Post by Dion Lesage on Jul 22, 2023 7:30:12 GMT -6
Dion Lesage
"I always pay my debts."
I. BASICS
FULL NAME:: Dion Lesage
NICKNAMES:: Prince Dion, Bahamut, Your Highness
GENDER:: Male
AGE:: 28
ORIENTATION:: Homosexual
GAME OF ORIGIN:: Final Fantasy XVI
ALIGNMENT:: Harmonious
EQUIPMENT:: His custom spear named "Wyvern's Fang" and a set of imperial dragoon armor
NICKNAMES:: Prince Dion, Bahamut, Your Highness
GENDER:: Male
AGE:: 28
ORIENTATION:: Homosexual
GAME OF ORIGIN:: Final Fantasy XVI
ALIGNMENT:: Harmonious
EQUIPMENT:: His custom spear named "Wyvern's Fang" and a set of imperial dragoon armor
HEIGHT:: 6'2"
HAIR/EYES/SKIN:: Blonde, Amber, Fair
DISTINGUISHING MARKS:: Prince Dion is always well-kempt and holds himself with the dignity befitting a prince. Though his life was generally dictated by the emperor, that does not mean that he is entirely without his own style. His father was quite scandalized by his favorite earrings, for instance, pointed like daggers with a ruby stud.
II. PERSONA
Dion is, on the surface, as eloquent as he is composed. He has the mannerisms of nobility, the bravado of a war hero, and the self-discipline of a soldier. He is unwavering in his principles, be that the loyalty to his country, the honor of his station, or the simple value of human life. He is formal to a fault, unused to being approached with anything other than deference, but that is not to say that he demands it of others. It is a reflex as natural as breathing. He approaches his superiors with nothing but detached respect, and he expects the same in return.
In truth, Dion's life has always been steeped in loneliness. Despite his many privileges, he was never treated as he truly was -- a child, a teenager, a man. As such, he was deprived of the very essentials of the human experience. His relationship with his father was one of respect and expectation, but never warmth. His childhood was devoid of play or friendship. Time and again, he was reminded of the burden on his shoulders and his obligation to the empire which he served. He would internalize these lessons until every failure became unacceptable and every weakness in his nation was a weakness in himself.
Beneath the mask, Dion lives a torturous existence of guilt, grief, and the self-doubt of a man who believes he must earn the love of both his peers and his people. His worst fears were made manifest after he lost control of his eikon in Twinside and ravaged the empire's new capital with Bahamut's might. Though he knows himself to have been nothing more than a puppet in Ultima's plans, he knows just as well that some actions cannot ever be forgiven. Though he longs for death in retribution for the lives he has taken, he would never sink to self-harm. Instead, he seeks his ever unreachable penance in acts of selflessness and gratitude which just so happen to put his life at ever greater risk.
Though he is loved by is people, commands unwavering loyalty among his dragoons, and has earned the respect of his newfound allies, Dion will never see beyond the veil of his own impossible expectations. Because he can never show weakness, he can never confide fully in another, and thus, he will ever be alone.
III. HISTORY
**Note: This history was written directly after the game's release. It is thus out of date. My actual writing will reflect a mixture of the below headcanon, fandom influence, and Ultimania information
Dion never knew his mother. He heard of her only from the words whispered on the lips of nobles in the palace's courts. A bastard, they called him. Low born. Ill-bred. These words meant nothing to the young prince, but he could sense their tone of contempt and disgust. When he asked his father of their meaning, he was told the truth. His mother was a common woman with whom his father had a quiet affair. He would learn later in life that said common woman was in actuality a concubine at Oriflamme's local brothel. His father had never conceived a child with his first wife who had died tragically young. This led him to frequent several establishments of ill-repute, offering the women there extra coin for their silence.
At his birth, Dion showed an affinity for magic. Disgusted, his mother prepared to rid herself of a Bearer son, but Dion's power soon proved unique. A spark of light shone within him, a power reserved only for Bahamut's chosen champion. The emperor was notified of his unknown and unwanted son who, nevertheless, carried the power of an eikon in his blood. He offered the consort a great sum of money for her son and her silence. The deal was struck, and Dion was named a prince, firstborn son of Emperor Sylvestre Lesange, destined to one day take the imperial throne.
Dion's childhood was a lonely one. Despite the constant stream of visitors to and from the Sanbrequois palace, he was only ever shown the decorum of a prince far beyond any visitor's status. He cared deeply for his father, and his father cared deeply for his heir, insisting at all times upon the proper procedure, protocol, and expectations of him. At six years old, Dion began his tutelage under the best historian of the realm, a certain Master Harpocrates. Though his new tutor could hardly be called warm in his demeanor, there was a certain knowing kindness to the old man's smiles that made his lessons Dion's favorites -- far more than that of etiquette or politics or religion. He most treasured the books that Master Harpocrates would offer him. Though they were far beyond Dion's limited literacy, he read them the best he could, devouring every bit of foreign legend, lore, and history the likes of which he had never dreamed.
As the crown prince, he carried the weight of expectation for Sanbreque's people, his father told him. As Bahamut's dominant, he carried the weight of Sanbreque's protection. As a member of the Lesage lineage, he carried the weight of Sanbreque's imperial bloodline.
He kept these lessons ever in mind.
When Dion reached his eighth year, it was decided that he would need future protection. Why he would need such a thing, Dion knew better than to ask. He was ever surrounded by either the palace guard or his father's entourage, yet still his father summoned a minor nobleman and general of the Holy Order of the Knights Dragoon who brought his son, standing sheepishly behind him. Dion watched them curiously from his seat in the throne room. He'd had little contact with other children, let alone a boy of about his age. The dark-haired boy was presented to the emperor as Terence, a future knight of Order of Dragoons, who would begin his training shortly. The emperor turned to Dion and asked what he thought.
The young prince was uncertain how to answer, particularly when the idea had not been his own. Still, after a moment's thought, he said what he thought was expected of him. "I...would be honored by his service."
At the ushering of the commander, the black-haired boy knelt at the lowermost stair. The emperor gave Dion an encouraging nod, and the young prince stood, giving a stiff bow in return as he'd been taught when conversing with those of a lesser class.
From that point on, he and Terence saw each other often.
Their meetings were often short-lived. Dion had his studies to attend to, and Terence had his combat training. Still, Dion found himself looking forward to those days when an hour or two would be slotted into his schedule for socialization. It was important to form a bond of trust with his future retainer, his father said. Dion didn't know what that meant, but he knew that he liked speaking with the boy, often taking walks through the palace gardens or sitting for tea as they discussed the challenges of their respective curriculums. Their meetings were always monitored and stifled by social expectation, yet even still, Terence was the closest thing that Dion had to a friend.
Life went on like this for some time, always scheduled, always structured until, at the age of ten, Dion was told he would be accompanying his father abroad. The news was a shock to the sheltered prince. He would be leaving not only the palace, but the imperial territories altogether? Once again, Dion knew better than to question his father, but he could hardly contain his excitement as he was told of the upcoming remembrance ceremony of the alliance between the Empire of Sanbreque and the Duchy of Rosaria. In its honor, Rosaria would host the emperor and his retinue, and Dion would accompany them so as to be formally introduced to the foreign king.
Rosaria. Dion had read about the kingdom in Master Harpocrates' books, and he requested even more in his excitement. "All that you have, if you wouldn't mind." This amused his wizened tutor, and he was well-supplied in old tomes and maps and histories which Dion would read feverishly by Bahamut's light. When the day of their travels finally arrived, Dion was dressed in his best and escorted to the carriage which would take him and their heavily guarded retinue of nobility to the Rosarian capital of Rosalith.
Dion watched, captivated, as the countryside slipped by and the landscape slowly changed. When they finally crossed the border between their lands, Dion couldn't help but exclaim so excitedly only to be scolded by his father for the outburst. This did nothing to dampen his spirits, however, and as the gates of Rosalith opened before them, he gazed in wonder at the foreign castle and its people. Even the flowers, so different from those in his own lands, left him in awe. He wished that Master Harpocrates had been able to accompany them. He could have told him the names of each one.
The event itself was no less wondrous. Though Rosaria's nobility carried themselves with dignity, their mannerisms somehow projected a warmth to which Dion was not accustomed. He stayed largely at his father's side, uncertain of the Rosarian merriment. When it came time for formal introductions, he bowed to the Rosarian king and watched as Archduke Elwin Rosfield introduced his two sons in turn. There was pride in his voice as he introduced first his eldest who returned Dion's bow and then his youngest who he clarified as the crown prince. The Phoenix, Joshua Rosfield.
Dion stared at the younger boy. He seemed small, shy even as all eyes turned to him. Dion had never met another dominant before. He longed to ask the other boy if his magic had yet to manifest or if he had connected with the power of his eikon. His questions were kept in check, however, by his father's expectations and he kept silent, directing them at his father instead once they'd parted ways from the Archduke and his sons. His father once again shushed him and went about his business of peace-making and alliance-forming. Dion stayed sullenly at his side, his eyes drifting time and again to the young boy across the room who seemed just as dejected as he did, unhappy, it seemed at the constant attention and chiding of his mother.
In time, however, the Duchess left her youngest son and approached Dion's father, requesting a more private audience. The emperor dismissed Dion, and the two left unseen and unnoticed while the rest of Rosaria's nobility were distracted by the ale and wine. Dion lingered where he was left, suddenly unattended and out of place. His eyes once again found the Phoenix, but the younger boy only had eyes for his older brother who was, at the moment, socializing with the Rosarian soldiers. The two dominants, once the center of attention, were now entirely disregarded, and as Dion's unease grew, he made a choice.
He approached the Phoenix with what he hoped was confidence and finally asked his questions.
Joshua Rosfield, as he was told, had command of fire and could currently heal light wounds with his magic alone. He was eight years old compared to Dion's ten, and he had yet to channel his eikon. As their conversation continued, Joshua glanced to the door where their respective parents had gone and then asked if they could talk outside. Dion whole-heartedly agreed.
The younger boy led him to a balcony just outside the dining hall. They sat beneath the stars, lighting the balcony with a sphere of Phoenix's fire and Bahamut's light respectively, and there, in the quiet of the night, their conversation turned more serious. Dion had never met another prince before let alone another dominant yet here one was before him, and he found himself confiding in Joshua the pressures of his station. He told him of his uncertainty in his own power, of the constant expectations of perfection, of his doubts in his fitness for imperial rule. Joshua shared much the same, speaking of his brother's strength compared to his own weakness. His brother, Clive, was fit for the battlefield. Joshua, on the other hand, could hardly leave the castle unattended.
Dion considered his words before pointing out that Rosaria and Sanbreque were allies. If invasion should befall one then the other would be called to aid them. The protection of Rosaria, then, rested not solely on the Phoenix but on the both of them together. Once they were both grown and could control their eikons at will, they would take to the skies side by side.
This seemed to comfort not only Joshua but Dion as well. As he gazed up at the stars, he thought for the first time what joy there might be in soaring through its heights, particularly if he had a friend to share it alongside him.
When they left Rosalith the next morning, Dion risked a secretive wave to Joshua. Joshua, momentarily free of his mother's watchful eye, returned it with a small smile.
That was the last that Dion would see of the Phoenix for twenty years.
Dion returned to his usual life of scholarship, schedules, and his regular meetings with Terence until, two years later, his father called him to the throne room with grim news. Rosaria had fallen. When Dion asked how, he was told only that the Phoenix had awoken to his eikon and lost control, incinerating Rosaria's forces before succumbing to the flames himself. Dion was horrified. Joshua? The boy he had met? Dead? Not only that, but he had lost himself to his eikon, a phenomena that Dion had read of but never imagined so thoroughly. He felt sick as his father told him of Rosalith's fall to the Iron Kingdom, how the invaders had ravaged the city, and how the remaining territories were left defenseless. Sanbreque would be sending imperial forces to secure what remained, and Dion nodded along numbly until he was dismissed.
As he sat curled around himself in his bedchambers, cold, numb, and nauseous, he vowed that he would never lose control of himself or of his eikon. He would lock away his emotions, keep his composure constant, and never, ever slip lest his power overtake him as it had Joshua.
Much of the following year was engaged in Rosaria's liberation. Not only had Joshua fallen to his own flames, but he had taken the rest of the royal family with him. Only the Duchess survived, and she called upon his father's forces to restore order. His father was often busy with matters of diplomacy between the two nations, and it seemed that whenever the emperor wasn't away in Rosalith, the Duchess was visiting the palace of Oriflamme. Dion and the Duchess rarely crossed paths, but when they did, Dion couldn't help but feel uneasy. It wasn't ever what she said which unsettled him, but rather, the look she gave him when she said it. It was a cold look laced with something like contempt. Dion had been taught well-mannered etiquette to visitors of the palace and so said nothing, hoping not to offend the leader of a foreign nation.
He held his tongue, that was, until his father announced his upcoming marriage.
"Her? But why?"
"Quiet, Dion." His father waited until Dion had reigned back his emotions and, with great difficulty, managed to keep himself in check. "Duchess Anabella faces considerable resistance in Rosalith. Even with our forces, she struggles against competing claims for the throne. Our union would strengthen her claim."
"But could we not simply form a stronger alliance? Why must you marry?"
"Our marriage would officially place Rosaria under imperial rule, and with it, imperial protection." When Dion still looked doubtful, his father added, softer than before, "Duchess Anabella has lost her husband and her sons in one night. We are to be her new family. It is my choice, Dion."
Hearing his father speak like that, almost in a moment of weakness, broke Dion's resolve. He lowered his head. "I understand, father." This seemed to satisfy the emperor, and he was summarily dismissed. Dion hoped that his misgivings were misplaced. He tried his best to be courteous to his new step-mother, the now Empress Anabella, but his attempts were returned only with silence or that same cold, contemptuous look as before. Though it was clear that she longed for his father for reasons Dion could not understand, it was just as clear that she wanted nothing to do with him.
The following year was endlessly tumultuous. Anabella's addition to the palace had made it a place of conflict. The very same rumors of Dion's origins that befouled the lips of his father's court echoed from his step-mother's lips. She was a master at veiled comments, petty criticisms, and insults which, when repeated by Dion, sounded far less disrespectful. She spoke ill of his tutors, of his studies, and particularly of Master Harpocrates who, Dion could only assume, she'd realized brought him more joy than the others. His father listened in rapt attention to every word. Why should Dion spend such time studying, his step-mother asked, when he wielded the power of Bahamut? Would he not instead benefit better from a martial education to prepare him for the battlefield in their ongoing war against Waloed?
Dion was thirteen when his father finally suggested Empress Anabella's ideas as his own. It was Dion's choice, he insisted, but it wasn't really. Dion would have done anything that his father asked of him. He agreed to train with the Order of the Dragoon, his tutors were dismissed, and he left the palace for the martial grounds.
If there was any solace in what felt like his banishment, it was that he had also left behind all the decorum and social politics of the monarchy and could, finally, speak freely. He rarely did, however, even when he began the grueling life of a future dragoon, only slightly sheltered for his status. Terence now accompanied him everywhere, his sworn guard, his retainer, and the only boy that Dion knew among them. Terence introduced him to the other dragoons. He gave him personal lessons with a spear after their official training had ended for the day. Slowly, Dion could not help but lower his guard. Step by step, as the two spent more of their time together, Dion could not help but form a bond with him.
As the months wore on, Dion's soft hands turned calloused. He built muscle where before there had been none. With the help of Terence and his instructors, he learned to use his spear and then how to combine it with his magic. At first, his father visited the martial grounds regularly to hear of his progress. These visits slowed with time, however, until they stopped completely. By the time of his fifteenth year, he saw his father only when he took family leave to visit the palace of Oriflamme. His father always greeted him eagerly. His step-mother greeted him like a persistent fly she wished to shoo away. Each visit, he saw more of her influence in his father's demeanor. Still, he knew it would do no good to say so. He held his tongue as expected of him and left quickly when his presence was no longer tolerable.
In place of his palace life, Dion found a new life among the dragoons. His sense of perfectionism, once directed towards his studies, now pushed him ever farther past his bounds. He trained from dawn until long past sunset, filling the abandoned martial field with Bahamut's light. He grew more graceful in the air. His strikes landed more precisely. When Terence wasn't socializing with the other boys, he was testing Dion. Their nights were spent sparring, conversing as they rested, and then taking up arms again. Dion began to treasure their private time together, Dion sitting among the grassy fields, Terence laid back with his arms behind his head as they contemplated the sky and their place beneath it.
Dion couldn't say when his affections turned to love. Dion had never felt such tenderness before nor had he seen it reflected in the eyes of another. There were so many nights when, sitting beneath those starry skies, he wished merely to reach out and take Terence's hand in his own. Still, he refrained. Terence was, despite his martial prowess, still only of minor nobility, practically a commoner in comparison to Dion's own station. His father would never approve.
Living among soldiers, the boys heard often of the ongoing struggles in their war with Waloed. They heard of the battles and the lives taken and of course of the nation's ever fearsome king who had mysteriously yet to take the battlefield. King Tharmr must have been otherwise occupied, they assumed, or perhaps he thought it beneath him to personally engage the armies of Sanbreque, a nation without an awoken dominant. Dion felt eyes turn to him then, every time the speculations began. Without Bahamut's might, the empire's forces were helpless against any eikon which opposed them. Yet no matter how Dion tried, the great dragon's form eluded him.
Dion took care to practice his power as a dominant only when he was well and truly alone, fearing that power as much as he longed for it. The holy spell had always come naturally to him as well as any extensions of Bahamut's light. It was only the dragon's form which evaded him, that primal expression of the divine wyrms gifted upon Sanbreque from the Great Greagor herself. Through great concertation, he was finally able to half-prime by age sixteen, sprouting leathery wings from his back as his eyes turned blue with aether. By seventeen, he had finally managed the impossible and channeled Bahamut in whole.
He did not lose himself. No matter how his heart pounded with terror, he refused to let the eikon take control. In moments, he was no longer in a body of his own, but rather one much larger, clawed and scaled with a snout that snorted in surprise, setting fire to the nearby bushes. He stretched his wings experimentally and then, determinedly, clumsily, took to the skies.
It was everything he'd thought it would be.
He climbed higher and higher, unaffected by the altitude or the need for breath. He reached up until he pierced the clouds and emerged out into the sun and an endless sea of blue. 'Joshua,' he thought. 'If only you could have seen this.'
He tucked his wings and fell, rolling, until he was at the proper altitude to spread his wings and soar over the military grounds. He saw training stop and fingers point up to him in awe. He saw his own shadow far below him, massive and foreign like the shade of some great beast. When he finally landed, he transformed back unwillingly and collapsed, shaking, to one knee. The short flight had exhausted him.
Word reached quickly back to Oriflamme. The eikon Bahamut had awoken.
His step-mother was blessedly absent as Dion arrived at the palace, busy attending to business as the vicereine of Rosaria. It was his father alone who greeted him in the throne room, beaming with pride. Dion was taken aback by such an outward show of affection, but could not help a smile in return. No matter how he reiterated that he still could not prime at will, his father continued his praise, thanking Greagor for the good fortune with which she had blessed Sanbreque. He stayed for the month, shadowing his father during his meetings with the Grand Council and presiding over business at the righthand side of his throne. Word of his step-mother's imminent arrival cut their time short, however. Dion elected to leave before he was forced to suffer her company.
Among the dragoons, he was quickly becoming known as a kind of prodigy. His body, it seemed, was made for the air, and after truly taking flight, he certainly had no fear of heights. His skill was attributed to the influence of his eikon, to his royal blood, or to the blessings of Greagor depending on which instructor one might ask, but rarely to Dion's efforts personally. While he excelled as a dragoon knight, his progression as a dominant was more tumultuous. Though his appearance as Bahamut at the Battle of the Twin Realms had secured the long-contested Straight of Autha from Waloed, it had not come without a price. Even a year after first channeling his eikon, he could not transform without nearly collapsing from the effort.
It was after one such occurrence that he was once again aided to his personal room in the barracks where he was once again carefully helped into bed and Terence once again stayed behind, determined to fulfill his role. Dion laid there, watching the ceiling miserably as the ceiling spun and his body ached from the overload of aether.
"How do you fair, Your Highness?"
Dion started to answer, but then stopped, hesitating for reasons he didn't understand. After a moment, he said quietly, "It hurts...a little more than usual."
Terence looked at him in surprise and then alarm. Dion was startled by the expression and by his own moment of weakness and quickly backtracked, "It isn't terrible, really. It's-"
But Terence had already sat at his bedside, perched beside him, looking down at him in concern. "My prince..."
Their hands touched.
Terence's fingers curled around his. Dion tightened the grip. Slowly, carefully, Terence leaned over him. Their lips met.
Stopping the rest would have been like trying to fight the tide.
Their relationship became an open secret among the dragoons. The two boys kept their outward appearances perfectly professional, and didn't know how the others had guessed. Perhaps it was in their longing glances across the training yard. Perhaps it was in their small touches that seemed to linger for just a moment too long. They didn't dare risk even an open conversation unless it was behind a closed door or, after were stationed in the empire's eastern battlefields, a closed flap of canvas in their tents. Whatever the dragoons knew, they were under no obligation to report it up the chain of command. They were their own kind of family, brothers in arms, and so they kept their secret, lightly teasing Terence only when they thought that their prince was out of earshot.
At Dion's request, Terence came with him now when he took his leave for the palace. The perfect guard. The perfect servant to his prince. His father commended the dragoon's loyalty. His step-mother ignored him entirely. Terence's company made these visits much more bearable, and yet...
Dion bore the expectation of his people to rule them. He bore the weight of a dominant to protect them. He bore the responsibility of his lineage to continue the bloodline.
At some point, Dion would have no choice but to marry. Terence must have known that, and yet as he laid beside him in his bedchambers, Dion found it difficult to care. His future was no secret, not between them or anyone else. Terence had made his choice. What blossomed now between them would not be decided by his eventual duty as Sanbreque's next emperor.
Dion had survived a long day on the battlefield when he received the letter. He was twenty-two, and though Waloed had gained little ground, day by day the fighting seemed endless. There had been talk of giving Dion command of the dragoon battalion. There was talk, also, of deploying him as Bahamut, but fear of invoking Odin's wrath stayed their hand. Dion returned to his tent, more than ready to rest, when the letter was handed to him with a mark from the palace.
His step-mother was with child.
He read the contents twice over to be certain before setting it aside. The news should not have come as a surprise. Empress Anabella had married his father over ten years ago. He'd known how they'd longed for a child of their own, but it had never come to pass. Perhaps it was the thought of her which sickened him to his core. Or perhaps it was the sense of foreboding like an ill omen which settled upon him...
He took his leave as the battles slowed for the winter. By then, the child had already been born -- a son, healthy or so the letters claimed. He planned to stay the season to better integrate himself with his family and to oversee his father's work. He would, at the very least, meet his newly born half-brother. He would meet Olivier.
Olivier Lesage was an infant like any other. Dion gave him polite courtesy at their introduction by Olivier's crib, not particularly understanding why the baby had the palace in such a fuss. He held his brother awkwardly at his father's request and watched as his step-mother's lips tightened. She snatched the infant from him at the first opportunity, and Dion could not call himself disappointed. He had few interactions with his brother from then on, preferring the company of his father and the royal court as he waited for the season's end and his return to the dragoons.
The court proceedings were interrupted one afternoon near the beginning of spring by an urgent message from the crystal mines at Drake's Head. To his surprise, the messenger demanded Dion's immediate assistance.
"There is an intruder headed for the Mothercrystal, Your Highness."
"Me? Are the mines not guarded?"
"The intruder has been identified as Cidolfus Telamon of Waloed."
"Ramuh." Dion looked to his father in surprise and received an affirming nod in return. Dion took his spear in hand and wasted no time in their confrontation.
He had no idea what Ramuh might want with the Mothercrystal. He had heard tell that Cidolfus, once the lord commander of Waloed's armies, had gone rogue and abandoned his kingdom, but that could not rule out the possibility of Waloeder subterfuge. And if he should prime within Drake's Head...
Dion did not give him the chance. As soon as he was within the crystalline sanctum, he threw himself from the narrow path and called upon his own primal form. Soon, he was soaring through the caverns unhindered, the aether flowing through him as though the Mothercrystal itself had come to his aid. He spotted the intruder quickly, ducked behind the path's half wall.
It soon became apparent that Cidolfus Telamon was quite slippery when cornered. He did not prime though he did shoot lightning with a snap of his fingers. Mostly, the man ran. And ducked. And hid. His mind clouded by the sanctum's aether, Dion felt his impatience growing, the power welling within him in time with his own frustration. He felt it grow within him as he attempted in vain to snatch the rogue Waloeder with his talons and his teeth until, after some time, the power gathered in shockwaves of light upon his wings. He saw Cidolfus' head peeking above his cover, and in that instant, his vision went yellow.
The light burst from him of its own accord, fired like a ray of white hot fire into the intruder's path. When the dust cleared, Cidolfus was gone and there was a hole in the Sanctum wall, blasted through as though by a catapult.
They never did find the infamous Cid nor did they find his charred remains among the rubble. Dion returned to the palace not as a hero, but as a blasphemer.
"The Crystal's Sanctum is sacred! A gift from Greagor herself! The damage you've done cannot be repaired, Dion!"
Dion knelt at the bottom of the stairs, head bowed in deference to his father's throne. "I take full responsibility for my actions," he said. "But the aether, it clouded my mind. And Ramuh..."
"Was allowed to escape."
"Proved more...difficult than expected."
The whole time, his step-mother said nothing. She merely sat in her place at his father's side, holding her son to her chest as she ever did. It seemed that she never let go of Olivier, at least not until he began to fuss, and then she would hand the infant off to the nurses until he had settled and she could take him in her arms once more. Dion risked a glance in her direction to see her smirking at him with a smug sense of satisfaction.
What was she plotting?
His father grew tired with him after that, pinching his nose and dismissing him with a wave of his hand. Dion returned the gesture with a soldier's salute and turned to leave, but not before he heard Empress Anabella whisper, "He had but one simple task."
Shortly after, Dion returned to the field. The tension with his father was, like the Crystal's Sanctum, never fully repaired.
If there was any solace to take from his disastrous performance at Drake's Head it was that Dion had finally unlocked the last of his power as Bahamut. Megaflare. It had been so easy to use, so natural beside the crystal where the aether flowed freely. When he was not engaged in matters of war, he would fly across the countryside until he found some abandoned wilderness on which to practice his latest skill. Odin's absence from the field had grown almost suspicious, and Dion vowed to be prepared for his inevitable arrival once it came.
Years passed. Years of battle wounds and bloodshed punctuated, occasionally, by visits home. It was expected now that he address the emperor not as his son, but as a soldier. With his considerable skill in both combat and strategy, it had been agreed that Dion should take command of the Order of the Dragoon, and so his visits often doubled as war meetings in an official capacity.
In the year 873, the fate of Sanbreque was changed forever.
The first omen of ill tidings came with a series of lesser shipments of crystals to the field of battle. The shortened stock came with no explanations, and their letters of complaint fell on deaf ears. With the fate of the war in his hands, Dion journeyed to Oriflamme to seek an audience with his father and, hopefully, resolve the situation.
He greeted his father with a soldier's salute and awaited permission to speak. Said permission was granted, and Dion explained how the dwindling crystal supplies harmed the war effort. The soldiers were triaged so that only the most injured were cured by magic. Their weapons grew dull without fire to light the furnaces. His father listened impatiently before finally interjected that mining in the Mothercrystal had been halted due to unsafe conditions.
"An aetherflood?" Dion's eyes widened. "In Drake's Head? But how?"
"If I might interject..." Empress Anabella sat in her usual place, holding the now three year old Olivier on her lap and stroking his hair as though he were a prized family pet. "I have heard some say that it is the ill will of Greagor which has befallen the Mothercrystal. I wonder what heresy might have prompted such a curse..."
Dion eyed her with every spark of his growing contempt. The woman was Rosarian. She had never once showed deference to the Goddess, and yet if she was implying what it seemed she might...
His father frowned. "The damage to the Sanctum," he concluded before sighing and rubbing his forehead in apparent exasperation.
"That was years ago!" Dion interjected. "Surely that cannot be the cause! I am immune to the affects of the aether. I could find the source if you would only allow me to-!"
"Have you not done enough already, Dion?" his father responded. "We will find another solution. In the meantime, I shall meet with the astrologers on the best course of action to quell Greagor's rage."
Dion stood in shock. From her chair, his step-mother looked down upon him with a haughty sense of triumph.
His father had made his decision. There was no point in arguing further and so Dion merely gave a short, "Understood," saluted the emperor once more, and left the hall.
The armies of Waloed were taking action, moving from the Straight of Autha to the mountains of Belenus Tor. Dion did not have time to waste at the palace. He returned to the battlefield at once, commanding his dragoons to follow the Waloeder army in order to meet them at the mountain's peaks.
The battle had begun in earnest, fiercer and more terrible than ever before. The battle raged for several days before a dreaded shadow rose above the mountain peaks in the form of a massive dark knight riding atop his nightmarish steed.
Odin had finally made his appearance.
This was the fearful moment they had all awaited for over ten years of war. It was the moment that Dion had always known would come, and had thus prepared for every day of his military career. He felt strangely confident as he gazed upon Odin's true form. He bore no hesitation as he took his spear in hand and launched himself from the mountaintops to meet his inevitable opponent. Odin galloped towards the battlefield, cutting down great swathes of men in his wake, and Bahamut rose to meet him, shooting beams of light which forced Odin onto the defensive.
Neither eikon definitively triumphed in their skirmish, but the soldiers, the men who fought on the ground below, most definitively lost. An entire Sanbrequois legion was annihilated in the fray, and without reinforcements from the capital, it was Waloed who emerged victorious.
Dion had hardly taken stock of their losses before he was summoned once more to Oriflamme. He entrusted the full retreat to Terence, now his second in command, and left for the palace the following morning. He fully expected that word of their defeat had reached the emperor and that he would face scorn for his loss at the hands of Odin. As he approached the city, however, he was met with a very different sight.
Drake's Head, once a comforting presence looming over the city, was no more.
He entered the palace in a state of shock, demanding answers that were, once more, deflected to his father. The emperor did not appear nearly as horrified as seemed appropriate. Empress Annabella offered him a cool smile.
The Mothercrystal had shattered, his father explained simply. Though they had no definitive proof, they believed the eikon Ramuh to be to blame.
"Cidolfus," Dion muttered. "That must have been his prior intention as well. But was it for the cause of Waloed or another?"
"It matters not," his father answered. "Drake's Head was aetherflooded. We seek a new supply now."
"But sire, this cannot be allowed to stand! The Mothercrystal was a symbol of hope for the empire! A symbol of Greagor herself!"
"Silence, Dion. I have made my decision." The emperor rose straighter in his throne, gripping his staff authoritatively. "With the Mothercrystal destroyed, we shall take Drake's Tail instead. We shall relocate our royal court to the city of Twinside."
"The Crystalline Dominion? You seek to conquer it? But what of the treaty?"
"Has Dhalmekia not allied itself with the forces of Waloed? How long before they target the Dominion for themselves?"
"We cannot lead a war of conquest when the forces of Waloed even now occupy the ranges of Belanus Tor!"
"Let Odin have his mountain. We must engage in more important matters. Do you not see how this would benefit our people, Dion? Without a Mothercrystal, our forges will grow cold. Our wounded will die. Our food will rot in the heat of the sun. You are to ready your forces for an invasion immediately. Have I made myself clear?"
Dion glanced once more to his step-mother. Her cold eyes met his, and her smile widened -- that smug, triumphant smile as she contentedly stroked the hair of her son. Had she had something to do with this? Had she been the one to whisper dreams of conquest into his father's ear?
His father's mind was steeled against his. There was nothing more that Dion could do but agree to the task and walk away, scowling his displeasure. He followed his father's orders and, within the year, the Dominon was under imperial rule.
Dion took no pleasure in their victory. Though the battles were won with few casualties and with Twinside as their prize, it was an unclean act of conquest which left him ever uneasy. Through invasion, they had taken the Crystalline Dominion. Through marriage, they had taken the Duchy of Rosaria, and despite the empire serving as Rosaria's only protection, it was no secret that many of the territory's people resented what they felt to be military occupation. There were rumors even that the empire had somehow orchestrated the fall of Rosalith. Though Dion knew his father had done no such thing, it did not help their image as warmongers. It was no surprise then when the Dhalmekian Republic rallied its forces and prepared to respond in kind.
Several years passed with the fate of the empire ever in flux. The former capital of Oriflamme had been more or less abandoned with the fall of Drake's Head, and the northern territories suffered for it. The state of their Rosarian territories likewise seemed to worsen under the rule of its vicereine. The southern provinces, on the other hand, flourished with the bounty of the newly acquired Drake's Tail Mothercrystal, and the eastern territories remained strangely calm -- Waloed seemingly satisfied in its advances with their singular outpost at Belenus Tor.
Dion's life, for its part, was a never-ending series of battles along Sanbreque's new southern borders. With the Non-aggression Treaty officially broken, it seemed the Dhalmekian Republic was desperate to take the Dominion for themselves -- desperate enough, that was, to exhaust their armies in a five year long campaign that Sanbreque returned in full. Time and again, Dion begged his father to seek avenues for peace, a prospect that did not interest the emperor in the slightest. Dion's visitations to the new imperial palace at Twinside were likewise limited only to when he was summoned directly. With the ever looming threat of Titan on the battlefield, Dion could not dare leave the fight for long.
Though he was never forced to dispatch Bahamut upon the battlefield for fear of Titan's retaliation, his regular use of magic upon the field took its toll. The holy spells which had once come to him easily now left their mark, and every time that he brought out the dragon's wings to aid his skills as a dragoon, it would leave him feeling winded. The change in his condition was not lost on Terence who made his worries known. The dragoon regularly checked over his body for the telltale signs of the curse taking hold. Other than a small patch of stony skin upon his right forearm, Dion seemed, for the time, nothing more than exhausted.
"Then rest, my prince."
"I shan't fall so easily," Dion said with slight shake of his head. Even still, he knew that he could only fight for so long. Titan sat upon a throne of riches, awaiting the day that the empire grew desperate enough to summon their eikon into action. Dion, on the other hand, spent his every hour ensuring such desperation would never follow. He was a commander, a dominant, and a prince, but he was also a dragoon knight. He would not leave his men to fight his father's battles without his spear fighting alongside them.
This continued until, at a time shortly after his thirtieth birthday, Dhalmekia sought terms of surrender.
It seemed that the same fate that had befallen Drake's Head had, mysteriously, befallen Drake's Fang. Without a Mothercrystal, the Dhalmekian Republic could no longer sustain a war of attrition, particularly not without its champion. According to rumor, Hugo Kupka, dominant of Titan, was otherwise occupied.
Dion left his victorious armies to report the news to his father. It would be a joyous occasion, certainly, to finally bring peace to Sanbreque. This was not what awaited him at the palace of Twinside, however. What he found instead was his father, pleased, expectant, but not otherwise satisfied. His step-mother sat upon her throne, slowly stroking the hair of her now eight year old son as he looked dully upon a wooden doll. Dion had rarely been allowed in the throne room at that age, but it seemed that Olivier was ever present at his mother's side. A deep part of him had grown to resent the boy, always so quiet, so pampered with nothing but affection showered upon him as he learned nothing, did nothing, felt nothing, but he knew just as well that his step-mother was truly to blame.
His father's lack of appropriate reaction turned quickly to something far worse. Far colder, cruel even, in a way that Dion had never experienced before. The emperor wished to lure the Dhalmekians into a false peace accord and then unleash Bahamut upon them as they fled, no doubt incinerating countless civilians along with them. Dion was rightfully outraged, but quickly silenced and brought to heel, forced to kneel at his own father's feet even as every part of him protested the order. His father claimed that new citizens could be bred, new homes built, but did he truly care nothing for the innocents who would fall to Bahamut's wrath? Did he care nothing for turning Greagor's holy dragon into such a dishonorable weapon? And what of the toll it would take on Dion in both body and spirit?
He could ask no such questions. He was summarily dismissed, ordered to prepare for battle. He returned to his camp, disheartened, defeated, but never disloyal.
As always, Terence tended to the ever growing effects of the curse. His concern was palpable now, and there was little Dion could do to quell it. Dion knew his duty. He knew what he, as the champion of Bahamut, meant to the people of Sanbreque. He knew where his loyalties lied. There was little to be done but to take comfort in each other as they had across every battlefield, every time of trouble, and every wound which scraped the other's body.
Their time was cut short, however, by a letter from his father.
Dion could scarcely believe what he read. He had left Twinside only days before, and now it seemed his father had gone mad. Not only did he wish to decimate the lives of his own citizens, but he had named Olivier -- a child -- emperor in his stead. It was absurd. The boy would be merely a puppet, and that aside, had trained in no way for the position. What his father could be thinking was beyond him, and rage gripped his heart like never before. Still, he was left with little time to dwell on his circumstances as he was soon interrupted by a familiar sense of magic.
The pair of travelers who forced their way to his tent were strangers, at least on the surface. However, he recognized the man clad in frayed red scarves by instinct alone. After twenty years, the Phoenix had returned.
He did not initially believe the tale of Joshua Rosfield. Who would? He spoke of the machinations of a dark god, of a ninth eikon who was channeled within his older brother, and of what he claimed were the true events of Rosaria's fall. It was nonsense which contradicted everything that he knew, and yet, Joshua proved his tale true as he unlaced his threadbare shirt to expose a strange, pulsing wound beneath. It was a primal blue, glowing with some strange power the likes of which Dion had never seen. There in his chest, Joshua claimed, was sealed the dark god himself. Ultima. A being which pulled the realm ever closer to destruction.
Ultima wished to sow chaos and warfare across all of Valisthea. Ultima had the power to bend the wills of men. Was it Ultima, then, which had driven his father to madness? Was it Ultima which had turned his father's heart so appallingly cold?
With these new revelations in mind, Dion had a meeting to take with his father.
He promised Joshua free passage to Twinside and bid the Phoenix meet him there at the palace to discuss matters further. He left the Order of the Dragoon in Terence's hands, asking that he bring a battalion to the capital before joining him the following morning.
Though he had hoped to talk sense into his father, the meeting which followed was nothing short of disastrous.
Not only did his father refuse to listen to reason, he dismissed Dion's claims out of hand, growing hostile the more Dion argued. This time, Dion would not go unheard or so he told himself. The facts of the matter were too self-evidently absurd to be ignored. A child, his eight year old half-brother, sat the throne still playing with his dolls. His father claimed him to be a kind of god. Truly, sanity had been long lost among the imperial courts, for it was he who was scolded for his lack of loyalty. Dion! The once crown prince who had done nothing but bear the weight of the entire empire upon his shoulders! Whose body even now suffered under the effects of his father's constant warmongering! Who had been willing to give nothing short of his life in service only to be denied that for which he had been raised!
His father bid him, Bahamut, to win his half-brother an empire.
The embers of his fury burned ever brighter with the added fuel of indignity and injustice. His father left with Olivier in hand, and Dion rose once more to his feet.
For some reason, his step-mother had not left with them.
"Does it pain you? Knowing that you will not inherit your father's throne?"
"I've suffered worse."
So she thought to goad him then. Indeed, if this all had been her plan, she stood victorious. Somehow, she had managed to insert herself into the imperial household after the murder of her first husband. Somehow, she had convinced his father to abandon reason and partake in endless wars for little benefit. Last of all, she had brought her precious son, her puppet, to sit the throne of an empire while she pulled the strings.
How very disappointing it must have been for her then when Dion did not rise to her bait, and so she dug further into her foul imagination and instead targeted the purity of his blood.
She attacked him for his mother, a common whore who had sold him to his father for the appropriate price.
She attacked him for his bastardy and claimed that he, unlike Olivier, would never be worthy to wield the power of a nation.
It was not his loss of station which troubled him, that much he had spoken true. He had in some way expected it since the very birth of his half-brother, a boy who lacked in every aspect except for his noble bloodline. He was legitimate in a way that Dion never had been, and Dion was no fool. He'd seen how his step-mother doted on the child. He saw, too, how his father lacked in Olivier the same expectations that Dion had always been forced to meet. More than that, he saw the tenderness in his father's eyes as he beheld the boy. He saw the love. He knew that despite everything Dion had accomplished and everything that he had sacrificed that he was truly the lesser between them.
And yet, he could never have expected this.
His thoughts ran wild as he stormed from the hall, his step-mother's goading still ringing in his ears. If Olivier had taken the title of crown prince in his stead, that he could have accepted. He had expected it in its own way, but this...
This....
He spent the night brooding, not expecting the company of either Joshua nor Terence until the following morning. As the rain battered the window of his bedchambers, he felt a terrible temptation take him, one which he would not have so much as considered even a month prior.
Treasonous machinations began to turn.
He prepared himself for his meeting with Joshua. The Phoenix, it seemed, was insistent that Dion join his cause against Ultima. The offer was tempting. Indeed, Dion saw it as a necessity if the Phoenix's theories were to be believed, but the circumstances were not quite so simple. While Dion's duty as a dominant may have inclined him towards the Phoenix's cause, he simply could not abandon Sanbreque. He promised to join Joshua once his own matters were dealt with. Once the imperial court had been purged of its most evil influences...Once his father once again sat the throne...
This he kept to himself for such thoughts were tantamount to treason. Instead, he bid Joshua farewell, sighing as he felt the Phoenix's presence fade.
He should have left with him.
That thought would plague him for many nights to come, but for the time, he was plagued by different thoughts. Thoughts of restoring his nation's honor and his father's sanity in one strike. He asked only for Terence's approval, and once given, there was nothing else left.
That night, the Holy Order of the Dragoon would engage the city's imperial forces while Dion set his sights on the execution of Anabella and Olivier both.
Chaos reigned in the streets. His men were under strict orders not to harm civilians and to keep damage to the city at a minimum. Their sole target was the city guard, and Dion had no doubts that said guard would swiftly fall. As the rest of the palace panicked at the attack, Dion donned his best armor, took his spear in hand, and strode confidently for the throne room.
A hush fell over the room at his entrance, punctuated only by the gasps of the nobility. Every eye was on him as he strode towards his father who stood, demanding answers, demanding that he cease his attack, demanding that he serve his new emperor. When Dion answered with the bared steel of his blade, his father demanded that the guards seize him.
No one moved. They didn't dare. For the first time in his life, Dion held the power between them.
As tensions came to a head, his half-brother, the new emperor, Greagor made flesh, chose to speak, carelessly not even so much as looking up from his doll. He bid him win the ungrateful child the world.
Dion saw red. He threw his spear.
Time seemed to slow. Before him, he saw not the child skewered by his spear, but instead...
"F-father?"
Blood. There was so much of it, spewing from his father's body as he collapsed, grasping at the spear, Dion's spear, and gargling words that would barely come. Somewhere distant, a woman screamed. People rushed away in a panic. Dion's heart beat cold. He was frozen by the sight, the terrible sight before him.
"Poor Father. How he doted on his children. That he would die to protect me was plain. It was but a matter of when."
"You planned this?"
Olivier walked slowly towards him, not with the clumsy steps of a child, but the confidence of a conqueror. Stained in blood, their father's blood, he sauntered forward, eyes cold as a snake's.
The last thing he saw were those eyes, a sudden piercing blue. His power surged past his beating heart, past his limitations, until it filled every cell of his body and he could stand it in no longer.
He woke broken and bleeding on a rubble-strewn floor.
Half-conscious, pained beyond all measure, he forced himself upright. His vision swam as he turned to see Anabella and...
A demon. It stood behind her, lit in a deathly blue, white-haired with eyes hollowed and staring. Ultima. It could be no other.
His hand found his spear. He threw it. And the demon haunting their family was no more.
He laughed at the sight of Olivier, usurper, manipulator, demon, disintegrated in a sickly blue light. He laughed as Anabella screamed and grasped at shadows. His consciousness was fading. His body would sustain him no longer. As he raised his head for perhaps the final time, he saw a vision of his father, reaching a hand towards his as though to usher him to the peace of the beyond.
His vision went black as death. He accepted it gladly, his work done. And yet, he did not die.
He woke to the smell of Blight and the sound of lapping waves. His body was exhausted both from Bahamut's power and the many wounds which plagued him. There were footsteps as he stirred, and he opened his eyes to see a red-haired woman he did not recognize with a strange scar across her cheek. She fussed over his wounds and applied salves, bidding him to rest.
A physicker then. But where...?
She answered her questions with all that she knew. He had been rescued by the Rosfield brothers and brought to the eldest's secret Hideaway to be healed. His attempted coupe had been interrupted by the appearance of Bahamut, out of control and thrown into a frenzy which destroyed much of Twinside. Phoenix and the ninth eikon, Ifrit, had worked together to put down Bahamut in his rage, nearly killing him in the process.
Dion could scarcely believe what he heard, but he knew it to be mere denial. He had lost control of his eikon, and it had cost the lives of the very people he had sworn to protect.
He had to see the ruins for himself.
By sheer force of will, he pushed himself to his feet, taking his spear from where it had been propped against the wall and using it as a staff to guide him. The physicker was furious, but did not stop him as he left that place, buying himself a small boat to ferry him across the waters of the Blighted lands to shore.
His journey was slow and laborious. Every day was a push against his own limitations. Every night, he lay in agony. Little by little, he made his way to Twinside. He made his way home.
What he found was beyond his imagining. The city was nothing but rubble and fallen stone. Where there had once been people, livelihoods, homes, now there was nothing but dust. The capital city, the heart of the empire, the hopes of his people, crushed with the city that no longer stood. Exhaustion took him as he fell to his knees, and finally the weight of it all overcame him. His eyes grew hot with tears and his vision swam to black once more.
What have I done?
Unconsciousness was a mercy just as death would have been. He deserved nothing less, and yet, he awoke again this time in considerably less pain. A light wind greeted him with the sounds of the night. He found himself washed and rebandaged, left to rest on a pallet bed within a shack of a house which seemed to have nothing to its name. He was met by a young girl, his apparent savior, who offered him nothing but kindness and expected nothing in return. Outside, he heard the weeping of the people as lanterns lit the river, one for each soul lost.
He left and started down the path with a renewed sense of resolve. He would bear his sins and atone for them. Punishment was not enough. His death would solve nothing. Action was the only way to make this right, and though he knew that he could never truly pay penance for the atrocities he had committed, there was nothing left but to try.
He found his dragoons stationed outside the city where they had camped the day of Bahamut's massacre. Much to his surprise, his men were still there, busy tending their wounded but still very much alive. Whispers surrounded him as he entered the camp and they stopped their business, gasping, to greet their prince with the usual military salutes.
All around him were dragoons, his brothers in arms, fewer than before, far fewer, but alive and still, somehow, they accepted him among them.
From their ranks, a familiar figure emerged. Dion felt his eyes soften as the sight of him. Something pulled at his heart -- pain? relief? -- as tears welled of their own bidding. "Terence...?"
"My prince." Terence started the soldier's salute before stopping, shaking his head, and running to him instead. He threw himself into Dion's arms, and Dion returned the embrace.
"You're alive," Dion said. He tightened his grip. "But how? Did Bahamut not...?"
"I knew you were not yourself, Your Highness." Terence pulled away just enough to gaze into his eyes. "I ordered a retreat before the battle began in earnest."
All of this, every survivor, had been Terence's doing. He felt a swell of gratitude along with his love. Dion looked past Terence to each and every one of them, still standing at attention. He released Terence from his grasp and moved past him to better look upon the dragoons. "Their number is much diminished," he said. "Did I...? Did Bahamut...?"
"No, my prince. The others were lost to an aetherflood. They went Akashic."
"A flood?" He turned to Terence to see that he did not lie. Still, Dion could not begin to ponder where such a flood could have sprung. And to have turned his men...
That was one solace then. As the city was not currently swarming with Akashic, Bahamut must have put an end to their madness and their suffering. It was a small mercy.
Terence's fingers curled around his. Dion tightened the grip. There would be time to mourn when the Twins were saved. He'd heard of the chaos that had engulfed Storm in his absence. The realm was besieged by monsters, bandits, and Akashic. Rosaria was long lost and Sanbreque, too, had fallen without its soldiers or leadership to guide it. All the while, the skies had darkened and the people spoke of the end of the world.
"We must aid Storm in its time of need." Dion stepped forward, his voice gaining strength as he did so. "We are no longer divided by nations. Rosaria, Sanbreque, Dhalmekia, we are all but men, and if we do not stand united then we all shall fall. Together, we shall quell this darkness. Together, we shall secure these lands for the people who live upon it. But we will need allies." Dion glanced at Terence. "How does the Republic fair?"
"Their forces have retreated to Ran'dellah. We've heard little news otherwise."
"Then we shall pray it has not fallen. We make for Ran'dellah!"
The dragoons saluted as though nothing had changed between them. Dion alone, it seemed, felt the gravity of his actions and the damage it had done. His heart ached with it.
The Republican capital was under siege as they arrived. The soldiers held their own, but were far outnumbered by the hordes of Akashic and strange blue-lit creatures that reminded Dion so much of Ultima. His dragoons entered the fray, fighting alongside the very soldiers they had, only months before, considered their enemies. The Dhalmekians had questions, of course, but their need was too great to turn down the aid of the imperials. Dion had questions of his own on the state of the capital, on the state of its forces, and as to where their need was greatest. He was directed towards the upper quarters where forced separate from the Dhalmekian army still fought at the behest of the nobility. Doubtless, they would be in need of reinforcements.
So that was where they headed, and after a long fought battle through the hordes, where they eventually found Lord Byron Rosfield.
It was quite the coincidence for the imperial prince to come to the Rosarian noble's aid in the Republic of all places, and yet it was a welcome one. The surviving Rosfield had come, it seemed, to try to secure an alliance of his own against the imposing forces that would threaten Valisthea, and as the old men bickered, Dion took his leave of them, returning to Terence's side.
He had found his fight. His penance. Though the odds were greatly stacked against him, he would fight until the end to protect Storm from all who threatened her. There was but one thing left to do.
Terence knew of his intentions though he did not say it. Dion saw the pain in his eyes as he was asked to repay Dion's last remaining debts, to leave this hopeless battle, and to return to Twinside where he would care for the impoverished girl who had saved his life. Terence argued, but only briefly for he knew Dion too well. Tears spilled down his cheeks at what he knew was to come, and Dion felt his heart wrench at the sight of them. Terence, his love, his constant companion. Dion could only do what he knew to be necessary if he was safe.
He let his own tears fall only once Terence had left him. Never had a parting hurt quite so much.
As arrangements for an alliance were made, Dion asked Lord Byron as to the fate of the Rosfield brothers, the man's nephews. The Rosarian boasted that they were on their way aboard Valisthea's finest ship, set sail towards Ash and the Kingdom of Waloed. The news shocked Dion, but Lord Byron was more than happy to elaborate. They had a plan to free Valisthea from the grip of the Mothercrystals and thus from Ultima himself. Dion knew Waloed to be full of dangers and its army to be highly regimented. He knew also that the Rosfield brothers had, against all reason, spared his life.
He had agreed to aid the Phoenix in his fight against Ultima. Though he no longer wielded the power of Bahamut, he was still a dragoon knight of the highest order. He could offer his spear, at least, for the cause. Without further delay, he left the Order of the Dragoon in the hands of his third in command, gave the word to aid this new alliance however was in their power, and paid for a ship to set sail from the docks of Ran'dellah towards the continent of Ash. Though the ship dared not enter the currents surrounding the continent, Dion asked only that they seek out a ship that had traded sails for engines made of fire and steel in the approximate location which Lord Byron had directed.
They set course and, in time, found their quarry.
Much fuss was made by the Dhalmekian sailors about docking alongside the strange and marvelous ship, but Dion merely launched himself airborne and landed gracefully on its decks. There was initial surprise and hostility, particularly from the ship's young captain, but an understanding was soon met. Alas, it seemed the Rosfield brothers had already left the ship, setting their eyes on Drake's Spine to the north.
If that was their cause then, after short deliberation among the ship's passengers, it was decided that The Enterprise would set course to meet them.
After days of travel, they came to the walls of Stonehyrr in time to hear a battle taking place within. The ship's scout had claimed the entirety of Waloed had gone Akashic, and from the sound of it, the entirety of Waloed was beyond those walls, currently engaged in battle against the Rosfields. There was heated arguing on how to reach them, but none could come to a satisfying solution until the young Captain Mid finally and without warning simply slammed her ship against the castle walls, crumbling it to dust.
Shiva's dominant, Dion, and the foul-mouthed scout leapt into the fray, clearing the field of the Akashic as they went. There was a brief lull in the onslaught, and as Dion turned to greet the Phoenix, he was met instead with the Phoenix's embrace.
He was taken aback, but returned the affection. This warmth, distinctly Rosarian, it reminded him of the night they met and the boys they had been, long before the ravages of the world had taken its toll. Dion assured him that they were past the need for formalities, but there was little time to spare. The Rosfields still had the last of their journey to Drake's Spine ahead of them, and the Akashic reinforcements had arrived. Dion reassured them all to go on ahead and to leave the incoming horde to him, but Shiva and the scout refused to leave the fight to his hands alone.
They opened the heavy door to Drake's Spine and found none other than Ultima himself waiting on the other side. The Rosfields were swallowed in darkness and disappeared along with the false god, and the three remaining were left to their fight, vowing to keep the route to The Enterprise safe for their return.
The battle was long and hard-fought. The hordes had among their number not only Akashic soldiers but also a fearsome behemoth, also Akashic. The scout was of only average skill with a blade, and Shiva, while clearly experienced, had also lost the power of her Eikon. Dion took stock of the situation and asked the other two to keep the soldiers at bay. The behemoth would be his quarry alone.
It spoke to their skill that there were no losses except among the Akashic, and in time even the behemoth fell. Still, there was no end to the onslaught. Thankfully, they did not have to hold their own forever. The brothers reappeared in another dark portal, wounded and clearly winded, but alive. Dion bade them all go, waited until they had boarded the ship and its engines were engaged, and then jumped onto the deck beside them, leaving the lands of Ash behind.
Back at the Hideaway, the Rosfields told their tale. Ultima was, indeed, a god. His kind had created not only the Mothercrystals, but also all of humanity with the purpose that one day one amongst their numbers might have the strength to serve as a suitable vessel. Dion listened, feeling out of place among these rebels and outlaws, many of which had suffered at the empire's hands. They seemed well past their differences, however, and focused only on their next plan of action. Ultima had erected a final Mothercrystal out of the ruins of Twinside, creating an airborne fortress to protect it, and if Ultima, a true god and the maker of humanity could not be stopped then all of Valisthea would fall.
The Rosfield brothers were determined to take the fight to Ultima alone, using Joshua's Phoenix form to fly them to the skyborne crystal. Dion interjected. Having seen the extent of Joshua's wounds, he knew that he must save his strength for the fight ahead, and that aside, he could not rest while Ultima, the demon which had plagued his family and his kingdom, was still at large. He insisted that he would fly the brothers to Ultima's fortress on Bahamut's wings. Though they objected that the other disempowered dominants had not been able to control their eikonic forms, Dion vowed that his will would overcome Bahamut's.
And so it was decided. The three would leave together, likely never to return. Though the two brothers pretended otherwise, Dion was all too aware of the truth. Ultima was a god. Men did not simply stand against the divine and live, and yet, the three of them together were the last chance for Valisthea, for humanity, for all the lives which still called the Twins home.
After that, it was only a matter of waiting. Dion waited for Clive Rosfield, Ifrit, to finish his final business with his friends and his allies, all the while he kept his eyes to the clouded skies devoid of sunlight and watched the distant figure of Ultima's fortress befoul the horizon.
Twinside. The site of his greatest failure, of countless deaths, of grief and atrocity, and now this...
He prayed that Terence had found that girl and had the sense to take her elsewhere. He prayed that he had not unwittingly sent his love to his death.
Day by day, Clive Rosfield approached each member of his longstanding retinue in turn, eager to help them in the last ways that he could. Day by day, Dion stood on his own, awaiting the time of his death and their last stand. That was, until the day that Clive approached him.
The eldest Rosfield entreated him to speak to a figure from his past who had, somehow, found his way to the Hideaway. Master Harpocrates. Dion had seen him already, of course, but as the old historian had made no signs of recognition, Dion had made none in return. Dion's eyes were set to the sky, to what had to be done, and he could not look behind him towards the past yet still Clive Rosfield insisted. Would he not test his resolve by meeting with his old tutor for a final time?
Dion agreed though his heart hammered with fear beyond anything he had felt on the field of battle. To face him again, the man whose teachings had meant so much to him as a child, after all that he had done...
What would the old scholar see in him? What could he possibly see but disgust?
Master Harpocrates answered, naturally, with a lesson. He presented him with a Wyvern's Tail, the national flower of Sanbreque said to bring peace to all who beheld it, and yet this one was a vivid violet in hue. Through metaphor, he implied that while Dion might have stemmed from the poisoned roots of the imperial family, that he had like the violet Wyvern's Tail, blossomed into something unique. "It is not our roots which define us." Harpocrates offered the flower to him as a gift, and yet, Dion could not accept. Even as he saw how his rejection crushed the old man's spirit, he was not ready to accept such pride nor such forgiveness.
In the end, his resolve had not been shaken. He thanked the eldest Rosfield for his insistence and awaited their final days in solitude.
When that day finally came, it was, despite the brothers' promises, a day of goodbyes. Their friends embraced them, at times with tears, and when they were ready, the three leapt from the Hideaway's decks as Dion had done a hundred times. He transformed, and this time, his will was stronger. The brother's landed upon his back, and Dion ferried them across the sky towards Ultima's accursed fortress.
Ultima's strange mechanical servants rose to meet them, but Dion was well accustomed not only to battle, but also to Bahamut's wings. He dodged their assault, making ever for the walls of sky fortress which had once been Twinside. He gathered the strength of his power and unleashed it upon the walls, blasting apart a hole large enough for them to fly straight to a battle against the dark god.
The two brother's primed and, together, they fought.
Ultima proved an impossible enemy, divine truly, though perhaps not invincible. The three dominants combined their forces, and yet it was nothing to Ultima who effortlessly dodged their blows and returned them with his own. Even their strongest attacks, released simultaneously as one with enough force to annihilate a countryside was not enough to fell the dark god. Ultima rose again, striking Ifrit with enough force to shatter his eikon before rising above them, gathering a truly immense amount of magic at his fingertips.
Joshua moved to block the attack with the Phoenix's defensive abilities, but Dion took up the position instead, insisting that he find his brother and heal him before he was lost. The Phoenix thanked him and dove to find where his brother had fallen.
Dion knew that he would not survive this attack alone. Perhaps with the aid of the brothers' fire, they could have diverted such magic, but that was of no matter now. As Ultima's power grew above him, Dion prepared to finally, truly, fulfill his debts.
To the brothers who had ended Bahamut's rage and then spared his life.
To the people of Valisthea whom he had fought, conquered, and slain.
If he could only protect the brothers so that they might face Ultima in his stead. If only Joshua might heal his brother to be their final champion...
He needed only enough power for this.
Ultima's magic fell upon him. Dion returned it with the full power of Bahamut's light, pushing his limits farther than ever before. He let his rage drive him, his determination, his will. And when it still wasn't enough, when that divine and terrible power made its way ever closer towards him, he dispersed the full force of his light into smaller beams which arched and met Ultima head on.
Ultima's attack, too, met its target.
Dion felt his eikon break with the force, felt his very being dissolve, and then he fell.
His body was wounded beyond repair. Consciousness hung on a thread. Yet as his vision faded, he smiled.
He could only hope that Joshua had saved his brother. He could only hope that Bahamut's light had weakened Ultima enough for Ifrit to finish the fight. For Valisthea's sake, he could only hope.
Yet his part was finished, his atonement complete. As the last of his consciousness left him, he was ready to finally find peace.
That was, at least, until he woke again.
Dion never knew his mother. He heard of her only from the words whispered on the lips of nobles in the palace's courts. A bastard, they called him. Low born. Ill-bred. These words meant nothing to the young prince, but he could sense their tone of contempt and disgust. When he asked his father of their meaning, he was told the truth. His mother was a common woman with whom his father had a quiet affair. He would learn later in life that said common woman was in actuality a concubine at Oriflamme's local brothel. His father had never conceived a child with his first wife who had died tragically young. This led him to frequent several establishments of ill-repute, offering the women there extra coin for their silence.
At his birth, Dion showed an affinity for magic. Disgusted, his mother prepared to rid herself of a Bearer son, but Dion's power soon proved unique. A spark of light shone within him, a power reserved only for Bahamut's chosen champion. The emperor was notified of his unknown and unwanted son who, nevertheless, carried the power of an eikon in his blood. He offered the consort a great sum of money for her son and her silence. The deal was struck, and Dion was named a prince, firstborn son of Emperor Sylvestre Lesange, destined to one day take the imperial throne.
Dion's childhood was a lonely one. Despite the constant stream of visitors to and from the Sanbrequois palace, he was only ever shown the decorum of a prince far beyond any visitor's status. He cared deeply for his father, and his father cared deeply for his heir, insisting at all times upon the proper procedure, protocol, and expectations of him. At six years old, Dion began his tutelage under the best historian of the realm, a certain Master Harpocrates. Though his new tutor could hardly be called warm in his demeanor, there was a certain knowing kindness to the old man's smiles that made his lessons Dion's favorites -- far more than that of etiquette or politics or religion. He most treasured the books that Master Harpocrates would offer him. Though they were far beyond Dion's limited literacy, he read them the best he could, devouring every bit of foreign legend, lore, and history the likes of which he had never dreamed.
As the crown prince, he carried the weight of expectation for Sanbreque's people, his father told him. As Bahamut's dominant, he carried the weight of Sanbreque's protection. As a member of the Lesage lineage, he carried the weight of Sanbreque's imperial bloodline.
He kept these lessons ever in mind.
When Dion reached his eighth year, it was decided that he would need future protection. Why he would need such a thing, Dion knew better than to ask. He was ever surrounded by either the palace guard or his father's entourage, yet still his father summoned a minor nobleman and general of the Holy Order of the Knights Dragoon who brought his son, standing sheepishly behind him. Dion watched them curiously from his seat in the throne room. He'd had little contact with other children, let alone a boy of about his age. The dark-haired boy was presented to the emperor as Terence, a future knight of Order of Dragoons, who would begin his training shortly. The emperor turned to Dion and asked what he thought.
The young prince was uncertain how to answer, particularly when the idea had not been his own. Still, after a moment's thought, he said what he thought was expected of him. "I...would be honored by his service."
At the ushering of the commander, the black-haired boy knelt at the lowermost stair. The emperor gave Dion an encouraging nod, and the young prince stood, giving a stiff bow in return as he'd been taught when conversing with those of a lesser class.
From that point on, he and Terence saw each other often.
Their meetings were often short-lived. Dion had his studies to attend to, and Terence had his combat training. Still, Dion found himself looking forward to those days when an hour or two would be slotted into his schedule for socialization. It was important to form a bond of trust with his future retainer, his father said. Dion didn't know what that meant, but he knew that he liked speaking with the boy, often taking walks through the palace gardens or sitting for tea as they discussed the challenges of their respective curriculums. Their meetings were always monitored and stifled by social expectation, yet even still, Terence was the closest thing that Dion had to a friend.
Life went on like this for some time, always scheduled, always structured until, at the age of ten, Dion was told he would be accompanying his father abroad. The news was a shock to the sheltered prince. He would be leaving not only the palace, but the imperial territories altogether? Once again, Dion knew better than to question his father, but he could hardly contain his excitement as he was told of the upcoming remembrance ceremony of the alliance between the Empire of Sanbreque and the Duchy of Rosaria. In its honor, Rosaria would host the emperor and his retinue, and Dion would accompany them so as to be formally introduced to the foreign king.
Rosaria. Dion had read about the kingdom in Master Harpocrates' books, and he requested even more in his excitement. "All that you have, if you wouldn't mind." This amused his wizened tutor, and he was well-supplied in old tomes and maps and histories which Dion would read feverishly by Bahamut's light. When the day of their travels finally arrived, Dion was dressed in his best and escorted to the carriage which would take him and their heavily guarded retinue of nobility to the Rosarian capital of Rosalith.
Dion watched, captivated, as the countryside slipped by and the landscape slowly changed. When they finally crossed the border between their lands, Dion couldn't help but exclaim so excitedly only to be scolded by his father for the outburst. This did nothing to dampen his spirits, however, and as the gates of Rosalith opened before them, he gazed in wonder at the foreign castle and its people. Even the flowers, so different from those in his own lands, left him in awe. He wished that Master Harpocrates had been able to accompany them. He could have told him the names of each one.
The event itself was no less wondrous. Though Rosaria's nobility carried themselves with dignity, their mannerisms somehow projected a warmth to which Dion was not accustomed. He stayed largely at his father's side, uncertain of the Rosarian merriment. When it came time for formal introductions, he bowed to the Rosarian king and watched as Archduke Elwin Rosfield introduced his two sons in turn. There was pride in his voice as he introduced first his eldest who returned Dion's bow and then his youngest who he clarified as the crown prince. The Phoenix, Joshua Rosfield.
Dion stared at the younger boy. He seemed small, shy even as all eyes turned to him. Dion had never met another dominant before. He longed to ask the other boy if his magic had yet to manifest or if he had connected with the power of his eikon. His questions were kept in check, however, by his father's expectations and he kept silent, directing them at his father instead once they'd parted ways from the Archduke and his sons. His father once again shushed him and went about his business of peace-making and alliance-forming. Dion stayed sullenly at his side, his eyes drifting time and again to the young boy across the room who seemed just as dejected as he did, unhappy, it seemed at the constant attention and chiding of his mother.
In time, however, the Duchess left her youngest son and approached Dion's father, requesting a more private audience. The emperor dismissed Dion, and the two left unseen and unnoticed while the rest of Rosaria's nobility were distracted by the ale and wine. Dion lingered where he was left, suddenly unattended and out of place. His eyes once again found the Phoenix, but the younger boy only had eyes for his older brother who was, at the moment, socializing with the Rosarian soldiers. The two dominants, once the center of attention, were now entirely disregarded, and as Dion's unease grew, he made a choice.
He approached the Phoenix with what he hoped was confidence and finally asked his questions.
Joshua Rosfield, as he was told, had command of fire and could currently heal light wounds with his magic alone. He was eight years old compared to Dion's ten, and he had yet to channel his eikon. As their conversation continued, Joshua glanced to the door where their respective parents had gone and then asked if they could talk outside. Dion whole-heartedly agreed.
The younger boy led him to a balcony just outside the dining hall. They sat beneath the stars, lighting the balcony with a sphere of Phoenix's fire and Bahamut's light respectively, and there, in the quiet of the night, their conversation turned more serious. Dion had never met another prince before let alone another dominant yet here one was before him, and he found himself confiding in Joshua the pressures of his station. He told him of his uncertainty in his own power, of the constant expectations of perfection, of his doubts in his fitness for imperial rule. Joshua shared much the same, speaking of his brother's strength compared to his own weakness. His brother, Clive, was fit for the battlefield. Joshua, on the other hand, could hardly leave the castle unattended.
Dion considered his words before pointing out that Rosaria and Sanbreque were allies. If invasion should befall one then the other would be called to aid them. The protection of Rosaria, then, rested not solely on the Phoenix but on the both of them together. Once they were both grown and could control their eikons at will, they would take to the skies side by side.
This seemed to comfort not only Joshua but Dion as well. As he gazed up at the stars, he thought for the first time what joy there might be in soaring through its heights, particularly if he had a friend to share it alongside him.
When they left Rosalith the next morning, Dion risked a secretive wave to Joshua. Joshua, momentarily free of his mother's watchful eye, returned it with a small smile.
That was the last that Dion would see of the Phoenix for twenty years.
Dion returned to his usual life of scholarship, schedules, and his regular meetings with Terence until, two years later, his father called him to the throne room with grim news. Rosaria had fallen. When Dion asked how, he was told only that the Phoenix had awoken to his eikon and lost control, incinerating Rosaria's forces before succumbing to the flames himself. Dion was horrified. Joshua? The boy he had met? Dead? Not only that, but he had lost himself to his eikon, a phenomena that Dion had read of but never imagined so thoroughly. He felt sick as his father told him of Rosalith's fall to the Iron Kingdom, how the invaders had ravaged the city, and how the remaining territories were left defenseless. Sanbreque would be sending imperial forces to secure what remained, and Dion nodded along numbly until he was dismissed.
As he sat curled around himself in his bedchambers, cold, numb, and nauseous, he vowed that he would never lose control of himself or of his eikon. He would lock away his emotions, keep his composure constant, and never, ever slip lest his power overtake him as it had Joshua.
Much of the following year was engaged in Rosaria's liberation. Not only had Joshua fallen to his own flames, but he had taken the rest of the royal family with him. Only the Duchess survived, and she called upon his father's forces to restore order. His father was often busy with matters of diplomacy between the two nations, and it seemed that whenever the emperor wasn't away in Rosalith, the Duchess was visiting the palace of Oriflamme. Dion and the Duchess rarely crossed paths, but when they did, Dion couldn't help but feel uneasy. It wasn't ever what she said which unsettled him, but rather, the look she gave him when she said it. It was a cold look laced with something like contempt. Dion had been taught well-mannered etiquette to visitors of the palace and so said nothing, hoping not to offend the leader of a foreign nation.
He held his tongue, that was, until his father announced his upcoming marriage.
"Her? But why?"
"Quiet, Dion." His father waited until Dion had reigned back his emotions and, with great difficulty, managed to keep himself in check. "Duchess Anabella faces considerable resistance in Rosalith. Even with our forces, she struggles against competing claims for the throne. Our union would strengthen her claim."
"But could we not simply form a stronger alliance? Why must you marry?"
"Our marriage would officially place Rosaria under imperial rule, and with it, imperial protection." When Dion still looked doubtful, his father added, softer than before, "Duchess Anabella has lost her husband and her sons in one night. We are to be her new family. It is my choice, Dion."
Hearing his father speak like that, almost in a moment of weakness, broke Dion's resolve. He lowered his head. "I understand, father." This seemed to satisfy the emperor, and he was summarily dismissed. Dion hoped that his misgivings were misplaced. He tried his best to be courteous to his new step-mother, the now Empress Anabella, but his attempts were returned only with silence or that same cold, contemptuous look as before. Though it was clear that she longed for his father for reasons Dion could not understand, it was just as clear that she wanted nothing to do with him.
The following year was endlessly tumultuous. Anabella's addition to the palace had made it a place of conflict. The very same rumors of Dion's origins that befouled the lips of his father's court echoed from his step-mother's lips. She was a master at veiled comments, petty criticisms, and insults which, when repeated by Dion, sounded far less disrespectful. She spoke ill of his tutors, of his studies, and particularly of Master Harpocrates who, Dion could only assume, she'd realized brought him more joy than the others. His father listened in rapt attention to every word. Why should Dion spend such time studying, his step-mother asked, when he wielded the power of Bahamut? Would he not instead benefit better from a martial education to prepare him for the battlefield in their ongoing war against Waloed?
Dion was thirteen when his father finally suggested Empress Anabella's ideas as his own. It was Dion's choice, he insisted, but it wasn't really. Dion would have done anything that his father asked of him. He agreed to train with the Order of the Dragoon, his tutors were dismissed, and he left the palace for the martial grounds.
If there was any solace in what felt like his banishment, it was that he had also left behind all the decorum and social politics of the monarchy and could, finally, speak freely. He rarely did, however, even when he began the grueling life of a future dragoon, only slightly sheltered for his status. Terence now accompanied him everywhere, his sworn guard, his retainer, and the only boy that Dion knew among them. Terence introduced him to the other dragoons. He gave him personal lessons with a spear after their official training had ended for the day. Slowly, Dion could not help but lower his guard. Step by step, as the two spent more of their time together, Dion could not help but form a bond with him.
As the months wore on, Dion's soft hands turned calloused. He built muscle where before there had been none. With the help of Terence and his instructors, he learned to use his spear and then how to combine it with his magic. At first, his father visited the martial grounds regularly to hear of his progress. These visits slowed with time, however, until they stopped completely. By the time of his fifteenth year, he saw his father only when he took family leave to visit the palace of Oriflamme. His father always greeted him eagerly. His step-mother greeted him like a persistent fly she wished to shoo away. Each visit, he saw more of her influence in his father's demeanor. Still, he knew it would do no good to say so. He held his tongue as expected of him and left quickly when his presence was no longer tolerable.
In place of his palace life, Dion found a new life among the dragoons. His sense of perfectionism, once directed towards his studies, now pushed him ever farther past his bounds. He trained from dawn until long past sunset, filling the abandoned martial field with Bahamut's light. He grew more graceful in the air. His strikes landed more precisely. When Terence wasn't socializing with the other boys, he was testing Dion. Their nights were spent sparring, conversing as they rested, and then taking up arms again. Dion began to treasure their private time together, Dion sitting among the grassy fields, Terence laid back with his arms behind his head as they contemplated the sky and their place beneath it.
Dion couldn't say when his affections turned to love. Dion had never felt such tenderness before nor had he seen it reflected in the eyes of another. There were so many nights when, sitting beneath those starry skies, he wished merely to reach out and take Terence's hand in his own. Still, he refrained. Terence was, despite his martial prowess, still only of minor nobility, practically a commoner in comparison to Dion's own station. His father would never approve.
Living among soldiers, the boys heard often of the ongoing struggles in their war with Waloed. They heard of the battles and the lives taken and of course of the nation's ever fearsome king who had mysteriously yet to take the battlefield. King Tharmr must have been otherwise occupied, they assumed, or perhaps he thought it beneath him to personally engage the armies of Sanbreque, a nation without an awoken dominant. Dion felt eyes turn to him then, every time the speculations began. Without Bahamut's might, the empire's forces were helpless against any eikon which opposed them. Yet no matter how Dion tried, the great dragon's form eluded him.
Dion took care to practice his power as a dominant only when he was well and truly alone, fearing that power as much as he longed for it. The holy spell had always come naturally to him as well as any extensions of Bahamut's light. It was only the dragon's form which evaded him, that primal expression of the divine wyrms gifted upon Sanbreque from the Great Greagor herself. Through great concertation, he was finally able to half-prime by age sixteen, sprouting leathery wings from his back as his eyes turned blue with aether. By seventeen, he had finally managed the impossible and channeled Bahamut in whole.
He did not lose himself. No matter how his heart pounded with terror, he refused to let the eikon take control. In moments, he was no longer in a body of his own, but rather one much larger, clawed and scaled with a snout that snorted in surprise, setting fire to the nearby bushes. He stretched his wings experimentally and then, determinedly, clumsily, took to the skies.
It was everything he'd thought it would be.
He climbed higher and higher, unaffected by the altitude or the need for breath. He reached up until he pierced the clouds and emerged out into the sun and an endless sea of blue. 'Joshua,' he thought. 'If only you could have seen this.'
He tucked his wings and fell, rolling, until he was at the proper altitude to spread his wings and soar over the military grounds. He saw training stop and fingers point up to him in awe. He saw his own shadow far below him, massive and foreign like the shade of some great beast. When he finally landed, he transformed back unwillingly and collapsed, shaking, to one knee. The short flight had exhausted him.
Word reached quickly back to Oriflamme. The eikon Bahamut had awoken.
His step-mother was blessedly absent as Dion arrived at the palace, busy attending to business as the vicereine of Rosaria. It was his father alone who greeted him in the throne room, beaming with pride. Dion was taken aback by such an outward show of affection, but could not help a smile in return. No matter how he reiterated that he still could not prime at will, his father continued his praise, thanking Greagor for the good fortune with which she had blessed Sanbreque. He stayed for the month, shadowing his father during his meetings with the Grand Council and presiding over business at the righthand side of his throne. Word of his step-mother's imminent arrival cut their time short, however. Dion elected to leave before he was forced to suffer her company.
Among the dragoons, he was quickly becoming known as a kind of prodigy. His body, it seemed, was made for the air, and after truly taking flight, he certainly had no fear of heights. His skill was attributed to the influence of his eikon, to his royal blood, or to the blessings of Greagor depending on which instructor one might ask, but rarely to Dion's efforts personally. While he excelled as a dragoon knight, his progression as a dominant was more tumultuous. Though his appearance as Bahamut at the Battle of the Twin Realms had secured the long-contested Straight of Autha from Waloed, it had not come without a price. Even a year after first channeling his eikon, he could not transform without nearly collapsing from the effort.
It was after one such occurrence that he was once again aided to his personal room in the barracks where he was once again carefully helped into bed and Terence once again stayed behind, determined to fulfill his role. Dion laid there, watching the ceiling miserably as the ceiling spun and his body ached from the overload of aether.
"How do you fair, Your Highness?"
Dion started to answer, but then stopped, hesitating for reasons he didn't understand. After a moment, he said quietly, "It hurts...a little more than usual."
Terence looked at him in surprise and then alarm. Dion was startled by the expression and by his own moment of weakness and quickly backtracked, "It isn't terrible, really. It's-"
But Terence had already sat at his bedside, perched beside him, looking down at him in concern. "My prince..."
Their hands touched.
Terence's fingers curled around his. Dion tightened the grip. Slowly, carefully, Terence leaned over him. Their lips met.
Stopping the rest would have been like trying to fight the tide.
Their relationship became an open secret among the dragoons. The two boys kept their outward appearances perfectly professional, and didn't know how the others had guessed. Perhaps it was in their longing glances across the training yard. Perhaps it was in their small touches that seemed to linger for just a moment too long. They didn't dare risk even an open conversation unless it was behind a closed door or, after were stationed in the empire's eastern battlefields, a closed flap of canvas in their tents. Whatever the dragoons knew, they were under no obligation to report it up the chain of command. They were their own kind of family, brothers in arms, and so they kept their secret, lightly teasing Terence only when they thought that their prince was out of earshot.
At Dion's request, Terence came with him now when he took his leave for the palace. The perfect guard. The perfect servant to his prince. His father commended the dragoon's loyalty. His step-mother ignored him entirely. Terence's company made these visits much more bearable, and yet...
Dion bore the expectation of his people to rule them. He bore the weight of a dominant to protect them. He bore the responsibility of his lineage to continue the bloodline.
At some point, Dion would have no choice but to marry. Terence must have known that, and yet as he laid beside him in his bedchambers, Dion found it difficult to care. His future was no secret, not between them or anyone else. Terence had made his choice. What blossomed now between them would not be decided by his eventual duty as Sanbreque's next emperor.
Dion had survived a long day on the battlefield when he received the letter. He was twenty-two, and though Waloed had gained little ground, day by day the fighting seemed endless. There had been talk of giving Dion command of the dragoon battalion. There was talk, also, of deploying him as Bahamut, but fear of invoking Odin's wrath stayed their hand. Dion returned to his tent, more than ready to rest, when the letter was handed to him with a mark from the palace.
His step-mother was with child.
He read the contents twice over to be certain before setting it aside. The news should not have come as a surprise. Empress Anabella had married his father over ten years ago. He'd known how they'd longed for a child of their own, but it had never come to pass. Perhaps it was the thought of her which sickened him to his core. Or perhaps it was the sense of foreboding like an ill omen which settled upon him...
He took his leave as the battles slowed for the winter. By then, the child had already been born -- a son, healthy or so the letters claimed. He planned to stay the season to better integrate himself with his family and to oversee his father's work. He would, at the very least, meet his newly born half-brother. He would meet Olivier.
Olivier Lesage was an infant like any other. Dion gave him polite courtesy at their introduction by Olivier's crib, not particularly understanding why the baby had the palace in such a fuss. He held his brother awkwardly at his father's request and watched as his step-mother's lips tightened. She snatched the infant from him at the first opportunity, and Dion could not call himself disappointed. He had few interactions with his brother from then on, preferring the company of his father and the royal court as he waited for the season's end and his return to the dragoons.
The court proceedings were interrupted one afternoon near the beginning of spring by an urgent message from the crystal mines at Drake's Head. To his surprise, the messenger demanded Dion's immediate assistance.
"There is an intruder headed for the Mothercrystal, Your Highness."
"Me? Are the mines not guarded?"
"The intruder has been identified as Cidolfus Telamon of Waloed."
"Ramuh." Dion looked to his father in surprise and received an affirming nod in return. Dion took his spear in hand and wasted no time in their confrontation.
He had no idea what Ramuh might want with the Mothercrystal. He had heard tell that Cidolfus, once the lord commander of Waloed's armies, had gone rogue and abandoned his kingdom, but that could not rule out the possibility of Waloeder subterfuge. And if he should prime within Drake's Head...
Dion did not give him the chance. As soon as he was within the crystalline sanctum, he threw himself from the narrow path and called upon his own primal form. Soon, he was soaring through the caverns unhindered, the aether flowing through him as though the Mothercrystal itself had come to his aid. He spotted the intruder quickly, ducked behind the path's half wall.
It soon became apparent that Cidolfus Telamon was quite slippery when cornered. He did not prime though he did shoot lightning with a snap of his fingers. Mostly, the man ran. And ducked. And hid. His mind clouded by the sanctum's aether, Dion felt his impatience growing, the power welling within him in time with his own frustration. He felt it grow within him as he attempted in vain to snatch the rogue Waloeder with his talons and his teeth until, after some time, the power gathered in shockwaves of light upon his wings. He saw Cidolfus' head peeking above his cover, and in that instant, his vision went yellow.
The light burst from him of its own accord, fired like a ray of white hot fire into the intruder's path. When the dust cleared, Cidolfus was gone and there was a hole in the Sanctum wall, blasted through as though by a catapult.
They never did find the infamous Cid nor did they find his charred remains among the rubble. Dion returned to the palace not as a hero, but as a blasphemer.
"The Crystal's Sanctum is sacred! A gift from Greagor herself! The damage you've done cannot be repaired, Dion!"
Dion knelt at the bottom of the stairs, head bowed in deference to his father's throne. "I take full responsibility for my actions," he said. "But the aether, it clouded my mind. And Ramuh..."
"Was allowed to escape."
"Proved more...difficult than expected."
The whole time, his step-mother said nothing. She merely sat in her place at his father's side, holding her son to her chest as she ever did. It seemed that she never let go of Olivier, at least not until he began to fuss, and then she would hand the infant off to the nurses until he had settled and she could take him in her arms once more. Dion risked a glance in her direction to see her smirking at him with a smug sense of satisfaction.
What was she plotting?
His father grew tired with him after that, pinching his nose and dismissing him with a wave of his hand. Dion returned the gesture with a soldier's salute and turned to leave, but not before he heard Empress Anabella whisper, "He had but one simple task."
Shortly after, Dion returned to the field. The tension with his father was, like the Crystal's Sanctum, never fully repaired.
If there was any solace to take from his disastrous performance at Drake's Head it was that Dion had finally unlocked the last of his power as Bahamut. Megaflare. It had been so easy to use, so natural beside the crystal where the aether flowed freely. When he was not engaged in matters of war, he would fly across the countryside until he found some abandoned wilderness on which to practice his latest skill. Odin's absence from the field had grown almost suspicious, and Dion vowed to be prepared for his inevitable arrival once it came.
Years passed. Years of battle wounds and bloodshed punctuated, occasionally, by visits home. It was expected now that he address the emperor not as his son, but as a soldier. With his considerable skill in both combat and strategy, it had been agreed that Dion should take command of the Order of the Dragoon, and so his visits often doubled as war meetings in an official capacity.
In the year 873, the fate of Sanbreque was changed forever.
The first omen of ill tidings came with a series of lesser shipments of crystals to the field of battle. The shortened stock came with no explanations, and their letters of complaint fell on deaf ears. With the fate of the war in his hands, Dion journeyed to Oriflamme to seek an audience with his father and, hopefully, resolve the situation.
He greeted his father with a soldier's salute and awaited permission to speak. Said permission was granted, and Dion explained how the dwindling crystal supplies harmed the war effort. The soldiers were triaged so that only the most injured were cured by magic. Their weapons grew dull without fire to light the furnaces. His father listened impatiently before finally interjected that mining in the Mothercrystal had been halted due to unsafe conditions.
"An aetherflood?" Dion's eyes widened. "In Drake's Head? But how?"
"If I might interject..." Empress Anabella sat in her usual place, holding the now three year old Olivier on her lap and stroking his hair as though he were a prized family pet. "I have heard some say that it is the ill will of Greagor which has befallen the Mothercrystal. I wonder what heresy might have prompted such a curse..."
Dion eyed her with every spark of his growing contempt. The woman was Rosarian. She had never once showed deference to the Goddess, and yet if she was implying what it seemed she might...
His father frowned. "The damage to the Sanctum," he concluded before sighing and rubbing his forehead in apparent exasperation.
"That was years ago!" Dion interjected. "Surely that cannot be the cause! I am immune to the affects of the aether. I could find the source if you would only allow me to-!"
"Have you not done enough already, Dion?" his father responded. "We will find another solution. In the meantime, I shall meet with the astrologers on the best course of action to quell Greagor's rage."
Dion stood in shock. From her chair, his step-mother looked down upon him with a haughty sense of triumph.
His father had made his decision. There was no point in arguing further and so Dion merely gave a short, "Understood," saluted the emperor once more, and left the hall.
The armies of Waloed were taking action, moving from the Straight of Autha to the mountains of Belenus Tor. Dion did not have time to waste at the palace. He returned to the battlefield at once, commanding his dragoons to follow the Waloeder army in order to meet them at the mountain's peaks.
The battle had begun in earnest, fiercer and more terrible than ever before. The battle raged for several days before a dreaded shadow rose above the mountain peaks in the form of a massive dark knight riding atop his nightmarish steed.
Odin had finally made his appearance.
This was the fearful moment they had all awaited for over ten years of war. It was the moment that Dion had always known would come, and had thus prepared for every day of his military career. He felt strangely confident as he gazed upon Odin's true form. He bore no hesitation as he took his spear in hand and launched himself from the mountaintops to meet his inevitable opponent. Odin galloped towards the battlefield, cutting down great swathes of men in his wake, and Bahamut rose to meet him, shooting beams of light which forced Odin onto the defensive.
Neither eikon definitively triumphed in their skirmish, but the soldiers, the men who fought on the ground below, most definitively lost. An entire Sanbrequois legion was annihilated in the fray, and without reinforcements from the capital, it was Waloed who emerged victorious.
Dion had hardly taken stock of their losses before he was summoned once more to Oriflamme. He entrusted the full retreat to Terence, now his second in command, and left for the palace the following morning. He fully expected that word of their defeat had reached the emperor and that he would face scorn for his loss at the hands of Odin. As he approached the city, however, he was met with a very different sight.
Drake's Head, once a comforting presence looming over the city, was no more.
He entered the palace in a state of shock, demanding answers that were, once more, deflected to his father. The emperor did not appear nearly as horrified as seemed appropriate. Empress Annabella offered him a cool smile.
The Mothercrystal had shattered, his father explained simply. Though they had no definitive proof, they believed the eikon Ramuh to be to blame.
"Cidolfus," Dion muttered. "That must have been his prior intention as well. But was it for the cause of Waloed or another?"
"It matters not," his father answered. "Drake's Head was aetherflooded. We seek a new supply now."
"But sire, this cannot be allowed to stand! The Mothercrystal was a symbol of hope for the empire! A symbol of Greagor herself!"
"Silence, Dion. I have made my decision." The emperor rose straighter in his throne, gripping his staff authoritatively. "With the Mothercrystal destroyed, we shall take Drake's Tail instead. We shall relocate our royal court to the city of Twinside."
"The Crystalline Dominion? You seek to conquer it? But what of the treaty?"
"Has Dhalmekia not allied itself with the forces of Waloed? How long before they target the Dominion for themselves?"
"We cannot lead a war of conquest when the forces of Waloed even now occupy the ranges of Belanus Tor!"
"Let Odin have his mountain. We must engage in more important matters. Do you not see how this would benefit our people, Dion? Without a Mothercrystal, our forges will grow cold. Our wounded will die. Our food will rot in the heat of the sun. You are to ready your forces for an invasion immediately. Have I made myself clear?"
Dion glanced once more to his step-mother. Her cold eyes met his, and her smile widened -- that smug, triumphant smile as she contentedly stroked the hair of her son. Had she had something to do with this? Had she been the one to whisper dreams of conquest into his father's ear?
His father's mind was steeled against his. There was nothing more that Dion could do but agree to the task and walk away, scowling his displeasure. He followed his father's orders and, within the year, the Dominon was under imperial rule.
Dion took no pleasure in their victory. Though the battles were won with few casualties and with Twinside as their prize, it was an unclean act of conquest which left him ever uneasy. Through invasion, they had taken the Crystalline Dominion. Through marriage, they had taken the Duchy of Rosaria, and despite the empire serving as Rosaria's only protection, it was no secret that many of the territory's people resented what they felt to be military occupation. There were rumors even that the empire had somehow orchestrated the fall of Rosalith. Though Dion knew his father had done no such thing, it did not help their image as warmongers. It was no surprise then when the Dhalmekian Republic rallied its forces and prepared to respond in kind.
Several years passed with the fate of the empire ever in flux. The former capital of Oriflamme had been more or less abandoned with the fall of Drake's Head, and the northern territories suffered for it. The state of their Rosarian territories likewise seemed to worsen under the rule of its vicereine. The southern provinces, on the other hand, flourished with the bounty of the newly acquired Drake's Tail Mothercrystal, and the eastern territories remained strangely calm -- Waloed seemingly satisfied in its advances with their singular outpost at Belenus Tor.
Dion's life, for its part, was a never-ending series of battles along Sanbreque's new southern borders. With the Non-aggression Treaty officially broken, it seemed the Dhalmekian Republic was desperate to take the Dominion for themselves -- desperate enough, that was, to exhaust their armies in a five year long campaign that Sanbreque returned in full. Time and again, Dion begged his father to seek avenues for peace, a prospect that did not interest the emperor in the slightest. Dion's visitations to the new imperial palace at Twinside were likewise limited only to when he was summoned directly. With the ever looming threat of Titan on the battlefield, Dion could not dare leave the fight for long.
Though he was never forced to dispatch Bahamut upon the battlefield for fear of Titan's retaliation, his regular use of magic upon the field took its toll. The holy spells which had once come to him easily now left their mark, and every time that he brought out the dragon's wings to aid his skills as a dragoon, it would leave him feeling winded. The change in his condition was not lost on Terence who made his worries known. The dragoon regularly checked over his body for the telltale signs of the curse taking hold. Other than a small patch of stony skin upon his right forearm, Dion seemed, for the time, nothing more than exhausted.
"Then rest, my prince."
"I shan't fall so easily," Dion said with slight shake of his head. Even still, he knew that he could only fight for so long. Titan sat upon a throne of riches, awaiting the day that the empire grew desperate enough to summon their eikon into action. Dion, on the other hand, spent his every hour ensuring such desperation would never follow. He was a commander, a dominant, and a prince, but he was also a dragoon knight. He would not leave his men to fight his father's battles without his spear fighting alongside them.
This continued until, at a time shortly after his thirtieth birthday, Dhalmekia sought terms of surrender.
It seemed that the same fate that had befallen Drake's Head had, mysteriously, befallen Drake's Fang. Without a Mothercrystal, the Dhalmekian Republic could no longer sustain a war of attrition, particularly not without its champion. According to rumor, Hugo Kupka, dominant of Titan, was otherwise occupied.
Dion left his victorious armies to report the news to his father. It would be a joyous occasion, certainly, to finally bring peace to Sanbreque. This was not what awaited him at the palace of Twinside, however. What he found instead was his father, pleased, expectant, but not otherwise satisfied. His step-mother sat upon her throne, slowly stroking the hair of her now eight year old son as he looked dully upon a wooden doll. Dion had rarely been allowed in the throne room at that age, but it seemed that Olivier was ever present at his mother's side. A deep part of him had grown to resent the boy, always so quiet, so pampered with nothing but affection showered upon him as he learned nothing, did nothing, felt nothing, but he knew just as well that his step-mother was truly to blame.
His father's lack of appropriate reaction turned quickly to something far worse. Far colder, cruel even, in a way that Dion had never experienced before. The emperor wished to lure the Dhalmekians into a false peace accord and then unleash Bahamut upon them as they fled, no doubt incinerating countless civilians along with them. Dion was rightfully outraged, but quickly silenced and brought to heel, forced to kneel at his own father's feet even as every part of him protested the order. His father claimed that new citizens could be bred, new homes built, but did he truly care nothing for the innocents who would fall to Bahamut's wrath? Did he care nothing for turning Greagor's holy dragon into such a dishonorable weapon? And what of the toll it would take on Dion in both body and spirit?
He could ask no such questions. He was summarily dismissed, ordered to prepare for battle. He returned to his camp, disheartened, defeated, but never disloyal.
As always, Terence tended to the ever growing effects of the curse. His concern was palpable now, and there was little Dion could do to quell it. Dion knew his duty. He knew what he, as the champion of Bahamut, meant to the people of Sanbreque. He knew where his loyalties lied. There was little to be done but to take comfort in each other as they had across every battlefield, every time of trouble, and every wound which scraped the other's body.
Their time was cut short, however, by a letter from his father.
Dion could scarcely believe what he read. He had left Twinside only days before, and now it seemed his father had gone mad. Not only did he wish to decimate the lives of his own citizens, but he had named Olivier -- a child -- emperor in his stead. It was absurd. The boy would be merely a puppet, and that aside, had trained in no way for the position. What his father could be thinking was beyond him, and rage gripped his heart like never before. Still, he was left with little time to dwell on his circumstances as he was soon interrupted by a familiar sense of magic.
The pair of travelers who forced their way to his tent were strangers, at least on the surface. However, he recognized the man clad in frayed red scarves by instinct alone. After twenty years, the Phoenix had returned.
He did not initially believe the tale of Joshua Rosfield. Who would? He spoke of the machinations of a dark god, of a ninth eikon who was channeled within his older brother, and of what he claimed were the true events of Rosaria's fall. It was nonsense which contradicted everything that he knew, and yet, Joshua proved his tale true as he unlaced his threadbare shirt to expose a strange, pulsing wound beneath. It was a primal blue, glowing with some strange power the likes of which Dion had never seen. There in his chest, Joshua claimed, was sealed the dark god himself. Ultima. A being which pulled the realm ever closer to destruction.
Ultima wished to sow chaos and warfare across all of Valisthea. Ultima had the power to bend the wills of men. Was it Ultima, then, which had driven his father to madness? Was it Ultima which had turned his father's heart so appallingly cold?
With these new revelations in mind, Dion had a meeting to take with his father.
He promised Joshua free passage to Twinside and bid the Phoenix meet him there at the palace to discuss matters further. He left the Order of the Dragoon in Terence's hands, asking that he bring a battalion to the capital before joining him the following morning.
Though he had hoped to talk sense into his father, the meeting which followed was nothing short of disastrous.
Not only did his father refuse to listen to reason, he dismissed Dion's claims out of hand, growing hostile the more Dion argued. This time, Dion would not go unheard or so he told himself. The facts of the matter were too self-evidently absurd to be ignored. A child, his eight year old half-brother, sat the throne still playing with his dolls. His father claimed him to be a kind of god. Truly, sanity had been long lost among the imperial courts, for it was he who was scolded for his lack of loyalty. Dion! The once crown prince who had done nothing but bear the weight of the entire empire upon his shoulders! Whose body even now suffered under the effects of his father's constant warmongering! Who had been willing to give nothing short of his life in service only to be denied that for which he had been raised!
His father bid him, Bahamut, to win his half-brother an empire.
The embers of his fury burned ever brighter with the added fuel of indignity and injustice. His father left with Olivier in hand, and Dion rose once more to his feet.
For some reason, his step-mother had not left with them.
"Does it pain you? Knowing that you will not inherit your father's throne?"
"I've suffered worse."
So she thought to goad him then. Indeed, if this all had been her plan, she stood victorious. Somehow, she had managed to insert herself into the imperial household after the murder of her first husband. Somehow, she had convinced his father to abandon reason and partake in endless wars for little benefit. Last of all, she had brought her precious son, her puppet, to sit the throne of an empire while she pulled the strings.
How very disappointing it must have been for her then when Dion did not rise to her bait, and so she dug further into her foul imagination and instead targeted the purity of his blood.
She attacked him for his mother, a common whore who had sold him to his father for the appropriate price.
She attacked him for his bastardy and claimed that he, unlike Olivier, would never be worthy to wield the power of a nation.
It was not his loss of station which troubled him, that much he had spoken true. He had in some way expected it since the very birth of his half-brother, a boy who lacked in every aspect except for his noble bloodline. He was legitimate in a way that Dion never had been, and Dion was no fool. He'd seen how his step-mother doted on the child. He saw, too, how his father lacked in Olivier the same expectations that Dion had always been forced to meet. More than that, he saw the tenderness in his father's eyes as he beheld the boy. He saw the love. He knew that despite everything Dion had accomplished and everything that he had sacrificed that he was truly the lesser between them.
And yet, he could never have expected this.
His thoughts ran wild as he stormed from the hall, his step-mother's goading still ringing in his ears. If Olivier had taken the title of crown prince in his stead, that he could have accepted. He had expected it in its own way, but this...
This....
He spent the night brooding, not expecting the company of either Joshua nor Terence until the following morning. As the rain battered the window of his bedchambers, he felt a terrible temptation take him, one which he would not have so much as considered even a month prior.
Treasonous machinations began to turn.
He prepared himself for his meeting with Joshua. The Phoenix, it seemed, was insistent that Dion join his cause against Ultima. The offer was tempting. Indeed, Dion saw it as a necessity if the Phoenix's theories were to be believed, but the circumstances were not quite so simple. While Dion's duty as a dominant may have inclined him towards the Phoenix's cause, he simply could not abandon Sanbreque. He promised to join Joshua once his own matters were dealt with. Once the imperial court had been purged of its most evil influences...Once his father once again sat the throne...
This he kept to himself for such thoughts were tantamount to treason. Instead, he bid Joshua farewell, sighing as he felt the Phoenix's presence fade.
He should have left with him.
That thought would plague him for many nights to come, but for the time, he was plagued by different thoughts. Thoughts of restoring his nation's honor and his father's sanity in one strike. He asked only for Terence's approval, and once given, there was nothing else left.
That night, the Holy Order of the Dragoon would engage the city's imperial forces while Dion set his sights on the execution of Anabella and Olivier both.
Chaos reigned in the streets. His men were under strict orders not to harm civilians and to keep damage to the city at a minimum. Their sole target was the city guard, and Dion had no doubts that said guard would swiftly fall. As the rest of the palace panicked at the attack, Dion donned his best armor, took his spear in hand, and strode confidently for the throne room.
A hush fell over the room at his entrance, punctuated only by the gasps of the nobility. Every eye was on him as he strode towards his father who stood, demanding answers, demanding that he cease his attack, demanding that he serve his new emperor. When Dion answered with the bared steel of his blade, his father demanded that the guards seize him.
No one moved. They didn't dare. For the first time in his life, Dion held the power between them.
As tensions came to a head, his half-brother, the new emperor, Greagor made flesh, chose to speak, carelessly not even so much as looking up from his doll. He bid him win the ungrateful child the world.
Dion saw red. He threw his spear.
Time seemed to slow. Before him, he saw not the child skewered by his spear, but instead...
"F-father?"
Blood. There was so much of it, spewing from his father's body as he collapsed, grasping at the spear, Dion's spear, and gargling words that would barely come. Somewhere distant, a woman screamed. People rushed away in a panic. Dion's heart beat cold. He was frozen by the sight, the terrible sight before him.
"Poor Father. How he doted on his children. That he would die to protect me was plain. It was but a matter of when."
"You planned this?"
Olivier walked slowly towards him, not with the clumsy steps of a child, but the confidence of a conqueror. Stained in blood, their father's blood, he sauntered forward, eyes cold as a snake's.
The last thing he saw were those eyes, a sudden piercing blue. His power surged past his beating heart, past his limitations, until it filled every cell of his body and he could stand it in no longer.
He woke broken and bleeding on a rubble-strewn floor.
Half-conscious, pained beyond all measure, he forced himself upright. His vision swam as he turned to see Anabella and...
A demon. It stood behind her, lit in a deathly blue, white-haired with eyes hollowed and staring. Ultima. It could be no other.
His hand found his spear. He threw it. And the demon haunting their family was no more.
He laughed at the sight of Olivier, usurper, manipulator, demon, disintegrated in a sickly blue light. He laughed as Anabella screamed and grasped at shadows. His consciousness was fading. His body would sustain him no longer. As he raised his head for perhaps the final time, he saw a vision of his father, reaching a hand towards his as though to usher him to the peace of the beyond.
His vision went black as death. He accepted it gladly, his work done. And yet, he did not die.
He woke to the smell of Blight and the sound of lapping waves. His body was exhausted both from Bahamut's power and the many wounds which plagued him. There were footsteps as he stirred, and he opened his eyes to see a red-haired woman he did not recognize with a strange scar across her cheek. She fussed over his wounds and applied salves, bidding him to rest.
A physicker then. But where...?
She answered her questions with all that she knew. He had been rescued by the Rosfield brothers and brought to the eldest's secret Hideaway to be healed. His attempted coupe had been interrupted by the appearance of Bahamut, out of control and thrown into a frenzy which destroyed much of Twinside. Phoenix and the ninth eikon, Ifrit, had worked together to put down Bahamut in his rage, nearly killing him in the process.
Dion could scarcely believe what he heard, but he knew it to be mere denial. He had lost control of his eikon, and it had cost the lives of the very people he had sworn to protect.
He had to see the ruins for himself.
By sheer force of will, he pushed himself to his feet, taking his spear from where it had been propped against the wall and using it as a staff to guide him. The physicker was furious, but did not stop him as he left that place, buying himself a small boat to ferry him across the waters of the Blighted lands to shore.
His journey was slow and laborious. Every day was a push against his own limitations. Every night, he lay in agony. Little by little, he made his way to Twinside. He made his way home.
What he found was beyond his imagining. The city was nothing but rubble and fallen stone. Where there had once been people, livelihoods, homes, now there was nothing but dust. The capital city, the heart of the empire, the hopes of his people, crushed with the city that no longer stood. Exhaustion took him as he fell to his knees, and finally the weight of it all overcame him. His eyes grew hot with tears and his vision swam to black once more.
What have I done?
Unconsciousness was a mercy just as death would have been. He deserved nothing less, and yet, he awoke again this time in considerably less pain. A light wind greeted him with the sounds of the night. He found himself washed and rebandaged, left to rest on a pallet bed within a shack of a house which seemed to have nothing to its name. He was met by a young girl, his apparent savior, who offered him nothing but kindness and expected nothing in return. Outside, he heard the weeping of the people as lanterns lit the river, one for each soul lost.
He left and started down the path with a renewed sense of resolve. He would bear his sins and atone for them. Punishment was not enough. His death would solve nothing. Action was the only way to make this right, and though he knew that he could never truly pay penance for the atrocities he had committed, there was nothing left but to try.
He found his dragoons stationed outside the city where they had camped the day of Bahamut's massacre. Much to his surprise, his men were still there, busy tending their wounded but still very much alive. Whispers surrounded him as he entered the camp and they stopped their business, gasping, to greet their prince with the usual military salutes.
All around him were dragoons, his brothers in arms, fewer than before, far fewer, but alive and still, somehow, they accepted him among them.
From their ranks, a familiar figure emerged. Dion felt his eyes soften as the sight of him. Something pulled at his heart -- pain? relief? -- as tears welled of their own bidding. "Terence...?"
"My prince." Terence started the soldier's salute before stopping, shaking his head, and running to him instead. He threw himself into Dion's arms, and Dion returned the embrace.
"You're alive," Dion said. He tightened his grip. "But how? Did Bahamut not...?"
"I knew you were not yourself, Your Highness." Terence pulled away just enough to gaze into his eyes. "I ordered a retreat before the battle began in earnest."
All of this, every survivor, had been Terence's doing. He felt a swell of gratitude along with his love. Dion looked past Terence to each and every one of them, still standing at attention. He released Terence from his grasp and moved past him to better look upon the dragoons. "Their number is much diminished," he said. "Did I...? Did Bahamut...?"
"No, my prince. The others were lost to an aetherflood. They went Akashic."
"A flood?" He turned to Terence to see that he did not lie. Still, Dion could not begin to ponder where such a flood could have sprung. And to have turned his men...
That was one solace then. As the city was not currently swarming with Akashic, Bahamut must have put an end to their madness and their suffering. It was a small mercy.
Terence's fingers curled around his. Dion tightened the grip. There would be time to mourn when the Twins were saved. He'd heard of the chaos that had engulfed Storm in his absence. The realm was besieged by monsters, bandits, and Akashic. Rosaria was long lost and Sanbreque, too, had fallen without its soldiers or leadership to guide it. All the while, the skies had darkened and the people spoke of the end of the world.
"We must aid Storm in its time of need." Dion stepped forward, his voice gaining strength as he did so. "We are no longer divided by nations. Rosaria, Sanbreque, Dhalmekia, we are all but men, and if we do not stand united then we all shall fall. Together, we shall quell this darkness. Together, we shall secure these lands for the people who live upon it. But we will need allies." Dion glanced at Terence. "How does the Republic fair?"
"Their forces have retreated to Ran'dellah. We've heard little news otherwise."
"Then we shall pray it has not fallen. We make for Ran'dellah!"
The dragoons saluted as though nothing had changed between them. Dion alone, it seemed, felt the gravity of his actions and the damage it had done. His heart ached with it.
The Republican capital was under siege as they arrived. The soldiers held their own, but were far outnumbered by the hordes of Akashic and strange blue-lit creatures that reminded Dion so much of Ultima. His dragoons entered the fray, fighting alongside the very soldiers they had, only months before, considered their enemies. The Dhalmekians had questions, of course, but their need was too great to turn down the aid of the imperials. Dion had questions of his own on the state of the capital, on the state of its forces, and as to where their need was greatest. He was directed towards the upper quarters where forced separate from the Dhalmekian army still fought at the behest of the nobility. Doubtless, they would be in need of reinforcements.
So that was where they headed, and after a long fought battle through the hordes, where they eventually found Lord Byron Rosfield.
It was quite the coincidence for the imperial prince to come to the Rosarian noble's aid in the Republic of all places, and yet it was a welcome one. The surviving Rosfield had come, it seemed, to try to secure an alliance of his own against the imposing forces that would threaten Valisthea, and as the old men bickered, Dion took his leave of them, returning to Terence's side.
He had found his fight. His penance. Though the odds were greatly stacked against him, he would fight until the end to protect Storm from all who threatened her. There was but one thing left to do.
Terence knew of his intentions though he did not say it. Dion saw the pain in his eyes as he was asked to repay Dion's last remaining debts, to leave this hopeless battle, and to return to Twinside where he would care for the impoverished girl who had saved his life. Terence argued, but only briefly for he knew Dion too well. Tears spilled down his cheeks at what he knew was to come, and Dion felt his heart wrench at the sight of them. Terence, his love, his constant companion. Dion could only do what he knew to be necessary if he was safe.
He let his own tears fall only once Terence had left him. Never had a parting hurt quite so much.
As arrangements for an alliance were made, Dion asked Lord Byron as to the fate of the Rosfield brothers, the man's nephews. The Rosarian boasted that they were on their way aboard Valisthea's finest ship, set sail towards Ash and the Kingdom of Waloed. The news shocked Dion, but Lord Byron was more than happy to elaborate. They had a plan to free Valisthea from the grip of the Mothercrystals and thus from Ultima himself. Dion knew Waloed to be full of dangers and its army to be highly regimented. He knew also that the Rosfield brothers had, against all reason, spared his life.
He had agreed to aid the Phoenix in his fight against Ultima. Though he no longer wielded the power of Bahamut, he was still a dragoon knight of the highest order. He could offer his spear, at least, for the cause. Without further delay, he left the Order of the Dragoon in the hands of his third in command, gave the word to aid this new alliance however was in their power, and paid for a ship to set sail from the docks of Ran'dellah towards the continent of Ash. Though the ship dared not enter the currents surrounding the continent, Dion asked only that they seek out a ship that had traded sails for engines made of fire and steel in the approximate location which Lord Byron had directed.
They set course and, in time, found their quarry.
Much fuss was made by the Dhalmekian sailors about docking alongside the strange and marvelous ship, but Dion merely launched himself airborne and landed gracefully on its decks. There was initial surprise and hostility, particularly from the ship's young captain, but an understanding was soon met. Alas, it seemed the Rosfield brothers had already left the ship, setting their eyes on Drake's Spine to the north.
If that was their cause then, after short deliberation among the ship's passengers, it was decided that The Enterprise would set course to meet them.
After days of travel, they came to the walls of Stonehyrr in time to hear a battle taking place within. The ship's scout had claimed the entirety of Waloed had gone Akashic, and from the sound of it, the entirety of Waloed was beyond those walls, currently engaged in battle against the Rosfields. There was heated arguing on how to reach them, but none could come to a satisfying solution until the young Captain Mid finally and without warning simply slammed her ship against the castle walls, crumbling it to dust.
Shiva's dominant, Dion, and the foul-mouthed scout leapt into the fray, clearing the field of the Akashic as they went. There was a brief lull in the onslaught, and as Dion turned to greet the Phoenix, he was met instead with the Phoenix's embrace.
He was taken aback, but returned the affection. This warmth, distinctly Rosarian, it reminded him of the night they met and the boys they had been, long before the ravages of the world had taken its toll. Dion assured him that they were past the need for formalities, but there was little time to spare. The Rosfields still had the last of their journey to Drake's Spine ahead of them, and the Akashic reinforcements had arrived. Dion reassured them all to go on ahead and to leave the incoming horde to him, but Shiva and the scout refused to leave the fight to his hands alone.
They opened the heavy door to Drake's Spine and found none other than Ultima himself waiting on the other side. The Rosfields were swallowed in darkness and disappeared along with the false god, and the three remaining were left to their fight, vowing to keep the route to The Enterprise safe for their return.
The battle was long and hard-fought. The hordes had among their number not only Akashic soldiers but also a fearsome behemoth, also Akashic. The scout was of only average skill with a blade, and Shiva, while clearly experienced, had also lost the power of her Eikon. Dion took stock of the situation and asked the other two to keep the soldiers at bay. The behemoth would be his quarry alone.
It spoke to their skill that there were no losses except among the Akashic, and in time even the behemoth fell. Still, there was no end to the onslaught. Thankfully, they did not have to hold their own forever. The brothers reappeared in another dark portal, wounded and clearly winded, but alive. Dion bade them all go, waited until they had boarded the ship and its engines were engaged, and then jumped onto the deck beside them, leaving the lands of Ash behind.
Back at the Hideaway, the Rosfields told their tale. Ultima was, indeed, a god. His kind had created not only the Mothercrystals, but also all of humanity with the purpose that one day one amongst their numbers might have the strength to serve as a suitable vessel. Dion listened, feeling out of place among these rebels and outlaws, many of which had suffered at the empire's hands. They seemed well past their differences, however, and focused only on their next plan of action. Ultima had erected a final Mothercrystal out of the ruins of Twinside, creating an airborne fortress to protect it, and if Ultima, a true god and the maker of humanity could not be stopped then all of Valisthea would fall.
The Rosfield brothers were determined to take the fight to Ultima alone, using Joshua's Phoenix form to fly them to the skyborne crystal. Dion interjected. Having seen the extent of Joshua's wounds, he knew that he must save his strength for the fight ahead, and that aside, he could not rest while Ultima, the demon which had plagued his family and his kingdom, was still at large. He insisted that he would fly the brothers to Ultima's fortress on Bahamut's wings. Though they objected that the other disempowered dominants had not been able to control their eikonic forms, Dion vowed that his will would overcome Bahamut's.
And so it was decided. The three would leave together, likely never to return. Though the two brothers pretended otherwise, Dion was all too aware of the truth. Ultima was a god. Men did not simply stand against the divine and live, and yet, the three of them together were the last chance for Valisthea, for humanity, for all the lives which still called the Twins home.
After that, it was only a matter of waiting. Dion waited for Clive Rosfield, Ifrit, to finish his final business with his friends and his allies, all the while he kept his eyes to the clouded skies devoid of sunlight and watched the distant figure of Ultima's fortress befoul the horizon.
Twinside. The site of his greatest failure, of countless deaths, of grief and atrocity, and now this...
He prayed that Terence had found that girl and had the sense to take her elsewhere. He prayed that he had not unwittingly sent his love to his death.
Day by day, Clive Rosfield approached each member of his longstanding retinue in turn, eager to help them in the last ways that he could. Day by day, Dion stood on his own, awaiting the time of his death and their last stand. That was, until the day that Clive approached him.
The eldest Rosfield entreated him to speak to a figure from his past who had, somehow, found his way to the Hideaway. Master Harpocrates. Dion had seen him already, of course, but as the old historian had made no signs of recognition, Dion had made none in return. Dion's eyes were set to the sky, to what had to be done, and he could not look behind him towards the past yet still Clive Rosfield insisted. Would he not test his resolve by meeting with his old tutor for a final time?
Dion agreed though his heart hammered with fear beyond anything he had felt on the field of battle. To face him again, the man whose teachings had meant so much to him as a child, after all that he had done...
What would the old scholar see in him? What could he possibly see but disgust?
Master Harpocrates answered, naturally, with a lesson. He presented him with a Wyvern's Tail, the national flower of Sanbreque said to bring peace to all who beheld it, and yet this one was a vivid violet in hue. Through metaphor, he implied that while Dion might have stemmed from the poisoned roots of the imperial family, that he had like the violet Wyvern's Tail, blossomed into something unique. "It is not our roots which define us." Harpocrates offered the flower to him as a gift, and yet, Dion could not accept. Even as he saw how his rejection crushed the old man's spirit, he was not ready to accept such pride nor such forgiveness.
In the end, his resolve had not been shaken. He thanked the eldest Rosfield for his insistence and awaited their final days in solitude.
When that day finally came, it was, despite the brothers' promises, a day of goodbyes. Their friends embraced them, at times with tears, and when they were ready, the three leapt from the Hideaway's decks as Dion had done a hundred times. He transformed, and this time, his will was stronger. The brother's landed upon his back, and Dion ferried them across the sky towards Ultima's accursed fortress.
Ultima's strange mechanical servants rose to meet them, but Dion was well accustomed not only to battle, but also to Bahamut's wings. He dodged their assault, making ever for the walls of sky fortress which had once been Twinside. He gathered the strength of his power and unleashed it upon the walls, blasting apart a hole large enough for them to fly straight to a battle against the dark god.
The two brother's primed and, together, they fought.
Ultima proved an impossible enemy, divine truly, though perhaps not invincible. The three dominants combined their forces, and yet it was nothing to Ultima who effortlessly dodged their blows and returned them with his own. Even their strongest attacks, released simultaneously as one with enough force to annihilate a countryside was not enough to fell the dark god. Ultima rose again, striking Ifrit with enough force to shatter his eikon before rising above them, gathering a truly immense amount of magic at his fingertips.
Joshua moved to block the attack with the Phoenix's defensive abilities, but Dion took up the position instead, insisting that he find his brother and heal him before he was lost. The Phoenix thanked him and dove to find where his brother had fallen.
Dion knew that he would not survive this attack alone. Perhaps with the aid of the brothers' fire, they could have diverted such magic, but that was of no matter now. As Ultima's power grew above him, Dion prepared to finally, truly, fulfill his debts.
To the brothers who had ended Bahamut's rage and then spared his life.
To the people of Valisthea whom he had fought, conquered, and slain.
If he could only protect the brothers so that they might face Ultima in his stead. If only Joshua might heal his brother to be their final champion...
He needed only enough power for this.
Ultima's magic fell upon him. Dion returned it with the full power of Bahamut's light, pushing his limits farther than ever before. He let his rage drive him, his determination, his will. And when it still wasn't enough, when that divine and terrible power made its way ever closer towards him, he dispersed the full force of his light into smaller beams which arched and met Ultima head on.
Ultima's attack, too, met its target.
Dion felt his eikon break with the force, felt his very being dissolve, and then he fell.
His body was wounded beyond repair. Consciousness hung on a thread. Yet as his vision faded, he smiled.
He could only hope that Joshua had saved his brother. He could only hope that Bahamut's light had weakened Ultima enough for Ifrit to finish the fight. For Valisthea's sake, he could only hope.
Yet his part was finished, his atonement complete. As the last of his consciousness left him, he was ready to finally find peace.
That was, at least, until he woke again.
IV. AUTHOR
PLAYER ALIAS:: Fin
OTHER CHARACTERS:: Kuja, Celes, Faris, Sephiroth, Prompto, Cecil
ROLE-PLAYING EXPERIENCE:: Eight years of Adventu
HOW YOU FOUND US:: An illicit Facebook ad
NOTES FOR CONSIDERATION:: All information in the application is either shown in game or head canon. I will update things like age, height, ect as official information is released, but I'll likely keep my head canon history unedited.
ROLE-PLAY SAMPLE:: Have I not already written enough?
OTHER CHARACTERS:: Kuja, Celes, Faris, Sephiroth, Prompto, Cecil
ROLE-PLAYING EXPERIENCE:: Eight years of Adventu
HOW YOU FOUND US:: An illicit Facebook ad
NOTES FOR CONSIDERATION:: All information in the application is either shown in game or head canon. I will update things like age, height, ect as official information is released, but I'll likely keep my head canon history unedited.
ROLE-PLAY SAMPLE:: Have I not already written enough?
