There are not twelve patron gods of Eorzea but thirteen.
People forget that the Traders, who share freely with each other what would cost the world dear, remain two deities. Nald deals in metal and grain, jewels and fine cloth, all luxuries and necessities alike. If he'd walked alone, perhaps his worship would have been more widespread. Perhaps people would not hesitate to speak his name.
Because Nald's brother is a merchant too, and his wares are lives, and theirs is a shared office
At Thal's Respite, beneath death's curved scimitar, a shadow waited, and watched, and was silent.
It wasn't a very large shadow. New, delicate fingers curled in upon themselves experimentally. Opened again.
The man who entered paid no mind at first, his steps heavy beneath the weight of his grief. This was a pilgrimage and a plea. Immin Asher left his cart laden with personal effects behind, glasses crooked atop his nose.
Saewynn, his wife, would be dead by morning.
No.
Saewynn was already dead. The primal puppet that took her body would have its strings cut. Just the same, Immin prayed her passage would be swift.
It wasn't something he wanted to see, Twelve help him.
They were supposed to build a life together. They were supposed to make a home, to have children, to tease each other old. He tried not to call it theft.
The shadow murmured, as if in conspiracy, eyes intent upon the visitor. Immin froze, and squinted, and stilled again.
There was no cry. Only the wide and patient gaze of an infant.
In his heart, Immin understood this was compensation.
Eight years, Cenric did not fit in with other children.
It helped not at all that he wandered Thanalan with his adoptive father. Immin formed ties. People smiled to meet him, as they did most merchants who sold them goods. Whether his own habit came first or the nerves Cenric cannot remember. Either way, silence earned few friends in his early life. Most were content to avoid him.
The strangeness of his features made it worse.
"Duskwight blood," Immin told him evenly when asked. Initially, Cenric had accepted that. He'd always been tall for a midlander, even then. The pale irises, the sharp nose, the cold, absolute darkness of his skin… that wasn't a combination common in desert-folk. The elezen had it, though.
When a hyuran boy with pointed ears came searching for elixers, Cenric didn't say a word.
Maybe more distant heritage was enough to look like him. Maybe it manifested differently between cases.
Maybe.
Immin was the closest thing most could get to a healer in these parts. Wealthy, foreign conjurers busied themselves in battle alongside mercenaries. The common man relied on peddlers with salves and eyedrops and inexpensive remedies. These were traveling medics who knew practical ways to treat the body's ills. His father was well-educated in such matters.
Cenric learned to follow directions, to grind herbs into paste, to pass surgical knives and bandages upon request. He could press rags into the jaws of patients so they wouldn't sever their own tongues in fits of pain. He learned that sometimes death is inevitable, and that more than stillness death empties a person's eyes of direction. Sleep was not comparable. Death divided bodies between being people and being things.
Such were their realities. And from his quiet, from the shadow fixed about his form, from his unflinching examination of wounds or corpses, from his citation of unspoken truths, from how he would occasionally stare, mouth agape, as if into the soul itself… rumor about Cenric took root.
Voidsent was the most common. Thal's spawn, next. The latter seemed to unnerve his father more than the former on occasions gossip became indiscreet.
"No voidsent could have been so unguarded," Immin had explained softly, sitting side by side on the cot their inn provided. His eyes, green and framed by unkept black hair, did not meet Cenric's own. "It was a miracle that I found you when I did. You'd never have lasted, being alone that way. Like any babe I had to find you milk. Burp you. Keep you clean and warm. Thal's spawn…" His father scowled then, and Cenric thought for a moment he was going to say something ugly. Instead, his expression shifted. Smoothed. With an exhale, Immin continued, "If Thal trusted me with something so precious as his own son, then I should count myself blessed. Don't trouble yourself."
Forgetting was easier when they were alone in a cheap room, watching Dalamud ascend. Listening to the hum of blowflies while under a thin, shared blanket.
That was enough for him. The people who watched and those who looked away. Kids who played at which would be brave enough to tap his shoulder. Adults who muttered comments under their breath or suggested Immin leave him somewhere, for his own good… they were passing scenery.
He had a father. They ate breakfast together and scoured the land before sunup for supplies. They laid traps for beasts and separated helpful plants from useless or dangerous ones. They crafted splints when those were running short and tended the daily needs of their chocobo. And in evenings they would read, or practice numbers, so that when the time came Cenric would be able to pursue his own craft.
There was no one else. They needed no one else.
It was enough.
Fourteen, they came to stay in a town called Mirage. Their journey took them far across the Sagolii, with their time in the Forgotten Springs nearly a week past. Regionally unique sabotenders grew there. According to the miqo'te, potent remedies could be distilled from venom in their needles. It was an opportunity.
Travel proved difficult. They kept to their wagon during the day, ate little. Drank what was needed and no more. Upon arriving Immin's beard had become an unruly mess—his skin raw and peeling in places. Cenric had been checking his own chin periodically for stubble, but so far nothing.
The journey left them both thinner than they began.
Most inhabitants of Mirage were hyuran, with only a few scattered lalafells. Constructed around an oasis, the trees and clay buildings offered a welcome respite. Gone were the dunes, gleaming white under the sun. In its place came soil, interrupted by scrub and grass.
Few visitors came this far south, the innkeeper told them over cups brimming with water. "Easy," Immin murmured as he took his own. Cenric could hardly breathe for drinking, found himself empty in but a few moments. He couldn't have replied if he'd wanted to. Thankfully, the next one was easier.
Their arrival was unusual enough to mark a community event. It was an occasion for exchange of not only supplies but news and tales from the road. Barely contained curiosity lurked in the scrutiny of all who saw them.
"We have an opportunity to do some good here," Immin would say later, having listened to local hurts and determined how best to attend. "We'll stay a while. Make sure they're well and can manage once we've left."
It seemed fair. He had yet to learn the price of kindness.
A jackal lay some distance beyond their gates, its eyes filmed over with a yellow-green mucus. Most of the fur had worn away, revealing countless sores and lesions. Its belly was swollen like an airship balloon. Insects swarmed at the anus, clustered on its tongue and nose until neither was visible anymore.
"Don't go near it, Immin cautioned the townsfolk. To their credit they did not.
But the flies went where they pleased.
Malena Saei fell first. She was nearing her sixty-eighth year, hair fading from its original brown into gray. Her irises were blue against weathered, copper skin. When she smiled, it dimpled her cheeks. She left three generations behind her.
Immin forbade Cenric from accompanying him as he examined the body. "It's an unnecessary risk," his father explained, wrapping a cloth over his mouth. Hempen robes covered him from head to toe. "You don't know what to look for, and it isn't worth the exposure. Stay with her family."
The entire house stank of bile and shit. Cenric tried to keep his expression empty as he offered sympathy lest disgust show up instead. When it was time for questions, he kept his voice low.
Maybe they'd noticed something. Maybe others could be saved.
It spread to Malena's grandson next, and her daughter after. Despite meeting with both, Cenric found himself mercifully spared.
The stares he faced turned hard after that. From then on, every new incident spread whispers like a disease.
This was the anger of Nald'Thal. Of that there could be no doubt.
Perhaps someone overheard when he asked Immin if this was his fault. If maybe they should leave. There was no fixing this.
("That isn't true," his father told him. His hands were painfully tight on Cenric's shoulders, eyes unblinking and wide and furious.
"Don't you dare say something so stupid in front of me again. Do you understand? Never again.")
Perhaps any offering would have sufficed, and this was just the obvious one. A quiet young stranger with his whole life ahead. A weighty exchange without personal investment. Maybe the Twins could be tempted.
Maybe then the town would be left in peace.
A knock, loud and frantic. His father already out administering aid. The room was, at the moment, his alone.
Something's gone wrong, Cenric thought. So he let them in.
They dragged him, hands bound, to a cave just past the town limits.
Desert nights were freezing compared to daylight. The sky remained clear and two moons, mismatched, circled overhead to bear witness. Bumps rippled across his skin, setting his hair on end.
What are you doing? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Silence. They wouldn't even look at him.
Someone must have heard. Someone must have.
Nobody came.
Gathered in shadow and stone before a makeshift altar, there was something animal in the way the townsfolk watched him enter. Wide eyes that caught the moonlight, wild and empty. No hate, no anger. Families, from elders to children, ringed the space.
"Kneel."
The mayor, a stout midlander with thin lips. His eyes creased when he laughed. In the moment, his body seemed animated by something that didn't understand the skin it wore or its warmth.
Cenric found himself speechless, frozen. One of his escorts kicked him from behind, catching his knees. Of course he crumbled.
"You should gag him," said the highlander woman quietly, unwinding a kerchief from her hair. It was the first time she'd said anything since he'd seen her, since she'd shoved him face-down into the inn floor. Since she'd dragged him here. "He wouldn't shut up the entire walk over. We can't afford distractions like that."
Mutely, pressing his mouth into a firm line, the mayor complied. When Cenric tried to struggle he found fingers digging into his scalp, his arms. Forcing him still. The fabric tasted sour, like old sweat.
Before them, resting across several crates, was a pair of scales. A dagger. The blade rippled from hilt to tip.
"To the Blessed Traders who enrich our lives, we're bound to pay with our lives in turn…"
Cenric's vision swam, burning, transforming his surroundings into a series of inarticulate shapes. The townspeople who held him did not relax their grip. His throat constricted.
Why?
He was shaking badly, pulse pounding in his skull. Drowning out the rest. Air whistled hard and frantic through his nose, arms trapped behind him, prayers echoing incomprehensible through the cavern.
I'm no one. I've never done anything important.
His cheeks were slick. The mayor wasn't looking at him, but at the community he would be sacrificed for.
"…in this time of hardship, we all see the need for exchange…"
Voidsent. Child of Thal. Child left as a gift to the Twins, stolen in error. It made no difference.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
Movement. The dagger before his eyes, held in broad hands.
"First we divide the offering in equal shares. Being as the heart carries life from our leftmost side, we're weighted all of us toward survival. This's the imbalance we must correct to make an appeal."
It felt as if a worm, impossibly large, wound through him. Coiled in his stomach. Cenric retched hard against the gag, but nothing came of it. He found himself wrenched backwards by his hair.
The mayor met his gaze.
"We had none of this, before you came here," he said quietly, as if reassuring himself. "Immin's normal enough but every one of us can see something's not right in you. Probably not even hyuran."
Not enough.
Flesh splitting at the bridge of his nose. White pain, searing. The knife jerked to either side in a diagonal motion as it was dragged away by another set of hands.
His father's hands.
"CENRIC!"
Back under the Sagolii sun, waves of heat rippled through the air. All they touched was made immaterial. Cenric found himself wandering as if in a dream.
"Run! Get out of here, I'll be right behind you!"
Immin was not right behind him. Or maybe he was, for a while. The elder Asher tore his son's gag loose before Cenric gathered himself to bolt. He hadn't wiped the blood from his face yet. His hands remained bound. The wound felt crusted over.
There were a few people following him initially. Shouting to each other. Some babbling and hysterical. The words didn't register to him then, and they made even less sense in hindsight. The world had tilted, dark and unsteady around him with each step.
It was the first time he felt truly certain he was going to die.
One foot in front of the other. Again and again and again, until his lungs burned. Head down. Push forward.
He had no direction in mind. No map and no compass. Just away.
Cenric didn't stop when the voices faded, or the town itself, or the moons overhead. There was no time to cover his tracks. All he could do was outlast them, outrun them, and hope Immin would prove more determined.
Wrists swollen, throbbing behind his back. Mouth paper-dry. Weaving as he went, dunes sloping up and down underfoot like waves.
It took some moments to notice when he stopped moving. The sand seemed to shift before him, flickering like light through water. His head was full with the sound of his own wheezing.
When he crashed into the earth, it was inevitable. Cenric considered attempting to rise, then remembered he had nowhere to go. It would be the same blind march for days yet. The sun had already passed its peak, but its descent would take hours.
Maybe… maybe with rest things would be better.
He could not tell how long he remained there. Awareness faded in and out intermittently. Golden light on sand. Deep orange, bordering red. Silver against a darkened sky.
His head ached, heavy and thick and cotton-filled. With his legs he half-heartedly tried to bury himself in sand to stop his own shivering. After a time Cenric settled on collecting a pile of it to curl around instead.
Then, nothing.
Nothing for a long time after that.
It was probably a dream.
Lukewarm water crept down his throat, nearly making him choke. A skin pressed to his lips, insistent. He coughed, and for the first time there was moisture enough for resistance.
The face that obscured his vision was shrouded in white cloth. Cenric found he couldn't focus on it. Mismatched eyes, one light and the other dark. Impossible to say if blindness caused the inconsistency.
A string of shells dangled from the figure's neck, rattling gently. The skin pulled back for a moment. Careful. Patient.
It returned only once he'd grown quiet. Cenric drank for as long as he could. Impossibly, a great deal remained by the time he relinquished his hold.
There wasn't enough of him present to say thank you. Cenric barely registered being dragged, being carried onto a cart. Awareness was altogether gone by the time they started to move.
A hushed conversation, separated by cadence. If asked he would not have been able to tell whether one man spoke or two.
The subject of debt was raised. Properties and inheritance and routes to travel by.
His head rested on a sack of grain. His face was sticky with ointment but seemed clean otherwise.
Sometimes, wordlessly, he found himself prompted to drink. To eat, something tough and gamey he couldn't place.
These moments were always fleeting. Sleep took him before there was opportunity to ask a single question.
Boy.
Sand clung to his lashes, to the corners of his eyes.
Cenric.
Heed me.
Light, filtering through canvas. A cold hand on his shoulder. The shrouded figure beside him. Grain and shells and the rocking cart.
You cannot stay here.
What comes next belongs to you. What lies behind has been claimed.
"M-My…" Immin. "My father," he croaked, "…I have to…"
Naught remains. It is done.
Silence. A lone heartbeat.
The figure, with its mismatched eyes, refused to look at him.
All will be well. We come to a familiar place.
There will be time enough for the rest.
A settlement in Southern Thanalan. The Sagolii behind him. The sky shrouded in dust.
"Merchant brought you here," said the village elder beside his cot, her gaze dark and intense under a tight bun. "Said you would've died, else."
These people had been kind. They remembered and allowed him to stay regardless of memory.
"Did he have a name?" Cenric asked hoarsely, hands in his lap. From the corner of his eye, he sees her head shake.
"Don't think he wanted you chasing after him, son. We did trade and that was it. Oh," she paused. Blinked. Found a pocket and rummaged there.
"Said I was t'give you this. So you'd listen."
He held out his hand, and as if offering payment she placed a pair of wedding bands in his palm.
Immin and Saewynn. Reunited at last.
At sixteen, Cenric dedicates his life to half-truths.
Charity has its limits and his has been reached. He begins with a hempen set of clothes. A satchel. What gil won't be missed. Young man like him shouldn't want for work, his hosts argue. Folks can always use another pair of hands.
Right?
He learns quickly that what his hands can accomplish is limited. There's no competing with the Ala Mhigans, who can carry twice as much without breaking a sweat. You need familiarity for an apprenticeship and he has cultivated little. Cenric finds himself half-grown and empty of potential as door after door shuts in his face.
He is no healer. What stock his father possessed was lost with him. Still, Cenric remembers how to bandage a wound. He knows what plants will stop scarring. If he can't locate an exact match he goes by resemblance and prepares it just the same.
He spends his funds on vials and stoppers and tricks to look older. A bandana here, some kohl there. He repeats the slogans of an honest man as if he has any right to them. People respond.
Cenric does not form ties and he does not linger. It's only a matter of time before the rest of them turn, after all.
Eighteen, he has almost stopped caring. His competitors are reliable but expensive. He can only retaliate with cheap potions and outrageous claims. A dazzling smile. Cenric plays at being exotic, draped in bright fabrics that do nothing to disguise the shadow cast over him.
Enjoy relief in the latest remedy from Thavnair! Impress your wife with a bottle of Menphina's Favor! Cure even the most stubborn ills with Phoenix Down, yours for only 800 gil!
He remembers true medicine less with each passing day. The effort spent searching won't put food in his mouth or guarantee a sale. If customers thank him afterward because a remedy worked, Cenric assumes faith and fortune are responsible. There isn't enough substance in his work to justify gratitude.
The visions have been coming more often of late. He finds himself dragged into the memories of menders and brass blades, struggling out apologies with a laugh. Through his own headaches and vacant expressions he has found fanatics. Runaways. Murderers. Sometimes knowing makes a difference. Usually it doesn't.
Tonight he finds himself in tavern, the air tinged by fish and torch smoke. Ouzo clouds his glass while anise unfurls over his tongue. He sits alone, searching for relief in the apathetic hum of conversation that surrounds him. Just a stranger passing through. No one of consequence.
"You."
It comes from the entrance. Snarled, almost animal. Cenric doesn't turn to look. It's not a voice he recognizes and he has no interest in engaging.
People have been passing behind him for hours. Some sloppy, some heavy, some quick.
When Cenric gets jerked back off his stool, he doesn't expect it. A hand, female, locks to his arm. Drags him backwards across the floor toward the exit.
"Stop! What are you—"
He is hurtling, backwards, down the steps. Out of the tavern. The fall doesn't quite wind him but his elbows have been scraped raw against dust and gravel. His eyes are wide as he finds his assailant.
Hellsguard woman. Late thirties. Hair tied back, red skin muted under the stars. His lips move, tracing the fragments of her name.
Say… Stay… Stray…
Ember. Stray Ember. A customer.
He doesn't have time to gather the rest before her boot is in his gut, driving the breath from his body.
"LIAR! YOU LIAR, I COULD'VE SAVED FOR YIYIRUJI MOONS AGO!"
His head pierced, front to back. Pounding like a heartbeat, like a hammer bringing shadows forging form. The memories of others.
Not now.
A child, slick with sweat. Lungs catching against each inhale. Round, gray face. White lashes. She clutched her mother's hand tight as she could manage.
"I COULD'VE GONE TO UL'DAH!"
He is in Mirage, twin moons mirrored in the stares of a mob. Maggots weave around bone. Air grows saturated with rot.
There is pain in his stomach, neither hot nor cold but sharp. Twisting. The cough forces Cenric inward and he tastes iron.
Stray Ember isn't done. Tears stream down her chin even as she bares her teeth. He knows then she will hate him until she dies.
"BY THE TIME THEY TOLD ME WHAT YOU'D GAVE HER DOVE WAS IN THE LAST STAGE OF BHOOT'S BLESSING!"
She had a small, upturned nose. Broad smile. Freckles. Showed talent for weaving even at nine cycles.
Lone Dove was afraid when she passed and nothing could protect her. I don't want to go… mama please, I…
Sightless. Corneas filmed over. Lips gone blue, tongue swollen.
Her toys have already been burned.
"Enough!" Cenric's voice sounds distant to himself, "I-I can't—"
They tore at his father's clothes, his eyes, his skin for getting in the way. Hydaelyn traded away a kind man for a cheat.
I should count myself blessed.
It was a mistake to take him. It had always been a mistake.
Immin gave his life to protect his son. Cenric took a girl from her mother to protect himself.
There are nails dragging through his hair, locked in place. He struggles to anchor himself in that, his fingers twisting tighter.
"SHUT UP! MY GIRL'S GONE BECAUSE OF YOU! SHE COULD'VE GOT WHAT SHE NEEDED IF NOT FOR YOUR GODSDAMNED CHOCOBO FEED!"
"Hey! Enough of that!" A man's voice. Maybe the one who'd prepared his ouzo.
Scuffling across the dirt.
"LET ME GO! THIS FILTH KILLED MY DAUGHTER!"
"Take it up with the blades then." More scuffling. Cenric doesn't move, doesn't look up. Doesn't release himself. Focuses on the hitch and burn of breath. "I'll not have more of this around my business."
There is a wet hiss. It takes him a moment to recognize it as spit.
Not at him.
Silence from the figures.
Then, very quietly, the barkeep says "Go home."
Stray Ember doesn't say another word.
She doesn't have to.
Cenric doesn't know how long he stays there. Something has been severed inside him. There is an impossible distance between his mind, his body, and the world outside.
"You too. You've caused enough trouble here tonight."
Shuffling. Blood in his mouth, pain like knives in his ribs. His arms and legs move of their own accord to obey.
She will not have been the first of his victims.
He fades in and out of awareness for some time. Days, months, years. It doesn't matter.
Often he finds that he is hungry and the air rests thick with spices. His clothes are torn, his hair a tangled mess. Sometimes there are coins at his feet. Mostly, people avoid looking at him.
His world is heat and wingbeats, insects and vultures and airships and the murmur of strangers. Dust clings to him. Cenric stops talking.
He sleeps when he can behind the boxes of Pearl Lane, testament to the glorious city that is Ul'dah. He offends shopkeepers whose image is tarnished on his account. More than once he finds himself beaten back with a broom or dragged away by his shirt.
Parasites take what others earn. That is their nature and he knows his.
Cenric wonders, as he sinks back into himself, if there will come a time when he does not resurface. If this empty beggar who moves without thought or foresight or even a name will simply waste away.
As in all things, this is for the gods to decide.
Whispers of Dalamud's descent don't frighten him at first. Everything here is ugly. So far as endings go it isn't a bad one.
Then slowly, slowly, he begins to look up.
As the sky erupts into flame and a dragon's scream rings across Hydaelyn, Cenric is fixed in place once more.
You will remember this moment for the rest of your life. However long that takes.
He can taste the smoke. Around him people run, weep, cling to each other. Children shriek for parents who have left them behind. Prayers for protection erupt from masses ready to trample all in their path.
There are things no man can escape. Bahamut is one of them.
Standing, his gaze locked on the inferno swallowing Eorzea, Cenric can only laugh.
