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year 5, quarter 3
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Yuna hadn’t thought that the idea of telling Celes about what had happened here would be so uncomfortable for Caius, but it appeared that she had been mistaken. Then again, she supposed that it was obvious how close the two of them were, even if she had only ever met them separately. Maybe Caius was afraid that the blonde general would act as disappointed as Yuna had, but she suspected that wouldn’t be the case. Yuna herself didn’t think she would have reacted as harshly if she had only heard about Caius acting in self-defense. Seeing his expression during the act had just been something else entirely.
“You were protecting Vordun. She’ll understand,” she murmured, before letting the subject drop. It seemed that she couldn’t stop making her friend feel uncomfortable today though, as he edged away from her comparison of the Original Sin’s leadership to the Dragonblades’.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest that you weren’t co-leaders,” she amended, clasping her hands in front of her and dipping her head to him slightly in repentance. “I was just thinking out loud. I suppose they’re not all that similar.”
Yuna hadn’t really felt this awkward around Caius since their first introduction, and she hoped that the feeling would pass soon. She thought of the blond man as her friend at this point, so she assumed that they both just needed some time to digest what had happened here today. Getting captured and being threatened with torture and a slave auction would have been scarring enough on its own even without what had happened to Darlene.
“At least we shut this location down,” Yuna offered with a faint smile. “Coming here helped a lot of people. I think we should try to remember that, and maybe go get some rest in town? I assume we both need it.”
Her brief moment of optimism was trampled on when Caius offered to accompany her to Provo, and Yuna hesitated, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye as she wondered how best to let him down. “Ah…Well…” She was a terrible liar. She knew it, and her cheeks felt hot as the seconds stretched on. She hadn’t thought of anything to tell him about what she was planning to do in Provo, because this whole Darlene mission had been spontaneous for her upon finding the notice that he’d left at the Dragonblades’ hideout. There was no way to refuse his company on the fly without making him feel bad, and after another moment of uncomfortable silence, Yuna clasped her hands together and gave him a deep bow.
“I’m sorry! I know you told me to avoid Ardyn, but I can’t anymore.” Raising her head again, she gave him a slightly shame-faced look that she tempered with resolve. “I met a woman who claims to have been his fiancée. She wants my help to seek him out where we met in Provo. I couldn’t refuse her.”
It was foolish to actively look for Ardyn when it was just her and one other woman who walked with a cane. Yuna knew that from her one horrifying encounter with the man, and Caius must have known it far better than she did from the stories that he told about what the red-haired man had done to his world.
“I know I should have said something sooner,” she said a bit mournfully. “If it’s your turn to yell at me now, then I won’t interrupt.” Sitting back on the grass, Yuna looked at him primly and awaited her judgement.
Maybe Yuna should have felt hidden behind her sequined mask, but something about the nature of the masquerade made her feel more exposed than usual. The last thing that she had expected upon returning from Provo was to find an odd invitation written in verse that had been delivered to the Dragonblade’s headquarters for her. Caius and Celes had each received one as well, which had only increased her suspicions of the unusual request. Their group had more than enough enemies right now. Problems with the Original Sin had only gotten worse recently, and Yuna was still reeling from her odd encounter with Ardyn in Provo. She wasn’t sure that she would enjoy a masquerade with the mood that she was in—though she did greatly enjoy dancing—but she didn’t mind attending for investigation purposes. Not when she had a bad feeling about what might happen there.
She hadn’t however counted on splitting off from Caius and Celes to cover more ground.
Yuna did her best to hide in a corner as she watched her surroundings and tried to identify someone suspicious. The problem was that literally everyone looked shady in these circumstances, and she was certain that she looked no better in her sleeveless dress stitched together with different shades of blue and green. Her mask matched her outfit with the blue half over her one green eye and vice versa. She had decided to embrace her Al-bhed side while no one knew who she was, and it was that thought more than anything that eventually drove her away from the wall. She was someone else tonight. She didn’t have to refrain from investigating closer.
Yuna cautiously picked up a glass of champagne as she circled the dance floor, but after one sip, she set it back down with a grimace. It was fruitier and had a lighter taste than the wine that she’d shared with Ardyn, but the memories of that night were still too bitter. She didn’t feel comfortable indulging in alcohol again so soon afterward. She was still embarrassed by just how far past her limits she’d gone. Instead, Yuna steeled herself to find someone to talk to.
While walking around, she noticed several men asking women to dance, which caused her to perk up a bit. She loved to dance even if she didn’t usually get to outside of sending rituals, and surely she’d have a better chance to study people up close if she had a partner. Glancing around a bit hesitantly, Yuna’s eyes lit on a brunette boy who looked just a few years older than her. There was something that seemed vaguely familiar in his hairstyle and the shape of his face, but since most of his face was hidden behind a mask, Yuna wasn’t able to place where she had seen him before. Uneasiness pricked at the back of her neck, and she did her best to cover her staring by pretending to fix her hair that was pulled back in a bun. Could he have been one of the bandits? Was that where she’d seen him before?
Not wasting anymore time, Yuna approached the boy with a smile that she hoped reached her eyes before giving him a slight curtsy instead of her usual bow in the traditional Yevon style. She didn’t want to give herself away in case he remembered her too, after all.
“Excuse me, sir. I'd be honored if you'd dance with me.”
That was one way to test her suspicions at any rate.
The hostility in Ardyn’s response took her aback far more than it should have. She knew the sort of man that he was, and yet with how pleasantly numb everything was beginning to feel, she was speaking more openly than she had before. “Confident? No, not at all. That’s why I-” Her gaze met his then, and the hatred in those gleaming yellow eyes pinned her in place. Yuna stopped talking so abruptly that she almost imagined that she could hear the click of her teeth as her mouth shut.
“Perhaps you would care to experience it firsthand? I would be more than happy to accommodate.”
Her eyes flickered to the darkness gathering at his fingertips, but she didn’t trust herself to speak. Nothing she had to say would make a difference now anyway. His temper had flared, so he would either try to turn her and this entire bar into those ‘daemons’ or he wouldn’t, but that decision no longer rested with her. The chatter of the other patrons continued around them like no one had realized that their lives were in danger, but Yuna kept her eyes on Ardyn’s, afraid to move or even to breathe. She’d go down fighting for these strangers’ lives if she had to, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t waiting for his next move in horror.
The moment passed. The magic vanished from his fingertips, and Yuna let out a slight ragged breath as he turned to face the bar again. She hadn’t expected an explanation of all things to leave his lips immediately after that, and she frowned slightly as the words sank in. He wasn’t really dead then? The explanation was confusing since he had definitely reacted to the sending that she’d performed, but if Ardyn was to be believed, then he was simply a true immortal. She’d never encountered anything like that before, and although she took his words with a grain of salt, the possibility sent her head reeling. Still, it was his final bit of information that finally made her willing to speak again. “A sacrifice?”
The word left a bad taste in her mouth, but she wasn’t sure if she should ask for more details or not. She was walking a thin tightrope, and one wrong step was liable to turn him back into the monster that she’d met in the hospital. While she weighed both possibilities with herself, Ardyn seemed to return to his previous good humor as he once again turned his attention to the alcohol.
“Tell me. Have you known darkness?”
There was no good answer to that. It was a rhetorical question meant to back her into a corner and make her uncomfortable. She was sure of it and resented him for it as she clenched her fists in her lap. “I suppose that depends on your definition,” she murmured, keeping her eyes on the wine-stained glass in front of her. It might make him angry again, but there truly were different ways of looking at darkness. The depths of depression. The black heat of anger. “But I would say that everyone has to some extent. I’m certainly no exception.”
Her father’s death. Everytime someone implied that she’d only made it this far on her father’s legacy. The bodies that washed up on shore from Sin. Knowing that her own death came closer with each step forward. Not knowing what Sin was doing to Spira right now because she was stuck here.
Yuna knew that she shouldn’t have more wine. She needed her wits about her, and she was in the most dangerous company of her life. She should have been ready to fight him, but something in her had hurt with that last thought, so instead she snatched the glass off the bar counter and took another long drink of bitter liquid. This is what people did, right? Everyone was always so convinced that this made them feel better, so why wasn’t it working for her?
Yuna set the glass back down on the wooden countertop with a clink, her fingers clutched so tightly against the stem that she imagined that she could see her veins through the pale skin. “You’re right. I don’t understand your situation. But I do understand what it is to be a sacrifice. I was meant to die, and I would have by now if I hadn’t woken up here.”
She swiveled in her bar stool to look at Ardyn, her long earring jangling at the sudden movement. “Maybe I do take my duties too seriously now that I’m here. I’m sure that’s true. But if this was how we had met, then I wouldn’t have tried to send you.” She bit her lip, wanting to run from the bar again, but finding herself unable to until she’d said her piece.
“Even if it isn’t what you want, how do you expect me to just walk away after what I saw at the hospital?” Suddenly feeling tired, she let her hands slip from her drink as she stood up, the bar stool making a squeaking noise as it slid against the wooden floor.
“Please. No more games. Tell me your intentions.” Standing made her feel dizzier than she’d expected, and she blinked slowly as she had to grip onto the edge of the counter to stay upright. “Do you plan to toy with me until you take your leave? Or stop being so rude and finish this bottle with me? Or shall we get it over with and fight?”
While Yuna had attempted to lighten the mood with her joke about Celes, it seemed to have the opposite effect as Caius looked down slightly and seemed chagrined at the thought of the fierce blonde woman learning about this. “I’m sure she’ll react better than I did,” Yuna said a little awkwardly in an attempt to comfort him. “I’ve only met her once, but she seemed like the type to understand doing what you have to in the heat of a battle. Or to protect someone you care about that much.”
Yuna herself had been trained to let her guardians do the fighting for her. Against the fiends and sinspawn that they’d encountered on the road, Yuna had mostly been on support duty, though she’d always summon if something big enough came along that her guardians struggled with. She was still getting used to being on the front-lines. Honestly, that had surprised her about the Dragonblades at first—they let her fight like any other mage, and she had discovered that it was freeing to refuse to hide behind someone else. But in times like this, Yuna did have to acknowledge that there was still a gap between her and people like Caius and Celes who had always been fighting for their lives.
Maybe not as big of a gap as she’d like to think though. The image of the blood-stained Maester refused to leave her mind, and Yuna rubbed the side of her head a bit, wondering if she should bring it up.
Thankfully, Caius changed the subject by handing her the documents that he had been reading over this whole time, and Yuna glanced them over curiously while he gave her the summarized version. “So there are three lieutenants left,” she murmured thoughtfully. Honestly, the more that she heard about Darlene, the less that she liked. She sort of regretted giving Caius such a hard time, so she tried to distract herself by looking over the remaining three. Charon caught her eye more than the others, and she found herself tracing a finger over his name as she read over the details. Illusion magic. That might be difficult to deal with. Maybe if she cast Reflect on all of them before they went against him, then they’d have a better chance.
“The leader, the recruiter and trainer, and the mage then,” she summarized aloud as she finished looking them over and glanced back up at Caius. “It almost sounds like a twisted version of you, Celes, and I.” She mulled that over as she handed the papers back to him. “I agree, we should get these to Celes. It might take all of us going forward. I imagine they’ll step up their defenses now that Darlene is dead.”
Getting up, Yuna brushed off the loose grass that had clung to her skirt before turning to look at the blond man and the dragon. “I’ll be leaving for Provo soon on an escort job,” she admitted while not making the best eye contact.
(Could he tell that she was blatantly ignoring his warning to avoid Ardyn by helping Aera to find him? She certainly hoped not. He’d have every right to be mad at her if he knew.)
“But I’ll be back soon,” she promised. Assuming she made it out alive against that twisted unsent of course, but she wasn’t going to dwell on that now. “So if you learn anything about the locations of the other three, then I’ll be there. This has to stop.”
Caius had been reading the documents clutched in his hands while Yuna had been talking, and at first the action had really irritated her. It felt disrespectful--surely the least that he could have done would have been to pay attention. But as she finished up, and he glanced distantly at her and then back down, Yuna was starting to wonder if it had been more of a defense mechanism. She knew that she in particular liked to be doing something with her hands during difficult conversations. Maybe it was the same for Caius. Anyway, Yuna had plenty of other reasons to be vexed with him, so she might as well let that one go.
The blond man admitted that he didn’t really know where to begin, and Yuna frowned slightly as she listened closely to his explanation. She didn’t think that it was so odd that he wouldn’t feel anything towards what he’d done yet--plenty of people were numb after tragedies, and anyway, she hadn’t yet sorted out her own feelings on the memories that had leaked back while they were fighting in the prison. It would have been hypocritical to expect him to have everything worked out already, but before she could tell him that, he spoke up again.
“Oh…” Her lips parted slightly in realization when he admitted that he couldn’t see Darlene as human, much like the bandits he had known in his world. Why hadn’t she ever realized before that of course he’d have issues around bandits? She knew what had happened to him, but she had never connected the dots before. Yuna felt somewhat like she’d failed as a friend, and she nearly missed his final words because they were so quiet.
“Perhaps that memory always will haunt me now. And maybe I deserve it."
“Caius…” Yuna finally rose from her spot and took a seat on the rock next to him, looking out at the horizon where the sun was beginning to dip below the treeline. “...I don’t think you deserve that.” She glanced to the side to look up at him. “She wanted us to be tortured and killed. And she hurt Vordun just to get to you. You were protecting us. I get that. I don’t think it’s always wrong to kill someone.”
That image again of Maester Seymour spread out on the ground in front of her and her guardians. Wincing, Yuna glanced away, unsure of how to package that yet when she couldn’t remember why it had happened.
“I just think we should be careful with going that route,” she continued quietly. “It will make it easier to do it again next time. And I know you don’t want to be known for that.”
Not wanting to end on such a dour tone, Yuna shot Caius a faint, tentative smile. “I’ll give you a few hours head start before I tell Celes though.”
It looked like Yuna’s words had shocked Caius out of a stupor, and she bit her lip slightly when he looked a little hurt by what she’d said. Whatever had happened, Caius was still her friend, but that was why she wanted to talk some sense into him now. She didn’t think that she would have been so disappointed by his actions if they had been less close.
He nodded his head in terse agreement before wiping the blood off his sword and approaching the remaining bandits. When he told them to go, Yuna let out a breath of relief as she watched them scamper off. It felt like what Darlene had done to Vordun had awakened another side of Caius and he was only just coming back to himself. The blond man came back towards her and Vordun afterward, and Yuna frowned slightly when his voice sounded just as distant as hers had earlier.
“Searching for something?” She questioned, turning to watch him walk away, but he seemed pretty set on leaving the auction hall as soon as possible. He only paused when Vordun tried to follow him, patting him on the head and directing him to follow Yuna instead. Vordun seemed as unhappy with this arrangement as Yuna was, and she gently stroked the dragon’s scales as Caius disappeared further into the bandits’ lair. “Looks like it’s just you and me for right now, boy,” she murmured before reluctantly turning back towards the entryway.
After a few minutes of climbing, Yuna managed to get back up to the cliffside with Vordun, and the first thing that she did was crouch in front of him to examine where his throat was cut. Caius’ earlier spell had healed most of the damage, but she still sucked in a breath as she gently touched where the skin had been pieced back together. Vordun shied away from being touched in that spot, so Yuna did her best to soothe him as she cast some additional healing magic on him. He made a rumbling noise afterward that she hoped meant that the pain was better before he eased down into a sitting position, casting what she imagined were worried looks towards the bandit camp.
“You two sure are inseparable,” Yuna murmured, not sure if Vordun had understood her or not when the dragon slowly blinked both eyes at her. “What do you think? Should we forgive him?” In response, Vordun yawned and gave her a lovely view of razor-sharp teeth before he bumped her with his nose and went back to looking at the entrance to the underground. “…I’ll assume that’s a yes.”
Falling back on the grass, Yuna spread out her arms at her sides as she considered the sky. It was likely too vulnerable a position when enemies could still be lurking around, but since Vordun didn’t seem to smell any immediate threats, she wasn’t too worried. Anyway, she had a lot of thinking to do. They had only been underground for an hour or two, but it had felt like an eternity. Darlene really had been a terrible person. Trying to kill them was one thing, but she had relished in their fear and in Vordun’s pain. Not to mention how many lives she must have ruined through the auctions. She had needed to be taken care of, but was Caius right? Did she deserve death rather than jail? Yuna’s head hurt as she flicked through everything that had just happened, trying to piece things together.
By the time that Caius rejoined them, Yuna was sitting upright against Vordun, and she nearly lost her balance as the dragon rushed forward to greet the man who had raised him. Caius didn’t say a word, which worried her a little as he took a seat on a nearby rock. He had a collection of papers in his hands that he was skimming through, and she almost asked about them before he nodded his head at her, indicating that she should start. If only she’d settled on a direction to take this.
“If we could help it, we’ve always had people arrested before.” Getting to her feet, Yuna walked over to stand in front of him. “They’d do all that and more to us if they could, but we aren’t them. I don’t want to be anything close to them.” Her voice was rising of its own accord until she was reminding herself of Lulu rather than herself. “And it affects my work too. How am I supposed to heal someone who’s terrified of me and running away? I couldn’t do my part back there.” Yuna tried to soften her tone on the next line and somehow couldn’t manage it. "And I’m worried about you!”
She was a little surprised by her own outburst and touched one hand to her lips in embarrassment before crouching in front of the rock and looking up at him earnestly. “I’m worried about you,” she repeated in a softer tone. “I don’t think you’ll ever forget about her now. And she wasn’t worth that.”
Ardyn seemed amused by her downing of the glass of wine, and he chuckled under his breath as he reached for his own bottle rather than signaling the bartender.
“Allow me.”
Before Yuna could protest, he was refilling her empty glass, and she glanced carefully between his steady, gloved hand and the dark red liquid swirling into the bottom. If she was uncomfortable before, she was even more unnerved to be sharing a bottle with the man who had haunted her nightmares for weeks. This wasn’t at all how she thought this encounter would go when she had pictured their reunion. She had thought there would be blood, and Shiva, and more people turned into monsters just to taunt her. She had thought that she’d have to call on every spell she possessed as well as dive into whatever Celes could teach her with a dagger. And even then, she hadn’t really expected to survive, if she was being honest with herself. It was just her duty to send him or die trying.
Instead, Ardyn was being almost amiable, and something about that made her insides squirm when she looked at him. She knew very well what he was capable of, but it was impossible for her to attack a man who was just calmly sipping wine at the bar. She felt paralyzed, and she hated it.
He seemed to find her question about his motives a bit distasteful as his face went cloudy again, and her hand nervously twitched for the dagger hidden in her sash. After a moment’s pause though, Ardyn did seem to decide to answer peacefully, and a frown crossed Yuna’s face at what his words implied. Aera was dead too? Half a continent of travel together, and Yuna had never once noticed that the woman was an unsent. Still, there were more pressing things that Ardyn had said, so Yuna chose to focus on those.
“You want to kill the gods?” She echoed slowly. “Meaning…Shiva and the others?” For some reason, focusing too hard on the very idea of her aeons dying sent a spike of pain through her head, and she grimaced slightly, shooting him a surprised look when he called her arrogant for assuming to know his situation and what he needed. She’d been called similar insults by other summoners who thought that she got special treatment due to her father’s legacy, but she had never expected to hear it again in a tiny bar in Zephon by a man who wanted her dead. The absurdity of what her life had become almost made her want to giggle, but she forced that back quickly. If only the wine hadn’t left her so light-headed.
“Death is…different here than it is in Spira,” she managed instead. Hesitating slightly, she glanced over at him, deciding that while his yellow eyes gave little away, he seemed to genuinely want to know why she had taken such a personal investment in sending him. Yuna had no obligation to explain herself to him. She knew that, and yet…
Reaching out a hand, she gently took her glass in hand as she took a smaller sip of wine this time. Somehow she had expected it to taste of poison now that she was sharing a bottle with him, but if anything, the liquid went down smoother now that she was on her second glass. She wondered if this was how lobsters felt in their pots as the fire was increased so slowly that they barely noticed.
“Where I’m from, souls can rarely move on by their own will,” she murmured, gripping her glass between her fingers rather than setting it back down on the bar counter. “One of a summoner’s jobs is to send them on to the farplane so they can find rest. If they stay, they normally just become fiends who prey on humans. But sometimes…if a person is particularly strong-willed or has a strong enough desire to stay, then they do retain themselves completely. But their humanity becomes more and more warped over time.” She refrained from looking at Ardyn as she took another sip of wine to steady herself.
“When we first met, Aera couldn’t talk enough about what a good man you were. And I believe that. I really do.” Yuna finally looked over to him, adjusting her sleeves before clasping her hands in front of her in a desire to keep them steady. “…So please. If my experiences have made me misunderstand something. Then correct me.”
Caius followed Yuna’s lead as she cut off the rest of the bandits with a fire spell, and the two fled down the hallway back towards where the sickening stage had been. Near the front of the prison, a jailer's office sat currently abandoned. While Yuna wouldn’t normally have given it a second glance, the gleam of her staff propped up in the corner prompted her to stop and slip inside. Letting out a sigh of relief, she sheathed the dagger and hid it back under her sash before taking the staff back in her hands. While it was much heavier than the dagger was, she somehow still felt lighter than she had before.
Ducking back into the hallway, Yuna noted with a frown that Caius hadn’t waited as he continued rushing down the hallway with Vordun. That wasn’t like him, and worry settled into her stomach as she hurried to catch up. He was usually a lot more focused on his companions and the people who needed saved than the enemy, but she wasn’t sure that had been the case anymore ever since Darlene had hurt Vordun. Maybe that had affected him even more than she had realized. She hoped that he could take some time to himself after this. Caius seemed like he needed it.
The three spilled out into the auction hall, and the room descended into chaos as Vordun let out an angry roar that echoed around the tall cavern. The ones who had come there to buy the people lined up on stage fled towards the exit, and while Yuna wanted to stop them, she had no way of wrangling so many people without summoning Shiva. And she refused to summon in such a crowded place. That was just asking for there to be casualties.
The bandits themselves took a much more arrogant attitude than the buyers. They hung about laughing as they sent several spells towards them, though Caius blocked most of them with a technique that she wasn’t sure she had seen him use before. Meaning to ask him about it later, Yuna sent him a grateful smile, though it slipped off her face as soon as Darlene stepped out onto the stage. The muscular woman openly taunted them, and Yuna tensed in place as she threatened Vordun again. Yuna edged to the side to stand in front of the dragon as Caius raised his gunblade in front of her. She had expected the shot that rang out around the auction hall, but she hadn’t expected the silence that had followed. Confused, Yuna glanced between Caius’ deadly expression and the bandits on stage, before she slowly raised a hand to her mouth as blood began to drip down Darlene’s chest.
“Caius!” She tried to grab her friend’s arm as he leapt onstage, but she was too late as he engaged the three mages grouped around their leader. What would she have said anyway? I thought we were only here to arrest them? I probably can’t heal that? She could die? The look on his face suggested he already knew all that, so Yuna gripped her staff before climbing up onto the stage after him. At this point, it was just Caius and Darlene locked in eye contact as the woman gripped her wound and struggled to stay on her feet.
“You’re right, I don’t kill people.”
Yuna relaxed from her place behind him. She couldn’t see his face from this angle, but she noticed the tense in his shoulders before he raised one his blades.
“I kill monsters.”
Yuna’s heart leapt, and she stretched out an arm more for his sake than for the woman at his feet. “Don’t!”
The sword fell before the word was even fully out of her lips, and Yuna glanced to the side at the sickening crunch followed by more silence. It felt like no one in the auditorium even breathed in that moment before Caius broke the silence by moving over to where the captives were still tied up. He released them, and though Yuna noticed a few were injured, no one that she tried to stop to heal would listen to her. They gave her the same scared look that they had to Caius before they simply kept running. In that moment, Yuna couldn’t blame them, even if it made her feel small.
Silence fell again as the three of them were left alone with Darlene’s body. After a moment, Yuna let out a breath as she walked past him to crouch next to the grisly scene. Even cruel people like Darlene deserved a sending. Yuna’s heart wasn’t really in it, so rather than stand up to twirl her staff, she just brought it down in front of her and closed her eyes. She had never really been certain if sendings had the same power here as they had in Spira, but her dance had affected Ardyn, and it always made the lamps flare like it had back home, so she planned to continue doing them even if this world didn’t have a farplane. Maybe it would still help people find peace somehow.
Afterward, Yuna stood and made her way over to Caius, warring emotions flashing across her face. Regret at not stopping him in time. Anger that Caius had felt he had to do that. Frustration that he had scared the people they had come there to save.
(Guilt that she knew Darlene had deserved it. And really, what right did she have to lecture him when Maester Seymour’s blood was on her hands?)
Yuna stopped in front of him, looking up at her friend with her lips pressed together as he examined the blood running down his sword. “You’ll have to clean that before it stains.” Her own voice sounded distant to her, but she didn’t take it back as her grip tightened around her staff down by her waist. “We should leave before they get reinforcements.” She hesitated before speaking with a firmer voice. “But when you’re ready, I want to talk.”
Yuna noticed the older man’s smile widening the longer that she left her drink untouched, and it rankled her a little. He was enjoying this. Of course he was. He was a remarkably human unsent for how old he must have been, but his actions at the hospital showed that he was still becoming a fiend. She wouldn’t have expected anything else from him.
“You are an Oracle if not in name than in practice.”
“I’m a summoner,” she corrected him firmly, though she had a feeling that her explanation would be lost on him if an Oracle was the closest equivalent on his world. Ardyn seemed determined to find her to be one and determined to hate her for it, but she at least felt that she had to try. “Yes, I passed Shiva’s trial and earned her aid, but she is no god in my world. She was just a human who sacrificed herself.” From Aera’s explanation at the Crystallus Divider, it sounded like these ‘astrals’ had created their world, which made them infinitely different than aeons. Still, she did have to admit that it was curious that the two shared a name. If she lived long enough, then Yuna hoped to look into that more.
Ardyn’s gaze drifted to hers, and Yuna felt the urge to shift her stool away further at the dim glow of those yellow eyes. All the humor had fallen from his face as he said that he held no interest in the sending that she hoped to perform for him, and as Yuna hesitantly flicked her eyes up to his, she wondered if she was imagining that he looked a little more tired than he had before. The moment passed, and Yuna glanced away, watching the way the lamplight flickered on the rim of her glass.
“I wouldn’t expect you to want that,” she murmured. “There are many like you where I’m from. If you felt at peace with your death, then you wouldn’t still be here in this plane.” It felt odd to speak so openly with an unsent. She didn’t normally have many chances to talk with one so casually before she had to send them, and it felt a little ironic that she was only doing so with Ardyn because he was the most powerful that she’d ever come across.
Ardyn said her name as he compared her to an Oracle that he had once known, and Yuna didn’t really like the way that her own name dripped darkly off his lips. She liked it even less when he referred to her as indoctrinated, but she didn’t really have a chance to respond before he changed the subject to Aera again.
She blanched a bit when he casually said that the blonde woman had asked him to infect her. It sounded like Aera was doing even worse emotionally than she had thought, and Yuna frowned when Ardyn waved off such a sacrifice as love just being ‘curious.’ “Yes. It’s curious.” She dug her nails into the skirt around her knees again before continuing. “But not just with her. You didn’t do as she asked.” Perhaps that wasn’t what Ardyn had wanted her to take away from that story, but Yuna was starting to get more comfortable in treading the line with him as the conversation went on. Whether or not that was a mistake had yet to be seen.
Ardyn poked fun at her for not having touched her drink yet, and Yuna bit her tongue, her fear of him at war with her distaste for the man beside her. In a poor show of her self-control, her dislike won out.
“I knew a man like you once too.” She just wished that she could remember who, but she felt the similarity in every careless glance and insincere laugh that left her paralyzed. “Very presumptuous in who he thought I was.” She was no longer sure if she was telling off Ardyn or the man from her past whose memory made her want to curl in on herself, but either way, she lifted the glass to her lips and took a large gulp of wine.
It wasn’t the worst thing that she’d ever had, but it wasn’t very good either. For some reason, it was served warm, and the sour, bitter liquid felt heavy on her tongue as she swallowed. The aftertaste was so harsh that she shuddered a little, but she forced herself to keep going until only the dregs remained. Setting the glass back on the bar afterward, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she looked over at him. “Thank you for the drink.”
It felt like something had died in her mouth, and the fumes had left her a little light-headed. Still, it was only one glass. Yuna didn’t know much about alcohol, but Ardyn had a large bottle next to him, so that must have been one serving of wine. She reasoned that one glass shouldn’t affect her mental capacity at all if that bottle was what it took to feel something.
Yuna felt like she had already lingered next to Ardyn for too long, but she couldn’t resist a question. “If I could ask,” she murmured as she tore her gaze away from the remnants of wine settling in the bottom of her glass. “If not Aera, then what keeps you from going willingly to the farplane?”
