The Naming (FFXII, Basch and Noah, Basch/Vossler)
Happy birthday to me.
So this was originally going to be something short and sweet.
It exploded on me.
I've tried a lot of new things with this one -- writing in the past tense and using omniscient third person in places (as fairy tale narration tends to do) -- but I'm pleased with the result. Even though this really isn't yaoi at all. There's incidental m/m, but I'm pretty sure this is more gen than anything else. I seem to be moving in a more gen direction these days.
Right. Enough of me babbling. You guys want fic.
Title: The Naming
Author: puella_nerdii
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 6,446
Warnings: Vague spoilers through the end of the game, depending on how good you are at deciphering metaphor.
Prompt: fairy tale - breaking and mending
Summary: What time would destroy, it can also mend. Two brothers, one journey.
A/N: Definitely more a fusion of fairy tale and FFXII than outright AU or crossover, but hopefully it still works. And definitely more gen than anything else.
Once upon a time, under the auspice of a clear night sky and gibbous moon, two boys broke the tranquility of midnight with their squalls. Their father severed two birthing-cords, the healer attending them took two towels and wiped thick clots of blood from two heads, and their mother held one babe to each breast and smiled before sleep claimed her.
Their mother and father gave the boys proper Landiser names, though one was often used in place of the other. The twins learned to respond to both, but when they grew old enough to speak, they laughed at this, that anyone should mistake Noah for Basch or Basch for Noah.
A name, you must understand, is more than a form of address. It is the shape of a man’s soul, and when his name is lost or torn from him, he may neither live nor die, for neither realm can abide his presence; without a name to call his own, he becomes what others think he should be, and is reduced to a pale, shifting imitation of a man.
“Perhaps I was Noah, when we were born,” Basch whispered to his twin. They had dragged their blankets to the roof of the fort that night, for a great shower of stars was to spangle the velvet skies.
“You can’t be Noah,” his brother insisted. He furrowed his brow with such gravity that Basch could not help but laugh. “I am Noah.”
“But perhaps you were not originally,” Basch countered, and he shoved his brother in the arm. “Perhaps the priests of Kiltias picked up the wrong babe when it was time to bring Basch to the holy light. Perhaps he seized me when he meant to seize you.”
“Mother and Father would have noticed.” Noah stuck his chin out at its most stubborn angle.
“Mother calls you by my name half the time. That’s because she likes me best.”
At this, Noah shoved his brother back and toppled him over with the force of his arms; Basch seized the loose curls framing Noah’s face, and they wrestled on the roof until they became hopelessly entangled in the blankets and in each other’s limbs, laughing and shouting as the moon winked at them from above.
“But intertwined they shall not always be,” the crone prophesied. Their father’s men-at-arms found her huddled beneath a threadbare blanket outside the fort’s gates; their mother sat her in front of the kitchen fires with a bowl of stew and a mug of ale. Her hair was a thin thatch of brittle straw, her teats shriveled plums, and thick brown liquid dripped from her cracked teeth when she spoke. “In dust and ash they shall part, and in blood and blackness they shall meet again.”
Tania fon Ronsenburg clutched her breast and swayed, the blood draining from her cheeks, but the crone’s voice marched on to the cadence of an ancient drum. The finger-bones wound about her neck on a string added their rattle to her foretelling. “And both shall be lost,” said she. “Naught left to them but a name, and even that must remain locked away lest it be tarnished from use.”
“Leave us,” Tania cried. “Take your ill tidings far from this place.”
The crone straightened and raised a gnarled fist to fon Ronsenburg’s lady. “You shall not live to see my words’ fruition,” she promised. “Blood will drown your lungs before the theft comes to pass. A small mercy, perhaps.”
And Tania coughed, and for the first time, her hand came away from her mouth smeared in red.
The crone tucked her tattered robes around herself and hobbled out the door, battered and buffeted by the roaring rains as she walked to the gate. Basch pressed his nose to the door and watched her halting steps until he could be still no longer; he seized a handful of roasted chestnuts and a bit of bread and cheese, bundled it in a kerchief, and rushed into the wall of water. “Here, madam,” he said, offering her the food, “for your journey.”
“I give you my thanks,” said she. “Accept this token as a mark of my gratitude,” and here she pressed a flat disc of mythril into his palm. “When all else is gone from you, this will remain; at such a time, entreat it for aid, and you will be answered. Thrice may you use it, and no more.”
He wished her well, tucked the talisman inside his shirt, and ran back to the hearth. She turned on her heel and was gone, for her kind does not linger in mortal company longer than they must.
His mother scolded him and wrung the water from his clothes. As he dried himself by the fire, Noah scampered to his side. “What did she tell you?” he asked.
“Nothing of import,” Basch replied. He meant no deception by it; with his brother by his side, he saw no need for the protection offered by a mythril talisman. He kept it tucked safe inside his mattress and thought neither of the crone nor of her present for many years, for when the war came at last to Landis, he had no time to spend thinking of such a long-ago night, not when the very air around him screamed for battle. He took his sword in hand; to his right, he heard Noah unsheathe his own blade, and the two of them charged forward until they could bear the reek of death no longer, until Archadia’s airships cast long shadows over the rusty skies.
Death waited for them when they returned home in the blood-spattered handkerchiefs littering Tania’s bedroom, in the greasy shadows under her eyes, in the translucency of her skin.
“We will not let her die,” said Noah. “Too many others lie dead. Must she be counted among their number?”
“We will do what we can,” Basch answered. “I will go south and seek a cure for her, and I’ll not return until I find a way to make her well.”
“But you will return,” Noah said.
“I swear it.”
And they clasped hands to seal their vow. Basch kissed his mother’s clammy brow, wiped a thin trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth, and journeyed through the blighted fields and slumping mountains of his homeland with naught more than a pack, his sword, and a good set of boots.
Long did he wander over hill and valley in search of the cure, but for his troubles, he gained only cramped legs and a thick cake of mud on his boots. He asked every man and woman he encountered if they had heard word, perhaps, of a way to stop the wasting sickness, but all shook their heads sadly, though they bade him luck on his journey. Even the viera he encountered had no knowledge of how to counteract the disease. Still, he walked on; perhaps the remedy lay in the next town, or the town after the next.
At last he came to the edge of a vast desert. The heat sat ill with him, used as he was to Landis’s colder clime, and as he mopped the torrents of sweat from his eyes he wondered how Noah fared. Spring ought to have ceded way to summer in the past few weeks, and the first clusters of valerian should have pushed their way through the warming soil. He wondered if his mother saw them blooming; valerian had long been her favorite flower.
Rubbing the crone’s talisman for luck, he came upon a merchant beset by wolves, but the creatures proved no match for his sword, and the pack staggered away with deep belly-wounds.
“Ah, sir,” the merchant cried, “you have saved me. How may I return your kindness?”
“Do you know of a cure for the wasting sickness?” he asked.
“Alas, such knowledge is beyond me, but the healers of Dalmasca are well-versed in herb lore, and they may have your answer.”
“My thanks,” Basch said. “Where does its capital lie?”
“Seven leagues from here, to the west. Follow the course of the Nebra River, and take this,” he said, passing a leather canteen writ with shining sigils into Basch’s hand. “It will never run dry, so you will always have water on your journey. And take a potion, for you will want it should you find yourself grievously wounded.”
“Again, my thanks,” he said, and the two of them parted ways.
He continued his sojourn at night and rested by the rocky outcroppings by day to avoid the worst of the heat. When he made his camp for the second night, he noticed an odd reddish-brown stain speckling the rocks. Curious, he followed the trail as the blood grew thicker and wetter until he arrived at its source: a dark-haired man in battered armor, with wide gashes across his face and a sluggish pulse. Basch knelt by the fallen warrior, cracked open the potion flask gifted to him, and tipped its contents down the man’s throat. As the magicks knitted his flesh back together, the ruddiness returned to his cheeks. He coughed violently and moved his lips as though he meant to give Basch thanks, but no words came out.
“Here,” Basch said, moistening the man’s lips with the water from his canteen.
“Sir,” the man said, “do not waste your water on me, for in the desert, it is more precious than gold.”
“Ah,” said he, “but my canteen will not run dry. Drink more deeply from it, for I mislike the hints of pallor about you.”
“Pallor indeed.” The man thrust his tanned forearm next to Basch’s fair one. “Still, sir, I am in your debt for what you have done. If there is any service I could render-”
“Your name first,” said Basch, “and then we will talk of such matters.”
“I am Vossler York Azelas, of the Order of the Knights of Dalmasca.”
“Dalmasca!” Basch cried. “That is the land I seek.”
“I will take you there,” Vossler promised. “I will give you an introduction to the king, and my recommendations that you be admitted to our Order, for you have the look of a hardy warrior about you, and we are always in want of them.”
“You are too kind, Sir Azelas,” said he, “but I do not think I shall stay long in your country. I must find a cure for my mother, who is stricken with the wasting sickness.”
At this, Vossler’s face grew grave. “I know of none.”
“Still, I must try. I will travel with you to Rabanastre to seek an audience with the king, but I can promise no more than that.”
Vossler nodded, and the two of them bedded down close together that day so one could rouse the other quickly should their camp be attacked. They passed the last leg of the journey amicably, and though Basch remembered home and Noah every time he glanced at his boots, he found Vossler a more pleasing sight to set his gaze upon.
(Vossler, for his part, felt his pulse quicken when the two of them sparred, a quickening beyond what physical exertion could account for.)
Rabanastre was a wondrous place suspended in eternal summer. On its streets, he witnessed the races mingling as they never had in Landis. They hawked their wares at the open-air markets, haggled like fishwives over the price of bread and tea, and gathered around the fountain in the southern plaza to trade stories. And Basch lived as he walked through the cobbled streets. With Vossler at his side, he dared to march up to the front gates of the palace itself. And with Vossler at his side he strode through the vaulted halls and bent his knee before the king.
“Sir Azelas speaks highly of you,” King Raminas said. “We have need of knights of your caliber.”
“And I thank him for his commendation,” Basch replied, “but I must not tarry; my mother will die of the wasting sickness unless I find the cure.”
“My healers may know of such a remedy, but I fear I do not.”
He inclined his head; the response was customary, but it still stung him.
“However,” King Raminas continued, “if you stay a fortnight, I can make inquiries on your behalf. Perhaps you would consent to spend time with my daughter Ashelia; she is an incorrigible little child, but she loves Sir Azelas dearly.”
Basch bowed again, said he was deeply obliged, and that he would be sure to visit the princess. And so he spent a pleasant two weeks with Vossler and the little princess-the three of them romped about corridors of the Royal Palace and made brief trips to the streets outside, and at the end of the day Basch retired to Vossler’s chambers, glad of company in his bed once more. The city itself was a gay affair, always busy and bright. He never glimpsed a storm cloud in the sky.
At the close of the fortnight, King Raminas and his healers had found no cure.
“I grieve to hear that,” Basch said, “and I thank you for your hospitality once more. I suppose I will go to Kerwon next, to the shrine at Bur-Omisace.”
“Stay but one more night,” Raminas entreated him, “and we shall find your cure. And Ashelia had so hoped you would take her to the Muthru Bazaar on the morrow.”
“Very well,” said he. “I suppose I can stay another night.”
The next day came and went, and still King Raminas had nothing for Basch.
“But stay with us another night,” he said, “and we shall find your cure. I know Sir Azelas would be glad of your company; it pleases me to see him smile so often these days.”
“For his sake, I will stay another night,” Basch said, and he did.
On the third night, King Raminas could not offer him a cure, but he did offer him another night’s stay in the palace. “We shall find your cure. And there is to be a tournament tomorrow. It is not too late for you to enter the lists.”
“I’ve not seen a tournament in years, not since the war began,” he said. “I shall stay another night.”
Every day, Basch would announce his intent to leave in the morning, and every day, King Raminas would ask him to stay another night, begging him to think of Ashelia and Vossler. He did, and in doing so the face of his mother slid further and further from his mind until one day he tried to recall her features and found he did not know the color of her eyes.
His brother’s face he never forgot. It was too like his own. He prayed nothing had happened to mar their resemblance.
On Ashelia’s birthday, he ceased his habit of announcing his imminent departure. Landis remained-in the crone’s talisman knotted to his belt, in the scar on his knuckle he received when he was five and Noah bit him, in the scent of pine that still clung to his boots-but Dalmasca was a nation in its prime. Dalmasca lived on, and so did he.
As Ashelia grew and blossomed, so too did her country, for the shadow of Archadia had not yet stunted its growth. But the skies of Dalmasca could not remain free forever, and when Captain Basch of the Order of the Knights of Dalmasca heard of Nabudis’s fall, he raced back to tell his new liege, confident that his chocobo could shake off any ghosts from his past that might be chasing him.
How very wrong he was.
Archadia swiftly forced Dalmasca to her knees. King Raminas took Basch and Vossler with him to old Nalbina and announced his intent to make peace with the empire, and Basch could do nothing but think on the gory entrails Archadia left behind when it fed. So lost was he that he did not see the ghost at first. Then he caught a glimpse of himself running down a darkened corridor, and he could do naught else but give chase. Long did he navigate Nalbina’s labyrinthine pathways until he could not tell what corridor led to where. And it was dark, darker than the deepest part of night when he and Noah had huddled together, their frozen fingers intertwined as they awaited the dawn.
Light flared before his eyes. He reeled and found no one there to catch his fall. As he clattered to the ground, several pairs of hands seized him roughly and jerked his head up until he saw himself. Himself, standing before himself. How could it be?
But it was not himself, for the lines around his own mouth were not so hard, and his own eyes had never held such coldness.
He looked again, and he knew.
“Oh,” he cried, “Noah, forgive me. Noah, Noah!”
“I am Gabranth,” and Noah’s voice was steel, sharp and quick. “What right have you to call me by that name? What right have you to name yourself fon Ronsenburg?”
“Our mother-”
“Dead. And with your name on her lips as she passed. And so I judge you, Basch fon Ronsenburg.”
“Noah,” Basch pleaded, but Gabranth acknowledged no brother and thus had no ear for Basch’s tales.
“You abandoned those who bestowed your name, those who shaped it, those who taught you its meaning. I strip you of your name and give you a new one: kingslayer.”
His judgment made, Gabranth took up the subtle knife of Shemhazai and with it severed Basch’s name from his soul. His name quivered in the air, a ball of feeble blue light, before Gabranth caught it inside a three-pointed pendant, and he saw that it had indeed been mistreated. Without his name, his skin shriveled and became pallid, as though he had not seen the sun. His ribs protruded from his sides, his hair grew long and disheveled, and red welts sprung up over his body.
“You see now,” Gabranth said. “The wounds on your soul are made manifest on your flesh. You wear the shape of a kingslayer well.”
And with the creature before him judged, Gabranth ordered him seized and thrown into a cavernous pit from which light could neither enter nor escape, for such a man as this could not be loosed upon the world. Gabranth clutched Basch’s name close to his chest: truly, he had done it a favor by freeing it from the man who would abuse it so.
The kingslayer sat alone in the dark, unnamed and unwanted. His shackles kept him upright even as the skin beneath them scabbed and festered. Lice nested in his hair and rats nipped at his toes; no other creatures had so much as a look for him. He had neither food nor drink, but as he neither hungered nor thirsted, their loss was not so painful.
Ah, if only he had not left Landis. If only he had not left half his heart behind, if only he had not broken his oath, if only he had not forgotten the crone’s warning.
The crone’s warning, yes, but he had also forgotten the crone’s gift. The talisman. What had become of the talisman?
“Wise woman,” he said in a voice withered and cracked from disuse, “you gave a boy a mythril talisman once, and told him to call upon it when all else was gone. All else is gone from me now. Only your promise remains. I beg of you aid.”
A soft glow pulsed beneath the ground and rose slowly as he blinked, rose until a sphere of light sat humming at his feet. It cracked down the center like an egg to reveal three winged creatures: one white-haired and ebon-skinned, one brown-haired and pale, one fair-haired and tanned.
“We’ve heard your call,” said the fair-haired, the smallest of them, “and we have been sent to help you. Call me Vaan; my darker companion is Fran, and her gentleman is Balthier.”
“I’ll free him from these shackles,” said Balthier, and at a touch from him, the shackles fell away and clattered to the ground.
“And I’ve the charge of tending to his sores,” Fran proclaimed. As her cool breath settled over his skin, the angry weals faded, and open wounds began to congeal.
“And all three of us shall carry you up and away, far from this pit,” Vaan finished.
“You are rather small,” he said. “Such a journey would not overtax you?”
“Let not our outward seeming fool you,” Balthier replied, perching on top of his head. “We are more than what they seem.”
The three of them seized him by the scruff of the neck, the middle of the back, and the feet and carried him lying prone, floating him up past the high dark walls to which he had grown so accustomed and straight through the ceiling of his dungeon. When they set him on his feet before the sinking sun, he wept to see the light grace his weakened eyes once more.
“Now we will leave you,” Fran said, “but we will teach you a rhyme; if you’ve need of us, recite it and we will appear to you, but we can only aid you twice more.”
“I understand,” he said, and so they taught him the verse:
By oath you swore to answer me.
I call you: one and two and three.
Vaan buckled a sword around his waist, Balthier set shoes upon his feet, and Fran outfitted him with a small pack. He gave them his thanks once more, and they vanished into the air, leaving glowing trails in their wake. Once more he faced the Estersand. It, at least, had changed little in these past years.
He set out for Rabanastre, taking a secret path through the desert far from the main road. He expected to encounter no company upon it, save for wolves and cockatrices, but he was sorely mistaken. A group of three women, veiled in the Rozarrian fashion, seemed to swirl up from the sand itself and tugged at his clothes, begging him for alms.
“I have little to give you,” he said, but something in their hands reminded him of his mother and he added, “But here are these three fire-stones I took from wolves I slew; perhaps you can exchange them for coin at the bazaar.”
“Ah, you are kind,” said the tallest of them in sweet, girlish tones, “too kind.”
“Where are you bound, traveler?” The stoutest of them was built along the lines of a boulder, but she moved swiftly for her size.
“To Rabanastre, in the west.”
The last of them waved a gnarled finger at him. “Oh, but you do not seek Rabanastre, not since Dalmasca fell to Archadia these two years past.”
“Two years,” he murmured. “Has it been so long?”
“And longer and longer with each passing day,” they chanted.
“If you would not have me go there, where must I go?” he asked them. “Must I wander once more?”
“You’ve roads to travel still, kingslayer,” the eldest of them cackled. He staggered back from her words; they planted something black and cold in his soul.
“Am I called that now?”
“Yes,” the stoutest said, “for your name is lost to you still.”
“Tell me, if you can,” he entreated them, sinking to his knees, “how may I regain it?”
“Walk,” the tallest told him. “Walk to the shores of Valendia. In the midst of the ocean is an island. No ship can navigate the waters around it, and no airship can sail through the jagd that veils it. On the island is a tower sheathed eternally in darkness, and in the tower’s highest reaches shines a light made by neither man nor beast. Bathe in that light and your name will be restored.”
“Heed not the creatures within, and take nothing from them, even if they are offered to you as tokens of surrender,” the stoutest said.
“When you battle the guardian at the gate, do not look at his eyes, for a most fearful curse will fall upon you if you do,” the eldest said. “And remember what your name once meant, for if you lose sight of that, your quest means nothing.”
And in a great flurry of sand, they vanished.
Once more he walked: through the Mosphoran Highwaste, fleeing from humbabas who howled as they pursued him through rocky tunnels and up the sides of great spires of jagged stone; through the Salikawood, hiking trails long grown thick with moss and rot; past the Phon Coast, pausing briefly to bathe in the waters of the Hakawea Shore; through the Tchita Uplands, watching for any serpents that might be hiding in the tall grasses; and down through the Cerobi Steppe, resting in the shadow of long-abandoned windmills. He reached Balfonheim Port a good deal hardier-the long trek toned his legs, and the beasts he encountered in the wilds gave his sword-arm good practice.
Most men and women he spoke to in Balfonheim knew nothing of the island inaccessible by land or air. A few started when he described the cataract, then drew the gods-circle on their chests and warned him not to speak of such things. He walked to one of the jetties just outside the port’s bounds and ran his hands along the damp rocks. He must cross the ocean, he knew. The wilderness cared about neither him nor his lost name, but Balfonheim’s citizens, tolerant as they may have been of myriad vices, looked askance at him when they asked his name and he could give no answer. He became accustomed to people drawing the gods-circle or crossing to the other side of the street as he passed, grew acquainted with the cloud of whispers trailing in his wake. “Accursed are the unnamed,” dock workers told one another, “for they will seek to steal your name to fill the gap within themselves.”
He only desired what had been his, but he dared not say it.
A vagrant slept at the foot of the jetty. There was something familiar about the man’s coarse beard; he bent closer to the sleeping figure and started, for here was Vossler, Vossler stranded at the periphery of civilization.
“Alas,” he cried, “how far you have fallen.”
Vossler tilted his head up. Thick brown scabs coated his eyes. He would never see again. “Your voice,” said he. “It sounds-tell me, were you once called-?”
“That name has been taken from me, but I would take it back, if I have the strength to do it,” he replied. “It was a good name, though I was not always worthy of it.”
“Nor I of mine,” Vossler said. Shiny burns striped his skin, pink and raw. “Little Ashelia-but she has not been small for years.”
“No. She has not.”
“I betrayed her.” He coughed. “They name you oathbreaker in Dalmasca, but that name ought to be mine. They told me the truth of what happened that night at Nalbina when I tried to broker peace between Lady Ashe and the Empire. And for it, I was cast from the skies in a ball of fire. ‘Twas her hand struck the final blow, I think.” Another cough; this one seized Vossler’s entire body and set it to convulsing. “I betrayed her to save Dalmasca. Had they reviled my name, I would have accepted it, but now it seems they will not know me at all.”
“Do not speak so,” he said, “for you will live.”
“No,” Vossler said. “You will live. You do not go to heel as your brother does, but there is something in you that will not die. He did not take that from you when he took your name.”
“I thought he had. When I saw him condemn me-we were so close, once. But he and I are far from that time, far from home. I fear those days are lost forever. His name is as lost as mine own.”
“Then as you seek your name, seek his also.” Vossler locked his jaw so he would not tremble from his body’s anguish. “Find him. Find the princess. Do what I could not.”
“I swear it,” he whispered, and upon hearing it, Vossler gave a great sigh and went still.
This, then, was a different sort of darkness. As he cradled Vossler’s body, the rhyme sprang unbidden to his lips:
By oath you swore to answer me.
I call you: one and two and three.
“We are here,” said Vaan and Balthier and Fran, “and we will carry you to the cataract, but you must lay Vossler York Azelas to rest in the sand first.”
“Then I shall,” he said, and kissed Vossler’s cooling brow before his feet left Valendia’s shores, bound across the rolling blue waters.
“Jagd is no barrier to us,” Balthier explained. “Mist is nourishment, not a hindrance.”
The sun weighed on the back of his neck and the glare rising from the water beamed into his eyes, but such sensations seemed fleeting enough; with the three sprites propelling him onwards, his voyage went swiftly. In place of tears, clouds laden with rain moistened his face. At last his feet touched ground once more, and the dark tower beckoned to him. It stood at the center of the cataract, issuing its challenge to the sky. Its design was ancient, sporting protruding spines from every floor, but the hand of time had touched it not, for he saw no worn patches of stone on the tower, no spots of discoloration.
“Again we must leave you,” said Fran, “but you may ask our favor once more.”
“Safe journeys,” said Vaan.
“And safe return,” Balthier added.
He walked the twisting path to the tower’s base alone. The light faded with each step he took, and he heard other feet stepping in concert with his own; he recognized his father’s heavy gait, his mother’s light steps, Vossler’s measured walk, Noah’s quick pace. The thump of their boots striking the cracked cobblestones carried to the farthest reaches of the cataract.
Then the dragon roared, and he caught a glimpse of blackened and rotting flesh hanging by shredded tendons from bleached bones before the stench of decomposition rolled over him. He was not to look at the creature’s eyes, he remembered, rolling to the side as its talons shattered the ground inches from his head. He could guess its movements from the way the ground shook and darted to the side when the tremors grew nearer, but it was a poor method of going about it. He glimpsed the tower’s gate between the dragon’s forelegs and despaired of ever reaching it before he was forced to leap away as the creature whipped its tail towards him. Showers of rock sprayed him; he snatched a flat grey stone before it could reach his eyes, and he recalled the nights when he and Noah slept in the forest and started their campfires with flint and steel. He struck flint to blade and begged the gods for a spark.
The gods heard his prayer, and as it is known they loathe creatures who would seek to cheat death’s clutches, they chose to assist him. A fiery whip blazed into being, and with a mighty crack it smote the dragon’s back; the creature released a shriek shrill enough to split the skies apart before it turned to ash.
He murmured his thanks and walked on. The dust clung to his boots as he approached the gate.
And what would you seek, traveler? a voice inquired of him. It was old, that voice, woven into the tower’s mortar at the dawn of the world.
“To regain what was lost,” said he, “and no more.”
Time will have changed it.
“Changed it, yes. But what time would destroy, it can also mend.”
Then pass through the golden gates, but know this: he without power, want it not. He with power, trust it not. He with sight, heed it not. Rend illusion, cut the true path.
The stairs stretched before him as the gates swung open to admit him, spiraling upward to infinity. He knew not how long he climbed, only that his legs ceased their protest when the tower’s depths vanished from view. The only sounds around him came from the whisper of his breath. The gloom showed no sign of abating; his feet quickly learned the distance between each step so he would not falter on his journey. And still he walked on. Always he walked on.
Then strange murmurs began to surround him, their overlapping voices promising him treasure after treasure. He took heed of the stout woman and paid them as little mind as he could, but he did not stop up his ears, and so phrases drifted into his consciousness.
“Take my hand, and I shall deposit all the gold of Ivalice at your feet, pilgrim.” Yellow lights shimmered before him, winking at him with promises of untold wealth. He climbed on.
“Take my hand, and I shall set a crown upon your brow and make you a king. Landis shall be restored, and you shall be the instrument of its renewal.” Another flash in the darkness revealed a cape of crimson fur and a mythril circlet, the garb of Landiser kings of old-but Landis had been a republic for generations before his birth. The old throne had long been melted down into scrap metal. He climbed on.
“Take my hand, and your love shall walk beside you for the rest of your days.” Vossler’s face swam from the depths this time, and he nearly paused to clutch the image close to his heart, but he remembered the dragon’s fate and thought of Vossler struck down by a similar wrathful bolt for daring to return. He climbed on.
Screams tore at the air behind him, and all was silence once more. His body told him he still moved forward, but the evidence of his eyes suggested no such progress. “If my eyes will tell me nothing,” he said, “then they need not remain open.”
When he closed them, warmth flooded his head. He fought not to reel backwards, sure of the perilous fall awaiting him should he stumble. Slowly, as though in a dream, his eyelids drifted open.
He stood before a great crystal flecked with every color he could imagine and several hues he could not. All the colors sounded separate notes as they danced before him until the harmonies blended into a voice.
Basch fon Ronsenburg, it chimed. You have come.
“No,” he said.
No?
“I have waited long to reclaim that name,” said he. “But it was taken from me, and I would have him return it.”
As you will, the voice said, and he thought he detected amusement in it. From a being of the sort that governed the tower, such an attitude would not have surprised him. The crystal pulsed, the Mist coalesced, and a figure formed from the light and magick. He could not tell if it was Noah or Gabranth who appeared on his knees before him, his Magister’s helm clutched to his chest.
“King- and kinslayer.” Gabranth bowed his head. “So you have come to this place.”
“Yes,” he said. “And you with me.”
“Better if you had died,” Gabranth said.
“Better if I had died when you cast me into the pit, or before? When I left Landis? Or earlier, during the war?”
“Better,” said he, “if we both had died then.”
“But we lived.”
“Aye, we lived. And what an existence is this? Torn from home, our very names forsaken things.”
He knelt before his brother. “So you have lost your name, too. Forgive me. I did not know.”
“I have no right to bear that name,” Gabranth said. “We are neither of us defenders of home and hearth.”
“Perhaps. But there is else to defend.” He thought of the princess and her desert country, of all the lands he had traveled through on his journeys.
“What has failed once will fail again.” Gabranth spat upon the ground.
“But what if it succeeds?” he asked.
Gabranth made no reply.
“I have sinned. I have tarried. I have forgotten much,” he said. “My name is tarnished, but it is still mine own.”
“And how would you win it back?” Gabranth asked, a snarl twisting his lips up in a mockery of a grin. “What power remains to you?”
“This,” he said, and placed his hand on his brother’s breast. “Noah. I name you Noah fon Ronsenburg.”
Radiance exploded from his palm and slammed into Noah’s skin, sending him crashing into the crystal. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface, multihued flakes chipped away from the crystal and went flying, and Noah cried, “Basch! Basch!”
And a force older than even the tower animated Basch as he ran to his brother. The crystal splintered and heaved one final time as they joined hands, expelling them into the sky as the explosion rippled through it. Locked together, they fell, the sea beneath them churning, churning-
“Noah!” Basch said. “Recite the rhyme with me!”
Their voices joined together as they cried:
By oath you swore to answer me.
I call you: one and two and three.
“We are here,” the three voices chanted as one, and the brothers felt their descent slow until they drifted in midair, borne aloft by the sprites. They held tight to one another and felt no need to speak as they floated towards the shores of Valendia, away from the cracked tower. When the sprites laid them down on Balfonheim’s sands, Basch and Noah thanked the three one final time.
“You’re welcome,” said Vaan.
“A pleasure to serve,” said Balthier.
“Most would have asked us to take them to the top of the tower, or to transport them across the breadth of Ivalice,” Fran added. “You did not.”
“I should have learned nothing had I journeyed in that manner,” Basch answered.
“True,” said she, and he thought he saw a hint of the crone and her companions in Fran’s smile.
The three bowed and vanished; as they departed, a mythril coin glinted in Basch’s palm. It bore no markings save for an inscription on one side. For remembrance.
“Aye,” he said, tucking it into his pocket.
“What was that?” Noah asked.
“Nothing of import,” Basch said. “We shall not need it, now that we are reunited.”
And as to whether they lived happily ever after, dear reader: it is of no consequence. They lived, and that was enough.
So this was originally going to be something short and sweet.
It exploded on me.
I've tried a lot of new things with this one -- writing in the past tense and using omniscient third person in places (as fairy tale narration tends to do) -- but I'm pleased with the result. Even though this really isn't yaoi at all. There's incidental m/m, but I'm pretty sure this is more gen than anything else. I seem to be moving in a more gen direction these days.
Right. Enough of me babbling. You guys want fic.
Title: The Naming
Author: puella_nerdii
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 6,446
Warnings: Vague spoilers through the end of the game, depending on how good you are at deciphering metaphor.
Prompt: fairy tale - breaking and mending
Summary: What time would destroy, it can also mend. Two brothers, one journey.
A/N: Definitely more a fusion of fairy tale and FFXII than outright AU or crossover, but hopefully it still works. And definitely more gen than anything else.
Once upon a time, under the auspice of a clear night sky and gibbous moon, two boys broke the tranquility of midnight with their squalls. Their father severed two birthing-cords, the healer attending them took two towels and wiped thick clots of blood from two heads, and their mother held one babe to each breast and smiled before sleep claimed her.
Their mother and father gave the boys proper Landiser names, though one was often used in place of the other. The twins learned to respond to both, but when they grew old enough to speak, they laughed at this, that anyone should mistake Noah for Basch or Basch for Noah.
A name, you must understand, is more than a form of address. It is the shape of a man’s soul, and when his name is lost or torn from him, he may neither live nor die, for neither realm can abide his presence; without a name to call his own, he becomes what others think he should be, and is reduced to a pale, shifting imitation of a man.
“Perhaps I was Noah, when we were born,” Basch whispered to his twin. They had dragged their blankets to the roof of the fort that night, for a great shower of stars was to spangle the velvet skies.
“You can’t be Noah,” his brother insisted. He furrowed his brow with such gravity that Basch could not help but laugh. “I am Noah.”
“But perhaps you were not originally,” Basch countered, and he shoved his brother in the arm. “Perhaps the priests of Kiltias picked up the wrong babe when it was time to bring Basch to the holy light. Perhaps he seized me when he meant to seize you.”
“Mother and Father would have noticed.” Noah stuck his chin out at its most stubborn angle.
“Mother calls you by my name half the time. That’s because she likes me best.”
At this, Noah shoved his brother back and toppled him over with the force of his arms; Basch seized the loose curls framing Noah’s face, and they wrestled on the roof until they became hopelessly entangled in the blankets and in each other’s limbs, laughing and shouting as the moon winked at them from above.
“But intertwined they shall not always be,” the crone prophesied. Their father’s men-at-arms found her huddled beneath a threadbare blanket outside the fort’s gates; their mother sat her in front of the kitchen fires with a bowl of stew and a mug of ale. Her hair was a thin thatch of brittle straw, her teats shriveled plums, and thick brown liquid dripped from her cracked teeth when she spoke. “In dust and ash they shall part, and in blood and blackness they shall meet again.”
Tania fon Ronsenburg clutched her breast and swayed, the blood draining from her cheeks, but the crone’s voice marched on to the cadence of an ancient drum. The finger-bones wound about her neck on a string added their rattle to her foretelling. “And both shall be lost,” said she. “Naught left to them but a name, and even that must remain locked away lest it be tarnished from use.”
“Leave us,” Tania cried. “Take your ill tidings far from this place.”
The crone straightened and raised a gnarled fist to fon Ronsenburg’s lady. “You shall not live to see my words’ fruition,” she promised. “Blood will drown your lungs before the theft comes to pass. A small mercy, perhaps.”
And Tania coughed, and for the first time, her hand came away from her mouth smeared in red.
The crone tucked her tattered robes around herself and hobbled out the door, battered and buffeted by the roaring rains as she walked to the gate. Basch pressed his nose to the door and watched her halting steps until he could be still no longer; he seized a handful of roasted chestnuts and a bit of bread and cheese, bundled it in a kerchief, and rushed into the wall of water. “Here, madam,” he said, offering her the food, “for your journey.”
“I give you my thanks,” said she. “Accept this token as a mark of my gratitude,” and here she pressed a flat disc of mythril into his palm. “When all else is gone from you, this will remain; at such a time, entreat it for aid, and you will be answered. Thrice may you use it, and no more.”
He wished her well, tucked the talisman inside his shirt, and ran back to the hearth. She turned on her heel and was gone, for her kind does not linger in mortal company longer than they must.
His mother scolded him and wrung the water from his clothes. As he dried himself by the fire, Noah scampered to his side. “What did she tell you?” he asked.
“Nothing of import,” Basch replied. He meant no deception by it; with his brother by his side, he saw no need for the protection offered by a mythril talisman. He kept it tucked safe inside his mattress and thought neither of the crone nor of her present for many years, for when the war came at last to Landis, he had no time to spend thinking of such a long-ago night, not when the very air around him screamed for battle. He took his sword in hand; to his right, he heard Noah unsheathe his own blade, and the two of them charged forward until they could bear the reek of death no longer, until Archadia’s airships cast long shadows over the rusty skies.
Death waited for them when they returned home in the blood-spattered handkerchiefs littering Tania’s bedroom, in the greasy shadows under her eyes, in the translucency of her skin.
“We will not let her die,” said Noah. “Too many others lie dead. Must she be counted among their number?”
“We will do what we can,” Basch answered. “I will go south and seek a cure for her, and I’ll not return until I find a way to make her well.”
“But you will return,” Noah said.
“I swear it.”
And they clasped hands to seal their vow. Basch kissed his mother’s clammy brow, wiped a thin trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth, and journeyed through the blighted fields and slumping mountains of his homeland with naught more than a pack, his sword, and a good set of boots.
Long did he wander over hill and valley in search of the cure, but for his troubles, he gained only cramped legs and a thick cake of mud on his boots. He asked every man and woman he encountered if they had heard word, perhaps, of a way to stop the wasting sickness, but all shook their heads sadly, though they bade him luck on his journey. Even the viera he encountered had no knowledge of how to counteract the disease. Still, he walked on; perhaps the remedy lay in the next town, or the town after the next.
At last he came to the edge of a vast desert. The heat sat ill with him, used as he was to Landis’s colder clime, and as he mopped the torrents of sweat from his eyes he wondered how Noah fared. Spring ought to have ceded way to summer in the past few weeks, and the first clusters of valerian should have pushed their way through the warming soil. He wondered if his mother saw them blooming; valerian had long been her favorite flower.
Rubbing the crone’s talisman for luck, he came upon a merchant beset by wolves, but the creatures proved no match for his sword, and the pack staggered away with deep belly-wounds.
“Ah, sir,” the merchant cried, “you have saved me. How may I return your kindness?”
“Do you know of a cure for the wasting sickness?” he asked.
“Alas, such knowledge is beyond me, but the healers of Dalmasca are well-versed in herb lore, and they may have your answer.”
“My thanks,” Basch said. “Where does its capital lie?”
“Seven leagues from here, to the west. Follow the course of the Nebra River, and take this,” he said, passing a leather canteen writ with shining sigils into Basch’s hand. “It will never run dry, so you will always have water on your journey. And take a potion, for you will want it should you find yourself grievously wounded.”
“Again, my thanks,” he said, and the two of them parted ways.
He continued his sojourn at night and rested by the rocky outcroppings by day to avoid the worst of the heat. When he made his camp for the second night, he noticed an odd reddish-brown stain speckling the rocks. Curious, he followed the trail as the blood grew thicker and wetter until he arrived at its source: a dark-haired man in battered armor, with wide gashes across his face and a sluggish pulse. Basch knelt by the fallen warrior, cracked open the potion flask gifted to him, and tipped its contents down the man’s throat. As the magicks knitted his flesh back together, the ruddiness returned to his cheeks. He coughed violently and moved his lips as though he meant to give Basch thanks, but no words came out.
“Here,” Basch said, moistening the man’s lips with the water from his canteen.
“Sir,” the man said, “do not waste your water on me, for in the desert, it is more precious than gold.”
“Ah,” said he, “but my canteen will not run dry. Drink more deeply from it, for I mislike the hints of pallor about you.”
“Pallor indeed.” The man thrust his tanned forearm next to Basch’s fair one. “Still, sir, I am in your debt for what you have done. If there is any service I could render-”
“Your name first,” said Basch, “and then we will talk of such matters.”
“I am Vossler York Azelas, of the Order of the Knights of Dalmasca.”
“Dalmasca!” Basch cried. “That is the land I seek.”
“I will take you there,” Vossler promised. “I will give you an introduction to the king, and my recommendations that you be admitted to our Order, for you have the look of a hardy warrior about you, and we are always in want of them.”
“You are too kind, Sir Azelas,” said he, “but I do not think I shall stay long in your country. I must find a cure for my mother, who is stricken with the wasting sickness.”
At this, Vossler’s face grew grave. “I know of none.”
“Still, I must try. I will travel with you to Rabanastre to seek an audience with the king, but I can promise no more than that.”
Vossler nodded, and the two of them bedded down close together that day so one could rouse the other quickly should their camp be attacked. They passed the last leg of the journey amicably, and though Basch remembered home and Noah every time he glanced at his boots, he found Vossler a more pleasing sight to set his gaze upon.
(Vossler, for his part, felt his pulse quicken when the two of them sparred, a quickening beyond what physical exertion could account for.)
Rabanastre was a wondrous place suspended in eternal summer. On its streets, he witnessed the races mingling as they never had in Landis. They hawked their wares at the open-air markets, haggled like fishwives over the price of bread and tea, and gathered around the fountain in the southern plaza to trade stories. And Basch lived as he walked through the cobbled streets. With Vossler at his side, he dared to march up to the front gates of the palace itself. And with Vossler at his side he strode through the vaulted halls and bent his knee before the king.
“Sir Azelas speaks highly of you,” King Raminas said. “We have need of knights of your caliber.”
“And I thank him for his commendation,” Basch replied, “but I must not tarry; my mother will die of the wasting sickness unless I find the cure.”
“My healers may know of such a remedy, but I fear I do not.”
He inclined his head; the response was customary, but it still stung him.
“However,” King Raminas continued, “if you stay a fortnight, I can make inquiries on your behalf. Perhaps you would consent to spend time with my daughter Ashelia; she is an incorrigible little child, but she loves Sir Azelas dearly.”
Basch bowed again, said he was deeply obliged, and that he would be sure to visit the princess. And so he spent a pleasant two weeks with Vossler and the little princess-the three of them romped about corridors of the Royal Palace and made brief trips to the streets outside, and at the end of the day Basch retired to Vossler’s chambers, glad of company in his bed once more. The city itself was a gay affair, always busy and bright. He never glimpsed a storm cloud in the sky.
At the close of the fortnight, King Raminas and his healers had found no cure.
“I grieve to hear that,” Basch said, “and I thank you for your hospitality once more. I suppose I will go to Kerwon next, to the shrine at Bur-Omisace.”
“Stay but one more night,” Raminas entreated him, “and we shall find your cure. And Ashelia had so hoped you would take her to the Muthru Bazaar on the morrow.”
“Very well,” said he. “I suppose I can stay another night.”
The next day came and went, and still King Raminas had nothing for Basch.
“But stay with us another night,” he said, “and we shall find your cure. I know Sir Azelas would be glad of your company; it pleases me to see him smile so often these days.”
“For his sake, I will stay another night,” Basch said, and he did.
On the third night, King Raminas could not offer him a cure, but he did offer him another night’s stay in the palace. “We shall find your cure. And there is to be a tournament tomorrow. It is not too late for you to enter the lists.”
“I’ve not seen a tournament in years, not since the war began,” he said. “I shall stay another night.”
Every day, Basch would announce his intent to leave in the morning, and every day, King Raminas would ask him to stay another night, begging him to think of Ashelia and Vossler. He did, and in doing so the face of his mother slid further and further from his mind until one day he tried to recall her features and found he did not know the color of her eyes.
His brother’s face he never forgot. It was too like his own. He prayed nothing had happened to mar their resemblance.
On Ashelia’s birthday, he ceased his habit of announcing his imminent departure. Landis remained-in the crone’s talisman knotted to his belt, in the scar on his knuckle he received when he was five and Noah bit him, in the scent of pine that still clung to his boots-but Dalmasca was a nation in its prime. Dalmasca lived on, and so did he.
As Ashelia grew and blossomed, so too did her country, for the shadow of Archadia had not yet stunted its growth. But the skies of Dalmasca could not remain free forever, and when Captain Basch of the Order of the Knights of Dalmasca heard of Nabudis’s fall, he raced back to tell his new liege, confident that his chocobo could shake off any ghosts from his past that might be chasing him.
How very wrong he was.
Archadia swiftly forced Dalmasca to her knees. King Raminas took Basch and Vossler with him to old Nalbina and announced his intent to make peace with the empire, and Basch could do nothing but think on the gory entrails Archadia left behind when it fed. So lost was he that he did not see the ghost at first. Then he caught a glimpse of himself running down a darkened corridor, and he could do naught else but give chase. Long did he navigate Nalbina’s labyrinthine pathways until he could not tell what corridor led to where. And it was dark, darker than the deepest part of night when he and Noah had huddled together, their frozen fingers intertwined as they awaited the dawn.
Light flared before his eyes. He reeled and found no one there to catch his fall. As he clattered to the ground, several pairs of hands seized him roughly and jerked his head up until he saw himself. Himself, standing before himself. How could it be?
But it was not himself, for the lines around his own mouth were not so hard, and his own eyes had never held such coldness.
He looked again, and he knew.
“Oh,” he cried, “Noah, forgive me. Noah, Noah!”
“I am Gabranth,” and Noah’s voice was steel, sharp and quick. “What right have you to call me by that name? What right have you to name yourself fon Ronsenburg?”
“Our mother-”
“Dead. And with your name on her lips as she passed. And so I judge you, Basch fon Ronsenburg.”
“Noah,” Basch pleaded, but Gabranth acknowledged no brother and thus had no ear for Basch’s tales.
“You abandoned those who bestowed your name, those who shaped it, those who taught you its meaning. I strip you of your name and give you a new one: kingslayer.”
His judgment made, Gabranth took up the subtle knife of Shemhazai and with it severed Basch’s name from his soul. His name quivered in the air, a ball of feeble blue light, before Gabranth caught it inside a three-pointed pendant, and he saw that it had indeed been mistreated. Without his name, his skin shriveled and became pallid, as though he had not seen the sun. His ribs protruded from his sides, his hair grew long and disheveled, and red welts sprung up over his body.
“You see now,” Gabranth said. “The wounds on your soul are made manifest on your flesh. You wear the shape of a kingslayer well.”
And with the creature before him judged, Gabranth ordered him seized and thrown into a cavernous pit from which light could neither enter nor escape, for such a man as this could not be loosed upon the world. Gabranth clutched Basch’s name close to his chest: truly, he had done it a favor by freeing it from the man who would abuse it so.
The kingslayer sat alone in the dark, unnamed and unwanted. His shackles kept him upright even as the skin beneath them scabbed and festered. Lice nested in his hair and rats nipped at his toes; no other creatures had so much as a look for him. He had neither food nor drink, but as he neither hungered nor thirsted, their loss was not so painful.
Ah, if only he had not left Landis. If only he had not left half his heart behind, if only he had not broken his oath, if only he had not forgotten the crone’s warning.
The crone’s warning, yes, but he had also forgotten the crone’s gift. The talisman. What had become of the talisman?
“Wise woman,” he said in a voice withered and cracked from disuse, “you gave a boy a mythril talisman once, and told him to call upon it when all else was gone. All else is gone from me now. Only your promise remains. I beg of you aid.”
A soft glow pulsed beneath the ground and rose slowly as he blinked, rose until a sphere of light sat humming at his feet. It cracked down the center like an egg to reveal three winged creatures: one white-haired and ebon-skinned, one brown-haired and pale, one fair-haired and tanned.
“We’ve heard your call,” said the fair-haired, the smallest of them, “and we have been sent to help you. Call me Vaan; my darker companion is Fran, and her gentleman is Balthier.”
“I’ll free him from these shackles,” said Balthier, and at a touch from him, the shackles fell away and clattered to the ground.
“And I’ve the charge of tending to his sores,” Fran proclaimed. As her cool breath settled over his skin, the angry weals faded, and open wounds began to congeal.
“And all three of us shall carry you up and away, far from this pit,” Vaan finished.
“You are rather small,” he said. “Such a journey would not overtax you?”
“Let not our outward seeming fool you,” Balthier replied, perching on top of his head. “We are more than what they seem.”
The three of them seized him by the scruff of the neck, the middle of the back, and the feet and carried him lying prone, floating him up past the high dark walls to which he had grown so accustomed and straight through the ceiling of his dungeon. When they set him on his feet before the sinking sun, he wept to see the light grace his weakened eyes once more.
“Now we will leave you,” Fran said, “but we will teach you a rhyme; if you’ve need of us, recite it and we will appear to you, but we can only aid you twice more.”
“I understand,” he said, and so they taught him the verse:
By oath you swore to answer me.
I call you: one and two and three.
Vaan buckled a sword around his waist, Balthier set shoes upon his feet, and Fran outfitted him with a small pack. He gave them his thanks once more, and they vanished into the air, leaving glowing trails in their wake. Once more he faced the Estersand. It, at least, had changed little in these past years.
He set out for Rabanastre, taking a secret path through the desert far from the main road. He expected to encounter no company upon it, save for wolves and cockatrices, but he was sorely mistaken. A group of three women, veiled in the Rozarrian fashion, seemed to swirl up from the sand itself and tugged at his clothes, begging him for alms.
“I have little to give you,” he said, but something in their hands reminded him of his mother and he added, “But here are these three fire-stones I took from wolves I slew; perhaps you can exchange them for coin at the bazaar.”
“Ah, you are kind,” said the tallest of them in sweet, girlish tones, “too kind.”
“Where are you bound, traveler?” The stoutest of them was built along the lines of a boulder, but she moved swiftly for her size.
“To Rabanastre, in the west.”
The last of them waved a gnarled finger at him. “Oh, but you do not seek Rabanastre, not since Dalmasca fell to Archadia these two years past.”
“Two years,” he murmured. “Has it been so long?”
“And longer and longer with each passing day,” they chanted.
“If you would not have me go there, where must I go?” he asked them. “Must I wander once more?”
“You’ve roads to travel still, kingslayer,” the eldest of them cackled. He staggered back from her words; they planted something black and cold in his soul.
“Am I called that now?”
“Yes,” the stoutest said, “for your name is lost to you still.”
“Tell me, if you can,” he entreated them, sinking to his knees, “how may I regain it?”
“Walk,” the tallest told him. “Walk to the shores of Valendia. In the midst of the ocean is an island. No ship can navigate the waters around it, and no airship can sail through the jagd that veils it. On the island is a tower sheathed eternally in darkness, and in the tower’s highest reaches shines a light made by neither man nor beast. Bathe in that light and your name will be restored.”
“Heed not the creatures within, and take nothing from them, even if they are offered to you as tokens of surrender,” the stoutest said.
“When you battle the guardian at the gate, do not look at his eyes, for a most fearful curse will fall upon you if you do,” the eldest said. “And remember what your name once meant, for if you lose sight of that, your quest means nothing.”
And in a great flurry of sand, they vanished.
Once more he walked: through the Mosphoran Highwaste, fleeing from humbabas who howled as they pursued him through rocky tunnels and up the sides of great spires of jagged stone; through the Salikawood, hiking trails long grown thick with moss and rot; past the Phon Coast, pausing briefly to bathe in the waters of the Hakawea Shore; through the Tchita Uplands, watching for any serpents that might be hiding in the tall grasses; and down through the Cerobi Steppe, resting in the shadow of long-abandoned windmills. He reached Balfonheim Port a good deal hardier-the long trek toned his legs, and the beasts he encountered in the wilds gave his sword-arm good practice.
Most men and women he spoke to in Balfonheim knew nothing of the island inaccessible by land or air. A few started when he described the cataract, then drew the gods-circle on their chests and warned him not to speak of such things. He walked to one of the jetties just outside the port’s bounds and ran his hands along the damp rocks. He must cross the ocean, he knew. The wilderness cared about neither him nor his lost name, but Balfonheim’s citizens, tolerant as they may have been of myriad vices, looked askance at him when they asked his name and he could give no answer. He became accustomed to people drawing the gods-circle or crossing to the other side of the street as he passed, grew acquainted with the cloud of whispers trailing in his wake. “Accursed are the unnamed,” dock workers told one another, “for they will seek to steal your name to fill the gap within themselves.”
He only desired what had been his, but he dared not say it.
A vagrant slept at the foot of the jetty. There was something familiar about the man’s coarse beard; he bent closer to the sleeping figure and started, for here was Vossler, Vossler stranded at the periphery of civilization.
“Alas,” he cried, “how far you have fallen.”
Vossler tilted his head up. Thick brown scabs coated his eyes. He would never see again. “Your voice,” said he. “It sounds-tell me, were you once called-?”
“That name has been taken from me, but I would take it back, if I have the strength to do it,” he replied. “It was a good name, though I was not always worthy of it.”
“Nor I of mine,” Vossler said. Shiny burns striped his skin, pink and raw. “Little Ashelia-but she has not been small for years.”
“No. She has not.”
“I betrayed her.” He coughed. “They name you oathbreaker in Dalmasca, but that name ought to be mine. They told me the truth of what happened that night at Nalbina when I tried to broker peace between Lady Ashe and the Empire. And for it, I was cast from the skies in a ball of fire. ‘Twas her hand struck the final blow, I think.” Another cough; this one seized Vossler’s entire body and set it to convulsing. “I betrayed her to save Dalmasca. Had they reviled my name, I would have accepted it, but now it seems they will not know me at all.”
“Do not speak so,” he said, “for you will live.”
“No,” Vossler said. “You will live. You do not go to heel as your brother does, but there is something in you that will not die. He did not take that from you when he took your name.”
“I thought he had. When I saw him condemn me-we were so close, once. But he and I are far from that time, far from home. I fear those days are lost forever. His name is as lost as mine own.”
“Then as you seek your name, seek his also.” Vossler locked his jaw so he would not tremble from his body’s anguish. “Find him. Find the princess. Do what I could not.”
“I swear it,” he whispered, and upon hearing it, Vossler gave a great sigh and went still.
This, then, was a different sort of darkness. As he cradled Vossler’s body, the rhyme sprang unbidden to his lips:
By oath you swore to answer me.
I call you: one and two and three.
“We are here,” said Vaan and Balthier and Fran, “and we will carry you to the cataract, but you must lay Vossler York Azelas to rest in the sand first.”
“Then I shall,” he said, and kissed Vossler’s cooling brow before his feet left Valendia’s shores, bound across the rolling blue waters.
“Jagd is no barrier to us,” Balthier explained. “Mist is nourishment, not a hindrance.”
The sun weighed on the back of his neck and the glare rising from the water beamed into his eyes, but such sensations seemed fleeting enough; with the three sprites propelling him onwards, his voyage went swiftly. In place of tears, clouds laden with rain moistened his face. At last his feet touched ground once more, and the dark tower beckoned to him. It stood at the center of the cataract, issuing its challenge to the sky. Its design was ancient, sporting protruding spines from every floor, but the hand of time had touched it not, for he saw no worn patches of stone on the tower, no spots of discoloration.
“Again we must leave you,” said Fran, “but you may ask our favor once more.”
“Safe journeys,” said Vaan.
“And safe return,” Balthier added.
He walked the twisting path to the tower’s base alone. The light faded with each step he took, and he heard other feet stepping in concert with his own; he recognized his father’s heavy gait, his mother’s light steps, Vossler’s measured walk, Noah’s quick pace. The thump of their boots striking the cracked cobblestones carried to the farthest reaches of the cataract.
Then the dragon roared, and he caught a glimpse of blackened and rotting flesh hanging by shredded tendons from bleached bones before the stench of decomposition rolled over him. He was not to look at the creature’s eyes, he remembered, rolling to the side as its talons shattered the ground inches from his head. He could guess its movements from the way the ground shook and darted to the side when the tremors grew nearer, but it was a poor method of going about it. He glimpsed the tower’s gate between the dragon’s forelegs and despaired of ever reaching it before he was forced to leap away as the creature whipped its tail towards him. Showers of rock sprayed him; he snatched a flat grey stone before it could reach his eyes, and he recalled the nights when he and Noah slept in the forest and started their campfires with flint and steel. He struck flint to blade and begged the gods for a spark.
The gods heard his prayer, and as it is known they loathe creatures who would seek to cheat death’s clutches, they chose to assist him. A fiery whip blazed into being, and with a mighty crack it smote the dragon’s back; the creature released a shriek shrill enough to split the skies apart before it turned to ash.
He murmured his thanks and walked on. The dust clung to his boots as he approached the gate.
And what would you seek, traveler? a voice inquired of him. It was old, that voice, woven into the tower’s mortar at the dawn of the world.
“To regain what was lost,” said he, “and no more.”
Time will have changed it.
“Changed it, yes. But what time would destroy, it can also mend.”
Then pass through the golden gates, but know this: he without power, want it not. He with power, trust it not. He with sight, heed it not. Rend illusion, cut the true path.
The stairs stretched before him as the gates swung open to admit him, spiraling upward to infinity. He knew not how long he climbed, only that his legs ceased their protest when the tower’s depths vanished from view. The only sounds around him came from the whisper of his breath. The gloom showed no sign of abating; his feet quickly learned the distance between each step so he would not falter on his journey. And still he walked on. Always he walked on.
Then strange murmurs began to surround him, their overlapping voices promising him treasure after treasure. He took heed of the stout woman and paid them as little mind as he could, but he did not stop up his ears, and so phrases drifted into his consciousness.
“Take my hand, and I shall deposit all the gold of Ivalice at your feet, pilgrim.” Yellow lights shimmered before him, winking at him with promises of untold wealth. He climbed on.
“Take my hand, and I shall set a crown upon your brow and make you a king. Landis shall be restored, and you shall be the instrument of its renewal.” Another flash in the darkness revealed a cape of crimson fur and a mythril circlet, the garb of Landiser kings of old-but Landis had been a republic for generations before his birth. The old throne had long been melted down into scrap metal. He climbed on.
“Take my hand, and your love shall walk beside you for the rest of your days.” Vossler’s face swam from the depths this time, and he nearly paused to clutch the image close to his heart, but he remembered the dragon’s fate and thought of Vossler struck down by a similar wrathful bolt for daring to return. He climbed on.
Screams tore at the air behind him, and all was silence once more. His body told him he still moved forward, but the evidence of his eyes suggested no such progress. “If my eyes will tell me nothing,” he said, “then they need not remain open.”
When he closed them, warmth flooded his head. He fought not to reel backwards, sure of the perilous fall awaiting him should he stumble. Slowly, as though in a dream, his eyelids drifted open.
He stood before a great crystal flecked with every color he could imagine and several hues he could not. All the colors sounded separate notes as they danced before him until the harmonies blended into a voice.
Basch fon Ronsenburg, it chimed. You have come.
“No,” he said.
No?
“I have waited long to reclaim that name,” said he. “But it was taken from me, and I would have him return it.”
As you will, the voice said, and he thought he detected amusement in it. From a being of the sort that governed the tower, such an attitude would not have surprised him. The crystal pulsed, the Mist coalesced, and a figure formed from the light and magick. He could not tell if it was Noah or Gabranth who appeared on his knees before him, his Magister’s helm clutched to his chest.
“King- and kinslayer.” Gabranth bowed his head. “So you have come to this place.”
“Yes,” he said. “And you with me.”
“Better if you had died,” Gabranth said.
“Better if I had died when you cast me into the pit, or before? When I left Landis? Or earlier, during the war?”
“Better,” said he, “if we both had died then.”
“But we lived.”
“Aye, we lived. And what an existence is this? Torn from home, our very names forsaken things.”
He knelt before his brother. “So you have lost your name, too. Forgive me. I did not know.”
“I have no right to bear that name,” Gabranth said. “We are neither of us defenders of home and hearth.”
“Perhaps. But there is else to defend.” He thought of the princess and her desert country, of all the lands he had traveled through on his journeys.
“What has failed once will fail again.” Gabranth spat upon the ground.
“But what if it succeeds?” he asked.
Gabranth made no reply.
“I have sinned. I have tarried. I have forgotten much,” he said. “My name is tarnished, but it is still mine own.”
“And how would you win it back?” Gabranth asked, a snarl twisting his lips up in a mockery of a grin. “What power remains to you?”
“This,” he said, and placed his hand on his brother’s breast. “Noah. I name you Noah fon Ronsenburg.”
Radiance exploded from his palm and slammed into Noah’s skin, sending him crashing into the crystal. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface, multihued flakes chipped away from the crystal and went flying, and Noah cried, “Basch! Basch!”
And a force older than even the tower animated Basch as he ran to his brother. The crystal splintered and heaved one final time as they joined hands, expelling them into the sky as the explosion rippled through it. Locked together, they fell, the sea beneath them churning, churning-
“Noah!” Basch said. “Recite the rhyme with me!”
Their voices joined together as they cried:
By oath you swore to answer me.
I call you: one and two and three.
“We are here,” the three voices chanted as one, and the brothers felt their descent slow until they drifted in midair, borne aloft by the sprites. They held tight to one another and felt no need to speak as they floated towards the shores of Valendia, away from the cracked tower. When the sprites laid them down on Balfonheim’s sands, Basch and Noah thanked the three one final time.
“You’re welcome,” said Vaan.
“A pleasure to serve,” said Balthier.
“Most would have asked us to take them to the top of the tower, or to transport them across the breadth of Ivalice,” Fran added. “You did not.”
“I should have learned nothing had I journeyed in that manner,” Basch answered.
“True,” said she, and he thought he saw a hint of the crone and her companions in Fran’s smile.
The three bowed and vanished; as they departed, a mythril coin glinted in Basch’s palm. It bore no markings save for an inscription on one side. For remembrance.
“Aye,” he said, tucking it into his pocket.
“What was that?” Noah asked.
“Nothing of import,” Basch said. “We shall not need it, now that we are reunited.”
And as to whether they lived happily ever after, dear reader: it is of no consequence. They lived, and that was enough.