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Snow. It was the wrong season for snow, it was supposed to be summer. The Central Highlands normally carried the faint smell of mountain flowers, and he could swear somewhere through that night he could still smell it – or maybe he was hallucinating. Camp Dragonhead was full of people; adventurers, Ishgardians, Coerthans, they had even found a couple Garleans they had then dragged into cells for imprisonment (which itself was odd, why were there Garlean soldiers prancing around the highlands when they were supposed to meet the Eorzean Alliance in battle at Cartenneau?).
Night had just fallen, and the snow seemed to fall even harder. It wasn’t what someone from the Western Highlands would call a blizzard (and somewhere underneath the cold dread that bubbled up in his throat whenever he thought of home he felt some sort of homesickness), but most of the people from Camp Dragonhead were panicked.
“Snow in summer! Fury above, what is this madness,” they’d call as thick clouds and the mountain air chocked with aetheric energy hid the stars.
Estinien idly sat around and watched as people walked around in the snow, either complaining about it, or looking for something. One particular pair caught his eyes – an Au Ra man and a… Seeker of the Sun Miqo’te woman?
‘Ah,’ he thought, ‘those might be Ser Sengun and his wife.’
The only times he’d met the man were when he was fully armoured, not dressed in casual, homely clothes with a quickly grabbed coat draped over his shoulders. Not to mention the panic on his face as they looked around the Camp and called someone’s name. Wasn’t that supposedly their adopted daughter? It went on for an hour or so, until darkness swallowed the camp completely and the woman dropped to her knees.
“We lost her, just like we lost my sister and Nhex, didn’t we…” The voice, choked with sudden despair, was almost a pitiful thing to hear, but Estinien yet remained unmoving on top of the crate he had sat down on. He was just some kid, brought in here by Ser Alberic after all – he could at least act like some senseless brat, then.
A split moment later a wail echoed through the camp, and the woman bolted back to her feet. Through one of the gates Haurchefant de Fortemps, young as he was, strode in carrying something that vaguely looked like a puffball covered in snow.
“Look, I told you! I told you all I saw the stars fall, and they fell! They fell, just believe me already!”
A voice befitting a shrieking voidsent, and Estinien cringed on top of his crate. The woman and the dragoon however stumbled towards the knight, almost ripping the strange screeching creature out of his arms and drowning him in mumbled ‘thank you’s.
The girl in Sengun’s arms, covered in snow and with blue-tinted lips, kept proclaiming she’d known about the falling stars since she was “just half a hand” old as her parents carried her inside a building to warm her up. She was still shrieking loudly. Good lord, that voice could raise the dead.
Her voice rang clear across the former battlefield, and he watched as she and her fellow adventurers helped the Ishgardians drive off the last stragglers. The Steps of Faith remained standing, the wards were still intact. Estinien hated to admit he contributed very little to this fight, despite all Aymeric had claimed before – ever lingering remains of the supposed attack by the remains of Svara’s horde. “Svara’s horde” was singing down there, loudly, yet with a voice as clear as a bell. He knew she had deliberately held back any reaction other than a raised eyebrow when they had met again, and that she most likely had noticed his strange position. A broken leg, a few broken ribs, various bruises and cuts, and burns all over… She had looked none the better, but she had won this fight and had a friend capable of healing, while he had refused all help due to his damaged pride.
He had almost forgotten she had desired to be a bard, to be someone who sang on the battlefield, who stood somewhere afar and shot arrow after arrow into targets with precision.
Almost like Aymeric the day he met the man.
The parallel was almost frightening for a second, especially when he recalled they had both dropped the bow for something that they thought fit them better – Al’nebar had grabbed a spear when the situation demanded, and Aymeric had gone and started using a sword rather than a bow. Needless to say, they both retained their sharp eyes and strange behaviours.
Al’nebar sang during or after battle, as if her voice carried the same properties as the one of a bard. Aymeric usually started counting from one to ten as he hit things – back then it had been him counting the arrows he had already fired.
After a while, he found himself humming along to the fine tune, even after she and her fellow adventurers had left to once more meet with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.
“You know, I had expected you to challenge her at least once.”
“Don’t tell me you started betting on it again.”
“Again? You wound me, Estinien. I would never repeat such folly.”
“Not after losing all that gil for betting against me, right?”
Aymeric huffed and crossed his arms, an unusual gesture for the man, whereas Estinien answered it with a small laugh, an even more unusual gesture.
“No, honestly. I had thought you would challenge her to prove who is better. The older, more experienced one; or the one who is literally guided by gods.”
Estinien shrugged. As far as anyone in the Holy See was concerned, none other than Alberic, Heustienne and Lahen herself knew. “I have better things to worry about than brawling with a child to see who’s stronger.”
“She is not much younger than you are, you know.”
“Next thing you tell me she is my sister. No, I will neither stand for that, nor will I challenge her so you can win back the money you lost from the fine Ser Baneutte.”
“Wha—“
“Oh, do not think I did not see you two chattering like heretic fools while handing the good Lady Lucia vast amounts of money.”
He had remained where they had stopped, together with the moogle and the oldest of the Warriors of Light and Ysayle Iceheart. The two other Warriors of Light casually strolled after the Leveilleur kid to watch him as he gathered wood.
At some point during that afternoon, he was alone with the other Warrior of Light. A tall, black-haired man with strangely gentle features which did not seem to fit the rather large knives he carried and tossed around like it was child’s play. The way he flicked his ears and swished his tail around looked like a way more fluent movement than whatever the hell Al’nebar was doing in her spare time with these ears and the additional limb of a sort.
When Lorven noticed the strange gaze on him, he laughed a little.
“Considering you normally stare at her with that angry kind of look on what little I can see of your face, I honestly don’t know whether to be honoured that you took your eyes off Lahen for a bit, or if I should be scared of you suddenly pouncing on me like she always does. What’s the matter, Ser Wyrmblood?”
Like the Raen scholar, the Seeker ninja was a friendly person. But he had a certain kind of fire underneath all that gentleness, which was something Estinien hoped to never be on the receiving end of.
“Nothing.”
A flick of the ear. “You sure?”
“Absolutely so.”
A swish of the tail and it curled up a little, while both ears flicked. “Truly?”
“Most certainly.”
A tilt of the head, and booth ears flopped into the same direction. “C’mon, you can tell me.”
“…”
The tail curled further up. “I’m serious, you know.”
Silence spread between them after that, for at least a few minutes, until finally, at least, Estinien clicked his tongue and took off his helm. He felt that it might be a better idea to ask someone of another race something like this if they could see his face and therefore hopefully would understand his actual confusion about this.
“… All right, the tail and the ears.”
Lorven raised an eyebrow. “No, it does not feel weird to me, if that’s what you wanna know. We’re used to those – we’re born with them, after all.”
“No,” Estinien immediately said and brushed his left hand through his bangs, “not that. Not exactly, I mean. You and Al’nebar… Lahen… you… you move differently, is all. I got stupidly curious about this for a second and stared a moment too long, I apologise.”
“Lahen? Oh, yeah. I guess she tries moving more like an Au Ra, but still is a Miqo’te and knows the way we move, but it ends up looking really awkward. It’s what tends to happen to Seekers or Keepers raised by people from, well, different races. If you’d been raised by Lalafell, you’d probably move differently as well, you just lack the special features to show it as blatantly obviously as Miqo’te or Au Ra do.”
Estinien blinked in confusion, and Lorven simply started laughing before putting his hands behind his back.
“If you and any race in Eorzea swung their arms in certain ways, you’d most likely do it the way you saw your parents, people of the same race usually, do it. Let’s say, you Elezen draw a half moon pointing forwards, and we Miqo’te round circles pointed towards the ground. If you and I grew up among people of our races, we’d draw the half moon and the circle, respectively. If you were raised by Miqo’te and I by Elezen, you would draw a circle and I a half moon – we wouldn’t know any better. Now, people who are raised by people of different races, or are half-race themselves… Well, if I were half a Miqo’te, half an Elezen, and were raised by such parents… I would attempt to draw the circle while at the same time drawing the half moon. My swinging of the arms would look strange, choppy almost, to other people. Miqo’te and Elezen would recognise parts of their movements in this mess, but it would be neither at the end of the day, because I am drawing neither a full circle nor a half moon. And that’s exactly what’s happening with Lahen – she’s trying to swing her tail like an Au Ra, and a male one at that, while still attempting to move like a Miqo’te at the same time. She moves her ears very little compared to me, or so I’ve been told. Most likely because she tries to make it look more like horns, but a Miqo’te’s ears get awfully cold when we don’t move them too much, which means she flicks them around hastily, desperately after a while.”
The winds brushed through their makeshift campsite.
“Nemi actually does the same, a little at least. She pretended to be a Lalafell for so long, she kind of adopted their movements. At the same time, even without the aetheric energy changing her looks and such, she still manages to retain her original posture because she knows she is an Au Ra. It ends up a strange, almost unnoticeable flaw, a character quirk of some sort. When she stands next to Lahen’s father, it’s all pretty obvious though – Nemi’s strange behaviour, and Lahen’s subconscious attempts at copying him.”
“… So, what about you?”
“Me? I grew up in a tribe in Thanalan. There was nothing around except for other tribes and maybe the odd outpost of the Immortal Flames. I had precious little contact with other races prior to me leaving the tribe, therefore I move like everyone back at my tribe did. And before you ask, no, I have no desire to ever change this. I may have left, but I am still kind of proud of my heritage.”
“I never said you, or anyone else, should change their behaviours related to their upbringing. To this day I still find myself oddly enticed whenever I watch sheep – not because I remember much about actual shepherding, but still, somewhere, I’m partially standing on the outskirts of Ferndale, and watch the sheep.”
They continued their work on the camp in silence until the sun was setting slowly. It was surprisingly efficient to work with someone who didn’t have the attention span of a flea, who wasn’t a love-struck puppy, or who wasn’t the leader of the heretics (or a moogle), and Estinien found himself admitting he quite enjoyed the oldest Warrior of Light’s company.
“Oh, one more thing.” Lorven’s voice was quiet, as the winds already foretold Alphinaud and Lahen loudly bickering in the distance. “Please do not tell Lahen we ever had this conversation. I can swallow her jabbing at my failed attempts to usurp the position of Nunh and leaving the tribe out of shame and with the desire to get stronger to win… But if she started swinging her arms in circles or half-moons, I’d consider using my knives on either her or myself.”
Estinien snorted. “Duly noted – and I partially feel your pain, though I am blessed with not living or travelling with her for as long as you did so far.”
Lorven simply grimaced.
“So, about that story you asked to tell me…”
“Not a word until we reach the accursed Sea of Clouds, Fortemps.”
“No, seriously. I’m curious.”
“Shush.”
“Come on already. I know you’re all stuck up and serious like a true noble, but—“
“Shut it.”
Sadly, that hiss was loud enough to draw attention. Estinien cursed fate and stormed blindly ahead until hands closed around his wrists and forced him to stop. A moment later he barely managed to keep his balance as Ser Aymeric, ever the watchful, forced him to turn around. Estinien attempted to keep an annoyed expression, but it only made the black-haired man keeping an iron grip on his wrists smile brightly.
“I could jump and just drop you off, you know.”
“And risk getting thrown into a cell for heresy due to using violence against the Commander? Please. You are hot-headed, but not an idiot. So, before you manage to talk around it for ages, where were you and Fortemps storming off to at this pace? One would think the Azure Dragoon is kidnapping a noble.”
The dragoon grinded his teeth in frustration and closed his eyes. “Maybe I was taking him out for dinner.”
“It’s three in the afternoon.”
“Look,” it was getting hard to ignore that infuriating smile on Aymeric’s face and the soft laughter coming from Haurchefant, and Estinien’s voice got slower and more frustrated as he went on, “it was nothing serious. Just a simple… I was just… You have absolutely no right to… Please, let go of me. People are staring.”
Considering barely anyone knew the Azure Dragoon in casual clothing and without a helm on, there was subdued whispering and the ever lingering question of who the man the Commander was holding onto was. Thankfully, neither Haurchefant nor Aymeric said his name, or mentioned him being the Azure Dragoon again following that comment – at least a small victory for Estinien, who quite liked his strolls through night-time Ishgard without anyone barking ‘Azure Dragoon, we need you!’ at him.
He quickly, almost breathlessly explained what his plans with Fortemps were, and Ser Aymeric’s face lighted up.
“Mind if I come along?”
“It is literally just the Sea of Clouds.”
“Considering the Manacutters are still being built, surely you have better things to do than to drag Haurchefant here away from Ishgard and to – or beyond – Camp Cloudtop, my good friend.”
“… Ugh. Come along, if you want to, but I swear to the Fury it is nothing you’ll ever be interested in.”
They moved forwards slowly. Apparently this was a season where the Gaelicats were especially aggressive, and Estinien, ever the one who hated these things, insisted they move slowly, carefully, and as quietly as possible until they reached a destination he assumed would be safe. Haurchefant looked amused, and Aymeric slightly annoyed, but at least there were none of these dreadful winged creatures around or within sight. The Azure Dragoon took in a long breath.
“Alright, back to our conversation back in the Pillars, Ser Haurchefant. A question or two regarding certain things. I’ll ask the easier one right away – regarding the ancient legend of dragoons leaving the city and somesuch. Are they true? Or, if they are, surely you as one of the high houses would know which noble Kain assumedly rescued?”
Both other men blinked, Aymeric with interest and Haurchefant with confusion. Had he expected something different altogether? Most likely. Only the strange chirping of even stranger insects that lived above the Sea of Clouds was to be heard for a few minutes, until at last Haurchefant scratched his head.
“Well, I guess the stories among the nobles are as mangled as the ones among the commoners, but… there is indeed a difference between them. Because as I know the story, there was never any noble that got rescued. Just a boy, who then turned out to be the son of the main Kain had almost killed during the time the dragon took over – the son of the initial reason that he left, you see. No nobles, no noble welcome for a dragoon who left for ages and returned a better man and dragoon both. It was the son of the man he had loathed and the woman he had loved. And instead of honour restoration and everyone around calling him a hero, all he got was… well, the forgiveness of two people who, by all rights, should have hated him for what he had done. He righted his wrongs, but he was not heralded for it. He just did what was right, saving a child in danger and returning him to his parents, who just by chance were the people he had wanted to speak to. It could have been any child.”
“That’s quite… drastic a difference, if I so may say. From the descriptions in the commoners’ story, the boy sounded like he at least married into the Fortemps family.”
“Oh, truly? Father would like that, I think. Nay, there are no such people in this family, nor have there ever been. Of course there have been various unassigned bastards and whatnot, but… well, you get the point. If he, or any of his parents, had been acknowledged bastards, then it would look different, but it seems like it was a perfectly normal middle-classed family. Kind of like Lahen’s, in that regard.”
Aymeric rolled his eyes. “Again with the Warriors of Light.”
Estinien himself held back a “Not again with this pink devil”.
A rustle in the leaves made them look around. There was nothing there, which made all of them suspicious. Maybe, they decided, searching the area would be better before any more questions were to be asked. After a throughout search, they returned with nothing, except for a peculiar plant stuck in Estinien’s ponytail, which Aymeric pulled out with a laugh and a remark of ‘Look, he’s growing a plantation underneath that helmet’.
“So, second question. You and those Warriors of Light…”
“E-Eeh?”
Aymeric agreed loudly when Estinien continued with: “Well, honestly, it’d kind of obvious you think highly of them, but is there anything more we should know about?”
Once more on that day, the strange satisfaction of making a noble turn deep crimson and stutter around washed over the Azure Dragoon. It took Haurchefant very long to recover from this, suspiciously long. Both the dragoon and the Commander were grinning by the time Haurchefant managed to regain his composure.
“It’s not like that, I swear… My intentions at first were simply focused on making someone uninvolved help me save my friend from what I knew were false accusations, but during the time they spent here I kind of… got attached to them. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of excited when they moved to Mor Dhona, because it meant that the Scions would be much closer to Camp Dragonhead, and therefore the Warriors with them. Those three just have a certain alluring charm with them, and I got hopelessly entangled in that web… Outsiders, either completely or by heart… yet they stuck together through all kinds of misfits, dangers, primals even. I simply wanted to know how they managed that, how they managed to be so efficient, but somewhere down the road I… well. I found myself enjoying their company when they were not fighting. I figured as someone as well-known as them there’d be hardly any people who would… well, talk to them about things that weren’t heroism, or expectations of a sort. So I started talking to them like they were normal people, and they answered, and so it came down to friendship…”
“Friendship that ended with you almost going on a rampage when they went off to fight Iceheart without a proper plan other than barging into her lair. You would have been more likely to succeed at killing them than Shiva ever was, dear Haurchefant.” Aymeric’s amused tone made the poor guy blush even more, and Estinien snorted.
“Not what I meant. Anything deeper than friendship?”
“… W-Worry not, I have nothing but a friendship based on competition going on with your fellow Azure Dragoon.”
“What.”
“I said, she’s absolutely free for you.”
“Aymeric, hold me back before I strangle him.”
“…?!”
“I’m serious. Don’t look at me like that, Fortemps, I have no interest in that she-devil straight from the void whatsoever. We may have forged a truce, yes, but there is no such thing going on.”
“…”
“…”
Icy silence, before Aymeric broke it by whacking his hands against both their backs. Both stumbled and crashed into each other with their foreheads, and both simultaneously let out a snarl at the black-haired man who just beamed at them. He looked like he was having the time of his life, nothing like the cool and level-headed Commander everyone knew. It wasn’t very often that Aymeric showed this side of him (it was almost as rare as Estinien showing his face, and he wondered how Haurchefant just took that without a comment of any sort), so it was a refreshing sight to behold.
“Either way, with Mister I-Hate-The-Warriors-Of-Light and Mister I-Love-The-Warriors-Of-Light, they’re bound to stay beautifully refreshed for any upcoming fights. One’s gonna cuddle them to death, the other might maul their faces off at night. Truly, ‘tis an excellent time to be alive as Knight Commander.”
With comments like that, Estinien recalled the rumours of Aymeric being the Archbishop’s bastard son. He always sounded like he was in disbelief he was alive, and in that high a position – well, anyone who had worked themselves the way up from the Brume to one of the highest military positions a simple man without any noble blood in them could possibly manage would probably sound like that, but deep inside that voice there was this edge of disbelief.
Well, even if the rumours were to be true talk simply masked as rumours, he wouldn’t mind being under this man’s command. Maybe it had been because he had saved his life, but Estinien trusted Aymeric.
“Uh, not to interrupt both of your obvious joy at my strange position, but… uh, behind you. I think I found what rustled in the bushes earlier, and… it came back… with friends and family and possibly the Gaelicat equivalent of the Warriors of Light.”
“… Gaelicats?”
“Oh Fury above! Run you two fools, run! Ah, that’s why I never wanted to come here in the first place!” Estinien shoved both his companions away from the glinting cat eyes, but that movement caused around thirty of these creatures to burst out from the bushes. It was a race of stumbling and tripping over every single piece of idiotic vegetation in this godforsaken place, and at some point Haurchefant tripped over some root and landed flat on his stomach. Estinien was shortly to follow, bumping into another creature of his way away from the flock.
The only man to escape unscathed that day was Aymeric, laughing loudly all the way down as he jumped off the floating island they were on to land on the next one as Estinien screeched and Haurchefant yelled.
“T-Twelve ab-above! Y-You two look awful!”
“I… Noted so… Nemi dear… Ouch…”
“…”
“L-Look, I’m gonna h-heal both of you up! S-Ser Estinien, please take off that—“
“No.”
“But…”
“I wore it when we got attacked, okay? My face is fine.”
Oh, how his face stung. But he would rather not take off his headpiece around any of Al’nebar’s friends. Especially not the healer, who was tending to Haurchefant as the noble seemed to just stare at her like a lovesick puppy.
After the Vault, there were changes, very noticeable changes. Despite him still being in the process of healing, Aymeric took up the bow again. Every time he let loose an arrow, he would not count from one to ten. He only had his teeth clenched and his fist curled around the bow so tightly that his knuckles were white – and against the white, the slowly healing bruises shone like a sick joke.
Everyone in House Fortemps who was not Count Edmond would suddenly look around at certain times, as if they expected someone to stand there, waving their arm or standing with the sad group known as the Warriors of Light and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, trying to cheer them up. Every time they noticed there was no one there, every single one of the people let out a sad and disappointed sigh and carried on with business as usual.
Camp Dragonhead was normally bursting with life or busy energy. Everything was slowed down now, people seemed to stop and watch the snow fall a lot more than anything else. It was a choking, horrible feeling, and he could never spend more than ten minutes in Camp Dragonhead.
Even Francel, who was already withdrawn person, changed noticeably. The poor guy was paler than usual, spoke in much more quiet tones than general, and all in all seemed to almost vanish at times. But those looks he shot the Warriors of Light every time he saw them… Good lord, Estinien was glad looks could not kill, or else all three of the Warriors of Light would have been impaled the same way Haurchefant had been at least a dozen times by now.
Lorven seemed to be unable to recover the same kindness he had before. The oldest of the Warriors of Light looked exactly like that: Old, and tired. One too many deaths on their list, and it had finally gotten him. He had even stopped twitching his ears or tail around, and Estinien hated himself for wondering if the poor desert-raised guy was not starting to freeze his long ears off.
The caring and quiet healer was the one who barked out she wanted to see blood for that, her eyes bloodshot with a slightly mad glint in them. He was straight up afraid to look at Nemi for longer than a few seconds, or else he feared she would turn into Nidhogg – their fury was the same, it felt the same, and Estinien had to cover his ears as Nidhogg’s ever underlying whisper turned into laughter.
Lahen… well, she lost her entire… brat-like aura. She was the youngest of the three, but all of a sudden she looked like she had aged a thousand years. The fact that Ascians had blasted at her and not Lorven had done her no favour; she had watched Nemi and Lorven leave with Alphinaud and Y’shtola. The Miqo’te had promised she would catch up, but she just looked exhausted. Drained. As if her entire energy had been sucked from her body, and left nothing but a depressing void. Their talk before she had gone to slay Bismarck seemed like it had taken place a hundred years ago.
Pale, exhausted, and barely out in the fresh air.
The one thing he noticed most was, however, that she had stopped singing. Her voice, once clear as a bell, was barely more than a croak these days. She might have sung against Bismarck, had hummed when she had raised her weapon against the Ascians, all maybe in a desperate attempt to not go completely mad from grief. But now she had lost her voice.
Estinien was humming.
Anything that followed that wasn’t as burned into her mind as it sunk into bleak despair as this tune. A song she knew all-too-well. A song every person from the Central Highlands would know. A ballad, about the war they were in. Who had written it? Some assumed it had been dragons, not humans, but they cared precious little about that as they sang that song.
Heretics and dragoons in Camp Dragonhead alike hummed it, but she had no idea someone from the Western Highlands like Estinien would know the song.
Then she remembered.
Lahen herself had probably taught him that, by constantly humming or singing it while they travelled together. Back when she was just one of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn or the Warrior of Light, there had been very few dragons she had fought; therefore the times she had sung this were little. But now she had fought almost nothing but dragons in recent times, and Estinien had been around almost every single time. Of course he would pick up that song. A song about dragons, about humans, about a war that brought nothing but pointless bloodshed.
Sometime after Nemi was gone from Ishgard to recover from the state of constant shock she was in (or so Lahen assumed – Nemi had just vanished and taken Lahen’s Bard Soul Crystal with her), there were nothing but nightmares to accompany the remaining Azure Dragoon in the nights. Lorven insisted they should not sleep in the same room, or same bed even, as the three of them normally did, at least until Nemi returned unharmed.
And thus, instead of snoring, Lahen would hear a song in her dreams. A familiar song, painfully familiar even. Her father had taught it to her, maybe even her birth parents had known it and sung it around her in that year they got to spend with each other before Ixal had ripped holes into Nhex and Sanhghana and they returned to the aether they had come from. Even people at Camp Dragonhead, around Haurchefant, had known the song. And Ysayle, though she might have never noticed it, had hummed along when they had travelled together.
In her dreams, the dragon was humming. Humming with the voice of Estinien. He hummed it as he picked up the eyes, and now Nidhogg was humming it as he tore what little remained of Lahen’s closest friends and family into pieces and then drowned all of Eorzea with fire as Ascians also started to hum along. A ghastly funeral song, and Lahen stood there and watched.
At some point, she even stopped waking up screaming.
She just hummed along.