Dislciamer: I don't own Final Fantasy IV

I'm sorry it's late guys! But exams are over, and I'm here now ^_^ Enjoy!

071. Autumn

Browning, decaying leaves crunched and crumbled and squelched beneath his silent, navy-armoured foot, each step bringing him closer, closer to his pray.

A branch creaked. The maze of trees before him swayed, ever so slightly, in the breathy wind. Another branch snapped beneath a footfall, and he stood, stock still, looking for anything that might have come into his path.

The wind brushed along his exposed hands and the nape of his neck, like an affectionate breath. To his straining ears, it sounded like a giggle, and to his widened eyes, he thought he saw a swish of gossamer blonde fabric.

Nothing was there, he decided. He hurried on, navigating his way around the forest, trying to find his prey, that which he needed to find for... For... He didn't know.

He caught a glimpse of red, perhaps, or maybe the sweet note of a lyre song. Yes, this was his prey. The notes shimmering on the air were just as he remembered from times long past - of hurried visits to Damcyan, and the unusual prince he'd found there. Or were they his? They felt like they belonged to another. Another, whose life and name and friends and family hovered just out of his desperate reach.

The wind swished against his skin again as he prowled in the autumnal forest, winding around the maze of trees and drawing his long lance with every step, shined until gleaming in the blood-like, rotting leaves.

The lyre notes grew stronger, and he peered around the thick tree trunks, through the evening mist. Retrieve, not kill. Those words ran like a mantra through his mind, even though he felt some perverse bloodlust, an insatiable itch that floated around his mind, springing from no emotion in particular.

He prepared to throw his spear, feeling the muscles under the veined skin of his left arm and chest ripple in practised precision, and aim for a non-deadly landing.

"Hahaha. Oh Kain, do you think you could kill me?"

The wind whirled furiously around him, and he dropped his spear unceremoniously, knowing she's caught him out, again.

She stood before him, dressed in barely any red material at all - only to cover what she needed to - and a lyre under her arm, with a devious smile on her exotic face. As she took every breath, the comforting wind kissed his skin. She controlled everything about the wind. She was the wind.

"You!" He spoke in a harsh voice he barely recognised, teeth gritted. He felt anger towards her for stopping his bloodlust; an anger so strong it held back another emotion that felt to him like sweet water, or air after being stuck under the ocean.

She giggled again, with a harsh biting tone like crushed glass hiding under her voice. "It is always me, Kain. Haven't you realised this yet?" Her grin was wide, and her purple eyes sparkled in the gloomy, dying forest. Her canines pointed over her full lips ever so slightly; he knew the danger her every fibre carried.

"I didn't know you..." his tongue felt tied, and he struggled to say the rest of his sentence,"you could play the lyre."

She snorted, and yet managed to make even that sound graceful. "I was a Lady once, Kain. Before I became a monster."

He frowned, yet made no move to contradict her. She said nothing to prompt a correction from him.

"You are looking for King Edward?"

He nodded and wanted to say something, say anything about that man... He couldn't. His tongue felt bound to the bottom of his mouth, no matter how desperately he tried to speak.

"Well well, the little dragoon can't speak." She giggled again, her voice like little chimes on the wind. "Master put a partial memory blocker on you? But yet won't let you speak of the past. Pity, I wanted to watch you squirm."

He heard the words she said, understood that they were both speaking the same language, yet he couldn't retain nor process what she said. He felt dumb, and completely helpless. His master, the man in heavy black armour, did not fully trust him... Would not let him venture outside the Tower alone. The first time he was allowed to, his master had allowed his memories of his pray to fall back into his mind, but he could not speak of the past, nor run of he wanted to.

He knew he was trapped, but he was also utterly confused as to why.

"Well," he stated, turning back to the matter at hand, "your target was false, and you are to return with me to the Tower. Master has deemed that you may be trusted, at least a bit." She snorted, and laughed at how little their master trusted him, but paid her no mind.

As she whisked them up, up, and out of the autumnal forest and back into the glowing confines of the blue-silver tower, his entirely blank memory returned, and he only felt hunger for this monster, this lord of the winds, this creature, once a lady. Once a different person, just like he suspected he was.

He knew he had been manipulated. He knew that he had no control over his actions and that once ensnared in the mind control, he could do little to get out of it. The only action of all the atrocities he committed that he could remember without an avalanche of shame, was the brief periods of time he spent with the Wind Fiend, when she too broke through the hatred and they were both confused and alone and not entirely themselves. Every autumn, when the leaves fell to the ground and the trees would die almost overnight, he remembered her - wild hair, burning, hungry eyes, and pupils that contained another fighting to be released.

When the leaves were almost all fallen and decayed into nothing but moulding mush, he remembered when she had proven that once, she truly had been another, not the wind demon Barbariccia.

And he learnt her true name.

I've always thought it'd be fascinating to delve into the past of the Four Fiends. I will, later on, but that's something to look forwards to ;) Please follow for more and review if you've got time. Thanks!