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The sky was a blaze of crimson and orange, and X’rhun’s shadow stretched long before him. When he turned about in his saddle to glimpse the sunset, he was disappointed to find that the sun had already dipped below the crenellations of Baelsar’s Wall. Even on the far side of the Velodyna, a long way down the trade roads, the black edifice and its twinkling red lights cut a swath across the land.
Even with the fading day, the heat did not abate so easily. It was not so long before that the caravan had camped on the western bank of the river, still in the shade of the trees. Their route had taken them away from the coolness of shade and water, into the dust and the direct sun. Arya, riding on her own chocobo on the other side of the cart they escorted, looked miserable; wilted in the heat.
X’rhun wondered if she regretted her insistence that the two of them take this job, or if she at least recognized the irony. At least the road was in good shape—surprisingly so, X’rhun considered, given the two decades of Imperial occupation that stretched between this visit to Gyr Abania and the day that he’d fled his homeland.
By sunset the caravan reached the eastern reaches of the Fringes, where mesas of red stone dotted the land. Eventually they gave way to plateaus that grew into foothills and, further on, mountains, until at last one stood upon Abalathia’s Spine. But before all of that there was a canyon cut into the rock. There the Fist of Rhalgr had once dwelt, and that was their true destination.
But that would be left for the morning. They made camp at the foot of a butte where a fault in the rock had carved out a niche, enclosing the caravan from two sides. After the meal, the merchant and her husband, the cart’s driver, went to take their rest. X’rhun lingered, and sat facing away from the fire. Rising stars pricked the night sky above the moonlit landscape.
Arya sat down beside him, facing the opposite way but a bit further out so they could speak face-to-face. “Why even build a fire?” she wondered, her gaze turning from the dancing flames to regard him. “It’s still so hot.”
“For cooking, of course,” X’rhun said with a smile.
“Right, but we could stamp it out.”
“It’s for later,” he told her. “It’ll get colder soon enough, though not as cold here as if we’d had to camp out in the badlands.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“I remember.”
“Are you feeling better yet?”
X’rhun winced, his ears flicking backward for an instant. “No,” he admitted. “I’m still not sure I deserve to be here.”
“The Warrior of Light thinks you ought,” Arya reminded him.
When last he had seen his other student, they had told him so: We
didn’t free Ala Mhigo for those who fought for her. We freed her for
all
her children,
they had said.
And someday I’ll return,
he had promised in reply. He simply hadn’t thought to keep his word so soon, but Arya had been in earshot. Her cajoling had been gentle enough, and she had been right that this was a duty fit for her recovering talent.
“Far be it from this old fool to gainsay my own students,” X’rhun said, and a weary smile claimed his features. In the deepening dark, he took his hat off and brushed the dust from the crimson felt.
“We should get there tomorrow, right? Rhalgr’s Reach?” Arya asked.
“Gods willing,” he agreed. “You’ll need to be on your guard tomorrow, as we may actually face a more potent enemy than the midday heat.”
“We haven’t seen anyone on the road except caravans going the other way,” Arya pointed out.
“That’s true,” X’rhun said. “The Resistance must have things pretty well in hand already to have seen no thieves so far. But they can hide far better in the canyons than the open flatland, and the hunt clans in the Shroud mentioned some reports of wild beasts. So you should take your rest. I’ll keep watch.”
“What are we going to do after tomorrow?” she wondered.
“Take work headed the other way, like as not.”
“Isn’t there anywhere else you’re keen to see here? We’ve already come all this way. You were born here,” she said. “You don’t want to visit home?”
He flicked an ear. “There are a few places I
should
visit,” he agreed. “Since I’m here. I owe them that much.”
“Who?”
“The other Duelists,” X’rhun said. “So I’ll see you safely back to the Shroud, and then I’ll go on to the Tomb of the Errant Sword.”
“I could come with you,” Arya offered.
“No,” X’rhun said, though his tone was gentle enough. “I’d rather go alone, if it’s all the same to you. Besides, if the Warrior of Light comes back and can’t find
either
of us, then what? And you have your own training to focus on besides.”
“Well, that’s all certainly true,” she agreed. “So long as you’re not trying to give me the slip so you can run away from here.”
Again,
X’rhun couldn’t help recriminating himself. “Get some rest,” he told her instead, and she rose, dusting herself down.
“Good night, X’rhun,” she said. “Don’t think about it so much.”
“Good night, Arya.”
They arrived in Rhalgr’s Reach only a little worse for wear—the rumors of thieves had proven false, but the hunt clans had been right. Arya was nursing her sword arm, and though X’rhun had managed to bandage her up a bit, she was going to want a healer’s attention or at least some sort of ointment.
But even with that concern at the forefront of his mind, he could not help but stand dumbstruck in the valley, gazing upward. Rhalgr himself, wrought in white stone, towered over the whole of the settlement, hand outstretched beside the waterfall that had carved out a plunge pool at His feet. The river wound onward, back the way they had come. Tents crowded the floor of the cavern, and people, too; the air rang with the sounds of soldiers at drill and tradesmen at market.
Arya gently herded him out of the mouth of the main road, then handed over a sack of coin. The weight of it brought his attention back to the present. Blinking, he turned his gaze about.
“Where’s our employer?” he asked, glancing around.
“Departed already from our company,” she said, “while you were gawking.”
“Then let’s find something for that arm of yours.”
He cast his gaze about, looking for someone among the caravansary that seemed likely to have ointments or at least herbs. There was no shortage of carts, some laden down with the fruits of the Shroud and Eorzean goods, but most being packed instead with blocks of fine stone or crates. Those not yet sealed revealed pounds and pounds of salt—from the Lochs, no doubt—or fine metalwork. The Ananta woman speaking with that cart’s driver left little question as to the provenance of such goods. Nor the chocobo being laden with distaffs of dyed and embroidered fabrics. They had passed a few traders coming the other way on the road, but to see so much at once was overwhelming.
Beyond even that, there were other tents and wagons that seemed to have their own services—here a tinker and potmender; elsewhere a food stall, and everywhere hung the banners of violet that announced the Resistance.
“I thought the Ala Mhigan flag had a griffin on it?” Arya wondered as they passed through the stalls. She gestured to a violet pennant embroidered with a gold star, a tail winding around its spindles.
“It did,” X’rhun agreed. “I doubt if we’ll see that one fly again. Certainly not here, considering the Mad King burnt this place to the ground … probably around the time you were born.”
“But everything looks so nice,” she said.
“They must have rebuilt it in secret during the occupation,” he realized. “The statue, the altar, all of it.”
“I thought religion was illegal in the Empire?”
He smiled sadly. “Worship of Rhalgr was banned long before Van Baelsar got here,” he said. “But I suppose it never really went away, not with the Resistance putting that falling star on their banners.” Though he smiled, he could not help but feel some new pang of guilt. He reached up to adjust his hat atop his head, just to give his restless hands something to do, and spotted a sign hanging among one of the arcades. “Having the House of Splendors here probably helps attract artisans and adventurers who can contribute to the restoration of this place, too.”
Loathe as he was to deal with Rowena, he was flush enough with cash to at least buy a poultice from one of her associates, and he sat at the edge of the water with Arya to tend her wounds. The rush of water filled the air, punctuated by the steady sound of a blacksmith working their trade. Somewhere nearby someone was playing music, and he trained his ears toward it.
A moment later he saw neither the lake nor the reflection of beneficent Rhalgr. Instead he found himself young again, standing in a mountain pass. A sea of pikes bristled around him—some were halberds, their hafts steel-shod and axe edges gleaming; others were little more than sharpened sticks. Their bearers varied likewise, from once-members of the army and mercenaries to the townsfolk of Ala Ghiri, who could not stand to simply watch the Garlean Empire seize their village and strangle what little trade was still left to them.
In this motley band, he alone wore crimson. His late comrades’ swords hung at his back, awaiting a more fitting internment than had found their masters. Before him, beyond the rows of pikemen and other fighters, the advancing Garlean troop was as though a shadow of black over the land. It rippled and gave way, a flicker of gold advancing down the center of the line—a unit of powered, ambulatory armor. They’d taken to calling them walkers, and to fearing their cannons. Most were black, and he could not help but wonder what its gold plating portended.
X’rhun could smell ceruleum, and his sword, already loose in its sheath, found his hand and a spell found his lips just as the trumpet sounded. The pikes around him fell forward, held parallel to the stony ground, as the advancing charge thundered over it. Pikes met cermet shields and pierced armor; his fireball struck the side of the golden walker. Flames erupted over its side—and then dissipated without so much as a scorch upon the golden plates. He furrowed his brow, and with another flick of his sword-tip, lightning erupted, arcing between his blade and the warmachina.
Usually this was more than sufficient to disrupt its sensitive engines, but the golden behemoth advanced. Its pilot seemed none too concerned with the mage himself, but turned its cannons on the pikemen around the walker. There were terrible screams and the sound of splintering wood, and the centurions swarmed forward into the hole blown into the lines, over the smoking corpses of the good people of Gyr Abania. Those not caught in the blast held their spears still tighter, but a broken pike was little match for a sword.
Well, if his magic was useless at range, at least his rapier might help, and X’rhun found himself standing just below the thing’s cannons, swinging his sword in the hopes of slipping it between the plates to disrupt the delicate engines that drove its movement. He heard the terrible screech of steel on steel, the gears inside the terrible machine chewing at his blade. He yanked it back and retreated a few steps in case the whole thing went up in flames. As its pilot hauled herself from the cockpit and slid down its golden hull to approach him, he heard drums from behind.
His ears swung back to hear better still, and he caught the fife. The music grew louder and louder still as the pilot drew her sword and X’rhun shaped his spells, aether sparking from the black steel of his damaged blade. He slammed the hilt of his sword against his focusing crystal, and aetherial echoes of his weapon took shape in the air around him, cutting at the Garlean pilot. Little doubt as to what he was hearing now: the Ala Mhigan anthem of his boyhood surely announced the arrival of reinforcements. X’rhun allowed himself to smile.
The others heard it too, for those before him roared and rallied, surging forward. Those behind were not so quick to follow, and as the pilot fell at his feet, X’rhun whipped about to find another foe to face. Instead he found another host plowing into the rear lines. Above the advancing troops flew a banner of purest ivory, marked with the sigil of three interlinked diamonds. He could hear what they were singing now: “For Glory, Garlemald!” echoed from every pair of lips beneath that standard. X’rhun had just a moment to wonder how thoroughly the Black Wolf had planned out his conquest to have seen to this minutest detail, and then the back lines collapsed.
“X’rhun? X’rhun!” Arya’s hand was on his shoulder, shaking him gently. He blinked, and looked at her, dumbstruck. “Are you alright?” she wondered.
“Fine,” he said, shaking himself once more. His tail still twitched in the grass behind him.
“Did you take a blow to the head back there and just hid it? You keep going all out of focus.”
The Duelist cleared his throat, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “No,” he said. “It’s only that … the last term I heard that song she’s playing, it wasn’t under the happiest of circumstances.”
Arya’s brow knit, and she lifted a hand to brush back her hair. “It doesn’t
sound
like a sad song,” she pointed out.
“It isn’t,” he told her, lifting his head once more. “Not of itself. I used to sing it in my boyhood, but I couldn’t have been much older than ten summers before it was banned.”
“Banned?” she echoed, her confusion only deepening.
“The last King of Ala Mhigo considered it treasonous, since he was trying to turn the kingdom away from the worship of Rhalgr, and of course it was seen as fomenting rebellion under the hungry eye of Gaius van Baelsar. The Empire had its own lyrics for that tune.”
“She’s probably playing the banned version,” Arya concluded. “Do you still know the words to that one?”
“Most of them, I think.” He was seized then with both guilt and desire—perhaps he did not deserve to sing that anthem, but he longed to nevertheless. So he said, “Shall we find out?”
“Let’s,” Arya agreed, pushing herself to her feet and pulling her mentor up after her. She was gone but a moment, pressing coins into the lutist’s hands. A moment later Arya stood at his side again, watching him carefully. He turned to face her with a small smile, and heard the song begin over again.
The first few words of the anthem spilled from him easily enough, and the rest tumbled out like water over the waterfall, all but glittering in the air. There was a warmth in his chest—a sort of pride which every Ala Mhigan seemed to carry, even in exile and in adversity. It was not unalloyed with sadness; he mourned yet his comrades who had laid down their lives trying to repel a force they could not have hoped to outmatch and who would never see it freed now, and the countless others who had died on foreign soil who would never return to their homes. Still, the Reach was beautiful, its treasures tended to and much of its storied majesty returned. Later he would kneel at Rhalgr’s foot in prayer, in gratitude and grief, but more than either, in hope. His smile might have been weary and age had begun to write itself upon his brow, but this place did not seem like a dying land. It had been bestowed once more a future, and red magic had found once again its students. The land and the art would survive him, though he still meant to serve both. But soon the song was ended, and the air found its stillness for a moment.
X’rhun was still smiling: he had remembered every word.