"Yes, sir!" He turns to face Azym fully and begins: "The Crusaders are sworn to battle Sin! We have chapters throughout Spira, accepting all who wish to join our struggle! The hero Mi'ihen formed the Crusaders eight hundred years ago as the Crimson Blades; later, our ranks grew and we started calling ourselves the Crusaders. We've been fighting Sin ever since!"

"Sounds like you have your work cut out for you. I wouldn't have expected people to be able to make any headway on... that," says Azym.

"The Crusaders' main job is to protect cities and towns from Sin and its Sinspawn, with our lives if need be. Sin may be powerful, but it is not very smart, and it is possible to steer Sin away to buy settlements time to evacuate," says Luzzu, but he shakes his head. "And that's all we can do. Summoners are the only ones who stand a chance."

"Well, but no more of this depressin' talk. We're on our way back to the village. Wanna come with?"

"We may as well," says Luzzu, nodding. "We were just taking a break between patrols, and were about to resume our trek back."

Onwards, then.

"So you don't remember anything?" asks Gatta after they've been walking for a few minutes.

"Bits and pieces. I remember I was a blitzball player. I..." Pause. "I remember Zanarkand. It was destroyed by Sin, right? A thousand years ago?"

Luzzu nods. "You would be best served asking questions at the temple, and perhaps praying to Yevon to regain your memories. But yes, Zanarkand was the first of the machina cities to be destroyed."

"Sin targets cities with... technology... in particular?"

"A thousand years ago," says Wakka in the tones of someone who has heard this told a million times, "people were growin' decadent. Lazy. Machina did all the work, and all everyone did was play all day and have no responsibilities. Sin was our reward..." He scrunches his hands up into fists. "But I don't get why we gotta be punished by what a buncha goofheads did a thousand years ago!"

(Azym does not ask what the problem is with playing all day and leaving machines to do heavy work. Clearly it's meant to be self-evident somehow.)

"Yevon teaches that once we atone for our sins, then we will be forever rid of Sin," he continues, shaking his head and regaining his calm. "So that's what we try, day in day out, to live better accordin' to Yevon's teachings so that one day we may be free."

Bullllllllshit.

"I see."

"The ruins are a reminder," Wakka continues, gesturing at one of them off to the side. "Of what we let ourselves do, when we had no checks on it. So we never forget."

Azym really has no idea how to engage with this whole... ideology. And it's, you know, not wrong that Zanarkand was a utopia where no one needed to work for a living and everyone could just do whatever they wanted, but...

Well. If he's honest with himself, he was personally deeply unhappy there, but he's not sure that's the same as it being bad. Other people weren't unhappy.

And he feels a sudden sharp stab of realisation that he'll never return. Either his Zanarkand was destroyed a thousand years ago, or his memories were made up by a neurotoxin, but in none of those cases will he... see his friends again. His team again. He's never going to stop at the bakery between his place and the beach again, never going to teach little Zanarkandite kids how to play blitzball again, never going to take Inochi or Yama or Hitomi or Sayu to dinner again. He'll never see his room and his boat again, never go back, go back home...

He stops, his legs almost giving out from under him as he staggers to a nearby tree to hold his weight. He's hyperventilating but he can't focus, can't think, can't pay attention to the voices of the other three trying to talk to him as the enormity of his loss hits him like, like, like over thirty thousand tonnes of water from a destroyed blitzball stadium. He doesn't notice when a fiend appears out of the woods and the other three have to protect him while he has a little moment.

Azym did not use to think of himself as a person who has moments. He'd rather not have moments, he'd rather not—there's no point, he should just keep going and not think about everyone he's lost, who's dead or never existed—

"Hey! Snap out of it!" Wakka says, shaking Azym by the shoulders.

He blinks, the ringing in his ears fading to nothingness as he looks back up and sees the characteristic evaporation of fiends happening over there where Luzzu and Gatta are watching for more enemies. He blinks more, looking at Wakka like he doesn't quite understand what's being said to him.

Determining that there aren't any more fiends nearby, Luzzu turns around and walks over to Azym. "Are you feeling alright, friend?"

"Yeah," Azym hears himself say. "Yeah, I'm. I'm fine. I just." What did he just. "I think the toxin is still messing with my head," which he doesn't really but it's the explanation they'll accept.

"We're almost there, then we can get you a bed in the Crusaders' lodge."

"Or maybe one of the priests could have something for him," he suggests. "They might have more experience with that."

Azym nods and tries to return more fully to his body. He does not need to think about how his whole life has been suddenly yanked out from under him right now. He can do that later. Or never, maybe never is better, it's not like he can do anything about it.

"I'm fine," he repeats, straightening up and clearing his throat. "I can walk."

"You're sure?"