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Clarricie dreamed of unicorns when she was little, as young children were often wont: shining manes that never tangled no matter how fierce the winds, horns that glistened like pearls, delicate legs dancing across the grass. Fierce, wild things that could eviscerate a grown hyur with a flick of their dainty heads, spearing through the thickest armor. Cloven hooves strong enough to smash a lion's skull like a ripe melon. No Eschva in recent memory had ever tamed a unicorn. She would be the first, finding a foal miraculously hidden under a bush or in a cave when she went out to forage for firewood, and then she would lead it back to camp and teach it every command she knew.
She grew older -- as young children were also often wont -- while grudgingly coming to terms with the fact that Othard's plains had been exhausted of unicorn stock hundreds of years ago. Driven east, driven west, poached down to turn their horns into ivory rings and their hides into scholars' book covers. She settled with vengefully teaching a chocobo how to shriek like a watchbird every time it scented a storm, and took on two aldgoats who were more than happy to slam their curved, blunt horns into whatever she pointed them towards -- inanimate or otherwise.
Under the wheels of their caravans, the grasslands rolled by. She married a boy from a family two wagons down who loved unicorns even more than she did, convinced that their bloodline still ran in the long-legged horses which roamed the Skatay Range. He could train a chocobo to prance with a metal cone balanced perfectly upon its head, and -- laughing -- Clarricie thought that that would be enough, maybe, for what they could hope to actually have in the world. These would be their unicorns, for those who had none.
Even if she couldn't have her dream, life could be good enough without it.
And then the Garleans came, and both of their herds died -- even her best beloveds, Grey Racer and Dawning and Little Buck, screaming in defiance and terror -- their blood buying time for an escape attempt that only failed in the end. The Garleans kept pace with their best riders. The tribe's elders had bartered for the future of their people, sending their strongest off to fight in wars between strangers, and it turned out that the enemies of Garlemald were more than happy to kill the Eschva too. Dalmascan rebels maimed three of their men in the first month. Then her husband perished soon after, and Clarricie stopped thinking about unicorns at all.
Until she saw the monoceros.
The campaign in Southern Bozja is a banquet for the IVth's beastmasters, and a bitterness for everyone else. Every time the War Beasts change locales, they must handle their menageries properly, stabling the creatures which cannot survive the new environments and bringing out the ones who can. They arrive with only half their strength and restock from local breeds. Their weapons rotate with the climes.
Bozja is a nation that has been blasted with aether. The natural balance which once flourished in its marshes and scrublands has been entirely overturned.
Even the most novice beastmaster among them thrills to the challenge.
There are three tamers assigned to Hedetet; it is rare to recover any beastkin from the Burn, and they'd thrown the thing into Zadnor to nest, close enough to Zuprtik Point to hopefully eat its share of unlucky Resistance scouts. Everyone gossips over the alkonosts, creatures even rarer than unicorns. Clarricie doesn't have room in her personal menagerie to tame one of her own, but a hot bubble of pride shines inside her every time she thinks about how it is her cohort which houses them.
No other Legion can boast the same way. Lyon rem Helsos is the greatest Beast King that Garlemald has ever known, and his influence brings them opportunities straight out of legend. He dotes on his beastmasters as well, Clarricie knows -- even her, though she is a woman grown. She has known him for over a decade now, and in that time, he has granted her every indulgence.
As a soldier, Clarricie has stroked the feathery wings of cockatrices as they have warbled their hungers to the breeze. She has gazed up into the eyes of behemoths, slow and ponderous in their malice. She has touched her fingers to the scales of basilisks slumbering in their sandy dens, and felt the menace coiled against her skin.
The mages have taken the unicorn as their own. It is as good as dead already. The best thing Clarricie can do is to forget about it. Even the name of it has been erased, retitled with a new word for the official records.
Monoceros. Translation: single-horned beast. A sterile label, as if none of the Garleans can bear the thought of any creature bearing a jewel in its brow save for themselves. When Clarricie had first overheard the reports, she'd thought they'd captured a yak.
Monoceros contains none of the poetry of its Eschvan name. Clarricie tries not to mind. She is not one of Sadr rem Albeleo's mages, free to study the creature's magicks. She is a beastmaster. The two realms remain apart.
It should not matter what she had once desired. That person is gone.
The unicorn can never be hers.
Lyon finds her dallying on one of the eastern ramparts before the evening spar. He carries riding gear for a chocobo over his shoulder, a full set of tack draped over his body with mythril-reinforced stirrups slapping carelessly against his knee. The worn leathers engulf half his body, but he keeps the saddle settled squarely in place -- as if, humorously enough, he expects someone to leap up at any moment and balance on him instead, trotting him around in laps like a show chocobo on parade.
He'd do it, too, Clarricie knows. He wouldn't stumble at all. Even with an entire roegadyn perched on his shoulders like an acrobat, Lyon would simply keep marching on, step by methodical step. He'd bull forward all the way to the practice yard, and then he'd grab whoever'd had the temerity to try such a feat by the ankle, and fling them headfirst into the bandersnatches.
He gives her an odd look when he sees her -- normally, Clarricie would be in the western wing getting ready by now, stretching her legs out and cooing over the latest animals, giggling theatrically at the other beastmasters while they went through their warmups -- and then cranes his neck to peer down over the edge of the rampart. The courtyard below is quiet, for once; nearly all the mages have retired early, off to study their texts and quibble over who most deserves academic recognition this sennight. Only one arcanist remains, gently stroking the mane of the horned creature which stands hobbled in the center of a dimly glowing circle.
"Ah," Lyon remarks when he sees the beast. His moment of silence is sympathetic. "I've only ever raised two, myself."
"I want it," Clarricie says: all the self-centeredness of a child, but none of the stubbornness. It's an observation, nothing more, uttered with the same pragmatism that one might use to note the infection of a cut. She might have just as easily said, I am hungry, I am tired, I plan to shoot Albeleo in the head if he makes one more godsdamned complaint about the manure in the halls. She can say what she wants to Lyon; he has always afforded her that gift.
He arches an eyebrow at her but remains silent, intrigued by the demand. As he turns his attention back assessingly towards the scene below, she can guess at the factors being weighed in his head. Price, most likely -- no unicorn comes cheap. How many favors he can trade to take one of the Mage Detachment's toys away from them. But curiosity, mainly: curiosity over what Clarricie might be able to do with a creature so rarified, and whose temperament cannot be controlled by treats for its appetite. A unicorn's powers of purification are not small -- but the War Beasts have never built their tactics around such needs. When they kill, they do so without care of defilement.
"What would you pair it with?" he asks finally, still focused on his calculations and tactics. "You'd annihilate half our own forces if you brought it to the field alongside the mages."
"Is that a loss?" she parries lightly, attempting to fold her arms in nonchalant dismissal. Only too late does she realize that she has wrapped her hands around her elbows instead, like a child begging for both protection and comfort. Her own body rebels when she tries to correct herself, clenching her fingers on the ruffles of her sleeves.
Lyon is right, of course. There would be almost no practical application for a unicorn in anyone's menagerie. There is no use for it.
There is no use, save that she wants it anyway.
She grits her teeth, forcing herself to regard the creature as an asset instead of a prize. "They'll waste all its potential like this. Its spirit's already broken. Look at how badly its head is lowered. Even if they never touch it again, it'll die in their care, its body rotting in some forgotten corner without even a square of earth to stand on."
Lyon shifts the weight of the tack, freeing a hand so that he can scratch thoughtfully at his beard. "I agree. Beast like that should have a chance to meet its end on the field. Same as all the prisoners stuck in Sicinius's fool experiments. Gabranth should string the bastard up if given half the chance." He screws up his face in displeasure, and then regulates the grievance to the back lines. "Who's been formally assigned to the beast?"
"Llofii pyr Potitus." It betrays Clarricie to know the answer at all, let alone to recite it on command. "She's down there now. Hernais was her guard a few times during field exercises. He says that the last time he saw her leave the research facilities, she was weeping."
"Llofii, eh?" Lyon does not bother pretending that he does not know the name. "She has a soft heart."
"She's weak."
"She's nineteen."
"Old enough to have the blood of half of Bozja caked on your boots," Clarricie snaps back. "As well you know."
He has no retort to that, as she knew he wouldn't. Instead, Lyon makes a half-hearted shrug -- a softening of his shoulders that grants her the victory point -- and then glances back down to the courtyard.
She follows his gaze, and regrets it. The unicorn looks even smaller now, a tiny, slender skeleton whose grey coat blends in with the stones. A strange tremble grows inside her the longer that she watches it, like a muscle held tight overlong.
"I should kill it myself." She does not know where the announcement comes from: only that it is marching out of her like a mudslide. "I should cut its throat and allow it to bleed all over those godsdamned ritual circles that get drawn everywhere. Snap its horn with my shield. Smash its hooves into scrap. I should flay its corpse and nail its hide to the door of the mages' quarters. All of that would be better than this pathetic death."
Her voice is harsh. It hitches where it should gallop, dips low instead of making its declarations boldly. She inhales to get enough breath back to continue -- and is surprised when she cannot. Something inside her chest is blockading her lungs, a wound inside her which is opening up like a flower, splitting wider and wider the longer Clarricie places pressure upon it. What began as a mere incision is now yawning wide enough to fit a hand inside, groping for her heart.
Her mouth bucks worse than any beast.
She tears her attention away from the courtyard. Lyon is watching her now, with the same lack of humor on his own lips.
"So," he says. "Is that your verdict?"
"It won't perform well for the IVth. It will bring us no victories." She pushes her words forward reluctantly, trying to convince herself of their worth. "If we took it for the War Beasts and sought to tame it now, it would have no cause to obey. We'd earn naught save for Fabineau chasing us down endlessly, demanding we return the remains."
"Aye. But that's not what either of us care about, nor should we." Hefting the saddle more securely into place on his broad shoulder, Lyon stretches his neck languorously from side to side, limbering himself up. "Forget about pointless things like glory. Are you still having fun in the fight, girl?"
It is the last question she expects, and the last one she wants. To Clarricie's horror, there is no witty reply present within her thoughts. The emptiness freezes her. Every time she looks inside herself, it is as if the person she once was is staring back at her from the far end of a corridor, and Clarricie cannot comprehend their whispers.
She can only speak the language of animals now. She has lost her native tongue.
All she can do is try and squint up her face to deny the way her expression is twisting into a frozen snarl, each blink of her eyes hot and wet. Her first herd was slaughtered with more dignity than this. Little Buck had gone down squealing after a single magitek round had blown out his ribcage into a spray of bloody bones -- and Clarricie feels just as helpless now as back then, seeing a beast she had similarly yearned for dying by degrees.
The unicorn's will is shattered. The hairs of its coat are turning dull, its muscles going slack and feeble. The world has finally seen fit to deliver her such a prize only so Clarricie can bear witness to the way it withers before her, and where every practicality tells her she should not care.
Lyon says nothing. He is as immobile as she is, studying her with the patience of a tamer waiting for a snake to uncoil and expose itself.
They hold one another's gaze without backing down -- until Clarricie finally breaks first, making a terrible, ragged sniffle, grimacing at the bubble of mucus in her throat. Even then, Lyon only moves forward with one hand uplifted. With blunt and dirty fingers, he wipes at her face, and then wipes again to get rid of whatever smears he must have left behind.
"And what would you do with it?" he asks, very carefully as he watches her walk through the process of recovering her jilted dignity. "What would you do, if its fate was yours to keep?"
There is no answer. Not one that she can say aloud.
But she knows Lyon hears it all, in the same way in which she can interpret his gestures, his postures that announce his intent without need for any words to shape it. Once, she saw Lyon command an entire room of coeurls simply by turning his head towards a window and going quiet. Focused. Like magick, every one of the beasts around him had similarly frozen in place, ears pricked up and waiting, eager for a glimpse of whatever he had spotted first.
Only a fool thinks a beastmaster is ever mute; Lyon is always talking, always, even in stillness.
He does so now with his chin, his shoulders, the mirthlessness of his gaze. "All our beasts die, Clarricie. As will we. There's no getting out of it as long as you're with us. Such are the risks of being alive."
"I know," she huffs, because she does.
Making another sniff that she hates to hear, she finally manages to regather herself, not caring if her face is smudged and her eyes are bleary. Her beasts will not judge her. Anyone else, she can maim.
"Give me a lift," she demands loftily. "So I can ride into the ring in style."
Lyon gives her another look, this one all in the eyebrows. Then he shakes his head at her audacity and leans down anyway, spreading one palm out for her to step upon. Once Clarricie sets a foot gingerly in place, he flings her up gamely towards his shoulder, where she catches herself and balances perilously, already sliding off the saddle.
"Price of your fare is to face everyone in the matches tonight, girl!" he barks, and then hurls himself forward without warning.
It's too late for her to refuse. Lyon's powerful legs propel them both along, tilting like a buffalo's charge. Clarricie's fingers slip on the leather of the tack as she crouches down, hooking in the buckles.
It is all she can do to hang on as Lyon pelts down the nearest stairwell and then through the halls, their howls of laughter echoing uproariously to the utter dismay of the nearby soldiers on patrol.
That evening -- once Clarricie is back in her quarters nursing a swollen arm -- she sets aside time in order to review the list of her equipment. She is fortunate enough to have a room to herself; such luxuries are necessary for any beastmaster with a decent menagerie to maintain. The mass of her training gear takes up most of the space, with multiple layers of armor that have been padded heavily and reinforced to protect the bones beneath from pulverization. Clarricie has trained her beasts to bite and snap and spit, which means that she has trained them upon herself: herself, along with her fellow tamers, working in teams to teach their animals to pursue live prey.
Some of the stuffing is leaking through her gloves, thanks to the bandersnatches. Another breastplate is weak from acid that has eaten it away. She should send at least half her gear down for repairs. After that, she has two new trainees to mentor among her subordinates, and a lion who keeps balking at taking its dewormers.
A soldier's work is never done.
Her hand lingers on a helmet as she picks it up, thumb rubbing along the dented rim where a jackal had tried to bite off her ear -- and then, Clarricie sets it back down.
Unlike the troops around her, Clarricie's requisite term of service ended years ago. All of the Eschva who had been recruited along with her husband have returned home again. She's not like Hernais and Pagaga, with a set expectation of time and a sentence of desertion if she ends her term early. Even if she did leave without permission, Lyon would mitigate her punishment. He has for countless others. Somehow, he'd find the paperwork to prove that Clarricie had already been formally discharged, and had just been hanging around camp as a teacher, slow in packing her bags to leave.
She does not fear repercussions for her honesty towards her commander. Lyon invites that bluntness around him; he respects frankness, the willingness to speak one's mind and then defend it. Clarricie has told him to his face on multiple occasions whenever she disagrees with his ideas. Pagaga has made it a breakfast routine to inform the man in great detail of how inferior he is to the Vochsteins, and Lyon always grins and baits her on.
It is a freedom so absolute that Clarricie has forgotten what it is like to live without it. The thrill is like being perpetually drunk, tipsy on adrenaline that burns ceruleum-bright. Everyone expects eccentricities from the War Beasts, and so their eyes only go wide in awe whenever Clarricie speaks in Eschvan to her menagerie, whispering to each other that she uses exotic magicks instead of mere affection to command them. She dresses herself in extra frills for her uniform, shedding the careful embroidery of her people in favor of gaudy crimsons. She fights with a shield rather than hunting on horseback with a bow.
She has learned new vulgarities: how to swear in six different languages and ask for directions to the nearest latrine trench.
She was born a nomad and now she is a soldier of the IVth Legion, an Imperial by choice. No animal in her current menagerie would have a home on the plains of her people. She has become someone other than Clarricie of the Eschva: something bestial, something cruel, but also someone who punches her commander in the face whenever she has an opening, and who teaches her hounds different commands solely for the pleasure of irritating Hernais, who can't roll his tongue around the same consonants.
Her own people wouldn't recognize her now, if she returned. She wouldn't recognize herself.
But these are still her hands, calloused and familiar as she holds them up towards the ceiling and studies the scars that gild them. This is the truth of the person she has become, flourishing in service to the IVth. The garish showmanship of it all has been her salvation. It puts handles on her grief for her, a leash that she can seize with both fists to keep from being yanked off her feet; her grip on it is rigid enough to be bloodless.
Like a rope collared around a mastiff's neck so tightly that the skin has broken raw and regrown to cover it, her sorrow and her survival have become one and the same.
She is Clarricie quo Priscus. She is resplendent.
Any time she needs it, there is someone around for her to fight. Someone to partner with when she needs to train her beasts -- someone for her beasts to hunt beside, if she wants the friendly competition. She dispenses the same giddy fury to her enemies and her fellow beastmasters alike. Despite any number of blackened eyes and a broken rib that once landed her on a medicus's cot, Clarricie rarely backs down from a match with her peers, thrashing them and letting them bash at her in turn -- until by the end of it, she's bled out everything save for arrogance and laughter, and there is no longer any energy left in her for heartache.
She is never alone here. She is never on her own.
She can spar with Lyon whenever she wants, and he always stops before it hurts too much.
The magitek engineers sneer at Clarricie as she skirts back and forth through their wing of the Castrum, using any excuse she can to return to where the unicorn is penned. The bulk of them are imported from the imperial capital, toadies to Sicinius. Menenius's favor alone grants them value. They swan about and see themselves as the IVth's new special favorites, protected from any fallout.
The pureblood Garleans hold even greater contempt for Clarricie than they reserve for the other beastmasters. They have a limited vocabulary when it comes to nomads and other travelers; to them, Clarricie is expected to be a savage among savages. They use the same insults on her that they use for the Xaela, turning custom into mockery: piss-drinkers, horse-swivers, cannibals.
But the rest of the IVth does not care. Nearly all of their Legion is an amalgamation of other peoples; Gabranth's new nation knows it is the sum of its parts, not the benefactor of them. It is a better ambition than Solus zos Galvus's -- and that Emperor is dead, besides. Varis, too.
It is vexing, how the remaining Garleans do not recognize their commonness. Clarricie kills their enemies regardless because Gabranth's dream is best served by conquest, and his goals are worth it. But in the slew of all their peoples together, the Garleans are merely another tribe which has been ingested into the mass. They are all equals despite Garlemald's arbitrary claims of superiority through the establishment of a great conglomerate nation; such patriots are fools to think that having an idea is the same as the labor involved in actually bringing it into being.
It seems as if everyone in the IVth Legion knows this, save for the Garleans themselves.
Like the unicorn, Clarricie would not fight well if the reason was simply to serve the imperial homeland. The Eschva would never have been able to broker the same terms of independence under a stricter legatus. Gabranth is from Landis; Lyon is the same. Garlemald itself means nothing to her. In the capital's eyes, Clarricie is merely another savage, a mutt. A dur.
For the first time in ten years -- as she prowls the battlements of Castrum Lacus Litore -- she finds herself thinking about what exactly that means.
A pod of korpokkurs waddle at her heels, squeaking as they bound up and down the stairs. Their squat bodies bump against Clarricie's legs. She picks her way fondly through them, momentarily distracted as one topples over, tiny feet paddling helplessly in the air as it rolls like a melon against the wall.
When she turns the final corner onto the ramparts, the glow of the unicorn is waiting there.
The illumination is dim, barely filling the mage's courtyard: a firefly's feeble ember that does nothing to warm its surroundings. As she watches, the violet sheen flickers once, struggling to maintain its power.
Then, it goes completely out.
Clarricie holds her breath, counting her heartbeats as the stones remain dark.
One second. Two.
Twenty.
And then -- raggedly, like a runner pushing themselves past their final reserves of energy -- the unicorn's light rekindles once more.
This time, the raw yearning hits Clarricie like a broadside sweep of a griffin's wing, robbing her balance from her. She can only breathe in shallow gulps, dizzy with shock. It is worse than when she had evaluated it with Lyon, worse than every other fleeting glimpse of the creature she has stolen since. All she can do is shudder beneath its tide.
She has never harbored such thoughts before in her service to the IVth. Not once. There has never been a reason for her to leave. There has never been anything left in the outside world to want.
Nothing, save for this: a last, fragile reminder of the life that had been taken away from her so long ago, and which should never have returned to tempt her.
She barely hears the chirping of the korpokkurs as they gather curiously around her skirts. All her focus is on the yard below. And her mind -- disobedient with its lusts -- begins to count up in a different way, racking a tally of days and weeks that condemns her with how easily they come.
The unicorn is kept in the mage's wing, save for when it is experimented on in the field. Even so, it is still classified as a beast. Under that jurisdiction, Clarricie could demand to see it under the pretext of examining its health. All of the senior beastmasters have substantial leeway to move; the other soldiers of the IVth are accustomed to the endless oddities of their work.
The western courtyard has a straight line out to one of the Castrum's exterior gates. After that, it would take Clarricie only a few bells to cut through the lines. If she left her own menagerie on watch behind her, her absence wouldn't be discovered for an entire day. She is a child of Eschvan blood -- she can find her tribe's caravan trails from the summer and winter pastures in her sleep. The mountains would shield her as the unicorn regained its strength. Once she reaches the plains, only another beastmaster would be able to find her.
In less than four moons, she could be among her people again.
Her family would be waiting for her there. Her grandsire, her aunts. Clarricie could see her cousins, old enough now to have children of their own. She could return to the wagons that she and her husband once shared, unpack the embroidered wedding blankets that had kept them warm throughout the deepest winter snows. She would peel off her crimson uniform and leave it behind like the crumpled scales of a snake. Her axe would be set aside, her hair would be braided up in the practical twists of an archer. The unicorn would be safe there with her, and all the songs around the dinner fire would be shared in a communal tongue.
She could go now, if she wanted. The gates of the Castrum are open to her. She doesn't have to stay.
There's still a chance for the creature's survival -- if she dares to risk it.
The light in the courtyard shudders, and dims again. Clarricie's skirts rustle as she tightens her fists upon their rippling silks.
For his sake. She swallows hard. The only thing the unicorn can do here is die.
It takes all of her strength to make it through the rest of the week. She ambles through the next few suns in a daze, barely registering her daily deployment orders. Her patrols are performed with mechanical disinterest. Her beasts all note her distraction; they turn restless, snapping and sulking as her uncertainty bleeds over into them. Clarricie does not rein them in. She drifts through their noise aimlessly, accepting the chaos as a reflection of the turmoil inside her -- until she realizes she's on the rotation for the jackals one afternoon, assigned with Lyon together.
It is a necessary duty, not a menial one. Pack animals who are not exposed to the greater chain of command will become unruly when brought onto the field in groups; they can become confused in battle by another tamer's hounds, rather than remaining focused on their proper prey. They must be socialized together. That is how kinship bonds are maintained.
But -- in her discontent -- Clarricie does a poor job of it. She does not let them sniff at her hands enough, does not raise her voice with the authority she should. She does not even register Lyon's presence beside her until he suddenly appears at her elbow, and deftly grabs a jackal's collar the instant that it bares its teeth at her leg.
She makes a disgusted sigh of dismay at the canine, along with herself. Lyon handles the work of discipline, pitching his commands with stern anger until the jackal slinks back, ears down in submission. Clarricie is already ignoring it.
When Lyon's voice next comes, it does so quietly: a low rumble like a bear rolling over in its sleep.
"Seems like Llofii's changing up the training schedule." Shooing one of the other jackals away as it starts to nose at his hand for a treat, Lyon knots a used rag into a ball and tosses it into the pack as a toy. "Girl wants to go out on an extra trip this sennight. Says she's being asked to test out the unicorn's purification magicks on some of the soil that's been damaged by the aetheric fallout, nearabout the Last Trace. She's asked Hernais to keep his beasts more distant than usual, out-of-sight so as not to spook the unicorn's work."
Pausing there, Lyon twiddles his fingers in the air, illustrating what he thinks of that mystical excuse -- and then adds, "Hernais said he thought you'd want to know."
The discrepancy is enough to jerk Clarricie out of her stupor. This is new. The position isn't smart. It is too close to the front lines, nudging up against Olana's Stand. Hard to protect -- but easy for anyone seeking to rush into Resistance lines as part of a suicide run.
Or as part of something else.
The girl is bolder than Clarricie expected. Llofii is making her escape first.
Another person's ghost speaks through Clarricie's mouth. "When?"
"Tomorrow."
"Send me instead of Hernais," she says, before she can second-guess herself. "He needs more practice with his panthers. He'll earn that while leading a few more charges into the southern reaches. Llofii is but a single mage. I'm certain she could not possibly get into any trouble while performing simple research."
The map unfolds once more in her mind. As an inexperienced hunter, Llofii would most likely flee downhill, hoping to use the cliffs as cover while forgetting that anyone at a higher vantage point could easily see through the ploy. Despite that, it is a laughably short trip to the Southern Entrenchment. Clarricie has fought on that front before; all the beastmasters have pushed various offensives into the teeth of the Resistance's forces, and they have always been forced to withdraw swiftly, pincered between two lines and easily overwhelmed.
If she can make it that far, Llofii would be in the heart of the Resistance's fortifications. She would be as good as lost in the chaos.
Llofii -- along with anyone else who might pursue her.
Lyon is studiously adjusting his thick, padded training gloves, fixing a buckle where one of the jackals must have tried to gnaw it off. "Aye, it's not as if it matters who watches over the girl if she stays within the safe perimeter, does it? Not as if the mages think we can do our jobs that well to begin with. If they're really that concerned, I'd imagine they'd spare a few of their own to go with her, anyroad."
His tone is so distinctly neutral that it warns her; his body language is withdrawn. With alarm, Clarricie realizes that she cannot gauge his mood. Lyon has always given her the luxury of sharing her thoughts, and now, she cannot do it.
If this is to be the last time that she can speak freely with him -- if this is the last opportunity to say what matters -- then she cannot let it pass.
"Lyon," she says, unsure of what's safe to voice aloud -- breaking all protocol like a chocobo hesitating, waiting for the command to show them what to attack, if they should stay or if they should run. If she's expected to allow Llofii's escape, or to kill the girl on any pretense that shows itself. "Do you want me to protect her?"
But Lyon doesn't give her the mercy of pointing her to either one. "I'm not going to be out there with you, am I?" he asks frankly, making a shrug before he beckons the next jackal over to begin the process of checking its teeth. "A beastmaster's instincts tell them what's right. You're an expert, girl. Listen to them."
The choice is hers.
She is quiet at supper that night. The poison of her thoughts makes even her stomach into a traitor. Her plate is nearly empty, save for a few spoonfuls of stewed popotos; she has no appetite for anything more.
All around her in the mess hall, she sees the other beastmasters watching her. They hear everything that her body is saying on her behalf: the secrets her posture is revealing, shouting as loudly as a challenge upon the battlefield. They can smell it on her. Every gesture Clarricie makes carries the tension of a beast about to bolt.
Suddenly, Lyon plonks his plate down on the table beside her, filled from rim to rim with sodden vegetables drenched in oily gravy. A thick steak is in the middle, coated with a reddish sauce -- military rations, but better than what other divisions get. The kitchens of the IVth know better than to short the Beast King his meals.
Clarricie feels her shoulders hunch, miserable with anxiety. Lyon sets his cup down next and then drops the handful of his silverware beside it, sitting heavily on the bench with his knee nudging her own.
Then, he picks up his knife.
Without warning, Lyon plunges his fork directly into the overcooked steak, pinning it down like a gazelle. The tough meat parts reluctantly; Lyon saws it relentlessly apart until he can force it into two halves, each nearly identical in size.
As soon as he finishes the last stroke, Lyon lifts one of the portions, and sets it on Clarricie's plate.
All at once, the rest of the beastmasters go as quiet as coeurls themselves. Clarricie yanks her head up, staring at Lyon with equal disbelief as a hush descends across their corner of the dining hall.
Unruffled by the attention, Lyon spears the remaining piece of steak with his fork. Then -- not bothering to cut it into smaller, more manageable pieces -- he brings the entire thing directly to his mouth. Baring his teeth, he bites into it, gnawing and worrying at the meat with the table manners of a dog. Sauce smears across the white hairs of his beard. It coats his lips, his chin, as if Lyon had shoved his face directly into the still-hot belly of a karakul to feast on its innards.
By the time he succeeds in tearing off an edible chunk, his entire mouth is painted red.
He chews methodically, relishing each springy wad of gristle that makes the muscles of his jaws strain to pulverize it. Then, after he swallows it down, Lyon arches an eyebrow at Clarricie and nonchalantly goes back for another bite.
The entire table is silent around them.
Suddenly, Hernais moves next. With rough jerks of his fingers, he tears apart his ration of bread, pulling out the soft fluff of its innards -- the best part, the only edible part, avoiding the sharp, unpalatable crust that the kitchens armor around each loaf.
Reaching out, he sets the pale wad carefully on the rim of Clarricie's dish, splitting the best portion of his meal with her as well.
She stares at the offering, no less significant than Lyon's own -- and then Pagaga pushes a bowl of shelled walnuts towards her, and another beastmaster reaches out to refill her wine, all of them sharing their own food with her, their own kills. She fumbles for her cup to gulp down hasty swallows, nearly choking on the liquid in order to hide the way that her breath is catching unsteadily in her throat in a sudden, lurching sob.
Because she loves it here, she loves the brute ferocity of it all, brimming with hate and adoration. Each of the performances that she puts on is a shout. The gaudiness of it all is like a cloudkin's courtship dance with the sun, flirting with each glittering feather of its wings. Strident. Shrill. Clarricie can scream as loud as she wants here, be as vicious and cruel and giddy as she needs to be, in order to feel anything other than helpless.
Loss is in every part of Lyon's unit. Their faces are shoved into it every day. Their beautiful beasts serve as the inevitable first casualties, again and again.
But life shouts in every corner of Lyon's realm too. Theirs is the rebellion against all that death might make them into. They will not be diminished. They are not alone. They will rampage in their packs together and they will one day fall together too, notching their shields ragged as the scorecards of their slaughter.
Her husband is dead. Ten years ago, he was laid to rest in the Eschvan way, with each of his bones facing north at a different crossroads -- but Clarricie remains. She fights everything now, including herself. She has held the line alongside everyone else at this table and she has bled in their care, and even though Clarricie's husband is buried in the ground and part of her will always be entombed with him, the rest of her is here: alive.
Llofii does not waste any time in becoming a fugitive.
Like an untrained novice, the arcanist bolts immediately for the southeast descent of the Castrum the instant she has a chance. She does not look back to check for any pursuers; with only her own senses to rely upon, the miqo'te makes perfunctory scans of the terrain before scrambling on, leaving bootprints clearly marked in the dirt.
It is laughable. Clarricie should kill her on principle, if only for that.
But she does not bother to spy on the girl directly. Instead, Clarricie watches her beasts. Her white lion idly tracks the unicorn's presence with his massive head pillowed upon his paws, broad ears rotating to catch the smallest noise. The drakes yawn. Their lack of concern is as good as any spyglass; Clarricie can tell when Llofii's pace has begun to lag when one ziz falls completely asleep.
The skies overhead darken with incoming rain. By the time the alarms finally sound to alert the nearest soldiers of Llofii's departure, a few drops have begun to patter erratically down.
Clarricie's lion huffs impatiently as the moisture hits his fur. The ziz squawk, shuffling in place -- too well-disciplined to bolt for cover, but eager to finally be unleashed.
A glimmer of violet light winks in the distance as Clarricie finally gets to her feet.
Less than half a bell separates Llofii from being either a defector, or dead. Five days to evade both imperial and Resistance forces. Three weeks to the northeast mountain ranges.
Four months of travel to reach the winter camp.
Clarricie's axe drips as she lifts it, holding it forth like a banner in the air. All her beasts look up.
"Go," she orders, and they do.
This time, when she speaks to Lyon again, it is soon after she is released from the first round of debriefings. The entire inquiry will last for days. Spurred on by Fabineau's wounded pride, the interrogators are looking for anyone they can possibly blame.
Clarricie's story never changes.
We were alerted to the actions of the deserter and the presence of the stolen asset only after Llofii pyr Potitus had already reached the Last Trace. The weather conditions made it difficult for my beasts to track her. Though we were able to successfully delay pyr Potitus in Old Bozja, the unexpected arrival of Resistance reinforcements resulted in the substantial loss of our forces.
After identifying the heightened risk of a rebel counterattack, I called for the retreat of my unit in order to protect our flank, and to clear the way for the Mage Detachment to utilize Spartoi.
They'd brought in Hernais too alongside her, questioning them both together and separately after noting the unexpected change in shifts. The man hadn't flinched once as he'd looked each of the interrogators in the eye, shrugging deliberately. My unit was occupied in the Southern Entrenchment, he'd answered. We were leading a scheduled offense far to the west of Olana's Stand, well out of range to be of any support.
After Clarricie is exiled to the waiting room after another volley of useless finger-pointing, Hernais is still there on one of the benches, both of them being made to dally like beggars. Judging from the other officers stalking past, the discussion has already escalated past the theft of the unicorn itself. A mage of Llofii's rank is a substantial security breach, harboring access codes and patrol schedules -- and the magitek engineers are justifiably paranoid of their secrets being shared.
Hernais makes room for her to sit, sliding over with a look of sympathy. She joins him gratefully; the interrogators had forced her to stand without relief for nearly a bell this time.
"Are they threatening to dock your menagerie too?" she sighs.
"Joke's on them. I can fight with naught but ziz." Hernais's smirk ripples into his voice. "And in the end, 'twas the mage detachment which failed the final pursuit. Spartoi was not ours to command. Lyon said he would lend me a pair of manticores in the meantime. I should thank the adjudicators for that. After all, what better opportunity to make our Beast King proud?"
The far doorway slides open; a scientist strides through on the way to his own questioning, each lanky step oozing irritation. The man glares at them both without bothering to hide it, the third eye in his brow sheening opalescent in the light.
Hernais remains silent as the man passes them by. After the doors slide tightly shut once more, his eyes flicker to Clarricie, and then away again.
He speaks without looking at her -- without looking at anything, save for the wall directly across from them both. "Garleans can be very... curious in their ways at times, can't they?"
It is the mildest of criticisms, the subtle acknowledgement of one conquered people to another -- where it is dangerous to admit dissent even to yourself in the privacy of your own quarters, for the real danger is to recognize that dissent exists at all.
Like him, Clarricie keeps her expression neutral. "Yes," she agrees distantly: one half of a conversation that floats, detached, from any specific argument. "They made certain to remind me of how rare the unicorn is."
"Aye," Hernais acknowledges wryly. His mouth twitches. "How rare the monoceros."
And then -- then, Hernais says another word in a language Clarricie does not recognize, a language that lives in the angles of his brow and the darkness of his eyes. It is a beautiful sound, half a sigh and half a lover's whisper. The meaning of it comes from a country that Garlemald would willingly forget -- but which Gabranth will not.
The word vanishes amidst the rhythmic, metallic thumps of magitek echoing down the halls. Clarricie does him the kindness of pretending that she has not heard him speak. Hernais does not repeat it a second time.
Their discretion pays off mere moments later when one of the officers slides open the door, and demands they come back in to report on the Resistance troop positions around Olana's Stand for yet another round.
In the end, both she and Hernais are released back to service without further penalty. Pettiness wins the day; by the time the interrogators finally dismiss them, Hernais is late for duty, guaranteeing him another demerit.
He claps a hand to Clarricie's shoulder, giving her arm a companionable squeeze. Then he heads down the corridor, whistling defiantly as the long coat of his uniform sways around his legs, and Clarricie watches her fellow tamer leave before turning to her own inescapable duty.
Lyon is in the stables when she finds him.
Predictably, the man is ankle-deep in hay, examining a broody chocobo: one of Daguza's reds, and therefore prone to calling down meteors if distressed. Clarricie keeps clear as she stamps through the rushes laid down in the stable dirt, waiting a safe distance outside the stall for Lyon to be done.
He takes his time fiddling with the cloudkin, checking the bird's beak and belly feathers as it irritably snaps at his hands. He doesn't turn around as he works. She can only read him through the lines of his back, deciphering the deliberately relaxed slant of his muscles. It is enough to know that he is not angry -- but she cannot tell if she has disappointed him or not, and so she stands there, awkwardly uncertain all of a sudden, as if she were a fresh recruit showing up for her very first day.
Then Lyon wipes off his hands, picking a stray tuft of down off his fingers and flicking it aside. Even though Clarricie did not announce herself, there is no surprise on his face when he turns; the man simply cants his head. "So, I assume the squabblers have finally finished hearing your report."
"They found no reason to doubt." Clarricie straightens her shoulders, holding herself at attention more sharply than she ever stood for the interrogators. "I am the last beastmaster who would allow such a rare prize to slip through her fingers willingly. After all, if anyone would want that creature to belong to them, it would be me. No one else wants it as much. No one."
The words are not lies. She repeats them all back with the same mirthless anger that she gave to the inquiry panel, nearly spitting the syllables out. Every ilm is real. She can still feel the hot ache of longing inside her, urging her to bloody the field with anyone who would stand between her and the unicorn -- and Lyon weighs it, nodding gravely as he hears it too.
"Aye," he agrees. "Everyone in the IVth knows your reputation. There's not a soldier in this Castrum who could deny that, my dear."
Abruptly, he waves towards her, beckoning for Clarricie to bend down. She obeys automatically, not yet understanding his intent -- but then Lyon reaches out his hand and sets it gently upon her head.
"You did well, girl," he says aloud. "I approve."
A simple bit of praise, belittling on its own. It is the careful stroke of Lyon's fingers on her hair which expresses the rest.
I'm glad you're here, it tells her. You walked a hard road.
Welcome back.
She replies in kind, in the tongue of the animals they have become: pressing her head against his palm, leaning hard into his touch. Standing this close together, she can smell the animal stink on him, the stew of musk and oils and sour shit that blends into a fetid perfume, saturated with the rotting-meat breath of the coeurls. The mixture is familiar; it covers her too. They share the same scent. They are all part of the same den.
"Fight me last tonight," she demands. "I want to see you trounce everyone else first, even Pagaga. Especially Pagaga."
Lyon ruffles her hair, and then finally drops his hand. "Suppose I can't say no to that," he remarks. "But we'll have to give them something properly impressive to wrap up the night with. Think you're up to it?"
"Always," she promises. "Just give the command."
That night, there are bruises marching up both of Clarricie's legs. There are hot aches in her wrists and a welt on her left forearm -- and two junior beastmasters nursing broken noses and missing teeth, having gained a newfound respect for Clarricie's shieldwork.
The pain is good. Every muscle feels as if she's put it to the test, taking inventory of her own body and its eagerness to rise to every challenge she throws it into.
It hurts -- but not too much.
The lights in her room dim and then go out. Clarricie stretches carefully out beneath the rough blankets of her cot, wincing as her right ankle twinges. She'll have to wrap it in the morning or risk a strain.
In the darkness, she closes her eyes. The noise of the Castrum fades away. She lets her breathing slow, and she thinks of two young dreams running free again, shimmering with wonder and hope across the fields of Othard.