The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Interlude: The Silent Colosseum
Vistarion, X789
For as long as anyone could remember, the Colosseum had been silent.
It was something to be seen and not heard: a monument, a relic, unused, silent. Those twisted columns did not reverberate with impassioned oratory or the frenzied chorus of sword striking shield, with its coda of bodies slumping to the sand. Everyone in Vistarion was familiar with the outside of those towering walls, but precious few had seen inside, and most of those were caretakers entrusted with its upkeep simply because it was an Old Building and Old Buildings existed to be maintained.
The enemies of the Alvarez Empire, those who cited the Colosseum's prominence as proof of barbarism in a nation which thought itself better than any other, did so in crude ignorance of its silence; of the fact that it had not been used for blood sports since the first scribe of Alvarez had set quill to parchment. It echoed back the shutter-snap of cameras and the myths booming from the megaphones of the tour guides without uttering a word in its own defence. Even to the archaeologists who prodded hopefully at its foundations, it did not whisper, and so they spun their own fantastic dreams around its stones.
The Colosseum had been ancient even when the emperor was a child, a remnant of a civilization whose histories and culture had not survived the madness of the dragons, save for this single towering anomaly of stone. It had been at the heart of Vistarion ever since Vistarion had been a handful of quailing huts, huddled close to its immense walls for comfort, and it had only ceased to be the exact geographical centre of the capital city once the imperial palace had been built. No one had ever questioned the presence of a functionless relic within a city of triumphant technological advancement, and it in turn did not question the civilization that had grown to be so very different to the one which had birthed it, but watched over it in detached, dignified silence.
Even today.
If there was ever a time when the Colosseum should have erupted with cheering, it was the moment that Ajeel ducked under the half-raised portcullis and emerged into the arena at its heart.
The noonday sunlight draped like a hot blanket across his shoulders, and the sand slipped between his toes with fond affection, but those stones set down in a bygone age remained stubbornly, jarringly, judgementally silent.
He thrust his fist into the air anyway, basking in the imagined roar from an imagined crowd – the roar he would have received had the Colosseum's sole contemporary use not been a secret kept from all but a handful of individuals. From empty row after empty row of crumbling stone benches he drew the adulation he deserved; in the towering amphitheatre, with its formidable walls sealing him off from the sounds and the safety of the city, he saw not fear, but an acknowledgement he had earnt. This was where he was meant to be.
Perhaps, in a time long forgotten, citizens had congregated here to watch gladiators do battle for fame and glory, for their very lives. Now, their ghosts would bear witness to his triumph.
Ghosts, and twelve very important living individuals.
Or so he had hoped, but as he scanned the thirteen well-maintained seats in the lowest of the spectator rows, his eyes narrowed a fraction at the realization that there was not one empty seat, but three.
The central one, he could understand – barely, but he could. It wasn't his place to question His Majesty's presence, or lack thereof. Not out loud, anyway. Privately, he felt entitled to his frustration: His Majesty had ordered him to take the final trial and made him wait while he went off gallivanting again and picked a date when the Twelve could all be present without care for Ajeel's own schedule and then proceeded to not bother turning up on said date.
Well, His Majesty had more important things to do than watch this. Ajeel couldn't think of any off the top of his head, but they existed. Probably.
But the seat directly to the right of the vacant throne was also empty, and that wasn't fair at all. The current Spriggan Twelve were all supposed to be present, so how the hell did August get away with slacking off? How was he supposed to take the old man seriously as his new leader after today if he couldn't even recognize a historic moment when he saw one?
As for the final vacant seat… the one furthest from the throne, at the left-hand side, Ajeel didn't mind at all. The moment this trial was over, that seat would belong to him.
The other seats were filled with an array of familiar figures, as diverse as the nation they watched over and as integral to its existence as that anomalous Colosseum was to Vistarion's paradoxical sense of identity. Just as an ancient relic of battle stood unquestioned at the heart of a city of politics and technology, so too did the emperor's inner circle comprise mostly of powerful mages and military advisors. In an empire-spanning administration of governors, senators, ministers, and a thousand vital roles of all descriptions, those phenomenal mages were the ones he was closest to on a personal level, the ones he trusted the most.
Ajeel knew all of them personally, albeit to a greater or lesser extent. He had, at various points in his life, been babysat by August and sometimes even Jacob; heard the myths of faraway lands from Irene; sparred with God Serena; failed to learn any kind of life lesson from his near-suicidal attempts to court Dimaria; and, on one particularly memorable occasion, took a three-week road trip with Larcade. He had grown up with Brandish, and when they'd begun studying magic together, their sandcastle-building competitions had become a tourist attraction to rival the ancient Colosseum, as he tried to encourage the sand to assemble itself faster than she could expand one she'd built by hand (he still wasn't over the fact that she had made it into the Twelve six months before he had).
Yes, it was safe to say that being the grandson of a former member of the Twelve had its advantages.
It had its disadvantages, too.
Outside the Twelve – and even inside it – there were those who saw Yajeel retiring from the Twelve and his grandson joining them and assumed that they alone were wise enough to spot what was going on. They had not seen Ajeel using magic before he could crawl, and fighting with it before he could walk; they had not paid attention when he had become the youngest person ever to qualify for his pilot's licence, or realized that those records he'd set in the practical exam – which still held to this day – he had only been able to train for in the evenings, after days spent volunteering with local law enforcement groups and pioneering rehabilitation programmes for juvenile criminals. They assumed that all his achievements were somehow his grandfather's doing.
That, for him, was what this final trial was all about.
Not passing or failing, because the thought that he might fail had not occurred to him.
No, this was his chance to prove that it was all down to him. Oh, it would do nothing for the ordinary people outside the Colosseum, who would remain forever ignorant of the steps required to join the Spriggan Twelve, as they were of so many other things. But for the eleven colleagues – ten, discounting August, who hadn't bothered turning up – who were about to see for themselves that he needed nothing but himself and his magic, there would be no doubt.
Quite what the final trial was, he had no idea. It was not spoken about even amongst the Twelve.
Really, though, he had known since the moment he had heard the silent Colosseum would be the venue.
What would he be fighting? A huge, untameable beast dragged down from the northern wastes at the cost of several handlers' lives? Or a captured Ishgar spy, the best the foreign continent could muster, who needed to be taught of Alvarez's strength the hard way?
The mere thought of it was enough to banish the annoyance those empty seats had brought. Whatever it was, he wasn't going to hold back. Grinning to himself, he permitted a little of his own power to flow into the sand. Grains hopped and skipped along the arena floor; tendrils of sand twisted amidst the wind stirred up by his magical aura, beating against the walls until the Colosseum's void overflowed with its rhythmic, wordless chant.
This was his moment.
He'd show them all.
A silhouette was forming in the darkness that lined the tunnel at the far side of the arena. It was too uninteresting, too humanoid, to be a rare and mighty beast against which he could prove himself, and yet if it had been a foreign captive, surely the figure would have been accompanied by prison wardens to ensure compliance…
It occurred to him, then, that the emperor had never condoned anything other than the most humane treatment of captured spies and prisoners-of-war. If not, the Colosseum would never have acquired its reputation for silence.
No, His Majesty would never let him fight for real against someone who had not volunteered, and who would be crazy enough to volunteer to be trounced by a candidate for the Twelve…?
Oh, no.
His gaze flicked towards the empty seats.
Every member of the Twelve had been personally ordered by His Majesty to attend the final trial. Therefore, if one of them wasn't watching, didn't that mean he had to be participating…?
The whirlwind of sand faltered, slowed, faded to a gritty little puff of wind that wouldn't have knocked down a house of straw.
No.
No, no, no.
That wasn't fair! They couldn't make defeating the leader of the Twelve a precondition for joining them! That was the very definition of an impossible task!
On the verge of tumbling into that unfamiliar chasm of panic, he looked again at the approaching silhouette and realized that it was far too short to belong to the leader of the Twelve.
Nor was it carrying August's familiar staff.
Nor could he detect any sign of that tremendous magical aura, which August could never entirely conceal. In fact, the only person he knew with sufficient power to pose a threat to him and sufficient control to appear otherwise… was the one who had spent four hundred years practising.
Oh, no.
His brain was still struggling to process the ramifications of this – surely he wasn't expected to fight his own emperor! – even as his eyes confirmed what his magical senses had already guessed. The extra evidence didn't make it any clearer whether he was supposed to be standing with his mouth agape or falling to his knees in reverence. His confused mind decided to cover all bases and do both at once.
"Stay on your feet," His Majesty ordered, yet although his voice rang through the creationless void of the Colosseum, it was reassuringly warm. "This will be a lot harder if you don't, wouldn't you say?"
"But…" Ajeel's body froze obediently at that command, but coherent thoughts continued to flee like shoals of fish from the beached-whale floundering of his brain. "I can't possibly fight you, Your Majesty!"
"Why ever not?" came the amused response.
More floundering. It was so obvious that it refused to be put into words.
"Don't worry, I will only be defending," his emperor spoke, again with that same smile. "There would be little point if you died, after all. I only wish to measure your strength for myself. Against too weak an opponent, your true power will not show; against one far stronger than yourself, you may never get the chance to demonstrate what you can do. But, since I cannot be harmed, I alone can determine the strength of your magic reliably, if you turn it fully against me."
His heart skipped. Wasn't this exactly the chance he had been hoping for? A fair way to prove his power directly to His Majesty, and screw what anyone else thought about his appointment to the Twelve? If he unleashed his full power here-
And then his heart thudded again, twice as painfully; a warning. That was the kind of thing one did to an unworthy rival. It was absolutely not the kind of thing one did to one's sovereign ruler.
"But," he repeated, "I couldn't possibly harm you, Your Majesty. It's shameful for a servant to even think of such a thing."
"Not at all, if I order you to do so."
"It isn't right." He shook his head, a small gesture turned emphatic as it was caught and exaggerated by his hair. It was the right thing to do – one thing he had learnt from his grandfather – never mind the fact that his heart was once again approaching escape velocity.
A small, patient sigh. "In all honestly, Ajeel, I've known you a long time, and I am very familiar with the power you hold. I have already chosen you. In that sense, this final trial is nothing more than a formality. Yet it is also critical, in a very different way. I need to be able to trust that you will do what I ask of you, even if it goes against what you feel is right."
"You can!" he argued. "It's just- well-"
"It's more than that," came the soft response. "I need you to be able to trust me; to trust in my power and in my immortality. There may come a time when I must order you to leave me at the mercy of my enemies. In such an eventuality, I need to know that you will do so without hesitation, and for that, you need to believe in my own ability to survive. Right now, I want you to do everything in your power to try and overcome my immortality. When you cannot, I know you will be able to trust my magic in the future. Do you understand?"
Ajeel had not so much as uttered a word before a knowing smile danced across his emperor's face. He suspected that his own facial muscles were not obeying the strict command to not look too eager about this opportunity.
"Ah," remarked His Majesty. "I see that you do. Then, this is an order: show me what you can do, Ajeel."
This time, Ajeel made no effort to suppress his wild grin – and that was the last anyone saw before a sandstorm descended upon that ancient Colosseum.
It would take time to build up the level of power expected of him, but that didn't mean he was prepared to sit around in the meantime. Where would be the fun in that?
His first attack came as a whiplash of sand, detaching itself from the surrounding storm in one fluid motion and striking at the emperor's unprotected back. The spectators would not have seen it coming, the sandstorm hid the battle too well for that – and within its winds, his opponent shouldn't have been able to see at all, but His Majesty somehow knew, of course he did. Black energy sheathed his forearm ever so briefly, flashing into existence just for long enough to break apart the sandy tendril which smashed against it.
Ajeel phased in and out of the circling storm, increasing the bombardment of physical and magical attacks. He knew His Majesty wasn't using his eyes at all, but was relying on his acute ability to sense magic – not to mention the fact that he knew Ajeel's magic inside out, having been the one who helped him master it. It reminded him a little of fighting August, and that was not a nice feeling. That old man was cheating personified.
Focussing his power, he increased the onslaught still further, trying to overcome his opponent's inhuman senses, but only succeeded in forcing him to use a larger, more sustained shield as his defence. It was less efficient, and less flashy – but then, he wasn't the one trying to impress the audience, was he?
Once, in the middle of that raging chaos, where time itself was bulging beneath the pressure of cramming so many strikes into so few seconds, the emperor had caught his eye. He'd wondered, then, how black eyes could possibly seem so bright, so startlingly alive…
But he'd read the message clearly in them too: I know you can do better than this.
He knew he could too, and so he did.
His power raged, and the sandstorm raged with it. As it lashed against the walls of the Colosseum, he felt with a surge of giddy adrenaline that he could break through them if he wanted, could scour the life from the stadium, from the city beyond, and see if they still considered the Colosseum silent then…
Instead, he turned it towards his emperor. Sand flowed like the quaking earth, lifted, reared as a titanic tsunami. His Majesty decided, wisely, that this ultimate spell was one he was going to have to defend against properly. He crossed his wrists in front of his chest, and a sphere, black and yet transparent, materialized around his body an instant before impact.
The shield held against the first onslaught, although he and Ajeel were the only two who knew that, for the sandstorm was thick enough now not only to hide His Majesty's body, but overwhelm any sense of magic except its own.
A grin stretched across the sand mage's face. The first strike was only the beginning. He stood with his right hand outstretched, and where he pointed, the desert of his own creation stripped away everything in its path. The vortex consumed his emperor; biting, scratching, tearing with feral fury at his last line of defence until-
Ajeel knew the moment the shield fell.
The alarm that two decades of battle strategy lessons from his grandfather had finally managed to install in the back of his mind was ringing: it had been too quick, too easy, His Majesty's magic wouldn't just break like that…
But it was drowned out by a roar of triumph. Triumph, because it had broken, and that meant he could really show what he could do. His Majesty wanted to see the power of one worthy of standing amongst the Twelve. Well, Ajeel would be happy to oblige.
Determination came alive as sheer power, and all of it was brought to bear against his emperor. Divine wind battered down any magical defence he could muster. Scythes of sand ripped robes and flayed skin; blasted lungs from the inside-out. The heat, the sheer dryness, drained vitality from shrivelling organs. Nothing survived, once the desert had chosen to eradicate it.
Magic soared within him. More than he had ever been able to invoke before. He could hardly breathe under the pressure of it, and yet he could not – would not – stop.
This was what he was capable of – and what he would do to everyone who dared to say to his face that he had not earnt his position amongst the Twelve.
He'd see if their desiccated husks could still gloat.
He registered the exact moment that all resistance to his magic ceased. The instinctive struggle of prey for air and moisture, the useless flailing fight against the quicksand below and the withering storm above – they stopped all at once, and he wondered if that was it.
If it was over.
If he'd not merely passed, but won.
If he'd not merely won, but…
"That will do."
Those three words shouldn't have been audible.
Everyone in the Colosseum heard them anyway, for the greatest sandstorm Ajeel could muster was no more of an obstacle to this man than the silent emptiness.
Ajeel did not recall consciously ordering his magic to stop, but in the next moment it was gone, and the only sign that any catastrophe of nature had ever been unleashed here were the undulations pressed into the sand on the arena floor. They converged upon the stadium's dead centre, where a perfectly unharmed man was straightening up, stretching, smiling.
"Yes," said he. "You will do well in the Twelve."
Several things happened at once in Ajeel's mind.
The lingering magic in his veins ignited like hydrogen touched by the flame of victory: he'd done it, he'd actually done it; he'd impressed the emperor with his magic and officially been recognized as one of the Twelve-
Holy Mother of Night, he really is immortal, observed some detached part of him, which apparently hadn't noticed that passing the trial was a success worthy of his full attention.
He had already known of the emperor's power, of course. Like everyone in Alvarez, he had heard the rumours. Unlike most, he had witnessed it with his own eyes, at a formal dinner he had really been too young to attend, and far too young to drink at. While the other guests had berated him (and rightly so, in retrospect) for his challenge, His Majesty had simply smiled, reversed the grip on his knife between mouthfuls, and rammed it into his own heart.
Still, there was a difference between watching his body regenerate from a wound no competent mage would ever take in battle, and seeing him emerge unharmed from the most devastating magic Ajeel could throw at him.
His Majesty really was incredible.
Yeah, and we're now a member of his personal guard, the first part interjected, popping open a bottle of mental champagne.
But how is that even possible? the second part wondered. He didn't block that magic, he took it head-on, and it didn't kill him-
Hush, now. Celebrating.
And, as if to prove its point, that happy little part of him began setting off mental fireworks.
He was aware on some level that his physical self was staring blankly at the arena while the conscious parts of his mind gathered for firework-viewing, but mentally seemed the only appropriate way to celebrate in a Colosseum still stubbornly free of cheering.
It wasn't as though he'd expected to awe the rest of the Twelve, or anything. He'd trained with half of them, and passed competency tests set by the other half; they all had a fair idea of the reach and limits of his power, even if he'd never had a chance to display it so dramatically before without the risk of destroying something – or someone. And he knew full well that many of his now-colleagues remained far out of his league, at least for the time being…
Still, some applause would only have been polite, wouldn't it?
And as His Majesty turned away, Ajeel could have sworn he saw something flicker in his eyes.
Disappointment.
He knew at once there was something he'd missed. Some other purpose to this final trial; something that went beyond a show of power or an establishment of trust…
Something so obvious he should have realized it from the moment His Majesty had first stepped into the arena.
Before he knew it, he was sprinting forwards, all thoughts of his victory forgotten, and he flung himself to the ground at his emperor's feet, face pressed into the sand. "Your Majesty, I beg your forgiveness for daring to raise a hand against you."
There was a pause, and he could only wait for his judgement, helpless and blind.
"You have it," came the soft response. "Raise your head, Ajeel."
He did not. Stumbling over the formal words, he insisted, "I have erred, Your Majesty. For that, I must be punished."
"You did exactly what I asked of you. I know that I can rely on you, and for that, you have my gratitude."
At that, he finally dared to glance up, squinting against the arena's light. He could not see the spectators – he did not know whether they were approving of or laughing at his actions – but he did not care for them, when his emperor was stood before him, offering out his hand.
"I look forward to working with you," said His Majesty.
Ajeel took the offered hand. Perhaps his emperor pulled him to his feet, or perhaps he simply floated up from the ground; he certainly felt light enough for it. On impulse, he bowed low to his emperor, who inclined his head slightly in return, and then he turned on his heel.
At last, at long last, the sound of clapping reached his ears, growing stronger by the minute. By the time he glanced back, all ten assembled members of the Twelve were applauding.
Grinning, he offered them an elaborate sweeping bow, and then he resumed his walk towards the future in service of his emperor, leaving behind a Colosseum which, for the first time in his life, resounded with noise.
Vistarion, The Present Day
It had stood silent ever since, that great anomaly of a Colosseum.
Ajeel had been the last of the current Twelve to join. He had never witnessed any trial besides his own, and so had never been able to confirm if his last-minute interpretation of the final trial – as an exercise in humility and knowing his place – had been the correct one. That had been the day which established the Twelve, the ones who would fulfil the destinies of all those who had come before and serve as the emperor's personal guard in the Final War: the coming conquest that would mark Alvarez's triumph and set His Majesty in his rightful place as ruler of the entire world.
Over the past three years, Ajeel had joined the others in strategy meetings and training sessions; had supervised the assembling of the nation's army and secured unprecedented funding for the air force and personally led the mission to purge all of Ishgar's spies from their shores. He had burned with excitement for the war, and when months had passed with no sign of it, he had burned only brighter, waiting for the command he had no doubt would come soon.
He had been there when the pressure of it had cracked the empire apart – and he would have taken Invel's side on that day, if not for the fact that the only thing worse than two of the Twelve fighting each other would have been three of the Twelve fighting each other.
He had not been the only one who had left the capital shortly after that incident. He wasn't like Invel or August; he found the political world far too dangerous and far too complicated when His Majesty was not there to guide him. He had travelled, he had trained… and he had waited.
And the call had finally come.
Well, August had not specified why he wanted all the Twelve back in Vistarion, but really, what other reason could there be?
It felt so good to be back. The streets buzzed with a nervous energy, as if they could tell that the time was almost upon them. The sleek whoosh of every magic four-wheeler passing him in the road was an assertion of Alvarez's superior technology; every trader's shout and every clink of coin and every guild's flag was another perfect link in the mechanism of this music box that hummed the hymns of battle.
He should have gone straight to the palace, following the natural flow of that energy towards the city's mighty heart, and yet he found himself stationary, gazing up at the great Colosseum he had fought within on that day. It did not resonate with the magic of the city. It had always stood alone, aloof.
"Brings back memories, doesn't it?"
Ajeel didn't bother turning to greet the speaker. "So, you're back too, Dimaria."
"As if I'd miss this." She came to a halt by his side, one hand resting on her hip as she ran her eyes over the layers of arches lining those walls like all-seeing eyes. "Seems like only yesterday that you were taking the final trial in there. Oh, wait – that's because it was."
"It was three years ago," he corrected crossly.
"Really, that long?" Surprise hung from every word, as fake and gaudy as baubles dripping from the branches of a tree. "My. I suppose you'll always be the baby of the Twelve, no matter how much time passes."
"A concept you must be very familiar with, Dimaria, given how you only look so young because the power of Chronos is-"
She flashed him a smile that shouldn't have matched the murderous look in her eyes, and yet when it came to her, one was very rarely seen without the other. One reminded him of how his attempts to woo her always ended, the other of why he kept trying anyway.
"I would think very carefully about how to finish that sentence, if I were you," Dimaria advised.
"…Because your beauty is eternal and will never fade with age?"
"I suppose that will do." Slipping her hands into the pockets of her jacket, she returned her attention to the ancient stones. "I guess I shall follow His Majesty's example during your trial, and be exceptionally lenient with you. I wouldn't want to hurt your feelings, rookie."
That earnt her a scowl. "For the record, he was only nice to me because I'd impressed him with how quickly I passed the trial-"
"Pff. Invel's record makes your time look like it was set by a one-legged blind man running a steeplechase with a stuffed sheep for his guide runner."
"Invel holds the record? Not you? I thought your magic would have made it a piece of cake."
"…I argued with His Majesty," came the stiff response. "And for a lot longer than you did. Invel's trial was before mine, so I didn't see it myself, but by all accounts he struck as soon as the order was given. Apparently it took about three seconds for the temperature to drop so low that citizens outside the stadium would have sustained permanent damage if His Majesty hadn't called it off."
"Hmm. I'm still surprised that Invel has the record, rather than August." In fact, he never had got a satisfactory answer to why August hadn't been there, and as they began to walk towards the palace, he took the chance to ask, "Did August attend your final trial?"
"August never attends the trials."
"I thought all the Twelve had to."
A shrug wouldn't have been graceful enough for her, so she tilted her head to the side a little and then back, a gesture so enchanting that one had to proactively learn to read it as dismissive. "As far as I can tell, every time, His Majesty orders all the Twelve to go – and, every time, August refuses."
"He refuses a direct order from His Majesty? I'm sorry, are we talking about the same August here?"
"I suppose there's some sort of unspoken arrangement there. Who knows, with those two?"
"That makes no sense. Hell, the final trial's just a formality! If, after ninety years of making everyone else's attempt at loyalty look like a joke, August was going to pick one thing to defy His Majesty over for maximum impact – why the hell would he pick that?"
"There are rumours," she said.
"What rumours?"
She flashed him another smile, and he groaned. "Look, we both know you've been on the Twelve for longer than me; stop gloating about your insider knowledge and just tell me already!"
"Rumour is, August failed the trial."
Ajeel stopped in his tracks. "Excuse me, what? The most powerful mage in Alvarez failed to impress the emperor?"
"Just a rumour," came the easy response, as Dimaria continued walking. "It's said that he had to receive special dispensation to join the Twelve without having passed… though of course there are no records of such a thing. And, since this was seventy-something years ago, and the only people still alive who were at that trial are August himself and His Majesty, where would a rumour like that even have come from…?"
"I don't believe that for a second. I'm gonna ask August what really happened."
"That's certainly a unique way of committing suicide you've chosen there."
"…Alright, fine, I won't bring it up."
"Thought not."
If there was one thing that everyone who served His Majesty knew, it was to never come between August and his emperor. It was also generally a good idea not to question August's ability or desire to serve His Majesty, unless one was looking for a way to get some use out of the will they'd just had drawn up.
Of course, both of these sage pieces of wisdom only served to make August's rumoured failure of the final trial more intriguing.
But as Ajeel had no particular desire to die today, he shoved that question back into its box, and they walked on for a while in silence.
Then he said, "Say, Dimaria?"
"What?"
"Want to go to Fiore? Like, today?"
"Sure."
"…Really?"
"Yeah," she drawled, and he must have been away from Vistarion for longer than he'd thought, to have missed the sarcasm in her voice the first time round. "I mean, August gets in touch for the first time in months and orders the Twelve back to Vistarion as a matter of urgency – what else would I possibly want to do in that situation except go to Fiore with you? Moron."
"No, hear me out," Ajeel persisted. "Odds are, we're being called back because His Majesty has finally decided to get on with the invasion, and since August only sent out the call last night, we're probably the first two back."
Here he paused to order his thoughts, a show of weakness into which she had no problem cutting with acid-laced words. "Yes, your logic thus far is sound. What I'm failing to see is how you get from that to ignoring our orders, forsaking our empire, and skipping this whole long-awaited invasion in favour of what I can assure you would not be a romantic getaway for two."
"Sure, but he wouldn't send out the call yesterday if we were going to war today. Brandish is out of the country on vacation; I bet you anything she deliberately left her lacrima at home, and August will know it. And who knows where in the world Irene or God Serena are? Everyone except Invel got out of the capital sharpish after that crisis…"
At her impatient look, he added, "So, essentially, it's going to take time to assemble everyone in Vistarion, and His Majesty's not stupid, he'll have accounted for that. The actual invasion's not going to happen for at least a month or so. Which means we have the choice of sitting in Vistarion twiddling our thumbs until Brandish gets bored of stuffing her face full of gelato at whichever tiny island she's currently gracing with her presence… or hopping over to Fiore for a few days and being back well before we're actually needed. There's not a single aircraft around here that I'm not qualified to fly; I'm sure I can find one that isn't being used for reconnaissance. What do you say?"
"…Putting aside the fact that it's completely insane, why do you want to go to Fiore?"
"Because I've never been."
"You can do all the sightseeing you want once we've conquered it."
"Nah, not that. It's just… aren't you curious? His Majesty, August, Irene, even Brandish… discounting the ones who weren't technically born, I swear more of the Twelve are native to Fiore – or whatever its proto-kingdoms were called, before Fiore was founded – than to our own country."
"You can't blame His Majesty for that; he's older than the empire," she pointed out.
"Oh, I wasn't, not at all. But aren't you curious about what it's like?"
Dimaria mused, "I have great-grandparents from Fiore. I've never been, but…"
"There you go, then. Don't you want to know what kind of pathetic mages would nominate God Serena as their strongest?"
She stared at him for a disconcerting amount of time, before breaking into an even more disconcerting smile. "Oh, I see. You know that if you wait until the actual invasion, you'll be so outclassed by the likes of myself that there won't be any strong opponents left for you to fight, so you want to get some battles in while you've got no one to compete against."
Ajeel spluttered something that didn't sound like words.
"Well, too bad. Unilaterally declaring war on Fiore before His Majesty is ready is not something I'm on board with."
"I'm not going there to fight. Or do anything at all that might get me in any kind of trouble with August. Just, you know… I might look around for a bit. Check out their guild structure." Sensing her hesitation, he went in for the kill. "I'm sure you've heard the rumours that Invel has been personally investigating one of the guilds in Fiore on His Majesty's request. Wouldn't it be beneficial to the empire if we could discover even more information by observing them first-hand?"
"I suppose…"
"Are you in? Quick tour of Fiore? You and me?"
"Well… as long as we can arrange our own transportation to ensure that we're not trapped on another continent when His Majesty decides we're done pretending to trade with those fools… and under the guarantee that you're not going to try and start a war all on your lonesome…"
"Then…?" he prompted, grinning.
"Then, I'm in. Let's go to Fiore."