XXV

Silence is the Loudest Sound

Jecht's sword was heavy in his hand. He flung it to the ground in disgust, watched as it rattled apologetically against a wall. Luca was a vibrant place throughout the year, but now silence was the loudest sound. In this gaping silence of so many ended stories, Jecht absorbed his failure. Once more, Sin had pillaged quenchlessly and Jecht could do nothing. Sin was making him doubt his abilities, and he would not have that.

He slumped formlessly at the fringe of a dock and let his legs dangle in the ocean. It was blood red, and dusk had only recently set in the sky. The minutes inched by as Jecht stared out at a horizon with no definition. He did all to avert his view from the mosaic of bodies being neatly stacked by Crusaders behind him.

The Spirans were so composed about it. They would look at the cold, dead eyes of what was once family, and respond with impeccable dignity. Some would wipe away buds of tears. Seldom would some allow their grief to best them. Others would salute, but none felt numbness replace their whole being like he did. This vacuum represented change. The security blanket of such things as comfort, wealth and success was being sucked down into it. Spira was stripping him down to the base parts as to rebuild him. He demanded anger and it sailed up in spurts right to the back of his throat, enough to make him thud his right fist in the stony ground. Bad move, he thought through the dull pain, as his untrained knuckles distended with thick swelling.

From the anger and pain birthed a distilled paranoia. In their distress, the survivors would believe he was in collusion with Sin, that he had orchestrated this carnage. As a matter of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Jecht was struggling with why Sin had spared him, or indeed why the creature had declined to kill him on the other two occasions they had met.

A puckish grin was well cached by his other hand. Even in this blackest of moments, the 'old' Jecht entertained the fantasy that Sin was following him. It took the meaning of 'biggest fan' literally!

He had been osmosed once and had that lady as his only companion. There had been a place behind her that only acted in his peripheral vision. It reminded him somewhat of Macalania Forest, with blue trees bearing tortured branches. The sky was blasted with arcs of burning white light, like the place was zipping at a million miles per second through a night sky. Gold dust nebulas exploded into glorious life, withered and melted. It was the act of a billion light years condensed into fleeting, human-sized moments. He got the dizzying feeling of this nexus compacting all the forces of life and death in a storm of unseen pyreflies. Her face was trapped in a portrait of ice. The lights bled through her gaunt cheeks, yet her eyes burned.

She was not mortal like him, but a phantasm. She had a measure of control, which made her in part answerable to the atrocities, or credited with keeping down the body count. She needed and loved him; this is why the beast was stayed before it could finish everyone else.

Jecht drew a sharp breath: a paper cut of terror inside as he conceived the moment when he would be forced to deny her love. Such words could shatter her last resolve and free Sin's true deadly force on Spira. She would have to be kept guessing and yearning.

"Summoner," Captain Vigus began in his weathered voice. "Before the attack, my men had noticed a Sin spawn floundering in the water. It appeared to be dying, so we saught to kill it with harpoons as swiftly as possible."

"Why?" asked Jecht. "If it's dyin', why waste your weapons on it?"

"Because Sin always returns for its spawn." The response was equal parts fatigue and distrust. Any Spiran should have known this. "We succeeded in killing the initial spawn, alas too late.

"Sin was already amassing on our borders. Thankfully, I had enough time to garner something resembling a rearguard before it hit the stadium."

In the sweeping wind, Vigus' hair was like fire, not only in its tint but the way it whipped freely from his scalp. He was staring at Jecht now with a creased eye.

"What?"

"I know who you are. You are the man who thinks he is from Zanarkand, yes?"

Jecht felt a starting in his chest, but displayed nothing. He pitched a piece of stone into the water, watching it plop and sink smoothly.

"Sin should have killed you, outlander," Vigus pressed. "Yet it didn't. Why?"

"Just lucky, I guess."

It was then that a cold prick found the carotid artery on the left side of his neck, just under the ear. He was forced around to face the business end of the captain's halberd, and the grim beast of fear roiled in his stomach. Vigus he knew was a tough son of a bitch, maybe the better of Auron through experience. An old scar meteored across his face and nose, fizzled out with time. An eye was crudely shaped, white and sightless. His brow was the overhang of a storm-battered precipice.

"Vigus..." growled Auron.

"You did this!" he spat, not acknowledging the guardian. "Sergeant! Detain this heretic. Perhaps Yevon will bestow upon our ravaged troops handsome recompense for his carcass."

Jecht knew something was dangerously off-centre with Vigus and that chilled him further. His eyes- his eye, had a rabid, unbalanced flame. He carried the weight of a man who had seen many friends perish.

"You would dare impede the pilgrimage of a summoner of Yevon?" Braska was typically unaffected by the heat of the situation. His reason brought war to Vigus' face. "That man is my guardian. I cannot complete my mission without him."

The summoner placed each word firmly so they would ignite into the skull of the enraged captain. He battled to resist the force that pulled his weapon away from Jecht's neck. A cut remained that yielded a thin rill of blood.

"But, sir." the sergeant protested. "You surely won't heed the fallen summoner Braska? He is not even endorsed by the temple!"

Retracting his weapon entirely and sheathing it across his muscled back, Vigus flighted a glance at Braska, then addressed his makeshift number two. "Aye, that may be so. But he is a summoner, nevertheless. He is willing to die for our sins." Jecht got the crazy urge to thump him in the back of the head while he was turned, but restrained himself. "If he is the one to stop all this," Vigus twisted a full circle and drew in all the suffering to him. "Then I care not whom he chooses to share his bed with."

Auron and Vigus clashed looks, and the guardian was in no small way reminded of an older Kinoc. Though they disliked each other, a great respect had been fostered between Auron and Vigus. The guardian nodded, a gesture that was barely reciprocated.

"Wait." Braska cast a unwanted look to the clash of corpses and blew the air out of his body. "There are... too many for me to send alone. I can do so much, but-"

Vigus waved away his concerns. "I shall call for others, from north and south of here, to complete the sending in your stead." To his commanding officer: "We leave."

"Yeah, you better run." Jecht uttered long after the men. The pads of his first two fingers bore a crimson trail from the smear on his neck. "Who was that asshole, Auron?"

"Captain Vigus, leader of the Crusaders." was his broody response. "Not like him, to be as hostile as that. Hmph. Time makes fools of us all, I imagine."

He chuckled to himself again before wandering off uselessly. Braska noted his guardian's off-key footfalls and deduced a mild ankle sprain. He would heal him next he had time, after the sending.

"So, what's your story, fur ball?" Jecht asked of Kimahri, who had been dutifully silent all this time.

The Ronso, powerful arms folded against his heaving chest, returned a glowing, feline stare and the man from Zanarkand thought an answer was not forthcoming. Kimahri turned away from them and flicked his eyes out on the still waters. "Kimahri's initiation from Ronso horn-moult was to escort the Blitzball team from Mount Gagazet to Luca and back safely."

A slight turn of his head and a backwards glance to the pile showed a muscular, furry arm jutting out near the bottom. "Kimahri failed this task."

"He died well." Braska averred and the Ronso hummed, a cavernous growl of shifting rocks.

"But Kimahri only become warrior of Gagazet if Elder Kelk sees this truth."

"You would make a strong guardian." The summoner added, and again the Ronso took a mountain's age to respond.

"...Kimahri's only loyalty is to Sacred Mount Gagazet."

With that, the Ronso was on his way and Braska prayed for his safe passage.

He confronted the dead with the best impassive face as he could fake. He appeared the wise and learned priest who had seen it all, but an atrocity on this scale sent invisible forces tugging the muscles of his face in a current of different directions. His lower lip was forced up, to clamp his mouth shut over any involuntary whimpers that may creep out.

He imagined the pounding in his heart at key moments in his life: gaining acceptance into the clergy, sailing out onto the great ocean bound for Navika Island, his eyes meeting hers when he got there, being there for her through the agony of childbirth, leaving Bevelle for the last time in disgrace. He wrung the fear from all those moments, mashed it together and doubled it. He would send as many as possible before he passed out through exhaustion. Such activities aged a person palpably. It was times such as this that his rationale slipped away and he hated the world. He hated that people did not get what they deserve, that evil could triumph so swiftly and so totally. The idea of things just happening for no reason pained him. He wanted destiny to tell him the suffering he and his family had endured was for an ultimate end, and not just because people were ignorant. Yevon's scrolls stated that the final victory for good would be achieved only through social purity. That made him hate those whose souls were impure.

A shake of the head brought his senses gushing back. There was a overwhelming negativity clinging to the air like a plague, hiding amongst the particles.

This act was done with great strain before he had even moved a pyrefly. Braska cordoned off the bodies by depositing heavy chunks of debris around them as a temporary funnel some thirty feet tall. This alone was fatiguing, as was the constant mental effort to ensure the structure's integrity. He left a gap in the top as he could not bear to cast these poor souls in complete darkness during their final moments.

And so, he began to dance. That elegant dance should have symbolised joy and celebration. Jecht wished to never see that dance again after Belvir. The pyreflies started to syphon out of the funnel top like smoke in a chimney and their sound was of grieving itself. It was a whiny din that the living make in times of loss.

The summoner pirouetted and shimmied for some thirty minutes before he was too ragged to physically continue. A part of the structure imploded as he relinquished his hold on it, but it held, locking the unsent within. Auron took his left arm over his shoulders and Jecht his right. Shadows began to devour Luca and so the pilgrims fled from them by boat, south west to Kilika Island.