Author's Note: Because I've had a few questions on it, the Lustrum are better defined in Chapters 2 - 3. The Lustrates are the halls that the Lustrum live in. They are apprentice priests.

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The air in my quarters is cool from a day spent untouched by visitors. It hangs quiet; everything is dark, drapes drawn closed, and I step inside this haven with gratitude. My room smells like the spice satchels tucked into the drawers, and of my own nightmares.

Outside, the guards pace on their ramparts. I can either pull back the curtains and watch their silhouettes criss-cross the lights, or I can choose for a single night to pretend they do not exist.

I am not sure why I felt compelled to thank Gella like that. Politeness is one excuse. But Gella cares little for unnecessary words; if I wanted to play on her sympathies, I should not have needed to hail down the hall and thank her. Did I feel gratitude? Yes, but that didn't mean I was required to voice it. So why?

The image of Dopha flickers past my thoughts, suspended eternally with white snow and dead flowers. A lifesaver, he called me. How ironic.

It is cruelty that has me leading the Lustrum on. They are already conscripts to the fates that the priests have lined up for them, plots built around their physical and mental measurements like undertakers eager for the coffins. I can't fool myself into thinking that I intend to save anyone. If it looks as if I have to sacrifice even one of them, I must be prepared if I wish to succeed.

Is this how Nooj felt? Did he rationalize these decisions in the same way, the same words?

Debating endless questions will only leave me with empty hands. That, and I am tired.

I stumble by habit's path over to sit on the bed, and then push myself back to standing when I remember there is melting snow all over my clothes. My sigh is swallowed by the darkness. Lying down to sleep exactly as I am would be a blessed relief. For one thing, I wouldn't have to wake entangled in my own sheets.

But the cold of winter's death is well-worked into the threads of my robes, and as exhausted as I may be, I know from experience that trying to sleep in these monstrosities is a losing proposition. They chafe. Difficult as they may be to undo, I know I will be relieved to have them off.

As I work dutifully with clothing lacings in the dimness of my room, my mind returns to mysteries. How could Trema have known about my theft? Did he count the spheres beforehand? Unlikely. The founder would have had to arrive many hours before I did in order to organize them all and repack the crates before I appeared. Was he watching from a secluded section of the room? No, he could not have; there are no places to conceal one's self in the hall, and I saw him enter with the others.

Did he hear that there would be a red sphere from Mushroom Rock, and was waiting for it?

How did he know exactly where I had hidden it upon myself?

A dull clunk hits my door, exchanged for an even more muffled impact. It sounds as if I either have inventive dogs trying to throw themselves bodily against the wood, or someone is unable to knock properly and so is forced to try to hip-check a greeting pattern. The latter is confirmed; a human's voice rises in a frustrated wheedle just seconds after the last thump.

"Baralai? Do you... hey, can you let me in?"

It is Shelinda. Rising from my bed, I toss aside the last of the robes and pad towards the entry, silent in bare feet. The timing could be better; the temperatures are frigid while I am wearing only snow-soaked pants.

A momentary fumble for the latch in the dark and I have it in my grip. Then I hesitate. Visions of the Lustrum tumbling in upon me are all too vivid; after another second, I decide that if Shelinda is leaning against the wood, it would do me best to step away quickly while I open it.

"Sorry I'm late," Shelinda chimes brightly as the door swings in, lifting the burden of her tray in offering. I peer around the frame, squinting against the blob she creates. Her formal robes are a blotch of poisonous green in the glow of the hallway lights. "At least that means the tea leaves have had plenty of time to steep. I was so worn out from trying to get those wreaths up! Can you believe how many there were? I thought I'd be working for hours!"

I wonder if Dopha told her who volunteered her name for duty.

Then I wonder if I should avoid drinking the tea.

The air from the hallway is chill, and as it rushes in, I take a step back from where I have been clinging to the door. My pants have become frigid around the shin region where snow had seeped in past the outer robes. I will have to find a way to put on new ones. Maybe while Shelinda is looking the other way.

"But everything got done just in time," Shelinda continues to chatter, even as she arranges the weight in her hands, prepares to embark into the room. "Whew, did I ever want to take a break after that! There were so many decorations to get ready for the elders. Dopha and I had to do all the gateways even up to--oh my."

The continuous rattle of her words dies off so quickly that the illusion of her conversation keeps going without her to direct it. Eventually I realize Shelinda is no longer actually speaking. I wonder what has surprised her, and then realize she is staring at my stomach.

I follow her gaze down. There is nothing particularly odd about my navel. The drawstring of my pants is still tied shut. I am about to ask her directly what is bothering her when the realization hits me; to an acolyte accustomed to the excess of Yevon's robes, I must appear nearly naked.

Oops.

My own modesty was left behind at Bikanel. I remember being just as shy once long ago, and then I had to room with Gippal.

"Just wet clothes," I explain for Shelinda's benefit, moving aside to further invite her in. Once she has taken a single hesitant step, she halts, juggling the weight of the tea and dishes. Since there is a covered platter, I assume Gella had also managed to roust a cook to recover parts of the evening meal for me. That or she went down there on her own, ordered Shelinda along.

The steam sneaking out from the tureen smells like soup. If I believed in higher powers, I might ask them to bless Gella for having good taste.

"It's so dark in here..." The tray shuffles itself in Shelinda's hands as she leans it into her hip. Looks into the room, then at me, biting her lip in worry. "You... you weren't asleep, were you?"

I shake my head. Another step back, meant to coax the Lustrum in, and then I turn to hunt out one of the lamps. A touch of my hand coaxes one of the stands on, a screen-shuttered glass that has wavy outlines embedded in its paper cover. Texture for variation, the artists might have originally thought, but in practice the effect causes the room to undulate. Drinking alcoholic beverages not recommended while you have it on, but I have never put this to the test.

The reason I keep the irregular decoration is because the turquoise luminescence it broadcasts reminds me of the ocean. I turn it on at times and believe I am underwater, deep in the currents like a blitz-trained diver, where there is nothing of the sun to strike me.

The addition of light to the room seems to encourage Shelinda. Fiends that may have lurked in the corners or beneath my bed disappear under the influence of waterglow. She is the type of person who prefers being able to witness her surroundings before daring ahead; I wonder if this is a trait only newly acquired after the early chaos of the Calm, or if she has always been afraid of the dark.

Learned behaviors guide her even now. Faced with my belly to menace her, Shelinda resorts to basic forms of nurture. "Drink up," the Lustrum leads off with first, setting down the tray on the small corner table next to the lamp. Then she bustles towards the dead logs of my hearth, folding her skirts neatly beneath her legs when she kneels to search for tinder there. "Let me build you up a fire."

Heat would be a welcome addition. I gravitate towards the smell of food in the meantime. Uncovering the dish releases a minor explosion of steam that billows up in a meat-flavored cloud. I welcome it by inhaling deeply. Insulating my hands with the napkin provided, I scoop the bowl up and cradle it in my palms.

While Shelinda handles bundles of twigs into the fireplace, I sit down beside her, cross-legged. One eye remains on the Lustrum during her task; the other deals with not spilling my dinner all over myself. The dish goes on my leg. Its warmth radiates through the napkin-cloth and into my thigh, and eventually I move it to keep from burning myself.

We sit like this for a time. Shelinda does not speak up, and I wonder if I have begun to acquire the reputation of being a quiet man, whose silences are best unbroken.

When I glance up to look at her, I notice she has been staring at me again.

The first time, she looks down in embarrassment for her lack of tact. The second time I catch her, Shelinda does not lower her eyes, but continues to regard me in the crackling light of the fire.

I do not know how much Gella told her.

Shelinda makes the first move. The stalemate is reversed. "What is that?"

At first my mind jump to the priests, Gella's own suspicions ringing in my head like a crime list being recited. Then Shelinda lifts finger to point it at me. Once more I glance down, able only to guess at what she means by searching for what she avoids speaking of directly.

Stomach muscles? No. I trace the path of her finger back and realize that what the Lustrum is singling out is the reddened scar upon my chest. The spot has not fully healed from an angry flush of flesh attempting to repair itself. Three months, and I have not yet accepted it as part of my body, not enough to remember it as a part of my being.

Now and forever.

In an instant, I know that Shelinda has not seen intensive combat. Not first-hand. Not closely enough to study the points of impact and judge how much blood was an acceptable warning, and how much meant death. "This wound came from a machina," I explain. Unconsciously I reach up to touch the spot. The scar tissue has not fully numbed to my fingers, still raw and pink from lingering blood vessels; I rub my fingers over the thickened flesh and can feel discomfort. Tingles. "The... bullet passed through."

"Who?" Shelinda asks before she realizes the tactlessness of her question. Fiends could not pull a trigger. That meant it must have been a person, and the scar is clearly recent. She claps an apologetic palm over her lips, adds a second hand for good measure as if the doubled layer of flesh would insulate her mouth from blame.

I answer anyway. "I... was betrayed." At first I think to say more, start to continue, but my voice has disappeared.

Shelinda fills in the details for herself. "The Guado," she murmurs, reverent as if handed the secrets of Bahamut on a golden scroll. By next week, I am sure that the Lustrum will be full of rumors. Yes, the Guado must have shot me. This is why I do not like to speak of Seymour in mixed company. The Guado shot me, and so I am proven as much a victim as the rest of Bevelle, my life placed in danger by a maester's manipulations.

The harm has been done. Let the Lustrum think what they will. If I am lucky, they will continue to write an entire epic tale for me to have lived, Baralai the Brave, Baralai the Daring. I can join Nooj the Undying. We are both liars.

My hand stops its fretting over the wound and covers the spot. Such is my apology of shame.

Having a weakness exposed on my part, I choose to redirect the conversation. Verbal diversions can handle Shelinda quite well.

The fire hums away in the stonework, spreading crimson petals across the room, fighting with the lamporb blue. "You sound as if you expect me to imprison you for seeing this." My voice falsifies a pleasant neutrality. "What's bothering you so badly that you have to think that?" Asking this while my spoon scrapes along the bottom of my bowl, and I fish out a chunk of meat while I speak as if the concept and my dinner were of equal unimportance.

When I glance up over my next mouthful, I witness a retaliation victory for my side. Fear matched with discomfort is burrowing its twinned way across Shelinda's face. It seems I have found a topic that relates to why she started questioning me in turn.

She does not have the willpower to win against me. Only mere seconds pass, the logs snapping and degrading themselves in the fireplace. "Somasil..." she starts, pauses, and then bends to unspoken pressure as surely as if beneath the weight of water. "He says you're here to spy on us."

"Somasil?" Instantly I wonder what I have done to earn that man's ire. Then I remember that anyone who appears overfriendly with Gella must seem suspicious.

I will have to single him out later.

Then I remind myself that I have no idea when such a time could be, or even if I have days left to count on.

"Somasil is only trying to look out for something he knows he can't protect." My stomach has decided it is full. At the least, the idea of chewing anything just now is most assuredly unappealing. Instead I fill my mouth with words, ones so quiet that the firecrackle swallows the life from them even while I shape the sounds. "Because he knows he can't do anything about the real threat, he wants to look for handholds that might help him get there. Something that gives him at least the illusion that he can change fate."

As if she were a child attempting to ward off a chill no longer in this room, Shelinda changes position; she draws her knees up against her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "When you say it like that... you make it sound so futile."

Perhaps it was me that was too cold.

"Maybe I'm wrong." Even though it falls back from my claim on Somasil's position, I shake my head. Laugh, dismiss my own conclusions. "I could tell you not to believe him, but how could you trust me either?"

This does not help Shelinda's crisis of faith. She bites her lip. "I'm not sure. You're an important man, Baralai. I mean, I don't know everything, but you're definitely a part of what goes on around here. We can all see it. You... you're already more like a priest than we are."

I say nothing.

I do not know what to say.

Shelinda continues. Her fingers twine themselves in her skirts, pulling at the cloth as if they could extract the answers out of linen. "And the priests don't tell us anything. Just orders. As far as I can see... even though Sin's gone, nothing's really changed. So I guess... I mean, I don't mean that I don't like you, Baralai, but I just don't know what's going on a lot of the time."

The tang of bitter leaves finally reaches my nose. They have been left in the pot by accident all this time. We both forgot to take them out.

"Is that so wrong of us? To not be sure?"

The tea will be too strong to drink.

"How are we supposed to know who to look to for direction, when no one seems like they're honest with us?"

Lowering my soup bowl to the ground with a muted clink, I tilt my head back and breathe in air that smells of ash and tea, in a room swimming with blue and red. Water meets fire, and I am reminded suddenly of just how great the forces are that I seek to dabble with. Such vast beasts, these, that wrestle with innumerable lives.

How tiny I am by comparison. Just a chip of bark that can be swept away on the nearest wave, and the sea to never pause in its infinite motions.

Here I am, just a single person. Alone.

"Shelinda..."

Flames wind themselves into dying stories on the logs. Watching them is better than looking at the face of a girl who could have had the same expression as I might have, once, long ago; once when I believed that there might one day be a reality behind all the lies I knew existed.

"Why do you work for Yevon anyway?" It may the Lustrum I am speaking to, but I wonder if I mean to direct the words at myself. "Is there something important to you, something you would stay here for because you want to protect it?"

She seems startled by my sudden turn in questioning. Her back straightens. Spine, tenses, and then she decides that I am not interrogating her so that I can gather more information on targets. "I just want to make a difference. I thought I could do that in Yevon. That... that's all."

A difference? Skepticism mutes itself across my features. Change Yevon? Change all of Bevelle?

Impossible.

Shadows help hide my expression as I lower my face. "I'm sorry, Shelinda. But you can't do that here." Pausing long enough to debate my next statement, I forge ahead regardless. "If that's what you really want to do with your life... it would be best if you went somewhere else."

Such a verdict is not one she had wanted to hear. Shelinda's head turns away, snaps to the fire as if I had struck her. The tassels on her ornamental hat twiddle themselves with the force of her motion; so much decoration that serves no purpose save marking the herd of Bevelle so they cannot blend in with the average crowd.

"I... I don't know if I can do that, Baralai. What would I do somewhere else?"

Shelinda's face is too unguarded. In an instant, I understand that she has seen enough of Yevon to be wary, but guile is not innate to her mind. The priests cannot understand it, keep her in the Lustrum because their minds do not wrap around the idea of someone whose veins do not run thick with manipulations.

All the more reason to push her free of this nest of vipers. "That decision is something you're going to have to figure out for yourself. What's stopping you?"

It is Shelinda's turn to be silent. The warring lights split her face in two; one half is bathed with the fire's warmth and the other, the coolness of ocean night. Either the heat or my words have caused a flush to blemish high in her cheeks.

There is no way I can rewind time and erase what I have said. I don't even know if it will have any effect. Shelinda has leaned upon Bevelle all this time so the uncertainties in her life would answered; without someone telling her where the next step in the path is located, she falters to a halt. Shelinda knows this world is vast enough to swallow her, even if she does not consciously realize it.

It is a cruel reward for her questions, what I have said. Her voice sinks through my mind like a bird with a broken wing that tries with failing strength to descend with grace. Is that so wrong? To not know what to trust?

Is it such a terrible thing, to need to have someone else to look up to?

What's stopping me from leaving this place?

There are reasons I am leashed to Bevelle. I have to know the truth about the Den of Woe. I have to know because I want to find an answer to the question that almost killed my Team--once at the hands of the instructors, once again from our very own captain. It is important for me to find these answers.

I think.

Bells rumble the stones beneath us, like the breathing of a giant Aeon. Priests used to warn that it was the sighing of Bahamut that would shake the temple so. No longer. Bahamut is gone, Sin is extinguished, the chimes are machina-rung, and now it is ourselves we must watch for when we are looking for monsters.

Or saviors.

The hour is late. I can feel it in every inch of my body, and the toll of the bells extends well past my desire to tally.

Shelinda excuses herself to me with only a murmur, collecting the bowl and untouched tea. I let her go just as easily. If there is further harm I can do to her verbally, I do not have the heart for it at this time, and no inspiration nips me to act.

When the Lustrum has gone, I roll over onto my stomach, and let my fingers walk themselves in measurement down the hearthstones. There. Five across and three to the side, and I have found the stone that moves.

I discovered the loose slate shortly after I moved into my room. Originally I had been going through the chamber inch by inch to discover what might have been concealed here by former occupants. Then I did it again just in case the priests had squirreled away unpleasant surprises intended to trap me. Like the barracks at Bikanel, there were no signs of the tenants who might have dwelled here before, no hint of other lives still lingering in the corners. When I leave this room, I am sure that there will be those who will erase me too.

It was in my careful search that I came across the weakened stone in the mortar of the fireplace. I pried it up and dug further in the crumbling space, using that rock to chip out enough room that I could safely fit both my fists inside with enough room for padding. Luckily, Bevelle is a great believer in providing thick floors between the levels; I did not have to fear hitting the bedrock of someone else's ceiling in my work.

And then I hid the sphere from the Crimson Squad there.

Putting it beneath the mattress, or the bed, or even in a drawer or closet would be too obvious. I had come across this one by the barest of chances, snatched it out of a shipment before it had been tallied. It was far too precious to risk being lost.

My fingers form the cradle for the sphere as it rests upon the tips as a gem suspended on jeweler's prongs. The doubled lights rolling through it are refracted a hundred times, like a prism of souls; the ripples swell over my fingers, the ceiling, the walls. I watched the sphere only once. Then I turned it off halfway through.

Some experiences that are pleasant when you first have them only become painful when you are exposed a second time.

Fire-warmth washes over me, and the exhaustion of the day pulls itself heavy in my bones. The soup filling my stomach does not help to keep me awake. My pants are drying out thanks to the proximity of the heat; there is less of a danger of stray sparks now that the logs are down to mere embers.

All my care in hiding this sphere would be useless if I fall asleep exposed like this. Too tired to keep holding the orb in the air, I lower it onto my chest and then from there, tuck it into my hand as I roll on my side.

Drowsiness crawls in like an errant murderer. I should get up and move to the bed. I should at least find a blanket.

"I can't explain why, but I felt.. so sad."

I should do anything except fall asleep right here on the floor.

Gippal's voice matches my own distant memories. He whispers into my ear as rivers of fire whimper through the logs, themselves fading into nothingness. "It was like .. somebody's raw emotions just came out of nowhere and hijacked my brain."

And by that, I know that I am already dreaming.