Disclaimer: I don't claim characters or copyrighted products that aren't mine. I do claim any concepts, plot, etc. that are.

For anyone living in a country awaiting the English release of Dissidia, it's now a little more than a month away. I don't know how I'll react. Kuja's voice kind of makes me giggle (yes, that's 'giggle'). Please enjoy and review!

Chapter Thirty-Five: O Magnum Mysterium

I'm moved to a cell on the first floor. It's not actually a cell, but it's all the same to me. It must have once been a halfway-decent room, but with all the trimmings and furniture hollowed out, I'm left with a ghost of what once was.

Mateus didn't remove the bracelets, so I have to lift both my hands to touch my black eye. I wince in anticipation, but the healer sent to me cast flawless magic and there's no evidence left behind of the bruise.

"Thank you," I belatedly call after the waterfowl mage just as he leaves. I've forgotten his name and I want to ask, but I'm embarrassed that I can't remember such an important hero's name. I'm also shaken by the way that he seemed uneasy and didn't say a word, even though he's supposed to have quite a mouth.

I feel like he heard me and wanted to respond, but the guard at my door—Cecil—closed it and flipped the bolt too quickly.

This is ridiculous. I'm past the point where I think that this is a mistake. Suddenly infuriated, I sit down right there in the middle of the floor, crossing my legs under me and I pull my hair out of its tangled excuse for a braid and comb it with my fingers. What am I going to do?

I feel lightheaded; I haven't been given food or water and the last time I slept was because I had been knocked unconscious. Halfway through the braid, I give up and undo the whole thing.

And I don't realize that I've drifted off until a soft knock on the door jolts me awake. I hear the bolt thrown open, and I look up with an obviously displeased face. Why should I be polite to these people?

Cecil enters, and when he takes off his helmet, he transforms into a silver-haired knight with gleaming bright armor that looks like it was forged from moonlight.

"Well, I didn't expect that," I tell him. "What can I do for you?"

He doesn't give me an answer, he just closes the door behind him. I watch as his fingertips linger on the doorknob, and he seals the doorway with magic for silence.

"You can escape," he says plainly.

I look at him. "Do you think I'm stupid? Why should I listen to you?"

Cecil glares at me. "Do you think I'm here because I want to be? Mateus, he promised me that as long as I fight for him, then my brother is safe. And my brother has done quite a few things to attract his attention."

"But that's blackmail," I say. "No, worse."

"You think that's the worst thing? Nuage, he isn't working in your king's absence. Your king is dead."

What? Why do I instantly believe him?

Because these people—Mateus, Cecil—they're not right. They don't belong. So everything terrible makes sense.

I stand up. "Who are you people? Where do you come from? You look like you were born in the Garden, but I know that you're not from there."

"Listen, that's not important right now."

No. The king is dead. Murdered. He's our world's only hope, now that the Master is gone. But just as quickly as I fall into shock, I snap out of it. I'll think about all this later. At the moment, Cecil is right. If I'm being handed a chance to get out of here, then I'll take it. The fact that I don't know why I'm here and that there's no one to know that I'm gone makes me fear for what will happen to me if I stay.

But I shake my head. "If you let me escape, won't you be in danger? Or your brother?"

Cecil shrugs. "I already thought of that. Trust me, if I say you feigned illness and then attacked and overpowered me, then he will believe it."

"That doesn't make any sense. I can't fight, and I don't know any magic. Surely the guards have told him that."

That makes Cecil smile. "He believes that you're faking. All I ask in return is that you seek out—no, if you happen to cross paths with… I don't know, Cloud—"

Cloud?

"Cloud is dead," slips out of my mouth before I can keep it inside. "He died defending the Garden."

"Just trust me," Cecil interrupts. "I realize that you owe nothing to me, but if you can find it in your heart to do this for me, you have no idea how much good you will be doing for us and… and for your kingdom."

Us and your kingdom? Not the same thing, I note well.

"Tell him this: 'the second self.' He'll understand." As he says this, he takes my hands and snaps the bracelets. I'm free, for what it's worth.

"You're insane," I tell him as he moves past me and walks toward the far wall.

He smiles. "Be careful. The guard's schedules are always changing, and he doesn't trust me enough to let me know the variations," he tells me as he lifts his spear and inflicts a wound on his own scalp.

"What are you doing?" I demand.

He waits for the blood to trickle down his face like a tear before he slumps against the wall. "Go," he breathes, and closes his eyes.

I stare at him for a moment or two; for a knight, he's a halfway decent actor. If I didn't know better, I'd say that I'd knocked him out myself.

The corridor that I step into is quiet, so quiet that I feel like my breath will give me away. That's when it occurs to me that I have no idea which way I should go. The only place I know how to get to is the audience chamber, which isn't exactly the smartest move.

Maybe I can find some sort of servant's passage and sneak out near the kitchens. Maybe I can also find clothing other than the stark head-to-toe white that I'm wearing, since it sort of stands out.

Why did Cecil put this much faith in my abilities? I'm clueless here. Why couldn't he have pretended to be moving me to some other location and then pulled his act right in front of the castle gates?

I'm not doing myself any good standing around here; someone's bound to notice that Cecil isn't outside my door. Outside the immense windows I can see a garden. Maybe if I just stay on the outside wall—

"Hey!"

I couldn't even last two minutes? If Cecil can hear this, then he probably thinks I'm an idiot. So much for sneaking around; I give up and run.

There's a somewhat-hidden flight of stairs and with these lush carpets, my feet hardly make a sound. I'm far enough ahead that I take a chance and I duck into the stairwell; the steps lead down to darkness but everything seems to be too well kept-up to lead back to the cell in which I first awoke.

Do I go down? I shouldn't. But I do for the chance that I find some long-lost hidden waterway that I can follow. Me, walking around in the sewers. Well, just a day ago, I never thought this would happen, either.

Sooner rather than later, I come upon light, and I reach the bottom landing and the space opens out to a ship portal, for the ships that people used when the world was still separated. Why would the lights be on? Why would anyone be down here?

I see him at the exact same moment that he sees me, and I feel like I'm dead where I stand. Cecil's message to a hero's grave lingers unspoken in my mouth. Mateus just smiles.

"I was just examining these machines. Quite intriguing," he says like he hasn't seen them before. "Look who couldn't bear to leave me without saying goodbye," he adds softly, mocking me as he takes his time pronouncing each syllable.

Suddenly some sort of protective instinct left over from when my brother and I were together kicks in. Just because I screwed up doesn't mean that Cecil should take the fall. "Did you really think that one guard would be enough?" I smirk, even though I'm shaking on the inside.

I try and channel every little angry impulse from this horrible experience and shape it into my smile and use them to turn my voice cold. It sort of works, amazingly enough. I never thought of acting as my sort of thing before.

Mateus slowly walks towards me. I lock myself in, steadying myself for some sort of strike, but he just drops his barbed staff on the floor and lets it clatter for a second. He jerks my chin upwards to make me look at him. I think I would have preferred for him to hit me.

"I've been told about the peculiarities of the sort of creature that you are, but even I am amazed at the resemblance," he whispers. "Cocky, even when you're trapped…"

This is getting weird. Very, very weird. The way he looks at me makes me shudder with revulsion. He caresses my cheek, and I'm panicked to admit that I used the perfect word there. The fear in my eyes makes him grin.

If I had magic right now, I would use it to get out of here. I've never seen anyone use teleportation magic before, but while I'm wishing, I might as well not do things halfway.

Something a lot like electricity sparks in my throat and runs down to my fingertips. I don't even realize that the lightning that sends Mateus flying belongs to me.

With an impatient growl, he gathers himself off the floor.

"You little—" he begins, but I don't feel like hearing what he decides to call me. Please, someone, somehow, get me out of here, I think as I close my eyes. He's going to kill me.

A sensation like the ocean and sky fused together surrounds me, and just when I feel like I'm going to be sick, I fall to my knees and the bright blue light subsides. I know where I am, and while it's not far from the castle, it's a town in which I could easily lose myself. The town of everlasting summer twilight.

I'm a little sad that I didn't tell him off before I left, but something tells me that if I'm not careful, I'll get another chance.

Here, I can find food, and different clothes, and maybe someplace where I can stay. Not that I have anything to pay with; the only reason I had pulled out that scrap of paper with that poem on it in the first place was because my pockets were suspiciously lighter than they had been before I had fallen into the king's soldiers' possession.

But I do have friends, friends who won't ask questions and certainly won't sell me out. When my brother and I fled the Garden, we came here with Setzer, Seifer and his two friends, and Vivi.

Cecil had asked me to find Cloud. Cloud's grave is back in the Garden, not far from where he fell in battle. His sword marks his grave. Did Cecil want me to pass on his message to a corpse?

He couldn't seriously be asking me to go back to the Garden, though. That was where the door had opened and Chaos had come back, in the very same place where the Warrior of Darkness had been forced to open a door to the darkness those years ago.

He would have remained behind the door for the rest of his life if it hadn't been for the king. And now the king was dead. Maybe it's the Warrior of Darkness that I need to find. If this Mateus person had been pleased to hear that the Crystal was almost found, then it couldn't be good.

And he had mentioned something about my freedom correlating with the Warrior of Darkness finding the Crystal. I want answers, but I don't know who can give them to me.

Kneeling there in the sun-dried grass, I stare at my hands in fear and wonder. I cast magic. Magic that a mage with at least a decade of experience would need to cast without an incantation, like I had just now. Powerful black magic that should have torn a novice like me apart from the inside and left me in pieces. But here I am.