Hey, not to be a bother, but why hasn’t more of this been posted? I’m anxious to see what happens next!
Haha, sorry. I’ve been busy for the past week and haven’t had time. I just got back here today. Now then…
Just as Yuna was helping a groggy Kimahri to his feet, the world twisted and distorted. The room and everyone in it disappeared, and Yuna was alone in a place so deep and black it defied everything she’d experienced.
Then the world shifted back into reality, and Yuna was suddenly on a bench in a park. Kimahri sat beside her, while Wakka and Lulu were standing next to each other beside a small fountain. Rikku stood at the base of a large tree, facing everyone else.
Yuna shook her head and tried not to faint. Though their location had changed, everyone’s injuries had apparently stayed painfully the same.
“What… what just happened?” Rikku asked.
“I wish I knew,” Yuna replied.
“Yuna,” Lulu said tentatively, “do you remember those teleport pads in the Via Purifico?”
“Yes,” Yuna replied, and instantly saw the point Lulu was trying to make. “It did sort of feel like teleportation to me, but the way everything distorted… and that place I was in for just a few seconds… it couldn’t have been teleportation.”
“You’re right. It was temporal displacement,” said someone.
“Who said that?” Wakka asked.
“I did,” was the reply. It came from the tree branch that extended above the bench Yuna was sitting on. The branch’s only resident was a large crow. Startlingly, it began to speak. “Yes, I’m talking. No, don’t look so surprised. No, I’m not a figment of your imagination. No, I’m not what I appear to be, that is, simply a crow. Yes, I do have something to do with Cerewin, the Elemental.”
Yuna blinked in surprise; the bird had answered both her questions before they’d been asked, and judging from the equally surprised expressions on everyone else’s faces, their questions had been answered, too.
“What is your name?” Yuna asked.
The crow cocked his head at her and replied, “A name. Yes, I suppose I would have a name. After all, to you humans, everything has to have a name.”
“So you don’t have a name?” Wakka asked.
“For your benefit, you may call me Anaroth,” the crow responded.
“Anaroth is the name of the yer’ – ah – the grertiam I met on the Thunder Plains and the man Cerewin spoke about,” Yuna said.
“Well, I am him.”
“What did you mean about temporal displacement?” Yuna asked.
“If you’d tried to leave the palace in that condition, you would all have died,” Anaroth said. “So I temporally displaced you here. Thank you for knocking Psertorpus out, otherwise I couldn’t have done it.” With that last, he turned and nodded to Wakka, a gesture that looked strange when performed by a bird.
“Why not?” Lulu asked.
“Suffice to say temporal displacement is tricky,” Anaroth replied. “Now, then, I believe you have somewhere to be.” With that, he leaped off the branch as if to take flight, but in the instant Yuna lost track of him he disappeared.
She turned to everyone and said, “I think we’re overdue for some recovery in a nice, warm hotel.”
The plan to rent a room in a nice, warm hotel had been only part of what they’d ended up doing.
The streets were filled with patrolling monks, every one of them looking for the five escapees. Fortunately, they’d found an Al Bhed shop owned by Rin and rented a room there. At about midnight, the monks had begun conducting door-by-door searches, so they’d hidden in a storage closet while the monks looked around.
Finally they’d left, and Yuna fell into the first deep sleep she’d had for a long time.
But it being a deep sleep did not necessarily mean it was a restful sleep.
Once again, Yuna stood on the rattling hull of the airship, watching the aeons burst from their stone prisons and take flight. Watching Tidus fade away before her eyes, along with all hope for a future.
This time, however, the dream continued. And Yuna did not like it.
The airship suddenly disintegrated, and Yuna was abruptly falling through the clouds that were turning black and stormy. Lightning flashed in the sky, and bolts shot through the air around her, nearly hitting her.
Just when Yuna thought she would spend eternity falling, she roughly landed on a particularly large and black storm cloud. The dream was already surreal enough that Yuna didn’t question the reality of the moment.
Anaroth appeared before her in human form. “Hello, Yuna. It is good to see you again.”
“Thank you,” she replied stiffly, thinking that Anaroth, whatever he was, had no right to intrude on her dreams – even her nightmares.
Then he said something Yuna would never suspect. “I am here to apologize.”
Startled, Yuna asked, “For what?”
“For what happened on that airship. I now understand what Tidus meant to you."
Yuna frowned, trying to understand what he was implying… and then it hit her, in all the harshness and cruelty of reality. “You,” she breathed. “You’re the one who tried to send Tidus to the Farplane!” Anaroth nodded gravely, and Yuna felt the rage building inside her. “How could you do that to me? If you could have not sent him, then why did you?”
“That world, his Zanarkand, was totally dependent on the Fayth, and therefore Yu Yevon. I could have allowed him to stay in the mortal plane, but it would have caused much chaos. Eventually everywhere he went reality around him would have been distorted and twisted. He would be totally and unbearably alone, and there would be no way for you to share a future with him.”
“I don’t care!” Yuna screamed at him. “I don’t care about what would happen! If I could be with him, really be with him, for just one more moment…”
“That,” Anaroth said sternly, “is not love. It’s selfishness. If you truly love him, you would never condemn him to such an existence.”
“How would you know?"
“You forget,” he said stiffly. “I am a yer’pulkh-nersatnoth, an eternal servant of the One and the earth. I am a sender of souls. Do you honestly think that after the dead transform into fiends that they will be sent to the Farplane upon their second death? Not at all! I am the one who constantly roams the earth and sends the unsent whenever I can. Only at this point, when the Farplane itself is in peril, am I allowed to take physical form and rise from the earth in which I have waited so long.”
“That still doesn’t prove how you know the difference between love and selfishness!” Yuna snapped back.
The instant he began his next tirade, Yuna knew she’d lost this particular debate. “Do you have any idea what it is like to release someone’s soul from their mortal bindings, Yuna? Do you? In case you had forgotten your past experiences with sending, however primitive an art it might be when practiced by your ilk, I will tell you.
“Summoners tied to this plane are required to perform a dance, a ritual, something. I am not. But you still know the feeling. As you release each soul from its mortal shell, whether it be a corpse or a living body, you see its experiences in life. Those experiences that define what it means to be yourself, unlike any other individual in existence. You see the happy times, the sad times. Perhaps the first kiss, the marriage. You see what love was truly defined as by that person you are sending.
“And then you see the heartbreak. The agony as ones the person loved dearly grow old and die. The agony doubled as the sent one feels pain because the person’s loved ones feel pain for him or her. It can break your heart, too, to witness such things. That is why sendings can be so draining for summoners. Unlike myself, they do not solely exist to send.
“I do. And that means I, more than any other person, understand what love is and is not. What heartfelt agony is, and is not. And despite all the power that has been bestowed on me, the sendings invariably weary me.
“Imagine that you are trapped in a deep pit. You can get out only by precarious handholds in the wall of the pit. But to grasp a handhold, you must experience a person’s entire life’s worth of pain and suffering. And it is a very deep pit indeed.
“In a world of paradise, it might not be so bad. In a world with no death, I would not exist, and I would gladly accept that fate. But in this world, a world caught in a spiral of death, it is very hard. Sin has ruled this world for longer than history has been recorded. Only legends speak of its birth now. And before Sin there were many wars. Countless lives have been lost in the course of this harsh reality.
“And I… I have continued to exist, suffering through it all.”
Yuna’s anger had long ceased to exist, realizing that Anaroth had only been doing what was required of him. After a long period of silence, interrupted only by distant thunder, Yuna finally spoke. “I’m sorry.”
“Do not be. You could not have understood what I have gone through.”
Yuna hesitated to ask her next question, but could not help herself. “When you sent Tidus… what did you see?”
Though she could not see Anaroth’s face beneath his hood, she sensed a smile.
“I shall show you,” he said.
Anaroth walked over to Yuna and placed a hand on her shoulder.
And then all was light.
Finally, the light faded… and Yuna was back in bed at the Al Bhed shop at one o’clock in the morning.
She sat up in bed and cried softly to herself. Anaroth had shown her everything, all of Tidus’s life. So much of it had been rife with struggles against his father, full of sadness and rejection.
There were also many good times. Parties with friends, blitzball victories, a rare family moment.
Finally, there was his time in Spira.
That had been the most tumultuous part of all, filled with clashes, bitter defeats, victories, rivalries, too many emotions and events for her to recall all in one sitting.
Through it all, he had developed a better and better understanding of her, just as she had of him, which had resulted in their inevitable romance.
Yuna looked up at the clock again. It was two in the morning. Sighing, she readjusted the pillow on her bed and shut her eyes, hoping to get some more sleep.
It was only four in the morning when they had left and snuck out of Bevelle. By five they’d been back in Macalania Woods, and at six they were on the trail to the Calm Lands.
Yuna privately wondered why all of them unconsciously went along with everyone else’s unconscious motivation towards Zanarkand. Nobody had said they had to leave Bevelle. They could have stayed, fought against Neltharios’ tyranny and Psertorpus’ magic. But instead, here they were on the road to the place where Belgemine had dwelled until Yuna had sent her.
Yuna guessed it was nine o’clock when they arrived at the plateau overlooking the Calm Lands. She was not happy at what she saw.
What had once been an admittedly marred but still beautiful, green plain was a dying, brown plain of knee-high grasses. Many of them were sharp along the edges, and Yuna recalled the unique razor grass that had grown along the perimeter of the Calm Lands. It had somehow permeated every part of the plain, making travel look unpleasant and probably dangerous. Where there had once been an Al Bhed trading outpost, there was a blackened crater. The small bridge to the pass to Remiem Temple that someone had apparently rebuilt was lying in pieces on the ground for the second time. Nobody was in sight.
“Looks pretty desolate, ya?” Wakka murmured. “Thunder Plains and Macalania aren’t the only places being affected.”
“It’s all of Spira,” Yuna said. “You heard what Priester Guado said about the eight dimensions – our world consists of the lower four, while the Farplane consists of all eight. The lower four are dependent on the higher four, and so when the Farplane is being crippled by Seymour, Spira is, too.”
“I wonder what Seymour was doing,” Rikku said absentmindedly. “He was drawing the waterfalls up to himself and making the clouds all stormy. It also looked like he was absorbing their electric discharges.”
“He’s probably doing more,” Yuna put in. “I get the definite feeling he was gathering power – but for what, I don’t know.”
“We should start through Calm Lands,” Kimahri interrupted. “Kimahri not want to travel through that grass during the night.”
Everyone reluctantly agreed, equally aware that their small conversation about Seymour really served as a reason for them not to enter the plain. But they did, and travel was just as bad as Yuna had feared. The razor grass cut through cloth like a sword through tissue paper, and had only a bit more difficulty with skin. By the time they were halfway through the plains, everyone was covered in cuts.
The razor grass, hard as it was to believe, was not the only unpleasantry on the trip. Many of the fiends in the area had been fleshy and soft-skinned, like the huge Marlboro or the Chimaera Brain. All those species without some kind of shell or carapace had been eliminated, completely extinct, within the first week of the razor grass’ spread. Those that survived evolved to fit their environment at an exceptional rate. Their shells, carapaces, exoskeletons, whatever protection they had was hard enough to weather a hail of bullets without a dent.
The last complaint was the air. Razor grass, unlike conventional grass, reproduced by means of airborne seeds. It was the season of reproduction for the plant, so everyone found themselves constantly spitting out the small seeds of the plant.
Finally Lulu decided she’d had enough. “Stand back,” she growled. Picking carefully through the razor grass and finding the exit of the Calm Lands, Lulu dropped her Moogle to the ground, raised her arms, then brought them down. A wall of fire blazed through a hundred meters of razor grass in a straight line in front of her.
“Now that’s the way to travel,” Wakka said.
The going was much easier, through half-cooked razor grass seeds tasted twice as bad as raw ones. Yuna didn’t want to think about what a fully cooked one would taste like.
At around five o’clock, the exit was only a few meters away.
Without warning the ground in front of Yuna rippled like a road in the summer heat. “What was that?” she asked, but nobody answered her. Yuna looked up from the ground in front of her, towards the bridge that went over the entrance to the ravine, and saw why. The giant stone automaton, Defender X, that had assaulted them the first time they passed through the Calm Lands, was walking up out of the ravine entrance.
“That’s impossible,” Rikku said, stuttering slightly. “We turned that thing into a debris heap!”
“I think the ground rippling in front of me had something to do with it getting up,” Yuna conjectured. Rikku gave her a so-what-else-is-new look, then turned her attention back to Defender X. Yuna did, too, and saw that the entire scene before her was rippling madly. Slowly other shapes began marching, crawling, and slithering out of the ravine. Marlboros. Valahas. Yowies. Defenders, smaller brothers of Defender X. Many different monsters that Yuna had fought and defeated in her quest for the aeon Yojimbo.
“Remember how everything rippled when we went through that temporal displacement?” Lulu asked. “I think this is something like that, only reality is being displaced…”
Lulu trailed off as everyone fell to their knees at once, grasping their heads. For a brief moment Yuna wondered what they were all doing, then she suddenly realized that she couldn’t remember how they’d defeated Defender X. Or any of the monsters in that cave.
“It has to be Seymour,” Yuna ground out through tightly clenched teeth. “He’s erasing our memories… depriving us of any advantages we might have… fight him…”
Rikku was trying to hold onto what little she could remember of Defender X’s weak points when all her memories suddenly flooded back. Rikku got unsteadily to her feet at the same time as everyone else. Except Yuna.
Yuna was on her side, curled up, trembling and clutching at her head.
Get out of my mind!
Yuna had lost all awareness of her physical position and instead was fighting against the cold, evil awareness inside her mind. It was flipping through her memories like a textbook… but which ones?
Think. What could I know that Seymour would be interested in?
Fascinating.
The last voice was Seymour’s. Yuna scanned her memories for what Seymour was looking at, then found it.
Seymour was viewing what Anaroth had showed her of Tidus’s life.
Yuna felt mindless rage course through her. Those memories, that unique view of Tidus’s life, was intended for her and nobody else, Anaroth had said. Anyone else knowing what she knew was a violation of everything that had been and still was Tidus.
GET OUT! Yuna focused all her anger and grief into one potent missile, then thrust it straight into the mind was invading her own.
Seymour drew away with a shriek of rage, and Yuna’s eyes snapped open.
Sitting up, Yuna began to stutter. “D-Defender X! The monsters from the c-cave! Where are they…”
Abruptly she realized they were all gone.
“They disappeared the second we got to our feet,” Wakka told her. “I guess whatever Seymour tried to do to you took up all his concentration so he couldn’t mess with our minds.”
He winced at what he implied, but Yuna shook her head and replied, “It was nothing too personal. Just something I’d seen that he wanted to know about.” Wakka still looked upset, but he nodded and half-smiled.
They continued their journey towards Mt. Gagazet, which was only a few hundred feet away at that point.
Yuna shuddered and reviewed what Seymour had managed to see. Sighing, Yuna came to the conclusion Seymour had seen nothing more than some of Tidus’s childhood memories.
They continued on, though they did not know what lay ahead.
Mount Gagazet was virtually unchanged from the last time Yuna had climbed its slopes. The only difference was every surviving Ronso and his brother had gathered at the entrance to the mountain. And though Seymour had nearly exterminated their race, every Ronso and his brother was still a huge crowd.
Yuna took it all in even as the crowd parted to make way for Elder Kelk Ronso, former Maester of Yevon. He seemed twice as old as he did last Yuna had seen him, and his once-gray fur was mostly shaded into a dignified white. Though he walked with a stoop, Yuna could sense the inner power within him, contained in the quiet shell of his appearance.
“Yuna.” Kelk raised a hand in greeting. “I welcome you to Mount Gagazet. But I must insist that you go no further.”
“What? Why not?” Yuna asked, startled.
“Foul things have been coming down the mountainside,” Kelk rumbled. “Foul things that, so my scouts say, originate in Zanarkand. We have seen fiends in that area before, but these are unlike any we have encountered. They are true monsters in both form and mind. Their only conceivable weakness is that they seem to be vulnerable to Holy magic, which only a few of us can call upon, now.”
“I have to go to Zanarkand,” Yuna said firmly. “I don’t know why, but I have to.”
“I cannot allow you to walk straight into the arms of death itself,” Kelk half-bellowed.
“Elder Kelk,” Yuna began. “Do you remember the last time we met? You admitted that my will was stronger than tempered steel no Ronso could hope to bend. At the time, I refused to acknowledge it, because I felt I was being overly flattered.
“But now I must go to Zanarkand. And I am willing to pit tempered steel of my quality against death any day.”
Kelk stared at her for a long time, and silence reigned. His brows constantly shifted, his hands clenching and unclenching. Yuna stared back with equal force, the only sign of her nervousness being the strain that flickered through her eyes.
Finally Kelk stepped to the side, beckoned to the path through the crowd, and said, “Go forth if you will. But trust not the road, for now the mountain itself devours any who dare climb its slopes.”
Yuna walked through the crowd, her friends right behind her. No sense of déjà vu struck her. She knew exactly why.
The first time Kelk had stood aside, he had done so while giving off the feeling of a fond farewell.
Now he gave off the feeling of a great general sending fine troops to their deaths.
And the crowds were the mourners at those troops’ funerals.
Scaaary premonitions. Again, I’m quite sorry for not having posted in a while. Things have been hectic. Have a nice evening.
Razor grass, hm? Have you, by any chance, read ay of the recent MTG novels? :hahaha;
Nope. Believe it or not, the razor grass came from an old Star Wars book that I read when I was a kid.
Ooh…cool. Stuff called razor grass is also featured in some of the newer Magic: The Gather novels, namely the Mirrodin block. Mirrodin is a world where almost everything in made out of metal, including the inhabitants.
It’s a pretty good read.
Bad news, guys. I’m posting this from another one of my computers. The C drive on my main computer where I keep ToS has failed. I have multiple backups of both my books, located on the D drive of the main computer and the C drive of a less-used computer. However, the less-used computer has no Internet access and I need to do a reinstall of Windows with the new C drive, so I won’t be able to update for a few days, worst case scenario.
OK, Mengde here. Everything is hooked back up and works now, so on with the updates.
The howling wind of Gagazet cut through the mental shield of warmth Yuna projected around everyone in conjunction with Lulu. Yuna focused more effort into the shield, and the wind became a warm breeze. At least until the temperature dropped again, as it had a fondness for doing so.
Yuna stared towards the peak of the mountain, wondering what foul things Kelk had been talking about. All she had sensed on this forsaken mountain was memories and the spirits of the yet-unsent. Anaroth would probably be along sometime to send them.
And in doing so he would cripple his spirit more.
Living to send was all well and good in theory, but in practice Yuna knew that sending even a single soul wore heavily on the soul of a summoner. Anaroth, powerful as he might be, had to be in terrible pain from everyone he’d sent, all the lives he’d experienced. All the sorrow contained therein.
Yuna found her mind drifting even as she instinctively negotiated the treacherous paths of the mountain.
Yuna shook her head, trying to focus on the mountain trail ahead.
“Yuna!” Wakka hissed in her ear, startling her out of her reverie. “Something big is moving along the side of the peak!”
“Hide!” Yuna hissed back, motioning everyone behind a mound of fallen snow on the trail.
As they all crowded into the small space, Yuna felt her heart pounding. She started to sweat even the temperature was well below freezing. Looking up, Yuna realized she could see what was moving if she tilted her head at an angle. A moment later, she wished she hadn’t.
It moved on twelve spindly spider legs that stretched from its brown-furred lower body. However, instead of a spider’s abdomen and other body parts, its torso was that of a human’s. Protruding from its shoulders came four long and spindly arms like the legs. Its head was shaped like a human’s, only it had no visible ears or nose. Its eyes were pure black, and it had a jaw that hinged at the very back of its head, giving it a huge mouth. Yuna did not miss, even at the distance away she was from it, the nine different layers of interlocking, razor-sharp teeth in the thing’s mouth.
And then Yuna heard the last thing she’d expected.
“Tra’liv-ad dur huntiis fertuquox, yuhiilii ponervexice. Oir dramados yr falleu drimno.” All five of them convulsed in agony as their souls left their bodies, accidental victims of Anaroth’s incantation.
Pyreflies erupted from the mountain around them, flying towards whatever lay beyond the sky.
Dimly, Yuna could hear footsteps nearby. “Yuna, we really must stop meeting like this.”
Anaroth took their souls in his hand and whispered, “Pulyrs breties yannokh.” The pyreflies, instead of flying back to their respective bodies, held their position bare inches away. Yuna was dimly aware that the monster, attracted by the commotion, came bounding down the slopes of the mountain. But even as it came within ten meters, it did not see them.
Growling in a language she’d never heard, it walked away, and the pyreflies returned to their bodies.
Wakka was on his feet in an instant, growling, “What was that all about?” He reached forward to grab Anaroth by the collar, but the man was suddenly behind Wakka instead of in front of him. Yuna puzzled over that briefly; she hadn’t blinked.
“I am sorry that your souls were released from your bodies while I sent the dead,” Anaroth said. “But it was just as well. That syrullk would have given you all major trouble had your souls been back inside your bodies.”
“That what would have given us trouble?” Lulu asked.
“The syrullk. As with what kind of being I am, your language does not have an exact word for it. The closest I can say would have to be enslaved evil incarnate, though that is quite a primitive way of putting it. The syrullk is a cross between a giant spider and a mutant offshoot of the human race untold ages ago that has long since vanished. Its eyes are blind to living things without souls, and a soul alone is invisible to it. But a living being with a soul draws it like a moth to a flame, and once it sees a soul it smells it, too, and remembers it scent for all eternity. Once it hunts the soul down, it sucks it from its body to replenish the syrullk’s everlasting thirst and to make it stronger as well.”
“Sounds disgusting,” Rikku said. “Who are they enslaved to?”
“As I have said, enslavement is not the proper word. It is a willing service, and at the same time not willing. The syrullk delight in the service, because they love to hunt living, sentient beings and drain their souls dry of spiritual energy. They hate the service because who they serve gives them the power of soul-sucking, of quenching their thirst for a time. They are an engineered slave race designed to take more delight in slavery than the average minion, and are thus many times more dangerous.” Anaroth shook his head. “They were created by the First Race when the world was new. And that is all I can tell you until you discover more for yourselves.” He turned and suddenly was gone.
“Doesn’t anyone ever say goodbye any more?” Lulu asked.
“Forget that, Lulu,” Yuna said excitedly. “Did you hear what he said about the First Race? Humans, Ronso, and Guado all think that their race preexists the other two. But none of us have the sheer gall, not to mention the power, necessary to create a… syrullk.”
“So Spira had occupants before there were any Humans, Ronso, or Guado?” Rikku asked.
“That’s about the size of it,” Yuna replied.
“YUNA!”
It was Kimahri. He had his spear out and was running forward, even as the others detected the danger behind Yuna and began to draw their weapons. Yuna turned around and froze.
Time seemed to dilate, to stretch. The syrullk was standing directly in front of her, brandishing a large, black scimitar etched with runes in a forgotten language. Yuna wasn’t overly concerned about the sword, though, because the syrullk’s huge mouth was wide open and descending towards her head. Its tongue was purple and had a hole where the tip would be. Yuna fought to keep herself from gagging or fainting at the sight. Time returned to normal, and Yuna followed instinct.
She dropped onto her back and kicked out with both her legs, sending the syrullk sprawling backwards, its maw slamming shut with a disgusting smack. A moment later she was getting to her feet as Wakka brained the thing with his Blitzball and Kimahri hacked at it with his spear. Muddled by the blitzball hit though it was, the syrullk successfully blocked Kimahri’s pinpoint slash at its head with the scimitar it carried, sending the Ronso stumbling back. Lulu waited until Kimahri was clear, then charged the ions around the spider-man and set it ablaze with electric fire. The syrullk didn’t flinch; apparently it was immune to elemental magic. Lulu immediately opened a Flare underneath it, but the chaos flame blasted around it. The syrullk was unarguably immune to magic, both elemental and otherwise. It raised the scimitar and uttered a warbling war cry made even more potent by its echoes and began to charge.
Then Rikku tossed her grenade at it. In an instant the syrullk was blown in half, the legs hitting the trail in front of them with a splat, and the torso falling into a deep ravine on the side of the trail.
Yuna watched it fall, wondering how the mysterious First Race controlled those beasts. There was only one logical explanation for both their dominance over the spider-men and the syrullks’ dependency on the First Race.
The First Race was vastly more powerful than even the mightiest syrullk.
And considering what an enemy it had proven to be, Yuna devoutly hoped she never met a member of the First Race.
After hurrying by the spot where they had defeated Seymour for the third time, Yuna looked at the large lake where a huge globe of water had used to spin, a sign of Yu Yevon’s power. Now the lake was silent and calm, while the rock wall that used to hold thousands of fayth was gray and empty.
The mountain cavern was much the same, with many of the fiends Yuna had fought in the caves dead and gone. One time they had run into a syrullk, and all conventional methods of concealment failed utterly. Apparently the beast saw through anything blocking its way to a soul.
Finally, they exited the cavern… and Yuna looked upon Zanarkand once again.
If anything, it looked twice as downtrodden and destroyed as it did last time she had been there. Many buildings that had been at least partially intact were lying in pieces on the ground, like a child’s scattered building blocks. Dark, formless shapes constantly skittered over, around, under, and through the wreckage of the once-great city.
Spotting huge patrols of syrullk, Wakka belatedly voiced the question everyone was asking. “Well, we’re at Zanarkand. We’ve made it. Now how are we supposed to get through that?”
“I wish we knew what they find of interest in Zanarkand,” Yuna murmured. “Then maybe we could fake it, draw them away even for a minute…”
“Too risky,” Lulu said. “Even if we did know, those things can see straight through solid rock to locate a soul, and at the rate they travel there’d be no avoiding them.”
“Maybe we can negotiate with this ‘first race’ they serve,” Rikku volunteered.
“Rikku,” Yuna said, her patience wearing thin, “do you think a race that considers itself superior to all others, that has the sheer power to engineer a race or races to serve it, and the sheer gall to spit in their face with that race’s dependence on them, would be negotiable?”
“It was just a thought,” Rikku muttered.
“If we can maybe distract them with a soul, then a path could be cleared,” Lulu said. “The problem is where we get the soul to distract them with.”
“But those spider-things can’t see souls without bodies,” Rikku protested.
“I’m betting that most everything else in there can. And those syrullk aren’t really hard to beat.”
All eyes turned on Yuna, and she belligerently stared back, asking, “What is it?”
“Yuna. You know every time you send someone part of what defines them stays with your staff,” Lulu told her. “If we can assemble enough parts of those definitions, perhaps we can create a soul.”
“That sounds kind of wrong, to bring a soul into existence so it can be killed,” Yuna replied.
“Do you have a better idea?”
Yuna, unfortunately, did not have a better idea.
They had waited for dark, and Kimahri had taken out Yuna’s staff. It glowed faintly in the absence of a full moon or a fire, giving off just enough light to see by.
Yuna sat cross-legged on a patch of ground she’d deemed comfortable. Kimahri handed her the staff, and Yuna laid it horizontally across her lap. That seemed a good first step, but Yuna was completely stumped as to what the next step was.
Everyone was just watching, waiting.
Yuna, feeling again like a kid called on the carpet for lying, placed her hands at even intervals on his staff. It felt cold, alien. She hadn’t used it in almost a year.
Yuna mentally reached deep into the staff, trying to find what she was looking for. All she felt was a vast emptiness, a void formed by her own emotions as she’d used it. Yuna had never been the kind of person that loved battle, that needed it. She never went into a fight with anything but a strange sort of sadness and perhaps anger.
Faintly aware of her brow creasing with the effort, Yuna reached deeper into the staff and saw the shreds of the summoned. A bit of every soul sent was kept with the sender, else he or she would not be able to remember everything the sent had experienced. But even as she grasped for them, they eluded her.
Yuna expanded her reach, channeled all her power into the void and surrounded the pieces of memory. Far too many pieces.
She gathered hundreds of them in a single sweep.
To her friends’ eyes, a faint glow formed next to Yuna.
Yuna herself knew that hundreds was not nearly enough. She went deeper and deeper into the void, remembering every fiend she’d killed and all those she’d sent had killed. Grasping hundreds, thousands, of memories and channeling them into the soul she was forming.
The glow became a tiny pyrefly. The process was almost complete. All it needed was one more memory.
Yuna paused in her search, somehow knowing that this last memory would define what the soul did and where it went. Instantly Yuna knew which she wanted to give. But it dwelt near the bottom of the void, weighed down with everything it represented. Courage, valiance, self-sacrifice.
Yuna also knew that if she went too deep she might not be able to return. But she had to retrieve this one soul, for no other would do.
Sweeping out her reach, stretching herself to the limit, Yuna grasped the memory. She grasped part of what defined Auron.
Pulling back, Yuna became aware that she was shivering with cold and sweating with exertion. Lulu was leaning over her, and Yuna also realized she was on her back, five feet away from where the staff lay. The ground around it was seared, as if…
“I don’t know what happened, but that staff suddenly blew you back from it,” Lulu started. Yuna waved her off, sat up, and looked at where she’d sat.
A pyrefly hovered there, glowing in the midnight light.
It flew off to the east, and a huge swarm of dark things followed it.
“This was a very bad idea,” Rikku groused.
“Quiet,” Yuna said out of the corner of her mouth.
They stood at a distance from a huge group of syrullk, all of whom were facing towards the dome that was their destination.
“Maybe we can sneak past if we stay away far enough away from them,” Lulu began, but at that moment Wakka sneezed.
The entire horde of syrullk turned around and focused on them. Nobody moved or breathed, insanely hoping the spider-men could only see souls that were in motion.
Then the crowd charged, and there was no doubt they had 20-20 vision.
The soul, moved by the confidence of a thousand minds and the cowardice of a thousand others, fled before the huge tide of evil that followed it.
But at that moment it sensed that the one who made it was in a peril greater than that of death. Auron’s memory suddenly took control, and the soul turned on the swarm, dodging through its innumerable ranks towards Yuna.
They had killed seventy of the syrullk before Wakka’s ball had been caught, Kimahri’s spear had been appropriated, Lulu’s Moogle had been stolen, Rikku ran out of grenades, and Yuna simply ran out of stamina.
Now one of the spider-men stood in front of Yuna, who had been caught by seven others. Its gaping maw opened, and the sinuous tongue darted forth.
Yuna closed her eyes and started counting off the people who would wonder where she’d gone after she disappeared for all of time.
Then the soul she’d created flew into the syrullk’s mouth. It gagged, choked, then fell over and died. The soul emerged from the carcass, and the other syrullk seemed to focus on it.
Then they all ran in wild terror.
In the dust they left behind, Yuna brushed herself off as Kimahri, Wakka, and Lulu retrieved their stolen weapons. Rikku slipped on a metal claw-glove to serve as her weapon.
Yuna was about to - illogically, of course - thank the soul, but it flew into the sack in which Kimahri kept Yuna’s staff. There was a flash of light, then nothing.
Kimahri opened the sack and the soul was gone. Yuna flinched as a barrage of memories that she’d taken from her mind assaulted her again.
Wakka, it seemed at the time, was the only one with a working brain. “Uuh, guys… if the soul Yuna made came this way to save us, then what happened to the huge crowd of things that were chasing it?”
Everyone exchanged wide-eyed glances, hoping that the soul had impossibly disposed of the mob of evil.
Then the ground began to shake with footfalls.
They ran.
The creatures surrounding the dome did not venture inside to search for the intruders. All of them knew what dwelt in that place. They took pleasure enough in knowing the intruders would find out the hard way.
Inside the dome, depression’s lead blanket was heavier than ever. Memories appeared out of thin air, thanks to the pyreflies in the dome. It was like a giant sphere, and the pyreflies were reacting to Yuna’s thoughts almost before she thought them. Tidus jumping off a piece of wreckage and assuring Yuna she could make it. Tidus exclaiming he recognized that twisted metal shard as the front door to his best friend’s house. Tidus going out of his way to find a blitzball in a far corner of the dome.
Everyone saw the memories. Nobody said anything. They picked through the wreckage in silence.
They finally ascended the stairs to Zanarkand’s Cloister of Trials. It had a mechanism that reset it every so often, but Yuna had been so frustrated with the puzzle that when she finally solved it she jammed the mechanism so other summoners wouldn’t have to go through it. The lift down to the Chamber of the Final Summoning glowed softly with the symbol of Yevon. Ignoring it, they all stepped onto the platform, and it began to descend.
Not for the first time, Yuna entered the Chamber. The stone statue that had once been Zaon was still in place, but the glass dome over it had been shattered. The entire Chamber, save for the fayth itself, looked as if it had been vandalized.
Everyone knew where to go.
Yuna stepped out onto the stone platform that seemed to hover in space, the symbol of Yevon emblazed on a dais in the middle. A flight of stairs began to lead up to who knew where, but seven steps up it was broken, the rest of the flight missing. At the far end, behind the dais, was a flight of stairs going down.
Tidus had tried to descend those stairs. He had always appeared on the sixth step of the flight leading up. It frustrated him to no end that he couldn’t see what the stairs led to, couldn’t explore it. He had tried going up the ascending flight, but to his exasperation there was an invisible wall that kept anyone from falling off the seventh step. At the time, Yuna had thought it was a safety precaution or some such thing.
Somehow, Yuna knew the descending flight led to all the answers she needed.
Wordlessly, Yuna walked over to the descending flight of stairs, walked down –
And in a bright flash of white light appeared on the sixth stair in the ascending flight.
Yuna growled and tried again. And again.
After five tries Wakka walked forward, frowning at the stairs. He stood directly on the dais. Yuna, exasperated, tried once more.
Again she appeared at the top of the ascending flight. She was about to give up when she noticed something at the same time Lulu did.
“Yuna…”
“I’m on the seventh step! Not the sixth! But what changed it?”
“That’s a mystery,” Wakka said, his brow creasing. The dais glowed beneath his feet.
“Wakka! You walked onto the dais and I appeared on the seventh step!” Yuna said excitedly.
“Don’t move, Wakka,” Lulu said urgently. “Yuna, try the descending stairs again.” Yuna did so and was suddenly on the seventh step of the ascending flight.
“I’ll be – what are we missing here?” Yuna asked. She started to lean against the invisible wall after the seventh step, then belatedly realized there was no wall.
Losing her balance, Yuna tumbled off the steps into the endless void.
Groggily, Yuna opened her eyes, then blinked them again in surprise.
She was in the mansion that belonged to the leader of the Guado. The temperature in the room was nice and cool, and Yuna would have enjoyed it greatly after the heat reflected off all the debris in Zanarkand.
She didn’t enjoy it or even notice it because, to her shock, Yuna was tied hand and foot to a chair.
Even as she tried to rip the ropes apart with her mind, Yuna realized that something was blocking the flow of magic in this place, that her power was between little and none here. Not even enough to shred a bunch of rope.
Calm down, she told herself, and assess the situation.
[i]I am impossibly halfway across the world from where I was, in Guadosalam, the leader’s mansion to be more precise, and tied to a chair I can’t get out of. I have no idea where any of my friends are, and that guy coming down the stairway looks a lot like Seymour –
No way.[/i]
It was Seymour, all right. And he wasn’t even in energy form; he was flesh and blood just like she was.
“Yuna. It is a pleasure to see you again.” Seymour’s smile was warm and friendly enough to kill a cat.
“Why is that?” Yuna asked evenly.
“Because you have something I need,” Seymour replied calmly, “and you are not leaving here until I obtain it.”
“Then you can come and get it,” Yuna snapped belligerently, even though she had no idea what he really wanted.
“Very well.” Seymour stepped forward. Yuna instinctively tried to kick him, but then remembered her feet were tied, too.
Seymour closed his eyes, tilted his head ever so slightly towards the ceiling, and clenched his fists.
Yuna flinched as she felt him invade her mind again, just like he’d done in the Calm Lands. She tried to hold his presence back, but his gaze was like an unstoppable forest fire, destroying every barrier she had before it was even up. Then he reached Tidus’s memories, and Yuna felt his pace slow and his search intensify.
One second he was searching.
The next he’d found what he needed, and from what Yuna could sense, that did not bode well for Spira.
Resorting to a last defense, Yuna pitched herself forward sharply. Chair and all, she slammed into Seymour and knocked him to the ground.
But it was too late.
Seymour had picked himself up and tied an unconscious Yuna to the main support pillar of the room. Then he left to bask in his triumph.
Her time unconscious was spent productively.
One second Yuna was falling towards Seymour to stop him from getting what he needed, and the next she was standing in a college classroom.
The sudden change of scenery, and the fact she wasn’t tied up, startled Yuna enough that she yelped in surprise. Equally surprising was the students in the room didn’t hear it, or even pay her any attention.
One of them was asking a question. Yuna recognized Tidus when he was younger by his eternally messy blonde hair. He was asking a question.
“So what you’re saying is that if enough energy were applied, the fabric of reality could be torn open and a hole of non-reality made, which could influence the structure of reality itself? And someone with the right procedures and the necessary energy could control how the non-reality manipulated reality?”
His teacher was nodding yes and explaining why, but Yuna couldn’t hear her. The classroom was growing dark around her, spiraling…
With a start, Yuna woke up. The fact she was tied to a pillar and not the chair did little to brighten her mood.
Then she focused on what Tidus had said.
That was what Seymour had wanted – confirmation of the theory he probably already had about that. But still, he had the necessary energy, and Yuna guessed ‘procedures’ were properly-run machines. And if anyone could use the power of his mind to out-perform a machine, it was Seymour.
Yuna was just about to give up when the room around her, not to mention the ropes, disappeared.
She was suddenly back in Zanarkand, standing on the seventh step of the ascending stairway. Only this time there was an eight step. And a ninth.
The flight had been repaired, and it stretched upward almost a mile.
Yuna shook her head again and looked around. Her friends were standing exactly where they’d been before. Their faces were different, though – they looked extremely relieved.
“For a second there we thought you were a goner,” Lulu said rebukingly.
“Yeah, good thing that when you fell you managed to catch the ledge and pull yourself up,” Wakka added.
Yuna just stared for a moment, then exploded with what had happened to her and her knowledge of Seymour’s plot.
And when all was said and done, the entire group looked like they could fry up a raw dragon egg with the force of their anger.
But Yuna interrupted their various declarations of revenge and whisperings about the injustices of the universe with a reason to keep fighting. A reason to go on.
“Let’s see what that staircase leads to.”
Big point in the plot coming with the next update. Sorry for being late with this one.
Damn you to the ninth pit of hell for keeping us in suspense! @_@
Now, let’s see what the staircase leads to!
The flight of stairs was actually quite longer than a mile. It was more like ten. But they finally arrived at the top, and it led to a floating platform in the void that was impossible to see from Yunalesca’s. Yuna took that as encouragement, because if a higher being than Yunalesca lived here, that meant they were making progress. Whether the aforementioned higher being was friendly towards them or not was the big question.
Yuna stepped onto the platform and all her doubts were instantly banished from her mind.
It had a dais in the middle of it, as well, but instead of the symbol of Yevon there was a silhouette of a galaxy. Above it floated the elemental that helped them back at Macalania – Cerewin.
< Yuna. I am glad you have made it this far. > The flame at the top of the elemental’s base glowed brightly, and the melted ice revolved around the center even faster.
“Cerewin… Seymour found me.”
< I know. And it was unavoidable. To reach this place, a person who had a solid understanding of the eight dimensions had to fall into the deepest part of this void, where matter and energy are precisely equal, as in a Far Dream. Seymour took advantage of this and manifested the area as his former home, so he could interrogate you. >
“If he manages to open a portal of non-reality, he’ll be able to control all of Spira,” Yuna said urgently. “He’ll be like a god!”
< The power Seymour will unleash is too terrible for his limited mind to comprehend, > Cerewin countered calmly. < In the end, it will destroy him utterly. >
“You think?”
Yuna stepped back in surprise as Seymour materialized at the edge of the platform, keeping Cerewin between him and Yuna.
That didn’t stop Wakka from sliding to the side and sending his blitzball shooting towards Seymour. Seymour raised a hand, and the ball stopped in midair, rotated, and flew back to Wakka.
“Seymour,” Yuna spat. “Don’t you dare open that portal.”
“Or you’ll do what?” Seymour asked, amused. “Try to stop me?”
“Exactly,” Yuna ground out.
“Watch me,” Seymour taunted. He raised his hands, threw back his head, and laughed.
Then a perfect circle of rippling distortion formed on the far side of the platform, the side nobody was standing near. All eyes were drawn to it, and Yuna was fairly certain Cerewin was looking as well.
With a toneless sound, the ripples opened to reveal a solid black hole. Wind suddenly started screaming into it, drawing everyone except Seymour and Cerewin towards it, while rays of deadly energy rippled back out.
Seymour laughed even louder, then crooked a finger.
Yuna felt her feet snatched out from under her. She was caught by the wind, pulled towards the black hole.
Tidus…
It would have been her last thought.
Until the gloved hand grabbed her wrist.
Yuna looked at it, her gaze shifting to the man holding her.
It was Tidus.
He appeared slightly transparent and surreal, but as a physical presence he was there as much as Yuna was.
“Hold on!” he grunted, trying to find traction on the smooth stone ground. Yuna grabbed his hand with her other hand, even as she felt herself draw perilously close to the gaping maw in reality.
She was faintly aware of her friends trying to rush to her aid, but someone was motioning them back. It was the image of Auron, telling them they could not help, to save their strength for the trials to come.
Another hand grabbed her. It was Jecht. He pulled Yuna away along with his son, the two of them instinctively working in tandem to find traction and hold their ground against the raging wind.
Auron walked over and grasped her arm, as well. He dug into the stone as best he could and pulled, too.
It was still not enough. Then her father appeared and took hold of her as well.
Suddenly Yuna was lying on the ground away from the hole, the four images were gone, and wind was no longer screaming into the hole, nor were streams of death issuing from it.
“That was surreal,” Rikku said after a stunned silence.
“Wasn’t it,” Seymour chuckled mockingly. Then his smug expression melted into one of pure horror.
Yuna would have enjoyed the change if she’d been watching it. She was too busy watching the hole.
It rippled and something emerged.
It was humanoid, but covered in sleek, jet-black fur about three inches in length. Its legs were long and powerful, with knees that bent backwards. Its feet had three long, clawed feet ideal for grasping and an extremely large talon protruding from where its heel would be. The upper body was muscular, and the arms ended in double-clawed, four-fingered hands counting the thumb. Its face had a cat’s green, slitted eyes, a fur-covered nose bearing close resemblance to that of a human’s, and a small mouth with two miniscule fangs protruding from beneath its upper lip.
< The First Race, > Cerewin said quietly.
The creature looked around, then its gaze settled on Seymour.
Seymour involuntarily took a step back.
Moving quick as lightning, the creature struck. It was suddenly in front of Seymour, hand digging its talons into his throat. Seymour let out a short, high-pitched scream ending in a gurgle to match the stream of blood puddling on the floor at his feet. A moment later he collapsed, killed again.
< This time for good, > Cerewin added.
The creature then looked at Yuna.
Lulu stepped forward and filled the air around it with a fiery explosion at such an extreme temperature it could be felt from halfway across the platform. A moment later it emerged from the storm untouched.
Sweating with the effort, Lulu surrounded it with Flare vortexes. A dozen chaos flames shot forth at once, but instead of turning it into a dry husk the flames seemed not to touch it.
“It’s magic-immune!” Lulu exclaimed frustratedly. “Why do so many of these things we fight have to be magic-immune?”
< It is not immune to magic, > Cerewin said calmly, as if a member of the First Race that had killed for good a man who’d been killed four times and existed to tell about it was not standing a meter away from him. < Physically it cannot be touched. You much reach inside and channel the energy to its mind. >
The creature promptly clutched at its head, barked out something in a guttural tongue, and collapsed. Its chest wasn’t moving, so Yuna guessed it had to be dead.
< A scout, > Cerewin spoke. < Once he fails to return, they’ll know the world is still ripe for the taking. >
“I think you should start at the beginning, Cerewin,” Yuna said.
“Yes, please do,” said a new voice from behind them. Yuna turned around to see Anaroth finishing the ascension of the stairway to the platform. “I always enjoy hearing this story.”
< Very well, > Cerewin replied. < I shall start at the beginning. >
< You see, back when the universe had been created by the Cosmic Explosion, otherwise known as the Big Bang, the eight dimensions were distorted. The powers that were, for the powers that be are not the ones that were then, decided to divide the distorted dimensions into higher and lower orders. That was all well and good, but to have proof this could work a certain rebellious entity coalesced the eight dimensions separately into what we know as Spira and the Farplane. So the world began.
< Of course, since the world was made in rebellion against the ethos currently circulating through the higher ranks, the first inhabitants were, naturally, twisted. The entity gave them great power and wisdom, but they used it for evil purposes. They created many slave races, which are what you see outside the dome. They became so powerful they developed the ability to forsee the future.
< They were evil enough that the rebellious entity was destroyed for his folly and the races of Men, Ronso, and Guado were created to scourge them from the earth. The other races came later.
< The allied forces finally came to the First Race’s stronghold and lay siege to it. Forseeing they would have a second chance to rule this world, the First Race sent many of their slave minions to this place, where they would sleep until one month before Seymour came and opened the portal, setting the First Born free.
< For they were not exterminated, as Men and the Ronso wanted. The Guado suggested imprisoning them in non-reality, where there would be nothing to rule. Men and Ronso agreed, and the deed was done. Over time, the way to open and close portals to non-reality were happily forgotten.
< But the Human archmage who imprisoned them, one Del Thaxos, could see the future as well. She saw their return, though she could not see whether they would rule Spira or be stopped by the next One.
< Yes, she was the first One. She was the one to imprison the First Race and thereby become ruler of Spira until the end of her days.
< She saw their return. And she created an object of tremendous power, capable of wiping their race from existence when used properly by her heir, the next One. It is a beautiful emerald shaped as a leaf, and when one with knowledge of non-reality and the eight dimensions exposes it to even the tiniest amount of magic, it will eradicate the First Race. Nobody knows where it is except the First Race. >
“You’re wrong,” Yuna said, her head spinning. “I know.”
Five-year-old Yuna ran shrieking with delight through the house, and Braska stared accusingly at his wife.
“You didn’t have to give her that thing, you know.”
“It was a pretty knickknack and I knew Yunie would love it. Besides, it’s not like it’s worth anything.”
The ‘pretty knicknack’ was a beautiful emerald in the shape of a leaf. When Yuna had gone to Besaid, she had taken the leaf with her. When she had left, she had given it to a friend that ran a tailor shop.
Besaid Island held the key to wiping the First Race from history.
And it was all the way across Spira.
They were not happy when Yuna told them where the object was. Rikku was more amazed than angry, Wakka was surprised, Kimahri was impassionate, but Lulu was seemingly ready to blow her top.
“It’s been on Besaid for more than a decade?” she screeched.
Yuna swallowed and nodded yes.
< They come now, > Cerewin interrupted. < Run. Anaroth and I must flee as well, for as you saw with Seymour they have the power to harm divine beings. >
“I wouldn’t call Seymour divine,” Wakka started to say, but Yuna pointedly motioned towards the staircase.
Then one of the First Race emerged from the hole in reality. He was taller than the first one they’d fought, but his features were much the same. Yuna frantically waved at the staircase, but Lulu informed her, “There’s some sort of invisible wall, like there was before. We can’t get through, but Cerewin and Anaroth didn’t even notice.”
Yuna turned and to her surprise found the creature wasn’t paying them any attention. He was muttering words in what seemed to Yuna’s ear to be three different languages.
The hole expanded a bit, then contracted back to its original size. It did it twice more, and then the blackness that it showed became pure white light. The hole also began expanding rapidly now. It sucked up the creature as it touched it, and Rikku, who had been backed up against the invisible wall, shouted inarticulately as it disappeared and she was rudely dumped onto the stairs.
“Run!”
The steep stairs were difficult to negotiate at high speeds, but nobody broke their neck from an unexpected fall – or an expected one, for that matter. Ten minutes later they were back at Yunalesca’s platform, where Cerewin and Anaroth waited.
“Come on!” Anaroth shouted.
Yuna briefly wondered why he was shouting, then clutched at her ears as a noise without tone crashed down on them like an avalanche of stone. They kept running, the dome flashing by.
The noise decreased in agony, as Yuna couldn’t say it had actual volume, and Anaroth said, “The gap between the worlds is slowing!”
“What worlds?” Yuna asked confusedly.
“They have taken what was a portal into non-reality and changed it into a four-way gateway between the Farplane, the nether-realm, non-reality, and Spira!” Anaroth panted. Yuna noted that fact; it showed that Anaroth had limits, and apparently they applied to his running.
“How much will the gateway envelop?” Rikku gasped.
< Most of the dome, > Cerewin said. His vibration was slow, unhurried. Yuna didn’t know whether to admire his poise or just be glad Elementals didn’t have to breathe.
They neared the exit, and Kimahri bellowed, “We are going to make it!”
Then the inhabitant of the dome even the minions of the First Race feared leapt down from the hundred-meter ceiling and landed in front of them with a thunderous crash.
Defender Y.
Incarnations of Defender Z riddled the dome. Once controlled by the warriors of Bevelle, they had been left to collect dust in the cavernous dome. Who had activated them and what the phantom automatons lived for was a mystery that might never be deciphered.
Defender X had been reactivated by the Guado to fight Yuna. Nobody knew who had reactivated the Defenders in the Cave of the Fayth and the Defender Zs in the Dome.
The Defender Y model had been the most powerful ever produced. Its expense was enormous enough that only five models had been built. Four had been destroyed in the war between Bevelle and Zanarkand. One was never accounted for.
It started by slamming the ground hard enough to knock everyone but Cerewin to the floor. The Elemental attacked the giant construct with all the elements at once, alternately searing and burning it. The Defender models had not been constructed immune to magic, but the fact they were made of stone meant they were resistant to magic in the extreme.
The automaton shook a bit with the impact, then smashed a four-hundred-pound stone fist into Cerewin. The Elemental spun to reduce the impact, but it didn’t help much. Wakka was getting to his feet when Cerewin smacked into him.
Y smacked the ground again, and then walked mindlessly forward, ready to kill everyone.
Yuna desperately looked towards the way they’d come; the gateway was still expanding.
The stone giant lumbered forward, unaware of their mutual plight. It raised a hand to smash Yuna into paste.
Then there was a flash of light unlike Yuna had ever seen from behind her. It was pure black at the center, but it shaded into dark gray at the edges. It was almost as if the light’s colors had been inverted.
Yuna didn’t notice; she was more occupied with the hand about to kill her.
Then the air around Defender Y exploded with magic of all kinds. Yuna was blown backwards by the force of it. The explosions continued, lightning crackling along its stone surface and flames peeling off what paint there was left.
Finally, after nearly a minute of continuous bombardment, Defender Y lost all structural integrity and collapsed to the floor in twenty-seven pieces.
Yuna was on her feet in an instant, all too aware of the expanding gateway behind her. Her first instinct was to run. It also happened to be the second and the third. But the fourth told her to turn around and see what had destroyed Defender Y.
Bracing herself for a legion of the First Race, Yuna turned around.
And fainted dead away.
“You’re sure she’s all right?” The voice sounded worried and tired, and more than a little familiar.
“Seeing you of all people alive and walking would make anyone faint,” was the wry reply. It was Lulu.
“You didn’t faint.”
“I stand out from the crowds. You said so yourself in Guadosalam.”
“Well, that was more because of your choice of clothes.”
“Very funny.”
Irritated by the bickering between two voices she knew well, Yuna opened her eyes and issued a loud moan to make sure their attention was diverted to her.
Lulu was instantly kneeling down next to Yuna’s prone form, helping her to sit up. “What happened?” Yuna asked groggily.
“Maybe you’d like someone other than me to explain,” Lulu replied.
“I’m really not in the mood for cryptic answers,” Yuna began to complain. Then she saw who Lulu had been arguing with.
Tidus.
Yuna felt herself starting to faint again, but Lulu pushed her to her feet and reprimanded, “Oh, no, you don’t. Tidus has been waiting for quite a while to explain everything to you.”
“This is impossible,” Yuna moaned. “Sure, you all managed to help me when that hole first appeared, but… you’re dead!”
“Yuna, let me explain exactly what happened back there.” Tidus took a tentative step forward, and Yuna took an involuntary step back.
Her foot crunched against snow, and Yuna quickly realized she was not in Zanarkand any more. They were back at Gagazet, on the peak overlooking Zanarkand.
“Yuna, I hope I didn’t come back to have to play hard-to-get with you.”
“Please. You’re a figment of my imagination, or this is a dream, or something. Anything but reality.”
“Would you have reality be something else?” It was Auron. “Or are you trying to imply you wish reality did not exist? Or are you simply stating the fact that reality is not what it used to be?”
“All of them at once,” Yuna started to mutter, then stopped. If this was a dream, then why not enjoy it? Pretend it was reality? She quickly covered up her false start with, “Maybe choice two or three. Not choice one.”
“You think this is a dream, don’t you?” Tidus asked scornfully. “You’re partially right. Reality as we know it is turning into a nightmare. Now would you like me to explain exactly what is going on or not?”
Yuna matched his tone. “If this is a dream, then none of this is real, so I shouldn’t bother listening to you and your stupid explanation.”
“Well, you’re not going to wake up from this particular dream any time soon. So why don’t you kick back, relax, and listen?”
Yuna nodded, putting her best clearly-uninterested expression on.
Tidus rubbed his temples. “I come back from the dead and Yuna’s gone mad. What else can go wrong?”
“I’ve decided to go for a sheerer look,” Lulu cut in.
“The world is doomed.”
“All right. I’m pretty sure you heard this same kind of long paragraph from Cerewin, but just take the time to listen.” Yuna still had her clearly-uninterested look on, while Tidus had his clearly-not-caring-about-what-look-you-have-on expression. “The First Race was banished into non-reality. Seymour, wanting to be grand master of all he sees and a bit more, opened a manipulable portal into non-reality. Then one of the most powerful First Race necromancers came out, then changed the portal into a four-way gateway. Everyone trapped in the nether-realm, of course, took advantage of this. So here we be.”
Yuna’s clearly-uninterested look had melted like wax in the sun. “It’s impossible… but you’re alive.” Tidus smiled and started to speak again, but Yuna cut him off. “What’s the catch?”
“Catch?”
“There’s always a catch to resurrection scenarios.”
Tidus gave a prolonged sigh and replied, “This isn’t a scenario. This is reality.”
“Same thing.”
“Do I have to pull out a dictionary out of my hat to prove a scenario and reality aren’t the same thing?”
“You don’t have a hat.”
“QUIET!”
Jecht strode over, frowning mightily. “Newlyweds are supposed to fight. You are not newlyweds. Therefore, you must get along perfectly. This is mandatory on pain of death.”
“Who’ll do the killing?” Yuna countered.
“I will,” Jecht growled, “if I don’t get some sleep.”
As he stalked away, Yuna exchanged a glance with Tidus. How anyone could sleep on the cold, hard rock and snow of Gagazet’s peak was beyond her.
A question occurred to Yuna. “When you said everyone trapped in the nether-realm, who did you mean?”
“Me, Dad, Auron, Braska, and all the other summoners.”
“Tell me… what happened after I, ah, fainted from the fumes left over from Defender Y? Wow, do those things pump out pollution…”
Tidus chuckled and shook his head. “I’m sure. Anyhow…”
Tidus leaned over Yuna. “This is just great,” he complained. “I had a whole gallant-rescuer thing worked out and she faints at the first sight of me!”
Braska tapped Tidus’s shoulder. “Have your Ronso friend pick her up and let’s get out of here. The problem with this kind of gateway is that you can come out, but if you try to go in…”
Tidus nodded and motioned for Kimahri. “Nice to see you again, ah… don’t tell me…”
“You want Kimahri to carry Yuna.”
“Yeah. Nice to see you again, Kimahri.”
The Ronso picked Yuna up and bared his fangs in a smile. Then he ran for the entrance of the dome.
Wakka was standing stock-still, frozen with surprise. His jaw hung open. “Ti…Ti…”
“Wakka!” Tidus ran over to him. “It’s good to see you!”
Wakka broke out of the ridiculous pose.
“No way,” he stuttered, then hugged Tidus. “I never thought I’d see you again, ya?”
Rikku walked over and also hugged Tidus.
The gateway was getting closer, and they ran.
Tidus was focusing on not stumbling over the wreckage of the dome when Lulu appeared beside him, running as well. “Welcome back,” she said casually.
“It’s good to be back.”
She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and then they were separated by a large piece of wreckage.
Wakka ran up to Tidus’s side. Tidus looked at him and asked, “Since when was Lulu so warmhearted and friendly?”
“She missed you whether she admits it or not.”
“I feel so loved.”
“It’s mutual, eh?”
The gateway began moving faster, and the group of about thirty summoners not counting Braska, seven former guardians, one ex-summoner, and two mysterious beings began moving faster to keep ahead.
They reached the exit to the dome just as the gateway expanded with a burst of renewed speed. Everyone jumped for safety and everyone made it by a narrow margin.
The gateway stopped expanding; it had swallowed the entire dome.
The huge army of various spawn was rushing towards the scene.
Tidus raised his Caladbolg. Auron unsheathed his Masamune. Braska pulled out a staff not too dissimilar to Yuna’s, and Jecht brought out a longsword. Wakka readied his blitzball, Lulu adjusted her Moogle, and Rikku checked her claw glove. Kimahri, still half-carrying Yuna, held a long dagger in one hand. The summoners with them began revealing various staves and other objects to channel their magical power.
They cut through the army of hellspawn like a flaming sword through cloth.
The entire tale had taken about half an hour, and sometime during that period Yuna and Tidus had relegated themselves to a fairly comfortable boulder overlooking Zanarkand.
“And so now we’re here, watching Zanarkand to see when the First Race pop out of that gateway they made,” Tidus concluded softly. He tilted his head to look at Yuna. She had been leaning on him, apparently still spent from her ordeal. She had also fallen asleep.
Tidus felt a smile quirk at the corners of his mouth, and he did nothing to discourage the expression.
Yuna groggily sat up, blinking. She looked around until her gaze settled on Tidus. She smiled back at him.
Tidus leaned towards Yuna and kissed her.
Yuna felt her arms, moving almost of their own volition, begin to snake up behind his head.
Then the mountain shook.
“Mmmph!” They both pulled away from each other. “It’s not fair!” Tidus complained. “We get to see each other again, just getting into the spirit of the moment, and the mountain decides to quake! What’s next?”
“You shouldn’t have asked,” Braska said, appearing suddenly from behind a nearby boulder. “It’s starting.”
Yuna slowly turned her head to stare at the gateway. It was throbbing with tremendous power. Suddenly everyone seemed to be in the area at once, staring at the sight.
Then legions of the First Race emerged, streaming out of the gateway like a horde of insects going for a sandwich some dumb picnicker had left sitting under a tree. Many of them stretched, sniffed the air, or poked through the wreckage of Zanarkand around them.
“It’s been a long time since any of them have been in a place where the five senses function,” Auron said quietly. “We must withdraw while they’re still getting re-adapted to reality.”
“Why?” Yuna asked. Auron turned, and Yuna somehow found it startling he had taken off his sunglasses and was absentmindedly wiping them with a handkerchief.
“Because when they all emerge, and remember how to survive in reality, they will go to Besaid. They will find the one thing that can destroy them utterly. They will destroy it. And then both Spira and the Farplane will be subject to their rule.”
Shivering with a sudden cold, Yuna turned her gaze back to the gateway.
A huge specimen appeared from the gateway, and Yuna felt no doubt in her mind it was a male. He was twice as tall and broad as any other member of the First Race, and he carried himself with an air of authority.
“Hyrr’bal.” Anaroth spoke softly. “The leader of the First Race.” He turned to Yuna. “They are immortal, you know. They have existed in non-reality for thousands of years. They have had their entire imprisonment to build up the wells of hate within each and every one of them. That hate is of us, that is, the immortal peoples sent forth by the One. That hate is also of you, the mortal peoples who defeated them in the first place. That hate is also finally of the freedom of Spira. They will destroy everything if they are not stopped.
“We must beat them to Besaid.”
Dum dum DUM. More to come in the next update.
Dum dum dum indeed. I’m shaking here!
The First Race are quite freaky. You did well with the description.
And now, the next update!!!1
The band of forty had been traveling through the trails of Gagazet at top speed for the rest of the day and most of the night when they decided to take a short rest and get some sleep.
Yuna had found a patch of snow next to Tidus and was just falling asleep when she felt someone creeping through the camp.
She sat up abruptly and saw one of the First Race inspecting the campsite. It saw her and hissed menacingly. “I speak your tongue, human. We all do. We have practiced it for many thousands of years.”
He crept slowly towards Yuna. Feeling her throat begin to constrict with fear, Yuna asked, “Why?”
“So that when we stand over the broken bodies of our enemies and celebrate our triumph, you will be able to understand and acknowledge the superiority of our race. That is, if you are still alive.”
Without further preamble he lunged, talons grasping for Yuna’s throat. Yuna braced herself for death just as her attacker was frozen in midair three feet in front of her. He screamed, waking up everyone in the camp. Then whatever had stopped his leap smashed him against the side of the mountain and threw him into the abyss on the right side of the trail.
Tidus was on his feet in an eyeblink, sword drawn. A split second later he was kneeling down next to a shaking Yuna, holding her, sword and imminent danger forgotten.
Auron’s priorities were a bit more focused on the sword and imminent danger aspects of life. He used what little magic he knew of to light a small fire in the middle of the camp, revealing the assailant of Yuna’s assailant.
It was a tall man, slightly muscular in frame, with long white hair, pale skin, and piercing green eyes. It was Psertorpus.
Yuna scrambled to her feet, breaking away from Tidus, mentally calling her staff to her side. “Psertorpus,” she said. Her eyes bored into his, and his into hers.
“Yuna. It is indeed a pleasure to see you again.” Psertorpus gave a mocking half-bow at the waist. “And Lulu, I believe you know my colleagues.” He crooked a finger, and Neltharios stumbled into the light of the fire. Another monk that Yuna didn’t recognize was at his side, stumbling with him.
Lulu recognized him, though. “Neltharios! Malath!”
Neltharios straightened up, smiled, and said, “We meet again, it seems.”
Lulu wasn’t smiling. In fact, she was clutching her Moogle in a deathgrip. Motioning viciously at the ravine the First Race scout had been thrown into, she hissed, “You have three seconds to jump into that ravine before I throw you in with my bare hands. Malath, I’ll be nice and give you the customary two extra seconds to say your prayers before I count to three for you.”
Anaroth and Cerewin stepped into the light. The fire in Anaroth’s eyes was easily a match for Lulu’s, and the flame atop Cerewin’s base turned a deep, crimson red.
“Psertorpus.” Anaroth’s upper lip twisted in distaste, and he spat each syllable of the word, making it clear it left a bad taste in his mouth.
< I never thought I would see you again, > Cerewin began, < and I see you now too soon. Lulu, forget the countdown; let’s just throw all of them in right now. >
“Hold it!” Jecht strode forward and boldly looked Psertorpus in the eye. “I don’t know who any of you are, but it’s clear that you’re not liked around here. Say whatever piece you came here to say, then turn around and march back the way you came before I throw you into the ravine along with Lulu and Cerewin, countdown or not.”
Neltharios raised his hands in a gesture of what Yuna thought indicated good faith. “Psertorpus has seen the opening of the gateway and the return of the First Race. We’ve come to make an alliance with you, and to let the past be the past. It was through such an alliance the First Race was defeated before.”
“That is,” Malath added, “all three sides hated each other with a vengeance, but worked together and retained some dignity and grace for the sake of Spira. Let’s do the same now.”
Yuna raised an eyebrow and looked at Auron, who had withdrawn just beyond the circle of light. Auron raised an eyebrow in return.
Yuna stood, smoothed the robe she had on, and said, “I would be delighted to discuss it – tomorrow. If we discuss it now I think I’ll indulge in throwing at least one of you into the ravine. At random. Countdown or no countdown.”
Tidus was a deep sleeper. Yuna wished she could say the same of herself. The sheer evil emanating from Psertorpus’ presence kept her awake. Was she the only one?
Then she heard Psertorpus and Anaroth talking.
Being careful not to move, Yuna focused in on what they were saying.
“Anaroth. We at last meet again. How nice it is to see you. This will be just like old times, eh?”
“Don’t remind me of old times, Psertorpus.”
From what Yuna could see, the necromancer raised his head and snapped, “Young lady. Go to sleep.”
Yuna felt herself stiffen, both in surprise he knew she was awake and at the sting of the reprimand. She replied, “The evil aura you seem to wear like a cloak is keeping me awake.”
“I’m so misunderstood,” Psertorpus sighed sarcastically.
“You can say that again,” Yuna snapped. “Only please don’t. Your voice grates on my nerves.”
“Anaroth, old friend,” Psertorpus said with almost as much false cheer as Neltharios could seemingly muster. “Remember that one poor soldier in the Guado army that went mad just listening to me speak? That was one for the history books.” He chuckled, and the ambient temperature seemed to drop a few degrees.
“Anaroth, you seem to know this necromancer,” Yuna said, ignoring him. “Why?”
Anaroth shook his head. “It is a long and sad story.”
“We’ve got plenty of time, and I’m feeling suitably downcast right now.”
“Very well. The three armies all had a semi-divine commander created for them by the powers that were. I was created to head the Guado army and afterwards move throughout Spira sending the souls of the forgotten dead. Cerewin was created to head the Ronso army and afterwards command the fiends of Spira, to make sure they retained their place in the natural ecosystems and did not destroy the world all on their own.”
That made sense to Yuna. Back when Sin had been around, there had been two fiends for every one person in the world.
“Psertorpus was made to command the army of Men, and afterwards command the arts of magic in Spira.”
“I prefer the word fashioned,” the necromancer interrupted. “It’s so much better than made.”
“Be silent. At any rate, the very soldiers he sought to command corrupted him. Though he helped us win the war, afterwards he was banished and the command of magic was passed to Cerewin, who, instead of handling both magic and the fiends, fashioned magical limits to the fiends, that they could not travel outside their natural habitats nor disturb it permanently. For many long years I sent the souls of the forgotten dead, like you saw on the Thunder Plains.
“Psertorpus was forgotten. We all thought he had perished.
“But he lived."
“I was contemplating killing myself when Sin came along,” Psertorpus interjected gleefully. “But then I thought Sin would be a wonderful creature to control. So I developed a method for seizing control of minds. It was difficult, but I accomplished it. The technique can also be used to pass one’s spiritual essence and power from shell to shell upon ‘death’, which is how I’ve survived so long with immortality denied to me by the powers that were.”
“Lulu told me what you did to her,” Yuna said quietly. “What were you trying to accomplish?”
“Seize the mind of the Sinspawn living in the waters near the Djose Shore,” Psertorpus said absentmindedly. “Once correct contact has been established, re-establishing it is a snap. The problem was your friend was too unwilling to cooperate. Anyway, I eventually would have succeeded, and then given control of it to Neltharios.”
“What did you get out of the deal?” Yuna asked.
“Why, my powers prolong the life of any body I steal,” Psertorpus replied. “But it is always refreshing to switch to a new body. The instant the change is made the age of the body disappears, and it is healthy, young, and strong once again. Neltharios made a pact with me that if I gave him control of the Sinspawn, he would willingly give me his body to inhabit once he died.”
“Well, I’ll say one thing about that deal,” Yuna muttered.
“What?” Psertorpus asked with false interest.
“He ripped you off.”
The group set off early the next morning to meet with Neltharios’ army that had assembled in the Calm Lands. It was hoped that there a defense could last long enough for Yuna to find the object needed.
The trip itself was easy; enduring it was the hard part. Anaroth and Psertorpus argued and feuded endlessly throughout the long hike. Cerewin alternately scouted ahead or stayed back with the group and argued alongside Anaroth. Being in the presence of two divine beings had been enough, Yuna thought. Having a not-so-divine one to go along with it was unbearable.
About midday they decided to take a break. The wind had stopped howling, so it was a tad less cold than before. Nobody could say it was warmer, considering the temperature was still below freezing.
Yuna found a small side path that led to a hastily erected grave. A grave of a summoner that didn’t make it through Gagazet’s twisting paths. It was commonly thought that summoners who died here, in this fashion, were never sent. Anaroth seemed to disprove that theory.
Yuna had also noted that Tidus seemed especially tired that day; he had bags under his eyes and walked in a bit of a stoop.
Musing about the problems of the universe that had no solutions, Yuna didn’t hear Tidus approach until he was just a few feet away. “Yuna, I have to ask you something.”
“Fire away,” Yuna replied, perking up somewhat.
“Did Anaroth show you my memories?”
Yuna started, then blushed and said, “Yes, he did. Why?”
“Last night I had a dream where he appeared to me and showed me all of your memories. I think he explained it as accidentally plucking your soul out during an incantation.” The half-smile that tugged at Tidus’s upper lip told Yuna he found it more than a little amusing.
“So what’s the point? Anaroth just showed us each other’s memories. That’s all.” Yuna shrugged noncommittally, but Tidus wasn’t fooled.
“Stop it. I’ve been inside your head and heart, Yuna. You can’t lie to me any more than I can to you.” Yuna blushed for the second time, knowing how right Tidus was. He walked over and took her in his arms before continuing. “I think Anaroth was trying to say something to us. Maybe trying to forge a bond between us.”
Yuna kissed him and replied, “If he’s trying to forge a bond, he’s a little late.”
“True. Then maybe he’s trying to strengthen that bond.”
Yuna took Tidus’s hands in hers and said, “Maybe. Maybe not. He hasn’t been himself lately, with Psertorpus and all that. I don’t think they get along very well.”
“I think they’re as warm and friendly with each other as fire and ice.” Yuna laughed, and Tidus continued, “You should do that more often.”
“What?”
“Laugh.”
“You mean I don’t do it often enough?”
“Nobody does, any more.” Tidus’s gaze shifted to the horizon, and the city of dreams that lay beyond it. His home.
Yuna kissed him again and murmured, “We will get it back.”
“I know we will.”
Wakka laughed and repeated himself to Braska and Jecht, both slightly stunned. “Like I said, Yuna goes off to think and then Tidus goes off to find Yuna. Now they’re completely alone, out of sight…”
“Yuna has been well raised!” Braska huffed. “She won’t do anything irrational.”
“You did die when she was about six, you know,” Jecht broke in.
“It’s enough that I raised her well with the time fate gave me,” Braska countered.
“Anyway, I’d be more worried about Tidus going and doing something than Yuna,” Lulu added absentmindedly.
“Are you kidding? Compared to Yuna, Tidus is as predictable as… as…” Wakka looked around helplessly.
“As predictable as you?” Lulu asked teasingly.
“Yeah. Hey!”
Yuna and Tidus had relegated themselves to the edge of the side path and were staring into the abyss, both thinking different thoughts that were in essence the same. Yuna had her head on Tidus’s shoulder and was leaning against him slightly.
Tidus recalled his mother telling him a story about a man who had found a special glass ball that would hold any moment he chose for all eternity. He could only choose one moment, so the choice was not to be taken lightly.
Tidus wondered if he, looking back on all that was sure to come, would have wished he’d used that glass ball at that moment on the mountain, or if there was an even more perfect moment to be preserved yet.
The air around them suddenly grew colder and darker, and Tidus knew the imaginary crystal ball would have to wait. Yuna sat up straight, startled and shivering.
“How sweet. If I cared, I would be happy for the both of you.” It was Psertorpus.
Yuna took a deep, calming breath and said, “Psertorpus. Go away. You’re not welcome here.”
“Well, that’s too bad. Because I want to be here.”
“What if I was given one wish, and I chose that you not exist?” Yuna snapped. Tidus kept his mouth shut; he knew a personal quarrel when he saw one.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Psertorpus recited, “and you have not yet proven that compared to me you are anything more than a beggar.”
Yuna got to her feet in a flash, shouting, “Then why don’t you go ahead and prove that I’m the beggar?”
It was the wrong thing to do. Psertorpus’ staff suddenly appeared in his hand and he thrust it forward. Yuna cried out and was thrown against the tombstone of the grave.
Before he knew what he was doing, Tidus was on his feet, his sword’s tip under Psertorpus’ chin. “You do that again,” Tidus growled, “and I’ll cut your throat, alliance or not.”
Getting to her feet, Yuna added, “And there won’t be a countdown, either.”
Psertorpus nodded calmly, smiled with all the warmth of an arctic glacier in the coldest part of winter, then turned around and went the way he’d apparently came.
The second he was out of sight, Tidus had dropped his sword and had Yuna in his arms without recalling having crossed the distance between them. “I hate that man,” he muttered, gently rocking Yuna.
“He’s no man,” she replied.
The hike continued several minutes later. Yuna didn’t miss any of the seemingly inconsequential glances Braska, Jecht, and Wakka were giving her and Tidus, who were walking hand in hand. However, Yuna was far beyond caring.
Then, when night was falling, they reached the Ronso camp from whence they’d come. It was completely devastated.
Everyone immediately began searching through the bodies and the dropped weapons, though they knew not what they were looking for. Yuna noted there were only a few dozen bodies. She hated to say it was better than the few hundred there would be if all the Ronso she’d seen had been killed, but reality had been especially stark for a while.
A few minutes later, Tidus motioned frantically, and Yuna instantly knew what – who – everyone had instinctively been trying to find.
Elder Kelk Ronso.
He was on his back, a large halberd still clutched in his right paw. The Ronso’s neck was at an odd angle, and blood ran from a dozen wounds.
But there was still the flame of life in his eyes.
Yuna was kneeling down at his side next to Tidus, trying to figure what do to. “Yuna,” Kelk whispered. “They came… from the west pass… I’ve no idea how they navigated it in such a short period of time, but they are both behind and ahead of you.”
“Hold on,” Yuna breathed. “There still may be time to help you, to-”
“My time is over,” Kelk cut her off. “Save us if you can. Tell… tell Kimahri that our race is not dead, that many escaped while few stayed behind to save our race from elimination. Tell him… that he is a model for all Ronso to look up to, and try to be like.”
And with that, the flame of life faded from his eyes.
Kimahri slowly walked over to him. Yuna and Tidus said nothing. The air was dead still.
Kimahri knelt next to Kelk, looked at him.
And then gently closed the elder Ronso’s eyes.
Yuna got to her feet, bowed her head for a moment. Then she started helping the others bury the dead and pay what respects they could.
Yuna woke up with a start to see that a blood red sun was rising. She rolled over and discovered Tidus had vacated his spot next to her on the ground and was helping fill the few open graves that were still left.
Kimahri was bending over a large rock that stood near the place Yuna recalled them burying Kelk. After a second or two he pulled away, a partly dulled dagger in his hand and an inscription on the stone.
ELDER KELK RONSO
ONE OF THE GREAT RONSO LEADERS OF HISTORY
HE WILL BE SORELY MISSED
Kimahri then pulled out a stone from his pouch and began re-sharpening the dagger on it.
Yuna stood up and stretched. Tidus looked over and smiled, waving to her. Yuna smiled back and walked over.
“So, are we getting ready to leave?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
“Yuna, you know as well as I do there’s no place to go if the First Race has gotten ahead of us this fast. As soon as the last of the graves are finished, all of us are going to sit down and discuss what to do next.”
“Could we remain standing? There’s no place comfortable here,” Yuna muttered.
“Tell that to Dad. He’s been proclaiming he hasn’t had such a good sleep in years.”
“Boys will be boys.”
“Hey!” It was Wakka. Yuna looked over at where he was standing; it was by a small crevice in the rock. Wakka was bending over something.
“What is it?” Tidus asked, his curiosity apparently piqued as well.
“It’s a dagger,” Wakka replied. He picked it up by the hilt and showed it to them.
Yuna frowned and asked, “So what? There was a battle fought here.”
“It’s just that I couldn’t help but notice it’s the only weapon that Kimahri and I have found that doesn’t have blood on the blade, Ronso or First Race.”
Psertorpus came over and took it from him. Wakka clearly wanted to object, but Yuna raised a warning hand.
“It’s a chirrum dagger,” Psertorpus announced self-importantly. “It sucks blood of all kinds into the blade, making both the weapon and the wielder more powerful with each blow inflicted. It also has another use, an uncommon one and best usually saved for desperate times.”
“What would that use be?” Tidus asked, feigning disinterest.
“You’re a very bad liar,” Psertorpus informed him calmly. “You want to know the alternate use for the weapon so badly a slight bit of perspiration is breaking out on your forehead.”
“Just tell us what the alternate use is,” Yuna snapped. She found herself doing that more and more often around the necromancer.
“Are you sure?” Psertorpus asked gleefully.
“Would I be sweating ever so slightly if I wasn’t?” Tidus asked. His tone dripped with sarcasm and contempt.
“Very well.” Psertorpus walked over to one of the freshly dug graves. He waved his hand, and all the dirt suddenly flew out of the grave, hitting several people. They growled and swore under their breath in three languages Yuna knew and five more she didn’t. Psertorpus smiled ingratiatingly, then picked up a rock and broke the blade in two.
A stream of blood gushed out of it into the grave. Steam rose from beneath the ground, and a decaying hand grasped at the ground around the side of the pit.
Yuna felt herself draw back in revulsion. The dagger had apparently resurrected the grave’s unfortunate inhabitant.
The corpse stood erect before Psertorpus in all its glory. The necromancer nodded, then snapped his fingers. The corpse twitched, then fell back into the grave. Psertorpus waved his hand again, and the scattered dirt converged into a tightly packed pile over the grave once again.
He turned and said, “In times of need the chirrum dagger can be broken and its supply of blood poured out onto a corpse in order to resurrect it and bond it to the will of the dagger’s master. Pouring out the blood weakens the wielder of the weapon only if he has drawn blood with the dagger and drawn strength from doing so.” He brushed a bit of dirt off his long, black robe and continued, “Of course, doing this improperly can be dangerous. Giving a body too much blood can result in it developing a will of its own. Quite frightening in practice. That is why the blood can reanimate more than one corpse if used in correct proportion.”
Tidus nodded amiably and replied, “You are one sick man, and I don’t envy you.” He turned on his heel and walked away.
Psertorpus sighed and said, “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” He turned and walked away as well, probably looking to quarrel with Anaroth again.
Yuna turned to Wakka and asked, “That sounded like a quote. Ever heard it before?”
“The minute, perhaps the second, they reach Besaid our world is doomed if nothing is done,” Auron was saying. “The First Race is totally bent on domination. We thought Sin was bad enough, and it had no overall goals. This is a force every bit as deadly as Sin, and it plans to conquer the entire known universe in time.”
“Uh, just a quick question,” Wakka interrupted. Auron gave him what Yuna had long ago chosen to refer to as “the look”, and motioned for him to continue. “Not that this isn’t fascinating and everything,” Wakka said, “but how does this little thing work, anyway? Yuna says it’s an emerald in the shape of a leaf. Anaroth and Cerewin say a bit of magic needs to be channeled into it for it to work. That sounds just a bit too easy to be true.”
“Are you suggesting we lied?” Anaroth asked. He had been increasingly hostile of late, no doubt thanks to Psertorpus.
Wakka backpedaled hastily. “Not at all, Anaroth sir. It’s just that ‘channeling a bit of magic into it’ sounds a bit unclear. Maybe you could… what was the word… oh, yeah, extrapolate the details of that?”
Anaroth nodded coldly and said, “The person to do the channeling must be pure in spirit.”
“No problems there,” Wakka said.
“It must be a she.”
“Sounds good.”
“She must have an innate understanding of the eight dimensions and their role in reality.”
“With a little help I think we can manage that.”
“And she finally must have someone at her side that she truly, deeply loves and is loved by him in return.”
“We have that covered easily,” Wakka said with a grin.
Yuna, who’d been sitting next to Tidus listening to the debate, blinked and asked, “What?”
Everyone had a brief laugh, then Jecht spoke up, bluntly as usual. “Has it occurred to anyone but me that maybe, just maybe, the First Race is gonna beat us to the emerald if we just sit around and talk about it with maybe a side of tea?”
“I wouldn’t mind some tea right now,” Lulu said, stifling a sneeze. She’d been sick since they had turned around at Zanarkand.
“That’s not the point I’m trying to make,” Jecht said impatiently. “Instead of sitting around and talking we should get up and get going.”
“We need to discuss the situation if we’re going to beat the First Race at their own game,” Braska pointed out.
Jecht groaned, then got up and started to pace around. “If I’m talking and walking at the same time,” he said, “then why can’t we walk towards the place we need to go and talk about the situation while we’re doing it?”
“Because,” Tidus said, “we can think more clearly if we’re sitting down and not trying to negotiate a huge plain of razor grass.”
Jecht looked at him but didn’t ask about the grass, though Yuna suspected there would be questions about that particular subject later. “I’ve always found that I do most of my problem-solving after a few rounds of something strong,” he said.
“The only strong thing you’ll get around here is a punch in the mouth from me,” Auron said, seizing control of the conversation again. “Now sit back down and I’ll outline the situation, so this won’t take too long.” Jecht reluctantly sat down again, and Auron leaned forward, as if to impart a sense of closeness. Yuna felt that was strange, because Auron had always been a very detached sort of man. “We are here, the entrance to Mount Gagazet,” Auron said. “The majority of the First Race, as far as we know, is still negotiating Gagazet’s trails. Only a few of them could have made it through the western pass – any more than a hundred wouldn’t have been able to sneak by all the fiends in that area. And yes, sneaking through is the only way even they could have gotten to the entrance of Gagazet in any reasonable amount of time.”
“You’ve outlined the situation wonderfully,” Lulu broke in. “Just one thing, though. The First Race isn’t immune to magic, but I can’t seem to harm any of them with it. Anaroth, explain again how you killed that scout.”
< Let me explain instead, > Cerewin said, < as I am the one who initially realized their weakness. The First Race, the Darmath as they are called in the tongue of ages, are naturally immune to magic and are innately excellent in its use. Their minds operate in a different way than ours do, as well. Instead of matter they perceive the energy inherent in that matter, and thus are they especially attuned and at the same time immune to the forces of magic. The trick to defeating them through magic is to isolate their weakness: in perceiving only energy, however fully, they do not understand the dimension of matter, while Humans, Ronso, Guado, and the other lesser races perceive both in their own limited way. Thus you merely need expose them mentally to the dimension of matter and their minds will break under the strain. A few survive to lose their sanity, but most die the instant they look upon the dimension of matter. >
“How am I supposed to mentally communicate to them the dimension of matter?” Lulu asked impatiently.
< A mere parlor trick, as you might call it, > Cerewin replied. < You simply picture a rock or a jewel the way you perceive it, then mentally thrust it foremost into your enemy’s thoughts. When I say the word, ‘object’, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? >
“A moogle,” Lulu said.
< Then simply picture a moogle in your mind’s eye, then show the enemy you are trying to defeat what you see. >
“I see. Thank you, Cerewin.”
“Or you could just give them a good, old-fashioned whack with a sword,” Jecht said.
“I think showing them the dimension of matter to dispatch them is quite elegant,” Lulu replied huffily.
“A friend of mine once said that just because something sounds good doesn’t mean its works,” Jecht said. “I should know. Don’t try to take aspirin for a hangover, let me tell you…”
Because it really doesn’t work, or at least has never worked for me. Yeah. More later, life calls. 
OK, not sure about the machinations of power around these parts, so I’ll just play dumb and post an update. :ulty:
An hour later they were heading through the Calm Lands, complaining about the razor grass without exception. Rikku was possibly having the worst time of any of them, but Yuna told her she shouldn’t have worn shorts.
They were negotiating one of the easier patches of razor grass when Tidus said to Yuna, “You know, I was just wondering if you and I are ever going to have kids.”
“Pace yourself,” Yuna said with a laugh. “We still have to get married.”
“I know.” Tidus was silent, so Yuna took up the conversation.
“If we were to have kids, I think we’d start out by teaching them right from wrong. You know, to raise them correctly.”
“I wasn’t really thinking about that.”
Yuna looked at him, puzzled, then said slyly, “You were just thinking about the part where we get the kids.”
“Are you going to attack my position in a conversation every time I stumble over a sentence?” Tidus asked her, trying to evade the subject of actually getting the kids.
“You’d better learn to live with it if we’re ever going to get kids.”
“Can we get off that subject?”
“If you tell me whether you were really thinking about something else, or just getting the kids.”
“Fine,” Tidus growled, though his smile took the edge out of the word. “I was thinking about how our kids would grow up, what with their mother being so pretty and talented-”
“Oh, please, stop it.”
“-and with their father being the most handsome man on the face of the planet-”
“I’m serious. Stop it.”
Tidus laughed and said, “Anyway. Would they become diplomats-”
“I don’t think so!”
“Would you stop interrupting me? As I was saying, would they become diplomats? Would they go around saving the world every two weeks or would they settle down and become novelists?”
“Exactly how many kids are you talking about, here?”
“Not many. Just five or six.”
“In your dreams.”
Both of them simultaneously bent double, laughing. Yuna straightened up first, tucked her hair behind her ears, and said, “Anyway, who says they all – and when I say ‘they all’ I don’t mean five or six of them – have to be the same thing? Maybe one will go around saving the world every two weeks and another will be a novelist.”
“Dad always said three was a lucky number.”
“Well, if we have three the third one had better not be a politician.”
“Seven’s a lucky number, too.”
“Stop it.”
They laughed again, then both concentrated on getting through the razor grass, embarrassed privately but neither willing to tell the other.
Suddenly Tidus tripped over something in the grass and went down with a grunt. Yuna cried out and helped him to his feet. They abruptly realized they’d strayed a bit from the main group, so it was still to be a few minutes before anyone showed up to ask what was the matter.
Tidus groaned as he got up; he was bleeding from a dozen different cuts. “What the heck did I trip over?” he asked.
Yuna was pulling the object out of the razor grass. It felt leathery, but when Yuna actually got a good look at it she nearly dropped it again in horror.
It was a dried-out First Race carcass. From the looks of its horribly deformed head, the thing had died from repeated blows to the cranium from some kind of blunt object. What had caused the corpse to dry out was a mystery.
Tidus brushed himself off and observed, “Nice skull.”
“I think it needs a new one,” Yuna said.
Anaroth appeared seemingly out of thin air. His robes and what little Yuna could see of his skin were completely untouched by the razor grass, and annoyed jealousy rolled off Tidus in waves. Anaroth took one good look at the corpse and said, “This was not a natural death.”
“Thank you for that brilliant insight,” Tidus remarked sarcastically. “Any other endeavors into the unknown you’d like to make?”
“That you’re being uncharacteristically cynical and it probably has something to do with your innate clumsiness,” Anaroth replied coolly. “Now, let me examine this corpse.”
“Innate clumsiness my foot,” Tidus muttered.
Yuna giggled and assured him, “I love you whether you’re clumsy or not.”
“You have the ‘or not’ part right.”
Anaroth looked up and said, “Coeurl.”
“Is that a new greeting?” Tidus asked with false cheer. “Merry Coeurl to you, sir,” he said, lowering his voice. “And a happy Coeurl to you,” Tidus went on, pitching his voice into the annoyingly high area.
“Very funny,” Anaroth said. “As I was saying, a Coeurl did this.”
“Are you sure?” Yuna asked. “Coeurls are slightly shy yet vicious tiger-like fiends that are excellent at sneaking up on their prey and then killing them with various magic spells, all of them innate to the species. Seeing as how the First Race are immune to most magic…”
“I never said a Coeurl did this with magic,” Anaroth corrected her. “Apparently they’ve adapted to the increasingly tough hides of the fiends in the area by developing brute strength to go along with their magic.”
“But there’s no way they could develop a shell or a tough hide,” Yuna protested. “Years ago they were skinned for their soft pelts!”
“How are we surviving this razor grass?” Tidus asked suddenly.
“By maneuvering through it,” Yuna said, realization dawning on her. “The Coeurls are naturally agile enough to move through the razor grass without getting cut.”
“Not quite enough to completely sneak up on their prey,” Anaroth said, “but they’ll have adapted to not even make the grass rustle.”
“Tidus! Yuna! Anaroth!” It was Jecht. “Come see this!”
A minute later Tidus, Yuna, and Anaroth were staring at a pile of nearly a hundred First Race, just as Auron had predicted… and the body of one Coeurl.
The killer Coeurls, as it turned out, were not the haggard travelers’ only problems. Neltharios’ army that he had been boasting about had been caught up in Macalania thanks to a furious assault by the Elementals in the region. They would not be arriving in the Calm Lands for another week.
The other problem was the fact the entire First Race was not far behind. They were slowly, cautiously moving into the Calm Lands in twos and threes, scouting the area. Auron had already killed several of the ones who went scouting alone.
“Let’s review the situation,” Tidus said as the group endeavored to get through another patch of razor grass. “We have a bunch of killer fiends in the Calm Lands that might as well be invisible for all we can do to find them before they strike. Neltharios’ ‘grand army’ has been delayed by a bunch of Elementals in Macalania and won’t arrive for a week. And last but not least we have an entire army of vengeful First Race chasing us down.”
“All right, we’ve reviewed the situation,” Lulu acknowledged. “There’s still the problem of what we do about it.”
Jecht had been walking quietly through the grass, listening to everything that was said, before he tripped. He slammed into Yuna, who then slammed into Tidus, who brought Auron down as well. All of them landed in the razor grass.
Yuna got to her feet, inspecting her latest collection of cuts. “I feel like an especially abused domino.”
“Yuna, you are a genius,” Tidus proclaimed.
“Not that I’m protesting,” Yuna replied, “but what is it that I’ve done to qualify as a genius?”
“Dominos. Chain reactions. Ecosystems.”
“Four words that have almost nothing to do with our current predicament,” Auron told Tidus.
“I agree with Auron,” Jecht complained. “For once try to make sense.”
Tidus grinned and said, “All right. What have the Coeurls adapted to?”
“The razor grass,” Yuna replied, confused.
“And how have they adapted?”
“By being able to slink through the grass without making a single blade twitch,” Jecht said. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“They haven’t just adapted by being able to slink,” Tidus corrected him. “They’ll need to be able to hear when the grass is twitching.”
“So we could have a dozen Coeurls bearing down on us as we speak?” Wakka asked. He looked unnerved at the notion.
“It’s the middle of the day,” Auron said. “Coeurls are naturally nocturnal.” Understanding was dawning on his face.
“If we make a loud enough noise, we just might be able to wake up all the Coeurls,” Tidus filled everyone in.
“Why the heck would we want to do that?” Rikku asked. “I’d rather not be ripped to shreds.”
“We’re not going to be making the noise,” Tidus said. “Our friends the First Race will.”
One scout that had strayed a bit far from the main group heard something rustling in the grass.
He sniffed the air. It stank of human.
“Yoo-hoo! Over here!”
Tidus grinned as he pictured the look on the creature’s face. A moment later he ducked as a chirrum dagger whizzed through the air where his head used to be.
A sleepy Coeurl raised its head and perked up its ears.
“You call that a throw? Come on!” Tidus slapped his knees and whistled.
A moment later the scout who’d thrown the dagger came bursting through the razor grass in front of Tidus and leapt at him, hands going for Tidus’s throat. Tidus smoothly stepped to one side, and the creature flew face-first into a batch of particularly sharp razor grass. The tangle of limbs and black fur got to its feet, then turned and bared yellowing fangs at Tidus. It drew a long, wicked scimitar from a scabbard strapped to its back, the only article of clothing it wore. It charged, swinging the curved blade in a perfect arc toward the human’s head.
In a flash Tidus drew the Caladbolg and parried. Instead of trying to block the creature’s swing, the muscle behind it being nearly twice his own, Tidus ducked under the arc of the sword while pushing it even faster with his own blade. The scimitar spun out of the scout’s hand and flew off into the razor grass.
The Coeurl, now wide awake, snorted as the scimitar embedded itself deeply in the ground not two feet away from the fiend’s hindquarters.
Venting an ululating, piercing scream, the scout kicked out at Tidus, the long talons on its toes glistening in the midday sun.
Tidus calmly brought up his sword, cutting side pointed towards the approaching foot, and stepped out of the kick’s range. The scout screamed as his foot was sliced off its ankle by Tidus’s sword. Hobbling on one foot, the creature beat a quick retreat.
The Coeurl growled in a low, bass tone, awakening others of its kind. Its nostrils flared at the scent of a blood it had never smelled before. Getting to its feet, the fiend silently padded through the grass, following its quarry.
Scratched and cut in a dozen different visible places, and no doubt scratched in areas that weren’t, Tidus burst into the only clearing in the Calm Lands: a large crater formed by a long-forgotten spell that went so deep into the earth it hit bedrock, preventing any of the razor grass from growing.
One look at Tidus’s grin and Yuna knew everything had been done according to plan. “Mission accomplished,” Tidus crowed. “Ten gil says at least a dozen Coeurls are headed to the First Race, intent on ruining their day.”
“I’ll raise you twenty that you stirred up four dozen,” Jecht replied. “We could hear that whistle of yours halfway across the Calm Lands.”
“I hate to break it to you, Dad, but I’m broke. And considering you got out of the same grave as I did, I’m willing to bet you are, too.”
“What were you going to bet, then? Your shirt?”
“I don’t think Yuna would mind,” Rikku teased.
Yuna shot Rikku her best imposing/annoyed stare. “Watch yourself or the next time we need to attract a bunch of fiends we’ll use you for bait.”
“I’m quaking in fear,” was the reply.
“Not that all this banter isn’t amusing, but we need to be going,” Braska spoke up.
At that moment Kimahri stood up suddenly and said, “Kimahri hears something.”
Absolute silence descended upon the clearing as if someone had cracked a whip. Yuna strained to hear what Kimahri did, and she perceived a far-off rumbling, almost silent for its lack of volume.
Rikku pulled out her binoculars, went to the edge of the clearing, and peered into them. A moment later she slowly put her binoculars back in her waist satchel, turned, and calmly walked back to the clearing. Every eye was fixed on her. Nobody spoke.
It was exactly what Rikku needed. The second she was in the middle of the clearing she screamed, “RUN! THE ENTIRE FIRST RACE IS BEARING DOWN ON US AND THEY DON’T LOOK TOO HAPPY!”
Everyone froze for a split second, then took off.
The approaching rumble was getting louder, and Yuna glanced over at Tidus, by her side even while running through thick patches of razor grass. Patches that, strangely, seemed to be getting less and less thick…
Tidus seemed to think so, too. He looked at Yuna and said, “Is it just me or is the razor grass getting less thick?”
“Without Seymour messing things up in the Farplane, Spira must be getting better, eh?” Wakka asked.
“Wait,” Yuna said. “Then that means-”
A second later she was slammed onto her back as she ran straight into a warrior monk.
Beside her she could hear Tidus groan; he must have run into someone, as well. Opening her eyes, Yuna saw the monk was offering her a hand up.
She took it and saw Neltharios triumphantly strutting in front of his army, motioning for everyone to get behind the vanguard.
“I told you no elemental attack could keep them from getting here!” he shouted over the now-thundering rumble of approaching First Race.
“Uh, actually, sir, we didn’t kill the elementals.” It was a private in the vanguard.
Neltharios looked at him like he’d grown a second head and asked, “What?”
“Sir, we were pinned down under siege by the elementals for two days. Then the third day comes along, and suddenly the elementals are playing a friendly match of hide-and-seek with us. The forests were also coming back to life, too. Darndest thing.”
“Looks like we have an advantage here,” Tidus said. “But how is one army going to hold back an entire species?”
< They will not have to, > Cerewin said.
“Why not?” Yuna asked.
< Ever since we entered the Calm Lands I have been summoning the elementals of the world to this place, > Cerewin replied. < I suppose you did not know that elementals are constructs of magic, not fiends, and when they are destroyed they return to the earth for a time. >
“No, I didn’t,” Yuna said, sensing where this was going. “Cerewin, you can’t sacrifice an entire race for us!”
< I do not intend to, > Cerewin assured her. < For after an elemental is destroyed, it eventually rises again from the earth. Our race is ever-preserving, and cannot be wiped out. >
Yuna felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and a shadow fell over the army. Yuna turned towards the source and gasped.
Millions upon millions of elementals were descending on the Calm Lands, blocking out the sun. There were a few types she’d never seen before. Giant elementals, tiny ones. And they began converging into a great and terrible orbit around Cerewin.
< We do this now because we know that your races can and will be exterminated if we do not intervene, > Cerewin said. < It is here that I leave you. Anaroth alone will accompany you from now on. I must stay here, to fall and rise again in accord with the destiny of my kin. Reality can be changed, existence ceased. Destiny cannot be defied. >
With that he began floating towards the wave of charging First Race, the elementals moving in tandem. Then the two forces met, blades and daggers against magic, pure and unbridled in all its passion and fury.
The sight was awe-inspiring, an event to be remembered as long as history existed. It struck both hope and fear into the hearts of all who looked upon it. Soldiers tightened their grips on their guns and flamethrowers. Neltharios and Malath stood stock-still, as if frozen. Tidus took Yuna in his arms. Wakka and Lulu grasped each other’s hands. Kimahri put a hand on Rikku’s shoulder. Jecht and Braska watched in mutual awe. Auron and Anaroth exchanged nods.
Psertorpus was the only one who stood alone.
The elementals wreaked havoc on the First Race. Thousands fell before the elemental onslaught. The sky burned and sizzled with flame and electric power. The air was choked with snow and water. Chaos flames blew whole formations apart, while the pure white Holy energy whisked enemies into the clouds and sent them back down in pieces. Dozens of First Race disappeared simultaneously as the Ultima spell claimed them.
Yet their casualties were minimal compared to that of the elementals’. Swords and spears, however ineffective they were against the material of the elementals, hacked and hewed at the delicate forms of the beings, eventually slicing them to bits. Bases were torn apart and the remaining pieces dropped to the ground, lifeless. The very earth shook as the elementals let loose a last explosion of power… and then, after four days of conflict, they were gone.
The First Race hurriedly drew back, no doubt expecting another army to fall upon them.
“They will not remain here much longer,” Psertorpus said in the silence that seemed to cover the world in the aftermath of the battle. “We should have retreated the instant the elementals engaged the First Race! They will soon descend upon Macalania. We must at least be going through the Thunder Plains by the time they do so.”
Everyone heard him with only half an ear. Soldiers everywhere were bowing their heads. Neltharios and Malath followed suit. Yuna had long ago run out of tears to shed and simply sat on the ground, her back against a rock, spent. Tidus sat beside her, looking forlorn and tired. Everyone looked tired; it had been nearly impossible to get any sleep during the battle. Wakka and Lulu simply stood looking at the carnage, embracing. Rikku and Kimahri were both busying themselves checking their equipment, though anyone could see they were worn and haggard. Jecht and Braska were fixing dinner with some of the considerable rations the army had brought with them. Auron stood alone, looking out at the battlefield. His arm was tucked inside his robe, as it had always been.
Yuna got to her feet and looked at Tidus, opening her mouth to tell him she wanted to get a closer look at the battlefield. She saw there was no need; Tidus had fallen asleep.
Yuna walked among the countless bodies, the burnt grass, the ice that still covered the ground. She looked through it all, not knowing what she was looking for. Then, just as Jecht and Braska were calling everyone to dinner, Yuna found what she was looking for.
Anaroth.
He was crouched over something that glimmered, though Yuna could not tell what it was. The ground around him was bare dirt, dry and burned. She knelt down beside him and saw he held in the palm of his hand a tiny flame.
It was the flame that had topped Cerewin’s base.
Yuna said nothing. She simply watched as the tiny flame twinkled and died in Anaroth’s palm. She knew there was nothing she could do or say.
Anaroth bent his head to the ground. He shook for an instant, then seemed to get control of himself.
After a moment he stood up, turned, and walked away. Yuna sighed deeply; she had not known Cerewin very well but that had not stopped her from regarding him as a friend. Then she noticed a drop of moisture on the ground that had not been there before.
A tear. Anaroth’s tear.
Yuna had cried every time she performed a sending. She had never seen Anaroth cry. Yet here was a single tear, shed over the death of what had to be a dear friend.
Yuna gazed at the drop of moisture, realizing it was much more than that. Inside it was the sorrows of countless souls, all taken upon Anaroth in an effort to free the forgotten dead. Never once had he cried as he took that burden upon him. The tear was a compounding of every sorrow, every burden, he had ever undertaken, each magnifying his own sorrow by a hundred, perhaps a thousand, times. Now here, at the place that would be his friend’s grave, he shed a single tear. Yuna knew the fact he had only shed one meant nothing. By shedding this one tear, Anaroth had shed more than Yuna ever would. He had poured out his sorrow and grief in a drop of water that was much more than just that, and he had still persevered and moved on.
Yuna, shaken by what she had just seen, got to her feet. She turned and headed back to the army. Then a thought occurred to her.
Her father had always told her it was easier to undertake burdens if she shared them with people she knew and trusted. Perhaps, had she not been there, Anaroth would not have shed that tear. Perhaps Anaroth would have kept his own sorrow, possibly the very first he had ever truly experienced for himself, a secret. The kind of secret that would destroy a man if not shared.
Then again, perhaps not…
There’s this scene change that would leave you all dying of suspense if I left off at it, but it would mean making the update 10 pages long instead of 7. So, I guess you’ll know it when you see it.
By the way, if I’ve misspelled the name of the Coeurl fiend, please forgive me for that. I always spell that name wrong.
One more thing, don’t ask me to explain how the supposedly magic-immune First Race got an asskicking from elementals. I originally had Cerewin giving some explanation about the relationship of the Elementals to the dimension of energy or something like that which allowed them to harm the First Race, but I remember Word crashing and losing some of my progress. I retyped everything but must have forgot the explanation. So, thanks for reading and have a nice day.
It works as-is. And yeah, your spelling is fine, though I think it varies between FFs(probobly due to shoddy translations).
And as an aside, double-posting, while frowned upon elsewhere, is usualy acceptable in story threads.
Good to know. Now, update time!
Macalania woods was eerily quiet. Yuna had a pretty good idea why. The elementals, still berserked and out of control, had exterminated all the other fiends in the woods. They had been the last life in the forests, and now they were gone. Now only the trees remained. Yuna knew that in time life would return, but perhaps catastrophes would occur. If life took too long to come back, perhaps the trees would lose their natural immunity to magic and be destroyed by the ecosystem returning to normal. If life came too early, it might not give the forests a chance to regrow and flourish again.
Yuna lay asleep on a smooth rock. Tidus had sat up against a large tree, but he was asleep, too. The entire army had bedded down. Everyone was asleep, though ready to be wakened at a moment’s notice. Everyone except Lulu.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t prepared to leave on a moment’s notice. It was the fact that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t sleep.
When it was near midnight, Lulu rose angrily and walked through the glimmering woods. It was truly a beautiful sight. She finally arrived at a huge, shimmering lake with an enormous tree growing out of its center. Lulu recalled Tidus and Yuna shared some fondness for that lake; they had visited it earlier in the day. Lulu had seen them sitting on the shoreline, having a quiet conversation. What annoyed her was that Lulu had no idea what the lake meant to them.
Oh, well. Maybe someday they would tell her exactly what was up with that lake.
Then Lulu tensed as she heard someone approaching.
“Who’s there?” she asked. Silence answered, as if the approaching fugitive knew he or she had been detected. “Come out and stop playing around,” Lulu called out.
Suddenly Lulu felt her feet pulled out from under her. She hit the ground hard enough to see stars, and when her vision cleared the fugitive had her up against a tree, a hand over her mouth and a dagger against her throat.
It was Malath.
“Hello, Lulu. You know, I woke up this evening with the oddest urge to kill you.” A strange and sinister smile spread over his face, then he drew the dagger back to slit Lulu’s throat.
Thinking frantically, Lulu mentally tugged at a low-hanging branch, bringing it down in front of Malath’s face. She released her hold and it whacked him in the eye. He stumbled back, cursing.
“YUNA! AURON! TI-” Lulu was cut off as Malath slammed his shoulder into her stomach. She flew backwards and managed to turn what would have been a sprawl into an awkward roll.
Before she knew what was happening, Malath was on top of her again. Lulu jerked her head to one side and the dagger plunged into the soft earth. She rolled out from underneath him and sprang to her feet just in time to grab his incoming wrist, blocking another strike from his dagger. Lulu kneed him in the stomach, and he responded crouching, whirling, and simultaneously throwing her over his head.
Lulu landed in the pond with a splash. If the entire army wasn’t awake by then, they were now. She scanned the shore for Malath, but then Lulu felt him grab her ankle and pull her under the water.
How does he move so fast? Lulu, partially in control of her wits again, tried blasting him with a spell or two but he raised a chain link of magic-immune silver grasped in his hand. Accelerating so fast he was a blur, Malath slammed into Lulu again, sending her reeling end over end through the water. She slammed into the tree with a jolt, and Malath began retreating. Lulu tried to swim after him, but then realized her foot was stuck between two massive tree roots. She tugged frantically at it, but it was no use. Almost unconscious from lack of oxygen, she had no strength with which to cast any spells. This is it, Lulu thought mournfully.
Then she yelped as the water suddenly disappeared and she thudded to the muddy lake bottom, her ankle wrenching horribly. Rolling over, with increased leverage, Lulu pulled her foot out from between the roots. Spitting out mud, Lulu had just begun to take an assessment of her situation when she happened to look up.
The entire lake’s worth of water floated there, suspended by some unseeable force. And it was wavering wildly.
Lulu was suddenly halfway to the shoreline of the lake without recalling crossing the distance. Just five more feet and I’m safe, Lulu thought. Four, three, two –
The water suddenly slammed down on her. Despite being in the shallows, Lulu was still slammed into the muddy bottom again. Coughing up mud, Lulu waded to the edge of the lake.
Anaroth stood there, looking immensely drained. He offered Lulu a helping hand out of the mud, then turned to look at the battle taking place in the clearing.
Tidus and Auron stood there, swords drawn, while Yuna had her staff out and was crouching slightly. Malath was nowhere to be seen.
Lulu blinked to make sure she wasn’t seeing things, confirmed she wasn’t, then saw Malath materialize out of thin air behind Tidus. Yuna immediately concentrated on getting a magic shield up behind Tidus, to prevent him being stabbed. The dagger bounced off even as Auron sliced at Malath with his Masamune.
Malath suddenly distorted, wavering, then reappeared in four places at once.
“Mirror images!” Anaroth warned. “Only one can actually do harm, but the copies are near perfect!”
“It would be a useless technique otherwise,” all four Malaths said at the same time. Then one attacked Auron, another Tidus, yet another Yuna, and the fourth circled the fight.
Anaroth was muttering in Lulu’s ear. “The one circling the fight has to be a copy. The magic-immune chain link it’s holding is slightly rusted, but the original is flawless.”
Lulu nodded, concentrating on the three other figures. She noticed a minor detail with one of them. “That one fighting Tidus is a copy!” she said. “It’s wearing an earring. The original wasn’t.”
“You’re right,” Anaroth said. “Now we’ve narrowed it down to one of the two attacking Auron and Yuna.”
“Hold on,” Lulu said uncertainly. “Yuna and Auron are both fighting a single Malath. Where’s the one that was fighting Yuna?”
Her question was answered as the real Malath burst through the dense foliage to her right and his dagger found flesh.
Lulu felt herself freeze as the dagger zeroed in on her neck… and thudded into someone else’s body.
Opening her eyes, Lulu saw Psertorpus standing between her and Malath. Malath’s dagger was buried in his left shoulder all the way up to the hilt.
Psertorpus threw his head back and laughed, then jabbed Malath in the forehead with the crystal on the top of his staff. Malath screamed, every vein and artery in his body pulsing with a bright blue light, then exploded in a blaze of energy.
A moment later his charred skeleton collapsed to the ground.
“I think we know who hired those monks back at the Al Bhed agency to kill us,” Yuna said.
Neltharios looked shaken. “I can’t believe he would know ancient spells of that caliber, or that he would try to kill any of you.”
Yuna shot him a withering stare, and Neltharios hastily amended, “I’m sorry, but I had a spare Al Bhed grenade lying around, and we needed you out for a while…”
“Spare me,” Yuna growled. “All I know is that Lulu confided in me the fact she was having dreams involving Malath.”
Anaroth cocked his head, apparently interested. “What sort of dreams?”
“I can’t really classify them. She described it as she would wake up in bed with Malath crossing the room. He would… ahem… kiss her, and after about a second or so Lulu would wring every last drop of blood out of his lower lip. In return, he would puncture hers just enough for one drop. All the blood formed stains on the white sheets of her bed, and she said something about Malath predicting horrible things to come from Spira.”
“That sounds like a fantasy dream gone wrong,” Anaroth replied, “except for the fact you had it more than once, Lulu.”
“The first time I confronted him with it he blew up at me and told me he had a girlfriend,” Lulu said with a half-smile. “The second and third times I didn’t even bother to tell him.”
“Wait,” Neltharios interrupted, frowning. “I wasn’t aware Malath was romantically involved with someone.”
“I didn’t say they were engaged, or having a liaison, or anything like that. He simply said he had a girlfriend.”
“Well, he certainly didn’t tell me about it,” Neltharios said. “He didn’t tell any of his friends, either, else they would have reported it to me.”
“You had his friends on your payroll?” Auron asked, apparently disgusted.
“Not at all, Sir Auron,” Neltharios replied. Even he had some respect, apparently. “They would have reported it to me out of duty, because having an affair might jeopardize Malath’s ability to perform his duties. The risk was minimal, though, but I doubt they would have overlooked such a thing.”
Braska, who had been silent until then, spoke up. “I think I might know what’s going on here. Thousands of years ago, just after the alliance broke up, Sin became known, and history as we know it began, necromancers of a lesser sort than Psertorpus were rampant throughout all of Spira.”
“You have the ‘lesser sort’ part a tad understated,” Psertorpus snickered.
“Be quiet. Anyway, all of them had ambitions, but one of them stood out from the rest.”
“Me.” Psertorpus was nearly grinning from ear to ear.
Jecht shot him a look composed of equal parts contempt and hatred. “Braska did NOT say the guy who stood out was you. I find it offensive that you would automatically assume it to be you. How childish is that?” He then leaned forward slightly and whispered, “Who was it?”
“It was a necromancer named Kekrioponus,” Braska replied.
“Told you so,” Jecht said, sitting back with an air of supreme confidence.
“Kekrioponus,” Tidus muttered. “Who would name a kid Kekrioponus?”
“It wasn’t his original name,” Braska said. “We don’t know what his name really was, but he was talented in the arts of possession. He would topple governments by possessing close aides to governors, sons of kings, and other such people. He was finally stopped in the eighty-seventh year of history as we know it, meaning his tirade of possession had gone on for approximately a hundred and twenty-four years. The only warning his victims had of the possession was strange dreams. They always involved blood and white cloth. The blood was always shed in a personal way, such as a son cutting his father’s hand at the dinner table with his knife. They would always give dark prophecies that came true after both their blood and the blood of the dreamer was shed onto the cloth. Never did any one of the prophecies go unfulfilled. One of them took five centuries to happen, but in the end it did happen. They would also tend to bluff their way through embarrassing conversations using details of the possessor’s personal life. Those possessed by Kekrioponus often were heard talking about poison frogs, a favorite subject of study for Kekrioponus. That is why he is also known as the ‘Poisoned Sorcerer’.”
“Let me guess,” Yuna said. “You studied him in school.”
“I took a dare to read the only published book about him,” Braska said. “I lost because I ended up having nightmares for a week.”
“Well, I doubt the girlfriend thing means anything,” Jecht said. “Offense intended, Psertorpus, but I’ve never thought of you as a lady’s man.”
“None taken,” Psertorpus replied lightly.
“Damn.”
The group dispersed and continued their journey through Macalania woods, with Yuna and Tidus instinctively keeping a little distance between themselves and the main pack.
“Possession dreams… if not Psertorpus, who do you think was possessing Malath?” Yuna asked.
“Maybe he acted of his own free will,” Tidus suggested.
“Tidus, please. Use your intuitive side.”
“That’s the left side of my brain.”
“I don’t care. Use it anyway.”
Tidus frowned for a moment, then rubbed his forehead and said, “I think I see what you’re trying to say. You’re saying that because Malath was only about twenty-eight through thirty years old means he couldn’t possibly know how to move so fast, or make mirror images of himself.”
“Those are very old and dangerous spells that the Order of Yevon closely guarded and are now under the protection of the Summoners’ Guild,” Yuna explained. “Moving fast enough to dodge most physical strikes is a spell that distorts the four lower dimensions, making the length, width, and height of the user null so the spell can slow time and push the spellcaster through the membrane that separates past, present, and future. The instant that is achieved, the four lower dimensions are again restored to normal. At least, that’s what the theory is. The problem with that spell is it disrupts the fabric of lower reality at its most basic level, and that disruption, instead of changing the entire world so as to preserve reality, only changes a small portion of it. I wonder if you heard of the Shimmering Island, off the coast of Bikanel…”
“No.”
“The island was once a place seven necromancers fought for supremacy. They used the motion-enhancing spell so much that reality became permanently imbalanced and the island appears to ripple and shimmer from a distance. Get too close and you’ll never be able to leave the island again.”
“What about the mirror image thing? How is that explained?” Tidus sounded genuinely interested.
“I think what it does is influence the higher dimension of space, creating four duplicates of space in an area, that area being the area of the spellcaster. The reason the copes are slightly different is because copying the dimension of space exactly is impossible as far as we know. That’s the spell’s only real weakness, except the copies can’t deal a deathblow, just wound their opponents. And if you’re thinking about an enemy dying from a strike the copy makes, it’s not going to happen.”
Tidus nodded, smiling. He leaned down slightly and gave Yuna quick kiss. “Where does a summoner learn all this stuff?”
“It’s called reading a book.”
“Sounds fun. Maybe I’ll try it someday.”
They shared a laugh, then both realized the army had arrived at the edge of the Thunder Plains.
The rain was back in full force, now. With Seymour gone, Spira was indeed healing.
Yuna vowed it would not heal just to be crushed by the First Race.
Anaroth was calmly looking at the Thunder Plains, and a question occurred to Yuna. It was a question so maddeningly obvious that she mentally kicked herself for not asking it before.
“Anaroth, why don’t the First Race, instead of setting out to conquer everything, just shape reality with their portal, like Seymour wanted to do?”
“That is a very good question, Yuna. The answer is simple. Do you have any idea how much magical energy is inherent in that gateway?”
“Um… a lot?”
“Close enough. Now, as the First Race only perceives the dimension of energy, the more energy a thing has the brighter they perceive it. Magical energy is lower than pure energy, but the same rules apply to its perception. To us it is a simple, pure white sphere that gives of no white of its own. To the First Race it is like a miniature sun. They cannot look at it directly without being blinded.”
“And you need to be able to see something to use magic of that potency on it,” Yuna exclaimed.
“Wait,” Tidus said skeptically. “How come the eyesight of the entire First Race didn’t get fried when they exited the gateway into our world?”
“Imagine looking directly at the sun when it is twenty feet away. Then imagine turning away from it and looking at Yuna. You would still perceive the light of the sun, but in bearable quantities because what you see lightning Yuna is a reflection.”
“Ah.” Tidus was silent for another moment, then he asked, “When you say magic is lower than energy, yet not a dimension unto itself, what do you mean?”
“Magic is a diluted form of pure energy that is directly influenced by length, width, height, and time. You can expand the radius of magic by applying three-dimensional terms to it, but as it gets bigger and bigger you require more energy to retain it for longer and longer. It is impossible for magic to exist in this world in corporeal form for anything more than a finite amount of time.”
“But the gateway!” Yuna exclaimed. “That means it’ll just disappear, right?”
“The gateway exists in three realms other than our own,” Anaroth reminded her. “Magic can exist for infinite periods of time in non-reality, the nether-realm, and the Farplane. Spira, being limited by length, width, height, and time, is the only realm with this restriction on the existence of magic.”
“What about you, Anaroth?” Tidus asked. “Do you have limits?”
“I do indeed, though my limits make me seem limitless to your conception of such things. Psertorpus has a finite source of power as well, though he prefers not to acknowledge that fact. Rarely has he ever fought a battle that I know of where all his power has been spent, though.”
“Can you pull off any of these tricks, Yuna?” Tidus asked.
“They’re way beyond me or any other summoner,” Yuna replied. “They were only performed by the necromancers of when history began.”
“Because they distort reality… why does that concept constantly come up while we’re running from a murderous race of magic-immune soldiers?”
“That’s the only way they entered this world,” Anaroth said.
“So are you suggesting if we close the gateway we can sever their link to Spira?” Tidus perked up with the idea.
“They exist on this plane, now,” Anaroth replied. “There is no way we can exile them without the magical object Yuna says is on Besaid Island. Closing the gateway would not sever your contact with Spira, either, Tidus.”
Tidus didn’t miss the look of relief that passed over Yuna’s face. He tried to change the subject, saying, “So when did you and Yuna first meet?”
“We met here in the Thunder Plains,” Anaroth replied. “I was sending the souls of those that died here long ago when Yuna accidentally stumbled into the spell’s area of effect.”
“Um… what happened, exactly?”
“I accidentally separated her soul from her body. That’s how I… ah…”
"Showed Tidus my memories,” Yuna finished for him. “He told me.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Anaroth said. He sounded slightly abashed. “It seemed only fair at the time, considering you’re seen his soul as well.”
“Tidus… could you go on ahead for a moment?”
Tidus nodded and jogged on ahead. Anaroth cocked his head and Yuna, though she could never see his face beneath the hood, felt a strong sense of curiosity emanating from him.
“What is it?”
“You can cry, Anaroth.”
Anaroth started slightly, then nodded. “I believe you saw the single tear I shed.”
“It was strangely beautiful,” Yuna said. “The tear… it glistened with thousands of sorrows, each enhancing your own. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“I should have shed more,” Anaroth said bitterly, and his tone slid into the realm of self-accusation. “Cerewin was the first true friend I ever had. He and I were like brothers. Psertorpus was nothing when we joined forces against him.
“Then came the hard times. Our powers slowly diminished as the threat of total war faded. I became a simple spirit that roamed the earth sending what you call the forgotten dead. Cerewin was still lord of magic and leader of the elementals, but he had faded, too. We never had to re-sharpen our powers. We thought Psertorpus was dead and gone, yet here he is, having honed his prowess for untold millennia. I wasn’t sure we could stand against him together. I’m sure I can’t stand against him alone.”
“That one tear meant more than any I could shed,” Yuna told him. “So what if I’ve sent a few hundred souls? You’ve sent the souls of the world and kept sane. Each sorrow you take on magnifies your own by a hundred, maybe a thousand times. It showed you truly what love and loss is, what the difference between needing someone and being selfish is. I don’t feel bad about crying over loss. But my sorrow is tainted by human wants and needs. Your sorrow is the most pure and untarnished in existence. You’ve taken the world upon your shoulders and still have room to sit down and have tea or cry over the loss of a friend. Now we need you more than ever for the unimaginable knowledge and wisdom that you’ve built up, so much of it that even you may not know how vast it truly is.”
“Touching,” said a mocking voice, accompanied by the sound of a single pair of hands applauding.
Yuna felt her anger hit a fever pitch, and she turned towards the voice. “Psertorpus, have you ever heard of minding your own business?”
“The world is my business,” Psertorpus replied smugly, grandly waving his arms in a sweeping gesture. “And Anaroth, you are right. Nobody can stand against me. Your pathetic sorrow may be the purest in the world, but my power is unmatched in all the universe.” He grinned wickedly, and a giant bolt of lightning made contact with his staff’s crystal. It crackled with power, and Psertorpus flipped his staff upside down and slammed the crystal into the ground. The nearest lightning tower exploded in a rain of searing electric hellfire. Psertorpus wrenched the crystal out of the ground and said, “Try to move against me and you will die slowly enough your regret will be worse than your agony.” He turned away, stalking back towards the rest of the army.
“Someday I think I’m going to throttle than man,” Yuna muttered.
“Perhaps. Fate is not set, Yuna. Prophecies invariably come true, but only through the actions of the mortal inhabitants of Spira. The prophecy concerning him…” Anaroth was silent for a minute, then said, “The prophecy concerning him is that he will betray the One, and take control of a monstrous beast that is worshipped by the First Race as a god. He will attempt to control their motives and actions, and none will stand before him.”
“Does it say anything about him actually dying?” Yuna asked hopefully.
“It discreetly mentions his death by the hand of the One,” Anaroth replied, “but it does not say when.”
“Discreetly. Well, when he does betray whoever this One is, I’m going to be there so I can stop him.”
Yuna walked away, calling Tidus’s name, and Anaroth shook his head. He devoutly wished Cerewin were still alive; the elemental would have known what to do.
“Yuna… I only wish that you would stop denying yourself the truth. You speak of the One as if you do not know who she is.”
He turned away, looking for an answer in the clouds.
Oh, and if you’re wondering where Yuna got all the info on ancient spells, it didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. The story only makes one mention of her reading a book anywhere (when she was in the rich guy’s bedroom), so she found out there. :hahaha;
Yuna seems like the type who’d read a lot, anyway.
Still doing good, blah blah, etc etc. You know the drill.
K good. While my WoW stress test is extacting, I’ll post up tonight’s update before I forget. Longer update than usual today, since it’s a turning point and I can’t cut off in the middle of it.
The First Race was moving through Macalania Woods faster than anything Yuna had ever seen in her life. The tops of the distant trees rustled with the passage of the enemy.
“This is bad,” Tidus said. “We need to get to Guadosalam, because that’s a place we can convert into a strongpoint to hold off the First Race long enough to get to Besaid. The problem is they’re almost through Macalania woods and we’re only halfway through the Thunder Plains.”
“We need some way to occupy them here,” Yuna muttered thoughtfully. “Maybe we can get a stake, stick it in the middle of the Plains, tie Psertorpus to it, and-”
“I heard that,” Psertorpus said.
“Ask me if I care.”
“No, I suppose you don’t. So there’s really no need to ask the question, is there?”
“There is if you find a reason.”
“Both of you stop it,” Braska cut in. “We have to get through the Plains by the time they reach the midpoint. At that point we can fortify Guadosalam.”
Yuna nodded mutely; Braska’s thinking mirrored her own. “Do you suppose that anything Seymour did to the Farplane has affected Guadosalam?”
“The portal isn’t really concrete, Yuna,” Auron said. “I doubt anything happened to Guadosalam as a result of Seymour’s meddling with the Farplane.”
About an hour later, Auron’s theory was disproven. Guadosalam had ceased to exist.
What had once been a spectacular cavern was now yet another smoking crater in the Thunder Plains. The only thing that had survived was the tunnel through Guadosalam to the Moonflow.
“I think Seymour really outdid himself this time,” Yuna said.
“Well, at least he’s dead for good,” Tidus agreed. “Maybe some Guado survived, though. I certainly hope so…”
“Doubtful,” Auron said. “The Guado mostly tended to stay in their home, except for necessary visits to the outside world on occasion. Aside for personal bodyguards, blitzball players, and high-ranking officers of Yevon, most Guado were content to stay in their homes and live out life.”
“Now their cloistered habits may have spelled their doom,” Tidus muttered halfheartedly. “It looks like a lot of people will be left without spiritual help for a while.”
“Well, at least this saves the First Race the trouble of exterminating everyone in Guadosalam that would refuse to evacuate.”
“We really ought to get going,” Psertorpus interrupted. “Considering they’re halfway across the Thunder Plains by now, we have to keep ahead of them.”
The ground started to rumble wildly without warning, and Yuna shouted, “It’s them!”
Thousands of them came pouring down the nearest hill. Everyone froze in their tracks for a split second, then the entire army snapped up their guns and fired.
Everyone was surprised. But Psertorpus was for a different reason.
“There aren’t enough of them,” he said.
“What? You would prefer more?” Jecht asked, longsword raised.
“There’s only a few thousand I can sense,” Psertorpus said, “in sharp contrast to the millions that destroyed the elementals.”
“A few thousand is more than enough to worry about,” Yuna snaped, but Auron held out a restraining hand and said, “He’s right. There’s only one explanation for the curious lack of First Race.
“Bevelle.”
Neltharios, who was within earshot, lost his balance. He straightened up and shouted, “BEVELLE? THEY’VE GONE AFTER BEVELLE?”
“I’m sorry, but there’s no other logical place for millions upon millions of First Race to go. They’re going after Bevelle.”
Psertorpus had closed his eyes, then opened them and said, “Correction. They went after Bevelle. And won.”
Neltharios sank to his knees. “My base of operations… everything…”
“Now is not the time to grieve,” Auron said sharply. “We have a battle to fight.”
“No, we have a retreat to beat,” Tidus said. “Those few thousand First Race are acting as scouts for the main force if they’ve already conquered Bevelle. If we flee then I doubt they’ll come after us.”
Neltharios, back on his feet, screamed, “FULL RETREAT! FULL RETREAT! INTO THE TUNNEL LEADING TO THE MOONFLOW! GO, GO GO! SUPRESSING FIRE ON THE ADVANCING SCOUT ARMY AS WE GO!”
Yuna had to admit one thing; Neltharios bribed well-trained troops. As one the army turned on its heel and ran towards the tunnel, with the summoners backing them up. Tidus, Auron, and Jecht lead the retreat, while Kimahri, Rikku, Wakka, Lulu, Braska, and Yuna took up the rear.
Lulu waved her arms in a spell, and about two dozen tightly packed First Race died. Lulu had been practicing projecting the dimension of matter over an area of effect, Yuna remembered.
The scout army stopped in its tracks, apparently satisfied their enemy was retreating.
Finally, Yuna arrived at the tunnel. She began to run through when one of the First Race sorcerors stepped forward.
The roof of the tunnel exploded. Yuna, almost to the end, felt darkness claim her as the rocks rained down on her.
Tidus felt his throat scraped raw, as if sulfur were at work. It might have been his scream at seeing the tunnel over Yuna collapse.
After getting through the tunnel, Tidus stayed by the entrance to the Moonflow, mentally counting the soldiers that ran through.
In an eyeblink Tidus was desperately shoving rocks out of the way, trying to free Yuna. She was half-buried in rubble. The dust was thick enough to choke on.
Rikku, Kimahri, and Lulu were at his side a moment later, helping. Yuna was unconsious for a moment, then she opened her eyes and her pinched expression made it clear at least one of her legs had been broken by the shower of boulders.
“Hold on,” Tidus muttered, “hold on.” He shoved an especially large rock out of the way, then grabbed hold of Yuna and pulled her out. Yuna gasped with pain, then shook her head and her eyes met Tidus’s.
“What happened in there?” Tidus asked. He didn’t get an answer and was about to inquire further when kissed him fiercly.
They stood there like that for nearly a minute until someone noisily cleared his throat. With a low growl, Tidus released Yuna and turned to face Psertorpus. “We were having sort of a personal moment, in case you didn’t see,” he hissed.
“Personal moment or no, the First Race will not be long in coming. We must keep moving.”
Tidus opened his mouth for what he hoped would be a stinging retort, but Yuna hit Psertorpus with a dangerously insulting barb of her own.
“If I didn’t know better,” she said slowly, “you being master of the universe and all, I would say you were afraid of the First Race.”
Psertorups simply stared at her for nearly two minutes, then finally said, “That would be none of your business. Perhaps I’m merely cautious.”
“Perhaps you’re scared out of your mind,” Yuna countered.
Psertorpus uttered a wordless sound of rage, then turned on his heel and stormed away.
“Keep running, Psertorpus,” Tidus called after him. “I’ll bet you my shirt that when you stop, you’re dead.”
Yuna stared at him, and Tidus assured her, “No, I wouldn’t give him my shirt. Considering the second he stops running he’ll be dead, he won’t need it anyway.”
“I’m glad.” She kissed him again.
“What happens,” Wakka complained, “when you throw a party and nobody shows up?”
“Your reputation is destroyed,” Lulu replied, “though I doubt after losing ten years in a row you would have a reputation left to destroy.”
“We recovered a lotta prestige from our wins, lemme tell you!”
“Don’t tell me,” Lulu joked. “You’ll only bore me.”
“But seriously. Here we go, inviting everyone to a meeting concerning Psertorpus, and nobody shows up. Even worse, the subject of our discussion himself shows up and says hi.”
“I think we’ll be having that discussion after all,” Anaroth said, stepping out of the shadows to their left.
“Psertorpus is too dangerous a threat to not deal with,” Auron agreed, materializing to their left.
Yuna hobbled into the light and said, “I believe you called a meeting. We’ve come to attend it.” Tidus stood next to her, constantly glancing over his shoulder. Seeing his jumpiness, Yuna assured him, “I made sure Psertorpus was sound asleep.”
“We will inevitably end up fighting him,” Auron said. “What we need is a strategy to counter his powers.”
“I think I have one,” Yuna said. And she told it to them.
The next day they crossed the Moonflow, telling everyone to evacuate to safe areas as soon as possible. Yuna had the uncomfortable feeling that Neltharios had vast support amongst the peoples of Spira, and he might be trouble after they fulfilled their quest. The one positive side of failing was they wouldn’t have to deal with Neltharios because they would all be dead.
The Djose Highroad seemed longer than usual to Yuna, whose leg, though regenerating at a remarkable rate thanks to her powers, was not yet fully mended. Tidus was constantly at her side, supporting and helping her. Yuna appreciated the help and found it rather odd that Tidus’s constant attention didn’t annoy her. Maybe it was because she knew all he wanted to accomplish through it was help.
Then, three days later, slowed by the wounded and the narrow path, they arrived at the Djose shore. And even Auron had to admit it was a sight to see.
While Neltharios had taken what Yuna had initially perceived as all of his army to Zanarkand, he had only taken half. The other half had remained at the Djose shore, fortifying the area against the lurking Sinspawn and the First Race. How Neltharios had known about the invasion in the first place was anyone’s guess; Yuna suspected Psertorpus had foreseen it and told him.
“It is here,” Auron said, “that many of us will make our final stand.”
“Excuse me?” Yuna asked warily.
Auron looked at her and clarified, “The entire First Race is bearing down on us. The goal here is to force them to withdraw and lick their wounds. That will give us the chance to sneak away and make for Bevelle.”
“It seems like a good enough plan,” Yuna said. “What problems do you forsee?”
“Our present company,” Auron replied simply. “Neltharios wants control of the world. So does Psertorpus. Malath was possessed by someone of whom we have no knowledge. Our goal as friends is to save all of reality from the First Race; Neltharios’ and Psertorpus’ goals are aligned with ours until the First Race is gone. Then they will turn on us.” His eyes shifted towards the sea, and he whispered almost to himself, “Many stories ended here not so long ago. I fear the same will happen not so long from now.” With that he walked quietly away, apparently lost in thought.
“Stories…” Yuna trailed off. She, too, turned to look out at the ocean and realized she was all alone. Her friends had gone off to see what Neltharios’ army had done. Even Tidus was gone, talking with a tech at the base of an energy tower.
“Will anyone ever tell any stories about what’s going to happen here today?” Yuna asked. “Will they sit down at a family meeting and ask to hear about what happened at Djose Shore? Who will the stories focus on the most, if any are told? What will they focus on? Is everything we do here for naught?”
“Nothing good is done in vain,” Anaroth replied. He had appeared out of seemingly thin air. Yuna found herself slightly jealous of that particular talent. “Perhaps defeat is suffered, but in the end it is not the bodies of the slain or the death count that determines victory and defeat. You may one day fight in a battle where the enemy outnumbers you five to one, with no logical chance of winning.
“Yet hope itself is the banner of victory. Hope and determination carry the day when none are left living to do so. Stories will indeed form; it is the inevitable cycle of history. As these stories are told, they will inspire great hope, for those in the stories found hope in a time of darkness and death. Surrounded by doom on all sides, the people in these stories find hope where there appears to be none, a light in a dark room.
“Hope cannot be destroyed. It can only be relinquished by those who believe a situation to be hopeless. Many times situations rationally are. A battle of one against a thousand is considered hopeless, while a thousand against a million is just as despairing. But there are always those who believe in the reinforcements arriving, those who believe God will come to their aid and strike down their enemies.”
“God? What would you know about God?” It was Psertorpus. He, too, had appeared out of thin air. He ignored the look Yuna gave him and went on. “God is the result of humans’ natural need to find something greater than themselves, something they can look up to and emulate in their quest for perfection. It is a concept used to explain that which cannot be explained. Earthquakes were called the Gods’ warhammers. Lightning bolts were the Gods’ gorgon gazes.”
“That is what many believe,” Anaroth said. “But what do you believe, Psertorpus? What do you think is out there, watching over you?”
“I need no supervision,” Psertorpus scoffed.
“Have you ever felt the need to know how to act, what actions to take and which to discard?” Yuna asked. “Have you, in that time, ever looked to a God in Heaven to emulate and follow? Many times it is the teachings of the God than the God itself that is important.”
“I need nobody to tell me how to act,” Psertorpus snarled. “I know myself and my limitations, of which there are very few. I need no God to point them out.”
“Fine. What about Hell, Psertorpus? Considering you are one of the most evil beings on the planet, have you ever looked to the devil as to your actions?”
“You know as well as anyone, perhaps better, that the Farplane is where all the dead go,” Psertorpus countered. “There is no Heaven and Hell. The Farplane is an equal combination of the two, and that is why Seymour was allowed to corrupt it. It is no more perfect than you are.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Yuna replied icily. “If I were you, Psertorpus, I would watch myself. If there is a divine being sitting on a throne, judging right from wrong and bestowing that judgment upon all he sees, then you had better hope his views coincide with yours. That he was once like you, a man bent on conquering the universe through the troubles and weaknesses of others, and that he is looking for someone to take up the throne because his damned crown is getting too small for his head.”
As Yuna hobbled away, Anaroth turned to Psertorpus and said, “She really told you off.”
Psertorpus waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Listen to her prattling about God, Heaven, Hell, and what-have-you. You know as well as I do we are the closest things to gods this damn universe will ever have.”
“The problem with that view, Psertorpus, is that it may make a lot of divine beings angry at you if they do indeed exist,” Anaroth said softly. “Perhaps someday they will deal out judgment. They may come in fire and glory, and obliterate all evil from this reality that you believe yourself to be above. Or you may be allowed to continue spinning your crooked webs until you are entangled in them and are killed by an insect on your menu for domination.”
An hour later, it began.
The First Race started pouring down the Highroad onto the beach. Artillery cannons fired from positions on the cliff faces, stopping their advances dead. Yet more continued to come. They poured onto the beach by the hundreds and thousands, and inside the fortress Neltharios had constructed Yuna waited to do battle. Directing all her mental energy onto her leg, it had healed in record time, doing so fast enough that Yuna felt the strange sensation of bone and sinew mending. Tidus stood beside her, his customary cocky grin discarded and a look of determination on his face.
The doors to the fortress began creaking open, their iron plating glistening in the fading light of dusk. Then Yuna received a tap on the shoulder. Turning, she saw an uncomfortable-looking private. He started to salute, hesitated, began the salute again, then finally gave Yuna a respectful nod.
“Neltharios needs you in the briefing room, m’lady.”
Yuna turned away from him to inform Tidus, but he was already speaking. “So, what does he want now, that son of a-”
“Don’t worry,” Yuna said hastily, “I won’t be long. And refrain from calling him those things in front of his army.”
“Fine. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Yuna quickly kissed him, then ran to the command center. Bursting through the large tent’s entrance, Yuna opened her mouth to say, “What is it?”, but stopped at the sight she beheld.
The lamps inside the tent had been dimmed, and various pedestals with magic-enhancing objects were scattered around. In the center of the tent was a large, circular stone pedestal with the symbol of Yevon emblazoned on it. A circle cut in the ceiling of the tent shed a circle of brighter light around the pedestal.
Neltharios lay just outside the circle of light. His neck was at an odd angle, and his eyes were squeezed shut as if in agony.
But that paled in comparison to the fact all four of his limbs were gone.
Yuna started to scream, then felt something kick her in the stomach hard enough to empty her lungs of air. Another force picked her up and threw her onto the pedestal. Lying on her back, Yuna instinctively swallowed as some kind of choker closed itself around her neck and restraints snapped into place, immobilizing her on the circle. Yuna tried to wrench herself free with any one of a hundred spells, but she felt her magic blocked.
Psertorpus loomed over her and hissed, “I have waited long enough for this!” Yuna tried again to scream, but Psertorpus made a clutching motion with his hand and Yuna felt her windpipe being squeezed. The scream came out as a hoarse whisper. Wasting no more time, Psertorpus placed a Spider Moogle on Yuna’s stomach. As if it had done this a thousand times before, it skittered onto her head and sank its pincers deep into her temples.
They had fought off the first wave of attacking First Race when Tidus felt his knees buckle out from under him, bringing him to the ground. His temples throbbed and he shook uncontrollably.
“Tidus!” Jecht yelled, trying to run to his son’s aid. A First Race took that opportunity for a wild scimitar swing at his head, and Jecht whirled and blocked the move.
Through the haze of pain, Tidus looked up and saw a First Race grinning evilly, brandishing a chirrum dagger. Tidus sliced the creature’s legs out from under it, and his enemy went down with a howl.
Tidus had a sudden flash of warning, almost a premonition, but it came too late. Even as he turned around, it came…
Yuna screamed, clutching her temples as she fell through a rippling portal of energies. She hit water suddenly, and then realized she instinctively knew how to end the agony.
Diving, Yuna swam right into the maw of the Sinspawn inhabiting the Djose Shore.
The Spider Moogle reared back, its pincers coming out of Yuna’s temples with a sucking sound that threatened to make her sick. Yuna shook her head and instantly regretted it as waves of agony hit her and blood splashed everywhere.
Psertorpus didn’t notice. He smacked the Spider Moogle away from Yuna and shouted, “I have it! With this power, the entire world will bow before Psertorpus!”
Good for you, Yuna thought. What the hell is he talking about?
Then the tent was plucked away by one of the Sinspawn’s tentacles and all of Yuna’s unasked questions had answers.
Tidus ran at full speed towards the camp just as the Sinspawn grabbed the main command center with a tentacle and heaved it up, exposing its occupants. Psertorpus stood triumphantly, hands raised. Yuna was somehow restrained to a stone pedestal and Tidus sensed that she’d been hurt – by Psertorpus.
Blind rage consuming him, Tidus ran towards certain death.
Yuna struggled to free herself from the pedestal as the Sinspawn swept into the fray, indiscriminately killing both First Race and man.
“Soon…” Psertorpus muttered. “Soon they will indeed see it and me as a god and then rule of this world will come doubly swift.”
“How much you want to bet?” Tidus swung the Caladbolg at Psertorpus’ head with all his strength.
Psertorpus raised a hand and Tidus stumbled, his sword suddenly stuck in mid-air. Psertorpus laughed as Tidus tried to pull it free. He twirled his staff and the Caladbolg flipped itself out of its midair prison and sank deep into the ground, flipping Tidus over onto his stomach.
Before he could remove it, Tidus was slammed against the far rock face by Psertorpus. A huge, perfect sphere of sand coalesced and floated two feet above the shore. Then it dissolved into a stream of sand heading straight for Tidus.
He dropped to the ground after nearly being crushed by the rushing sand. Psertorpus laughed again and twitched his staff. Tidus was slammed face-first into the ground. Then he was slammed against the cliff face behind him. The one-two slamming repeated four more times, then Psertorpus waved his staff over his head and Tidus landed hard at his feet.
Psertorpus raised his staff once again and Tidus was lifted up high into the air. Yuna struggled at the restrains but could not get free.
Then the necromancer brought his staff down and Tidus landed next to Yuna on the pedestal.
Psertorpus twitched Tidus’s head over even as Yuna turned hers to see him again. That instant their lips briefly met.
Then Tidus was yanked away and hurled into the sand in front of Psertorpus.
“Your last kiss,” Psertorpus spat. “Say goodbye.”
Tidus looked up at his tormentor and saw the lone figure approaching him.
“Goodbye,” Tidus said with a smile.
Then Anaroth grabbed hold of Psertorpus’ shoulder.
The necromancer screamed, clutching at his head. He sank to his knees, screaming the entire time, until he finally expired and fell over.
Psertorpus was dead.
The Sinspawn let out a screech loud and long enough to create huge cracks in the cliff faces of the shore. That proved to be its downfall as at least a hundred two-ton boulders slammed onto it, crushing its shell and exposing its organs to attack.
The First Race swarmed over it like termites assaulting a wooden beam.
The army began retreating back into the fortress.
Five minutes later, all hell broke loose.
Tidus wearily undid Yuna’s restraints, wiping the blood off his split lower lip. He was pretty sure the onslaught of sand had bruised several of his ribs as well. If Psertorpus had slammed him around much more, his spine could have been dislocated.
Tidus felt like killing Psertorpus all over again after seeing what he did to Yuna, but then again he liked the necromancer better when he was dead.
He finally managed to pry open the last restraint. Yuna swung her legs up off the pedestal and embraced Tidus.
“You had me worried for a minute there,” she said.
“I was more worried about you,” Tidus replied.
Auron walked up to them and said, “I assume the plan worked?”
“It did,” Anaroth replied. “Psertorpus, being a necromancer of such proportions, drew his immense power from the negative thoughts and feelings of those around him. Sorrow, anger, jealousy, what-have-you.
“So Yuna came up with the idea that Psertorpus could only handle so much negative emotion. With all the sorrows I have taken on in my existence, I was the natural choice to convey those feelings to Psertorpus.”
“Looks like Psertorpus couldn’t handle everything you had to give him,” Tidus observed.
“Apparently not. He always considered himself my superior. Yet superiority comes with the possession of knowledge your inferiors do not have. I know what both sorrow and love are. Selfishness and selflessness I understand. Jealousy and admiration I know well. Yet Psertorpus only knew the negative side of these emotions.”
“Knowledge is power,” Yuna said.
“Indeed.” Auron nodded gravely. “Now, I believe the two of you have some wounds to be cleaned up.”
Both opened their mouths to deny it, but Auron looked at them pointedly over the tops of his sunglasses.
They were just about to give in when the iron doors of the fortress bent inward.
The First Race was coming.
Yuna finished wrapping the bandage around her head as the gate bent inward even more. Tidus had patched up his wounds and was standing ready, sword in hand.
Inwardly Yuna knew she should have been running away, going to Besaid, but she felt she had to stay here for some purpose as yet unknown to her. Once that purpose was accomplished, she could continue on. Just as she had trusted her instincts about Zanarkand, she trusted her instincts about her purpose now.
She braced herself for the gates to split open, but the blow did not come.
Tidus was just as puzzled as Yuna was. “It didn’t break.”
Then a bellow sounded from the invaders’ side of the doors, and they were ripped off their hinges.
By one First Race.
Hyrr’bal.
Yuna felt a surge of recognition shoot up her spine. This was why they were staying behind. Hyrr’bal had to fall if the First Race were to withdraw for a time.
“It’s him,” Tidus breathed. He shot a look at Yuna and asked, “This is why you’ve insisted we not leave?”
Yuna nodded and said, “I didn’t know he was the exact reason until he slammed open those gates by himself.”
“Then let’s go,” Tidus said. He strode boldly towards Hyrr’bal. The creature was about to motion his troops forward when Tidus shouted a challenge.
“Hey! Ugly!”
Yuna winced; that wasn’t the best way to get the thing’s attention.
“Yuna and I challenge you to a fight to the death!” Tidus crowed.
Hyrr’bal bared his fangs and bellowed back, “It will be my pleasure!”
Without further adieu he clapped his hands and Tidus shoved Yuna aside as a chaos flame shot upward where she’d been standing.
Tidus charged and Hyrr’bal brought out his scimitar.
The duel began.
Anaroth stared in disbelief for once in his life. Yuna and Tidus had challenged Hyrr’bal to a fight to the death.
He saw Hyrr’bal draw his Zanmato scimitar, which contained a terrible destructive essence that the Aeon Yojimbo had tapped – just barely.
Anaroth tried to rush to Tidus’s aid, but Auron grabbed hold of his arm. “Let him go,” Auron said quietly. “You cannot tell his story for him.”
Anaroth nodded, admitting that even humans could at times point out wisdom he could not see.
Tidus braced himself as Hyrr’bal swung at his head, going for a clean kill. Tidus pulled up Caladbolg and parried, then thrust at Hyrr’bal’s chest. The First Race leader leaped back four meters, then leaped forward again, his scimitar cocked for a killing blow. Tidus ducked under and slashed backhanded at his foe, but Hyrr’bal rolled to his right, avoiding the stroke. As he came to a stop he stood up on his left hand, while with his right he cut at Tidus. Tidus barrel rolled away, then kicked out at Hyrr’bal’s left hand. Proving deft for his size, the First Race pushed up off his hand, flipped in midair, then landed on his feet. He slammed his scimitar into the ground while waving his left hand.
Tidus flinched as a bright light flashed in his eyes. He was blinded and Hyrr’bal was undoubtedly going in for a kill.
Then he felt Yuna’s presence. Tidus, keep your wits and listen to my voice. I’ll guide you.
Tidus mentally frowned as he saw what Yuna was seeing. The frown was instantly forgotten as he kicked Hyrr’bal in the stomach to avoid being bisected by a downward sweep of the scimitar. Hyrr’bal, no doubt unexpectant of his opponent kicking him, had let his guard down. He wheezed as air left his lungs, and Tidus thrust Caladbolg deep into his heart.
Instantly Tidus could see again. He let go of Caladbolg as hot, boiling blood gushed out from Hyrr’bal’s chest and began dissolving anything it touched except Tidus’s sword.
A moment leader the leader of the First Race fell dead to the ground and was consumed in his own blood.
After solemnly watching his foe melting away at contact with the liquid, as well as the First Race’s retreat, Tidus carefully picked Caladbolg out of the pool and looked at Yuna.
She had put on her whatever-happened-I-didn’t-do-it look. Tidus didn’t buy it for a minute. “You were helping me the entire time,” he accused. “I don’t have reflexes that fast, but you were feeding my subconscious what you saw and that kept me alive.”
“You did say, ‘we challenge you to a fight to the death’,” Yuna reminded him. “If necessary I would have put up a barrier to block his scimitar.”
“But then he would have stopped ignoring you and finished you off before coming back for me.” Tidus wiped sweat from his brow and tried to control his rampant breathing.
Anaroth was walking slowly towards what was left of Hyrr’bal – and that was not much. He stared at the small puddle for a long time.
Anaroth finally turned and said, apparently awestruck, “A hundred million inhabitants of Spira could not defeat him, and yet you two killed him here with only a sword and mental cooperation.”
“Not just that,” Tidus corrected him. “A brilliant plan in addition to all of that is what beat him in the end.”
“And the First Race will be beat in the end by the very object we’re going to Besaid to recover,” Yuna said. “And we are going to Besaid right now.”
She turned and almost casually walked away. Tidus got up from a kneeling position he did not remember assuming and muttered, “When did I get this lucky?”
Yup. You can see that I was wondering what Spira used for God and had a little debate with myself. I also noticed that the First Race seem to like using scouts and scouting parties. A lot. Oh, and they have acid blood because acid blood is awesome. Anyone remember how you went “OMG” when the facehugger’s blood ate through four decks in the first Alien film? The defense rests.
KK, update time.
They, meaning Auron, Jecht, Braska, Tidus, Yuna, Wakka, Lulu, Kimahri, Rikku, and Anaroth, had made it most of the way through Mushroom Rock Road when the sounds of conflict began behind them again. The First Race was laying siege against the stronghold again, and this time Yuna doubted they would turn around.
Anaroth glanced back worriedly, then shook his head and continued onward. Auron, Braska, and Jecht constantly exchanged glances, as if they had a telepathic bond. Yuna wanted to know what they were communicating to each other, but it was probably nothing.
At the point where the Mushroom Rock Road became the Mi’ihen Highroad, it was sunset and they decided to take a short rest. Yuna wandered off a bit, taking a look at the Oldroad. She was in the ruins of a lookout tower, sitting on a broken pillar, when she felt someone approach.
Yuna rose and turned around just in time to see Tidus, frozen in mid-sneak.
“Uh… hi.”
“What were you trying to do, make me jump out of my skin?”
“Just a friendly hello.”
“You’re a bad liar, you know that?” They sat down on the broken pillar together.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Take it however you want, it’s true.” Yuna draped an arm around Tidus’s shoulders, and he instinctively moved one of his hands supportively to the small of her back. “Thanks for coming after me.”
Tidus raised an eyebrow and responded, “I never liked Psertorpus. The whole pedestal-Yevon-thingy was what he was doing to Lulu?”
Yuna nodded mutely. Tidus went on, not noticing. “It’s funny that he managed to seize control of the Sinspawn with you but not Lulu. Maybe it was distance, or the fact he’d had practice…”
Yuna broke down crying, and Tidus sputtered, “What did I say?”
“It’s not you,” Yuna sniffed. “It’s me. I’ve been asking the same question you just did. Why me instead of her? You’re right, it could be distance or practice but I think it’s because… the ‘iron will’ Kelk told me I have. Ever since this whole thing started, I think I’ve not wanted to do anything about it. When you came back into my life, I just wished the entire world was at peace. That we could get married, have the two or three kids we talked about… that we could lead a normal life. Instead, we’re stuck running from an entire race who are bent on conquering the world. My will to live this life, to do everything for others, is fading. All I really want now is to be with you.”
Tidus looked pained. Yuna sobbed and assured him, “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I’m being selfish.”
“Perhaps you are, Yuna,” Anaroth said quietly, appearing from behind a mainly intact pillar. Tidus jerked, but Yuna was unsurprised. “However, just as I know what selfishness is, I also know there can be a time and a place for it to take hold. You have devoted your life to helping others. The time you became a summoner despite Wakka and Lulu saying no, that was not selfishness. That was sacrifice. All the sacrifices you made more than make up for the selfishness you feel now.” He walked calmly over to her and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I hate boasting of one’s own accomplishments almost as much as I hated Psertorpus, but in the eyes of others I have made many sacrifices. I am, in the eyes of those who know me, worthy of being selfish for once. In my own eyes, I will never make enough sacrifices to warrant being even the tiniest bit self-centered. You regard yourself in much the same way.”
He strode calmly back towards camp, and Yuna lost all pretense of self-control and cried freely. Tidus simply held her, saying nothing, doing his best to comfort her. The sun grew dim and the stars became pinpoints of light in the sky, but Tidus still held Yuna in his arms, wishing he could do more and knowing he could not at the same time. The cold logic of the situation made him want to cry, as well, but he ignored his own discomfort and remained a steadfast pillar of support for Yuna.
In his heart, Tidus knew Yuna wanted no more from him.
The Highroad had been completely deserted. People had fled to Bikanel, to Kilika, to Besaid, to wherever they perceived safe. The threat of the First Race was well known across Spira by now, what with Bevelle fallen and Neltharios killed. Yuna instinctively wanted to hurry, to have it all end so she could simply be with Tidus. But her feet felt as if they were in shoes weighed down with lead. No matter how well or badly she slept, exhaustion hovered over her like some black thundercloud.
Anaroth had told her it was aftereffects from Psertorpus’ successful possession through her, and Lulu assured Yuna that her aftereffects had passed within hours, since Psertorpus had been unsuccessful with her. Yuna’s had lasted several days and were in their late stages.
Tidus stayed by her side, offering a joke here, a comforting word there. Yuna was grateful to him beyond words. Auron, Braska, and Jecht also tried to cheer her up whenever possible. They were less than successful, however, and after a while stopped trying.
Finally they reached the Travel Agency at about midday. It had been abandoned, thoroughly ransacked for anything valuable, ransacked again though less thoroughly, then left alone.
“Well, it doesn’t look like we’ll be renting a room here anytime soon,” Tidus joked halfheartedly. Apparently the joke involved a half-heart too much for Yuna. She just stared wistfully at the Agency and continued down the road.
Tidus sidled up to Wakka about an hour later and muttered into his ear, “I think Yuna’s losing it.”
“She’s just tired, ya? I mean, first Sin and now this when all she wanted in the first place was a vacation. Necromancers, rebel leaders, it’s all a lot to cram in at once.”
“But she’s had a lot longer to do it than I have and she’s still falling apart!” Tidus said.
Auron interrupted and said, “I believe I’ve figured out who possessed Malath.”
“Psertorpus,” Jecht guessed.
Auron nodded. “We all dismissed the possibility at the time because none of us thought that Psertorpus would have a girlfriend. But let’s not forget he’s lived longer than any of us and could have been attractive once.”
“Key word: once,” Yuna said. “He knew none of us would suspect him, so Malath was free to talk about having a girlfriend.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Anaroth admitted. “I did suspect him for a time, at least until I saw the presumed logic in thinking that Psertorpus had never and would never have a girlfriend.”
“Well, I’m glad we know who did it,” Yuna said. “But why?”
“He had Malath try to kill Lulu,” Jecht said. “He couldn’t seize control of the Sinspawn through her, so technically she was of no use. Neltharios was pretty useless in the end there too. Malath was a way to eliminate anyone who wasn’t useful to Psertorpus without placing the necromancer under unnecessary suspicion.”
“How he could conceive of using someone like that… it’s far beyond me,” Yuna said.
“Psertorpus was, in many ways, far beyond any of us,” Anaroth replied.
They reached the outskirts of Luca two days later. And that was basically all that was left: outskirts.
The city itself had been ransacked, pillaged, set on fire, doused, then set on fire again. Stone had been destroyed, partially rebuilt, and destroyed again. The blitzball stadium was the only piece of the city that was intact. Yuna saw that practically the entire city was crammed into the stadium.
"I wonder what did all this and forced them in there,” Yuna mused.
“Remember that fiend charge?” Lulu asked. “I’ll bet there was more than one.”
“No matter how many fiend charges there could have been, there is no way they could have demolished a city as big as Luca,” Tidus said adamantly.
“It wasn’t the fiends,” Auron interrupted.
“Told you so,” Tidus said.
“Look.” Auron was pointing to the very eastern edge of the city. There was a seldom-used trail there, one that didn’t have a guard tower for lack of use. “Remember the Oldroad?” Auron asked. “It used to be an extension of Luca before Sin destroyed everything there. Now it is only used for archaeological research.”
“Are you suggesting that the First Race got to Luca before we did and demolished this city in a record amount of time?” Lulu asked, unconvinced. “And the very fact they would have had to take the Oldroad to do it makes the theory impossible.”
“Lulu, I would have thought you to be one of the first ones to understand that just because there is a dead end in a road does not mean the road does not lead anywhere,” Auron admonished her. “The dead end in the Oldroad halfway through it was formed by ruins that were slowly covered with earth. Surely it took the First Race a while to break through, but they did break through, I can assure you.”
“How could they have done this to Luca so quickly?” Rikku asked, indicating the rampant destruction.
“They haven’t done this to Luca quickly,” Auron said grimly. “They are using it as a forward base of operations to conquer this ‘half’ of Spira, just like they are using Bevelle to conquer the other ‘half’.”
“But they left Bevelle behind!” Yuna protested.
“They will return for it once Spira’s one hope is destroyed,” Auron countered. “They are setting up camp even as we speak and preparing an expedition of, say, a thousand or so of their most elite fighters to destroy the emerald.”
“To beat them to the emerald, then, we’re going to have to sneak through Luca,” Tidus declared. “Just one thing, Auron. What are we supposed to do about all those people trapped in the blitzball stadium?”
“Look at them, Tidus,” Anaroth urged. “They are not moving. The First Race has no need for blitzball. There is only one thing that they will do with it.”
“They will fill it to capacity with the corpses of Luca’s former residents,” Braska said softly. “The entire city is dead and gone. All of Spira will be like this if we fail.” He turned towards the group and said louder, “This place is no longer a city.
“It is a place of evil… and a mass grave.”
Descent into Luca was like descent into the ultimate incarnation of all that was wrong and terrible with the world. Seeing what had been done to the place, Wakka refused to be comforted, thinking all the Aurochs were dead, until Anaroth assured him that if the Aurochs were dead he would know.
The First Race was still pillaging and looting, paying almost no attention to what was going on around them. The few times they’d encountered an enemy that was aware enough to notice them, they literally played dead.
It worked like a charm.
After two days of horror, they made it to what should have been the harbor and hopefully an intact boat they could sail on to Kilika.
But instead they arrived at the road leading to the blitzball stadium.
Everyone was put off by this, so naturally they retraced their steps. About two miles back, they ran into the road leading to the blitzball stadium. So they went back towards where they all knew was the harbor, and they came upon the same road.
Feeling desperate, the group tried to take an alternate, though longer, route to the harbor. It ended on the road to the stadium.
“Maybe if we follow the road to the stadium, we’ll run into the harbor along the way,” Rikku proposed hopefully.
They followed through on the idea and an hour later were standing at the gates of the stadium. The stench of rotting flesh drifted out of the place in waves, threatening to keel everyone over.
“I don’t think your plan worked exactly the way it was supposed to,” Yuna told Rikku.
“Something is calling us in there,” Anaroth said quietly.
“There’s nothing in there but a bunch of rotting carcasses,” Wakka countered sourly. “Let’s go back and see if we can’t find a way out of this hellhole.”
“Do you honestly think we would run into the same road four different times if we were not meant to enter its destination?” Anaroth asked. “Besides, there are many souls in there that must be sent, else the First Race will use them to spawn more servants.”
Quietly entering the stadium, Yuna kept herself from gasping for fear of killing herself. Syrullk patrolled everywhere, poking at bodies that were sprawled, juxtaposed, or otherwise placed in particularly interesting or unique ways. Where the huge ball of water normally floated were several thousand First Race.
From a distance Yuna could see one, bigger than all the others, pacing in front of the ranks and shouting something. She strained her ears to see if she could hear them, and caught faint echoes of a language she did not understand. Anaroth nodded silently, and she could suddenly understand what the congregation was.
“The one called Yuna is the heir of the human who banished us to the realm of non-reality,” the leader was saying. “Our advantage is our numbers, our determination, and the fact the human slime refuses to admit she knows it is her destiny. Instead, she wants to be with that male of hers.”
Yuna felt Tidus’s hand on her shoulder, both comforting and restraining her at the same time.
“We must go to the island of Besaid and destroy the one thing that can spell our doom. An emerald, shaped as a leaf. We must find and eliminate this one object, then the world is unarguably ours.” Cheers arose from the First Race gathered there. “You have been chosen because you are the elite, the best fighters in our race,” the leader continued. “You will prevail over the human slime, and when you do-”
He had no more time to say anything because Auron had located the controls by the stadium’s entrance and directed the pool’s giant mechanism to hit the First Race gathering with, if were gathered onto a giant scale and measured, two hundred thousand tons of water.
They dissolved under the onslaught.
Anaroth stepped forward to perform the sending for all the trapped souls. Yuna stepped forward with him and said, “Let me do this with you.”
Anaroth shook his head adamantly and replied, “You cannot imagine the pain that you will be bombarded with. The agony, the suffering…”
“That is why I want to do this with you,” Yuna insisted. “So that I can be reminded why I wage this war against an entire race.”
Anaroth slowly nodded in mute acceptance, then raised his head to the sky. Yuna did as well.
Together they recited what later came to be known as the Code of Senders. “Tra’liv-ad dur huntiis fertuquox, yuhiilii ponervexice. Oir dramados yr falleu drimno.”
The dome erupted in all perceivable colors, pyreflies flying to and fro. Anaroth provided the sheer power behind the sending, while Yuna provided the fine control to make sure none of her friends were accidentally sent as well.
Anaroth stood tall, but Yuna sank to her knees and clawed at the ground with the waves of sorrow and agony that pounded into her. She collapsed onto her side, but the cycle continued and she could not stop it.
Tidus was suddenly at her side, gently lifting her up off the bloodstained ground. She held onto him, trying to comprehend everything was being shown to her.
Abruptly, it was all over and Yuna collapsed, limp, in Tidus’s arms. Tidus stared at Anaroth, who assured him, “She will be all right. Yuna will only be unconscious for a few minutes at most. Forty-five seconds at the very least.”
“In case anyone didn’t notice,” Rikku said, “but that little display you two put on is going to wake up every First Race in town!”
“First Race fashion souls to do their bidding,” Kimahri said. “First Race afraid of so many souls. They hide. They stay in shelter. We must go while they are still afraid.”
Tidus nodded, then turned and walked back to the way they’d came as Yuna began to stir. The blitzball stadium was left behind. Like many other things in his life.
Thirty seconds later they were on their way out of the city and Yuna had woken up. Tidus, after careful consideration, posed a question to Anaroth.
“Why didn’t you send the souls of the First Race?” he asked.
“Immortal beings do not have souls in that sense,” Anaroth replied. “They are self-aware, but since they are created immortal they have no need for a soul. It’s very difficult to explain. Suffice to say that they view souls as resources to be harvested and used.”
“I see.” The harbor was drawing near, and Tidus posed another question. “What if there are no ships left intact?”
“Then we build a new one,” Auron replied steadily.
“Out of what?”
“Whatever is left of the other boats.”
They arrived at the harbor to see decommission work in progress. A group of First Race was picking through an Al Bhed cruiser for anything they considered valuable. One of them was trying to hack off the engine exhaust vent with his scimitar.
A minute later Auron tossed the last of their dead bodies into the sea. Rikku gave everyone tasks to be accomplished in the repairing of the vessel. It took three hours, but in the end they were seaworthy.
Not to mention dead meat if they didn’t start running.
About five hundred First Race were charging down the docks in pursuit of the cruiser. “Rikku!” Tidus yelled. “What’s the max speed on this thing?”
“Hundred and seventy, two hundred miles per hour,” was the reply.
“What’s the acceleration?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Tidus quickly drew Caladbolg and intercepted the chirrum dagger that had been thrust towards his throat by the first enemy that jumped aboard. Tidus rotated on the balls of his feet to his enemy’s right and gave him a punch to the gut, expecting the First Race to double over in pain. Instead, Tidus yelped as his fist hit what felt like stone. His enemy scowled, then smacked Tidus over the head hard enough to make him stumble back. It was just drawing its scimitar when Tidus managed to cut it in two.
“More of them!” It was Auron. He was deftly using his longer reach to cut down enemies before they got to him, though the Masamune was nearly useless in blocking. What few attacks did get in he took on the large steel bracer he wore beneath the glove on his left hand. How he managed to avoid the glove being slashed to pieces Tidus didn’t know.
“Rikku, see if you can’t get any more acceleration out of this bucket!” Tidus yelled, then sprinted to Auron’s aid. He began his attack with a wide forward sweep of the blade to clear a space for him. Tidus followed through with a downward strike that connected beautifully with an enemy’s head, then twirled to gain power for his next strike, a horizontal slash that bisected two of them.
Tidus jumped, pulling his legs up, as an enemy attack whistled through the air where his ankles would have been. He twisted in midair while bringing Caladbolg around to slash at the First Race who’d attacked him. It proved fairly quick, ducking beneath the blade. As Tidus landed he lashed out with his right foot in a high kick that caught his assailant just below the jaw. It didn’t do much damage, but the First Race stumbled backwards, opening up his guard for a split second. Tidus impaled him on Caladbolg, then pulled his sword out of the dying enemy.
His feet were pulled out from under him, and Tidus lashed out backhanded with Caladbolg. The distinctive sound of a skull splintering immediately followed, not to mention a spray of blood. Tidus rolled to avoid the acidic shower while slashing upward, taking out two more First Race.
Tidus noticed about the last four hundred and eight of their pursuers were stuck on the docks. Rikku smirked in triumph and crowed, “I managed to get almost two hundred percent more acceleration out of the engines! Wait until Dad hears about this!”
“Next stop, Kilika,” Yuna said.
Not halfway to Kilika, Tidus had felt something wrong about the ocean they were traveling over, something malevolent and horrible. It was nightfall by the time Kilika was in sight, but the water continued to feel wrong, somehow.
When they got to Kilika, Tidus could see why. The town had been built on the water, suspended by stilts. The sun rose and Yuna fought to keep from vomiting at the sight.
The bodies of every man, woman, and child that had lived in Kilika were still slightly bleeding from a hundred different wounds. Their blood turned the water a deep crimson.
“Oh my God,” Yuna whispered. “What could have done this?”
“Not the First Race,” Anaroth replied. “Something else.”
“Whatever did this, I’ll bet it’s also scrambling my navigational compass, too,” Rikku added. “I think it wants us to stay for a meal. Or two. Or ten.”
“So we’ve got to find and kill whatever’s driving the compass crazy?” Tidus groaned. “With the First Race coming after us and Besaid only a day away in this boat?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Wakka said.
“Look who’s coming to dinner,” Tidus sighed.
Coming towards the end of ToS, here. Thanks for reading thus far.
Can’t wait for the last bit. 
Do you have any other writing projects, fanfic or otherwise?
I’m working on an original story about a character of mine… it’d be too complicated to explain, sinceyou really do have to read it, and it’s not finished (won’t be for a while).
Another update rolls around omg!
As they went throughout the town, looking for whatever could have caused the wholesale slaughter, Yuna felt foreboding crush down on her increasingly. It became more palpable the closer she got to the jungle, and less palpable the farther away she got. Which, of course, convinced her that whatever they were looking for, it would be in the forest.
“I didn’t like this place when we first visited,” Tidus said. “Now look at this. Shameful, I tell you. The fog’s so thick you can barely see two feet ahead of you.”
“Not to mention the fog’s crimson,” Lulu said with a barely-concealed shudder.
“So much for protecting the environment,” Tidus complained.
“All of you, quiet down for a minute. I think I hear something.” Yuna stared out at the crimson mist, then saw a man appear.
He spoke in a strange tongue, and Anaroth sucked his breath in. “He’s a mimic!”
“That’s impossible!” Tidus argued. “Mimics are only found in the Omega Ruins, and though they take on the forms of the most fearsome enemies their assailants fought in the past, they only vaguely resemble them because they are constructs of pure energy! The only thing they really resemble is a treasure chest!”
“This one is different,” Anaroth said. “He was the first of the mimics. And with the First Race coming, he’s wanted to prove his superiority over men so they won’t destroy him.”
“He’s going to have a hard time proving his superiority to me,” Tidus growled.
The mimic shrugged, then his form melted and congealed into a huge, four-armed Wendigo.
It charged, all of its fists seeking different targets. Tidus neatly cut the hand off the arm going for him, and the mimic howled in pain. Auron cut through its base, and the wendigo toppled to the ground, decapitated.
“That was easy,” Tidus said.
Then the three separate pieces of the wendigo melted, ran together, and became a huge Marlboro.
It spat multiple gouts of stomach acid at them, and luckily all the gouts missed, burning holes in the ground. Tidus sank Caladbolg deep into the mimic’s side, but the Marlboro convulsed wildly and Tidus was forced to pull his sword out or lose his hold on it.
“Oh, no,” Tidus muttered as the Marlboro turned on him, its six-foot maw opening menacingly – and then it vomited at him.
Tidus somersaulted backwards from the mess that gushed out of its mouth. The sheer stink of the stuff was enough to burn half the hole in the ground that came about. The pure acidic quality of the stuff burned two and a half more holes like it just for good measure.
Then Jecht came around from behind it and stuck his sword into the Marlboro’s throat. It gagged and black, steaming blood gushed out of its mouth. Jecht pulled back before any could get on him. The Marlboro melted, and Tidus complained, “How do we beat this thing?”
“That’s the trouble – I don’t think there is a way,” Anaroth admitted.
“I have an idea!” Yuna announced. “Follow me!” She ran in the direction of the Kilika Temple. Everyone followed her just as the mimic ceased being a blob and became a cross between an army knife and a cheetah. It had taken on the form of a Skyk, a creature with a lean, reptilian body, small, red eyes, and giant, double-edged blades for legs. It galloped after the fleeing humans, the scent of its prey sweet in its oversized nostrils.
Yuna led everyone inside to the Cloister of Trials. The Trials had been used for the last time long ago. Unwilling to destroy it, the monks of Kilika had reset the mechanism, then left it alone with the temple itself to be reclaimed by the jungle.
Yuna slammed open the double doors to it and ran inside.
Yuna grabbed a Kilika Sphere, a glass elemental orb with a tiny flame inside of it, off the pedestal it was set on and used it to burn down the door blocking the way deeper into the Trials. The Mimic was about to leap into the Trials when Kimahri slammed the entrance door shut. Yuna pulled a Glyph Sphere, a glass orb with a neutral element, off a pedestal, used the Kilika Sphere to create a glyph above a third pedestal, then set the Glyph Sphere into it, revealing another entryway. Yuna stepped into the next chamber. It was blazing with a magically created fire, one that could only be doused with the glyph sphere.
Yuna did not intend to douse it.
“Now!” she shouted, and Kimahri purposely opened the door. The Mimic was halfway through a leap at the door. It screeched as it hit the floor two meters away from the magic fire. It braced against the smooth stone with its blades, but they simply created sparks. With another screech, the Mimic fell into the fire.
“I don’t think it’s going to stay dead,” Tidus reasoned. Even as he said it something in the fire wailed and hissed menacingly, and a shadow took form. Yuna didn’t want to see what the Mimic would assume next.
Then an idea occurred to her. “Quick! The Destruction Sphere!”
Destructions Spheres were glass orbs that held the same neutral element that drove the Ultima spell. They were used to blow up certain walls in the Trials and reveal hidden treasures that had allowed Yuna to acquire the Aeon, Anima, at the Baaj Temple. The treasures were always something different and uniquely suited to the summoner facing the Trials.
Tidus pulled out the Kilika Sphere that was in one of the pedestals feeding the magical fire. The fire shrank, and Yuna noted it shrank a bit too much.
Then the temple literally exploded.
Yuna picked herself up from the rubble a moment later. Tidus tossed the Glyph Sphere he was holding over his shoulder, then picked out the Destruction Sphere from the wreckage.
“The next time you see the Mimic, chuck that thing at him,” Yuna said.
Then they saw the Mimic. It had become the one rival with Omega for being the top of the food chain in the Omega Ruins.
The Balrog.
Born of the same fire as the Aeon, Ifrit, the Balrog was considered Ifrit’s cursed brother. The Balrog also happened to be bigger than the enormous temple. It was cloaked in flame, shifting patterns of fire that never ceased. A huge plume of jet-black smoke followed the creature like a cape. Its head was that of a feline’s, with the exception of an elongated snout ending in a triple-nostriled nose. Its mouth was a furnace, fire constantly shooting from it. Pure black fangs were barely visible through the inferno. The slitted eyes were wreathed in a redder flame than the rest of its body, and the pupils were huge and staring. Its ears flared out from the sides of its head, twitching constantly. Two huge horns sprouted from where its eyebrows would be, curving back over its head and ending just short of the back of its neck. The torso was that of an especially barrel-chested Ronso, minus all the fur and a generally better attitude. The hands were three-fingered counting not counting the two thumbs it sported. All of them ended in fiery talons. Instead of two legs, the Balrog had four of them, sprouting at parallel areas from the waist. All of the two-toed feet pointed outwards from the body, and it moved much like the syrullk did. In one hand it held a flaming book, containing the Code of Fire. It was said that anyone who wrenched this book from the Balrog’s demon grasp and read it would be granted mastery over all creatures in the world whose natural element was fire. The Balrog could use the book as a blunt weapon, but many times it flipped through its pages at lightning speed, finding one of its many horrid spells to cast. The way it did this was through its unusual powers of telekinesis. No fiend in Spira but the Balrog possessed telekinesis, nor could many mages compare to the Balrog in terms of both fine control and sheer power. In the other hand it grasped the Blade of Fire, a weapon of pure energy that took many forms. At times it appeared as a sword, other times an axe, a mace, and rarest of all a long whip. Many people had posed the theory that the different states of the Blade represented the different moods of the Balrog. The sword meant the Balrog was quick, thinking on its feet, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. The axe showed the Balrog was mad beyond all reason and would destroy everything in sight if provoked. The whip, rarest of all, meant that the Balrog had encountered challenging prey and that it would enjoy playing with it before killing it.
The Blade of Fire happened to be in whip mode. The crimson fog retreated instantly from five hundred feet around the Balrog in every direction. Yuna winced at the searing heat the creature emanated.
After Omega had defeated the Balrog in single combat, he had banished him to the core of the world. The Balrog remained there, chained and helpless. At least he wouldn’t be feeling any drafts down there.
This Balrog, however, as far as Yuna was able to determine, was free and was pretty pissed at the ten of them.
“How are supposed to fight that thing?” Tidus screamed over the sound of the Balrog’s very presence.
“We force the Destruction Sphere down its throat, it dies,” Yuna screamed back.
“How are we supposed to get this sphere through that?” Tidus motioned at the inferno that constantly spewed out between the Balrog’s lips even when they were tightly pressed together. The Mimic, of course, had his mouth wide open.
Lulu channeled all her energy into an explosion of ice inside the Balrog’s mouth. The small glacier appeared out of nowhere, absorbing all the heat inside the Balrog’s mouth – for about a second. Then it was consumed in the flames.
In response to the ice inside its mouth, the Balrog blinked.
It drew back its whip, then struck at Tidus. He rolled to the side as the whip slammed into the ground that he’d just vacated, leaving a searing fissure that Yuna swore reached down into the planet’s mantle. The whip struck three more times, but Tidus always managed to dodge.
The Balrog, its nostrils scenting the air, probably for a lack of its prey’s fear, howled. The sound shook the island to its foundations, and the gout of flame it produced was at least two hundred feet in length and maybe half that wide. Then the book, almost as if by its own accord, opened and flipped to what Yuna guessed was a page somewhere in the three thousands area.
That was bad. If Yuna remembered her classes in school on ancient legends correctly, the three thousands area of the flaming book – it had yet to be given a name like the Blade – contained spells along the lines of massive area-effect detonations.
The Balrog spoke in a language Yuna didn’t understand, but Anaroth nearly fell over in his fright.
“GET AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO THE BALROG!” he shouted. “DO AS I SAY!”
Yuna stared at him as if he were insane, but followed his orders. A moment later the Balrog finished the chant and every drop of the crimson mist shrouding the jungle turned into pure fire. The entire jungle lit up, then burned to the ground within seconds of the spell being cast.
The Balrog screamed in what Yuna took to be delight. The flame was three hundred feet long, now. The visible part was, at least; it cut deep enough into the earth to bring hot lava sizzling up, indicated the flame had hit bedrock with devastating results.
The Balrog slammed a foot into the huge pool of lava, sending steaming gobs of it flying everywhere. It turned and roared again, sweeping the flame across the temple ruins. The ruins themselves offered little protection from the heat.
“TIDUS! TOSS ME THE SPHERE!” Yuna screamed. Tidus barely heard her, but he tossed her the sphere. The Balrog turned its head towards her and sniffed at the small object that had been thrown, then reared back on its hind legs and opened its mouth to scream again.
Just before the fire came blasting out, Yuna sent the Destruction Sphere whistling in.
“GET DOWN!”
The Balrog exploded in an incandescent rain of fire, a searing wave of heat that rippled outward in a shockwave, tearing up the ruins and bringing into form three full-sized but briefly lived tornados.
Then, an instant later, it was all over.
Kilika was nothing but a burned husk. There was no sign of it ever being inhabited except for the few ruins of the temple that survived the shockwave.
Everyone simultaneously took off for the nearest water.
Three hours later Yuna sank down onto the deck of the Al Bhed cruiser, her back against the ship’s side. Tidus sat down with her and sighed softly as the cold, metal skin of the cruiser cooled him down even more.
“That was fun,” he murmured.
“If our luck is any good, we’ll have less fun on Besaid,” Yuna said.
“Things sure have been skewed lately. If our luck is good, we have less fun. If we have fun, our luck is bad and the world is doomed.”
After a while, Yuna asked, “Tidus… if we get through this, and have the two or three kids-”
“Seven.”
“Forget that. If we have two or three kids, what are we going to name them?”
“First daughter, we’ll name Ariana,” Tidus declared.
“Why that name?” Yuna asked.
Tidus smiled mischievously and replied, “It was the name of my first girlfriend.”
Yuna playfully smacked him on the arm. “Very funny. How many did you have?”
“Six or seven that I really considered, a million more I’d never met .” Yuna giggled at that, and Tidus turned the tables on her. “So, how many boyfriends did you have?”
“None before you, and you’re more than just a boyfriend.”
That certainly surprised Tidus. He quickly and unsuccessfully blanked his expression and said, “Besaid too small?”
“I tend to think of a boyfriend as someone who I really like, in addition to his liking me. One-way things really don’t work out.”
Tidus heard an exchange between Braska and Jecht that interested him. He got up, and Yuna, puzzled, got up with him.
“Welcome to the small, cozy island of Besaid,” Jecht announced with a grand wave of his arms. “Water and blitzball chumps a speciality.”
Jecht had the water part right. The so-called ‘blitzball chumps’ were nowhere to be seen as they landed. Fog covered the island, white enough to reflect light from the moon and provide dazzling, if short-ranged, illumination. It was about midnight when they finally sealed up the boat and stepped onto the island again.
Yuna suppressed a shudder. She almost felt like denying this was Besaid at all. The buildings by the beach she remembered were gone, leaving only a few moist, rotting planks.
They traveled towards the village, and Yuna felt apprehension trying to mislead her every step she took. Perhaps one of the most unnerving changes was the old, rickety, wooden bridges over Besaid Falls had been replaced with long, glistening, steel ones. They lacked any ornamentation at all except the glistening drops of water the falls left. There were no handrails present, either.
The group finally reached the village… and it was nothing like Yuna remembered.
All the small, hunched huts had been burned to the ground and replaced with larger, steel ones. The temple appeared to have had steel armor welded to every point of it, and there were multiple cannons peering out through hastily made holes in the structure.
Yuna gasped. Tidus gave her hand a squeeze, then slowly walked forward.
Twelve cannons spoke from inside the temple, shooting white-hot shells at Tidus. He rolled out of the way and yelled, “Hey! Watch it!”
Yuna faintly heard someone inside the temple yell, “Cease fire!”
A minute later they were all inside, and what a crowd it was. There were at least a thousand people packed in, all told, and the temple could only hold so many because most of them had completely disassembled the Cloister of Trials and explosively created an underground cavern in its place.
“What’s going on here?” Yuna asked a stiff-looking monk.
“Some sort of unknown race has been sweeping across Spira, killing everything in sight,” he said hastily. “As far as we know, we’re all that’s left. Those guys over there volunteered to man the cannons for us.” He pointed to the Aurochs.
“GUYS!” Wakka ran over and immediately was deep in conversation with them, punctuated by the occasional high-five or backslap.
“Excuse me…” Tidus said, “We’re looking for, um, an emerald in the shape of a leaf. It’s crucial to defeating the invaders. Have you seen anything like it?”
“No, I haven’t,” the guard replied. “But the entire population of Besaid is here, plus a bunch of other survivors. Asking them en masse would be your best bet.”
Five minutes later Yuna had alternately pushed, pulled, shoved, crawled, and slipped through the crowd until she reached a large rock spire. Climbing atop it, she yelled, “EXCUSE ME! YOUR ATTENTION FOR ONE MOMENT, PLEASE!”
Every eye was suddenly fixed on her, and people could be whispering, “It’s Yuna! She’s come back!”
“I’m looking for an emerald in the shape of a leaf,” Yuna told them. “It’s crucial to defeating those who are invading Spira. Does anyone have it?”
“I might!” someone from the audience yelled. It was a man, about forty years old. “It was given to me about the time you left on your pilgrimage!”
Yuna recognized both the man’s voice and his face; it was a friend of hers who had run a tailor shop. “Can I see it?” she asked.
“Of course!” He held the emerald aloft. It sparkled with an inner fire.
“That’s it!” Yuna said excitedly. “Now, just give it to me and our problems will be-”
She was cut off as the man screamed and crumpled to the ground. The emerald was snatched out of thin air by what seemed to be a shadow. In the space of an eyeblink, her friend was dead and the emerald stolen.
“Solved,” Yuna whispered softly.
An hour later Tidus and Yuna were outside the temple, getting a breath of fresh air and trying to figure out what to do.
“This is totally unfair!” Tidus complained. “We have the emerald in our grasp, and now it gets stolen! What else can go wrong?”
“Don’t ask that or something else will,” Yuna said. “I’m trying to figure out how to lure the thief into the open.”
Suddenly Tidus perked up and said, “I have an idea…”
“Is everyone ready?” Tidus whispered. Auron, Jecht, Braska, Kimahri, Rikku, Wakka, Lulu, and Anaroth nodded, almost completely concealed in the shadows of a steel building.
Tidus casually turned on his heel, and then walked over to Yuna where she was sitting at the foot of a building on the opposite side of a street. She was absentmindedly twirling a small cloth bag by the closing string.
“I sure am glad that you decided you wanted to keep the emerald and gave that guy a fake one,” Tidus said loudly.
“I still feel bad about it,” Yuna replied with a wink, “but at least the thief doesn’t have a clue he has a fake emerald.”
“I beg to differ.”
The voice was cold, cruel, and sliced through the air like a razor.
“NOW!” Tidus shouted. All eight of their cohorts jumped out of the shadows, brandishing their weapons. They collectively gasped as their weapons were ripped out of their hands and then they were pinned against the building by an invisible force.
Tidus had Caladbolg out and slashed at the intruding shadow in the middle of the street. The shadow blurred and re-appeared to Tidus’s right. It wrenched the Caladbolg out of his grasp with telekinesis, then slammed him to the ground. Yuna was on her feet, staff in hand, when it was yanked away and she was picked up and hurled against the building she’d been sitting by. The shadow calmly floated the cloth bag over to it, then opened it.
The glass beads they’d hastily put in the bag poured out, and the shadow unexpectedly laughed. “This is the most sorrily executed trap I’ve ever been ‘caught’ in,” it sneered.
Tidus spat out dirt and said, “Do I know you?”
The shadow coalesced into a solid shape that made Tidus’s jaw drop.
It was Psertorpus.
“Hello again. Do you recognize me now?”
“You’re dead,” Auron spat as he strained against the telekinesis that was pinning him to the building.
“YOU IDIOTS!” Psertorpus laughed. “You actually thought Anaroth channeling all his sorrow and negative feelings into me would overload me? I am more powerful than anything in the world, and I have Yuna and her brilliant plan to thank for it!”
Tidus and Yuna began to charge him, weapons or no.
“Fools,” he hissed. “The power of the necromancer was limited to the body. I am no longer just a necromancer.” His smile froze the blood in Tidus’s veins. “I am the one spoke of in legend. I am a hyrr’yighl.”
“A Tormentor of the Mind,” Anaroth said, shocked.
Tidus and Yuna suddenly collapsed to their knees, tormented by images nobody else could see.
Tidus pushed aside the ringing in his ears and the pain in his skull. He looked up, located Psertorpus, and started to charge.
Then he heard a shriek to his right. Tidus turned and saw Yuna collapse onto her stomach. She didn’t move or breathe.
Tidus turned her over onto her back.
Her blue and green gaze, once so full of fire, was completely devoid of life.
Tidus felt herself backing away, stiff-legged. He was overwhelmed by horror at the undeniable truth.
“You idiot!” Yuna’s voice assaulted him from nowhere. “You weren’t in time to save me! Now the entire world is doomed and it is all your fault.”
Tidus collapsed onto his back and tried to deny it, but her voice doggedly repeated. “All your fault. All your fault! ALL YOUR FAULT!”
“STOP IT!” Tidus writhed in agony, unable to banish the voice from his head.
Yuna grabbed at the building behind her, trying to regain her sense of balance that had suddenly been taken away. The world spun wildly, until Tidus suddenly grabbed her hand.
Yuna turned to thank him when she saw the wicked grin spreading over his face. In his free hand he held the emerald.
“What are you doing?” Yuna asked belatedly.
Tidus shrugged, then crushed the emerald in his hand.
“NO!” Yuna screamed. Tidus barked a short laugh and then let the glittering pieces of the emerald fall to the ground. His blood stained them, and they made a thunderous crash as they fell into the dirt.
Yuna closed her eyes and cried as the earth began to be split asunder.
“What are you doing to them?” Jecht roared at Psertorpus.
“I’m merely magnifying their greatest fears and planting them as concrete images in their minds,” Psertorpus sneered. “Not that there is anything you can do about it.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the emerald. It glittered faintly in the fog. “Once I discover how to tap this emerald’s enormous potential, I will be truly invincible.”
Jecht strained even harder against the telekinetic grip. “You bastard! I’ll-”
“You’ll what?” Psertorpus asked, his voice colder than ice at absolute zero.
“I don’t know what he’s gonna do, but I’m telling you to go to hell!”
Every head turned in the direction of the new voice.
Cid.
“FIRE!” he shouted, and the airship that had silently drifted above Besaid let loose a full missile salvo at Psertorpus.
He screamed as the explosion tore him apart.
Tidus and Yuna abruptly stopped writhing on the ground, saw each other, and embraced. Jecht grunted in indignation as everyone was dropped to the ground from the building face-first.
Rikku spat out more dirt and sputtered, “Dad! The emerald-”
“Is right here,” Yuna said, holding the jewel aloft.
Psertorpus gathered himself up from where he’d fallen, then advanced on Yuna. “GIVE ME THAT EMERALD, YOU LITTLE BRAT!” he screamed. The howl rattled buildings for blocks around.
“Come and take it,” Yuna snapped, then channeled all her magical strength towards Psertorpus through the emerald.
A bright green light illuminated the entire island for a second.
When it died down, Psertorpus was gone for good.
“So, why didn’t it wipe out the First Race the instant Yuna used it?”
Tidus had on his most skeptical expression. He stared at the emerald lying on the table inside the temple. Yuna could almost see the gears working inside his head, trying to figure out why their enemy wasn’t gone.
They knew the First Race wasn’t gone because a scout party had attacked the island only ten minutes before.
“Because the emerald holds a sentience of its own,” Anaroth replied. “It holds the spirit of the first One, Del Thaxos. It knew what had to be done in order for the First Race to be destroyed.
“The First Race is spread over all of Spira. It is like a sea. And still more are emerging from the portal. The portal is the key to destroying them, because if the emerald were to be used in Spira alone the First Race still in non-reality would not be expunged.”
“Then we’d just wait for the ones still in non-reality to come out,” Wakka objected.
“They would not come out for many years, not until Yuna dies and there is nobody to oppose them,” Anaroth said sadly. “We must take the emerald to the gateway and use it there.”
“Oh, GREAT!” Wakka complained. “You expect us to go all the way back to Zanarkand when the world’s about to be destroyed?”
“Excuse me,” Cid interrupted, “but I brought my airship. We’re more than willing to ferry you there.”
“What about Rin?” Tidus asked.
“Rin’s captain, now. I don’t have much use for the old bucket o’ bolts any more. At least, not until those weird things from Zanarkand started swarming the place. Bikanel Island’s safe for now, but once Besaid’s overrun it’ll only be a matter of time.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Yuna asked. “Let’s go to Zanarkand one last time.”
Coming up next… the last update of ToS! Stay tuned.
And as for the whole Balrog thing, I use it in Dawn of New Light. :enguard: