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CHAPTER 14:
SPUN GLASS FRACTURES OF A TAINTED PITCHER
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Edward Elric's right leg wasn't supposed to be dragging him down with its weight, along with his left one.
Nor was he supposed to be able to feel how it did so.
Yet here, hanging suspended from reality and history in a frozen and pitch black and fissured and broken and frigid and deserted wasteland so withered of hope and terrifying with empty horror there was no soot or ash for legs to even leave footprints in, the singular and sole sensation Edward was able to imbibe was the lack of any purchase for his feet, and his legs.
While there was nothing, at all, where his other foot, and leg, were supposed to be.
"You're in no position to take issue with me for hating Hughes for choosing Mustang over me, and Mustang for choosing his duty over someone he'd called friend, when; by convincing Winry not to take on Scar, thus convincing him to spare Kimblee, and therefore remaining true to your shared aspirations with Winry, you paid none other than Al, the person you swore your most sincere oath of love to, as the toll for preventing Winry from bloodying her own hands with death, and torment himself, and your shared dreams with him, as the toll to do so?"
"You fell right into my hands.
"You've learned how to counter our hostage taking strategies?
"I think not.
"I had no intention of taking Al hostage in the way that I threatened to.
"My threat was merely a ploy to maneuver you into open the Portal with without costing me any of my Stone, so I could hitchhike on it so that, when your human transmutation ends, I'll be returned to Central somewhere random well away from the Central Command Center, and the revolutionaries who have partially or fully occupied it by now."
"I know that's a hard promise to keep."
"Maybe I'm just arrogant."
"I can't let my ego get in the way."
No.
Not once again.
He'd told himself he wouldn't let this happen this time.
He'd told himself he wouldn't let this happen once again.
Al had his original body, and mind, back.
Ed had his.
He couldn't let this happen again.
"You'll have all the apple pie you could ever want."
"That's not a Truth I'm willing to accept!"
"What's actually relevant is that I'm no longer going to believe in myself because I'm an alchemist. Being an alchemist means nothing. I'm still nothing more than a hopeless, insignificant human who couldn't even save one little girl, much less Al or anyone else."
"I know that's a hard promise to keep."
"I can't let my ego get in the way."
"I guess you'll just have to keep moving forward. In any way you can."
"Maybe I'm just arrogant."
How could he reconstruct a bridge over a new horizon for Al, and Winry, and himself, to move forward on; when no matter whose dreams he strove to protect, or let die in a ditch by the wayside; no matter whether he averted his eyes from hardship or confronted it head on; no matter whether he believed in the Truths of others or strove for his own; no matter whether he crawled on that bridge, or sprinted on it; he'd end up giving something of someone else, and not of himself!?
"I'm still nothing more than a hopeless, insignificant human who couldn't even save one little girl, much less Al or anyone else."
"You've sacrificed countless lives in your pursuit of the Truth! How can you have deluded yourself into thinking that's right!?"
"Spare me. Look at the actions of your own country! They cultivate senseless slaughter, and call it justice! I see no reason to accept a world that allows such atrocities! I will use my power to purge it, once and for all!"
"There really is a new world still out there. But you won't find it on the other side of the Doorway of Truth. It begins here, with the ground under your feet!"
"You fool! You can't possibly understand the unbearable pain that I've had to live through!"
"You'll have all the apple pie you could ever want."
"I know that's a hard promise to keep."
Was that possible, at all, though, when determination to stop averting his eyes to anyone's torment but Al's, and his own; be it Hughes', Winry's, Ling's, Lan Fan's, Mustang's, Hawkeye's, Ashleigh's, Julia's, Miles', May's, Scar's, Darius, Heinkel's, Greed's, Pride's, that of the Ishvalans, that of the Milosians, that of the Xingese, that of the Chimera, that of the Homunculi, and work together with them to carry their pain so they could realize their shared dreams; itself exchanged one death for another, one dream for another, and none of his, and Al's, owns; and made Al's, and his, dreams come true by climbing up a ladder of handicapped spines until they broke past any remaining faint flicker of repair?
How could he carry Al's pain, or Winry's, or anyone else's, if, no matter how he moved forward, whether he transmuted with his own bare hands and legs, or he himself became the shoulders for others to stand on, all he did was walk astride the oblivion of death, and the pain of life, and there wasn't any other theory he knew how to pr
Ed suppressed the urge to laugh once, harshly, and he knew, had been asking that question out loud in an informal setting, he would have intentionally shut himself up by biting down on his tongue.
And you call yourself an alchemist pioneer.
Are you honestly so hopeless you're even giving up on developing your new theory the first time you need to rethink its particulars?
You really are arrogant.
Not this time.
He was not going to let another trinity of Homunculus, Amestrian military, and Ishvalan charlatans, be the ones to take off with their own crackpot theories.
He was going to get up, face forward at the right here and now, take off on his own experimental rocket out of the blizzard of blood and ice, and soar.
Edward Elric, the once and present Fullmetal Alchemist, opened his eyes and looked in the direction of the ocean of blood and the vast black arms, and hands, now waving more animatedly; he opened his mouth; and while his calm, surely confident words in a solidly steady, quiet tone of voice he attempted to keep reassuring, and assuringly conciliatory, but not too instructive, or personal, were for Rosalie's Homunculus, they were meant just as much for Erbe, and even Douglas, if he was effectively listening in.
His wounds meant nothing, his adrenaline keeping them from debilitating the motions of his mouth, or vocal cords, even barely.
"I disagree about the specifics, but I do genuinely do agree Emi hung you out to dry at the short end of a very thorny stick, and that you shouldn't have trusted your canopy bed to keep you safe from hardship."
Emi inhaled harshly.
Edward pushed aside the rush of pain that washed through him, however, and he kept his eyes forward, not even sparing Mustang, Hawkeye, Havoc, or anyone else a glance.
Emi was in the company of the best squad for recovering refugees from the battlefield that Ed could think of deploying with that duty.
That Emi hadn't already attempted anything reckless meant, somewhere, she'd already recognized this herself.
The Hero of Ishval had taken the field, as had the Hawk's Eye.
That was all Ed needed to know.
Erbe shifted with irritation, but he didn't say anything.
This time, Edward intentionally ran his mistakes, and the things he'd learned, through his mind intentionally, trusting the memories of the mistakes he'd made, and what he'd learned from them, not to drag his invalid body to the sediment of a river of mud corroded blood, but to alert him if there was something he was overlooking as he delicately, carefully parsed over the words he was attempting to give voice to before he said then.
"This planet of ours is a life form itself. Or rather, a vast nervous system that carries the current of the All and the One to every corner of the globe. It has stored every memory from the instant of the inception of its soul at the beginning of all of reality's space and time, and all the dimensions and planes of the existing universe, from when the planet was just a soul before the physical planet was born, and afterwards, until now. Furthermore, it has witnessed the immaterial and material universe unfold from when imaginary time began innumerable eons ago, and it has thus retained all of the information on the workings and secrets of existence within itself.
"What you know as the Doorway of Truth or the Portal of Truth is actually a single separate Gateway of Truth connected to an individual organic being's soul. But the planet itself has a Gateway of Truth, behind which all of whole repository of information and knowledge that comprises the Truth and the current of the One and the All, and thus the actual Truth, is stored. If a toll sufficient to open it is paid to the Truth, it can be opened and the Truth itself can be decomposed and then reconstructed into one's soul, mind, and body."
"The Amestrian advanced Stone will control the Truth within the new form that I will transmute for myself as a perfect being with all the almighty power of God.
"This is why I am worth it.
"I will realize the dream that all life longs to take hold of, and that the Truth, the current of All is One, One is All, the Law of Equivalent Exchange, and the science of alchemy were implemented in nature to enable living beings to bring about."
"I will free myself from all constraints, all restrictions, all bounds, and all bonds. I will unlock all of the secrets of existence and become all knowing and almighty, and the pinnacle of the evolutionary currents of All is One, One is All."
"What's actually relevant is that I'm no longer going to believe in myself because I'm an alchemist. Being an alchemist means nothing. I'm still nothing more than a hopeless, insignificant human who couldn't even save one little girl, much less Al or anyone else."
"You'll have all the apple pie you could ever want."
"However, it's for that very selfsame reason that I know you really can stop what's happening to you, as long as you don't trust the Truth any more than you trust your canopy.
"I know precisely what you're going through, even if I don't understand the specifics of how you've been hurt.
"As you've said, I've seen other humans, Homunculus and natural born, bleed with broken limbs in those ditches, and I've done the same myself.
"And it's because I've been through what you're going through, that I understand the pain you're in, and how you may be able to move forward from it without standing on the shoulders of any other Homunculus who has come before you in a way that will just leave you even more crippled."
Edward wasn't sure anyone else would have noticed it.
But he himself knew precisely what to look for.
For the briefest second, the shifting arms, and hands, slowed slightly, before correcting their movement in a way that appeared to be an ordinary shift of position due to a change in the tides of the sea of blood, but that possessed a wary distrust of almost anyone, and almost anything, Edward recognized all too well.
Erbe stiffened slightly, and snarled, but he still clearly knew better than to risk doing anything potentially precipitous at this time.
Ed took care to keep his voice from altering.
"You've sacrificed countless lives in your pursuit of the Truth! How can you have deluded yourself into thinking that's right!?"
"Spare me. Look at the actions of your own country! They cultivate senseless slaughter, and call it justice! I see no reason to accept a world that allows such atrocities! I will use my power to purge it, once and for all!"
"You're just looking for an escape because you can't handle this reality. You say you want to make a new world. But you can't use Truth as a tool to destroy what's real!"
"You know nothing, you fool!"
"There really is a new world still out there. But you won't find it on the other side of the Doorway of Truth. It begins here, with the ground under your feet!"
"You fool! You can't possibly understand the unbearable pain that I've had to live through!"
"I mean, you're not so bad. For an alchemist, anyway."
"But that's part of the point.
"I can't understand you because I'm not you, so I need to learn about you to do so."
"So I've taken my own children. I provide my children with a purpose for being here in reality, and the responsibility of caring for my children would burden me and prevent me from gaining true freedom from all flasks. Human parents abandon their children and let them suffer to find meaning in existing all the time. You should know this very well by now.
"So I seek to take a single nation within the space of a minority of minutes. Julia sacrificed at least around one hundred million human souls who died over the course of six or more centuries, and Ashleigh sought at least around fifty million more.
"If I leave the Truth in the grasp of humans, humans will destroy the world. The lives lost within and near Amestris have been necessary martyrs, saving humanity from itself and its sins. I am the testament, the Shepherd of the Truth. I have to obtain the Truth, to prevent you humans from one day harnessing it to exterminate each other and one another off of the surface of this world."
"My theory for how to obtain God and become a perfect being includes, as all scientific theories are required to, the Principle of Uncertainty.
"The toll will not be paid through the Amestrian advanced Philosopher Stone. The Portals of Truth, that are components of alchemists who have become living transmutation circles as you have, can be opened at the same time by applying those alchemists as living matrixes at the points in a human transmutation circle; five Portals will then endeavor to seize my Stone or soul as the toll for opening them, and a central tenet of the Principle of Uncertainty is that you cannot fully understand something because, if you arrive too close to it, you will change its position. Truth cannot understand Truth without the five Truths rejecting one another; this is also why humans cannot live without rejecting one another. As the laws of alchemy put it; as above, so below. When five Portals wage war against one another, this will generate enough energy to serve as the toll."
"Humans who dare to defy the natural order are repaid with despair for their arrogance.
"That is Truth."
"That's not a Truth I'm willing to accept!"
"And both your canopy bed, and the Truth, are containers that have prevented you from doing the same thing."
"Even if you don't have any alchemic aspirations of your own, or you don't want to get into any field, you know enough about the Truth you still have a decent amount of scientific learning, and trusting in a container, or the Truth, to tell you any answers, equates to having a breakthrough spoonfed to you in a ruby kennel with a golden dish."
"Don't delude yourself! It doesn't matter that you weren't born naturally! You're still a human, like us!"
"Not any longer."
"If you have any true confidence in who, and what, you are, as a human born of the Truth, are you really willing to betray everything alchemy is about, and refrain from ceaselessly questioning what the truth even is, and not seek to find your own way to stand up on strong legs, and strong feet, of your own?"
"That's right," Mustang interjected, and while Ed knew better than to risk provoking Erbe by looking down at the Flame Alchemist, he let a smile come to his face at the new, sure, calm vitality in Mustang's own conciliatory voice.
"Lieutenant Hawkeye's father, and my own alchemy teacher, Berthold Hawkeye, once told me that alchemists die once they stop searching for new truths.
"For all of Amestris' renown for its alchemic skills, it has been nothing more than an empty gleaming circlet since it was founded, and the Dwarf in the Flask was the same before he even had legs to walk with.
"If you strive for the same kind of homeland as the Dwarf in the Flask did, you'll become nothing more than a walking invalid of your own before you even gain the chance to walk.
"Don't defend yourself with Bradley's party line about how Homunculi can have pride in themselves merely because they're a different branch of human evolution.
"Species that don't adapt to their own environments die out, and if you don't make your own choices, and you just let someone, or something, else, tell you what to think, and how to feel, and how to live, and what choices to make, all you'll do is set yourself up for extinction."
"God should always create a new Stone.
"I'm not done! There's more! A billion humans I can draw energy from!"
Edward had the words for his voice before the memory had even totally dispersed from his mind's eye.
Edward's voice was still as steadily solid as before.
"Evolution comes from within, not from the Gateway, Doorway, or Portal you were transmuted from; from the laboratory you were born in; or from the container, be it a flask, canopy bed, body, or even a city, or a nation; you've lived in up to this point.
"Whether you can trust Emi, or not, is partially beside the point.
"If you get up on your own legs, you can walk away from the hardship you're in on your own, and you can find a better way than whatever it is you have in mind, at this time, for standing on the shoulders of the alchemist from your own Homunculus species who has come before you.
"I don't understand exactly how, but I do understand you feel cold, and scared, after you lost the sole person you believed loved you, so you're now faced with walking on your own legs in the truth of reality for the first time.
"I understand how, like the Dwarf in the Flask, Al, and I did, with DHohenheim, and Mom, respectively, you're willing to do anything to make it home from the cold to a warm hearth."
Would things have been different, if he, Edward, had been raised by a Hohenheim newly employed out of slavery in a Xerxian alchemic laboratory, while Al had had the Dwarf in the Flask as a Homunculus older brother when Mom had died?
Or, if Mom had been the Xerxian who had been promoted to an alchemist, and who had raised the Dwarf in the Flask, while DHohenheim had been the one to raise Al, and Edward, himself?
Edward pushed it firmly away.
"You'll have all the apple pie you could ever want."
"I know that's a hard promise to keep."
What mattered now was that he kept his, and Winry's, shared promise to Al.
"If you believe that the possibility is there, then you should rise to the occasion."
"I guess you'll just have to keep moving forward. In any way you can."
"I can't let my ego get in the way."
"It's time for you two to learn you don't have to do everything by yourselves!"
"There's one other thing for you to keep in mind.
"It's because the Truth is a gilded circlet; and all people, be it species, or in any other way, are different individuals with unique truths of their own who live by their own choices; that we know, no matter how cold, and choking, the tide of bloody mud might be, and no matter how frozen, and remote, the light is on the other shore of the dark, forbidding star ocean; there's still no end to what we can learn about people, and places, that will teach us a place where we can curl up before the warmth of a hearth at rest at home."
Edward then waited silently.
Someone shifted in an alley around a corner that was out of sight, light reflected off something at head height, and he saw Hawkeye slide her eyes to Mustang in a clear signal Edward couldn't decipher, but, even so, it took no effort to keep himself from betraying his knowledge, whatever Erbe himself decided, he was about to find himself a prisoner in the back of an armored military truck.
Edward had spent enough time around Pinako to know how light reflected off the lenses of glasses.
Sheska was the one who had found them.
The titanic arms quieted, and when the voice of Rosalie's Homunculus spoke, there was a guardedly determined relief in it.
"Henry Douglas, if you'll believe my advice, and, of your own initiative, fire shells from the cannons at very specific points, points my hands will trace in dot and dash, around edges of the circle I'm expanding at very specific velocities, and keep them firing, you will send a briefly lasting crosscurrent through the tides of the blood here that will fashion a transmutation circle I can apply to harmlessly end this rebound.
"Then, as long as it's under the Fullmetal Alchemist's oversight, I'll surrender myself to your custody, Henry Douglas, and you'll thus return home a hero in a position to make it look like, although, Mustang got Ross out of Central, he's still nothing more than an ineffective pen pusher; while, even though it turned out to be from information intentionally falsified by your superiors, you were passed up for a promotion for all the meticulous, hard work you did building a case against Ross."
Edward suppressed the urge to smirk as he shifted his face, knowing it was going to be now, or never, for Mustang to act.
He knew Mustang's eyebrow was twitching with furious anger because Mustang had forced it to, for Hawkeye's, Havoc's, Falman's, Fuery's, Breda's, Catalina's, and his own sake, and very likely for Erbe's, but lightness filled Edward to see the twitches were absolutely genuine.
The next second, sparks cascaded down the ray reflected off the lens of Sheska's glasses, and a single small pinpoint burst of fire pulsed in front of Erbe's head at what Edward knew was a very precise height, sending waves of heat washing over his hair, and face.
Erbe pulled his proboscis back reflexively.
Right behind the single cracking shot that funneled along a direct path from the muzzle of Hawkeye's rifle into his proboscis.
The dry and deadpan sarcasm on Hawkeye's face was no less sincere, and very clearly meant for Erbe, Douglas, Sheska, Emi, and Rosalie's Homunculus along with the rest of them.
Edward tucked into a smooth roll as he landed, and he spun on steady legs, even through his injury, to face Erbe while the reverberations of launching cannon shells resounded at a number of distant locations beyond the structures of Citrine.
Erbe's voice, when he spoke, brimmed even more with hate, even through the wheezing from his proboscis.
"What now, Flame Alchemist, Colonel Roy Mustang?
"What will you do now, Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist, the youngest and most prodigious State Alchemist in Amestrian history?
"How far will each of you flit in aimless flights of fancy to chase your whimsical daydreams of cooperation and peace through demilitarization?
"Will it now be Alphonse Elric you sacrifice, for the sake of not just the people of Amestris; but Ishval, Xing, Milos, Creta, Drachma, Aerugo, and who knows how much of this whole planet?"
It wasn't the thick, tall curtain of light blue, and tree trunk wide bolts of rising alchemic currents, that washed blue white haze over Ed's perspective from his right as the black morphing arms at last began to descend into the ground, and the sound of something thickly wet receding rapidly joined the echoes of the cannon shells; or the vertigo of the fall; that now caused Ed's breaths to come harder, and with less stability.
Erbe took the opportunity to spin, and fly in the direction of the closest roof edge as fast as he could.
However, Ed still heard his last words without anything lacking in the clarity it would have made it easier for his ears to avert themselves from, if those words themselves hadn't removed all of his ability to even tell whether he'd passed out from his wounds, blood loss, and he was having a nightmare, or he was at least hallucinating due to having lost so much blood he couldn't take in enough oxygen.
"For, as a byproduct of everything the two of you Elrics have done with your shared Portals before you at last performed the transmutation that separated them; up to, and including, Alphonse's own human transmutation of his soul through the planet's Gateway of Truth; he is now, essentially beyond any feasible doubt, currently the single and one alchemist; alive to draw his breaths in a living body upon the blood stained dirt under the Sun you two challenged warming not just Amestris, but all of this world itself; who has had the formula for, through coercion or decision, performing the transmutation of a completed Circuitus circle etched upon his individual Portal of Truth."
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BOOK TWO: THE MINIATURE IN THE CANOPY BED
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Fin
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Begin
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BOOK THREE: SPIRALING UNDERTOW OF CRIMSON SEDIMENT
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"We didn't have a choice then. We believed it was the only way we could save Spira. Do you know what it felt like to watch them die? Right before my eyes? It was the only thing we could do. It was the only choice we had. I gave in, I accepted, I believed. I allowed it to be true. I thought I'd be able to go through with it without ever doubting myself. But I… It hurts so much."-Yuna
"Forgive us."-Bahamut
"Everyone was so happy. 'Great job, Yuna. You did it. You saved us all.' There were too many smiles to count. And I know that I was smiling, too. But now, when I look back… the people who should be here aren't. The ones who should be smiling with me aren't here."-Yuna
"We had no choice."-Braska
"'We had no choice.' Always 'we had no choice.' Those are our magic words. We repeat them to ourselves again and again. But you know… The magic never works! The only thing we're left with is regret."-Yuna
"Yuna. I'm sorry."-Braska
"No. I don't want this anymore. I don't want friends to die… or fade away. I don't want battles where we have to lose in order to win. Nooj, I know that what you say is what you mean to do. Give me your resolve. Believe in Yuna."-Yuna
FINAL FANTASY X-2
