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The Knight choked down a sob and grabbed the Warrior's arm. He planted his feet in the scorching sand and tugged. The Warrior's body slid only an inch on the thick, soft sand.
The Knight renewed his grip and heaved with all of his might, already fatigued muscles clenching, an involuntary grunt tearing its way from his dried throat. His sweat-slicked grip slipped down to the Warrior's wrist, and he stumbled backwards.
The manikins didn't stop their slow, predatory approach. They were even closer. He had wasted precious seconds.
His entire body nearly went cold with surging panic despite the sweltering heat of the desert wastes around him.
The Knight searched with renewed vigor for the clasps of the Warrior's armor, his breath panting and short. He dug underneath the high collar behind the Warrior's neck and even pawed at the sides of his ribs, but he couldn't find them. It was only when it occurred to him to brush the heavy yellow cape fabric away from the Warrior's shoulders that he found them underneath, on the tops of his shoulders.
He looked up just in time to see the point of Exdeath's knotted, branch-like sword flying straight at him. He screamed, barely managing to throw himself backwards and down onto the sand on his backside as the sword sailed through where his head had been not a second ago.
The Exdeath manikin curled its crooked, clawed fingers, and the Knight knew the sword would be sent back for another blow. The Knight scrambled to his knees and knelt over the Warrior, half to protect him, and half to continue to work on the armor clasps to remove some of his weight. Right as he managed to undo one of them on his left shoulder, the Yuna manikin swung her staff. A translucent copy of one of her winged Aeons appeared in the air between them and flapped its wings. Several orbs of light manifested on the tips and shot towards him.
The Knight dove over the Warrior's form, accidentally jostling him all around as he reached for the discarded shield. He stabbed it into the sand and buried himself behind it, covering himself and most of the Warrior's upper body. A few of the projectiles slammed into the metal, and the impacts jarred up the Knight's arms so forcefully that he nearly recoiled and let go of the shield. He renewed his block, curling up tighter behind the shield until the barrage ended.
A relieved laugh bubbled out of him when he realized he had managed to hold firm.
He crawled to the Warrior's other side and started to undo the clasps on his right shoulder, every so often peeking up over the shield to watch their constant advance. Each time he looked, they were even closer. Fifty feet away. Then forty. Then thirty, and he dreaded when they were on top of him.
The thought shot through his mind and his body with sharp clarity - he wouldn't survive.
The adrenaline and his own exhaustion made his hands tremble. He fumbled with the Warrior's clasps, all the while the skin on the back of his neck prickling harder and harder with each passing second that he wasted. Sweat poured down his skin like water, burning his eyes and salting his dried, cracked lips. The chestplate popped free after what could only have been moments but felt like an eternity, and the Knight braced himself as he peeked over the top of the shield.
He came face-to-face with the Rinoa manikin.
She leaned over, swinging her arm wildly back and forth, the blades of the weapon cinched to her arm hissing through the air. He craned his neck back just in time. A few severed pieces of the front of his hair glittered in the harsh sunlight as it softly flitted to the ground between them.
The gasp he made didn't make it past his throat. He shoved the shield forward into the manikin's stomach and pushed it back. Its feet slipped in the sand and it went tumbling backwards down a dune.
The Knight staggered to his feet, the muscles of his legs trembling. He picked up the heavy shield and held it over his shoulder to protect his back as he lifted the chest plate off of the Warrior's form and shimmied the back plate from underneath him. A brief thought that he could've just exposed the Warrior to more attacks entered his mind, and he immediately chided himself for a hasty decision. But in his panic he knew it couldn't be helped.
He needed to get them both out.
He looked over his shoulder at the Gateway. It was still too far away.
He had to try. Defeat pounded against his chest with each enhanced beat of his straining heart, pulsing so hard that his vision pulsed.
The Knight grabbed the back of the Warrior's black undershirt, damp with sweat, and heaved. The shirt caught under his arms and worked as leverage. Perhaps the Knight imagined it, perhaps the adrenaline that was flooding his system made him stronger, but to the Knight's intense relief the Warrior slid with much more ease over the sand. He staggered away from the manikins as quickly as he could, energy surging with the briefest glimmer of hope.
It was dashed a moment later.
The Exdeath manikin disappeared from view. It reappeared in a blink, directly behind the Knight. He watched the several-foot-tall shadow loom over him, as well as the silhouette of an arm lifting for a blow.
The Knight whirled around, an attack already on his mind. His speed usually made up for what he lacked in strength, and against a slow-moving magic user like Exdeath, it served him well. He was already moving into the manikin's space, intending to dodge and launch a flurry of blows before the manikin could even react.
But the Warrior would be left undefended.
He jerked to a stop, off-balance, and that hesitation cost him. The manikin raised its hand straight up into the air, and the Onion Knight felt the crushing weight of Exdeath's magic press in on his body from all sides. He was lifted up, limbs flailing on impulse in an attempt to right himself. The manikin held him suspended there, then with its other hand drew a symbol in the air.
The glyph that appeared between them was so bright that it blinded the Knight. The interlocking squares, circles, swirls, and other geometric shapes dizzied him further, and he could only close his eyes as a peaceful second passed before impact. The beam from the attack slammed into the Knight's chest full-force, and he was tossed backwards through the air.
The initial piercing agony of the attack rocketed through his ribs, and all of his breath was knocked out of him. His chest collapsed, and his heart stopped. A moment of weightlessness, and then his back slammed into the sand, kicking up a pile and raining it back down over him.
His diaphragm jerked, trying to get back into a rhythm, but it took too long, so long that his vision started to go black. He curled around his aching ribs, mouth gaping, pure battle instinct the only thing pushing his body to stand before his conscious mind caught up. He finally was able to suck in a breath, so sharp that it cut through the back of his throat and through his chest, as he threw his body towards the swirling image of the Exdeath manikin looming over the Warrior's form.
His steps were weak. They were off balance and off target. He had to correct his course a few times, all the while clumsily ducking and dodging attacks from the other two manikins. The sand worked against him, dragging his heavy feet down beneath their depths with every step, and he quickly lost the energy to pull them free despite his willpower.
The Exdeath manikin stood over the Warrior and lifted its sword over his chest, ready to stab down.
"No!" the Knight rasped, but it was little more than a whisper from his parched throat. His feet trapped where they were, he collapsed to his hands and knees.
He didn't want to watch, but he couldn't tear his eyes away, even as the sword tip surged down at the Warrior's unarmored chest.
Without warning, the Exdeath manikin jerked. Its entire body spasmed and its back arched, arms splaying out to the sides. The massively thick blade of a greatsword suddenly protruded from its chest with a sickening crack. Triangular in shape, almost like a curved arrowhead, and wide enough to split the manikin from the center of its neck all the way down to where the very bottom of its abdomen would be, the Knight knew who it belonged to, even before the growling battle cry came from the warrior who had thrown it.
Jecht stampeded over the dunes, cresting the top and storming straight for the Exdeath manikin. He barreled into the manikin's back, and the two of them went down in a tangle of green crystal, darkened, tan skin, and black, tattered clothes. They rolled to a stop with Jecht scrambling on top of the manikin. He grabbed the T handle of his sword and wrenched back, bending the Exdeath manikin backwards, then lifted his foot straight up. With a final roar of exertion, he slammed his heel down on the back of the Exdeath manikin's helmet. The crystal crumbled in a shower of teal, scattering over the dunes, and then the rest of the body was next, disintegrating beneath him.
Jecht turned next to the other two manikins, teeth bared like a wild animal. He charged, but the Knight's breath hadn't quite fully returned yet, and the sand was turning white, and the sky was turning white, and his skin and his hands in front of him were turning white as his vision congealed and the sound started to fall away from his ears.
His body relaxed, but falling asleep sounded distantly bad for a reason he couldn't remember. He clung to consciousness as much as he could, pouring the last dregs of his energy into keeping his wits about him each time they tried to drift. He didn't want to give up, but he felt his thoughts getting smaller, more distant.
". . . hell you doing out here, huh? You alright? Hey, kid! Kid, you alright?"
A hand was shaking him. The Knight blinked, but couldn't get his vision to return to normal. The sound was coming from miles away.
"J-Jecht?"
"Yeah, kid. Come on. We gotta go."
The hand that was shaking him moved to his bicep, tugging him up, but the Knight couldn't get his legs to hold his own weight. With a sigh, Jecht's muscular arm wrapped around his middle. The world tilted, and as the Knight started to bounce in rhythm with Jecht's steps, he realized he was tucked under his arm like a blitzball.
He didn't have the energy to be annoyed by that.
"I . . . The Warrior . . . We, we need, we, we've got to . . . " he babbled, struggling weakly. Jecht shouldn't have been helping him, he should've been giving the Warrior water or moving him or something. But the Knight couldn't get his brain to move fast enough to verbalize his thoughts.
"I've got him," Jecht said, grunting with a heavy shift of his weight. The Knight took that to mean he was draped over Jecht's other shoulder. "He's gonna be fine, but we gotta get you guys to some shade or something."
He was fine. The Warrior was fine. That was it. He needed the Warrior to be safe, and he was.
"Okay. Okay. That's good. Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay. Um, Jecht?"
"Yeah, kid?"
"I am going to pass out now."
"No, no! Come on, don't-"
The white turned to black, and the Knight sank gratefully into it.