Wakka and Lulu continue harassing the fin, and while they're not actually damaging it very meaningfully the hope here is to bother it enough that it changes its mind about going to Kilika.

Gatta and Luzzu have joined the fray at some point in the chaos, and are doing a pretty good job of keeping the fiends boxed in where Valefor can continue burning their life out. Kimahri helps, the long range of his lance serving as a good backup to the swords.

He also does something extra, though. Something weird. When a fiend looks like it's about to lose coherence, he casts a spell of some kind, and fiends that have been targeted by that spell seem to... partially become spheres? when they die. Some of their dissipating energy coalesces into red orbs like the ones Zei offered Azym early that morning, and Kimahri tries to grab them whenever he can.

...seriously? They're getting loot from the fight? Maybe the genre he should be thinking of here is a video game of some kind, that would explain some of the absurdity of this whole scenario, it's just lazy worldbuilding.

Anyway, he helps the Crusaders however he can, and as more sinspawn arrive to replace the ones they kill he tries to push them towards the little crowd they have.

Sin swerves suddenly again, and the force of the pull is enough to rip one of the harpoon guns off the deck. It swings wildly for a moment, but Zei casts some sort of shield spell into the air that the thing bounces against before it's lost to sea, so no one is harmed by it.

Speaking of harmed, Zei is clearly the party healer. The four close range combatants are not managing to fight the fiends unharmed, but he's pretty on the ball to protect them when he can and heal them when he can't. Occasionally one of the sinspawn will throw an energy projectile from the spikes of its wings at someone else, but those are rare enough that Zei has managed to intercept and fizzle all of them so far.

"Do we have an actual plan here?"

"Keep Sin occupied as much as we can!" Wakka calls back.

"It's the best we can do," says Luzzu.

That... feels utterly hopeless but they'll know better whether this kind of thing ever actually works. Presumably it does, sometimes?

...but it is the best they can do. He'll offer what support he can.

Despite the fate of the first harpoon gun, the second one takes much longer to give out. In the meantime, they're just playing a stalling game, with Sin sending more of the fiends attached to its ?⁠skin? and the group dealing with them and trying to convince the monster that going for Kilika is not worth its trouble. It's a long, drawn out, exhausting fight, but... it's all they can do.

It's not enough.

The second harpoon gun manages to stay intact for over an hour, and the boat is definitely going much faster than it otherwise would as it's pulled by Sin. If it really is going for Kilika, they'll arrive there sooner than expected.

They might not arrive to anything, though. The second harpoon gun stays intact for over an hour, but eventually snaps, and although Zei tries to cast the same shield spell from before he's too tired, too slow, and as it swings wildly it hits Azym square on the side and pulls him with it.

Azym didn't even see it coming, but he really should've. And it hurts less than he'd expected. He goes underwater and watches as the gun passes by his head above the surface of the water.

He... kinda can't move. He might've broken something.

This is not looking great for his life expectancy.

There are more sinspawn underwater, and they certainly don't want Azym's life expectancy to be longer than a few more minutes.

Zei and Wakka jump into the water, though, and while Wakka distracts the fiends Zei casts a very heavy duty spell on Azym.

Oh. He can feel his legs again.

Magic is really fucking cool.

Wakka and Zei help Azym swim up to the surface, then get back onto the boat, where all remaining fiends seem to have been killed.

Also, Sin's fin is no longer visible in the distance.

"Did we do it?" he asks from where he's lying on the floor. "Did it—work?"

Luzzu shakes his head. "We won't know until we get there. But we did our best."

Their best doesn't matter. Did they win?

No.

The trip still takes several hours—without Sin to accelerate them they can only go so fast—but no one really has the heart to do much of anything other than mope around. The Aurochs eventually resume a little bit of practice, mostly to work off the nervous energy and restlessness than to really practice. They can't fight, they only watched helplessly, and—it was the first time, for all of them, seeing Sin from up close. It always does something to you, seeing it for the first time, getting the understanding of what Sin is, what Sin does.

Kilika Village—or what's left of it—is visible from a distance. Visible enough that they know they didn't win. The village goes well into the woods—most of it in fact is not by the coast, it is not a smart idea to build settlements too close to shore when the local kaiju likes to come by water—but enough of it was by the beach and Sin came with sufficiently little warning that it's not a surprise to see shapes that are distinctly corpses floating in the water amongst the debris.

One of the crew cries out when he sees it, and falls to his knees to sob into his hands. Another one kneels beside him to wrap an arm around him.

The silence is oppressive. No one talks, everyone is barely breathing. The only sounds are the smooth glide of the boat along the water and the distant noises of the crashes of the waves.

Zei is standing at the bow, back so straight it hurts to watch. He's holding his staff for some reason, a white-knuckled grip that almost looks like he's trying to snap it in two.

At the sight of the boat, some of the people who were trying to pull the bodies from the water to the beach or deal with the debris stop what they're doing to help moor the boat. They send little wooden rafts to fetch the passengers on the boat, but Zei just vaults over the railing into the water and wades towards some of the people.

"I'm a summoner," he says. "Let me help."

"Lord summoner," says the person closest to him, looking startled, "we still don't have all the bodies for a Sending—"

"I know. Let me help," he repeats. "I'll help find the bodies and clear debris and whatever else. Point me at where I can be useful."

...yeah. That's—that's good. A good idea. Azym follows Zei to do the same. The Aurochs and Wakka and Kimahri and the Crusaders and the boat's crew all join them, so soon enough they are all coordinating to deal with—all of the everything. Lulu stays on the beach relaying requests and serving mostly as communication liaison.

They seem to be prioritising recovering the bodies, even those that aren't... whole... but Azym doesn't question it. Whether there's a practical reason or a purely sentimental one, these people have just—had their life upended, destroyed, changed forever. They deserve to have their wishes respected.

Azym can sympathise.

They work well into the evening and by the time they've determined they won't be able to find any more bodies or relevant belongings the sun is setting. People at the beach have been hard at work putting the bodies into adorned coffins, each one individually carved just then and there with the name of the deceased. A few of the coffins stand empty, but that was only to be expected. All of them have good luck charms for the Farplane and flower garlands attached.

Very few people talked, beyond the strictly necessary. The mourners all worked, with whatever they could. The grief was palpable in the air, thick enough to cut with a sword, but no one cried all afternoon. Not even the children.

When most of the work seems to be done, the locals start pushing the coffins towards the sea, where they float lazily on the water. Azym is still not questioning their customs, not talking, just helping, but it still strikes him as very odd. What's the point of recovering the bodies only to put them in boxes then return them to sea?

But as the villagers all start clustering around them—around Zei in particular—he gets his answer in the sound of drums.