Act 3 - Concerning the Inheritance of Sin
Scene 1
Daguerreo didn't have a dedicated section about eidolons.
This caused me much frustration, because it meant I had to refine my search, and I couldn't afford to spend as much time in the Library as I had done during my first visit.
My inquiries to the wrinkled veterans of Daguerreo produced very little in the way of concrete information. I covered the magic section extensively, but only dug up references to the powerful creatures. The area of the Library devoted to beasts and battles dredged up nothing but whispers of rumours. After that, I turned to the history section again, frantically chewing my way through tome after tome for revelations about Madain Sari and the summoners themselves. All but that elusive civilisation was recorded officially and expansively.
Finding myself at a loss, I wasted several more days searching through mineral records and jewellery books, hoping to discover the secret of the crystal I had heard about at Madain Sari. That quest also proved fruitless.
The answer hit me not long after. The existence of eidolons and summoners had yet to be proven within 'civilisation' on the Mist Continent. And that would class them as Myth and Legend.
My feet barely touched the ground as I made my way towards that area of the Library.
"Too excited to think straight," I muttered to myself, skimming the spines of hundreds of books with nimble fingers. There were several that looked promising, and I dragged them all out of the dusty bookcase, staggering under their weight. My frame was not obviously made for hard labour, but the inhabitants of Gaia seemed obsessed with lore and legend and the tomes were incredibly heavy. For that, I suppose, I should be grateful, because when I tripped over an old lady in the narrow aisle, managed to miraculously stay on my feet despite a column of books in my arms that impeded any forward vision, but came crashing down when she chased me with her obsidian walking stick, the volumes scattered widely, and I landed face-first on an open and very relevant page.
"I'm never going to get old," I promised myself, rubbing at the lump the haggard woman had dealt me on the back of the head. She'd cursed and blamed me all the way, despite not having suffered a scratch herself, and had then attempted another blow for desecration of the books! Fortunately, I had managed to escape with the tome clutched in my arms to another bookshelf.
All pain and irritation were forgotten when I read the open book properly. It was very old, and written in a version of the Common Tongue that echoed its age. Even with my Genomic talent for languages, I struggled to read it. The first part consisted of a lot of babble about the importance of responsibility when entrusted with power, but the passages after that . . .
Grinning like a fool, I hurriedly read on.
There was little else of interest, but I had what I needed. So the Crystal was scattered across two continents, eh? While at first this seemed an inconvenience, I realised I could turn the situation to my advantage.
From the way the 'Three Great Kingdoms' were referred to, this passage had to have been written about four hundred years ago. I remembered from my studies of Gaia's history that Lindblum was the oldest city, but not by far - it had first been named and defined as a city around five hundred years ago, and Alexandria had been founded by young members of the Lindblum Royal Family who had wanted to strike out on their own only a few decades later. Besides the odd case of sibling rivalry, Lindblum and Alexandria were famed for their close kinship. Even now, the current King Cid Fabool of the former was distant relative and close friend to the latter's well liked ruler and his wife. The discrepancy came with mention of the Dragon-Knights, who, as a race, had been acting intelligently for much longer than the humans of the Mist Continent had, but had generally kept themselves to themselves within the confines of their western lands. As a result they hadn't been 'classed' as a Kingdom until the then ruler of Lindblum had begun exploring their territory, discovered the quickly-growing city of Burmecia there and had offered a formal pact of mutual friendship, an event which, if my memory served, had occurred around four hundred and fifty years ago.
The reason I deduced the text to be so old was that it didn't make mention of the fact that the Dragon-Knights had since gone through a civil war, consisting mainly of insults and accusations rather than actual fighting, that had split them into two factions - the official Royal Family and their followers, who had stayed in Burmecia, and the more pacific self-proclaimed 'Cleyrans', who, having been ordered to leave on account of treason, had promptly set up a new city, estranging themselves from the fellow members of their race. They had built their alternative home in the body of a giant tree trunk and its thousands of branches, and then used an unknown kind of magic to raise and maintain an impenetrable sandstorm around it, effectively cutting themselves off from the rest of the world in its entirety. Nothing had been heard from Cleyra since.
The problem was that afterwards, the Burmecian Dragon-Knights had grown somewhat paranoid and distrustful of everyone who wasn't Burmecian. The original pact had been broken, and though they still maintained a somewhat tentative 'friendship' with Lindblum, the Alexandrian rulers of the time had dubbed them cowards and an unstable settlement, causing the Burmecians to cut themselves off from Alexandria completely at the painful impingement on their honour, withdrawing further and further into complete isolation over the following centuries.
Even three hundred years later, Alexandria's prejudices towards the Dragon-Knights were strong. Though the genuine name of their kind is 'dragoon', Alexandria and even people in Lindblum have taken to calling them 'rat-people', mostly out of ignorance of the truth, which has most likely been forgotten by now in those two most powerful Kingdoms, but also out of contempt for the Burmecians' behaviour back then and their appearance, shunning the dragoons' heritage as very, very distant descendants of dragonkind. Since the book didn't mention any of this, it had to have been written when relations between all three Kingdoms were good and strong.
Meticulously, I began to take down the relevant passages word for word with the ink and paper I had brought with me, my mind rolling the possibilities of the crystal shards' whereabouts over and over. It was quite likely that all three of the so-called Great Kingdoms had forgotten the jewels' importance, relegating them to the rank of 'family heirloom'. Madain Sari's shard, though . . . was that why Garland had asked me to spare that family? No - he wouldn't have then known about my plans to obtain an eidolon like Alexander, so his purpose for doing that was different. Still, being the only remaining summoners, they would undoubtedly take it upon themselves to preserve the shard, wherever it might be - the people of Madain Sari were not the sort to forget tradition and their role in the protection and usage of eidolons. I could safely leave them until later.
Gathering up my notes, I decided to stop off at Lindblum on the way back to my Desert Palace. Before any of my magnificent plans could be implemented, I needed to build my black mages, something that would probably take a lot of time to get right.
But, if Garland could do it . . .
. . . Then so could I.
***
It felt . . . good to get back to my mission. My temporary retreat from it, spent with Faowri, had been wonderfully restorative, but I had begun to subconsciously lose sight of my very purpose, which was my revenge on Garland. And leaping back into the task had renewed my determination to accomplish that goal.
Still, I made time for her. Every few months or so, I would break off my almost inhuman focus on building a race of my own to control and visit Faowri and her father. Sometimes we would watch plays together - King was fond of holding private viewings in his auction house - and on other occasions I'd split my time equally between the Noble and his daughter. However important Faowri was growing to be to me, my friendship with Utendo King was also genuine and heartfelt. I knew it was a bad idea to grow close to either of them - after all, carrying on with my plans to destroy Garland might lead to the actual assimilation of Gaia, and, hence, their deaths. I would consider a way to save Faowri from that - it wouldn't matter much in the ailing King's case - but the question was whether or not she would want me to save her, once she learned I was responsible. Or even whether she would want to survive when everyone else would surely die.
Her rejection would be . . . very painful. As it was, I wasn't even sure if she felt the same way about me as I did about her. Imagine if I attempted to save her alone from destruction, on the grounds of love, when the feeling wasn't even mutual!
It was a bad thought to even consider. Faowri, King, everyone had to come second until Garland was defeated. And then I would worry about what people thought of me.
End of Act 3: Scene 1