Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy or Vincent, and he wishes I would leave his personal life alone. Fat chance.
A/N: There's a little bit of naughtiness here, but it's just an inevitable body function. Poor Vincent, it's not easy being him. And I'll ask for forgiveness beforehand, there's quite a few canonical references and I'm sure to have screwed at least one of them up.
Seri opened her eyes an inhaled cold, clean air. They had come through into a vast hall with graceful arches of luminous glassy material, reaching four or five stories overhead. Sections between the arched ribs opened to what appeared to be the outside, and small gusts of wind trailed in thin lines of snow.
"It's similar to Cetra temple construction," Seri whispered, "but way bigger than anything they would build. Grander. "
Vincent made a quick check behind them to make sure the bridgedoor was still there. It was, and actively displaying its colors. He decided to designate the direction away from the door as forward and started in that direction. The place was completely silent save for intermittent echoing of wind, and Vincent's careful, normally silent steps clacked on the icy floor. Seri's soft soled boots thudded along beside him. Her foot crunched into a wedge of snow that had swept in from one of the many openings to the outside, and she looked towards this opening, then with mouth open walked slowly towards it. Vincent followed, stepping in her footprints in the snowdrift rather than make another telltale set and wishing she had not made this evidence of their presence. But he forgot all about footprints and gaped slightly as he looked out. A vast city stretched out under them, its beautiful, arched structures billowing up like lithe, glassy flowers. The scene was so alien, so clearly non-human, that all three humans, even the tiny one, were held fast with equal parts fear and awe. Although Vincent was feeling something else as well. Excitement. Familiarity. Longing tinged with sadness.
"The city of the gods," Seri said, softly dreamlike. "Where is everyone, I wonder?"
War
"Between the gods? To the point there were none left? Did they die?" Seri asked.
Vincent stared at her as she turned to look at him. He was sure he hadn't been the one who had spoken. Or had he?
They changed, moved on. All except the Guardians. They were bound to the physical world through materia links, so the planet might use them when needed.
Now Seri just stared at Vincent; since she was now looking at him she could see he hadn't spoken.
"Um, Vincent? I'm hearing voices in my head."
Vincent sighed. "Not your head. He's in my head. It's the large, winged demon you saw me transform into earlier. A Class Three, as bad as they get."
Seri stared at him opened mouthed for a moment. "That is so cool!" She blurted out, and, without warning, without asking permission, Seri grabbed Vincent with her free hand and put an ear to his chest, as if she might hear more of the demon there.
Vincent jerked away from her, horrified, and might have struck her if not for the small child she was holding.
"It is not cool!" he protested, dimly aware that all four of his demons were now trying to talk at once, even Galian, who couldn't actually speak beyond animal noises. "And it's never happened before, that anybody else could hear him."
"Maybe it's this place," she said.
Vincent thought to himself that it maybe wasn't just this place. Chaos seemed to have developed a bizarre fixation on this Mariteen language student.
Not bizarre. You're just obtuse.
Vincent continued looking at Seri, making certain his face revealed nothing during this last thought exchange with Chaos, and after a moment decided Seri hadn't heard that last comment. Interesting. It seemed Chaos could control who heard him. Maybe he always could. Maybe he talked to people all the time and Vincent just hadn't caught on. Maybe because he was... obtuse.
"How many?" Seri asked, looking not at Vincent, not into his eyes, but down into him somehow. The look made him uneasy, the way the healing witch had. "Three... no, four. All distinct. Vincent, how do you concentrate?"
He doesn't.
Seri laughed a little and Vincent grabbed her arm, pulling her roughly back towards the hall.
"We should be looking for Fuhito and Odin," he said sharply, and the little boy made a small, nervous sound.
"Shhhh," Seri said, but followed Vincent's lead. She hummed to the boy as they walked and both the child and Vincent's interior landscape quieted.
Can she hear my thoughts as well? Vincent sent the mental question to whichever might answer. At least two of them laughed.
Don't be stupid. Not between humans, and you are humans. Mostly.
Then Chaos began to make a noise like Vincent had never heard before. It was rhythmic, though kind of rough sounding. Vincent thought maybe he was singing, imitating Seri's sounds. He sent several questions regarding where they were and what Chaos knew about it, but the demon had ceased his momentary cooperativeness.
They walked until they reached the end of the massive hall and found it opened into a circular room. It was sheltered from wind and the wisps of snow; warmer and far more inviting. As they broached the circle the area blazed with a light of indefinable gorgeous quality, as if light itself had taken on smells of cherished memory and the music of angelic harmony. The room was empty, but the stone walls were intricately decorated with inlays of colored marble, punctuated by velvety, midnight-black doorways spaced evenly every few feet. They were the kind of black Erik had described the bridgedoor to be, before it changed color. They approached the first and the black door lit with a slow-swelling, orange glow. A figure appeared behind the door, suspended and unmoving. Its overdeveloped muscular body was about two-thirds the height of a man, including the large horns sweeping out from the top of its head. Before Vincent could stop her, Seri reached to the glowing figure. Her hand passed through the figure, the orange light shimmering. Just a hologram, or something similar. Lettering had appeared above the image. Vincent couldn't read it – cetra lettering, but he didn't need to. He recognized the figure.
"It says... Hell and flame," Seri said. "Or fire. Hellfire?"
"It's Ifrit," Vincent said. "A summon creature, like Odin." He felt Chaos give a small, disgusted grunt.
Seri ran her fingers over the letters; they rippled as if they were made of water instead of light. "We have no guide to how the Cetra language is pronounced. Maybe these letter combinations, which I read as 'hellfire', are pronounced 'ifrit' ".
Vincent shrugged, he couldn't care less how some ancient language that nobody was ever going to speak again sounded. Seri bent down to scrutinize some lettering below the figure.
"It says something like 'status equal... idle'"
Sleeping
Seri nodded and reluctantly pulled herself to the next slot. A naked, blue woman with an elaborate headdress. "This one is also... sleeping. I can't read her name, some of the symbols I've seen in descriptive passages, something to do with a color, like.. opalescence."
"She's Shiva." Vincent and Chaos said simultaneously, which somehow annoyed Vincent far worse than the demon simply talking out of turn.
"She's also a... summon creature?" Seri asked.
She is a GUARDIAN! Chaos snarled in such a way that Vincent winced and Seri leaned away from him.
They moved quickly through several more of these "cubby holes of the gods", some Vincent could identify and some he was sure the world of men had never seen. They came to one that contained not a hologram of an entity but a slowly revolving silver sphere.
"I know this one," Seri said. "Big dragon - Bahamut. It says he's... active."
"He's been summoned," Vincent said, a creeping worry filling his chest. There weren't many people were capable of summoning a Bahamut. Cloud maybe. If someone else summoned a Bahamut anywhere near Midgar, there was no way his friends would stay away from it. He worried if they were OK.
"He was summoned by...a person?" Seri was still trying to piece together this part of the world that she had always thought were myths. Strange tales of monsters that were actually controlled by humans instead of the planet.
"Yes. One with the right skills. If they have the right materia," Vincent said. Then, "Ohhhh."
Suddenly he grasped the larger picture. "Via the materia links, created so that the planet might use these 'Guardians'. They were never meant to be used by humans."
You actually thought otherwise?
Chaos sounded less indignant than genuinely surprised.
The next also had a revolving sphere, a red one. Seri read the flowing curves that made up the ancient letters. "Quite a description here. Lord of destruction, or maybe, 'violent discord'? And some letter groups related to death. "
Is that you?
Chaos didn't answer him, but Vincent knew it was true. Their thoughts may not have been automatically shared, but not everything could be hidden between them.
Where is your materia?
Idiot.
Vincent sighed. "Chaos," he said. "His name is Chaos."
Seri stared into Vincent's eyes, tracing the curve where the luminous red broke into startling white sclera, catching a bright gold thread rise and swirl at the edge of the iris.
"Chaos?" she said tentatively.
Hello.
Vincent turned his gaze, his nerves strangely jarred and heat rising in his face. He quickly passed several more figures, looking now only for Odin. He stopped at another absentee, only there was no ball in this one. It was empty, black, and lifeless feeling.
"It says father" Seri said simply.
"Odin," Odu-in! Vincent and Chaos said with another one of those simultaneous communications that annoyed Vincent.
"Why is it empty?" Seri wondered out loud. "There's not even a ball."
His materia link has been broken. He's free.
Vincent raised his eyebrows at this. Free? So this is a prison? You were incarcerated with the rest of these?
Chaos gave Vincent a little pain inducing jab, but Vincent smiled despite the sharp stabbing in his head. As planet creatures, his demons were beyond the reach of human laws and Vincent had always felt the burden of guilt on himself for their actions. It hadn't occurred to him that there might be some other, demon specific, realm of justice. And it seemed that it wasn't just in Vincent's world that Chaos had been ill-behaved.
"OK," Vincent said, thinking out loud. "Fuhito wanted something Odin had, something Odin made. He probably had Odin's materia link in his possession, but needed to come here physically for him, or maybe for the device. Maybe he freed Odin."
Vincent, sensed a change in Chaos. The demon had noticed something, or realized something.
What? Vincent demanded, but Chaos didn't want to tell. This potentially fell into the category of information he should 'extract from Chaos at all costs'. A short mental battle ensued, one Vincent knew he might win if persistent enough, and was willing to put up with all levels of pain. But Vincent Valentine was blessed with an enormous pain tolerance, even before the extra "practicing" he had gotten with Hojo. And he had the stubbornness to match any demon. He won this one and Chaos gave in.
Fuhito has a way to nullify materia- that box. Maybe it can break the materia link as well.
Right. Is that why you were out of control earlier? The box temporarily nullified your link? Where is your materia? Is it here?
Chaos growled and retreated, and Vincent decided to leave that battle for another day.
"So, where are they?" Seri asked, looking around. "Wouldn't we have seen them if they went back through the temple?"
Vincent gave Chaos another prod, even though they were both still sore from their last exchange.
Maybe at Odin's Hall. Across the city.
A map appeared in Vincent's mind, complete with knowledge of every street and building. Chaos had known this place well.
"Did you hear-"
"I heard," Seri interrupted him.
They left the warm, circular room and out to one of the openings to the outside. Vincent scoured the abandoned city of Asgard until he identified Odin's Hall, just a spec standing up tall on a small hill. It had to be at least 20 miles.
«εighτεεη» a delighted sounding Death Gigas informed him.
Thank-you, Gigas. At least that one of them was in a good mood.
"Eighteen miles would take us hours even at good pace," Vincent said. "Odin probably had a transport method, maybe his big horse was "freed" along with him. They'd be moving fast."
"Can you... fly?" Seri asked, "With Chaos?"
"I could, but I don't want to leave you here." Vincent looked around once more, the place was deserted but it unnerved him far more than the temple outside of Bifröst had. Maybe because it wasn't supposed to be so silent. Outdoors carried with it the expectation of certain sounds, birds, trees rustling, something, anything. But here there was nothing, just the soulless wind.
"He can't carry you eighteen miles, besides, you'd both freeze if we flew through the air."
Seri had been rubbing her arms and now stopped, feeling conspicuous. She picked up Elias to help keep them both warm.
"I have another idea," Vincent said. He lowered his head to look directly at the boy.
"Your name is Elias, right?" he asked, trying to speak in a gentle, non-threatening tone. The boy nodded shyly.
"How old are you, Elias?" He asked, remembering that small children always seemed happy to answer that question. Elias was no exception.
"Four!" Elias said proudly, holding up four fingers.
Vincent made an effort to smile. It felt fakey and strange on his face but he hoped it would suffice. "Do you like... kittens?"
Elias nodded again, more enthusiastic this time.
"I'm going to get a friend of mine to help us. He's a really big... kitten."
The boy looked excited and Vincent tried not to grimace. Referring to the Galian Beast as a "kitten" was more than a stretch. With a warning gesture towards Seri to stay put, Vincent slipped behind one of the large columns and willed the most animal of his four demons forward. His skin itched, then burned as his body transformed into something more massive, his sense of self as a man shrinking until he was forced to abandon the notion of his own body or slip the boundary of insanity. He felt enormous, even more so than usual in this form. Galian wanted to loose a gargantuan roar of vitality and freedom and Vincent checked the impulse. But he could feel the searing power and energy, he felt he could run forever, do anything. It was, Vincent suspected, this place he was in. He felt fantastic, and did his best to dampen that feeling. It wasn't wise to feel so good in this form, even with his regular mood it was difficult to keep Galian from...
...too late.
The Beast was randy as hell on a normal day let alone one where he felt particularly good, and Vincent shifted uncomfortably as the enormous sexual organ swelled. More than ever Vincent was grateful for the residual of Chaos while in this form. That bit of inert wing hung outside of the Galian form as well, now wrapped around the beast's nether regions. It was perhaps a way for Chaos to assert dominance, but at the moment it was shielding a rather awkward condition. What happened to Vincent's own clothes while in this form was a mystery to him. He thought they might be under the skin somewhere.
The Galian Beast dropped to all fours and crept back into the room. Seri's eyes went wide but she managed not to react in the standard fashion i.e. screaming and running.
"Kitty!" the boy Elias squealed, and grabbed two handfuls of indigo blue fur.
Vincent swung the beast head to indicate for them to crawl onto his back. He had to crouch down extra low for this; Vincent had been right about the size. Galian was quite a bit bigger here. Seri grabbed a handful of the coarse ridge on his back and using only one arm while the other held Elias she swung herself up like an experienced Chocobo rider. While they settled in Vincent was annoyed that Galian was constantly trying to swivel his head around, until Seri reached forward and scratched at a spot between his horns. Vincent tried to be annoyed at this too, but damn, that felt... good. But he needed her to grab onto those horns, or something, and he couldn't speak while in this form.
Tell her to hang on, Vincent directed Chaos.
I can do better
And to Vincent's surprise and mild dismay the red cape loosed itself from its claps, flowing and expanding upwards until the two fully formed wings wrapped around the passengers on his back, pressing them tightly into the thick, warm thatch of fur. That left him and his animal privates exposed, but he supposed there was no one to see now that the only other people around were now both on his back.
Hang on. Going for a little run.
"Okeedoke," Seri said, wiggling to get better settled and squeezing Galian with her thighs. Vincent felt the beast's sex pulse with encouragement at the movement of warm, living bodies so close to him, and Chaos's wings tightened around her and the boy. He hoped those two reactions weren't both related to arousal. He mentally jerked them both to reign them in. It was taxing him a bit to have two demons so physically active at once; prior to today he hadn't even known that was possible.
Something that sounded like a growling whine filled his throat and Vincent realized Galian was ready to go, more than ready, he was itching to run. Right, Vincent thought, running would be just the thing right now, burn off some of that energy. He leapt off the landing and down the long flight of stairs, bounding ten feet at a stretch. Galian often fought upright, but he had a fast and smooth gate on all fours. Within minutes they were in the heart of the city, racing past eerily silent buildings, all which had the same flowing, liquid lines and graceful construction. Ten, then twenty minutes passed by without a hint of fatigue from Galian and Vincent was starting to enjoy the rhythm, the speed, the feeling of sheer strength and vitality. He relaxed, feeling the demanding physical activity sap bloodflow from other, more inconvenient, areas.
Up the hill Chaos directed once they had reached a section of the city populated with smaller structures that Vincent thought might be residences. Galian turned, racing up steps to a building far more ornate than anything surrounding it. Vincent would have been tempted to call it gaudy.
This was the Hall of Odin?
Yes, the pompous ass.
Galian slowed to a trot as they entered the building, which, like all the others, lacked any semblance or doors or window panes. His nails clicked loudly on the hard, slick floor, and he swung his head to and fro, sniffing. He felt Seri sit up as Chaos's wings loosed his passengers, and a smaller weight moved around in as Elias was set upright in front of her.
"Kitty," Elias said again, and Vincent could feel him petting the back of his neck.
The two humans rode this way as they crossed the great hall, the beast body quickly recovering from his run and to Vincent's dismay, recovering his former condition as well. Time to get out of this state. He stood slowly, sliding the riders down his back until they straddled the thick, muscular tail and both scrambled to their feet. He had his back to them, but in that frozen moment of the transforming Seri came around his side, her eyes widening somewhat at the sight, and probably the size, of Galian's exposed and currently engorged anatomy. Chaos, the bastard, was no help, refusing to re-shroud him.
"Oooh," Seri said, before averting her eyes.
As soon as Vincent was able, he spun away with a groan. Of all the cursed humiliations. Not only were his demons laughing heartily at him, but he was stuck with the full load of Galian's arousal. At least he was clothed now, and under any normal, human, state he would have been able to calm himself down. But his human systems were overloaded with the demon's more potent energy. Fire filled his face, and he began to sweat, and if he didn't release he was quite likely to pass out in the next few seconds.
"Excuse me," he managed to mumble, and walked quickly into a side room that he hoped to hell wasn't full of booby traps or something. He unfastened his fly and with a single touch relieved his distress as strangled cry escaped his throat. It wasn't the first time this had happened to him, and had always supposed it was only a matter of time before he failed to hide it. As his body calmed, Vincent hung his head and wondered again why he persisted with this existence.
Once more presentable, Vincent walked back into the main entry where Seri waited, one hand holding the boy's as he tottered about her feet, yanking on her arm. Vincent opened his mouth to speak and found he couldn't, physically just couldn't manage. He put his back to her to compose himself.
"Hey," Seri's husky voice came from behind his head, "Next time, you know, I'd be happy to help with that."
Vincent turned his head to see Seri standing with her weight on one leg and looking at him teasingly. Quite suddenly Vincent's self-mortifying embarrassment washed away in the face of her attitude and raunchy comment. This was not a girl he had to be polite in front of. Making him an offer like that put her, in his mind at least, in a similar casual-intimate category as strippers and bawdy barmaids. The kind of girl a guy could relax around when it came to bodily functions.
"I'll keep it in mind," he said. "Let's look around."
They moved between the rooms, although Vincent was sure nobody was here, at least nobody that made the sound of breath or had any scent to them. The place was empty, and pristine. There was no way to look for tracks, because apparently there was no dust in the city of the gods. The palace was enormous, and it was almost ten minutes before they came to anything of interest. It was a large room filled with what were maybe machines for this world. To Vincent they looked like the architecture, like they had been made out of blown glass. The objects had structures inside them that moved, pieces that interacted but never touched, via some non-mechanical force that Vincent suspected was not as simple as magnetism. All the separate "machines" were set in a semi-circle and trading some sort of colored light communication with a cylindrical object in their center. Above the cylinder floated a small, twisted item of glossy black with a few swirling tendrils of gold inside it. There was a green thread of fire connecting the black and gold swirler to a rectangular door, similar to the one they came through, inky black save the incongruous green thread that disappeared into its center.
They've started it. I never actually believed it would function.
"This is the device Fuhito spoke of? The thing that will unwrap time?" Vincent said aloud, so Seri could hear.
I believe so. We never saw it run before Odu-in was...
"Incarcerated?"
Yes. He was- Don't touch that!
Vincent's hand shot out and grabbed Seri by the shoulder.
"Ow!" She protested. "I wasn't going to touch. Just look."
Vincent and Chaos sighed at the same time.
The machine must not be disturbed in any way during its startup phase, otherwise it might feedback energy in an explosive way, proportional to its design objective. For a machine targeted to change time over the whole planet...
"Its feedback might explode the whole planet." Vincent said.
Yup.
"Did you say it was still warming up?" Seri asked.
The askel will be completely gold when charged.
"How long?" Vincent asked.
«τώo dαyς, ςix hoμrς, forty-two miημτες»
Vincent frowned, wondering how Death Gigas knew that. He looked at Seri and pointed to his ear, questioning if she could hear this demon too. She nodded.
"How do you know that that, Gigas?" Vincent asked.
«Oßjεcτ ςtαrτ oηε ρoiητ τhrεε ρεrcεητ gold ßy volμmε. ƒivε αηd onε hαlf miημτες ηoώ oßjεcτ iς oηε ρoiητ ςεvεη ρεrcεητ gold ßy volμmε. εςτimατε ßαςε oη τhατ hας coηςταητ rατε of iηcrεαςε»
Vincent puzzled momentarily. The counting, the ability to remember huge lists, he was familiar with these traits of the demon. But he had no idea it was some sort of mathematical genius. Or arithmetic genius, at least. And could gauge volume with accuracy.
"How do we shut it off without blowing up the planet?" Vincent asked.
The Lifestream thread powering it must be shut off at the source. This machine probably needs the richest tap from the planet.
"Midgar," Vincent said. There was a reason ShinRa had put its first and biggest reactor there. There was an enormous, natural mako spring there.
Yes. Odin probably set that door to Midgar before he and his helpers went through, and then opened the tap from there. We can't go through now, not with the stream coming through.
«τώo dαyς, ςix hoμrς, forty-oηε miημτες»
"We have to get to Midgar," Vincent said.
"Back through the temple?" Seri sounded disturbed. "We didn't find Erik, or Mrs. Snortland. She must still be with Fuhito. How are we going to get back through the maze?
«mε cαη do iτ »
Vincent nodded, that was right up Gigas' alley.
"Still," Seri said, "It might take two days to get from Bifröst to Midgar."
"Not by airship," Vincent said. "I know someone I can call; we can make it in a few hours. And oh," Vincent scrunched up his face, remembering the isolation he had been appreciating in Bifröst. "After a half day chocobo ride to the nearest phone, in Dreisel, that is."
"Or less, on high speed motorcycles," Seri reminded him of the bikes collected from the original attackers.
"Right. But first back to the door to the temple. Hopefully it's still there." Vincent strode back out to the entrance of the hall with Seri trotting behind, shifting Elias to a less fatigued arm. "I can carry you as before."
"Are you sure?" she asked. "Are you going to have that... problem again?"
Vincent groaned and squeezed his forehead with his hand.
"Maybe. Probably. And it's not my problem, it's Galian's, Galian Beast. He's a Class One demon, limited but very strong. He's very... excitable."
All of Vincent's demons laughed.
But you're the one who jizzed in Odin's Hall, Vincent. Which, by the way, I'll love you forever for.
Oh just shut up! And you can love the Galian Beast if it pleases you; it's his deal.
Sure, Valentine.
Seri laughed, too, holding a hand to her mouth that failed to hold back a gaping guffaw.
"Beast is right!" she burst out, thinking the demon was well named in more ways than one. "Maybe I should 'help' him instead!" She laughed again, a gut busting ruckus that doubled her over so that she had to set the boy down.
"It's not funny," Vincent protested.
"Oh, admit it, it is a little bit funny. And sexy." She laughed again, and when she looked up she was different. Just a tiny bit, her eyes had drained of some color, and the warm, brown tones of her skin had a hint of cool iridescence. Suddenly Vincent knew what he should have known at first blush. He of all people should have picked up on it, because apparently his hoard had known all along. Some piece of himself, not his Turk-self certainly, had trusted too easily. He grabbed Seri and shoved her back into a wall, both his human hand and his claw digging into her shoulders.
"What type is it?" he demanded. "What level?!"
She shook her head, confused, eyes wide, jerked suddenly from mirth to terror. He moved his clawed hand to her throat and slowly increased the pressure. She'd reveal herself before long; even he couldn't control the changing if too close to death. The boy Elias started wailing from where his little bottom sat on the floor next to them, and the other inhabitants inside Vincent's head began an agitated clamoring. He ignored all of it and continued to squeeze, the edges of his clawed appendage tearing her skin and slicking the surface with blood. Finally, what he had been waiting for happened. The creature in his grasp shifted in appearance, her skin paled to the blue white of glacier ice and her eyes dropped their color and shone like mirrors. Now he remembered those eyes, catching briefly the candlelight in the witch Betty's hut, but he had been too rattled at the time to attach much significance from it. The small irregularities in her teeth morphed and straightened until they were blazing white and incredibly sharp looking, the canines elongated and sharpened, a typical demon trait.
And then quite suddenly he released her, only he hadn't. Vincent's brain hadn't sent the command to open his fingers, or to take a step back, and here he was doing both. He barely caught the feeling of that peculiar aligning of his own demons inside, not relaxed this time, but aggressive and agitated and cooperating, before it dissolved.
"Shit," Vincent hissed. He launched a vicious locking down of control from every emotion to every thought to every physical cell in his body. But he was receiving no particular resistance now. His demons had gone back into their normal, disorganized states. Only Chaos remained focused and attentive. Seri, meanwhile had sunk to the floor, looking like her normal self again but gasping and holding her throat.
Vincent, once again finding himself the boss of himself, squatted down on his haunches to look at Seri. She was still fighting for air and bleeding from the neck. Her demon form, such as it was, hadn't even healed her. He hadn't sensed any extra strength or magical prowess in the thing. It was hardly more than a color change and some teeth.
Vincent accessed his green materia and spoke the phrase. "Cure1."
The spell healed the skin on Seri's neck and whatever he had bruised in her throat. She took a long, unfettered breath.
"Is that it?" he asked. "That's not even a Class One demon."
"Demon? It's just a birth defect!" she yelled, still catching up on air. "It happens sometimes among my people. Girls, I mean. Only girls." Seri crawled over to Elias and pulled him into her lap, trying to shush his crying.
"Shh, it's OK," she said softly. "The big, mean, man isn't going to hurt us."
Vincent shut his eyes and rolled his lips inward where he bit down with some force. In the strange absence of Chaos' normal recriminations he supposed he should just say it himself. Valentine, you're an asshole.
Vincent scooted over to her and, with great internal effort, gently reached forward to awkwardly pat her shoulder.
"I'm sorry," he said.
Seri gave him a sulking look, one that made him unsure if he was forgiven or not.
"But I need to understand this, before we can move on. You are not hosting a demon entity?"
"There's no demon!" she said, now exasperated with him. "Just because you're infested with demons doesn't mean everyone is. It's just me, it's just how I am. If I get to upset or... excited, I turn a little blue. Every Mariteen girl who has this has the same thing, if it were demons we'd all be different. But it's just blue. Sometimes one is born who is more deformed. It's rare, and they... normally the witch smothers the baby before its first cry. So its soul is not harmed."
They what?!
It was the first thing Chaos had spoken since Vincent had attacked Seri, and Vincent could feel he was upset. But Vincent couldn't blame the Mariteen people; whatever Seri seemed to think this was, it certainly was some sort of demon phenomenon. They couldn't afford to have a full fledged demon growing up among them. Demons had a tendency to kill and sometimes eat humans.
"It's rare," Seri continued. "I only heard of it once while I was growing up. It's supposedly a kindness. Such infants never live past a few days, at least that's what I've been told. They would scream in pain for a few days and die."
It's not pain. It's grief.
Seri looked startled. "I've heard that. Sometimes we say that the Sawteye, the bluing birth defect, is an expression of grief."
"We have to move," Vincent said, "We can talk as we travel." He pulled up Galian without warning, and this time Elias screamed.
"Hey," Seri said, bumping the boy up and down. "It's the kitty, remember?"
"Kitty," Elias said, less enthusiastically this time.
cccccc
For the second time that day they were loping through the City of the Gods, the large horned beast and its riders. Chaos spoke as Galian ran. In fact, the amount of speaking Chaos had been doing surprised Vincent, one of many surprises for this trip. Vincent could force Chaos to comply to a transformation and control that transformed body physically (or mostly, at least under normal circumstances, not including mad scientists with weird boxes). But he rarely could he force Chaos to divulge things he knew. In general it was deadly difficult force Chaos to speak. Or to shut up for that matter. And at the moment the demon seemed genuinely delighted to have someone to talk to besides Vincent.
Everything came down to Baldr. Everything that is now, and was then, the entire downfall. Odu-in's son, the one that undid us all. It was his vanity... and arrogance. Convinced of his invincibility, he boasted and tempted all the Vanir to prove him wrong, until finally one did. A weak and blind Vanir, no less, armed with the most innocuous of things.
Odu-in wasn't the only one fatally grief-stricken by Baldr's passing. He had a consort, Fryja. She was blue as the winter sky and so reflective she seemed to emit light of her own. And she was quite a warrior as well. But her real strength was in her nature; she could soothe any ragged nerve or ill temper, I think because she loved so deeply. Each of my kind has an essence, an immutable nature. Mine is destruction and disorder. Hers was... love.
"Did you love her?" Seri asked.
Chaos seemed to consider, as if the question confused him.
She was Baldr's. Although she should have been one of mine. I'd have treated her better.
One of yours? You had a... haram?
Chaos gave one of those purring growls, and Vincent wondered how the two of them were compatible enough to share the same body without blowing apart. Vincent was about the most un-haram type guy he could think of. He couldn't even get over the one love he had had. And lost.
"You loved her," Seri said simply.
Hrmph. Perhaps. But I held no ill will towards Baldr because of it. None could. You cannot imagine what it was like to see him, to be in his presence, how gloriously beautiful he was. How every time you saw him, it was like you had been starving and hadn't known until his smile sated you, had been living in black and white until he shone color onto your eyes.
Vincent, privy to more than just Chaos' words, saw Baldr in his mind, and his internal self gasped. A visual alone could never have done him justice; it was the feeling that Chaos was feeding him that worked the magic. He felt he might explode with awe, excitement, and...greed. He wondered if that last part was the fault his human self, failing to absorb and interpret properly these alien emotions.
When Baldr fell, Fryja flew from Asgard and descended to the physical world, to Gaia, your world. I tried to catch her... but she was fast and had too great a lead by the time I understood what she meant to do. She fell so hard in her grief and despair that when she plunged into the sea her body struck the bottom of the ocean and released a plume of soil that welled up and formed an island.
"OH!" Seri cried. "That's just an old legend! That the island of Meritee was formed by the falling of a god from the sky! But you don't expect me to believe that is literal?"
Chaos gave a mental shrug that indicated he didn't much care whether he was believed or not.
Her essence, her nature, her talents, and her songs, they passed to the habitants that sprung up from that soil
"It passed into the human population?"
Cetra, human, whatever.
"But... the Cetra and human are different species," Seri said, confused. Chaos shrugged again and would say no more about it. They had reached the main hall and stopped in front of the color changing door. Vincent stood as he transformed back into his human self, dumping Seri onto her butt where she rolled to keep the child from hitting the floor. The boy laughed, delighted, and Vincent had to admit he was at least an agreeable child.
Chaos wrapped his wings around Vincent voluntarily this time, before going limp as the last of his demon forms left him. Although neither of them was distracted in the same embarrassing way as last time. Vincent smiled a little. Gigas still felt pretty good, and Vincent did as well. Chaos was reflective, and the other two were... asleep. Vincent helped Seri up, and even chanced to scoop up the boy himself. Elias settled easily into the crook of his arm, letting his white-blond curls fall against Vincent's neck.
I liked holding the female and the child. Why don't you procreate Valentine? What about this one? She is of the correct age for peak fertility.
She's not my type Vincent shot back without thinking, and partly in shock because he suddenly knew one of those extra things that sometimes came when Chaos spoke. Any child he sired while hosting this particular powerful demon would inherit demon traits. Yet another reason never to have sex.
What about the strong female in your group, the one with the large mammory glands?
Not happening, demon.
The young one? She will be old enough soon.
Quit!
Vincent spoke out loud to drown out the pestering in his head.
"Here we go," he said, holding Elias in one arm and Seri in the other to ensure they went through together, "on the blue..."