In which the world as they know it ends.

12/6/10 - yes, it's just a repost of the original ending, slightly edited. See my profile for details.

How the hymn was created: I listened to Tear doing the grand fonic hymn a few times and examined the hymn words. I decided that the hymn language in them was probably between Yulia and Lorelei, and decided to make a new hymn language by picking syllables that had similar feels to the ones in the orignal hymn, and assigning one syllable to each fonon. Then, I figured out what each subhymn would have them say if it was a normal arte (like Jade's 'Oh admonishing melody, arise in the name of the Necromancer'), took the words in those phrases (ignoring some articles and such), and figured out which fonon best symbolized each of those words (like anger or red would be fifth fonon). Jade's mystic arte would be seventh-sixth-seventh-fourth-second-seventh-third, by the way.

I then lost my notes as to the phrases I picked and which syllables went with each fonon. D'oh.

Am I the only one who thinks never hearing Van sing the Grand Fonic Hymn was a missed moment of awesome? Damn, that voice.

He should be able do to this: it had to be within his power, if he had Lorelei's power. It was hyperresonance that had turned Luke into the child he had never been, and Asch wielded that same power.

Ever since their fon slots had been synchronized, the real reason they'd come to Choral Castle, Asch had felt truly connected to him. The child whose fonons had come from Asch in the first place, the one who… Who could end the tyranny of the Score along with him.

The golden power answered his call and flowed to Luke, not harming him as Asch had been taught to use hyperresonance but embracing him. Asch guided it to use his own body as a pattern, find the similar pattern within Luke. Strangely, his clothes grew with him as they had shrunk with him, because a body should have clothes that fit it according to this logic.

Luke didn't look exactly the same as him, hair far more golden than Asch's own… and turning more and more golden as Asch watched. He withdrew his power and it stopped. Frowning, he conjured it again. The more seventh fonon Luke was exposed to the more golden his hair grew. Was Asch the same? Or was it that the fonon was red-gold in its raw form and Luke was simply the pure fonon shaped?

Purity. His key. He knew it would work. If they didn't need the Hymns he wouldn't have waited for Van. But no, he needed someone to make a pact with.

But did he want that? Luke… was his. Someone else commanding Luke… No, Van would be creating the pact with him, Asch reminded himself as he examined Luke's hair. Putting it back in place his fingers traced features that looked so different on Luke that he really couldn't understand how anyone could possibly mistake them for one another. The nose, the mouth, the delicate curve of the neck…

And there he had to jerk back, because he'd felt this strange and urgent desire to squeeze.

It wasn't that he still hated Luke on some level, which was his first thought. No, the desire to kill him was… anything but hate. Yet strangely similar. Asch had thought he knew what bloodlust was, but this was something different.

Akzeriuth… No one but him could harm Luke. No one had the right. Luke's fonons had come from within him…

…leaving behind only the ashes of the sacred flame. His eyes widened in realization.

Asch didn't hold Lorelei's manifestation. Not anymore.

Luke was Lorelei's manifestation. The Score taken form, the thing he hated above all else lying here on the replication machine. Utterly helpless.

Someone walked in. He would recognize Van's tread anywhere. "Van. What title does the Akzeriuth score use?"

"Young scion of Lorelei."

"It was his score all along," Asch realized. "The Score really is that invasive. Even we were manipulated by it in fighting it."

"What exactly do you mean?"

"Look at him, Van." More delicate than Asch, left handed… "He's my perfect isofon and yet he's more different from me than Sync is from Ion, try as he might to distance himself from his original. I don't think… I don't think he's my replica. You extracted the replica data from me, but…"

"But you inherited Lorelei's power. Yet you aren't Lorelei's power. Luke, however, is entirely composed of the seventh fonon and that is required for a sentience." Van came up next to him. "I realized it after re-reading Yulia's notebooks and then reviewing my notes on the Score. She had someone with Lorelei's power be born so that the future could start to change, but the most important of those deviations was permitting a manifestation of Lorelei to form, even though the Score prohibited it so that the Score could remain absolute. His headaches, the voices he hears: I thought they were caused by you. According to Dist's readings I was wrong."

"Can we still create a pact?"

"He is the sentience we would need, your perfect hyperresonance the weapon. But apparently the pact's maker is the one who must sing the hymns, compose them, and wield the weapon, and your power can only be wielded by yourself. It would be the same if Luke were to kill you. That was the first problem I found."

"Is there any way I can learn Yulia's hymns?"

"No. They're restricted to her bloodline, and while I could use them to summon Lorelei to my aid I couldn't use them for a pact."

"It's been two thousand years, is there any chance I'm a descendant?"

Van shook his head. "The family has always been small. Unusually small." Whenever there was more than one heir born, the spares died, as Van was scored to die in a couple years. He wasn't really fazed by that, much less as obsessed as the real Ion had been.

"Well, how were they created?"

"Lorelei traveled with Yulia while she quested in search of him and inspired her."

"In other words, there was no point to her locating him until she was able to create a pact." Asch stroked Luke's hair, sighing. "What do the hymns have to be?"

"One for each fonon, first through seventh."

"I don't think it will be that hard."

"It took her almost a year. According to her journals, he inspired each one, and the circumstances grew more and more difficult."

"Was the first fonic hymn, nightmare, the first?"

"Yes."

"That might explain why this seems so easy." Asch bent forward, lips almost touching Luke's ear.

He could feel the first fonons answering the song's call. Luke's somewhat pained expression eased as the ache of the replication machine's tests faded away and he fell into a slumber it would take more than a simple shout or tap to wake him out of.

"Yulia wrote that he simply asked her to sing a lullaby, and what she heard as normal words came out as hymn words."

"What did you hear?"

"Sae lune sae lae na lae na lune sae." No glyph appeared around Van.

"Stasis." Asch knew the name as soon as he heard it. "He's not just asleep but frozen in time." Although time moved on around him, and he could be hurt. "The second fonon, earth." He opened his mouth but nothing came. "It's there, I just can't get a grip on it yet."

"That was what she wrote, that something needed to catalyze the artes."

"It's… protection."

"The second hymn is force field. It was an attack on Yulia herself that catalyzed it, and Lorelei's avatar's fear for her life. Apparently a bond between the pact maker and Lorelei is necessary."

"And I have the first level of that bond by virtue of being his source?"

"And almost the second, it seems. She couldn't even truly get a grip on it until that key instant. It seems he already wants to protect you."

"It's not to protect him, he wants to protect me," Asch realized, and sang.

"Na sae dia na lune lune lae." Van smiled. "You're doing well. Next is the third fonon. It's an enhancement art, holy song."

"Endure. This next one will be easy." He sang their pledge.

"Lune lae na lune lae ri lune lae lune."

"…I want to call it holy song, but that's already taken. Heaven's blessing."

"The next is fourth fonon, revitalize. It heals everyone it can reach."

That was easy. They had both shared each other's pain, that was the requirement.

"Dia sae na dia ri lae lune."

"Rebirth. It restores the dead as well as heals." Not that there were any dead here, though the greenish light promised they would be healed if they were.

"The fifth fonon, fire. Judgment. It attacks all enemies."

"That one… Oh, do we have enemies."

"Lune ri sae na ri lae ri ri lune."

"Wrath."

Watching Asch's face as he'd sung the words and seeing again why his title was the Bloody, "I'd say it is," Van agreed. "The last one is the hymn of light. It's a surprisingly conventional attack arte, grand cross."

"That one… there has to be more to it." Asch looked at Luke. "Oh." Yes, ouch.

"Lune lae na dia sae. What exactly did that arte do?"

"Revelation? What a magic lens does, as well as damage, to an enemy. Cures ailments if cast on an ally, but it does a bit of damage in the process. Knowledge is power, but the truth hurts."

"And that only leaves the seventh. She gained that one when he faked his death. He couldn't be in two places at once and he needed her to go against Lorelei with all her might."

"Oh, I've thought of him as doomed for far too long now. You are…" he told Luke, knowing it was true. Luke was the reason he would save this world and the reason he had first truly wanted it dead and dust.

"Lune sae na lae dia ri lune lune."

"Nirvana." As Asch spoke that word Luke awakened: Asch hadn't cast revelation on Luke but on himself. Nirvana, however, was more than enough.

"Asch." Luke smiled at him.

"You're seventeen again," Asch told him since it didn't seem to have registered.

"But I'm not seventeen, am I? Jade told me what the signs of a replica were so I would know how I was different from one. I think it was to either test or reassure me, or both. We aren't the same so he thought you couldn't be my original, but you are. I know it now, somehow." Luke raised his left hand to hold the one of Asch's that reached towards Luke's face hesitantly. "And I know there's something you need to do."

"Luke, this isn't just about what we need. It's about what we want. What do you want?"

"For there not to be a war. To be able to stay with you, and Master Van, and travel, and see everything. To be free, all of us." Luke sat up, leaned against Asch. "I thought it would be possible, with you there, but then I knew it wouldn't be, because there are things people have to do, like it or not. I wish it wasn't that way."

"We can change it, Luke."

"I know. The power that let me escape the manor can. Our power. We're all chained down, Asch. I knew that even though I didn't know what the Score did besides tell people what the weather would be. Please, Asch. I want to be free even if it kills me."

"Do you think it will?"

"It will. But I won't be dead. I was dead in the manor, buried alive. You'll free me, won't you?"

"Yes. I will." Asch gathered his power, readying to destroy. Luke closed his eyes. "Sae lune sae lae na lae na lune sae." Go to sleep, Luke, so you won't suffer. Although a Grand Fonic Hymn didn't cast the components, only the greater arte. "Na sae dia na lune lune lae, lune lae na lune lae ri lune lae lune, dia sae na dia ri lae lune, lune ri sae na ri lae ri ri lune, lune lae na dia sae, lune sae na lae dia ri lune lune," and, finally, "Die, Luke," he murmured with a tenderness normally reserved for words of affection as he plunged the hyperresonance down into his heart and disintegrated his body into nothing but raw fonons.

Then he turned that same power to reshaping, as the Key contained the Sword that absorbed fonons and the Jewel to disperse them into the new form, writing the pact into Luke as he recreated him.

Luke opened golden eyes to whisper, "Thank you," and then vanished.

"Where did he go?" Van demanded.

"To destroy the Score." Asch closed his eyes. "He's still connected to me. Ha!"

"What are you smirking about?"

"The fonstones of the Score accumulated enough power over the millennia to destroy all of the miasma. He just gathered them all up and used them. They vanished from in front of so many people's eyes! I can see their memories, feel their dismay, shock… And it hasn't even had time to sink in!" Asch's delight vanished. "Oh…"

"What now?"

"Lorelei. He's dead, now. It was such a relief, to be able to return to nothing but the fonons he sprang from. I hated him, but I didn't realize that he was memory. The memories of everything that happened to everyone because of the Score: they were in him, they were him. He loved Yulia. He loved this world, and to be responsible for its suffering and to suffer as it…" Asch had tasted Lorelei's loss and regret and recognized his own feelings for Natalia. "We wanted him to suffer for what happened to us but he suffered everything that we did. He shared everyone's pain. For two thousand years alone… He wanted Luke to apologize to you for him, although it wouldn't be enough. Two thousand years, that was how long it took to save enough fonons to create another manifestation. He had to hold back the miasma, the… The Score wasn't meant to last this long."

"Yulia wanted to end the war, and save the world from the miasma."

"The miasma was the seventh fonon itself, corrupted by death and the artes they used to try to take control of Lorelei by force."

"She suspected that."

What Luke did next made Asch able to laugh again. "The only thing he knew about the Score was that it predicted the weather, it's hard to miss that! So he just changed the weather. It will be the opposite of whatever the Score predicted everywhere. Snow in Chesedonia! Desert heat in Keterberg! It will be chaos!" It caused him such delight! "In Yulia City they want to read the Score to find out what happened to the miasma, but there are no Score fonstones to read!"

"Do you know what will happen as well as what is?"

"No! I don't know! And he doesn't either!" Fantastic! "Chaos! No one knows what's going to happen, for the first time in over two thousand years! It's glorious!" Asch grinned at Van. "Come on, can't you feel it? You're a seventh fonist, aren't you? Yulia's descendant? How does the fonon feel?"

Van closed his eyes. "…Wild. Free." Even after all this there was a note of surprise in the second word.

"And good luck to them if they try to tame him! He'll take away all their memories, turn them into rappigs, something unpredictable if they even think about it! Will they go into denial? Listen to charlatans and have their hopes dashed? I can't wait."

When Luke appeared again, small again (he liked it better that way, people were nicer), Asch grabbed his hands and spun them both around laughing, like the child Luke was and he had been once, so long ago. If there was a note of gloating, of cruelty to it, that people would suffer as they deserved, Luke didn't care.

And Vandesdelca approved.