Final Fantasy VI: The Sands of Time
Book 2: The Goddess War
Chapter 11 - Red Tide
11.15 - Changing Hands
Ole Bull lay in his voluminous bed, barely alive. But alive.
"We did it, didn't we?" he groaned, trying to flex his battered hands, and grimacing in pain at the failure. "By Gaeus's beard... we damn well did it..."
"By Gaeus's beard indeed," Maduin said, sitting by his side in a large iron chair that once was Ole Bull's personal "throne" for the rare occasions when the leader of Zwill needed to act like the leader of Zwill. The giant Esper barely fit, and was uncomfortable in the cold, tight metal. Thrones were not for him.
"I did what I needed to do, you know that. Elphis is safe, as I promised she would be."
"Roll over, you great lout." Captain Delphino nudged Ole Bull from the other side, her mouth full of stitching thread and needles. "You're lucky you're so fat, or the knife would have reached your heart for sure." She poked and pulled at Ole Bull's wide chest, closing the deep wound Ole Bull's own son had sliced into his chest.
"Is she safe?" Maduin asked harshly. "I told you that magicite was not for you, and you took it anyways."
Ole Bull grunted as Delphino yanked hard at a stitch. "Hmph. She gave it to me. Said Titan was telling her to." "And besides..." Ole Bull looked up at Maduin's face, matching his cold stare eye for eye. Both faces had been changed by the strange battle on the plains beyond Zwill. Maduin had a new scar over his mostly healed eye, weirdly blue like some vein of exposed cobalt on a craggy cliff. Ole Bull now had an unearthly gold-brown tint to his own eyes, an after-effect of the near-suicidal summoning. "Titan told me what to do. I heard him, Maduin. When there was nothing left but to die, I heard his voice in my head. Sounded like it came from a million miles away, but it was there, and he told me what to do. I called his name, and there he was, large as Gaeus himself. It was incredible."
Maduin grimaced.
Still being manipulated by the gods, or their servants at least. Who is Titan to let his power be used by humans like this?
But, at least one mystery was cleared up. "I think we know what happened in the forest now."
"Aye," Ole Bull reached for a glass of water, gulping lustily. After seeing that wave, he never thought he could drink again, but he somehow felt dryer than he ever had before, like he had been infused with a massive dose of dust and grit. "It seems I was not the first to call Titan's name."
Everyone looked at the corner of the room, where Elphis had been sitting in her own little chair silently since the group had gathered. Her thin arms were wrapped around Kumiro's fluffy body, and her eyes were staring squarely at Maduin, as if they could see him. She was not smiling, or frowning. Simply...staring.
"I...can see you!" she gasped suddenly while the three adults looked on, and then the smile broke over her face, wider than the world. "You're all blue, Maydune! A big blue teddy bear!" She leaped up and practically dropped Kumiro in her joy. What she saw was only a blue hazy outline of Maduin's magical aura, barely what a normal person would call "sight", but to a girl blind from birth who had never seen the color blue to begin with, it was a miracle beyond all reckoning. She hugged her big blue teddy bear with all the strength in her tiny frame. It hurt, like hugging a statue, but it felt wonderful.
"Elphis...," Maduin found he could not speak.
"She doesn't remember it, but Titan does." Ole Bull waited for Elphis and Maduin to compose themselves before continuing, gulping more water in the meantime. He felt like he would never be able to drink enough to get rid of his thirst. "She has the eyes now, as do I. Summoning like we did, with every ounce of our chakra, has its price. A piece of the Esper stays with you. I came very close to killing myself summoning Titan, and Elphis came even closer. That's why she was out like a light for so long. I'd hate to have been whatever she summoned him against, though!" Ole Bull tried to pound his fist on the bed, but could not. "What power! That hell horse never saw it coming!"
"Calm down, you'll bust your stitching," Delphino growled.
"Let 'em bust!" Ole Bull burst out, grinning his crooked toothy grin. "I feel more alive than I ever have! The strength of that stone, the power I felt flowing through me! Imagine the possibilities!"
"I can." Maduin said. "The power of magic, of Espers, of the gods...it's not for humans to use."
"Bull! Titan chose me, Maduin. And he chose Elphis. Who are you to tell him what to do? Unless I'm mistaken, he's your senior by a thousand years or so, right?"
"Hmph." But Maduin was disturbed. Who was he to say how other Espers should use their powers, and have their powers used? That would make him no better than the gods that made him and tried to point him like a gun. He reached into the pouch and pulled out Titan's magicite. It glimmered in the low lamplight of the room, but shed its light silently. Titan would not speak to Maduin directly as he had Elphis and Ole Bull. Why?
"Something else is bothering me," Maduin said after studying the silent stone. "Leviathan summoned Ixion after he had killed him. How? I can't imagine Ixion agreeing to be used by his own betrayer. Leviathan forced him to be summoned somehow."
"That is a problem," Ole Bull agreed. "An Esper summoning another Esper? Magic bolstered by more magic? It's a frightening thought. Think about it! Even if we kill them, they can still be used to attack us from beyond death. It's just like..." but Ole Bull's voice trailed off, remembering where that wound inches away from his heart came from. The knife was unable to pierce his thick battle-scarred flesh, but the memories dug deep.
"Like your son." Maduin finished for him. It seemed Espers weren't the only thing that could be controlled by force after death. What dread powers did the Goddess possess, that she could raise the dead?
"The Still Going, the Living Dead...," Ole Bull said, naming them. Things with names were always less terrifying, and Ole Bull knew this. "They never stop, they just keep on going. That was why we were losing ground during the fight. I saw Zwill soldiers cut limbs off them, stab them in every spot that should kill a man, shoot them, break their bones, but they still kept going. The only things that stopped them were fire arrows...and...beheading."
All three looked down at Elphis, but she did not flinch from Maduin's side. What Ole Bull was describing was gruesome, and she was just a little girl. But she was strong, and because she had never seen a dead body, or a living one, never saw blood or bone or a man's guts spill out of his chest, she was not afraid. Their words were just descriptions of things she could not begin to have a picture for in her innocent little head. She knew death, but only by smell and sound and cold touch.
"Enough. I must have answers to many things," Maduin said, clearing his throat. They had talked of the past enough. The battle was over, and it was time to move on to the next battlefield.
When will I be free to live my life the way I want? When will I not be moving from battlefield to battlefield?
"I must find out how Leviathan summoned Ixion. I am an Esper, and I must know how my kind can be used against their will, and how to prevent it, if possible."
"But think of the possibilities!" Ole Bull interjected. "If we could use the enemy's own Espers against them..."
"No!" Maduin shouted, surprising himself. "I will not allow my kind to be slaves to anyone!" He gripped the magicite tightly, fearing Ole Bull would try to snatch it from his hands. "You can't have it!"
Then he gasped, and let the magicite fall to the bed. It had been too much like before. He suddenly felt like he was taken back to when he was human and seduced by the gravity crystal's allure. The memory of his disgraceful hoarding of the crystal stung him, and for the first time in a long time, he felt very cold. He thought he had killed that evil thing inside him that had come to possess his body under Doom's power and call itself by his name. But he hadn't really. It wasn't some creation of Doom, it was a part of him, and always would be. Doom had fed it, allowed it to grow out of all proportion and balance, but it was still him, still Dune. Once again, his own pride had fooled him into thinking such a beast could never have been inside him, that Doom had created the malevolent Maduin and planted it inside him to fester, grow, and eventually consume him.
But that wasn't what had happened at all, was it? Maduin had always been inside him. He was Maduin, and Maduin was him, since the beginning, before Doom, before the magic transformed him on the outside. And he was still there, Maduin discovered, watching his reflection in the faceted surface of the magicite as it fell to the bed. Inside, outside, it didn't matter. That darker side of him - full of cold pride at his own strength and burning shame at his own weakness, and lightning-quick unpredictability when pushed - would always be waiting deep, deep down in his soul. He had banished it back to its proper place with the light of the Nacre, but still...
"I am sorry. Here...take it." Maduin recovered himself. There was still much to learn about being an Esper. And being a human.
"What? Now you're giving it to me?" Ole Bull did not hesitate to cup the stone with his numb hands and scoop it to his side. It felt warm. It felt right.
"Yes. If Elphis trusted you with it, and Titan spoke to you, then you deserve it more than I do. Perhaps that's why Titan never spoke to me. He knew I would not hear his words. I have yet to find my balance, it seems."
"That's the first truly wise thing you've said, Esper." Delphino's voice crackled unexpectedly. "You are a bomb waiting to go off, and now you know it fully. But, I agree, you must seek out the answers to the problems facing your kind, especially this matter of magicite abuse. Come see me on my ship in the morning, and we will talk." Delphino gave Ole Bull one more looking over, then nodded, her work done.
Ole Bull looked up at the old captain curiously, but she simply smiled and shook her head as she tottered back to her ship. Some things were still secret, even among the secret society of the Stradivari. Ole Bull understood this, and closed his eyes to rest. The magicite gave him strength, and he felt at peace. Tonight, he would dream of a vast plain beneath a vast sky, and hear the voice of the earth, and the voice of his son. It was an ugly end to a beautiful boy, but it was an end at least. The body had been burned and given a proper burial, thirty years late. Lady Fey was right, the Stradivari must not let their emotions control them, and for now, he held no grudge against her. For now, he would dream of the child Mathias was, not the thing he became.
"Elphis, take Kumiro to our room and get some rest," Maduin said quietly as he shut the door behind him. She nodded and trotted off, letting Kumiro guide her back to the room through the twisting corridors. He was sure she would sleep soundly, even without Titan by her side. She never seemed to suffer from nightmares like he did, despite leading a far harsher life. What was her secret?
Alone, Maduin wandered the halls of Ole Bull's expansive manor, eventually finding his way outside to where the frozen pit he had created with his so-called "Chaos Wave" still sat gaping out at the sky, now half-filled. He had done that, in the blind, mindless rage of a bomb going off, just as Delphino had said. He had not had to use such uncontrolled power during the fighting, thankfully, or things might have been worse, not better.
"Are you still there?" Maduin saidto no one, clutching the string of pearls around his neck and looking up at the sky, now devoid of all clouds. The Nacre was always there by his side, but had been dead and silent for a long time. And so, too, had the skies above. There had been no massive swirling of clouds during the battle, no intervention by the gods that he could see. If Genju and Adamastor, the Herald of the Master of Storms, were out there, they were not here. The two of them combined could easily have destroyed the entire army and Leviathan as well, if they chose.
But that's not their way, is it? Genju is a pacifist, and Adamastor does not intervene unless his Master decrees it is necessary to maintain the Balance. Where do I stand? What is my way? I must find my path, and unlock the secrets of my own power somehow. What had that voice said? I must seek the Triad, seek Balance? How can I find this balance? What does Delphino know?
"You are the key to all this, I know it." Maduin lifted the Nacre up to his eyes and peered at it, trying to see some answer with his Esper eyes. But there was nothing to be seen. If there was magic still residing in the necklace, he could not divine it. A pretty trinket, but worthless in his ignorant hands. Somehow, somewhere, someone knew what this could do and how to use it, hopefully to free his friends and all Espers from the grasp of their harsh Masters. And Delphino knew who that was, Maduin was sure of it.
"Tomorrow, I will get some answers, finally. Tomorrow...," Maduin yawned wide, surprising himself. He had not yawned for a long time, had not truly felt tired for a long time. Tonight he would sleep well, and perhaps not dream of horrible Cassandra-things or see the faces of the dead, lost, or left behind. Perhaps.