FFXIV: A Dream of Home Part 2
Part two of my story, A Dream of Home, you can find part 1 here
Q'ihnn Tia, Ophianne, and Rhea Basco belong to my lovely wife uldahstreetrat
---
Q'ihnn Tia was not having a good week
Quite frankly, the past 6 months had been harrowing. Keeping Ala Mhigo from falling in on itself, the business with Yotsuyu, and open war with the Garleans increasingly becoming a "when" rather than an "if". But the past week had provided the cherry on top of it all. Right as they'd devised a plan to cripple the empire from within, Thancred and Beloch both dropped from their chairs, trapped in some kind of magically induced coma. Every day, it seemed another Scion - another friend - was meeting a similar fate. No magic or medicine could rouse them, nothing could reach their conscious minds. They are all alive in every conceivable way save the matter of consciousness.
And now it seemed that very fate had befallen his best friend...
He was speaking to Lyse when he got the call. Allie had been found near the edge of a cliff on the outskirts of Rhalgr's Reach, sound asleep. Just like Beloch. Just like Ophianne. Just like his daughter...
Fuck.
He rode back to the Rising Stones with her on his Chocobo's back like a man possessed. He didn't notice or acknowledge anyone he rode past, so lost was he in trying to figure out what he was going to say to Rhea when she found both of her lovers comatose.
---
Rhea Bosco was also not having a good week.
Granted, not as bad as Q'ihnn's, but pretty close. The whole nation's gone to hell in a handbasket because her former countrymen can't leave well enough alone, the prince was dead except apparently, he wasn't except no he kinda was but whatever, her boyfriend had fallen into a weird magical coma, her girlfriend was in the midst of a depression death spiral. And on top of all that, her latest book had failed to break even, and her publisher was being a real dick about it.
She had lost track of Allie a few days ago - something about helping out a friend in Ala Mhigo. Which left her alone with the sleeping Beloch. She had not left his side in two days.
"Landlord has to be pissed," Rhea joked to herself, one hand holding up one of several books, while the other remained on Beloch's - her thumb gently stroking his knuckle. "Eh, I'll send him a fruit basket later, that should mull him over." Rhea set the book, and the page she had been struggling to read for 5 hours, down with the rest. Both hands were now on Beloch's. "Ya know, um, babe. I...I keep thinking about when we first met. When Allie and Q'ihnn came back with you after that business in Halatalai. I-I just, I kept thinking "man, it's a good thing Allie came along when she did, otherwise I'd be climbing you like a tree". Funny, that." Rhea chuckled, once more to herself. Beloch, Thancred, and the rest of the scions, remained sleeping. Rhea's hands left Beloch's so that she could rest her face in them, taking deep breaths to keep calm.
"I really don't know what I'm going to do if you don't wake up..." her voice shook, memories of the mountain caves of her youth playing through her mind. Of Reapers brought home broken and bloody, killed by the very nation they served. Of her mother. And the way she would keep herself and everyone else calm. Someone has to remain calm, she would say, over and over - a mantra to keep focus.
And as the door was kicked open, Rhea found herself repeating that mantra to herself over and over. because Q'ihnn just came in with the other love of her life, as comatose as the one in the bed next to her. "Clear a bed!" Q'ihnn shouted.
Someone has to remain calm, someone has to remain calm, someone has to remain CALM. The words marched through Rhea's mind, choking down the hyperventilation and stowing the spiraling thoughts. Rhea had a bed prepared in a flash, and Q'ihnn laid Allie upon it.
"Gods, not you too..." Rhea muttered.
"Someone found her like this," Q'ihnn explained. "She...she was found at the edge of a cliff." The two looked up at each other, in silent communication as to the implications of that last detail. Allie was always on a precipice, but to know that this affliction that had been tearing through the scions might have just saved her life was...much to consider. Rhea turned back down towards Allie, and she lifted her hand to gently stroke her cheek. "Allie..."
Then, her eyes widened, as her magic felt the flicker of something deep inside. "She's still in there."
"What?" Q'ihnn asked.
"This isn't like the others, Allie is still in there!" Rhea tripped over herself a few times as she raced to her bag. From it, she produced and unfurled her Astrolabe. Using it, Rhea focused on the threads of her lover lost within the maze of her mortal body. "Yes, she's in there. But it's weird, it's as if the threads of aether that make Allie Allie are...tangled up into a ball. It's rather like...oh."
"What is it?"
"She's dreaming."
---
"And you're sure this will work?" Alisaie asked while steadying her staff.
"Just hold the connection, kid, otherwise...well let's not think about that, okay?" Q'ihnn replied. Rhea was checking the book one last time, to make sure they got the incantation right. The book was a loan from Master Matoya. Once they figured out the differences between Allie's affliction and what had befallen the other scions, Q'ihnn immediately set off to find and recruit Matoya's help. She found the answer in a tome that was, somehow, even older than she was.
It was called the Blissful Prison, a spell that locked its victims away in a perfect prison built from their hopes, dreams, and regrets. "Supposedly," said Rhea, " the prison is impossible to escape from on your own, even if you see through the illusion. The spell creates endless dream states; escape one, and you end up in another."
Q'ihnn adjusted his gauntlets and then sheathed his sword. "So what are we in for when we go in there?"
"If I'm right, Alisaie's portal will drop us right on top of her, so that'll cut down on the time otherwise spent wandering the prison. Other than that, it's just a matter of convincing Allie that the real world is better than whatever the spell can make."
Oh, is that all? Q'ihnn thought to himself. "I trust you have a plan for that?"
"Well she has her duty, her friends, the scions," Rhea gestured to her chest. "Oh, and these, these can make do anything."
Q'ihnn rolled his eyes, though internally, he knew that she was right. It didn't matter what illusion this spell had put up. Allienea Shepard just couldn't stay away. It wasn't in her programming. He looked at Alisaie and nodded. "Fire it up."
Alisaie took a deep breath and readied her staff. She spoke an incantation, in a language not spoken fluently since the 3rd astral era. She almost flubbed one or two stanzas but managed to correct herself before the spell unraveled completely. This counter-spell was developed when the blissful prison was used to trap the princess of a long-dead kingdom. Alisaie chose not to tell Q'ihnn and Rhea the ending to that story, where, once freed, the princess threw herself from her bed chamber window to the rocks below. Choosing the comfort of oblivion over the harshness of reality.
The spell was completed, and the jewel atop the hilt of Alisaie's red mage tuck shone a vibrant blue. The same glow shone from behind Allie's eyelids, before a chain of aether wisped from beneath them to Q'ihnn and Rhea's eyes. The mist overtook their eyes, and their arms fell limp at their sides. Their minds were linked, their dreams shared. Now all Alisaie could do was wait.
---
A swirling vortex of colors and lights gave way to sand, sea, and sky. Q'ihnn and Rhea knew, instinctively, reflexively, that they were in the right place.
"She told me it was beautiful, but..." Rhea said breathlessly.
"Yeah," Q'ihnn replied, "I only saw it in an echo vision. Right at the end." The sand was littered with bodies in that vision, the air thick with gunsmoke and screaming. "If this is Shepard's dream, then I know where she'll be. C'mon."
The Isle of Cronera was founded in the 5th Astral Era by the Shepard family, as they led their people out of slavery to the Dalmascans and into the waters of Thavnair. Since then, they stood as a beacon of religious wisdom to the Family Collective - which actually ran the island. The Cronerans were fiercely isolationist, and protective of their lifestyle, lest it be overtaken by yet another powerful government seeking to make slaves of them.
Sadly, when that powerful government did come, they were not looking for slaves.
It felt surreal for Q'ihnn to walk up the road to the main city. As if he had always known the way. Then he remembered that his and Shepard's minds were linked. Thus, what would be muscle memory to her would be so to him in this space. He looked to his side, at Rhea, who looked nervous. A rare emotion for the usually effortlessly calm Viera, but something about this place made her tense.
The air was crisp, the sound of the waves made his heart soften like the hand of a mother placed upon the head of her child. Everything about this place...
Twelve above, how could they convince anyone to give this up? Especially if the reality was so-
They heard laughter in the distance. Laughter and music. Q'ihnn and Rhea rushed to the sound's source, whereupon they found a large crowd of Cronerans gathered in the center of a clearing. His instincts telling him that they had arrived at their destination, Q'ihnn and Rhea pushed their way through to the front of the crowd, where they saw her.
Vibrant red hair flowing behind her like a great crimson river, her clothes a flowy, beautiful mix of tans, violets, and blues, her eyes so full of joy. Allienea Shepard danced like she hadn't a care in the whole damned world. The music, joined by the rhythmic clapping of the people around her, timed perfectly to her every movement.
Neither of them knew Allie could dance like this. Neither of them had ever heard her laugh like she was.
"We may have our work cut out for us," Rhea said.