Yuna walked briskly, her boots echoing in the large anteroom of the damp temple. Where there should have been five statues of the High Summoners before her, only two stood above her and the rest like gatekeepers to the Cloister of Trials. This temple had only been discovered recently by an Al Bhed group surveying the Thunder Plains. A brand new temple, hidden under the surface of the lightning scorched earth, never seen by anyone but Lady Yunalesca and Lord Gandolf. Reports from the Al Bhed surveyors stated that energy similar to the previously active Fayth emanated from the heart of the ancient building. It bothered Yuna, the idea of an untouched Fayth lying deep within the temple walls, still dreaming that never-ending dream. On the surface, the party was here for the many spheres that may be hidden in the cloister's labyrinth, but Yuna was here for a different reason. If there truly was an active Fayth here, she had to put it to rest. It was her duty as the High Summoner who brought about the Eternal Calm and ended Vegnagun's wrath. She took a deep breath as she approached the Cloister's entrance, offering a silent prayer to whoever's soul was still trapped below.
"You okay, Yunie?" Rikku's concerned voice brought Yuna back to her senses. Was it truly wise to keep this information secret? What if there was a fight?
"Yes. I just… There's something everyone must know before we continue." Yuna scanned the room, reading everyone's expressions. Calm, worried, trusting. These people were her friends, her guardians. There was no reason to hide anything any longer. Tidus approached her, putting a warm hand on her bare shoulder. A welcome gesture in this cold, damp place.
"Yuna?" He said, looking at her with uneasy eyes.
"There may be an active Fayth inside this temple. We aren't really here for spheres." Yuna's face took on a look of determination as she prepared herself to once again face the trial of the Fayth.
"What?! But we released the Fayth from their dream, didn't we? They're all at peace!" Rikku chimed in, her voice tinged with denial and fear. "We beat Sin! There's no reason for a Fayth to go on, right?"
"Yes," Yuna affirmed Rikku's worries. "The Fayth should be no more, so why? I must find out what's going on. I feel like… I feel like it's my duty."
"If you really feel that way, then we better hurry on. There's no use talking about it if we don't do something too, right?" Paine, the usual voice of reason, spoke up as she began climbing the stairs to the Cloister of Trials. Tidus, Rikku, and I nodded to each other and followed her into the cold, dark hall.
~The Day We Disappeared From The World~
In the room just beyond the heavy, stone door, three glowing spheres were set in three pedestals. Each led to three different rooms. Yuna examined her options. These trials were just that: trials. She decided to push the middle one along its set path into the middle room, where a green glyph shone on the floor at its center. Once Yuna got the pedestal situated in its place above the glyph, she looked around for any noticeable changes. At first, nothing happened, but as Yuna stepped away to return to the group in the first room, a loud rumbling echoed from the stone walls.
"Yuna? Everything okay in there? What's that sound?" Rikku called from the entrance, her footsteps just barely audible over the loud echoing.
"I think so! Just wait there, I'm coming- Ahh!" Yuna let out a shriek as a large barrier of stone fell between her and the entrance, crashing to the ground with a loud, grating noise.
"Yuna?!" Tidus, Rikku, and Paine all cried out in unison, rushing to the stone barrier.
"Yuna, are you alright?! What's going on?!" Tidus's concerned voice filled Yuna's ears as she looked around for a way out. Just before she opened her mouth to answer him, she heard another grating noise as a path opened up behind her. Briefly glancing back to examine what lied ahead, she responded to the group's worried shouts.
"I'm fine. A door just opened up back here. I think we have to push the pedestals into the other rooms before we can continue. It looks like we'll have to split up."
"Alright. Rikku and I will take the left room, Paine will take the right. Everyone okay with that?" Tidus proposed. His plan was sound, yet Yuna still felt uneasy about leaving Rikku and Tidus alone together. She remembered how they interacted on the Celsius before they arrived, and let out a disgruntled sigh.
"I'm fine with that." Paine said indifferently. Yuna heard her footsteps fading as she walked to the room on the right, leaving no room for protest.
"We'll meet up soon, okay? I'm sure the three pathways join back together at some point. Just be careful, Yunie!" Rikku's optimistic voice should have comforted Yuna, but in her jealousy, it only annoyed her. If only she were on this side instead of me, she thought.
"Right. I'm going." Yuna turned around and started along the path before her, once again reminding herself why she was here and what she had to do. All traces of petty jealousy and romantic feelings pushed to the side, the Ex-Summoner readied her gun and continued on, the echo of her boots against the wet ground her only company.
~The Day We Disappeared From The World~
I pushed the heavy pedestal across the cold, grey floor, my mind heavy with uncertainty. I thought about the emergence of this new Fayth, and whether or not it had anything to do with my revival here in Spira. Yuna had told me that that kid Bahamut told her that they would 'do what they can' to let her see me again. Is this what he meant? If Yuna goes down there and releases this Fayth from its dream… Would I disappear too?
"Tidus, you're pushing a little too far there." Rikku pulled me from my thoughts, tapping me on my shoulder. I had overshot the glyph by a good three feet, the pedestal almost to the other side of the room.
"Oh. Sorry, I was just thinking about stuff." I said, pulling the pedestal back to the glyph on the floor.
"Stuff?"
"Just about this Fayth that's supposedly down there. It's nothing important." I gave Rikku a reassuring smile as the wall opened up behind us, releasing a good amount of dust that built up over the years.
"Yeah, I was thinking about that too. D'ya think Sin's gonna come back?" Rikku offered her theory on the Fayth, one I hadn't thought of.
"I don't know. Let's just hope we can finish this without something like that happening. Stay close to me." I said, walking through the doorway before me.
"Eww, it feels even grosser in here than it does in there! It's all sticky. How long has this place been hidden?" Rikku groaned, loosening the scarf around her neck. The scenery beyond that doorway was different than what we had expected, less like a product of architecture and more like a cave or tunnel. There were still markings and hieroglyphs on the walls, and the glow of spheres could be seen further along the tunnel, but other than that, it was completely different. As we arrived at what seemed like another door with one out of two recesses for spheres filled in, Rikku started shuffling through her bag, pulling out the glowing green stone that was on the pedestal earlier. She must have grabbed it before we came through here.
"This should do the trick." Rikku said, inserting the sphere. When she did, the door became engulfed in a green glow, bathing the surrounding area in an eerie light. It hung for a while, like an old machine starting up after prolonged disuse, then faded away, an empty pathway taking the place of the door.
Beyond, a large circular room fanned out before us, its walls painted in ancient murals. Giant fiends were shown battling a large Aeon and its summoner in what was probably the Thunder Plains. The Aeon was unlike any of the ones that aided in the battle against Sin three years ago, possessing four gigantic wings that shone bright with every color of the spectrum. Its dragon-like body towered over the three malboro, ready to rip them apart with its sharp talons.
"What is this place?" Rikku said, marveling at the art around the room. "Look at this one!"
Rikku pointed towards another mural, of which the same Aeon was the subject. Instead of fiends, however, it towered over a horde of people, prostrating themselves as if worshipping the beast. I looked around the room for clues that would tell us how to continue, and noticed a small recess in the wall where a glowing blue sphere sat. A similar sphere was placed on the opposite side of the room.
"What are we supposed to do with these things?" I said, grabbing the sphere closest to me. Rikku grabbed the other one and examined it, holding it in the air and squinting.
"I dunno. They look like regular old spheres to me. Maybe these are the special sphere for this temple."
That's right. Each temple had its own special sphere that would do certain things when you used them. There must be something we can do with these. I turned the sphere over in my hand and noticed a small notch in the crystal, as if a key or something would fit inside. Suddenly, an idea sprang to mind.
"Hey, Rikku, does yours have a part that juts out or something like that?"
"Hmm, let me see." Rikku turned her sphere over as well and smiled at her discovery. "Oh! It does! I wonder what it's for!" She scampered over to me and handed me the sphere, her fingers grazing mine as she did. They were as warm as her personality in this freezing cave, and I vaguely wanted her to touch me again. Shaking such thoughts from my head, I pressed the two spheres together and gave a small sigh of relief as they clicked into each other perfectly.
"It worked!" I cheered, holding the double-sphere in my hands. Before I could say anything else, the object of my pride suddenly started to vibrate, and a high pitched warbling sound radiated throughout the room. After a few seconds, it stopped, and another recess opened up in the wall opposite the doorway. The double-sphere in my hands fit inside perfectly, and the sound of stone grating against stone signaled that a path was opening up. Once the door opened completely, the fear and doubt I felt in the pedestal room welled up inside me again.
"No way…" Rikku gasped. "That's not possible."
~The Day We Disappeared From The World~
Paine calmly walked through the twists and turns of the cave before her, solving the puzzles before her with ease. The trials thus far haven't been mental, but physical. After she had left the pedestal room, a door had opened up behind her and revealed a new path. An easily found glyph sphere opened each door in her way, leading to a small room with a fiend waiting inside. After defeating it, another glyph sphere was left behind so the Trials could continue. This repeated three or four times, finally ending at a large door with an old mural painted on it. Paine admired the mural for a few seconds, hoping that the large monster painted on it wasn't what was waiting for her beyond the door. Using the glyph sphere in her hand, Paine unlocked the grand door and continued forward.
Inside the sizeable room was a large altar, adorned with old offerings of rotted fruit and rusted coins. Paine noticed another mural above the table, the same winged beast decorating it that was on the door. Among the offerings on the altar, she saw a faint red glow.
"A sphere?" Paine said, words floating around the empty space. She walked over to the spot that glowed red, then picked the sphere out from behind the many rotted fruit on the table. It was a movie sphere. It wasn't recorded, like the crimson spheres she made with Nooj and Gippal, but it was a sphere that contained someone's thoughts and memories. Paine focused her mind on the sphere, connecting her thoughts with whoever's were inside. Suddenly, a vivid image began playing in her mind.
"Nobody came for me." A voice rang out in the dark, empty anteroom of the temple. "Sin is gone, but no one came. Have I been forgotten?"
Suddenly, pyreflies gathered in the center of the room, conjoining to create the image of a translucent young woman. Her long, red hair grew past her thighs, and she wore a ceremonial robe with fake, multicolored wings sewn to her back.
"Nobody has come to this temple in ages. Sin has come and gone three times, yet no one has asked for my assistance since Lord Gandof. They told me that I would forever be visited by summoners who wished to defeat sin, yet no one comes… Why? Was I sacrificed for nothing?"
The red-headed woman hung her head and sighed, then turned around and headed for the Cloister of Trials. The scene suddenly shifted to the Chamber of the Fayth, the woman's statue glowing beneath her. Paine noticed that the room was in ruins. This must have been a more recent memory. The woman was crying into her hands.
"The others have woken from their dream, but I'm still here. Why? Was I truly forgotten? Will no one ever come for me? I'm tired too…"
With that, the image slowly faded from Paine's mind. What a poor girl, she thought, gazing into the swirling red light of the sphere in her hand. Paine felt the glowing red ball grow warm through her gloved hands, then watched as it suddenly burst into a swarm of pyreflies. The dancing lights hung in the air for a moment, then rushed into a barely visible gap in the wall behind the altar. With a loud scraping sound, the wall before Paine split in two, revealing a small walkway. Leaving a prayer for the lonely Fayth, she wandered into the dark, muggy passageway.
Okay so it's been like two years, I know, but I decided to actually continue this fic! This chapter is just some setup for the plot so there's not really any Tikku yet but bear with me! As always, please review and fav. Thanks for reading!