Two days trek from Bevelle to Guadosalam.
One day in the city, causing chaos, more than she intended.
Two days through the Thunder Plains, before destroying the towers.
Two more, the power keeping the lightning and fiends at both command and bay, however, the separation between holder and held was diminishing.
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Jyscal sat in a chair, watching Id. Id stood, watching Jyscal. Id was the one who insisted on ‘keeping an eye’ on Jyscal, but frankly, he was bored and waiting for him to come up with an idea he could say was useless and then find a ‘better’ way to do it.
If they were any less mature, they’d have insulted each other’s mothers and stuck their tongues out.
Before things got to that point, or one of them snapping from boredom and anger, there was yelling outside and they both deemed themselves the one to run out and see what had gone wrong this time.
After a race out the door with a bit of shoving, Id managed to slow himself to a confused walk, nearly tripping on his own feet before stopping. Jyscal, however, ground to a halt, nearly losing his balance, but he caught himself—a stupid attempt, considering he fainted shortly afterwards.
The farplane edge warped and bent and wobbled, like the edge of a bubble too big to hold it’s shape. It flexed and moved and spouted pyrflies in spurts and cascades and tiny erratic bursts.
The pyreflies increased in number and the bursts came faster, the farplane wavered more violently, as if in convulsions. The movement reached its crescendo and all was replaced by a bright lash of iridescent light.
The light died away, faster than it began, leaving behind someone standing on the cold, soft, moss-covered path that was neither branch nor root, but made of living tree.
The silver-haired woman, wearing naught but ribbons, most flowing at strange angles and some decorated with writing, looked about and then walked off, knowing it was safer in another direction—at least temporarily.
Those who could manage their vocal cords began swearing and stuttering. Id wasn’t among them.
Jyscal hit the ground at that point.
All of this, from the vantagepoint of the commsphere, aimed at the doors and not the farplane, just made the event even more confusing to those on the airship.
……………………………………………………………………………
One week.
They had lost one week getting to Macalania. No one voiced it, but it was obvious the party was beginning to doubt they’d catch up. This time Sin had an appointment. Even Tidus didn’t think there was any point now.
Still, either in stupidity or in desperate hope, they trudged on, out of the land of rampant electricity and into disappointment.
The Macalania trees were withering from the inside-out. All the glow, all the sparkles, everything surreal and mystical and preternatural was gone, leaving a dry, bony husk.
Gone were the glowing paths to walk on. Gone were the glowing orbs.
The springs had run dry and muddy and stagnant, now breeding flying parasites in the wake of their former majesty.
What had not left were the fiends. The creatures had fallen to the ground, knowing a painful death of their very life sucked from them.
They’d risen again, bone held together by nothing. Eye sockets empty as their flesh-less skeletons and some with pieces missing.
Sin had been here.
Not just it’s power, but Sin itself. It had found a way out of its prison, at least for a short while.
With the forest crumbling and the path marred by death and dust, the four easily became lost.
Two more days of struggling past going in circles around undead, and only then did they reach the path where it forked, two dead ends, and one way to Bevelle and out of the cursed woods.
They also found Jyrrin, standing in the middle of it.
Her head tilted to one side. There were bruises on the sides of her neck. Her eyes were shriveled and covered in pus, giving the image that they’d been turned inside-out.
Her skin was pale, paler than it had been at the Thunder Plains. Only now was it so noticeable, it had shrunk over her bones and organs and taken on a blue tint. Even now humans could smell the thing, for the body was beginning to rot. She didn’t blink.
Something was wrong. This was not the effect of an unsent.
"You again?" she asked. Now even Yuna could tell that was not her voice. Something was speaking, and it wasn’t from the throat, nor did the lips move.
The body shift and the head rocked to the other side. Then it grinned, pulling atrophied muscles connected to withering lips. "You’re not very bright, now are you?"
None of the four said anything. Tidus waited for one of the girls to explain. They had barely explained anything. Sin was back. Paine was an ally. That was all the could afford in conversation, having to put all effort into staying alive and headed in the right direction.
The thing shook its head, making it tip back and forth, side to side. "All that work… everything for naught. Strange. So strange…" Now it seemed lost, as if touched by its own toxin. "Strange. This feeling… this…thing… I can touch her mind. I know what it is to feel. To think, no longer to be a mindless entity, drawn towards something, acting upon whatever fears they hold, not knowing. I like this… knowing. This mind… I understand why you mortals hold it so precious…understand…I could not have done that without it, could I?"
"Anyone else more confused than before?" Tidus asked.
"So enticing… this mind… to understand the powers of bringing about the deepest fears… it sparks something within me…it amuses me. This body, though…it burns. Even dead, this guado blood burns. Blood is blood, it flows, it amuses me, but this blood… it is too dangerous. Strange that she…the martyr…should not believe so, while the monster feels all is same. You see…she conceived a half-breed purely for the purpose to die. That is what they are for to her… odd that they should all choose death…their own…other’s…each and everyone of them…then blame what others they find. I have less time than the other one…he’s not dead, you know? Don’t you? He would have died had he been true-born. As I would have…in her hate for the bloods she let me live. I inhabit this rotting shell and I am the only one after life. Not even you… not even you care," it said, pointing accusingly to Yuna.
Now she was on the spot. Now she had to speak up.
"I don’t want anyone to die!" Yuna retorted.
"Truly?" the thing asked. "He doubted you. You claimed to take him back and look who you’ve held in your arms so suddenly. No. No it is not contempt you hold, but a lie. A lie you’ve held for too long…hurting people…Anzi.." it said, slipping back into Jyrrin. Though her organs were turning to liquid and gas, though her vocal cords had been severed and crushed when someone had strangled her, it was still her voice, dainty and delicate like the voice of the tiniest of bells. "You can’t kill me, I’m already dead," she spoke, taking her hands from her sides and revealing a large kitchen knife.
The four each stepped away, failing to hear a distant rumbling in their fear.
Instead of threatening or attempting to deal them harm, Jyrrin lifted the knife to her own throat and proceeded to slice across it.
"See?" she asked, launching the knife to the side and into a dead tree.
Everyone’s eyes followed its flight, not believing the aim wasn’t meant for them. They were wrong.
A hand, alive and pink and long-fingered, curled over the blade as the owner stepped from behind a tree.
"Anzi!" Rikku shouted.
"What’s she doing?" Paine asked. "Why didn’t she run?"
"Yuna…" Anzi spoke. "Please…"
"I’m right here," Yuna said, stepping forward. My friends are right here. No one’s going to let you get hurt. I promise. We’ll take you back."
Anzi’s lips parted again, but she did not speak.
"Here, take my hand," Yuna said, reaching out and taking another step.
"Yuna… don’t do this," Anzi said, gripping the knife harder.
"Do what?" she asked, dropping her arm.
Anzi waited for Yuna to understand.
Yuna waited for Anzi to speak again.
Paine heard the rumbling.
Rikku noticed Jyrrin turn towards it and then she noticed it too.
"Sounds like running water," Rikku said.
"Lots of it," Paine said. "Yuna, we have to get out of here! Now!"
"She’s right! Come on!" Tidus yelled.
Jyrrin smiled. The thing within her was genuinely amused.
Yuna never saw it.
Anzi didn’t flinch.
The others forgot the oncoming flash flood as they watched the knife shoot through Yuna’s chest, Anzi’s hand clinging to it.
She drew back and Yuna fell to the ground. Tidus rushed to her, holding her uselessly, for he knew no spells nor treatments for the wound.
"Anzi, follow me. I’ll keep you safe. I won’t let you be harmed. I’ll never lie to you…follow me soon," Jyrrin said, and turned to walk down the path to Bevelle.
Anzi turned to leave with Jyrrin, but Paine interrupted her.
"Why?"
Anzi turned to the warrior. "Because she made me choose. Between her and Seymour I choose him. I was made to choose between Jyscal and Seymour and Jyscal lost. Yuna lost. The next person who tries to make me choose between those I love…" she said, tears falling from her face as she lifted the knife to her throat in her shaking hands. "The next time…"
She turned and fled, her sobs drowned out by the water.
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The forest had faded. She was standing in flowers that held no fragrance and blew in a wind that she couldn’t feel.
This was the end then, wasn’t it? No chance for good-byes, no stopping Sin. No friends. They were all alive, and she… she was on the farplane.
"You’re not here to stay," she heard behind her.
She turned around. There was no one.
"We aren’t either. There are fewer of us. There will be even fewer tomorrow."
"You can’t stop it?" Yuna asked.
"We have little power in the world of the living. Less when we’re in it. We know only of one weapon…"
"What’s that?" Yuna asked after a minute of silence. More minutes answered her before a new voice spoke up.
"We need you to protect him…" the new voice spoke. It was a woman, soft and gentle, but there was a strength to it. The tone sounded so much like her mother’s, but the voice itself was wholly different.
"We are sending you back. It is smarter now. The creator is already dead, there will be no repeat of the battle within. There is only one… who has any chance of destroying it."
"Who?"
"My son…now go back. Go back to him…"
The farplane faded. Ironically, she was now surrounded by death, the trees, the ground, and the flood rushing for them.
There was a face in front of hers, calling her name. Everything was going black now.
"Take…me…home…"
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Tidus had managed the impossible. He had less of a clue than anyone else in the entire world. Still, he could swim.
Paine and Rikku ran off after Sin.
They had lost time with the flood. Tidus ran and kept running. Where there was no way across, he made one.
The women split up, one to Bevelle and the other to the calm lands, both hoping to see each other, and Yuna, soon.
‘Lake Macalania’ was now an understatement.