INDOMITABLE
aethere.
NOTE. Completely random. It may or may not be finished. Set ten years pre-game. Yay for muse. Tired, so while fic may be good author's note is already complete crap. Thanks for reading. Have a nice day. Oh dang, my air vent smells like potatoes.
one.
It first came to Ashelia in a dream...she, all grown-up, to still be privy to such excitable things as dreams in anywhere but her war chamber!
It was astonishing: the idea that she was invaluable to the kingdom went hand in hand with the possibility that something like an Elixir of Immortality could be made and utilized. Foolish dreams, those: Ashelia was not so precious to Dalmasca, regardless of her image and her uncanny resemblance to the Weeping Madonna of Rabanastre's primary cathedral. The idea astounded and flattered her simultaneously. However, for all the flattery in the world Ashelia could never have forgotten that at twenty-nine, she had three children...three heirs. She had named the first after her second oldest brother, her favorite of eight, the second after her mother's mother, and the third after her father's father. This was base tradition among Dalmascans.
Tobias was the eldest, a boy who longed to be a knight despite his youth. What queen would knight a ten-year-old? He was already a page - a well-liked one among his masters for his chivalry and dedication. He could almost be Rasler reincarnated. He had the same blonde hair and dogged dertermination. Once in a while Ashelia even toyed with the idea that his father was not Eaden, King Consort of Dalmasca, but the groom of her first marital union. While fairly impossible, considering chronology, Ashelia liked the idea Tobias' life was Rasler's next.
In contrast her daughter Elsimer couldn't resemble her father more. Above a high-bridged nose perched telltale green eyes that sparkled with mischief; and framing those features were short, childish dark curls. She looked mature, but as stubborn as she was she could hardly be beaten at the crafts of court women. Ashelia no longer these arts took for folly. The proof was in Elsimer herself. (She had thus far managed no less than fifteen advantageous marriages between their house and that of Rozzaria and Archadia, suspending civil war indefinitely.) If her political accomplishments were nothing to boast of, then certainly her shrewd thinking, uncanny for her age, was. All housewives should be blessed with such quick wits. Elsimer, however, would probably never be a housewife; or even a wife at all if she refrained from arranging a suitable match for herself.
Ashelia could hardly wait. Wedlock, as all monarches knew, was the strongest of alliances.
The youngest of them all was Gabriel, as fair and bonny as his heavenly counterpart, except for when his temper got the best of him. On such occasions, if he were a normal boy he would have missed out on supper, but the court doted on him so much his mother couldn't help but do the same. He was barely a toddler at three; even smaller than normal because of his premature birth, it was a wonder he had survived his time in the womb at all. Ashelia sent blessings up everyday for his health.
The upbringing of her children, along with other such matters that all queens had to have experience with, was a matter of careful steps. She could not anger her councillors. She could not anger her generals. She could not anger her children, nor her servants, nor her allies. She could not anger any one of them...yet they were all so hard to please it was a wonder she could get through the day without at least one assassination attempt. And she had had those, too. They had been short-lived under the guise of a particularly vicious rumor. According to said rumor, she'd intended to allow Rozzaria to overtake Dalmasca and make it little more than a province on the outskirts of the vast Rozzarian empire.
For all their dainty ways, Rozzarians were ambitious and had no limit to their zeal, Al-Cid least of all. He'd proved to be rather disappointed on her wedding day to find her husband was not the take-charge sort and would rather let his wife deal with the political shim-sham.
This was to be expected. She had done little than to encourage her "friends" to keep in close contact all summer, promoting such filial devotion. The heat was harsh, the summers a test of survival within Dalmascan borders. It was all she could do not to go around in her underwear in order to keep cool. During a Dalmascan summer, you could scarcely understand why any sane merchant would want to travel across a land of sands that, in the summer, simmered even after sunset. Such heat must have afflicted her mental capacity rather than her desire for carnal satisfaction.
(Most Dalmascan queens got it over with and had a single boy. Ashelia had two and a girl besides. Gabriel bore traces of Balthier's lackadaisical persona, but she doubted even he had the gall to come into her bedchamber and rape her so unceremonially.)
Other than the dreams, little more than speculation sustained her.
If trade increased she would ask young Lord Tunstall to oversee the sands and ensure no merchant accidentally wandered into the Zertinan Caverns during a trip to Rabanastre.
Ifthe number of market riots went down she might pay a visit to the bazaar and see if she could get her daughter a gift for her governess Aliena.
Ifthe most prominent members of Clan Centurio magickally turned into fat ladies with grapes hanging from their headdresses and started singing she might laugh and have them brought to the palace to see if there was anything to be done about the rest of the Hunters...yes, there were dozens of lewd possibilities.
Mainly, however, it was the dreams.
In one, she stood on a cloud. Her bare feet were so lengthy she could reach up and she would have plunged a star into darkness with a careless wave of her hand. In the end the cloud evaporated just as she was managing to grab a star without extinguishing it; and she fell curled in a ball with a star held close to her breast. Even as she was singed by its heat Ashelia had woken up to find that she was holding the head of her husband to her breast. She was shocked in realization moments later: the hand that did not hold him close was bleeding where the cuticles had bit hard into the palm.
In another, Balthier stood on her windowsill inviting her to see the pleasures of the world. When she made a move toward him, he drew a knife and sliced off her wedding ring. It melted into a pool of acid on her floor. Leaping down from his post, he was mildly surprised at her gasp of horror. Rather than staring her feelings he made to bend and kiss her hand in such a gentlemanly fashion Ashelia felt that she had to forgive him...and the moment she gave him the pardon and went past him to close the window, he let his blade sink in her stomach so deep the point came out the other end. She had bled jewels and he had taken them, opening the window again and jumping out.
In a particularly vivid one, Ondore had come to visit. Ashelia greeted him robed in slashed magenta silk, thrown over this shoulder and that hip. She bade him enter her sitting room so that she and her maids could make merry with him. Appalled at her, he'd almost left, yet he was so entranced by her lady-in-waiting, a viera with features of a dragon rather than a hare, that he let the viera cradle him in her arms like a child. This filial display of affection continued until Ashelia dumped wine at him and the viera attacked her. They ran about the room in a delightful little tramp. Then Ashelia tripped suddenly over a jut in the carpet. The viera tore away her skimpy clothing, meaning to use it to strangle her until Rasler came through a door that had not been there before and tried the robes on for size. They smouldered at his touch until Ashelia had to look away in case she saw too much. Then he was burning. The viera chose to push him out of a window into a fountain, giggling while Ondore disappeared along with the rest of the room. It was just she and Rasler while Ashelia could only watch as they had fun - always an outsider to such intricate schemes as these.
Not all of them were in the bed. Some were in the presence of her court.
Ashelia had learned to sleep with her eyes open. When she did her children dictated minor matters, such as whether she should attend Lady Aaliyah's next banquet or skip it in favor of Baron Sarohn's. Mainly it was Elsimer, though she was only eight. Tobias chimed in once in a while. Gabriel distracted foreign courtiers with his child's antics. He idolized his father. To impress him, Gabriel had a tendency to show off magick tricks he had learned secretly. The last Firaga had had been quite a fiasco, singing the Rozzarian court mage's coattails. Kir-Rael, the mage, had been hired to teach Gabriel how to control his talent. Elsimer looked on and learned little things here and there from her brother in return for sweetmeats.
That same mage had advised her to listen to her dreams, especially those that were unusual. No one else knew what to do if she dreamt of Espers; and yes, that she did. Adrammeloch taught her to contain lightning in her jewelry one night. The next Shemhazai would allow her to look into a pool and see the past. They all had something to share.
From Ultima she learned nothing, for the Seraph still dreamed of a world ruled by Espers, but Zodiark was not as resentful and taught her how to speak to fiends. Giruvegan was no longer a mystery - the wondrously learned Famfrit told her its every blueprint, from the Great Crystal's massive hidden halls to the lairs where fiends lurked inside Giruvegan's deepest bowels.
As experience had taught her, the things she garnered from these dreams were not foolish. Bhujerba, slowly crumbling away as magicite mines were chipped away at, was affixed in a constant position to make airship travel easier by use of Chaos' Chaosjets.
Apart from the Espers, her old friends visited her in her dreams. She often saw Vaan and Penelo scraping clouds off the rims of storms in their daring escapades via airship and sky; and at the same moment elsewhere Balthier would be haggling with a merchant over a new gun while Fran surveyed the rest and purlioned all the adequate ones. Basch preceded over a batch of new recruits for Larsa's foremost unit in his army - his ambassadors, acting as both diplomats and spies. Meanwhile, Al-Cid had ten wives so far, and they quarreled like old women constantly.
Dreams such as these visited Ashelia for a total of nine years, beginning not a month after her succession to the throne and seemingly neverending.
Her only escape - and it was not much of one - was her court and its' blind, crazed merriment.