replacement theory

. o .

It was autumn.

The housewives of both worlds were busy planting flower bulbs in small plots and regal gardens, but these two had a far more valuable harvest to sow. Working with a small battalion of Yggdrasil's forces, they had pursued a band of escaped prisoners into one of the many cave systems in the Toize valley. The budding Exspheres fused to the escapees were in their final stages of development, making the fugitives dangerous in their desperation, but she led the charge. Disregarding the risks, she pursued the last of the fugitives, swinging her oversized mace with a precise fury that made grown men tremble in the moment before their kneecaps were smashed.

He'd never met anyone like her. The girls he had grown up with were…girlish. Coquettish, even. He wondered if the woman leading this small army remembered how to be either. Forcystus' eyebrow quirked as the woman who he watched suddenly called off the attack.

Before she could spin to face him, he had rushed up and placed his arm cannon at her throat; if she had experienced a change of heart, or if she was being manipulated somehow, it had to be dealt with quickly. Shaking her hair in a blasphemous wave of green – it should have been red, he thought; red for the blood she spilled relentlessly, to match the paint that covered her lips – she glared. "You're wasting your time," she scoffed, eyes focused on the last of the refugees. "Look."

He did, watching them disappear into the cave. "And? We're allowing them to escape."

"No… no, we're not," she replied slowly, savouring the feel of the words. "I had my men search out and block the other entrances. The weapons those fools still have won't be enough to get them out of this…"

Belatedly, he realized that the spell circle forming beneath her feet was one that would disrupt the earth; following her gaze, it became clear that she intended to barricade the last entry point. The first spell shook some stalactites from the ceiling of the cave, partially blocking the cave access, but Pronyma frowned. The spell should have been stronger.

It was then that he remembered that some of his forces would be trapped in the cave as well. She had downed a gel-like potion and was already casting her second spell, although he was certain she could see the Desian uniforms chasing the refugees further into the cave. "Wait." He couldn't let them go without a word.

Although she looked over, her spell circle did not break. "No battle is won without loss, Forcystus."

"But those are our men, Pronyma."

Shouting as the spell ripped itself from her body, she sunk to one knee. His upbringing prompted his hand to extend to her, but she slapped it away. "When will you remember that you're not the hero anymore," she whispered harshly. "We can't save everyone. Moreover, you fool, we don't want to."

"This has nothing to do with that. Some of those soldiers deserved better deaths." Walking over to where the cave access had been, he sifted his hand through the rubble.

"We all deserve… better, Forcystus." Steeling herself before he had more than a moment to wonder about her hesitation, she shouldered her mace and circled him predatorily. "Unless you intend to dig them out, they've chosen their fate. They're soldiers, not bystanders; they courted death as willingly as we do." Pausing, she sent a wicked smile over her shoulder. "Not quite as well as we do, Hero Boy, but no matter..."

He stiffened as her hand traced teasingly over his shoulder, but did not back away. "In future, it would be best if you didn't call me that."

"Oh, my," she simpered. "Angst doesn't suit you."

That was enough. Squaring his shoulders, and using the fact that he had a couple of inches in height to his advantage, he glared down. "Surely even you have memories you would not see defiled, Pronyma."

"…Hmm," she conceded. Turning to address the remaining troops, she shouted triumphantly: "we are done here, everyone. I trust you have places to be." As the soldiers saluted and retreated, Pronyma looked back at her fellow officer. "I have somewhere to be, too…"

He watched as her eyes traced out the Tower in the distance, and frowned. "Send the Lord my regards. Competent underlings are rare, so I must return to Iselia immediately."

"I see. I would wish you luck," she added, "but I don't care, really. It's futile; you don't have enough mana remaining to move those rocks more than a couple of inches, and you know it." Waving her hand dismissively – at him or at the rocks, he wasn't sure – the sorceress climbed onto her Rheiard and set off.

Honour and spite fuelled the wind spells that he sent at the cave, but, weakened, they did little more than shift some of the smaller stones. "I am sorry," he whispered, disgusted with his failure. He should have been jubilant. His soldiers had been well-trained, and their ranks were almost full as they left the battlefield. She was right, perhaps, in that he clung to his past too fiercely.

But if anything, they were well-matched in that regard.

. o .

Bitter winter sent snow through the yards of the human ranch he'd been told to call his own when he was called next to the then-decaying world. Reporting on the status of his domain, he noticed that the sorceress paid their liege-lord more attention than loyalty required.

He smirked over it at first, and kept his silence – he knew from the start that Pronyma was an ambitious woman, and she was still alive, which was as good a sign as any that Yggdrasil did not find her subtle fondness wholly distasteful. But as time progressed, it became clear even during the tiny amounts of time in which he would meet with both that the affection Pronyma offered was fondness, tempered with almost maternal protectiveness, and no more.

He happened across the two of them in an unguarded moment once; the tower was visible in Sylvarant now, and the latest Chosen had just failed in her journey, so all the Grand Cardinals were expected to pay their respects. Choosing to take the warp portal instead of the staircase – he found the spiralling ascent both dizzying and decidedly eerie, and avoided it when possible – he appeared in the Great Room. Finding it empty, he was about to go for the staircase when the blond he was looking for emerged from the far doorway, tucked under the arm of the sorceress.

Forcystus was glad that the portal was at least partially hidden from that side of the room, as the look of shock he wore would not have gone over well with Yggdrasil. His Lord's mood swings had become increasingly violent; the angel had backhanded Pronyma into a chamber wall when she had become too familiar in front of the others during his last visit to the Tower. Kvar and Rodyle had left that meeting with a shared, victorious smile that would have chilled the ice beasts of Flanoir. Forcystus had watched in stunned silence as Pronyma had risen to her feet with the grace of a queen, wordlessly wearing the blood dripping from her lips like a trophy as she walked from the room.

But when the two thought themselves unobserved, their postures were telling. Although he frowned, Mithos leant against Pronyma's side, and did not shrug off the hand that gently traced circles on his back, or silence her murmurs. It sounded like gibberish from where Forcystus was concealed, and perhaps it was… in child's form, and clutching a Cruxis crystal, Mithos was clearly agitated, but was being soothed by Pronyma's whispers. Once his Lord had calmed, Forcystus quickly reactivated the portal to make it appear as if he had just arrived. "Milord?" he called, walking out from behind the half-wall.

"Forcystus," Yggdrasil greeted after a brief flash of light, his wings now fluttering behind his adult form. "I heard that you had news for me. Report."

Coming out of his formal salute, Forcystus nodded. "Yes, sir. As my intelligence officers have informed me…" Continuing, Forcystus observed the interaction of his superiors. Pronyma kept a respectful distance, but her eyes would soften occasionally. She was very careful to keep up a deferential mien whenever Yggdrasil would ask her for her input, however, drawing away and bowing very slightly before answering. Cataloguing this observation, Forcystus allowed himself a tiny smile before answering Yggdrasil's next question.

As it had turned out, the information that his Lord had been looking for had not been the only data that his soldiers had uncovered; in the town records, there was a collection of old newspapers and notices that listed a younger Pronyma as a mercenary, and, intrigued, he had pieced together her past.

The sorceress Pronyma had been married once, and had not always been a sorceress. The latter condition had been learned after her husband and son had been murdered. From the sparing details that the papers had given to that event, there were hints at anti-half-elf sentiment being at the centre of their deaths.

She had been born into a family of warriors – she had told him as much before both had ascended to the rank of Grand Cardinal, and it seemed that she had returned to that side of her nature after the premature severance of her domesticity. Using every tool she could, she hunted down those who had been involved in the death of her family, killing each perpetrator with a surprising lack of theatrics; more often than not, the deaths of these influential men were passed off as accidental. She just happened to be in town at the time.

With no land or property, and a quickly dwindling supply of gald, she took jobs as a mercenary, gaining a decent reputation for it along the way. Bands of human thieves and brigands that haunted the main byways of the area were not safe from her either; their deaths she saw as a service to the community.

So life had continued for ten years, according to the records, at which time her name disappeared from contracts and the newspapers alike. She could have continued her life as a mercenary, he knew, but a meeting that she believed had been chance was to change that. In the markets of Meltokio, a young child stumbled across her path, his wispy golden hair a painful reminder of the son that she had lost. Stunned, she followed as a childish Mithos had whispered "…follow me," in a voice millennia too old for his body.

And follow him she had.

But the organization had been taking different steps as of late that were almost radical in nature, and he feared that the delicate hoax that they had constructed was beginning to crumble due to her influence. Seeking the sorceress out in the overgrown part of the Tower that she favoured, he intended to challenge her on the changes that she had made.

He would later chide himself for not cleaning the remnants of an Evil Orchid that had crossed his path en route off of his clothing before finding her. The smug look on her face and the disgusted expression on his immediately placed him at a disadvantage, and while they danced around pleasantries and half-hidden barbs, Pronyma quickly brought their pretence to a close.

"Forcystus," she purred, leaning casually against a pillar, "do you remember that battle in the Toize all those years ago?"

"I do," he replied.

"Did you, I wonder, ever return to rescue those men?" Stretching languidly, Pronyma laughed as the other Cardinal looked everywhere but at her. "You men are ridiculous. Practically immortal and impossibly powerful, but do you do anything with it?" Pressing her palms together in false piety, she smirked. "Sweet, perfect, and dead Martel, no, you don't…"

He'd been taught never to hit a woman, much less one who was a superior officer. Still, the thought was tempting.

"…you're all ice-blocks pining over dead women and past glories," she continued. "Pathetic. Kratos and Yuan are bad enough; they don't need you to add to their ranks."

"Is that all you have to say, Pronyma? I don't have time for this." Turning, he decided to retreat; she was being ridiculously dramatic, and his questions, if he got the chance to ask them, were not going to be taken seriously.

"Of course you didn't rescue those men we sacrificed… you might have thought about it – you might have even felt a little guilty – but you didn't go back, did you?" Following him down the hallway, her voice taunted him. "The rebels made lovely Exspheres, by the by… so nothing was lost. You might say that something was gained from the experience, hmm? Besides," she added, catching up and tangling her fingers into his hair, "you can't substitute your old soldiers with the troops you have now." Her grip on his hair tightened, and she tugged him around in his surprise. "They're your pawns, not your equals, you fool."

He'd been obedient for more years than he could count. One count of excusable subordination… just this once. Pulling her hands away, he closed the distance between them, glowering down at her. "Don't you dare speak to me about replacement, Pronyma. Don't you even try." Lowering his voice, Forcystus matched her whisper, but his tone was bitter. "You'd be a greater hypocrite than any of us if you so much as tried to tell me to be rid of my past, when it is you that fawns after Lord Yggdrasil like some childless peahen. He hasn't been a child for four thousand years..." As Pronyma pushed away from him, her body nearly crackling with anger as she did, it was his turn to call after her: "…and he'll never be your son, Pronyma. You've got to stop this self-deceit for all our sakes."

He'd been too busy watching her eyes to observe the spell circle forming beneath her feet. As she shouted the spell words, her eyes blazing madly, he dove, cursing, out of the blast radius of the acid rain she had summoned. However, before he could fully construct his guard spell, some of the toxic liquid bounced off his arm cannon and into his right eye.

Collapsing to the floor in agony and clutching at his face, pain was all he could think before the world went hazy and he thought no more.

When he awoke, he was in a more central part of the Tower, and the world seemed curiously halved. Realizing that something covered his injured eye, his hand went to it until the half-elven nurse attending him moved his hand away.

"Lord Forcystus," the woman said, "you…you have lost use of your injured eye. Even considering the speed with which you were brought here, there was nothing we could do. We were able to stop the spread of the poison, though, so that was the only irreversible damage that you took, sir."

He tensed. "I…see," he replied, turning away in dismissal. What sort of warrior fought with only one eye? He would kill that deluded witch when he saw her next.

He almost didn't need to.

Lord Yggdrasil had not been pleased with Pronyma's rashness, although he did not grant the sorceress the death that she eventually begged for.

When they met again, she'd looked with veiled horror at his eye patch, but the larger surprise had been the garish, almost tribal tattoos that circled her legs. If one looked closely at the designs, one could see the scars that Yggdrasil's rage had left; crimson ink fading as it clashed with ivory scar tissue.

"Vain even now, Pronyma?" he'd chided, and to his shock, she had disregarded his comment, placed the order from Yggdrasil on his desk, and with a quiet "Forcystus," she was gone.

Life became, if not peaceful, then relatively calm from that point on, until the day that the Tower became visible once again through his window, and a young half-elf and his friend journeyed up to the Ranch and inadvertently broke the non-aggression treaty that he had so carefully constructed.

Pity.

But this time, Forcystus did not flinch as he tightened the bolts on his arm cannon and walked down the path to Iselia. Nothing gold – nothing good – could stay for long. This was why the fact that he had to kill this boy, this child who believed that this pathetically fragile existence was worth fighting for hurt Forcystus just a little.

After all, there had been a time when he had believed that, too.

. o .

…finis…

. o .

Disclaimer: The only thing I own is the plotline of this story; all else is under Namco's jurisdiction. The histories of Forcystus and Pronyma are largely speculative, although his history as a 'hero' is canon.

Sabriel's Scribbles: Written as part of a Christmas fic exchange with Silvie-chan, this was a tough, if ultimately rewarding thing to write. Forcystus and Pronyma are fantastic and dangerous characters to have under one's skin… That said, thoughts and concrit are always appreciated; thanks for reading, and Cheers!