(Standard Disclaimer: Final Fantasy characters and settings belong to Squaresoft.)
Raining Blood
from a lacerated sky
bleeding its horror
creating my structure
now I shall
reign in blood
'Raining Blood' -- Slayer
Spira would celebrate. The light that arched across the world signified the defeat of Sin. The Calm would now encompass the world, leaving her people free to rebuild their villages, bear their children, spend their days in peace. There would be no fear of Sin, no fear of the ultimate death that Yevon's teachings preached would return eventually. How easily they would forget, only to be reminded harshly when in time their transgressions would return to haunt them. That's what Yevon taught, after all. Their imperfections could not be forgotten. They had to be reminded and punished until that day they could finally atone.
Jecht could feel the lifeforce within him. Diminishing, waning, dying. Braska had called forth the last Aeon, the Final Summoning. He should care, he realized. Somewhere, distantly, the wrongness of the entire act began to emerge like the dawning of the sun over the horizon. And, like the dawn, it was not immediate. A trickle, then a torrent. If he could have reached for Braska's hand, he would have, but as a fayth, he found his form no longer corporeal. He could only grasp at air, fingers slicing through the reality of his Summoner's hand. There was no smile gracing Braska's lips, no peace as his death came for him. Only the bold realization of the futility of this act. He wanted to bring peace to Spira, not to placate the perpetual for a decade.
Auron accomplished what Jecht could not. Holding the body of the Summoner he had guarded all this time, his face bore a mask of rage and anger, carefully controlled and concealed for the moment. The waters of his psyche remained stilled at the surface, but churned relentlessly beneath the façade.
"Can you see him?" Braska asked of his only remaining guardian.
"No, Lord Braska, I see only you," Auron replied grimly. "But I am sure he is with you, my Lord."
Braska coughed, a trickle of crimson blood coursing down one cheek. "I should... I should have listened to you, Auron."
You ain't the only one, Braska. Jecht sent through the link they shared, fayth and Summoner.
"No, Braska you... you have brought peace to Spira again. The people--"
Braska cut Auron off with a faint shake of his head. At last a smile, however sad and rueful, curled his lips upward as a hand reached to touch Auron's cheek in a last gesture of comfort. Jecht couldn't watch, closing his ethereal eyes to close away the scene. He could hear Auron's choked sob and Braska's words.
"Sin will be reborn... I have seen this. We... could.. not..." he trailed off.
Jecht felt the severance of life, and with it an end to the pact they shared. The hollow did not remain empty, however. Yu Yevon was there to fill it, bringing in his taint of madness and corruption. Of a thousand years alive, feeding off the fear and terror he wrought upon the world with his hardened body of Sin. And now it took Jecht into that madness, sucked into the vacuum to settle to the depths of the ocean. He screamed, he writhed, he felt himself falling even as he fought it with every once of his willpower. But Yu Yevon would not be denied.
In the Calm Lands, surrounded by the scorched earth that marked the last battle with Sin, Auron held the body of his Summoner, even as it began to dissipate into a thousand pyreflies, to ascend to the beyond, the farplanes. Braska accepted his death long ago, and would not need to be Sent. He Sent himself, instead. Jecht's scream brought him out of his misery, the cry that tore through his mind and threatened to rupture his eardrums. The sound of a man betrayed.
Oh god, help me Auron... I don't... I can't...
And then Auron knew he was truly alone. Braska dead, Jecht enslaved by the mysterious force that bound the fayth to their Aeons and would now remake him into the next Sin. This was not what they bargained for. They were deceived, used, and now discarded. Spira would celebrate in their ignorance and as the Calm ended, send out yet another Summoner to sacrifice everything to bring about another Calm.
Falling to his knees with the realization, Auron thrust his sword into the ground and wept. The sky over the horizon had begun to bleed, turning lurid red, raining crimson down over the remains of the Calm Lands. He failed them both, a thousand accusations spearing his conscience, and now he had lost them both. If not for the promises he made, he might have ended his life there. But there was Jecht's son to think about, the kid he thought so fondly of despite his gruff mannerisms. Braska's daughter, the little girl he recalled meeting briefly before undergoing the pilgramige.
Too many things to do for him to be dying, yet. But he knew what his first mission would be. With a resolute grip on the hilt of his sword, he pulled himself back to his feet and jerked the sword free from the ground. He would have answers, first. He would know why Braska and Jecht had to die in order to save Spira, what this pointless mission accomplished in the end. He would find a way to end the cycle, the circle of death and anguish.
Or, he would die trying.