by Jun Eishima
Ardyn’s vision shifted once again. The flood of images had stopped, and now, under his gaze, lay the man he’d beaten to the ground. Except he was a man no more. From black sleeves protruded hands equally as black. Diseased skin with which Ardyn was well acquainted, along with the languid black haze he knew it to emit.
“I didn’t purge him of the scourge; I bestowed it upon him . . . ” he said to himself in disbelief.
He looked down at his own hands. When he’d driven them into the man’s body, they’d seemed suffused with his anger. He could still feel it. And that concentrated rage seemed to have turned this man into a daemon. His mind reeled at the prospect.
His entire life, he’d labored to deliver the people from the scourge’s grip. Even if it meant becoming a monster himself, every life touched still meant another soul delivered.
Now, rather than saving a soul, he’d infected one. Now, his body was a vessel that poured the scourge into another. It was too great a contradiction for his mind to accept.
“Incredible!”
Beside him, clapping his hands in a decidedly exaggerated fashion, was the pretentious man who had ordered Ardyn taken from the prison of stone. He seemed to have withdrawn to a safe distance during the scuffle, waiting to see how things unfolded.
“His power’s unbelievable!”
Ardyn studied the man more closely. His silver hair was carefully slicked back, and his uniform heavily adorned. He very clearly was of a different pedigree than the men he commanded.
As the man strolled closer, he threw his arms wide. His features retained a dignified reserve, but his eyes radiated a strange intensity. This was a man to whom morals meant nothing, one of those who dreamt of atrocious schemes and cared not what price they carried. He was a man of Somnus’s ilk, and Ardyn wanted nothing to do with him. Ardyn tried to move away but found his limbs unresponsive once again.
“Hey!” the man exclaimed as Ardyn fell.
But his voice was already far away, and blackness closed in on all sides.
M.E. 722
His eyes opened to a familiar vista. Ears of wheat gently bowed in the wind, the field extending as far as he could see. Above them stretched the evening sky. Aera stood beneath the outstretched boughs of their tree.
Oh, Aera, how I longed to see you. The real you. Not the pathetic imitation conjured by my mind. How I begged for one more chance to be with you. Come, let us sit in the shade and talk as we used to do. There is so much I have to tell you.
But as he ran toward her, she was not smiling as she should have been.
“Aera!”
She was somber, gazing at something over his shoulder. Ardyn turned. Somnus was there.
“Forgive me, Brother. But the throne seats only one!”
Why do you still go on about the throne? Unless . . . you were never meant to sit there?
“Stop!”
A longsword flashed into Somnus’s raised hand, and Aera threw herself in front of the blade as it came crashing down. Crimson welled from the wound. Ardyn stood frozen, unable to do anything at all.
“Why . . . ?”
This last whispered word came not from Ardyn’s mouth but Aera’s. It seemed strange. Shouldn’t he be the one to ask why? But he felt certain that back there in the sanctuary, it had been Aera who spoke that word. What had she meant?
Ah, of course. This is a dream. The same dream as always. I’ve seen it so many times, it’s more vivid than reality. An ancient tale, still unfolding right before my eyes. Her body in my arms, growing cold.
“Gods, no! Aera . . . !”
He awoke with a start. A dream that was all too real was now replaced by a reality that could have easily been a dream. The ceiling above him shone with an unnatural luster. The bed in which he lay did not smell like a bed. The room around him was cluttered with furniture. Every object in sight was much too gray and had shapes that were far too straight and uniform.
Ardyn rose from the bed, but the strange room did not vanish. That alone seemed to prove that this was not a dream. A sigh escaped his lips. Would he never be free from this unfathomable world?
“Ardyn Izunia.” A metallic voice rang out with such perfect timing, he had to imagine its owner waiting patiently for the sleeping man to wake. Ardyn flicked his gaze about, searching for the speaker, but he was alone. Then he remembered: it was one of this world’s many devices meant to carry voices from afar. The contraptions had been absolutely baffling to him at first, but time saw him develop a modicum of familiarity with them.
“Chief Besithia would like to see you.”
What drudgery. Of course Chief Besithia wished to see him. The man always did, and every interaction was a chore. Verstael fancied himself single-handedly responsible for waking the ancient monster sealed at Angelgard and returning it to the modern world. Worse yet, he now assumed his new pet to be at his constant beck and call. From the moment Ardyn had been carried into the facility, the poking, prodding, and questioning had been ceaseless. He’d have refused, had his weary body and mind not deemed resistance the greater nuisance.
I wish he’d give up, Ardyn thought, and leave me be. There isn’t anyone I wish to speak with. There isn’t anything I wish to do or any place I wish to go. I’d be content enough back in the monotony of that stone prison.
He did not, however, make any of those thoughts known. Trying to do so would have been a tedium of its own.
“Might as well head out.”
Each footfall was accompanied by a faint, hollow tap. He’d somehow managed to accustom himself to the dreadfully uncomfortable shoes everyone wore. But the clothes still irked him. They cinched at his waist, constricting around him in a way quite unlike any other garment he’d known. Any movement of his arms was accompanied by an unpleasant tugging at the shoulders. He felt restrained. Pinned down. As he continued down the hallway, he grumbled to himself, “I daresay this outfit wasn’t tailor-made.”
He knew that such comments would scarce resolve his complaints. Such garb was common―even expected―by the people of this “year 722 of the Modern Era.” Ardyn passed through a great sliding doorway made of some material even colder than the walls of his ancient stone cell: just one more strange and off-putting experience for him that, to everyone else in this world, was so regular as to pass unnoticed.
The troopers posted at seemingly every door and in every hallway were all clad in the same uniform, faces indistinguishable under the same masked helmet. It made the people, too, seem strange and unnerving, as if they were not men at all, and this place devoid of all life beyond Ardyn himself. Perhaps that, too, contributed to the ever-present blurring between reality and dream.
He trudged through a long corridor until he reached the doors at its end. This “research lab” of theirs was a place of simple, straightforward design.
When he opened the doors, he found a room empty of researchers save Verstael, who sat stiffly in a high-backed chair at a dining room table. The man extended a hand without rising, his movements theatrical as always. Repeated exposure to the man’s mannerisms and speech had not bred familiarity so much as barely suppressed irritation.
“Come. Have a seat,” Verstael invited.
The spacious table was laden with a lavish array of dishes. “I thought we might enjoy a nice chat over dinner.”
Ardyn lowered himself into a seat at Verstael’s urging, but he was uninterested in the food. He’d been served countless meals since his arrival, and as with the garb, he found them strange and unpalatable. The things piled atop each plate looked unapologetically artificial. Bread rolls in a nearby basket were the only items he saw that he felt certain were edible.
“Are you not going to eat?” Verstael asked.
When Ardyn didn’t respond, the man continued, unperturbed. “You’ve been asleep for years. Learning to appreciate the waking world again will take time.”
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Ardyn had no appetite. He saw no reason to force himself to consume objectionable food. After all, he did not risk death for lack of it.
“How long has it been since you brought me here?” he asked.
“Two hundred and four days,” Verstael responded. “Roughly seven months or so.”
The revelation surprised him. Had it really been that long? Ardyn reflected on what had happened since his arrival. Aside from periods spent under observation, attached to the strange equipment that filled the facility, he’d spent the majority of his time asleep. Perhaps that was how the days had passed so quickly.
“Then again,” Verstael mused, “the Lucians had you locked away in that prison for nearly two millennia. I’d be more surprised if you hadn’t lost all concept of time.
“You must loathe those Lucians for what they did to you,” he added.
Ardyn gave only an irritated sigh in response.
It was not that he did not care, but he had little need of a lecture on the subject. Verstael had neither ties to nor understanding of the matter. Ardyn found his smug air distasteful, and he had no desire for the man’s sympathy.
“Was your examination of me a fruitful one?” he asked.
Verstael and his researchers had poked and prodded to their heart’s content. Something better have come of it.
“Oh yes. You’ve proven far more fascinating than expected. No wonder they kept you locked away. To think the powers of a daemon could dwell within the heart of a man. It’s incredible!”
Verstael was all too excited to explain, as if he’d been waiting desperately for Ardyn to broach the subject.
“The Starscourge doesn’t sap your life force. It gives you more! Your cells can regenerate themselves, and you can daemonify other life-forms as well. There’s no doubt. You are―”
“A monster,” Ardyn finished.
“Not a monster. A marvel.”
All a matter of wording, Ardyn thought.
Whatever words were used to describe him, it did not change the fact that Ardyn was something other than human.
“I can’t wait to unravel all your mysteries,” Verstael continued.
“What is it you want from me, anyhow? What about me interests you so?” Ardyn asked.
“We need those powers that you possess. With your strength on our side, we could finally put an end to the gruesome war with Lucis.”
An end to the war. Put more bluntly, the goal was to see all of Lucis’s lands under the empire’s control. The man never could settle for direct expression.
“You, too, must desire the fall of the kingdom that cast you into exile?”
Verstael seemed to peer into his mind as he spoke, and Ardyn found it incredibly disconcerting. He stood from the table and turned his back on the other man.
“My desires are all in the past.” Ardyn’s reply was curt.
When he’d first learned how long he’d spent in the depths of Angelgard, he was stunned. It was no longer an issue of whether Somnus was alive or dead; this world wasn’t even aware of what had transpired all those centuries ago. The Kingdom of Lucis had no record of a man named Ardyn Lucis Caelum ever existing. So what did he stand to gain by dredging it all back up? And even if he’d wanted to, what means did he have to take action?
“The man who wronged you may have died long ago, but his descendants live on to this day. Surely you must bear them some feelings of ill will?” Verstael prodded.
Ardyn turned to glare at the man and the infuriating smirk he wore.
“My feelings are none of your concern.”
He took no care to hide the scorn in his voice, but Verstael seemed unfazed. Quite the opposite, he appeared to believe Ardyn’s response an indication that he’d been right all along.
“Come along,” Verstael said, rising from the table. “There’s something you should see.”
Ardyn could have chosen to ignore him. To walk away without another word. He couldn’t imagine a thing in this world now able to catch his interest. Yet he followed obediently as Verstael made his way down the facility’s other hallways.
“I found something most interesting on the Rock of Ravatogh,” the chief said.
Something I should see. Something most interesting. The fact that Verstael was able to entice him suggested that, somewhere deep inside, Ardyn still possessed some spark of curiosity. He’d spent two millennia locked away on that lonely island. And though the days outside wore on, for Ardyn time had been at an unchanging standstill. It would have been a lie to claim he had no interest whatsoever in the world’s course over all those centuries.
“This way.”
And many of the objects that filled Verstael’s laboratory were admittedly striking. There was a miniature panorama fashioned after the face of the Star itself, a thing quite beyond the drawn atlases Ardyn had known in his own time. Verstael had called it a “model,” describing it as “how the gods must feel, looking down upon our world.” On examining it, Ardyn had found Angelgard. The island where he’d spent two thousand years in captivity was but a speck, hardly larger than a pebble in the grand scale of the world. The mainland shore that had seemed so impossibly far away was now separated from the island by just a thin line of blue. All the lands Ardyn had known in his own time―his entire world―occupied but a fraction of Verstael’s modern map.
Aside from the model, there were the specimens―daemons harvested for study―and great paintings, stretching from floor to ceiling on the laboratory’s vast walls, that depicted the events of the Cosmogony. The displays were all grand, but they never seemed to have visitors to entertain or enlighten other than Ardyn. They seemed to exist largely for Verstael’s own amusement.
Soon the corridor narrowed and canted downward at a steep slope. Ardyn felt as if he were walking through a giant, angled tube. It was a strange, unsettling sensation.
“Right down here,” Verstael coaxed.
They reached a dead end to the tube, and Verstael placed his hand upon the metal surface with a knowing smile. There was a shriek of shifting metal, and the dead end was no more. It was like no door Ardyn had seen before, but it was a door nonetheless.
On the other side was a vast, open space. Verstael strode in and stopped, gazing at something beyond and below. Ardyn realized the room was divided in half by a long, transparent wall. He’d seen such partitions in other areas of the facility. Usually they were placed at right angles, forming boxes to house the labs’ many specimens: creatures stripped of their flesh, bare skeletons, and other such oddities.
This one must have served a similar function on a larger scale. But there was another type of object he’d not encountered before: huge cylinders extended at a downward angle from opposite walls. They each expelled a steady stream of white mist.
Ardyn drew closer to the partition. Peering in, he discerned a large, humanlike shape lying flat on the ground, shrouded in the mist. The shape may have been human, but he’d known no man even half so large.
“Is that . . . ?” Ardyn began, only to trail off.
Verstael grinned. “Ifrit, the Infernian.”
For a moment, Ardyn thought he’d misheard. The huge figure, however, seemed of a size befitting an Astral. The being that lay there would have had no trouble crushing a man in just one of its enormous fists.
“You subjugated a god . . . and brought him here?”
“He was sound asleep, just like the legends said he’d be, so we put him on ice.”
After the War of the Astrals, the gods, having used up all their strength, were said to have fallen into a deep slumber. The spot where the Goddess of Ice lay became a region of bitter cold; the bed of the Infernian, a mountain spitting fire.
“Do you think you could turn him?” Verstael asked.
Ardyn’s eyes widened. Turn a god into a daemon? It was absurd. Beyond fantasy. Something only a m
adman could conceive of.
Verstael continued to probe. “You’re able to keep the memories of those you daemonify, yes?”
At some point during the many hours he’d been under observation, Ardyn had spoken plainly of his experience on Angelgard, when the memories of the daemonified soldier had flooded into his mind. Perhaps it was a detail he should have kept to himself.
“If you manage to daemonify a deity, you could learn truths no mere mortal could ever dream of knowing. It’s certainly an enticing offer, isn’t it?”
“How so?” Ardyn asked dryly.
“You’ll access two thousand years of his memories, and if you can control him, he’ll be a weapon of supreme power. Just think. You could exact sweet revenge through divine retribution!”
Ardyn cut him off. “How do you know what I want?”
Revenge? On Somnus’s descendants? The very idea was absurd.
“I don’t,” Verstael responded. “But I know you have no other options.”
Ardyn did not care. Anger and hatred still burned within him, as strong as ever. But too many years had passed. He was centuries removed from the age he knew. Nothing he did now would matter.
“Suit yourself. This was not the only thing I had to share.”
At Verstael’s urging, Ardyn proceeded down another corridor. Nothing sparked his interest. Everything was gray and bland and devoid of life. All of it had so little to do with himself. Still, this seemed somehow better than returning to his room. He half listened to the scientist’s ramblings as he slowly trailed behind.
The bottommost level was a large hangar area. From its size, Ardyn guessed it was used not only to store but also to test the weapons and large mechanized suits Verstael adored so much. It stretched on and on, several times the size of the room housing the dormant fire god. The ceiling, too, was several times higher, and in that vast space, Verstael’s animated voice began to echo, much to Ardyn’s annoyance.