Content Warning: Wound Descriptions
"Brace yourself," Esredes said in Dragonspeak. He shifted back down to his fully Elezen form, wrapped both hands carefully around the spear... and yanked it out in one go.
Naturally, the much larger dragon he was standing on roared in pain, but it passed quickly, at the least.
He threw the spear off into the distance, then crouched down and reached his arms carefully underneath the scale, applying pressure to the wound with gauze, repeating the process until it finally stopped bleeding among the piles of bloodied cloth sitting on the back of the dragon. All that was left was to apply a healing salve as best he could, and he had done all he could for the wound.
Slippery little things, Dragoons were. For all the protection scales provided, they made it a pain in the ass to then get to anything damaged underneath. It was fortunate enough then that not only could Esredes himself change sizes at will, but that his people were nearby enough to rush to aid after several Dragoons got into a panic skirmish with a venturing group of Hraesvelgrs'.
"You'll heal over quickly," Esredes said as he stood up quickly. "I'll get off your back now." In an instant, the man was shrouded in black, his small Elezen form losing shape and form, the shape morphing and streching upward and reforming into the outline of the wyvern. And as the blackness dissipated, he leapt off the dragon's back and landed back on the ground of Dravania, where his group was still busy finishing up their work treating the wounded.
"How is he?" Came a voice from behind. Esredes turned around and lowered his head upon a hyur woman with blue hair and purple eyes, a far recognized face by the name of Ceila.
"Not badly damaged," Esredes replied. "I think once the rest are done, we should go. They're not going to tolerate us sticking around."Ceila smiled faintly. "I have to agree. But what about yourself, Esrey?"
"What do you mean?"
"I think you need to rebandage."
Esredes glanced back at his own flank, the long graze of a slash across it looking redder even on his red skin then it had twenty minutes ago. Unlike most of the dragons here, he had no scales with which to deflect the spears of Dragoons. "Ah," he said. "Yes, it looks like so."
He shifted back down and stepped away from the group, snipping away at the bandages that reformed at the top of his leg and redressing them quickly. It was only when he turned back around that he saw Ceila approach from the group.
"I think here would be a good takeoff point. I told the others to gather here once they finished," she said, stopping right next to him and staring right up at him. "Everything all right with you?"
"The wound will be fine." Esredes said, taking a seat right there on the ground. "But it's best I rest a little before we fly back."
She took a seat next to him without saying a word, staring at the sky. "It's so hard to resist the sky, isn't it?" She said with a small chuckle.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we seem to end up talking under it a lot." She glanced at him. "You seem like something particular is on your mind today, Esrey. I've been meaning to find a moment to bring it up."
"Do I?" He looked right back at her. "I don't really think there is. I've been thinking about the same sort of things all week."
"Such as?"
"Such as what we're doing." He said, staring at the slowly rolling clouds. "Does it ever just hit you what is truly happening? That we really are growing so fast we might be able to take on the Holy See someday?"
Ceila took a few seconds to respond. "It does. Maybe not as hard as it hits you. I had a feeling, when I left the city to find you, that something would come of it I couldn't imagine at the time, whatever that may be. It never felt hopeless to me, but more as if something was bound to slowly brew out in Coerthas." She flashed him a soft smile. "Coerthas is often weird like that, you learn growing up there."
"I suppose that is the greatest truth of all." Esredes said. The sky stretched on as if endless, and those large trees and larger mountain scapes never seemed to shrink even slightly. "I think I felt something too, there underneath everything else. It simply doesn't make sense until now. Well." A bug crawled out onto a nearby rock, and then continued on its way and disappeared underneath. "Even now, it doesn't really make sense."
"It doesn't make sense because you want to process every little detail of it before you decide it does," she said. "That's what you're good at. Just don't let it overwhelm you too much."
"I like to think I'm doing all right with that right now." Esredes said.
Silence came over them for a moment. A few leaves traveled by on the breeze.
"What do you believe Shiva looks like?" Esredes asked.
"Hm," Ceila said after a moment, pausing to contemplate her answer. "Well, I always imagined she must be quite graceful and... kind looking. Something for even a dragon to see something in, you know? She also strikes me as quite tall, and... commanding. I think black hair suits her."
"I think my mind pictured her more golden." Esredes said. "But that makes sense. I think you have the right idea."
More silence followed."We're going to win." Esredes said, looking at her. "That's what you'll say if I bring the question up, yes?"
"Is that what you're thinking about, Esredes?"
He brushed a hand through his hair once, lightly. "It's hard not to. The more people we get, the more I just think about how we're going up against Eorzea's best military, and if the fire of those scorned combined with advanced magic and the blood will really be enough in the end. Either we're just another failed attempt about to die on the wind, or this is history. History, Ceila. I never thought I would even have a chance of driving history itself. Are we even ready for that weight?"
"I don't think most people are," Ceila replied. "But we're not really operating on something with precedence. We simply have to see where this will go and work with it. And that's really as exciting as it is frightening, isn't it?"
"I think you meant to say terrifying."
"I did." She said after a moment. "No matter what happens, we'll be as we are and act accordingly. Not as mere knights, but the something greater we've both become through this journey we took."
Esredes stared at the skyline. "It'd be nice to go home again someday." He said. "But even if not- there are worse things than to stay out here and enjoy the scenery, or become one with the earth itself. Maybe that would be my thanks to it for allowing me to wield it."
"I'm sure it hears your thanks already somehow, Esredes."
The clouds in the sky had barely moved an inch by the time the rest of the party came over. It wasn't long before dots of color joined that background of blue and white, but only for a small moment in time before everything went once more back to as it was before.
