A/N: Thanks to everyone for all the encouraging reviews.
Rocket and Lady Aegis: thanks for pointing out the gigantic mutant paragraphs that ate Chicago… looking back, I realized that those two chapters were difficult to read, not just because of the monster paragraphs, but because of an embarrassing amount of typos and just plain awkward sentences. My excuse: that week I was very stressed about school and other things, so that stuff slipped through my revisions… I'll fix it when I've got time. I'm glad you guys mentioned that, and I'll try to watch for it in the future.
BTW, there's a lot of "she" and "her"s in this chapter. I tried to avoid pronoun confusion, but if there is any, please let me know so I can fix it. Thanks.
Chapter 5: Dream and Memory
When the flood calls,
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You're a thousand minds, within a flash
Don't be afraid to cry at what you see
The act is gone, there's only you and me
And if we break before the dawn, they'll use up what we used to be
Peter Gabriel, Early Warnings
"Do you know her name, kupo?" the moogle shaman asked softly. His voice was quiet and solemn – the tone, Locke could not help thinking, that one might use on someone's deathbed.
"I'm afraid not. I just thought of her as the Sorceress." Locke said, unconsciously mirroring the elderly moogle's tone. The shaman nodded, apparently unsurprised, perhaps even approving. He had given his own name as Kumo, and the young apprentice, hovering on the edge of the cavern and watching over his teacher's myriad herbs, potions and amulets – none of which seemed to be of any use in this case – was Mog. The young moogle was quick and sharp, and kept darting curious glances at Locke, who was quite possibly the first human the boy had ever seen. The shaman seemed to take Locke's presence in stride, not wasting time with questions about what a human thief was doing in a moogle city. Locke wasn't particularly surprised by that fact; it was Kumo's reaction to the girl that he found strange, and a little troubling, though in reflection, not altogether unjustified…
Locke remembered how the moogle had hurried into the cave room, all business, prepared to heal the human girl and be on to more important tasks. Kumo had knelt by the girl's side and placed his hand on her forehead, but at the moment the moogle's hand had touched her skin he had practically jumped backwards, drawing in a sharp breath. The shaman had gathered his composure and reached down again, more gently this time, more tentatively, to brush a lock of green hair away from her closed eyes. His own dark, shrewd eyes were wide and fixed on the her still dreaming face, and his own furry face was painted with a strange mixture of awe and trepidation, an expression that looked almost like… Locke found it hard to believe, but almost like reverence. Locke was unused to the idea of moogles being frightened by much of anything, much less touched by awe. In his experience, the best even the most powerful or dangerous human could expect from any moogle seemed to be what he himself had won: grudging respect. But then, that was the thing, wasn't it… any human. This Sorceress might be anything. Locke felt a sharp, bitter laugh rise in his throat, and managed with effort to still it; now was not the time for hysteria, nor was it yet the time for despair. The shaman hadn't given up on the girl yet, and Locke saw no reason why he should either.
"A pity, kupo… there might have been some help there."
Locke shook his head in disbelief. Magic, he could accept, but…
"You mean to tell me," he said, trying to keep the skepticism from his voice, "that the old superstition is true? Names have power?"
The old moogle chuckled wryly, though Locke could see nothing in the least amusing about the situation. "Perhaps not in the way you imagine," he said softly, "but power, yes, of a sort. You hear your name spoken across a crowded room, kupo… do you not? There is power there. Only in the mind, perhaps, but that's where she is now, a prisoner in her own mind. A name might show her the key… ah, well, no matter. There are other ways." Locke hoped so. According to the shaman, there was nothing wrong with the girl in any physical sense – even the fever that had so worried him was nothing, according to Kumo, though he wasn't sure how convinced of that he was. Gods, kid, I hope you're all right.
Still kneeling beside the sleeping girl, Kumo waved at Locke and Mog to clear out of the way, then reached out once more to touch her forehead, closing his eyes in silent meditation. Locke wasn't at all sure what the moogle was planning, but he had a feeling it was both big and a last resort, that after this old Kumo didn't have anything else to try. And then, she either wakes up on her own, or she dies like this. Damn, damn, damn!
Celes's attention was drawn almost helplessly to the cry she heard echoing out over the gray wasteland of dream, piercing through the shimmering and featureless sea of fog in which she drifted. The voice was thin and tenuous, as though she was hearing it from across a great distance… but she had a feeling that distances in this dream-world had nothing to do with physical space or measurement. All distances here would be in the mind, all rules would be dream rules. Over the years, Celes had come to understand that such things had an odd and twisted logic of their own. She had always suspected that her dreams were more than simply fragmented pieces of her own dark subconscious, and that suspicion seemed all the more true in this case. She felt as though she was a part of this dream, not the other way around, and whoever it was that she could sense out there, lost in the shifting mists, must be a part of the dream as well.
Who is she? Celes thought that she should know, but whenever she tried to focus on that distant, alien consciousness, her thoughts slipped away from her. It was like trying to catch a shadow or a mirage in the corner of her eye – as soon as she looked directly at it, it vanished, only to appear again in the corner of her vision just as she looked away. Only it wasn't vision, but thought, awareness…
The voice hung on the edge of her consciousness, rising and falling like the crash of waves or the pounding of blood in her ears. She almost thought she could hear words, but she had neither the desire nor the ability to hear more clearly. The voice was chilling in its familiarity, and, though the battle-hardened general didn't like to admit it to herself, the raw, animal pain she heard there pierced her to the bone. A small, shameful part of her shrank away from that pain, telling her to get away, as far from the source of it as possible. Part of her wanted to ignore it, to wake up and try to forget… but if there was one thing she had learned from years of bad dreams, it was that running got you nowhere. Besides…
I have been a coward before, though I called it obedience and the papers called it heroism. I will not be a coward now. She did not run, or even shy away. She turned toward the voice, and to the tiny, flickering beacon of a lost soul that she could somehow sense, far off on the edge of her mind. She reached out…
…and was shoved away with desperate violence, agony lancing through her. It felt like her mind was being slammed by a tidal wave, drowning her and crushing her at the same time. She fought to get back, to keep from being torn away, scattered against rushing torrents of fire and darkness... there was a sickening certainty in her mind that if she failed to keep her footing here, there would be no waking. She could see in her mind's eye the image of a pale, empty shell which had once served as her body, lying prone on an examination table in Cid's lab, living but soulless… no. Not today, I'm afraid. The General is harder to kill than that. Fighting the other's power was ripping her apart… so she stopped. Instead of resisting, and being drowned, she let the currents wash over her, and simply concentrated on staying afloat. Soon enough, the storm faded around her, leaving her shaken and exhausted in the gray sea whose emptiness she was growing to hate. Everything was as it had been before, but for one thing – Celes now knew who it was that had almost killed her.
She had been sent reeling by the jarring force of the other's mental assault, but not before getting one clear glimpse through the barred window that was her mind. Celes had seen with harsh clarity the thin, battered frame of a young woman chained to a corroded steel throne, green hair spilling across sharp, bare shoulders, a bright trickle of blood running down one cheek. It was the eyes that Celes remembered most of all, fierce and golden, burning with hatred and half-mad with terror, holding a deeper, darker fire than even the General had ever seen. It seemed as though those eyes were boring into her still, piercing… judging…
She had recognized the room the girl was in. It was a sort of anti-magic chamber, created to hold the Empire's most powerful and dangerous prisoners. She didn't truly understand how the magic dampers worked – she doubted anyone but Cid himself did, and he was the one who had invented the things – but she knew their effects well enough. She herself had enjoyed the charms of that small cell on more than one occasion, during a particularly rebellious phase of her youth, and the bare metal walls and chains, even the dirty light that streamed in from one high, narrow window, were unpleasantly familiar. She had never expected to see the inside of that room again, even in some strange dream-echo of the real world, and she didn't like it. She didn't like being reminded that places like that existed in the Empire that she had helped to build. And that too is cowardice. If you aren't capable of facing the ugliness of what you've done, you have no right to call yourself a knight. If you can't see clearly, if you won't see clearly… then how can you ever hope to redeem yourself?
She recognized the girl, as well – though if not for the distinctive, disturbingly inhuman hair and eyes, she wasn't at all sure she would have. There was little enough other resemblance between the silent, ghostly waif who had haunted the corridors of Cid's lab and the fierce, burning spirit who stared out from behind those heavy chains… Terra. You've changed… as much as I have, I suppose. Celes could remember a time when the other girl's golden eyes had seemed to big for her face, painted in deep shadow, looking out at the world across a gulf that Celes had never been able to bridge. They had never been close, exactly; the green-haired child had kept herself hidden away behind walls of silence and deep mistrust, impossible to reach through. There had been times when Celes had imagined the other girl had more in common with the ghosts which haunted the edges of her thought than she did with the other humans of the labs. Terra had never had more than one foot in this world; it seemed as though she saw and heard things that Celes didn't understand, suffered in ways that Celes never knew, and her presence had always been as precarious and delicate as a candle-flame, burning brightly but easily extinguished. It was not so now; time and anger had fanned the flames, or perhaps the ghost-child had finally come into her own, magic-wise.
Is she there right now? In Vector? Celes wasn't certain what she thought of that prospect. If she was, then the General's first and final act of treachery could involve freeing the Empire's living weapon from those magic dampers, and that would be a wonderfully fitting vengeance for both of them. And it would be justice, it would be right, but… Cid. There was the issue of Cid. What Terra would do about the scientist, when and if she got free, was anyone's guess. The girl was not bloodthirsty, but Celes knew danger when she saw it, and there were times when Terra was practically the living incarnation of peril, whether the girl knew it or not. And her attitude toward Cid was a wild card, a factor that Celes didn't understand nearly well enough to predict. I don't think she would kill him. I don't think she would. But I don't know…
Cid had always made slightly feeble efforts to be kind to Terra, but nonetheless, the child's hatred of the scientist ran deep and savage. Once, Celes had seen her bite him, though she had been young at the time, and that action had been prompted more by frightened reflex than anything else – he had been trying to give her an injection, at the time. Usually, the girl had simply sat silent and glaring, refusing to speak or move, eyes burning with trapped rage as Cid and his fellow scientists performed their seemingly endless tests. Once – and Celes remembered this most clearly of all – she had spoken.
"Why do you do it?" the girl had asked, her voice the carefully emotionless echo of someone who wants to believe herself too strong to cry, "Can't you see you're hurting them? Why are you doing this?" Celes had been five years old then, and eavesdropping, and she hadn't been sure at the time who "they" were. Later, with the innocent imprudence of a child, she had asked. Terra had been silent for a long time, before smiling a mad, beatific smile and whispering "My people…" At age five, Celes had been convinced the girl meant Celes's ghosts, the ones no one else seemed to see or hear. As time passed she had convinced herself that ghosts didn't exist – a major contribution to her certainty on the matter had been General Kefka's slow descent into raving madness, which had frightened young Celes to the very core of her soul, for uncomfortably obvious reasons. Now, at age eighteen, she wasn't so certain. My people. Goddesses, what does that mean?
No, that's not important right now. Is she in Vector? Somehow, that idea didn't seem quite right. I heard they sent her off to take some city up north… under the control of a slave crown, no doubt, she's too unpredictable for them to let her out of their sight otherwise… Not Figaro, because they're going to coordinate that attack with Doma… But if she was heading northward to battle… then what was she doing in that cell? The General scowled suddenly, cursing her own stupidity. Because it's a dream, of course. Terra wasn't necessarily in Vector any more than Celes was literally, bodily here in this damnable dreamland.
Maybe that's what happens to you, when you wear a slave crown. Maybe your mind gets trapped here, leaving your body empty… From what Celes had seen, Terra wasn't having a particularly pleasant time of it, either, and somehow, Celes didn't think she had seen the worst. The General might not have understood or been close to the ethereal child she remembered, and she might have been slightly frightened by what that child had grown into, but… evil was evil. Celes couldn't leave her to the mercy of this place and her own memories. To do so would be a betrayal of something important… the cold and ruthless General's last shred of innocence, perhaps, or the integrity that she had never truly managed to leave behind.
What of Cid? I can't take the chance that – no. That wasn't a problem. Even if the prospect of Cid's murder was of utmost importance in the girl's mind, which Celes doubted… If she was in Vector, that meant she was in the anti-magic cell, and would be staying there for a bit longer whether she woke up or not. If she wasn't, all the better. Either way, there would be plenty of time to get the scientist to safety. As for the rest of the Empire… Celes might not have known Terra well, but well enough to know that even now she wasn't one to harm innocents or to kill for pleasure. The only people who needed to fear the witch-girl's vengeance were those who deserved it. Cid… Cid wasn't exactly undeserving of vengeance either. Celes hated to admit it, but her time as a soldier and, later, a commander of soldiers, had torn the veil from her eyes, and she was no longer capable of pretending not to know. Cid was a good man, but he had done evil things… under duress, perhaps – she honestly didn't know – but gods knew that even a good excuse could only get you so far. Of course, she didn't intend to let Terra or anyone else harm him, but allow her the luxury of whitewashing the past or, for that matter, the present. This is not the time for reflection. I don't know how fast or slow time flows here, but I've wasted quite enough of it either way. I have to find a way to get to Terra.
But how? The last time Celes had reached out to the girl, it had nearly killed her, and she saw no reason to believe it would be different a second time. Did I give her some reason to fear me? Did I act with too much force? She didn't think so. It seemed more as though lashing out was the only way the girl knew to react at the moment. She was even more of a trained weapon than Celes herself, and under that kind of tension, the oldest instincts tend to take over. Can I do this differently, somehow? Celes thought that if she could just get past Terra's defenses, she would be in a position to help the girl without getting torn apart herself. She trusted me. I remember that. Maybe even loved me, inasmuch as she was capable of loving anyone. If I could get her to know who I was…
Celes's attention was yanked rudely back to the present; if she had had a body she might have jumped, or at the very least looked up sharply. As it was, she drew in on herself, peering out from behind the familiar, reflexive mental barriers that she erected in the instant she sensed a… wrongness in the air. A change. Something was happening… The mist was gathering and swirling around the tiny pinpoint of light that Celes now knew to be Terra's dreams, and the very air seemed to be changing texture, growing heavier, like the air before a storm. It seemed almost as though Terra's soul, if soul it was, had become a new center of gravity, and everything in the vast gray sea – including Celes herself – was slowly being drawn inward toward it. Lightning seemed to flicker in the billowing mists, now thunderstorm dark. The air tasted of magic, cool and slightly metallic… Celes had, as a child, been surprised to learn other people didn't seem to be able to taste or smell or even feel magic, even when, as now, it had the force and presence of a gathering tornado. This is my chance. I don't know what's happening, whether it's good or bad, but it's a definite distraction. I might be able to get through. She mentally tensed for action, relying on her soldier's reflexes to tell her the right moment to move. This is my chance. I might not get another one.
The shaman closed his eyes and began a low, droning chant, words that Locke didn't know, and which didn't sound even vaguely like any moogle language he had heard. And then the elderly moogle got to his feet and literally begun to dance, slowly at first, but gathering speed with the ponderous momentum of an avalanche. Soon, the old shaman was moving like a dervish, while Locke and Mog watched in silent fascination. The thief wasn't sure how much of it was true magic and how much mere ceremony, but it seemed as though he could feel a power gathering in the room, centered on the shaman or perhaps the Sorceress herself. It felt a bit – no, Locke amended, very much – like the air before a lightning strike. As the dance continued, he could feel his skin tingling with energy, his hair lifting around his head in a golden halo, drifting in the crackle of electricity… the atmosphere itself seemed ripe with potential, pregnant with power.
Locke could remember sneaking out as a child, during the summer storms which wracked Kohlingen, standing amid the rain and wind, watching the thunder flicker and dance in the distance. It had been a dangerous thing to do, stupid, but there was an exhilaration to it as well, a sense of being caught up and swirled around in a terrible and beautiful power. Once, he had brought Rachel with him, and the two of them had stood together in the storm, laughing and getting soaked while the wind whipped around them and blowing leaves tangled in their hair… I caught hell from her parents for that, I can remember, but we both agreed it was worth it. Neither of them had understood the danger back then – had known, of course, but hadn't truly understood. Now, standing in the rushing winds of a different, but no less wild, kind of storm, he thought he saw for the first time all that he had been risking. There were winds that could sweep a man from his feet and carry him tumbling along in their wake, powers that could pick him up and break him and continue in their course without so much as registering a human presence.
But maybe we were right, back then…
Maybe it's worth it…
The shaman stopped his dervish dance, as suddenly and smoothly as a bird turning in flight, and with no less weightless grace. Locke had been amazed that the elderly creature could dance like that, when ordinarily he moved with the same cautious care as any human his age… part of the magic, the thief supposed. Kumo had ended up on one knee, one hand resting lightly on the cave floor, furry head bowed. He rose slowly and stepped across the room to where the girl lay, that feeling of electricity streaming out around and behind him like a cloak in a high wind. He knelt again by her side, reached out to touch the hand holding the crimson jewel, which now seemed to be glowing with its own pulsing light – and pulled back sharply as lightning, no longer invisible, flared between and around the two figures in blinding blue-white flashes. Electricity crackled and flashed, filling the small cave with almost tangible energy and with the sharp smell of ozone. Locke heard Mog gasp, and he clambered over to where the moogle boy was pressed against the stone wall as lightning danced and flickered around them. He grabbed the boy's hand and held it tightly, offering any comfort he could, while the storm raged around them.
Mog clutched at Locke's jacket, and his voice sounded like a whisper above the sharp crackle of lightning when he looked upward at Locke and muttered "I've never seen anything like this before, kupo… Never…" The moogle boy – he can't possibly be older than fourteen, thought Locke with strange and irrelevant clarity – was wide-eyed, and all his fur was standing on end from the static in the air. It was a sight that might have been comical, but for the sheer, oppressive force of the magic in the air, and the almost-hidden terror in Mog's face. He thinks he's to old to be scared of anything, boys that age always do, but this is the sort of thing could give any kid nightmares…
The shaman himself was facing the girl, standing straight as a rod with his arms lifted and his head thrown back, still as a rock in the middle of the rushing currents of power. As the thief watched, wonderment and panic warring for control of his mind, Kumo gathered the lightning around him like a cloak, drawing it close and seeming to channel it through his small, frail body. Then he flung his arms down in an abrupt gesture, leaving shimmering trails in the ozone-scented air. The lightning followed the path of his hands, sparking downward to the stone floor, forming a scintillating pool of light around his feet before finally dissipating in white ripples acrossthe cavern floor. Tension drained from the air as the storm of magic finally faded and died, leaving Locke and Mog stunned and half-blinded, clutching each other like frightened children. The thief had endured the thunder of battle, had even faced magic before, fire and lightning flung from the hands of those supposedly half-mad Magitech Knights… but he had never experienced anything so… immediate. It was as though he had been in the eye of a hurricane, or perhaps the dead center of a tornado, standing in a circle of calm as wind and lightning raged about him. He had a definite suspicion that he was, once again, very lucky to be alive…
When he had recovered enough to look up, he saw the shaman collapsed on his hands and knees, breathing hard. The moogle appeared to be unhurt, but deeply shaken, and small wonder. Locke wasn't certain what Kumo had been expecting to happen, but he highly doubted that it in any way resembled what actually did. The thief brushed dirt off his coat in a habitual motion as he managed to get to his feet and headed over to the place the shaman had fallen. He gently helped the old moogle to his feet, remembering too late that such an action might be taken as a gesture of disrespect – moogles deeply hated being perceived as fragile or weak by humans, and for good reason – but it seemed to make no difference in this case. No one in the room was composed enough to care about respect or the lack of it, not at the moment.
"That was…" the shaman gasped roughly, sounding to Locke's ears suddenly very old and tired, "that was not… supposed to happen, kupo. Some kind of… reaction… resonance…"
"Are you all right?"
"Me? Of course I am, but her, this Sorceress of yours… I don't know, kupo. I don't know. I tried to reach her… foolish, foolish, she pushed me away, of course. Violently. Such power…" The moogle sighed, weariness permeating his voice. "She didn't trust me. Thought I was trying to hurt her… I don't know what to do, kupo. Trying again might kill us all…"
A/N: Next chapter, Terra finally wakes up, with Celes's help, and we can finally get on with things! Yay! I wanted to have that happen this chapter, but I've been way busy lately and didn't have much time to write – I'm not one of those people who can just sit down at the computer and slam out an update, for me it takes a lot of time and effort to write anything worth reading. I messed around with Mog's character a bit in this chapter by making him a shaman's apprentice – my take on where he learned that magic dancy stuff – but even in the game he really is 14 years old.
NOTE: Due to computer trouble at my mom's house, updates during the summer might be sporadic at best. I've been updating from either school or my dad's for the past few times, and I'm not going to be either of those places over the summer. So, in other words, if this isn't updated over the summer, its because of no internet access, not because I gave up. I will try to post when I can, but no guarantees. Sorry for the inconvenience.