Chapter Four: Human Sacrifice
Blinding streaks of ceiling light passed overhead, one by one. Voices surrounded her, murmuring to one another; nebulous, blurry words poured from faces she couldn't quite see. Wheels scraped along a rough, unkempt floor beneath her, jarring her back. When she strained slightly against her restraints, her body felt stiff and tired, and her eyes burned with the lull of artificial sleep.
Through her drugged stupor, Tifa tried to focus. She remembered that the Amyntasi guards had taken custody of her after her trial had concluded, sedating her before she had the chance to run or fight. And also before she could make a meaningful plea for the court's mercy when they decided to execute her.
Amyntas reminded her so much of Gaia, but in all the wrong ways. There were a few good people; a few wise or kind, but most of them would sooner kill off a disturbing messenger than face up to the fact that their world was in danger. They were a cowardly bunch, just like most of the world that had relied on ShinRa. Most, even at the very top, were only interested in maintaining their comfortable status quo, too hasty to settle for a false solution that would allow them the temporal luxury of looking the other way.
And now, as they carted Tifa away from the court room, down some unknown passage on the upper tier, she found a sick sort of comfort in their familiar, stubborn naïveté. The feeling was so wrong, and maybe even somewhat consenting to their deadly ideas about her, but it was a little like home. Once, long ago, ShinRa had needed someone to blame as well. Weapons were on the rampage, and Meteor had only been a week out from crashing down. A scapegoat offered a lot of mortified people a much –desired distraction in the face of all-certain death.
But then, she had escaped the death penalty before. Maybe it wasn't impossible to pull it off again. Tifa relaxed her stiffened neck, and let herself dose off slightly.
Somewhere along the way, she'd entered an elevator. The sinking, descending pull of gravity stretched on into a lengthy, indeterminate period of time. Like a proper prison or dungeon, the place the judges had termed "Candlesticks" was probably at ground level or lower, she figured. That might be a good sign; unlike Junon's gas chamber, this place probably wouldn't test her with a potentially fatal leap off an oversized cannon raised hundreds of feet above the ocean. Undoubtedly, Candlesticks would have its own special challenges, but it was pointless to try to guess what they might be.
A morbid conclusion Tifa had drawn was that she simply wasn't destined to die—to suffer, yes—but death seemed deeply disinterested in her. So long as she was present to witness its methodic, violent assault on her sanity, her life was safe. If only she could turn its indifference against it; make it bored with its own purpose.
Wishful thinking was always nice, wasn't it?
They had moved on to some kind of bustling tunnel now, and the guards were loading her into a vehicle. So this was where the Amyntasi kept their major transit systems! If they truly were Cetra, Tifa imagined that keeping it all underground made some kind of sense. Whatever waste these machines and passages produced was strictly isolated, prevented from impacting any of the wildlife above. Aside from the slums, with how clean the air seemed in most locations, they probably also had some means of scrubbing the vapors that escaped to the surface.
Tifa stifled a well-earned chuckle. Here she was, theoretically on the way to her execution, and she'd finally made some time for a bit of that overdue sight-seeing after all!
"Candlesticks, pier seven," one of the guards muttered to the driver.
"Seven? What the hell did she do?" the driver exclaimed.
"Classified and under review. All we know is she's a high risk."
Trying to roll her eyes at her captors' gross misjudgment, Tifa found that they were rather comfortable to stay there, closed and nestled within her head. At the moment, fighting the sedative's effects was meaningless. No matter what they personally thought of her, it was obvious that these people were just doing their jobs.
A few minutes passed. Or maybe it was a half the day. Either way, her guards suddenly wanted her awake again. They were shoving and poking at her, trying to get her to move.
"Y'know, you could try talking…I use words too," she slurred, but they ignored her suggestion. She was a known alien now, and they were pulling out all the stops to treat her exactly that way.
Groggily, Tifa dragged her legs over the stretcher's edge and stood, bracing herself against it to keep from falling down.
Only one guard remained with her, while the other had wandered off…somewhere. In her stupefied, drugged haze, Tifa didn't really know. Staring at the tunnel's wall was growing strangely engaging until, impatiently, he snatched up one of her hands, and then the other, cuffing them together. He then motioned for her to head for the tunnel's exit, genuinely intent on not sharing so much as two words with her.
Tifa had to wonder if he'd been instructed to remain silent, or if he was doing so out of his own personal disgust or fear. Not that it mattered at this point, but she couldn't help but entertain the thought that perhaps, this was how most of the Amyntasi had seen her from the very start. She didn't have such difficulties surviving in the slums for a lack of know-how. Reliable allies had just been too hard to come by most of the time.
In the cold clarity of hindsight, they'd been impossible to find at all.
Stumbling ahead as steadily as she could manage, Tifa's mouth dropped slightly ajar when she saw what loomed before her. It was just like that mural she'd seen on the upper tier, on the antechamber's walls. Far out at sea, stone towers rivaling the height of sky-scrapers jutted out of the water, bearing what looked like oversized fish bowls at their peaks.
This was Amyntas' death row, although they had yet to reveal exactly how they intended to kill her. Tifa had to give them credit: They sure knew how to paint certain doom in a glorious light. Back on Gaia, not even ShinRa's most lavish properties before Meteorfall could have compared to this kind of architectural engineering.
Peeling her gaze from the ocean, Tifa looked down the dock. Ahead, toward the very end, there was a small row of boats. An elderly woman stood there, waiting with a small bowl in her hands.
Catching up to her, Tifa's guard grabbed her by her right arm and ushered her the rest of the way, until she stood before the old woman.
"This is our sacrifice?" she inquired.
"From Cluster 100, a murderer in exchange for our continuing endurance. She is like the trespasser from long past," he explained, adopting a sanctimonious carriage that Tifa could tell was just a ridiculous act for this part of his duty.
The old woman grimaced. "So it may be, but she is yet weak. We are safe. She will die easily." Dipping her fingers into the dish, she drew a circle on Tifa's forehead with her pointer finger.
Thick and black, the substance ran down into Tifa's eyes. In this macabre ceremony, they'd marked her with fluids they'd collected from those they'd presumed to be her victims. She wasn't worried about becoming ill with Geostigma—if Sephiroth had intended his stigma for her in that way, all her previous exposures would have been more than enough to bring her down. Let them do whatever they pleased. Her greatest concern, she decided, was simply to observe everything and stay awake. Hopefully, with enough precursory observation, she'd be able to find a way out.
After that, the guard quickly herded her into one of the boats, and fired up its motor. Racing out to sea, they passed one tower after another. Soon, the shoreline was barely visible, and only one more remained, straight ahead.
Pulling up to its base, the boat slowed, circling it until it stopped at a small entrance to the tower's interior. It was nothing more than that, Tifa noted—there wasn't a door or barricade, just a hole. If all these people planned to do was take her to the top and hope she'd just die, they were sorely mistaken. Yes, they'd come a long way out to sea, but not more than a mile or so. She could swim the distance back to shore, barring any rip tides, overwhelmingly large waves, or predatory sea creatures.
All of which she had no clue, but that was just a chance she'd have to take.
Cooperatively, Tifa stepped out of the boat before her guard saw fit to push, shove, jab, or kick her again. Inside, she found the expected spiral stairwell, along with a small diagram of the tower's interior on the wall, engraved into a metal placard. Her heart sank. If she was reading it correctly, there were ten locking checkpoints on the way up. If she had her full strength, this would have been the exact moment at which she'd stopped playing along with whatever the Amyntasi- Cetran Cluster government wanted to do with her. She would have throttled the guard, and then taken the boat back to shore, preferably somewhere far removed from Cluster 100's territory.
No wonder they'd so heavily sedated her.
At this rate, she had no choice but to move on, and hope the top offered some kind of respite.
Tifa panted and leaned hard against the one final gateway to her supposed execution. The way up had been almost as long and twice as trying as the ShinRa building. Or maybe she was just out of shape? It had been a long, poorly-fed year since she'd done any real exercise or fighting.
Unsympathetic, her guard forced her to stand up straight, grabbing at the link in her handcuffs and painfully straining her shoulders. Loosening the lock, he freed her hands before giving her one last boot into the space ahead.
Falling down on her hands and knees, Tifa heard the gate slam shut, followed by the guard's quickly fading footfalls back down. Like a countdown, each checkpoint locked down as well until her entrapment was completed. There was nothing left to do but wait for the sedative to wear the rest of the way off, and then investigate. Albeit, she was too anxious to do the former. She wasn't about to bet her life on a place like this being safe to nap in. Crawling up a ramp-like incline, Tifa dragged herself out into the open.
At the very top of her assigned tower, Tifa gasped. She was inside one of the glass enclosures she'd observed on the way. Outside, the surrounding ocean was placid and still. The view beyond that was incredible. At this height, she could see past the other towers to the shoreline, where the boat that had brought here her was quickly approaching. Only somewhat distant, Cluster 100 stood tall and proud on the horizon. From behind her, the beginning of sunset illuminated its graduated tiers, while the rising of Amyntas' largest moon provided the city a nocturnal crown.
A small, half-laughed hiccup bounced from inside Tifa's throat. Why did beauty and horror have to be such fond bedfellows? She was privileged to be here, absorbing the sights of an alien world—a world with breath-taking cities and nature; its own eclectic mix of people, animals, and technology. She really was. No one part of it had ever quite prepared her for what she might encounter next. Yet, through her distractive musings, the latter half of her situation, the horror, in the form of an itchy smear on her forehead, reminded her of why she was here.
From what she could see, there was only one way out, through a small balcony on the furthest edge of the tower from the sealed entrance below. Leaping from this height into the water promised instant death to anyone who'd dare to try it. The tower itself contained literally nothing. There was neither food nor water. Aside from an overhanging ledge near the entrance, there was no roof, and no way to control the temperature. She was completely deprived of sustenance, and exposed to the elements. To top it off, there was no toilet, and no way to bathe. Just sitting around and waiting for nothing to happen would grow unsanitary very quickly.
This place, the Candlesticks, was made to force prisoners to choose how they'd perish. Here, she could die of dehydration, succumb to illness or exposure, or commit suicide before it became too unbearable. All the while, they'd called her a sacrifice—a sacrifice to their planet, Amyntas. Hers was a sentence meant to objectify and humiliate. The judges couldn't make heads or tails of what she was, or what her real intentions were, so they drew the worst conclusion possible, allowing them to issue the harshest sentence in their arsenal. By sending her here, they could flaunt their control over a being they vaguely suspected of being the same as Jenova.
"These guys don't care who they have to kill, so long as they get to act like their planet is safe," Cloud agreed.
Tifa looked down at the clothes she'd been issued, this time with both understanding and astonishment. They appeared sacramental because they were. Her trial had probably been a farce; a show she had to put on before the judges issued their already-decided upon verdict. If their relationship with their world was based upon feeding it new knowledge and wisdom through the life cycle, then what better treat for it than an alien sacrifice? What tastier morsel than one who knew of things having nothing to do with this isolated sphere? Even here, there was no exception to the cruelty of life.
Cetra or no, the Amyntasi were not justified, holy keepers of their planet, Tifa decided. They were barbaric cowards.
"Tifa, I don't know what to say. I'm sorry," Aerith's voice murmured from the back of her mind.
In all of what had been Aerith's short life, Tifa had never heard her sound so guilty, so contrite. She was probably shocked. How gut-wrenching it must feel, to find out long after her natural life that her ancestors might have been just as crooked as normal human beings. What a dark revelation it had to be for her, that being born from the Planet had made them neither sacred nor particularly righteous.
But she couldn't bring herself to answer her old friend's apology, because of what they were soon to share in common. Tifa had been so confident that she'd find some way to slip out of this trap, but as the sedative's effects grew weaker and weaker, the more clearly she could see that no such thing existed. Like Aerith, she was to die atop a Cetran altar.
"The Goddess will intervene when your death is immediately imminent. No sooner," Genesis supplied.
Tifa perked up, enlivened with a morbid, tricky thought. If that's all she had to do to force Minerva's hand, then, "Just watch me!"
Shutting her eyes and clenching her back teeth, Tifa broke into a full sprint for the balcony. She could do this. She could take control; show Gaia's disembodied soul that she wasn't just a convenient shelter or mode of transport. She was still her own person, and if all she had to do was hold herself hostage, from here on out, she'd be the one calling the shots.
Then, a sharp peal of thunder nearly knocked her back, halting her only precious inches from the edge.
Her heart throbbed in her ears, and she watched the dust and pebbles she'd kicked up in her run take the plunge she had not. Far below, where they fell and disappeared, the waters had grown severely agitated. Waves crashed and sloshed at the base, and leapt into the lower entrance, probably flooding it. Looking up, Tifa beheld low-hanging clouds rapidly gathering out of nowhere, spinning directly overhead. Bolts of crimson and violet reached out from their center, like an electrified spider crawling through a small hole.
The rim of the tower's glass walls caught one of the lightning strikes and sparked to life, buzzing with a fresh, live charge. Startled, Tifa booked back beneath the meager shelter of the awning near the final checkpoint. She'd lived long enough on this world to have seen a few rough storms. None of them had ever looked or acted like this, but with how the tower was reacting—
"Might be Amyntas, tryin' to eat yer ass up, just like they want," Cid commented.
Outside, rain began splattering hard on the stone floor, and water surged down the ramp to where she was hiding.
Tifa pressed her back against the bars, eyeing the shape-shifting clouds. Black and misty, they dipped and receded like searching fingers, assaulting the platform above with water and blasts of wind.
She'd seen this before, hadn't she? Black doomsday clouds, risen from a world utterly consumed in rot; corrupted souls heeding the call of their new master. Tifa hissed through her teeth, trying to calm her nerves enough to think coherently.
"No, that's not possible, Tifa," she corrected herself. "Amyntas isn't that sick yet. Not like that."
Her friends fell eerily silent at that statement, and her head felt suddenly heavy. Buzzing static overloaded her ears. Someone was trying to say something; someone was trying to push through. Tifa listened closely, but it was like trying to pick out a single voice from a million whispers.
Then, as quickly as they'd come, both the torrents of rain and the psychic static ceased. Trembling slightly, Tifa crept back up to the tower's roof. When she emerged, a massive, roaring, super-sonic explosion sounded from above, rolling the clouds back as though they were only plumes of dust. Crimson light poured down through the center of the storm, coloring the surrounding cumulonimbi in its deep hue. As it reflected off the raging sea, all the world was bleeding.
Still, Tifa dared to step further out. There was nowhere else to go, and nothing she could do to make her situation any safer. She was already drenched; hiding to stay dry was pointless.
As if in response to her boldness, the storm's winds died down. The ocean settled, turning into one huge, bloody mirror that seamlessly melded with the sky further out.
Then, from the shore, a series of sirens howled out their warning.
Tifa did an about face. From Cluster 100 and other populous locations further inland, bright columns of white magical energy burst upward and out, pushing back against the spreading darkness.
"That's…Holy," she said to herself, unable to tear her eyes from the spectacle unfolding in the sky above.
But that meant whatever had brought this tempest about had nothing to do with Amyntas accepting its peoples' sacrifice. What could an impressive, collective summoning of Holy magic like this mean? Frozen in place, Tifa continued to watch, pacing back slightly while it collided with the clouds, engaging in a full-fledged struggle. Both forces surged and retreated, again and again, neither making significant headway.
Another thunderous blast roared directly above, emitting a shockwave which, when it met with Holy, repelled it on every side. Slowly, the summon fell apart. Magnificent, fluid white power faded into corroded, weak, bluish wisps and dissipated, leaving only a tingly, electro-static charge in the air to indicate it had been cast at all.
Tifa swallowed hard and forced her eyes to peer up into the heart of the storm. There, she saw a perfect, black orb of spirit energy, melded together like an oversized materia, hovering within the opening. A golden ring of light surrounded it lengthwise, giving the illusion of an eclipse. As she observed the anomaly, her temples began to burn. She tried to pick up her feet, but they wouldn't respond. Frantic, she searched inward for her friends, hoping they had anything to say, but she could barely feel their presence. It was as though they'd all fled into the smallest corner of her mind, and they weren't making a peep.
No one said a word. The oceans and winds were still, and the shores had darkened. The world had fallen silent.
Blinking only once, Tifa almost missed seeing the dark sphere peel itself apart. Someone was coming down, and she didn't even have to question who. He was descending like shooting star with terrific speed, his hair and coat trailing behind him, coming closer, even while she begged for it to be anyone and everything else.
He crushed her denial in milliseconds, crashing through the glass wall.
Tifa finally forced her legs to jump back, but for all the speed of her reflexes, she was still too slow.
His sword pierced her chest just beneath her heart, and exited through the center of her back.
This was it. Her life was over. She was going to die here, and he would move on, ever victorious in his world-consuming conquest.
Slowly, agonizingly, he retracted the blade, and Tifa fell to her knees. She coughed hard, and blood splattered from her mouth. Trying to inhale, the most horrific, deep pain greeted her efforts. Eyes wet, she looked up just in time to see him lift her from her spot on the ground by one hand. Suspended upright, Tifa felt her life's blood fleeing the wound from both her front and back.
Sephiroth leered at her, just as he had so many years ago in Nibelheim, smirking in joyous fury for the prey he'd caught. Only this time, she'd angered him far, far worse. She'd nurtured his child-self in Eden, and then stolen away the one part of the Planet that would have truly completed his ascension. The breach in her mind reopened, and Tifa felt it—how betrayed he actually felt when she did that, and how now, he burned with divine rage, intermingled with a sinister fascination for how she'd even accomplished such a feat.
Drawing her closer, until his lips nearly touched her ear, he quietly challenged her, "We both know this can't destroy you, Tifa. Show me what you truly are."
Tifa made a weak effort to shake her head—no, there was nothing left for him to see; nothing new for him to take from her but her already-fading life. But then, she started hacking again, uncontrollably. The flesh that Sephiroth had run through spontaneously started knitting back together; her ribs and lungs rejoining the broken parts that were killing her. A tremendous surge of energy flared to life within her, and every inch of her body was ablaze in terrific pain.
Dropping her on the spot, Sephiroth kept watch, his eyes continuing to bore through her while she struggled for her life.
Whatever was happening to her felt like using a summon materia, but instead of expending just a portion of mental energy, this was threatening to divide her in two! Streaks of light poured from her body until the sheer force of it threw her back several feet. On her back, she heaved for the oxygen the now-healed wound had deprived her of, while a few wisps of straggling life energy escaped her.
Coalescing together, and now looking very much like the Lifestream she'd once known, the strands and sparks took the form of Minerva. Standing between her and Sephiroth, the Goddess was fully clad for battle.
Low and dark, Sephiroth laughed and flapped his wing once to gain a small amount of altitude. "Oh? A generous offering, Tifa, but what shall I call the one who can wield the soul of a world?"
Violently shaking, Tifa couldn't bring herself to speak. Her lungs and throat were too rough, still healing from the massive damage he'd inflicted.
Then, it began. Minerva vaulted after Sephiroth, preparing her massive arrow.
Sephiroth blinked once, acknowledging the challenge, and raised his sword.
In one fluid motion, the Goddess released the string of her armor-fashioned bow, sending the arrow hurtling toward him.
For several long seconds, Sephiroth didn't budge.
Tifa's heart raced sickeningly fast. Was he really just going to let it end, right here and now? Just like that? What if all he'd wanted was one last opportunity to torment her for taking what he thought was rightfully his?
No. Of course not. His goal was ever the same.
At the very last instant, with a single, sweeping slash, he cut the arrow in two, cleaving through its center. The diverted halves passed harmlessly on either side of his head, and in another swift turn, he did exactly the same to Minerva's material form.
An unintelligible cry leapt from the back of Tifa's throat, and she reached out for the strands of life energy rapidly bleeding from the once-again defeated Goddess, willing them to return to her.
Shockingly, they obeyed, retreating into her body until she was left alone with Sephiroth yet again.
"When my journey is complete, I will meld with all worlds, and take my rightful place in Promised Land. Even this planet, overconfident in its stature and age, shall become one with me," Sephiroth coolly reiterated, raising one hand heaven-ward.
Mountains of rock and earth came pouring down from the skies at his unspoken command, gouging and wounding Amyntas in every direction Tifa looked. One of them piled over Cluster 100, crushing and burying it, wiping it from the face of its planet.
She couldn't stay. Tifa couldn't bear watching another world be torn apart at the hands of this man. Cold, formless spirit energy still radiated around her, and she recalled her narrow escape from Gaia. Pulling the Goddess' power in, clinging to it, she pictured the safety she'd found in that crystalline materia shell.
Heeding her wishes, the energy solidified around her into that same egg-shaped pod, and levitated slowly upward.
At the moment, Sephiroth did not seem intent on pursuing her, too busy laying the world to waste.
Still, she continued to watch while the huge planet of Amyntas struggled in vain against him. Eight huge beasts—presumably this world's Weapons—emerged from the sea and began stalking toward him. Their fall was swift and decisive. The same piles of debris that had ruined Cluster 100 fell over them, dragging them back into the depths. At last, bright, fluid tendrils of Lifestream erupted from all around the planet. Defeated and resisting no more, they flowed together into a colossal airborne river, feeding into Sephiroth. Soon, he would command an even greater power than if he'd been completely successful in taking Gaia.
Gaia had fought so much harder than this, time and again. A large, old planet like Amyntas should have been able to turn the tide, but instead- "Why," Tifa wept, leaning her forehead against the wall of her shell. "Why couldn't you at least hear me out? I didn't want this to happen again."
Speeding into space, she saw the remains of a dead world, crumbling and falling into the much larger one below. Even though it should have been impossible without the Goddess, Sephiroth had used Gaia's remains to overpower Amyntas. Somehow, he'd found a way to hold the empty husk of a world together.
Tifa curled up and closed her tired, tired eyes. Behind her lids, she could still see Sephiroth, holding her gaze fast while he drank in Amyntas' life. That old, vulnerably open feeling at the forefront of her consciousness had indeed returned. In forcing her mind open to preserve her sanity, and to an extent, to control her, Minerva had erred greatly. Now, all Sephiroth had to do to regain his foothold was walk through an open door.
Drifting, Tifa was startled when, rather than mocking her, he merely reassured her, "We will meet again, when you are ready to follow. Rest well, Tifa."
Tifa shook her head. She'd go mad before she'd willingly partake of his conquest.
But then again, if she honestly counted the cost, she already controlled nothing—not even herself.
Wishful thinking was always nice, wasn't it?