It took less time than Cloud had expected from that point to reach the city of Aredthusa.
It also apparently took a lot less for a settlement to be considered a city by the Cetra than he was used to.
There were hundreds of caravans set up around a lake that was twice the size of the one that remained in his time, but few permanent buildings. What the encampment did have, though, was its atmosphere. The thrum of the Planet was far more evident here than anywhere else Cloud had been so far, teasing on the edge of his hearing and threatening to give him a headache as he walked next to the caravans while they progressed closer to where they had to register.
"It's not exactly a Leniter settlement, with brick and clay buildings, but it's ours. The ever-changing city, it's called, and for good reason," Kenhelm called to Cloud from his perch on the front of his caravan. "There's always caravans here, but everyone comes and goes as they please. Last time we were here was, let me think, two - no, two and a half years ago."
"You can give him the lecture when we've registered," Orothe told him from his own caravan. "We need to pay attention here."
"Usually there's a queue," Kenhelm told Cloud, only slightly more quietly. "I can guess why there's not one now."
"Hey! Who's in charge?" a burly older man shouted over. "Come here, there's a new process in place."
"That's me," Orothe said, handing his reins over to Vahana. "What do you need?"
"Stay back, thanks," he was told. "Usual information needed for the books - names of individuals, name of caravan, expected duration of stay. Then on to an inspection in the red caravan over there, just to be sure you're not bringing in the infection. After that, we'll give you a place."
As Orothe filled in the details for the book, Cloud braced himself for the inspection. Unpleasant as it was, it was necessary for the safety of the city and he understood that - but if it was the same as the inspection he'd been subjected to when he first met up with the group of Cetra it would be at best embarrassing.
"Huh. Big sword," Cloud's inspector, an older man of maybe sixty, commented as he took First Tsurugi off his back and shrugged off the harness. "How can you carry it?"
"I'm strong," Cloud said, not afraid of stating the obvious.
"Right. How?" he repeated.
"I fell into a mako pool as a child. I'm stronger than most, and more durable too," Cloud replied briefly as he removed his shoes. "Any other questions?"
"No. But a gift from the Planet like that is a rare thing. Are you joining the army?"
"Planning to." Cloud removed his jerkin and shirt, folding them over the chair that was thoughtfully provided and wishing the man would just shut up.
"Good, good. Stop there, I'll be inspecting your top half first and it's too chilly to be in your altogether for long."
Okay, maybe you can keep talking.
Fifteen excruciating minutes later - or possibly several hours, Cloud couldn't tell - the inspection was over. While he appreciated the man's professionalism and detachment, Cloud hoped he never had to see him or speak to him again.
"You're all clear," he said finally, after Cloud had dressed himself, and held out a thin blue ribbon with what looked like a small coin with a hole punched through it. "This is the token showing you've been inspected and confirmed clear. If you lose it, you get reinspected. If you leave and re-enter the city, you get reinspected. If you meet with someone who is infected or hasn't been inspected, you get reinspected. So, just stick with the people you know and try not to go out of bounds. Good luck."
Taking the ribbon, Cloud headed back out and found that apart from Cenne he was the last one out.
"What's taking so long?" Vahana asked the man who was dealing with their registration.
"It's Luca, she's probably just chatting," he replied dismissively. "She'll be out soon."
After a few more minutes of Vahana getting steadily more nervous, Cenne came out with her own blue ribbon and token.
"Sorry - she was telling me about the new location for the market, it's gone west where there's more room for the stalls to be spaced out," she said apologetically when Vahana hugged her. "Steady!"
"Just got worried," was the reply before she was released.
"We're over to the north-west," Orothe said, interrupting. "Someone left a couple of days ago, so there's a space closer to the centre than we would have otherwise got. Benefits of being small, I suppose."
When they got to their allotted space, Orothe told them what he'd learned while waiting for them to come out of inspection.
Apparently, the army would wait a month more before moving out - there had been reports of more caravans making their way to the capital, and they needed all the help they could get. The Calamity had no such restriction, of course, and for every report of a hale and healthy caravan on the way there was another reporting on an outbreak in a settlement, or wreckage found on the road.
Fortifying the encampment was therefore the main priority; nobody entered without inspection, and suspect cases were quarantined. For Cloud and the others it was hardly an imposition, as they'd been inspected and now just needed to stay together in the city. Nothing except the prospect of reinspection stopped them leaving, either; they could always give up and continue travelling to who-knew where.
As a result, it was easy for Vahana to get up out of her bedroll one morning two weeks after they arrived and walk out of the encampment altogether.
Cloud didn't realise her intentions at first. She had woken him when rustling about gathering her things, but he'd assumed she'd gone to relieve herself. Fifteen minutes later, he sat up and looked over at the space she'd claimed as her own. It was empty.
Grabbing his own things, abandoning what he couldn't pack quickly, he made his way outside. By now she had perhaps a twenty minute head start, but it was the twenty minute head start of an unenhanced woman with a heavy pack in the dark trying to be quiet and invisible; as someone used to travelling on his feet with a weight on his back and enhanced with excellent night vision and superhuman strength, it was simple for Cloud to catch up.
Instead of challenging her as soon as he saw her, he hung back and watched. She never looked back.
As she was heading north, he could guess her destination. What he couldn't figure out was why she wasn't waiting for the rest of the Cetra. The Northern Crater was their chosen battlefield - why not wait another two weeks and travel as one of hundreds? On foot and on her own, this wouldn't be an easy journey so why was she attempting it?
When she paused for her first rest since leaving, with the sun high in the sky, he approached. Vahana didn't seem surprised when she saw him - she just smiled wryly.
"I hoped it wasn't Orothe. I'm not going back, Cloud."
"Alright," he shrugged. "I'm coming with you."
"I had a feeling you'd say that. Can I persuade you to go at all?"
"No," he told her firmly. "But, if you could tell me why I'd appreciate it."
"The Calamity must be stopped, and the army won't succeed. I've thought for a while now that you might understand, but - it sounds so ridiculous!" she said, laughing without a trace of humour in her voice.
"What does?" Cloud asked, as calm as if he was dealing with a spooked chocobo.
"I've - I've done this before," she said, still with a smile on her face - almost as if she was daring him to call her a liar. "I lived this before. Or maybe I dreamed it? And we fought, and we failed. The Calamity won, and began eating away at the heart of the Planet. I was one of the last survivors of the battle, until I woke up and it was five years earlier. Do I sound mad?"
"I - no. No, you don't," he said, feeling a little giddy himself with the implications this had. "The same thing happened to me, almost. I was sent a lot further back."
"You...did?"
The smile plastered on Vahana's face finally faded to be replaced with a look of the purest, most desperate hope Cloud had ever seen.
"Mn. I'm from a lot further forward, and in the time I come from the Calamity had been defeated by the Cetra. It was our stupidity that revived her, but she was weak compared to now. She couldn't do what she's doing now," he told her.
"So... I won?" Vahana asked.
"If you were the one to defeat her, then yes. You bought us thousands of years, and - Vahana?"
Cloud reached out to the hunched over woman, resting his hand on her shoulder as she laughed through her tears.
"I'm going to win," she whispered. "I won't fail. I won't."
"So, what's the plan?" Cloud asked a while later, after Vahana's tears had dried and they had started to walk again on the trail ahead of them. Vahana sucked in a deep breath, pausing for a few minutes as she put her thoughts together before responding.
"I- I'm going to try and make the Planet react to it. If things continue, the Travellers will awaken and reduce us to the Lifestream, before carrying us across the void to a new world. That's not a bad thing", she hurriedly added, "it's just - they'll carry the Calamity with us. We'd be corrupted long before we reached a new world that could accept us. This Planet would have died, and any other world the Travellers took us to would die too.
If we could - if I could make the Planet reject the Calamity, if I could persuade it to - oh, I don't know. The Planet has so much that can destroy and renew. Fire. Lightning. Floods probably wouldn't be a good idea, but ice? Maybe an earthquake would be pointless, but a landslide?"
She looked over at Cloud as though hoping he had an answer for her; he didn't. From what he remembered, Jenova had been encased in rock when she was excavated by Gast and Hojo, but that wasn't exactly a plan.
Looking at her now, knowing what she'd been planning and what she'd been through, he could see that the bags under her eyes and the new hollowness to her cheeks were the result of her pushing herself harder than anyone had any right to expect of her. He asked a question of his own, instead.
"Why do you think the Planet chose you, on your own?"
"I don't know, " she said with shrug. "I know that Mother was said to be a descendant of Yunalesca, but I'm hardly the only one. It could be because I fell into a mako pool five years ago, as when I returned I was being pulled out, but other's have fallen into the pools and been recovered before. The Planet's voice was always clear for me, but that's not unique either." She shook her head before turning to grin at him. "Besides, I'm not alone, am I? I have you."
Glad to see her a little less shaken, he rolled his eyes and continued trudging on for a minute or two before something occurred to him.
"That caravan we saw, that you didn't want to meet up with? Was that because of something that happened...before?" he asked.
"Yes," she said after a moment. "Last time, we were with them when - when they fell down the ravine. There were people who were infected there, and they infected Cenne. When the infection overwhelmed them it - it -"
"You don't have to tell me the details, if you don't want to," Cloud told her. "I can imagine the rest."
"No. No - Orothe and I survived. Orothe saw Cenne became a monster, and Kenhelm, he wouldn't leave her. We only just survived to reach the army," she finished quietly.
Silence reigned for a few moments as Cloud tried to find something to say.
"They're alive now," he said finally. "That's got to mean something. You've changed that, at least."
"You're right," she said so softly it was hard even for his hearing to pick it up. "At least I've changed that."
It was a long trek to the Northern Crater, as Cloud had expected, but the weather was unusually co-operative. The small settlement that would one day become Icicle Inn was located in a part of the continent cold enough to kill the unwary, but the bitter winds and ice-laden blizzards the region was known for were curiously absent. When climbing the rock faces, there was no sleet numbing their fingers and snow didn't blind them as they walked treacherous paths. Cloud had his own suspicions as to why, based on that first conversation, but he wasn't going to complain about it - not when remembering his last journey in the area.
Even with these comparatively gentle conditions, though, he could see Vahana was being worn down by the long days, hard walking, and rationed food. As an enhanced faux-SOLDIER he could continue for some time with minimal food as long as he was prepared to pay for it dearly later, but Vahana's appreciation for whatever he could give her outweighed his expectations for future discomfort. She was thin and used to walking well-trodden routes, so her reserves for this kind of trek were low.
If Cloud was being honest with himself, which he wasn't precisely in the habit of doing, he had stopped thinking of going home as a real possibility. He still missed the people he'd left behind - there was still a part of him that wondered whether they were alive in that future time, or if it had been wiped clean when he went back in time. For all that he couldn't admit it to himself, however, it did guide his actions. He gave Vahana extra food, more sleep, the spare blanket, whatever was needed to keep her going.
Greengreengreengreengreen
burning
burning
GREEN
cloud
"Cloud?"
Cloud startled awake to Vahana's gentle call - again.
"Thanks," he said, voice hoarse with sleep. "Was I loud?" Could I have attracted anything to us?
"No," she reassured him. "Just tense. Was it the same dream?"
"Yeah. Yes. Sorry."
Vahana shook her head and knelt beside him, resting her hand on her back in a show of support that Cloud needed more than he wanted.
"No need to be sorry. Do you want to try and go back to sleep?" she asked.
"No point," he yawned. "I'll take over, you go rest."
Sitting up, he stretched the stiffness out of his upper body and loosed his legs from the bedroll and blanket. His eyes were heavy, but from experience Cloud knew he could shake that off more easily than the dreams from the Planet.
The closer they got to the Northern Crater, the more frequent and incoherent the dream had become. Often it was just a sea of green, or uncomfortably familiar pair of green eyes, with a discordant song of wordless voices cresting over him and drowning him in their insistence. He didn't know if it was the Planet communicating with him or...
Her.
Orothe's teachings and techniques to listen to the Planet were no longer relaxing, instead increasing the chances that he would end up screaming rather than tensing to the point where he was genuinely afraid for the survival of his teeth.
We're not far from the crater, he thought to himself. A day, two if Vahana needs the rest. Then we'll be there. Facing her.
Let's hope the Planet gives Vahana an idea of what to do between now and then.
