Suddenly, he was falling facedown. The chains and restraints had been severed, and Ardyn, unable to support his own weight, went crashing unceremoniously to the ground. His arms and legs lay limp, unresponsive to his will.
Then, in another instant, he felt pain in his chest and flank. The weapons embedded there were being pried free. It was a rough, ripping sensation, underscoring the fact that the blades had become one with his flesh as the ancient wounds healed over.
“Take him away!” The command came from the same man who had laughed earlier. The order―and its tone―made his position in relation to the others clear.
Ardyn felt his body rise. Hands gripped him from either side.
“Don’t touch me . . . ” he said.
He wanted to brush the hands away, but not a one of his fingers would heed his mind’s commands. Concentrating every bit of strength in his body, he could barely manage to raise his head slightly. It was a pathetic display.
Still, when his eyes finally grew accustomed to the light, the new angle allowed him glimpses of the men who had brought an end to his isolation. The two carrying him seemed to be rank-and-file soldiers. They were clad in curious garb, unlike anything he’d seen before. But they carried themselves in the manner of trained troops. Of that he was sure.
Somnus would have been long dead. Perhaps the men were under the orders of one of his brother’s heirs.
From some distance away came another voice, this one strange, somehow inhuman.
“Status report.” It was accompanied by a crackling noise, like kindling in a growing fire. The noise and the voice’s hollow quality made it difficult to sift out the words.
“We’ll have the medical team ready as planned. We’re ju―!”
There was a noise like distant thunder, then silence.
“Shit. Move!”
What the cause for upset was, Ardyn could not fathom, but he felt the men at his sides quicken their pace. The edges of the light at his feet began to blur. Cold crept across the uncovered skin of his shoulders and torso. He gathered his strength and lifted his head a bit higher, now able to see almost straight ahead.
They were headed toward a rectangular opening―it was a door to the outside. The outside. He could see it. New sounds echoed from beyond the doorway. Heavy objects colliding with each other. Shrieks of pain.
“We knew they’d come. Keep moving forward,” the leader ordered, his voice low.
Who else was here that this man had expected to encounter?
The next instant, the world stretched out around him on all sides. The sky was the color of ink swirling its way through a vessel of water. It might have been dawn, or perhaps it was day and the weather harsh. Still, it felt unbearably bright to eyes accustomed to an eternity of darkness.
A little farther ahead, several figures stood facing them, clad in black, with weapons held at the ready. At their feet lay several men in armor identical to that of the soldiers at Ardyn’s sides.
Suddenly, the hands were gone, and he was pitching forward again. He heard the men to either side of him groan as they both crumpled to the ground. Their defeat had come so easily, Ardyn wasn’t sure if it was a sign of their weakness or their enemies’ strength. They were enemies . . . weren’t they? Clearly there were two factions at play here, but Ardyn had no idea which was friend and which foe.
He found the strength to rise from the ground and observe his surroundings, more annoyed than curious. One of the men clad in black barked out, “Adagium sighted!”
Another word he didn’t understand.
“Get it back in the cell―no matter what.”
Ah, they’re speaking of me, he realized. Is that what they call me? “Adagium”?
“We can’t let that thing off this island!”
Tiny objects zipped through the air, rushing toward him. Pain streaked through his side.
“Stop . . . ” he moaned.
His chest seared with agony. It was some manner of assault he’d not encountered before, but the pain itself was the same as he’d experienced so long ago.
“Cease this . . . ” he pleaded.
His flesh tore, his guts spasmed. These were sensations he hadn’t felt in ages. Sensations he’d desperately wanted to banish from memory.
“Cease this at once!”
Anger welled up from deep inside him. He felt the fresh wounds closing. A man with short swords clenched in both hands rushed at him, and Ardyn’s arms rose to intercept the blow. It should have been a fruitless defense: Ardyn had no weapon but his bare fists. Instead, he flung his attacker away. The man’s body spiraled through the air, swords spinning away in opposite directions.
“Unbelievable. He really is a monster . . . ”
In a flash, Ardyn found himself on top of this other soldier―the one who had called him a monster―and was pummeling him into the ground. He’d heard the insult so many times he ought to have been numb to it, yet at its sound his blood boiled.
“Who did this to me?” he demanded.
Why did he have this monstrous strength? He had never wished for such a thing.
“For what sins must I atone?!”
Rage filled him, and another man who happened to enter his field of view found himself its target. Ardyn made a fist, into which seemed to flow every bit of anger he possessed. His knuckles drove deep into the man’s body. His bloodcurdling cry echoed in their surroundings.
Then time stopped.
To Ardyn alone, the world was frozen. The barren stone landscape of Angelgard was replaced with a new scene, a summer day bright enough to leave him dizzy. Large white boxes were neatly aligned atop gray earth. Pillars in the ground flickered with red and green lights in curious shapes. It was strange. Baffling. And stranger still was the means by which the images came. He saw them not with his eyes: they arrived directly in his mind.
“These memories are not my own . . . Could they be his?”
His wife stood beside him, a smile on her face. A small hand clutched his own. He felt another small weight and the warmth it exuded draped across his back. It was his family. It was . . . the family of this man beneath him.
Other memories came in succession. A deluge of scenes.
Lucis.
Insomnia.
The king.
“Graaaugh!” Ardyn could do naught but shriek and stare. This man―this soldier―was a subject of the kingdom built by Somnus. The Kingdom of Lucis, now ruled by its 112th king, Mors Lucis Caelum. Descendant of House Caelum. No. Descendant of Somnus. “This man . . . belongs to . . . ”
Ardyn’s vision shifted once again. The flood of images had stopped, and now, under his gaze, lay the man he’d beaten to the ground. Except he was a man no more. From black sleeves protruded hands equally as black. Diseased skin with which Ardyn was well acquainted, along with the languid black haze he knew it to emit.
“I didn’t purge him of the scourge; I bestowed it upon him . . . ” he said to himself in disbelief.
He looked down at his own hands. When he’d driven them into the man’s body, they’d seemed suffused with his anger. He could still feel it. And that concentrated rage seemed to have turned this man into a daemon. His mind reeled at the prospect.
His entire life, he’d labored to deliver the people from the scourge’s grip. Even if it meant becoming a monster himself, every life touched still meant another soul delivered.
Now, rather than saving a soul, he’d infected one. Now, his body was a vessel that poured the scourge into another. It was too great a contradiction for his mind to accept.
“Incredible!”
Beside him, clapping his hands in a decidedly exaggerated fashion, was the pretentious man who had ordered Ardyn taken from the prison of stone. He seemed to have withdrawn to a safe distance during the scuffle, waiting to see how things unfolded.
“His power’s unbelievable!”
Ardyn studied the man more closely. His silver hair was carefully slicked back, and his uniform heavily adorned. He very clearly was of a different pedigree than the men he commanded.
As the man strolled closer, he threw his arms wide. His features retained a dignified reserve, but his eyes radiated a strange intensity. This was a man to whom morals meant nothing, one of those who dreamt of atrocious schemes and cared not what price they carried. He was a man of Somnus’s ilk, and Ardyn wanted nothing to do with him. Ardyn tried to move away but found his limbs unresponsive once again.
“Hey!” the man exclaimed as Ardyn fell.
But his voice was already far away, and blackness closed in on all sides.
M.E. 722
His eyes opened to a familiar vista. Ears of wheat gently bowed in the wind, the field extending as far as he could see. Above them stretched the evening sky. Aera stood beneath the outstretched boughs of their tree.
Oh, Aera, how I longed to see you. The real you. Not the pathetic imitation conjured by my mind. How I begged for one more chance to be with you. Come, let us sit in the shade and talk as we used to do. There is so much I have to tell you.
But as he ran toward her, she was not smiling as she should have been.
“Aera!”
She was somber, gazing at something over his shoulder. Ardyn turned. Somnus was there.
“Forgive me, Brother. But the throne seats only one!”
Why do you still go on about the throne? Unless . . . you were never meant to sit there?