“Argggh--!”

When he realised he had been dreaming he stopped shouting abruptly and took in a sharp breath.

“Easy, lad!”

An old man was holding him by the shoulders where he sat. The man had bushy white eyebrows and a white beard with the hair between his nose and mouth shaved off.

“You’ve just had a brush with the void. Best if you take things slowly.”

Beyond the old man’s head was the face of a beautiful blonde woman in a tattered cream dress, her brow crinkled up in concern.

“Are you alright, Ryn?” she asked. “We thought you had died.”

Memory returned to Ryn, seeping into his mind along and mingling with the aftertaste of the nightmare.

Cid released him and he took in another few gulps of air. They were still in the woods, it was cold, and it was getting dark. It must be early evening.

“I guess it was your turn to be worried about me,” Ryn croaked to Nuthea when he had calmed down a little, surprised at his own boldness, but disappointed that it came out in a croak. “I’m fine now...I was just having a nightmare before I came to…...I remember… I remember being stabbed. What happened to me?”

“I healed you,” said Cid.

“I thought you had ridden on...” said Ryn. “I thought you had left me and Vish behind…” He looked around. The bodies of dead Imperial soldiers littered the forest floor. Sagar, Elrann and Vish were a little way away with thechocobos. Hearing that Ryn was awake, they wandered over and sat down on the grass. Nuthea joined them, and they all sat in a circle together.

“Of course we wouldn’t leave you and Shadowfinger Vish behind,” said Nuthea.

“S’right,” said Sagar. “Soon as we realised that the Imperials had caught up to you and the scumsucker, I turned around immediately and led the charge to come back and rescue you.”

“Actually,” said Elrann, “way I remember it, you did want to leave him behind. Princess-girl was the one who wanted to turn around. You took quite a lot of convincing.”

“Whatever,” said Sagar.

“Anyway,” went on Nuthea, “once we eventually got back you did fight very valiantly, Captain Sagar. Shadowfinger Vish here had succeeded in dispatching most of the soldiers, but even he couldn’t cope with all of them at once--”

At that, Vish made a disapproving noise inside his head covering. “Humph. Please. I had them all taken care of. I think I deserve some poppy for what I did.”

“In time, in time…” said Cid. “I’ve told you, you need to space the hits out, or they’ll diminish in intensity.”

“If I don’t get a hit soon everything will diminish in intensity.”

“Hang on,” said Ryn, “you can’t have done that good a job at fighting them ‘all’ off because one of them stabbed me through the chest.”

Vish went quiet at that, narrowing his eyes to slits as he looked at Ryn.

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Elrann. “When we got here you’d already been run through by that fat soldier.”

Ryn thought to look down at his tunic for the first time. It had torn where the sword had gone through and blood stained it. But there was no wound on his chest. It ached awfully, yet there was no visible sign of the sword’s piercing it. He couldn’t even work out exactly where the blade had gone in.

“He did...” Ryn said. “He ran me right through. Just like…” Mother. Father. Hometown. He swallowed. Every time he remembered them a jolt of pain went through his mind, even now. No wonder he dreamed about them every time he was unconscious. He hadn’t had time to feel sad about them properly before he had been caught up in this crazy whirlwind adventure. An adventure on which he had just been stabbed through the chest. “How the hell am I still alive?” he asked of Mid in general.

“Well, to be honest, we did think you were a goner, pup,” said Sagar. Was that disappointment in his voice? Disappointment that Ryn hadn’t died? Bastard. “But then the old timer here got to you and worked his magic. I don’t care what you say about your healing skills any more, old timer, that was magic and I know it was.”

Ryn’s eyes grew wide as he stared at Cid. The old man’s face was solemn, his jaw set behind his white beard. He seemed tired, the crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes more pronounced.

“I was basically dead...” Ryn said to him. “How powerful are you?”

“Yeah, come on,” said Sagar. “Spill the beans, old timer. Pup here was basically dead when you got to him. What did you do?”

They sat and waited for Cid to speak.

It took him a while, staring at the ground, but eventually he said “I brought you back to consciousness with a ‘Life’ spell. I am Jewel-touched as well, like the three of you are.”

“I knew it!” said Sagar triumphantly. “You have healing powers as well as healers’ training! I knew all that stuff about ‘miracles’ was garbage!”

“It’s still a miracle!” protested Nuthea at once. “The One can also work through the magic of the Jewels.” For some reason, she didn’t seem all that surprised at the revelation that Cid was Jewel-touched.

“Whatever,” said Sagar.

“Indeed,” said Cid, “whatever we call it, I’m afraid this young man is right. I have healing abilities from my contact with the Light Diamond. I think of these as being miraculous too, Granddaughter, but it is also true that I received them from my contact with that Jewel.”

“So you can bring people back from death?” said Ryn.

“No,” said Cid.

“Huh?” the rest of them all said together (except Vish).

“Let me be very clear on this,” Cid went on. “The Life spell can resuscitate a person who is dying or who has been brought near death. If someone loses consciousness from injury, or is so injured that they are slipping away into death, I can bring them back. But once they have fully passed away into it, once they have died, I cannot bring them back. I cannot people back from the dead. Only the One could do that.”

Sagar snorted. “Yeah, if ‘He’ existed.”

“Hold on, hold on,” said Elrann, motioning with her hand for the rest of them to listen, then massaging her forehead underneath her short purple hair. “Let me get this straight. What you’re saying is that these magical jewel-thingamys--”

“The Primeval Jewels,” interrupted Nuthea.

Elrann blinked at her. “Right, yeah. What you’re saying is that these magical primeval jewel-thingamys that we’re trying to get princess-girl back to her homeland to tell her parents about can also give people healing powers, and that pops here has come into contact with one before, and that it’s because of that that he was able to bring farmboy here back from near-death after he got stabbed by that fat Imperial soldier?”

A pause.

“Yes,” said Nuthea, Sagar, Ryn and Cid all at the same time.

“You’re all completely nuts…” mumbled Elrann, shaking her head and pinching her nose. “Ok--let’s assume for a moment that I believe you: How did you ever get ya hands one one of these jewel-thingamys then, pops?”

“Primeval Jewels,” Nuthea felt obliged to correct her again.

They all looked at Cid. Even Vish stared at him intently.

“Hey, I led a rich and full life before I settled down in Nonts…” Cid said defensively, shrugging his shoulders and holding out his hands in protest. “I did many things and went on many adventures. Is it so surprising that I would have come across one of the Primeval Jewels?”

“You’re right,” said Nuthea, “it’s not. And followers of the One are all the more likely to come across such things. It must have been your destiny.”

“No, I’m not buying this,” said Sagar, shaking his head. “This is chocobo-poodoo. Tell us how you really came by it, old timer. I’m not traveling around with someone who has elemental manipulation powers when I don’t know where he got them from.”

“Hey,” said Elrann, “you have elemental manipulation powers and we don’t know where you got them from!”

“I inherited a fragment of the Wind Shell from my father, alright!” said Sagar heatedly. At the same time, he took out a necklace from inside his shirt and showed them the shard of translucent shell that its silver chain ran through.

Elrann’s eyes stretched.

“Oh my,” said Nuthea.

Ryn wasn’t so surprised--he had come to suspect something like this might be behind Sagar’s powers. Cid’s face was unmoved too.

“And the princess here has her powers,” Sagar continued, putting the necklace back down his shirt, “‘cause she’s from the royal family of Magnolia.”

“Manolia,” said Nuthea.

“Whatever. And pup has them because the Fire Ruby was hidden in his village for years without him knowing or some poodoo like that, yadda yadda yadda. And as far as we know the woman and the scumsucker don’t have elemental powers, but if we find out later they’ll do I’m sure they’ll tell us how they got them. So...what’s your deal, old timer?”

The group fell silent, waiting for another answer from Cid, who for a moment only stroked the side of his beard and scrunched up his face.

Ryn chewed the side of his mouth. On the one hand, he could perhaps believe Cid and Nuthea that Cid had just stumbled upon one of the Jewels somewhere, and even that it was made more likely because it was his ‘destiny’ from this ‘One’ god, the ‘God of gods’. On the other hand, what Sagar was saying made an awful lot more sense. Once again Ryn found that while he would prefer to believe what Nuthea and Cid were saying, what Sagar was saying seemed more likely. These Jewels didn’t seem like the sort of objects that you just chanced upon, or that ‘destiny’ brought you to. They seemed like the sort of things that you had to know about, and go looking for, in order to find. After all, there had been one hidden right under Ryn’s nose for apparently as long as he had been alive, and he hadn’t found out about it till recently. And now he had lost it to someone who had been looking for it… Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr.

“Come on, Cid,” Ryn said, choosing to lend his support to Sagar. “Even if you did just chance upon the Light Diamond somewhere, we want to know how it happened. The true version of how it happened.”

At length, Cid sighed. “I suppose it was foolish of me to think that I could keep this from you for long. The One must have purposed for me to tell you through this turn of events.”

“Sure He did,” said Sagar, “or maybe you just discovered you couldn’t keep lying to us for very long.”

“Sagar!” objected Nuthea. “Don’t be so rude to Grandfather!”

“That’s what he was doing, princess. Call it what you like, but that’s what it was. We know that now. Come on, old timer, out with it.”

“Well, if you must know,” said Cid, his eyes not looking at any of them but off into the vague distance of memory, “I was once the healer in an adventuring party that set out to find all of the Primeval Jewels long ago. And with some of them, we succeeded.”