FFXII: the Pharos
Done for ffxii_arcana
Arcana - the Tower (collapsing). Symbols include a king, a queen, a priest, lightning.
Meaning - All man’s creations crumble; a warning against complacency; complete and sudden change; eventual enlightenment.
Fandom: FFXII
Title: Who Dares to Dream of Forever?
Characters: Ashe, dream!Raithwall, dream!Rasler, dream!Raminas, dream!Occuria, dream!Random, Reddas, Fran, Balthier, Basch, Vaan, Penelo.
Spoilers: Pharos and beyond.
Rating: PG
Notes: A fable told in fragments.
---
“Once upon a time,” Ashe said, “there was a tower.
"The tower was built by man, and the tower touched the heavens. It was everything that man was not. It was a dream, a dream of forever, of an endless horizon, a world spanned by a captive sky.
“But the gods had their own dream for forever, and it did not involve mortals at their side.”
---
i. the tower and the dream
The Pharos beckoned.
This did not surprise Ashe. The tower served its purpose.
What did surprise her was the yearning that the sight of it engendered: an indecent one that reminded her of Rasler, of Balthier, of claiming and owning, of demands and answers. Ashe did not resist the inevitability of the architecture. Her gaze lipped over the edge of every tier, seeking the summit, the Mist-laced apex, the sky.
Ashe wanted it. All of it. Hers.
Her neck cramped. She took an unconscious step backwards to broaden her field of view. Her foot found nothing but air. The edge of the world beckoned, and she did not want to fall.
A hand clapped her on the elbow; a swift, presumptuous tug. Her grateful feet reclaimed the earth.
“Careful,” said the stranger. “The tower killed me, in precisely that way: with my eyes on the heavens. I presumed much: a single step backwards, the depth of the scaffolding, and that dreams would give me wings.” He smiled, sorrowful, achingly familiar: he looked like someone she should have known, could have known. “I told the damned scaffolders that they needed to add a rail. I hardly asked for the world.”
“Who are you?”
“The architect. I dreamed it, whole; I birthed it, through my head, through my hands. It could have been my crowning glory. But what is glory when set against gravity, against time?”
“Nothing ever goes to plan,” she told him. “I know.”
“I dreamed it, but when do dreams ever withstand dawn? The gods had their demands, their difficulties: and they never understood dreams.”
“They have only ever had the one,” Ashe said.
“Yes.”
“It is my dream too,” she said.
“Ah,” he said, and the world.
.jarred.
.turned a hard circle with the Pharos its lynchpin at the centre, a sucking black hole of everything and nothing, a weight, a needle, the fulcrum, the cruxis; the tower held everything and became nothing.
.and her stomach turned its outside in. She presumed a step to find her balance.
Her hands caught at clouds, at nothing --
-- at the arms of her chair, aching; a desperate save for an imagined fall.
Ashe dreamed herself awake.
“Cursed updraft,” said Balthier, as he levelled the Strahl’s flight. “What a choice of real estate.”
“Look at it,” Vaan said. He stumbled, only avoiding a fall by clutching at the back of Balthier’s chair, puppy-eager. “That’s something you’d never see in Rabanastre.”
“You sound like you want to pack it up and take it home,” Penelo said. “I’m pretty sure even sky pirates can’t thieve architecture.”
“You might be surprised,” Balthier said. “Anything constructed can be deconstructed.”
“There is a tale,” Reddas said, “of the gods destroying a tower that man built. Through the tower’s heights man came too close to reaching the heavens. If ever there was a tower that fit that myth, Pharos is such. Yet it stands. Perhaps the gods have found a purpose for such defiance of the skies.”
Vaan’s eager backside still limited Ashe’s view. While she had not thought to be grateful for such a sight, she had seen enough of the tower. The sheer mass of it drew them in, across space, across the ages, the weight pegging the fabric of their existence.
“Unlikely,” Fran said, “as the tale you recall is a distortion. My memory has the inverse. The gods are the builders, and the tower exists to stop man from reaching his true heaven. He becomes infatuated with the reaching the sky in its stead.” She looked sidelong; the ghost of a smile on her lips, and Balthier shifted his grip at the controls. “Such a thought amuses.”
The Strahl banked sharply. Ashe adjusted her grip on the arms of her chair only to release it a moment later, deflecting Vaan as he almost fell in her lap.
The Strahl touched land.
“Well,” said Balthier. “We’re here.”
Dizziness surged despite the lack of any basis for its presence.
“At last,” Ashe said, but the words sounded as eager as Vaan, and conveyed nothing of her intended meaning.
---
“No. That wasn’t. That wasn’t right.” Ashe paused, and gazed down into the solemn stare that would not look away.
“Once upon a time,” she tried again, “there was a tower.
“The tower was built by the gods, by those who had no imagination and no striving and never any dreaming. The tower offered false promises, hiding the path to the sky with stones and stone walls and old memories, with ghosts.
“The tower held everything inside, and did not allow new dreams to taunt man with thoughts of what he could have; what he could have been.”
---
ii. the queen and her fortitude
Pharos led them in circles.
Circling like vultures, no: vultures had intent, and a line’s edge of hope. Rather, they circled like bewildered moths without even a flame. They walked the same path. Ashe knew it like the feel of her sword hilt, like the taste of sorrow.
The Pharos confounded her.
The interior wound a broad circle, a sharp contrariness. A circle defied the natural shape of a stone block; the circular path defied even the building’s exterior. The tower’s paths led nowhere; mazes had no exit but the entry. The logic of functionality, the expectation for order within the built form set her, and the others, athwart this architectural purpose. Perhaps of them all, only Fran would look at this tower without eyes conditioned by expectation.
Ashe walked passed the shadow of her self, and wished she could stop to ask directions.
Balthier did not bear their state of misdirection well, and she did not think he hesitated for thought of his father. Ashe’s intention faltered as often as did her focus, as often as did their path, and the only ambiguity Balthier had ever tolerated was his own.
He marked the stone with his belt knife as they walked, and he pointed out the scratched crosses each time they passed the same point.
“X marks the spot,” he would say. “I think we’ve been here before.”
Ashe set her jaw every time she heard him inhale to speak, temples and cheeks aching. She could have borne his audacity with better grace if he had not succumbed to the monotony -
“X marks the spot,” he said, and raked the tip of his dagger across the already-scratched stone, a jarring clatter. “I think we’ve been here before.”
-- and merely repeated himself, over and again.
The ache in her jaw threatened to become a headache. She lost tolerance even as she lost her way. Battle-ready, tensioned like a trigger, she heard Balthier’s lips part, heard the barest inhalation preceding his words. As she spun to unleash all seven hells on the pirate, Balthier rocked back on his heels and smiled, just barely.
His expectation of her fury sparked her contrariness: she would not be considered as predictable as he. She faced forward again, continuing the pace. She held her tongue for as long as she could bear it.
“I will not bear this complaint,” she said. “I am not your mother, your wife or your queen. If you wish to go: be gone, find another path, or be silent.”
Balthier hesitated. His silence ached like a compressed spring.
“I merely wonder at the wisdom of allowing architecture to decide who, precisely, is worthy of power,” he said eventually.
Basch grunted. “The Queen has no need for our wisdom or our wondering.”
“Perhaps that is a greater loss than the Lady comprehends,” Reddas said, from the rear.
“I’m willing to pass on the wisdom,” Balthier said, “if we could just end the wandering.”
Ashe stopped again. The three men continued for a good few steps before realising.
“Should you wish to discuss my attributes, kindly wait for my absence,” she said. “Common courtesy dictates that, at the least. But for now, I am still here.”
“Indeed, it seems we are all still here.” Balthier pointed: the stone wall bore one of the crosses he had engraved. “X marks the spot,” he said. “I think we’ve been here before.”
Ashe almost screamed.
Instead, she ran. She kept her pace as fast as she could bear: perhaps the exertion would consume the breath Balthier needed to vent his scorn.
“Stubborn,” Reddas said. His tread fell as heavy as his disdain.
“Purposeful,” Basch said. Air rasped in his throat before he could further defend her.
“Come now, Reddas,” said Balthier, his words running apace, “stubbornness does have its helpful features: Ashe will always know what she’ll be thinking tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. Balthier had the right of it even in the depth of his wrongness. Tomorrow would contain more circles. Tomorrow would contain only the tower. The tower would stand for far longer than her stubbornness would; Dalmasca would continue long past the memory of her efforts.
Her footsteps pounded the rhythm of her breath, her heart, her thoughts. She had nowhere else to be. Her path had led to the Pharos, through it. She would not allow mere architecture to daunt her.
The gods offered her the world alongside Dalmasca, and she had not even asked.
---
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t right either.”
“You’re not very good at stories, mother.”
“I know,” Ashe said. “But some stories aren’t very good ones.”
“Try again?”
“Once upon a time,” Ashe said, “there was a tower.
“The names of the builders of the tower were lost in the mist of time, in that endless forever of the gods. But none of that mattered, because the tower was meaningless, meant nothing, and changed everything in the end.
“Long ago, a king came to the tower and found within it the stone from which to build a nation.”
---
iii. the king and the nightmare
Fatigue made even the best of resolutions difficult to keep.
Ashe nodded. The symphonic fire, crackling, majestic in its barbarity, could not demand her alertness. Her chin slumped, her eyelids closed, her head fell weighted by dread, by anticipation.
The taste of the century of ages filled her mouth; the dreams of the gods crusted her eyes with slee--
--sleep? She could not slumber! Ashe leapt with a gasp. She had to run. The path through the heart of Pharos stretched before her, behind her, stretching outwards and upwards.
A spiral. Not a circle.
Ashe ran, and Rasler kept pace to her right, Raminas to her left, and Raithwall kept guard at the rear.
“You have my sword,” Raithwall said.
“Yes,” she said, and looked at the blade in her hand.
Rasler smiled, a warmth she could have known, should not have forgotten. “You will restore the greatness of Raithwall’s peace. You will avenge us.”
“Would that I could see such greatness,” Raminas said. “But I know that some sacrifice is necessary in the cause of peace, and stability. You will make me proud to have died, daughter.”
Ashe could see her target now, and only once she saw did she realise she even had a target. She pushed, until her body ached with the rhythm of her pace, jarring teeth, clothes, feet, bones.
When she realised who walked this path ahead of her, who she had pressed so hard to reach, the shock of it settled her in the pit of her stomach.
Raithwall.
Raithwall.
Raithwall.
Raminas flanked him to the right, Rasler to the left, and Ashe kept guard at the rear.
“I must apologise for that sword,” Raithwall said, as she shadowed his footsteps. “It is exceptionally heavy, is it not? Promises can sometimes weigh more than metal.”
“Promises are the rock from which we build nations,” Raminas contradicted.
“Promises are the walls that keep out the night,” Rasler said.
Raithwall told her: “I never wanted the sword. All I wanted was somewhere without swords. I wanted somewhere to rest, without need for setting a guard. I wanted my women to collect water in the cool dark of dawn without the threat of a raid. I wanted to remove the risk of death, of thirst. Surely that was not much? Surely I did not ask the world? Just water, and life. I wanted my children to play, instead of staring, endlessly, weeping, with naught to comfort them, not even a mother. I wanted the aqueduct finished; I wanted the city walls built. I did not want the sword.”
“Some sacrifice is necessary,” Raminas informed her. “If sacrifice is not necessary, then it is pointless. Will you make my death purposeless?”
“There is only one way forward,” Rasler said. “We must keep moving.”
A circle, not a spiral. They ran in circles.
Raithwall stopped. Ashe stopped. Their flanking guards stopped, chill shadows, weights of stone. The back of Raithwall’s head, his hair: she saw now they were the grey of marble, his skin the chipped texture of weathered granite.
“Where will you go, then?” he asked. “What path for your feet? Which sword for your hand?”
“The treaty,” Rasler said, the sound of a tombstone grinding, inexorable, closed.
“The treaty cuts a path,” Raminas said, the clatter of a useless blade falling to the floor.
“The treaty,” Raithwall said, and he sighed. “Yes. I had forgotten. It is set in st--”
“--stone,” Raithwall said, and reached to claim it.
“No,” said his constant god. “Not yet . You must cut, three times.”
Raithwall lifted the treaty blade.
Raithwall struck.
Raithwall cut off his left arm.
“The dawn of your peace,” said the god.
The words entered Ashe’s mind like mice in a granary, unwelcome, and without recourse to the usual mode of entry.
“That limb will not bother me again,” Raithwall said, uncaring for the blood that skated across the floor. “It is better off; it shall not bother me with its pains.”
“Again.”
Ashe could not hear the god’s eagerness for the ringing in her ears, the sound of the tip of Raithwall’s sword scraping across the wet stone floor. Blood snaked across the tops of her feet, as cold as uselessness.
Raithwall lifted the treaty blade. He struck, cut off his right leg, and fell.
“The twilight of your striving,” the constant god told him. “The sun sets on your endeavours.”
“It ached, when I ran too far or fought too hard,” Raithwall said, kneeling before the god. “It is better this way.”
Her vision blurred, her ears felt muffled. As Raithwall lifted the sword for this last, his third blow, her skin vanished, or perhaps the world disappeared.
But Raithwall hesitated.
“Again,” the god said. “Once more, as our treaty dictates. A third time, for the never ending, unshadowed realm that is your midlight. Again, for peace unending and life unchanging. Again, for eternity. Again, again, again, and we shall remember your name forever. The forever of a god, not of man. T he forever that is stasis, and perfection, and all that you are not. The tower will stand forever.”
Raithwall’s blade fell for the third time. He cut off his remaining leg.
“It was useless, without the others,” he told her, he entreated her. The true terror of the matter lay not in his dismemberment, but in her understanding.
Ashe would have offered him her sorrow, but she had turned to stone.
---
“And when a queen came to the tower,” Ashe continued, “many long years after the king, she came seeking a sharpened sword, thinking to build anew, or perhaps merely to build an old nation new. But along with her came a priest, and in the manner of all priests as he gave and found absolution he taught the queen a lesson, and she learned she was no queen, but a fool.
“And the queen learned that nations are built with stone, honest stone,” Ashe said, “not with the edge of a blade that is not.”
“…not what?”
“A blade.”
---
iv. the priest and priestess
Fran led.
“The Mist is thicker through here,” the viera said, and pointed down a dim path. “We should continue.”
“As you will,” Ashe said.
Two days, and new territory revealed itself under Fran’s scrutiny. They had not encountered one of Balthier’s scratched reminders for some time, a small mercy merely replaced by Reddas’ onslaught of confession, of query.
“A wise leader learns the value of putting the right tool to the right task,” Reddas said somewhat kindly, as Ashe fell into step with him.
Ashe glared.
“In the place of wondering you wish to offer me your wisdom,” she said. “Shall Dalmasca’s queen be advised by a repentant fool?”
“I take exception, m’lady. Consider me your priest instead. Tell me of your intent.”
“A strange priest, this. He seeks my forgiveness instead of bestowing his; he offers judgment in the place of solace. Fran: your advice in the place of this strange priest, for even a viera can do no worse! In his quest for clemency does he count my word in the stead of my husband’s?”
Fran looked over her shoulder, her expressionless gaze lost in the distance between them. “ Substitution is ever the habit of humes, Lady. It seems none of you will ever learn such a thing holds no succour. Not woman. Never man.”
“Lady,” Reddas said, heavy, unbending. “Let us not talk of forgiveness, for I need none from you. What I share is my knowing; what I ask is your understanding.”
“And I demand yours! You call my intent into question at every turn. But my intent has no focus on these events but instead the outcome. Everything I do is for Dalmasca. For the Dalmasca I remember. For the Dalmasca past; great, safe. I will restore it; I will remake the past.”
“You wish to walk an impossible path,” Fran said, her eyes forward. “As well try to tread precisely the same grains of sand twice.”
“Heed Fran if you will not heed me,” Reddas said. “Question the heart of your intent. To my sorrow I did not.”
“You would have me reject the stone,” she said.
“I have never pretended otherwise. Such a blade turns too easily.”
“And then what will happen to my people, Reddas, to Dalmasca, when I have no blade with which to defend?”
Reddas kept his silence.
“Questions,” Fran said. “Question everything, but not to find an answer. The right question will never be answered: it is not a bolt for tightening into place. It is a seed for planting, to bear more seed, to green the whole landscape with more questions.”
“Question,” Reddas said, “but not what will happen to Dalmasca should you reject the stone. Question what will happen to you, Lady Ashe, should you accept it?”
---
“Is that all the story?”
“No,” Ashe said. “There is an ending, of sorts.”
---
iv. lightning
Raithwall, Ashe knew from her history lessons, had been considered an architect as well as an autocrat; a designer and a dynast, the maker of cities as well as of civilisations.
Raithwall used stone as a foundation for a nation; and the gods’ stone as the key holding the arch. He never used it as a sword. To reject change was to be the architect of nothing but decay; to walk in endless circles. This Ashe knew, as well as she knew the pain of the sharp-shrapnel edge of Mist ripping at her face.
Raithwall and his constant god had set their treaty in stone; thinking stone would last forever. But the forever of a god and the forever of a hume were different things. This Ashe knew, as well as she knew the haft of her sword ripping at the palm of her hand, and she knew she would never bear a blade but one of metal and leather.
Reddas ripped the blade from her hand, and after a moment, Ashe let it go. A moment, and all plans were voided, all dreams forgotten. A moment, and all her hopes birthed themselves, anew. A hope for every moment, and every moment held new hopes, no promises. Every moment shone like a dawn; all the greater for that fact that she was not.
Ashe ripped out the piece of herself that feared; Ashe knew herself, inadequate, mortal, set to die with or without changing the world. But therein nestled the choice, a perfect spark, and the choice was hers, and not made alone.
Reddas ripped himself from the world, and Ashe knew and understood, in a way that no one word could describe. Ashe let go, of him, of the blade, of Rasler and her father and her ancestor, of the past and the nightmare and the dream; Ashe let go and grabbed onto the only thing left, and that was her self.
Ashe did not ask for directions. Where she went now, she had not been before.
There was terror here, a new one, and no old comfort to be a shield, or a blade.
Ashe smiled.
Lightning ripped the sky, and changed everything.
---
“Once upon a time,” Ashe said, “there was a tower, built by the gods to stop man from reaching the heavens. But the tower did not achieve its purpose.”
Silence ached.
“Did you destroy it, mother?”
“Why would I?” Ashe said. “Time will do that task for me: nothing lasts forever. I made a new path, and it led well away from any towers.”
Silence congealed.
“You really aren’t very good at telling stories.”
“Some stories are not told for listening,” Ashe said, “but for the knowing."
---
Arcana - the Tower (collapsing). Symbols include a king, a queen, a priest, lightning.
Meaning - All man’s creations crumble; a warning against complacency; complete and sudden change; eventual enlightenment.
Fandom: FFXII
Title: Who Dares to Dream of Forever?
Characters: Ashe, dream!Raithwall, dream!Rasler, dream!Raminas, dream!Occuria, dream!Random, Reddas, Fran, Balthier, Basch, Vaan, Penelo.
Spoilers: Pharos and beyond.
Rating: PG
Notes: A fable told in fragments.
---
“Once upon a time,” Ashe said, “there was a tower.
"The tower was built by man, and the tower touched the heavens. It was everything that man was not. It was a dream, a dream of forever, of an endless horizon, a world spanned by a captive sky.
“But the gods had their own dream for forever, and it did not involve mortals at their side.”
---
i. the tower and the dream
The Pharos beckoned.
This did not surprise Ashe. The tower served its purpose.
What did surprise her was the yearning that the sight of it engendered: an indecent one that reminded her of Rasler, of Balthier, of claiming and owning, of demands and answers. Ashe did not resist the inevitability of the architecture. Her gaze lipped over the edge of every tier, seeking the summit, the Mist-laced apex, the sky.
Ashe wanted it. All of it. Hers.
Her neck cramped. She took an unconscious step backwards to broaden her field of view. Her foot found nothing but air. The edge of the world beckoned, and she did not want to fall.
A hand clapped her on the elbow; a swift, presumptuous tug. Her grateful feet reclaimed the earth.
“Careful,” said the stranger. “The tower killed me, in precisely that way: with my eyes on the heavens. I presumed much: a single step backwards, the depth of the scaffolding, and that dreams would give me wings.” He smiled, sorrowful, achingly familiar: he looked like someone she should have known, could have known. “I told the damned scaffolders that they needed to add a rail. I hardly asked for the world.”
“Who are you?”
“The architect. I dreamed it, whole; I birthed it, through my head, through my hands. It could have been my crowning glory. But what is glory when set against gravity, against time?”
“Nothing ever goes to plan,” she told him. “I know.”
“I dreamed it, but when do dreams ever withstand dawn? The gods had their demands, their difficulties: and they never understood dreams.”
“They have only ever had the one,” Ashe said.
“Yes.”
“It is my dream too,” she said.
“Ah,” he said, and the world.
.jarred.
.turned a hard circle with the Pharos its lynchpin at the centre, a sucking black hole of everything and nothing, a weight, a needle, the fulcrum, the cruxis; the tower held everything and became nothing.
.and her stomach turned its outside in. She presumed a step to find her balance.
Her hands caught at clouds, at nothing --
-- at the arms of her chair, aching; a desperate save for an imagined fall.
Ashe dreamed herself awake.
“Cursed updraft,” said Balthier, as he levelled the Strahl’s flight. “What a choice of real estate.”
“Look at it,” Vaan said. He stumbled, only avoiding a fall by clutching at the back of Balthier’s chair, puppy-eager. “That’s something you’d never see in Rabanastre.”
“You sound like you want to pack it up and take it home,” Penelo said. “I’m pretty sure even sky pirates can’t thieve architecture.”
“You might be surprised,” Balthier said. “Anything constructed can be deconstructed.”
“There is a tale,” Reddas said, “of the gods destroying a tower that man built. Through the tower’s heights man came too close to reaching the heavens. If ever there was a tower that fit that myth, Pharos is such. Yet it stands. Perhaps the gods have found a purpose for such defiance of the skies.”
Vaan’s eager backside still limited Ashe’s view. While she had not thought to be grateful for such a sight, she had seen enough of the tower. The sheer mass of it drew them in, across space, across the ages, the weight pegging the fabric of their existence.
“Unlikely,” Fran said, “as the tale you recall is a distortion. My memory has the inverse. The gods are the builders, and the tower exists to stop man from reaching his true heaven. He becomes infatuated with the reaching the sky in its stead.” She looked sidelong; the ghost of a smile on her lips, and Balthier shifted his grip at the controls. “Such a thought amuses.”
The Strahl banked sharply. Ashe adjusted her grip on the arms of her chair only to release it a moment later, deflecting Vaan as he almost fell in her lap.
The Strahl touched land.
“Well,” said Balthier. “We’re here.”
Dizziness surged despite the lack of any basis for its presence.
“At last,” Ashe said, but the words sounded as eager as Vaan, and conveyed nothing of her intended meaning.
---
“No. That wasn’t. That wasn’t right.” Ashe paused, and gazed down into the solemn stare that would not look away.
“Once upon a time,” she tried again, “there was a tower.
“The tower was built by the gods, by those who had no imagination and no striving and never any dreaming. The tower offered false promises, hiding the path to the sky with stones and stone walls and old memories, with ghosts.
“The tower held everything inside, and did not allow new dreams to taunt man with thoughts of what he could have; what he could have been.”
---
ii. the queen and her fortitude
Pharos led them in circles.
Circling like vultures, no: vultures had intent, and a line’s edge of hope. Rather, they circled like bewildered moths without even a flame. They walked the same path. Ashe knew it like the feel of her sword hilt, like the taste of sorrow.
The Pharos confounded her.
The interior wound a broad circle, a sharp contrariness. A circle defied the natural shape of a stone block; the circular path defied even the building’s exterior. The tower’s paths led nowhere; mazes had no exit but the entry. The logic of functionality, the expectation for order within the built form set her, and the others, athwart this architectural purpose. Perhaps of them all, only Fran would look at this tower without eyes conditioned by expectation.
Ashe walked passed the shadow of her self, and wished she could stop to ask directions.
Balthier did not bear their state of misdirection well, and she did not think he hesitated for thought of his father. Ashe’s intention faltered as often as did her focus, as often as did their path, and the only ambiguity Balthier had ever tolerated was his own.
He marked the stone with his belt knife as they walked, and he pointed out the scratched crosses each time they passed the same point.
“X marks the spot,” he would say. “I think we’ve been here before.”
Ashe set her jaw every time she heard him inhale to speak, temples and cheeks aching. She could have borne his audacity with better grace if he had not succumbed to the monotony -
“X marks the spot,” he said, and raked the tip of his dagger across the already-scratched stone, a jarring clatter. “I think we’ve been here before.”
-- and merely repeated himself, over and again.
The ache in her jaw threatened to become a headache. She lost tolerance even as she lost her way. Battle-ready, tensioned like a trigger, she heard Balthier’s lips part, heard the barest inhalation preceding his words. As she spun to unleash all seven hells on the pirate, Balthier rocked back on his heels and smiled, just barely.
His expectation of her fury sparked her contrariness: she would not be considered as predictable as he. She faced forward again, continuing the pace. She held her tongue for as long as she could bear it.
“I will not bear this complaint,” she said. “I am not your mother, your wife or your queen. If you wish to go: be gone, find another path, or be silent.”
Balthier hesitated. His silence ached like a compressed spring.
“I merely wonder at the wisdom of allowing architecture to decide who, precisely, is worthy of power,” he said eventually.
Basch grunted. “The Queen has no need for our wisdom or our wondering.”
“Perhaps that is a greater loss than the Lady comprehends,” Reddas said, from the rear.
“I’m willing to pass on the wisdom,” Balthier said, “if we could just end the wandering.”
Ashe stopped again. The three men continued for a good few steps before realising.
“Should you wish to discuss my attributes, kindly wait for my absence,” she said. “Common courtesy dictates that, at the least. But for now, I am still here.”
“Indeed, it seems we are all still here.” Balthier pointed: the stone wall bore one of the crosses he had engraved. “X marks the spot,” he said. “I think we’ve been here before.”
Ashe almost screamed.
Instead, she ran. She kept her pace as fast as she could bear: perhaps the exertion would consume the breath Balthier needed to vent his scorn.
“Stubborn,” Reddas said. His tread fell as heavy as his disdain.
“Purposeful,” Basch said. Air rasped in his throat before he could further defend her.
“Come now, Reddas,” said Balthier, his words running apace, “stubbornness does have its helpful features: Ashe will always know what she’ll be thinking tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. Balthier had the right of it even in the depth of his wrongness. Tomorrow would contain more circles. Tomorrow would contain only the tower. The tower would stand for far longer than her stubbornness would; Dalmasca would continue long past the memory of her efforts.
Her footsteps pounded the rhythm of her breath, her heart, her thoughts. She had nowhere else to be. Her path had led to the Pharos, through it. She would not allow mere architecture to daunt her.
The gods offered her the world alongside Dalmasca, and she had not even asked.
---
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t right either.”
“You’re not very good at stories, mother.”
“I know,” Ashe said. “But some stories aren’t very good ones.”
“Try again?”
“Once upon a time,” Ashe said, “there was a tower.
“The names of the builders of the tower were lost in the mist of time, in that endless forever of the gods. But none of that mattered, because the tower was meaningless, meant nothing, and changed everything in the end.
“Long ago, a king came to the tower and found within it the stone from which to build a nation.”
---
iii. the king and the nightmare
Fatigue made even the best of resolutions difficult to keep.
Ashe nodded. The symphonic fire, crackling, majestic in its barbarity, could not demand her alertness. Her chin slumped, her eyelids closed, her head fell weighted by dread, by anticipation.
The taste of the century of ages filled her mouth; the dreams of the gods crusted her eyes with slee--
--sleep? She could not slumber! Ashe leapt with a gasp. She had to run. The path through the heart of Pharos stretched before her, behind her, stretching outwards and upwards.
A spiral. Not a circle.
Ashe ran, and Rasler kept pace to her right, Raminas to her left, and Raithwall kept guard at the rear.
“You have my sword,” Raithwall said.
“Yes,” she said, and looked at the blade in her hand.
Rasler smiled, a warmth she could have known, should not have forgotten. “You will restore the greatness of Raithwall’s peace. You will avenge us.”
“Would that I could see such greatness,” Raminas said. “But I know that some sacrifice is necessary in the cause of peace, and stability. You will make me proud to have died, daughter.”
Ashe could see her target now, and only once she saw did she realise she even had a target. She pushed, until her body ached with the rhythm of her pace, jarring teeth, clothes, feet, bones.
When she realised who walked this path ahead of her, who she had pressed so hard to reach, the shock of it settled her in the pit of her stomach.
Raithwall.
Raithwall.
Raithwall.
Raminas flanked him to the right, Rasler to the left, and Ashe kept guard at the rear.
“I must apologise for that sword,” Raithwall said, as she shadowed his footsteps. “It is exceptionally heavy, is it not? Promises can sometimes weigh more than metal.”
“Promises are the rock from which we build nations,” Raminas contradicted.
“Promises are the walls that keep out the night,” Rasler said.
Raithwall told her: “I never wanted the sword. All I wanted was somewhere without swords. I wanted somewhere to rest, without need for setting a guard. I wanted my women to collect water in the cool dark of dawn without the threat of a raid. I wanted to remove the risk of death, of thirst. Surely that was not much? Surely I did not ask the world? Just water, and life. I wanted my children to play, instead of staring, endlessly, weeping, with naught to comfort them, not even a mother. I wanted the aqueduct finished; I wanted the city walls built. I did not want the sword.”
“Some sacrifice is necessary,” Raminas informed her. “If sacrifice is not necessary, then it is pointless. Will you make my death purposeless?”
“There is only one way forward,” Rasler said. “We must keep moving.”
A circle, not a spiral. They ran in circles.
Raithwall stopped. Ashe stopped. Their flanking guards stopped, chill shadows, weights of stone. The back of Raithwall’s head, his hair: she saw now they were the grey of marble, his skin the chipped texture of weathered granite.
“Where will you go, then?” he asked. “What path for your feet? Which sword for your hand?”
“The treaty,” Rasler said, the sound of a tombstone grinding, inexorable, closed.
“The treaty cuts a path,” Raminas said, the clatter of a useless blade falling to the floor.
“The treaty,” Raithwall said, and he sighed. “Yes. I had forgotten. It is set in st--”
“--stone,” Raithwall said, and reached to claim it.
“No,” said his constant god. “Not yet . You must cut, three times.”
Raithwall lifted the treaty blade.
Raithwall struck.
Raithwall cut off his left arm.
“The dawn of your peace,” said the god.
The words entered Ashe’s mind like mice in a granary, unwelcome, and without recourse to the usual mode of entry.
“That limb will not bother me again,” Raithwall said, uncaring for the blood that skated across the floor. “It is better off; it shall not bother me with its pains.”
“Again.”
Ashe could not hear the god’s eagerness for the ringing in her ears, the sound of the tip of Raithwall’s sword scraping across the wet stone floor. Blood snaked across the tops of her feet, as cold as uselessness.
Raithwall lifted the treaty blade. He struck, cut off his right leg, and fell.
“The twilight of your striving,” the constant god told him. “The sun sets on your endeavours.”
“It ached, when I ran too far or fought too hard,” Raithwall said, kneeling before the god. “It is better this way.”
Her vision blurred, her ears felt muffled. As Raithwall lifted the sword for this last, his third blow, her skin vanished, or perhaps the world disappeared.
But Raithwall hesitated.
“Again,” the god said. “Once more, as our treaty dictates. A third time, for the never ending, unshadowed realm that is your midlight. Again, for peace unending and life unchanging. Again, for eternity. Again, again, again, and we shall remember your name forever. The forever of a god, not of man. T he forever that is stasis, and perfection, and all that you are not. The tower will stand forever.”
Raithwall’s blade fell for the third time. He cut off his remaining leg.
“It was useless, without the others,” he told her, he entreated her. The true terror of the matter lay not in his dismemberment, but in her understanding.
Ashe would have offered him her sorrow, but she had turned to stone.
---
“And when a queen came to the tower,” Ashe continued, “many long years after the king, she came seeking a sharpened sword, thinking to build anew, or perhaps merely to build an old nation new. But along with her came a priest, and in the manner of all priests as he gave and found absolution he taught the queen a lesson, and she learned she was no queen, but a fool.
“And the queen learned that nations are built with stone, honest stone,” Ashe said, “not with the edge of a blade that is not.”
“…not what?”
“A blade.”
---
iv. the priest and priestess
Fran led.
“The Mist is thicker through here,” the viera said, and pointed down a dim path. “We should continue.”
“As you will,” Ashe said.
Two days, and new territory revealed itself under Fran’s scrutiny. They had not encountered one of Balthier’s scratched reminders for some time, a small mercy merely replaced by Reddas’ onslaught of confession, of query.
“A wise leader learns the value of putting the right tool to the right task,” Reddas said somewhat kindly, as Ashe fell into step with him.
Ashe glared.
“In the place of wondering you wish to offer me your wisdom,” she said. “Shall Dalmasca’s queen be advised by a repentant fool?”
“I take exception, m’lady. Consider me your priest instead. Tell me of your intent.”
“A strange priest, this. He seeks my forgiveness instead of bestowing his; he offers judgment in the place of solace. Fran: your advice in the place of this strange priest, for even a viera can do no worse! In his quest for clemency does he count my word in the stead of my husband’s?”
Fran looked over her shoulder, her expressionless gaze lost in the distance between them. “ Substitution is ever the habit of humes, Lady. It seems none of you will ever learn such a thing holds no succour. Not woman. Never man.”
“Lady,” Reddas said, heavy, unbending. “Let us not talk of forgiveness, for I need none from you. What I share is my knowing; what I ask is your understanding.”
“And I demand yours! You call my intent into question at every turn. But my intent has no focus on these events but instead the outcome. Everything I do is for Dalmasca. For the Dalmasca I remember. For the Dalmasca past; great, safe. I will restore it; I will remake the past.”
“You wish to walk an impossible path,” Fran said, her eyes forward. “As well try to tread precisely the same grains of sand twice.”
“Heed Fran if you will not heed me,” Reddas said. “Question the heart of your intent. To my sorrow I did not.”
“You would have me reject the stone,” she said.
“I have never pretended otherwise. Such a blade turns too easily.”
“And then what will happen to my people, Reddas, to Dalmasca, when I have no blade with which to defend?”
Reddas kept his silence.
“Questions,” Fran said. “Question everything, but not to find an answer. The right question will never be answered: it is not a bolt for tightening into place. It is a seed for planting, to bear more seed, to green the whole landscape with more questions.”
“Question,” Reddas said, “but not what will happen to Dalmasca should you reject the stone. Question what will happen to you, Lady Ashe, should you accept it?”
---
“Is that all the story?”
“No,” Ashe said. “There is an ending, of sorts.”
---
iv. lightning
Raithwall, Ashe knew from her history lessons, had been considered an architect as well as an autocrat; a designer and a dynast, the maker of cities as well as of civilisations.
Raithwall used stone as a foundation for a nation; and the gods’ stone as the key holding the arch. He never used it as a sword. To reject change was to be the architect of nothing but decay; to walk in endless circles. This Ashe knew, as well as she knew the pain of the sharp-shrapnel edge of Mist ripping at her face.
Raithwall and his constant god had set their treaty in stone; thinking stone would last forever. But the forever of a god and the forever of a hume were different things. This Ashe knew, as well as she knew the haft of her sword ripping at the palm of her hand, and she knew she would never bear a blade but one of metal and leather.
Reddas ripped the blade from her hand, and after a moment, Ashe let it go. A moment, and all plans were voided, all dreams forgotten. A moment, and all her hopes birthed themselves, anew. A hope for every moment, and every moment held new hopes, no promises. Every moment shone like a dawn; all the greater for that fact that she was not.
Ashe ripped out the piece of herself that feared; Ashe knew herself, inadequate, mortal, set to die with or without changing the world. But therein nestled the choice, a perfect spark, and the choice was hers, and not made alone.
Reddas ripped himself from the world, and Ashe knew and understood, in a way that no one word could describe. Ashe let go, of him, of the blade, of Rasler and her father and her ancestor, of the past and the nightmare and the dream; Ashe let go and grabbed onto the only thing left, and that was her self.
Ashe did not ask for directions. Where she went now, she had not been before.
There was terror here, a new one, and no old comfort to be a shield, or a blade.
Ashe smiled.
Lightning ripped the sky, and changed everything.
---
“Once upon a time,” Ashe said, “there was a tower, built by the gods to stop man from reaching the heavens. But the tower did not achieve its purpose.”
Silence ached.
“Did you destroy it, mother?”
“Why would I?” Ashe said. “Time will do that task for me: nothing lasts forever. I made a new path, and it led well away from any towers.”
Silence congealed.
“You really aren’t very good at telling stories.”
“Some stories are not told for listening,” Ashe said, “but for the knowing."
---