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Bones cracked under her foot and the Garlean screamed. So did the hatchling with the blue decoration. Alphinaud, her mind supplied.
She sighed.
“What now?”
“Stop torturing him!”
She sighed again and removed her armored foot from the gaping wound she had lodged it in. This was why you did not let children on a battlefield. They did not have the stomach necessary for it yet.
She looked at him, too pale for it to be healthy and trembling all over. At least he was not retching in a corner like Yda or Lyse or whatever that girl was calling herself nowadays.
“So?”
Alphinaud, opened and closed his mouth, but no words left, only a wounded keen.
“It would have been over far earlier for him if he had just agreed to talk.”
“He would have eventually.”
She scoffed and nudged the Garlean scout with her bloodied boot for good measure. He only whimpered this time. Good. Perhaps he was finally breaking. She did not delight in such wastes of her time and energy on lesser beings.
“Really? When? Your lifespans are too short to waste your time waiting for answers.”
“Stop talking like that! Ever since you came back from your training on Azys Lla and defeated Nidhogg, you have been different. You actually talk like him! I know Haurchefant’s death affected you but this is too much! This is no way to deal with your grief!”
The growl she let out made him take several steps back on instinct.
How dare he make light of the gaping hole in her heart. She was staying with them, helping them, to honor his memory, just as her brother Hraesvelgr had come to their aid for his dear Shiva.
Behaving like Nidhogg? Her lips pulled back in a snarl that revealed too sharp teeth and Alphinaud took another step back. She had had her lot of heartbreaking betrayals and murders of her beloveds yet she was not inciting a star-wide conflict. At least not anymore. But if he was taking it like that, she would show him her brother’s wrath had been nothing compared to her own.
[Tiamat]
Her father was back again. She swallowed her rage and turned to the sprite only she could see with a smile. How delighted she was to see him again.
[Control yourself my child.]
She frowned under her helmet, tail swishing behind her. She did not want to. She had been chained for so long, had been so tired after all the cruelty she had endured at the hands of men. Hadn’t she already paid for her previous foolishness? She had been chained and tortured for so many decades, her children all dead or in captivity. Hadn’t she resisted the call of the deformed imitation of her beloved, the strain wearing her soul thin, until she found a way to finally be free? Hadn’t she atoned already?
New hurts and exhaustion had only added to her burdens. She had been so tired of being dragged from one plot to another like a tool, from one betrayal to another. Yet she had answered the Call of Hydaelyn. So she had fought to protect the Star, the last bastion of hope, felling Primal after Primal. That in itself was not unpleasant, nor was helping the people she met during her meanderings. The political maneuverings though, she would prefer to do without. The expectations. The way everything was demanded of her while little was given back in return.
While she was still two, one thing had remained a constant : she had been alone, tired, soul-weary, betrayed.
They had met then, on Azys Lla. The dragon so afraid of succumbing to Bahamut’s Tempering she would rather stay in the prison her long dead tormentors had put her in. The Warrior so desperate for enough power to free herself from the grief of the loss and to satisfy the burning need to destroy those who had taken away her chance at happiness with the one person who had always given and never taken from her.
So different yet so similar. The lonely grieving souls had reached an understanding, sealed after the Dragon had learnt how the Human had let her defiled beloved and the dragons of Meracydia to rest, finally free and at peace.
Hydaelyn had opposed this, but Midgardsormr had been more than happy to see his child show a desire for life again. If it had to be through this human he had come to approve of, then he would support them. The Blessing of Light muted anew, two became one, Au Ra shaped, yet so much more.
She looked down at the human before dismissing him from her thoughts and view as she turned back to the Garlean.
[The human is still young and you have yet to fully settle into yourself. Give it a decade or two.]
[He is from the Land of Knowledge] she grumbled.
Midgardsormr laughed
[I haven’t heard you this petulant since you were but a few centuries old,] there was true mirth in the tone and despite herself, she felt the last of her anger leave her. [I am glad to see you are finally doing well again my child. Never hesitate to call to me if you feel your control slipping away once more.]
“Vanna! Are you listening to me?”
Her soft smile faded from sight at the same time the spirit of her father did. She turned towards the hopelessly naïve child, aggravation already starting to settle in again.
“You demanded my help child. You and all those present at the time. ‘If you do not help us, then the Mhigan resistance is lost and after that it will only be a matter of time before the rest of Eorzea falls to Garlemald’. That is what you all said.”
“I did not mean it as a way to make you snap like this!”
She waved his argument away.
“You were right. You will not win with how weak your forces currently are. But I am not yet at my best.” Against Nidhogg, she had still been separate enough for her to be Tiamat and Vanna, and her brother had been here to help her keep a semblance of stability. While a part of her instinctively knew how to handle the wealth of power dragons possessed, she had become a newborn soul in a newborn body that was neither Xaela nor Dragon, with an aether that was similarly changed and a body as of yet to frail to handle her full power. She had to learn everything anew.
“How does this explain this brutality? I asked Estinien if it had been something about the bond Hraesvelgr said he had with you back on the Steps of Faith but he just told me Hraesvelgr had actually just wanted to help you.”
She let him prattle on. This was no concern of his and she was grateful to Estinien for keeping silent. He was perhaps the closest to kin she had now. Only they could truly understand the other, what they had gone through. Though the means had been different, he too had lost a solid part of his humanity as payment of the time he had spent sharing a soul and a body with Nidhogg.
She focused on the fragile hatchling again. What an exhausting life, having to expand so much energy for friends and enemies alike with such a dim soul. She shuddered. Had hers been so weak before her merger? Was this why she had needed to be kept under Hydaelyn’s influence to resist the calls of Primals?
What a pitiful existence.
“Yes, he looked at me that way too,” Alphinaud said in a small voice, barely a whisper.
Yet, she knew this did not make him any less dangerous. He may have a weak body, soul and magic, but that did not make him any less threatening. She had mistaken those humans as weak before and had paid the price of her hubris for five millennia. Never again would she consider any of them harmless and reminiscences of an Uldian banquet had shown that no matter how much time had gone, human nature had stayed unchanged.
Was it because they knew of their inherent inferiority that they rebelled so much against their lack of power and short lifespan? What it the reason why they enslaved or destroyed all that would not yield to their desires? In any case, their frailty was exactly what made them so dangerous. The Allagan and the Crystal Braves had amply proven that.
She forced herself to soften her posture.
“I will make them talk more nicely next time. But Garlemald is a threat and if you want this little Mighan rebellion of yours to work, then we need to know if they are aware of where their base of operations is.”
Alphinaud hung his head. She should comfort him, he was so young. But he also wanted to be responsible for the future of a whole continent, so she would not coddle him as others might.
“I wouldn’t have let him survive this encounter anyways,” she added when Alphinaud raised wide eyes to look into hers.
She shrugged, letting a derisive smile grow on her lips and turned back to her prisoner. She crouched at his side, looking into terror-filled eyes, her smile becoming sharper with each of his whimpers. She rested lightly a clawed hand on his open stomach, letting it trail upwards through visible ribs, the white of the bone stark against the red of the flesh, to finally rest against his throat, painting it red. “After all, it wouldn’t do for you to escape and tattle on us to your Alla-Garlean superiors, right?”
Another whimper answered her and the Garlean scrunched his eyes closed. Not that it would save him. A look backwards showed her Alphinaud doing the same. Too young and too soft for the battleground, she had always thought it.
She refocused on her enemy. Allag had fallen eventually. So would Garlemald. The Eorzeans were nearly powerless against her though the Garlond Ironworks would have to be monitored closely. Garlemald with its magitech brought back memories of her prison. They could pose a greater threat to her safety and that of her kin and she would crush the threats to her freedom by any means necessary.
She closed her hand against the soldier’s throat, sharp claws digging into soft skin.
The soldier did not even trash this time, he barely twitched.
“Now will you talk and let me end your torment? I promise you to make it fast and painless, a much bigger mercy than your kind ever gave mine.”
A whimper. A nod.
Her smile widened to show teeth too sharp to belong to any human.
“Good.”