Hello. My name is Mengde, and I recently stumbled across FF Compendium, which in turn led me here. A couple years ago, I wrote a sequel to Final Fantasy X that I called Twilight of Spira. It clocked in at approximately 72,000 words, about 141 pages. The friends who read it asked for a sequel, so I went ahead and wrote one, called Dawn of New Light. Dawn of New Light was slightly shorter, about 62,000 words (115 pages). I hope to submit these to the FF Compendium fan fiction area, but I would also like to post them here, as some of you may not visit FF Compendium or may not want to search through the large database.
The format in which Twilight and Dawn are constructed makes it difficult for forum posting in two ways: one, they were written in Microsoft Word, so all formatting is lost when it is transferred to a php interface. This is no real problem, as I can just add in the formatting again. The main problem is that I do not use chapters in my work. The entire composition is one long story with nothing other than scene changes interrupting the flow. This way, I find that the reader has an easier time just becoming engrossed in the story. Since there are no chapters, I will post about 7 pages at a time - a little more or less, depending upon where a scene change is. I will start with Twilight and if enough interest is expressed I will move on to Dawn.
One more thing to note, I wrote Twilight while FFX-2 was being developed and took nothing of FFX-2’s story into account. Dawn was written after FFX-2 was released, but it follows Twilight in its omission of any FFX-2 related material.
Now, I apologize for the long paragraph read. Without further ado…
Final Fantasy X
Twilight of Spira
Written by Mengde
The sky was a golden hue, the clouds whipping past faster than the eye could see. The metal deck of the airship vibrated beneath her feet, an occasional bit of turbulence provoking a rattle from the iron.
The Aeons, freed from their stone prisons, rose and took flight to the Farplane. The swift Valefor, the powerful Bahamut, the chilling Anima, all of them slowly disappeared into pyreflies… just as he did.
She ran toward him, tried to reach him one last time… but she fell through him, hitting the deck hard enough to elicit shooting pains up and down her arms. She didn’t notice, didn’t care. He was fading away, going… and he jumped off the deck of the airship just before she opened her mouth to say she loved him.
With a start, Yuna woke up. For a moment, she forgot everything; the pain, the burden she had been carrying. Then she remembered the events of the past three months and depression, like a lead blanket, landed squarely on her shoulders again.
Angrily, Yuna tried to get out of bed, only to discover her legs were entangled in the sheets as if she had been running in her sleep. After a split second of trying to get free, she gave into her frustration and mentally blasted the offensive bedding onto the floor. It lay there in a tangle, sparking with the energy of its exposure to magic.
Yuna peered out the window; it was still the middle of the night, the constellations readily visible. With a sigh, knowing she couldn’t possibly get back to sleep after that dream, she slipped into a robe and went outside. The breeze was cool on her face, but it did little to comfort her. Distractedly, she wandered over to a nearby fountain, all the while surveying her surroundings.
The palace of Bevelle had been too oppressive, with people in every nook and cranny, always wanting to talk to her. Yuna had decided to go back to Luca, hoping to find some peace there. Inwardly, she wondered if she ever would. Upon her arrival, the crowd was so eager to see her that it stretched for miles. So she had slipped off the boat and swam to shore.
Staring at the fountain, Yuna’s mouth quirked in a half smile, thinking that despite the fact she had grown up on an island, she had never really liked to swim. Yuna walked over to the edge of the base and gazed into the crystal-clear waters. Her reflection stared back at her, and Yuna felt like denying that was her at all; she looked tired and disheveled. Sighing, she absently lifted some water out of the fountain and formed it into a perfect sphere. For a moment, the orb pleased her… until it reminded her of things she would rather forget.
Like blitzball… she had loved the game, until he disappeared. After that, she could never find any pleasure in it. Then she thought of Sin, and the perfect globe of water it had often traveled in.
Shaking her head, Yuna allowed the sphere to lose form and fall back into the fountain with a muted splash. She began contemplating the prospect of going back to bed again when she heard footsteps.
In no mood for anyone, not even Kimahri, Yuna raised her voice and said, “Go away. Whoever you are, it would be better if I didn’t have to talk to someone right now.” Yuna reflected on how harsh and tired she sounded… but only until she realized that the footsteps continued in her direction. She turned, her bicolored gaze sweeping the area and seeing nobody. The footsteps drew closer, and Yuna, squinting in concentration, set a nearby torch ablaze.
It was only a passing man, apparently too drunk to realize that Yuna had told him to go away. Seeing the torch being set ablaze by nobody, the man let out a startled yell, then turned around and ran back the way he’d came. Relaxing muscles she hadn’t known were tensed, Yuna turned around to go back inside. That was when she saw the hooded figure.
The approaching figure was wearing a black cloak; Yuna couldn’t make out who it was. The man – or woman – hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to do next.
“That’s far enough,” Yuna told the figure, trying to put all her authority into her tone. It didn’t help, as the figure continued to approach. It was entirely silent, as whoever it was appeared to be gliding across the ground. The torch, apparently deciding to silence its own noise, went out.
The figure stopped at arm’s length from Yuna, then seemed to nod. Yuna didn’t know how to respond, so she said nothing.
In a high, raspy voice, the figure said, “Why, Yuna, don’t you recognize your old teacher?” Yuna shook her head, painfully aware the movement looked more like a spasm than a response. “You should,” the figure told her. “After all, you wouldn’t have had such a good time at Remiem Temple without me.”
“Belgemine?” Yuna asked in astonishment.
“Yes, Yuna, it is I,” the figure responded. “And I have come to warn you that Luca is not safe for you any more.”
“First, tell me how you can appear to me outside the Farplane after I sent you,” Yuna told Belgemine.
Shaking her head, Belgemine replied, “It is very hard – but those with power such as mine can, from the Farplane, possess a material, inanimate object. I did not want to cause a stir, so I chose this cloak.”
“Very well. Why is Luca unsafe for me?” Yuna asked. “If there’s going to be another fiend invasion, I could care less.”
“No! This has nothing to do with the fiends!” Belgemine told her. “The order of Yevon is indeed destroyed – but the pieces that were left behind still oppose the truth. I cannot tell you more than that.” Yuna frowned, about to ask why not, when Belgemine interrupted, “Goodbye, Yuna. We will not meet until you reach the Farplane…”
“Belgemine!” Yuna cried, but at that moment the cloak suddenly dropped to the ground in a heap. The summoner that had helped Yuna so much was gone.
Her face wet with freshly shed tears, Yuna sank to her knees in front of the cloak. Once again, she’d been orphaned.
“The Beasts are sinking into the renowned Kilika Barrier Defense Routine!” Jimma shouted. “It’ll be tough for the Aurochs to get through that!”
“That’s absolutely right, Jimma!” Bobba replied enthusiastically. “We’ll be seeing plenty more action before this game is over!”
Looking contemptuously at the announcer’s box, Lulu watched the Aurochs from a walkway on the south rim of the Luca blitzball stadium. Gritting her teeth in annoyance, she turned and stared down a man who had been looking at her more than he’d been watching the game. Unnerved, the jerk quickly relegated himself to another seat. For the third time in as many weeks, Lulu walked out of the stadium.
Blitzball didn’t hold much appeal for her any more. Not since they’d returned from their quest to defeat Sin and found that the Aurochs had been crushing the competition left and right since they’d won the season championship. Not since Wakka had been invited back onto the team and was lucky if he got to visit with Lulu once a week. She’d kept mostly to herself, not having to find work as being the former guardian of Yuna meant she ate free anywhere civilized in Spira. Lulu had found a deserted lot where she could practice her spellcraft. Various objects lay littered about the place, burned from exposure to fire and lightning, or wet from melted ice or water in general. She’d even performed a few castings of Ultima… until an unlucky bird flew into the area of effect. The results had convinced her to leave out that spell in her practice sessions.
A few minutes later, Lulu arrived at the house she’d been granted by the Luca governor for the duration of her stay. Walking up to the front door, Lulu noticed a message on the mat, which was decidedly unusual. Picking it up, she unfolded it and began to read as she walked into her house.
Come to the deserted lot where you practice your spells at midnight tonight.
Frowning, Lulu turned the note over, but found nothing else written. Shrugging, she tossed it into the hearth in the den. Channeling a bit of mental energy into the hearth, she watched the note explode into flaming bits of molten glory as she ignited it.
Lulu had never liked taking orders, and anonymous notes were even easier to ignore. Smiling to herself – something she didn’t do often enough – she vowed to be sound asleep when the writer waited for her, out in the cold.
In the middle of the night, Lulu woke with a start and realized there was someone in her house.
Moving quietly, Lulu got out of bed and stepped into hall. A silhouette stood at the end of the hall, moving silently away from Lulu.
Away. Lulu frowned and wondered why, then decided it was for the better and began sneaking up behind the silhouette, hoping to identify who it was. Just as she was about to reach it, the silhouette reached out and lit a nearby lamp.
In the light Lulu saw her intruder; it was Yuna.
“Yuna!” Lulu exclaimed, her voice cracking from lack of use. Yuna nodded, smiled, and they embraced. After a few seconds, Lulu drew back to arm’s length and scolded her, “You were the one who wrote me that note!”
“Of course. And I knew that you would make sure you were in bed, sound asleep, when you should’ve been waiting for me in that lot…”
Lulu smiled at her own predictability.
A moment later the two were in the seldom-used kitchen area, where they were waiting while a local drink, called coffee, boiled on the stove. It was about halfway done, thanks to Lulu’s constant mental adjustments of the temperature to make sure the coffee boiled three times faster than normal.
Yuna, meanwhile, was sitting by the hearth, though she didn’t appear cold. She stared into the flames distractedly, apparently lost in thought. Lulu didn’t mind; Yuna obviously had a lot on her mind. She would, if Lulu had been in Yuna’s position. Lulu wondered what Yuna saw in those flames. Whatever it was, it had to be a less than pleasing image, judging from the sad look on Yuna’s face.
Just as she was about to ask Yuna what was the matter, the coffee, released from her mental grasp for a moment, hissed and a drop of water flew out of the bowl. Lulu pulled her hands back in time to avoid being burned. Angrily, she turned her full attention onto the coffee again.
Yuna sighed and wondered again why she was staring into the fire. She could be catching up with Lulu, instead… then Yuna realized that her friend had all her attention focused on the coffee pot. Sighing again – she did that too much these days – Yuna gently reached her hand into the fire and plucked out a flame. It twinkled there, in the palm of her hand, but without wood to feed it the little flame went out. Like lots of things in her life.
Like how her father had, in one moment of supreme bravery, been taken away from her forever. Like how Auron, standing before the platform where they’d battled Jecht, had told her he’d had enough of life and wanted her to send him. Like how… he had been taken away by cruel, harsh reality.
Abruptly, a steaming mug was placed in her hand. Yuna winced, then looked up at Lulu and saw the worry on the older woman’s face. She smiled, trying to dissuade her from asking what was wrong, but Lulu asked anyway.
“Everything,” Yuna replied, and Lulu didn’t seem surprised in the least. Seeing a chance to tell all, Yuna began in a rush. “It’s just not fair. First Auron decides he’s tired of life-”
“Can’t really blame him,” Lulu muttered to herself.
“- and then he, of all people, turns out to be dependent on Sin’s existence. If I’d known, if I’d had any inkling of what was going to happen if I killed Yu Yevon, I… I don’t think I’d have destroyed it. I think I would have let it live.” It was a terrible confession for Yuna, but it was the truth. “You know how I feel, don’t you, Lulu?” Yuna asked. “You and Chappu…”
Yuna broke off, realizing that she’d gone too far. But Lulu didn’t seem offended in the least.
Taking a careful, measured sip of coffee, Lulu replied thoughtfully, “I do know how you feel. I was depressed for months after Chappu died. It’s just… I suppose I have a confession of my own to make,” she said wryly. Yuna frowned, not understanding. “Do you remember back to the first time we visited Kilika Temple?” Lulu asked.
“Of course. Let’s see, there was the race up the steps… and the Sinspawn…”
“Not any of that. Do you remember when I blew up at Wakka for thinking Chappu was still alive?” Yuna smiled, then squelched the expression and nodded.
Lulu sighed, saying, “Well, I wanted to believe him. But I felt, for some reason, that I couldn’t let him know that.”
Shaking her head, Yuna replied, “It must have been easier for you. You weren’t there to see Sin kill him!”
“It’s not a question of easy and hard-” Lulu began, but Yuna wasn’t finished.
“I was right there when he disappeared,” Yuna went on. “Right there to see him vanish! We had the rest of our lives ahead of us and he left!”
Finding an output for her anger, Yuna focused in on the mug she held in her quaking hand. It began to crack and splinter, the coffee dripping out onto the hearth. A sudden cold struck her hand, which was odd, but then the mug shattered into a hundred pieces… and the coffee, frozen into a large, icy chunk, thudded to the ground, too hard to break.
Yuna looked angrily at Lulu, who must have frozen the coffee just before the mug broke. “I didn’t want you to spill hot coffee on yourself,” Lulu said pointedly. With that, the brief storm passed, and depression replaced it, as usual. Yuna seemed to shrink a bit, and Lulu went to get a broom.
Again plucking a bit of flame from the fire, Yuna dried the inexplicable tears and tossed the flame back into the hearth before it could go out or Lulu could notice. However, Lulu did notice, but didn’t mind in the slightest. Blushing, Yuna murmured a halfhearted apology.
“There’s no need to apologize,” Lulu said as warmly as she could. “I completely understand how you feel. If there’s anything I can do…”
“There’s nothing you can do,” Yuna said, suddenly standing. “I shouldn’t have come… I’m sorry!”
Before Lulu could stop her, Yuna had ran out of the kitchen and out the front door. Lulu dropped the broom and would have started after her had Yuna’s touch not half-melted the door handle, making it too hot to open the door.
Halfway back to the luxurious house she’d been given, Yuna sank onto a public bench and cried freely. Her life was coming apart. She was an idol for a people that would never leave her alone. She would never find peace, not even with her closest friends. It was just so unfair, all of it.
“Irritating, I know. Or are you afraid?”
Yuna snapped her head up. Someone had spoken, but there was nobody in the vicinity. At least, that was what she’d thought until she saw the two, luminous figures before her. One of them was Auron. The other was shining too brightly for her to tell who it was. Gasping, she started toward Auron but found the way blocked, somehow.
“Me, afraid?”
There was no mistaking that voice. It was him talking to Auron.
“Tidus?” Yuna asked, her voice shaking. She’d hadn’t said his name for months.
Immediately the figure’s brightness level dropped enough for her to recognize him; it was Tidus.
Neither of the men seemed to notice her.
“I’m going to offer my services to Yuna. Come.”
“And if I don’t want to?” Tidus asked Auron while the older man began to walk away.
“Every story must have an ending.”
“I don’t care about your stories!”
Auron looked over his shoulder, sizing Tidus up, and finally said, “I see. Sorry you feel that way.” He began walking away again and Tidus exploded.
“You make it sound like it’s my choice! But there really is no choice! I have to go with you, I have to!” A brief silence was exchanged, and then Tidus said, “I still don’t buy your story.”
“Sin is Jecht,” Auron told him, putting emphasis on the words. Then he turned and walked away. Tidus, his glare drilling into Auron’s back, followed… and they both disappeared.
“Don’t leave again!” Yuna yelled at the spot where Tidus had been. “Not again! DON’T LEAVE!”
She sank to her knees, pounding at the hard, cold ground with her fist. The stone resisted at first, then began to buckle and crack with the force of her anger, not her strength.
Yuna looked up, towards the horizon, and screamed. Screamed until her throat was raw, until her voice was gone. Screamed until she had nothing more within her to draw upon.
Getting to her feet, Yuna staggered towards the way she’d been going, then put a hand on a nearby crate for support. At that moment she heard a peculiar cracking sound. Looking down, her eyes widened in horror.
That one expulsion of pure anger and grief had carved great fissures in the surrounding stone, weakening it to the point that the slightest movement would send it all falling down into the sea. Yuna, leaning heavily on the crate, took a careful step forward… and the crate fell off the stack it was on.
The next moment she was in the water, giant, jagged boulders raining down on her. Yuna dove under the surface of the water, suddenly finding energy where she thought there was none. Mammoth splinters of the walkway plummeted through the water all around her, but she was not touched by any of them.
After she was sure that all of the rock had fallen, Yuna burst to the surface, gasping for air. She just as quickly dove back under as a last, giant rock shaped like a circle fell, but this time she could not avoid it. The rock, though slowed by the impact of the water, smacked her to the bottom of the ocean, unconscious.
Lulu had sent a signal flare to Wakka, who showed up almost immediately at her front door, saying that he was in the neighborhood. She had told him of her encounter with Yuna, and Wakka seemed deeply disturbed by it. He hadn’t seen Yuna in a while, either, so the two set off after Yuna at a brisk pace. They’d rounded a bend when they saw the gap in the walkway and a huge, circular rock fall into the water.
“Oh, brudda. What’d Yuna do this time?” Wakka muttered. He and Lulu peered over the edge of the gap but couldn’t find Yuna.
“She’s probably underwater, either unconscious or-” Wakka held up a hand to stop that particular train of thought then and there.
“I’ll look, ya? In the meantime, you’d better get some night shift guards here – to erect a roadblock, or whatever it is they do when a giant section of walkway…”
Wakka stopped at Lulu’s piercing stare. With a nervous grin, he jumped into the water. Lulu, shaking her head, started for the nearest guard station… until she remembered it was on the other side of the gap.
There is the first 7 pages (3300 words) of Twilight. I hope you enjoyed reading it. The story starts off slow, but I will post more tomorrow and things really begin to move in the next 7 pages. Comments and constructive criticism are welcome, but I would just like to point out this has already been printed and given to several of my friends, so I cannot revise anything without some measure of difficulty. I would also like to point out that any sentences that may seem out of context or sound like they are something a character is thinking to him or herself, it probably is a thought and I missed it in my reformatting. Thank you again for reading.
Sorry, I had planned onm reading this earlier and responding, but I was distracted by shiny objects. Anyway, it’s a pretty damn good story. And nice touch with the vision thing, for a second I thought it was a cliche “ethereal message from the ones you miss the most”, but it wasn’t, and that pleasantly surprised me. In short, if you don’t keep posting mroe of this story, I will hunt you down and Horribly rape you until you do start posting again.