2020-10-06: The Trial
- Cutscene: The Trial
- Cast: Yuna, Seymour Guado, Auron, Mika, Kinoc, Kelk Ronso
- Where: The Palace of St. Bevelle
- Date: 10/06/2020
- Summary: The High Court of Yevon is now in session. Co-written by Seymour and Yuna's players.
OOC Note: All prisoners of Yevon witness the trial.
The High Court of Yevon, in keeping with the aesthetic of the Palace of St. Bevelle, is a vast, open space, with a high ceiling above, lost to darkness, and an endless depth below, lost to mist.
There are, fundamentally, three floors. Looking down upon everyone are the balconies where the Maesters stand; there are three. Two platforms curl along the walls to either side of the main, largest one, which is the centerpiece of the room, and backed by a gigantic Yevon symbology, one which combines several of its runes to powerful effect.
Currently, Maester Seymour Guado stands alone on the left balcony, looking sublimely unconcerned by these proceedings. He has changed out of his wedding robes and is back to combining Guado and Yevonite fashion, with his signature Hot Youth Pastor charm point: a bare, beautifully tattooed chest. On the other side, short, soft-featured Maester Wen Kinoc is no less at his ease, reclining in a chair on the right balcony; what little light there is seems to collect on his bald pate. And at the center, Maester Kelk Ronso conducts the trial, while Grand Maester Yo Mika sits behind and above him, beneath the Yevonite seal, both implicitly and explicitly the highest authority of all.
Kelk and Mika make an interesting pair, right next to each other like that. They're both in their impressively elaborate Yevonite robes, which are no less suitable for this trial as for any other act of Spira's governance, but the resemblance ends there. Mika of course is an immensely frail-looking old man, as wizened as he is wise; spotted and wrinkled, with a long, thin white beard; at this point in his life, he most strongly resembles origami wrought from rice paper and looks about as sturdy. It's even in his voice. Kelk Ronso, however, is a giant among his kind in more than one way -- the spiritual and functional leader of the Ronso, in the same manner that Seymour leads the Guado. His fur is mostly a steel gray, except where age has whitened it -- along his shoulders, and his long, long mane. He exudes strength BECAUSE of his age rather than despite it.
Also, for people who've mostly gotten their take on Ronso from hanging out with Kimahri, Kelk is notable for being the rule, rather than the exception; he has a downright majestic ebon horn protruding from the middle of his forehead. It is surprisingly not ridiculous. Nothing about him is, in fact -- he is an immensely formal and mature person, and when he opens his mouth, his voice has a sophisticated command of the language, as well as a profound command of everything and everyone else.
"The High Court of Yevon is now in session," he booms. "The sacred offices of this court seek nothing but absolute truth, in Yevon's name. To those on trial: Believe in Yevon, and speak only the truth."
'Those on trial' are being held on the other two levels. At the lowest, a Silence-warded holding pen has been set up for the bulk of the prisoners -- they can hear the trial, and they can hear one another, but it seems they are unable to interrupt, as though they're behind a false mirror, only for sound. It is Sleep-warded as well; any act of aggression will trigger it. And, of course, on the other side of the single exit is an appallingly heavy guard.
In between the Maesters above and the prisoners below is one more platform, different than the others, because it is mobile, hovering; both witness and defendant's box, it rises out of the mist in the perfect silence of excessively high technology. It contains Yuna, all by herself.
She too has been changed back into her summoner's raiment, which is the only good sign; they could have denied her even that symbol of her status. But a single glance at her frame is enough to gain a sense of troubling, even terrible, contradiction. She carries herself with a determined dignity, but there are a thousand tiny signs of fatigue and, perhaps, much worse, that oppose this posture and that she therefore must defy; her smallest motion contains the magnitude of hesitation that a body has when moving after it has been very badly used. In light of this her unblemished, perfectly pale complexion, which almost glows, moonlike in the mists, is a deliberate insult, a provocation to those who love her. How much healing magic has been poured into her by her captors? What price did she pay, now disguised?
The self-composed lift of her chin says everything. She stands before the Maesters unbroken, despite their inquisitors' better efforts.
"Summoner Yuna," Maester Kelk intones gravely. "You have sworn to protect the people of Yevon, true?"
"Yes," Yuna agrees. Her answer contains a fierceness wholly at odds with its softness and brevity.
Kelk's eyes narrow, the tip of his tail flicks with frustration, genuine disappointment. "Then, consider: You have inflicted dire injury upon Maester Seymour Guado... conspired with the Al Bhed and heretical Otherworlders and joined in their insurrection. These are traitorous and unforgivable crimes that disturb the order of Yevon."
Seymour is expressionless, while Kinoc has the audacity to grin, and Mika leans forward, intent. For her part, Yuna just looks sad, in a quiet, understated way. Taking responsibility for these accusations bows her head at last; on some level, at least, it seems that she accepts them as her own.
"Tell this court what possessed you to participate in such violence," Kelk commands.
Yuna's hands make fists in her skirt. She takes a deep breath, then raises her head once more and locks eyes with her questioner. And her voice rings out -- loudly, clearly, pealing like a bell that cuts straight through the whisper-hungry acoustics of this space. "Your Grace... the real traitor is Maester Seymour!" Her speech is characteristically earnest, and a little bit halting, as she chooses her words with her typical care. In combination, this imbues them with an unmistakable honesty, as well as a poignancy of hurt. She takes no pleasure in saying any of this, that much is obvious. "He /killed/ his father, Jyscal, with his own hands!"
Maester Kelk flinches back, which in a body his size, makes for a dramatic gesture. "What is this?" he scoffs, taking this claim for what it is: outlandish. First he looks to the Grand Maester for guidance, but then his attention is drawn to the side by Seymour.
"Hmm?" the Guado prompts mildly, with the same tone that one might discuss the latest news of the Blitzball season. "Hadn't you heard?"
Horror replaces some of the Ronso's skepticism. Kelk and Jyscal were contemporaries. Perhaps they were even friends.
Yuna presses her case softly but urgently, closing her eyes at the memory. "Not only that... but on Gaia, Seymour performed a murderous ritual to create a second Sin, called the Clysmian of Desperation! If not for the brave people who stand behind me, my allies and," her voice softens further as she glances over her shoulder, down at them, very briefly, "Friends, Sin's suffering and misery would have spread to an entirely new world."
"Poppycock!" interjects the Grand Maester for the first time. He sounds genuinely offended. "'Create' a Sin... such a thing is impossible. And if he'd succeeded... your tales of defeating it, are even MORE impossible!"
"It was very young," Yuna tries to explain, raising her voice. "If we hadn't acted quickly, I do not think it would have been possible to contain without the Final Summoning -- and even so, we were barely able to defeat it at all--"
"ENOUGH," interrupts Kelk, drowning her out effortlessly, his basso an epic, intrinsic amplifier. "We have no way of knowing if you even traveled to Gaia. This whole story is impossible to verify. The High Court is a place of truth, not fairy tales."
Seymour folds his arms, and cannot quite resist joining Kinoc in smirking down at her. He holds his peace. It is quite obvious that he need say nothing in his own defense.
Frustration and disappointment war for the territory of Yuna's face -- she had obviously truly hoped to reach and move the Maesters with this news -- but in the end neither is the victor. A grim serenity rises in her instead. "Finally," she calls out firmly, "Maester Seymour is already dead! Grand Maester Mika... please, send Seymour now!"
This is a challenge levelled straight at the Grand Maester, not a plea with the expectation of success. But it cuts straight to the heart of things in Yevon. Kelk Ronso did not know of Seymour's crime. Who among the the Maesters know of the Unsent in their ranks?
"Send the Unsent to where they belong?" rasps the Grand Maester, getting up from his thronelike seat. He shuffles forward.
"Yes!" insists Yuna, implacable, though incapable of keeping a certain naive plaintiveness from her voice, also. She does not understand what she saw at the wedding. She does not understand how any of this is even possible. Even now she dares to hope that, perhaps, somehow, she MISunderstood.
Not so much. Mika chuckles, and the sound is EXTREMELY ominous. It will haunt Yuna's dreams for months. "Send the dead, hmmmmmm?"
First one, then a small handful, then a steady stream of pyreflies emerge from his body. They fill the air above the central platform with will-o-wisp ghostlight.
"You would have to Send me, too," he acknowledges openly, as unconcerned by displaying his true nature before the other Maesters as Seymour was.
Yuna's heart falters in her chest for the first time. It shows in her expression. Her jaw drops, and her eyes, which contained so much pain already, threaten to overflow.
Kelk's voice is patient; he replies almost gently. "Grand Maester Mika is a wise leader, Summoner Yuna." Alone among the maesters, he is the only one to use her name. "Even in death, he is invaluable to Spira."
Kinoc has waddled up to the railing of his platform to speak for the first time, and his voice -- his living voice -- possesses a nasal cynicism that is somehow simultaneously fanaticism. "Enlightened rule by the dead is preferable to the misguided failures of the living," he explains with the matter-of-factness of a human being who has wholly surrendered his destiny and is comfortable with the choice.
Seymour subtracts the cynicism to add a chillingly dreamy zealotry. "Life is but a passing dream," he remarks as though quoting some unknown testament, "But the death that follows is eternal."
Mika nods encouragingly at all this, then leans forward to address Yuna once more. "Men die," he agrees, certainty embossing his papery voice with iron. "Beasts die. Trees die. Even continents perish. Only the power of death truly commands in Spira. Resisting its power... is futile!"
Yuna stares between the four great leaders of Spira.
Her hands clench even more tightly.
"But what of Sin?" she demands, passion raising her voice to new heights. "I am a summoner, my lord, like my father before me! I am on a pilgrimage to stop the death that Sin brings! Are you," she falters, mastering her emotion -- she WILL not cry -- "Are you telling me that that, too, is futile?"
Her arms sweep wide, cream-sakura ombre following them. Her whole body defies what she hears, her back straighter than ever, her chin prouder, her voice both agonized and ferocious in its rejection of this twisted dogma. "Grand Maester Mika, I am /not/ alone! All the people who have opposed Sin... their battles, their sacrifices -- were they all in vain?"
Mika remains calm. There is a sense that, perhaps, he has had this conversation once or twice or a hundred times before in his long Unlife. "Not in vain," he answers, easily. But it is too much at ease with too awful a truth: "No matter how many summoners give their lives, Sin cannot be truly defeated. Sin's rebirth cannot be stopped. Yet," he raises a finger, "The courage of those who fight gives the people the hope they need to carry on." The upper limit on his own passion is starkly lowered by his condition, but he approaches it now.
"There is nothing futile in the life and death of a summoner," he tells Yuna. He tells them all.
Down below, Auron shakes his head slightly. He is both dry and dark, like Bikanel Desert at night. "Never futile... but never ending."
Apparently the Grand Maester has some unfair and arbitrary means of monitoring the prisoners' words after all, because he allows this comment to be heard and replies to Auron directly, bobbing his head excitedly. He is obviously delighted to be so clearly understood, in the manner of an ecclesiastical nerd -- or, perhaps, a prophet who often feels unheard, unregarded, despite the fact that he literally rules the world. "Indeed!" he chirps. "That is the essence of Yevon."
He gets no such highbrow philosophical engagement from Yuna. "/Lord Mika!/" she gasps, at pretty much the top of her lungs.
He tuts at her. "Yevon is embodied by eternal, unchanging continuity, summoner."
"No..." One of Yuna's hands is over her heart, now. The other is extended forward, reaching out for help that never came -- for support that will never come, from the authority she has served her entire life. "That can't be right!"
Mika loses patience and temper at once. Raising his arms, he calls his pyreflies back into himself, becoming louder, more fiery, more hideous in the very perfection of his false semblance of life. His voice cracks with an old man -- an old ghost's -- querulousness. "Those who question these truths -- they are traitors!" He slams a button on the dais.
"Lord Mika!" Yuna objects, even as her platform vanishes back into the mists below, and she is lost to sight, then sound.
The Sleep wards trigger next, and when everyone wakes up, they are back in their cells.
---
LATER, IN YEVON JAIL
"Come out," Maester Kinoc instructs, his voice a blunt instrument, though there are also plenty of other weapons present, just in case. "Your sentence has been decided."
"Sentence?" Auron smirks from within his hanging birdcage cell. "Don't you mean execution?"
Kinoc smirks back. For a moment their expressions are identical, even though their faces are completely opposite; one hardened by a lifetime of struggle, the other softened by a lifetime of avoiding struggle. "Really, now, what kind of person would execute a dear friend?"
"You would," Auron points out.
Kinoc waggles his eyebrows at him. "The Via Purifico -- the river of purification -- will mete out your sentence: death."
One at a time, the prisoners are led to a dank underground platform. It is not very different from walking the plank of a pirate ship, except that instead of being tossed into the ocean, they are pushed, bayonet-butt first, into a labyrinth of dark, fiend-filled tunnels, some flooded, some merely half-flooded. Its vastness cannot be overstated. It may in fact be larger, geographically speaking, than the entire city above it.
"Get going," the warrior-monk drawls. "Maybe you'll find the others floating down there somewhere."
Their gear is tossed after them, bobbing away with the current. Stay and argue, or leave and go get their stuff -- it isn't much of a choice.
But that too seems to be the true essence of Yevon.
There is no choice at all.
---
EVEN LATER, ELSEWHERE
Mika, Seymour and Kinoc are gathered in a private room of the Palace. Seymour looks at them, with a thoughtful expression -- one that hides the feelings within him. Anger; resentment, even. But, such things are easily hidden by Seymour Guado. He has always done so.
"How fares the Ronso maester?" inquires Mika.
Seymour is, perhaps, a little bit wry. His lips quirk into a smirk, and he keeps himself from showing too much beyond the sort of dismissiveness that comes easier to him ever since Macalania. "It seems my father's murder troubles him," he says in exquisite understatement.
Mika chuckles again. That chilling laugh of his at the trial, it seems he makes it often, when not in public. "Ever the Ronso," he opines. "Hard-headed, /hardly/ useful."
"However..." Seymour muses very carefully, not wanting to seem too invested. A calculation on his part. "The summoner Yuna, daughter to High Summoner Braska... /she/ may be of some use to us alive."
Mika makes an executioner's gesture with his hand, killing this idea as well as the person involved. An instant dismissal; one that comes easily for the Grand Maester, with so many years of power. "She has disturbed the order of Yevon," he says mercilessly. "She cannot be allowed to live."
"I understand," Seymour declares. There is no hesitation in his voice; he does a short bow. His eyebrow, though flickers when Kinoc speaks -- and sees through the ploy.
Kinoc rolls his eyes. "Let it go, Seymour. No one thrown into the Via Purifico has ever survived."
Mika pauses -- hesitates -- considers. "Yet there is always a small chance that they might," he observes. "Remember the Dragonmaster's friend? He escaped, somehow, before we could seize him. And we never found him in the city." The idea stirs in the Grand Maester's mind, before he nods decisively. "Place guards at the exit," he orders. "Kill any who emerge."
"Sir." Seymour bows again, even more floridly. "Leave that to me."
Mika is amused by this display. "First your father, now your bride?" It seems he has something of a sense of humor, as regards murder.
Seymour, however, is in perfect earnest. "Allow me to do this /because/ she is my bride," he insists. "And the Otherworlders with her... they were our allies, once."
"Wait," Kinoc interjects abruptly. "I will go, too."
Seymour mocks the living Maester with his eyes. "You do not trust me?"
Kinoc grew up with Auron. He knows well how rise to this sarcastic occasion. "Would you trust a man who murdered his father?" Then, he hesitates for a moment. "Besides. We've stored our... experiment down there. I'll take one of my finest, and we'll put a watch over it. I don't want the lot of them ruining the entire thing."
"Very well," Seymour says. He shrugs his shoulder. "Suit yourself, Kinoc. Though... there are many exits from Via Purifico. Few know where to look. Still--" He looks at Mika.
The Grand Maester tilts his head. "You have an idea? Someone to help us?"
"Yes," Seymour says. "The Trial Knight... they would be pleased, I think, to be of service."