#eidin trusted one (1) scion in arr

[eidingate]

FFXIVWrite2024 #11 - Surrogate

Early ARR Characters: Tataru, WoL Eidin Words: 868

"This has happened before. Hasn't it?" 

The sun was dipping toward the horizon, casting Vesper Bay in a cloak of red and orange as the savage midday heat burned itself down to embers. Eidin dangled one foot off the edge of the rock, lounging in the evening light with a feigned composure she did not feel. Compared to her companion, she was all limbs sprawled over the sparse patches of grass that had managed to find a hold on the rockface. 

Tataru took a slow sip of her wine before answering. She had provided the cups from the Waking Sands kitchen, snatching them up with the kind of confidence that only the receptionist who was responsible for stocking the shelves could harbor. She'd nestled into a little nook on top of the rocky outcropping where they had retreated together, and it struck Eidin that the dainty little receptionist could make any stone appear to be a throne. 

"It has. Not for a long time. Not since – well, we really haven't seen full Primals like that since the Calamity." 

If Eidin had learned anything in her time in Eorzea, it was that everything came back to the Calamity. She had been far from these shores when Dalamud fell, but even she remembered when the sky burned red. The blood currant wine lingered on her tongue, heady and cloying, a gift from a woman in the Shroud in return for a few favors. "And how did you deal with it then?" 

Tataru gazed down at her cup, her eyes clouded with a memory that Eidin's Echo did not deign to share. "We had… heroes. The Warriors of Light. I wish I could remember their names."

Eidin returned her gaze to the sea, where the sun's fiery reflection was cut through with fishing trawlers. "Heroes. With the Echo?"

"Yes. Like you."

Something in Eidin bristled at the comparison, and her hand tightened around the cup. It was a little too small for her hand, but on the balance, it was probably a little too big for Tataru's. "Why was I never told? All that talk about what made the Echo so special. Yet nothing about this? About tempering, and what it means?"

"It wasn't for any malicious reason," Tataru said quickly. "I promise, we weren't hiding it from you. Minfilia always planned to tell you, but…" she sighed, setting her cup down to turn to face Eidin fully. "She won't say it because this is an old argument, but Minfilia never wanted the Echo to be used in this way. She's always believed in its power to reach across languages, to open hearts, to be used for diplomacy. She always wanted that to be its first and primary use. And as long as Primals never fully manifested…" 

She sighed, and reached for the bottle between them, falling back on her skills as a hostess to cover the tension of this moment, and topped up Eidin's cup. "She didn't want you to feel pressured. If you knew you might one day be the only one who could face such a creature and escape with your will intact, would you not feel obligated to take on that role?" 

Eidin sipped at her drink, feeling the wine swill uncomfortably in her stomach. Tataru's face was open, earnest. She trusted that Tataru believed what she said. And as Minfilia's friend, of course she was inclined to see the more noble intentions behind her actions. 

But the excitement that had radiated off of the Scions when she had been recruited, the glances they had thrown each other, the haste with which they had brought her into the fold, all of that was finally crystalizing before her. This had always been her purpose, for them. "So for want of your lost heroes, the Scions sought a surrogate. Someone who could stand in for them, now that they've gone."

Tataru froze, nearly spilling her wine down her tunic. Her mouth opened and closed a moment, as if trying to find which part of that statement to react to, before finally landing on, "you're a hero too, Eidin."

Eidin set the cup down, carefully setting it in a dip in the rough stone, because Tataru had been very kind in offering it and the inclination to throw it into the sea was too strong. "I didn't save them, Tataru. I didn't save anyone." 

The sun skimmed the edge of the water, red as the flame of Ifrit's gaze. The angry wine-soaked bile that rose in Eidin's throat was not for the fear that she'd felt at her capture, or the days she spent recovering with burns and smoke-filled lungs. It was that Minfilia and Thancred, in their wisdom, had let her spend those days thinking that at least she had saved those people from Ifrit's fire. At least the men who'd sat tied up shoulder-to-shoulder with her could go home to their families. 

None of it true. Everyone she thought she had saved was doomed from the moment they beheld the Primal. Once again, nothing she did resulted in a single life saved.

She stood, the edge of the cliff dizzyingly close. Tataru looked so much tinier below her. "Don't cast me in the role of your dead heroes."