Esthar had two main transportation options; the airships, and the trains. Trains were generally more reliable in terms of schedules, but the airships were more exciting and often faster. Either could encounter monsters mid-route, but passengers often didn't notice this when riding by rail. This was because guards were stationed on every car to make sure the way was clear; this also had a deterring effect on would-be train robbers. In an airship, a combination of guns and fancy flying got passengers to their destination in one piece, though it was not a recommended mode of travel for the delicate of stomach. Shutat generally preferred the train; he knew too many wind-gifts to feel comfortable trusting his life to the temper of one. So the three friends rode by train to East Timber - a city none of them had ever seen.

"Do they know what's been done with their name?" Naia asked as she looked around at what appeared to be a town more heavily fortified than Winhill. Although wooden-beam construction was prevalent on older buildings, there weren't many left - and stone and steel were more common on the newer. Mostly what one could see, perched on any building of reasonable size, were artillery guns. "I thought Fisherman's Horizon was the checkpoint!"

Shutat shook his head. "FH belongs to Esthar the same way Balamb belongs to Galbadia," he began, and Chugi laughed - a short, sharp bark.

"Then it doesn't belong to Esthar at all," he said. "Galbadia doesn't put the big guns and long range missiles on Balamb because it'd have a war on its hands if it tried, Shu. We belong to Galbadia because in the end that's all they wanted to be able to do - point at a map and tell you Esthari "hey, we own that". If they actually tried to act like they own us we'd kick their butts so hard you could come in and finish them off without breaking a sweat."

Shutat paused. "I thought they had a little more control than that," he protested, then waved his hand in negation. "Never mind. The point is, FH is less a conquest and more a colony. They're engineers that left Esthar during one of the Sorceress wars, and when the Galbadian empire started re-assembling again, they sort of reached an agreement with us. FH is part of Esthar, and works for Esthar - our planes and ships can be repaired and refueled there, and they'll give us their new designs first - but they're not involved in the wars of empire. They'll help us with materiel, but not with manpower. So there's no checkpoint there - trains go straight across, Timber to East Timber and back again, with only emergency stops at FH when necessary."

Naia sighed, disappointed. "I was looking forward to seeing the Fishermen," she said. "They're supposed to be great people. Really brilliant - and you've got to admire the way they've managed to never fight a war."

Chugi snorted. "Oh, yeah," he said, rolling his eyes. "Gotta admire how they get other people to dirty their hands keeping 'em safe. At least you Winhilli do your own fighting." He paused. "When shoved, anyway."

"We defend what's ours," said Naia serenely. "Against the whole world, if we have to."

Shutat stumbled as a blinding headache hit him like a hammerstrike to the brain. War. War and fire. A great battle is waged on the walls of a fortified city - monsters and men wearing jump-packs fighting against the defenders. Whirlwinds and earthquakes and bursts of flame and water as the defenders fight; there are mageborn in the battle. A woman in a black form fitting gown spreads crow-black wings and flies to the top of the wall; a man - one of many on the wall - is her target. He wears a SeeD's uniform, a gold star pinned to his collar. And then pain in his knee as he hit the ground. He blinked a few times, shaken and breathing hard.

Vision, said Griever. Quickly - what did you see?

The Guardian Force's voice caused a dull, throbbing reaction, and Shutat automatically put his hand to his face. Chugi and Naia hovered close by, concerned.

"Are you okay?" asked Naia. "What's wrong?"

"Need some help?" added Chugi, worried. "There any pills that work on you guys? I could get 'em..."

"A vision," gasped Shutat, trying to hide his sudden fear. A waking vision - he hadn't had one of those since...he focused on holding the images in his mind for Griever to see, as he described them for his friends. "A walled city - war. Mageborn were fighting, I could see the jets of fire and water, feel the wind and earthquakes. A sorceress led the attack, and the Commander was on the walls."

"Walls?" asked Naia alertly. "Winhill is the only walled city."

The city is Winhill, Griever confirmed at the same time.

"Omar?" asked Chugi, getting right to the point. "Was it Commander Kinneas?"

"No," Shutat denied, shaking his head as he wobbled to his feet. The headache was making him nauseated, and he swallowed against it. "No, not Omar. Someone I don't know. But he wore a black SeeD's uniform and had a gold star on his collar. Who else would it be but the Commander of the time? It couldn't be the Headmaster, not against a Sorceress."

"A Sorceress wants to take over my city?" asked Naia, indignant. "I hope you saw us kicking her butt."

Shutat looked around him, at the steel and concrete of East Timber, the clean military efficiency. It was nothing like his vision - comfortingly real. "It ended too soon," he said quietly. "I'm sorry." But I had a waking vision. Wide awake. I have to find the White SeeD soon. "Which way was it to the check station? Naia, you have the map..."

He felt disoriented. The headache probably had a lot to do with that, but he couldn't shake the feeling of being underwater - one of the most terrifying states for a fire gift to be in. Chugi and Naia seemed to decide letting him be was the best course, without saying a word. At least, without saying a word he could hear; the ocean seemed loud in his ears. Maybe I should've flown after all, he speculated.

You cannot hear the sea from here, said Griever quietly. Focus on what is in front of you.

Easy for you to say, Shutat replied shakily. Faint though Griever's words were, he still felt as though someone had been beating on his head with hammers. A hand gripped his arm, and he turned to see Chugi.

"We said, we need you to get the tickets," he said as if repeating for the nth time. "We don't have a good enough grip on Esthari. Shu, don't even try telling me you're okay. What's the problem?"

No. No, he was not going to have Chugi and Naia looking at him like that. If his surroundings were going to play tricks, he would focus on his friends instead. "It's just a headache," he said, wishing he were capable of lying, but that was one power humans alone seemed to have. "There's nothing to be done about it."

Chugi's stern glare said he wasn't buying a word of it, truth or not, but he let it go. "Just...get the tickets, man," he said, "and then we're gonna knock your butt out on the train to Timber."

"In your dreams," Shutat managed to retort, with at least some semblance of his usual demeanor, and ordered tickets to Timber. "Here, you two get in that line over there. We need to prove we're not smuggling cactuars or something equally ridiculous."

"Why not use our SeeD privileges?" grumbled Naia, as they started dragging bags.

"Because we're not carrying anything illegal," sighed Shutat. "Five foot swords are pretty obvious, so I'm not carrying any concealed weapons. And you two are martial artists, no weapons at all, and if we don't need to go waving Garden passes all over the planet I'd just as soon we didn't, okay?"

"Jawohl," snapped Chugi, annoyed. "Hyne. Give a guy command and it goes right to his head. Remind me to ask about headache cures for mageborn when we get there, Shu."

"And everybody knows I adore standing in queues," Shutat snapped back, in no mood for this. "Just do it, all right? It's not like you have to carry around enough heavy clothing for an arctic expedition, now is it?"

"And if you boys don't stop arguing, I'm going to have to beat you both black and blue and lock you away from the cookie jar," came Naia's not-entirely-idle threat from farther up the line. "Orders are orders, Chugi, and it's not like a line is the end of the world."

"Hmph," grunted Chugi, though he was careful to be very polite to the customs agent assigned to look through his bag.

Shutat was relieved that Naia, at least, understood that SeeD passes shouldn't be waved around indiscriminately. Any time officials saw one, they automatically assumed that the SeeD in front of them had something to do with them, their little secrets and peccadilloes, and answers and help thereafter became one huge tangle of favor for favor, lies and misdirections. If the hassle could be avoided by passing through customs as any other travelers did, then Shutat preferred to do so. Soon enough they were on the bullet train to Timber, that would cross the ocean-spanning Horizon Bridge.

It might be a marvel of engineering, but as far as the three friends were concerned it was one of the most boring trips to make in the world. Long ago, the Bridge had been covered with a tough transparent plastic and its supports reinforced, so that the vagaries of the sea would not wash track or train away. But the plastic was much-scratched by sea salt and monster claw, and there was nothing on the other side but ocean; although the train could cover the distance in a day, it was never fast enough for the people who rode inside.

The SeeDs had prepared for this as for anything else; knowing they could sleep more cheaply on the train, they'd spent all of the previous night at the Archives, ferreting out any remotely useful piece of information. Putting the pieces together could wait until they were sure they had enough pieces, and on the train they could sleep.

Shutat hadn't expected to, in truth. Mageborn typically required at most half the sleep of humans - Chugi had grown very used to Shutat spending a lot of time studying or training when he should have been sleeping. But this was not now the case; since the Exam, Shutat had been sleeping a lot more. Almost as much as his friends, and it made him feel odd. Or did he have the cause and effect reversed?

Your power is fueled by your body, Griever said, and Shutat winced. You have not been sleeping when you close your eyes.

That was a disturbing notion, even through the vague feeling of too much sleep and too little rest, and the tenderized feeling in his head from the Guardian Force's presence. Visions... he thought distantly. I'd always been taught that we burn ourselves to ash. Maybe I'll sleep myself to death instead...that would be nice.

Griever might have said something; Shutat had the unclear impression of some leonine sound, but he was already drifting off. Or waking up...

He stands on clouds, dark and purple-gray and flashing with lightning in their foggy shadows. Above him is endless starry night, or something near to it; bright points of light in impenetrable darkness. He steps, and finds without surprise that he can walk on the cloud tops; the clouds are soft and springy, like rich earth, and tendrils of mist curl around his booted toes. He walks aimlessly, seeing no one else, with his head tilted back to watch the brilliant stars. He has never seen stars so beautiful, so bright; light pollution long ago rendered most stars invisible from the ground.

"Every star is a single life," says a voice behind him, and he turns.

They appear to him as woman and man, with the dark black skin of the jungles of Timber. They wear, both of them, silver and midnight blue and steel blue, and their eyes are the eyes of the night above. Stars even shine in their black depths. And even though their eyes and his are not the same, something else inside tells him who they are.

"Bahamut," he breathes, and they smile. It is not a welcoming smile; spiders might smile that way.

The Sorceress of Bahamut raises a hand to the sky, and lines of light appear, connecting the stars. The lines create an impression of flow, of nexus, of progression, "Behold, child, all of Time there shall ever be."

He looks - cannot look away, in truth, the sight is breathtaking - and on instinct reaches out as if the stars might come to his hand. A feeling of rushing movement, and suddenly he is close enough to touch the Timestream. But he is not Bahamut; he cannot control what he sees. He is not the gravity that determines the course of the river's flow, but only a leaf riding headlong on the current. And what a current; faces grow from infancy and fall into age, rising and falling into the white 'water' of the Stream, Sorceresses rising like jutting boulders in the whitewater, Guardian Forces changing the flow and he is helpless, helpless as he is carried along, seeing far too much to ever comprehend or remember.

When a hand reaches out to pull him free of the Stream he takes it, and only after he is free does he see that his savior is Bahamut. Wide eyed, disoriented, he is still aware enough to be frightened; Bahamut has never been a merciful creature. "Why?" he asks, and is wary of hearing the answer.

"You are given the power to see the flow of Time," says Bahamut's Knight. "But not the power to control it. You see, and will see, until you drown in the waters of history. Humans are not meant to see so much."

Quite true; it is what has always killed the mageborn of his Gift. "Why did you save me?"

The Knight does all the speaking, the Sorceress, all the actions. As he speaks, her hand waves at the sky; what was a great profusion of lines narrows down to few - an outline of a stream, rather than the stream itself. The actors who shape the stream's course and flow. "We can see, and to some extent control," the Knight says. "But you exist within Time, as we do not. You can act, within the flow, to change the flow much more quickly and completely than we are currently able. If you know where the pressure points are. If you know what to do when you reach them. We offer you alliance."

He is rocked back on his heels; he can feel the awesome age and power of this Force - it is everywhere, all around him. The Dragon has no need of him.

"We do," repeats the Knight. "And you have need of us. Without our aid, without us to filter your visions, you will die mad as all your kindred have before you. We offer alliance; a service for a service."

Now Shutat is more than wary; he is concerned. "If you can do this, save me...why haven't you ever done it before? Why have the Bahamut gifts died, if you could save them?"

"We offer alliance," repeats the Knight. "Not servitude. We do not exist to answer your questions. Your power is of us, its source is of our body. We are your only hope of ever controlling it."

Shutat fingers the silver pendant around his neck - a representation of Bahamut, wings and talons outspread as if to grab and hold. The tiny talons feel needle sharp, and he is afraid.

Suddenly, the vision fades - night and cloud and Force together.

He opened his eyes to find Chugi shaking his shoulder. "Come on, Shu, we're here. This is Timber - last stop for the Horizon train."

As if the nap had only fended it off, not treated it, Shutat's headache returned tenfold. He winced, grimacing at the pain, and fumbled for his bag. Another hand, more capable, picked it up first.

"I've never, ever, seen a sick mageborn," said Naia quietly, slinging his bag over her shoulder. "But you've been sleeping, and you're definitely not well." She held out her free hand and he took it, letting her pull him to his feet. "I think you need to tell us what's going on."

"Not here," pleaded Shutat quietly, aware of the curious eyes on the train. With his ghost-white skin, heavy clothing, and the blue tint to his hair, he was obviously mageborn. He didn't think anyone needed to know more than that, and would really have preferred them not to know even that much.

Chugi steered him off the train by the elbow, and into the humid air of Timber. "Yeah? Well, we need a drink to clear our heads of that godawfulboring trip anyway," he said matter of factly. "I'll say this for the Timberi - they make almost as good a set of drinks as I could get on the beaches at home."

Bahamut spoke to you, said Griever quietly. We know the way it feels. Clever, to speak through your power; we could have stopped it, or at least listened in, otherwise. What did it offer?

Don't talk, begged Shutat in his thoughts. I'm in enough pain...your voice...voices...hurt...

"Shu?" asked Naia, and then her features set. "That's it. A drink, and sitting down, or you get relieved of command for medical reasons. I've got the certification and you know it."

"Drinks here!" Chugi called from a short distance away. He already had a fanciful plastic tourist cup filled with something that looked violently green, and was picking up another drink that was just as brilliantly yellow. He nodded toward a table. "Sit there, this one's for you, Naia," and he handed her the yellow one. "They call it a Chocobo Twirl, not a clue what's in it." The green drink he plunked down in front of Shutat. "And that's called a Cactuar Thumb. I figured if it makes you any greener you'll get sick, and maybe feel better after."

"No," said Shutat, pushing it away. "You have it." Hyne, his head was killing him. "I don't think I need to add being drunk to my problems."

That stopped both of his friends. Mageborn were famous for being immune to any chemical alteration, desired or not. Alcohol had no more effect on them than aspirin. "...Shu?" asked Naia. "What's going on with you?"

"I'm a Bahamut gift," said Shutat slowly - and quietly, for Timber had many mageborn and they'd probably have an interest in a stranger. Griever and his friends were the only ones who needed the explanation.

"Yeah..." agreed Chugi, frowning. "That just means fire gift, though, doesn't it? That's all you've ever done. Well, that and the visions, but that's just the past few days..." He trailed off. "Visions."

"Yes," sighed Shutat. "Bahamut is the rarest gift...because it kills those born with it. As the gift matures...we see more, and more. Future and past and no way to tell which is which, until we can't tell when now is anymore. In the end we die from the gift going out of control. We burn ourselves alive."

"There's no way," said Naia. "There's no way you could be burning yourself up for all this time and nobody knows about it. Mageborn don't..." she stopped. Mageborn don't lie. But they didn't get sick, either, or drunk. "You are mageborn, aren't you?"

That won a small, tired snort. "Yes. I'm just a crippled one. That's how I've lived so long. Before me, the longest-surviving Bahamut gift was thirteen years old. But me...up until recently I had no visions, I could only call my fire to edges, couldn't hold a sense shift long..." he glanced at his friends, "and I could get a buzz from spiked drinks." He leaned his elbows on the cheap tourist table, resting his face in his hands. "Only it's not like that now. I'm starting to see things again - I told you - and I'm not sleeping because of it, and my head's killing me."

Chugi stared into the green depths of his drink. "So...you're going crazy?" he asked slowly.

"I hope not," wished Shutat. He raised his gaze, looking around. East Timber had been half wood, half steel; Timber itself was entirely of wood, from its buildings to its benches. Although it had grown enormously in recent decades, it was easily the most sprawling city on the planet. "Timber is...ab Chwaer, isn't it?" he mused to himself. "They're practical folk..." he pushed himself to his feet, grabbing his bag. "Come on. I'll show you what to look for...in case you ever need it. Every group of mageborn has at least one."

"Headache gone?" asked Naia hopefully.

"No, but if I let it stop me I might as well give up right now," Shutat replied. "I'll fall over when I fall over, and rest then, and worry about it then. Come on."

Eyes tight with pain, the echo of shift in the dark irises, Shutat led them down the curving cobblestone streets of Timber as if he'd memorized a map of the place. But then, as both his companions knew, the indications he followed might not be easily seen. He stopped before a low, square building that was, oddly enough, not made of wood. Although obviously kept in good repair, the candle shop was built entirely of stone. He nodded at it. "Do you see that design?"

"Square stone building," Chugi agreed. "There's a meat shop in Balamb..." he trailed off.

"And a bakery in Winhill..." said Naia, equally quiet.

"There's one in any mageborn grouping," said Shutat. "At least one. In bigger cities there'll be two or more, just to be sure. They'll always be run by mageborn, and if we live apart they'll be in the mageborn part of town." Mother. His mother had told him...and he was not going to think about it right now, not in depth, not yet. Just the essentials right now. Just what the other two needed to know.

The other two nodded, looking at the candle shop. Neither needed to go inside to check how accurate this claim might be. The building was, in size and construction, nearly identical to the ones they knew. It was only the business that was different.

"If I...." Shutat stopped, sighed. "When I go insane...if we're in a town, you have to get me to the building that looks like this. You won't have a lot of time and I'll probably fight you - do whatever you have to do, but please don't let the other humans know what's going on. Shove me in there...give the people inside time to get out. The business will burn but the building won't. And nobody will die that way. The mageborn will rebuild the business."

He leaned on a lamp post, closing his eyes. There were headaches, and there was looking at your own grave. Bahamut's offer floated to the surface of his mind - to be spared, to live - but what would Bahamut ask, in exchange? I'm seventeen. I should be starting my life, not planning my funeral. But since when had Life changed its plans because they weren't fair? He had the time he had. That was all anyone had. And he was not going to think about it yet.

Chugi, as always, was the most practical. "Well, great. I wasn't looking for a moody drunk, Shu."

"You were the ones who wanted to drink," Shutat pointed out.

"So...how much time?" asked Naia. "Is there anything we can do while we're here, or should we get going?"

Shutat turned away from the candleshop, and its grim construction. The sweltering jungle heat of Timber was welcome, very welcome. He almost felt comfortable enough to take off his trenchcoat, which he hadn't been tempted to do outdoors in years. It was certainly helping the headache. So was his friends' attitudes; in a sense it was a relief to get the worry off his chest - they'd know what to do, now, and they were SeeD. More, they understood mageborn and how important a secret it was he'd entrusted them with. For five hundred years, the nature of the Bahamut gift had been kept from humans. There was good reason for that; in most cities, mageborn were barely tolerated - if that. In Esthar they lived in separate neighborhoods, generally separate suburbs. In Deling they lived here and there, scattered like an invisible web over the cityscape, treated and tolerated as if they were vermin. Dollet assumed a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy that worked fine if you weren't one of those mageborn who had an immediately recognizable gift; Shutat actually found Deling more welcoming because at least there they didn't pretend to tolerate him.

But Chugi came from Balamb, where the ab Nodwydd had long since gone past a state where 'clan' might apply, and had reached 'horde'. There wasn't a human on Balamb Island who couldn't claim kinship with at least one mageborn, either by blood or marriage or both. Even the deadliest gifts had places they could go and people they could rely on; Chugi was probably not kidding about his people's capability to tell the huge Galbadian empire where it could shove its swagger stick. And Naia came from Winhill, and there it was even more tightly knit than Balamb; Winhill was run by mageborn, every family there numbering several mageborn members. It was a sort of concentrated version of Balamb, and had adopted a fiercely defensive stance that had successfully held off both empires to date. Winhill had no railroads and no roads to reach it, and only one small airport. Naia was probably more surprised that there was something about mageborn she didn't know, than the reality of her friend's gift.

"Winhill's still the destination," he said. "If there's any record of contact, it'll be there. Probably in the Catacombs under the Memorial."

Naia smiled. "You're taking us, right?" she asked pointedly. "I've always wanted to see them - I've heard the Brothers-gifted and the Diablos-gifted have really done something special down there. Like a wonder of the world or something. But they don't let humans go down there."

Shutat blinked at her. "Why should they be anything special?" he asked. "They're catacombs, Naia. Burial vaults. There's really no need to do those in a fancy way."

She looked, for all the world, like she was enjoying some old ghost story in her mind. "They say the first ones are buried down there," she confided. "The very first mageborn. Come on, Shu - they're your ancestors! Aren't you at all curious?"

Chugi looked like he was watching a ping pong match, watching from face to face as Shutat gave the question honest consideration, relieved that his friends were distracted. "I know what happened to my forefather," he said slowly. "But...now that you mention it, I don't know what happened to the others." He shrugged. "You two probably know what happened to Nodwydd, Cariad, and Chwaer though. Should I be curious?"

Chugi grinned. "Nothing special here. The Cactus House still stands, anyway - I think the only time they close the doors is when a hurricane's coming in, and even then they get the local Pandemona-gifts to blow it away from the House."

"Nothing about Nodwydd, then, that I need to know to find the SeeD?"

The question made Chugi shrug. "Nodwydd's son Liam took up with one of Kiel's daughters." He paused. "Okay, probably more than one of Kiel's daughters."

Shutat's expression was bland. "That would be a 'no', then, I take it. The Dinchts wear the black, not the white. Naia?"

She, too, shrugged. "I'd have said no, Shutat, except that I thought I knew mageborn and I didn't know your gift does...what it does. I know you're off base thinking the ab Chwaer are still there, though. They left Winhill and came here, to Timber. Just about all of them."

That made Shutat blink. "I knew the Line here was ab Chwaer, but...why?"

"Not over an argument, if that's what you're thinking," said Naia. "The father of the line, I think, came from Timber. Some of his children decided some of his family should live here. So they came. I do know this is the only place you can get any kind of transport to Winhill from." She pointed at Shutat. "You can do it, probably. I can't." She indicated her uniform. "Technically, I'm no longer a citizen, because I joined SeeD."

Shutat was tempted to ask her why on earth she would leave her family and her city - by all accounts a good place to live - to join SeeD. But there were more important considerations. "I can?" he asked. "Where? How?"

She pointed down the row, at the painted image of a yellow chocobo on a swinging board. "The chocobo stables," she said. "The ab Chwaer are the chocobo breeders - and Winhill didn't want to give them up. So there was a deal; as long as the line was open, the ab Cariad would supply the greens and the ab Chwaer the chocobos. It's only open to citizens of Winhill or the mageborn that know to ask for it, but it's absolutely safe." She grinned. "Just don't insult their chocobos!"

Chocobos - Winhill chocobos. Mageborn-run chocobo carriages. "I wouldn't dream of it," he said softly, even managing a smile. The Winhilli had managed to resurrect the lines of colored chocobos - it was the closest thing the city-state had to a cultural sport. Races were segregated by color, and a skilled chocobo jockey could live in luxury if he chose. Televised chocobo races were the city's main export. Although chocobos did not die of age, and chocobos had been bought by non-Winhilli, no one had yet managed to successfully breed colored chocobos outside of Winhill. There were secrets that were jealously kept by the natives on the subject, and given the capabilities of the colored birds, more than one war had taken place trying to uncover them.

To Shutat it meant a safe, and fast, trip to Winhill. That was very much what he needed; there was no telling when another vision might strike. If he could, he would try to wrangle a gold chocobo; they were the strongest and fastest of all.

They do not come cheaply, noted Griever, and Shutat clutched his head.

Don't shout! he pleaded. Your voices hurt. He wobbled slightly, and both his friends immediately reached to grab his elbows. It makes me dizzy.

We will try to speak more quietly, said Griever. But we were not shouting. We've spoken to you at that volume before without difficulty.

"Shu?" asked Chugi. "It's not another vision is it? Your eyes didn't change...at least your eyelids weren't glowing..."

"No," Shutat replied, and looked at his friends patiently until they let his arms go. "Griever's voice is just giving me a headache."

"All the more reason for us to get ourselves a carriage," pushed Naia. "It's a long hike, and you need to talk to somebody about this, Shutat. If you need rest, you can rest on the carriage."

That sounded like a good idea, so Shutat nodded - carefully. "That place, you said?" he asked, pointing to the building. When Naia nodded, he adjusted his bag on his shoulder and led the way. Leadership aside, he was feeling in need of rest - and that bothered him more than a little, given that he'd slept on the train and not really exerted himself. Maybe he needed to eat; that was possible, given all his visions. The gift - any gift - was fueled by the body, whether it was consciously called or not. There was no telling what the drain caused by the visions was; as far as he knew, no Bahamut gift had lived long enough to really study the matter.

"You gonna be okay?" asked Chugi. "I mean - anything we can do? I've never seen you so floored, not even after a bad day at practice."

"I think...I'm probably hungry," said Shutat slowly, and threw out his hach thing as a fat mageborn, really - the powers, even sense-shifts, were very energy intensive. If anything, mageborn were widely known as hearty if bland eaters; most mageborn couldn't tolerate spices in amounts that humans could taste. He didn't have to wait long, at least, before Chugi came running back, his arms loaded with food. The smell of it all set his mouth watering, and Shutat knew some of his unease was hunger by that - for the food that Chugi brought back was tourist fare. Hot dogs, burgers, fries, pretzels, corn dogs, "Chugi, it would've been easier to buy the cart - and where did you get money to pay for all this?"

"Plastic, man, plastic!" he beamed as he approached. "There's a vendy type machine in the deli, I just started pushin' buttons!" He handed over a wrapped hot sandwich. "Here, start in. This stuff's making me hungry too."

"Hey," groused Naia, liberating a pretzel. "What about me?"

Shutat didn't have anything to say for several minutes; now that food was in front of him, he ate - and heartily. It did seem to help the general feeling of weakness and nausea. Standing on a sidewalk, leaning on a building, and trying to eat rather inferior (but condiment-buried) hot dogs while trying to avoid getting anything on his trenchcoat - with limited success - Shutat could just about pretend everything was fine. Or at least getting there. After three hot dogs and a heavy hamburger, he ventured, Could you say something...quietly? to Griever.

This is as quiet as we can be, before you don't seem to hear us at all, said Griever.

The two blended voices still turned his stomach - enough that he didn't finish his fourth hot dog for a few minutes - but it wasn't as bad at all. Not just hunger, then, he decided. Don't say anything you don't have to.

The faintest murmur of sound was Griever's affirmation; a small purrish noise. When the three of them had polished off the mound of food - Chugi and Naia also looking better for the meal, however unhealthful - Shutat wiped off his hands and face and said, "That was one of your better ideas, Chugi. Thanks."

"Like I ever have a bad one?" grinned his friend. "You look worlds better, anyway. So - let's go do the chocobo thing."

"Ahem," said Naia with an answering smile. "I seem to recall something about the DC and a pair of cadets who thought it would be great fun to provide the Headmaster with a custom selection of the kinkier class of Deling hooker cards..."

"Not my idea," said Shutat quickly. "Chugi said if I didn't go along with it, he wouldn't share any of them with me next time his folks visited there!"

"Coward," Chugi snorted. "Everybody knows Almasys don't like to play if they don't get to hunt. Hookers aren't their style, man, not at all. It was just a gag, anyway. Headmaster didn't need to get so pissy about it."

"An Almasy with a sense of humor is like a fish in a triathlon," said Shutat, in motion again. "I could've sworn he was waiting for me to cry feud on him."

Naia blinked as she and Chugi moved to follow. "You. Declare feud. On the Headmaster? I didn't think he thought you were that stupid."

Shutat grinned wryly in answer and tugged with one white hand at his bluish curls. "My family doesn't have a reputation outside of Esthar for being the brightest bulbs in the mageborn chandelier," he said. "And you can't be a SeeD without wanting to be able to fight. Ah...here we are..." he opened the door, and finished quietly, "...oh."

Anyone could tell that the building was dedicated to the love of chocobos. Photos, artistic renderings of internal organs, images of various greens, trophies, and autographed holograms competed with the huge off-track betting station and wide screen against the far wall. A young-looking man with mousey brown hair and a quiet expression stood beside the counter, taking in what on first glance were two SeeDs - Chugi and Naia - and the unmistakably mageborn Shutat. His friends had probably changed on the train, this being their continent, but Shutat avoided his uniform whenever possible. It simply wasn't warm enough.

Shutat almost felt sorry for the man; he wasn't a border guard or government official, to be used to seeing strange groupings. One of his kind in the company of SeeDs was unheard of. And by the young man's wary expression, probably not a good thing. So Shutat opened with, "It's all right, really. They're my friends."

The clerk blinked, his eyes briefly shifting emerald green before returning to a human blue. He said, in the simple gesture, I am a mageborn of Carbuncle. By inference, on Shutat's side against the SeeDs if necessary, and relieved to not be needed that way. "You make strange friends, stranger," he said mildly, but without reproof. "None of my business, but thanks for easing my mind anyway. I'm Charles. Charlie if you like." He waved a hand at the room. "What do you need?"

Shutat knew it would give him a headache, but he did Charlie the courtesy of returning a brief eyeshift of his own; brown eyes to blue-white, and watched Charlie frown again; the shade was uncommon, and he might not know that it wasn't just a variation on Leviathan. People, human and mageborn alike, generally didn't know the Bahamut gift well off-hand. "I need a ride, for myself and my friends, to Winhill as fast as can be done. I've been told this would be the place to start."

"And finish," agreed Charlie with a nod. "Leviathan?"

Shutat sighed. "Half-gifted Bahamut," he admitted. "Harmless," he hoped.

"Luck of the Cactuar," was Charlie's heartfelt reply. "Yeah, I can get you to Winhill. The carriage'll be here in about two hours, the fee's fifty gil per passenger." He eyed Chugi and Naia sternly. "And it's for our own, not for you, that I'm offering at all. Don't think either of you two can come back here and get tickets on your own. Do yourselves a favor and don't report how you got there to anyone, right?"

Naia accepted the reprimand and warning with a graciously bowed head; Charlie didn't need to know that she was Winhilli and had been the one to say that rides were possible. Shutat kept his expression carefully neutral, though he couldn't stop his eyes from shifting in the heat of his anger and had to close his eyes. Part of him longed to snap back "I'm a SeeD too! Of course we're not going to tell him!" - but that would serve no purpose at all. He was lucky Charlie seemed lost in a world of chocobos and didn't follow the extensive mageborn grapevines; Shutat was the only known Bahamut gift currently living, and it was generally known that he had joined the Gardens for training as a SeeD.

Chugi, quite clearly both human and SeeD, and as new to the chocobo carriage as Shutat, was possessed of a large and fiery temper that he was now restraining through sheer force of will alone. He couldn't hurt a Carbuncle gift and knew it - the gift was to summon an impenetrable shield that his martial arts were useless against - but he was deeply, deeply tempted to take the man by the shirt and give him a thorough seeing-to. He was a lifelong friend of mageborn, and didn't appreciate being so insulted on a casual meeting, without cause.

Shutat set his hand on Chugi's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "There won't be anything in the report," he agreed, and left it to Charlie to work out how Shutat knew that was the truth. He fished the required money out of his wallet and handed it over. "You should apologize, Charlie of Carbuncle," he continued mildly. "Don't you recognize the Dincht mark on his cheek?"

"Dincht?" the clerk blinked as the tickets and receipt printed. He handed the printouts to Shutat and took a closer look at Chugi's anger-reddened face. "No," he admitted, surprised. "I've never seen the mark myself before, and you weren't properly introduced." There was a mild censure for Shutat in that, for the omission. Bowing low to the SeeD, he said, "I'm sorry. I wouldn't have said that if I'd known."

To Shutat, the rather stunned look on Chugi's face was more than worth the mild effort of cluing his distant kinsman in. Shutat well knew the sheer magnitude that particular name carried with his kind, and what made it all the more gratifying was that Chugi, one of hundreds of his house, didn't know. Most mageborn were more world-aware, and accorded Chugi the respect they considered due his family instinctively; he'd never had it brought to his attention that there was a reason for it.

"Apology...accepted," said Chugi dazedly, and held out his hand. "Uh...don't bang your head on the counter or anything, okay? Only I just ate lunch."

Naia's hand rose to her mouth as fast as Shutat's did, and for the same reason; to smother a laugh. "You didn't know?" she asked, in the same way she might have asked how he could not know the sky was blue. "Chugi...some days I just don't believe you."

Shutat steered his friends out the side door before Charlie could be inadvertently included in any more of the discussion he knew was coming. The carriage would be along in a few hours, and possibly they could see more of Timber while they waited, but he rather doubted it. For one thing, Chugi - while generally speaking a very intelligent person - had a hard time handling simple tasks like walking in a straight line when he was overwhelmed.

"Know?" he almost squeaked. "Know? Know what, Naia?" One gloved fist cracked the brickwork as he punched it. "I thought they liked me. I didn't know it was this," and he indicated the blackflame tattoo on his cheek, "that they were being nice to. Why should I? It's not like it's anything they can't handle!"

"You're looking at it the wrong way," said Shutat, grabbing his friend's hand and forcing him to sit down on the bench built into the building's wall. "The mageborn you've met do like you. When you're not trying to punch holes in their businesses, anyway."

Chugi's jaw set stubbornly. "I know what I just saw, Shutat," he snapped. "Don't try to tell me it's something else. He wouldn't've given me the time of day, and then you told him who I was and suddenly he's all nice!"

"Your name makes up for your lack of native charm in some circles, Chugi," said Shutat mildly. "And most mageborn you've met either already knew what family you belonged to, or liked you enough before finding out your name that it didn't matter. Charlie in there was only caught off guard. Sounds like if it doesn't have to do with chocobos, he's not interested."

Naia tapped her friend on the shoulder. "If it helps, Chugi," she said, "I'm more than happy to knock you flat right now for being stupid. That's not how it works with them. Mageborn don't kowtow to anybody."

"Well, Charlie in there sure looked like he was thinking about it!" Chugi all but shouted back at her.

Shutat and Naia exchanged a look, and Naia said, "Let me. You might break his jaw by accident," and Shutat nodded agreement. Instead, he grabbed and easily held Chugi by one shoulder as Naia swung a mean right hook at her friend's jaw, knocking him out with clinical precision.

"Good one," Shutat approved quietly, picking the shorter man up as easily as he might pick up a pillow, and laying him out on the bench. "He does get worked up about things."

Without warning, everything changed. In the blink of an eye, his friends were gone, the bench he'd just laid Chugi on was a rusted mass of twisted metal, and the scent of burning filled his nostrils. Shocked, he raised his eyes and looked around.

He was not alone. All around, men and women ran from buildings that were burning onto streets coated with ice. He could see the slickness of it, the puddles of melt near the flaming buildings, feel the tightening of his skin in anticipation of ice-burn. He didn't dare take off a glove to touch, but - "This is a vision," he said aloud, trying to force himself out of what he was seeing. "It's not real. It's a vision!"

A mob of screaming people were stampeding for him. He didn't dare find out that way how real this was - he ducked into an alley instead, and fire engulfed him. That didn't bother him at all; the heat felt wonderful, and he focused on the fact that his clothes, which were leather and could burn, were not in fact burning. "Vision," he repeated to himself. "It's a vision. It's not real." But it certainly felt real. This wasn't like before - it wasn't something he could prove to be in his mind. He walked, and the world appeared to move in accordance with his steps. What was happening?

This was Timber. He was sure of it. They were in Timber, they'd just walked halfway across it. The cobblestone streets of the oldest part of the city's center, the open-timber construction the people were so proud of...all here, all aflame. But why?

Sense-shifted, he heard the sound of marching. Steady, cadenced footsteps, boots on stone, approaching. Shutat stayed in the fiery alley; only mageborn would go into such a place after him, and mageborn did not join armies - he hoped. When was this? How much time was there to stop the city from burning?

The booted steps came into view. Soldiers in violet uniforms, the rich, wine-dark purple that had once been called imperial. As they came, the fires burned higher and ice seemed almost to grow along the cobbles, bursting directly into steam as it reached the burning buildings. "Mageborn?" asked Shutat, unbelieving. Mageborn in uniforms? Mageborn destroying cities? He was an outcast for just being trained as a soldier - who were they? When was this? He tried to look into their eyes, but even sense-shifted he couldn't see if there were telltale glows behind the mirrored eye-shields the soldiers wore.

He was alone, whenever this was. There was no one to report to. And he was not going to let them, whoever they were, burn Timber to the ground. The ice on the streets made him snarl with rage as well as pain; it was meant to hinder the people fleeing, make them slip and keep them within range of the fires. Rank after rank of the purple-clad soldiers passed by his fiery alley; Shutat gathered his courage, drew the flamberge from its sheath on his back, and charged. If he was quick enough, he could cause a lot of confusion and maybe some casualties before they took him down.

He ran right through them. Literally; his body passed through their bodies, his sword left no mark. Proof of vision - but the lack of expected resistance sent him sprawling, off balance, onto the ice-coated street. His clothes protected him from most of the cold, but his cheek touched the ice directly and he screamed as the cold seared his skin.

"Shutat!" cried Naia's voice through the pain, and a hand came down on his shoulder, shaking him. "Shutat!"

The fire was gone, had never been. The sun shone, the bench still held a recumbent Chugi - he hadn't been gone even that long? - and Naia's light brown eyes were full of concern as she shook him. It wasn't the most welcome of welcomes; his mind was full of the clinging chill of the ice his cheek had touched; he half expected to touch his own face and find cold blisters there.

Griever tried to speak into his mind, but this time he didn't even hear words. A leonine roar echoed in his mind, so deafeningly loud that his hands clapped themselves over his ears automatically, nausea a rising like a tide in his stomach. Naia exclaimed something as he dropped to one knee, breathing hard with the effort of keeping recently eaten food down and his head from exploding with the force of Griever's voice. Stop, he cried, and did not know if he said it with his voice or his mind only. I can't hear, I can't see. Stop!

He couldn't tell whether the silence or loss of consciousness happened first - and didn't care, either, for either way the darkness was gentle and quiet.

Shutat woke to find himself taking up half the seating in a fairly small carriage, lying full in the setting sun and therefore almost comfortably warm. His head felt made of lead and his thoughts were sluggish, but he still made one thought clear: Griever, don't talk. Walk around my thoughts if you have to, but don't talk. Not yet, not until I know I can handle it. The visions were doing something, making the junction dangerous to touch or interact with. Hopefully the effect would fade and he'd be able to at least pass Griever on to either Chugi or Naia, but for now he had a bad feeling that any attempt to do anything with them would flatten him.

"You're awake?" asked Chugi quietly, worriedly, and after a moment Shutat managed to make his eyes focus on his friend, sitting with Naia on the other bench in the carriage. He'd changed out of his uniform, though he still had his combat gloves on. He reached over to touch Shutat's arm, lightly. "You've been out for hours. Just about all day."

"You've been sleeping a lot," Naia agreed. "We knew you weren't unconscious so much as sleeping, at least after the first half hour, but you've never been that asleep before, that I know of. If there's nothing we can do, we're going to have to go back to Garden. You can't function like this."

"I don't have much of a choice," replied Shutat groggily, rubbing his cheeks with gloved hands in the hopes of shaking the echo of ice burn out of his mind. "I wasn't sleeping on the train, I was having visions. So I guess I've been catching up..." He made himself focus. Carriage. Two benches, facing each other and comfortably upholstered. They'd stretched him out on one of them, sharing the other between them. Closed space, windows on either side. "Where are our bags?"

"On the roof," said Naia brusquely, undiverted. "You can't do this if you're sleeping all the time, or off having visions. We'll have to go back to Garden."

Alarm cleared Shutat's head in a hurry, and his hand darted out to cover Naiad's mouth. "Don't. Say. That. Word," he whispered. "The driver can hear you. If he's been listening then you've just brought trouble."

Chugi blinked. "Chill, Shu," he suggested. "Mageborn don't..."

"Yes, they do," said Shutat. "Not openly, and they'll die before admitting it, but SeeD are not part of the 'don't kill' ethic. We've been enemies from day one, and SeeDs who poke their noses into mageborn business don't come back. And you two are probably only safe because you were helping me. Don't push things. I don't even know how far Chugi's name will protect him."

Naia frankly stared. "So...that's how it is with you. Shutat, that's not how it's ever worked in Winhill - or Balamb either, I think. The driver won't hurt us unless we hurt him. Yes, you being along helps, but the Winhilli mean it when they say they won't kill." She sighed, resting her elbow on the windowsill of her side of the carriage. "How have - do you know what kind of risk your people are taking, doing that? What would happen if even one murder got back to the Gardens?"

Shutat adjusted his gloves, pulling them smooth. "Actually, yes," he said. "I'm probably the first one to see it from both sides. Pity that means neither side will believe me. From my mother's point of view, the SeeD declared war on us in the first generation. SeeDs killed mageborn first. SeeD made it clear at the time that it would watch mageborn, police them, as long as it exists. That mageborn would never be free of that. So from her point of view, making sure the odd SeeD never returns to report is just self defense." He drew one of his knives, a slim throwing blade from a wrist sheath, and set the edges aflame. "Naia...they don't use powers like mine for that kind of job. How would SeeD ever know the reason their operative didn't come back was a mageborn, if the operative walks the streets in winter and his body is found frozen to death? Or if his body is never found at all - because it was needled into hamburger, and washed into the sewers? If a Leviathan gift rose from the water and pulled your operative into the water - how would you know?"

Chugi looked like he was inclined to be sick. "No wonder your people live like that, in Esthar. How many? How many dead are because you guys are doing this?"

"You think we keep records?" Shutat asked. "Chugi, we're bound the same way other mageborn are. We can't lie. We don't 'live like that' because we like it. We do it because we have to, because there's a good chance of being murdered ourselves if we don't. It's not our first option, but if someone pokes too far into our ways - they don't go home. That's all there is to it."

Naia looked as sick as Chugi, her lips twisted as she stared out of the window at the gradually-higher hills. "That's why you can't go back to Garden, isn't it," she said. "The Commander must know. If Chugi and I went on without you, we wouldn't come back, either."

Shutat wrapped his arms around his legs, in a creak of leather, resting his forehead on his knees so he wouldn't have to see their faces. "Not all the Lines have that view, I guess," he conceded. "Winhill, Balamb...we're part of things there. It's ...nice... to see everybody managing to get along. But we don't get along everywhere. In Deling, mageborn can be hunted - oh, I know it's not legal. It's not prosecuted, either. If a gang of kids with nothing better to do and their parents' rifles decides to blow hell out of a mageborn - the police won't investigate. They just don't care. In Esthar...not everywhere, but in some neighborhoods it's the same way. Deling mageborn live in little houses and don't draw attention, and keep in touch with their pagers and cell phones. Esthar mageborn live in walled ghettoes, us and them..." He sighed. "If we didn't hold our own, if there weren't just a little fear that pushing us too far might make us give up on this idea of everybody getting along and pull out all the stops...there wouldn't be mageborn in Deling, Dollet, or anywhere in Esthar. Maybe not even in Timber." He thought a moment, and finished, "Yes. I'd guess the Commander is at least aware it's possible. He's a Kinneas - he's trusted. He doesn't stop us or talk, and we don't touch him or his. And the only way the White SeeD could hide from the Gardens so well for so long is if there are a lot of mageborn involved in keeping them hidden. SeeD's got the best technology on the planet. You'd need first-rate hackers and engineers to get around the Gardens' detection systems."

"And you guys are smarter than us," said Chugi sourly, realizing there were multiple ways that fact could be used.

"On average, yes," Shutat admitted. "We were made to be. We don't want the world, Chugi. We never have. We'd just like to not be hunted like animals or treated like dirt because we don't have any interest in dying for governments that, by and large, can't stand us."

There wasn't really any answer that could be made to that; the attitudes of the major powers toward mageborn were well documented - even, in some cases, relied upon by SeeD. And the reasoning seemed sound; if Shutat being what he was didn't factor into the success of his mission, why send him? And if the White SeeD did not have mageborn in their ranks, how had they managed to hide from the most sophisticated detection systems on the planet for so long, leaving almost no clues even to their existence?

Shutat stretched out on his bench again, eyes closed, as if to sleep. There was nothing to see, anyway - just the thick trees of Timber's jungle, all around, and the narrow road the carriage followed. Here and there, faintly, Shutat heard the whisper of needles and knew the driver was a Cactuar gift. They were certainly safe enough.

I can't keep doing this. The thought rose in his mind with inescapable certainty. I can't keep distracting them. But he'd have to. Two visions in one day? Travel made times uncertain, but even if one of them had been Bahamut's doing, this was dangerous territory. The last vision, especially, that one had been so...real...

Progression. He tried to remember the progression, the warning signs as his people knew them. That was half the problem, of course - the Bahamut gifts died just as their powers reached adult strength, and by and large that had come with puberty. All the prior accounts of his gift therefore came from children. First are hunches - not just the usual kind. Not a hunch as to which was the shorter path to school, but hunches like which path would have the bullies on it, and where they'd be, without seeing it as any kind of vision. Those, he'd always had. "Just lucky," he'd said at first, and changed that in Garden to "Tactical guess".

Next are the visions. Visions were new. Two, now, he could be sure were his own - one in Esthar, and one in Timber, one day or so apart. The third, Bahamut's vision...if it were his own, and Bahamut had just twisted it, well, that was a very bad sign. But it was too convenient. More likely the Dragon had just pre-empted his sleeping time. He hoped so, anyway. They weren't lethal by themselves. They weren't a problem by themselves, except in the way of daydreams - the lack of attention to Now.

We aren't sure what happens. We think you'll get lost in the visions. Forget where 'now' is. Once you lose your way back, it's a matter of days before you call more fire than you can control, and you'll die. Was that what had happened today? The trouble was that all the first-hand accounts of his gift came from frightened children, and the gift was so internal that observers really didn't know what they were seeing. Shutat was older. He'd had more time to get used to the reality - that if his visions, his power, ever flowered, it would kill him. He wasn't as scared as a boy or girl of twelve or thirteen would have been...but he was still frightened. Time. Everything, everything, became a question of time. How much time did he have before the visions overwhelmed him? How much time to find the Haven, and the White SeeD? He had a chance that no one of his gift had ever had, to do something with the time he had.

How crazy is it, to be a prophet and to have no time? But the answer was in Winhill. At least one answer. He didn't just know that, he Knew it, with the certainty of his gift. There were Answers in Winhill. He just had to find them. The hunches were the least clear and most useful aspect of his gift. He needed - and the irony of it was bitter - time. Not just to see, but to live. He had to stop the visions coming so fast. Or slow them down somehow. Force his gift back into the box it had been in so long...but he knew, with the same firm Knowing that he had about Winhill, that there was no way to do that. He could slow his death, maybe, if he found the answer he was looking for. He couldn't stop it.

But he could stop his friends from worrying. For a while longer. Divert them, distract them, downplay the significance of his visions' frequency or the disorientation that seemed to be getting worse with each succeeding event. He'd told them what they needed to look for when he lost it completely. If they were outside, of course, it wouldn't matter so much....and once again Shutat jerked his thoughts away from morbidity. That, there certainly was no time for. If he sank into mourning the inevitability of his own death, he'd be giving up precious time that was better used in living. SeeDs lived with the reality of death all the time, and most were no older than he was now. Chugi and Naia were his own age, or younger, and faced the prospect of dying on this mission, and they weren't being morbid. Training helped. Don't mourn a death that hasn't happened yet. You're alive, remember that. You might die tomorrow, but that's tomorrow. Today, you live. Be alive. SeeD training had been valuable in more ways than one. The enemy was Enemy and to be given no quarter, and it didn't matter that his Enemy was inside him. He'd make the best use of the time he was given and he would not dwell on what was to come, except as it affected his mission. He might have only a week or two, or he might have a month. Or a year. It didn't matter. Here and now he lived, and had at least most of his mind, and as long as he had life and sanity he would try to finish his mission.

The answer's in Winhill. He was sure of it. And with iron-hard resolve that almost managed to hide the black fear beneath, he determined to find that answer.

Settled in his own mind, Shutat drifted into true sleep.

* * *

Gradually, the hills around them grew wilder, steeper, and shed the burden of trees and jungle that surrounded Timber even now. Timber's primary industry was logging, and for miles around the city the jungle was really more a thick logging forest, as replanted woods were never as wild as the original, but past that it was true untamed rainforest, as it had been for thousands of years. That the little chocobo carriage had gone through the forest unscathed said a lot for the wariness of wildlife and monster-kind toward the mageborn, for it carried no visible armaments. When the carriage emerged from the tree-coated hills, Chugi and Naia looked out at a clear, starry night.

Asleep again? Chugi flashed to Naia in hand signals, indicating Shutat.

Yes, she signed back, shaking her head. I don't like it. Maybe it's another vision.

Chugi's lips tightened at that, and his hand gestures through his combat gloves were sharp and quick. He never had one vision the whole time we were cadets, and now he has them all the time.

Naia nodded, willing to concede that; she'd had no idea that a Bahamut gift wasn't just another fire-type of gift until this mission. Maybe the final exam broke some barrier? she gestured slowly. Blew a safety valve in him or something?

If he gets much worse we might as well give up, signed Chugi, shaking his head in turn. There's no way he'd be able to find the White SeeD, unless they're in Winhill for some reason and he walks into one.

I think it's really sleep, Naia ventured, after watching Shutat for several minutes. He was...more still?...when we were in Esthar. So hopefully he'll be up to helping us. I for one want to see the Catacombs.

Chugi made a small, irritated noise. What's so big about a bunch of dead people? he demanded. That's all catacombs are. Just tombs. Unless you were planning on grave robbing, there's nothing to do in them.

Naia grinned. Not exactly. There's always been a few questions about them that I've wanted answered. The Catacombs should answer them for me.

Like what? Chugi demanded. They're all related anyway. Have to be, if all of them came out of six people. It's only been a few hundred years.

Five, corrected Naia. Five hundred years. And they're all over the place - well, she stopped herself, maybe not so much in Timber, Dollet, or Deling City, but they're all over the place in Winhill and Balamb at least, and apparently Esthar too. But you can solve that just with sex, Chugi. I'm more interested in the skips. When they started happening. How they're counted.

Chugi didn't answer that right away. 'Skips' were humans born to mageborn parents, as well as mageborn born to human parents. They happened most often in Winhill and Balamb, but weren't unknown anywhere. At last he asked, Why?

Because <>we are skips, Chugi, was Naia's serene answer. We must be. Winhill and Balamb are closed societies, pretty much, and mageborn are the majority - or were - in both places. Which would indicate that any human from either place has the potential to have mageborn children. The thing is, I don't know what the odds are.

Can't be, was Chugi's first answer. Because then there'd be mageborn Dinchts, and there aren't.

Naia's grin was positively superior. They pay a lot of attention to names, she said. I know Shutat's means something big - I'm not actually up on Esthari mageborn lineage so I'm not sure how big, but big.

Chugi snorted - quietly, so as not to wake their sleeping companion. Like his mom's full of big ideas, he signed, his expression derisive. You know the woman's shown up on our radar as trouble.

More like his mother's where he got his lineage from, Naia signed back. Look, it's too complex a theory for me to just lay it all out, and not in signs anyway. Just trust me that I think there's a lot of reasons besides Shutat's particular gift that the Commander wanted him on this mission. If we get to see the Catacombs, I'll show you then.

Which brings us right back to square one, Chugi pointed out. How long do you think he'll last, Naia? I mean, he's my friend and all, but this gift of his looks like it's making up for lost time in the killing him department.

Naia sighed aloud at that, her expression falling with his as they were brought back to the topic both of them were trying diligently to avoid. I don't know, she admitted. Whatever cap he had on it that kept him alive this long, it seems to be gone now. But just because he can see, I don't think it means he will...not all the time, anyway. Maybe he'll have a break, and it won't get any worse for a bit now that we're out of Timber. She gave him a direct look. Did you get any orders about Griever?

Yeah, Chugi admitted with a nod. If he looks like he's getting a reaction, I'm to take the Griever junction and release Diablos.

"You what?" Naia blurted, so startled that she did so aloud. Then, with a guilty look at Shutat, who stirred briefly at the sound before settling back into sleep, she signed, You what? Release Diablos? Don't you mean transfer?

Nope, signed Chugi levelly, not even smug that he'd gotten a completely unguarded response from her. Those were my orders. If Shutat can't handle holding Griever, I'm to take over that junction and release Diablos. Part of our mission parameters are then to guard and protect Diablos as long as it stays with us.

Naia was stunned. To release a Guardian Force...there was no telling what would happen once the Force was released from the bindings of its junction. The last Guardian Force to be released was Leviathan, centuries ago, and it had been recaptured since. To not only release the GF, but then to guard it - well, that was frankly unheard of. Why do you think you were ordered to do that? she asked. There's no way the Garden administrators were all in favor of it. Diablos is a very useful GF.

Chugi only shrugged. I have no idea, he admitted. There honestly isn't any precedent - I checked the databanks. If precedent exists, it's during this Commander's tenure; everything else is open for SeeD perusal. He paused thoughtfully, then added, It's a very quiet junction. I mean most of them are, unless you get the advanced junction, but this one's quiet even for just a general junction. Like empty caves on a quiet night.

As if any cave you were in for more than a minute could be called quiet, teased Naia. Hey - I'm starting to recognize these hills. We're getting close.

Wake Shutat? asked Chugi.

Naia sighed. "Coward," she said aloud, and then to Shutat, "Shu. Wake up. We're not far from Winhill."

Leather creaked and groaned as Shutat stretched on his bench, and gloved fingers rose in a now-habitual movement toward his temples. "I actually...don't feel terrible," he said, semi-hopefully, as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "How far?" he asked, looking out of the carriage window at the star-strewn hills.

"About an hour," Naia guessed. "Not more, probably less - my memory's rusty."

"Easily enough solved," said Shutat, and rolled down one of the windows to poke his head out into the night. "Driver! How far yet?" He waited, blue-white curls streaming eerily in the starlit wind, then ducked back inside and quickly rolled the window back up. Although the night was hot, his face was flushed as by a cold blast. "He says half an hour," he relayed to his companions. "And I think I'm rested for the first time since starting this mission. Which is good, because I've always heard good things of Winhill."

"You know," said Chugi, "either one of us could've poked our heads out and saved you the frostburn."

"Fifteen minutes?" Naia blinked. "I'm a lot more rusty than I thought, or this carriage makes a lot better time than I thought it would."

"Go with the second," Shutat offered. "Those chocobos look like ex-racers. Probably almost as fast as a train or car would've been." He paused, ruffling his gloved fingers through his curls. "Any idea where we can stay, in Winhill? I've heard they're not too open with guests, or SeeD."

"They're not," Naia agreed. "There's just one hotel in the whole city - and if I'd been thinking ahead properly I'd have booked us rooms. We'll just have to hope they have rooms free."

"Hm," Shutat frowned. "There might be another option, but it wouldn't be comfortable. My mother's a Pandemona gift - that's not so common, outside of Esthar, I understand. But she told me that mageborn who knew to ask at the Airstations for a place to sleep could usually get a cot in the hangar at least, in exchange for a few hours of using their gift for the Airstation in question. So that may be an option. I know that Winhill has an Airstation. Or at least an airport."

"That might just be for Esthar, or Pandemona gifts," Naia warned. "I can't see it being that common otherwise."

Shutat's good humor wasn't dimmed. "Then we'll just have to hope you're able to get us rooms at the hotel," he grinned.

Chugi didn't say anything, but his knowing snicker was a dead giveaway to his feelings. It was the only sound in the carriage as a huge shadow loomed out of the hills; the walls of Winhill. In the night, they seemed impossibly high, impossibly thick, and the guns stationed every fifty feet were impossibly huge.

This is the city of your vision, Griever pointed out, and Shutat was pleased that it only hurt a little bit. Perhaps he'd only needed some real sleep, after all.

Yes, I suppose it is, he agreed, surveying them. They were burning, and broken in places. Damn, the place is huge. What kind of army would it take to do that kind of damage to a city as fortified as this?

Tens of thousands, and at least a thousand magic users, Griever opined seriously. But apparently someone will be determined enough to gather such a force.

But why? Shutat blinked, as the carriage pulled up to the huge, outward-swinging gates. It stopped for a few minutes as the driver and the gatekeeper exchanged codewords or passwords. I mean, aside from the fact that it's really well defended, what is the point of using that kind of manpower to attack it? The Winhilli have nothing unique but chocobos, and most military folk prefer mechanized transport anyway.

Nevertheless, Griever repeated. This is foreseen as burning.

The carriage was going much slower now, the way jagged and bumpy and jarring, for the road was rutted earth. Beyond the huge wall, to Shutat's surprise, wasn't a city but a slice of history. Houses and boardwalks and rooms that were entirely antiquated. There were yards, single storey houses, and a dearth of apartment complexes. It's wonderful, said Shutat, thinking of the cramped highrises of Tears' Point.

"All out," said the driver, and as Shutat and his friends got out of the carriage, the driver started tossing their bags down to them. "Hotel's that way," he said helpfully. "Have a nice night." He then proceeded to ignore them entirely as he began releasing his chocobos from their harnesses, whistling at them and fussing over them.

"Well," said Shutat, amused, as he shouldered his duffel. "I guess that's as good a welcome to Winhill as any stranger's likely to get." Grinning at Naia, he said, "Let's go find ourselves a place to sleep."

"You sleep any more, Shu," warned Chugi, "and I'm gonna start calling you Van Winkel."