From Gehenna

by spinbrarian (Alvilda_Apocrypha)

Summary:

In M.E. 736, a young Cor Leonis rescues not one but two sorry souls from Verstael Besithia's labs in Nifleheim, and from that point on the future of Eos begins to shift.

This is an AU, but it includes spoilers up to Episode Ardyn.

Notes:

Hi there! Thanks for clicking in.

This story got its start as a fill that very rapidly veered away from what op wanted, so I decided to move it here to become its own thing. Fortunately, there's another very lovely fic already on AO3 that did a much better job of being an actual fill with lots of Ardyn/Cor/Prompto goodness.

If I'm counting right, Cor's 25 at the beginning of this story.

AU rules of the road:
- Potions and such exist but are quite a bit rarer. Phoenix downs are pretty much like a fantasy version of an AED, if you happen to get one fast enough to use it.
- Ardyn did not escape from Angelgard under his own power, and he's come through it a little differently than what we got in the game...

4/2019: So when I originally tagged this as slow to update, I really didn't intend for it to be a "once a year" zombie fic. In any case, I've made a few minor alterations to the first few chapters that don't change the plot, mostly to streamline Cor's exploration of the base. Plus some new content, finally!

This is only my second fanfic, so feedback is love :)

Chapter 1

M.E. 736

Two years and seven months after he joined the Imperial Army, flashing forged papers and a scowl that dissuaded all but the most routine questions about his origins and qualifications, Cor Leonis finally made his move.

The generator was burning. The raging fire had already consumed half of the power station and, judging from the high winter winds whipping gusts of flame into the air, it was terribly close to spreading across the base. Most of the soldiers who were unlucky enough to have pulled holiday duty had rushed to answer the wailing sirens, and the scientists had followed their own evac procedures. The active Magitek Trooper units had gone too, of course, fodder for the human soldiers’ orders. MTs could stand hotter temperatures than humans could before they stopped functioning – and they could be replaced more easily, too. This facility alone sent a score of train cars to Gralea each month, stacked to the top with new units. It was twice the rate of six months ago.

Cor, who just happened to be left behind to guard the entrance to the now-dark Magitek production building, tapped a cigarette out of its packet. He stared into the distant glare of the fire, watching as an explosion blew out the side of the generator building, sending dark figures flying – men or MTs, they were too far away to judge. He whistled softly through his teeth.

“’Stopping it’s gonna be a close thing,” he growled, slipping the unlit cigarette between his lips. He shook another free, handing it to the only other soldier left guarding the doors. “Got a light, Marcus?”

“Thanks, sir. Besithia’s gonna be pissed!” Marcus took the offered cigarette, and as the young guard twisted to search his pockets, Cor quietly slipped his Niflheim-issued shock baton from its strap, flicked it on, and jammed it into the other man’s neck. He caught the young soldier as he collapsed, then turned toward the doors behind them.

As Cor pulled Marcus’ unwieldy body through the entrance into the dim red emergency lighting, six MTs turned to watch, their glowing eyes drinking in the prone man and the soldier dragging him. A warning tone started from the one closest to the men, rising in pitch, and Cor let Marcus slump down as he raised his hands, palms out. He glanced quickly at the barcode on the closest MT’s chest.

“GL-001245, you are ordered to stand down, authorization VB2-094P.” Cor spoke firmly and clearly, putting command in his voice, glaring straight into the inhuman eyes. He knew his words were being recorded. Six willing, the tapes wouldn’t be reviewed until after he’d left the base long behind. “I have a wounded soldier here. He’s being transported inside for medical treatment. Your unit will guard the entrance. Move!”

Soft skittering noises passed between the MTs for a moment, and then they turned as a whole to march away as ordered. Cor exhaled only after he heard the door slam, cutting off the mechanical scraping and clanking of the machines. Even as practiced at close contact as he’d become, his chest still clenched whenever he had to speak to an MT. They were too often in his dreams, shrieking and charging forward in unending waves. They died easy enough, if you could call dissolving into black smoke death, but they never stopped coming.

Shivering, he clicked on a flashlight and stuck the end between his teeth, then hoisted Marcus into his arms and carried him into the nearest bunkroom. He dropped him on a bed, ripped up a sheet for a gag, and pulled off the boy’ own belt to bind his wrists and ankles together around the bunk post. Hopefully, he wouldn’t regret leaving the kid alive. Pulling the door securely closed, Cor wasted a precious moment to take a deep breath and settle himself on tonight’s task. He shook out his arms, trying to shed his nervous energy. Time to move.

Cor been carefully gathering data on Niflheim's military operations since enlisting, taking care to cultivate a perfectly unimpeachable, if also unremarkable, reputation. Once he’d gotten himself transferred out to the First Magitek Production Facility, he’d spent most of his time surreptitiously documenting the base and piecing together how the damned machines were built, but soldiers were never assigned to any but the low and medium-security areas. He’d spent endless shifts in the factory, watching the armor assembly, lightproof shells fixed over metal joints by already-built MTs, but the Magitek cores that brought the shells to unnatural life were still a mystery. The other soldiers didn’t know, and the scientists weren’t talking. Cor felt like he’d learned almost nothing, and the frustration gnawed at him. Tonight though, he intended to find what he’d come for. He would make a sweep of the Keep's research unit, that great hulking building that clung to the cliff behind the factory, and then he would run for Lucis, as fast as he could. A truck was loaded in the yard, ready for his last trip. If his luck held, he would be clear of the base by midnight and outside of Niflheim’s borders within two weeks.

Most of the cavernous rooms Cor sprinted through were empty, the production process halted for the holidays, save ranks of inactive MTs that had probably been interrupted in the middle of their charging cycle. He spared these hardly a glance, though their sheer numbers and what that promised for Lucis weighed on his mind; he only wanted to reach Besithia’s laboratories. With both the freight and personnel elevators out of commission, Cor spent precious time running through endless halls, up and down too many astrals-damned flights of stairs, until he finally burst out the rear exit of the factory and the research building towered in front of him.

A badge he’d filched six months ago from a high-ranking general on an inspection tour from Gralea got him in, and Cor impatiently ducked under the low-power emergency access door before it was fully open. This building he’d never been inside – this should be the jackpot that made everything worth it.

The first half-dozen rooms were small offices, and Cor slipped into several, sweeping his flashlight around, but he couldn’t access the powered-down workstations. He could, however, pull the magnetic data reels off the dark, hulking computers that lined the walls and drop them unceremoniously into his own pocket of the armiger, along with whatever folders, report, and stack of papers he came across. Nifs were certainly advanced in some areas of tech, but for whatever reason they'd lagged sorely behind in modern computing. Hopefully he was getting something important. He certainly didn't have time to sit in the dark and peruse papers to decide what might be useful.  

I hope Clarus enjoys filing. I hope at least half of this is maintenance reports. Three years, Regis!

Cor, of course, did not expect to be joining that filing. Cor expected to be at Galdin Quay catching up on several months of leave, as soon as he could finish delivering the material and debriefing. He picked up one last handful of folders, dismissed them in a small shower of blue sparks, and checked his watch, wondering how the progress against the fire was going.

I’ve got to find something better than this.

Finally, after what seemed like far too much time wasted running through offices, Cor reached the stairs up to the next level, and as when the pulled open the door at the top, light spilled out of the hallway beyond. There were backup generators here –- and that should mean something important enough to bother with the expense of redundant systems. Cor loped down the long hallway as fast as he could, catching himself up short to fling open the first door.

It was better not to know.

Rows upon rows of clouded tubes stretched through a vast hall, the condensation lining the glass doing little to hide the human forms suspended therein. Every one was inhabited: thin boys, pale, with delicate, identical features. Every one was utterly motionless in a slowly swirling suspension of green liquid and dark fog. Rapping on the glass of one of the tubes elicited no response at all. They didn’t seem alive. Cor pulled his camera out of the armiger, and started snapping pictures. He calculated quickly; there must be over two thousand of them, stretching away in this warehouse of bodies, and as the rows went on they were younger, some barely out of infancy.

His pictures taken, Cor backed out and closed the door quietly. The heart of the base was Magitek production, Magitek export – and these bodies must be involved… but he didn't have time to think through it now; and so he set those troubling thoughts aside and moved on, through crowded labs that were mostly unexceptional to his soldier’s eye save for the odd green-filled tube.

The next level was Besithia’s personal domain – or so proclaimed the nameplate on the wall. Cor stole every bit of carefully stacked paper from the well-appointed desk, swept quickly through a small suite of living quarters that were empty of personal effects but full of ostentatious furniture and overwrought paintings, and ended up in a large space that was half piles of maps of Eos and drawings of daemons, and half madman’s dungeon, complete with barred cells and racks of heavy weaponry.

Cor gathered what he could and turned to leave, ready to be out of the labs, out of the base, and out of the whole damned country. There would be useable information in some of the files, some of the tape reels. Something to explain the bodies, and the demons, and the Magitek… As he jogged back toward the office, though, he passed a door tucked almost behind a cell… a door that blinked green when he scanned his filched ID. Cor smirked.

The bastard must’ve outranked Besithia.

The thought warmed his heart a little.

The room beyond was busy with cabinets, deep sinks, racks of white coveralls and heavy rubber gloves and aprons, and a hatch marked INCINERATOR. On the back wall were three heavy doors. They reminded Cor of the vaults guarding the weapons in Insomnia’s strongest caches, red-and-black painted steel hung in a heavy frames – the most color Cor had seen in this dismal place -- with a manual wheels set in the center. He felt just a little ridiculous, choosing a door, so he simply started on the left. The wheel was well-oiled, and well-used, the paint rubbed to cold bare steel on the spokes. The door’s steel rods drew back into the frame with hardly a sound. It moved as if hung on air.

That first room was almost unexceptional, but Cor took pictures anyway. It was a large, almost-bare oval room with a sunken center, steel gurneys herded to one side. The oddest feature of the room was the high, domed ceiling, mounted with clusters of stout cylinders that clung like stalactites. A barrier of thick glass panels guarded a ring of chairs around the room’s upper level. A freight lift proved to stop once at  the hall of tubes and once at the a hall he’d somehow missed, in which screeching demons filled stacked cages.

The second room looked, to Cor, like a match of the first, but it was anything but empty. The ceiling here was alive with light, the mysterious cylinders giving off a hum so low Cor could feel it in his jaw, almost aching with his first foot in the door. The sunken center of the room, so bare in the first chamber, was crowded beyond reason, carts clustered haphazardly between unidentifiable instruments and heavy machines, blinking and chirping in disharmony.

In the middle of it all was a stainless steel table, atop which he could see a body – part of a body -- so covered in wires and tubing and that the naked form was hardly visible.

Then his mind registered how black the blood pooled under the body was, and Cor the Immortal almost turned tail and ran.

Notes:

I screwed around with the layout of the MT facility, so things aren't quite laid out as they are when you play Episode Prompto. Some things surely changed over the years - or at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! At the very least they ramped up security after Cor's escapades... there's even a note in Ep Prompto that mentions putting MTs to work guarding the facility. Post-episode Ardyn note - I streamlined this chapter a bit, and changed the descriptions of Besithia's level.

Chapter 2

Notes:

In which an overwhelmed Cor cultivates a little trauma and jumps to several incorrect conclusions.

Only almost, though it was closer than he'd ever come. Cor growled in disgust at himself, once the moment had passed, and he forced his clenched fists open. There'd been no sign of hazmat equipment, only aprons and long gloves. Either Besithia was extremely reckless in dealing with the scourge, or he’d determined that the risk of airborne infection was negligible. Cor filed that fact away; it was more than they knew back home in Lucis. All the same, he searched out a box of gloves and pulled a pair on before turning back to face what was on the table.

Cor had seen plenty of death in the service of Lucis. He’d watched Nifs fall dead at less than arm’s length, cut open by his own blade, held the hands of boys bleeding out who didn’t even know they were corpses yet, and scoured old battlefields to recovered the bloated and torn bodies of his comrades. The ruin on the table should’ve been among those dead, but there was no reason to intubate a dead man, to feed IVs into him, or to bandage his eyes. No reason for the steady beeps and dancing lines on the machines.

At the very least he’s unconscious. Hasn’t moved since I came in, and I haven’t been quiet about it. Brain dead, probably.

Cor sucked in a deep breath, and lifted his camera.

New film, check the flash.

This won't bother him, then.

Cor started shooting.

Wide views of the room first, delaying for a few dear moments a closer examination of the man on the table, but then there was nothing left but the subject at hand.

Most of the body was missing. There was nothing from the belly down, unnaturally dark organs and intestines spilling out of the torso in heaps, shielded by clear plastic film stretched over the table, shiny with moisture. The viscera moved as the man breathed, slow and mechanical on the ventilator, and Cor felt the burning of bile in his throat. He looked to what was left instead.

The man’s black-streaked skin was the mottled color of a corpse gone bad, and dark ichor leaked from every wound. Scourge, obviously, but so far past the terminal state it looked as if there were more disease than man. His chest was covered in sensors. Underneath, a bright scar ran down the sternum, crossing older, faded lines, and another wandered from shoulder to elbow on the one outstretched arm. That arm was strapped down with leather bands, IV lines taped at the elbow. Cor checked the bags. They were drugging the man out of whatever mind he had left. Bless the six for the poor bastard’s sake.

Cor circled the table. The right arm had been wholly removed at the shoulder joint, and this wound too was open and raw, feeding lines that trailed across the table to disappear into a nearby machine. The skull was cut open, probes sunk directly into exposed brain matter. Black seeped from under the bandages covering his eyes, and leaked around his lips, staining around the tubes filling his mouth.

Who is he? Who was he, before they brought him here?

With luck, the answers were in Besithia’s files. There must be a reason for keeping such a wretch alive long enough to do this to him. Cor only hoped that there weren’t (knew there had to be) more men who had found their end like this. He took one last picture, maneuvering in the cluttered space to get the entire body in the frame. It was past time to make his exit, and there was still the last reinforced door to check. Still, there were two tasks he felt pressed to see through before he left this room behind. Curiosity first. With a tickle of guilt, he summoned a long, thin dagger and returned to the head of the table. Carefully, he edged the tip of the blade under the bandages that covered the man’s eyes, and cut them free.

The eyes – they were open, saturated with that awful ichor, the irises an unnatural, gleaming yellow, and Cor knew why the Nifs had kept the bandages on. They were the eyes of a monster, and they stared straight at him, very much awake.

Cor backed away quickly, unable to tear his own gaze away, until he caught up against an open cabinet, almost losing his balance. Glass containers shifted under his weight, and fell, shattering on the floor, saturating his pants and splashing an all-too-familiar deathly black liquid onto him.

 "Six! Oh, astrals!"

The fluid slipped under his boots as Cor ran from the room and slid through the door, throwing himself to a sink to heave his stomach dry. Still coughing, throat raw with acid, he tore off his Nifleheim soldier’s coat, flinging it into a corner, and scrubbed harsh soap into his skin until every spot of black was gone and his skin was red and raw. Then he sank to the floor, looked down at himself, and laughed. He hardly recognized his own voice.

 

 

 

----

The last lab was full of babies. Dozens of babies, unnaturally silent and still in plastic cribs. They were whole, but each had almost as many wires and sensors as that scourge-infected horror, and several sported IV bags dripping scourge ichor straight into their veins.

The bastards are infecting babies on purpose? What the hell for?

Cor walked down the first row of cribs. The babies were as identical as the bodies in the tubes, and Cor had his answer. Of the infants, only one seemed to notice him, reaching out a chubby arm. Cor's vision swam, and he tasted blood. He looked down; he'd bitten his hand hard enough to break the skin.

This was too much. He crossed off a thousand ways to save them all, each more foolhardy than the last. You couldn't put babies in the armiger. Nothing alive.

I can save at least one.

Cursing himself as an idiot, Cor turned to the room's cabinets for supplies, sending everything he touched into the armiger. The room was stocked almost as if it were a normal nursery. Diapers. Formula. Bottles. Towels. Antiseptic. Whatever the hell's in these boxes.

There was no easy answer on which baby to save, no choice that would allay the heaviness in his soul, so Cor went to the infant that had reached for him, peeling electrodes from delicate skin, pressing gauze to the baby's scalp to pull out the IV port, trying not to look into the soft blue eyes brimming with tears.

He picked the baby up, froze for a moment, and put it back down. And Cor, short of time as he was, managed to fumble his way through changing his first dirty diaper.

You're lucky, kid, that my stomach's already empty.

Fighting disgust and an overwhelming sense of relief that he'd never had time to become a parent, Cor pulled the sheet covering the crib's thin mattress up and tied it into a sling to cradle the baby tight against his chest over an unstained shirt he'd pulled from the armiger.

Tugging the knots to make sure they were secure, Cor took one last look around at the rows of babies, and he felt his heart break.

"I'm so sorry."

----

Cor slowed as he left the nursery, hesitating for just a moment before he reentered the second room. His earlier panic had stilled, and though he couldn't save the man on the table, he could at least grant him the final mercy he’d intended. He untied the sling and situated the babe on the floor, just inside the door.

"Wait here for me, OK?"

The kid just looked at him. Feeling awkward, Cor shrugged and turned away. He approached the table even more slowly this time, edging carefully around the drying sludge on the floor, and grabbing more gloves and pulling them on. Those yellow eyes moved to follow his every step. Cor tried to keep his own eyes on the man’s face, preferring it to the wreckage of his body.

When Cor reached him, holding up his hands to show he meant no harm, the man’s brows knit, and tried to turn his head away. It was the first movement he’d made save the shifting of his gaze, but it was in vain. His head was strapped firmly in place. He closed his eyes instead.

“Why are you in here? BACK AWAY NOW! I’ve got a gun!”

Cor spun around just a white-coated man punched a red trigger mounted near the entrance, one hand holding a shaky gun out toward Cor as the steel door slammed shut behind him. Cor dropped to the floor, summoned one of the guns Regis was forever insisting he carry, and shot the man in the forehead. He fell dead at the feet of the unnoticed infant.

Cor never hesitated.

He dismissed his gun. Still, it was too late. Whatever dormant MTs were in this building would be activating, fully charged or not, and they would be here soon. Damn. Even if Cor could get the door open, he’d be walking straight into an ambush.

Sighing, Cor pushed himself to his feet, looking back to what he came to do. Those eerie eyes were back open, searching Cor’s face, confusion writ plain even through the seeping ichor. Cor spoke, in the language of the Empire, as gently as he could.

"I’m going to end this. I can make it quick."

The man squinted at him, and looked away. Cor tried again in Lucian. Not a flicker to indicate he’d been understood, but Cor didn't have time. If the gods had any mercy, the man would die on his own very soon, but that was a slower pain than Cor was wont to allow. Thinking of the dying soldiers he'd comforted in Accordo, he reached out to touch the man's forearm. Human contact often meant more than words, in extremity. He moved to lace the gloved fingers of his left hand through the man's own, summoned a long dagger behind his back, and brought it around, miming striking at his own heart.

After a long pause, the man gave the tiniest squeeze to Cor’s fingers, and his yellow eyes slid closed one final time.

In seconds, it was done. The man's eyelids fluttered, but he made no sound apart from a small grunt as the knife found his heart.

Be at peace.

He watched for a moment in silence after the man's breathing stopped, to honor this stranger with the ravaged body, then withdrew the blade. The machines around them began to wail softly in protest, and at the same time the deep humming pulses from the cylinders on the ceiling faded. He flexed his fingers to pull away his hand away and as he did the body jerked, and Cor’s hand was suddenly caught in an iron grip. The knife fell loud to the floor, loud as thunder, and skittered away.

Cor pulled, hard, but he couldn't break free. The body jerked again, and black motes began seeping like gritty smoke from the man's skin. They bunched thickest at the wounds, flowing in masses across the table, bunching up in mounds. Cor felt a sickening, shifting cold where they touched his gloved hand, where they reached, seeking, up his arm.

Almost as quickly as they’d appeared, the motes dispersed, seeping back 'til nothing remained, and when they had gone the man started to gasp, chest heaving, convulsing as if he were in terrible pain. His open wounds had healed into shiny scars, mottled in black, and the right arm and lower body had reformed itself from nothing, tubing and wires falling loosely to the floor, severed cleanly where new flesh, as pale and mottled as the old, now lay.

The columns on the ceiling lit up all at once with a deafening vibration, and the man's body arched.

"What the hell are you?" Cor whispered.

There were no stories or rumors of the scourge healing its victims. This man... was he the product of Nif experimentation? Were they trying to bend the disease to military use? Cor envisioned hordes of Nif soldiers, rising up from whence they'd fallen. Were there more like him, locked away in other labs? Were those babies grown into men in the tubes to be the next undying horror, to put the nightmare of the MTs to shame? Even Insomnia couldn't resist an unkillable enemy.

His mind fell upon another horror, and held fast to it: what if the scourge itself was a byproduct of the experiments conducted here?

A heavy thud sounded through the door, and Cor made several very poor decisions in the space of a heartbeat.

He leaned down to grab the knife, and started cutting through straps on the table.

The mission will be wasted!

He shoved the thought back to a corner of his mind. The mission had just added a new objective. He’d probably be dead within the hour, anyway, if the gods abandoned him in the next few minutes.

Bahamut save me. I'll rethink my impulsive decisions LATER, Clarus.

Cor had long ago given a name to that particular nagging bit of conscience.

He sliced through the last strap and dismissed the knife. The man's eyes were screwed shut, his lips twisted in a grimace.

"Hey. I’m getting you out of here," and even as Cor was said it, he was thinking, oh astrals, "you're coming with me."

Another thud. Whoever had the door overrides was apparently still fighting the fire.

He patted the man's face, and again, a little harder, until he saw a sliver of gold. Cor held up the hand the man still gripped, showing him his own arm pulled free from its bonds. The yellow eyes grew wider.

"Yeah. Would you let go of my hand for a minute?" He pried at the fingers holding his, and was relieved when the man released his grip. He started pulling off what sensors and tubes remained on the man’s chest, less gently than he had with the baby. Thinking wryly back on how reluctantly, and how often, he’d been pulled into assisting as an amateur medic’s assistant in Accordo, Cor steeled himself and did the quickest job he could of extubating the man. That earned him a glare, as the man gagged and coughed.

"Quid facis?" The man's voice was a rasp, and he spoke through labored breaths. "Neque tu times?'

Cor laid a hand on the man's shoulder.

"All right, we're going to get you up. Come on."

Cor pulled up on the man's shoulder, trying to ignore that it was soaked in wet blackness, and the man seemed to understand, straining to raise himself just enough for Cor to get an arm under his back.

It's already been all over me. I'm already exposed. So's the kid. Huh. Maybe I'll come back to life when they catch us and shoot me.

He lifted the man, helping him sit up and swing his legs off the table, trying not to notice how close to dead weight he was.

"Stay here. I'll be right back."

Not waiting for an answer, Cor dashed away. A quiet voice followed him: "Nescio."

Back at the door, the baby, still strangely silent, had managed to roll out of his sheets. Cor stepped around the dead man and scooped him back into place, then hitched the makeshift sling around his chest.

"Ready to go, kid?"

Now or never.

He rushed back into the lab, ignoring the pointed stare the man gave the sling. Without a word -- because what was the point? -- Cor pulled the man's arm over his own shoulders and reached an arm behind his back, tugging him forward, supporting his weight as it dropped to the floor.

Cor moved one foot forward, and the man took a trembling step. Too slow. They walked three more before his legs collapsed, and Cor was almost pulled down on top of him.

"Discede. Ego quoque infirmi." He pushed away from Cor. Some things were easy to understand.

“I don’t think so.”

"Discede!" The man's voice broke, and he seemed to fold in on himself, pulling out of Cor’s grip. This is ridiculous. Cor grimaced, and knelt, grabbing ahold of the man's unresisting left arm and pulling it over his own shoulder, then clasping the forearm. He'd just carry the man, too. It would be awkward, with the baby, but they weren't going far. Not yet. He rose to a crouch, reached back to find the man's thigh, and hitched him halfway into place.

"Astrals, you've got to at least hang on!"

He stood the rest of the way, off balance, and finally the man seemed to come aware again, wrapping his other arm around the Marshal's neck. Cor let go to grab his other leg.

I feel like an overloaded chocobo.

They made it to the raised perimeter of the room, and Cor squatted behind the row of workstations. Shifting the man's weight to one side, he reached into the armiger and pulled out a flask of firaga. It was the first magic he'd retrieved since reaching Niflheim. He was too rusty for this.

No time for second thoughts.

He threw the flask, aiming for the far wall, grabbed again at the man's arm, and ducked back just as the flames burst out. He counted to three, and raced through the burning lab toward the hole he'd blown in the wall, nothing but the blacked-out winter sky beyond.

He thought he the man scream something, or it might have been the MTs, or it might even have been himself.

Cor reached the edge, and jumped into the night.

Notes:

"Slow to update" still applies, but this second chapter was mostly done already :)

To anyone who knows anything about Latin at all, forgive me.

Thank you for reading! Feedback is most welcome!

Chapter 3

They snapped back into reality in a shower of sparks, collapsing into a tangle of limbs and snow and rocks as Cor’s ankle twisted under him and broke. Alive. They’d fallen so fast, dark masses of rock speeding at them, and he’d flung his dagger wildly down into the dark of the valley, praying he remembered how to pull.

He’d tried to learn from Regis, back when the prince made his first attempts to share his power, but after losing his lunch - and his dignity - one too many times, Cor stopped trying, not wanting to give Cid any more reason to laugh at him.

The baby started to wail, protesting the harsh jostling, and Cor wrapped his arms around the bundle, drawing it against his racing heart. Alive. Cor opened his eyes, looking back up at the sky. It was as if the stars were spinning. He squeezed them shut again.

"Stulte!"

 It was spoken like a curse, close to his ear. Alive. Cor counted between his breaths, forcing them to slow.

“Stulte.”

Quieter this time; a breeze of a laugh fluttered in his hair. A hand reached up to brush Cor’s forehead, and he turned his head into the cool touch, letting it ground him.

“Placet mihi.”

It was a whisper, and the man’s hand fell away.

When the world stopped moving, Cor pulled himself out of the man’s arms, tucked an arm around the baby’s sling, and rolled to a sitting position in the snow. He hissed at the pain in his left ankle, and took a moment to break a potion directly over it. The pain faded to an aching throb, and he stretched, experimentally, and winced. His other bruises and scrapes would mend themselves, given time, and weren’t worth either his last elixir or another of his potions.

Praying that no one was looking down from the hole he’d blown in the wall, Cor clicked his flashlight on and shone it around. They’d tumbled into a snowbank, blown deep against the rocky side of the hill. Fifteen feet from where he sat, the craggy ground fell away, plunging deeper down the forested side of the mountain. He looked up, and couldn’t see the lab; his blade must’ve fallen quite a way. All the same, they were exposed on the ledge, and it would be too easy to notice his light, even in the heavy snow. He clicked it off. The moon was full, though dimmed by smoke; it would have to be enough.

Cor tugged the knotted sheet over his head and pulled the little boy free, settled him awkwardly into the crook of one arm. The baby’s bright blue eyes brimmed with tears under a dusting of mussed blond hair, and his lips trembled under a runny nose turned red from cold, but still he was quiet. Cor made an unconscious sign to the gods in thanks. They were in trouble if the baby cried; his wails would be a beacon in the night.

Still, the child was upset, and he didn’t know what to do, so he smoothed down the boy’s fine blond hair as gently as he could, murmuring. Images of the lab – full of other babies – flashed into his mind, and Cor pushed them sharply back. Not right now.

How old is he? Younger than Clarus’ kid was when I left.

The baby yawned, and hiccupped, and Cor allowed himself a small smile. The kid was cute, and had calmed down fast. Cor wrapped the sheet more tightly around the drowsy baby and set him gently on the snow.

Cor turned back to check on his other stolen captive. The man was curled on his side, clouds of white puffing between his lips. He still seemed a grotesquerie, pale skin marred with scars and scourge stuff. There was no response when Cor shook his shoulder, so he instead pushed himself to his feet, summoned a sleeping bag to spread open, and rolled the unconscious man onto it. He zipped the bag around the shivering form, and limping and cursing under his breath all the while, dragged it toward the lee of a snow-capped tumble of rocks under a stand of twisted pines. It was poor concealment, though a better spot than the open ground, and it should help to break the bitter wind.

The baby went into the sleeping bag next to the man, and Cor tugged the fabric close around them both. Sitting back against the trunk of one of the pines, he drew forth a flask of fire, weaker than the magic he’d used before. Wedging the tip of his dagger into the seal of the fragile bottle, he twisted the blade carefully until it broke loose. Cracked open like this, it would spill out a softly-glowing heat for many hours.

I could get out with the baby. The truck’s gotta still be there, right where I left it. I could leave clothes, the bag, even my other elixir… a blade. He’d have a chance.

Cor knew he was lying to himself even as he thought it.

---

The trek back up the cliffside seemed to take forever, every step on the uneven terrain more excruciating than the last. It seemed an age before he reached the level of the production facility, and he leaned on his knees to rest for a moment. In the distance, the flames were burning lower, and the silhouetted figures seemed ordered rather than panicked. He was out of time.

There were now eight MTs clustered at his former station. With them stood Marcus, gesturing animatedly with a flashlight, his back to his former partner. Cor looked down at himself, grimaced at his general state, and walked straight up to the soldier and MTs.

“Hello, Marcus.”

He spoke casually, but as soon as the words had left his lips, the younger man spun about, gun drawn. Cor held up his hands and stopped approaching.

“Caius! What the hell’s going on, Caius? You should be dead, but here you are. These two,” he tipped his head back, but the MTs were all the same, “found me, yelling for help. We searched for you, and we got to the lab just when they forced the door open.” Marcus kept the beam of the flashlight pointed straight at Cor’s face. “We watched you jump.”

Marcus took a deep breath, and lowered the flashlight slightly, angling it out of Cor’s eyes. “I’m giving you a chance to answer… because you’re obviously a traitor, but you only zapped the hell out of me when you decided to go rogue. And,” he hesitated again, “‘cause I don’t understand what I saw in there.”

Chapter 4

Notes:

13+ months later and all I have to show for it is this super short chapter? I'm sorry, folks. I had a rough patch there without much time to work on projects for myself. On the other hand, all the new fan content that's come out since E:Ardyn has been a blast to read, don't you think?

Cor kept his hands up. He had no weapons – or at least, none realized from the armiger. The MTs now had their own guns trained on him, and they stepped up to flank Marcus.

“I can’t tell you what’s going on there. It’s what I’m trying to find out. I heard rumors, Marcus, from more than one source.” Cor was making this up as he went. “A month ago, a drunk tech even let something slip about too many bodies. And it’s true, Marcus! Six, did you see the babies? They’re filling babies with scourge, for what? Think of them doing that to your Rucia!”

Marcus winced at the mention of his infant daughter.

“It has to be stopped. Let me pass. I’m taking it to the press, in Gralea. They can shoot me as a traitor afterward, but I can’t let them use babies as guinea pigs.”

Marcus was scowling, hard, and his aggressive stance didn’t change, but Cor caught the soldier’s almost imperceptible nod. Marcus didn’t break Cor’s gaze as he addressed the MT units.

“MT units, this man is a traitor. I’m taking him into custody. Maintain your position and guard the entrance to this building.”

A low buzz met his order, and the two units stepped back, though they kept their firearms readied. Marcus gestured with the tip of his gun.

“Turn around and walk, Caius. Slowly. Keep your hands up. Toward the canteen.”

The two men started off at Cor’s hobbling pace. They’d moved into the gloomy dark, the gun’s muzzle pressed into Cor’s back, when Caius finally spoke.

“The generator was you?”

Cor shrugged, the gesture awkward with his raised arms.

“Of course.”

Marcus was silent for a while.

“How many babies did you find in there?”

“Fifty in that lab. I don’t know if there are others.”

“What were those boys in the tanks?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they clones? Are they dead?”

“I don’t know that either. Maybe they’re trying to grow humans. Maybe the Magitek aren’t good enough. Can I put my hands down? I can’t feel my fingers.”

“Not a chance.” The gun pressed harder into his back. “The MT infrared can probably still see us. Keep going.”

“So are you turning me in, or letting me go?”

Marcus didn’t answer that, instead pressing on with questions of his own as they walked

“If you really are going to the press, how do you plan to make anyone believe you? You’ll be written off as some nutcase defector. They’ll bury you and your crazy story.”

Cor laughed softly, for effect. “I took pictures, Marcus, of everything. I have the film in my pocket” – there was nothing in Cor’s pockets, and he prayed Marcus didn’t think to check – “and I’m mailing prints to the Gralea Daily and to the tabloids, too. Someone will run it.”

“Sure, it’ll look as credible as “Alien Mummies Found in Bauthern Mines.” Marcus’ voice was full of derision, but the gun finally dropped. “How do you plan to get out of here, anyway? You’re not stupid enough to not have a plan.”

Stupid enough to ruin my own plan, yeah.

The truck was probably still standing where he’d parked it, far removed from the excitement of the fire. Too far away from the baby, and the man.

Cor let himself sigh, deeply, just once.

“Marcus, I’ll need your help.”

Chapter 5

Summary:

I felt a little crummy about posting such a short chapter for my 14-months-later update, so here's another one?

Cor took Marcus’ helmet, the other man’s identification markers a camouflage against scanning eyes; the awakened units were fanning out in the darkness around the buildings, now, but so were several human soldiers, returned from the fire to answer the new alert blaring from their radios.

They both slipped back onto the base – Cor returning in a roundabout way to where he had cached the two fugitives, and Marcus to find a vehicle and meet him on the road to Gralea that hugged the lower mountainside.

I hope.

Climbing down the ridge as quietly as he could, Cor aimed his descent right into the first searching MT in his path, an overloaded shock baton shoved right into its Magitek core. He threw the now-useless baton away as the armor collapsed, black miasma bursting forth, and summoned his katana from the armiger. It familiar weight settled into his hand comfortably. He silently apologized to Gilgamesh as he used it to catch himself in a slide, and hacked his way past a thorny branch that tore at his sleeve; the enchanted blade would survive the abuse.

He slowed as he approached his cache of fugitives from above; five dark shadows were working their way through the clearing just short of the copse of pines. He was close to one end of the line; the nearest shape was an MT with an axe, skirting along the edge of the line of higher rocks Cor was following.  Five paces away was a man bearing a rifle. The rest were hardly discernable in the swirling, moonlit snow.

Bless the snow, or they’d be seen already.

Sheathing his katana, Cor summoned his dagger again, the blade still slick with black. MTs were too awkward to be a threat to him individually, but what they lacked in finesse they could make up in numbers. He’d have to be quick.

Gathering his nerves, he took off with a few running steps across the snow toward the short drop, and pushed off with enough speed that his fall tackled the nearest MT to the ground beneath him. Cor had drawn the knife through the thick bunch of tubes and wires at the unit’s neck before they hit the ground, acrid fluid spouting into his face, and he wrenched the blade free just in time to throw it into the chest of the soldier turning to face him. He sprang up, kicked the gun out of the man’s spasming fingers, drew his sword, and dashed through the snow to slice the deadly edge across the gut of the next soldier. The last two came at him together, both MTs, and Cor threw his helmet at the glowing face of the unit with a short sword to slide under the swing of the other’s axe. The move was misjudged; as he spun away to pull his sword out of the MT axman’s mask, his abused ankle failed, and as he caught himself he felt the other unit’s blade slice down his ribs. He gasped, gritted his teeth, and continued his motion to cut the head cleanly from the attacking machine’s shoulders.

Damn it. The wound stung like Ifrit’s fire. Cor slumped to his knees among the fallen armor, pressing his hand into his side to cover the bleeding gash in his side. If he were alone, he would quickly wrap it to stem the blood and go limping on, betting on his unnatural luck that it wouldn’t be enough to kill him before he got to a place of relative safety, but here… he conjured his precious elixir, crushed it to his side, and breathed deeply as the flesh knit under his fingers. If he made any more mistakes like that, he had only potions, and that could be the end of all of them.

At least, he thought as he pushed back to his feet, my ankle feels better.

Under the trees, his two stolen prizes remained untouched, the sleeping bag half covered by snow that had drifted down through the tree branches. Cor had to shake the man hard to awaken him, but this time he seemed stronger, able to sit up and tug on the old sweats that Cor pulled from the armiger.

He rose shakily and gestured at his feet.

“Calceos velim,” he said, one eyebrow raised. Cor would almost say his eyes were glowing with a soft golden light in the thick darkness under the trees.

Cor shrugged and pulled the swaying man's arm over his shoulder before he could manage to fall down.

"I don't have a cobbler in my magic bag, if that's what you're asking."

His tone of voice was clear; Cor heard a tsk next to his ear, but the man nodded and followed along without protest when Cor started moving. Most of his weight was on the soldier, but he kept his feet moving, despite the snow on the rocky ground

Not bad for a man that’s just been dead… who still looks it.

The little group stopped in the clearing to pull the boots and coat off the tallest of the fallen soldiers, and then descended the mountain as fast as Cor could manage without sending them all tumbling, the oddly silent baby again tucked in the makeshift sling, the stumbling man’s arm over his shoulder. Cor both held him up and pulled him along, keeping them under cover when he could, making entirely too much racket sliding down slopes of scree when he couldn’t.

When they reached the top of the sidehill cut above the narrow service road, Cor pushed the baby into the man’s arms, gestured him to stay down and back from the edge, and dropped down the rock to wait near the road in the shadows of the setting moon.

Notes:

Cor doesn't have shoes big enough for Ardyn's giant feet; leave him alone.

Chapter 6

Summary:

Next chapter won't be out for a bit -- busy week ahead!

A truck lumbered into view in the half-light before dawn, hugging the shoulder. It was a troop transport with a long cab and an open bed, much larger than the vehicle Cor had chosen and packed. Just past the short stack of stones Cor had piled at the side of the road, it pulled to a stop, and Marcus leaned out, scanning for him.

Cor’s hand twitched in his coat pocket, and when he closed his fingers, they wrapped around the grip of a handgun. He kept his other arm around the bulge under his jacket, where the baby dozed. He’d climbed back up after stacking his marker to find the man unconscious again, slumped back against the steep ground, the sleeping infant swaddled in his lap. The kid’s cheeks were red with cold, even under his blanket. Cor had done the best he could over the next hour, warming one of the stolen bottles against his skin for the boy, but the child just screwed up his face and turned away.

He stepped into the road, rounded the back of the truck to the driver’s side, and called out.

“I’m here, Marcus.”

Marcus twisted back to look at him. Cor stayed put.

“I’m alone. Climb in.”

“Anyone else coming?”

“The radio tower was damaged in the fire. I’m on my way to request assistance at Kammbahn and call in to Gralea. I left alone, but… Once they finish the second sweep of the search, they’re sending a team to follow up.”

“You still OK with this?”

Marcus pushed a hand through his hair and sucked in a breath.

“Sure. Gotta help those kids, right?”

Cor let the gun fall back into the armiger, in favor of one of his rolls of film. He held it up for Marcus’ benefit.

“And get this to the press.”

“If they believe you.”

“They will.” Cor walked forward, his boots crunching on the snow. “I picked up that other evidence I mentioned.” He unzipped his coat and lifted the baby out. “Take him, will you?”

“Shit, Caius!”

Marcus kept cursing as he reached down for the baby, taking the bottle Cor passed up afterwards.

“Put him in the seat and get out, will you? He’s not the only one. I need help”

---

There were ice crystals in the man’s lashes, and he was shivering violently despite the sleeping bag, which Cor was certain he’d never personally use again. While Cor tried and failed to rouse him, Marcus stood five paces away, staring at the streaks of ichor trailing down the man’s face, whispering blasphemies against Ifrit’s mother.

“Help me out, Marcus. We’ve got to carry him down.”

“Hell no.” He backed up a step.

“I can’t do it by myself.”

Marcus another took a step back, heel scraping over the edge of the rock. Cor could see panic starting in his eyes.

“I thought you were carrying someone, when I saw you. It was that? He’s gonna turn, Cauis. I’ve never heard of one that bad before he turned. Gods, let’s leave him!”

Cor covered the ground to Marcus in less than an instant, grabbed the man’s arm, and jerked him away from the edge.

“You don’t like it? Besithia did it to him. Get over here and help me pick him up. You want to get the word out about what you saw? This is what we need!”

“But you can’t-“

Cor pointed down at the unconscious man.

“Is that a threat, right now? If he starts to turn, you shoot him in the head.”

Cor didn’t elaborate on his own doubts of the efficacy of that strategy.

Marcus hung back for a moment, anguished indecision on his face.

“Can’t you just show them the pictures?”

“Only if you want them to run next to Ulldor’s Coerl-Tailed Love Child.”

At that, Marcus froze, then laughed shakily and threw up his hands.

“Can’t argue with that, sir.”

---

The magitek facility was remote, to say the least, nestled in the mountains northeast of Gralea. The aging train that ran supplies in and completed units out took ten hours to ease down toward the foothills edging Vogliupe, where Kammbahn, a small but heavily fortified base, served as a station for both army trains and supplies. With the delivery of the first functioning Magitek units, Verstael had finally won funding for higher-speed rail, but the engineers building it had been beset by both rockslides and bureaucratic delays.

In the truck, trusting their lives less to Cor’s driving and the grip of the massive tires, they’d reach the base in six hours.

When Marcus had declared himself the oldest brother of four siblings, Cor had gladly taken the wheel, relieved to let Marcus try to coax formula into the baby. Their larger charge was tucked in the second row, still dead to the world.

“He doesn’t make much noise, does he?”

“No. He only cried once.”

“When?”

“After we jumped.”

“Lucky no one got hurt.”

There was the smallest edge to Marcus’ voice. Cor tightened his grip on the wheel.

“Lucky snowbank. I didn’t plan on that exit strategy.”

“Ah.”

They rode in silence for a while, listening to the soft sounds the boy made; he was finally suckling the bottle.

“Did you notice his arm?”

“Yeah.”

Cor glanced over; Marcus was rubbing the boy’s wrist.

“Want me to drive when he finishes? You should catch an hour of sleep.”

 

--- 

 

Cor was woken when Marcus reached over to shake his shoulder; he growled and opened his eyes a slit. The sun had risen high enough to glare through the windshield. He groaned and held up a hand to block the light, and looked out the window. They were in the beginnings of the foothills; just a little snow dusted the ground in drifts. He yawned, and peered toward at the driver’s seat.

“How far out are we?”

Marcus’s eyes were looking a little bloodshot when he glanced back.

“Maybe two hours from Kammbahn. There’s another truck, but they’re still pretty far behind us.”

Cor twisted in his seat. Their passenger was sitting up in the back seat, his elbow propped on the window, head leaning heavily into his hand; with the other he held the canvas shade pulled back just a little. He frowned at Cor, but raised his fingers in acknowledgement.

“He’s been muttering for an hour. Who the hell speaks Old Sol?”

“Old Sol?” Cor ground the heel of his hand into his eye. “You know it?”

“No, but I had a couple of buddies in training who learned it in back in school. They spent half of every night sharing, and loved explaining stuff after they taught us how to say it.” He tilted his head back, stumbled his way through a long phrase, and Cor looked back to see the man roll his golden eyes and huff in disgust.

“Quot aetate es? Amove te!”

“What did he say?”

“I have no idea. I just memorized the sounds.”

Notes:

I really considered actually typing out a line from Catullus for Marcus to say, but that's waaaaaaay too dirty for me, so just use your imagination. Ardyn replies with something like, "How old are you? Get out of here!"

Also, Marcus is way too pure.

Chapter 7

Ardyn

 

His thoughts hissed out like dew in a bonfire.

 

In the noise

 

and fog

 

his eyes were darkness

 

they burned

 

took

 

and there was less of him

 

he saw his brother

 

sneering

 

the scourge boiled against the pressure

 

howling

 

until it was released and exploded

 

and it slammed back into him

 

destroying him

 

and

 

began

 

again

 

 

 

 

Gods, he thought, when he could. 

 

 

 

He longed for Somnus’ chains, when he could.

 

 

 

There was a knife, or he was dreaming, and what might have been a promise. He knew it for a lie and accepted it.

 

 

 

it ended

 

 

 

and began again

 

 

 

He was almost himself. There was the soldier, and there a scientist with his brains blown out kneeling at the foot of a babe. The soldier pulled at Ardyn, trying to take him. They were at the door, and Ardyn tried to push him away; the pressure was building again, and he fell...

But the soldier carried them out, and they warped, and when they crashed down in the snow, Ardyn felt like they were still flying.

“Fool!” Ardyn said, in disbelief at the man’s audacity. “Fool,” he said again, and he touched the soldier’s face, trying to bring it into focus. “I like you.”

The world slipped through his fingers.

 

 

Ardyn woke in the quiet night, wrapped in a padded blanket against the snow. The baby was with him, a warm bundle in his wrappings. He was restless, and Ardyn traced his fingers over the child’s feathery hair until he finally stilled, his breath evening in sleep. It was... peaceful. Even the scourge lay quiescent inside him, exhausted into a murmuring brook in place of the usual torrent. He was free to listen to the rustle of the trees in the soft wind and watch the shadowy flakes falling through the dark branches above them. 

The child settled, he pulled his arms from under the fabric and held them up in the dim light, turning his hands, squinting at the shadowy forms. He curled his toes, familiarizing himself with feeling present again, though not whole. He tried to imagine whole, and felt uninvited tears tracking down his cheeks. When he wiped his face, his hand came away smeared in black (as he knew it must), and he rubbed it in the snow, letting the cold numb away the feeling.

What did Bahamut mean by all of this? Had he erred in His eyes, by declining to humor the insane schemes of the scientist He allowed to pull Adagium from his tomb?

The little man had dangled revenge, through his broken words, and promised glory. His words would once have tempted Ardyn. He once would have burned the world, as his heart was burned out when his brother cut Aera down, before turning the blade on him. He had screamed promises of vengeance for a century as he hung in his tomb, and had cried for mercy for a century more, but the passing of ages had worn all things down 'til only emptiness remained. In truth, what could any grievance of his matter to a world that had moved on? What could matter to him, in his immortal state, save regret? What remained to tempt him, save death?

I’ve had my reward for playing Bahamut’s part, and there is no glory in it.

He drew his hands into fists to ease their trembling.

And now, had he yet again been stolen to be a pawn for another empire-builder’s dreams? Was he bound for Angelguard again, to be buried for two millennia more?

How blessed were those who could say with truth I can endure no more. 

Although... if this was his new fate, why would a lone soldier be sent to spirit him away? Any man with Lucis Caelum magic could only think of him as a monster; a daemon to be contained, a plague to be stomped out. It is all I am. The soldier had left him here, though, with an innocent, no wards to keep him from fleeing… and he had done so with care, had provided shelter and a little ball of magic that had melted a puddle in the snow.

Why?

The trees around Ardyn grew dim, sinking into a deepening haze, and he thought of the pity in the soldier’s eyes as he held the knife.

Why, it’s as if he doesn’t know me for what I am.

He slept.

Notes:

Placet mihi is literally "it pleases me." I've seen it used as "I like you/it" at least once, so I went with it. Close as I could get!