Chapter XIII – Facing the Truth
"Wonderful," mumbled Auron under his breath. "Sara won't be alright without us." He left the room with Edgar and Helena trailing behind him.
"Where are you going?" asked Alex.
"You saw the sphere. Seymour's bad news," said Cid. He surprised himself again as he didn't say "Maester Seymour."
"But he's a Maester!" protested the guardian stubbornly.
"If he is truly at fault, then it must be done," Lulu said as she too left with Cid.
"This can't be happening," grumbled Alexander with a sigh.
Cid rushed into the room on fast feet. "Seymour!"
"Please be silent. Lady Sara prays to the Fayth," said the other calmly. Cid held a tight fist and clenched his teeth. A door on the opposite side of the room grinded open to reveal Sara leaning on a wall.
"But…But why?" she gasped.
"We saw Jyscal's sphere," explained Auron. He turned to Seymour. "You killed him."
Seymour didn't look the least bit surprised. "What of it?" he began pleasantly like this was skipping through a field of flowers. "Lady Sara, surely you knew of these things, did you not?" The summoner looked awestruck. "Well then, why have you come here?"
Sara looked down at the ground. "I came…" She didn't look too sure. Suddenly, her face was full of determination. "I came to stop you!"
"Ah, so you came to punish me then." He extended his claw-like fingers. However, Sara backed away. "What a pity." Her guardians surrounded her. "Ah, but of course. 'Protect the summoner even at the cost of one's life.' The Code of the Guardian. How admirable," he said with amusement. "Well, if you're offering your lives, I will have to take them." He clapped his hands, and two Guado dressed like him appeared out of thin air.
"Maester Seymour," declared Sara, her voice loud and clear. "I trust my guardians with my life, but they're also my friends. I won't stand by and watch them get hurt." She raised her staff high. "I will fight you too!" She nodded at her other guardians, carrying a mental message to them about a plan.
"So be it," he mumbled, raising his hands high. Ice came crashing through the roof, aiming for Sara and her companions. The summoner bravely twirled her staff in three circles and the ice shattered around them, as if they had a shield. Edgar, Cid, and Auron ran to Seymour's Guado guards and sliced at them. Both of them drank some sort of water, and it was like nothing happened.
"Let me try," said Helena. She snooped around the room until she snuck up behind them and stole their water, tossing it to Alex who surprisingly smashed it with his shield. An opaque liquid sprayed all over the floor, hissing and churning. Lulu conjured a torrent of water that burst through a side of the room. Seymour smashed into the opposite wall. Then, the two Guado guards vanished into a bunch of pyreflies, which Seymour seemed to collect.
"Feel my pain." Seymour's voice was like a knife now. "Come, Anima!" A giant hook crashed through the ceiling and into the ground, spewing black flames everywhere. Cid looked on with horror as he recognized Seymour summoning the same aeon he had in Luca. That fish's skeleton looked so grotesque that it topped any unsent Cid had ever seen in his life.
"Sara! The new aeon!" he cried. Sara mumbled something that sounded like "Oh Fayth, give me strength." She raised her staff and knelt on the ground on one knee. Four giant pillars of ice came down behind her, forming a flower-like shape. A shadowy figure was embedded in the ice. It looked like a woman. Her eyes flickered open, and the ice shattered into a thousand pieces. A blue blanket landed in Sara's open arms. Her new aeon was Shiva. The others backed away as Shiva snapped her fingers twice, causing two crystal-clear boulders to be impaled in Anima. The disgusting aeon fired those invisible beams at Shiva, who somehow nimbly dodged something that couldn't be seen. The two aeons gave Cid a pang of conscience, a flash from the past. Could this be the vision that he had seen before? No, he thought. Where is Judas? Then, he wondered where his friend was. Suddenly, Shiva spun around in a circle with a palm facing Anima. Ice shot out of her fingertips around Anima. Cid really didn't want to get on Sara's bad side. Who could possibly survive in some kind of attack like that? Ice covered Anima. Shiva snapped her fingers one final time, and Anima shattered like glass. Seymour's aeon dissipated into a bunch of pyreflies.
"That power that defeated Anima…It will be mine!" screamed Seymour in a voice that didn't seem to belong to him. He futilely assaulted Sara's party with ice and fire and thunder and anything that he could make, but the summoner was his equal. Every time he tried to cast some nasty magic on them, she countered by making a nullification spell on them, causing no damage from the Maester's magic. Helena threw a smoke grenade on to the ground in front of Seymour, causing a haze to spray all over him. Lulu covered him in pillars of fire while Alexander, Auron, Edgar, and Cid launched their weapons into Seymour's location. They were satisfied as all of their weapons were protruding through a fallen Seymour. Each of them extracted their weapons, wiping the blood on Seymour's clothes. All the rumbling stopped. Seymour turned his head painfully to Sara. "Would you pity me now?" With that, he died.