Chapter XIV

"What were you doing all this time? You've got muscle!"

"You think so?" Tidus panted, sweat and water dripping down his slightly broader frame. He was tensed up against the kitchen counter, glaring out of the window and trying to ignore the hyperactive blue light on the wall. "How's the new ship feel, by the way?"

"Lighter, sturdier, being able to fly… A line of cannons is revenge's best weapon! "

He could barely respond, but he smiled slightly at Geosgaeno's satisfaction. He glanced at the rear of the grapple cannon which was built into the wall. His grip hardened and his stomach churned with the increase in air pressure.

Two months. Just two hellish months in those underground tunnels was nearly enough to strip him of all his humanity. How stagnant and timeless they were, how he dreamed for daylight and constantly feared that Yuna had given up. He became a lot more fluent in the Al Bhed language and adapted their clothing styles. Every day he would carry heaps of steel, eating nothing but barely-edible junk and downing it all with putrid magical essence. Although the labour burned him all over, it was the only way for him to improve his strength for the breakout.

The airship was barely finished in time and it showed from a functional standpoint: An extremely limited supply of mana; fewer rooms and lots of little insecurities everywhere. But it was the best everyone could do with all of the other countless problems. He only hoped that it would be enough to save Yuna; without the power of flight, everything would be ruined.

Even then he had barely escaped from the underground with his skin intact. Auron had organised a cargo ship to arrive at the secret docks the night before. In the morning the masses of Al Bhed made a stampede for the docks, with Rin leading them. But then it happened. An earthquake from both the floors and the walls.

A tidal wave was unleashed from above, blasting through every single tunnel with the intent of drowning the slaves. He barely had time to comprehend it before he, Cid and Brother had rushed for the safety of the airship. Geosgaeno blasted the layered walls apart with the makeshift bombs, which both slowed down the submersion for the Al Bhed exodus and gave the airship openings for it to fly up and launch through. Their hearts were now pounding from all the tension. They could only hope that Rin could pull through and guide the other people to safety.

"Don't get too excited, Geos. You only have so much fuel," Tidus responded, glancing out of the window again. Below he could see the tidal waves cascading as waterfalls from the temple's foundations, swallowing parts of the streets. Citizens scattered for dry land and were swept away onto the main road. "A—anyway, take us to that vessel. I'm dropping off Cid and Brother."

Spectators screamed and pointed fingers at the surreal sight in the sky. After casting its shadows over the buildings, it came to land in the ocean just beside the vessel. It bobbed up and down as the two Al Bhed fumbled onto the deck. Rin came dashing out with his followers just then; the waves had helped them get to their escape faster. With some of the Al Bhed standing on guard and most of them retreating to the cabin, Cid thanked him profusely.

"Get up there and rescue your girl, son," he encouraged Tidus, making his face heat up. "I don't want to see you until my niece is safe. We'll all be returning to Bikanel. Until next time."

With that, the airship boosted out to the ocean and took off again, this time making a difficult arc toward the top of the temple and surging forward. Tidus carefully made his way to the deck. Balancing against the mast with his dungarees whipping his lower legs, he crooked a smirk at all the fancily-dressed attenders as they cowered from the noise. Mika was the priest at the top of the altar. His eyes bulged out of their sockets and his brittle legs rattled.

"N—no! The machina demon… it has been reborn and has unfurled its wings!" he cried to the wind, about to fall unconscious in the face of the terror.

Geosgaeno aligned them in front of the altar and readied the cannons, but the bride caught Tidus' eyes.

"I'm here," he whispered with a tiny smile.

Despite the situation, he was taken by Yuna's much-missed beauty until the entire platform was sprayed with smoke bombs. Only the top of the altar remained. Most of the attenders and security finally gave in and fell back to the interiors of the towers, but Seymour persevered and trekked up the steps, his bride in struggling tow.

"I can't believe it. Even the Purifico didn't stop you!" he yelled to the giant shadow, violently throwing Yuna onto the ceremonial stage and seizing her arm. He turned to a blubbering, tearful Mika who couldn't form a full sentence. He was clutching onto a thick black book and nearly dropped it with his quivering state. "I can't stand your incompetence any longer! Give me that. You never deserved my magic."

He snatched the book out of Mika's arm and sent him sprawling off the altar. His head narrowly avoided getting clobbered by the grappling hook which pierced the wall on Yuna's side. Quickly he opened it to the bookmarked page and began to chant a mantra in an unknown language, eyes fixated on his bride with every silver-tongued syllable.

Lashing winds enveloped Yuna. The air around her dropped to freezing temperatures, and every sound was muffled and overpowered by Seymour's inhumane chanting. Purple colours flitted across his pupils as his voice got deeper and raspier. She was incapable of movement. The dark spell in his eyes anchored her to the very spot as he slowly began to lean in to her lips.

She suddenly felt something intense – feelings she never knew could exist; they were a stone-shattering fear, an infernal anger and a confining sorrow. The very notion, the very thought that she would be Seymour's puppet – it awakened a power deep inside of her. One that she had been building up for two arduous months.

Seymour had finished reciting. She could feel the insufferable, sinful magic emanating from his lips. She could hear Tidus zipping down the rope from behind her. His very presence gave her hope. The hope – the reason – to continue living.

She broke free from Seymour's grasp, raised her hands and unleashed her suffering in the form of shapeless beams.

His screams were unlike anything she had ever heard in her life. He slumped to the floor, clawing at his face as the two different energies reacted in his eyes and mouth. He shrilled and shrilled. She didn't care.

With her senses returning to normal, she turned around to meet Tidus' bewildered, yet affectionate expression. She couldn't help but let her guard down and smile back. Two months without his dimpling smile, or his shining eyes. She felt the warmth return to her. His face she would never take for granted again.

He couldn't refrain from taking her white gloved hand in his black one. She couldn't refrain from reciprocating his gesture. They were about to speak to each other. They so eagerly awaited each other's voices—

"Guards, seize Yuna! Stop that traitor!"

—but instead, Tidus wrapped an arm around Yuna's waist and dislodged the grapple without warning. She squeaked and held onto him for dear life as they swung around in the air, with only a rope and a metal hook to support them. It bashed some of the guards over the head, and he kicked away the ones that were trying to get close. He called Geosgaeno through his earpiece to get him to raise the grapple. He tightened her hold on her to get her prepared.

In an instant they were whisked upwards. Just as the guards gave up and resorted to firearms. Their aim was no match for the airship's velocity however, as in no time they were on the deck and shielding themselves with the metal coating. He sheltered her within the cabin and commanded Geosgaeno to find another opening to the temple. They descended, keeping out of the guns' range as much as they could when they came across the windows.

He ordered Yuna to stay on the ship and Geosgaeno to pick him up when he contacted him. The grapple smashed the glass and the interior was shrouded with another smoke bomb. She protested for the sake of his safety, but he only cast a reassuring smile. With the engines now conserving as much mana as they could, he grabbed one of the hand-cannons, leapt from the deck and dived through the broken window, making a sharp detour into the temple while the smoke still covered him.

Auron had told him about the highly-secured chasm that Yuna had stumbled across. He weaved between the spaces and knocked out unsuspecting guards with the hunk of metal. He came across the giant doors while being hunted down by a posse. He ignited the cannon – his hands burning from the overheating cylinder – and blasted the doors to bits with the dense ammunition. Sparks spurted from the dying force-field. The effluvium made him suffocate and drop the cannon, shattering it. The distant rumbling of footsteps forced him to clumsily charge down the tunnel.

He was having withdrawals – the unwelcoming darkness made him feel like he was back underground. The shadow in pursuit was shooting off a freezing air and snuffing out the torches in front of him. The haunting voice called out from behind. Its footsteps echoed against the walls, desperate to claim its prey. It was exactly like the underground – no… it went back further than that. This was the night it all began.

A black wall crushed his hopes. His predator was slowly, but surely trailing behind. This couldn't be a dead end. It couldn't be over. He wanted to cry out. Instead he pounded his fists against the hard, cold… loose material. It swiftly swung open, revealing the secret chamber with blinding light. He could barely take in the artefacts, his sword, the objects on the table and the spherical crystal before he was assaulted with a numbing emptiness.

He wrapped his arms around his body and weakly stepped onto the marble floor. An uncontrollable trauma settled within his reflexes whenever he stared directly into the black and purple depths. It was ridiculous; he was losing control of his basic emotions. Tormenting hallucinations and headaches flashed in his head.

He needed answers. This void of negativity had taken his nightmares by the reins and trampled over his sleep. He approached Valefor's mask. She could reveal everything; she said that she knew everything. The pieces were all banding together.

If he was this fallen aeon – though he still fervently denied it – he could realise the reason for all these events.

His fingertips grazed the scarred wood, causing his insides to go weightless and the ground to lose its solidity. Shivers and convulsions pulsated through him. He forced himself to grip the mask, though he was surely losing strength. Valefor slowly appeared before him, her childish face solemn as always. But he also heard gasps and whispers coming from the other pedestals.

Two more figures rose from the artefacts in swirling lights. From the horn came a man he had seen before, but his features were now more pronounced. His lack of a shirt showed off his skinniness and deep tan. Silver ponytails draped from every space on his head. From the necklace came half a man and half a beast. He stood tall, brandishing bare bulging muscles with long, fiery hair. His chiselled face made astonished contact with Tidus'. He knew that they were Ixion and Ifrit.

All three of them started speaking at once. They stamped out each other's words with the desire to converse with the bewildered man. Tensions were running high. His attempts to quell the aeons' ramblings were all for naught. Sizzling and dissolving started occurring within the sphere, startling them all. The face of a masked man floated within the colours.

"Go to him. Tell him you can see me," Ixion muttered calmly.

"No! Don't listen to them!" Valefor pleaded. Her efforts to stop Tidus' movements toward the sphere were proven futile through her ethereal form. "Don't you recognise him?! You have no idea what you're getting into!"

"Uh… Shinryu?" Ifrit scratched his head, still making puzzled noises.

But he continued to ignore them and their relentless arguing. They couldn't stop him, after all. With the mask still in his hand he reclaimed his sword with the other, and drew closer to the distorted hologram. Beady eyes locked onto his. Suddenly he experienced an unknown surge of fear; his feet were now working against him. He rooted himself to the floor with all of his vigour.

"I—Ixion…" now his voice was escaping him. This fear – this appetite-stealing, bone-deflating sensation – had always been connected to those damning dark colours. "Ixion sent me—I can see him, I think…"

"…I see," the man responded after a long pause. "So you are the one Seymour told me about. He was right… you do look exactly alike, but…"

"Don't listen to him! He's gonna try it again!" Valefor shrieked in his ear. Tidus gritted his teeth in frustration. The lack of silence and his obliviousness were driving him crazy.

The man sighed deeply after his ponderings and laid eyes on the other two artefacts. Ixion and Ifrit both looked resentful yet subjective. "Tidus, will you do something for me? If you really can talk to the aeons, then… tell them that Yu Yevon is sorry for everything."

"You can just say that," Valefor spat bitterly. Her apparition began to dissolve at the fists as she looked to and fro the two men. "I'll never forgive you for Shinryu! Nothing you do will bring him back or justify yourself!"

And just like that, the voices started again. Valefor's raw anger fell on deaf ears. Ixion tried and failed to reason with her, leading to more disharmonious voices. Questions sprouted and toppled within Tidus' mind. Chaos. The pitches were clashing together and tormenting him, ignoring him. He always hated being left in the dark. They brought on the questions and it was now that they needed to answer.

He had blurted it out at the worst of times, with the worst of manners. He didn't regret it. Everyone slowly came to focus on him. He was surrounded by spirits. Spirits and a worshipped deity.

"Am I Shinryu?"

They completely ignored him, for another person stole their attention. His bellowing robes and intricate staff scraped against the gritty floor with every subtle step. He shot his feral, disfigured grin at the aeons and at the masked man. Tidus refused to turn around, even when his scorched claws made contact with his shoulder.

"Isn't it obvious?" Seymour's throat had been damaged by the earlier assault, but his raspy – almost soulless – tone suited him infinitely better. "You can't run now. I've seen through you."

He directed his glassy eyes to the mask in his hand with an amused curve in his lips. He slowly stretched out his fingers and eased them toward it. Tidus felt his frigid attempts, snatched the mask to his chest and held out his sword. Seymour couldn't help but chortle loudly. He flipped his staff onto its opposite end and held the jagged stake to Tidus' neck.

"You'd still protect little Valefor? As I thought. Only you would still care about that brat. I'm surprised he hasn't jumped for your face, High Lord. Strange how he's come back…"

He sounded so sincere. It was perplexing and yet… horrifying. Tidus' willpower was draining away by the second; he almost felt inclined to believe his ambiguous assumptions. But why? Why should this lunatic's ramblings hold truth after everything he's done? Was he – an ordinary person with dreams and ambitions, who coincidentally stumbled into a news-worthy massacre – being mistaken for somebody else?

Would that mean Cid is a lunatic as well? Or Auron? Could they really be on the same side as the maester who was about to end his life?

"How many millennia has it been, Shinryu? Not enough, seeing how you're still pretending to be clueless as always," Seymour whispered harshly. His hands were quivering slightly. "It's all over. Your people have built me a nice superweapon right under our feet. Starting tonight, SIN's blood will replace your waters. Your cursed island will be demolished. And you and your Al Bhed agenda will cease to exist. My new Spira will end the suffering you caused!

And about Yuna… If you steal from me, I can steal from you. Just like all those years ago."

He chipped Tidus' neck with the stake. He gasped violently. Ripples shot through him and his mouth was filled with a coppery taste. His immediate reaction was to discard the mask, dive to his knees and retaliate with impaling the sword into Seymour's chest with both hands. The pain settled in. He started to cough up blood and an abundance of magical essence.

Seymour screamed that curdling noise again. He flailed about to dislodge the aquatic blade from his torso. Desperately clutching the wide tear in his skin, he fled up the chasm without another word. Tidus tilted his neck up toward the sphere as he felt the essence quickly heal his wound. In doing so, the masked man stared down at him with obscured emotions.

"Seymour wants to renovate everything in this room to Project Vegnagun, that superweapon. Before you go, I... I would suggest you take the artefacts, that mirror and anything else you can handle. If you want more answers, go to the island surrounded by storms."

He nodded. After all, he would trust anybody who was working against Seymour, no matter how unbelievable the situation was. He finally brought down his arms to take in the blade which he had not seen for two months. However, the sight hit him with dawning.

It was stained black.

"Get back in my cabin, missy!" Geosgaeno yelled at the brave, yet foolish summoner. She was dangerously close to the edge; the angle at which the ship was recoiling and rocking was too much for the safety railings to catch her. "I got a message from Tidus. He says Seymour's coming for you!"

"So you're just going to fly away?" Yuna responded flatly, still staring at the broken window just metres from the grapple cannon.

He stuttered, feeling more batches of mana stream from his thrusters with each passing second. Only a few minutes before they would empty out completely. "Well, we can't stay here forever. Either you get killed or we both plummet for miles! I'd never leave him in a place like that, but otherwise it's his fault."

"I don't care what comes our way," she spoke quietly, firmly gripping her staff until her knuckles turned white. "After all we went through we're not leaving without him."

Her eyes steeled themselves on the smashed glass and what little smoke remained, searching for a slither of yellow or a smudge of azure. She should have gone with him to find the artefacts, even if he so openly opposed it. Even then she would have heard his voice through overprotective lectures or his questions as she explained what she had heard in the chamber just a month prior. But she stayed behind, and was now facing the risk that she had missed her last chance to truly see him again.

'I can't think like this,' she shook her faltering head. 'I have to trust him. I've always relied on him since the start.'

Sure enough, a brawl could be heard from just behind the window. Tidus had come out victorious just by edging close to the open air and pointing his sword at the opposition. He turned to the ship and beckoned with his head. It got as close to the wall as it can, and Yuna helped by reaching for the small container in his hand.

With just enough time he lunged for the guards and knocked them to their feet with a few swipes. He made a sharp turn and half-cautioned, half-jumped for the deck. They both yanked the grapple from the wall and the ship blasted off, leaving an explosion of mana contrails on the walls and within the filthy break-in point.

Tidus noticed the stormy island off the south end of Bevelle; it was the same island that he had been wondering about the morning after he docked on the outskirts. Once he commanded Geosgaeno to descend toward it, he shot an exhausted smile in Yuna's direction, who in turn gave him an empathetic one. He gently took the hand that held the container and eased the both of them to the cabin.

But Yuna's senses were more tuned. She screamed his name and tackled them both to the ground. Just adjacent to his feet was where a combusted set of boards crackled away. They scuttled to their feet. Seymour jumped down from the awning with a heavy thud. His teeth-bearing grin spoke more than a thousand words as his fingers splintered one of the columns.

"Your invention makes for a good obstacle course."

But they heeded no attention to his taunts. They were instead drawn to the emblem-like creature crawling forth from his chest's inflicted wound. Black and purple fungus-like limbs wriggled and toiled from the decaying flesh down to his abdomen, which was now sickly discoloured.

On top of that, the swollen veins on his head were even more prevalent. His skin had turned pale and translucent, with dark shadows bruising him all throughout… He looked like one of the tricoloured fiends. A man cursed by sin.

"Yuna, this is your last chance," his voice cracked amidst his agony and insanity. He lurched for her with his claws, which seemed to be growing in length alongside their loss of colour. "Become my summoner, and we will rule the new Spira together! We will kill the monster that stands beside you!"

She looked down at the hand which she was already holding, and then to the misshapen one which was mutating before her eyes. Although they were deathly afraid, they failed to hold back tiny laughs of pure disbelief.

"I'm sorry. Who's supposed to be the monster?" she snapped back into seriousness, raising her staff and nearly ramming the tip into his transmogrifying face. "I'd never do anything to him or anything for you. Not even for the whole world."

She aimed the tip at his festering wound and charged up a spell. Upon realising her intentions, Seymour cried out, covered it with his claws and took a step back into the open. It turned out to be a bad idea. Geosgaeno took the chance to tilt the whole ship sideways. Tidus and Yuna slammed into the wall. Seymour cried out as he toppled over and frantically clung onto the safety railings. His lack of control over his growing power combined with the flimsy, unrefined metal was his literal downfall. His shrills were silenced by the spacious, yet disturbed ocean.

They didn't have a chance to take in the dark fluid pooling in the water, as they had already whizzed by it. The two of them regained their balance once they had their feet to themselves. They thought they finally had to time to relax. But then they heard sputters. Whizzes. The mana contrails ended. Geosgaeno bellowed a warning to them.

And then they took a steep dive. They were sent careening to the floor again. The ship made a violent impact with the ocean and it was nearly swallowed whole. Still it skimmed toward its destination with uncalled-for speed. Straight into the island's storm-wall.

The monsoon battered down on the deck, making the boards incredibly slippery and bruising the two of them. Geosgaeno raised the ship's wings in an attempt to shield them from the lashing tides, but it was a meaningless effort by then. Their hands slipped. They fell back to opposite sides.

They climbed and crawled by the dents of the planks to reach each other again, but it was just too unstable for them to succeed. They then made a stretch for the cabin, but they were losing consciousness from the lack of oxygen and… a song. A sweet, light lullaby that just barely reached them through the howling winds.

Despite the aching pain and the possibility of death, they began to feel drowsy. They fell just short of the awning's safety before the soothing music shut down their minds. Before Geosgaeno could awaken them with his boundless screeches, they were thrown overboard by an engulfing tidal wave.