002 ♃ Be careful what you wish for...

[seekinganswers]

Characters: Sheba and anyone who wants some last-minute pre-event CR!
Setting: Daytime - Floor 08, Floor 09, Floor 10 || Nighttime - Floor 11
Format: Starting with brackets but I will follow you!
Summary: Sheba's continuing her exploration of the Tower little by little, but a fair amount of dilly-dallying leaves her pretty far from the safety of her dorm room by the time night falls.
Warnings: Sheba has no particular concern for the privacy of others at the moment, so if you run across her chances are she'll probably try to read your mind at least once.

[FLOOR 08]
[Sheba was really starting to question her choices.

If you'd asked her what she was planning on doing today, her answer would not have involved wandering lost in a maze. In spite of her best intentions, though, that's exactly what she was doing. She'd come up to this floor just after breakfast and she wasn't sure how much time had passed since then, but it sure felt like a lot.

With a sigh, she stopped walking and leaned against a wall to gather her thoughts.

Come on, Sheba, it's just a maze. You've found your way out of more confusing places than this before... remember Air's Rock?

...

This isn't helping.

[Sigh.]

[FLOOR 09]
[It had taken some doing, but she'd finally gotten out of that maze and was making her way through the Tower again.

As she came up on the ninth floor, her footsteps slowed until she came to a stop. She looked curiously from the lights by the staircase to the darkness that seemed to have fallen over the rest of the floor.]

That's strange... why is it so dark?

[Perhaps it wasn't the most intelligent decision, but the whole point of her venturing out of her room today was to get acquainted with the various floors in the Tower. She couldn't do that if she just stayed on the staircases. She took a breath and stepped away from the stairs, continuing further into the room and hunching her shoulders, then crouching. It was getting darker and darker, and the room seemed to be getting smaller and smaller...

When she was forced to get to her hands and knees to keep going, she started to think that this wouldn't be a floor she'd want to hide out on if anything happened. She came to an abrupt stop after a few moments, though, looking around with a slightly guarded expression.]

What...?

[She could have sworn she'd heard something... She frowned. No, when she wasn't moving, it was quiet. She crawled forward a little bit more and--

What was that?!

She'd seen something. She knew she had! But now there wasn't anything... She scowled. If this tower was trying to scare her, she wasn't going to let it! The space got smaller and smaller, and she had to resort to inching forward a little at a time on her stomach. The sounds and sights just kept coming more and more frequently - but she could never pinpoint where they were coming from, what they were...

Finally, she came to the edge, but before she could get a good look around she felt something around her ankle.]

?!

[And then, all at once, she was yanked back so hard that it nearly took her breath away. By the time she could scream, she was about halfway across the room; the next thing she knew, she'd slammed into the suitcase and slumped forward.

When she lifted her head, there was nothing there but the same eerie darkness she'd looked out at minutes before.]

Wh-wh... what...

[She was trembling. What was that? What had just happened? Why...]

[FlOOR 10]
[Sheba was still shaking as she climbed the last stair and stepped out onto the tenth floor. Thankfully, she could see in all directions here - this part of the tower seemed well-lit and... well, altogether, it just didn't seem like the kind of place where someone would be dragged away kicking and screaming.

No, this place seemed a lot safer...

She looked up at the enclosed bits of water, her arms wrapped around herself, and watched the creatures that were swimming back and forth. It took her a moment to realize that there wasn't any glass - how was the water staying up? Why wasn't this whole floor flooded? This seemed like something that could be accomplished with Psynergy, but she hadn't seen any other Adepts here, not really...

Her thoughts were cut off when a sea creature she didn't recognize leaped out from one block of water and landed in another one.]

Oh, wow..!

[Her eyes were wide. Even on her journey through Weyard, she hadn't seen anything like this before.]

[FlOOR 11]
[Between the maze, that... floor she didn't really want to think about, and the aquarium, Sheba had stayed out pretty late. The sun had gone down a good hour or so before she finally came upon the eleventh floor, which might have concerned her if she was familiar enough with the Tower to know that nighttime was when the monsters thrived. But she wasn't.

Instead, she was just blown away by what she'd found. A ceiling, but no walls? Waterfalls? Upside-down rainbows? The sight of a regular rainbow had been rare enough in her part of Weyard, given that there wasn't exactly a lot of water in the air around Lalivero to reflect light to begin with.

Cautiously, she made her way to the edge of the room and looked down over the side of the tower. Oh... they really were high up. She vaguely wondered what would happen if she jumped out from here - she'd survived falls from much higher up, before. But the first one she hadn't even been conscious of, and the second had been mostly luck and... Felix.

She'd managed not to dwell on thoughts of him or the rest of their traveling group for the last few days, and while she really wished she could keep from thinking about them, it just wasn't meant to be. Because almost in the same instant that she got to her feet to come away from the edge, she heard a voice.

"Sheba!"]

Who's there?!

[She whirled towards the sound of the voice, her heart pounding. Was her mind playing tricks on her, or had she heard...? She narrowed her eyes to focus on a faint figure a good distance away. It looked almost like mist, but maybe that was because of the waterfalls.

Maybe Felix was here? It had been his voice she'd heard, hadn't it? She took a few hopeful steps in its direction, then paused when she heard another voice.

"Sheba!"]

Jenna...?!

[She allowed herself to hope. Maybe she'd have questioned just one or the other, but Felix and Jenna together--! It would have made sense. They'd both been there on Mars Lighthouse with her, right before she'd appeared here. Now, if only--

"Sheba!"]

Piers!

[They were here - they were here! Feeling more hopeful than she'd felt since coming here, she took off at a run, her eyes locked on the hazy figures on the other side of the room. Three voices, three figures - it had to be them, it had to, she had so many things to tell them, she was so glad they'd managed to survive, she--

...wasn't getting any closer to them, it seemed. Were they... walking away?]

No! Wait! Don't go - don't leave me alone!

[The figures seemed to vanish. Sheba let out a sharp cry and put on a burst of speed, desperate to catch up. But there was nothing; she fell to her knees and gasped to catch her breath.]

No... no, don't go...

["Sheba..."

Felix's voice again, and this time it was much closer. She looked up.

The ... things around her almost looked human, but not quite. They didn't seem solid or real, and they didn't look like her friends. But there were lots of them, and they pretty much had her surrounded.

She felt weak...

Was it because of the run, the despair of finding out that it wasn't really them, or were these Phantoms doing something to her? Sheba didn't know.

And she didn't really want to stick around to find out. She had to get out of here. But, as she realized, an expression of alarm crossing her face - she'd left her staff in her room today. And try as she might, she couldn't summon up a windstorm to blow these strange mist-creatures away.

She'd have to run for it... she'd have to... she was just so tired. Her gaze shifted from one Phantom to another, looking for an opening. She had no idea what would happen if she tried to run right through one, but that wasn't really something she wanted to find out, either.]

Comments

[seekinganswers]

[She really wanted to read his mind and find out if he was serious about people using it to pick what food they were going to eat, but all things considered, intruding on his mind again wouldn't help anything.]

But it doesn't determine what must happen, does it? I mean... if it's real, won't the things that are supposed to happen, still happen regardless of whether or not people look at it and are aware of what it says? Because a prophecy is a look at what's to come, it's not what... makes those things happen, isn't it?

Unless prophecies work differently on Auldrant than they do on Weyard...

[bloodyashes]

...It's complicated. Because the Score promises prosperity [ - as far as the common person knows - ] people follow it willingly. And then there's the Order of Lorelei, which encourages people to follow the Score - by martial means, if necessary.

[He frowns deeply, rubbing at his temple.]

It's possible to go against the Score, but it's ingrained in the way people think, and has been for two thousand years. For all intents and purposes, it's self-fulfilling.

[seekinganswers]

I see...

[In a way, it was sort of similar to how things were on Weyard - but the differences were there, too. On Auldrant they followed the score for prosperity; on Weyard they followed the Wise One's commands for fear of their world ending.

It was funny how being told something for so long could make an entire society believe it, regardless of whether it was true or not - be it the inevitability of a prophecy coming to pass, or the inevitability of a world being destroyed.]

It sounds... complicated, living in a place like that. If you don't mind me saying.

[bloodyashes]

Complicated? Ha.

[It's a dry, ironic laugh, without much actual humour in it. Sheba, you have no idea...]

It's simple enough for most people, I suppose. The Order of Lorelei doesn't allow Scores of death to be read publically, so most people go through their lives knowing only the good things, not the bad. Only the highest ranks of the Order can access the Closed Score, and they don't reveal much of it.

[A pause. He folds his arms.]

Van had access to not just that Score, but the Seventh Fonstone, which is the final piece of Yulia's Score, the one that promised prosperity at the end of the Sixth Fonstone. The Seventh Fonstone is a Score of doom for the planet.

[seekinganswers]

...so they were lying...?

[Sheba frowned. If the prophecy was mostly self-fulfilling because the people believed so strongly that it was true, she could understand why people would try to hide the parts that contradicted it. But the idea of so many people being lied to was something she didn't like.

But then, it wasn't just self-fulfilling. People believed in it because more than just a few parts of it had come true - which meant that it was possible parts of it would come true regardless of what people did or didn't do.

...so if the Seventh Fonstone foretold doom, then...

But no, Asch had said it was possible to go against the Score. Which meant the end of their world wasn't inevitable.

But, wait, A little voice in the back of her mind piped up. He's here. He was told his world ended, too. Maybe it did, maybe his planet was doomed just like the Score foretold.

She shook her head slowly.]

Do you believe your planet was doomed?

[bloodyashes]

...No, I don't.

[A short sigh, halfway cut off at the end.]

If I had, then I wouldn't have worked to save it. I probably would have continued to follow Van, even after everything.

[seekinganswers]

So you're one of the people who went against the Score...

[Her voice trailed off and she considered that for a few moments.]

That must have taken a lot of courage.

[Especially if he'd been raised to believe it was all true. It was one thing to do brave deeds - it was something quite different to do them knowing that they supposedly weren't meant to happen at all. Fighting what could be defined as "fate" was something that even the bravest people had trouble doing. It was definitely something Sheba could admire.]

[bloodyashes]

[The admiring words leave him a bit awkward - his first instinct is to downplay them, and so he does.]

The Score demanded my death - or rather, the death of "Luke" - so rejecting it wasn't as hard as you'd think. Replicas aren't in the Score, though, so when Luke was sent to die in my place... Somehow, we both managed to survive.

[seekinganswers]

The will to survive is a really strong thing - it can make even things that are supposedly impossible happen.

And besides, no one should have to die just because an old prophecy said so...

[Everyone died eventually, but Asch didn't seem that old, and by proxy Luke couldn't be that old either. It would just be too sad if they'd died so young.]

I'm glad you survived.

[bloodyashes]

[He nods - the will to live is strong, and people would do anything for it. That's the entire reason that Scores of death weren't read; so that people wouldn't try to prevent them.

At her last few words, a slight blush creeps into his cheeks. Why would she say that? They'd met all of twice; even a mind reading ability didn't enable you to get to know someone that fast...]

...Thank you.

[What else could he say.]

[seekinganswers]

You're welcome!

[She smiled brightly at him. If he hadn't survived, he wouldn't be here now, and she wouldn't be eating this bread...]

[bloodyashes]

[He continues to look awkward for a moment, before taking another bite of the meat, and - ]

So what about your world?

[seekinganswers]

Well...

[She looked thoughtful for a couple of seconds as she tried to figure out where to begin. First things first...]

To start with, it's flat. At the edge of the world are these gigantic waterfalls... the water from Weyard's oceans fall into the void, and no one really knows what's at the bottom of it - anyone who's ever fallen has never been seen again. It's really dangerous if you live near the edge, but unfortunately there are a couple of places where it's completely unavoidable...

[One of the most frightening moments of her life was fetching Haze from the Apojii Islands. One little misstep, and...]

[bloodyashes]

[He stops chewing for a moment and stares at her slightly. A flat world, with waterfalls all around the edge? It immediately reminds him of the sight of the oceans around Hod and Akzeriuth, when the Outer Lands were still floating.

He finishes chewing and swallows.]

Perhaps it's more alike to Auldrant than I thought; until recently - [yay, adventures to save the world] - most of Auldrant's crust hung in the sky above the rest of the planet. Where there were holes in the crust near the ocean, it caused waterfalls similar to the ones you're describing.

[seekinganswers]

Really? [She smiled. That sounded at least a little familiar to her - maybe not the waterfalls, but floating landmasses...] In the continent of Atteka back home, there's a really big crater near the town of Contigo. It's said that hundreds of years ago - maybe even thousands - that crater used to be where the city of Anemos was, but the people who lived there raised the land far into the sky after a terrible calamity, so that those of them who were left could still survive.

No one knows for sure where it is now, but... there are rumors. If it turns out that I can go back to Weyard someday, I'd like to look into it. They said that the people of Anemos were a lot like me...

[Her voice trailed off and she was quiet for a few moments.]

I'm sorry, I got a little sidetracked there.

[bloodyashes]

On Auldrant, it was practically the reverse. To save the planet from the toxic miasma leaking from the core, all the lands were raised save for one city, and one mostly uninhabited continent.

[No one was quite clear on why the Tower of Rem and the surrounding land hadn't been lifted as well; perhaps it was because it was a back-up plan in case the plan to raise the lands failed. The tall, fragile tower probably couldn't withstand an impact such as those experience by Akzeriuth and Hod.]

...Auldrant isn't flat, though. The water poured into the Qliphoth below, not into space.

[seekinganswers]

Is the ... Qliphoth the name of the continent that stayed behind the lands were raised? Or is that something else entirely?

[It was really interesting to hear about Auldrant - the similarities and differences between their two worlds were fascinating.]

I'm not sure why Weyard is flat. It just sort of ... is. But the problem with that is that the water of the falls sort of... erodes the edges, as time passes. Our world was getting smaller and smaller...

[She dropped her gaze to the floor.]

Maybe the Anemos had the right idea, but no one else in Weyard really has the ability to do something on such a large scale. So something else had to be done.

[bloodyashes]

The Qliphoth is the space where the lands used to be. Except for Yulia City, it was just an endless, roiling sea of mud, completely choked with the miasma.

[And it had taken the power of the Planet Storm to raise the lands in the first place, hadn't it? So the most important difference seemed to be - ]

You said your world didn't have anything like the Score. Do you have any sort of healing powers? How do they work?

[Her mind reading ability is something he would intuitively associate with the Seventh Fonon as well, but he'll hold off on classifying it that way for now.]

[seekinganswers]

Oh...

[She stopped to consider that, but then blinked, startled, at Asch's question.]

I don't have any, myself. But the others I traveled with did... [Her expression wavered a little and she looked down. When she spoke up again, her voice was a bit quieter.]

Felix was a Venus Adept. His powers were mostly earth-based... he could heal, but only one person at a time, and it was mostly... surface healing, I think would be a good term for it. He could close up wounds, but if we weren't careful we'd reopen them. That was just at first, though. When he got stronger, so did his healing. He had the ability to bring us back from the brink of death... it saved my life more than once. [She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.] Jenna was a Mars Adept - a master of fire Psynergy. At first she couldn't do it, but when we found a couple of Mars Djinn for her, she was able to. She could heal all of us at once, but her healing was the weakest of all. It was sort of an aura of warmth that drifted over us, and we were healed... and then there was Piers. He was a Mercury Adept, one of the strongest I've ever seen. His command over water was amazing. Mercury Adepts are some of the best healers... his Psynergy only healed one person at a time, too, but it was a lot more effective than Felix's. I've heard that in some places it's even been used to heal illnesses, so it fixed us up both inside and out.

We met others during our journey, too... there was another group a lot like ours. Two of them could heal. One was a Venus Adept with powers similar to Felix's, and the other was a Mercury Adept - she could do the same sort of healing as Piers, but she could also use her powers to heal a whole group at one time, too...

[Her fists were so tightly clenched that her knuckles were starting to turn white. It was a lot harder to talk about her old friends than she'd thought it would have been. Talking about them just made it feel more real to her that she'd never actually see them again - because they weren't here right now. If they were, she would have found them by now... wouldn't she?]

[bloodyashes]

[So... Not the Seventh Fonon, then, from the sound of it. And how on earth could fire heal someone - ]

On Auldrant, all healing abilities are tied to the Seventh Fonon, and there are only a small percentage of people who can use it with any ability. Most people can't actually manage to heal well with it - they're trained to read the Score instead, since that's the least complicated use of the fonon.

[The most complicated... He'd pick fomicry over hyperresonance, actually, because when it came down to it, hyperresonance was simply causing the fonons to reverberate with each other. Fomicry was much more esoteric an complicated - if dealing with Luke had taught him nothing else, it had taught him that.]

The Seventh Fonon isn't natural to Auldrant - it was formed through mixing the other six in the Planet Storm. The first six fonons are simply the elements - fire, water, wind, and so on - but the seventh is more complex. It's commonly called the sound fonon, but it's also tied to memory. Healing artes work by restoring the body to the state it remembers being, using Seventh Fonons to fill in the gaps caused by the injury.

[Or so the theory went. He'd have to remember to ask tear about those lessons, the next time he saw her.]

[seekinganswers]

Oh, wow... So healers there are incredibly rare. [They were rare on Weyard too, though; it was just that Sheba happened to be spending the majority of her time with the 1% in the world who had such powers at their disposal.]

Earth, fire, water, wind, and... what are the last two? [She furrowed her brows, thinking. Those four were the base elements from which everything else was made, weren't they? What else could it be? Light, darkness... maybe. But no, light and darkness could be formed from the other four, in some ways.] On Weyard, if there are other elements, no one has the ability to use Psynergy tied to them. I suppose Auldrant is a little more... [What's the word...] ...advanced, in that way, if there are other elements you can make use of.

[She tilted her head to the side thoughtfully.] That method of healing makes a lot of sense. Probably a lot more sense than Mars Psynergy healing does... [She chuckled a little.]

Do you mind if I ask another question? Have the Fonons ever been sealed away in your world?

[If they haven't - if the elements have always been free - it might explain the development of a fifth and a sixth...]

[bloodyashes]

The First Fonon is darkness, and the Sixth is light.

[So her world was limited to only the middle four... Could the Seventh Fonon even exist there, without all of the other six?]

And as far as anyone knows, no. The only thing that's ever been sealed away is Lorelei, the sentience of the Seventh Fonon, which was sealed in the core of the planet. Lorelei being sealed didn't make it impossible to use the Seventh Fonon, but it's more difficult now, if the records that still exist are anything to go by.

[seekinganswers]

I see... it would make sense that it's more difficult to use now.

[She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes as she continued to speak.]

On Weyard, the power of Alchemy - the concentration of all the elements - was sealed away so long ago that there's barely any records of what it was like before then. The problem is, without Alchemy, there's... very little. Alchemy drives the growth of civilization, and without it, everything withers. [She sighed heavily.] Adepts are very rare in Weyard now. Most of them come from parts of the world that have the strongest connection to Alchemy in some way...

Two of my friends were from Vale, which was a village at the foot of Mount Aleph, a mountain that was full of Psynergy stones. My other good friend was from Lemuria... it's like Anemos, sort of, but it's full of Mercury Adepts, and they're hidden away by thick fog and treacherous currents. The Lemurians were around in our ancient past, but they've long since cut off most of their contact with the outside world. [She finally opened her eyes, here, and looked out at the sea creatures swimming around in the water across from her.] Their society was... amazing. It was so much more advanced than what you'd see in most parts of Weyard.

But that sort of advancement, and even the ability for most people to use Psynergy at all, was sealed along with the powers of Alchemy. The sealing of the elements was why our world was being eroded away by the Gaia Falls, actually. Or... that's what some people in Lemuria thought. When you look at their maps, dating back to the time of the Golden Age, the world was so much bigger back then.

- short tag because I can't brain

[bloodyashes]

That makes sense. The world would slowly die without the power to restore itself...

[Much as Auldrant would, choked by the miasma.]

There are a few things left over from the Dawn Age on Auldrant, but except for the Sephiroth that hold the land afloat, they're mostly in ruins.

short tag for similar reasons sigh

[seekinganswers]

It's like that on Weyard, too. Most of the places connected to Weyard's Golden Age are in ruins... except for the Elemental Lighthouses.

But those are something else entirely. [She shrugged.] How does this "Sephiroth" hold everything up?