a liquid voice called, son of gods !

The dream in the cave had been far too disorienting for any one man, then practically a boy, to handle. When a voice calls out to you from cool, dark mist, showing nary a trace of even the most ambiguous silhouette, "Do you wish to change it? The future." ...well. What can you do? There's nothing to be done.

Bound by a premonition like that, of course any step into the next waiting moment meant that danger would come.

But Alvis had said that the Monado would grow with him - with Shulk. That hadn't just been a statement, an assertion. It had been a promise. And so the shield came against the danger.

It was something like an angel, wasn't it? An eldritch presence bearing over you with the grim portent of BE NOT AFRAID , BE NOT AFRAID .

So Shulk wasn't afraid. To be sure, scientifically, he was curious, and intellectually, he was cautious, but at the core of his soul, where his Monado resided...he was not afraid.

That was in Tephra Cave, somewhere he'd been quite a few times before. Spiral Valley, then, was new. But he was still not afraid when the time came.

He could have shied away from it, could have flung the crimson sword from his grasp, tugged on Sharla's wrist and Reyn's forearm and ran, to regroup and find another, more sensible solution to the problem.

The Monado had spoken to him. It had answered his question, one he'd barely even voiced aloud. Why hadn't he been afraid?

Maybe he had. Maybe he'd tried to ignore it. And maybe...

Maybe it was a little something about saying hello to the monster living under your bed, and a little something about relentlessly re-pasting the glow-up stars to your ceiling. Because sometimes you want to believe so badly that you just have to.

You just have to. Of course you can.

And Alvis said many things to Shulk, throughout their journey. He provided the goals, the truths, the self-evidencies in ways that were simultaneously imperious and altogether down-to-earth. He was not a tool, but he was just such a facile accomplice.

He was just such a guiding force, and he reanointed himself so every time he said Shulk's name.

After the end, Alvis was quiet. He stayed observant, looking half like he wanted to disappear without a trace for no particular reason at all and half like he was simply yearning for a reason, any reason, to exist. Any at all. To exist...at all.

And it wasn't down to Shulk to give him a purpose, of course. Because that would be...well. That would defeat their entire goal, if he attempted to give commands and pull strings and orchestrate the continued passage of fate.

God had fallen down out of the sky. If he was meant to be anywhere, it was up there. Some might say that it was the prior form factor that was ill-fitting, not the fact of the mounting point itself. But maybe heaven, the ideal and the idyll alike, had simply been abolished altogether.

Do you see what I mean?

So Shulk was, primarily, attuned to refusing any such requests for guidance, if they were to appear. For once, when he was ready for them, of course they didn't. Until, just once...

"Well, but Alvis...if I could ask you one thing."

Never mind the punctuation there; the written can never truly capture the incorporeal bodies' inflection. And isn't it so human a thing to cast the universal with an exception, to turn back on your word only when you know acceptance and acquiescence lie in wait?

"You might ask many more than just one." Mischievous devil. And surely that is not a god, no matter how benevolent its smile. "But, one will certainly serve."

It was easy to laugh. Maybe it always is, when you're sending such a specific kind of aural signal. "Someday, I'm sure. But right now...could you say my name again?"