This was originally intended as a response to a calendar challenge suggested by SasukeBlade in the Moogle's Nest forum, started last December. The dungeon was Rebena Te Ra, and the theme was of remembrance or reminiscence.

I never got around to posting this as an individual story, so I've decided to continue the challenge and post each month's tale as stand-alone chapters in one story. Being as I decided all of the pieces would feature the Crysila caravan, it should make sense. It may well be chronological. I'll let you know if this changes. A quick warning; this is pretty long.

In the meantime, please read and enjoy :)

Crysila's caravan, December

My dearest Cecille

I sat and watched the sun rise this morning from the point, as I do this day every year and will do for the rest of my life. I could not stay long, as things are very busy and it is somehow never the same without you.

Summer here is as beautiful as ever, as I am sure you can recall. The meadow was ablaze with colours – I swear that more are invented every year especially for our little village. It was a wonder to behold, although, of course, not as lovely as you!

Your nephew wishes me to tell you to hurry home, because although he tries very hard he still cannot come to grips with a quill so that he can write you himself. I bet you can hardly imagine what he looks like now. A year is a long time for such a little boy to change, so I shall be surprised if you recognise him!

My dearest Cecille

Beatriz from next door sends her regards, and also her condolences. She was very sorry to hear of the death of your mother. But she offers you some words of comfort, for whatever good they may do you.

It is fall here now, and the trees are gold and red and brown. I think your mother would have appreciated the sentiment, for all that is beautiful and fragile folds away at this time of year to hide from the coming frost, hoping to wait out the cold. Some pretty flowers do not pass the winter. But, in one way or another, some will rise again in spring.

Do you remember when we were only ten and eleven seasons each? We'd hunt for the first flowers in spring, and when we found one your mother would hand us an apple apiece and put our precious little find in a pot. The very last time we went looking, you found a blue flower. I'd never seen one like it before.

Do you remember it?

It has been so long since you wrote last, I often feared the worst. Imagine my joy on receiving your most recent letter! I tipped the moogle fifteen gil, and he let your nephew play with his pom-pom. What funny little creatures they are. I wonder what kupo means.

Times are hard here. The harvest was bad this year – the upper Jegon flooded and most of the crops were spoiled. I helped your sister salvage what we could, and I only hope that there is enough to see us all through this winter.

You should be home by then. Right?

Without you around I find myself looking back more and more. You seem to be my anchor in the present. I do so wish you would write, so that I can stop myself dwelling on the past.

My father always said I was too much of a daydreamer to run a farm. Maybe you have to be a daydreamer to run this farm, or maybe I just proved him wrong. It is certainly an education. One has to learn from mistakes, although there is little room for trial and error in this business. I won't bore you with talk of crop rotations and irrigation. After all, they hardly compare to the tales you tell when you come home at the end of each year.

Tell me Cecille, while on the caravan have you ever made a mistake? Did you do something wrong, and thought that, perhaps, if you had the chance to go back, you would do it differently?

I sometimes wonder whether I made a mistake that day when I let you leave without asking you to marry me.

I hope this letter finds you well, for you seem to have vanished from the face of this world. Passing caravans and traders have not seen you since summer. Where are you, Cecille?

The moogle I entrust this letter to vows he will not stop until he finds you. If he cannot, well…

You said the day you joined the caravan all those years ago that you would seek out lands undiscovered. That you would be famous for your exploits. That you would cross the boundaries so far left well alone. I only hope that you have crossed such a boundary with the intent of returning, because no reward of fame and fortune is worth the price of losing you.

I remember you promised me you would return. I remember many things – the day I first saw you, the day we danced at the festival, the day we sat up on the point for the first time and threw conkers in the sea. If remembering you is the only way I can keep you alive, I shall do so. Wherever you are, I hope you are safe. I enclosed your blue flower, the one I pressed for you that summer, as a charm of sorts.

Winter gets closer every day, and still you do not come back. Write home, Cecille.

All my love,

Harry

The letters are much creased around the edges, as if someone has read them often. One is torn at the corner, and has been lovingly mended with paste and delicacy so that a casual observer would never notice. As the letters are folded and thrust safely into a deep pocket, a blue flower falls to the ground.

The Clavat on the hillside looks down in mild dismay and stoops to retrieve it. The flower does not return to the pocket, however, but is pushed securely into the buttonhole of her overcoat where she can keep bright blue eyes on it.

She needs the overcoat. Rebena Te Ra is a cold and lonely place.

"Cecille," a soft voice hails her. "Are you prepared?"

"Aye," she agrees. She is tall, this Clavat, with short silver-blonde hair that shimmers wetly in the fog. It is difficult to tell her age; perhaps she is thirty? Definitely no older than forty, although there is a wisdom in those blue eyes that comes only with long experience. She is not beautiful, because what use has a caravanner for looks? Her face comes to a sharp point, her skin is pale, her face frowns as if questioning the world at every passing second. In the fog it is difficult to see the scar that run across one cheek, but it is there nonetheless.

"I like not this place," the second voice confides, and a Yuke steps up out of the fog to join her. Insofar as it is possible to tell by glancing, this Yuke is male, and perhaps as old as his companion Clavat Cecille. Magic rings of Cure and Clear glow on his giant furred fingers in response to his agitation; his papery wings flicker in the sigh of the wind. "I can hear the cries of times long past. There must be ghosts aplenty here."

"Ghosts can be banished, Aonyx," the Clavat woman replies firmly. "Wounds heal."

"Let's hope we aren't going to be getting any wounds," says a new voice, a voice that can only belong to a Selkie. The words are drawled with a nonchalant, lazy ease that suggest, if you are not careful, that ease can be directed towards other less innocent things. The Selkie looms from the fog like a ship's figurehead to join his fellow caravanners. The way that he leans so casually on his weapon – a racket of fine craftsmanship – suggests incredible self confidence with just a hint of pride and arrogance. But, as he himself often said, what was a Selkie without that?

"So that's Rebena," he says, almost to himself, "And here was me thinking it was just a story."

"Just because it is a story does not mean it does not exist, Catseye," Aonyx the Yuke points out sagely. He hefts the chalice to his shoulder with a strength too massive for such spindly arms, "Even if such tales of harmony and prosperity seemed too much a like a child's fairytale to be true."

"Spare me the philosophy," Catseye the Selkie groans. His nickname is now so familiar to his companions that they use it more readily than his birth name; that real name is rarely spoken, and given only to those who merit the highest award of trust. Cecille often wonders what it is that her Selkie companion has done to be wary of distributing his identity. As it is, she does not ask just as she has not done before. Catseye stares out over Rebena, green eyes narrowed.

The view below is not pleasant.

All children know of Rebena Te Ra, even if not by that name; it has become a metaphor. The much diluted, much embroidered version of the tale is told around every campfire. Rebena Te Ra is a city of legend, a city of myths and a time where the gods walked among mortals. Once, it is said, the four tribes lived in harmony here. The hands of four races built this place, the minds of four races shaped it and the kings of four races ruled it fairly and wisely. Those kings lived atop the great pyramid in the centre, the same pyramid whose crumbled remains emerge from the fog like some monster.

The Elders do say that, in another time, another place, another world – pyramids were tombs.

The fog is everywhere, like shroud. Perhaps this is appropriate for a city that has laid hollow and dead for thousands of years.

"This place doesn't seem real. It's not natural," the Selkie mutters. "For all we knew, Aonyx, this place was a fairytale. A story to frighten little children."

"I remember hearing it for the first time," Cecille says quietly. "My mother told it to me when I argued with the Yukish boy next door. She said that great things can be accomplished when the races work together, and that terrible things befall us when they don't."

"Aye, well." The Selkie shrugs expressively. He does not seem cold at all, for all that he wears just a tunic and a tattered jacket of plundered furs. "Goes to show, doesn't it."

"Endellia," Aonyx calls into the gloom, "be you ready?"

"Aye, Aonyx."

The fourth and final member of this caravan joins the line, staring down into the valley. Behind her sallet of diamond her face twists in distaste for the densely overgrown ruins, and an overwhelming sadness for those that had lived and died here in this ghost town. The Yuke girl, the youngest of the caravan, slides five rings of magic into place on her fingers with a deliberative air.

"I hear the tree," she states, "It weeps. We were right, Aonyx. Whatever despicable, miserable act happened here, the stories do it no justice."

"Always the case, Endellia," her companion replies sadly. Then, with a final look exchanged, the caravan of Crysila town plunges into the fog.

Cecille had long since found that she fought best when she did not concentrate.

Her reflexes had kept her alive now for so long that she feared thinking too hard would completely put her off. It is all too easy to miss the smallest sound when one is too focused on other things. Instead, the Clavat would spread her senses all around, feeling rather than seeing.

Many a wild swing from the edge of the melee had been detected by her strange vision that even sharp-eyed Catseye would have missed. Many a cracked twig had given away an enemy that would have stolen up on even cautious Aonyx. Anyone who sparred against Cecille for practise would often remark that she seemed to be in a trance the entire time, relying on some other part of her being to do the fighting while…

While what? What is it that Cecille does? Where does she go?

Not even Cecille appears to know. When asked, the woman just shakes her head slowly and says, "I just contemplate."

"Contemplate what?" is usually the next question. That never gets an answer.

The gateways of Rebena do not open without some sort of sacrifice.

Cecille knows this, although she cannot explain how. She places herself squarely on the decorated switch will pulses orange in recognition of her weight. It takes much courage to stare down the mad golden eyes of the skeleton mage as it raises its staff, and as the first glowing embers leap in her direction she grits her teeth and shuts her eyes and -

- she'd had to do it to show him that she could.

It was not unkind, the way they laughed at her, but she could tell that they thought she couldn't play their games because she was only a girl. And such stupid games they were! Tests of daring and bravery, like flicking fingertips into the flames.

She stares hard at him, and pushes her hand into the fire just like he'd done. Only she does not pull her hand out after the first second, because she is not frightened. They all stare at her in awe for a moment, but when her hand still remains in the heart of the flames alarm begins to creep into their eyes.

She tries to keep their gazes but all of a sudden it begins to hurt. It shouldn't hurt as badly as this, should it? One quick glance into the fire and she sees the skin peeling, writhing in the heat, blistering, and it hurts SO MUCH -

- the flames of the Fira spell belch around her, rolling off her flame-resistant armour like so many harmless waves. The switch sings out a note under her tough leather shoes, and the way is open. Hair singed at the tips she leaps through the curling smoke like a demon.

The skull of the mage rolls to a stop at the foot of a collapsed statue, grinning. Without a backward look, Cecille strides on.

The fog is thick, so thick that it might have been miasma. That thought causes her to shiver, and she tries to shrug away the clinging tendrils with a sudden unease. Catseye brushes past her reassuringly on his languid patrol of the crystal boundary, and she is grateful for the Selkie's presence.

A few feet away, Aonyx's shadow becomes visible for just one moment before the fog swallows it again -

- what was that thing? She'd never seen anything like it.

Cecille and her companion stood in awe on the riverbank, hand in hand, stopped dead in whatever game they were playing by the shape in the fog.

There is a creak of timbers and a white wing flaps just once in the wind. Someone's voice calls out a quiet command and the shape withdraws.

"What's that?" she asks, and Harry squeezes her hand knowledgeably, all of one year her intellectual superior at eight years old.

"It's a boat," he confides in her. "The Jegon gets all kinds of people a-goin' up and down it."

"Not up here," she says adamantly. "There's a waterfall 'tween the sea and here, I seen it. How it get all the way up to Crysila?"

"Don't know," Harry says. "You suppose it's a ghost ship?"

"Must be," she agrees, and together they watch the strange contraption recede into the heavy gloom. How did it stay afloat? There had to be someone controlling it - there had been the voice in the fog. The crew, although lady knew what had happened to them. Had they drowned at sea and returned to wander near their homes? Or -

­- and then Endellia is calling for help and Cecille cannot see her, for the fog wraps round her like a thick blanket, muffling the noise. Her hand clenches on the hilt of her beautiful weapon, Excalibur, and the red scars on her pale skin that remain from that silly childhood game seem to twist into recognisable shapes for a moment.

Then Excalibur is out, scything the fog, and the Clavat is calling for her friend because nothing would be so terrible as for her to die in this city, so far away from home.

Endellia is wounded now, but not enough to warrant a waste of healing magic. The Yuke girl continues as if she is not hampered and so they follow her lead.

They must be close now, or at least close enough; Endellia's magical rings had easily opened the stairway to the top of the pyramid that had been sealed long ago. The stairs are not accessible from this side of the dead city though, and so they follow their route back cautiously. But retracing one's steps is not easy, especially when every corner looks the same and the past presses in at every footfall.

"I hate this place," Catseye says dispassionately, drawing close to Cecille's side. She merely nods, a woman of few words.

"What happened here, d'you think?" he asks. It does not take a scholar to see that the seemingly random piles of rubble that litter the base of the central pyramid are not so random after all. There is a structure to them that suggests houses, dwellings. To some extent, they all know, the stories are true. People had lived here once, together.

"I don't know," she replies. "But can't you feel it? This place is trying to suck the memories from us. As if it's trying to replace whatever it lost."

"Put whatever words you like around it," Catseye mutters, stretching. "I just think it feels plain weird."

She turns away, a smile flashing across her face at the Selkie's blunt speech. Cecille does not smile very often, because smiles are precious and should be used sparingly. Otherwise, they lose their value.

Despite Catseye's dismissal, Cecille cannot help feeling that she has put her finger on the exact point. Rebena had been something once, and now it sought to regain that something from them all. People were what made a city alive; Rebena's people were all gone. She sees that clearly, even through the fog.

What makes people… people?

Thoughts? Feelings?

Memories?

A wind blows, and Cecille shivers in her overcoat. The flower, her blue flower, is swept away and she snatches at it, too fearful of losing it. Her fingers close around the stem tightly –

- "Ophelia!" the Lilty boy calls, "Come back, Ophelia!"

"Shan't!" his companion shouts back petulantly. She is a Clavat girl, with a short blonde plait and cloudy eyes, and she runs across the field with the tiny Lilty in pursuit. Her footsteps are light, for she is young and weighs nothing, but it is enough to throw up clouds of petals from the blossoms that crowd the meadow in a riot of colour and shapes. The petals that are carried back to the Lilty boy are blue like the sky.

Beyond Ophelia the houses cluster at the edge of the field, and beyond them is the pyramid –

- and Cecille stops, because that memory is not her own and suddenly she is frightened.

Catseye walks into the back of her as she stops abruptly. Almost instantly, he is by her side, eyes watchful like a bird of prey.

"What is it? Did you see something?"

"No," Cecille replies, and stares at the flower. "It's nothing."

"You sure?" Catseye presses her. He looks dubious. For all his insouciance, he is a kind heart and can see in Cecille's eyes the raging fires of sudden, stinging anxiety. But then Aonyx and Endellia are almost upon them, and he knows that Cecille will not confess her problems to the group for fear of seeming weak. Instead he steps back respectfully and allows her to plunge on ahead as she always does, the brave one.

The fog parts with theatrical timing.

The pyramid is revealed, towering above the approaching Cecille as if she were a child.

She leads them up the stairs. They are carved into the pyramid itself, decorated with all manner of sigils and runes. Even Aonyx, a scholar to the marrow, knows nothing of their meaning. Endellia – with a lack of patience and abundance of eagerness at the possibility of another skirmish so unbecoming of a Yuke – falls back to hurry him on more than once, because he holds the chalice and his fascination with this intricate piece of lost history is slowing them down.

"I wonder what it says," he remarks to Endellia, and she cranes her head to look at the pictograms that adorn the stone around them.

"I suspect the pyramid was one of the first buildings the Rebenans constructed," she suggests. "Perhaps it was built before quill and parchment? Maybe it records their early history."

"If only I could understand," Aonyx sighs wistfully. "If there were more time I could note down some of these runes – it would be most interesting to translate them. Who knows? We might discover something of our ancestry that we never knew – the extent of creationism by the lady goddess, the coming of the miasma – "

"The past often only reveals more of our ignorance," Endellia waves a paw dismissively, and the fog glistens wetly on her jewelled rings. "It is more sensible to dwell on the present, or perhaps the future. Hurry, before Cecille gets away from us."

Cecille is almost running now.

There is an urge to reach the top of the pyramid, a sort of inexplicable driving force, as if she somehow expects to find a solution to a problem she is not aware of at the peak. There is something, she is sure of it. Something important.

Her eyes are focused on the slick steps so that she does not trip; this is perhaps why she notices the little picture near the foot of the stone wall running parallel to the stairs. At first she wonders what it is about this engraving that catches her attention, and then she realises that it seems somewhat familiar.

The engraving is of a figure. The posture exudes some sort of careless air, and she recognises Catseye's signature slouch. She stops, and her eyes are drawn back to the Selkie toiling up the steps some short distance behind her. The engraving is not him, certainly, but it is a Selkie nonetheless. She crouches, and her questing fingers brush aside a clump of moss to better see –

- the young man storms ahead of her up the stairs, and it is all she can do to keep up even though her heart is breaking and she can barely stand for all the grief burdening her shoulders.

"Wait," she sobs, "Please wait!"

"I will not hear you speak!" the young Clavat man shouts back. His voice could have been a kind one, but it is twisted by outright fury and pain. "Every word you utter brings more suffering some poor soul!"

"I don't understand – "

The Clavat whirls on the stairs and glares down at her; some dozen steps above her, he appears twice her height. Twice her worth. Such is the nature of his glare – she is nothing to him now.

"You wouldn't understand, Deti," he snarls, "You have never had someone taken from you before their time. My sister was taken this morning by the sickness. She was raving all night, seeing terrible visions, and this morning she coughed and coughed and then simply died right in my mother's arms."

"But Elliot," the young woman pleads, "how could that be my fault?"

The perspective shifts subtly, the watcher becomes aware of what this woman is. She is of the Selkie tribe, with lavender hair and attractive curves, the markings of her clan tattooed tastefully on her smooth skin. And somehow, that is why the blame for Elliot's ordeal is laid at her feet.

"How many people have died of the sickness, Deti?" Elliot growls, "How many?"

"I don't know – "

"Two hundred so far! Two hundred lives, and no one knows where it came from or what causes it! We only know that it arrived with the Selkies. You and your damn shooting star of ill fortune, that brought the sickness to Rebena that drove my sister mad!"

"Elliot," the Selkie woman wails, tears pouring down her face, "I swear to you, we Selkies have never before experienced such a thing! And Selkies suffer from the sickness just as much as you Clavats, Lilties and Yukes. How can it be our fault?"

"The day we opened our gates to you and your gypsy kind, we sealed our fates," he spits. "Stop following me. I go to the kings to propose that we banish you all back to the swamp from which you came!"

And with that he turns and runs again, and the woman collapses to the hard floor with her hands pressed to her eyes, shoulders shaking with absolute desolate despair –

- and Cecille blinks, because Catseye is nudging her shoulder gently.

"What are you looking at?" he asks with genuine curiosity, and then his eyes narrow to a frown of concern.

"You're crying. Cecille, for the lady's sake, what is it that ails you?"

"This place," Cecille chokes out. "This place – "

"Are you hurt?" a voice asks in alarm, and Aonyx suddenly fills her vision, radiating worry. Endellia hovers close by. There is something about the pyramid that evokes the primal need to stay in a pack.

She tries to explain it to them, and they try to understand.

Rebena died.

That much is agreed in all the stories. Some terrible fate befell the people of the citadel, destroying them utterly and completely. And without people, what is a city? People make a city alive. The life was sucked from Rebena the day those people died and it was left to rot as a hollow, empty shell.

But those things that were once alive seek always to regain what they had. It is the basic nature of living things to strive, to want, to take life back – just like flowers that die in winter and are reborn in spring.

And Rebena had retained those strong emotions, the brightest of memories, and recorded them. The echoes of the Rebenans and their lives, their triumphs and sorrows, bounced off the walls of the pyramid.

Cecille, with her wandering mind, had picked those lost scraps of civilisation up and seen the last days of Rebena replayed. In recognition of her vibrant mind, the soul of the city of Rebena sought to take the essence of Cecille away as a replacement for what it had lost. All Rebena needed to regain its glory was people.

What makes people… people?

Thoughts. Feelings.

Memories.

And what better way to attract people back than the very essence of living?

"It's trying to keep me here, Rel Gen," she says grimly. Catseye hears her use his true name and knows that something has shaken his companion to her very core. "Whatever evil spirit that haunts this place, it tries to steal memories away. Don't you feel it? Something trying to reach into your mind, to make you remember things? That is what it wants; strong memories to stay here and be a lure to other people."

He nods slowly, as she finally puts words around the strange sensation that has dogged him since first setting foot in the dead city. Endellia too nods her head.

"We Yukes are sensitive to the fluctuations of the mind," she says. "This place… it is alive, as you say. Alive in the manner of a ghost, eating memories to cling to the past like miasma and monsters."

"I feel it too," Aonyx states, "but the mind does not belong to Rebena itself. Rebena you might call the vessel."

"What does the mind belong to, then?" Catseye asks, looking unsettled at the occult tone of the discussion. For a man whose life is measured by material things, the allusion to the spiritual plane is beyond the level he cares to rise to.

Aonyx pauses, and then raises a paw to point up the pyramid steps. High above them there is the suggestion of an end to the ascension, and a doorway.

Beyond the doorway is darkness.

The old tomes call them lich.

Cecille had never known how to pronounce the word, but she said it thus: leech.

It fills the chamber before the four caravanners of Crysila, the true size of its form made impossible to determine by the tendrils of unearthly purple light that wreath its ghostly body. Cecille is not sure whether to be frightened or angry or both as it drifts towards them, clutching a staff-like weapon in one bony appendage and what looks like some blood-red crystal ball in the other; there is almost no flesh to it, just a suggestion of a shape under straggling feathers and a tattered cape.

And then Cecille's eyes are drawn to the copper sallet above the scrapheap of a body and her eyes widen as she looks first to Endellia and then to Aonyx.

This thing had been a Yuke, once.

The lich reaches out carefully with the crystal ball, as if offering it to Endellia.

"No," the maiden says forcefully, and Cecille hears the choked sob in her voice. The lich draws back and surveys Aonyx instead, and he too shakes his head.

Cecille feels Catseye draw close to her. There is some communication going on here between the Yukes that she and Catseye cannot comprehend. Even as the lich opens its mouth to shriek a battle cry she has already found the two unobtrusive poles at either side of the cavern just like those Endellia had cast upon outside this crypt. One flickers fiery orange; the other, a cold blue. A barrier?

It is too late to suggest this to her companions. The lich swings a precise arc of the staff towards Endellia and she does not move fast enough. The clang of the staff striking her sallet is enough to hurt Cecille's ears. Endellia is sent sprawling, stricken on the floor.

"Bastard!" screams Catseye, and aims a blast of aura magic at the thing. Without so much as a hint of resistance it passes straight through the ghostly form and dissolves into nothingness on the chamber wall behind.

Cecille points to the magic poles in an overly dramatic gesture that catches Aonyx's eye. "Fire and Blizzard!" she calls urgently. She doesn't know what activating the poles will do but it is the only thing she can think of. With their only offensive mage unconscious on the stone floor though, she can only hope that Aonyx will know what to do.

"I'll do it," Catseye says, darting past Cecille towards Endellia, "Just watch my back!"

With deft movements he removes the Yuke girl's magic rings and stands square, eyes closed in concentration. Cecille knows he can cast, has seen him do so before in times of dire needs, but with nowhere near Endellia's strength and precision.

"With me, Cecille!" Aonyx snaps her out of her reverie and she follows the Yuke without hesitation, rushing in close to the lich to divert its attention from the struggling Selkie. As is expected, Excalibur sweeps through the smoke around the lich without even damaging the disgusting cape draped about its shoulders. This close, she can see the copper sallet atop the body is encrusted with more grime than gems. The lich withdraws up the steps at the rear of the chamber, and Excalibur's next swing rebounds jarringly from some sort of invisible barrier at their foot.

Aha! That's what the poles are for!

Catseye releases his casts and the room lights up with such intensity that she almost can't see, but she runs forward anyway through the dissolving barrier. A scything blow from her blade still cuts only livid purple smoke but now she knows that this creature is only a ghost and that Aonyx will know so too.

True enough, she hears the sound of magic behind her: a Cure for Endellia. It is followed by a blast of gold as the two Yukes combine the most potent Holy spell she has ever seen. Her next swing slices off the cape, leaves a gash among the swirling suggestion of a torso as the ghost is dragged onto the material plane. She cries out in triumph; the lich reels back in agony at this unexpected pain.

She is about to plunge Excalibur up the hilt into the clotted feathery mass where the lich's waist could be when suddenly the crystal ball is in her face. Startled, she glances into its bloody depths despite herself.

"NO!" Aonyx bellows. "Cecille, look away!"

She doesn't.

The barrier reforms between the Clavat and her party and their cries are muffled.

- there is a moon, a red moon, floating lazily in the sky.

Never has Cecille seen the sky so clear. Even on the brightest blue day, there has always been the fog of miasma coated across it like a thin greyish veneer. As she stands in the window, gazing out at the stars, she can recall nothing from her travels more beautiful than this red moon.

"Do you like it, princess?"

She turns, and finds an elegant Yuke woman stood before her. The sallet is closed, as ever, but a lifetime of learning to read Aonyx lends Cecille the knowledge that she is smiling. She nods, wanting to please this Yuke woman. "It is beautiful."

"The red moon," the Yuke gestures expansively. "Do you feel it speak to you, princess?"

"I – " Cecille stops, puzzled. There is a conflict somewhere within her, as a youthful eager personality that she knows is not her own tries to use Cecille's mouth to form a reply. She fights it, angrily.

"I don't hear it," she says abruptly. "What does it mean?"

The Yuke tilts her head very slightly. "We Lunites understand that it means great events are in the making."

Lunites. From where does she remember that word?

"Great events?" Cecille's eyes are dragged inexorably back towards the crimson orb in the blackness of the night. A slight movement catches her eye and, in the far west a flicker of white movement commands her attention. A comet, perhaps. It is there only a moment before disappearing into the far mountain peaks beyond the swamps.

Suddenly, she is uneasy.

"Ah," the Yuke woman claps her hands gleefully. "My lord Raem of the blood moon has sent a message."

"What?" Her voice sounds dull. Vacant.

She feels only the gentle pressure of the Yuke's paw on her shoulder. "Forget what I said, dear princess. Look at the moon."

And Cecille does, fighting every step of the way until she can think no more and the red moon is all that she can see – and wouldn't it be nice to stay here forever? –

- "Wake up! For the lady's sake, Cecille, I will punch you into next sowing season if you don't!"

She opens her eyes almost instinctively, and Catseye, leaning over her, pulls back sharply.

"You dumb Clavat," he says roughly. "Don't do that again – what's wrong with your eyes?"

They are crimson. She knows that without him having to tell her. A scream from Endellia casts the thought away immediately. She seizes Excalibur and is up past Catseye before he can even think to stop her. Both Yukes – her Yukes – are on their knees before the lich, still struggling to bring it down with magic reserves dwindling as their stamina wears down. Aonyx has a broken leg and cannot move but still he tries to reach Endellia, who is buried up to waist in rocky debris brought raining down from the ceiling. The lich is aflame from her most recent Fira – she is too weak now to cast Firaga – but still it continues towards her with crimson orb outstretched.

"NO!" she is screaming. "I will not look!"

Loooook atttttt meeeeee look atttt ittt myyyy beeeaauuutifulllll moooon

Endellia turns her head aside as a last resort as the crystal ball is thrust into her face.

Cecille lunges. Her legendary weapon sweeps down and the crystal ball is cleaved in twain. A pivot, neatly as a dancer, and she drives Excalibur home into the claggy waist and pulls up –

The ethereal flesh splits grotesquely, spraying her with a foul slime, but her work is done. The lich is dying. It scrabbles on the floor for its broken crystal, bone staff tossed aside. Cecille stares past it to the remains of six thrones, now mouldy with damp centuries of misuse.

And behind them, a giant rune of magic inscribed on the wall.

"How do I activate that?" she yells at Endellia, heaving a boulder aside to allow the Yuke maid some breathing room. The Yuke shakes her head weakly. "I don't know! It's a Rebenan pictogram, I don't understand it!"

She runs past the wailing lich and presses her palms flat against the wall.

"Help me!" she cries. "Help me remember what you did!"

"It's easy," a voice says amicably, and there by her side is a girl with a bob of bright red hair all wrapped about in a blue shawl. "Watch."

The rune flares brilliantly, leaving an afterimage of yellow and purple on the inside of Cecille's eyelids. The lich, bony arm raised to smite Endellia and crush her skull, is struck by a blast of wind roaring in through the open crypt door. Cecille hits the floor in desperate self-preservation as the rune activates, dragging the lich backwards ever further as is claws vainly at the stale air. It is over in a second, perhaps less. The rune-light dims and goes out; the wall remains unchanged for all that it has just swallowed a demon.

Cecille looks all around for the little girl and sees nothing.

In the background, Aonyx Cures his leg with a grunted curse; Catseye digs the stunned Endellia from her rocky prison and she collapses onto him in a rare moment of weakness and lack of composure.

"Cecille?" Catseye calls as he does his best to support the slender maid. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," she whispers. It is all too easy to believe in this chilly chamber that the lich has sucked some of the life from her. "Fine."

The first thing Aonyx did on their return to the caravan was to go through his alchemical supplies and throw out every crystal ball shard he possessed with the most genteel of shudders.

"What happened?" Catseye snarls impatiently. Everyone seems to know something he does not, which does not suit his ego one iota.

"The lich was a Yuke from the days of Rebena," Endellia replies mutely. "Held together by determination to rule the city and miasma. Perhaps... the Yukish king or queen."

"No," Cecille says. "She was... an advisor, perhaps. She told me when I was staring into the orb that she was a Lunite."

Aonyx tutted softly. "As I thought."

"Anyone care to tell me what a loonite is?" Catseye asks. Aonyx sighs, and studies his Clear ring distractedly. "They were a cult, in basest terms. There were several attempts made in Rebena's early history to seize power from the eight rulers of the citadel by this cult, who worshipped the red moon."

"There were only six thrones," Catseye points out blankly.

"The Selkies came to Rebena and installed their own rulers after all but one uprising by the Lunites occurred. The last attempt succeeded, historians agree. The Lunites seized power and murdered many. This is one of the theories behind Rebena's fall."

Again, Cecille shakes her head. "No. She told me the red moon was a sign from Raem that something important was going to happen. I think the Lunites were tricked by Raem into thinking they would rule Rebena if they let in the miasma."

"Let in the miasma?" Aonyx says, puzzled. "But there were no defences back then. The miasma would have gotten in without their help."

Another flashback now, this time gentle, and she is an observer rather than an unwilling participant: a cavern full of gently singing crystals somewhere deep underground. It is the loveliest thing Cecille has ever seen.

"They grew crystals," she says softly. "Whether they knew it or not, the Rebenans did have one defence. The Lunites must have smashed them."

"How do you know that?" Catseye is looking at her eyes warily, searching for the crimson flicker that has long since disappeared, and she frowns.

"I don't know. This place shows me things I would rather not see."

"And how did you know that the crystal ball would brainwash Cecille?" Catseye demands of the Yukes.

"It was a cheap imitation of the red moon, designed to amplify the suggestions made by miasma to unwary caravanners," Endellia shrugs. "It is uncommon, but to be greatly feared. A Yukish invention," she adds quietly, shrouded in her shame at this blot on her race's genius. "The symbology behind it is mostly lost now."

Catseye lets out a low whistle. "So what was this Lunite doing?"

"She wanted to bring people back to Rebena and enslave them to her will. After all, what is it to be the ruler of a city with no subjects?"

"Aonyx," Cecille interrupts him suddenly. "What happened to the royal families?"

"As I recall from the family trees in Shella's archives, the Lilty royals remained in Rebena to fight the monsters save for their son, who left with the refugees. This son became the head of the great Lilty empire which proceeded to span the continent. There are debates as to what happened to the Clavats, as it is suggested their king was controlled by traitorous advisor and his daughter stolen from him. The Yukes left with their tribe, using their magic to sustain the crystals in place of myrrh. So draining and near impossible a task was it that few Yukes survived. Fueling the crystals killed most of them."

Catseye's unspoken question is directed towards Aonyx with just a flicker of his green eyes.

"History remains silent on the fate of the Selkies," Aonyx says slowly.

"The Clavat princess stolen away," Cecille says, "was she young? Red hair?"

Aonyx raises his hands. "I know only what I have read. I am sorry, but not even I can recall finding such a detail. You must surely know most of Rebena's documents are lost. That is why its existence is doubted in this era."

"What do we do now?" Catseye asks. The last drop of myrrh from the tree atop the pyramid has filled the chalice to the very brim.

Endellia speaks the fastest. "We leave this godforsaken place, and never come back. I dislike it with an intensity."

"Just say hate, Endellia." Catseye looks weary. "It's acceptable to express irrational, unscientific emotions sometimes."

They fall to bickering as they hurriedly prepare the caravan to leave. Even though the pyramid is empty now, it is easy to feel as though it continues to watch their activities. Tasks which therefore should have been simple are made harder by trembling fingers and paranoia. Cecille decides to leave them to it.

The fog closes in around Cecille as she paces as far away from her friends as the chalice boundary allows, and she takes a deep breath. Her legs are stony and numb, arms sore at the shoulders and elbows from wielding Excalibur so intensively despite all her practices. Had the rune not activated when it did, she doubted she would have had the energy to finish the lich off with a sword. She was certain that the rune's activation had been nothing to do with her.

"Thank you," she offers to the world at large. There is no reply, of course. No one is even listening. Rebena is well and truly dead. It is only fitting, therefore, that she leaves a respectful gift on the largest gravestone the world has ever seen. She takes her blue flower from her buttonhole, noticing how the fog collects wetly on it almost instantly, and lays it in the gateway between the two columns.

"Cecille! We're going. We've only got five weeks to get home, woman. Hurry it up!"

Dear Harry,

I've been thinking about some things. The past, to begin with. Remembering can be hard sometimes, can't it? But it's necessary. I'm sorry I haven't been in touch recently. Things have been difficult. We are a long way from home, but we have three drops of myrrh now.

I will be home soon, I promise. I love you.

Cecille

End.

There are some allusions to Ring of Fates within this chapter, but as usual I have mutilated most of the canon beyond recognition to suit the themes in my other stories. Sorry, guys. I did love that game though, Meeth especially.

I hope you enjoyed the read. If you've got any questions or constructive criticisms feel free to fire away :)