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Aug 23, 2023

They made no attempts to disguise themselves, that is her first cue that they want her attention.

The tavern on the Scions’ doorstep is always a lively place. Despite Mor Dhona still being home for naught but adventurers and those prepared to brave the rugged frontier, few in the settlement could disagree over the prospect of sharing a drink once the day was done. Seventh Heaven bustles with her usual slough of folk and to any other who walked through these doors naught would be amiss. Save that Ciardha cannot miss the familiar head of black hair, the way violet streaks through it and cascades from its bindings in the same messy waves she has always known. They wear the same jacket that she knows so well, dusty from the road and worn with the kinds of adventures she once assumed commonplace for such a fellow. The sight of Eury upon her return had once bubbled eagerness within her. To hear their most recent tales, to perhaps share a few of her own, to ask their mind on that which weighed upon hers. They’d always so much to say.

That was before.

Before she last saw them in black robes with violet markings, a red mask cast over those same golden eyes that could mean naught else. One would think she’d have learned her lesson when Lahabrea had infiltrated the Scions; that she’d have learned to question a friendly face and yet… Never once had she even considered it. That the Ascians might have eyes upon them still. Watching. Waiting.

Yet she has never sensed that from Eury. They have always been a sunlight dappled path, warm and inviting yet never demanding more from her than she would freely give. She has never considered herself so poor a judge of character; perhaps that is why the betrayal still stings so deeply. The shock of it has yet to let her go. Even now she struggles to see it; to remember how they looked wrapped in darkness and on the other end of her blade. In such a familiar place she can see naught but the adventurer who has offered a guiding hand time and again.

They are standing by the bar, engaged in conversation with the lalafellin mage to their right, but even as they laugh at some joke that has been made, Ciardha can tell they are aware of her presence. It is an offer, made silently. She needs only decide whether or not to accept.

Her steps carry her to the counter and she slides onto one of the stools. A quick exchange with the tavernkeep puts a wooden mug in her hands and the smell of mead in her nostrils. The honeyed contents do little to tempt her, but she can watch them in the reflection upon its surface. She knows better than to think the depths of her cup will offer any answers.

She can hear the conversation reach its end, the tell tale chink of a gil purse being exchanged with the tavernkeep. The young mage wanders back off to adventure and Ciardha keeps her vigil, reminding herself over and over that she is not dealing with whom she thinks.

“Lively as ever.” The familiar voice comes from closer than she expects. Eury leans back against the bar, their elbows propping them up as their eyes look well beyond the wood of the ceiling.“‘Tis good to see the place doing so well.”

It lurches in her chest at how easy it all feels. As though naught has changed between them, as though they’d not stood between her and Emet-Selch in the final, crucial moment of battle. As though they are not one of the people who has orchestrated misery after misery for those she holds dearest. Yet if she has learned nothing else for her journeys upon the First, it was that the Ascians were not so simple as she wished to believe. That they too had that which they loved, which they fought for. A duty they must fulfill at any cost. Things she knows all too well.

“What are you doing here?” Ciardha asks quietly.

“Not looking for a rematch, if that is your concern,” Eury answers with a bemused shrug. “I assure you I am in no state to stand against you or any of your allies after our last encounter.”

Ciardha remembers the moment with painful clarity. The light that crept into the cracks of her soul and sought to rip her apart. Arbert’s sacrifice that she might take those last few painful steps to–

To accomplish naught. Emet-Selch yet lived, thanks to Eury’s intervention. The very last face she had ever expected to see standing against her. The last person she’d have ever imagined to be standing amongst her enemies. She has known Eury nearly as long as she has known the Scions, their presence ever cropping up when she needed it most. Kind, gentle Eury, always listening to her every trouble, always with a comforting word and encouraging suggestion. They’d always the right perspective to offer, always when her path the most obscured… To look back at it now it was so painfully obvious it had all been orchestrated and yet–!

Ciardha’s fingers tighten about her mug, digging into it until she can feel the splinters beneath her nails. She wants to believe. Even now her heart rails against what her mind would insist is the truth. They are an Ascian, everything they have done has been in purpose to their own design. They’ve used her, made her dance as they would wish it, all while she remained ignorant. She thought of them as a dear friend; did they think the same? Of course not. She probably does not even know their name.

“Who are you? Really.” Ciardha finally speaks. “I’ll wear this veil you have pulled over my eyes no longer. Is your name even Eury?”

“It is, actually,” They answer, and Ciardha tries to pretend she does not see the pain flash across their reflection in her cup. “Euryphaessa, to be precise, if you’d like my true name in full. Though I imagine that answer you wish is that I am- or rather I once was- Azem, fourteenth seat of the Convocation of Thirteen, which by its name ought to give you an idea of how much esteem they held for me by the end of it all.”

“Azem? You’re Azem?” The name strikes a chord so sharply she feels it in her gut. Was that not the very same that Hythlodaeus had spoken to her of? A wanderer, he had called them; someone who belonged everywhere and yet nowhere. Ciardha thought it nothing but a clever riddle.

You’ll help them, won’t you?

What did Hythlodaeus think that she capable of?

“The last one to hold the name before it was removed from the Convocation, yes.” Eury sinks against the bar with the full weight of their words. “Though as you’ve seen, it has not stopped me from falling in with my fellows when the world found itself shattered. Particulars aside, I’m still an Ascian like the others, and am still just as guilty for the rejoinings that have taken place.”

There is more to this story; Ciardha can feel it in the knot curling in her chest. They have the same weight Elidibus did in his final moments atop the tower. For all the power they wield, all the destruction Ciardha knows they are likely capable of, Eury feels small, and isolated, and alone. Emptied by the long years of what once mattered to them and grasping aimlessly for anything that was left.

They are opposites in every way, yet she looks at them and sees a white-robbed figure, small and curled over themselves and spilling tears onto the last remnants of their dearest friends. Ciardha pulls a single orange stone from her pocket, traces its familiar bevel in her palm. The remainder she had given to Elidibus in his final moments, yet for some reason she’d felt compelled to hold onto this one. Was it for now, for this moment?

“Then… this is yours, I imagine.” She holds it out to them.

In all the time she has known them, it is the first in which she sees true surprise upon their face. Ciardha is greeted by golden eyes paralyzed wide, their casual lean has straightened and they stare at the simple crystal as though it prepared to consume them entirely. Ciardha feels as though she has just held out the world itself in her hand for them to take.

“Where… did you get that?” Eury’s voice is scarcely a whisper.

“Hythlodaeus gave it to me, or Emet-selch’s recreation of him, anyways. He said it was Azem’s, that means it is yours, doesn’t it?”

“Yes but– no. That’s impossible I– I never made one.”

They must see the question in her eyes for they shake their head. “When the Final Days descended upon the world, the Convocation laboured to find a solution, to save our people from the horrors it wrought. This you know. But with such danger as there was, who was to say they would not meet the same fate as any other upon the star? That they should not risk their plans being set back by such a loss, each member imbued their memories, their very duties, into such stones. After… everything fell apart, we found that they could stir the shards of those souls, remind them of who they once were, raise them to their seat and drag them back into this eternal cycle of torment we’ve carved for ourselves.”

“To raise an Ascian to their station, Hythlodaeus said as much.” Ciardha stares back down at the stone in her hand. Was it…relief? To know that it belonged to Eury, to an unsundered soul– one that she couldn’t possibly be a fragment of. To know it couldn’t affect her, or change her or make her into someone she was not… it lifts a weight from her heart, even as that very burden seems to fall more heavily upon Eury’s shoulders. ”Even if this all true, why then did you not make one?”

“Because by then I was already removed from the convocation. I disagreed with them, you see. I refused to accept their plan to summon Zodiark, insisted I could find a different answer, a better answer. Even when Venat came and asked me to join her in summoning Hydaelyn, I refused. It was no different. To surrender so many of the lives we wished to protect was folly to my eyes.”

“So then why…?”

“Join the Ascians?” Eury regards her, their attempt at an easy expression only carving the pain deeper into their gaze. “Because I never found an answer. I failed, painfully and bitterly. I lost my right to choose when my path would have killed everyone. I no longer know what was right, but that you are here, that this star still lives and breathes, still laughs and cries as it does, is thanks to the choice I rejected. The choice the convocation made, the choice Venat made, and the souls that surrendered everything is what saw us to tomorrow.”

How did they bear it? Ciardha has felt the weight of loss in the crackle of Amaurot’s fires and the hollowing emptiness of the streets that remained below the Tempest. Some distant part of her heart that remembers still weeps for all that is lost even as her mind knows only of the present. Yet never has she felt it like in this moment. Even the thought of having to make such a choice is enough to paralyze her. To surrender half or risk it all only to lose everything–? It was a fate crueller than death itself.

Was that the truth that was hidden within this memory stone? Ciardha wanted to know the answer nearly as much as she feared it.

“May I see it?” Eury asks and Ciardha places the stone in their palm. They jolt at the contact as though it an ember from the hearth. It glistens and gleams in a way Ciardha is certain differs from when she holds it. Whether it gives them any answers, she cannot discern from their expression alone.

After several long moments a faint smile pulls against the sorrow upon their face.

“I might have guessed it was him.”

“Who...?”

Eury shakes their head. “Nothing to worry about, I assure you. It seems one was made on my behalf, even though I was not granted the honour of remembrance. At least one person thought I was worthy of it.”

It occurs to her then, who that someone might be. One does not throw themselves before white auracite for simply anyone, after all.

“He cared for you.” She says.

“Even when he had no reason left to.” They chuckle sadly. “He always was sentimental.”

“You should keep it,” Ciardha returns her hands to her mug. “It’s clearly very important to you.”

“No. It was given to you for a reason, this I believe. Hythlodaeus has always had an eye for such things. He did not bestow it to you on a whim. Not an unfounded one, at any rate.”

Eury curls their fingers around the stone, and in that moment something within them shifts decisively.

“I, too, have something I would like to give you.” Eury closes their eyes and the stone in their palm begins to glow, golden motes of light shimmer and dart about it before settling deep within the crystal’s depths. They hold it out and drop it into her hands when she reaches for it. The stone is as sunlight in her fingers, warm and gentle and inviting.

“What did…?”

“I’ve imbued the stone with a little something of my own. A magick of my own making that I think you’ll find quite useful on your adventures, I know I certainly did.”

Ciardha closes her eyes and tries to focus on the aether newly imbued within. She has held the stone long enough that the new additions light up to her senses. The aether twists and pulls, directs one way then another then– her eyes open. A… puzzle?

“Ah, but you’ll have to figure out my little trick, first.” Eury offers a wink. “I do have every faith you’ll manage. Prove yourself worthy of it, and you’ll not want for aid or those at your side ever again.”

“Eury…”

What was she to make of such a gift? What was she to make of any of it? Were they a friend? An enemy? Why should they come all the way out here to give her this, when she the very reason their life nearly ended?

“Try not to worry too much about it,” Eury reaches over and ruffles her hair as though they have guessed her very thoughts. “I’m a traveller, after all. I follow whichever road I fancy in the moment. The one I elected tonight led me to you, and I am glad you willing to speak with me.”

They stand up properly from the bar, and place a small pouch of gil for the tavernkeep.

“Have another drink before you leave. Oh and do see that you don’t let Hydaelyn give you too hard a time. If She does, come find me and I’ll share with you all Her stories.”

Ciardha feels their hand on her shoulder, and it lingers there just long enough to hitch her breath. She could not shake the feeling that she would not see them again– and did not know if this should bring her relief or make her want to cry.

“Eury, wait.”

They pause.

“I don’t understand– I don’t understand it at all. Why?” Ciardha shakes her head, her words send ripples across the surface of her drink. “Why stand against us in one moment, to save Emet-Selch, then aid me the next knowing I will fight against him again? You know that we cannot accept the rejoinings, that we are fated to clash so– so why are you here? Gifting me these things? It doesn’t make sense.”

“You’ll find not much I do does,” Eury answers. “But even I have that which I cannot afford to lose. He may be a grump more often than not, but he is still someone very dear to me. Even if perhaps the reverse no longer holds true.”

That turns her head enough to see them looking malms away, to a time and place she not privy to. The familiarity aches in her again; she knows these feelings and Ciardha is uncertain what to make of how often she has felt these familiar notes with her Ascian foes. Elidibus and his duty, Eury and their love for their kin that would put them in front of the executioner’s blade…

“Elidibus tells me you were poking about the records in Anyder, surely you’ve some idea now as to what my reasons may have been. What it is I’ve been trying to achieve.”

“Elidibus told you–?”

It stalls her entirely from the remainder of her thoughts. He could not have– from the time of their confrontation in the ocean’s depths to the summit of the Tower, Ciardha can think of scarce few moments for such an exchange. Which meant the most likely explanation was–

They all remained. Even…

Eury raises a finger to their lips. “Worry not too much about it. None of us are of the mind to force a confrontation, or much of anything in our present state. The world may continue with its share of troubles, but you’ll get none from us for a while at least.”

“Yet not indefinitely.” Ciardha follows the thought to its conclusion. The wood of her mug is rough beneath her fingers, grounds Ciardha against the pull in her chest. If it were her in their place… would she act any differently? Had she lost the twins and their energy, G’raha’s tender kindness… were she stripped of Thancred at her back or Y’shtola’s bold knowledge… perhaps she too would discard an empty future in search of a lost past.

“You will resume eventually. The rejoining, the calamities. To reclaim the old world, restore your friends.”

“That I cannot say; they may yet.” “And you?”

Eury turns their head and they regard her with such sorrow that the smile they wear could not hope to mask it for all they are trying to. She feels it resonate down to her very core in a way that steals her breath.

“I simply cannot bear to lose any more. That is all. They seek to reclaim the past, and it is not my place to pass judgment on them for it. I’m simply of the mind to hang onto what little I have left. And perhaps, now, that also means you.”

Ciarhda can find no words with which to reply.

“Fare thee well, Ciardha Tinuviel. Know that where you walk, fate is certain to follow. And so long as it does, the sun will always guide your steps.”

They turn, and this time they do not stop when she reaches after them.

“May we meet again.”

And then they were gone.

#screenshots #ciardha #euryphaessa #AU: Seat of the Traveller #drabble

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