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The Temple Knights marched along Ashpool’s shore. Hot sunlight poured off the lake’s glittering surface, blinding them like metal shields repelling dragon fire. Spearing out from the lake’s center, the Dreaming Dragon loomed over them, offering shade and baleful reminders concurrently. The air yet reeked of her burnt flesh, as though the beast had been slumbering for only a bell, rather than many winters.
As they neared the Dravanian outskirts, their sharp-eyed archers fell from the formation to scout the trek ahead. Ser Aymeric, like the others, peeled away, his deft footfalls but wind amongst the grass. Rounding the strewn boulders at the mountain’s base, he came upon the ridge’s edge. Back turned to the sun, he surveyed the lush plateaus and vales of the Western Highlands.
Any number of the Horde could lurk in the shadows of the Coerthas countryside. The farmers and herders that made their living on the land west of Falcon’s Nest knew what risk the mountain’s narrowing held. A single dragon could snuff out one’s life and livelihood without even stepping into the sun and be back in its nest before word reached Camp Riversmeet. Such fear kept most but the Temple Knights and the hunters of Tailfeather from foolishly venturing beyond the Coerthas River; but it was by the hearts and blades sworn to the Holy See that the Dravanians stayed north of the mountains.
Aymeric’s breath halted as he listened into the silence of the land. For a while, only the Ashpool’s babbling answered; that was, until his eyes tracked the source of a faint rustling. Kneeling in the brush on the rise opposite him was a man; an Elezen, he shortly realized. Aymeric crouched, silently unsheathing his longbow as he watched the stranger finger through the fine yellow flowers. He wore supple leathers and had no weapon so far as Aymeric could tell. A scythe with a curved handle laid on the ground before him and a mysterious round, flat tool, not unlike a buckler, was fastened on his back.
He stood, deeming the man of little threat, and began to raise a hand to call for his attention. Civilians should evacuate the area, he planned to say; Dravanians have been reported not far from here. Yet the words were pilfered from his tongue before he could draw breath.
Four dragons suddenly crested the landing, cornering the man against the ledge. They held low to the ground, slithering like snakes, their underbellies flush against the grass. He watched the man glance down into the vale yalms beneath him, his heel but ilms from the worst. With an awful cry, fire bellowed forth from a dragon’s maw, igniting the very brush he had been knelt amongst moments before. Aymeric could feel the heat from his distance.
Wordlessly, he wielded his bow once more and prepared to loose his arrows, even if only to buy time for the Knights to realize their struggle. Yet Aymeric had merely pressed nock to string before a light intense as the sun staggered him.
When his eyes adjusted, the very breath of his lungs was lost upon the sight before him. The man now wielded an odd object; circular and doubled in on itself twice, perhaps thrice. Curiously, he recognized it as the formerly flat tool that had been strapped to his back. Now, it spun maddeningly. Aymeric nearly felt dizzy attempting to wrap his mind around its machinations.
Its golden metal shined brilliantly, but it was not the source of the blinding light. A white orb sparkled amidst shafts of purple and blue, enveloping the man as though he was caught in a divine flame. As the orb shimmered and grew, becoming a nebulous web of color and light, the man arched the hovering tool over his head. As though it was but a jagged knife against cloth, the daytime sky suddenly ruptured. Pale hued stars showered around them both, turning the very air they breathed into a kaleidoscope of the Heavens. The ground beneath their feet swirled with the cosmos and Aymeric’s heart slowed.
The nearing dragons and raging fire felt worlds away within the glowing sphere. As the shimmering nebula around the stranger exploded into suspended diamonds, Aymeric felt the very word of the Fury blow through him, hackneyed as the fanaticism was to him. The crawling vines of fascination bloomed; its slender stems weaving between the mortar of his mind and heart with the fortitude and fealty of Ivy.
Aymeric blinked and the dragons were reduced to shrinking corpses, lying in the charred grass like morbid statues. The fire, as well, was nothing but ashes, just as quickly scattered by the breeze. Breath returned to him as though he had broken water. He gasped as the color drained from the air and the man turned. Their eyes locked. Aymeric swallowed the bile of guilt that filled his mouth, as though he had witnessed something private, intimate. Unseemly. He had forgotten the oath-sworn nature of his presence; the chainmail placard that dubbed him more soldier than man at present.
He recovered enough sense to wave as he had intended. The man paused, seeming to look him over before giving one short nod and turning away again. Aymeric glanced back at the lake. The men would expect his report of the conditions ahead promptly, though if he were to say he had been preoccupied with evacuating a citizen, his delay would be understandable. He took that peace of mind and jogged ahead to the low slope that connected their plateaus.
“Pardon, Ser,” Aymeric began, but just as swiftly hesitated.
Now closer to the man, he could discern several details that were missed from his former distance; most prominently being the hue of his skin. As completely as Aymeric could tell, he was the color of fogged night, sporadically freckled the same.
“Are you quite alright?” Aymeric managed, the silence stretching him thin.
“Aye.”
“It is just,” he exhaled, a wry smile hitching half of his mouth as he gestured to the corpses at his ankles. “After witnessing such a feat, I must wonder,” the air was heavy in his chest. “What strange magicks do you wield, Ser?”
“You’ll find no magicks here, Ser Knight.”
The stranger’s lie caught him off guard. He had witnessed it; the falling of stars, the blinding, dizzying colors. The dragons lay still beside him, intact without a single cut, yet dead all the same.
“Perhaps you will indulge me, then,” Aymeric continued, his brow complicated. “In an explanation for these?”
“Nay, I have none, for they were here when I arrived.”
“Is that so?” Something deflated in him, wilting his shoulders.
“Aye,” The man pointed at him, but the words that followed made clear that he was referring only to his armor. “Was it not by the hands of your own that they were slain, Ser Knight? T’was what I assumed.”
“Nay, for my men wait yalms from here.”
“I see.”
Aymeric’s feet shifted in the grass. He squinted up at the sun, looking for guidance in the clouds. Drawing a reluctant breath, he prepared stern words of evacuation. They weighed thickly on his tongue, tasting of bitter jelly.
“I can tell you are discontented by my response.” The man sooner said, stepping forward.
“From where do you find that suspicion, Ser?”
“If I were you,” He continued, squatting to run a hand over the useless, blackened flowers. With a sigh, he recovered the singed scythe. As he spoke, he used it to gesture. “I would sooner claim those as proof of my blade than allow some fetcher of flora to muddy the score.”
Aymeric blinked at the suggestion, then again at the flat circle on the man’s back. The pieces fell into place.
“You’re attempting to save me the trouble of knowing your answer.” The revelation came over him, restorative as ice water.
A grin cut the length of the stranger’s face before being subdued and exchanged for a furrowed brow.
“Nay, Ser, I would never accuse a Knight of wanting to avoid the stuff.”
As slow as dripping honey, Aymeric began to realize the humor in his manner of speech. Despite retaining eloquence that would befit the High Houses, each word seemed laced with an obscured joke, as though the very fact of his principled tone should be understood as a quip.
“What is your name, Ser?” Aymeric asked, posturing himself closer.
“Syrion,” he answered, chin raised. “Rurelthwin.”
His surname was a twist of constants that placed his birth well far from Ishgard. Aymeric doubted his ability to spell it without first seeing it written.
“From where is your family, Syrion?”
“Are you always so discrepantly inquisitive, Ser Knight?”
Aymeric gave pause. They had gravitated towards each other without note, as though Syrion’s keen gaze had drank him in like the tide. He found himself but a yalm away now. The proximity enlightened him to even more curiosities. While Syrion’s hair was predominately the color of spilled ink, Aymeric caught hints of dark blue streaks; the color whispered throughout like shattered shards of iron rich iolite.
“Aymeric,” he said, the heels of his shoes hot like cinders and filled with indecision. “de Borel.” He bowed at the waist. The name felt inadequate on his tongue, in the same way his flat black hair and boyish round eyes felt lacking under the stranger’s scrutiny.
When he rose, he caught the final moments of another smile, quick like sparks off flint.
“I am from Gridania,” Syrion answered. Aymeric wondered at the distance, finding some strange part of himself disheartened. “Yet I’ve come to make a home in Ishgard, I do think.”
“I am full glad to hear it,” his own zeal surprised him. Aymeric rushed to regain himself. “That mine countrymen have been kind enough for you to consider Ishgard as a home.”
Syrion clicked his tongue, his swift smile lingering. Aymeric recognized the sound as a muted laugh and something fluttered in his stomach.
“Your countrymen rather pride themselves on the opposite, I had thought.” Syrion paused, and though Aymeric did open his mouth, to either object or perhaps commiserate, the former continued as though the cultural nuance meant naught to him. “‘Tis all the same. Among the sea of disdain for foreigners, I did find my welcome.”
“I do not mean to assume you have settled without enduring your share of Ishgardian mistrust. I apologize on behalf of my kin,” sincerely, Aymeric placed a fist against his chest. “And am ever indebted to those that have found it within themselves to receive you kindly.”
“I hear he has the most foul reputation amongst your houses, so I should allow you to rescind that debt, Ser.”
Aymeric’s brow twitched in thought as he tried to recall who would be deserving of such an assumption. He came up with two, perhaps three names that the rumor mill oft churned unfavorably for.
“Be that as it may,” Aymeric dismissed, deterring himself from prying. “Should you find yourself in need of a harbor amongst that dreadful sea, I would have you rely on my house.”
Lightning flashed in Syrion’s eyes. He leaned forward, as though suddenly hooked by an invisible thread.
“Pray forgive me, but do you extend that offer to all those seeking Ishgardian citizenship?”
“Nay,” Aymeric exhaled with a stifled laugh, “Only to the ones who can hold their own against no less than four dragons at once.”
“I see I’ve just barely passed the bar, then.”
“Only just.” Aymeric’s mouth spread into a full smile. “You will find Borel Manor in the Pillars, East of the Last Vigil. We are fortunate enough to share the quarter with Dzemael Manor.”
Syrion’s brow furrowed, his dark lips hitched asymmetrically. For the first time, Aymeric could see the thoughts swirling in his verdant eyes. Despite his perceived alarm however, the tone that followed was composed.
“You mustn’t mean across from the Athenaeum Astrologicum.”
“Aye, that area. You’re familiar with it, then?”
Syrion looked away. Aymeric watched him squint at the distance, where sky met peak. Despite the hot sun directly overhead, a chill ran him through in the silence.
“Tell me, Ser Knight.” Syrion mulled his tongue as he met Aymeric’s gaze once more. The heat returned, like wine settling in the pit of his stomach. “How is it that I’ve resided in Ishgard for several moons, in that particular district, mind, and have managed to never happen upon you before now?”
Aymeric exhaled, the relief palpable. “I am a Temple Knight, Syrion, despite my current idling. While Borel Manor was my home for many summers, I now stay and train at the Congregation with my fellows Knights.”
Syrion nodded, the air clearing with a breeze. Aymeric was left to wonder at it and how the knot it had placed in his stomach became undone with the other man’s voice.
“I see. Who should I call for then, if I were to visit your Borel Manor?”
“The Viscount and Viscountess, of course. They are kind and dependable. You won’t find better in all of Ishgard.”
“Such high praise.” His brows lifted, shrouded behind his sharp bangs. “They would be your parents?”
Ayermic paused despite himself. “Yes.”
A flash of something rippled across Syrion’s features, as though he had tossed the tiniest pebble into a vast ocean. Aymeric swallowed.
“One final inquiry, if you will indulge me.” He heard his own voice rush like a river over jagged rocks. Syrion nodded, though as Aymeric continued, he began to pull something out of his pocket. “You mentioned frequenting the quarter of which I spoke. What brings you there with such regularity?”
Syrion’s mouth twisted, the tight and rigid shape almost resembling a smile as he peered over the edge of their plateau. Aymeric tracked the movement, and subsequently spotted an approaching Knight on the rise of land he had formerly occupied. His stomach flipped and paralysis spread through him, quick as poison.
“My employment.” Syrion said, before suddenly blowing into something odd and yellow.
A high pitched whistle followed. Aymeric recognized it as the calling for a Chocobo. Not a moment passed before a blur whirred past him. The beast bounded up to its master, wearing the canary colored standard of Gridania, marked with twin serpents.
“Where are you employed?” Aymeric’s urgency heightened, the words scalding his tongue like too-hot tea as Syrion hoisted himself on the Chocobo’s back. “Ishgard’s horticulture would have you here, in the Highlands rather than the city.”
“Ah, I have misled you, Ser. Botany is but a hobby of mine.” He sighed, haggard as though the following truth was more burdensome to admit than to carry. “Nay, verily, the welcome I had found was at the Astrologicum, as I had mentioned it.”
The sun eclipsed Syrion’s face as Aymeric attempted to read his strange expression.
“You’re an Astrologian, then? That is a fine profession.” Yet one that was incongruent with the image Syrion had painted of himself. The confusion was evident in Aymeric’s tone.
Before he could consider the implications any further, the distant Knight called to him, shattering the thin glass mood that had formed around them. He felt Syrion’s eyes as he waved to his comrade.
“I’ve distracted you from your duty long enough, it would seem, Ser Knight.”
“It would.” Aymeric’s stomach sank as the man turned and headed back the way he had come. “Though I would have just one more inquiry for you.”
The Chocobo’s wings fluttered as Syrion steadied him away from the ledge.
“What is your second final inquiry for me then, Ser?”
The humor he had come to know in Syrion’s voice suddenly suffocated him with its sweetness, like saccharine honey coating his throat. He choked on it, the words he longed to ask sticking stubbornly alongside. His eagerness burned red across his cheeks. The silence strangled him, yet the fear of never again feeling any of it wrenched him forward.
“Will I be seeing you? In Ishgard?” The Chocobo’s feathers ruffled at Aymeric’s volume. He watched Syrion’s brows disappear behind that night sky fringe once more.
Aymeric’s heart throbbed in his ears as he strained into the lull. Naught but the wind answered for a strenuous moment as Syrion looked away, his coy smile playing tricks on Aymeric’s mind.
“I think such a question is unwise for me to answer, Ser.” Syrion said, making a quick, cryptic motion at the scabbard on his hip. “Let us consult those who know the future far better than I.”
With those enigmatic words, the rectangular objects that had circled his spherical device earlier now flew out from their casing in an arc towards Aymeric. His eyes grew as he recognized them as cards of some sort. They settled in the air, lined before him as though laid mundanely against a table. He thought them beautiful; golden and shimmering, as though dipped in ichor.
“Go on, then,” Syrion said, chin raised in that same challenging manner as earlier. “Choose one and we shall see if the Twelve will our reunion.”
The notion was baffling, yet it reminded him of old, frantic whispers. Hissed rumors that demonized such trappings echoed in his ears since he was old enough to count the beads on Halone’s rosary. He swallowed thickly.
“I see now from whom you had received your welcome.” Aymeric called across the plateau, noticing the distance between them. “When you meet with Master Jannequinard next, pray give him my regards.”
Syrion paused as the edges of his smile went taut.
“Aye, I shall, Ser Knight. Yet I wonder if you won’t still partake, even knowing what impiety I conjure. The curiosity in you is clear from where I stand.”
Aymeric considered, finding Syrion’s assumption to be true. His eyes ran over the aureate cards before him. Rich purple, the color of spilled wine, pooled between the amber pillar borders, like a sunset beholden from Ishgard’s own Jeweled Crozier. Looking further down, he once again beheld the corpses at his ankles. He recalled the splendid Heavens that had fell and swirled at Syrion’s behest; the instantaneous victory he had procured in mere moments without a single drop of blood let. Aymeric knew full well that such a battle could have cost many lives; as well as he knew the sin that gripped him as he reached out a gauntleted hand.
His choice of card flipped at the prompting. Aymeric gasped as an opulent portrait of the Fury was revealed. Syrion’s sudden laugh, musical and full of joy, tore his gaze away.
“But of course you would draw Her.” He said, chuckling still as all but the card touched by Aymeric floated back into place at his side.
The Spear hung between them. Despite Her fierce, soldiering beauty, Aymeric felt thoroughly haunted by Her, as though the unyielding expression She wore was for him, alone. He shuddered at the next breeze.
“I shall save you the sin of knowledge,” Syrion sighed, recalling the Fury to his side after their moment of reverie. “I thank you for your time, Ser Knight, and will take my leave now.” His Chocobo fluttered, readying itself for flight.
“You didn’t say,” Aymeric near shouted, feet carrying him forward despite the rising blackness in his heart. “Will I be seeing you, Syrion?”
The Chocobo cried out at the harsh tether of his harness as he was stilled. Syrion’s lips parted as he stared at Aymeric, yet silence was all he could manage.
“Ser! We are moving on from here!”
The call of an unnoticed Knight carried harsh over the vale, wrenching them into reality.
“Aye, Ser, on my way!” Aymeric responded, that chilled breeze worming its way around his heart like chains. He steeled himself to leave without an answer.
He turned, feeling the warmth of Syrion’s gaze on the back of his neck like the last rays at dusk. He would remember it; the Halonic presence of Astromancy, the tongue-in-cheek manner of a man nearly known, the humility magick and knowledge evoked in their witness. As Aymeric began down the slope, he held it all close to his chest, knowing that his blooming fascination had elicited a great change in him. He welcomed it, the lesson slipping down his throat like creme.
“Yes!” Syrion suddenly yelled out to him. Aymeric spun to see his face held shock equal to his own. “Yes, Aymeric.” He paused to swallow, to catch the breath that had been ripped from his lungs. “You shall see me in Ishgard. The Heavens will it as much as I.”