Summons, Espers, Guardian Forces, Aeons.

Chapter 1.

By Sir Diddimus

(I do not own the rights to, nor did I create, the names, characters, or anything about Summoned Monsters, Espers, Guardian Forces, or Aeons. The makers of Final Fantasy and/or Squaresoft own them)

Bahamut's eyes were closed. He was seeing visions, seeing the world of humans pass him by in an endless passage of time. He saw evil men plotting destruction, heroes being born. Inventions created, cities rising and falling. Technology. Magic.

Magic. Magic had once been a problem for his kind. He remembered the days when humans had drained his powers for the stuff.

'Bah, magic', he thought, opening his eyes and shutting the visions away. The humans had since found new means to acquire magic, whether through study, spherical jewels, or drawing it from the earth. His kind was no longer employed for such means.

Moving towards the nearest seat in his dark chambers, he sat with a resounding sigh, thinking about how he loathed and loved humans. In the passage of time, humans had lost the ability to easily call upon him, or any of his kind. That power had dwindled to a relative few, the ones that he respected. The summoners.

Summoners were friendly, and they respected him in turn. They knew they were calling on an ancient and powerful being, and did so out of good will. He remembered many of them, but he loved one above all the rest. The green haired girl. She had esteemed the Espers so much that she had come to live with them.

Bahamut smiled. Rydia. He spoke the name in his mind again and again, glad that she still lived among the Espers. She had helped them to understand humans more, to not hate or fear them.

Her time had passed in the world of humans, her friends and companions long dead, but she didn't seem to mind. Funny, how she put on such steel resolve so as not to hurt the Espers feelings. The Espers, who had power beyond her imagination.

Bahamut looked about his chambers.

'Well, power beyond imagination doesn't mean anything when you're stuck wherever those damned powers put you.'

 The Espers had been moved about many times in their lives, through human means as well as their own. After the infiltration and fall of their city many years ago, they had moved to an isle deep under the earth, and from there to the Void, and from there to their current location, a dimension only accessible to the most powerful of sorcerers.

Unfortunately, the new locale didn't exempt them from being called upon. Nothing seemed to ever change that. The summoning would change from time to time, the process, execution, and location, but never the fact that if the Summoner willed it, it would be done.

'Well, there it is,' thought Bahamut, stretching the pair of legs that came with his humanoid form. He preferred the form only because his large dragon body could not fit into his chambers. Otherwise he loved to fly free with Pandemona's wind flowing against his massive wings, feeling freedom from the world of humans.

But not right now. Now he was cloaked in thought, from time to time letting the visions seep into his head of what would be coming soon. The future, or rather, his new Caller. Or Summoner. Whichever the humans called them currently.

Peering farther still, eyes now shut again, he saw the next point in which his kind would be called upon. It was a world of technology once more, with magic readily available but secondary to the humans. He saw a floating building first, and then a vast city of technology. Next he saw a bleeding moon, (Which he sighed upon seeing, missing his old home) a looming black castle with tentacle-like chains, and a red ship that resembled him.

"Well at least they have taste," he said aloud, eyes still shut, trying to peer further. He saw monsters running free, (As usual, the damned lucky fools) a town built upon a ruined bridge, half in the water, and then finally what he was looking for. An Esper. He focused, trying to form the Esper's shape in his mind.

The image was blurred. All he could see, or feel rather, was the creature's power. It left a kind of residue on his vision, but not a shape. He opened his eyes suddenly, and then breathed quietly a moment before shutting them again. Forcing the other images out of the vision, he focused entirely on the image, trying to get a shape, a color, an element, anything.

Then it came. All shape and texture faded from the vision's world, and the shape shot into focus. He looked puzzled at the creature a moment, but then recognized it as an incarnation Titan sometimes took on. Or incarnations, rather. All Espers had some power to change form, and Titan's was to either be his huge, muscle-bound self, or to split into two separate yet controlled beings, known as Sacred and Minotaur to humans. All Bahamut could see in the vision was Sacred, but he didn't worry much. His two forms weren't always near each other. It is an advantage to have two sets of eyes looking in two different places.

Bahamut opened his eyes and shook the visions out of his head, and stared at the floor of his chambers, a silverish cobblestone design. He wasn't much surprised by the vision, but that didn't stop him from being uneasy. 

'Same deal then,' he thought, 'we can dwell freely in their world until some daring "hero" comes and defeats us in battle. Great'.

He stood.

'No sense in dawdling,' he thought, 'best to go assemble the whole lot and tell them we're about to be slaves…. Again.'

By 'the whole lot' he meant the rest of the Espers, and that would mean a major pain in his ass. Besides hearing the same old complaints, he couldn't stand the literal fiery temper of Ifrit or the hint of sadness in Shiva's face whenever he went to tell them a new age of calling was upon them.

Ifrit and Shiva were never exempt from the calling. While some of the other Espers for one reason or another weren't called upon every time an age of calling began, the fire demon and the ice goddess were always the first to go. Bahamut was hardly ever excused from the calling himself, but he knew that since the time of the first summoning Ifrit and Shiva had had to use their powers for whatever human called to them.

And this new age didn't seem to single out the calling to just Summoners. Yes, he would have to be cautious. It had been years since just anyone could bind an Esper to his or her will, and they would not be happy to hear it.

Bahamut threw his dark cloak over his shoulders and made his way out of his chambers, and into the relatively open paths of the Esper dimension, making his way to the commons.

'Well, at least they created a ship in my image,' he thought on the way.

To be continued….