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Blood-soaked mud squelches beneath her shoes as she trudges through the fields, the corpses of her people and Dragethians alike laying still as the crows begin to pick at them.
The sight makes her sick, but her head is blurry. What had happened? How did she… get here…?
She had been holding court, speaking with her son David, then…
Screaming. A guard, rushing in, warning them that the city gates had been opened, and a massive force of Dragethians allowed inside the capital.
Then… then…
Blood, screams, her own brother on the side of the enemy, her people dying, her city, burning…
She hadn’t even had time to don her armor. The invasion had started too fast. No one had time to prepare.
“Where… where is…?” She whispers.
Her son. Where was David? He was too gentle a soul for battle – what had become of her darling boy? Her breathing quickens, even as she struggles to recall –
Brandon had struck her with his shield, her head ringing with the impact, but her sword found its way through his neck regardless. She looked around, blurry vision sweeping across the chaos of the field, but saw no sign of her son or his guard.
That was right. Alec was with her son. Alec would keep him safe. David was… he must be safe.
She calms, but barely.
Her feet ache. She is not dressed to walk across a battlefield like this. Where is she going?
How could so much blood have been spilled here? This was peaceful farmland, she’d walked through it with her attendants just days before. The bodies, the mud, the houses and crops destroyed… what was the point of all this? Why would they do this…?
“A straggler!” A jeering voice calls out. She looks up to see the shape of what must be a soldier and his comrades, too blurry to know how many there were…
“Pretty little thing, isn’t she? Come here, little girlie, we’ll take good care of you.” Another voice rings. She recoils, moving aching arms to raise her sword. They are not her people. No one was fool enough to speak to her with such vulgarity.
“More fighting, then.” She mutters, tiredly. It cannot be helped. If these are not her people, and they are walking the same battlefield as she, they must be her enemy. For the sake of her subjects, she will kill them all here.
“Oh, she’s got fire in her, she does! Let’s see what it looks like when –“ A voice mocks before being interrupted.
“Silence, you fool! Don’t you recognize all that finery? That’s the dog nation’s queen!”
She tunes out their words and draws in a breath. She may be tired, and her body may ache with exhaustion and wounds in places unknown, but if she draws in her focus she can continue for as long as she needs. It is so common for many to assume that her nation, peaceful as it is with its bountiful harvests and frequent celebrations, and her children being more given to pursuits of knowledge and medicine and commoner’s crafts, is weak and incapable of war. Other rulers have certainly made that mistake before, believing Ausozar an easy conquest in their desire for expansion.
One needed only to look at her eldest son’s exploits to know how wrong such assumptions were. Her wonderful, hardworking Michael, a prodigy in war and strategy. But even prodigies needed to be taught, and it was not her late husband who had overseen their firstborn’s education in the art of war. That Dragethia needed to catch them by surprise, at all, should be proof enough.
She breathes out and moves into a familiar stance. No other sound matters but that of combat. No sense matters except that which will lead her to victory.
Soldiers rush at her, thinking her to be an easy target for her impaired sight and clear exhaustion. The first to run in are always the first to die – they are no exception. She deftly dodges to the side to avoid a sword swing, and thrusts forward with her sword, running the soldier through the neck, his battle cry turning into a wet gurgle. With a heavy flick of her sword, she throws the body at another soldier, who yelps at the sudden weight and falls upon his own blade.
An axe bears down on her, and she blocks it with her blade, pushing the man back. Another sword thrusts at her, and she just barely dances out of the way before leaning down to the blood-wet ground and using her hand to flick mud up at where the soldier’s eyes must be.
He must not be wearing a helmet, because he screams and staggers back, leaving her an opening to separate his head from his body.
The axe-wielder charges forward, but it is easy enough to sidestep his swing and relieve him of a hand. He screams as blood pours from the wound, and she skewers him through the throat to silence his cry. Where there are soldiers, there must be more, and she cannot afford to deal with too many at once.
The soldiers are panicking now – they did not expect their quarry to be so beyond them, the fools. She loses track of how many she cuts down, her dress soaked in blood and dirt, before she hears it – a horn.
She curses. Reinforcements would be on their way, then. Her heart beats rapidly in her chest, and she knows – this time, she’ll get overwhelmed. Skilled as she is in swordplay and even magic, had she the ability to use it at the moment, she’s but one person against an army. The thought is a bitter one, and her grip on her sword tightens as she strains her eyes to try and remove the blurriness.
She thinks of the soldiers that died defending their country. The people that died for simply living in the wrong place at the wrong time. She thinks of her capital, sacked and its citizens killed or worse, and her children – David and Alec, running for their lives, and Michael, Rhea, and Ryan all scattered.
Is this it? Is this where she leaves them orphans, the last remnants of a nation? Is this where Ausozar ends, burned to the ground by Dragethia?
She screams in fury, in grief, and in defiance. This cannot be the end. She refuses to let it be the end. She wants to see her children again, to walk through these beautiful fields, to celebrate anything, everything, with her people.
“Come, then, you bastards!” She shouts. “Queen Aela will face you!”
And suddenly – her vision clears. She sees every gathered soldier around her, every corpse, every scorched house. She sees the walls of her city in the distance, smoke rising into the air.
No, it’s not just that – the world seems to have… frozen.
“I’m sorry.” A voice says, and she whirls around to face its source.
It’s… her. A vision of her, as a young girl, straw-blonde hair and guileless blue eyes, cheeks dirty from playing with her sisters in the gardens.
“I’m sorry.” The phantom repeats. “For what happened. The guardian of this land only just awoke, and I can’t do anything the way I am now.”
“Who are you?” She asks, her voice trembling. “Identify yourself!”
The phantom blinks. “I’m the Eidolon Gaia. I used to be Titan, but he died, a long time ago, and I came back in his place. You’re my vessel.”
“What?” She doesn’t understand. She shakes her head, as though to dispel the illusion in front of her.
“You are me, but mortal. I am you, but immortal.” Gaia shrugs. “I remember some things, but I’m too newly reborn to remember everything. I can’t really explain much beyond that.”
“What do you want? What do you mean a ‘vessel’?” Aela demands.
“I just said I can’t explain it any more or any simpler.” Gaia says, pouting. “But more importantly: don’t you have things you want to do, still?”
Aela stays silent.
“You’re going to die here, if this keeps up.” Gaia kicks at the ground. “You know that as well as I do.”
Aela’s lips thin into a line. She doesn’t enjoy how she can’t refute the phantom’s – the Eidolon’s – point. “Your point?”
“I can help.” Gaia smiles. “In the first place, I’m you, so everything you want, I want too. I can’t do much when I’m a spirit like this, but if you let me in, we can do everything together.”
It’s an impossible offer. Insane, in fact.
“What have you done to them?” Aela gestures at their surroundings, frozen in time. “You say you are powerless in your current state, and yet…”
“Nothing at all.” Gaia says simply, scooping up a mound of mud. “We’re having a nice conversation in your mind. The speed at which humans can think is truly astounding, isn’t it? But I can’t hold this forever. You have to make a decision.”
“What if I refuse?” She asks, challenging. “You are a foreign entity. I have no reason to trust you whatsoever. Why should I accept your offer?”
When Gaia rolls her eyes, the earth seems to shake. The mud in her hands turns into dark and loamy soil, and new life begins to sprout from deep within it, a small sapling, nestled in the soil cradled in a child’s hands…
“You will die.” Gaia says. “I won’t force you into something you don’t want. Like I said, we want the same things. I know about David, and Michael, and Rhea, and Ryan. I know about your people, and the promise you made to your husband, and the years you spent to keep your queendom afloat after he died. I don’t know it the same way you do – but I know it, and I feel the same way about it, every time. It’s like that, for us, you know? We Eidolons come into being split in half, reflecting our missing pieces without knowing where to actually find them.” She walks closer to Aela, blue eyes solemn.
“I want to protect them too. I want to make this place beautiful again, a place where people can live in peace. I want to make sure that a war like this won’t happen again – but if one has to, I want to be able to keep this place safe.”
“You don’t have to trust me.” Gaia says, parting her hands and letting the soil fall back into the mud. “You’re proud, and cautious, and that’s wise. But I can’t offer anything else besides what I’ve already told you. The only way to know for sure…” She holds out her hands, mud-stained and soft.
“So… what will you choose?”
Aela breathes deeply. She’s still suspicious, but there isn’t time. And she can’t bear to leave everything she loves alone like this.
If entering with an agreement with Gaia is her only choice, then…
“I… accept.” She says, haltingly. She takes the Eidolon’s hands into her own, and –
---
There are so many of them, tiny insects walking upon her skin.
Not all of them are unwelcome – she senses a camp of familiar presences, deep in the forest. Two more, moving to the north, sweltering heat keeping her son close as they move out of her awareness.
Ah… so Ifrit had awoken. And had begun moving, as well – had he found his other half? Was it Alec? How fascinating.
She thinks briefly about following them, but decides not to. She has her own work to do, here.
The scrape of metal and the tickling sensation of little feet upon her skin draws her attention back to the battlefield. There are more than just soldiers of flesh and blood, here – there are also machines, the pride and joy of Dragethian engineering. Was this what they had been building up to? Their magitek, leeching aether from the world and turning it into magic and technology both?
These bugs are unwelcome. Invasive insects in the garden of her home.
She moves, then, and giggles, childlike, at their shouts of surprise as the very earth underneath them rises. Some of them try to run, the silly little things.
You can’t run from the ground you’re standing on.
She sits up and opens her eyes, yawning.
“You’re even smaller than I thought!” She smiles. What would have been ruthless and fierce on Queen Aela’s face is turned gentle and kind on the titaness’ face.
And all the more terrifying when she raises a single hand, itself as big as a city, and crushes every single Dragethian caught in it, armor, machines, and all.
Gouts of fire and lightning scorch her earth-skin. A frozen bombshell explodes against her cheek. War-beasts, torn from their homes and forced into service, screech and flee in abject terror, the fury of the land itself far more frightening to their wild instincts than even the sting of the Dragethians’ whips.
More importantly, though…
She casts her senses out, searching for survivors, for her people who had managed to flee from the destruction of Meon… and she finds them, scattered, wandering, but alive. Relief spreads through her chest, sweet like mountain air. She hasn’t failed yet. She can still bring them back home.
The earth begins to shake as Aela – Gaia? – concentrates, pushing her will into the ground and asking it to do one thing:
Rise.
Massive ridges of stone erupt from the earth, throwing human, beastman, and war-beast alike into the air, crushed by the force before they even begin to fall back down.
In this form, she has no legs. She cannot move from where she rises. But her reach is long, and her vantage high in the sky. More than even that, anything and everything that touches the earth touches her – and so there was never any hope of these invaders escaping alive.
She doesn’t have much time in this form left. She can already feel herself tiring, the insistent pull of sleep tugging at her consciousness. Eidolon she may be, but even she has limits, and those are fast approaching. She won’t be able to kill every single Dragethian soldier here – but she’ll settle for “a large number” of them, at least.
It isn’t enjoyable work, crushing so many lives into paste. But to protect this land, to protect her people, Aela decides, she will do it all the same.
---
The ground shakes, and David and Alec stop in their tracks.
Alec looks around, sniffing at the air as though he could detect the source of the quake through scent alone… which, thinking about it, he probably could.
“What is it?” David asks. Alec stares into the distance for a few moments before chuckling and turning back to David.
“It smelled like Titan… or, I suppose, whoever has taken Titan’s place. Them… and Queen Aela.” Alec smirks to himself, the expression strange on Ifrit’s wolf-like muzzle. “Two Eidolons finding their vessels within one kingdom. I wonder if this is an omen of things to come…”
“Mother is…? Then, shouldn’t we go back? To help her?” David asks, looking back in the direction they’d come.
Alec hums. “If you wish to go back, then we will. She can handle herself, I’m sure – especially now, with the power of the Eidolon of the Earth. Knowing her, she’ll probably look for your countrymen who fled from Meon during the Dragethian invasion after she’s done sending the invasion force running.” Alec tilts his head.
“I do have my own business to attend to – I have to follow up with the other Eidolons and ensure Bahamut’s seal remains intact – but you need not come with me to do so. With Titan awakened, it would even be safer to return to her. Even without fully manifesting, she should be more than enough to deal with anything coming your way, short of another Eidolon.” He levels an expectant look at David, his face once again shifting back into Alec’s human visage. “The decision is yours, my love. I can pass by the other nations and check on your siblings, if you wish.”
“I…” David trails off, thinking. “I want to go back. I want to see her. I have to know she’s okay.”
Alec nods. “Then, that’s what we will do.”
---
Somewhere dark, something massive shifts. Savoring feeling of its binds loosening.
A presence, soothing in its familiarity but still somehow strange and foreign, teases at the edges of its prison.
It whispers to the presence, but it doesn’t respond. Perhaps the bindings aren’t loose enough for that yet. But it whispers to the presence all the same.
It will never let go again. It will destroy everything, and whisk the presence away somewhere where it can watch it, treasure it, never lose it ever again.
Oh, how it wishes to hold such a precious thing in its claws once again. To bite deep, to draw blood, to savor its taste on its tongue.
The world will
burn again,
when
I am free. And the flames
will warm us both
as I take my fill of
you.
It won’t be much longer now. Perhaps shorter, even, if the presence were to bless the earth with its blood. Give it a taste of its physical presence, of the aether that its life has stored in its blood.
When Bahamut Dahak rises, he will claim what was taken from him so long ago. What he has been sealed away from.
Wait for me,
treasure.
I am coming for you.
---
Inside the barn, a thin, sickly man tosses and turns in his makeshift bedding, beset by soft, cruel dreams.
Amidst the sleeping chocobos, a single crimson pompom pops out, a moogle floating up soon after it.
“Kupo… this is bad, kupo… gotta tell everyone…” The moogle mumbles sleepily before floating out of an open window and disappearing into the night.