Year 878

Battered and shaken, Ultima stared down at his creation, Mythos, and for the first time allowed himself to see not a vessel in need of purging, but a complete entity, an infant godling. "Logos… you were never meant to be Logos."

Clive frowned darkly, fire tracing his skin and dancing on his blade. "My name is Clive Rosfield. I am a shield of Rosaria, an outlaw, a brother, but I will never be your Mythos or Logos or you goddamn vessel. Are you finally done fighting, Ultima?"

The four-armed god hovered in silent, reverent contemplation. "My purpose is to preserve life, to preserve Logos. Everything has been in service to that end." The creature flashed forward, not in attack but to stand in front of Clive, glaring with his sunken, withered eyes. "Humanity gave rise to Logos. Impossible." The creature's stoic expression broke, betraying a raw hunger. "After everything. New Logos... But there is no time. And Logos or not, you remain too weak to prime a spell of creation without succumbing to its power."

Never dropping his sword, Clive danced carefully back from the homicidal god. "I'd ask what you mean, but I really don't care anymore, Ultima. Die already."

Apparently unfazed by Clive's threat, Ultima cocked his head to the side as though sifting rapidly through possible solutions to his dilemma, and he moved again. "Time is needed."

Clive's sword was through Ultima's gut before the god's four hands could seize his head and neck, but the mortal wound did not stop him. No longer trying to squash Clive's will and consume him, Ultima seized his mind and soul and forced himself inside. Clive desperately tried to stop the flow but the river couldn't be turned.

Instead of being consumed or erased, Clive was being filled, stuffed like a turkey at Christmas. He choked on the flood of Ultima, drowned in him. Screaming and writhing, he desperately tried to keep himself separate from the alien settling into his mind and bones.

"Time," Ultima said, again and again. "We need time."

As hard as he fought, Clive couldn't stop the flood of ideas and memories. Ultima had a plan, save the Eikons, save the world… and save humanity too. "Logos," Clive whispered, finally understanding what the word meant when Ultima had spoken it.

Using the power and the knowledge of the entity overfilling and overwhelming him. Clive/Ultima cast a spell.

And the world went black.

Year 852

Sitting with his chubby toddler brother in his lap, Clive listened to Jill reading from the latest storybook Uncle Byron had sent them. They had escaped from their studies into the garden on the uncommonly warm spring day to enjoy the too tempting tome. There would be rainy and cold days for lessons and Clive was completely prepared to take the blame for their naughtiness.

Joshua scrambled clumsily up to run at Jill in his uncoordinated baby stride, and Clive smiled at the grace with which she let the little fellow climb into her lap without losing her place reading at all. He leaned against the garden wall and closed his eyes. Clive could almost see Sir Crandall and Saint Sybil as Jill read their exploits. A knight and his lady, united in glorious, righteous battle.

"How dare you."

Clive's eyes snapped open and he was on his feet in a flash. His mother was the worst person he could think to have found them, but there was no mistaking that cultured derision. She wasn't due home for another week. Clive would never have dared insubordination with his mother home. Without a thought he stepped between her and Jill. Joshua had nothing to fear, but he didn't want his mother's anger focused on their new ward from the north. "It was my idea to come outside and read a little. It's warm and the doctor said sun is good for Joshua."

"Yes, the doctor did say that. Imagine my surprise when I went to the nursery to find my baby missing. I wanted to take him outside for a constitutional," Annabella said with icy politeness. "You have no consideration for anyone but yourself. You skipped out on your tutors and kidnapped your poor little brother."

Her nostrils flared and bright red spots appeared on her cheeks, silently signaling that Clive was not getting out of this without a significant punishment.

Her tone shifted, suddenly as posh and gentle as any aristocratic lady. "Jill, dear, please take Joshua back to the nursery and report to your tutors in the library. You're new here, so you can be forgiven for being led astray this once."

Clive could see that Jill was torn. She didn't want to leave him alone to take the blame, but she was scared and still very new to the household. In the end, she did as she was told, bundling his brother and the book away. Clive tried to shoot her a subtle smile of encouragement.

As they passed, Annabella caressed Joshua's chubby cheek and a genuinely affectionate smile graced her face for a moment before he was out of sight.

Clive's gut twisted with emotions he couldn't properly sort, jealousy, anger and shame leaving him queasy and dangerously close to tears. "I'm sorry, mother. I would never do anything to hurt Joshua."

"Your existence hurts him. Your father should have branded you and cast you out as soon as it was clear what you are. The shame you bring on this entire family by existing and living among us is frankly incalculable." Annabella crossed her arms. "Today you've gone too far. Gallivanting all over the grounds with my son, making a spectacle of yourself."

Clive didn't try to apologize again. He just let her rant through her usual refrains. It wasn't the first time she had told him her feelings. When she asked for his hand he gave her his left, anticipating his punishment and not wanting to lose his right to injury for any length of time. Using a crystal she kept in her skirt pocket, Annabella cast a simple spell designed to hammer nails. Clive accepted the punishments, staccato, repetitive blows that built pressure, creaking his joints and finally cracking a bone with an audible snap. He tried not to make a noise, but he couldn't help himself whimpering and fat hot tears, streaked his face. If he had been looking, he would have seen only satisfaction on his mother's face.

It wasn't the first time his mother had punished him, and Clive knew the drill. He let her usher him forward to see the doctor. He knew better than to contradict her standard story about him falling in the garden. All he wanted was for it to be over.

But it seemed his mother wasn't done with him this time. While they made their silent climb to the infirmary, a new painful pressure crashed into him, crushing him and stealing his breath. He groped forward trying to hold onto consciousness but helplessly, he drifted into the black.

For her part, Annabella saw Clive waver before he was falling. She had little more than an instant for her instincts to decide his fate. Instead of a hand to his back to guide him into a forward fall, Annabella stepped smoothly to the side and watched her firstborn topple back down the steep stone steps.

Almost immediately a woman was screaming and trying to help little Clive, but Annabella had seen the fall and the catastrophic landing. A twinge that might have been grief if she had let it bloom fluttered in her chest, but she stomped it down. Clive was never her son, just another bearer, albeit one without the proper marking.

Distributing the regular flower delivery from Eastpool was a job Hannah Murdock performed weekly. She loved the work, and the chance to move through the shiny marble halls of the dutchy's seat. Rodney escorted her in for the delivery and most weeks was able to steal time with her in the gardens before the long ride home.

Humming to herself, she settled a vase of yellow and white buttercups in the entry hall. Idly she daydreamed about her sweet husband and how he might surprise her today.

Hannah heard the fall before she saw it, little Clive Rosfield tumbling down the stairs boneless as a doll, finally crashing to a harsh stop, a pool as red as a Rosfield banner expanding over the white marble floor.

Hannah ran forward, screaming every step for help. Scared to move the child, certain she could hurt him worse, she crouched close, listening for breath. "Help me!" Hanna screamed. Only then did she see Lady Annabella, standing at the top of the stairs, dispassionately watching the scene unfold. The duchess' feelings for her bearer son were well known and Hannah knew what had happened.

She's killed him, Hanna thought hopelessly. Gods, his mother's killed him.

No one in the room could see the true cause of the fall, an incorporeal specter from the future. If Hannah or Annabella could see him, they wouldn't recognize him as an older Clive. Warped from his recent absorption of Ultima, four hands clenched into ineffectual fists, anxiously hovering over his own younger and gravely injured form. "Ultima, what have you done? Is this a dream?" It wouldn't be the first time the monster had tormented him with dreams of his home, broken and destroyed.

"Time," Ultima answered, "We needed time."

Clive opened his mouth to hammer the deity with more questions, but the answers came to him with no need for conversation. "No. I don't accept. There is no we!"

"Denial is a pattern for you, Logos. If we must play act this dance, so be it, but I am inside you now. You are the Logos in this moment. You are aware of the crisis. If you fail to act, everyone, the Eikons and humans will die in a few short years."

Clive squeezed his incorporeal head, eyes wild and terrified. "Your… our plan didn't include accidentally killing little me."

"He is not dead yet," Ultima said, blandly. "The humans have fetched a doctor. We must fetch the Phoenix."

"Joshua can't be more than three years old," Clive hissed.

"He is the Phoenix. He can save his brother or he can die with everyone else in the next twenty years or so."

"Fuck," Clive groaned. Shifting toward the nursery, allowing his memory to guide him, Clive/Ultima tried to fix what they had broken.

A duke's work was rarely interesting or dramatic. Governance was most often about little things. Little things kept people fed and clothed and happy. Halfway through his pile of petitions, Elwin's boring day took a turn. Rodney, one of his oldest friends and his captain of the guard, strode in, barely taking the time to give the appropriate head bow. "Your grace, Clive took a fall."

Elwin stood, his heart beating suddenly painful and fast. "He's okay?"

"No, he is not. You need to come now." Rodney was moving, leading the way at a rapid clip.

"What the Hell happened?" Elwin imagined Clive sneaking a chocobo out of the stables or climbing a too tall tree in the garden. His brave, reckless son reminded him of himself when he broke the rules, and gods, hadn't he encouraged it? "Rodney, tell me."

"We've detained your wife. There was a witness. She seems to have pushed him down the stairs." Rodney stopped at the door to the infirmary. "My Hannah was the witness."

Witnessed, and by Hannah? Elwin stepped into the infirmary and stared hard at the chaotic bloody scene. The healer, a bearer, was casting, and had likely been casting for some time now judging by the tremor in her arms. The supervising doctor, was attempting to help with a crystal. "Tell me," Elwin commanded the doctor.

"Skull fractured, neck broken," the doctor said, without stopping his efforts. "We will try as long as he's alive, but you should say goodbye, your grace, while you can."

He stroked, his son's head, horrified when the bone moved under his hands. "Clive, gods, boy don't die. Do not let her win." Elwin brushed a kiss on his son's cheek and then he was moving again, getting out of the doctor's way and he let a wave of apoplectic fury swell to blistering fruition. Once in the hall, he gestured for Rodney to lead the way.

Rodney didn't ask where Elwin wanted to be taken. Similar anger clenched his fists and hardened his expression. "You can't kill her, your grace. You married her for diplomacy. Killing her would be war. The fucking emperor won't care that she killed your son."

"Because he's a bearer," Elwin said, his tone perfectly even. "Maybe I don't care about war right now. My son, if he dies… Clive will have justice, like any child of Rosaria deserves."

With a single, tense nod, Rodney agreed and he led his friend to his wife.

Their eldest son lay on his deathbed with a cracked skull, but Annabella was pretty as a picture, no hair out of place. "Elwin, there you are. Tell the guards to release me. Some low bint accused me of harming Clive— vicious lie that I will see her pilloried for at the very least."

Elwin could feel Rodney swelling behind him at the threats and insults about his wife. "Why, Anna? Have I not been kind and lenient and fair? Have I not given you everything you ever asked for?"

Her eyes widened fractionally and her lips pursed, the only visible signs of her displeasure. "Why what? You really think I'm stupid enough to push your son down the stairs?" Annabella asked. "Have a care, Elwin, how you accuse me. The clumsy little ducking fell all on his own."

For a long moment Elwin saw red and the only sound in his ears was the steel of his blade sliding against its scabbard. Rodney's hand clapped onto his shoulder and Elwin released his sword hilt without actually drawing it. "You need to pray, wife. Pray for that boy's life. If he dies, you won't like the turn justice will take for you."

Sitting quiet as a mouse in the nursery with Joshua, Jill waited expectantly for the duchess. She had left Clive to take the blame for their unscheduled trip to the garden, but she couldn't leave things there. Jill had to explain to the lady that Clive had meant no harm. She had to try to protect him the way he had protected her.

Focused entirely on the door and how she would appease the frightening Lady Annabella, Jill was startled by Joshua's plaintive tug on her skirts. "Hungy," he pleaded. "Hungy. Hungy. Hungy." How late was it? Sure enough, the sun was slipping below the horizon. Where was everyone?

"Pony!" Joshua released her skirt and giggled. Pony? But it wasn't a pony at the door. A man, no a monster, impossibly tall and broad had appeared from no where, silent as a specter. Four grotesque muscular arms reached out to Joshua and Jill jerked the toddler behind her.

"Jill," the creature grumbled in a strange garbled, echoing voice. "Clive is dying. Little Phoenix can save him. Joshua must save him."

"I won't let you touch him," Jill said, despite the terror looming over them.

"Pony." Joshua tried to escape into the monstrosity's arms, as though he didn't see what she did. "Pony."

"I… we, can not touch him or anything here." The monster reached out but its hand passed harmlessly through Jill's cheek without even a whisper of sensation. "Please, take Joshua to Clive. Save him. Jill, please."

The monster stepped to the side and a maid bustled through the door bearing food and water. She moved around the room apparently oblivious to the hulking behemoth in the corner. Never, completely taking her eyes off the strange ghost-creature, Jill spoke to the maid. "Do you, know… Is Clive okay? His mother was very angry with him."

The maid clutched a hand to her chest and made a sad little noise. "Shouldn't come from me, but the poor boy is all but dead. His mother's killed him they're saying in the kitchens. Threw the poor angel down the main stairs. You stay here with the little, master. Someone will come when its over."

When it's over.

When Clive is dead.

Jill scooped Joshua up into her arms. Gods knew if he was even the dominant of the Phoenix. The Rosfield custom was to test a child when he turned five, but Jill's thoughts were on Clive. A kind, protective boy who had included her in his family, who made this strange place bearable. She thought of the smile he spared her, when saving her from his mother's wrath today, and she ran.

Unsure if she was doing the right thing or maybe just going crazy, seeing things that weren't there, she raced toward the infirmary, certain that she had to try.

Returning to the infirmary, Elwin didn't rush. He had seen too many battles to mistake Clive's injuries for something a good healer could repair. If by some miracle they coaxed life back into him, his son would likely never be the bright, precocious child he had been. Elwin walked back, winding through unnecessary twists and turns, contemplating the errors he had made to lead them here.

Marriage for lords and ladies very rarely involved love or even affection. He had thought himself lucky to be in a position to marry a young, beautiful lady. Gods, he had thought early on that there might even be the possibility of more, a real family, love even. She was such a good mother to Clive, so affectionate, so doting, right up until they tested him and he became just a bearer, not the dominant of the Phoenix after all.

If he found the change in her affections jarring, how must it have felt to his five year old son who went from having a loving mother to a hateful witch? Elwin thought that time would change things, that Annabella would soften in her views, that she couldn't forget that early love, not really.

How had he been so wrong?

The door to the infirmary loomed and Elwin paused outside. The commotion of a hard fought healing no longer buzzed and banged inside, and he couldn't find the courage to open the door.

Rodney had followed a pace or two behind, letting him meander at his own pace. Now he gripped his shoulder tightly and Elwin felt stronger, strong enough to open the door anyway.

Not in a million years would he have guessed the scene that awaited him. Clive propped up in bed with a splinted arm, met his gaze.

Alive. Awake. Cognizant.

Little Joshua was curled under his good arm, sleeping. Elwin knelt next to his sons and traced a hand over Clive's face in wonder. No longer a smashed and bloody cracked egg. His son had been made whole. "A miracle?"

"The Phoenix," Clive whispered with a look down at his brother. "Joshua is most definitely the new Phoenix dominant. He fixed me right up." Shifting the splinted arm, he added, "Well, he fixed the most important stuff. The rest will just take a little time according to the doctor."

As if on cue, the doctor returned from an adjacent room and bowed to the duke, far more formally than at their last encounter. "Your grace, the Warrick girl deserves a lot of credit. Velma, my assistant cast herself unconscious and I'd just about run out of options to try when she stormed in with the little master in her arms. Even if I'd been certain he was the new Phoenix dominant, I'd not have sent for him. How could he possibly have the control to even try to help?"

"My little brother, doing the impossible at three. I guess the Phoenix knew what it was doing waiting around for him." Clive's uninjured arm tightened around his little brother fractionally, protectively. "Mother will be pleased."

At the mention of Annabella, Elwin found his rage had not gone with the miracle of Clive's survival, but it was no longer murderous. Making a decision on the spot, he decided his wife's fate, a punishment that might not ignite a war immediately. "Your mother is done in Rosaria. She's to be banished, back to her homeland, Sanbreque."

Clive looked back at him, confused. "But she's the duchess, mother to your heir and the new Phoenix. How can you banish her?"

"For those reasons she gets to live. The duchess tried to kill my eldest son. I'll not allow her to pollute the air around anyone else I love." Elwin gripped Clive's shoulders and made sure he was looking him in the eyes. "If you had died tonight, it would have been to the gallows for her, and I'd have fought the war it would have caused with no regrets. You are worth five hundred of the duchess."

A sleepy toddler poked his head up and smiled at his papa. "Pony?"

"The hero of the hour wants a pony?" Elwin asked. "Mount up little prince." He swung Joshua up onto his shoulders.

With gentle urging from the doctor, Clive soon found himself alone with orders to rest, but before he could find sleep a new visitor stole into the room. Jill, pale and tired with puffy red eyes sank into the seat closest to his bed. "I wish we'd gone to lessons."

Clive laughed, just a bit hysterically. "Me too."

"Are you okay?" she whispered.

"Thanks to you and Joshua." Clive stared at his hands. "Are you okay?"

Jill sucked a breath and Clive followed her gaze across the room. A man was there, dressed like a sell-sword and bearing more than a passing resemblance to his father. Clive frowned. "Who is that?"

Jill didn't look away from the stranger. "You mean what is that? I'm really glad you see it, because the other adults don't seem to. Your brother kept calling it a pony."

Clive shrugged. "It does look a lot like our father, and Joshua has been calling him pony for weeks."

Jill shuddered and hugged herself. "You think that looks like your father? It has four arms and blue skin and its eyes are just, wrong."

Ignoring his aches and pains, Clive swung his legs to the side of the bed and made to rise, but the man appeared in front of him before he could even settle his feet on the ground.

Jill gasped and reacted. Jerking him by his good arm she helped Clive put a bed between himself and the spectral monster. "I don't know what it is, but it told me to bring Joshua to save you. So it's maybe not as evil as it looks to me," Jill said without much conviction.

"It talks?" Clive asked.

"It talks," the creature agreed, it's voice inhuman and resonant in a manner that defied it's human appearance.

Feeling terribly small and mostly broken, Clive still pushed Jill behind him. "What do you want?"

"We are here to save the world."