Hey there! This is my first time writing fanfiction. First time writing period, actually. So who knows how it will go?
I don't know if anyone will read this, or how it will be received . . . but here it is!
Also yeah I know the title is weird, it came to me in a dream and I still like how it sounds actually
Chapter 1: Windward
Poka was looking at the landscape, sitting on a mossy rock. Behind her were the bustling noises of her fellow villagers finishing up the preparations for the caravan. Every able-bodied villager was busy loading the wagons with all the supplies they could scrape by for the upcoming journey.
Poka was a moogle. The small leathery wings on her back, her long ears, her fur, and the pom-pom on her head all contributed to make that pretty obvious. Most of the inhabitants of the small continent of Asadia were also moogles. This was their home continent, after all - though not for long.
She shut her eyes and felt the warm, almost gentle, wind ruffle her fur. Today it was not as strong, but it had begun blowing not many weeks earlier, either.
It was almost pleasant, but she shuddered. What the people had taken to call the Windblight was carrying disease upon the crops, the vegetation, the cattle, and even the people themselves; even the earth itself became as if blighted. Like elsewhere, it was now already becoming a barren desert of cracked ground, dust and mud as far as the eye could see; a few skeletons of Chocobos and other farm animals already dotted the lands around the village houses and farms.
Where the scorchingly hot and heavy wind blew, powerful monsters and beasts soon followed, too. They were the only ones unaffected, perhaps they even thrived in it. And it would not be long until this place too would be reached, the village where she had been born and grown, a place once green and fertile.
Poka shook her head, still trying to visualize behind her closed eyes what the surroundings had been. She remembered the trees, the pond, the everyday bustling of the village.
Nobody knew what was causing the Windblight, and every adventurer, warrior, and researcher who had ventured into the windy lands towards the source, believed to be somewhere towards the center of the continent, had never returned.. Most likely they either had succumbed to the pestilence, or been slain by the beasts. Or by something else. Their fate was the subject of much speculation, too, and none of it helped the spirits of the people of Asadia.
It had all begun a few months earlier, when from the central regions of Adal came reports of the air getting increasingly thick and ever more unbearably hot, with winds blowing with increasing force; and finally of some mysterious disease following in its wake. The effects of the scourge began showing about a month after the first signs of wind, the land wilted, the people were bedridden. And then they died, nobody had ever survived, to general knowledge. The disease seemed incurable, although not contagious; but the afflicted that tried to outrun the wind were shunned by most nonetheless.
The situation had gotten bad enough that some of the neighboring kingdoms, from the other continents which were unaffected, had agreed to send ships to the shores of Asadia to try and evacuate as many refugees as possible. Even then, fear was in the air, and every one of the villagers, even Poka, could feel it . . . nobody knew if the seas would stop the wind.
Airships could not even fly into the mainland to evacuate people, or to study the wind from a vantage point, because each time the Windblight would destroy them leaving no survivors . . . it seemed to be much stronger high up in the air, even in the regions otherwise not yet reached by it.
A hand tapped Poka's shoulder, interrupting her train of thought with a startle. She turned around; it was Koup, a royal soldier that was sent to escort their caravan. Each caravan got at least one, depending on size.
Koup was a Dragoon, one of the top elite warriors in the four kingdoms. Clad in an awesome, obsidian-black armor resembling a dragon's body, spiked and horned helmets covered dragoons' heads, obscuring the eyes - the visor had ember-red eyes, said to be inspired by Bahamut himself, the legendary king of dragons.
The fearsome appearance was somewhat diminished by the fact that Koup was a Moogle, and quite short even by Moogle standards. His spear was about twice the length of his body and he had to carry it sideways behind his back. The villagers did not feel very encouraged or protected, truthfully.
Poka looked down to his draconic helmet. She wondered how he had even reached her shoulder. Koup told her: "We're about to depart. If you still haven't gotten all your stuff together, please hurry; we cannot be late on anybody's account". He stared at her from under his helmet. He had to crane his neck quite a bit to look at her eyes, and even then it was hard to say where his gaze was pointing, behind the mask.
Poka nodded, and made for the caravan, followed by the dragoon. She did not like him very much, truthfully. He was foreign, from the continent of Kalpea, and his speech sounded strange to the ears of Asadians.
That, and the fact that she felt a bit unnerved by those crimson eyes. Probably the Dragoon would not have intimidated an enemy or a monster in the least, though. Probably one of the Windswept could stomp him without even realizing he was there.
As Poka climbed the seat of her wagon, she tried to not think of the village they were leaving behind, of what had happened, and of the future. Her seat was next to her brother Mogur, the former village's white mage - which was to say, basically an overqualified healer. He patted her shoulder encouragingly and spurred their red and yellow chocobos, who squawked in protest but followed the rest of the wagons. The caravan had already begun to move. The dragoon rode past them on his golden chocobo. Even the big birds were feeling nervous and sometimes behaved erratically.
As they went past the village's gate, she was sure she had heard, perhaps even felt on her fur, the wind picking up and hissing venomously behind her.