*Dragon (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild OST)
**Message from the Goddess (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword OST)
***Overlooking the Great Ocean (Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles OST)
****Magi is Everything (Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles OST)
*****Magmoor Caverns Ambience (Metroid Prime OST)
*Well, he had in fact, narrowed down his search for the source of said wicked power- the very same as represented by Selenos' human, to a very small cluster of worlds. And what Anankos learned since was not encouraging in the slightest. Throughout the ages he surveyed, his conversations with the guardian spirits of the worlds' in question all revealed the bearer of said malevolent power, whoever he may be, to be blessed by gods, to the point where even they were helpless against its bearer. Even after revealing his true form and extent of his powers, even his own kin in these worlds- other dragons warned him against seeking out the source of the malice, let alone confronting him. How could one being, let alone a human, have so much power flowing inside of him, to the point where the hands of gods were tied?*
Kind and intelligent by nature, Anankos was also something of a worrywart, prone to getting lost in his own thoughts; this just so happened to be one of those times. What if his own power- even with those of the other dragons, was truly no match for the human in question? What if Selenos was not simply being obstinate, but maliciously guiding his charge down such a path, empowering him further? Was there any hope at all to purge this evil from their world?
In the sea of time and space, the traveler between the worlds was drowning in his own anxiety before...**a certain epiphany; all the chaos of the assorted worlds colliding and interacting suddenly went silent, his own mind just as still before being flooded with a soft, divine melody, resonating just as clearly as if he'd heard it with his own ears. ("Oh, weary traveler from distant lands! A great evil from one of our sister worlds has put yours in grave danger! A being of hatred and rage threatening even we gods.") He could not exactly make out the lyrics, but the gentle woman's voice stilled his anxiety, filling his heart and mind with hope and, most of all, a renewed sense of urgency and purpose ("But there is still hope yet; the spirit of my champion has found the one who'd stand against the demon!") Of course! It all made sense now! Even if Selenos had unleashed the incarnation of hatred and rage into their world, there was still hope! His own polite nature implored him to seek out the woman and thank her profusely, said message also made clear that there was also precious little time to waste- to aid the humans ("Nonetheless, you must make haste- locate treasures of the three virtues and the cornerstone and return them to your own world- after that, the rest will become clear to all.") in their oncoming struggle against the tyrant.**
***Being as careful a soul as she was, Flora would have of course preferred that this letter be delivered in person to her "uncle," given the sensitive, certainly explosive information contained therein. Nonetheless, Flora jotted down her thoughts, the sounds of Florian roughhousing with some of his men acting as background noise.
"Dear Uncle, are you well? I suppose that's a foolish question given the circumstances. We all have precious little time for pleasantries, so I will be blunt with my questions. Has Bela fallen out of favor with my father at all? Has Father's mindset budged, even in the slightest? If not, than we truly are out of time; as the others are already planning their efforts against the enemy."
Guiltily, Flora exhaled, affording herself a brief pause before she finished the letter. "This is not a conflict we can afford to be on the wrong side of- if Father truly is so obstinate, we have no other choice but to carry out the 'plan' we had previously discussed."
Signing her name and sealing the letter, Flora rose from her resting place to close in on the impromptu wrestling match, which quite fortunately, was wrapping up, her own man looking rather pleased with herself.
"Alright, good match, everyone!" Florian exclaimed, throwing a friendly arm across the shoulder of a young man as they approached the previously-drawn water.
"You really think so?" the youth inquired, bright green eyes sparkling in admiration of his hero.
"Yeah, I really do, Var. You've really grown strong these past few years."
Clearing her throat, Flora spoke. "Varius, a word?"
"Hm, sure, Lady Flora, what's wrong?"
Extending the letter to the youth, the heiress' visage seemed even more dire than usual. "Florian trusts you with his life, so I'm choosing to do so as well." she said. "See that this letter gets to Sir Hadrian as soon as possible. Speak of it to no one, guard it with your life."
The young man, a boy, really nodded confidently, his sweat-strewn blond locks only seeming to emphasize his upbeat expression. "Yes, ma'am!" he confirmed. "I'll do just that!"
The lad gathering up his associates for their ultimate departure and return home, a rare smile crept over Florian's lips. "That Var's a good kid, huh?" he remarked proudly.
"Well, he learned from the best, didn't he?" replied Flora, somewhat more at ease. "You're his idol, you know?"
The tribe's champion chuckled fondly, recalling the training, both combat and physically-oriented, over the years. While a stern (but ultimately fair) leader with little tolerance for nonsense, Florian, despite many of the discomfort many of the elders had with him, was genuinely revered by his warriors not only for his strength and valor, but for his treatment of them as an adoptive family of sorts, from the lowliest recruit to those nearly equal to him in strength like Varius. Given Florian's past- the gory details of which he had in common with many of his men, this was not surprising.
"You know, you'd actually make a pretty good father someday." remarked Flora carelessly, face coloring slightly as she recognized the possible implications of such a statement.
Florian chuckled nervously. "Really? You think so?" he answered, somehow awkwardly.***
****Gods love them, she loved them too- they had literally created her AND been there for her when no one else in that hick town of theirs ("What, Ed? Your girl think she's too GOOD for us?") would have even given her the time of day, but at the same time, Charlotte could not help but cringe. They were just so embarrassing at times! For fuck's sake, she had spent years cultivating the image of NOT being some uncultured, backwoods hayseed! Still, a part of Charlotte felt it was her own fault for using her pull with the king to arrange such a tour of the castle. All the noblewoman's finery in the world could not account for the inopportune nature of prurient teenage interests.
"The gallery must be soooooo dignified and romantic!" insisted Josephine.
"No, no!" insisted Jean impatiently. "We gotta see the dungeons! They say if you listen closely, you can hear the ghosts of the people who died there! Some people say you can hear a man's voice pretty clearly!"
"Jean, that's just a stupid myth!" Charlotte insisted. "It's just like the rumors about people going insane just living here!"
"I dunno about that." remarked one of the guards. "My cousin spent ten years on dungeon duty; guy was sharp as a nail, but when he got out? Mad as a hatter, that one. Wouldn't stop ranting about the 'almighty power' and 'calamities.' Pretty damned sad."
"Oh, come on!" insisted the second guard. "People say literally any old place is haunted! You can't seriously buy into that stuff?!"
"Speaking of the gallery, you know it's haunted too, right?" remarked a third guard. "The horseman from one of the very first paintings? Yeah, it follows you around the gallery, through the other paintings! Seen it with my own eyes."
Jean, always kind of an oblivious lad, spoke next. "Oh, man, that's so cool! I wish 'Pa could be here to see this!"
Reflexively, Charlotte's mother and sister winced, knowing how explosive a combination could and would be. "Oh, yeah!" remarked a fourth guard to Charlotte's rear mischievously. "Isn't he even a bigger savage-lover than the princess?"
The burly blond youth's turned his ire on the guard. "Hey! Don't talk about him like that! He's a better man than you'll ever be!"
"Jean, settle down!" insisted Charlotte, now rather irate.
The second guard shrugged his shoulders. "Kid, you gotta learn that people'll call thing's what they are; people think your 'pa is a savage-lover? Up to him to change it."
"For real!" said the fourth guard, completely in agreement. "If I had his kind of pull in the castle, I wouldn't be wasting my time trying to speak for savages who'd roast and eat me alive as thanks! I'd be all-"
Charlotte briefly considered the possibility that the man groping her backside was a stress-induced hallucination. Given the utter fiasco this visit had become, it was not out of the question. Nonetheless, the short distance between the two and the general tack of the conversation led her to believe against it; even were it not, she was honestly desperate to heave the second guard over her shoulder and slam him to the ground if it would end the affair early.****
"Oh my goodness!" she exclaimed airily. "What happened?! Are you alright?!"
"Ow...my head..." moaned the groping guard.
Charlotte's expression matching her actual mood as she turned to the squad's leader, she continued in that same vein. "Will you not see your comrade to the infirmary?"
"Erm, uh- yes, of course, Lady Charlotte! I apologize, but we will have to escort you all out."
Her siblings may have been groaning in disappointment, but inwardly, Charlotte was breathing a sigh of relief. She respected the man and thought the world of him, but the fact was that her father's particular eccentricity had closed a lot of doors for the family. She was doing this for their own good! Even if she had to wear a mask she absolutely fucking despised.
*****"How many times do we have to say it, worms!" spat the faceless Nohrian soldier, whipping one of the tribesmen back to his unsteady feet. "Breaks are for exactly one minute, on the hour!"
Exhausted and dehydrated (more than a few looking as though they'd one foot in the grave already) as they all were, this provided more than enough incentive for the gaunt, emaciated Flame Tribe members to return to their grueling, dangerous work, to say nothing of their young precariously suspended in cages above the lava pools, Futago cursing to himself as he (yet again) cut his palm on a piece of some ore demanded by the Nohrians, tearing some stray fabric from his ragged clothes in an attempt to stanch the bleeding.
Contrary to what one may have expected from the often frigid exterior, the Mount Haku temple was actually situated on top of and inside a semi-active volcano, the temple interior extending a decent way into the mountain. And exactly as their would-be masters in Nohr had long suspected, home to a great deal of mineral wealth. For all his time (it could not have been terribly long seeing as he was still alive) forced to extract minerals by hand at literal blade/spear-point from one of his people's holiest sites, Futago, in all his four decades in the world, could not comprehend one thing; what exactly goes through the average Nohrian mind, let alone their rulers, to see this as even remotely acceptable? Sure, he was just as aware as anyone else of their lurid "savage" obsession, but defiling another people's sacred sites with slave labor and (on a good day) gratuitous murder for noncompliance? Even in his wildest, angriest, revenge-driven dreams concerning the country, doing such a thing never once occurred to Futago. It simply was beyond the pale!
"Hey, old timer!" sneered a second guard, poking Futago with his spear. "Your collection quota's looking kind of low!"
"There's no more ore here!" Futago insisted, as calmly as any man could in such a situation. "If I had some of my tools, maybe I- Fuck!"
The second soldier laughed nastily at this suggestion as he continued to pierce the older man's ankle with his weapon to the point of drawing blood. "Yeah, right! You savages would love that, I bet! Like we're REALLY gonna trust you with things that could easily be turned into weapons?!"
Futago cursed to himself once again; he had a point there. Whoever the hell was in charge here may have been evil and (as expected) arrogant, but he was not stupid by any means; while the enslaved, embittered worshipers at Mount Haku may have had a fairly short life expectancy, any of the Nohrians who'd left their weapons unattended, even for a moment or two, would have an even shorter one.
Of course, this life expectancy was entirely dependent upon the relative goodwill (or lack thereof) shown by their captors, as illustrated when a frail, elderly man collapsed against the rock wall, heaving and gasping for breath. "W-water!" he gasped hoarsely. "P-please! Water!"
The nearby guard, rather incensed already, sheathed his whip in favor of the short sword on his belt, dragging the old man to his unsteady feet. "Who the fuck are you to demand ANYTHING from us, savage?!" he spat.
Forcing the poor old bastard onto a rock wrists-first, the outraged guard, heaved his blade with all his might, severing both his hands at the wrist. Now severely dehydrated and bleeding profusely, forced to his feet, he stumbled listlessly for several steps, only to have that same Nohrian force him over to the bridge and into the pool of lava below. For all his aliments, at the very least, his suffering ended fairly quickly if his halted screams were anything to go by. "There's your fucking water..." growled the soldier. "What the fuck are you all looking at?! Get back to work before your brats join him!"*****
He knew fully well he'd not live to see it; too much was working against him, given the intensity of the labor, the lack of provisions, the high cost of failure to meet one's quota, and the fact that they were slave labor- chattel assigned to work literally to death inside a volcano. But one thing gave Futago any satisfaction whatsoever with his plight; that crimes such as the siege-massacre of the sacred mountain and defilement of its temple would be neither forgiven nor forgotten by his fellow tribesmen and women.
Pacing in his study that fateful evening, Grand Prince Micheal, known as a wise and patient statesman at home and abroad, wrestled with his instincts versus what he (or was reasonably sure, at least) he knew about the world at large. The arrogance literally dripped off the page; who was this desert bandit- this king of thieves- to demand the submission of his country or face its destruction?! He would not tolerate it! And neither would any of the other nobles for that matter! There was nothing worthwhile in those deserts and never would be!
"Milord," inquired his scribe, peeking in from the doorway. "have you made your decision? Shall we ignore the desert rabble-"
"Send word to Nantes and the surrounding lords." the grand prince insisted sternly. "Instruct them to bolster their defenses and be ready for battle. I'll send some of my own troops to reinforce them."
"Understood, milord. Anything else?"
"Yes; we'll end this banditry nonsense once and for all."