VOICES: CHAPTER 8

The Deadlands.

Why hadn't he thought of that? Why hadn't anyone thought of that?

Well, apparently someone had. Leave it to Ramuh's Dominant to come up with the best hiding place in all of Valisthea, and it was right there under their noses the entire time.

It had been an interesting week or so since Dion had taken up residency here, unofficially claiming that little promenade at the front of the Hideaway for himself. Interesting less in that anything had happened since that Greagor forsaken Mothercrystal demolished what was left of Twinside, and more that Dion was getting a full idea of just what 'Cid the Outlaw' had been up to all these years.

The revelation that "Cid" was not actually Cidolfus Telamon anymore, but Clive Rosfield was probably the least shocking of everything Dion had seen since he'd joined forces with Byron Rosfield. No, what had Dion marveling in wonder was a ship that did not rely on wind, but was self-propelled by mythril engines. Bearers, walking free and unfettered, being served and serving as equals. Bearers with removed Brands that were healthy and hearty. Food being grown in the Deadlands. A forge and physicker's infirmary all functioning perfectly well without a scrap of crystals to go around. Calls for aid from village and city alike being answered, regardless of province. Small excursions into Ash to help those still stranded there.

His old tutor surrounded by students and others seeking his knowledge and expertise.

A tutor who remembered him, and somehow thought Dion was worthy of an apology.

Ifrit and Phoenix had been scurrying in and out of the Hideaway almost non-stop since their return from Ash, and a few days ago Shiva started joining them, so Dion had been mostly left to himself. But before they'd disappeared on their latest errand, investigating some strange crystal shard their Trader friend had discovered, Ifrit had relayed Harpocrates' message to Dion that he wanted to speak with him.

Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that that his old tutor actually had wanted to apologize to him, that he felt he had failed Dion on some level. The fact that he had even thought to gift Dion a wild wyvern tail…it had thrown the Crown Prince for a loop and then some.

If anything he should be apologizing to everyone else. For not being strong enough, smart enough, proactive enough. For not preventing Twinside's downfall, for not protecting his father from Ultima's puppet. He had made up his mind in Ran'dellah that he would atone for his failings, and he was set in that course. Not even Terence was able to dissuade him.

But a flower from an old tutor somehow had him pacing along his favored promenade while the night guards milled about on the docks below.

You're doing it again.

Dion sighed internally as he paced around the deck area of the Hideaway, drawn out of his frustrated musings by a familiar haughty whisper in the back of his mind. Dion directed a mental huff of irritation at his Eikon. He'd long ago perfected the art of projecting his inflections into the mental conversations he had regularly with his Eikon. Bahamut was, after all, quite the talker.

Or at least he had been, before Twinside. Ever since the night they'd lost control, when Ifrit had inadvertently taken Bahamut's power, Dion's Eikon had been uncharacteristically silent. It had been unnerving, losing that feel of a constant companion. At some point Dion had realized that Bahamut was still there, some portion of his voice, at least, but the wyrm confessed to having been reeling, coming to terms with the new perverted reality that had been laid out before him.

No longer was he simply "The King of Dragons", or the "Divine Wyrm" but instead a piece of a cosmic puzzle meant to culminate in whatever Ultima planned for Ifrit. A means to an end that amounted to nothing but a stepping stone. His legacy, his people, all his prior Dominants, all were irrelevant and pointless, because he merely existed to wait for Ifrit to arrive.

And when you hold together your people by threading your own existence through them, lines blur. Dion would know. That was, after all, how he'd lived his life. A servant to the people but never himself. The Crowned Prince, carrier of the Divine Wyrm to all. Only Dion to a select few, and that number had dwindled over the years.

Dion had faced this reckoning many times in his young life, but watching Bahamut face such a similar existential crisis was heartbreaking.

When Dion had been younger, he'd once asked Bahamut what it meant being an Eikon of Light. Light wasn't a force of nature the way earth or fire or water or wind were. It was abstract, ill defined, as multifaceted as the magic Bahamut embodied. How could you define something that…defied definition?

The great wyvern had laughed, musing with a joy that could not be feigned, how it had been ages since his Dominants had asked him such a question. He had then launched into what Dion could only vaguely remember as a days-long lecture about the nature of Light and how its very defiance of one singular thing was exactly what it meant to be Light. It was warmth, it was joy, it was ferocity, it was sight, it was blinding, it was everything you could want and nothing you could touch. The finer philosophical implications had been lost on Dion's then-ten year old mind, but the sheer enthusiasm with which Bahamut shared his nature with Dion had always stuck with him.

To see his Eikon now questioning that nature, his purpose, was agonizing. It was no wonder Ultima had so easily manipulated them that night. Dion had not been the only one swept out into a sea of grief. Indeed, Ifrit had upended everything everyone ever thought they knew about their world. Even the other Eikons.

For the weeks and months after Twinside, Bahamut had remained silent. Present, but nothing beyond simple acknowledgement that he was there, coiled in whatever roost he shared with Dion's mind. For a while, Dion wondered if Bahamut's voice had been taken with his power, or if the Light Warden was too dim now to speak up.

Until Kihel.

Amidst rubble and ruin, a girl dressed in little more than rags picked him out of the dirt and brought him back to life. She had nothing save the poultices in her bags and the shack she had found, and still she saved him. She hadn't even thought about repayment, or favors, or anything beyond the fact that he needed help and she could give it.

Just like that, Dion's shock had been lanced like a festering wound, and suddenly he saw the people around him, picking each other up through the destruction. Lighting their lanterns for the lost, while lighting torches to find those that were still there. Suddenly the world wasn't over, it was just different.

And after months of silence and mourning, Bahamut began to stir again. A fractured, weak shadow of his former exuberance, but it was to be expected. His confidence in his place in the cosmic scales had been shaken, but as the days went on, as Dion gathered his Dragoons, found Terence, learned of what was transpiring in the wake of the poisoned skies, put together a plan to fight back and keep their world from fracturing further, Bahamut's voice returned. Whatever had been going on in the mind of the Warden of Light over those silent months, it had lead the Eikon to some new form of understanding of his place in the world. His voice never quite rang as blindly confident as it had before, but it was warm and dedicated.

Hopeful.

And at times, downright annoying, but Dion was glad for it. Though he would never let the Eikon know how much he had missed his smug chattering.

Doing what, pray tell? Dion muttered in irritation at Bahamut as the wyrm drew him out of his private thoughts. They didn't share thoughts the way some people seemed to think they did. Dominants and Eikons were their own, but when you share one body and awareness, the lines sometimes blurred, and you got very good at reading your partner's moods. Bahamut apparently thought Dion's current mood demanded addressing.

That thing where you start agonizing over the could-haves and if-onlys, the great wyrm chuckled.

The Crowned Prince scoffed. Of course I am. I have nothing but could-haves and if-onlys left.

Oh come now, you know that's not true. Your country? Your people? Your lover?

Dion bristled. The people I let down? The country I helped destroy? Terence, who I sent away even though I knew it broke his heart to obey, because we know there is no coming back from this?

Bahamut snorted in that indignant way that somehow managed to be amused and slightly dismissive at the same time. Ultima was the one who destroyed your country. His machinations. His meddling. It is his shadow we chased away, even if it took Ifrit and Phoenix's help to do it. You know it was him who took advantage of a moment of understandable weakness, and not simply a temper tantrum on our part gone out of control. Blaming yourself accomplishes nothing.

There was a pause where Dion could feel the smugness rolling off the wyrm. Now, sending the one man you love with all your heart away, that one was entirely your choice.

Dion bit back a flare of anger at his Eikon's accusation. I owed not only Kihel for saving me, but also I would not have Terence succumb to grief by standing idly by, knowing he cannot save us from what we must do. I gave him a reason to live. A last command that hopefully in time, will help him to carry on after this is all over.

Because you cannot?

Because I am not a fool. I know that even should we manage to prime without losing control, we likely fly to our deaths, Dion paused and added bitterly. And I know how having a path to follow when everything around you shatters can be the difference between life and death. I want Terence to live beyond whatever it is that comes next. Even if I can't be there with him.

Bahamut paused thoughtfully, then chimed in, Ifrit and Phoenix don't seem to think this is the end, and I'd wager the stakes are even higher for them. Especially for Ifrit. Even Shiva seems to have roused herself from whatever momentary melancholy had affected her Dominant. They actually seem quite happy, all things considered.

Then they are the fools.

Or perhaps they have chosen the thornier path.

The Crown Prince sighed. He knew this tone, and it was going to be easier just to humor the Eikon. And that is?

To live, despite the chaos and horror to come, Bahamut said simply. To persist, when the liklier, easier path, is to assume there is no after.

Which type of fool are you, then, Bahamut?

The Divine Wyrm was quiet for a moment, coiling around himself in contemplation in whatever shared awareness Dominant and Eikon resided.

I am the fool who knows that in the end, all light must fade and submit to the darkness. That at the end of time, I will be the last glimmer that existence sees. I will end. But I am also the fool who knows that while that end is certain, it is not today.

Dion sighed at his Eikon's flowery prose. You're saying we're probably going to die, and yet you still have hope?

I am saying that the only foolish thing to do is to ignore the light while we have it.

The Warden of Light shifted and curled a proverbial wing around Dion in comfort. I have spent many of my eons with humans trying to guide them. I was certain I existed to chase away the darkness and make way for life to exist in my wake. Sometimes the light is too harsh and it burns instead of nourishes. Others, it is too weak and the cold of darkness swallows it before it has a chance. And once in awhile, the balance is exactly what it needs to be. This is the cycle, and always has been.

Dion let some of his irritation dim at the Great Wyrm's words, sensing this was no longer just about Bahamut, but also about Dion. Ultima made clear that our cycle was not what we were fashioned for, not what I was forged for, but it does not change my nature. I am an Eikon, created by this….thing…God….what-have-you, yes. But I am also Light, in all its intensity and brightness and warmth and hope. I am potential and chance and while I myself was made for a different reason, it does not change what I am.

Bahamut shifted his 'gaze' directly at Dion, the wistfulness diminishing, replaced by a tone Dion hadn't heard in decades. You have suffered much, little one, Bahamut said softly, using his favored nickname for Dion from when he was a child. It would sound condescending coming from anyone else, but from the Great Wyrm it held special meaning. You have lost so much, so quickly, and that loss seeks to dictate your future. And you are letting it.  You are more than what Ultima has made of you.

There was a small broken crack in Bahamut's voice at the end, and it sent a pang through Dion's chest.

He knew he was an oddity among Dominants, had known since he learned what Dominants were. It was unique, to awaken as one before you knew how to form your own words. Before you could retain your own memories. To his knowledge, Dion was one of the few where an Eikon awoke in him while he was still an infant, so for him, one of the first voices he heard was that of Bahamut. And the first voice Bahamut heard when he awoke this time, was the screams for comfort from a confused baby.

The result seemed inevitable. For really, Dion didn't truly know what it was to have a mother. A caretaker, certainly. A father figure, absolutely, and he had no doubt that once upon a time, his father loved him. Dion also knew that as he had grown, his father had drifted away, become poisoned by the deceit inherent in the court politics of the empire. Whatever dark lust for power and expansion had driven his father to destroy Rosaria all those years ago, that had morphed his concern for his citizens into casual disdain, Dion couldn't point to any one moment where it all went wrong. Anabella's entrance into their lives certainly did not help anything, but the decline started well before she graced the throne. Long before Olivier was usurped and replaced by Ultima. There was little concern for 'Dion' and more concern for 'Bahamut' throughout most of the Crown Prince's life.  No, he had never had anyone who's mere presence offered peace and security like a mother was supposed to.

Except for one gentle voice that had lulled him to sleep as a child. One warm whisper that offered to wipe the tears away with a wash of comfort. Bahamut was as much family as his father had been, and even now, 28 years later, old affections seemed to persevere.

But it did not change the harsh, bitter truth that haunted him.

Dion sighed, and brushed off the offered comfort. It is no less than I deserve, he said bitterly. It is not simply my failings at Twinside. I have held reservations of my Father's choices for much longer than I voiced, and yet I still carried out orders that I felt were unjust. I let Sanbreque's people languish in the grip of Blight and chaos so I could fight pointless wars on abandoned shores, and when I finally managed to gather the courage to act, it was too late to save anything.

The historian does not seem to think so, Bahamut said, nonplussed by Dion's dismissal.

Dion snorted at the thought of his old tutor, probably pouring over the books by candlelight up in the Shelves. He is an old man who sees a boy who no longer exists. I have not been that naive child for several decades.

And yet you told him to wait for you, did you not?

Dion pursed his lips in annoyance. He had, hadn't he? He had meant to simply turn down the gift gently, admit to Harpocrities that he was no longer worthy of such a priceless symbolic gift, but instead he'd blurted out, unprompted, something about proving himself worthy. Something made him stop just shy of flat out refusal, and instead made it sound like he intended to come back and accept the gift once this last mission was complete.

What nonsense had been going through his head?

Bahamut sensed the hesitation and pounced. What is so different between the man who told his lover to care for his people in his stead, and the man who told an old teacher to wait for his return so that he would be worthy of a gift?

Is this one of your riddles meant to lead me to some profound self-realization? Dion grumbled, threading his hands through his hair in frustration. He hated when Bahamut did this. Tried to lead him to an answer without directly giving it to him.

Time, little one. Time is the difference, Bahamut mused soothingly. You were reeling from the loss of your father, your country, your people, your trust in yourself. Now, you have had time to reflect. To decide.

And what have I decided?

That is the question, isn't it? Clearly you have decided to make amends, but how exactly to do that is still up to you. The future is not written in stone, despite what the Curse may say.

Dion couldn't help the chuckle at the self-aware humor. Have I mentioned I despise your riddles?

Many times, the great wyrm laughed. He left it there for another beat before he seemed to coil up and recede, adding in as his voice grew quiet. For what it is worth, I have decided not to give in to the inevitable just yet.

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