Disclaimer: (I love these.) Seifer isn't mine, though I believe he inhabits my brain and mind and spirit the most of all…ahem. Eminent domain or something like that.
The Bright Knight Comes Only In Dreams
And then the world was extraordinary.
It was the blackest night he had seen, ever in Galbadia. And through this he could see the sheets of stars. But all of that was worth shit, as far as he was concerned. What others, the mere flecks of lives that surrounded and swarmed like locusts around him, what they thought when they looked upon those stars, he knew. They thought that their wishes were as grand and distant as them. Those were beautiful, shining, and unreachable. Lovely landscape effect, though.
As if Seifer could stand placebos.
Yes, dreams to the mere flecks were truly wasted. The idiots thought that placing their dreams on a pedestal, holding it at arm's length to always have full view of it, and it's splendor, was the way. Harrumph! That was why they were ordinary. Simpleton, all of them!
You want to get to the guts of a dream? You plunge your sword right in!
Seifer took up the Hyperion and thrust it into the dirt with a grand smile.
Ah, yes, perhaps the flecks wanted to suffer. After all, as they say, anticipation is the greatest thrill. However, since none had participated in their dreams…huh…none could revel in the utter power of them. The untouchable, touched! Caught! Overcome! Harnessed! A-ha! The pretty powers of the mind were fright-inducing to the flecks! Fearsome, isn't it, he thought, to have all you have wished for, all the adventure, all the dream!
Afraid of waking up?
What if you never had to?
Never…never…
Seifer cast his glare out over the plains, surveying the darkened lands. High upon a ledge, the sounds blew up to him. Monsters' calls moaned, cried. He crossed his arms and let out a loud laugh. It came from so deep it shook his body, vibrated his vocal cords, and buzzed his teeth. Filled with such vigor, the frozen air slathering his skin and filling his lungs with its lucid brilliancy, he grasped the gunblade's hilt and yanked it out of the ground. He swung it around his head. The swoosh of the night air parting in its wake, the blade slicing cleanly, all was filling his veins with golden electricity.
"Dreams were never meant for you!" he shouted, standing as if triumphant. "You will never sleep, and I never wake!"
There was a step, a soft sigh of some dirt clusters breaking under someone's weight, behind him. He whipped around, Hyperion held level to someone's throat. His eyes being properly adjusted to the thin, red moonlight for the past half an hour, he could immediately see his sorceress. Just as instantly he brought the gunblade down.
"My Lady," he hastily assembled, and dropped into a bow from his waist.
Edea's smile wasn't so much condescending as it was amused. She was well pleased. Her eyes glittered with it and the dark gleam quickened his blood.
"My dear Knight, I see you are in a happy state," she purred.
He bowed subtly once more. "Nothing without your doing, My Lady."
Their twin grins spread, each with its own power behind it.
His Lady tilted her head back a bit, made an approving noise, and moved like a black cloud over to the ledge. He would have barred her path, so she could not fall, but he knew His Lady. She would not fall.
After a few minute's silence, and whilst the watery-red crescent of the moon further rowed up the sky vault, His Lady spoke again. He listened attentively. He could physically feel the connection they had between them, a deep and lethargic power that turned over in a steam like thick tar. It was binding.
"What was that you were saying before I happened upon you?" She asked simply.
"My Lady, I said they will never sleep, and I never wake."
"And…who are 'they'?"
"My Lady, they are everyone but you and me."
He could feel her smirk.
"But how are you to look after me…asleep?"
"My waking dream, My Lady."
She gave a velvet laugh. "I see. That is what my Knight is so happy about."
Seifer stood beside her on the ledge. He felt taller when standing by her, tall and definitely accomplished. Besides, she was the pivot of his world, his reality.
His Lady was silent again, and he felt better not to speak. If she wished not a disturbance of the air, he would freeze every molecule. Every…single…molecule.
As she had with her way of speaking, His Lady let her words drip deliciously off her purpled lips, like the purest nectar from a flower petal. Every utterance was a soft, hypnotic seepage.
"Sir Almasy, I would wish you in charge of Galbadia Garden," she pronounced. "There is to be a war of no greater proportions than the one that will come. Things have been placed so as to liken the snapping of air when lightning strikes: an awesome and terrifying event, partial to nothing…to…stop…it…" The last words were a conviction, as if a spell was spoken. She clipped them so gently from her lips, she was massaging smoke with her kiss.
"A great honour, My Lady," Seifer got out passionately, the golden tremor in his veins humming. His unequivocal victory trumpeted within his very pores. Every part of him was alive. Every part of him was filled with light.
She turned her potent view to him, and Almasy had yet another surge of vehemence. How the wheel becomes of it! he laughed inwardly. The fire of battle, scourged by a meaningless, pitiful Garden, endowed and awakened to his potential. Every fleck was in piss-pants terror at their dream. Nightmares were the unmasked precocity of this state, and so woefully they grow pale at the false insertion into them. Yes, yes…hold your dream at length and you will hesitate, Seifer thought. When you hesitate, you will fear.
Better you did, too! A-ha! He joyously cackled mentally. They were fear. All wishes, all hopes. But all the flecks forgot that the reveries were born, were leaked from humans. A-ha!
They never once thought that the power of the dream was fear. Fear was the power. Flecks filled their wishes with so much of misdirected fervor, their willful hopes, their ardently sought-after dreams, that the wild and cataclysmic thing for which these emotions had become when accumulated scared them. When you plunge, plunge into a dream you are not further terrorized: it is merely returning, returning to the pure vigor of your subconscious, the violent, raw power, of the completion of…of the self.
You become fear.
Seifer's grin was so great His Lady took obvious notice of it. Her beguilement brightened her countenance.
She strolled off into the moonlight, which draped her shoulders, the coal feathers glowing in catching this liquid wave such that she had a positive halo about her amber eyes. His Lady looked magnificent.
"My Knight, " she began, "do you know the meaning behind your gunblade's title?"
He held up the sleek silver cutting edge, and ran a finger lightly across it. The keen edge lovingly split his skin into a thin crimson line. He looked from this to His Lady, and then back again. Seductively, he licked the marble droplet off his fingertip, savoring the warm tang of copper.
"Hyperion," he whispered in rapture. He stared at the way the moonlight slid over the polished grain, and if he tilted it at the right angle, it seemed awash in blood.
Seifer laughted loudly.
"Yes, Hyperion, God of Light," His Lady continued. "A Titan, who… gave birth to the sun, Helios, and the dawn, Eos." Seifer looked up to her with an anticipating grin. His seafoam-coloured irises suddenly sparked with something demented in their depths, as if he were not entirely connected with this reality.
And he wasn't, given. A-ha!
Her eyes grew darker. Something was brewing in them, something devious and formulated. His Lady's voice floated over to him as a scented cloth drifted down to a dozing lover. The golden flow in his body almost caught him up into him fainting, but he held on. He felt as if he could throw his head back and laugh on, forever. The hysterical giggles caught in the closest place to his tounge in his throat, and only his reverence for his sorceress would leash them.
"You, Sir Almasy, a Sorceress' Knight…You," she repeated. "You shall be the bringer of the new beginnings, the cut of a new day on the horizon. To the future, a brilliant golden line of hope, a new day. To the future…and just like that, a flaming, raging, severe sunlight. Instantly, no one can withstand your direct touch. No, you…you are much, much too powerful for that. You will bring light upon a desolate land. The daytime dream. No one will be able to sleep, to dare to dream, as long as you keep your weapon high. Your Hyperion, God of Light. You are…the beginning."
Almasy felt as if he couldn't be even more filled with such restlessness. He wished his weapon bathed in the drippings that lined the insides of every lifevein of every fleck. He wanted the immortality that kept the ephemeral muscle and flesh blush. The very royal bronze of His Lady's eyes demanded it. The very throbbing of his heart greedily ached for it. His circle of protection would as soon kill all the world before it left his sorceress. They were of one unit, now. Blood fed them both. Blood fed the dawn.
*
"'The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers ordisposed to destruction according to their capacities. The crimes of
these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek
in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better.
But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through
blood, he can, I maintain, find himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading
through blood…the man of the future…move the world and lead it to its goal.'"
- Crime and Punishment
Author's Note: It's another one of those self-writing stories! It's another! Ack! They're stalking me! Pummeling on me brain! Me tinsy, tiny, brain! Seifer wanted me to do it! I admit, this was beginning as a character analysis, but quickly degraded through help from some Gladiator music to some insanity sketch. My, how the wheel becomes it!