Final Fantasy XVI fic, Chasing the Forgotten 2 (Irreversible Oath)
title: Chasing the Forgotten
author: caledon (the_tower_room)
pairing: Dion/Joshua
rating: E
summary: Having been born the Phoenix meant Joshua was destined to be by Bahamut’s side as his consort.
He didn’t know what he was expecting, but certainly not the situation he found himself in.
Omegaverse AU.
words: 4692
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XVI belongs to Square Enix.
Warning: Sylvestre Lesage.
Chapter 2: Irreversible Oath
On the winter after the one who would become emperor was born, it heralded a great change in the Empire of Sanbreque, especially as it pertained to the rise of House Lesage.
His mother Apolline was a low-born concubine his father had taken in and registered into House Lesage just two years prior. Her postpartum belly was slow to recede even a year after she’d given birth, and so Cardinal Sylvestre would usually exercise his conjugal rights with her on her hands and knees and him pushing in from behind while pulling her hair, unwilling to see the ungainly body that had housed his son. On that fateful winter’s night, amidst the sound of frantic smacking of flesh and cries of pleasure, the nursemaid’s sudden terrified screams broke through. Utterly displeased with the racket, Sylvestre only gave it a momentary consideration before resuming his movements, slapping the fleshy rump against his hips. But the nursemaid hadn’t ceased, her voice sharp and piercing through the pleasure that Sylvestre was focused on obtaining.
“My lord-!” gasped Apolline. “Should we check on what’s happening?”
Sylvestre pulled harder on her hair, and she yelped as her head was stretched further back. “Should not you check on your husband’s needs before all else?”
“I’m sorry, my lord,” she muttered and set about moving her inner muscles in the way she knew he liked, and he rewarded her with another slap on her butt, thumb circling her asshole and drily breaching her, making her body seize and tighten even more around him from the pain of it. It was enough to send him over the edge though he was still left immensely unsatisfied due to the disturbance. Sylvestre pulled swiftly out, not even able to enjoy the sight of his spend dripping from his concubine as he haphazardly threw on his clothes, not caring one whit about Apolline’s state.
This nursemaid will pay dearly, was Sylvestre’s incensed thought as he left his concubine’s chamber and followed the noise in their child’s bedroom.
The nursemaid was on the floor by the door, voice hoarse from her snivelling. And upon the small toddler-bed was a crying one-year-old with silvery scales with hints of opalescent azure manifested all over his skin; soft spikes, a tail, and the beginnings on membranous wings sprouting from his body; and a set of tiny translucent horns peeked from his pale blond head.
“Please, I did not do anything to your son!” cried the nursemaid, crawling in the ground in supplication. “Please, it was not me! One minute, he was normal, and the next he was like this! I beg you! Mercy, please! I did not turn your son into a monster!”
Cardinal Sylvestre with a now soft reverent gait stepped forward into the room and sharply admonished the woman, “Cease your prattling!” Then turned to the bed and genuflected before it, staring in wonder at his son. “I’m become the father of the emperor.” The smile that stretched on his lips was that of gruesome delight, an uncontrollable maniacal laughter breaking from his chest and he threw his head back and gave into it, eyes shining bright at the future before him. Lips still trembled in uncompromising glee, he managed finally to control himself, then gentled his voice as he gazed upon the salvation of his noble House. “Here before you is the Blessing of the Great Goddess Greagor.”
Apolline finally managed to settle herself enough to dress up and follow, distraught and confused at what she beheld. She asked, gasping, “What has happened to Dion? What do you mean, my lord?”
The cardinal’s mind was already heavy with all that he needed to accomplish, a note of regret flashing through him at the thought of the young woman that soon would be lost to him - her body had pleased him greatly, and she had even made him a father to the new incarnation of the great dragon who would become the emperor. But her low-born existence sullied the image House Lesage wished to convey to the world, especially now with an emperor-to-be in their midst.
He gave her what he deemed was the greatest honour he could bestow to one of her inferior status: he inclined his head - not quite a bow - and acknowledged, “You have served me well.”
Then he rose, and took the crying draconic child into his arms, leaving the courtyard of his concubine to make his way to the courtyard of his legal wife.
“Where are you taking him, my lord?” Alarmed, Apolline tried to chase after him but was stopped at her courtyard gate by guards. “Please!! My child-”
Her transformed son peered over Sylvestre’s shoulder, still sobbing, tears like fat dew drops on his ruddy face, tiny arms reaching for his mother.
There is much to prepare, thought Sylvestre, and smirked, patting the toddler’s back in a half-hearted attempt at comfort. To the guard that followed him, the cardinal bade, “Kill them.”
The guard halted in his tracks and bowed his head. “As you wish, Your Eminence.”
Among the first of Sylvestre’s preparations was declaring his concubine’s child legitimate by having his legal wife adopt him under her name. Thus was Dion Lesage listed as issue of Euphrasie Lesage, of House Lebeau. Having had no children of her own - and not for lack of trying with her husband - she had nonetheless been displeased to raise a son her husband sired with another woman. But the greatness and glory that this son would grant House Lesage, and by extension her own House Lebeau, was too beneficial to pass up, and so she initially held back her feelings of dissatisfaction and hate, and tried to raise him as her own.
It was not long after the adoption that the child was presented to the court of Emperor Emanuele Saint Nooj, where the Imperial Astrologers confirmed, “It is as our auguries have shown, Your Radiance. Phoenix has been birthed in Rosaria, and therefore is Bahamut not long to follow. And this child before you is the sixteenth incarnation of the Holy Son of Goddess Greagor come once more to Valisthea.”
As had been the custom and law of the empire, the incarnation of Bahamut must live to serve the people as the next Emperor of Sanbreque. Dion’s existence suspended all the fighting for the throne that had been rife in the court since Emperor Emanuele was voted into power. And any incarnation of an Eikon was nigh unkillable and have a way of preserving themselves, so attempts at assassination or abduction would have proved futile. And as part the law and custom, the Duchy of Rosaria was aware that their Phoenix was to be offered to the empire as the consort to their next Emperor Bahamut - and to the Duchess Anabella Rosfield, there could be no greater honour than to have her very own son as second only to the emperor in power.
And thus was Dion Lesage named the heir to the throne of Sanbreque, charged to live in service of the empire.
At barely three years of age was the young Crown Prince Dion Lesage bidden to live in the Whitewyrm Palace for the start of his education. Moving from the main house of the Lesage family, he had barely felt what it was like to have a mother, to have been wrested from her before he had a mind developed enough to recall her. His father, aware that the dragon in his son could see through his lies, had admitted to Dion when he was older: “You must understand, Dion. Apolline died for a good cause. Her very existence may not sully the Lesage legacy. Unthinkable, unpardonable, that our Emperor Bahamut came not from my lawful wife. And though we are not able to erase the fact that you did not come from Euphrasie's womb, but in all that matters, she is your mother.”
But Madame Lesage had been no better. Despite her decision and House Lebeau’s urgings, she could not bring herself to treat her husband’s son kindly. She had been strict and distant, not wont to show affection for someone she was distasteful of. And though fearful that the dragon would exact vengeance for her misconduct against his incarnation, she still could not help herself. Her attitude towards this untoward situation bleeding through to her actions and words to so a young child.
As for Sylvestre Lesage-he had focused only on what Dion’s existence had brought to the House. Suddenly he was promoted to High Cardinal, enjoying the power that came with the seat and having the Emperor Emanuele’s ear for his machinations and manoeuvrings at court.
Dion was groomed to be the groom of the Phoenix, groomed to be the ruler of the empire. Those young days filled with nothing but lesson upon lesson of his destiny, of what he must be. When older, he would be standing at the pinnacle of the world, and such heights were brought forth not by choice. Never by choice. But destiny.
"This is who you are, Dion Lesage," his elders told him, hammering home that fact ad nauseum throughout his life, wresting from him everything they deemed unnecessary and leaving him nothing but a husk that lived only for the good of the empire.
Having nothing else, young Dion reconciled himself to the loneliness brought about by his fate and dutifully learned his letters and numbers, art and literature. As he grew older, he’d been allowed to attend classes inside the palace with noble peers of similar age as himself, learning politics, diplomacy, history, law, the art of war, the art of ruling. Older still and there came to be learned various styles of combat with fists and weapons such as the bow, the sword, and-his favourite-the halberd. Along the way was meditation and control of one’s self to transform back and forth between dragon and human, and convene with Bahamut dwelling inside him.
Learning came easily to Dion for he had a well of the dragon's memories to draw from. All the lessons on history, law, politics--he'd known them already, even lived some of them as the previous incarnations. What new knowledge he’d gained were the current culture of the age, the recent history that Bahamut slept through.
Likewise, the lessons in combat were not new; Dion needed only to attune the dragon's muscle memory and he returned to the prime of his body, accomplishing each move-set and reacquiring forgotten skills.
During those years one such tutor he had was a kind old man, much traveled and learned of the world. He had taught the Crown Prince with infinite patience, silver beard partitioned into little ponytails and eyes gentle. Among the greatest lesson Harpocrates imparted to his young charge was: “Remember, Crown Prince Dion: an emperor’s words are sacred, beyond contestation, and thus not easily broken. As the sixteenth vessel of Bahamut, your words as emperor will be even more binding, as they are magic and can hold your very life on account. I beg you be careful, and take the utmost heed of any vows or oaths you may take in the name of Bahamut. For even you cannot easily unmake them.”
The young Crown Prince felt Bahamut stir, and his whole being shook with the knowledge of truth. Carefully word such an oath if you must take it, instructed the dragon, for it is a trap, a prison, in which we may not be able to free ourselves from.
Communion with Bahamut came naturally. Once, Dion transformed into the dragon and took to the skies, and through the rush of wind on his scales and spikes he looked down at the empire that he served, at the minuscule human figures like ants going about their daily lives. The sight made him want to truly be a part of it, part of that world, not just its overseer, but to see and experience what Oriflamme was like beyond the palace walls. To be among the people.
And so from Bahamut's memory did Dion came to know of the Elucidated-a group not unlike the secret spy network that officially worked under the emperor, accomplishing whatever clandestine tasks (whether investigation or assassination) commanded of them. But the Elucidated served only Bahamut, answered only to the Eikon separate from the crown, and Dion had sought their services. Through them he learned how to disguise himself and found a way to surreptitiously sneak out of the stuffy, repressed-by-rules palace to interact with the very people that Dion would someday rule over, all without the distance wrought by their fear and reverence for a dragon emperor. It was…rather freeing. Not being himself. Not being tied to his fate, even if for only a short moment.
When Dion was eighteen, the Emperor Emanuele held his yearly hunt, special this time due to the Crown Prince’s attendance.
Many nobles, both great and lesser, elected to participate in the four-day event held in the forest south of Oriflamme. Tents and viewing platforms were erected at the site, smoke from campfires lingered in the air. There was nothing but merrymaking and celebration, hot blood churning with the abject desire to best the populace in the art of hunting. Prey had been released in the wild, and off the participants went on horseback, bow and arrows at the ready.
Sir Terence of House Branford followed at Dion’s side, as ever he did since they met at seven years old in the class at the palace. A beta from a lesser noble House with brown hair and blue-grey eyes, that always peered longingly at the Crown Prince who was oblivious to such a gaze. Since that first time they met, the beta’s pure heart had always bled for the duty that had trapped and shaped the Crown Prince, empathized with the little boy who had had to grow up knowing he would carry the empire on his shoulders, so very different from the various emperors who’d won their power by being elected when they were older. As they grew up together, those feelings transformed, bloomed into intense yearning, wanting nothing more than to give all the love that the Prince had never had. But the beta held himself back, for upon that golden-brown gaze was the world, and though Terence was part of that very world, he knew he would never be the focus. Not when a Phoenix waited in a far-flung future.
When the two accidentally wandered into a Bomb King’s lair, it was fraught with danger they’d never experienced before. Scorched with flames hither and yon, there hadn’t been much their flimsy bows and arrows could do to get them out of the mess; they could only slowly whittle down the huge fireball’s health. Dion had not wanted to call upon Bahamut’s power; instead he wished to rely on his human form’s own strength.
When at last it seemed that they were to be victorious, the fireball exploded, and Terence would have perished as a burned carcass had it not been for the Crown Prince throwing himself over the beta, saving him from the brunt of the explosion.
In fear for the Crown Prince’s life did Terence forget himself, with tears falling, he held Dion’s face, lips upon the Prince’s as he prayed to Greagor, implored to any gods to save the Prince, the words of love he never could speak of before now spilling out of him in frenzy.
At a choked exhale from the Prince, Terence pulled back, though his hands remained on Dion’s cheeks. Golden-brown eyes were groggy, wounds dissipating as Bahamut healed his flesh. Laughing through his tears, the beta sighed in relief, leaning his forehead against Dion’s.
“Terence…?” uttered the Prince, eyes slowly becoming clear, confused at the overt familiarity in which he was being treated.
Sniffing, the beta braced himself. Having come this far, what else had he got to lose?
“My prince, I can no longer stay my feelings. I love you, Your Highness. I'm in love with you. I thought I had lost you when you saved me. Please allow me to love you. I want to stay ever at your side.”
Love? thought Dion. In love with me? His brows furrowed. Such a concept was something he never thought would apply to him. He had been raised on ideals in which love had no place: his duty. His fate.
But a small part of Dion wondered if he could stray from the call of destiny even for a little bit. For what was before him was an offer of something he’d never had. Someone claimed to love him, and from the way the beta spoke of it, that love was different from the denizen’s love for their emperor, from a parent’s love for their child.
So why not?
Why not take that hand held out, ready to pull him in a world he’d never known?
Dion had never had anything in his life that he had decided for himself. What was being asked of him now had nothing to do with the empire, nothing to do with power. Before this, all else had been prearranged for him: the throne, the duty to the empire, his marriage.
But this one was all about himself. An offering of devotion that was solely for him. And the temptation of it was a sudden unrelenting grip in his being.
And so he took that hand, accepted the confession. And his first friend showed him what “love” could be.
Ever deep in Dion was a wish: a wish to be seen as simply himself. Without the barrier of his role or duty between them.
Once he had beseeched his lover, “Have not I asked you to address me simply as ‘Dion’?”
Terence broke away from his arms, imposing that ever-present distance of station between them. “You have, my prince.”
“Then may I ask why you persist in not heeding me?”
“I dare not!” The brunette shook his head, falling to his knees and grabbing the Crown Prince’s hand to place it over his chest. “Know please that that is the name I speak in my heart for I dare not voice it out loud. Please let that be enough. Please ask no more, I beg you.”
And so Dion, who cherished this person with a love even he himself felt distant from, did as he bade and asked no more.
Ever deep in Dion was another wish: a wish to be seen and accepted as he truly was.
In the rising tide of passion, the Crown Prince found himself uncontrollably transforming into his semi-primed form. The claws that clambered over Terence’s skin elicited insurmountable fear in the beta. The horns, the scales, the spikes, the wings-were all already too much, panic seizing the cowering figure and sizzling in the air. And despite the fact that the two spiked phalluses had grown flaccid at Terence’s reaction, the beta still found their size, shape, and quantity overwhelming. Dreadful. Repugnant. Blue-grey eyes were round with a different kind of desire this time: the desire to flee. In his haste to get away the beta fell from the bed, crawling on his back to put as much distance between himself and what the prince had become.
Such a reception needed no more words for further elucidation. It was clear as crystal that this was yet another wish to bury deep down and deny acknowledgment. What was one more among the many that already made up Dion’s life?
At twenty-two, Dion Lesage ascended the throne a month after Emperor Emanuele Saint Nooj passed away. With his ascendance came the news that in a year, Joshua of the House Rosfield from the Imperial Duchy of Rosaria, would be arriving in Oriflamme for their grand wedding. Although it was an inevitable event that had long been in place since before Dion and Terence met, emotions still rung high between the newly crowned Emperor Bahamut and his newly titled Shining Concubine.
All in all, it was a period of major adjustment for everyone: the new emperor to his rule, and the concubine to his role.
Terence, in choosing to be with Dion, effectively lost his freedom, consigned to the inner palace to live in his courtyard, doing nothing but wait for the potentiality that the emperor might come to him in the evening after a day of running the empire. He was naïve back then, not realizing what loving Dion would entail exactly: loss of agency, useless as a concubine for as a beta he could not bear a child for the alpha emperor, could only warm his bed. And though House Branford greatly benefited from Terence’s appointment, he himself was not happy. What use were these pretty clothes, makeup, jewelry on him when he had none of these when he confessed his feelings? He had only been himself. And now he had become a doll, a treasure to be hidden from the rest of the world. And he felt stifled, the entrapment he’d once observed in Dion before now applied to himself.
And now, all the stress just became even more exacerbated with the news of the emperor’s impending nuptials. Words were yelled, furniture kicked and thrown about-the courtyard became a lovers’ battleground.
Heaving in frustration, Dion, in wanting to cherish what he had that had nothing to do with the empire, felt there was nothing left but to resort to the vow he’d been warned against making when he was young. Aether sparked over his skin, his eyes glowing a golden hue, and his voice began to distort as he spoke, “Terence, this love I hold is for you and you only. My dedication. My devotion.”
Suddenly, he screamed, bending down as though in pain, feeling Bahamut trying to break free and stop Dion. His bones popped as they rearranged themselves, signalling the beginnings of the change, and Dion pressed on quickly with his oath, wanting to voice what he needed to before he lost to the dragon inside him.
In pain Dion invoked, “That save for the one night I am required to spend in my marriage bed, I, as Dion Lesage, will not leave your side as long as you live. I, as Dion Lesage, in Bahamut’s name hereby take this oath.”
A loud roar echoed in the courtyard garden. He felt the chains of the oath begin to circle around his heart, wrapping around and constricting him to the terms, Bahamut expressing his outrage and fighting to take over. You have damned us both!!
No longer able to hold the dragon at bay, to prevent anyone from getting hurt Dion took flight still semi-primed, the dragon finally breaking free mid-air as he transformed fully into Bahamut, enraged. As his sacred duty to the empire bound him, he could not wreak destruction upon it, and so he flew further onwards until he could touch the clouds and the stars, blasts of light erupting out of him, flaring out to distant planets.
“Phoenix!!” cried Bahamut. “My human shell has wronged you! I pray for your forgiveness.”
For truly, Dion hadn’t understood then the ramifications of the oath he’d sworn. But Bahamut did, and was wholly aware why it was not easily broken nor could it be reversed.
For the price of breaking the oath would mean to end the cycle that brought both Phoenix and Bahamut into the world together, forever separated, never to unite ever again.
Down below, Terence stared with eyes wide at the aggrieved dragon, disbelievingly shaking his head, the weight of loving Dion too heavy for him to bear. “You swear? You swore yourself to me… Or at least one side of you did, while the other…”
The other hates me, he finished the thought in his head, regret suffusing him for all the choices he’d made. But the heart could not be swayed; it wanted what it wanted. His love was not one he had been able to halt. Terence was all too aware that Dion Lesage was simply not like any other men, and when he had realized his feelings earlier on, he had been at peace with the decision not to reveal them. But the more one denied one’s self, the more unattainable a desire was, the more one coveted it with unmerciful greed. And once he’d had that love in his grasp, Terence could scarce let it go. He could only cling tighter. In selfishness did the desire to monopolize ate away at him. “…Why can’t you be mine and mine alone…?” he whispered to the dragon writhing in despair in the sky above Oriflamme, barrages of light flashing through the cosmos, sensing his head maidservant arrive at his side.
And so to Terence, the view of the dragon above was of one as though he had left all his problems on land, and remaining below was a concubine wrung dry of tears and heavy of heart, his head maid Leviana cradling him in her arms.
For days afterwards, Bahamut refused to recede back into Dion's mind, keeping to the dragon form. Whenever he came across the concubine, always he sent him a penetrating gaze, his growling a deep rumble in his throat. He was incredibly pleased with himself when it resulted in the concubine cowed and unnerved, unable to reach Dion to converse over what had transpired. However much the human tried to make amends with the dragon, Bahamut was not swayed. He kept Dion's consciousness in slumber deep inside until one day, finally, the dragon felt a change in the air, a shift in a scent. When next he saw the concubine with his entourage in his daily attempt at appeasement, the dragon sent him a sharp toothy grin before finally ceding control of the body, and transforming back to Dion Lesage.
At twenty-three, Emperor Bahamut met the Consort Phoenix on their wedding night, and amidst the effulgence of aether thrumming through their bloodstream and over their skin, their Eikons finally retreated from them, leaving them back in their human forms, bodies still melded together.
Up close like this, Dion was able to take his time running golden-brown orbs over the slumbering figure. The soft pointed chin, rosebud lips, delicate nose, the sweep of lashes over cheeks, ginger waves spread out over the sheets, the pearls among them like stars in a red-gold sky. He felt his heart stir, and then a squeeze, and in the breath he released he realized that this was what he had been waiting for: all those buried wishes fulfilled by this one person.
All his life prior to this moment he was suspended in the air, adrift in the unknown, the duty prescribed to him simply a method to while away the wait until he was reunited with the other half of a heart he had never realized was incomplete.
For the first time in his life, he could feel. A well of history opened up inside him, and his mind was suffused with the memories of the Bahamuts and Phoenixes of yore, separated at first, but reunited at the last, and together as long as their time allowed them. Until they met again in the next life.
And the love they held for each other spanned centuries, spanned millennia, beyond time. Incomprehensible to human standards. And Dion also lived it all through Bahamut. Warmth now filled his life, and he would never let go.
Or at least, Bahamut would not.
But Dion would have to. He could feel the binding of the oath as chains holding him down and holding him fast. He only had this one night to spend with the love of all his lives, for after this he would return to the one he had bound his heart to.
He had effectively rendered the Phoenix out of his reach. And as his oath bound him, he could not simply reverse it.
In his ignorance, in the desperate need for love, he brought this entrapment upon himself.
Forgive me, Joshua Rosfield. Phoenix.
I know not how to set things right.
Thanks for reading :)
Sep/2023
=========================
previous chapter | next chapter
author: caledon (the_tower_room)
pairing: Dion/Joshua
rating: E
summary: Having been born the Phoenix meant Joshua was destined to be by Bahamut’s side as his consort.
He didn’t know what he was expecting, but certainly not the situation he found himself in.
Omegaverse AU.
words: 4692
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XVI belongs to Square Enix.
Warning: Sylvestre Lesage.
Chapter 2: Irreversible Oath
On the winter after the one who would become emperor was born, it heralded a great change in the Empire of Sanbreque, especially as it pertained to the rise of House Lesage.
His mother Apolline was a low-born concubine his father had taken in and registered into House Lesage just two years prior. Her postpartum belly was slow to recede even a year after she’d given birth, and so Cardinal Sylvestre would usually exercise his conjugal rights with her on her hands and knees and him pushing in from behind while pulling her hair, unwilling to see the ungainly body that had housed his son. On that fateful winter’s night, amidst the sound of frantic smacking of flesh and cries of pleasure, the nursemaid’s sudden terrified screams broke through. Utterly displeased with the racket, Sylvestre only gave it a momentary consideration before resuming his movements, slapping the fleshy rump against his hips. But the nursemaid hadn’t ceased, her voice sharp and piercing through the pleasure that Sylvestre was focused on obtaining.
“My lord-!” gasped Apolline. “Should we check on what’s happening?”
Sylvestre pulled harder on her hair, and she yelped as her head was stretched further back. “Should not you check on your husband’s needs before all else?”
“I’m sorry, my lord,” she muttered and set about moving her inner muscles in the way she knew he liked, and he rewarded her with another slap on her butt, thumb circling her asshole and drily breaching her, making her body seize and tighten even more around him from the pain of it. It was enough to send him over the edge though he was still left immensely unsatisfied due to the disturbance. Sylvestre pulled swiftly out, not even able to enjoy the sight of his spend dripping from his concubine as he haphazardly threw on his clothes, not caring one whit about Apolline’s state.
This nursemaid will pay dearly, was Sylvestre’s incensed thought as he left his concubine’s chamber and followed the noise in their child’s bedroom.
The nursemaid was on the floor by the door, voice hoarse from her snivelling. And upon the small toddler-bed was a crying one-year-old with silvery scales with hints of opalescent azure manifested all over his skin; soft spikes, a tail, and the beginnings on membranous wings sprouting from his body; and a set of tiny translucent horns peeked from his pale blond head.
“Please, I did not do anything to your son!” cried the nursemaid, crawling in the ground in supplication. “Please, it was not me! One minute, he was normal, and the next he was like this! I beg you! Mercy, please! I did not turn your son into a monster!”
Cardinal Sylvestre with a now soft reverent gait stepped forward into the room and sharply admonished the woman, “Cease your prattling!” Then turned to the bed and genuflected before it, staring in wonder at his son. “I’m become the father of the emperor.” The smile that stretched on his lips was that of gruesome delight, an uncontrollable maniacal laughter breaking from his chest and he threw his head back and gave into it, eyes shining bright at the future before him. Lips still trembled in uncompromising glee, he managed finally to control himself, then gentled his voice as he gazed upon the salvation of his noble House. “Here before you is the Blessing of the Great Goddess Greagor.”
Apolline finally managed to settle herself enough to dress up and follow, distraught and confused at what she beheld. She asked, gasping, “What has happened to Dion? What do you mean, my lord?”
The cardinal’s mind was already heavy with all that he needed to accomplish, a note of regret flashing through him at the thought of the young woman that soon would be lost to him - her body had pleased him greatly, and she had even made him a father to the new incarnation of the great dragon who would become the emperor. But her low-born existence sullied the image House Lesage wished to convey to the world, especially now with an emperor-to-be in their midst.
He gave her what he deemed was the greatest honour he could bestow to one of her inferior status: he inclined his head - not quite a bow - and acknowledged, “You have served me well.”
Then he rose, and took the crying draconic child into his arms, leaving the courtyard of his concubine to make his way to the courtyard of his legal wife.
“Where are you taking him, my lord?” Alarmed, Apolline tried to chase after him but was stopped at her courtyard gate by guards. “Please!! My child-”
Her transformed son peered over Sylvestre’s shoulder, still sobbing, tears like fat dew drops on his ruddy face, tiny arms reaching for his mother.
There is much to prepare, thought Sylvestre, and smirked, patting the toddler’s back in a half-hearted attempt at comfort. To the guard that followed him, the cardinal bade, “Kill them.”
The guard halted in his tracks and bowed his head. “As you wish, Your Eminence.”
Among the first of Sylvestre’s preparations was declaring his concubine’s child legitimate by having his legal wife adopt him under her name. Thus was Dion Lesage listed as issue of Euphrasie Lesage, of House Lebeau. Having had no children of her own - and not for lack of trying with her husband - she had nonetheless been displeased to raise a son her husband sired with another woman. But the greatness and glory that this son would grant House Lesage, and by extension her own House Lebeau, was too beneficial to pass up, and so she initially held back her feelings of dissatisfaction and hate, and tried to raise him as her own.
It was not long after the adoption that the child was presented to the court of Emperor Emanuele Saint Nooj, where the Imperial Astrologers confirmed, “It is as our auguries have shown, Your Radiance. Phoenix has been birthed in Rosaria, and therefore is Bahamut not long to follow. And this child before you is the sixteenth incarnation of the Holy Son of Goddess Greagor come once more to Valisthea.”
As had been the custom and law of the empire, the incarnation of Bahamut must live to serve the people as the next Emperor of Sanbreque. Dion’s existence suspended all the fighting for the throne that had been rife in the court since Emperor Emanuele was voted into power. And any incarnation of an Eikon was nigh unkillable and have a way of preserving themselves, so attempts at assassination or abduction would have proved futile. And as part the law and custom, the Duchy of Rosaria was aware that their Phoenix was to be offered to the empire as the consort to their next Emperor Bahamut - and to the Duchess Anabella Rosfield, there could be no greater honour than to have her very own son as second only to the emperor in power.
And thus was Dion Lesage named the heir to the throne of Sanbreque, charged to live in service of the empire.
At barely three years of age was the young Crown Prince Dion Lesage bidden to live in the Whitewyrm Palace for the start of his education. Moving from the main house of the Lesage family, he had barely felt what it was like to have a mother, to have been wrested from her before he had a mind developed enough to recall her. His father, aware that the dragon in his son could see through his lies, had admitted to Dion when he was older: “You must understand, Dion. Apolline died for a good cause. Her very existence may not sully the Lesage legacy. Unthinkable, unpardonable, that our Emperor Bahamut came not from my lawful wife. And though we are not able to erase the fact that you did not come from Euphrasie's womb, but in all that matters, she is your mother.”
But Madame Lesage had been no better. Despite her decision and House Lebeau’s urgings, she could not bring herself to treat her husband’s son kindly. She had been strict and distant, not wont to show affection for someone she was distasteful of. And though fearful that the dragon would exact vengeance for her misconduct against his incarnation, she still could not help herself. Her attitude towards this untoward situation bleeding through to her actions and words to so a young child.
As for Sylvestre Lesage-he had focused only on what Dion’s existence had brought to the House. Suddenly he was promoted to High Cardinal, enjoying the power that came with the seat and having the Emperor Emanuele’s ear for his machinations and manoeuvrings at court.
Dion was groomed to be the groom of the Phoenix, groomed to be the ruler of the empire. Those young days filled with nothing but lesson upon lesson of his destiny, of what he must be. When older, he would be standing at the pinnacle of the world, and such heights were brought forth not by choice. Never by choice. But destiny.
"This is who you are, Dion Lesage," his elders told him, hammering home that fact ad nauseum throughout his life, wresting from him everything they deemed unnecessary and leaving him nothing but a husk that lived only for the good of the empire.
Having nothing else, young Dion reconciled himself to the loneliness brought about by his fate and dutifully learned his letters and numbers, art and literature. As he grew older, he’d been allowed to attend classes inside the palace with noble peers of similar age as himself, learning politics, diplomacy, history, law, the art of war, the art of ruling. Older still and there came to be learned various styles of combat with fists and weapons such as the bow, the sword, and-his favourite-the halberd. Along the way was meditation and control of one’s self to transform back and forth between dragon and human, and convene with Bahamut dwelling inside him.
Learning came easily to Dion for he had a well of the dragon's memories to draw from. All the lessons on history, law, politics--he'd known them already, even lived some of them as the previous incarnations. What new knowledge he’d gained were the current culture of the age, the recent history that Bahamut slept through.
Likewise, the lessons in combat were not new; Dion needed only to attune the dragon's muscle memory and he returned to the prime of his body, accomplishing each move-set and reacquiring forgotten skills.
During those years one such tutor he had was a kind old man, much traveled and learned of the world. He had taught the Crown Prince with infinite patience, silver beard partitioned into little ponytails and eyes gentle. Among the greatest lesson Harpocrates imparted to his young charge was: “Remember, Crown Prince Dion: an emperor’s words are sacred, beyond contestation, and thus not easily broken. As the sixteenth vessel of Bahamut, your words as emperor will be even more binding, as they are magic and can hold your very life on account. I beg you be careful, and take the utmost heed of any vows or oaths you may take in the name of Bahamut. For even you cannot easily unmake them.”
The young Crown Prince felt Bahamut stir, and his whole being shook with the knowledge of truth. Carefully word such an oath if you must take it, instructed the dragon, for it is a trap, a prison, in which we may not be able to free ourselves from.
Communion with Bahamut came naturally. Once, Dion transformed into the dragon and took to the skies, and through the rush of wind on his scales and spikes he looked down at the empire that he served, at the minuscule human figures like ants going about their daily lives. The sight made him want to truly be a part of it, part of that world, not just its overseer, but to see and experience what Oriflamme was like beyond the palace walls. To be among the people.
And so from Bahamut's memory did Dion came to know of the Elucidated-a group not unlike the secret spy network that officially worked under the emperor, accomplishing whatever clandestine tasks (whether investigation or assassination) commanded of them. But the Elucidated served only Bahamut, answered only to the Eikon separate from the crown, and Dion had sought their services. Through them he learned how to disguise himself and found a way to surreptitiously sneak out of the stuffy, repressed-by-rules palace to interact with the very people that Dion would someday rule over, all without the distance wrought by their fear and reverence for a dragon emperor. It was…rather freeing. Not being himself. Not being tied to his fate, even if for only a short moment.
When Dion was eighteen, the Emperor Emanuele held his yearly hunt, special this time due to the Crown Prince’s attendance.
Many nobles, both great and lesser, elected to participate in the four-day event held in the forest south of Oriflamme. Tents and viewing platforms were erected at the site, smoke from campfires lingered in the air. There was nothing but merrymaking and celebration, hot blood churning with the abject desire to best the populace in the art of hunting. Prey had been released in the wild, and off the participants went on horseback, bow and arrows at the ready.
Sir Terence of House Branford followed at Dion’s side, as ever he did since they met at seven years old in the class at the palace. A beta from a lesser noble House with brown hair and blue-grey eyes, that always peered longingly at the Crown Prince who was oblivious to such a gaze. Since that first time they met, the beta’s pure heart had always bled for the duty that had trapped and shaped the Crown Prince, empathized with the little boy who had had to grow up knowing he would carry the empire on his shoulders, so very different from the various emperors who’d won their power by being elected when they were older. As they grew up together, those feelings transformed, bloomed into intense yearning, wanting nothing more than to give all the love that the Prince had never had. But the beta held himself back, for upon that golden-brown gaze was the world, and though Terence was part of that very world, he knew he would never be the focus. Not when a Phoenix waited in a far-flung future.
When the two accidentally wandered into a Bomb King’s lair, it was fraught with danger they’d never experienced before. Scorched with flames hither and yon, there hadn’t been much their flimsy bows and arrows could do to get them out of the mess; they could only slowly whittle down the huge fireball’s health. Dion had not wanted to call upon Bahamut’s power; instead he wished to rely on his human form’s own strength.
When at last it seemed that they were to be victorious, the fireball exploded, and Terence would have perished as a burned carcass had it not been for the Crown Prince throwing himself over the beta, saving him from the brunt of the explosion.
In fear for the Crown Prince’s life did Terence forget himself, with tears falling, he held Dion’s face, lips upon the Prince’s as he prayed to Greagor, implored to any gods to save the Prince, the words of love he never could speak of before now spilling out of him in frenzy.
At a choked exhale from the Prince, Terence pulled back, though his hands remained on Dion’s cheeks. Golden-brown eyes were groggy, wounds dissipating as Bahamut healed his flesh. Laughing through his tears, the beta sighed in relief, leaning his forehead against Dion’s.
“Terence…?” uttered the Prince, eyes slowly becoming clear, confused at the overt familiarity in which he was being treated.
Sniffing, the beta braced himself. Having come this far, what else had he got to lose?
“My prince, I can no longer stay my feelings. I love you, Your Highness. I'm in love with you. I thought I had lost you when you saved me. Please allow me to love you. I want to stay ever at your side.”
Love? thought Dion. In love with me? His brows furrowed. Such a concept was something he never thought would apply to him. He had been raised on ideals in which love had no place: his duty. His fate.
But a small part of Dion wondered if he could stray from the call of destiny even for a little bit. For what was before him was an offer of something he’d never had. Someone claimed to love him, and from the way the beta spoke of it, that love was different from the denizen’s love for their emperor, from a parent’s love for their child.
So why not?
Why not take that hand held out, ready to pull him in a world he’d never known?
Dion had never had anything in his life that he had decided for himself. What was being asked of him now had nothing to do with the empire, nothing to do with power. Before this, all else had been prearranged for him: the throne, the duty to the empire, his marriage.
But this one was all about himself. An offering of devotion that was solely for him. And the temptation of it was a sudden unrelenting grip in his being.
And so he took that hand, accepted the confession. And his first friend showed him what “love” could be.
Ever deep in Dion was a wish: a wish to be seen as simply himself. Without the barrier of his role or duty between them.
Once he had beseeched his lover, “Have not I asked you to address me simply as ‘Dion’?”
Terence broke away from his arms, imposing that ever-present distance of station between them. “You have, my prince.”
“Then may I ask why you persist in not heeding me?”
“I dare not!” The brunette shook his head, falling to his knees and grabbing the Crown Prince’s hand to place it over his chest. “Know please that that is the name I speak in my heart for I dare not voice it out loud. Please let that be enough. Please ask no more, I beg you.”
And so Dion, who cherished this person with a love even he himself felt distant from, did as he bade and asked no more.
Ever deep in Dion was another wish: a wish to be seen and accepted as he truly was.
In the rising tide of passion, the Crown Prince found himself uncontrollably transforming into his semi-primed form. The claws that clambered over Terence’s skin elicited insurmountable fear in the beta. The horns, the scales, the spikes, the wings-were all already too much, panic seizing the cowering figure and sizzling in the air. And despite the fact that the two spiked phalluses had grown flaccid at Terence’s reaction, the beta still found their size, shape, and quantity overwhelming. Dreadful. Repugnant. Blue-grey eyes were round with a different kind of desire this time: the desire to flee. In his haste to get away the beta fell from the bed, crawling on his back to put as much distance between himself and what the prince had become.
Such a reception needed no more words for further elucidation. It was clear as crystal that this was yet another wish to bury deep down and deny acknowledgment. What was one more among the many that already made up Dion’s life?
At twenty-two, Dion Lesage ascended the throne a month after Emperor Emanuele Saint Nooj passed away. With his ascendance came the news that in a year, Joshua of the House Rosfield from the Imperial Duchy of Rosaria, would be arriving in Oriflamme for their grand wedding. Although it was an inevitable event that had long been in place since before Dion and Terence met, emotions still rung high between the newly crowned Emperor Bahamut and his newly titled Shining Concubine.
All in all, it was a period of major adjustment for everyone: the new emperor to his rule, and the concubine to his role.
Terence, in choosing to be with Dion, effectively lost his freedom, consigned to the inner palace to live in his courtyard, doing nothing but wait for the potentiality that the emperor might come to him in the evening after a day of running the empire. He was naïve back then, not realizing what loving Dion would entail exactly: loss of agency, useless as a concubine for as a beta he could not bear a child for the alpha emperor, could only warm his bed. And though House Branford greatly benefited from Terence’s appointment, he himself was not happy. What use were these pretty clothes, makeup, jewelry on him when he had none of these when he confessed his feelings? He had only been himself. And now he had become a doll, a treasure to be hidden from the rest of the world. And he felt stifled, the entrapment he’d once observed in Dion before now applied to himself.
And now, all the stress just became even more exacerbated with the news of the emperor’s impending nuptials. Words were yelled, furniture kicked and thrown about-the courtyard became a lovers’ battleground.
Heaving in frustration, Dion, in wanting to cherish what he had that had nothing to do with the empire, felt there was nothing left but to resort to the vow he’d been warned against making when he was young. Aether sparked over his skin, his eyes glowing a golden hue, and his voice began to distort as he spoke, “Terence, this love I hold is for you and you only. My dedication. My devotion.”
Suddenly, he screamed, bending down as though in pain, feeling Bahamut trying to break free and stop Dion. His bones popped as they rearranged themselves, signalling the beginnings of the change, and Dion pressed on quickly with his oath, wanting to voice what he needed to before he lost to the dragon inside him.
In pain Dion invoked, “That save for the one night I am required to spend in my marriage bed, I, as Dion Lesage, will not leave your side as long as you live. I, as Dion Lesage, in Bahamut’s name hereby take this oath.”
A loud roar echoed in the courtyard garden. He felt the chains of the oath begin to circle around his heart, wrapping around and constricting him to the terms, Bahamut expressing his outrage and fighting to take over. You have damned us both!!
No longer able to hold the dragon at bay, to prevent anyone from getting hurt Dion took flight still semi-primed, the dragon finally breaking free mid-air as he transformed fully into Bahamut, enraged. As his sacred duty to the empire bound him, he could not wreak destruction upon it, and so he flew further onwards until he could touch the clouds and the stars, blasts of light erupting out of him, flaring out to distant planets.
“Phoenix!!” cried Bahamut. “My human shell has wronged you! I pray for your forgiveness.”
For truly, Dion hadn’t understood then the ramifications of the oath he’d sworn. But Bahamut did, and was wholly aware why it was not easily broken nor could it be reversed.
For the price of breaking the oath would mean to end the cycle that brought both Phoenix and Bahamut into the world together, forever separated, never to unite ever again.
Down below, Terence stared with eyes wide at the aggrieved dragon, disbelievingly shaking his head, the weight of loving Dion too heavy for him to bear. “You swear? You swore yourself to me… Or at least one side of you did, while the other…”
The other hates me, he finished the thought in his head, regret suffusing him for all the choices he’d made. But the heart could not be swayed; it wanted what it wanted. His love was not one he had been able to halt. Terence was all too aware that Dion Lesage was simply not like any other men, and when he had realized his feelings earlier on, he had been at peace with the decision not to reveal them. But the more one denied one’s self, the more unattainable a desire was, the more one coveted it with unmerciful greed. And once he’d had that love in his grasp, Terence could scarce let it go. He could only cling tighter. In selfishness did the desire to monopolize ate away at him. “…Why can’t you be mine and mine alone…?” he whispered to the dragon writhing in despair in the sky above Oriflamme, barrages of light flashing through the cosmos, sensing his head maidservant arrive at his side.
And so to Terence, the view of the dragon above was of one as though he had left all his problems on land, and remaining below was a concubine wrung dry of tears and heavy of heart, his head maid Leviana cradling him in her arms.
For days afterwards, Bahamut refused to recede back into Dion's mind, keeping to the dragon form. Whenever he came across the concubine, always he sent him a penetrating gaze, his growling a deep rumble in his throat. He was incredibly pleased with himself when it resulted in the concubine cowed and unnerved, unable to reach Dion to converse over what had transpired. However much the human tried to make amends with the dragon, Bahamut was not swayed. He kept Dion's consciousness in slumber deep inside until one day, finally, the dragon felt a change in the air, a shift in a scent. When next he saw the concubine with his entourage in his daily attempt at appeasement, the dragon sent him a sharp toothy grin before finally ceding control of the body, and transforming back to Dion Lesage.
At twenty-three, Emperor Bahamut met the Consort Phoenix on their wedding night, and amidst the effulgence of aether thrumming through their bloodstream and over their skin, their Eikons finally retreated from them, leaving them back in their human forms, bodies still melded together.
Up close like this, Dion was able to take his time running golden-brown orbs over the slumbering figure. The soft pointed chin, rosebud lips, delicate nose, the sweep of lashes over cheeks, ginger waves spread out over the sheets, the pearls among them like stars in a red-gold sky. He felt his heart stir, and then a squeeze, and in the breath he released he realized that this was what he had been waiting for: all those buried wishes fulfilled by this one person.
All his life prior to this moment he was suspended in the air, adrift in the unknown, the duty prescribed to him simply a method to while away the wait until he was reunited with the other half of a heart he had never realized was incomplete.
For the first time in his life, he could feel. A well of history opened up inside him, and his mind was suffused with the memories of the Bahamuts and Phoenixes of yore, separated at first, but reunited at the last, and together as long as their time allowed them. Until they met again in the next life.
And the love they held for each other spanned centuries, spanned millennia, beyond time. Incomprehensible to human standards. And Dion also lived it all through Bahamut. Warmth now filled his life, and he would never let go.
Or at least, Bahamut would not.
But Dion would have to. He could feel the binding of the oath as chains holding him down and holding him fast. He only had this one night to spend with the love of all his lives, for after this he would return to the one he had bound his heart to.
He had effectively rendered the Phoenix out of his reach. And as his oath bound him, he could not simply reverse it.
In his ignorance, in the desperate need for love, he brought this entrapment upon himself.
Forgive me, Joshua Rosfield. Phoenix.
I know not how to set things right.
Thanks for reading :)
Sep/2023
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