When Terra feels the summoning pull her back across the gulf between worlds, she answers, but she does not answer gently. She burns across the sky in a meteoric arc, haloed by fire, shearing down through the clouds with the heft of Ragnarok in her hand.
The one who called her stands at cliff's edge, unshaken. Meets her eyes. Says her name.
She does not touch down to earth, does not breathe or smile or speak. It is only by this other's strength that she is here at all, and the summoning and binding resonates beneath her skin, into muscle and bone, except - she is not, she has neither, only air and fire and will. And this human, this proud young mage with the temerity to call herself summoner - this one who calls herself queen - steps forward once, wrapped up in magic, her dark hair lifted behind her in the rising wind. She is heedless in her audacity, and very dangerous, as proud young powerful humans always are.
There are stories that say Odin loved a queen once, long ago. They claim he served her willing, knelt before her and pledged all his strength to her defense, and Terra knows that this is true. She has seen the weeds where that castle used to stand, growing up through cracks in the tiled floors, and the memories that once clung to the stone like mist and did not dissipate with the day's heat. Now even those weeds are gone, this world changed beyond comprehension while she was elsewhere, but the memory remains.
Terra does not serve willing and does not kneel. They told her once that she had been born to the service of empire, and she had sworn that she would not serve again. But when this new land's queen reaches out to her, echo and invocation and the answering thread of magic, what fills her mind is not the rusty taste of magitek or the gleaming sterility of Vector's labs, but a desert city, pennants of green and gold above an ocean of sand and the slow rumble of machinery beneath the earth.
It's enough, that memory, to stay her hand and her anger. She lowers the blade. She does not strike.
"I am Garnet," the queen says, or perhaps, "I am Dagger." The thoughts are tangled together in her mind, layered so close that one has no meaning without the other. Odin is bound to her, and Shiva, and Bahamut. Others.
I do not serve. I am not yours.
"I know that," Garnet-who-is-Dagger says, or thinks.
I will not conquer for you.
I would not ask it, she says, and there is an image unbidden, the memory of a city burning, white towers backlit by flame. Will you defend?"
And Terra remembers sand and stone, human things she had known once, kingdoms dead for centuries. The images are startling in their intensity, stronger here in the physical world. They will not leave her be. Magic sears through her and gives her form, but with the sun's heat falling heavy upon her shoulders and the wind whipping back her mane, it is not so easy to forget that she too had once been half human, with people to protect.
She had been given the choice, once, to walk away from the world; now the world has called her back, and the choice is hers again.
I will, she says, and Summoner-Queen-Garnet-Dagger bows her head as she completes the binding, not in veneration but respect.
.
(I don't know if this is what you were hoping for, but I hope this prompt gets multiple fills regardless because I'd love to read them.)
Fire and Will (FFVI/FFIX, Esper!Terra &Garnet)
The one who called her stands at cliff's edge, unshaken. Meets her eyes. Says her name.
She does not touch down to earth, does not breathe or smile or speak. It is only by this other's strength that she is here at all, and the summoning and binding resonates beneath her skin, into muscle and bone, except - she is not, she has neither, only air and fire and will. And this human, this proud young mage with the temerity to call herself summoner - this one who calls herself queen - steps forward once, wrapped up in magic, her dark hair lifted behind her in the rising wind. She is heedless in her audacity, and very dangerous, as proud young powerful humans always are.
There are stories that say Odin loved a queen once, long ago. They claim he served her willing, knelt before her and pledged all his strength to her defense, and Terra knows that this is true. She has seen the weeds where that castle used to stand, growing up through cracks in the tiled floors, and the memories that once clung to the stone like mist and did not dissipate with the day's heat. Now even those weeds are gone, this world changed beyond comprehension while she was elsewhere, but the memory remains.
Terra does not serve willing and does not kneel. They told her once that she had been born to the service of empire, and she had sworn that she would not serve again. But when this new land's queen reaches out to her, echo and invocation and the answering thread of magic, what fills her mind is not the rusty taste of magitek or the gleaming sterility of Vector's labs, but a desert city, pennants of green and gold above an ocean of sand and the slow rumble of machinery beneath the earth.
It's enough, that memory, to stay her hand and her anger. She lowers the blade. She does not strike.
"I am Garnet," the queen says, or perhaps, "I am Dagger." The thoughts are tangled together in her mind, layered so close that one has no meaning without the other. Odin is bound to her, and Shiva, and Bahamut. Others.
I do not serve. I am not yours.
"I know that," Garnet-who-is-Dagger says, or thinks.
I will not conquer for you.
I would not ask it, she says, and there is an image unbidden, the memory of a city burning, white towers backlit by flame. Will you defend?"
And Terra remembers sand and stone, human things she had known once, kingdoms dead for centuries. The images are startling in their intensity, stronger here in the physical world. They will not leave her be. Magic sears through her and gives her form, but with the sun's heat falling heavy upon her shoulders and the wind whipping back her mane, it is not so easy to forget that she too had once been half human, with people to protect.
She had been given the choice, once, to walk away from the world; now the world has called her back, and the choice is hers again.
I will, she says, and Summoner-Queen-Garnet-Dagger bows her head as she completes the binding, not in veneration but respect.
.
(I don't know if this is what you were hoping for, but I hope this prompt gets multiple fills regardless because I'd love to read them.)