Under the topic "A Challenge to Fandom" in my forum The Moogle Nest, I posed a challenge for the month of December: send a caravan to the lost city of Rebena Te Ra. This story is a response to my own challenge, and ties in with my crossover-fic Sword of Redemption that takes place approximately four-and-a-half years after this point in my own Tipa caravan's timeline.
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles or any characters or locations within, only my own caravanners from Tipa and the plot of this fanfic.
Secrets of the Lost City
"I don't like this place," Lydia whispered fearfully, gripping her steel blade and shield tighter as the caravan from Tipa approached a broken-down stone gate, the entrance to the lost city known as Rebena Te Ra. This caravan needed one more drop of myrrh before the end of this year; it was Lydia's sixth crystal caravan (she joined in the same year that Khetala became the caravan leader) and the fourth since Dimo Nor and Anaїs Nin became caravanners. Unfortunately, they needed to hurry if they were to return home with a full chalice in time—tiptoeing their way through the marsh of Conall Curach for myrrh, over rickety wooden bridges and through sahagin-infested water, had cost them more time than any would have liked.
Khetala stooped to reach into a niche in the gate, retrieving a small cache of magicites that she had found in a previous visit to Rebena and stored in anticipation of future visits. "Be prepared, whatever you would find," she warned, "nightmares and cerberi roam among the broken walls; gargoyles and ghosts; bats and skeletons. Don't even approach a treasure chest with your guard down; it could be a mimic."
"A mimic?" Dimo Nor repeated. "As in, a treasure chest that tries to bite your head off, like the Marr's Pass caravan told us about the other week?"
"The very same," answered Khetala grimly.
"How do we tell if it's a mimic?" asked Anaїs Nin, for already the caravanners saw two chests, one on each side of the crumbled gate. She approached the chest to the left, unsure of whether to kick the latch open or smash the chest with her racket.
"Stand aside, Anaїs Nin," Khetala ordered. "Fire, Blizzard, Slow, or even Holy, no spell ever harms a mimic." She readied a stone of brilliant purple magicite. "Thunder!"
A loud thunder-crash sounded as jagged bolts of lightning exploded against the chest. Anaїs Nin jumped away, but not soon enough: she gave a short, high-pitched yelp as the lightning bounced off the chest and shocked her in mid-jump. Paralyzed, the Selkie keeled over to the side as she landed on the ball of one foot, mercifully in the opposite direction of what the caravan realized was a fully-fledged mimic.
Before the mimic could attack Anaїs Nin with teeth and jagged claws, Lydia and Dimo Nor rushed in to destroy it. When the mimic finally dissolved into the miasma, the Selkie was able to move again but found that her muscles still twitched violently from the reflected Thunder spell. "Not…far back enough," she panted.
"I'd forgotten that mimics can sometimes reflect spells instead of merely absorbing them unharmed," answered Khetala by way of apology. "I hope that nothing else has any nasty surprises for us."
Mercifully, the "nasty surprises" of which Khetala was afraid were few: the caravanners had had prior experience with fighting skeletons at Tida, gargoyles at Moschet Manor, bats and ghosts in the goblin-infested mountain path dubbed "Goblin Wall" by previous caravans, and wraiths at Daemon's Court. The nightmares and cerberi of which Khetala warned were rare, a mercy in itself, for such monsters were difficult to destroy and took great liking to attempting to freeze, paralyze, burn, or otherwise curse the caravanners.
The northern region of the lost city turned out to be even more fraught with tricks and traps than the southern region: more cerberi, gargoyles, and undead blocked the Tipa caravan's path at every turn. Often there were mystical barriers present, impenetrable until somebody cast a spell on a nearby switch and then struck it sharply with a weapon. Each switch glowed in the color of the magicite whose spell would deactivate the barrier: blue for Blizzard, red for Fire, purple for Thunder.
Before casting a spell on a switch or allowing anyone else to do the same, however, Khetala insisted upon approaching the barrier and holding out one hand to it as close as the magic would allow, whispering cryptic statements—like she often did at the crystals in towns; perhaps she gleaned information from them.
"When Oblivion washes the world, Darkness will follow, star fallen from Heavens as one who falls from good Mio's grace…"
"Good Mio's grace?" Lydia repeated curiously as Khetala thus came to the first mystical barrier.
Dimo Nor had a strange sort of light in his green eyes, a reverence that none of his fellow caravanners had ever seen in them. "The fable's true, then," he breathed. "The Queen of Memories who fights against the demon that devours people's memories has a name—Mio."
They came to a second barrier after killing a cerberus beyond the first, and Khetala spoke again when she touched it: "Only when a mortal breaks the seal of Oblivion will the fallen fight for Redemption, reunited with his brethren to lift oppression of Darkness from the mortal realm."
"Something that everyone forgot a long time ago…" thought David aloud as he was transferring the crystal chalice from one shoulder to the other. "Does it mean that a conflict of some kind will erupt when somebody finally remembers the thing everyone forgot?"
Anaїs Nin pondered the cryptic statement and David's words thoughtfully before trying to state her thoughts on the matter in a way that made sense. "If somebody remembers 'what was forgotten,' it would only be by Mio's will, so the mortal who remembers would have to be the reincarnation of one who died before this 'oblivion' washed the world," she surmised.
After passing the second barrier and eliminating a flock of ghosts and a nightmare behind it, the caravanners reached a third barrier. This one, however, had a switch on each side: one red, the other blue. A fourth barrier lay east, protected by a purple switch. "Which way?" asked Dimo Nor uncertainly.
Khetala first approached the eastward barrier with the purple switch beside it, reaching out as though to touch it. "This mortal is of bleeding soul, wounded as by swords of suffering, that the Demon would compel her to fear good Mio's will."
"Someone who's been through something terrible—but that could mean anything, really," was David's next dejected remark. Something attached to the magic switch, however, caught his eye: it was a ribbon of a peculiar pink shade, woven through the scrollwork beneath the purple orb. "Khetala, take that ribbon, will you?" he pointed it out to the Yukish caravan leader.
Removing the ribbon before casting the Thunder spell that would deactivate the barrier, Khetala examined the ribbon more closely. "My word," she reverently breathed, "how old must this ribbon be?" It was woven of some soft material, not smooth like silk, but certainly softer than newly-woven cotton—a material that none of the caravanners had ever seen or felt before.
"We can ponder the ribbon later, but what would the other mystic barrier tell you if you asked it?" coaxed Anaїs Nin, who had, for whatever reason, brought along a bottle of ink and a scrap of parchment and now recorded Khetala's findings for her.
"Good thinking," praised David. "We never know what secrets we'll find in this lost city, and we may not remember them all once we go back to our wagon."
Meanwhile, Khetala pressed her hands to the northern barrier with two switches. "She that breaks the seal of Oblivion then will gain the immortality of the angels and serve good Mio eternally as Redeemer of sinners," the Yuke woman spoke again, repeating what she alone could hear.
"That makes some sense," replied Lydia. "The mortal being who fits these prophecies—were she to redeem a 'fallen one' and be rewarded with immortality for it, it would only fit that she then serve the Queen of Memories by redeeming other repentant sinners…"
"Lydia," Khetala startled the Clavat maiden out of her reverie. "I need your help to deactivate this barrier—cast Blizzard on the blue switch as I cast Fire on the red one, and then strike it with your sword," she ordered. Lydia did as Khetala told her, and the barrier opened at the moment of Khetala's hitting the red switch with her hammer—but as the barrier opened, a blast of flames narrowly missed the two women: a cerberus lay in wait beyond.
"Ay, pea brain!" Dimo Nor taunted the beast, throwing at it a shortsword that a skeleton had dropped before. The Lilty aimed true, as the blade landed squarely in one of the cerberus's eyes—giving Anaїs Nin the perfect opportunity to leap in on the blind-eye side and cripple the beast with a crushing blow to the shoulder. She then struck the back of the beast's head until it was dead, and, removing the skeleton's shortsword from the cerberus's eye, quickly used it to harvest the beast's four choicest fangs from its jaws. "Who has the spoils bag?" asked Dimo Nor before Anaїs Nin could speak.
In answer, Khetala held the well-worn leather bag open for her Selkie friend to deposit the cerberus-fangs. "Every time we meet a nightmare, I hope to harvest a fiend's claw from it, or perhaps a rare devil's claw," the Yuke explained.
Beyond a fifth barrier to the northwest (that, to Khetala, was oddly silent, but that would open for any magic upon its switch) lay a large room with no fewer than four treasure chests, suspiciously unguarded. "What do you suppose that only one is real, and the other three are mimics?" came Lydia's sardonic inquiry.
Lydia turned out to be right: Khetala's Gravity spells, which should have effectively thrown shrapnel of real chests everywhere, had no effect on the first three chests that she tested, indicating that they were mimics and had to be destroyed. With the mimics appropriately smashed to pieces, Lydia was able to safely kick open the latch on the fourth chest. Inside lay an age-yellowed roll of parchment, which Lydia promptly added to the spoils bag—she would take a closer look later.
"I remember this part of the north side," said Khetala heavily, reaching for a Cure magicite in her pouch as the caravanners continued eastward following their venture into the Hall of Mimics. "We need to bypass several more doors and switches before we can reach the pyramid in the middle of this lost city. Pay attention to what spells the skeleton-mages cast when they try to attack us—some of these doors will only open if one of us stands in the right place and lets the skeleton-mage cast its spells."
"We need to let them beat on us?" Anaїs Nin repeated with a mixture of incredulity and fear.
Khetala nodded heavily. "It'll be painful, I know, but it's the only way forward," she explained, "and of course I carry Cure magicite to heal you when you've borne the spells necessary."
As if on cue, a skeleton-mage sprung up from a pile of bones near a purplish square floor-tile near a door to the northeast, trying to cast Thunder on the caravanners. Realizing that this first encounter was her turn to bear the pain of the spell, Anaїs Nin stood on the purplish floor-tile, bracing herself for the worst. Mercifully, though, the paralysis that took her was of shorter duration than the time when a mimic had reflected Khetala's Thunder spell. Still, no sooner had the door opened than Lydia bashed the skeleton-mage with her shield, throwing the force of her entire body into the blow to send the monster shattering against the nearby wall.
A long corridor lay north of the door, patrolled by wraiths and skeletons, until the caravanners reached a bend that led them southward once more, past a flock of ghosts, and to a large expanse. To the north lay a locked door just past four pale floor tiles with the same patterns as the purplish one of earlier; to the south lay two floor tiles before a locked door: one a ruddy red color, the other a deep blue, both flanked on the side by piles of bones that would spring up as skeleton-mages. "The sooner we reach the myrrh tree, the better—going north will only delay us, therefore we go south," Khetala told the caravanners, taking the chalice from Dimo Nor. "You stand on the red tile," she ordered Dimo Nor, "and Lydia will stand on the blue." No sooner had the Lilty and Clavat assumed their positions than the skeleton mages sprang up and cast their respective Fire and Blizzard spells. Upon setting down the chalice when the door opened, Khetala crushed one skeleton-mage with a hammer strike before casting Cure on her fellow caravanners as Anaїs Nin bludgeoned the other mage.
Beyond the southern door lay a nightmare and a wraith. "I remember this part—once we destroy those two that guard the passage south," David began to explain, "there's a fork in the road a short distance afterward. We'll need to go further south to open the door to inside the pyramid, but then we'll go back and turn westward; it's a shortcut around the pyramid to the door. The myrrh tree is inside."
"And what manner of miasma-beast will try and stand in our way this time?" asked Dimo Nor warily.
"Amidatty called it the Lich," explained Khetala. "A cursed king of the undead that will bring down shrapnel and lightning on all who stand against it. I would call on Anaїs Nin to be our chalice-bearer, but even the nimblest struggle to stay out of the Lich's lightning-spell range. Therefore, Dimo Nor, who wears armor forged of iron and thunderball, will carry the chalice. Take this Life stone, Anaїs Nin, so that you can help me cast Holyra on the Lich. Lydia, be prepared to cast Clear and Cure when necessary, and David, you and Anaїs Nin will do your best to strike the Lich with your weapons when Holyra forces him to materialize. Do we all understand?" When the caravanners gave their assent, Khetala raised her hammer high. "Very well. We go."
Khetala's strategy worked well against the Lich that guarded the myrrh tree; instances of caravanners being pelted with dangerous sprays of meteorite shrapnel were few. There were times when the Lich succeeded in briefly paralyzing three out of the five caravanners at once (including one where Dimo Nor recklessly abandoned the chalice beside a paralyzed Lydia and flew at the Lich in a spear-swinging fury), but thankfully none of the caravanners required Anaїs Nin to revive them with her Life stone as the wounds of battle killed them.
As the caravan left the myrrh tree with the chalice full and returned to the wagon, however, a dozen questions burned Khetala's mind. Those words she heard as she pressed her hands to each magical barrier…what did they mean? Were they prophecies? Were they secrets of something that happened in the city before it fell to ruin? Who spoke them, and did he, or she, serve the good Lady Mio, Queen of Memories, or the as-yet-nameless evil memory-devouring demon? If the being who spoke to her served the good Queen of Memories, what did Lady Mio mean her to discover? What was the meaning of the strange pink ribbon woven into the scrollwork of one of the switches?
And if the being who spoke to her served the demon, what scheme had he afoot?