Greetings all! I may have to work this weekend, so I am posting my next chapter a little earlier than usual in case I don't have time later. Here goes and thanks to everyone for reading.
Ifrit lounged on his throne in his new kingdom—if one could count a large boulder at the end of a red rock canyon a throne. Comfort meant nothing to him. He was a God, at one with the shimmering heat, at least after the darkness/dawn adjustment—he could be sitting on a rock spire for all he cared. Although he supposed Agneya may not like that. She was presently napping in her stone cradle on the boulder beside him.
Even though it was open to the elements, his lair did have a throne room feel to it. The long narrow canyon meandered towards his boulder, just like how a long red-carpeted hallway of a castle led to a throne. The canyon opened up around his boulder, just as a throne room would. And even better, the canyon dead ended behind him. There would be no way he could be attacked from behind unless someone was willing to plummet 500 feet to get to him. His enemies weren't known for their ability to fall and survive.
He was getting bored, and impatient. Izunia was dragging his feet getting Iris to him. It was almost as though he didn't want his immortality back. Ifrit expected betrayal, but not before Izunia had gotten his share of the spoils. And what was Ifrit to do with his share of the spoils? He couldn't exactly collect what Iris owed him with a baby nearby. While it would show Agneya full well the worth of humans and what she should do to them when it was her turn, it was not a lesson she would understand yet.
Agneya was small—there were plenty of other places she could rest where she would be sheltered from what Ifrit had in mind for Iris. He stiffened as he saw movement in the swirling sand towards the end of the canyon. A shape was approaching. A human-sized shape.
Iris stepped forward, hesitantly. She kept turning around, looking out for threats. She was wary, as though expecting a trap. Seeing as Ardyn had evidently brought her here, she was not too far off. Ifrit smirked triumphantly. Ardyn had fulfilled his side of the bargain. Yet, where was he? He wasn't the type to just give her over without assurances that he would get his fair share first.
Iris glanced down the canyon, saw Ifrit, and her face went pale. She turned and ran through the heat, desperate to flee the canyon. Ifrit wasn't about to let her escape and began marching down the canyon towards her. He didn't have to run—she would not survive long in this wasteland without his, "protection". She was out of sight by now, but not for long…
"Ah, the esteemed Infernian," Ardyn oozed, stepping into Ifrit's path midway down the canyon. "As you evidently saw, I have delivered Iris to you, alive."
Ifrit glanced around the shadowy rocks, attempting to see where she had run off to.
Ardyn saw him glance about, and made a great show of looking around himself. "Now, where did Miss Iris go, I wonder? You did not, frighten her, did you," Ardyn asked, all innocence.
"Frightening her is the least of what I have in store for her," Ifrit replied with feral intent.
"Oh, so you mean to hurt her," Ardyn asked with over the top shock. "You shouldn't have told me that. It's always better to keep the courier in blissful ignorance as to the fate of their captive. Now I may have second thoughts about the enterprise," he concluded mockingly.
Ifrit rolled his eyes, annoyed with Ardyn. With a brusque gesture, he flung his arm out, and Ardyn felt warmth spiraling through him. It wasn't an attack—the heat felt, pleasant, as though getting a hot stone massage. Ardyn felt the familiarity of immortality streak back into him. It was am indefinable feeling, and one that could only be experienced, and remembered when lost. That feeling was back. Ifrit had done as promised.
"I have given you back your immortality," Ifrit replied, as though bestowing upon him a blessing from the Gods. Ardyn knew it to be a curse instead, but merely smirked back.
"You have my thanks," Ardyn replied dryly. "Now, tell me what you really want in return for this? I refuse to believe it is really Miss Iris. As lovely as she is, she is not worth all of this for."
"All I want is Iris! She has defied me! She owes me!"
"I have defied you as well, yet you have seen fit to grant me immortality instead. Interesting power by the way. I always thought it was the crystal that granted that power."
"It is," Ifrit replied. "Now get out of my way!"
Now this was interesting, Ardyn thought. Ifrit was able to use the crystal's powers? This raised further questions, and ones he needed to get answers for before playing his hand.
"You'll have a hard time finding Miss Iris on your own you know," Ardyn replied calmly. "She is frightened to death of you as you saw. She will not make it easy to find her."
"Then I find her desiccated body," Ifrit snarled back.
"You are correct, unless you want her alive. I thought that was the whole point, but then again what does a Man of No Consequence such as myself know," Ardyn commented.
Ifrit stiffened. Ardyn had a point. She would be useless to him already dead. And in this climate, humans could not last long.
Ardyn saw he had him there. "In deference to your keeping faith with me, I can help you find Iris. I was able to, er, sweet talk her into coming here, so I will be able to entice her out of hiding as well."
"You will get no further boons from me," Ifrit replied. "As far as I'm concerned what I just gave you is more than you deserve."
"I thought it was the crystal that gave it," Ardyn murmured.
"Through me," Ifrit snapped back. "And I can take it away if you piss me off, so keep your mouth shut!"
This gave Ardyn pause. He was forgetting that there was a God in the mix here. While he had been unable to reverse the crystal's curse of immortality, a God perhaps could. He had to be careful, or else he would lose his powers. And that would be, very vexing indeed.
Ardyn smirked. "I was not asking for anything else," he replied placatingly. "I am in fact eager to get Iris off my hands. She is more trouble than she is worth as far as I'm concerned. For your sake I hope you don't keep her alive for too long. She is a liability after awhile."
"Don't tell me how to treat my prisoners, Izunia," Ifrit snarled. "If you are serious about helping me then get to work."
"Forgive me for speaking out of turn," Ardyn oozed back. "I merely thought that as a prisoner of the Draconian myself, I had some expertise on the matter. However, I am sure you know what you are doing." The sarcasm was so expertly placed that it took Ifrit a bit to catch it. By that time Ardyn had already moved on ahead searching behind rocks and calling out periodically for Iris.
Ifrit had no such finesse. He merely went to every boulder he could find and smashed it with his fist. If Iris had been hidden behind any of them, the impact probably would kill her, but Ardyn had already warned Ifrit of that. If Ifrit refused to listen, that was on him.
The blowing sand had been to his advantage, Ardyn thought, smugly. Ifrit had never figured out that the "Iris" he saw had actually been Ardyn in disguise. Ifrit had been able to penetrate Ardyn's disguise in Altissia, but he had evidently been unable to tell for sure through the sand here. Perhaps if it had been Titan he had been trying to fool it would not have worked, Ardyn thought clinically. However, earth and sand was not one of Ifrit's powers. He had fallen for it as any human would. If he was that fallible, perhaps Ardyn could outwit him after all.
Ardyn needed to stall a bit longer. He wondered if Noct had even received his little love note yet. He'd have to play the game with Ifrit a little more, and maybe pry more information out of Ifrit in the bargain.
"I do not wish to look a gift horse in the mouth of course. However, I must ask why you are willing to grant me such a good turn. I know you and I have never seen eye to eye, so to speak," Ardyn commented politely. "I am pleased, but surprised that you would grant me your favor now."
"Spare me your sycophancy," Ifrit cut back. "I gave you your powers back because it was in my interest to do so."
"Oh, so you must like me then," Ardyn replied brightly. "I will take that as a compliment."
"I don't like you, you Accursed Bastard," Ifrit returned angrily. "You are much more useful to me immortal than dead. If you weren't I would have incinerated you long ago!"
Nobody who called Ardyn "The Accursed" ever got away with it. Not even Ifrit would, Ardyn promised himself, swallowing his fury for the moment. Just a little longer…
But why would he want Ardyn immortal? All Ardyn had done with it last time was nearly…ah ha! Ardyn now had the answer as to why Ifrit had given his immortality back to him. Ifrit still held out hope that Ardyn would destroy humanity, and had given him back the means to do so. Ardyn had just been given another trump card. Now he just had to figure out how to play it.
"Ah. Mutual benefit then? That makes more sense," was Ardyn's only reply.
Ifrit merely grunted, kicked over another rock that could be hiding Iris, and stepped into the shadows to see if he could see her.
Ardyn stared at Ifrit, for once in his life, stunned. As Ifrit moved into the shadows, he could see black swirling mists beginning to form around him. His eyes glowed with a sinister gleam that was all too familiar.
"When did you say you gained your powers from the crystal," Ardyn asked conversationally.
"Shortly after you made me kill Shiva," Ifrit snarled, then returned to the light, looking like his normal self.
Even with the return to his normal form, Ardyn now knew the truth. The crystal was the real enemy here, Ardyn thought bitterly. It kept giving out its powers and leaving destruction in its wake. It had destroyed his life already, started wars, and was set to destroy them all. It had even seen fit to turn Ifrit into a daemon in the bargain to ensure it. The crystal is what really needed to be dealt with. As Ardyn had said long ago. How gratifying to know one was right.
And the absurd part was that Ifrit didn't even seem to know about his slow but sure daemonification. He was still banking on Ardyn destroying humanity for him—giving him back his immortality attested to that. Ifrit wasn't fully a daemon yet, but if he ever became one, and figured out what his new dark powers could do, they were all doomed.
Ardyn wouldn't let Ifrit get to that point. Ardyn knew more about the workings of the crystal, and of daemons, than Ifrit ever did. Being the embodiment of the Starscourge did have its advantages after all. Now that Ifrit was a daemon, Ardyn's victory was almost assured.
The question was, how should he finish him off? Should he make it quick and have him dealt with before Noct and his friends even got here? Noct really was dragging his feet, and Ardyn would give almost anything to see the look on Noct's face when he arrived and saw Ifrit lying crumpled at Ardyn's feet.
But then, that would be boring, and there would be nobody to appreciate the victory, save himself. Ifrit didn't deserve a quick demise after all. Ardyn hadn't been called the Bringer of Darkness for nothing. Ifrit had made him become that. Immortality was but a fraction of what Ifrit owed him for 2000 years of hell. Ardyn would make him pay in full.
Ardyn deserved a little fun after all of this. Now that he was immortal, and Ifrit was on the way to daemonhood, the playing field was leveled a bit. Ardyn would make Ifrit his plaything and enjoy every minute of it. It was time to play his hand, and give Ifrit what he wanted.
"I daresay Miss Iris must have fled back towards the boat by now," Ardyn ventured coolly. "We should find her quickly before she commandeers it."
He led the way back to the boat, eagerly awaiting Ifrit's reaction when he saw the "real" Iris.
Leviathan hated coming to Bahamut's domain. Since it was the "afterlife", she had only ever come to it immediately after pain and death. To come here now, alive, of her own accord, felt strange. But then, these were strange times. She kept her eyes forward, studiously avoiding the souls floating past her on their one-way trip to this realm. She and her fellow Astrals were the only ones who could make the trip back. Except for Noctis and his allies thanks to Bahamut's efforts.
She could see why Bahamut had done it. Even though she tried to avoid it, she could see the incessant movement of souls out of the corner of her eye. That had happened far too often of late—first ten years ago when Insomnia had been sacked, and again when Gralea had become overrun with daemons. She supposed now was still the result of the destruction of Galdin Quay—with the sudden influx of so many souls, Bahamut and his attendants were having trouble handling them all. It was their job to guide them to their next plane of existence—endless paradise for the good souls, endless torment for the truly evil, or a path of redemption for bad souls who had the potential to improve.
She kept her eyes forward as she slithered down the tunnel of light to reach Bahamut's throne. He didn't appear surprised to see her—but then again he knew everyone who transitioned to his realm. He obviously knew she was coming. His long-lashed eyes pierced through his helmet to stare at her impassively.
"It is rare to see you in your full form, Hydrean," he commented.
"You typically see me bloodied and sliced in half," she countered.
He shrugged—a stiff movement of his metal shoulder pads. "You have come about Ramuh have you not?"
"And Shiva too. Have you, seen them?"
"Yes. You know what happens if we are slain by one of our own. Their souls travel too fast for us to be able to catch. This is what happened to both Shiva and Ramuh. Shiva, landed in the Paradise Path. She is in a place of blessings and no further suffering."
"So Shiva will, never come back," Leviathan asked gravely.
Bahamut nodded. "However, there is, some hope for Ramuh. He fell into the path of redemption. When he finds his way out, he will end up back here and could potentially reincarnate."
"Well, he should be here now then. He has nothing to atone for," Leviathan stated.
"No. He has quite a bit to atone for, as do we all. We created the crystal."
"We had to. We needed a way to clean up mistakes."
"What we created was a monster," Bahamut commented flatly. "Even if Noctis succeeds in defeating Ifrit, the crystal still needs to be destroyed to ensure the planet endures."
"We, have fallen so far," Leviathan replied in shock. "There has to be another way."
"We could have weathered things with Agneya filling in the void left by her parents. There is nobody who can fill in the void left by Ramuh. The planet will suffer unceasing storms without him.
"I can, do something with the flooding," Leviathan replied in desperation.
"But what about the constant lightning," Bahamut countered.
Leviathan flinched.
"Ramuh cannot return until he has atoned for his mistakes. And the biggest mistake is creating the crystal. It must be destroyed before he can return."
"I can do it. Titan and I," Leviathan said eagerly.
"No. It is one of us. If you destroy it, it will travel here. What do you think happens if a destructive force like that ends up in the afterlife? It will destroy whatever afterlife it ends up in, and what happens to those souls? It will create imbalance in this world and end up not just destroying the planet, but the universe as well."
Leviathan ducked her head. "You can't ask Noctis to kill himself again. You know what happened last time!"
"Unfortunately we must weigh a handful of human lives against the fate of the universe. And if Noctis and his allies must fall to keep the universe going, then we must."
"You can just, revive him again, right," Leviathan asked. It seemed absurd that after eons, she still did not fully know Bahamut's abilities and how they worked. The mechanics of the Afterlife had been kept a mystery to her on purpose since, as he said, for her to fully know its workings would create a paradox each time she reincarnated here, and could destroy the universe. For those who could "die" the afterlife needed to stay a mystery.
"I risked a paradox bringing them all back the first time. I could only do so since I put them in a copy of the living world and did not send them onto any of the other realms. I cannot do it again," Bahamut replied regretfully. "I hate to ask this of you Leviathan, but the secrets of the crystal must be made known to Noctis and his allies in full, even if it shows us in a negative light. I cannot leave here to tell him myself. The burden of the truth, and what he must do, must fall to you."
Leviathan swallowed. Bahamut's word was law, and there was nothing she could do about it. "I, understand. For what it's worth, he already knows us for the fools we are. This should not surprise him."
Bahamut's lips twitched. "I think the same thing. Go in peace, Hydrean."
Leviathan returned to the world of the living, dreading the news she must impart to Noctis.
