There are lines you read in a story book and they make sense. They fit. Clive was living in the real world and spirits did not enlist children to help them save the world. It was ludicrous. "Save the world?" He couldn't even stand up to his mother.
"Whatever you are, maybe take your quest up with someone who isn't eight," Jill said. "How are we supposed to save the world?"
"We save the world the same way we do anything, one step at a time. It would be nice to let you grow up and worry about the dying planet later, but the blight races forward ever faster. If you start now then maybe, by the time you're close to Logos, there will be enough life left in the planet to save her."
"Logos is what? Why us?" Clive asked.
"Joshua is the Dominant of the Phoenix. Jill here is the Dominant of Shiva." The spirit gave no pause for the young girl to protest his claim. "They can be your friends and support you along the way, but the only path to save everyone lies with Logos. There is an Eikon inside you, Clive. You must awaken it. You must master it. And maybe, it will be enough."
"I think we would know if we were dominates," Clive said. "So, go away. We can't help you."
The spirit seemed to vibrate, and Clive got his first glimpse of the version of their visitor Jill saw. "You don't get to say no, we will make you awaken your Eikon."
"We will do no such thing. He has a choice. If he won't listen, we keep trying to convince him."
"There is no time!"
Man or monster, the spirit vibrated and shifted, it's voice changing between statements.
Clive took Jill's hand and led her away from the spirit that was distracted, arguing with itself. They slipped out onto the balcony and Clive tested the trellis running along one side. "You can climb down from here and get away."
Tapping his splint gently, Jill shook her head. "Am I supposed to leave you with that thing?"
"Yes, you are. Go get help. I'll wait out here." Clive gestured at the trellis.
"The last time I left you alone with a scary monster, it threw you down the stairs and you almost died," Jill said without a trace of humor.
"Did you see that thing? It was moving through the furniture like it was air. I don't think it can even touch me, much less throw me. Besides, do you have a better idea?"
She didn't have a better idea. Jill sighed and with a little help from Clive, managed to get over the railing and onto the trellis. "They are all going to think I've lost my mind," Jill muttered to herself.
"Be careful." Clive watched as her blue hair disappeared steadily down. Life had been so normal when he woke up this morning. Slipping off to the garden had seemed like a great adventure. "I'm probably asleep," Clive told himself. "This isn't really happening."
"You're wrong." The specter had joined him on the balcony, no longer vibrating or showing anything but a human face. "This isn't a dream. If you'll allow it, I would like to help rouse your Eikon, just a bit, just enough so that you can feel them."
"I'm just a bearer," Clive said. "You're wrong about me.",
The spirit held a hand out. "Prove me wrong. There will be nothing inside for me to wake if you're just a bearer."
"No thanks." Clive backed up until he was leaning against the stone balustrade. "Tell me why you look like my father. Did you do that to make me trust you?"
"I don't look like your father. I look like myself." The spirit did not try to close the distance between them. It sat, resting its arms on its knees. "The world is dying so fast now that the children alive today will see its end. If you would just try, you can save it. I know you, Clive. You won't let the world turn to ash. Will you?"
The spirit had to be lying. Clive knew one thing more than anything else, he wasn't strong enough to save the world. He wasn't the Phoenix and he would never be good enough. Annabella made sure he learned that lesson. "You don't have the right person."
"What hurt would it be to see if I'm lying?" The spirit extended it's hand again palm up.
Clive wished a lot of things trapped on that balcony. First, he wished Joshua had healed his arm while he was saving his life so he could have been away with Jill, free to run and not face the spirit's plea, but part of him didn't wish that at all. A part of him wanted to reach out, to touch his hand to the thing Jill saw as a monster if it meant he was special and powerful. He wanted to be Sir Crandall saving the kingdom, not the powerless slave trapped by his birth. Kind as his father had always been about it, Clive knew exactly what he was worth. Children bearers sold for one hundred gold pieces, two if they were pretty.
"You're worth more than she told you, Clive."
The spirit's words scared him anew. Was it reading his mind? "You're trying to manipulate me."
The spirit began vibrating again, two distinct voices speaking in opposition.
"You have talked enough. Show him what he is and we can begin."
"I won't take his choice from him. If he doesn't want it, the Eikon will sleep on."
"Foolish Logos, so obsessed with choice and free will that you would let the world die? There is too much of me in you now for this."
The vibrations calmed again, and thankfully the spirit remained human after the struggle. Clive kept what distance he could, but he sank down so he was sitting, mirroring the spirit's posture. "Are there two of you? What are you?"
"I was a man watching the world end and screaming against it. Everyone and everything I loved were dying before me. My sword couldn't stop it, nor could my magic. Then I was filled by a spirit, a vengeful, terrible god, but one with a plan to save everyone, to save the world. The four-armed creature is not to be trusted. It can and will do anything to achieve its goals. I happen to share its goal of saving the world. So we can mostly work together as a unit toward that end.
"With our power combined, we took a step back in time, to a point when we might influence matters, where we might push things forward."
Ghosts and gods and time travel too? Founder, he had to be stupid. The fall down the stairs had damaged his brain, but Clive believed the spirit's intentions were good. He held his uninjured hand out, still certain that there was nothing to wake inside him. Once the spirit realized its mistake, it could move on and find the person meant to save the world. "Go on then, before Jill comes back and yells at me for being reckless."
His children were safe and sleeping, but Elwin had quite a lot of work to complete before he could rest. The Duchess would be out of Rosaria before Clive left the infirmary if he had to work through every night for the next week. Trying to find the diplomatic phrasing of 'your daughter is a murderous whore that I can't legally divorce' left him staring blankly at the letter he needed to write. Maybe a couple hours sleep and his language skill would return sharper?
A knock at the door and his night guard entered. "Your grace, you have a visitor."
Dress torn and leaves tangled in her hair, Jill Warrick stood before him. She had a large hand in saving his eldest so he tried not to be terribly annoyed at the late night interruption.
"Sir, there's a monster. I mean, your grace, sir." Jill gestured, frustrated and scared and struggling to remember the protocol of how she was supposed to talk to the duke. "It's in the infirmary with Clive. He couldn't climb down the trellis so he sent me for help."
His first instinct was to assume the child had had a bad dream, a monster under the bed. But she was rumpled like a girl who had climbed down a trellis and monsters could be very real in their world. A pretty blond monster almost killed Clive once today. Best make sure fate wasn't trying anything else with the poor child tonight. Elwin nodded to the guard and they strode off.
Little Jill had to run to keep pace with the men, but she stayed right with them until they opened the door on an empty infirmary. The sheets were scattered and Clive was no where to be seen.
"It's touching him," Jill groaned. On the balcony, through the curtains, she could just see the monster, one hand gripping Clive's right hand and it's other three at his head, heart and waist. At the interruption the monster looked back at her with its ugly black eyes, but it betrayed no emotion and showed no sign of letting go.
Elwin followed Jill's gaze to see Clive sitting on the balcony holding an odd pose. His right hand was extended like a man offering greeting. More concerning than his pose was the fire pulsing at his chest, cracking through his skin. He hadn't seen a dominant prime since his brother's death, years ago but it looked strangely similar to what was happening to Clive. "Joshua is the Phoenix," Elwin whispered. "How?"
"Make it stop," Jill begged. "It's hurting him."
Elwin drew his sword but could see nothing to swing it at. "Point me to an enemy."
In a move that reminded him of her northern heritage, Jill stole a dagger from the hip of one of his guards and charged at whatever she could see on the balcony. For an instant, he thought she meant to stab Clive, but her blade sliced through the air, through an invisible monster that was calling fire through his son's chest.
Clive's hand dropped back to his side but he showed no sign of consciousness. The fire from his chest spread faster, cracking through his cheeks, turning his blue eyes into smoldering orange coals.
"Wake up, Clive," Jill begged even as she fled the scorching flames licking off him.
The monster that had released him during her attack, took hold of Clive again, this time sitting beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and tucking him in like a mother bird sheltering a chick. "Let it sleep again, little Clive. You're not ready to ride that fire all the way. He'll ride you if you let him out now. Bank the flame, but don't forget it. I'll help you." He couldn't build the mental wall for him, but he showed Clive the bricks of his own mental barricades that let him house eight Eikons and a dark god without completely losing himself to the cacophony.
The fire faded back inside him, and Clive stared at his hands that for a moment had been powerful, molten claws. He was a dominant? He looked up into the eyes of the spirit propping him up and wondered that it could touch him when it couldn't interact with anything else in the world. "We're family, aren't we? You're a Rosfield from the future."
The specter smiled and laughed softly. "I am a Rosfield from the future."
Elwin felt every hair on his back rise watching the invisible force move his son about, but at least the flames seemed to be retreating. "Is it still there, Jill?" he asked.
"I don't know why you can't see it. Joshua could see and Clive too, but they don't see the monster. Joshua called it pony and Clive said it looked like you, your grace." Jill hugged herself. "What is it doing to him?"
Folklore was full of monsters that took the form of family to trick and torture mortals. Elwin strode forward, determined to break whatever hold their invisible enemy had on Clive. Taking his face was a mistake when the real Elwin was here to shatter the illusion. "Clive, come," Elwin commanded. It wasn't a request or a negotiation. He spat the command with the same force he ordered soldiers into battle and Clive responded. Rising slower than usual with the lingering injuries from his fall, Clive stepped away and into his father's embrace. In a matter of seconds, he had been shuffled behind and they were backing out of the infirmary.
Still reclining on the balcony, the specter made no move to follow.
"We're letting him run away?" Ultima asked.
"Don't pretend you aren't satisfied with his progress. He's eight years old. He almost died and got his first taste of the Eikon in his chest. Let him process and heal. It's a good beginning."
"There is no time for coddling."
"Agreed, we also don't have time to break him and then put him back together, so let him breathe."
"You did take distressingly long to recover when we broke you the first time."
Clive the older winced and not for the first time questioned his decision to follow any plan of Ultima's however much it seemed to be for the greater good. "I guess it's good that I'm the dominate personality in this partnership."
"It should never have been a partnership. This is inefficient. Break the wall between us and let our wills become one."
With no one to witness their struggle, the spirit vibrated, oscillating between man and god, the bricks that Clive had hastily walled Ultima away behind quivering under the God's desire to join with him. "Not today."
"Tomorrow then."
"How about never?" The struggle faded again and Clive cradled his head in his hands, utterly exhausted. "We could save them all. Not just a faceless future humanity, but Joshua, father, the captain, everyone."
"Or we could fail if you continue to resist me." Ultima made no struggle against his bonds this time, just let the possibility of failure paint its own picture. "Can you really live with that?"
Sealed in his office, far from prying eyes, Elwin plied two traumatized children with milky tea and biscuits until the entire story of the spirit took some semblance of a clear shape. "I don't like the sound of this spirit." He held a hand up to forestall Clive. "Your instincts say he's not evil, but he told you not to trust the aspect of himself that Jill sees."
"We have to help save the world though, right?" Clive asked. "We can't protect Rosaria if there's no Valisthea."
Elwin sighed, proud of his son's stance, but the blight wasn't going to be stopped by a single boy, whether he held an Eikon or not. "You're not wrong but we need to be careful. This spirit told you to save the world a step at a time. It told you to master your Eikon, yes? Well that's a good idea. We will focus on that. If it asks anything else of you, Clive, you will tell me immediately. We will decide what to do together. Agreed?"
"Okay." Clive yawned and struggled to keep his head up, the weight of the day catching up now that the tense moments were long passed.
"Time to get to bed, I'd say. You're both going to sleep in my rooms where I can keep an eye on you tonight." Elwin scooped Clive up so he could wrap his uninjured arm around his neck and he took Jill by the hand. The guards followed, asking no questions when Elwin took the children to his second bedroom and settled them under the covers.
Little Clive had fallen asleep before they had taken ten steps, but Jill stared into the dark, her eyes still bright with fear. Elwin met her gaze and frowned. "Is it back then?"
She nodded and pointed to the foot of the bed.
It was frustrating, not being able to see the interloper interfering with their lives, but Elwin stood with his hand casually on his sword and faced the spot Jill was transfixed on. "Whatever you are, you claim to be benign, a force for good even. Lurking over my sleeping children in the dark is not the act of a benign entity."
"It left," Jill whispered.
"Good. Now get some sleep. I'll watch over you."
It made no sense that Elwin guarding them should comfort her enough to relax. He couldn't even see the monster if it came back, but Jill was comforted. She closed her exhausted eyes and slept almost immediately.