The Dawn of the Future

by Jun Eishima

　And with them, I am to defeat Ardyn? Me? Am I even capable of such a feat?

  　But if fate ordained had changed, perhaps that meant Noctis would no longer need to use the ring. He’d seemed to be in such agony when it happened. If she ventured forth as the Draconian commanded, perhaps Noctis would not have to suffer. He would not shatter into pieces in the world beyond. He would not cease to exist.

  　If Noctis could be saved, it was worth trying to see this new calling through.

  When Lunafreya rose in the morning, the sensation wasn’t any different from all the other times she’d woken. Only this time, there was no morning light to greet her. The world outside the windows was still immersed in perpetual darkness.

  　She remembered with perfect clarity every word of her conversation with the Draconian. But no matter how she tried, she could not remember the god’s form or visage. Somehow, that confirmed to her that what she’d seen had not been an ordinary dream or a product of her imagination.

  　“A new calling,” she said softly to herself.

  　As the words left her mouth, she felt a surge of motivation to see it through. She sprang up, ready to act. On the floor next to where she’d slept she saw a small pile of folded black cloth. When she picked it up, she discovered it to be a full set of clothing. It hadn’t been there when she went to sleep. Perhaps its presence suggested she was welcome to change into it?

  　As she pondered what to do, the door opened and Sol peeked in.

  　“You finally up?” Sol asked.

  　“Oh. Yes. Good morning.” Lunafreya responded. She paused, then asked, “About these clothes . . . ”

  　“You looked like you could use a change. I dunno if they’ll fit, but it’s better than walking around in what you’ve got on now.”

  　Over the course of the previous day, her soaked dress had finally managed to dry. Still, it was torn in several places and smeared with dirt. It had, in a sense, seen ten years of use, so it was hardly surprising that it might be literally a bit worse for wear. She thanked Sol and quickly changed.

  　Black was a color she’d never worn before. As Oracle, it was only proper for her to perform rites in formal white. On her journeys, too, she’d always chosen to wear white. Come to think of it, even her casual wardrobe had been filled exclusively with whites and off-whites.

  　The new clothes thus seemed rather peculiar on her, once she’d changed and was looking herself over. The stretchable fabric was admittedly comfortable, and she suspected it would prove easy to move about in. Yet the clothing was still somehow hard to accept. It made her uneasy. She wondered if she might ever shake the feeling that she was wearing borrowed garb.

  　The first words out of Sol’s mouth on seeing her were, “Looks good on you.” Then she added, “A lot better than that old dress.”

  　It may have been self-serving, but she let Sol’s compliment assuage her unease. Until this moment, she’d paid little attention to her apparel. It was strange and somewhat exhilarating to learn how a new outfit could bring with it an entirely different mood.

  　Lunafreya was on a journey like nothing she’d experienced in her past, and she was making it in clothes wholly different from anything she’d worn before. But this new fate had been thrust upon her, and it stood to reason that new experiences and a new appearance would come with it.

  　“I’m done tuning the bike. Once you’ve got some food in you, we’re heading out,” Sol said.

  　It seemed Sol had woken up far earlier than Lunafreya.

  　“I’m sorry. I promised to help you.”

  　“No big deal. Figured I’d get the repairs done early and skip on out of here. Y’know, leave you behind.”

  　Sol said it with a straight face, but if she’d truly intended to abandon Lunafreya, it seemed unlikely she’d have gone to the trouble of finding her a change of clothes.

  　“Miss Sol, I wonder if I might ask a favor,” Lunafreya ventured.

  　She straightened and looked the other woman directly in the eye.

  　“I should like to accompany you a bit longer. There is a destination I must reach.”

  　To fulfill this new calling, Lunafreya knew she would need assistance. Over the relatively short distance from the underground tomb to Wael, that truth had become all too apparent. Compared to Sol, she fell far short in so many ways. Sol had means to get around and was experienced in combat. And it wasn’t only the obvious things. The previous night, Lunafreya had realized she did not know how to open cans of food for herself with a knife, let alone how to start a fire.

  　Sol had the learned skills of a person well-traveled in lands from which civilization had vanished. She knew so many things that Lunafreya could never have hoped to gain in her days of warm welcome at every place to which she journeyed.

  　“Not that I expect you to see me all the way there,” Lunafreya clarified. “I should simply like to stay with you as long as our paths are shared.”

  　Even a short while would be welcome. She would journey alongside Sol and learn as much as she could. Her travels as Oracle might have failed to teach her how to subsist on her own, but it was not too late to begin learning now.

  　“Where are we talking about?” Sol asked, her tone curt. She peered at Lunafreya with suspicion.

  　“I need to get to Insomnia.”

  　“The Crown City? You’ve gotta be kidding. I told you, that place might as well be a breeding ground for daemons. What business could the prim and proper Lady Oracle have in a place like that?”

  　“Please. I would ask you stop calling me that. My name is Lunafreya.”

  　Every time Sol referred to her as “Lady Oracle,” Lunafreya was acutely reminded of the wall that stood between them. Yesterday, she’d made no protest at the distant, cold means of address; Sol was, after all, a simple passerby with whom she shared no relationship. But now things would have to be different.

  　“Sure. Whatever you want,” Sol replied. “But Lunafreya’s still kind of a mouthful.”

  　“Then, please call me Luna.”

  　When she said it aloud, that familiar young face floated once more to mind. Lunafreya. Her name had been too long for him then as well. He’d stumbled over it, until finally they’d both settled on his simply calling her Luna.

  　“Okay. Luna it is. Then you can quit calling me Miss. Just Sol is fine.”

  　“Agreed,” Lunafreya responded. “Thank you, Sol.”

  　“So what do you have planned once you get to Insomnia?”

  　“I will fight. I will challenge Ardyn.”

  　“Ardyn? Don’t tell me you’re talking about Ardyn Izunia,” Sol said, one eyebrow raised.

  　When Lunafreya nodded in response, Sol first stared blankly. After that initial moment of shock, her words were incredulous and mixed with laughter. “You? You’re gonna take down Ardyn? That’s a joke if I’ve ever heard one.”

  　Lunafreya simply regarded Sol in silence. She had no delusions that Ardyn would be an easy opponent to fell. But if she did not fight . . . If she did not stop Ardyn, the darkness that shrouded their star would ever remain.

  　After a moment, Sol registered her expression and stopped laughing. “Whoa. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  　She seemed to hesitate, and then mumbled to herself, “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  　But Lunafreya was most decidedly not kidding. The sentiment seemed to convey itself, and Sol’s next words, accompanied with a small sigh, were “Fine. Whatever.

  　“First we head to Lestallum,” she continued. “Your little trip to Insomnia comes after that. That good with you?”

  　“Of course,” Lunafreya nodded.

  　She knew a sea crossing would be necessary to make it from the former empire to Insomnia. If Sol was taking her to Lestallum, it meant help and companionship through the crossing as well. It was far more than Lunafreya could have hoped for.

  　She bowed her head and added, “It will be a great help, than
k you. I shall be most indebted.”

  　A look of distaste crossed Sol’s face.

  　“Is something wrong?” Lunafreya asked.

  　“Forget about it.”

  　Sol turned away, her eyes clearly contradicting her words. Lunafreya felt as if she’d said something wrong, but she had no idea what it might have been.

  “I found one! This is one of them, yes?” Luna held a can aloft, seeming quite pleased with herself. The two had driven back to the spot where the Oracle had thrown out the “extra weight” in their panicked flight from the Deathgaze. On the road, food was precious. They really couldn’t afford to leave it.

  　Along the way, Sol had also given Luna a chance to try driving the bike. It wasn’t the kind of thing someone could pick up in a day or two, but they had a long trip ahead. There would be plenty of time for Luna to learn, and it’d be a lot easier on both of them once switching off became a viable option.

  　Sol was able to identify the stretch of road where the bag had been lost. But what proved to be the really painstaking work was tracking down the cans themselves, which had rolled off in all directions.

  　Luna labored without a single word of complaint. She probably felt responsible, which she pretty much was, since she’d been the one to fling the bag out of the sidecar in the first place. So Luna hunted in concentrated silence, save for her triumphant outbursts on each find.

  　“Here’s another!” she exclaimed.

  　She was quick. In the time it took Sol to find one can, Luna would pick up three or four.

  　“Geez. You’re . . . ”

  　Good at finding things, Sol had begun to say, but she clamped her mouth shut.

  　“What was that?” the Oracle asked.

  　“Nothing. Forget about it.”

  　As the words formed, it had occurred to Sol just exactly what would make someone―or something―so quick at locating the cans. Visual acuity in low light conditions. In other words, seeing well at night. Just the kind of thing daemons were good at.

  　When they’d had the encounter with the Deathgaze, Luna had seemed to be pulling or absorbing some kind of energy from the monster. And the particles that rose off her open wound―for the brief span of time it had been open at all―were just like those of a daemon.

  　And now, here was another daemon-like skill. Hunting things in the dark. It fit right in with the other odd feats the Oracle was apparently capable of.

  　But it didn’t seem right to jump to the conclusion that Luna was an enemy just because she had powers in common with the daemons. Sol had made sure to visibly lower her guard a few times the previous evening to see if her new companion might go for a surprise attack. She’d seen no indication of a desire to try.

  　And of course, to top it all off, there was the woman’s ludicrous claim that she intended to face off against Ardyn Izunia himself.

  　How were you supposed to react to something like that? Sol was still wrestling with the question as their search for the wayward cans wrapped up.

  　After that, they hopped back on the bike, and when they’d ridden for about an hour, they were met with bits of white falling gracefully from the sky.

  　“Not a cloud in sight, but we’ve got a flurry,” Sol observed. It was said to happen around here, along this little swathe of land sandwiched between the desert and the mountains locked in eternal winter, but only at this particular time of year, when temperatures were low and the air was dry. Strong wind lifted snow from the peaks and carried it to fall like a winter flurry over the land below, creating the bizarre sight of snow falling from a clear sky.

  　“Heh. I guess it’s probably nothing new to you, being from Tenebrae and all.”

  　“I have known of it, yes, but this is my first time seeing it with my own eyes,” Luna responded. “It was described to me as resembling a cascade of white blossoms dancing through the sky.”

  　“Against a sky like this, I’d say it’s more like a swarm of insects.”

  　But how did it look to Luna’s eyes? With her vision, perhaps snowflakes against a dark sky didn’t look so bad. It occurred to Sol that everything she saw might look quite different to her companion. They might stare in the same direction and see two very different things.

  　“I wonder if I could ask you a question,” Luna ventured hesitantly.

  　“Shoot.”

  　“The way to Insomnia―no, the way to Lestallum. How many days’ travel is it?”

  　“Hate to say it, but I really can’t give you a precise number.”

  　A vast expanse of sea stretched between the former lands of Niflheim and Lucis, where Lestallum was located. To get across, they’d need either a dropship or a watercraft of some sort. But dropships were reserved for patrols and reconnaissance; other uses weren’t permitted. As far as ships capable of traversing open water, well . . . there were never enough hands available to keep the things in proper shape. And without many seaworthy vessels, it was likely that they’d make it to the port only to find it empty and have to wait.

  　“From what I hear, this area used to be about two days from the port. But we’re making the trip hunting daemons along the way, so let’s say four or five. Problem is, after we get there, we may be waiting for a while before there’s a ship that can take us.”

  　“And I suppose even once we’re across, it will take several more days.”

  　“More than that. The City of Light itself is the only place that’s safe. Daemons lurk everywhere else, so it’s slow going.”

  　“Yes, I suppose that makes sense,” Luna replied, in a voice so small Sol thought it might get carried off by the wind. They’d had to deal with three daemon encounters already, just to get to the site where they lost the cans. They’d narrowly managed to avoid two other packs by spot-ting the daemons before they themselves were spotted and speeding away on the bike. Three or four hours had gone by since they left Wael, but it certainly didn’t feel like they’d managed to cover much ground.

  　“And daemons aren’t the only things that’ll slow us down. We gotta make time to rest, too.”

  　Sol gently pressed on the brakes. Luna looked over with astonishment. She seemed to want to protest that she could go farther; she wasn’t yet tired.

  　“Not for us,” Sol explained. “For Regina.”

  　Sol patted one handlebar as she said it. The engine had been pretty hot for a while now. It was well past time to let it rest. The bike was running again, but it had been a quick fix. She’d had to make do with whatever parts she could find, and Cindy, too, had made a point of telling her not to push the vehicle very hard.

  　“‘Regina?’” Luna asked.

  　It wasn’t until Luna chirped the name back that Sol realized what she’d done. Ugh. She hadn’t meant to reveal that.

  　Sol had met Regina during one of her early missions. She’d been busy helping beat back the daemons, and bam, there it was: an old Niflheim-built motorcycle just abandoned there on the side of the road. It was love at first sight. Sol knew she had to ride it, and she begged Cindy to restore the machine to working condition. Cid shook his head as he muttered about it being the kind of thing a “do-nothin’ bum” would ride, but he helped Cindy fix it up, and no sooner was it running than Sol was riding and thinking up the name she’d christen her new partner with.

  　“What, you got a problem with my bike’s name?” she glared at Luna.

  　“Not at all,” the Oracle responded.

  　Not that any other answer would have mattered. Rider and bike were inseparable now. Sol wasn’t going to let anyone laugh at the fact that she’d named her bike―or at the name itself.

  　“No travel faster than the slowest member of the group,” Sol said. “That’s an ironclad rule among the Hunters.”

  Since departing Wael, they’d stuck exclusively to one particular route that ran parallel to a railway track. It was a fairly narrow road, offering much less space than the major thoroughfares, and at
least for the portion they’d traveled thus far, it was poorly maintained. Lunafreya had assumed Sol chose the road to avoid encounters with daemons, but now she wasn’t sure. They’d run into plenty so far. Why, then, travel along such a tedious route? It wasn’t until the end of their first day that she finally understood.

  　Stations and signal cabins had been built along the track at regular intervals, so following the track meant they’d never want for a relatively safe place to spend the night. Along this route, they’d always have a roof under which to sleep, and the water lines servicing the buildings would enable them to drink and wash. According to Sol, only major stations were likely to see any upkeep and use as proper outposts, but even so, a tiny, unnamed signal cabin would serve well enough for one night’s stay.

  　In the control room they were currently occupying, they found some tableware and folded blankets tucked away opposite the levers for the rail switches. There was even a small kerosene heater. A fine layer of dust coated everything, but aside from that, it was all in good enough condition to use.

  　Sol lit the heater, filling the tiny building with warmth and the reek of kerosene. Lunafreya, suddenly overcome with fatigue, realized that if she sat down, she might not stand back up. Better to take care of everything that needed to get done before resting.

  　“Shall I heat some water?” she asked.

  　Sol grunted in response, and Lunafreya began combing through the contents atop a set of small shelves. She found a small pot in which to heat water, as well as utensils for the night’s canned meal. Then, her eyes happened to fall on a teapot hiding at the back of one shelf.

  　A teapot, she thought. What an unusual find. And if there was a teapot, then perhaps . . . Lunafreya’s hands and eyes continued to search, eventually coming to rest upon a familiar rectangular metal shape. Loose-leaf tea. A bit of rust had begun to form on the outside of the tin, but when she popped off the top to check the contents, the tea itself seemed dry enough.

  　She turned back to face Sol at the heater and asked, “Would you mind if I put on some tea?”