Chapter 20: Desert Heat
By mid-day, Seifer had sand in places that he'd never had sand before. Every inch of exposed skin felt gritty, and his clothing was chafing against him as if it were woven out of heavy-duty twine. Though his chocobo had gone from fresh lemony yellow to a sour golden hue, it didn't seem bothered by either the dirt or the heat from the sun that was burning oppressively in the cloudless, metallic-blue sky. When they reached a small, muddy oasis flanked by a few scrappy trees, Seifer was relieved to swing off his chocobo's back and collapse into the meager shade.
"We're about halfway there," Lieutenant Gilder said. Despite the heat, he had yet to take off his helmet or any other piece of his uniform. "This is the only oasis between base camp and the site. Our chocobos need a break, but as soon as they're rested we've got to leave, so don't get too cozy."
Seifer watched his chocobo scoop up water in its beak, bobbing and swallowing. The other birds crowded around it. And soon, Seifer's shade was filled by his companions as well: Fujin and Raijin under his tree; Quistis, Zell, and Dr. Shipey under another. They were all silent, even Zell, which was an especially welcome blessing since he had talked non-stop all morning long about Ancient Centra, lunar cries, chocobo racing, and desert survival tips that Seifer thought he'd probably learned in cub scouts.
"It's not going to be this hot up there, is it?" Zell asked as he fanned himself with both hands.
"Probably not," Lt. Gilder replied. "Stays nice and balmy up in the mountains this time of year."
"How far up in the mountains are we talking?" Quistis asked.
Lt. Gilder shrugged. "I don't know exactly. There's a trail that goes right up, over, and into a valley. You'll see. We should make it by nightfall."
"At least we haven't run into many monsters," Raijin said. His optimism was surprising seeing as he went back moments later to picking grains of sand from between his teeth with one filthy, blunt finger.
"It's too damn hot for monsters," Seifer replied. "They're smarter than us, hiding away in a cool cave somewhere until the sun goes down."
When they mounted up and got back on the trail, Seifer thought his chocobo felt heavy and sluggish, glutted with water. Fucking thing will probably up and die from drinking too much, he thought. If not now, then he figured it certainly would five days down the road when whatever parasites that were living in the fetid oasis finally caught up to it. He kicked the bird hard in the sides as they lagged behind the group.
A nagging sense of disappointment clung to him. When he'd watched Laguna Loire travel the world on choco-back in The Sorceress's Knight, it hadn't been anything like this. Laguna's pale bird had been impeccably groomed with beautiful, gossamer feathers. And it had been trained to jump and fly on command. He felt like he was riding a scruffy, stupid mutt in comparison. Plus, Laguna had sat on top his steed as if it were the most natural, comfortable place in the world, whereas Seifer was beginning to get sore. He'd never figured riding would be physically difficult, and the growing pain in his thighs and ass were really beginning to interfere with the romance of his boyhood dreams.
Quistis fell back to ride beside him as they continued on toward the site. He glanced at her long enough to notice that she was dirty, and somehow it made her prettier.
The mountain range they were approaching ran down the middle of Centra and was mostly bare rock capped with snow on the highest peaks. In the far south and the far north a humid ocean breeze allowed trees to grow along the slopes, but the stretch they were heading toward now looked bleak and desolate.
"You sure there's something out here?" he asked no one in particular. "I thought everything down here was destroyed."
"A lot of it is," Dr. Shipey replied. "But some things survived, mostly in ruin. None of them have much writing though. The place we're going is special."
Seifer thought that was a nice way of saying the place they were going was so far out in the middle of nowhere that even monsters coming from the moon didn't bother with it. He wondered how anyone had discovered the ruin to begin with but was afraid to ask, hesitant about sparking another lecture from Dr. Shipey who didn't know how to answer a question in anything less than five hundred words.
When they finally reached the foothills of the mountains, Lt. Gilder instructed them to line up single file, and they made their way along a hard, beaten path traveling up the loose slopes. It was an old goat path, Dr. Shipey told them, used up until the desert had consumed the last of the good grazing land in the area a few dozen years ago. In a few places, the derelict trail had been washed out by rainfall from sudden cloudbursts, but their chocobos cleared the ragged gaps with ease. The path slowly tapered and the grade became steeper until it became little more than a switch-backing ledge going up the mountainside.
"My ears are plugged," Zell whined.
"Yawn and they'll pop," Lt. Gilder replied.
Zell spent the next twenty minutes yawning elaborately, working his jaw around in circles and digging his fingers into his ears. On the bright side the intense heat was beginning to abate, giving way to the cooler, thinner warmth of the mountains. Seifer was still sweating, but it was coming down off his forehead in rivulets now rather than streams.
As their trail curled between two peaks, scraps of vegetation began to appear, starting with yucca and bushy Centran thistle. Seifer's chocobo bent over as they passed a bunch of bright, purple flowers, ripped the plant out by the roots, and chewed leisurely. Seifer saw it swallow the snack only halfway, its craw bunching like an Adam's apple under its beak. Disgusting animals, he thought.
The sky was growing pink when they finally crossed over the top of the pass, revealing the startling valley beyond. It wasn't green exactly, but in the middle of the world's largest desert, it looked like a verdant paradise. A thick river sparkled like liquid fire in the sunset, meandering between wild fruit trees and punctuated by huge, island pillars of rock jutting up into the sky. They were wide and flat, topped with crumbling buildings interconnected by ancient, ratty bridges. Running parallel to the old bridges, someone had installed hasty new walkways made out of yellow nylon rope and wooden planks. Snuggled against the mountainside, away from the river, a shanty-town of tents was flapping idly in the breeze.
"This is the only place this river comes to the surface at," Dr. Shipey said as they started down a steep incline into the valley. "Just a few miles downstream, it goes back underground. It rises here with winter runoff and causes the erosion you see in the softer rock." He paused, looked over his shoulder triumphantly. "I told you this place was special."
"What was it?" Quistis asked. "A town?"
"No one knows for sure whether it was a functioning town or just some kind of hermitage. Some of the old Estharan histories call it Eram, but only in reference to people traveling there and back."
"Hot damn!" Zell whistled. "I know it's wrong to think so, but right now I'm kinda glad this whole Hyne thing has happened. I mean...excavating in Trabia, in the Tomb of the Unknown King, exploring the Dollet Catacombs: how much cooler could it get?"
Seifer thought Zell was probably in the wrong business if a few old buildings was what made him weak in the knees but for once kept the thought to himself. He was a little impressed this time around as well. It was hard not to feel close to something important here. For the first time, he felt like he might really be walking in Vascaroon's footsteps. This was just the sort of place he could imagine the ancient hero whiling away his days.
"Hey!" Another soldier waved to them from the tents. "We're keeping the chocobos over there, on the other side of the camp!" He gestured wildly with his arm.
Lt. Gilder acknowledged him, then dismounted and handed his reins to Fujin. "You take her in for me."
"Why should she?" Seifer asked. "What'll you be busy doing besides scratching your ass?"
"I've got to sit down and meet with my men -- lots of people to debrief. There are extra tents; you'll have to put up your own."
For the first time, Lt. Gilder took off his helmet. He was young, maybe approaching thirty, and unremarkable. His wasn't a face Seifer would remember.
Seifer watched as the soldier walked away, shouting a loud hello to his comrades. He supposed that the man thought he was important, that his life and existence were at the center of all things. Lots of people thought that, but only a few were actually right. Seifer meant to be one of the latter. He'd made certain his entire life to be at the epicenter of everything, and it gave him a chill of self-satisfaction to think that his presence here in Eram was vastly more critical than any of the Galbadians, or Raijin, or Fujin, or even Quistis and Zell. They needed him to defeat Squall -- he was the linchpin.
They dismounted onto rubbery legs and walked stiffly around the camp, down a nylon walkway to where the chocobos were being stabled among a grove of citrus trees. The air was sweet and fresh, warm but crisp from the river flowing slowly nearby. The chocobos needed no rubbing down: Seifer's pulled eagerly out of its bridle the moment he unhooked it and then flew up into a nearby tree where its weight sagged the branches, knocking off a few, unripe fruits. A cacophony of bird calls erupted out of the other chocobos already there.
Quistis crumpled to the ground. "I'd like to lie down and sleep for a few days. And maybe take a hot bath. I'm so sore, I can hardly walk."
"AGREED." Fujin dropped beside her.
"I don't know if it's true," Dr. Shipey said, "but I've read that there's baths here."
Quistis laughed. "You shouldn't tease, Professor."
"I'm not. The Ancient Centrans had very well developed water infrastructure. They built lots of irrigation systems and baths; they prized fresh water. You should hear some of the descriptions of the gardens they built..."
"And these baths still work?" Seifer asked.
"It's not really a matter of working," Dr. Shipey replied. "They're fed by the river. They're always full."
Quistis got up. "Well, it's a cold bath, but better than nothing I guess. Where's it at?"
Shipey didn't know for sure and said they would need to explore. The Galbadians seemed content to let them wander, apparently unconcerned that the excruciatingly saddle-sore group would get very far, and no one said anything to them as they hobbled past the collection of tents into the ruin. The city was filled with cryptic buildings, a few of them decorated with reliefs of people, others with abstract mosaic floors that were partially covered in dirt. The one Dr. Shipey eventually led them into was relatively intact compared to the rest, but was missing one wall. A pool-sized area in the floor was filled with still, dark water.
Quistis bent over and dipped her fingers in.
"Hey." She smiled. "It's not bad."
"The bottom of the bath is painted black to draw in heat from the sun. It warms the shallow water quite effectively," Dr. Shipey explained. "They stay in good shape here in Centra, there just aren't enough plants or bacteria here to muck them up. But I've heard of a couple that turned into horrible, rotting ponds in Galbadia."
"Hell. Looks good to me," Zell said. He started to pull his shirt over his head.
"FIRST!" Fujin bellowed, jabbing her chest with her finger.
"It's big enough. We don't have to take turns." Zell tossed his shirt to the ground and started unbuttoning his pants.
"Fuck. Hold on, Chicken Wuss! There's no way I'm going to get in there naked with another man," Seifer said, his stomach turning at the thought of seeing Zell any more undressed than he was now.
"Oh!" Zell stopped abruptly. "Uh...yeah. Me neither. So, what? You guys wanna take turns?"
Fujin got to go first, then Zell. Everyone else walked back to the camp and started setting up their tents as far away from the main group of Galbadians as possible. Seifer drove the final stake into his right as the sun went down and held the flap open so that Raijin, fresh from the bath, could survey his work. It must have been satisfactory, because Raijin climbed in and didn't come back out.
In the dim light remaining, Seifer saw Quistis start off on the trail into the ruin and jogged to get ahead of her. He knew that if he got there first, she would let him go in front of her, and he didn't want to be the last one up, stumbling around this dead city in the dark. She was slow, her gait pained, so he easily beat her to the bath. Wet footprints paced back and forth across the stone floor, making it cold and clammy against his feet as he pulled off his boots and socks, tossing them aside. Hastily, he tucked his arms into his shirt as well and worked the dusty, wretched thing off. He'd be in, back out, and in bed within five minutes. And sleep was sounding damn good.
Quistis turned the corner and stopped. "Hey! Seifer!" Her eyes were narrow and her mouth was set in a hard line when he glanced at her. "It's supposed to be my turn next!"
"I already started," he replied.
"So?"
"So...I'm practically already wet. You should let me go."
"You're not wet, and it's my turn." She was being more stubborn than he'd anticipated.
"Look. I'm here, I'm half naked...the ball is rolling. You can wait just a couple minutes while I clean up. It's not a big deal."
"If it weren't a big deal, then you'd be the one waiting. I'm hot. I'm tired. I'm dirty. And I want my goddamn bath."
He was surprised to hear her curse, and was even more surprised when she didn't so much as glance away from his face when he unzipped his pants, the metallic, unraveling sound passing her by without ruffling a single hair.
"Well, I'm hot and tired and dirty, too," he replied. "Maybe you should share."
An expression of hard fury raged across her expression like a brush fire. He saw her fingers clench around the change of clothes she'd brought with her. And, like a gunshot, she yelled, "Fine!"
Seifer felt a brief stab of guilt, but the feeling was abruptly overwhelmed as Quistis stomped past him to the edge of the bath and bent over to take off her shoes.
He watched in mute fascination, afraid to interrupt, eager to see how far she would go. Their tense, almost awkward kiss in the training center and her dismissal of him in her dorm room had led him to believe she was the shy type, afraid of her body and what it could do. But here she was in the middle of nowhere, standing in the silver light of the rising moon, unfastening the buttons running down the front of her shirt, her hair hanging loose in a wild mane of wind-blown tangles. And he felt a spasmodic, embarrassing lurch of lust.
"God." He reached out and stilled her hands as they moved to peel her blouse apart. "Stop."
"Why? I'm not kicking you out. Take your damn turn. I don't care."
She pulled at her shirt again, revealing the soft, inner curve of one breast vanishing into creamy lace.
"Do you always have to be such a selfish bully?" she demanded when he pulled her shirt shut, the tips of his fingers brushing her bare skin. "Isn't there even a shred of decency in you?"
He thought what he was doing at the moment was pretty damn decent and told her so.
"That's not what I mean," she snapped. "It's this whole attitude you have. You spend all of your time insulting me, demeaning me, and then you expect all of these favors as if we're the best of friends. You undermine my authority in front of the other team members. And you don't even seem to feel the faintest bit of guilt over what you've done. So what's the deal?"
Words were tumbling unchecked out of her mouth. He looked down at her, and he saw that she was teetering on the edge, in the same sort of mood she'd been when she tried to strangle him in Dollet. She was tired, her defenses were down, and he'd pushed some wrong button. Now he wasn't sure whether he wanted to un-do it or ride out the wave.
"That's just who I am," he said.
"Yeah! An ass!"
Her voice bounced off the stone walls of the bath, echoing back to them off the mountains. She covered her mouth after she said it, whether from actual regret or to keep from screaming further Seifer wasn't sure. But, absurdly, he wanted to rip her hand from her lips and kiss her. And he was going to, until something shuffled out of a crack in the partial ceiling and dropped with a plop into the water.
"What the hell...?" Seifer took a step toward the bath as something splashed and scuttled, heading toward the edge.
"Seifer." Quistis grabbed his hand, her voice hushed. "Step back. I think that might be a--"
She didn't get the opportunity to finish before the creature -- a cactaur -- leapt onto the dry stone, gurgled, and scissored its blunt, stiff arms at them, releasing thorns like shrapnel from a grenade. Seifer felt no pain, though a hail of thorns hit him in the arm and the back as he spun around and grabbed Quistis, trying to pull her down, out of the brunt of the attack. He saw three huge thorns fly through the shoulder of her shirt and stick in the flesh there before they tumbled painfully to the ground together. The cactaur made a throaty sound and ran away, bare of thorns for the moment, its smooth body twitching off into the night.
Quistis groaned.
"Shit. Sorry." He sat up with her.
"I tried to warn you. You never listen." He chose not to remind her that she had been the one to scare out the cactaur, electing instead of watch silently as she peeked over her shoulder at the damage and sighed, her posture sinking. "I'm way too tired for this."
Despite his pride, and perhaps because he was so exhausted as well, Seifer didn't want to do battle with Quistis tonight. He searched his mind for some way to make amends.
"Here...I'll pull them out for you if you pull them out for me. Deal?"
He took her silence as agreement and drew her close. One by one, he pulled the thorns out of her shoulder, pressing his fingers to the little trickles of blood that came free and stained her shirt with black blossoms.
She leaned into him, wincing, her cheek pressing against his collarbone, her hair in his face. And then it was her turn.
Seifer allowed a strange silence to fall over them as she shifted to sit behind him, her hands moving over his shoulders, easing between the thorns and prying them loose, gentle healing magic flowing slowly from her skin into his. For a long time, he sat still and let her work. He looked out over Eram rising in platinum and shadow from the valley floor, and he felt something stir deep in his heart, pulsing to the rhythm of Quistis's gentle hands, the tug and sharp pain of the thorns, and the weariness from a hard day's travel in the sun. He felt his eyes growing heavy and dreams danced across his brain of an ancient sword sitting on top an alter at the edge of the ruin, last held as Vascaroon cleaved it through Hyne's immortal flesh.
When Quistis was done, dropping the last thorn into a pile at his elbow, she leaned in front of him.
"That's it," she said.
He swept one hand through her thick, blonde hair, and kissed her.
It wasn't passionate or possessive or any of the other ways Seifer usually kissed women. She tasted warm, sweet, and innocent. He felt her sag against him, her hands gripping his shoulders. He pulled her around into his lap, then kissed her again, one hand at the small of her back, the other buried in her hair, bringing her down until his sore back touched the cold, wet floor.
Thinking of the way she had tended to him, he held her close and peeled back her shirt from the wounds he hadn't bothered to heal on her shoulder. Now, his eyes closed, his cheeks warmed by her breath, he pressed his palm over the tender area and funneled magic into her. He'd almost forgotten he had any cure spells at all -- he never used them, didn't usually like the way regenerative magic felt, spicy and penetrating. But she sighed and moved against him when she felt the spell ease the pain from the cactaur attack and her stiff, travel weary muscles.
Seifer had done a lot of things in his time. But he'd never done this -- whatever it was. It felt dangerously intimate, like having Ultimecia inside his head, pulling every rapturous string.
Quistis murmured something against his shoulder and her legs slipped to either side of his own.
He ran his hand down from her shoulder to her hip and hooked his fingers on the top of her pants. He pushed them over the rise of her upturned bottom and felt her smooth, cotton underwear underneath which he held in place with one hand while urging her pants down her legs with the other until she kicked out of them.
Thoughtlessly, Seifer squeezed the back of her thigh. And she winced and pulled away.
"Oh fuck. I'm a damn moron. I forgot." He looked up at her, hoping he could still salvage the moment. He eased her to him again, listened to her sigh, and felt her pulse in her throat when he kissed here there. But the haze, the world constricted to him and her, was dissolving back into desert, exhaustion, and conflict.
Before their peace was all gone, she smiled down at him and said, "Let's take a bath."
They bathed together in their underwear, silent. It wasn't warm, but after an entire day spent under the sun, Seifer thought slightly cool felt just right.
0 0 0
Irvine looked through the rearview mirror in his rented car and watched the city of Esthar sink into the distance. He was driving straight out into the desert, past the Sorceress Memorial and past Tear's Point to a power relay for the city's protective fence. Selphie was in the passenger seat, working on a laptop sitting open across her lap. She brought up a glowing green map of the continent and highlighted one of multiple red dots marking the locations of equipment critical to keeping the barrier up. The relay they were heading to now had failed twice in the past five years and was currently designated "faulty" on their map. The mechanic with her toolbox in the back seat was along to fix it, and Selphie and Irvine were charged with protecting her.
"I think we're still too far north," Selphie said. "Turn that way a little."
"How can you tell? Let's just drive until we hit the fence and figure out where we are from there."
It was the middle of the night. The whole desert was pitch black and seemed exceptionally dark after coming from the city. Irvine's headlights hardly penetrated the inky veil, illuminating only a few rocks and the sporadic eyes of nighttime creatures.
"Sir Laguna said we need to get on this as soon as possible," Selphie reminded him. "And I'm pretty sure it's that way. I think I've seen it before, when we were here to get Rinoa."
He turned the wheel a little to humor her.
"Can you bring up notes from the last inspection for me?" the mechanic asked. "I'd like to get some idea of what we're going to find."
Selphie pointed and clicked her way to a document that looked like it had been produced on a typewriter and then scanned into the computer later.
"I meant the most recent one."
"This is the most recent one."
"Guess that explains why it's broken," the mechanic said, her voice flat.
She was unaware that at any given moment during their mission she might be snapped up and eaten like Tonberry had been on the beach in Galbadia. The monsters still left over from the lunar cry two years before posed enough of a danger to the average person to warrant the escort, so she hadn't questioned why two SeeDs were driving her. Laguna had been quietly shuttling people across the sea from Balamb all day long. And Xu had already set up shop in the Presidential Palace. But walking the calm streets of downtown Esthar one wouldn't know the government was preparing for an onslaught. Even for this simple mission, Irvine and Selphie were both equipped with two of Garden's strongest guardian forces: Doomtrain and Diablos.
"There!" Selphie bounced in her seat, almost throwing the laptop to the floor. "I think that's it!"
Irvine pulled to a stop in front of a small, dark building and turned off the car. "It's a whole building?" he said. "I thought it'd just be some kind of green box." He turned around and looked at the mechanic, doubtful now that she alone would be able to do anything to fix the problem.
They got out of the car without turning the headlights off. Out in the desert, nothing stirred. Only Selphie's Strange Vision was moving, swinging free in her right hand, already charged and sparking with thunder magic. The mechanic walked up to the door, flipped open a panel, and began punching numbers into the display.
"There hasn't been an actual repair here in over seven years," she muttered, gesturing to a slip of paper taped to the inside of the panel. "Why isn't anyone staying on top of this?"
When the door hissed open, Irvine buttoned his coat and followed the mechanic and Selphie inside. Somewhere up ahead, he could hear the girl flipping switches and throwing levers. Half the lights came on and the other half flickered in their sockets and went out. Inside, the small structure was filled with obscure metal boxes rooted to the ground and long wires strung across the ceiling, the floor, and the walls. Far in the back, a generator hummed.
"This might take a while," she said. So Irvine and Selphie walked outside together, turned off the car's headlights, and waited like sentries on either side of the door.
Beyond the light spilling out of the relay station, Irvine couldn't make out much. His eyes chased phantom streaks of color and bits of moonlight, but nothing resolved into anything solid. He was beginning to relax, beginning to feel confident that the monster had stayed in the salt flats and wasn't smart enough to try his luck this far up the fence, when the mechanic stuck her head out the door.
"I think there's a problem with the transformer," she said. "I'm going to have to shut it down for a few minutes to take a look at it, and it's going to knock this portion of the fence out. I can't work on it when it's got power running through it."
"How much of the fence does this power?" Selphie asked.
She shrugged. "I don't know. What's it matter?"
"Just be quick," Irvine replied. "If it's something you can't fix right away, just power it back up, and we'll come back later."
She nodded and walked back inside. Moments later, he heard something wheeze and settle, and a flicker ran like a streak of lightning across the desert as the stretch of wall came down. Now was the time for vigilance -- he stepped away from the relay station, out into the dark, and waited for his eyes to adjust.
Something tickled his brain. A sound maybe, soft and steady. Or paranoia, perhaps.
"Hear that?" he whispered to Selphie.
"What?"
The mechanic was humming now, irritating and loud. Over that and the sound of her tools, Irvine couldn't clearly make out the punctuation of his own heartbeat, but a shiver crept across his skin. He turned and looked at their idle car, awash in gray light, but nothing moved. Out across the hard, baked earth, not even an imp cried. But he couldn't shake the feeling that there was an odd sound in the mix, like a single note out of tune in a symphony.
"Shit," the mechanic cursed. "It's really hosed. We're going to have to come back. Should hold out for a little while; I replaced one part. But this whole thing looks like it needs some serious attention."
"Fire it up again then, and let's go," Irvine said.
She muttered under her breath about bad bureaucracy and the inspectors not doing their jobs as she worked. The box she had turned off, the transformer, came back to life with a shudder and an electric hum. Irvine's hair stuck to the back of his coat and the side of his face as the charge to create the fence built up, and then exploded outward, racing across the sand and sketching huge honeycombs across the black sky like a quilt of velvet and diamonds. In amongst the folds, before the storm of fresh current settled, he saw something close to him move -- just a spattering of spots against the ground.
He didn't have time to react before he found himself sprawled face first in the rocky soil. His chin hit hard, cracking his teeth together.
"Irvine?"
A growl, and something caught the bottom of his coat, pulling him over onto his back. Blindly, he reached out with Exeter, and as soon as he felt the barrel come into contact with solid flesh, he pulled the trigger. The recoil wrenched his arm, but he saw a flash of orange fur and fired a second time. And a third.
"Irvy!" Selphie skidded up to him, nearly crashing over his prone body. A ball of fire was glowing in her hand. "Are you okay? What just happened?"
A torama was lying prone across his right led, over half its head blown off by armor piercing rounds fired at close range. Some of its fur was singed and smoking.
"Wow." Selphie bent down. "Really snuck up on us, didn't it? You're bleeding." She rolled the dead monster off him and helped him up. "And...I think you just really freaked out our mechanic."
He lifted a hand to where blood was dribbling down his shirt from his split chin. Silhouetted in the doorway to the relay station, the mechanic was gripping the door frame, her stance wide and alert.
"I thought for a second that..." he trailed off, feeling like a coward. "Sorry."
She let her fireball die out, dropping the remnants of the spell to the ground. It burned away to an ember next to the sad carcass of the torama. Beyond it, Esthar's fence shimmered, just barely visible. And somewhere beyond that, he wondered, was the god beast still waiting? Doomtrain loomed stupidly inside his head, offering no insight and no sense that he any idea something out of the ordinary was happening.
Then again, how often was Irvine's life actually ordinary?
When Irvine got back in the car, he frowned and rubbed his shoulder. Tomorrow he was going to start working with some men from Dr. Odine's lab, and he didn't want to be as edgy as he was now. He hadn't been quite himself since that snake washed up on the beach, and since Selphie told him she knew he'd been cheating on her.
"Was that a torama?" the mechanic asked. "I thought I saw those whisker things."
"Yeah," Irvine replied. "Got the drop on us."
"Well, God. I'm glad you guys were here." She smiled, bright and cheery. Oblivious. "This whole place just hasn't been the same since the lunar cry. It's so dangerous now. I've heard there's even some dragons up on the cliffs."
Irvine sighed. "How long did you say that transformer would hold out without being fixed?"
"Hard to say for certain. Couple days. Couple weeks. Tell President Loire he needs to just bite the bullet and replace the darn thing, otherwise it's going to break completely, maybe take a few things down with it, and then a whole section of Esthar's going to be exposed. And if this one hasn't been serviced, you can bet the other ones haven't either. I'm just saying...it's worth spending the money on, you know? It's a disaster waiting to happen."
0 0 0
Quistis slept late the next morning. She was glad as she dressed alone in her tent that Fujin wasn't there to see the fresh, red marks the cactaur thorns had left on her shoulder and the small bruise Seifer's lips had left above her collarbone.
Breakfast was already over by the time she emerged, but one of the Galbadian soldiers offered her what was left of a plate of bacon and a hard biscuit. She walked down to the grove where the chocobos were and picked a few ripe fruits to supplement her cold, meager meal. And as she ate, she felt good. She was reluctant to credit Seifer with her cheerful attitude, but she searched the camp for him while finishing off the last of her bacon.
She eventually found him, along with Zell and Dr. Shipey, in the ruin.
Seifer was leaning against the wall, a camera slung around his neck. Zell and Dr. Shipey were entirely absorbed in barely visible carving on a small chunk of rock that the professor was holding in the palm of his hand.
"You see this?" Shipey asked and pointed.
"Ah! Yeah!" Zell took it from him. "Looks like this is some sort of list. Those are numbers here in this column, right? And this one looks like it could be orders of magnitude, and this one here is what they're counting."
Shipey nodded. "Right. That word here is for a type of cereal grain. So what's that tell you?"
"Storage?" Zell looked around. "Or a mill maybe, but I don't see any milling equipment around so...storage, right? Unless it's been moved."
"I don't think we have to worry about provenience. Nobody comes here, and there's nothing to indicate it was moved in antiquity. So, yes. Storage."
They walked out together, both nodding.
"What's going on?" Quistis asked Seifer. He rolled his eyes.
"School."
Zell had been spending a lot of time with Dr. Shipey, learning what he could. And Dr. Shipey was more than happy to oblige his fledgling student. Quistis hadn't realized just how much her friend was picking up.
"Why are you here?" She didn't mean it to sound insulting, but it did.
He gestured to the camera sitting against his stomach. "I got roped into being the damn photographer after Raijin and Fujin volunteered to pick through what the Galbadians have already collected looking for a certain symbol or something. Left me standing there like a goddamn moron, the only one not helping. Aside from you, I guess."
Quistis and Seifer trailed after Shipey and Zell, across a nylon bridge to another broad pillar of rock. They came up to a well-preserved building that was built right into the mountainside. The doorway was flanked by the remnants of two statues, both missing arms. Inside the air was cool and dark, illuminated only by the open door and by shafts of light peeking through breaks in the solid ceiling. Quistis had to blink a few times before her vision resolved and she noticed the colors.
Paint was thick across the walls, peeling off in sheets in some places but still fully intact in others. A huge, tropical tree was painted across the far wall, heavy with fruit. People were sitting underneath it, scraps of paper lying open in their laps, quills balanced between their fingers. The sun bared down above the tree, rays of light spreading out down to the scene and up across the ceiling where concentric circles spread until they met in the middle.
"Now this is promising," Shipey whispered.
He walked up to the tree, reached out as if to touch it, and glided his fingers along a cushion of air just above it. He stopped at a column of writing. His mouth moved as he read.
"Yes. This is perfect. It's a creation story...about Hyne." He gestured to a figure on the ceiling, a black, malevolent cloud from which the sun was bursting. "That's Hyne right there."
"So what's this place then?" Seifer asked. "Not another storage room, is it?"
"It's a shrine. Sanctuary. Church. Whatever you want to call it." Shipey nodded, satisfied with himself. "This is our best bet for now. Let's get started, shall we?"
For the rest of the day, Seifer and Quistis took photographs, fetched notes from Dr. Shipey's tent, and packed fragile objects into boxes stuffed with cotton so that they could be examined back at the camp. The day passed almost without incident.
Quistis left Dr. Shipey puzzling over a set of words he didn't recognize. The camp was entirely empty when she got back except for Raijin and Fujin playing a game of Triple Triad and Seifer, cleaning Hyperion after finally being released from his photography duties. Quistis walked up to them.
"Where is everyone?"
"Dunno," Seifer replied. "Galbadians have been gone all day, according to Fu."
"And you didn't go with them?" Quistis asked, turning to Fujin.
"Why would she?" Seifer replied. "Personally, I've seen enough dirt and rocks for one day. I just want to eat and then hit the baths."
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, arrogant beyond measure. She'd been curious whether their previous evening would repeat itself. It seemed unlikely that such a quiet, gentle moment would ever occur again in Seifer Almasy's caustic world. And with the way he looked at her now -- borderline triumphant, entirely confident -- she began to doubt he'd even felt what she had. It wouldn't have been the first time for Quistis that a man didn't notice the burning emotional connection that she felt like a firebrand through her heart.
She sat down to observe the progress of the Triple Triad game and ate some of the dry food from their rations. She was finishing off a bag of dehydrated-something when Zell sprinted up.
"Hey!" He paused, gripping his knees. "You guys have got to come check out what the professor just found!"
"It's almost dark, Chicken Wuss. I think whatever new letter Dr. Shipey found etched into some wall can wait until morning."
"Trust me. You'll want to see this."
Reluctantly, they followed Zell back into the darkening ruin. He was talking the whole way about how the professor's proficiency in Ancient Centran had vastly improved since they'd picked him up in Galbadia, about how they'd discovered a lot more about the creation story of Hyne, and about how they'd come to notice a "certain something" about the tree at the back of the sanctuary.
When they arrived, the sanctuary was empty, though notebooks and sheets of paper were scattered across the floor.
"It's through here," Zell said, walking toward the back. "You hardly even notice it until you get right up by it. The light is so dim, it's really easy to miss."
He stepped up in front of the huge painting of the fruit tree and, with a smile, abruptly vanished behind it. He was gone for a few seconds before his head popped back out again, grinning at his stunned friends.
"There's a doorway," he explained. "Right here. It's hidden really well by shadows and by the painting. Like I said, you hardly even notice it's here until you're right on top of it. Come on. Dr Shipey's down there already."
"Down where?" Seifer asked as they followed Zell's disconcerting, disembodied head behind the fruit tree, through a narrow gap in the wall, and into a long, dark tunnel. It was warm inside, the air stale but slightly sweet.
"Watch your step." Zell was somewhere far ahead. "And just keep going straight."
Quistis could see vague outlines of a high hallway they were walking down on an inclined path straight into the side of a mountain. It snaked briefly upward before plateauing and leading them into a chamber that was lit by a flashlight set on end, shining up at the ceiling. In among the shadows, Quistis could see walls thick with writing and pictures, kept fresh and vital by the chamber's protection from the elements. The room contained four large columns, one in every corner. And in the middle of the room, next to the flashlight, an empty alter stood, flat but worn in the middle.
"This word," Zell pointed to a group of symbols on the wall. "That's 'Hyne'. Now take a look around. See how often it's repeated? This is the freaking jack-pot."
Quistis looked around, but kept having to refer back to Zell's finger. All these letters looked the same to her, and it frustrated her that Zell found the language so easy to pick up on -- she wasn't accustomed to being the slow one.
"If it's so great, where's Dr. Shipey at?" Seifer asked.
"He was gonna head further in when I came to get you guys," Zell said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the far back of the dark room where, Quistis assumed, another doorway must have been hidden.
"You let him go alone?" Seifer crossed his arms. "What if it's dangerous? You ever think about that, Chicken Wuss? What if there's monsters down there?"
"I haven't seen any monsters here," Zell replied with a shrug.
"Yeah. The valley seems pretty safe," Raijin agreed. Seifer's scathing look drew out a quiet, "So far, I mean...ya know?"
As they followed Zell to the back of the room and through another partially concealed door, Quistis drew the soft, familiar scent of cinnamon, honey, and incense deep into her lungs. It was exactly how the tomb in Trabia had smelled -- the scent of a sacred place. It made her slow, groggy with memory of that first chamber she'd dropped through the floor of the crater into, filled with broken pottery and paintings. So she was the last one into the next tunnel and unable to see anything ahead of her except the wall of Raijin's back and the low ceiling, just rough rock. The light from the flashlight Zell had taken from the first room was faint, but she thought the walls were decorated here as well. They felt rough under her fingertips.
"Ouch!" Raijin hit his head on something, and Quistis ducked just in case, afraid either she'd hit the same thing he had or that the impact of his solid head would bring the mountain down on top of them. Neither happened. Instead, they emerged out into the cool, star-studded night.
They were on another island pillar to the east of the city, facing out over the vast, moon-bleached desert. Beneath them, the river slipped around a bend, and the ground under their feet was thick with flowers. It was a stunning contrast.
Fujin smiled a little. "BEAUTIFUL."
Quistis wondered whether Hyne understood moments like this. Or Ultimecia. For the first time, she felt a rush of pity for the sorceress who'd hated life and the world so much that she'd done everything she could to become its destroyer. She'd seemed sad, alone in her castle, though Quistis only noticed so now.
And then, suddenly, like the mountains had birthed him, Dr. Shipey came flying out of the darkness, running across the flowers toward them. He was waving his hands, stumbling in his haste. And he was yelling.
"I have it! By God, I have it!"
His voice was shrill, coursing with euphoria. He looked like a half-mad ancient philosopher, running the streets of ancient Eram after discovering the earth was round, or solving an arcane mathematical problem. Quistis was so occupied with the oddity of the usually placid professor sprinting through the night that she didn't immediately take in what he was saying.
"It's this way!" he yelled, waving behind him. "Vascaroon's weapon...right there, clear as day! Come see! You have to see!"
The next thing Quistis knew the flowers were ripping by under her feet, petals fluttering up in her face from Seifer's footsteps as she followed him and he followed the professor across the field, up to the towering mountain face and down a spiraling path worn into the rock. Shipey was nearly incoherent at the front of the group, his glasses riding halfway down his nose, his balding head beaded with perspiration that he kept dabbing off with his sleeve. The spiral path ended at the opening to a cave. Dr. Shipey jogged inside, his flashlight beam waving about, a piercing, yellow eye.
Crossing into the cave, a solemn weight settled on Quistis's shoulders. This was important. She looked around, trying to pick out details to recall later for when she told her children (or, someone's children) about the moment. But she couldn't see much beyond the hint of images and writing on the wall, nothing she'd be able to recount. Ahead of her, Seifer was quiet, his eyes intense. This was a pivotal point for him as well, she realized. This was his redemption, whether he realized it or even wanted it. She knew this day would alter the way history would record him. He'd be a hero at last.
"In here!" Shipey waved them forward.
They entered a room similar to the one they'd been in further up the mountain with columns and an empty alter in the middle.
"You said it was here," Seifer said.
"It's here." Shipey pointed to a passage of text on the wall. "Wait. Just listen."
He cleared his throat, ran his fingers along the wall with a reverence Quistis had never seen a man display, and began to read.
"The hero Vascaroon went alone into the desert. He was gone for forty days, and returned with a guardian from heaven to protect us. They rode back together on a huge, pale beast with six legs, bearing a gigantic sword." Seifer grunted, and the professor continued. "They left then to confront Hyne. In his native land of Trabia, Vascaroon found Hyne and the guardian took his sword and cut the magician in two. One part was buried there while the other vanished forever."
"So, it's this sword we need?" Raijin asked.
Quistis frowned. "I don't think so."
"It seems very clear to me," Shipey said. "The guardian from heaven must be a guardian force. And according to this, Vascaroon didn't defeat Hyne himself. He didn't even fight Hyne. The guardian force did it."
"Great! Then all we gotta do is find this GF. Does it say anywhere what it's called or where we can find it?" Zell asked.
"Right here." Shipey pointed to a word and beamed, holding his finger on it, letting it burn into his skin. He said the name slowly, pointing to each letter and sounding it out: "Odin."