Chapter 10: Desecrate the dragonstone

"I can't stand the heat anymore," a lone soldier who was falling behind complained.

"Tell me about it," Tyrell agreed, falling in step. "Especially with this armor."

"It's so different to be travelling to Kaipo on foot. Captain says most of the hovercrafts have been destroyed in the tsunami," Roland added, wiping sweat from the visor of his standard purple armor.

"We would be blessed to find the dragoon or dark knight collapsed in the desert," Aria responded, slowing down to join the other Army recruits. "The black armor of dark knights and the blue of dragoons are darker than the color we wear. Surely they must tire before we do."

"That's a good point," Tyrell agreed.

"I don't think I have enough energy to think of things like that," the soldier whined. "I just keep seeing the oasis in the distance but it seems like we never get closer."

"Laurel doesn't want to battle, does she?" Roland mocked.

"A potion for your exhaustion," Aria offered the comrade who had fallen behind. "We need to catch up with the rest of the regiment. Captain is eyeing us. Besides, if there's another surprise attack from a Sandworm, we'd be toast."

"She didn't deny it," Roland stated smugly, speeding up into a light jog.

"C'mon Roland," the Tyrell scolded. "Save the fire for the actual battle."

"What's going on here?" the Captain shouted, causing the regiment to look back at the stragglers. "Keep the pace back there."

"How many days ahead is it, Captain?" the soldier asked.

"Less than a day's travel now that we've reached Kaipo Desert Central but I'll make you run laps at the entrance of Kaipo and pass you over for a promotion if you keep this up," the Captain replied sternly.

Downing the potion quickly, the soldier ran to catch up with Aria, 'Rell, and Roland. His comrades grabbed him by either shoulder and began to jog faster. Groaning, the soldier wiped the sweat off his visor and eyed Aria suspiciously.

"Hey, Laurel's not even breaking a sweat. Why is that?" the soldier continued to complain once they had finally fallen into formation with the rest of the regiment.

"Cuz she's got more of a backbone than you," Roland snickered.

Embarrassed by the sudden attention, Aria didn't respond. After all, she had been using very weak Blizzard spells on herself to withstand the heat.

The regiment eventually fell silent as they realizing they would still be walking for many hours and needed to conserve their energy.

For the most part, Aria had avoided most of the random encounters with monsters except for the back attacks. She had voluntarily fallen behind with 'Rell and Ro to see if she could catch a glimpse at a white mage following them from a distance. But it was to no avail, having seen nary a Baron traveler. They had only encountered a few merchant caravans and ruffians that looked to wear Kaipo garb. While riding a chocobo was much faster, most chocobos were known not to withstand the burning sand of the desert during the day since they thrived in a more temperate climate, especially in a wooded region where they could hide from people.

-~o`'*'`o~-

The green-haired girl was not heavy, but from carrying her many miles, the dragoon was beginning to tire. He began to think he got the rotten end of the deal. Probably Cecil had been the lucky one and the Red Wings escorted him right back to the castle.

Now what to do about this child, Kain thought, remembering Epaphras the merchant's plea. If only Cecil were here, I could leave the moral obligation to him, he grimaced.

After battling a sandworm on his own about an hour ago, he decided he wouldn't want to battle one of those monsters again. At least not on his own. When he has jumped to finish off the sandworm in a final blow, there had been a Sandstorm spell and the girl had nearly been absorbed into Sandworm's greedy mullet. Yet even still, the girl was still asleep. She must be faking.

For now, he had been trying to flee every monster to recover after fighting the sandworm. Surprisingly, it was harder to flee from the speed of the sahagins that were relatively weak compared to the powerful sandworms he had run into.

He had been sitting on the sand for a short break after fleeing the last battle and felt a bit disoriented from fatigue. Though he could see the large glittering lake of the oasis in the distance, he estimated there were still several days to reach Kaipo.

For now, he felt like he was focusing on survival. Although he knew, Baron would soon come for him, it was the last thing in his mind.

Furthermore, since he had been travelling alone, thoughts he had long repressed had begun to surface, particularly about his parents' deaths in the Mist. The king always told him that his father had fought valiantly, living up to reputation of the Ricard Highwind of centuries prior who shared the same name as his father. The older dragoons who lived during the invasion of the Mist told him tales of the foggy day that his father had death.

Shortly after his birth, his father had first invaded the Mist on the king's orders, only to suffer a defeat by the eidolon dragon Diabolos who had taken the lives of many dragoon. When he returned after his failed battle, the king had become embroiled in a war with Eblan.

Ricard had expressed his skepticism to the king of his decision to listen to the newly appointed advisor, Nessus, who had advised him to become more militaristic in regards to Eblan, Mist, and Troia. With the rest of the military leaders, namely Baigan, behind him, Nessus had made a laughingstock of his father. After such an encounter and future clashes with Nessus and Baigan, Ricard stopped attending military counsels and vowed to personally take down Diabolos without the help of any of his men.

While the Red Wings and the Dark Knights had been fighting in Troia and Eblan, Kain recalled his father's vigorous daily training regimen. His father rarely spoke except to punish him. When he had asked about his father's motivation as a young child, his father began to pressure him into training to become a dragoon, allowing him to be trained by the dragoons while is his father trained on his own.

Then, after that, it seemed like the few memorable encounters he had with his father were when his father would test his ability as a dragoon trainee.

On the day he had last seen his father, he had asked to see his father's wyvern, which was the form a true dragoon could temporarily take when one's stamina and spirit had gotten strong enough from fully mastering the job class. His mother had scolded young Kain, that it presumptuous to assume he become a dragoon after so little training. She then proceeded to yell at him that she would take up Ricard's lance and kill Diabolos herself if he ever asked such a thing again. He did not know how such a calm person like his father could stand his mother, Maribelle, who was nicknamed Bellow for bossing the dragoons around, especially his father.

His father, on the other hand, was stone-faced and surprisingly acquiesced. Leading him into a room without his mother, he had transformed into a dark blue dragon and told him to take a scale from his back. Thinking it would hurt like ripping a nail out, Kain had been timid though obedient to his father's request, which imparted him the ability to Jump and land safely as if a wyvern caught him no matter the height. According to the other dragoons, Ricard had been the only one able to transform with the only other dragon scales from fallen dragoons of the past that had not yet been naturally degraded over time. That had been one of the greatest moments of his life.

He and his mother had been despondent ever since his father died. She distanced herself from her close friend Joanna Farrell mother of Rosa as she mourned. Less than a year later, his mother told him she was going to the Mist to organize masons to build a stone monument outside in memory of Ricard and the dragoons who had died in the first invasion. As a child, he wanted to join her but she had told him it was too dangerous.

I shouldn't have trusted her, Kain thought to himself.

It was then that he realized there were numerous tracks of soldiers in the desert in the distance. They couldn't be far away. He was unsure if they were ahead or behind him. Realizing he had to hurry, he reached for the child.

Pulling away from his grasp and awakening with a start, the girl brushed some sand from her clothing and faced him.

"Where are you taking me?" she glared, feeling unhappy it was the dragoon over the dark knight who didn't think it was wrong to kill her in the first place.

"To Kaipo," he replied.

Reaching out a hand to lift her again, she flung a Wind spell at his face, knocking him back a few steps.

"Look. You're badly injured," the dragoon reasoned. "And I'll try to get you the help you need in Kaipo."

"You don't care about me or my mother. You killed my mother," she shouted, throwing a handful of sand at him in frustration.

"I should've died not Mama!" she screeched. "No not even that, you should be dead. I only got rid of one of you monsters!"

"I'm ...sorry," he said, trying to sound sincere.

"No, you're not," she argued. "If you were sorry, Mama would still be alive."

"Fine, maybe I'm not completely sorry but I'll take the blame for what I did," Kain admitted, recalling that he felt like he and Cecil were defending their life. "I know you don't believe me. When we get to Kaipo, you'll get the help you need and you'll never see the likes of me again. Consider it my penance."

"Penance?"

"A way to forgive," Kain explained, looking away.

"I'll never forgive you until you let me fling spells at you until you're dead."

"And what would that accomplish?" Kain probed. "I'd be dead. It wouldn't bring back your mother. You think she would want that for you?"

"I don't care! Mama was a very peaceful High Summoner yet even she couldn't kill the evil Baron men that killed grandpa. And you're related, aren't you? Mama told me grandpa was killed by a dragoon just like you. That's why I have to finish the job. Enough talking."

"My father's ...dead," Kain replied. "His grave is quite a distance away from the Mist."

"So he did help kill my grandpa who was just defending the village!" she stood up a bit wobbly and even more filled with wrath. "He deserved to die."

Kain stepped back, feeling stunned and speechless by her sharp words. That did little to assuage her fury and instead confirmed her nightmares. Here stood the murderer of her mother and son of the murderer of her beloved grandpa, the most beloved High Summoners now dead because of the dragoons and the scourge of the Bomb Fragment's inferno.

"I know all about that grave," Rydia continued. "Mama made me visit it and even lay flowers on it so there would be peace between Baron and Mist in the future. You ruined it! Besides, there's no good in you. I heard you and your friend talking about killing me. He was against it but you – you were FOR it. That's not easy to forget."

"No, it's not," Kain admitted. "It doesn't make it fair so I'm giving you this offer of kindness. If you don't cooperate, I can just leave you here."

"If you were really sorry, you'd take me your father's grave and watch me destroy it," she persisted.

"I could. Only that the path to Mist village is completely destroyed. See, look in the distance," Kain pointed. "Plumes of ashes and an actively erupting mountain range that you caused earlier. There's no way we can travel past them for now."

"Fine," the girl seethed. "But don't you ever try to strike up a conversation with me again."

Once I get to the Kaipo inn, I'll drop the girl off at the inn and never have to deal with this again as long as I meet with the soldiers on my own, Kain thought. Better yet, I could find that merchant's brown-haired fiancée and leave her in good hands.

At a markedly renewed pace, he continued his journey towards Kaipo with heavy sorrow about his parents and mixed feelings about the girl's justified anger towards him.

Looking back at his mother's actions, he realized his mother likely felt the same way as Rydia. When she left, he went to practice with his father's lance yet felt immediate guilt when instead he found his father's lance missing and a few dragoons were stationed to prevent him from leaving the castle. She had gone to avenge his father's death, which was probably why she never returned. When the dragoons returned a week later, they handed him his father's lance, which he did not practice with until he had coped with his parents' death. He later learned his mother and father were both killed by the same eidolon named Fenrir who used the spell Banish to remove them from this world and vanquish their lives. With that, Kain tirelessly pursued the path of the dragoon regardless of the king's attempts at dissuading him with the notion that the dragoons are dying out – soon to be replaced entirely with the dark knights.

The King of Baron I serve is so evil, Kain lamented. He caused both my parents' deaths, this seemingly innocent girl's death, and countless others from stealing Mysidia's Water crystal. Do I really have the courage to stop this from occurring without outright seeming treasonous?

Come to think of it, the perturbed dragoon could not think of any good things the king had done. Sure, he had taken him in as a son though he was treated more like a prodigal son for choosing to become a dragoon rather than becoming a dark knight to follow in the footsteps of the king. Maybe his parents' sacrifices meant nothing to the king.

A/N: A good deal of drama there. I wish I could designate this story as adventure, drama, and romance. ...Don't worry, I would feel sick if I did RydiaxKain, having him know her as a child. Well, regardless, for this story, I will probably stick to canon pairings like CecilxRosa and EdgexRydia although Edge will not play a major role in the story.

I took some creative liberties here with the inclusion of the spell, Banish, which is actually supposed to be Warp in this game, FFIV. Banish, a spell that makes enemies vanish, is from FFVI (and maybe other FF I did not research) whereas its alternate version in FFIV is Warp, a spell that allows you to teleport your party back to a dungeon entrance. And of course, the reason for Ricard's death had to be contrived. The wiki says they thought he may have been assassinated, but I think that would be too obvious to kill off a prominent military leader while still saving face especially since the king was less senile back then. Much easier to send him to his death. By the way, all my theories about the king of Baron point to a mostly evil king as opposed to a mostly good king. Perhaps Cecil idolized him from the way he was treated as a son, largely ignorant of the consequences of the world events Baron was involved in until his became captain of the Red Wings.

FFVI and recurring summon reference: I refer to the esper Diabolos as a dragon although it's more a demon-like creation because it seems like a humanoid version of a dragon.

Reference to Dissidia (?): I read in the wiki that Kain was tasked with taking care of Ricard's aging wyvern after he died, which would link FFII to FFIV very directly. Since every FF game is different whether wyverns are present or not in the dragoon class, I thought it would be okay to include this albeit in a more spiritual sense.