We traveled northeast. The well-traveled and immaculately maintained Imperial Highway petered out into wide gravel roads; the small towns and wayrests that had been plentiful on the road from Meltokio to Sybak were now few and far between. Soon there were none at all. The chalky grasslands of the coast were blooming with sweet-smelling tufted grass and flocked with butterflies; farther north the landscape turned to unfriendly scarpland, thick with tall, straight pines and dense, dark firs.
Gaoracchia Forest lay like a black lake among the grey-peaked mountains; a sprawling, sunless creature a hundred miles across - and that was only the length of the marked trail. The real size of it was supposed to be many million acres, impossible to traverse on foot.
The Forest was a place of impenetrable, preternatural darkness, a place of monsters real and imagined. Beyond the borders of the Gaoracchia forest, Zelos told us, there was no summer, no life that was not wretched and strangling and watchful. The streams were drowning streams; the trees fruited sweet poison.
The dead walked with the living, jealous and maddened and waiting. When we walked in the forest, we would walk on graves, and the maggots would writhe in anticipation of our proffered feast.
"That is inaccurate."
Zelos looked around at Presea, hurt.
"What? It totally is!"
We would enter the forest tomorrow. Tonight, we camped well beyond its borders, a buoy of light in the shadow of its gnarled trees and fertile green-blue darkness.
Lloyd and I made camp with familiar, easy efficiency. Presea, too, was comfortable in the wild, and had a fire going in only a few minutes. Kuchinawa stayed a little apart from us. He was more taciturn even than Presea, and so I often forgot he was there; Zelos wandered uselessly from Lloyd to Presea to the borders of the camp, unsure of what to do and unwilling to take the initiative. Colette remained a figure in the dark.
"The forest is not sentient," Presea continued. "Your assertions are not factual."
"Presea, Presea, Presea," Zelos wheedled, "We're on the same team here! Tethe'allans have to have each other's backs."
"...That is a meaningless distinction."
"You've traveled through the forest before, Presea?" Lloyd asked.
"No."
"Sane people take the riverboats," said Zelos, "but something tells me the Pope's gonna keep an eye on those."
"Yes," agreed Presea. "It is very... inconvenient."
"She's more talkative," Lloyd said to me, smiling a little. And then his expression fell into grim severity. "I almost forgot to tell you. After you were taken away, we got shut up in this underground lab. The lady there knew Presea," he went on. "Presea was pretty upset, and we almost fought, but Kuchinawa convinced the lady to let us out. I guess she knows Sheena? But anyway-"
"Miss Kate," supplied Zelos, leering. "Unusual for a half-elf to defend the Pope like that."
"Anyway," Lloyd said, ignoring him, "they've been doing Exsphere experiments here, too. What that guy said to us in the University - it's not the whole story at all. They're trying to make Cruxis Crystals, just like Colette's."
"So Presea's Exsphere is..." I waved a hand. "A kind of test?"
"It's got a special Key Crest," Lloyd nodded. "It's really frustrating. I can't tell the difference between the one she's got and a normal one at all. But Kate said there's a dwarf living south of Ozette. I think we should talk to him. If he can help Presea, then maybe he can help Colette, and then we wouldn't have to go all the way back to Sylvarant to see Dad."
"I missed a lot," I sighed, stretching my legs until the soles of my feet were nearly touching the edge of the fire. "What is that Dwarves can do that you can't? I saw you working! And you fixed Raine's Key Crest."
Lloyd made a face. "I think Dwarves can see magic in a different way, kind of like Genis and the Professor can. And Raine's Crest was for a normal Exsphere. I don't think Colette's or Presea's is close enough for the design I know to work. But... if Exspheres are kind of living things, it explains how some of them are different."
"Yeah?" I asked.
"I mean, mine's different from Raine or Genis', and yours is different, too."
"Where do they come from?" I asked, "I guess I assumed they were lab-grown. 'Cause Kvar said yours was part of a project, right?"
"You guys don't know?" asked Zelos. "They're mined in Toize Valley. Way southwest of here."
"They're mined?" I repeated. That seemed weird to me, for some reason. "I wonder what they're made of." I wondered if Sybak had a course in Xenobiology, or if that violated some kind of Church edict.
"Who cares?" said Zelos, dismissively. "It's not like knowing would help us."
"Oh, totally," I replied - because he'd managed to use exactly the kind of tone that pissed me off - "Yeah, I totally agree it's better not to know things."
Zelos had been really annoying since he found out I was a half-elf.
It was like all his goodwill and interest towards me as a person had evaporated in an instant - like I'd personally slighted him somehow by not introducing myself as 'Edie, a half-elf'. I had the distinct feeling that he expected me to apologize - for deceiving him? For making him go out of his way for me? It wasn't that he had started insulting me, or complained about having to go running after me - it was like he was sulking. Or resentful.
Maybe if I had pretended to be ashamed of myself, he'd have taken pity on me. But I hadn't, and so he didn't.
I didn't find him quite so amusing anymore.
"No need to get all uptight, Miss Mystery," he sneered, "I'm here, aren't I?"
"Shut up, Zelos," muttered Lloyd.
"It's fine," I said, levering myself to my feet and stretching. "I'm gonna go for a walk."
"What?" Lloyd asked, "It's pitch black!"
"Seriously, this place isn't safe," added Zelos, dropping the attitude for a moment.
"Who cares?" I echoed, aware of how childish it sounded.
I shouldn't have been bothered. I knew that Zelos had been raised in Meltokio, been taught a certain way - but that didn't seem like a very good excuse.
It was only that we'd gotten along so well before. It had only been two days - but it was enough to sting.
I went off into the dark, my hand a dim beacon of white light.
The grass here was long and damp with condensation; I skimmed my free hand across the fine, thin feelers of it, a sensation like drifting through dewy cobwebs. I liked that it was colder here, that I could smell the richness of the earth without the clogging oppression of summer heat. And still it was only just July - things had moved so quickly after Hima, and it had been cool there, too. We had missed Sheena's birthday, and I felt bizarrely guilty for it - had I thought we'd be reunite with her before then? No, I'd just forgotten - after all, it was Colette who remembered things like birthdays.
I missed Colette.
She'd been like this - what, a week? Just over seven days, if I didn't count the day at the Tower. It seemed much longer, because she had been silent for so long - but she had still smiled. She had still been there. I felt her diary in my pocket like a lead weight, and sometimes I thought about reading it, but I couldn't. Reading it would be too much like admitting she was gone.
When I was a good distance from the camp, I extinguished my light.
The stars wheeled overhead.
Where was Kratos now? I worried about him, even though I know I shouldn't have. I had almost entirely forgotten that feeling of alien terror, when he had stood there, wings outstretched - and all I could really remember was that afternoon on the green in Asgard, when he had told me about his wife.
I stood there for a while, until the cold air leeched my temper from me like lost heat.
No one had come after me. I was annoyed at myself for noticing, or even caring; I wasn't a child having a tantrum, and I didn't need coddling or reassurance. I knew better than to blame my bad mood on anyone, even Zelos - I was fatigued, and stressed, and to let that unhappiness fester into resentment was no good for anybody.
I came back to camp and found the others sitting in contemplation of the fire.
"I'm gonna knock off early," I said, "Lloyd, can you get first watch?"
"Sure," Lloyd replied, glancing up. "Um -"
I paused. "Hm?"
Lloyd shook his head. "Nothing. I hope you get some good sleep."
The forest canopy blocked out almost all light, so that those places where the sun fell seemed to burn, pools of luminous gold in the bleak darkness. The lightless air was heavy, cool, and thick with the smell of loam and moss and rotting leaves. The trailhead, marked by a single hanging lantern, opened to us like the expectant mouth of some vast, hungry leviathan. We left behind the sun and traveled into starless midnight.
"Yeah, I hate this," complained Zelos. "I can barely see anything."
"Visibility is low. Proceed with caution," advised Presea.
I lagged behind, fascinated at how the dark seemed to be punctuated by deeper darkness; the trees created pockets of near-blackness, and there was the impression of constant, invisible movement. A wind moved about us in unpredictable streams and eddies, so that disembodied sounds swam past the ears, sourceless and incomprehensible. What light there was cast fickle shadows across the warped earth and knotty, twisted trees, conjuring specters from waving branches or shifting brush.
My instinctual reaction was fear, but I also felt a kind of kinship with the forest - a strange comfort in the smell and the dark.
It wouldn't last.
"What was that?" asked Lloyd, head swiveling.
"Ugh, I dunno," said Zelos. "Wind?"
"Keep moving," said Kuchinawa.
-and there the mortal flesh, absolved of this monstrous vitality, shall succumb at last to dissolution -
"Okay, you guys heard that, right?" I said, cupping my hands to my ears at odd angles as if it would help me locate the sound. Was it a whispering, or was I hearing patterns in the meaningless symphony of nature? It had been so distinct, but only for a moment, and now I couldn't be sure that I'd heard it at all. "Something about flesh?"
"Edie, come on," shivered Lloyd, "it's scary enough in here as it is."
"I... heard it," Presea said, as if entranced.
"Well, I don't like that at all," said Zelos, "let's keep going, huh? I don't wanna see any more ghosts than I've gotta."
-to grow fat on blood, the ache of gluttony, teeth sunk deep, to gorge on the mindless parade of humanity and from that weakness render strength -
"You honestly - I'm going nuts," I declared. "I'm sure I heard it that time."
"If you hear it," Presea ground out, "then perhaps I am not imagining things."
"Agh! You've gotta be kidding me!" cried Zelos, "Presea, my little rosebud, please, tell me you're kidding."
"I am not."
"Enough," said Kuchinawa. "There's no use in discussing it."
"But how come Presea and Edie can hear it, but we can't?" asked Lloyd.
"You heard the man, Lloyd!" said Zelos, "If we walk fast enough, we can get outta here before the girls turn on us."
"Not so sure about that," I grumbled.
-and their shattered bodies given up to a terror beyond imagining, and be reborn -
There was a change that had started in me at Sybak, or maybe I had only started to notice it there; I couldn't think too deeply on it, not in Gaoracchia, but the forest had a dark, oppressive quality that stifled conversation and turned the mind inwards.
I was bizarrely grateful for the monsters, and for Colette's continued reticence, and for the incident with Sheena, because it gave me things to think on and worry about that were real - problems that I could be sure I wasn't imagining.
But the change - and my thoughts on the change, however I tried to suppress or avoid them - still lingered at the edges of my mind, a thing in the periphery of my vision. It was a thing I could not look directly at, or it would drive me mad.
When I was little, I had a recurring dream.
I was always hazy in the recollection, but it involved a children's television show mascot, a golden cage, and a giant, rainbow-striped egg. And for years, I'd held that dream as a kind of evidence of the natural, surreal unconscious - a collection of nostalgic, vaguely disturbing images and notions that had been churned out of the detritus of my everyday life. It was the anecdote that surfaced at slumber parties or during teenage fits of psychoanalysis, and it had stayed with me all the way through to adulthood.
And then, while visiting a friend's childhood home, my dream had manifested in the television cabinet, one spine in a row of vintage tapes.
The dream wasn't a dream at all, but a bad recollection of some straight-to-VHS special that I must have been too young to properly remember. Everything was there - the golden cage, the rainbow egg - and I'd imagined none of it. Seeing it there, in print on the cardboard case, filled me with a sudden, sheepish relief - because sometimes, although not always, that dream had been a nightmare.
That discovery was, in many ways, the inverse of what was happening now.
In that way that familiar things sometimes become strange, the Edie in my memory had slowly become a stranger. I could still empathize with that person, but now I had the horrible, unmoored feeling that she was not me, and maybe never had been.
That wasn't so unusual - I'd had periods of depression, dissociation, loss of memory - I'd had times I'd looked back on things I'd done and regretted the person I had been then. But they had always been me, and I could still feel the ghost of whatever impulse had driven me to act badly. I lived those memories, those moments, from the body I had - piloted? Inhabited? - for twenty-odd years. But now...
I recognized myself, but these hands weren't my hands, just as these ears weren't my ears. The Edie in my memory hadn't been a fighter, and neither had she been an adventurer; she'd been a homebody, at heart, a reluctant bartender and local confidant, a musician - the Edie in my memory would never have been able to kill someone. I was sure of that now - that the pure psychological horror of inflicting permanent harm to another living person would have incapacitated her.
I tried to recall being that person; dredged up the grief at my father's death, when I was still a teenager - probed the still-tender wound of my mother's death only two years previously. I thought about my high school friends, about the summer night we had driven down the main drag of our backwater town, dreamy Icelandic synth-rock pouring from the open windows - about the intoxicating closeness of the handsome, stupid boy beside me.
I thought of my first and last relationship - and about the things she had said that last month together, when everything had collapsed and I'd let it, my coursework abandoned and the lease up, and her either unwilling or unable to find someplace else to stay - and about the awkward apologies we'd shared later over text, and how deeply it had relieved me, despite everything - and finally, sitting alone in my empty childhood home, head buzzing with white noise.
I dug fingers into my bruises and worried at old scars, hoping that I might feel enough pain to reconnect me to the past.
But they had all taken on the quality of a dream; and maybe it was only a product of my sleeplessness, or stress, or both, but I felt as if I had shed my identity, as if it was a loose, translucent skin shrugged off, the thing underneath still damp and formless and uncertain. It was not a relief - not a welcome transformation - but instead a stripping bare, a sudden, stinging vulnerability, and I was afraid.
I did not want to be someone else.
In the silence, and the dark, beneath the tide of whispering trees, I was alone, and I had started to feel as if I was no one at all.
-the rotten stench of it, perfumed memory, a hymn of decay, of regrowth, of slackened, weeping piety, and there will be a beauty there, in the white bone and the sinew and the seeping color of what remains -
"Edie? You should get some sleep."
Lloyd, in the light of the dying fire, became an impression in deep reds and searing yellows. I smiled at him.
"Sorry," I replied, "I just can't sleep in this place. I keep hearing stuff that - anyway. I'll get some rest once we're out of this place."
"You still need to sleep," he reminded me. "We'll look out for you, all right?"
I nodded. "Yeah, of course."
-and in the bowels of hell, many hands -
"You okay, Miss Mysterious?"
I glanced sideways at Zelos, too tired to dredge up the animosity of days previous. We'd been in the forest for three days already, and I'd hardly been sleeping. Presea heard the voices, too, which was some relief, but the voices were, in a hundred ways, the least of my problems. Zelos' foul attitude barely registered - in fact, it was almost reassuring. It gave me a role to assume.
"I'm tired," I said, "but I'll live. How are you?"
That caught him off-guard.
"Oh, y'know, spooky forest, wanted criminal," he shrugged. "What can you do?"
"Can't imagine," I replied.
"...So," he continued, after an awkward pause, "I was thinking that I probably owe you an apology."
I raised an eyebrow at him. "Did Lloyd put you up to this?"
"What? No," Zelos said, all exaggerated hurt.
"It's fine," I snorted, "I'm over it."
"Come on, at least let me say sorry."
"What for?' I asked, because his reluctance to come right out with it annoyed and amused me all at once. He seemed to recognize it too, by the sudden tightness around his eyes.
"I'm as much a fugitive as you are, so it was pretty crummy for me to treat you differently just because you're a half-elf," he said. "I'm sorry."
It was hard to gauge his sincerity, but I had already decided to forgive him. "Yeah, it was," I agreed. "Apology accepted."
"It's not you or anything," he went on, unnecessarily, "It's just the way things are around here."
I rolled my eyes. "Don't give me that crap. You're smart enough to see bigotry for what it is. What did you think I was, anyway, a particularly pointy human?"
"I assumed you were an elf," Zelos countered, "I've never seen a half-elf swagger around giving people orders. What was I supposed to think?"
"You've met the Renegades, haven't you?" I pointed out, "Look, anything you say about this is just gonna piss me off. It's not my job to make you feel better about being an asshole," I went on, and then, feeling that was too harsh, said, "I already said I forgive you, anyway. Let's talk about something else, huh? I missed chatting with you."
Zelos, left to unpack all that, opted for the easiest out.
"You missed me, huh?" he grinned.
"Desperately," I returned, only half-mocking.
I put off sleeping as long as I was able. But by that last night - the forest a stifling coffin - no urging from my mind could keep my body going. I drifted off, feeling dazed and weightless, and then I was dreaming.
I stood shin-deep in cold water. The sky was gray and overcast, the lakewater black and dull. Beneath my feet I could feel the rounded stones, slick with kelp, and behind me was the rocky beach, gray and cold and familiar. The moldering wooden steps, with their uneven, splintering handrails, climbed over the slope and out of sight. I should have been able to see the peak of the house, the little round window to the attic - but I couldn't.
When had I been here last? Had I ever been here? I squinted at the sky, looking for the shape of the island on the horizon, but there was only gray. There were no seabirds, despite the hour, and the air seemed heavy, dense and empty.
I turned sluggish, to scale the beach, but the stones slid beneath my feet like loose sand. I fell once, twice, landing awkwardly and sending a shocking pain up along one arm - and then I fell back into the water, which was no longer still but cresting in dark green waves up along the shoreline. I tried to get up, my hands sliding on stone, but each wave hit me harder than the last, stealing the ground out from under me and I was drowning -
My head lurched beneath the surface, and as water filled my ears I heard the whispering - and in the deathly quiet surrender your heart - and gasped, freezing water burning in my lungs, and then - a pair of small hands seized my shoulders and pulled.
"Edie?"
The ground was cold and hard and slightly damp. The fire had burned down, heat and orange light roiling beneath a thatch of ash and charcoal, and there was a misty, grey quality to the air - the only indication that dawn was coming on. I felt clammy and not-quite-real, as if my bones had been switched out for smoke, and there was a ringing in my ears. Colette was crouched over me, hair hanging in amber curtains around her face.
Her eyes, wide and shining, were a beautiful, unmistakable blue.
"Waghh?" I asked, mind spinning in uncertain, wobbly circles, the bits between my ears unsure to do with the information I was getting from my eyes.
"Are you okay?" Colette asked, combing the hair away from my forehead. Her hand was warm.
I dimly registered Lloyd on the other side of the camp, a red smudge rising unsteadily from the base of a tree. Zelos was on his feet, paralyzed.
"Wuhappened?" I asked.
"There was something... It was trying to attack you, and, um, and I just kind of..." Colette gave me a helpless smile.
My throat was dry.
"You're back," I said, reaching up to touch her face - so mobile, so alive - "You're really back."
Colette nodded, eyes shining with tears. "Um, I think so."
I threw myself forward, hugging her as tightly as I dared, eyes itching and my heart hammering - Lloyd was still half-asleep, staring down at the two of us like he was witnessing a mirage. Colette clasped me to her, tighter still, and I closed my eyes for a moment, relishing in the sensation of her as another living being, and then pulled back, still unsure that I was seeing something real. Her face was splotchy with emotion, and then she was crying.
"Sorry," she said, wiping her face, "I'm just - I'm just so happy to be back!"
Lloyd dropped onto the ground beside us, eyes wide, before he burst into breathless laughter and grabbed Colette from me, dragging her into a hug and grinning like his face would split in two. "You're back!" he gabbled, "I feel like it's been forever, but you're back!"
Colette nodded. "I'm back," she repeated.
"Welcome back," Lloyd grinned.
"Er, not to interrupt, but -"
Zelos hovered, awkward.
"We're having a moment," I said, beaming up at him.
"...I'm confused," he admitted, "not that I'm not happy our little angel's woken up, but... What happened?"
"Uh, I dunno," said Lloyd, frowning, "she was shouting for Edie, I guess Edie was asleep, or-?"
"I was drowning," I said, a hand at my throat as I recalled the sensation. "I was dreaming," I explained, "and I started hearing that whispering in my dream and then... Colette pulled me out of it."
"I - I think I've been coming back for a while, since Lloyd gave me my birthday present," Colette said, "and then suddenly I just had to move, or something horrible would happen, and... and I did!" She beamed.
"Huh," said Zelos. "Not bad, Lloyd."
"I was so happy," she went on, addressing Lloyd. "Thank you... I was really happy," she repeated, "but there wasn't anything I could do at the time. Sorry."
"It's okay," Lloyd said, grinning as widely as I'd ever seen him, "don't worry about it."
Colette blinked, and looked around. "Where are Genis and Professor Sage? And Sheena?"
"Ozette," Lloyd explained, "you don't remember?"
"It's kind of like a dream," Colette said, "are they - okay?"
"We'll see them soon," I said, reaching out to grab her hand. It was small and warm and even slightly sweaty. "They're gonna be so happy to see you."
I remembered, suddenly, the journal at the bottom of my pack - and how Colette had been there all through my expository conversation with Raine back at the Renegade base. Colette certainly didn't look upset with me, or even afraid or wary. Maybe now wasn't the time. Maybe she didn't remember at all - although I wouldn't count on it. It was enough just to be near her, alive and warm and human, and know she was back.
"Well, it's-" Zelos began, but he was interrupted by a high, burbling sound, loud enough to be heard clear across the campsite. Colette blushed.
"Um," she said, "Is there anything left to eat? I think I'm hungry!"
Colette was back, and the world had changed.
It wasn't only that we escaped the dark of the Forest; it was just having her around. Lloyd couldn't stop smiling, and I wasn't much better. I kept taking her hand, just to remind myself she could feel, and asking her about everything if only to hear her speak. There was so much to catch up on, and Colette's memory of the last week or so was hazy at best - but it was hard to talk about some things. Mostly what had happened at the Tower.
She didn't remember most of it, beyond her goodbyes to Lloyd and our miraculous rescue by Botta. She knew the broad strokes just from being around, like Kratos and Remiel and Sheena - but not the specifics. I thought that was probably a good thing; Colette didn't need borrowed trouble, or secondhand nightmares. Lloyd was on the same page.
"It wasn't too bad," he said, at last, "we all got out okay, and now you're okay, everything is going to be all right."
"What is, though?" asked Zelos, "Now that Colette's back to normal, there's no reason to go to Sylvarant, right?"
I gave him a lopsided smile. "Regretting your choices?"
"I didn't say that," he replied, surprisingly serious, "I mean, what are the next steps?"
"Well... Meet up with, uh, Yuan, right?" Lloyd said.
"The Renegades?" Zelos squinted. "You sure you can trust those guys?"
"They saved us," offered Colette. "They don't seem all that bad."
"They were the ones that got the King to hire Sheena, y'know," he frowned.
"Water, bridge," I mimed. "Look, it's complicated, but what's important is that we can pass the buck to Raine once we hit Ozette." Zelos snorted.
"If you say so."
Colette and Lloyd drifted forward; I fell back, half-turning while I walked to check that Presea was still there.
She hadn't said a word all day, but that was normal enough. Kuchinawa was there, too, hardly more than a frowning shadow. I kept forgetting he was there - he didn't eat with us, or sleep near us, and he didn't make sound when he walked.
I still couldn't remember who he was, and it was starting to get annoying.
"Is something wrong?"
I must have been staring; Kuchinawa asked the question without any kind of inflection. I was bad enough at reading expressions to begin with, and all Kuchinawa had to offer was the strip of skin around his eyes.
"How do you walk without making any sound?" I asked.
I thought he raised his eyebrows. "Magic."
I slowed so that I could fall into step with him.
"Can you show me?" I asked.
"No."
"Because it's secret?"
"Yes."
"Ah. Bummer." I dug my hands into my pockets, leaning back so that my walk became more of a saunter. "Soooo, how do you know Sheena? I mean," I frowned, "other than being from Mizuho, obviously."
This time I was sure it was a quirked eyebrow. "What more is there to say?"
"Well," I shrugged, "I'm glad you met up with us. I don't know that I could have kept it together, not knowing if she was okay or not. So. Thanks."
"I'm doing my job," Kuchinawa said.
"Doesn't mean I can't be grateful," I said. "Thanks for sticking with us through the mess in Sybak, too. You didn't have to do that."
That made him pause.
"I'm from Mizuho. The affairs of the Empire aren't my concern."
"Empire," I repeated, considering my shoes. "So Meltokio - I mean, Tethe'alla, apart from Mizuho, is like a unified Empire?" That was hard to believe. Tethe'alla and Sylvarant weren't as big as Earth, but Tethe'alla was still a planet. The homogeneity of culture from one to the other felt off to me.
"I suppose."
"I need a real map," I concluded, "I don't get this place."
"Is it so different from the declining world?"
I looked up, surprised. "I mean, yeah. Power in Sylvarant is super... decentralized, I think is the word. Desians mean that no one city-state can get too big, and it's not like anyone has the resources or inclination to go around conquering one another. Might have done, right after Spiritua," I conjectured, "when the world had just started to decline but there were still military powers. I guess. I don't know." I needed better sources that weren't Raine. "Anyway. How do people get around in this place?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I've seen horses and carts and stuff. But you got from Mizuho to Ozette to Sybak, presumably, in like, what, two days? Unless you're hiding a wing pack somewhere..." I gave him a once-over, unsure. He traveled light.
Kuchinawa glanced down at me, eyes glinting.
"Magic."
"You're laughing at me," I accused.
"Yes," he agreed.
I gnawed on my lip, thinking. If it wasn't a Rheaird... He could have hitched a ride on a merchant vessel out of Ozette, but even ships would have to take the circuitous route through the mountains to avoid Gaoracchia, and it wasn't a trip you could make in a day. He could have rented out a horse and gone right through the Forest at full gallop, but it wasn't the kind of place you took horses, even at a leisurely pace. There was probably a sensible explanation I was missing, but all I could think about was long-distance teleportation.
I'd gotten pretty good at my brand of teleportation, but it didn't do well over distances greater than thirty yards. Even that little bit could be pushing it, if I was trucking along another person or struggling to orient myself.
"What if I just asked yes or no questions?"
"No."
"Damn."
"I have been assured," Kuchinawa said, after a moment, "that your technique is wholly original." I frowned. I wasn't sure if he was saying there wouldn't be overlap, or if he was probing for information - did he think Sheena taught me? "You would benefit from training."
"I'm trained," I protested, but without any heat.
"By a foot soldier," he observed, nodding at my sheathed sword. "You are obviously unsuited to the fighting style."
"Oy," I said, "I'm doing my best."
"I am surprised," he continued, "that Sheena hasn't seen fit to instruct you."
I frowned again. I had the weird feeling that this was a test.
"Isn't it forbidden, or whatever?"
"Or whatever," he echoed mildly.
A thought came to mind. "You could fight me."
"...And why would I do that?"
"I could learn without being taught," I waved my hands excitedly. "It's been forever since I've fought someone for fun. You're traveling with us until Ozette, right? We could spar tonight, even."
The last person I'd sparred had been Kratos. And then he'd put a stone spear through my heart, so there you go.
"...Very well," Kuchinawa agreed, "I'd like that."
Zelos made a face.
"You're fighting for fun?"
I spread my hands. "No, I'm fighting for education."
"That's way worse."
Lloyd was stoking the fire, and Colette was nibbling on waybread with preserves. She kept trying to make conversation with Presea, which was sweet and a bit awkward. Zelos glanced from me to Kuchinawa to the two by the fire, as if deciding on the best target for an appeal to sanity. "Well, don't come running to me for healing if you two hurt yourselves," he said at last, dropping to the ground and pulling over his rucksack. "Geez, you people."
It was a warm night, the strange foreboding of the forest hours behind us, and there were fireflies low on the hills near the distant riverbank. The smell of woodsmoke perfumed the air, and the darkening sky was a deep, dusty lavender. Kuchinawa beckoned me a little ways away from the camp, towards a slope of long, emerald grass. The deep red of his robes should have stood out against the grass, even in the semidarkness, but there was something about his posture and stance that made him into a natural part of the landscape.
"Terms of engagement?" he asked.
"Er. No maiming?" I said, not expecting the question. I had sparred with Kratos and Lloyd plenty of times, and no one had ever needed to specify no slicing bits off, but Kuchinawa was still half a stranger to me. I shrugged. "Have fun."
Kuchinawa nodded.
I had no idea what Sheena had told him about me, but I felt like I had an upper hand. He had never seen me fight, not really, and if he and Sheena used the same general style - then I had the advantage. There had been monsters on the road, yes, and in the Forest, but I had defaulted to a frontline position with the sword. It had felt natural at the time, but now, asked to hold my own weapons again, I could see what I had been doing; trying to fill the gap in our formation left by Kratos.
He'd been the one to drill me on healing magic, not Raine, and I was used to the way he and Lloyd worked together. Before, in Sylvarant, I had been a kind of... ancillary force, bouncing between support and frontline as people needed me. Without Kratos, there was no one else who could take his place.
Zelos might be able to, in time, but he didn't get along with Lloyd and he wasn't used to us, not yet.
"Go?" I suggested, because Kuchinawa hadn't made a move.
"Go," he agreed.
I dropped into place behind him even as he moved to parry me, my dagger scraping on the ceramic of his arm guard as he brought his other hand up, a blow that would have struck me in the diaphragm if I hadn't gotten out of the way in time. He was fast - not as fast as Yuan or Kratos, but faster than Sheena, and no one else could match me for speed.
He didn't hesitate, moving forward out of the defensive stance and into a brutal series of jabs and twisty acrobatic attempted takedowns, some of which I avoided and some of which hit home, each point of contact stinging with the promise of a very, very bad bruise. He had an economy of motion that made it impossible for me to guess how he would move until he was already moving, and by then it was too late. I had underestimated him, and now I was paying for it.
I was trying not to rely on teleportation, because Kuchinawa had implied - or I had self-consciously inferred - that it was a crutch, but Kuchinawa's strategy of relentless close-up assault wasn't something I could match.
I wasn't sure I could take him, even if I was teleporting everywhere. Because, no matter how mobile, I still had to take him down - and he was too fast. The moment I made contact I was forced back onto the defense; in a real fight, I'd have to put my hopes on striking a decisive killing blow before he could draw me into melee.
He didn't use cards, like Sheena, but he didn't need to - he had an apparently endless reserve of paper notes, each with a unique magical effect, and there was something about the surface of his palms that added an extra dimension of pain to every hit.
"Uncle!" I pleaded, at last, hands thrown up in a gesture of peace.
"Uncle?" Kuchinawa repeated, bemused.
"I forfeit," I translated. "Owwww." I rubbed my hands together, trying to get the feeling back into them.
"Thank you," said Kuchinawa, tucking something back into his belt, "that was illuminating."
"If the point of the lesson was 'you suck at hand-to-hand', consider it learned," I complained, massaging my elbows. I was sore all over, but it was a good kind of sore - the 'adrenaline without fear for my life' kind of sore. I'd missed it.
"It was not a lesson," Kuchinawa said, tone suddenly sharp in a way that suggested I had been over-familiar. I blinked.
"Right. Uh," I scraped a hank of hair behind one ear. "Are you gonna be sticking with us? After tomorrow, I mean?" I had no idea how long-term Kuchinawa's mission was, or what it entailed beyond seeing us to Ozette.
"Unlikely," he said.
I frowned. I was used to spars as a kind of bonding experience - a kind of sporting camaraderie, but this wasn't that. Kuchinawa took his leave without another word, and I stood there in the long grass, feeling oddly dissatisfied. Had I offended him somehow? Had calling it a 'lesson' been some kind of cultural faux-pas? It wasn't as if we had been on the road to being best buds, but it still bothered me. The night air suddenly seemed too humid, and I tugged off my armor, not bothering to undo the clasps.
I had been looking forward to the fight all day, and now...
I missed Kratos.
The sentiment clambered to the top of my thoughts, heavy and unwelcome.
I stared up at the moon, annoyed with myself, and with the world. We just needed to get to Ozette, and to Raine and Genis and Sheena; we would all be together again, and things would be okay.
"So, don't get mad, but," Zelos said, "You should probably put your hood up."
I gave him a look. "What? Why?"
Ozette lay only an hour away, nested in a bramble of black branches. It was one of a half-dozen villages, each smaller than the last, secluded in seams of dark firs and wild forest. We had, for a little while, been out of the shadow of the woods, but now the road turned inward again, squeezed between river and impassible mountainside, and with it had returned that faint sense of foreboding. It felt like the kind of place where little girls went all alone to grandmother's house and ended up as a stomachache.
"Ozette is notoriously not a friendly place for half-elves," he told me. "And that's me saying that."
I raised my eyebrows. "You thought I was an elf when we first met."
Zelos shrugged. "Yeah, but... you know, better safe than sorry."
I sighed. "I don't get you. You seem too rational for..." I waved a hand. "All that crap."
Zelos glanced down at me. "I seem rational?"
"I mean, you're obviously smart," I said, "I dunno. I don't get it."
He gave me a thin smile. "What don't you get? You're the first half-elf I've ever had a conversation with. It's just - I grew up hearing people always telling me it was wrong, you know? 'Half-elves are mistakes'." He looked somewhere between rueful and resigned. "It's not like people have them on purpose. Why would you ever wanna subject a kid to a life like that?"
I thought about my parents - about the cost of fertility clinics and all the stuff my mom had done to have me so late in life. They always talked about it, how much money it had been and it was always in a tone of awe and gratitude, like they would have spent ten times as much and I still would have been their little miracle. We were comfortable, and I'd been spoiled, but the real outstanding aspect to my childhood was that I had been deeply, obviously beloved. Somehow I thought Zelos wouldn't appreciate it as a counterargument.
"I mean, everyone's kind of a mistake," I shrugged. "The whole world is made up of mistakes. That's physics. Nine times out of ten people are just following instinct. Mistaking instinct for reason, you know? We're all just animals," I said. "And it's not like a pigeon is that different from a parrot, in the long run. A year or a century - in the end it's still just some dead bird."
"...Well, that's dark," said Zelos.
"It's not, really," I said. "Look, think of it this way. Even if we pull this whole thing off, the world-saving or whatever, and the whole world comes together in mutual cooperation or some bull, nothing lasts forever. One day we're all gonna be dead and the world's still gonna be going on, doing its thing, and maybe in another couple thousand years there's a massive war and everything gets fucked again."
"Yeah, not really seeing the bright side to this," Zelos said.
"I mean that time is going to pass, but we're still here, right now," I said. "What we do isn't pointless because we're still there, doing it."
"And what if you're miserable?" Zelos asked. "What if every moment of your life is pain? What's the point of that?"
"Because it's literally all we have," I said. "We don't have anything else. It's like..." I tried to find a metaphor. "Even if it's awful, there's always the chance that it won't be, and the only other option is no chance at all."
Zelos laughed. "Weren't we talking about half-elves?"
"We are talking about half-elves," I said.
"Well, I guess you answered your own question, then," he observed.
"Huh?"
"Why I don't like half-elves," he said, without much humor. "They're not like me, and that makes them bad. Instinct, like you said."
That was such a miserable way of thinking about the world; no wonder Zelos wanted out.
"Meh, you'll get over it," I said at last. "Just need some exposure therapy."
"Well, if you wanted me exposed," Zelos waggled his eyebrows, "you only had to say."
I put on the hood, in the end.
Ozette was a town built into the gnarled roots of a giant tree. Whether it was the giant tree, I couldn't know; each tendril was wider than a two-lane road, and many were larger, large enough to allow two buildings to sit opposite one another with a road between. Some parts of the tree looked to be still alive, putting forth new growth so dwarfed by the surroundings as to be invisible; some parts had a dull hardness that suggested the tree had petrified over time, rather than rot. Carpets of dense green moss grew over everything; the town, canopied beneath the tangled forest, had a sense of being in perpetual twilight.
Lanterns burned, even at mid-morning, and there was a strange, musty smell on the breeze that prickled up from beneath the general freshness of the forest air.
We had only just passed the gates when Presea broke from the party to jog ahead.
"Well, bye, I guess," said Zelos, as Presea disappeared into the bramble of cottages and natural byways. "She was in a hurry."
"Is she going to be okay?" asked Colette, worrying at a lock of blonde hair. "We should go after her."
"You are expected at the inn," Kuchinawa reminded us.
"She'll be fine," Zelos reassured Colette, "You've seen her. We can go check up on her later, yeah?"
"Well - okay," Colette agreed.
"This place is kind of..." Lloyd trailed off.
I could see what he meant.
Kuchinawa lead us upwards past shops and thatched houses, across a plank bridge and up a long flight of stairs carved into the living wood. There was a preternatural silence to the place, like Gaoracchia, but worse, because we were not alone. Gaunt faces watched us from windows and stoops, from behind a shop stall, from a crowded paddock, without pretense or concealment. They fell silent when we came into view, and whispered only when we had gone on far ahead.
"They're talking about Presea," Colette murmured, "about how they'd hoped she'd gone away. Why would they say something like that?"
"Dunno," Zelos muttered, "But best to keep moving. Doesn't look like we're getting the welcome wagon."
"Glad I took your advice," I admitted, in an undertone. I had lived in the Midwest, in places where you could drive for hours and not see another living soul - but Ozette had the feeling of confinement, not of space. It felt like the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else, probably on account of being related.
Meat raffles were common enough where I came from, but you could usually count on it being beef or pork, and not freshly-butchered tourist.
The innkeeper was friendly enough, at least, and directed us upstairs.
"Lloyd!"
"Genis!"
"Colette?"
"Sheena!"
I grinned, tugging the hood down around my shoulders and wading past the kids to embrace first Raine, and then Sheena. It became very crowded; it was more of a bunkroom than a hotel room, but Raine, Genis and Sheena were not alone. Another Mizuhoan, in blue rather than Kuchinawa's red, was seated in the corner, and gave us a nod of acknowledgment as we piled in.
"Orochi," said Kuchinawa.
"Brother," returned Orochi, with a little more warmth.
Sheena was seated on the end of one bunk, her hair in a low bun. I looked her over, eyes searching for any trace of injury or sickness, but she looked fine - healthy, even, as if she'd had a few more square meals over the intervening days.
"I'm fine," she said after a moment, smiling at me. "Undine kept me from falling into the ocean, and then Raine and Genis showed up. Raine told me about the Rheairds," she continued. "I'm glad you guys are okay." She reached out, took my hand, and gave it a quick squeeze. "More than okay, I guess," she said, looking at Colette. They shared a long, teary look. "I'm so glad you're back."
"I'm glad to be back," said Colette, and gave Sheena another hug. "I'm so glad you're okay!"
"I'm sorry we couldn't meet you earlier," said Raine, more soberly, "but we couldn't risk the flight back."
"Turns out Lloyd here is kind of a miracle-worker," said Zelos, clapping Lloyd on the back. "Everything ended up okay, in the end."
"I see that," Raine said, smiling at Colette. "You were able to find what you needed at Sybak?"
"We got arrested," Lloyd blurted.
"What?" demanded Genis.
"Come on, Lloyd, you can break it a little easier than that," chided Zelos. "It's fine, the Pope's guys were just stalking us and accused me - and by extension, you guys - of some light treason, nothing to worry about." He looked sideways at me, as if asking a question.
"They tried to haul me off for being a half-elf," I explained, "They had these blood tester things. But I got away."
"For being a half-elf?" Genis echoed.
"'Caste deception'," agreed Zelos, "any half-elf in Tethe'alla accused of a crime is pretty much automatically guilty. Hey, I didn't make the law," he said, because Lloyd was scowling at him again.
"Oh," mumbled Genis.
"Shut up," I advised Zelos, patting him on the shoulder. "The point is that we got the info we needed and Colette is back, although," I paused, and gave Raine a look, "We might wanna have a dwarf look at the Crest. Cruxis Crystals might interact differently with Crests and the body than Exspheres, and I'd rather head anything nasty off at the pass." Raine nodded, although Lloyd and Zelos looked bemused. There wasn't really precedent, but... "You remember what the Unicorn said?"
Sheena perked up. "About Martel's illness? Right, if Colette is supposed to be the perfect vessel, or whatever..."
Lloyd frowned. From his position, we'd dealt with Colette - he hadn't foreseen more trouble. "Wait, so Colette might get sick? Why?"
"Mana signatures are not always indicative of genetics, but they are certainly correlative," Raine interjected before I could make a fool of myself, "but if Martel was ill in a way that could only be cured by the magic of a Unicorn, it must have been a very unusual malady. If Martel was susceptible to some rare physical disorder, or more troubling, to a mana disorder, then Colette might be at risk, too. It would be best to keep an eye on it."
It was a bit suspect if you actually listened to what she was saying, but the authority and tone were there, and I nodded along.
"Right," Lloyd said, "you'll let us know if you feel funny, right?" He asked Colette, "I'll look after you, whatever happens."
Zelos made a noise. "You can just say cheesy stuff like that and everyone takes you seriously? Man, I can't believe you guys."
"Shut up," snapped Sheena, mood disturbed, "you say cheesy stuff all the time."
"I can't deny the language of love when-"
"At any rate," Raine interrupted, "now that we're all in one place, we should discuss what happens next."
"On that note," said Orochi, getting to his feet, "we have a great deal to talk about."
There was a lot to talk about. Orochi was here representing Mizuho, and Mizuho had decided to ally themselves with the Renegades. The news that we'd been declared traitors to the crown only cemented that decision - Sheena was the current face of Mizuho, and any accusation leveled at her was leveled at the whole village. There hadn't been any kind of public declaration - Mizuho played things close to the vest - but the fact that we were here at all spoke volumes.
"So we do have a line of contact with the Renegades?" I confirmed.
"Yes," agreed Orochi, "we've had agents with them for some time now, and official overtures have been made. I'm here on behalf of both Mizuho and the Renegades."
"So what now?" asked Lloyd. "Yuan said something about... something?"
"Mana links," sighed Raine. "Right now, the Great Seed is being prevented from germinating. The same links that restrain the Great Seed are the same tethering Sylvarant to Tethe'alla. The anchor points of those links, if you will, are the Summon Spirits. Yuan also mentioned another Spirit, Origin, who gave Mithos the power to sunder the world in two, although I would have to seek out more information on the subject."
"They want me to make pacts with the other Summon Spirits," Sheena nutshell. "If I can make new pacts, then Mithos' will be dissolved, and the Great Seed will be able to grow, I think."
"The other issue is mobility," Raine continued. "To move between the two worlds, we have to be able to use the Rheairds."
"What do they run on?" asked Lloyd, "Coal?"
"We've talked about this," Genis said, but Lloyd was grinning at him, and Genis kicked him in the shin. "Don't talk if you don't have anything useful to say."
"Doesn't Mizuho have some kind of power source we could use?" Lloyd carried on, ignoring him. "We've got to use them somehow. They run on, like, magic, right?"
Raine looked at Sheena, who had gone still. She was waiting for Sheena to say it.
"There's a way," Sheena volunteered at last, staring at her knees. "I just need to form a pact with Volt."
A/N: i dunno why this chapter was so hard for me to write im sowwy