I

Chapter 8


He was thinking with all the mental strength he had, but still didn't understand a single thing that "who-ever-that-guy-is" was saying. "Nothing"? "Nowhere"? What was that?

"Let's try to organize this..."

"Organize what?"

"Hey, get out of my thoughts!"

"How do you want me to do that?"

"Just shut up! I don't care about you anymore..."

"Whatever you want, boy..."

"So, even if I'm just a dream, I am something... I was there, right? That couldn't all be a dream, or some sort of hallucination!"

"No, that actually happened, Sin is dead, Yevon is vanished, blah, blah..."

He ignored "who-ever-that-guy-is".

"So, I died..."

"I had already told you, you were never alive..."

"... and now I'm here. Why? Why not the Farplane? Let's see... I was a dream, summoned by the faith... I was an aeon. They stopped dreaming, so, as an aeon, I vanished... My body was made out of pyreflies, and now it's gone... so, I guess that physically I never existed"

"At least seems that you got smarter..."

"But why do I still think? If I was nothing at all, I wouldn't be here thinking about this... I think, therefore I exist, right?"

- That's because you have a real soul.

"What?..."

"What the?..."

He froze at the sound of that piercing sound. Another voice?

"W-... who is there?" - this time it was "who-ever-that-guy-is" asking

"What, I thought that you knew all about this here, smart guy"

He was extremely confused; and extremely happy at the same time. Confused because of that voice, happy because there was someone else there other than that "smart guy" who could give him some decent answers, who could give him hope.

"Real soul? Who is there?"

- Yes, a real soul. And I am what you could call a Faith.

"Hey, you can't be here!"

- How come? Didn't you just say that there was no "here", that you both were "nothing"?

"Yeah! That's precisely why it's impossible for you to be here! How can a Faith be in nowhere?"

"Maybe because we are somewhere after all!"

- No, you are indeed nowhere. You exist only in thought. I could manage to talk to you through thought.

"Like,... telepathy?"

- Yes, something like that.

"So, what were you saying? Real soul? What is that? I want to know everything!"

That "real soul" thing was a ray of hope for him... just the word "real" was enough to get him interested.

- Wait and I will explain everything.

"I'm listening"

"I guess I'm too"

- A thousand years ago, Yevon summoned the Dream Zanarkand, the city you come from.

"Yeah, yeah. I know about that "dream city" deal"

- Please, let me explain everything until the end.

"Yeah, you heard him! Let the Faith talk and shut up, boy!"

"Alright... I'm sorry..."Despite his big curiosity and excitement, he tried to keep quiet. "Please, continue"

- This city, the buildings, the people, were all created by the huge aeon Yevon summoned then. The buildings were easy to summon, but summoning an entire population was a big challenge, even for Yu Yevon. To summon buildings, Yevon just had to manipulate the pyreflies to give them form, but to create a person, just shaping the body wasn't enough. A person exists in three different ways: body, mind and soul. The body is the material form of a person, it's what allows someone to walk into some place, to live in the world. Mind is the collection of a person's life experience: all the memories and knowledge. And finally, the Soul; a soul is what makes every person different from all the others, is the true essence of someone.

Making the bodies was easy: it was just like summoning the buildings, manipulating pyreflies. But a body without a mind is like a newborn baby: it knows nothing, it has no memories at all. To create the minds, Yevon literally invented lives... He thought about the people who lived in the real Zanarkand and transmitted those thoughts to the bodies, giving them an artificial mind. This is where your memories about your past came from. But, even being the most powerful summoner alive, Yevon couldn't create souls. As I said before, a soul is the essence of a person, and that is impossible to create.

So, the population of Dream Zanarkand had a body and a mind, but no soul.

"But... you said... if we are from the Dream Zanarkand... how can we have a soul?"

- When we stopped dreaming, the aeon city vanished, that includes the buildings and the people.

"That includes us..."

- The building and the people's body vanished; the people's minds vanished too, as they were made of Yevon's thoughts. So, that population completely ceased to exist in that moment when you killed Yevon.

"Yeah, but, what about that soul thing? You said we..."

- I'm almost there. You two were just like everyone else in Dream Zanarkand. You had a body made of pyreflies and a mind that came from Yevon's thoughts. But you managed to come to Spira, and had contact with the real world, with real people. From that point, your mind became independent from Yevon, since you were living outside Yevon's reach, where he could control your life experience no more; you created your own mind. That's why you remember Zanarkand, Spira, and all that you lived. And, somehow, when you contacted with the real world, you got a soul. I'm not sure why this happened... But not even we, Faith, know how or why souls are created. We only know that every intelligent living being has one that is unique. That's why you are here thinking, somehow existing.

"How do you know we have a soul?..."

- Because if you hadn't, you would be just mind. You would be just a piece of knowledge and memories, roaming around with no destination. It is the soul that makes you think and question what is happening.

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- Who is there?

"What?! Another voice?"

- Stop doing that! Who are you?

"D-doing what?" He was getting really confused. First one voice, then a Faith, now another voice? But this one was different, this voice had a tone, a feminine tone... a tone he recognized from somewhere...

- Stop following me! Where are you? Show yourself! - the voice seemed really angry.

"Following you? What are you talking about? I don't even know exactly where I am…. Where are you?"

- That... makes no sense... Who are you?

"I'm not really human..."

- Are you a Faith?

"No... actually, I used to be a dream of the Faith..." So, this voice knew what a Faith was, which means that the person speaking (or thinking?), was from Spira, right? "Hmm... Where are you?"

There was a long pause until the voice's answer.

- Mi'hen Highroad... What do you mean a dream? - the voice seemed now tired, desperate.

"It's... complicated..."

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"So... the rest of the population of Dream Zanarkand doesn't have a soul? They don't exist at all?"

- Yes. There are absolutely no memories from them. It's like they never existed.

"There's a Faith here, I think it's better to be him explaining..."

- Explain what?

"Explain that "dream thing" to her"

"Her who? What are you talking about?"

"To her! The other voice?..."

- Other voice?

"Are you nuts, boy?"

"Hey! Wait, you didn't hear?"

- Heard what?

"The voice! The other voice! She is in Mi'hen!"

- There is nobody here except for us three.

"So,... you didn't? What the?..."


End of Chapter 8