"I don't ever want to do something like that again," Sazh said. He sat with Cid, Desch and the orphans, plus Toan and Alus while Desch righted the Floating Continent.
Cid, also worn from the meld, patted him on the back. "If you hadn't gone and gotten yourself possessed like you did, then we wouldn't have to yank you out of your head. You gotta think about these things before you do them."
"You're the first," Refia said. "The Crystals say no one else has figured out how to get one of you free."
Sazh forced himself to stand and stretch despite the strange ache in his feet. It spread to his back. "The others are quicker to take Fate on Her word."
"We need to connect with Gaia V," Ingus said. "Sazh, where's your son?"
"I'll worry about dragging him here. You guys do what the Crystals say."
"Can I help?" Cid asked.
"Wait," Luneth said, "we can hit two birds with one stone, can't we?"
Ingus looked at Desch. "Only if our communication works for both. Speaking with ascended beings doesn't ensure overlap with planets."
"But aren't the Crystals on the same level as Sazh?" Arc asked. He kept up a steady stream of faint white magic to Alus' comatose body.
Sazh shook his head. "If we are or not, they're probably on a different wavelength." He reached out for the others, only to blank at the thought of reconnecting with Bhunivelze. There was no saying what might happen.
"What's wrong?" Cid asked.
"I need to remember where Dajh went."
"You can't just call the kid?"
"No." Sazh searched the room before remembering this wasn't somewhere Dajh would know. "Kid wanted to see the world and now he's running about the stars. How am I supposed to drag him back here?"
"You know your son better than any of us."
Sazh thought hard. Cid got up to help the orphans and they eventually left him in the low, red light of the control sphere. Dajh could be anywhere, so he couldn't go chasing him. But Sazh had nothing to lure him back here unless he connected back to Bhunivelze.
He closed his eyes and thought of the Reds. He thought of touching minds not his own and he thought of seeing connections he couldn't broach. But Mwynn knew people and she enlightened them without words. And whatever powers Mwynn had, he would have by right of Bhunivelze. Whatever Bhunivelze had, Sazh had.
He put out a hand to steady himself before punching though space and seeking the same power that took him from this world in the first place and took Dajh away from him. He sought his connections and stretched for the horizon.
A spark stung him but Sazh held firm. He felt the swell of synergy and latched onto Eight's conscious. Smoke burned in his nose, but the rumble of distant worlds and the warmth of molten crystal steadied him against the sensation of falling through nothing.
Sazh heard a grunt of confusion before he broke off the link and gasped for breath. His vision blurred and his knees buckled. He almost forgot the weakness of mortality, but he wouldn't be complete until he got the rest of Bhunivelze's power.
"Whoa," Desch said. Sazh forgot about him. "You don't look too good."
Sazh remembered to breathe and orient himself. He connected to someone. He did. He did the thing that only Queen and King could do. He could touch another's conscious and—
Sazh felt sick and lost hold of that strengthening fire. "Oh, shit."
Desch gave him a quizzical look and Sazh gripped him as if he could transfer everything he knew in a second of touch.
"Bhunivelze knows. We need another plan."
Balthier swam amongst void currents as he raced after Bartz and Gilgamesh. The two moved faster than he thought possible in this place and they often stopped to let him catch up. The place didn't feel like water, but it had a similar sense of… pressure? And thinking of it as water didn't make the distant, shifting masses any less unsettling.
Gilgamesh said the place "ate" at the cosmos and they moved through its stomach. Even after all the time they already spent diving through the depths, Balthier didn't make out a hint of light or structure. Even space sounded better to him than this… place.
"Incoming!" Gilgamesh swerved and something hit Balthier's leg. Another something whizzed past his ear and he grabbed the thing that floated near his leg where it hit him.
"A rock?" He looked up to see a shadow against the nothingness. "What's—?"
"Move!" Bartz snatched his wrist and dove down. Balthier lost his sense of up and followed Bartz toward nothingness.
Debris nicked his arms and stomach and he caught sight of silverware, leaves, bone, and something colorful pass him by.
They kept going until the debris slowed and they found it safe to wander back toward Gilgamesh. A vast shadow covered the space where they aimed for and Balthier chilled at the outline of a house slipping in above him.
"Another world falling to the void," Gilgamesh said. "Looks like a piece of Gaia II to me."
"Then let us make haste," Balthier said. He lost track of time here and he wondered how long it'd been since he first started moving. It felt too long already.
"Wait," Gilgamesh said.
Balthier drew up short and Bartz ran into him. Gilgamesh looked about them with an intent look and put out a hand with two fingers straight.
"You're different, you know," Bartz said.
"Hold your words, my rival. I'm thinking."
Balthier relaxed. "Doesn't like to be disturbed this one. Seems contrary to me after all that he's put on himself."
"As I said. He's different."
"We're going the wrong way," Gilgamesh said at length. "Perfect. Let's follow this current and find where it takes us, eh?"
Bartz said, "You want to get more lost."
"That's how the rift works, rival." Gilgamesh reached into the void and gestured. "Hang on tight!"
Something caught him and sent Gilgamesh spinning through nothing and toward the dark. Bartz repeated what Gilgamesh did, but didn't move. Balthier watched him and waited until Bartz also darted off. Then he found the touch of something like a jetstream. It tugged at his hand and Balthier moved closer—
He caught. His vision blurred and he spun. There was no wind in this place, but he couldn't keep his eyes open past the forces slamming his face and chest.
He glimpsed purple, then dusty black, smelled the stench of death, then fresh flowers, then saw blue sky—
Pain exploded in his back and joints like he fell from a chocobo a dozen times over. He landed on glistening tile. He spit out muck and took time to straighten himself out while Gilgamesh insisted again on fighting Bartz.
"Save your shenanigans for later, will you?" Balthier asked.
"I don't answer to nobodies like you," Gilgamesh said. "Make yourself scarce or you'll serve as fodder!"
"Oh, please." Balthier left them to it. "I'm surrounded again by idiots."
He looked about the hall they found themselves in and marveled at the finesse of the silver and rose-tinted vaulted ceiling. This was a mighty place indeed to use such expensive trim and color. That detail would fetch a fine price in any economy.
"Bartz!"
Balthier startled out of the way of an oncoming child dressed like a vagabond. The boy barely looked like an adult, yet he moved with the speed of someone seasoned by time and battle. And it all hit Bartz with the force of something feral.
Balthier left them to their reunion and Gilgamesh bellowed his disagreement with the company of strangers. It wasn't Eos, perhaps, but it was a planet from which they could get work done.
Lenna appeared around the corner and Balthier drew up short. "You make a pleasant surprise," he said.
"As do you," she said. Arrayed in silks and sheers, she struck the image of Ashe when she first stepped up as Dalmasca's queen. The color gradient of her sleeves and hems mixed with a shimmer dust that made it look like cloth made of crystal. And despite her level tone, she looked at him like she saw a ghost.
"You're gathering people like us?" Balthier asked.
She guided him and the others into a room decorated with a throne and other normal chairs. "Not all deliberately as it turns out. We've learned that those connected with Cosmos and Chaos hold a special talent against things such as the Void, and as we're standing on an artificial entrance, we thought it an effective place to make our stand."
"You're willing to turn your home into a battleground against the Void?"
"I'm willing to do what it takes to end this conflict. I don't consider anything else to compete in import."
Balthier looked about the place and found a sensation familiar to that of Giruvegan, only instead of drenched in a magic mist, it felt twisted and gaping. Like the Rift. "And you speak with a finality that worries me. The point of our war is to save our worlds. Do you not plan to see beyond the culmination?"
"I don't much care what happens to me or any of us broken by Bhunivelze. I only worry for the salvation of the innocents brought into this mess."
Balthier watched her as she spoke and found a hard mask formed by unknowable years of conditioning. "You don't care?"
"Not at all." She fiddled with her sleeves.
"You must be quite practiced at telling yourself that. You don't dress as one ready to meet their fate."
"Because my people need a symbol of strength."
"You can pass a symbol of strength without decking yourself in so many hues." Balthier got closer and she took a telling step back. "You want your legacy to last, Majesty. Do you not?"
"I want to do my job, pirate. Don't presume to know what it's like to live in the delicate balance of public gratification and private machinations."
"I don't presume, Majesty. But perhaps you do. Why do you fight with everyone you meet?"
"I do not fight—"
"You do fight with yourself, Majesty. I can only wonder why."
Lenna went quiet and a flash of fear betrayed her. Balthier knew she hid something beneath her scaly demeanor, but he also knew if he pushed it, she would only fight back. It was time to leave her be—after all, it wasn't his responsibility to save her from herself.
Behind them, Gilgamesh engaged in battle with all three of Bartz and his friends. A common bar brawl in a castle like this? The worlds really did turn upside-down.
"I would prefer not to live beyond this," Lenna said, quiet. "I'd rather not keep interacting with my servants like I didn't try to kill them when last I was here."
"They don't understand you're safe now?"
"I can never be sure if they really trust me. But I will not abandon them either before I can raise an heir."
"So, you would like the freedom of having it taken from you."
She regarded him with contempt. "… Perhaps I would."
"Do you organize this on your own?"
"I follow Princess Sarah's orders. She has provided direction in the dispatch of the Void and I trust her every word."
"A quick trust, isn't it?"
"She works with the Crystals and it shows. She displays a wisdom far beyond my own."
"I don't much care for wisdom. Intelligence, perhaps, but wise people make for easy arrogance."
"I think it the opposite. Intelligence blinds people to their faults while wisdom is common sense often linked to an innate intelligence."
The door to the throne room burst open again and a small group stumbled through, armed to the teeth with firearms. They watched the fight going on near the throne with interest before one of them—a man with alarmingly blue hair and sleek clothing—approached Balthier and Lenna.
"Lenna," the man said, "you're looking good! Love the detail on your hems! Sarah sends her regards, by the way."
"Thank you, Yuj," Lenna said. "Have you met Balthier?"
"He must have come later." Yuj put a hand to his forehead, highlight a device wrapped around his wrist and fingers. "Nice to meet you."
"Likewise," Balthier said.
"You brought weapons?" Lenna asked.
"Enough for us and five others. Gadot there is loaded with all the bullets and I think Maqui found a hand cannon that we can save for the big fries. Plus, we've found a way to replicate some gear from our old home."
Lenna looked impressed. "Thank you for your efforts."
"How many guests do you expect?" Balthier asked.
"Too many," Lenna said. "The Void has built up reserves of creatures in numbers beyond calculation."
"We saw some in the Rift," Balthier said.
Lenna stared at him. "Could you see them here? Could you step back in and—"
"I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. There are currents, but the entrances are sporadic at best and we found ourselves lucky for making it out at all. And I'd prefer not to get lost in the annals of nothingness, thank you very much. Now if you'll excuse me…"
Balthier left them to figure out their plan while he went and looked for somewhere to rest. After spending all that time traveling without ground, his muscles hurt just from standing.