Chapter Eighteen: Child of Calamity—Year Two, Phase 02
My friend, the fates are cruel.
There are no dreams—no honor remains.
The arrow has left the bow of the goddess.
My soul, corrupted by vengeance
Hath endured torment, to find the end of the journey
In my own salvation
And your eternal slumber.
Legend shall speak
Of sacrifice at world's end.
The wind sails over the water's surface
Quietly, but surely.
—From Act IV of the epic poem, Loveless
By an author obscured by the passage of time
Morning arrived as morning always did.
Ienzo stirred in his bed, still exhausted from dancing all through the night, and he woke to find Even sitting in a chair beside his bed, looking tiredly out the window. The unexpectedness of it all gave the boy a fight. He never grew to accept the man who raped his sister and constantly neglected him, no matter what sort of paternal façade he would affect from time to time. But there was something in the way he held himself, the way his normally imposing visage was worn by some invisible weight that choked the air in the room.
Ienzo didn't speak to him, but only guarded himself with caution.
A few minutes passed before his black-hearted guardian finally opened his mouth. "Ienzo…" he wavered, something almost akin to human tears pooling in his eyes, and the boy knew something horrible was coming. Even looked to him and finished, "Evelyn is dead."
Ienzo didn't move. He didn't…anything. Those words, they just…seemed so unreal.
Even continued, "It happened in her sleep. A Heartless…somehow breached our new defenses and…" he swallowed a lump in his throat. "They seek strong hearts. Evelyn was…" he wiped at his nose, "…she was perfect…exactly what they wanted." He looked again to Ienzo. The boy's stupefied vacancy slowly—slowly—transitioned into something like faint incredulity; he now heard his guardian's words, but had yet to accept them as true. "I was right next to her when it happened. I woke to find the beast…" His words trailed like those of a broken man. He finally finished, "She never stirred. She was never awake to experience the horrors of losing her heart. I panicked, grabbed a knife, and destroyed the monster on the spot. But by then, Evelyn was already fading. She died peacefully, Ienzo. And after reading all those horrible accounts Xehanort gave us of what happens to those consumed by the Heartless…I thank the spirits that Evelyn was spared the torture."
Ienzo now registered the man's words, and could no longer dismiss them as his ears taking advantage of his morning fatigue and playing cruel tricks on him. The primordial inklings of tears finally manifested in his young, tired eyes and a prominent enough part of his consciousness knew that Evelyn was dead.
"I understand this is a lot to take in," Even placed his hand on Ienzo's, "so I won't ask you to be strong. I only want you to take time to accept this and grieve as much as you need. No one will judge you…Evelyn wouldn't judge you." He patted his hand as he rose to leave. "I'll leave you alone."
Ienzo knew the man was walking away. He heard the retreating footsteps, the opening and closing of the door, but it was all a distant echo to him. His breathing slowly hitched, his shoulders bobbed once, then twice, and the first tears finally broke from his eyes and he realized that the last thing he wanted was to be alone.
He leapt from his bed and bolted through the door, ignoring the severe aching in his muscles from last night as he sped past Even and sprinted haphazardly to the crime scene. He arrived panting and on the verge of collapse, but made it in time to see the investigation concluding. Dilan and Aeleus stood at the bedroom door. Heartbreak seized them when they found the young prince sprinting doggedly towards them. They stood their ground and Dilan caught him when he tried to enter.
"Ienzo, please! You shouldn't be here!" the aeromancer tried to stop him, but the boy only pitifully fought back.
"Let me in!" he half-screamed, half-gasped. "Let me in! Please!" He looked past and saw Terra, Aqua, and a small handful of other investigators finishing their sorrowful work inside the chamber. He called to the Keybearers, "I need…to see!"
Terra and Aqua exchanged remorseful glances. There was no easy way to do this. But the longer they prolonged it, the worse things would become. Their work here was finished. There was no harm in letting him in.
Aqua made the difficult call and touched Dilan's shoulder to let Ienzo through.
The path opened, Ienzo found he no longer had the strength to run to his sister's final resting place. He could only stand, stare, and stagger. He finally balked forward, hands and knees trembling as he moved agonizingly closer to Evelyn's side of the empty bed. He stepped past a dagger stained in black ichor on the floor—blood from the Heartless Even slew—and finally fell to his knees at the side of the bed where stains of shadow on the under sheet and pillow, all that remained of Evelyn's mortal form, slowly, slowly dissipated into the air. He found himself choking and wheezing on his own tears as hot water clouded his vision. He reached oh so vainly with shaking hands to the evaporating trails that were once his sister and nothing could stop him from sinking his head where her heart once rested and bawling his own, far frailer heart out.
He stayed like that for several minutes while the adults—Ansem and Even now among them—quietly discussed what was to be done next. They spoke of potential security breaches and preventative measures, of Emperor Palamecia's wickedness and the Heartless' depravity, of what this meant for the kingdom now that their defenses were so suddenly bypassed…and, inevitably, of what happened to Evelyn after she lost her heart based on what they knew from Xehanort's studies.
Enough of Ienzo's senses returned when they whispered of that last subject.
"Wait…" he croaked between sniffles, "if…if Evelyn lost her heart…that means she's a Heartless. …And if her Heartless and her Nobody are destroyed…"
They could see the false hope rising in him, a clear manifestation of posttraumatic denial. Aqua accepted the encumbrance of letting him down. "Ienzo…we don't know if it'll work like that."
His eyes were inflamed, his voice desperate, "But why not?"
"Because," she hesitated, looking for the right words. "Not everybody becomes a Heartless, and even fewer become Nobodies. Even if Evelyn was among those that did, the chances of us finding both and restoring her in our lifetimes is…it's just not realistic."
"But we can do it!" he spoke at Aqua, but begged to an entity beyond his comprehension. "We just have to destroy every Heartless and Nobody out there!"
Terra stepped in, sorrow tinging his words, "If it was so easy, we would've done it already." There's simply nothing we can do for Evelyn, he wanted to add, but felt he'd said enough.
Desperation and winded anxiety gave way to new layers of sorrow. His breathing hitched, his shoulders rose and fell, and his soul was mercilessly dragged by claws of misery to renewed depths of torment.
Aqua stepped forward, taking a knee and delicately reaching a soft hand to the boy in an effort to comfort him as she so often did for Ventus, but Ienzo's sorrow turned to rage and he sidestepped her, thrusting an accusing finger to silent Aeleus and crying, "Where were you when my sister died?!"
All were silent. They simply couldn't justify any of this to him. Dilan tried anyways on his friend's behalf, "Ienzo, please—no one could've—"
But the child pressed savagely toward the geomancer, "You're our bodyguard! You're supposed to protect us from—from…!"
He couldn't speak any further. None of them could. Aeleus only looked away in stolid shame. Seconds of palpable silence later, the geomancer turned and walked away. Dilan reached after him, "Aeleus—!" but he didn't stop. Dilan stood conflicted, caught between choosing which party needed him more, but soon enough, he followed his former captain out of the others' sight.
There was nothing else that could be done. Ienzo wasn't ready for help. He wouldn't accept it.
When all the adults finally left, Ienzo locked himself in the room and grieved every way his immature mind and body knew how. He stormed. He kicked. He paced. He screamed. He cried. He curled into a ball at Evelyn's bedside and wept until his eyes were incapable of offering anymore tears. There was now only dry misery.
Food trays were left outside the door at the regular mealtime intervals and the servants always informed him so, but the door never opened. The boy couldn't eat or drink. If he needed the restroom, there was a private one attached to this room like all members of the nobility enjoyed in this castle.
This was the day of October 31. Even worked late again that night and didn't return to the room Ienzo claimed in his agony. The entire day passed. Ienzo spent it reminiscing over his most vivid memories of the person he loved more than anyone in the whole world.
He remembered their fights, their arguments, their impromptu wrestling matches…
Their birthdays, their picnics, their moments of innocence…
The day she saved him from a rabid dog, the night they had an adventure in the forest of fireflies all to themselves and never knew they were lost…
The first time he saw her cry, the first time she comforted him after their parents left to attend their regular war meetings…
The night she wished upon the star of Calamity and everything changed…
The night of her forced marriage and when she treated his wounds at his bedside despite everything she'd endured…
The magical night they shared, dancing their cares away under the autumn moon…
And now she was gone.
The clock struck midnight. It was now November 1.
At some point, Ienzo dared to raise his inflamed eyes to the large window and survey the nightly heavens, half-wishing for another meteor to mercifully annihilate him at that very moment.
So many stars…and none of them on an errand of mercy…
No comets fell. No wishing stars made themselves known.
What did Evelyn wish for…the night we lost everything?
A desperate half-thought crossed his mind, and his vision soon focused on one star out of hundreds of millions. That would be his star. A child of science, he didn't believe in the presence of ancestral spirits as his kingdom's religion taught, but if praying to a star—a mere property of indifferent nature—brought him closer to Evelyn…
If there's anyone…anything out there…please…kill me.
The star he wished on then flickered and faded, its brilliance wavering and growing ever dimmer until, finally, it vanished.
What precious shreds of hope Ienzo had left died then, certain that, if there was a greater power ruling over the cosmos as Evelyn believed, it only scorned him and took pleasure in his suffering. This was to be his fate as long as he lived. Nothing in the universe could convince him otherwise.
He couldn't have known the star that faded was Destiny Islands.
In miserable time unmeasured, fatigue finally took him.
He closed his eyes and welcomed the embrace of night…
Letters of red flashed under his eyelids:
THERE WAS NO HEARTLESS
He panicked and shot his eyes open in a cold sweat. Nervous, his vision flitted around the dark, moonlit room, looking for a source to the words.
There was nothing. The room was empty.
His breath settled. I'm tired. I'm seeing things.
Still curled up against the wall beside the bed, he turned to the depression on the mattress that vaguely fit his sister's frame. The dark wisps had long since faded and left only unpolluted air in its place. Left with no preferable alternative, he wearily picked himself up and cautiously eased himself into Evelyn's fading shape. He settled into the blankets and sheets, afforded a whiff of the scent he would soon never smell again, and tried again to close his eyes.
EVEN DID IT
EVEN DID EVERYTHING
At this, his eyes shot open harder than ever and he stifled a terrified scream.
"Who's there?" he called, feebly, into the dark, empty room.
No answer.
After some seconds of darting his anxious gaze across the large bedchamber, he slowly brought his exhausted eyes to stare wearily into the folds of blanket covering his lap. Tears of worry began to form. Then, the crimson letters appeared on his lap's covers:
HE HAS NO FACE
SEE HIM LIMP
A quick shriek escaped him and he shot his hands to cover his mouth. What force was this that it could cross from his nightmares to woken consciousness so seamlessly? And what did it mean that Even had no face and limped? Nothing could be further from the truth.
But then the words flared to life all over the room—on the bedposts, the lampshades, across the dressers, the windowsills, on the clock, the paintings, the awards for scientific achievement, everywhere—
EVEN IS GUILTY
CAN THEY SEE?
HE IS A MONSTER
BROUGHT THE HEARTLESS
BROUGHT CALAMITY
KILLING ANSEM
KILLING THIS WORLD
DOOR TO DARKNESS
MIRROR, MIRROR
DARK SEEKERS
TRUST THE KEYBLADE
SAVE THE SEVEN
STOP V
The phantasmagoria flooded his senses, racking him with one stream of broken, otherworldly messages after another so that devastated Ienzo had no alternative than to accept his role as recipient of this fantastical nightmare-come-true. But prominent above all other communiqués and transposed in gargantuan letters of brilliant glowing crimson so that none could miss it was the warning:
BEWARE CHERNABOG
Fear rattled the terrified boy. He had no idea of what entity sent these foreboding messages…but he believed every word of it. Even caused Calamity…
Words and warnings invaded him for far longer than he cared to keep a chronological record, but when fear turned to silent, righteous anger, he accepted this imposed role of inheritor of a one-sided unearthly transmission. But deep into the night and after the stream of information relented and the words vanished, it occurred to him: No one will believe me if I told them. I have no way of proving any of this.
Such became his fate: the miserable boy emotionally crippled by the loss of his sister and who knew far more than he should have, yet couldn't share his apocalyptic knowledge with anyone. That is the fate he resigned to all the way to February, but through the crushing weight of solitude, his hatred for Even as the murderer of his family never wavered. But if he were to act and kill the monster responsible for all this, he would have to throw his own life away and be prosecuted as a murderer. There were days when he wanted nothing more than to claim his revenge regardless of the consequences—days when his own life meant nothing as long as retribution could be his…
But Evelyn's words the morning before she perished always returned in Ienzo's mind.
"I've worked hard to give you the best life possible. If you want to do something for me, do this: live. Live as much as you are able. And then I'll be able to smile knowing I didn't give up my own life for nothing."
And so this cycle of depression continued. There was no way he could muster the strength to become the man Evelyn always dreamed he would be, and no living soul that could understand him.
But that didn't stop one from trying in mid-December…
A shutter flashed, waking Ienzo from his brooding meditation atop the small stack of crates in an alley in Radiant Garden's ghettos. He'd taken to regularly leaving the safety of the palace and wandering the streets in the days following Evelyn's funeral. Escaping the capitol unnoticed to have time to meditate was hardly a problem now that Aeleus and Dilan were reassigned to active duty to combat the increasing Heartless menace. Add to that the tragic consideration that the ambiguous heart complications Lord Ansem had been battling for the last two years had reached a point where the sage-king was now almost always bedridden, and there was practically not a soul left that cared to notice the boy's presence or wellbeing. For all this, Ienzo had always managed to masquerade as one of the downtrodden peasants or refugees. Being noticed was profoundly undesirable to the nine year-old recluse, and so when the alarms in his head alerted him to someone having taken his picture and potentially identified him as a royal, he shot his attention to the mouth of the alley and found two forms standing there in the gently falling snow.
The taller of the pair was a man Ienzo recognized immediately: Terra. Someone from the palace had sent a search party for him, no doubt, and Terra was among the lucky duo to find him.
But the second was a woman altogether unfamiliar to the child yet appearing in the Keybearer's age group. She stood somewhat shorter than Terra, wearing her straight brunette hair at shoulder length and lowering her camera to reveal a pair of warm, emerald-hued eyes.
She and Terra shared the same light, heartfelt smiles at finding Ienzo safe and sound.
Terra jibed playfully at her, "Told you we'd find him first."
She scoffed in good humor and shot him a quizzical look. Clearly, this was part of an inside joke they shared.
Displeased, Ienzo turned his lethargic gaze away from them and to the snow-speckled ground of the alley. He didn't need any grownups speaking down to him right now.
They strode closer. Terra called, "You've got the whole palace worried, Ienzo." Lies, obviously. "They've sent out some search parties looking for you." They stopped when they drew close enough. "Any reason why you've been running away lately?"
The boy refused to look him in the eye. He only shifted away in his seat and gave him the cold shoulder against the cold brick wall.
Terra sighed. "One way or another, we'll have to take you back. The streets are hardly as safe as they used to be."
Because of all the refugees you brought back, you mean—Ienzo wanted to retort, but knew that wasn't fair to the vast majority that weren't criminals. He resigned himself to a withering "I don't care. Like it better out here."
The Keybearer couldn't find the right words. Were it not for that heartbreaking tone of utter defeat in the child's voice, he would have rebutted somehow. But he knew how terribly Ienzo still took the death of his sister and had yet to find the right way to reach out to him. Ventus was so much easier to comfort.
Terra didn't reply. The woman did that for him. She stepped in front of the despondent prince, keeping a respectful distance but maintaining an air of casual concern all the same, hands and camera stuffed in her pockets, and she inquired, "May I ask why?"
Ienzo allowed his world-weary eyes to flit to her direction. She now leaned against the parallel wall, hardly two arms' lengths away, and slouched just low enough to reach approximate eye-level with him. Her approach was different from Terra's and the others'. She didn't seem condescending—she wasn't speaking down to him. She didn't seem to put up an act or behave like an out-of-touch grownup failing to communicate with a kid on a respectful level. Ienzo got a good look at the casual, subdued sincerity on her face and knew she was far more experienced than the others in dealing with children.
He wondered what to say to her.
Because I don't get the messages anymore.
Because I can't stand being near the monster that killed my sister.
Because I can't breathe in that horrible palace.
I hate everyone who let Evelyn die and is too stupid to see the truth.
I want the palace to burn.
I want to see everyone in it die.
I just want to be alone…
Tempting though it was, he refused to let himself cry. He averted his gaze from the woman on the opposite wall and muttered, "Don't like the palace. It's easier to breathe…out here."
Naomi expected this. After what she'd heard of the boy, this was hardly surprising. "I know what that's like," she replied. "Feeling like you don't belong in your own home…it really is suffocating."
Terra knew she was telling the truth. She'd told him of how her own family and lover cast her as a pariah after she gave birth to Sora out of wedlock.
"I don't ever wanna go back," Ienzo half-choked. "I…I hate it there. You can't make me go."
That subdued sympathy was evident more than ever on Naomi's face. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled sadly. "Then I won't."
Neither Ienzo nor Terra had expected that.
She continued, "Only a monster or a fool would force you into something so toxic. So, I've got another idea." She had Ienzo's full attention, difficult though it was to tell. She pulled the camera out of her pocket and held it before him. "I'm a chronicler working with Ansem and Xehanort. I come out here almost every day learning all that I can about the refugees and how hard they fight to survive. I take my pictures, film what I need, and let the more fortunate ones know just how bad things are out here." She paused, staring pensively at her camera. "Thing is, I used to be one of them. I know what it's like to lose your world—everything you've ever loved—and find yourself relocated to the cutthroat slums, just wondering if you'll ever eat again or if any night could be your last. That's why I'm so passionate about all this. That's why, knowing what I do about you, I think you could come in handy."
Terra raised an eyebrow. He truly didn't know what Naomi had in mind or that she'd been considering…whatever this was.
She resumed, looking Ienzo straight in the eye, "You've been sneaking out of the capitol for over a month now and surely know this place like the back of your hand. You're small enough to get to places I can't reach, and I hear you're really brilliant to boot." She exhaled and replaced the camera in her pocket. "So…would you like to be my assistant?"
The boy's eyes promptly shot open and he faced her with all the attention he had to offer. Is this…? Did she really just…?
Before Terra could speak, Naomi resumed, "I can't promise you'll never have to return to sleep or keep up appearances—we all have to make sacrifices sometimes—but if you say yes, I can guarantee they'll leave you alone as long as we're out here. Palace contact will be kept to a bare minimum and you'll have plenty of time to yourself. So, what do you say?"
Ienzo never recalled actually saying "Yes"—just one of those transient details lost in the greater abstract memory—but the deal was struck. The arrangement became the closest thing to independence the young prince had ever known and he never regretted a moment of it. There were nights and days when some authority figure at the capitol demanded his presence for formality's sake and Naomi made sure he complied, but she was always there waiting when he was granted the next opportunity to leave.
The rift between him and his guardians and servants at the palace never mended. He never forgave Aeleus, and Aeleus never wanted him to. Dilan was a more complicated case, but given that they rarely saw each other anymore anyway, Ienzo counted him as one of the allies forever lost to him from an already miniscule list.
Not long after the advent of the Emblem Heartless, Radiant Garden's forces—now adequately trained to more competently battle the Heartless—had captured some of the Emblems and gave them to Even for research and experimentation. This, Even claimed, was the noble research project that so often demanded his attention and made him a great authority—almost a steward for dying Ansem—for all governmental affairs concerning their war with the Heartless and contact with those from other worlds. When the Coalition of Allied Worlds was founded, it wasn't uncommon for Even to attend the summits in Ansem's place.
A new figure emerged from the slums—the place now slandered by the locals as "Hollow Bastion" for their lack of faith in the kingdom's questionable ability to protect them. None knew this new person's past, not even the young man himself, but only his name: Sephiroth. For his valiant exploits against the Heartless and his loyalty to the oppressed laborers and peasants he emerged from, the begging class soon called him the Hero of Hollow Bastion. Naomi and Ienzo even caught a glimpse of him once, off in the distance, but were unable to secure more than a grainy photograph from the remote encounter.
There were many nights when Ienzo was able to sleep at Naomi's house. He met her sons, Sora and Riku (the latter adopted) and learned from them how much fun the young Princess Kairi was to play with. Dinners with them were the first family experiences he'd had in years, and whenever Terra and Aqua came over, he was surprised to see them in a new, more human light. He saw them laugh as friends do with his new employer and her children, he saw the Keybearers worry about their lost ally, Vanitas, and when they thought they were alone, he saw them tremble and sometimes weep in concern for Ventus, only recently found and more recently sent on a high-risk, deep-cover mission to rescue Vanitas. He learned from this time that even heroes mourn.
He never truly opened up. He'd garnered a reputation of almost never speaking, either confining himself to the lonely domain of his troubled mind or being supernaturally alert of his surroundings. It wasn't always easy for outsiders to tell which. This served him well when he and Naomi went to work among the crowds in the ghettos. She often rewarded him at the end of the day with hot chocolate, and he would listen to her talk when they drank at the market stalls. Sometimes he would talk back.
Ienzo was the first person Naomi confided in when she caught herself falling in love with Terra.
He was also there, hiding in secret with his camera, when Naomi and Terra shared their first kiss. He was smart enough to leave when they locked the bedroom door and closed the curtains. He gave them both a copy of his photograph the next day.
Through all this, the boy grew enough to often forget his hatred and sorrow. Though he rarely expressed it, he finally felt joy. He finally felt alive…
And then the Heartless pierced its claws into Naomi's heart and reddened the snow with her blood. Ienzo should've known this assignment from Even was far too suspicious. Aeleus and Dilan gathered this, but only when it was too late: when the Heartless guarding the Emblem Factory at the site of the C-bomb's detonation in the borderlands back in August caught wind of their mission and massacred their forces on the clifftop.
But Ienzo was far too terrified from the ambush and the Dark Hide's pursuit for his slumbering rage to reawaken then. It wasn't until well after the crash, when he dug the knife into the Soldier's side—the same knife he now carried with him through the riot with the clear intent of skewering Even's heart out—that all the ire and anguish he'd nearly forgotten resurfaced with a vengeance.
If the disembodied messages he received the night of Evelyn's murder were true—and Ienzo believed more than anything that they were—then the atrocities Even secretly committed would only worsen over time.
First my parents…then my sister…and now Naomi… You've taken everything from me! Naomi said I survived your deathtrap for a reason, and now I know what that reason is. I'm going to rip out your black heart, Even, and then I'll feed it to those Heartless pets you're so fond of. You die today, by my hand.
The corpse-strewn cobblestone of the capitol plaza; late afternoon of February the third…
All was quiet. All was dark.
He saw nothing, and all noise was a faint, distant echo.
Those echoes drew nearer. Dim splotches of red brought light to his eyelids. He could hear himself groan.
"Hey, I think this one's still alive!" a distorted voice called. Feet scampered to his side and excited hands tried to rouse him awake. "Hey, buddy," that same voice probed, "I need you to hang in there, alri—?"
Aeleus' eyes shot open, assaulted by the bright grey sunlight, and his right arm instinctively shoved the paramedic aside as he tried to pull himself up…only to find his body ached and panged with every muscle moved, and his left, bionic arm was no longer there to give him support. That's right…it'd caught fire and he had no choice but to lose it. And the mob…they trampled him underfoot.
His strength failed and he fell back to the stone ground.
Bodies lay all around him. Many still breathed, but some only barely, and yet far too many others were dead. He was trapped in a macabre sea of broken forms, all the result of a riot that turned violent and a police force incapable of peacefully disbanding it.
With a hitch of his breath, the injured geomancer forced himself to sit upright, groaning—almost screaming—with every inch raised. Upon reaching his arc's zenith, he plopped his torso forward, just enough to make sure he'd stay in that seated position and anxiously scanned the battlefield for a shattered corpse that may have once been Ienzo.
Ienzo, tell me you made it through…
"Sir!" the medic cried. "The back of your head—! It's bleeding!"
The knight-captain remembered then the spiked whip that Ienzo cracked the back of his skull with. He felt the blood run down behind his ear and along his neck and shoulder. He didn't care. He only sought to perform that duty he failed once, long ago, and finally had a chance to redeem himself with: protecting Even's family. He unknowingly let Evelyn die—a failure that haunted him to this day—and now his only chance for penance was in saving Ienzo.
Where are you?
He took some deep breaths in anticipation, then hoisted himself up, agony thundering through every limb and nerve as he raised himself to his knees, then his feet, then when he staggered and had to keep moving to catch himself. He now stood as he once sat: slumped, awkwardly balanced, and on the brink of total physical collapse. He inhaled and exhaled, fighting against every paroxysm of torture screaming at him to just give up and let the medics mend him. Any sane human being would've done it.
He took a trembling step forward, careful to reapportion his weight with every movement, and then risked another. The kneeling medic looked on in distressed awe at what this survivor barely held together by his sinews could muster. Small rivulets of blood ran down the back of his greatcoat and dripped onto the cobblestone with every movement. Then, with a rough gathering of air to his bruised trachea, the former bodyguard called in a voice far-reaching but hoarse, "IENZO! IENZO, WHERE ARE YOU?!"
No answer.
He ground his teeth, held back the building, searing screams of pain yearning to be free, and called once more, "IENZO!"
The medic ran to his side and tried to stop him, "Sir, if you're looking for someone, we'll have our own forces do that. You need immediate medical attention—"
But Aeleus seized the man's collar with his only arm and barked in his face, "Ienzo—he's a small boy, nine years old, has silver hair and blue eyes—he's Lord Even's son for spirits' sakes!" The medic replied only with silent terror. Aeleus growled and forcefully added, "The inbred prince! Ring any bells?!" Still nothing. The injured geomancer grimaced and thrust the medic to the ground just as he did to one of his soldiers at the borderlands when he gave him the same stupefied reaction. Then he turned his fuming gaze to other medics and survivors nearby. "HAS NO ONE SEEN HIM?!"
Silence met him once again. Until—
"Hey!" an elderly woman called. "Is this him?"
Horror surged through the knight-captain then. For all his demanding, he never wanted an actual answer. He wanted to spend hours rummaging the bodies only to conclude the boy had somehow escaped the fray. But now that he had a lead…
He groaned and dragged his feet forward as fast as he feebly could, panting heavily with every dogged step. He finally reached the elderly woman's side and she moved away to give the imposing brute his space. The geomancer now stood over the sickeningly crumpled form and wished the old woman had never spoken. At his feet, covered in heavy winter clothing sprawled a lifeless pile of mangled flesh and shattered bone roughly the size of a nine year-old boy. Cold wind blustered through the jacket folds and tresses of bloodstained silver hair. Filthy shoeprints sullied his clothes and left morbid depressions in his shape that surely reached far enough to crush his internal organs. His face had caved-in, a bludgeoned mess of dermis and dislodged teeth and gore smeared into the pavement. A combat knife had fallen just out of reach of one hand, and the ring finger on his other hand bore the sigil of nobility. There was no mistaking it. This was Ienzo.
Survivors and medics still moved about the sea of bodies, but the knight-captain and his slaughtered prince remained as petrified as statues, moved only by the currents of wind—until weight and wear became too much to bear and Aeleus allowed himself to fall, excruciatingly, to his knees.
It was all too much. It wasn't supposed to end this way…
He reached his only hand forward, wanting his fingers to pass through the corpse and prove it was only a nightmare-induced illusion before him, but he stopped himself within inches of the boy's non-face. His heart didn't have the strength to go any further. He wanted so desperately to curl his hand into a fist and strike the ground, to somehow take out his rage—but found that loss made him incapable of even that, and what he felt torturing him from within and wetting his eyes was hardly rage.
It was a stage of grief he'd repressed for far too long.
In time, the autopsy would report that, shortly before Ienzo perished, he'd begun suffering pangs of searing agony deep across his face and within his skull, and it was the building culmination of this unusual wound that crippled him and rendered him helpless against the dozens of bodies that unwittingly trampled him underfoot. Further investigation would discover that the source of this cranial trauma was the result of an older wound, temporarily sealed by magic, rupturing back open from sustained neglect with disastrous results.
This was the fatal wound from the truck crash that Sephiroth previously saved Ienzo from after rescuing Naomi from the Dark Hide.
"He—he has a pulse," Naomi informed him as Sephiroth peered closer to examine Ienzo's condition. "It's just—he took the worst of the crash and I don't know how long he has…"
But the hero's hand was already placed against the open wounds of the boy's face, where the blood ran most severely and the most cranial trauma was sustained. The radiance of the restoration spell was already at work. Sephiroth reported, "He'll live. But he should still see a doctor. Magic can only do so much."
And only so much magic did.