2022-01-02: Only God Knows

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  • Cutscene: Only God Knows
  • Cast: Citan Uzuki, Yui Uzuki, Emperor Cain, A Mysterious Man
  • Where: Various
  • Date: January 2 2023
  • Summary: The upcoming summit occupies the attentions of many, as does certain revelations about the nature of Filgaia.

BGM: (Samuel Barber - Agnus Dei (arr. Adagio for Strings)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVowLNuV4Zk



Solitude is not easy to find in Shevat.

It is night in the ancient capital, still days before the summit is set to begin. a cold wind blows, bringing with it the early promise of a storm on the horizon. Two stand together in the lee of a building, speaking quietly with one another.

"Yes... I see. I had known that the situation was dire, but to think it was this grave..."

Yui nods, her frown creasing her already serious expression. "Yes. The Gardener faction has been active of late. No doubt..."

"...because they fear the results of the summit," Citan says, finishing his wife's sentence. "They seek to 'drum up' support now and consolidate their power, for if the summit succeeds in its goals..."

In a political sense, they will lose power. In an ideological sense, they will need to have surrendered to their rivals' wishes.

"I will do what I can here. You had said you intended to join the summit? That's the best place for you," she tells him.

No, while he might have allies in Shevat, there is a marked difference in what he can achieve, and what Yui -- born and raised here -- can accomplish.


It is a place that does not properly exist, not in the same sense as much of the rest of the world of Filgaia. There is little ornament in this place, but for a few objects that float about the throne by the Emperor's will -- for that is the only ruling principle here.

There is only the throne, otherwise. The throne, the figure seated upon it, and that small space allotted for the man who now faces him.

"So... the summit between Shevat and the Al Bhed shall soon begin," says Emperor Cain, atop his throne.

"Yes. If all proceeds as both parties have planned, no further trouble is anticipated. Even the Gardener faction would not risk an outright upset," Citan reports, gazing upon the golden skull-mask of the Emperor of Solaris. "...I will be out of contact until the summit concludes."

Spira -- no, all of Lunar -- is beyond even the Emperor's reach, such as he is now. Perhaps once, Cain might have been capable of extending his will further than the limits of Filgaia's atmosphere, but now...

He is dying, and there are limits to what he can now achieve. There is little left that the Emperor can affect in the physical world. But neither is he without his means.

"The Al Bhed..." muses Emperor Cain. "They are the true inheritors to the wonder that was Zeboim. No... it would not be only them... nor only those of Zeboim. All of those she took away with her with her departure to the heavens..." He sighs. "It is fitting, is it not? That they and Shevat shall soon meet..."

No doubt it had been the revelation of this history that had prompted the Al Bhed to extend their hand -- that, and the other similarities the two ultimately nomadic peoples had discovered they shared. Be as it may, Yui's assessment from months ago had been correct: there was a potential here, perhaps the spark that Shevat needed to shed its reactive stance and possibly begin to return to what it had been of old.

Assuming, of course, that the summit went as planned.

"This, too, may be fate," Citan says, but he pauses and frowns even as he says the words.

"What is it that gives you pause?"

Without that prompting, he might well have kept the matter to himself.

Citan shakes his head. "...My lord, I confess, I am still troubled. To think that even your memories had been altered by the Yggdrasil System... Is that the extent of its effect?

Could... what had been fated, too, have been altered?

There is a pause before Cain answers, and that, in itself, is a small mercy -- had he a swift and ready answer, it would have spoken poorly of the man's appreciation of the gravity of what the system had wrought. "Nay... we cannot know."

It is just a shame it avails his worries not.

"What had been wrought upon the world from there is beyond even his understanding," Cain continues. "It itself might rest under the domain of 'God' alone."

"So even Krelian does not..." Citan starts, only to trail off. Yes, that was right -- nanotechnology was that man's specialty, a field that he himself knows only little, and even then merely for military weapon application. "In God's domain... I see."

It is, in other words, something that only 'God' can know the truth regarding.

"We must prepare for the possibility that reality has been further altered but neither must we permit ourselves to be blinded by that possibility," the Emperor speaks, setting forth his decree. "Proceed, and intervene as you must."

Particularly as it regards 'him'. It is not even necessary to speak such, now.

"At once, your eminence."


The screens about him beg -- no, demand -- his attention, but his attentions are elsewhere. Piles of books litter his desk and the floor around it, many of them marked with scraps of paper. It would be a most primitive form of research, by the measure of most in Etrenank.

Krelian has never cared for what Etrenank thinks. But then, he can afford to ignore the ways and mores of Solaris' capital city.

He can even afford to ignore the requests coming in from the ministry. No doubt, they wish to take him and his division to task over the Demetrioi debacle -- a waste of his time. They had only lost one, perhaps two ships? Some soldiers. A drop in the bucket.

It might have been lost to him but it isn't as if it had been a failure. No, quite the opposite... Sadalbari had collected some very useful data.

His gaze traces another line of text in this book.

Yes, it should have mentioned it here. But instead, again, there is an omission. One would only know the absence by the knowledge of what was lost. A book on standard crop harvesting procedure from Ignas, only twelve years old, should have mentioned 'what was' instead of 'what now is'.

It would have been easy to have doubted what he had learned from the Yggdrasil's mainframes. But, not only was their data compelling, but she had told him something very interesting. It had lent further weight to his hypothesis.

"So... this power can rewrite even history itself," he speaks aloud to the empty room.

No, it had not in truth changed the past but is it not arguably the case that what had been had been obliterated?

It was no mean feat of engineering -- their technology had successfully reached out into the world and scoured its history of all that had been only ten years before. One might expect such a result from the hand of the divine rather than man.

Was it then, not merely engineering and instead some faint touch of the divine? Or perhaps it would instead be the other way around -- that all divinity paid heed to some code and pattern of its own?

It is not the first Krelian has considered such. He closes the book, without marking the page this time and gazes up towards the ceiling.

"In the end... where is the boundary between man and God?"

He, himself, has already blurred it.