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Literature Text
“Are you ready, dear?” Sierra placed a hand softly on Edwin’s shoulder. The ring around her finger luminesced ever so faintly, as it and the rest of the siegel of her champion bond always did when she touched him physically. In spite of her worry, the sight still made her smile. The choice to become his Champion, and his wife, had been a surprisingly easy one, considering how little notice she had given men back home. But then, there had been no men like Edwin back home. And she just smiled wider.
As hard as life on Eos could be, she would not trade the people she had met here for all the other worlds possible.
“Ready to stop being a burden and get back on my feet? Absolutely, my lady.” The fact that he was teasing her, even as he lay preparing for the second major surgery since arriving in the ruined city, was reassuring.
“Part of me wishes Leirian or Nei’ess were here as backup,” she admitted, lifting the sterilized syringe of analgesic compound.
***
“Is he going to be okay, Eli?” Ryon clasped her doll body to his chest.
“I don’t know, Ryon,” he replied tiredly.
“Just say he’ll be okay, then,” she pulled his face up into a pout.
He sighed. “He’ll be okay. He took that swordswoman with him. He’ll be fine.”
“Even if that scary metal man follows them? He was gone again when I went out earlier.”
“Like I told you not to.”
“And the trail of black stuff looked like it went in the same direction.” She continued without baring his grousing any mind.
“Which is why it’s a good thing that guy with the funny clothes found us and brought us back.”
They both looked up when they heard the baby squall, though only Ryon’s reaction actually prompted the body to move.
“It’s just a baby,” Eli frowned, even though he could tell there was something strange about the baby. It felt of magic, but not the kind from his world, and not the kind he had witnessed the curly haired woman using either. “We should find the woman instead. I might be able to learn more about magic from her.”
“And stuff me back in the dark?” Ryon’s pout returned to his lips, as she moved his feet down the dimly lit hallway. "You spent forever reading your book last night! I was afraid you would never pick me back up."
“Only for a little while more. If she can teach me more about my magic, I might be able to finish bringing your body to life.” Eli knew he was bargaining for time in his own body. And part of him resented having to. But what Ethan had said was right. He didn’t hate Ryon. And as much as he wanted his own body to himself again, he also wanted to fix hers. He was responsible for making her the way she was. For bringing her to life.
Still he could feel her reluctance. So he tried again. “You’ve seen all the moving dolls she made. They are all powered by magic.”
“They aren’t really alive thought either, are they?”
They reached a room in the cool dark hallway that had a sliver of light spilling out from under it. In the near-dark gloom of the hallway, it was almost painful.
“Is that sunlight?” Ryon wondered.
Eli didn’t know, but he didn’t bother to say so this time. It did look like sunlight spilling under the door, bright yellow and warm. Maybe their own world was on the other side.
Ryon opened it, and they both stood blinded for a moment while their eyes adjusted.
The disappointment hit him like a brick wall. Even if it did mean he still had a chance to talk to the curly haired woman.
The baby sat in a strange sort of cradle, one of metal and bolts that looked more like a vicious weapon than a proper bed for a baby. The yellow light was a lantern placed above the baby, flat and wide, directing the light strait down. It both looked and felt hot, and as Ryon moved closer to look at the baby, he wondered if it wasn't hurting the child. It was so bright! But the baby was laying there calmly, sucking on its fist, clearly no longer agitated as it must have been to cry.
Ryon's attention did not stay on the baby, though. His eyes moving around the room again, the otherwise dark clutter, harsh nightmarish shadows thrown by the brightness of the light. It looked like some kind of workroom. Tools and pieces of metal and papers strewn across a tall table, all around a single stool. There were bits of other metal dolls, not finished yet, and a complete one standing beside the cradle, as though watching the baby.
He wanted to go over to the table. To read the notes and look at the strange glass marbles that felt like magic. Ryon, however, looked back at the cradle, and reached out to touch the white-hot light.
"No, Ryon! Don't-"
She screamed in alarm as the metal hand of the finished, apparently active, doll closed around her wrist, stopping his hand before she could burn it on the light. He felt the cold of the metal fingers, but they did not pinch or squeeze just immobilize. He knew from long ago that Ryon could only feel that his hand was stopped, and would not have felt the pain he did had she succeeded in touching the light.
"Please do not touch the lamp," the doll spoke, in a soft feminine voice that sounded almost like Sierra herself. "You will burn yourself."
"Burn?" Ryon asked, confused.
"Like when you touched the fire, even though I told you not to," Eli explained, while the doll said something about dehydration, and denatured protien structures.
"Oh, right." She looked down at the baby again, which was looking up at them now with bright green eyes. Bright like the jewels that had glowed from Sierra's arm when she had helped to fight the gargoyle man, Angelo. The baby's skin was slightly green too, Eli noticed, thought its hair was a deep rich brown. It didn't look like either Sierra or Edwin, though they treated it like their child.
"Why doesn't the light burn the baby?" she asked aloud.
"He is feeding," the woman doll said with a smile. It- She had more of a face than some of the other dolls, but not as beautifully painted as Ryon's porcaline doll face. "The light is his food. Mommy built it after he could not eat this planet's sunlight."
"Mommy?" Ryon asked.
"I think she means Sierra, the woman with the curly hair," Eli pointed out.
"Yes," the metal doll smiled again. "Mommy makes things. Us, the light for Thomas, weapons to defend this place. We help her."
"So, a Mommy is something that brings you to life. That means Eli is my Mommy, right?" Ryon asked her.
"No! I told you a mother is a woman who gives birth to a child. I'm not a woman, Ryon!"
"According to my observation files, a humanoid child typically has two parental operatives." The doll spoke, her language strange. "The female unit is referred to as Mommy. The male unit is Daddy. Other care units can be associated with the raising of a child, termed in gender binary. Examples include: Nanny, Uncle, Big brother, and Cousen."
"Oh, Big brother! That was the word you used, right Eli?"
"Uh, yeah," Eli replied absently, there was something strange about the way this doll spoke and related things. Almost like the way his book defined new terms.
"What's your name?" Ryon went right on talking to the other doll.
"I am designated 'Nanny,'" the doll still smiled. Then canted it's head quizzically. "Do you talk to your big brother Eli the same way I talk to Mommy?"
"I don't know." Ryon replied, reaching out to touch the baby in spite of his discouragement. "How do you talk to your Mommy?"
"When she is present, I can interface data with her verbally, as I do with you. When she is in other physical locations, I can comunicate via audial or text files transmitted to her Journal." Nanny reached into the cradle to pick up the baby, the doll's hands carefully cradling the small head and bottom. "Would you like to hold him?"
"Yes, please!" Ryon reached out with one arm, the other securely wrapped around her doll.
"Ryon, no. You'll hurt it, or drop it."
"I don't drop me," Ryon reminded him. "Only you do that."
Nanny carefully placed the baby so that he was cradled in Eli's arm, moving that arm gently as well so that Ryon held the infant close to his chest. It felt strange to hold a baby in his arms, instead of a doll. He could feel the weight and heat of the little body, the resilience of its skin compared to the unyielding porcaline clay. He wondered just how much of those things Ryon actually could feel. But she could see it, in the way the baby moved in response to being handled, the bright life in its impossibly green eyes. It reached up and touched his face.
Part of him cringed, at least mentally recoiling from how wet and slimy it felt, that slobber soaked fist, fresh from being sucked on. But the other part of him was amazed by how quiet Ryon, usually a font of childlike babble, was as she just looked down at it.
He could feel her wonder. A strange joy, but a fear and curiosity as well, as she held her doll body up next to the baby. They were nearly the same length. One soft, and one stiff. One full of life and movement, and the other...
"Eli?" her voice was small. "Will I be soft like this when you finish bringing me to life? Will I stay small like a baby?"
"I don't-" The baby reached over and grabbed Ryon's doll arm in its tiny fist, pulling with surprising strength. A part of his heart stopped. A gutwrenching realization that the baby could rip the doll from his grasp. Drop her, or throw her.
"Now, now," Nanny said then, addressing the baby in soothing tones. "That is not yours." Gently, she removed the baby's hand from the doll, picking it up out of his arms and simply holding it in hers, bouncing it very gently. The absence of softness and warmth at least meant he didn't have to worry about Ryon squeezing the baby too hard, just because she could not feel the delicacy of it. Then Nanny asked another question of her own.
"Is Eli in Eos as well?"
"Yes, of corse!" Ryon responded, placing his hand to his chest. "He's right here!"
"Do you mean to indicate that he resides within your heart? Or does he reside within your mind like a defensive override sub-routine?" Nanny turned and placed the child back into its crib, and it settled back into a sleepy curl, that fist going right back in its mouth.
"Ryon..." Eli cautioned.
"No, this is his body. He brought me to life. But not all the way. Now I live in him too, because I can't see or move or feel things in here." She brandished her doll body.
Nanny regarded them without emotion, as though desiding how to react to this news.
"It does not damage Eli's body or primary personality program to run you in the foreground. You speak to him as though he is responsive to your auditory input. Does he receive other forms of input while you run the body?"
"Uh..."
"I think she is asking if I can actually hear you, and if I can see and hear her like you can." Eli translated for her, after mulling of the strange language himself for a moment. "You might as well let me out to talk to her."
"Eli can see and hear you," Ryon helpfully told the other doll. "And feel and smell things. He can talk to you, too, but I have to stop to let him. And I don't like being in the dark for very long."
"It is inconvenient when your optical sensors malfunction. The limited input results in less than optimal analysis of environmental surroundings and the required response functions."
"No, she's just afraid of the dark." Eli cut off her nonsensical babbling, holding Ryon tucked under his arm, rather than cradled to his chest.
"Afraid," Nanny repeated the word as though it was foreign. "You refer to avoidance protocols intended to prevent structural damage?"
"Look, I don't know what a protocol is, but why don't you just talk plainly like you did at first?" Eli snapped slightly. Her elongated speeches were starting to hurt his head. "Hey, Sierra does magic, right? Do you think she could teach me how to get better at it?"
"I certainly could," a different voice, though similar to Nanny's, spoke from behind him. He turned to see Sierra standing in the door, looking tired. And- he shrunk back at the realization- covered in blood.
"Holy crap, what happened?" he demanded. And suddenly, with a mechanical click, the room was plunged into darkness. He nearly screamed himself, though he had never feared the dark as Ryon did.
Then the lamp by the desk, a soft white light, clicked on. "Please reset the timer, Nanny," Sierra's voice was the embodiment of calm. And that helped ground him as she removed her bloodspattered white coat. "What happened is: I just finished installing my husband's new leg. Which means I had to reopen the wound above the truncation. You must be Eli."
Eli blinked at her.
"You speak differently than Ryon." She stated with a smile. "And I do not generally 'do' magic quite as much as I study it. Though that has changed recently." She opened her palm towards him, and he could see the silvery moon interlace that crossed her skin. "But while my practice is new, my study and knowledge is not. I have studied several forms of magic, from the artifact casting of my husband and the Materia, to Nei'ess' pattern magic, to Leirian's soul based magic, and Arshan's divine channeling. So there is a good chance, whatever form of magic you use, I can offer at least some advice."
It was not the promise of absolute success he had hoped for, but all the same, he felt like a great weight of hopelessness had lifted from his chest. "Please," he approached, unslinging his tomb from across his back and setting it down heavily on the table before her. "I need a teacher."
"I will see what I can do," she smiled, opening the book.
***
It was dark. It was dark and quiet. It wasn't even cold. It was just dark and quiet. No sensation at all. No weight, no heat, no light, no sound. Was he ever coming back for her? He had to! They would both die if he left her.
Unless he had found a way to sever their bond. He had wanted to study magic with Nanny's Mommy. What if he was doing that? What if, instead of learning how to finish bringing her to life, he had instead learned how to separate them, and left her alone in the dark nothingness of her inanimate doll body.
How long had it been? Forever. Too long.
And though she tried to distract herself by remembering the things she had seen and done and touched, there was a tight coil being wound in the back of her mind, tighter and tighter. What if he had left her? What if he never let her back out? How long had it been? A couple minutes? A couple hours? She couldn't tell. There was nothing to gage the passing of time against but the raveling of her own mind.
"I hate you."
The memory of Eli's voice echoed in the silence like the shattering of her own porcaline skin.
"This is all your fault." "Ryon." "I hate you."
He wasn't actually trying to find a way to bring her to life, was he? He was just looking for a way to break free of her.
He would abandon her, and she would be alone in the dark and the nothingness forever.
"Eli!" her spirit screamed. "Eli, I'm sorry!"
Nothing. No light, no sound, no response.
"Please, Eli! I'm sorry. I'm sorry! Don't leave me alone! Please, Eli, don't leave me here!"
Nothing. Nothing and he was never coming back.
"Eli!" she screamed again, panic strangling her without even a body to feel it. "Eli, Eli, Eli, Eli-"
***
"Eli!" the scream ripped raw from his throat. "Eli, I'm sorry! Please!"
"Ryon! Ryon, I'm here!" he had left her in too long, completely lost track of time. Now she was panicking and terrified, and flailing with his body. Even as a pair of maternal arms wrapped around him, pulling his body into an embrace that was as warm and soft as the baby had been, he reached out to Ryon in their shared mindspace, embracing her much the same way. "Ryon."
"Eli?" His eyes were clouded with her tears, his voice ragged from her screams. But her mental voice held relief. Hope. And she clung to him tightly. "Eli," her voice whispered. "I'm sorry. Please don't leave me."
"How can I leave you?" he asked, rubbing her back, just as Sierra was rubbing his. "We're bound together."
"You can learn how to break it," she sobbed. "You will learn how to break it, and you will leave me all alone. You hate me." Somehow, the fact that her voice was so soft made it cut all the more deeply.
"No, Ryon." He held her tight. "No I don't. I was angry, and I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm not going to leave you. I'm going to learn how to master my magic, and I am going to finish the spell and bring you to life the rest of the way."
"And then?" her voice crackled with fear and despair.
He swallowed hard. "And then... I am going to stay with you. Show you the world you want to see. Keep you safe, and never alone in the dark."
He wasn't lying. She could tell. And that filled her with a warmth she had never felt. Not even when she burned his hand.
"I love you, big brother," she murmured, squeezing him tight.
"I love you too, Ryon," he smiled down at her.
"Are you alright?" they both looked up, at the voice that came from outside them. "Ryon, Eli?"
"Yes," Ryon smiled, whipping tears from his eyes with his fist. "We're fine now."
"Good," Sierra smiled. "I do need to sleep now, as I was telling Eli before. But I think we have made good progress deconstructing and understanding the matrices of the spell. Ryon, I am going to try to isolate the element of 'Animation' that Eli missed when he cast the spell the first time. Because you are already alive, and it might be bad if that part of the spell was repeated."
"Yeah, I don't think I could be alive twice, could I?" Ryon wondered.
"I don't know." Eli privately thought it sounded nicer, the way Sierra said those words. With the assurance that even though she did not know, she would find out. That it would be okay anyway. "But we don't want to risk hurting you in case something did happen. Eli was very adamant that he still wanted it to be you inside, not another person or spirit."
"He was?" Ryon turned to look at him as she said that, her smile for him so wide it almost, almost, made up for the embarrassment of having his words to Sierra spoken back to Ryon.
"Uh, yeah," he replied awkwardly over Sierra's affirmation of the same. "I was."
Ryon looked back to Sierra then. "So, after you sleep, you will need Eli again to learn more."
"Yes, I am sorry. But we will try to keep better track of the time so you will not be alone so long," Sierra promised.
To Eli's surprise, Ryon replied. "It's okay. As long as you can help him, I want to help Eli too. I can wait as long as you need." After all, she now had something to keep her company in the dark.
The memory of the words Eli had spoken.
An SE for the OCT Libertas, featuring my npc character Sierra, and Eli/Ryon.
This came out way differently than I had first envisioned, and I ended up writing from Eli and Ryon more than my own character XD but it was fun to imagine what might be happening with those left behind at the Airport.
Libertas is run by :ladyriverlark: who also owns Edwin.
And Eli and Ryon belong to :tanixebt:
Oh, and Sierra and Nanny are mine. The baby is Ladyriverlark and Frostmuffin's
Edit 1: Fixed some typos and a mistake Tankixeb pointed out. I had mistakenly thought Eli could only see and hear when he was stuck being a passenger, but had the full range of senses when he was in controle, while Ryon's senses were muted while she was in controle. Turns out I was wrong about him being able to feel things, and he has full sensory input all the time, just no control over what he's going to sense when Ryon is driving XD So I fixed those passages where that mattered.
This came out way differently than I had first envisioned, and I ended up writing from Eli and Ryon more than my own character XD but it was fun to imagine what might be happening with those left behind at the Airport.
Libertas is run by :ladyriverlark: who also owns Edwin.
And Eli and Ryon belong to :tanixebt:
Oh, and Sierra and Nanny are mine. The baby is Ladyriverlark and Frostmuffin's
Edit 1: Fixed some typos and a mistake Tankixeb pointed out. I had mistakenly thought Eli could only see and hear when he was stuck being a passenger, but had the full range of senses when he was in controle, while Ryon's senses were muted while she was in controle. Turns out I was wrong about him being able to feel things, and he has full sensory input all the time, just no control over what he's going to sense when Ryon is driving XD So I fixed those passages where that mattered.
© 2013 - 2024 MegamiJadeheart
Comments14
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This is lovely! Such a heart-warming look at what's happening behind the scenes/in-between the cracks while the larger action of the tournament is going on. Thomas is adorbs. <3 And Eli/Ryon's bond is so sweet. Plus now I'm all excited by the possibility of seeing Edwin back in action. XD