#tbh I think maybe the most merciful thing would be to just let Illy sleep and Dawntrail is the Hollow

[capriccio-ffxiv]

thinking about Illyria and how her main job isn't actually Dragoon (though that's a big part of her!) or Arcanist

It's actually Mimic/Mime & Blue Mage.

Both "This is a way to explain why she's an omniclasser"

and some other things

I'd never intended to pick up Bard or Dancer but did anyway and am glad because they're actually super fun, but a whole thing for Illy is she was always the black sheep of the family there (her mom and brother are actors & musicians; her dad is a carpenter who builds musical instruments). Terrible singer, two left feet; she's actually decent at carpentry, but terrible at things like accounting, staying on task, actually finishing orders. It's why her parents sent her to arcanist school... and why she dropped out after taking several extra years.

But here's the thing. Give her instructions and tools and she can perfectly replicate an item. Show her a song or dance, and she can exactly copy it... but she can't remember it after. It's why she loves cooking, but could never be a chef---people love it when you can follow a recipe exactly (or even improvise a bit to fix the recipe), but it's not a big deal if she isn't coming up with her own unique stuff all the time.

It also means she always feels... hollow. Like an impostor, like there's nothing there. She mimics, she mimes; she builds on everyone else's talents, but there's no Illyria at the center of all that. The Warrior of Light doesn't exist, as far as she's concerned; that is a mask she wears. People told her what that hero was supposed to be like, and she followed their instructions perfectly. She's always been trying to live up to what others wanted her to be—her mom, her dad...

(even sex for her is just something else you do to please people, another mask, another thing she's good at because she's just a mirror people project on to)

Haurchefant was one of the only people who just wanted her to be her.

And then Estinien, it turns out, was the same way, or rather, he never really expected anything of her. First, it was get out of his way, then it was ... but he's always gone. Always leaving.

I'm still sorting the timeline, but I think she stuck around long enough that she did, indeed, defeat the Endsinger, but most of that wasn't even her—it was this sort of... Dynamis-fueled idea of her, this... mantle, this mask she was wearing. All the hopes of the star, worn like a costume, like armor.

And then after that of course she goes to Feo-Ul and says, "Surely you can take the me out of this thing, this... whatever it is. And let me rest."

Greymalken pretends they don't care—they're a voidsent, this is just another body to wear. Nevermind that their pact had been an equitable one, that they'd started to feel... something? Something, from being in the sun. No.

The Maenad wants to argue that she is part of that core, she is the part of Illyria that loves herself, except that her hate and pain and rage is greater than her love, and in the end maybe she's just part of that greater whorl of expectations and projections. The version of the Warrior of Light that's feared, not loved.

Silver is a soul bound to a weapon and some part of him thinks in his last life that's all he was too, and he promised he'd always be by her side (he thinks?) except she's not even there anymore. He is not as he was. ... but a knight must give his life for others. This is his calling. Isn't it?

The gestalt entity that's left, well, even Y'shtola barely notices; after all, the Maenad still holds the same color and shape, just as any Dark Knight's shadow does. And the Voidsent and Anima were already there. Why would even she notice that there's no longer a core? Was there ever a core to begin with?

(And again, Illyria's name... 'Illyria' is an imaginary country from a Shakespeare play. 'Capriccio' is a painting of a place that doesn't exist; a fantasy of architecture and landscape that looks like it could, maybe, be real, but isn't. Often of ruins; the most famous of which is Piranesi's Prisons of the Imagination...)