#X'shasi

[starcunning]

2. Bolt

Breath of Morning

For @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast's FFXIVWrite 2022. [AO3 mirror] References to adult situations/NSFW content. Not explicit.

She wakes with a start to unfamiliar environs.

This is not her ceiling—not the canopy of canvas hung over the bed in her cliffside waystop; not the stone facade that rises above Mor Dhona, giving a name to the likeliest place for her to lay her head. This is certainly not the gilt-tracery mosaic of some Amaurot apartment.

It’s warm.

She hears the rise and fall of breathing far too steady to be her own, and Shasi slowly turns her head.

The spill of his blonde hair is lank and damp from the shower—bells must have passed since then, and in Thanalan the desert air would have wrung them both out long since, but … she strains to listen past Eros’s breathing, and yes; there is the distant rush of waves.

La Noscea, then. With him—neither should be a surprise. How often had she returned to Limsa Lominsa simply for him? Her head hurts and her throat is dry. His arms are heavy, still wound around her.

One touches the small of her back, fingers splayed loosely over the branching, fern-like scar, twin to the one on her front. His other hand is between her legs, thick fingers not quite reaching inside her. Shasi shifts her weight and finds herself sore; his fingertips spark that sensation anew.

Not a surprise that she’d come here. An inevitability. She had found him dancing for money, stole him away for a drink, and turned his head by refraining to follow up with the usual proposition. In return he had poured out a measure of trust; had laid before her a banquet of secrets and suffering, speaking of things too long unspoken. This she was used to.

Then Eros van Aventis—no, Eros yae Galvus—had asked her to unburden herself before him in turn.

This was strange.

So too the fact that she had fallen asleep in this rented bed—she had meant to linger only so long as it took him to fall asleep, but perhaps she had succumbed first. It will take some doing to extricate herself from his grasp, and yet she must. With war-callused hands she grasps his wrists, marveling at the black and red whorls of ink that decorate his skin. Slowly—ever so slowly—she unwinds them from about her.

He stirs, and she freezes, ears trained forward to catch any hitch in his breathing. Her attention lingers upon his face; the fringe of his pale lashes hides those golden eyes, and with his face slack in sleep the resemblance to his kin is more obvious than ever. Awake, he is rather too animated—not given to Zenos’s apathetic anomie nor Varis’s dour mien, the relative he most resembles, she finds, is his grandsire Solus. But Eros’s smiles are more expressive than wry, and that dimple in his cheek is not of the Galvus canon. Something of his mother’s, she supposes.

He does not rouse as she lays his arms loosely atop his chest. Shasi finds the room far colder once she’s slipped from the bed; she gathers her discarded clothing, clutching it to herself. There comes the oddest impulse to stay—after all, he had invited her to, less with words than deeds when he had turned on its face the chronometer meant to keep the time she was allotted with him. No less so when they had washed in the wake of their coupling and he had not handed her those garments she now holds against her body, but tugged her back into the bed that still smelled of them both. But she had been lucky to wake silent once and would not be so again. His face is so peaceful in repose, she thinks. She will not be the one to steal the ease from that countenance.

If she does not go now, she will never make it out. Shasi creeps across the floor, and quiet as she can, puts a door between them, standing naked in the silent halls of the bawdyhouse that—however impossibly—hosts a prodigal prince of the Empire. The sky is pre-dawn grey outside the distant windows, and she hastens to dress, confident now that the sound of her footfalls should not give her away.

Knowing not what she flees, X’shasi Kilntreader steals away into the last of the night.

[karniz]

2021 Commission; A Cast of Characters from Final Fantasy XIV.

Dubbed affectionally as the Shasiverse. Characters from left to right; Reno, Messalina, Vita'ya, Sokhatai, Y'shtola, Syn'thiel, Dzhambul, Shpoki, Holuikhan [Au Ra], Stenya [Hrothgar], Karniz, X'shasi, Thancred, V'jaela, Mani [on phone], Lensha, X'raleth.

Nothing rendered in 3D, no tracing. Yes, I do like to suffer. Hehe~

This was a very extensive project that took about six months from planning to finish. I don't normally offer full blown background art in any commission, but I have exceptions for an exceptional person.

♥ you star, you are truly a patron of the arts. [and soon to be Blender masstterrrr!]

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Get Early Access to illustrations & commission work I do when you become a Supporter! [Yes, these illustrations are fairly old!]

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[momodeary]

Warrior of Light, X'shasi

[twelveswood]

It was difficult to get any shots up at the very tippy top of the jump puzzle (thanks to everyone rezzing us blue mages up there), but here’s a few anyway with the lovely Shasi (@shasi-ffxiv ... though it’s not tagging you for whatever reason) whom Kajh was absolutely not holding hands with, but would be honored were such true. 

[castellankurze]

☾ Vita’ya + X’shasi

The sky was clear, and it seemed fully a million stars were out, while the moon cut a curving sliver through the glittering carpet.  The wind through the peaks was cold after sunset, and the smoke that rose from the embers of the dying campfire fluttered in the breeze.  The breath of air stirred Vita’ya’s hair, and he blinked his silver eyes to clear them.  Despite the distant groan of his muscles, he’d stayed awake long after X’shasi had drifted off, staring up at the unblemished night sky.  It had been a too-rare sight in his life - hidden behind the fog that rolled from the mountains that towered above Salamund, or the smoke emitted from the machinery at the mines.

The Warrior of Light lay but a few feet from him, their heads a few feet apart as they’d laid their bedrolls by the campfire, and the sky lay open above them, and the mountains of Gyr Abania stretched on in every direction.  If it weren’t for the cold on his face and arms, he would have credited it a dream.  Eventually, though, the fatigue of the day’s exertions climbing said peaks rose up to claim him, and he slowly shut his eyes.

Smoke blotted out the sky.  Fires crackled and roared in every direction.  Explosions shook the ground as the fortress slowly collapsed.

Amidst the carnage, a clutch of armed adventures did battle with a single figure, clad in black.  He was younger, more pale, his white hair shorter than Vita’ya had seen him wear it, but even behind the glowing crimson sigil he recognized the face of Thancred Waters.  The clawed gloves he wore flashed in the firelight as pools of dark magic opened beneath his foes, threatening to mire them and pull them under to their doom.

And there she was, X’shasi Kilntreader, leaping through the air and striking furiously with her foil, forcing the ascian back, barking cries accompanying every thrust and swipe as emotion alike poured from her in a near-tangible wave.  The ascian let out a yelp of his own as her sword caught his arm, and he stumbled, growling through clenched teeth.  Yet even as he seethed the corners of his mouth turned upwards, and he laughed.  “You are strong, Warrior of Light,” he said, tilting his head as if in compliment.  “Yet know that if I should perish, so too will the mortal within whose flesh I reside.”  

He saw her take a half-step back in shock, liquid glistening in her eyes, an expression of outraged grief slowly giving way to raw fury as she grit her teeth.  Thancred - no, Lahabrea, Vita’ya finally remembered the name - straightened and cupped a hand around a churning ball of dark aether.  “Now make your choice, and live with it!” he crowed, and Vita’ya heard Shasi’s cry as she leapt once more to the attack, his cackling ringing in her ears.

Vita’ya’s eyes shot open as he gasped in a sharp breath, sitting bolt upright so that the cold night air washed over his shoulders and chest as the bedroll fell away.  Despite the chill, he was sweating with the memory of the heat from the Praetorium.  He gulped and put his hands to his face, trying to quell the trembling of his fingers as he pushed his matted hair back out of his eyes once more.

A soft moan drew his attention, and he twisted to see X’shasi turning her head back and forth, her eyes still closed as she tried to mouth something.  Vita’ya felt his stomach tighten as she realized she, too, was having a vision…and if he’d just seen that moment in her life…what manner of terror was his version of the echo subjecting her to?

He crawled over to her, hesitant, and then swallowed and reached out to touch her face.  “It’s okay,” he tried to whisper to her, his voice cracking.  “It’s okay, it-”

Her hand shot up and her fingers fisted in his hair as her eyes flew open.  He froze, unsure of what to say.  She stared as if unseeing for a long moment, only to release her grip as she, too, scrambled to a sitting position, likewise short of breath and damp with sweat.  “It’s okay,” he finally managed.  “I’m w-”

She spoke at almost the same time he did, her voice likewise cracked.  “I’m with you in the dark.”

“Don’t forget,” whispered the voice of his father.

He stared, his hands trembling, and after a few moments she leaned forward to take him in her arms, and both of them squeezed one another breathless as if without that fastness, the mountains might plummet away beneath them and leave the pair stranded in the night sky.

[rashkah]

#30ShadowScreenshots 10. Your favorite emote from 4.x

/charmed is so good. Loving your friends on main.

[spacelingart]

X'shasi Kilntreader

August’s Patreon reward for @starcunning!

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[canadianblueart]

An icon commission for @starcunning of her character X'Shasi. Ten different expressions :3  Thank you for commissioning me~

[inkary]

Commission for @starcunning, their X'shasi the miqo'te having a walk with Haurchefant.

[pervasivescariness]

For the art warmup asks: A1 and O3 for my X'shasi?

Always a joy to draw your adorable catte! (I love her actual IC colors, btw so soft and pretty!)Thanks for the ask!

[ Expression Meme ]

[maverwyn]

Swimsuit YCH for X'shasi

Commission Info / Twitch / Ko-Fi ♥

[starcunning]

1. Cross

Streams of Time

For @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast's FFXIVWrite 2022. [AO3 mirror]

The meandering breeze carried with it the scent of sliced apples and pine needles, winnowing through silver hair that had grown long and shaggy. Like the First, Shasi reflected, Elpis seemed a place out of time. It was only the length of her hair that told her how long had passed. That and the depth of her husband’s tan, she amended, cracking one eye open to peer at him.

The apple she’d smelled, she discovered, was in Eros’s hand. With a pocket knife in the other, he had cut free a slice, and paused in the lifting of it to his lips, suddenly aware of the force of her gaze. He turned those golden eyes upon her, and Shasi found herself thinking their color was at that moment just the same as the gilt tracery of the windows in their villa.

“I had not meant to wake you,” he said, glancing away a moment. Shasi shook her head: “You didn’t,” she assured.

“Pleasant dreams?” He cut free another slice of apple and offered it to her. Shasi pushed herself up to a sitting position and took it, pale apple flesh sliding over silver steel. “I dreamed of Elidibus,” she said. “Themis.” “No,” Shasi insisted, “Elidibus. Our Elidibus.”

She did not like to think of the Crystal Tower; of its Ocular; of its keeper and of the entity that had been consigned to imprisonment in its spires until he spent the coin of his life fueling the spell which had first brought her to this place. And yet the picture would not go from her mind of her last visit—enclosed by walls the same blue as her eyes, the figment in white had appeared before her.

“I’ve been thinking about what he said,” Shasi continued. She scrubbed a hand over her face, blinking the sleep from her eyes. Motes of manifold color glimmered on the wind as it wandered over the isle, and Shasi found herself blinking again, because for the first time, the moon had risen above the horizon.

The trackless days she had spent here, investigating Pandaemonium—aided by Eros, Erichthonios, and Elidibus; the youth need not admit his identity for her to know him—had never been so marked before. The night skies over Elpis were rich with stars, but she had been born under two moons, and to find none at all appeared night after night had made her wonder …

Garlemald was only Allag writ anew—and it did not take much thought to connect Azys Lla with Elpis—but had Dalamud, too, been crafted in the image of an older prison? Perhaps Etheirys had known no moon until the Sundering. But no, there the evidence stared her in the face: the moon had been a convenience, not a creation, when it came time to bind Zodiark.

Why had it not appeared before now? She made a note to ask Erichthonios. If he did not know the answer, he could surely point the way to one who did.

“Shasi Galvus,” Eros said, with the sort of tone that implied it was not the first time. She allowed a crooked smile to tug at her lips, reaching out to wind her arms about his bicep, pressing her temple to the curve of his shoulder. Eros canted his head to one side to press his cheek to her hair in turn. “What did he say?” Eros prompted her. “A thousand things, for ten thousand purposes,” Shasi murmured. “I wish I could tell him his name,” she said then. The pity sat strange in her breast, where once she had held nothing for the man but rancor. That had not been true even when she and Eros had met—indeed, they had first chanced to cross paths not long after her final return from the First, and his very name had caught her ear, echoing as it did the appellation of one of her Lightwarden foes. And now they were wed, and Elidibus was gone, and Shasi lamented that loss.

She cleared her throat. “When he sent us here,” she said, “he told us that even if we were able to make ourselves seen and heard here, we could change nothing. Not as a warning, I think, but as a truism. But … he’s wrong.” “Oh?” Eros seemed amused. That dimple teased his cheek as it had not in some few moons, and Shasi tipped her head up to kiss it. “Well, wife,” he continued, “tell me the rest.” That made her laugh—and his smile broadened in response, like he cherished the sound. “The Exarch,” she said then. “’Tis true that, bereft a host, he will fade in time, as the Scions might have done, but … he should have disappeared the moment I turned back the Light for the first time. Or when Estinien destroyed the first Black Rose facility. Or at a thousand junctures before and since, when the river of time was diverted by the weirs and dams of my actions. You met G’raha Tia,” Shasi added, modulating her tone to blandness.

Eros extricated his arm from her grasp so that he could gather her against his side instead, stroking one broad hand down her bicep in turn. He sensed her agitation, then; she had little way of hiding it from his empathetic insight, and in truth she hoped she never learned the knack. “I did,” he said.

Of her many Echo-induced gifts, her husband’s manner of emotional insight had never numbered among them. But even she could tell he was hedging in like manner to her—though like as not it was more to do with the matter of their separation during that time, and whatever had found him in the rift between worlds as he pursued her to another shard.

“Well,” Shasi said, finding herself nuzzling against Eros’s side, “he cannot then be dormant in the tower for Cid to discover and awaken after a Calamity that will never come to pass.”

“Whatever it is you’re talking yourself around to, you can just tell me,” Eros reminded her.

“There’s absolutely nothing stopping us from changing the past,” Shasi said. “And then what? We live out our natural lives here? If you wanted to escape to paradise, I’m told Tataru bought us an island.” “No,” Shasi said, “we go back to Garlemald, as we planned, and finish the work we started there. Or … we spend our lives with the work, and hope our children’s children might finish it, more likely.” She looked up at Eros’s face—so like his grandsire’s, she found herself thinking for the thousandth time. As she often did, she hoped his brow would never grow so lined with worry as had Solus’s. “Tempting as it is to stay here—and maybe the only thing more tempting than watching your skin grow tan while we’re about our work here is watching you work on your tan deliberately on a remote isle where we should scarcely find ourselves interrupted—I can no more live a life of idleness than you can.” “Will that life still exist to return to?” Shasi pursed her lips, then nodded. “The tower could send us back to the time and place whence it came, if I but understood how to command it to,” she said. “I suspect we should still find a world to greet us, else the Exarch should have disappeared.

“It isn’t fair,” she said at last. “Very little is,” Eros murmured, and for three small words they bore too much weight. “It isn’t right; it isn’t just. It’s far too late for me to make right what went wrong so long ago in Ktisis Hyperborea. And that would create some other stream of causality, one which you and I could never see. Never visit, never cross to. But Amaurot could be saved—they could all be saved, if I could only make them see—” “See what, kitten?” Eros asked her. “That the end of the world was caused by one of their own?” “No,” Shasi said, looking up into those struck-coin eyes. So like his grandsire’s; so like those of her soul’s oldest friend. “The same thing you taught me to see. That they’re not alone.”

[karniz]

Patreon Early Access: X’shasi from FFXIV ♥ view on my patreon @ patreon.com/karniz/ ♥

Interested in being a Patron? If you enjoy my work and want to support me; for only one dollar a month you get early access to illustrations I’ve done! Tiers include Monthly Sketch Requests [like this one] as well as access to a patron-only commission queue!

[pixoleil-productions]

Characters [left to right]: Thancred Waters, X'shasi Kilntreader

Owners [left to right]: Square Enix, @starcunning

Want your own character shamed? [Click here for details!]

[twelveswood]

Fact swap: X'shasi knew what she was going to be when she grew up from the time she was six years old.

Dreyll always felt like there was something out there for her, but definitely not in a “knew what she would be” way, just this buzzing excitement to eventually go out and see the world. She really only anticipated MAYBE finding other viera and learning about the culture she would have originated in. Definitely NOT that she was some vaunted hero. 

[castellankurze]

B’aiken Shishido, What’s in a Name

I haven’t written anything in awhile, let alone for B’aiken, but an idea I should have had long ago came to mind the other night and so I ended up banging out...four thousand words, holy crap.

Takes place around 4.1-4.2 of Stormblood.  Some blood.  More of me rambling about sunseeker miqo’te gender politics.

-

It wasn't sake, but  this western beer wasn't bad as long as you paid Baderon the extra coin for his top-shelf stuff.

It was a typical day in Limsa Lominsa - the sun shone through a scattered veil of clouds, light glinting from the waves whipped up by the wind that came down from the mountains of Vylbrand.  Hawker's Alley bustled with a thousand voices raised to haggle for wares.  The docks were filled with the shouts of sailors and longshoremen as they struggled to make sense of the bewildering array of merchantmen and privateers that sought space.  The customs office with the rustle and hustle of a throng of foreigners attempting to move any number of goods.

Above the chaos, the Drowning Wench was a low-key port in the storm of humanity.  It was midday, too early for the place to fill up with workers leaving shift to find respite in a mug. So it was that another visitor to Lominsa had a table all to herself as she nursed one beer after another, having little else to do in the pirate town while she waited for a particular ship.  Though she sported the ears and tail of a miqo'te, her garb was unmistakably that of the eastern nation of Hingashi, as was the sheathed sword which she had unbelted and leaned against the edge of the table beside her seat.  

B'aiken Shishido was no longer quite the disheveled wreck she'd been when X'shasi Kilntreader had found her in the back corner of a Kugane hostelry.  Travelling throughout the Far East and to Eorzea had reduced the time for lounging in bars and waiting for employment.  Her hair had been pulled into an only semi-anarchic mess at the back of her head, but for a set of bangs which fell over the left side of her face to veil the scars that crept out from behind the patch that hid her blinded eye.  And she had changed her clothes.

She sat in her chair almost carelessly, her chin propped on her remaining hand as she contemplated the mug in front of her, studiously ignoring the occasional curious glance shot her way.  The miqo'te woman was comely enough, with a square-chinned handsomeness and a full figure, but the dour expression that ever rested upon her features discouraged any from plucking up their courage and crossing over to inquire of her availability.  

So it was that she sat and drank alone, until a set of footsteps drew near and a male voice asked, "are you the woman called Be-Aiken Shihshih-do?"

He'd mangled her name, first and last alike, but in a foreign land one learned to expect such things.  B'aiken looked up and assessed the newcomer quickly.  A miqo'te male, a head taller than her, and she was not a short woman for her race.  Forty years of age, perhaps.  He wore a shirt and skirt of interlocking metal mesh, his arms and legs covered by leather armor.  An axe of the type favored by Limsan marauders was strapped to his back.  His eyes were a bright green, his hair a dull and greying red.  His broad face was marked by scars...and by inked designs which decorated his lower cheeks and jaw.  They suggested, to her mind, a set of tusks that had swept forwards from within his hair to end with their tips just beneath the corners of his mouth.

Dangerous.

For her part, the samurai nodded in response to the question.  "I am," she replied.

The miqo'te lifted a hand to the back of the seat opposite hers on the table and pulled it out, dropping himself into it.  Everything about his movement and posture was coarse in a deliberate way - a practiced brute.  As he sat, B'aiken noted behind his shoulder a pair of miqo'te women standing some fulms off, one of them armed with a blade and wearing a half-mask that shadowed her eyes and hair.

Very dangerous.

When the man had sat he looked across the table at B'aiken and asked, with no preamble, "why is that your name?"

This was not a question she had expected.  Normally armed men came to her for one reason - gold for another blade.  Not to inquire about her name.  So she shrugged her shoulders and took up her mug, answering simply "my mother gave it to me," before sipping.

The miqo'te kept his gaze fixed to hers, but at her response he canted his jaw first left, then right, as if he were worrying at his tattooed tusks.  It should have looked absurd, but the bluntness of the man drained away what silliness might have been found in the mannerism.  "Who was your mother?" he asked after a moment's silence.

B'aiken was momentarily spared from answering the rude question as one of Baderon's waitresses came up, spying a seated figure with no justification for his presence, and the miqo'te waved her off with a curt 'mead.'  Once she had retreated, the samurai narrowed her ruby eye and responded, in lieu of an answer, "who asks this question?"

The man worked his jaw once more, and then sat back in his seat and took a breath.  B'aiken recognized the stance of one reigning in one's more hasty impulses.  "My name is Be-Hahn Nunh," he said.  He frowned slightly and added after a moment, "as an Easterner, do you know what that means?"

B'aiken nodded slowly and sipped the last remnants of her drink.  Her parents' teachings about the western world were but a dim memory of her childhood years, but since coming to Eorzea she had learned at more length from M'naago Rahz about the tribal structure of miqo'te in these western lands - the twenty-six major tribes with their distinctive division between rank and file Tia males and the elevated Nunh.  In some tribes the Nunh held great power, whilst in others they were but figureheads of the female leadership, but there was one commonality - the right to father children.

B'hahn Nunh settled his arms atop the table, one hand covering a loose fist.  "Who were your parents?" he questioned again.

B'aiken set the mug down atop the table.  "My mother's name was Grayne," she said.  "My father's name was Cossen."

B'hahn leaned back in his seat as the waitress delivered a drink B'aiken was certain he had no intention of touching.  As he did so his gaze finally wavered, dropping down to the tabletop as he once more worried at his tusks.  "Cossen and Grayne," he said softly.  His eyes came back up.  "We had long wondered what became of them.  Are they still in the Far East?"

"Buy me another drink," B'aiken replied.  Without hesitation the Nunh pushed his mead across the table to her.  She drank.  It was too sweet.  "They worked in the service of a Hingan lord.  My mother was slain by assassins who meant to kill his child.  My father took revenge upon their employer, but it killed him.  This was when I was six years of age."

The Nunh closed his eyes for a moment.  "Did they teach you the meaning of your name?" he asked when he had opened them once more.

B'aiken's stone face cracked slightly, her full lips tugging upwards into a smile.  "In the tongue of Hingashi, 'bai ken' with the correct context means 'boisterous plum.'  My mother said she chose it because I came out of her screaming and giving her trouble and refused to stop."

B'hahn Nunh did not seem to share her humor.  Instead he frowned, his lips pressed tight.  "But did they teach you the meaning of the 'Be'?" he asked.

B'aiken sipped her too-sweet mead.  "Why does this so concern you?" she asked.

She saw his tongue press against the inside of his cheek as he once more rolled his jaw side to side.  "Cossen and Grayne fled from these lands to the Far East to escape judgment from the Boar Tribe," he said.  "Cossen was of no standing to pursue a woman as openly as he did.  Both flouted our laws and ran when they were discovered.  Now I am Nunh, and word comes to me of a woman not known to our tribe calling herself Be-Aiken-"

B'aiken had already begun to bristle at his assessment of her parents, but she had contented herself to let that slide - it seemed factual enough.  But when he butchered her name a second time her patience snapped.  "B'aiken," she interrupted, pressing her lips together and blowing out a pop of air to emphasize the 'B' sound.

He stopped, blinking.  "What?"

"I say my name B'aiken.  Not Be-Aiken," she emphasized with a shake of her head.

B'hahn Nunh frowned. "When the written word comes to us of the Scions and their exploits, your name is printed with a B, then an apostrophe, and then the remainder of your name," he said.

B'aiken nodded.  "That part is correct.  It was how my mother told me it would be spelled in the land of our foremothers."

"No," B'hahn Nunh growled, bristling suddenly.  "That is not acceptable.  The Boar honorific is the symbol of our tribe.  It was not an exile's to grant a child born in foreign land.  Her transgression, not yours," he added, perhaps an attempt to offer an olive branch as a scowl grew upon her face.  "But nevertheless it cannot continue, unless you choose to rejoin the Boar Tribe."

Heads turned as a short, sharp laugh cracked in the air of the Drowning Wench, but even as it left her lips B'aiken's features faded once more into stony obstinance.  "I am ronin, B'hahn Nunh.  I have no interest in throwing myself into the ranks of some strange clan, simply because I bear some accident of kinship," she said.

"You might be welcomed," he pressed.  "We have heard of your skill with a blade.  It would be honored."

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.  "No."

He worried his tusks.  "Then your name must change," he said stolidly.  "Call yourself 'Baiken' if you will, or 'Aiken' if that would hold meaning, but the use of the Boar honorific must cease."

"Hey," a new voice interjected.  "Is something going on over here?"

"Just bring us another round, for Twelve's sake," the Nunh growled, pushing several coins into the waitress' hand.  She departed, carrying a suspicious look and B'aiken's last mug.

B'aiken was grateful for the momentary distraction as her rage burned suddenly hot within her breast.  She forced herself to sit back slightly and distract herself with a sip of the too-sweet mead.  As she had learned from her near-violent confrontation with M'naago, it was not reasonable to expect these westerners to know that 'aiken' in the Hingan tongue meant dog.  That part, her mother certainly could have thought about a bit more.  Then a thought occurred to her and she lowered her cup to glower over the rim of it.  "B'hahn Nunh," she said.  "That means you have offspring."

He blinked, perhaps thrown by the sudden shift in the current, but nodded.

A sneer worked itself across B'aiken's features.  "And if I did give myself to your tribe, would you have me for your bed, Nunh?"

He frowned slightly, but there was little hesitation.  "Not unwillingly."

She snorted, but decided the response seemed earnest enough that she could let the sudden suspicion drop.  "No," she said again.  "I do not belong in your tribe simply because my mother and father once did.  They were faithful to one another," she suddenly diverted once more.  "To the best of what I learned from their cohorts as I grew, theirs was an enviable love.  They lived and died for each other."  She took a moment to breathe.  "And so my answer is no, B'hahn Nunh.  Neither will I join your tribe, nor will I renounce my name as my parents gave it to me."

His frown deepened, but he glanced over his shoulder and made a beckoning gesture.  The two miqo'te females that had been standing off and watching with increasingly poor attempts to disguise their interest came walking over.  The one that was armed moved with a grace that suggested skill with the blade she carried, while the other's was a more normal tread.  "Kinrah," the Nunh demanded.  "She refused both offers."

The unarmed woman - B'kinrah - blinked a pair of pale pink eyes and snatched up a book she carried, flipping it open to a marked page and hurriedly scribbling with a quill.  For his part, B'hahn looked back across the table, his face stone.  "B'aiken...Sh..."  He hesitated.

"Shishido," she supplied the proper pronunciation.

"B'aiken Shishido, on the honor of the Boar Tribe I summon you to a duel.  We cannot countenance your use of our tribe's honorific and if you refuse to relinquish it, you must defend it with your blade."  The Nunh delivered the words slowly and deliberately, his voice unwavering as B'kinrah copied down his challenge.

B'aiken spared a moment to consider, finishing off the mead the Nunh had given her in exchange for the information by which he now hung her out to dry.  "I am ronin, Nunh," she said for the second time that day.  "I have no honor.  But my name...that does have meaning for me.  I accept your challenge," she said, setting down her cup and reaching out to close her fingers around the sheath of her sword, thumping it against the table.  "Now, if you'd have it."

"You're drunk," he said, working his tusks.

She laughed.  "Afraid I'll throw up on you?"  She flexed her legs and stood, and the Nunh hastened to match her as she belted her katana.  "Your girl there has my words in her book," she said with an ironic smile for B'kinrah, whose face colored as she met the samurai's ruby eye and held the book up a bit higher.  "If I didn't stand by my drunken words, then I would have none at all."

"Hoy!  HOY!" a voice shouted across the room.  The gathered sunseeker miqo'te turned as one to see Baderon leaning over his bar and frantically waving a finger at them.  "Whatever yer doin' yer not doin' it 'ere," he scolded.  "If it's t'be drawn steel then go out past the Aftcastle."

B'hahn Nunh nodded.  "Aye, Baderon," he said in acknowledgement.

The waitress who'd been bringing the next pair of drinks stopped a few steps short and huffed.  "You're still short seven gil," she said, cross.

B'aiken reached into her belt for one of the solid gold koban from Kugane she still had banging around and thumbed it onto the table.  Then she reached out and plucked one of the proffered mugs from the girl's hand and threw it back.  Her throat didn't work; no audible gulps or gasps emanated from the samurai, but instead she only tipped the mug further and further back until it emptied and she slammed it down atop the table, the corners of her mouth wet with the excess.

"Let's go," she growled.

The quartet left the bar at a walk, heading south to where the bridges of Limsa Lominsa connected to the isle of Vylbrand.  The wind made B'aiken's long robe flutter, as well as the empty sleeve that dangled from her right shoulder.  She stayed a double arms' length from B'hahn, both of them careful to stay abreast of one another despite looking determinedly forward.  

"Um, excuse me," a soft voice said at her shoulder.  She turned her head slightly to see the scribe doing her best to keep up with the taller miqo'te's longer stride.  "If it's not too much to ask, how did you get the name Shishido?" B'kinrah questioned, blinking her pale eyes through her dark hair, quill poised above her open book.

B'aiken considered her response for several steps.  How to describe her apprenticeship under the legendary samurai?  Her sensei had taken her under his wing for many hard years of training that had defined the course of her life right up to this very moment.  But on reflection, the woman didn't want to hear her life story.  Just the basic information.  "He taught me how to use the blade," she said simply, and B'kinrah bobbed acceptance and fell back as she scribbled down the response.

They passed over the stones of the Aftcastle and proceeded down the connecting bridge to the island, under dirt rather than dressed stone slapped underfoot.  A quartet of Limsan Yellowjackets manned the entry, and one of them must have seen the way B'aiken and B'hahn drifted apart as they left the bridge behind, their posture increasingly wary of one another.  The roegadyn came forward, eyeing first one and then the other.  "A duel?" he asked.  He received an assortment of nodding heads in return, and with a sigh he lifted his hand to point.  "No deaths, and off the road," he instructed.

The pair obeyed, stepping into the grass and walking a short distance from the side of the road.  "What, then?" B'aiken asked.  "First blood?"

B'hahn Nunh shook his head as he unstrapped his axe and threaded it behind his back, bending his elbows around the haft to limber up.  "A full surrender," he replied.

B'aiken considered this for a moment and then nodded.  She lifted her hand to the metal shoulderguard that she wore on her right shoulder and pushed, sliding it laterally so that it took her garment with it, baring the stump of her right arm where it ended abruptly halfway down her biceps.  She heard a gasp from the road and glanced aside briefly as she tied the sleeve into her belts, seeing Kinrah holding her book up to her face.  The other woman, the one that had been silent all this time, showed no reaction.

B'aiken did much the same with the left side of her robe, tying the sleeve into her belt so that it would not interfere with her movement.  Her remaining arm was muscled, as was the miqo'te's stomach, her breasts concealed by the wrappings she wore beneath her garb.  Her hand dropped down to the handle of her katana and levered it forward slightly, swinging the sheath behind her legs as she bent her knees and stood flank-on towards the Nunh.  She could feel the tingle in her fingertips as she readied herself, her ki - what Eorzeans called aether - already flowing between her body and the sheathed blade, making it tremble.  "Come forth, then," she said.

B'hahn Nunh had taken the intervening moments to swing his axe a time or two, flexing his legs to ready himself.  At B'aiken's invitation he took in a slow breath and exhaled.  Then, in the space of half a heartbeat, he was suddenly roaring and charging forward like his tribal namesake, his eyes a ferocious glowing red.

He crossed the space between them in an eyeblink, his axe swinging hard, and B'aiken was forced to hurriedly drop back before he took her remaining arm.  Her katana leapt from its sheath with a rasp of steel and she swung for his leg, but the Nunh was fast and sidestepped so that the tip of her blade passed through empty space.  He swung again, a shorter chop this time that allowed him to follow up with a quick reverse blow.  B'aiken managed to turn it aside, and aether crackled in the air as the samurai's blade encountered the berserker's axe.

He was good.  He was very good.  He couldn't sustain such a pace for very long, surely, but the sheer ferocity of his assault had no doubt served him well in unmanning his opponents in the past.  Nor did he fight with the axe alone- he took his hand from the weapon to swing at her with a leather-clad fist and she ducked aside.  She didn't miss his stomping boots, either - the Hingan-born miqo'te wore a set of open-toed zori, and one good smash from the Nunh would break her foot.  But B'aiken had fought a number of opponents like him - taller than her, stronger than her, more lustful than her.  She threatened him with her blade as she ducked in and out of his range, the air humming and her aether-clad katana whipped past him, roaring whenever the two weapons deflected off one another.

There came a whistle from the direction of the bridge.  Presumably the Yellowjackets had come off their station to watch the show.  B'aiken didn't have time to look.  She whirled, stepping past B'hahn even as his axe whirled past her so that the pair of them reversed positions.  With a quick filling of her lungs the samurai cocked her sword back and swung it underhand, sweeping the flow of aether from the land and sending it thundering forth from her blade in a blood-red halo that struck the Nunh full-on and forced him back, sheltering behind his axe.  In the moment he was thus distracted, B'aiken brought her sword back down and laid open his forearm, his leather bracer snapping beneath the sword's edge.

B'hahn roared and surged forward at her, seemingly heedless of his wound, and he leapt high enough to nearly clear the level of her head as he brought his axe down in a fiery smash that she was just quick enough to avoid.  B'aiken felt the heat of the moment set her nerves alight, her skin pricking as her hair seemed to stand on end.  The Nunh

will come at me with a rising swing and there will be a moment that his leg is unprotected

came at her with a rising swing and with reflexes sharper than the blade she wielded, the miqo'te dodged to one side and lashed out with her blade, letting it be sheathed in energy that extended past the tip, a cut longer than she could have made with the blade alone.  The toughened leather of the Nunh's boot split open just beneath his armored skirt as she sliced through the meat of his thigh, and he stumbled as his leg went out from under him.  He caught himself on his good leg, but it was to no avail as the tip of the samurai's sword came up beneath his chin and hovered at his neck.

B'aiken's chest heaved for breath as her head throbbed in the wake of the sudden insight, her musculature gleaming with the first signs of sweat from the short but explosive fight.  "Surrender to me," she demanded.

B'hahn Nunh worried his tusks for a moment, his face torn between emotions, but after a breath to think, he nodded slightly.  "You win."

B'aiken stepped away to the sound of clapping from the Yellowjackets, and the sound of boots on the grass and B'kinrah came forward to crouch beside the Nunh, lifting a hand that glowed to hover near his wounds.  For her own part, B'aiken lifted the handle of her sword to her teeth and fished in her belt for a cleaning cloth, wiping away the blood before she returned the weapon to its sheath.

"Well?" she asked as the Nunh stood.  His arm would bear a new scar, it seemed, as Kinrah's magic was sufficient to close the wound but not erase it from his flesh.  B'aiken did not resist the urge to wallow momentarily in pleasure at the sight, though she kept it from her face.

He nodded.  "You may keep your name, B'aiken Shishido," he said, pronouncing it in the same manner she had done.

"Is our business then concluded, B'hahn Nunh?  You will mark that I am not one of your tribe's women, nor will you attempt to take my name from me a second time?" she asked, keeping her gaze pinned to his.

He paused and worked his jaw once more before answering.  "It is concluded.  There will be no second challenge."

B'aiken shrugged and began the process of unknotting her sleeves from her belt so that she could put her robe back to rights, while the Nunh gingerly walked himself back towards the road with B'kinrah in tow.  At the same time a set of footsteps came towards her, and B'aiken looked up to see the blade-bearing miqo'te coming to a stop a few fulms from her.  She lifted up her hands to remove her mask, and B'aiken was struck by an odd sense of familiarity as the woman revealed bright purple eyes and near-black violet hair.  The stranger offered a slight smile to the samurai before she spoke.

"My name is B'sayyda Eskil," she said.  "My mother's name is B'lotte Zinba, and she was full sister to B'grayne Zinba."

B'aiken paused in the midst of shrugging her arm back into its sleeve.  She blinked her eye as she looked upon the other woman, near as tall as she, broad in shoulder and hip like herself, close to her in age.  "So then...we are cousins?" she asked as she finished donning her clothes.

B'sayyda pursed her lips briefly.  "In blood if naught else.  In spirit if you wish.  In arms...only if you were to rejoin the tribe," she said with sudden formality, which she promptly dropped as she went on.  "My mother spoke from time to time of missing her sister.  I'm sure she'll be sad to learn of her passing, but perhaps the knowing will give her comfort."  The swordswoman shrugged and smiled a bit once more.  "Especially to hear that Grayne and Cossen stayed together until the end.  If it's alright with you I'd like to tell her about all this.  Let her know Grayne had a child.  It would mean something to her."

B'aiken considered this.  She reached out with her hand to squeeze B'sayyda's shoulder.  "Tell all, then," she said.  "Be well, B'sayyda Eskil."

"And you, B'aiken Shishido," said the violet-haired woman, returning the gesture with a squeeze of B'aiken's shoulder.  Then she turned and pulled her mask back into place, following after her kinsman and woman.

Left behind, B'aiken stretched out her arm and turned her face up towards the sun, letting the wind wash over her.

It felt free.