Part II: More Magic, More Fantasies

Chapter 32- The Next Mission

"I heard about everything that happened over in Trelana. Although the situation itself isn't favorable, I want to congratulate all of you on the way that you handled those monsters. It's always a good thing when the death toll is low."

"Thank you, Rasa," Lima said.

Beside you, Arrigan just looked sad again. Less than ten people had died, and one of them was his mother- surely fate was mocking him.

"You're welcome. Now, unfortunately, there's a bit of a quicksand problem here in Motavia, so your next orders are to fly over here and give our ship a nice pull so we can fly out of there."

"...Seriously?" asked Lightning.

"You'd have to come here anyway, to drop off our teammates that you borrowed. While you're here, I can brief you on where you'll be going next. Does that sound ideal?"

"Copacetic." Kyra gave him the okay symbol.

"Can someone explain the quicksand thing?" asked Maceida. "My brain is having trouble processing how a pool of that shit could be so big that it's swallowing an entire fucking airship; especially one of that size."

"In the country of Motavia, at the start of the reign of a dark lord called Zio, large sections of quicksand began to appear throughout the country. The most notable pools of the stuff, spanning at least six times the size of a small village, are near a small farming village called Mile, and adjacent to a large medieval castle used as the dark lord's base of operations, aptly named 'Zio's Fort.' Although this lord was defeated before many of us were born, the quicksand has shown no signs of disappearing, and is thought to be a permanent fixture from here on out." Mumford smiled when he'd finished saying all that.

Many of the adults in the room gave him blank stares.

"I had a history project during my first year of high school, and I was obsessed with medieval castles at the time. That led me to learning about that."

"The kid knows his stuff," Alys shrugged. "That's all exactly right."

Mumford looked like a small child on their birthday at that compliment.

"Well, it looks like we're heading there first, then." Lima shrugged. "You're all dismissed until we land."

Dismissal almost always meant to leave the area so the adults could talk, so you walked to your room.

"Where do you think we're going next?" asked Yuffie.

"That's a good question." You thought about that. "The crystals are usually in caves, so I guess that rules out any Cocoonian land because they've built over pretty much all their natural land formations. Personally, I'm kinda hoping it's a place I'm not familiar with again, so we can be amazed."

"You know those two crystals that we're completely ignoring?" spoke up Reiko. "The ones that are in the Pangaean countries. I wonder in what cities they'll turn up in?"

"Probably not a city at all. Caves, remember?" You tapped her head gently.

"Unless someone scavenged it from a cave and is trying to sell it in a city," Rinoa pointed out.

"Do you have any idea how insane that sounds, Rinny?" you asked.

"It's not that crazy," Spencer-Lynn said. "Besides, we've heard and seen crazier."

"She's got a point there." Yuffie shrugged.

~~~~~

"Whoa..." you said as the airship slowly descended and you looked out of the window. "That is a lot of sand."