Born With Magic (Book 1 Of The Last Fantasy Duology)

Chapter 30: The Beginning of the End, Part I

The little town had recovered well from the brutal Empire invasion.

It was only a week after the disaster that had transpired, and the homes that had been burnt or destroyed were nearing completion. Meanwhile, families allowed other families to board with them, and children helped their elders out with the rebuilding the best they could. But while Thamasa as a town could easily pick up from where their lives left off after the Empire had come, it was different for the Returners.

Strago got the Innkeeper to let the Returners stay with him for free until they felt ready to move on, and while they recovered, he also took care of the burying of Leo's body in the eastern town cemetery. He ordered Relm to stay at home, and for once, she obeyed, and left Locke, Terra, and Celes alone.

Terra, completely worn out physically and mentally from everything that had happened, spent most of her time sleeping and flitting from nightmare to nightmare. While sleep had usually been her escape, now it was just as painful as anything else. A constant dream that Terra had was when she first woke up after the attack, and saw Leo's dead body, soaked in his own deep crimson blood and face down. She screamed out and crawled weakly over to the body, shaking her head as she shook him over and over again, begging him to wake up.

"Leo! Leo! Get up, get up! Kefka is gone... he's... gone..." She lowered her head and began to heave a sob, dropping her now dampened hands into the grass. "Leo... you promised... that we would..."

After that, the dream would blur out a bit, although Terra could hear the voices of Locke and the others in the background, questioning about what had happened frantically.

"Somebody call for a doctor!"

"I'll go fetch him, Grandpa!"

"Celes, cast a spell!"

"I... I can't... not for something like this..."

And then Terra would wake up, only to mumble something incoherent and immediately fall back asleep. She didn't have the energy to face the world. Her room was kept dark at all times, and the only people who went in were Locke and Celes, to bring water and food, which, when they came back at the end of the day, would see had not been touched...

Despite knowing Leo more than Terra, Celes was carrying on a lot better. However, she didn't seem to have much to say. She would disappear from the Inn at times during the day, and go to the cemetery, where she would simply walk among the graves, studying each one intently. She had never seen such a big cemetery in a town before, and when she read the graves, she would find some of them to be hundreds of years old.

"Leo... you don't belong here..."

Locke spent most of his time resting and browsing Weapon and Item shops, picking up whatever the party would need for their trip back to Vector, however they would manage to do that. He also was the only one of the Returners that would visit Strago and Relm from time to time. Part of him wished that the elderly man and the girl would ask to join the Returners permanently, but another part of him secretly hoped that for some reason, Shadow would of ended up back at their home. He hadn't been seen ever since he abandoned the group, and Locke was worried for him. Surely he would of come back so that he could join the Returners on the ride back to Albrook...

~~~~~~

On the final night that the Returners stayed in Thamasa, Terra had a dream, a dream that differed completely from the constant flashbacks of Kefka's attack and Leo's lifeless body. In it, she imagined herself, all alone, in a dead and empty void. The darkness was thick and overpowering, and she almost felt as if she were going to suffocate. But then slowly, ever so slowly, light began to pour in around her. When she looked to her feet, she could see that she was standing on a baron, cracked, dry piece of land, covered in white pebbles and dead, dried up roots of plants. In the distance, she could hear an ocean, but when she looked about her, she was positive that there was not one there. Instead of the large, rolling waves of sapphire blue water she had seen on her ship ride to Thamasa, there was instead a calm, almost still body of filthy brownish-red water lapping at the eroding shores. There was no sparkle from the reflected sun, and no sign of life anywhere within it.