Chapter Text
As a young lass, Lleidspaer Grymhaswyn was endlessly curious.
Her mother was a chemist, which sparked Lleidspaer’s thirst for knowledge about how the world worked. Her father was a sailor, and his stories about all the different shores he had seen only made Lleidspaer more eager to see the whole thing. The family had lived at Halfstone for a time, but when the locale was no longer convenient for the family’s respective careers, they moved across the Strait of Merlthor to the western coast of Thanalan.
Lleidspaer’s mother, Zealous Current, had originally come from Ala Mhigo. This was back well before the Garlean occupation, which had happened when Lleidspaer was around twelve years old. “It’s one of my biggest regrets, that I wasn’t there to stand with the rest of my family against the Garleans,” she told Lleidspaer once. Looking back, Lleidspaer thought the incident might have been what prompted the move to Thanalan.
Lleidspaer’s father, Grymhas Frydmyrgansyn, was a sailor with a storied past in one of Limsa Lominsa’s innumerable pirate crews. His name, in the old Roegadyn tongue, meant “Cruel Scar,” which he always said referred to the wound in his heart from being away from home so often. But he was a sailor, and a Lominsan sailor at that, and he could not stay shorebound nor could he acclimate to Thanalan.
Starting when she was sixteen, Lleidspaer accompanied her father on a number of sailing trips and learned the basics of nautical life. Other times she stayed at home as an assistant around her mother’s laboratory. She was content to take care of them — she had few friends of her own, and it gave her something to do.
It wasn’t that she lacked interests — Lleidspaer was an avid student of history. She learned her letters at the small village church in Halfstone, and she even studied the basics of chemistry out of the thick tomes that her mother brought back from her colleagues at Frondale’s Phrontistery in Ul’dah. Her favorite object of study, though, was the old and partially-waterlogged treatise on naval tactics she had rescued from a shipwreck in Moraby Bay during her first ever sailing trip with her father.
Grymhas was skeptical — he did not want his daughter growing up to see such bloodshed, he told her with a haunted look flickering behind his easygoing smile — but Lleidspaer was dedicated, and before she returned to Thanalan, she bought her own cutlass and buckler from Naldiq & Vymelli’s. Training was fun for her, the one passion she could truly call her own. She might even have sailed as a deckhand with the Lominsan navy for a time — she did not fully recall — but she never fully moved out.
At last, when Lleidspaer’s twenty-sixth nameday came, her mother could no longer condone Lleidspaer stunting her own future to take care of her. “Go live your own life,” she urged. “I’ll still be here whenever you want to come home.” So Lleidspaer had sailed away from Vesper Bay one final time, set to enlist with the thalassocracy’s dockworkers, deckhands, secretaries, and couriers.
Alas, fate likes to play cruel tricks. Before Lleidspaer turned twenty-seven, Zealous Current died in an operation with the Ala Mhigan Resistance near Northern Thanalan. “She was trying to atone,” Lleidspaer recounted numbly at the funeral. “For not being part of the Resistance the first time.”
That was all it had taken to ignite a fire in Lleidspaer’s breast. She threw herself into her sword training, joining the Resistance for an operation that should have been tactically sound. She could no longer recall the details — ripped along with so many others from her memory — but she knew that it had been disastrous.
Everything from that point forward was hazy and fragmented. She enlisted with the Maelstrom once war with the Empire crossed the line from “inevitable” to “imminent”. She joined a campaign to try to stop the moon from falling — though she no longer remembered who her erstwhile colleagues were. And she personally witnessed the chaos of Carteneau, could not forget the sight of the massive black wings unfurling in the sky above her, the smell of fire searing her lungs, and then light, so much light…
Lleidspaer grimaced. Even the memory of the light was painful. Shaking her head to clear it, she returned to the present.
She sat — as usual — in the healing waters of the Warmwine Sanitorium, at the Lominsan encampment at Bronze Lake. The makeshift military hospital had grown entrenched over the past five years. They seemed to be there to stay.
But Lleidspaer would not be staying with them.
Just this morning, the lalafell attendant — she thought his name was Rukusa — had told her that her physical therapy regimen had run its course.
“I’m sorry to see you have to go so soon,” he said apologetically. “But there’s really nothing left we can do for your leg. You can use it again, with a functional range of motion nearly identical to before the injury, so long as you warm up well and don’t misstep — and I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how miraculous that is!” He attempted a reassuring smile, which he quickly aborted when he saw her stony expression.
“A-anyways,” he continued, flipping through the medical notes, “we’ve done everything we can think of to get sensation back into your leg again. It’s going to be prone to misstepping and locking up if you can’t feel where you’re putting it, but there’s nothing we can do about that save amputation and prosthesis — but the limited articulation of prosthesis, not to mention risk of catastrophic injury, is a strong contraindication.”
What he very diplomatically didn’t say was that the Maelstrom couldn’t afford to try anything else, nor house her here for the rest of her life while she… drifted uselessly along. But what else was there for her to do? She had no prospects. Her mother was dead; her father had not been seen since the Calamity; her career as a soldier was obsolete with the ending of the war.
“We can charter a carriage for you to any Lominsan port you’d like to go to,” Rukusa continued. She stared at him. He looked away. “Ahem… would Limsa Lominsa be a good destination?”
Lleidspaer tilted her head dismissively. Rukusa did not even come up to her waist.
“I-I’m sorry to have to see you go so soon. I’ve packed some extra ointments in case the pain comes back. Feel free to return if you need anything at all, okay?”
She did not respond.
Rukusa looked up at her anxiously, then darted away. Lleidspaer felt a twinge of regret at that; she had not been extremely personable during her convalescence, but Rukusa had been nice to her. No, getting attached was foolish — to a person as much as to a place. She gathered her belongings around herself and climbed up into the carriage.
The cart sped down the road past the obliterated ruins of Quarterstone — Halfstone had not even been lucky enough to have ruins, a fact which made Lleidspaer grit her teeth in dismay — as it headed east and south, past Swiftperch and Summerford, on its way to the city of Limsa Lominsa. The city looked fragile. It made Lleidspaer’s stomach twist.
When the carriage dropped her off outside Bulwark Hall, as she wove through the hustle and bustle of Hawker’s Alley, as she stared across the docks at the stagnant Astalicia , one emotion echoed through her head.
Bitterness.
As she walked through the white stone streets, Lleidspaer gripped the hilt of her smallsword like she was trying to choke the life out of it. Like the firmer she held to it, the deadlier it would be. The safer she would be as she drifted in and out of these unfamiliar memories of pirate ambushes, treachery and villainy behind every corner.
Lleidspaer had made it to the shadow of the Astalicia when someone jeered, “Oi, lass, ye lost? This ‘ere be the ship o’ the Bloody Executioners, not a fuckin’ tourist destination!” Lleidspaer looked up and saw an emerald-haired miqo’te girl shouting over the side of the ship. Lleidspaer paused in confusion. This wasn’t the marauders’ guild she knew. She had dueled with the marauders before, here on this very ship; she could remember the rush of steel on steel; the irony of her opponent’s massive battleaxe being countered by her own flimsy cutlass.
Lleidspaer turned away abruptly, ignoring the miqo’te’s heckling. She stalked in the direction of the ferry docks. This city chafed at her. She had to get out. She couldn’t do this. Why had she come here?
There was nothing for her in Limsa. No, she would buy a ticket to Vesper Bay, putting this life behind her and returning to the house where she had grown up — if it even still stood.
She paused. She hadn’t thought about that. It was not likely that her house — a lone building amidst the wilds of the Footfalls, where her mother had set up shop — even still stood. It would have been considered abandoned after the Calamity — been looted or worse. And seeing her house in that state would chafe a dozen times worse than walking these streets that were at once stranger and familiar.
Her hands shook. She wasn’t at Bronze Lake anymore. She was on her own. She had to think about tomorrow — the physickers wouldn’t be there to keep her trapped and secure in the interminable daily routine — there were no guarantees — the winds were changing, and if she didn’t adjust the sails she would capsize.
As she stood, yalms away from where the ferry ticketer sat, Lleidspaer realized she didn’t have the gil for the trip anyway. Her deliberation was cut off as a pair of officials — customs assessors, judging by the cut and color of their robes —brushed past Lleidspaer (“Excuse us, miss,”) to stand at the pier and greet an incoming ship that had just settled in at the dock.
“From Sharlayan,” one assessor said, just within earshot. “They’ll not be carrying anything suspect. Those scholars may be the only people more meticulous than we are.”
“That may be,” another replied, “but policy is policy. Mealvaan’s Gate did not earn its reputation for quality by trusting others to do our jobs for us, Sharlayan or no.”
Lleidspaer tuned them out as a distant memory slowly emerged from the fog. Mealvaan’s Gate. The Eorzean home of arcanimatic study. It was no Frondale’s Phrontistery, but Zealous Current had worked with arcanima before — something to do with aetherial conductivity. Lleidspaer had never grasped aetherochemistry, but maybe she could learn.
She would have to do something . She had left Bronze Lake. Gods only knew what else there was for her here, but she’d taken the first step. The stagnant, unrelenting drone of Lleidspaer’s life was breaking. Althyk’s hourglass began to turn, and the stasis of fate which had held the world in suspense these five long years was broken.
Lleidspaer stood up straighter, turned to face the Arcanists’ Guild, and steeled her gaze. She would not get swept up by the tide.
Nia’a Tsara would be quick to insist that he was not a romantic.
And yet, as a child, whenever his mother, Nia, brewed up another mug of silverwine and sat on the gnarled root in the garden, staring out at the moon’s reflection dancing in the waters of the Rootslake, and started to talk about her husband: Nia’a was the most attentive listener.
As his mother always told it, she had been a young maiden, destined to become a matriarch in her own right, when she had fallen in love.
Each retelling put a different spin on the love: sometimes she recounted a playful summer of mischief and smiles; sometimes she lost herself in the nostalgia for the days when she had made a stand and chosen her own path; sometimes she was solemn and lonely, wrapping her arms around herself as if to remember what it had felt like to be held.
In short: the fact that she had been deeply in love with T’rhowa was never in doubt.
Not everyone approved of their liaison. T’rhowa was, after all, a Seeker of the Sun — an outsider among the secretive and distrusting Rootslake clans.
Nia would always recount how baffled she was to learn about the differences between the two miqo’te cutures. Yet this bafflement, she would add with a twinkle in her eyes, led to numerous nights of cultural exchange under the twinkling stars on the shore of the Rootslake.
When the two were wed, Nia had insisted to know the name of the woman who birthed T'rhowa so she could give him a Keeper name. T'rowha had smirked playfully back and retorted that, in fact, it was he who had to know her father's name so he could give her a Seeker name. Neither could answer the other's question, of course: it was too large a culture gap.
As a youngling, Nia’a had found this entire exchange fascinating — but he was his father’s son, playful smirk and all, and could not help but find the situation dramatically unfair. Why should Nia’a be given name that meant no more than “Nia Tsara’s first son,” when his dear father had a name all his own?! Nia’a once declared his proper name to be T’nia’a Tsara Tia, and his parents had shared a long meaningful look as they both struggled not to laugh.
Those days were long dead.
Now, Nia Tsara lived alone. T’rhowa Tsara, her beloved, had not been seen in over fourteen years. On the other edge of the Rootslake, Nia’a did not even know if his mother and sisters remembered him. (Since the Calamity, few people did.)
He hoped they had forgotten him. It would dull the pain of absence, if nothing else. If they still lived. But Nia’a was not about to end his self-imposed exile to see how well they were getting on. Not until his search was over.
No, Nia’a was definitely not a romantic — he was a coward. He tried not to think of his family anymore. But like his mother with her silverwine, sometimes when Nia’a got a little too deep in his cups at Buscarron’s tavern, and when he looked out at the Rootslake and the silent, mourning moon stared back, he could not help but remember.
He had left home nearly a decade ago. Or thereabouts. Nia’a barely bothered with timekeeping anymore. His father had vanished six or seven years prior. Nia’a was approaching marriageable age and dreading it all the while. The last straw fell when he heard a girl from another family had her eyes on him as a mate. Honestly, given the circumstances, Nia’a would argue that he took it relatively well. He calmly considered all the options, and then — rationally — he wrote his mother a goodbye note and fled into the night.
Only a year or two before the Calamity, Nia’a had found a lead. There had been an airship crash in the middle of the forest years prior; a rogue presence had tried to rebel against the Elementals; entire swathes of the forest had been bathed in woodsin. All of this took place the exact year T’rhowa had vanished. If Nia’a had only chased after him then — but no, Nia’a had been a mere ten years old at the time, hadn’t even started his apprenticeship.
It was pointless to dwell on that, anyway. The fact of the matter was that T’rhowa was gone, and almost a decade later, Nia’a, by then estranged from his family, had picked up the trail. And that meant contending with all the mysticism and judgment of the city of Gridania.
Today, he could not even remember if he had found the answers he was seeking. All Nia’a could remember was himself, hatchet in one hand and needle in the other, distilling herbs into a poultice for the Twin Adder troops. He remembered the sweat beading on his face as he labored, his ragged breaths as he exhausted himself for the very city that had, quite possibly, taken his father from him. At the least, they had covered something up. Something big. Nia’a thought he could remember a tree burning — a child screaming — but it was the barest fleeting memory, and it was gone.
When the Calamity neared and Dalamud reared its ugly head in the sky, Nia’a gave up the search to serve the forest and the Elementals — or, at least, the Gridanians. Such acts were tantamount to treason among the Keeper tribes, he knew, but he could not help feeling proud of himself as he fought to save his homeland from its certain destruction.
He remembered very little of the war, aside from the endless rows upon rows of imperial soldiers in the red glow of Dalamud — and the blood on his hands that seemed to never come off. No matter how many times he washed, there were always more wounded to stitch up.
His insomnia became worse. He barely slept. He was sick all the time — he didn’t even have the strength to brew himself any potions that would alleviate his headaches, let alone lull him to sleep.
After the Calamity, things hadn’t gotten better. Nobody seemed to remember him from his days in Gridania — days that he himself could barely stitch together in his own mind — and, truth be told, he preferred it that way. Living as a phantom on the outskirts of oblivion.
He had started sleeping better, though. Buscarron had opened up his Druthers, not far from Rootslake, and was always willing to hand out a glass of mead in exchange for several odd jobs nearby. It helped him sleep, it really did — both the mead and the odd jobs.
Today, Nia’a was gathering plants near the Upper Paths when he overheard an altercation between poacher gangs. The Redbellies and the Coeurlclaws, most likely. He froze.
He was, of course, unarmed. That was one of the lines he had never crossed.
If he moved, he would be seen. He shrunk down and peered through the foliage to surveil the confrontation. The Redbelly swung her boar-tusked lance like a vicious hook, and speared the Coeurlclaw — no — Nia’a felt sick.
Mere seconds later, the Redbelly had departed, leaving the miqo’te corpse laid out on the uneven soil. Nia’a crept closer. Was the man beyond saving? He took quick stock of the wound. Fatal. A pang of grief roiled through him, but he forced himself to stand.
As he stood and made to return to the Druthers, Nia’a’s eyes fell onto the Coeurlclaw poacher’s bow. It was a familiar make. The man had been from the Tsara branch of the woods, for all that he was a stranger. But the bow, it felt… like family, in a way. Nia’a picked it up, tested the draw. He had never wielded one before, not since early childhood training. Nia’a did not recognize the Coeurlclaw: he could have been an uncle or a cousin, and Nia’a would never know. But the man’s bow was the first artifact that Nia’a had come across in years that brought him back home. If he learned how to wield it, he could… he could…
Visions — memories — nightmares — of corpses, riddled with arrows, leaking rivers of Dalamud red onto the ground —
Nia’a flung the instrument of death away from him, took two steps back in horror, and promptly passed out.
When he awoke, he found himself flanked by Gridania’s Wood Wailers, staring at him askance. They needed to question him on the issue of the poacher whose body Nia’a had been found unconscious beside. He was helpless to refuse their summons, no matter how many times he repeated that he was just a healer, a traveling apothecary, who had stumbled upon the wounded by happenstance.
He asked them to conduct the interview at Buscarron’s, or even at the nearby outpost of Quarrymill. But they regarded him with distrust, which meant they needed to “confer with their superiors”. So Nia’a had been marched down to a comfortably furnished cell known as an “inn room” in Gridania’s most deceptive gaol.
That was when he heard it.
The sound itself was hard to describe. It sounded like whispering, not in the way that speech does, but in the way that the wind whispers through the leaves of a tree, or the way that water whispers its way over the rocks of a stream. To the north and west, the whispers were agitated.
Nia’a sat, and heard.
The agitation reached a peak before subsiding into murmurs and fading entirely, drowned out by a new, very human sound. Screaming. It was coming closer and closer.
Suddenly, a knock came at the door.
There were wounded, the Wood Wailers said beneath their hollow-eyed masks. If Nia’a really was an apothecary as he claimed (and as his tools attested) then he would ply his craft in service to the people of the forest to clear his name.
So Nia’a ended up doctoring the wounds of a young, dark-skinned Elezen man so overcome by grief and rage it took three Wood Wailers to restrain him so Nia’a could sew the lad’s scratches closed. The boy — well, the man; Nia’a couldn’t ignore the proof of his neatly trimmed goatee — was near incoherent with sobs, but Nia’a caught “Father” and “Mother” amid the syllables and his heart sank.
Eventually the boy fell silent aside from his ragged breathing, and in the silence Nia’a couldn’t help eavesdropping on the soldiers’ gossip.
“We lost Hyrstmill. Poor kid was found trying to use his dad’s pitchfork to hold off three birdmen at once.”
Hyrstmill — Nia’a was unfamiliar with the name, but surely a farming village — overrun and bathed in blood. Nia’a felt sick again, but steeled himself to the task at hand. Nobody would appreciate an apothecary with a weak stomach.
That night, as Nia’a stared at his hands, he swore he could still see the bloodstains — perhaps the blood spilled at Hyrstmill today; perhaps the five-year-old stain from Carteneau. He stared at his hands, heart pounding, until the alien susurrations of the wind and water around him finally tempted him to a fitful, uneasy sleep.
Vivimani Qiqimani whistled a merry tune as he cast his line back into the sea. Another herring or two and he would be set for the day. If he was lucky he might find a haddock, but he would be fine either way. That was who Vivimani was: a lalafellin man who was, at his core, just fine with his lot.
(That was a lie, of course. But what else was there?)
The Silver Bazaar was far from bustling — its populace had dwindled since he had first set down roots there in the aftermath of the Calamity. The fish he caught there were nothing special, either. Usually. Sometimes, instead of fish, he would catch little bits of junk — discarded coin, ruined Garlean weaponry, once even a corpse — but that messed with his head, sending him into a stupor of nostalgic reverie so trite his teacher would have smacked him across the head for it.
But remembering his teacher was so off-limits that even the attempt gave Vivimani a headache. One of those godsdamned holes in his memory that he had discovered when he awoke in the aftermath of Carteneau, covered in burns and other people’s blood. All he could remember about his teacher was — was foggy. Anger. The glint of a knife. The sensation of white-hot flames across his face.
And when he’d awoken, somewhere not far from the Yafaemi Saltmoor, even his magic had abandoned him. He liked to tell himself he barely even felt where it once had dwelled in his mind or soul or whatever. But it was still there. Like the blackened stump of a long-dead limb he swore he didn’t even care about. The worst part was that he didn’t even know what he’d done five years ago to burn out his magic. It had to have been something awful. After all, that was the way things went. Curses were always, always karmic.
The fault, of course, lay with Ul’dah — the temptress, font of covetousness and adventure. Which was why Vivimani did not allow himself to travel to the city for so much as a change of clothes. No, his traveling days were over, and now he was but a simple fisherman who caught everything he needed to survive here on his own doorstep, or else bartered the catch of the day to others in the dilapidated hamlet.
It wasn’t that Vivimani was scared to leave. Not scared for his safety, at any rate. His magic might have been burnt away, but Vivimani still knew his way around a knife, and not only for fileting fish. No, Vivimani was scared of what he would feel, climbing up the Eighty Sins of Sasamo and passing through the Gate of the Sultana — blessed be her name and lineage.
The first time he had walked through those gates, he had felt something akin to jubilation. He had just set out on his own, a junior archaeologist (read: treasure hunter) joining a troupe of mercenaries, miners, and a few down-on-their-luck laborers gambling for a windfall. And they succeeded. They had found a relic of Sil’dih not far from Highbridge, and brought it to Ul’dah to be assessed and sold. Their journey ended in a night of celebration, with the most expensive libations their palates could discern and their coffers afford.
Their second expedition ended in a mass funeral at the lichyard of Saint Adama Landama.
If only that were the end of it. But no: a conversation with the priests at the funeral had summarily led to a few lessons in the principles of thaumaturgy. Those lessons became a thrilling lifestyle among the splendors and shadows of Ul’dah — until everything became more complicated inside the city.
Vivimani didn’t remember what, but the rumors circling the city like vultures spat words ranging from extortion to assassination to necromancy most vile. And he could believe any of those accusations — because the holes in his memory were merciful (or cruel) enough to leave faint glimpses. Whatever treachery had brewed, Vivimani — and his teacher — had sat at the center of the controversy.
They had fought; Vivimani could remember that. His memories were fractured, but they had been bathed in betrayal and grief, leaving a trail of bodies.
So: clearly, Vivimani could not be trusted to have learned his lesson about plunging headfirst into dangerous environs, bringing his family, friends, and coworkers into the pit of peril at his side. That was why he wouldn’t allow himself to leave the Silver Bazaar. He would grow old here, become tempered and domesticated with age, and let time wash away the blood that had once stained his hands.
Except it seemed he wouldn’t be growing old here at all — because when Vivimani strolled back into the center of town, haddock in hand, his whistling was cut short by the sight of yet another problem.
Kikipu Kipu, the de facto leader of the Silver Bazaar was being pushed aside by none other than the very same land prospectors who had been hounding her for the past moon. “They want the land,” she had explained. “The whole area the Bazaar is founded on. Probably the lighthouse too. But we’re not going to let them have it, are we?”
It seemed they weren’t going to take no for an answer.
Galfridus — Vivimani’s only competition as angler, age be damned — hobbled up to yell a few words about unlawful eviction. He earned himself a backhand across the face so hard it knocked him to the ground. The old man landed on his flimsy fishing rod, which broke with an echoing snap.
Vivimani saw red.
“I regret to inform you,” he said in his most commanding tone (which, Vivimani would proudly admit, was quite commanding indeed!), “that the Silver Bazaar is under my protection.” It was unfortunate he was wearing commonfolk clothes and bearing the catch of the day, but Vivimani could improvise.
Grabbing a gnarled stick from the ground, he marched forward and spun it around, chanting as he did so. The chanting was unnecessary — just some old Mhachi noun declension — but it would have some dramatic effect while Vivimani struggled to wrest a sliver of mana from his battered self.
Not much — and his scars flared up again as he tried — but he eventually managed to light the end of the gnarled stick, desiccated as it was in the Thanalan climate. It was much less intimidating than it should have been due to the height difference: Vivimani barely came up to the other man’s chest. He was able to flick the embers at the sheaf of eviction notices in the man’s hand, however.
The man yelped and jumped back, dropping the offending papers. Those would need to be extinguished posthaste, or Vivimani would have just accomplished his task for him — but Vivimani did not have the magic to accomplish anything more, so he left that for his townsfolk and advanced, slowly, on the retreating hyur. “By the authority of the Sacred Order of Nald’thal, and by all of the arcane teachings of Mumuepo the Beholden, I command you to begone ,” Vivimani hissed.
And that was that.
As the sun set, Vivimani cooked up some battered fish and spiced wine. Fancier fare than usual, but he had caught a prize haddock, and his neighbors were willing to part with some local popotoes and newly purchased La Noscean olive oil. The meal had to be fancy — this would be the last meal he ate as a resident of the Bazaar. Kikipu was watching him, eyes still red from the tears she pretended she wasn’t shedding, inscrutable expression on her face, and he knew.
Vivimani’s charade was up. No matter what he had wanted to be, he was now known to be more than a simple fisher.
He entrusted his rod and net to Galfridus — the people here would still need to eat — and walked over to face whatever judgment Kikipu saw fit to impose.
“This whole bloody time,” she said numbly. “We’ve been struggling for so long, and I had no idea you were someone who could do something about it! I saw your burns, and I thought for sure that was an injury from the Calamity, not the mark of a veteran!”
Vivimani said nothing.
Kikipu turned away slightly. “I don’t know if you were lying about all that — if you’re secretly a deserter or a fugitive or what — but they’re not going to stop trying to chase us off our land unless someone puts a stop to it.” She looked at him again, and he saw the tears in her eyes she was trying to hide. “I don’t know if maybe you can’t be that someone — but at the very least, would you take a letter to the city for me? Byregot only knows how long our little Bazaar can stay standing — but I’m not ready to… not ready.”
Vivimani considered it — and he was considering, he just already knew what he would decide — until, finally, he nodded. “I will,” he said.
So the simple fisherman Vivimani, content to stay in the Silver Bazaar until he grew old, gazed upon the lights of the city of Ul’dah in the distance and something fluttered in his heart. The place he’d avoided for so long — the place he’d lived and worked and enjoyed himself — the den of evil at the end of every road —
Vivimani’s last vestiges of wanderlust were suddenly alight, like embers caught in the dry desert grass. His past five years’ labor of trying to bury it was undone in a single evening. Magic or no — it was all he could think about.
And then the fear swarmed in like a pestilence in the wake of a flood. Free to what? To reveal himself as the figure behind the knife flashing in his shattered memories? To surrender himself for judgment for all the bodies his decisions had left behind? To become the rot that festered in the heart of Thanalan — or to learn that he always had been?
I can’t stay here, he reminded himself in the morning, as he set out. I’ll deliver the letter. For Kikipu. I’ll set things right at the Silver Bazaar. Satchel on his back, letter in his hand, he stared up at the Eighty Sins of Sasamo with determination and no small amount of dread.
The stories said that Princess Sasamo had been given a penance for her treasonous plot to usurp her sister’s throne. She had been made to walk the eighty steps, eighty times a day, for eighty days — and she had seen her sentence through. Upon taking her final step, however, the weight of her sins was relieved from her, and her soul was judged — and she perished right before the gates of the city.
Vivimani shivered. That would be his fate one day, if he didn’t watch his step. Maybe even if he did.
I’ll do what I need to do in the city, but no more. And then I’ll come home.
(But Vivimani had never been good at lying to himself — the Bazaar wasn’t his home. He suspected that it never had been.)