"Flurry!!!" Ghiki's voice was lost in the groaning of the tree as the trunks moved around him. He couldn't contact his friend. He couldn't escape, couldn't ask what to do, couldn't find out why his paw was passing right through the leaf as though it was an illusion.
It was an illusion. The leaf was just a fake. A beam of light designed to lure them into a trap.
Ghiki could feel the trunks closing in on him, and all he could do was grasp at thin air where the leaf should have been, but wasn't.
Failure was right there in the palm of his paw.
It was still there, the empty space where the leaf should have been, even as Flurry swooped in from under the branches and locked his talons around Ghiki's body again and took off with him in a great rustle of feathers.
"It was an illusion," Ghiki admitted as Flurry soared through the air with him.
"No time for that now," Flurry replied, his voice gutteral, abruptly changing direction in mid-air.
Ghiki turned his head, and noticed instantly what it was that Flurry was concentrating so hard on. It seemed that X-Death had noticed their presence, finally, and now was using its branches and limbs in an attack against them in mid-air. Limbs curled around as though they were made of flesh and not wood, creating a net before them.
Flurry swooped and soared, avoiding falling shattered pieces of wood as X-Death destroyed itself in order to stop them.
"Flurry, no, you don't get it," Ghiki tried to say as he turned to protest. "We have to go back, the leaf wasn't really there, it was all a trick--"
"Getting out of here alive is more important!" Flurry's wings spread even farther as he floated down, narrowly missing the secondary trunk of X-Death as it swung around. Ghiki could feel the wind created ruffle his fur in a very disturbing way.
"No!" Ghiki protested suddenly, trying to wedge his way out of Flurry's grasp. "Getting the leaf is our job. It's what we have to do! If we leave now--"
"If we leave now, we'll have another chance," Flurry insisted. "If we're caught, the world will be without any sort of hope!"
The net of branches and limbs that X-Death had created was closing around them. Snapped branches fell down to the water, creating splashes that Ghiki could almost feel on his fur. Flurry was flying right for the net, his talons closing around Ghiki and drawing blood.
Or, no, they weren't drawing blood. Ghiki was already bleeding quite badly from that cut... on his neck. He vaguely remembered receiving it. Right now, all he cared about was how tiny that hole in the netting was, and how fast Flurry was flying right towards it.
Suddenly, it seemed as if time slowed down. Something snapped in Ghiki's mind, and he could almost feel his body begin to tense. Something was going horribly wrong. He was about to die in the grasp of the very thing he had been created to fight.
"Do you hear them?"
Flurry's voice almost startled Ghiki enough to make him fall out of the bird's grasp.
We did not agree to this.
"I hear them," Ghiki replied, feeling his back nearly breaking.
The net was growing closer.
A loud groan rang through the air, the wave of vibration visible in the black haze.
We will not let this go on.
------
------
The virus -- X-Death -- is designed to take lives.
We will not let that happen any more.
We need to stop it, but a sacrifice from us is the same as the sacrifice of summoners for Sin.
Our lives will just give it the momentum to return later. And then this will have to happen all over again.
The haze is dark. The virus brings darkness.
The way to remove the darkness is with light.
I can bring the light.
...are you sure?
We can't leave you.
You can and you will. This is my destiny.
...we have to. There's no other way.
No! I can't let you do this!
You have no choice. You two must return. I am no longer needed.
Come on. Come to me. We'll escape.
No! I won't leave you! You are sacrificing yourself--
Better to end it forever than to let it continue because of your own sentimental attachments.
No one should have to be lost in order to end this!
We must lose something great in order to gain something greater.
Come with us! We'll find another way!
No. It is my time. Besides, you'll see me again.
...we will?
For once, I know something for sure.
...I'm sad to lose you.
Grieving wastes time. Go. Run. It's time.
Goodbye.
For now.
------
------
The next thing Gippal knew, he was flying through the air.
"There you are," he heard Baralai say, only after a resounding thud.
Gippal shook his head. Blood went flying. His own blood.
Once his mind cleared, he realized that he was on the back of a dog. On the back of Baralai's Totem form.
And they were running. Really really fast.
The black haze that Gippal remembered was clearing. The air was growing lighter as the scenery flashed past them. Gippal clinged to Baralai's back with his blood-soaked fur-covered arms, holding on for dear life, even if his world was growing blurry around him.
"Hold on," he heard Baralai say. The voice was so soothing and familiar that Gippal couldn't help but to obey.
He heard a great groaning and a deep-voiced shouting behind him. He lifted himself off Baralai's back as much as he could while still holding on, and turned his head to see what had happened behind them.
It hadn't occurred to him that his time spent as nothing more than the provider of life force was actually real. That the conversation was real.
It hadn't struck him that he had just said goodbye until he saw the pure white light rise to the sky through the black haze left behind them and explode into a brilliant rain of holy light.
Prismatic white light soaked down through the black cloud, covering the tree, eradicating the black virus-infested haze.
In a vision-shattering flurry of prisms, Lake Macalania exploded into a dazzling mushroom cloud of light. The shock wave was enough to send Baralai stumbling forward, and the sonic boom that followed shattered their consciousness.
"Lightfall," Gippal murmured as he felt his body fall into the deep snow, and the pure white overtook his vision.