The night after they escaped from the monstrous dog, Ryn slept better than he had in a long time, probably from the exhaustion.

They slept outside, wrapped in thick grey woolspun cloaks that Cid had brought with him from Nonts--one for each of them--along with his other food supplies. They slept on the grassy earth under a roof decorated by myriad stars, having finally made it out of the woods that surrounded Nonts, although they kept close to the tree cover in case they were attacked again and needed to flee into it.

They set a watch, and took turns taking it, and Ryn was glad to have one of the later watches of the night which meant he could get a good chunk of sleep before Elrann invariably shook him groggily awake and whispered “Your turn, farmboy.”

They rode for the better part of each day, stopping only to eat from the provisions that Cid had brought with him--bread, hard cheese, some salt beef, watery wine, and the odd apple. It would take them five or so days ofchocobo riding to get to Sirra, Cid said.

The terrain mostly consisted of flat fields, though it did rise and fall from time to time, making thechocobos work harder to carry them, and here and there it was dotted with little woods and forests, which they made good headway through, re-checking their direction of travel against the traversing sun whenever they emerged back into the open fields.

They looked over their shoulders constantly as they rode, and continued to keep watches at night, but for now no more Imperials came their way, nor monstrous dogs, nor Shadowfingers, despite Vish’s insistence that there were others on the hunt for them. They seemed to have escaped the grasp of the Empire by running away on their chocobos, at least for now. In fact, looking out over the flat green fields only occasionally interrupted by a fence or a farmstead or a forest, with the bright sun lighting up the clear blue sky and their route ahead of them, you could almost be forgiven for forgetting that this country had recently been invaded by the Empire at all.

“But that’s because we’re in the provincial grasslands on the far outskirts of Sirra, pup,” Sagar explained from his mount on the second day when Ryn voiced this thought. Ryn was still bitter that Sagar got to ride with Nuthea, while he was stuck riding his bird with Vish. “When we get to the city--you’ll see--that’s where the fighting will have been. That’s where those airships were headed when they left us behind in Ast.”

In the tiny amount of free time that Ryn got between sleeping, eating and riding, Ryn practiced his flame projection powers and his swordsmanship. Nuthea had told him that he needed to practice his flame projection in order to grow in skill and increase the amount of time he was able to use them before he grew too tired, which she said was linked to something called his ‘mana reserve’, so he took every spare moment that he got to practice forming little flames in his hands, concentrating hard to hold them in existence, then deliberately willing them to extinguish.

“That’s it--you have to practice commanding the element into existence, then shutting it off again,” Nuthea would say, nodding sagely. Ryn was glad of the excuse to spend time with her. “Then, once you’ve mastered that, you can focus on manipulating it--making particular forms and shapes, and sending them in directions that you choose.”

Ryn sometimes ‘practiced his flames’, as he came to think of it, when he was on watch too, but he had to be careful doing that as he didn’t want to give away their presence to any prowling Imperials or Shadowfingers that might be on their trail. Once he accidentally lit a flame too bright and it woke Sagar up, who swore loudly and in turn woke the whole of the rest of the group up. They were a grumpy party on that particular morning.

The other thing Ryn practiced was swordfighting. When they had set out after defeating the dog-monster near Nonts, he had made sure to take the sword from one of the corpses of the Imperial soldiers who had been chasing them. Cid, who had also taken one of the Imperial’s blades and somehow knew swordfighting despite his profession, offered to teach Ryn.

Ryn wondered whether Sagar was actually better with a sword, but Cid seemed to know what he was doing, and Ryn felt would much prefer to be taught by Cid than Sagar. So in the few remaining moments between riding, sleeping, eating and practicing his flames, he practiced with his sword with Cid a little way away from the rest of the group, following the old man’s instructions in swinging, thrusting, blocking and parrying as they traded carefully pre-agreed blows.

Sometimes, when people fell quiet on the long rides during the day, or during his night watches before he started practicing his element-projection, Ryn tried to remember his life before any of this had happened--before the Empire had attacked his hometown. The trouble was, he couldn’t. Of course, some memories stood out, which he held on to like solid rocks in a seething, foggy sea of despair.

His birth-day celebrations with mother and father. Racing the farm chocobos out in the woods with Jaq and Fargu on seventhdays. Making Carlotia laugh in the classroom at the town school. Reading a favourite storybook sat under a tree. It wasn’t as if all of this had happened very long ago.

But even these memories were growing faint, the light and colour fading from them as time passed. He found he could no longer remember any of their faces clearly.

And they all threatened to be swallowed up by the one single big memory that loomed large in his mind, that his mind didn’t seem to be able to let go of: His mother and father being killed, and his hometown being destroyed. The thoughts of all that, the images of the sword going into his mother’s chest, the burning buildings, the light going out of his father’s eyes, never really left him. They came to him unbidden, again and again, when he was riding, when he was talking to Nuthea and the others, while he was eating, taking a piss or before he fell asleep. Mother. Father. Hometown.

It was like his mind was obsessed with the events and couldn’t let them go, and nor could he move on from them either. It was torture. Once he had recovered from the exhaustion of escaping Nonts, he continued to re-live the whole thing again and again in his sleep. Sometimes he would wake in the night shouting from the memories, as he had done when Cid had revived him from his sword-wound, sometimes with whimpers and moans, which was extremely embarrassing. Rarely, if ever, did he wake up feeling refreshed. His nerves were constantly frayed and his head ached all the time.

There was only one way out:

Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr.

What he would do after that, if he ever managed it, he did not know. There was only ever one other vague notion that occasionally presented itself in his mind:

Stay with Nuthea?

*