#woodwrath

[gentleeclipsey]

Jackie's blade, Woodwrath!

It's a semisentient blade, running on instinct and emotion, only able to speak few broken words into her mind when it absolutely needs to. The body of the blade, hilt, and handle are all carved from the same heartwood of a hybrid Irish Blackthorn from her homeland of the Tamaskan Isles hidden off the coast of Ireland! The blade edge and pommel are forged from the remnants of old weapons the Isles had left from human invaders centuries ago.

The tree itself was some sort of magical, and the blade continues this, acting as a magical funnel to cast some serious spells, but it wears the wielder down faster than normal casting. It's akin to Finn's Grass Sword in that its cursed to her, but she doesn't mind it much these days!

[bhukadpunekar]

Simple Egg Omlet - Sinhgad Trek Diaries 🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹 Some say you need Carbohydrates, some say you need fats, some say you need protein, some way you need Fibers, well well well... I say you need food after a nice long trek or a heavy workout !! This was clicked when I went on a trek with our neighbor and some of his friends couple of months back. I want those day back. Last whole year has been like a terrified nightmare. Am I wrong if I say 'I just want a hard reset on whole Earth 🌍'. I know I'm not wrong but common we all need a break. A long break which we got from the hectic schedule before the pandemic was alright at the beginning but as it prolonged we all started suffering in one way or another. Can it be just over in a click. I would be ready to die if Thanos existed and a quick snap could take complete care of this whole Covidsituation. I want to wake up from this terrifying dream and I want to start traveling again. I want to visit Sahyadri Mountain Range again. I want to climb, I want to run, I want to walk, I want to swim, I want to fly, I just need some good night peaceful sleep. 🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹 “No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.” ~ Haruki Murakami 🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹 😀Stay tuned for more updates. Your Love is Our only Motivation 🙏❣️ @bhukad_punekar Tag us & use #bhukad_punekar to get featured🤗😋 🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹 #foodgasm#foodtrek#sinhgad#sundaygoals#sundayfunday#foodlust#foodlove#foodporn#foodpic#foodmoment#foodworld#woodwrath#foodgasm#protine#healthyfood#lifestylechoices#foodgram#foodpune 🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹 Note :- We deeply respect everyone's choice and love for food 🤗. Eat Healthy and Stay Strong 💪 (at Sinhgadh Fort) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPZ3Jv6FlHg/?utm_medium=tumblr

[charlettebffxiv]

Prompt #23 Soul

You need to understand one thing, to fully understand Gridania. It is not the idea of the elementals or the concept of Woodwrath. It’s not the hesitance around foreigners coming into the forest, or the limits to where you can or should go within its borders. No, the most important part of figuring how this city-state and its forest dwellers seem to live in the simplest place, but remain so complicated to outsiders, is in fact taking the time to understand the value of slow, careful, considered growth.

Every move anyone makes in Gridanian, in the Shroud in general really, is based around the concept of planting a small investment, and slowly watching it unfurl and reach higher. To slowly nurture now, for the express reason of reaping the benefits later is how it all came to be, really. The city itself, grown from the smallest seeds of hope, to the sprawling metropolis that is carefully entwined with the forest. The people, literally sprouting from the ground itself and twirling and blossoming under the nurturing touch of the Elementals and spirits. To understand the soul of the Gridanian people, you have to believe in the value of planting this sun, and having the patience before you sow no matter the time it took for it to form. Or, at least, to Charlette this was the fundamental truth to being one of the Shroudborn. This sun, she was practicing nothing less than the uttermost patience, as she lined a crop of her own. Patience is something Charlette had in abundance, it was something sewn into her character a long time ago. By her parents, her teachers, the culture that she grew-up in. The trick to it, she found, was to revel more in the pleasure of working on a task, or setting one in motion towards its finalization. Not solely the rewards that may result from such effort. She reminded herself of that, as her hands dug deep into the soil of the orchard fields, and placed another seed deep within it. She covered it over like a mother pulling a blanket over her child, mixing in a fertilizer Bobocufu had them produce especially, from specific material, all native to the Shroud itself. The orchard was a testimony to this ideal of the Gridanian people, stretching on for yalms in every direction. Each tree had taken at the least fifteen twelvemoons to grow to maturity. Each row of trees emanating out from the central farmhouse had been planted by a new generation of the same family, owning the land and constantly tending to it, growing each one lovingly. Charlette may never get to see what she planted this sun grow to more than a tall sprout, a notion that may have halted many in the efforts she currently exerted on the task. But not if you were a Gridanian. A true child of the forest. For how else did a Gridanian build a better future, a better home for the next generation, than by laying down the foundations for the very thing that protected, fed and sheltered them all? What was that saying? “Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” If there were a people that this truly spoke to, it was them. And in Charlette’s heart sat the soul of a Gridanian. A duskwight who believed in the forest home and all it promised. If you could understand this, really take that lesson to heart, then you could understand anything about her. Which is why it confused her so deeply now, just how much the Order itself had proven in its recent activities that this law of their apparent people, does not occur to them.

[theprincesslibrary]

1. Handsome stranger

Fandom: Final Fantasy XIV Rating: Explicit Relationships: Warrior of Light/Thancred Waters Characters: Thancred Waters, Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV) Summary:When she thought back on it, it boiled down to two things: - He was handsome - She had needs

Ul'dah was exhausting. It wasn't just the sizzling heat or the deadly court intrigues: Ul'dah the restless never slept. At first, she had been amazed by the glamour and the opulence of the commercial hub, but after two weeks in the city, she was starting to get motion sickness. The perpetual noise and bustling activity of its streets made her feel like she had been trapped in a beehive, and the contrast between the abundance of the city-state and the desolation of the surrounding desert was dizzying to the point of nausea. She missed the trees, the open space... Ul'dah was by no mean small, but it was crowded. Everywhere she went, she almost stepped on someone else's toe. Literally. In the forest, she could be alone for days, lost in her own world with no one to interrupt her daydreaming. In Ul'dah even the quietness of her mind was lost to her, stolen by the overwhelming noise of the jewel city. She missed the eeriness of the Black Shroud, its shadows, and its otherworldly atmosphere. Hell, she even missed the constant threat of the woodwrath.

The city wasn't all bad, of course. The melting pot of civilization made for some amazing food. And the baths... Gods, the luxury of city plumbing. She didn't consider herself to be shallow or high maintenance, but after a moon in the wilderness of Eastern Thanalan, a rose-scented bath had been a necessity. The people of Camp Drybone had been lovely, but the place smelled like sweat and desperation. Not a scent she liked lingering on her skin.

Still, Ul'dah wasn't for her, she'd be gone by morning. But before that, she wished to indulge in some recreations: it was after all what the city was famous for. She didn't care much for the arena, or the gambling halls, but she'd gladly partake in some form of tumbling. A girl could only play with herself for so long. And it had been a long time since someone had touched her outside a fight. A. Very. Long. Time.

Scanning the room, she studied her prospects. The barmaid was cute. They had flirted a few times, but she had the feeling the girl, as curious as she might be, wasn't there  just yet. The rest of the patrons were either passed out in a corner or on their way out to throw up in the back alley. Then, there was him: tall, ash-blond hair, tattoos... He was sitting two stools down from her, nursing a cold drink. She had seen him a few times around the city. He wasn't the only handsome man, but somehow he was the only one she had truly noticed, and she was pretty sure he had noticed her too. Whether their unspoken attraction would lead to more than a few appreciative looks was yet to be determined.

She signaled the barmaid and made a small head motion in the stranger’s direction. The brunette smiled in return, then nodded: girl’s code for "not an asshole". She ordered another drink and studied his profile. He was handsome. The hard line of his jaw and his chiseled features made him look sculptural, like a forgotten deity. Judging by the sand still attached to his boots, he hadn’t been in the city for more than a few hours. He had the stance of a warrior - all taut muscles and tanned skin - his calloused fingers only seemed to confirm her intuition.

She wondered how those hands would feel on her, on the most sensitive parts of her body…

"Didn't your parents teach you it's rude to stare?" he finally asked. "Didn't yours warn you against talking to strangers?"

When he turned his head to face her, his smile was as wicked as she expected. His eyes swept down her body and back up to her face, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

"I guess we'll have to get better acquainted then."

Within minutes, they were up on the second floor, and he had her pinned against a wall, her legs wrapped around his waist, her arms looped around his neck. His kiss wasn't tentative or shy. It was deep and dirty: he was claiming her mouth as if he were laying claim to her whole body, marking her as his own if only for one night. Time stopped around them, as they stood against the wall, tangled with each other. He tasted like the desert, like cheap alcohol and sand, yet she couldn't wait to get drunk on him. It didn't matter that they were in a public place, or that some drunkard could stumble down the hall. All that mattered was his mouth on hers and his hands on her body.

She buried her hands into his hair and his mouth drifted down her throat, sending chills down through her. She arched under his touch, her skin tingling with lust as her hips pushed against his, delighted to feel him hard and thick against her core. She let out a lustful moan when he nipped at the sensitive spot near her clavicle.

"Gods." She whispered. "Not a god." He shot back. "This would be the part when you tell me your name then." "Why, will you scream it?" "Can you make me?"

He pulled back and huffed at her challenge. She had been making the most indecent noises just a few seconds ago. But if challenging him meant he'd try even harder to please her... well, she'd be winning either way.

"You're lucky I'm a gentleman and was taught how to behave in public."

She arched a brow.

"This is you behaving? Hate to break it to you pretty boy, but you’re failing at that." "Trust me, if I wasn't," he leaned in closer, stopping short of their mouths touching, "your pants would be down by your ankles, and my cock would be so deep inside you, we'd both see stars."

The image sent a shot of electricity through her body. She was down for that. In fact, many parts of her were craving just that. She might have forced him to make good on his words, had they not been interrupted by the inn's foul-mouthed patrons: drunk shouts erupted downstairs, bringing them back to the corridor and its lack of privacy. Gracefully, she disentangled herself from him and slid down the wall.

"Well then, let's see what you can do."  

She barely had time to close the door before he removed his shirt and tossed it in a corner of her room. His pants were hanging low, and she got an eyeful of those side muscles near his hips: the adonis belt. Adonis, the name fitted him.

"Thancred." He said, forcing her to look up, and grinning at the obvious effort it took her to tear her gaze from his body. "Excuse me?" "My name. I'd rather you pray to me than the twelve when I make you come."

She half laughed, half snorted, and crossed her arm over her chest.

"Arrogance isn't as sexy as you think it is."

He didn't reply, simply kicked off his boots and removed the rest of his clothing, exposing even more of his body to her hungry gaze. He was naked, yet she was the one feeling vulnerable. Maybe it was the way the dim light coming out of the window cast shadows on his face, or maybe it was the glint in his eyes, but in that instant, he looked intimidating, slightly dangerous, and all the more enticing.

She licked her lips while she studied him. Her eyes stopped on his erection, her mouth watering at the thought of all the wicked things she could do to make him scream. Her stare traveled back to his face, and she noticed his teasing grin had morphed into a wolfish smile.

"Take off your clothes." He demanded.

She wasn't one to be submissive in the bedroom, but she'd be lying if she said his commanding tone didn't arouse her. She would comply, but at her own pace.

Her attire was lighter than what she was used to. The scorching sun of the Thanalan desert had forced her to adapt her gear and even in the comfort of the city, the heat could be unbearable, almost paralyzing. Still, she was fully clothed, and her shirt had oh so many of those tiny buttons. She took her time undoing them one by one, reveling in the tension that filled the room. She all but stopped her task when he circled the base of his cock, her throat going dry as she watched his hand move from tip to base and back up. A bead of liquid glistened at the tip, and she had to refrain herself from licking her lips once more. He was teasing her just as she was teasing him, and there was something extremely erotic about watching him pleasure himself, knowing she was the one to elicit that need. Her shirt finally fell on the ground, and he let out a low, appreciative, hum at the lack of binding.

"Take off the rest." He ordered.

She did so without delay, and he was on her before the remaining of her clothes even touched the ground. With one swift motion, he lifted her off the floor and she instinctively wrapped her legs around him. He carried her over to the bed, dropped her without much regard, and then he was on her again, crowding her, stealing her air. Everything in the room disappeared and she could only focus on him and how good he felt pressed against her, how he invaded all her senses. Her hands explored the expanse of his back, marveling at the sensation of his muscles rippling and flexing under his skin. His body was perfect even in its tiniest flaws. Like hers, his skin wasn't without scars: some were simple nicks, others looked like old wounds. She traced them with the tips of her fingers, making him shudder under her touch.

Breaking the kiss, he rested his forehead against hers and breathed heavily. When he opened his eyes again, she could barely see the brown in them.

"Huh huh," he chided her. Taking her hands, he placed them above her head. "No distraction. I’m supposed to make you scream, my honor is at stake after all. But where should I start ?"  

She huffed at his fake wondering, but her laugh was caught short when his mouth captured one of her breasts, his tongue swirling around the hardened nipple. He kept kissing his way down her body, sucking and nipping, exploring every inch of skin. She watched him as he traced the scar near her navel with his tongue, and her toes curled as an unexpected shot of pleasure rolled through her. Who would have thought something that almost killed would come to bring her so much pleasure? But it seemed he had a talent for making her whimper with need. Her back arched off the bed as he went lower still, and he chuckled against her skin at her eagerness. By the time he started nibbling her upper thigh, she was breathless and wanting, a litany of yes pouring from her mouth. And then it all stopped.

His warmth left her completely as he sat back on his heels, hovering over her like a predator. Still dazed, she propped herself on her elbows and glared at him. The corner of his lips twitched, repressing a smile.

"If looks could kill," he joked.   "You’re a fucking tease."

Her breathing was ragged, and she didn't know if it was from frustration, anger, bliss, or a mix of all three. His gaze traveled down her body, mapping down every curve, every dip as if he was studying a battlefield.  

"I could do a great many things to you", he mused as his hand circled the base of his length once more.

He stroked himself slowly, languorously, his eyes drinking every inch of her: the intensity of his inky gaze almost a caress on her skin. Heat pooled at her core and she clenched her thighs together in a desperate attempt to alleviate her needs.  

"No" he stopped her, "show me."  

Her cheeks flushed a deep red, but she obeyed once more, spreading her legs wide for his enjoyment. She might have felt some degree of shame at her willingness to comply had she not been this wound up, but all she could feel in that moment was want and need.

His gaze dipped to her core, and she quivered in anticipation as he licked his lips. His free hand reached out to her, and she flopped back on the bed, unable to hold herself anymore, as he parted her folds, sliding one finger into her heat.

"You're so fucking wet. I bet I could fuck you right now. You'd like that, would you?"  

She nodded in agreement, unable to utter a sound. His hand stilled.  

"Say it."   "Yes". She gasped.   "Good girl".  

She looked down at him, his smile was pure sin as he added another finger to his ministrations. The pressure increased, he hooked his fingers slightly, and a strangled sound came out of her as her hips lifted off the bed. And then he stopped again.  

"I could do that, but I would need some encouragement. ‘Please Thancred’; ‘More Thancred’… I’m not picky, anything will do." "I'm going to murder you."

Her voice came out breathy, needy, there was barely any bite to her words. She could almost feel his satisfied smile in the heavy air of the room.

"Not what I had in mind".   "I swear on the twelve..."  

Then his mouth was on her. Her chest heaved as he lapped greedily at her core from cunt to clit, burying his nose in her damp curls. She felt electric under his touch, her whole body vibrating with a hungry need. His hands were hooked on her outer thighs, keeping her open to him. She reached for his head, pressing him closer, grinding against his mouth. Her head thrashed from side to side as he pulled her clit into his mouth. The tension inside her finally snapped and she cried out to the twelve as wave after wave of pleasure washed through her.  

Once her breathing slowed, she propped herself on her elbows once more, but this time there was no frustration or anger in her eyes. Her whole body flushed at the sight of him resting against her thigh, a wicked smile plastered on his face while he licked his fingers clean off her. She couldn't resist the irrepressible urge to kiss that satisfied smile off his face. She reached out to him and forced him up for a kiss. She was drunk on him; intoxicated by the scent of her arousal still lingering on his lips.

The kiss slowed, becoming more intimate. She wasn't devouring him anymore instead, she wanted to savor him. It was like getting to know him. Her lips moved under his slowly, seductively. She traced the contour of his mouth with her tongue and he opened to her, allowing her to explore his mouth leisurely. She was still breathless, pleasure coursing through her veins, but her body ached for more: more of him, more of them. She pushed him off of her, and onto his back, then lifted herself to straddle him. For a while she did nothing more, just stared at him: it was her turn to toy with him and she would enjoy every second of it.

She lowered herself to him, kissed the corner of his mouth, licked his neck, bite his nipple... he growled in response, the noise resonating through her whole body. Placing her hands on the hard planes of his chest, she started rubbing her wetness against his length, her whole body singing with pleasure, enjoying every little noise she got out of him. He was giving her full reign over his body, letting her use him as an instrument to reach her own pleasure and it was intoxicating. She felt powerful, in control.

When she was satisfied, certain to have teased him more than enough, she lifted her hips and grabbed the base of his cock to position him at her entrance. They growled in unison as she lowered herself onto him, inch by inch, until he was fully sheathed deep inside her. He slid his hands up to her side and held her there, anchoring her to him. She started rocking her hips against him, slowly, languorously, reveling in the exquisite feeling of him stretching her. Her pace picked up, and his followed, until they moved in sync to a rhythm of their own. His grip tightened on her hips, and she felt him tense under her.

"Gods, you feel amazing."

The rumble of his voice sent goosebumps racing over her. She liked his praise; liked the groan coming out of his mouth; liked the sight of him beneath her. He was the one figuratively pinned down, and it was exhilarating. She tightened around him, her head spinning, and then she broke apart, shattering into a million pieces. She was still coming, her body shaking with pleasure, when he flipped them over, and rose to his knees, lifting her hips off the bed. He moved inside her with long hard thrusts, wanting to drag her orgasm, to hear her pleas and prayers for more. And she prayed until she couldn't bear it anymore. Lust consumed her as hips moved against hers, each thrust deeper, harder. There was no more bet, no more game, just an irrepressible need for their body to melt together, for their hearts to beats like one. With one last thrust, he came, his body shuddering as he spilled himself deep inside her.

He collapsed next to her, his breathing as erratic as hers as they both stared at the ceiling in blissful silence. For a long time, neither of them moved. They were content, deliciously exhausted.

"This didn't go exactly as I planned." He finally said. "You were supposed to scream my name; maybe even pray to me."

She rolled to the side and propped herself on her elbow. In the dim light of the room, his body seemed to glow; she knew it was most likely the thin layer of sweat on his skin, but lying naked in her bed, with that infuriating smile on his face, he truly looked divine.

"I'm an atheist." "I'm not much of a preacher, but maybe I should try to convert you. To save your soul of course."

[jackoftradesmakescontent]

Again - for people who missed the last one - I put together my character’s backstory to justify why a person whose people were Japanese had a Western name because I didn’t know that’s where the Au’ra Raen were from when I made the character.

(Quick recap, he was born in Sui-no-Sato and hitched a ride to Gridania following some Aetherial voices. The Gridanians couldn’t pronounce his name so they gave him a new one. Then when he went adventuring no one else could pronounce his Gridanian name except for Urianger, so he simplified it. He has never seen the night sky.)

A Realm Reborn basically went as it always does, though the Quarrymill section was a lot faster because Jack could heal the injured Ala Mhigans there despite the Elementals’ decree without suffering Woodwrath (which was a hint that his magic did not come from the Elementals). So the Conjurer’s Guild sent him to the Padjals to learn White Magic.

After Jack had broken his horns at 14 to stow away on a ship heading West, the unmanaged horns grew back and inwards to the point that he could not raise his head to look up without stabbing himself in the neck. That, combined with most of ARR taking place during the day or on cloudy/smoky nights, meant that Jack still never saw the night sky. His horns did eventually break in the assault against the Ultima Weapon, and so Cid built orthodontic headgear into the Augmented Ironworks Optics he gave to Jack to help his horns grow outward instead of in.

Then, of course, came the march of misery that was the ARR patch quests and finally Jack saw the night sky and the stars when he passed through the gates of Ishgard to start Heavensward. He realized he’d been hearing the song of the stars for his entire life and followed them to Jannequinard so that he could become an Astrologian and harness the true form of his magic.

Next is going to be the final outfits I landed on as his forever fashion. But, uh, the clothes get super complicated after ARR so those are an entire other project. I will say, along with Astrologian, Jack adopts the Dark Knight after that whole string of betrayals, and then after Shadowbringers he learns to cherish what home he still has, so goes back to Sui-no-Sato to learn the way of the Samurai and reclaim the name he was born with (I used the post-ARR fantasia that I never used and a name change to update his in-game character model to match).

(Also, again, the background is by TRANOID on Steam because I just could not find the character select background on google.)

[darthsuki]

The Black Shroud is the forest region surrounding the city-state of Gridania. The forest itself is known to take the lives of anyone who does not heed the Elementals, a danger often referred to as the "woodwrath". This makes it a natural filter against those who would bear arms against Gridania, though that hasn't stopped the Ixal, Ala Mhigo, or Garlemald from trying.

It is connected to Thanalan to the south, Mor Dhona to the south west, and Coerthas to the north west. A large wall currently blocks off neighboring Gyr Abania in the east.

For more screenshots, please check out the #gpose tag on my tumblr!

[farplane]

the taste of defeat

août 2019: eorzea sairsel and baelsar’s wall. ffxiv patch 3.5 spoilers. 5,043 words. (read on ao3)

Sairsel had been raised under the shadow of Baelsar’s Wall.

Far enough, deep enough inside the forest, it could easily be forgotten—as was the plight of the people who suffered on the other side. Beside it, the Wood still lived, breathed, thrived. Sairsel had never known the world any other way: the Wall had stood, skeletal and cold, in the seasons before he came into the world.

His people lived as the heart of the land beat, calling no place home but the Wood itself. If ever they camped by its eastern borders, the children were under the strictest warnings not to approach the limits of the Wall; all they needed to obey was the shadow of a girl who had wandered too close and returned with a gaping hole in her chest, a memory they were not soon to forget. Nairel—six years her brother’s elder, and nine summers on the day the hunters had carried the girl’s body home—had told Sairsel that their people had very nearly taken up arms against the Empire in revenge, arms long since laid down when the war against Ala Mhigo had been won.

The clans of the Twelveswood had been the first to fall to the griffins’ blades, in those days; the stories of the elders made that abundantly clear. What could they do now, against the might of a magitek empire? They would not suffer the slaughter of all their children to avenge the death of one. The Empire won; the Empire had already won.

The jagged metal spires slicing the sky, in the eyes of all those who lived among the trees beside it, were the forefront of its dominance. Ala Mhigo was an enemy left behind in the past, and a neighbour forgotten in the present.

When the Calamity came, the sky bathed the Wall in its red shadows. Sairsel couldn’t forget the sight of the way the crimson moon in the west had rained down fire, so devastating in its destruction that it spread west, too, everywhere they looked; everywhere burning. The sky had been red, and the Wall had been red. It had stood tall and angry, sharp and unshaken on the horizon, never faltering. Even in the disaster of its own making, the Empire never seemed to suffer. Dalamud was cut down from the sky, and it stopped burning, and the Wall stopped flowing red. Its sharp lines were choked by grey, barely visible, but no one ever came.  It simply stood while the smoke drowned the forestborn.

Ever flows—

Months. It had taken Sairsel months to forget the stink of it, the feeling of ash under his feet, so thick it blanketed the earth like the first blush of snow when winter came to kiss autumn. Had the imperials on the Wall felt that fear—the one that crept in and pierced the heart, whispering that everything was lost? Had they seen the sorrow, the loss? His people’s laments and the wailing of the Wood itself had seemed like an echo to answer the waning call of Hydaelyn, her voice long extinguished by the fading of the light.

the land’s—

They never returned west after that; the desolation alone was near impossible to stomach. The whole of the Twelsvewood had fallen so quiet since the red moon had taken to the sky that even the forestborn strained to hear its voice, and in the west, the corrupted aether was so stifling that it was utterly silent. Rock and barren earth, singing no songs but that of the dead. None could live upon that land.

well of purpose.

In the five summers of healing that followed, Sairsel never saw Baelsar’s Wall again, either. With every passing season, it seemed, the imperials encroached upon the Wood more and more: with the threat woodwrath had once posed no longer standing against them, there were only bodies, always too few to oppose them. Sairsel’s heart broke for his home and ached not to be far from it, but for the horizon itself. For skies not darkened by the shadow of that wall. And when his feet took him away at long last, they took him west, as far as the sea of sand—until a daughter of the griffins welcomed him to a home he’d never even known to seek.

“You were a sellsword?” asked the Griffin.

“Aye,” answered Morgana Arroway. Her voice scraped like sand on stone when she spoke of the past. “My brother and I were courted by one of the companies, in the end, that led the charge against the mad king—gods, I don’t even remember the name. But I imagine we would have stayed with them for the new world order, if that order had been ours.”

The Griffin was silent for a moment. Even sitting a ways from them, pretending to be wholly focused on sharpening a new batch of arrowheads, Sairsel couldn’t help but wonder what sort of face lay behind the mask. Did he look kind? Hard? Broken? Perhaps half-mad? Handsome? His silences held as much weight as his words, always spoken in a low voice like a serpent’s venom filled with shards of glass.

The stone, the sand, the broken glass. Everyone in the Resistance had something of it in their voices—the ones old enough to have known the fall, at least.

“I was, too. A sellsword.” Another pause. Morgana made no effort to fill it; every moment, she seemed to be taking the measure of the Griffin. Not out of the same naïve fascination of her son’s that bordered on burgeoning admiration, but the way she regarded every man and woman who asked to lead her sword. “So you would have stayed, then, if not for the invaders?”

“Of course. I never had any other intention. I’d entertained the notion of taking my sword elsewhere, for a time, but never without my brother, and he had a wife and a boy. Never without my family.”

The broadhead in Sairsel’s hand slipped, slicing the side of his finger open. It stung, and his breath hissed; blood welled up from the shallow cut. Both the Griffin and his mother’s attention were pulled to him, but he didn’t look at them, because he didn’t know what reaction he might have if he looked into her eyes after hearing this. Never without her family—without Gotwin, Havisa, Mathias. But her own son? He’d not been born in Ala Mhigo. Him, she’d had no qualms leaving in the Wood with the shadow of a mother he thought long dead.

“Your family—”

Morgana shook her head, jaw tight. “Gotwin, my brother, he wanted to stay and fight—thought we could drive the Garleans back. If not for the child, I’d have stayed, too, but we convinced him to leave. We fought in the arena for a time; earned a reputation. It was right around the time General Aldynn was fighting, too—gods, but they loved pitting the Griffin’s Talons against the Bull of Ala Mhigo.”

Neither she nor Sairsel could have seen the minute shift in the Griffin’s expression, even if he had not been hiding it behind the mask. She went on, none the wiser: “We were set to have a match against him, and we were approached to make certain he didn’t make it out alive. He’d come to the bloodsands in irons, see, and won his freedom—and by then was costing the wrong people too much coin. I would have gone through with it, but my brother, the honourable fool, he refused.” 

Knuckles white-hot as she gripped the hilt of her sword, mouth in a snarl; there was no other way to tell that story. It was the first time Sairsel heard so much of it, but he knew.

“They slit his throat and left him in the desert. I tried to hide his wife and boy away in the Shroud, but I lost them, too. That’s when I joined the Resistance; it’s what I should have done from the first instead of running.”

The Griffin shook his head, his voice raw with quiet anger. “Even scattered beyond that accursed wall, they’ve taken everything from us. We ran to protect our families, only to fall to the blades of those who were content to watch them slaughter us. The only way forward is back where it began.”

“So that’s your play,” Morgana said slowly, after a moment. “You listen to our stories, and then you make a rousing speech of it.”

“Do I seem to you like a man who is playing?”

“No. But whoever you are underneath that thing,” Morgana said, reaching out to tap a finger against the mask, “you should know, already, that I don’t need convincing.”

“So you’re prepared to do what it takes?”

“Anything,” Morgana said.

The Griffin held out a hand, palm angled upwards. Morgana looked down at his gauntlet, as though considering, then slipped on her own to grip his forearm with fingers like claws. “I’m with you,” she said, then tugged his arm towards her, bringing him closer, “but I can’t be doing with the mask. The imperials hide their faces, too, my friend.”

Behind the mask, the Griffin smiled bitterly. “We are brother- and sister-in-arms. That is all that matters.” As Morgana let go, he deigned a glance towards Sairsel; he could feel the weight of that gaze even behind the blank white of the mask as the Griffin motioned to him with a tilt of his chin. “The little Elezen. He’s yours?”

“Aye.”

The Griffin turned back to Morgana. “Has he got the stomach for it, too? Anything?”

Sairsel answered before his mother could do it for him; he wouldn’t have put it past her. “I do,” he said between gritted teeth, wishing that it were true.

The Griffin looked at him. Sairsel did not know what he saw.

The people of the Wanderer were easy enough to find, if one knew where to look—and Sairsel never needed to look very long or very far to come home. It had been months since the last time; he’d found his clan near Urth’s Fount then, as though by some twisted game of fate. He hadn’t stayed long, too distraught and broken to let the world come into focus around him, but his father had come with him to the place where Wilred’s body was found. The water was not stained red. No part of the Wood bore traces of his passing, or his lonely grave—instead the weight had traveled all the way to Little Ala Mhigo and remained where his absence left the greatest void.

“The worst part is I didn’t even know him all that well,” Sairsel had said, his voice half-caught in his throat, “but he was so desperate to free Ala Mhigo when I met him, even though he’d never even seen it. This must have been the closest he’s ever been to it. And I—all my life, I’ve been so close, and I never even cared.”

He’d barely felt the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder. “I kept too much from you. I worried that it would only cause you pain to know that a wall stood between you and your mother’s homeland.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. It’s not about my Ala Mhigan blood. It’s about all of us not giving a damn about this—this cruelty that’s been under our noses for twenty years. Twenty years, Baba. All of Eorzea turned their backs on them, and Wilred, he… he died wanting to protect it. Killed by one of his own.” And he’d sounded like a boy, then, even to his own ears: “It’s not fair.”

“One of his own?”

Sairsel had heard the name Ilberd a fair number of times, through the Resistance as much as through what covert information he exchanged with the Riskbreakers. A brother-in-arms. A traitor. No one knew whose blade had killed Wilred, but the whispers running through the Resistance said that it could have been no one else’s but Ilberd’s. Hearing the name was one thing, and hating it, too, but speaking it was something else entirely, too caustic on Sairsel’s tongue.

“An Ala Mhigan. A comrade in his company.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” his father had said, and Sairsel knew that he truly was.

The weight of Wilred’s death had pressed too hard, too close; he’d left soon after. 

Now that he returned, it was only in passing again: he found his clan near the Sylphlands, this time, far enough from the Wall that he hadn’t run into the hunters while scouting, but too close for him to be comfortable.

He’d told Gundobald and the Griffin and anyone who would listen that this was his home—that he knew the Wood inside and out, that it was on his doorstep that the imperials had built that monstrous thing. For once, he could show that he was not playing at this for his mother’s sake: he was not two halves, not forestborn one day and Ala Mhigan another, but a whole of a boy who had grown up under the shadow of a chained homeland he’d never known was as much his as the Twelveswood.

He was forestborn. He was a Riskbreaker. He was Ala Mhigan. And he was a damned good ranger.

It wasn’t his first time being sent on a reconnaissance mission by the Resistance; if the gods were kind, the next would be beyond the Wall, scouting the reaches of Gyr Abania. He hoped he would live long enough to see Ala Mhigo itself. The thought that he might not had haunted him on every one of the nights he spent in the Wood on his own, watching for guard patterns and breaches in the Wall’s defenses. It was an inescapable reality, burrowing inside him and settling through every empty space of his being, but he was even more afraid of running than he was of dying.

The Resistance did not own him. It could be easy, he thought: he could send his last report, toss his linkpearl into the bushes, and take the nearest aetheryte to the Goblet. Ashelia hadn’t thrown him out on his arse for associating with the Resistance; surely she’d welcome him back if he said he had given them all that he could. I could not bear it if you became another corpse. Even after all this time, all those days spent with the Resistance wondering if there was even anything left of the boy he had been when he lied to his mother that he no longer had anything to do with the Riskbreakers, the Grand Steward’s words rang as clear in his mind as they did when she spoke them.

He was afraid of hurting her, but he was selfish. When he thought of leaving, he couldn’t help but imagine what his comrades would say of him—that he was a traitor, craven, that he had only needed himself to prove that he never belonged. He thought of the Griffin turning that blank-faced mask to his mother and showing his judgement of her even through it. Whoever he was—Sairsel was beginning to think that it didn’t matter, because what mattered was the way he spoke, the way he led—Sairsel wanted to prove himself to him almost as much as he did his mother.

So he did not run, but he did not return to Little Ala Mhigo. He would wait for the others to join him, he said, and one of the Masks replied that they would come.

While he waited, he found his clan. He found the nightfires, pulled his sister from her watch almost feverishly; the dawning of the assault was twisting him with apprehension.

“You have to leave,” he whispered to her, taking her face between his hands. Watching her face like it was the first time he saw it; like it was the last. “You have to leave, all right? Tell your mother whatever she needs to hear to move camp as quickly as possible.”

“Sairsel—” Nairel said, but he shook his head.

“No, listen to me. There’ll be fighting at the Wall, and if—if it spills out on this side, or the Garleans decide to retaliate, they will put anyone they find to the sword. You need to go west, or north, or—I don’t know. Just be as far from the Wall as you all can get.”

Nairel narrowed her eyes; she looked at him like he was half-mad, and for that, he couldn’t blame her. He certainly felt as much. “What are you saying? Why would they retaliate against us?”

Because if we do everything right, they’ll think the whole of Eorzea has moved against them. “I need you to trust me, Nairel. Please.”

For a moment, Sairsel thought that his own sister would turn him away once and for all. She searched his eyes, as though watching for some truth she knew him to be hiding, and, at long last, gave a nod.

“I’ll talk to my mother,” she said, squeezing both of his arms. “We’ll alert the Wood Wailers, too, try to get—”

“No. No Wood Wailers; they’ll only report back to the Adders. Only the clan.”

Nairel’s frown deepened. “Sairsel, what have you gotten yourself into?”

“We’re finally doing something. This is the first step for Ala Mhigo. It’ll be worth it, you’ll see—I promise.”

It made Sairsel ache more than he thought, to slip his hands from his sister’s, but he retreated back into the shadows before she could tell him to stay safe, or anything else that might sound like what Ashelia had told him—it could only hurt more.   

The next morning, his people were gone, but this part of the Wood remained as he had always known it. Baelsar’s Wall stood with its sharp edges, dark against the colour of ash, as lightning split the sky. 

Sairsel had always hated the Wall’s cold, graceless metal and the angry lights of all the Empire’s blighted magitek polluting the peace of the Twelveswood. ‘Beautiful’ was a word he never would have thought to be applicable to that thing, but tonight, it was—because tonight, Baelsar’s Wall was burning. Shrieking alarms blared, watch dogs barked and howled, and men and women in all the colours of the Alliance shouted battle cries as they clashed against imperial soldiers.

For the first time in his life, Sairsel found beauty not in the peace of the Wood, not in the quiet and the solitude he so dearly sought, but in chaos and violence.

“It will be a long while before the Empire is done paying for all they’ve done to us,” Morgana had said to her unit as they readied for the assault. She’d been restless the whole day before the attack, likely spurred by the urgency of being so close to home yet so many battles far—but Sairsel had an inkling it was the Twelveswood, too: the place that had taken from her far more than it had given. She’d barely looked at him all day. “But for tonight, I’ll be glad to take back some of that coin in blood.”

And blood there was. It slicked the metal footpaths under Sairsel’s boots, and he was glad not to be encumbered by a Serpent’s uniform; he spent much of the assault scouting ahead, and back and forth to ensure the infiltration of each unit, sticking to the shadows. His ranger’s clothes served him than those glaring yellow jackets and heavy boots ever could, and he was thankful for it as he climbed higher through the castrum, closer to the sky, deeper in the blood. Every ladder he found, he climbed.

Morgana was alone, pulling at the collar of her Flames uniform, her sword more crimson than steel when he found her. Far from the fires, the air was cooler, and the breeze blew stray strands of greying hair across her damp forehead.

“All right?” Sairsel asked breathlessly.

“All right,” she replied, weariness sewn into the fringes of her voice. “My unit’s deployed. Everything to plan. Finding higher ground?”

“Aye. Putting those forest-soft skills to good use,” Sairsel said curtly, designating his bow. “I—”

“Wait.” Morgana made a beckoning motion that was more a quick tilt of her head and grabbed Sairsel’s wrist when he came closer, pulling him to the edge of the walkway. “Look.”

Beyond, the sky bled from the steely black above to a soft, dusky blue. And against that blue lay a horizon, bright and clear but for a few wisps of clouds, marked by the rising lines of mountains that spread as far as the eye could see. For the first time in his life, Sairsel gazed upon the other side of the Wall, stretching far beyond the Twelveswood he knew.

“The Gyr Abanian highlands,” Morgana said. She raised a bloody hand, pointing east. “It’s too far to see, but—far beyond that tower, there. You’re looking at Ala Mhigo, boy.”

Sairsel opened his mouth to speak, but found no words. Instead he took his eyes from the mountain peaks and looked at his mother, trying to understand the look on her face. He never quite could, but the intensity in her eyes was more familiar than anything he’d ever seen; he simply couldn’t remember, in that hasty moment, why it was.

“How do you feel?” he asked, quietly. Surely she’d find the question appalling. Surely—

“I feel,” she began.

A crash resounded below, shaking the ground. Morgana swept around and fell into a battle stance—but no attack came. She rushed to the other side of the narrow platform upon which they stood, with Sairsel beside her, a hand at his quiver. A pair in Garlean colours ran across just below them; Sairsel nocked an arrow and readied to draw, but his mother’s hand lowered the bow.

“Wait. I know those men.”

“What?”

Morgana’s fingers tightened around his arm. “I’ve seen them with the Griffin—those traitorous shites.” She gave an urgent squeeze, then a small shove. “You need to go find him. Tell him we’ve got turncoats. I’ll make them talk.”

“Morgana—”

“That’s an order, boy. Go!”

The two men were headed back towards the fighting, and Morgana would be following them down into the Garleans’ hells. It was enough to make Sairsel hesitate, but there was no going against her. Not now. He turned, made to run off—and heard her voice again, quiet, not directed at him.

“Bloody hells, Ilberd,” she hissed, a desperate curse for her own ears.

He never should have heard; he would not, had he been anyone else. But he had a ranger’s ears, and the name cut through the faraway battle and the wind itself, turning Sairsel’s blood cold.

So he’d shown Morgana his face. He’d told her his name, and it had meant nothing to her, and her loyalty had been unshaken—or maybe the name meant something to her, too, and she hadn’t cared. Anything, she had said. Anything it took.

Sairsel tasted blood in his mouth as he ran. He ran until his breath burned in his lungs, ran until he could see the proud line of the Griffin’s back, his black-and-white figure stark against the night. A victory so close at hand below him—and Gyr Abania beyond, at his right hand. Sairsel watched the griffin embroidered on the fabric of his cape and felt, above his rage and his disgust, a grief so heavy and sharp it clawed at his throat.

“Look at me,” he said. His fingers were tight around his bow, the string biting through his gloves. The arrow was already nocked. He’d seen the Griffin in his armour enough to know that his throat was bare, unprotected—Sairsel had wondered, once, about the point of so much armour if one arrow could do the trick. Does he want to die?

The Griffin turned, pinned him with the blankness of that stare shadowed by mask and hood. He said nothing.

“Two of your people are in imperial soldier uniforms. Morgana is chasing after them for turncoats.”

“She’s more loyal than most.”

Sairsel was tired of wondering what lay beyond that mask. The itch to see the eyes hidden underneath was a raging gale, and everything—all of it—made his hands shake.  

“What are you really afraid of?” Sairsel asked, breathlessly. “People knowing your face, or your name?”

“You assume wrongly, to name it fear,” said the Griffin. “Is it that you’re afraid, boy?”

“I’m a lot of fucking things, right now.” He raised his bow, keeping the tip of the arrow level with the Griffin’s throat. All he had to do was draw, loose. Set it free. “I knew Wilred. In Little Ala Mhigo. I didn’t join the Resistance until after he went off to fight for the Braves, but—I knew him.” He swallowed. “Did you kill him?”

“He died to bring us closer to freeing Ala Mhigo, like every man and woman here,” the Griffin said, steadfast. No doubts; no remorse. Sairsel ached. “Some of us are worth more in death than in battle.”

“Then you die, too,” Sairsel yelled, his voice rising too harshly from his throat, “and maybe it’ll bring us another step closer.”

And, if not, it might help Wilred rest, at the very least. 

Sairsel did not hesitate as he pulled back his bow string as far as it would go, unfeeling. He loosed; pain blossomed in his chest as the arrow flew towards the Griffin’s throat. It would have torn through him, if not for the blade that rose to slice it in two.

No man should have been capable of such a thing—but Ilberd Feare no longer was the man he had once been. And Sairsel had not the sense to let people stronger than he defeat the things that made monsters of someone like the Griffin; not tonight. He tossed his bow to the ground, sprinting forward, and tore his sword from its sheath.

His sword-skill was never good enough; blades didn’t sing in his hands the way they sang in his mother’s. Swords always felt too heavy, their weight all wrong, their steel too firm compared to the wood of the bows that seemed to know his hands, his eyes, his heart. But he was beginning to understand how people worked with swords in their hands—beginning—and so he managed to dodge the first thrust with which the Griffin met his forward lunge.

Sairsel found himself beside the Griffin’s left shoulder, with Gyr Abania at his back as he slashed at that bare throat. The Griffin threw his head back just in time, sidestepped away, then charged back in to throw his shoulder into Sairsel’s chest. That sent him hurtling back, his head and shoulder meeting the unforgiving metal of the platform hard; it knocked the wind out of his lungs, tearing a groan from his throat, and his sword clattered away.

Not like this.

The pain was spreading like wildfires through his body, but his fingers still searched frantically for his sword, and his eyes still saw the Griffin’s blade bearing down on him. He rolled away, scrambling to his feet. His chest felt like it was going to collapse in on itself from the force of the Griffin’s blow, but he could still stand, so nothing mattered. He still had a knife. 

“I don’t want to kill you, lad,” the Griffin said, and Sairsel couldn’t see in his eyes if it was true. That didn’t matter, either. He lunged again, slashing and slashing and slashing like a wild coeurl swinging its claws until they found purchase.

And his claws drew blood. For a heartbeat, Sairsel stopped, but it wasn’t enough; only a glancing blow drawing a shallow line under his jaw. It was enough to make the Griffin hiss, but he was a man who barely faltered, and Sairsel had already given up his opening in the hesitation. The Griffin’s blade slashed upward, and Sairsel staggered back.

The pain in his chest changed. He barely felt the blood that began to run down the front of his jacket.

“I didn’t want to kill you,” the Griffin said as he collapsed—first to his knees, then to the ground. And, just like that, he turned away to watch the fighting below.

Sairsel didn’t know if he was breathing anymore, but he knew that it hurt, worse than anything he had ever felt before. Sobs that wouldn’t rise from his lungs died on his lips, and his fingers clawed at the Griffin’s ankles, too far from him to reach. He wanted to ask— he wanted to ask—

“How could you do this do us?” he croaked out.

If the Griffin answered, Sairsel didn’t hear it. He turned his head and watched the mountains fall into the night sky as the fighting went on.

That voice.

Shining is the land’s— 

He heard it again.

“Mother?”

light of justice.

It was a foolish thing to ask, because he had never heard his mother sing, and the voice was soft. But it reminded him of her. The echo rose all around him, at once distant and so near it seemed to resonate within his very heart. Like the Wood, on the day—

On the day—

Sairsel reached an arm out again, heavy as stone. His fingers found the narrow spaces in the metal below him, and he dragged himself—wheezing and whimpering—until he could curl one hand against the edge of the platform. He shook as he peered over, lifting his head with everything he had left.

Was her voice rising for the piles of bodies that lay silent upon the metal? Did she lament for him, too—for Ilberd Feare, broken among them, his unmasked face a horror in death? 

As the light rose from them into something without shape, something far brighter than the fires and far greater than the deaths that served it, Sairsel’s mind latched onto one last thought.

Does she sing for me?

It hurt so much. Sairsel rolled onto his back again, let his head fall to the side, and saw light again. Not that light—not the light that consumed. 

The light of a warrior. 

Sairsel watched her, gleaming in her armour, as the edges of his vision blurred and that angry light burst.

[fellkrieger123]

Doing your fact thing. It's a rather random thing that he picked up when he was younger, but Rilun always knocks on a doorframe twice whenever he enters or leaves a private bedroom. He used to believe that not doing so would anger the Elementals (potentially enough for a woodwrath.) Although he knows that not to be the case anymore, he still does it partially out of habit and partially out of feeling off if he doesnt.

Larka was the only cook amongst the triplets for a while, until Raise asked her to teach him how to cook. She agreed, and he was actually pretty damn good at it. But the first thing he did was weaponize the cooking. He made chili pepper bombs and started throwing them in the eyes of the bullies who picked on Fell. He still makes and carries those things with him, just in case he finds himself in a bad situation and it might be a little too much to kill a person....

[makattack42]

Got this in the mail yesterday and I LOVE IT!!!! Now where should I hang it? #woodwrath #icforlife #navyvet #audiokid

[charlettebffxiv]

Prompt #2: Sway

“Put your back into it! Long arms like those shouldn’t struggle with a thin trunk like that!” Bobocufu’s voice was high-pitched, almost childlike, and even the most demanding of statements she made sounded partly joyous. Charlette had a theory that it was because of this the lalafell was such a demanding leader. “The hearth needs wood if they’re going to be ready in time for All Saints!” they had received quite a large order, the town's carpenter Winneth having been tasked with carving decorations specific to this twelvemoon’s celebration. A hundred-and-fifty logs of walnut wood and barley a sennight to collect them by the deadline. “C’mon you three! Swing hard, strike true, clean cuts and quickly, before the Shroud decides it would rather keep these trees and sends woodwrath our way!”

Since being handed over to Bobocufu and the contingent of the Botanist guild that made its home in Willow’s Heart, Charlette has known little more than back-breaking work. She never expected caring for the wilderness and harvesting its bounty would be so incredibly demanding. No, when this was being bestowed onto her as penance for her misdeeds during her quest the Elder’s made it sound like it was a kindness, a gift! “Immerse yourself in the peace of the forest, Charlette. Let it be a time to reflect on and recover who you are.” High Archvisit Aemeric’s words had stung, the entire ordeal of her meeting with the Elder’s feeling like a cruel joke after the Twelvemoon she had already endured. But part of her couldn’t help but accept it, believe some of it and make an honest attempt to do just that. But why has it been so difficult? The question floated through her mind as she made the final swing of her axe and the aged walnut tree toppled over to the whoops and cheers of her fellow workers. “Thassit! Get ‘em down and get those branches off, we’ll give Winneth her order days in advance and give the green here new land to fill.” Bobocufu’s jubilance called out louder than the swing and thud of the axes at work, it begged the question of what she was more excited about; completing the order early or seeing a new swath of life fill a dead clearing. Perhaps that’s where Charlette needed to go? Maybe if she saw the Elder’s intentions and understood Aemeric’s point a little better, she could find that kind of joy in this work.

Then maybe they would let her go after the rest of those tomes…

“No dreaming Charlette.” a hand patted at the back of her shoulder, a Wildwood elezen with bright-blond hair smiling at her as he whispered to her. “Before the little-bully sees you staring into the wood again.” she nodded her thanks, looking down at the old tree she had felled, it’s life spent, its wood having turned a darker brown due to burrowing insects and parasitic mistletoe leeching away its life force. It didn’t take long to cut away the branches and remove the wilting leaves, Charlette and her companion working away at separating it into even logs, timing their swings to land one after another, like builders hammering in pillars for a foundation. THUD, thud, THUD, thud, THUD, thud…

“Maxim…” the blond elezen looked up at the sound of his name, the question in Charlette’s tone pulled at his curiosity. “That is my name.” he joked, the dead-look Charlette gave him only making Maxim giggle louder. “What is it?” it sounded almost like he was bracing himself for something. “Why are you a botanist? Why did you take up this profession instead of joining the hunters with your brothers?” he leaned back from the gouge he had been hacking to roll his shoulders and wipe sweat from his brow, taking the time to think before he answered. “Because I’m terrified of your mother.” The Bellamy matriarch had a reputation for being a strict and uncompromising leader for the hunter’s of the village. But she knew that was not the reason. “Honestly, why choose this over everything else you had in front of you. Hunting, crafting, adventuring. What was it that drew you to botany above all else?” she was picking for any kind of insight she could find. Maxim turned back to see where Bobocufu was, the lalafell currently helping their midlander companion haul logs onto the chocobo-driven cart. Once he seemed satisfied they were safe, Maxim leaned toward Charlette the two of them like gossiping hens, bent over their woodwork. Whatever he was going to say must have deep meaning to him for all this caution. Surely. Maxim took one more look over his shoulder, the conspiracy of it all building until finally... “I’m in love with Bobocufu.” Charlette shoved him away, pushing his shoulder with a disgusted “Uugh…” Maxim trying to protest the truth of this through chuckles he did not really try to hide. “Tis true! Despite our age difference she is the one! Ever since I first saw her peering through the tall shrubbery, grass stains on her tunic, mud across her face I was smitten!” For all his flaws, Maxim was good at levity. Hand on heart, he pleaded for his ‘love’ between looks to make sure the subject of his joke couldn’t have heard a word of it. “I just wish for the day I can bounce her on my knee at our bonding ceremony! Having her complain all the way down the aisle about wasted flowers and time.” Despite how it frustrated her, Charlette couldn’t help but smile. He reminded her of Franklin, of the jokes and tricks her entire generation of trainees at the Archive had to suffer due to being in the same group as Franklin. A flutter had made itself known in her chest as those memories came back, and it grew as Maxim pulled a laugh from Charlette, his need to sway her mood into the light added strength to the wings of that feeling.

It was just too much…

Charlette felt it threaten to wash out, the flutter had turned into a whirl of sadness, anger, confusion. All of it and the struggle to keep it down bringing a stiff edge to her voice. “We should get back to it.” her first swing, THUD, hit the wood so hard her axe dug too deep leaving Charlette to angrily yank at it. Maxim, confused by her sudden shift, walked around and offered to help by way of reaching for the handle. “Careful, it will come out too fast and hit you-...” she raised a hand up at him, cool words cutting his down. “I don’t need your help.” Maxim backed away with hands raised as Charlette clasped it with both hands, lent her full weight back into the tug and pulled the axe free. It swung backwards and came dangerously close to hitting her on the nose before she tightened her grip and gained control of it again. Maxim looked at her, lurching his head toward the axe with wide-eyes, the words unspoken but clear; I told you so. Charlette huffed out a frustrated breath and bowed her head. “Sorry, I just...  “ brushing sweat-damp strands of her hair from her face she shook her head, Maxim walking around to his side of the trunk without a word and picking up his own axe. “It’s okay. I think I can understand… a little bit. You don’t want to be out here. Not like the rest of us.” his voice had become sheepish to some degree, careful. “But… if I can give you some advice. Let us help you, in our way.” he dipped his head toward the others working in the clearing, each of them struggled with something, but all of them had a friend to help. “Y’know, like how old Bobocufu is never too proud to let me pass her the tea leaves from the top shelf.” he clasped his hands in front of him, a faux-dreamy sigh like a teen in love escaping him “I do so love it when my dearest needs me.” Charlette shook her head, picked up her axe and returned to their work, but not before given Maxim what she could “I’ll try…” Because maybe that’s where she will find herself again, as Aemeric had suggested. In new people to rely on.

[farplane]

for hearth and home

septembre 2019: sairsel and morgana arroway, brothers-in-arms, and the fight for home; a direct continuation of liberty or death. ffxiv:stormblood (4.0) spoilers. 15,699 words. (read on ao3)

In truth, Sairsel was not quite certain what it meant to be an adventurer.

It was a path he’d decided to follow once he realized it was better to be on a path of his own, even if it was obscure both in direction and in what he wanted from it, than to follow something that he increasingly felt was never meant for him. And it wasn’t that the whole clan was to blame—Nairel’s mother was, by far, the most skilled of them at finding words that strongly implied he had no real place among them without saying it outright, and even she tempered herself as a courtesy to her daughter and Sairsel’s father. Even at nineteen summers, Sairsel had wisdom enough to know that he himself had his part of responsibility in it, too. He still didn’t know whether Nairel’s mother had meant it as a kindness when she told him that Oschon himself had cursed him with wandering feet, but to him it had felt like the first thing setting him free.

Perhaps adventuring meant fighting, or helping as many as possible—but for Sairsel, at least, it started with finally being left alone.

He loved the freedom of solitude. He was perfectly content to provide for himself and to spend his days as a vagabond through the Wood; one day soon, he told himself, he’d take another path and see the rest of Eorzea. As long as the forest had for him new landscapes that he hadn’t seen on his own, though, he didn’t want to leave it all behind. 

For the most part, he avoided the settlements—and most pointedly of all, he avoided Gridania itself—except out of necessity. Even if it did come to necessity, he’d try and find every possible alternative to having to find himself among people who had never been quite his own even when he’d had a clan to call his: the settlements in the Wood were all offshoots of Gridania, and he was ever more of an outsider to them than he was to his people. When the strap of his quiver wore down so terminally that his most recent attempts at sewing it back together broke his sewing needle, he resigned himself to the inevitable with a dread that crawled unbidden inside him and settled as a weight low in his ribcage.

His apprehension, as it so often did, proved to have been pointless and unfounded as he passed through the open gates of Quarrymill: no one so much as spared him a second glance. He wondered why it was so, when he’d been made to feel for so long that he stood out in every possible way. Could his short ears still be seen as those of a full-blooded Elezen at a passing glance? Or was it simply that he looked enough like an adventurer that it was expected of him to be an outsider? Perhaps it was the foul weather, with its bloated dark grey sky and cutting winds, that made everyone less keen to appreciate their surroundings.

It wasn’t until he’d traded a few skins for a new strap and sewing needle that he overheard the Highlander’s argument with the Hearer, and understood that he went unnoticed because someone stranger than he was stirring up trouble.

The man was built like something carved out of sturdy brown rock, but emaciated; the muscles of his bare torso were much too sculpted, and exhaustion showed in the dark colour sunken deep under his eyes. He wore his black hair braided and tied back, but for a few beaded braids framing his face that shivered and tapped against one another in the wind. Behind him, a few others stood and sat near the water, the lot of them looking just as—if not worse—haggard as the man did. Among them lay a man who seemed halfway to his grave, sweaty with fever and breathing raggedly.

  These people were not of the Twelveswood; that much was clear in the way the man spoke to the Hearer and cursed the elementals. Desperate anger was written in every tense inch of his posture—before he even understood his plight, Sairsel found himself feeling for him, though he was unsure as to why. Perhaps it was all his father had said to him, of Hearers abusing their positions to give commands that had little to do with the elementals’ true will; even Nairel’s mother claimed that their will was in every part of the Wood—every leaf, every branch, every stone, every storm and wind and flood—and that the Hearers were but fallible proxies. The wandering clans knew woodwrath better than the Gridanians and their guilds ever could, and Sairsel’s father had raised his children to be wary of the abuse of which people could be capable when they believed too staunchly in keeping others out.

He stepped forward before he could be afraid of doing it, his heart jumping in his throat when he realized there was no pulling back. “What’s going on?” he asked, turning his attention to the man more than the Hearer herself.

“One of my men is grievously injured, and these—” the man said, gritting his teeth against insults that could only worsen his position, “they refuse to offer succor out of superstition and judgement of us outsiders, even in the face of begging.”

“It is the will of the elementals. They have denied us to act, and they will continue to do so, and we will continue to obey their will for the safety of all those present.”

Sairsel scoffed, glancing over to the wounded man before turning his gaze back to the Hearer. Don’t be reckless, said a voice at the back of his mind that sounded suspiciously like his sister, don’t look for a fight. He’d never been so combative, not since he’d realized it only ever made things worse—but now, he was tired of making himself as small as he could be.

“Aye, because the elementals do terribly fear a dying man,” Sairsel said flatly.

“The elementals do not fear. The elementals—”

“Speak to you, sure, but I’d wager it’s been rather quiet of late. When’s the last time you’ve seen woodwrath strike since the sky went red?” he asked. The Hearer opened her mouth, and Sairsel turned to the man beside him. “What do you need?”

“You doom yourself, boy,” the Hearer said before the man could answer, staring pointedly at Sairsel’s ears. “You gamble with the grace they have afforded you by letting you walk our land.”

Sairsel had never been so calm in his anger. A cold chill spread through him down to his very fingertips, and he felt like someone else as he took the man’s arm and began to steer him away, his other hand outstretched as he looked up at the trees around them.

“Woodwrath take me now, then, if the elementals so staunchly oppose the mere fucking act of preserving the life the Wood grants us.”

It was more complex than that; he knew that much. He knew it was about balance, that the Wood could destroy with a ferocity that did not discriminate; no one life was worth more than any other. But Sairsel had grown up with the belief that perhaps—just perhaps—any who took the time to live in the Wood and listen to its heart knew the elementals just as well as any Hearer could. So he trusted his instinct, and the elementals did not strike him down.

The man was looking at him with an expression Sairsel didn’t understand—eyes wide, brow furrowed. Sairsel gave him a tentative shadow of a smile.

“You— You’re the first person here to even dare to help us,” the man said.

“Well, I’m not from around here.”

“An adventurer, then?”

Even though he’d told his family otherwise when he left, he didn’t feel like an adventurer. “I’m not—I mean, I am from the Wood. Just not this town. We believe different things about the elementals, I suppose.” He scratched his neck. “So, er, your man—what does he need?”

“His wound’s festered. We have no healer with us, and I’ve no means of obtaining any remedy while stuck in this gods-forsaken place.”

Sairsel was startled to realize that there was something he could do for them. Though both of his children had shown more of a penchant for the path of the hunters, Sairsel’s father had been staunch in his insistence that they should learn as much of what he knew as the clan’s herbalist, and Sairsel had taken better to it than Nairel, who could hardly sit still. He’d helped him, once, with a hunter who hadn’t properly cleaned a scratch she’d obtained from a broken tree branch; a fever had settled in within days.

“I can get you what he needs. Let me— I’ll just be gone a few bells at most. Do you think he has that long?”

“We can only hope that he does,” the man said, touching Sairsel’s arm just as he made to turn. “Thank you. I won’t forget this kindness.”

Sairsel made an uncomfortable gesture that was meant to be dismissive of himself; it was only as he had walked away that he realized it may have come as plainly dismissive and coarse. He ruminated the concern for a time, while he searched for the herbs he needed in the underbrush—but what did it matter? The man had far more dire things on his mind than whether the skinny half-Elezen helping him had reacted to his gratitude in an impolite manner or not, and surely the help itself balanced it out. What Sairsel understood the least was himself, for having gotten involved in the first place as much as for how eagerly he seemed to want to make this man think well of him.

Behind its veil of grey, the sun crawled along the sky as though it meant to steal daylight away, barely noticeable in its progression. It was a harder search than Sairsel had expected, and by the time he finally did find the white-leafed plant he sought, his thoughts were weighed down by doubt—doubt that perhaps the elementals had not struck him down with woodwrath, but that this was their way of showing their disapproval. It was a stupid and poisonous thought to have, he realized as he knelt down and began to pluck at the leaves as efficiently as he could; the Wood provided. It always had, and always will.

All that mattered was that the right people knew it, and knew to make something of that boon. Sairsel uttered a silent prayer of thanks as he prepared the remedy in a wide leaf from a nearby tree, for want of a mortar, and kept those words in his mind the whole way back to Quarrymill.

The wounded man had not yet breathed his last. When they saw him, the whole pack of his comrades seemed to shuffle to their feet at once, moving towards Sairsel expectantly.

“I’ve got it. You only need to apply it directly over his wound—” he began, and a spindly woman snatched the leaf out of his hands with a quick, thickly accented word of gratitude, “—er. Just make sure to spread it at least an ilm around, too.”

“Thank Rhalgr you’ve come,” said the man from earlier. Rhalgr? That gave Sairsel pause. “Stay here—give me a moment.”

Sairsel watched, meeting the thanks of the others with curt nods as he watched the man kneel before his wounded companion. He took his hand, pressed a palm to his glistening forehead, and whispered what Sairsel assumed were words of comfort—to his surprise, even through the fever and what must have been immense pain, the wounded man managed a little smile that he turned up towards Sairsel with a grateful nod. That fleeting moment of serenity was broken as the spindly woman began applying the remedy; Sairsel looked away from the wounded man’s contorting features, not knowing whether it was for his own sake or to allow him some privacy in his pain.

The man with the braids stood and returned to Sairsel, taking him a few feet away to gaze upon the gentle stream running through the village. He turned his eyes to Sairsel: a brown dark with honesty yet softened by gratitude, though no less worn around the edges.

“You’ve done Gallien a great kindness, lad,” he said. “All of us. I wish there was something I could give to repay you, but we’ve nothing—”

Sairsel shook his head. “I didn’t do this for coin. I did it because… I don’t know. The Wood is my home. It’s not right, what that Hearer did.”

The man nodded and leaned with both hands on the shoddy fence. He looked out into the water once again with a furrowed brow for a moment, grappling with his thoughts, before turning back to Sairsel again like he’d just remembered something, holding out a hand. “I’m Meffrid.”

“Meffrid,” Sairsel repeated. He shook his hand, then belatedly pointed to himself. “Sairsel.”

“Well, I meant what I said earlier, Sairsel: I won’t forget this.”

“Me neither,” Sairsel said clumsily, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “May I ask—how come you’ve found yourselves here? You’re obviously not Gridanian. Are you going to be all right from here on out?”

 That made Meffrid smile—a weary, diminished sort of smile, but it was a smile nonetheless. “Aye, lad, we’ll be all right; I’ll make certain of it. We’ve come from Gyr Abania—from the Ala Mhigan Resistance. We have a hell of our own over there. I led them all the way here for their safety, but I suppose that being away from imperial dogs only means we’re closer to a different sort of hound.”

“I’m sorry,” Sairsel said. He didn’t know whether he was apologizing for their whole situation—was that presumptuous?—or for the hardships suffered in the Wood. Perhaps it was simply for Meffrid himself that he felt sorry; for the way his gaze fell spoke of all the weight on his shoulders, all the responsibility he carried by himself. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for. We’re more than halfway to Thanalan by now, aren’t we? As soon as Gallien has recovered, we’ll be on our way, and we’ll soon be safe in Little Ala Mhigo.”

A heaviness settled in Sairsel’s chest. “I hope the Wanderer guides your path.”

“Thank you.”

Meffrid laid a hand on Sairsel’s shoulder and squeezed, a gesture that made him feel as though they were not strangers at all. And yet, they were—Sairsel made certain to remind himself of that when he parted ways with the Ala Mhigans and left Quarrymill feeling stifled and guilty. They were strangers on separate paths. He forced himself not to hope to see them again, because their plight was a faraway one, and Sairsel had given what he could when they needed it.

He never did see Meffrid on this side of Baelsar’s Wall again.

“Are you Gridanian, by any chance?” asked the Grand Steward.

Sairsel shifted uneasily in his seat, wondering—for perhaps the fifteenth time—what in the seven hells he was still doing here, sitting in a free company mansion in the middle of the desert across from a woman who somehow inspired both terror and inexplicable awe in him. He considered correcting her, but decided against delving into the subtleties of what it meant for a forestborn of the clans to be called Gridanian when he had never once lived in the city for a day in his life.

“Is that going to be a problem?” he asked instead.

The Grand Steward tilted her head. Ashelia Riot, her name was; leader of the Riskbreakers, a company that, against all sense, Sairsel still considered joining. Something in her eyes kept him rooted—something of an anchor, true and fierce—against everything that told him to get up and leave. Everything but his instinct.

“Not at all. I’m simply surprised that a Gridanian would be interested in joining a company run by a Mhigan.”

Sairsel didn’t stop to wonder if there was some age-old disdain lingering from the Autumn War to that remark—there wasn’t—and instead mumbled something clumsy about the imperials and his home and dedication to what was right that, within the year, he would already have forgotten. What he did remember was the thought at the back of his mind, then—that if Ashelia Riot was as caring and selfless as what he had seen of the man named Meffrid in Quarrymill, he would be prouder to follow her than any Gridanian he could ever meet.

(He learned, soon enough, that he was prouder to follow her than any other Ala Mhigan he could ever meet, too.)

There was a twinkle in Madelaine’s eye that Sairsel knew, by now, heralded a particularly clever or biting remark. He was already preparing to roll his eyes.

“So the little rabbit wants to learn to hop.”

Sairsel rolled his eyes. “You know what, this was a bad idea. I can ask someone in Little Ala Mhigo. They’re always going on about Mhigan pikemen, anyroad,” he said, and made to turn and leave. Madelaine was smirking as her fingers wrapped around his wrist, tugging him back.

“Don’t be a child; it only makes you look like a boy trying to be a man,” she said, twirling a finger in the direction of the stubble on his jaw. “Besides,” and she bent to reach under the bed, dragging out a long bundle that she opened to reveal two lances, “you didn’t come all the way to Coerthas just to see my face, did you?”

“You’d be surprised of the lengths I’d go just for you, Madame Lachance,” Sairsel said. It didn’t have quite the suave effect he was hoping for with his teeth chattering; acclimatizing to the desert heat had been a hell and a half, and now it left him especially ill-suited for the cold climates he’d always tolerated better than most.

Madelaine snorted. “What is it really, Sairsel?”

“It’s—” he began unsteadily, then sighed. “The Resistance, they’re all people who’ve been fighting for years. And, I know, they had no other choice, even the ones my age, because Ul’dah and that whole fucking desert have been cruel to them—but I’m not like that. I’m a hunter, not a warrior. Sword-skill doesn’t come easy to me and I know I disappoint my mother every time I try to make her understand why swords feel so heavy in my hands.”

“What makes you think learning the lance is going to be easier than a sword?” Madelaine asked, keeping a level gaze on him.

“I’m an archer. I’m better at a distance.”

Madelaine raised an eyebrow and spoke in an airy voice, the sarcasm clear in her words: “How unlike you to balk at intimacy even in violence.”

“Oh, you know me. Love looking people in the eyes.”

Without a word, Madelaine gathered up the lances. She paused by a chest at the foot of her bed, opened it with one hand, and tossed Sairsel a fur. “Well, come on, little rabbit. We’ve a long way to go before you’re worthy of the Sirens, so we had better get started yesterday.”

Sairsel was still unsure of how, exactly, he felt about standing in Gyr Abania.

It wasn’t like coming home, of course; how could it be? He had come into the world in the Wood, lived most of his life in the Wood. Ala Mhigo had been a distant thing to which he was blind beyond a wall that had seemed, for twenty years, to be utterly impenetrable.

Seeing the mountains from the top of Baelsar’s Wall for the first time, with his mother at his side—or perhaps rather he at hers—had been a moment he knew he would remember for all his days. But standing on Gyr Abanian soil—that was not a moment. It was seconds, minutes, hours all woven together, as continuous as the flow of life itself; how could he make sense of something so utterly immeasurable?

He’d liked East End best, predictably, because it felt familiar. The sound of the wind through the trees and the distant rush of water, the vibrant colour of the canopy, the earthy smells of nature—they all spoke to him as though to a friend, albeit in a different voice. East end was the Wood without the elementals, and it should have unnerved him, but it didn’t; he heard not the silence he expected.

The woods in Gyr Abania spoke the same words, even if they did so in another language. Sairsel could almost understand it, but they moved on deeper into the Fringes before he could wholly make sense of it. There was a wideness to the highlands that simply disoriented him—greater, somehow, than the bare and sandy expanses of sand in Thanalan. In the Fringes, the sky seemed to open up even higher and farther; the waters swallowed up what might have been finite in the dusty ground and made it endless, from waterfall to stream to tree.

He couldn’t explain how beautiful he found it, and how small it made him feel.

Perhaps it made him quiet. It came as a surprise that anyone even noticed, because that was how they knew him—but Leofric seemed to see the difference. When Sairsel rejoined his unit in Castrum Oriens, it fell naturally that he should bring up the rear, because he was, above all things, a ranger. As they reached the Striped Hills, however—all rock and dust and dead trees and harsh sun, but air cooler than Thanalan could ever breathe in daytime—Leofric insisted that Sairsel should stay with him at the front.

Sairsel didn’t ask why, but his expression did.

“Don’t look so glum and wary, hey? It’s not a punishment,” Leofric said, clapping him hard on the back.

“I just thought it would be better if I lay low for a while,” Sairsel muttered. He very carefully did not look over his shoulder at the others despite how much he wanted to; he didn’t need any more reasons to look suspicious. “After the whole Griffin business—”

Leofric gave him a perplexed, incredulous look. “What, you think people think badly of you for survivin’ hell? Because you followed him?”

“Everyone’s going around saying he was a madman and a fanatic.”

“Aye, because he was. No one was saying that before he went and threw himself from the Wall to summon a primal, though, were they?” Leofric said. “We’re all oracles when something’s already passed.”

Sairsel raised a hand to his chest, scratching at the fresh scar through his coat. Every day, he wondered if he would have survived the Griffin if not for magical healing. He certainly would not have been back on his feet so soon without it, and that alone was more of a blessing than he deserved, but gods did it itch.

When he didn’t answer straight away, Leofric added, keenly: “Everyone needs someone to blame for our dead, Arroway. We can’t blame the imperials this time; it was one of our own. So we need to tell ourselves he was the worst of us.”

The worst part of it all was that Sairsel could see past his rage, and it wasn’t clarity that waited on the other side. It was a single, muddled thought, one that tore at him: he wasn’t certain whether the Griffin—Ilberd—really was the worst of them. Only the most desperate.

That, he never would dare to speak aloud. “I suppose,” he said instead.

“Aren’t you going to ask why you’re at the front, then?” Leofric asked after a moment.

“Why, you want me to? You could just tell me.”

Leofric draped a heavy arm across his shoulders and leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. “I want to see your face when you see the Reach for the first time,” he said, straightening up but not pulling away. “Everyone in my unit’s been at least once, so it’s not new for any of us. But the young ones—it’s always something for you lot. First time ever seeing Gyr Abania somewhere that’s really, truly still ours.”

There was something in the way Leofric’s voice weaved those words together that made Sairsel’s heart jump in his throat. He’d seen East End, the Velodyna—all with the creeping metal of magitek almost everywhere the eye could see. He wondered if he would feel something that he could understand when he saw it; Leofric’s manner made him hopeful of it, at the very least.

“I didn’t know you to be so sentimental.”

“About the right things, I am. You’ll see,” Leofric said. “You’ll understand.”

Sairsel expected more rock that wouldn’t speak to him at all when they came upon a dead end by the end of the afternoon, the light falling low and hot on the cliff face. Then Leofric opened a tiny satchel at his belt and blew a pinch of dust into the air, and the glamour fell away with a shimmer, and he smelled the water and heard the rush of waterfalls.

The sky opened. He was home.

Not his home, perhaps, but a home nonetheless—with the Destroyer standing high under the heavens, palm outstretched, water streaming down from the mountain behind him into a shimmering pool all around his altar. The temples were carved into the rock itself, and colour spread between the walls in tents and awnings and bright torches even in the daylight, and people—the Resistance as he had never seen it, as it never could be in Little Ala Mhigo. Gnarled trees stood between the tents, twenty summers dead in flames, but patches of green grew at their feet, creeping up: life clawing its way back even into the things that seemed lost.

Gazing upon Rhalgr’s Reach, it truly did almost seem as though freedom was close enough to grasp.

“Told you,” said Leofric’s voice near Sairsel’s ear as he stood in awe of that illusion. He put a hand on Sairsel’s shoulder and steered him forward through the base while Sairsel barely even looked ahead; there was too much to see, too much to take in.

The statue of Rhalgr drew his gaze the most. It was the first time, Sairsel realized, that he saw him represented as more than a symbol: now he was a man with a face, a hand that seemed to be calling him forth, with moss growing at his feet and creeping up the rocky folds of his clothing. Where the water flowed, green followed, and the Destroyer stood at the center of it all as though it came from him. Rays of waning sunlight fell into his hand, colouring the stone of the Reach an orange gold.

Sairsel was staring, he knew, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away even as Leofric stopped to greet old comrades, exchanging embraces and handshakes. The unit fanned out, finding reunions of their own, and the relief and energy seemed to feed that light, that freedom—without Leofric’s hand on his shoulder, Sairsel brought his gaze down to the people around him. It was a beautiful sight, and though he was alone in that moment, being an observer did not make him feel as much of an outsider as he did in Little Ala Mhigo.

This was the Resistance: the devotion, the embraces—the people fighting not against the Empire so much as for one another.

The voices tumbled over one another in laughter and spirited conversation, and then something moved through the crowd, and one familiar voice cut through the rest. At first, Sairsel mistook it for Leofric’s; he looked his way, only for his gaze to catch on a man moving past Leofric, and towards him.

“Destroyer take me,” said the man just as Sairsel noticed him. “Sairsel?”

Of all the things Sairsel had expected of coming to Gyr Abania, he would never have dreamed of hearing his name spoken this way—and at the headquarters of the Ala Mhigan Resistance, of all places. His lips parted, his voice caught in his throat and onto a whirlwind of emotions he didn’t understand; he could only cling to Meffrid as he pulled him in a bone-crushing hug.

“You’re here,” Meffrid said, his voice a muffled rumble against Sairsel, “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I can’t believe it either,” Sairsel breathed.

Meffrid pulled away, keeping one hand on Sairsel’s shoulder, heavy brown eyes searching his face. The weariness Sairsel had known still wore him around the edges, but his cheeks were fuller, his frame stronger than it had been in Quarrymill. Sairsel couldn’t help but wonder what changes Meffrid saw in him.

“I don’t imagine you remember me, after all this time,” Meffrid said with a sympathetic smile that didn’t completely conceal a spark of hope.

“Of course I remember, Meffrid,” Sairsel said. “I never forgot. I’m— I’m with the Resistance, now.”

Meffrid smiled. “Aye, I can see that,” he said fondly, taking Sairsel’s face between his hands with the warmth of a brother. “Gods, let me look at you.”

Still unsure—but growing less and less so—Sairsel laid a hand on Meffrid’s forearm as he watched him in silent wonder. The attention made the back of his neck burn, but it didn’t matter.

“You look—” Meffrid said, searching for the right words. “You look so—��

“Grown?”

Meffrid corrected him with unshaking certainty, almost incredulous in his affection, that very nearly made Sairsel weep: “Mhigan.”

“Ah, well—about that,” Sairsel said, laughing nervously, “I am half-Mhigan, as it turns out. Recent discovery.”

“I’ll want to hear all of it,” Meffrid said, and Sairsel was shocked to realize that he actually meant it. He gave Sairsel’s cheek a pat, looking into his eyes and smiling once more. “Feels like that Spinner has been working herself to the bone for us, aye?”

Sairsel couldn’t help but smile, too. “Aye, she has.”

Few were those who could wake Sairsel—for the simple reason that he was usually long on his feet by the time most people even started stirring. He woke with the crows, his father always said; in the misty, cold hours where the Wood was silent but for the croaking and the fluttering of black wings in the trees. Even in the Resistance—in Little Ala Mhigo—he’d always been among the first out of their bedrolls, and they were by no means the sort who lazed about. But Rhalgr’s Reach was different.

Meffrid was different.

Sairsel learned that on the morning he woke, his face still smashed into his bedroll, to Meffrid halfway inside his tent and poking his hip with the pommel of a sword. It was, at the very least, sheathed.

“Oi, new blood,” he said, as though they were strangers—and grinned when Sairsel cracked a bleary eye open in his direction— “Time to earn your keep.”

Miserably, Sairsel pushed himself up and rubbed his eyes. “What d’you need me for?” he asked with a stifled yawn.

“I’ve heard from your unit you’re a gifted scout. So I want to see that scouting for myself. Come on,” he said, tossing a green jacket right at him. “You know that barricaded tunnel to the east? Of course you do; you’re a scout. I want you there in ten minutes; Lyse is already waiting for us. There’ll be food if you get there in time.”

Sairsel extricated himself from his bedroll as quickly as he could and dressed, taking a few self-indulgent seconds to hold out the jacket and admire it: the same style that most members of the Resistance wore in Rhalgr’s Reach, and now he had one of his own—for the first time, he felt like perhaps he did have a place of his own among them, after all. He shrugged the jacket on to combat the morning chill and ducked out of his tent, hurrying through the rest of the steps to get himself ready.

As soon as he appeared by the tunnel, Meffrid handed him a dry cake wrapped in leaves. “I’m on time?” Sairsel asked.

Meffrid glanced at Lyse, who shrugged, and gave a shrug of his own. “No idea. Everyone ready to go?”

“Ready and raring,” Lyse said, enthusiastically thumping her fist into her palm. When Sairsel merely nodded, as though afraid to take up space, Meffrid clapped his shoulder and took the lead.

It was strange, traveling with Lyse. Sairsel knew her only in passing—the Scions called her Yda, when he was only half-conscious in the aftermath of Baelsar’s Wall, and by the time he’d rejoined them with Ahtynwyb to cross over into Castrum Oriens, she had shed the mask and taken a first step towards freedom. The way the Resistance spoke of her was as though of an heir, and Sairsel was beginning to piece together the legacy her father had left Ala Mhigo; he felt like a voyeur even knowing this, and an intruder even more as they walked together on the side of the Reach that would lead her to her childhood home.

Even though this path only took him further and further away from his own home, she treated him no differently than the rest. With her and Meffrid beside him, the Peaks were silent giants not judging his approach, but welcoming him.

And welcoming Lyse, too. Sairsel was glad, in some way, for the distraction that his focus on reconnaissance provided; it gave him something to do rather than watch her come home. He liked to believe he’d been raised with some manners, and it only felt wrong not to let her have at least some intimacy to live these moments of her life—and from what glances he allowed himself when he stood on distant vantage points, any real proximity might have overwhelmed him. She took in her surroundings with almost childish wonderment, with unbridled joy and relief; and then she would see something familiar, or perhaps something that was everything but—a broken statue, a glint of Garlean steel—and loss would flash across her face.

Still, she was strong, and hurt never prevailed over her for long. She was smiling again under the bright sky, some distance ahead on the path, as Sairsel hopped down from a high outcropping of rock to give his report. They were more than halfway to Ala Gannha, by now, and the sun had the height of midday; its warmth bled through the air enough that they had tied their coats around their waists. 

Lyse's eagerness was contagious: Meffrid's easy smile betrayed his high spirits even when he tried to play the part of the responsible captain as Sairsel updated his report.

“Good. Very good. I’ll never tire of hearing about an absence of imperial patrols,” he said, clapping Sairsel on the back again. He was getting into the habit of putting a hand to the nape of Sairsel’s neck and giving a fond squeeze and a shake—and that, Sairsel never tired of. “You’re doing good work.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Sairsel quipped, and almost immediately regretted it. Had he gone too far in the familiarity? Sure, he’d helped Meffrid months ago, but—

“I’m not surprised at all,” Meffrid said, genuine. “And if I were, it would only be pleasantly so. I couldn’t have been sure what to expect, could I? This isn't exactly the Shroud.”

Meffrid extended his hands, designating the Peaks as a whole: the dusty roads, the rock, the open ground where the hardiest trees could only sparsely grow. Scrunching one eye closed against the glare of the sun, Sairsel glanced around, and up towards the sky.

“No, this isn’t the Wood,” Sairsel said. “Maybe if this were right after we’d met, I would be a proper nuisance, but I learned a lot in Thanalan. And I talked with some of the others—the scouts and the rangers and the skirmishers, and all that lot. M’naago knows this place like the back of her hand, doesn't she?”

Meffrid nodded. “Oh, aye.” Lyse’s voice called to them expectantly, and he shared an almost conspiratorial smile with Sairsel. “And I'm sure you will, too, in no time.”

Such a small thing, faith could be. Still, those words—unassuming as they were—remained with Sairsel. If Meffrid believed he could know this land even half as well as someone like M’naago did, then perhaps he had a place, too.

When they camped, Meffrid would often sit at the fire and sing as stars began to fill the sky. He never dared to properly raise his voice; it was little more than a breathy sort of hum that filled the silence with something deep and worn, but never devoid of life or hope. By now, the tune was familiar: one Sairsel had heard in the Reach, on strings and voices—once, on a trumpet—but never dared to ask after.

Mostly because he was afraid of reminding them all that he was an outsider when he could now find himself believing, a bit more every day, that he wasn’t. But Meffrid—Meffrid had never done anything but welcome him, even before Sairsel had told him about his mother. And then, he’d only listened with kindness, and told him he was a son of Ala Mhigo.

“It was kindness, aye, and maybe the Spinner’s hand that brought you to us that day, in the Shroud,” he’d said, “but maybe it was your Mhigan blood, too. Guiding your heart.”

He’d smiled at him, then, and Sairsel had found himself smiling back.

Son of Ala Mhigo or not, his disposition was still no different. He was growing braver—fiercer, Morgana had said before they separated in Castrum Oriens—and better at mimicking his mother’s boldness when it came to talking back, but talking at all was entirely different. And it was worse when it came to purposely drawing the attention of someone he admired; by the time he worked up the courage to interrupt Meffrid, he already felt breathless.

“You sing that song a lot,” Sairsel said, “would—”

“Do you want me to stop?” Meffrid asked, raising an eyebrow.

Sairsel shook his head and waved his hands, already halfway to frantic. “Wh— no!” he said. “I really didn’t say that to make you stop. I only meant—”

Meffrid smiled. It was then that Sairsel noticed his hands moving, turning over something small—wood?—in a manner that had more to it than mere idleness.  

“You wonder what it is?”

“Aye.”

“The Measure of His Reach, it’s called. It’s our song,” Meffrid said, his gaze briefly falling to his hands before glancing back up at Sairsel. “With those words, at the very least. The imperials have tried to make it their own—so if you’re going to sing it outside the Reach, better make it hard to hear the words. Especially if you’re in Resistance colours. Makes it harder to pretend you’re singing for the glory of the Empire.”

“Oh,” Sairsel said. His face fell into a thoughtful frown.

“It’s a risk to take, but everything is, these days. I’d rather die with pride in my heart than live singing their words like they own us.”

“You could not sing at all,” Sairsel pointed out, though he didn’t really believe in the sentiment. As soon as the words left his mouth, he vividly imagined thumping his head against the nearest rock.

“I could also not fight at all. What’s freedom without a little risk, hey?” Meffrid said, nudging Sairsel’s arm with his elbow. His smile was soft around the edges, not quite as steady as it could be—but Meffrid’s faith never wavered. “Every small thing—it ends up mattering, Sairsel. Sometimes it’s a supply run going right. Sometimes it’s snatching intelligence from under the imperials’ noses. And sometimes, it’s just singing a song that reminds us who we were—who we still are, no matter what. Reminds us why we fight.”

Sairsel bit hard on the inside of his cheek, looking up towards the star-speckled sky as though it might quell the rising tide within his chest. Beside him, Meffrid kept on trailing the pad of his thumb against the bit of wood in his hands, only closing his fingers fully around it when Sairsel’s gaze moved back towards him.

“Would you teach it to me?” Sairsel asked quietly. “So that I can sing it with the right words.”

“Of course,” Meffrid said, nudging him again. “Maybe you can sing it when we liberate Ala Mhigo, make a proper bard of yourself. And make your Gridanian ancestors spin in their graves.”

Sairsel snorted. “I’m no bard,” he said, and focused on what little aether he could manipulate, as Aoife had taught him: like reaching into the pantry for that last biscuit, she’d said, except that the biscuit was a lute. Once it was in his hands, he strummed the strings once, and raised a finger pointedly. “I have a friend who is. Just because I’m an archer and I like singing—when no one hears me—”

“And Gridanian.”

“Forestborn,” Sairsel corrected.

Meffrid smiled, and Sairsel began to pluck away at what he remembered of the melody—and ever so quietly, like sharing a secret, Meffrid taught him to sing the beating heart of Gyr Abania. 

“How are you acclimating?”

Sairsel shrugged stiffly. “Would you ask anyone else in Leofric’s unit that?”

“No,” Morgana said without hesitation. “I have only the one son in that unit, so I am asking him.”

Something in his mother had changed since Baelsar’s Wall—to say she had softened or warmed to him would have been a grand overstatement, but she was different. As though some walls of her own had been knocked down; whether it was the loss and betrayal of a man she had believed in, the abject failure of the operation, or the simple fact that she got to stand upon Gyr Abanian soil, Sairsel wasn’t certain. He appreciated the change, of course, but he wished it hadn’t taken her believing that he was dead for the ice around them to begin to melt. 

And, much as it shamed him to even think it after having spent his life without a mother, he felt as though he’d finally been breathing his own air since they had separated in East End. Without her presence, her gaze, her weight, he had been able to begin to make sense of what the Resistance meant to him and him alone, to make something of what it was for him to be Ala Mhigan without all of it passing through what it meant to be the son of Morgana Arroway.

Now that she’d returned, he thought—with no lack of guilt for wanting such a separation—that perhaps one was intrinsically tied to the other.    

“It’s been going well enough. I prefer it here to Little Ala Mhigo.”

Morgana showed a hint of a smile. “That doesn’t surprise me. More green, aye?” she asked, then laid her wrist against the pommel of her sword as she looked around. “Is your unit captain satisfied with you?”

She almost never referred to Leofric by name if she could help it; the way she regarded him could only be described as wary, and Sairsel was beginning to understand that it was protectiveness. Part of him wanted to reassure her that she had no impropriety to fear, but that would require, at the very least, hinting at what had already transpired—and Sairsel had no particular desire to broach the subject of men with his mother.

“I haven’t been with my unit much of late,” Sairsel said, clearing his throat and straightening his spine. “I spent most of my time since I got here doing reconnaissance work under Meffrid. He asks for me personally.”

“Meffrid?” Morgana asked, raising her eyebrows. Childishly, perhaps, Sairsel enjoyed the pleasant surprise on her face; of course she hadn’t expected him to be able to make something of himself on his own. “He’s one of Conrad’s best. How did you come by that?”

“I told you when we met that I’d helped some members of the Resistance back in the Twelveswood before, didn’t I? Meffrid was their captain.”

Something in her eyes shifted; they narrowed and softened at the same time. “That’s good. That’s very good. I’m glad to hear you continue to earn your place.”

“What,” Sairsel said, regarding her with an expression that allowed no quarter; something he had learned from her. He didn’t know how much of it was teasing and how much was genuine. “You didn’t think I was capable of it?”

“No, I didn’t say—”

“Oi, Sairsel,” called Meffrid’s voice off to his right—always the voice of an equal. Meffrid never commanded; Sairsel liked that about him. He waved a roll of parchment in his hand. “Mind helping me with this map? I can’t plan this route in any way that I like.”

“Time to earn my place some more,” Sairsel said to his mother, perhaps too harsh in his sarcasm. Morgana gave him a satisfied nod and waved him off; he regretted how stiffly he turned away.

He didn’t mean to antagonize her, really, and neither did he expect that she was trying to be as abrasive as she had been with him before, especially now. Still, he struggled not to respond in kind, even if the attitude was needlessly preemptive, after the time he had spent learning it from her. As he followed Meffrid to a nearby table—a slab of wood mounted low on a number of stacked boxes—he tuned his mind to the tension in his shoulders, releasing it, trying to slip back into the ease he felt at Meffrid’s side. Breathing his own air.

“That was your mother—Morgana, aye?” Meffrid asked, smoothing his hands over the map. Without even needing him to ask, Sairsel reached out to hold down a corner, while Meffrid laid three fingers against the opposite.

“You know her?”

Meffrid smiled. “I know of her. She’s been with the Resistance a long while, and even before that—the Coliseum, the Griffin’s Talons. People like her make a mark. You’re lucky you were able to return to Gyr Abania together.”

Much as Sairsel wanted to complain about her like a little boy, Meffrid was right. The fates had been unfathomably kind, after ripping so many families apart—including the family they might have shared—if only in bringing them together. That they should have both survived the Griffin was a boon for which Sairsel knew he should be thanking the Twelve every day, but he never could bring himself to speak to them as though they had ever done anything for him.

“I know,” he said. “The Spinner has been working herself to the bone.”

“It’s a good thing to cherish, my friend,” Meffrid said, clapping him affectionaly on the back. He kept his hand on Sairsel’s shoulder long enough to give it a squeeze, then motioned to a spot on the map, and launched back into the subject of supply routes with little more ceremony.

Sairsel liked that about him. Much as Meffrid had a knack for wearing himself to the bone with concern for his people, he never wasted time or words. His devotion fell to the right places. Twice as they pored over the map did Sairsel look up, studying the sharp focus in Meffrid’s eyes; the weary, kind lines of his face. Something about his admiration for Meffrid felt almost boyish—Sairsel was aware of that—but no one else in the Resistance seemed to draw it from him the way Meffrid did. 

When they were done, Meffrid clapped Sairsel’s back again, satisfied with their routes, and went off under gathering storm clouds to take the plans to Conrad. It was only a matter of hours, then, before Sairsel would come to think that the Spinner had perhaps had enough of keeping so many threads of his life intact.

This time, when Sairsel fought amidst chaos and flames, there was nothing in them to be celebrated. At Baelsar’s Wall, there had been triumph; there had been choice, a chaos of their own making; they had been taking something back that was theirs.

Now, the imperials only took. The flames of magitek artillery choked all the peace out of their sanctuary, taking away in minutes something that had been preserved for decades, and the sky answered with sharp purple-white lightning. Still, Rhalgar only watched. He could only watch as the Resistance died with his name on their lips—the same broken cries Sairsel had heard in a fog as he lay at Ilberd’s feet.

It took him almost all he had not to sink down and drown in it; it took him everything else just to stay alive. He clutched his bow like it would keep him afloat and ran—not away from the fray, but into the smoke, his fingers and boots scraping on rock as he climbed to a vantage. Barely high enough, but it had to be enough. He had to be enough.

Aim quick. Strike true. Three, eight, eleven arrows. The fires blinded him, the beams of light sparking from the imperials’ arms too bright— Between the plates, through the circuits. Cover the ones who can really fight. Fourteen. Twenty.

“I want that fucking archer dead!” bellowed a woman’s voice, her accent so thickly Mhigan that Sairsel didn’t realize it came from an imperial until a bullet whizzed past his left ear. With shaking legs, he jumped down from his vantage and rolled away just before the cannon blast hit where he’d been standing, burning at his back as he scrambled to his feet.

He threw himself into the smoke to disappear, the way the skirmishers had showed him. Bullets and magitek blasts still burst through the air—it was endless, a chorus of explosions and screams and slashing steel—but no longer at him. Still, the woman in black saw him: she advanced, cutting down every Resistance fighter in her path with ease, dressed in some fading memory of Gyr Abanian styles plated with Garlean blacks.

It was only for a breath, for two footsteps, but Sairsel felt himself become prey. Her blade was relentless; he knew there was no surviving it, not when so many with more skill and strength than he could ever dream of having lay dead in her wake.

Then he heard Meffrid’s voice. “Sairsel!”

In the tumult, Meffrid stood as a titan. He challenged the imperial with a low growl that seemed to shake the earth, halting her advance towards Sairsel; their blades clashed with flashes of steel. They met blow for blow. Meffrid’s rage bled into every stroke of his sword. Just beyond him, Sairsel’s eyes caught a flash of metal, and the arrow was already nocked to his bowstring as an imperial aimed his gun, the bullet meant for Meffrid.

The man fell. Meffrid grunted, blood splashing from his mouth into the sand as the Ala Mhigan imperial cracked the hilt of her sword against his jaw. He spat red at her feet.

“Traitor! Kinslayer!”

Her arms, her neck, her belly, her legs; she was nowhere near as unprotected as the rest, a target full of weak points for Sairsel’s arrow to strike. Briefly, he wondered if Meffrid would see dishonour in Sairsel shooting her while she was engaged solely with him—but he was prepared to accept any scorn if it meant they could both live through this hell. 

He reached back. His fingers grasped only air—and panic rose in his belly. It was wrong, it couldn’t be, he’d counted, he always counted—

“You are no kin of mine,” the woman said, launching forward with a slash that passed through Meffrid as quickly as the lightning that split the sky in two.

Meffrid staggered back with a quiet gasp as blood spilled from his belly and dripped onto the ground. Sairsel watched him drop to his knees, so still, and Meffrid’s name tore through his throat in a scream, joining the thunder of Lyse’s.

Sairsel didn’t see her. He didn’t see the fighting around them. All he saw was the spear that lay on the ground to his left, a mere few steps from the imperial. He tossed his bow aside, running forward with burning lungs, gripped the lance with both hands, made to strike with the most savage thrust he could muster— 

Strong arms locked around his waist and stopped him, pulling him back so swiftly that his boots scraped in the dirt. He thrashed and swore and—

“You’ll get yourself killed,” hissed his mother’s voice in his ear. “Is that what you want?”

“Let me go!” Sairsel howled, tears stinging his eyes. “Let me— I’m going to— Meffrid!”

Lyse was a blur of crimson as she unleashed her fury on the imperial. Sairsel could only struggle in Morgana’s hold, his rage so consuming it made the corners of his vision darken and his entire body shake. She kept on dragging him back, far from Lyse and the imperial, far from the looming figure of the viceroy, far from Meffrid. To safety—or some semblance of it.

He cursed and struggled so much against Morgana—almost freeing himself—that she had to strike the back of his neck with the hilt of a dagger to get him still. If only for a moment, everything faded.

“I’m sorry, boy,” he heard her say as she lowered him to the ground.

She was gone. Sairsel shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut to clear his vision. His head swam, and his limbs moved as though through mud, but the urgency was not long in returning. Every inch of him, inside and out, seemed to burn. When he managed to drag himself to his feet, the imperials were gone, as quickly as the shadows of death had descended with them.

There were bodies everywhere; wounded and dying and dead. Sairsel ran for Meffrid, falling to his knees beside him with a foolish shred of hope still flickering inside him like guttering embers, burning him from the inside out. He grabbed Meffrid’s face, thumbs on his cheeks, wiped away a stain of blood from his skin as he shook him.

“Oi, oi,” he said, as though there was any word he could say that would reach him, “Meffrid. Please. Please.”

His hand moved shakily down to the wide, open gash in Meffrid’s belly. The blood was still hot on him, growing cold and sticky on Sairsel’s hand in the harsh night air; all the life that was left of him, ebbing out. Sairsel could almost taste it, sickeningly bitter on his tongue and sharp as the blade that had cut him open.

The breath was already long gone from his lungs, but Sairsel couldn’t let go. He slipped an arm under Meffrid’s shoulders and drew him close and clutched his hand, pressing his forehead to his. When he squeezed his eyes shut, he could see Meffrid’s weary smile, his anger moments before the imperial hound struck him down.

His bloodied fingers tightened even more around Meffrid’s hand as he squeezed his eyes shut, holding onto him as though it might keep him from slipping away. The first sob rose from his chest like a panic, stripping him down to nothing.

“Fuck,” he wailed from between gritted teeth, his voice so choked and raw it was barely a sound. 

He didn’t know how not to make it ache, how not to let it tear him to shreds. The grief and the shock burrowed deep into him, turning him to stone beside Meffrid—Meffrid’s corpse—as Rhalgr stood high above them, silent and watching. 

No one came near them; not for a very long while. There were too many wounded, and many more dead—and what was one more grave? Sairsel had long since fallen still and silent when a hand touched his shoulder, only to draw back as he flinched.

“Sairsel,” said Morgana’s voice, so distant it may as well have been underwater.

The sound of his own name shot through his veins so coldly that it sent a shiver down Sairsel’s spine; the last time he’d heard it had been in Meffrid’s voice, heavy and urgent. He couldn’t bring himself to answer to it.

“I’m sorry, lad.” Her hand returned to his shoulder as she crouched beside him, the other coming to his wrist. “You need to let go.”

He’d been wrong to think he had no tears left to cry. The sorrow closed around his throat again at the mere thought of leaving Meffrid behind, letting him be nothing but a dead man. He shook his head, gritting his teeth. 

“Do you want to stay with him while he rots in the sun?” Morgana asked, not unkindly—but her words cut. “Is that what he deserves?”

“He deserves to be alive,” Sairsel said, his voice scraping at the back of his throat. Despite it all, he didn’t have the strength to fight as Morgana pried his fingers from Meffrid’s hand.

“He’s not. He’s gone, Sairsel. He died fighting and it’s better than dying beaten and on his knees. You sitting here—”

“I know it won’t change anything,” Sairsel said, jagged and broken. If he’d just had one arrow, if his quiver hadn’t been empty— 

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to see something, anything that wasn’t Meffrid falling to his knees. “Just leave me be. I’ll—I’ll get him with the others.”

“You’re sure?”

Sairsel sniffed and didn’t look at her, laying a shaky hand on Meffrid’s brow ever so gently. “I’ve gone my whole life without you. I can do this on my own.”

He had to do it on his own; he didn’t know how to share his grief with her, and the simple truth of it was that he didn’t want to. These last moments with Meffrid had to be his and no one else’s.

He sat stroking his thumb over Meffrid’s brow in silence—barely at home in his own body—until he heard Morgana’s footsteps recede and fade into the quiet. This time, when she was gone, he did not breathe any easier; still he forced himself to move, to pull the air into his lungs and remind himself that he yet lived. It was too early to think of legacies, of carrying on, of making Meffrid proud while he waited for kith and kin on the shores of the next world. For now, Sairsel contented himself with burying the guilt at least long enough to get his body with the others.

It was like ripping a part of himself away, but Sairsel drew back from Meffrid. He wished it could find the words, find his voice—tell Meffrid, even not knowing whether he could hear his voice, that he was his brother. That he would sorely miss his kind brand of courage. That he would fight to his last breath, too, to see his dream of a free Ala Mhigo realized. No sound came; it felt as though the dirt of a grave filled his throat, weighed down his tongue.

So he took his hand. When his fingers slipped into the loose grip of Meffrid’s fist, Sairsel felt wood against his fingertips. He opened Meffrid’s hand, pulled from it the small charm he’d held as he died: the faces of a woman and a child stared at him, their likeness carved into stillness, and Sairsel’s vision blurred with tears before he could make out the details of it. He squeezed the charm until he realized his hand was shaking, that his grip on it was so tight the ridges of the wood dug into his scars through the fabric of his gloves. The hard press of it hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, half a sob. “Meffrid, I’m sorry.”

Meffrid was silent. Knuckling at the traces of fresh tears on his cheeks, Sairsel sniffled and let out a shaky sigh, then carefully slipped the charm into a pocket he’d sewn into his jacket, near his heart. I’ll keep this safe for you, he thought. He took Meffrid’s sword, too—vowed to let it drink the blood of imperials until Ala Mhigo would be free—and left his own sword with Meffrid, laying both of his hands over the hilt. It had always been too heavy for him.

“He looks like those great warriors in the tombs,” M’naago said from behind Sairsel as he got to his feet again, his legs shaking as much as her voice trembled. She swallowed a whimper of emotion.

“I’ve never seen them,” Sairsel said, stupidly.

“Oh,” M’naago said, and then she pulled him into a crushing hug that, even with her wounded, made him ache inside and out. Her voice was so quiet as she spoke against his chest that it took him a few heartbeats to understand. “I’ll have to show you sometime.”

It wasn’t until they stood in one of those tombs, cold and rocky and silent, that Sairsel showed M’naago the charm.

“Thought you were training to be a pikeman,” said Leofric, leaning against a tree as he regarded Sairsel—the blood and ichor staining his blade, his clothes, his face. He considered their surroundings, too, and thumbed idly at the scar below his lip. “Are you tryin’ to put the Alliance watchmen out of a job by decimating every living thing around here?”

Sairsel adjusted his grip on his sword—Meffrid’s sword. “I’m training,” he said stiffly. “And I’m being careful; I’m only killing the disruptive ones. Won’t put the forest out of balance.”

“Are you in balance?”

Of all the moments to become astute, Sairsel wished Leofric hadn’t picked this one. He had better things to do than to answer to his captain while the rest of the unit was off-duty, for one; and he hadn’t yet found a way not to be so raw, even as the weeks passed, which meant it was a struggle not to bristle at this sort of razor-sharp, prickling attention. He sighed, picked up a fallen leaf off the ground, wiped the blade clean with it.

“I’m standing on my own two feet. That’s balance enough.”

Leofric made a noise at the back of his throat that was not exactly enthusiastic agreement. “I won’t have a blood-frenzied boy in my unit endangering himself and the rest of us because he can’t handle loss.”

“I can handle it,” Sairsel snapped. “I’m still as capable as I was before the Reach, and after how I picked off that patrol over three hours the other day, you should know I haven’t forgotten to be patient.”

“But you’re angry.”

Sairsel stomped closer to to Leofric, his voice bursting through the quiet of the forest. “Of course I’m fucking angry! Were you even there, Leofric? Why aren’t you angry?”

“I am angry,” Leofric said, low. His face had darkened, and now he stood straight, tapping a finger against Sairsel’s chest. “But I know how to wield it, and I want you angry the right way, too. You don’t grab a sword by the blade.”

“I’ve got it right,” Sairsel said.

Leofric glanced down at Meffrid’s sword in his hand, tipping the blade up with a finger against the sharp edge—slow and careful. “Are you really training, or just looking for things to keep killing?”

The words sent a chill down Sairsel’s spine. All his life, he’d walked through the Wood knowing just how much he could take, knowing to offer quiet words of gratitude in prayer when he did. It had been a long while since he’d given any thanks, or any thought at all towards hurting, towards killing. In truth, what he wanted now was to keep the blood singing in his veins, because it drowned out the rest; he wanted his body to ache, because it got his anger to fade.

But the question was a necessary one.

“I’m training,” he said firmly, hoping it might solidify his own thoughts. “My sword-skill needs it. I need to be able to hold my own.”

“You said swords weren’t right in your hand.”

Sairsel attempted a meager smile. “That’s because I favour my left,” he said, and Leofric smirked. He looked down at Meffrid’s sword once more. “I think I’m starting to understand them better.”

“That so?”

“Aye,” Sairsel said with a nod. “It’s been getting lighter. Every time an imperial falls, the burden’s less.”

Slowly, Leofric’s smile faded, and doubt crawled within the spaces of Sairsel’s certainty. What part of this could be wrong? He was finally learning, finally becoming strong enough to matter in the fight against the Empire—

And then he realized that Leofric’s expression was not disapproval. Not quite satisfaction or pride, perhaps—a part of Sairsel desperately wished it were so—but understanding, at the very least. He saw the path that lay before them, before Sairsel, and knew that he must walk it.

Standing close, Leofric reached out and grabbed Sairsel under his jaw, making certain that he wouldn’t pull his gaze away. “Just promise me one thing, Sairsel,” Leofric said. “Don’t die.”

“That’s not a promise anyone can make.”

“It’s not a promise everyone can keep,” Leofric corrected, shaking his head. “But you have to make it. Because then you remember.”

Sairsel held his gaze. Despite everything, he didn’t want to die. He remembered the fear and sorrow whenever the scar on his chest throbbed with that dull ache, never forgetting the unrelenting sharpness of the Griffin’s sword. He couldn’t forget how tightly Morgana’s arms had held him when he crossed Baelsar’s Wall alive and whole.

And he’d made a promise, already, even if not with words—a promise for a dream to be realized.

“I promise,” he said, and not just to Leofric.

By nightfall, Leofric’s face was shifting in his mind; the words he’d spoken thrummed like a different string every time. Don’t die, said Meffrid’s voice. Don’t die, said Morgana’s. Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die, don’t— Ashelia, Madelaine, his sister and his father and—

His own voice, too.

To say that the Lochs had Sairsel breathless was an understatement. It had everyone breathless, to begin with; no one who crossed Castrum Abania, whether stepping onto the soil which bore Ala Mhigo for the first time in their lives or in twenty years, stood unaffected by the sight of the city—a mountain bared by flatlands against the burning sky. Salt in the air; the sun like fire on the horizon, bleeding into every rock and stone. The glittering waters of Loch Seld in the distance, more precious than any diamond.

There was the beauty of the place, the taste of it on the wind, and then there was the feeling of a storm crashing through the whole of Porta Praetoria, constant and endless. Since Rhalgr’s Reach, no one would have shied away from calling the reality as it was: they were at war, now—but penetrating the last castrum made it palpable. They could gaze upon their final battlefield. They could feel the creeping of victory, or defeat.

At the Lochs, those whispers of war never stopped; how could they, when those whispers had become a constant cry?

In that ever-shifting, elated chaos, the only thing Sairsel could hope to quiet was his own mind—but he no longer knew how to find the silence. Battle loomed; every day, the strongest of them pushed closer and closer to stand at the doorstep of the Empire. They waited, they worked, they fought. Sairsel hunted, perhaps more in that short time than he ever had in his life, because soldiers needed to be fed.

It was the best he could do. And then, when night fell, he couldn’t sleep. It would be half a day yet after sunrise before his unit was to be deployed, and he knew he had best use this time resting, or preparing, at the very least—but his body was locked between restlessness and frozen fear. He hated to be afraid, but he was; every hour, at the very least, he swallowed the impulse to stand up and walk back through Castrum Abania, cross the Peaks and walk until he was in East End again, and smell the air of a forest again, and leave Baelsar’s Wall and all its horrors behind until he was home in the Wood, where he belonged.

But Ala Mhigo wouldn’t let him go—or perhaps he couldn’t let go of it, glittering in the distance as he sat upon the battlements of Porta Praetoria with a sword across his lap. At night, the shadows could almost make the stark white flags upon its walls seem different. When he closed his eyes, he could almost believe that M’naago had glamoured them, too: that the flashes of white were the shape of a griffin. But they wouldn’t need glamours if they won.

They would fly the Ala Mhigan flags themselves.

And then, the colour he saw didn’t belong to imperial flags. It was the Griffin’s cape, cut clear across the Gyr Abanian sky.

His fingers rose to the scar on his chest.

“Still hurt, does it?” 

Even when it was quiet, Morgana’s voice cut through the night like a blade. Sairsel jumped, but she said nothing—instead, she put a hand on his shoulder as she sat down beside him, straddling the battlement with a knee pulled up to her chest.

“I’m fine,” Sairsel said.

“No, you’re not. It always hurts. This?” Morgana asked, tapping the faded scars on her neck. “Older than you, and it’s never entirely stopped. Sometimes it’s in my head, I think, because you don’t forget. But it still aches sometimes.”

“Just the wound?”

It was a question he asked knowing the answer; she knew that he did. Months ago, she might have chosen to pretend otherwise, and simply walked away. Now, she stayed. She looked at the stars with her son.

“Everything,” she said.

Sairsel’s hand, still resting against his chest, crept up; his fingers touched the shard of crystal at his neck, ran it along the leather cord upon which it hung. Morgana had worn it for nigh on fifteen years before she left it with him.

“I’m afraid,” Sairsel said at last, keeping his voice as steady as he could.

“You’d be a fool if you weren’t. All that tripe about courting death the songs always go on about, it’s—it’s shite. Fighting means fighting death. You’re not fond of it. You have to hate it. To fear it. It’s the only way.”

Sairsel turned his head to look at Morgana, watching the lines of her face, the distance in her eyes as they followed the silhouette of Ala Mhigo in the sky. At first, he turned over her words in his mind; then he found his thoughts drifting past death and fear, only to settle on the city itself.

“Tomorrow, you’ll be going home.”

“Aye.”

“Will it—” he began, his courage slipping. Then he gripped it again: “Will it be strange, coming home with me? I mean, I know our units won't be fighting together, exactly, but—”

“I won’t be fighting with the Resistance,” said Morgana.

“I’m— What?” Sairsel asked, purely stammering. His mother’s words were so disarming that it took his mind several seconds to catch up. “I’m sorry, but—what? You’ve been with the Resistance almost twenty years. I joined for you. And now you won’t be fighting? Who are you?”

“I won’t be fighting with the Resistance,” Morgana repeated, surprisingly calm and not nearly as cutting as she had a habit of being, “because I’ll be with the Flames’ Ala Mhigan Brigade.”

“The Flames.”

“The Ala Mhigan Brigade. We’re leading the vanguard.”

Saisel let out a breath as though he’d been holding it. “And you were planning on telling me this, what, ten minutes before their lot is going to march out?”

“I didn’t realize you were counting on me to hold your hand during the fighting.”

“I didn’t realize you were aiming to get yourself killed,” Sairsel shot back. There was truth in his insolence; after the words fell, he frowned, growing more serious. “Is that what it is? You’d rather die fighting to free Ala Mhigo than keep living after because there’ll be no fight left?”

Morgana scoffed. “I am not a tragic hero in an hour-long ballad, so no. I have no intention of dying tomorrow,” she said, rolling her shoulders. “But I want to be first through that gate. Because I’ve been fighting for twenty years. It’s a smart way to use the Resistance, securing the Ala Mhigan Quarter, but it’s not enough for me. I want to fight the way I should have twenty years ago.”

“All right,” Sairsel said stiffly. The more seconds passed, the less he knew how he felt—not about her choice, but about how unburdened it made him. “I’ll fight with the Resistance. For the both of us.”

“Not just for me, then?” Morgana asked, watching him.

Sairsel shook his head. “Came for you. Stayed for me.”

“The old bear would be proud to hear you’re fighting for the right reasons.” 

To that, Sairsel could only hum in passive agreement. He looked down at Meffrid’s sword laid across his lap, pressed his bare palm to its hilt. “I just had to cross the Wall understand what it was I was fighting for, is all,” he said gently.

“Liberty or death,” Morgana said. To Sairsel, they were Lyse’s words—a rallying cry, one that burrowed deep into his bones with every passing day. He didn’t know what it meant to Morgana; didn’t even know she had gone to Coldhearth and seen the words, timeworn and faded, upon the bricks of an old home—into the very bones of Gyr Abania.

He nodded, swallowing around the fear; he thought of Meffrid, and knew that he would have said these words from the deepest reaches of his heart. “Liberty or death.”

It was, after all, for liberty that he had died.

(“Do your lot take on irregulars?” Morgana had asked. “Or do you have to swear and salute and say ‘for coin and country’ as though there’s something at all inspiring about it?”

“I sense there’s another question underneath some of those knives.”

Then came a sigh, followed by a question asked pointedly so as not to sound like a question at all: “What if I wanted to fight with the Ala Mhigan Brigade.”

“I’d start by asking why you’d turn your back on the Resistance so close to the end.”

“I’m not turning my back on the Resistance. I’ve spoken with Commander Hext. The Resistance has my sword, has my blood, but— Well, let me ask you this: would the Bull of Ala Mhigo feel content with anything less than charging through the gates?”

She’d known the answer to that question even before she asked.

“No.”

“Neither am I.”

“You’d fall under my command.”

“Aye, I was able to work out that much, thank you. I should be able to tolerate it for a few hours. Heard you’re not bad at it.”

“You’re certain you don’t want—”

“I’m bloody certain, Raubahn, else I wouldn’t be standing here.” Another sigh. “I can’t be down there with the Resistance. If I am, I’ll— I won’t be able to stop looking for him. Not after Baelsar’s Wall. Every moment of the fight, looking over my shoulder, trying to find my son in the crowd. If I’m tempted to fight for the both of us, I’ll get us both killed.”

Her words had found only a searching frown.

“Do you not have faith in the lad?”

She had more faith in Sairsel than she ever thought she might when he came to her, scrawny and naïve, and pretended he had no loyalty left for Ashelia Riot’s Riskbreakers to join the Resistance. 

So she’d shaken her head, and admitted, as though she tasted broken shards of steel: “It’s in myself I don’t have faith.”)

In the morning, the chaos was worse; and it grew by the hour. Commanders from all manner of companies—the Eorzean Alliance’s, the adventurers’—bellowed orders left and right: Sairsel trained his ears, in the din, to pick up Ala Mhigan accents above all. Still, there was something distracting about the airy lilting of the Gridanians’ words, as though they brought with them the rustling of leaves from the Wood. Dully, Sairsel ached—only for a breath, only like an echo, but every time. He focused on the sharp ice of the Ishgardian voices, thought of how Madelaine’s tongue had shifted to match theirs, picked up the rolling roars of a Lominsan. When he heard orders for the Flames, he turned his head towards the voice.

Ala Mhigan.

As far as he knew, General Aldynn was a good man. He had the natural charisma to inspire loyalty in hundreds, the strength to survive this long, the tactical talent—Sairsel supposed—to lead adopted forces of a foreign land as well as his own people. Something about him had the same pull as Meffrid had, the same solid kindness. Like Ashelia, like Lyse. Sairsel would have followed any of them; hells, a part of him still felt like half a turncoat for fighting among the ranks of the Resistance when he could have stood with the Riskbreakers—and he’d been watching Porta Praetoria for a glance of the Grand Steward, or A’zaela, or anyone familiar all morning.

But it still barely made sense to know that Morgana would fight along the Flames, and not with her people. He wondered if it was that she saw ghosts in the Resistance; Leofric had told him with a surprisingly sympathetic look that none of her unit had survived Baelsar’s Wall. Since then, she’d been filling the roles that needed it, never falling back into a command of her own. In his grief, he’d been vaguely aware of her taking on some of Meffrid’s responsibilities during Lyse’s absence. She’d never seemed to sit still.

And now, the Flames’ Ala Mhigan Brigade gathered at the foot of the steps, ready to march on the city while the Grand Companies prepared for the initial assult. No sitting still for the vanguard.

“Oi.”

For a moment, her voice sounded almost like Ashelia’s. Sairsel’s heart very nearly skipped a beat as his head snapped back to look at Morgana, her hair tied high, braids pulling back the sides—revealing the grey that was most obvious just above her ears. She bore two swords: one blade with the familiar curve of the Ala Mhigan scimitar, the other long and slender and a bright violet reminiscent of the griffin banners flown all through Porta Praetoria. Utterly undauntable, even in armour that had more of a mercenary or a gladiator’s carefully selected, distinctive styles than a proper soldier’s.

“Ready to go to war?” Sairsel asked.

“Aye.”

He fiddled with the fabric around his hands. “Is this the part where we say goodbye?”

“I’m not saying goodbye,” Morgana said sharply. She glanced down at the sword he wore. “Are you not fighting with the bow or lance at all?”

“Bow, yes; still the most useful I can be. Lance, no. My sword-skill’s gotten better.”

And he would fight for Ala Mhigo with Meffrid’s sword in his hand, no matter what. Regardless of whether Morgana understood—Sairsel had given up on trying to work out what she thought, and on caring about it—she nodded.

“My brother wasn’t all that talented with a sword, either, if I’m honest. But he was strong,” she said as she glanced back up at his face. “Remember that today, Sairsel. You’re not just my son, or your father’s. You’re Gotwin’s nephew—this is his legacy you’re fighting for, too. Our family’s.”

Too many legacies to count. If he was to survive, he’d have to empty his mind of them—Gotwin, Morgana, Ashelia, Meffrid. Curtis Hext, Conrad Kemp, Ilberd Feare. Hundreds, thousands more. He knew so few of them, but he could forget none. His heart wouldn’t; not while standing upon this ground.

“I will.”

“You’ll fight well.”

Sairsel nodded. “So will you.”

Stiffly, Morgana reached for him: she hooked her arm around his neck, pressed a hand to the back of his head as she touched her brow to his, eyes closing. He closed his eyes, too, and breathed. Salt and storm on the air.

When she tore herself away, she was silent, though her lips were stiff around words that wouldn’t come. Sairsel swallowed and forced his own voice.

“See you in Ala Mhigo,” he said. Only a matter of hours; win or lose. They would see each other there, or they wouldn’t.

“Aye. In our Ala Mhigo,” she said, and turned away as though the horns of war were at her heel.

Blood trickled down the side of Sairsel’s face; he didn’t know whether it was his or someone else’s. In the fight, he’d vaguely been aware of the spray that had hit him when his blade had caught in the vulnerable spaces between the bottom of an imperial’s helm and the top of his armour. He’d been vaguely aware of pain throbbing above his eyebrow when debris from a magitek blast had burst at his right side. Everything seemed to come into his awareness only as a blur, like a dream shifting and rewriting itself and wiping away what had passed—a dream filled with screaming and the ringing of blades and shrill magic and heavy magitek, the smell of blood and smoke and death.

So long as the blood didn’t get into his eyes, he didn’t care. The only thing for which he had utter clarity was the number of arrows in his quiver. This time, he didn’t just keep count: he repeated the numbers in his mind like a chant, slipping it in the spaces between the war cries and the paeans that had him singing his throat raw, screaming words almost bare of melody with the rest of his unit.

The Resistance, even after every loss, after every fallen warrior, seemed to flood the streets of the Ala Mhigan quarter, breaking down the imperials’ barriers with thaumaturges from their own ranks and those of the companies. They made barriers of their own, too, cutting off the imperials from the civilians on every block. Sairsel kept to his orders at finding high ground, covering his unit, keeping an eye ahead at the enemy’s movements. Leofric’s blade flashed like a green serpent below, and Sairsel kept to it like a beacon.

He did not think of Morgana, fighting in the city above with the vanguard, clearing a path for the strongest of them. Cutting down, cutting through to the palace. Fighting alongside brothers and sisters who were strangers.

In the palace, her eyes caught a flash of white hair. Even if she had looked for Ashelia Riot through the battle, she would have never found the cherry blossom pink she expected; instead, she looked like a shadow of herself—a vengeful, righteous shade, but a shade nonetheless. Skinny as the girl with bloody knees in Little Ala Mhigo, as the young woman who’d traipsed off with the Corpse Brigade.

Morgana let out a battle roar worthy of the bloodsands and thumped the flat of her blade against her shield. “Face me, you bloody worms!”

She danced around the mob that turned to her as the shade and her comrades passed through the hall unseen, cut down all in reach of her blade. Breathless, she whipped around, looking for Raubahn’s towering shape, and ran to his back—as they had fought once, young and lost, under harsh lights and the bellowing of a crowd. As another imperial unit poured in through the hall, black bathed in oblique blades of sunlight, she turned to his side and yelled above the noise, shoving at his shoulder.

“They’re going to get through,” she said, the bloodied point of her sword designating Riot’s party running ahead. She threw aside her shield. “Cover them.”

He opened his mouth, and she unsheathed Gotwin’s scimitar with her left hand, sunlight catching the sharp black edge. “I’ve got this,” she said, twirling it once. “We’ve got this. Go.”

As Raubahn charged ahead, Morgana turned and stood with the three of her countrymen who had pushed through while the rest of the brigade fanned out through the palace. “We hold the line,” said Brida, the unit commander.

The imperials crashed in with a magitek armour at their backs like an all-consuming tide. It wasn’t long before Morgana was screaming.

Sairsel did not hear her voice—but he heard the horn bursting like a clap of thunder through the air, as though it rent the sky in half. There were three arrows left in his quiver and his entire body shook and the first thing he noticed as the battle faltered with hesitation was that the sun was setting, casting pinks and oranges across the clouds. Then came the second blast from the horn.

He heard Leofric’s voice to his right, quiet at first. “He’s dead. We won,” he said. Then again, louder, echoing through the street: “We won.”

It rose through them like a murmur, then like a chant, and Leofric brandished his sword towards the sky and roared: “Ala Mhigo!”

Sairsel’s arms dropped at his sides, his shoulders sagging from the shock; the noise rumbled in his ears as freedom fighters screamed and whooped and wept, and his own breath fluttered in his chest. Much as the battle had been interlocking seconds of chaos all weaved together into something he could scarcely pick apart, this new disarray of victory spread itself so wide across the reaches of his mind that it seemed unreal. Leofric was the only fixed point, even as he moved: in freedom, he shone like a beacon, his smile unbreakable even as their unit closed in around the imperial soldiers who hadn’t simply run as the horn sounded their defeat.

It wasn’t until he heard the clattering of weapons—swords and lances and bows falling to the ground like drops of rain—that Sairsel began to smile. The viceroy was dead. The XIIth Imperial Legion was surrendering. Moving as though through water, he slung his bow across his shoulder, slipped the arrow in his hand back into his quiver, and jogged back to his unit. 

Leofric caught him in passing. “We won,” he said again, holding him at arm’s length with both hands on Sairsel’s shoulders before pulling him in and planting an elated kiss on his lips. Sairsel realized he was laughing as Leofric looked at the rest of the unit, and at a fair-skinned man in a Flames uniform. “By Rhalgr’s cock, I could kiss every last one of you. Aye, even you, Ul’dahn.”

The Flames officer responded by scoffing and throwing Leofric a length of rope for the surrendered imperials. Before long, the Resistance had gathered up their prisoners; civilians began to trickle back into the streets, adding to the vibrant commotion as they walked the streets no longer governed by the Empire for the first time in twenty years.

There were those who mourned their dead, too. Resistance fighters who had died for liberty, wounded pulled to the sides for urgent healing who watched their victory through a haze of pain or barely had a notion of what was unfolding around them; it was then that Sairsel felt the pull of reality past the overwhelming rush of celebration. His eyes searched frantically for the nearest Flame uniform.

“Oi,” he called, rushing past Leofric at the fair-skinned Ul’dahn from before who was gathering imperial weapons from the street. “Is there word of the Ala Mhigan Brigade?”

The Flame shook his head, and Sairsel’s heart dropped. “I’ve no clue, friend. I’m not on their shell. Last I heard, they were pressing the advance into the palace.”

“Thank you,” Sairsel said, halfway to breathless. If the viceroy was dead, then—they had succeeded. The vanguard had to be whole. Otherwise the Flame would have heard of it, surely, if—

He only had to turn towards Leofric to see him nodding his way before he even spoke. “Go. But keep your head on your shoulders; not all dogs have to sense to show their bellies,” he said, sharp and venomous as he glanced towards a bound imperial being shoved forward by a Resistance fighter. “Report back to me by nightfall.”

“I will. Thank you, Leofric,” Sairsel said, already running towards the steps that led up towards the palace.

“We won, Arroway!” Leofric called after him—as if he needed the reminder.

Sairsel flew past Resistance fighters and officers of all three Grand Companies and nearly barrelled into an Ishgardian knight; he heard a griffin loose a cry to or from the heavens, which the Ala Mhigans on the ground met with a swelling cheer; the sound of his footsteps was buried by chants of Ala Mhigo! and Liberty! Liberty or death! and For the Reach!—now no longer battle cries, but oaths for what was won. Countless names poured past Sairsel and receded like the swell of a tide as he moved deeper into the city: he heard Conrad Kemp’s and realized that they were the names of the dead.

Please don’t make me say hers.

He was at the very edge of the Royal Menagerie when he saw her standing beside a bed of prim pink flowers that matched the sky—he thought fleetingly of Ashelia—with her right hand against gilded metal railing. Supporting herself, he realized: most of her left arm was wrapped in bandages, the flank of her armour singed black.

“Morgana,” he called, his voice wavering.

It didn’t matter that she was meant to be watching the leaders of an alliance gathering to consider the death of a tyrant; when Morgana heard her son’s voice, there was nothing else in the world that mattered. Even with one arm, she embraced him so tightly it made the scar on his chest ache again.

“Sairsel,” she said against his hair. Her whole body was trembling. No more words seemed to come.

So he spoke for her. “It’s over.” Then, in his clumsy Ala Mhigan: “Mother, you’re home.”

“We’re home.”

She pulled back, touching the side of his face with her hand, then glanced sideways at the two thin ranks forming on the side of the promenade, awaiting Commander Hext and the Warrior of Light. She tugged him along to fall in beside her on the line that could see over the edge of the Menagerie and toward the mountains, the Ala Mhigan Quarter sprawling below.

“Are you all right?” Sairsel whispered. Morgana stood at attention, but she was still shaking from head to toe. He took her right hand in his—her skin was ice, but her grip was firm.

“Magitek blast. A few small burns: nothing more. Field medic’s healed it some.”

He didn’t have time to ask after the meaning of “a few small burns” when spoken by a woman whom he’d heard referring to a countryman’s dismemberment as a flesh wound. The procession led by Lyse—a proud commander in crimson—marched forward, away from the fallen body of the viceroy.

From a bloodthirsty tyrant’s ending to their new beginning.

One by one, Resistance and Alliance alike saluted their leaders as they passed: Commander Hext, the Doman lord come all the way from across the seas to fight for them, the Scion boy and Ahtynwyb, too, a woman whom Sairsel had once witnessed sitting in a stream while in full plate—their Warrior of Light. And light indeed did she cast over the world.

Rather than salute with her good arm, Morgana opted to keep Sairsel’s hand tightly in hers. Out of the corner of his eye, Sairsel watched his mother smile at General Aldynn, strained by pain but open in a way that was unfamiliar to him. A former comrade—and opponent—on the bloodsands; now a true brother-in-arms. Short as his passing was, he smiled at her, too.

Morgana pulled at Sairsel again as they joined the back of the procession, gathering behind them; he found himself beside M’naago, her breath audible as the force of her emotions made it flutter in her chest. Wordlessly, they shared a glance—Sairsel felt his throat tighten as he thought of the last time they had stood alone together, in silent tombs where he gave away a piece of Meffrid to which he had been clinging—and touched foreheads.

It was as they stopped at the edge of the promenade that Morgana’s hand slipped from his. She was still shaking, and Sairsel brushed his fingers against her wrist, not daring to take it and wind her arm around his shoulders.

“You can lean on me. You’re free.”

He half expected her to look away and force herself to stand taller, but she dropped a heavy arm around his shoulders and rested some of her weight against him. She smelled like smoke. He raised a hand and laid it against hers, and she tilted her head down against his as if in answer.

Below, the Ala Mhigan Quarter was a sea of people. Horns blared a familiar note through the air twice, and Sairsel felt a sharp pang between his ribs—elation and sorrow were two edges of the same blade—as voices rose from below around them.

For the first time in twenty years, the free people of Ala Mhigo sang a hymn that belonged to them and them alone. And Sairsel sang, too: he sang with all the breath his lungs would muster, sang words that had weighed upon every inch of his soul since that quiet night where freedom had still seemed like half a dream that could fade away in the smoke of the campfire.

Raise up your hands and voices; let fill your hearts with pride.

Sairsel wrapped his fingers around the hilt of Meffrid’s sword and didn’t let go as he sang the words Meffrid had taught him. Just ahead of him, Arenvald—the boy his age, the one who called himself half-breed as though digging a blade between his own ribs—lifted a heavy standard high above his head, and the banner of the Resistance flew over Ala Mhigo, whipping in the wind in time to join in their chorus.

Morgana had a beautiful voice—even weary and shaking, it was strong and clear; she sang with her chin tilted up towards the heavens, staring at Rhalgr’s burning star upon the flag’s violet field.

His beacon, carried forth by all the hands fighting for liberty, had guided them home.