Path of a Summoner

In the time that the other two had gone, Wren was still practicing her summoning skills.

She was sure she was close, after her last attempt in Remiem.

Of course, it was thanks to her lack of control over her power that had stopped Amalthea from doing any serious damage to Mobius. This partnership might not work if she couldn’t give instruction to her Aeon, but maybe it was just that she lacked the same conviction as her partner. It was difficult for her to decide.

Twill provided some assistance, and a great deal of comfort. Their soothing presence made her feel like she could open up easily - and she was already the type to be very honest when she was upset. 

It did take time. A full day and a half passed before the airship returned with supplies, both to live off of and for their new scheme to get inside the collapsed dome of Zanarkand’s temple. It was a happy reunion when the ship showed up at noon, everyone sitting around the fire before they set out to finish what they started. 

The charges were set, and everyone vacated the area as Merris was about to set it off. As soon as the bomb was triggered, he booked it down the rubble to the other side of the citadel. The explosion was only going to be enough to give them a means to enter the dome, but a controlled explosion was still an explosion. 

Wren covered her eyes and ears, ducking down behind the main entrance wall. As Merris rounded the corner, the blast came, sending a torrent of fiery debris into the sky. Only Twill watched, shielding their face with a heavy sleeve to check its progress. 

The metal dome seemed largely unaffected, but the wall around it crumbled to dust as the flames erupted. With a groan, it fell at an angle so that it was no longer level with the ground, just big enough to pass through. 

Twill nudged Wren’s back with a gentle hand. “We should put the rest of the fire out. The dust will burn out soon enough, but we should get moving.”

Wren leaned on the wall to stand up, then reached for her staff. She approached the slowly burning blaze with Twill, staves extended. A cascade of water descended onto the flames in a pressurized blast, extinguishing the remaining flames that licked vainly at the dusty stone.

The passage was structurally questionable, but it would do. They ducked through the entrance they’d made one by one, giving them access to the temple inside.

“I’ll stay here to watch the entrance,” said Twill, placing a hand on the corner of the dome. “Don’t take too long.”

They took a seat near the rubble and waited.

Once inside, the intense atmosphere seemed to become even more heavy on their consciousnesses. The inner sanctum of the dome was grand, but in shambles. Collapsed columns lay everywhere. There was no sign of any litter, as there was outside the dome, but some of the stones were disturbed in such a way that indicated the brief window of tourism as the culprit. 

Wren briefly lamented how easily Spira’s history was forgotten in favor of new amusements. It was a shame, but it was a good sign that Spira was able to march on without its past hanging over it. Once this blew over, time forget all about Sin and the miserable death march it spawned forever.

They came to a lift, after passing through several more rooms, that took them to what appeared to be the end of the line.

When they stepped off of the lift, in the center of the room was a Fayth stone. Its surface was cloudy and cracked beyond any chance of recognizing its contents. As Wren got closer, she could feel that there was nothing inside. There hadn’t been in a long time.

“Is this the Final Aeon?” asked Merris, wrinkling his nose.

“No, remember what that Fayth showed us?” asked Tana, as Wren knelt down beside the stone. “They probably used this to hold an Aeon once, but… We know what the Final Aeon really is.”

Merris nodded quietly, looking down at Wren.

She stood up after a moment, pushing herself up with her staff. “Sorry, this place is weird. I expected to find another hole to the Farplane here, but I don’t think anyone’s been here in a long time.”

It almost looked like it had simply fallen this way over a thousand years ago, and had been undisturbed since, but Wren had seen that this wasn’t the case, if she didn’t already know better.

“Let’s keep moving,” she said. “I feel something up ahead. That’s probably where the pyreflies are.”

The stone path continued, and so did they. It was a short distance into the next room, but once they crossed the ordinary looking doorway, they were standing in a room unlike anywhere they’d ever been before.

They stepped out of the hall and into the starlight.

“We’re still underground, right?” asked Wren.

The sky, or what appeared to be the sky, stretched out around them in all directions. The ground they stood on appeared to be a floating layer of stone, the end of the world just past the edge of the crumbling stone structures that surrounded the platform’s edge. Not much time had passed, but this sky looked like it was the middle of the night, a full moon hanging in its very center like a gentle reminder.

“Maybe this place is connected to the Farplane, somehow,” offered Tana. “I’ve never seen the night sky there before, though.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Wren. There was nothing beneath the floor but a looming promise of a sunrise that might never come. “I think it’s some kind of illusion, but it sure feels like the Farplane here to me.”

Wren looked to her left and saw a short flight of stairs leading down off the platform. She crawled closer, then sat on the edge of the stairs for balance as she stuck her leg out to try and meet the ground beneath the stairs. Past the last step, her sandals completely disappeared, as if disappearing behind a veil. The comparison didn’t stop her from yelping in surprise and drawing back up the stairs as quickly as she could.

“There’s something down there,” she said, still sitting on the floor in a position that looked like she’d fallen over backwards instead of crawling that way on purpose.

She leaned forward with her hand this time. There was no sensation at all as her fingertips disappeared, but they seemed to vanish entirely.

Merris made a noise of discovery, and Wren and Tana both turned to see him standing on a collapsed piece of rubble, covered with moss and crumbling with age. 

“Get down here!” said Tana, whispering harshly as if that were safer than yelling. “You’re going to fall!”

Instead of heeding Tana’s warning, he reached out with both palms, putting his full weight behind his hands as he leaned against something solid, but invisible. “There’s no way I could fall.”

There was a wall to this room after all, but that realization hadn’t stopped Tana from gasping in anticipation and dread as she watched him.

Tana rolled her eyes. “Don’t scare me like that. How old are you, six?”

He grinned, then jumped down from the rocks to land beside her. 

Newly inspired, Wren stood up, then stuck her foot out again, stepping purposefully off the platform. 

As she resurfaced on the other side of the invisible doorway, the new room she found herself in looked exactly the same, but Tana and Merris were nowhere to be seen. At the exact same time as she crossed into the room, she heard the two of them give a surprised shout in unison, and she immediately turned back to climb the stairs, appearing suddenly in front of them again.

Tana and Merris’ eyes had gone wide with shock, but as soon as she returned they both relaxed with a nervous laugh.

“I guess I should have said something first,” she said apologetically. 

Merris huffed and puffed out his cheeks in indignation. “I don’t like this place.”

Wren laughed quietly. “Too bad it looks like there’s still more of this place to explore. I’m pretty sure we’re close, though.”

She poked around the first room for a few moments, then decided to follow the doorway she’d gone through once already. When she appeared in the nearly identical room, it seemed like she had been transported to the opposite side of the first one, but she could tell she was moving closer to the source of the strange feeling she had.

Scanning the other doorways, she selected the one to her left, where the pull felt the strongest. Before she went down the second steps, she paused. She was following a trail, but it had suddenly changed. 

“I think someone is already here,” she said, lowering her voice. 

She shook her hands out nervously. How could someone have gotten to the pyreflies before them? The dome was sealed before they all got there, and no one could have passed them without being noticed.

“That’s impossible,” said Tana, shaking her head. “This place has been sealed up for a few years now, going by what Yuna said.”

“I know,” mumbled Wren, frowning. Her mind was already conjuring up the image of Mobius, already waiting for them down below. There was no way he could be here now, but it was a scary idea.

She held her staff close to her chest as she crossed the illusory doorway.

In the middle of the room was a lean figure seated on top of a fallen bit of rock silently. They turned when they heard Wren’s footsteps, not helping her sense of alarm, but at least this person was clearly not Mobius.

The person that turned to look at them when they entered the room was dressed in a plain cloth tunic, with a darker piece of fabric slung around their shoulders like a cloak. They were as unnaturally pale as the silver moonlight that fell across the entire room, to the point that Wren thought they may be ill. There were pyreflies - normal ones - floating around their equally surprised figure and illuminating their skin like light shining through a prism. Their white hair flowed down their back freely, and as Wren approached, they squinted their nearly colorless eyes.

When the stranger spoke, it was with a voice that was neither high nor low, and Wren couldn’t explain why their voice didn’t quite match what she expected.

“What are you doing here?” asked the stranger. “I thought the temple’s entrance was sealed.”

“That’s our line, don’t you think?” asked Tana. Her attitude had shifted into diplomacy mode. The question wasn’t particularly friendly, but the way she stood and the way she asked it made it seem like it was. “The dome was closed when we got here. How did you get in here?”

They blinked long eyelashes at them, before considering this. “I was… already here. This is where I’ve been the whole time.”

“What?” asked Wren. “Like since the dome closed? Have you been trapped in here?”

There was no way a person could survive like that.

They shook their head. “Not trapped… I haven’t been trying to leave. I think the door was closed when I got here.”

“This is weird, right?” asked Merris, quietly leaning away from the stranger, who seemed unfazed.

Wren nodded. “The feeling I’ve been following is coming from them… I’ve never felt that coming from a person before.”

She didn’t know. Maybe they were unsent?

Tana clicked her tongue, turning back to the strange looking person. “I’m Tana, from Djose, and these are Merris and Wren, my brother and my traveling companion.”

The figure thought for a moment, then nodded, as if they had just made up their mind about something. They pointed to the light in the sky above them slowly. “You can call me Yue.”

Yue looked between them, then tilted their head. “Still… what are you doing here? Are you a summoner’s party? There is no Fayth here, and I cannot create the Final Aeon for you, I’m afraid.”

Their words sent a chill through Wren’s spine. “Nothing like that. Spira help us, if we were. We’re just…”

She realized she didn’t know what to call their little group, at this point. These people were no longer just her bodyguards.

“We’re travelers, mostly,” said Tana, picking it back up. “Right now we have two others outside, waiting for us to return. So if we’re finished here, we should probably head back.”

Tana looked questioningly at Wren, who murmured a small noise of confirmation. If what she came for wasn’t here, she would just have to wait it out until Mobius appeared. 

“Um, but first… we did come here looking for something,” she said, stepping forward. “There are these pyreflies… they look like the ones you normally see except… bigger? And kinda blobby?”

Yue thought for a few moments, watching the softly fluttering lights that hovered in the air around them. “Nothing strange, no… Nothing more unusual than the ones right here.”

“Then I think we should go back to the camp,” said Tana firmly. “Would you like to come back with us? We have plenty of food and a warm fire. Better than sitting here alone.”

Yue stood up from their seat with a nod. “Yes, that would be much better.”

Merris made a face when the offer was extended to the strange one, but he stayed silent, even as the pyreflies that clustered around them seemed somehow magnetized to them. The pyreflies drifted lazily towards them, then flitted away when they moved too quickly. It was unnatural, but no one made any comment of it as they moved towards the room’s exit.

All four of them navigated back through the illusion rooms, past the empty Fayth chamber, up the lift, and back outside the temple. The entrance showed no signs that it would collapse anytime soon, so first went Merris, then Wren, then Tana. 

Twill greeted each of them, then rose to their feet to stretch their back out comfortably. “That took longer than I thought. Did you find the pyreflies?”

Before anyone could answer, Yue showed themself, crawling through the opening with ease. Twill took a step back from their sudden appearance, looking to the others with a stunned expression.

Their equally confused faces did little to answer Twill’s puzzlement.

“This is Yue,” said Wren, stepping closer to Twill. “We found them inside the Fayth chamber.”

She trailed off, not knowing how to phrase her bewilderment at the whole situation. 

Twill looked on at the lanky and pale stranger. “Are they coming with us?”

Wren could only shrug, wide eyed confusion still plain. “Seems like it. Let me know what you think of them later, alright?”

Yue seemed not to notice the confusion surrounding them, even as everyone walked in silence back to their camp.

Chia, as usual, was likely onboard the ship and nowhere to be seen. Tana went aboard to fill her in and let her know a new face had joined them.

As the sun was starting to sink into the sky (another fact that made that chamber inside the temple seem so otherworldly), Twill got the fire started and invited Yue to sit with them.

Around this time everyone was starting to feel hungry, so they broke out their recent procurements for their dinner.

Despite the eager anticipation of dinner, Yue’s presence had created a sort of unease, an unspoken vow of silence still hung between all of them. Even Chia, once she wandered out of the ship to gawk at the new stranger, stayed silent. Yue seemed to only further cement the silence, seemingly content to say nothing at all.

As Twill put the pot over the fire, finally they were the one to break that silence.

“If I may ask, what is a guado doing out here alone?” they asked. They seemed to be addressing Yue, but the silence seemed to further descend on the camp once the question had been asked.

“Uh… Twill?” asked Merris, glancing from the stranger to the group’s resident healer.

Twill’s eyes had an innocent, confused appearance as the focus honed in on them. Clearly, they didn’t think there was anything strange about what they’d said.

“Yue, is uh…”  said Wren, looking to the group’s new addition. “Not… a guado, right?”

Yue glanced down at themself, as if studying the sickly pallor of their skin. “All I know is that I simply am.”

At this, the group exchanged an uneasy look. 

Twill covered their mouth as they tried to focus on a closer look at Yue. “I was sure that I… It’s the hair, and the-- I’m sorry, for some reason it’s hard to look for very long.”

Wren looked at the same time and also found this to be true. For a moment, their appearance seemed to shift, moving like ink in water. She could almost make out the unique silhouette of a guado’s hair and horns, characteristic markings on their skin, before they vanished again, and Wren saw only the face she had just been introduced to. If she tried to see that outline again, a dull pain formed behind her eyes.

Rubbing at her eyes, she looked away from them, frowning as Merris and Tana also winced and turned away. “Yue… what are you? Is that rude? I’m just a little confused.”

Yue paused. They had a childlike quality about them, even as their face flashed again, shifting to that of a worn and bearded man before returning to normal again.

The stock in the pot was starting to boil over. Tana swore and stood up to tend to their dinner, but the air remained decidedly tense even though the curse was lifted.

“I am Yue,” they said, seeming to think about it for a moment. “I woke up here in the temple alone, with no way to leave. I sat down and waited. You all are the first people I’ve seen since… since I gained consciousness.”

That only raised more questions.

“Where did you come from?” asked Tana, looking over her shoulder. The food had been removed from the fire, but no one seemed very interested in eating it.

“I suppose I must have come from the temple,” said Yue.

Wren didn’t feel any less uneasy, hearing that.

“I went looking for any sign of those weird pyreflies, but all I found was you,” she admitted. “Are you… Unsent, maybe?”

“I don’t think so,” said Yue, though they frowned as they answered. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You would probably remember if you were, right?” offered Tana, still trying to make sense of the situation.

Everyone knew it now - there was something very wrong with this person, but no one could quite piece together what.

“They… do smell like the Farplane, though,” said Twill, frowning. “The way I’m unable to read them, and their face… doesn’t it remind you of those fragmented memories that play out here?”

Just then, Yue’s face flickered once more, to a face more familiar to Wren. Though their complexion remained as colorless as ever, the face was unmistakably Yuna’s.

Wren gasped, leaping to her feet so quickly it startled Merris as well.

“It’s exactly like that-” said Wren, forgetting her manners to gape at them. “What do you see, Twill - does their face look familiar to you?”

Twill, who had also seen that briefest of flashes, tried one more time to peer into Yue’s eyes, who didn’t seem bothered by it at all, instead giving an innocent smile that indicated their cooperation.

As they gazed deeper, it became harder to focus, but just before they turned their head away to rub at their aching eyes, a look of recognition crossed their features.

“If I look hard enough, I see a guado. It’s Lord Jyscal’s murderer, Seymour,” they said, blinking the fatigue from their eyes. “It’s not obvious at first because the face is constantly changing, and he looks a little younger than when he arrived in Guadosalam - but I know that face.”

Merris also looked closer, but shook his head. “I don’t see either of those things, but I don’t recognize the face I see. It looks like a guy maybe our age, maybe a warrior monk? But then it goes away.”

Wren folded her arms out of frustration, then took her seat once more. “What’s going on? The way what we see changes is the same as those afterimages… Are you… real?”

Yue blinked glassy eyes at the group. “As I said, I know nothing of that. All I know is the room I first awoke in.”

It was all pointing towards something, but none of them could quite figure out what. All of them had their suspicions, all of which more or less amounting to the idea that Yue was not truly of Spira, but that much was obvious from the moment they mentioned the Final Aeon.

Days went by. The stranger never left the camp and ate little, but they weren’t unwelcome. It seemed that they had no better place to be, and to tell the truth, Wren was happier to have them in the camp than to leave them inside the temple. Such a strange and apparently vulnerable being was safer where their eyes could follow.

On the eighth day, the time for waiting had ended. The uneasy comfort that settled in the camp was shattered.

Mobius was there.