Though the Five Lords accepted the tale of Kuksedra, having borne witness to the tail end of the battle between the twin gods (though they hadn't understood it at the time), the rest of the world was not receptive to the story Zaveid and company had to tell about the war between primal deities that had led to their existence. As promised, those who had escaped the skypulse all traveled across, not just the continent, but the entire planet, ensuring that every single person heard the story, but it was not a story anyone wanted to hear. Even with Zaveid's illusory artes depicting what he had seen in the skypulse, what he knew, it took a long time for anyone to really and truly listen, just as Edna had predicted. It went against everything humans thought they knew about the world, and Zaveid got the sense that even with Kuksedra right in front of them, there still would have been deniers.
Still, the group didn't stop telling the story - they made it a point to travel around the world and tell the story again and again and again, to everyone, for years, decades. Eventually, all the humans left alive were those who had grown up hearing it, and slowly, it became more and more accepted.
What took significantly less time, if what felt like significantly more effort, was Zaveid's courtship of Lucine. He stayed as devoted to her as he'd vowed, and they traveled around the world telling the story together; every moment, he worked to try to make himself something remotely resembling worthy of her, even though he knew he never could be. She was shy, nervous, carrying hangups from her marriage in her human life, and it took three years of hard work before she finally kissed him. Even from there, things progressed slowly, but Zaveid tried despite himself, and found that he was indeed able to fulfill Edna's last request. Broken and empty as he was, Lucine made him feel alive, in ways he had thought he would never feel again, and he gave her everything he had, glad that he could spend the rest of his life with her.
Then, not even a century after he'd met Lucine, Zaveid felt the Call.
When he woke up in Lucine's arms and felt that disjointed feeling that could only mean he was nearing the end of his life, it was all he could do not to burst out laughing - out of all of life's cruel, sick jokes, this one by far took the cake. Not even a hundred years previously, he would have felt nothing but relief to know that his time was coming to an end, but now, with Lucine, he actually had a reason to go on living, to want to go on living.
Well, two could play at that game, he decided; there was a reason seraphim were given a one-year warning before death, after all.
So, he took an oath, this time to extend his life: he built a house for Lucine by human means, using only human tools and human resources - watching Rokurou build the treehouse for his family had given Zaveid just enough of an idea of how it worked, so he managed to at least cobble together something that didn't fall over - in exchange for being able to live long enough that he and Lucine would have a full two hundred and fifty years together. That was enough time, right? Hell, she'd probably be tired of him by then, and he'd be ready to face his final judgment.
But it wasn't enough time. Rather than drifting apart, Zaveid and Lucine only seemed to get closer with each passing year, and by the time his oath had expired, he wanted to stay with her even more than before. So he took another oath, and cut his hair, letting it grow at a human pace while never letting it get long enough to touch his shoulders, in exchange for another century. When the century passed and they were closer still, he started wearing a jacket - not a shirt, so as not to infringe on his other oath, but as long as he was in a public place, he had to keep himself covered, all in exchange for another fifty years.
On and on it went; the oaths would expire, and Zaveid would make more. He only ever made small oaths, small sacrifices, though not because he wasn't willing to give anything to stay with Lucine. The problem was that making a large oath would just invite another cruel, sick joke - the inevitable end of his relationship with her - and leave him with centuries to live on his own, when he would long for death all the more once she realized she could do better than him. So, he kept them small, giving himself only tiny increments with each passing oath.
One thing he did not do was tell Lucine the truth, that he was supposed to be dead - it would only burden her, he figured, and he didn't want to weigh her down with that knowledge, he lived to see her smile. Instead, he made excuses: he wanted to prove he could take care of her, he was tired of his hair being so unruly, he wanted his body to be a treat reserved for her and her alone, and so on. Luckily, her blessing only allowed her to read his feelings, not his thoughts, and though he knew she knew something was up, he was able to keep his secret as he made bargain after bargain to give himself just a little more time with her, a little more time, a little more time…
At last, a few decades before their one-thousand-year anniversary, Lucine, fed up with his self-loathing, used her blessing to make him see himself through her eyes, and though the man he saw there was not perfect, he was forced to accept that he was not necessarily a villain, that maybe he didn't have to be a scoundrel. That brief moment of 'maybe' sent his heart, which had secretly grown strong on a steady diet of Lucine's love, bursting free of all the smotherings and bindings he had kept it under, and he was alive again. When this miracle took hold, he decided that, once his latest oath expired, he would take a large oath - he didn't need Lucine to live anymore, he loved her deeply but could survive if she left him, and he was finally ready. Still, he decided he'd wait on his big oath until the last minute; a sacrifice that big was one he wouldn't make eagerly.
Then, three days before it was time for him to make his big oath, an oath that would grant him another thousand years of life to double his time with Lucine, he was lying in bed, sound asleep, when an unsettled wind roused him.
Zaveid frowned, refusing to open his eyes, snuggling deeper into the bedding and Lucine's embrace. But the odd wind tugged at him again, teasing the edges of his consciousness with its wrongness.
Groaning, he cracked his eyes, focusing on the wind that had disrupted his sleep. It was…something big, yet something small, something dangerous yet harmless. What the hell?
With another groan, Zaveid disentangled himself from Lucine's bare arms and sat up, reaching for his clothes, still half-asleep. Whatever was going on, there was a chance it could be dangerous, and he wouldn't rest easy if there was a potential threat to Lucine lurking nearby.
"Zaveid?" Lucine murmured sleepily, pushing herself up behind him. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," he grunted, still getting dressed. "I just need to check on something. Go back to sleep, angel; don't you worry about a thing."
"Zaveid," she said, rising into a sitting position to embrace him from behind, her head resting against his shoulder.
"Everything's fine, babe," he insisted, forcing a smile as he leaned his head against her sapphire locks of hair, then turned to plant a kiss on her forehead. "I promise, I'll be right back. You just go on back to sleep." He smirked as he strapped on his weapons and added, "If you're still awake when I get back, I might just have to take advantage of the opportunity."
She laughed and hugged him tighter, her fingers skimming across his tattooed chest. Gently, he took her hands and pulled them off of him, turning around to face her. She kissed him gently, and he kissed her back, running a finger down her jaw.
"I love you," she murmured.
"And I love you," he responded, meaning it with every fiber of his being and wondering how he had ever thought he wouldn't be able to.
Then he stood up, grabbed and pulled on his jacket, then went and retrieved his hat and plushie from behind the armchair in the corner - his keepsakes of past family members were always something he kept stowed away when he was intimate with Lucine, not wanting anyone else to intrude. He donned his hat, tied the plushie to his belt, made for the door, and stepped out into the cool night air.
The uneasy wind was stronger out here, yet he still couldn't quite get a good read on what he was sensing. Only a direction was clear, and he made his way into the forest surrounding the one-room house he'd built to share with Lucine in the wilds of the Falkewin Hillside.
All of his senses were on high alert as he lost line of sight with his cabin; something was wrong about this, so very wrong. Pendulums at the ready, he stepped around some trees, carefully navigating the undergrowth, until eventually he found himself in a small clearing, where the wind's trail ended. Moonlight gilded the little opening with silver, but he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, nothing that could have conjured such a disturbed wind.
"Took you long enough."
A sudden voice caused Zaveid to jump, and he turned around at the sound that was still familiar, even all these centuries later. Hardly able to believe what he was seeing, he watched as a small figure walked into the clearing to join him, carrying an umbrella.
"I was starting to think you'd never show up," Edna grumbled.
"Edna," he gasped, his eyes wide as he drank in the sight of her. "Are you-?"
"I don't have a lot of time," she stated; "to answer your question, no, it's not time for Kuksedra to come back yet, he just gave me a few minutes here so I could pass on a message to you."
"A message?" Zaveid repeated dumbly. "I don't…am I dreaming?"
In response, the tiny earth seraph stomped over to him, raised her umbrella, and speared him in the gut.
"Ow!" he grunted; the familiar pain, pain he'd missed, was as sharp as ever. "Okay, I'm not dreaming."
"Glad we cleared that up," Edna said tonelessly.
"So…the message?" Zaveid asked, straightening.
Blue eyes met his in the light of the night, and he realized she looked incredibly sad. "You need to stop taking oaths," she told him; "if you take even one more oath to extend your life, you'll turn into a dragon."
Zaveid stumbled back, the words piercing him much deeper than any weapon. "Edna…" he gasped. "You…you can't…"
"The fact of the matter is, you should have turned into a dragon centuries ago, you've been so obsessed with staying with Lucine," Edna went on. "But Kuksedra was grateful to you for working so hard to tell everyone his story, and he never takes without giving in return, so he's kept the malevolence away from you all this time. But…well, it is his job to maintain the balance between life and death, and you've extended your life so much, he's decided he's not going to help you anymore."
"But…" Zaveid breathed. "But just…one more…"
"I'm sorry," Edna said, and he could hear the sadness in her voice now. "I know your next oath was going to be a big one, and I tried to convince Kuksedra to let you make it, I really did. He wouldn't hear it. The only thing he would let me do was come down and tell you, so you'd actually know the consequences of the choice you'd make; that much, he agreed, was only fair."
"There must be a way," Zaveid mumbled to himself, desperate. "I…I can't leave Lucine, there has to be something…something…"
"There is something Kuksedra offered," Edna shrugged, "but I don't think you'd like it."
"What is it?!" Zaveid demanded, stumbling forward and grabbing her by the shoulders. "Tell me!"
She met his eyes again. "You know how sometimes humans can be reborn as seraphim, but not be the exact same people they were?" she asked. "Kuksedra said that, in theory, he could possibly do the same thing to you, if you let him. There are two ways he can influence the mortal world from within the skypulse: through manipulation of malevolence, or if someone deliberately and intentionally asks him to, like Niko did. So if you pray to him as you die, he can give you a second life, just, remake your soul and body into a new seraph." Her eyes closed. "But there's no telling how much of yourself you would keep over that process. You might not keep your memories, your personality…even in the best-case scenario, you wouldn't be the person you are now."
Releasing her, Zaveid stepped back…and chuckled under his breath. "Now that," he said, "is a cruel, sick joke. There was a time when I'd've given anything to be remade as someone else, given a chance to start fresh…but…"
"But there's no guarantee you'd still love Lucine," Edna finished for him. "Even if you did, you wouldn't be the man she loves."
"It'd be cruel to her," Zaveid concluded. "To have the same soul be right there, but not be the same person…she'd spend her whole life trying to get back the person I am now, and I wouldn't be that person, I'd be someone else. She'd suffer…endlessly…" He shook his head.
"So what are you gonna do?" Edna asked. "It's that, turn into a dragon, or die. Which do you choose?"
Zaveid took a long, slow, deep breath, letting it out heavily, before replying. "You know full well what I'm gonna do," he responded.
Edna nodded. "Good," she said. "And, again, I'm sorry. For what it's worth, you did as I asked."
"I didn't do it for you," Zaveid admitted. "I…" He shook his head again. "Damn…I don't want to leave her…"
"She'll be fine," Edna assured him. "Just like she healed you, you healed her, too. But if you want some advice: don't do to her what my older brother did to me."
"Huh?" Zaveid blinked, not following.
"Tell her," Edna told him. "Tell her everything. Explain to her what's going on, the sooner the better."
"But-!" Zaveid exclaimed, his stomach turning. "But she-!"
"Oh, she'll be upset," Edna said tonelessly. "She'll scream and cry and beg you not to go. But at least, once you're gone, she won't be left tormented by unanswerable questions. Why did you go? How could you just die on her without warning her? Didn't you think about how lonely she'd be?" She shrugged. "It'll hurt to lose you, but it'll hurt even more to lose you without knowing why. Trust me."
"You would know," Zaveid admitted with a sigh. "Okay…I'll tell her."
"Good." Edna turned her back, twirling her umbrella…then turned back around again to face him once more, her voice losing its edge as she added, "Speaking of my older brother, when you see him…you'll tell him, won't you? You'll tell him where I am, why I'm going to take so long to see him again…?"
"I'm not so sure I'm going where he is," Zaveid said, "and I'm pretty sure he already knows. But if I do see him, and if he doesn't know, I'll make sure he does." He hesitated, then added, "Do you…that is, should I tell him you won't ever be coming, or that you might show up someday?" It was the only way he could think to ask what was really important.
"Tell him I'll see him again," she replied. "It'll be a long time before I get to come back to the world - another ten thousand years at the very least - but our work isn't pointless. Already, Kuksedra isn't the same bitter ball of evilness he used to be."
"How can you be so sure?" Zaveid questioned, curious.
"He said I had five minutes to pass on this message to you," Edna replied simply; "it's been at least ten."
Zavied chuckled.
"Oh, and one more thing, since I guess I have time," Edna added; "I know you're going to want to make the most of your last three days with Lucine, but could you maybe find some way to pass on a message to Isan? Please tell him that, if he continues to be the Lord of the Land while I'm away, he should live long enough to see me return - apparently, the sentiments of humans play a large part in dictating a seraph's longevity."
"Guess that explains why I was meant to die so soon," Zaveid muttered, thinking back on all the time he'd been taking oaths to shorten his life, not realizing he was shortening it just by making people hate him. "Just another one of life's cruel, sick jokes…"
"Yeah," Edna sighed, "so…so tell him that he should live long enough for me to come back…and tell him…tell him I think of him every day and can't wait to be reunited with him."
"I don't have time to tell him myself," Zaveid said, "but I'll tell Lucine while I'm telling her everything else, and I'll have her pass the message on to him."
"That'll have to do," Edna sighed. "Well…goodbye then. Again, I'm sorry."
"You're just the messenger, babe," Zaveid shrugged; "it's hardly your fault. I…I'm just glad I got to talk to ya again."
"Yeah…me too," she said.
Zaveid hesitated, then blurted out, "Listen, if we hadn't met Lucine-"
"I know," Edna told him before he could finish his sentence. "That's why I'm really glad we did. The world wouldn't be at the point it is now without your illusory artes, just like I said…and besides, I couldn't have done for you what she did. But yeah…I know."
"…I love you, Edna," he stated. He had to say it while he had a heart at least once.
"I love you too," she replied dully. "Bye."
Then, suddenly, malevolence poured out of the sky and wrapped around the tiny wind seraph, morphing her into a massive beast.
"Edna?!" Zaveid exclaimed, raising his hands in preparation to cast a seraphic arte, his blood running cold.
The dragon finished taking shape, then turned to him. "Relax, idiot," it said with Edna's toneless voice, "it's temporary. After all, only a dragon can reach the skypulse."
With that, Edna launched herself into the air and flapped her wings, swooping and diving to gain momentum before she swung upwards into the sky. Zaveid watched her silhouette as it slowly faded against the bright white moon, then watched with the wind until she was beyond even his element's reach.
"I'll make sure your messages get where they need to go," he finally said softly. "And if I get a chance to give Eizen his in person, then when you finally come back and get to rest, you'll find him and me waiting to give you a big hug."
For another long minute, he stood there, processing what had to happen now. One hand went to the little plushie dangling from his belt, and he squeezed it a few times, thinking. He had known, deep down, that this day would eventually come, though he hadn't let himself believe it might happen so soon…
With a sigh, he turned away from his house and started running, wanting to get his final affairs in order as quickly as he could - if he was going to leave Lucine, there was one last thing he needed to do. As he ran, as much as it hurt to know he would be leaving Lucine soon, he didn't let himself ignore the other important fact that Edna's visit had brought him: the mission was not pointless. The day would come, really and truly, when Kuksedra would return and take back up his mantle as guardian deity of the world, and put an end to the curse that had plagued them for so very long.
Despite what he had to do, when he eventually went home, the sky just beginning to brighten with pre-dawn light, he didn't only have bad news to deliver to his beloved water seraph, he also had good news, the best news. And it was this that got him through the doorway, as he prepared to say goodbye to the angel that had saved him.
He would never see the world cleansed of the curse, but it would happen. It was only a matter of time.
~THE END~
If anyone happens to be annoyed that I glossed over the entirety of Zaveid and Lucine's relationship, don't you worry, I elaborate on it Zestiria-only M-rated fic (Zestiria-only because it doesn't contain any mention of any Berseria characters), "The Wind and the Waves". It is VERY M-rated, mind you, but I mean, it's a love story starring Zaveid, how could it not be? XD Also, the thing he did at the end there about getting his final affairs in order is setting up something in The Wind and the Waves, you don't have to worry about it if you don't care about this relationship. Either way, The Wind and the Waves is up, feel free to look at it if you wish.
As of the rewrite, this is not the final chapter; there is still a true ending to see. But as it would still technically be a post-credits scene, this is still an epilogue. There's just an epi-epilogue after it now.
