Author's Note: Nope, unfortunately, it's not a double-length chapter. It's a full page longer than usual, though, which makes up for the missing page from last week! And thank god, it's not a filler chapter. (This was posted later than usual due to site upgrades. Huzzah.)
First of all, thank you to everyone who offered birthday wishes. C: Midnight the Black Fox, we're about to find out (the answer is pretty much what you'd expect). Blacktepes, it's always another week – I post every week on Tuesday. As for games, I got Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep for my birthday, so maybe! WiREP, I'm sorry for the dragon chapter. My brain is a little fuzzy and fried lately, too. :c Hopefully this one is just a bit better (though here there be dragons, too). JessRangel, I can't comment on your speculations, but I always enjoy reviewer speculations; they never fail to be interesting. And XitaUnlucky, yes, Neirin was probably laughing at Kuja the entire time; Neirin's kind of an ass like that. And you're right about the ocean; it's always beautiful.
On with the chapter! Bring on the new continent, indeed!

Origins
By LeFox

Chapter Twenty-One: Consequences

For three days, they lingered on the shoreline, making what preparations they could. Kraken and Tiamat set to catching as many fish as the larger dragons could conceivably carry and preparing them to last for the duration of the flight. The end result didn't look especially appetizing, but Kuja didn't have the heart to complain. They also began filtering a great deal of seawater; boiling it and running it through cloth in hopes of removing as much of the salt as possible. Meanwhile, Lich educated Neirin further in the working of magic, and Jalen and Maliris drilled Elisi in knife techniques. Left to his own devices, Kuja spent the days reading. When the book was at last finished, he set about collecting shells from the rocky shore.

Their shelter was a small cove, holding tightly to a small pool of seawater. Rather than sand, the shore was lined with rocks, beaten smooth by the rise and fall of the tide. Kuja walked barefoot along the rocks, scooping up shells from their hiding places in cracks and crannies. He'd read about the hobby of collecting shells, though he wasn't certain he understood it. He studied each shell carefully, turning it over to examine the pink-and-grey smooth undersides, before setting them back into their niches. There was no point, after all, in keeping them. Sighing, he glanced over his shoulder, eyeing Elisi and Neirin enviously.

He was old enough for a blade by now. He was old enough to fight by now.

Sighing, he withdrew Jalen's tiny knife from his pocket, turning it so the blade flashed in the light of the sunset. Thus far, the only use he'd found for it was in prying open an oyster to see what the inside looked like. So long as they encountered nothing more dangerous than an oyster, he supposed, they were perfectly safe.

And it wasn't fair. He'd done more of the fighting so far than Neirin had; why did Neirin get to be trained? And why Elisi? Elisi was just a servant last time he'd seen her; why did she get to become a warrior, and why was he supposed to be content to be dragged along like this, helpless and defenseless? It wasn't that he resented either of them; of course not.

But he resented being a child.

He sat down on the largest of the rocks, picking up a white, cracked shell. In front of him, the ocean spread out for miles, with no land in sight. It occurred to him that he hadn't bothered to ask how long the flight across the ocean would take, or for that matter, how in the world they were going to make the flight with two dragons who could barely manage a flight of several hours. It seemed as if Maliris were asking for a miracle… and he had encouraged it. At the time, it made so much sense. With the sight of the immense ocean before him, however, Kuja was beginning to have his doubts. He wondered if it was too late to suggest the port town after all. If nothing else, he supposed that between the eight of them, they could have taken control of a ship; steered it elsewhere… in retrospect, that seemed like a brilliant plan, and a much less risky one.

"You're lost in thought again." Elisi's voice jolted him out of his self-pity, and he looked up at her. Her hair was damp with sweat and her skin was flushed, but she seemed happy enough; happier than the situation warranted. She smiled, settling herself down on the rock beside him. He scooted over to give her more room.

For a moment, they stared at the ocean together in silence. Kuja wondered if she, too, was considering the impossibility of the task ahead. "We depart tomorrow morning," Elisi said quietly, picking up a rock and tossing it into the lapping waves. It splashed inconsequentially.

"How long will it take?"

She shrugged. "Maliris swears it's not a long crossing. The shortest continent-jump we can make, and probably the only one we can make without dragons born for long flights." She laughed humorlessly, shaking her head. "The king is right about one thing. We'd be well-served by silver dragons now. They're incredible for long flights like these."

Kuja looked at her. "What happened to the dragons at the castle?" It was a question he hadn't even considered until now. "The silver ones and the others? Were they all killed?"

"When the castle was attacked, the stable boys threw the balcony open." Elisi's voice was hollow, and her gaze was distant; not quite in the present. Kuja regretted asking; it was likely a night she didn't care to remember. "Most of the dragons flew before the cultists reached the stable. A few were trampled in the confusion, some got into fights in the air, and a few didn't even try to leave the stable. A pretty good number likely survived, though; I couldn't tell you where they ended up." She sighed. "I know Lich's dragon was killed. Kraken fretted for months about Erebea, but we never found her. I don't know about the others."

Kuja smiled sadly. "I wanted to see the dragon races," he remembered. "It was all I cared about in the city. Dragon races. Where the dragon races were held, mostly; I wanted to know where…" He trailed off, fighting back the lump in his throat. What he wouldn't give to have such simple, silly desires now; he was tired of wanting nothing more than survival. He wanted to be back in Traje, wide-eyed and fascinated, surprised by everything. He wanted to be back at the manor, creeping through old passageways, pretending he was on wild adventures. He wanted to be back in the forest of Bran Bal, battling an invisible hecteyes with a stick. More than anything, he didn't want to be sitting on an unnamed shoreline preparing for an impossible flight to a continent he knew nothing about, caught in a constant flight from a foe with the power to kill Terra herself.

A hand grazed his cheek, and he blinked, surprised to find that he was crying.

Elisi wiped away the last of his tears and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "You'll see hundreds of dragon races," she whispered, as he rested his head gratefully on her shoulder. "We're going to save Terra and put Neirin back on the throne, you and I. Just you wait."

xxx

Dawn came.

Kuja was very nearly still asleep as he climbed into the harness; Neirin had to secure it for him, for Kuja was simply too tired to bother. He'd been awake much later than he likely should have been, tossing and turning restlessly for hours. He couldn't stop imagining that, mid-flight, the orange dragons would lose their strength and plummet into the ocean. In the few moments of sleep he managed to grasp, he dreamed of drowning. When he woke from these dreams, he swore he tasted salt, but perhaps that was only the air.

Still, he allowed himself to be secured into the harness, if only because he was too exhausted to protest. "He'll sleep for the better part of the day," Maliris said from just beyond the curtain of semi-consciousness. She gave a short laugh. "Probably for the best, if he hates flying as much as Tiamat says."

"Flying with Tiamat would make anyone hate dragons," Kraken replied, erasing the traces of their campsite. "He's reckless, careless, foolish…"

Grinning, Tiamat secured the last of the bundles of fish to the largest of the dragons. "I fly dragons the way they're meant to be. If the beast isn't exhausted by the end of the day, it's a wasted flight." He patted the dragon's flank, and the beast snorted at him. "Well, this isn't likely to be a wasted flight, I s'pose." He sobered. "Might be the death of the beasts even if we do make the crossing."

Kuja pretended he hadn't heard that.

They lifted into the air in a manner that in no way resembled the orderly formations they were all accustomed to flying in. To make matters even more awkward, they were forced to fly at a very low altitude, lest they risk being seen from far off. The dragons skimmed the water's surface, occasionally sending up a startling spray of cold salt water to shock Kuja out of his slumber. For his part, Kuja tried desperately to keep his face buried against the dragon's back; he didn't want to see the water below, nor did he wish to see it all around him.

Yet again, he found himself questioning his decision to fly south: had they gone to the port, there would have been no flying over the ocean involved.

As Maliris had predicted, he spent a great deal of the first day asleep in the harness, draped over the dragon's neck. If he dreamed, the dreams were forgettable; if he woke, he didn't recall it. When at last he woke, the sky above was dark again, and by some act of mercy, he couldn't see the sea below – everywhere above and below was black, save for a spark of light in Neirin's palm and, somewhere a short distance ahead, a light from Lich as well. Kuja disliked the heaviness with which the dragon flapped its wings, slamming desperately at the air. He heard it panting with the effort to stay in flight, and clenched his teeth. How much longer could it keep going like this?

The answer, he knew, was not nearly long enough.

"You should go back to sleep." Neirin's voice was strained; he too knew the dragon couldn't last. Panic crept up Kuja's spine, and he looked around in the inky blackness that surrounded them, searching out Elisi and Jalen. He heard labored flapping from somewhere behind, but could see nothing. Neirin looked at him sharply, his faces oddly sharp in the light. "Don't move around so much," he instructed. "The dragon can't take distractions right now." That got him to sit still.

Several times, the dragon dropped so low that it splashed through the water and panicked, flailing to pull itself back up. It can't swim, Kuja realized dismally; he'd hoped they could rest in the water if need be. He heard Elisi scream when her dragon hit the water for the first time, and found he couldn't blame her. I don't want to drown. Nothing seemed as important, in that moment, as not drowning.

"Can't you do anything?" He looked at Neirin desperately. "Anything at all?"

Neirin smiled wryly. "This was your idea," he replied. "Do you have any ideas?"

He did not. Kuja clung to the faltering dragon, loathing himself for ever making this decision in the first place; it was suicide. Had they truly come halfway across the world just to die in the ocean? Surely there was some way to survive this; surely there was some way to allow the dragons to rest… or, perhaps, to restore their strength altogether.

That was it! "Heal them!" Neirin blinked at him, confused. Kuja growled, frustrated. "Heal the dragons! It'll give them more strength, won't it? That's what we need!"

Neirin shook his head. "It won't be enough."

"It'll be something," Kuja exclaimed, anxiety cracking his voice. "It might be enough to get us to a place to get some real rest. It's better than drowning!"

The king hesitated for a moment longer, until the dragon splashed through the water again, spraying them with salt and terror. "Fine," he said, calling up as much magic as he could and forcing it into the dragon. The world erupted into glowing white-green-gold light, radiant and warm.

Kuja felt the magic going to work. The muscles beneath him relaxed, no longer as painfully clenched as they had been, and the wings fell into a regular, comfortable rhythm. The dragon drew a deep breath and rose steadily higher, gaining its lost altitude. Neirin exhaled a shuddering breath, shaking his head in disbelief. Kuja understood; there was no reason why that ought to have worked – it was a desperate last-resort strategy. By rights they ought to have dropped out of the sky and into the ocean. The boy laughed with the weight of his relief; despite all odds, they'd lived.

"Elisi's dragon too?" Kuja looked up at Neirin, glancing over his shoulder at Elisi's dragon, which was still floundering weakly through the air. "Can you heal hers, too?"

"Not from this distance." They were gaining a great deal of distance on Elisi and Jalen – their rejuvenated dragon had picked up a great deal of speed, placing them only a very short distance behind Tiamat's weighted-down mount. Neirin's eyes widened suddenly, and he looked back at Elisi and Jalen. "The girl uses magic, though, doesn't she?" He banked their dragon, trying to slow it down enough to come closer to the others, but couldn't get the beast to drop back – having come dangerously close to dying, the dragon was now desperate to fly as far and as fast as it could, seeking land.

Kuja watched Elisi and Jalen drop away into the darkness, horrified. "Elisi!" He screamed, trying his hardest to be heard above the wind. "Elisi, you have to heal the dragon! You have to-"

From somewhere beyond their small ring of light, Kuja heard a painful roar, a heavy splash, and a blend of screaming and swearing.

The scream was cut abruptly, horribly short.

"Elisi!" He called, straining to see beyond the black curtain of night. "Elisi, answer me! Please!"

No answer came.

They flew on.

xxx

When the sun rose, there were only three dragons flying above the ocean. No one spoke of the fourth dragon's absence, though all six of them frequently glanced back at the horizon, praying to see Elisi and Jalen catching up. Tears stood in Kraken's eyes, Kuja saw when they drew close enough. Even Tiamat seemed disheartened, patting his dragon's flank miserably. Maliris was stone-faced, staring blindly ahead. Lich... Lich cradled his head in his hands, shaking with silent sobs. Kuja wished he could cry. He wanted to cry so badly it hurt. But it didn't seem real; it couldn't be real; he'd only just reunited with Elisi – how could she be gone so suddenly?

And he had killed her.

That was the truly awful part. It was his decision that led to her fall into the ocean; it was his decision that had placed her on that dragon's back – a dragon who had no business flying across the ocean. Their own dragon had to be healed several times over, and Neirin did so without a word. He, too, seemed incapable of feeling anything. Kuja wondered why. Was it for his benefit; did the king know he felt guilty? Was it for Jalen, who had been with them only for the sake of money? Or was it his own guilt over being the reason they were here at all?

Neirin offered no explanation, and Kuja didn't ask. He rested his face against the dragon's neck and closed his eyes, willing himself to fall asleep, hoping he'd wake up to find it was all a horrible nightmare.

And so the days passed.

Kuja lost track of how many days exactly they spent in the air, but it was nearing sunrise when at last they spotted land on the horizon.

The continent was vast and golden, gleaming with sand and red-gold rocks. Kuja stared at it in unconcealed awe and no small amount of fear: he'd not expected a desert. He wasn't certain of what he had expected; perhaps a continent much like the mother continent he knew so well. Of course he'd always known there were deserts in the world. There were always deserts in the stories, filled with thieves and treasures, but to actually see one…

The dragons needed no coaxing to land; they did so happily. The orange dragon collapsed upon touching the land, sending Neirin and Kuja sideways in the harnesses. They untangled themselves with some difficulty, then walked to reunite with the guardians.

It seemed so lonely without Elisi.

Worse, Kuja thought he missed Jalen just a bit.

"If she'd only known to heal the dragon," Lich was saying, shaking his head. "If only I'd been allowed to teach her-"

"Do not act like this is my fault!" Kraken screamed, grabbing the man by the collar of his robes. "You bastard, do not act like this is all my fault! Don't… don't…" She broke down, choking on her sobs. Lich reached out a steadying hand, but Kraken knocked it aside, turning away. "This was not my fault," she said flatly, roughly brushing away her tears with the heel of her hand. "We… we have no time to waste. Maliris." She turned to the other guardian, who was making a show of helping Tiamat with the unloading of the dragons, likely to avoid the necessity of consoling the inconsolable Kraken.

Maliris raised her head. "In a hurry, are you?" She pointed toward the distant horizon, where mountains jutted up against the sky. "There's our destination, if you're so eager to rush off. Best of luck crossing the desert during the heat of the day."

"You mean for us to wait until night?" Tiamat dropped the satchels he'd been carrying, nearly hitting the dragons. The larger of the two snorted irately at him, but seemed too tired to do much else. "Maliris, you thrice-damned bitch, you had us arrive in the morning!"

The red-haired woman shrugged, picking up the satchels Tiamat had dropped. "We'll need today for preparations. We have next to no food, and we'll need more water. We'll cross the desert quick enough with the dragons, but they're exhausted." She jerked a thumb toward the orange dragon, which hadn't lifted itself from the sand yet. Kuja sat beside it, stroking its crested head absently; he didn't know what else to do. Neirin sat nearby, channeling healing magic into the weary, half-dead beast. Maliris eyed them both, sighing. "The dragons are exhausted, and those two aren't fit for travel."

Lich nodded his agreement. "Give the boy a day to grieve and Neirin a day to rest. He's not a healer by nature." The man sighed, wiping sweat from his brow. "I can't imagine what the trip must have taken out of him. Leave them be."

The day passed in agonizing slowness. Occasionally Kraken would catch herself staring out at the ocean, hoping for some sign, any sign, that Elisi had survived. The horizon remained stubbornly empty.

The orange dragon died around noon, despite Neirin's best efforts. Too much strain on its heart, Lich explained; too much strain, too little strength left. Neirin was miserable and furious, and spent the rest of the day fuming and barking orders. Kuja sat beside the dead dragon. He couldn't think of anything better to do. Elisi would know, he thought, and closed his eyes against the pain. Elisi would talk to me, at least. The sun inched slowly across the sky. The guardians filtered water. Neirin got into an argument with Lich. Kuja watched it all, feeling emptier than ever before.

"Up with you," Maliris ordered, nudging him with a foot. "We've a bit of a flight ahead of us. You've had your time."

Slowly, awkwardly, Kuja rose to his stiff legs and staggered over to Neirin. "Oh no you don't," Maliris said, steering him toward the dragon she and Tiamat shared. "You're riding with us. Not enough space on the dragons for four, and we're short a set of wings."

"Pity we can't butcher it for meat," Tiamat lamented, lifting Kuja into the harness. He secured the boy into the harness using straps stolen from the dead dragon, and for once, Kuja didn't feel especially afraid of the flight. He didn't especially feel anything at all. He looked at Neirin as the king mounted the other dragon, and took comfort in the fact that Neirin didn't look especially sure of himself, either.

The dragons took to the air, grumbling in pained protest. The day had done little to rest them fully, and Kuja felt the stiffness in their movements. All the same, they flew through the sunset light, toward the rocks on the horizon.

"We'll cover the desert in a day," Maliris said, pointing to the dry expanse ahead. "And then the real trial begins."

Tiamat looked at her over his shoulder. "Real trial, eh? What sort of people d'you come from?"

She grinned wickedly. "The best sort," she replied. "Thieves, backstabbers, liars, and sneaks; just as likely to kill you as save you. And if anyone can help us, it's them."

Author's Note: Maliris comes from good people, obviously. See you next week!