Ivalice Returning: Final Fantasy XII

By Maracae Grizzley

Chapter Four

There was a commotion at the door and everyone turned to look as several guards led two bound prisoners into the room. Balthier and Fran recognized the two young people they had seen earlier in town. Apparently the boy's thoughts on sneaking into the palace had won out after all. The lead guardsman turned to Ashe. "My Queen, we found these intruders as you suspected. You asked that they be brought to your presence."

Ashe nodded to the man. "Thank you, Lieutenant."

He bowed to her and started to leave as the young man softly whistled appreciatively at Ashe. "Damn, this is better than HD. I am so glad we finally came here."

Balthier chuckled behind his hand as the lieutenant reached out to cuff the young man on the back of the head. "Be polite, ruffian. This is the Queen."

Ashe shook her head. "It is well enough, Lieutenant. You can leave them with us. I highly doubt that they can do any harm with all the people we have gathered."

The lieutenant looked around and then nodded before gathering his men and leaving, but not before giving the boy a parting blow, which he managed to dodge this time, grinning all the while. When the guards were gone the young man looked around at the room while his friend sighed and looked at the ceiling in obvious unconcern for her surroundings.

"Sweet! Claire, it's Balthier! Ohh, man, this is so cool." He grinned wide at the sky pirates. "Looks like the whole group is here. So what's the occasion?"

The girl, Claire, closed her eyes and shook her head, muttering something insulting under her breath.

Ondore took a step forward. "I understand that you are visitors to this land. I wish to ask you some questions, if I might."

Claire shrugged and looked at him. "Only if I get to ask some questions in return."

The boy looked around with his face turning pale and he nudged Claire with an elbow. "Sis, I think we're in for it. That's . . ." He swallowed carefully. "That's Doctor Cid over there, and he's alive, and in the same room with everyone else." The emphasis on the word was peculiar, as if he, too, knew that Cid should have died. "And that's Reddas, and he's alive, too."

Reddas quirked an eyebrow up. "You say that as if it were unexpected, boy."

"Uhm, yeah, it is." He swallowed carefully. "You were supposed to have sacrificed your life to destroy the Sun-Cryst." He looked at his sister. "Claire, I think we're in deep kimchee."

Claire shook her head. "Careful, fanboy." She looked back at Ondore and furrowed her brow a touch in confusion. "That's strange. You've been altered. What's going on here?"

Ondore nodded. "I held to the hope that you might be able to aid us in determining just that. We have records that do not match events as they are remembered. Are you . . ." He searched for the proper way to ask the question. "Are you what is called a Traveler?"

Both young people blinked in surprise. The boy was the first to speak. "Oooh, who got here first? We haven't met anyone else since me and Jessica 'woke in the hall with Claire to help."

Claire elbowed the boy to silence him. "You're just confusing the issue, Daniel. Yes, we are Travelers. I presume you have met another of our kind, since the Knight hovering over the young Princeling over there carries a Traveler's stone in his right front breast pocket."

All eyes turned towards Basch and he reached one involuntary hand to touch his breastplate right above the pocket where he carried the stone, now humming as it had during the procession. He found his voice after a moment. "What do you know about this stone?"

Claire turned to face him and all the blood drained from her face. Her voice disappeared for a moment as her mouth worked soundlessly. "Oh dear God in Heaven. How is it possible . . ." She appeared to choke slightly on her words.

Basch returned her stare curiously, knowing somehow that something larger than him and his dreams was happening. "Is something wrong?"

Larsa looked from one to the other, his face flushing in excitement.

The girl took an involuntary step forward. "By all the names of the Mother Speaker . . ." she murmured before she firmed her expression with her resolve. "Where is she?" she cried out, running forward. "Where is she? I know why you would have hidden her, but I swear, I mean her no harm."

Vaan was confused. "She who?" No one noticed Daniel suddenly choke on a burst of laughter at the line. Speakers bless Final Fantasy and their repetitions.

There were tears flowing down Claire's face as she turned to face him. "His wife!" she sobbed. "His lifemate! The Dreamsail woman who has claimed him as her chosen mate and bound her soul to his." She turned back to Basch. "Where is she, please!"

The boy, Daniel, started forward. He wasn't laughing anymore. In fact, he seemed painfully serious. "Claire! Claire, get a grip. That's impossible. That's, like, even more impossible than Cid and Reddas still being alive. Basch fon Ronsenburg is the Knight of Knights; he's like Auron, all duty, no play. No way he'd be distracted from that duty for a romance."

Claire glared at him. "Oh, and what about Steiner and Beatrix. I may not have fallen into your fanboy obsession with Twelve, but I did play Nine. It has happened before and it has happened here. I can See the bond between them, Daniel. It's faint and something is tearing away at it, but it's still there!"

Larsa stepped forward to catch Claire's attention, taking her bound hands in his and quietly unfastening the bindings. "We do not know where she is, Milady. She has vanished and has been largely forgotten by all, except in dreams." He swallowed carefully. "Why is this matter of such importance to you?"

Claire looked at him, wonder in her eyes. "You're Dreamsail-claimed, too. Sibling-claimed, just short of your hair changing, I think." She blinked tears away. "I am Clarity Dreamsail, daughter of Bright Eyes Dreamsail, daughter of Spiritwalker Dreamsail. I thought I was the last one. I though . . . I thought Wolf Eyes had killed all the others." She blinked away more tears. "You don't know what it's like thinking you're all alone."

Daniel cleared his throat behind her. "Claire, he does know. That's . . . He's the last of his bloodline, the last of House Solidor." He took a deep breath. "But if you're saying that he's claimed like I am, then things don't look good for her."

Ondore turned to Daniel, his face somber. "Explain this to us, then."

He shrugged. "From what Claire's told me, the bigger the waves a Traveler makes in a world the more likely it is that someone is going to show up intending severe physical harm. If a Dreamsail Traveler came here, became sister to the Imperial family of Archadia, and then proceeded to have enough of an effect to save the lives of two, count 'em two, people supposed to die, then she had enough of an effect for one of those guys to track her down."

Claire shook her head. "She's not dead. She's still alive and out there somewhere. I can See the bond between them. She's still alive and we've got to find her."

Larsa nodded. "I am in complete accord. If my dreams, and the dreams of Captain von Ronsenburg, are any indication, my sister was expecting a child at the time she vanished. Is it possible to use the stone she left behind to find her again?"

Claire looked at him, her eyes wide and frightened. "She was carrying an unborn? The only way this could get worse is if Wolf Eyes himself was the one to track her down. The expectant mother is the most powerful of Travelers . . . and the most vulnerable. It's the whole reason I haven't chosen to carry a child myself, yet. I haven't found anyone who could stand protector over myself and a child."

At his side, Basch clenched a fist so hard that his hand shook. "She carried my child, and I could not protect her." The guilt was plain in his voice.

Larsa looked at him and shook his head. "Do not think that. We do not know what happened. I have not seen how we lost her in the dreams and I have been afraid to look at those events in the stone."

Claire looked at him. "You can scry events through the stone?"

He nodded. "She said that the stone would show me the truth."

"May I see this stone? I need to know what happened. Maybe . . . maybe it can give us a clue to finding a way to locate her."

Larsa looked at Basch for a long, silent moment. Basch sighed and reached under his breastplate to pull out the stone he carried there and showed it to Claire, lying flat upon his palm. Claire whistled low.

"Which Dreamsail is she? The power held in that stone . . . and it's linked directly to her soul. It's not merely a talisman, it's an actual Traveler soulstone. If Wolf Eyes or any of the hunters got their hands on it they would have a direct link to her soul and could corrupt her almost beyond redemption."

Larsa trembled. "Beyond redemption?"

Claire nodded. "It would take one of the Old Ones, or one of the Shards, to redeem one soul-lost through a stone."

Larsa shrugged. "Perhaps her own words would explain her best." He concentrated on the stone in Basch's hand and an image formed above it, like a holographic representation. It was a woman, standing facing the Occuria at Giruvegan. She was young, only slightly older than Vaan and Penelo at the time, with golden hair that was streaked by white. The image was too small to clearly see the color of her eyes.

She held one clenched fist up, shaking it at the silent statues of the Occuria. "I know what I am! I am the living avatar of the Mother Speaker! I was cut away from her like any shard of your damned Sun-Cryst. While others fought the Shade, DarKheist, I sat in a room with my friends and played a game. I was the one who decided that Guenevere would sleep. I decided that she would wake as innocent as a newborn. I decided that I would cut away a part of myself, to surrender my Name and become a Traveler. I decided that this Mother-shard would be there to guide Guenevere's innocence.

"I willingly surrendered my Name and my free will for the chance to walk in worlds I had only dreamed of. As much as I may argue with The Mother, as much as I may resent her, I cannot deny that we are the same person! I swear to you! If my Nii-chan is threatened in any way because of your vendetta, I am calling upon The Mother's power and I am destroying you!"

The image faded and Claire drew in a hissing breath. "Oh dear God in Heaven! Not just a Dreamsail, not just a Traveler, not even just another Motherborn. She's the Motherborn Shard, the last one. Not an Old One, but it doesn't really matter with her. Oh God, I thought she had gone mad and destroyed herself."

Basch interrupted Claire's hushed words. "She told me about the Madness. About how in madness she created a love and a child only to lose them when she was woken from it. She told me, if the dream really happened, about how losing them almost drove her into madness again from grief. If the dream was not a dream, if it truly happened and we just cannot remember it happening, then she thinks that the madness happened again and she is in agony right now. I cannot . . ." words failed the knight for a moment, "I cannot leave her in such pain. How do we find her again?"

Claire met his eyes and her expression firmed. "I need to know what was done to all of you that you cannot remember. Reversing that effect will help greatly. At that point . . ." she paused. "At that point we need to find a way to connect to her again. The connection between your souls is faint, though clear to me, because you have been fighting whatever is trying to sever your memories of her. Once the connection is back in place then we can go about trying to locate her."

Larsa nodded and then looked over at Ondore and Ashe. "With your agreement, then, I would like to set out on this endeavor."

Ashe looked around the room, at the nods and shrugs, and then slowly nodded. "If any of us might be of assistance, let us know at once."

Larsa bowed to her. "My thanks, Majesty."

Well, that's what I have so far. Next chapter should catch back up with Mara in Smallville, as soon as I can get it written. I'm looking for any suggestions anyone might have, as well as any comments in general. I know that someone's reading this, I just don't know who yet. How am I doing?

Mrs. Grizzley