Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Chasing Spring ❯ Nessel's Crag ( Chapter 2 )

[ Disclaimer: (Though I don't think these are really necessary after the first chapter…) FF8 still doesn't belong to me, just in case you were wondering. ]

[ Notes/Etc.: Something I forgot to warn about in the first chapter...Spoilers. If you don't like, then stay away. Another warning: I change POV in this chappie. Sorry to those easily confused, but I really had intended this to be a Seifer-Zell confrontation fic. Mostly because they interest me. Also, I really really like writing from their POVs. Especially Zell. They're some of my favorite characters to write.

One more thing: I'm almost 99.9% certain that I got the names of the monsters right. I haven't played FF8 in a while and I'm too lazy to look anything up, so I just went with the names I thought were correct. But I really am curious if I was right in my guessing. If anyone knows, right or wrong, inform me in a review or email. Thanks. ]

II - Nessel's Crag

Seifer Almasy mumbled something that could vaguely pass as gratitude and stepped directly from the old farmer's truck into a steaming pile of shit. He was not pleased, and immediately voiced this displeasure. The farmer waved a goodbye to the hitchhiker and chuckled to himself as he drove off, obscenities echoing behind him.

His tirade dwindling to a stop, Seifer looked about him. He took in the empty dirt road, muddy snow piled in clumps on either side of it, the retreating pickup that had bore him across miles and miles of similar landscapes. Seifer tugged his pack back over his shoulder and vaulted the decaying fence separating him from a stinking heard of Mesmerizes. The equine beasts, quite harmless after years of domestication and the removal of their horns, snorted lazily on either side of him. Seifer watched in disgusted silence as the cause of his earlier misfortune ate and shat and slept in huddled masses on the frozen terrain. He wondered to himself who in their right mind would raise such a worthless animal as livestock. Sure, he allowed, their horns were useful, but the beasts couldn't grow them back. And nothing, in Seifer's opinion, could be attained from these creatures that actually warranted the care given to their stinking, matted carcasses.

As far as he knew, (Seifer continued on this train of thought, having nothing better to direct his attentions to) the people that lived this far north hunted Snowlions. A skillful hunter could easily down one of the monstrous beasts and sell it for a hefty price to one of the scattered villages, which would in turn skin and gut the thing and sell off its various parts to merchants. Seifer also knew, or rather inferred, that those living closer to the coast would get their sustenance from the sea. That was simply how things worked. Mesmerizes shouldn't have had to be raised as cattle and left to themselves to shit where Seifer walked.

The tall blonde continued his musings until he reached the end of the Mesmerize field. From there, he'd have to cross unknown lengths of forest before finally hitting a stretch of road that would take him directly to the nearest drop of civilization; a small mining town the farmer had said was called Nessel's Crag. The farmer had happily divulged to Seifer the history of the small town. How it had sprung up a few years ago when some lucky bastard had stumbled upon a strong vein of nectyte, the raw form of Energy Crystals. One by one, treasure hunters and opportunity seekers alike had settled the wilderness surrounding the mine. Eventually, the town had grown into a well-built community that hung somewhere between developing and stagnant.

Seifer sighed, dreading the long walk through the cold and snow, and crossed the ice-hung fence that separated him from the slightly intimidating pine trees.

Seifer dozed uncomfortably beside a fading fire. Droplets from melting icicles tumbled harmlessly into his hair and dribbled down the side of his face. With an unconscious gesture every few moments, Seifer wiped at the little wet trails on his cheek. Above him, night birds twittered uncertainly, uneasy with the sleeping human so close. Nameless creatures came and went as the night gradually drained from the sky. A few hours from dawn, the last vestiges of Seifer's fire went out, and the cold quickly closed in around the little clearing, worming its way through the fibers of Seifer's clothes and stinging his skin.

He woke soon after, the bite of the cold and wind quickly dragging him into awareness. Even though he had been careful to situate himself on his small pack of clothes, the chill from the permafrost he had slept over had still managed to seep into his flesh. His butt was thoroughly numb.

Seifer cursed his constant misfortune and readied himself to leave. He was hungry, tired, and stunk of days of travel. His head pounded with a growing ache and he was having a hard time believing his extremities were still attached. His uncertainty grew until he finally succumbed to looking and found that, yes, everything was still present and accounted for. Seifer fervently hoped the cold wouldn't give him permanent shrinkage and plowed noisily through the woods, swatting snow-dusted branches out of his way and hissing obscenities every time he slipped on the slick ground.

The day waned slowly from his sight as Seifer approached a mass of bituminous buildings that could only be Nessel's Crag. It was larger than he'd pictured, and more run-down. On the very edges of the town, crumbling ruins huddled together, leaning against each other for support. Behind them rose dark structures covered in a sheet of wet snow that glinted sharply in the sunset. Smoke billowed thickly above slanted rooftops, as imposing as any storm cloud. Stepping across the town's outer boundary, Seifer felt the air suddenly thicken. When he swallowed, he could almost feel the grime from the polluted air cling to the sides of his throat. He had almost forgotten what it was like in civilization; it was a bitter remembrance.

Seifer walked down a mostly deserted main street, catching curious glances as he went. On either side of him stood an outward semicircle of squat buildings, interspersed with newer, taller complexes, presumably apartments. There were few automobiles; most walked or rode bicycles. Seifer spotted an occasional cart pulled by a weary team of Mesmerizes, but there were so few of them that he couldn't credit transportation as the reason for the field on the other side of the woods.

Eventually, Seifer came to a stop in front of a flashing Vacancy sign. The building behind it was identical to the others, average in appearance and size. It was only a few stories, and Seifer deemed it sound enough, mounting the ice-covered steps and tugging open the weathered door, grimacing as paint chips fell off in his hand.

The transition from outside to inside wasn't by far dramatic, but after two days in freezing temperatures, Seifer was more than qualified to tell the difference. The whir of a window-mounted heater buzzed in his ears, the sound almost magical, and he was submerged in a stale draft of warm air. As the coldness ebbed, Seifer felt his skin begin to tingle as heat gradually returned to it. He uttered an over-dramatized sigh of relief and approached the mass of wrinkles at the counter across from him.

"I'd like a room," he said gruffly, his voice sounding unused in his own ears.

"Yeah?" murmured the old woman (Seifer presumed it was a woman). She settled back in her wooden chair, the thing creaked pitifully as her girth shifted. She was chewing noisily, her great wrinkled cheeks moving grotesquely as she did so. "We got a room," she said, spitting a dripping black stream into a tin at her feet.

Seifer grimaced as the woman wiped a trail of spittle from her chin. "How much?" he asked at last, loath to be breathing the same air as this woman, lest some disgusting contagion leak from her pores into him.

"D'pends," she said, chewing away, "on how long yer stayin'."

"I don't know yet," he mumbled stiffly, fidgeting uneasily under her unwavering, squinting gaze.

"Well," she shifted again, and Seifer could've sworn that the whole building groaned with the chair this time. "I suppose you can stay for 350 for the week, after that, it's 50 gil a night."

Seifer nodded his approval. The price was reasonable, but hopefully he wouldn't have to stay that long. "When do I pay you?"

The woman seemed to consider this. Her eyes were hidden for a moment by quivering layers of fat as she squinted harder in thought. Her lips came together in a severe line, momentarily making her cheeks puff out farther, she scratched at her stubbled chin. Then, all at once, she seemed to deflate, her cheeks going slack and her eyes popping without sound from the recesses of her flab. "You can pay when you leave. It's not every day we get some pretty fellow like you in here. You really brighten up the place." She gave him what resembled a wink and smiled in toothless mirth, her black wad of tobacco bulging against her bottom lip.

Seifer nodded again, quickly, like a twitch, and took the proffered key from the fat woman's hand. The thing was greasy, and slick in his gloved fingers, and he nearly dropped it. She told him the room number and he scurried, there was no other word for it, up the stairs. The woman's meaty chuckle followed his hasty ascent.

The room was small, dirty, and smelled like something dead. The single window, directly across from Seifer, was curtainless, and smeared with accumulated grime. Seifer could only just tell that it was snowing outside. A few feet from the doorway was a single bed, remarkably clean. He sat on it experimentally, disconcerted by the tremulous creak it made; he could actually feel it as the springs compressed under his weight. The thing was old, but at least it wasn't covered in filth. Seifer tossed his battered pack of clothes at a chair across the room. He missed; the bag landed on the floor in a small, pitiful heap. Seifer sighed and leaned back on the bed, hoping, as a change of pace, to get a full night's sleep.

Of course, this was yet another thing impossible to the young blonde. His sleep was fractured by sudden bouts of awareness whenever his tumultuous thoughts reached a climax. He found himself waking, at times, to clouded thoughts of Edea, or Ultimecia, and lapses of time he couldn't remember. Then again, sometimes when he woke it was Fuijin or Raijin's name on his lips, and he was able to lull himself back into unconsciousness only by thinking of better times with them. And once, sometime deep into the night, Seifer woke, puzzled by the Mesmerize field.

But everything, with the exception of the Mesmerizes, led back to Seifer's self-imposed exile and his lonely trek across the mountainous region north of Trabia. He couldn't pinpoint why he had chosen this particular continent to isolate himself to, but he suspected the reason lay deep in his unconscious, and would plague him until one night, when he was too drunk to even remember his name, it'd spring itself at him and startle him off his barstool.

Admitting defeat, Seifer sighed, pocketed the room key, and left; thankful that his rotund admirer and retired to her own quarters. Outside, a fresh layer of snow carpeted the ground, and Seifer made his crunching way to the end of the street, finally coming to a stop where the road merged with a slender mountain path. From where he stood, Seifer could see the lights illuminating the mouth of the nectyte mine. They glowed eerily in the pre-dawn quiet.

Walking with his eyes on his feet and his hands in his pockets, Seifer made his slow way to the very edge of the town. Caught between stray beams of light from both the mine and the buildings behind him, Seifer looked up at the sky. Like a seething mass of celestial soup, dark clouds rolled over each other, alternately hiding and revealing a few scattered stars. The wind picked up, carrying with it bits of snow blown from trees and rooftops that caught in Seifer's hair and eyelashes. He blinked the bits of ice away, closing his eyes and relishing the moment of clear thought.

Basking in the silence for just a moment more, Seifer decided that he could stay here, quite possibly longer than he had originally thought. It was rare that he could have a break from his warring mind like this. Since he had forsaken (Been freed from? He couldn't remember) Ultimecia's control, Seifer had been plagued by one conflicting thought after another. At first, he had had Fujin and Raijin to help him differentiate between what had really happened and what hadn't. But even with their reassurances, he hadn't been able to put himself at ease. And soon enough, their smiles of pity and hollow encouragements had grated on his nerves, and he had left, trying to forget all that had happened. And yet, even miles and miles away from the root of his inner turmoil, Seifer still felt smothered by it. But here, he had found maybe three minutes of peace, which was worth all the trouble he had gone through to find it, including the Mesmerize shit.