Chapter Text
“Go, Cidolfus.”
The words of the man who was somehow both his King and not hadn’t left his mind in the months that had passed since the disastrous end of their mission in Rosaria. Nor had the image of Shinryu’s terrible coils, imprinted against the burning sky.
Barnabas had…not been pleased by the outcome. Raging like the storms that often rolled in off the waters of the Narrow to rock the foundations of Stonhyr—built atop the remnants of Veldermark—where it clung to the craggy shoreline: cold and brutal. What had once been a gradual slide into fervor transforming into a wild downward spiral. His fixation upon ‘the Blasphemy’ and the missing Rosfield—a boy who seemed synonymous, to him, with something he called Mythos, though what the significance of such a thing was Cid couldn’t begin to fathom—consuming his mind more and more each day until it seemed religious fervor was the only thing left behind. Until he was no longer the man he’d chosen to follow, after Odin had found him in the wake of his first Prime and offered lofty promises of vengeance against Alexandria. Promises he’d come to accept had never been anything other than lies from a zealot who only had room in his being for devotion to some arcane god Cid couldn’t begin to comprehend. One that had left him a cold, Akashic pillar of pale skin and silver eyes. Devoid of the sucking regret that had lived in the same eyes, looking out from behind the snarling form of Shinryu’s semiprime.
The eyes of a man who’d done something terrible and lived to see the other side.
Barnabas hadn’t done anything enough beyond the pall of any other ruler in the Twins to bear being distinguished as ‘terrible’.
He would. Eventually. Of that much Cid was certain, now. A sick, creeping dread taking hold of his bones which seemed to find its source from somewhere deep within him. Perhaps the same place that housed his thundering Eikon.
Barnabas wanted the Dominants for something. It was why he’d come for him. Why he’d come for Benedikta, the newest addition to the castle at barely fifteen who’d been dropped into his lap to train without so much as a word of warning after she’d awakened to Garuda. Why he suddenly seemed so fixated on Shiva, though how he could possibly know who they were or that they’d awakened Cid couldn’t begin to guess.
The only thing that had stopped him from throwing caution to the wind moons ago had been the headstrong, stupid confidence that he could handle himself. That, even mad, even Akashic, even having been the one who’d taught him everything he’d knew about combat both Primed and not, he’d be able to handle himself against Tharmr should it come to blows.
That had changed a fortnight ago, when he’d stumbled on an abandoned infant tucked under a rainberry bush and hadn’t been able to bring himself to leave her there. He was no longer alone in Stonhyr. Now, there was someone else for Tharmr to target should he deem him out of line. Someone else that couldn’t protect themself.
He was leaving Bennedikta behind.
She wouldn’t come with him, already too tied up on the gossamer net of the Black King’s pretty promises. Attempting to convince her would only give the game away. And then his own escape would be doomed before an attempt could even be made.
Still, it filled him with guilt.
Thunder growled amidst the clouds above him. The air was full of the scents of wet stone and petrichor. Mid stirred in his arms, beginning to babble, and he hushed her. Carefully pressing the infant deeper into the folds of the heavily-cowled cloak which concealed both his face and his weapons. The docks of Stonhyr weren’t well traveled at that time of night, and in that sort of weather, which aided his efforts to remain unnoticed. The unfortunate side effect of the matter, though, was that were he to be seen it would draw immediate suspicion and, as such, the entire situation was better left avoided.
Cid could only pray that his contact had managed to remain unmolested at their agreed upon meeting point.
The Einherjar loomed on the near horizon, its hulking shape instantly recognizable even in the moonless night and its mast rising high over the surrounding rooftops. Unmanned, but for a skeleton crew left to mind it, though Cid knew well that those included sentries. The rhythmic lap of water against the hulk’s titanic sides and the whisper of wind through its jet-colored sails—even tied back to the yardarm whilst not in use—would be more than sufficient to smother his footsteps as he passed, using the vessel's shadow to conceal himself from the watching eyes above. Still, Cid found himself holding his breath as he went.
A breath that he only fully released when he arrived at the far end of the shortest dock and found both rowboat and ferryman seemingly intact. Still, wise as he’d grown to Barnabas’ tricks—and the tricks of his egi—and couldn’t be certain he wasn’t about to set his foot in a snare.
Yet.
“My town.” He said. “The name. What is it?”
It was difficult to tell in the dark but, despite both of them being well aware of the necessity of this little dance, the other man’s face seemed to pull down in exasperation at the waste of time they could be using to escape. “Naigrave. A little fishing village on the Orterran Coast.”
Barnabas knew he was from the outer continents, just the same as he was before his people had fled to Ash, but Cid had never told him the specifics. Partly out of caution he’d never been able to shake; caution that may have been linked in some way to Ramuh. Partly out of shame for the family he’d left behind.
“My son’s name. What was it?”
It had been less than a year since the tragedy had happened and he could hear in the other man’s voice that the pain was still there. But it was a smart question to choose because it was an answer that Barnabas, and Sleipnir by association, wouldn’t care to learn.
“Alastair.”
“Right, well…I’d say we’ve pissed away enough time here. Now that we can both be certain we’re who we say we are and aren’t, in fact, a shapeshifting horse in the service of that mad bastard up in the Keep, shall we be getting on Lord Commander?”
“Not Lord Commander anymore,” he said. “Just Cidolfus. Cid, preferably.”
“ Preferably you’ll determine what name you’d rather be called by in the ferry. At this rate we won’t make it out of sight of land before first light.”
Nerves were plain as day in his voice and so, despite knowing they had plenty of time left to them before the sun arose to make it to the other side of the Narrow, Cid took mercy on his companion. Adjusting his grip on the swaddled infant in his arms to ensure he wouldn’t accidentally drop her, he stepped down off the aging dock. Boots meeting the floor of the rowboat with a thump, muffled by the water beneath them, and rocking it back and forth. Otto had started rowing before he’d had the chance to properly sit down, the little wooden craft pulling rapidly away from Stonhyr, and the whole of Ash beyond it.
How was it that he always ended up fleeing, blind, toward the horizon in hopes of finding a better place on the other side?
How was it that he hadn’t learned, after coming to Valisthea, that no matter where a man went in the world it was all the same?
“Let me know when you get tired. I’ll row for a while, then.”
His only answer was the slap of oars against the waves beneath them as the water rapidly grew deeper and more treacherous, though it seemed that Otto had heard him over the ocean’s roar because a handful of hours later he traded the oars for holding Mid—how the kid could bear to sleep while they were being tossed around like loose cargo Cid doubted he’d ever understand but, all things considered, he supposed he ought to count his blessing where they came—and left him to his turn at rowing.
The only words exchanged between them were those necessary to facilitate the trade of duties, and the silence that stretched in the interim—broken only by the snarl of the sea—was tense. More often than not Cid found his companion scanning the horizon behind them. He didn’t have to ask to know what he was looking for. Once, he even turned himself to ensure the black form of The Einherjar wasn’t bearing down on their position, swift as the wind and impossible to escape.
They never saw a trace of it.
Soon, as color began painting sunrise in the sky, the coast of Storm came into view. The glittering spire of Drake’s Tail rising up into the clouds. Sand scraped the belly of the rowboat as they came to rest on the shore. With no intention of ever returning to Ash and no further need for the craft neither one of them bothered to pull it out of reach of the waves.
“What do we do now, Cidolfus?”
It wasn’t hard to understand why Otto would look to him with that question. Of the two of them, he was the one with experience washing ashore of Storm with no plan—though he’d been a stowaway, then, aboard a merchant’s ship—and just winging it until he’d found his way. Though something told him that, this time, given his past associations with Waloed, Sanbreque wouldn’t be a smart place to go to.
The Crystalline Dominion was too close for comfort.
Once, Rosaria might have posed a good option. Elwin, after all, was a reasonable man and the Rosfield history of granting far more dignity to bearers than any other nation in the Twins would have served them well in pushing even greater reforms. Perhaps, even, to the point of creating a kingdom where those born with magic could be as free as any other man. But the Archduke was a year dead, now, along with both his sons and most of Rosaria’s army and the woman who’d crowned herself Arch Duchess was the polar opposite of what her husband had been.
No doubt her efforts to ingratiate herself with the Empire that had laid her country low would see them hogtied, gift wrapped and delivered to Oriflamme in short order.
The northern territories were gone. Consumed by the blight. And Dhalmekia would ask too many questions. Which only left one choice.
“Kanver.” Cid said. “They’re independent of any other nation and, should any of them demand we be turned over, they’d have little reason to comply. Besides, they owe me for the part I played alongside Tharmr in helping them secure that independence in the first place. It’ll give us somewhere to breathe. Somewhere to plan until we find a better place, more out of the way.”
“Kanvers a long way away, Cid. Even if we manage to secure transport.” Otto said. “Not a journey to make without supplies.”
“Aye.” Cid said, somewhat reluctant as he turned to look back at the towering Mother Crystal. “Well, let’s make a supply stop first then.”
Not much was open in the first moments after dawn had come, as most who owned businesses in the area had either not yet risen from their beds or just returned to them, so their first order of business after making it into Twinside was to wait for the markets to rattle back to life without looking suspicious to any guardsman who might happen to be on control. No one came to bother them, though Cid could never quite shake the sensation that he was being watched and, at one point, thought he saw a small figure darting around a nearby corner. But the glimpse had been too short to determine if it had been a person or a cat.
When the stalls finally opened he made certain to collect bags for them to carry their supplies in—Chocobo porters or not—before anything else. Handing one to Otto before parting ways to collect what they needed with an agreement to meet back at the entrance. Keeping his hood pulled up over his face and an eye on the sky in search of ravens, he hadn’t expected any trouble. Still, without fail, it managed to find him as he was negotiating with a merchant over the price of cured meat. Not in the form of confrontation with the city watch but rather a small hand deftly slipping into the coin purse at his belt.
Unfortunately for the perpetrator, Ramuh left him quick as lightning and it didn’t slip back out. Gloved fingers wrapping around a thin wrist and halting the effort made at escape with a yelp; more surprise than pain, as Cid had been careful not to grab the kid that hard.
An orphan, it turned out, and not one it was easy to rattle the thieving tendencies clear out of. A little blonde boy of only eight with big scared eyes and a build thin enough that he’d likely been alone in those streets for much longer than he’d have liked. If Cid were still the ruthless monster that Barnabas had done his damnedest to turn him into, he'd have abandoned the kid there to fend for himself.
Hell, maybe he should have. They already had enough to worry about as it was. Were already slowed by having one child with them, and certainly didn’t need another.
He didn’t.
Otto looked at him like he’d lost his mind when he showed up at their agreed meeting location with not only the supplies he’d been tasked with but the child as well, wary-eyed and clutching the apple he’d bought him as if it might vanish at any moment, but all he did was sigh heavily and shake his head. “I see your reputation for adopting strays wasn’t unfounded.”
“Gavs a good lad. He’ll behave. Won’t you?”
The boy gave an enthusiastic nod, mouth too full of fruit to respond.
Travel wasn’t easy.
It wouldn’t have been even without the children, though Gav proved the useful and enterprising sort. Not only happy to help with managing Mid but with running ahead of them to scout for danger, though Greagor knew the first time he’d done it had scared Cid a good deal more than he’d admit.
There’d been no sign of Barnabas, nor of Sleipnir or any trace of a search party from Waloed.
He’d never be convinced that the Dominant of Odin would simply let him go. Not of his own volition. Not unless he was truly so engrossed in his fevered fantasies of Mythos, his obsession with hunting down both his other self and Clive Rosfield—who Cid didn’t himself believe had survived the tragedy at Phoenix Gate, even with the monstrosity that was Shinryu having come to his aid—that he had nothing left to spare for anything else.
Not unless it played into whatever mad ravings he might seek to call a plan. Though Cid didn’t like to think on the implications of that, so he simply refused to. Instead focusing on the situation at hand.
Had they gone straight to Kanver it likely would have taken less than half the time it had. As it was, in an effort to avoid recognition and evade both any search for him by Waloed that might be going on beyond his awareness and the efforts by the likes of Sanbreque to track him, or else send Bahamut—child though the Dragon King might well be—after him. And by consequence their all-but-religious adherence to the backroads—the long abandoned sort the likes of which were only traveled by bandits, these days, and dotted with settlements so long abandoned that they no longer appeared on most maps—had not only their travel taken nearly a month before they’d even reached the Velkroy but it had gotten them ambushed.
They were too well trained to be common criminals. Stealthy enough that he hadn’t noticed them before they’d struck, and had no way of knowing how long they’d been tailed beforehand. Swift enough that he hadn’t been able to even consider a Prime.
He wasn’t certain what he expected when he regained consciousness but being clapped in a pair of crystal fetters was certainly in line with it. Waking up in a bedroom, rather than a cell, with an unfamiliar boy sat on the floor with Gav over a game of cast tiles while feeding Mid—who seemed perfectly at ease—out of a cloth topped bottle hadn’t, though.. He looked up abruptly, as if realizing he was awake, and their eyes met.
The same immediate sense of recognition he’d felt the first time he’d laid eyes on Barnabas, though at the time he hadn’t understood what it had meant, shot through him. This boy with another Dominant. And not just that.
He was the Phoenix.
“It looks like one of Rosfield’s boys survived the fire after all.”
Probably not the wisest course of conversation considering the boy’s—Greagor, he couldn’t have been more than twelve–expression darkened like a storm cloud. Blue eyes sparking. “Both of Elwin’s children lived, in defiance of our mother’s best efforts in conspiring with the Empire. My brother through intervention by Shinryu. And I through the intervention of my Undying after…” for a moment his expression threatened to break “it wasn’t his fault.”
That didn’t seem to be aimed at him. Cid didn’t have the attention to spare for determining who it had been aimed at because his mind had caught on what else he’d said. Dredging up another memory, smudged with smoke and ash, of what had been visible in the glimpse he’d caught of the burning keep. The great horned beast who’d stood as tall as the castle’s towers, yet Shinryu had managed to lift with ease with but a single claw.
“That thing was Clive Rosfield?” He hadn’t heard much of the Arch Duke’s eldest son. He knew him as the first Shield, but that was all. “A second Dominant of Fire.”
How was it possible?
And how did it relate to whatever the hell ‘Mythos’ was?
The Phoenix, despite its reputation as a gentle Eikon—at least by the standards of Eikon’s in general—didn’t have a gentle Dominant. Despite being wafer thin and pale as driven snow—likely poor in health even before being attacked by his sibling—the kid didn’t miss a beat in drawing a sword and shoving the point under his chin.
Gav attempted to voice a shaky protest but didn’t step forward, eyes darting toward the door. A moment later Cid realized what he was looking at when a cloaked figure—a woman not much older than Rosfield was—stepped forward to take Mid.
At least the kid was mature enough to realize babies and weapons didn’t mix.
It was a fine sword, he couldn’t help but notice. Well made with a shimmering silver blade.
“Your companion claims you have disenfranchised yourselves from the Hermit Kingdom, but I don’t find myself convinced. And I won’t have you speaking of Clive until I am. Bad enough Drekar has hold of him. The last thing he needs is to be hounded by Odin as well.” For someone that looked like they could have been given considerable trouble by an unarmed moogle, the kid certainly knew how to make himself sound threatening. “What did Waloed want with Rosaria? I know you were present on the night of Phoenix Gate. Herjan claimed so, as did my brother and the Shields that were with him. Were you involved with the plot as well?”
It took Cid a moment to put together what he was being asked. “No, lad. Even plunged into madness Barnabas would have never agreed to working with Sanbreque. Not after they attempted to back Veldermarke in the war.” He said. “I wasn’t given much information. In the last handful of years the Black King hasn’t been much of one for explanations. But I was told we were there to hunt the Dominant of Shinryu.” Maybe they’d been there for the elder Rosfield boy as well, though how Barnabas could have known what he was before he’d awakened he didn’t know.
“So it was trouble Herjan brought with him.” There was palpable distaste in the way he spat the name.
“That’s what he was going by, was it? I suppose it makes sense. Easier, I’d imagine, than explaining to your father what a perfect double of the Black King was doing in his court.”
Rosfield froze, then. Every facet of his form suddenly stiff with dismay. “You truly mean to suggest that the Dominant of Shinryu—.”
“Is Barnabas Tharmr. But not the one I served.”
An unknown element, even to the man he’d fled from. Potentially dangerous. And vanished, now, to the Goddess only knew where presumably with Clive Rosfield—with Mythos—in tow. It wasn’t a concept that Cid much liked. Nor did his captor, it seemed, as after a momentary naked panic, his expression hardened into a steely resolve. The blade was pulled back but Cid knew better than to assume he was out of danger.
“Jote,” he addressed the cloaked woman beside him, “take the children back to Otto. Inform Cyril we’re not to be disturbed for the next several hours. It seems the Dominant of Ramuh and I have much more to discuss than I initially imagined.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” She bowed and, after taking Gav by the hand, exited the room. The door swinging shut behind her with a very final sounding click, leaving him stranded beneath the piercing gaze of pale blue eyes.