Army of One

( nier automata | alien manifestation [vocals] )

In her dream, she approaches the goddess' crystal throne, and she crystallizes with it: frozen in twenty-one years of age, frozen as the rebel soldier who has brought the moon down, frozen with her beauty her sin her redemption and her hubris. She walks with the eternal youth and loneliness of one giving up on the world in order to save it. She raises her proud head, walks out as she kisses the inert dead air – then soars above the winds, an army of one.

How much longer? Lightning Farron wonders

Dimly, fallen again cracked and bleeding from the cliffs of time-worn and polished Valhalla

Marble, pale green and iridescent as the millions of human lives entangled in timelines

Flashing past searing eyelids. In those barely discernable dreams she can never touch

Breathes her sister, her adopted human family, the partner-child she can't watch growing up

And the pilot-father she can't witness growing old.

The dragon adorned in pulsing ruby and luminous garnet hunts the tips of her gloved fingers

With spite and hellfire, a murderous rage left brewing for thousands of human life cycles,

And she has to put a stop to it. She will put a stop to it.

How much longer? Lightning Farron repeats

With conviction, and with every unchanging hour and year

(except the invisible scars and loss of joy and memory that accumulate under her skin)

The answer becomes more and more clear.

(She ceases to dream about forever as she learns to charge immortality over and over.)

"You cannot defeat me," Caius states as one immersed in the full weight of chaos and unrelenting fate, unflinching dark steel and tumultuous violet eyes. "You are one and divine. I am human and many. How can your loyalty to something so distant and abstract defeat my love for every single Yeul that's ever existed?"

In Valhalla he always has a new body to bury.

In Valhalla she always sends her one visitor away.

When the same cascade of snow-white feathers constantly strays its color by the same pool of heroine blood,

Every day is a swansong.

Etro has no court; no ladies-in-waiting, no officers or generals, no lovers or family. The chant goes: Come, pity poor Etro, she is left all alone. Her blood pouring forth, in Chaos to atone. Queen of nothing, goddess of death — so let her be known.

She waits under the pure glowing rays of the temple, quietly pacing in the courtyard, guarding that which is invisible and untouchable. The goddess exists in repose; the knight remains en garde, her blade illuminated by – in equal amounts – her overlord's authority and obstinate will.

(Lightning Farron hasn't felt like Lightning Farron for a very long time.)

Come, pity poor Lightning, she's chosen to be all alone. Her blood pouring forth, battling chaos to atone. Knight of faith, goddess of loss – so let her be known.

Let me fight, she prays in tears she does not feel rolling down her numb face, let me make up for everything.

The grace that touches her diminishes her, turns her name into Light from Lightning. A symbol. It's enough for her. It's enough for her, twenty-one and relieved and oblivious, taking her sister into her arms without realizing the destruction of one third of cocoon. It's enough for her, she who has forced a child onto the ground instead of allowing him to pity the dead. If she can be anything other than destruction, any force to protect and serve at all, she'd fight for it.

But would you fight for a thousand years? Comes the inquiry, wordless and emotionless, almost a reflection on water. This is dedication without reward or end. You will bruise. You could lose. We might all inevitably perish, even if it would be at the end of days.

She nods.

I'd fight for a million.

(I'd fight for anyone and everyone that is not me.)

Promise that you'll remember me.

The actual crystallization feels like falling back asleep. Or has she ever been awake in the first place? Sacrifice. Pretense. A goddess' lifetime in Valhalla and it all cracks and falls into pitiable pieces when she cries out for a fragment of her human heart. Pathetic. Meaningless. Unforgivable.

What's an army of one in a war that cannot be won?

(Serah's verdict, left to drift and echo through the historia crux even as Lightning descends into a perpetual slumber not unlike death: everything.)