#clarification: liios already dealt with it all by 6.3

[meowww-ffxiv]

Oh God.

The hunting technique I made up for Liios's clan functioned very alike to the "Death's Design" damage-up buff reapers use where you placed it on a target.

And his clan lived deep, deep in the mountains north of Garlemald, where the original reapers hailed from and where Y'shtola once remarked the veil between Source and Void was thin. Very likely, it was the same technique. In Liios's case, it was taught to his clan by the voidsent they played warden to, and protected.

Liios's clan had a way to hunt large, dangerous prey where the hunters and a mage would cast a spell that created a sort of mild aetheric link or attunement with the target that allowed them to sense each other.

1) it would make the dumber beasts constantly on edge and nervous, which tend to make them flee, which makes it easy to herd them towards traps they otherwise might be just too smart to fall for

2) the smarter ones might just turn around and face the hunters instead of fleeing, saving them some energy and effort going after it in the tundra hellscape

3) hunters could cast several spells based off of that link that disorient or debuff their prey to give themselves an edge

The skill required either a distinctive aetheric signature or some of the prey's own blood to substitute for that. The former was easier to come by than the latter of course, so keen hunters or mages were valuable for the hunting technique.

Liios used to be one of these.

He cast the spell on Nidhogg's eye because at the time Alberic requested his aid in hunting down this "traitor".

But a dragon's eye wasn't like any beast's. It was like comparing a lighthouse to a candle. In creating the aetheric link with it, Liios attuned himself to its aether.

What he didn't understand was how he was able to continuously use a portion of dragon's aether in the following months and years for dragoon techniques.

But his research into Allagan summoning with Y'mhitra made him think it wasn't that different from tempering, unfortunately. Blood was where a high concentration of any living creature's aether resided. Dragon's blood could corrupt your own aether and body to the point of a total transformation as seen in some heretics. Being exposed to an intangible but still extremely densely concentrated form of it, like Nidhogg's eye, would certainly impart a "taint" on anyone's soul not unlike how Allagan summoners gained their abilities by being exposed to primals' aether.

--or so he mused to Estinien at 3 in the morning before Estinien shoved his face into his tits and said, "Go to sleep."