"The Vault" from Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

XIX. Anathema

Weights over my heart made Fang feel weightless in my arms. She still breathed. I tried to focus on that instead of my helplessness that fought so hard light-headed. Serah trailed behind me, with Vanille at the fore, turning back every so often to make sure I kept up with her. She led us through the open courtyard of Luxerion's Grand Cathedral. The massive building bathed in the dawn's light. I stared up at the northern façade in front of us. Hourglass-shape arcades and clock towers outlined the front. Time. I kept thinking of time. The watch Serah gave me came to mind. Each of the towers had their longer hands right at the thirteenth hour. They fooled me into thinking that we'd run out of time, but we hadn't. I couldn't let myself think that in case it consumed me.

I stared down at Fang, at the early morning light washing over her skin. Her sari shined black of silk and of blood, and Vespair's chaos pouring through her, keeping her alive. She'd survived for this long. Her signs were stable. As long as I pretended she was only asleep—ignoring the chaos-bandaged wound over her chest—I could focus on moving forward.

"Just a heads-up," whispered Serah as we neared the entrance. "Mog told me that his magic works a little differently this close to Luxerion's crystal in the Cathedral. It seems like people will see us as whoever they expect us to be."

Vanille stopped. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I'm not sure… I guess we'll find out soon."

The pair of Secutors standing guard at the entrance saluted us. They looked at Fang and staggered.

"What happened?!" exclaimed the first. "Has there been an attack? How did one of your unit get injured? It looked like he was only asleep from a distance!"

They expected us to be fellow Secutors—that must've been how we appeared to them. Vanille caught on right away. "It's nothing too serious," she said. "We got carried away during a few exercises. Could you let us in so we can get some rest?"

"Of course, of course," said the second, opening the double doors. "Just in case, go see Priestess Yeul and pray to her. The Knight-Commander's moved her to another room in the Inner Sanctum. You know the rules—one three-hour session at a time. We don't want Ser Kreiss to revoke our privileges again."

They let us pass through and closed the doors behind us. The loud echo of the doors overwhelmed me as much as our surroundings did. Serah and Vanille walked along the chess-patterned ambulatory of the nave. Dozens upon dozens of rows of empty seats made up the congregation area. I breathed in the smell of chilled stone and fresh book pages. Decorated stone walls rose high above, leading my eyes up to the lancet windows glowing as sun-gold behind the quire. That same glow washed through the whole building, warming me in an unexpected way. Long flags bearing Luxerion's coat of arms hung along the outer walls of the ambulatory. More hourglass-shaped arcades ran along the hallways upstairs.

Vanille pointed up to the arching stairwells beyond the quire. "The Inner Sanctum should be through there," she said. "Let's try to keep quiet. I don't want to run into Noel on the way there…"

"Is this really a good idea?" asked Serah. I followed after them, listening. "You said Yeul would be able to help Fang… How can she help if she's sick from a chaos infection and won't wake up?"

"There are certain sacrifices that must be made…"

Serah frowned. "Like what…?"

Vanille turned to look at me. "The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows," she riddled. "Light, I meant it when I said you're a beacon of light. Peace and harmony are what sustain you. When you shine, Fang benefits from the shadows you cast. I think you know by now about her—that it's the chaos that sustains her. But this…it's too much. We have to get rid of the excess chaos in her system like last time."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Serah asked for me. My throat and stomach were still in knots. "Didn't you go all the way to Elysium last time? This place is the exact opposite of the underworld."

"That's why we're going to see Yeul," answered Vanille. "When we find her, all we have to do is pray."

Upstairs we went, past the quire, through the chantry, and up another floor to the Inner Sanctum. I saw my sister glancing at me too often over her shoulder. I kept my expression stern; unreadable. On the inside, I bottled up my screams and swallowed them down. Those unspoken sounds engulfed my emotions and blocked them off from me. The noise moved further still, awash within me, moving up to my head—pulsing and pounding there, like a storming sea in my ears with nowhere to go. The pressure mounted all the more once we made it to the Inner Sanctum; when I saw the streams of water outlining the stone passageways, and the fresh water fountains along the walls. Water surrounded my every move and thought. If I let my emotions come out, I knew they would drown me. I looked instead to the openings through the stone walls, carved as stark shapes to let more light in from the courtyard outside.

Blood red beamed in through the makeshift windows, burning over the low-labyrinth hedges and poplar trees. The same crimson heated the black of Fang's hair. Reminders of seeing this red before—memories of happier days: they upset the storm in my head, making it rage down to my stomach, acidic. I swallowed it down and kept moving. I barely heard Vanille say we were almost to Yeul's room. Almost there. We hadn't run into Noel yet. He wouldn't recognize us. Fang would be fine. I repeated all of that to myself over and over again. Thinking and hearing words, words, words instead of infinite images and translucent lights of Fang's influence over me—she should've been chaos. To me, she was the light of my life, far brighter than even this cathedral.

We arrived to Yeul's small prayer room. Lit candelabras outlined the room. Long tables held up endless amounts of religious offerings and written prayers. Yeul sat in the center of the room, asleep in her chair, looking far worse than the last photograph I'd seen of her. Her long hair had grown overlong and her face was gaunt, making her seem older than she her lap, she had a closed book: Anathema, the Holy Manuscript of the Order of Salvation. I'd heard that it was an entire text dedicated to Bhunivelze's life, as well as the part I played in killing him. The Savior as the abomination.

"Light," whispered Vanille. "Set her down here in front of Yeul first." I did as she said, slow to move; mindful of the storm still raging on in my head. Vanille knelt down just behind Fang, interlacing her fingers in prayer. "The time I spent as the Saint here will help us. Serah, come here. Remember the prayer I taught you on the train."

I watched my sister mimic Vanille. I finally found my voice and asked, "What about me?"

Vanille closed her eyes, lowering her head. "The book in Yeul's lap," she spoke. "Skim through it. See what it says. This will take a few hours… Perhaps you shouldn't stay."

"Why wouldn't I be here for this…?"

"The energy I'm sensing from Fang—it's similar to when we found her in Elysium. She doesn't want you in the room for some reason. I can't imagine why. When she wakes up, I'm sure she'll tell you. You should leave for now. I'm sorry…"

I took the Anathema from Yeul's lap and left without a word. If I thought about the possible reasons as to why Fang didn't want me there, I'd only make things worse. My light-headedness had already gotten too bad. Black spots darkened my sight as I walked outside to the brisk morning breeze of the courtyard. I made my way to a bench along the pathway, between the hedges. I sat and stared at the book in my hands. I realized, then, that even if I had stayed, I wouldn't have had any prayers. I wasn't religious. Any gods I could have believed in were dead—Bhunivelze and Etro both. Way before I became the Savior, and a l'Cie, I didn't believe in God. After everything I'd been through, whenever someone mentioned religion, I would only think: 'What has God ever done for me?' Seeing Bhunivelze with my own eyes and killing Him with my own hands didn't do anything to get rid of that perspective of mine. I had faith that Vanille would help bring Fang back, but not on any religious basis. If she knew a way to make Yeul wake up and help us, then it would work. But the people who visited this place and worshipped it as holy ground—they would have called me a heretic for relying on logic instead of giving into the whims of God's dead spirit.

No matter how close I was to breaking, I held fast to my logic. Fang would live because Vanille was capable. Trust was as close as I could get to blind faith.

This book preached about Bhunivelze's essence continuing to spread through the world by the gospels of the Order's sermons. I opened it to a random page. Here was the Venus Gospel: a tale about a bishop who hoped that the Survivors of Gran Pulse—Fang and Vanille—would have a safe voyage back to their homeland, so that the Order might finally have some peace of mind with them gone. Their real names were never once mentioned, but there was no one else who fit the description. Venus Gospel was also the name of one of Fang's spears. I doubted whoever wrote this knew about that. The coincidence was interesting enough, anyway. This was supposed to be good news from the future—a fictional account of how God and Luxerion would react whenever this happened down the line. I read the passage, oddly drawn to the story.

1 When Bhunivelze had finished morphing Chrysalis, He separated the Land of the Free from the Land of the Hunt. 2 There two Survivors were thrown to our Land, causing strife and misremembrance of His Light. 3 They looked on from afar across the Ashensand, wishing to flee this earth soaked in the blood of the fore-walkers. 4 Embittered and embroiled was the fair Knight-Commander over losing his light of Paddra Nsu-Yeul, that he might cast away the Venus Raven and her True as our former Gospel. 5 The Savior was a woman of authority, ensorcelled and driven by Her desire. She told her love, Venus, 'Let us go,' and they went; and to Gospel, the second, 'Come with us,' and she joined. 6 I observed the Savior create their vessel with Her own hands—how she labored at the Lake's shore. 7 Atop the heavens, Bhunivelze breathed a sigh for Luxerion; the winds blew their ship across the crystal sea. 8 God shared unto me His relief: 'If they stay, they shall sow the blood of their hearts, how they labored in silent chaos. The silent must speak. They must yell. Let them not yell over your light.' 9 The Land of the Hunt welcomed the return of their brood. There Gospel, Venus and her Savior exalted their jubilation, far away from Luxerion's ways, and were better for it. 10 The Knight-Commander and his Priestess lived in health at long last, away from the Pact that was Venus and her Knight of Chaos.

The Order of Salvation constantly referred to me as a Knight of Chaos. One of darkness. A woman of malice—an abomination who murdered their God. And yet Vanille had just said that I represented light. Vespair had more or less said the same a few times. I knew I shouldn't have cared much about what this book said I was. I still couldn't help wondering—which one was I supposed to be, and why?

Heavy, plated footsteps sounded along the pathway behind me. "Ah, the Venus Gospel," said Noel, smiling by his tone. I froze in place. "It's quite a hopeful story, isn't it? With a title like that, it certainly has to be about good tidings. God knows we could all use plenty of that these days." I stared down at his shadow clipping the ground in front of me. I watched it get closer to me as Noel walked forward in his armor. "You know, it's not every day I find my soldiers skipping their duties to read the Anathema. If you tell me why you're out here alone, I might let you off the hook."

He expected me to be just another Secutor. That was how I appeared to him—like the guards downstairs. I tried to stay calm and remember that. I had to keep him distracted, too. If he went to Yeul's room and found the others, I didn't want to imagine what would happen.

"One of my unit was injured during training," I replied. "I thought if I read this, she'd recover faster."

Noel stood at my side, blocking the sunlight. "Oh, so she was with you," he remarked. "I heard about that. Did you pay Yeul a visit and pray to her? The company might do her some good…"

"Yes, Ser Kreiss," I answered. "The others are still with the Priestess. I don't want to disturb them."

"Are you worried about her? I heard the injuries might have been serious."

I started to see how surreal this was, talking to Noel about this… "I am, Knight-Commander."

Noel sighed and sat down next to me. "At ease, soldier," he said. "I can see you're upset—you won't even look at me. I think you know that I sympathize with you. Every time I walk these halls, people look at me as if they pity me. As if they could understand."

We stayed in silence for a few minutes. I glanced at the shield over his caped back. It didn't have Luxerion's coat of arms over it. Instead, I saw two beams of light crossing over each other. If Fang and I meant to represent a Pact of Chaos in this world, then Noel and Yeul must have been a Pact of Light. It was no wonder Yeul couldn't handle the chaos that had overtaken her, whereas Fang was happier when she had just enough chaos in her system. I worked well with a balance of the two. Noel…I felt that he was the same as me. I should have killed him then and ended this war. With Fang in this state, he was right—he could sympathize with me, far more than he knew. If he was in my position right now, I wouldn't want him to kill me. I wouldn't want him to take me away from my love. Logic had sustained me before; it arrested me now, locking up my joints, keeping me from doing what I should have.

Mercy ruled me instead. I knew I'd regret this later. But now—right now—I saw Noel as the one mirror that I couldn't shatter.

"Yeul has been like this for months," he went on. "There's nothing anyone can do. I haven't ordered any of the units beyond Nova Chrysalia because of it. Our intelligence on Bodhum's crystal barrier hasn't gone anywhere. At this point, I'm beginning to believe what the priests are telling me."

"What have they been telling you?" I asked.

Noel eased the book from me. He turned it over in his gloved hands, eyes downcast. "That even if we siphoned the chaos from Yeul into Fang, she wouldn't survive the process," he responded. "That it wasn't Fang's fault…none of this was. The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows. The light in my soul grew brightest when we first came to Luxerion together. I dreamed of a happy future for us. I enlisted in the Secutors and swore to protect her from anything. But Yeul—she saw the future. She knew that Lightning and Fang would have their happy ending instead of us. The more I fought against it, the further she sunk into the shadow I'd cast over her. Our entire Order thrives on seeing the Savior and her Pulsian Queen as anathemas…and yet now you know the truth."

What Vanille had said about certain sacrifices needing to be made—this was what she'd meant. Yeul wouldn't survive this. Getting the excess chaos out of Fang's system and giving it to Yeul would have the same effect. Yeul would die and Fang would live. Noel would find out and he would want revenge all over again. Unless we managed to get away without him finding us… I knew he'd find out eventually. As long as it wasn't this day, or tomorrow, or the next day.

Noel closed the Anathema and nestled it in his hold. "I'll return this to Yeul later," he muttered. "You should go to your comrade. Be by her side. I won't interrupt your prayers." I stood and walked a few steps away, feeling his eyes over my back. I stopped instinctively. He had something else to say. I had to consider one last time if I should kill him or not. I couldn't; I listened instead, staring ahead at the red of the courtyard bleeding in the dawn's light. "Promise me you won't tell your fellow soldiers about our conversation. I plan on holding a sermon to tell everyone the truth in due time. I can't do that until I accept Yeul's fate…"

"I understand, Ser Kreiss," I said to him.

"Won't you tell me something about you? A secret. Just in case you spill mine, I'll have a little blackmail on you. It's all fun and games, of course. I know you'll keep your promise."

I turned to him one last time, saying, "My real name is Claire." Noel smiled in approval. He didn't know. Or he didn't remember. Maybe he'd never heard Serah say my name. When I left, he didn't follow after me. He really had no idea. That made my sympathy for him sting all the more.

When I made it back to the prayer room, the candles had mostly melted down, still burning. Yeul was gone. Her body had been replaced by wisps of chaos, like incense smoke. Vanille still knelt in front of Fang, head down in prayer. Serah stood by the entrance, staring at me as I walked inside. She had a scowl on her face, looking too much like me. Just as I was about to ask what was wrong, she answered my question.

"I saw you talking to Noel," she said quietly. "He didn't know it was you."

"No, he didn't…"

Serah glared at him across the way. He sat on that same bench, reading. "He looks so peaceful," she pointed out. "Is that why Luxerion hasn't attacked Bodhum again? Or why they haven't tried?"

"They can't breach our barrier," I explained. "This war will be a stalemate until one of us figures out how to get past that. I wouldn't worry about it." I closed the door behind me. That weight found my heart when I looked at Fang again. "How is she? Where's Yeul?"

"Fang should wake up soon," she replied. "We're waiting on Vespair to let go of her—"

Just then, a burst of chaos came forth, and Vespair shot out from Fang's body. She landed closer to Serah and me, bent over and clutching a purple stone. "Oh, fuck me!" she complained. "Why the hell didn't anyone say we were doin' this? I would've got out sooner if I knew this was a fucking divine intervention to get her to wake up. Where are we?"

"Vespair!" hissed Vanille. "Keep your voice down! We don't want anyone to hear us and come in! You shouldn't swear in here, either."

"Well where the hell is here?" asked Vespair.

"Luxerion's Grand Cathedral," I said. Vespair snorted in laughter. "What is it?"

Vespair tossed her stone in the air and caught it again. "Brilliant testin' grounds," she answered, smirking. "I get to see what's come out of all my hard work!" She summoned Bane from the stone. He padded around in her lap for a bit, taking in his surroundings. Bane wagged his tail when he saw Vespair, curling up on her. Vespair held him in her arms, staring in horror. "Why are you still a baby? How…?"

"Your hard work?" I echoed. "Did you plan on Fang being Rosch's target?"

"No…that just happened—you know that… Somethin' like that's way too risky to plan. But this, Bane, he's—he's supposed to be a big boy now. He's like your watch: my way of tellin' where Fang's at on the chaos meter, you know? After all the shit I've done, he ain't grown not an inch…"

"I don't get what this chaos meter really is."

Vespair let Bane paw at the furs of her belt. She smiled wistfully. "I don't either," she admitted. "I thought I did before. I was sure it was how I could tell if Fang was good or not. But then she started gettin' get fragments of memories back and that threw everything off. Those fragments are made of light. You're light, too. Thought I just had to overpower that with a bunch of chaos for her to be all right. Her clock ain't goin' nowhere despite what I did for her. Maybe I had it all wrong…"

Vanille finally stood up. "Yeul is gone," she announced. "She took away Fang's excess chaos and left this world. If something happens again, Fang won't be able to recover." She beckoned me over. "Will you carry her again? We have to move." I picked Fang up, slowly feeling my hopes come back to me. I had a feeling I knew why Fang hadn't wanted me here before. I prepared myself to face that reality once she woke up. "She should wake up along the way. This room leads to the underground tunnel system beneath the city. Let's go!"

"Where exactly are we going from there?" asked Serah. I turned around; Vespair was gone, along with Bane. I should've asked her more about what she'd mentioned. Then again, I couldn't follow her half the time. I doubted hearing her explanations would have cleared anything up. "If everyone thinks we're Secutors, can't we go out the way we came in?"

"No, we can't," said Vanille. "We have to find Luxerion's crystal. It's separate from Nova Chrysalia's. Once we deactivate it, we can leave safely. Our I.D. cards were all that got us through before. They won't work a second time. I remember the passageways from when Fang and I lived here before. The crystal has to be down there beneath the building. There's no other place for it."

"I'm glad you know your way around here… We would've been completely lost without you."

The underground tunnels looked and felt just like the Grand Cathedral itself. It was a long walk along winding, downward slopes of hallways. Once we were halfway there, Vanille suggested we stop and wait for Fang to wake up. Not long after, Fang stirred in my arms. I felt strangely steeled for this. Because I knew she might've been angry with me. Because I knew that, any other time, I would have shut my emotions off completely, keeping myself from being affected too much. My heart could have easily run away from her to avoid this pain. Instead, I remembered the image of Noel's solemn honor burning in the light of the dawn. He set an example for me as a true knight of devotion, no matter what the future had in store.

If I wanted to be worthy of the future his Yeul had seen, then I had to keep that of him—my only mark of mercy and understanding.

I knelt down and lay Fang along a level stretch of ground. She bolted up and took in her surroundings. Vanille and Serah had put some distance between us, looking on from afar. When Fang saw me, her eyes grew wide in anger.

"Lightning!" she shouted. "You knew! You fucking knew! Vespair showed me everything that you kept from me! That whole thing at Snow's palace was a mission of yours?! You were supposed to let that fuck aim at you, all so Jihl could catch him in the act? Let some fucking court decide if he's guilty or not? Have you lost your motherfucking mind?!"

Fang's rage didn't stop. I'd thought that, for a second, she might've been glad to see me again. I'd thought for another second that she would let me hold her before going off on me. Those storming seas built in my head again, washing away my balance; whiting out my vision before blackening it again. White noise rushed through my ears, cutting out Fang's words like static; only letting the most scathing words through, testing my foundations. She figured out I didn't want to worry her; in the same breath, she accused me of thinking she was some barbarian who would've killed Rosch without a second thought, compromising my mission before it had even started. I took her emotions in, breathing in her life after I'd nearly lost her. I fought to stay still even as her shouting shook me to the core. She only needed to let it out. She loved me. She hated that I'd lied and kept things from her. I hated myself for the same reasons: that my mistakes had all led to this.

After a while, she calmed down. Fang hesitated before asking, "Did you hear a word I said…?"

"…I did," I told her.

"You ain't moved an inch," she noticed. "No flinchin' or nothin'. You…seem a little different." I couldn't think of anything to say to that. The noise in my head turned to vertigo. The vertigo rushed down, churning my stomach. I swallowed it back down again, refusing to cough or cry out. I couldn't keep doing this. "Light…"

"I'm—really happy you're all right," I whispered, eyes wide shut. I steadied my breathing. "I was devastated…thought I'd lost you."

Fang wrapped her arms around my neck. She'd fully retracted her claws. I couldn't budge. If I moved, I would throw my balance completely off and let my weakness win. She sensed this battle within me. She didn't ask me about it. One second at a time, I felt the growing bile pass. The pits of my mistakes and misjudgments passed with them. She replaced the storm with the serenity of her forgiveness. Feeling the heat in her skin and smelling the traces of my dried tears over her hair brought me back more, and a little more. I'd never been on this tight-rope before. I couldn't go from zero to sixty and back again like she could. I didn't know how to come back down from it without falling—crashing—

"I wanted to stay mad at you for a while," she murmured. "I didn't want you in the room. But feelin' you like this now, I can't justify that no more. Why do you keep justifyin' this distance from me?"

"I just—need some time," I explained. "I'll be all right. As long as you're here, I'm not going anywhere."

Some part of me had chipped away during this ordeal. It had to, for me to keep myself stable for her. This limbo of imbalance and storming didn't leave me completely. Fang held me tighter. Steadily, once more, I felt her presence wash away the temporary shields I'd built in her absence. Here at this zenith of my uncertainty, I saw my old habits of maintaining those shields indefinitely. She'd experienced them firsthand for too long, all the while dealing with her feelings for me that I'd refused to return. She didn't want a repeat of that. I didn't, either. I did all I could to focus on her, on what we had; breaking those last bones from my old instincts of self-preservation. I wasn't alone anymore. I didn't only have to rely on myself to get by. Monumentally, steadily, I remembered that, and smiled in her hold, against the darkness that we'd left behind, of Noel eventually realizing what we'd done.