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FFXIV Write Entry #25: At the End of All Things

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

A/N: Spoilers for Endwalker, and warnings for blood and violence at the end of the piece.

Here we go.

It is a fundamental truth of combat that no battleplan survives first contact with the enemy.

Even with that in mind, as she falls unconscious from lack of air, Dancing Heron can’t help but think the Scions set a brand-new record for the plan going straight to shite even before they met their enemy. Just their damned luck.

The edge of existence is awful, desolate in both terrain and spirit. Heron and her sisters are quiet, where normally they would banter, attempting to fill the silence of the group as they traversed the landscape; even Rereha is subdued, the weight of Meteion’s dynamis and Thancred’s disappearance a pall over them all. Normally, Heron and Thancred would switch off who takes point and who guards the rear, but today Heron must stay in the lead.

And then Meteion taunts with what she did to Thancred, and what Thancred did in his last moments.

Heron is…she is not surprised.

Stay standing, despite all thought or reason, attempt to disable the enemy, and when that fails—give his everything for his family, to use Meteion’s own weapon against her and give them a chance to continue on, however slim it is. That’s Thancred. That he, somehow, was also able to give Y’shtola true sight in this broken hell, isn’t a surprise either; even when he played at the roguish cad, he always displayed a keen thoughtfulness for those he loved.

(She’s reminded, too, her lips quirking as the memory flits behind her eyes, of a sly comment Thancred made years ago, just before he and Lyse and her sisters and herself dove into the salty depths of Loch Seld to infiltrate Ala Mhigo in the lead up to the liberation, about being able to hold his breath. Rereha had taken the obvious bait, both bards falling into an innuendo exchange that had had the rest of them groaning.

Later, she promises herself, she’s going to beat Rereha to the obvious ribald joke when she lifts a tankard in memory.)

And then Estinien is next. And Y’shtola and Urianger. Finding the path forward, no matter what.

Heron cannot let herself break. She cannot. She’s the shield, the bulwark against danger, and she cannot falter. Thancred and Estinien and Y’shtola and Urianger have acknowledge more than once the willingness to lay down their lives to see this last journey through, have placed their faith in Heron and her sisters, and she will not insult them by mourning. Not now.

Later.

It’s G’raha’s sacrifice of all of them that causes the first real cracks.

Heron is the cool, calm adult of the Warriors of Light; Synnove gets mistaken for one only because she is very good at pretending to be one at the Arcanists’ Guild. Heron is reason and sense and the strong arm to dunk one of her sisters in the nearest body of water when they’re being gremlins.

And she holds a grudge worse than any of them.

The Crystal Exarch’s plan to save the First and avert the Eighth Umbral Calamity was, to put it mildly, fucking terrible. And as the most highly attuned to her aether and how to manipulate it, Synnove had been the best choice to contain the Lightwardens’ essences. Her little sister was a brilliant aetherologist, if the Exarch had taken the time to explain his theories before throwing them at the Lightwarden of Lakeland, or sat down with her at any point after instead of leaving Synnove to muddle through it on her own with the assumption there was no further information to be had—

Synnove had nearly paid for that willful negligence with her life. And when it came to the well-being of her sisters, Dancing Heron of Ul’dah did not forget, and she did not forgive.

G’raha Tia was not the Crystal Exarch—not entirely, the blending of selves effectively creating a new individual with the memories of the old. But while Synnove had been willing to allow a fresh start, with Rereha and Alakhai following her lead, Heron had not. Had it been fair? Perhaps not. G’raha, at least, had respected her simmering anger and left her be, and she had done the same.

It's the cheerful young man, so certain they’ll succeed and have the chance to adventure somewhere new, even in the face of Y’shtola’s warning that they can’t use the Azem stone to restore the lost Scions. He believes in them, enough to counter the despair of the omicrons, powerful enough to forge yet another path forward.

(She’s going to have to buy him at least one drink. Honor demands it.)

But if G’raha is the crack, the twins are the dam breaking.

“Please,” Heron breathes, falling to her knees before Alisaie and Alphinaud, “please not you, too.”

Alisaie throws herself into a hug, and Heron clings to her, tears pouring down her cheeks.

“Alphinaud’s plans have a way of working out, in the end,” Alisaie says, though her voice is suspiciously watery.

Alphinaud butts his way in, and Heron enfolds him into the hug, too, as her other siblings crowd around them; Rereha clings to Alphinaud’s waist, and Alakhai is hugging Alisaie from behind.

“Given the nature of this realm,” her little brother says, hesitantly, “it may be possible to do more than unbar your path. We might also pave you a new one. One where you find happiness at journey’s end.”

Heron squeezes her eyes shut and tightens her hold on the twins further. Her heart hurts, she should be the one doing this, it’s her job to put herself in the line of danger, to take the blows for them all—

“This much, I think we can believe with the utmost conviction.” Alphinaud’s voice is stronger now, giving truth to his claim. “No matter how deep our despair.

“So please, believe in us too. And press on.”

Oh, damn him, her brilliant little brother. But he’s right. She owes him the courtesy of that belief, when so often he has believed in her, in them.

Heron breathes out. “All right,” she says. “All right. Let’s see this through.”

The final walk is the hardest thing she has ever done.

Heron has Synnove talked under one arm, and Alakhai under the other, and Rereha is sitting on her shoulders with Heron’s shield supporting her back. Synnove and Alakhai are nearly mirrored, an arm each around Heron’s waist with their hands grasping at their other sister; Galette is tucked into Synnove’s free arm, warbling sadly. Rereha clings to Heron’s head.

They are each of them crying.

“I swear to any god listening that if one of you throw yourself on the metaphorical sword to make a new path,” Heron says through her tears, “I will resurrect you solely to beat you to death with my shield.”

“And if you do the same, I’m beating you with my grimoire,” Synnove sniffles.

“Please tell me one of you has thought of something,” Alakhai rasps.

“Yeah,” Rereha says. “Gonna need the orange rock candy.”

Heron can’t stop the sputtering laugh that escapes her as Synnove growls out, “Stop calling them that,” even as she reaches into her hip ouch to draw out Azem’s stone.

Rereha takes it, and Heron feels her lalafell sister prop it on the top of her head.

In this place of dynamis, of emotion given tangibility, Heron can hear echoes from the past, and it steadies her stance, firms her grip on her sisters. But it’s the last that gives her the will to take that final step:

Let’s finish this.

Heron helps Rereha down as Meteion taunts them; this messenger of the Meteia isn’t worth listening to. For all that she quails in the face of the task before her and her sisters, Heron won’t give up.

She owes it to her family not to.

Rereha steps forward, clutching the Azem stone in her hands. She rocks back and forth on her heels, and then looks over her shoulder at Synnove. “You aren’t going to like this,” she says.

“What are you—oh for fuck’s sake.” Synnove’s sigh is deep and weary. “He’s going to be an insufferable prick.”

“Isn’t he always?” Rereha says. For the first time since they arrived here, she’s cheerful, and Heron sighs herself as she realizes what Rereha is about to do.

She has always been exceptionally good at finding loopholes.

Turning back to Meteion, her grin still in place, Heron’s tiny sister says, as the Azem stone begins to glow, “All right, boys! Time to join the show!”

“Endsinger,” Synnove names the creature that rises from the flock of black-winged Meteia.

A single, tiny bluebird flits before the herald of the Final Days. Stop! their Meteion cries out to her sisters. Calm yourself! Please, stop!

The Scions try, oh, but they try, but in the face of ichor of the Endsinger’s despair and fury, and the echoes of dead stars, they fall before her, their magicks shattered, their weapons broken. Meteion pleads and pleads, but the Endsinger is deaf to her.

A single beat of the Endsinger’s wings sends nearly all the Scions airborne, leaving just Heron and her own sisters, and she watches in horror as the Endsinger gathers the means to destroy her family once and for all. For a moment, there is rage in her heart, and hatred, that despite all the Endsinger’s claims of the gift of oblivion, she would resort to such cruelty as to make them watch her family die.

Too bad for the Endsinger that Bloewyda and Wilfsunn are brilliant aetherologists.

“Girls,” Heron says, “it’s our show now.”

She knows they understand. They always do.

As one, they push themselves to their feet, and reach into pouches or pockets. Rereha’s teleportation device flies from her hand first. Synnove’s is next, then Alakhai’s.

Heron lifts her head; even from this distance she can see Alisaie reaching out, hear her call out, desperate and afraid: “Stop!”

If they make it back from this, she will deserve the ire of her youngest sister, and she will let the elezen maid rage at her for as long as she desires. And if they don’t, she hopes Alisaie will rage at her regardless. She is at peace with what must be done. This is her job.

Dancing Heron blows Alisaie a kiss, pushes the button, and lets go.

CRACK!

The walls of the dead suns, of the Meteia’s nest, shake, huge cracks now glinting across the starscape of eternity. Endsinger and Warriors of Light alike turn, all five of them stunned.

“My Ultimatum,” the Endsinger says, truly dumbfounded. “What is happening?”

Heron is briefly reminded of another time a being broke through the spaces between worlds to reach them, it’s Rere who puts into a single, hopeful word what each of the sisters are thinking: “Dad?”

Reality breaks.

It is not Midgardsormr.

A bluebird flutters to perch on Heron’s shoulder, bunching close to her cheek with her feathers floofed up in alarm. What is that?

Heron reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose, sighing gustily. “A headache,” she mutters.

Synnove is now beating her forehead on the shoulder opposite little Meteion, a rhythmic thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

“A concussion isn’t going to help,” Heron says over Rereha and Alakhai’s very loud, very colorful swearing. It’s always a fun day when Alakhai is reduced to using spoken words.

“No, but it makes me feel better,” Synnove says.

Well. The son of a bitch is offering a ride. This might as well happen.

“What do you think?” Heron says. “Four, or eight?”

“Eight’s always a good number,” Synnove says. Alakhai grunts her agreement.

On the back of a dragon, Rereha hands Heron the Azem stone. She holds it to her chest, breathes out, and puts all her will and hope into the stone, all of the love she has for her sisters and her chosen family and her star. The stone awakens once more, the summoning spell spilling forth bright and warm as the sun, painting golden beams around her and her sisters’ feet, creating a platform and Heron calls out:

Will you come?

A beat of her heart, two, three, four—and four more Warriors of Light, from across space and time, answer.

And now for tradition:

Heron grins ferociously and settles her shield on her arm, drawing her sword in the same motion. “Give us the beat,” she says.

Synnove begins to whistle, and drums her grimoire against her thigh; even in a realm of dynamis, the aethersong must be thick in Synnove’s mind with how quickly she settles into the rhythm. Alakhai picks it up after her, stomping a foot, knives in hand, and then Rereha’s voice, a soprano clear as a crystal bell, rises like a clarion call.

This is what Dancing Heron and Synnove Greywolfe and Rereha Reha and Alakhai Noykin do best:

Save the world.

Heron coughs, blood pouring from her mouth, and stares up blankly at infinity.

Zenos viator Galvus has rattled his last accursed breath, and good riddance. She feels filthy, giving him the fight that he has craved for so long, but it is over. He won’t haunt her or her sisters’ steps ever again.

But just as they gave it their all, so did he, and he hadn’t fought the living embodiment of oblivion beforehand.

She rolls over, coughing again, her arm holding her intestines inside her stomach, and crawls to where her sisters lay to gather them close.

Alakhai is wheezing, deep and heavy and desperate: collapsed lung. Just one, which is a small miracle, with how caved in her chest is. Her face is a ruin and she might be blind in one eye now.

Synnove’s right arm is broken in at least two places, her hand crushed, and she is deep in aethershock, her skin the same grey pallor as a corpse; Heron distantly recalls seeing another mage, after the Sacking of Rhalgr’s Reach, in the same state, who died of organ failure.

Rereha can’t move at all, her spine possibly broken. Her palms are torn down to the bone, and she is covered in blood. Most of it isn’t hers. The killing blow against Zenos, after all, was Rereha’s. The lalafell had used a moment of distraction while he was gutting Heron to launch herself off Synnove’s collapsing body and straight at the Garlean, a feral scream tearing her throat. She had driven the broken remains of her bow into his throat, over and over and over and over, until he had thrown her off himself with a gurgling roar and her body had impacted the ground with a sickening crunch.

They’re bleeding out. If fate is kind, they’ll breath their last at the same time.

Heron collapses onto her back, blood thick in her throat and mouth, but she’s got her sisters now and she stares up at the end of the universe once more. Synnove lolls her head onto Heron’s broken shoulder, and Alakhai tucks herself into Heron’s ruined side, and Rereha buries her face in Heron’s blood-soaked hair.

“I love you,” Heron croaks.

“Love you, too,” Rereha whispers.

“I’m glad I picked you three,” Synnove says, more of a sigh. “I’m glad you picked me back.”

“See you on the other side,” Alakhai murmurs.

The only sound now is their uneven, crackling breaths.

In the starscape above them, Heron sees a pair of blue tailfeathers wheel, and a glint of something…metallic?

There’s a clatter, suddenly, just next to her head, opposite of Rereha. An eerie, familiar beeping croons in her ear, and slowly, horribly, despite the pain that infuses every cell of her being, Heron laughs.

They taught her well, the little hopesinger.

“Thank you,” she mouths.

The world goes black.

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