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year 5, quarter 3
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[attr=class,bulk] The term akashic apparently meant something else entirely to the undead stranger as he spoke at length about a type of flatbread served without cheese. The most sinful state for bread to exist in, according to the man, which parodied his own words from earlier back at him. Barnabas just sighted in response. He felt like he was getting used to the skeleton's games at least. “I can’t decide if you mock me, or if this is just how you make your way through the world.” Perhaps a bit of both. The king didn’t enjoy being made light of, but he was too troubled by everything else the man was saying to really address it.
Anyway, there was little point in cutting someone down who was already dead.
To his surprise, the man actually put in the effort to understand Valisthea’s origins, though he didn’t seem very impressed with what he heard as he asked if this was real or not. “You’ll be disappointed to hear there’s nothing mythological about it. Too much aether is enough to turn most people akashic, but God graced me with the honor himself. As a Dominant, I wouldn’t have been able to turn otherwise.” That word was highly likely to lead to another misunderstanding, but Barnabas simply didn’t have another word to describe his relationship with Odin. The man could take that as he would.
The undead skeleton then reasoned that Ultima’s complaints with free will made very little sense, and the king once again pondered the statue of Ifrit in the courtyard as he mulled over his words. “I believe humans developed free will organically as he slept. But I suppose you’re right that choosing to give up one’s will is in itself a choice…” He wasn’t quite ready to hear Ultima insulted so directly however, and he gave the man a more sharp look as he insulted the god crudely. “You’re trying to get under my skin. Is it a battle you’re looking for?” The man had to know those words would provoke him, and Barnabas was keen to see what he was after. A quick escape from the conversation? Or perhaps he just liked crossing his blade with others. The king could almost respect the latter.
The stranger had one last question though, and it was one that had kept Barnabas awake at night ever since he had woken up here alive. “I handed my will to him, but…I believe I took it back before the end.” The answer was like ash in his mouth, but it was the truth. He had gone against his lord’s wishes in taking his battle with Clive Rosfield as far as he had. That had been entirely on his own will. And now he was somewhere where Ultima didn’t exist after forcing Clive to take his power. Surely that meant he couldn’t be akashic anymore. What did that make him exactly?
He feared the answer, but he had a question of his own for the undead man across from him. “...What is your name? Unless you’re going to tell me again that it’s Shiva.” Barnabas didn’t often ask, but this man had given him plenty to think about. Even if he was crass and messy about it.
Mikkel shrugged. “You give too much weight to the distinction between the mundane and the esoteric. Very meaningless words, the both of them, and the distinction is a burden that can only exist in your head. I’m dead–” He paused, rethought his wording, continued, “Undead serious: only after death did I learn how to make a proper akashic. And I couldn’t even eat it. Tested it on my prisoners, I did.”
Some evils, like Necromancy, occasionally turned out to be really propaedeutic to other, even greater evils, like Decaseification, or Decaseination, or Cheeselessness, which in turn prepared one to even higher impieties, such as the wanton capitalisation of torturous coinages.
Akashic-in-his-sense-of-the-word or not, to cling onto such a duality at all signalled to Mikkel that, when all was said and done, there was still humanity aplenty within that kid. Humanity that he might just have been unwilling to shed. He wondered how long it would take for the kid to realise that.
“Alright, putting aside for a moment the fact that you and I clearly have very different ideas of what ‘dominant’ means, I feel I got the gist of it.” Humans developed free will afterwards but Ultima could not or would not remove it and Mikkel still stood by the idea that that Ultima was an incompetent cretin, aether was magic or some sort of magical energy and no mistake, and dominance was in all probability something Mikkel would have called ‘affinity’ instead. “So, let’s get to the bottom–” Two well-timed hems. “–what are you dominating, at the end of the day? Actually, hold on that thought. Let that be an asterisk for later.”
After all, that was the kind of blank he could fill with the help of some very cheap novels he could buy, steal, or otherwise obtain at a great number of newsagents’ shops and-slash-or public libraries across all of the continent, but especially at a certain kiosk in Regina Highwind Alley in Torensten no earlier than half past ten postmeridian, except on Tuesdays.
“You took your will back! Interesting! You now get to hear my real name: it’s Mikkel, but you can make an anagram of it and get my epithet, which is ‘The Rust Baron’, if you think it sounds fancier. So, what made you decide to take back your free will, undead junior? It doesn’t take a nose to smell the one big heap of bovine manure in your story here. Or was it all one big and unnecessary figure of speech?”
Final Fantasy XVI
70
YEARS
Male
Ultima
Pansexual
23 POSTS
Erin
You may kneel before Barnabas Tharmr, Warden of Ash and King of Waloed.
[attr=class,bulk] The stranger said that Barnabas was putting too much distinction between the two versions of akashic that had been brought up. There was perhaps a philosophical point to be made there, but the king’s lips still twitched in suppressed laughter at being compared to a type of flatbread. Still, he was more curious about the allusion that the man made to his own past than he was about arguing the point. “Prisoners you say. You didn’t strike me as a jailor.” If it was said a bit dryly, then it was because he was starting to suspect the man’s history to be bloodier than his own. Maybe that was to be expected though for someone who had lived as long as the skeleton across from him. Truthfully he wasn’t even sure how old someone had to be before their very skin had left them, but that was a question for later in their conversation.
Barnabas could only sigh when the man lightly teased his use of the word Dominant again. Perhaps it was time to clear up that little misconception. “I’m perfectly aware of how you’d define it, but in this context I only mean that I have Odin’s power. There won’t be another Dominant of Odin until my death.” Or perhaps he would be the last considering that Ultima was ready to claim his vessel in Clive Rosfield. Dominants likely wouldn’t be needed anymore in the new world. It was a strange thought.
He finally had a name for the stranger, as well as a title. “The Rust Baron,” he echoed thoughtfully. “It has the sound of a legend to it. You seem to evoke fear then.” That wasn’t always a bad thing. Fear brought respect and it often kept people away who would otherwise bother you. The king himself could only tolerate a few. “Barnabas Tharmr,” he introduced himself in turn, seeing as Mikkel had given his name. He didn’t include any of his titles as he would have back on Valisthea. It didn’t much matter here whether or not he was the king of a country that no longer existed.
Mikkel of course questioned what had made him take this will back from Ultima right before he had died, which brought Barnabas pause. Nothing was forcing him to answer of course, but perhaps it was time to unpack what he hadn’t really wanted to examine yet since coming to Zephon. If it was the questions of an undead stranger that brought that self-reflection about, then so be it. Stranger things had happened. “He sought to reign me in while I fought his chosen vessel. He was worried that I would kill him,” Barnabas explained reluctantly, one hand settling in on his hip. “However, the man gave me the best challenge that I’d seen in decades. I’d almost forgotten the the thrill of the fight.” He really would have killed Clive if he hadn't bested Barnabas instead. Even if that would have ruined Ultima’s plans, the king hadn’t cared in that moment. It was hard to stomach, but it was also hard to feel guilty whenever he remembered that battle. Truthfully it might have been the first time that he’d felt anything in years.
“Do you ever find that the years have made you apathetic?” It was hard to find people who were his elders anymore, but now that he had, perhaps the man would have some wisdom to impart.
Although brief, that bout of aborted chortling did not go unnoticed. It meant to Mikkel that the man was starting to learn, though that kind of wisdom probably had to erode its way through several strata’s worth of sedimented religious indoctrination and the queer circumstances of his revenancy. Whatever was awaiting on the other side was bound to be interesting enough to be worth a revisit, but you had to let the decades do their work first.
“Curious that, most people object to the baker bit instead.” As he said that, he raised a gloved hand to his head and turned it a few times. It was a little remembered fact that skeletons did not in fact have palms the same way people who still had flesh about their person did. Once you got past the carpals, it was just fingers all the way to the tips. Kneading dough became therefore rather more challenging without some external support. “Anyway, I’m a bit old school, you could say. When you’re old school, you always get some poor buggers knocking on your door – or knocking it down, really – to try to vanquish you in the name of goodness, justice, their kingdom – and it’s always a kingdom, never an empire or a republic – or any divinity you can think of. Or even bandits, once in a while. In the meantime, there are times when you’re in need of test subjects or human sacrifices. So, when they just deliver themselves to you without you even asking, do you send them back? No way.”
Of course, there were other circumstances under which he would find himself with guests unexpected and otherwise. A bunch of notables from neighbouring lands that he’d kidnapped at some point from one reason or another, the odd prospective understudy, countless runaway youths… And it would take all day to go over them, though there were a couple of anecdotes worth a retelling, like the time when a random princess somehow managed to sneak into his lair and tested no less than seven different beds in about as many different cells and firmly believed there were seven versions of himself called Michael, Mickey, Miguel, Michele with a k, Mikhail, Mitchell, and Cornelius Algernon “Grievous Bodily” Harmsworth. That one had been trouble.
“Odin,” he repeated. “Alright, I know that one – big guy, always on horseback, very martial.” Until his death, the guy had said. Mikkel decided to hold on that thought and promised himself to address it later, because that was getting ridiculous. But Mister Flatbread had decided in the meantime to get to a bit of good old brown-nosing, and Mikkel would sooner be found dead(er) than with his pants up for that – you had to respect some nice villainous flattery. It was just good manners.
“Indeed. For over a thousand years I have struck fear into the hearts of the common people. Some, I made rare. My name is featured on hundreds of ballads and many a chronicle, on dozens of epics and countless pieces of actually quite deranged literature that thumbs its metaphorical nose at basic notions of anatomy of any species.” And now that he was on Zephon, even he could not fathom the latest inevitable developments. “He who allowed the non-flying to fly, a prodigy of technology and magic alike, now an enemy to all! He who in hindsight is not very good at anagrams yet dares you to find the differences between these two paragraphs! And– Yeah, and so on and so forth. Charmed, I’m sure.”
“Indeed. For over a thousand years I have struck fear into the hearts of the common people. Some, I made rare. My name is featured on hundreds of ballads and many a chronicle, on dozens of epics and countless pieces of actually quite degenerate literature that thumbs its metaphorical nose at basic notions of anatomy of any species.” And now that he was on Zephon, even he could not fathom the latest inevitable developments. “He who allowed the non-flying to soar, a prodigy of technology and magic both, now an adversary to all! He who in hindsight is not very good at anagrams yet dares you to find the differences between these two paragraphs! And– Yeah, and so on and so forth. Charmed, I’m sure.”
Finally, Mr. Flatbread – or rather Barnabas recounted the tale of his reclaiming of his free will. It was rather short and perhaps more anticlimactic than expected. Yet, at the same time, it felt fitting. He who embodied Mr. Big Warrior Guy with Sword and Spear and Horse, taking back his freedom for the sake of a bit of fisticuffs. A warrior through and through, truly. Well, Mikkel considered in the traditional way that led one to conclude a thought with “I guess”, as long as emancipation was in the picture.
“Yes and no,” he said in response. “Or to better explain: when you die, your body and mind no longer force you to… care. Care for things that would have mattered to you as a human, or a dwarf. Survival, mostly, and what it takes you to achieve it as an individual or species.” Society, for example. Family, reputation, duty, companionship. “Yet, it does not prevent you from caring either. You are simply free to choose what you want to focus on, everything else be damned. It’s quite liberating, though I’ll admit it takes a while to really get to this stage. Didn’t realise it myself in the first few years, I have to say. Anyway–”
–and now came the knot to the handkerchief that he’d made earlier.
“You said you are going to be the Dominant of Odin until your death. But then you became undead. Then Ultima’s chosen vessel killed you. And now you’re here, alive or undead. Look, I am probably putting way more thought into this than I need to, but: what?”
[attr=class,bulk] Mikkel stated that most people objected to the baker bit over the jailor bit, which just made Barnabas shake his head. He felt that he was starting to get used to the skeleton’s particular brand of humor. “I’d only question it because I doubt you have much need for food.” Apparently he’d had prisoners over the years to keep alive, so the baking could have been for their benefit. Unlikely though, since Mikkel complained about the type of people who would come to bother him. The casual way he mentioned human sacrifices once again gave the impression that the skeleton was more dangerous than his personality would let on. “Should I be offended since I ran a kingdom?” Barnabas asked with a faint smirk before zeroing in on one word he had used. “Experiments…what exactly were you researching?” Likely nothing particularly moral or ethical, but It wasn’t really his concern what the man had gotten up to in his own world.
Mikkel knew of Odin, and Barnabas brightened as he described him as a big guy on horseback. “That would be me. Though clearly not the version you knew. Strange that the concept would carry over between worlds.” Perhaps god had a hand in it after all, even if Mikkel would likely argue otherwise.
The skeleton—or the Rust Baron apparently—also outlined a few of his legends. His longevity was honestly impressive, and he probably had a fascinating view on the rise and fall of different empires. As usual though, he made light of the entire thing. Perhaps humor was the only way to survive an existence that long without completely losing one’s mind. Unless he’d already lost it long ago. Actually, that was the more likely option considering he repeated the same thing twice and challenged him to find the differences. “Does anyone usually play along with that?” Perhaps his prisoners, but they might not have had much choice in the matter.
Still, he took Barnabas’ question on whether age had made him apathetic to everything around him seriously. One line in particular struck him. That he was free to choose what he wanted to focus on now, everything else be damned. “That…wasn’t really the case for me before, but perhaps that’s why life had lost its luster. Here though, you could be right. I’ll have to consider what I want to focus on for myself without Ultima’s guidance. Thank you.”
He was actually genuinely grateful for the insight, so he just sighed when Mikkel immediately ruined the mood. “I don’t think there could have been another Dominant of Odin while I still existed, but as it happens, I did pass my power on to Ultima’s vessel when I died. My magic is lessened considerably now. I doubt I can still fully prime into Odin, though I may still be able to manage a semi-prime.” He suspected that was also why he hadn’t been able to summon Sleipnir since appearing here. Creating an egi was beyond his magic now, which was the only reason he had chased down Mikkel himself in the first place.
“...Come to think of it, why sneak into this town?” He asked, glancing a bit dubiously at the man’s “disguise.”
“Right, I don’t.” Certainly not akashics, at any rate. Some form of energy remained a necessity; what changed with undeath was the nature of that energy, as well as that of the method of its procurement. A lich only needed a tiny amount of magical energy to function, and a lich could only become a lich because they trained themselves into having lots of it and using it very efficiently. It was as if an animal learnt to sustain itself by doing nothing more than breathing. “Hey, just a funny little trend I noticed,” he added, quietly acknowledging Barnabas’s past as king. Mikkel gave the possibility of a former viziership a moment of consideration as well, only to admit that he did not feel a whole lot of slime from the kid. There was rather a touch of martial hubris, and you could not get kinglier than that. “Anyway, research. Lots of things, actually – you would not believe my bibliography – but since you sound like you want to know about the experimentation on living beings, think about the investigation of what even constitutes human sacrifice. Variances in rituals, their optimisation, amount of human to be sacrificed, what is the bare minimum that may still be recognised as human by the beneficiary of the sacrifice. And so on and so forth.”
He allowed some time for the information to sink in, and for a curious person’s imagination to do its job. It was a shame that he could not read people’s minds to see what images they could conjure without visual aids. He waved his hand again. “Lots of content, not a whole lot of relevance, and I could not bring my work with me to this world anyway.”
Instead, Barnabas raised an interesting point: some… some elements of his world carried over to Zephon. Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh – all of them were as much of a part of this world as they were of his native one. Apparently, they were part of different ones as well.
“Clearly this did not apply to the… spirits? Let’s call them that. To the spirits we seem to both know. My money is on what we call the Rift between worlds. I think it’s got to do with this fun little phenomenon.” Mikkel shrugged. “A bit odd that they seem to share the same names and general physiognomy across worlds, eh? Yet you notice the small differences, like Shiva’s cup size. I already have a hypothesis or two that I might explore about that, actually. Well, three, if you count padding.”
Hypothesis one, the spirits, if one could call them that, travelled across the Rift and between worlds much more freely than anything else in existence could. You could summon most of them into battle, for the void’s sake! Hypothesis two, they were all different emanations of one original version of the spirit that existed somewhere in the Rift itself or in one of the many worlds.
Still, Mikkel’s knowledge on the topic had always been remarkably lacunose. It wasn’t as if, try as he might, he could never pierce the secrets of the Rift. On the contrary, Mikkel did dedicate a handful of years to investigating it, which was why he knew anything about it at all. He then realised he had found out enough to know better than try to pry any further. Scratch the dangers of merging entire worlds with one another – that would have been positively thrilling – poke enough holes in the all-too-gossamer fabric of space-time, and you were bound to end up in one of them yourself eventually, and good luck getting back to any kind of world after that. It was second only to the Void itself in his list of topics not to touch with a six-foot pole.
But now, well, now he was well past that point, was he not?
“You’re welcome. You gave me an idea on what I want to study next, beside this world itself. And I believe this answers your question about why I’m here. With that said, may your future tribulations be a source of my entertainment.”
[attr=class,bulk] Mikkel confirmed that he had no need to eat, which raised a host of other questions, but perhaps he sustained himself purely on magic at this stage of his life. Barnabas himself certainly didn’t eat as much as he once had, so he let that point slide for now. It wasn’t as important as the man’s other comments. The experiments he described, on the other hand, painted a rather grisly picture. He could almost see the appeal from a curiosity standpoint, but he was certain that most people would be horrified to hear of it. “I suppose that could in theory save multitudes of lives in the future. Assuming that you determined a full human sacrifice isn’t necessary.” Now, the participants in Mikkel’s experiments likely weren’t willing, and it certainly wasn’t saving their lives. Barnabas didn’t bother to get upset over something that had happened a world away though. He hadn’t even mustered the energy to care about the experiments being done on bearers in his own kingdom, so this was even less of a concern.
Mikkel also shared that he had a theory about why so many concepts between their worlds carried over, and Barnabas was honestly interested in the knowledge that the skeleton seemed to have over this so-called rift. “You speak of it like it’s common knowledge, but I’ve yet to hear of this rift between worlds. I’d be curious to hear your hypotheses.” He paused for a moment before feeling the need to clarify. “Except perhaps for the one about the padding.” Considering the undead man’s sense of humor, it needed to be said.
Mikkel accepted the king’s thanks for giving him his insights on longevity, and he also clarified that he was traveling around and studying Zephon. “Once a researcher, always a researcher?” Barnabas asked with a slight twitch of his lips before giving a more genuine laugh when Mikkel said that he hoped the king’s future trials were a source of entertainment for him. “I’ve yet to see what any of this new world’s warriors have to offer, but I look forward to finding out.” There seemed to be an implied farewell to Mikkel’s words, and Barnabas had never been one to overstay his welcome, so he straightened up and nodded to the skeleton. “Then next time we meet, perhaps you’ll have gleaned new information from your studies. And perhaps I’ll have adapted to living in a world without God…”
He still didn’t know if Ultima was here or not, but the possibility was looking slimmer by the minute. Barnabas still wasn’t sure how to proceed with that in mind, but he had plenty of time to decide.
Mikkel gave a noncommittal shrug in response. He said it already: it really depended on whom you were sacrificing to, and what you were asking in return. His interest nonetheless lay with those entities who would require a life to be taken, and therefore establishing how much one could strip from a life while making sure it would still be recognisable as a viable sacrifice. Or, in simpler terms still, how much human, dwarf, goblin, or werewolf needed there to be? If you were on the run, you could not really bring along all of your prisoners so that you could continue working on your projects. You had to pack light.
“It’s the empty space between worlds, to make it as easy as I can. It’s what makes sure that they do not touch.” A membrane, as it were. Or the cheese between each hole, except the exact opposite of that. On second thought he was glad he hadn’t used that metaphor. “Still, I will need some more time to elaborate on them; see if they can become more than conjectures.”
Yes, once a researcher, always a researcher. It wasn’t even a sentence that needed further affirmation, not after saying that once one becomes undead, one gets to choose at last what truly matters to oneself. And now Barnabas understood it too – even if in his case it might have been more accurate to rebuke that once a warrior, always a warrior. Whatever his story had been before Zephon, Mikkel wished he had seen it unfold, for a fool’s errand or a twisted goal were no less entertaining than a clear path and more illuminated ambitions. After all, all stories worth their salt required but a wish.
“If it’s a warrior you are looking for, I found a mighty one in a pirate captain I met at the Pale Coast near the city of Torensten, all the way west from here. Also, there’s a colosseum over there, run by Tonberries. I should think there’s plenty of what you’re looking for there and yes, I do mean it. You’ve gotta start somewhere, eh?” He raised a skeletal arm to the west. “Shortest way is through the Kahiko Valley, if you don’t mind a hike or two. Or you could take the long way south, then west and up north again. You still have a mountain range in the way though. Anyway, should you look for me again in the future to talk about the progresses we will have made, I dwell at the Pale Coast myself. Farewell, then!”
