Disclaimer: Final Fantasy characters and settings belong to SquareEnix. Just borrowing them for a bit and I'll put them away when I'm done.

Possession.

by RaichuTec

"Open your eyes."

The voice sounded remote. It felt as if someone had turned a switch on inside and suddenly the lights came on. He could see but everything in his vision swam in a sea of blurry over-brightness. He blinked as if sleep coated his eyes and he could wash it away or rub at it. Nothing about this was right. Not in this painted world of never ending fields filled with green grass and wildflowers and waterfalls. A dreamy quality to it made him wonder if he were merely asleep and this was just a surreal nightmare. The sort he'd tell Gippal about when he woke.

He was not alone. Yuna sat amongst the tall wildflowers and blades of grass, disoriented and perplexed chased by a touch of fright. He turned his head, trying so hard just to make things focus. But the fuzz refused to fade, and he continued looking through a dusty lens that could not be wiped clean. It was to his relief that he realized it was Nooj and Gippal. They were here, too, but soon it became his dismay he realized they stood apart from him. They kept their distance and watched him like hawks eyeing prey too big to take down with a fowl swoop.

Motes of light danced before his vision and the pull of another mind reared at the back of his head, groggy and disoriented but terrifying all the same. In a moment he knew it would claw at his eyes and rip him away, throwing him back into the dark recesses if his mind to cower there while his skin committed untold transgressions. Already his hands were shaking.

And when he looked at them, held them out to really see, they moved to the command of another. The world spun and faded, tunneling out as one last sneer invaded his conscious thoughts.

I told you that you would be no challenge to me, praetor. Go back to sleep.