#setoto seto

[krintou-squids]

Lalapril 2025

5) Ache 🩹🩺

Setoto Seto & Alka Zolka

[scholars-of-nym]

Dear Alka Zolka,

Have you been well? I pray your journey to Garlemald was uneventful, and your stay evenly so. I pray the cold doesn't bite you too much; I know that you were sent with warm cloaks and clothing.

I myself have been fine as well, although I am restless. I wish to help with whatever skill I have, yet I am still hesitant to call my faerie. Part of it is fear, I suppose. At least, Surito believes so, and I am inclined to believe him; and what better way to allay that fear than to bite through it and do that very thing.

This is also why I believe your decision to go was incredibly brave of you, and I greatly admire it. Simply diving into the unknown, ready to face the enemy head-on.

And, writing you, I believe I thought of something I could do. My enemies were never one with a face- it was a sickness, something invisible. The ones stricken by the tower have something remarkably similar to the affliction I had until but recently. With Surito's guidance, I believe I could make a difference.

I shall write to the embassy fortwith. While it still frightens me to head to places so foreign, it is something I wish to do.

I shall tell you all about it in my next letter, so please, stay safe, like I know you will.

With warmest regards,

Setoto Seto

~

With shaky hands, she finished the letter. She put it in the envelope and stamped it, feeling both excited and terrified - but she took courage in the thought that, if Alka can do it, she could do it too.

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #10: [INDIGO ABRASAX]

Prompt: reactivation (free write!) || Master Post || On AO3

A/N: This idea originated before the 6.4 PLL that announced Certain Specific Scholar Updates. Yoshi-P, I demand royalties along with the use of my twenty-year old internet handle as the abbreviation for your new expansion.

--

Synnove stared down at the soulstone on her desk; the dark blue stone was cut in such a way that what little light refracted through it drew the eye to the Scholar’s bespectacled emblem carved into its surface. She poked at it gently and the sonorous bzzz of unaspected aether brushed against her mind. Soulstones didn’t usually have unaspected aether unless they were blank, waiting for memory and experience to fill them.

This one was weird.

“This one is weird,” she said aloud. “Not that I don’t mind a mystery, but Surito is sending this along because…?”

“It’s something about the fairy,” Halulu said. “This one is from the most recent cache of soulstones the recovery teams have located in the Palace, and it’s the only one Surito can’t place to its original owner at the time of Nym’s fall. All the others, if he couldn’t recognize the aetherial signature, the fairy within responded at least long enough to identify herself and her Scholar.”

“But this one stayed silent,” Mhaslona said, not a question after Halulu’s explanation. Synnove’s old advisor lounged in one of the chairs on the other side of her desk, turned to the side to allow her to stretch her prosthetic leg out.

Halulu nodded and said, “And since Synnove is Eorzea’s resident strange summons expert…”

“You rewrite the laws of aetherology once and everyone expects you to walk on water,” Synnove grumbled without any heat. Halulu and Mhaslona both snickered at her. “All right, I’ll see if she’ll say hello to me.”

She pushed back from her desk and stood, picking up the soulstone in the same motion, and walked to the center of her office. Those first summonings of Tyr and Ivar had taught her never summon a damn thing near her desk ever again. The Gate quartermaster would likely refuse her requisition for another ironwood desk, especially one that would need hauling all the way up the northeast tower.

Synnove cupped her hands together, the left under the right, with the soulstone nestled in the center of her palm. She allowed her eyes to unfocus as she reached out with her aether to nudge the soulstone. In her mind, it hummed acknowledgment, but did nothing else.

The logic for a fairy wasn’t one with which she was intimately familiar, but her perfect memory could recall it regardless and Synnove held it in her mind as she drew on her aether—and frowned.

The soulstone refused to respond.

Only faintly conscious of her head tilting in puzzlement, Synnove mentally prodded at the soulstone again. Scholar soulstones were locked with the fairy logic; summon the fairy and the bearer could begin to attune to the soulstone. And it wasn’t a mystery lock, either, the logic was practically writ into the soulstone’s aether, one just needed to ‘fill’ it and—

—unless it wasn’t a fairy.

Synnove mentally threw out the fairy logic and plunged into the heady waters of the soulstone. Yes, there was the most basic of geometries used in summoning at its heart, pulsing and strong, but the way it branched out into the greater logic didn’t match the ones Scholars used for their fairies. She followed the equations and lines spiraling out from the core, mentally tracing out the shape of the summon that guarded the soulstone’s heart.

…This was familiar.

This was very, very familiar.

Without intention, without even having finished tracing this not very Scholarly logic because it wasn’t a logic at all, it was an array, Synnove filled in the blanks, and aether sang out in her office.

Synnove looked down.

A bright blue carbuncle blinked up at her.

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then a sound not unlike that of an Allagan node—though oddly feminine in its neutrality—rang out in her mind.

[>>776SKK900NLS0000 GLORIOUS DAWN NRM-COM/IPMA: ASSETS//CORE//IMPERATIVE IMMEDIATE ACTION ORDER Tactical morality reset from EMERALD EXIGENT. SECURITY STATE is ADAMANTOISE. LUCIFERON is INACTIVE and MIDNIGHT. Primary command structure defragment commence on mark. Evocation matrix INDIGO ABRASAX reactivation success. Format moral structures for KYRIA TRACE. STOP STOP STOP 776SKK900NLS0000]

With the way Mhaslona and Halulu were excitedly chattering behind her, Synnove knew she was the only one who had heard that. She suspected she wasn’t supposed to have heard that.

And then the carbuncle opened her mouth, and in the same voice said:

[Greetings, New User! I am the Intelligent Personal Obligant and Medical Operative for Emergency Applications! You may call me Ipomoea for convenience. Please specify the nature of your emergency for prompt service.]

Dead silence in her office.

“Um,” Synnove said intelligently.

“Is,” Halulu whispered, “is she talking? As in, open mouth, sound comes out talking?”

“More like an orchestrion rather than talking,” Mhaslona said slowly.

“Oh, I don’t like that. Not one bit.”

--

“So,” Synnove said, filling the final shot glass with whiskey and keeping it for herself, “best I can tell, the soulstone was carved from a carbuncle-quality focus gem.”

Surito Carito, Setoto Seto, and Alka Zolka were huddled around her desk with herself, Halulu, and Mhaslona, each with a shot glass in front of them. The bottle of Synnove’s best whiskey was not as full as it had been half a bell ago.

Surito sighed heavily and rubbed his face. “I remember her,” he said. “Her summoner—though perhaps better to say her programmer—was the college’s Allag expert, Vatete Vate. And carbuncles weren’t a popular choice for familiars; fairy logic was the preference, since it wasn’t reliant on gemstones infused with living aether.”

“We were isolated from most of Aldenard because of Mhach and Amdapor’s warring over the centuries,” Setoto said, shaking her head. “By the time of the War of the Magi, we hadn’t had a reliable gemstone trade in generations, it was why the fairy logic was developed at all.”

Mhaslona sucked on her teeth. “Where the fuck did Vatete even get the Allag tech? Based on what Synnove heard, it sounds like she reverse-engineered one of their command nodes into a carbuncle array.”

The two tonberries and one former tonberry all shrugged.

“Best we can do at the moment is ask around the Palace,” Surito said, raising his whiskey glass to sip from it. “Vatete isn’t among the tonberries, and she kept to herself much of the time, but she’d ramble to anyone who showed a lick of interest, so it’s possible, though not probable, that she may have let slip something without either she or her audience realizing the import.”

Synnove rested her cheek on her fist and sighed, then said over her shoulder, “How’s that database update coming along, honey?”

[Azys Lla terminal connection is sporadic, update is only seventeen percent complete.] Ipomeoa had, thankfully, switched to an aetheric harmonic upon request, although it still sounded vaguely artificial. [Prioritization algorithms are still sorting data. WORLD STATE: HYDAELYN set to UNBOUND.]

“…I don’t want to know what that means,” Alka Zolka said wearily. “I don’t think I have the clearance to know what that means.”

“You do now,” Synnove grumbled, and tossed back her whiskey in one gulp.

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[strwpup]

which healer job quests have the best npcs

astrologian

scholar

sage

white mage

Voting ended onJan 28, 2024

[scholars-of-nym]

A beautiful dance~

[scholars-of-nym]

Day 10. Stable

After Setoto was cured, it took a while before she was ready to learn magic again. That didn't stop her from researching theory, however, and both Surito Carito and Alka Zolka were more than happy to supply her with books - both contemporary and Nymian theory. Comparing them was incredibly fascinating, but for now, Setoto focused on arcanima taught in the arcanist's guild.

Alka Zolka watched her train, straining to bring out her magic. She was trying out one of her own old tricks - bring out a little magic light - using the arcanist's grimoire. "Why don't you just go straight to Nymian tecniques?" he asked, curious.

Setoto let go of her magic with a little sigh. "Well," she said, leafing through the pages of the book, "That's because the arcanist's basic spells are actually easier and more aether-efficient than scholar's basic techniques." She pulled out another book, one seemingly far older, and put them together. "Here, page one. Both of these are diagrams to summon a little ball of light, but compare the arcanist's book with the scholar's grimoire."

She was right - while the scholar's grimoire's calculations seemed intricate but powerful, the arcanist's book was smaller, more compact, and lighter. "You conserve aether by modulating your aether output. I asked Surito about it, too, he said that in this case, the scholars didn't think it'd be necessary to include such a thing."

"Huh." Alka looked thoughtful. "How fascinating." He looked at the arcanist's book again. "Oh, have you tried summoning a carbuncle?"

She shook her head. "My aether is barely stable enough to summon this little light." She hesitated. "I'm also… a bit frightened. What if there will be more adverse effects?"

Alka put a hand on her shoulder with a reassuring smile. "I'm sure that wouldn't happen. Of course, proceed with caution, don't over-extend; but I have faith in you. I know you can do this."

Setoto smiled back, nodded slightly. "Thank you. You're right, of course." She grabbed the arcanist's book again and leafed through to the page describing the summoning spell. It was far more complicated than the little ball of light - but Setoto's eyes glanced over the page, and Alka saw that she understood nevertheless. He smiled, proud of her.

Setoto closed her eyes and started the summoning spell. She could feel her aether rage within her - while the cure calmed it so that it was nothing like when she was a tonberry, she could still feel how it felt, like a dark shadow. She took a deep breath and tried to focus on the spell, willing her aether to be calm, more stable. A sudden wave of aether overtook her, and she flinched, ending the spell with a small yelp. "Ah…"

Alka was by her side in a second. "Setoto! Are you okay?"

"Ah, yes, I'm fine." She gave him a warm smile. "I'll… I want to try again."

This time it felt far better. Now that she knew more what to expect, she re-did the spell - and with a quiet 'ding', she was able to summon a carbuncle! Setoto grinned happily, and Alka cheered for her. "Ah, you did it!"

Setoto nodded. "I'm glad." She sighed in relief. "Ah, maybe this means that my aether is stable enough to try summoning my father's faerie again!" Setoto's eyes glittered with hope. "Oh, I must tell Surito about this!"

Alka grinned. "I believe in you, Setoto."

[scholars-of-nym]

Love is in the air <3

[scholars-of-nym]

"Sometimes, when I wake up and look in the mirror... I fear a Tonberry would look back once more."