“Stop!”
A longsword flashed into Somnus’s raised hand, and Aera threw herself in front of the blade as it came crashing down. Crimson welled from the wound. Ardyn stood frozen, unable to do anything at all.
“Why . . . ?”
This last whispered word came not from Ardyn’s mouth but Aera’s. It seemed strange. Shouldn’t he be the one to ask why? But he felt certain that back there in the sanctuary, it had been Aera who spoke that word. What had she meant?
Ah, of course. This is a dream. The same dream as always. I’ve seen it so many times, it’s more vivid than reality. An ancient tale, still unfolding right before my eyes. Her body in my arms, growing cold.
“Gods, no! Aera . . . !”
He awoke with a start. A dream that was all too real was now replaced by a reality that could have easily been a dream. The ceiling above him shone with an unnatural luster. The bed in which he lay did not smell like a bed. The room around him was cluttered with furniture. Every object in sight was much too gray and had shapes that were far too straight and uniform.
Ardyn rose from the bed, but the strange room did not vanish. That alone seemed to prove that this was not a dream. A sigh escaped his lips. Would he never be free from this unfathomable world?
“Ardyn Izunia.” A metallic voice rang out with such perfect timing, he had to imagine its owner waiting patiently for the sleeping man to wake. Ardyn flicked his gaze about, searching for the speaker, but he was alone. Then he remembered: it was one of this world’s many devices meant to carry voices from afar. The contraptions had been absolutely baffling to him at first, but time saw him develop a modicum of familiarity with them.
“Chief Besithia would like to see you.”
What drudgery. Of course Chief Besithia wished to see him. The man always did, and every interaction was a chore. Verstael fancied himself single-handedly responsible for waking the ancient monster sealed at Angelgard and returning it to the modern world. Worse yet, he now assumed his new pet to be at his constant beck and call. From the moment Ardyn had been carried into the facility, the poking, prodding, and questioning had been ceaseless. He’d have refused, had his weary body and mind not deemed resistance the greater nuisance.
I wish he’d give up, Ardyn thought, and leave me be. There isn’t anyone I wish to speak with. There isn’t anything I wish to do or any place I wish to go. I’d be content enough back in the monotony of that stone prison.
He did not, however, make any of those thoughts known. Trying to do so would have been a tedium of its own.
“Might as well head out.”
Each footfall was accompanied by a faint, hollow tap. He’d somehow managed to accustom himself to the dreadfully uncomfortable shoes everyone wore. But the clothes still irked him. They cinched at his waist, constricting around him in a way quite unlike any other garment he’d known. Any movement of his arms was accompanied by an unpleasant tugging at the shoulders. He felt restrained. Pinned down. As he continued down the hallway, he grumbled to himself, “I daresay this outfit wasn’t tailor-made.”
He knew that such comments would scarce resolve his complaints. Such garb was common―even expected―by the people of this “year 722 of the Modern Era.” Ardyn passed through a great sliding doorway made of some material even colder than the walls of his ancient stone cell: just one more strange and off-putting experience for him that, to everyone else in this world, was so regular as to pass unnoticed.
The troopers posted at seemingly every door and in every hallway were all clad in the same uniform, faces indistinguishable under the same masked helmet. It made the people, too, seem strange and unnerving, as if they were not men at all, and this place devoid of all life beyond Ardyn himself. Perhaps that, too, contributed to the ever-present blurring between reality and dream.
He trudged through a long corridor until he reached the doors at its end. This “research lab” of theirs was a place of simple, straightforward design.
When he opened the doors, he found a room empty of researchers save Verstael, who sat stiffly in a high-backed chair at a dining room table. The man extended a hand without rising, his movements theatrical as always. Repeated exposure to the man’s mannerisms and speech had not bred familiarity so much as barely suppressed irritation.
“Come. Have a seat,” Verstael invited.
The spacious table was laden with a lavish array of dishes. “I thought we might enjoy a nice chat over dinner.”
Ardyn lowered himself into a seat at Verstael’s urging, but he was uninterested in the food. He’d been served countless meals since his arrival, and as with the garb, he found them strange and unpalatable. The things piled atop each plate looked unapologetically artificial. Bread rolls in a nearby basket were the only items he saw that he felt certain were edible.
“Are you not going to eat?” Verstael asked.
When Ardyn didn’t respond, the man continued, unperturbed. “You’ve been asleep for years. Learning to appreciate the waking world again will take time.”
Ardyn had no appetite. He saw no reason to force himself to consume objectionable food. After all, he did not risk death for lack of it.
“How long has it been since you brought me here?” he asked.
“Two hundred and four days,” Verstael responded. “Roughly seven months or so.”
The revelation surprised him. Had it really been that long? Ardyn reflected on what had happened since his arrival. Aside from periods spent under observation, attached to the strange equipment that filled the facility, he’d spent the majority of his time asleep. Perhaps that was how the days had passed so quickly.
“Then again,” Verstael mused, “the Lucians had you locked away in that prison for nearly two millennia. I’d be more surprised if you hadn’t lost all concept of time.
“You must loathe those Lucians for what they did to you,” he added.
Ardyn gave only an irritated sigh in response.
It was not that he did not care, but he had little need of a lecture on the subject. Verstael had neither ties to nor understanding of the matter. Ardyn found his smug air distasteful, and he had no desire for the man’s sympathy.
“Was your examination of me a fruitful one?” he asked.
Verstael and his researchers had poked and prodded to their heart’s content. Something better have come of it.
“Oh yes. You’ve proven far more fascinating than expected. No wonder they kept you locked away. To think the powers of a daemon could dwell within the heart of a man. It’s incredible!”
Verstael was all too excited to explain, as if he’d been waiting desperately for Ardyn to broach the subject.
“The Starscourge doesn’t sap your life force. It gives you more! Your cells can regenerate themselves, and you can daemonify other life-forms as well. There’s no doubt. You are―”
“A monster,” Ardyn finished.
“Not a monster. A marvel.”
All a matter of wording, Ardyn thought.
Whatever words were used to describe him, it did not change the fact that Ardyn was something other than human.
“I can’t wait to unravel all your mysteries,” Verstael continued.
“What is it you want from me, anyhow? What about me interests you so?” Ardyn asked.
“We need those powers that you possess. With your strength on our side, we could finally put an end to the gruesome war with Lucis.”
An end to the war. Put more bluntly, the goal was to see all of Lucis’s lands under the empire’s control. The man never could settle for direct expression.
“You, too, must desire the fall of the kingdom that cast you into exile?”
Verstael seemed to peer into his mind as he spoke, and Ardyn found it incredibly disconcerting. He stood from the table and turned his back on the other man.
“My desires are all in the past.” Ardyn’s reply was curt.
When he’d first learned how long he’d spent in the depths of Angelgard, he was stunned. It was no longer an issue of whether Somnus was alive or dead; this world wasn’t even aware of what had transpired all those centuries ago. The Kingdom of Lucis had no record of a man named Ardyn Lucis Caelum ever existing. So what did he stand to gain by dredging it all back up? And even if he’d wanted to, what means did he have to take action?
“The man who wronged you may have died long ago, but his descendants live on to this day. Surely you must bear them some feelings of ill will?” Verstael prodded.
Ardyn turned to glare at the man and the infuriating smirk he wore.
“My feelings are none of your concern.”
He took no care to hide the scorn in his voice, but Verstael seemed unfazed. Quite the opposite, he appeared to believe Ardyn’s response an indication that he’d been right all along.
“Come along,” Verstael said, rising from the table. “There’s something you should see.”
Ardyn could have chosen to ignore him. To walk away without another word. He couldn’t imagine a thing in this world now able to catch his interest. Yet he followed obediently as Verstael made his way down the facility’s other hallways.
“I found something most interesting on the Rock of Ravatogh,” the chief said.
Something I should see. Something most interesting. The fact that Verstael was able to entice him suggested that, somewhere deep inside, Ardyn still possessed some spark of curiosity. He’d spent two millennia locked away on that lonely island. And though the days outside wore on, for Ardyn time had been at an unchanging standstill. It would have been a lie to claim he had no interest whatsoever in the world’s course over all those centuries.