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Final Fantasy VI: The Sands of Time

Book 1: The Beginning

Chapter 6 - Omens of the Past

Part 6.8 - The Sacrifice

"JEHAD!" Silas screamed through the heavy doors. "Jehad, can you hear me? Jehad! Dammit!"

Silas pounded on the doors, knowing there was no way he could get in. He stopped and breathed, thinking things through like the scientist he was.

"Now calm down, Silas. This may just be part of the ritual. Maybe the doors will open once he's done. I need to sit tight and wait, and see what is going to happen."

So Silas did just that. Lighting one of his portable torches, he backed away from the doors and slowly surveyed the ancient language carved around the doors. Might as well do something useful while he waited. He called on all his knowledge of past languages, and found some similarities between these and the ritual language used by the Order today, but it wasn't enough to translate. He thought harder.

The symbols were definitely familiar, but not from the Order's rituals. They reminded him of another civilization halfway around the world. A small isolated island culture far to the west, the people of the Island of the Moon, so called because of its crescent shape. Their language was much simpler than this, but there was no doubt that they were descended from this place. The millennia since their split from this island must have degraded their culture to that of primitive barbarians, and their language along with it.

Silas tried to find common symbols among the much more sophisticated Phoenician script, and his dedicated eye managed to slowly pull a rough meaning from the words.

"Hm...Ritual...Offering...God...these seem to be the same between the two languages, and no surprises that I'd find these words here," Silas quietly said to himself, quickly becoming absorbed in his studies.

"Now this is strange...Sacrifice...Death...Dark...God...Fire...Prophecy...hmmm...and this one could only be some sort of apocalypse...but what does it mean?" Silas kept at the words, trying to combine his the language of the islanders with the ritual language of the Order. His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched as he turned the words over and over in his mind. The meaning was becoming clear now, and Silas didn't like what he was seeing.

"This is no mere ritual...this is a human sacrifice, and there is more going on here than just this one ritual. There's something else in there...something evil. Something that wants out..." Silas was putting the pieces together now, and one thought forced its way through all the others.

"I've got to get Jehad out of there!"

While Silas struggled with the door, Levi struggled to find something of worth among all the rubbish. Now that the others were gone, he had found it was indeed too dark to see inside the temple, and had been forced to light his portable torch. Whether they had a magic light or not he didn't know, but it didn't matter. They were gone and he needed to start searching.

He went from room to room, looking for an idol, a chest, jewels, ancient weapons...anything that could be sold for a huge profit. But there was nothing. Every room was the same - small cells meant for the contemplation of life, not the accumulation of wealth. If only Levi knew that the members of the Order had never been concerned material things, and had taken a strict vow of poverty since time immemorial.

He grew more aggravated with each empty room he rummaged through, his search growing more frantic as the number of rooms dwindled. He would not be denied! Now he was simply venting his anger, throwing the meager contents of the room against the walls, knowing by now that there was nothing of any worth in this trash heap of a temple. Had he come all this way for nothing? The mere thought of it sent him into a rage, screaming at the walls and running down the corridors, looking desperately for anything he could take back.

Then the most obvious thought in the world struck him like a lightning bolt. The inner sanctum where those two fools went! If there was anything of value at all in this place, then that was the only place left to look. He had thought it would just be waste of time to watch their ritual, when he could go off by himself and take what he wanted elsewhere, but now it seemed he must see this ritual for himself, and hopefully take back a part of it.

Levi rushed back down the corridors, wondering what riches could possibly be lurking behind those doors he had seen at the end of the hallway. Those two had better not try and stop him, or else they would see just what happened to those who tried to stop Captain Jonah Levi from getting what he wanted.

Soon, Levi saw Silas running towards him just as he was running towards the hallway with the doors. The man looked scared, and Jehad was nowhere to be seen. Had something unexpected happened? Levi couldn't help but grin at this prospect.

"Captain Levi!" Silas shouted as soon as he saw Levi. "We must hurry! Jehad is trapped behind those doors, and I fear he is going to be killed if we don't do something!"

Levi could care less about the priest, but he did want whatever else might be behind those doors, so he feigned concern and agreed to help.

"Of course. We must get those doors open, at all costs. Let's hurry."

Silas and Levi ran back to the doors, but there was nothing to be done. The doors were just too heavy and hard. Even if they had explosives they would not be able to break them down. Both men did everything they could to try and open them, although for very different reasons. In the end, they were forced to give up. There was just nothing to be done except wait, and hope the words around the doors were wrong. The men sat silently and waited, not talking to each other, absorbed in their own very different trains of thought.

After almost an hour, a great shaking started and the two jumped up, expecting something to happen now. The shaking continued for a few more moments, then suddenly dropped off, leaving the shrine as deathly silent as it had been before.

"What was that?" Silas asked, fearing something terrible had happened behind the doors.

Before Levi could say anything, the doors began to vibrate, and then burst open. The two men didn't waste any time asking questions now, and ran into the room, not knowing what to expect.

What they saw was not the same room Silas had seen before. There was no beam of sunlight coming down through the ceiling now, and there was no sense of peaceful contemplation. The room was filled with a fierce red glow, and was unbelievably hot. At the center where Jehad had knelt was now a gaping hole, filled with magma and belching flames all the way to the ceiling. Jehad stood before it, calmly, his back to the two men.

"Jehad!" Silas called out, thanking whatever gods there were that he was still alive. "Get away from there! This ritual is meant as a sacrifice, and you are the offering!"

Jehad did not turn around, he simply stood at the mouth of the flaming hole, gazing into it intensely. Without moving at all, he uttered the last thing Silas would ever hear him say.

"I know."

And with those words, he let himself fall forward into the flames, and was lost.

"NO!" Silas yelled, trying to reach him before he fell. Silas managed to just barely miss Jehad as he fell, grabbing at his hand. He had succeeded in grabbing something, but Jehad apparently did not want to be saved, and let his hand slip from Silas's as he disappeared into the wall of fire.

Silas fell back from the rising flames, overcome by the insane heat that exploded from the hole just as Jehad disappeared. The explosion threw Silas back against the wall, burning his hands and face. What had that poor fool done? Did he choose to die for his beliefs after all? Somehow, Silas couldn't see the priest, so full of hope for the future, his future, just throw it all away. And yet, it seemed that was what Jehad had chosen to do in the end. Silas wept for the fate the man had been given.

Levi had not paid much attention to the man before the fire. His only goal was to search the room for some sacred object while the others were occupied. He circled the room, looking for something, anything of value. Again there was nothing! How could such a place have nothing?

But there was something else here, hidden well at the back of the room. As Levi's greedy fingers swept the walls, he finally found what he had been looking for. Inside a small compartment was a scroll, just waiting for someone to pick it up. There was more of the unknown language written on it, but surely it must be an important artifact to the Order or it would not be hidden in such a place as this.

Little did Levi know that he could read the language on that scroll if he chose to. But his poison-filled eyes were forever lost to the light, and just as he could not see the holy aura around Silas and Jehad, so too was he unable to read the sacred words of God written on the scroll. It did not matter to Levi, though. The scroll wasn't much, but it was surely something the Order would pay a fortune to have, and so he clutched it tight in his fist, laughing at his good luck.

Silas was now struggling to his feet, trying to figure out what to do next. He suddenly felt a warmth in his hand, different from the heat from the flames. Looking down, he saw that he was holding a necklace of pearls, the very necklace Jehad had worn. Was this...the Nacre? Silas was not sure why it was in his hands now, but he felt its light pulsing through him once again. Four of the eight pearls still glowed with an inner light, like before.

Suddenly a voice spoke up inside Silas's head, holding him in thrall as if hypnotized.

"Holder of my wisdom, you must flee this place. The offering has been corrupted, and the Vengeful One will soon rise, bathing this island in flames. These pearls hold the only hope of sealing him away once more, but now is not the time. Only when this area is at peace again should the pearls find their way back here. You must keep them safe until then. Now go!"

Silas snapped back into reality, his head throbbing at the power of the voice he had heard. There was no question in his mind. That voice was the Truth, and he no choice but to obey it.

"Levi, we have to get out of here, now! This place is going to be destroyed any moment!" Silas yelled to Levi, still laughing over his find.

"What?" Levi said angrily at first, but quickly regained his composure. "Yes, of course. Shame about the priest, but nothing we can do now, right? Let's leave before we meet the same fate as him."

As if to accentuate the words Silas had heard, the flames increased in size, forcing the hole in the ground to crack and crumble away as it grew. The two men fled, the hole quickly expanding to fill the entire room. Silas made one last look back but could only see a hell of magma bubbling where the room's floor used to be, and walls of flame where there were walls of stone before. It was swirling and bursting with the ferocity of an erupting volcano, and Silas had a very strong suspicion that was exactly what was happening.

Silas and Levi ran towards the entrance to the shrine, smoke and sulfur-laden fumes now filling the temple with a noxious presence as deadly as the purple mist outside. Coughing and gagging, Silas burst out of the shrine and into the poison air, not sure how he or Levi would survive either cloud of death. But the Nacre in his hands was still hungrily feeding off Silas's inner energy, and it once again covered him in a white light that drove off both the poison air of the Nacropolis and the volcanic smoke that was issuing from the growing hole that was engulfing the shrine. Even if Levi refused to believe in its power, he was still blessed by its protection, unworthy though he was.

The two men made a mad dash for the upper echelons of the Nacropolis, the earth quaking violently beneath them as they climbed. The central shrine soon collapsed in on itself and went down under the flames in a great explosion of lava and stone, feeding the great furnace even further. Cracks were now spreading out from the central depression, and soon the Nacropolis would follow the shrine into the mouth of the volcano, newly awakened after more millennia than all the histories of the world could account for. This beast had slept for ages untold, and it was hungry. It would feast and feast on the very land that created it, and would devour itself in its own fury. The two mortals caught in its rage were nothing but specks of dust, to be consumed with the rest.