There was a splintering noise, and the fire spread farther. The giant arm broke through more of the wall, and a body wreathed in flames passed through, landing on the floor of the hangar. In its other hand it held a giant, fiery sword.
“He’s awakened!”
Ardyn finally understood the reason for Verstael’s panic. The explosion must have been the sound of the cooling unit rupturing. With the ice melted, there was nothing left to restrain the Infernian.
“We must stop him before he destroys everything!” Verstael yelped.
There’s little chance of that, thought Ardyn. This was a god. Verstael and the others were now dealing with something quite apart from a once-human monster.
The Pyreburner spoke, his words strange and haunting. The language was impossible to parse, but the god’s tone was clearly not a friendly one. His giant blade came smashing down, engulfing the floor of the hangar in a sea of flames. In an instant, the Lucians in their black garb were naught but ash.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ardyn saw Verstael bolting away, a shrill shriek escaping his lungs as he fled. The fact that he was running at all was a testament to the malevolent man’s luck.
Ardyn stared up at the Infernian, making to neither flee nor fight. Verstael’s earlier words floated to the forefront of his mind.
Do you think you could turn him? Just think. You could exact sweet revenge through divine retribution!
With the passing of two millennia, Ardyn had thought his lust for revenge long withered. Somnus was dead. Killing his descendants seemed to serve little purpose.
But his mind and heart were at odds. The anger and hatred had never left him; still they smoldered deep in his breast. That was why the Somnus of his mind―the illusion that had taunted him―said the things it did. My legacy lives on in Lucis. It lives on in the minds and hearts of the soldiers before you. Somewhere deep inside him, Ardyn longed to see an end to the Lucian line.
He was so wrapped up in these thoughts that he failed to notice the motion of the god’s flaming hand. It was too late to run. Soon he was in the grip of a fist that could crush a man with no effort. There would be no escape. No matter how much he struggled, he would not break free of this grasp. Ardyn had only one means to resist.
“Power . . . ”
He funneled the darkness―the rage―into the palm of his hand.
“O Infernian, grant me the power to take Somnus, his people, and his cursed kingdom . . . ”
The same sensation he felt when he’d turned those soldiers into daemons surged through his arm. The Pyreburner’s great frame shook. Soon Ardyn felt his own body ablaze, ignited by the Astral’s unquenchable heat. Yet Ardyn’s hold did not slacken. His fingers dug into the deity’s arm.
“ . . . and burn them all to the ground!”
The Infernian fell to his knees. “Fool!”
The cryptic sounds coming from the Astral’s mouth began to convey meaning. The words of the gods were no longer a mystery to Ardyn.
The hand clutching him slackened, and he was cast to the floor. No doubt the process would take far more time with a god than it would with a man, but the scourge was beginning to take hold.
“You dare to subjugate the divine?!”
Ifrit’s memories flowed into Ardyn’s mind. He witnessed the moment when man was given fire, and the days when civilization enjoyed the Infernian’s patronage. Solheim dawned and flourished, its technology ascendant. Man grew arrogant. Then betrayal. Rage. The Great War of Old. The Six subsiding into slumber.
Beyond that, there were memories of the Crystal. Ardyn was fascinated to learn that it not only relayed the words of the gods to the Oracle, but also served as means for the sleeping gods to observe the human world. The realization came in bits and pieces, as he observed faint images that could not have been lived by the Infernian himself.
He saw Aera, kneeling before the Crystal. She wore an expression unlike any he’d known in his countless imaginings at Angelgard. It bothered him that there was any side to her he didn’t know.
“Aera!” he called, though she could not hear.
The head bowed in prayer tipped back suddenly, as if with a gasp. Her face seemed to radiate joy. Her eyes were wide, and her cheeks were flushed pink.
When Ardyn caught the image reflected in her pupils, he was stunned.
“No . . . How could that be?”
It was his own face swimming in her eyes. There could be no doubt. Aera was seeing his image in the Crystal. The meaning was clear.
“I was the one chosen to be king . . . ?”
The gods had not selected Somnus.
“Why . . . ?”
It was the word she’d spoken during that final confrontation in the castle. It had played back endlessly in his mind, a swirling uncertainty that finally made sense. Her final, soft utterance as her life slipped away. The question she’d asked when the Crystal rejected Ardyn’s outstretched hand.
This was what she’d not been able to understand. Why had the Crystal turned away the man chosen to be the Founder King?
Two thousand years’ pondering had bestowed on him some clues. Clearly the gods had, at one time, settled on the man who cared for his suffering people. They’d seen him most fit to serve as king. But as he absorbed more and more of the scourge into his body, he became something other than a man. He acquired strength not meant for mortals, a power so unnatural that it offended the Crystal. Or perhaps it was the scourge itself that the Crystal could not suffer.
In any case, the choice of the gods and approval of the Crystal were in contest. Perhaps it was an oversight on the gods’ part; perhaps they cared so little for man that the error slipped by unnoticed.
It was a development not likely foreseen by Somnus either. To him, it must have appeared as a great stroke of fortune. Surely the people assembled there saw what transpired and deduced that Ardyn had not been chosen. All that would have remained for Somnus was to silence the only other voice aware of the truth. With the Oracle gone, there would be no one left to convey the knowledge that Somnus had never been granted the gods’ favor.
The Crystal faded from view, and Ardyn found himself standing amid a vast expanse of flame. If what he’d witnessed was the truth, then that meant . . .
“It was Somnus’s lie that killed you!”
Aera floated before his eyes once more. At some point in his cell on Angelgard, he’d lost the ability to envision her smiling. Now, too, her face was clouded with sadness.
“Forgive me.”
Why do you apologize? It was all a trap laid by Somnus.
“I defied the will of the gods and revealed to Somnus you had been chosen to be king.”
No. It was Somnus’s cunning. His scheming pried the revelation from your lips.
“It’s my fault. I’m the one who ruined your future!”
You were deceived! That is all! You’ve no sins to atone for!
But no matter how strongly he objected, she refused to acknowledge his protests, as if even now, in death, she remained entangled in Somnus’s wiles.
“In the names of the gods above . . . fulfill your calling, Ardyn, and punish me for my sins! Kill me!”
Why was she the one to suffer pangs of guilt? The one who must pay was Somnus, not Aera. Somnus was the one who deserved death!
“Too bad,” his brother announced. “I’m already dead, and have been for some time.”
Another Somnus appeared before his eyes. Another trick of the mind he could neither kill nor send away. This was the man who had deceived everyone, who had killed Aera and usurped the throne. No number of deaths dealt to him could ever be enough to see justice served. Yet he would never die at Ardyn’s hands. How could such a travesty be allowed to stand?
“This monster may not be able to destroy you, but I’ll see to it that I destroy everything you built!”
The nation. The bloodline. He’d destroy it all. Just as the name Ardyn Lucis Caelum had been expunged from history, he’d see to it that Somnus Lucis Caelum and everything connected to him was eradicated.
In an age past, Ardyn had believed himself called upon by the gods to save the people. Now, he’d have to kill them.
“Hear me, gods above! No longer shall I supplicate you for pardon.”
Gone was the obligation to obey the gods who failed to see through Somnus’s deception.
It was the gods who had allowed Lucis to flourish, who brought no punishment down upon it.
“No longer shall I sojourn toward the light. Nay . . . the path I intend to tread is paved with blood and darkness.”
His faith had been unwavering. He’d lived for the people. Now he saw what a fool he’d been. His faith belonged with no one else. He’d seek strength only for himself, labor to see only his own desires filled.
And the only desire he had was for revenge.
He would agree to Verstael’s proposition and aid the man with whatever he desired. It would be a means to see the end of the Caelum bloodline and the destruction of the Kingdom of Lucis.
“No longer shall I seek your guidance. This path is mine to tread alone.”
As Ardyn thought of Lucis and all the many ways it would be brought to ruin, a great burst of laughter welled forth from deep within him. It was some time before the laughter stopped.