auronlu | Love Her and Despair Remaster [40] (Reply)

Title: Love Her and Despair
Chapter 40: "The Lady"
Final Fantasy X/X-2
Characters: Auron, Rikku, Elma, Isaaru, Pacce.
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Word Count: 2200
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The Story So Far: Overcoming the deadly trials of the dream-world inside Sin, Auron and his companions seek an audience with the Fayth of Yuna's Final Summoning.

Illustration by @mintywolf

In dreams, one might trip over a Luca balcony and die on the pavement below, or leap from the peak of Mt. Gagazet and alight on the ruins below with barely a jolt. This was no featherless glide, but at least it was not fatal. Icy boughs tore and broke, skinning flesh and slowing their descent. Tangled vines caught and gave way. Roots and gravestones made a hard landing. Winded and blinded, the party lay waiting for their eyes to adjust to the darkness while Isaaru healed them.

When he was finished, Auron pressed a vial of ether into his hand.

Accepting it meekly, Isaaru crushed it against his throat and looked around. "I could swear I've seen this place before."

"It's Djose," Elma said, voice tight. "Almost. What's with these rocks?"

The darkness of Lulu's garden had assumed a more specific color, blue-black to match the trunks of the Macalania trees. Golden light filtered down from the great crystalline moons of seedpods snagged in their branches. Dark vines and creepers curtained everything. There were fewer flowers than Auron remembered: a solitary orchid, a spray of jasmine with just a few waning stars left, a dusting of withered rose petals clinging to spiderwebs.

"It's beautiful," Pacce said.

"Yeah." Rikku reached out, brushing her knuckles against a hibiscus. "Guess this is the garden Yunie dreams about."

"It's pretty and all," Elma said, "but I smell an ambush. Let's move to open ground."

Auron turned to the fence of young trees penning them in. Brutal overhand swings made short work of their trunks. With fleeting glimpses of the bluffs to orient him, he started clearing a path uphill.

"Hey!" Rikku said. "Bad enough you stomped my tomatoes!"

"If all goes well, my lady, I think your friend will be glad to leave this garden," Isaaru said.

They emerged onto oceanless beach, a vast spreading wilderness of dark vegetation spilling over gravestones, bathed in a wavering mirage of blue flames that consumed nothing. Ignoring the others' awed exclamations, Auron scanned the bluffs for any sign of white.

"There's Al Bhed writing on this one," Pacce said.

"Huh? Let me see." Rikku crouched, pushing aside aloes to peer at the block of sandstone. "It says…" Her voice hitched. "'Anna.' My Pops' sister."

Gazing out where the sea should have been, Auron spotted a thin blush of salmon-pink on the horizon. Below it was a streak of the same hue, tremulous as a tongue of flame licking along the edge of a scroll.

Rikku began to shout. "Hey, Lu! We made it! Come and get us! Come out, come out, wherever you— aaah!" She gave a startled scream as a plump fruit let go from one of the vines, striking her between the eyes and bursting open. "Ew! Thanks a lot, Lulu!"

"Shouldn't we keep quiet?" Pacce said, eyes darting from shadow to shadow.

"Heh-heh." Rikku's face looked pale when she wiped the glop and seeds away. "Just trying to get it over with."

Tearing his eyes from the horizon, Auron sheathed his sword and seized Isaaru, heaving him over his shoulder. "Run." He started blundering towards the cliffs, trusting the others to obey. This was no open field. The trees and vines that had broken their fall were suddenly a deadly obstacle course, concealing rocks and boulders that could send them sprawling.

Baffled but unquestioning, Elma caught up with him quickly. "Higher ground, sir?" She pointed towards the slope at the back of the "beach" that narrowed as it climbed. Hundreds of Crusaders had perished in its real-world counterpart, trapped in the bottleneck. Yet a small group might use it to reach a broad shelf partway up the bluffs. Auron nodded and followed her, ignoring Isaaru's gasping questions.

The onrushing wave was eerily silent. Had that streak of dawn not reflected off its crest, he might not have spotted it until too late.

Laden as he was, Auron reached the level ground well behind the others. Elma was making for an outthrust leg of the cliff forming an arch. Inadequate, but it would break the full force of the water. Auron set the summoner on his feet behind it and turned to face the menace rumbling towards them. They could hear the roar of the ocean now, crashing as it overtopped trees, bushes, tombstones.

"What's she doing?" Rikku said.

"Yu Yevon's taking no chances," Auron said.

"A trap," Elma said, stoic. "Is there anything we can do, sir?"

"Everyone, stay close," Isaaru said. "I can buy us time, Sir Auron, but no more."

"Understood." Auron said. "Pacce. Guard him well."

"Aye, sir." The young man moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother, planting himself on the outside of the arched overhang facing the sea. Elma and Rikku wedged themselves in on the other side, bracketing the summoner. Rikku, more trusting, threaded her feet into the old vines lacing the rock. Looking out, they could see a vast ridge of muddy water devouring the beach they had just vacated. Isaaru began to pray. A faint green membrane of light sprang up around them.

Stepping away from NulTide's flimsy barrier, Auron strode to the edge of the natural balcony and raised his hand, displaying the brand she had given him. "Summoned, we have come! Lady, heed my prayer. I bring you Grand Maester Isaaru, High Priest of St. Bevelle, to answer for Yevon's crimes!"

"What the hell?" Elma said.

"What's he doing?" Pacce said.

"Avenge Yuna. Avenge Tidus. Avenge Chappu. Avenge Kimahri. Avenge all those whose memories you guard in this dream of death."

"Making her mad," Rikku muttered.

Auron's booming voice echoed off the bluffs, trumpeting above the sea's thunder. "Now is the time to break the spiral, Lulu! No more Yevon! No more pilgrimages! No more teachings! No more cages! No more lies!"

The tide reached the rocky shelf and spilled over. It flowed as a river, not as a wall, forcing Auron back step by step until it lifted him off his feet. His head struck the cliff. Held there by tremendous pressure, he could see the others huddled together a few paces away, surrounded by a faint sphere of light that was trembling like a soap bubble. The water rose to his shoulders, then began to recede, drawing him with it.

"Auron, you dummy!" Rikku's outburst had him smirking even as the water dragged him towards the edge.

There was a splitting thunderclap. The bolt struck where he had been standing, but instead of fading, it opened like a fan. A blinding white figure stepped out of it.

Chains and straps of leather whipped around like angry snakes, plunging into the waves and coiling around his arms, his legs. They held him fast in a bizarre tug-of-war with the sea. The current pulled him down, down, draining through the mesh. He hung suspended against the bluff, waterlogged and half-drowned. When he could collect his wits, he climbed up using straps and chains as a ladder. Heaving himself over the edge, he rolled onto his side, retching saltwater.

Yuna's Final Aeon stood over him, implacable, a figure of glass and steel and white fire whose head and shoulders rose above the heights of Mushroom Ridge. Ropes of hair flared out like Shiva's, forming the butterfly fan of the Venus Crest against the sky.

The lightning began to fall. Its forked fingers spiraled around the rock sheltering the summoner and guardians. Pacce took the brunt of the first attack and fell, mail smoking. There was a shimmer, and Isaaru's barrier shifted from green to gold. The bolts began to flow around them. Assured that they were safe for the present, Auron slashed through his bonds and advanced upon the aeon, bracing himself for the first kiss of lightning. It staggered him, but he could bear it.

Maybe.

Chains battered him, sending jolts along the links. Heavy straps scourged his head and arms, biting with edges fringed in slivers of glass, scoring bloody welts. The electrical barrage was relentless. Clothed in a sheath of living lightning, the aeon mauled him with pitiless elemental talons, searing nerves and flesh again and again.

The sheer futility of Lulu's old plan reasserted itself as he fell to his knees.

Healing washed over him. Lifting his head, he saw Rikku on the other side of the aeon's glass calves. She was cowering, struggling to keep the targe up and not clap her hands over her ears. Some of the thongs and chains had wrapped around her legs, pinning her to the ground. None of the aeon's blows fell directly where she was crouched, but the recoil of the lightning strikes upon Auron splashed over her, sinking into the wires of her upraised shield.

Auron rose and moved forward, gritting his teeth in anticipation of the next lightning strike.

The pain was less. Rikku must have conjured a magic barrier from her alchemy kit as well as a restorative. Angling around so that he would be an easier target for her missiles, he closed in, throwing every Break he knew against the aeon's treetrunk legs. Jangling bolts and elixirs crashed over him in a disorienting shower.

This, too, was a lie. Lulu had to be here, just inches away, locked inside that murderous shell. Raising his eyes, he willed himself to see her. If he could just bend the pyreflies to his will as she had done many times since she gained Sin's powers and chains, he might twist Yu Yevon's lies back to the truth. Could he still find it in himself to believe?

Another bolt lashed him with biting words. Auron, really. Stop pretending you're a cynic.

Yes. For one moment, the mage was there, reflected within the aeon's glassy shins. She stood before him with arms raised in equivocal greeting, calling down the storm.

His sword went through.

The aeon's chrysalis shattered. Shards of silvered metal and black steel and ice and crystal came raining down, smashing and sparking and skittering across the ground. His sword went through, piercing metal and glass, burrowing into fabric, flesh and bone. His sword went through her. He felt sick.

Lulu crumpled— black— white— red— was she still wearing his coat, or was all of that blood? The lightning ceased.

"Auron, you didn't!" Rikku rushed forward. He grabbed her as she tried to push past him.

The mage was lying in a bed of salt-covered roses, knee-length black hair and white limbs falling in a graceful spiral as if she were still a symbol. Lulu might have appreciated the imagery, blood staining white roses red, but he was no poet. They were just damned weeds, and she was really lying there, blood pumping from a huge gash through the fourth and fifth rib (breasts, you fool, they don't grow any finer) and he hoped he had missed the heart.

If she still had one.

"Wait," he said.

"Let me save her!"

"Wait."

The body shimmered with blackness. A boiling cloud of red and black, viscous and foul, began to bleed upwards from Lulu's pale flesh.

"Auron, come on!" Rikku struggled against his grip.

The demon burst free and catapulted into the sky, veering wildly, searching, a churning knot of hate.

"Hurry," he said, releasing her. Then he turned. "Isaaru. Send."

Isaaru, supported by his two guardians, stepped out into the open. Curling his hands together in that accursed prayer, he began to dance.

Pyreflies lifted from Auron's collar. He turned back to Lulu. Rikku was kneeling over her, crying and shaking out two phoenix downs at once, spitting Al Bhed curses at the mage and at him. Lulu's face was bone white, that familiar spill of black hair falling across one side of her face with artful carelessness: the Lady, even now. He wanted to hold her, to press that dire wound closed, to weep like the passionate young monk who had died long before she knew him. He wanted to stay long enough to see shadowed lids open, a true smile of freedom, Rikku beaming with triumph before she turned to glare at him through snot and tears and really let him have it. He had waited too many years to miss this. But there was a god to kill.

The fayth had been right. Isaaru was stronger than Auron had given him credit for. His sorrowful, reverent, insidious prayer was paring away Auron's pyreflies like waves lapping at a sandcastle.

"Sir Auron!" The sending slackened.

Auron thought Isaaru had yielded to misplaced sentiment. Then he saw Yu Yevon bearing down on him. He moved away from the two women as the seething cloud exploded overhead. It engulfed him in a vortex of desperation, hunger, madness, cold fury and implacable will. Auron was no fayth, but he was unsent, halfway there, a last-ditch prop to latch onto. Shouting defiance from every last fiber of his being was not enough. It had not been enough for Jecht or Lulu. Yu Yevon was consuming his soul.

"Keep sending!" There was a reason why Yunalesca had rejected him at the Hall of the Final Summoning— or so Auron hoped.

Then the world was pain.

Next Chapter: "No Matter How Dark the Night"

Author's Notes

Artist's credit: Definitely take a gander at the full-sized version of @mintywolf 's artwork.

Chapter renumbering: originally the second half of Chapter 42, posted June 2010.