Scene 7

Bring me the Crystal...

Letting out a soft despaired moan, the paladin shook Rosa off. The white wizardess confused the fear of the voice in his mind with him being stubborn and extended her arms around him again.

"Don't...look at me." The words sounded foreign to him. Was he already losing himself?

Kain appeared in his line of sight. "What is the matter...?" Despite saying this, the look in the dragoon's eyes betrayed what he knew. Cecil couldn't look at him, ashamed, aghast. The dragoon took this as a confirmation of his fears. "Rosa, step away from him." The dragoon's voice too, didn't sound like him at all.

What is it that Kain said just a few days ago? It is as I feared..

"Wait?" Rising, the white wizardess didn't move from Cecil's side, brown eyes flashing. "What is wrong?"

Bring me the Crystal...

Another groan slipped past the king's pale lips. He slid a hand across the cool crystal tiles. The voice intensified. Cecil surmised this was because either Zemus realized his goal was near at hand or because he no longer had to extend his influence over multiple subjects, exerting his full mental domination on Cecil alone.

How had Kain borne it? How had Goblez? His father?

It was simple. They hadn't.

Edge came over to kneel down by the Lunarian, checking his pulse. "Yeah, he definitely bit it, Rydia." He stood up, eyes peering down at Cecil curiously. "What happened here?"

The summoner came over to stand by her husband, giving the paladin a sympathetic glance and a quick sharp rebuke to Edge. It was likely she was mildly annoyed at the ninja's lack of sensitivity when confirming Klu-Ya's death.

Genuflecting by Cecil, Kain laid a hand on the paladin's shoulder. "You can fight this."

"Fight what?" Rosa's voice was one note below a scream.

Bring me the Crystal! Insistent, now. Urgent. Demanding. Dominating...

One hand bracing him, the other on his head, Cecil whispered, "Keep her away. I don't want her to see me like this."

Standing Kain caught the white wizardess just as she was about to drop back down to the paladin's side, dragging her back. Rosa struggled in his grip, calling out to her husband. At this point Cecil pulled himself off the floor, backing up against the wall again, hugging it as if to draw strength from cold stone. Anything to keep his hands away from the...

...the Crystal.

"What is going on? Cecil? Kain?" Rosa broke free of the dragoon's grasp but didn't embrace Cecil this time. A glimmer of fear danced across her lovely counteance while glimpsing at her husband's visage. Had she seen it? A shadow of Zemus? Had Kain once looked like that?

Cecil covered his face with his hands. "Zemus...is here."

Out came Edge's twin blades. "Zemus? Here? Where?"

"Don't be afraid, Cecil, we can stop him," Rydia said, hands in their pre-spell glow.

"Put away your weapons." Kain came to stand next to the paladin. Somehow, someway, Cecil felt comfortable with only the dragoon by his side. Perhaps because Kain understood this whole ordeal. "Zemus has not taken physical form."

"Then where the hell is he?" Edge pratically stomped a foot.

"Me." Cecil choked the word out. "He's in me."

Edge, Rydia and Rosa all fell silent gazing at the paladin. Kain had his head down, bracing his chin with a hand. Unable to bear their stares, Cecil kept his hands upon his face. Zemus's voice drilled into his mind, like a slippery serpent gnawing on his mind until he finally broke down and surrendered his soul.

Out of the corner of his eye the paladin glanced at the huddled form of his father. The body of Goblez superimposed on that body, merging and dragging Cecil into despair. Neither could escape Zemus's psychic onslaught. Both were dead now because of him. And all for naught, since the evil Lunarian would simply claim the crystal with him...

...dead...him...Him...dead?

Excalibur was but two paces from him.

No...bring me the Crystal!

Perhaps seeing the wild shimmer in his eyes, Cecil couldn't take those two paces before the dragoon grabbed him.

"No, Cecil, there must be another way!" The dragoon's grip was powerful.

"There isn't! You must let me go!" the paladin nearly screamed. How much time did he have? How much longer before Zemus claimed complete control and the crystal with it? "Surely you of all people should understand!"

Rosa ran over, blocking his view of the sword. "Cecil, Kain, please tell me...I don't understand!"

"Ah, hell, Cecil's...You're joking me, right?" This was Edge who couldn't seem to figure out whether to bear his blades or drop them right there. "What are we suppose to do?" Rydia clutched at her husband, fighting back tears.

Meanwhile the paladin hadn't given up on his goal, struggling most heartily with Kain. When Rosa tried to intervene Cecil was accidently released and snatched up the sword, bringing it to his neck. He fully intended to slit his own throat but the agonized cry of his wife stayed his hand.

"I don't care what Zemus has done, or where he is! Don't do this, Cecil!" She was crying too. "I love you, I love you..."

Kain placed a comforting hand on the white wizardess's shoulder. "We'll figure out another way."

"What other way?" Cecil shook his head in despair. "My father and brother had to die. This must be something to do with our Lunarian blood. In order to keep Zemus from getting the crystal I have to..." He swallowed, fingers tightening around the sword. "What other way would keep Zemus from extending his influence over me?"

"I don't know," the white wizardess said, "...but I don't care. I need you. Our son and our friends need you. We can't lose you!"

"Tie him down?" Rydia suggested.

"Rydia, this is no time to get kinky!" came Edge's half-joking protest to which his wife smacked him.

"Something to keep you from taking the crystal to Zemus..." This was Kain now, brow furrowed.

"Lock him in a room?" Rosa said, hopefully. "Until he gives up?"

Again the paladin shook his head. "He would find some way. So long as I am conscious, he'll have the power to escape whatever prison I could be placed in. No, I must not be awake for it."

"I could cast sleep?" the summoner piped in. "But that would wear off...So would paralyze and stop..."

Over in his head Cecil recalled all the self-sacrifices that his comrades had made. He remembered Yang taking one for the team in the Tower of Babil, Cid risking his life to keep the Red Wings off his tail and the twins who made themselves stone statues in order to prevent them from being crushed as the walls of Baron caved in on them...

...stone statues...

Bring me the Crystal!

That was quickly getting old.

"Rydia," Cecil once again didn't recognize his own voice, it was so strained and alien. "You can still cast Break, right?"

"Um, yeah."

Excalibur clanked to the tiles and the Baronian king took a deep breath. "I need you to cast that spell on me."

Kain's eyes widened then narrowed. "That could work. He wouldn't be able to telepathically speak to you as he needs a host that's conscious at the time to carry out his bidding."

"But is this safe? Can he be brought back?" Rosa wrung her hands together. "We'll have to find and defeat Zemus, won't we?"

Seeing the desperate love and fear in her eyes, Cecil took his wife into his arms. To feel the warmth of her body and smell her fresh perfume made the paladin forget, if but for a moment, that he was a prisoner of Zemus's power. For a moment it was just the two of them, as it was their first night together in his bedroom in the Tower of Baron...

Bring me the Crystal, now!

Jerking to the sound, Cecil thrust Rosa back. They had to do something, now, before he lost total control. Already the paladin could feel Zemus throwing his all into mental submission and he started to grasp at his head again, pained. "We must do this, now!"

Rydia stepped forward, green eyes glassy. "Hold still. It'll be easier that way."

Cecil did his best not to move, but the negative energy of the Lunarian was like one of Cid's hammers splitting his skull. Rosa, Edge and Kain surrounded him and Rydia, their faces full of hope and fear all at the same time. The paladin himself could feel that mix of emotions churning in his soul. They would have to find and give Zemus an absolute death in order to free him of the mind-control.

What if they couldn't...they barely managed to the last time, and they had him to lead them then.

Hero. Husband. King. Leader. He would have to forgo those titles for now.

As the spell swirled around him, Cecil glanced at the four, the Heroes of the Cystal War.

It seemed that the war was reawakened.

The last sight the paladin had before his spirit flew from his body was that of the crystal, as it shed its light...and darkness...silently.