Author's Notes: Here's the next chapter! Only a handful more chapters to go.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Final Fantasy franchise
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Chapter 5: History Rhymes
Drake scratched at the back of his head as he leaned against the guard rail on the bridge of the Invincible. The Pillar of the World was starting to come into view over the horizon. A very unpleasant thought popped into his head, reminding him of what he'd heard about mountain climbers that hiked to the peak of Mount Everest. Would they even be able to breath up there? Were they dressed properly for the sort of cold they were going to experience?
A squawk that sounded like Garuda made Drake jump, and he turned to look into the bridge again. Everyone else looked surprised. Odette had an odd look on her face and her head tilted to the side. Drake realized that he could feel a spell in the middle of the bridge.
"Sorry about not warning you." That was Yan's voice. "But we've managed to get a temporary seal on Ozma. I don't know how long it will hold, so I hope you're close to them." Drake glanced back over his shoulder.
"We're fairly sure about where they're sealed, and close enough to see it. Thank you, all of you." That was Dagger, speaking with the tone of voice she must have learned for when she put on her queenly mask. Drake turned around to look at the Pillar again. He still couldn't see the mountains of Caledonia, and the Pillar itself looked barely more than a smudge on the horizon still. Dagger was exaggerating a little about being able to see it.
The feeling of the spell faded, and Zidane sighed. Drake had to stabilize himself as the ship started to move faster than Drake had been aware it could. The mountains of Caledonia quickly rose over the horizon as the Pillar of the World grew. Drake swallowed as he finally got a sense of the scale of the spire.
While he had thought it was thin, he realized that it was probably about as wide as a city like Lindblum. Even so, it towered over the mountains of Caledonia. Looking at it, he had a feeling that one of the legends that Ed and Sabin never learned about the Pillar went something along the lines of 'it holds the sky and land apart'. There was a fairly similar legend in greek mythology. What really confused him was why he had never heard of it before.
In half an hour, they were circling the spire as they rose in elevation. Drake had to yawn several times to pop his ears as they went up, mentally running over his role and the equipment he had on him. He had a majority of the potions because he was assigned to keep everyone healthy. Eiko and Dagger were going to be summoning as much as possible, and their pockets were full of ethers. Vivi and Amarant had revealed that they could copy a spell that was directed at them to the attacker, so they were on the attacking side of things as well. Exactly how either of them knew how, they didn't tell.
Pretty much everyone else was either on item duty or attacking when they had the chance. The Chosen were all starting to feel the effects of aid from their Constellato. Drake wriggled his fingers, watching the purple light wash over them. He was starting to feel what he was pretty sure was an Einherjar in the back of his head.
"There's the top." Drake looked up, lifting a hand to block the light that would have otherwise lanced into his eyes. Sure enough, they had reached the top. There was a pile of what looked like rubble at the center of the pillar, and Drake could feel the pressure of concentrated mana that triggered the terror that he always felt in the presence of an Eidolon. "Time to go." Drake turned away from the windshield and tugged his hood up over his head. Everyone else was heading towards the door as well, except Zidane who was landing the ship.
The buzz in his head that was the Einherjar increased as he stepped out of the ship. He blinked, and it was like someone had placed sunglasses over his eyes. The light no longer hurt as badly, which made him smile briefly. He glanced around, and saw that the rest, even those who weren't Chosen, now had a thin layer of light over their bodies.
As Zidane stepped out of the ship, the pressure of magic around the pile of rubble increased until it coalesced into a gaseous ball of color. There weren't any sharp delineations that Drake remembered from the game, just a fuzzy border that shifted every second. There were times where Drake could almost see the image that the game had used, but for the most part it was indescribable.
"The seal is in place. Attack!" Drake shook his head a little at the voice in his ear. A glance at the others showed him that he wasn't the only one to hear such a voice. Zidane was rubbing at one ear with a grimace, though Drake realized that it hadn't been the voice of an Einherjar that he'd heard. It had been Yan.
"Well, you heard 'em!" Eiko bounced a little before holding her flute to her lips and starting to play a tune. Drake took a deep breath in and watched. He wasn't on combat duty, which ate at him a little, but his arrows weren't going to do much to a proto-eidolon.
Drake stood near Odette and Zidane, in case either of them needed a quick heal. The others on item duty had their own people to attend to. Sabin was watched over by Edgar, and Freya had the task of keeping Amarant conscious.
The pressure of magic increased, and Drake flinched as he saw that the spell Ozma was casting was far stronger than even Kuja's flare attack that had nearly killed them all on Terra. He felt, more than saw, the charm in his ribbon activate the Reflect spell that had been built in, and wondered briefly how the synthesist was able to put multiple spells into one item.
The spell reflected off of the spell built into the charm, as well as off of the Reflect spells that everyone else wore, and slammed into Ozma. Drake swallowed as he realized that Ozma had cast a spell that had injured it just as much as it would have injured all of them, if they hadn't been wearing enchanted charms. His eyes slid over to Vivi and Amarant, seeing both of them mouth words to a spell.
"Doomsday!" Drake blanched at the name of the spell as Vivi cast it. It was the exact same spell that Ozma had first cast. The spell bounced off of the Reflect spells again, and Drake deliberately didn't think about how many uses the spell had in it. He was pretty sure he wasn't going to get used to seeing the rubble Ozma had been sealed into picked up and thrown around. A few moments after Vivi's spell ended, Amarant cast his.
"Fenrir!" Drake blinked at Eiko's call, and had to avoid taking a step back as the wolf eidolon jumped out of a patch of cloud. The wolf turned its head to look at Drake, nodded in greeting, then turned to look at Ozma. Drake gulped at the nod, remembering what his totem animal had told him when he'd first met it.
A howl made Drake and everyone else cringe. Fenrir summoned wind stronger than Drake had ever felt with that howl, to the point where he wrapped an arm around Odette's waist to steady her. He glanced over at Vivi and saw that Steiner had caught him so he wouldn't get blown away. Eiko didn't seem to be affected by the wind, which made a bit of sense because it was her magic that flowed through Fenrir.
The gas that made up Ozma was blown away, leaving them looking even fuzzier around the edges. Drake realized with a start that the seal was what made them look spherical. The game hadn't been able to display what Ozma looked like without the seal because Ozma didn't have a form without the seal. The gas that escaped the seal was gone, maybe forever. He hoped.
"The gas that escapes will not return." Drake jumped a little. It sounded like Rydia. "Yes. Sorry, I know I'm not supposed to pry because you haven't won against Ozma yet, but you really need some information from a Summoner in a fight like this." Drake nodded slightly, frowning a bit. He jumped as Dagger summoned Bahamut. "Easy, Bahamut is on your side now." Drake bit the tip of his tongue to keep from snapping at Rydia that he knew, it just didn't tell his instincts the same thing.
Drake was only aware that Odette could tell what he was feeling when her hand gripped his tight. He blinked and looked at her in time to see her smile briefly at him before turning her attention towards Ozma again. He glanced over the rest of their group, and blinked as he saw Sabin holding his hands the way Amarant had in Ipsen's Castle.
"Razor Gale!" Drake blinked at the attack, and made a mental note to ask Sabin how many special attacks he knew, because that was not one of the ones that he'd been familiar with. It worked about as well as Fenrir's howling gale did to whisk away some of what made up Ozma. The edges of the sphere seemed to disappear as the wind faded. Drake sighed a little and jumped as a red light washed over him. He felt a few tinges of anger, but they didn't catch. It wasn't until after the fact that he realized it had been a Berserk spell.
Ozma tried to heal itself, but the gas that made up its form didn't return. Before anyone else could attack it, it unleashed a spell that looked like the one Kuja had used on them, only much bigger. Most of the spell got reflected, though Drake had to pat out a bit of fire that caught on his armor. He wasn't the only one that had to do so.
Drake had to shove potions into the hands of others as they noticed that the variant on a Flare spell had actually managed to get around the Reflect spell. He didn't have the time to wonder why Doomsday hadn't done the same thing. He could feel the Regen spell embedded in his ribbon working on his burns, but if Ozma decided to do that attack again, they would quickly get into trouble.
A flash of light announced Zidane using his Thievery skill, and Drake glanced at him before hearing Odette mutter to herself, her eyes on Ozma. Drake glanced at her before looking at Ozma. Odette didn't know any wind spells that he was aware of, but it wasn't his place to question it.
"Sky's fury and deeps' grasp, teach our foe the pain of death's clasp!" The spell rocketed towards Ozma, then into them before it took effect. Drake flinched a little as Ozma's form was sucked into a ball that crackled with electricity and set Ozma on fire as their form expanded back out to fill the confines of the seal once more.
The smoke from the fire caused by what must have been a Thundaga spell didn't dissipate through the seal, it simply joined the colored gases to make the orb darker. Drake frowned at that, but was too busy digging in his belt pouch for one of the ethers that he'd had shoved in with the potions he had to hand out to bother with asking if the smoke would do anything to the fight.
Another of that variant of Flare that Ozma used exploded over them, and Drake winced as he felt the fire hit his skin this time. He pulled out a potion and handed it to Odette, seeing that she had also gotten more of the spell get past her Reflect than last time. He gulped it down and groaned at the taste, shaking his head with a shudder.
He and Odette seemed to be the only ones that had gotten injured from that attack, for some reason. He shook his head a little at that, but glanced around. Eiko and Dagger were working on summoning again, and Amarant was digging in his belt pouch for something. Another Flare attack, this one less focused on Drake and Odette, distracted him.
"Vivi, can you copy that one?" Drake didn't bother with swallowing another potion, he wasn't as injured this time around so the Regen spell could handle it. The black mage shook his head, and Drake sighed through his nose. "Was worth an ask. Zidane, any ideas?" Zidane glanced over his shoulder at Drake before looking back at Ozma.
"Wind seemed to work best. We should concentrate on that." Drake sighed a little at that but nodded. He glanced at Eiko in time to see her summon Fenrir again. He noticed with a small amount of shock that he felt less terrified in the presence of Fenrir than he did when other eidolons were summoned.
Vivi and Odette started to throw Blizzaga spells at Ozma, after seeing that fire and lightning didn't have as much of an effect on the proto-eidolon as they had been hoping for. Ozma didn't attempt to cast the Doomsday spell again, having realized on whatever level of sentience it still had that doing so would just injure it more than it would the fighters surrounding it. Instead it concentrated on the Flare Star spell, as Drake had started to call them in his head. They did look like exploding stars to him.
As more and more of the gas was pushed out of the seal, Ozma's attacks became more and more desperate. The ball of gas faded until Drake saw it attempting gaseous form after gaseous form with each spell. He recognized some of the forms belonging to various eidolons that had never existed on Gaia. He named them in his head as he recognized them. Pandemona, Ixion, Valefor, Kjata, Jumbo Cactuar, Tonberry King, Diablos, even a chocobo of all things.
One last attack by Fenrir revealed the core of what had once been Ozma. It hung in the air for a moment before it plummeted, and Drake realized that the feeling of dread that usually accompanied the presence of an eidolon was completely gone. They all just breathed for a moment, glancing at each other as if asking if the others thought it was over as well.
"You did it." Everyone jumped at Yan's voice, and Drake sighed at the confirmation, sitting down to rest. "Ozma is no more." Dagger went over to pick up the stone that had fallen from Ozma's core. Odette sat next to Drake and leaned against him.
"That was...much easier than I expected," Drake admitted. "I thought it would be much harder to kill an eidolon, even one that was weakened." Everyone murmured agreement, and Zidane looked around. Dagger was turning the stone over in her hands.
"Well I think we're done here. Let's get back onto the ship before anyone gets sick from the height." Drake and Odette groaned in unison, and Sabin helped them both up. Drake blinked as he turned around, and frowned. Some of the edge of the Pillar was crumbling a little. The edge wasn't closer to them or really even putting the Invincible in danger of leaving them stranded, but it was still a little worrisome.
The trip back to the ground was easier, and Drake sprawled on his bunk instead of standing in the bridge. He felt like taking a nap, despite not doing nearly as much as the rest of the group, but he also felt too fidgety to sleep. Finally, he grumbled and found an out-of-the-way place to meditate.
"Drake?" Hours later, Sabin roused Drake. "Hey, you been able to get any rest?" Drake shook his head, and Sabin sat, offering him a roll. "Neither have I. Wanna try getting in touch with the Einherjar? If we can summon them, we ought to be able to get their attention somehow." Drake blinked and took the roll, thinking.
"I had the summoner that volunteered to be in my group talk to me during the Ozma fight, actually." Sabin frowned at him, and Drake smiled lopsidedly. "She admitted that she wasn't supposed to have done that, but I was glad for her help anyhow."
"Well that's interesting. Think you could get her attention again?" Drake took a bite of the roll Sabin had given him and shrugged. Sabin rolled his eyes with a small smile before flopping down on the ground. "Well, you've probably got a better shot at it than I do." Drake shrugged again and swallowed his mouthful of bread.
It wasn't hard to get back into the meditative state, though instead of just sorting through his thoughts like he'd been doing before Sabin bothered him, he tried to reach for the feeling that he associated with the Einherjar. It took him several tries before he managed to get a connection.
"What the-?" That sounded like the red mage, Lyn. "Oh, you're...Drake, right? Rydia said that you were battling Ozma." Drake pondered for a moment how to get his words to the Einherjar. "Just think and we can hear you. So the battle went well, did it? Good for you. If you want to talk to anyone specific, you should concentrate on what you've experienced with them. I guess most of that would be stories for you." Drake agreed and thanked Lyn before opening his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Rydia should be able to tell you how to summon us. Or your friends should ask the summoners in their group."
"That was remarkably easy." Sabin grunted at that and tilted his head to lift an eyebrow at Drake. "I managed to get ahold of the red mage in my group. Pretty much you have to think about..." He tilted his head to the side a little, thinking about how to explain it. "Hm. This is harder to word than I thought it'd be. You know the feeling that you get when there's an Einherjar riding in the back of your head? You have to figure out how to feel that, and think about what you've experienced with the specific person you want to talk to." Sabin frowned, looking confused.
"What?" Drake heaved a sigh and shrugged. Sabin grumbled, looking annoyed, and flopped back on the ground. "Guess the rest of us will have to figure it out ourselves." Drake nudged Sabin until he moved enough that Drake could stretch, then folded himself in half to ease some of the tension he felt in his muscles still.
"I'm still not sure I understand it all that well, myself. It's kinda like knowing how to execute a technique but not knowing how to describe it to someone else." Sabin frowned thoughtfully at that. "Speaking of, I should probably try to get Rydia's attention so she can teach me how to summon them. If it requires the same amount of energy as summoning an eidolon, Dagger's gonna be the only one to do so."
"Nah, I'm sure it won't. Hey, you sure Odette isn't a Chosen?" Drake blinked at that and pushed himself up to stare at Sabin. "We've seen that being a Whole Soul is actually a good thing for a Chosen, and no one I've talked to knows who the Chosen of the red mages is. Nor have they ever heard of mixing spells the way she does." Drake thought for a bit and then shrugged.
"She's never offered any information about whether she is or not, and I've never thought about it. You are right, though, she does have the skills to be one." Drake went back to stretching, thinking again. He was pretty sure that Treno was where the Constellato of the red mages lived, so why had she not been made a Chosen? Had it been because she had been working under Kuja?
"Hey Drake! Sabin! Are either of you hungry?" Both of them looked up as Eiko poked her head around the edge of the bed that marked the boundary of the area most of them used for stretching. Drake looked at Sabin before shrugging.
"I could use some food, yeah." Sabin accepted a hand up from Drake and they followed Eiko to the eating area. Dagger wasn't there, but Drake had a feeling that she was asleep. He was surprised Eiko was still up, but it was possible she'd already woken up from her nap.
The food wasn't much more than soup, but Drake and Sabin both appreciated it anyhow. Drake hadn't been aware of how hungry he'd gotten. The soup was exactly what he needed. He almost nodded off over his bowl before realizing that he needed to get some sleep.
He felt like he closed his eyes on the airship and opened them on the battlefield. Except it didn't seem like much of a battlefield at the moment, there wasn't any arguing, just people standing or sitting in clumps. There were some that were sparring, but they didn't seem to be taking it very seriously.
"Hey, there you are!" Drake blinked as Rydia came bounding up to him with a grin. "Congrats on that fight! Though I guess you were more watching than anything else." She gestured for him to follow her and he did so with a small shrug to himself.
"Yeah, though I get the feeling that my role was mostly before the fight, anyhow, with finding the summoners." Rydia led him to where the rest of his group was waiting. Jay and Lyn were sparring, and Drake blinked as he saw that Lyn didn't use a sword like most red mages, but a spear with a lightning motif.
"So, any problems yet?" Drake blinked at Cecil as he greeted him, and sat with a sigh on a rock. He shook his head with a small smile, watching the two that were sparring. Lyn looked like she had at least had basic training in how dragoons fought.
"No, not yet. It's only been a few hours since we beat Ozma anyhow. I think all of us are going to need to ask a lot of questions about the summoning thing." Drake scratched his head and flicked his eyes at Rydia. "I figured out how to talk to you guys while I'm awake, though I think Lyn wasn't pleased that she was the first one I contacted." Rydia snorted at that.
"Don't let her grouchiness fool you, she's actually very nice. The summoning thing is actually rather complicated." Rydia sat down next to Drake and used the end of a summoner's staff that appeared in her hand to draw diagrams in the ground in front of them.
It was probably hours later that Drake woke with a confusing amount of information on summoning in his head. He groaned as he sat up and rubbed at his head, feeling like it was overstuffed. He went to the bridge and sat, watching the moon sink over the horizon. Not thinking about anything helped him adjust to the mass of information that Rydia had given him.
"Morning, Drake." Drake turned his head to blink at Sabin before pulling himself upright with a grunt. "You look like someone crammed an entire library in your head." Drake laughed a little at that and ran his fingers through his hair.
"To be honest, I kinda feel like it, too. Rydia is a good teacher, though, I think I should be able to manage summoning them when we need it. Though I think it may only be something I can do while in Trance, because that would be a lot to keep track of." Sabin lifted his eyebrows at that, then frowned.
"Oh, that's right, you've got next to no magic. For some reason, I keep forgetting about that." Drake shrugged and stretched his arms. He hadn't used his bow at all the day before, but his muscles did ache a little.
"I don't mind it much. This is the first situation where the lack of magic has actually been a problem." Sabin frowned at that, and Drake grinned. "With the knowledge I got from growing up with you as well as from Earth, I've been able to think myself out of most situations." Sabin laughed at that.
"Ah, I guess that's how things work for you. You've always had a quick wit, anyhow. Come on, let's go help Quina with breakfast." Drake shrugged, but followed Sabin anyhow. He got stuck with cleaning root veggies for whatever Quina was going to make for lunch.
"Alright, we're on our way back to Daguerreo." Drake waved his knife at Zidane as he walked in before slicing the rutabaga he was holding into chunks that he dropped into the bowl Quina had shoved at him to hold the cut veggies.
"I'm guessing we need to get different equipment? I doubt everyone having a Reflect spell on them constantly would help." Zidane nodded, and accepted a bowl and knife that Quina handed him. Drake grinned at that and handed his blood brother a veggie to cut.
"Yeah, that's the main reason. Dagger mentioned that she asked the synthesist to make some things while we were gone, so we shouldn't have to wait for as long." Zidane started to peel the thing that Drake had handed him. "We went past the Iifa Tree a while ago, I want to punch a hole in Kuja's spell before it gets too much bigger." Drake nodded at that.
"I've been worrying about that too. I don't like how close it is to the clans. The sooner we deal with it, the better." Drake picked up a potato and started to slice off the eyes. "Though I figure you want dibs on Kuja at the end?" Zidane grinned lightly at that.
"I don't know. Maybe. There's always the chance of something changing my mind." Drake shrugged as well and glanced up as he heard Dagger's voice at the door to the kitchen. Though it really hadn't been originally. Quina was better at putting together a kitchen out of nothing than Drake had realized.
"Is there any tea?" Drake waved at Dagger before turning his eyes back to what he was doing with his knife. "Good morning, Zidane, Drake." Zidane looked up and smiled at Dagger before Drake kicked his boot to bring his attention back to what his hands were doing.
"Good morning, Drake. Good morning, Zidane." Drake glanced up as he heard Freya, and smiled at her. She crouched, a mug of tea in her hands. "As far as I've been able to tell, everyone's recovering from the fight yesterday." Drake nodded, and dropped the chunks of potato in his bowl.
"Everyone seems to be doing pretty well. Hey Freya? What sort of Chosen normally come from Burmecia?" Freya tilted her head to the side at Drake, and he smiled a little. "I've noticed that not all Burmecians that I see among the Einherjar are dragon knights."
"That is true. Most of the ones that I know of are dragon knights, though. Any in particular you'd like to hear about?" Drake picked up a carrot and started to carefully peel off the outermost section of it. Quina had told him to peel and cut up everything in the basket he'd shoved at the archer.
"Any red mages?" Drake knew there was, but he didn't know if Freya knew about Lyn. She didn't speak with the same accent as any burmecians that Drake had met. She spoke more like people from Treno, now that he thought about it.
"Just one, that I can think of. She started off training to become a dragon knight, if I remember right. She never picked up the sword that red mages usually use, but was known for using a spear with a flamberge blade." Drake had a blank look on his face, and Freya smiled a little. "Flamberge means that it's one of those swords that looks like a moving snake." Drake nodded slightly at that.
"Okay. Yeah, that sounds like the red mage I'm thinking of." Freya chuckled and sipped at her tea. "What else was she known for? She hasn't talked to me very much." Zidane was quiet, his eyes flicking to Freya on occasion. He was interested in the story as well.
"Well, when she was young, she ran away from dragon knight training, and ended up in Treno. She became the apprentice of the then-Chosen of the red mages, a man that I've only ever heard called Redgrave. It was a time of peace then, still, but when she became Chosen, she ended up traveling with other Chosen. Some of the stories say that they found a desert kingdom before the settlement at Cleyra was founded, others say that they found a cavern full of wisdom. All of the stories have a connection between her and a human that learned the ways of the dragon knights, but none can agree how." Drake snorted a bit.
"Considering that there's a dragon knight that keeps flirting at her that's human, I'm not surprised at that." Freya choked on her tea. "She is good with that spear of hers, though. I saw her sparring with him last night."
"Well, I did hear that the group of Chosen in that time period acted like a family. Not too different from the ones in this time period, I think." Drake blinked at that and tilted his head to the side. "But she was known for a few different things besides her connection with the other Chosen. She had a particular skill with fire magic that hasn't been seen since. I don't believe she ever came back to Burmecia, either."
"What's she known as? I know what the other Einherjar call her, but the names associated to legends and their actual names are usually very different." Freya hummed a little, rubbing at her throat a little. Her voice had gotten a little hoarse from coughing.
"She has a few titles. Firechild is one of them, but I don't remember why. I want to say that another one is Storm Bringer, but that doesn't feel right. Oh! She was called Tiny Giant because of her strength. I'm sure it's exaggerated, but some of the stories involve her being able to pick up larger boulders than most monks could."
"I seem to remember a couple of stories where there was a foreigner that strong that visited Figaro," Sabin put in from where he was helping Quina. "That was I think around the same time as the king of Figaro decided to expand his hold on Caleonia. Burmecia is a land of constant rain, isn't it?" Freya turned to look up at Sabin and nodded. The monk sighed a little. "Yeah, that was probably her, then. Figaro's always been in need of water, so I guess the king thought that if he was able to conquer someplace that had more than enough rain, they'd be able to send some to Figaro as a tithe."
"I guess no one told him that she was from a different continent," Zidane said, and picked through the basket to find another veggie to peel and slice. "Though I shouldn't be surprised that Chosen can change things just by their presence." Drake tried to suppress his blush at that. He was very aware of what he had changed just by being around.
"Hey Sabin, what's your team like, anyhow?" The monk paused and blinked at the small clump of friends for a while before handing over the bowl he'd been stirring to Quina and wiping his hands off on a piece of fabric.
"Argumentative. Most of them can't stop bickering at each other, and the thief and red mage can't stop flirting for anything." Sabin shook his head with a sigh, and Drake laughed. "Though I think the red mage is the mentor of the one you've got? I've heard him mention her a few times as a student." Drake tilted his head to the side.
"No wonder she's prone to ignoring anyone that flirts at her. Anyone else of note?" Sabin hummed and dropped into a crouch next to the wall. Drake started to peel a potato with regular strokes, his eyes still on his fingers.
"Kain the Betrayer." Drake jerked at that, thankfully not slicing himself, and Sabin smiled grimly. "Yeah, he's one of the reasons why the group is prone to bickering. There's this guy who calls himself Cloud, too, the monk keeps pestering him to talk his problems out with her, but he's a dark knight, they tend to be brooding sorts anyhow."
"Wow, I thought he wouldn't be there, considering his role in the war during his time." Sabin shrugged, and waved at Edgar, who was walking in, looking half asleep. "Though I guess he was still the best dragon knight of his time."
"Yeah, he still hasn't forgiven himself for most of it. Nor has he talked about any of it besides confirming that he was that particular dragon knight." Drake tilted his head to the side in a shrug before looking back down at the potato he was peeling.
"Drake, do you know much about an archer called Guy the Wild?" Drake blinked at that and frowned, thinking. He glanced up at Dagger before back down at was his hands were doing. Dagger had a mug of tea now.
"Not a whole lot. He's not from Caledonia." Dagger sighed at that, and sat on a stool, sipping her tea and watching Quina cook. "Why do you ask?" There had to be a reason why Dagger had asked him.
"He's not very talkative, and when he does talk, I don't understand him very well. Also he really dislikes the dark knight in my group. More than once, I've seen the rest of the team have to step in to break up the fight before they killed each other." Drake frowned at that.
"Hm. I'd have to ask around. Ed?" The thief blinked, still looking half-asleep despite the cup of tea I his hand. "You need a spot to sit before you walk into something?" Ed scowled at him, annoyed. Drake smiled and shrugged.
"I'm fine. Still not sure why my team is mostly men, though." Sabin and Drake both failed miserably to hide their laughter. Ed's expression darkened even more. Drake had to set down his knife so he wouldn't hurt anyone with how hard he was laughing.
"Wow, I guess even the Einherjar have heard about your womanizing ways," Sabin joked. Ed glowered, looking annoyed, and Drake finally caught his breath, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. Sabin had a wide grin on his face, entirely unconcerned about his older brother's anger.
"Female warriors don't put up with nonsense, you ought to know that by now, Ed." Drake's comment had all the anger flowing out of Edgar. He sat with a grunt that nearly spilled his tea. "To be honest, the more amusing part was your reaction to it." Ed grumbled at that, looking tired.
"Mornings like this, I feel old." That got more laughter. Edgar was younger than Steiner by a fair amount, and Steiner was the only one they would let say something like that without comment. "I don't think I'm the only reason that there are only a few girls on my team, though. There's a couple of other guys that flirt with girls as much as possible." Drake lifted his eyebrows at that.
"What're their names?" Drake handed the last veggie in the basked to Zidane and cleaned off his blade and dried it. When he looked back up, Edgar was staring at him, and Drake lifted his eyebrow. "You do realize that the stories Earth has about Gaia are not all of the same time period, right? Nor are they all terribly accurate, but that's another thing entirely." Edgar sighed and rolled his eyes.
"One of them's actually named Edward, but he goes by Edge instead. He's a thief as well, one of the ones that I've found easy to talk to. The other is an archer named Irvine." Drake blinked for a moment and then smiled.
"Ah. Yeah, I see what you mean, then. Those two have appeared in a few stories on Earth, though I don't know how accurate they are. Their flirtatiousness certainly made an appearance, though." Drake didn't want to have to explain all of the different games, or the fact that the games were all different worlds, especially if people from those other games were appearing in various ways in Gaia.
"Mmph. Come on, let's go walk around the ship, I need to stretch." Drake shrugged and heaved himself up before offering Edgar a hand. Zidane grimaced at him before finishing his part of the veggies and handing the bowl over to Quina.
By the time they were done with their walk, breakfast was done being cooked, and the island that housed Dagurreo was starting to appear on the horizon. Drake was feeling more awake now, and less like his head was filled to the limit.
"Is there enough time for a spar?" Amarant spoke up as he was passing the pot of oatmeal over to Freya. Drake blinked as he put the lid back on the honey pot and licked a dab of it from his thumb. "That fight with Ozma wasn't nearly as physical as I'd hoped for." Drake glanced at Sabin before shrugging.
"I think we could manage a spar, if just to stretch out a little. Anyone else up for it?" Edgar and Zidane looked at each other before shrugged. Edgar no longer looked stiff and mostly asleep. Zidane hadn't gotten a whole lot of action in the last fight, either, seeing as he was mostly a physical fighter.
"I wouldn't mind teaching a few techniques," Edgar offered, and Zidane's face lit up. Drake blinked a little at that, wondering when Zidane had gotten used to the face that Edgar was far and away a better technical warrior.
Drake ended up getting some of his footwork corrected by Freya as he went through some of the staff drills he'd learned as a child, while Amarant and Sabin sparred in the larger section of the meditation area, and Edgar and Zidane worked between the bunk beds. The skills of a thief required less space to work in than most any other physical style.
"Ship's arrived!" Odette must have learned how the PA system worked, because they all jumped at the announcement and looked around. Drake was the one that spotted what looked like a mesh circle built into the ceiling.
They were all rather sweaty, but warmed up for the trip to the cavern. There were several monsters that tried to attack them this time, including Mistodons, the creatures that Kuja had created to attack them back at the Iifa tree when they had first confronted him there. After the fight with Ozma, nothing really seemed to be much of a challenge for them as a team.
The scholars greeted them once they entered, and Drake imagined that they weren't used to the same group of people coming and going so often. More people were greeting them than had last time. Drake blinked a few times, but went to get a bath. The Mistodons may have been above the layer of the Mist, but they still seemed to exude it.
Once he was clean again, he went looking for books on legends of Chosen. There wasn't anything for him to focus on researching this time, but he was still curious about the Einherjar he'd had assigned to him. The good thing about Dagurreo was that books from all over Gaia were copied and sent there.
He read through several books before he found one with the information he was looking for. He settled into a hammock next to a lamp and started it swinging with a gentle kick of his leg as he carefully set the book on his abdomen. It looked like it was a new copy, the parchment wasn't yet yellowed with age, but he still didn't want to break any of the pages.
Tony Redgrave, as it turned out, was the name of the Red Mage that had taken the young orphaned Burmecian that became known as the Tiny Giant. He'd found her meandering Treno, of all places, and tried to teach her how to use a sword.
He was the one that had discovered that she had a better than average resistance to fire, to the point where she barely even got scorched fur from it. He also was the one to find out that she was terrified of lightning storms, which explained why Freya had remembered a connection to storms with her.
What interested Drake the most, though, was the description of Redgrave. He was an albino human whose white mage mother had managed to help him avoid losing the use of his eyes. He wielded a sword about as long as some people were tall. There was even a portrait of him that made Drake do a double-take, but he couldn't for the life of him remember where he'd seen him.
Shortly after Redgrave stepped down as Chosen, Lyn had been selected as his replacement. She had met another Chosen, Tess, through her teacher. Redgrave, it seemed, was known for being involved with multiple women at once, and one of them had been the Chosen of the Dancers. Lyn and Tess had soon become sisters in all but birth.
Tess had introduced Lyn to the Chosen that most claimed was her love, a human adopted by Burmecians named Jay. Drake had to skip a few pages as the scholar who had written the book went into theories about why the two of them had to have been together, focusing on the symmetry of their childhoods and the way the skills they were known for, strength and speed, worked together. To Drake, it felt a little like shipping, but real people instead of fictional ones.
The next one to be introduced to their group was a Dark Knight named Zeke, whom Drake recognized from his role in teaching Cecil. He was also close to Lyn. There were many mentions of training with Lyn and Jay, and his skills seemed to lean close enough to the skills of thieves that Drake found himself wondering who the Chosen of the thieves was in their time.
Interestingly, Redgrave was the one that introduced them to the last of the group that seemed concise. A chemist with the odd name of Key, that was also one of his paramours. There was no mention of drama between her and Tess, which made Drake think that they had both known of the other long before being properly introduced.
Violet, the scholar that was in Drake's team, was the only other Chosen mentioned in the book, and she was the one who had interviewed the others to get the primary sources the author of the book Drake was currently reading used. Drake took note of her name and went looking through the shelves for books that she had written.
Drake glanced down one of the aisles and smiled as he saw Odette with a small stack of books in one arm, looking intently at a shelf. He had a feeling that she was looking for stories on the Einherjar like he was. Knowing her, she was probably looking for stories about red mages.
It took a lot of looking around and asking for help before he found the books he was looking for. Most of them weren't terribly interesting to him, though he did eventually find what looked like a journal of her trip with the other Chosen. Or rather, a copy of it.
Drake settled down on a cushion to start reading it, settling the book in his lap with a lamp tilted just right to cast enough light to read. He read slowly, muttering to himself over the handwriting of the person who had copied this journal. It took a fair amount of decoding.
Hours later, Drake gave up trying to glean any information from the journal and closed it with a groan, rubbing at his eyes. Squinting at the tiny text had given him a headache, though he had given it a game try.
He set the journal back in the book returning area and went looking for food and water, rubbing at his temples. After some bread, a lot of water, and a nap in a dark corner, he was feeling much better. He hadn't realized how easy it was for him to slip back into some of the old habits he'd had when he was back on Earth.
He climbed up to the observatory at the top of the library, and blinked as he found Amarant up there, sitting in one of the windows. He turned his head a little to acknowledge Drake before looking out over the landscape again.
"How do you know the story of what's going to happen is accurate?" Drake blinked at Amarant for his question. He groaned a little as he sat in one of the other windows. He should have guessed that Amarat would have heard that.
"It isn't entirely. The story didn't mention a lot. But it is a lot more accurate than most of them. The story about Edgar and Sabin has them as twins. Caledonia has never been mentioned in any of the stories. There's a barber in Lindblum named Squall that was said to be a warrior, but he's actually a very gentle man. Compared to all that inaccuracy, the story I've been going off of is startlingly clear. But there isn't much left to it." Amarant shifted a little and Drake watched his shadow on the other wall.
"So what you can tell is that the one story has gotten more of the facts right." Drake hummed an affirmative, and Amarant grunted. "Makes sense. You're still prone to keeping secrets." Drake chuckled a little and shrugged.
"Bad habit. I'll have to work hard to break it. Who knows, maybe I'll dictate the stories I remember to someone someday. I'm sure there's already people trying to write a story about our travels." Amarant snorted at that.
"I doubt that. You'd back out at the last minute for fear of being thought you were crazy." Drake blinked and tilted his head to the side. "So this story...Does it have a name?" Drake's mind froze at that. In his experience, all stories had names of a sort, but how was he supposed to tell Amarant that it was part of a series of disjointed stories?
"Not really, no." Amarant waited to see if he would continue before scoffing. Drake smiled weakly, though he knew Amarant couldn't see it. He trusted the monk more than he let on, really. He just didn't have the words to explain everything, that was all.
"You just don't want to tell it. What, is it obscene?" That startled a laugh out of Drake. It took him a while to get his laughter under control. Having a couple of laughs catch in his throat to the point where he coughed was enough to get him to regain his composure.
"No, it's just...It would take a lot of explaining, and I don't have the patience for it right now." Amarant scoffed at that, and Drake yawned. "At some point, some of the people writing the stories down got lazy with the names and started to assign them numbers."
"That is..." Amarant sounded boggled. He made a few sounds like he was trying to figure out what to say, but couldn't manage it. Drake just smiled wryly.
"Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous sometimes. The numbered ones aren't even more accurate than the ones that were actually given titles, either." Amarant made a noise that Drake recognized as 'annoyed', and the archer grinned.
"That's a bit more than just being lazy. Why didn't anyone else give the stories a better name?" Drake shrugged and stretched his legs out in front of him.
"Because they were the only ones that published the stories? I think they were more concerned with getting the stories out than about giving them names. Heck if I know why, though." He had a feeling he knew why, and it was because the technology had just gotten to the point where the most information could be given to those who paid attention, like he had.
"Pah. I doubt I'll ever figure out why scholars do things the way they do," Amarant growled. "Let's go down and see if Zidane has managed to destroy the enchanted things yet." Drake snorted at Amarant's comment and waved a hand.
"I'll stay up here, thanks. I could use the fresh air." Amarant shrugged at that and went down to the main part of the library, leaving Drake alone in the observatory. Drake took a deep breath as a breeze swept through the open windows, and a small smile crept over his face.
Even if things in Memoria didn't go as they were supposed to, he had at least made a difference in Gaia. Amarant wasn't as much of a loner as he had once been. Cleyra still existed. Treno was on its way to becoming a nicer place, with the example he had set. If he died in Memoria, at least he would have done that much. His name would be remembered.
Not that he was planning on dying in Memoria. He wasn't planning on dying anywhere but in his home, in his own bed, as an old man. Preferably with Odette at his side, surrounded by their children. And even once he was done, he would become an Einherjar, and probably be well known among them, because he was a Whole Soul.
All in all, his life was going to be very different from what it would have been on Earth. He was pretty sure that he didn't mind that difference in the least. He did, however, understand why the phrase 'may you live in interesting times' was considered a curse.
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End notes: Yes, I did throw some more OCs in. A fair amount of them are cameos of characters my friends and I RP as. And if ayone wants to know who has who on their team, I might put in the lists on the next chapter.