Garnet sat, frozen and silent since Cater told her what Sice did. Cater didn't know which was worse—the silence or Sice not having the decency to look apologetic.
"I heard about what happened," Garnet said, after an actual eternity. "And I knew that you worked with the spymaster to retrieve names of those that we knew as problems. Did he not tell you that I am against murder and assassinations? We had plans to use them to stop others from following in their footsteps."
"Well, at least you won't have to worry about them killing anyone else, right?" Cater asked.
Garnet pressed her lips into a fine line "It won't happen again, will it?"
"Doubt it," Sice said.
"I have welcomed you all into my city. Even into my castle. But I do not condone violence and murder. I understand there is little I can do to stop you, but I would withdraw my cooperation if you keep up this poor behavior."
"We won't," Cater said with a meaningful look to Sice.
"Thank you. You're dismissed."
Cater smothered the instinct to fight back. She and Sice left.
"That could've gone better," Cater grumbled once they were far enough from the Queen's study.
Sice quirked a smile. "We don't have to be friends to work together."
"No… I suppose not."
Zidane fought the fuzz in his head and found something like clarity. Amarant was fainter today and Vivi hummed with stress.
"Hey, guys," Zidane said. "Feeling any better today?"
Amarant refocused. "Until you started talking."
"You've been in here too long. You don't remember how to hit where it hurts."
"Is that a bad thing?" Vivi asked.
Amarant re-exerted control. "You're as pesky as ever."
"At least I'm consistent. Now, how about giving me my body back?"
"Come on, Amarant," Vivi said. "You don't want this. You work under your own rules, right?"
Amarant growled and it went through Zidane's throat.
"Vivi's right," Zidane said. "This isn't you. I mean, come on, working for deity? Amarant?"
He yanked against the chains and Zidane startled. "Don't shun the darkness," Amarant hissed under his breath. "Don't fear the light."
Metal dug into his flesh. Vivi cried, "Stop!"
Zidane forced past the pain. "Come on, we're all friends here!"
Amarant kept pulling and it aggravated the injury in his arm. "It sucks that you're dead," Zidane told him, "and I'd love to know who did it and how to get revenge, but it's gonna be hard to do that if you kill me before I get a chance!"
Amarant screamed and one of the guards moved to approach before their friend pulled them back.
"We'll miss you." Zidane imagined burying another friend. "If death is really what you want. But we can get you back!"
Amarant slowed, breathing hard. "Don't fear the light…"
"The official pardon went through, hasn't it?" Vivi asked.
"Not too long before I got back, actually. So, no one thinks Amarant is a thief anymore. They do still know he's a mercenary."
"Don't…"
Vivi hesitated. "It's okay to move on, Amarant. I used to be scared, too. But, you know, the afterlife is full of super nice people and… It's a relief. Dying hurts. But being dead is comfortable. There are some broken things about it right now, but those won't last. It's better than whatever Bhunivelze put you through."
"What does it look like?" Zidane asked. "Death?"
Amarant stilled. "There is no release from this."
Vivi said, "Then don't give up. There are tons of us fighting it. It may take a while, but we'll get control back and we'll never lose it again. And you can prove yourself better and stronger than everyone else!"
The door opened and Garnet burst through in a stunning dress that hugged her curves in all the right places and fell short enough to show ornamented boots and a thrilling glimpse of knees. He wished Amarant looked higher so he could see the collar.
"Open the cell," she said.
Zidane pulled against the restraints and Amarant felt his body's need to get closer to Garnet. She stopped outside his reach and Amarant finally looked up at her. Zidane admired the glint in her eyes that bespoke her determination and he really hoped he'd get a chance later to ask her to wear something like this more often.
Clanking armor distracted him, and Steiner burst in, short sword drawn. Zidane felt a flash of panic before Steiner drove that thing through his shoulder.
He didn't feel it. He entered shock. The pain would come, but for now a clammy sweat overtook him and a thrumming in his ears muffled Garnet's explanation.
"You're better than this," Steiner said. "Now unbind yourself from this false fealty and depart!"
Amarant pulled himself toward Steiner and made the thing cut deeper. "I'm stronger than any of you. You can't expect a small injury like this to stall me."
"Not you." Steiner pushed and the hilt forced Zidane back. "You know better than to let mortals suffer like this for your crimes."
Amarant growled and grabbed for Steiner despite the restraints. Vivi recoiled from them in panicked silence. "You'll kill your friend to prove a point?"
"I'll kill my friend to save him from you!"
"He'll still die."
"A sacrifice I'm willing to make."
"You're a fool, Steiner."
"At least I remain loyal to the cause to which I am sworn. Can you say the same?" Steiner pushed him against the wall and scraped his sword against the stone. "Or will you just run away to another body? Will you take me to continue your insanity?"
Garnet asked Steiner to stop, but he maintained eye contact with Amarant and said, "Perhaps I'll bury Zidane today for nothing."
Amarant screamed—a boiling mixture of rage and frustration—before a moonlit young girl's ghost appeared beside them. A boy in tough clothes joined her and gave Zidane a furrowed look.
"You found him faster than us," the girl told Zidane. "You might not even need our help."
"We need to get him back, still," Vivi said. Though it didn't make it past Zidane's lips, the girl nodded and vanished.
"Gotcha." The boy put a hand on Zidane's head. "We'll get you home, Amarant. We can make it very easy. Or you can move on and we can take you to the afterlife."
"No!" Vivi cried.
"We don't get to decide," the boy said. "It's up to him. Either become whole with your body or follow us to the Councils beyond."
Amarant grew smaller in Zidane, relaxed by the divine presence of these… spirits. Amarant still seethed with rage, but it became more contained. Fueled by the focusing power of the blade in his shoulder, he said, "I'll keep fighting."
"With us?" the boy asked.
Amarant didn't want to say it. He didn't want to bow to these pitiful shapes. He wanted to carry on with his own free will. But he wouldn't beg for it.
So instead Zidane said it, "He wants his freedom back."
"You'll get it. And…" The boy leaned in and said in a conspiratorial whisper, "We'll help you destroy the thing that took it from you in the first place."
"That's what we said!" Zidane managed before Amarant took over again.
"I'll kill him of my own power. Not because you allowed me."
"Done. But let's hurry since they don't realize I'm gone." The boy took Zidane's hand and they all evaporated away.
Zidane grew cold and felt empty lungs. He gasped in breath and spasmed as pain returned to him.
"Vivi…" He paused at hearing his own words come out of his mouth. The blade burned his shoulder and made every motion agony.
"Zidane." Garnet waited for confirmation and he didn't know how to give it.
"Uh… I'm back. I guess."
"Oh, thank the heavens!" Garnet dropped to his side and summoned white magic while Steiner left the sword, backed off, and grumbled under his breath.
Zidane slumped again the wall and the motion seared his shoulder from the blade's jostling. Garnet would heal it before they removed the sword. "What was that?" he asked Vivi. "How did he take my body in the first place?"
"Sorry." Vivi's voice was once again a seemingly innocuous echo in the back of his mind. "He died on a world with broken connections to time and space."
"Right, you said something about that before." His mouth felt dry as dust and he wondered when the last time he drank was.
"Everything's been falling apart. Space, time, and even death. We're trying to get it all picked up, but it's complicated. I'm sorry."
"Stop apologizing."
"It is our fault. We've gotten so caught up in this stuff that we've neglected our other duties. Do you mind if I stick around a little longer? I'd like to talk to Garnet and everyone about what's going on out there."
"Yeah. Sure."
"I apologize," Steiner said at length. "I preferred not to kill you."
"Aw, be honest. It would make you very happy to kill me."
"It would not. Especially as it was under Her Majesty's orders."
"Garnet—?"
She gave Steiner the go ahead and Steiner started pulling the blade out. Garnet healed it all the while and Zidane saw the telling strain of too much magic in the sheen of her skin. "If you found a potion," he said, "that would help, too."
"You know that's not nearly as effective." Garnet strengthened her cure and Steiner removed the blade for good. They sealed up the wound and Steiner stepped back to watch him.
His eyelids grew heavy and sleep beckoned him. Garnet took him in a tight hug before peppering his face with kisses. She smelled of warm syrup and flower soaps and it reminded him of the lingering dirt of his cage. He wanted to hold her back, but the chains held him fast. "Not to be ungrateful, but could you let me loose maybe?"
"Of course." Garnet gestured and Steiner retrieved a key. "The scent of death is gone from you. What happened to Amarant?"
"He left. Either Steiner's trick worked, or he just gave up. Or maybe he swapped to someone else?"
"We'll watch for him," Steiner said.
"Oh, I'm so glad you're back!" She kissed him again and Zidane moved to find her mouth with his.
Steiner cleared his throat and warned Garnet to be careful, but Zidane ignored him. But this would be a lot more satisfying if he weren't so parched. "Thanks for not killing me," he said.
"I wouldn't have let them kill you."
"Even if Amarant didn't leave?"
She pulled back and looked at him, dark eyes warm. "I'd find another way if he didn't."
"Majesty," Steiner said, "we have other matters—"
"Matters that can wait." Garnet took Zidane in a tight hug. "Let's get you food and rest, shall we?"
"Can we go with water first?"
Garnet gave a wheezy laugh and let Steiner accompany them to the kitchens. Zidane refused to let her go the whole way.
Vivi took off with Dajh's guidance and Amarant's spirit in reluctant tow. Yeul felt their departure and carved out her best path back to Gaia VIII. She couldn't feel Amarant's body, which she could only hope meant Rinoa got that handled.
Yeul sat on a stone bench overlooking Alexandria. Birds sung and the flowers danced with the breeze. The ever-present flow of life teased her hair and filled her nose with earth and growing things. She thought of those that outlived their time and readied to meet Death.
Yeul closed her eyes and thought-traveled a path invisible to anyone watching. "Speak with me, o Death. You who carry the burden of Etro, the mantle of Death. Caius released me from the same fate, yet now I come to take it."
"It remains only half."
Her heart skipped and she forced a deep breath. "It is the only part you bear. The only part I will take upon my own incarnation, allowing the previous rest."
"It is not so. Accepting the power will not free us from our duty."
"I can feel that I am to take it myself, as my own domain. That will not free you? How?"
"Etro knew Her creator had no intention to remain away. She knew that someday, He would return, and She knew His desire for control over all things. Had She accepted this inevitability, there would have been no need for reckless travel through time. To allow such travel brings about the need for a seeress."
"She traded one danger for another."
"Throughout the entire life of Gran Pulse, there were only ever two."
"The many named Yeul and the one Serah. I understand this. I do not understand your greater message."
"The many were only ever meant to be one."
"Yet we are all different, if built on the same foundation. We developed to be our own beings, separate and unique."
"Naturally and deliberately. Caius stoked this fire, enforcing the thought that we are separate. In the end, it is only partly true. We were one soul, cut off at the end again and again, for the purpose of Etro's struggle to keep humanity free from Bhunivelze."
"But we are unique."
"Our separation is little more than standard phases of a normal life. We grow, our interests change, yet who we are remains the same."
"And the dark of us? The ones who chose different?" Like the ones that targeted Noel and Serah.
"Times when we fought the weight of our role. We are one soul. Many meant to be one. You cannot be a god as a sliver of eternity."
She wrapped her fingers around the bench. "Caius insisted."
"Caius has gone through too much for one such as he. But now he relearns eternal stability."
"Will I still be… me?"
"You are the last of us. Together, we will not be one of our incarnations, but we will remain most like you. You will gain our experience and your emotions—now stripped of depth but for your limited portion—will be made whole again."
"I'll change."
"We have accepted it. When you have done the same, return, and we will end this fractured existence."
Yeul agreed and cut off the connection.
The place where she sat still smelled like earth and growing things. She still felt the distant souls seeking rest. They grew ever more restless in the time she spent walking amidst these mortal realms. They reminded her of the work she neglected.
Yes, better to get this done sooner than later.
Bartz leaned against his headboard and made out shapes in the dark room. Porom returned some time ago and rested on her cot. Neither spoke.
Bartz's skin prickled with the heat of these thick blankets and he wished he could leave to the liberating wind of outside. At this time of night, he could even avoid sunlight until he found a portal or a cave or something far away from people.
Porom held a jewel in her hand that glittered despite the darkness.
"What's that for?" Bartz asked.
"An implant." She turned it over in her hand. "I'll admit, it's not the best job I've seen, but there was only so much I could do this far from home. I haven't actually made one myself."
"Implant?" He thought back to his brief time on Porom's Earth. Remembered Rydia, with the ornament on her temple. "You put those things in people's heads?"
"I know—it's so needlessly reckless. I mean, we have infusions, which are more reliable anyway, so why slam a spike into your skull? But this one is in the interest of sharing information and technology." Porom tapped the jewel. It lit with a small glow. "There is little I can do to rectify the death I caused, but I can share this. Infusions need more people and expertise, so I'm stuck with this barbarism."
"For the queen?"
"Yes, I mean… just by studying this, they'll learn faster than we did by trial and error."
"You did it by choice, I hope."
"Of course. I was always set up to become the leading white mage and a wisewoman to my village. I would do anything to make myself a better…"
"Better what?"
"I don't know. Better person. Better white mage. Better sister. Now I don't see how what difference any of that made. No magic in the world made me a leader or friend."
Zidane joined them with a lantern. "You're all still alive, right?"
Porom cleared her throat. "I've replicated a skull focus, if you would be interested in learning from it."
"Garnet will like that. I'm too dumb to understand that magical nonsense." Zidane sat on the edge of a desk. "Speaking of, I've got an old mage in my head that wants to talk. Tell me about this magical nonsense."
"Oh? It's, um, it's a focus. With proper medical attention, it can be embedded in the head of a mage and used to further their magical power. It shores mana and increases capacity for use, either in endurance or in potency…"
Bartz felt the pull of sleep and woke to a cool cloth on his forehead and the burn of fire despite the room still being dark as night. Ice in his veins like jumping in the ocean in the middle of summer. It pushed out some of the fuzz and brought him coherence.
"You're sick," Porom said. "The fever overtook you. Eiko overheard your mutterings and insisted on coming with us when we leave. I all but kicked her from the room."
"How long did I sleep?"
"An hour, maybe. Less."
Bartz ripped his blanket off and the air did nothing to cool him. Porom summoned white magic and soothed the edge off the heat. "Water?" he asked.
Porom helped him drink. "It's times like this that remind me why I made myself a foci. I would just flood you with white magic, but you've barely accepted any of the other spells offered."
"That's weird."
"Not so much. It's hard to want healing when you don't know what you're healing."
"Hm?"
"You know, because maybe the evil part of you will revive and take over again."
Bartz felt a stirring of nausea at the thought. "But Bhunivelze's not taking people anymore."
"Doesn't mean he didn't leave something." Porom stared at him for the longest time before she dipped her head. "Bartz… I need to get back to Blue Terra. Will you come with me?"
His limbs were all but useless and his brain fried to the point that two Poroms spoke to him. His connection to the Crystals felt as a fading dream. "And skip my discovery journey where I find out what Bhunivelze left behind?"
"I think this will make its own journey."
"Should we take that punk kid that insists on coming?"
"I'd prefer not. But we should thank Garnet for her help in restoring us and if she prefers we take another young adventurer, then so be it."
Bartz thought of Krile joining their party and his initial fear at having a child with them. She seemed so small, and this one was smaller. Maybe the two would become friends if they met.
"Let's do it," he said.
Noel's chest burned with the phantom of the Heart of Chaos while he paced his borrowed chambers at the palace. But he and Serah went through the gate and got stuck in the fake worlds meant to trap them with their carefree guise. But he also failed to save Hope from assassins. And then he succeeded other times. He sometimes met Snow again before the timelines converged into Nova Chrysalia.
He couldn't remember a single future where he was born again into a new and thriving world, seven-hundred years after the fall of cocoon. Not once did he win what he set out to do. Instead he got Chrysalia.
"Noel?" Yeul slipped into the room the queen lent them. "I have a question."
Noel dismissed his aimless thoughts. "What's up?"
"What do you think of the other Yeuls?"
"The others?"
"You met many of them in your travels."
Didn't she travel with them? No, that was another split. "I thought they were you at first."
"They were and they were not." She looked so small in the doorway and yet her words still echoed with something wider and deeper than what a girl her size should know. "No matter what I may become, you'll stay with me, won't you?"
"Why? What's wrong?"
"I am not meant to gain the power of Bhunivelze as part of my ascension. It is Etro who held the power of Death, and it is my past selves who hold it now. To ascend, I must become one with them."
"You can do that? What will you become, then?"
"They say this Yeul, the one from the end will make the resemblance of all. But I'll change. To what degree is yet unknown."
His heart dropped and Noel crossed the room to her. Yeul looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes and said nothing. Noel touched his forehead to hers and said, "I stand by my statement."
"Are you certain? If you do not know what I'll be like after, then—"
"I would make a terrible brother if I placed conditions on our relationship. I'll make beads as a promise."
Yeul tugged at one of his travel bags. "But we can't even collect shellrocks."
"I'll find something similar." Noel smelled must on her. "Have you not been outside?"
"On the balconies and in the courtyard. The people outside unnerve me."
"They're just people, Yeul."
"People can do a lot of bad things."
Noel couldn't bring himself to deny that one. "Let's go looking for beads together tonight, okay? Before you go blend with your other selves."
"I will come back with more memories and the power of Death itself. That's good, isn't it?"
"People said you were the image of Etro and Mwynn Themselves, and here you are taking their place. It's amazing."
"But what if this version of me doesn't make it back? What if I change so much no one wants me anymore?"
"Then those people aren't worth your time."
The moment was too long and too short. He memorized the way she looked at him with worry and the way she clasped her fingers together. He didn't think to ask her about Valhalla's choirs before she determined it was time to go bead-hunting.
They went into town and asked around for somewhere they might buy rocks and pebbles. That earned them a lot of odd looks, so they followed one redirection to a jewelry shop in which they found assorted gems. From there they moved on to one place of odd collections that hid one tiny box of assorted… things. Noel found pieces of strange rock, wood, and shells that he purchased with borrowed money from the palace.
"And string?" Yeul asked when they left the shop with barely any less money and a small pouch of potential beads-to-be. "I don't see many places that would sell good leather for string."
"That place seems a good start." Noel referred to an armory some blocks away. "They'll have leather, at least. Though I hope I don't have to buy a jerkin just to strip it to pieces."
They ventured in and after a lengthy discussion with the tradesmen there, got assorted twine and unwanted leather that Noel could work with. On the way back to the palace, a baker stopped them to gush about Yeul's hair and offered them bread to accept as his "tribute to a lovely goddess." Noel took it as a small blessing for the growling in his stomach, but it only took a couple of bites to find it less flavorful than most food he tasted across the realms.
"It's better than what we had back home," Yeul reminded him. Unable to argue that point, Noel agreed, and they found a comfortable balcony back at the palace to settle and watch the town. The sun sank an hour or two ago and only lamps remained to light the winding streets.
They barely started before Yeul stood. "I should go," she said. "I fear if I put it off any longer, I'll never do it."
Noel gripped the shell in his hand hard enough to hurt. "I'll have this ready when you get back."
"It won't take that long."
"I'll finish it anyway to give to you when you return."
Yeul gave him a shaky smile and left. Just like that, Noel was left to the haphazard supplies splayed across the ground. He didn't even have the tools to smooth some of these tougher pebbles.
"I should not be surprised to find you on the ground." Caius formed before him, looking as disappointed as he did during training.
Noel shook his head and refocused on the beads. "I didn't ask you."
"Yet here I stand."
"Didn't know ghosts could stand."
"Pick yourself up. You have much yet to do."
"I can barely remember what's real and what isn't. Was I ever the guardian, or the bodyguard, or the shadow hunter? Any or all?"
"Always a hunter."
"But I remember the others."
"Never did you take on the name of guardian. I entrusted Yeul to you only after I stopped the title of Guardian for good."
"I took the Heart of Chaos. I held it in my chest."
"Your blade pierced the Heart within my own. You never held it yourself."
"I did." Noel broke a shell and drew ragged breath. "Not this time, but in another. I took it and I became the Guardian."
"You've come to recall alternate timelines. That does not make them true."
"I was the Guardian. Just like I got caught in a place disconnected from time with Serah and Yeul. Just like I stayed behind in Academia. Just like I was left, forever stuck in a false world you made for me. And you know what? I never left that world. I died in Academia, lived out my life in some broken ending with Serah and Yeul, and I never ended as the Guardian."
"Memory or not, it does not matter. It never truly happened. To be the Guardian is to live a hell of your own and you have not yet found that hell."
"This isn't about the Guardian!" Caius's face blurred and Noel wiped away the tears. He got to chiseling out a hole in the first stone. "It's about me. You said it yourself, I'm not the Guardian. I was never good enough for it. I thought you would help us restore the world I wanted. But, like always, you only push my limits."
"I push you in the vain hope that you will stop breaking. Yet even your five-hundred years of life could not teach you that."
"Either help me out or leave."
"I cannot help you with beads without a physical form. I can only visit you or possess you."
"Did you ever even ask Yeul? Did you ever once ask what she wanted instead of you?"
"She did not want to die. She struggled on for the purpose of a world that would fail one way or another. She would never find rest while Etro lived."
"And she accepted that!"
"As you never did."
"Or you!"
Yeul accepted the other fragments of Yeul into herself, as they did with her, yet she never stopped feeling like herself.
A rush of wind filled her and stopped breath. She thought she'd forget mortality but then it rushed back to her in a collision forceful enough to buckle her knees and cloud her mind. Voices overlapped in a maddening cacophony before they suddenly silenced and Yeul absorbed years' and years' worth of information. Eons and ages and generations. It happened so fast she thought she'd explode from it.
And in moments, it was over. They were her and she was them. There were no split consciousnesses, there was only Yeul.
She opened her eyes to find a flower, purple petals shifting in the breeze. It was a singular bloom among dozens of others. Despite that, it was clearly the focus of the patch. It grew large and proud, not unlike Symethens or Adias back on Gran Pulse, and shimmered in the pale moonlight.
One of the petals curled and Yeul jumped back, remembering the power in her.
The flower relaxed back into its old self and Yeul recovered her breath. A sickening realization and she felt the coursing of magic in her stronger than anything she felt before. Bolder than the blackest magic and stronger than the strongest white.
With the power swirling inside, she feared her body would explode. Her head spun and she couldn't see straight.
"She said it was her choice." Noel finished the second bead and tested it with the twine. "And I respect her choices."
"And yet, even after all this time, she still won't obtain the future she deserves."
"We're all making sacrifices."
"And what have those sacrifices won you in the past? A broken world and shattered time. Space fled your realm for the disaster wrought."
"Something you caused."
"And that you made necessary. But enough of futile words. I'll leave you to your work." Caius dissolved into nothingness.
Noel broke a third wood chip and dropped the knife with a curse. Blood trickled from his finger and he wished he could just grab his old threading.
If only it wasn't lost to the Void long ago with everything else.
"Noel." Yeul joined him and he startled. He didn't hear her come in. "I'm sorry I left. I can help now."
He didn't ask her how she was, and she didn't explain. They just returned to working on their promise beads and pretending everything was normal.
