2019-10-06: Killing Seyve 2
- Log: Killing Seyve 2
- Cast: Seymour Guado, Belize, Lulu, Yuna, Rikku, Gon Guado
- Where:
- Date: October 06, 2019
- Summary: The battle in front of Macalania's Chamber of the Fayth escalates into an aeon duel. Seymour tries very hard to kill everyone; Yuna doesn't hold back. Afterwards, those who have love for Seymour mourn him.
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
Arrows fly across the battlefield. Wedge raises a fist into the air, to salute Belize. Seymour gives them a quick, brief nod -- no spoken praise, because that may be rather much, given the circumstances. Then, his eyes turn back to Lulu.
Power explodes from around her. It is a ripple through the Temple. Ice lifts off the floor, then falls down, landing shattered like a dropped plate. Lulu summons orbs of pulsing black light -- and then orbs smash into them. Wedge is struck once, twice, three times. Kimahri's flame breath washes over him, pitching him all the way backward.
When he is smashed into the wall, this time, he crumples over bloodied.
A hole is shorn through Biggs's shield. Another blasts a piece of his pauldron out, and then a final one drives him backward. "Gh--Maester Seymour!"
Which is when Auron is gone, in a flash. His too-huge katana in a blur of steel and motion -- and then a gout of blood splashes on the floor, and Biggs crumples into a heap with a clatter of steel.
"No..." Seymour screams. "...No!"
The spells slam into him. One strikes his side, leaving a burnt hole in his robes. Another shatters his staff at the midsection; he drops the two halves. The third clips him in the cheek, and he spins, then falls down; his hair burnt black, a deep black singe along the skin of his cheek.
He rises -- and Tidus comes down, spinning in a spiral, and Brotherhood comes up. Seymour is not trained in melee combat. He has instincts -- and this is a problem, as he sees a blade made of water crashing down for his face. He does the most logical thing that he can think to do:
He reaches his hand up.
In a second, Tidus sheers clean through half his hand. Thumb, index, and part of his middle finger drop to the ground. Then Seymour screams, blood-curdling, grabbing the ruined limb.
He looks up, blood welling between his fingers, and his eyes wide with grief. Bright, red human blood -- unlike the more orange blood from Biggs's and Wedge's wounds.
He spits, furiously, and his face is now a mask of rage and pain. Pale eyes are wide, and baleful. "You," he declares, "are going nowhere. Feel my pain..."
And the lights in the room snuff out, before there is a swirl of red fire at the ceiling, about an orb of darkness -- and a chain slams into the ground, shattering the flagstones again.
"ANIMA!"
The chain draws her forth from the darkness. A being bound in chains and bandages, a screaming head, arms bound, with a sickly pallor -- and not unlike a fish, somehow. She sways, before she lifts to the top, and looks down. Her gaze falls, first, on Tidus. Then, brilliant blue-white light explodes under his feet in a terrific column.
She screams.
<Pose Tracker> Belize has posed.
It's just as well that Seymour and Wedge don't vocally compliment Belize on their cursed arrows--which, as vectors of that curse, the arrows will do no *physical* damage, but the curse itself is painful enough--considering that hurt and betrayed look Yuna gives them too. Belize grits their teeth and grimaces. For all they'd psyched themself up earlier, this is honestly difficult to keep up. This isn't a battle they want.
But then Yuna's Guardians take out Seymour's--and when Seymour crumples, he raises a hand to ward off an attack, and is rewarded for his misguided efforts with pain.
Belize screams, nearly dropping their bow as they clap their hands over their mouth. "M-Maester Seymour!!" They whirl on Tidus--on Yuna and the others in general. "Stop it! Stop!! Do you intend on killing him?!" they demand, fear and anger warring for prominence in their cracking voice. They whirl back towards the Maester and dash towards him--but then skid to a halt when he looks up, his true self finally reflected unvarnished on his face. Even this Belize could explain away--of course he'd look like that when his arm got *cleaved in twain*.
Then Anima rises. Her eyes flash. Raw powers tears through Tidus in retribution for his spiral attack. He collapses; Anima screams.
And, for the first time, Belize realizes that this battle is to the death. Sure, Biggs and Wedge had talked like they were going to kill Yuna and company, but they always talk like that to humans; Belize has gotten used to not taking it seriously. Perhaps killing Yuna and her friends had been Seymour's intent all along, perhaps he's only losing his temper after Tidus cleaved his arm in twain, but it shocks them almost as much as Seymour's violent injury had.
"Wait! Lord Seymour, wait!" they shout, half-stepping between Seymour and Team Yuna. "As I said, the entire party hall saw the sphere! There's no need to use such permanent means to silence them!" They pause. It may already be too late for that boy. "...silence ALL of them!"
In a streak of thought like a shooting star, they wonder: will he listen? Or will he take their words as treason and send them to the Farplane at last?
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
The black mage Lulu watches the battlefield as her spells crash into it--Auron, stepping forward. Tidus, leaping. Yuna...
Her fury grows as she sees her on the ground. But Rikku reaches her--and Lulu cannot stop to think of anything but channeling her power in this instant, not until she finally finishes it--
She is catching her breath, when it is over--after having delivered her rage straight at a Maester himself, spinning, falling, without his weapon. And she sees the leap Tidus makes pay through--
Lulu's response to the bloody wound is to press her lips together firmly, and stare. She takes no joy in this gore, in this task. ...But it is necessary, at this point. She wonders, for an instant, as she drags herself back upright, how well Tidus will cope--And there is Belize, calling. She has no answer; it is not in her in the moment to explain, to defend, because she has to catch her breath... and indeed, she doesn't have the chance. She gets no pportunity.
Lulu's eyes widen, as she sees Seymour's gaze, understands suddenly as he speaks what he is doing. "No--!"
She watches Anima dragged forth from the darkness, the flagstones shattering--and then Tidus, hit full-on it would seem by the sheer power of Anima's strike. Lulu takes a step back instinctively, looking around--
No. Escape is no longer practical. She knows the only thing they can do--
"Yuna!" Lulu calls. "The new Aeon!"
She looks then, only then, to Belize. "Belize--I don't know that he'll let that stop him." Her voice has a touch of warning in it--but for her, this time, despite their battle.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Yuna has always had a tender stomach, sensitive to upset feelings -- her own and others' -- and, sometimes, mystical manifestations (which, when they're pyrefly-based, is not particularly different from 'upset feelings', at least from her unique perspective). Thus she's been quietly miserable for days, in that way, speaking little, eating less.
Belize's curse finally pushes her over the edge -- though whether it's the magic or the tormented state of their friendship is an open question -- and Rikku joins her just in time for Yuna to ACTUALLY empty the meager contents of her tummy, rather than just having a close call. It freezes immediately in a small puddle on the floor (thankfully at an angle, as she turned at the last second to avoid her cousin, and leaned forward, weight on one palm, to avoid herself). It is a soft, sad sound.
But her shaking hand clutches Rikku's, after, the potion bottle held between them. And, with a little help, she manages to get it down. Her color improves immediately, and her tender gaze is filled with gratitude. Chaos surrounds them, but at the heart of the maelstrom of battle, the two of them are for the briefest moment the eye of the storm -- an eye of their own making.
And then Seymour screams.
---
Tidus' last expression, before he is smote by Pain, lingers on his face, after. He was surprised, even dismayed. It belongs on an athlete who has gotten really, intensely into what will later become the Play of the Game, and who has just discovered that his rival couldn't keep up -- that he really HURT him, injured him badly. If this WERE a game there might be remorse in the mix -- or maybe not, Tidus inherited a pretty killer competitive instinct -- but it isn't, and he doesn't.
But it isn't what he expected, Seymour being unable to defend himself effectively from his sword. In a way it's complimentary, that he thought Seymour was one of them, a fellow pro, this battle just another Tuesday to a Guardian who fights fiends on a practically hourly basis. In a way it's sad, how little he knew about the man whose hand he just destroyed.
In a way his expression -- fundamentally an innocent one, perhaps even cruelly innocent -- is an answer to Belize's question. No. Of course he didn't intend on killing Seymour. All any of them have done, thusfar, is try to organize an escape.
But it's a silent answer. The boy's last words may well have just been spent.
Fallen from his own, nerveless hand, Brotherhood is painted with Seymour's blood. When it hits the floor, rivulets freeze upon -- within? -- the liquid blade in jarring red-brown swirls.
Tidus' fate matches his sword, but for two details: he is more broken, his limbs at unnatural angles. And the blood painted on HIM is his own.
---
Seymour is right about one thing: Yuna IS going nowhere.
As Anima tears herself into existence, a Greek chorus explodes inside her. Her very bones resonate with the plucked strings of her soul, drawn -- ripped -- dangerously taut, close to snapping, close to screaming.
PAIN
PAIN
PAIN
PAIN
PAIN
PAIN
It's hard to even see through the miasma of their suffering -- and their sympathy for their counterpart. It's like breathing a cloud of razors. She has to shake her head to clear it, and even the soft tinkling of her Besaid beads seem part of the harmony, for a moment. But they aren't. They're physical, in the room, and it helps ground her heart, a lifeline thrown to her amid the rapids and vortexes of her increasingly vast inner universe.
Which isn't to say that they are more real. All of this is real. VERY real. All too real.
Yuna draws herself up, still hand in hand with Rikku, and tells her cousin in a voice too gentle for the extremity of the moment -- or maybe not, there is something very controlled about her just now, resolve pouring off of her like monsoon rain:
"Don't worry."
<SoundTracker> Who Are You, Really? - Mikky Ekko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wl4UnxMlJY
She sets her small-but-sturdy black boots more firmly on the ground. The way their soles scrape as she sets her stance -- You Shall Not Pass is writ by every line in her body -- is reminiscent of Auron, when he first arrived in the chamber, to confront anyone and everyone between him and his charge. She wasn't there to see it; it is not an intentional echo. Their similarities have become more profound.
Her relaxed shoulders are Kimahri's, a lesson taught over a lifetime: you must bend, not break, when facing great danger. The reed, the palm, not the oak. And taught to her again, more forcefully, by Rikku; how to go with the flow, to ebb and swell and retreat, safety, and poetry, in motion. Her white-knuckled grip on her rod is Wakka's -- not too loose, not too tight. Maybe a little too tight, just now, in the same way that his hold on his blitzball is a little off, the stress of the revelation of corruption within Yevon putting them both slightly off their game.
Her plan is Lulu's. It's the right call, and she acknowledges it with a flash of her eyes, the two of their gazes briefly meeting across the room. There is so much you can put into a look like that, and so little. This could be the end of everything, far, far sooner than planned. There's so much Yuna still needs to tell her, so much left unsaid. But if she dies in the next five minutes, Lulu will know, from that look, that Yuna died believing in her, trusting her. And loving her.
Her heart is Tidus', though even now she doesn't know it yet, not completely. But it's there in her eyes, as she looks at his tortured body, the pang that she feels. She doesn't cry. She doesn't rage. And she isn't afraid. Whatever that awful feeling is, she allows it to fill her to overflowing.
Everything happening happened because she wanted to protect her Guardians -- because she SWORE to herself that she wouldn't let this labyrinth of scandal and murder consume them.
It's time to make good.
"I'll protect you," she concludes, to Rikku, to all of them. It's a promise, not a prayer. She glances at Belize, last of all. "I'll protect everyone."
---
PAIN
PAIN
This isn't the first time Yuna has been present at the summoning of Anima, and although it would be easy to say that being on the other side, FACING her, is a different beast entirely, that is superficial, it elides the truth. Yuna has always felt this way in her presence, has always known something there is terribly wrong. She was just too busy, the other times -- with battles of her own -- to think about it very much. To FEEL about it very much.
PAIN
Yuna has never met Anima's fayth -- has no idea who or where they are, they've always just been part of the mysterious and unique package that Maester Seymour represents -- but the aeon, bond of their shared souls given form, tells both their story, for the same reason.
PAIN
It isn't a happy one. Seymour shared more of it with her than with most; Jyscal, too, from beyond the grave. In a way, this, too, is just another way for her to get to know him better.
This is HIS story.
Yuna doesn't flinch from it, though it would be easier to try to draw apart, to separate to shield her heart from their storm. Instead she lets Anima's pain wash over her, pour through her, mingling from the outside in with the chorus of fayth who've already drawn it, through her, inside out.
"I'm sorry," she tells Seymour, and his fayth, and their aeon, all at once, and means it, in her earnest, heartfelt way. "I know that you're in pain. And I want to help you... that's why I won't let your pain hurt anyone else!"
---
EARLIER
<SoundTracker> Hymn of the Fayth ~ Shiva https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MgGN8aISdo
Every Chamber of the Fayth is different, but at their core they're all exactly the same: they're a tomb. Macalania's is no different. Yuna's breath wreathing her head like a halo -- the chill leaking through her skirt into her knees -- the way the tip of her nose downright tingles with color -- these are all unimportant considerations. Childish things. She puts them aside, along with all her other discomforts, and... opens herself.
Her spirit flowers, one petal at a time. It takes time, though along with all the other trappings of the outside world, this, too, has fallen away. It could be a minute or a year before she has stripped herself bare of all separations, all illusions, between herself and the fayth she has supplicated herself before. Total vulnerability. Nothing less will do. Everything she is, she offers to the fayth.
And it's scary, every time. Rejection would shatter her to the core. It is one thing to be hated or resented or judged by the stranger. But to freely and willingly -- though never easily -- put your soul in the palms of another, and be weighed, measured, and found wanting -- that is another thing, entirely.
She stopped using the proper prayers long ago, beyond an initial invocation, out of respect for a thousand years of tradition. But she knows better. She knows that this is personal. The most personal thing there is.
She has no lips to move, no lungs to breathe air through them. Her plea comes from further down and deeper in.
"Please," she implores Macalania's fayth.
Please join me, join us.
Please allow me to use this small life to defeat Sin.
Please help me give myself to the people of Spira, as you have done.
Please.
She has no eyes to see, but she can feel the fayth's awakening and approach. She does not brace herself for what happens next, for that instinct is the opposite of the path forward.
Instead, she lets go. She lets herself get carried away...
-*-*-
Her fingertips are blotted with ink, a Rorschach test that shows her only constancy, a life of everlasting, unceasing devotion. Another stroke of the brush -- then another. Painstakingly, she attends to the perfection of her calligraphy. Beneath her supple, skilled hands, an inch at a time, the Yevonite scroll grows, and grows, and grows--
--she holds the child in her lap, smoothing away their tears. Not a child of her body, for that will never happen -- her body is promised to Yevon by oaths sancrosact, sworn with her whole heart. But her child all the same, made thus by the same oaths. All Spira is Yevon's children, and so all children are hers, too. Bending, she kisses away the small wound on this one's knee--
--alone, in these cold halls, even surrounded by other faithful, she's always a little bit alone. Apart. Isolation and remoteness protect her, and with Macalania's legion of warrior monks on top of that, she is among the most well-defended in the world. She has nothing to fear for herself, her safety. But it isn't her own safety that grips her heart--
--this is something she can do. This is something only she can do. This is all she can do.
-*-*-
This has happened once before, in Besaid; held in such deep communion, such profound thrall, by and for and with the fayth whose feelings she shares, Yuna lost herself, unable to distinguish where she ends and the fayth begins. To become one in this way is a powerful, even beautiful, experience. To transcend self so completely. But it is also terribly dangerous.
As it is then, so it is now: it is the fayth that rescues her. But the REASON is different. It isn't the approach of another, familiar presence, outside.
It is what Macalania's fayth saw inside Yuna. This transference, this union, is two-way, and its totality begins to fade exactly when Yuna's heart is suddenly clenched by an icy grip of FURY.
She is plunged into absolute zero.
Yuna has never experienced such rage, not even from Kilika's fayth.
With a soft cry, she collapses onto her side.
Her lips are numb, but she doesn't need them, even now.
"I know," she sadly tells the fayth, who is even now stalking through the hallways of her soul, seething at the revelations she has seen, has lived, through Yuna's eyes. How her Temple has been used, and by whom, for what purpose. "I'm sorry."
Outside of trance, she rarely experiences the fayth's thoughts as words. This isn't telepathy. She feels their feelings as feelings.
But she isn't completely outside yet, more in a halfway-between state.
And also she is -- no, the fayth is -- PISSED.
NEVER AGAIN APOLOGIZE FOR THE FAILURES OF ANOTHER.
The words pour through her like ice... but also with wonderful, terrible clarity.
Djose and Kilika's fayth saw her as a child, and care for her accordingly, with love and pride and also a certain father-knows-best patronization. Even Besaid's fayth did and does see her that way, in a way that binds them together profoundly, as two girls together against the world.
Macalania's fayth addresses her as a woman, and demands that she be nothing less. They are equals, now and forever. Equals, together.
Yuna discovers the strength to stand. Frost sloughs off her skirt, her hair, everywhere, in beautiful, delicate flakes and shards.
DO NOT BE SORRY. AND DO NOT GET ANGRY.
Her lips have enough feeling in them now, she is sufficiently back inside her own skin, to smile shyly at that, at both the absolute foundation of support she's just discovered within herself, and its -- her -- open, unapologetic hypocrisy.
GET EVEN.
Yuna accepts this advice from her elder sister in the only way she knows how: with a solemn heart, and a deep and grateful bow.
Behind her, the door to the Chamber of the Fayth rumbles open.
---
NOW
"Rikku," Yuna murmurs over her shoulder, one last request before she commits herself entirely to what's to come, "Please look after Tidus."
Lifting her skirts, she carefully steps over his body, the last thing between her and her fate.
Anima is SO huge, even for an aeon, and she is SO small, even for a person.
But she is not alone.
Her Guardians are with her.
Her father is with her.
Truth is with her.
And...
"O FAYTH!" she prays, urgency ripping the words from her heart into a low shout, flinging her arms wide. "GIVE ME STRENGTH!"
The gigantic room they're in -- the Antechamber of the Fayth, if you will -- abruptly gets much much much colder. This is MACALANIA TEMPLE, the heart of all ice, the fount of all winter... and the seat of her power.
The flagstones that Anima's entrance shattered are crawled over by a kiss of frost, mending them. Fragile, beautiful snowflakes swirl around Yuna's upraised summoning rod.
How lovely.
And then, descending in concert with rod -- and girl, who drops to one knee with the force of her own movement -- enormous shards of glacier crash down behind her like shooting stars. Like an unfurling flower. Like a crystalline prism -- or prison.
And something else descends, too. Someone.
It is a rare thing, to see the fayth half of an aeon unveiled, before the aeon takes full form, but then, this fayth has never been a SHY one, and the beckoning was very strong. She arrests the breath, as cold is wont to do, and as beauty can, as well, when it is pure and strong and self-possessed enough to inspire awe instead of jealousy in an onlooker. She is little more than a shimmer of silver silhouette, but that is more than enough, almost painful to look upon.
She enters the ice, and becomes it. It becomes her.
Maybe a little bit too much is enough, after all.
She flings her heavy, ornately bound azure locks behind her with a casual toss of her head, visible individually through every pane of the ice, in every direction. Her eyes open, filled with strength--
--and with a flick of her wrist, she shatters the ice, and steps forward, fully actualized.
<SoundTracker> Oblivion - Gunn, Masoyoshi Soken & THE PRIMALS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swp4FmTPkpc
The endless lies, I've cast aside, locked them in ice
Steeled is my soul, my blood grown cold, I've gained control
Shiva glances at Yuna with a side-eyed, wry expression that anyone could read, that all but cries out, I THOUGHT YOU'D NEVER ASK, then tosses her summoner her shawl. Like the rest of her, it is composed of gradiants of blue, violet, and white frozen water (and pyreflies, and the will of two hearts, entwined), but the limitations of elemental physicality doesn't stop it from draping beautifully across Yuna's arms, which she's hastily extended in order to make the catch; she wasn't expecting it, and has to lunge a little, lest she -- fayth forbid -- DROP it.
That's okay, though. Shiva is graceful enough for them both.
"Please," Yuna repeats, soft with reverence.
Shiva inclines her head in response.
Then she turns to Anima and looks up at her with a grim expression. It is more than the sum of its parts -- the fayth's fury, the summoner's compassion. SHE is more, for that matter.
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her
Maybe that's why it doesn't seem to matter that, like Yuna, Shiva is dwarfed by Anima; not AS badly, but badly enough -- maybe she comes up to Anima's knee, instead of, like, Anima's (theoretical) toenail. Shiva is in fact shorter than Valefor, Ifrit, and Ixion (if he rears up on his hind legs).
But she knows the secret that beats, furiously, in the hearts of all small things: size has nothing to do with power. And power POURS off of her, like the heart of a star compressed into her body.
These voices screaming to let it go (never let go)
This time I'm screaming back no no no (go on say no)
She speaks with her actions instead of with words, like any aeon, but so, SO loudly. Shiva knows herself, and knows her voice.
From zero to blur in an instant, she swirls forward -- her hair and raiment following her midair twist, as she leaps up to kick Anima right in the jaw, size difference be damned, with all the might and all the mayhem of winter behind her.
My mind's made up, yeah my fear is gone (Where have you gone?)
Open my eyes now here I come, oblivion
GS: Yuna enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Yuna has attacked Yuna with Grand Summon! GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Yuna has launched an attack Link! DC: Yuna switches forms to Shiva! GS: Yuna takes a solid hit from Yuna's Grand Summon for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! applied to Yuna! GS: Mighty! applied to Yuna! GS: Yuna enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Yuna has attacked Seymour Guado with Rush! GS: Yuna has gained 1 Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado guards a hit from Yuna's Rush for 335 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Disease expired!
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"It is far too late," Seymour snarls at Belize, "for such niceties!"
His voice is angry as it is pained. The way blood runs down his ruined hand, pattering onto the ground and into his robes, speaks volumes. He is desperate. He is driven. He is backed into a corner. He looks up at his Aeon, wrath in his eyes... but fear, too. He fears Anima. The way she sways forward, straining at her chains, speaks volumes. This is no Aeon that a summoner commands, easily.
This is a beast -- a reflection of unrealized desires -- that is chained because he cannot, truly, control or master them. It said, in some circles, that some Aeons are stronger for some Summoners. Some Aeons are powerful, yet hard to master. And some are Aeons that must be leashed.
This is one.
He looks at Yuna, then. Seymour watches Yuna -- and sees the way her eyes are on his tortured, fallen body. The body of one who may be dead in a few breaths. A thought comes to him, unbidden: 'She never looked that way at me.'
And there isn't a new, childish anger.
There isn't a new, hot rage of jealousy.
There isn't a melancholy sense of loss.
There is only the same anger at being misunderstood; the same cold, lonely knowledge that Seymour Guado will always have to walk alone. Seymour stares at Yuna for a moment, and then he looks up. "Glorious... truly, beautiful," he says. "A power that I must have."
Because, in the end, that is all she can be to Seymour. He thought she understood -- but no one can understand. He hardens his heart when it wants to scream. Shiva rises, frost rolling out over the chains binding Anima to the ground, hoarfrost and rime across them. Anima leans forward, and then there is a brief, primal scream from Anima in his mind.
Those feelings are blocked off. Seymour denies them: disappointment, sorrow, and anger. "I know," he whispers to her. "Now--"
Shiva's foot slams into Anima. The titanic Aeon slams backward, and emotions are swept aside as Seymour witnesses one titan batter a second. The blow slams her back. Chains rattle; the frost that crept up them cracks, and Anima slams into the wall just to the side of the doors to the Chamber. Cracks spiderweb out.
She turns.
And Anima lurches forward, and screams. A dozen chains form from the darkness, rusted and pitted iron reaching out. They strike and slam at this new Aeon. Like iron to a fae, they burn when they come close to her. And, beneath the bandages, Anima's eyes blaze.
Darkness fills the room. So thick -- so blinding -- that it seems like all there is. And Anima rises, lifting into the air, and the chains are dragged up with her. One can see what is under her: a screaming, pained skeletal face, and terrible claws. Her lower body is an upper body, in reverse.
Those claws slam into the floor. Where they dig in, the little light that escapes her mien flashes across the gouts in the stone by contrast.
"DESTROY HER!" Seymour screams.
And Anima screams back. Wordless and pained -- without emotion in his mind -- and the light explodes from her. A flash of rainbow, but so drowned out that it is a ghost of a rainbow. A pinpoint, that explodes into a washed out sunburst centered on Shiva.
GS: Seymour Guado spends 3 Combo on Headshot and Link! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Chains of the Forsaken! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo! GS: Seymour Guado has launched an attack Link! GS: Seymour Guado spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Oblivion! GS: Seymour Guado has gained 2 Combo! GS: Mute expired! GS: Seymour Guado has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Yuna takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Chains of the Forsaken for 274 hit points! GS: Please react targeting the attack number in +queue. GS: Yuna takes a glancing hit from Seymour Guado's Oblivion for 261 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Belize has posed.
Normally speaking, Belize is a self-possessed, forceful personality, who freely and flagrantly pushes their anger and righteousness onto others. Ivan experienced this; so did Marivel. But when it comes to people they like, people they care for, it becomes much more difficult to be angry. Instead, they fret. They agonize. They worry. They've already lost two they cared for dearly; it looks very much like there will be more in the very near future.
For example: Belize doesn't really get that Yuna's Guardians just want to escape with her in tow. Of course that's *part* of what they want, but they also want to bring Seymour to justice. Therefore they're confronting him deliberately, yes? They don't realize that the group would already be gone if Biggs and Wedge hadn't opened physical hostilities. So they ask the group, ask Tidus, if they're aiming to kill Seymour. And, well...
They've never really had a proper conversation with Tidus, and probably never will. The most they know about him is that they are some kind of Otherworlder, igorant of the realities of the Summoner's pilgrimage, and that Yuna loves him all the same. She requested they not tell him the truth; they respect that request. Given how difficult it can be to discuss on top of their lack of common ground for general conversation, it hasn't been hard. So they don't really know him beyond moments like these, where he bellows his rage at Seymour and then cuts his arm in twain.
But they can read people to a certain extent, and this young man is easier than most: that was absolutely an accident. He, in his muted horror, had never intended to do such damage. That tempers Belize's temper some, but--there is much more going on, and suddenly Belize has no more attention for him.
Lulu tells them that she doubts Seymour will stay his hand at this point. 'It is far too late for such niceties!' Seymour snarls, proving and underscoring Lulu's point. And Yuna empies her slim body, then stands tall and counter-Summons.
Perhaps Seymour believes it's too late. But Belize, more than most, has a keen understanding of what is and isn't too late, and they shake their head violently. Even as the two majestic and terrifying Aeons clash, they have no eyes for the battle. Instead, they fling aside their bow, letting it clatter along the subzero flagstones, and rush in Seymour's direction. They won't make it that far; the intense flow of power from Anima, the rip of their chains along the ground, will keep them at a distance. Just as everyone is kept at a distance from Seymour Guado, as it were.
"This is no TIME to fight!" they beg, desperation and genuine fear for his well-being in their voice. "You've been critically injured! If you leave that arm alone, you will bleed to death! Is that what you want?! To die without ever ending Spira's painful cycle?!" They reach out to him over the chains, frozen so cold that they burn to the touch, keeping them from simply struggling over. "PLEASE, Seymour!! You must live! And if you are to live, you *MUST STOP*!!"
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
That look. Lulu would know Yuna's feelings. But could she live with that knowledge, if she lived, and Yuna didn't? It's hard to say. But it is a different feeling, that she has, as she sees what happens. As Yuna answers... As Yuna shows her resolve. And she sees--
...That Aeon. The Aeon that is like the one she saw so long ago, but so, so impossibly different. Yuna is part of it, and Lulu's lips part, as she watches her, and it is not because of the pure elemental power within her. ...No...
Lulu watches in silence, for a moment. She stares, and there is raw emotion in her eyes for a brief moment. Only after Anima screams does Lulu's spell break, and she shakes her head. "No!" she calls--but she is nearly done. Seymour screams, again, but it is different--
...And Belize--Belize, tries, as the Aeons battle. Lulu can only trust Yuna, and the Aeon made of her heart. She cannot defeat such a thing herself. ...And the way Yuna looks now...
Lulu does not speak of it. "...Yuna," she says. "...The two of you... can do this."
And she looks to Belize again, and her expression is hard to read. ...There is nothing she can say.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
A chill crawls down Yuna's spine, spiderlike, when Seymour looks at her like that. When he says the thing he does. She is used to being categorized. Spira calls her 'savior'. Yevon calls her 'her father's daughter', mother determinedly forgotten. An hour ago, Trommel reduced her identity to 'his Master's bride'.
But never before has she been reduced to her power. To a THING. To something someone else must POSSESS.
She shivers, and it has nothing at all to do with Shiva's cold. But she does not blanch or hide or turn away. No more embarrassment, let alone the mortification she experienced, that day he asked her to marry him, from his attention, from his boldness, from his desire.
No. No more apologies for the way his behavior discomforts her.
When someone shows you who they are, believe him.
She stands tall and stares straight back at him, this man who would have taken her -- as more tool than bride. She SEES him, almost seems to look straight through him. It's reflected in her eyes, in turn; shock and a very real awe at his anger -- not childish, hot, or melancholy, but a darkness well beyond anything she's ever experienced before, even in a lifetime of bearing other peoples' feelings. She comprendeth it not.
But she wants to. For Spira's sake. For his father's. For his, too. Sorrow hasn't left her yet. It pierces her to the quick, that she tried so hard and things have turned out so badly -- that she failed him, failed everyone.
Her distraction comes at Shiva's direct expense; it is only when those terrible chains sear her, through the aeon's flesh, that her gaze snaps away from her counterpart on the opposite side of the battlefield, and onto the battle itself.
She avoided several, but there were too many... and she's been cornered.
It is Anima's screams, not Shiva's, that fill the air with sound, but both spirits fill her with pain (and sorrow, and anger; only one aeon offers disappointment, but she knows not what it means). Shiva endures silently, as she is strung up, pummeled, and finally exploded out of their grasp.
It's snowing again. Flakes of Shiva that touch the unaltered floor of Macalania Temple stick immediately. Flakes that touch Anima and her darkness melt instead. Some of them dissociate entirely, into pyreflies, whose radiance mingles freely with that of the ice.
But the aeon, though much reduced, is unbroken. She flies backwards, landing hard -- but not as hard as she could have, barely -- not far from her summoner.
Yuna offers her a hand up -- though all her fingers barely wrap around the giantess' pointer finger. They share a long look, and what passes between them is not something that can be shared outside that bond.
And then, together, their heads both swivel to regard Belize, as she offers Seymour a final chance to stop.
There's a question in Shiva's eyes, and Yuna answers it with a little nod. The aeon takes a defensive stance, light on her feet, one fist bisecting her face, between Yuna and Anima, but otherwise does not attack.
But Yuna dares not allow herself another distraction; she does not look away again. Still, she answers Lulu, her voice chiming across the huge chamber with soft surety.
"I know."
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"I will bind it," Seymour snaps, heatedly, "when this is through!"
Perhaps is beyond reason. Perhaps he was always beyond reason -- and there is a cloud of pain and anger in his eyes. Controlling Anima is hard; the chained Aeon makes demands of her Summoner, and especially Seymour as her Summon. That he cannot give into those demands makes her summoning all the harder.
"This is not a time to hold back! This is--it is all or nothing, Belize! Surely, surely you must see that!"
The darkness that Yuna sees never leaves. His words may be impassioned, but there is still the same consuming darkness. It is clear, in this moment, what Jyscal Guado warned the world of. The way that Seymour lurches forward, maimed. The way he looks at a creature as grand and terrible as Anima, that he knows she truly is, and commands her anyways.
It is a brutal, unceasing control towards one end -- and even if ends justified the means, that end is terrible.
"ANIMA!" he screams. "Relent not!"
She slams into the ground. Darkness fades; the room comes back to one of blues and greens, of frost and stone. She screams again, and the chains rattle and shake. And, then, there is a surge of utter darkness into Shiva's heart. A pinprick, that billows and blossoms out.
That tries to sever her life's threads--
But one cannot sever what is not there.
GS: Seymour Guado has attacked Yuna with Death! GS: CRITICAL! Yuna completely evades a hit from Seymour Guado's Death!
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
So much happens so quickly. Rikku puts both her hands over her mouth as Tidus maims Seymour's hand. It's not exactly that she feels sorry for the guy... it's more that she feels sorry it's gone this far. Rikku knows what can happen every time she throws a grenade, and yet she still does so cheerfully. What is it like for Tidus cutting off his fingers? What is it like for Yuna seeing it?
And then Anima arises, and hope becomes a terrible wrenching in her throat. Her voice faintly rasping, as she remembers what that thing did to the Fiends of Luca, "No no... no - we've got to get out of here-!"
Tidus is the first victim of Pain. And Rikku is cut off speechless. Retreat is so much harder. Living is so much harder. "I'm scared Yunie." She admits, hand in hand with her cousin as the two rose. Even as she tells her not to worry.
Such a statement as don't worry shouldn't take the edge off the situation. Yet... it does. A little. Perhaps it's because she has fayth in Yuna.
"Alright." She finally finds the courage - the hope - the faith to say those words. Though the next come easier. "I trust you." And she takes a step back, behind Yuna. Entrusting Yuna as the role of protector to her own Guardian. It's a paradox. It's the best kind of paradox. Rikku protects her Summoner. Yuna protects her Cousin.
"Okay. I've got this." Her eyes linger on Yuna for one moment longer, like she wants to say something, just in case.
There is no just in case. Yuna asked her to trust her. And so she will.
She wills herself to refuse to believe in that reality where she cannot trust in Yuna. And she suddenly darts across the room to Tidus, reaching into her pouch and applying a down feather to him from one of their salvage runs into the center of his chest. A certain heat spreading throughout him as the feather consumes him. And she dumps a potion down his throat for good measure.
"Sorry no time to let you nurse this drink. You back with us?" She then corrects quickly, nervously, "Don't get up yet. Just... take it easy for a second. Catch your breath." She tries to smile his way, "Thought you were a goner there. So - don't be. You've got something she needs." And then correcting herself yet again, sounding more abstracted, "Something I think all of us need really."
She doesn't clarify that to the newly revived Star Player of the Zanarkand Abes.
And it's in that moment that she catches her first glimpse of Yuna's new Aeon. Resplendant - shining like facets of a diamond. As brilliant as Yuna herself in Rikku's eyes.
"Besides..." She says with a note of awe. "You'll want to see this."
And then Rikku says little else for a while, as she watches Anima duel with Shiva. Watching Anima's power crash down, and Belize tell Seymour to relent... and... and...
Seymour do anything but...
There's this soft shake of her head like Rikku realizes that she's been entranced before shouting out, "He's going to be okay Yunie!" It's the best she can do for her, to let her know he's going to be fine, to give her that reassurance so she can focus. "You've got this! Just don't give him any ground!"
Warily she steals a glance at Belize though, just in case... well... right now... they could be a wildcard.
<Pose Tracker> Belize has posed.
Once Belize had realized that Seymour was fighting for real, that he has every intention of slaying Yuna and her Guardians, they simply couldn't abide by this battle any longer. They're not sure what they thought the meaning of the battle was before, but--after all, they're very good at making incorrect assumptions of things that aren't made explicitly clear. That's a lesson they haven't learned so far, and won't learn tonight. For the time being, Seymour instead does them a service by making it clear that he won't stop until this battle is over.
Belize doesn't need to read the room to understand that if he fights to the bitter end, he *will* die. That if they do nothing but plead, he *will* die.
They grit their teeth. Rikku and Lulu both look their way, one wary, the other stony, but Belize acknowledges neither one; their eyes are for the Maester only. Even Yuna, holding Shiva back this time with her will in the face of Belize's pleas, won't enter into their consciousness until later, after they've had a time to calm down and think things through. Right now, they only see Anima writhing, shooting out her pain in the most literal way possible, her chains jangling and tearing across the frozen floors. As that pinprick darkness attempts to overtake Shiva, as the others' eyes are otherwise on the Aeon battle, they make their decision.
They climb the chains.
Immediately, they're forced to grip hold as the chains will not be easily held, and immediately the skin tears from their hands as they tumble over. They shriek in pain, voice watery despite all the ice, but still attempt to rise and stumble forward. The chains whip around, and this time *crack* into them, hurtling them across the room to smash into the wall somewhere to Seymour's rear.
On the one hand, it got them much closer to their destination.
On the other, that CRRACKK was one people usually don't survive.
Yet. Somehow. They do. With their hair in disarray and tumbling out of their braid, they twitch and stir. With torn and raw hands, they scrabble up to their hands and knees. With tears freezing to their cheeks as soon as they shed them, they crawl in shuffling determination towards their Maester--their savior--their friend.
Pyreflies dance up through the frozen air.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed. <SoundTracker> Apres Moi - Regina Spektor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MlSNck2oP8
I must go on standing
You can't break that which isn't yours
Shiva is badly wounded. There are numerous weaknesses to her frosty frame that Anima exposed or outright created. And though this latest invocation of darkness cannot execute something that is not truly alive, not in the way that it must be to take effect, it does reach her heart; it does taint her veins, which come out the other side of the ordeal a dark, flushed violet, stark against her icy 'skin'.
It would be so easy to withdraw -- to dissolve flesh into pyreflies, to return fayth to summoner's soul. It would be so easy for Yuna to dismiss her -- for her own protection. Her aeons are her friends, and it's unbearable to see them hurt this way.
But she doesn't... and she doesn't.
They both want to stay.
I must go on standing
I'm not my own, it's not my choice
And they both have to LEAVE. Ifrit's temple is sealed, Dona nowhere to be found, and Belize-- Belize--!!!
'I cannot perform the Sending,' they said apologetically, that day, without explaining why, and she didn't push.
The revelation rocks her... and their determination to reach Seymour, rewarded with such suffering, brings tears to her eyes, which immediately freeze to diamonds on her cheeks...
...but it doesn't stop her.
It leaves Yuna the only active summoner she knows of who could still complete a pilgrimage, receive the Final Aeon, and defeat Sin.
Sometimes, the only way out is through.
Yuna is accustomed to the terrible burden of responsibility to Spira. And that of her choice to go to Zanarkand -- it is a burden, carried less by her and more by those who love her. She doesn't look at them, but she feels them, all around her, watching. Some of her Guardians are fearful, some stoic. All of them believe in her.
She made them a promise, too.
So, she assumes one more burden, on top of all the rest.
No words pass between aeon and summoner. They don't have to.
Be afraid of the lame, they'll inherit your legs
Be afraid of the old, they'll inherit your souls
Shiva puts a finger to her lips, then spins, tracing a swirl of rime through the air that expands, tremendously, into an initial foundation of ice, which encrusts Anima's base with the promise of more to come.
The power at her fingertip lingers and expands -- intensifies.
It turns out Macalania Temple can STILL GET EVEN COLDER! so everyone gets to enjoy that, too. But, actually, after an initial and precipitous thermal drop, it starts to warm back up a little, because Shiva is DRAWING ALL THE COLD INTO HERSELF, like a charging cannon.
And she starts to leak, just a little. Energy can't be moved or transmuted without some being lost, a black magic lesson that Yuna, too, has internalized by osmosis in Lulu's company. She knows what she's seeing, when the spikes at the tips of Shiva's locks shine with white radiance. When the very air around her aeon freezes, not into a plate, but into a perfectly clear orb, the stop of molecules so sudden and complete that they remain perfectly well-arranged, not obfuscating at all.
Most of all, light gathers above Shiva's upstretched hand.
Seymour wanted this power, demanded it.
Let it not be said that Shiva and Yuna fail to deliver.
Be afraid of the cold, they'll inherit your blood
Shiva's palm thrusts forward, reforming this immense, redirected cold into a blast that crystallizes into ice whenever it impacts something else. Something else, of course, being Anima.
Yuna's eyes widen hugely within her pale face as she witnesses it -- how MUCH of it there is. THEY'RE doing that. SHE'S doing that. This voyage of self-discovery into her own potential for sheer destruction is not an entirely joyful one, though breathless wonder and appreciation for the aeon saving all their lives is certainly a facet of her heart, in the moment. This, too, will be another responsibility.
That entire half of the room vanishes beneath layer after layer of glacier, which rises higher and higher, up to Anima's talisman of a beautiful woman, then even higher still. It forms intricate spikes and colors and shadows, thousands of years of winters expelled in a single, billowing breath.
Shiva looks upon what she has wrought dispassionately...
...and snaps her fingers.
Apres moi le deluge, after me comes the flood
The whole world shatters.
Everything disappears within a cloud of diamond dust.
GS: Yuna has activated a Force Action! GS: Yuna spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Yuna has attacked Seymour Guado with Diamond Dust! GS: Yuna has gained 2 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"Belize, what are you--"
Seymour is distracted from his wrath for only a moment. He sees the way that they grab onto the chain. Onto chains that burn like iron against something from the feywild; chains that writhe, uncontrollable in that they barely control an Aeon that refuses to be bound. He sees them fly.
He sees them hit, and he sucks a breath in. He opens his mouth for a moment, inhaling -- and it's through cold, chattering teeth that he exhales. Mist hangs before his mouth. Why are there pyreflies in the air?
How did they survive it?
It doesn't matter. Nothing matters -- and Seymour barks out a kaugh, as he turns towards Yuna. He looks at her -- at all of her Guardians -- with eyes widened and crazed. He holds a hand out, and it trembles with something.
"Strike her down, Anima! End this! End--" But he quiets, as he sees and understands."No... no--"
Anima did not lay Shiva low. The battered Aeon rocks, at Seymour's side. He stands there too -- unaware of how Belize crawls towards him, or perhaps not appreciating it. Light gathers, in Shiva's hand. He stares at it; he feels the tips of his hair grow heavy with frost. Sees it form, in fractals, on the floor. The cold blasts into Anima, first. Ice races up her body; it freezes over her, and she screams. Again. And again.
AND AGAIN.
Her body slams against the chains. One breaks free -- and then freezes as a wicked, recurved whip in midair. Ice forms over it. Seymour steps back, as if in fear -- not, not as if. His toes come down then freeze to the floor. Ice shoots over his body, capturing his face in that moment. In the space between terror, exultation, and suffocation.
The ice forms a coat of frost over the floor anew. It reaches just to Belize's fingertips. And then, with a snap, it becomes dust.
Anima explodes as the ice shatters. Her entire, towering form -- chain and appendages almost torn free, as if to shield Seymour in his final moments -- burst into so many pyreflies. For Seymour, it is sharp and brief -- a dozen lacerations, across his chest and limbs. Then he stumbles, hacking once. Bloody spittle comes from his lips. Then, he falls -- collapsing back onto the floor in the center of the temple. The circular indentation is perfect about him. His unmaimed hand falls to the side.
"Yuna..." he rasps. Then his head shifts. He sees Belize. "...even in the end, you... do not pity me."
His pale eyes look into theirs. They continue to, after he ceases.
GS: CRITICAL! Seymour Guado guards a hit from Yuna's Diamond Dust for 651 hit points! GS: Seymour Guado has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
Her battle done, Shiva follows Anima out, vanishing into pyreflies, though her presence lingers on, within Yuna and surrounding them all, as surely as do the temple walls.
Uncharacteristically failing to thank and farewell her aeon, Yuna breaks into a stumbling run through the pyrefly cloud, rushing to Seymour's side even as he's falling backwards. She sinks to her knees beside him.
Much as Anima tried to cast Death upon an aeon, only to find that there was nowhere for that power to go, now Yuna's Life finds no purchase. Magic moves within her, uselessly. She senses the spell cannot be cast. No light show accompanies this revelation; it is silent and personal.
Her hand lowers, then, from above his chest, to touch his face -- to close his eyes.
Shiva shattered the tears that had frozen on her cheek for Belize, but she has more where that came from, and weeps openly. They sprinkle Seymour's chest in a posthumous baptism, liquid diamonds instead of crystalline. But like her aeon before her, the summoner makes no sound, other than the occasional pained intake of breath.
Yuna grieves in silence, and denies Seymour even his final wish.
Obviously she pities him a great deal.
Tidus looks on uncomfortably, having regained his feet. After a moment of hesitation, he focuses in on the mangled hand. He owes Seymour that much.
Kimahri, the tips of his fur coated in lingering frost, which has transformed him from a blue Ronso into a white Ronso, pads over to stand behind Yuna, a pillar of quiet support.
Auron grimly moves to stand by the door. It's hard to see his expression beneath specs and collar, but someone who tried very hard might catch a hint of apprehension, like a marathon runner bracing himself for the starting line. "Yuna," he orders, in a low, urgent voice designed to REMIND everyone that the temple is under ATTACK, "Send him."
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
Slowly, Biggs comes to. The big Guado looks up from where he fell on the floor. He is cold. He thinks, at first, it must be a wound; then he sees a patch of frost across his gauntlet, and he shakes it free. Weakly. His dark eyes turn, moving over the room, until he sees Yuna.
Crying, he thinks. It's a dim thought -- realized through a fog of shock and pain, of bloodloss rendering his thoughts less clear. The clarity comes when he sees who she cries over. A breath comes, then, sharp and hitched.
"No..."
Wedge, conversely, had already seen. He lay against the wall, back against it and slumped. His eyes are open -- but his wounds are enough that efforts to rise, as Aeons battled, weren't enough. He laid there and he watched, an observer to the end of the battle. But not by choice.
His lips are chapped. Cracked. A little orange blood runs down them. His eyes look up, at Tidus's back.
He stares at him, and he finds he can still hate a human. Good, Wedge thinks.
<Pose Tracker> Belize has posed.
If only there had been a little more time. If only they'd acted sooner. If only Yuna's Shiva weren't so powerful. If only they hadn't been thrown off the chains and into the wall. If only, if only, if only. Belize, once again, is left adrift on a sea of regrets. Diamond Dust envelopes Anima, sending pyreflies through the room in her wake. Perhaps some might not notice if a few more pyreflies mix in with them; perhaps they've already noticed. The ice then slashes through Seymour and cricks and crackles along the ground, just before their raw fingers--and then poofs into icy dust.
They stare, numb and disbelieving in the arctic cold, as Seymour collapses. Though his final words are for Yuna, he looks into their eyes as he dies.
Their breath hitches. Then, with nothing more to lose, they kick themself off and forward, sliding along the ice until they come to a stop next to his body. To the chunk of meat that was once Seymour Guado.
Yuna is there as well. To Belize, it seems as though she simply materalized over, teleporting through the snowfall to be at Seymour's side. They stare up at her, and then down at Seymour. Their tears, too, fall.
Then their features screw up, and they double over next to Seymour's body and sob, broken and unrelenting.
They don't protest or resist when Auron commands Yuna to Send him--even though Sending him would Send them as well. Let it be. This is what they deserve.
<Pose Tracker> Lulu has posed.
Lulu looks with shock at Belize's action--the action almost of a Guardian... and then of something else, entirely. She watches--she watches them, and she watches Seymour stare back. But this attack comes...
She feels the cold; Lulu resists the urge to hold onto any of it. She resists much. The cold that must be here is necessary. The heat, it is necessary.
....It is necessary here, too. Lulu can only guess, of course. But the way her eyes widen...
Just as she steps back, accepting cover; she is too tired to contribute magic, but it is not necessary. No, Shiva's power...
It is the purest expression of ice, perhaps, that Lulu has ever known, intensified even above the presence of Macalania's Fayth herself. But Seymour...
He stumbles. He moves down. And in that instance--Lulu sees. She sees, what Yuna has taken on.
...She sees the strength that Yuna has gained. And for just a moment, she can only stare at the other woman, as she approaches Seymour suddenly, running with a stumble. ...And it doesn't work. Her grief comes...
...And Lulu, after Kimahri, begins to force herself up to step towards Yuna as well. Auron mentions it--
"It must be done," she agrees. "It's time."
But she sounds almost un-present, in a strange way, or present only to and with Yuna now.
...She can look at no one else.
<Pose Tracker> Rikku has posed.
Rikku's eyes remain fastened upon Belize as they makes their trek to the chains. Rikku's devotion to Yuna in this moment enough that she grasps a Bomb Core within her hand, and makes ready to throw it.
And then Belize begins to climb the chains - and Rikku blanches as she sees their skin tear. Hears their shriek, watches them smash into the wall. Rikku seems stunned by this act for the space of one second - two seconds - three. Then she shudders in a breath. "Oh Belize..." The two never got along for obvious reasons. A Summoner. And an Al Bhed. They knew - and Rikku knows they knew.
And yet she feels not disdain in this moment. She feels... sick.
It is why she participated in Cid's plan. To protect Summoners... sometimes even from themselves.
"I'm sorry." She whispers even knowing that they would never accept her apology for such a thing. Maybe for anything at all. Yet even beyond the sickness, even beyond the hatred of Seymour - she can still respect their devotion to someone... someone you'd...
And then power expands from Shiva's fingertip. And Rikku finds herself hugging her shoulders from the freezing chill - before she then feels eerily warm. She remembers that usually being considered a bad sign.
It is not. Not for her at least.
Anima snaps - and cracks. And shatters. And Seymour falls.
Rikku finds it harder to say 'I'm sorry.' for him, even silently. Perhaps later, when she's by herself.
Rikku begins her slow walk before finally kneeling down on the ground near Yuna, though there's a certain threshold she doesn't cross. Like, she doesn't deserve to go any further right now, and as the others declare that she needs to send them. That it's time. Rikku finds herself flinching and saying. "Yunie..." It's just a quiet word for a moment, sounding forlorn, and her next statement is a quiet complaint. "Why can't she ever... just have a minute?"
It's not even a complaint to Auron - or Lulu.
It's like it's a complaint given to Spira itself - for never allowing Yuna to slow down... and have time for things such as grief.
<Pose Tracker> Gon Guado has posed.
<poem> The turbulence, the commotion. It never ceases. The moment of reflection upon the conclusion of this unavoidable battle is met with but another upheaval, like a door slamming open. It creaks, timidly, as though what lies beyond is too horrified to think about what's beyond.
The double doors part open only enough for five figures - five of the Guado people.
"L-Lord Seymour!" Tromell, arms wide, posture guarded, takes wide but measured steps down the staircase as his gaze locks upon the Maester laid upon the ground. To either side are two other Guado each. One, to Tromell's left, is a younger attendant who follows suit in silence, mournfulness in his eyes.
To Tromell's right, lagging behind ever-so-slightly, is Gon, clasping something between his hands - Ida's gift to Seymour - even at a time where such an act and goal no longer hold meaning. He sets it down on the nearby low railing, as if this were the only one thing to go right today no matter its ultimate pointlessness.
Behind both, two Guado Guardians - their footsoldiers - already battered from any number of things that have gone wrong here today.
"What happened here?" Tromell asks, no more composed than when he first appeared - as if only now coming to comprehend that the worst has come to pass. His pace remains measured as those accompanying him flare out past Yuna and her Guardians, past anyone else - even past the wounded Biggs and Wedge.
Tromell kneels behind Seymour's head. Two of them, the younger attendant and Gon, take to the fallen Maester's side, opposite of where Belize weeps. Gon is among the most proficient sorcerous healers of his own kind, if there is any chance Seymour is not yet within death's embrace... the air grows warm near Seymour in the beginnings of a Curaga.
The third Guado of the three around Seymour looks to Gon, knowing he is their best chance, as he seems heedless of even the sobbing human Summoner. His features betray his annoyance as the White aspects of Fire start to build under the strange disciplines of Spira's sorcery...
...but the spell does not complete, for he knows it will do no good. Gon's composure erodes, eyes closing, as he pulls his hand back to state what is already known as truth. "Maester Seymour is dead."
Tromell rises, the reclamation of his full height moving in tandem with his mounting horror. "Y-youuu did this...?" He looks to the gathered, as those attending him remain knelt before the fallen. He can see the looks in their eyes. The purpose. The resolve. They aren't done with Seymour yet, even if he did not hear Auron's very command as it was first issued.
"No!!" Tromell raises his right hand feebly. "Stop!" His voice finds fire. Indignation, as if he did have strength to make them cease. "Stay away from him, traitors!"
No further command need be given, as both Gon and the other Guado move hoist Seymour up by their arms, as if more important than even seeing to the well-being of those two who still live (or addressing the Unsent in the room). They both share the burden in carrying him - to remove the prospect of seeing one so consumed by their darkness Sent.
Tromell follows from behind, as the remaining two Guardians move to see Biggs and Wedge retrieved and assisted and to further put bodies between Yuna's entourage and the late Maester. Tromell destroyed the evidence of Seymour's treachery within his very hand - and by his hand and decree, so, too, will the affairs of the Guado remain their own to deal with.
<Pose Tracker> Yuna has posed.
They say pain shared is pain halved, but Belize's enters Yuna's heart at a time when she can't take it -- can't take anymore. Her own sobs begin to wrench, a little more loudly.
It is only Auron's instruction that makes her look up -- but when she does, she is rewarded by the faces of everyone she saved.
And other survivors. There's nothing to say to Biggs and Wedge that will make this right. In the end, she bows. Perhaps, after the Sending, she might have tended their wounds.
But instead...
She looks over, jarred by the Guado's bursting into the chamber. They shouldn't be here. Like, chain of murders aside, this FLOUTS Yevon law, some of their most sacred traditions. Just like Tidus!
Apparently the Guado are not as devout adopters of Yevon as they sometimes pretend.
But that isn't what's important right now.
"Wait a minute!" yelps Tidus. "It's not our fault at all -- Seymour struck first! He's the bad guy!"
It falls on deaf ears, and soon enough they're alone again, together. Biggs, Wedge, even Belize left with them.
"What... what have I done?" Wakka asks, looking at his palms despondently, as though they're the ones dripping with blood.
"Traitors?" Yuna murmurs, sinking back down to her knees.
"We're finished," Wakka moans.
Tidus isn't giving up just yet, like a dog with a bone, only his bone is the truth. "Now hold on just a minute! Seymour's the bad guy, right? We'll just explain to everyone what happened!"
Auron shakes his head, knowing well the true value of truth in Spira. "It won't be that easy. Let's get out of here."
They file out of the antechamber and into the Cloister of Trials proper, but no sooner have they set foot upon the ice bridge leading back out to the Great Hall--
--CRACK!--
--Macalania Temple breaks open, beneath a battle of Gears.
And everyone falls -- down -- down -- down --
-- into the lake --
-- and what lies beneath it.