Defiance

The party spent that night at the Guadosalam Inn. Tired from a long day of travel and battle and troubled by the encounter with Lord Jyscal, Yuna retired immediately to a private room and spoke to no one. Everyone else took rooms at the inn as well, but I quietly slipped out after the others had gone to sleep and found a private camping spot in the forest outside the settlement. I needed to put physical distance between myself and the Farplane; I didn't trust myself to sleep otherwise.

Fortified by the fresh night air of the real world, I woke before sunrise with renewed strength and energy. I returned to the inn before the others stirred. The Farplane still beckoned, but I found its call less enticing. My evening in the woods had cleared my head, reminding me that I had remained on Spira for a purpose. And I would carry on until that purpose was fulfilled. Initially, caring for Tidus and bringing him to manhood had been my reason for continuing to exist, but Jecht had changed things by bringing us to Spira. Now I had one goal, and one goal only: the final eradication of Sin. I would free my world from the eternal spiral of sacrifice and death, expose the lie that had held it captive for so long. And if I smashed the yoke of Yevon in the process, so much the better.

As I waited for the rest of the party to finish their preparations, I thought about Seymour's proposal. My refreshed mind now remembered Seymour's own aeon, a Final Aeon beyond any doubt. Of course he had met Yunalesca and learned about the sacrifice. Was this proposal an attempt to position himself as the fayth of Yuna's Final Summoning? Only one plausible reason for this goal occurred to me, and it chilled me to my very soul: Seymour wanted to become Sin. But why? Was he simply insane? Or was there some deeper, more sinister madness at work here?

I broke off my musings when Yuna joined us. We formed up behind her and headed for Seymour's mansion in total silence. Outside the door, she turned to us. "I will go meet with Maester Seymour," she said. "Please wait here."

"Yuna!" I said. "Jyscal is the Guado's problem, not yours."

She didn't even acknowledge my words as she entered the door to the manor. I shook my head and took up a post by the entrance. This time I didn't try to fight the Farplane; I simply slipped back into meditation, imposing blankness as my mental armor, and did not notice either a struggle or the passage of time. It seemed like only an instant had gone by when Lulu appeared at my side.

"What do you make of this proposal, Sir Auron?" she asked me as I pulled myself aware.

"It is a folly and an unnecessary diversion," I replied, "but as long as she doesn't delay the pilgrimage, I have no strong feelings one way or another." Not precisely true, but I couldn't go into my concerns with Lulu. If Yuna married Seymour and them left him behind, it didn't matter to me. But I hoped she would not invite him along on our journey. His presence would throw my plans into serious disarray, no matter what his purpose might be.

"Hm." She crossed her arms and looked thoughtful. "As I said before, it does make a certain sort of sense -- the High Summoner's daughter, a Maester of Yevon, three of Spira's races represented in their heritage. I suppose it's not surprising that Master Seymour would think of it; I understand that marriages of alliance are quite common in the upper echelons of Yevon."

I almost, but not quite, held back a noise of derision. Lulu looked at me oddly but didn't ask any questions -- she was not the type to waste words on idle curiousity or gossip. It was a quality I appreciated in her, along with many others. Had I not been dead and in love with another woman… but both these things were true, and they kept me from having any real inclinations of that sort.

The black mage continued. "I agree that the pilgrimage is the important thing. But what harm can come of a marriage such as this one? And, though as you say it is a distraction, I think it may serve as a welcome distraction from other things." She glanced at Tidus, who was walking toward us. "Surely you've noticed--"

"I have," I said quietly. Tidus and Yuna were becoming closer every day. The bond between them hadn't grown into romance quite yet, but I had a feeling that it might soon. "I don't think there's any need to worry. Yuna is focused on her goal. She won't let him get in the way."

Lulu looked down at the ground for a moment, then shrugged. "I hope you're right," she said.

"Hey! Everyone!" Tidus joined us, breathless with news. "Did you hear? Seymour's gone!" And as we gathered around to hear his report, I suspected that Yuna had made her decision.

Twelve cadets sat around a campfire on the shore below Mushroom Rock. Liss rested comfortably on the ground, propping herself up against Sam, who sat back to back with her, her cheek resting on his shoulder. They all listened to Commander Beclam, the officer in charge of their training for the past month, as he went over the most recent mission. They had cleaned out a nest of lizards and drakes occupying a cave on the road to Djose, and overall the fighting had gone well, but Beclam always found plenty to critique. Some of the trainees had complained about his harshness, but Liss generally found his criticisms to be both fair and useful.

"…and so that's why you need to work on your shooting form," he finished saying to Maura, who nodded.

"Understood, sir. Thank you."

"Good." Then he moved on to Liss. "Lissira. Are you comfortable with your new sword yet?"

Liss sat up straight and turned to face her commander. "I believe so, sir," she said. "Actually, I think it suits me better than the old one did."

"Then start acting like it," he said. "You still carry it with too much reverence. Yes, it's a fine weapon, but it's still just a sword, not a holy relic."

Liss bristled at this. This was the only place she found fault with Beclam -- his insistence on brushing off the role of summoners and guardians in protecting Spira for so many years. "Commander, you don't understand--"

"I do understand," he interrupted. "The sword belonged to your father, and that's meaningful to you. But there's no point in carrying it as a weapon if you're not going to put your full strength into using it. The steel is strong; it's not going to break. And if it does, we have the best smiths in Spira to mend it. Either use that sword as it was meant to be used, or put it away as a souvenir and find another to fight with."

Although she felt an angry retort rising to her lips, she held it back. The commander had a point -- she did treat the blade a little too gingerly, being reluctant to use it against anything too hard. Besides, raising his ire about the old days would serve no purpose here. "Aye sir," she said instead. "I'll do better."

"Very well." Beclam stood up and stretched. "Fine work, all of you. Just remember everything I've said. Be here tomorrow morning at the usual time for your next assignment."

Liss sighed, and leaned back on Sam, who had shifted so that she nestled against his chest. They had been established as a couple for months now, and she always found his presence solid and comforting. "Why is he so hostile about the whole guardian thing?" she asked.

"Beats me," said Sam. "Hi, Captain."

"Hello everyone," said Paine as she approached the fire. She crouched down next to Liss and Sam, between them and Maura. "How are you finding the training?"

"Tiring." Sam rested his chin on Liss's shoulder and closed his eyes. "Good, but tiring."

"It's all the essence you spend using magic," Paine told him. "Have you considered working more on your hand-to-hand? Magic is useful, but you can't use it against everything."

"That's what these guys are for," he said, waving his arm vaguely at his fellow cadets. Maura snorted with laughter, but Paine just shook her head.

"Teamwork is good, but any fighter in the force needs to be able to stand on his own. You never know when you might be caught without help. Don't forget that."

"Aye captain," said Sam with a bit of a sigh. Liss smiled and lightly stroked his leg.

"So, Liss," said Paine. "I have news for you, and an invitation if you're interested."

"Oh?" Liss sat forward and turned to look at her cousin.

Paine held out a sheet of parchment that was rolled up and tied with a ribbon. "Yuna's sculpture is finished, and so is the portrait of her guardians. There's going to be an unveiling ceremony in Bevelle, and the Praetor has invited you to attend. And your mother, if she's interested."

Liss untied the ribbon and unrolled the scroll. The invitation was written in a flowing, formal hand and addressed to both her and Arelle. Looking up from the paper, Liss met Paine's eyes. "Will you be there?" she asked.

Paine nodded. "Baralai's been invited; all of the Council has. But even if he weren't, Yuna would've added me to the guest list. She wants you there, too. Well, let me know what you decide." She started to stand up.

"No need to think about it," Liss said. "I'll come."

"Oh you will, will you?" Liss looked up to see Beclam scowling over her. "So you think you can just waltz away from training for a couple of weeks, attend some fancy ceremony honoring a dead tradition, and then pick up where you left off? I don't think so."

Liss's heart fell. Beclam was her commanding officer, of course he would have the last word on this. She looked up at Paine, resigned to changing her answer to no.

Paine rose to her feet, hands on her hips, and glared at the commander. "Give it a rest, Beclam," she said. "You know that Liss never asks for special treatment. She is honoring a personal request from Praetor Isaaru and High Summoner Yuna. Surely--"

"Surely not!" he retorted. "She is a trainee under my command and I say---"

"You'll say nothing." Paine lowered her eyes and gave Beclam a hard look. "I'll take this to Lucil if I have to, and you know what she will say."

The two stared at each other for what seemed like a full minute. Beclam looked away first. "Fine," he grumbled. "She can go. But I hold you personally responsible if she falls behind in her training."

"I'll train her on the road," Paine replied. "Plenty of opportunity for her to practice fighting while we travel. In fact, why don't I take a small group? They'll build a team and learn how to work together. Liss, that's your first assignment, before we go. Pick a well-balanced group of three -- the best for the job, not just your friends -- and we'll see how you do as a fighting force. Since we'll be going on foot rather than by hover, we'll leave the day after tomorrow."

"Yes ma'am!" Liss saluted her cousin and successfully resisted the childish urge to stick her tongue out at Beclam. Instead, she looked into the fire and started thinking about assembling a team, and wondering how her mother would feel about coming to Bevelle.

We gathered in the main hall of Macalania Temple. Except for the addition of Braska's statue, and the temple musicians playing in preparation for the upcoming wedding ceremony, the space was much as I remembered it. Four days had passed -- two to cross the Thunder Plains, and most of two more to get through Macalania Woods. It was now early evening, and Yuna had arrived ahead of us to meet with her future husband: Maester Seymour Guado. I mistrusted the man and his motives, but I was willing to withhold judgment a little longer, to see how things would play out.

"So, where's Yuna?" Tidus asked the room at large, echoing the question in my own mind.

Shelinda, a young acolyte who had been following us since before Operation Mi'ihen, responded. "I believe she has gone to the Cloister of Trials with Maester Seymour."

He had taken her to see the fayth alone, without her guardians? That was all I needed to hear; I ran to the stairway that lead to the Cloister and headed up it, the others right behind me. But no sooner had I reached the top than a nun burst out of a side room. "Lord Jyscal!" she cried, as we raced back down. "A sphere in Lady Yuna's belongings…." The woman collapsed as we rushed past her.

The guardians filed into the room, where a sphere sat atop Yuna's bag. I picked it up. "This may well answer a few questions," I said, handing the sphere to Tidus. He placed it on the floor and activated the playback mechanism. And the image of Lord Jyscal appeared to tell us his tale of woe, the dangerous truth about Seymour. The Maester and leader of the Guado had murdered his father, and now the slain man had brought a message from the grave, a message that Yuna had heard and taken to heart: "Stop Seymour! Stop my son."

"Wonderful," I muttered after the playback finished. Jyscal's words convinced me that Seymour was using Yuna to become Sin. If that happened, "destruction and chaos", as the late Maester had termed it, would be a understatement. "The total annihilation of Spira" was more like it.

"Will Yuna be all right?" Rikku asked.

"Hmpf!" I made for the exit. "Without us? No." Kimahri beat me out of the room, and the two of us returned to the main hall and strode up the stairs.

A priest barred the door at the top. "The Lady Summoner is at prayer inside," he said. "You may not pass."

"We are the Lady Summoner's guardians," I said, unable to keep the anger from my voice. "You would keep us from our sacred duty?"

"She is with the Maester," the priest replied. Round-faced and officious, he had tried to deny Rikku entry to the temple earlier. I had known and despised his type from my very earliest days in Bevelle -- it was men such as this who had scorned Braska and, later, me. I would not let this fool get in my way.

"Precisely," I responded. "Now, will you let us by, or will we have to use force?"

The priest drew himself taller. "You wouldn't," he said, aghast.

Kimahri growled, grabbed him by the shoulders, and tossed him down the steps. I heard him hit the ground with a thud. "Bevelle will hear about this!" he shouted as I pushed the door open and walked through.

We entered a corridor made of ice and snow, Rikku on our heels. The Ronso and the Al Bhed ran ahead to the Chamber of the Fayth, while I took up a post to wait for the others. They were only a few moments behind. "Kimahri's up ahead," I told them. "Go."

"Right!" Tidus pumped his fist in anticipation, then headed down the hallway, followed by Wakka.

As the older blitzer walked past me, I stopped him with a hand to his arm. "We will protect Yuna from anyone," I reminded him. "Even a maester."

Wakka made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob, clearly distressed. "This can't be happening," he moaned.

Lulu came up to us. "If he is truly at fault, it must be done," she said, her tone sad but resigned.

I nodded to her. "I know how difficult this is. Do you think it was any easier for me, learning of such corruption at the heart of Yevon? But our concern at the moment is not Yevon, or what Bevelle might think of us. Yuna is in danger, and we are sworn to protect her. Nothing else matters. Now, no more talking. We go!" I turned on my heel and walked through the corridor, down the stairs, and into the antechamber. Seymour knelt at the entrance to the Chamber of the Fayth. Yuna was nowhere in sight.

"Seymour!" Tidus shouted, pushing his way to the front of the group.

"Please be silent," Seymour commanded. "Lady Yuna prays to the fayth."

"Make me!"

Seymour faced us and took a step down the stairway. He stared at Tidus, and Tidus glared back. The face-off stretched into a long moment, and I started to worry about Seymour's reaction. Would he strike the boy down before any of us could react? Fortunately, they were interrupted by the appearance of Yuna. All of us, including Seymour, turned to look at her as she opened the door.

She gasped. "But… why?"

"We saw Jyscal's sphere," Tidus told her.

I took a step forward. "You killed him." I made it a bald statement of fact rather than a question.

Seymour shrugged. "What of it? Lady Yuna, certainly you knew of this when you agreed to join me here."

Yuna, dismounting the steps, paused, then nodded with a noise of assent.

"Then why have you come?" he asked.

She had reached her guardians. "I came…" She took a deep breath. "I came to stop you."

"I see." Slowly, he turned back to us. "You came to punish me, then." All the oily charm and fake graciousness he had exuded back in his home had fallen away now, leaving his face cold and his eyes hard. He reached out a hand to her, and she backed away, putting Tidus and me between herself and the maester.

"What a pity," he said, the threat plain in his voice. We all closed ranks around her, and he smiled. "Ah, of course. 'Protect the summoner even at the cost of one's life.' The code of the guardian. Admirable." His own guards stepped forward. "Well, if you are offering your lives, I will have to take them." He raised his arms, preparing to cast a spell.

"Maester Seymour." Yuna spoke up from behind me. "I trust my guardians with my life. But they are also my friends. I will not stand by and watch them be hurt. I will fight you, too!"

I risked a glance at her. She was holding her staff, ready to attack, her expression fiercely determined. My heart thrilled to see it -- she valued our lives at the risk of her own, so much that she would stand up to Seymour. When the time came, would she also stand up to Yunalesca?

"Maester Seymour!" Wakka's cry rang out from the back of the room, pleading and desperate.

He was ignored. "So be it," said Seymour, and the battle was joined.

Seymour was defeated, and so were we.

The battle was long and tiring, a contest of aeons in the end -- Seymour's personal aeon versus Yuna and the fayth of Macalania. Once she had defeated Seymour's aeon, he had come to a quick end. Tidus dealt the final blow. As he fell, Yuna rushed to him.

"You would pity me now?" the fallen Guado had asked, and then he slumped backwards, clearly dead. Yuna knelt by his side and gently closed his empty eyes while the rest of us gathered around.

Then Trommell had burst in, aghast at the scene before him. Uninterested in explanations, he had taken away Seymour's body before Yuna could send him, destroyed the sphere of Jyscal, and then sent his soldiers after us. We'd had no choice but to run. In the end, they called forth a wendigo, which had confronted us on the lake ice and then sent us beneath it.

Now the party gathered at the bottom of the lake, dejected and betrayed. We stood on some surface, knee-deep in water, surrounded by odd structures with the tune of the Hymn filling the air, and I thought.

I had not expected to have to go up against Yevon so directly. Much easier if we could have just carried out the pilgrimage as usual, learning the truth about our leaders and the religion we followed only at the end. But Seymour had forced events in a direction I had not anticipated, and matters had been complicated. Yuna was still short an aeon, and it was the fayth of Bevelle. Trommell had branded us traitors; getting into St. Bevelle would be difficult at best. I had no doubt that something could be managed, but what if the others balked?

Yuna was explaining her reasoning for agreeing to marry Seymour -- she had been hoping to confront him about his father's murder and his future plans.

"In exchange for marriage?" Lulu asked.

"Yes, if that's what it took." She shook her head and sighed. "But he didn't say anything. Now, I don't even think it was worth it."

"Enough!" I said, weary of recriminations. "Dwelling in the past is futile."

"Hey!" Rikku fixed a glare on me. "You don't have to say it like that."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "You want to waste time listening to her regrets?" My tone was harsher than I wanted it to be, but my impatience was growing, and I could feel the beginnings of a serious headache. My first in ten years; I'd thought my death might have put an end to them. Apparently not.

Rikku backed down and looked away from me. "You don't have to say it like that," she repeated under her breath.

I bit back another retort, and turned to Yuna instead. "Our immediate concern is your pilgrimage," I said. "Are you willing to go on?"

"I am willing," she replied, "but do you think Yevon will allow it?"

"The fayth are the ones that give power to the summoners, not the temples or the teachings. If the temples try to stop us…" I stood up straight and looked at my companions. "Then we will defy Yevon, if we must."

Gasps rose from Yuna, Lulu, and Tidus, and Rikku's eyes went wide. "I can't believe you said that," she exclaimed.

Wakka stepped forward, scowling. "Count me out," he said. "We have to atone for our sins. It's not like I ever liked Maester Seymour or anything. No way will I forgive him for killing Lord Jyscal. And for trying to do us all in, too, ya know? But still, going against Yevon? No way!" He crossed his arms and glared at me, defiant.

"I agree," said Lulu, and I had to contain my dismay. I'd had such hopes for her, but she wasn't ready to face the truth about Yevon. And Yuna would follow her lead. "We have transgressed, and must face our punishment." She bowed her head in shame.

"We must go to Bevelle," said Yuna. "I will seek an audience with Grand Maester Mika and explain what has happened. It is the only way, I think." She looked at the ground, then me. "Sir Auron…"

I shrugged. "So it is decided."

"Will you come with us?" she asked me.

As if I would allow anything, even her own foolishness, to separate us. "I am the troublemaker, after all." A bitter disappointment, but I should have expected it. A lifetime of training was a difficult thing to shake off. Well, there was still time. I would go along with this farce and regain their trust. As long as Mika didn't throw us all in jail cells, we would find a way to continue to Zanarkand. Perhaps the shock of Yunalesca would finally shake them out of their blindness to the truth. This was far from over.