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The Echo had not given Gyome a moment's rest since he had set foot in Doma for the first time. Even retiring to his inn room had done little to quiet the buzz at the back of his mind. Was there danger in the city? Was he supposed to be doing something else?
His answer came in the shape of a beacon of light suddenly appearing in his bedroom. Drawing his katana, he observed the beam turn into a Lalafell-sized doorway. Something beckoned to him from within, he could feel it. A crackle in his mind made him clutch at his head.
Suddenly, a voice-!
"Let expanse contract! Eon become instant!"
A gust of air shot out of the doorway before pulling insistently at him. His robes fluttered at his ankles as he tried to step back. The pull only became stronger, tendrils of aether emerging to wrap around his frame. He startled at the familiar feeling, but he could not place where he had felt it before.
"Champions from beyond the rift, heed my call!"
A final pull drew him forward at last. The moment his fingers touched the light, he was sucked in.
Light surrounded him, a tunnel and a safeguard as he felt himself be lifted weightlessly. He had no sense of which way he was going, blinded as he was, and could only trust the lifeline of aether holding him tightly around the middle. Confusion and concern was only heeled by the pulse of recognizable magic. As quickly as it had started, it ended just as soon, setting him upon stable ground at last.
The instant his feet touched the floor, Gyome was met with a cacophony of sensation.
The Darkness around him was in stark contrast to the familiar wash of Light that had granted him passage to wherever he found himself now. It laid heavy upon him, a crushing weight that nearly pressed the air from his chest, choking his senses. The Lalafell became aware of a singular point from which the aether poured from, a shape that grew and molded into something else entirely. It pulsed with life, growing and growing until it towered over him. Smoke took form and revealed a hulking monster with hulking arms in a billowing robe. He took in the grand staff in its hand, a familiar purple entity atop it, carved in crystal.
Zodiark...!
"Show me your 'vaunted' strength. And I shall expose the lie of your fragmented existence!" the creature of Darkness bellowed.
Whatever it was, it was clearly the enemy.
Before Gyome could draw his sword, however, someone came to stand in front of him, back turned. A Miqo'te dressed in Allagan robes. She threw her hand back to stop him, barely turning her head. He startled back at the heat of Light rolling off of her in waves. If the creature before them was a void, a vacuum without a glimmer, she was like the Sun itself, bright and hot with malignant aether.
"We do this together, my friend," she commanded him. Her voice was sharp and determined.
And oh so familiar.
At the sound of her voice, people around him began to stir, others he had failed to notice. When they stepped forward, some of them were instantly recognizable to him. Eleanorne, Dromarch, Aigead, Momoya'...they were his guildmates!
But somehow...not them...?
The notes of their different aethers were wrong, but still somehow in the right order to be them. These were his friends, but they were slightly off. Uncannily similar, but just enough different to stir a strange feeling in him. Glancing amongst them, he could see they were also taking each other in. Some were sporting completely different outfits, some even in a different class than he knew them to be in before. What struck him most was the chord of their souls, the same familiar song that he knew echoed back from within his own spirit.
They were also Hydaelyn's chosen.
So the Miqo'te...?
Gyome's eye shot forward to rake over the figure before him. White hair and fur, but she stood the same, held herself the same. Her aether sang to him a tune he knew by heart, even if the notes danced away from him in this other form she took. As she drew her staff, he could see it was the familiar Yagrush in her hand. She seemed to sense his gaze and turned to him at last. He froze.
Instead of her kind, brown eyes, her gaze was a bright and foggy white. She was looking at him, but not really.
She was blind.
"You're with me, right, Gyome?"
Maya. His Maya. His dearest friend.
But not.
Suddenly, there was movement all around them. Darkness fell away to reveal the crumbling remains of a city in twilight. The creature's robe flowed and roiled with an unseen wind, gliding unsettlingly closer to their group. It raised it's monstrous claws and swung at them.
"You are destined for naught else but oblivion!"
Electricity seemed to flow through the party and they all sprang forward to attack. Though Gyome's eyes often drifted to his friend in the crowd.
This Maya's magic felt the same. Her healing aether flowing through him whenever his made a misstep was the same. It was clear she was using aethersight, dancing away from attacks and looking at the party members who needed her. He wanted to watch her, wanted to see what else was strangely alike to his Maya, but knew that the creature - this Hades he heard it boom - would need all of his focus.
Gyome's blade sang with the skill of his swings, slicing and cutting the Darkness like a gleam of lightning tearing through the horizon. It made sense for him to think of Ramuh now, of all times. The flowing robes, the whistling wind of his blade, a giant being with a staff. He tried his best to center himself on the memory of his blessing from the Primal, trying to find the eye in the storm of the chaos around him.
The group fought and danced as one, escaping cloying Darkness and avoiding flailing limbs and tendrils of magic. Even as Hades grew and grew, wider than the arena itself, the group managed to stay together. Maya healed and struck out with all her might, a wild power radiating off of her. Her skill was beyond the Maya of his home. There was even a moment where her magic seemed to gush out of her, creating wings of pure Light at her back, granting them life and succor with every cast.
Despite his terrible form, despite his promises of eradication, the beast was slowly being beaten back. It was taking blow after blow after blow, trembling and quaking. With a terrible cry, Hades finally withered away, stealing away whatever illumination he had been creating.
Silence.
Maya glanced in his direction. She opened her mouth to speak, to call out to him-
"I...will...not...yield."
Thunderous. Murderous.
All at once, Gyome was being ripped away.
Every fiber of him was being flung back. Not just off the platform, but far away. Back in the direction of home. He glanced around to see that everyone else was feeling the same, bracing themselves against an invisible force.
Everyone, but Maya.
She reached out to him, fear painted across her face. A face he knew, a face he loved like family. She was terrified and all he could do was reach back.
The last thing he heard before falling away into the abyss was her calling his name.
-----
Gyome lurched up in bed, katana drawn. He glanced around his room wildly only to see the usual furnishings. No doorway of light, no reflections of his friends, no Hades. Through the crack in his window shade, he could see the dawn was creeping up the horizon. A dream...?
Yet when he stood up, his body ached with the telltale pains of battle. His hands burned and his shoulders were stiff. It felt as though he had not slept a wink besides.
What was that...?
He had little time to think upon it before there was rapping at his door.
"Pardon, sir, but Lyse has asked after you," called a voice. Perhaps the inn attendant?
He needed to focus on the moment. He was here, in Doma, fighting for their liberation. Whatever he had dreamed, it would have to wait to be examined further some other point.
As he packed his things, Gyome's hands stopped upon a small pile of letters he had tucked away in his bag. Thumbing through them, he smiled gently at Maya's messy scrawl. She had wanted to come with him, but he had asked her to stay in Ala Mhigo, defend his home. She would be needed more there in the aftermath of the rebellion. The niggling sense of worry he had for her had also played a part in it. He could not risk her to Zenos.
He made a note in his mind to pick up parchment and ink in the market.
-----
As the months passed, the memory of the dream faded from Gyome's mind. Too much was happening for him to stay in one place for long. Doma, Ala Mhigo, then the Crystal Exarch calling upon him and the Scions, bidding them to the First. Lightwardens and primordial Light and Emet-Selch. As he fought, he imbibed Light and did his best to save the First from Calamity.
But it would not be enough.
G'raha was lost to the Ascian, stolen away to a city beneath the sea, a city Gyome was scouring for clues. A fair number of Amaurotines stopped to talk to him, but none struck him more than Hythlodaeus. Perhaps he was imagining it, but something about the shade called to mind Maya. Perhaps he just missed her. At the same time, there was so much about Amaurot that felt like more than coincidence.
Gyome tore through the Final Days, Scions at his back. He fought the creatures, felt the searing heat of flames on his skin, until, at last, he was before Emet-Selch himself. The Ascian struck them down like insects. If it were not for Ardbert, he would have surely lost the fight. He stood tall in the face of Emet-Selch's wrath. When G'raha appeared behind, bloody but alive, his soul sang with triumph. And then-
"Let expanse contract! Eon become instant!"
Thunderous. Defiant.
"Champions from beyond the rift, heed my call!"
As beams of light shot up around him and Gyome relived a memory, Emet-Selch seethed.
"Let us cast aside titles and pretense, and reveal out true faces to one another!" he bellowed. Casting a hand over his face, his Ascian mask shone bright from behind his fingers. He bellowed a name Gyome already knew. "I am Hades! He who shall awaken our brethren from their dark slumber!"
As he was transported to a new arena, he looked to the pillars of light around him. One by one, they flickered and faded to reveal champions. His friends.
But not.
At the very last, the one he had wanted to see the most appeared. Maya blinked as she took in her surroundings before looking up at the hulking behemoth ahead of her. To his surprise, Gyome saw that her pupils were odd coloured, one a rich brown while the other shined a glistening gold. Her expression twisted. Pain flashed, but was soon replaced with a cool determination. She took some steps forward-
-but was stopped by a Lalafell standing in her way.
When she looked down at him, Gyome offered her a smile as best as he could.
"We do this together, isn't that right, my friend?" he said softly.
Her mouth opened in surprise before she clamped it shut again. It was clear she had a lot to say. Surely she could see the Light pouring off of him. Surely she knew that he was experiencing what she had experienced once before, the pain and crushing weight of tainted aether. Instead, she took a deep and steadying breath before giving him a grin of her own, that same, familiar toothy grin.
"I'm with you, Gyome."