the sky and the setting summer sun's harmony

[oncedriven]

You breathe. Today is -

(ten, twelve, fourteen.)

Bahamut's song echoes in your ears. You can hear it now, as you couldn't then.

(when's the last time someone called upon you to play that role?)

The memories flicker, twist, as somewhere beyond the sky a red moon cracks open like an egg -

(Thank you, you say to some stranger, whose sacrifice resounds, half a world away. Whose mantle lays strewn across the fields of Cartenau, waiting for you to pick it up.)

You are no dragon. But neither is that dragon who falls from the sky.

"Aodhan?" you hear someone asking, as the crashing outside renews. The madness, the despair. The twisted song of Dalamud, which all of your people can almost hear, even if it doesn't yet beckon them into madness.

To them, you imagine, it must seem that you drift as though you're in a trance, making your way to the doors with a grace that sixteen-year-old you never possessed.

(turn it back, take it back, we can make it better this time - )

No one actually tries to stop you until you're at the doors. Holy child, dragonspeaker child, fragile child.

It's your mother who is the first to act to stop you, of course. A hand on your arm, rougher than anyone else would dare.

(In your heart there is loss. Somewhere in another future, another you lives out another life, through to the end.)

(But the you in this moment - )

You say to your mother, "I'm going out there whether you allow it or not."

"Don't be foolish," she says, and it's more than an admonishment, it's a command. Her grip tightens on your arm.

(Beneath your skin, aether prickles - )

(What would happen, if someone tried to make a primal ou of dynamis?)

You stop only long enough to tell her, "Let go or you'll be dragged. Someone has to stop Dalamud's song."

(When it comes to making things right, you have to start somewhere.)

(Why not here?)

You turn your head away just as you see the shock bloom on your mother's face, and then you begin to walk.

As you'd promised, your progress isn't even slowed by the hand in a death grip on your arm, even as she digs her claws into it. Even as she digs in her feet - even for viera, the kind of ceremonial heels she's wearing aren't great for balance. When you reach the end of her reach, she stumbles half a step after you and lets go.

If you wanted to really be impressive, you could blow the doors off their hinges, you think. That's not the point, though. Golden lights already beginning to float through your fingers, you pause on the doorstep, and shoot a cocky grin over your shoulder before sliding out the double doors like a child sneaking out after curfew.

As soon as your feet touch the ground, the power floats up into you -

With the hymn of a dead world on your lips and the memory of an unmade god in your soul, you step forward onto the air, and become the sun.

The creation of primals is flawed, because they are not - have never been - creatures of aether alone.

Prayer, after all, is a staunch requirement. Belief, faith, whatever it is you choose to name it -

Half a world away (but only half), the primal Bahamut, the rage of Bahamut, roars and screams a song of destruction across Eorzea.

You are but one person. Your voice cannot reach so far, even with the grief of a dead world to carry it. Even if your hope reaches further still.

(For a moment, you imagine you can feel them, those who would hear this song in the tongue it's meant for. Four wyrms with their heads tilted to the sky, to the song only they can hear, the grief that they too bear.)

(Dawn will come, you sing. Not a hope but a certainty.)

A dancer's footsteps, to calm the heart. To draw the poison out and make it something you can fight, something you can kill.

Every hatred, you take, and you swallow it. Fuel for your next steps, across the horizon line, sunbeams flickering in your footsteps and the sound of your voice.

Every hatred, every grief, rooted in love -

(What is the sun?)

(Those who study the heavens posit that it is a great orb of flame, set in a distant abyss, shining its light on all creation.)

You burn, until there is nothing left. Until all that there is has gone still.

Only then do you slump forward, in the silence that follows a battle, strength leaving you with little more than pinpricks of starlight -

Someone catches your shoulder, as you spit up a last few notes of gold, and that's the last you remember.

Comments

[oncedriven]

You don't even remember seeing the starfall. You don't remember it the first time, either. But you must have, to be here.

The glitter of the familiar crystal, turning slowly within the aetherial sea. Spots of light curl in and out around it, uncountable, the Eorzeans who are awakening to the Echo at this moment whether they recognize it or not. No need to send visions of a starshower after that Calamity.

Familiar words echo in your ears, in a familiar voice, tired but not yet spent. Hear, feel, think.

You wait, on the sidelines, until the spiral of stars, the bright spots of new heroes, parts. You have no idea how long it is, but you have the patience to wait, and anyway your body isn't going anywhere anytime soon. You asked a lot of it, probably too much - not that you'll die, but you'll need time to recover, to build up the physical strength that you're used to having alongside the strength of your soul.

(Lorelei was only ever an option when you had no other options. At sixteen, you're not sure that you could lift your sword even if you had it to hand. You certainly couldn't face an army.)

(One thing at a time.)

As the vision tries to fade away, you catch it in your thoughts, and plummet through the aetherial, down, down, down to the depths beneath the deposit of ten thousand years' aether and faith, to where the voice comes from.

She's surprised, the goddess who calls herself Mother, anyone else she might have been forgotten. She looks the same as she did, that day ten years from now, when you cut her free from her burdens, except that this isn't something you could have ever told her. This isn't in the plan.

(Fuck the plan. It's not like she asked your opinion of it, anyway.)

"Venat," you say. Another name from a dead world, a name unspoken even by her enemies for the last ten thousand years. The look of mild surprise is eyes-wide shock now, almost enough that Hydaelyn disappears in favor of the woman underneath. "We need to talk."

[oncedriven]

Even after you rope Venat into your scheme, there is so very much to do. For today, you start the slow work of working your body while you sort out what order to do the rest in.

The first thing you need is help. Help that Hydaelyn cannot give you, locked away in the core of the world, waiting with her nest egg that will bear you to the end. Help you cannot get from the Scions, who are still too green and too freshly hurt by their failure, by their loss. Not even to mention that if you're sixteen, then the twins are eleven, and gifted as they are, naught but students still.

If you look at it that way, your pool of potential help narrows considerably. It leaves you, really, down to Ascians, dragons, and Zero.

Well. Start at the very beginning, as they say.

She doesn't have a name - that puts rather a wrinkle in traditional voidsent summoning. To call a powerful voidsent, you need their name, or at least a means of identifying them, a vessel, and enough aether to catch their attention. You have aether in abundance; a vessel in your own form, with thanks to an old friend, and when you actually bother to reach Eorzea you'll be sure to reach out to her. So you just need a way to ensure that you get the right voidsent in the first place.

Though the Zero of this time has no name, you cannot imagine she has changed. Voidsent are outside the reach of time. So except for that which changed in your knowing her, all that you know of her will still be true.

So you sing. Scythe lax across your knees - never a favored weapon, not for you, but an apropos one - you sing until you get an answer.

Mistress of the ruins. Memoriate. She who is only herself. Oh, bargain-striker, won't you deal with me? I have so much to offer you, whose form remembers her body.

Of course, your bait draws four imps, a hecteyes, two succubi and a gargoyle before you attract her attention properly. To each of those you make yourself quite clear - they're not who you're looking for, so they can either return on their own with a small gift of aether, or be cut down.

They're hungry, always. Most of them take the easy meal. The imp that doesn't is, you'll concede, stronger than the average of their kind, but hardly a match for you, even now.

Finally, she comes.

"You know an awful lot about me for someone I've never met."

For a hot moment at the sight of her, at the all too familiar sound of her voice, you are momentarily reminded that you're sixteen again. But, bravely, you carry on. "But not someone who has never met you. Time travel. It's complicated."

She's skeptical. But she accepts the offer of aether to hear you out, and by the end you think that you've convinced her that you are, at least, not full of shit.

oops it's horny now

[oncedriven]

She's staring at you - not in a bad way, exactly. You're not sure there's anything that could actually prompt a reaction of disgust from the woman used to beings that eat each other for sport. More just taken aback, genuinely confused, like she pulled up a sprout thinking it was a weed and found a whole carrot in her hand instead.

Someday, you'll be free of thinking about carrots.

Finally, she says, "You're serious."

"You can say no," you say. "It has no impact on our other arrangement."

"I simply fail to understand why you'd be interested in such a thing," Zero says, in that tone she has, where she's pulling herself back from a situation because it's something just a bit too close to her real feelings. It occurs to you, belatedly, to wonder if anyone has ever propositioned her before, much less anything else.

'Do voidsent even fuck?' was never something that broke into the list of things you've actively considered researching. While there are plenty of records of idiots falling for some succubus or another (and sometimes even less human-shaped), the matter of whether they experience desire on its own is an open one.

You might guess that, if anything, any lust they might experience is so tied up in the hunger that any encounter ends in one partner consuming the other. And that in turn spirals off to a tangent labeled 'Shiva and Hraesvelgr' in your mind, and really, why is that a recurring theme in your life?

"Because it's you, and I trust you," you say. Zero narrows her eyes in that particular way she has, now, the one that says 'only an idiot trusts voidsent, so are you an idiot?' and for a moment you think you've fucked it up.

But after a long moment she says, "I'm not going to be what you're expecting under my clothes."

"I don't have any expectations," you say. "You're half-voidsent. I came prepared for anything."

A slight softening. "Even aside from my nature," she clarifies. "I was not like other women."

You snort lightly. "There's not nearly as much difference between viera men and women as there is in other races," you say. "You might be surprised yourself."

A glimmer of curiosity, now. She is - was? is-but-partially? - Hyuran, despite her stature (which makes sense, if you've taken her meaning correctly), and you have no idea what other races there were for her to encounter before the end. The First didn't have all of them, or at least not all of them survived the Flood.

Hyur tend to be fairly straightforward, but a bit on the girthier side, from your understanding, as someone who by coincidence or fate has mostly fucked Elezen men. You might have to practice before you're able to take her.

The thought is not unappealing.

Zero says, "Ususally, those who summon voidsent with such purposes in mind get eaten quickly."

"Good thing the only one I'm interested in doesn't like eating people," you say.

Zero hums. There's a dash more color in her cheeks, only visible because she is so very washed out in comparison to most people. She leans forward, now, into your space, like she's testing if you'll flinch. "The only one?"

Your heart beats just a hair quicker in your throat. "I only invite people I trust into my body," you say. "In any meaning of the word. No other voidsent is ever going to be that kind of trustworthy."

Zero leans further forward, her face pressed against the length of your ear, her voice a touch more whispery. "You're a fool," she says. "But you're going to be my fool. I will seal this pact with you."

A proper voidsent pact is sealed with blood. That's true whether it's as someone's avatar partner or anything else.

So you shouldn't really be surprised when Zero leans the rest of the way in and just bites your ear, in the sensitive part of the shell right down by your head, hard and sharp enough that you can tell those are no human teeth. The side of your ear is not the only place where blood is flowing downward rapidly.

You think she's bitten all the way through. You think that if she has, you're going to put an earring in the hole to keep it.

Zero shifts her head slightly, to close her mouth over your ear so that no blood escapes. (You appreciate that there won't be any dried clots in your hair.) She sucks gently, pulling not only the literal blood from the wound but the figurative, sucking a thread of aether out of you into herself to sustain her presence in this world. You breathe the smallest flutter of a sigh and lean into her body as you feel the pact transmute and settle into place, knitting the two of you together. One of your arms wraps around her waist.

After a few moments of this, probably when the wound in your ear has clotted enough not dribble, Zero detaches herself. She doesn't make any move to pull away from you.

Instead, she says, "I don't actually know how it goes from here," and you laugh lightly into the cape over her shoulder.

"Then I guess I'll just have to show you."

[oncedriven]

Even though you've already stepped into it to make the pact, you still have to get Zero out out of it. She folds against, over, into your body, physicality becoming aether connected to yours, your body now her gate into the Source. You can feel her right there, a tickle at the base of your spine, a breath at the back of your neck.

You wonder how much of the sensation of your body she can feel. She's not technically possessing you, not yet, just waiting for your call.

You step out of the summoning circle, just enough more voidsent yourself than when you entered it to feel the difference as it passes over your skin, and then you do the responsible thing and scuff the hell out of it so that no one else can go summoning so much as an imp with it. Leaving a potential open crack to the void, even a tiny one, is significantly more problems than it would be worth. You set up a mop and bucket in the corner for precisely this purpose, in fact.

If it's practically an extended tease with yourself and her, going through the important steps of making sure nothing else follows her through even while your aether is hooked into her and vibrating with the desire to pull her back into this plane properly, well. You enjoy enduring it, feeling your clothes just a little too tightly, a little too intimately. The ache in your ear, just a little too intense to be called dull, is in the same category of hyperawareness.

So you drag out the process just a little, until you can really start to feel Zero building up beneath your skin, a unique sensation in its own right. It's confirmation that voidsent, or at least half-voidsent, can feel desire, because you've never had cause to think of the normally laid-back Zero as impatient for anything else before. Why would she be, with an endless age stretched out on either side of the present moment, in a world where no one dies or is born?

Eventually you call it good, in part because you're not entirely sure that Zero couldn't simply possess you if she wanted it badly enough. It's not a battle you've ever had to fight, not against both an external force and your own self, who trusts her enough that you would probably let her. Will almost certainly let her, at some point down the line.

Instead, you walk, measured pace and carefully stiff, back to your bedroom, and there shut and lock the door and close the windows against any potential disturbances. You take a seat on the side of your bed and undo just enough of your clothing to be interesting, kicking your shoes away from the bed.

Only then do you call her to you, a gentle beckon as you offer a hand for hers, which appears in a gentle swirl of shadows. You feel the change in her presence as she shifts planes.

She's still fully clothed, but the first thing she does is lift the hat from her head and hang it on one of the ornamental overhangs on your bedpost. It's a start, you think.

After a moment's hesitation, she starts on some of the buckles of the rest of her outfit. "I'm unused to wanting things," she says. "I'm beginning to wonder what kind of devil I've aligned myself with, that can tempt a voidsent."

You huff a laugh and reach out for her hand. She gives it to you with a curious look, and you start very carefully taking the glove off. The skin underneath is as pale and strangely un-time-worn as her face, except for a scar cutting deep into her wrist, which - in contrast to human scars - sits with the purple darkness of a bruise, or darker, on her skin.

"I didn't know you could scar," you say.

"A memory of the living," she replies. "I can't, anymore. But these remain."

"The body remembers what the mind forgets, I take it," you say.

Zero nods. You slide your thumb over her wrist - there isn't a pulse as you're familiar with it, and her skin is cooler than almost anyone else you've ever touched. You catch your thoughts wandering towards Shiva - the goddess, this time, not the real one. You still wonder sometimes if her skin was cold.

Zero slides her other glove off and tosses it to the side in a dismissive motion. You underhand the one you're still holding in the same direction. The two dissolve on impact into the black wisps that correspond with voidsent dispersing, and you raise your eyebrows.

"How do your clothes even work?" you ask.

"I've never investigated it too closely, honestly," Zero says. "It wasn't important. They're just clothes."

There's another scar on the back of her other hand, this one just the faintest line of darkened skin at an angle behind her knuckles.

"If you're so impatient, you could have saved time and appeared naked, then," you mutter, pulling at the bottom of your shirt, and to your surprise she chuckles.

"I hadn't thought of that," she says. "Could I? I don't know. I haven't seen my own skin in..."

She doesn't so much trail off as simply stop. You understand. Linear time is incomprehensible. You say, "Something to try in the future. We'll just have to do this properly, this first time."

That tiny smile is back. "Properly?" she repeats, tone just incredulous enough to be mocking, to say is there anything proper about this? and it makes you want her mouth.

So you push off your bed with just the smallest bounce and into her, catching one hand to tangle in the fabric of the cape that's still over her shoulder, and you kiss her.

[oncedriven]

Thavnair is as it always appears to be, a brilliant spot of green against the sea.

You lean forward against the railing, resting your elbows on it as you look out beyond the ship. Thavnair is the only place to and from which Meracydian traders make port, and now that you know what you know, that makes perfect sense to you.

It was far simpler to secure passage this time around. You didn't have to save up for years, and you shan't have to spend another six months there saving for passage to Eorzea.

To no one - that is, to Zero - you say, "Why did I decide upon ship's passage again? This has taken too long."

It's six months after the moon's fall already. Six months with nothing to show for your efforts except a bettered state of affairs in your homeland and one voidsent companion.

Zero, from her position on the other end of your connection, says, "You are the one who insisted it gave you legitimacy."

You sigh into your elbows. "It was rhetorical, Zero."

"I know."

She picks the damnedest times to show a sense of humor. You lift your eyes to stare off the railing again. "Sometimes I just need to complain," you mutter.

Truthfully, you've gotten a good deal on your passage. After all, two for the price of one isn't a bad deal by any stretch, and the ship's crew have had enough trouble that you're sure they'll be missing you as a defender when they make to return. Though one, Hannish, remarked that they had gone remarkably unhassled on this return trip to their homeland. (Most of the sailors ae Hannish, owing to the Meracydian tendency to distrust those from the north.)

You rather suspect that the usual suspects - Garleans and Lominsans both - are simply preoccupied with other matters. But you've seen enough of the usual sea monsters to get a work out even on the contained decks of the ship, and they also don't object to you climbing in the rigging now and then as long as you don't get in the way. You've managed to build enough muscle that you don't think a greatsword would be such a problem, now.

"I've just realized," you say to the sea breeze. "Varshahn doesn't exist yet. It'll be one of his predecessors."

That puts a slight crimp in your getting in contact with Vrtra directly plan. You'll have to either find whatever incarnation he's currently using, or go through more traditional channels, and you'd rather avoid the latter. For all that you actually do have the claim of being an envoy of your homeland this time, you'd rather not swing that political weight around if you don't have to. It comes with expectations of good behaviour that you want to avoid.

Zero says, "Will it be a problem?"

"Nothing insurmountable," you reply. "He's... Like you, Vrtra will not be so very different, really, from the one I remember."

Less confident, no doubt, without the experience of revealing himself to his people and having them accept him. But it's nothing like knowing that somewhere to the distant north, Alphinaud and Alisaie are only just beginning to become the people you know. Nothing like the knowledge that Estinien still drinks deep of the cocktail of revenge in his heart, and will yet for many years.

Like the knowledge of Ysayle, not yet Iceheart, alone in the cold.

One thing at a time, you remind yourself, and one more time you breathe deep of the wind coming off the Bounty, free of the taste of smoke that still seemed to hang over Thavnair when you left it last. The clear breeze that you're doing everything in your power to protect. One thing at a time.

[oncedriven]

You've entered Radz-at-Han by this port only the one time before, and this time when you look upwards, it's not in unfamiliar wonder at an unfamiliar city. It's with the same slight release of tension in your shoulders as the sailors who walk past you to unload at the port, to finally return to familiar soil after so long at sea.

(You carry one of the crates to shore yourself, because you may as well, and it helps work the regrowth of the muscles in your arms. For your own things, you travelled light.)

The docks at the base of the city cliffs are thronged with all manner of people, and you pass among them without much remark, even as unusual a sight as you are, a crimson-haired viera amidst a sea of Raen, Hyur, and Arkasodara. Fortunately, the people of Thavnair are a friendly lot, well-used to exotic travellers, and while you get a few looks of curiosity, it's nothing like what you know now awaits in Eorzea, where your kind are virtually unknown.

Last time, you spoke immediately to everyone you could, to seek out lodgings and employment. This time, though you're not unfriendly, you walk the streets with entirely different purpose, your senses pricked for a particular aether signature.

It takes far less time to find him than you would have expected. Perhaps, you cannot help but think, Meracydia is not so forgotten in his heart even now. Why else would he have come to witness the arrival of this particular ship?

(Or perhaps your song truly did echo across that great sea - if it did, then you imagine his curiosity must be very great indeed.)

The boy is similar-looking enough to Varshahn that you could easily have called them brothers. A year or two older, with thicker horns and the same dark green hair, but this time grown out enough to braid back at the nape. His clothes are much the same, and his eyes are equally red, if not a hair brighter, closer to the true crimson of the eye disguised within his chest.

There's a flick of curiosity in those eyes, which grows as you approach. The polite smile is the same, as is the accent, as he says, "Welcome, traveler. Is this your first time in Thavnair?"

"Yes and no," you say, because both are true; it is not your first time in Thavnair, but it's Thavnair's first time hosting you. "It's been a long journey, so forgive my bluntness - I would like to speak to the satrap, if you're able. It concerns his sister."

You spent far too long figuring out exactly what you would say, to convince him to hear you out when you have nothing but your words and knowledge. In the end, you just put as many of your cards on the table as you safely can in a public place.

To the best of your knowledge, Ahewann has no sisters.

The boy's eyes narrow suspiciously. "And what is it about her that you would speak of?" he asks.

"She lives," you say simply, almost crudely, in comparison to what the words truly mean. To what they mean to him. You say it again, in the language that carries with it your intent, in the tongue of dragons that is nearly as much your mother tongue as it is his - "Azdaja lives."

It's impressive, the journey that his expression goes on, all the more because you know that what lies underneath is not a being used to the expressiveness of a human face. You wonder if it shows as naturally because of something the alchemists did, because the flicker from suspicion to hope to relief so close together can't have been from practice.

The boy tosses his head slightly as though to shake away the overwhelming feelings, and says, "That is... significant news indeed. I had given up all hope of hearing it." The words are genuine; they sound ripped from the chest. "And how is it that you came by this information?"

It's said with as much suspicion as he can muster, but you smile in relief yourself, because - you've gotten this much, at least. You're confident you can talk him around now that the door is opened, because at the end of the day, you want the same things. You say, "It's one hell of a story, and one best not shared on the docks where anyone might overhear."

"Of course," Vrtra's vessel replies. "Forgive my impatience. If it pleases you, I shall go on ahead to Meghaduta and arrange rooms for you. Tell the guards at the door that you're a guest of Viradahn and they shall bring you inside."

"It's appreciated," you say, inclining your head. "I look forward to it. Though - prepare food for an extra, if you would. I have a companion who will be joining us."

'Viradahn' nods and takes his leave, turning off into the crowd as though at a rush - though, of course, you're sure that before he's even out of your sight, preparations for your stay are already underway. The benefit to being in two places at once.

If only you could manage that.

[oncedriven]

You take some time getting up from the docks - they're less familiar to you than the gate to central Thavnair and the vicinity of the aetheryte. Still, you're able to find your way up to the city proper without too much trouble.

Radz-at-Han, unlike many cities, doesn't try to stop you from accessing particular quarters by demanding paperwork, which is good, because you haven't got any.

"Do you want to come out?" you ask of Zero idly as you wander the streets.

"Perhaps when there's fewer people about," she replies.

"Fair enough," you say. "This city can get a bit overwhelming at the best of times." Even as you say it, you dodge carefully around an Auri man carrying a stack of fabric bolts that's almost too much for him when he stumbles. You catch the top three bolts of bright colors before they can hit the ground, and refuse his thanks when you open a shop door for him after.

Finally, you make your way up to Meghaduta and allow yourself to be escorted inside. You're led, not to the private rooms, but to the satrap's personal hall - to the place where Vrtra waits in the flesh.

The curtains are drawn. In front of them, there is a table spread for four, with two already seated before it. Vrtra's vessel, Viradahn, looks for all the world like a boy of good upbringing but youthful inexperience ought to look, just a bit nervous. Beside him, Ahewann looks - young, in comparison to your memories of him, and you can appreciate how exhausting his last days must have been all the better for seeing him outside of them.

The servant who leads you in has her eyebrows raised, no doubt looking for your mentioned companion, but you say, "Thank you. With the satrap's blessing, would you give us some privacy?" and Ahewann nods, so she closes the door when she leaves.

Anyone else would wonder at the lack of guards in the chamber. You say, "Good. Can we dispense with the deceptions then, Vrtra?" which at least gets you one reaction of shock from Ahewann.

The dragon's vessel quirks his mouth in a crooked grin. "Only if you are willing to be equally honest," he replies.

"That's the reason I came," you say, and then, pulling your aether together, "Zero? Now's the time."

There's the subtlest kind of warp and shift, familiar now to you but drawing narrowed eyes. Zero manifests, tall next to you, and says, "At least you've brought me lunch."

"I can't take you anywhere," you tease, before turning to the two men. "I should warn you that, being what she is, she can eat her weight and then some and you'd never know it."

"What she is..." Viradahn murmurs. "I see. I've heard of such covenants before, but - forgive me, but you are not a typical voidsent, are you?" he says to Zero.

"If you're worried about me sucking you dry, then you can rest easy," she replies. "Even if I were so inclined, you'd take a great deal of swallowing."

With that, she seats herself on your side of the table. You say, "Zero is a unique existence that you might consider to be the last fragment remains of the world that became the void. As much as she pretends a mercenary attitude, she is among my dearest companions."

"I see," Viradahn says, inclining his head from Zero to you. "And what, then, does that make you?"

"Oh, that's the simple part, unfortunately," you say, stepping around one of the chairs to sit beside Zero. "I'm a time traveller."

[oncedriven]

The tale is longer, this time, than it was to convince Zero. Zero, after all, had few concerns before your arrival in her world.

Vrtra's, naturally, are many. You speak over the food for a long time, not just of Azdaja but of Tiamat and Hraesvelgr and Nidhogg; of Midgardsomr and Hydaelyn and Omega; of the end of the world, and what it is you hope to do.

Ahewann looks, understandably, overwhelmed. As would anyone, you think, finding themselves thrown into the true reality of what it means to be a companion to a dragon. He spends as much time staring at his plate as eating.

Zero, as is her wont, eats with very little pause, cleaning her plate thoroughly of every scrap that contains aether. Those bits that can't be disgested by her humanlike body, she takes the energy from as voidsent do, leaving a bowl of blackened hamsa bones beside her plate.

(She takes yours, as well, which you are used to. One thing about living with a voidsent in your pocket is that you know very well that nothing goes to waste.)

"Were your account not so very accurate," Viradahn says between plates (he consumes less food than a true human of his apparent age), "I would think you mad. However, the details of your tale are too consistent to dismiss it as mere insanity."

"I like that 'mere,'" you mutter. "It implies that you already know I've lost it."

Viradahn smiles, then. "In Radz-at-Han, there is a longstanding belief that the mad are given fragments of wisdom from the gods," he replies. "To go so far to change the course... It must surely be madness, but it is one I will gladly be a party to. Even if it were not for Azdaja's sake, or that of my people..."

He glances at Ahewann, almost shyly, but you can guess the thoughts in his head. You do not, and never have, believed that hiding the truth of someone's fate from them does any good. Since that point, Ahewann hasn't eaten a bite, only sat before his plate with his eyes closed. You spared the details - it would put any mortal off their food, yourself included - but you can still imagine how heavy the knowledge must sit.

And you can imagine how it must feel to him, to be told that, and then in the same breath to be told, I came to save as many as I can, you included.

Finally, Ahewann says, "Then we are in agreement. Whatever it is you would ask of Thavnair, you shall have it."

"Thank you," you say. "Truthfully - for now, while there is much work to be done, I need to get my bearings. I'm in this land three years ahead of time, and don't know the shape of how things stand. Following that, I shall need to get in contact with the Garlean Imperial Palace - I'll drag Emet-Selch out by his hair if need be. It's my understanding that His Radiance has an impressive beard? Because that will do for a handle."

Ah, good. Ahewann's recovered enough to look at you like you're insane. Vrtra says, in his own voice, "In all the centuries I have ruled here, the Ascians have only but rarely darkened these lands. I confess, I know little of their ways."

"You and your siblings are some of the only beings who could hope to compete with the Unsundered in sheer might," you say. "It only makes sense that they'd avoid you, in the same way that they avoid the greater voidsent lords. That's probably why Thavnair has been allowed to remain neutral for so long in spite of being only across the sea from Corvos, honestly."

"The voidsent..." Vrtra muses from Viradahn's mouth. You're beginning to pick up all the more clearly the tells of when he uses one or the other. For now, his vessel straightens and says, "It's a pity that you can't reproduce the recipe of the warding scales as accurately as you can the principles behind the tempering cure. But now that we know it can be done, there is no reason to wait in doing it."

You nod, and say, "The sooner that work begins, the better. I shall leave that in your capable hands, then."

Viradahn nods, and says, "Is there ought else to put in motion before you approach Garlemald?"

You roll things around in your mind. "I should pen a letter to Sharlayan as well," you say. "The sooner I can bring the Forum into order, the sooner we can resolve the issue of the Final Days. Eventually we'll need to figure out a way to the moon, as well, but that can wait. The loporrits aren't going anywhere." You work your way backwards up the list, and then finally say, "I would like to free Tiamat as soon as possible, and that would be much easier with your assistance. My personal store of aether is large, but it is not infinite."

"She is still my sister," Viradahn replies. "Though we were never close in comparison - as indeed I was never close with the trio of Hraesvelgr, Nidhogg, and Ratatoskr - I have no wish to leave her to continue to suffer. Yes. For that I will offer my aid gladly."

"Then we'll start with that as our items of action," you say. "... Tomorrow. After some sleep."

You have years of head start. You don't have to rush into everything.

sometimes i have feelings about hades dot txt

[oncedriven]

You pull a crystal from your pocket - the smallest of the three that you have prepared, and yet the one that is the most convincing by its nature. The impossibility that you hold in your hand, the size of a particularly large almond.

You flash it to him between your fingers, the golden-green glittering, before you toss it. The body of Solus zos Galvus is well past its prime, but its occupant snatches the fragment of crystal from the air as though it were forty or more years younger.

"And what is this?"

"A fragment of my memories," you reply. "I know you aren't the sort to accept empty words, so let that convince you."

He stares at you for a moment, and then says, "Impressive, if you've actually managed to crystallize a usable memory."

"Just watch it," you say, knowing already well enough what it contains. The scent of the wind, more years than miles away, and -

Oh, how surprised he was. Claimed he hadn't done anything remarkable for anyone. Modest to a fault.

The smile of a new old friend. The feeling of the grass beneath your legs, your hands as you lean back to watch a frightened creature learn to fly.

A memory of a forgotten place and a lost time. One which is lost even to him, who has maintained his memories with such rigor and care in comparison to his companions.

"What - what is the meaning of this?"

When our friend calls, he never fails to answer and lend his talents.

The golden eyes are less sharp, now. Tears fog them, calling another memory to mind - If your heart can be broken, then so can mine. - and perhaps it is a cruelty, to return him to those lost days, if only for a moment. To make him hear once again the voice of the lost.

"This is impossible!" he says, near loud enough that someone outside might hear, as you thought he might. But as ever, his actions speak louder than his words, and between Solus' garled fingers, Hades clutches the fragment of crystal with all his might. "You - how did you - you can't be... This must be a trick."

I just don't understand how you can be so alike and so different.

"Most Emminent Emet-Selch of the Last Convocation," you say, and then, more softly, "Hades. As the successor to the Seat of Azem, in more ways than one, I beseech your aid. Please. Help me to put an end to the Final Days once and for all."

Why don't you go and signal to Emet-Selch. Let him know that his arduous task is at an end.

He stares at you, all pretense - royalty, dignity - abandoned. Tears leak down the sides of his nose into that godforsaken beard.

"Why," he says, the word more of a sob than a question. "Why now?"

"I came as soon as I could," you say. "I'm... sorry it wasn't sooner, but it isn't as though I could control the time I was born."

A pause, and then finally, a huff.

"I suppose you could not, at that," he says, looking away. "I'll be keeping this." He shoves the crystal into a pocket of his robes without waiting for an answer.

"I figured as much," you say.

[oncedriven]

You leave him with the memory, that night. In spite and because of everything, you don't want to hurt him. In the skin of Solus, he looks the wizened old man he must feel to hold a memory of his youthful self in his hands.

You are received as an honored guest in the Garlean Imperial Palace, which you take the chance to explore as much as the guards hovering not far behind you will permit. You avoid Zenos as much as you can manage; at nineteen, he still lives mostly within the palace walls, his days of cold command still ahead of him. But some unnamed feeling tells you that if he were to lay eyes upon you, it would all start again in an instant.

That is, you think, the biggest risk of being in Garlemald. That, and the risk that you'll encounter Varis, but that is more of the international incident kind of risk than the sword-wielding beloved friend kind of risk.

(And Varis, of course, is only a man. Zenos, even before he became one of the Resonant, was almost something else.)

You attend breakfast with the royal family, but decline the political lunch to instead perfect the other three crystals you have already made, and to produce the last.

The first two are your memories of Elpis, together near entire; it was too much to attempt to consign to a single crystal, at least not unless you wished to hand Emet-Selch something near the size of his Garlean head. They aren't perfect, from his perspective, given that you spent a great deal of time entertaining sad bird girls while the supposed adults handled business, but they're complete enough.

The third contains a patchwork of memories of Amon-Fandaniel, and serves as a compilation of How You Fucked Up Bigtime By Upraising This Guy. It's a decent outline of his plans in the timeline you lived, though you have no doubt that he is adaptable enough to change them.

And the last, barely a sliver in comparison to the others...

For yours is the Seat of Azem, and where you go, fate is sure to follow.

The spires of the memory of Amaurot on the First, which if you have your way shall not exist again, not in that particular way, almost seem to tinge the crystal blue of their own accord. You don't include the whole of it; those memories that have not occurred are not his by right in the way the memories of Elpis are. But you are willing to give him enough to attest to the veracity of your claims.

You do not know me, he said to you, in Elpis. I will return to my duty, and you will not bother me again.

With these crystals, you say to that man - I am the only person left who knows you, and you will not be free of me that easily.

So, naturally, dinner is destined to be an awkward affair. You spend a portion of the afternoon allowing yourself to be toured around the wonders of Garlean magitek, biting your tongue, looking at what is clearly a manicured selection of the positive things it can do. And some of them truly are wonders, not least what they've done with aetheryte technology. You make no pretensions of not studying that intently; after all, you did present yourself as a specialist in the matter, and you've had enough afternoons ensconced in Moenbryda's workroom by now to talk intelligently about the matter. The poor technician in charge looks as though he might marry you for your feedback.

In the waning light, you insist on a trip out unto the city, specifically the Forum Solius that remains such a ruin in your memories. You wade out ankle-deep into the heated water, faintly misted with steam, and you breathe in, deeply. Behind you, a pair of children chase each other through the playground. One of them, a girl with blue hair, catches your eye, and as the dark truly begins to set in - yes, there.

Jullus is perhaps eleven or twelve, now; his sister runs up to him at his call, and they look a fine pair. Happy, even if the look the boy gives you is wary - and why wouldn't it be? You cannot exactly hide that you are foreign, even if a touch of glamour lets you pass for older than you physically are.

To his suspicious eyes, you give a deep bow, startling your guide and guard once again. Surprised, Jullus gives a stiff bow back whilst his sister curtsies. The boy she was playing with, following their lead, bows as well, and then the three turn to return to their homes without a word.

It's a reminder, of the things you're fighting for. For children who deserve better than to perish in the snow.

[oncedriven]

The hour is late, and snow falls, gently, over the Imperial capital.

They do not make balconies here, so instead you sit in a windowsill and watch it fall. Even triple-paned, the glass does not keep out the chill.

And here you sit, and here you wait. He will not make you spend all of eternity, but just long enough to prove that making you wait agitates him more than it does you.

Three days it has been since you gave unto Emet-Selch the crystals containing your memories of Elpis, recounted nearly in full. The hour is midnight.

You know he is there before he arrives. It's quite funny, really, how much more easily he can make that elderly body move when no one who needs to be taken in by the act is looking.

"I still do not believe your tale," he says, and you cannot bite down upon the smile that comes to your features.

"After all this time?" you say. "You wound me."

He folds his arms, and for a moment you see him, that ages-younger man. "I do not believe it," he says, frowning, "but nor can I see any other explanation. Loath as I am to speak to Hydaelyn... There is none other who retains reliable memories of those days."

You say, "If you intend to go by means of Sharlayan, you'd best wear something else."

There's a pause, and then, incredulously, "Really? That is all you have to say on the matter?"

"I have a lot to say on a lot of matters, but you're going to do what you want anyway," you say. "The Altiascope is functional, it's possible to physically traverse without discarding one's flesh, and I can get it opened expediently by twisting the Forum's arms behind their backs. But it's a physically demanding enough journey that 'Solus' wouldn't be able to take it, never mind the political implications."

He stares at you, then folds his arms. "So you've already spoken to her, then."

"I would be stupid not to," you say. "But that was in a vision of the starshower, and you're not going to be having one of those any time soon."

A slightly softened frown. "I have my own ways," he says finally. "And besides, I would have a separate accounting from each of you before I make my decision. If there are inconsistencies to be had in your stories, I will find them."

"Of course," you say. "I expected no less." You look out to the snow falling.

"You could at least pretend to be less blase about this," he says. "Your claim of destroying Zodiark - for that alone, I ought to destroy you with my own hands, here and now."

"You won't," you say. "You won't take the risk that my tale could be true. Because if it were, then you, Emet-Selch of the Convocation, would be demanded by duty to first ensure that the Final Days never occur again upon this or any other star."

A hmph his only response to that idea. You know him. You knew him before you were born, and you knew him after his death.

"No last favors to ask?" he drawls. "No demands for a show of good will? You truly intend to simply leave?"

"I have every confidence that you'll come around eventually," you say. "Though - if you were to name Titus your heir formally, that would soothe my nerves on some of the lesser matters."

"Varis must truly have made a poor impression on you," Emet-Selch replies.

You look back at him then, meet his eyes, gold to gold. "Varis is an idiot and a well-manipulated tool," you say. "But Zenos? Zenos terrifies me. And putting every barrier possible between him and power is yet another form of fighting the end."

Another hmph. "...I will consider it," he says.

"Thanks," you say, just as casually. You hop down from the windowsill and step towards the door, your path bringing you close to his figure. Solus is less a mountain than his kindred, so you can pass quite close to him indeed -

Close enough to put your hand over his where it supports him on the cane he always carries, and lean in close to say, "I did miss you, for what it's worth. I hope that some day we can cease to dance around each other, on two separate paths of time."

And after you let that moment hang suspended for half a breath, you say, "Sleep well, Your Radiance," and dart off to the door, pulling the shadows up around you as you go. It won't truly hide you from his sight, of course, but sometimes it's all about the act and the parts you play.

From her eternal position over your shoulder, Zero does not express herself so casually as to sigh, but she says, You cannot help yourself, can you?

In answer to her, you only laugh.

[oncedriven]

This is, in many ways, the one you've been dreading.

Emet-Selch, for all his flaws and griping, is easily convinced, because not only do you know who he is, but he knows who he is. His compatriots...

Well. You don't know if there is anything to be done, for Lahabrea. The idiot's been carrying a piece of auracite around in his pocket for ten thousand years, and it has worn him down and twisted him like every other. If you're to have any chance of putting him to rights, you're going to need the help of the others, and a crystal that you just have to wait to have wash up upon your shores.

Perhaps you can get Emet-Selch to fish it out of the lifestream for you.

But you can only face those problems one at a time. And in this case - you've prepared yourself as best you can.

And so he does not catch you unprepared, the shadow of a figure in white robes, his hood up and a red mask - such as you can only remember him wearing like this - on his face.

You tip your head. "Emissary."

He tilts his own at you, a faint hint of confusion on his features. "Strange, to need no introduction. Though hardly unexpected, given my comrade's recent preoccupation with you."

"I should hope he's been preoccupied," you say. "Twould be embarrassing otherwise."

The night is brisk. Dravania is a harsh land made harsher by the recent Calamity, the winds colder, though not so cold as they will be by the time they fall upon Coerthas. You are near the border of Sharlayan, or at least what Sharlayan once claimed, now lost to the wilds. In the morning, Sohm Al will cast its long shadow over you.

Elidibus will not draw arms against you - not in this, your first encounter - so you continue onwards, allowing him the sight of your back. The goblins haven't fully taken the valley and the remains of the city for their own yet - the wild beasts and broken bridges own the most of it. The small encampment to the north is not yet torn apart by cheese wars and Quickthinx's prophecies.

It's impossible to read him beneath both hood and mask, in the silence of your trek. You continue down onto the old Sharlayan paving, until you find your objective, or at least the first piece of it.

"All the tasks you claim are before you," Elidibus says, "and yet here you are, righting an aethernet shard in a forgotten city."

"Who is to say this isn't one of them?" you ask. The dead aetherstone tilts as you set it into its base. "Teleportation magic is one of my specialties, after all."

You breathe deep and channel deeply of the well inside you, funneling it into the blue crystalline. It lights and lifts under your fingers.

Elidibus says nothing, until you turn to him and say, finally, the pale blue light casting just enough light that shadows climb across your face, "I lay claim to the Fourteenth Seat, as the successor of Pandora, who left none."

Elidibus says, "There is no Fourteenth Seat." His voice is cold. If you did not know him - in so many shapes, in so many times - you would miss the way it almost quivers.

You say, "The Seat of Azem, the Traveler. It is mine by right."

"It was abolished," Elidibus counters. "Azem betrayed us in our hour of need." There is definitely tension in his voice now.

You say, "I claim it. If you want to debate my claim on the merits, Emissary, by all means, but you uplift fragments of the other seats to your numbers for less. But the only other with a claim has recognized it."

"Hydaelyn." There's no small amount of hatred to the name.

You say, "So you remember that much, at least."

[oncedriven]

He doesn't flinch, physically. But his aether tells a different story, threadbare and barely held together. Elidibus is a person who barely has an identity at all, a soul who has dipped in and out of the aetherial sea too many times.

You say, "I remember your name, Elidibus. We were friends, once - not you and Azem, but you and I. I know what you have given up for your duty, and I am not asking you to put it down. I'm asking you to let me help."

Which is true at least so far as the Final Days go. But you can get to kicking his ass back and forth along the border between worlds later.

Elidibus stares, then takes a tiny step back. And then there's the twist of space, and he vanishes.

You look at the aethernet shard as though it has any opinions to offer, and sigh. "I knew he had a predisposition to cut and run, but honestly..."

Well. Back to it, then.

[oncedriven]

You take your time in the ruins of the Sharlayan colony, which does not yet deserve the name Idyllshire. Gobbiebooms play havoc around you occasionally; you ignore them and focus on your task.

Occasionally some wildlife has a go at you. You usually trade back and forth with Zero on it, get her used to working as part of a team. As your partner.

Aethernet shards and even aetherytes don't actually be open to the sky to function; it's just preferable. You tuck your slyly reestablished network into the shells of buildings, under the shelves of the cliffs.

Last of all, you put one just shy of directly outside Matoya's door. It's at the limit for how far you can put one aethernet shard from another and still have them connect up - and it is connecting up, as you stashed the other one away on the upper side of the cavern's landmass, where Matoya would have no reason to think it was related to her specifically even if she did notice.

And you're certain that she's noticed. She's probably been keeping half an eye on you the entire time.

Once you're certain that you've gotten it hooked into the network, you unroll a woolen Steppe blanket and take a seat, folding your knees up like you're a Doman lord awaiting supplicants. Though neither Kaien nor Hien probably has to deal with frogs attempting to sabotage their complicated works of magick on behalf of their hermitic mistress. Not on any kind of regular basis.

A frog appears, before too long. Without getting up, you raise your eyebrows to it and say, "I'm not following you into her cave to meet with her so that the rest of her minions can blow it up behind my back."

It blinks its big eyes at you. There is wobbling. You are unmoved.

You add, "You can also inform her that I know about the Antitower, the source of the Forum's dumbassery, and what her apprentice has been up to lately."

The frog wobbles its eyes at you one more time before hopping away.

DT bits here

[oncedriven]

A letter delivered to Tuliyollal under the seal of the Students of Baldesion, approximately two years after the fall of Dalamud -

To the Dawnservant, Gulool Ja Ja -

Pray forgive me the nature of this letter, couched as it is in indirect language. These is certain information contained within that I cannot risk falling into the wrong hands, or indeed any hands at all save your own. I would prefer to speak to you in person, given the choice, but such is simply not feasible at this time. Please also forgive me any grammatical inclarities; the Eorzean tongue is no more my native one than it is yours.

Pleasantries aside, this is - as you might have guessed based upon the sending address - regarding the matter of the Golden City which lies at the depths of the world. Galuf was kind enough to allow me to send it under his order's seal after I discussed with him certain matters pertaining to his granddaughter's homeland; I am not a member of the Students, nor indeed of any Sharlayan order.

My name is Aodhan, of the tribe of viera in Meracydia known as the Feol. Nominally, I am come to Eorzea as an emissary and a scholar of aetherology to investigate the fall of Dalamud and the surrounding events (of which I am sure you have by now heard). However, it is more proper to say that I am a researcher of other worlds and related subjects, including teleportation magicks, the flow of aether which Sharlayan calls the aetherial sea, and the ability known as the Echo, which allows one touched by it to see sights otherwise impossible to see within the flow of time.

I will not delay the point. You are without doubt aware of your own mortality and preparing for the matter of your succession even now. Your timeline is thus: The Head of Reason shall fall into a sleep from which he shall not wake in approximately six years' time, leaving the Head of Resolve alone to arrange the planned contest. In a total of nine years from now, the Rite of Succession shall take place, involving your three children and a pair of blessed siblings from Mamook as an outside challenger.

This concludes in both your desired outcome and a conflict of great tragedy and loss of life, for reasons related to the power behind the gate to the Golden City. One contender - and should I say that he is of particularly martial mind and unsympathetic nature, I believe you will have your suspicions as to which - takes losing poorly and steals a certain relic which is within your keeping to obtain its power and wage war upon the people of Tuliyollal. The power which lies on the far side of that gate - an entity in the form of a woman known as Queen Sphene, as in the gemstone - ultimately seeks a source of living aether upon which to gorge for the sustanance of a system designed to defy death. She is incapable of being dissuaded from this course; she is not human and capable of such agency as you and I possess.

To that end, I advise the following measures for the time being:

- The relic in question should be hidden in a more secure location, disassociated from the gate and your old friend who serves as gatekeeper.
- Said gatekeeper should move the aspect of his charge which he keeps in his home to a more secure, external location.

I have included what I can recall of a list of crops that will grow to a satisfactory degree in Mamook's environment. This should lessen the burdens of the people there, and in turn, the pressure upon their chosen candidate. Unfortunately, a number of them are native to regions which are currently under the control of the Garlean Empire, and will be difficult to procure. The indicated livestock may be easier to obtain, though it will likely involve complex negotiations with the Sharlayan Forum, for which you have my apologies.

I would dearly like to meet in person in order to discuss further, and I can only hope that I have roused your curiosity enough to propose a meeting outright. I have the ability to reach Tural in approximately a half year from the date of this letter, which should allow for plenty of time for correspondence to make its way to you and back to Sharlayan. If you are amenable, the only requirement of my travel method is a large enough open space for at least another person of your size; I will be accompanied by a representative of Thavnair who requires such accomodations. I leave the precise matters of location and time in your hands.

Awaiting your reply with great anticipation,

Aodhan sehn Feolthan
Azem of the Seventh Star

[oncedriven]

To the Azem of the Seventh Sun, Aodhan sehn Feolthan,

You have certainly caught my interest. I am familiar with the power the Sharlayans call the Echo only in passing; it is rare in Tural, as Galuf surely told you. His granddaughter is the only person I have met personally who possessed such an ability, and she was far too small at the time to say much of interest!

We have discussed your words with all due consideration, and taken the steps you advise. The list of crops to import for Mamook is interesting indeed, and it gives me great hope that something can be done to ease the suffering of the people to whom I was born.

As for the opportunity for a meeting, your terms are most curious indeed! We are well aware that there exist few beings on our scale, intelligent or not. Only a handful of the most ancient of the Yok Huy are larger, as perhaps you already know, well informed as you seem to be. I would find a meeting with an emissary of Meracydia agreeable even if you did not offer so many tantalizing mysteries - few indeed are those who have been to the southlands and lived to tell the tale, even in Sharlayan, or so my old friends have told me.

Consider yourself and your companion welcome in Tuliyollal any time after this letter comes into your possession. The Landsguard shall welcome you at any gate into the city of your choosing. We look forward to the chance to speak to you in person!

Gulool Ja Ja
Dawnservant

You fold the letter back into its formerly-sealed case with a smile. At least one world leader isn't giving you too much trouble. Though perhaps you should have expected it, from the eldest of them who comes of mortal stock.

Still, as affable as he may have sounded in the letter - and you can well imagine the Head of Resolve dictating the words - you're certain that the reality of your letter's reception was not so easygoing. To hear the date of one's impending death by a stranger from across the sea is not an easy thing to believe or bear.

So it doesn't surprise you that the reply bore no mention of that, nor of Zoraal Ja's eventual betrayal, the golden city, or the things no one outside Mamook should know. Such things are too risky to put to a letter; you only did so because, as with Vrtra and Emet-Selch, you needed to cement the truth of what you know as quickly as possible.

Koana arrived on the same ship as this letter, to spend his next four years in the Studium and learn everything he can pack into his head. You observed him from a distance with a smile, before you pointed Moenbryda in his direction, another awkward erudite boy to tuck under her wings. But it isn't the Second Promise that you worry about, the one whose path you still hope to sway.

It isn't the Second Promise, nor the Third, who want for saving. And you hardly expect Zoraal Ja to make it easy - but you owe it to his siblings to try.

(For the Wuk Lamat and Koana and Gulool Ja you have lost. For the Zoraal Ja, Cahciua, and Gulool Ja Ja you can yet save.)

(And, still, for the Wuk Lamat you have yet to meet. If you can bring her a world where she never has to put her brother down like a mad dog, then that must be worth the cost of trying.)