#ardbert comes to the source to save it from its own flood of light and the cycle repeats anew

[thegreatyin]

the best thing about Shadowbringers world is that slow dawning realization as you explore it

that ultimately, the entirety of Norvrandt, As You See It Now, is the end result of a long series of dominoes falling

that started with the right person getting on the right Chocobo cart at the right time.

my favorite thing about shadowbringers is and will forever always be that it's pretty much just the aftermath of a jrpg plot in of itself. like every single member of ardbert's crew had their own personal journeys and backstory and calls to adventure and he slowly collected them along the way like a classical rpg story and everything. there was something there, once. you could have (and were) that exact same person in that exact same situation, once. ardbert did literally everything right and still it came to this etc etc

[voidsentprinces]

Four years later and I am still thinking of the writing done in Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers and the throughline to Endwalker. For example, have you all realized that all the Scions are following the exact same actions as they have before in in the MSQ but the varying degrees of difference? Each Scion is given a second chance at making the same decision twice and each time the end result is different. Where to begin?

How about 1.0, with Thancred Waters. Thancred was doing spy work in Ul’dah for the Circle of Knowing but was caught up in its machinations and his lax attitude lead to the death of Minfilia’s father and being caught in a garlean scheme. With Minfilia at its center. In the First, Thancred is told about a new Minfilia caught in the machinations of another city having grown fat from its luxury and makes the same choice to protect Minfilia but instead of drifting from her life and leaving her to slowly grow up under the watch of another, Thancred is overprotective. Breaking her out of Eulmore but for all intent and purpose, she is still a prisoner of his own guilt and shame. Only truly breaking free of it when she meets with our Minfilia and is renamed Ryne, becoming her own person. Thancred is forced to come to terms that he won’t be able to prepare her for everything, he WILL have to leave her behind just as he did before and this time she WILL be strong enough to stand on her own. He is not afraid to let go of Minfilia and look to a brighter future for Ryne. No longer suffociating her with his own issues and leaving her with all his love and support for her going forward. Nearly dying to prove that point when he fights Ran’jit. Albeit this section of Shadowbringers is hamfist, somehow drags on too long and is rushed through too quickly. But in the Endwalker, the final result of this journey is him finally letting go and breaking free. Willingly throwing his all in the rescue of Garlean survivors, using his gunblade to protect the other Scions as they fight the Final Days and finally to sacrifice himself to see a future that he knows tomorrow Ryne will live to see.

Next, Urianger. The man whom Shadowbringers would not be possible without. Urianger the recluse, hiding beneath his robes and keeping to his books. His only companion being the rambunckous and inquisitive Moenbryda. In his seclusion, she is killed by Nabriales in an attempt to banish him from the realm by becoming a blade of light for us after we lose the blessing. And from thereon he comes out of his robe slowly. Losing the hood and goggles and traveling with the Warriors of Darkness. When faced with a choice to lead the Warriors of Darkness to their doom, he decides they are worth saving. At the cost of Minfilia and so he ushers them into conflict with the Warrior of Light and into the arms of the Voice of the Mother. Where Ardbert and his companions seek the salvation of the First. And forestall the Flood of Light. He then makes it his task to see every Ascian fall for what they had done to Moenbryda. He goes back into his robes during Stormblood. Ushering in and working in secrets to remain there as he figures out the thinning of aether and when he arrives in the First. He is made to keep another secret. And so he does, he keeps the secret of the Exarch’s fate and weaves a tale to spur the other Scions into action. The end result, not the Exarch’s triumph but once again the Warriors of Light and the world he seeks to save on the brink of oblivion as a second flood of light is made manifest. But, in the First he finds an Ascian willing to share his tale, the tale of Amaurot and in it, Urianger finds the troubles of the ancients. Realizing in that moment that his acts of secrecy are no better than them and that he should keep his allies close. Returning to the Source, he rejects his formed hooded cloak and remains visible in his Astrologian robes. And the end result? He gets to teach the loporrits about his world, the world he has read so much about and the world Moenbryda and Minfilia sacrificed for. When he is approached to keep another secret from us, he comes out fully to the Warrior of Light. Leaving nothing to question, now flowery words, no deceitful tales, just the truth of Livingway’s proposition. Instead finding a new path forward, one where his wisdom might be used to bring a brighter future in his own sacrifice in Ultima Thule.

Y’shtola. Raised in isolation and study after the Sharalayn Exodus. Living in the hovel of Master Matoya. Learning the secrets of the realm before casting off isolation in exchange for Limsa Lominsa. Itself isolated from the other factions of Eorzea and stubborn to reject her pleas to make peace with the Kobolds. She readily throws herself into the aether stream to save Minfilia and the Warrior of Light. At the cost of her sight and a fraction of her life force. But she keeps moving forward. Meeting the tribes of the Xaela and finding their warring words to be tiresome. But upon reaching the First, finding the Exarch using his words but keeping the same tiresome tone in twisting what he says. Keeping something from her. The last time, she let sleeping dogs lie, the Bloody Banquet took her eyes, her friends, and time away from her. So she follows her Master’s teachings and selections isolationism only to stumble onto a group of people under attack. Calling upon dark magics to protect them, she brings them under her wing and becomes a center for their society. She entered Rak’tika expecting to study in solitude but there she’s found family and kinship. Those who harken to her words and are ready to learn her teachings. When we arrive in Rak’tika we have the same witty sorceress but one who seems genuinely happy with her surroundings to the point when Thancred judges her for it. She snaps back with her own razor wit of her own observation of him traumatizing the poor Minfilia by being too protective of her. She has found her place in this other world, but knows that her friends need saving once more. But that doesn’t stop her from making the same choice to throw herself into the aetherstream once more, knowing the consequences, if it means saving her Night’s Blessed. The result is different, an Ascian pulls her from the aether stream untouched and unscathed. She is welcome back into Runar’s warms embrace and she finds meaning in it. Returning to the Source and learning all its secrets she could of returned to be a council to the Eorzean Alliance but she instead pours over tomes to discover a way back to the Night’s Blessed and her family. And in having finally found a home after years of being so distant from us and everyone else, she finds the will to use her knowledge with Urianger to build a better path forward for her tribe’s future and thus she sacrifices herself even seeing where her path might end with the Ea. Knowing that she’ll find a way, some way to grant hope.

Alphinaud. A naive and stuck up child from Sharlayan. Who thought he would bring peace and prosperity to Eorzea. That he alone could bring change to Ul’dah. And so he forms the Crystal Braves and takes on the entire world, only to fall for his arrogance. At the cost of all of his friends, his connections, his hopes. Humbled, he slowly picks himself up and takes a different path forward. Standing on ceremony, never again considering himself the smartest man in the room. He forges a party with the Warrior of Light, the heretic Ysayle and the vengeful Azure Dragoon. He wanders the wilderness of Coerthas and Dravania with us. He learns of the past and history of Ishgard and Nidhogg’s war. That not everything is black and white or clean cut. He loses Haurchefant, Ysayle and nearly Estinien to this war. But he keeps clinging to our arm, battered but determined to make it right. And in doing so, Estinien arrives safely home. Y’sthola and Thancred are returned to his side. The Scions are re-established, his sister willingly returns to his side as well. He travels in Ala Mhigo and sees the battered people of Garlean occupation and he uses his mind to liberate Doma with Hien, Yugiri and Gosetsu there to scrutinize his short comings but provide advice to lift the young higher. Through his journey he is forged into a ready and able politician and emissary in his own right. To the point that when he arrives on the First. He isn’t shaken when he needs to stand alone. Using us all as an example, he walks in Vauthry’s Shadow. And makes connections, gathers informations, learns the story of Eulmore before casting judgment. He sees the arrogance and corruption of the Holy See in the people of Eulmore, he sees the battered and broken people for Ala Mhigo and Doma in the residents of the First. And instead of trying to take it all on his own. He falls back and gathers his allies, meeting with us and leaning our expertise to forge a path into Eulmore. Confronting Vauthry as if he was Teledji Adeledji himself. Facing the Ilberean Ran’jit on the battlefield even if he knows he will lose. He faces the shadows of his past and instead of crumbling before it in pity. He remembers Haurchefant’s words and cup of cocoa and rises to the occasion? The result, he is no longer a trembling, arrogant young man who will bend to Fourchenault’s arguements. He is quiet and contemplative caring more about the health of Arenvald’s health than his own disownment. He faces down the horrors of Lunar Primals and the Final Days steadfast that he will see the answer and together with his sister at the ends of the universe, he becomes the thing he sought to be so long ago. He becomes the future for Eorzea and the shards at large, he becomes our bridge to Meteion even when there is no one left to save. He carries his hope and rises to the sacrifice. Meeting the Garlean survivors and negotiating with them. Never drawing blade or calling up an army to meet them. But discussing with them, learning from them, and sacrificing himself for them. The little lord has come a long, long way.

Alisaie. The fighter. Fighting to save Eorzea in her own ways. Not being able to stand the stagnation of the Eorzean Alliance and walking off on her own. Meeting the shadow of Bahamut and her legacy in her grandfather Louisoix. Despite his words, she wanders off to keep track of the Warriors of Darkness alone and is poisoned for her efforts. Being saved by Thancred at the last minute and seeing how profoundly Alphinaud has begun to change. She enters the wings of the Scions actively once more. Watching the Warrior of Light face odds and wanting to do the same for us as we have for everyone. But, she keeps losing. Louisoix, Ga Bu, Tesleen. She fought and fought and fought and can only lose and lose and lose. Until, she comes upon the idea of curing the tempered. And in this she finds the solution in those light barren lands. When given a choice to standby and let events play out as her primal forged grandfather, she is given a chance to cure those afflicted. To soothe the wounds of the world and she takes to this masterfully. She throws her all into it and when faced with the same decisions of being burned by sacrifice and falling back into her training she instead finds her second wind. Curing those around Tesleen’s outpost, saving Ga Bu and eventually sacrificing herself to same the same world her grandfather did. The results speak for themselves, she is proud of her brother, she able to aid in healing the world and fighting for the right cause. And even when facing down the Garlean survivors, she now works to help them rebuild and heal all wounds like the Phoenix’s flame giving rebirth to the realm.

G’raha Tia. I don’t know if you know this, but when he was a boy, he yearned to stand tall as the heroes of eld. But like a fool seeking to pluck the stars from the heavens, my every attempt to reprise their deeds fell short. And then, one day, an all but forgotten dream from my youth stood before me, in the flesh. In the Crystal Tower, he meets the Warrior of Light and tries to take on the challenges we do. But finds himself falling short only able to take control of the tower and rest. When he awakens, the world is in ruin and there is no hope in sight. Well there is one hope. He is the hope. And when confronted with the same challenge of rising to the occasion. He throws his all into it. For the sake of the future, he would trick the Scions. For the sake of the future, he would trick the World. And so he becomes the Crystal Exarch and the result? He may not be able to cleanse us of the light energies. But he faces down Emet-Selch with us. He faces down Elidibus with us. He looks into the face of oblivion for one-hundred years and becomes the hero of eld, he so longed to be. When returning to his younger flesh. He enjoys his life but when terror and destruction finds its way to Thavnair in the Final Days? He stands tall as he becomes the Exarch once more. Taking charge of the chaos and leading the city in its time of great need. And when the sacrifice must be made, he once again crystalizes and becomes his hero of eld. Working for a brighter future, always. He has obtained what he wished again and again, though he does not know it. And the results are a brighter tomorrow. No longer is he sleeping in the tower, tis good to be awake once more.

[thefreelanceangel]

Shadowbringers Is Finally Ended

With Patch 5.55 and the official end of the Shadowbringers story, setting up now for Endwalker in November, there are now a few months ahead to grind gear, finish content and reflect on the most recent expansion.

And, without any hyperbole, I can say definitively that I have never in my life been as impressed with a game's writing as I have that of Shadowbringers, both the original expansion and a lot of the patch content. I have... thoughts.

I'm a bit of an outlier; I skipped Stormblood (oops) and went straight from completing Heavensward (which greatly impressed me at the time and still does) into Shadowbringers because I wanted to get a max level character already.

Within the first few cutscenes of Shadowbringers, I was absolutely hooked.

First, let me just say that "monstrous angels" is 100% My Thing. I ADORE the reinterpretation of the standard "Renaissance art angelic figures" into something closer to incomprehensible beings taking on twisted, terrifying appearances. The human mind is a finite thing and comprehending an angel would be as difficult as comprehending infinity; these are things so alien to our experience that assuming they'd be easy to grasp and familiar feels disingenuous to me.

So the sin-eaters and the Lightwardens? SLAP.

Also, the intent behind the usage of "Light" in Shadowbringers was deliberate and purposeful. Our Lord and Savior, Yoshi-P, stated this clearly in his Forbes interview.

"The inception of this idea was very simple: in recent fantasy works, the perception that light equates to good and dark equates to evil is very set in stone, we wanted to shake this up a bit.

"Until this point in Final Fantasy XIV, our players have been Warriors of Light: the hero. However, with Shadowbringers, we leave the Source and embark on a journey to the First, and through this I want our players to discover the truth of the world, as well as think about the real nature of light and dark. That is the theme of Shadowbringers.

"In any case, a light too strong could potentially become evil. Darkness and night are also necessary for the world to maintain its balance; that's the kind of theme we will be shedding light on."

And the themes in Shadowbringers had such an amazing resonance that they were both painfully clear and masterfully executed. Not only was the theme of "balance" clearly executed in the "returning Darkness to a world flooded by Light" goal, but the desire for players to "think about the real nature of light and dark" showed in a multitude of ways.

The Warriors of Light (who we met as the Warriors of Darkness in Heavensward) are, in their home world, reviled. They directly caused the Flood which nearly destroyed their home and although they were able to save it with personal sacrifice, the populace at large is unaware of that sacrifice. The motives behind what the Warriors did is essentially lost to history; all that remains is the perception of their actions and the results thereof.

Motives, however, which you (player and WoL) are privy to.

"At long last, you see. To save our world, we gave our lives. We were just adventurers trying to make our way. An odd job here, a favor there—we never aspired to be Warriors of Light. But word of our deeds spread, and soon people were calling us heroes. They placed their hopes and dreams on our shoulders and bid us fight for all that was good and right. We fought and we fought and we fought...until there was no one left to fight. We won...and now our world is being erased from existence. We did everything right, everything that was asked of us, and still—still it came to this! You of all people should understand! We cannot—we will not falter. We brought our world to the brink of destruction, and now we must save it."

You had that fight with the Warriors of Darkness. You heard Ardbert explain exactly what happened, how they came to the point where they faced off against you, and you saw what happened when they were given the choice to hold back the Flood. And you were there when the one favor Ardbert asked was for the Warriors of Darkness to be taken home.

You see how the First remembers them and it's stark contrast to the heroes you met who were fighting desperately to save people who now spit on their names. History quite clearly has two sides and which you believe is dependent entirely on what information you have.

This becomes even more of a clear theme when you meet Emet-Selch and learn more about the Calamity which led to the entire Zodiark/Hydaelyn duality. Here, your previous experiences with Ascians has painted them solely as "villains." They are established enemies, manipulating events and people in order to attain goals which, to you, are nothing but Calamities.

And yet, as you learn more about the original Source and the Amaurotines that once lived on it, these goals are painted in an entirely new light. Instead of merely seeking to wipe out "the world" for no apparent reason or, at best guess, greater power for their deity Zodiark, the Ascians were striving to repair the damage done by the original Sundering. They, in a manner of speaking, were doing what the Warriors of Darkness were. What you, the Warrior of Light, have been doing. They were trying to restore what was lost.

Which leads into another of Shadowbringers' major themes: grief and loss.

The earliest touches of this are in Alisaie's questlines where you learn about what happens to people tainted by the Light. Families are destroyed, people are transmuted into sin-eaters and those who avoid that fate must stand by and watch as their loved ones fall to something far worse than death. "A Purchase of Fruit" shows you exactly what the end result is while also highlighting something very specific: with no hope of removing the Light's taint, knowing that all that awaits the tainted is a painful transmutation and existence as a sin-eater, those untainted make the best they can of those last days and end the tainted individual's pain before it begins.

Grief, yes. Loss? Absolutely. And yet, this is a loving, compassionate thing that those in Amh Araeng are doing. They face their own grief and loss. Rather than refusing to accept the actuality of their circumstances or refuse to weigh themselves down with taking a decisive action, they make the choice to face their grief and loss directly, even willingly taking on the guilt of their actions rather than leaving the tainted to suffer.

Magnus in Twine lost his wife and son, which immobilizes him. He can't find solance in anything save alcohol and brooding over their graves. It takes outside interference to pull him directly from his grief, to help him see past the loss of his family and look towards the future where life might once again be worth living. His struggle with grief is painfully familiar and so very, very close to many real life struggles that it's extremely poignant.

This struggle with grief is the fight the Ascians are, without question, losing. Let's set aside the "tempering" argument when it comes to Emet-Selch and Elidibus for the moment, largely because it's actually quite true that grief can spur people into committing horrific acts either as a desperate attempt to assuage their own pain (revenge) or make 'things right' in some way (vengeance).

Emet-Selch does not, in fact, properly grieve for Amaurot and the Ancients he knew. He clings to them, as Hythlodaeus tells us, weighed down by an aching sense of loss.

"And though he may carry himself with a certain glib ease, Emet-Selch is not a man to bear his burdens lightly. In fact, I imagine they have only grown heavier with every passing century. ...T'is truly a terrible weight he has chosen to carry."

Quite significantly is the word "chosen" in that. Grief is a process that involves, eventually, letting go of the pain and living with the memories of what was loved and what no longer is. Emet-Selch chooses not to do that. He does not grieve for Amaurot and his lost loved ones; he refuses, no matter how often he mentions his loss, to admit that what is gone is gone.

Elidibus, rather similarly, refuses to accept that the duty he took on when called upon to become Zodiark's heart is finally at an end. That the world he and Emet-Selch originated from is gone. Although he admits that he can barely remember why he's set on this path, he refuses to turn away from him.

One won't forget, one can barely remember--neither will grieve and let go.

Even the Ascians' characteristic arrogance and disdain for what they consider "lesser beings" is easy to read as their long-lasting struggle with grief. Considering the Sundering, all the beings that the Ascians are so disdainful of are, in fact, echoes of that which they once knew. If they acknowledged that, accepted those beings as what they are and perhaps even admitted they had worth... well... Rather like realizing abruptly that you've spent a whole day without thinking of someone recently departed, it feels like a betrayal.

To find value in the worlds as they currently are, to turn away from the duty they were asked to uphold, to choose to lay down the memories of the past are all, in essence, choices the Ascians will not make because to do so would be to let go of what's lost, to move into the acceptance of grief and that can feel like betraying those whose memories are slowly fading.

Emet-Selch's end--"Remember us."--is directly tied to his refusal to forget. To let himself have even one day without hoping for an eventuality that's highly unlikely regardless of effort, without remembering the Sundering and the Final Days. He remembered, forcefully and tenaciously, and wishes that legacy to live beyond him.

While Elidibus, in remembering, unable to deny failure any longer, finally expresses grief and loss. "My people. My brothers. ...My friends. Stay strong. Keep the faith. At duty's end, we will meet again. We will. We will. The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it."

And coming from villains, quite specifically from villains that have been largely indistinct "puppet master" figures throughout the previous expansions, these story arcs were a punch to the gut. (Yes, I had to pause writing this to cry helplessly over Elidibus again because my gods, that last line just...) Villains are at their best in fiction when they're relatable. When it's so very easy to see that thin line between villain and hero.

Faced with the loss of everything you'd ever loved, with the faintest possibility of getting it back, what would you do? What wouldn't you do? Yes, the Ascians did terrible things and that's undeniable. Stopping them was necessary to save hundreds of thousands of lives. And doing so, being victorious, didn't feel like a victory and that is such a rare, rare thing in media. The Warrior of Light does the right thing, but in doing so, must face the fact that those they've been fighting have hopes and dreams and feelings and pain as real and as motivating as theirs.

And Shadowbringers does such an impressive job of turning those standard tropes around. Heroes are a dime a dozen because if you just awaken them, as Elidibus did with the starshower, well, there can be dozens of Warriors running around. Villains have heart-wrenching motivations and relatable reasons for their goals. History is multi-faceted and no one person knows what the "truth" truly is. Grief can spur people to helping others (i.e. the tank Role Quest ending) or it can fester and go unhealed and create nothing but more destruction.

There is so much that Shadowbringers did beautifully, I don't have the time to touch on all of it. The lack of "breaking the flawed system fixes everything" trope following Eulmore's liberation from Vauthry and the struggles that Eulmore faces in trying to build a functional, working social order for themselves. Embracing the value of childish dreams and tending to the smallest, most overlooked victims of trauma with the Pixie Tribal Quests. Dealing with a commander whose soldiers died and seeing Lyna's survivor's guilt. Seeing how having a single, unified goal can inspire and rally people into putting differences aside and helping each other.

Shadowbringers has finally ended with Patch 5.55. The story on the First ended with Patch 5.3. And all I can say is that this is a game that I will never forget.

[ilikeyoshi]

prompt time.... i remember feeling so fucking hopeless after mt gulg. the immersion was SO damn powerful, and i cried at the way everyone rallies to help the warrior of light through it.

shadowbringers spoilers, 820 words

cw for mentions of (attempted) suicide

-----------------

de·struct

/dəˈstrəkt/

verb

1. the deliberate causing of terminal damage.

The light of day had never stung L'aiha's eyes before she stepped foot in Norvrandt. More Seeker than not, her eyes were well adapted for bright skies above arid lands.

Yet now, even candlelight hurt to look at. She imagined even starlight would, had the sky not paled back to its sickly, primordial state.

But this time it was not monsters lairing in the far corners of the realm—it was her. This Light, this plague was a sickness within and without her.

She couldn't bear the people's worry. Though no one knew she was the Light's new source, their fear and anger and confusion felt like daggers to her chest. Every word a brutal reminder that so long as she lived, Norvrandt was doomed.

Emet-Selch had given her two options. Wait, and be consumed by the corruption. Or be killed, just for her burden to seek a new host.

Yet perhaps he had not considered if she merely died, alone, where the Light would have no place to go but into the Lifestream with her. Perhaps he thought mortals too selfish and feeble for such martyrdom. L'aiha, however, was not one to stop at the expectations of Ascians. It was a long shot, yet it would be hers to take.

She did not tell the Scions, nor her fellow Warriors of Light. She knew they could save the Source even in her absence; they were strong and of good hearts. Norvrandt would survive, and so would the Source.

So she left, traveling deep into the sands of Amh Araeng, where the corrupted go to die. Then she went farther still, to the suspended Flood of Light, where she set about scaling its highest point.

The Empty yawned before her, its white-hot sand searing her eyes. Twas where the Light came from, and now she would return it.

She closed her eyes, wincing through a spike in the pain of her splintering aether. Tears fell—not quiet or light, but ugly with a world's worth of grief.

"Nanamei," she croaked. "Aes'a... Save them."

She hiccuped and bowed her head.

"Forgive me."

She took a deep breath, lifting puffy eyes back to the blinding abyss that awaited her descent. She took one step, then two.

She was not afraid. She was only sorry.

A third step—

"Wicked WHITE!"

L'aiha staggered, a suspended foot clumsily grounded back to the frozen Light she stood on. She didn't turn, but she knew instantly who was with her—the only person that possibly could find her.

"Are you serious right now?" Ardbert snapped, the strain in his voice betraying horror beneath the flimsy facade of outrage.

She didn't answer.

"L'aiha!" he barked, storming to her side and grabbing onto her arm. "Look at me, damn it!"

Her body turned at the way he pulled her back, but her eyes stared still at the Empty. It burned her very soul, yet it was still less painful than facing her own guilt.

Ardbert's teeth shut with a loud clack, and given a moment, he tried to sigh away his high emotions. "L'aiha," he said again, far softer. "Please."

And slowly, finally, she met his eye. Crying still, even heavier than before. "It is here because of me," she whispered, miserable. "It's my fault—"

"It's that bastard Ascian's fault," Ardbert snapped at her. "It's the fault of a world that's been dying for a hundred years. Hells, it's my fault.

"Not yours. You hear me? You're not doing this, it's happening to you."

L'aiha sniffled, looking away again—this time to drop her head and shut her eyes. At a loss, or perhaps afraid she'd yet jump, Ardbert bundled the little miqo'te into his arms.

"Look," he hushed over her head. "I don't know what we're gonna do. But... your friends are working their arses off trying to figure it out. So it'd be a real shame to put all that effort to waste dying in the middle of nowhere. Don't you think?"

The only answer he got was a sob. It made him grimace.

"I don't know what to say that'll make you okay," he whispered. "But hells if I won't keep ranting until it comes out.

"Your friends need you. A whole two worlds of people need you. And I think I've known you long enough now to be sure you need you, alive, doing what you do best: helping people. Helping us. Me."

"What if I kill you all?" L'aiha cried.

"What if you find a way to purge this corruption once and for all, and shove it up Emet's arse for good measure?"

There it was: the thing he needed to say to make her okay. He knew it at once with the way she flinched, a mangled little laugh breaking free.

She lifted her head, face red and damp. But she clung to the weakest little smile. "I think I prefer your plan."

Ardbert grinned in turn. "That's the spirit."

[home-halone]

Weight of the World

AO3 // Being called the Warrior of Light carries a burden no one could ever fully grasp— save for one.

This one’s for the tiny pool of content for Ardbert stans, so here’s my contribution to the ghost bf.

----

As soon as she had the solitude and privacy of her own quarters, Caesia shut the doors behind her and slumped against them for support.

“Oh, fuck,” she exhaled, sinking onto the floor.

Her carbuncle leapt onto her lap and curled up in her arms. She glanced down at him, scratching his ears lightly.

“We’ve really got it going for us now. Twelve fuck me.”

Despite the warmth and kindness shown by the elusive Crystal Exarch, Caesia felt as though she held her breath from the minute she had arrived. She set Crouton aside and attempted to gather herself, but found that her knees buckled underneath her weight. The journey might have left her worse for wear, but it was her mind that wore her down.

Too much had been said too quickly, too casually for her to process. That an eternal nightless sky hangs aloft. That her friends yet live. That she had been designated the savior of a star unknown to her. That the flow of time may or may not be on her side while Eorzea is without its champion. It was in these moments she found herself missing friends she trusted implicitly.

But in the First, she had no one.

Her impulse was to set out and search for the Scions—some of whom had not seen her in five summers. The time she had possibly thought them at death’s door on the Source could not even compare to the twins’ twelvemoon on this shard. And yet Caesia had lost countless nights of sleep all the same. But there was no telling what could happen and how much time would pass if she would stay for a reunion, much less stay to rid the First of its ails.

The cutting tension between the Alliance and the Empire had frayed what little peace could be found in Eorzea. And each passing moment she spent away threatened to sway it in Garlemald’s favor. Everything she held dear could be lost in a war in her absence.

She pulled her knees to her chest. The very thought made her wince.

The entire ordeal had been so draining and disorienting that she had taken everything at face value. Who could even say that the Exarch had been truthful at all? Betrayal was not a foreign concept to her. Would it not be a wiser choice to fight for something she knew to be true? And what if hewere truthful? For someone to reach across time and space to enlist her aid, only for her to spurn his cause. Could she turn away at the expense of people he intended to save? For all her selfishness, she could not make a decision so cruel.

Caesia was roused from her thoughts when Crouton nipped at her blood-red robes. She returned the gesture by crouching down to stroke his fur. Her breath caught in her throat as she closed her eyes. If anyone could see her now, they would not recognize the ineffable Warrior of Light stripped of her confidence.

“I need some air, is all. Go on, get some rest.” She smiled weakly, nudging him in the opposite direction.

The carbuncle bumped his head against her leg a few more times, before retreating to a place out of sight— a location betrayed only by the sound of soft pitter-patter against the tiles.

Caesia finally took notice of the Exarch’s accommodations. Though not the most luxurious, it was perhaps the most inviting and comforting an inn room had ever been for her. A table with food and a flagon of ale prepared beforehand was a welcome kindness. And she needed every bit of kindness she could get.

“At least I get all this space to myself,” She sighed, crossing the room to the windows.

She fumbled with wresting the iron frames open, desperate to be rid of the suffocating thoughts. But with the sight of the swirling, bright “night” sky, the crushing weight in her ribs had not abated.

“Great,” Caesia laughed wryly. She gestured at the sky to no one in particular. “Really can’t catch a break today.”

But before she could pass a second more wallowing in her dilemma, an eerie distorted voice called out from behind her.

Immediately, Caesia whipped around, hand outstretched, arming herself with a spell. ‘Voidsent? Or would it be an Ascian?’

“…You…?” The aether violently swirled and warped into a humanoid form.

She had seen enough that neither seemed to fit the bill, but she could not take the risk. Caesia held her defensive stance until the swirling aether had parted and unveiled a familiar face.

“I know you…” He said, ”You’re the Warrior of Light from the Source!”

Caesia’s arm went slack, and she tilted her head in recognition, her raven hair following in a sweeping movement. It was, after all, a small blessing to find an ally of sorts in trying times.

“…The Warrior of Darkness? So you have made it home.” She scoffed, grinning for the first time since arriving. “Gods, don’t you know how to make an entrance.”

“What?” He seemed alarmed by her response, which in turn, alarmed her.

“…What do you mean ‘what’? Do you not recall, in Dravania—”

“Did you just… You can hear me!?” His eyes grew wide.

“Of course I can hear you, I’m speaking to you aren’t I?” She placed a hand on her hip. It was uncertain where this conversation was heading.

She had always thought he was a bit of an oddball with his unkempt hair, bravado and flair for drama. That had been her first impression of him, despite the dangers he and his friends had posed. Yet in the end, she could not help but empathize with their plight. They too served Hydaelyn as Warriors of Light, and they too wielded a strength and passion that changed the fate of their home. It was for that parallel that she found a softness in her heart.

“Oh, gods, how long has it been…?” He sighed heavily.

And as if suddenly remembering she was still in the room, he lifted his head and met her gaze.

“…Aye…aye, that was what I called myself in your world… The ‘Warrior of Darkness.’”

Caesia sucked the air through her teeth, clicking her tongue. “Yeah, that’s a mouthful. I don’t know if that’s going to cut it for me. I recall your friend calling you Arbert?”

He shook his head sheepishly.

“My real name is Ardbert.”

“Oh, misheard that one, then.”

“No… Not quite. I used an alias in the Source. A daft one, looking back…”

There was a hint of amusement in his voice and Caesia smiled in return.

“Alright, ‘Ardbert’ it is.” She said, seating herself within reach of the basketful of bread, breaking off a piece to snack on.

“And please don’t call me the ‘Warrior of Light.’ You know damn well how exhausting it is to be called that.”

He chuckled. “A fair point. It’s certainly an epithet I’d never asked for.”

“Nor I. Besides, even if you’d chosen it, the ‘Warrior of Darkness’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it either, no.” She said, brandishing the morsel in his direction as a gesture. “’So it’s Ardbert for you, Caesia for me.”

“Caesia, then.” He responded with an uncharacteristic fondness.

The ragged weariness in his voice was not lost on her. She furrowed her brow, as something in the way he spoke resonated with her, despite the lightness it carried. She knew too well the weight of his duty and how it had unfolded. Ardbert cast a long look out the window. He remained in silence, thoughts seemingly elsewhere though his gaze was fixed skyward.

“If you recall my tale, it was my comrades and I who caused the Flood.” He said quietly. “We thought our home doomed. And so we listened to the Ascians— let them guide us to the Source and tried to hasten their godsdamned Ardor.”

“Ah, that’s when you and your lot showed up. I won’t lie, you gave us one hell of a fight.” Caesia took another morsel to her lips.

“Well, I remember when we fell, defeated by you and yours.”

“You’re welcome,” She said, and gave him a bow, comical enough to elicit a half-chuckle.

“…And I remember our audience with Minfilia— how she listened to our pleas and returned our souls to the First.”

“Yes, that was the last I saw you. And here you are, on the First.” Caesia looked right at him, then off to the side. “Say, Ardbert, where is everyone else?”

“The Flood was poised to swallow Norvrandt… Minfilia and my friends, they…” He trailed off and broke eye contact.

It quickly occurred to her that it might not have been the best thing to ask. The heavy silence that followed said as much.

“They… surrendered what little they had left to hold it back. Just faded away.” He said. “Leaving me to bear witness.”

Caesia covered her mouth. Her thoughts turned to Minfilia. She and Urianger had suggested as much, and said as much would happen, but hearing it again after the events had unfolded made it real. She had hoped to find her again, somewhere, somehow perhaps with another audience with Hydaelyn, but that may not— would not— come to pass. Minfilia had faded away. Caesia understood that what had remained of the First— and the survival of those who thrived on it— was their doing. That everything yet existed, was because of them. Then her thoughts turned to Ardbert. She had lost a friend, but he lost four. What could she ever say that would make a difference? She watched him stare at the reminder of all their deeds hanging in the sky. His shoulders were tensed with resignation and the burden of his past. A burden he now carried alone.

He turned back to face her, as though something had occurred to him.

“Caesia, do you know the year? How much time has passed since we caused the Flood?”

Her heart sank. Does he not know?  She knew very little of the First and had few answers, but this was one she wished she did not have. Not when there was a sliver of hope in his voice that things might change. She looked down.

“Uh… a century, give or take.” Then she quickly added, hoping to soften the blow somehow. “At least, that’s what I’d heard.”

“A hundred years…” His voice cracked. “A hundred long years…”

Not one for verbal apologies, she poured him a cup of ale, and set it on the table for him. He had watched her do so, but his expression simply grew more defeated.

“I thought maybe you might need one. I know I do.” She poured herself one as well, and began to down it. Gods help her.

He remained at a distance, watching her drink and no doubt thought about her more somber expression despite her attempts at humor. She surmised as much, knowing her face well, and how easily her emotions were laid bare. He made his way towards his cup, locking eyes with her the entire time. His hand simply passed through the cup of ale.

Caesia’s eyes widened. “You can’t…?”

“No,” He shook his head, staring at his gloved hand.

“My hands find no purchase. My gestures catch no eye. And my pleas, be they whispered or screamed, reach not a single ear…” Ardbert lamented. “I am a shade, cursed to do naught but drift. I feel as if I’ve been walking forever… ”

“For a hundred years… Truly? Without ever interacting with anything or anyone. How have you not lost your sanity?” Words or tact were never her strong suit, but her voice carried her deepest sympathies. The pain she had imagined could never compare to his reality.

“Truthfully, I hardly noticed when my mind and body began to fray at the edges.” He lifted his head and gave her a wry smile. “Then ‘bang’, my senses were sharp again. I felt like a fish being reeled in and before I knew it, I found myself in this room.”

“Oddly enough, that accurately describes my harrowing day and how I’d found myself here.” Caesia shrugged and began to down the cup meant for him, wiping the corners of her mouth.

“But why is it that you can see me?”

“I want to say, ‘Perhaps our destinies are now intertwined.’” She said, batting her lashes. ”but it’s almost certainly because we’re both Warriors of Light. It’s a little tough to think about, given all our connections to each other.”

“I don’t know how you do that, back and forth, all serious and now sarcastic.” He said, gesturing to her. ”What are you even doing here, come to that?”

“In the least amount of words, supposedly, this figure called the Crystal Exarch had been attempting to conjure me out of thin air and successfully pulled me from The Source to the First. If you recall my companions, they too had been pulled here, though purely on accident. He hopes I would fight to preserve what remains of the First. I know naught of his intentions, but…”

“You were summoned to save the First? A waste of time.” Ardbert crossed his arms, and looked at her thoughtfully.

“Not when there are those who yet survive.” She offered.

“No, this world is beyond saving— like those who try to save it. Muddled as my mind may be, I’ve not forgotten that.” He said quietly. “But if fate has brought me to you—“

“Intertwined destinies, baby.” She said, taking another swig.

He paused in the middle of his thoughts, looking at her with a flat expression, while she smiled back.

“But if fate has brought me to you— the one person in this gods forsaken world who can see or hear me— then perhaps there is a reason I endured.”

“Perhaps. I’d like to believe you have a purpose, even if it is tied to me somehow. Because the alternative is, you’re just a ghost haunting my bedroom.” She snorted into her cup.

The thought occurred to him, and he frowned. “…Must you put it that way?”

“Hey, I don’t like it either.” She shrugged. “I’m saying you must have a purpose. Truly. I believe it.”

“If I can find out why I was left behind then maybe… maybe I can bring this journey of mine to an end…”

And it was all he could hope for at this point. For his weary soul to find rest after a century of wandering and bearing the guilt of the Flood. She could not help but feel mournful for their fates, his above the rest, though she had not known them in life.

“You will. I’ll make sure of it.” It was an outlandish promise to a man long gone in a land ravaged by light, but it seemed to be something she could set right. And she felt it to the core of her being.

“Well, I’ll be watching, Caesia.”

“Let me know if you do. At least I’d know it’s you when I feel like I'm being watched.”

He gave her a faint smile and turned to leave.  “Do me a favor. Be careful out there. This world has had its fill of heroes.”

Before she could get another word in, he was gone. She drummed her fingers on the table, staring at the two empty cups for a moment, then refilled one of them halfway.

“Not if I can help it.” She muttered, taking a generous sip. She wondered if she had found clarity and purpose.

[illegiblewords]

The Immortal Wound

He was right after all.

Despite herself and him and everything leading up to it, she does like Amaurot. Beyond its beauty, its peace, its serenity on the cusp of annihilation… there is something bitterly kind woven into the bones of its people. Of its shades and its spires and every glass reflection it catches.

Maybe his magic is to blame. Even so, it aches to see this place and know all she sees will slip between her fingers if she holds too tightly. So many grains of sand that cannot keep their shape.

It aches to know this is something he realizes as well. He’s called her to his monument of loss to lose herself, and for all his fury there is something touching in that too.

“Tread carefully,” Y’shtola warns her, as they part ways to consult what shadows dwell here. “Bright as you are, the aether of this place may be enough to drown even you. Should something happen we may not learn soon enough to reach your side.”

“I’ll be alright,” says the Warrior of Light (and it is of Light this day, overflowing as she is) “I’ll be careful.”

She does not know if this is a lie. Alisaie’s reprimand to Ryne rings in her ears.

But, well. There are some choices yet that belong to her alone.

She will take care of this. Does it really matter how she accomplishes the task?

Across the silent, windless streets. Past citizens debating moot points in circles. The purple-flowered trees that offer no scent of their own.

Only a lingering brine.

She does, eventually, find the edges of this place. They fade into darkness like fog or forgetting. Realizing the boundaries of his spell hurts too. A reminder of artifice.

By the time she’s realized this may not be the best location (at the border where dreams begin to unravel and Amaurot’s residents do not think to peer beyond their limits) it's done already.

She whistles once more. High and long and keening and distinct from all past attempts.

This time, the shades look up. Study her for several long moments, as if struggling in their stunted nature to grasp her presence. Her significance.

Slowly, inevitably, they drift about their business.

The Warrior waits.

***

“You aren’t going to change his mind, you know,” says Ardbert, arms folded across his chest. He isn’t looking at her but the space where fiction tumbles into nothing. Of course, nothing stirs.

“I know,” she answers. This truth sits heavy behind her ribs. A dead bird in its cage.

“He doesn’t love you.” This statement catches her off-guard, and she meets his gaze. Blue eyes on gray. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed. I’ve been trying to find the right moment to tell you, but… well, now’s as good a time as any.” A ghostly frown. He drops his scrutiny to his feet. “Look around. He loves this place. These people. Maybe, at best, who you used to be. He could never love you as you are.”

The Warrior of Light smiles. It hurts, but less than she expected.

An exhale.

“That’s alright,” she tells him, and it might even be half-true.

It’s better that he doesn’t love her. Any alternative feels too cruel under the circumstances.

“You can trust me,” she says, and cannot tell whether what she feels is resolve or resignation. It is certain either way.

“…You’re sure, now?”

She shuts her eyes.

He has the blood of billions on his hands. Norvrandt. The Source. Seven worlds equally rich.

He'd be stained with her too in a heartbeat.

“If I didn’t try, I would never forgive myself.”

***

Eventually, Emet-Selch comes.

More than anything, he looks haunted. His form is near doubled-over, eyes glassy, visage pale. Enduring some unseen injury. Even so, the Ascian finds it in himself to snap as he approaches.

“You,” he says, his mouth twisting in such a way that she can almost believe his anger, “are a fool. And you should know better than to keep playing games like this.”

The Warrior opens her mouth to speak.

“No,” says Emet-Selch. “No more jests. It was fun while it lasted, but time has run out. This is the end. You and I both knew what was coming. The occasion for stalling has passed.”

“You answered,” she says simply.

He stares at her for several moments. Something in his expression shifts. Hard, but not hostile.

“This will kill you,” says Emet-Selch at last. His attention passes over her, skirts aside. “If not your body then the rest. That light will sunder your soul once more, as surely as anything could.”

“Perhaps,” she says, and again shuts her eyes. Searches herself.

Seeks him out and extends her hand.

“You came to me offering peace. Does that still stand?”

For some time, he remains perfectly still. Unblinking.

Then his lip curls, and his eyes narrow, and he says with more venom than she has heard yet, “Oh don’t look at me so.”

The Warrior flinches.

Still, she does not withdraw.

“Is this begging?” he asks. “Do you really think after all that’s happened, everything I’ve told you, everything you’ve seen—“

He cuts himself off.

“What do you hope to gain in such invitations? My sympathy? My remorse?” The Ascian scoffs, irises like brass. “Please. Even by the standards of your kind this is idiocy.”

Something settles inside her. She keeps her stance as he sharpens his gaze.

“Do you really have no love for yourself? No fear? What of your friends? What of the countless lives depending on you?” He turns away. “If you were convinced to surrender after only a few words from me, your conviction must be truly pathetic.”

This, Emet-Selch pronounces syllable by syllable. As if talking to someone particularly dull.

“I’m not giving up,” says the Warrior of Light quietly.

He finds her again. Calculates. Recalculates. In pieces, some of the tension eases.

“G’raha is a good man,” she tells him. Her tone doesn’t waver. “Let him go.”

At this, Emet-Selch laughs. It draws his head backward, exposes white teeth to what light manages to reach this place. There is a hollow ring to it, and every gesture he makes resembles a marionette twitched into motion. Too exaggerated for truth.

“Has it not occurred to you that I have slaughtered better men than him a thousand times over?”

A half-step toward her. One of his hands spasms shut.

“Your Exarch can transcend space and time. With his innovations, we can recover the Thirteenth Shard before its fall. We can prevent so many disasters from unfolding, from even being conceived. We can—“

“Why should you think,” she asks softly, scarce more than a whisper, “that you’d stand a better chance of saving them now than you did then?”

It’s as if he’s been hit. She hears the breath leave him, sees his shoulders fall.

Strings cut.

What little color he had drains to nothing.

Thumb to temple. Index finger across forehead. He covers his eyes.

For several long moments after that, Emet-Selch does not move.

“I have to,” he says. It's almost a snarl. “You know I have to.”

The Warrior hesitates.

In his expression, she can see him tumbling backward into his own memories. His mistakes. His regrets.

The death of a world he blames himself for.

Then she says, no louder but perhaps kinder, “Come here.”

He looks.

Whatever their misgivings, he does take her hand. When she pulls him close there is no resistance.

***

She wasn’t sure what the difference between their aether would feel like.

Emet-Selch claimed exhaustion under the burning skies of Norvrandt. Its light floods her now—more than the vessel of a soul should rightly contain.

But an Ascian is tempered darkness, and that darkness comes born of unity. Of creation.

A steadying touch.

If it pains him, he does not say so.

 ***

She takes his hand again as he leads her through Amaurot.

No.

She takes his hand again as he leads her through his memory of Amaurot.

The Warrior does not smile. Emet-Selch does not sneer. He only pauses at the contact and looks back. A weary, unspoken question.

She squeezes gently.

They walk together.

 ***

Most of the trek is silent. When speaking risks shattering this fragile truce they’ve stolen, they take care to hold their tongues.

Only the dead speak here. Therefore, Ardbert lets his opinions be known directly.

 “You shouldn’t do this,” he informs her. It isn’t the first time he’s said as much.

They enter one of the buildings. Like others of similar design it is gray, tiered, with opalescent cornerstones far above. The doors open for Emet-Selch without so much as a gesture on his part. The lobby beyond proves ornate, shaped through woven beams and gold-on-marble patterns. They remind her, abstractly, of ripples in water. No windows but a lift waiting across the entrance.

“I mean it,” Ardbert goes on. “You’re making a mistake. There’s no middle ground here. He’ll kill you or he’ll watch you turn in front of him. You do know that, don’t you?”

Another set of doors open. Only Ascian and elezen board.

The Warrior exhales slowly, deliberately, through her nose.

“Trust me,” she says. Cautious. “I know what I’m doing.”

Ardbert keeps his feet on the ground. They leave him behind.

Emet-Selch, for his part, glances her way. “Do you?” he asks as they ascend. A hint of his preferred wryness colors the question.

Her expression goes taut. Then she says,  “It’s true I lack your longevity. Even so... time and time again it has fallen on me to decide who lives or dies for a greater good. As if that was ever my place.”

His jaw tenses, but he does not interrupt.

“Believe what you will,” says the Warrior. “Only know I feel the weight of my world as you feel yours. For that reason, I cannot take your path with less gravity than my own.”

They come to a stop. The doors open.

Emet-Selch sighs, and removes himself from her touch. Steps out into a short, narrow hall. Another door, like opaque glass, waits at the opposite end. Illuminated faintly from behind.

He approaches. She follows.

“Longevity,” says the Ascian, “is not my only quality you lack.”

They step inside.

***

On this floor, an entire side of the room consists of windows. She can see the skyscrapers, shimmering light-through-water, minuscule shades who wander below.

There is a desk, which appears less organized than she would have expected. The documents strewn across its surface have large sections crossed out, written in a script she can’t recognize. Although it’s impossible to be sure, there is an impression of mania—a jagged edge to Emet-Selch’s letters—that suggest sloppy penmanship.

One of the shelves holds assorted trinkets, from rings to cups to models for machines. Many of these are broken and rusted. One may have been a minion once, but its body falls unresponsive. These are meticulously arranged.

A gray couch, all straight lines and clean edges. Empty archways, beyond which she glimpses a bedchamber. A kitchen. Warm brown floors and muted walls with golden lines spiderwebbing between.

Mounted on every side are masks, so many there is scarcely space between them. Empty, ranging from red to gray to black and white with patterns streaking across their surfaces. Some are shattered. Some are whole. Only darkness waits where eyes should be.

Emet-Selch stops at the center of the room, his back to her. It seems, briefly, as if this is so far as his immediate plans go.

“What I hope for,” she says, scrutinized by a people long since fallen, “is to preserve more lives than I end. To protect those who can yet be saved.”

“A pretty sentiment,” replies Emet-Selch, unmoved. “But you would ask me to spare diseased beasts at the expense of my civilization.  By your broken nature, you are incapable of seeing how great the divide truly is.”

“What makes a person diseased?” demands the Warrior at last. He doesn’t so much as do her the dignity of turning. “Being mortal? Being fallible? Living with our limitations and finding happiness even there?”

She moves closer, puts a hand on his shoulder. Drags him to face her. At the back of her mind she sees Elidibus striking Minfilia down as she reached, sees Nabriales grinning as he dashed Moenbryda to the ground with one hand. When Emet-Selch yields to her touch, expression tired and perhaps even pitying, she knows in her heart any success she finds is only because he permits it.

Therefore, although the force remains in her voice... perhaps some of the anger abates. “What do you imagine happening should everything go right? Do you really think things will return to the way they were before?”

He shuts his eyes.

Once more, she hesitates.

What comes next is almost delicate.

“Life goes on and people change with it. You aren’t the same person you once were any more than I am. Any more than a person could be.” Again, there is no interruption. “Resurrect Amaurot to find them as they were or influenced by time, you can only meet disappointment.”

“Do you truly believe I don’t know that?” Emet-Selch asks simply, looking once more.

He removes himself without force or violence. The Warrior does not stop him.

“My time,” he says, as a statement of fact empty of rancor, “should have ended long ago. I remain because there is a task I have yet to complete, a responsibility no one can perform in my stead.” He pauses. “I will not entrust it to the others. But when this is over...”

Silence. His eyes are very bright.

“...my world will have need of neither heroes nor villains.”

She understands then that he doesn’t mean to survive so long as Amaurot does.

The resignation in his face, his voice, the weight of his shoulders, has built over ten thousand years. The only person with power to resist gave up long ago.

Hydaelyn’s chosen kisses him then. Once on the cheek. Again on the mouth. His expression does not alter, and she takes care not to press him.

“It is possible,” she murmurs, “to lose yourself in years.” Her hand finds his jaw, holds him. Keeps his gaze until there is no doubt in his attention, his recognition. “It doesn’t have to be like that,” insists the Warrior of Light, nesting her fingers in his hair. “It might not even be possible for it to be like that.”

He has no answer for her then.

“Why did you make this place?” She asks, scarcely more than a whisper.

Emet-Selch opens his mouth to speak. Stops. Glances down without pulling away.

At last, with a tremor that could almost suggest laughter, he says, “Everyone needs something. For me, well. Look around.”

She rubs her thumb back and forth, brings her remaining hand to his shoulder.

When he next speaks, there is no mistaking the tension in his voice for humor.

“I see her in you. Echoes of who she was, how she spoke. What she believed in.” A hard stop. He swallows, and she catches it in her palm. His arms stay at either side, and even were she not before him it seems likely the Ascian’s head would remain bowed.

When his voice breaks, she finds herself unprepared.

“...You have always been so kind to me.”

It is all she can do to meet him, to silence his tongue with her own. Anything to prevent things from falling apart more than they have.

Stalling. Forever stalling for more time.

When he holds her back it is too tight, almost painfully so. Something that might slip away at any moment, sundered and scattered never to be whole again.

There is a sound that comes with every breath as he searches her hips, her shoulder-blades. Not words or language but the impression of his voice withheld. In that instant, she understands perfectly.

He already has her. Therefore she uses both hands to pull his face nearer still. Although she relinquishes his mouth, their noses brush and she can feel the heat rising under his skin.

“Tell me your name,” she says, and they are close enough that surely he can feel the shape of her words in the air between them.

“Hades,” he breathes, at last devoid of chiding and excuses. “My name is Hades."

***

His expression grows panicked when they collide with the desk. It’s only an instant, just after the small of his back hits metal.

Even so.

A flare of urgency on her part. He must not flee now, hurling himself down a dark corridor. The Warrior finds his throat at the exposed skin above his collar and moves.

Her teeth graze the space, and when she sucks there is something gratifying in shattering the silence he so determinedly strives for.

Loud, strangled, not a moan so much as a cry. He fumbles to find an edge, to find anything he can hold onto. Braces himself. One of her hands has woven into the base of his skull, and between her lips she can feel the way his breath hitches, the way his heart races as she refuses to let him go.

“Please,” Hades gasps. And the Warrior well knows when to press her advantage, so of course she does.

Harder now.

Enough that it will show.

Under the insufferably heavy robes he insists upon, past the moan she does pull from him eventually, he stiffens.

And she finds one of his hands pushed, firmly, into her shoulder.

He could have done any number of things. Shoved her. Thrown her.

He’s asking.

She lets go, disentangling herself as she steps away.

The man before her is flushed, breathing ragged, scarcely balanced against collapse. Unfocused, he clings to awareness like one drugged.

“Hades,” she says quietly, and he breathes a little deeper, features briefly exposing pain.

“If I…” he manages, hoarsely, and it hits that he doesn’t even see her, doesn’t see this place. “…won’t last… you’re not…”

This is someone who wants to go home so desperately that he’s built a world from memory and imagination to live in. Scripted conversations, their paths rehearsed day after day. If the Ondo are to be believed, he did this generations before she was so much as a glimmer.

Plunged deep under a foreign sea, Emet-Selch is drowning.

When she approaches once more, tentative, he doesn’t react.

“I am here,” she murmurs, fingers unfastening the clasp at his neck. “I’ll be alright, and so will you… Please. Stay for now.”

As she makes her way down his robes, peeling back layers of fur and silk, he leans his face into her shoulder. Neither helping nor hindering. And although she notices, the Warrior spares him the embarrassment of commentary as damp spreads across her skin.

***

He’s lean under the epaulettes, and he knows this body in enough detail to include its history.

There is a mole on his right forearm, and a faint scar at one knee. The kind someone might get while climbing a tree as a child. She wonders if this is a legacy of his original host or one of his own past accomplishments.

When the cloak slides from his back, she follows its descent with one hand. This makes him shiver, but it doesn’t make him look up.

Briefly, she wonders whether the Empress of Garlemald saw him thus. If any partners before her did.

The idea of him fucking with an empty expression on his face is enough to make her cold.

“You’ll be alright,” she whispers again, and although they both know this to be a lie it is something she wishes with all her heart.

***

She takes his hands in her own, kisses the joints of his fingers before placing them at the top buckle of her coat.

“If you would,” she says, “pretend for a while that your worst conclusions no longer exist. We have a moment, and they won’t serve it any good.”

“What a stupidly mortal thing to say,” Hades replies at last. If his words are a little unsteady, they do carry a hint of his usual ease.

Slowly, deliberately, he begins the task of removing her clothes in turn. His hands are shaking when the leathers part around her navel. He stares a moment, then presses a kiss to her collarbone. Lingers there.

“I miss you,” he confesses. “I’ve always missed you. And there are questions I would ask that you can no longer answer…”

His thumbs hook the waist of her breeches, hold there. He looks to her face and seems to trace it. Searching.

“…I know your own history escapes,” he says quietly. “This is your lifetime. It isn’t supposed to be—“

She kisses him again.

After a moment he exhales. Relaxes.

They part.

“Forgive me,” says Hades.

“I do,” says the Warrior of Light, and there is grief in her smile but she means it. “Don’t overthink this. Let it be something good.”

He steps in, off the desk, and she is forced to move back to accommodate as he kneels. Presses his own kiss to her stomach as he drags her smallclothes down with the rest.

The nip is a surprise, and when she yelps the wolfish grin he gifts her is familiar.

“Not here,” he says, as if it were only natural. “Come with me.”

***

When he holds out his hand, she takes it.

***

“It seems empty.”

The bed isn’t made. The windows are frosted over. The walls are bare.

She knows not what she expected to find, but for every small way he betrays himself, Emet-Selch’s room is remarkably barren.

He looks down. A faint, bitter smile crosses his face and is gone.

“Nothing escapes you.”

He steps behind her. Presses lips to vertebra, arms folding across her chest.

Not hard yet, but she can feel him. It’s more reassuring than she expected, something else to put him in kind with other men.

At least in this vessel.

“When I come here to sleep,” he says, “remembering is counterproductive.” Another kiss, trailing right. “As is scheming.” Another. “As is impressing guests.”

“Mm.” She shifts against him experimentally, receives a surprised almost-laugh in response. “…how would you impress a guest, if you felt so inclined?”

He rests his chin on her shoulder. Eyes closed. “With myself, mostly.”

Make believe things are fine.

“…how would you have impressed me?”

He stills.

“With myself,” he repeats, more softly, “but not in a way you could manage. Not as you are.”

The Warrior considers. Tilts her head back.

“I’d like to see you,” she says quietly. “As much as you can share.”

At first, Emet-Selch neither moves nor replies.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks at last. “The Oracle’s protection will fade ere long. You know what comes next.”

He promised her madness. He promised her the end of a world.

It takes thought, to answer without lying.

“With our circumstances, we don’t owe each other trust,” she admits. “Or faith. Or kindness. I noticed when you offered them even so.”

More deliberation.

She sighs.

“Woe unto me, I’ve been persuaded to care about you,” she concedes. “Only declare that this has been a ruse from the start and I’ll look terribly foolish.”

“Tempting,” he says, and then nothing. Nothing for so long that she can only assume he is weighing her words with precision.

“Everything I’ve told you,” he echoes, “has been the truth.”

***

She gets onto the bed before him, back to the mattress.

He lingers.

“For an Ascian,” says Emet-Selch softly, “it is only to be expected that the limits of flesh impact us while inhabiting vessels. We are immune to neither pleasure nor pain… it only happens that our tolerance is somewhat higher than yours.”

A pause.

Still, he waits at the edge. Not-looking.

“Our way is more intimate than physicality by itself. It is a… a meeting of aether between equals. Exploring each other’s secrets. Making love to every choice, every memory, every insignificant piece of what makes you who you are.”

His arms are folded over his chest, holding himself.

“You would become lost in me. I would be left wanting in you.”

Stalling.

“Hades,” says the Warrior of Light. “I’d like to see you.”

And she smiles.

***

He straddles her, leans in close. The mark on his neck is flush and darkening. She presses her thumb over it, strokes the space. A grin twitches across his features, involuntary. Honest.

“My turn,” he says hoarsely, and there is a flash of red as the glyph obscures him.

He finds the space at the corner of her jaw, the pulse beneath the surface. Teeth and heat and wet and the impression of something not-quite solid. Hooks and horns and wings pressed flat into light, the glow humming at the heart of the abyss.

Beneath, a mortal mask she knows. Beneath that, the mask of his kind. A pair of pale, twin arches. Sound waves or rain on calm water expanding in rings.

He reaches for her with his tongue and his aether and his hand tangled in her hair, she feels something slide behind her ribs beating beating the black stain of him like a drop of ink against the sun. Briefly he almost shrinks back, scraping as he bites as she shouts stripped of language one of her legs meets his back searching for something to hold onto in vain.

Hades pushes further, cold and solid and alive, and she feels him shudder as she lets strands of her self (too much light, an entire world’s worth of light) wind around this anchor examine—

wide-eyed prayer against the bodies of children parents brothers sisters friends teachers lovers strangers Amaurot Amaurot bleeding over marble the howl of beasts the secret cruelty of men is anybody listening is anybody there we offer anything I offer everything take it please my god my Father save something please save us

a hitch, he moves lower finds the space between her breasts knees sliding backward she grips his waist between her thighs

on the field of war she prepares he begs her would die to keep her from this she does not care completes her ritual with those who remain who would throw their lives away what is left proves empty endless it matters not how desperately he calls her name

“Wait,” he breathes, she tightens her hold he inhales sharply arms buckle

I love you he told her I love you the silver winding hair her blood of creation against eternity it was he who lit the lamps it was he who gave the stars it was he who gifted small machines to make her smile even as she offered birds fish serpents lions vines twining around his wrists holding him fast

stomach, he is almost reverent mouths something she can’t hear (this is her womb, her particular vessel of creation) nails catch his back drag reminders into his skin

here I am

early battles saw man spilling himself across the dirt pink sinew yellow fat they wore pieces of each other as trophies like jewelry sick and shaking he sees fault my fault things he never imagined his people were capable of end of the world until the end of time

darkness coiling pooling inside her with his tongue between her legs hot and slick and searching feverishly

he tells his wife who is sweet and gentle and so fragile she says nothing for hours afterward in bed she stabs him to death demon butcher liar traitor too shocked to fight back he lets go

she streams to meet him finds his hair and pulls red behind the symbol that marks him Ascian breathing hard expression slack she wonders what he sees twines her aether deeper threading the core of him like roots he chokes she twists them as one

Elidibus found him unresponsive in-between and he didn’t want to be awake anymore Elidibus gripped him hard enough to hurt it’s not real he said it has never been real stop placing yourself beside them when all they offer is pain please

please let me sleep

she has him under her finds where the blade entered ages past and kisses him there, finds another spot to follow scars he neglected to include wonders how many more she hasn’t seen

countless small betrayals petty hatreds it doesn’t take true ugliness to inspire it a word misplaced a liberty taken he wants to go home he wants more than anything to go home

“Please,” he whispers, she latches to his mouth tastes herself she wants him to coat her the same way she is too bright to be swallowed as he fears

the streets of Amaurot at night hand in hand her head on his shoulder she maps his constellations warm and delicate he had no grasp then that such happiness could end each time he remembers it rips the wound open once again

***

At the core of him something hungers, something keens, something collapsed entirely past reason. She finds Hades mutilated by time, flooded with darkness nearly feral in need of a world long gone—

she knows.

The light encircles him and he flinches, she cannot make herself less than she is now but nonetheless she is here.

Like a pupil contracted, like a black hole, he has concentrated his being into something impossibly small and dense.

She cannot smooth the edges of him, cannot undo the damage of eons.

Perhaps once, when he was newly tempered, he would have refused any contact with her light. His hatred of Hydaelyn, still a powerful thing now, would have won over all else.

But he is so lonely.

When she touches him, he can’t help but respond. Can’t help but move into the first contact he’s had in ages. It matters not that she’s incomplete, hers is the soul he’s longed for.

Slowly, his grip on himself begins to come loose.

***

“Stop” he says, voice rough and frantic as he reaches for the side of the bed.

She stops.

“Hades?”

He wants to pull away, isn’t aware enough or coordinated enough for a portal. Let alone while their aether remains thus enmeshed.

She gets off. The Ascian manages to roll over, to prop himself on hands and knees. Slides his legs over the side.

“What is it?” asks the Warrior of Light, and this is too much. He stops, puts his face in one hand.

It’s all so quiet. She can see his throat working as if he’s trying to speak, but nothing comes.

Tentative, she rests her palm along his spine.

“I know it isn’t real,” he says at last, the words quick and clipped and no less agonized for that. “None of it. Not you. Not this place. Not what I…”

She encircles him from behind, rests her head on his shoulder-blade.

“I’ve drawn this from my own mind because the… the shell of Amaurot. Its broken buildings. Its people… naught remained. I know what you are, and she’s…”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh…” says the Warrior.

Silence. Beneath her ear, she can hear faintly the aborted efforts of his voice, his lungs.

“They’re gone,” he manages eventually. “More sacrifice.”

She folds her arms up over his chest.

“I’m with you now,” she tells him softly. “I’m real.”

A terrible sound, like a sob. Something constricts.

“Hades,” she says again, “Hades, listen to me. You’re not alone.” Lips to skin, warm and insistent. “I beg of you… allow yourself this respite. Time is short.”

“A fantasy,” he says, his voice high and stilted. “A p-pretty fantasy and nothing more.”

“Even so,” says the Warrior.

She hesitates.

“The reality of our situation will come whatever we will,” she tells him. “So have mercy. Make something better to recall.”

He stills beneath her.

The name he says belongs to a stranger, but it is no less hers for that.

“I… I don’t know what will become of it all, should I…”

The Warrior of Light sighs. Shuts her eyes.

Holds him closer just the same.

“I’m so sorry,” she says in almost a whisper. “I wish it wasn’t like this, but it is.”

She presses her mouth firm, struggling with the words she knows must come next.

“Pretend with me,” she tells him. “I promise I’ll… I won’t let anything bad happen. I swear it.”

In her arms, in increments, he allows himself to breathe.

She waits.

He could interrogate her. He could denounce her. He could belittle her fragmented strength and the absurdity of her offer.

“Alright,” he says instead, so quietly that she wonders whether it is for himself. “The pretty fantasy it is, then.”

***

When at last she begins to get up, he only watches her. Not listless but resigned. Any curiosity he shows is passive.

When she kneels before him, her hands on his knees, he stops her.

“You’re aren’t planning to…?”

She meets his eyes, finds herself bewildered at catching him bewildered.

A moment passes.

“It only seems fair…” she tells him, less certain under questioning.

Another moment.

“I’m… you seem like you could use it,” she elaborates. “I wasn’t going to make you move, so I thought—“

He smiles, exhaling what might have been a laugh.

Rests his hand on her head.

“I’ll have you know,” says Hades, and it is such a relief to hear him speak easily again, “that sundered as you are, I am still very fond of you.”

He leans in. Presses a kiss to her brow.

It is perhaps one of his warmest gestures toward her—not born of memory or need or circumstance. Unbidden, she finds herself smiling back. Blinking away the sting of her own vision.

“That way,” he says quietly, “doesn’t offer me anything particularly novel. I’ll be best pleased by having you by my side.”

***

She wants him to remember in the echo of her touch, in every place her aether takes root and blooms within him.

When the world was whole he marveled at the land around him, wove structures into stone and steel like living things. She learns his cleverness and mischief made her laugh even then. When first she stole his breath with a kiss, it stunned him silent. And she smiled, and she wished him good night, and she proved undaunted in every way that he was not.

She explains how she loves him, still and always, in the way her lips linger at his shin. The scar on his knee. The bony angle of his hip and the flow of blood to his groin. Lower abdomen, upper abdomen, the vulnerable flesh that is his mortal body. Further to where vitals work to sustain the soul which overwhelms them.

When he invited her to his home for drinks and collaboration, they found themselves dancing in each other’s arms. Inebriated, clumsy, undignified—giggling like children at their own missteps. Beyond his window the moon was full, and Amaurot gleamed, and this time he kissed her instead.

He pulls her back into bed with him. She meets each eyelid, the tip of his nose, his mouth. She does not relinquish her hold even as he turns her, positions himself above. The Warrior clasps Hades’ face with both hands, guides her aether to the most withered parts of him she can find and overflows. In return he seeks her like a lifeline, graceless and grasping at the fractured corners of her soul. She bites his bottom lip on a whim, earns a moan as her reward. Then this gap between them seals once more.

They memorized the city together, not in a matter of years but centuries. Every face, every voice, every street, every hall. Each of their number constantly testing boundaries of what was possible, what could be imagined. Each of them sparking off their fellows. They shared the casual intimacy of the familiar, celebrated one’s epiphany as if it were their own. An unfathomable connection today.

Her voice catches as he enters, smooth and firm and practiced. His body accustomed to gestures aether has forgotten. Like surface tension breaking, as Hades plunges deep she comes to meet him. Acts as guide to corners he can exploit, hot and throbbing across nerves to fingertips. The Warrior shouts as darkness lances through, curls her toes. Arches and tries to pull him further past any capacity for escape.

He is marked through his habits. The way hair forms odd angles upon waking. The way he hums to fill silence. His care in turning pages and his precision at drafting tables. Emet-Selch used to surprise her occasionally in remade dishes that took his fancy. By following lightning overhead with his eyes. She feels, pressing into these details, everything he’s surrendered since then. The warmth of watching him stir replaced by despair. With nothing waiting for him, day after day he throws himself back into dreams.

Wet, encircling with arms and legs and cunt, she whispers “you’re mine” into a mouth swollen from ministrations. And as she draws herself tighter, putting pressure against his cock, he cries out and his hips spasm and she refuses him relief. Pushes closer still, grinding from below to snag his voice. Eyes wide. Catching every tremor in his lips and every blind, wordless answer. Barely a grunt repeated louder as she insists as she permits no rest as she traps him in the brilliant force of her you will never be rid of me now.

And at last, something snaps and he jerks hard enough to bruise glyph flaring and going out and there isn’t enough left of him to say her name when he comes. Sticky-hot and seeking, captive to her and his vessel pouring out.

Eventually his body ceases to rock of its own accord, not at once but in pieces. Sightless, trying to form words, slowly softening inside her.

The Warrior starts to relax, and there is a single, violent shudder as Hades sinks. Still unseeing, still unspeaking despite his efforts. Limp.

***

Extricating herself she turns him onto his back, leans over his chest and with one hand gently pushes the hair from his eyes.

“Stay with me…” he manages at last, barely audible at all. “…I can’t…”

This will kill you. If not your body then the rest. That light will sunder your soul once more, as surely as anything could.

She closes her eyes as her own sight blurs as tears inevitably escape to roll down her cheeks. The Warrior of Light kisses Emet-Selch once, tenderly, and only replies “I will.”

***

Their aether remains locked even after their bodies have separated. Although he tries to withdraw, the effort proves feeble.

She holds fast.

Eventually, he stops trying.

Hades has lost both will and energy to resist her light.

***

He struggles to shift position, moves sluggishly. When Hydaelyn’s chosen realizes he wants to hold her, she assists him.

His arms rest around her waist, one ear flat against her thigh. Eyes glazed, she wonders if he’s even noticed her aid.

She strokes his head, his back. Listens as the uneven breathing slowly begins to calm.

He’s warmer now, moist with sweat and interrupted by her touch. Bright against the pallor of his skin, she examines where she met him with nails. With teeth. It’s more worrying than she thought it would be.

Hurting him now would be frighteningly easy.

“…asked me…”

The Warrior stills. Checks his face. Finds him fading, lids half-shut already.

“Hades?” she says quietly. Her fingers prickle against his undercut.

Nothing.

Nothing for several moments.

Then he seems to collect himself, if only just. Finds her through a haze.

“…you asked me, before,” he says. “What I… what I know of you.”

Strands of hair slide across his nose again. Smiling faintly, she tucks them behind the exposed ear. “I did,” she replies simply. “I liked your answer.”

Tension as he tries to shake his head without lifting it.

Emet-Selch quirks his lips. “Charity,” he admonishes. “I didn’t… not a proper…”

She bends, plants a kiss against his scalp. “You owe yourself more credit.”

A laugh. Faint, affectionate this time. “…tried to perfume a chocobo. Bloody fool.”

Her mouth parts, aghast.

“Don’t tell me that’s what you…”

He smiles a little wider. Shuts his eyes entirely. “Bending over backwards, always… always making time. You’ve always offered a… offered kindness. Your word. Your heart.”

His smile fades.

“…moments lost, and those around you didn’t… couldn’t see it. Asked too much.”

He nuzzles her leg gently. Kisses her there.

“…kind of you… always your mistake.”

A soft exhale, through her nose. She brushes her thumb across his brow.

“I love you,” she murmurs, and it is such a simple thing to say. A truth like the swell of the moon, the curl of a wave. “I’m glad you came back. That you’re here to see.”

The tremor of a breath taken. He whispers her name.

Her name, and hers alone.

***

"I thought I’d seen you for the last time."

She listens to the sound of his voice. Of his heartbeat.

“I’m with you now,” she tells him, tears spilling hot and unrestrained and silent. “I’ll be with you until the end. I promise.”

Her answer satisfies him.

“And I do love you,” he breathes. “Always have.”

***

This is how he falls asleep in her arms.

At peace as she has ever seen him.

***

Thy Life is a riddle, to bear rapture and sorrow

***

“It’s alright,” she whispers to the air. “I promise you.”

***

Eventually, as she understood from the beginning, time runs out.

“Are you ready?” asks Ardbert softly from the entrance.

The Warrior looks down at herself. Looks at the silent and exhausted form of Hades.

“Yes,” she tells him quietly. “But be wary if you embarrass easy.”

Ardbert does not laugh, and the smile that crosses his face is joyless.

“Funny,” he says as he enters, “somehow it just doesn’t seem important anymore.”

He doesn’t meet her eyes. Entirely avoids Emet-Selch.

“I think,” says Ardbert carefully, “that I know what you mean to do.”

The Warrior can’t bring herself to reply. Runs her fingers across the back of her lover’s neck.

He doesn’t stir.

“Maybe it really is the best way,” says Ardbert.

Don’t make a decision that leaves you alone.

She shuts her eyes.

Their voice.

Their heartbeat.

“I’ll be with you,” Ardbert tells her. “I knew almost as soon as we came to this place. With me, we can be…”

Quick.

Clean.

Merciful.

***

As one.

***

She prays to Hydaelyn in silence.

I remember the evil you placed at the feet of Lahabrea.

I remember what you called them.

These… these are the dark minions of which you spoke.

She hesitates. Hears the even breathing of a man in her lap.

They’re only people, she thinks. They have only ever been people. And though they must needs be stopped, what they’ve been forced to endure is unforgivable.

What he has been forced to endure.

Do not forget you bear responsibility in this, Mother.

As do I.

Her vision burns, blurs.

Have compassion now. For him and me both.

He is more than Emet-Selch.

Hades tried. For eons, he bore the weight of a world that was never coming back. A world he couldn’t save. There were innumerable betrayals and disappointments and doubts.

More loss than could be borne by a single life.

He had no choice. Zodiark claimed him upon staying the death of a world.

As he had to.

As I have to.

Hydaelyn.

Let his dreams be sweet for what remains of his life. Let this be an end to pain. Relieve his burden.

Set him free.

***

To listen, to suffer, to entrust unto tomorrow

***

A blade of light.

An entire world of light.

“I promise you.”

In bliss rather than despair.

Thus does the Warrior of Light slay Emet-Selch in his sleep.

***

In one fleeting moment, from the Land doth life flow

***

He does not wake.

Despite the blow’s force, when what crystalized aether remains of him dissolves it is gentle.

***

Again, for the last time, a terrible wail resounds with the death of Amaurot.

***

G’raha is with them.

“We have to hurry,” he says, leaning against Thancred for support. Striding past the indifferent shades, striding to where her aether flared like a beacon. “It may already be too late.”

Yet there she is, waiting outside. Disheveled and red-eyed and wholly herself.

“Emet-Selch is no more,” she tells them simply, and does not smile as she says so.

As one, they hesitate.

As one, they wonder.

“…how do you fare?” Alisaie asks. It is a strange care with which she chooses her words.

None of them have seen the Warrior in such a state before.

This time she does smile. With it comes the weight of her grief. She pats the younger elezen on the head lightly as she passes.

“It’s alright,” she tells her. “I promise.”

***

Yet in one fleeting moment, for anew it doth grow

In the same fleeting moment thou must live, die and know

[historicrystalis]

Headcanons; Crystal Exarch

And with that chapter of the story written down, on he goes to the next chapter of his life, the Crystal Exarch.

Two hundred years after G’raha Tia goes to sleep, he is woken up by the survivors of the horrors of the Eighth Umbral Calamity. He is woken up to a world in ruins, a world at war with itself, and discovers the tragedy that he slept through. The Scions dead, the Warrior of Light dead, the Garlean Empire unleashing a weapon that killed thousands and ruined the world.

Heartbroken and horrified, he spends many years working to help them with their plan --- to throw the Tower back into the past, into the First, using the plans and designs left by Cid Garlond and Nero Scaeva, designs using their travails with Alexander and Omega both --- to save the world. To go back, to find the Warrior before they fall, and to save the First and save the Source in so doing. They had lit his path, inspired him, meant so much to him, and...even more so, as he traveled the ruined world, finding what was left behind by those whose lives they’d touched, reading their story in books and records, the stories of Ishgard, of Ala Mhigo, of Doma. 

Finally, finally, it was ready, and with the hopes, dreams, and prayers of the people of this apocalyptic wasteland in his heart and on his shoulders, he set forth back in time and across space, hoping to get there in time to save them all.

However, the Tycoon module within the Tower --- Cid and Nero and Garlond Ironworks’ legacy --- overshot a little in its enthusiasm, and he ended up on the First...90 years early, give or take. Ten years after the Flood was stopped and the Oracle and Ardbert and his group died (or rather, ‘died’, in Ardbert himself’s case).

Not knowing for sure at the time how long ahead he’d overshot, and finding himself the custodian of a bedraggled group of survivors in Lakeland where the Tower had landed, G’raha Tia fused himself with the Crystal Tower --- the Archon marks did stop his aging, yes, but he didn’t know how long he’d need to wait, and he needed this power to protect the people now in his care. He needed the power to hold on until the Warrior was come. So he became one with the Tower, and became the Crystal Exarch.

Over the years of helping build and guard and run the Crystarium, his memories began to fade and blur, both from time and from his link with the Tower. By the time things drew close, and he was readying to call the Warrior to his side, he had quite forgotten he had ever been part of their story personally. Oh, he remembered fragments, things he’d spoken to old friends of, his going to sleep, but he had forgotten he knew them, and even if he had remembered --- a little voice told him why would they ever remember him? It was a foolish little hope. All he could ask was that he was part of their story now, at his own’s end. To make sure it wasn’t their end, to keep their story going.

Eventually, he picked up a little orphan Viis named Lyna, and despite himself --- something poking memories he couldn’t name, the forgotten echoes of another child taken in by a wise caretaker --- he took her in, and raised her as best he could. She was a serious, brave, blunt sort, but he loves her dearly, and even if she still treats him more like a leader than a grandfather at times, she does fuss over him quite a bit, and for a while she was the only one he could let his guard down a little around.

He did not mean to Call the other Scions, and was very apologetic about it, but in the end, they proved valuable allies, especially Urianger, who was willing to help him with his plan --- the Exarch (his name was a blurry faded thing, too) was glad, because the stories had shown the man to be quite pragmatic and clever when it was necessary, but he was...unsure of why the man seemed so upset when he brought it up. He had forgotten his own family, only knew the Scions as those in the stories and tales, only knew them as distant heroes. He could not recall his own place in their narrative.

And then the Warrior came, and called him G’raha Tia. And then the story went on, and he watched his inspiration and his lodestar fight on, fight for the First and their own world, and he felt guilty for his part in the plan and their own pain, worried and fussed for them, wanted for them nothing but peace and happiness and to have a small part in their story before his came to a close.

But then they--- his story didn’t. Certainly the Ascian shooting him in the bloody back wasn’t very fun, but he didn’t die. He was terrified for the Warrior, of course, having been unable to take the Light inside of them, and overwhelmed and vaguely traumatized by the sudden return of the rest of his memories --- they and his old playfulness had been slowly returning along the way, especially that time they spent with the Warrior dealing with Tomra, and that quiet talk on the hill before Mt. Gulg, but in that final confrontation after Innocence it all came rushing back, the Warrior and the Scions and his role in all of their stories --- but at the same time, to be in Amaurot, and to learn of all of the stories here...it was fascinating.

Emet-Selch stuck him in the upper floors of the Capitol and left him there while he went to deal with the Warrior and Scions, and he spent that time wandering the building --- well, limping around it --- and trying to read and learn everything he could. He was very impressed with the thoroughness of the illusion, and very sad to see all of what was lost. He didn’t learn anything important of Zodiark or their plans, no, but he found a great many things of personal interest in the Convocants’ offices. The offices of leaders, of normal men and women who led a city, who had day to day work and the like. It was the remains of a tragedy, like walking into an empty building after all its inhabitants had died and seeing the things they left behind. To discover Emet-Selch was a historian like him, a chronicler of people and their stories was...fascinating, and he tried to speak with the man when he returned briefly before the final confrontation, but got knocked around a bit for his troubles.

He did briefly meet an aware shade while he was licking his wounds, a man named Hythlodaeus, and they spoke briefly. It was an interesting and sad little conversation, one he intends to keep to himself. 

He was still able to, despite his injuries, join the fray at the end, summon the Warrior some allies across time and space to fight Hades, and in the end...he got to go home, too. With his dear friend, his family. Who knew him and remembered him, remembered G’raha Tia. Those who had--- those whose story he had always been part of, even if he had forgotten it. And that was the greatest gift, if he were to be selfish: that the First and Source were safe was wonderful, and he was blessed to know that the people of the Crystarium were safe, but...to have that knowledge, to know that he was a part of a hero’s story at long last, and had ever been...it meant the world to him.

As of now he’s working on a way to help get the other Scions home, or maybe open a permanent way between the worlds, and trying to write down all he’d learned in Amaurot, as well as this tale, and wondering if he couldn’t ask one of the Warriors to go back and bring him more records from the illusory city. And maybe trying to get used to wearing his hood down? He has much to do, still! Not that he minds doing it.

[crossroadsdimension]

There were monsters made of light here. Because of course there were in a world that only had day.

And the stranger had a name now, at least. Or a title. “Crystal Exarch.” Better to call him something, at least.

And Cross certainly had a number of names for him, and made sure he knew she wasn’t pleased at his choice of timing. “I was in the middle of a fight with an Ascian when you called me last. You could’ve sent a message and asked BEFORE you started trying to knock down doors! You could’ve killed me if someone hadn’t come to my rescue!”

That got a wince from the Exarch. “Ah...yes. My sincerest apologies. Events here forced my hand to move sooner than I would have liked. If we had had the choice, we would not have called you at all.”

Well. At least that was something.

He led her the rest of the way to the Crystarium, and showed her around the space. No one here knowing of the Source, or her own world, was a bit understandable -- it wasn’t like she’d known, before the Ascian business started. Saying that she could use the Exarch’s “homeland” as an excuse not to be asked questions raised some questions of her own, but she decided not to ask them.

The fact that Miqo’te were called Mystel here was confusing. The fact that Warriors of Light were what caused the Flood of Light, and were now blamed as villains, was even more alarming. Cross couldn’t go by the title “Warrior of Light” here, not at all. And certainly not after a century since the Flood.

Granted, she’d known that the Warriors of Darkness had caused something to upset the balance on their world, but learning that they’d become villains in their world’s narrative, and that the world was barely surviving as it was...Cross had a lot to think about.

(The only other thing to worry about, besides the Warriors of Darkness’ reputation, was that the Exarch had yanked the Crystal Tower from the source at some point. Since it was still there in her present, it had to have happened in the future, so G’raha Tia had to be somewhere around there. Except...he wasn’t. Cross didn’t want to think of what that meant.)

Exarch offered to give her a place to sleep for the night and think about what she’d learned -- after making a pact with a pixie of all things in order to get her materials from the Source. She’d had to make a pact with a voidsent in order to pick up a reaper’s scythe, so she hoped the two wouldn’t have problems....or that she wouldn’t have problems with them both.

A room in the Pendants was hers to rest in...and apparently get visits in.

Cross’ eyes nearly bugged out of her head when she found out that the Warrior of Darkness was a ghost, in her room. A ghost who was equal parts relieved to find he could be seen and heard, and alarmed that Cross was on the First. He told her to be careful, and that the world had had its full share of heroes.

It saddened some part of her, to see that Ardbert was so defeated. The world he’d fought so hard to save, and now it had turned its back on him, blamed him for everything that had happened.

The Exarch gave her more to think about the following morning. The flow of time was different between worlds -- Alisaie and Alphinaud had been here for a year, Y’shtola and Urianger had been here for three, and Thancred had been here for five. Well, that certainly explained why the First had moved forward a century when barely that much time had passed on the Source.

Still -- all this time, trapped on another world, souls wandering around with a physical form but nothing else from home. At least the Scions were finding ways to learn about the world and try to stop the Light-based disaster from overtaking everything.

The Exarch showed Cross a map, pointing out the locations of everyone he knew. Thancred was apparently off wandering the land somewhere, but Cross was able to identify the Source equivalents on the map for the different nations left in the world. (She thought she could hear Ardbert scoff at her geographic mutterings behind him, but the Exarch didn’t seem to notice)

Alphinaud and Alisaie were easier to reach than Y’shtola and Urianger -- somehow, the Ishgard and Gridanian equivalents were just going to be Difficult for some reason -- and the Exarch left it up to Cross who she wanted to find first.

While Alphinaud attempting information gathering and diplomacy in an area where the rich lived lazy, lavish lives made Cross uneasy at the idea, the desert region and Alisaie sounded like a better place to start. Closer to home, for her, since it was Ul’dah’s closest equivalent. Besides, Alisaie was the last to be torn away. She’d want to make sure Cross was all right.

Destination decided, Cross decided to stock up and get more than a cursory glance at the Crystarium.

[ofdragonsdeep]

9: Friable

What soul would not fray under the burden of Light?

(Existential dread, unsettling descriptions of Light-sickness, discussion of death)

9: Friable

It was like aetherial static in the back of his mind, the hiss and twinkle of the Light. The stillness wrested him towards it, a beckoning call of emptiness, perfection in stasis. What had once sounded ill against the ears felt welcome.

Ar’telan sat in his room at the Pendants, his eyes upon the window. The shutters had been thrown wide as so many had at the subsidance of the Light, and night twinkled in the distance. Stars so like his own, but pale and reflected in the mirror of the sky.

“World’s got you pensive of late, hasn’t it?”

Ardbert’s ghost walked over to the window, staring out at the land beyond. If Ar’telan had struggled, then Ardbert had suffered tenfold. Watching as his world curdled like milk under the Light, knowing that it had been his choices that made it so, his goodness which damned it. Ar’telan had thought them alike when they had met upon the Source, united in distrust for Hydaelyn even as they were pitted against each other, like chess pieces in the game of foes. Of late he was disliking being found right.

“It feels wrong,” Ar’telan said, knowing that Ardbert would hear him with the Echo despite being faced away. “Not… Not Norvrandt. But-”

“Aye, it eats you. I can see it,” Ardbert agreed, casting a glance back at him. “Why do you hide it? You know those friends of yours would do anything to protect you.” Ar’telan looked from Ardbert to the stars outside the window.

“As did yours.”

The silence that met the statement was tangible, and only a frustrated sigh from Ardbert broke it. Neither of them could talk now, even though Ardbert had been the voice of his companions when they had cast themselves as the Warriors of Darkness.

He had wondered how it felt, back then, but perhaps he had known for longer than he thought.

The solid wall of aether which bordered the desert of Ahm Araeng was a sight to behold. It had been even before the Lightwarden had fallen, but illuminated in the glow of night it was a truly marvelous creation.

In the ruined palace at Nabaath Araeng, Ar’telan walked across the sandy tile. It was here that Ardbert’s friends had died - here where Minfilia had perished, first to stop the Flood, and then to save Ryne from the fate of her predecessors.

They say that we are heroes, giving our all to protect the weak and innocent. But we are bodies like all the others, thrown upon the walls of war to rot.

His gaze drew up to the apex of the Light, feeling the roiling aether within it despite its stillness. Beyond it was emptiness, silence, and the slow and rotting death of the Light. Scrubbed of the imperfections of life. He took a step towards it. Then another. The ringing in his head scratched against the glass like claws, clamouring for freedom.-

The misty axe in his path stopped him dead from the sheer surprise of it, and a look to his side found Ardbert, shaking his head at him.

“Leaving the show early? Doesn’t seem fair,” he remarked, which got a weak laugh from Ar’telan.

“Strange to think that one Ascian’s death could cause this,” he said. Ardbert made a noise of hollow amusement.

“Always the way with them, isn’t it? Not like it matters to them, the bastards,” he agreed. Ar’telan thought of Igeyohrm, her talents too great, losing a world to the darkness. He thought of her shrieks of agony as she had died under the aether, trapped still and torn asunder. Perhaps he knew how that felt. Perhaps.

Emet-Selch had said that it was simple to replace an Ascian, even one of their vaunted red-masked brethren. Another soul that seemed alike to the dead, elevated to their position. But they had not replaced Igeyohrm. They had not replaced Lahabrea. Was it a direct lie, or one of omission? Only a fool would truly trust an Ascian, and yet…

And yet.

Sand toppled from the brickwork suspended in the frozen light, disturbed by the wind so newly returned to Ahm Araeng. Ar’telan flinched as it threatened to sting at his eyes, but Ardbert simply watched as it passed straight through him, like so much else had. Perhaps that was the most tragic fate for the heroes forged by Hydaelyn, after all. To be surrounded by suffering, an island in an ocean of sorrow, and be unable to render aid.

The bustle of activity around the grand lift to the top of Kholusia’s cliffs was a stark contrast to the stifling light that lit their work. Ar’telan sat upon crates, distanced from the busywork he could no longer aid, drinking in the atmosphere of enthusiastic camaraderie.

The arrival of Emet-Selch seemed inescapable, in the situation, and Ar’telan sat and listened to him talk, as he often did. His words made the same kind of almost-sense that they always had, the same way that Elidibus did, that if you tilted your head and saw things just skewed enough, it would seem a foregone conclusion. Ar’telan supposed that to the Ascians, it must have seemed as though their enemies were the ones who were so close to truth, but who saw things just a fraction too sideways.

“If we mire ourselves in the past, we forsake the future,” he said, which earned him a scoff from Emet-Selch.

“I think I would rather forsake a half-alive future if it meant reclaiming what was lost,” he disagreed. “I had hoped that you might understand, having lived as you have. A pity.” Ar’telan looked away, his gaze unfocussed, the memories coming unbidden to the surface. Of course it would feel as though it had been stolen from them - all who had lost felt the same. But they had waited and yearned for so long, Ar’telan wondered if they truly remembered what they longed for any more.

“It is the nature of life to turn,” he said. “To live and to love and to lose. To feel certain, and then crack like glass.” The light in his soul strained against the bounds of it at his words, and he winced at the pain and the horrible echo on the inside of his ears. “I too had family. Friends. Loves. Ones that you would say did not matter, content in your comforting hypocrisy.” Emet-Selch watched him, something unsettling in his keen amber eyes. “We rob each other of dreams with every breath. Zodiark. Hydaelyn. Amaurot.” The sigh, so deep and wistful, felt oddly familiar. “You are just like Elidibus. You say that it would make sense if we knew, and then you do not tell us. If you are so confident in your veracity, then speak it aloud.”

“Strange that you would say that,” Emet-Selch said, stretching his arms above his head with a satisfying crack of joints. “Ah, well. I am content to wait, hero. Unlike you mortals, I have the luxury of time.”

“Lahabrea thought the same,” Ar’telan replied, and Emet-Selch went still, as though the words had actually given him pause.

“Perhaps he did. Perhaps he did not,” he said. “He was ever a fire, was Lahabrea, stoked every higher with the fervour of righteousness. The friction was inevitable, I suppose.” He gave Ar’telan a searching look. “Do you believe you are strong enough, hero? To prove me right?” Ar’telan shrugged.

“There is no singular hero of the kind for which you wait,” he said. “No one Warrior of Light to lead the people from the darkness of their own hearts. We are small and insignificant in comparison to the souls of eld, perhaps, but we are strong in our multitude. Many hands hold this beacon, not simply my own.” He returned the look with a level one of his own. “The others say that your mind was made up before we began, that you are simply waiting to make your move, and I do not disagree with them, exactly. But I wonder how strong your own conviction is. You more than any Ascian know us mortals well, don’t you? We crumble and fray at the edges, our lives snuffed out too soon for one used to eternity. But the thought lingers. In those we love, in those who mourn us, we live on. In the push for change, in the belief in the righteous, in memory. For those we have lost, for those we can yet save. We are many, but we are the hero that you seek to find.”

Emet-Selch let out a long breath, tendrils of the familiar Ascian darkness gathering around his fingertips as he moved them through the Light-saturated air.

“If you miss those you left behind in Amaurot, then let us remember them for you,” Ar’telan said.

“You do not need to, hero,” Emet-Selch said, a sorrowful note to his voice. “But they will know this iteration of you, all the same.”

It felt like glass, scratching against every surface of his skin. Leaking through the cracks of what was left of him, beautiful and stifling in its surety, its stillness. White and unblemished he would become, the golden threads knitting together what was left in the gaps. Pure and stagnant and- and-

“May I?”

The voice cut across the noise, and his vision cleared, even if it was only for a moment. In the cool halls of Amaurot stood another of the multitudinous ancients, identical in every way. This one was regarding him with a tilted head, some way between curious and amused. Ar’telan, blinking in the aftermath of the light, offered the weakest of nods.

His name, he explained, was Hythlodaeus. It was familiar and not, plucking at the edges of a memory that wasn’t his, floating in the mire of his light-addled soul. He explained with patient ease the truth - the city, its people, Zodiark. The role which Emet-Selch had taken upon himself. The familiarity of Ar’telan’s own, a soft laugh on the shade’s indiscernible lips at the thought of it. And when it was done, he vanished, part played - Ar’telan and Ardbert both stood in blinking confusion at his departure.

“The same soul…” Ardbert muttered to himself as Ar’telan reached up to take the papers offered to him by the shade of the clerk.

“Emet-Selch would have seen it if it were true,” he said. “If he is strong enough to pluck a soul from the lifestream.” Ardbert made an unhappy noise.

“Aye, perhaps, if his mind wasn’t rotted with Zodiark,” he offered. “Hard to think about, isn’t it? To lose so many.”

“But they won,” Ar’telan said. “They saved their star. Oblivion beckoned and they held fast against the tide, strong in their multitude.”

“But it wasn’t enough, was it?” Ardbert said, a bitter note in his voice. “So they’ll do it to us a dozen times over. Fatten us up and slaughter us like sheep for their god.” His fingers clenched into a fist, though even in this aether-rich city he would not have been able to strike the wall in any way that mattered. “Do they even listen to themselves? Who are they saving? Who?!”

“We’re not so different,” Ar’telan said, his voice quiet. “To them, I mean. We would live in the wake of their deaths, or so they see it. No matter that the lives were freely given. No matter that the dead lived on in the life they created. Every moment we breathe is another that we drive the dagger deep into the heart of what once was.”

“It’s madness,” Ardbert said. “Madness! To accuse us of killing the dead!”

“Zodiark is a primal,” Ar’telan said. “They were Tempered. They still are, they must be. To them… To Zodiark…” Ardbert kicked the floor in frustration.

“Aye, and so is Hydaelyn, to hear them talk,” he spat. “So are we the same, then? Tempered thralls compelled to do her bidding? To expunge the darkness no matter the cost to those who yet live?” Ar’telan looked down at his hands, sparkling with brilliant Light, and thought of Minfilia.

“Some, perhaps. But not us,” he said. “When we first met we were the same. Wearied by our battles, carrying the weight of how pointless it seemed. We met on opposing sides, but you knew-”

“That you didn’t trust her. Maybe, but still…” Ardbert tried, but the fight was gone from his voice now.

“Did you not hear it when I spoke to Emet-Selch? He says that he believes, and he has the conviction of a broken man. He does believe, with every fibre of his being - devotion demands no less. But he skirts around the edges like a caged animal, longing for a way out.”

“And is this it? To bring the hopes of both our worlds crumbling down around us?” Ardbert asked, a hopeless look in his eyes. “To put his hope in a myth, as if it will make manifest like this cursed city?”

“We shall give him a myth,” Ar’telan said, though the Light inside him pulsed to disagree. “Show that their sacrifice was not meaningless. Live, with every screaming nerve, with every agony, with every joy. What else is there to do?” Ardbert considered it, looking down at his ghostly hands as if in a trance. How it must have hurt, to see the Light that he set free corrupt every tendril of the hero they had trusted in. To see another victory snatched away at the final moment, replaced with the crushing understanding of defeat. How many horrors could one soul see?

Many more, if Emet-Selch’s vigil was any proof.

“Aye. Perhaps you’re right,” Ardbert allowed. “Though I couldn’t have thought of it when first we met, a thin and lonely shadow. I won’t leave you to fight this war alone.” Ar’telan offered a smile, though he was loathe to truly part his lips, lest the light shine through the spaces.

“Thank you,” he said.

If nothing else, they would part as friends.

[voidsentprinces]

Every bit of Shadowbringers is the Scions it corresponds with.

Amh Araeng Prt 1 is very Alisaie. Mirroring her decision in A Realm Reborn, Alisaie wanders off to the outskirts of civilization. Choosing to observe the powers of the world and figure out a way to stop coming tragedies. We’re introduced to the threat and aggressively fight against it but in mirror the loss of Ga Bu and Louisoix. Alisaie loses someone dear to her by Tempering. Louisoix became a Primal and Ga Bu was tempered by Titan. (Though honestly I wish Alisaie would stop losing people dear to her cause after Requiem for Heroes it feels like the story likes to kick her while she’s down at this point)

Kholusia Prt 1 is very Alphinaud. There is a semblance civilization, a rule of law in the area, there is even a function in which the society works. Mirroring Alphinaud remaining well within spitting distance and very much in the middle of the comings and goings. He uses his diplomatic maturity, which once was made for personal gain with clever wit and scheme. He has learned from the Crystal Brave betrayal, corruption of Ishgards, the result of those who choose might means right and what it results in from his time in Ala Mhigo, Hingashi, and Doma respectively. Applying himself to better comes to grips with the peoples plight. Upon seeing how Eulmore treats those chosen but then thrown away and then coming face to face with Vauthry. Rather than turning a blind eye and just being, “That’s just how it is.” as he was with the Monetarists and Refugees of Ul’dah. He pushes back against the system, damn the consequences, leaving an easily position to effect the politics of Eulmore and even gets a bullseye placed on the back of his head.

Lakeland is very much the Crystal Exarch’s Domain. It is the place of mystery, where life heavily clings on and every time we venture out to it. We come into conflict with either Eulmore or the Sineaters, Vauthry is controlling. It is in Lakeland, we fight through the Holminster Switch. Come face to face with our first Lightwarden and see where there was once furtile farm land, peace, and people. Now chaos reigns and an apocalyptic wave of disaster has struck. Mirror the world, G’raha had woken up to after the Eighth Umbral Calamity. This is where our foot hold is. Where we first bring night back to the First and his plan for saving the Source is put in motion. There is also a sense of myth about the place, Bismarck, a fae being in this shard slumbers in the Lake aptly named the Source. And it is only by bringing together to allies we made that we allowed to travel to the Tempest when he is spirited away. Just as G’raha gathered allies and people to himself to build the Crystarium.

Il Mheg is Urianger’s realm and reflects the game, he has agreed to play with the Warrior of Light at the behest of the Exarch. It is full of beings, who make deals out of innocent furvor at the determent of all who are around them. Pixies trick travels and fellow fae a like. The Nou Mou live to serve mortal kind just as Urianger serves the realm as a whole, no matter what light history might cast him in. And the Amaro dream of comrades lost, wishing to feel the comfort the adventurers and merchants they once wandered with. Grieving in their own way just as Urianger did after Moenbryda’s passing. Il Mheg is the land of faeries, it is steeped in myth and legend just as Urianger always had his nose in a book. Titania lays at the center of the realm. Once the pinnacle of the fae, forever corrupted by the Lightwarden’s energy. A horrific mirror of what should happen is G’raha’s plan should fail and the paragon of heroism, his friend: The Warrior of Light. Could also become a monster wearing the skin of a kingly figure should his mask slip. Yet when we enter his abode in the middle of Il Mheg, the Waking Sands/Rising Stones music plays. Reminding us of home and the Scions, he calls family and he welcomes us as he ever did, cryptically.

“Unto a hero weary of heroes, a heroes wends [their] way...”

Rak’tika is Y’shtola of course. She has turned away from her light magics of conjury to the dark magics of thaumaturge. The great boughs rise up and block out the sun light of the Great Wood. Reflecting the living style of her mentor: Master Matoya. A person who prefers their solitude, away from the dealings of the world, but with great knowledge to progress the plot forward. Thancred and Y’shtola get into an argument on how each other has changed. The two of them stood side by side after the Bloody Banquet and were both flung into Aetherstream by her Flow spell. While Y’shtola adapted to her blindness and halfened life force. Thancred had to push against the constrains of no longer having access to his aether and briefly losing sight in one eye. His last moments were the thought of protecting Minfilia. Only to wake up in Dravania and find out that Minfilia is no more. Y’shtola rejects Master Matoya and Thancred’s choice of solitude. Making friends with the Night’s Blessed. Even though, she knows she might have to leave them behind all too soon. She becomes a pinnacle of the Night’s Blessed community. While Thancred wanders hither and tither unfocused with Ryne at his side. Slipping easily into her role as a Scion, she researches the clues left behind by the Ronka Empire and makes allies with a civilization who has also closed themselves off from the world. Y’shtola is the first one to recognize the faults in G’raha’s plan and is immediately suspicious of the Exarch’s intentions. We see Y’shtola never truly changed however as when it comes time to get the item that will save the world and protect her friends. She readily uses Flow once more. Damn the consequences. Her sacrifice for the greater good is, as always, her charge which she never hesitates to grant. She even bonds with Runar seeing him as a little brother despite his obvious want for something more, just as she has a sister back in Gridania with whom she has a friendly relationship with. Just as Y’shtola’s connection to Matoya opened up the path to Azys Lla. Her run in with Emet-Selch opens up the path to learn of the Ancients and Amaurot and the true nature of Hydaelyn and Zodiark.

Amh Araeng Prt 2 is Thancred. Its tedious, its nearly empty, full of the smallest hopes. Each challenge is made to be tougher than it should be and despite us being able to compliment Thancred when finding a Voebrite coin. He shrugs it off as he is wont to do at this point. We get Ryne’s inner turmoil deepening. Thancred comes face to face with another individual wallowing in their own grief for those he loss and suddenly after coming face-to-face with Ran’jit again. Thancred throws away his misgivings and brings Ryne into the fold as shoe horned and bad written as possible. So lets just skip this area and never talk of it ever again okay? Cause the story never really does save for the Fatebreaker Eden section

Kholusia Prt 2 is Ardbert’s story or what it once was. We gather our group together and besiege Eulmore only for the villain to escape our grasps. But we triumph in liberating Eulmore from Vauthry’s tyranny for a moment. Alphinaud gets his heroic speech, Alisaie gets to combat the threats of the Lightwardens, Y’shtola and Urianger work together to make a massive Talos, Thancred and Ryne keeping tabs on Vauthry and Mt. Gulg. We meet face to face with G’raha. For all intents and purposes our Cylva. A person with a schism coming to a head. We come together as a team for the first time since coming to the First and each shows their worth in their connections to the realm. Mirroring Ardbert’s journey, we are faced with multiple seemingly insurmontible odds and come out on top. Vauthry’s Sineater Guard fall, he himself becomes the last one. The night returns to the First. And. We. Fail. We fail due to the machinations of Ascians just as Ardbert’s group did. The Warrior of Light is brought low by the combined aetheric energies of all Lightwardens. G’raha’s plan fails when Emet-Selch appears and leaves us for dead. Sure the enemy was vanquished, Vauthry and Ran’jit for us, Loghrif and Mitron for Ardbert’s group, but the First still falls to a Flood of Light as the eternal day returns and we are left on the cusp of despair. For all our triumphs. For all the schemes. For all the fighting. We fail. And just as Ardbert learns to protect his world with the aid of the Word of the Mother. The Warrior of Light only survives due to the aid of Ryne. An Oracle of Light who has come into her own and not died on the battlefield. We wander the Crystarium afterwards listening to the tales of the people and what they think of the Exarch. Then immediately find our courage to plunge into the depths. Ardbert giving us the strength to move forward, that he didn’t have when he met Elidibus. No more desperation. Just courage in the face of oblivion.

The Tempest is Emet-Selch. We are bridged there by the mythical Bismarck and find a dwindling but prospering Sahagin alternative. Living and getting by the ruins of those who stood before. The one part of the world far, far, far way from the light of the First. From the people and things, he used to care for. We find he made a city out of nostalgia and even the ghosts become almost too real. He is at the depths of his grief in a world, he cannot forget and will not forsake. It is here, the one clinging to the past the most falls to those who look to the future they yet have. He covets the Exarch’s use of rift travel because he knows if he can harness it, he has a chance to go back and save EVERYONE! But, he can’t and he won’t. He can no longer go home and knowing Elidibus’s memory and personality has been slipping since he left Zodiark’s breast. He asks us:

“Remember us...remember that we once lived.”

The Crystal Tower is Elidibus. It is the shining beacon of hope, he wished to become as Emissary. From the day, he chose to become the heart of Zodiark. To every motion to move for or against his breathren. The Allaghan Empire’s greatest achievement. But ruled by an Emperor whose death dropped him into Nihilism. Conquest was nothing but ashes in the mouth of Xande and he wish to consume the Source in Void. Elidibus wishes the return of Zodiark. For it is his duty, there is no solace in memories he can no longer recall. A being frozen in time just as Amon had the Crystal Tower’s previous inhabitence. Telling us repeatedly that no matter what our Echo shows us of his past. It will not avail us to his present. So he takes on the image of the Warrior of Light, playing pretend at the role of the hero having possessed Ardbert’s body before. He speeds up the Heroes Journey. Has us actively fight against our own memories and in the end, his own brother reappears amidst the clash to grant the last Unsundered Peace in his fall. G’raha sealing away his essence in the Crystal Tower to become part of the beacon of hope and light. Though perhaps in his final moments, his true duty was that he was waiting for someone to return to him. Someone he looked up to in his younger years. A shadow in his memories he has clung to and taken into being the example off in their absence.

“The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it.”