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The words caught in Sidurgu’s throat when he approached the marketplace teeming with au ra.
Rielle peered at him from his side, trying to discern what kind of face he was making beneath his unkempt hair. The tang of salt stuck to her skin still, but it was a relief to see the sun after traversing the length of the briny cave. The sky was a vast, infinite blue with an endless plains beneath it, not unlike Coerthas before the calamity. Sid only talked about his homeland a handful of times, but the Azim Steppe was as beautiful as he always made it sound.
He seemed lost in thought - the axis of his home was now skewed, shifted from warm yurts and lumbering dzo to unmoving steel and stone. The people here weren’t his family, the food was unfamiliar, and he lost the ability to understand the language long ago.
But he ruffled Rielle’s hair anyways, giving her a small smile. “Thank you.”
-
It's been a few turns of the sun since then, and they’d been staying in Reunion for the most recent leg of their wayfaring. Sid found work among the merchants and hunters, his obvious experience as a mercenary lending him an edge. The people here don't recoil from the sight of him or his sword - if anything, they ask him what sort of beasts he managed to fell and what tribe he was from.
Rielle lets the daylight swathe her in its rays as she strolls across the Sea of Blades, humming one of the songs the hunters from Tailfeather brought back to the Forgotten Knight. She climbs to the top a grassy ledge, gathering herbs while looking out onto the land and beasts below. It happens again, in that moment - she can feel hollowed bones on her back, twitching from the desire to take wing and drown in the deep blue above. And then it fades as soon as it had come, her staff swinging and knocking against her shoulder blades as she hops to the next bush.
Don't stray too far , Sid told her. He would be accompanying one of the Qestiri hunting parties to earn his keep, leaving Rielle to her own devices. The children thought she looked strange - hornless and bereft of scales - but took her into their fold nonetheless. She doesn't have the heart to tell them she is summers older than most of them when they tug her along to play games of hide and seek. When they got tired of that, she ventured past the gates under the watchful eye of one mute guard.
Reunion’s walls are still in sight, she notes while putting more plants into her satchel. She heard that some tribes were fond of assaulting travelers, but none would dare interrupt the peace when the marketplace was so close. The Xaela man clad in a bright yellow coat - Tamachag - told them as much when they arrived. She rounds one stone lantern and spares a glance towards the west, taking in the Dawn Throne over Azim Khaat. There were whispers of a foreign warrior woven through the marketplace, like wispy tendrils of aether in the air. One who came from across the sea bearing strange company, a strange sword, and the strange penchant for fighting under the weakest tribe’s banner. The thought of them makes her smile - they always found a way to leave their mark, like following a trail of mischief and heroism when their letters came late.
Rielle can imagine them now in the field of verdant blades, their movements mirroring Fray’s when they dance with a sword in hand, aether black and bright as it wraps them with bursts of power. She wonders when they'll visit Ishgard or Gridania again. Maybe if she’s lucky, they’ll come bearing another rolanberry tart or one of Mother Miounne’s pies-
...In an instant, Rielle’s neck snaps up from her task, her brow furrowing. Something is amiss, in this paradise of radiant sun and lush grass.
The hair on the back of her neck prickles. She knows the feeling well; it's the feeling of being watched. Like prey. It makes a muted bolt of panic course through her veins, but she stills herself, instead scanning the area around her. E-Sumi-Yan always emphasized the importance of keeping a clear mind. (Sylphie, with her sharp tongue, remarked it was easy for him to simply say, having lived over two centuries and seen everything under the sun.)
There is truth to his words, though. Conjury is based on attuning to the aether around one’s self - the stalwart earth, the fickle wind, the heartbeats of the creatures beneath a thick canopy. She slows her breathing, despite her quickening pulse. Just like Fray taught her to.
The bloodlust clogs her senses and she sees it, her head whipping around towards the source - a beast that looks like a coeurl but with two long canines protruding from its jaw. It snarls at her, its ribs visible and sunken eyes fixed on her as she edges away.
Her hands itch for her staff as they maintain this deadly stalemate. Her heartbeat rings in her ears like the sound of the Holy See’s mighty ballistas. Thud, thud, thud - sharpened steel explosively fired from atop their bastions when the dragons threw themselves against the Gates of Judgement; the sound was loud enough to hear even from the Pillars. Rielle’s body seems to tremble to the same rhythmic drone from her heart as she's fixed on the creature’s every move.
When the beast makes ready to lunge at her, she ducks, rolling out of reach in the grass. She unsheathes her arms, channeling the aether around her. Focus, focus!
The earth answers her call, churning stone breaking free from beneath the grass. The chunk of rock is lobbed at the beast, momentarily stunning it. But the aether here is different from the Shroud and Rielle can't draw upon its full potential, and it only takes a moment for her attacker to recover, its chipped fang only making it more agitated.
Rielle does what she did the day she met Sidurgu and Fray - run.
There aren't any thick trees or arching stone to hide behind, the short blades leaving her fully exposed. Rielle’s satchel bumps against her waist, her staff gripped in one hand and making her movements more cumbersome than she'd like. Reunion’s gates are within sight, but they're not close enough. She doubts the guard could see or hear her from this distance. She also knows she can't outrun a beast like this, not when it had the advantage of living on the Steppe for all its life.
Rielle’s senses sharpen again, this time to the wind around her as she sprints. If she can cast a single aero spell to disorient it, then maybe- !
The second she spares a glance behind her, she freezes, eyes wide. A figure consumes the sun for an endless moment, lacking wings of any kind but seeming as free and natural in the air as if they'd been flying all their life.
Upon impact, a watery gurgle escapes her pursuer, and when she fully turns she's greeted by a spray of blood. She is no stranger to death - Fray and Sid and the Warrior of Light have killed for her plenty of times - but what is a stranger is her savior.
He pulls his weapon out of the carcass with a smooth schlick , and his lance seems to drink deep of the carnage, ancient rage radiating off of it for a horrible, visceral moment. Rielle nearly flinches on the spot as if the end had sunk into her, rather than the beast.
She recognizes his choice of arms as the symbol of the Knights Dragoon - the order of soldiers who held Ishgard’s pride in every jump and thrust of their spear yet remained somehow damnably mysterious to the general populace. And when Rielle dares to approach the man - a man clad in armor like scales while his hair dances about like a blizzard in the highlands - she nears not a chorus of rage, but a soft hymn.
She knows him and his song, and his true name is in a tongue hers cannot adequately pronounce.
Nidhogg, her mind supplies. He is Nidhogg.
Nidhogg, who wept with every onze of his being for Ratataskor. Even from Anyx Trine, the deafening song of his vengeance had the most mournful of melodies hidden underneath.
“Nidhogg?” She asks cautiously.
And the man - an elezen, not a Dravanian - finally turns towards her, clearly surprised. “Who are you, girl?”
-
It only took a glance for the other to sense the aether laced into her being. He lowered his guard and walked with her to Reunion, saying he had a bounty to collect. It seemed Sid wasn’t the only foreigner who sought out menial tasks for a bit of gil.
They finally rest at one fire pit in the market, with Rielle sealing his wounds. The other is sporting cuts and bruises from various excursions, and while he insisted he didn't need tending to, she wanted to repay him somehow. (And no, she didn't use her puppy eyes, as Sid always put it. She is perfectly capable of being diplomatic when she needs to be, like that elezen boy from the Scions.) The magicks under her fingertips are soothing as the aether skims the surface of his skin. The scent of his blood makes her distantly nostalgic with each wound that closes.
As they sit by the cookfire, she learns he is Estinien Wyrmblood. The same Azure Dragoon who drove his lance through countless Dravanians and Nidhogg himself, only to fall upon the city as his mortal enemy’s shade until he crossed arms with the Warrior of Light. He tells her of a more recent encounter with Hyadelyn’s chosen, one where they fought as allies rather than foes.
“I try to seek peace with what is left of Nidhogg’s horde.” Estinien’s voice is soft, even as his lance pulses with the vestiges of the wyrm’s implacable grief. “But some have been driven to madness by his song. I can only offer them the release of death as a mercy.”
He spares a moment’s glance towards the Steppe’s proving grounds, to the northwest.
“'Twas fortuitous Faunehm’s consort descended when he did.” He gazes deep into the flickering flames, closing his eyes after a moment of deliberation. “I would have liked to spare her, yet I know only too well the power a song has over one’s brood.”
Rielle is briefly reminded of her mother - Sidurgu did the same for her, when she was taken by the promise of Halone’s love.
Estinien looks tired, like he had fought for a thousand years, but happy. Nothing like the bitter husk of revenge he had been. He fidgets with dried wood and a hunting knife in hand, absently whittling away the bark as he speaks and tossing it into the fire. “Nidhogg - he still lives, because I still live. He lives in the space in my veins where I bled for him and his kin. His essence has become entangled in mine, much like yours. Although, it is unusual for those who partake of dragon blood to such an extent to retain their elezen form.”
Rielle shakes her head. “I wasn't the one who partook. It was my father.”
Her thoughts drift back to him - she finds it strange, how all the moments of his love have been near-eclipsed by that day. She can't remember his face, only his claws and fangs as he tried to rip her mother’s throat out. And after the Templar’s sword found its way through his scaled hide, her eyes turned steely and anxious, seething with disgust as if Rielle was complicit in his betrayal. We must needs repent for our sins, Halone forgive me, forgive me...
“The sins of antiquity,” Estinien murmurs, as if he can sense the unpleasant memories he's dredged up. “are ever potent. Though you look none the worse for wear. I suppose that comes with growing up alongside the magicks cultivated in your blood rather than wresting it all in one go.”
“I have dreams.” Rielle suddenly tells him, clasping and unclasping her hands because she hasn't told anyone about this, not even Sid. “And in them, I’m flying around the spires of Anyx Trine and the peak of Sohm Al, with little dragonets climbing on my scales and taking shelter under my wing. And all of it feels familiar.”
She and Sid visited the Trine again, once. Those from Ishgard didn't know what to do with themselves after the end of the Dragonsong War and it wasn't unusual for them to make the pilgrimage there. The forelands called to her in their ancient tones, holding the lingering aether from both elezen and dragon in eons past. The dragonlings within the Trine’s walls called her Father, father!, flitting around her and playfully tugging at her hair. Sid looked outright appalled at that, but she only felt a lifetime of fondness despite it being the first time they’d met. Sid didn't ask when she looked over the Churning Mists, gazing longingly in the direction of Zenith and Sohr Khai.
The sense of ease made her uneasy, made her wonder if this was the reason she was being hunted by the Inquisition. She was a girl, a dragon, or perhaps both at once or neither at all. There are times when she wakes up without a covering of scales and it feels wrong - as if Sid, who is snoring and curled around her protectively even in his sleep, looks closer to natural than she does.
Estinien has no words for her.
He takes something out of his pack, and it's wood and bone carved until they form spindly shapes and thick shells. A perfect emulation of one of Ratataskor’s gleaming scales, reflecting the sun in their own melody as she sings into the skies around Sohr Khai. The form of Midgardsormr in gnarled driftwood, and she can see it in her mind’s eye perfectly, how the forefather of her forefather was comforted by the way he stretched across the skies only to sink into the depths of Silvertear like a falling star. The shape of Tioman, lazily basking in the warm sun atop Sohm Al without a care in the world.
A fang, something that could be shared with a thousand of someone’s kin, that she somehow recognizes faintly as another of Nidhogg’s brood who was fond of baring her fangs in a toothy smile, mirthful around the elezen who had taken to lacing her horns with chains of flowers and feathers. The leathery wing of an overzealous youth flinging himself from the thick canopy of the forelands, the shape imperfect well into adulthood with one part of the membrane torn yet too proud to simply collapse on itself.
She knows this like she knows Nidhogg’s slumbering form taking deep breaths, making his shadowy form rise and fall when he curls into himself in the Aery. They are the same as the shower of snowy feathers that came with Hraesvelgr’s descent upon the Anyx Trine, each one iridescent like the stained glass in Saint Reymanaud’s when it catches the light of the sun. She watched each fleeting spectra with every scale and spine, inhaling the ancient taste of his aether and bowing her neck in reverence when he came to bless his children.
The tremors of home echo in a timbre in her chest and it's nearly too much for her to bear. She thinks this is how the warrior must feel, thrust into pasts and thrown into currents of emotion without warning. Her eyes water slightly and she can't tell if it's from the sudden breeze wafting a puff of smoke in her direction or because she's never been able to put the nagging yearning into words until now.
“I carved these while on my travels. It helps when there's no one else to… to speak to, about this.” There’s a hand tentatively placed on her shoulder. She meets Estinien’s soft gaze, and she can sense the ghost of gnarled horns around him like a wreath of knotted briars and dark scales.
He waits, listening to the sound of her breathing and silently encouraging her to speak. The stories spill from her mouth without warning and without restraint, but he seems content to listen to them all.
-
It’s close to cathartic to talk about the smell of ancient aether and the feeling of soaring through clouds until it's sunset on the Steppe. Estinien nods sagely, not in a patronizing way, but in one that means he understands when he joins in to fill the gaps.
“You learn to live with it - the fleeting memories, the vague sense of missing something.” Estinien says once she's tired herself. And maybe coming from anyone else, it would be a meager comfort, but this is the man who held onto Nidhogg’s fury until it cracked his skull and burned his ribs down to the marrow.
Rielle nods, still gathering herself from the echoing chorus ringing in her head.
“Twould not do well to deny what is part of you, Rielle. Fury knows I made the mistake of thinking Nidhogg and I were any different, seeking naught but revenge for fallen kin.” He confesses quietly while gathering his trinkets back into his pack. “Whoever’s essence runs in your veins, I am certain they mean to make peace with you. They would have torn you apart otherwise.”
Rielle only blinks at him slowly. Perhaps if she were more naive she would be inclined to be furious at the proposal, hands balled into fists and her jaw clenched - what sort of peace could I hope to forge when this blood turned my father into a scaled beast and my mother desperate and depraved?
But she knows now, that it would be futile to curse what is in the past. If there was anything she learned from Fray, Sid, and her favorite adventurer, it was that forging ahead was better than dwelling on things that couldn't be changed.
And she’s always known, when ghostly wings keep her steady or when the aether is sharper than usual and she wields the wind and earth with the practice of someone who has felt it in their bones for centuries, that he sought peace. She sighs, not unlike the deep sigh that escaped the dying dragon who sensed her beloved tangled in Rielle’s aether.
“He has kept you safe thus far, has he not?” Estinien asks. “One of Hraesvelgr’s brood.”
“I think so.” She knows the surges of aether guiding her staff were not always her own, but she was never afraid of them. Although, she had Sid and Fray and the Warrior of Light to protect her as well.
“There you are.” Sidurgu interrupts the moment on cue, looking notably ragged from the day’s hunt.
“Sid,” Rielle gasps, not hearing him approach from behind. He stops by her side, slightly bristling at the sight of Estinien in spite of his fatigue.
“And you are…?” Sid asks, eyeing the other carefully. Ishgardians fascinated by exotics were practically infesting Kugane which already set him on edge, but to find yet another on the Steppe was unusual.
“No one of consequence.” He says, rising to his feet and slinging his lance across his back. “I take it you're her…” He gives a curious glance between Sid and Rielle, thinking of Alberic and if the term actually sounds right when it rolls off his tongue. “Father?”
“What? ” Sid nearly chokes at that. “I’m the one taking care of her, if that's what you mean.”
Estinien only looks faintly amused at his incorrect guess and shrugs. “Well, Rielle has been pleasant company. I’ll be in Reunion for a while yet if you need anything, but my business here is done otherwise. Take care, child.”
With a short wave, he takes his leave, just like powdery snow being swept away by the wind.
-
“...Do I really look that old?” Sid asks after he's left, only remembering to be offended as he’s biting into another chunk of khorkhog.
“Maybe it’s the height.” Rielle offers, giggling when Sid makes a face.
She thinks about Estinien and his mission of peace - peace for those left behind by the Dragonsong War, and peace for himself. Ser Lord Speaker and the rest of Ishgard hummed with the promise of such a thing, and Rielle thinks that maybe she'd like that, too. The wings on her back flutter happily, feeling lighter than before.