Waiting in the Dark

It could not have been more than four hours ago that Imuardian had appeared with tidings of the situation at hand, of the battle against the demon Raem (who was suspected, in fact, to actually be Inarius under a false façade), when Sephiroth suddenly felt a fierce burning in his blood. So intense, it might have overtaken him, were he not acclimated to the heat from four thousand years of Mount Kilanda’s hell-fire. But he knew that it was a sign, a sign of one of his fellow Defenders, most likely Ardwynna, being wounded. He knew that it was only a matter of time before he, too, would need to take up his sword and fight. Lest I be condemned to another four thousand years of hell for letting further harm befall Aeris, he thought angrily, unable to keep back his reproach toward the Lady Mio for begrudging him even now.

Bitter though he had every right to be, however, Sephiroth had to admit that what the good Queen of Memories now wished of him, once the demon was gone, was certainly an appealing alternative to the threatened hell-fire. As he looked down again at the Clavat girl who now slept in his arms, his thoughts began to take a more earthy turn, for he did rather enjoy the soft curves of Aeris’s form pressed to him in comforting repose. He admired the way the loose waves of chestnut hair lay along the exposed side of her lovely face; he liked to hear the soft murmurs that she sometimes made in her sleep; he positively relished the way she instinctively clung to him for warmth whenever a cold draft blew through the chamber. The “Clavat without a guardian” had already come a long way, since breaking the seal of Oblivion, toward having enough faith in the Lady Mio to trust an angel who served Her Grace—even a fallen angel who had to fight yet for his redemption.

How hard would it be, Sephiroth wondered, to melt away all of Aeris’s fears with tender caresses? To kiss those soft lips of hers until her entire body begged for more of his kisses and touch? To claim her completely as his own, then, and truly make her one with the heavens? For it was exactly what he longed to do to Aeris: stir within her such a burning desire for his touch as to drive away every last tendril of cold fear, so that terror itself would flee in the fear of being burned. Then he would take her. Take her, and by so doing immortalize her.

Somehow or another, Sephiroth found his bitterness toward the Lady Mio for her wrathful condemnation of him four thousand years ago giving way to amusement at Her Grace’s sense of humor regarding the methods to her madness. She had held him the ultimate sinner until the day when she sent Aeris to release him from the hell-fire of Kilanda, and had long ago decided that one who redeemed the ultimate sinner—as Aeris had done for Sephiroth in giving him back both name and freedom—deserved the ultimate boon: immortality. When Nerissa had refused to surrender her maidenhead for anything less than “the ultimate boon,” the good Queen of Memories had apparently decided (since she only ever did decree that a mortal being should gain immortality every few thousand years) that making love to a deserving mortal should be the angels’ means of giving such a rarely-bestowed gift. Her Grace wants her angels to derive the ultimate pleasure from bestowing the ultimate boon, thought Sephiroth with a wry amusement.

And Inarius be damned, as the Selkie-formed Defender flattered himself that such would indeed be the fate of the traitorous Dreamweaver who had masterminded the demon Raem. The air seemed to be lightening outside the chamber where Sephiroth currently lay low; he suspected that the Lady Mio was now gathering the remaining miasma in order to form a Hell to whence to banish Inarius and all his evil creations. She’ll make the four thousand years of Kilanda’s fire to which she condemned me feel like a mere slap to the wrist to you, Inarius, he was certain, once my fellow Defenders and I bring you down once and for all.

Soon, however, the awareness of Aeris’s stirring awake broke through Sephiroth’s thoughts of revenge against Inarius. He glimpsed the flutter of her eyelids opening and shifted the girl in his arms so that he could better observe the just-awoken languid expression on her beautiful face. “Did you sleep well?” he asked her, with a pleased note in his low, smooth voice.

Aeris found herself returning the smile that she saw grace his countenance. “Couldn’t be better,” she sighed. “Thank you. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve been able to sleep so well—most of the time I wake up in the dark from…” She trailed off, somehow uncertain.

“From what? What kept appearing in your dreams?” Sephiroth questioned, prodding Aeris for an answer.

Aeris seemed unable to reply for a moment, but then she surprised her questioner with the way she suddenly looked straight into his eyes. “It was you,” she breathed in realization. “Ever since I met that Yuke woman, Khetala, who told me that I needed to go to Mount Kilanda,” she explained, “I kept dreaming of a tall swordsman who had the pointed face of a Selkie, with bright green eyes and long silver hair…” Aeris even reached up now to lightly trace one hand along the side of Sephiroth’s pale face as she told him, “The other angels must’ve been telling me that I had to find you. Was it because…” but she trailed off again as fear returned to her emerald eyes. Clearly she had been about to say, “because Khetala happened to be right and the demon Raem was going to be coming to cause death and destruction.”

As if a vital point had just crossed his mind, however, Sephiroth shifted his arms to better carry Aeris again as he suddenly stood up. “I’m taking you to another place of refuge, while I can still do so without Inarius detecting our presence,” he told the Clavat in answer to her startled cry, at once carrying her out of the pyramid and eventually further northwest of Rebena Te Ra’s ruins. He knew not how long it would take for Inarius to trace him and his newly-appointed charge, but Sephiroth was determined to see the shroud of Raem fall before the fight boiled down to him and the traitor.

Frightened again at the speed at which the silver-haired being ran with her in tow, Aeris opened her eyes, after another two hours or so, to find that Sephiroth had taken her to what appeared to be a crater or chasm of some kind, with rocks in every shape tumbled carelessly about. This place was still dark, even as the miasma was already beginning to dissipate, and somehow reeked so strongly of blood and sickness that Aeris futilely tried to cover up the smell of the air with the sleeve of her torn tunic. “This place must’ve been where the source of the miasma was,” she mumbled, this explanation as close to a complaint as she was willing to utter.

“The one who sent you to release me, the Yuke woman Khetala, must have also led a crystal caravan or other band of warriors to cut the miasma off at its source,” Sephiroth told Aeris then as he set her down to let her find a semi-comfortable place to sit down and rest, “and in doing so, they drew Inarius out of his hiding place, albeit under the guise of Raem.”

“And—Inarius—came after me, because—because I was a ‘Clavat without a guardian’—at least, until I reached you?” Aeris questioned, somehow confused. “But—but why? What did—what did the Lady Mio want from me—that Inarius wanted to keep from happening?”

Sephiroth seemed to consider for a moment as he sat down beside Aeris, but then answered in such a way as would not null his attempt to outsmart Inarius: “Because among other things, his motive was to prevent your Ascension.”

“My Ascension?” Aeris repeated incredulously. “As in, ascension to immortality? But how could that…”

“As it came to pass, you were the woman to whom Her Grace’s prophecy of the Redeemer referred,” the silver-haired being replied. “She sent me to foretell, a few short years before my fall from her good graces, that ‘she who breaks the seal of Oblivion will gain the immortality of the angels and serve good Mio eternally as Redeemer of sinners.’ Little did I know, at that time, that the ‘seal of Oblivion’ referred to the seal that the Queen of Memories cast on me when she stripped me of my name and imprisoned me inside my own sword.” His voice was becoming steadily bitterer to recall the Lady Mio’s condemnation of him to Kilanda’s hell-fire.

Aeris looked down for a moment and then back up. “The name that no-one knew for four thousand years, until I whispered it,” she murmured—but then her expression brightened in realization as she continued: “Does that mean that I’ve broken the seal? That I’ve—I’ve redeemed you?”

“Yes and no,” Sephiroth answered, some of the bitterness fading. “It is perhaps a sign that the Lady Mio finally forgives my sin that she sent you, Aeris, the mortal I wrongly struck down, to release me from imprisonment at Mount Kilanda. You did as Her Grace willed, so according to the prophecy, I must make you immortal. As you may be able to tell, however, I’m still confined to the mortal realm, unable to return to the Nest of Memories until the Lady Mio returns me that power.”

“Or you might’ve taken me to the Nest of Memories to keep me safe from Inarius?” Aeris ruefully guessed aloud.

Sephiroth chose not to answer to that point, instead continuing: “Unfortunately for us both, I cannot make you immortal until Inarius is neutralized. That’s why we’re waiting in the dark here, because Inarius’s power will weaken if more Defenders hinder his pursuit. When the shroud of Raem falls, I want to be the one who finishes Inarius off once and for all.”

“And none of the angels want any more innocents to be hurt, except that traitor,” said Aeris with a nod of understanding. “That’s why you’ve taken me so far away.” She looked up toward the edge of the great crater, still fearful. “But will it be far enough?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

Instead of answering the whispered question, however, Sephiroth sat down beside Aeris and wrapped one arm around her shoulders, caressing the side of her face with his other hand. “You should sleep, Aeris,” he told her, in a soft but commanding tone, like one casting a spell. And his words had precisely such an effect on the young Clavat woman: her eyelids slid closed, her breathing slowed to a deep and even rhythm, and she slumped against the arms that gently lowered her to the ground.

The Selkie-formed fallen angel then focused his energy into warming the rock surrounding Aeris to precisely the right temperature, so that the girl would not catch a chill. He would have liked very much to hold her again as she slept, like he had done in the ruins of Rebena, but he needed, for his own sake as much as hers, to resist such an easy temptation. He really did not need four thousand years to catch up to him—at the absolute least, not until he made Aeris immortal as Lady Mio willed.

You will not thwart me, Inarius, thought Sephiroth with deepest contempt. This time, you will be the one who faces damnation.