Chapter Text
It is beginning to look as though the Seventh Astral Era will be one of the shorter ones.
At least, it is difficult not to think as much when spending any amount of time in the aptly-named Ghimlyt Dark. Even when the sun shines, a quirk of weather shrouds the place in clouds; Aymeric should be used to such gloomy skies, but at least when the sun does emerge in Coerthas, it is multiplied a hundredfold by the ever-present snow. Here, the weak rays that break through the clouds of vapor and aether only catch on crumbling magitek and pools of oily ceruleum, glimmering uneasily against the shadows. He never thought he would find himself almost wistful for the battlefields of the Dragonsong War, where at least one could cling to the hope of catching a clear breath amidst the stench of smoke and blood, should a stiff breeze or a wyrm’s wingbeats stir the air.
War again, and so soon. He had harbored no illusions that he would find himself behind a desk for the rest of his days—offering military aid to her Eorzean neighbors is of course a major tenant of Ishgard’s reform—but it does not make the reality any less bleak. Though for one who never saw Carteneau, he wonders if he and his fellow Ishgardians are only paying their due in facing down the Garlean threat at last. Even the nightmares they confront on these fields, the magitek and the altered beasts, can hardly compare to what he imagines it must have felt like to watch Dalamud descending overhead. Complaints are better kept quiet.
A flash of color draws him out of his grim thoughts; bright as a dandelion against the metallic grays and sooty blacks of the battlefield, Hien picks his way through the debris a few yalms away. They had each taken a unit of soldiers out to survey this sector of Ghimlyt, and now their sweeps converge as both parties approach the main Alliance camp again. Hien looks up and catches Aymeric’s eye, hailing him with a wave, though it is another few minutes until they can merge into one unit, as the treacherous terrain is unforgiving of haste.
“Ser Aymeric,” Hien greets him first, glancing over him and his knights, dirtied by naught but the inevitable soot. “No excitement, I hope?”
“Nothing. It appears we have earned a respite, at least for a time.”
Hien reports similar uneventfulness. They send their soldiers on ahead as they slow to share their observations; but Ghimlyt indeed seems to have quieted for the time being and there is little to discuss. They walk in as companionable a silence as the hellish landscape allows for a time—though it is far from a leisurely stroll, as a mist of rain has begun to dampen the ashy soil, and they sink an ilm into fresh mud with each step.
But at the very least, Aymeric has no complaints regarding his company. If there is a personal bright spot in these dark times, it has been the opportunity to become acquainted with the Doman lord, who from his first arrival in Ala Mhigo had drawn Aymeric’s attention with his impressive midair martial skill. Hien is easy to speak with, and surprisingly grounded for the king of a nation, though his easygoing manner belies a shrewdness with which Aymeric has become more familiar over the course of strategy meetings and parleys. Hien had not been unbalanced by Varis’s targeted jibes; even face-to-face with the leader of the empire that had subjugated his homeland, he had remained calm while Eorzea’s leaders floundered and while Aymeric found his personal appeals turned back on him.
But despite his own embarrassment at Varis’s hands, Aymeric has felt—though perhaps presumptuously—that he and Hien have gravitated together among the other Alliance leaders. Though it may only be the relative recency of their addition to the Alliance that links them, newcomers in comparison to the rest, Aymeric would like to think they share somewhat more than that. Both leaders of small, war-torn nations, facing daunting rebuilding efforts and navigating the formation of new partnerships, they have already found plenty to discuss in matters ranging from leadership to trade agreements.
And selfishly, Aymeric cannot help but feel relieved to think that he is not in Hien’s debt; their nations may begin an alliance on a clean slate, without the bitter withholdings of the past to color the relationship. Even so, Aymeric hesitates to interpret a personal bias on Hien’s part. Hien speaks with him affably enough, but there is yet a difference between their conversations and what he observes when the Doman Lord greets the Warrior of Light or the other Scions who aided in the liberation of his homeland.
But such camaraderie is earned, and Aymeric must do his best to stifle an admittedly familiar sort of yearning. Ishgard’s eventual savior had taken Aymeric’s awkward affection in stride, but there is far too much at stake to rely upon Hien extending similar grace. In some ways, Aymeric’s current position restricts him even more than his last. He represents Ishgard more than he ever has, the face of her new era, not simply a pawn in the Archbishop’s schemes, and he cannot thoughtlessly act as freely as he might wish. And there is the cultural difference to consider; despite Hien’s apparent friendliness, Aymeric thinks it best to temper his own enthusiasm, lest it come off badly to his Eastern ally.
The worsening rain intrudes on his thoughts as water begins to drip from the ends of his hair. Rare as it could be in Coerthas of late, Aymeric recalls rain after a battle as a cleansing occurrence, rinsing viscera and char from armor and skin even as it muddied the ground beneath their boots; it does not encourage him to learn he can expect no such respite here. The darkness only seems to cycle from the sky to the ground and back again, the horizon fogged into indistinguishable gray so it seems they wade through a thin broth of ashy mist, the tang of ceruleum ever-present on their tongues.
The ground, too, has become muddy enough to slow their progress even further, so their subordinates are now long out of sight. Aymeric squints through the settling clouds, but just as he begins to suggest that they change course to seek higher ground, Hien comes to an abrupt halt, his eyes fixed two or three yalms ahead, on a crumpled suit of magitek long devoid of any spark of life, reduced to naught but a heap of metal plating by a quiver of Ishgardian spears.
Aymeric almost expresses some grim satisfaction at the sight, until he blinks rainwater from his eyes and follows the focus of Hien’s gaze.
From the cockpit, which has collapsed nose-first into the mud, a body dangles, pale skin and hair inevitably graying in the sooty mist, ivory Auri horns dripping rainwater like tears. Clad in a crimson and black tabard, small like so many of her kind, she looks especially dwarfed by the hulking ruins of the magitek around her, incongruously delicate.
And she is quite dead, pierced through the thigh with one of those Ishgardian spears, pinned to her crippled machina and left to bleed out. Little trace of blood remains but a ruddy splotch on the seat, the rest of it rinsed away by the rain or overwritten by mud.
A conscript, more likely than not. In the midst of battle, it is difficult—and indeed, serves little productive end—to remember that many of the soldiers at the end of his sword may not be there by choice. Aymeric dwells in the discomfort for a moment and offers a brief prayer before glancing at Hien.
His eyes fixed on the fallen woman, Hien’s expression is still enough to have been carved from stone, but he yet seems to burn, animated from within by a flame so pure and bright that Aymeric almost blinks. Abruptly, Aymeric feels a gulf open between them; despite the things they share, Hien is far from him in this moment, his heart weighed with grief and anger that Aymeric cannot fully comprehend.
He knows war. But Ishgardians had fought a holy war, self-styled though it was, and though besieged for a thousand long years, they had stood proud in their convictions atop their rotting foundations, each siege only further proof of the rightness of their cause. That so many had floundered when deprived of conflict, clinging to the ancient feud and to its more recent wounds lest purposelessness set them adrift, was only further evidence that the war had been a pillar supporting the entire project of their nation, without which the edifices of its doctrine would begin to crumble.
His countrymen had thought themselves oppressed under the shadow of Nidhogg’s ire, and while they were preoccupied with their feud, others had faced true subjugation at the hands of what the Holy See would dismiss as an upstart of an empire. The slow bleed of heretics into Nidhogg’s forces was nothing to the wholesale plunder of people and resources back to Garlemald in a fraction of the time, leaving none but rebels and refugees to preserve the identity of what had once been a nation. Though Doma had won the return of many of her conscripted sons and daughters, in this crumpled body Hien must see all the rest who never came back, who died alone on battlefields far from home, their bodies left for the carrion birds.
“We might…” Aymeric hesitates. The steady rain renders a pyre impossible; ceruleum will burn away before the body can catch, and the fires sparked to life in a recent storm have been dampened again to embers. Burying her, too, would prove a difficult task in the shifting, ashy ground. She would resurface with the next storm, and all that will have been soothed is their own consciences. “…we might bring her with us. There are other bodies awaiting funeral rites back at headquarters.”
“And no doubt many more scattering the field.” Hien glances up as if out of habit, to check the angle of the sun, and then remembers where they are. “We are already late returning.”
But his persuasion is meant for himself. His gaze drifts back to the pallid face amidst the soot as if drawn by a lodestone.
Aymeric tilts his head. “We have not seen a single enemy unit, and camp is not far. There is no great risk.”
Hien raises his eyes to him, searchingly and oddly guarded; wary, perhaps, for a hidden test. But Aymeric intends no such evaluation; he only knows that while honoring this single dead soldier will not soothe the guilt Hien carries, to leave her will trouble him, and they all have enough trouble as it is.
He knows not whether Hien reads this in his expression, but after a long moment, he drops his gaze again.
“It will be a great blow to the Alliance to lose two of its commanders in an ambush,” he mutters under his breath, but his eyes remain on the corpse. “Very well. That banner, there, can you…?”
Though the fallen soldier is smaller than both of them, it still takes some work to extract her from the debris and dirt, especially as the rain worsens. The embedded spear poses its own challenge, nearly forcing them to abandon the task entirely, but Aymeric finds his own stubbornness rising when Hien’s begins to flag; with a great effort, he finally manages to wrench it from the cockpit, and by snapping the shaft they draw it from the fallen soldier’s leg without too much further trouble.
Gray streams of water run from her muddy tabard and over their hands as they lift the corpse free of the armor and place it atop a torn and sodden pennant that Aymeric has retrieved from a broken flagpole. A corner of the fabric shows the crimson of the Garlean emblem, but otherwise it is white beneath the dirt, and regardless of suitability, there is naught else nearby that might pass for a burial shroud.
The dripping dead weight will not make for an easy burden, and Aymeric moves as if to take it into his arms, but Hien intercepts him, hoisting the body over his shoulder instead with a stern glance at his companion that brooks no protest. Even for less than half a bell’s work, they are both even filthier than when they started, faces streaked with the sooty rain seeping from their hair, uniforms splattered with mud, hands and gauntlets crusted with grime and fingertips wrinkled from the unrelenting downpour. They look as though they have been ambushed, save the lack of any blood, though Aymeric feels it would be inappropriate to say as much, the irony unfitting of the solemnity of their task.
By now, the rain has turned the ground into a mire of soot and dirt, but to attempt to scale their way to the ridge would be unwise with Hien so encumbered. Aymeric remains especially vigilant as they slog through the muck, knowing it will fall to him to cover for his comrade should they find themselves under attack after all, but he spares a glance at Hien when he can, watchful for any sign he is straining himself overmuch.
He will invoke the threat of Yugiri’s ire if he must; it would not do for one of their commanders to injure himself unnecessarily. And though he does not doubt Hien’s strength, an Au Ra woman would be a much less cumbersome burden for an Elezen.
But Hien stubbornly carries on, though their path only grows more treacherous, to the point that Aymeric must measure the depth of running streams of water and ceruleum with his sword to ensure they are passable before sinking up to the ankles of his sabatons in the churning runoff. Halfway across one of the deeper flows, he habitually catches Hien by the shoulder to steady both of them, and almost withdraws his hand just as quickly for the presumption, but Hien leans gratefully into the support, and they ford the rushing water without incident.
From there, for a blessing, the terrain begins to rise as they approach the Alliance headquarters, and they leave the burgeoning floodwaters behind. Aymeric suspects that any further delay would have left their route entirely impassable, and he sends silent thanks to the Fury that they were not left stranded or forced to abandon their cargo after so much effort.
Symbolic effort, perhaps, an empty gesture that does naught for hundreds of others who have died in imperial service, nor to redress the years of life lost to those who had ultimately been freed. They do not know this woman; she might have resented her captors, but she might have taken to her role with her own satisfaction, for reasons known only to herself. One or more of the other dead lying in the camp might have perished by her hand, and her own killer might be visiting the armory tent in search of a new spear to replace the one that had severed her vital artery. Around one woman is tied such an insoluble tangle of morality that Aymeric cannot help but muse upon how it was only the lies that allowed Ishgard’s faith to remain so unshakeable over the centuries of conflict; the truth of war is not so easy to resolve with dogmatic certainties.
A Gridanian conjurer taking his rest near the entrance to the camp leaps to attention when he sees the two commanders approaching with their tragic burden, but Aymeric shakes his head, and he withdraws with a solemn nod and a glance towards their destination, the corner of the camp where rows of shrouded dead await transport by carriage to their final resting places across Eorzea and beyond.
Hien explains the situation to the thaumaturge currently on duty, and she directs him where to place the corpse. Setting her beside the rest, he pauses to offer a moment of silence. Aymeric, following behind though he is arguably no longer needed, does the same, and when he opens his eyes again, he finds Hien watching him.
“Thank you,” Hien says. “You needn’t have indulged me.”
“It was no trouble,” Aymeric assures him.
“So you say,” Hien replies, and Aymeric is surprised to see the touch of a smile in his eyes—or perhaps a grimace—before he glances back towards the camp. “But I am not eager to answer Yugiri’s questions, and I suspect you are in for a similar interrogation.”
Aymeric had not even considered it, but Hien is right; Lucia will at best be baffled by his present state, and she will no doubt raise the same concerns that Aymeric himself brushed off a bell ago. He finds himself suddenly grateful that it is only mud and sodden clothes that he must explain away. They were lucky; he will admit as much now that the task is behind them.
“I suspect the rain will go some way towards explaining our condition,” Aymeric points out. “They need not know the entire story, should you not wish to tell it.”
There would be no shame in the tale, though Aymeric understands his reluctance. In their positions, their actions must be weighed not only against their own values, but the common good which might sometimes demand minor concessions to principle. Though no harm has been done, to undermine the belief that they hold the conviction to do so would do no one any good.
Hien meets his eyes; there is that caution again, shrewd appraisal that, more than anything else, reminds Aymeric that it is a king who is taking his measure. But the weight of his gaze is marred somewhat by a streak of mud on his cheek—or rather, the stain distracts Aymeric with the bizarre and inappropriate impulse to reach out and wipe it away. He closes his fist over the troubling whim, clearing his throat and hoping his lapse of attention went unnoticed.
“Conspirators, then, eh?” Hien says at last, his sudden smirk bringing a boyishness back to his features, the dirt on his face only adding to his mischievous charm. It does not entirely hide the shadow in his eyes, but Aymeric is not entirely tactless; he knows as well as any leader when a mask is required, for one’s own sake and that of allies and subordinates alike.
And besides, though it is not quite the same as friends, Aymeric yet feels a small, honest thrill at his words, this acknowledgement of the connection he so desires to foster, a statement of trust not granted lightly, despite the tone in which it was spoken.
“Indeed,” he agrees—perhaps a hair too eagerly, if the slight lift of Hien’s eyebrow is an indication. But his smile only widens—sincerely, Aymeric thinks—before giving way to the more customary gravity required of leaders on an active battlefield, and Aymeric turns to see their squadrons from earlier approaching, no doubt wondering what delayed them.
Hien’s vague remarks about the rain go unquestioned. The storm wears on, and the ordeal soon passes into insignificance beside the weightier matters that occupy their days.