~x~

Final Fantasy VI: The Sands of Time

Book 1: The Beginning

Chapter 1 - Pandora's Box

Part 1.3 - Awakening

"Hey, Dune!"

Dune slowly opened his eyes at the familiar gruffness of the Captain's voice. Everything was a blur without his spectacles, but he could just barely make out the large form of the Captain standing over him. His head throbbed, and his entire body felt as if he had been run over by a train. He couldn't move a muscle without an excruciating pain running through him. He attempted to get up, but fell flat on his back, panting. He made a motion for his glasses, and the Captain carefully set them on his face. He looked around at his surroundings. It looked like he was in the infirmary at the base camp. He was lying on a small white bed in the corner of a small white room with very little decoration save a few chairs and desks scattered about amongst the row of beds. At first it was difficult for him to see anything because of the blinding light positioned directly over his head. The light! He winced at the painful memory of the hate-filled lightning bolt that had struck him and left him for dead. How long had he been here? How did he get here? More importantly, how was he still alive after that terrible storm had had its way with him? These questions burned in Dune's mind, but for the moment he was too exhausted to ponder the answers. He closed his eyes again, already weary from this simple excursion back into the world of the living.

"Leaving us already, Dune? You're not going to get out of explaining what happened that easily!" the Captain said jestingly, a rare note of concern in his voice. "C'mon, get back here now!" He gave Dune a soft slap across the face to bring him around again.

Dune opened his eyes once more and stared at the Captain. The usual anger-worn creases in his face appeared to be somewhat softened, and his good eye seemed full of worry and red from lack of sleep. Dune was surprised at the change this made in the Captain's countenance. Before him was a tired old man, almost fatherly in his concern for this wounded comrade at his side. Dune couldn't help but attempt a painful laugh at the old man's startling, but pleasant change in appearance. He couldn't believe that this was the same man who had kicked him with a wooden leg on so many occasions.

"Eh, something funny, boy?" All semblances of kindness and concern instantly vanished from his face. He was the grizzled Captain once more. "Listen, what the hell happened out there? I waited for you, longer than I should have I might add, and right as I was turning to head back to camp I heard a loud bang from the direction of the dig and the storm just came out of nowhere. And what a storm she was!" the Captain paused and smiled at the memory of it, almost like a past lover. "It was all I could do to high-tail it back to camp before she was beating on my doors. The strangest thing about the storm was that it seemed to just hang over the dig site for a bit before continuing west towards the camp. If I didn't know better, I'd say that storm had it in for you, Dune! You must have really pissed off someone up there!"

Dune remained silent. He felt a strong surge of guilt, but couldn't place its source. Combining his own terrible experience with the Captain's account, it had definitely seemed as if that lifeless mass of clouds was focusing all of its energy on him and him alone. His eyes shifted uneasily towards his shirt, which was hanging on a chair nearby along with his hat. Both of them seemed as battered as he was. The hat was tattered and full of holes, and the shirt was not much better, although the small pocket that held his precious discovery remained sealed and undisturbed. Large reddish-brown stains covered both the shirt and hat, and Dune couldn't help looking at himself to see just what this storm had done to him. He moved his head forward as best he could to get a better view of his body, but could see nothing but bandages draped over his chest, arms and legs. He felt a sharp pain in his neck and quickly laid his head back down onto the pillow.

"Ah, yes. You are lucky to be alive, you know that?" the Captain said with a dual note of concern and scorn. "If I hadn't seen you when I did, you'd be nothing but carrion for the vultures by now, if there were any vultures or anything else living in this deathtrap of a desert, that is."

"T..thank..you, Captain," Dune managed to squeeze out of his painfully dry mouth. At that moment he would have given anything for something, anything to drink. Sensing his thirst, the Captain walked over to a small white sink and poured Dune a glass of water. He put the glass to Dune's lips and he greedily let the revitalizing water flow unceasingly past his swollen tongue. He felt the cool liquid course through his chest, and felt his strength slowly coming back.

"Don't thank me, thank yourself. If you hadn't lit up like a beacon the way you did when you were hit, I would never have been able to see you. That damn storm really had a mind of its own, you know that? No sooner had I turned the searchlight on, than a bolt of lightning struck the watchtower and shattered the light to pieces. Never seen anything like it..." the Captain trailed off and became silent, pondering the strange events that had happened.

"How...long...?" Dune struggled with the words.

"Almost two days. I was starting to wonder if you'd ever get up, but the doctor assured me that aside from the wounds from the hailstones, you were perfectly alright. You really are one lucky fool to be struck by a bolt like that and not receive any major injuries." the Captain rubbed his bald head in disbelief. "Now, I want to hear exactly what happened to you out there," he finished solemnly.

Dune slowly related everything that had happened from the time he left the Captain right up to the gates of the camp. The whole sequence of events couldn't have taken more than ten minutes, but it felt as if it were an eternity to Dune as he retraced his steps. He kept the part about finding the strangely cold object and his inner struggles concealed, however. Something inside him pushed him to secrecy regarding the mysterious discovery, as if it still wanted to remain hidden from the world at all costs. Dune had not forgotten it, though, and longed to see it. In all the chaos and darkness, he had never once actually looked at what he had found. All he knew of it was the freezing aura it exuded. The object's extreme cold numbed his senses and kept his fingers from discerning its shape and texture. What could possibly be the cause behind the object's unnaturally low temperature? Dune's mind continued to race, and he soon wanted nothing more than for the Captain to leave the room so he could get a glimpse at his treasure, without any prying eyes. Its hold over him had not weakened in the least over the last two days. He pretended to close his eyes as if he were extremely fatigued from the talking, hoping the Captain would get the message.

The Captain, playing into Dune's ruse, got up and prepared to leave the room. "Aye, I can see that you still need to get some rest. Well, I've heard what I needed to hear, so get some sleep while you can. I'll give the order to get a move on back to Narsille tomorrow, although I don't think the Committee's going to be too pleased to hear we came back empty-handed. This expedition sure was a bust, eh?" The Captain shook his head in disappointment and quietly left the room, his wooden leg echoing off the hard floor with each sullen step.

The Captain was a man of the sea in heart, but still a man of science in mind. He too was curious about the Committee's purpose for this dig, and was dismayed that nothing was found. He and Dune had spent the better part of a week surveying this desert, and could find no trace of anything that could be considered of any scientific value. Despite Dune's unwavering fervor at each new rock formation spotted, the Captain grew weary and increasingly irate with the lack of even the most trivial of findings. The Captain knew the history of the desert reasonably well, but the question of why it was so devoid of life still remained unanswered to him. He knew it was the bottom of a large sea eons ago from geological samples taken by other brave souls who had dared to enter this wasteland before him, but how it had arrived at its current state was wholly a mystery. There were in fact only two distinct strata to the rocks scattered on and below the desert. Due to the extreme lack of any form of climatic disturbances over the many long years, the rocks just below the surface of the sand were the very same rocks that had once sat at the bottom of the sea, making geological analysis very easy. One stratum was filled with now extinct aquatic lifeforms and the tell-tale sediments of a seabed, and the very next was dead, devoid of all traces of the former environment. Not even the tell-tale thin line of rare metals, indicative of a collision with a body from space, was present between the two. Nor was there the line of sulphur and ash that would have suggested a volcanic eruption. For all intents and purposes, this place had one day been a thriving sea full of life, and the next a barren land full of nothing but death. It was this mystery that the Captain had secretly hoped to solve on this expedition, even if the true purpose was of a different nature. The Captain always was a man of his own devices, and even if the Committee had told him exactly what he was supposed to be doing here, he would have delegated the main task to Dune and carried out his own fancies in his own way, only lending a hand when necessary. But his hopes were for naught, and after a week of exploring the region, he knew that he alone would not be the one to solve this riddle.

He sighed at this frustrating turn of events as he walked down the corridor outside the infirmary and down the stairs to his own lodgings. It had been a hard two days for him as he watched over Dune, and he had not slept at all. He reached the door to his room and slowly turned the handle. Just as his hand touched the handle he felt a strange chill for a moment, and looked over his shoulder back towards the stairs, but saw nothing. He shook off the feeling and continued into the room. It was not much different than the infirmary in appearance; white walls and a white floor, with little more than a bed, a few chairs and a desk to fill the space. He walked over to the bed and was soon fast asleep, dreaming of the open sea that he longed to return to.

Back at the infirmary, Dune had been busy trying to push himself over to the edge of the bed so that he could reach his shirt which was hanging off of a nearby chair. This was no easy task, and Dune fell back onto the bed more than once out of pain and lack of strength. But his desire to see what he had suffered so much to get wouldn't let him rest. With one last painful turn he managed to roll himself over and he reached out his hand towards his shirt. He groped around for a second, his fingers barely able to touch the cloth. He slowly searched for a safe piece to grab onto. The last thing he wanted to do was to drop the shirt on the floor, rendering it utterly beyond his current reach. He firmly clutched a suitable corner of the shirt and dragged it over to the bed with some effort. He did his best to sit up so as to properly examine the shirt. It was nearly impossible to tell that this had indeed once been a shirt. It was so torn and full of holes and dried blood that it looked like nothing more than a dirty rag. He scanned over the extremely weather-beaten shirt with his eyes and fingers, searching for the hidden pocket that contained the unknown object. It didn't take long to find, due to the objects peculiar coldness, which still slightly emanated through the flimsy material. His anticipation growing, he slowly reached into the pocket and pulled out the object, casting his scrutinizing gaze on it for the first time. He had to handle it using the shirt as a sort of glove, since it was too cold to hold directly for any length of time. What he saw did not shed any more light onto the object's unusual properties, and only raised more questions.

It looked like something that was not made by nature, and yet not by the hand of man, either. The object was shaped like two tetrahedrons connected at the base, with six identical faces all as smooth as fine glass, but much harder, like a diamond. Unlike a diamond, though, it was pitch black, and didn't reflect even the smallest amount of light, making it difficult to discern its true shape at times. Even stranger, it didn't appear to weigh anything at all. Dune could feel its coldness and the sharpness of its edges, but did not sense any pressure from its weight. For a moment, Dune got the impression that he was in fact not holding matter at all, but a lack of matter, as if in his hands was a piece of the very fabric of the cold emptiness of space. He shuddered at the profundity of this thought, and suddenly felt a strange chill run down his spine. He felt as if someone or something had become aware of him the moment he looked at the object. He glanced at the door and quickly put the object back into his shirt pocket and placed the shirt back on the chair as best he could. Just handling this object had drained him of what little strength he had left, and he decided that it would be best if he really did get some rest before tomorrow's journey. He passed into an uneasy sleep full of visions of the harrowing experience from two days ago.