Dream of the Water Fayth

By Fai Gensou

Disclaimer: I would think the fact that I'm writing fanfiction would be indicative of the fact I don't own the series I'm writing about.

Note: You should go and play Dissidia 012. Because Yuna kicks ass in it. As a summoner. Lightning is cool too, but it just makes me want FF13 more, and I can't afford a PS3. I hate being a poor college student that can't get a summer job. And I can't ask my parents for one, since my birthday isn't until December and Dad will not buy any more gaming systems since they would disappear into my dorm room and he wouldn't get to play with them. Later I'll probably use Japanese honorifics, since I feel it fits in better with Yevon.

On another note, please review! I can't know if people are enjoying this if you don't talk to me.

Chapter 2

This is my last chance...to tell my story...

But where to start? What defines the beginning of a story, especially mine?

Given how they have been an integral part of Spira for thousands of years, I suppose the best place to start would be with the Fayth.

The legends say that the first Fayth were created when powerful mages summoned the gods and bound them to stone with human sacrifice. Yuna had to stop at that line. Gods? Yevon had always preached that the Fayth were people who willing gave their souls to create aeons and fight Sin. Then again, given how much Yevon had concealed the truth, should she really be startled with this revelation?

Still…

Yuna remembered a recurring dream she had had ever since she was a child. A bird surrounded by fire, consumed by it only to be born anew. A dream of Phoenix, a being that created the world in the ancient tales of creation that even Yevon could not suppress. Maybe…

Yuna shook her head to clear her thoughts. Tidus had written this to reveal the truth, so certainly there would be answers. She turned back to the page.

Three gods were bound in this fashion-Ifrit, Shiva, and Bahamut-before the other gods realized what mankind was doing. When the mages tried to bind a fourth god, Ramuh, he killed them all, and created an eternal storm over the area where they had attempted the binding, so mankind would always remember that the gods are not meant to be at the beck and call of mortals, and that the powers of the gods are far beyond their understanding.

For the gods that had been bound, there was no way to free them. None of the mages would give up their prize. The souls of the humans who were sacrificed in the binding, willing chosen as the legend goes, had merged with that of the gods', and so the bound gods only had two ways with which to interact upon the world. In the form of the human that bound them, formed of pyreflies and capable of limited magic, or by gifting a portion of their power to those they found worthy, allowing for the summoning of a dream in the form of what they had once been, but still far limited compared to the power they once were capable of.

After the slaughter of the mages by Ramuh, no one ever attempted to bind any other god again. However, some enterprising person modified the spell used-or created a new one, the stories aren't clear-so that a person's soul, transferred from their body to stone, could also create dreams of power, which people had started to call 'Aeons'.

The biggest change that arose from the creation of the Fayth was in regards to the mages themselves. They and their families gained great wealth and prestige, as people felt it fitting to respect those who could bind the gods to the will of mortals and their families. Even Ramuh's wraith did not change this, especially as the families would take it upon themselves to hunt down fiends that plagued the towns and roads, and performed sendings so the dead would not create more fiends. The families of the mages became the ancestors of the great summoning clans, who became the ruling class of Spira. Every major town or island had one, but what would become Zanarkand had the most, as it was created when eight cities, whose names have long been forgotten, merged together, and the eight clans of the cities elected a chief among them, replaced only upon death. Thus Zanarkand, a city full of machina, was known as a city of summoners.

Truthfully, calling it a city of summoners is a bit of a misnomer. Only about 30 percent of the city were a part of that class, since the 'summoning class' had not only summoners, but their families and vassal families. Not everyone from a summoning clan become a summoner, but in the same vein, only those who had a summoner within the last two generations-parent or grandparent really-could become a summoner. Anyone could learn black magic, but only summoners could receive Aeons, learn white magic, and perform sendings. As time passed, this started to bother people. Bevelle ultimately became the center for those people, along with Luca to some extent, and focused on the development of combat machina.

This was the world I born into, over a thousand years ago.

Yuna paused here. She wished that Tidus had provided a little more information about the world before the war, since the most Yevon would say was that it was a hedonistic time where machina fulfilled the wishes of man, making them lazy. But, she realized that he probably didn't know it all, and this book was really more for his story, not a history of Spira.

I was born in summer, to Jecht, a famous blitzer who was the star of the Zanarkand Abes, and his wife Nami. I was the younger of twins, by three minutes, as I would remind my brother Shuyin when he played the older brother card. (Tidus never mentioned having siblings…) Pretty much out of the womb, we were in our father's shadow. I swear people were comparing us to him before we could crawl, let alone know what a blitzball was. As much as we were shielded from the media hounds, something I later realized was probably Dad's doing, they couldn't be kept out entirely.

Shuyin…I think he was affected more by being in Dad's shadow then me, since he was the firstborn. Sometimes it felt like his emotions were pressed onto me, making me feel what he felt. I don't think he was conscious of it, and no one else ever seemed to comment on it. We were always competing with the old man, and each other, for Mom's attention. In hindsight, Jecht never actively took Mom away from us, but five year olds doesn't understand why, when coming back from kindergarten, Mom seemed more interested in Dad's day then yours. She was a great mom, but we had come within my parents' first year of marriage (the trashier media would always say that the old man only married her because he got her pregnant), so I guess it was still some of that newlywed bliss.

We were seven, when it happened. I had been playing out on the houseboat deck, and Shuyin and Mom and Dad were inside. The Abes were talking about getting rid of Dad, "trading me in for a younger model" as he would put it, when he came storming out, six pack in hand, got in the powerboat that was moored with the houseboat, and speeded off. Shuyin said he had hit Mom. Mom neither confirmed nor denied, just said he was upset with the managers and went to blow off stream. The old man had reeked of alcohol, so he was most definitely drunk, something had had happened more frequently as rumors of him being replaced grew.

He never came back.

Huge searches were mounted after the 24 hour waiting period before a person is officially missing had passed. This was the most popular blitzer in Spira. Even those that hated the Abes or Zanarkand in general loved him. But they found nothing.

Some say he drowned. Others argued that a blitzer can't drown, and detractors argued back that a drunk blitzer could, as one had ten years before. A small portion said a fiend or a shark got him. Either way, the only thing they ever came across was the powerboat and empty bottles.

Yuna slipped the juice, wondering. "Jecht-san…died a thousand years ago. Had he been a dream? But I was able to send him…" Placing the glass back on the nightstand, she returned to reading.

If there was one thing I could respect about my old man, he knew how to manage his money. Between his salary and the money he got for endorsements (letting others use his name and image to sell things in return for a percentage of the profit or a set sum), he had been pretty well off. He had set up trust funds for me and Shuyin each, an account to take care of the houseboat expenses and maintenance, and a general account. And Mom was listed on the accounts, so she could access the money even after he disappeared. She still went back to work afterwards, I think so she wouldn't sit in the house and waste away. But she was never the same.

Time went on. While Mom could function well most of the time for our sake, other times she couldn't, namely around his birthday, their anniversary, and the anniversary of his disappearance. Shuyin was the one who would take care of her, and I would take care of him and her as much as he would let me. He felt he had to be the man of the house with Dad gone. It was really bad when the official notice declaring Jecht legally dead came when we were fourteen. After that, she seemed to be in another world sometimes, and couldn't work as often as she had before.

We were sixteen when she finally gave up.

I had had to stay after school that day to make up tests I had missed the week before when I was down with stomach flu (it missed Shuyin, the lucky bastard). Shuyin went home early, since he had been in a fight with three other guys that week and was suspended from playing for two months. People still couldn't realize that you do not taunt Shuyin about the old man without repercussions.

He found Mom in a pool of blood, her wrists slit. I didn't learn this until I came home, the neighbors whispering outside, Shuyin covered in blood trying to clean up the blood pool, but some idiot from the temple, when they came for her body, mentioned that she wouldn't receive a sending.

Suicides don't get Sent. The official reason was that since they accepted death while still alive, they did not need guidance to the Farplane. The real reason was an ancient, almost prehistoric, belief that those who take their own lives have committed an unforgivable sin against the gods, failing to preserve their life and taking what is only the gods to take. They used to bury suicides at crossroads, so their souls couldn't find their way, and drive a stake through their heart. Attitudes had changed, so suicides would now at least receive some form of proper burial, either at sea or cremation, but they would not have a sending performed.

Yuna suddenly felt bad, for she had said his mother had accepted death while alive when she had appeared during their visit to the Farplane. Then she noticed a note in the margin-don't feel bad, you didn't know, and she couldn't help but smile. Tidus had known her well enough to know how she would feel about his mother's death, and comfort her, before she even read this.

Officially, she remembered, Yevon didn't say people killed themselves. It said that they atoned for the stain of the sin of machina use with their lives. But the whispers always remained.

I think she would have killed herself two years earlier, when Dad was declared legally dead, if not for us. At fourteen we would have entered foster care and Dad's money into limbo. But at sixteen, we could be deemed fit to care for ourselves. Mostly at Shuyin's insistence, we dropped out of school, as anyone could do at sixteen, and tried out for blitzball. We might have been allowed to live on our own with our trust funds, but he didn't want to take that chance, since the courts would prefer that we are capable of supporting ourselves, and a job is a better sign of that.

I think he just didn't want to have anything to do with the old man's money.

We had drop the old man's name just to get a tryout, but we were judged on our skills (we had made sure of it) and made it. Me on the Abes, him with the Duggles. Shuyin didn't really care for the Duggles, but he hated the old man more and they were the Abes's rivals. I just liked the Abes more than I didn't like the old man. Not to say that we would trade places and play for the other team. All we really had to was change the part in our hair. One thing we refused to do was play against each other. Whenever the teams played against each other, we would play opposite halves of the games. The managers could never get us to budge on this point. We were all we had left, and did not want to risk it with the media comparing us should we directly play against each other.

Not that we played each other much attention. I had gone back to school through a night school, since I wanted something to fall back on after blitzball, and Shuyin…did whatever. I'm not sure. I know he meet Lenne, an up-and-coming songstress who happened to be a summoner. He became her guardian when they started dating, and I got drafted to help him learn to use a sword. More like learn with him so he wouldn't look like an idiot. But beyond sword training, we hardly saw each other. He pretty much moved into her apartment, and I was cramming for the tests to get my high school degree and considering college courses.

I barely noticed when the war started. But that would soon change.

End of Chapter 2

Please review. It's not healthy for me to compliment myself.