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CHAPTER 70:
NO OATHS TO KILL
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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'June Mermaid,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and afterward, 'Destiny,' from the FINAL FANTASY XII Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and afterwards, 'Theme Of the Empire,' from FINAL FANTASY XII: REVENANT WINGS. The first composition can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section, and the other two on Zophar's Domain.
Elsa stood, gazing up in the direction Xion had vanished.
Elsa let herself become drenched by the knowledge that was the direction in which, for the first time, other than such a small amount of times Elsa could count the incidents where the patrolman, or patrolwoman, had died in conflict with one, or more, criminals resisting arrest, her own people were giving their lives at her command in defense of Arendelle.
Xion was, once more, risking her life to protect the people she loved the most.
And, until they sprung their trap, assuming it even worked, for all Elsa's talents, for all the years, and reasons, she'd been terrified of them, now they weren't even enough.
"I stand at the core of Ahtohallan now, with all of the power over darkness the one genuinely active provocateur of the Second Keyblade War who didn't care which side won has taught me.
"Feel free to throw all your penitence or puissance, negotiation or warmongering at me you want, it won't make a difference any longer.
"For soon, so very soon, for the preservation of our green and verdant land, the trumpets of Arendelle will once more resound their clarion paeans to herald the return of its one true and undoubted, eternally and forever indisputably renowned King, Runeard the Magnificent!"
"Fighting to love and keep safe brings about just as much death and pain as fighting for any other reason. This is why Mickey and the Disney Kingdom believe in the world order. They could easily solve a lot of problems on other worlds if they sent knights or other military forces there. But if they did, they'd just end up waging war or bringing about harm for the sake of connections, and peace and prosperity. This would result in as many horrific tragedies, and as much torture, as waging war for any other reason.
"The people who we murder and hurt while fighting to cherish and protect our loved ones, friends, other people, the worlds, and the World can no longer be protected and kept safe, and they have no present or future."
Was she any different from Grandpa?
Ira had shown her, with crystalline edged stark clarity, what C
Anna
Elsa needed to protect Anna this time
She could pay for her sins when Anna's lasting happiness was ensured
hristopher had said to Sora, about warfare to protect others.
Elsa suppressed the urge to look behind her.
Elsa couldn't do enough for Roxas, either.
Even if she could give the kind of love Anna could, Elsa had no idea what kind of love Roxas sought from her, romantic, sisterly, or friendship, and that was what was important.
Elsa pushed aside the knowledge, if she attempted to give romantic love to someone she wasn't comfortable loving as anything other than a friend, or sister, she'd be effectively imprisoning herself in a virtual arranged betrothal after years of locking herself in a room away from reality itself.
And, while Elsa knew her difference in age from Roxas was similar to the one dividing Philip, and Aurora, and that was something Roxas might see as a comfortable midpoint between Axel, and Xion, Elsa could be sure, if Roxas did one day establish a romantic relationship, he'd need a love as true as Philip's.
Elsa couldn't be a sister, like Anna, to Roxas.
Now Xion was gone, as well.
Could Elsa even be a friend?
Mattias.
Are you still out there?
Anywhere?
Please.
If you're still alive, please.
Please, come back.
Please, tell me how to do this.
"This is why I keep rethinking whether or not asking a human out is anything other than a waste of time," a small, female voice commented at Elsa's left.
Elsa didn't turn her head away from the direction of where one of her first true friends, and her people, were risking, and, in all likelihood, giving their lives, for Arendelle.
She knew who she was talking to.
She didn't know whether Mickey would remain a steadfast ally, now that Larsa had made it here, or whether he'd turn out to be hypocritical enough about a stance Elsa couldn't justify as seeing as anything better than amorally isolationist, in the face of Anna's peril, he wouldn't even assist her in bringing the Treaty of Flames to a conference table. Or, worse, whether he'd actually attempt to intervene military, unilaterally, as the Disney Kingdom, or, bilaterally, with Ivalice Zodiac.
If the Foretellers attempted to exploit Arendelle's current weakness to launch an open war of their own, in response to Elsa's earlier declaration, Elsa knew the latter, bilaterally, was a genuine sizeable possibility.
Though, Mickey had done enough for them, Elsa saw no reason to be wary of Yuna.
If Elsa scrutinized Yuna as a potential enemy, Elsa really would be the same as Grandpa, and Hans.
That didn't mean Elsa would refrain from increasing her wariness, or, keeping her words couched behind a mask of professional neutrality.
"Have you been informed of Tidus' condition?" Elsa questioned.
Yuna's voice was unsteady with cracks, as she answered.
"Don't let my size fool you.
"My cousin, Rikku, my friend, Paine, and I, are all Dominants, practitioners of cantrips that enables me to bind other species, and races, of faefolk to me, similar to how Sora used his old Heartbinders.
"I'm known as the Dominant of Zodiark.
"Anywho, I pulled some strings, with Lucca's assistance, after Tidus at a place known as the Fayth of the Phoenix.
"Part of the reason was to one up Tinker Bell, and, part of the reason is Sora has friends from there, from a borough in it known as Shibuya. That place resides in a memory world sketched from a hodgepodge of cards Lauriam," Elsa let herself wince, "And Even forced the human Dominant of the Phoenix to create as a testing ground at Castle Oblivion. Lucca discovered about this, during her studies of Xion. So, I wanted to convince Tidus he's just as capable of what Sora is, by taking him on an adventure to effectively wake up the Fayth of the Phoenix by weaving its chain of memories together with that of an ethereal heart who has been inspired by the name of the Phoenix Dominant to attempt to set the Fayth of the Phoenix liberated as a world akin to Traverse Town, and Twilight Town.
"Ask Lucca for the details, but it was a no go.
"I couldn't have taken Tidus to Shibuya, even if I'd made the try.
"The Phoenix's Dominant, Joshua Rosfield, has been debilitating his own body, for the better part of the last two years, in order to keep a con artist named Sephiroth Sora has met stuck in the heart of the Fayth of the Phoenix. One of the reasons Larsa is here, is Joshua's older brother, Clive, got in a really nasty tussle with Alma Beoulve. Clive won, although it was close, but Sephiroth then attempted to don Clive's body as a second skin to wield like the marionette Xion almost became during the Second Keyblade War," Elsa let herself cringe, "And Clive was too fatigued, and injured, from beating Alma to defeat a wholly fresh, uninjured Sephiroth on top of that.
"Joshua wields the Flames of Rebirth, though. So, he used them to imprison Sephiroth in a self repairing cage of fire inside his own body, one Sephiroth, even though he's a much more determined infomercial scuzzball than any other scam artist I've met in my life, can't break his way out of, even to take Joshua's body as his own.
"Keeping Sephiroth locked inside the Fayth of the Phoenix, and himself, has been debilitating Joshua for the better part of the last two years, though, and it's at the point he can now barely even walk, and he spends a lot of time coughing up his own blood."
Elsa risked squeezing her eyes shut tightly, attempting to keep any hotness pushing against the backs of her eyes as far as all the sentiments those words caused to flood her.
Her insides distorted violently with a sick surge of guilty self hate she hadn't needed to weather since Anna had taken Hans' strike, even when Lauriam, and Elrena, had revealed what Elsa had done to Mom, and Dad, and Christopher had revealed what she'd done to Kristoff, and his own family.
This was too similar to shutting Anna out, now.
She couldn't keep this away.
Not after what she'd just done, by going to Ahtohallan without Anna.
Elsa opened her eyes, and she let the tears obscure her vision, and enough pain it wouldn't debilitate her ability to protect Anna, and her people, through.
She didn't blink enough of them away to wholly see clearly.
Well, now she knows.
But Anna didn't.
After shutting Anna out, once more, and breaking her promise, there was no way Elsa couldn't tell Anna about this.
And, when Anna did, she wouldn't be upset what Joshua had done, for so long, for Clive didn't mean enough to Elsa.
What Elsa was terrified of was how much more hearing about this could spur Anna to attempt to be everything for everyone, particularly Elsa.
Elsa suppressed a sigh.
She knew better than this.
As much as she wanted to deny it, it wasn't just Anna.
As soon as the message with the carrier pigeon had told Elsa the battle, and war, had begun, as much as she was attempting to avoid making the same mistakes herself, at least as badly as Anna had been making them since she'd heard about Elsa's choice, Elsa had become aware, at the edges of her perception, of a muted perception that reality had cascaded into a desperately vitalizing concave singularity within her own perception of any existence, or potential, or denial, or reminiscence of it that spun with the same moaning gales of the gusts that had scattered the eternal winter.
Elsa wasn't embracing those sentiments, as she very well would have, if things had been different, but she wasn't that much better off than Anna.
The same hopelessly desperate determination to be everything for everyone, if that was what it took to protect Anna, Anna herself was buckling under, was present within Elsa.
As much as Elsa disagreed with Mickey, it had been one of the core reasons Elsa had declared an actual war on the Foretellers, if not the largest.
It thrummed within Elsa, even now, a molten tidal wave of ice she was holding back by a dam.
But Elsa knew what to do with it, now.
She drowned herself in her memory of Anna's freezing hand shattering Hans' sword, and she risked letting her attention shift enough to weave a lattice magic around the new storm inside her, one that would redirect it along the routes Elsa was choosing until she could use it as the fuel to spring the cantrip that, Elsa hoped would end the war before it went on too long.
If she fueled her fear with love, not a selfish drive to run away from her problems, she should be able to transform her cantrip into one single tsunami of overwhelming power that should sweep away all before it as though they were chips of brittle sticks, and end the battle, and war, swiftly, and decisively, almost before it had begun, while intimidating anyone else within the Treaty of Flames into surrendering, without much, if any, delay.
"Anna, what do you know about true l"
Elsa pushed the memory to the side.
Elsa did the same thing to the question of why she was even thinking about Hans at a time like this.
"You can't run from t"
Mild self hate, and guilt, rushed up for a different reason.
How could she still be second guessing, this much?
It was already too late.
Grandpa was already her enemy.
"Your Majesty, you look like you could use a friend. Don't you want to ta"
Elsa didn't conceal that one, in any means.
She suppressed the urge to be surprised at how the smile that came to her face was so warm and weightless, her legs felt as though they were going to give out.
"That's fabulous for Clive," Elsa acknowledged, and it took no effort for undiluted unadorned elation to be present in her voice.
"It's too bad, for Tidus, though."
"You've done enough for now.
"Just rest, safe with me, in my arms, engulfed in my love all around you, where you can know that I love you and that it doesn't matter that Grandfather hates you, and where I won't let him hurt you at all."
Elsa drowned in the memory; and the warmth of Anna's arms, and body, around her, and her lips against Elsa's forehead; as Anna had spoken those words.
No.
There was nothing to second guess.
Of any form.
This was what Elsa was fighting for.
With that knowledge polished glass unconcealed in all the kaleidoscopic shades of its radiance all within, and about, Elsa, there was no way she could doubt the battle that had just begun, the spell she was going to cast to win it, or, any of the possible repercussions of waging this war.
"Roxas," Mare inhaled in drawn horror.
Elsa spun around, to see Roxas was no longer laying on top of the mound of snow.
Mare was already completing a shift into her human form, and her right hand, and arm, now fully human, had raised to call her Keyblade to it in twirling black, and silver.
It materialized without the eye present.
If Mare was sparing any attention for this, though, even her ordinarily expressive face didn't display that.
"No, you don't!" she snarled with unadorned savage viciousness.
"Should you endeavor to cut corners, all you'll cut is yourself," a new voice interjected, male, and human, but with its own version of the cares Elsa recognized in Mickey, and herself.
Mare jolted violently, and she clenched her teeth together, tightly.
"A road ahead is oft best discerned through forbearance and circumspection, not rash haste."
Behind Mare, and to her left, an adult male stood on the left of Mickey with short black hair that curled, about once, behind, and, about once, to both sides, of his neck, a medium amount, and blue irises. His brow was adorned with a cerulean circlet of twined serpents in the process of devouring their own tails at each side of his head, with the head on the left facing backwards, as it swallowed the current lower tail. The head on the right faced forwards, and was assuming the tail that was then on the top. His garb was as regal as Mickey's, and, excepting sleeves, and pants legs, that were white from the knee down, navy blue, with a pattern of lines of sapphire diamonds connected at each vertical tip on his on shirt, that separated the navy blue areas. He wore two silver pauldrons on each shoulder, with a single long, medium diameter silver horn extending roughly horizontally a lengthy ways out of the side of each one, after it bent down over the side of his shoulder, to sweep at a lengthy shallow slope downward, and then level out to travel another long, rough horizontal distance, where they each tapered to a sharp point.
What appeared to be an average sword, in weight, and length, with a hilt that looked like an unremarkable cross guard outside of its platinum color, hung sheathed, in what also appeared to be a common wooden sheath, at the right side of the statesperson's waist.
But Elsa was under no illusions.
She knew how this most likely was.
Elsa drew herself into her most practiced regal air.
As she did, she dropped her left hand to the side, on the other officiary offhand, at wholly ordinary rest, outside of its dignified poise, but with an incantation coalescing invisibly, so Elsa could bring it to bear, without any delay.
"Emperor Larsa Solidor, of the Empire of Archadia, in Ivalice Zodiac, we presume?" Elsa queried formally, inclining her head forward, courteously.
Mare's fists were clenched tightly enough, her nails were drawing blood from both of her palms.
However, she remained where she was, and she didn't do anything else ill advised.
The officiary fell to one knee, with his own head inclined forward.
"Well met, Your Majesty, Queen Elsa of Arendelle," the official replied, his voice composed, and deferential.
"If it pleases you, would you allow Larsa Ferrinas Solidor the grace of your court's welcome?"
Elsa suppressed the urge to wince.
Though, she knew what she was fighting for.
The Treaty of Flames could close in, at any time.
Elsa waited, until Larsa took his feet.
Then, she got directly to the point.
Elsa kept her tones composed, and officially dignified. Nevertheless, she didn't spend any time with red tape.
"If you're making this visit from concern the current hostilities will spread," Elsa commented, "We should inform you, at the beginning, any counsel you speak that we should allow foreign bodies to threaten the people of Arendelle will fall on deaf ears."
Mickey lowered his head, agony manifesting on his face.
Whatever Larsa felt, and thought, about this, he, however, let none of it show.
His own voice remained composed, and it now became neutral.
"Then I shall regale you with a tale, in its stead," he said.
Elsa kept her face expressionless.
"As His Majesty has confirmed you've endured firsthand," Larsa spoke, "Many authoritative, or belligerent, leaders seek to enhance their might, and their territory, through a combination of militarism, and inconspicuous foreign, or native, intervention.
"Yet there are depths of immorality, and amorality, even they will not stoop to. And, if they're faced with the knowledge their policies have descended to these lows without their intent to reach them, as with Hades, horror at the measures they've reached can, at times, be enough to convince the coercive conqueror to rethink his, her, or its outlook.
"Regrettably, rather than make the choice Hades did, when Brother discovered elements within Archadia had lowered themselves to depths even he would not sink to, he turned even further upon his own, and he ended these movements with widespread, and brutally exemplary, mass executions, many of them, in the interests of thoroughness, of Archadian innocent, along with the guilty."
"If not for him, I'm not sure that we'd have been able to defeat Vayne.
"But I made sure that he, or Minnie, weren't the ones to deliver the final blow and murder Vayne with his or her own hands."
Elsa almost didn't remember not to cringe.
She wasn't sure she'd kept her face from becoming expressionless.
Mickey's face was now a mask, but he moved closer to Larsa's side.
The corner of Larsa's mouth, on that side, curled up in wan gratitude.
Elsa drenched herself in the knowledge one of the largest reasons, if not the largest reason, Hades hadn't made the same choice was due how effectively Sora, and his companions, had kept Hades in a partial détente. Anna, and Elsa herself, had been among them, indirectly, by preventing the Real Organization Thirteen, and Hans, from gaining any true foothold in Arendelle, thus depriving Hades of other potential resources, in personnel, and equipment.
Anna was slightly responsible for things not ending for Hades the way they had for Vayne.
"One such measure was a proposal by Archadians associated with the Feolthanos family Vayne responded to by summarily executing the officers who recommended he implement it all throughout the Archadian navy within the meeting of the military staff where they proposed it. Upon discovering what had happened, the rest of this faction implemented these measures throughout the craft they oversaw, believing they could prove its validity to enough of the Archadian forces Vayne would see the merits of their strategy, and tactic.
"Their proposal was to expedite arms production by implementing defensive measures on Archadian warships Sphere utilizes with their employees, whether they agree to it, or not, to run checkpoints for contraband. They believed heavy armor plating, and arcane, or technological, energy defenses were too cost heavy, so they adopted Sphere's method of shielding warships by capturing thousands of loyal Archadian citizens, and, to deter foes from firing upon Archadian warships, placing them in flimsy compartments on the surface of military craft with less sturdy armor, and no manner of energy defense."
"Feel free to throw all your penitence or puissance, negotiation or warmongering at me you want, it won't make a difference any longer.
"For soon, so very soon, for the preservation of our green and verdant land, the trumpets of Arendelle will once more resound their clarion paeans to herald the return of its one true and undoubted, eternally and forever indisputably renowned King, Runeard the Magnificent!"
"You've done enough for now.
"Just rest, safe with me, in my arms, engulfed in my love all around you, where you can know that I love you and that it doesn't matter that Grandfather hates you, and where I won't let him hurt you at all."
Mare jolted violently, her jaw dropping open.
Elsa compressed her lips together, tightly, at that one.
Surely, even Grandpa wouldn't go that far.
Would he?
Larsa's voice was unchanged as he went on.
"However, Brother had recognized the practicality of this approach from the beginning. If he'd put it into practice throughout the entire navy, the rate of production for our airships could have increased exponentially. It was his definition of morality that prevented him from actively engaging in this practice, himself. At worst, Brother was willing to turn a blind eye to Sphere's willingness to practice this, on what he saw as a temporary basis that would be over as soon as every single one of who he believed to be Archadia's external, and internal, foes had been entirely destroyed."
If Grandpa did, Hans would not get that chance
but Grandpawouldn't
thatwastoofar
thiswasn'therheritage
Mare snorted derisively.
"Let me know of a single example in history, from all the realms, of when a single authoritarian conqueror has actually pulled that off," she commented sarcastically.
"Or, for that matter, whether, or not Namine would happen to have been on Sphere's payroll, at any time, however briefly."
Elsa suppressed the urge to cringe.
As much as she understood Namine, and empathized with her, what Namine had done to Mare was still one of the most remorseless sins Elsa had learned about, in all her tutelage, and studies, or encountered elsewhere.
At least Xion, and Xehanort's other puppets, had been intended to live through their conscription, and they hadn't been created to die from the beginning, no matter how exemplary their service.
To say nothing of how Data-Sora, and all the other inhabitants of the Jiminy's Journal datascape, also unlike Xion, had been created to lose their memories from the beginning.
"Go ahead and compare Elsa to Ansem the Wise all you want, his belief data can't have hearts doesn't cause Namine to have had any less of a mind of her own."
"Nooo!
"You have been yourselves at home all your lives!"
"You've done enough for now.
"Just rest, safe with me, in my arms, engulfed in my love all around you, where you can know that I love you and that it doesn't matter that Grandfather hates you, and where I won't let him hurt you at all."
Ansem the Wise had sought revenge for what he'd already lost, not to defend people, and places, that hadn't been lost yet, as Xehanort had.
Anna was in horrifically accelerating danger.
"That sounds like Sephiroth," Yuna whistled, in impressed disbelief, at Elsa's side, her voice steady.
"He sees himself as the worst nightmare of economic excess everywhere, but, for all his talents, and skill, at battle, all he's good for are the scams of traveling salespeople.
"Beckett met Davy Jones because Cloud and Sephiroth never made it back to Ivalice Zodiac.
"They ended up in Port Royal, where Jack, and Will, took Cloud under their wing.
"He's so brimming with hate for people like Beckett, he wants people's lives to amount to something,"
"Whether they obey our will or not, we dump the rocks that never had a role to begin with into the swamps where they belong until they crack into brittle chalk and their last breaths stop gasping for the air even merit and servitude can't give them a place in."
Elsa suppressed the urge to cringe
"But all he wants is for this to give their deaths meaning, not anyone's life, no matter how meritorious their service. His definition of medical benefits was to drag his exhausted employees back out of Davy Jones' Locker, and put them back to work until they withered away once more, lather, rinse, repeat."
Mickey's jaw dropped.
Larsa cringed, violently.
Mare went totally stiff.
Elsa saw no reason not to cringe, violently, herself, at that.
"Sephiroth went after Clive Rosfield because his solution, as he saw it, to the cares of the people of Port Royal, and their neighbors, was to attempt to send all of The Caribbean into Davy Jones' Locker through fusing Calypso with himself, against her will, after which everyone in The Caribbean could then toil under his leadership for all time in a factory for riches he's so determined to prove he's better than people like Barbossa he refuses to even admit to himself he can't give his employees.
"Sephiroth was born from the chamber of Cloud's heart that, among other things, held, and still holds, Cloud's fixation on proving himself to others, such as his brother, Glenn."
The cold never bothered me anyw
Elsa pushed it aside, and walled it off
"So, by the time all was said and done, Sephiroth got stuck with a body of white crabs.
"But even this, as Sephiroth put it to Jack, when hovering with an impassive smirk, above, and past the railing of the Black Pearl, as he saw the Kraken claim it, was convince Sephiroth, in his own words to Jack, 'I may be duplicatable, but I will forever be incomparable.'
"Whether you want another reminder, or not, Mare, you're still following in his footsteps with your own hatred for Namine."
Mare gave an exaggeratedly dismissive shrug.
Mickey's face once more lost its sentiment.
Larsa's brow furrowed.
"That's a better point than you believe, Yuna," he said, still looking at Elsa.
"Whether you've closed your own ears to these words, can you say the same for Roxas, and Xion?"
Elsa forgot not to jolt violently.
"Irrespective of his other failings, from what I've been informed of, Roxas has learned, by now, war is the consequence of the refusal of societies to accept each others' beliefs, and impose them on others, and people like Yozora, and Xehanort, are more often the aggressors, to other demesnes, and their own people, because of how their egos are so inflated with their own righteousness they're unwilling to accept the morals of others.
"If you wage this war off of this world, if not outside of Arendelle, how is that any different than what Lea did to them, as Axel?"
Anna
"Then, unlike Xion, I won't stop."
graywolf'sheadextendedrushingat
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"The sword is an end, not a means. And it makes you the very thing you seek to destroy."-Margrave Roienbourg
VALKYRIE PROFILE: COVENANT OF THE PLUME