Author's Note: I'd like to thank everyone reading this for their patience. This chapter would have been up earlier, but for wanting to get all the action in a single section instead of breaking it again.
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Stonework shivers underneath my feet and the platform is dropping into blackness, carrying me with it. Trema's study rushes away. The sparse rectangle of light leading back to safety recedes in a matter of seconds; it shrinks and vanishes even while I am staring at it, willing it to remain in place through my desire alone.

The free-form nothingness within Bevelle is a flood of cold air. Moisture graces each breeze, swelling from the massive waterways beneath the temple. I can smell the mixture of metal and rust. Here is the dust of secrets untouched. It is ancient, and I am a visitor miniscule.

The tower's proportions circle. I am cycled from lift to lift, an organic package shuffled along the treads of all this cogwork machina. Truthfully, I had not expected to find a route of such proportions so near to the Founder's access. By being elevated highest to the sky, Trema is also furthest away from the underground. A subconscious ruse; visitors lift their heads in awe to the tower, crane their necks back, and forget that there are numerous floodgates running beneath their feet. The highest priests are above. They are detached from even their own party, separated away from the muck of common intrigues.

In retrospect, I suppose the method does nothing for Trema save force him to walk even longer when he wishes to involve himself directly in Bevelle's underbelly.

The air cobwebs across my face. Trema's machina pistol is unwieldy, the grip too thick; I shift it awkwardly in my hand as I lean upon the lift-railing, wait to arrive for delivery. While service lights are embedded around the lift's perimeter, their sparse radiance does little against the gloom save to scroll blue arcs over the tower's innards. The shapes cast through shadow are bloated nightmares; mapping this world is impossible, unless you scripted in vast chasms for dreams.

Surrounded by so much bleakness, all I can do is listen to my own descent.

The emptiness of the tower invades me, pawing at my nerves.

I have never been afraid of the dark. Since childhood, I have learned a familiarity with the substance, knowing it to be only another vehicle of intrigue. What is spoken or heard from the shadows is only information, even if such is naught but foreknowledge of the beast that will be your doom.

Otherwise, a secret is only words. And words can work for you as easily as against.

The gulf within the tower is the same. I can feel it tasting my body, and then relenting upon the recognition that I, too, am of Bevelle. Invisible pressures recede. I inhale must.

In this hollow within the temple's skin, I can almost hear the breath of Bahamut again.

Then the lift settles to a stony halt; the blue lights dim, and I know the low rumble back-hum in the air to be but gearwork. A million forms of machina fill the underground. Now I must walk among them.

My transport has docked itself in a minor antechamber. Thin stone platforms lead to a shuttered door; these, my only way out. I take them steadily, not sparing a glance down to the whispering void a footspan's width from falling. No directions were provided to me. For all I know, Somasil might have slipped already and plummeted into the deep, so far down that even his fiend would be lost to prowl the lowest levels.

Machina guardians stud the walls, jointed like insects; their artificial construction leaves them in eternal readiness against any threats that might intrude. Some are multi-legged. Others remain bipedal, mimicking a humanoid only in loosest approximation. I cannot imagine what their original creators might have taken for inspiration but the living world, and these resemblances to natural beings unsettles me.

Soulless eyes swivel in my direction. Noting either my Lustrum coat or some other insignia important enough to heed, the guardians subside and allow me passage.

My arm, unaccountably, has begun to ache again.

It is less than five minutes down the maze of corridors that leads me to find the first signs of trouble. The tunnel floor is metal, absorbing my bootsteps with muffled thunks; there is no other sound than my own presence, not even when I turn the corner and discover evidence of a struggle. Stains mark the ground in clusters, darker than rust-puddles where moisture collects into rot. The spots are fresh. When I touch them and lift my fingers for study, I see that their color is crimson.

Somasil. It must be. That or fiends bleeding true, a red swath instead of ichor-yellow or ivory. I should not be surprised to find fiends down the crevices of Bevelle, but so close to the Cloister of Trials?

So preoccupied am I in trying to determine if the liquid is from a human or a fiend that I am taken unaware by the lizard that slams into my side. A hard-edged mouth claps upon my waist; the coat takes the worst of the fiend's bite when it closes its jaws and tries to yank, but I can still feel its teeth creaking upon my lower ribs.

My arm hits the wall. The weight of the fiend is atop me, rolling, and I twist as best I can to plant the muzzle of Trema's machina pistol in its flesh. Point-blank, the shot detonates within the fiend. It spasms in pain, muscles going haywire in reaction to strong trauma; one claw whips across my face in a glancing cut, and I fight now to get free of the creature's death throes.

Shoving the fiend's dissolving body aside, I struggle to get back up to my feet. Green ichor is spattered across my jacket, all down my leg, and when I try to wipe my cheek with the back of a hand, the ooze sends a fiery sting into the wound.

Luck is not on my side. Two more of the lizards have dropped out of the shadows further down the hall, and now they are hissing in my direction. One of them slows briefly when I clip its leg, and then they are both upon me, snapping for my face. I fire the machina gun with a complete lack of finesse under their onslaught, missing once, hitting twice, minor explosions of force that kick my hand back like a punch to the palm each time.

Then all response from the machina ceases. Horror-struck, I find myself staring at the weapon, my finger still uselessly squeezing the trigger even as the lizards thrash near my feet in mimicries of death. Pyreflies leak from their bodies and whirl around me, confused.

I step hastily away from the multicolored clouds.

Five shots, that was the sum allotted me. Either Trema already had a half-empty clip, or he simply never relied upon the weapon. Now they are gone, and this pistol is worth little more than a bludgeoning club.

There are many reasons why I dislike machina guns. Running out of ammunition would be one of them.

Having no other option, I press close to the walls, shifting my path along the running-lights in hopes that the attempt at cover will keep me from being revealed as half such an alluring target. The displays here are in poor condition; judging from how the casings have been shattered, the damage is either recent or no one has been able to repair the bulbs for a while.

Drawing nearer to one, I examine the clear plate for signs of layered dust. Nothing. Whatever has broken them is recent.

This is the trail that I follow, connecting dots of splintered casings as I skirt from hall to hall. Gloom expands, invites me in. Occasional machina guards click to attention when I pass. With all this distraction, I almost miss the ghosts in the corridor before one lifts its head and croaks my name.

"Baralai."

"Somasil?" Recognition of that voice hits me like a machina bullet, and I break into a jog to the Lustrum's side. He is slumped against the corner of the wall and floor, made smaller somehow through his wounds, his exhaustion. Reduced. Muscled limbs capable of splitting a skull like an apple are drawn up to himself to keep from a full-out sprawl. Somasil's jacket has gone sodden and torn with teeth marks; the lizards must have caught him too, snappish needle-mouths seeking to devour.

When I kneel, I realize that I am doing so in a smear of Somasil's blood.

"Hold still," I order immediately, blindly, pulling my Lustrum coat off and pinning a corner beneath my foot. Finding a ragged edge in the cloth, I wrench a strip off. The expensive weave gives way easily; Yevon unravels itself in my hands. "Let's get some of these wounds tied up."

Somasil is too weak to stop me, though one of his hands comes up in an initial attempt to still my efforts. I start to brush it aside. Then I frown, wrapping my fingers around his knuckles and feeling the extent of his flesh's chill.

"I'm glad I found you, Somasil. You're as cold as death."

The Lustrum twists his hand and catches mine in his own when I say that. Looking up, I watch a bare-toothed smile spread itself across his features.

Then weariness sweeps his eyes, and he is only human again.

"What are you doing down here, Baralai?"

Sore temptation to claim that I am on a scenic tour, as tense with nerves as I am. "I was looking for you. To have fiends so close… that's surprising this near to the temple." Pulling my fingers away from Somasil, I probe the rip in his right sleeve and wince when I realize that what I thought was destroyed fabric is actually shredded muscle tissue. That could not have been from only lizards. "How did they even get down here?"

"Pyreflies." Somasil's one-word explanation is a choked laugh. "I took a turn further on and found myself surrounded... they were all coming up from the mists. All I could think of when I saw them was about death. They must have responded to me. Become like that." Covering his mouth with a wrist, Somasil makes a series of wet coughs before he manages to speak again. "Too many bad memories."

He tries to shake his head, the motion turning to wince as he pushes himself to lean forward. Fails.

I think of a blankly reassuring noise to make here, related to how everything will be fine as long as he holds still and does not exert himself.

"Putting me back together isn't going to help, Baralai." Lowering his hand from his mouth, Somasil wipes the trickle of fluid upon it off on his pant leg. "I'm trapped between monsters below and priests above. They're both equally as bad. Leave me here. I don't have anywhere else to go."

"Don't give yourself up so easily." Another ribbon ripped off my jacket, and I am lashing the ruins of Somasil's coat to his arm. "I've spoken with lord Trema. He promised... " and here I pause, finding the weight of that unspecified bargain settling like a chill noose around my chest, "that he's willing to give a second chance to you. Come back, Somasil. We have a chance to change our futures. Stay alive, and come back with me."

Jagged laughter comes out the man upon my encouragement. "You're an idiot, Baralai." His tone holds no humor, no forgiveness. "You can't fix the world overnight. What's done can't be erased. You've heard what happened or else you wouldn't be down here. I killed Gella's priest. I'm guilty. Pushed him off the stairs."

So the rumors were true. Unsurprised, I exhale. Reply simply, "I know."

My acquiesce spurs a rush of anger from the flagging Lustrum. "Then do you think I'll really just be let free if I return? I can't bring him back to life, and even if I did, it wouldn't change anything. He'd still hurt Gella. If he were alive and standing before me," Somasil continues, shifting his leg with a wince, "I'd do it again, too."

I say nothing. The strength melts out of him, dissolving like the flicker of a pyrefly.

"Did someone Send the bastard?"

"Yes."

"And... Gella?"

"She's imprisoned inside the Gaol."

In the dark, I hear him curse.

By the time the bandages have wound about his arm and are negotiating with the gashes in his stomach, Somasil has ventured into speaking once again. His words are soft as spring rain. "Gella wouldn't come with me. She has family, and she felt they'd be punished--that's why she stayed here, despite what that fat swine did. I've just wanted to protect her." The Lustrum lowers his head, volunteering the last drabs of his life. "All that's left is try and take the blame for her now that she's freed from that bastard. That's all I can do with myself. Even that little will make me content."

I rip another stripe off my coat, working around the thick lump of an ornamental patch. "If only it were that easy, Somasil." The line of the tear shreds sideways; measuring the length of the patch, I deem this one too small and discard it to the side. "You should know Yevon as well as I. They're blaming her because they can't have you--"

"Then let me become a fiend!" Somasil's frustrated growl bursts out of him. It bounces off the bounded arch of the ceiling, echoes back to us in distorted speech. "When I come crawling up, maybe I can take them with me too. What other option do I have?"

He sobers, and in his bitter resolve I hear the predetermination of his judgement. "At least then, I might be able to kill the priests who have done this. Maybe I can get her out of there that way."

Unexpectedly, I find my temper rising. The once-robe lowers in my grip, a temporarily forgotten ruin of ritual clothing. "Can't you see that you're hurting her more by doing that, Somasil? Gella just wants to be with you. She doesn't care if you're not able to change the priests, or if you can't make the whole world better for her. She's not asking you to sacrifice yourself like that." I speak, and known the bitterness of my own hypocrisy as I do. "What makes you think she wants a existence that was bought at the expense of yours?"

Buffeted by my sudden ire, Somasil weakens. "I only want her to be safe, Baralai," he answers, and his voice is as helpless as a child's. Equally confused in the storm of fate he has been swept up into. "That's more important than what happens to me. Haven't you ever had someone like that before? That you would give your life for them, even if you can't remain together?"

"Gella doesn't want your life," I reply, harder than I feel. "And neither does New Yevon. What they both want is your ability to overcome the past and build a real future. I don't know what I can be done about the priests, Somasil. But I do know that dying like this, underground," I make a motion with my hands, flicking them out, "is the old way. It's how Yevon has always handled its conflicts. That ended when the High Summoner Yuna showed us we could defeat Sin forever--but what we had to do first was believe that things could change. We had to choose to live."

Such manner of defense is a tired companion to us both; I know it, and I recognize Somasil's familiarity with such rationalizations when he leans his head back against the wall. His exhalation is tinged exhausted with a weariness that has nothing to do with his body, and everything with his soul. "Does that actually work, Baralai?" The question is faint. "How can you erase blood once it's been spilled? Tell me… is it ever possible to take the red out of snow?"

If only I knew.

"One step at a time, Somasil." The New Yevon litany comes to my mouth, automatic, and for the first time I think I understand the lifeline thread of its simplicity. "If you really want to see Gella again and be with her... you'll have to be able to be patient. Even slow changes begin from somewhere. What other choice do any of us have?"

At last, I see withered resignation eclipse Somasil's features. His lips split in a broken smile; eyes upon the floor, the Lustrum shakes his head, rueful. "And here I always thought you the priests' pet dog, Baralai. I figured you came here to pull me back like a rat so that you could be stroked about the ears like a good boy when I was delivered. You've got enough honey on your tongue that you sound just like them." A sigh then, and he runs his fingers over the wrappings on his arm that I have tied, the white cloth that is yet unstained from his wound. "Maybe I'm an idiot as well to trust you. But you're right. There's nothing left for me to lose."

"Except for her."

My addition to his speech earns me a grunt on his part, and I continue, more merciless in the dark of Bevelle's underground than I think I have ever been before. Ever save to a mirror, to myself--and now, to the dilemma I see reflected in this other man's struggle.

Priests below, fiends above. Friends behind you, aiming at your back.

"I understand how you feel, Somasil. Maybe better than I should." The prolonged confession of our entire discussion hits me then, hard, and I sit back on my heels. "Neither you nor I have anything left to have faith in down here. I wonder... if it's time to leave our beliefs behind, before we're smothered by them. Otherwise, nothing will change."

Now his expression has changed. Brown strands of his hair are plastered over his face from the wound; reaching up, he shoves them back and I see the bullish staff-fighter restored in his features that I recall from the sparring floor. "If you can do that so easily, then you're stronger than I took you for, Baralai."

"No." I close my eyes, reopen them. "If I were, I would be able to heed my own advice."

How often have I berated myself for the very claims that Somasil has made? Wishing that the guilt done were undone, that events could be rewound and erased. That history could be rent as simply as Trema's hand ripping through a recording sphere.

How often have I tried to convince myself that there was no way out save a self-destruction, a sacrifice fitting for Yevon's own stagefright mockery?

The color of the Crimson Spheres is the same as blood poured upon the sands; Team Four's demise in Bikanel, my own later on the Highroad. None of that can be erased. That shade has become a reminder of guilt to me whenever I see it, of acts that I still curse.

Red. Just like the color of Paine's eyes.

I have to believe in what I am doing. So long as I am alive, I might be able to find a way to reconcile events in the future.

If Somasil can do it, then so can I.

This determination goads me to stand. The ruins of my jacket are left behind, a pile of useless cloth that no longer resembles a Yevon shroud. "We'll have to get out of here before more fiends come. The problem is, I'm not sure how." Somasil watches as I click out the machina clip, verifying the results to be empty. "I don't have any spare ammunition. Didn't you come down here with a staff of some kind?"

"Broken." Somasil lifts the snapped lamppole from where the scant length was hiding beside his leg. "Not even sturdy enough for a crutch."

"Are you sure?"

"Why do you think I was sitting here?" The irony of the situation encourages a long shake of the other man's head. He overcomes any urge to jibe swiftly, no comment made as to the uselessness of encouragement if neither of us make it out alive. "If I had it still, I would give you the pistol I took from one of the guards. But I dropped it by accident," the Lustrum confesses, self-scorning for his own sloppy handling of a weapon, "in one of the side rooms. I thought I could hide there but only found an even bigger fiend waiting. The smaller ones chased me in. I ran, but I think I might have woken it up."

There is a specific saying among the Al Bhed when one enters a worse situation from a poor one. I forget the exact phrasing--Gippal rattled it off once to me during Squad training and then claimed I said something entertaining about a goat when I tried to repeat it back--but I could make good use of it now.

"I suppose we have no choice but to go back for it." Holding out my hand to give the Lustrum a grip, I brace myself against his weight. He fetches up against me with a stagger; the man is a practiced staff-fighter, but he has been days without sustenance, and wounded. "Lean on me, and we'll make it out."

Somasil catches his balance with a groggy reel, but his eyes are sharp when he fixes them upon me. Bevelle rarely accepts those with slow wit. "This person it is you're working for, Baralai..." he states aloud, watching his conjecture verified in my face, "she must really be worth it to take you this far."

I look at the blood-stained floor, at the red of Somasil's life left behind as yet another Yevon mystery in the depths.

"She is."

We say nothing after that, occupied with the work of slinging Somasil's arm over my shoulder, my hand gripping him about the waist. It is a carryhold I learned from the Crimson Squad. Some skills never fall out of usefulness.

Trema's machina gun is passed off to the Lustrum, and I take up the broken staff. Stumbling like this back down the hall is an exercise in patience. I seal the doors behind us as we go. Their edges lock into place, recessed near-invisible in the rat-maze of hallways; with luck, that will keep fiends from surprising us from the rear.

Guided by Somasil's directions, we pause near a split of corridors. The door behind us has already been shut; there cannot be more than a few additional minutes walk back to the salvation of the lift, but I have not yet passed the scene of my last encounter with the lizard-fiends. It is far too likely that others have returned.

Somasil interprets my hesitation. "The monster is down that way," he defines for me, nodding at the yawning arch to our left. "Are you sure--"

"Shh."

We drop into mutual silence with the same fearful wariness as children caught by threats of Sin in the attic. One echo whispers at the edge of my hearing. Then a second. Scrabblings over metal, chitter-whispers of creatures finding playtime in the Underground.

"And fiends between us and our exit out." I gauge the distance back with a wary eye; even with ladlefuls of optimism, I cannot think our chances of avoiding all trouble are very high. "I'll try for it. Stay here, Somasil. If you have to, take that hallway down and palm the door. It should bring you to Trema's study. Don't wait for me if there's trouble. Do you understand?"

Surprise takes him at mention of the Founder, but then stubbornness fits his face. "Do I look like a priest, to abandon you down here at the first sign of a fiend?"

"Then let's hope I don't get caught."

The pistol is near the entrance, a short crouched-jog in. It comes easily to my palm, fumbled there by fingers as I kneel gingerly, foist it into my hand. Shadows steep like overaged tea. They shift, hypnotic around the bulk of the creature, and I am arrested as I stare up at the dark god above me.

It might be a huge spider, judging by how there are cables here and there woven into where it lurks; I cannot tell their nature, only their thickness based upon the sparse observations where they criss-cross over the dim lights, streak a gridwork over the pulsing runes of Yevon's doctrines.

In the throb of electrical light, I think I catch a glimpse of the creature's shape.

"Hold on," I whisper, passing the machina back to Somasil and then pacing two steps deeper into the room. Three. Four, and the beast has not yet moved. Five.

The staff is held tight in my hand. Perspiration from my fingers is turning the weight of it clammy. Six steps and there is no reaction, no sign that this hulk is even alive or aware. Seven.

At the eighth step comes the rumble far below of Yevon's temple bells; they assemble in sleepy choirgoer status, starting off uncoordinated at first before they rally together with iron-tongued chime to toll the hour. Generators whirl to accept the power load of numerous cogs spinning together in unified time. Yevon's script scrolls down the walls.

In acknowledgement of this, the creature at last begins to stir.

Rune-writing blossoms around the walls of the fiend's lair. Then the lights all flash on, a lightning's stroke of brilliant blue power, and I recognize what manner of being has burrowed its nest deep within Bevelle's Underground.

Locust-skull face. The same as has haunted my dreams since the Den of Woe, its crest rising high above the creature's head as an antenna. Wings couched closed where they cannot possibly spread full in a room this small. An insect coiled inside a honeycomb isolation.

Vegnagun.

A whirl and I am facing Somasil, whose eyes are wide as grief as he stares at me dwarfed by the monster.

"Run!"

No sooner does that word scream from my mouth than I hear the roar of a nightmare awakened. I grip the broken staff in desperation and turn; too slow, much too slow, for Vegnagun is already unfolding its bulk from hibernation.

A shot cracks through the air, the noise a slight whisper in comparison to the beast. Somasil has lifted the machina gun, bracing it against the door and his arm as he tries to bring the targeting sight to bear upon the monster's face.

This attack only serves to enrage the creature further. It surges out of its perch, legs spindling around me like a cage while I try to dash for the exit. One joint strikes me across the back; even the glancing blow is enough to send me flying, a breathless arc that skids me deeper back along the chamber's platform and groping for a handhold to keep from falling off.

I hit the ground hard.

The remains of the impromptu staff bounce out of my grip, clattering on the metal walkway. Pawing forward in a chase of the meager weapon, I crawl along on my belly, pushing off with my knees in a desperate lunge.

It rolls towards the edge and then, wavering, drops off just as my fingers glance its battle-chipped surface.

Panicked, it is all I can do to keep from diving afterwards. Instead I can only watch the lampstand descend into the pitch depths below, spinning end over end like a glinting looped-pole staff, glimmering like a star.

With a thud strong enough to send my very bones throbbing in reverberation symphony, Vegnagun slams its heavy tail down upon the walkway out. Lights flicker as their power is disrupted; flicker, and then all go out at once when an overburdened circuit snaps.

I am trapped.