Day 44:
The sky darkened.
From a distance it looked like a dust storm rising up out of the deserts of what had once been Niflheim and was now little more than scattered chaos not fit to be called a country. But the cloud grew closer. Resolved from a singular mass into a collection of points, and from points to figures. Dozens of them. Like a horde of daemons advancing in the black of night, and yet it was day. And she controlled the daemons.
The presence that approached was neither dark nor daemonic. It was stifling like the over-bright sun on a sweltering summer day, and it resonated like the core of light deep inside her—not yet blotted out by the Starscourge. It was divine, but not titanic. Messenger, not Astral. And its destination was her.
So Bahamut sought a fight, did he? And he could not even be bothered to mount the offense himself, but sent servants to do his bidding. That was his first mistake. His second was sending them after her. If he wished to make a threat, he would have sent them for her family while she was away.
It didn't matter what happened to her.
Cartanica was a poor place to do battle. Collateral damage—human or structural—was immaterial, but fewer obstacles meant fewer limitations. The desert would have to do. It was the best battlefield she had on hand; if they wished to face her, they would follow and fight her on her own terms.
The heat in this place seemed to rise up from the earth as much as it descended from the sun. Sweltering. Suffocating. In the long night, cold had been an obstacle. Never heat. But as she turned and faced the oncoming storm, sweat ran down her face and neck. One more unfamiliarity.
She would be forced to fight in the light. No daemons would come to her call, not in the peak of the day. And her waking Dreams—the visions that prevented her from ever standing in the wrong place at the wrong time—were a thing of the past. She had the scourge in her veins, the ring on her finger, and the Caelum family magic, borrowed from her brother.
It would have to do.
The swarm grew closer. She could make out creatures of all shapes and sizes—some humanoid, others animal, and still others caught halfway in between. Some came by air, some by land. But they moved at an inhuman pace, seeming to leap closer each time she blinked. These were not the simple beasts she had slain in the Malmalam Thicket and across Lucis. They were not even the near-mindless, yet overwhelming, masses of daemons she had faced throughout the beginning of her Dream. This was an army. Intelligent. Skilled. And gifted in Eos' magic.
Reina summoned her naginata. The weight was a comfort in her hand; she twisted it, waiting, as the palms of her gloves grew damp.
They stopped before they reached her: a menacing crowd of bipeds, quadrupeds, and halfway in-betweens. Over a dozen. Over two and very nearly three dozen, if all had come. But they had not. When she scanned for those few faces she was familiar with, she counted none. Gentiana. Umbra. Pryna. All the Messengers who answered to the Oracle were absent. What did that mean?
The Messenger at the front of the pack—a winged humanoid of feminine proportions—opened its mouth, but Bahamut's voice spoke instead. :Step down from thy path, or face thy demise.:
"I would not, even if I could." Reina grasped her naginata in both hands, wringing the staff and falling into a defensive stance. Just as Cor had taught her.
:Then thou shalt die. And thy kin shalt follow.:
Her kin? Was it possible this was merely a distraction? That he had sent the Messengers for her so that he, himself, could destroy Lucis with everyone in it?
The Messengers hung, motionless. Waiting.
Could she jump back to Lucis in time? He could prevent her from Dreaming, but this magic was the Starscourge; so far as she knew he had no control over that. She could leave the Messengers behind with nothing to fight while she returned to the Citadel.
Unless… Unless they were coming here.
Cor had sworn he would follow wherever she went. She had hoped to be out of danger before he found her again, but it had been hours since she had left Caem. And Ardyn still had yet to arrive.
The winged Messenger at the front of the pack dove.
Reina had just enough time to collect her thoughts and phase out of the way. When she rematerialized, a cut across her shoulder burned and bled. It would have been through her chest. It should have been nowhere at all. She had moved dangerously slow.
As if reacting to some silent order, the rest of the Messengers surged forward as one. A spear flew past her face, catching only an echo of her. When she rematerialized, a mouth full of three-inch teeth was waiting for her. It snapped on the edge of her cape as she phased again. A taloned claw swiped for her face, forcing her to dodge yet again. And again. And again, thirty times and more because anywhere she moved there was another blade, another tooth, another claw, another spear.
She dodged and parried. She shielded and deflected. And she deliberated, still not committed to this fight. If Lucis was in danger, she could be wasting time here. If it wasn't, she could be leaving an ambush for Cor and anyone else who had followed after him.
Claws snatched at her clothes, tearing fabric and catching skin beneath. Every cut burned with sweat and added a sharp sting to the hot air.
Leave or stay? Fight or flee?
Cor, Iris, and Ignis? Or Father and Noctis?
If only she could Dream!
Make a choice. Kill them all; save them all.
She pulled on the magic of the ring until her skin cracked open and fire screamed through her veins, and then she pulled more still. She pulled power until it exploded out from her, throwing Messengers in a shower of rocks and leaving a crater where she was standing.
Kill them all.
She leapt into the darkness, becoming a black mist of miasma with violet lightning leaping through. The sunlight burned, but no more than the fire of the ring. Pain. Pain she could handle.
She never fully materialized, leaping from one Messenger to the next; her naginata was a flash of purple magic, fire and lightning erupted from her black cloud, and death and destruction spread. The Messengers were no beasts and they fell nowhere near as easily. But she struck and she struck again. She burned and froze and electrocuted. She decapitated. She suffocated. And when the strain became too great, she consumed, pulling souls from bodies and fueling herself on their angelic lives.
Kill them all.
She lost time. The Messengers were too great in number, more powerful than any mass of foes she had ever fought before. The Starscourge stained her blood: the ice in her veins clashed with the fire from the Ring and the burning of sunlight. Perhaps with Ardyn's regenerative powers she could have gone on indefinitely. But the sun and daemons did not mix well.
Her hold on the amorphous, Starscourge form slipped. She fell back into her physical self, standing on her own two feet—but only barely. Some Messengers lay dead in the dirt. Too few. Too few with too many still reaching out for her.
Blackness surged up around her, swallowing her whole and covering up the blinding sun. In the midst of that shell, she felt a sliver of peace. And a familiar presence.
Now, now, Little Dreamer. You didn't plan to keep all the fun to yourself, did you?
"Ardyn…" Her voice came out between a wheeze and a gasp, hardly audible even in her own ears.
He materialized in front of her, Starscourge falling away from his form, and bowed. "At your service, Little Dreamer."
The Messengers had caught up again. The first one lunged and struck hard against a shimmering crimson barrier.
"Are the others safe?" She asked.
"Oh, I expect you'll find out soon."
"They're coming here?"
"And why not? Because they might be in danger?" His words dripped with mockery. She didn't care.
"They'll be killed!"
His eyes flashed with something both mischievous and malicious. "No… but you will be without them."
He vanished, a puff of miasma once more, and took his barrier with him.
The Messengers closed in. Reina released her tenuous hold on the Starscourge, let it take her over once more and transform her into that same black, incorporeal form.
I don't care what happens to me, she shot at him—thrusting thoughts in the direction of his consciousness, rather than shouting words.
No? And if you're dead… who will keep them safe? Who will you dismantle the prophecy? Who will kill Bahamut? Who will convince the Starscourge incarnate not to kill Noctis and take over the world?
You wouldn't dare.
Oh, I would, Little Dreamer. I would. Without you I have no reason to play nice with the Caelums.
She dropped out of the miasma and ran a Messenger through with her naginata. Too late she realized another was upon her. A blade cut through her side, skimming along the edge of her skin as she phased a fraction of a second too late.
She warped away. Her legs protested against holding her weight and she dropped to her knees instead; she couldn't feel the cut on her side because everything burned as sharply. Her whole body was alight: cracked with violet flame and dripping with scourge.
And still the Messengers came.
She couldn't do it.
She couldn't destroy them all when she had only one blade, one set of eyes, one consciousness. Even with those few she had destroyed, the fight never grew simpler. They expended a fraction of the energy she did. They were organized. They were focused.
And Bahamut could have been burning Lucis while Reina stood in the desert.
"Flank them! Stay together; leave no gaps!"
She knew that voice.
She knew that manner: charging into battle and shouting strategy after others too eager to worry about it.
Ignis.
Borrowed magic flared—Father's, Noctis', hers—and blades came after. The Messengers split their attention. The spear primed in Reina's direction turned and flung away from her instead.
And for an instant she felt relief instead of worry.
"Reina!" Cor shouted over the renewed sounds of battle.
"Doing alright, Rei?" Iris called.
"Well, Little Dreamer?" A velvety voice whispered in her ear. A hand rested on her shoulder. "Shall I send them back where they came from?"
He extended a hand.
"No—"
And he paused.
"No," she repeated. "I need them."
"I know," he said.
And he disappeared once more. Starscourge leapt among the Messengers, dropping bodies like hailstones.
"Reina!" Ignis shouted. "We'll need a barrier. Isolate a few. Shunt the rest outside."
A barrier. Yes.
She climbed to her feet. The Ring blazed to life on her finger and a violet shell sprung up, cutting half a dozen Messengers from the pack and leaving the others outside with the scourge. Her legs quivered, threatening to give out again. But if Ignis, Iris, and Cor could press on, so could she.
"Focus them down," Ignis shouted. "On my mark!"
He threw a dagger. It struck a Messenger, which froze nearly solid and dropped from the sky. They surged in, striking methodically. When one of the others swooped in from overhead, Reina thrust a handful of lightning at it, throwing it against the inside of her barrier and down to the ground. They focused that one next.
The process repeated. By the time those Messengers inside the shield were dead or incapacitated, Ardyn had made similar progress outside. Reina dropped her barrier and repeated the same again. And again. Somehow she found the strength to stand and hold the shields at the same time. Her body was past the burning pain. In its place was an unsettling numbness, as if her body had given up hope that its pleas would ever be satisfied.
The Messengers fell. One by one, two by two, more joined those she had already destroyed, until the desert was littered with their bodies, but the sky was clear. And the air was dead silent, but for the heavy breathing of Reina and her retinue.
Her retinue.