She resumes speaking, without taking her eyes off Theo. "My, being the High Summoner's daughter must have its perks, if you can find unknown aeons like that. Quite peculiar design, too."

Sigh.

She finally looks at Kaede again. "And all these people are your guardians? My, what a rabble. As I recall, Lord Braska had only two guardians. Quality over quantity, my dear. Whatever were you thinking? I have need of only one guardian. Right, Barthello?"

She raises an eyebrow. "There's all sorts of reasons to prefer quantity over quality, as a matter of fact. No matter how qualified a single guardian is, they can only exist in one place at a time and have limited attentional capacity, and that's not to mention replaceability. This isn't a job with a very high life expectancy, is it, and guardians have a defection rate as high as if not higher than summoners'. Not that I expect any of my guardians to defect, of course, but it happens, and not preparing for the eventuality is thoughtless. I'm not going to artificially handicap myself out of some sense of pride, nor am I going to hypocritically try to convince my guardians not to do what I myself am risking my existence to do, so if they want to come, I shall welcome them."

Theo is somewhat confused by this interaction but doesn't plan on interrupting at this stage.

Dona looks affronted, like no one had ever talked back to her like that, then recovers her composure and says, "Barthello, we're leaving."

"And he's not an aeon, by the way," she calls after Dona. Then turns to Theo. "Sorry about that. People develop the craziest signals to take their minds off the task, sometimes pretty costly ones."

"It's fine," he says. "Kinda nice for someone to be ignoring me for something I'm not for once." Pause. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm not running on emotion, I have thought about all my choices, this isn't a project where I can afford to make mistakes or wing it or go the normal way. I mean to end Sin, for good, no take backs."

"About that– I still have no idea what Sin is but I'm assuming if your 'mission' is to end them-or-it for good then they've probably done something rather terrible? Like maybe that plant from earlier plus other examples?"

"Right. Sin is a giant monster that periodically destroys places."

"A thousand years ago, there were a whole lot of cities in Spira. Big cities with machina to run 'em. People played all day and let the machina do the work. And then, well. Sin came, and destroyed the machina cities."

"The teachings of Yevon say that Sin is our punishment for our hubris and laziness, and that it will be gone for good once we atone for our sins."

"I– does it explain how in particular you might need to atone, and a thousand years ago is a long while, and– is Spira the continent or the whole, uh, world?" Pause. "And is Sin magical like that plant or what."

"We must work, and show our self-sufficiency and effort and humility."

"And when that has happened a summoner will defeat Sin and it won't come back, but until then it always will," she explains, with only the barest hint of an eyeroll. "And in the meantime Sin has never let us develop good enough forms of transportation that we can actually explore the rest of the world to see what there may be other than the continent, so."

"Do you know what your solar system is like? – You have magic plants, why am I even assuming you have a solar system. You have a– sun? How about a moon?"

"Yes we have a sun and a moon, no clue what a solar system is, though."

"A group of spherical objects – planets like this presumably is and moons and stuff – plus comets and things, orbiting a star, like the sun. So presumably you have one." Pause. "Anyway, not really helpful, so do you want to get started trying to summon things? Medical daeva can be useful in hospitals and looking at things around here I assume you're not particularly high-tech though I have no idea why you would have recording devices."

"That would be because Sin destroys every civilisation that gets too much tech, using some fuzzy definition of tech Yevon knows—Wakka did tell you we had machina cities a thousand years ago..."

"And Kaede still needs to go pray to this temple's fayth."

"So the fayth isn't that statue you just prayed to? I seem to be lacking in contexts for some of these words, like, I know they're something you might pray to but not where to find them or whatever. Fayths are, what, things you pray to to get aeons or–?"

"A fayth is a person who offered their life to fight Sin. Yevon took their souls out of their still-living body and trapped them in statues where they live forever. When a summoner beckons, wishing for a way to defeat Sin with all their heart, they awaken and come to the summoner's aid—that's an aeon."

"The fayth are beyond the Cloister of Trials," he says, gesturing towards the top of the stairs whence Dona and Barthello came. "Only a summoner and their guardians are allowed in there, and only the summoner can see the fayth."

"Is that, they're beyond the Cloister of Trials in each temple thing, or this is a special temple that contains the Cloister of Trials and all the fayth? – And would I count as an automatic guardian or would I have to undertake some sort of ritual or something?"