For a century, he had poured over every word, trailed every ghost, traced the fractured outline of her legend across Eorzea’s battered, broken lands. He had learned all he could ever know of the Warrior of Light, the depths to which he reached in search of her far deeper than any of his Archon studies.
And in Nordvrandt, he had found himself lacking.
She had been a conjurer, and though in their youth he had seen the richness of her martial prowess, he had known her to only wield a cane until the day the Black Rose took her last breath away. He saw her image so vividly in those holy texts, all pure white lace and red livery, Hydaelyn's blessings pouring unbidden from her lips, wisps of the Elementals’ very essence imbued into every incantation. How could she be anything but, seeing as her prayers had been enough to harbor mankind unto a new future— enough to thread together what was left of him, after all these years.
And yet.
No sooner had he reached her in Lakeland, his heartbeat thundering in his ears, did he realize the discrepancy between scripture and reality. He could have fallen to his knees then and there, her gaze enough to strike fear and reverence within the darkest depths of his soul. As if she had disrobed him, peeled back the layers of crystal claiming his humanity, and saw clear past the Exarch, beyond the blood of Allag, beyond the responsibilities that had carved out the shape of G’raha Tia to better suit their aims. In her eyes, he felt as if he were the little boy on the shore of Corvos, eyes filled with stars, hands outstretched towards a horizon he could not conceive of but no less wished for.
She never smiled, but he understood. Across the sweet line of her cupid’s bow he could still imagine it, the way her mouth could curve into the gentlest of curves, the shape it would take to give voice to those words of sweet succor, merely awaiting the right time.
He strained to take in the glory of the woman he had chased for a century, but there was no time. No sooner had he pried her from Lyna’s watchful gaze, explained all that he could of the First and the Scions, that she whisked away to the lands beyond the Crystarium, to Holminster Switch. He would go with her, with them, the Leveilleurs now in tow, the uneasy way with which they regarded the Exarch reminding him of his place in her story.
It is beyond the screams of his people, past the horrors clad in light at their heels, where G’raha Tia hopes to feel the balm of hope’s mercy for the first time in a century.
And upon the land flared holy conflagration, hope’s scourge a ravenous thing, consuming darkest despair like a beast starved, Dalamud himself set loose upon Menphina’s scorned.
No sooner had he unsheathed his sword, an Aetheric shield on his arm to carve her path, had she sprinted past the frontline, Alisaie and Alphinaud on her heels in dogged pursuit without nary a glance. As the first horde of Sin Eaters descended upon her, his heart in his throat, a choked wait..! on the tip of his tongue, he saw her mouth give shape to the words he had dreamt of, staff aglow with a magick not unalike that which threatened to consume the land beneath their feet.
“H̸a̷i̸l̴,̸ ̸H̶y̵d̵a̴e̷l̸y̶n̷,̸ ̵f̴u̶l̸l̶ ̷o̸f̷ ̷g̵r̷a̶c̷e̸,̵——!”
He could see it all around her, light like aetherial lily petals unfurling, a dense orb of pure light rising to unleash a wave of destruction. The selfsame light that had corrupted these innocents into the beasts before them, now used to— They stilled, light aether’s stagnating qualities paralyzing their bodies, the world going silent save for the aether crackling in the air, before they fell to the ground in almost perfect unison.
Beside the Warrior, the twins looked back to the Exarch in unison, and Alisaie called out, “Lead the way, Exarch.”
He had been so eager to take the charge, to garner a modicum of her trust through his actions. He had expected the wings of hope on his back, words saccharine yet unknowable fortifying his mind and body, allowing his sword to cleave all those who would dare to silence them. He had expected a conjurer, one perhaps overeager and brave, yet a White Mage all the same.
Reality, however, was rarely so predictable.
Despite his attempts at shielding her, of remaining in the vanguard, he soon found himself struggling to keep up with her. It was not that his body could not physically match her, although he was certain that was part of it, but rather the asynchrony with which they danced across the battlefield. Eithne was relentless in her pursuit towards her goal, her feet quick and lithe, dodging snarling maws like the hares he had tried and failed to hunt in Mor Dhoma. She flitted about the clearing, gathering the sin eaters into large hordes, until the creatures seemed to coalesce into a singular mass of writhing ivory.
Alisaie and Alphinaud appeared well versed in the tactic, falling into a well-worn rhythm. Alisaie playing the role of loyal hound to the Shepherd’s commands, her sword maintaining the hordes together as Eithne darted between the beasts eager to rend her flesh from bone. Once they were satisfied, Alisaie would begin casting her magicks, and amongst the throng, a single beacon of hope rising, ever higher, until it shattered the air around it, its power warping light into geometric shapes.
“N̴o̴w̸ ̵a̶n̴d̶ ̵a̵t̶ ̷t̴h̶e̶ ̶h̸o̷u̴r̵ ̸o̵f̶ ̷o̴u̵r̵ ̷d̸e̷a̴t̸h̸.̵——!”
He could not, would not, waste this opportunity to fight alongside her, and once he appraised the situation he endeavored to cover her openings. He’d protect her, in his own way, and flatten the undergrowth upon which she might dash freely, safely, towards her mark. He could only think back upon that first, piercing gaze in between each thud against his shield. Eyes like the moon at harvest, glowing bright gold amidst night’s cloudless expanse. Unreachable, forlorn, and within it— hope unyielding.
She was not the woman he had met more than a century ago.
Then again he, too, had been changed.
He recalls their nights by the campfire, the memory frayed, dulled at the edges, like a well-loved photograph kept close against his heart. He thinks of her smile then, her quiet laugh, her eyes half-moon crescents, her voice a lily-white bell within the night’s sonata.
“I will fear no evil——”
He sees its shadow before he sees its claws, but it is the ripple of light-aspected aether enveloping his body that alerts him to the danger. Like the eternal wind upon his back, the song of hope he had consecrated within his heart rang clearly in his ears, the new yet at once familiar warmth of her Divine Benison bidding him to raise his shield against the incoming attack.
“——For you are with me.”
It was not the dulcet tones he had seen prophesied within literature, but rather conviction made manifest, the steadfast belief in mankind’s perseverance the only comfort against the jaws of despair. Her prayer was firm, offering out a hand amidst the dark, and it rang true all the more for it. The Exarch raised his shield against the sin eater’s slash, and behind him Hydaelyn’s Champion continued onto her next target, unflinching.
He had never needed to earn her trust in battle.
To choose to walk besides the Warrior of Light, whatever it may cost him, had been enough for her.
By the time Philia is slain, Hydaelyn’s promise holding true and the aether absorbed by her beloved hero, he feels as though reality has been split apart and reformed beneath his feet. To see Eithne, boots caked in mud, face ragged and smudged by her efforts, cleaving the sky in-twain inspires within him a storm of emotions— the thorns of guilt finding purchase in his yet human heart, alongside a rushing tempest of hope surging throughout his veins, enough to bring him to his knees in supplication.
She had been all he had dreamed of and more. His fervent desires answered in ways he had not foretold, the wisdom the Tower provided him amounting to nothing but a child’s ramblings in the face of her fate-bending presence. As he took a knee, easily speaking the words he had oft struggled to compose throughout the decades, ones turned and rearranged until they lost all meaning. It was as if she imbued the very air around them with Hydaelyn’s sweet mercy, the earnestness with which she helped her fellow man allowing him to speak his heart true for the first time since he had awoken.
G’raha Tia, his heart ever on his sleeve, honest to a fault, save for...
It was not the first, nor would it be the last time he would watch her in battle. Whether at her side or within the tower, scrying her location with furtive motions, praying the Tower would swallow him whole in his shame, he would watch. It was there, the room where Emet-Selch whispered venom in his ears, where the guilt grew ever deeper, where his longing found new ways to escape its half-crystal prison. He watched, and watched, and watched. Every scratch, every creak and crunch of her bones under whatever manner of beast, every wound carving her flesh yet another notch upon his cincture, the ledger of the sins he has committed by bringing her here.
Their salvation, climbing every higher at his behest, offering herself unto the altar of their stars.
He imagines briefly, the Eithne he had read of, the one who had seemed so far from the pale girl sitting under More Dhona’s now unfamiliar night sky, her small voice barely above the crackling of the fire they huddled around. The way his boyish heart raced at the flutter of her lashes under the firelight, her eyes like the golden embers at their feet.
He wanted to ask her then, what led you to become a White Mage?
Instead he bit down on his dinner.
He sees the Eithne of today through the scrying mirror, all bruises and gritted teeth, eyes the same smoldering gold of that night.
He wants to ask her, why do you still choose the path of a conjurer?
He sees the silent fury roiling beneath, the step she always, always, places in front of her, no matter the wound, no matter the loss. Behind her sees a shadow, and in her battle stance her cane is as if a greatsword, with how her magicks cleaved through the beasts. And yet her allies would find their every need satisfied, their bodies shimmering with her magicks as they rushed into the fray. The battlefield at times appeared as if a garden, translucent white lilies blooming in quick succession across it. In the face of insurmountable odds, transcendent wings would unfurl from her back, granting succor to her and those around her.
Even should she fall...
Hair matted with sweat and blood, she rises.
Hands balled into fists, she rises.
Onwards, onwards, upon the eternal winds, she rises.
He tries again to imagine the Eithne he had so carefully constructed within his mind’s eye, the puzzle of her being he’d struggled to complete. He saw the mismatched pieces: the lace, silk satin ribbons adorning her waist, downturned eyes softened by time and hardship. As he spends more time watching her, with her, beside her, he realizes that whether she had ever been what the myths described had become of little consequence to the Exarch, and even less to G’raha Tia.
Her cane a tool for salvation and ruin in equal measure, her tattered and stained clothes no less a holy maiden’s regalia, evidence of victories wrested from the clutches of despair.
Gently pressing a hand of crystal to the mirror, his digits trailed the outline of her face, creating ripples in the magick until she slowly faded to nothing.
A hundred years, he had imagined.
And now, he would know the truth.