#meanwhile in eorzea

[echthr0s]

Trying to do WoL QotD on Bluesky (which seems to really be the place for it, there's so many over there) is a nightmare. I'm sure Twitter natives are just used to character limits but I am DYING... especially since I need to incorporate various contexts that have already been long-established on this blog. For example, there was this, for which I tapped out a condensed answer for Bsky's purposes but you know I can't thrive without being able to ramble at length:

So obviously the answer to this one is 100% yea for Dayir, to the point where I feel like a broken record going on about how much radical love, deeply spiritual and intensely physical love, is the whole of the law for her. It's how she gets things done in Eorzea and beyond.

But then there's also the fun fact about how all of Osiris's shards tend to "spotlight" some specific facet of its complex being. Ishan very much exemplifies the ability to face deepest darkness and know it well, but to remain uncorrupted by it. (Whether Osiris remained uncorrupted is what we call "a matter of debate", BUT.) Fun fact again, Zenos would have borne the mantle that Dayir wears but the whole time-fuckery shit with Dayir resurrecting in the late Sixth Astral kind of broke the system (everyone say "thank you, Emet-Selch"). To undigress, the fact that Emet-Selch -- who knows enough that he can reasonably be held responsible for his results -- basically created Dayir means it's possible he angled for these results. This was the facet of Osiris he wanted to bring forth. This is what would save the world. This is what would save him.

Ishan's "focus" being what it is, he is both averse to but very well-suited to the complexities of loss and grief -- which, of course, makes one well-suited to experience love without fear. He... doesn't fully realise this, is the thing. He thinks he's afraid of loss, he thinks he'd rather just be alone -- in fact, he thinks he's made for loneliness, that this is his lot, and anything else is just a temporary diversion. The thing is, he's a dirgesinger for a reason. He can express pain and grief and sorrow with such bittersweet depth and stark honesty because that's how he feels it. And it never breaks him. He is always steadfast and present and open-eyed. If your suffering is too heavy, he'll carry it for you. It won't even occur to him not to. But he's just really bad at seeing himself, as a lot of people are -- he can't see this strength, this empathy, this incredible emotional intelligence, for what it is. He just knows he doesn't feel the same lightness and happiness and frivolity that other people seem to feel in love, and thinks that means he doesn't love properly, or isn't suited for it. The people that love him, however, love him exactly because they feel their darkest selves are safe with him. It is a gift beyond measure, to be able to provide that safety.

[thefandomexpert]

people r saying the pranged role quests are the weakest and that’s probably true but to me they were worth absolutely everything bc the turali people are like ‘well, you’re a strong enough adventurer, maybe together we have a very slight chance of standing up to these people please help 🥺’ and then you go back to gyr abania and that one resistance person is like ‘Warrior of Light. Look at me-no no no, Look At Me. You Can Not Vaporize these petty thieves you’re going after. do you understand me. I need you at your worst grey parse. I want you to use the first button on your hotbar and NOTHING else. tell me you understand. you Can Not just fucking Vaporize these guys like you normally do.’

and I just have to believe your turali pal is like. what.

[therovingstar]

I do wonder how Turali folks first reacted to Odzaya as an Au Ra, seeing as (far as I could deduce) there are no Au Ra on the continent. Do they think her scales and horns are a condition? Is she a Hyur with some Mamool Ja mixed in somewhere? Have they seen enough Auri sailors/travelers to know what she is, and her kind are just a rare sight, a la Eorzea?

Regardless, I like to think there’s been at least one exchange in which she was described, and folks got a little confused. “Blah blah blah Wuk Lamat’s party from across the salt blah blah skilled adventurer blah blah blah a fetching woman with pale horns and scales!”

The general Turali populace: “oh neat! Wait what?”

[eorzea80]

"HEEEEYYYYY MR. EXARCH!" Thom's position on the beam put him roughly at eye level with the entrance of the Crystal Tower. "I take it this is what you meant by your orders to take in the sights of The Crystarium, right?" "Lyna, tell him to get down, go to Musica Universalis, grab a half dozen bagels and see me in my chambers in forty minutes. I trust you can keep him occupied until then?"

"Of course, Sir. Providing that..."

"Yes, one of those bagels is for you. A bargain at half the price for another thirty minutes sleep."

Lyna chuckles. "A sage choice, befitting our storied leader. Rest now and I'll be back later with your...vivacious guest." Moments later, G'raha can hear the muffled aftermath reverberating through layers of crystal. "Alright, Mr. Grimalline. Time to come down!"

"Right you are, Lyna! Catch!"

"AAAGGGHHHRGG!"

With a sigh, G'raha turns over for a brief extension of his centuries of slumber, muttering to himself;

"This is not my problem for another thirty-seven minutes."

[exandrianineorzea]

Selru literally teleports over to the Azim Steppe every year a few days early to join the Mol for it. Honestly he frequently ends up treating it less like a combat spree and more like a Parkour foot race now that he knows the way, augmenting his mobility with aether, trying to beat his own personal time to get to the new location. There was at least one year where he arrived before everyone else and cast sleep on those who were on his tail, and claimed the spot before anyone else could arrive. He still gave Magnai and Sadu a spar afterwards, though cause he knew neither of them would take the fight being over before they even arrived without a fight to prove he didn't use trickery.

WoL QotD

People who use a personal timeline in FFXIV rather than keeping the time bubble, how do you explain that your WoL is still the khagan after all this time? Have they participated again in the Naadam?

[squapejuice]

"Hyur are so boring, why would you play a human in a fantasy game?"

Fine. Whatever. You find the idea of playing a human boring. But I'm kind of getting sick of people saying this to me, a hyur enjoyer, sometimes even directly under my own screenshots of my OCs.

Hyur in FFXIV are a *wildly* fascinating take on the "humans in a fantasy setting" that we often see in video games. They're an almost complete subversion of "humans are the dominant culture that everyone assimilates into and also they did a colonialism at some point, which is why their language is The Common One".

Meanwhile, hyur in ffxiv? They're MIGRANTS.

They're NOT the dominant culture. Are they the most numerous population in a lot of places? Sure. Because they have kids out the wazoo, but I digress. Hyur in ffxiv are defined by their adaptability and willingness to assimilate. They're *so* defined by adaptability that there are at least three major historical events throughout the astral and umbral eras called "The Great Hyur Migration". Hyur only arrived in Ishgard after the dragonsong war had started and you'd be hard pressed to find any modern Hyur born and raised in Ishgard who would define themself as anything *other* than Ishgardian. Their names may be slightly different than Ishgardian elezen, but I would theorize that might just come down to class dynamics as while hyuran noble houses exist, they're not common. However in Hingashi they've completely assimilated into eastern Raen culture, as an example. I actually hesitate to find any place we know ingame to be completely dominated by hyur, because in Gridania despite the elementals picking hyur to be padjal the culture seems to be most influenced by wildwood elezen, and in ala mhigo while hyur are the most populous of demographics, the entire culture seems to be a marriage of hellsguard and miqo'te. Ul'dah is clearly highly influenced by lalafell above all, and limsa lominsa is heavily developed by the sea wolf roegadyn. Hyur just kind of fit themselves in and adapt to what everyone around them is doing.

So why is the language spoken by all the peoples in Eorzea the same? Isn't that the hyuran language? Nope! It's pretty explicitly said that the common language is a pidgin tongue that was deliberately developed by merchants and was adopted widespread out of convenience. They even say that Tural took inspiration from this in developing their own (and it's only coincidentally similar enough that your party can understand it with minimal language barrier, funnily enough. That's a hilarious way to handwave 'eh, game mechanics' tbh).

Anyway hyurs are really cool and I really want to see more people appreciating them for the interesting lore they do have and also exploring this concept more. Like making their hyurs naturally predisposed to learning multiple languages for example.

[anneapocalypse]

On the role of outsiders.

One thing I think makes the Scions' relationship with Wuk Lamat unique isn't that they're mentoring her--I don't really see it as a mentor relationship and for various reasons I think it's better for it not to be that--but that, as outsiders, she finds that she can show vulnerability with them that she's only rarely been able to show with anyone else.

When we meet Wuk Lamat in 6.55, it's pretty heavily telegraphed that she's posturing a lot to cover up some personal weaknesses or insecurities. This made me really curious about her, who she was and what that overconfident demeanor was covering for. And when I got into Dawntrail and started getting to know her, I wasn't disappointed.

(No Wuk Lamat hate on this post, please. Any responses clearly trying to pick a fight will be removed and blocked without reply.)

Wuk Lamat has a couple of foils in this story, but a big one is Sphene, and I love @unmovingtroika's description of Sphene as "unpersoned to an extreme degree." And as a distorted mirror of our main character, Sphene reminds us that any person in a position of authority or heroism is depersonalized to some degree, no matter how down-to-earth or benevolent.

Gulool Ja Ja is really presented to us as very much a people's ruler, the charismatic blessed siblings who united the peoples of Tural through curiosity and open-mindedness and understanding. And that may be largely true, but it's also made of him a myth, a legend inscribed in stone and memory. Meanwhile in the course of Dawntrail's story we also meet the real person Gulool Ja Ja... at least, the one who's left. The man who has spent three years grieving his brother, his ever-present companion, the Reason to his Resolve, a man who for the sake of political stability has had to hide his grief and loneliness from even his own children, as he does his best to carry out the work they had begun together, and complete the Rite of Succession in his brother's absence. And if there are places where Gulool Ja Ja failed to foresee the potential negative outcomes to the Rite, like Bakool Ja Ja's actions endangering his people, we might see there in hindsight the Head of Reason's absence in the final stages of the Rite's preparation. And we see, in some of Zoraal Ja's anger and resentment and insecurity, a glimpse of the ways in which the people's Dawnservant might have failed his own son.

One of Wuk Lamat's early growth moments is when the Scions convince her that she doesn't need to try and hide her obvious seasickness--an affliction she can't help, and which represents no failure of character on her part but which is, well, embarrassing. I love that she seems to particularly connect with Alisaie, who's had her own experiences of feeling inadequate next to her sibling, and feeling the need to prove herself on her own terms.

Could Wuk Lamat have been convinced to drop the act by her allies if they weren't outsiders? The problem is that everyone else in Tural, even her own siblings, are the people she'll have authority over if she wins. Erenville frequently rolls his eyes at his old friend's posturing, and fairly so, but Wuk Lamat doesn't behave that way just because she's insecure. In the same way that her father has had to conceal the death of his brother even from his own children, Wuk Lamat recognizes the danger of showing weakness before the people she will have to rule--especially when she's already aware of her reputation as being less qualified than her brothers. But these outsiders from Eorzea are different. They're allies who will never be her subjects. In private moments, she can be a person with them. She can be vulnerable. She can be Lamaty'í.

(Incidentally, I think this is also why I found Sphene calling her Lamaty'i so unsettling. Initially it seems like a simple misunderstanding, an outsider mistaking a very personal nickname for someone's "public" name. But in the hindsight of what we learn about Sphene, I think it feels a lot worse. Sphene is, consciously or unconsciously, pushing past the walls of formality and reticence that necessarily exist around a ruler when interacting with most people--nevermind a foreign head of state whose intentions are unknown. She's positioning herself as a friend when she is not.)

As the story progresses, we learn the Wuk Lamat and Koana have always been close. Now, in the Rite of Succession, they must treat one another as rivals and can no longer share confidences--at least, at first. Koana's love and protectiveness of his sister emerges with a vengeance when Wuk Lamat is in danger--and I'd venture a guess that he, too, feels safer showing this sudden vulnerability before his allies and those of his sister, because again, they will never be his subjects. While we get only briefer glimpses of Koana's journey with Thancred and Urianger, I'd guess that their friendship has affected him in similar ways.

One of the benefits of blessed siblings is that they are never alone. They bring two perspectives to any situation, but they also have one another to confide in, to understand, to commiserate over the burdens of leadership in a way they can't with anyone else, not even family. Wuk Lamat and Koana taking on the role of Dawnservant together brings the benefit of their very different strengths and perspectives to their people. But it also means that neither must take on those burdens alone. When their allies depart, they will still have one another. There will always be someone at their side with whom they can just be a person.

The tragedy of Zoraal Ja is that he's evidently never had that kind of relationship with anyone. The myth of his seemingly miraculous birth has depersonalized him from the very start. All his life, he has carried the burden of living up to the expectations of the Resilient Son, and has never enjoyed the close relationship his brother and sister have with one another. To the very last, he attempts to live up to the legend alone--and he fails.

One of the biggest themes throughout Final Fantasy XIV is standing together. There is strength in companionship and cooperation, but for that strength to flourish, there must also be trust and vulnerability. Wuk Lamat and Koana ultimately find that in one another, as siblings and co-rulers, but the Scions play the important role of offering them an outsider's friendship in their journeys when they are cut off from one another, and would otherwise be alone. As Ketenramm and Galuf Baldesion once were to Gulool Ja Ja, the Scions to Wuk Lamat and Koana are neither mentors nor subjects, but companions and friends.

[autumnslance]

Noctis vs Clive

Having a convo with @eremiss the other day, about the tonal differences and speed of the FF15 event versus that of the FF16 crossover. And I do think that is a reflection of their respective games.

I haven't played (or watched) 15, but from what I know, a big point of it's start was "the boys' trip." Noctis spends time with his friends/trusted retainers, having adventures and sidequests and minigames, going fishing and taking pictures, all before fate catches up and breaks all of them.

Clive's story, meanwhile, is very focused on the central quest. He's a man who has everything and everyone stripped away, and only over time does he regain some of what was lost, and new friends besides. While there are party members who come and go, Clive's the only controllable character, with only 2 very brief switches to another character. There are no minigames in 16; there's some sidequests that help complete a collection of mementos, and Hunts that feed your blacksmith's crafting, some fight challenges, and...that's it. There's not a lot of whimsy in Valisthea as it teeters on the brink of Armageddon thanks to a capricious god.

The crossover events really reflect these differences; Noctis, while eager to get home, and willing to do his duty to face Garuda, is mostly relaxed and takes time to hang out with the WoL, talking about his friends. He's confused, but willing to explore and learn.

Clive, meanwhile, is taken from a very specific, single point in his story, as he's facing a terrible and difficult moment, his mind refusing to accept it. He's introduced to Eorzea as an amnesiac, not only to avoid spoilers, but focus on reaching this key moment where he realizes who he really is. There's no slowing down or stopping for Clive (even in his game, a period of downtime results in a 5 year time skip to get right back to active story).

These events really reflect the characters and tone of their games, the styles in which they're told. FF16 is a very lean, MSQ-focused tale, and disaster begins Clive's journey toward fate. FF15 is a bit more traditional, starting Noctis's path a bit more innocuously with danger a background rumble to start, giving him and the world a little time to breathe, before ramping things to their climax.

[meowww-ffxiv]

His name wouldn't have even been "Meowdred". Mordred changed it after returning to Ul'dah, and in a fit of brazen defiance born out of joy -- he loved the name! It was silly, it was a pun, HE changed it -- had chosen to keep it.

This amnesiac one was just Mordred. Not even Surana. He'd picked his surname back up in Ul'dah too, when he spoke to Momodi in registering for the Adventurers' Guild.

This Mordred was sour-faced and weary, and said very little to anyone who made conversation with him, even though after the third or fourth day he seemed to have resigned himself to being detained by the Scions. He clearly didn't believe half the things they told him about himself, if anything at all, but had decided trying to escape wasn't worth it. (They were in Old Sharlayan.)

Then he immediately went back on it and teleported to Aleport.

He asked around, and his old acquaintances did all act like he was famous. Some of them even tried to get something out of him, so Mordred knew for a fact that what they said was true.

So...now what?

Well, obviously, avoid people. Surely Mordred couldn't be all that famous. Right?

Maybe I should put Meowdred in the amnesia cube for a treat.

A Mordred who (temporarily, like Yotsuyu) forgot everything from the moment he stepped off that carriage outside Ul'dah, at the very beginning of A Realm Reborn, until the present day.

He was suspicious of the Scions who were trying to help him, he was suspicious of Theodore for knowing him so well, he thought this was one giant setup they were playing on him because the story they told him was incredibly wack.

But Mordred knew how to work the enchantments sewn into his coats. His hands remembered the skills he didn't recall learning. And he did feel really bad about the stricken look on the redhead Miqo'te's face. Then angry for feeling bad; why should he feel bad?! He didn't know him.

[plounce]

thinking about yshtola (i am nearing the end of 5.0 so these are incomplete thoughts) and it’s like... ok imo there are two main character traits for her: seeking knowledge and being a mean blunt bitch. the first i think lends more toward “what is yshtola doing here now in the plot” activity which is important for  a character. the second is what im thinking more about because it’s almost entirely flavorful for her. i think that her being blunt in that way matches well with matoya’s own stubborn pursuit of doing her own thing and yshtola spent a large portion of her youth with matoya, who was stubbornly apart from the rest of the sharlayan elite and made no secret of her disdain for them! so i think being at least partially raised with that gave her a certain tendency for avoiding centralized authorities - see how she leaves sharlayan for eorzea, see how she goes to the rak’tika greatwood and away from the exarch (who she is suspicious of). it doesn’t matter if somebody’s A Good Guy: she is willing to doubt anything to ascertain the truth of it. she’s stubborn but she’s also very humble, because she’ll also doubt her own understanding or previous knowledge (but not to an extent that she’d be gullible - she’ll invite emet-selch to share information, but she still doesn’t trust him as far as she can throw him).

she doesn’t like tricksy machinations and doesn’t engage in them herself and will tell you that right to your face. she says “urianger what the FUCK are you lying about this time” “thancred get your STUPID ASS head on straight” “emet-selch say something USEFUL or shut the FUCK up” “sharlayan you are full of BITCHES and COWARDS” and it is just great every time. she has love for her companions (excluding mr squelch obv) but that love does not hold her back or preclude her from demanding better of them.

she’s not a rude person. she is very kind and has a solid heart in her chest and a great head on her shoulder. she is blunt. (urianger’s a really great foil to her as another scholarly character but as opposed to her, he will circle around something and keep things to himself and try to get everything to work out for the best without sharing anything. meanwhile she will say “alright here��s what i think needs to be done and i’m going to do it. and if i can’t, i need you to.” he’s kind of an enabler; she calls people out. passive vs active. healer vs caster dps.)

and that bluntness lends itself to her choosing to be really reckless! girls will jump into a bottomless pit to save a community of civilians and then do a really insanely risky spell, one that she has already permanently disabled herself (and thancred!) doing, rather than resigning herself to dying, because she will do everything in her power to move herself and the cause forward. she thinks things through, but she thinks fast, because she’s smart and decisive. she is reckless but not rash. and she will throw herself into danger if it’s the best thing to do to help save the day - in the english translation, using her aethervision drains her vitality, but she’s gotta do it to keep others alive and to save the world. it’s a sacrifice she’s choosing to make, even if her loved ones would rather she not do that to herself, please. but that’s a value judgment she’s making, and you probably couldn’t win the argument against her. she’s not infallible, but she’s usually right. she is the sort of person who is full of hope that can be more accurately described as stubbornness. she knows her loved ones for who their best self can be and she demands that of them - which can make her a great character to have around for other characters as well.

there’s also another secondary aspect to this that is kind of more depressing lmao but it is evident that in eorzea miqo’te women are often sexually objectified by the game and by characters within the world, so another reason she might have to have such high + spiky walls up is to like. deal with that. her more suggestive lines of dialogue are about her having sexual control (the lines about having you “over her knee” or putting you on a leash, for example). after the stormblood expac magnai fight:

she’s got it handled, but it does also suck that this is something she has needed to learn how to handle! 

and those are my current #catgirlthoughts

[voidsentprinces]

Alright, look. Imma level with you. Ultima is an extradimensional being who came to Eorzea trying manipulate man and destroy itself and feed upon the excess of aether on the planet similar to JENOVA feeding on the various worlds lifestreams. Venat's meeting with Rhalgr happened while she was still an Azem and he helped destroy an oncoming meteor that was going to strike ancient Eitheirys. In addition to this, one of the first things Meteion reports on initially is finding some worlds just completely vacant of all life only one having even the bones of its residence as any indication that something had lived there before. Since she did not witness their deaths like the Dead Ends, she doesn't know what killed them. Which puts a sort of question mark on how they met their ends. And I repeat from my Emet-Selch son post, nothing ever EVER dies simply in this game. To finish off since this happens before Venat steps down from the seat of the Traveler, this meteor also possibly leaves behind a fragment in the Heart of Sabik which Athena discovers and goes mad over. Meanwhile, now that the threat is over Rhaglr and Venat move on while Ultima digs in to build her nest or is vanquished but later resummoned to eventually faced off against by the nation of Ivalice and its heroes and she is power great enough that the only way the Warrior of Light survives the encounter is from the aid of ghosts of the past. Its all fucking connected.

[echthr0s]

Emet-Selch -- the Ascian, specifically -- is like twin serpents to me, endlessly at war with himself. Everything he does is of dual purpose: to serve the Ascian agenda and to subvert it, simultaneously. He instructs the Allagans in the replication of indestructible aether-storing Hearts for the purpose of making living weapons; he imbues one of these living weapons with the means to know itself (and the Ancient whose soul it holds -- and who put that soul there? it certainly didn't come to dwell there by accident). He establishes the Galvus dynasty for the purpose of growing an empire that would drive the world to Calamity; he thusly rigs the game by making it more likely that a certain Ancient would incarnate as a Galvus. All he does is in service of Etheirys. All Azem does is in service of Etheirys. Grief and love and grief, life drive and death drive and life drive. Emet-Selch knows what must happen but is powerless to be other than he is. So he paves the way for the one who will open the door he cannot.

Like any true romantic, he refuses to die by any hand but that of his greatest love. Ten thousand years is nothing when reckoned in that one fateful moment -- his beautiful and terrible Osiris gazing upon him once again, its hand cradling his head, its aetherial lance piercing his heart.

[leonaquitaine]

Sights of Eorzea: beta version is out!

Drumroll, please - https://www.sightsofeorzea.com is live, and there are lots of new features!

Photo Studios

You can now not only search for studios and photo booths across all regions and data centers, but you can also filter by Server and even if they're accessible by free-trial players!

Character Settings

You can now look up (and contribute your own) character setups - search by race, tribe, or attributes like Face number!

Save your favorites!

Found the perfect Photo Studio, or maybe keeping that gorgeous Au Ra configuration for a future alt? You can now sign in and just add it to your Favorites!

Meanwhile, on our Discord server...

We're seeing a lot of contributions from our community - Preset creators, Guide authors, and Gposers sharing their work on our Community Resources forum.

We already have over 200 Gpose locations listed, and the list keeps growing!

This is all a work in progress. Come join us and help us build a truly useful resource space for the GPose community!

[timaeustumbls]

My favorite cutscene in A Realm Reborn is the one where Gaius narrates the fall of the Agrius. Because there's just so much disparity between what he's saying and what's happening onscreen. He's out here really acting like he would have definitely conquered Eorzea, if it wasn't for a teeny tiny unforeseeable problem, meanwhile Midgardsormr fully just opens his mouth and one-shots the flagship. Incredible. Fifteen years later and Gaius's salt level is still off the charts. Midgardsormr genuinely left this man with his chakras closed and his ass uneaten. Iconic work.

[apocalypsegay]

the thing about "there are no gods, it's all primals!" in ff14 is that it... flopped? badly?

the narrative still legitimizes the Twelve as the "truest" gods because they predated the Current humanity's mythologies, unlike every other primal we've met. every single other population other than eorzea has its deities literally Not Exist in any physical or material way until their summoning by its current believers.

meanwhile, The Twelve always existed before people actually started believing in them. therefore, eorzean religion is still the most "right" in this scenario, technically speaking, especially because The Twelve, even though the writing CLAIMS they influenced non-eorzean belief and are influenced by it in turn, they don't seem to bear any kind of relation to non-eorzean religion beyond the game Telling us. azeyma doesn't have anything in her design that ties her to Azim nor does menphina have anything that might tie her to Nhaama or Tsukuyomi. None of them bear resemblance or connection to Titan, or Ifrit, or Garuda, or Susano, or Ravana, and so on, and so on. at most we have Ramuh and Rhalgr as the "beard and lightning" guys and that's where they called it a day.

they all resemble Eorzean mythos the most than any other. so clearly there is a religion in this context that is being Prioritized despite the attempt at saying they're all equal in value.

like its just weird for your story to say "gods don't real buuuuut there Are these primordial beings that only the european-ish guys perceived properly unlike everyone else" right?? am i making sense????

[nonbinaryurianger]

Arguably Kinktober 1: Dirty Talk

(It's really more like a parody of the prompt, featuring two socially anxious Elezen and a meme. Rated T at most.)

It had been weeks since Emix and Urianger had confessed their feelings for one another, and yet it felt as though their relationship had gone nowhere in that time. Urianger spent most of his time at the Waking Sands, occasionally appearing at the new headquarters the moment he was needed, only to return to Vesper Bay as soon as his work in Revenant's Toll was completed. Emix, meanwhile, had been sent all over Eorzea on a multitude of tasks, from fighting another primal, to apprehending a spy, to exploring an unearthed Allagan ruin. It was rare for them to see each other for more than a few moments at a time. On one hand, Emix was happy to take things slowly, given their own limited experience in the area, but this was bordering on ridiculous.

It seemed Urianger was of the same mind, as he guided Emix towards a less populated corner of the Rising Stones on the way out of Minfilia's solar after a meeting with the rest of the Scions.

"So the antecedent has bidden thee rest," he commented once they were more or less alone. "If thou art amenable, I am inclined to take advantage of said request. Lest thou forget, our erstwhile headquarters lie empty save for mine oversight." He took Emix's hand in his and asked, "May I see thee this eve?"

Emix swallowed hard, but gave him a nod with an almost shy smile. Possible implications aside—they would unpack that later—it would be nice to finally get some time alone together.

Urianger returned the smile with one of his own.

"Then when thou hast seen thy business here to completion"—he leaned in, bringing his lips an ilm from Emix's ear so that they could feel his breath on their skin—"pray return to the Waking Sands."