Prophecies are read in tea, in bones, and in the slow cycles of the stars. Augury, sorcery... these are only tools to fight an uncertain future. And even Hyne learned too late that tools easily cut the hand of the Maker.

Blood drips from she sky when the Cup overflows. What use are prophecies then? The only use is the sword and shield, flame and cutting cold. There is no bandage which closes the wounds of the sky or the soul.

Small wounds are forgotten when great wounds are taken. Who knows but the heavens may be close to dying, all to be ignored when the moon's blood seeps?

-

Four hours into the mission proper, Nida was giving serious consideration to killing both of his teammates.

"Did you know that if you shoot a bullet horizontally and drop a bullet at the same time, they'll hit the ground at the same time?" Selphie asked, lying spread-eagled on the ground and staring up at the clouds.

"Yeah," Zell responded. He was shadowboxing--he had been doing that a lot, stopping for short breaks in the shade of the weird blocklike runes that made up Tears Point. It was hot, on the plains. "Did you know that it only takes five pounds of force to break bone?"

"Yeah," Selphie said, searching her brain for another piece of useless trivia. "Did you know that stones found on this side of the moon have a higher paramagical concentration than stones from the dark side of the moon?"

"Did you know that a trained assassin can kill two people in less than five seconds if given the correct equipment?" Nida interrupted.

"Yeah," both of them chorused back.

"All right, I give up." Nida had been sitting--resting his back against one of the huge blocks--but now he stood, glancing around in aggravation. Nothing interesting had happened yet, and--given his luck--nothing interesting would. Ever. It was a fool's mission, and the people at Garden probably knew it. "I'm going for a walk. Find me if the world ends."

Without waiting for a response, he wandered off down one of the wide lanes between the runes. Tears Point was impressive, sure--but this mission was offering him about as much excitement as a geological survey. And at least in a geological survey, one could look around and see the sights.

Here, the only sights were the row upon row upon row of weird monoliths and the statues in the middle, who seemed to be totally engrossed in... staring blankly out into the distance.

A few of them had instruments. Nida wondered why.

Sitting down in the shade of one of the enormous feet, Nida leaned back and stared at the sky. There was really very little else to do. With a sigh, he let his mind wander and fully expected it not to come back.

"Hey, Nida!"

Nida groaned as Selphie approached. "What is it?"

"Did you know if the magical concentration in the Tears Point array drops below point oh-two-one of whatever it's measured in, it means that there's a high probability of a Lunar Cry in the near future?"

He sighed. "No, Selphie. No, I didn't."

"Neither did I!" Selphie admitted. "But that's what it says in the overall briefing."

"Yeah... I remember something like that, I guess."

"I just thought you'd like to know, since the screen on that thing they had us bring along is reading point oh-one-three."

Nida froze. Very carefully--as if afraid of disturbing the universe in just the wrong way, like the butterfly who flapped his wings in Esthar and somehow orchestrated a bank crash in Deling City--Nida stood up and glanced skyward. The moon was there--pale in the sunlight, looking big and calm and generally non-threatening.

"So maybe we should report that, huh?"

"Maybe!" Selphie agreed. "I mean, it would be, like, a mega-bummer if there was another Lunar Cry, huh?"

"I would think." Nida dusted himself off, walking back toward the entrance. "If there was an anomaly, we were supposed to run some kind of in-depth scan. Are we doing that?"

"Yeah, Zell's figuring it out," Selphie said.

"Well, that's good news." Nida picked up his pace.

When they arrived, Zell appeared to be doing some kind of a victory dance in front of the monitoring equipment. "Oh, yeah! They call me the machine when it comes to machines, baby!"

"Zell?" Nida stole up beside him, glancing over the readout. "First off, no one calls you that. Second, never call me 'baby' again."

Zell looked a bit startled. "I wasn't--"

"So, anyway, we'll stay here for the rest of the time we're supposed to unless Hexadragons start hitting us on the head. Once that's done, we run back to Esthar like scared ninnies. Sound about right?"

"Sure!" Selphie plopped down next to the equipment. "Did you know--"

"Goodbye," Nida said, turning on his heel and wandering off back down the path. Impending Lunar Cry or no, this was still a fool's mission.

It was going to be a long couple of hours.