Yay! Chapter Two! Already! (A pod person must be writing this. The REAL nakigoe-chan waited months before updating. And the freakiest part is the fact that this is my least popular story. Maybe I should go post another chapter of After You to salvage my ego. Whaddaya think?
Nah; I'll just keep going with this one, at least for a little while.
Whoever owns all the characters and situations I'm using in this story...well, owns them. The story is MINE, MINE, MINE, and I'm not sharing. ^_^
Thanks to my prereaders, obviously, and also:
Amy: Wow, thanks! Glad I could throw in a twist...I tend to try to flip things around at the end of chapters, but I never know if it'll work. Cliffhangers are my friends. Oh, and Seifer isn't in this chapter, but he'll show up within the next two, I promise.
Dee-whY-Cee-aRe: Witness more, soon as I could. ^_^
Wildrinoa: Writing lessons? Hmm...well, I'm in an AP English writing course at my high school – does that count? But really, thanks for the compliment. (And BTW – YOU are not dying. The LIGHT is dying. ^_~ Sorry; I couldn't resist.)
Isis: it's absolutELY, but I always spell it wrong, too (along with unfortunately and occasionally and sometimes my own name...) but thanks for the review.
Rebekka: Arigatou!
Ekatay: I know; it's confusing. Yup, they're trapped in the castle, but sooner or later, they'll have to get out...
Pheonixsong: thanks for the compliment on the style – I've never really written anything this dark before (my other multi-chapter IS a murder mystery, but it has a much lighter tone...) so it's very reassuring to know that people don't think I'm botching it up.
Dragonchic: Thanks for coming back for a second helping...and look, I took the hint! (Seriously, this is as fast as I CAN update...)
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THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
Chapter 2: The Book of Legends
By: nakigoe-chan
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"Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't."
- Richard Bach
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The girl stood in the doorway of an old-fashioned classroom, examining the inhabitants. Classmates; people she saw everyday – people who ignored her everyday.
So why were they staring at her now?
She was distracted from her sudden position in the spotlight when she noticed that they were clustered around a boy who had his head wrapped in a bandage. She didn't know his name – she barely knew anyone's name, it wasn't as if they ever introduced themselves to her – but yesterday he had lent her a pencil. He was the only person who had acknowledged her presence in the last two weeks.
She rushed toward him in concern, asking what had happened, how he had hurt himself.
He jerked away from her, eyes wide with terror, stifling a gasp.
She paused, tilted her head in confusion. Another boy pulled her back with such force that she stumbled and fell backwards onto her butt, staring up at the accusatory eyes of her classmates, who had formed a protective ring around their injured comrade.
"How can you ask him if he's alright?!" the boy who had pulled her back shouted. "You're the one who did this!"
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I jerked violently back from my reflection, throwing out a bloody hand to block my view. No, no, no, no...
What was HAPPENING to me?
I heard a violent crack, and when I looked up the mirror was a spiderweb of glass slivers, as if someone had thrown a ball into it.
My magic had unconsciously taken over.
I sank to the floor and started sobbing. How could this have happened to me? How could I have done that to Quistis?
Quistis! I'd forgotten about her.
But she had been standing in the doorway watching me with sad eyes, blood still pouring down her cheeks like crimson tears, the whole time.
I went to her, slowly and cautiously. I was as afraid she would run as, doubtlessly, she was afraid I would attack her again.
But she evidently decided to trust me, because when she saw my tears she wrapped her arms around me and let me sob.
I pulled her into the bathroom and washed her face off with a blue fuzzy washcloth. How ludicrous! Ultimecia had given us blue fuzzy washcloths. I couldn't find any antiseptic, so I had to make do with soap and water. The soap was even more out of place in the castle than the washcloths – it was yellow and smelled like daisies and sunflowers.
Quistis submitted silently to my inexperienced first aid, her eyes never leaving my face. It took a lot out of me to look her in the eye, but I did it, and I was glad that I did it.
I saw, in her eyes, that fear was overshadowed by curiosity and concern. She had known all along, I am sure, that I was hiding something from her, and she had the self-control to wait for me to come clean.
And come clean I did. I sat down on the floor, and told her about my dreams of the girl who had no name. I even told her that I had tried to kill the sorceress – although I suspected she knew, all of us had tried at some point – leaving out only the fact that I conceivably could have killed her, but was stopped by my own mind.
Quistis turned, picked up a pair of scissors, and gestured toward me. It took me a minute to understand that she wasn't trying to keep me at bay.
I sat down on the toilet, my back to her, and let her carefully cut my impossible hair. When I looked into the mirror after she finished, I saw the Rinoa Heartilly I'd known all my life staring back at me – shorter hair, hazel eyes, and all.
And Quistis smiled, stood up, and guided me through the castle.
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Ultimecia's library was extensive. I had scoured every atlas she had for mention of a place called Tokyo, but came up empty handed. Other than that, I was at a loss. I didn't even know this child's name – hadn't Ultimecia said that my name had not always been Rinoa? – so where else could I look? Quistis had passed by the geography section; I had no idea what she had in mind. I closed my eyes and sighed. "What are we doing here?"
Quistis silently pointed at the shelf label above our heads. It declared its genre in bold capital letters, as if admonishing me for not finding its contents in previous trips, as if scolding me for neglecting to seek its insight.
MYTHOLOGY.
"Mythology?!" I said in disbelief.
Quistis shrugged.
"How will this help us?" Quistis had already started down the row, and shrugged again in a halfhearted, distracted manner as I trailed after her.
This one-sided conversation thing was getting a little old.
Quistis gave a little start in front of me and snatched a book off the shelf. She turned to me with a triumphant expression, holding out a VERY worn leather-bound volume in front of her. She presented it to me, but all the cover displayed was an intricate drawing of a silver castle.
"What's your point?"
Quistis threw up her hands in exasperation and pointed to the silver lettering of the title on the spine of the book.
The Silver Millennium and Crystal Tokyo.
Tokyo.
I couldn't believe it. Had Ultimecia planted some silly spell on me as a trick? To make me believe I was some kind of long-lost fairy tale?
No. There had to be more to it than that...
I opened the book.
The Silver Millenium (the book's first chapter explained), while a popular myth, was long considered to be nothing more. Its origins were not explored, and thus the strange coincidences revolving around how this myth began and spread were unknown of. However, in examination of the source of the tale, one must admit there is more to it than simple fable...
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The land was barren and practically colorless; there was no wind, no vegetation, no variance in the flat ground. Squall Leonhart turned in every direction, squinting for some indication of where he should go, but there was no sign that there was anything besides level rocky ground and dreary, gray-green sky.
If this was death – as he suspected it was, though he didn't remember dying – it wasn't nearly so interesting as he'd anticipated.
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The first record of the Silver Millenium fable in Galbadian history is traced back to the sorceress Juno, living from the year 1234 to 1310. However, another sorceress by the name of Ceres, who lived in Esthar at roughly the same time, apparently also told this story. Both sorceresses claimed to have dreamt of alter egos residing in a different world. Neither one ever encountered the other in their respective lifetimes, but their stories match almost exactly. The myth was nearly forgotten, however; Juno told no one of her dreams, but recorded them in a journal, using a shorthand common to sorceresses but virtually incomprehensible to the rest of the world. Thus it remained no more than a few scribbles in a notebook for three centuries. Ceres, rather than writing it down, described her dreams in great detail to one of her servants, a man of the Densetsu-Iu tribes that wander the plains surrounding Esthar. He told it to his people, and it became lore that they passed down through generations.
Juno's journal was eventually translated by the sorceress Vesta in the year 1518. Soon afterward, Vesta started to report that she, too, was having dreams of the place, time, and world that had haunted Juno. This was dismissed in her time as the ranting of a witch, as sorceresses were highly persecuted at that time. However, Vesta too recorded her dreams, and many elements that never appear in Juno's tale – but corresponded to Ceres' – came to light. There is a possibility that she had heard the tale from the Densetsu-Iu, but that is viewed as unlikely through evidence presented in other historical documents. Vesta was burned at the stake five years later for witchcraft.
"Ouch," I said to Quistis, who was sitting beside me reading over my shoulder. She raised her eyebrows.
"Well, this burning at the stake thing. I mean, theoretically all SeeDs are magic-users too, right? If we'd lived back then, we'd all be dead."
Quistis shook her head.
"What do you mean, no? No, we don't use magic? No, we wouldn't be burned at the stake, or - "
"No," a voice behind me interrupted, "Even if we had been taught magic – which we wouldn't have been, because institutions like Garden wouldn't have been allowed – most of the people punished for using witchcraft were entirely innocent, so in all likelihood we wouldn't have been caught."
It was Zell. He towered over us – odd, as he'd always been the shortest and least intimidating of the guys – and tried to look as if he didn't care what we were doing.
Quistis gave him a look that said, hey, why couldn't you have paid attention in MY class?
"Zell," I managed, "do you want to join us?"
"What are you doing?" he asked suspiciously. He didn't want to cave easily; it was awkward for all of us, and we didn't seem to be engaging in the required twenty-four hour activity for all of us, namely, antisocial self-loathing.
"I tried to kill Ultimecia in her sleep a few days ago. She woke up and caught me, and then she did this funky little magic thing. I've been having these weird dreams ever since, and we're trying to figure out what they mean."
"What's the point?" Zell's voice had a hint of derogatory scorn, but it was small enough to let me know that his viewpoint was subject to change if I gave him a legitimate reason.
I paused. What was the point of this? Up until now, I had mostly wanted to justify myself and the girl from my dream; we were not Ultimecia's puppets, dammit. But I realized that there was something more significant there: Ultimecia wanted something from me. She could gain nothing by my service – I was already in her power – so what did she gain by this? What did she want?
A thought hit me in passing, something that had bothered me for a long time, but I'd ignored because I hadn't wanted to deal with anything else I didn't understand.
Ultimecia had wanted to create a time compression in which only she could exist.
So why hadn't she? Why were we – and our world - still around?
"I think," I said slowly, "that Ultimecia is trying to gain something from us."
Zell scoffed. "What kind of power do we have that she doesn't? We're completely at her mercy. She has more power than any of us – more power than all of us put together."
"Maybe she does," I admitted, "but she still isn't all-powerful. She wanted time compression – so why doesn't she have it?"
Zell was silent.
"She doesn't have it because she doesn't have the magic to pull it off. But we know from Ellone's power that time manipulation is possible. And Ultimecia knows it, too, since she can also manipulate time. She would have killed us if we were a threat; she would also have killed us if we served no purpose. Ultimecia isn't stupid; she wouldn't keep the leaders of the resistance against her around just to mock us. At first I thought that was exactly what she was doing, but she isn't egotistical enough to let her conceitedness get the better of her brain. We have something she wants, and these dreams may be the key."
Zell stared at me for a long time. When he answered, I realized that it wasn't an offer to help so much as a step back into the bond Quistis and I were trying to rebuild.
"Tell me what I need to do," he said.
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"Am I dead?" Squall asked the silence, pretending to himself that he didn't already know the answer.
By human terms.
It wasn't a human voice, or even a voice at all, and Squall was not comforted by the fact that it was not even really a sound. It was as if a corner of his mind suddenly knew everything, but he had no access to anything in it. Part of him had been lost, but returned to mock him from inside his own head.
But he had more pressing questions.
"Where am I? What is this place? I'm dead, but this place is somewhere. Why am I here? No one else is, but so many have died."
Not everyone is alone where they are, when they die.
"So why am I? What is this place?"
The voice sounded scornful; amused. Don't you know?
"Of course I know," Squall said sarcastically. "I come here all the time. It's one of my favorite fucking restaurants!"
Despite your sarcasm, part of your reply is, nevertheless, correct. Truth be told, this is the place that, even in your life, you never left.
"What the...?"
This place... cooed the voice, and Squall found it comforting and sinister at the same time, like someone he trusted but knew he shouldn't. This place...is your soul.
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The three of us sat with our backs to the bookshelf, immersed in the book. It wasn't exactly enthralling reading, since we were still on the introduction, but I wasn't about to skip over anything that might be important. But one thing was blatantly obvious: even from the brief and fuzzy references to the Silver Millennium or Crystal Tokyo made in the intro, it was clear that the little girl I dreamed about had not lived in either place or time.
Were we back to square one?
Zell stood up and started to pace back and forth next to us. I had learned from my limited experience that martial artists – especially the one next to us – have a very low boredom threshold.
"We aren't getting anywhere." He muttered, frustrated.
"At least we're moving," I halfheartedly replied, "which is more than we could say before."
Zell promptly found a mature and productive way to alleviate his aggravation, namely, punching the bookshelf. It wobbled backward, teetering on its edge, before righting itself and sending a ton of books cascading to the floor around us.
"ZELL!"
"Sorry."
We all stood up and tried to put the books away. This was difficult, because a lot of them were in different languages – with different alphabets – meaning we had no clue where in the big scheme of order they went. "Shit."
We managed to get them more or less back on the shelf, and then turned back to the book we'd been reading. It was only then that we noticed the last book that had come raining down from above: it was small and thin, and handwritten in the most confusing and obscure alphabet I'd ever seen.
I handed it absently to Zell, who paged through it as Quistis and I went back to the big book on Crystal Tokyo. We continued in silence for awhile, but Zell and silence had never been very compatible.
"Hey," he said, shoving the weird little book under Quistis's nose in an attempt to show her the sketch of two young women in colorful soldier outfits the author had drawn on one page. "How come female SeeDs don't dress like that?"
Quistis gave him a you're-such-a-little-pervert glare; the skirts of the two girls were very short. I glanced absently at the page.
And then I slammed my hand down on top of it.
"Hey!" Zell protested. "Get your own ancient warrior chick pictures!"
I ignored him as I studied the girl on the right. There was no mistake.
"Who is this girl?"
"How the hell should I know?" Zell grouched, miffed at his loss of the picture. "I can't read the damn thing. You can't read the damn thing. Even if Quistis could read it, which of course she can't, she couldn't tell us. Hence, we won't find out."
"We need to find out."
"Why?"
"Because this is the girl from my dreams."
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"What do you mean, this is my soul?"
You never let anyone into your soul, the voice explained. Hence, when your soul's time for bonding was up, there was no one in it. You're gonna have to deal with the afterlife by yourself, bucko.
There was something wrong with this, Squall knew. For one thing, no part of his brain, however detached, would use the word 'bucko.'
"What are you?"
{He is something that is not supposed to be here,} said another, distinctly female voice.
This new voice was smooth and resolute, and brought with it none of the doubt that the first one had.
And then the owner of the voice appeared before him. It was a woman; she was tall and elegant and beautiful. She was wrapped in a dress of red and gold, and her chestnut hair was pinned up behind her head. Squall felt a strong sense of recognition – he was SURE he'd met her somewhere before – but he couldn't bring a name to mind.
{Reveal yourself, Lurk,} the woman said.
Squall suddenly felt a small creature on his head. There was a tiny goblin the size of a cat standing on his shoulders with its wrinkled arms clutching his forehead. It was greenish-brown and portly, wearing only a rag around its midsection. It had grey horns and orange eyes, and (Squall felt with intense discomfort) very slimy skin.
This one is MINE, the thing hissed at the lady. It let me in. It wants my words. I saw it FIRST!
{You are not allowed to catch human souls in the In-Between,} the woman admonished it. {They have too little chance; too little choice.}
They are impossible to catch once they've passed the In-Between! It isn't fair!
{It is, nonetheless, a rule.}
The little thing replied in a guttural language that Squall did not understand. The meaning, however, was obvious – Squall couldn't even tell what curses were being used and he still felt that he should be offended. Language was obviously stronger after death.
The Lurk disappeared.
Squall turned to the woman. "What is a Lurk?"
{It is a creature that feeds off your own doubts and nightmares. They gain nourishment from it, but they trap you within those emotions forever.}
"What is In-Between?"
{It is where you are now. You have died, but you have yet to reach the destination of the dead.} She pointed over her shoulder, towards a very faint glow in the distance that he hadn't noticed before.
Squall suddenly, desperately wanted to go there, and he started off.
{Squall, wait.}
Squall paused impatiently. This woman was keeping him from the place on the horizon; the place that he knew held the answers and the peace that he'd always sought.
{I must ask you not to go there. Not yet.}
Squall turned on her angrily. "Why not?" He said, and then began to walk toward the horizon once more – until he realized that his feet weren't moving. He turned his head to see the woman's hand outstretched; she was holding him back somehow. How DARE she?!
"Who the HELL do you think you are, lady?"
{My name, when I was alive,} she replied, {was Julia Caraway.}
"Oh, well, gee, that clears it all up for me, thanks."
{Squall, I saved you from that Lurk with a purpose. I need you to do something for me, something that only you can do.}
"I'll do it after I've been there."
{Once you pass out of In-Between, you cannot come back. The task will be impossible, and all will be lost.}
"Don't you think that's a slight exaggeration?"
{I need you to save my daughter.}
"Why me?"
{Because you hold her heart, and she holds yours. Because without the bond that you and Rinoa share, everything will melt away into hell.}
Squall looked up at her, exasperated. "You keep going on about this bond Rinoa and I have, and all you're doing is making me more confused."
{And why is that?}
"Because I've never met anyone named Rinoa."
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End of Part 2 (Please R & R! And please don't kill me for that ending...or you can always email me; I respond to all my emails. nakigoe_chan@hotmail.com is my address.)
I haven't even started the third chapter yet (which will probably focus MUCH more on Squall, inasmuch as it'll be called The Land of the Dead), so I don't know when the next update will be, but I'm having a lot of fun with this story so it shouldn't be too long. On the other hand, college applications and studying for exams may get in the way...
Ja ne!
~ nakigoe-chan