Title: chasing dreams
Series: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Gen, Friendship/Love, Introspection
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Mikleo/Sorey, Phoenix, Maotelus, more characters in later chapters
Warnings: All the spoilers and possible post-game feels. Also steampunk/solarpunk fantasy Glenwood(?)
Summary: Of rediscovery and finding his way through the dark.
A/N: The first three chapters were actually posted on my tumblr for Sormik Week 2016. I decided to gradually post up the rest here too. Will try my best to update 1-2 chapters weekly. Music inspiration for scene#2: The Mist Doors (The Secret of Kells OST) by Bruno Coulais.
chasing dreams
~.*.~
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ii.
"I hope you know where you're going; this labyrinth is a mess and no one's going to find us if you get us hopelessly lost."
Sorey chuckled softly, lips quirked into a tiny smile. Phoenix wasn't one to voice his trepidation aloud, being the proud creature that he was. But he could tell from the way the normin fidgeted while perched upon his shoulders, one paw gripping the hood of his travelling cloak and the other onto the short ponytail he wore at the back of his head. His hair had gradually grown out in the last couple of moons; it was now long enough to skirt around the edges of his jawline. The length hadn't bothered him much, only when a stray lock or two was caught and tangled in the metal clasps of his ear cuffs, which made him hiss in surprise at the sudden tug. It was only when Sorey's hair was snagged for the fifth time within the span of their morning that Phoenix decided to take matters into his own tiny hands. The normin refashioned one of the leather bracelets Sorey had picked up earlier, and skilfully secured the young seraph's hair back in a short ponytail with the band, complete with bronze beads and two bright orange feathers.
"Well, I can't say I know for sure where we are exactly, but..." Sorey trailed off, pausing in his steps to study a portion of the water-slicked mural that caught his eye. He ran a hand over the small engravings etched into the obsidian rock, feeling the curl and shape of what looked to be a series of familiar pictographs. He pulled out a piece of goatskin parchment from his pack, comparing the hand-written ciphers on it to the ones on the wall before him.
"Looks like some of these inscriptions match the ones on the parchment we found earlier!" Sorey said, green eyes aglow at the challenge of cracking a new puzzle. "If I could take a moment to try to decode them–!"
Phoenix snorted as he hopped down from Sorey's shoulder to study the wall, clearly unimpressed. "You taking a moment means we may be stuck here for yet another hundred years. Maotelus asked me to guide you in the ways of seraphim, little one. Not to let you go tumbling down lost in rabbit holes and caves."
At the normin's words, Sorey finally pulled his gaze away from the pictographs. He offered an apologetic grin, self-consciousness permeating his features. Phoenix was right – he did have the tendency to get too absorbed whenever they chanced upon something of interest. And while Phoenix didn't seem to mind these explorations, they had gotten lost more than once whenever Sorey carelessly allowed himself to be side-tracked by every new discovery. Now was not the time to be distracted; he glanced back at the dusty path before him, closing his eyes as he tried to reach forward with his senses, listening to the stillness in the air. He'd insisted on exploring this particular passageway because he'd felt... well, he wasn't sure what he felt, honestly. It was as if something (someone? ) was calling out to him, guiding him further into the heart of these ruins.
"You're right." Sorey opened his eyes again. "I can always come back to study this in detail later. Right now, I have to keep going forward."
Phoenix hummed, fixing him with a quizzical stare. He said nothing more however, giving Sorey a quick nod instead, and started down the path ahead of them.
"Thank you, Phoenix," Sorey said softly as he fell in step behind the normin. He should have offered a better explanation, he knew. He was excited, of course – ruins had enthralled him since the day he'd awoken in the cavern with Maotelus – but there was more to this passageway besides his need to thoroughly inspect a route. A stronger sense of familiarity, an almost-presence that he felt like he remembered and should know somehow… Yet, whenever he tried to recall the memories skirting around the edges of his mind, all that came to light were merely the bits and pieces.
A fragmented scene or two–
Again, that young boy with the silver hair and violet eyes, smirking as he waved a feathered white and gold glove at him tauntingly.
Or snatches of conversations from days long gone–
"Sorey, look! The land below has some of the same plants that grow back in Elysia!"
"You're right... –mps' blessing surrounds and protects... – but I guess the two lands are still connected."
"Yeah, maybe plant life from below has gotten carried by the wind all the way up to Elysia."
Sorey felt a sharp, stinging sensation in his right eye; he winced, biting back a noise of pain, raising a hand to his eye. He blinked tentatively several times, before gazing back at his hand and then at the space around him. As abruptly as the pain had started, it had faded and his vision was clear as ever – he could see Phoenix walking several metres ahead of him.
He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts as he continued down the path, listening to the soft sound of footsteps. At first he'd dismissed it as his own, but after several moments he realised it was someone else's – the steps were steadier, the pace unhurried, unlike his own small excited hops and bounce. After a moment's hesitation, he veered off the path, heading towards the sound of those footsteps instead.
"Hey, where are you going?" Phoenix called after him.
Sorey didn't reply; he was too busy picking his way down another, smaller passageway. He heard scrambling steps from somewhere behind him, followed by the normin's low grumbles of "Baby seraphs and their impeccable magnetism for trouble!"
He would have apologised again then, but he'd caught sight of a shadowy movement ahead. He quickened his pace, running down the length of the passageway until it widened and led him into a huge room. There was the faint rushing sound of water from all around him; Sorey stared, his eyes wide with wonder at the stone-cut structures and massive columns looming high into the ceiling. And standing in the centre of room, bathed in a circle of light, was a lone figure.
A human... no, another seraph?
The figure was staring up at the domed roof above, one hand shielding his face from the sun as he studied the oculus in the roof. His long, lustrous hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, glinting pale-silver in the sunlight, the tips darkening into a radiant teal – much like the brilliant turquoise gemstones Sorey had seen earlier in another part of the ruins.
He moved towards the figure excitedly, ready to call out when abruptly, there was a loud rumbling noise, a great shuddering of the earth. To Sorey's horror, the ground where the figure stood upon began crumbling apart, giving way to a terrifying drop into the unknown darkness.
Sorey threw himself forward – Mikleo! – the second name, the name that had been flitting about constantly in his memories, his dreams, springing to mind.
He reached out over the edge, fingers grabbing securely around the other seraph's arm just in time.
For the next few heartbeats, there was no movement from either of them, only a tense silence that hung in the air between them – almost as if the world around them had paused, watching, listening.
Sorey let out tiny sigh of relief, breaking the silence.
"Talk about a close call, huh," he said, shifting his weight ever-so-slightly to better balance himself over the edge.
The seraph (Mikleo? ) he'd just saved lifted his head, his long pale hair trailing out behind him like a splash of silver ink over the velvet darkness of the chasm below them. He was staring at him as though he'd seen a ghost, in what seemed to be a mix of bewilderment, wonder and… and something Sorey couldn't quite read.
When the seraph met his gaze, Sorey felt a rush of exhilaration, a burst of images flitting through his mind – violet eyes fixing him with an all-knowing gaze; one hand raised to rest elegantly beside a teasing grin; laughter shared underneath a starry sky.
– "Mikleo, look at this tree stump!" –
He didn't understand why the name (these... memories?) came to him here and now; it had only appeared in his dreams of a seraph youth, also silver-haired and dressed in a similar turquoise blue, black and gold.
(Sometimes the name bled into his waking hours where he spent too long in deep thought, trying, always trying, to put the pieces together, to remember, to know–).
This seraph did not look exactly like the Mikleo in his dreams; he was older and taller, his hair very much longer. But his eyes – those beautiful jewel-like eyes – they were Mikleo's eyes, as captivating and as keen.
"Are you all right?" Sorey asked again, shaking his head to clear the haze of memories. "Here, let me pull you back up and–"
–and there was another deep rumbling, followed by an even stronger tremor. The ground beneath Sorey shook itself apart and crumbled away under his weight, plunging both of them down, down, down into the inky blackness of the chasm below.
"AAAAHHHHHHHHH!"
It wouldn't have made much of a difference, really, whether he yelled aloud or not. But Sorey was given to habitual and fervent displays of emotion, as Phoenix pointed out once – he wondered, briefly, if this was how he was like before – and since broken bones and impending death loomed below them, yelling in utmost fear throughout the fall didn't seem entirely out of place.
Falling alongside him, Mikleo remained silent, seemingly as unfazed as Sorey was clamorous, with only a hint of concern in his furrowed brows. Reaching into the folds of his shirt, he pulled out a tiny vial filled with clear liquid. Thumbing the lid open, he released the liquid; his palm glowed with magic as he cast his seraphic artes and called upon a mighty surge of water to engulf them.
"W-wait, what are you doing?!" Sorey wondered if the seraph had decided it was kinder to have them drowned instead of being smashed against the hard, cold rocks that awaited them at the bottom of the fall.
"Hold your breath, Sorey!" Mikleo called out sharply. The water curled around the two, enclosing them in a sphere of liquid. And just in the nick of time too. A few seconds later, the edge of the sphere grazed along the wall of the chasm, before hitting the ground with a dull thud.
Sorey cracked open an eye and blinked, feeling the water around them shudder and ripple as it absorbed most of the impact from the fall. Mikleo was floating gently in the water just below him. As soon as Mikleo's feet touched the ground through the water, the sphere shuddered again and – pop! – began to collapse. The brief weightlessness he had felt earlier disappeared, and Sorey suddenly found himself pulled forward by gravity, landing unceremoniously on top of Mikleo with a slight oof!
They lay like that for several shallow gasps, hearts reverberating in unsteady, erratic beats. Sorey wheezed painfully at length, the adrenaline from the fall still rushing in his veins. He caught the other seraph's gaze. It was the same wistful expression he had worn before they fell – an expression of both disbelief and relief, of yearning and painful waiting.
Sorey realised then that he had been staring at Mikleo for longer than he should. Feeling slightly self-conscious and abashed, he shifted, trying to gently disentangle himself. His movement must have startled Mikleo from his reverie as well; he broke away from Sorey's gaze hastily. They were both moving too fast – too quickly together all at once, only to end up bumping foreheads. Sorey's surprised yelp had Mikleo reaching out anxiously towards him, one hand brushing against his cheek with a tenderness and affection that Sorey was sure now in his heart that he had always known, had always craved–
Mikleo. I know him... I dream of him–
And then Mikleo was laughing softly, cupping his face with both hands. Sorey held his gaze once more, staring at those radiant violet irises, at the tears now in Mikleo's eyes. There was a familiar wetness that stung the corners of his own eyes, and the same yearning ache that bloomed within his chest now at the shadow of a sorrowful memory.
"Sorey," Mikleo breathed, fingers brushing tenderly against his cheeks, his jaw, bringing their faces close. Before he could work through the swirl of memories and emotions within him, Sorey felt Mikleo's lips against his – happiness, loneliness, pain and relief all shared in their kiss. And Sorey remembered, knew for certain now, this was Mikleo; the same Mikleo who was ever present in his dreams, in the fragments of memory he had recalled from time to time.
Sorey remembered then – not all of it, not everything, not yet. But Mikleo – he remembered Mikleo, his dearest friend, his one and only, his home.
"Someone sure took his time," Mikleo said, after they'd pulled apart slightly, resting their foreheads together.
"Sorry," Sorey said, offering a weak grin by way of apology. "Guess I've always been a heavy sleeper... I think."
Mikleo only huffed, his face crinkling slightly in petulance. "And still very much the pig, I see." Then, embracing Sorey tightly – as though afraid of losing him all over again – and burying his face deep into the crook of his neck, he said, in a softer, gentler tone: "I've missed you so much."
"I know," Sorey could feel the warmth of his friend's tears on his collarbone, the way his shoulders shook as he cried silently. He smiled, pulling him closer, blinking back his own tears as he pressed another kiss to the crown of Mikleo's head. "It's okay. I'm here now – I'm home."
They held each other a little longer; unspeaking, remembering.
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~.*.~
