Some legends are told...
Dec. 9th, 2015 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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spira_rpAerith had been right; it wasn't a quick journey back.
Lea's route, achieved by pressing further into what Fang came to know as the Bancouri border-desert and then backtracking along the river was, indeed, longwinded. It was also safer, that much was clear. Ignoring the infrequent swells and waterholes along the route, the number of monsters was greatly diminished from what they could see roaming in the distance. Smaller plate wyrms, wyverns and helms could very occasionally be seen beyond a haze of wind-thrown sand, all species better left alone.
Desert monsters were typically large reptiles, creatures that didn't crave water like mammals did, or smaller pack hunters who got most of their water from their kills and seldom visited the riverside except to hunt at waterholes. The waterholes, while more dangerous than the fast-moving river, were still something of a boon, for they often saw small herds of prey animals, or larger lone monsters, which were of as much interest to them in terms of food as they were the other creatures that hunted there.
Mercifully, the waterside hunters weren't too dangerous. Weird gators with false, hinged faces had come as a surprise to Fang, but the one foolish enough to pick a fight with her was easily dispatched with a spearpoint to the soft, unarmoured flesh beneath. Gigantoads, though slow, were better skirted around. Unlike the gator, they were not edible. Their poisonous skin saw to that.
The long journey didn't bother her, at least. She'd been on the road for longer getting from where she had started to the Chocobo Eater and travelling with a supply of fresh, flowing water was much more preferable to stopping and filling up heavy waterskins every few miles. It helped that the river allowed them to wash the sand, if not the chocobo, away from them more regularly.
The company wasn't bad, either. She wasn't sure they were hardened Hunters like she was, she couldn't shake that feeling, but if they had only recently picked it up as a job, they were learning remarkably quickly. Where she was from, Hunting was a lifestyle, not a job, something you took to from a very young age to build up your strength and stamina. It wasn't the case here. It was lucrative, apparently, but still something you could just elect to take on or give up as you pleased. She felt fortunate to have joined up with a trio with formidable fighting and healing skills, nonetheless.
Abilities aside, it helped that they also weren't bad people. Lea was more social than Saix, and Aerith was more levelheaded and friendly than both of them, for all Saix attempted to look like a voice of reason for the group. All three had one thing in common. They were odd. The boys were very powerful fighters, but the way they handled themselves, and their weapons, and their elements, just didn't feel normal, not when they seemed almost naive about certain aspects of Chakra manipulation while using it in odd ways otherwise. Something told her that they just weren't normal for the world. Being displaced by centuries didn't make her feel any differently about it. Aerith was just different. Absurdly good at healing, that was for certain, and very in tune with the natural world.
She had a feeling that they probably felt the same about her. Even though they were definitely strange, they knew more about the world than she did. The collapsed city had been her tell, she was sure of it.
As she thought about it, she hardly noticed the warmth gradually leaving the air. Night was falling. Travelling at night would probably have been easier on them all, especially the chocobos, but sleeping in the heat of the day wasn't a viable option. It was time to find somewhere to set up camp.
Lea's route, achieved by pressing further into what Fang came to know as the Bancouri border-desert and then backtracking along the river was, indeed, longwinded. It was also safer, that much was clear. Ignoring the infrequent swells and waterholes along the route, the number of monsters was greatly diminished from what they could see roaming in the distance. Smaller plate wyrms, wyverns and helms could very occasionally be seen beyond a haze of wind-thrown sand, all species better left alone.
Desert monsters were typically large reptiles, creatures that didn't crave water like mammals did, or smaller pack hunters who got most of their water from their kills and seldom visited the riverside except to hunt at waterholes. The waterholes, while more dangerous than the fast-moving river, were still something of a boon, for they often saw small herds of prey animals, or larger lone monsters, which were of as much interest to them in terms of food as they were the other creatures that hunted there.
Mercifully, the waterside hunters weren't too dangerous. Weird gators with false, hinged faces had come as a surprise to Fang, but the one foolish enough to pick a fight with her was easily dispatched with a spearpoint to the soft, unarmoured flesh beneath. Gigantoads, though slow, were better skirted around. Unlike the gator, they were not edible. Their poisonous skin saw to that.
The long journey didn't bother her, at least. She'd been on the road for longer getting from where she had started to the Chocobo Eater and travelling with a supply of fresh, flowing water was much more preferable to stopping and filling up heavy waterskins every few miles. It helped that the river allowed them to wash the sand, if not the chocobo, away from them more regularly.
The company wasn't bad, either. She wasn't sure they were hardened Hunters like she was, she couldn't shake that feeling, but if they had only recently picked it up as a job, they were learning remarkably quickly. Where she was from, Hunting was a lifestyle, not a job, something you took to from a very young age to build up your strength and stamina. It wasn't the case here. It was lucrative, apparently, but still something you could just elect to take on or give up as you pleased. She felt fortunate to have joined up with a trio with formidable fighting and healing skills, nonetheless.
Abilities aside, it helped that they also weren't bad people. Lea was more social than Saix, and Aerith was more levelheaded and friendly than both of them, for all Saix attempted to look like a voice of reason for the group. All three had one thing in common. They were odd. The boys were very powerful fighters, but the way they handled themselves, and their weapons, and their elements, just didn't feel normal, not when they seemed almost naive about certain aspects of Chakra manipulation while using it in odd ways otherwise. Something told her that they just weren't normal for the world. Being displaced by centuries didn't make her feel any differently about it. Aerith was just different. Absurdly good at healing, that was for certain, and very in tune with the natural world.
She had a feeling that they probably felt the same about her. Even though they were definitely strange, they knew more about the world than she did. The collapsed city had been her tell, she was sure of it.
As she thought about it, she hardly noticed the warmth gradually leaving the air. Night was falling. Travelling at night would probably have been easier on them all, especially the chocobos, but sleeping in the heat of the day wasn't a viable option. It was time to find somewhere to set up camp.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-17 10:34 pm (UTC)Including how she could be so knowledgeable about the wildlife, and so used to living as a hunter, but had no idea about things such as Midgar.
He looked at Lea as Aerith spoke again. He didn't imagine Lea would be ready to up and abandon her in light of this information. He had always been terrible at turning away people in need of help, and if they were honest, Fang's input had been useful for them, too.
There was mutual benefit to be had if they stuck together. If Fang was willing to stick with them, at least.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 12:23 am (UTC)She wasn't familiar with the term, or that war, but Aerith had implied earlier that it was that that had caused the fal'Cie to go insane. Gran Pulse's historians had first suggested that the pollution was some sort of disaster that had killed everyone below, and then they said that it was a deliberate attack on them when everything had started to go wrong. Whatever it was, it caused problems, even affecting their gods, though their descent into madness had been a slow one.
"Is that when the Miasma started?" She asked, having a feeling that she already knew the answer. "It happened about ... oh, I don't know, four, five hundred years ago? The stories said it happened slowly. That the fal'Cie closest to northern edge of the continent started to make weird decisions and that the air had started to affect crops, technology, monsters and even people."
She scowled, thinking of those who had been born with mutations thanks to the tainted air they had been breathing. Some were worse than others, and some were even useful, but that sort of thing hadn't happened until the Miasma spread over the land.
"Then the madness hit more and more of the fal'Cie and everything got worse. It had kind of plateaued by the time I was born. It was just how things were. We heard horror stories from the north, and about wars raging on Lemurés between the bird people and on Gran Pulse proper, but we had a way of life and got on with it. Whether you have crazy fal'Cie or not, you have to survive."
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 12:25 am (UTC)He knew when the War of the Magi had happened and it didn't tally with what Fang had said at all. Was that even possible? He didn't think anything about Spira could surprise him any more, but he had a feeling he was about to be wrong.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 01:39 am (UTC)They were taught that the war had ended with an almighty battle between Sin, and Vegnagun. It had been magic versus machina on a grand scale, and mostly, since it had been so long ago, no one taught much more than the mythology of it. It was like a fable now, rather than real history. The scars of the war were still visible on the landscape, and there had been the technological backslide, but it wasn't immediately relevant any more, for most people.
"That miasma," she said, slowly, "might be a Mist infusion. When the war ended the final battle made the Ridorana Cataract, a wound that never healed. It destroyed a lot of the surroundings, and flooded them with Mist." She frowned, and looked at Fang, slightly concerned. "That was nearly a thousand years ago."
If it was four or five hundred years ago for Fang, then either Fang had been crystallised for half a millennium, or she was very badly mistaken about times.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 02:06 am (UTC)She knew she'd been gone for some time, she'd felt time pass, somehow, but it was in a dreamlike, disconnected way that only became apparent if she really thought about it. She didn't remember being crystallised, or what had come before, but she knew she must have been. She wasn't a Cie'th, after all.
She hadn't been sure of what to expect when she came to. She'd woken in a Pulsian building, but when she found her way out the world she'd ended up in was alien to her. The buildings were built in a strange style and the lands around them was different. There were also no people. They weren't dilapidated enough to be ruins, not all of them, but they weren't inhabited either.
In the beginning, she'd assumed that she was still on Gran Pulse, and that she'd been away long enough for it to have returned to what the historians called 'normal', that all the wars were over, and that some places has been built and then abandoned while she was gone. She'd estimated that her crystal sleep, if that's what she'd been in, had lasted a century at least. She had come to terms with the fact that everybody she had known was gone then, in that moment.
With that in mind, she had struck out, away from the ruins she had awoken in. Not long after, she had seen the sea from a high ridge along a cliffline. A real, actual sea, with rich blue water extending as far out as the horizon and beyond. Skyseas weren't like that. They were vast, but this seemed impossibly deep as well. Then, high above and like a haze in the distance, she saw a continent, dark, imposing, shrouded in clouds and so far away.
When she moved inland the land turned from abandoned, half-ruined buildings to wilderness. The familiarity had almost made her doubt what she'd seen on that ridge and the evidence of her eyes. It smelled wild, like her home had, but when she really looked it wasn't the same. The monsters were different, the plants were strange and the terrain all wrong. When she'd seen people they had looked normal enough, but they lacked the edge of toughness that she'd come to associate with those around her. It wasn't soft, exactly, rustic living never was, but they didn't look like she'd expect, and their manner of dress had been different enough for her to avoid them.
She hunted to live, not having forgotten those skills, and managed to wrangle a chocobo to ride on. He was a big bull, but not as large as those she was used to, though his ferocity had made up for it. She had covered a lot of ground, travelling for a month or more, before she met the Chocobo Eater.
By then she was certain that she was, somehow, on the lowerworld.
"I knew I was out of time," she said quietly, looking down at her hands, her tone resigned. "Didn't realise it was by that much."
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 02:19 am (UTC)It made a lot of sense, now he thought about it. Fang was at least five hundred years away from what she knew and in an unfamiliar land. She may be from the same world, but she was as far out of touch with it as they were, which meant that she may as well be a Ryoka as far as the natives would view her.
She was from a lost continent, which, according to Aerith, had been left uninhabited in the wake of what Fang had described. If their gods had gone that crazy, they must have eventually either destroyed the population wholesale, or let them dwindle into extinction. If anybody was likely to be able to feel a sizeable populace, it was Aerith.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 02:29 am (UTC)Fang didn't even remember what she'd been tasked to do, although Aerith wasn't sure if that made it better or worse for her. Maybe she didn't want to remember what she'd been made to do, or maybe it would make things better to know what she'd been able to accomplish.
Maybe she'd been given some stupid task by an insane Fal'Cie. Knowing how much she'd lost and left behind, that wouldn't have been much comfort
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 02:39 am (UTC)"We have no way of returning to our world," he said, his usual softspoken tone being extra quiet, and the word 'either' lingered at the end of the sentence, even though it was unsaid. "So we're trying to make lives for ourselves here."
They weren't bad lives, and Spira wasn't a bad world. Saix missed home, missed the Garden, but not enough to put this world at risk in order to obtain it. There was enough on Spira to be worth protecting.
Saix turned, finally, and looked at Lea, a question in his expression as he said, "I expect you too will be able to find your own niche, given time, and some help." The statement was directed at Fang, but the question on his face, directed at Lea, was a much more simple, 'With us?'
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 07:51 pm (UTC)"We're not the only Ryoka here, but we spend more time in the wild than most of the others," he said, shrugging a little. "The city's okay, but it's nice to get out. That's why we're Mark Hunters. Seems like it might suit you."
She was very good at the job. She knew what she was doing and, as far as Lea was concerned, her curse could hardly be worse than theirs, especially if she'd already completed whatever task she'd been set to by whichever insane god that had marked her.
"We have friends here, natives, people who keep our secret and help us out," he explained, trying to sound somewhat reassuring. "You know, in case you thought it was the blind leading the blind. You're welcome to join us, if you wanted."
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Date: 2015-12-18 08:00 pm (UTC)Her way of life, back before the branding, had been communal. Everybody helped everybody else. Another person may have been suspicious of their kindness, but it didn't seem wrong to Fang.
"I think I'll take you up on that," she said, giving a nod. Then she smirked. "Just don't go on too many hunts without me. I don't know if I could stand being stuck in a city for too long."
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 08:32 pm (UTC)He didn't mind the city, not really, but he was constantly watching his own actions, and the actions of others when he was in Rabanastre. Just as he had in Lindblum. He liked to get out regularly, and relax with a good fight.
There would be a lot they might have to tell Fang. Their relationship with the rest of the Order, for example, and luck being what it was, their history with the Arrancar might come up sooner rather than later, too.
Still, he doubted it would put Fang off. She wasn't the type to scare easily.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-18 08:35 pm (UTC)Saix liked to act like the calm and reasoned one, but in reality, Saix and Lea had this way of egging each other on that could land them both in trouble. Aerith found herself trying to keep them out of trouble, sometimes, and while Lea was usually inclined to listen, well....
Saix might be more willing to listen to Fang, since his crush on her was fairly obvious already.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-20 06:45 pm (UTC)"Looks like we'll be the weirdest party in the world," he said, looking at the other three. "A Cetra, a l'Cie and a couple of Ryoka. I'm sure that will be a turn out for the books."
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Date: 2015-12-20 06:51 pm (UTC)Well, they were hardly the first offworlders to have appeared, not if there was a word for it, and it wasn't just the lowerworld that were treated to their strangeness. She shook her head, still half amazed, but turned her attention to the pot floating above the fire.
"I think that stew should be about done by now," she said.