It was a rough night for both of them to say the least. At first, Seymour's sleep was light, but untroubled. Then the dreams began. Some of them were just strange but not scary, but they evolved into more and more nightmares. Various people began to descend on him, speaking to him in accusatory tones. There was Jecht, who attacked him in some monstrous form that he imagined to be the final Aeon. There was his father, Lord Jyscal, who always seemed to hate him. There was the very last Summoner party—Tidus, Yuna, Auron, Lulu, and Rikku, and Wakka—as he relived the horror of his own "first death". There was even his own mother at one point, who didn't attack him, but simply shook her head and cried silent tears for the disappointment he'd become to her. Out of all the things he'd been through, Seymour had the hardest time with that one because it was the biggest source of guilt. It didn't help that the dreams felt more real because he kept either rolling onto his wounds or bumping them on accident.

On Melody's end, it was the inability to make the nightmares stop. Since this skin was so new, she hadn't yet learned the ways of Spira or how to harness the invisible power that seemed to permeate the air. Previously, all her assignments had been on Earth and she was clueless as to how to deal with everything. How did one fight dreams? How did one fight memories and feelings made physical? How did one learn to manipulate their surroundings in such a direct way and achieve the impossible? Healing people came naturally to her, but she was hopeless so far at doing other things. It was an extension of will and concentration, but she hadn't had time so far to figure out how to create a spurt of flames from her palms or conjure an ice storm out of nowhere. She'd desperately wanted to—being able to cool Seymour off when his fever spiked would have been nice, but she'd had to make do with ordinary water gathered from the sea. She'd had to start a fire the very clumsy, old-fashioned way by trying to make a spark and that had taken a whole day. Getting fresh water was also a big problem—she'd been letting him have nearly all of it, but now she was feeling the effects of dehydration. Compounded by the lack of sleep, her head was throbbing.

"I need help," she whispered, "Please, Lord, help me to make this work…help me to learn to function on this world…"

A wind flowed through the temple through the cracks in the ruins. Some of the flower petals blew off and swirled in it. Despite her distress, Melody couldn't help but smile: the "petal storms" as she sometimes called them were beautiful. Beautiful and tragic at the same time. They drifted toward something hidden behind a pillar and disappeared. She chased them out of sheer childish glee, welcoming the distraction and having to stifle her giggles in order to keep from waking Seymour up. Then, she was puzzled. The petals were disappearing—but where were they going?

Dropping to her knees, she crawled into the shadow and hoped that there wasn't a fiend or a wild animal waiting for her there. Deciding not to take any unnecessary chances, she retrieved her sword and wandered blindly into the dark. She barely had time to let out a yelp when she went forward too quickly and the ground disappeared at a sharp slope. She lost her grip on the sword and it clanged noisily behind her before skidding away with a scraping sound. There was a terrible moment where she couldn't see anything, couldn't feel anything, and couldn't figure out where she was. Then, there was an enormous splash and she was submerged in very cold water.

Coming up coughing and sputtering, Melody took a moment to catch her breath. Shivering violently, she felt around for her sword. She was forced to go under again before her hand was safely on its hilt. Putting it back in its scabbard on her belt, she felt marginally safer. Hauling herself up to the first dry place she came to, she wished she had a light. She tasted no salt in the water, so she belly-flopped onto the ground and drank until her stomach was full to bursting. Then, she blindly began to feel around. Taking her sword from its hilt once more, she began to tap it against the walls. Listening carefully, she was able to form a mental map based on how much the sound echoed. Though it wasn't entirely accurate, it was a shade better than panicking. She didn't like the dark at all because you never knew what was lurking there.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The room is narrowing, she thought.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. PING!

I've hit something metal.

Her small fingers fumbled around, touching the huge metal door.

This is a little like the ones outside, she thought. She had to push with her back against it to get it open. After several minutes of straining, the rusty hinges gave way and she finally got it to move. Once inside, the musty, disused, damp, and somewhat moldy smell assaulted her nose. Clearly no one had been in here for quite some time and it didn't get a lot of air. She wondered how long it had been…

Suddenly, light exploded out of the darkness, blinding her. She threw up an arm to shield her eyes for a moment before seeing a glowing glyph on the wall.

"What in the quill is that?"

She looked around. It was a hallway of some sort. She wondered what was making this thing glow. The minute her fingers made contact with it, the glyph flashed and the dead-end suddenly peeled away. Melody stared in puzzlement at it.

"Huh?"

There were a bunch of statues, all with glowing colored spheres at their bases. Melody examined each one and wondered what these glowing balls were for. Each one she touched reacted to her hands by glowing more brightly. There was also a brightly colored glowing glyph on the wall. Someone had opened it at some point, for she had no trouble getting in there. A stone statue of a woman was inside this room. Melody retrieved one of the glowing spheres to use as a light source and looked around. It was a strange thing, this sphere—it felt wet, but it left no water on her hands. She felt a strange sort of resonance from it. The room was mostly dusty with fallen chunks of rock, but she pawed at them anyway. So far, she'd had a great deal of luck finding things that had been forgotten in the corners. In some cases, the water had washed things ashore. Other things had been there for years and were simply left behind and forgotten. It had meant the difference between life and death a few times, so she took none of the rooms for granted. So far, the search came up empty until she reached the last corner of the room. There was something there that glinted. The Pyreflies that lingered in the room began to swirl around it and the thing sparkled more brightly in response. Melody picked it up and brushed off the dust. It was another one of those spheres, but this one was different. There was a strange sort of sadness coming from it and it increased the moment her hands touched it. Suddenly, something happened and she was standing in a different version of this room. It was brightly lit, clean, and full of flowers. A dark-haired woman who was sickly pale but beautiful just the same gazed at her with sorrowful eyes. Melody reached out to her, but her hand passed right through the woman. The woman seemed to be looking past her at something in the doorway. Melody didn't see what it was, for she accidentally dropped the sphere. The room returned to its decrepit state.

"Huh?!" she wondered out loud, heart thundering.

You have found my sphere, then, a voice said, I was wondering when someone would have the time or the inclination to look for it.

Melody nearly jumped out of her skin. The Pyreflies that floated around her had come together and formed a transparent figure, though it was beginning to become a tiny bit more opaque with each Pyrefly that joined her.

"I know you, don't I? From somewhere?"

There was an odd sense of familiarity about the woman though Melody didn't immediately recognize her. It was the same feeling one gets when a person you haven't seen for years runs up to you and greets you while you're struggling to recall their name.

"My son sleeps upstairs," she said, her voice taking on a faint, ethereal quality as it echoed through the damp stone room, "maybe you've seen me in his memory. He dreams of me often, of happier times when we were still together. Now that I no longer appear as the Aeon Anima, he can no longer see me as he once did."

Melody bit her lip and nodded. That must be hard. It was difficult for her to not be able to physically see her own Father though she knew He wouldn't leave her completely on her own. Being fleshed always brought an enormous sense of loss in that respect.

"But I have not abandoned him," she continued, "there is little I can do from the Farplane—I don't have long to stay, so I will only ask one thing: have my prayers been heard?"

Melody smiled.

"I believe they have, Lady Aderes."

The name had come to her suddenly as if it had always been there. She was relieved, as she hated not knowing people's names.

"What are you going to do now that you've snatched him from the depths of Via Infinito?" she asked.

"I have no idea," Melody confessed, "but we'll get there somehow. I promise you that he'll join you the next time around, though I don't know when that is. In the meantime, we'll see what happens."

"You're his guardian now…" she had begun to fade already, "…so please…try to see him as I do. He'll be difficult. He'll be terribly stubborn and sometimes very temperamental. He has a tendency to hurt everyone that gets close to him, but I beg you not to give up on him…"

"I won't," she promised, watching Lady Aderes disappear.

Picking up the sphere, she turned it over and over in her hands. The wonders of this strange place called Spira would never cease to amaze her. She could literally hold a person's memories in her small hands. She wondered how she was going to get back upstairs—everywhere seemed to be full of water. At least it would light her way, she mused. She twisted a section of her skirt and knotted it over the sphere, as she couldn't think of a practical way to swim well and carry it at the same time. Her other hand would be needed for the sword, so she plunged into the depths of the water once more. Though having found a clean source of it made her feel better, she still felt heavy and tired. Swimming was easier than walking or climbing to her, but her clothes were heavy and she was quite cold by the time she climbed out of the pool. Getting back up there was much harder than going down. Using the hilt of her sword, she dug into the cracks of the steeply slanted walls and slipped and scrabbled her way back up. Her shoes made a wet squelching sound every time she stepped and her clothes clung uncomfortably. She checked on the sphere a few times, making sure that it was still tied into her skirt, then finally emerged, panting with exertion, into daylight. Flopping tiredly into the floor, she lay still for a moment. After her heart had stopped pounding in her ears, she raised up and looked around. Her skirt was tangled, so she tugged it loose and let the sphere roll towards her bed. It was eerily quiet.

"Seymour? Seymour, are you still in here?"

She heard a thud and a gasp of pain. Instinctively seizing her sword upon hearing the sinister hiss and feeling a dark presence, she ran outside after the sound. A few feet away from the door, a bird-like fiend was dive-bombing her charge. He managed to dodge it, but the thing had already hurt him. There was blood on the concrete.

"Seymour!"

She ran towards him and managed to get between him and the bird. Seeing that it was going to potentially be deprived of a meal, it descended on her with outstretched talons. Melody swung her sword with all her might, but barely managed to even nick it.

"How bad is it?" Melody asked him, still tracking the bird's movements.

"Bad enough," he grunted, doubled over, "for someone who's supposed to be protecting me, you're not doing a very good job!"

THWACK!

Melody landed a much bigger blow on the bird this time. It staggered backward, but it continued to swipe at her. It was nearly as big as she was and she let out a terrified yelp as its wickedly curved beak snapped too close to her arm.

"I'm sorry, I just—OW!"

Its talons raked her arm and opened a very nasty gash. She staggered backward but managed to keep a grip on her sword.

"Can you get inside?" she asked through gritted teeth. She didn't have time to ask him any more, for he grabbed the sword out of her hand and plunged it into the beast's heart. It let out a cry of pain and stopped moving. Melody watched in stunned silence as its Pyreflies floated away. Seymour tugged her sword free and thrust it roughly back into her hands. His eyes squeezed shut as he leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath. He felt sick to his stomach and he hurt in places he'd forgotten he had. One shoulder of his robes had slid down revealing the blood-soaked gauze. Melody gulped, her face paling.

"You might be a skilled mage, but you're…ugh…"

He clutched his strained shoulder.

"I'm what?" she asked shakily.

"You're worthless as a guardian!"

"But—"

"But nothing! The first rule your father should have taught you is that you DON'T run off!"

He crumpled into a blood and silk heap. Melody bowed her head, tears welling in her eyes.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be gone so long!"

She dipped the sword in the salt water to clean it off, then put it back in the sheath. He only let her help him up because he hurt too much to protest and it would hurt even more to struggle. His stare was completely iced over, however, and it pained her to see that look. She blinked the tears back as she cleaned out the new and old wounds alike and winced every time he hissed in pain. Once they were clean and bandaged up, she sent her power into his body, helping the blood flow to cease and the skin to knit together. She felt him relax a bit as the pained lessened to a more tolerable level. She did the same to her own wounds before sealing them up. Feeling terribly exhausted now and very dizzy, she was forced it sit down. Her hands were trembling as she bound her arm with gauze.

"What happened?" she asked shakily.

"I went looking for you," he said crossly, "when I called for you, I got no answer. As these crumbling ruins themselves are just as dangerous as the fiends, I thought maybe you were hurt or trapped somewhere. Imagine my surprise when one of those fiends happened to scent my blood and came after me the moment I stepped outside…"

"I'm so sorry…" she lamented, "I truly didn't mean to be gone so long."

He crossed his arms and gave her a look that could freeze Hell itself.

"Just what were you doing that was so important?" he asked icily.

"I was…looking for water, actually. We were completely out. There was this hole I fell down and I must have fallen a long way because it took me forever to climb back up. Then I had no light, so I had to find my way around by tapping with my sword. There was water, all right—tons of it. I'll have to take the bottles back down there again and fill them. But then there was this great big room with all these glowing things and statues and then—"

She paused to draw in a breath, "—then I found this. It's like a memory thing…I don't know how exactly, but I saw your mom in there."

She retrieved the sphere that she'd dropped earlier and placed it in Seymour's hands.

"I thought you'd like to have it," she said meekly, "I know it wasn't worth all the stuff you just went through, but I can tell you miss her."

He held the sphere in his hands, the coolness soothing his sweating, stinging palms. Much as he longed to watch it, he decided to wait until he had some privacy. He never shared his memories of his mother with anyone, not even Yuna, though he might have eventually trusted her enough to later on. The failed marriage was yet another one of those things that rubbed salt in his mental wounds. He had genuinely cared about Yuna—he didn't know her well enough to say he loved her, but he'd seen the potential before she'd found out what he had done.

And you…how much longer will you want to help me when you find out?

Melody swayed when she tried to get up. She looked dangerously close to losing consciousness. Her face was unnaturally pale—even her lips were gray. He frowned—he had seen the type of creature they'd fought before and it wasn't supposed to be poisonous. She hadn't even lost that much blood.

"What's the problem?" he asked.

Melody sat back down, clutching her head in her hands. Black swirly stuff had begun to edge in on her vision.

"Oh, nothing…just a little dizzy. It happens sometimes when I have to do a lot of healing. Here lately, I've been doing a bunch of it. It doesn't help that I sometimes pick up a memory or two without meaning to—it happens with the energy exchange."

Looking understandably uncomfortable, he raised an eyebrow.

"You can see memories without using a sphere?" he demanded to know.

"Yes…out of all my flesh incarnations that Father has given me, that one was always a constant," she told him, "in order to heal you all the way, I have to push the light energy into you, but I have to pull the darkness into me so that the light has room to grow. During those times, sometimes I see things that have happened to people and I see it from their point of view. In your case, I saw the same bird-monster coming for you when you were a kid. You fought it off, but it nearly got you."

He remembered that day. It was when he'd seen how frail his mother was getting. Staring down at his clawed hands in his lap, he wondered what else she had seen.

"Your secrets are safe with me," she said, as if reading his mind, "I swear it won't go any further than us. Not that anyone would believe me anyway."

Laying down on her side, she let her eyes close for a moment. With her bandaged arm, damaged skirt, and wild hair, she looked very much like a corpse who had lost a fight.

"What else have you seen?"

He sounded calmer than he felt. The idea of anyone being able to look into his memories bothered him terribly. In his mind, that was far worse than getting raped.

"A man who looked like you," she said, "being torn apart by lightning, fire, and ice…there was so much fury and pain mixed together. And it was through your eyes."

Of course…THAT memory…of all the things she could have seen…

Her hazel gaze wasn't accusatory, but there was knowing there. In fact, it was full of the one thing he couldn't stand: pity. His own lavender gaze darkened into a stormy blue-violet as his expression settled into its arrogant mask.

"I have fewer secrets from you than I thought, then," he said coolly, "was it worth braving the most Hellish place in Spira for a murderer?"

Melody fidgeted with one of the withered palm fronds that made up the bed, but her gaze never faltered from his.

"Of course it is…the only one who can't see that is you."

"You don't fear me, then?"

"No."

"Then you are a fool."

"We'll see."

Her eyes slid closed. Her voice had steadily been becoming deeper and more husky because of the exhaustion. Seymour was exhausted himself, but he forced himself to stay awake. Now was as good of a time as any to watch the sphere. When he was sure she was fully asleep, he activated it. The room around him transformed, turning into a younger, less damaged place. It was full of flowers and fresh air, though it was still cavernous and lonely. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him was Lady Aderes herself. She was holding the sphere to her temple at first. Once it was activated, she held it up and began to talk to it.

"If anyone other than my son finds this sphere," she said in an ethereal, ghost-like voice, "I am Lady Aderes Guado—my husband is Lord Jyscal Guado and my son, Seymour, is the one I bequeath this sphere to. Seymour, if you're listening, I want to say first and foremost that I love you. No matter what happens, I always will. You've undergone so many hardships already and you're going to make an excellent young man and an even better Summoner. It isn't easy to know that I'll be out of your reach in just a short time. I want you to understand why I've done these things that I've done and to give you a part of me that's still human before I change. I've decided to become an Aeon and I'm going to do it just before my strength fails. Then, I will always be with you and be able to protect you in a way that I couldn't as a woman. I…"

She wiped away a transparent, gleaming tear.

"…I'm sorry that I've put you through all this. You're so young and though you're very mature for your age and very responsible, you're still a child, too. You've been through so much already…but it can't be helped. I've hidden something away for you that only you can access, something that might help you on your journey. You can find it where you saw me transform. In the meantime, I'll be praying that someone else comes along that can ease your loneliness. Take care, my precious gem….I'll see you in the Farplane, but hopefully not anytime soon."

The image faded and Seymour was left staring at the empty air where his mother had been sitting. He supposed she'd held the sphere level with where his eyes would have been, but now it seemed as if she'd been staring at his heart the entire time. With no reason to mask it, he let his anger surface. If his father hadn't been so terrible to both of them, they never would have left and maybe the Guado could have found a cure for his mother's mysterious wasting disease. He'd have never had to watch her body distort and warp until it became huge and monstrous and covered with chains. Despite being terrified at first, he had come to see that she was still beautiful, just in a different way. He had thought about bringing her back so they could kill Jyscal together, but that had seemed too cruel in the end. He had taken care of it himself. He remembered the old man's defiant sneer even as his heart had stopped—he had won in the end even temporarily. Seymour put the sphere beside him and lay down very, very carefully. Sleep was defiant, but it eventually came.

Melody still wasn't quite herself when they woke up, but she had regained a little color and now only looked a little sickly rather than almost dead. Needing some air, they both went outside, him leaning against her for support. Night had fallen and the air was fresh and cool. The ever-present Pyreflies were still shimmering over the ocean, all swarming around them. Sometimes Melody could hold out her hand and one would land in her palm. They usually had a mind of their own and didn't let people try and touch them.

"What is it about you that attracts them so?" he wondered out loud.

"Heck if I know," Melody said, grinning at a rather vividly colored one, "what are these things, anyway?"

"They're memories of the dead."

She frowned.

"There's an awful lot of them around here."

"You should see Zanarkand," Seymour said, "it is known as the City of the Dead because there are so many Unsent there…even then some of their Pyreflies may remain."

"What happened to it?" Melody asked.

"Sin destroyed it," Seymour explained, "and a great deal of people died there. Hardly anyone goes there anymore—it isn't safe for most. Even experienced mages, fighters, and Summoners have difficulty getting through unscathed."

Melody now had about four Pyreflies competing for space in her hand.

"Are you sure you're not a Summoner? Only they can manipulate the Pyreflies as you do."

"I don't even know what a Summoner is or does, remember?"

He stared at her in disbelief.

"They are the ones who send the souls of the dead to the Farplane," he explained, "if they are not Sent, they become resentful of the living and take on monstrous, destructive forms called fiends. You've run into some of them already."

"Oh, my…." She trailed off, then sputtered: "Those were once people?!"

"Once. They need no pity, for by not accepting the inevitable, they transform themselves. It was once my job to Send them whether they wanted it or not."

"How sad…" Melody lamented, "that must have been a hard job."

"Not really. They had no more pain or suffering. The ones to pity were the living—they still had to go on."

There was an edge of resentment in his voice during those last few words.

"And do you consider yourself unfortunate that your heart beats again?" Melody asked. Seymour looked up at the sliver of moon in sky, debating on how to answer that one. He'd walked right into a trap there.

"That depends, doesn't it? I'm not exactly a grand success in the eyes of most people. I died at twenty-eight years old. I lost everything in the process—my mother, my father, the faith of the people I worked for. I never completed my pilgrimage and everyone will remember me as the murderous Maester who allowed the crusaders and the Al Bhed to go on a suicide mission. And then there's Yuna and the others…Yevon knows what they think of me. They fought me inside Sin. On top of all that, every injury I obtained along the way never healed and the more Pyreflies I absorbed to transform only corrupted my body and mind further."

She watched the waves, listening intently.

"I refuse to stay here longer than I have to," he said quietly, "but I must warn you of the hostility we're bound to face. By now, all of Spira must either know of my actions or they're finding out as we speak. You might want to consider going separate ways once we've crossed the water."

He pulled away from her then and turned his back to her, looking up at the stars.

"I'll do no such thing," she announced emphatically, "I was sent to help you and I'm going to until Father calls me home again."

"You're either very brave or very foolish," he said coolly, "only time will tell which."

A violent splash of water made him jerk back from where he was standing. The sharp gleam of teeth in the moonlight made them appear all the more sinister. This time, Melody was ready. She shoved Seymour aside and plunged the sword into the water. At first, it was still.

"You missed," he said mockingly, "again. How disappointing."

A fountain of Pyreflies surged upward and the body of the fish emerged on the waves. That particular piranha wouldn't bother anyone again. Melody waited for a moment before deciding there were no more and sheathed her sword.

"You were saying?" she asked.

Chastened, he didn't reply.

"It didn't get you, did it?" Melody asked.

"No."

His robes were a little wet from the splash, but nothing else had happened. He shivered a little, as the temperature was dropping.

"What powers does that sword have?"

Melody glanced at her shining weapon.

"It's my guardian sword," she said, "the only thing I know about it is that I can retrieve it from long distances if I need to. It also shape-shifts into other things—it turned into a bow once. But it always has this same coloring: white with blue gems. Father says it goes wherever it's needed the most."

"May I?"

She handed it to him. Seymour examined the softly glowing blade. He had previously thought that the only unusual thing about it was its color, but there seemed to be a warmth radiating from it. The presence there seemed almost alive; a separate entity by itself. It reminded him of the Aeons and how they were very gentle, yet very fierce at the same time. This blade seemed to have the same potential in the sense that it could really hurt someone if it wanted. It was silly to believe that an inanimate object could be living, but not as much of a stretch as it should have been. In addition to the whiteness of the blade, there was also the intricate design of the engraved wings joining the hilt to the blade. The detailing of the feathers was so fine that they could almost pass for real. In the hilt, the three blue gems inlaid were shining softly. Even in the dim light, the unnatural brightness of the blue was evident. He reached out with his mind, trying to figure out the secrets of the blade, but it refused to tell him. Whatever magic was forged in with the metal resisted him.

"Even I don't know how it's made," Melody said, figuring out what he was doing, "Father gave it to me on my way down here."

The man must have been an impressive blacksmith, then. Seymour handed it back to her. She waved it around in the moonlight as if sparring with an invisible partner. The clutz nearly dropped the sword in the water a couple of times and barely managed to catch it before the waves did. He shook his head, half in amusement and half in annoyance. She reminded him of a little kid playing soldier. Eventually, she grew tired of the game and put it away.

"How is it that this place is so peaceful, yet so dangerous? Every time I think we're okay, something jumps out at us," Melody sighed.

"Wait until we're actually in the water," Seymour said darkly, "then you can talk about lack of peace."

"That bad, huh?" she asked.

"I'm sure you've noticed that what little of my skin that wasn't ripped open had plenty of older scars," he replied, "many of them caused by piranhas."

"Oh dear…" she frowned.

"I gave as good as I got," he said dismissively, "it was learn young or not at all."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not."

When they went back inside, he noticed her cleaning out the wound on her arm.

"You really should use a shield spell. It could save you some trouble later."

"I don't know how," she said sheepishly. Again, it was the dumbfounded expression that rubbed her ego the wrong way. His expression was quite incredulous that she didn't know any.

"That lack of memory is getting to be a serious problem," he pointed out.

"In order to remember or forget something, I'd have had to learn it in the first place, right? The problem is that I didn't know to begin with."

Seymour did face-palm then, but took care to do it gently.

"Children learn that from the day they're old enough to understand," he sighed, "who trained you?"

"No one."

He let out an exasperated sigh. He was worse off than he thought—he had a guardian who couldn't shield! Could this situation get any worse?!

"We shall have to remedy that," he said, "as soon as possible. If we want any hope of surviving outside these ruins, you have to be able to keep your enemies at a distance. By the time they get within arm's reach, it's usually too late."

Melody nodded, looking as troubled as he felt.

"It's going to be more difficult to teach you, as my own power is still absent," he said, "so we must rely on yours for the time being. Perhaps mine will return soon and we won't be so helpless."