Work Text:
“He took me and Kain in when we were crying orphans…”
Rosa stopped in her tracks.
“…and raised us as if we shared his blue blood. No other king, in the past or future, would be this generous.”
From his quarters, Cecil’s voice was clear. What was making him think aloud in the depths of the night?
“I can’t bear to disobey the King who adopted us without any lament of bloodlines, even when he’s a changed man.”
Cecil’s thoughts were laced with sorrow. The mention of change of course evoked the King’s sudden and unforeseen desire to seize the world’s crystals by force. This evening, he had returned from his Mysidia mission; had the thought of invasion troubled the light spirit in the dark armor? From Cid’s hearsay, he was tasked to deliver a special ring to Mist tomorrow—why would the King not allow respite for his son?
She opened the door to his quarters; as each other’s sworn beloved, it was their duty to comfort in the worst moments. Cecil sat unarmored on his humble bed, his head hidden in his disheveled white hair.
He was troubled.
“Cecil?” Rosa said as she approached him, closing an open bottle of wine he must have taken a sip of to ease his gloom. “What’s wrong?” Her presence would surely lift her lover’s spirits.
“It’s about Mysidia.” Cecil pushed his tired hair, as worn as his mind, out of his eyes. “I had to kill people in the way of the Water Crystal. Even white mages.”
Rosa’s cheeks paled. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. And I can’t ignore this stain on my heart.”
Many defenseless lives for one Crystal. The King, the same King who let his sons mingle with her like a neighborhood father, was stooping to a bar this low?
“I understand, Cecil. But you shouldn’t take it too personally. It’s not possible to spare everyone, as my mother learned the tragic way.”
“I fear the darkness of my sword is seeping into me,” he rued, the moonlight tracing his hair. “Has it influenced me to swear loyalty to such a deplorable mission?”
Rosa placed his hand over his. “I know that will not happen. I remember when you failed the paladin exams as a squire. You recovered from it and had the valor to take up the dangerous sword of a dark knight. Like you defied your devastation as a boy, you can defy the fate your armor has marked.”
Silence fell over them.
“Why are you going to Mist?”
“It’s a penance mission with Kain. Only after I deliver the Carnelian Signet will my rank be restored.”
“You lost your position yesterday?” Rosa’s other hand clutched Cecil’s bedsheet.
Cecil nodded in grim acceptance. “For a mere questioning of His Majesty’s motives.”
A desire for domination and a collapsing temper. The King was changing in more than just purpose in only a matter of months.
Rosa took his hand and lifted it. “Please come back to me in one piece. You and Kain. Don’t let desperation get the better of you, especially in these uncertain times.”
Cecil laid a kiss on her hand. “I will.”
Rosa allowed Cecil the freedom to reflect as she left his quarters. Just being with him had restored a good part of his clarity, raising him from a pit of despaired confusion. Her bones felt uneasy about Cecil and Kain’s journey to Mist; if the expedition of Mysidia was a siege in disguise, this one had a strong chance to spiral into destruction, especially as Mist was just a village. One that could risk their lives.
At even the slightest hint of darkness, Rosa swore to intervene.
Night had fallen.
Cecil and Kain had not returned.
Mist was only a stone’s throw from Baron. Why would they stall to deliver a single ring?
Mist was the home of summoners. They had a special kinship with the eidolons. In exchange for the summoners’ attunement to their otherworldly values, the eidolons pledged to defend them in every hour of need. Mist was rumored to be under the wings of a colossal dragon.
And if Cecil and Kain did not pass this dragon…
No!
Rosa dug into her wardrobe. Armed to the teeth with potions, phoenix downs and arrows, she yanked her bow off the wall and rushed out of her room.
“Mother!” she called as she descended the stairs. “Let me go to Mist. I’m worried about Cecil and Kain.”
Rosa’s mother blocked her, snatching her bow. “Why should you?! Didn’t you hear about the monster outbreaks? You’ll get killed!”
“That’s why I brought my own bow, Mother!” Rosa grabbed the bow’s grip. “I am already armed!”
“Do you think Cecil and Kain are the only knights in all of Baron?” Mother’s skin steamed with contempt. “Just seek the loyal aid of a Red Wing to save their former captain. That is all you need, no risky ventures into the wild.”
Rosa swallowed her mother’s words. As a widow, she had every right to chew her out, dread disguised as anger. Mother gave back her bow and she went to Baron Castle.
But rather than the atoning Lord Captain and the missing Commander of the Dragoons, talk of a new captain, Fabul and crystals were bandied about among the Red Wings and the foot soldiers.
How inconsiderate!
She asked Captain Baigan to let her convince the King to send in a search party.
But even the King was not bothered.
Was this a father’s reaction to his adopted sons gone missing?
Cecil had remarked of his drastic change in spirit, going from a welcoming monarch to an opportunistic conqueror, but to stop caring about his own children? This was a ledge so steep it wasn’t a believable descent into darkness; some monster must have corrupted his mind.
The next morning, Rosa was on her way to Mist.
Only a close friend could save them when their kingdom had fallen for its king’s corruption.
And in Cecil’s case, it was miserly to call him just a close friend.
The trek through Mist Cave was harder than she estimated. With every goblin’s dagger and rat’s bite, she needed a potion to patch up her wounds. Even with her incapacitating spells at bay, these monsters always attacked her in packs.
The dragon… was missing. Not even a body.
Was it just a scaremongering myth?
Sipping a potion for what she hoped was the last time, Rosa exited the cave when the sunlight exposed the splayed dark armor on the ground.
“Cecil?!” she cried, hurrying to the armor, which bore the curves of a dragon’s head upon closer sight.
It was Kain. A little blood trickled from his lip, but nothing more. Rosa took a phoenix down from her supplies and roused him back to consciousness.
“What happened?” she said, her eyes wide with anxiety. “Where’s Cecil? Did you deliver the ring?” Rosa lifted off his helmet to check for head injuries, letting blond tresses cascade past his ears.
“L-look ahead,” Kain’s voice came out ragged as he was helped to his legs.
Ash, debris and a wall of boulders along the earth lay in place of Mist.
Rosa’s throat churned with shock.
“This is what the ring did,” Kain said, removing one of his gauntlets to rub the blood off his mouth, “the King’s true intention.”
“Is Cecil alive?” Rosa pleaded as she applied a cure spell to him.
He snuffed. “I don’t know.”
She couldn’t gape. Even at the violation of humanity the King had committed.
Her father’s fate cannot be repeated.
Rosa disappeared into the smoking ruins of Mist, wondering how to cross the path-spanning pile of rock.
“Come with me, Kain,” Rosa yelled, “to find Cecil!”
When he emerged out of the lingering smoke, his helmet was back on, turning his reaction into another mystery. Kain had always been the hard-boiled sort since childhood, difficult to visibly react as well as read.
“Rosa.” He looked at her through the eyeholes in his helmet. “I’m going back to Baron.”
“But Cecil?” Why would he pass up their childhood friend? The three of them had been inseparable, why was he backing out?
“As you personally came all the way to look for us,” Kain said, turning back and seeing her, “you go ahead. You’re the one with white magic. There’s a diversion to Kaipo through the mountains.”
“What will you do?” Rosa was indignant. “He’s your best friend!”
“The Dragoons need me more than Cecil needs you.” Kain began to walk away. “I can’t let them panic. And one last thing, I will be waiting for you as well.” He slipped into the smoke. “Don’t forget.”
How could he say that?
Had the corrupting miasma spread to Kain?
There was no time to waste. Rosa headed for the diversion to Kaipo in hopes of finding Cecil at the other side of the landslide.
Everything she had known was collapsing at an unearthly pace: the king’s corruption, the monster outbreak, everything surrounding Cecil and the kingdom’s inexplicable indifference.
Please, let Cecil’s life not be the next.
The heat was already boiling.
The sand dunes of Damcyan rippled like water. The Sun was so bright it was a haze, or was it just an all-encompassing brightness?
Was this an oasis?
Drenched in sweat from head to toe, Rosa hobbled toward the water, licking the last droplets left in her waterskin. The arduous diversion through the mountains had drawn more effort to cross than she had bargained for, leaving her with only a mouse’s worth of water when her feet touched hot sand.
The feet between her and the oasis felt like a whole mile, and when she finally reached, she realized it was another barren patch of sand. Rosa’s stomach beat against itself. The tremors inside brought her to her knees and she retched. Whatever thirst she had quenched was forced out, dissolving into the sand.
Where was Cecil?
Was he looking for Kain?
Rosa began to tremble. Her limbs stuck to the sand like flies to a spider’s web, tricked and helpless. Her skin was cooking from the inside.
She willed herself to keep going, breaking free from the sand.
The heat made her tongue hang and her eyes shed tears of sweat. She couldn’t become another skeleton in this desert. She won’t.
Cecil must be found.
Her hero, one who refused to disobey his principles even as a vessel for conquest. When they first kissed under the bridge last year, the twin moons’ reflection shimmering in the river promised an auspicious passage of time as lovers; a noble act of bravery for him and a wealth of healed wounds for her. Like all that had befallen Baron in recent times, were fate and prospect falling apart?
Her head gained a dozen pounds of phantom weight. Something spun inside her; clumps of her mind scrambling to find each other and reunite. She fell to the sand again, too weak to strive out of it once more.
Rosa’s vision became water, and something appeared in front of her: ribbons of silver atop a star of white.
It called her name.
Cecil.
Cecil Harvey, redeemed from Mysidia and Mist.
Shed of the darkness.
Star of a kingdom returning to its noble senses.
Rosa reached out, trying to get onto her feet to meet the silvery blue irises in his eyes that reminded her so much of the twin moons, windows to not only one soul, but also the whole world.
She did.
And Cecil became dust.
The dust swept across her whole sight.
“Wake up!” someone shouted. “Are you okay?”
Rosa was back on the sand, having never risen at all.
“Drink some water-”
And the whole world became pitch-black.