Chapter Text
The Warrior of Light placed her hands around her teacup and closed her eyes. The time had come. The one thing she’d hoped she would never have to tell them. And depending on the outcome, the kindest or cruelest thing she could possibly do to them. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled through her nose.
“In the future I came from… A calamity called the Final Days has befallen the world. In response, mankind is being forced to flee the star.” She looked around to try and gauge their reactions. Confusion? Concern? Disbelief?
Emet-Selch crossed his arms. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
“The beginning? The beginning of what? Of my time’s recorded history? Of the sixth astral era through the seventh? Of my own misbegotten life?!” the Warrior snapped, louder than she intended.
Emet-Selch didn’t flinch. “‘Tis your tale. Begin wherever it makes sense to begin.”
The Warrior closed her eyes and breathed slowly in and out for a few moments. “...The future I come from is one where this world and all of its inhabitants have been shattered across fourteen different worlds. The Source and its shard realms, as we call them.” She opened her eyes and stared down into her teacup. “Azem. You asked me earlier if we are the same person. I didn’t feel like I could give you an adequate answer then, and I don’t know how much more satisfactory this one will be either. But I suspect the reason my soul was so quickly recognized when I arrived here and why we look and sound so similar is because…” She pulled her head up and looked Azem in the eyes. “I am one piece of what remains of your soul twelve thousand years or so in the future. Nine fourteenths of your soul, to be more precise.”
Now they each looked well and properly shocked.
“Twelve thousand years?” Hythlodaeus repeated back. “That is indeed quite far into the future. Well beyond the lifespan of our kind.”
“A…fragment of my soul? Fourteen worlds? I don’t understand…” Azem said.
“A shard of you, so to speak. One larger piece of five smaller ones that may still exist out there. But the memories of your life and any others this soul has lived are lost to me. I know only my own life in my own time, and that is what I will tell you of.
“I was born in what is known as the Sixth Astral Era. I won’t bore you with details of my early life—it was the same as countless other children of my time. War was a constant looming threat. Our homes lost. Our families gone. The same sad tale as every other survivor, over and over.
“I fled like so many others to the city-states of Eorzea, one of the few places I could find passage to that was still considered safe. I fashioned myself as a mercenary and took any odd job I could to get by. Clearing roads of dangerous predators, guarding caravans, locating missing items and people… I’d take just about any job if it paid well enough. I was skilled at it, enough so that I eventually caught the eye of the leadership of one of the city-states who hired me for a job involving traveling to the other cities as something of a representative. Having made enough of a good impression, I was then offered a position in the grand company of one such city, a guild formed to help give work to the many displaced people now populating the lands.
“During this time, I became aware of a strange phenomenon. Once, early in my adventures, I heard a voice call out to me as I saw a vision of a fiery sky raining meteors down. The voice said, ‘Hear, feel, think.” After that, sometimes without warning I would experience the memories of other people around me as though I were there myself. I could sense things coming before they would happen—quite an advantage in a fight, you can imagine. I could understand people who didn’t speak my language. And lastly, I could not be tempered by primals.”
“Ah yes, you mentioned these ‘primals’ earlier,” Venat said. “Something about them corrupting people’s aether?”
“Yes. They are what your kind would most likely consider some form of arcane entity that warps the aetheric balance in both the land and creatures around them, and were a constant danger in Eorzea. They needed a significant amount of aether to summon and the devotion of many people to make manifest, but once summoned, they were quite a problem. They are god-like beings of immense power and could create mindless followers by a process we called tempering, in which the aether of a person is corrupted and their mind enslaved to the primal to do its bidding. With no known way to reverse this process, any who were found to be tempered were slain. In a series of events, I was captured and taken to be sacrificed to one such primal known as Ifrit, but discovered that I could not be tempered. Instead, I defeated the primal who had tried to enslave me, and word of that deed soon began to spread.
“It was then that I was approached by a group calling themselves the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, a group dedicated to keeping the peace and stability of Eorzea, of which one of their primary functions was to locate and slay the primals that threatened this balance. There I met others who also possessed what we call the Echo, or the Blessing of Light. It was explained to me as a gift from Hydaelyn, a goddess who lived at the heart of our world, who I learned was the source of the voice I had heard call to me. I didn’t know what to think of any of this. Chosen by some elusive god that would occasionally speak to me? I was just another war refugee trying to find my place in the world. But I had triumphed over one primal and was immune to their tempering effects, and thus was a prime candidate to slay these monsters before they could wreak any more havoc. I could help people, protect them, and keep my new home from further destabilization. I decided that maybe this was what I was meant to be doing with my life after all and joined their organization.
“During the course of investigating another primal, I encountered a man in black robes and a red mask. He introduced himself as the Ascian Lahabrea, and said one such as I could not be suffered to live before trying to kill me.”
If anyone’s attention in the room had drifted off before, it came right back when the Warrior mentioned Lahabrea.
“Lahabrea?” Azem said back.
“So the Convocation of Fourteen still exists that far in the future…” Emet-Selch mused. The Warrior chose not to correct him for the moment.
“It’s been many years now since this all happened, mind, so I do not recall exactly what he said to me. Only that the power I possessed made me a danger to him and his plans, and I needed to die to see his goals to fruition. And to the man’s credit, he was correct.
“The Scions of the Seventh Dawn and their predecessor organizations knew of these people calling themselves Ascians and had been attempting to track them and unravel their plans for some time. We determined that they were behind the many primal summonings plaguing Eorzea. We had no idea who they were or what they wanted—to us they were like some cult of death god worshipers who existed solely to sow chaos and destabilize nations from the shadows.”
For now, the group seemed content to let her talk without interruption, although she could tell from his eyes Emet-Selch had a lot to say already. And she was going to have to touch on some uncomfortable subjects soon… She stared into her teacup again. The knots in her stomach refused to let her drink it.
“...After I killed my second primal, I returned to the base of the Scions only to find everyone who wasn’t out on a mission dead. Each of them brutally slain, and our leader captured. The Echo showed me that it was the Garlean Empire behind it.” She sighed and combed her fingers through her hair. “I suppose I have to talk about them. The Garlean Empire is a brutal military dictatorship that appeared seemingly out of nowhere about sixty years ago at that time, and the reason why war was such a constant looming threat. Garlemald had already conquered most of the continents of Othard and Ilsabard and were pushing into the continent of Aldenard where Eorzea was. They had taken Ala Mhigo in the northeast but had stalled out there for some time due to the presence of Primals in Eorzea and the need to focus on other fronts, but five years previously they had made a concerted effort to invade. One particularly unhinged legatus had sought to pull one of the two moons down from the sky and crash it into the continent, killing everyone and everything on it.”
That line got quite the collection of confused looks.
“Sorry, but… one of two moons?” Azem asked.
“Some neighboring planets possess them, but Etheirys lacks any such celestial bodies,” said Emet-Selch. “Are you sure you’re from Etheirys at all?”
“Yes, I’m aware of how ridiculous that last line sounded.” The Warrior rubbed her face as she spoke. “I’m trying not to bog you all down in unnecessary details. In the future, there are more moons, of which one got dropped on Eorzea, and it had a gargantuan and very angry ancient Primal inside called Bahamut, which tried to lay waste to the land and was only stopped by a powerful mage with the help of the Scions, but it still lead to massive casualties on all sides and rained the burning shrapnel of a giant artificial satellite across the land.” She rattled it all off so fast that she had to stop and breathe at the end. They didn’t look any less confused. “Which also sounds ridiculous, but you should know that it happened and was called the Seventh Umbral Calamity. It was so calamitous that it disrupted the aetheric balance of the whole continent if not the whole star and all the people’s memories on it.”
“Including your memories?” Emet-Selch asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why should I believe your story when you admit your memories have been compromised?”
Her anger flared up again. “Frankly, I don’t give a damn what you believe or not. You asked me to tell my story and I am doing so. Believe what you will, or don’t.”
“Now now, let her finish her tale before we pass judgment.” Hythlodaeus chided to Emet-Selch and sipped his tea. “I find it fascinating thus far. Do continue.”
The Warrior had no idea how Hythlodaeus could be so nonchalant about all this future business, but at least someone could remain calm.
“Anyway, where was I? Right, so a contingent of soldiers from the Garlean Empire found our base and killed many of the Scions and captured the leadership. With our lines of communication severed, I took refuge in a nearby church that was friendly with the Scions. I met a Garlean defector there named Cid who was also being hunted and soon reconvened with one of the surviving Scions, an elezen teenager named Alphinaud. Unfortunately there had been another primal named Garuda summoned and we needed an airship to get to it, which our defector friend conveniently had, but less conveniently had crashed in the mountains of another nation.
Azem raised his hand. “My apologies, I’m trying to follow as best I can, but what’s an elezen?”
Hythodaeus also raised his hand. “I also have a question. What is a ‘teenager?’”
The Warrior looked between the two of them, unsure where to start. “Would ‘adolescent,’ be a clearer word? It is the age where one is not quite a child anymore but also not quite yet an adult.”
“Ah, the generalized education ages, I see. Carry on,” said Hythlodaeus.
“And elezen are one of the many dozens of sapient races of people across Etheirys in the future.”
“Many dozens? Just how many different types of people are there?” Azem asked.
“I don’t think I’ve ever tried to stop and count, honestly. And even then I could be missing some from parts of the world I haven’t visited yet,” the Warrior answered her.
“So your appearance isn’t indicative of how the average person looks in your time?”
“Oh heavens no. Besides generally being bipedal and possessing the intelligence to speak words and form societies, there are people who range from looking more or less like your kind here but smaller to people that resemble felines, rodents, reptiles, birds, sea creatures, elephants, plant life…”
Hythodaeus looked delighted at such a prospect. Emet-Selch scrunched his nose up at the thought.
The Warrior continued her tale without interruption for a while longer. She told them of traveling to Coerthas and their thousand-year war with the dragons, how they recovered Cid’s airship, and of taking on Garuda and the Ultima Weapon. Of finding the surviving Scions and the rescue mission to break their captured friends out of the castrum, and how Lahabrea had stolen Thancred’s body to infiltrate the Scions in the service of Garlemald.
“Stop.” Emet-Selch raised his hand. “The seat of Lahabrea may belong only to those with advanced knowledge in phantomology, but one cannot simply pull a soul out and put it in another body, especially one already occupied. While there is ongoing research into the field of souls and their nature, even our kind cannot manage a feat such as that.”
“Then I suppose your kind must have figured it out in the intervening twelve thousand years, because Lahabrea can and did do just that, quite frequently from what I gathered.”
Emet-Selch sighed and shook his head. “Truly the quality standards of those selected for positions in the Convocation have deteriorated that far into the future. Reduced to possessing others and milling about in the shadows…”
The Warrior continued to ignore him. She covered the Alliance’s coordinated strike on the Empire’s bases, how she fought her way into Castrum Meridianum and her battle against Gaius, the Ultima Weapon and Lahabrea, of how Hydaelyn had shielded her, the battle won and the day saved.
“Well.” The Warrior tilted her head to the side and sighed. “Naturally, word of that feat spread far and wide, and almost overnight I found myself quite famous. As much as I insisted that I could not have managed any of this alone, I was hailed as the Warrior of Light, Champion and Savior of Eorzea. Soon everyone from every corner was petitioning the Scions of the Seventh Dawn for aid in this or that endeavor. The Scions decided to relocate to more neutral territory since we needed new headquarters anyway. Before the move, however, we were visited by another so-called Ascian, this time a man in white robes and a red mask.”
“Elidibus,” Emet-Selch answered before the Warrior could say the name.
“Yes. He claimed to be an emissary and did not wish to fight us. He was just as unhelpfully cryptic as Lahabrea was, though. Said something about how those of us with the Echo were valuable to them, how if we could grow and understand more of the nature of the world we wouldn’t have to be enemies, but we weren’t there yet, or something like that. Talked more about the one true god Zodiark, the world being broken, refused to elaborate, and left.
“For the next year or so, things slowed down. I was ever on standby in case another primal was summoned and needed removing, but thankfully such incidents were few and far between. I spent most of my days helping the never-ending stream of refugees from foreign lands seeking asylum and a new life in Eorzea. In time, the settlement called Mor Dhona where the Scions had relocated grew into a proper town as we did what we could to find work for all the new migrants to the area. Things were not so peaceful everywhere else, however, as the presence of ever more impoverished asylum seekers caused much political unrest in the city-states, especially Ul’dah, where they were the most numerous. Riots began to break out, and while I did what I could to de-escalate the conflict, the root of these problems extended far beyond me, and I was in no hurry to become someone’s political pawn.
“Aphinaud, the elezen teenager I had traveled with extensively by that point, sought to unite the Grand Companies of Eorzea under one banner to continue to uphold our unified front. I helped to recruit more wanderers and adventuring types like myself to the company while Alphinaud worked to secure funding for the organization.”
“You said this ‘Alphinaud’ was quite young, correct?” Hythlodaeus asked. “Less than a century old, I take it? Isn’t that rather young to be forming and leading such an organization?”
The Warrior gave Hythlodaeus a bewildered look. If less than a century was a teenager, then what did that make her? “Yes, he was indeed very young to be taking on such tasks. He had a fancy degree from a nation of scholars and enough money to keep the Scions afloat, though, so I just…let him go about his business. Perhaps not the wisest choice in hindsight, but I was always busy with other matters to think much of it at the time.”
She continued her story as the time passed, feeling like she was rambling a bit and never sure how much or little detail to tell, but no one had said anything one way or the other. She covered the building of Mor Dhona, the Doman refugees, Lady Iceheart and her band of heretics in the the Coerthas mountains, meeting Lord Aymeric, the Garlean civil war, Moenbryda and her research into how to trap an Ascian’s soul to prevent them from body-hopping with Auracite and then destroy it with a blast of concentrated light aether. She told them of Nabriales, and how he became the first Ascian the Warrior of Light had slain, but what it had cost them to do so.
“Let me get this straight,” Emet-Selch started. “The Convocation of Fourteen exists in the future, but they go by the name ‘Ascians,’ do not operate openly, and have some form of hierarchy among the members, unlike today where they are all considered equals.”
“More or less, yes, that is correct.”
Emet-Selch sighed and shook his head. “I do not like the sound of your future one bit if that is what the citizenry has been forced into dealing with from their leadership. This future Nabriales sounds unbearable, and the current one already grates on my nerves.”
“Come now, Nabriales isn’t so bad,” Azem lightly chided.
“It’s his voice, I can’t stand it when he— Ugh, nevermind, please continue with your story, ‘Champion of Eorzea’ or whatever it is your people call you.”
She frowned but otherwise ignored Emet-Selch’s little barbs for now and returned to her tale. She spoke of the war with the dragons in Coerthas heating up and the Crystal Braves stand at the Steps of Faith, of her framing at the banquet in Ul’dah and the Crystal braves betrayal and of how they were forced to flee the city at great loss with the survivors left to seek asylum in the closed off city of Ishgard in Coerthas, ironically now the place with their most vocal allies.
Azem raised her hand. “Sorry again, just to clarify, this is the nation with all the snow and large scaly beasts called dragons? But some people of the land had chosen to side with the dragons instead, and that was the group with the woman who turned into a Primal?”
“Correct.” The Warrior of Light continued with the story of how she set to work trying to repay the kindness of House Fortemps for taking them in, meeting the Archbishop and learning of more Ascian involvement, Ysale and their journey to Dravania with Estinien to seek the aid of Hraesvelgr to stop Nidhogg, and of Ysale learning that she was not the avatar of Saint Shiva after all, and that the primal was a creation of her own desires.
“How strange.” Hythlodaeus put a hand on his chin and looked down in thought. “That sounds most akin to the way that many of our people transform, weaving aether around themselves in such a way as to reflect their own concept of self… but we have no creations like Primals with this tempering process that you spoke of earlier.”
“I cannot say for certain, but I suspect the magicks involved are of a similar nature,” the Warrior answered him. “After all, it was the Ascians who taught each of these disparate groups how to summon Primals in the first place. While those of my time do not possess creation magick at the level of your kind here, it seems the Ascians retained enough knowledge to teach people how to replicate an imperfect or warped version of it, if they could call upon enough gathered stores of aether to do so.”
She covered their search for Nidhogg after her and Estinien decided that the only way to end the war was to kill Nidhogg without Hraesvelgr’s help and the subsequent slaying of the wyrm. How the Echo let her learn the truth behind the Dragonsong War, just as it had for Ysale, and how they returned to Ishgard to share the good news of Nidhogg’s defeat only to find the city in chaos from Ysayle’s faction rioting in the streets. How they told the truth behind the war to their close companions, how Aymeric went to confront the Archbishop, and how they stormed the Vault of the Holy See of Ishgard to rescue him when he didn’t return. And…of Haurchefant’s sacrifice. The Warrior could feel the corners of her eyes tingle mentioning it, even after all these years.
She leaned her head back and sighed before righting herself again to continue her story with how they pursued the archbishop and learned of Azys Lla, of the confrontation of the Scions with the Heavensward and the Garlean Empire in the ruins of the ancient floating islands, the loss of Ysayle, the battle with Lahabrea and Igeyorhm and their defeat, and the subsequent defeat of Thordan and his knights.
“Before he perished, Thordan looked up at me, horror writ plain on his face, and asked me who—or what—I am. I had no answer to give him. I was just another wandering adventurer who happened into some odd circumstances. But by then, it was starting to become clear that there was something strange about me beyond just the Echo and the Blessing of Light.”
The Warrior glanced around the room to gauge her audience’s reactions again. Azem had an awkward face with a flattened and pulled back mouth. Emet-Selch was resting his chin on one hand and with one eyebrow slightly raised, while Hythlodaeus looked as unperturbed as ever and Venat wore her encouraging smile. The Warrior took a very small sip of her tea to test her body’s reaction to it. It tasted lovely, but her stomach still did not feel agreeable, so she set the cup back down.
She pressed on with how Estinien became corrupted by the eyes of Nidhogg, Ishgard formally rejoining the Eorzean Alliance, finding the missing Scions and clearing their names, keeping Ishgard from falling apart for the next few tumultuous years of civil unrest, and of the strange encounter with the so-called “Warriors of Darkness” who claimed to be from another world dealing with its own Ascian-based problems. She took a bit more time detailing her encounter with Minfillia-turned-Hydaelyn in the Antitower and how much, or how little, Hydaelyn told her about the history of the world and the Source and its 13 reflections, of which only five remained.
“Hydaelyn explained to me that with the destruction of each shard, the Source had experienced a Calamity, an event of untold destruction and death that had long marked how our historians tracked eras of time,” she explained. “The seventh such calamity had happened in my own lifetime: The event with Bahamut and the false moon. That was why everyone’s memories and the aether of the land itself had been so strange afterward: Another world had been destroyed and all of its aether drained into ours. With each rejoining, Hydaelyn was weakened and Zodiark strengthened. She did not think she could survive another, and beseeched me to stop the Ascians, lest the world fall to ruin in another calamity and eventually result in their dark god regaining his form.
Azem raised her hand once again. “An observation, if you will. We are currently in a time before these two beings, Zodiark and Hydaelyn exist, yes?” The Warrior nodded. “And these future ‘Ascians’ as they’re known serve Zodiark?” Another nod. “And the Ascians are the ones who know of and teach others how to create these god-like Primals?” A third nod. “Then would it not be unreasonable to surmise that at some point in the future but long before your time, these two god-like entities are created and those on the Convocation at the time fall prey to this tempering effect you mentioned earlier, and are thus forced into serving Zodiark?”
The Warrior straightened up with surprise that Azem had pieced that all together so quickly. “Hydaelyn did not say. But you are not wrong, either. I learned much later that Zodiark was indeed the very first Primal ever created, and Hydaelyn the second, created to combat the first.”
“Well, that would certainly explain why this future Convocation is so bafflingly idiotic and incompetent,” Emet-Selch scoffed. “Enthralled to a creation? How ridiculous and embarrassing that would be.”
The Warrior continued to bite her tongue at Emet-Selch’s remarks. “Truth be told, I did not entirely trust Hydaelyn’s words that day. I was angry that some giant crystal in the middle of the aetherial sea had taken our leader and friend Minfillia from the Scions for her own ends. And while I was no friend of the Ascians, I disliked being told what to do. The whole ordeal left me with far more questions than answers. Having already met a person from another world, I knew that portion of what she said to be true. But why had she fought Zodiark in the first place? Who or what even was he? And for that matter, who or what was she? Why would she choose me? What did I have to do with any of this? I sensed that she was hiding something from me.”
She felt as though she hadn’t even made it halfway through her story and was already tired of talking for this long. She much preferred other people to be the ones that shared her tales of adventure, embellished though they may be. With a sigh, she continued, and covered the final fight with Nidhogg and saving Estinien, the confrontation with the Warriors of Darkness and the last desperate act to send them home to save what remained of their world.
She leaned forward onto her forearms and laced her fingers together. “At this point, I was getting quite fed up with these so-called Ascians. Just about every major disaster and tragedy I’d witnessed in my life could directly or indirectly be traced back to them in some form or fashion. The Calamity? Ascians. The constant Primal threat? Ascians. The Garlean Empire? Ascians. Archbishop Thordan? Ascians. The Warriors of Darkness? Ascians. Time and again, it all led back to them. While I was aware it would not magically bring about world peace, I knew that I would know no rest so long as this group existed, seeing as I had gone and made myself their priority number one target by killing three of them. So I swore then that I would hunt down and kill every last one of them if that was what it took to rid myself and the world of their chaotic and corrupting influence. And Elidibus was next on my list.”
For the first time in some time of staring unfocused at the table as she spoke, the Warrior looked up and locked eyes with Emet-Selch. “Are you perhaps beginning to understand why I was so reluctant to tell you my story? Why I did not wish to recount these tales to anyone in this room? I came here to find the cause of my world’s impending destruction. That is all you needed to know, but I told you much more, and I tire of speaking. Leave this conversation and speak to me no more about it and the future. You will be happier that way. To speak further would only alter the future more than I have already potentially altered it. To speak further could strand me here in a place and timeline not my own.”
“You expect to leave off there and have us accept that?” Emet-Selch asked in an incredulous tone. “No. I told you before. I will hear it all. Everything. Now continue.”