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FFXIV Writes 2024 - Prompt #3 : Tempest
Spoilers for the White Mage and Dark Knight Job Quests below, along with mild Stormblood Spoilers, you have been warned. Also, Celeste is not The Main WoL, but part of the WoLstatic alongside Xander (Main WoL), M'hana, and Iori.
Celeste reeled as she arrived in Camp Tranquil from Rhalgr’s Reach. Even replete with anima as she was, teleporting took the wind straight out of her. Or, perhaps it was merely her anxiety that sucked the wind from her sails as she made to approach her two former mentors in the art of the White Mage.
No, not to approach. To confess. To admit to what she’d done to their most precious artifact, something an outsider like her should have been blessed to so much as touch, much less wield. She’d felt the knife of shame in her gut when she took Rielle to see the Padjali to determine what ailed her, but that was nothing compared to the guilt squeezing around her stomach like a vice right now.
Her mouth and throat ran dry as she stood before her mentors now, fiddling with the blessed robes of a White Mage that she was no longer fit to wear.
“Celeste! It’s good to see you again. What brings you out this way after so long?” Raya-O-Senna asked, the cheer in her voice sending another splinter of shame through Celeste’s chest.
“I-“ Celeste began. Faltered. Wrung her hands nervously before her. Gods, where do I even begin-? “A-Ruhn, Raya-O, I have… I have a confession to make. The resting place of A-Towa-Cant’s soul, the White Mage Job Stone… After the incident in Ul’dah a year ago, I-“
The two Padjali stared up at her, expectant. A-Ruhn’s expression was unreadable, hidden by his bangs as it was. Raya-O simply kept her hands folded behind her back, leaning forward as though paying rapt attention to Celeste’s every word.
Celeste squared her shoulders. Tried to screw her courage to the sticking place. Then, bowed before her mentors, letting it all out in a rush of breath. “In my spite and fury with Gridania for refusing to shelter my companions, I chose to throw the Soul of the White Mage into the Abyss churning outside of Ishgard. I’d go to retrieve it myself, but visiting such an area, buffeted as it is by ice and wind aether, would be the death of me, so I- I just wanted to let you know and to give you both my most sincere, heartfelt apologies. You gave me- with great reluctance- a precious gift, and in a fit of pique I threw it away like so much garbage.”
She rose from her apologetic bow, hands outstretched as if seeking the young seedseers’ clemency. “You are under no obligation to forgive me, and I understand if you never want to see me again after this, but I couldn’t- I simply couldn’t let this sit on my heart any longer.”
Not if she intended to put the lessons Fray and Myste taught her to good use. Not if she ever intended to forgive herself.
Celeste felt two someones take hold of her hands. She opened her eyes to find her mentors staring up at her. She hadn’t realized she’d closed them.
“Celeste. You needn’t ask for our forgiveness.”
She blinked at A-Ruhn’s words. “But I lost your most precious treasure. Not just lost, but threw it away-!”
“It’s not so lost as it might seem.”
As Celeste tilted her head in confusion, Raya-O reached into a pocket of her robes and withdrew a familiar worn, egg-like white crystal, holding it out for the elezen to take. Celeste cupped her hands around the Job Stone, which glowed faintly with power that resonated to the depths of her soul, a reassuring whisper of the voice of nature, silent yet strong, echoing in her ears.
“This is- but how?!” She asked, inarticulate with a combination of shock and relief.
“We received it around eleven months ago by way of a rather frostbitten postmoogle, who’d seen it glistening in the depths and thought it might be important. He told us at length about how he nearly ‘froze off his pom, kupo’ while trying valiantly to retrieve it.” Raya-O intoned with a grin.
“We suspected something had gone wrong when you never reached out to us for further guidance after obtaining the legendary gear once worn by A-Towa-Cant’s apprentices.”
Eleven months? Celeste felt a little sick as she did the math in her head and realized, “So, when I came with Sidurgu and Rielle-“
A-Ruhn nodded. “We already had the stone back in our possession, yes. We were not going to seek you out and force you to resume the art if you did not want to. And we could both sense that the tempest churning within you at that moment must have been dire indeed to force you to take so drastic an action.”
“So you see, we’ve no reason to be angry with you. We never were. We were just hoping that you’d find your way once more. And now, it seems that you have.”
The Seedseers’ forgiveness ached far more than their condemnation ever could have, and Celeste found herself weeping before them, clutching the Job Stone to her chest amidst inarticulate apologies and quiet, hiccuping sobs. And yet, with each tear, she could feel the festering bitterness lingering in her heart towards her second home bleeding out, leaving behind a clean wound that was, at last, ready to heal.
“All right. I’m ready to learn. If you’ll have me.”
Raya-O-Senna beamed. “You don’t even have to ask. Let’s resume where we left off, shall we?”
FFXIV Writes 2024 - Prompt #4: Reticent
Spoilers for the end of Dawntrail and the Arcadion Raids lie below. You have been warned.
Xander closed his eyes, foot tapping an uneasy rhythm against the floor as the blaring techno beats that defined the music surrounding Solution 9’s continuation in mankind’s ‘grandest’ universal tradition of blood sport echoed in his skull.
Twenty-one souls. All you have to do is succeed in this contest, and twenty-one trapped souls will be freed.
So he’d been promised by that shifty Lalafell- or, Milala, he supposed- Metem, who seemed responsible for announcements in this ‘Arcadion’. A promise that had damned well better be upheld if the bastard hoped to secure his continued cooperation in this nonsense bread and circus designed to placate the grief of the despairing people of Alexandria.
Then again. It wasn’t just Metem to whose expectations he had to rise. The thought of Celeste and M’hana’s eager eyes watching from the crowd filled his mind. Iori would bear witness, too, though he had considerably less interest in sport-fighting than they did.
Gods, I wish I had them watching my back instead of watching me compete right now. Xander thought with a shudder.
He’d never felt this nervous before taking the field of battle. Not in all his five years at the Bloodsands as The Golden Warg. Not in all the battles he’d fought with the fate of the world hanging above his shoulders.
Though he’d shelved his greatsword and tucked away his copied crystal of the Dark Knight, Xander could swear he heard the whispers of his shadow from deep within his soul over the roar of the crowd outside.
You seem reticent, my friend. Do not tell me that you, who stood in the face of Despair itself and won, now balk at so simple a contest. I doubt any foe here is worthy of gracing your blade with their blood.
He sighed. To the voice of his friend, his enemy within himself, he replied, “I’m reticent because I know the cost paid for the crowd’s entertainment here. I’ve fought beasts in the ring before, but something about using beastkin souls as fuel and fighting until I’ve actually slain my foe here sits ill.”
Though it was called ‘the Bloodsands’, in truth, actual deaths in the arena were rare. Waste of valuable fighters. Killing in the ring could easily merit execution in turn. Fights were supposed to be to the point of death, not to the death. Not unless some ungodly sums of coin had changed hands to change it from a fight to an assassination. (Or an ‘unfortunate accident’ had been arranged.)
And here, not only was he expected to slay his foes, he was encouraged to do so, to allow them to use their godsdamned Regulators to drag themselves back to live. Death here, not so much an ending as an inconvenience, so long as one had cleansed souls remaining in reserve.
A multitude of candles of life to burn. And burn them, these fighters did. Wastefully. As if the loss of whoever’s soul they used as fuel mattered not.
Hah. Those who fight without the certainty of death will never know the true meaning of life, the time between the seconds. If you wish to give the lie to their culture of deathlessness, then show them the capabilities of one willing to burn his one candle of life to its very dregs.
Spurred on by the words of his shadow, Xander’s eyes snapped open. “Oh believe me, I will.”
He drew his sword and shield from his back, laying the blade of his sword against his head as an age-old prayer passed his lips. “We who walk in Thal’s halls, for the glory and blessings of Nald, request the blessing of the twin gods. Grant the victor your gilded boons, and the loser safe passage.”
Though the twin gods to whom he prayed had been sent on their way to the Aetherial Sea by his own hand, murmuring the words brought Xander a vague sense of comfort. He could swear he heard Nald’Thal’s approving chuckle at his back as he readied his sword and shield for combat and stepped out into the blinding lights of the Arcadion.
He would show them. He would show them all that their abuse of the souls of man and beast was not only cruel, but pointless. And maybe then, he could finally begin to dismantle this corrupted system in full.