I.
Tavist had not been in the city for thirty minutes and already he found himself walking toward a guard post with trepidation. It had had been eight years since he was in his second home, Luca, and most believed that he was dead.
"Excuse me," he said in his low voice, rapping on the door of the post, a garrison on the wall that looked out toward the Mi'ihen Highroad that Tavist had come from. "Excuse me." He repeated knocking again, but harder.
"What's that?" A man with tanned skin and broad shoulders wearing the yellow and purple uniform of the city guard said, looking Tavist over wildly as he exited his post. "Spot a fiend have you?"
He looked Tavist up and down, and no doubt he was quiet a sight: tall and pale as the moon, with long arms and short legs, he wore black leather britches on top mail, that you could see through in the places his pants were ripped, and had black leather boots on, that tied with a silver cord at the top. Standard issue of the New Crusade, and so far they had lasted eight years. On his chest he wore a metal breast plate, slightly rounded between his ribs, dyed in blocks of color diagonally, cobalt at the bottom, coming into silver enameled with red vine surrounding the sigil of the New Crusade, the heart of Spira, topped with steel the color of purple fluorite crystal. Attached to his breastplate a mantel, with two silver swirled ornamental broaches that a short emerald cloak hung from. Over his pink lips he still wore a black veil that he had taken to wearing once he started traveling alone. The most eye catching piece Tavist wore, despite his display of colors, was his headdress: made of a beaded cyan band, that matched the color of his wiry tree branch like hair, with a single large blood red amethyst in the center and steel tree branches that wove in with and extend pass his hair.
"I'm looking for my brother." Tavist said, remembering finally to pull down his veil and show his face. A gesture that instantly made the guard feel more at ease.
"Your brother?" The guard repeated slowly as if Tavist might not understand him. "A Guado? Not many of them here in Luca." He shrugged.
Tavist smiled and held his breath, this was it, now or never. "No." He said pausing a moment. "He is not a Guado. He is your Commander, Lord Zaon, the eldest son of Vania." The guard shot upright. "Perhaps you've heard of me." He said with a bow "I am Vania's other son, Tavist."
The guard looked his once over again. "To be quiet sure," He said under his breath marching around Tavist. "Sorry M'lord I did not recognize you."
"There is no need for such formality," Tavist said shaking it off. "I only ask that you help me find my brother."
The guard motioned Tavist to follow him. "Of course, he'll be in the harbor already, you're cutting it close you know. The service will begin with a sending at sunset." His words were solemn. "But, I guess you did rise from the dead to be here." The guard laughed at his own joke.
"I assure you I was never dead," Tavist said as he followed the guard, "Even though there were plenty of times when I wished I was." He said more to himself wondering if based on the knot in his stomach this was going to be one of those moments too.