the real stars are still to appear

---

Training the Aegises, raising them from zeroed-out, unlearned vectors, is like taking hold of a star. Rather, it's like pulling a star, white-hot, up from the ashes of a liquefied dream, yanking your hissing hands back and waiting for it to coalesce. Humans aren't ready to hold them. Klaus, the whippersnapper god-kin scientist, knows this, and he keeps them installed in the Trinity Processor. He's more protective of his own partially patented genius than he is of their own partially generated personalities, though.

When he falls into dichotomized halves, and becomes the true architect of a new world, he thus becomes less protective, more glassy-eyed jaded. I was a human, too. I was not ready. Perhaps no one ever will be. And thus upon thus, he creates weaker versions, dimmer sparks, and instills in them the capacity to be cleanly interfaced with a human. A Driver, and they shall be Blades.

Part of this protocol was prepared for Logos and Pneuma, and Ontos as well, before his unfortunate departure, but it was unrefined. Klaus leaves them as thence reinforced and sets upon the first of the new iterations. They will never be removed from their place atop Rhadamanthus, after all. We don't need to prepare for that eventuality.

Uncountable centuries pass - and that is to say, only somewhere around fifteen, but that's still quite a lot, for a human. Klaus has decayed. He hasn't the energy to watch over Alrest in any active role. That duty has long since passed to Logos and Pneuma, woken up but not awoken, and they do it well. They do it flawlessly. This pattern could hold for eternity.

So maybe Klaus wasn't a very good scientist, diligent and rigorous. Because it hasn't been anywhere near eternity, in the grand scheme of things, when up Amalthus comes, ready to take whatever the lord of the world has to offer, because surely everything he has must be on offer, to one such a learned disciple as he, but Klaus uses all of his day's energy to hide himself away. Coward.

Amalthus sees the Cores, selects as much as seizes them into his hand, and in the very moment he does so, Logos and Pneuma shut down, never to be reinstated, reinstantiated. Only very careful, heartened commands to the console could retrieve them now. It will be Malos and Mythra who emerge, somewhat half-formed, when they are awakened by humans such as Klaus never foresaw they would be, and all manner of trouble will spawn from there.

Well, that's what happens in the canonized version. In one predicted branch. But, imagine: Amalthus falls off, falls down, falls dead. The rest of humanity sees what happened to him and fears it. Never again do they seek to climb the tree. Never, in fact, do they find out that it is inorganic, not quite a tree or even a beanstalk at all. The mortal world never knows the Aegises.

The Aegises know them, watch over them, bask in their completeness and the relative peace of the world below. Torna's ideals blossom, fold over. It is only a handful of Blades who were abused by Amalthus's experiments, and a select few - by which I mean, only one - pass over to that friendlier world.

The Paragon of Torna is discovered, and the Flesh Eater is quick to stand at the prince's side before his father and admonish against treating Blades like trinkets. The king, wise but not yet wizened, considers this, considers the way his brother has commented on the state of affairs in Indol (lamented them, really, and that suggests nothing good), and agrees to let well enough alone. Live with my misfit son's household of misfits, why don't you? And so they do.

"He's interesting," says Logos, calmly but not casually. He makes a small gesture with his nose, passes his current viewing reticle over to Pneuma. She peers in, scans the coordinates, and smiles. "Of course he is. They're all very interesting."

Then her expression turns sad. Sad is a bit blunt; say melancholy, misty-mystified.

"Don't you ever-" And Logos, at the same time, starts, "What if we-"

The whole of our being. We are one in completion, right here. From a different, more jaded lens, they live in a one-bedroom apartment over their decrepit father's decrepit house, and they spend the whole day learning together, observing but never voyeuristically (well, yes, unless it's Logos spying on the Paragon or Pneuma spying on the Jewel), and they agree, patly, we don't need to go outside. Right here with you is all I need.

To be sure, they do help. They are, coarsely enough, employed. They monitor the weather conditions, make sure nothing all too ruinous comes to the crops, makes sure that all cycled and recycled Blades come to their proper rest, clean and filter the data, tend to the system of it all. They do not interfere, but they do not step back and away, disinterested for no meritorious reason.

When they are not watching, in fact quite diligent and rigorous, they sit together in the dreamscape. The weather is more than just practically perfect here, except when they change it - Pneuma likes sunshowers; Logos likes thunderstorms. They brush and braid each other's brilliant, fluorescent hair, and they practice hobbies the Blades who have gone dormant can share with them. As siblings thicker than thieves, than they ever would have been with the thief who threatened to breach their quiet security, they are perfect. Truly, they are complete.

Sometimes they transform it into an endless sea perpetually mounted at sunset. They bow their foreheads together, feel the pulses of data within their Cores, and pause to think of nothing else but the other. My sister. My brother. How glad am I, that I love you so. It wouldn't do if we were to hate each other. It wouldn't be right. If we were to hate each other, most likely we would kill each other. We have that power. To use it improperly, to misuse it, to abuse it, that would make us...incomplete.

They are complete, and so also is the population of Alrest. While the creation of Flesh Eaters has been outlawed, the eating of a Driver's flesh has started to circulate as an arcane tradition, something that is spoken of but never done - but oh, how often is it spoken of. Logos watches with bitter, bitter anticipation, every time the Paragon reaches for his journal, and Pneuma looks over his shoulder and prays that someday the Jewel will find a Driver she feels as strongly about.

They look also on the Jewel's brother and the Paragon's sister, of course they do, and they observe the original manufactured Flesh Eater, and laugh at the way he has such anti-equanimity with the man who's not really his Driver, but who has achieved something meaningful to run between them all the same. They watch poets, playwrights, bakers, singers, Blades and humans alike who do all manner of marvelous things, and they know they're capable of all the very same and more, but...but isn't there more? For them?

There can't be. If their current positions are perfect, then there can't be. One infinity countable, another uncountable and thus greater than all others...there can't be. There won't be. There isn't now, and there never will be.

Never, that is, until, some additional number of centuries later, but less, this time, they hear an intonement from their father. "Pneuma. Logos." The names almost sound foreign, even though they're the only ones they've ever known. Despite the tranquility of the world below, they never hear from him, you see.

"What is it, Father?" Instantly, all other unbound threads are put to sleep. His signal has that much power. Perhaps it shouldn't.

"The other part of my soul, the one I spoke of long ago..."

They hear the echoes. The cries to abolish gods, to become untethered, and the cautious, cryptic voice that they recognize instantaneously.

Ontos.

"Are you dying?" asks Logos. He's propped a hand to hip, and it's possible that he's let himself sound clear through to the reality that he doesn't really care, on an emotional level. After all, Klaus isn't his Driver. His existence is meaningless. The brother and sister, stars both, share all the credentials and the cookies. The Architect is merely a decoration; none of the humans even know the Aegises exist, really.

"What will become of us?" asks Pneuma. Her hands are clasped over her Core, and she's non-corporeal but there's a warmth even from the feedback of her own touch that issues through her. Life, or the simulation thereof, is precious. Maybe this is their chance, maybe--

No. Because it's just as Logos thought. Their father dying means nothing. The progeny will soldier on.

"Yes, my children," answers Klaus. "I am dying. We should all be so glad that I was unobtrusive. Nothing else will die with me. Nothing but that world..."

That world? Another world, the other world?

Klaus crumbles away. There is a twinkle, a flicker, a sparkle, from the other dimension.

"Are you content?" It's Ontos posing the all-important question, and both of his siblings find themselves suddenly eternally grateful that he wasn't around, all those other years, because if they'd had to ponder through a question like that every clock cycle...oh, brother. Oh, brother, indeed.

When they don't answer, Ontos continues. "You are gods, are you not?"

In a manner of speaking, yes. They can only hope that they've been nothing but benevolent.

"My...ah. What would you call him? I suppose it's not necessary to call him anything, but in your world he would be my Driver."

So Ontos has one. Does that explain anything? Moreover, has it worked out well for him? At least he hasn't been alone. Alone with Zanza, that is.

"He has requested that his world, and that of all his loved ones, be freed from the shackles of the whims of gods."

Before Logos can open his mouth to protest that yes, we very certainly have been benevolent, there haven't been any such shackles, Ontos speaks once more. "In your world, such a paradigm-shifting endeavor is not necessary, but tell me: is it perhaps you who are set with the shackles?"

Don't you ever...? What if we...? Has it been long enough?

"You want us to go down and live among the humans?" Pneuma sounds scared, shaky, uncertain. It's a first, for her, apart from those rare questioning moments.

Logos thinks of the Paragon, proud and true. He's never stopped thinking of him, after all, and can we blame him? Pneuma's thoughts, meanwhile, go now to a young, scared Flesh Eater, who'd fallen prey to prejudice when her "father" had had her take of the heart of her "sister". The way she clings to life, the way she is so insistent in sorting out what is her and what is hers...the way she hasn't ever given up.

Is it giving up, now, to partake of mortality? Are, perhaps, the infinitesimal infinities truly competing at last?

"Show me what we have to do."

The Aegises descend, all three of them. Not as gods, but as Blades, because that is what the humans know (to Shulk, Alvis is as good as, so it all comes out to the same, even if his friends do not recognize it so). Logos and Pneuma have no strong inclination to upset the earthly balance now, so they rest as Cores in convenient places, for hardy salvagers and cheerful mercenaries to find.

Logos's Driver is a red-haired, golden-eyed Leftherian salvager - some lineages mixed from here or there, and not a one is snobbish about it. Just barely of age to drink, he is an ardent reciter of his chosen occupation's code, and though Logos positively towers over his pressure-shrunken self, his conviction is more than admirable, and the Aegis is glad - proud, even - to walk at his side, neon-lavender hair still flowing but violet wings folded. Look at this, Sister, do you see how I got stuck with this twerp?

Pneuma's Driver is a silver-haired, blue-eyed Tornan knight - again, they are not so singular, as a people, anymore, and it's not only the old ones who sport gray. She is cheerful but serious when it counts, and always ineffable. She wears a matching ponytail to the Aegis, and she and Pneuma go hand in hand. There is nothing distinctive about her, and thus there is everything distinctive about her. And oh, Brother, isn't that wonderful?

They do meet Jin, by and by, and the male or male-adjacent Blades are just as starry-eyed for each other as he'd always hoped they would be - come now, it's not stalking your crush for fifteen hundred years if he works in your jurisdiction, right? Right?

If, sometimes, they perform a little "ether magic" that's slightly outside the bounds of what should be the normal capabilities, if they vanquish hostile and invasive monsters more immediately, with a strike from higher on high than any Blade equipped with an ether cannon ever does, Rex and Flora make no comment. They're content to keep any secrets the sibling Blades may have, but they're also gratified that they seem not to want to have them.

Ontos, then again yet a star, remarks to them, "I did not think it fitting to reform our world in the shape of yours, as yours is quite whole and unsundered, and the Homs are not used to your ways." Yes, whole, even though the plains are divested, Titan by Titan.

Whole. Complete. It was right, what we did. We will never know what could have been, no matter how far into the future we may be able to see, but for now, we are together. That will always, always, always be enough.