“Show it, don’t say it. Sit tight over there while I get things ready. Then you can give me a hand.”
“Certainly,” the Oracle nodded with the innocence of a child. Her lack of concern probably indicated just how little she knew about bike repair. This was gonna require muscle, and by the end of it, their hands would be filthy, coated in dirt and grease. Sol laughed to herself. Once the Oracle found out what the job required, she’d probably break down in tears.
That’s what Sol figured, anyway, but she couldn’t have been further off the mark. The Oracle didn’t flinch in the slightest at getting her hands dirty. She obviously didn’t have much experience working on machines, but she wasn’t completely useless either. Actually, Sol had to admit, she was kind of nice to have around. A quick learner, too.
If you want to get a good sense of a person’s character, work alongside ’em. A little boring, back-breaking work’ll show you exactly who they are.
How long ago had she been given that advice? Not too long, Sol decided. It would’ve been after she was finally recognized more or less as an adult in her own right, when the two of them could start speaking on equal terms.
Good advice, sure, but the person who gave it still couldn’t stop treating Sol like a child. Just that morning, Sol had gotten fed up enough to shout at her.
“All right. Lookin’ pretty good,” Sol announced. “The rest is fine tuning. You can leave that up to me.”
Sol looked up. It was night already. It’d been years since you could find the sun to track the time, but the color of the sky still got a bit darker as night set in.
“Let’s call it a day,” she said.
More than anything else, she wanted some dinner.
Lunafreya had thought she was accustomed to traveling. Her calling as the Oracle had taken her to places all across the land, conducting every imaginable ritual and rite, blessing the havens, easing the pain of the ill and wounded. The work had been unquestionably demanding.
However, as the Oracle, she’d always traveled in the company of others. Her safety on the road was assured, and wherever she stopped warm meals and comfortable accommodations always awaited her. She hadn’t had to face daemons in battle herself. Nor had she ever slept in an unoccupied building, wrapped up in a dusty blanket. These experiences were new.
It was also the first time she’d eaten straight from a can, fork thrust directly into the unheated and decidedly unusual contents. According to the label, she’d dined on vegetable and meat stew, but the taste was rather removed from that description. It wasn’t that it was bad, but it gave her pause. The bewilderment accompanying her first bite must have been apparent, for Sol smirked and said, “Is it not to the Lady Oracle’s liking?”
Sol’s guns were never far. She no longer watched Lunafreya with obvious, constant caution, but neither had she fostered any degree of trust. That, too, was a new experience. Never in Lunafreya’s life had she been treated with such clear suspicion. The title of Oracle alone had always elicited a measure of trust and openness from anyone she encountered. Even the imperial forces, who regarded her with little warmth, had never been openly disrespectful, and Lunafreya had never felt the need to go out of her way to dispel a sense of mistrust from those in the employ of the empire.
Thus, when confronted with suspicion, she had no idea how to react. She did not know the proper overtures to overcome Sol’s mistrust. Lunafreya had never envisioned a need for such skills or knowledge.
As she prepared for bed, her mind still was weighed down with concern. It felt as though she might not manage even a moment’s sleep. But when her head met the pillow, she realized how weary her body was from the day’s events, and the moment her eyes closed, she drifted off.
Lunafreya Nox Fleuret.
Lunafreya’s eyes opened at the sound of her name. The voice was one hard to imagine coming from a human, and her surroundings were far too luminous for the mortal realm. Even a decade ago, before the perpetual darkness, there had been no place on Eos so bright. And it wasn’t just the light. She hung weightless in a space of emptiness extending as far as the eye could see, and the emptiness itself glowed like some great jewel. This was most assuredly no part of the reality she knew. This was a place of dreams or visions.
Hearken unto the voice of the Bladekeeper, Bahamut.
The Bladekeeper?
As a child, she had often listened to Gentiana recounting tales of the Star. They were the stories of the Hexatheon, the six gods of Eos, of which Bahamut was one.
As Gentiana told it, all members of the Six were as gods to mortals, but even among them Bahamut stood apart. Titan, the Archaean; Ifrit, the Infernian; Ramuh, the Fulgurian; Leviathan, the Hydraean; and Shiva, the Glacian: these five ruled over the natural elements of their world, existing alongside the Star itself. But the Draconian was different. He existed alongside the heavens encircling the Star. Gentiana never outright stated as much, but her tone seemed to suggest that Bahamut occupied a position superior to the rest.
And now here Lunafreya was, being directly addressed by the Bladekeeper.
A new calling awaits the Oracle.
As the voice boomed, the space around Lunafreya began to shift. What had been empty void before was now darkened landscape. Within that landscape she observed the Citadel. In a courtyard which she faintly remembered, Noctis and Ardyn stood with blades crossed.
Noctis seemed much older than that day they parted in Altissia. Did that mean she was seeing a vision of the future? The scene was silent, but she could still almost hear the ringing of the two men’s weapons striking against each other. At times the swords spit sparks. At times they found their marks, and their blades and the arcs they drew were painted with blood. For a moment, she thought the two men might go on fighting forever.
When it finally did come to an end, this swordfight that was a duel to the death, the one on the ground was Ardyn. But the battle between him and Noctis was not yet over. Darkness still hung thick over Insomnia.
“This cannot be . . . ” Lunafreya murmured.
The scenes that came next defied everything she believed true of their lives and fates. Deep within the Citadel, Noctis sat upon the throne as the True King, calling forth the power of the Ring of the Lucii, summoning the souls of his ancestors. Thirteen Kings of Yore encircled Noctis, weapons held raised and ready. Each in turn thrust spectral steel into Noctis’s flesh.
Tears formed in Lunafreya’s eyes as she watched. “Noctis!” she screamed. “Why?!”