A new twist on a familiar tragedy. Dedications go out to (in no particular order) Ryouka Nocturnal, occultkat, Kirux, Twilight Scribe, and The Trinity Tree, and anyone else who has played upon this muse of inspiration. Special thanks to SasukeBlade, who has written from multiple angles on the tragedy of the Black Knight and so inspired me to write from a different angle here (note the impartiality with regards to Tipa caravanners, unlike my poem).
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles or any characters or locations within, only my own Tipa caravanners that are barely even mentioned.
The Demon Sends His Messengers
Somewhere in a dominion darker even than the summit of the mountain where lay the very source of the miasma, the great demon Raem spread his wings wide and lifted his head in the stance of a king. "Minions!" he called commandingly into the darkness.
Several monsters answered his call: three behemoths, six ghosts, two dark flan, and twelve sahagins whose bodies were made of stone. A task, Master? the centermost behemoth lifted its head as if to say.
Raem's gaze swept over his minions before he addressed them. "I call on you now, my minions, to destroy a growing threat to my dominion," said he, "a threat perhaps greater even than the fools Hurdy and Leon who thought they could destroy the source of the miasma at Mount Vellenge. Your task is first to station yourselves in the marsh known as Conall Curach. You will find a young man there—a Selkie over whom the miasma in its vague and clouded form, though it gave him much pain over his course, has lost its power. If any member of either of two caravans now bound for Conall Curach learns of this Selkie's triumph over the miasma's power to hold the four races captive within the crystals' aura, others would soon follow and we would lose power."
"You wish us to kill the Selkie and therefore eliminate the threat," quietly spoke a ghost.
"Not only to kill him," explained Raem, "but to make it known beyond any doubt that he is dead; that all his work has been in vain; that his noble ambition, like those of many of his race before, is buried in the marsh of dead dreams."
The three behemoths stamped their giant forepaws in unison in a manner that said, "Consider it done, Master," before all twenty-three monsters vanished to make their way to Conall Curach.
It was late in the afternoon in the marsh of Conall Curach, though nobody could have guessed so for the clouds that veiled the sun. The miasma was thick here—but even so, a lone Selkie youth had through months of painful effort adapted to it, and he now wandered the marsh in wait for the arrival of two caravans. He had only yesterday sent off two letters, one to the motley caravan hailing from the shores of Tipa and another to the caravan from the Yuke city of Shella, to proclaim the success of his work. He had found a means by which the world's four races of people could be free of dependence on the crystalline auras. After centuries of general scorn by the Lilties, Yukes, and even Clavats of the world, he had finally done something to glorify the race of Selkies.
Despite his pride in his accomplishment, however, the young man found himself heartsick. He longed for the shores of Leuda that called him home, and he longed for Shella where his work had begun. But maybe once he returned to Shella, unburdened by the crystals that travelers everywhere needed, to prove the success of his research, he would then set out to see more of the world. Maybe he would even visit the tiny village of Tipa in the near future. Who knew where his next travels would take him?
A series of dull sounds from behind, as of rocks rolling down a slope, interrupted the Selkie's reverie. He looked over his shoulder to see a stone sahagin approaching, rapidly closing the distance between them.
"Gravity!" the Selkie shouted as he snatched up two magicite stones from beside the rock where he sat. A slight rock-breaking sound indicated that the spell had hit its target—just in time for the stone sahagin to deliver a powerful jab with a stinger-like arm. The jab dealt the Selkie a shallow cut to the forearm, but he nevertheless managed to batter the stone sahagin with his racket until it crumbled, pelting him with rock splinters.
Before the Selkie could dress his wound or even assess the damage done, however, two more stone sahagins sprang up—and rumbling could be heard just before a purple-skinned behemoth charged across a broad expanse. Knowing he was in trouble, the Selkie sprinted away toward an old wooden bridge—until a ghost waiting midway across the bridge stopped him in his tracks.
Already the ghost prepared to cast a spell to freeze the Selkie in place. It missed its mark—the Selkie had jumped out of the way just in time. He crashed down on one of the stone sahagins behind him and blindsided the behemoth with a backhanded racket-strike across its ugly purple face. The Selkie took advantage of the behemoth's confused moment and grabbed one of the horns, vaulting over onto its neck—only to be thrown off again with a vigorous shake of the behemoth's head.
The stone sahagin that the Selkie had briefly flattened, meanwhile, had gotten back on its finned feet. Now it made a vicious slash, failing to wound the Selkie but tearing off the well-worn faded purple-and-grey bandana that he wore around his head. The sahagin slashed again, cutting a long curved stroke across the Selkie's chest from the left shoulder to a lower rib on his right side. The impact of the blow knocked the hapless young man flat on his back, only for his painful outcry to be cut off as the charging behemoth pounded the ground with its tail. There the Selkie lay, frozen by the icy tail-pound impact, until the behemoth stamped a huge forepaw.
For a moment the force of the grounds shaking rendered the Selkie weightless. Then both of the stone sahagins lanced their victim at once, one slashing his side under a splayed racket-arm, the other skewering him in the middle of his thigh, and the impact of both blows throwing the still-frozen body of the Selkie into the water.
As the effects of the freezing-spells faded, so did his final moments, so that the last of his breath was but a whisper on the wind. His noble ambition became just one of many shattered hopes buried in the marsh of dead dreams.