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year 5, quarter 3
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[attr=class,bulk] Yuna had meant to relate to Prompto and encourage him to open up with her story, but it seemed like she had side-tracked him instead. He was sweet enough to be horrified for her sake, and Yuna felt her cheeks redden as he asked if she was the one who needed to talk. “Ah…I’m sorry, was that too personal? I only meant to tell a quick story to relate-”
The source of his confusion became clear as he stated in no uncertain terms that Ardyn had never forced Prompto to marry him. Yuna stared at him. And stared some more. Then she wasn’t able to contain herself as she pressed a palm to her mouth to stifle her giggle. “I’m…I shouldn’t laugh, I’m sorry. That would be equally as serious if it happened. It’s only that I wasn’t trying to suggest that was what happened.” Yuna didn’t think she was normally this bad at conveying her intentions, but something about the blond-haired boy just left her at a loss. His thoughts were almost too quick and abrupt for her to follow.
Her uncertainty died though as Prompto started talking about what had happened between him and Ardyn after all. He did it in one long run-on sentence that was probably easier for him to get out without thinking about, but Yuna wasn’t sure if that way was the most conducive to healing. A frown settled on her face as she tried to take in everything he’d said. She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant about being a clone, but that question would have been for her own benefit rather than his. And his feelings were what mattered now.
“...Whatever he said to you, I’m sure the people who care about you would never believe any of it. I hope you won’t either.” Looking up, she gave him a concerned look when he mentioned how bad Ardyn had hurt him. She could read between the lines and see that not all the scars left behind from that were physical. “We’ll make sure that never happens again. And that you can be safe here.”
Prompto turned the attention back to Yuna, and she looked down at the carnival in embarrassment while a small smile touched her lips. “...You’re very kind. Maybe more than you realize.” Folding her hands in her lap, she reluctantly turned her thoughts towards the blue-haired priest who had stalked her pilgrimage. He had seemed so charming and eloquent at first, but now she couldn’t think of him without pity and disgust. And maybe a measure of fear on nights when she was more honest with herself.
“I’m alright though. Maester Seymour was sent to the Farplane. I performed it myself, so he isn’t here anymore.” Yuna felt that she had to start with him being gone. It helped her keep that in mind as she continued. “He was one of the unsent that I mentioned, so he was already dead when we were married. He planned terrible things while alive, but being an unsent always amplifies those qualities.” The compartment suddenly felt a bit too hot, and it took all her temple training to remind herself to breathe normally. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Summoners always had to be in control of themselves and their emotions.
“My guardians and I…I’m not proud of it, but we fought and killed him several times. And each time he’d come back a little less of himself. So I do understand when you say that about Ardyn.” Glancing over at her companion, she tried to judge how Prompto was doing. “Facing down a man who just comes back…there aren’t words.”
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna could see the pain and indecision racing across Kimahri’s face, and she wanted to do anything to take that expression away. She felt that this was her fault. If only she’d been smarter or stronger, then maybe she could have saved Kimahri from the creature’s influence before it had come to this. The fiend was still yelling at Kimahri in her own voice, begging for him to help her and not separate them, but the real Yuna just let her head bow forward in defeat, her eyes slipping closed as she waited for his decision.
What she didn’t expect was for Kimahri to turn his Spirit Lance toward his own throat.
Horror welled up in Yuna, and she suddenly fought back against the plant’s restraints with everything she had, one hand desperately outstretched towards him. “No! Kimahri, please! I’m the fake. You can help her, just don’t-!” The summoner had spoken in a panic, believing that being killed by her friend was still better than him harming himself to avoid the choice. But as the fiend next to her revealed its true form by screeching at him in rage and launching its vines at him in attack, she realized what Kimahri had been trying to do.
He wasn’t trying to harm himself. He was trying to force both of them to show their hands, and he had won.
Unfortunately the fiend proved itself to be too much for Kimahri just like it was for Yuna. The plant’s appendages struck the Ronso from every direction, knocking the spear out of his hand and viciously throwing him back towards a tree. It was the second time that he had struck a tree-trunk with brutal force against this creature, but Yuna still winced as he hit the ground. She didn’t have much time to react though before the tendril around her neck suddenly cut off her breath again.
Choking, Yuna could only watch with eyes that were involuntarily leaking from the pressure on her throat as Kimahri finally seemed to realize she was there. She could see the horror written across his feline face before his expression settled into something determined and steely. The next second, his arms locked themselves around the creature’s body in a death-hold. Judging from the way the plant screeched and struggled, Kimahri’s grip must have been like a vice. Yuna had no idea what he intended to do next until he looked directly into her eyes with an apologetic expression, the edges of his body starting to glow a hot orange.
Yuna knew exactly where she had seen that before. The Grenades on Mt. Gagazet.
Despite the pressure on her throat and the way that black dots were starting to swim across her vision again, Yuna threw herself forward, shaking her head emphatically since she couldn’t get any words out. Still, the Ronso started to glow brighter and brighter, and in desperation, Yuna mouthed what she didn’t have the air to say. I love you.
The parallels to Tidus weren’t lost on her. First the boy she’d loved and now her oldest friend and guardian. She hadn’t been able to keep either of them from their sacrifice even though they had both saved her from hers. And like with Tidus, Yuna had no choice but to watch as Kimahri vanished in a white-hot explosion.
The force knocked her flat on her back and left a ringing in her ears that was so disorienting that it took her a moment of gasping for air to realize that the plant had released her. The fiend seemed to be in its death spirals as it smashed into trees before going still, and Yuna wasted no time in grabbing for the bag that she’d been trying to reach this entire time. With shaking hands, she fumbled inside for a moment before pulling out a tiny glass bottle that contained an ether. Downing the green liquid, she felt the warm glow of magic spread throughout her body, and she quickly pressed both hands to the stomach wound that Kimahri had given her. “Curaga.”
The pain lessened considerably as the flesh started to knit itself back together, but Yuna still felt weak from the blood-loss as she crawled forward to examine the carnage in the clearing. “Kimahri? Kimahri!” There was no answer. The plant lay still now, and between the smoldering trees and all the blood that had been shed, the forest floor was a mess.
As Yuna drug herself forward towards the spot where Kimahri had been, her hand bumped something laying among the grass. Glancing down, her heart froze in place as she slowly gathered up the Spirit Lance in her hands. It had taken a lot of effort to acquire this spear before their final encounter with Sin. She could remember hours scouring for chests in the Thunder Plains and hunting for butterflies in the Macalania Woods, but it had all been worth it to see the pleased look in Kimahri’s eyes when he’d held the finished product in his hands.
Now though, Yuna could only clutch the weapon to her chest and cry.
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna had thoroughly bundled up in preparation for her current mission, but the cold of Mt. Hotan still managed to cut through each layer of clothing and leave her shivering. It was times like these when she missed her aeons the most. Shiva was the only one who had answered her call so far on Zephon, and while the summoner greatly appreciated having even one of them around, the ice maiden wouldn’t be much help to her on a frigid mountain. Ifrit on the other hand would have been lovely in keeping her warm, and if she had managed to summon Valefor, then Yuna wouldn’t have had to go on foot at all.
Both of those were wishful thinking of course, but Yuna had lots of time to mull things over as she carefully made her way up the snowy mountain path.
The summoner mostly made a living these days by taking healing jobs, since there was unfortunately no shortage of injured or sick people in this world either. Occasionally though, she didn’t mind taking a different sort of mission as long she felt that it was the right thing to do, and this one was no exception. A woman had come tearfully knocking at her door last night, stating that her husband had gone to climb Mt. Hotan near the ski resort and hadn’t returned when he was supposed to. She was worried that he might have gotten injured, and Yuna privately agreed. She had heard that the mountain could be prone to unexpected snow storms or landslides, so even though the Sonoran law enforcement was also looking into his disappearance, Yuna agreed to help out. It would at least help her conscience to look. And if she did manage to find him, the summoner would help the poor man however he needed it. Whether that was healing or a sending.
Yuna had been hiking for several hours now to no avail. It was impossible to follow footprints since this was a popular trail for mountain climbers, but she did at least have a photograph of the dark-haired man in her bag that she could show anyone she came across. So far, there hadn’t been anyone who had recognized him, and once Yuna had become completely exhausted, she decided that it was best to take a break. If she kept going now, then even if she found the poor man, she would be too tired to do anything about it.
It was while she was looking for a place out of the wind and cold where she could build a fire that Yuna stumbled upon the cave. It was an outcropping of rock that jutted out from a ledge, and Yuna cautiously lingered in the entrance as she peered into the darkness. Her eyes were so adjusted to the blinding brightness of sun glinting off snow that she could barely see anything at all at first glance, and she wanted to make sure that there were no animals or other travelers before she settled in. “Hello?” She ventured without really expecting a response.
[attr=class,bulk] Prompto didn’t seem to know what Ardyn’s goals were or if he would be able to use Noctis to get to their world’s gods, so Yuna let that topic go. It wouldn’t help to speculate on something when neither of them really knew anything for sure. Only Ardyn himself could answer those questions, and getting close enough to ask would be…dangerous. To say the least.
Despite how serious the conversation was, Yuna couldn’t help a startled laugh when Prompto referred to the unsent as ‘monster ghosts.’ “I’ve never heard them called that before but…yes. I suppose you’re right. Some fiends even look like ghosts, but those are rare.” She’d only ever seen them personally in the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth, so maybe they preferred the dark. For his part, Prompto suggested that maybe the sending worked on daemons, which gave Yuna pause. It wasn’t something that she’d considered before, but it had merit. “If daemons were once human, then…they might be similar to the unsent. I hadn’t thought about it in that direction, but you might be right.” She couldn’t test that theory anymore unfortunately since the daemons had vanished along with Ardyn, but hopefully that would remain the case. Then it wouldn’t matter either way.
Prompto’s reaction to Yuna acknowledging that Ardyn had hurt him made her incredibly sad. The way he choked up and tried to hide it suggested that he hadn’t had many chances to talk about it before. Maybe he hadn’t even come to terms with what had happened himself yet. Regardless, he tried to stay strong and change the subject to the stunning view below them, but then he seemed to get self-conscious about the topic and cave in on himself. Yuna’s heart went out to him, and she quickly shook her head. “No, it’s beautiful. I didn’t know anything could be so tall.” Tidus had told her stories of the skyscrapers in Zanarkand, but she had never thought that she’d be able to set foot in something like that one day.
Glancing at Prompto out of the corner of her eye, Yuna let out a breath before looking up at the open sky above them. The roof of the ferris wheel car was glass, and dozens of constellations dotted the sky between the light cloud cover. They were so different from the stars at home.
“Ardyn reminds me of a man from Spira. Maester Seymour. He was one of the highest priests in our temples, and I greatly admired him until he showed who he really was.” Their car was at the very top of the ferris wheel now. The carnival felt so tiny and far away from up here. They might as well have been in a different world from the people having a care-free time below. “He murdered so many, and that’s what everyone always remembers and talks about. But what I’ve always found most painful and hardest to come to terms with is that he forced me to marry him.”
Dropping her head to look at Prompto, Yuna gave him a sad smile. “...So if you ever felt like you wanted to talk about the more personal side of what he's done. I’d listen.”
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna was starting to see dark spots from the lack of oxygen, but she still mustered up enough energy to glare at the fiend as it dragged Kimahri’s prone body closer. She wanted to tell her doppelganger to leave him alone or to refute what it was saying about him, but she didn’t have the air for that anymore. She couldn’t really do anything anymore. Just when her vision began to turn black, the tendril around her neck loosened just slightly.
Yuna sucked in a gasp of air before she dissolved into a coughing fit. The creature hadn’t released her entirely—she still wasn’t able to move and the vine around her throat was a constricting force—but she wouldn’t suffocate now. She could breathe with some difficulty, and she feared why the fiend would decide to spare her now.
“Let us put your faith to the test, then.”
A pink haze washed over the scene in front of them, obscuring the guardian from her view for a moment. As the fog began to thin out into the surrounding air, Yuna could finally see Kimahri again as a dark-blue shadow, and she gasped as the tendrils appeared to set him on his feet and then release him entirely. Her friend’s head hung low around his shoulders, and he looked confused and a little unsteady on his feet, but his expressions were his. Had the creature willingly released Kimahri from its control?
Yuna couldn’t fathom the reason why it would do something like that until her doppelganger suddenly cried out for him. Using her voice. Yuna whipped her head around to stare at the creature in shock as the meaning behind its words sank in. It was pretending to be the real Yuna so that Kimahri would kill her. Nevermind that its cracked, plant-like face was exposed and that the real Yuna was restrained and still heavily bleeding from her abdomen. Kimahri himself looked horrified and perplexed, so he must legitimately not be able to tell the difference. Whether it was something in the pink haze or not that was confusing him, Yuna couldn’t say, but she needed to reach out to him too before this ended tragically. Kimahri would never forgive himself if this ended that way.
“Kimahri!-” Yuna tried in a raw voice, but the pain in her throat made her wince and have to start over. The moment’s pause made her reconsider what to say to him. Help! She wanted nothing more than to plead for aid and reach out to him like she always had since she was seven. That was the direction that the fiend had gone for, so it must have seen that in Kimahri’s head. He had always protected her, looked out for her, and been like a silent older brother figure even when she’d taken the path of a summoner. But Yuna wasn’t a little girl anymore, and she refused to lose another friend.
“Kimahri, run! Yuna didn’t know what her voice sounded like to him when he was under the influence of magic and she was so hoarse anyway, but she had to try. “Don’t put this on yourself! I can do this!”
A white lie. She was finished if she didn’t get healed soon, and her ethers were still out of reach when she was so restrained, but it was better this way. Yuna would die before she let Kimahri kill her.
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna had landed at Kimahri’s feet with one hand clutched to her abdomen to stem the bleeding, but she didn’t have time to rest. She barely even had time to breathe before the same red, thorny branches that ensnared Kimahri suddenly burst from the ground below their feet. There were so many in the cluster that Yuna lost sight of her guardian for a moment, but she heard the crack as he was thrown bodily against the trunk of a tree. He and his lance landed hard in the grass below, and Yuna’s heart leapt when he made no movement to get back up.
“Kimahri!” Yuna desperately stretched out a hand to try to reach him, but a vine lashed itself around her wrist before she could move. She tried to tug away, but another had already grabbed her leg, causing her to trip back to the ground. The harder that Yuna tried to slip free from the plant’s grasp, the more of the cluster encircled her until the summoner could barely move at all. The vines’ grip was tight and the thorns dug into her skin until Yuna didn’t know how Kimahri had been able to stand it for so long during their battle. As it turned out, she had bigger things to worry about than the tendrils though as the bulbous head of the plant unveiled itself directly across from her.
“You,” she breathed, though she really shouldn’t have been surprised as her doppelganger’s cracked face stared back at her from between the petals. The creature had been the cause of Kimahri’s grief like she had suspected--the fiend had just been much stronger than Yuna had realized.
One of the vines started to wrap itself around her neck, and Yuna was powerless to stop it with the rest of her limbs already restrained. She choked as her airflow was immediately constricted, her vision starting to swim as the fiend screamed in her face. With her lack of oxygen, the creature was starting to resemble the plant-like structure of Yunalesca’s final form that they’d fought in the Zanarkand Temple. Maybe it was that more than anything that inspired Yuna to use the last of her air to choke out “You own nothing of them!”
Kimahri still hadn’t moved, and Yuna could feel Shiva weakening nearly to the point where she’d have to disappear, but it didn’t matter. They would fight and carry on even if Yuna herself died here.
With her last bit of strength, Yuna tried to reach her discarded bag and staff with one restrained arm. She had ethers in the bag that would restore her magic, but it was a token effort at this point. She’d never have the time or energy to break free before she suffocated.
This could be the end for them. Yuna could only hope that Kimahri himself could escape one day.
[attr=class,bulk] He doesn’t kill people until he’s done with them. Yuna let out a breath, feeling her cheeks grow a little hot as she remembered the terrifying note that she’d woken up to in a hotel in Provo. That night was one of the main reasons she’d bought a house and moved on, but she still feared waking up to another slip of paper at her bedside. What use did Ardyn have for her? Entertainment? Most likely he just wanted to watch her struggle against him until he killed her and moved on to the next person, which was an uncomfortable thought. Not so different from how Yevon thought of its summoners though, when she really got down to it.
Prompto asked if she was an Oracle, and Yuna hesitated with her answer more than she had with Ardyn. “Not strictly, no. I’m called a summoner in Spira, but...I suppose they might be similar. He insisted I was an Oracle in practice if not in name after I called for Shiva’s aid…” Her attention was lost after that as Prompto informed her that Ardyn had actually killed the Oracle back on Eos. Yuna stared at him in horror, bringing one hand to her mouth as she reflected on every murderous gaze he’d sent her way. It seemed that her life had been in more danger at the bar than Yuna had realized, though she tried to swallow down her fear at the heartbroken look on Prompto’s face. The Oracle’s death seemed to have hit him hard. “...I’m so sorry. I hope she’s found peace.”
Yuna listened attentively to Prompto’s descriptions of the red-haired man. He didn’t seem to really know what Ardyn was, which was disappointing. Yuna had her own theories of him as an unsent of course, but she had wondered how that would translate to Eos. Apparently not well, if Prompto had nothing to compare it to. Even stranger was the revelation that Ardyn was after his friend.
“He wants to get to your prince?” Yuna frowned thoughtfully, reflecting on what she remembered from the bar before the wine had utterly destroyed her memories. What a fool she’d been that night.
“I only know that he despises your world’s gods and wants to see them dead. He said as much during our second encounter. Would he be able to accomplish that through Noctis somehow?” It was more of a guess than anything. For all Yuna knew, Noctis was just another source of entertainment for him, but it was worth the question.
“As for what he is...I don’t know either, but he reminds me of the unsent from Spira.” This would require a bit of explanation, so Yuna glanced down at the twinkling lights of the carnival below them before she settled back more firmly in the ferris wheel’s seat. “Where I’m from, the dead don’t usually move on of their own will. A summoner has to perform a sending for them so the soul can find its way to the other side. If they’re allowed to stay, then they can morph into all sorts of monsters. Some of them even retain their appearance and personalities.” Yuna gripped her hands together in her lap, trying not to dwell on Maester Seymour too much before she continued. “Ardyn reacted to a sending I performed in front of him. Which tells me he isn’t alive, if nothing else. I’m not sure what an unsent translates to where you’re from though.”
It occurred to Yuna that she should check in on the blond boy next to her, and she gave him a concerned look even as he stared at his lap. There was a lot that he wasn’t saying, but she didn’t need him to if Prompto wasn’t ready for that.
[attr=class,bulk] It had been a weird suggestion that they talk about Ardyn on the ferris wheel of all places, but Prompto seemed to be too nice to make her feel bad about it. Yuna was grateful for that, and she nodded a little sheepishly as he agreed. “I just thought...you might want to talk away from the crowds. I’m sorry if it feels inappropriate.” She didn’t have a better suggestion of a place to be alone with someone at a carnival though, so they started to head off towards the line together. At least until Yuna stopped in her tracks when Prompto expressed exactly why they should be careful.
“I’m sorry?” She asked a bit numbly, though she had heard him perfectly well. “You’re telling me that he can change his appearance to...anything he wants?” Ardyn had never shown her that particular skill of his. It wasn’t unusual for an unsent to change forms of course, but usually it was to something more monstrous over time. Someone who could mimic other humans was...troubling, and it called into question her theory that Ardyn had vanished from Zephon. Had he really been in plain sight all along?
Feeling suddenly more vulnerable, Yuna gripped her skirt as she followed Prompto towards the ferris wheel. She hadn’t even brought her staff, and that suddenly felt like a mistake even though she hadn’t seen Ardyn in nearly a year. Perhaps Prompto’s anxiety was just wearing off on her, but Yuna still wasn’t able to breathe easy again until she was alone in one of the ferris wheel compartments with the blond boy. On the seat next to her, Prompto still seemed uneasy though, even going so far as to say that they shouldn’t talk until they were higher up. Giving him a concerned look, Yuna peered out the window of the ferris wheel as they slowly drifted upwards to allow the next couple to board the ride.
“I think we should be alright,” she murmured, letting out a slow breath as she leaned back in her seat. It was the first time that she had ever done a ride like this with a boy, but her heart was beating fast for all the wrong reasons as she turned her memories north to a demolished hospital. Her fault. She had never quite been able to believe that it wasn’t.
“I met Ardyn in a hospital in Provo. There was a new plague spreading around the city that was rumored to turn men into monsters, and...I thought maybe I could help. Where I come from, I’m known as a summoner, so I specialize in healing magic. I volunteered there for weeks, but I was the only one in the quarantined section of the hospital that day. Me and...one other man. So I asked for his aid.”
Biting her lip, Yuna glanced over to gauge Prompto’s reaction. “Knowing what I do now...I don’t even know why he was there. I’ve heard that he causes the starscourge, and it’s...chilling to think he would visit his victims like that.” Boredom, perhaps? The image that she had gathered of the man from the bar was an unsent who had grown depressed away from the subjects of his vengeance. Perhaps in a world without the gods, his brother, or King Noctis, he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. It didn’t excuse anything of course, and Yuna still hoped to send him to the farplane in the end, but that was easier said than done.
She had seen him fight Shiva one on one and emerge victorious after all.
“I healed a man in front of him, and that seemed to convince him that I was the equivalent of an Oracle from your world. I...suppose he tried to kill me, but that’s not really right. If he had wanted me dead quickly, I have no doubt that I would be.” Yuna entwined her fingers together and gave Prompto a worried look to see how he was holding up. Talk of Ardyn seemed to make him incredibly anxious, and she didn’t like to think about why.
“Does that sound right? He summoned his sword sort of like Caius, but the magic looked red instead of blue. I thought that was odd.”
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna’s spell hit its mark, and her heart beat even faster as pearls of light rained down on the doppelganger. The white magic was so bright that the creature was entirely obscured from view for a moment, so Yuna couldn’t tell if Holy had finished the siren off or if Shiva needed to step in again. Either way, Yuna had no intentions of taking her eyes off of the fiend that had ensnared Kimahri until a sudden squelching noise made her eyes flicker back towards her guardian.
Yuna could barely take in what she was seeing for a moment, but when all of the blood trickling down his blue fur finally sank in, she pressed one hand to her mouth in horror. The pretty, decorative blade that Celes had bought her was clutched in one of Kimahri’s hands, but it looked far more threatening than beautiful when the jewels were stained with her friend’s blood. Intentional or not, she had stabbed Kimahri, and the open wound on his chest looked dire.
“I’m so sorry!” Yuna stepped forward with one hand stretched out entreatingly. “Please, let me-!” Before she could finish approaching him, Kimahri lunged forward with Yuna’s own dagger. The summoner only had a split second to react, and it wasn’t enough when the attack had caught her off guard. Her staff was held downward at her side, and Shiva was still far away by whatever remained of the fiend. Her Protect spell was still up, but that could only help so much as Kimahri thrust the dagger straight into her center.
The force of the blow rocked Yuna backwards, and she gasped as she instinctively latched onto his wrist that held the dagger. She didn’t dare look down to see how far the blade had impaled her--the pain was intense and she could feel the blood soaking into her white chemise, and that was enough. What was worse, she was low on magic after casting Holy. She had plenty of ethers in her bag of course, but she doubted that either Kimahri or the fiend would give her time to rifle through it. Which meant that her final spell had to count, and looking up into Kimahri’s eyes, Yuna knew what it had to be.
Letting her staff fall to the forest floor, Yuna reached up her free hand to lightly lay it on Kimahri’s chest. “Curaga.” The magic pouring out from her left her body feeling cold, but it was worth it to see the ragged edges of his stab wound starting to knit itself back together. Despite Kimahri’s frenzied eyes and the red vines that still encircled his body, Yuna smiled at him in relief before her knees buckled and she landed heavily on the forest floor by his feet.
Thankfully Shiva wouldn’t vanish until she lost consciousness.
[attr=class,bulk] Yuna saw Shiva deliver her Heavenly Strike attack towards the creature wearing Seymour’s face, but she was too caught up with Kimahri afterwards to really pay attention to their battle. She could still feel Shiva’s movements of course, but it was a bit of a whirlwind to keep up with them as she stared down her former guardian instead.
Kimahri had even more wounds than before--Shiva’s Blizzara attack had done worse to him than she had feared it would, and that seemed to have compounded the creature’s control over him. More of those red vines encircled his body, and he had dodged Yuna’s Thundara spell with more grace than she had expected. That was probably foolish of her though. They had spent hours in the Thunder Plains dodging lightning strikes during their travels. She knew that, but seeing the familiar movement of his dodge sped up her heartbeat with hope again. Even if it was only muscle memory, there was still a part of him in there. That wasn’t something the creature could make him do. It was something he had learned in Spira.
“Kimahri. I know you’re still in there,” Yuna entreated even as she held out her staff defensively. “Help me fight it, one last time. You’re the strongest person I know, and you deserve to follow your own path. Not hers and...not mine either.” It was a sad thing to admit. It felt almost like she was letting him go, but he deserved that. He had always done what Yuna wanted, from staying on Besaid to protecting her on her pilgrimage. It was time for the Ronso to live his own life and time for Yuna to protect herself.
Unfortunately there was no sign of recognition in her friend’s eyes, and he attacked her with a ferocity that took her aback, even with all her knowledge of him. Yuna did her best to keep her distance from him, casting black magic spells in an attempt to keep the fight on her terms. She could only keep him away for so long though, and as soon as Kimahri managed to dive in close, Yuna was at an immediate disadvantage. She was no physical fighter, as much as she tried to push him off her with her staff. And even with her Protect spell up, his spear kept getting through--a slash on her arm, a long cut on her stomach, a deep gash to her leg. But the worst came with a stabbing attack straight towards her middle.
Yuna just barely managed to twist to avoid getting impaled, but the spearhead still drove itself into her side, leaving her gasping more from the shock than from the pain. “Fire,” she managed to cast in an attempt to force him back, but the spear being wrenched from her side finally caused the pain to slam into her like a shoopuf. With a strangled scream, Yuna fell to one knee, using her staff to support her weight on the other side as she pressed a hand to her bleeding wound. “Cure.” She needed more than that--she’d been healing the wounded for long enough that she could tell how bad this one was, but she was saving the magic for something bigger.
Looking up, Yuna met her attacker’s eyes, smiling weakly as she slid her hand down from her wound towards her sash. “We’ve never fought before, have we?” Kimahri was always there to protect her instead. Holding her up when she’d collapse after getting a new aeon. Standing in front of her whenever there was a fiend or when Maester Seymour showed his true colors. But not this time. Yuna only had herself, and it was her job to protect him now. Left-handed, she gripped the hilt of the dagger that Celes had gifted her. The blonde general was fond of saying that Yuna shouldn’t always rely on magic, and it looked like she was right. Pulling it out of the sheath inside her sash, Yuna flung the jeweled blade towards Kimahri before rolling to the side. She was sure that he’d knock it aside, but the point wasn’t to injure him.
The point was to buy a moment to attack the source together.
As one, Yuna and Shiva changed the course of their attacks to both face the fiend wearing Seymour’s face. Shiva brought two fingers to her lips and spun in a circle to begin her Diamond Dust limit break, causing ice to spring out that would attempt to hold the creature in place. At the same time, Yuna flung her staff out like she was summoning again and glared at the fiend with every ounce of her determination.
