Hope is Comforting
By Yagami Iori
A/N: To my anonymous reviewer: I didn't know that Yunalesca was Yu Yevon's daughter until I started writing, so I changed the backstory. Yunalesca is NOT the daughter of Yu Yevon, and she did not start the tradition of the Final Aeon. I find the story is more interesting that way, in a slow- corruption sort of way. It's fanfiction, so I stray just a teeny bit from game continuity. Thanks for the nitpick, though.
Chapter Five: Death
Cold. Cold like Shiva's ice. Cold like the barren streets of Zanarkand. But, unlike Zanarkand, there were no pyreflies to lead my way. I was enveloped in darkness. Suspended, I could not scream, could not speak, could not shout. I was crucified in a dark prison of cold pain.
Where was the joy and heaven of the Farplane? I was lost in this endless black Limbo. I could not even see my own form. Was this to be my existence forever? Was this death?
I deserved Limbo, I suppose. I was the daughter of hatred, priestess of Yu Yevon, creator of the Fayth. Perhaps in their cold stone prisons, they too felt as lost as I.
I wondered if Zaon, too, was encompassed in this dark world. I thought back to our wedding night, when he had told me that no other woman would ever catch his eye. I thought of his joy at the news that I might be pregnant. Even when that was disproven, he still was happy that I was happy. We lived together in love and joy. Now, we were dead together in pain and despair.
I thought of my guardian, Riva. Her long red-gold hair reaching her waist, her green armor shining in the light of the sun. When I received Ramuh in Djose Temple, decades before the creation of Ixion, she jumped with glee. I pictured her defending me from fiends, fighting them back with her rapier and flail. When she died, the emptiness began to creep into my soul. Was Riva too like this? Lost in darkness?
I thought of my student, Belgemine. She died on Gagazet, en route to meet me at my dome in Zanarkand. I had been dead for 500 years when I took her under my wing. She showed great promise, but she was too eager. She attacked Sin before she was ready, and lost. Her self-esteem was forever damaged. Poor girl. Perhaps she was right next to me, unable to move, to speak. Perhaps all I had known was now here, in this blackness.
I tried to sing, to chant, to summon. No reply met me. I cried then, for the first time in 1000 years. I did not know if there were actual tears in that dark realm, but I cried nonetheless. I cried for all I had had, all I had lost, all I would never have. I resigned myself to eternity in the void.
Hope was lost here. It could not penetrate the dark.
By Yagami Iori
A/N: To my anonymous reviewer: I didn't know that Yunalesca was Yu Yevon's daughter until I started writing, so I changed the backstory. Yunalesca is NOT the daughter of Yu Yevon, and she did not start the tradition of the Final Aeon. I find the story is more interesting that way, in a slow- corruption sort of way. It's fanfiction, so I stray just a teeny bit from game continuity. Thanks for the nitpick, though.
Chapter Five: Death
Cold. Cold like Shiva's ice. Cold like the barren streets of Zanarkand. But, unlike Zanarkand, there were no pyreflies to lead my way. I was enveloped in darkness. Suspended, I could not scream, could not speak, could not shout. I was crucified in a dark prison of cold pain.
Where was the joy and heaven of the Farplane? I was lost in this endless black Limbo. I could not even see my own form. Was this to be my existence forever? Was this death?
I deserved Limbo, I suppose. I was the daughter of hatred, priestess of Yu Yevon, creator of the Fayth. Perhaps in their cold stone prisons, they too felt as lost as I.
I wondered if Zaon, too, was encompassed in this dark world. I thought back to our wedding night, when he had told me that no other woman would ever catch his eye. I thought of his joy at the news that I might be pregnant. Even when that was disproven, he still was happy that I was happy. We lived together in love and joy. Now, we were dead together in pain and despair.
I thought of my guardian, Riva. Her long red-gold hair reaching her waist, her green armor shining in the light of the sun. When I received Ramuh in Djose Temple, decades before the creation of Ixion, she jumped with glee. I pictured her defending me from fiends, fighting them back with her rapier and flail. When she died, the emptiness began to creep into my soul. Was Riva too like this? Lost in darkness?
I thought of my student, Belgemine. She died on Gagazet, en route to meet me at my dome in Zanarkand. I had been dead for 500 years when I took her under my wing. She showed great promise, but she was too eager. She attacked Sin before she was ready, and lost. Her self-esteem was forever damaged. Poor girl. Perhaps she was right next to me, unable to move, to speak. Perhaps all I had known was now here, in this blackness.
I tried to sing, to chant, to summon. No reply met me. I cried then, for the first time in 1000 years. I did not know if there were actual tears in that dark realm, but I cried nonetheless. I cried for all I had had, all I had lost, all I would never have. I resigned myself to eternity in the void.
Hope was lost here. It could not penetrate the dark.