Years prior...
Kratos noticed the sky and its obstinacy – the darkening umbra of cumulus clouds and the static in the air. But not a single drop of rain. It hadn't rained when Anna died either. It hadn't even rained on the day that Colette Brunel's Journey of World Regeneration failed. And now it wasn't going to rain for Dirk's funeral.
For a small town, there were many people gathered there, forming a fair-sized mass of ebony – but not a single comment toward the Seraph's Cruxis garb. Whether they'd believe it or not, he wore his best, from his stiff collar down to his boot buckles. He knew that he was unwanted, at best, by the townspeople, but so what? So was Lloyd. So were Colette and the Sage siblings and the rest of their failed and fabled team. It felt like an act of barely obscured pity that they were even going through the motions of this ceremony. But they owed it to Lloyd, at least.
Lloyd.
The pale-faced brunet stood on the other side of the burial tract, across from Kratos' left side. He was flanked by Colette, Raine, and his grief. The drawn, haunted face was devoid of feeling, leaving his eyes as the only windows to his distress. How old was the boy? Seventeen years? Kratos almost flinched when he had to recalculate the math. It had been some months since they had disbanded after the catastrophe that was their journey. Since then, the Iselians beelined back here, to their home. Very predictably, the town couldn't welcome them home with open arms and celebration – only those close to the Journeyers treated them as fairly as before they had left, namely Frank and Phaidra – for Colette and company bore Iselia's disgrace which was to be shared by all of Sylvarant. The small, western country town acquired recognition, but it was for the wrong reasons. Under the circumstances, the mayor acted as the mayor was expected to act: actively contrite when it came to public disclosure, ostensibly magnanimous when it came to the Journeyers, and shamed and redfaced when it came to reality. But life went on.
Though the Journey came to an early close, interrupted midway by unforeseen complications that brought it to an irrevocable halt, the good that had been achieved was marred by the bad. In the end – if you wanted to imagine that the Tower of Salvation's collapse was any kind of closure – each gain seemed nullified by a particular course of inaction, and the only new world that was spat out was a recycled Sylvarant stretched tight with uncertainty. The history books would mark it a failed expedition, in any case, both for the people of Sylvarant and for Cruxis, depending on which history books you read. Kratos knew that. He also understood the precariousness of the situation.
When the Tower fell and Derris-Kharlan came to light, the Cruxis organization implemented its master stroke; it withdrew from the comet, relocated on Tethe'alla, and publically declared itself a commonwealth with allegiance to the Church of Martel. Tethe'allan legislature balked. The king found nothing recorded in the annals in keeping of sanctioned protocol for such a phenomenon, for Cruxis wasn't declaring itself an organization but a people, and the people were of a race neither human nor elf – nor half-elf, even! – and the proof was in the sky. The comet of Derris-Kharlan was a globe, not a country – or at least something closely translated to a world by the king's scholars. That made Cruxis an independent body, yet it couldn't be classified as invasive because it had immediately allied itself to the Church – a Church, Kratos knew, which had been puppeted by Cruxis all along. But the public didn't know that. A compact was petitioned by the king on behalf of the body politic of Tethe'alla, and Mithos dictated that Cruxis was, indeed, an "autonomous political entity" whose formal status and relationship to Tethe'alla was undefined. Its direct relations with the Church of Martel gave Cruxis automatic bid for sanctuary, like an estranged alien people sheltered by religion, and though the monarchy itself was closely linked to the Church, the wedge of Cruxis' position ceded a pseudo- separation of church and state. Ironically, the people of Cruxis were dubbed "holy beings."
The whole thing gave Kratos a headache. And what was Mithos doing with Cruxis now, during this open-ended state of civil conflict that it brought upon the people of Tethe'alla? Reconvening its energies toward… something else. Something suspicious, if Kratos could hazard a guess. Mithos had never been bolder than he was now, and he burned with a madness because Colette never succeeded in becoming Martel's vessel. And the Tower had fallen, but the World Tree was dead. Truly, so much of the good was blemished by the bad.
And to top it off, it still wasn't raining.
Kratos ran his garnet eyes over bark and birch and tree canopy. It made sense, though – the weather, that is. What did the sky care for a dwarf? Wasn't subterra its antithesis? Didn't its wind never touch the halls of the underground? Kratos stared down at the casket in its grave. Dirk was being buried in Iselia, which the townspeople likely considered an honor since Dirk had never dwelled among them. Somehow, though, Kratos felt strongly the opposite. Perhaps this burial location wasn't a gift from the townspeople to Lloyd but, rather, a gift to the townspeople from Lloyd. Kratos speculated that the offer had perhaps been brandished like a double-edged sword by the mayor, and Lloyd, without needing subtlety to be spelled out for him, accepted it. The boy understood to tread lightly, appear grateful, and avoid disturbing waters that were best left undisturbed. No sense in making any more rifts with these people. But Kratos – and probably Lloyd, too – still thought that the dwarf would have wanted to be buried separately from those who exiled his son, just as he had lived separately.
Then again, Dirk wouldn't have wanted to be dead in the first place.
The longevity of Dwarf reckoned a lifespan longer by far. So, then, why was Dirk dead? It couldn't have been due to natural causes. Kratos suspected foul play. Furthermore, Noishe wasn't present. This whole funeral was superficial in the Seraph's eyes, nothing more than a cautious dance between two betrothed individuals who were not in love. It wasn't fair to Lloyd. And still no rain.
Glancing toward his son, Kratos upheld his muted expression. Lloyd's liquid brown eyes, deeply drained and sad, never met his. Instead he stared down in front of him, not at the casket but at the ground. He was orphaned once more, but he knew that neither Iselia nor Kratos could embrace him, and the pain of losing Dirk was quickly becoming a hollowed out anguish – more quickly than Lloyd felt Dirk was properly due, in fact. Maybe he was bone-weary from the long-suffering path that he'd trodden since that fateful day of the Oracle. Maybe the stigma that had been placed over his head from their Journey's shortcoming had taken more out of him than they'd thought. True, he had saved Colette – or barred her from her own decisions – but mana remained deficient in Sylvarant.
The rest of the ceremony proceeded mechanically. For humans, Kratos observed that there weren't a lot of tears. Some of them seemed more nervous than anything, while others were plainly and understandably uncomfortable. Oh, Colette's eyes were streaming, but Lloyd gave no words, just stood there somberly and endured, his lips set in a thin line. Dirk was a good man and a better father than Kratos could have ever hoped to be. These and other like sentiments were felt by more than just Kratos and didn't need to be expressed in words by Lloyd. When it was over, Kratos quietly paid his respects, spoke to no one, and left as he had come – and maybe his vanishing presence was noted, and maybe not. He had a lot to think about – too much – but he wasn't sure that his stay in Iselia hadn't already been too long.
Taking his leisure, he reached his destination well before the sun hit its zenith in the sky. It was a deserted building – rather, a tall house – on the southern outskirts of Iselia. Presumably, it was once a House of Salvation, but infrequent traffic shut it down. Iselia itself was a sparse country community, rural and simplistic, and there really just weren't enough travelers this plot of the world to warrant the operations of a House. So it was left for abandoned, its only remaining function serving as a wayfarer house for the occasional squatter. Regardless of its exploitation, it was not in a state of neglect. Drifters had counted it a blessing and had kept it serviceable, tidy, and homely, and Kratos would make use of it the way that others had before him.
It was two hours after sundown when the rains finally came. It was as if the floodgates had been pounded upon all day and, just when it felt like they'd never open, divine persistence had won at last. The skies unlocked a torrential downpour, like a startling springtime deluge and one unaccompanied by thunder or lightning. It was pure. Pure and painless. Probably the first thing that day that was. Kratos listened to the weather's pulse as it pummeled the roof of the House in slanted sheets of rainfall. He lay upon his back in the front room's clean but mismatched reupholstered couch that was the color of moss. His eyes looked jaded as they continued to skim over the tome that occupied his right hand. But he seemed at ease now that his starched overcoat had been discarded and he was comfortable in a loose, sleeved tunic as white as tonight's moon when it could be glimpsed in pale snatches through the rainstorm. His train of thought escaped to briefly wonder of Noishe and whether the creature was caught up in this when a knock sounded at the door. Kratos lifted his head from the pages that he had been reading and shot an inscrutable look toward the oat-colored front wall. With the lantern light, he had made no secret of his private invasion of the House. But on a night like tonight, he couldn't blame anyone their choice of refuge. Pulling himself to his feet, Kratos made his way across the room to the oaken door and pulled it open.
The last person that he expected to see was Lloyd. Yet there Lloyd was, blinking up at him from his hunched stance as he tried to ward off the rain with his shrug. He was soaked through. His shirt even looked heavy as it swallowed up the water and stuck drenched to his skin; his black shirt. Evidently, he hadn't changed from the funeral attire, nor was he wearing even a practical cloak to protect himself from the elements.
In one terse moment, Kratos and Lloyd studied each other. Then Kratos stepped aside with a tug of the door handle. "Come in" was all that he said.
Without hesitation, Lloyd obliged. His short, choppy brown hair was matted to his forehead any which way, and he shivered in spite of himself when the first wave of warmth struck his gooseflesh skin. Sopping, he stood, rainwater dripping from him onto the faded entrance mat. He said nothing.
Kratos had turned his back on him immediately and disappeared into the adjacent room where he mechanically drew hot water for a bath. His mind did not reel at his son's unexplained presence – not really – but he was sure that, out of all the things that Lloyd could be expected to do during the hours following his dad's funeral, trekking through this miserable squall to reach Kratos shouldn't have been at the top of the list. Not only that, but Kratos wasn't sure what was expected of him. He just slipped into autopilot.
When he reappeared, Lloyd hadn't budged from his spot at the door. The boy turned his eyes to Kratos, and Kratos couldn't help but notice how miserable he looked. Without further ado, the Seraph spoke, "You'll find a change of clothes on the stool. Help yourself." And then the man made himself turn away from the wretched image of his son as he stood there with plaintive eyes and stooped shoulders.
Lloyd gave Kratos' back a long look. Then he, too, walked away without a word and disappeared from the room.
The bathwater was hot enough to touch the air to steam, and once Lloyd relaxed his aching body into it, he felt the knots evaporate from his muscles – knots that he didn't even know he had. Resting his shoulders against smooth enamel, he relished the heat and solace and, most of all, cleanness. Dirk was six feet under now, and there wasn't much to keep that thought from festering behind Lloyd's every waking vision. But the powerful urge to scrub himself clean of it, to mop every inch of himself and drown his skin in a homemade baptism, was overbearing. Except that he was too exhausted to do it. So he sat and unwound and watched trickling rivulets of sweat and vapor run down his arms and chest, like little beads of holiness.
Kratos, meanwhile, reassumed his position on the couch – though, granted, he couldn't concentrate as before. His son was in the next room, and he was hurting, and knowing that disoriented him. But so did Lloyd's outward calm. It was confusing. Preferable to any version of chaos, but confusing nonetheless. After all, didn't Kratos cry when Anna had died? Didn't he weep and grieve, roar and shed yet more bitter tears when he had lost his family in one fell swoop? Wasn't it just the human thing to do? Shifting restlessly, Kratos dropped the book to his chest and took a deep breath, filling his lungs to near bursting just so that he could recall a little of what that pain had felt like. Not to much avail.
When Lloyd had been in the bath for almost an hour – it was so quiet – Kratos rose from the couch and walked to the stove.
Eventually, Lloyd emerged, a quiet shape bare from the waist up and wearing the gray slacks left for him by Kratos. He smelled cooking and managed to separate the fragrances of onion, pepper, and lemon by the time he reached the counter.
Kratos paused in his efforts and got his first good look at Lloyd all day. The boy had more color in his face now. A towel hung limply around his shoulders, damp, and he stood with more readiness than before. Gone were the slouched shoulders. His eyes were distinctly usual and confronting. He was evenly toned, competent. Kratos knew then that he hadn't faltered in his training, even after everything. The slacks fit him okay, despite their length. Lloyd had no choice but to tread on them because of his height difference from Kratos, but they hung at his waist suitably enough.
Lloyd's eyes were touched to warm honey in the lantern light, and, once again, even though he was still young, he reminded Kratos of Anna. He focused those eyes on Kratos. "Thank you," he said. For the clothing? For sanctuary? He did not specify. But Kratos responded with a short nod, somehow understanding that Lloyd's two-word expression of gratitude encompassed everything, from showing up at Dirk's funeral – how had he known about it, anyway? – to sticking close to Iselia for the night.
It wasn't long before Lloyd was situated at the House's sole table with a bowl of cream of asparagus soup in front of him. It was the first thing that he'd eaten all day, and he tore into it with ravenous abandon. Kratos stood just aside, a silent sentinel watching his son. It was a slow-rippling revelation, like a trace motion breathing across a deep vernal pond, but Kratos realized that Lloyd was going to be alright. In fact, he already was. Lloyd was being emphatically okay. Odd it may be, but this was all Lloyd had decided he needed. The boy didn't cry – wouldn't, Kratos had deduced after a while – even though Dirk's death was a sorrow that was difficult with which to come to grips. He wouldn't rail against his misfortune, like something battered and pathetic and utterly contemptible. Though more human of a response – and, purely for that reason alone, more satisfying – it wouldn't be easy to empathize with that sort of behavior. But that wasn't why Lloyd was acting contrary to these very human tendencies. Kratos believed that Lloyd was a self-perpetuating individual. Simply put, he didn't need to suffer under any more grief after the aborted Journey of Regeneration. No, what Lloyd needed was to keep his head above the water. He needed a return to normalcy. And, so, normal he acted. Kratos stood by at the ready, prepared for the breakdown that he realized wouldn't come. He wouldn't actually know what to do if it did, but that was his job, wasn't it? As a relative? As Lloyd's… father? The boy was made of sterner stuff than at first taken for. Kratos wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but today it was just… odd. Surreal.
But life goes on.
Just as Lloyd came, he left. Kratos offered to outfit him against the weather, but Lloyd politely declined, saying that he wanted to feel the rain. Dressed in his black attire, now dry and crisp with fireside heat, Lloyd stood before the Seraph. Kratos rigorously studied him, the burnished chocolate brown hair, the faint crease of exhaustion at his brow, the color in and around his eyes, the upright shoulders and sturdy legs. Lloyd was going to come out of this, maybe unscathed to all those who couldn't read into him like a book. There were no hugs or grins, no claps on the back or bubbling thanks, but Kratos knew that it was well with the two of them, and as Lloyd was swallowed by the stormy, abysmal night, Kratos clutched that unspoken appreciation and pulled it deep inside of himself where it could flourish and amplify and supply him with a goodness to carry him onwards.
If he only knew that this was the last time he would see Lloyd in Iselia for years to come.