Chapter Text
The Crown Prince of Sanbreque returns to Whitewyrm victorious. Hymns to his glory ring out within the vaulted cathedral, echoing across buttresses high toward the belltower. In the taverns, bards sing of his feats, the boy prince young and fearsome and brave, and on the streets shadow puppets delight children in mimicry of the dark king’s defeat by Bahamut’s light. There is to be art commissioned to commemorate the occasion, a forty thousand gil mural painted upon a new chapel consecrated to Greagor. Dion the Bold, they call him, as he passes. Ladies offer their favour alongside knights with flowers and blown kisses and silken scarves. Dion knows unfathomable adoration among the masses he is fated to protect. He lifts his golden head high and offers a prayer to the goddess as they wreath him with laurel and shower down petals of the purest white wyvern tails and proclaim him their saviour.
‘I wish to see my father.’ The words slip from his mouth without thought as if his only care is for his approval. Perhaps now with a battle secured he shall come to love him again for he has proven his valour and worth and filial obligation to his Emperor.
‘You shall see His Radiance in time, Your Highness.’ It is a priest dressed in finery that denotes the status of a bishop perhaps. Dion confesses that he does not know their robes, only that he is in the service of Greagor and here for some holy purpose. Another comes to lead him away. Dion does not protest, nor make demands as two more figures approach him. ‘You must be made ready, Your Highness.’ Their features are concealed and hooded. Monks, or—
One takes his hand. There are many halls within Whitewyrm; some where he and Terence once played their games of dragons and knights, and others winding, twisting corridors that lead to rooms unknown. He casts a glance to where he knows the royal chambers await beyond many painted portraits of Emperors long dead. They pass familiar doors onward. A ringing high and insect pierces his ears. The Mothercrystal. Drake’s Head pulses with light, beckoning his Eikon as the hall opens into a magnificent gallery. His breath catches in his throat. He has heard of the splendour to be found here, but he’s never been deemed worthy to stand so near the crystal. The Inner Sanctum. Light resonates at a frequency as if calling out to those who are blessed and sets Dion’s skin aglow. ‘Why am I here?’
‘To be made holy, Bahamut.’
He’s led toward a small chapel hewn from the very stone upon which Whitewyrm castle rests. ‘You must pray first. Confess your sins and seek absolution.’ The door latches shut behind him, and Dion is left to darkness save the thready light that slips beneath the cracks, and the glow that illuminates a statue of Greagor from some oeil-de-boeuf above like palest moonlight. He kneels before her, his mail heavy, head bowed and prays. He recites liturgies learned, and then utters sorrows for those lost in war, he asks of the goddess to bless his father, and his stepmother, cruel as she may be, and then Terence. Sweet, dear Terence who is not here, but somewhere in a camp south toward the Dominion. Having given up his ecclesiastical vestment, he is training to be a soldier. Dion confesses, ‘It is my selfish want that he be safe.’
Time passes without consequence. Bathed in shadows that do not change, Dion is unsure whether it is day, or it is night. He implores Greagor what is expected of him. ‘I have served my Empire well as holy Eikon.’ The bolt clicks twice. Those hooded men from before have returned. They ask that he follow where others await. Dion is aware of the rituals within the Greagorian faith, but many have fallen out of practice or deemed heretical by Emperors. He does not ask which this one is. If his father’s Church sees it fit, he will submit.
The holy man from before stands there dressed in those same fine robes. He introduces himself as Bishop Archambault, and then addressing him as Bahamut, asks, ‘Are your prayers done?’
‘Yes. Aye.’ He has no prayers left.
‘Then you are fit to be blessed.’
They remove his coat of mail, gauntlets are unfastened, and ribbons and ties unlaced with the same precision as if done by his chamberlain. Dion feels no shame in his own nakedness as they strip him of his garments. He is still barely more than a boy, with a body yet not fully formed, though the months of training within the field have left him not as he was when he left this place to flee that summer’s night. He shivers ever so and knows it must be evening as the cold seeps into bare toes, and the air grows still. They bathe him with rosewater. The glide of cloth over the honed muscle of his thighs and torso unnerves him in its strangeness. Few have touched him thus. He closes his eyes and thinks of Terence, how his hands might feel upon his flesh. He’s longed for his touch since that afternoon spent among the lavender. Having him near is madness, for how he wishes to go to him and give himself bodily once more, to love and sate his own need and spill himself in ecstasy and devotion.
His breath catches as hands move across the curve of his ass, then higher to work along the small of his back. A flush paints his cheeks crimson. And then there is nothing but the cool air upon his damp skin and lingering scent of roses. Someone calls for sacred oils and he thinks of Terence again. The nights alone in his tent where he’s worked himself to release. His mind is lustful, but his love is pure. He asks that the goddess forgive him, but did she not also love? There are many hymns sung to her fertility, her most holy womb, and those seventy-two blessed nobles born. Greagor understands what it is to know carnal desires of the flesh. He sighs some slip of a prayer he remembers from the hourly devotions to Bahamut. One spoken by the beloved. ‘Oh goddess, come to my assistance. Glory to the Mother, and to the Emperor—’ Heady incense fills his nostrils as the Bishop anoints his brow with oils. Dion’s lips move in silent prayer as words spoken in old dragon tongue lilt. It feels like heresy as they worship before his naked form. An Eikon given flesh in the vessel of a prince of Sanbreque.
One who is shrouded takes his hand and kisses the ring upon it. Bahamut’s Mercy. It is a holy relic of the Empire passed down throughout the generations of those chosen by Greagor to be her champion. One day they shall take relics from what remains of his stony corpse, and fashion gilded icons in his likeness so that all may pay worship.
They lower him toward an altar with gentle care. Dion’s heart races as the sensation of coarse cloth and coldest marble brushes against his extremities. Those hooded figures gather near, chanting still as dread settles into his chest and throat. ‘I am not pure. I’ve laid with another.’
‘As have all before you, Your Highness. It is merely symbolic so that you might receive her blessing.’ He is assured once more that this is a rite of passage, ‘One that all those before you have endured upon the victory of their first battle.’ Wine laced with herbs or a distillation drips into his mouth and he recites back vows.
The goddess lay with the first Bahamut as lover and revered, and so it is thus done. Dion lies back upon the stone and thinks of Terence’s warm thighs, the way he might feel settled near, the taste of his lips sweeter and more beguiling than this sacramental wine. ‘What shall I see?’ Dion grapples at the bishop’s vestments for purchase, something to keep him grounded to this realm as his pulse gallops and Drake’s Head turns blinding in its brilliance. He shall be overcome, he is not holy or worthy, but the unloved son of a whore from the Veil. He repeats the question again.
‘That is not for us to know, my prince.’
Terence.
The room with its bishop and hooded monks and altar slips away into stardust as above a pallor of light opens to the clouds. Lightning sparks between them swirling and twisting into kaleidoscopic patterns like the tiled halls of Ran’dellah. A rolling nausea takes hold. Someone instructs him to focus. ‘You must endure, my prince. This journey is yours, but you are not alone.’ Terence. Oh, merciful Greagor. His voice echoes in Dion’s mind. He focuses on the memory of his smile to chase away the words of an uncaring father, and the cruel smile of a stepmother. The clouds part to bring endless skies of blue where dragonets flit about, but their forms are incorporeal, and they leave their tails and wings and bodies behind until only the glow of their eyes remain and turn to starlight. Metia that hangs nearest the moon bursts into all the colours of the galaxy, and Greagor bathed in radiance extends her hands and blesses him. She kisses his cheeks and tells him he is the holiest of all Eikons. ‘Why me?’ He knows in this moment that he is the son of a prostitute. Her hair is the colour of sunlit gold, and eyes of amber. Her tears are like diamonds and frost. He will give himself bodily to Greagor as she has given hers to nobles and knights, but the goddess presses her lips to his brow and comes not to him as lover, but divine mother who cradles his soul within her hands and tells him, ‘Your life will be short, but you are loved.’ No, he is not loved. The words of his father return. He hears the beat of Bahamut’s wings and the shrieks of many and sees fire and flare and ash and blood and the world with its colours fades into bleak hopelessness.
‘Dion.’
Hands settle against his shoulders and his brow as if to comfort. ‘Your life is to be short, but you are divine.’
You are mine.
The words of Greagor, or Terence, he does not know. Their faces blur, but he tastes lips on his and feels the soft scrape of stubble. Terence hovers above him, hands and face bloodied and confesses his love as Dion’s own wounds turn to vermillion rose petals. An imperial crown rests upon Terence’s brow. It is heresy, and yet—
The storm clouds return once more to give way to a night’s sky not unlike those above Whitewyrm in deepest winter. Stars alight in the band of the galaxy and the heavens dance with all the colours of the aurora. They comfort him as his mind settles and calms and he basks in the majesty of Sanbreque, the beauty of Storm, and glory of Valisthea. He shall be its saviour and usher in a new world as the most blessed and holy revered son of the great merciful goddess, Greagor. He looks on until all slips away with those lights in the sky.
He shivers in the aftermath. The monks speak to him in hushed voices as the warm trickle of tears slip down his cheeks. The visions have subsided but all around him the aura remains as each holy man appears nearly as radiant as Greagor herself, haloed and luminous. He suspects were he to catch a glimpse of himself in a looking glass, he, too, would appear as if one of the divine. He stumbles once as they assist him from the altar. Someone calls for robes. His mail and surcoat shall be made as relics as a single lock of his hair is also clipped to be kept in a crystal châsse. The figures pulse and blur as they dress him in finely woven silks of snowy white adorned with the colours of the Empire in marine and crimson. ‘You are bound to the Empire, her mercy, and our great Emperor.’ The garment is laced with ribbons as fingers glide over silver embroidered motifs of abstract wyrms. He’s offered a drink of water sweetened with citron and mint to quench his thirst. There shall be feasting soon but Dion has no appetite.
The bishop aneles his brow once more, and then kisses his cheeks, lips, palms and tells him, ‘Go forth, Your Highness. His Radiance awaits.’
The halls that stretch before him are unfamiliar this night, and their stony tiles twist in the flicker cast from sconces. Those portraits of Emperors and Eikons long dead watch him with painted eyes, and even those armour suits seem to stand tall and at attention as if knowing their Bahamut. He lifts his hand in the shadows to catch a flame and then carry its light as aether lingers with each twitch of his fingertips. He stares mesmerized.
A voice calls his name. The Holy Cardinal come to retrieve him. He takes Dion’s arm and asks, ‘How fares His Highness?’ Then giving him a look over, adds, ‘The effects will pass, in an hour or more. By morning you will know yourself, and what the goddess asks of you. And a peace that shall linger for some days.’ For now, the Emperor waits to receive him so that all of Sanbreque might honour their glorious Warden of Light.
‘Come forward, Dion.’
He does not know when he’s come to fear his father’s voice. Perhaps he always has. No, ‘tis not so. He fears his father’s disappointment and not his voice for his disapproval has borne countless sleepless nights. Dion steps into the great hall with all the grace and ceremony befitting his station, as with each step mythril beads and jewels ring like the bells and coins upon a dancer’s belt in the Dhalmekian harems. He is unused to such ceremonial garments and much prefers the comfort of his surcoat, and boots, and gauntlets for in them he is a soldier armoured with a legion of men in his service. And here he is but a prince who holds no power nor voice. He casts a glance toward those in attendance. The surviving eldest of each of the seventy-two noble houses are here to witness this occasion. He says their names each as he passes by, some familiar, others he knows only from court as faces turn or distort into ghoulish masks or shine as if also blessed. There among them is Terence’s own grandfather who offers him a stately nod. Dion does not have to speculate where Terence’s goodness springs; he is wise and kind and generous with no Bearers in his household.
Dion continues on.
Fourre, Balneolis, Loys.
He kneels at his father’s feet. At his side the Holy Cardinal stands. He leans in to whisper something to the Emperor. ‘I am told Greagor has come to you.’
‘Yes, Your Radiance.’ The memory of light is disorienting, and he averts his eyes from where sconces burn. ‘I am blessed by her mercy and grace and glory for she has shown me many things.’ Prophecies, someone utters. Dion does not know if his visions are true, but he must have faith lest all he has been made to believe will be falsehoods and lies. The Emperor rises then, and with a sudden clap to signal an attendant, approaches his son. Dion does not look upon his face for he fears what he might see.
‘Bahamut has brought about a great victory against our dark enemy Odin. He has been blessed by Greagor.’ Some object wrapped in silks is presented to the Emperor. It is too long to be a sword, and he has no need of a crozier or sceptre. The fabric falls away to reveal a finely fashioned halberd. ‘You were promised a grand weapon befitting the great and fearsome wyrm that you, Dion, Crown Prince of Sanbreque, are chosen to be his vessel to serve and honour and bring glorious victory to Greagor and her Holy Empire.’
When Dion lifts his head, he sees only the face of his father who stands there before him and presents his only son a holy and sanctified weapon. ‘Use it well, Dion, in the service of your Emperor.’ His hands wrap firmly around the mythril shaft of the halberd as he tests its weight. It is an exquisite instrument of war. He bows his head low and swears his fealty, and then utters a silent prayer to Greagor for he sees its point stained with patriarchal blood, his own hands crimson, and feels the madness of his Eikon cry out.
Light comes as a comfort as beyond the line of his father’s shoulder he sees Greagor there. She offers him her grace and then turns away. After there is nothing but stars and the traces of holiness long passed.