Love Her and Despair Remaster [28]

[auronlu]

Title: Love Her and Despair
Chapter 28: "Otherworld"
Final Fantasy X/X-2
Characters: Auron, Isaaru, Maroda, Elma, Pacce, Paine
Rating: PG-13 (Violence) Word Count: 1900
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The Story So Far: Isaaru's pilgrimage derails when the unquiet ghost Shuyin shows up, possessing one host after another in his quest for vengeance. They chase him into the depths of Bevelle, where the Crimson Squad members are trying to keep Vegnagun out of the wrong hands.

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Beyond the Chamber of the Fayth, the secret tunnel ended in a wall of rusted metal. The only light came from a violet Destruction glyph pulsing balefully on its streaked surface. Scowling, Maroda reached forward to tap the glyph with his spear. "Wait." Auron caught his elbow. "Touch that and we may not catch him."

"Huh? He went in here, didn't he?"

"Unless it's a trap for idiots," Elma said. "Maybe it's rigged to explode."

"It's a lift," Auron said. "Once you activate it, we won't know where Pacce got off."

"What else can we do, sir, force the door open and jump?" Elma said. "Could be a long drop."

"Vegnagun's gotta be at the very bottom, right?" Maroda said, trying to shrug him off.

"Not necessarily," Isaaru said behind them, pained. "The Via Purifico, where I fought Lady Yuna, is said to be the uttermost dungeon. Yet who knows if that is truly the bottom? In Yevon, something always lies beneath."

"Like Vegnagun, maybe?" his brother said. "Come on, we're wasting time!"

"The Hymn of the Fayth," Auron said. "Start singing."

Maroda gaped. "You've got to be joking!"

"Let us do as the heretic suggests." With a strained smile, Isaaru sketched Yevon's prayer and began to sing. "Ieyui nobomeno..."

Elma joined him, wavering in and out of key.

"Don't stop," Auron said, hand hovering over the glyph until they had cycled around to a new verse. Touching it, he started counting. Two verses. Three. Five. Just where was Vegnagun docked, under the harbor? Seven and a half—

"Keep going," he commanded as the door slid open. "Get in." Again he waited for the start of a verse before pushing the lowest tile on a corroded panel embedded in the wall.

Maroda's sullen tenor joined theirs as the room began to descend. The Hymn sounded oddly ordinary in close quarters, meant as it was for soaring domes and monumental halls. Nor was Elma much of a singer. Nonetheless, the shared mantra seemed to steady them. That was all to the good. Will, not just weapons, would be needed in the coming battle.

Auron freed his left arm from his sleeve. Another sound was booming up the elevator shaft: an alien, jangling music churned out by some kind of machina. It sounded like Zanarkand Stadium's halftime show with a drunk at the keyboard. No, two drunks. The pyreflies in his veins stirred in response, an itch within his flesh that he had to resist clawing. Lost your way, a fallen knight... they whispered, latching onto the music's insistent rhythm.

Not now, he told them.

Oblivious to the eldritch summons, the others continued the soothing refrain. "Renmiri yojuyogo..."

Seven and a half. Auron pressed what he hoped was the emergency override. The car squealed to a halt. The doors opened. A wave of sound broke over them. He leapt, hit the bridge a few feet below, and launched into a dead run.

What in Spira was that racket? Auron had never entered the Farplane, but he knew with a wrench he was hearing its heartbeat. Pyreflies surged in his ears, buzzing in time to the acoustic barrage. A behemoth loomed on the bridge's far side, a monster with tusks and teeth and gigantic legs clawing the void and wings, gods, why did the big ones always have wings? Roving blue spotlights sent out feelers. One of the men in its skull was shouting, his words overwhelmed by the musical torrent. Below, Nooj stood under Vegnagun's jaws, tottering, furious, brandishing his artificial leg like a club. His target was well out of reach, but as Auron approached, he took aim for a throw. (No better plan than to do or to die.)

A frenetic duel raged in the midst of the span, accented by flashes of magic and blood. Juno staggered, warding off Pacce's darting attacks with dogged economy, wielding her sword as a shield. A whirlwind wrapped the blade, obscuring its edges. Her left arm hung limp. She was giving up ground, slashed by the dervish assault that had shredded Auron and Maroda a short time ago. Blood slicked the deck. Slipping, she caught sight of Auron, raised her weapon and rallied in a burst of strikes. Pacce redoubled his blows, baleful laughter cackling over Vegnagun's uncanny chords.

Auron slammed his weight into the boy's back. Pacce's body flew from the point of impact. For a beat, Auron feared he would hurtle over the edge. Then he executed an aerial flip, a blitzer's move so familiar that Auron nearly skidded off himself, distracted. By the time he had checked his momentum, Pacce had rebounded and was springing towards him, laughing shrilly with sword weaving in a maddened hornet's dance.

"Wondered if you were going to show, old man." The blade sliced into Auron's upper arm too swiftly for him to block with his bracer. "I hear we've met before... or is it since?"

The nagging pyrefly chorus was growing louder, building in strength with the machina's din. Auron gritted his teeth and pressed forward. Shuyin bent around his swing and and pierced his side with a jab before whirling away.

"You're slowing down," Shuyin taunted. "What are you doing here, anyway? Aren't you supposed to be on pilgrimage?"

What was he doing here? It was a dangerous question, with Farplane energies crashing over him in waves of sound. Auron's vision blurred. The ribbed walls of Vegnagun's vault were transmuting into Zanarkand's skyline. (Memories of it cloud your sight.) Soaring towers and girders blossomed around him like the bones of a dream.

"It's… the right thing to do." He swept his sword in a wide orbit, using its counterweight to help him circle his opponent. Again, Shuyin was too quick for him. He jumped and landed on the blade, smashing Auron's knuckles to the floor.

"Saving Bevelle?" Raucous laughter struck another chord of memory. "Is that what's keeping you? Pathetic!"

"Pacce!" Maroda pelted into the fray with spear reversed. "Shake him off, Pacce! We're here!"

"I'm so glad, dear brother." Shuyin sidestepped him and sliced downward, chopping the spear in two. Maroda staggered. Auron dragged him back from the edge.

Elma seemed to have better tactical instincts. Waiting for an opening, she darted past the melee to reach Juno. "Potion," the Crusader shouted, pressing a phial into her hands. "Fork attack?"

The percussion of Vegnagun's engines obscured the clash of steel. The bridge was quaking. Pyreflies were swarming now, sliding over Vegnagun's exoskeleton in a pulsing web. The machina was growing translucent, or else fiend's madness was mazing Auron's sight. The dream of Zanarkand Stadium still roared in his ears. (Fight fight fight fight). Vegnagun's floodlights painted Pacce's spinning body in a sphere-pool glow.

Auron caught up his sword and lunged, drawing Shuyin's attention as the two women split in a pincer movement, attacking with sword and truncheon as the young man landed between them. Barely registering their blows, he flung his arms wide to shove them aside, leapt high, and raised his sword in a triumphant pose.

"Let's blitz!"

Two simple words, but Auron was staggered by them. He failed to shield himself from the burning trails of fire and sparks raining down. Looking up, he saw not Pacce's chubby features, but the elfin face of another he had failed to protect. He glimpsed blond hair, blue eyes, a cheeky smirk that was crueler, older than he remembered.

"Tidus?" he said, choking on the name.

Zanarkand. He had forgotten how much he hated it. Pyrefly spectators cheered with bloodthirsty glee as Auron began to cough, drowning, his blood diffusing into the sphere-pool as he thrashed.

"Isaaru, send! Send now! He's taking Sir Auron!" Maroda cried.

The referee's bellow made no sense. Auron released his sword and pressed his hands over his heart, fighting to stem the spill of pyreflies. The referee leapt in front of him, reaching for the dropped weapon, but the gesture left him exposed. A scalloped blade darted in like a fish. There was a scream, a moment's struggle— the women were grappling with Tidus, yanking him backwards in a double tackle— and the referee went down writhing, clutching his stomach.

An anguished cry rang out. "Maroda!"

Auron grabbed for him, catching the straps of his armor as he rolled off the bridge. In his mind's eye, Auron saw another, younger face, another body dangling below him, another voice shouting his name. His fingers were melting through the straps, losing hold. (Hopes dies. Dreams, they rip asunder...)

Maroda plummeted through the bottom of the sphere-pool with a cry, disappearing from sight. Auron was falling, too. One of the women's voices cut through the water above him, distorted and desperate: "Please, sir, you've got to send, or we'll lose Pacce too."

The pipe organ's blaring tumult suddenly ceased. All lights went out. Auron felt himself floating down, down, swathed in an unraveling shroud of pyreflies that had no color, no sound, no taste, no sensation. The last embers of his will almost wept with relief. At last, he would allow himself to strike bottom.

(The otherworld, it takes you.)

In dream or Farplane or somewhere in between, two warriors sank through a void with pyreflies for stars. The second was no more than a red haze. The first was substantial, not yet reconciled to death. Maroda raged in denial of the nothingness they had become, haranguing his mute companion.

Dammit. You know, if Isaaru hadn't been sending Shuyin, someone coulda slapped me with a phoenix down.

...Or not, I guess. What the hell did you have to go and drop me for?

"No comment," eh? Death hasn't changed you a bit. And why are you dead? I'm the one with the great big hole in my gut.

Oh, no. Don't tell me. That's what you were hiding? And the sending got you, too? Jeez, man. I don't know what to say.

…Dumbass, maybe. Wasn't sending Shuyin your clever plan? And now Isaaru's short two guardians.

Poor Pacce. He's gonna be a complete wreck.

So, hey. You're unsent, right? You pulled it off once already. Why can't we both go back? It's just killin' me, leaving 'em like this.

A woman's voice cut through the one-sided conversation. "All you need is determination."

Huh? I'm pretty damned sure I don't want to die, lady!

"None of us wants to die. But existence is more than negating a negative. What is it you cannot forsake? What drives you, warrior, that you would endure a waking death, forgoing the Farplane's peace?"

My brothers! I've got to get back to them. This totally sucks, you know?

"Such bonds may be strong. But they are not you. Who are you? What is you?"

Huh? Who are you, for that matter?

"One who exists on the boundary between life and death. The living fear me. The dead ride me."

Whatever. Look, lady, just show me the way—

"As you wish. But for you, the path goes only one way."

In the uttermost depths of the Via Purifico, two corpses struck water hard enough to fracture bones. One kept falling, in this world and the next.

The other was not so lucky.

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Next Chapter: "Via Purifico"

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Author Notes: Originally posted as Chapter 32 in August 2009.

Comments

[mintywolf]

I admit I am a little confused about who is conversing in the last scene. Is it Auron, Lulu, and Shuyin? Or Pacce still? Did she manage to yank Shuyin out of Pacce? Or is the one mouthing off Maroda?

[melchar]

Pretty sure that it's Maroda taking the long dive, Auron - being sent back & Lulu doing the job that Jecht did for Auron last time.

[auronlu]

Drat. It's Maroda. I waffled back and forth over to whether to use his name-- or whether he could remember it.

The silent warrior falling beside him, the red smear, is Auron. Vegnagun's Farplane energies and Shuyin's attempts at possession finally started getting to him, so that he forgot himself and his raison d'être. Which, for an unsent, can be fatal.

Pacce is still back up on the bridge with the others, as the next scene will make clear. (That scene originally preceded the "falling warriors" scene, but I decided to flip them.)


And yes, Lulu is down at the bottom of the Via Purifico to provide dead-people-ferrying service.