20 - Scholar's Sorrow
“Is this thing working?” Twilight asked, one hoof held up to her ear, once again glamoured as a lavender paw, and her muzzle scrunching up in a mixture of discomfort and fascination.
The linkpearl in her ear was clearly not designed for her ear shape. It sat loose and uncomfortable, rolling around with every tilt of her head like it was a big ball of ear wax that just refused to fall out. It was driving her crazy.
Thankfully, though, it did fulfil its intended function. A moment later, Y’shtola’s voice crackled through into her ear, slightly muffled and reverberating as if spoken into a dense metal can, but still clearly legible. “Aye, all seems to be in order. Welcome to the Scion’s network, Twilight Sparkle.”
Twilight’s discomfort over the way the linkpearl fit in her ear evaporated with delight. She turned around, facing away from the wind that a moment ago had been blasting her in the face, and waved frenetically at the miqo’te who stood on the far end of the ship’s top deck.
They were out at sea, having just pushed off from the docks of Limsa Lominsa a handful of hours ago. Their stay in the city had been equal parts boring and delightful. Boring, because much of their time was consumed by meetings with the Admiral and her assorted underlings, dealing with paperwork, and planning follow-up movements in the wake of Titan’s defeat. Delightful because Twilight had gotten to visit the Arcanist’s guild in person!
It had been a treat, and she had a new spell tome at her side, to boot. A few orders of magnitude better than her old one, too, if the tall and friendly roegadyn guild master’s input was anything to go off of. The instructions were clearer, the patterns were better defined, there were more of them, and the cover of the book was laced with aether-imbued threads to greatly amplify the spellcasting capabilities of the wielder.
She even got to break some boxes! It might’ve been immature for her to take such delight in a considerably meagre task, but after recent events, it was cathartic!
Now, though, all of their work in the city was done, and it was time to return to Thanalan. A ship had been chartered for their safe passage, and after making sure Twilight had a linkpearl in her ear, the two had set off once more onto the waves.
“Wow,” Twilight squealed, trotting in place as her mind buzzed with wonder and excitement. “How does this thing work?! Is it sending the sound waves through empty air, or is it simply copying the sounds in one and replicating them in the other? What’s it made of? How do I-”
Y’shtola snickering in amusement drew Twilight’s barrage of questions to an abrupt halt. “Twilight, though I admire your scholarly curiosity, I would strongly advise against using the Linkpearl for such trivial questions. They are to be used for short, concise communications only. Magic and technologies exist in abundance that can listen into, or even disrupt, contact between link pearls, so do use them sparingly. Besides - anyone with one of these on our network may have just heard all of that.”
Twilight blinked, imagining the faces of Thancred, Yda, and Papalymo all grinning at her as she spoke, and a light red tint came to her cheeks. “Er… right. Understood. Um, roger? Over and out? How, how do I… What’s the ‘bye’ term?”
“...You say farewell?” Y’shtola said, more a question than anything else. “We don’t follow so strict a protocol of communication, Twilight. Just take your hoof away from the pearl when you are done speaking.”
Twilight nodded. “Gotcha,” she said, then lowered her hoof. Just like that, the linkpearl went silent in her ear, and across the deck, Y’shtola gave her a nod.
New technology. Exciting.
Twilight turned back to the ocean view before her, the salty wind blasting against her face as the ship pushed through the waves. She took in the view, the endless expanse of rolling blue, and tried to relax. There was still an uncomfortable tingle in her chest where the bullet hole was, and part of her wanted to dive back into studying the physick spell so she could mend it herself. But on a boat, with the deck rocking and rolling beneath her hooves, she’d be more likely to hurl on the pages than learn anything.
“It’ll just have to wait,” she thought. With nothing else to do, she closed her eyes, feeling the wind. It ran over her body in a steady breeze, occasionally twisted by a gust or burst of additional air as they sailed through a wind current.
She was reminded of the sky, and slowly, she unfurled her wings, grateful for the fact that she was still in her carbuncle glamour. As far as anyone seeing her could tell, she was just a purple carbuncle keeping watch at the front of the ship. But for her, for this moment, she felt as if she was flying again. She could feel the wind racing between her feathers, as it did when she took to the air back in Equestria.
She frowned, fondly remembering the lessons on flight that she had gotten from Rainbow Dash. “Staying in the air requires you flap your wings really hard. Ya gotta push the air down enough that it lifts you up, ya know? And ya have to keep your wings flapping at the same time if you want to keep yourself steady. Flapping ‘em out of sync can be good for things like rapid spins and turns, but that’s not somethin’ you wanna try and pull off when you’re just starting.”
“Ya gotta know the wind, too,” Rainbow had gone on. Twilight recalled she had been flying in circles around Twilight at the time, the two of them perched up on a cloud high above Ponyville. “Updrafts. Hot air. Cold air. Gusts, gales, and twisters. Even the slightest shift in the wind can spell disaster for you if you’re not careful. It all kinda becomes automatic once you’ve done it enough, but for you, you’re gonna hafta be micro-managing that stuff. So kinda like you do already, so you’ll be fine.”
Twilight had then tried to fly and promptly got into a brief but very intimate relationship with the grass in her backyard.
Still, the memory pulled a smile to her face, and Twilight’s wings gave a few gentle flaps, trying to recall the exact sensations of her first truly successful flight. Flying had frightened her so much when she’d just been starting out, but as she gained experience and practice, it had become a profoundly liberating experience. Just lifting off, seeing the world from on high… it had made her problems feel so much smaller, so much more manageable.
She flapped her wings again, and she thought she could feel it. The weightlessness, the sensation of her hooves leaving the ground. She flapped her wings again, basking in the wind rushing between her feathers, against her exposed barrel, and under her belly. She scrunched up her muzzle as something occurred to her. There was something in the wind that she hadn’t noticed before. A pattern… like a bee buzzing in her ear in time to a steady drumbeat.
An idea came to her, and Twilight flapped her wings in time to the beat. Flap. Flap. Flap. Flap. The buzzing grew more intense, louder in her ears, and she felt the weightlessness even more keenly now.
Somewhere behind her, someone yelped in alarm. “What the?! Is that thing flying?!”
And just like that, Twilight realized that the feeling of weightlessness was not, in fact, a memory. She opened her eyes and looked down. Sure enough, her flapping wings had taken her several feet up and off the deck of the ship, where she was maintaining a steady hover. For a moment, she felt herself starting to panic at the sudden and unexpected lift, but forced herself to concentrate, to keep flapping her wings in time with the rhythm of the wind. Flap. Flap. Flap.
She stayed in place, just over the deck of the ship. She was starting to drift back from the rail as her hover bled the momentum the ship retained, but the fact remained. She was flying.
Her lips split into a wide grin, and not at all caring for the fact that carbuncles were not supposed to talk, spun to face Y’shtola. “Y’shtola! Y’SHTOLA! I’m flying! I figured it out!” she yelled, a surge of excitement and joy overwhelming her.
Y’shtola turned to her, blinking in surprise. She then took a step forward. “Twilight! Watch out for that-”
The mast of the ship smacked into Twilight, drawing a cry of alarm from her and sending her tumbling back down to the deck in a crumpled heap.
Y’shtola cringed. “...mast…”
“I still proclaim sabotage…” Twilight quietly sulked as the faux carbuncle accompanied her ‘master’ off of the ship a few days later, stepping onto the dock of Vesper Bay with an indignant huff. “Someone moved the mast. You can’t prove otherwise.”
“Simple logic is all the proof I require,” Y’shtola retorted, albeit with a pitying smile. “Still, you need not be so upset. ‘Tis a mark of progress, a sign that your body is attuning to the local aetherial currents. Your hard work is bearing fruit, so please, do stop with the pouting.”
“I am not pouting,” Twilight pouted.
“It is merely hidden by the face of your glamour. But I know better. I can hear it in your voice.”
“Hrmph…”
At least they were able to pass off her little display as a parlour trick of sorts. A little ‘song and dance’ weaved into an otherwise ordinary carbuncle…
She wasn’t sure the miqo’te was particularly thrilled to have people thinking that’s what she did with her free time, but it was the least she deserved for that pity smile!
“Stupid always right cat lady…”
Stepping up from the docks, they made quick strides towards the Waking Sands, the structure easily visible even before they had disembarked. And while Twilight had only had the pleasure of visiting the Scions’ headquarters once before, she couldn’t deny a profound sense of relief on seeing it now. It was like how she might’ve felt returning home after a particularly arduous study session back in her days at Celestia’s school.
She couldn’t tell if those days of magical experimentation had had more or less explosions than her time in Eorzea so far…
Still, she was intent on enjoying this feeling of homecoming. Thus far, there were few other places in Eorzea where she had felt truly safe. No ascians. No primals. No mad imperials and their ravenous mockery of a carbuncle. Just her new friends and plenty of time to recover, reflect, and maybe get a bit more flight practice in.
At least, that was her intent. And yet, as they approached the front steps of the Waking Sands, she began to realize that something was off. There was a tense aura in the air around them. People were murmuring in short, anxious whispers as they hurried urgently on with their days. Worse still were the darting, almost paranoid stares directed at the Sands. Fleeting glimpses before bystanders would fearfully avert their gazes and hurry along.
Y’shtola caught onto it too. She halted her advance, her ears twitching as she listened in to snippets of the surrounding conversation. Now anxious, Twilight did the same, perking her ears up and listening.
“-the bodies were taken to… This is a peaceful town! Why come here?”
“Can you believe such a thing would occur here of all-”
“I didn’t see anything. But my neighbour heard the commotion in that building before the guards could respond…”
Yshtola’s hand went to her ear.
“Minfillia. Respond.”
Nothing.
“Thancred.”
Silence.
“...Yda?”
…Dead air.
Twilight’s blood chilled. She had never seen Y’shtola go pale. She’d seemed concerned before, but now… she was scared. The feeling of wrongness swelled into a creeping dread. Something terrible had happened here.
“Y’shtola…?”
“Inside. Now.”
Y’shtola continued for the Sands at a far brisker pace, Twilight able to do little but follow on. She did her best to ignore the curious glances levelling their way as they stepped into the building and an unlit entryway.
No light. No life. Twilight’s eyes first moved towards the nearby table, desperately wanting to find the rambunctious lalafell that served as the receptionist here. Yet Tataru Taru was decidedly missing from her post, and the room was in absolute disarray. Papers scattered, furniture cast aside, and drag marks along the floor heading for the exit.
Y’shtola pressed on, quickly and urgently descending the stairs and into the headquarters proper.
The smell of blood was the first thing to hit.
The second was, once their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the stains themselves. The Waking Sands had become a nightmare house. Host to a slaughter that had happened all too recently. Blood splatters caked the walls and the floors, dark and dried and soaked into each surface. But it was fresh enough to leave the stench of death and terror in the still air.
Twilight gaped at it all, unable to speak. She couldn’t even think through the sudden storm of emotions ravaging her mind. The Scions… Tataru. Thancred. Minfillia. Yda. Papalymo. Urianger. Even the very champion they’d just sent back here…
There were no bodies left. No corpses. Yet even as Twilight’s eyes frantically jolted from one detail to the next, one stood out to her.
Her eyes drifted downwards to an object that had been abandoned in the middle of the corridor. An object with a cylindrical barrel, a bladed rifle that itself was smeared in the blood of its victims.
A Garlean gunblade.
Y’shtola’s hand balled into a shaky fist. “Damn her. Damn her! Damn them all! The attack on you was only one prong of their strike! They had intended from the first to hit all of us. We were so focused on Titan that we were blind to the threat approaching at our own gates! And I sent him walking right into it…”
Twilight swallowed heavily, desperately trying to find a thread of hope in all of the madness. “W-we don’t know if he was here when… Maybe you should try and-” she muttered, lifting a hoof up to her ear.
Y’shtola’s hand caught her wrist, the grip like a vice. “No linkpearl! If the Empire has them, they could well be compromised. If he wasn’t a part of this atrocity then I will not lead another right to him.”
Twilight cringed, her fetlock burning from the force of the miqo’te’s grip. “Y’shtola…” she protested slowly, meeting the woman’s eyes and dispelling her glamour.
A few moments later, Y’shtola let go. She stood up straight, rigid, and her fist clenched so hard that her nails drew blood. She closed her eyes, taking one deep breath after another. It must have been half a minute before she finally had an aura of calm about her. Though the miasma of rage was not so easily quenched…
“The townsfolk mentioned bodies. We need to speak with them,” she finally announced. “If our friends weren’t among the dead then perhaps-”
“HEEYA!”
A clumsy blur accompanied that battle cry, Twilight’s mind too numb to even react as it shot toward Y’shtola. But she was having none of it, expertly sliding to one side and her wand immediately swept up into her grasp. As the attacker shot past her, Y’shtola turned and levelled at weapon at her attacker, already channelling aether.
No further strikes came, though.
“...Yda!?” Twilight spoke first, her eyes flying wide at the sight of the masked woman. The hyur stared right back at them in complete bewilderment.
Yda licked her lips, slowly lowering her fists. She was shaking with adrenaline and emotion. When she spoke, her voice came out in a broken, cracking whisper. “...Twilight? Y’shtola? You’re…?”
“Yda… You are well…?” Y’shtola asked in turn, slowly lowering her wand as relief came over her features. “You did not answer my call. I had assumed that after our last transmission…”
“I… I mean…” Yda started, her lips quivering even as the words left them. Her weapons fell from her hands, clattering against the brick floor below like the falling of a gavel.
All of the energy bled out of her, and she fell to her armoured knees, sobbing into the cold stones beneath her. Twilight stared at her, dumbstruck. The contrast between the dopey but endlessly cheerful woman she had travelled to Gridania with and the broken, weeping mess in front of her twisted her mind and her heart in ways she didn’t want to imagine. It was almost like the rare occasion Pinkie would cry. Or, more commonly, when Fluttershy would. Someone like Yda didn’t deserve this…
Driven by the comparison, Twilight stepped forward and swiftly enveloped the woman in a tight hug, wings and all. Yda returned the embrace, burying her face into Twilight’s shoulder and holding her tight. She was shaking like a leaf, but in spite of that, her grip was firm, vice-like. Twilight forced herself not to care.
“It’s happening again,” Yda whimpered, giving Twilight a squeeze. “I can’t believe… I-it’s not supposed to… w-we were supposed to be…”
Twilight didn’t dare to ask what she meant by ‘again.’ She just kept holding her and running her hoof down the back of Yda’s head.
Y’shtola came up beside them and knelt down, placing a comforting hand on Yda’s back. “Yda. Breathe. You’re safe, now. We’re here,” she said, her voice low and gentle.
Yda shuddered, but after some gentle coaxing from Twilight, she began to do as instructed, breathing in and out, slowing her hyperventilations bit by tiny bit. It felt like forever, and for Twilight it may as well have been, but finally, Yda withdrew from the embrace. She reached a hand up to her mask as if to pull it away so she could clear her eyes. A moment later, she thought better of it and lowered her hand to her lap.
“Do you know what happened?” Y’shtola asked. “The others. Are they alive?”
Yda shuddered, then shrugged. “I… I don’t know. It was like this when I got here. I’ve only been in here for a little while. I’ve turned the whole place upside down, but… th-there’s nobody. Everyone’s gone… All I know is that a bunch of bodies were carted off before I got here, off to be buried in the lichyard near Drybone.”
Twilight swallowed hard, looking around. “How did the empire even get here?” she asked. “I thought this place was hidden.”
Y’shtola frowned. “...If the Ascians are in league with the empire, then who knows the full extent of their reach?” she questioned in a low, dangerous growl. She rose back to her full height a moment later, wiping the blood on her palms off onto her pants.
Yda looked up at her, sniffling again. “W-what do we do?” she asked in a pitiful whimper. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve always had someone with me. Paplymo, or Minfillia, or someone. I don’t… I d-don’t…”
Y’shtola did not answer. Instead, she turned on her feet and walked back the way she had come, her every step punctuated by a hard stomp. Twilight winced, turning back to Yda. The woman looked back down at the floor, shivering uncontrollably and wrapping herself in her own arms as if trying to hug herself.
Twilight shifted on her haunches, trying to think. “We… w-we shouldn’t stay here,” she finally said, rising back to her full height. “If the Empire hit this place, they might come back looking for stragglers. W-we… w-we need to go.”
“Where?” Yda asked, looking up at her again as her voice raised. “Where could we go?! They found us here! Where would possibly be safe?!”
Twilight flinched, taking a step back. “I… I d-don’t know,” she confessed, turning to stare after Y’shtola. Part of her wanted to go after the woman right away, but she held herself back. Y’shtola needed space, if only for a moment. And there may yet still be something here for them to find. Wiping a hoof over her own eyes, Twilight turned back to Yda. “Come on. Help me look around. Maybe there’s something we can still use. Food, maps, weapons, armour. Anything.”
Yda nodded and slowly got back up. “R-right… um… t-the storerooms were this way,” she said before heading down one of the long corridors. Twilight trailed behind her, her eyes drawn inexorably to the bloodstains on the walls. Every mark denoted a place where someone had died. Some of them might have been the friends she had made here. Others belonged to people she had never even heard the names of. People she had never met, and now would never get the chance to meet.
She paused, her eyes glancing down at the imperial gun blade sprawled on the floor.
She had felt many emotions during her time in Eorzea so far. Most of them weren’t good. Fear, confusion, panic, anguish, anger, and so many more. Thrust from one horrific revelation to the next, one gruesome atrocity to another. The only solace she had had were the Scions. This small band of men and women fighting valiantly in an uphill battle to try and put right all that had gone wrong with this world.
And now they were gone. Cut down and murdered right under her nose.
Rising to meet the wellspring of her shock and grief was another emotion. One she was very unaccustomed to feeling.
Hate.
At that moment, she decided she hated the Empire. She hated the ascians. And if an opportunity presented itself, she would make them pay.
Barely stifling a growl, Twilight drove her hoof into the weapon’s blade, snapping it cleanly in half with an echoing clang.
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Well, that just happened. Damn, the Empire isn't playing around anymore.
So, to recap, Twilight gets herself shot, and yet everyone else dies.
Typical.
... Yeah, that's about the reaction I had, when this happened. Damn, this chapter hit hard all over again, just from the memories... hooooooo boy...
11513651
Worst part is it is just beginning...
11513694
Ooooooh, I know. This is going to be... trying for Twilight...
yeah...this part...I still remember the first time I saw this...even though it's been almost 7 years
Yda evaded capture? Nice to see her, even if she's...going through it. Too much like when her sister died in Ala Mhigo, perhaps?
11514378
Exactly. A little hint to her true identity as Lyse, rather than Yda. And Lyse obviously is still running from it all at this stage, the ditzy follower as opposed to her future as leader of a rebellion.