6Chapter 2 – The Pitfalls of Magic
She's running a fever…
The hunter straightened, slipping his glove back on over gnarled knuckles. He'd suspected as much. The swollen, shaded circles lurking under her bloodshot eyes spoke of long and sleepless hours prior to their encounter; only the comparative neatness of her appearance convinced him that she wasn't a wanderer such as himself. The way she'd just warned him of a imminent, non-existent storm and then fainted at his feet was another indication of ill health.
He cast an esuna. As he had also suspected, the spell proved ineffective.
Her malady was one born of exhaustion, and severe emotional stress. Spells could only cure so much, after all.
Frowning, the hunter considered his next course of action. (Dealing with other humans always seemed to require so much thought. It was one reason he tended to avoid them…) Ever practical, while pondering what to do next, he rummaged through the Selphie Kinneas woman's belongings (the braille-code system of item compression, built into her clothing, was another indication of her likely familiarity with traversing the wilds); finding a brightly coloured thermal blanket, he proceeded to wrap her in its folds.
It was plain to him that she was in dire need of rest, and would soon require expert medical attention if her condition was allowed to worsen. Given that she was unconscious, this posed a dilemma to the hunter: namely, that he would be ill-advised to wake her up and ask for directions back to her settlement. And as he had no real concept of where he was – let alone the location of the nearest outpost of civilisation – he had no idea about where he could take her without the benefit of her directions. In addition, while the shivering woman had been incorrect about the incoming squall, the low-hanging clouds slowly approaching over the northwest horizon bespoke substantial falls of snow during the coming night, which was not that far off.
In short: she required shelter more substantial than a Tent could provide. And there was no such luxury to be had in this sparse forest, even should he be willing to waste his time dealing with the crafty, scavenging monsters which would be drawn to the carcasses of all those snow lions he'd butchered earlier.
His piercing gaze drifted speculatively south. A weathered mountain-range rose above the foliage in that direction, perhaps six kilometres distant. He dimly recalled a cave which might prove suitable for the purpose at hand. He would have to make haste, however, if he wished to get her to shelter before sundown.
Decision made, the hunter stepped over with knife in hand to the mutilated snow lion, sprawled on the ground at the edge of the clearing. Methodically stripping the carcass of its skin was the work of a couple of minutes; removing the lumps of fat and clotting blood was easily performed with a few scrapes and another cleansing mantra. It would no doubt come in handy later. Stowing away the thin fur in a compact roll, he decided against searching the bodies of the late lion's compatriots. He didn't have the time.
The petite woman was heavier than she looked. Draping her swaddled form over his shoulder, he paid no thought to this; he was done thinking for the moment. Gunblade held loosely in his right hand, the hunter stalked into the undergrowth once more.
Maybe there'll be some dragons up there, too… His lips twisted upward a fraction.
—ox-oxo-xo—
She ran through a twisted, barren tundra; lonely tufts of spindly grass blurred under her feet in her haste.
Selphie was searching frantically, trying to follow the faint trace of her quarry. From moment to moment, the identity of the one she was chasing changed and jumbled. Irvine. Squall. Irvine. Ellone. Irvine. Squall. Irvine… Swearing with frustration at the vagaries of her unco-operative mind, she ran on and on, ignoring as best she could the air's constant attempts to entangle her frantically pumping legs; hoping to get a glimpse of the one she was trying to find.
Between one step and the next, the landscape changed. Skidding to a halt, she stared out longingly across the snowy plain below her. Her fevered gaze caught a flash of movement below, disappearing into a mineshaft.
She gauged the distance. It wasn't that tall a cliff. She could jump it.
Selphie took a step back. Two. Froze, gaping up at the nightmarish vision suddenly facing her; its glowing golden orbs looking her in the eye, its massive wings blotting out the sun. An entity that even the passage of thirty years had failed to erase from her memories.
The Tonberry, watching from behind her eyes, moaned with fear…and awe.
—ox-oxo-xo—
Her eyes flying open, Selphie heaved herself upright. Panting, her heartbeat thundering in her ears, her eyes darted around her dimly lit surroundings. They were drawn like lodestones onto the only source of light.
She took a trembling breath, scrubbing sweat and tears with her hands. It's a campfire…just a campfire… I'm not in hell… The light of the dying fire's glowing coals flickered fitfully, reflecting weakly off rough granite walls. I'm in a cave…
Once she knew what she was looking at, she noticed a dim shape at the far end of the cavern, limned with a dim, pale light; that outline shook as if blown by a gust of wind – which it probably was. A glance upward revealed a complex, natural network of thin cracks near the highest point of the hollow; that was where the campfire's smoke was escaping.
"Whew…" She appeared to be safe for the moment. How she came to be here…was more than a little hazy.
It had all started with that stupid, stupid contest.
Trabia Garden might not boast the martial mindset of the other Gardens, but the sheer inhospitality of their homeland made for a grand tradition in the art of hunting. Indeed, most of Trabia's SeeD contracts called for the patrol of remote villages and hamlets – not to protect against bandits (not that there weren't bandits), but to headhunt dangerous wildlife. When she returned home not long after the defeat of Ultimecia, the newly minted SeeD Irvine Kinneas had joined her. And if anything, he enjoyed the hunt even more than most of the Garden's natives.
And so, when word reached Garden two weeks past of a nest of ruby dragons which had emptied the new town at the mouth of Trabia Canyon, Irvine had interceded with Selphie to make a great contest of the affair. The rules were simple: ten teams of three, each scouring the mountains of Trabia, for one week. And the team which collected the most (fresh!) dragon skulls at the end of that week would split 100,000 gil. And this added up to a lot of takers, making the competition a certain hit…provided nothing went wrong.
Selphie had not participated; she instead led the teams which had dealt with the actual ruby dragon nest which had prompted the whole thing. Irvine had organised the contest, and led a team to boot.
And one week later, nine teams had returned. The winning team was Instructor Narko's team, with a whopping 24 skulls (none of them belonging to ruby dragons, but still a herculean effort); seven of the teams had killed at least three dragons, thereby earning a SeeD Rank increase (or a 5,000 gil prize for the civilians and candidates). One team had returned after only a few days, claiming that they could find no dragons in that area; they were soundly laughed at.
And Instructor Irvine's team had disappeared.
Four days into the 'operation', in a casual call to his wife and headmistress, he'd complained that there were no high-level monsters at all in their area, let alone dragons. At least, no living ones. Someone or something had scoured the area over past weeks, tearing apart anything remotely worth hunting. The next day, he'd called again, claiming to have found the entrance to an abandoned mine. He'd led the team in.
When the search party went searching for them, they indeed found the mineshaft. They also found the fresh cave-in, barely two hundred metres in. But his colleagues – and his wife – did not give up hope. President Seagill had been kind enough to authorise the use of a deepground surveying pinnace, and the results indicated tunnels honeycombing the mountains for nearly thirty kilometres around that shaft – though its tracks remained dismally vague, useless for actual reconnaisance. Thus giving the searchers a massive area to search.
They were alright. They had to be. He had to be.
Another missing man's wife might have worried that he was dead, crushed under tonnes of rock in the initial cave-in. Not Selphie. If nothing else, Ellone had assured her that he was alive. She'd even been linked with him for an hour or two…yesterday? The day before? Whenever it was. But there were monsters down there, plenty of them, and powerful ones to boot. And his team hadn't found an exit.
And so she'd gone looking for an opening. By herself, completely alone, throwing away her responsiblities, even refusing to answer com calls unless they were about Irvine and his team. For five days. And found nothing – no trace, no tunnels. No sign of Irvine.
She burned to continue the search. She… Trying to get up, she broke out in a sweat. She was sick, exhausted; she needed the rest, or she'd be useless.
Repeating the mantra several times actually helped a bit. Selphie tried again to recall how she got here. Let's see… There was that pride of snow lions—
…Nah…can't have been… I must've dreamed that bit… Squall was dead. Ellone said he was dead, she saw him fall… He had to be. He had to be…
Her mind busy at work trying to refute the admittedly shaky evidence of its own recollections, her gaze roamed aimlessly over her makeshift shelter. She absently noted the smell of roasting meat, overlaying the more subtle musk of molted dragonskin, her senses proceeding to catalogue any relevant information for when she would require it. Her eyes lingered on the spitting haunch propped up over the coals, mouth watering, before drifting onwards in their scrutiny.
They lit on a darker shape in the darkness. Her heart leapt into her mouth, which promptly dropped open.
It didn't move, didn't give any indication that it was real instead of some imagined or innocuous shadow. Slowly, carefully, she extricated herself from the blanket in which she'd been tangled. Stood. Crept over towards the dimly perceived shape. Knelt before it.
It still didn't move.
Facing away from the fire now, her sight deepened to suit the darkness; the figure slowly came into focus. It was a man, sitting, head tucked down into his chest. Looking down to his right, a thin, jagged ribbon of light betrayed the blade which – she looked closer – was still loosely held in his hand. And from this close, he was moving, in the barely perceptible movements of light breathing. He seemed to be asleep.
It can't be him…
It kinda looked like him, certainly. But Squall would never look so…wait! The man, she remembered, sported a massive head of hair, almost down to his hips. And a beard, or at least the patchy, straggly growth born of genetics which did not lend themselves to facial hair. No wonder she couldn't see his face!
With infinite care, trying her utmost to stop her hands from shaking, Selphie felt out in front of where she guessed his forehead would be. Her questing fingers encountered thick bangs of hanging hair, a bunched-up curtain under her touch.
It slid through her hands as the man's head rose. One gold eye opened, stared at her. She scrabbled backwards with a most undignified squeak.
The eye shifted away from her, over to the fire. Trick of the light, trick of the light, trick of the light… It was a dark, stormy blue eye. Pupil round, not narrowed to twin points. A human eye, not a lion's. The fire began to burn a little brighter.
With the silence of sure movement, he stood, walking over to the firepit. A thin stake had been driven through the haunch; the hunter picked up the stick and sat back down.
The eye swivelled around to her again for a moment, considering. It went back to the fire, which suddenly burst into life. She squinted reflexively, eyes watering in the unexpected light. When her sight recovered, the first thing she saw was the thick, dripping haunch of meat before her eyes.
She needed no further invitation. It was several minutes before she had an opportunity to speak without losing a mouthful of roasted, mildly smoked snow lion. Her eyes never left the shape of her chance companion, gnawing away on the lower, thinner half of the shank. She stared at him unabashedly, devouring his every visible feature.
His jacket was a faded black, and had a grey fur collar. His trousers were also black, faded and worn at the knees. His boots were black, and in atrocious condition. Jacket, pants, shoes – check! (He wasn't wearing a t-shirt, though - and his favourite ring seemed to be missing too.) His sword, propped up against the wall to his right, bore the shape and lines of the Lionheart, the most famous weapon in existence. Gunblade – check! (Though the Lionheart had never been a mottled rust colour. Given that adamantine plate never rusted, it must be from all the blood that it had shed over the decades…which in itself gave some indication of what the man did for a living.)
There the similarities ended. His hair was an unruly mop, still hiding much of his face; in the firelight, strands of chestnut glowed amidst the brunet and grey. It made the man look a bit like a lion. She supposed Squall could look like that, if (she chuckled, almost choking on her meat) he could bear to let his hair get so scruffy. The beard really was a disappointment, patchy and uneven. More interesting was the variety of scars, thin and thick, clean and jagged, which peeked out from under it. And the collar, and the chest – in particular, the deep trio of furrows carved over his upper torso which had reminded her so much of him in the first place. They bespoke a hard, hard life.
Only the eye told her that it wasn't Squall. It was the right colour, and there was intelligence lurking deep within its cold depths. But there was no recognition there.
Squall Leonhart would have known her. He would have.
Unless… The fire. It had been stoked with the aid of magic. Sure, many could learn to utilise para-magic without the mixed benefits of a GF junction, but still—
"…Squall…"
His gaze flickered back up to hers. "No, just snow."
Her mind reeled. Could he really be THAT far gone…?
Casting the scant remains of her meal into a corner, she crawled over to kneel before him once more. The hunter lowered his bone, looking at her curiously. Slowly, slowly, her hands raised to his face. Brushed aside the obscuring locks of hair.
And there it was. The slashing, diagonal scar which Squall had received at the hands of his old rival. Faded, crisscrossed with the furrows of smaller scars and wrinkle lines, but there. She swayed, overcome with the emotion of the moment.
It was him.
—ox-oxo-xo—
The hunter stared down at Selphie Kinneas. She'd fainted again. Fortunately, she'd also let go of his hair in the process of doing so.
Discarding the bones, he bent down and picked her up, depositing her in her bedding once more. He straightened.
"…Found you…" she murmured.
He blinked, looking down at her. She was smiling, for some reason.
Shrugging, he turned and retrieved his gunblade. Their current shelter was the lair of a blue dragon, and it was due to return from its hunt shortly. Perhaps it was fortunate that she was out of it.
A/N: There is a reason why I'm putting in all this stuff on the mechanics of magic, and also why Squall seems to be working on different principles. Just bear with me.