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The winter was brutal. The seasons of Centra were back-to-front compared to what he was used to, winter in June and summer in December. He'd arrived just at the beginning of its spring, fortunately for him, but it had not spared him winter when the time came. Amazingly, there was rainfall at this time of year - or rather, snowfall. Great howling blizzards of snow and hail that told him quite clearly why spring had been so beautiful. It probably took months for the earth to dry out again. His original supplies, taken from the ship, were long gone. Only his utility knife remained, kept carefully honed and sharp. He'd learned to survive on anything, anywhere, any time. He could make a meal from the marrow in the bones of the Forbiddens if he had to - and he had had to, more than once. The use of his power took something out of him - drained him, in a way, though it grew more powerful with use. He had much greater control now than he'd had before, much better aim, and a lot more raw voltage. And at the same time he had less control as his power increased - his body fairly hummed with lightning now, all the time, so much so that he didn't ride Tika because the tingle of his power bothered her. In the aftermath of power usage, he was usually ravenous - and in general there was nothing to eat but whatever monster he'd had to fight. About the only creature he couldn't make a decent meal of was Blobra, and that was only because when they died the viscous creatures tended to dissolve into an inert jelly that Taran couldn't scoop up without getting at least as much dirt as Blobra. Anything else that crossed his path, he knew how to eat it. Not that he always particularly wanted to, but it was better than starving. He'd made new clothes of Blitz hide - full winter gear, heavy coat and pants and gloves and hood, and it seemed to contain his power reasonably well. He could touch Tika with the Blitz gloves on and she didn't wark. Tika was his lifeline in the wasteland - every bit as intelligent as the Chocoboy had told him, he could sing to Tika and she would trill a harmony. He could use her paces as a rhythm if he chose - she had a steady, even gait, and seemed pleased when he set his singing at the same rhythm and tempo. She couldn't speak but she could whistle and trill with a musician's ear, and he'd begun teaching her simple melodies that served as a mutual language. It turned out that Tika had a remarkable memory for direction and terrain, such that he could tell her to make for the nearest place out of the wind, and she'd be able to get him there. Tika also carried almost all of what supplies he had - dried strips of monsterflesh, and any of the things they carried on them that he could use. Most especially he prized the dynamo stones the Blitzes sometimes carried, for at need he could hold one in his hands and absorb its power and that would serve him instead of food for as much as two days. He had learned that just as his power was drawn from his life force, so his life could be fed by his power at need. It didn't stop his stomach from demanding food, but he could absorb lightning magics and survive solely on that if he needed to. His life and his power were inextricably intertwined. And his power was so much more than he'd thought. He'd thought that he was simply connected to electricity - to lightning. He could see where lightning would form and where it would strike before it actually did, and the power of lightning revitalized him and healed him. But some of the things he took from the corpses of monsters he could use, and some he could not. And he was very, very sure that his father didn't know about it - because if he had he would have tested Taran's brothers and sisters as well. Betrayal swords, bomb fragments, zombie powder...such items were useless in Taran's hands except inertly - he could use a betrayal sword to cut, or zombie powder to absorb moisture to make footing easier, but he could not call out the items' innate powers. But other items, such as magic stones and coral fragments - they held a piece of his own power in them, and he could draw that power out and survive on it. And items like the force amulet he'd liberated from a forbidden's corpse would amplify his conscious use of power for as long as he wore them. He kept all such items that he could find, and stowed them in his pack and Tika's saddlebags. They served him better than any medical kit or food supplies. Oddest of all were the shear feathers and windmills he liberated from Death Claws. He'd learned to tell by the feel of an item in his hand when it had power he could unlock, and these items had such power. When he released their inner magic, though, he was stunned to find it wasn't lightning but wind trapped within them. He had unlocked wind items - surely that was Gwynt's power? He had no means to explain why he should be able to use those items, but it did come in handy. He didn't have anything like the control Gwynt had over the results - they called whirlwinds that tossed whatever was in range upward, and that was it. He could use them to facilitate an upward climb or break a fall, and that was all. For the most part he stowed them in his packs and hoped that one day Gwynt would be able to make good on his promise to return here, so that they could test them out together. But winter was brutal and lethal, the cold winds full of snow and ice and no hills or mountains to dull the howling in his ears. He could see through storms of any kind, and Tika followed the sparks in his glowing, shifted eyes loyally, but she was growing slower. The cold might not kill him but it would kill her, and soon if he couldn't find shelter. Tika find no-wind-place? he whistled near the chocobo's feather-covered ears, but without much hope. If Tika remembered a place out of the wind near here, she would already have tried to guide him there. The poor chocobo was practically vibrating she was shivering so hard. And his suspicion was confirmed when Tika whistled in a mournful negative. She didn't remember anywhere around here that was out of the wind. Well, that just left making a place out of the wind. He'd have to hope that would be enough - there was little chance of unearthing anything that could be used to make a fire, and he'd run out of kindling this morning. He worked as quickly as he could - the howling winds would blow snow into his efforts soon enough. Pulling off his Blitz gloves he called lightning to his hands and started digging in the ice-packed snow, using his power to melt as much as he could until he got down to bare earth. "Tika!" he yelled over the storm, and when the chocobo obediently moved closer to him he pointed to the bare patch and had the bird crouch down into it. With Tika out of the way, Taran pulled his gloves back on and started moving snow to build a wind-wall, working as quickly as he could. Once he'd built a wall thick enough to cut the wind off from Tika, he started turning the single wall into part of an igloo - a dome structure of snow and ice that would at least conserve body heat until the worst of the storm had passed. He already knew he could not freeze to death himself - though the cold stung and bit, his father had taught him what the signs of frostbite were and he'd never felt them. But Tika probably could, and he would not risk harm to his only companion. An hour later the two of them were huddled under a solid dome of snow and ice - or nearly solid. Taran used a hollow Forbidden bone to make an air hole, and the wind whistled past it. He didn't mind - as long as it was whistling, he knew it was still touching open air. If it were silenced, they were truly buried. Tika good? he whistled to the chocobo, and got a sleepy affirmative in response. Reassured, Taran unpacked the Blitz-hide blanket he'd managed to put together, and draped it over the bird carefully. Strong Tika might be, but she still had hollow bird bones and it wasn't difficult to hurt her by accident if he wasn't gentle. He rather doubted Tika wanted to sing tonight - the chocobo was warm and safe and apparently simply wanted to sleep. But she wouldn't mind if he sang, and he knew it. He was hungry, and he needed little sleep in any case. He had no means of keeping a journal or log, and the messages from his siblings were scant on detail and coded. Most of a year. He'd been here most of a year so far, his hair growing rather long and shaggy. He kept it out of his eyes by the simple expedient of grabbing his bangs in one hand and slicing the hair short, but he didn't want to do that to all his hair. For one thing, tucked into his jacket it seemed to help keep the wind off, and he was very much in favor of anything that could keep him warm at the moment. In the relative stillness of the igloo, he simply tied it back with a leather thong. His songs had gotten sadder, for the most part. Tika was a pretty good companion, really, but it was like having a three year old as your only friend - you could do it, but occasionally you came to long for a real conversation. "Watching and waiting, for a friend to play with...why have I been alone so long?" Taran sang, because it seemed to fit. "Mole, he is burrowing his way to the sunlight...he knows there's someone there, so strong..." He sang the song all the way through, sad as it was, because it suited his mood. The sound of his voice soothed the chocobo, and soon Tika had tucked her head under her wing and under the hide blanket and gone to sleep. Taran leaned back against the soft warm body and listened to the whistling of the wind through the hollow bone tube, and waited for sleep. * * * * * * Taran couldn't sleep for more than four hours at a stretch, but he'd learned to enter a sort of trance state at need, that let him think things over while marking the passage of time and the sounds of the wind through the Forbidden bone. Lacking any means of keeping a journal, Taran wrote songs in his mind and committed them to memory against the day he worked out a way to create a written record. He would enjoy writing down other things, too - like the things he could do with the various items he managed to collect, and which items were useless to him. He wasn't sure of the exact time the wind stopped. His first reaction was to grab the Forbidden bone and shove it upwards - to see if it was merely blocked. Pulling it back down, all the way through, there was daylight on the other side. The storm had stopped. After, judging by the depth of the hole, dropping perhaps sixteen inches of snow on them. Drat. Tika stay, he whistled, and the chocobo trilled happily and ducked further under the hide blanket; the chocobo had no love for cold and snow and was quite content to let him do the digging. He fished in the saddlebags until he found what he was looking for; a makeshift pickaxe he'd come up with. The points were inferno fangs, always warm and sharp, attached to a bone handle. With this he could use his own strength much more effectively, as the hot points would crack and melt snow and ice faster than he could dig alone. He'd be spitting wet snow for a while, but that couldn't be helped. Half an hour later the two of them were running lightly over the snow crust - running because if they stopped they'd sink. Taran had to admit that Centra was beautiful in the winter, the harsh deserts and rocky outcrops rendered into breathtaking spires of snow and ice. It was just almost completely unlivable; the snow was too deep, the cold too sharp, and the monsters got hungrier and meaner. He made for such outcrops as were clearly higher than the snow to catch his breath - in this respect Tika was far more capable than he was; he had greater endurance, but Tika could run quite a bit faster. There was no way he was going to get through the whole winter like this - he simply didn't have the resources to carry all the supplies he'd need. This outcrop was remarkably free from snow and ice...he groaned just as Tika chirped a warning and hunkered down. She knew the drill very well by now - see a monster, tell her human, and then get out of the way. Four Bombs. Very fierce - the creatures had probably been trapped in the rocks by the snowstorm, given their aversion to cold, and were therefore hungry. Taran fished in his pocket and came out with a magic stone. He didn't have the energy to fight off four of the things on his own, not with the way hunting had gone lately. But he was able to pull power out of the stone and throw it in a chain effect at the Bombs. He didn't try to lower the voltage - the creatures were apt to explode if weakened rather than killed, and that could blow Tika and himself right off the rock and into who-knew-how-deep snow below. It turned out to be a good investment. Tearing apart the corpses for edible meat and 'goodies', he found four more magic stones. He cleaned them in the snow and pocketed them, but mostly he was happy that there was edible meat on the Bombs. It had been several days since he'd actually gotten solid food. And Bombs were hot edible meat as well, which right now felt like heaven going down. Still...he didn't much like the idea of relying on luck to get him through the winter. There might not be more Bombs for a long time; the creatures moved to the coasts in winter, where the ocean winds warmed the air, and any of them around here would be trapped as those four were trapped, on high outcrops of rock. He set his hand to the rock and started climbing. There was no point in running around blindly; he needed to find some goal to make for, some hope of shelter, and ideally some place with good hunting, or he'd be so thin a good breeze would knock him over come spring. He stared at it for perhaps ten minutes before realizing that no, he wasn't looking at a natural formation. It was far distant, but that was a tower there in the southeast. A human construction. Human constructions in Centra? Like the complex he'd found, with its terrible secrets that he had destroyed? Or some other group - and were they still here? Well, if they could see a resemblance to his father now, with his hair all grown out and his clothes made of monster hides and the lack of good hunting, he was either his father's twin or they'd have been looking for him anyway. It was worth a chance of discovery simply because he didn't think any official group would come down to Centra without Irvine giving him at least a heads-up. It was something to make for - and honestly, he was lonely enough for real human company that even if it was populated entirely by SeeDs sent by Seifer to haul him away, he'd still want to go. He climbed back down, and pointed the distant tower out to Tika. We go there, he whistled. Tika made a kweh of acquiescence, and he knew that if they got separated by some huge monster attack Tika would still go to that tower. He smiled; he'd had no idea the birds were so intelligent, but it was the most welcome discovery he'd made. The only thing Tika couldn't do was talk. They were fortunate, or so he thought - no monsters attacked them as they ran from rock to rock, aiming for the tower. The outcrops grew more and more ruin-like as they progressed; here and there a shattered lintel or a broken column or a brightly colored tile told Taran that he was nearing the center of what must once have been a city. He wondered what the place was like without snow hiding the ground - were there signs of lost roads? Destroyed buildings? He grinned; a puzzle like this could keep him busy for weeks. It occurred to him that if enough of a building was intact, it would make a fine camping place until spring. Assuming he could find one both intact and tall enough to let him out when the snowstorms hit. He was grateful to find a few such, and walked along their roofs slowly - both to check for loose tiles and to catch his breath. He wasn't sure if it was ice or inattention that caused it later, but one moment he was walking along a rooftop and the next he was tumbling - along with several roof tiles - into darkness. He landed hard on something lumpy that dug curves into his back, and the breath was knocked out of him. Taran ok? Taran ok? Tika come? The chocobo was warking up a storm up there; the bird well knew Taran's value to her own survival. He liked to assume the bird cared for him, but with chocobos that was a bit hard to tell. He didn't have the breath to answer for a bit. The air was dusty and dry and cold, and his back hurt from the fall. It was dark, except for the sunlight from the hole he'd fallen through; he let his eyes shift to see in the blackness. He'd fallen into...a cellar? The dim light was more than enough for shifted eyes - he could make out rack upon rack, floor to ceiling in more or less neat rows. He froze as he heard a rustling. Monsters. How the hell did monsters survive down here? Tika stay put, he whistled, knowing that whatever it was down here would also hear the sound and come to it. A lumbering, turtle-like creature. Armadodo. Damn. Without hesitation he turned his lightning loose on the creature, accenting the magical attack with punches at the vulnerable head and limbs. The smell of cooking monster was starting to make him hungry - he hoped there wasn't anything else in the immediate vicinity, he hadn't had armadodo in a long time and it was tasty meat. A heavy shock to the brain and the monster fell. Taran fought to get his breathing under control so he could listen for more monsters. Assured by the silence that there were none, he whistled an all-clear/come to Tika. The bird obediently hopped into the hole and flapped her stubby wings furiously so as to land as lightly as possible. Taran investigated the armadodo's corpse and came away with a turtle shell that tingled in his hands. He grinned; another useful thing. He tied it onto his shoulder with strips of dried leather and felt better than he had in days. A cellar. A wine cellar by the look of it; there were skeletons of monsters here and there, scattered bones sucked hollow and broken. The racks, however, were unbroken - made of some sturdy metal that didn't corrode, bolted ceiling and floor. Some were much bent, but none were broken. Taran investigated curiously, with shifted eyes. The metal was...very well forged, his eyes and fingers told him. Very, very well forged. Either the Centra people had had incredible skills, or this had been a rich man's house. It would take a dragon's might to rip these racks free of their housings. The contents - hm. The contents were not so fortunate; he stepped sometimes into shards of broken glass, and the floor had old stains. He pulled out one of the intact bottles, surprised to find it came away from its casing easily into his grip. The label had been paper and was long since rotted away, but the glass was thick and dark and the magic of it tingled heavily in his hands. Enchanted...wine bottles? He carried it into the light, tilted it this way and that. There was still fluid inside, moving freely. No one had lived on Centra since the Lunar Cry. He had seen nowhere on the continent that would be remotely conducive to the growing of anything you might want to bottle. These things had to be incredibly ancient, and yet they appeared - missing labels aside - to be in perfect condition. Tika come, he whistled, and the chocobo obediently trotted over to him. He stowed the bottle in one of the saddlebags - and selected a few more from the racks to join it. He certainly wasn't going to try drinking any of this until he had a good idea of what it was and what the enchantment on it was (and how did you enchant bottles? A stop spell? A slow spell?) but he rather thought such bottles might have a collector value. If Gwynt ever did return to Centra, Taran could give him the bottles and hopefully repay the favor. If they were valuable, he could give Gwynt the lot of them and perhaps the money would be useful to his siblings. If they were not...well, if they were drinkable they'd get drunk eventually. And if they weren't drinkable they'd be emptied and filled with fluids that were drinkable. The cellar was pretty much empty of anything else - just bottles and monster bones and the starved armadodo, which had probably gotten trapped in here during the storm. Tika remember? he queried; if the chocobo could memorize the location this place could well turn out to be useful. Tika remember, the chocobo confirmed. She could find this place again if she wanted to; that was all that was important. Taran laughed and gave her a pat; wonderful creatures, chocobos. Absolutely wonderful. He stripped the armadodo of any edible meat, glad that the cold would keep it reasonably fresh, and helped Tika get out of the cellar. For himself he had only to jump; it was only perhaps ten feet up to the hole he'd fallen through. The find of the bottles had increased his curiosity for the area; he found himself brushing snow from worn carvings, tracing patterns on columns. He could winter here. Melt snow for water, there were plenty of monsters for food, and now that he knew the signs there appeared to be several places in the ruins where he could hole up for a few days. If he got bored enough he might tunnel between them. And the faded carvings fueled his imagination; he smiled and thought of all the songs he could sing about a people that were gone. Yes; he could winter here. Watching and waiting 'Cos here, there's lots of room for doing Soon you will see me 'Cos here there's lots of room for doing Watching and waiting -The Moody Blues, Watching and Waiting |
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