Kane's hand closed on his sword as he felt an otherworldly force pulling him back. He saw Jack stab Astos, but then the rest of the torches died, all of them at once, snuffed out as though by a great wind. In the darkness, Jack started screaming, an agonized wail that went on and on.
"Jack!" Kane called to him, trying to go to him, but his limbs felt full of lead, and Jack seemed impossibly far away. Every bit of him felt heavy, like he'd never be able to move again.
The only thing worse than the screaming was the completeness of the silence when it finally stopped. What happens to the Warriors of Light if he's dead? Kane wondered, ears alert for the slightest movement, for a single word, a single breath. "Jack?" he called again.
Jack didn't answer him.
Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the dimness. A beam of moonlight from the window illuminated two still figures sprawled across the carpet ahead of him. Sheathing his sword to free his hands, he pulled himself along the floor, his muscles protesting all the while. Jack was on his side, his face hidden by his hands and the scarf he wore. Kane could see his shoulders shaking.
Not dead, he thought, and he held fast to that fact as he drove himself forward. He realized Jack was muttering in Leifenish, a mournful, repetitive plea that might have been a prayer, but then he drew close enough to hear the words.
Though Leifenish was part of a royal education - and Kane had been educated by the princess's own tutors - he hadn't seen the point of learning the language of a fallen empire. He had forgotten most of it as soon as he learned it. But these words, he understood. They were simple words: over and over, Jack was saying, "No. Please, no."
"Jack, talk to me!" Kane said, almost yelling as he forced himself to move.
"Kane..." Jack said, and his voice was so small and broken. The mage lowered his hands, and Kane could see his eyes shining with aether, his tears glistening in the corona. "Kane, it hurts. The ritual… I couldn't stop it… I couldn't stop it…" He started sobbing.
Ritual? He reached Astos's still form, found the book the elf had dropped, but there wasn't light enough to read it. He squinted over at Jack; the mage appeared uninjured, but he cried from some terrible pain. "What did he do to you?"
"He damned me," Jack murmured. "Oh, gods, I damned myself. I can feel it."
Kane became aware of the cold, an icy chill radiating out from Jack, and he feared the black mage more now than he had when Jack lost his temper in Gollor's study, when Kane had seen firsthand that black magic needed to be strictly controlled. His friend held the aether now - it shone in his eyes. How much control could he possibly have over it at this moment?
Give him something to focus on, Kane thought. "Jack, listen to me. We have to get out of here. He said others were coming. You can't face them like this."
Jack didn't move from his place in the floor, hopeless, even as frost began to form on his shoulders. "Let them come. Let it end."
No, Kane thought. He crawled closer to his friend, pulling roughly at Jack's coat as he tried to get both of them to their feet. Weak and dizzy, he couldn't manage it; the mage had gone completely limp. "No. Get up. You have to get up, Jack." He couldn't let the mage lay down and die when he had promised Sarah he would protect them... All of them. Lena, he thought. That's it. "What would I tell Lena if anything happened to you?"
Jack looked up at him. Kane had never looked this closely at the corona before; he could still see Jack's eyes under all that light, could see a flicker of focus returning to them. "Lena?"
"We have to go back for her, remember? She's waiting for us. She could be in danger."
"Yes," Jack said, pushing up on his elbows, but then he hissed a sharp breath. "Can't… H-hurts." The floor beneath his hand where he braced himself became a patch of ice at his touch. "It's too much… I can't control it. You have to run!"
"No," Kane said. He couldn't have run if he tried. He wasn't sure he could stand.
Jack reached for the dagger that lay in a pool of blood beside Astos.
He means to kill himself! Kane thought, but the mage only closed his eyes with the dagger in his hand, and when he opened them again, the corona in them had deepened from white to a dark, glittering black.
Jack grabbed Kane's upper arm, his fingers digging in. "Brace yourself."
Kane's stomach lurched. He felt a weightless, rushing sensation, like he'd been thrown from the edge of the world, followed by a jarring force as if he'd fallen several feet. He was still on the ground, only now the ground was a soft bed of grass and leaf mold, the air scented with pine. Trees obscured the moonlight. The only other light was the glow of Jack's eyes, but as Kane watched, those eyes rolled back. The mage fell forward with a muted thud, his grip on Kane's arm gone slack.
Kane shivered, but the summer night air soon warmed him again as the unnatural cold faded.
Refial woke with a splitting headache in a place that smelled uncomfortably of wet dog. He had woken in unexpected places before, generally hungover with little memory of the preceding events, so his current situation was not entirely out of the norm. Nor was this the first time he had woken with his hands tied. But the tree was new - to the best of his recollection, he had never woken tied to a tree.
A harsh voice whispered, "Nice of you to join us."
The sunlight filtering through the branches shone exactly in his eyes, but he squinted against it to find the speaker, Redden, similarly tied to a tree nearby, resuming a whispered conversation with the monk who was bound beside him. "For the last time, no. If this patch of Rot is part of what we passed through on our way north, we're closer to the Keep now than to the city."
Refial looked around, noticing the state of the trees, how some of them seemed to droop and wither where the Rot had spread. That explains the smell, he thought. He noticed that some of the trees had what appeared to be little huts made of bundled sticks under them, as if they were in a village for very small people, and it was then that he remembered the circumstances leading up to his current predicament. Attacked by moogles like a character in a story, he thought. He could see a few of them several yards off, paying him no mind as they worked away at a fallen tree. He winced as the sounds of chopping and sawing echoed painfully through his skull, remembering how one of those furry little bastards had knocked him with its spear. "My head…" he moaned. "Could I get a Cure over here?"
Redden glared. "When my son was a child and picked fights with the other boys, do you think I Cured every injury he earned with his own foolishness?"
"I'm sorry!" Refial said. "I panicked, alright? It was reflex! I told you I was a coward and you insisted on bringing me along."
Redden sighed, and though he sounded annoyed, Refial could feel a Cure soothing his throbbing head. "Yes, well, consider yourself fortunate if I bring you along when we leave here… wherever 'here' is."
Refial grinned, relieved that someone at least knew what they were doing. "Leaving? You two have a plan?"
Orin nodded, face serene. "Escape these ropes, retrieve our belongings, and walk away from here."
Refial stared, waiting for the rest. When Orin merely smiled, he said, "That's a terrible plan. What if they attack us again? I don't know if you noticed, but there are quite a few more of them than there are of us."
Redden rolled his eyes. "Look, they've already lost interest in us. If we don't attract their attention, they won't even notice we're gone. I told you before, they were only curious. If you hadn't offended them, we'd be long gone by now."
"That still leaves the question of how we free ourselves."
Orin wriggled a bit, the smallest, most innocuous of movements, and suddenly his hands came free. "Moogles are clever beasts, but terrible with knots."
Refial stared. He tugged at his own bonds. They were quite secure. "How-"
"Ready?" Redden said to the monk.
Orin stood, rubbing his wrists, and then bowed. "I am ever ready."
And just like that, he vanished.
"Huh?" Refial said. He felt invisible hands untying his own. "How…?"
"An old white mage trick," Redden said. He leaned forward, and Refial could see the ropes around his wrists writhing as the knots seemed to untie themselves. When his hands were free, the bard sprang up and reached down to haul Refial up after him. "Come on. This way."
The two of them entered the forest, giving the moogles a wide berth. "They're normally peaceful creatures," Redden said. "I think we just caught them at a bad time. With the Rot encroaching on their village, they're probably a little on edge."
They traveled in silence for perhaps a quarter hour before Redden stopped him with a firm hand on his arm. "Were you successful?" the bard asked.
"Yes," said Orin's voice from the path behind them. Refial shrieked, but managed to curb the impulse to throw a Sleep in that direction. A pack dropped onto the path as though it were appearing from nowhere. Redden opened it, checking its contents, and Refial saw the golden gleam of the crown nestled safely inside.
"Alright," Redden said, passing the pack to Refial. "Do you know how a compass works?"
"I'm a pirate! Of course I know how a compass works!" Refial snapped indignantly.
"Good," said Redden, pulling one from his pocket and holding it out for him. "If I'm right, Elfheim is a few days south and east of here. Get the crown to the king, no matter what."
"Me?" Refial squeaked. "What about you?"
"We are returning to the Western Keep," said Orin's voice. "To find young master Carmine and master Ashward, and to help them if we can. The crown cannot come with us. You must carry it back to its rightful place in the city."
"I can't hike through the forest by myself!"
Redden snapped, "For Bahamut's sake, Refial, there's nothing dangerous in the groves. Elven children younger than Thadius camp in these woods. You've faced greater peril on the open seas!"
"With a crew of seventy men at my back! What if-" He stopped at a noise in the trees, looking about frantically, but it was only a bird. When he turned back to Redden, the bard was gone. Refial's breath caught in a choking gasp.
"Relax," Redden's voice said from near where Refial had seen him last. "You'll be fine. There's a little food in the bottom of that pack, and a flint and steel in the front pouch if you need a fire. I know you can hunt for yourself. We're counting on you, Refial."
"Be well, master Fortem," said Orin.
"Don't go!" Refial said. "Please! I'm no good at being alone!" But when there was no answer from the two men, Refial realized he was alone. He stood, dazed, holding the pack and the compass in suddenly numb hands. A moogle's cry echoed through the trees. Refial turned and ran.
When the sun rose, Kane realized he recognized this part of the forest: they were in the groves, in the place where they had camped before they entered the Rot on their way north. Somehow, Jack had teleported them across miles of landscape it had taken them the better part of two days to cross on foot. It was miles farther than Kane had been led to believe a single Teleport could take someone.
He paced. He stretched his sore limbs. He found a peach tree nearby and ate some of the fruit. He flipped through the strange book he'd been holding when Jack Teleported them away; there were illustrations of creatures out of nightmare, but he couldn't read the Leifenish words that described them.
He waited as Jack slept. Kane didn't try to wake him. He wondered if the mage might have emptied himself, and if so, how long he would have to wait for his friend to recover, but it was only mid-morning when Jack stirred, gazed blearily at his surroundings, and asked, "Where are we?"
"South of the Rot," Kane said. "You brought us here. Do you remember?"
Jack groaned. He sat up, moving slowly, squeezing his eyes shut again.
Kane waited for the mage to speak, but when he didn't, Kane said, "I didn't know you knew that spell."
Jack sighed. "I wasn't sure I did. I knew the theory, but I'd never tried it. It always seemed too dangerous."
"So testing it on me seemed a good idea?"
"I'm sorry. It was the biggest spell I could think of." His voice took on a lecturing tone, as it always did when he was explaining a magical concept. "Astos had a ritual circle hidden in that room. Circles like that funnel aether into the mage at the center. It was too much for me to control. I had to use it on something." He sounded so matter-of-fact about it; there was no sign of the distraught, broken man Kane had seen the night before, the man who was ready to die.
Perhaps it was the pain speaking, Kane thought, but he doubted it. "That ritual, you said you couldn't stop it. What happened back there?"
Jack's eyes went soft and sad again, his gaze fixed on the forest floor. "What happened is that I broke my Oath in every possible way. By killing Astos in that circle, I did to him what he was planning to do to you." Jack shook his head, fetching his hat from the ground beside him and putting it on to shadow his face, but not before Kane noticed the tears welling in his eyes.
"It's not your fault, Jack," he said.
"I killed him," Jack said, his voice steady and without emotion. "I used my power against him and then I killed him. How is it not my fault?" The mage pushed to his feet. "We don't have time for this. Are you ready to go?"
"Go? Jack, you can hardly stand!"
"I'll manage."
"Another hour-"
"No," Jack said, cutting him off. "Astos said he'd cursed Eldarin to get the crown. The king, Kane. They're both cursed, and the elves didn't tell us. This is bigger than we thought." He turned to walk unsteadily off into the trees, heading east. Though his knees shook, Kane had no choice but to follow.
Thad hurried toward Aryon's room. Carrying a covered tray for Lena, he whistled as he walked the empty halls. It was nice to make some noise for a change. He'd spent the past few days sneaking around, quietly following an elf named Cotto about his boring business. Lena said the balding elf was evil, and Gollor had agreed that it couldn't hurt to keep an eye on him, but so far the king's advisor had done nothing more exciting than trip over a rug one time.
There were more people in the royal wing where Cotto conducted his daily affairs, and Thad enjoyed watching them. These halls seemed abnormally silent by comparison, the sort of halls where ghosts would be found. Though he'd been told the king had come to visit the prince recently, Thad had never yet seen anyone else in this part of the castle, as if the other elves had forgotten Aryon.
He felt badly for the prince. Thad couldn't imagine being trapped in his mind like that with no one to talk to. He could hear talking now, coming from down the hall. Lena tended to talk to Aryon as she worked, but today she sounded upset. He sped up his pace, recognizing, as he got closer, the words of Leviathan's prayer.
"-with me on the waves throughout all storms. I hold to the tiller and trust in your will."
Thad hurried toward Aryon's door, found Lena on the bed, kneeling over the prince. Her hair hung across her face, the red curls lank with sweat. The glow of white magic enveloped her arms nearly to her shoulders, but beneath her hands, the prince was shaking, violently. The normally smooth bedding was disordered, the sheets pulled free at the edges, pillows and blankets knocked to the floor. Frantic and desperate, Lena began the prayer again: "Sweet Leviathan, lord of the seas, be with me now as the tide turns. Be with me when my soul and my sails are empty. Be with me on becalmed waters and be with me on the waves throughout all storms. I hold to the tiller and trust in your will."
"Lena?" Thad said.
"Get Gollor!" she snapped. "Sweet Leviathan, lord of the seas, be with me now-"
"What's happening? What's wrong with him?"
"The curse is breaking, and it's taking him with it! Go!"
He dropped the tray and ran, but she was praying again before he'd made it out the door: "Be with me now as the tide turns..."
Author's Note: 9/16/16 - A friend recently got me hooked on Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, a mobile game that is free to download. Unlike other mobile games I've tried, this one actually has a real story to it. The two main characters, Rain and Lasswell, remind me of Kane and Jack. Rain is more happy-go-lucky than Kane is, and lacks Kane's temper, but he's a natural swordsman, pure-hearted and honorable. Lasswell is the serious one, quiet and moody, who wears a spiffy coat and occasionally uses ice magic. He's more confident and sure of himself than Jack is, though. I'm not very far into the game's story yet, but I'm really enjoying it.
None of that has anything to do with Final Fantasy: Fated. I just thought I'd mention it.