Love Her and Despair Remaster {26]

[auronlu]

Title: Love Her and Despair
Chapter 26: "The Tower"
Final Fantasy X/X-2
Characters: Auron, Isaaru, Maroda, Rikku, Elma
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2800
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The Story So Far: Cid, possessed by Shuyin, has attacked Bevelle, and now seeks the doomsday weapon beneath the Tower of Light. Summoner Isaaru, his guardians and Rikku give chase. One problem: the palace is on fire.


Artwork by mintywolf

Soot lay in eddies and glyphs about their feet. The stout doors creaked, their stone bulk dampening the roar of the maelstrom beyond. The floor quivered as if Ifrit might burst through to demand a new statue.

"Wait!" Rikku said. "There's another way in! Remember, Auron? When Kinoc and his goons caught us, they didn't take us back through the Cloisters. Those creepy tunnels—"

"The Via Infinito, used by the Elite Guard for initiations, interrogations, and executions." Auron's face went blank: not at the memory of Kinoc's betrayal, but for a darker crime. He could no longer remember the name of the lowborn monk executed without a sending, but Auron would have been named the father of the dead man's child, had he not refused to marry the mother. "Too far, and I don't know the lower levels. I'm sorry, Rikku."

"For all we know, they've already gone up in smoke," Maroda said.

"We're running out of time," Auron said, turning to Isaaru. "Can you shield us?"

"I believe so." Isaaru drew his hands together in Yevon's prayer. "Lady Yuna's sacrifice gave me many more years to train. Yet I have never put the spell to such a test. I shall not fault any of you for turning back."

Maroda stepped to his brother's side.

Rikku hugged herself, staring unhappily at the doors. "I can't abandon Pops."

"Elma?" Isaaru said. "If Pacce is here, it's possible Maester Lucil may also be in the city."

"What, you think I can face her after pulling a Clasko?" She gave a strained laugh. "I'm not bailing on you guys."

"Very well. Keep close, all of you. The effect extends only a few paces around me." He placed his hands on Maroda's and Elma's shoulders. A shell of bluish-white light sprang up around them. The soot on the steps whisked away as if struck by a hurricane blast. Auron's hanging sleeve began to flap violently, falling limp when Isaaru stepped up behind him. "Tread in my footsteps, Lady Rikku. Take care not to trip on my robes. Sir Auron, we are ready."

Auron set his palms against heated stone and pushed, nearly stumbling headfirst when an unseen force wrenched their weight away and flung them them wide open. Rikku shrieked as whirling embers and flames billowed towards them. At the last second, the debris was deflected by an invisible wind, streaming away in a fiery fan.

"Go!" Isaaru said, shouting to make himself heard above the roar. "We don't have long!"

Auron strode forward, barely glancing at the statues of pious donors being consumed like a forest. Near the center of the chamber, the inferno's eddies had drawn together in a spiral, forming a fire tornado. Not daring to deviate lest those behind him move out of sync, Auron marched straight through it, feeling searing heat on his face for an instant before the writhing pillar of flame exploded outwards.

Elma caught Auron's cowl and shouted something. He stopped, looking back. Maroda was lifting Rikku onto his back. Her face was knitted with pain. For a moment Auron could not tell why, then he noticed the soles of her shoes dripping like wax. He had not registered the heat of the floor beating through his thick leather boots.

"I've got her!" Maroda shouted. "Go!"

"Faster!" Elma added. She, too, appeared to be suffering, her thin riding boots no match for the stovetop floor.

They moved. The burning statues of Yocun and Braska were before them now. Auron adjusted his course to the left. The flower-like pedestal on which Yuna's statue danced had transformed from faux water to living fire. Her arm and staff came crashing down on top of them as they passed beneath. Isaaru gave a cry as some of the molten steel from her staff dripped through the barrier. "Run!"

Auron reached back, grabbed Isaaru's collar, and lunged forward. A stairwell opened at his feet. Burning timbers and cracked stone were falling now, and Isaaru's magical shield was failing. Auron threw himself headlong, hurtling into darkness. How far was the nearest landing? The noise grew to a thundering tumult. The whole dome of the great hall sounded like it was imploding. Auron grunted as his shoulder struck a stone floor, mercifully cool. The summoner landed on top of him, partly extinguishing his burning coat. More thuds meant at least two of the others had followed. Before Auron could catch his breath, a massive fist of water came sluicing down, striking blistered flesh like a battering ram, snuffing out anything that had caught fire.

"S-sorry," Rikku hissed through clenched teeth. "Water marble."

"Good thinking," Elma said, coughing for breath.

"Steady, my friends," said Isaaru. Soothing white magic poured over them. The pain receded.

Auron stood and assessed their status. A few dying embers lay steaming on the wet steps above them, but it appeared that the head of the stairwell had been blocked when the great hall's roof collapsed. The party was all here, singed and caked in dust like wet concrete, but more or less in one piece. Maroda was cutting Rikku's rubber shoes away with a field knife. Auron moved to her side, holding her and letting her bite his gauntlet while the brothers tended her feet. Maroda had to slice through burnt skin along with her shoes, but Isaaru worked quickly to repair the damage.

When he'd finished, Rikku raised her head and blew her nose on Auron's sleeve. "Ow and more ow. I don't think I could've done that if I'd known it was gonna hurt so bad."

"Forgive me, milady," Isaaru said. "I did not think it would."

Tears were trickling down her cheeks. "Enh, well, I needed another phobia."

"Can you walk?" Auron asked, in that gentle tone he used to reserve for Tidus.

"Uuuum..." She wiggled her bare toes. "Looks like it."

"I hate to say this," Elma said, surveying the debris-choked stairwell, "but if Cid was behind us, he's not going to be able to get through that."

"Great time to mention it," Rikku said. "Come on. We know where Pops is headed, anyway. I doubt that creep's gonna let him turn back."

Ten levels down, they reached the depths where sanctimonious Yevon architecture gave way to secrets and blasphemy. Beams, conduits, and empty space spread out before them, etched with pulsing geometric designs. Maroda groaned, but Rikku brightened at once. Plucking a sphere from an ornate wall panel, she waved them towards a stone pillar on a dais at the bottom of the stairwell. "Come on! This is the fun part." She popped the sphere into a socket on the pedestal. A glowing white glyph appeared under its base, covering most of the dais.

"Fun?" Elma said as they crowded around her. "What the heck is this?" She gave a squawk as the glyph shot sideways, then plummeted, carrying them with it.

To a Yevon-trained eye, Bevelle's Cloister of Trials was an incomprehensible landscape, like writing to a blind person suddenly cursed with sight. They were traversing a bizarre lattice of light-paths rushing up, down, sideways, and diagonally. A disc-shaped forcefield marked by Yevon's sigil carried them along. Step off that narrow foundation, and one would plummet into the abyss.

"Whoa!" Rikku said. "Everybody off." She stepped onto a passing landing, one of several small balconies fixed on either side of the streaming paths. The transport pad slowed, backed up a few inches, and came to a halt.

"What's wrong?" Maroda said.

"Oh, nothing. There's just a break down there." Rikku pointed to the nearest junction, where a slanting pathway dropped away to the right. A metal strut had fallen across the ramp partway down. Moving patterns of colored light pooled above it like water piling up behind a dam. A single line of green flowed across the gap to the next lit section. "If we cross that, the transport pad could fritz out."

"Can't we just climb down there and jump over it?" Elma said.

"The floor's not solid." Rikku waved a hand at the white glyph they had been standing on. "This is. That's it. I'll have to reroute the program. There's another ramp farther on, but right now it flows up." She retrieved the Bevelle sphere and inserted it into the base of a control panel anchored to the railing. Flipping up the lid, she pulled out a probe from a pouch and peered into the box. "Ooo, what a mess. No wonder Yevon never goes in a straight line." She began fiddling with toggle switches.

"Machina at Yevon's heart. Is it too much to ask for a little consistency?" Elma said, drooping over the guardrail.

"Maroda began to question, too, when we first saw this place," Isaaru said. "I took longer. I did not wish to see. It's one of the reasons that I loosened our interpretation of scripture. I debated whether to show this to the other maesters."

"I'm glad you didn't," Elma said. "The general breaks a drill sword after almost every Council meeting. Last time she broke my arm." Suddenly she stood and pointed. "Wait, I see them! Six levels down!"

Isaaru turned. "Pacce!" he called. "They're fighting!"

There was a flash as Rikku jerked away from the control box. "Shoot. We'll have to go around for another pass. Auron, gimme a push! Follow me, folks!"

He shoved the stone pillar out onto the transport pad. Everyone but Elma piled onto it.

"Come on, Commander," Maroda said. "It's still Yevon, y'know."

"I'll delay them," she said, climbing onto the guardrails running parallel to the track.

"You'll fall!" Rikku said.

"Already did!" Elma called after them with a shrill laugh. As they sped away, she edged sideways along the rails to the nearest junction. There she threw one leg over the bannister of the malfunctioning ramp and slid down, disappearing from sight.

"Idiot!" Maroda said.

"Maroda, watch her," Isaaru said. "She bears up bravely, but I sense her despair. So may Shuyin."

"Folks, I need you to watch for more spheres," Rikku said.

"What are you trying to do?" Auron said.

"Trick it into—no, no, left! Aaagh! I hate Yevon!"

"Calm down," Auron said. "Your father's as trapped as we are. Pacce's keeping him busy."

"But if one of them pushes the other off—" Maroda said.

"Have faith, my brother," Isaaru said.

"In what?" Maroda said. "Dammit, Rikku, can't you stop this thing? I've got to get down there!"

"No room," Auron said. "Trust his training."

The moving patterns, scaffolding and crisscrossing pathways afforded only brief glimpses of the duel rushing past on a track several levels below. Cid and Pacce were circling on a treacherously narrow platform, the boy whirling his sword with upward sweeps that he must have learned from Juno. Cid, wielding a rifle like a quarterstaff, was relying on darting slices, spry leaps ill-suited to his large frame. Shuyin's moves, no doubt, but why did they seem so familiar?

Irrelevant. The party had circled back to its starting point without passing a single sphere. They needed a fallback plan, quickly.

"Rikku," Auron said. "Would a memory sphere work?"

"Nah. We need a glyph sphere, 'cuz... uuuum... hey. You know, it might. For a little while, anyway. Only problem is, the floor'll go 'poof' when it shorts out." Rikku tensed, gathering herself for a spring. "Gimme a count, Auron. Any stop'll do."

"Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two—"

"Yaaah!" She pushed off, landing on the same siding where they had stopped a before. The transport pad glided to a halt. The stone pedestal rose out of it. "Here goes!" Rikku said, snatching the sphere from the top of the pedestal and inserting it back into the control box. From her satchel she drew out a larger sphere. Despite her urgency, she hesitated, cupping it in both hands like a rare egg.

"Will it fit?" Maroda said.

"You can only save the living," Auron said.

"Wakka's gonna kill me." Biting her lip, she jammed Yuna's sphere into a socket beside the first. Several lights on the box's lid blinked on. Sparks began to dance over the memory sphere's surface.

"Okay," Rikku said. "Keep your feet on this balcony 'til I give the word. If I screw up, the transport pad could vanish too." Flipping the lid up, she fished out another tool and frantically began laying down lines of solder. "Pops' Rule Number Two: never rewire when the power's on."

Smile fraying, Isaaru turned to gaze down towards the lower levels. He cupped his hands to his mouth. "Pacce, we're coming!"

"Don't distract him," Maroda said.

"Don't distract me," Rikku said, wincing as a spark arced across her knuckles.

Auron looked down. Pacce was parrying Cid's hammer-blows, but weakly. The boy's speed was the only thing saving him, and he seemed unable or unwilling to take advantage when Cid left his flank or torso wide open. He doesn't want to kill, Auron realized, having faced the same dilemma from time to time. Fortunate, but it left Pacce vulnerable. He dropped to one knee.

Maroda made a despairing sound and drew back his spear. A futile gesture: it was a thrusting weapon, and there were too many obstacles for a clean cast. Then a banshee scream echoed up the shaft. Elma tumbled from above, landing on Cid's back and bringing him crashing down across Pacce. Cid rose with a roar, nearly throwing her over the side. Suddenly the odds were even. Pacce grabbed the rifle and slammed its butt into Cid's stomach. The larger man crumpled between them.

"Can you send?" Auron asked Isaaru.

"Not at this range."

"Done!" Rikku said, brandishing the soldering iron. There was a white flash, a whiff of burnt plastic, and every floor-segment of the maze was suddenly anchored by motionless glyphs and a fence of stone pedestals. "Let's go!"

Skidding on the glassy surface, they raced along the walkways. Clouds of pyreflies were wafting up from Cid's prone form. Elma was helping Pacce to his feet. Suddenly she twisted, wrenching his sword-arm behind his back and setting the metal truncheon across his throat, lifting him off the ground.

"Rikku!" Maroda said. "Nightcap, quick! Shuyin's got Elma!"

"Last one," she said. "Here goes!" She reared back and lobbed a pellet across the gap to the path two levels down. Elma crumpled. Pacce rolled a few paces away.

Auron gripped the railing and vaulted over it, putting the forcefields to the test where he landed. Pyreflies surged around him, coyly greeting Yuna's guardian and Braska's guardian and Captain of the Guard and all his other past, failed selves. Ignoring the insidious chant, he seized Cid by the shoulders and dragged him towards the nearest solid ground. There was another landing just ahead, and the welcome sight of an ordinary staircase beyond it.

"Isaaru!" he called. "Send!"

"Sir Auron!" Isaaru said. "Please, step away from him, before I—"

The pedestals around them began to flicker in and out of sight.

"MOVE!" Rikku said. "The field's coming down." Skidding down the last ramp, she dashed towards Elma, struggling to pull her out from between the pedestals where she had fallen. Auron turned back, slinging the Crusader over his shoulder and sprinting for the exit. The brothers were dragging Pacce after him. As Maroda tripped and sprawled over the edge of the landing, all the glyphs and pedestals winked out. The colorful river of lines and patterns resumed its dizzying current.

Cid was coughing, pushing himself onto his hands and knees. "Dryd lnywo meddma bihg— ra'c kud ed—"

"Pops!" Rikku hurried over, dropping to her knees and patting his back. "Pops, you in there?"

"Send," Auron said again, drawing his sword and bracing it against the floor.

"Sir Auron?" Isaaru said. "Very well." He raised his hands, sweeping them together in Yevon's sign to begin a stately dance.

The floor under Auron's feet seemed to melt away. Not much of a summoner, the pyreflies whined, his own voice ringing in his skull. Not much of a summoner. How much of a guardian? He gripped the sword— his sword, the one he had carried on every pilgrimage— and hung on.

Maroda, bent over his little brother, gave a cry and crumpled. Pacce exploded past him. Auron's swipe went wild as the boy sprinted by. He disappeared down the steps and through an open archway, running with long, loping strides. A trail of pyreflies floated in his wake.

"He... he didn't even know who I was!" Maroda gasped, doubled over.

"Tried to tell ya," Cid said. "Little punk said somethin' about avengin' his brothers. That's when Shuyin jumped him."

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Next Chapter: "Nightmare in C Minor"

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Author's Notes

Chapter renumbering: Originally Ch. 30, posted July 2009.  

Comments

[mintywolf]

Rikku WOULD love the Cloister of Trials puzzles, haha. Also I never did think about how Kinoc and Co. got into the guardians' waiting room outside the Chamber of the Fayth so fast (or got Yuna's party out of it after they got arrested). The Via Infinito is a very tidy and plausible explanation. During that puzzle in the game we can just see Tidus but I always picture the entire party crowded together onto that one little platform, with assorted expressions of delight, resignation, and terror.

Those are some intriguing hints at the circumstances surrounding Auron's being dishonorably discharged from the warrior monks, as well.

The surroundings of this chapter were vividly described; I could hear a kind of background soundtrack of crackling flames and crashing architecture in the back of my mind while I was reading.