"I know I was never a good father-"
"You were a horrible father."
"-but you will see." The old man sighed heavy, the life of ardor slipping from between his teeth. "A life spent fighting. The Mad King, the Garleans, the Primals…" The old warrior tightened his grip on the sheets.
"I have given her all I had left to give. This old body… it doesn't yet have the energy to execute her will."
"And yet you gave me up."
He looked at her quizzically, unsure of her words. Her old man shook his head, the confused frown accentuated all the more by the battle-scars that marred his stone-like skin. Then it dawned on him-
What She had meant… about how the light must not fade.
"... You heard Her? Her call?" The spent elder sat up in his bed, the sudden realization shocking energy back to him. "To hear? To think? To feel?"
Quietly the woman rubbed her arm, avoiding eye contact with her father. It wasn't until he struggled to raise himself from the bed that her piercing green irises peered into him from behind her red-rimmed spectacles.
"Mayhaps-"
The now-frail warrior collapsed back into his sickbed, caught in a daze.
"Then you too, will understand." He spoke with voice as cold and distant as these lands of Coerthas that they had fled to.
"My daughter- my beloved Reeza-"
"Don't you dare-" She gritted her teeth, trying her best to put on a sneer. To remember everything that this man had put her and her mother through. The years of loneliness, watching her mother waste away waiting for his return.
It disgusted her.
Seeing her mother swell with pride whenever they heard news of the Warrior of Light's exploits… yet what was there to show of him? Gil, trinkets, the occasional spoil of war and adventure sent back home for them- but all were just placations that couldn't fill the void of his absence. She swore she saw more of his adventuring companions than of her father.
"I did everything in my power to keep you safe. I offered Her my everything except you." Her father sighed shrinking once more as his resolve diminished. For once, the man she had always seen as the stoic mountain of sheer willpower, appeared on the verge of crying.
"All I wanted was a life of peace for you and your mother… and yet…" He stared to the ceiling, shaking his head more and more feverishly, trying to deny some truth he had stumbled upon.
"All I can see now is just how… just how natural it looked with that axe in your hands."
He spoke of the time when he had returned to them- before everything went so awry…
Back when she still looked up to him.
Back when he was still her personal hero.
It was a time when the Circle of Knowing were as much family as their own. When she could remember fondly of quietly learning the ways of an adventurer from her father's friends. She was but fifteen springs old, a fledgling by any Eorzean standards. He had let her try and hold aloft his beloved axe- the symbol and tool of his trade. She could barely lift the thing from the ground, yet still, he smiled at her not out of mockery, but pure pride. She remembered swearing that one day she would lift his axe.
Now where were they all? The Scions… the Free Company… Oak, Lohana, and R'Loon?
Dead?
Captured?
Only Alphinaud stood accounted for, but it was his childish naivete that had put them all in this situation.
Did her father abandon them as he had with her and her mother? Had such a trifle as this broken him?
Every new unanswerable question burned in her core. The Beast rose up within…
And she quietly struck it down.
Reeza calmly glided to the armoire set in the corner of the room, casting its wide double doors open. Carefully placed within hung the blood-crimson breastplate, a finely crafted piece made up of interlocking jointed Allagan steel plates- one of his prized possessions. Alongside it lay the matching helmet, greaves, gauntlets…
And the axe.
Ragnarok.
Reese watched wordlessly as his daughter- the lithe-framed yet confident woman she had become- grab hold of his beloved axe.
Lean, powerful muscles that lay hidden underneath her fair skin flexed and strained as Reeza lifted the axe from its stand. Despite the initial difficulty, once the weapon was gripped firmly in both her hands it appeared has natural as when he had wielded it. The arcane flames- the spirit of the weapon itself, had ignited, casting a powerful crimson hue that drowned out the candlelight.
"You claim it as a burden- and yet…" Reeza muttered, not having to hide the disgust on her face for much longer, "-and yet you still used it as an excuse to run away from us."
"So I will take up your axe." She spoke bluntly, terse and emotionless, "Not out of respect for Her call, or Her blessing-" The flames flared as the Beast once again clawed its way in her heart, "-but because you failed. You failed to keep me from this path."
Reeza tried her best to hide the sneer that pulled at her upper lip, to relax into a persona of indifference. She remembered how her father used to look- the power in that stoic gaze of his. When he didn't need words.
"I will surpass you." Reeza hastily rested the axe by its head upon the ground and grabbed its harness from the armoire, expertly adjusting it to her size. She made sure never to cast a glance at her father; she could feel that unwavering gaze and she could not bear whatever expression was held upon it.
"You lay there, old man- and you make sure that you live long enough to hear of my tales." She spoke as much to the floor or to the wall as to her father, It mattered not how awkward it would look as she shouldered the harnesses. Nor for how it would appear when a Hyur woman left a Ishgardian noble's house in naught but a blouse and skirt with one of the legendary Zodiac Braves strapped to her back.
Let the nobles of the Pillars gossip and gawk in the dark at her uncouth demeanor.
Let the rabble in the Foundation not question her strength.
Soon all of Eorzea would all be speaking of Reeza Highwind, Lightbringer, Scion, The Warrior of Light.
