The Hand That Pulls You Back
This is it, she thought as the rocky gray walls closed in, narrowing the path slightly each yard, and the space seemed smaller than the last time she had visited. She focused on the indents on the rock, on the layers of different grays and browns, on the craters and chips created by the weather and by history. The path to the Den of Woe was shorter than she'd remembered. It made carrying the water jug much easier, but it brought her closer to her goal much sooner than she had expected. When she reached the climactic moment—the entrance—it looked just the same. The intricate golden sphere grid outstretched over the stone like a small sun. She noticed something new though. There were some odd handprints against the wall and some half-scribble on it that she couldn't understand. It was as though someone had tried to open it by force.
Rikku ignored the new marks, and set her pack and water jug down. Her heart had been palpitating out of chest as she neared the entrance, but she had rationalized that it was merely the heavy lifting and trekking the rocky path to the cave that had caused the rapid heartbeat. But, as if to rebel, it pounded more forcefully against her chest. She felt like she would heave.
"No Rikku, no turning back now. You're not a big chicken." She took in a deep breath. "You can do this." She crouched and rummaged through her bag for the spheres. She took them in her hand and began placing them each in their slots. After the last one, a light reddish light flashed, and the barrier disappeared. It was a solid wall of dark, which no daylight could penetrate. It was thick and muggy inside, and it smelt of mold and dirt. She saw the small circle on the wall that would release the spheres and seal the Den of Woe again, and her trembling hand reached toward it. Before she could touch it, she stopped herself, gulped the fear that had balled in her throat and turned away from the shutting mechanism. She grabbed her pack and the jug, and with deep breath to absorb the daylight into her, she entered the cave.
A few steps in, she encountered no pyreflies and therefore no source of light. She reached into one of her belt pockets for a glow-light, which she shook to life.
"Okay, all right, no problem," she whispered as she explored the place further. It wasn't until she reached deep into its moist chambers that the pyrefies moved about her in their slow swaying flight. Their hissing disturbed her, and she quickly ran out of the chamber, back into the long path before. She decided to set camp near the door, in case she needed to quickly escape before having a fit or before these things ate her alive.
She would have to get over it eventually and map out the entire cave to strategically determine where to best place the bombs without having the foundation of the mountain collapse around it. The last thing they needed was a landslide into the beach.
She spent the rest of the day pitching her tent and unpacking. She rationed her food, unfolded her tent and pulled out all the blank sheets for mapping and set them neatly into one corner of the tent. Though she busied herself as much as she could, she never forgot where she was and every so often she thought she could hear wailing and the slow hissing of the pyreflies. The Den of Woe was like a big sphere that recorded your feelings, just like the temple in Zanarkand, but with one huge difference. Because of Shuyin's disturbance, these pyreflies acted somewhat like spheres, somewhat like the ones in the Farplane summoning up old memories as palpable as the pyreflies that make up fiends.
Those glowing wisps of energy were unexplainable to her, and like a good old Al Bhed, she hated the unexplainable. If you couldn't ask why, then there was no point. That was their main problem with religion. It tells you not to question, but the more they tell you that, the more you can't help it. Well, for an Al Bhed, she supposed, because for a long time, before Yuna ever came along, nobody questioned a damned thing. It had brought them a thousand years of nonsensical deaths.
Time crawled toward night, and Rikku settled to stay in her tent and zip it closed until sunrise. She could bear it during the day, when she could escape into sunlight if need be, but during the night, to exit darkness only to enter it again would be too much. Little by little she would bring in the tent until she could fully stay at the center of the cave, where so many horrors had happened.
It was at night when the distant voices started and the scattered echoes of shots fired from deep within the cave. It had become active, like an old ghost emerging, and the pyreflies playing on the contents they had recorded three years ago. The low shouts and footfalls of the spectral soldiers kept her awake all night, and at some point, she nearly broke out into a fit of crying. She hated the dead, and she hated the pyreflies for keeping the dead so present in this world.
Day 2
An expedition to map the east side of the cave started the minute the sun was out. She hadn't slept, and the disturbing noises of the night had only made her more resolved. She found two crevices in the rock perfect for stuffing enough explosives to blow at least two feet of the stonewall. It would not fill the entire cave, but make it unbearable and unstable enough to traverse through. This task done, she headed toward her tent, which she had brought in about twenty feet and good distance from the entrance. She left the cave to walk to the well near the lift to get some water to bathe. Then she searched for a sphere recording she had brought of Yuna's Thunderplains concert, which distracted her for a small period of time.
She ate her rations for lunch and searched through her bag again for something to do. The mutterings of the soldiers and distant gunshots had started up earlier than yesterday. She didn't dare wander deeper into the cave again for fear she might encounter recordings of Paine, Nooj, Baralai or Gippal. She could do this so long as she didn't see anyone she recognized. Ignoring the voices, she began to sharpen her hand blades and after that, she went through all her garment grids and arranged them by type: magic, physical or other. It was then when she found the old sphere that had washed up ashore and picked up by the creepy woman.
She examined it, noticed that it in fact wasn't playable, and that she had nothing else to do but put it on a garment grid and try it on to see what it was. She decided to equip it under a benign garment grid that merely helped defense and perturbed no other abilities of the sphere. The less intrusive on this unknown thing, the better.
Rikku stood up and activated her garment grid, the sphere shone and a light surrounded her for a moment, but no transformation occurred. Instead she felt two prickles on the back of her neck and a horrible pain down her spine, and then she lost all consciousness.
---
"Rikku," a child's voice whispered hoarsely. "Hey Rikku!" Warm breath on her ear. She tried opening her eyes, but her head hurt too much and they felt too heavy. "Cid's girl, would you wake up already?"
Gippal, her mind's voice said, but it couldn't be him. She had distinctly heard a boy's voice. She forced her eyes open, but met only darkness. Her throat was dry, and her chest was heavy. She gasped for breath and then coughed and heaved. Her hands reached for her head as she sat up slowly. Everything was spinning and her sight was blurry but not completely dark. Her left hand crawled around her, searching for a glow-light and finally found one. She shook it, shut her eyes the moment the bright light spread to her surroundings, and took a deep long breath. The moment she opened them again, she met with child's a face. Young Gippal's face.
"Rikku," he said, and she shot backwards, dropping the stick and consequently turning it off. She trembled, afraid to reach for the light again.
"It's not possible. It's all in your head. It's all this cave." She drew her knees to her chest, trying to keep her pounding heart from exploding. Her hand slowly reached again for the glow light. Once she grabbed the tube, she shook it again, slowly fixing her gaze in front of her. The light came and revealed her tent devoid of anything but her own belongings. She stood up slowly, glanced at the deactivated garment grid on her side. The sphere she had tried to use had cracked.
"Faulty shitty sphere," she said grabbing it and throwing it out of the tent.
"Hey! Are you coming out or not?" The voice again. Rikku grabbed her blades, placing the glow tube in her belt.
"Who's there?" she asked as she slowly stepped out of her tent, blades first. Her eyes had instinctively began to water out of fear, simply to let it out somehow, because she knew her hands had to remain steady in case she had to kill any fiend or pyrefly demon in her path.
"Will you hurry up?" The voice insisted. She froze in her steps, but resumed after a long period of silence. She surveyed the tent's surroundings and the few pyreflies lingering around her.
"Go away," she whispered, the knives still steady in her hands.
"Stop being such a chicken," the voice said again. It echoed all around her from no direction in particular.
"What do you want?" It sounded like a plead for her life rather than a question.
"Your mom is looking for you," he said.
"Rikku." She felt two hands on her shoulders and turned around aiming the sharp tip at whoever had got a hold of her. She came face to face with her mother. Her reddish hair glowed with the pyreflies that surrounded. Her eyes were warm and her tight-lipped smile so much more vivid that any memory Rikku had preserved. "I've missed you." She extended her arms out toward her daughter, but Rikku pulled back in tears and shaking her head.
"You're not her," she mouthed, but her mother came closer with her arms outstretched ready to embrace. Rikku held her breath. Her whole body quaked with fear.
"Don't touch her!" hissed little Gippal. "Rikku!" He grabbed her hand. "That's not your mother!" Rikku screamed and shook her head. She pulled the spectral child hand off her and ran in the direction of the entrance.
"No, not that way," Gippal shouted. Rikku felt the small hand around her arm, the little fingers wrapping around it like worms. An inhuman force yanked her from her path, threw her to the ground and forced her back into unconsciousness.