It was later in the day that they all returned to the disaster, which hadn't stopped being a disaster. The blue flames had died away, and at least a few reports of survivors were confirmed.

Nothing was actually decidedly better.

The Gullwings had to trek towards Guadosalam from the river, but didn't manage to get anywhere near the heart of where the city used to be.

The landscape had turned dark. The sky disappeared into blackness, as did most of the landscape. Rocks and plants took on a strange solidified-metaphorical look to them; they were almost positive they had wandered into a realm where yellow had a sound and music had smell. They didn't venture very far into the strange place. Although the shadows seemed as solid as rocks, there was the undeniable glint of large teeth coming from them.

"Hello?" Yuna called out.

Something growled so loud and yet so low that it wasn't sound anymore; it was an earthquake.

"This might be that 'complicated but important guado magic' you mentioned?" Paine asked.

"That's a good guess," Yuna said.

"Yunie…" Rikku said in a scared voice. Yuna and Paine turned to see what it was all about.

There were footprints, huge and vaguely like those of someone's boots in the dark ground. They led out of the darkness and into normality, then they disappeared.

"So…" Paine started. "Where's he gonna sleep?"

…………………

Yuna was suddenly annoyed. At least, exponentially more annoyed than before. Somehow, in her logic, being the twice-sole savior of the farplane justified it as hers. It wasn't as she'd left it.

The flowers were old and brown and overall dead. Things didn't die in the farplane. They didn't because… because… because she said so. So there.

She looked around. There was no portal to more farplane. There was no anything else. She was standing in nothingness… maybe. It was dark nothingness. Either that or it was just nothing and it was dark. Metaphors aren't easy on the eyes.

"Hello?" she asked.

Some sort of solid blackness rushed her and she was knocked over. She shot at it once and it left, seemingly more out of disinterest than anything else. If darkness had the ability to regard something, this darkness regarded her in the same way a cat regards a carrot.

Something showed up. It looked like a bad watercolor. It had no distinctive shape, just a lot of verticality. Parts were bluish, parts were white, some part was black, but not as black as the rest of the place, and somewhere in it had a color that could be described as 'pale flesh.' This was all if you squinted hard enough.

"Who are you?"

"The fayth," it whispered, with some effort.

"Um," Yuna said. "About that thing you asked me to do…"

"We are all losing power," the fayth said.

"Yeah, um… if it'll fix all this… and the things with the teeth…I can… um… I can try."

"This world… depends on his mind…" The fayth said. "Make him happy."

Make some guy who vilified parenthood and idolized Sin happy. Sure. No problem. Oh, and don't blow up the world… anymore than it already is. Yeah.. that would be easy.

"Is there any other—"

"…No…"

"Okay… I guess," Yuna said. When life gave you lemons, you made lemonade. Suddenly that adage stopped working. Squish Sin, good. Squish fiend, good. Squish Vegnagun, good. Now the lemon life—or not life—that was giving her was Seymour. 'I guess I'll think of something' she decided.

"Go back to where it all started," the fayth said. It seemed to be losing what solidity it already had. "For him."

"…Okay…" Yuna said. She was about to continue, to ask for clues or a hint or even directions, but the fayth was gone. It made no sign of being about to return.

Still, what could possibly go wrong?

…………………………

There was more running. It was almost always running. In life you had the option to turn around and say 'Oh yeah?' or 'Fine, finish it and see if I care!'

This wasn't life. This was an existing un-life. This was where, just because it was 'game over' it was also 'restart.' Saying 'Oh, yeah?' got you eaten or impaled or flayed, or whatever means the metaphor-come-to-life demons does to kill you. Then you get up and his buddy appears and says he knows what you said and doesn't think it's very nice. If you said 'See if I care,' they did. They often saw to it that you DID care, also. They saw to it that you cared a lot very unhappily. And if you didn't care, that just made them madder, but had no real difference in end result.

Seymour was tired of dying…un-dying…whatever it was. All he wanted was to shout at his own mind 'Go away' with some expletives added and have it listen—and especially obey.

This wasn't even real life. In real life sometimes you turned around and even though you got punched and even if you lost, the important thing was that you got some of your own punches in.

Demons, being metaphors, are rather unpunchable. You can't even say 'I'm not afraid of you!' because they get mad and make you afraid of them again.

So here he was… wherever here was. The problem with infinity was that you can easily get lost in it. The landscape hand been changing so much he wasn't even sure if he restarted in the same place.

It hadn't always been like this. It had been trashed when his father was alive, and he'd coincidentally did his best to keep it good, but then he'd died at the hands of some pretty smiling person he thought would be his friend and the farplane lost it's gleam, it's shine, it's sparkle, and replaced them with mud, pointy and hard rocks, bits of fire, and monsters. After slow magical erosion, the whole metaphorical cliff fell on him, not without turning into monsters first.

He considered the whole place a nightmare and since the farplane was indeed where dreams were made real, it was true.

He was running. He kept running. He'd long ago ran out of seeing any point to 'Oh, yeah?'s and attempts at 'Go the fuck away!'s.

He was running away—

--And then suddenly he was running towards. He skidded to a stop. The place was familiar, but the farplane took on a more… 'evil' décor than emulating a flashback. It was colder here. In fact, it was freezing, probably literally. On occasion he could see his breath. The place was made of stone, a mix of actually built stonework, and just fallen down rubble. It was dark. It was damp.

He heard a slight slithery-scraping noise, not one metaphors make. He turned around. Before he could blink, the giant lizard leapt at him.

………………….

It took nearly an entire day, fighting monsters that weren't solid, fiends that had grown not only to giant size but also some extra spikes and even heads.

All the while, they kept trying to find the place where 'it all started for him.'

It wasn't Guadosalam, because there wasn't anything left of that. Even though they had been there to defeat monsters, it wasn't Beseid or Kilika. It turned out not to be Luca, although the stadium was now a pile of rubble. It wasn't Macalania, because that had sunk. Bevelle hadn't seen him, and the populace was busy arming themselves against creatures, or whatevers, from the Not-So-Farplane.

They checked outposts, temples, ruins, and roads. There was no sign of him. Yuna remembered when that was a good thing.

"Damn!" Yuna swore. "Where the fuck did it all start?"

"And what's 'it?'" Rikku asked.

"Yeah, those monsters and near-death experiences were just side notes to this story, huh?" Paine muttered.

"Why doesn't anyone tell me these things?" Yuna said.

"What, giving you all the information so you don't have to work at it, or not to kill people that might have mystical importance to the world?" Paine asked.

"Yeah," Yuna said.

"His mom's a fayth, right?" Paine asked.

"Either that or some fayth is off their rocker and really likes him," Yuna said.

"Then there's a temple to her, right?" Paine asked.

"I guess so," Yuna said.

Rikku, shrugged. To her, anything beyond 'the farplane is there' was ignored. She was agnostic, which meant you knew there were powerful beings, but you didn't have to care.

"So where is it?" Paine asked. She had been a reporter, not a summoner. Aeon stuff was Yuna's area of expertise… hopefully.

"I don't know," Yuna said. "I never met her."

"You skipped a temple?" Paine asked.

"Not to my knowledge," Yuna said. Now she was confused. She never thought about it. A temple was a huge, great, looming thing. And a fayth… how the heck could you miscount fayth?

"You mean, there's a temple out there that I—everyone missed?"

"Well, no one used it a generation ago because it wasn't there," Paine said.

Rikku, who had let the conversation fly over her head like fast weather, suddenly stopped in mid-bounce, which nearly caused her to fall over.

"Can it be a broken temple?" she asked.

Suddenly everyone on the airship was looking at her.

"What?" she asked.