Chapter 7: Abandoned

"So this is the Mechonis capital."

Shulk looked across the unusual landscape. To call it a "landscape" was somewhat incorrect; it was more like a collection of platforms suspended from the Mechonis' head, almost like a grapevine. He wondered what kind of engineering would be necessary to build even one of the spindles from scratch, before realising it was probably at least partly a natural formation.

"Yes, Agniratha," Vanea responded. "The heart of the Machina civilisation."

"It looks so desolate." Melia got a very strong sense of foreboding and sadness, both from herself and Meyneth's chestplate, interrupting the rest of her thought. The similarity to Alcamoth was eerie - she had known it was of similar size, but to see it laid out into individual, circular divisions made it feel even creepier. The destroyed Colony 6 may have felt depressing upon first visit, but seeing a city of such size go abandoned while mostly intact brought forth a new level of shuddering.

"It truly is a soulless city," Dunban agreed.

"Here bad place. Riki want to go."

Reyn seemed more impressed than put off. "So the Machina built this whole city? Not too shabby."

"It looks like the buildings have been here for a very long time," added Shulk.

There was a pause while everyone took in the view. There was a disturbing lack of guardrails along the suspended pathways, likely due to age wearing down such thin structures to nothing, meaning that falling would be a constant danger as they tried to fight through whatever defences Egil had installed. Wind currents alternated between fresh air and a thick smell of rust.

Riki suddenly pointed at something nearby. "Look, friends! Dinobeast! Dinobeast eat city!"

"What? Here?" Reyn was first to respond, turning to see a fossilised Telethia. "Oh. What?"

"It...it's a stone Telethia?" Shulk was the first to approach, with the others following closely. He poked it with his foot; it certainly felt like stone.

Sharla looked back up across the city, now recognising what was first dismissed as random rocks. "They're everywhere. All over the place, dead Telethia just like this one. But how? Did they attack the city?"

Melia wasn't sure whether answering would be a good idea. She remembered the memory of Meyneth's that had surfaced after the fight with Jade Face, with what appeared to be Telethia streaming out of the Bionis towards the Mechonis. It was now clear that they had attacked the city at the same time the titans had fought.

Vanea answered instead. "The truth is not what anyone wants to hear, but you must in order to truly understand what happened between the two titans. We must go to the Data Centre within the Central Tower. From there, you will see the memories the Machina left behind."

"Okay then." Shulk led the party towards the indicated structure. "It's really weird, though, to see dead Telethia just sitting around. I thought they just exploded into ether. Melia, have you heard of this?"

Melia was busy being introspective, but was paying enough attention to catch the question. "The two Telethia we fought were destroyed by absorbing too much ether energy. It is normal for Telethia to leave a corpse as much as any other physical being. I assume those here have turned to stone by the same process that left the Bionis itself replete with bedrock. Though I am surprised the remains are this well-preserved, almost untouched by wind erosion."

It was difficult to maintain further conversation, with the city's eerie emptiness looming around them. The party silently moved towards the Central Tower.

Reaching the ground floor, two rows of curiously-shaped objects caught their eye, shaped like glowing gears perched on giant metal pushpins.

"These are the civic information terminals," Vanea said. "Long ago, they provided basic information about the state of the city to anyone who asked. Now, I suppose Egil has repurposed them for his own needs. Perhaps they still hold useful information, but now is not the time. The Data Centre is on the top floor."

The group moved on. It took no time at all to arrive at the Data Centre, which was currently lit up with several holograms across the room.

"It looks like there's power in here," Shulk said. "Weird. Was Egil in here?"

"Almost certainly," Vanea replied. "A great deal of useful information is stored here."

Melia looked around the room. It wasn't outright familiar, but there was still an inkling of recognition. The console just ahead attracted her attention the most; she had a hard time looking at anything else once she first laid eyes on it.

"I think..." she mumbled by accident, before speaking up. "I think Meyneth wants to show us something. Something from this console."

Vanea extended an arm towards the console, silently inviting Melia to do whatever needed to be done.

Melia carefully walked to the console. The two side discs looked like they were supposed to be palm inputs, so she placed her hands on them. Nothing happened. She could feel her fingers twitching a bit as if restless, anxious to type something in, but the device remained inactive.

After a few moments of no results, Shulk had a realisation. "No one from Bionis has ever tried to use this before, right?"

"Of course." Vanea clasped her hands and held them on her chin, thinking. "The Data Centre was not designed for organic usage. Its haptic interface wouldn't be able to detect your hand any more than a mushroom or pile of dirt - it's optimised for our metallic construction."

To Melia, the solution was obvious. "Then I shall need your hands."

Vanea looked puzzled, but after a bit understood. "Very well." She stepped behind Melia and placed her hands on the side discs.

It was a little scary for Melia to be surrounded by Vanea's metallic body; she couldn't forget the misguided attack when they first met. It took a bit of courage to place her hands on top of the grey ones, which felt simultaneously lifelike and lifeless. She closed her eyes and tried to relax, which after a bit allowed her Meyneth-provided instincts to rise up and type out a series of instructions.

The plan worked flawlessly. A series of orange-tinted holographics flared to life, displaying a large image of Agniratha in front of the console. The others surrounded it with interest.

"I believe it will now play a sequence of records." Melia lowered her hands, prompting Vanea to do the same and back away. "Records from...from very long ago. While this city was still alive."

The image of Agniratha was replaced by the Bionis and Mechonis, standing together in peace, focusing on them in turn. It then showed a large statue that presumably resided in the city somewhere, depicting a female Machina that Melia and Vanea recognised as Meyneth but no one else did.

Melia could feel the memories playing in her own head at the same time as they rendered for the others. "Meyneth was born alongside the Mechonis, acting as its spirit and soul. She created the Machina and lived alongside them."

The display passed over several scenes of daily life in the flourishing Agniratha. One later scene showed the very recognisable Miqol, alongside Vanea and another male Machina.

Shulk pointed at the new face. "That must be him. That's Egil."

Vanea gave a slight and silent nod.

The next image to appear depicted two Machina in Makna Forest, meeting with a High Entia and a Giant, who shook their hands.

"The people from both titans shared their stories and lived in peace." Melia's voice started becoming less confident and defined, as if she didn't believe what she was saying, or she could feel that something disturbing was coming. "They believed they could grow their worlds together."

The Bionis broke its peaceful stance and attacked the Mechonis, slicing its giant Monado through it. Terror reigned in Agniratha as the Machina attempted to escape the attack, but swarms of Telethia began to pour in and hunt down the survivors.

"But why?!" Shulk had backed away from the hologram as the others made various gasps. "Why would the Bionis attack the Machina?"

The Mechonis awoke and began to fight back, recreating the legendary duel. The titans fought until they landed the final blows on each other.

Melia was starting to have trouble understanding the memories Meyneth was recalling; they were becoming jumbled and non-linear with respect to the scene being played out for the others. "Meyneth...tried to save the Machina by confronting the Bionis. By confronting...Zanza?"

"Zanza?!"

The Giant appeared just as Shulk repeated the name, being sealed into Prison Island by a group of High Entia.

The two titans dimmed to inactivity. Corpses from both worlds littered Agniratha. Meyneth was shown entering a portal nearby her shrine. Finally, the hologram vanished.

"The High Entia took the chance to seal Zanza away, but it was too late. Meyneth warned the surviving Machina that Zanza was not finished, and would eventually be released. Exhausted from the battle, she entered a long and deep slumber to prepared for his reawakening."

"Zanza is the one that started the war?" Shulk looked pretty distressed, moreso than any time in recent memory. "I released him! He chose me as the only one to wield the Monado! Does that mean...that I'm the bad guy now?"

"Come off it, Shulk." Reyn gave him a gentle shove. "He ain't the one who's been using the Monado, it's you. And you haven't been attacking anything that hasn't come after us first."

Dunban nodded. "Zanza wanted to destroy the Mechonis and its people. Perhaps we did too, back when we did not know the truth. But now our only quarrel is with Egil."

"Egil." Shulk shook his head, still visibly upset. "So he and Meyneth have the same goal: to stop Zanza and the Bionis from destroying them. But he's going about it completely wrong. How does attacking the Homs and killing us help him?"

"I do not know," Vanea replied. "I have tried to reason with him many times, but he remains blinded by revenge and unable to see logic."

"Blinded by revenge..." Shulk shook his head and turned away, knowing exactly how it felt.

Melia figured now was a decent time to ask Vanea a question that had been nagging her. "So Meyneth decided now was the time to awaken, and requested a body to operate from. Why did you select...the person that you did?"

Vanea didn't appear to want to reply, but she did. "Because Fiora was close to Shulk. The heir to the Monado. She believed it would help keep him moving towards the light, and avert him from the path of Zanza."

Shulk looked back, confused. "What do you mean, the path of Zanza?"

Melia surprised herself by recalling the answer. "You said it yourself, Shulk. That you can sometimes hear his voice, telling you what to do."

"...yeah, I guess. But he hasn't led me wrong yet. Maybe a bit more violent on the Mechon than we need to be sometimes, but..."

"The Monado is a powerful force," Dunban said. "Sometimes I feel as if it goaded me on, pushing me beyond the limits of good judgement, and it most certainly pushed others to desire it for no good reason. You have used it wisely. But now that we know what may truly lie behind it, we must take extra caution."

A hush fell over the room for several moments. Nobody seemed very interested in discussing what they had just learned.

After a while, Vanea spoke up. "Is it still your intention to defeat Egil?"

Shulk was busy staring as his feet, but he looked up. "If he is willing to listen to us, we'll try to reason with him. But if not...then we'll do what we have to."

"I understand." Vanea turned to leave. "Perhaps I can try to persuade him one last time, but I do not expect success. I wish you all luck."

It took a few moments after Vanea left for the group to get their minds together.

"So where do we go now?" asked Reyn. "Maybe we shoulda followed her."

Sharla shook her head. "It wouldn't do her any good to show up for negotiating with his biggest enemies beside her."

"But we do need to know where to go," said Dunban.

"I already know." Melia looked through the windows and pointed at particular structures. "There are four Verification Devices within four pillars. Once they are all activated, we may use the transporter to the Meyneth Shrine."

Reyn followed the pointing. "Aren't we gonna need Vanea's hands like we just did to turn those things on?"

"Not any more than we did to activate the various other switches and controls on our climb up the Mechonis. Only this complex data interface requires such finesse."

"Sounds good. Let's see if those terminals downstairs know how we can get there." Still a bit jittery from today's revelations, Shulk took a deep breath. Things weren't going to get any easier.

Melia sat alone atop the Seven Sage Cloister, staring at the Meyneth Shrine in the distance.

Agniratha had been a difficult experience. Almost every corner brought some new memory of the past from Meyneth's mind to hers. The four Verification Devices had been guarded by the toughest of tough Mechon. The widespread presence of Telethia corpses acted as a constant reminder of what had happened eons ago.

But in the end, they had succeeded at activating the transporter to the Meyneth Shrine, while also completing all the tasks the not-entirely-cognisant-of-reality terminals had asked of them. While they would be taking several days to rest and regroup, it looked like the next major task of theirs could be the last: to reach and confront Egil.

The party had returned to the Data Centre to see if they could find anything of interest that Egil had left behind; they had discovered several pairs of Machina gloves in what had appeared to be a blacksmith's, which worked quite well at allowing them to access the foreign haptic terminals. Melia hung around for a few minutes before leaving; she didn't want to undergo a barrage of memories over every little thing that they looked at. No one attempted to stop her.

She unconsciously looked down into the floor, tracing the path that her ethersense told her was someone leaving the Data Centre. Two more seconds of focus told her it was Shulk.

Of course. He's so fearful of my condition that he can't leave me alone for a minute. Melia pushed the intrusive thought away. True, she felt Shulk was getting a bit too obsessed with never leaving her side - it had been a while since he'd ever suggested the group split up into trios with them separated, and he was definitely standing a lot closer to her during downtime. But while it felt unnatural for him to do so, she didn't mind having him around. It produced a nice illusion that he personally cared about her, when in actuality it was probably about protecting Meyneth, or maybe just the Fiora personality traits he thought he saw in her.

"I knew I'd find you up here." Shulk arrived as expected. "I guess you already kind of know everything we'd find in the Data Centre, right?"

"I suppose." Melia didn't turn to look at him.

There was a strange pause. Melia expected Shulk to ask a question, or perhaps even start to gaze at the Meyneth Shrine in the distance alongside her. But instead, there was motionless silence. For a moment she considered that he'd forgotten what he came here for.

"Here, catch."

Melia spun around to see what looked to be a purple ball being lobbed through the air towards her. She reached up to grab it, but it bounced off her knuckles and rolled up against the ridge at the edge of the walkway.

"What is this?" Leaning forward to pick up the object, it turned out to not be a ball, but some sort of Mechonis fruit. It looked like an apple with very shiny purple skin and a second stem attached to its underside, rendering it rather symmetrical.

"It's a Chain Apple." Only now did Shulk come to sit down next to her. "We found a line of them in the Data Centre. According to the records, they grow in long strings of eight or thirteen, mostly in the Mechonis' sword arm. They're supposed to be mildly sour. Couldn't let you not have one, before Riki scarfs the rest."

"Why would the Machina keep fruit in the Data Centre if they do not eat?" Melia turned the apple around a few times, leerily looking it over. It had a flat spot where it had hit the ground.

Shulk shrugged. "Curiosity? Science? Maybe Egil was thinking about using them to poison us or something, but we scanned them and they're clean."

Melia rubbed the flat spot on the fruit's rubbery skin, her finger oil smudging its shininess. She was quite un-hungry at the moment; just the idea of putting anything in her mouth made her throat tighten.

"I appreciate the gesture, Shulk, but I am not hungry right now. Perhaps later." She placed the apple on the floor beside herself.

Shulk's face fell noticeably. Without a word, he turned away to look at the view.

Ugh, why's he so downed by my truthful response. Now I feel even worse, thank you very much.

The two sat in silence for a moment, mildly disappointed in each other.

"How much of a later do you think there'll be?"

Melia didn't understand Shulk's comment. "Come again?"

Shulk's head turned a tiny bit, his face still too hidden to read. "You've got royal things to do, right? Once we're done with Egil?"

"Indeed. I shall be quite busy for the next several months." Perhaps years.

"Yeah, I thought maybe." He was fidgeting with his hands now. "Man, your life sucks."

It was an unexpectedly harsh comment. Melia wasn't sure whether to be offended by its frankness or cautiously pleased that Shulk might have developed some sort of sympathy for her.

"I-I mean," he continued after a moment of consideration, "the rest of us are probably the heroes of the colonies. Maybe the biggest ones ever. We'll get to stay together as famous friends for long after this. But for you, it's just another thing on your schedule. You have to go back home, maybe have a feast or something, and that's it, back to work. No time for any of us."

Melia just nodded. Of course she'd already thought about it all before, but having it spelled out by someone else made it feel even more depressing.

Shulk suddenly appeared to have an idea. He turned more directly towards her, still looking a bit down but with a potential out. "Say, what exactly do you have to do? Could we do anything to help?"

Hm. A noble attempt, but ultimately fruitless. "I'm afraid most of my duties cannot be aided. The deciphering of the ancient scripts must be undertaken alone, as their contents must be kept with absolute secrecy. There are various tasks and rituals that require specific people on hand and also cannot be revealed to outsiders." She considered stopping there, but considered that laying it all out might be a healthy alternative to letting it fester. "I believe I am required to undergo some sort of medical procedure to ascertain my ability to produce heirs, which of course would be eventually followed by marrying, once we unearth exactly what sort of consorts I am supposed to be pursuing."

"You mean, like whether you need two of them or not?"

"Precisely. We don't know at the moment whether a half-blooded ruler is supposed to maintain the practice of a Homs consort. My initial presumption is that it would be optional, taking care to ensure the imperial line does not become any further diluted."

"Right." Shulk's expression was hard to read, though it was clearly thought-heavy. "So...so in theory, by the time we see you again, you'd probably be actively looking for someone?"

Melia hadn't bothered to figure out the exact timeline before, but it did make sense at face value. "I suppose."

"Well, hopefully it doesn't take too long then. We're all going to miss you."

"As will I."

Shulk figured the conversation was over and stood up to walk back down to the Data Centre.

Melia wasn't sure how to feel. It was yet another entry in the lengthening line of conversations where Shulk appeared to be unusually interested in her personal well-being, but somehow this one felt significantly more genuine. She couldn't place why, but it perhaps had something to do with the unspoken assurance that the party would try to see her again after her future work was complete. It had been a while since she'd had anything to look forward to - even if it was years away and didn't make too much sense at the moment, with her friends currently within reach.

Of course, her thoughts inevitably steered towards Shulk in particular. If indeed she did have to take two consorts, he would be a very convenient choice for a Second, given that a friendship had already been established and he was no stranger to Alcamoth. The odds of him agreeing seemed low, especially given more than enough time would pass for him to find someone else or simply grow into a different person, but it wasn't like many Second Consorts were married by love anyway - most were married by lust or obligation.

What am I thinking? I would absolutely not take a consort without their wholehearted approval. There's already been enough upheaval and drama in the imperial family in my lifetime to last a millennium. There's no reason to bring an unwilling participant into it. Besides, it would remove Shulk from the rest of his friends and restrain him to Alcamoth. That's my fate, not his. As with carrying Meyneth, I suffer so the others don't have to.

I somewhat hope I won't be allowed to have a Second Consort even if I wished. That would stop me from thinking about all this.

Melia looked down at the Chain Apple still sitting on the floor. She now felt neutral rather than un-hungry. Meeting the others in the Data Centre looking pleased with a half-eaten apple in hand seemed like a good idea.