#smtcy

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 20 Nov

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, but not the poem this story takes its name from.

Previously: Week One, Week Two, Week Three Previously: 18 Nov, 19 Nov

Aether burst over her body, knocking her back with such force that she landed upon her back, the glowing water filling her mouth, still gaping in shock. She struggled to her feet, bringing her arms up to grasp the hilt of her sword.

“You almost killed me once,” said Thancred’s voice. “Would you really do it again?” That made her hesitate, but only for a second. “If I had to. If it were really you, you’d know that.” Her sword still at her back, she turned her eyes on Myste. “Stop this,” she said. “I can’t; I won’t; forgive me … I was afraid of what you’d do; I didn’t have a choice.” “There’s always a choice!” she shouted back, the words ringing off the walls of the cave. Somehow—without a body, never having seen his face—she knew Fray was smiling.

She drew her blade then, turning it upon the simulacrum of Lahabrea. Their brief detente shattered, Shasi surged forward, her first slash cutting through black leather and pale skin. He was real enough to bleed, to cry out in pain. She could feel the flames of the Praetorium upon her back despite the dank coolness of the cave.

Lahabrea lashed out with tendrils of dark aether, seeking to twine them about her arms, but the weight of her blade gave her momentum; she broke those bonds and turned their loose aether to her own purposes, aetherial echoes of her blade stroke deepening the wounds she inflicted.

“For all you seem to think of Fray, it took you long enough to realize I was the same thing,” Myste said. “What?” Shasi said, throwing herself aside as Lahabrea lunged for her, gauntlets glimmering in the ethereal light of the water. “You were happier, not knowing,” Myste said. Lahabrea’s spells roiled over her skin, boiling away the last drops of glowing water, scalding her. “Why couldn’t you just let me help them? I could make them happy! They would forgive you for your sins!” She let Lahabrea throw himself at her—past her—and brought the hilt of her blade down upon his back with punishing force. The water rippled and shone as he fell into it. “And you have so many sins, Shasi Souleater.” “I would have more if I failed to act,” Shasi said, planting a boot on the Ascian’s back. He thrashed about in the water. “Justice is an excuse—murder is murder!” She looked down at him and she still saw Thancred. She wanted to beg his forgiveness as she put the blade to his neck, but she bit it back and bore down. Blood dimmed the water’s glow, and she held tight to the sword as he went still, knuckles white so that her hands would not tremble.

“We’ve been going about this all wrong,” Myste said, so distraught that he seemed not to notice the stillness of the cave. Thancred’s form—Lahabrea’s form—began to dissipate into the same dark aether that always remained, the afterbirth of Myste’s simulacrum catharsis, and Shasi channeled it back up the steel of her sword and into herself. She could taste lamentation on her tongue. “Rather than go to them one by one and mend them—we can create a world beyond pain and suffering and anguish and despair,” Myste said, the words tumbling from his lips like a desperate prayer. “A world beyond death! A world in which we never need say goodbye again! Don’t you want that?” “Of course I do,” Shasi said. “Or you wouldn’t exist.” “I could do it for you too,” he said, looking at her with shining eyes. “I can’t let you,” she told him, her voice trembling. “I have to stop you.” “I’m not your enemy,” Myste implored her. “It’s not too late to turn back. You are still a good person; you can still be a good person.” She lifted her blade, and said nothing. “So this is your answer?” he said. The water rippled around him, and the shadows of the cave began to coalesce. “I have seen you, as few others have—the darkness that hides in the depths of your soul; the fears you have buried; the nightmares that drive you screaming from your bed.” It was all she’d ever wanted. It was what she’d always feared. “Time strips us of even this bitter remainder—if we let it. So many broken by this world, and then by you. We will not forget them.”

They came out of the darkness to surround her, all the unquiet dead. She saw the soldiers of the Immortal Flames, put to death after Ifrit’s tempering flames. The black and crimson uniform of the XIVth Legion—not a pureblood among them; conscripts all, dying far from home for a cause they hadn’t believed in.

“Woe betide the man who stands against the Weapon of Light, for death will be his reward. Death for him and his kin and all that he holds dear.”

And … there was A’aba, and Aulie. And Noraxia, young Noraxia, who had left Little Solace for duty’s sake. The knights of Ishgard that had followed her unto their deaths, at the hands of dragons or their own kin. The Ala Mhigan resistance fighters—her countrymen!--who had died at Rhalgr’s Reach. Who would never breathe free. Wilred.

“Woe betide the man who stands beside the Weapon of Light, for death will be his reward. Death for him and for his kin and all that he holds dear.”

They did not speak; they did not hurry, only advanced in solemn procession, far too many of them. She could feel the weight of her sins, thick and sticky as tar. They numbered beyond counting; fathomless; endless. She could fight them. She had the blade and the skill; she could fight. But for how long?

“I can free you from this suffering,” Myste promised. “One way or the other.”

She could cut them down. Again. Would that redeem her?

If she won—if she lived—did she deserve to?

Yes, Fray said, his presence crawling up her back, pressing too tight against the confines of her form. You need me. YOU NEED ME! It was no secret at all. “I need you, Fray,” she whispered, closing her eyes. Listen to my voice. Listen to our heartbeat …

“Suffer. Promise. Witness. Reason.” Not the Mother’s voice, but Fray’s. “No dark knight can ever be free for long. Someone always needs us—and who protects the dark knight?” She’d asked him so long ago. “There’s no justice. Just us.”

She opened her eyes to watch the spikes of dark aether shoot through the crowd, disrupting their forms, multitudes becoming a vast cloak of shadow. But the dark was comfort, was protection, and they were her; had always been her. She drew them back into herself, and felt stronger than she had in weeks.

“No,” Myste whispered. “It can’t happen like this. Isn’t she afraid of you?” Fray laughed. “Were you ever?” “Once. When I didn’t understand you,” Shasi confessed. “I’ve been with her this whole time, boy,” Fray said. “I know her better than to think she’d listen to you—she wouldn’t listen to me, the very soul of good sense. And she knows me better than to think I’d betray her. I’m part of her.” She looked at him, in gratitude and in awe, and then she saw his hands were empty. “A dark knight needs a sword,” she told him. “This one was yours.” “And is no longer, but I’ll take it,” he said, wrapping his gauntleted hand about the hilt. It looked right there, even if it wouldn’t be there forever. “Stop!” Myste shrieked. “You don’t know anything but the fight! How can you help her? How can you help anyone? I am offering you peace! Catharsis! A chance to be forgiven!” “It’ll be an interesting fight, at least,” Fray said to Shasi. It was so much easier to focus when she could listen to his voice. “But it’s time to drive the boy out of the game. I can’t stay long.”

The shadows moved, smothering the light upon the water. Her hands were empty. Her heart was full. She was afraid—it was alright to be afraid. Whatever came next would hurt her; would hurt her even before it ever lifted a weapon. She knew that sure as breathing, and she would face it because she chose to. Because she was the only bulwark they had. There were people she needed to protect.

The sword she forged was of her aether and of her will, crimson light pouring from her hands.

It came to her just in time, because when she lifted it, the shimmering clouds of aether revealed the faces of her foes: Ilberd, who had died to free Ala Mhigo; Arbert, who had died to free the First. She didn’t need to look at Fray, didn’t need to say a word; they both sprung into action in the same moment.

The Warrior of Darkness swung his axe like it weighed nothing. How cruel that she should bring her blade of light to bear against him. But it was that or die—not for him but for some false echo of him. And Urianger could not intervene this time.

She was quicker than him, even in water up to her knees, his crashing blow landing in the water with a thunderous splash. He was the greatest warrior of the First, dauntless in her memories. It was no easy thing to land a blow upon him—he caught the first on the haft of his weapon, throwing her aside, swinging for her ribs before she could bring her guard back up. He was real enough to cut her, the blood pouring down her side. She swung for him while he brought the axe about, the curve of the axe head catching her blade, and they locked arms. “You of all people should understand!” he roared at her. “I do!” she cried back. “I would not be half so afraid if I were ignorant!” “To spare them oblivion, I had to kill them! I never wanted to say goodbye!” The memory caught her by surprise, and she was still. He kicked out with one armored boot, driving her back a few steps, her blade sliding along the steel of the bravura, and he shook her grasp off, charging at her. She brought the blade up in time to catch his blow, lashing out with her aether to drive him back. He stinted a moment, long enough for her to catch him with a whirling slice of her blade, to pour herself into the unmending. All the wounds she’d ever seen him take opened like sores upon his body, the stink of his blood filling the air. “I’m sorry, Arbert,” she whispered. She drove her blade into his chest, drinking of the aether that formed him until his form crumbled.

Then she turned on Ilberd, who still harried Fray. Even with the sloshing sound of her footsteps announcing her intent, he did not turn to face her, and she drove her blade through his back. Ilberd died laughing, as he had the first time. “Not really the fairest fight,” Fray said. “I didn’t think you’d mind a bit.”

They turned on Myste, but Shasi did not see him. Her eyes fell instead upon an Elezen man clad in pristine white enameled armor, his blonde hair unkempt, his green eyes uncaring.

She knew him. She would never forget him, nor the way he looked with a spear of aether in his hand.

She could not raise her sword against him. Once, perhaps, but he had died a thousand times in her heart and had never brought her any satisfaction. Perhaps she’d let him make the throw a second time. There was a reunion awaiting her in death, after all.

“Shasi,” Fray shouted, interposing himself between her and the knight of the Heaven’s Ward.

Not again, she thought. Never again, she swore. Remembering her fury renewed it in her; her grief covered her, but the blade in her hands shone more brightly rather than be dimmed by her sorrow. One step, maybe two; the water eddied around her booted feet, swirling brightly behind her as she leapt, higher and further than she ought to have been able to, lifting her blade so that she could bring it down as she landed. Body and steel and foe crashed into the water together, the aether of her momentum, the charge of her horror, channeled down the blade into Zephirin’s body. It tasted like vengeance at last.

But he rose and drew his own blade, broad and heavy as her own, and met her in battle. He was small, for an Elezen, but still taller than her, his blade longer, the force of his blows shaking her arms as their blades met.

Dark knights did not often fight their own. All the memories she possessed told her that. But she had done it once before. She would do it again or die, and the latter was a very real possibility. His blade caught her across the flank, blood welling and then spilling from the wound, trickling down her leg to pollute the waters below. She lashed out in reprisal, her blow opening a black rent in white armor. Fray’s sword clashed against the man’s ribs a moment later, and Ser Zephirin turned his head to look back at the other dark knight.

His focus remained on Shasi, a snarl of contempt escaping his throat with his next blow. She knocked the blow wide, and she heard the clash of steel a moment later. Where she opened Zephirin’s guard, Fray struck, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy her. She met his next overhead strike with her own, thrusting her hilt upward to push him back, into Fray’s blow. In the instant his arms remained raised, she circled, lunging, striking at the gap in his armor beneath his armpit. Crimson stained his side, coated her blade, dimmer than her searing light.

He roared in pain and leapt at her then. She let him overextend, bring his sword down on nothing but water and stone, and lifted one hand to punch him, hearing the crunch of his nose. His next cry sprayed blood everywhere. Fray leapt on his back, driving him to the ground, but he dissipated in a crystalline spray the instant before impact, and Fray landed with a splash.

Shasi pulled him to his feet, moving to protect his side. Her gaze fell upon Myste, who only stared back at her.

“Forgive me,” he said. “Forgive me … I ask, I beg, I pray, but it never comes … forgive me; I only wanted to bring everyone together again. I wanted to spare you the pain of parting.” “No matter how powerful you are, you cannot stop those you love from dying. The pain becomes part of you. It exists in the beating of your heart. In your hand upon the sword,” Fray said. “Isn’t it better never to say goodbye? Do the lost not deserve to live again?” “They live,” Shasi said, “in our hearts and in our souls. In our memories. It would hurt less to forget them, but that’s no way to live.” “Do not seek to lighten the burden,” Fray said. To Myste, or to her. If there was even a difference. If there ever had been. “It weighs as it should.” “But the weight of loss …” “That’s the cost,” Shasi said, “to care for another person. I don’t like it—of course I don’t like it—but I like the alternative even less. It’s my choice to make. It’s where I draw my strength.” “I’m sorry,” Myste said. Fray laid aside his sword, and outstretched a hand toward Myste. The other he offered to her, and she unraveled the blade she’d crafted to take hold of that black gauntlet. “Listen to my voice,” he said. “Listen to our heartbeat. Listen …” There were echoes in the cave of their words, of water lapping at the walls, dripping from the ceiling. “I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you.” “Thank you,” said Myste. “That is all I ever wanted.” Fray gave her hand a squeeze before dropping it, and Shasi opened her eyes. “What happens now?” she said. “Your aether you have reclaimed already,” Myste said, “but … if you could … return me to the crystal. I existed … I exist to protect people from sadness and loneliness. If I could do that for you, I would be happy.” “Myste,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. She fell to her knees, reaching out to embrace him, her face buried against his fragile chest. “I don’t want to kill you,” she said. “You aren’t. You won’t be. Fray and I will just go … back where we belong.” “With you,” Fray said. “In your darkest hour, in the blackest night, think of me—and I will be with you. Always,” Myste promised. “For where else could I go? Who else could I love but you?”

She did not say goodbye as she unmade him, as that face so dear to her dissipated into inky blackness. She could feel the aether that sustained him—and Fray, for he dissolved too—shimmer against her skin, like an embrace. Every breath tasted of clear night air, of the freedom of a boundless vista.

She held him until there was nothing left to hold.

[starcunning]

Depression isn’t a superpower, but she’s absolutely determined to make it one.

The worse the explanation, the better.

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 19 Nov

Motivation machine broke today. I don’t really know why. Anyway, we’re cooking with gas now, so ...

Previously: Week One, Week Two, Week Three Previously: 18 Nov

Shasi collapsed into the chair beside Urianger—the one where Moenbryda had sat, but a moment before. “What is he?” she wondered. You know the answer to that, Fray chided her. Annoyance flickered across her face, and she flicked an ear rather than respond aloud. “His aetherial signature is much alike to those of his creations,” Urianger told her, “or at least the sole example I was given cause to observe. Had he the notion this was thine intent, in bringing him to me?” “I don’t know,” Shasi sighed. She looked over at the Elezen a long while, listening to the soft whirr of his spectrometer, quietly winding down. “Thine aether is disrupted, too,” he noted. Shasi furrowed her brows. “How?” she wondered. “Thou art drawn, as one might be after a long journey upon the currents which flow o’er this world, or as one would be after immersion in the Lifestream itself. But thou came hither not on wings of swiftest aether, as I recall; rather by mundane fashion. Thou comest apart at the seams, to borrow a turn of phrase.” “Like Y’shtola?” “For thy sake, I pray it is nothing so permanent. Have a care, my lady, especially if thou hast reason to believe this the boy’s work.” “I can’t be sure,” Shasi said.

Then, she asked, “Will you take those off? I need to look at you.” “For what purpose?” “I need to see your face when I tell you this.” Careful. Shasi cleared her throat, and Urianger set his goggles aside. His eyes were palest silver, fixed to hers. Something in his aspect had eased the barest fraction, for all that he seemed now to worry. “What would thee tell me, my lady?” “Myste is … not the first of his kind I have encountered. The other did not seek to temper, and I have no cause to think Myste has, either. If you have heard any strange reports from Whitebrim Front, that is where I faced that shade.” “Ah,” Urianger said. “There was somewhat; a rumor between soldiers that thou did battle with a voidsent that had stolen thy face. Given their affinity for disguising their nature, I was minded to believe it as it was told to me, and Mistress Alisaie had writ me often enough about thine adventurers with young Mistress Arya for me to realize that heretics were not all Ishgard had thrown into Witchdrop.” “If that’s the version they tell, I’m satisfied by that,” Shasi said. Will you tell him the rest? Fray asked. That you made me? That you carry me with you? She shook her head, sighing. “I understand where that one came from, but I’m not sure about Myste.” “Wouldst thou allow it to affect thy reasoning if that answer were given to thee to know?” “Yes,” Shasi said. “Then perhaps thine ignorance is a mercy. Why is a primal ever born?” “There are a hundred reasons.” “And they have never mattered to its end, have they?” Urianger said. “No,” Shasi agreed, despairing. “We have to do this now. Don’t we.” “Thou knowest too well the dangers in hesitating,” Urianger told her. He looked upon her face then, and he sighed. “I am sorry,” he said a moment later. “We have asked thee to make so many lonely choices in recent months.” “By my last I was able to do some good,” Shasi said. “Perhaps thou might by this one, as well,” Urianger said. “I hope this outcome doth not damage thy faith in me.” Shasi shook her head, pushing herself to her feet. “What good would it do me to blame you for telling me the truth? Myste is a primal. We have one recourse against a primal, and it exists in my own person. Captain Slafswys has a linkpearl, I’m sure?” “I will summon her back with the … with Myste,” Urianger said.

He rose, opening a pouch at his belt to find the proper pearl, and Shasi stood. He means it, at least, when he says he’s sorry, Fray said. Shasi didn’t dare speak, so she only nodded, fingers adjusting the baldric where it laid across her chest. But it didn’t stop him from asking. “He’s right,” she said, as though to herself. “I wish I had another option. I wish Zenos had been able to teach it to me. But he couldn’t, so I have to do this.” ‘You could always take him and run.’ That’s what you expect me to say, isn’t it? Fray asked. You know better. We know better. Do you really expect me to counsel that kind of denial? She shook her head. There are other options. You could make this someone else’s problem. But you won’t. I know this because you know this. You’ve made your choice.

Urianger turned toward her in consternation, and Shasi went rigid under the force of his gaze. Had he heard, somehow? The brass goggles still laid on the table, so he could not have seen, she was sure—and what could she have said if so? “There has been no answer from Slafswys,” Urianger said. “You’re sure she has her linkpearl?” “I assured myself of it ere I entrusted the boy into her care.” Urianger closed his eyes. She could read in his expression his concern, along with the unspoken question. What manner of primal doesn’t temper? “Stay here,” Shasi told him. “We treat this like any other primal. If I don’t report back by dusk … well, you know the contingencies if I should fall.” “Be careful, my lady. Go well.” Shasi nodded, felt the weight of her sword at her back as she fled, but heavier still was the question: how could she?

Chapter Ten

She expected upheaval. She didn’t find it. Only Vesper Bay under a noonday sun, indifferent to the primal that walked among them. Shasi wanted to fault them for that, but how could she? She had done the same, and for much longer.

The Waking Sands was clear behind her. Slafswys had left with the boy, the watch had reported. But  she had not made it so far as the alehouse across the quay—at least according to the waitress, who recalled neither her nor the being calling itself Myste.

You should’ve known, Fray said. “I wondered at it,” she admitted. “If it was something to do with you.” Only the gutter I crawled out of. Not that he was born in the Brume. “Not that he was born at all.”

Little enough time to think on it in any case. Shasi patrolled the docks, but there was no sign of them there, and the crew of the ship unloading cargo told her they had seen nothing, either. In the square, nobody had seen Slafswys that day—or would not admit to it in any case, but …

“The boy with silver hair?” a Lalafellin merchant asked. “He left north, alone, after asking if I had any crystals.” “Please tell me you didn’t give him any,” Shasi groaned. “I’m not authorized to trade in crystals! Are you mad?” “Thank the gods,” she muttered, sprinting toward the northern gate.

A flash of yellow caught her eye as she ran, and she leaned over an alleyway below to find the prone form of Slafswys. There was no obvious sign of injury, but she wasn’t moving, and Shasi briefly struggled with herself: tend to her, or chase after Myste?

No choice at all. To see to Slafswys was a task anyone might do; to see to Myste was within the capability of herself—and a few choice others, none of whom were in Thanalan at that very moment. Still, guilt surged through her chest even as she fit her linkpearl to her ear.

“Urianger? I found Slafswys, just by the overpass toward Parata’s Peace,” she said. “Know thee her disposition?” “She wasn’t moving. I’m tracking him. I didn’t stop.” And she wouldn’t, sprinting along the cliffside. She could hear the ocean roar in her ears, the steady beat of her heart. The rhythm of her footsteps echoed as she entered the tunnel connecting the bay and the swamp.

All was too still, she realized. There were bogies that haunted this place, coblyns, yarzons driven from the swamp by its caustic gases. But she heard no sign of any of these pests—the only thing that moved in the tunnel was her.

At the mouth of the tunnel, where it opened up to the thick yellow mire of the swamp, Shasi found a pack of yarzons, clustered together as though they had swarmed some prey—but they were still and dead, though the fate of the orobon between them was no real mystery.

She did not know much about yarzon physiology, but they bore no obvious injuries—no legs wrenched off, no pale ichor oozing from cracks in their chitinous hides. They had simply … stopped moving, like a mammet whose core was tapped.

And they were not alone, for as Shasi stepped further into the Peace, feeling the foul air begin to itch at the back of her throat, she found other such specimens. Vilekin and toads, left where they fell, their bodies unmangled, their hides pristine.

“My lady,” Urianger said. “Slafswys yet lives, though ’twere a near thing. I would fain distract thee with that news, but more pressing was it that I should tell thee: her aether has been disrupted. The manner is not identical to the anomaly upon thy person, but whatever attacked her drained her aether most thoroughly.” ‘A man’s soul will sate that need as well as any crystal,’ Fray reminded her. Why not hers? Why not yours? “Why not theirs,” Shasi finished bitterly, stepping over another dead beast. “Do what you can for her, Urianger.”

The growing sense of malaise in her chest as she traversed the swamp had little enough to do with the fetid air, she was sure, but she saw no sign of Myste in the mire or on the rocks above. She pressed on, into the Peace, and when she came upon a cave that seemed lit from within by its glowing waters, she was sure this must be the place.

“Myste?” she called into the dim, the sloshing of her every step giving her away just the same. There was no answer, but she could feel the thrum of aether in the air, the way her passing stirred up eddies in the glowing waters charging the air still further.

When she found him, she hardly recognized him—all the hesitation was gone from his posture. There was something hard in those blue eyes—not guilt, anymore, but anger, brought to bear against her. He lifted a hand, not in greeting as she might once have expected, but to direct or to indicate, and for a moment Shasi knew not who or what.

From the shadow of the cave stepped a man in a black robe. Upon his brow was a mask of crimson—Lahabrea’s mask; shining before his face was Lahabrea’s sigil. That would have been baleful enough, but he lifted his clawed gauntlets and took down his hood, and Shasi could not fail to recognize him. His hair was pale and shaggy, and his neck adorned with crimson tattoos.

“Thancred,” she whispered.

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 23 Nov

And we’re back! I hope my American friends had an enjoyable holiday, and my international friends had a pleasant midweek. I think taking a second crack at this scene after reflecting on what I wanted to accomplish was a good call.

Previously: Week One, Week Two, Week Three Previously: 18 Nov, 19 Nov, 20 Nov

Chapter Eleven

The crystal glittered in the harsh sunlight, red as pigeon’s blood in her hand. It was whole again, at last, and running her fingers overs its surface revealed no flaw in its making, nor was the crack visible to her sight. It was as though it had never broken, but for her memory of its happening and the ordeal of its re-creation. But then, she had no need of a scar to remind her.

It felt strange to travel alone, after Fray’s company and then Myste’s. Neither were truly gone, she knew, but it was one thing to walk beside them, and another to carry them with her, in her—in the crystal or else her heart. No scar told that tale either, or at least none visible to mundane sight.

Urianger had noted the disruption of her aether even afterward, and she suspected he might for as long as she carried the crystal with her. Two souls in one body; one person in three parts—neither were the expected configurations of the self. And this was too dear and too dangerous to confess even to Urianger. She would see, first, if it disrupted her work.

When she returned to it—which was not yet. Her linkpearl was silent and her soul was anything but, and still she found herself in Ul’dah, on Pearl Lane, watching the faces of the porters as she passed. Ala Mhigo had called her sons and daughters home—but not all of them, she saw. Still, hope lightened their brows. Those that would go would soon be gone; the Sultana had seen to that.

And soon, too, for winter was closing in upon the city. Though it mattered little enough to Thanalan, Shasi still recalled the snow on the highest peaks, the emptiness of the roads through the mountain passes. Those memories were hazy and distant. She was eager to renew them. She was afraid to return.

She stood there a while, watching the loading of a caravan, feeling the sun upon her cheeks in the crispness of the day. She noted the mark of Eshtaime’s Aesthetics on some of the crates, and thought briefly of the Crown Gemworks—of her students, if one were generous enough to think of her occasional lessons qualified her as a tutor.

She knew the man handling the merchandise, she realized. “Wystan,” she named him, quietly, then more loudly, pushing off from her perch to approach the carriage. He went ashy at the sight of her, eyes widening, mouth falling open. “Ei—” he began, or perhaps I, or even aiee. She lifted her empty hands, keeping them well away from the hilt that rose over her shoulder, and halted in her approach. “What are you doing here?” “Working,” he said. His fellows paused to watch the exchange, and she heard her name pass in a low murmur—liberator, god-killer, Kilntreader. “Can we talk?” she said, jerking her head toward the Gate of Thal, feeling the swing of her earrings in the wake of that sharp motion. Wystan looked to his fellows, who waved him off, and he nodded, though he kept well out of the reach of her weapon as she led him off. “I’m not going to kill you,” she said after a moment. He laughed, not with amusement but perhaps with relief. “Where’s your friend?” he asked after a moment. “Fray?” “Fray’s not going to kill you either,” she said. “Don’t worry about him.” Wystan looked unconvinced, and she found it hard to fault him. “He shouldn’t have threatened you like that, but he’s not going to follow through.” She slowed to a stop beside the great portcullis, his mates out of sight and out of earshot.

“I’d have thought you’d made it to the temple by now,” she said. “Aye,” he said. “I did.” Shasi turned her head, looking away from the passing convoys and the sun-bleached gold of the desert to look up at the old Highlander’s face. “Why not stay?” she asked. “Was that not your dearest ambition? To return to the temple?” He turned his face away from her own, looking back toward the dirty lane they had come from. “I can’t,” he said. “Are you traveling with the wagons, or staying here in Ul’dah?” she asked. “I’ll go with ‘em, see to it nothing troubles them on the road to Ala Mhigo,” he said. “I done it once before, there and back, can probably make one more circuit before winter.” “And stay here for the season?” she asked. “Why? You could just take them to their destination and stay.” Her brow knit, but it was nothing compared to the tension in his shoulders. “You’re from Gyr Abania,” he said. “Heard that in the Reach.” “I suppose it was inevitable they’d talk about me,” Shasi muttered. “Do you keep the old faith?” he asked. She closed her eyes, though light still shone crimson through her eyelids, the world reduced to a crimson haze. Against that bloody field she envisioned the shrine at the foot of the Destroyer, remembering the feeling of waterfall spray clinging to cheeks and hair. “I wouldn’t say I’m devout,” she admitted. “But you knew enough to recognize me,” he asserted. “Know you the story of Rhalgr’s Beacon?” Shasi opened her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned back against sun-warmed stone. “Certainly,” she said. “In Rhalgr’s name I go to guide my brothers home,” Wystan said. “They tell stories of you on the road, too.” “Are they kind to me, in these tales they tell?” Shasi turned her gaze back toward the road, stretching long and vast away from the portcullis and the city, a ribbon of grey beneath a sky of blue. “Some times more than others,” Wystan said. “This story was about the woman who faced down the Corpse Brigade, so that those who had lost their hope could make the long journey home.”

“Your raconteur was from Little Ala Mhigo, then,” she said. “They made it?” “Aye, those that chose to come. They came to Ul’dah without me, and I was with them the rest of the way.” “What else do they tell you?” she wondered, looking back up at him. “Our countrymen?” “Different things,” he said. “They speak of you as their liberator, the destroyer of Garlean tyranny, but others … there were others what said you were in league with the Crown Prince. Which is it?” He did not meet her gaze as he asked, looking instead at the scar on her cheek. She lifted a hand to touch it, remembering the blade that had split her skin—and the hand that held the sword. One was broken and the other was gone—whether she put store by the rumors in Kugane he had survived his execution, Zenos yae Galvus was far from her side. “I don’t know, Wystan,” she said softly. “Am I the woman that tried to kill you outside Castrum Centri, or am I the one that let you go?” “You are both,” Wystan said. “Which version do you tell?” “I don’t,” he said, barking out a laugh. “I want to live, and that means keeping some things to myself.” “But you think of it, when you hear my name. Which version do you tell yourself?” He was quiet a long while, expression contemplative. His shoulders hunched still further. “The one where you spare me,” he said. “I did the same for Zenos,” she said softly, “and I don’t repent of it.” She looked out over the desert and listened to her heartbeat a long while. Not an act of weakness, after all, Fray said. Shasi could not answer him, but felt herself smile, a little.

“If you stay here the winter over,” Shasi said, “they may restore the temple without you.” “They might,” Wystan agreed. “Or they might try, but fail.” “They might do that too,” the old monk said. “Does neither eventuality bother you?” she asked, scrutinizing his weathered features. “How long will you spend escorting caravans?” “As long as it takes,” he said. “To see everyone home? Not everyone is coming home,” Shasi said, tone soft. “Even among the living, there are those that will choose not to return. But you know that already.” She watched his face. “Don’t you.” “Aye,” he said, gazing unseeing out at the traffic passing before their eyes. “Ul’dah is a damn sight better than a castrum,” she said, “but I still want to ask why.” “Do you think that because you didn’t end my life you’re entitled to my story?” the old monk asked, his gaze hard when he looked down at her. “No,” she said, looking away. “I simply think it might do you some good to tell it.” “It’s not that interesting a tale, girl,” he said. “I came to the temple as a youth and thought I would make of myself one of Rhalgr’s warpriests. Zenos yae Galvus wasn’t the first to sack the reach—the Mad King got there long before, and like a coward, I lived. The Black Wolf did for what was left, swept me up into his pack. I could fight, was good for the fight; the fight was good for me, if I let it be, and I survived. I survived by doing in Dalmasca what’d been done in Ala Mhigo, and then Eorzea was next.” “Monks aren’t just warriors,” she said softly. “Aye, I know that!” he snapped. “I thought you didn’t know much about Rhalgr’s worship.” “He’s my patron, like any Gyr Abanian,” she said, “and there was a military historian brought to the palace after we took the city. I know enough. About constancy. About sincerity.” “How can I think of either, after the life I’ve lived?” Wystan asked. “I look back on the things I’ve done, and I’m not proud.” “I’m not asking you to be,” Shasi said. “What are you asking?” Wystan asked.

“I’m not sure that I’m asking anything,” she said. “This is strange territory for me. I don’t choose my fights—necessity chooses them for me, usually, or someone else devises the best course of action, and then mine is the arm of the Destroyer. And there are better tools for peace than a Weapon of Light. But … what I wanted to do in the first place was help people, and betimes that necessitates something other than warfare. Sincerity, maybe,” she said, lifting a hand to stroke a finger along her scar. “If there’s something I’ve learned in the time since last we met, it’s this: there’s always a choice.” “I know that,” Wystan grumbled. “Wouldn’t be much sense in regret if there weren’t.” “Not just then,” Shasi told him. “Your order were warpriests?” “Aye, but the ‘war’ half has become comfortable and ‘priest’ sits strange upon my shoulders.” “You can go on choosing war if you want to,” she said. “Even if you feel you have to. It’ll always be an option—there will always be caravans to escort and bandits to fight and beasts to hunt, in Gyr Abania and everywhere else. If that’s the life you want, you can choose it. But when I had my blade at your throat, you told me you wanted to clear out the temple.” “I do,” Wystan protested, a guttural noise of frustration escaping his throat. “That wasn’t a lie. I’ve just … thought about it more since then.” “What conclusions did you come to?” she wondered, lifting a hand to brush her bangs off her brow. “I don’t know that I deserve to.” “I won’t say you don’t,” Shasi said. “I can’t tell you that. I don’t know that anyone can. Perhaps it’s between you and Rhalgr. But I believe in second chances for the people that want them. They might say some things about me in Ala Mhigo for offering them, but it’s my choice. And it’s yours what you do with it.” “It’s difficult to look upon one’s past with eyes unclouded,” Wystan said. “Ala Mhigo is free not because of anything I did but despite my complicity with her conquerers.” “If you want to atone for that, you should do the things that only you can do,” Shasi murmured. “There are few enough monks left to remember the old ways. The young that want to walk that path need guidance, and even if you don’t count yourself among the Fist of Rhalgr anymore, the histories could use your account. ‘To ye who help your brothers, shrink not from Rhalgr’s flame,’ isn’t that it?” “I don’t know that I count as a goodly soul,” Wystan laughed bitterly. “I don’t know that I do either,” Shasi admitted. “I just try to make good decisions.” She straightened, pushing off the wall with a roll of her shoulders. “Well,” she said, turning to face him. “Good luck with the caravan. Perhaps we’ll see each other again sometime.” “Perhaps we will,” Wystan said. “Either way … thank you.” She blinked once, and smiled. It was nice to hear, she realized. “You’re welcome,” she said.

Then she was off among the crowd once more, restless legs carrying her back toward the Sapphire Avenue Exchange. You’ve solved all his problems, Fray said, forever. Are you happy? “There are worse things,” she replied, feigning ignorance of his sardonicism. That only seemed to irritate him more. It was a pretty speech. Were you listening to any of it? “Of course I was,” she said. Then take your own advice, Shasi. This isn’t where you want to be. You gain nothing by denying yourself. “What do you want me to do, Fray,” she muttered, her good cheer evaporating. I want you to go to Ishgard, he said. It’s what you want you to do, too.

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 14 Nov

Everything is better with two cloves of garlic.

I’d like to dedicate this chapter to @seraphicrose, though she won’t thank me for it.

Previously: Week One, Week Two Previously: 11 Nov, 12 Nov, 13 Nov

Chapter Seven

They had left Ishgard after that. Shasi had had a lifetime’s fill of harsh snows and bitter memories, and Myste was sure they could find someone to help anywhere they went. So she let it drive her, and found herself on the far side of the world with the orphan boy.

She had hoped he would like Kugane, but he met it with detachment, reserving the passion in his gaze for the people they passed on the street. When they went together, he would reach out his hand for hers, and she would take it, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Time for bed,” she told him, looking at his reflection in the mirror on the door. She looked different in black, but the pourpoint offered better protection than her duelist’s costume, and she had meant to take care of it for some time. She did not much resemble Ser Ompagne—nor Fray—but then she no longer resembled her old self either. She had cause to be glad of that, though her gaze still lingered on the scar on her cheek. “Myste,” she said, and he lifted his head. She turned to face him. “You’re not going to bed,” he accused her. “No,” she admitted. “Not yet. But that doesn’t excuse you from going.” She crossed to stand beside him, doing her best to look stern. “If you don’t go to bed now, you’ll want to sleep late tomorrow. And you wouldn’t want to oversleep our destiny, would you?” “No,” he said, properly chastised. “Will you brush my hair before bed?” “Of course I will,” she told him.

They sat together before the mirror—her in her gambeson and him in a nightshirt—as she brushed out his hair. It was so long, so soft and glossy, and she could not help but think of Ysayle, then, and her heart ached at the thought. “I am still thinking of what Ser Ompagne said,” Myste confessed. “Do you think that good deeds can erase bad ones?” “Yes,” she said. “I think most people do.” She lifted a lock of hair, carefully brushing the tangles from the ends, holding the strands so as not to pull at his scalp. “Atonement … penance … these ideas come from that hope that good deeds can balance out bad ones.” “Is there ever a thing so bad that you could never be forgiven for it?” Shasi paused, setting the brush down to run her fingers through Myste’s hair. She felt no snags as she poured the silk through her fingers and sighed. “I think that depends on the person,” she said. “It’s easier to forgive someone who didn’t hurt you directly, or who hurt you only by accident, but … no one should ever expect to be forgiven.” She sighed. “As much as they might want to be. Now. Let’s get you to bed.” “Was there ever someone you couldn’t forgive?” he asked as he stood, reaching up to push all of his hair back, bundling it together in a loose queue. “Yes,” she said, looking away. “And I’m sure there are people who won’t forgive me, either. Best not to think of that now, little bird. Get some rest.” “Do you think we’ll find someone tomorrow?” “I’m sure we will.”

In truth, she was anything but. Still, sometimes a lie was the more comforting thing, and if they failed to find anyone, it wasn’t for lack of trying. They had been a week in Kugane already, had walked among her markets and embassies, visiting tea houses and theatres, and though Myste was moved to pity so often, he had not been moved to act. And her restlessness had not been left in Ishgard as she had hoped. It had driven her from her bed the last three nights, until she had simply surrendered to it. Shasi walked different routes, saw different parts of the city—once an onsen, a few okiya; tonight’s route led her through a park. She had seen it in daylight, the lovers gathered beneath the maple trees; the artists composing landscapes or tanka to reproduce in calligraphy. The lamps beside the pathways enkindled at dusk, and few remained overlong to enjoy their glow. They shone on Shasi alone as she walked, drawn inexorably onward to the district at its far side.

For three nights she had stood and stared, pale and placid, at a facade of iron on the other side of the gates. At the Imperial standard graven above the grand front entrance. She could hear the march of booted feet, drawn up short by the sight of her. But it was no crime to look, and she was the eikon-slayer. To the men on the other side of the wall, she was fear made flesh, and if any within those walls had the will to cast her out, they had not the temerity to bring it to bear.

The stars spread over Kugane, and her streets grew empty, and X’shasi Kilntreader looked upon the interlocked diamonds that represented the Garlean Empire as though they would give up some answer now that they had not proffered in the days before.

There were rumors that Zenos yae Galvus yet lived; she had heard them upon her arrival here, where Imperial soldiers intermingled freely with the populace beneath the aegis of Hingan neutrality. How could that be, she wondered? She had watched the light go from his eyes. She had borne the blade that ended him. How could he live when she had put him in the ground? If he drew breath, what kept him from her side? And what did the Empire know of all that had gone before? What did she want them to know?

She kept her silence, and the banners of Garlemald kept theirs. Would that her mind was as quiet, for the question that always came next was How much of my relationship with Zenos yae Galvus was real?

She was glad to hear footsteps behind her, flicking her ear as though that might shake loose her thoughts. A landward breeze swept in from the Ruby Sea, ruffling her hair. The footfalls approached, stopping some short distance away.

“It will not give you the answers you are looking for,” said a woman’s voice. “Believe me, I tried the same.” There was a bitter undercurrent to the words, the barest whisper of accusation. Shasi turned her head to face the speaker: an Elezen woman, dressed in white linen, her black hair unbound, curls tossed by the night breeze. Her eyes were burnt orange, and perhaps the hardest thing about her. Shasi did not know her. “That is meet,” she said, “since I do not really know the question.” The other woman’s eyes narrowed, lifting her chin. She wore a fillet of gold that glimmered with the motion, its finials like twin serpents coiled around a third eye she didn’t have. “What are you here for, then, eikon-slayer?” Her voice quivered with anger—not unexpected, Shasi thought. Her own grief had taken that form too often for Shasi to think otherwise, though she was glad Myste was not there to witness it. He had seen enough, she had to think. The woman stared at Shasi, chastising her for her silence, and then she spoke again. “You are a long way from home to have no questions to pose. Or have you run out of lives to ruin there, and hope to find them here in Othard?” Shasi wanted to laugh—not because it was funny, but because she was cornered. Because she hoped that might disarm her foe, though the Elezen woman bore no blade to match Shasi’s own. “I came to help people,” Shasi said, guilelessly. “Help? Really?” Pain pitched the Elezen’s tone high. “Have you ever considered that not everyone can bear the cost your help comes at?” Tears welled in her ocher eyes. “Yes,” Shasi said, no pride in her voice. “But perhaps the blood price you demand for every eikon slain seems a fair trade to most.” Not to her, the woman’s tone made plain. Something faltered in the Elezen’s expression.

Shasi felt a warm hand in her own, forestalling her from speech. She turned from the embassy, from the woman, toward Myste, in his robes and on the street. Shasi knelt to regard him, putting her other hand on his shoulder. “You should be in bed,” she said. “I want to help her,” Myste told her, addressing neither the unspoken question nor the accusation implicit in it. “Help her?” Shasi asked, turning to look back at the Elezen woman. There was nothing in those features she recognized. “You made a widow of her, and have forgotten her face,” Myste said gravely. “Did I?” Shasi asked, as though waking from a dream. The woman said nothing, but her expression beneath the serpentine arabesques that decorated her brow spoke plainly enough. Shasi could look upon her no longer, and turned her gaze back toward Myste. “It’s up to her,” she said, pushing herself to stand. Myste remained at her side a moment longer, until she touched his back, just between his shoulder blades, shepherding him forward like a shy child being herded to the front of the classroom. The other woman looked at him, her anger softening, expression transmuted into something almost maternal. Shasi wondered if this was how others saw her when she spoke to the boy. Fray offered some silent protestation of the notion, but she could not help but hope so anyway. It was as close to the real thing as she was ever likely to come, in the life that she’d chosen for herself. Myste found his courage at last, voice clear in the night. “There’s someone you’d like to see again, isn’t there?” The question rattled the other woman, who looked away. It could not conceal her yearning; nor could the words that followed. “I think that’s true for almost everyone, little one.” She closed her eyes as though on her tears, lashes dark against her cheeks. Shasi held onto Myste’s hand, the way she held onto hope. She gave his fingers a brief squeeze, an encouraging gesture. “Yes, it is,” Myste agreed, with the gravity only the innocent could muster. “We have seen it and felt it … we bear that guilt with us.” So she did. “The gods made me for this one purpose.”

“There are no gods, boy, but those made by the hands of men.” It was a man who spoke, stepping out of the shadow of the embassy. Shasi did not know him either—he was Garlean, a pureblood, handsome, his dark hair mussed, his chin shadowed with a day’s growth of stubble. He wore no armor, nothing to mark his station but his elegant hands with a swordsman’s calluses, which reached for the Elezen woman, groping in the darkness for her. She seemed startled by his voice, trembling at his approach, but lifted her hand so that his found it. “Hello, wife,” the Garlean said, lacing his fingers with her own. “What do you think you are doing?” the Elezen demanded to know, a note of panic in her voice. Myste recoiled from her, stepping back into Shasi’s shadow. “Helping people,” he said. At the same moment, Shasi replied, “Reckoning the cost of my intervention.” The man had nothing to say, focused only on the hand captured in his own, skimming his thumb over her knuckle, along the side of her finger. She looked at Myste and sighed. “It’s alright,” she said, but then she yanked her hand free, taking a step back, away from all three of them. She did not look at any of them, only stared into the distance, goosebumps prickling the bare skin of her arms. “Whatever sorcery this is, you can’t be real.” The statement was flat, devoid of intonation. “I lit the pyre myself, as is custom, just as I sat through everything else. As was expected of the wife of a Legatus.”

Shasi looked again at the man—the Legatus. She knew his voice. She knew him, if not his wife. Regula van Hydrus turned his head to follow the Elezen’s retreat, his expression resolute, touched by sadness. “I think you’ve haunted me long enough,” the woman said. “Can’t you find someone else?” “Lindleya,” he said, raking his empty hand through his hair, nettled by her rejection. “That I died here none would deny, but I assure you, I am real enough.” “Myste,” Shasi said, her voice soft, but warning lingered in her tone. “Please,” said the boy, earnestness naked upon his face. “Don’t you have anything you’d like to say to him?” That plea seemed to move the woman—Lindleya—for she looked at him then, pursing her lips, and then she turned her face away once more, her gaze wandering the landscape as though those sunset eyes could not bear to look upon her husband’s face directly. When she did, she glanced away, as though he shone so brightly to her she could not bear to look overlong. “I love you,” Lindleya said. Shasi needed neither her Echo nor the other woman’s words to know the truth of that, only the barest glance at her expression. But Lindleya’s lip quivered, and then she spoke again. “But I doubt you ever really did the same.” “Lindleya,” Regula said again, more firmly, almost a scolding. Whatever harshness his tone bore, however, he undercut as he lifted his hand to touch her. Lindleya’s fingers brushed the back of his hand, bringing his palm to her cheek. He traced her features with the pad of his thumb, as though he could gauge her expression thereby, and she leaned into the touch like a shy kitten coaxed from hiding.

It was then and only then that Shasi had the first inkling that Regula van Hydrus, Legatus of the VI Legion, was blind.

She wanted to blind herself too, or at least to turn her face away from the raw intimacy of the moment—to go back to contemplating the interlinking diamonds graven above the door. To think always—or not at all—of Zenos yae Galvus. But then why had she come if not to bear witness to Myste’s work? It was him that squeezed her hand, then, as though to anchor her to the moment.

“Of course I love you, Lindleya,” Regula insisted. “You are my wife for no other reason but that.” It was almost enough. Shasi could see how badly Lindleya wanted it to be enough, the way she leaned into him and then drew back, refusing the comfort of his presence. It was a maneuver Shasi had executed too many times to count, and she felt a strange kinship with the Legatus's wife. “What …” Lindleya warred with herself. She found her steel, and placed it in her gaze, the look she gave her husband baleful and uncompromising. “What about Varis, then?”

Shasi could not fail to recognize the name. It had been spoken often enough in her presence—and her experience with Regula van Hydrus had spoken to a deep and abiding loyalty between the Legatus and His Radiance. Still, to call it unsurprising was to mischaracterize the situation.

“You knew,” Regula said, not a question. His expression was pained. “I had hoped to spare you that. I did not love my Emperor, Lindleya,” he said, his tone bereft of pride. “I merely obeyed him.” “Really?” Lindleya asked, tone velvety. “And in twenty-odd years, it never occurred to you to say no? Or to tell me, perhaps?” She shook her head, turning her face away from him, out of the grasp of his hand. “Regula van Hydrus could twist every order he was given to his liking—except for this. But then I suppose it was for the good of the Empire, wasn’t it?” Shasi almost pitied him, as she had not since she herself had thrashed him in the depths of Azys Lla. But she could not watch him, which left all four of them casting their gaze about for somewhere else it might rest. She settled on watching Myste, whose horror was rising upon his face. Regula spoke his wife’s name again, making of those three syllables an apology. “I have had a great deal of latitude in my command, yes, but in this there was no refusal, no half-measure to be taken. None but the one I pursued—to keep this from you so that you would not suffer. Do not think me proud of what I have wrought.” “You are so bloody stupid, Regula!” Despite her words—despite all the words they had just exchanged, there was a note of devotion in the way she spoke his name. And she did not turn and run, caught in his gravity. “As if I needed to be sheltered from anything, least of all this! Of all the things you foolishly sought to protect me from, this was the killing blow.” She paused to sniff. “I was never confident enough to think I could compete with a prince, much less an emperor. It was simply easier to deny when you were still there to curl up to every night.” Lindleya sighed, and when she spoke again, her voice was muffled, her face buried against Regula’s chest. “You are supposed to get more careful as you get older, not more reckless.” “Foolish aan,” he sighed, his voice muffled too. Shasi chanced a glance at the pair to find his face buried against her curls, his eyes closed, holding her as though she might fall down if he let go. “Of course I love you. Not perfectly—perhaps not even well, this being the result—but I love you, and you alone. Perhaps that is reckless of me, too, but I will not repent of it.”

Shasi looked down at their feet as they stood together; at Myste’s hand in her own, her knuckles white. She loosened her grasp, just a bit, and thought to make her request of the boy then and there. Her chest ached as though it were hollow, and she wished there were someone to hold her the way van Hydrus held his wife. But she did not dare ask, and dared not look, only thought of Azys Lla, of the Demon and the Sixth. Of the Legatus who had come to her for help. Of broken blades and broken shields; wounds of aether …

“I wouldn’t change a single thing,” Lindleya said after a moment. “The timing, perhaps��I would have liked a few more months, and a better chance to say goodbye.” She took a step back. “But I love you, and you made me happy. That’s all that matters.” “What regrets I have are naught to do with our time together,” Regula van Hydrus said. “I would have liked to see her grow up.” His tone was wistful, his speech interrupted by the soft sound of a gentle kiss. “I love you, too. And her. Goodbye, Lindleya.” “I’ll be seeing you,” Lindleya whispered, as though it were a promise so dear she could hardly bear to speak it aloud.

Then the lovers spoke no more, and Shasi heard the whispering of the abyss, a point of deepest black in the vastness of the night. Myste let go of her hands, and Shasi drew her blade. Lindleya did not shy from the reach of her weapon, only looked upon her with understanding.

A single swipe cut through the lingering wraith, insubstantial as memory and gone as quickly, the aether dancing along the steel and flowing up her sword arm. It tasted of juniper and the strictures of duty. Shasi put her blade up.

“Legatii,” Shasi said, the single word a gusty sigh, bitter on her tongue. “Indeed,” Lindleya said, tone almost amused as she continued, “the word might as well be synonymous with ‘moron.’” Shasi smiled, despite herself, letting go of Myste’s hand to card her fingers through the silk of his hair. Lindleya’s humor did not last long, the pair standing side-by-side, looking at the embassy in parallel. “You bested Gaius van Baelsar … but that isn’t what happened to our miraculous prince, is it? At least not all of it.” The question hung in the air. It was Myste who spoke first. “You should tell her,” he said. “No,” Shasi said, and Myste opened his mouth to protest before she continued, making plain the refusal was not directed at him. “No, that was not all, between Zenos yae Galvus and I. What makes you call him miraculous?” “We only learned of his existence a handful of years ago—he had been sequestered, it was said, for his own protection. Regula believed it, but … I was less sure. Though he did look … very much like Varis did, at that age.” Lindleya trailed off in the night, and did not elaborate further. Instead she said, “I’m sorry.” “I’m not,” Shasi said, though she felt like she was trying to convince herself. “He … lived. Some few months after the Empire was driven from Ala Mhigo, he lived. But despite having held the province for only the scantest handful of years, the tyranny he displayed throughout that reign could not be abided. Whatsoever he did after,” she said. Shasi averted her gaze. “Everyone knows about Cid nan Garlond, I’m sure, and Nero tol Scaeva could never return to the Empire, so became our bedfellow by necessity, but … Regula van Hydrus was the first Imperial citizen to proffer any hope of collaboration, of peace or at least detente between us. I would not have reached out my hand in understanding to Zenos—to the prince—if Regula van Hydrus had not done the same for me in direst circumstance.” Shasi pursed her lips, feeling the weight of death upon her shoulders. “I am truly sorry for the cost of that alliance.” “… Whatever my personal feelings about what happened, in the end you weren’t the one who struck the killing blow,” Lindleya said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement. “What Regula did was reckless, and he should have known better. But he didn’t. It is only the last in a long line of equally rash decisions.” “Sometimes it does not feel so,” Shasi confessed. “Good men, sure their arm will not falter, dying for my sake—he was not the first. Nor the last.” “But we will be there,” Myste said, his tone comforting, “to tend to those they leave behind.”’

“You showed me kindness today when you didn’t have to,” Lindleya said, “so … thank you.” “I disagree,” Shasi said. “I did have to be kind—or what is the point?” She felt a smile rise upon her face, wan and watery, but it lingered for more than a moment, and in that there was victory. “Let me repay you with a word of advice, if you are willing to hear it: whatever it is you are searching for, you will not find it beneath the ivory standard. The crown prince may have come from Garlemald, but the Zenos yae Galvus you mourn … perhaps did not. There was no kindness for him here. The Empire will never have that answer—you are more like to find it reading tea leaves.” Had she been so obvious? Shasi drew her shoulders up, discomfited by the notion. “I will trust to your wisdom,” she said instead, “and haunt you no longer.”

Then she looked down at Myste, who smiled up at her, and took her hand, turning back toward the park. She addressed the boy a moment later, her tone laden with concern: “What were you doing out of bed at this hour?” Shasi glanced back once, and swore she saw Lindleya smile in understanding before she, too, turned away.

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 13 Nov

I put myself to bed early and then went out into the sun, which as it turns out is a very effective treatment for sleepy bitch disease, as I was able to make up just a bunch of ground today. Also, can you believe I was going to cut this encounter? It literally was not in my outline. Foolishness beyond foolishness.

Previously: Week One, Week Two Previously: 11 Nov, 12 Nov

She felt little better by morning, with her shattered crystal returned to its keeping beside her heart. That was proof enough of the events of the night before, she supposed. With a clearer head, she laid atop the bedcovers, closed her eyes, and reached out—the way Fray had taught her, when first they had communed.

He did not answer, no voice rising to greet her above the sea of whispers. But … she felt … something. A presence, beyond her reach, too weak to come to her; and felt herself, too weak to go to it.

“I’ll find you,” she promised, and when she sat up she was not sure whether she felt more or less alone.

Then she bathed and dressed, and found Myste waiting for her in the Forgotten Knight.

“So,” he said. “You really came.” There was gladness in his eyes. In the light, their color was familiar, and she could see his hair was not blonde as she had supposed, but silvery, hanging like a banner down his back. “I’m trying to get better about meeting people where I promise to,” she said with a wry smile. “Have you thought about where we can find people to help?” Myste asked. “The Brume isn’t far. Do you know it?” He looked up at her, then glanced away. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s begin there.”

He offered her his hand, and she took it, leading him down the back stairway and out into the crisp light of day. Even in summer, Ishgard never grew warm, though the cold was not the only reason she brought her hood up.

“Do you know anyone here?” Myste asked her as they walked the city wall. In the belly of the Brume, she watched the laborers repairing the stone masonry and the scaffolding. The foreman wore livery of gray, the rook-and-halberds of House Dzemael embroidered over his back, and she wasn’t sure whether to be cynical about the fact that the High Houses still held control even here, or simply grateful that they’d taken an interest at all. “Sort of. I knew people who came from here—Hilda, of course, and a few students at the Scholisticate, and Fray. Some of the soldiers who served beside me—not the Temple Knights, just the common infantry. But … they don’t love me here like they do in the Pillars. They’ve seen too many sons die to believe in heroes.” Not that she hadn’t lost the High Houses their sons too. “Fray,” he echoed, leading her through the uneven streets and the stilted homes of the Brume. Shasi let him pull her along by the hand, watching the faces of all those who turned to watch them pass. She saw small sorrows written on many, and sometimes recognition—but only when they looked at her. Never when they were watching Myste. “Who’s that?” Shasi pursed her lips, watching the wind stir Myste’s hair. It shone in the sunlight, brilliant as a blade’s edge. Who was Fray? It seemed far too complex to describe their relationship, and she knew little enough to say about his personal life. But there was a simple answer she could give, so she did. “Fray is a friend.”

“Is he happy?” “No,” Shasi said. “And when he was, it was never for long.” “Where is he? Maybe we can help him.” Myste paused, turning back to look up at her. Shasi closed her eyes on that plaintive face. “This is going to sound insane,” she said. “You may even want to go to the Inquisition about it, but please don’t. Fray and I are traveling companions.” “Why would I tell the Inquisition about that?” Myste asked. “Because … Fray died.” “Oh,” Myste said, face falling. “I don’t know that I can help the dead.” “The thing is … I can still hear his voice—or I could. Fray owned the soul crystal I carry, and it has his memories. I can still feel his presence, a little. But ever since last night, he hasn’t spoken to me.” “I’m sorry,” Myste said, his shoulders hunching as though in anticipation of some reprisal. “I’m not angry,” Shasi said. “I’m just ...” “Worried?” “Yes,” she said. “I’m worried.” Myste nodded, very solemnly. “What if … I were to help Fray? Would that make you feel better?” She felt something ease in her chest, though a part of her remained tense, unsure—of Myste’s intentions? His ability? Even Shasi couldn’t quite make sense of the feeling. “I think so,” she said. “Then … please ask him to forgive me. And think of someone important to him he’d like to speak to again. Do you know a place he would have liked?” Shasi shook her head. “Nowhere nearby. He said he liked to travel, but I’m not sure ...” If that was him or me. The line was so blurry when she looked back on their journey together. “I know where he told me to bury him, but that’s all.” “Then just go somewhere you feel calm,” Myste offered.

That was a tall order in Ishgard, but Shasi resolved to try. She could not focus enough for true communion and move at the same time, but allowed her thoughts to wander along with her feet, bearing her away from the sounds of construction in the Brume, descending into the charred ruins of row houses. She remembered when they had burned—how the Holy See had held hostage the families fleeing the fires. And something compelled her to enter just the same, to walk among the burned-out husks, every one a life. Every one a family, disrupted by her actions. She could still smell the smoke. She could still taste the fear in the air.

She entered one of them, its skeleton frame burnt to black, but she could see the shape of the house, the bedrooms on its second floor. Shasi touched the scorched wallpaper, picking her way carefully through the remnants that littered the floor. Anything still intact had been looted long before; anything that would burn had been consumed—either by the first fire, or burned for warmth sometime after that. Something about the sight made her sad—not guilty, as perhaps she had felt a moment before, merely sad. But still, too, and she let a deep breath fill her lungs and leave her.

“This is the place,” she said, and when she turned back to look at Myste, she saw a third figure coming in through the door frame. Like her young companion, he was an Elezen, but there the resemblance ended—the visitor was aged, his hair gone hoary, his face scarred by a life of battle. He wore the armor for it too, black as the beams around them. His eyes met Shasi’s. “What are you doing in my house?” he asked. “Sorry,” she began, “I was only looking for a place to meditate.” “I know that sword,” he said, his gaze fixed upon the handle of the greatsword that rose above her shoulder. The moment he said it, she saw he bore one of his own—more ornate, perhaps, but she knew him then for another dark knight. “That’s Fray’s sword.” “Fray was my mentor,” Shasi said. “Is, still, I suppose.” “As I was his,” said the knight. “Ser Ompagne.” “Shasi Souleater,” she replied. That felt right. “I didn’t think we called ourselves ‘Ser.’” “A relic of my old life,” he said. “I would invite you to sit, but ...” he gestured helplessly to the ruin around him. “You can’t still live here,” Shasi mused. Ompagne just looked at her. “I don’t,” he said. “But I did, when Fray was a boy.” “So that’s why I came here,” Shasi said. Ompagne seemed unfazed by this, merely waiting for her to continue. “He hasn’t told me much about you, I’m afraid. Or much at all about his old life.” That made him laugh, a full-throated chuckle that set her slightly more at ease. “No, he always played things close to his chest. Not half so moody as Sidurgu, though.” “Sidurgu,” she echoed. “‘Sid?’” “Aye, the very same. He sees me in you, did you know that?” “Fray?” she asked, pausing to reflect the way she always did after she spoke his name. But he didn’t answer—nor had she really expected him to. “Why?”

“Because I was a hero once, too.” Shasi blinked at him. He smiled, a touch wryly, and shook his head. “I never saved Eorzea, I suppose, but I was hero enough for Ishgard, and hero enough for the Temple Knights. I knew nothing of the darkness then, but I knew how to swing a sword, how to kill Dravanians, how to earn the love and respect of my men. I could have led a charge into the Seventh Hell in the full knowledge that they would follow after. There were times I did exactly that. It was enough to lead us to victory, and victory was enough for them to laud me.” “But?” Shasi asked, gesturing to the blade at his shoulder. “There always is a ‘but,’ isn’t there,” he said, his smile growing grim. “But they never counted the cost when they handed me my accolades—and my reinforcements. For every man I lost, there were a dozen who would have gladly died for Ompagne the hero, for their dreams of glory. And they did, green boys spilling red blood on white snow.” Shasi looked away, only nodding once. “There were so many of them, and one day I realized I couldn’t remember … I couldn’t remember the first one’s name, couldn’t call to memory his face. He had died for me, and I had forgotten. That was the day I left the Temple Knights.” Shasi cast her mind back, remembering the faces of her squadmates. She had always counted them as the first, but part of her wondered if there wasn’t another answer. If she would always be spared Ser Ompagne’s sorrow—because the first to die for her was her mother. That answer, she supposed, depended on whether X’shakkal Halha was her first victim, or the last sacrifice to the Warriors of Light that had disappeared. But she said none of that, settling instead on “I’m sorry.” “So am I,” Ompagne said. “And I was sorry enough then that I swore I would never lose anyone I cared about after that day … because I would never allow myself to grow so attached again.”

Shasi lifted her eyes to the stairway, the steps broken beyond her ability to climb them. “Then how did Fray come to live here?” “Because nothing lasts forever, my girl,” he said with a bitter laugh. “I gave up my shield and relinquished my title, but my sword was my own to keep, and for a time it was enough to punish the wicked, to find—to create—righteousness in a world that seemed to lack all familiarity with the concept. I wanted justice for the boys I’d failed; forgiveness for the blood on my hands. But though I saved lives … death separates us from those we love, but life may do that too. Circumstances conspire to part us from our charges, don’t they.” Shasi plucked at her necklace, listening to the silence after. She thought of the Scions, and wondered how they were getting on without her. Of X’rhun, who had undertaken some journey of his own. Of Minfilia, lingering somewhere beyond both her reach and her grasp. “Yes,” she agreed. “Even so, I wanted to … feel something again, to care for another person even knowing that someday we would say goodbye and never greet one another again. And I wanted to atone for my sins, for the lives I’d lost by my heroics.” Shasi could only nod solemnly at that, cast back into that mode which demanded her resolute silence, her unspoken understanding.

“That’s why I adopted Fray—and Sidurgu. No one should be alone in this world. I thought if I could teach them all I knew, help them learn from my mistakes, they wouldn’t make the same ones. Fray was an eager student, you know.” “He did tell me that,” Shasi nodded. “But this is not a calling one can thrust upon another.” Shasi blinked, remembering something suddenly. “Did you teach him conjury, or was that someone else?” Ompagne laughed. “Not I. A chirurgeon, who I had cause to be well-acquainted with before my retirement and after. Fray studied with him a few months, but he never really put down the books I’d given him. It was no surprise, really, when he told me.” “I think … he was grateful of the choice just the same,” Shasi said. “He made sure I knew I always had one, too.” “Then … I can be proud,” Ompagne told her, reaching out to grasp her shoulder. “Of my legacy. Of Fray’s. Maybe I’ve done enough to be forgiven.”

“You should say goodbye now,” Myste said softly, his whispery voice cutting through the stillness of the ruined house. She had almost forgotten he was there, he had gone so still, so silent. “Ah, there, my lesson demonstrates itself,” Ompagne said, his smile coming more easily. “One last piece of wisdom first. You are, in a sense, my disciple too.” “Of course,” she said, smiling at him as fondly as a grandfather. “You will meet many people in your life. You have already, and will in the future. For all you gain, you will lose in equal measure—for each introduction, a farewell. This is the way of things. You may fear that loss, and mourn it when it comes to pass—and you should. From these feelings the dark knight draws their strength. No sense in avoiding it, my girl; you will not protect yourself even so. And when the parting comes … bear it with the grace and strength I see in you now. Keep the departed in your heart, and you will feel them so close to you, you can feel their breath on your cheek.” “‘Strength is sacrifice,’” she said, echoing the thing that was not quite Fray. “Yes,” Ompagne said, “but what you must know that Fray did not is this: sacrifice is strength. It will make you the greatest of us one day.” “I’m glad to have met you,” Shasi said. “Remain so when I am gone,” Ompagne said.

Myste let out a shuddering little sigh, slumping to his knees, and Shasi moved to stand over him, putting a hand on his back. “Are you alright?” she asked. “I … I’m sorry, it’s just so hard to keep them together for so long.” “Keep them together?” Shasi asked, crouching down beside him. “What do you mean?” Myste lifted his hand to point, and she followed the line of his arm. There, in the center of the room, a pool of inky blackness swirled, glittering lights not quite able to escape its depths. “What … is that?” “That’s the aether from your crystal,” Myste said. “I used it to make Ompagne whole … and maybe Fray, too. It’s yours to reclaim now.” Shasi blinked at him, not fully understanding, but she felt the call of the abyss that had opened before her. She drew her sword, and channeled the aether along the blade in the same way she had learned to bolster herself when she flagged.

It tasted of steel and regret.

“Fray?” she asked. There was no answer, but she could feel him now, even without trying—wary, yes, but grateful too. And … perhaps, a little embarrassed. Shasi couldn’t help but to smile at that. “Was that really someone you knew?” She could feel his certitude, his sense of filial duty, and she nodded to herself. “Fray … still won’t speak to me,” she said, fishing out her crystal. There was still a large portion missing, and she could feel a foreign dismay at the back of her mind. “I thought you promised to give it back?” she said, not harsh but stern. “I did, and so I have,” Myste said. “Forgive me if you feel yourself misled—the portion I used for my power just now … is yours again.” “And the rest?” “The rest is enough to do this … perhaps four more times. Will you still help me?” “I don’t really understand what you did,” Shasi admitted. “That wasn’t really him?”

“It was him,” Myste insisted. “It was him as your friend Fray remembers him. I can give the memories form, I can breathe life into them and return them to those they love.” Shasi felt a shock of cold. “And all you need for this is aether?” she asked, her throat growing tight. A part of her knew what this must be—what any being conjured with hope and aether must be—but it was another part of her that spoke first. “I can get you crystals. Hundreds of them, if that’s what you need. If you can help me.” There were so many people she longed to see again … He looked at her with a sad smile. “I can help you,” he said, “and I will, since you are helping me, but I will not help only you.” She fell to her knees—relieved, exhausted, overwhelmed, and Myste leaned in to embrace her again. “Please,” she said. “Let’s set the world right together.”

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 17 Nov

Fanfest good, game good, friends good, sleep ... good.

Previously: Week One, Week Two Previously: 11 Nov, 12 Nov, 13 Nov, 14 Nov, 15 Nov, 16 Nov

Chapter Nine

They went not as did adventurers, carried on currents of aether. Myste was weak enough now to make that a dangerous proposition, and so they dozed in the back of a chocobo carriage. Myste drowsed with his head against her shoulder, his brow against her chin, his breath against her neck. She was so tired. The journey made her weary, she supposed.

He had told her all along, hadn’t he? She had simply misunderstood, or chosen to misunderstand. Myste could not raise the dead, only breathe life into their memories. It was perhaps a relief to know that the mother who stood in the field was a reflection of nothing more than X’khilo’s perceptions of who she was, who he wanted her to be. But X’khilo never knew who had sired Shasi, and perhaps Shasi would never know.

It was a relief and a burden all its own to know that X’khilo Nunh was not her father in blood as well as deed. It should have freed her to forsake the tribe at last, but the nunh’s blood had never been what bound her to them.

No, you were never one for renunciation, Fray said. She did not answer, looking down at the boy resting on her lap. No sorrow touched his face in sleep. He did not stir as she put her arms around him, carefully arranging his silver hair. He looked like Ysayle. She had always held that to be true. But he looked like someone else, too. He looked like … Everything you’ve lost, come back to you. “Mm,” she said, noncommittal in her tone. She could hear the steady pace of the chocobos on the road, and she missed Anthea, left behind when she had chased currents of aether to distant shores. Myste stirred just the same, blinking up at her. “Are we there?” he asked. “Nearly, little bird. I can see the light glinting off that horrible statue even from here.” She lifted a hand, and he shifted in his place to follow the line of her arm. “How awful. What will we find there?” “A friend,” she said. “He will treat you kindly, I promise.” “And he needs my help?” She thought of him proffering the siphon; remembered his voice in her ear as she stood in the Royal Menagerie, overwhelmed with uncertainty. “Perhaps more than anyone else I know,” she said. Oh, there was Thancred, of course, whose demons were without number, but she got no sense that Myste could allay them. “I should have asked Unukalhai to come and visit,” she said. “You remind me of one another.” “Why?” Myste wondered, shifting and stretching in the carriage, at last settling beside her. Shasi tilted her head, considering the question. “Both of you are overburdened by a weight that should never have been yours to bear,” she said. “But I don’t mind it, really,” Myste said. “I like being able to help people. I love people. If I can take their grief and grant them peace, that’s a worthwhile trade. It makes me happy, to see them smile again.” “What will you do when all the aether of my crystal is returned to me?” Shasi asked. “I suppose I’ll go away,” Myste said, and the ache she felt at the notion surprised her.

The carriage jolted to a stop a moment later, and Shasi breathed in the salt air of Vesper Bay. She jumped down from the back of the carriage first, holding her hands out to Myste, who let her help him down, then turned his face to catch the sun. She smiled, and he smiled too.

The Waking Sands looked abandoned—but it only looked abandoned, she knew. Its shade was yet welcome after the pressing heat of the Thanalan sun. How quickly she had forgotten, having fled its light. The glamour was convincing; Shasi was sure she tasted dust with every breath, and the stairway looked surpassingly precarious, such that even she herself balked at the first step. “If you need to,” Shasi told Myste, “you can just put a hand on my shoulder and close your eyes, feeling for the next step with your feet. I promise it’s safe.” “I know,” Myste said. “You would never hurt me.” Shasi felt a pulse of aether as she skimmed the toe of her boot over the first step. That would be the alert, she surmised, and when she made it to the bottom of the stairway, the door opened and Urianger stepped out.

She had to look up to meet his eyes—if indeed she did; the goggles obfuscated where his attentions were laid. His hood, too, sought to obscure him, and Myste seemed shy of him a moment, but Shasi settled a hand on the nape of the boy’s neck. “It’s good to see you, Urianger,” she said by way of greeting. “I’m sorry that I could not sooner warn you of my intention to visit, but it was a decision made in some haste.” “It is no trouble, my lady,” Urianger said. “Full glad am I to see you well, as ever. This, then, is the guest of which thee told me?” “Yes,” Shasi said. “This is Myste, my traveling companion. Myste, this is Urianger Augurelt. He is a great many things—a sage of Sharlayan, one of the Archons that followed Louisoix Leveilleur to Eorzea, and an accomplished scholar—but most importantly to me, he has been a dear friend.” Myste seemed overawed by that, but he stepped through the door when Shasi shepherded him forward. “It’s good to meet you,” he said. “I am glad to make thine acquaintance, Myste—and to hear that thee thinkest me still thy friend, my lady,” Urianger said. She blinked at him, faltering in her step for just a moment. “Of course,” she said a moment later, not a dismissal but an insistence.

They retired to the anteroom, which was much the same as Shasi remembered it—only emptier, with no Scions to sit around the table there. None but two, anyway, and Myste sat beside Shasi, solemn in the dim light of the room. “My lady tells me thou art possessed of a unique ability to speak with those departed,” Urianger said. “Yes,” Myste said. “When did this potential make manifest itself in thee?” the Elezen wondered. “I’ve been able to do it all my life.” “Dost thou recall the first instance of that power’s usage?” “Yes,” Myste said. “I was with some people I really admired, the sort of people who fought to protect others from the grief and sadness of this world. But … I had nothing really to contribute to their efforts, and so I kept to my silent admiration.” His chin fell to his chest, hair cascading forward as though to curtain away his shame. “It is isolating work, though, to be the bulwark of the innocent, and one day I heard a cry, as if from a great depth. I felt that loneliness as my own, and I wanted to alleviate it … since then, that has been my greatest joy and sole purpose.” Myste lifted a hand to brush his hair back over one pointed ear. He smiled across the table at Urianger. Shasi looked over at her old friend, too, but his face gave nothing away, his implacable mouth framed by silvery bristles. “What became of these people you admired?” Urianger asked. “What becomes of all of us, sooner or later? The bonds between us were broken. But … I do not hate them for that. Truthfully, I am drawn to that sort of person.” He turned to look up at Shasi. “That’s why I knew you would help me. Because you’re a good person.” Shasi only pursed her lips, glancing away. “Do you want to show Urianger what you can do?” she said instead. “Only if that’s what he wants,” Myste said, looking ashamed. Shasi gave him a nod of reassurance. “That there existeth a life untouched by loss I must surely doubt,” Urianger said, “least of all my own. My mentor preceedeth me through circumstances too strange to consider, but words enough from him have I to comfort me. If thou wouldst do me kindness, there is another I would speak to again, had I the opportunity.” Myste stared at the scholar, and for a long moment, Shasi was afraid he might refuse, but then she heard the swift approach of heavy footsteps.

“Urianger!” cried Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn, leaning over the back of Urianger’s chair to throw her arms around him. She rested her chin atop his head, pulling his body back against hers. “Moenbryda,” he said, “this is most unseemly.”

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 16 Nov

I had to get up so early to get this done. I could have slept in an hour because I forgot time zones existed, but oh fucking well. Enjoy Fanfest, everybody!

Previously: Week One, Week Two Previously: 11 Nov, 12 Nov, 13 Nov, 14 Nov, 15 Nov

Despite her diffidence, there was a sense of longing in the words. The grasses grew thick in the Emprise, waist-high on the dark knight and her charge, and Myste let the tufted heads of seed hulls skim over his open palms as they passed. Rhalgr’s Reach lay just beyond, where the ruined colonnade met a cave, its mouth framed in a facade of stonework. There was a white figure, stark against the shade, like some sort of perverse silhouette, who lifted his head as she approached.

“Where’s the other one?” X’khilo Nunh called. “Fray is … indisposed,” Shasi settled on. As she drew nearer, she lifted her hand just a fraction at the wrist, and Myste curled his fingers around her own. “Pity,” said X’khilo. “I could’ve grown to like him.” Shasi felt annoyance prickle up her spine, not sure if that were Fray’s reaction or her own. Whatever the case, it moved her to mutter, “The feeling was not mutual.” Clearing her throat, she spoke more clearly. “This is Myste. Myste, this is X’khilo Nunh.” “I’m her father,” X’khilo told the boy. Shasi only closed her eyes a moment on that statement. “It’s nice to meet you,” Myste said, very solemnly. X’khilo did not return the pleasantry, only stared back at the pair. “You never told me who he is to you,” he said. “Fray’s get?” Shasi bit back a laugh. “No,” she said. “An orphan from Ishgard. I’ve been looking after him.” She lifted her hand, extricating it from Myste’s, and clapped him on the shoulder, shaking him gently. “And he looks after me.” “It’s a shameful thing to raise someone else’s child,” X’khilo said, eyes narrowed as he averted his gaze. Myste looked wounded by that, and Shasi lifted her hand to the crown of his silver hair, shaking her head.

“Did you bring the rest of the tribe back with you?” she asked. “Come now, Shasi,” X’khilo said, with a grin that flashed too much tooth to ever really be friendly. “X’shasi,” she corrected. He ignored her. “You know that’s the council’s decision.” “Right,” she said, not at all convinced. “What did they decide, X’khilo?” “They decided that I should go first, see how settled things were, and then we could begin the process of emigration gradually.” “Of course,” Shasi said. “Well, I hope you know that for those too old or weak to make the trip on their own, I’m willing to hire a caravan to see to their safe transport,” she said, locking eyes with the Nunh. “I will.” “I left a linkpearl with X’rhinne, so perhaps I’ll get in contact with her to make arrangements.” “You can just call her Rhinne,” X’khilo said, rolling his eyes. She could, and she had done so often enough while in conversation with the old healer. But to do so in front of X’khilo felt dangerous, as though that connection gave him some path to her.

It had been weakness enough to suggest that Myste meet him.

“So what about this one,” X’khilo asked after a moment, jerking his chin at Myste. “Your little cuckoo.” “I want to help people,” Myste told him. “Ah, another of that altruistic lot,” X’khilo said, and Shasi could not fail to note the roll of his eyes as he said it. “Why should you do for others what they can do for themselves?” “The things I can do for you can be done by no other,” Myste pronounced. He seemed more confident when he spoke on the subject, standing taller. His excitement animated him, brought a smile to grave features, and Shasi could not help but to smile herself. “Is there someone from your past you’d like to see again?” he asked. “Someone you lost?” X’khilo Nunh simply stared at Myste, and then looked at X’shasi. “Seriously?” he scoffed. “Yes,” Myste insisted, all the confidence of a moment before shattered. “Yes,” Shasi echoed, more calmly. “I know it sounds hard to believe, but Myste can return the dead to life—at least for a little while. I’ve seen him do it.” “I’ll believe that when I see it,” X’khilo snorted. “Fine,” Shasi challenged, “then ask.” X’khilo narrowed his eyes at her, then turned his flinty gaze on Myste, his black-tipped ears pressed back against his skull. “I want to talk to her mother,” he said. “X’shakkal Halha.” “Is that—” Myste began, but Shasi cut him off. “Yes,” she said. “Do it.”

It still hit her like a punch to the kidneys when she heard a woman’s voice call Khilo’s name. Astonishment was written plain upon the aging Nunh’s face, and Shasi turned to follow the line of his gaze.

Picking her way through the grass was a miqo’te woman of about Shasi’s own age. Her hair was a tarnished silver, shaggy but short, tossed by the breeze that rippled through the grass. Her eyes were silvery, too, framed by the dark lashes Shasi had inherited from her. She wore a leather-reinforced bliaud, and from her ears dangled a pair of amethyst cabochons. Shasi lifted a hand to tug at the earrings dangling from her own ears, a fingertip tracing the silver figure inlaid over the stone. The very same gryphon rampant glinted on the woman’s earrings—the same earrings. Her mother’s earrings. But X’shakkal looked younger than she did in most of Shasi’s memories.

X’khilo recognized her in an instant just the same. “I didn’t think it was really possible,” he said. “I know,” she laughed. “I thought I would never see Gyr Abania again.” X’khilo stepped out of the shadows of the Emprise, into the sunlight and the tall grass. He stood a head taller than her mother, the long, fluffy fur of his tail blown about by the wind.

“Look how happy he is,” Myste whispered, sounding overjoyed himself. And Shasi had to admit it was true—she had never seen X’khilo look anything like this calm and content—he seemed always on edge around her, for some reason she could not fathom.

“I thought I would never see you again,” X’khilo said, leaning in to press his forehead to Shakkal’s. There was the briefest tremor, Shakkal’s ears swiveling back for just a moment before she leaned up to meet him. “You have me now,” she said. “What can I say to you?” “Explain something to me,” X’khilo said.

Shasi reached down to pluck up a stalk of wild grass, winding it through her fingers like a cord. The prayer beads from Fray’s funeral were still looped around her left wrist, and she unwound them a moment later, the soft clatter as she turned the beads about the circle lost to the wind. She felt an unease in her chest, not sure if it belonged to her or not.

“What is it?” Shakkal asked after a moment, straightening. She looked up at him with soft eyes—eyes Shasi had never seen in her mother’s face before. “Why did you leave?” X’khilo asked after a moment. Shakkal reached up to adjust the lay of the fur ruff about the Nunh’s throat, straightening his white leathers. Shasi knew the gesture, had been on the other end of it dozens of times—from the first time she’d put on the dueling jacket to the very last, the morning they marched on Carteneau. “You know why,” Shakkal said, looking away, not at her daughter but toward the eastern horizon. “You’re standing in the ruins of my reasons why.” “We would have been fine where we were,” X’khilo protested, closing his deep blue eyes. “The royal forces weren’t going to come all the way up the mountain just for us.” “You’re so sure of that,” Shakkal said, the corner of her mouth quirking upward in amusement. “Why?” “Because it’s been decades and they never came,” said X’khilo. “You can say that now with the benefit of hindsight,” X’shakkal told him, stepping back so she could run a hand through her hair. “We didn’t know it at the time. It seemed best to be prepared to fight,” she said. “To make sure others were given the same chance. We knew the art. It would have been selfish to hoard it.” X’khilo shook his head: “It could have gone poorly for you. For the tribe. Why give up the advantage?” Shakkal squinted at him: “It was war, Khilo,” she said. “We didn’t have the time to be that small-minded.” She took another step back. “You never taught it to me,” he said, looking away. He cast his gaze about, and it settled on Shasi for a moment. Myste stepped closer to her, and she settled her hand on the boy’s shoulder. “What would you have done with it?” Shakkal wondered. X’khilo turned his face to hers once more, the scar upon his jaw twisting his frown into a scowl. “Defended myself,” he said. “From unjust challenge.” “If you could not keep the seat, ‘twere better you lost it in any case,” Shakkal said, the words falling carelessly from her lips.

Shasi could see the lines of anger write themselves upon X’khilo’s form, the way he drew his shoulders up and his ears swung back. His anger troubled her less than had all that passed before; the memory of that easy affection made Shasi wary.

“And what did your altruism get you?” X’khilo demanded to know. “Did it save your home, when the Black Wolf came to take it? Did it make your life any easier in Ul’dah?” Shakkal only stared at him, dumbstruck as Shasi had never seen her in her life. “Did it get you killed?” X’khilo pressed. “No,” Shasi protested from her place on the sidelines. Those hard eyes turned on her, almost black in their anger. She had not inherited them from him, nor her mother’s bewildered silver stare. “Maybe you got her killed instead,” he said. “If you want someone to blame, I’m as good a target as any,” Shasi told him, setting her jaw. Her tail twitched behind her, batting restlessly at the grass. “Stop it, all of you,” Myste whispered. “I’m sorry, Myste,” Shasi said, “but this has been coming a long time.” She lifted her chin and her voice: “I’ve asked myself the same question,” she admitted. “I’m sure everyone who lost someone at Carteneau has spent the last decade doing the same.” “She’s right here,” X’khilo said. “Did she kill you?” he asked, turning his gaze on Shakkal. “I don’t know,” she said, her shoulders shaking. “Did she get you killed?” “I don’t know!” “Why did you leave, Shakkal?” Khilo demanded to know, reaching out to take hold of her by the arms. “Why did you take our daughter and run away?” “She’s not your daughter,” Shakkal shouted back.

She wasn’t?

“But you knew that,” Shakkal added a moment later. X’khilo looked across the field at X’shasi, the force of his gaze like a physical blow. “Yes,” he said. “I knew. I just never understood why.” “I can’t give any answer that would satisfy you,” Shakkal said. “I know,” X’khilo said. Then he said, “If I ever see you or your little cuckoo again, it will be much too soon. I can’t believe you would do this to me.”

X’khilo’s indignation did not move her. His anger did not frighten her. She was much too much in shock for that, and the only sound that reached her was Myste’s sniffling. Shasi dropped to her knees, holding her arms out to him. X’khilo Nunh spat upon the ground as he passed them.

“I didn’t know,” Shasi whispered. To herself, to him, to Myste; she wasn’t sure, only sure then that it needed to be said. No one answered. “Mama,” she called across the meadow, “why didn’t you tell me?” X’khilo’s stalking footsteps receded into the distance, echoing in the cave that led to Rhalgr’s Reach. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Myste. “Forgive me.” “No,” Myste said, and Shasi felt as though she might crack in half again. “No, no, it isn’t your fault, we did not fail …” “I don’t know that we succeeded,” Shasi said, bowing her head to rest her forehead against Myste’s. “He will not thank us for the closure he found … if he found it at all.” “No, that is not his way,” Myste agreed. Shasi lifted a hand to brush her thumb over the boy’s cheek, wiping away his tears. A fresh spate fell, and a deep sorrow gripped her, echoed within by a second voice. “I wanted to speak to her too,” Shasi said. But she could hear the whispers of the abyss, and knew her chance had passed. “Forgive me,” Myste whispered. “I can’t hold onto them long after … when he ran away, he stopped thinking of her, and I couldn’t … what cruelty.” “Family can be … complicated,” Shasi said with a sigh. “You did nothing wrong, Myste.” “That’s not true,” he said. “I stole from you. Go on … reclaim that which I took. Make yourself whole, at least.”

It took her a long time to pull away from Myste, to push herself to her feet. There was no recognizable trace of her mother as she looked out over the landscape, only a dark wound in a sunlit meadow, seething with blackness. She gazed into its depths and swore she felt the presence of flame, flickering unseen. The taste of it on her blade was ash and ruin.

“You wouldn’t call her again if I asked, would you.” “It’s not wise,” Myste said. “Will you come with me a little ways? I want to say a prayer for her.” “There’s a shrine to Rhalgr in the Reach, isn’t there?” “Yes,” Shasi said, “and maybe I should go there, but I don’t want to just now. Rhalgr and I have always had a … contentious relationship.” “Then where will we go?” Shasi lifted a hand, pointing at the shape of a ziggurat where it broke the landscape. When she let it fall to her side again, Myste laced his fingers with hers.

There was no trace of the qiqirn that had taken up residence in the ruin at one point. Shasi wondered if that was because Clan Centurio had driven them out, or if Lyse had managed to coax them elsewhere somehow. She hoped it was the latter, but did not set much store by the thought. It was quiet for her visit, and that was enough.

“I came here once as a girl, so small I barely remember it,” she said. “We must have left here not long after.” “Why?” Myste wondered. She looked down at him. “I wasn’t always a dark knight. I don’t know that I always will be. I was sure I’d be a red mage all my life, but look at me now. But my mother … the art was important to her. And it was important to her that I learn it, too, even after we left. Especially after we left.” “Why?” he echoed, in the guileless way of curious children. “Because the art was born in Gyr Abania, and so was I, and she wanted me to have that.” “Do you ever regret it?” “No,” Shasi said, kneeling down in the dirt and laying her sword aside. “She taught me to defend the weak, and to offer my aid wherever it was needed. Especially if I was asked. So … in a way, you could thank her for the fact that you are here with me, too.” That seemed to make him smile a bit. “Then I will say a prayer in her memory too.” Memory. What a curious thing. Shasi closed her eyes with a sigh. “She seemed … different. Strange. She’s been gone a decade already, but I …” She shook her head, feeling the weight of her mother’s earrings as they swayed with the motion. “I always got the sense there was someone she missed, but … I didn’t dream it would be him. And maybe it wasn’t, if I’m not … if I wasn’t …” “We’re so many things when we’re alive,” Myste said. “And then death comes, and all of a sudden, we no longer exist …” “And the living are left to make sense of our contradictions.” Shasi took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

She could feel the sunlight on her skin, seeping too warm through the black of her gambeson. There was a gentle breeze, and she could taste dust with every breath, but there was the scent of growing things, the haze of late summer settling over her shoulders. Soon it would be autumn, as it had been when she had first crossed the wall. She felt so distant from the woman she had been then, untouched by love and loss, unhoned by grief. There was an ache in her chest when she thought of it—all those she had met; all those she had left behind. The terrible cost that had mounted all around her so that she could kneel in the dirt and think of her mother. She did not flinch from it.

Welcome back, Fray said, and it startled her so much she had to bite back a yelp. “What’s wrong?” Myste said. Shasi’s eyes snapped open, flustered. Don’t tell the boy a thing. “It’s nothing,” Shasi said. “Just a bug bite.” He looked at her so strangely that she had to laugh, and for a moment he joined in. “So many things,” he echoed, all the joy fled him. “Have we done more harm than good?” “Who’s to say?” Shasi wondered. “I hope we have,” he said. “You are still a good person. You can still be a good person.” Shasi didn’t know quite what to say to that. “I hope she would agree with you.” “One more … and then yours, isn’t that it?” “If you still agree to it.” “All the lives we’ve shattered … we can make them come together again,” Myste promised. All the wishing in the world will not make the broken shield come together again, Fray whispered. Shasi knew who she wanted to believe. As surely as she knew the truth. “I’d like to stay here just a little longer, and then we’ll go somewhere else. Find someone else. Alright?” “Alright,” Myste said. “Go and play. It’s good for a boy your age to go and play.”

Sunlight streamed through his hair, staining it gold as it streamed out behind him. Shasi watched from a distance, but all the ease had gone from her.

You know what this is, don’t you? Fray said. Tell me you’re not this blind. Shasi shook her head. “I think I’m starting to understand,” she said. A lie, however sweet, is nevertheless a lie. “Was she lying to him?” Shasi asked. “Is that what it was? Why? What have the dead to fear from the living?” What do you want me to tell you? Fray asked. Think carefully about the question. “Oh,” she said. Such a small word. Such a heavy burden. She could feel Fray’s frustration. Ware the penitent, for theirs is a compulsion all-consuming. “What should we do?” You won’t kill him. The thought seemed an affront to her. She didn’t need to say so. The only child you’ll ever have? You won’t kill him. “I could always adopt an orphan from the Brume, teach him the dark arts you’ve taught me.” That would require you to bring someone else into the hell you’ve made for yourself. “You know me too well.” I am you. “So what do we do?” You know what he is. Who else would you go to? Shasi closed her eyes and sighed. “No. No,” she said. Go on. Who do you trust with the knowledge of what you’ve done? Who do you trust with your grief? “Vesper Bay it is.”

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 12 Nov

i diagnose myself with sleepy bitch disease

Previously: Week One, Week Two Previously: 11 Nov

The city grew dark outside her window and the bottle grew empty, and she grew no less restless. Shasi paced her room a while, and at last put on her cloak and went out into the night. The sky was uncommonly clear, pricked with stars, the cold air filling her lungs, chasing any thought of sleep from her mind.

It wouldn’t have come anyway, she remembered, the thought wringing a bitter chuckle from her. She’d forgotten the restlessness that followed a funeral. How it had driven her all the way to the Sagolii after her mother’s death; how Nidhogg taking wing after Moenbryda’s memorial had been half a mercy. How she had kept moving rather than think about all the funerals they never held; all the ones she never attended. Perhaps they hated her in Little Ala Mhigo not just for her mercy toward Zenos, but because they thought she had forgotten Wilred.

How could she? Her footsteps on the stone echoed the question back at her. How could she forget? And why grieve now for someone she had never known in life, and who remained with her in death? It was a strange passion that moved her, eyes on the stars. She knew the city, and climbed for better vantage, as though by looking upward she could pretend she were somewhere else.  When there were no stairs left to climb, she found herself standing in the Hoplon, looking south toward Coerthas. The stars were distant and cold, and every breath chilled her lips, spilling from her in a plume of white.

The lamps were lit all along the Last Vigil. She could see candles in the windows of the houses. Looking closer, she could see the shadows of people moving about within. Her eyes settled on one window—dark, the room it looked out from disused, no glow on the ceiling from the hearth. No cause, she expected, ever to ready that room again.

You were their ward, Fray said as she looked upon the Fortemps manor. “Once,” she agreed, the single word straining against the tightness in her throat. Why take a room at the Forgotten Knight?

What answer could she give him? For all the funerals she had missed, perhaps that one was the most unforgivable. She remembered the perfect gold of the sunset, the spires of the city. The anguish made plain on the Count’s face when she brought back the shattered shield. The resounding silence. And she remembered fleeing to the Sea of Clouds, chasing the Archbishop and baiting gods. He had died for her, and she hadn’t been there when they buried him. She had been the Warrior of Light instead.

There was a sound like shattering glass in the stillness of the night, interrupting her swirling thoughts. But there was no motion on the street, and it had not come from so far away. She lifted a hand, wondering if the cabochons in her mother’s earrings had cracked, but the amethysts were smooth and unbroken beneath her fingertips. Shasi lifted the iron chain over her head, fishing her dark knight’s crystal from beneath the folds of her clothing.

She laid the crystal across her palm—what remained of it. It had split down the very middle, a clean break, the flat edge contrasted with the rough scalloping of its natural edge. Shasi dropped to her knees, feeling around on the stones for the other half.

“Fray?” she called into the night, suddenly fearful of being alone. She heard footsteps behind her. Shasi looked back, the shadow of the Vault looming over her. But it was no nightwatchman nor priest that approached her—only a child, his pale, unbound hair tossed by the night breeze. “Do you need help?” he asked, tugging at the tasseled fringes of his robes. “I dropped something,” she said, fingers crawling over the frigid stone. “My crystal broke in half, and I think part of it fell here.” “Please forgive me. I think … that might be my fault,” he said. Her eyes met his—deepest blue, set in a guilty face. “Who are you to think that?” she asked, tone gentle. “My name is Myste,” he said. She blinked at that, once, but he continued unperturbed. “I have a … well, a sort of power. I want to use it to help other people, but it needs aether. So … while I was drawing on the aether around me, I must have tapped into your crystal, and borrowed some of its stores.” Shasi could only stare at him, dumbstruck. “And it shattered in the process? Forgive me, please, forgive me,” he continued, seeming genuinely distraught. “I’ll give it back, I’ll fix the crystal—just as soon as I’ve helped someone. I promise.” “Who are you trying to help?” Shasi asked, sitting back on her heels. “I don’t really know yet,” he said. “Someone sad, or frightened, or lonely. But that could be anyone. Or everyone. I want to make someone happy,” he said, lifting a hand to push back his hair. “There’s so much sadness in the world.” “I know,” Shasi said, sighing. “But it’s late, and ...” she paused, glancing back at the Fortemps manor. Most of the curtains had been drawn, the house coming to rest. “It’s true there are unhappy people even here,” she said, “but we should look somewhere else. Do you have somewhere to go?” “If you’re thinking already of where to look for people to help, does that mean you’ll help me?” Shasi smiled softly. “I try to help anyone who asks,” she told him. “So I want to help you, Myste. Let me sleep on it. I’m sure in the morning I’ll have thought of someone in the city we can help. Will that do?” “Yes,” he said, nodding resolutely. “Thank you for putting your trust in me!” “Ask for me at the Forgotten Knight in the morning. I’ll wait for you there.” She glanced down at her crystal, shattered and silent. “I promise.” “I will, I will! Thank you,” the boy said, and threw his arms around her a moment. Despite his youth, he was taller on his feet than she was on her knees, and she found her cheeks buried against the worn leather that mantled his robes. “Thank you,” he said again.

When he let her go, she could feel the cold of the night, and the exhaustion she’d ignored welled up inside her, so that she had to struggle to her feet. By the time she rose, the boy was out of sight. She settled her cracked crystal against her chest—no longer warm, as it had once been, but she was not bereft of its aid. She still knew all the secrets—all the triumphs, all the sins—that had been etched in its depths. In fact, the only thing she seemed to be missing was Fray.

She made the long walk down to Foundation, back to the Forgotten Knight and out the back door. Frost glittered over the Brume—the place Fray had come from. The place Myste had come from, she thought, but part of her was not so certain.

She wanted to go down and investigate, to ask after the strange child with his strange power that had taken half her soul, but the hour was late and she was bone-deep tired. And something told her they would never talk to her anyway. X’shasi Song-ender was too recognizable a figure, even hooded and cloaked.

When she surrendered herself to her bed, it was with her fingers wrapped around the jagged edge of her crystal, straining to hear a voice that had fallen silent.

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 6 Nov

man if only i could just suplex everyone in authority shit would be so much simpler

Previously: Week One Previously: 4 Nov, 5 Nov

They had left the next morning, on foot, leaving their birds with X’rhinne, along with a linkpearl. During their hike to the Well, Rhinne had called to report the return of the scouts, and X’kher related to her the location of the Amalj’aa encampment where the others were being held. It was cut into the cliffs above Zahar’ak, and X’shasi was glad of her experience as a mountaineer.

Because of the remoteness of the camp and the difficulty of the climb, the Amalj’aa were not expecting them, and Shasi took the lookout by surprise, dropping onto his back from a cliff overhead, sword entering at the neck and exiting at the throat in a spray of too-hot blood. Fray dropped down beside her a moment later, and she got a sense of his amusement from the look in those golden eyes. She did not return his hidden smile, only turned her gaze upon the camp.

How long had it been since the first time she’d done this? Even before Thancred Waters had pulled her up out of the dust and enlisted her aid, as a member of the Immortal Flames it had been her duty long since to quell the threat of Ifrit’s awakening. That peace had been bought in blood, and would be purchased anew this day.

Fray followed like a shadow—apt, perhaps, given all he sought to teach her—as they went deeper into the mountain camp. She could smell the iron on the air, of rust and of blood; could scent the smoke of flames that never went out. She thought of the Bowl of Embers, of the squad mates that had walked into that place with her and never come out.

When they found the cages, they were guarded by a half-dozen Amalj’aa. There was little room for subtlety, and she was not a subtle tool. And never had been, she had to admit to herself. So she walked into their midst, lifted her sword, and challenged them openly.

The lizard-men swarmed her, and she gathered her aether and sent it pulsing outward, rippling through the ground beneath them as though it might swallow them all whole. Most of them were unarmed, but it mattered little—their claws were wicked enough, scraping over her arms and ringing along the length of her blade. It bothered her little. She was used to being outnumbered, though at least now she felt equipped to handle it.

One of them lifted its voice to bellow the alarm. She silenced it a moment too late, arterial spray washing over her face. That was becoming too familiar a sensation, she thought, then shook it off. “Fray,” she called instead, “the cages.”

He shot out from behind her, charging between the lizard-men heedless of the dangers. Aether pooled darkly around him, trailing behind him like a banner of war, murky as ink. Claws and spiked fists cut through the cloud of darkness. Most missed her, giving her the chance to whirl about and deliver an arcing slice. Two more of her opponents fell, the crowd now halved. But that only allowed her to better see what approached.

The chains of silver about his neck announced him as a priest of Ifrit. So too the scepter of bone in his hands. It glowed ember-bright for just a moment, and then she felt the gout of flame blister over her, charring her side.

She should have been afraid. Instead she was determined. One of the pugilists caught her with a punishing blow, the spikes of his knuckles buried in her wounded side. She cried out, and Fray looked back at her. Shaking her head, X’shasi lunged forward and buried her sword in the Amalj’aa’s gut, allowing herself to be invigorated by its death.

“You next,” she declared to one of the remaining Amalj’aa. As though responding to her goading, it stepped in, raking its claws across her. She felt the pain suffuse her, well in her chest like an unvoiced scream, and allowed it to enshroud her. The tip of her sword scored the Amalj’aa’s leathery skin, but did not penetrate, not until she swung around and caught him on the back stroke. Sweat and blood slicked her body, covered her face. She could taste it with every breath, and let it fuel her.

She was shorter than the Amalj’aa. That only made it easier for her to drive her sword upward, beneath the ribs, so that her opponent died on her blade, blood running down. Over the hilt, over her hands, their last desperate breath leaving them without a sound. Like an execution.

One left.

Flame blossomed around her once more, singing her hair, burning bare her tail. Two left, she recalled. Her eyes darted about, looking for Fray. He was still occupied with the cages, and the priest advanced unchecked. The last pugilist struck her across the face, driving her with the force of the blow. She turned the movement into kinetic force, directing her aether with her steps, lashing out to wither him. His next strike was not half so potent, easily batted aside. She drove her blade into his gut, twisting as she pulled back, and then disengaged at a sprint, advancing on the priest.

Flames buffeted her with every step. She could feel the hilt of her sword grow hot in her hands, even through its leather wrapping. She knew how the magic was made. She knew how to unmake it, and steeled herself against the flames.

The priest seemed shock when she shook his next blast off, emerging from the flames to stand before him. She swung her sword. He threw up his arms to intercept the blow with his staff. The bone splintered; the aether channeled through it shattered too, washing over both of them. X’shasi called the darkness to her like a second skin and shrugged off the worst of the explosion of aether. The priest was not so lucky; she could smell his charred flesh. It cracked and crumbled beneath her slashes, crumbling like ash. Still the priest was desperate enough to try and cast without a focus, and still she pressed him. He was fueling his spells with no less than himself, and her last blade stroke was almost perfunctory. Almost a mercy.

When she looked back at the cages, the Lynx tribe captives were still cowering within the bars of iron. X’shasi wiped her sword on a scrap of clothing not already soaked in blood or charred beyond use, and stowed it as she ambled down the hill. With every step, the pain she had ignored during the battle returned to her. Fray met her halfway, holding a hand out to her.

“Wait,” he said. “We could commune, now. We should commune now.” “No,” she told him. “You need to hear the voice! You’ll never find her if you put this off!” “That’s not why I came, Fray. Don’t ask again.” “You’re going to have to make a decision at some point, Shasi. Do you want to be a hero, or do you want to be a dark knight?” “I want to save them,” she said, brushing past him.

Every part of her ached. She had to pant for every breath she took, and each one tasted of blood and ash. She lifted her voice and found it raw. “It’s safe now,” X’shasi declared. “We came to rescue you.” She fumbled for a canteen of water, wanting to wash clean her face. Then, guiltily, she reconsidered it, holding it out in offering to her tribesmen.

It still took a solid minute for the first of them to emerge.

The Well was not so far a diversion on the trail from Zahar’ak to the Lynx camp, and so they made the stop. In any case, X’shasi wasn’t sure she could have made the hike in a single day, nor could the captives. They seemed glad to stop and rest in the oasis—the Well was in truth a mountain spring, and its waters pooled in a pond ringed with trees and leafy bushes. The Lynx tribe miqo’te were exhausted, and it seemed a fine place to camp. Fray offered to take the first watch, and X’shasi—for all her intentions to relieve him—slept clear through until morning. Then she wandered down to the edge of the spring.

The water was blessedly cool against X’shasi’s skin as she knelt on the shore to scrub her face. “You should leave it,” Fray said. “It itches,” she protested. “Let him see it,” Fray said. “He should know the cost of the things he asks from you.” “He didn’t ask.” “No, he simply expected.” “I volunteered,” she countered. “Why?” Fray asked. “You know he’s no father of yours.” X’shasi frowned, struggling with her boot as she pulled it off. “It’s true, I left the tribe and don’t really want to rejoin it,” she said. “But that doesn’t absolve me of all my responsibilities to them. Even if they were strangers—” “They practically are.” “Even so,” she said, raising her voice just slightly. “I would have helped.” “Why?” he repeated. “It’s what I do,” she said, pushing herself to stand. She waded into the water, letting the spring wash away the ash and grime. “This isn’t the hard part. This is what’s easy. This is what’s clear.” “You have a choice.” “Abandoning innocent people to be sacrificed to call a primal, when I could save them? There’s no choice at all.”

Her clothes were still stained, still singed, her wounds still visible. She ran a hand along the gash in her forearm with concern, looking back at the shore. Fray said nothing, but one of the other miqo’te was watching her. “You’re hurt,” she said. X’shasi looked at her—still a girl, though nearly a woman, at least as they counted such things in Ul’dah. “I’ve had worse,” she said. “I could help you,” the girl told her. “I’m Rhiri, Rhinne’s apprentice, I know a bit ...” “What about the others?” X’shasi asked. “I can make it back to camp alright, so don’t worry about me.” Fray scoffed from his place on the bank. X’shasi only looked at him. “I can at least make sure nothing gets infected,” X’rhiri offered. X’shasi shook her head, spraying droplets of clear water from her hair. “Alright,” she assented, wading out of the cool spring.

X’rhiri had some skill as a conjurer, and X’shasi felt her wounds close painlessly, though the flesh was still scabby, not yet healed. She swung her tail about to inspect it and found the flesh pink and hairless, the tuft of white fur at its tip all but burnt away. X’shasi let it go with a sigh, and X’rhiri looked almost apologetic. “I do feel better,” she told the young apprentice. “Good,” she said. “I think the others are ready to set out whenever you are.” “Sure,” X’shasi said. “Just give me a minute.” X’rhiri nodded and withdrew, tracing the banks of the Well to rejoin the others on the far bank. “How come you didn’t do that?” she asked Fray, offering him a hand up. “It’s not as easy as it looks,” Fray told her. His gauntlet was frigid in her own, colder still than the spring water. “And you didn’t ask.” “You’re angry with me,” she said. “About yesterday.” “Yes,” he said flatly. “We’ll deal with that once they’re safe.” “As long as we deal with it.”

When they approached the mesa that sheltered the Lynx camp, X’shasi found herself at the fore of the group, the former captives arrayed behind her. The sun had dried her clothes and hair over the hours of the hike, but effort had slicked her skin with new sweat, and some of her wounds had reopened to gild her with blood. However haggard she felt, there was a grim determination in her core—and in her eyes, perhaps, for among those who came out to see the advancing party stood X’khilo Nunh, and when their eyes met, she saw something like fear upon his face.

She stood on the plateau and addressed the Lynx tribe: “I came here to deliver a single message, and so I tell you now that Ala Mhigo is free; that the mountains of Gyr Abania will welcome you home. But I must tell you also that X’khilo Nunh would have seen you return there without those behind me, including members of your council. Do with that knowledge what you will.” “Is that a challenge?” X’khilo called back. “It is not,” X’shasi said. “I could not take your post from you even if I wanted it. You may fight me, if you like, and you will lose, and it will remain what it is: the truth.” To Fray she said more, in a lower voice. “We’re leaving.” “I thought you might like to stay,” said X’rhiri. “I can’t,” she said. “Give my thanks to your mistress, but I’m leaving tonight.” “Where are you going?” “The Bowl of Embers.”

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 11 Nov

Kind of a short one today. The internet blew up this morning, so I lost most of my day to that. You don’t realize how used to a certain workflow you are until it’s not a viable option. Ah, well. As a reminder, we are oops! all spoilers! in this story.

Previously: Week One, Week Two

Part Two: Myste

It gets alright to dream at night; Believe in solid skies and slate-blue earth below, But when you see him, you’ll know. – John Darnielle

Chapter Six

She really didn’t know the first thing about funerals. It felt strange to sit before the grave, to watch the laborers pack cold earth over the wooden casket, knowing what she knew. No one came to interrupt her vigil, which was not a surprise but a relief nevertheless. So they buried him in his armor, his face a stranger’s to her, and all the while they spoke.

“How are you here?” was the first question. I don’t know, Fray said. If I had to guess—knowing what you know about crystals—every dark knight that has ever held this stone has written a piece of his soul into it. “Thus the name, I suppose,” she said. The ostiary had given her a rosary to pray before he said the mass, and her fingers moved the beads while she spoke, low enough not to be overheard. “Did this ever happen to you?” No. Never. “It’s never happened to me before, either,” she said, reaching for her bag. After a moment’s rummaging about, she retrieved the bracelet her mother had given her when she had first taken on the mantle of Crimson Duelist. She examined the copper cuff, its verdigris patina making the brilliant vermilion gem at its center seem brighter still. “You could access their knowledge, right? It’s how my form improved so quickly when we began to travel together.” Yes, Fray said, though I studied a lot longer than you. “I’m wondering if the Echo doesn’t have something to do with it,” Shasi said, tucking the cuff away with a sigh. I would have no way of knowing that, Fray admitted. Beyond what you know.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she murmured, her fingers twisting a bead restlessly. “In the end, I got what I wanted.” Which was? “A mentor,” she said. How freely you admit that, now that I already know. “Why is it such a bad thing?” she asked, watching as footfalls churned snow and dirt into a dingy mire. “To want a mentor? Of course I want a mentor. I want to learn.” More to the point, you want to be taught. “And they killed the last one before he could teach me what I need to know,” Shasi said. Her hands went still. “I. I killed the last one.” There’s nothing wrong with wanting a mentor, Fray admitted. It was simply another sentiment you would never give voice to. Do you hate him? For leaving you before he could teach you everything you wanted? “No,” Shasi said. “How could I? I was complicit. He understood me, and I killed him. It’s a pattern. I thought Zenos would be the last, but now you are.”

Fray was silent then, the only sound the whisper of the wind and the trowels turning soil, patting it flat. They laid the placard upon the earth thereafter—the same gold as his armor, as his eyes. It read Fray Myste, a loyal knight. Shasi stood slowly. “Should I say a prayer?” she asked the empty air. The gravediggers glanced at her briefly, then nodded. I believe the traditional Halonic rite begins ‘In thee, Halone, do I put my trust; let me never be put to confusion. She knew it, to her surprise. She’d heard it whispered in moments of doubt by the defenders of Ishgard, sung more lightly by her greatest knight. She knew the sound of it with her ear to the speaker’s chest, backed by the beat of his untarnished heart. She had never recited it before, but she did not stumble, and to her credit her voice did not crack. “May he find rest and peace,” the others said. “May he find rest and peace,” Shasi echoed. Not bloody likely, Fray said.

Shasi had little desire to remain in the city, but there was too little light left in the day to make it far. She kept her head down and the hood of her cloak up, passing beneath the stone towers that reached up, like fingers, into the darkening sky.

There were a dozen homes that would have sheltered her, she knew, and made for none of them. Where are we going? Fray asked. “Somewhere to rest. Why now, Fray?” I don’t understand the question. “Why are you here, now. I understand a bit about the workings of the soul crystal, and perhaps the Echo makes me more perceptive of your … influence, your revenant, whatever bit of you that you managed to write into the stone.” Isn’t it enough to know those things? You wanted a mentor, and Fray—I—wanted to live. That’s the easy answer. “But it’s not all of it.” You know the rest. Shall I say it for you? “Isn’t that your job?” she wondered, passing by the Holy Stables. She glanced back at the herd of chocobos a moment, still seized by the impulse to retrieve Anthea and ride into the night. ‘When you lose someone you love, you go a little crazy for a bit.’ “Haurchefant was a long time ago,” she said, turning her eyes forward again. Not him. At least, not now. Can’t you say it? “No.” Zenos.

She didn’t answer him, only sprinted across the plaza, determined to rob herself of breath, to feel nothing but the cooling night air on her cheeks. To not stop, until at last she stepped into the warmth and shelter of the Forgotten Knight.

It was emptier than she remembered, with fewer familiar faces. Of course Tataru would no longer be sitting by the bar, but those she’d recognized as regulars had fled. Even the Xaela that always basked beside the fire—him and the girl that had cowered in his shadow.

They left the city, Fray said. For Anyx Trine. “Huh. How do you know?” I told them to, when I came to say goodbye. “Should we … go after them?” She could feel Fray’s hesitation in the moments before he answered. No, he answered. I’m not sure he’d trust you anyway. Things have changed in Ishgard, but maybe not that much. “If you’re sure.”

Gibrillont seemed surprised to see her, meeting her blue eyes with surprise. “Mistress Kilntreader,” he said. “What are you doing here?” “Renting a room and drinking a bottle of mulled wine, if you have them for me.” “I do, but …” He let the question trail off, and Shasi didn’t finish it for him, only slid her coins across the counter, retreating to her not-quite-solitude.

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 5 Nov

Not really sure what to say about today’s update. It has some stuff I’ve been looking forward to writing. Tomorrow has more. Also I crossed the 10k word mark today, so that’s exciting.

Previously: Week One Previously: 4 Nov

Chapter Three

The mountains that ringed the Sagolii robbed it of rain, and reaped the meager rewards in a dusting of scrub and ironwood trees. It was not an easy climb, made more perilous by the cactuar population. There was little shade after morning, and X’shasi felt the sweat trickling down her back. Her injury no longer troubled her, and though she had never been soft, she had slowly grown used to the weight of the blade.

That was Fray’s doing, she supposed. He was not a gentle taskmaster, sending her off to drill while he made camp and fed himself. But as comfortable as she had grown with the blade in her hands, adapting to its length and momentum like a pendulum for her aether … in the small hours, when she looked up at the stars and listened to the sound of her heartbeat, she heard nothing but the call of night birds.

“What’s that?” Fray asked, pulling her from her thoughts. “Up ahead.” She looked further along the trail and saw a dark smudge beneath a rocky outcropping. “Seems like a place to rest,” she said. “Do you want to push for that before noon?” “Seems wise,” the dark knight said. Shasi reached up, adjusting her grasp on Anthea’s bridle. She walked at the fore, keeping a lookout for tribal signs. There hadn’t been many during the ascent, but with no real winter to speak of there wasn’t much need to retreat this far down the range. “Are they even still here?” Fray asked. “I don’t know,” Shasi admitted. “It’s not like I write. But this is where they were when I left them as a girl, and this is where they were when I visited fifteen years later, so … the odds are good.” “What if they went back already?” “I’d have heard about that,” Shasi said. “I still have the name—well, the tribe name, at least—so someone would have let me know.” “What were you before you were Kilntreader?” Fray wondered. He still sounded a bit winded. Perhaps it was the thinning of the air, or the full armor on a trail hike too precarious for even the most sure-footed chocobo. “Take a guess,” she laughed, tail swinging playfully behind her. “Why would I know your father’s name?” “It’s Khilo, but I didn’t use it,” she said. “I was X’shasi Silverhair from the moment I came to Ul’dah.” She paused a moment, sweeping a foot over the soil. “Mind the needles,” she said a moment later, and then they were too concerned with the trail to speak.

The outcropping proved to overhang the mouth of a cave, and they retreated into it for shelter from the sun. It was drier than Shasi expected, sandy-bottomed, and the pair paused for a moment to water their chocobos and tend to their feet. A cross-breeze moaned over the throat of the cave, bringing with it the rancid scent of coconut. “Oh no,” Shasi said. “What,” Fray asked. “This is an antling burrow.” “Are you afraid of antlings, now?” Fray wondered. “No,” Shasi protested. “It’ll just spook the birds.” “A bit of homework, then,” Fray said. “Go get your blade and kill me a dozen of the things.” She gave him a flat look, but he only stared back. Then she retrieved her baldric from where she’d strapped it to Anthea’s saddle and settled the sword at her back, advancing into the darkness.

There was no sport in killing antlings. She had faced them often enough as a red mage, and she knew where to strike to drive her blade deepest. All the joints in their chitin. She carved out their crops so they could not spray acid and cut off mandibles. This when she did not kill them with the first thrust. Soon their gore coated her blade and the stench of them was unbearable.

She stalked out of the cave without a word, flicking their guts from the length of her sword and wiping it down before the acid could weaken the steel. Fray appeared at her shoulder a moment later.

“If you think we can commune now, reconsider,” she said. “It didn’t produce that state of mind.” He laughed softly. “What makes you think your resentment unpalatable?” he asked. “You stalk like a lioness in your anger. I’ve been waiting to see that.” His voice was low and whispery, much as it was when they communed, hand-in-hand. “Remember this feeling, Shasi,” he instructed. “Treasure it. Carry it with you. When you think you are ready, come to me and offer it up.” “Fray,” she said, turning about to regard him. She brought a hand to his helmet, fingers curling about the rim, and lifted it a fraction of an inch. “What are you doing?” he demanded to know, the rebuke striking her like a physical blow. “Sorry,” she said, snatching her hand back. “I thought—”

Thought what, exactly? What would she have done after she had taken his helmet off? Kissed him, like as not. The heat in her chest spread to her cheeks instead, and she ducked past him, retreating into the darkness of the cave. For a mercy, he did not follow, leaving X’shasi to ready the birds alone and stew in her shame.

The next hours of the climb passed in tense silence, broken only when X’shasi spotted the chalk indicator that meant camp ahead. “They’re still here,” she informed Fray. “Perhaps we’ll make it by nightfall.” “Why did you leave?” Fray asked after a little while. “I don’t think you care about that,” X’shasi said dismissively. “Besides, I was a child. It wasn’t really my decision.” “Not then,” Fray said. “You told me you came back as an adult. Why did you leave?” “I didn’t really belong here,” X’shasi said. “Since I grew up elsewhere, we had different … values. Let’s put it that way.” “Then why come back at all?” X’shasi shifted her weight in the saddle, looking over at him. The events of the afternoon still laid awkwardly across her shoulders, and for a long moment she considered not answering him. “It was just after the Calamity. With my mother having died, I didn’t know where I belonged. I suppose I thought it could be here.” “Home is a fragile idea,” he said. “I know,” she said, turning her face forward, lifting a hand to point out another chalk mark. “That’s why I couldn’t stay in Ala Mhigo.”

When they came to the camp, it was all at once, coming around the bluff of a mesa to find the settlement cut into the rock. Doorways dotted the stone like pigeonholes, ladders lashed to the rock to move between exterior tiers. No one rode out to meet them, so they picked their way through the scrub as the sun disappeared at their backs, painting the stone in brilliant crimson. As they approached more closely, Shasi could see a few miqo’te emerge onto the terraces, peering down at them, and then a few came out to meet them in the field. X’shasi recognized some of the faces around them from her months there before. One of them—the tribe’s healer, a woman named X’rhinne, was the first to approach.

“It’s you,” she said in surprise. “You were expecting someone else?” X’shasi wondered, tilting her head. “The Immortal Flames, maybe,” X’rhinne told her. “Why,” X’shasi said; “what’s going on?” X’rhinne looked back up at the terraces of stone. “Better if you came inside,” she said.

X’rhinne’s room was redolent with the grassy smell of drying herbs, the dwindling sunlight supplemented with a number of lamps that gave off a golden glow. It had not changed much from X’shasi’s last visits, pleasantly cluttered with journals and the detritus of her trade. “Perhaps it’s a blessing you came when you did,” X’rhinne said. “A few days ago, some of the hunters went to the Well, and on the way back they were ambushed by Amalj’aa.” X’shasi felt her shoulders tense. “How do you know?” she wondered. “A couple of them made it back and were able to tell us what happened. One of the scouts, Kher, went out with them yesterday and is trying to find out where they were taken.” “And then what?” Fray asked. “I don’t rightly know,” X’rhinne admitted, her brow creased with worry above her silvery eyes. “Hasn’t the council said anything?” X’shasi asked. X’rhinne flinched. “They can’t come to quorum,” she admitted. “A few of the council members were in the hunting party, and they haven’t returned. And Khilo ...” “What about Khilo,” X’shasi said curtly. “Maybe he’ll listen to you,” X’rhinne sighed. “He’s trying to make the argument that it’s too dangerous to do anything.” She felt her jaw tighten. “I will speak to my father,” she said.

X’khilo Nunh—for he’d claimed that title again a handful of years prior—was a hard man, his close-cropped hair framing a face peppered with scars. His eyes resembled his daughter’s only in their flinty aspect, cast in a deeper blue than X’shasi’s own. “Shasi,” he greeted her. “Save it,” she said, nettled by the unearned familiarity. “Rhinne told me about the council members. And the other hunters. She said you don’t want to do anything.” “Shasi,” he wheedled, “you know it isn’t up to me. The tribe nunh isn’t allowed that kind of power.” “I know how it’s supposed to work, X’khilo.” “Do you?” he wondered. “Why don’t you sit down and have a drink with me.” “Because I don’t want to,” X’shasi said. “I want to know about this. What have you been saying?” “Only that there’s no sense in throwing good lives after bad,” X’khilo said coolly. “If they’re too weak to save themselves, what does it matter if they die?” X’shasi closed her eyes on her anger, taking a deep breath. She could feel something prickle at the back of her neck, but shook it off, fixing her gaze on the old Nunh. “I was told the Amalj’aa took them.” “So far as I know.” “How many people?” “A dozen or so.” “They should have armed themselves,” Fray said. “That’s exactly what I thought,” X’khilo agreed, flicking a black-tipped ear. “It doesn’t matter what they should have done,” X’shasi protested. “If the Amalj’aa have them, they have them for one purpose only: sacrifice. The Flames have done everything they can to crack down on trade in crystals, and the beast tribes have slowly been losing the trading partners that allowed them to amass the crystals they need in the first place.” “So what?” X’khilo asked. X’shasi made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat, halfway to a growl. “So, to Ifrit—to any primal—aether is aether is aether. A man’s soul will sate that need as well as any crystal.” X’khilo blinked at her once. “I’m told that’s your problem.” “Really,” Fray snarled. “You don’t even have the dignity to ask—you just expect that of her? This is ridiculous.” “Fray,” she said, her tone perfectly measured. “Let’s take a walk.” She turned her back on her father, and went out into the night.

“How do you feel about this, Shasi?” Fray asked her, looking out over the mountains. “How do you really feel about it?” “Does it really matter?” she wondered. “Yes,” he insisted. “People have lives, Fray. They’re allowed to have them. That’s why we do this.” “If that’s really what you want.” “I shouldn’t presume to speak for you,” X’shasi said a moment later. “I do this so that other people can live their lives. Isn’t that the call of the dark knight, to defend the weak?” He sighed. “Yes,” he said. “In the end, that’s true. But there’s a difference between saving one person and saving everyone. You’re going to have to learn that sooner or later, or it’s going to kill you.” “Maybe,” X’shasi said. “But I don’t think so. Something else will probably do it before that gets the chance.”

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 8 Nov

I don’t know why I find this harder to commentate than TBTRM. Maybe I just want it to speak for itself. Anyway, I made up some ground from yesterday.

Previously: Week One Previously: 4 Nov, 5 Nov, 6 Nov, 7 Nov

The Bowl of Embers was much as she remembered it: a vast plane of black basalt, scorched at its rim by unnatural fires. On the far side from her vantage was an altar—a bier of black stone flanked by torches and, every other time she had seen it, Amalj’aa priests. It was dim and silent now; Ifrit did not stir in the depths of that kiln. But she would wait for the aetherometer, she decided, and then she would make whatever call that dictated.

“What would you have done if you found Ifrit waiting here for you?” Fray asked her, looking down from where he stood over her. “I would have fought him,” Shasi said. “Alone?” She looked up from where she sat, holding fast his gaze. “I don’t know,” she said. “Would you have followed me? Even into that? I wouldn’t ask you to. Do you remember how we used to do it? How they dealt with primals before they had a Warrior of Light to call on?” “I do,” he said, settling in beside her with a grunt, watching the whirling of the aetherometer. “But you want to tell me, so tell me.” She looked down over the silent battlefield. “The first wave would charge, and they would do as much as they could,” she said, sweeping a finger over the circle of black to indicate a likely approach. “But they knew they were dead men. The first wave was for tempering.” “Then the second wave would approach from here,” Fray said, lifting his hand in turn. “And engage the first,” Shasi nodded. “And the third would come from the other flank—” she cast up her other hand— “and engage the primal. A man from the second or third waves might die, and might expect to. A man from the first wave knew he would.” Shasi let her hands drop into her lap.

“My friend,” Fray said, “the hero. She fought Ifrit once.” “When?” Shasi wondered. “A long time ago. Years. We weren’t alone here, and she charged in there like … well, like a woman possessed. I wanted to stop her, I shouted and begged for her to come back, but …” He sighed, reaching out to pick up a pebble from the plateau and cast it into the abyss of black stone. “She put that wall of flame between us. She went to fight that thing, that being of crystals and spite, for the sake of people who were already dead, or worse. If she heard me calling to her, she didn’t want to. Standing there … watching her … I thought I would die. Just from the sight.” Shasi furrowed her brow. “Did you love her?” Fray turned his golden eyes upon her. “She was the person I wanted to protect most in this world. When you find someone like that—someone you would give anything to save—your hearts are connected so deeply that there can be no barriers between you.” He turned his face away. “Or so I thought. It killed me to watch her go, not just because I was afraid for her, but because I could feel her slipping away from me. Because I knew I wouldn’t be able to save her. Not just then, but ever.” “What was her name?” “I can’t say,” Fray told her. Shasi glanced away. She watched the blue light of the aetherometer pan over the stone, over her folded hands and scraped knees, shadows shifting in its wake. She lifted a hand, held it before her, so that it was silhouetted by the azure glow, the way the Warriors of Light looked in her memories of Carteneau. “Is that why you didn’t want to go back to Ishgard?” she wondered. “Are you in disgrace because she died?” “Nothing like that,” Fray said. “I was in Ishgard when you came,” he added. “I only went to Mor Dhona to try to help a friend with his charge.” “And yours, when she fought Ifrit … was she afraid?” Shasi wondered. “I don’t know,” Fray said, and it seemed to trouble him. “She was cutting me off already even then. Were you?” “When I first came here? Of course,” she said. “My number was up. Me and my squad. First wave.” “But still you fought.” “I am usually afraid,” Shasi admitted. “And I always fight.”

Fray looked at her a long while, his gold eyes studying her with unusual intensity. “That tells me more about you than any number of Amalj’aa you could kill for me,” he said. “When you see this place now, what do you feel?” “Guilt,” she said. “My squad, they were all tempered, and they had to be executed. Everyone but me.” “Sometimes we can’t save everyone, Shasi,” Fray said. “Sometimes a dark knight is lucky just to save herself.” “I have to try,” she said. He gave no answer then, but she heard his breath leave him in a tired sigh. “What about the voice? The flame in the darkness? Do you still care about her?” Shasi drew back, affronted. “Of course I care about her.” “Then we should commune again.” “Well, if we climb back down and backtrack, there’s a way into one of the Amalj’aa dens, but …” “Were you listening to me just now?” Fray asked, pushing himself to stand. “You don’t have anything left to prove to me at this point. I wouldn’t say no, if that’s what you wanted to do.” “No, I … think I’d rather the Amalj’aa didn’t know we were here.” She pushed herself to her feet and dusted herself down as she continued. “If we just attack them, they’ll close ranks, they’ll get scared, and a frightened tribe summons. Unless we absolutely have to stop them right now, we shouldn’t interfere. I don’t know why Garlemald refuses to learn that lesson, but that’s my assessment as a Lieutenant of the Immortal Flames and as a professional god-killer.” Fray laughed. “Then give me your hands.”

She did, callused palms resting against cold steel. His gauntleted fingers closed over her hands. “Close your eyes,” he said. She did that too, the blue light of the aetherometer passing over her eyelids. She could still see its flicker against the darkness, hear the steady clicking of its flywheels, making it easy for her to count the seconds. “Breathe,” Fray told her, and she did, the scorched air filling her lungs. His hands were cold in her own despite the warmth of the air. She could taste brimstone. “Remember what happened here,” he said. “The moment you pulled the cold hands of fear from your throat and mastered yourself. Master yourself now and walk the path. Listen for the other—to her words, to her meaning. In her voice, discover your purpose …” She felt the heat spread from lungs to heart, welling and blistering inside her, the only warmth in the vastness of the whispering abyss. Shasi let it spill from her with each breath, and the susurrus seemed to shrink from her, to withdraw until there was one whisper left.

A thousand cries for help surround me, bury me; a thousand voices drowning out my own. If I have no voice, how can I convey my feelings? The pain and anger that fills me … has nowhere to go, and no one to hear it. But … if my voice is powerless … I can use another’s. So that you can hear me. So that you can feel my pain …

Shasi felt the damp clinging of her lashes, tears evaporating from her cheeks almost before they could fall. Fray sagged against her, and she caught him in her arms. He was cold as a Coerthan winter, his breath whistling through his mask just beside her ear. “Fray,” she said in alarm. “You heard her?” he asked. She nodded, buckling under his weight so that they both knelt on the stone. “Good,” he wheezed. “Good. I will not ask you what you heard, or how you feel, or what you think. What matters is … are you ready to go to her?” He closed his eyes, shivering. “Are you alright?” “It’s getting harder,” he said, “I don’t … know how long I can do this, but I …” “Have to?” she finished. “You need me,” Fray muttered, repeating it to himself like a mantra. “Are you ready?” he asked. “You stand at the precipice. Do not fear the fall.” “She needs me,” Shasi echoed. “It’s your choice, Shasi,” he said. “Always … your choice. This doesn’t have to be you. It could be me. I could take her and go.” “And what would I do?” “I think … we both know. But … it’s your choice,” he repeated, leaning back on his hands. “We could leave this place forever. We could run away together. There are still … places where no one knows you. Places … you could live. With her. With me. Whatever you choose.” “I can’t,” Shasi said, voice cracking. “I’m the Warrior of Light.” “You don’t have to be!” “Yes, I do!” The tears welled anew, and she pushed herself up to her knees. “Is that what you want?” Fray asked. “Is that really what you want? All these things you’ve tied yourself to … have bound your hands.” She set her jaw. “Then I can still strangle you with the chain between them,” she said, swallowing her tears.

That made him laugh, but soon it rumbled into a cough. “I don’t think … I have much time left.” She looked at him with pity, feeling the old ache in her chest. For all it was well to be forewarned, she found it didn’t help much. “Don’t worry ...” he said, looking at her face. “I’ll try to teach you as much as I can until then. But … if we’re not leaving … I want to go home.” “I understand,” she said softly, though the thought of Coerthas made her shiver. She thought of autumn storms, and of cold graves. “I can take you.” “Good,” he said. “I just need to … rest here a bit, and then … we can go.” Shasi nodded, turning back toward the aetherometer.

She pulled the tape through her hands, watching the fluctuations of the needle’s path during their observations. All seemed calm, the needle like a taut thread down the center of the paper.

“Fray,” she said softly, so that if he slept she would not wake him. “What?” replied the dark knight, voice as soft and brittle as ash. “Why did you ask me to go with you? I didn’t think you wanted me.” “I don’t,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. Why do you think you can solve all your problems by taking them to bed?” “Not all of them,” she protested. “You wanted to bed down with me.” “I considered it,” she admitted. No secret there, not after that fumbling seduction in the mountains. “But you never take your armor off, do you.” “Neither do you, Shasi Souleater,” he said.

Something trembled, she realized. Some kind of aetherial disruption had rippled over the butte, had moved the needle. Looking at the reading, she heard it like an inchoate scream. She looked from the ticker tape to Fray’s still form, and thought of the long road ahead. Then she made a choice, and reached for her linkpearl.

The Scions agreed to send Arenvald, and Marshal Tarupin offered a crack squad to support him in observing the Amalj’aa further, and so Shasi and Fray returned to the road, following the Sunway east toward the border with the Black Shroud. The evening sun cast their shadows before them as they rode in silence, slowing as they approached the caravansary at Highbridge. They dismounted from chocoback to wind through the crowds, though the bridge itself was quite empty, the lamps already lit against the coming dark.

“How sure are you of your footing?” Fray asked as they climbed the stairway of the bridge. Shasi flicked her tail playfully. Patches of it were still bare, the white and grey fur growing back uneven. “Reasonably,” she said. He held out a gauntleted hand, motioning for her to pass over Anthea’s reins. Shasi obliged him, though the bird let out a squawk of protest. “I want to teach you something,” he said. “I’m listening,” Shasi said. “Ready your sword.” She retrieved the baldric from her pack, settling its familiar weight around her, and drew the longsword, holding it at the ready. “Look around you,” Fray said, “across the bridge.” She did so dutifully, her eyes scanning the vista from horizon to horizon—from the falls to the south and the twisted spires of corrupted crystal to the Belah’dian ruins to the north. “Not there,” Fray said. “In front of you. I need you to see everything in front of you on this bridge. And everything behind you.” She glanced back. The sun blazed low above the foothills and mesas on the far side of Camp Drybone. She shifted her weight so that one of the iron spires that rose above the bridge cast its shadows across her eyes, and her vision resolved. Past the throng she could see the grazing droves of myotraguses and the spreading branches of ironwood trees. “Higher,” Fray said. “Fix your eyes heavensward.” Nothing in the sky but clouds, and black iron barring her vision. “And the way we’re headed?” “More of those spires,” she said. “And stone posts.” “And if something waiting up there was a threat?” Fray asked. Shasi shook her head. She adjusted her grip on her sword, her rings glinting in the sun. The shard of Dalamud inset into one was brilliant crimson in the light—the unicorn was redder still. For just a moment, she could see it—the threat on the bridge. Not this one but another.

If she were a red mage she could draw tight a cord of aether. If she had been quick enough she might have done it then. But she was a dark knight, and too late. But if she could have done it—if she could have done it she would have led with her blade. She would need a step, maybe two, to build up the momentum, but she knew how to spring upward with force and accuracy to rival any of Ishgard’s dragoons.

She heard her footsteps on the stone, felt the wind ruffle through her hair, and brought her blade down just as she landed, directing all her momentum into that downward cleave. Aether leapt along her blade, and she heard the stone crack.

If she could have done it, she would have killed Zephirin de Valhourdin then and there.

Fray clapped, the sound echoing across the empty bridge. She turned back toward him, toward the setting sun, and blinked the tears from her eyes. Careful of her balance—and suddenly very mindful of the chasm underfoot—she wrenched her blade from the stone, returned it to its sheathe, and made the much shorter leap to the brick platform below.

Fray caught up to her a moment later. “You didn’t seem afraid at all,” he said. “I was thinking of someone I wanted to protect,” she said. “Once.” “Ah,” he said. “Greystone.” Shasi looked away. But her callused thumb ran along the inner edge of the silver signet ring she wore on her left hand. “Oh, come now,” Fray coaxed her. “All Ishgard knew you were sleeping together.” She looked back at her mentor. “We were never lovers,” Shasi said, her voice cracking right down the middle. Fray only fixed her with those golden eyes a long moment, and then he looked away.

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 7 Nov

hello i cannot brain the good today

Previously: Week One Previously: 4 Nov, 5 Nov, 6 Nov

Chapter Four

They picked their way through the mountains toward the Burning Wall, and as they descended the temperature rose. Soon, they could only travel by night, oriented by the stars above a moon-silvered landscape. She felt the weight of Fray’s gaze upon her back for malms, the only sound from behind her the occasional whistle from his chocobo. But when they stopped to make camp—Fray building the fire while Shasi looked after the sword—at last he spoke.

“Why didn’t you stay?” “I never meant to,” Shasi said. “Any more than I meant to stay in Little Ala Mhigo. Especially if they’re preparing to summon.” “So that means more to you than your own family?” She closed her eyes, sighing. “My blood,” she corrected. “Family is … somewhere else.” Even if she wasn’t sure where. “And the voice?” “She’s somewhere else, too.” Shasi examined the sword’s edge in the firelight. “And you’re refusing to listen.” “I’m not,” Shasi protested. “I want to find her, but there are other things I need to do, too.” “Why are you even letting me come with you at this point?” Fray asked. His voice struck a bitter chord in the quiet night, and she looked up at him. He did not look back at her. “Why haven’t you left?” she wondered. “Because I believe you could do this,” he said, prodding the nascent fire with a long stick. “You could be a real dark knight, if you wanted to.” “What am I now?” she asked, drawn back by the comment. “What have I been doing?” It was his turn to sigh. “You are a dark knight,” Fray said. “You have a dark knight’s sword and a dark knight’s technique. I’m just not sure you have a dark knight’s soul.” “It’s right here,” Shasi said with an ironic little smile, tugging at the iron chain around her neck. The crystal glimmered in the firelight. He laughed, once, shaking his head. “That isn’t yours. It belongs to you, but you don’t own it.” “What would happen if I did?” Shasi asked, lifting the loop of iron over her head so that she could cradle the soul crystal in her hands. “Then you wouldn’t need my help to hear the voice. You would know exactly who you were meant to protect. I wouldn’t feel the hesitation in you I feel now.” “So you keep following me because you think I could be someone different?” “I am with you because as long as I am, you can make that choice. Why haven’t you sent me away?” Fray asked. Shasi looked at him a moment, closing her hands over the crystal. “I think we want the same thing in our heart,” she said. “This will sound strange, but … in a way, it doesn’t feel that different from being a red mage.” He laughed: “That does sound strange. What do you mean?” She glanced away, watching the chocobos as they scratched and stamped in the dust. As she considered her words, she ran a thumb along the edge of the crystal, feeling the scallops like serrations. “At its core, the art of the dark knight is a balancing act, isn’t it?” “Yes,” Fray said. “The darkside empowers us, but without control it can consume us. That’s why communion is so delicate.” “Red magic is a balancing act too,” she said. “It is not one art but three; two schools of magic and the kinetic, physical aspect.” She looked down at her soul crystal, comparing its form and wicked edge to the precise faceting of her red mage’s crystal. “And remembering the kinetic parts of my duelist training have helped me grow in the arts of the dark knight,” she added. “I don’t know much about the history of the dark knight, but red magic was born in adversity—after the War of the Magi, practitioners fled to the mountaintops to try to survive the flood, black mages and white mages both. When they created red magic, it was with an intention to spare the world such destruction as had once been wrought, and to use their art to protect and aid those in need. Isn’t that what dark knights do?” “After a fashion,” Fray said. “I told you we protect the weak, and that’s true. But you’ve seen Ishgard, I think.” She turned her hands over, looking at the unicorn signet she still wore. “Yes,” she said. “The first dark knight was simply a knight first, who became aware that one of his compeers was abusing young ladies. An exorcism, the man claimed, and his was a name beyond reproach, so he was released. It seemed all of Ishgard was content to turn a blind eye to this for so long as it went on. And so the knight killed him.” “No.” Shasi blinked. “Yes! To save dozens, perhaps more, from the abuse that would have gone unchecked, Tryphaniel cut him down. For this he was censured, stripped of his station and his shield.” “That’s why we don’t carry them?” “Because we owe no allegiance to bear upon them. Thus unfettered, we are free to sacrifice anything to protect our charge. What about you? Could you betray thousands to save a single person?” “‘He that holdeth fast unto his convictions shall never count betrayal amongst his crimes, though all the world may call him villain,’” Shasi recited. “What is that?” Fray asked. “The advice of a dear friend’s mentor,” she said. “For you, perhaps it will suffice for an answer.” “Then you mustn’t abandon our communions,” Fray said. “I never meant to.” “If that’s the case, I’ll stay with you as long as it takes you to make the choice.”

She stood a moment later, laying aside her sword to go and lay out her bedroll. With a brief whistle, Anthea trotted over to her side, and as Shasi settled in and made to lay down, the bird knelt beside her bedroll. Shasi let her fingers trail over the glossy black feathers, scritching at Anthea’s neck, and laid there staring at the stars. She could smell the dust of the trail, the worn leather of her riding gear. When she closed her eyes she could feel her own heartbeat, and Anthea’s fluttering pulse against her hand. She heard the crackle of the fire and the song of insects, the soft clack of her beak as Anthea lifted her head and settled it on Shasi’s stomach.

And no voices.

Not until she raised her own to ask a question. “Fray,” she said. “Who protects the dark knight?” “Nobody,” he said.

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 15 Nov

Here’s what I have for you today. It is what it is.

Previously: Week One, Week Two Previously: 11 Nov, 12 Nov, 13 Nov, 14 Nov

Chapter Eight

The canyon walls shielded her from the harsh light of the Gyr Abanian sun, and Shasi paused to stoop, letting Myste down from her back. The air felt cold upon her neck with his breath no longer rushing over her skin, and she shook off a yawn. Perhaps he was heavier than he looked, for the walk had made her tired.

“I thought you didn’t want to come back here,” Myste said, taking her hand. “That’s true,” Shasi admitted, “at least in part. But I know someone we can help here … if he says it’s alright. Not like last time, okay?” “Forgive me,” Myste said, looking away. “You have to ask him if it’s alright. She was really angry, Myste. You could have gotten hurt.” His expression was weary with the half-dozen other times they’d had this conversation. “I don’t think you’d let that happen.” “No,” Shasi promised, “I would never just let someone hurt you. But what if I couldn’t stop it in time? Just be careful. There are people who care about you very much.” Myste shook his head, his hair rippling with the motion. “There’s only you,” he said. Then, “This is your home?” “Not really,” Shasi said.

[starcunning]

Suffer Me to Cherish You: 3 November

[12:11 PM] %%Battletag_nodigits%: I was out here crying in target just now because chocobos aren’t real and I will never hug one [12:12 PM] rust staring at crushed beer can: ah [12:12 PM] rust staring at crushed beer can: that's where shasi gets it from [12:12 PM] rust staring at crushed beer can: :P [12:12 PM] %%Battletag_nodigits%: I got it FROM HER [12:12 PM] rust staring at crushed beer can: that's even better lmfao [12:12 PM] friendly killer mech: your daughter changed you star

Previously: 1 Nov, 2 Nov

Chapter Two

Despite assurances from the porter that all of his birds were steadfast, Fray’s chocobo was a fussy, anxious thing. It seemed to make Anthea anxious, too, and though the Starway was in good repair, they stopped often to let the birds calm and to seek shelter from the midday heat. The chocobos were drinking and preening at the edge of Soot Creek. X’shasi watched them a while from her place beneath a baobab tree. Her shoulders ached, and she glanced over at Fray, who was saying nothing, only staring at the walls of Ul’dah.

“That’s the Gate of Nald,” X’shasi supplied helpfully. “The Adventurer’s Guild is just on the other side, and the markets … we could see about getting another blade so that you don’t have to keep lending me yours.” “It’s not a loan,” Fray said. “So you keep saying.” “You’re growing more used to it,” he observed.

It was true. X’shasi turned her hands over before her, looking at her palms. New calluses had begun to form, on her left hand as well as her right, as blade and knight acclimatized to one another. The demands were different from the swordplay she’d known as a red mage, but she was growing more used to them. With the way Fray drilled her every night while he made camp, X’shasi supposed she had to.

“But you still haven’t heard the voice again.” “No,” X’shasi agreed. Fray sighed. “I can lead you through the communion again,” he said. “But I wasn’t fully honest with you the last time.” She turned her head to look at him, eyes narrowing. He met her gaze unflinchingly. The pale gold of his eyes reminded her anew of a predator, though she had little fear of him pouncing then. Perhaps she should have. “What do you mean?” “When we communed in Bluefog, that was through the use of my power. I can do it again, but it would be better if you worked to be able to hear the voice on your own. There are risks involved.” X’shasi closed her eyes, the heat of the day burning behind her eyelids. “My life has been a series of risks for the last five years. Longer.” “You say that like I don’t know,” Fray said. He grunted out a single laugh, though it seemed almost like he was scoffing. “When you commune, the part of yourself that you connect with and nurture is called your Darkside. That, at least, is as I explained it before. But if a knight comes to commune and is not prepared to face his own negative emotions, they will consume him.” “And?” X’shasi asked, opening her eyes once more. She watched the sunlight sparkle on the creek. “And the backlash will tear him apart,” Fray said simply. “The first part of communion is bloodshed not because the communion itself requires it, but because that way I can be sure you’re ready.” “You’re worried about me.” Something about that thought amazed her, and laughter bubbled up from her chest. She could feel the soul crystal rattle on its chain with the motion. “You do know what I do with my life, don’t you?” “Yes,” Fray said simply. “Now, I’ve been honest with you about the risks. Every time we do that—every time I have to do it for you—it only becomes more dangerous. So I’m asking you to trust me.”

The chocobos splashed about in the water, Fray’s rented bird spearing a silver fish with its beak. She remembered the chill of the waters of Mor Dhona, and despite the midday heat felt the hair prickle on her neck.

“The voice,” she said. “That person … how can I hear it if we don’t commune?” “You would have to nourish that connection yourself,” Fray said. “You would have to confront your desires and fears and master them. Not suppress them,” he told her, tone careful as a tightrope walker, “but master them.” “I’ll try,” X’shasi said. “If you haven’t heard it by the time we get to our next stop,” Fray said, “then we’ll perform the ritual again. It would be better if we didn’t have to.” “I’ll try,” she said again, dusting herself off as she stood.

The desert sun only grew harsher when they had put the Sagolii Gate to their backs, and X’shasi was quite bedraggled by the time they arrived in Little Ala Mhigo. Despite the heavy black armor he wore, Fray seemed unconcerned, though his chocobo was a different story. She surrendered it to the chocobokeep of the camp, and Anthea’s reins as well. When the porter named his price for board and feed, it seemed high, but she was too tired to dicker over it. All the while, Fray watched the aetheryte turn, luminous blue even in the deep shadows of the cavern.

He put a gauntleted hand to it, though X’shasi felt none of the aetherial eddies of attunement. “You went the long way,” Fray said. “Why?” X’shasi only shrugged. “I wanted to,” she said. “It felt important. And … if I hadn’t, we would never have met.” “True,” he grunted. “You still haven’t heard it, have you.” “No,” X’shasi admitted. “Then we should ask around for a fight,” Fray said. “After.” “After what?” “After I speak to Gundobald,” X’shasi said. Looking around, she saw few faces, and fewer still turned toward her. She shrugged it off, retreating into the dark of the caves. The smoky scent of old campfires pervaded, roasted meats and drying herbs. X’shasi breathed in deeply, relishing the comparative coolness of the stone around her.

She approached Gundobald’s tent. An older woman sat out front, stirring a cook pot over a meager fire. “What do you want?” she asked, not looking up. “I was hoping I could speak with the elder,” X’shasi said. “Old bear’s busy,” the woman told her. “I can wait,” X’shasi replied, gripped with a sudden obstinacy. She settled in on the low bench opposite, reaching for her flask of water to drink.

The only sense she had of the passage of time was watching the sun shafts crawl over the cave walls. She looked out over the people of Little Ala Mhigo, at their weathered faces and aged bodies. There were few refugees of an age with her.

Ilberd had taken them, she supposed. And Lahabrea’s machinations a few years before hadn’t helped. But between those two incidents, X’shasi herself had come with Alphinaud and asked who would fight for a brighter future. And Wilred had taken up that charge. He will never see a free Ala Mhigo now, X’shasi realized with regret. She closed her eyes and steered her thoughts from the Crystal Braves with some effort, listening to the crackle of the fire, the scrape of the wooden spoon against cast iron. X’shasi looked over at Fray, evening light gilding the edge of his black armor. He did not fidget—did not move at all, the tense set of his shoulders betraying his displeasure.

There was the rustle of canvas as Gundobald emerged from his tent, seeming surprised to see her sitting there beside the fire. “Kilntreader,” he said, the name a gust of breath. “What are you doing here?” “Bringing news,” X’shasi said. “Ala Mhigo is free.” “That much I have heard,” Gundobald said. “The Sultana has decreed her support of a resettlement effort for Gyr Abanian expatriates. There are job opportunities, and homes …” “And she sent you herself to tell us?” Gundobald asked, seeming amused. “No,” X’shasi said, “this is an undertaking of my own making.” “Well,” Gundobald said, “most of the young left when the Flames gave word they’d be supporting the Resistance, more’n a year ago.” “But it’s safe now,” X’shasi said. “The Resistance have turned their efforts toward patrols, with Alliance support, and the hunt clans have taken care of the fiercest beasts. Everyone could go home.” Didn’t they want to? Her heart ached for the fact that she could not stay—but then, remaining in Ala Mhigo would have left her feelings no less tender. “That’s a long road,” Gundobald said, “and it has its own dangers. The Corpse Brigade, for one thing. They know they’re not welcome, not after what they done, so if they can’t go back, they’ll make sure none of us can either. We lost a few that way already.” X’shasi flicked her gaze toward Fray, not turning her head. She saw him give a fraction of a nod. “We’ll deal with them,” she promised. “In the morning, we’ll—” “We’ll go tonight,” Fray interrupted. “Or we could go tonight,” X’shasi said crossly. Gundobald looked at her with a bemused air. “Well, whenever you go … I, at least, will be grateful.” Fray said no more, only shook his head as he turned away, making for the wooden palisades of the camp. “I should—I’ll be back when we’re done,” X’shasi said, then turned to hustle after Fray.

The night sky over the Sagolii was darker than any she’d seen in some time. These were the stars of her girlhood, the ones she’d retreated to after the Calamity. Fray was looking up at them, his arms crossed over his chest. X’shasi slung the baldric across her body.

“I thought you’d take longer,” Fray said. “Or did you finally realize they don’t want you there?” X’shasi sighed. “Then the Sepulchre’s the perfect place for me to go, isn’t it?” she asked, tone grim. “You didn’t even stop to retrieve your bird.” “We’ll walk,” Fray said, suiting deed to word. “So we really are going now? We’re going to attack in the dead of night?” “Yes,” Fray said simply. “That’s not really the fairest fight,” X’shasi said. “A fair fight is overrated,” Fray opined. “That kind of thinking will get you killed.

“So, what did you do to make them resent you so much? Those are your countrymen, aren’t they?” “Yes,” she said. “That’s half the trouble.” Her tail flicked behind her in annoyance, counterbalancing her steps. The wastes of Broken Water looked strange in the moonlight, bleached by the single moon. “A few years ago, the young people here thought they would summon Rhalgr—our patron god—to help them free Ala Mhigo and avenge the wrongs done them in exile. I put a stop to that.” “They should be grateful,” Fray said. “If they’re too weak to solve their own problems, they should at least be grateful to you for doing it for them.” “They were,” X’shasi said. “That’s the problem. About a year after that, when the Crystal Braves were formed—did you hear about all that?” she broke off to wonder. “I know all about that,” Fray muttered. “One of the young men I saved during my first visit here died because the Braves’ commander, Ilberd, was double-crossing us. And then he came back here and riled everyone up with his speeches about Ala Mhigo, and more of them died at Baelsar’s Wall and in the war that followed.” X’shasi kicked a rock ahead of her on the path with a sigh. “It was the same on the other side of the wall,” she told him. “Ilberd took half, and … Zenos yae Galvus took the rest, and I took what was left.” “That’s hard to forgive,” Fray said. “Maybe that’s the other half,” X’shasi admitted. “When Zenos stood trial, one of the refugees that had lived here testified against him.” “And?” “And I testified on his behalf,” X’shasi said, fussing with the lay of the leather strap across her chest. “So you forgave him,” Fray said. “Something like that.” “Maybe you’re not as strong as I thought.”