XXI

Shadow of Sin

The sound of clawed feet steadily scuffed off hardened soil and up into the midday air. Rin had rewarded Braska's party for their courage in defeating the fiend outside the agency with a free Chocobo ride each. Such a feeble offering angered Jecht, who had labelled the crafty proprietor a tight ass. Rin had simply bowed and took it as a compliment.

The golden-feathered birds were swift on ground, their huge, bounding strides capable of speeds beyond any man. They were noble creatures, with prominent chests and plumes from their heads and rears. Chocobos had soft, black eyes and wide, curved beaks that always seemed to offer a smile. It was too bad their owners did not consider bathing them a high priority, Jecht thought with a repulsed expression.

He had seen one or two Chocobos in Zanarkand, but not put to such uses. They were extremely rare, mainly exotic pets for the particularly wealthy eccentrics whose company he had been forced to endure for his art. They were uncommon because a city that thrived on unerring technological progression had simply left them behind. Anything a Chocobo could do, a machina -machine- could do ten times better.

The creature handled pretty well, though. Slight tweaks of the leather straps tied to its beak altered its pace, while it veered naturally between obstacles but remained close to the pack.

For miles in all directions were plush green fields of long, windswept reeds. This winding dirt track had been ground bald over many centuries by many wandering feet. As the pilgrims ventured into areas of the Highroad more densely populated by fellow travellers, they slowed the speed of their Chocobos to a halt. The surroundings presented themselves a little more clearly now and Jecht realised that more ruined husks ruptured the clodding earth.

The dead. These remnants were of dead, ancient civilisations, preserved for all time. The Fiends they battled and sent to the Farplane were souls of the dead. Aeons were dreams of the dead made flesh. It seemed to Jecht that, in Spira, one commanded more power in death than in life. That dragon creature that had fought with them in Belvir was an Aeon, a dream of the Fayth and had crushed the Sin Spawn without breaking a sweat.

Most curiously, that indeterminable tune that ran through his mind every so often -the Hymn of the Fayth- was a song to soothe the souls of the dead. He knew the tune implicitly, but could not pinpoint where he had learned it. It had always resided at the back of his mind, maybe from his childhood. He'd heard others whistle it on the streets of Zanarkand too, so he wasn't the only one.

Braska approached a mound that hosted an especially dominant ruin of what was once a building top, its windows riddled by ivy. It was hollow now, allowing journeyers to step right inside and run their fingers along the dusty old stone of the past, become one with their world's most ancient history.

Jecht whistled appreciatively. "Beauty, ain't it. So, what's the story with this place? I see an awful lot of ruins around here, maybe more than anywhere else."

"Correct." Braska replied. "The Mi'ihen Highroad was once a city, a thousand years old. Until of course Sin annihilated it during its destructive baptism. There were many cities such as this, drawing the fury of the beast and they were unmade in such a short time. It shows that we are still weak as a people that Sin continues to attack us. We are truly paying for our short sighted dependency on machina."

This was the one legend of Spira that continued to not impress Jecht. It just seemed too convenient to him that this Sin was an elaborate manifestation of their own sins. It did not seem realistic to his rational mind.

There was a statue further on just to the right that required them to pivot in on themselves to identify it. It was of a beast of a man, standing triumphantly over a vanquished behemoth, his blade sank deep into its back. The man was indubitably a warrior, from his burly physique, to his formal armour and blade.

His flowing dark hair swept back over his scalp, blending into the rugged sideburns and stubble on his face. Jecht was amazed at how meticulous the sculptors of these statues really were, that they would so passionate about their work as to include facial stubble in an alarmingly realistic statue. All such tributes in Spira featured similar levels of loving detail.

His garments were a battle of functionality and ceremony. He wore a breastplate like Auron. It was metallic and golden, and also in a state of disrepair, missing sections revealing a leather under section. He wore a silken white kilt over grey leggings and brown leather boots. Around his waist was another, thicker kilt. More like a cape that had started at his hips, the sculptor had designed it so it blended into the rock.

Tied to his left shoulder and scaling all the way down his arm was an oblong shield. In his right hand, he grasped tightly the shaft of his weapon: a blade, somewhere between a conventional sword and the anchor of a ship. At one end was the curved edge and at the other, a double hook, presumably for snagging the weapon of a foe. The blade was enormous; the fact that this man could wield it, let alone pick it up, was testament to the power he possessed.

"Wow, who is this guy?"

"That is Lord Mi'ihen." said Auron, with an undisputed tone of respect. "Remember those Crusaders we ran into at Djose Temple? Mi'ihen is their founder. Eight hundred years ago, he founded the Crimson Blades –now the Crusaders."

It surprised Jecht that Auron knew so much about the Crusaders. From what he could gather from their confrontation with those boneheads outside the temple, the Crusaders and the Warrior Monks hardly got along. But then, maybe it paid to keep your enemies closer.

"Their growing ranks caused concern to the Maesters of Yevon, who suspected a potential uprising." Auron continued. "So, Mi'ihen walked alone from the Oldroad all the way to Bevelle to have showdown talks with the Maesters, stopping along the way at Djose Temple to gather supplies. He won over the priests there and then the Maesters, and Yevon sanctioned them the 'Crusaders'. They serve to protect towns and villages from Sin and its spawn."

"Hey, you're beginning to sound like that old fart in the green hat." This brought a smirk to Auron and Braska's lips.

The summoner's dismount from his Chocobo signalled for his guardians to reciprocate. He approached the Al Bhed handler and offered her the reins with a dutiful smile.

The view physically knocked Jecht back on his heels. From amidst the dense forest and the bay erupted this vibrant, pulsing city! Though not able to hold a candle to Zanarkand in terms of area, it was very much a sight for his sore eyes.

Auron presented the city to Jecht with a beckoning arm. "Behold: the city of Luca."

Mingling hundreds of feet above the buildings was a legion of hot air balloons: tall, thin and in a spectrum of colours, they allowed excited families the chance to view their beloved city amongst the birds. Jecht had noticed that the ruins dotted throughout the broken plains of Spira had been somewhat similar in design to those of his home city. Here, he could see that Zanarkand and the rest of Spira had similar architecture; the only obvious difference was that Luca was relatively conservative, the buildings all bunched up tidily around a plaza in the centre. The city that never slept was risqué in its design, maybe even dangerous at times, but so much more wondrous. He imagined this same view at night being dull, with no iridescence.

Many of the buildings were tall, elegant stupas of many colours, while others were low and wide. The cobbled streets were of white stone, as were the shafts of many of the buildings, giving Luca a bright, clear look. Though jostling with hundreds of people, the city seemed at peace, with fear a mere distant murmur. Jecht modified that thought; it wasn't a city without fear, it was a city that didn't give a damn. They actually had lives here, he imagined, and Sin was not constantly at the forefronts of their minds.

In the far distance, sitting in the maws of the bay, was a structure he could not quite determine, probably the temple. His eyesight wasn't what it once was. There seemed to be much activity going on down there though, with the teeming masses heading in their droves over the bridge that connected it to the mainland. A distant sound of a horn bounced off the ocean surface and up into his ears. It reminded him of the harbour back home. Almost everything about this place did, but then, he had been away for a long time.

After making their way down a flight of steps onto a stone walkway, Jecht was now able to make out that structure dead ahead, at the far end of the city. "Blitzball!" he exclaimed, leaning so far over the iron handrail in his excitement he nearly fell. "I didn't know there was a Blitzsphere in Spira." Another connection.

For a moment, he was sent hurtling back to the waves of fans cramming the aisle that led to the Zanarkand dome, the one he had cockily strode hundreds of times throughout his illustrious career en route to another show-stopping performance.

Luca stadium was built up around a glass sphere that encased the Blitzsphere and the stands. The glass was out in the open of day, but also featured a retractable roof for evening fixtures and bad weather. The structure around it was a well-crafted combination of curved, white painted steel and stone. Five sheltered offshoots sprouted from the centre like fingers from a palm, with ships sailing from all directions to dock at them.

Descending further into the heart of the city, they entered the city's main plaza: a series of commercial buildings and offices rammed together, all revolving around a stone monument with a towering crystal erupting from the top, in the style of a sword. It reminded Jecht of the Diamond Cup he had won innumerate times, the way light shimmered from its smooth surface.

Crammed in between a café and the stacked Blitzball Broadcasting Company building was a small but popular haunt. Numerous fans, decked out in various Blitz merchandise, shuffled along the orange carpeted walkway that led to the building's wooden entrance. Above the aisle was an archway festooned by a single word. The three innocuous letters hit Jecht full in the face: BAR. He felt an internal twinge, like that of a muscular injury, only so much more profound. Jecht realised that while he could try to quit the drink, the drink would not quit him so easily. He'd been fighting fiends and thoroughly enjoying it, taking on Sin and generally being more responsible. He had ventured into realms of his own heart previously uncharted and revelled in it. He had been sucked in by Spira and forgotten all about his old addiction; indeed, he go as far as saying Spira had become his new addiction. Only here in Luca, a city comparable to Zanarkand in a backward kind of way, was he reminded that he was still trying to go cold turkey. The thought turned his stomach into a bottomless pit.

"Are you okay, Jecht?" asked a concerned Braska. "You look pale..."

"Nothing a beer wouldn't fix..." he said absently.

"A beer?"

"Sorry." the blitzer uttered, slapping his hand to his forehead.

"Don't be. I can't imagine it's easy for you, to just stop."

"No, no. Fact is, this is the first I thought of it since the Moonflow."

"A lot has happened to distract you." Jecht's eyes fluttered down to the floor like the path of a falling sheet of paper. "It's all right. You can talk if you want. I won't judge you."

"It's just..." Jaw clenched and eyes staring pointedly at the ground, Jecht found himself struggling to stay above the surface again, all of sudden. "It's just that I didn't even have to buy myself a drink back in Zanarkand. I'd stroll into a bar, just like that one there, and it'd be, 'Hey Jecht, what're ya drinkin'?', 'Oh look, it's Jecht! Wouldn't it be great if I bought him a drink? That'd sure make me look cool!' Everyone used to buy me a drink, all the time thinkin' they were the only one, that it made them special. But everyone bought me one, and I couldn't refuse."

Even packed in amongst the cheerful fans and even his two comrades, Jecht felt utterly alone for a chilling few seconds. It was always that same feeling, when he was backed into a corner and forced to face it. There was nobody who could help him, not even Braska, whose sincere, but ultimately useless smile could not even scratch the surface of Jecht's problems. Even his loving wife did not know the extent of the demons that tortured him, and he was not one who would lay it out to her, or anyone else, but deal with it in his own way, brood on it and let it eat him up inside. Instead, he raised a shield, or more specifically, a mask of arrogant macho bravado to hide his weakness from the world. Sickness was weakness, after all, and weakness would not do.

The Blitz ace realised he had come dangerously close to lowering his guard beyond acceptable limits and slipped his mask back into place. He spotted in his periphery a small, balding man trying to offer odds on the upcoming Blitzball tournaments. Looking rather down on his luck, he spoke frantically, spewing the prices he was offering on the Luca Goers to win. No one was naïve enough to take bets against the Goers, not since the Belvir Warriors team had been so recently decimated by Sin.

Jecht caught his eye inadvertently and the fat man jerked as though to shuffle towards him, but the Blitzer gave a curt shake of the head, effortlessly able to decline his offer of a bet.

With his addictive personality, it would be easy to imagine Jecht hitting the bookies with relish, but he never did; he had seen what it could do to a man. There were many solid Blitzers that he had seen fall away to fund their extravagant pastime. Gambling... definitely the worst sort of addiction. Next to those guys, Jecht felt better about his own problem, if only a little. Of the three "Sportsman's habits", his was by far the tamest. Too often did he take a warped sense of pride from that knowledge.

At least with Blitzball it was black and white, simple; escapism at its best. Playing was a drug too, but one that could not lead to self destruction. Drink, narcotics, gambling were the by-product of the sport, or more specifically, of the pressures that came with the sport, of being a role model. He wondered if the Blitz stars of Spira were the same. Maybe not, he couldn't imagine it being so important here as it was back home. In Zanarkand, it was the only religion the people had, the stadium its only altar. In Spira, how could the fans possibly kick back and enjoy themselves while constantly cast in the shadow of Sin?