Twenty years ago…
Phantom Miria surveyed the battlefield, trying to pinpoint the most concentrated groups of enemy forces. Hundreds of monsters swarmed through the canyon, their fury and chaotic devastation directed towards Rabanastre.
"Riful, I need you to lead your squad to the northern exit. We need that area covered to a greater extent." She ordered confidently and quickly.
A young girl, no older than 12 (at the very most), dressed in the Blades uniform nodded. She had long blonde hair that was cut spiky at the ends, like sharp blades of ice to match her personality.
"Right!" She nodded, and led several Blades in that direction.
I appeared, my black cloak contrasting with their white uniforms.
"Miria! We need to fall back! The inner defense has prepared artillery!" I called urgently, but she shook her head.
"My comrades are too spread out and entrenched! We'd lose more lives than we'd save falling back!" She explained irritably, her normally emotionless face having changed to one of distressed thought.
"We have to! The artillery will completely annihilated anything standing in this canyon in less than four minutes!" I pressed, blasting away a wolf in the process with a wave of my hand.
"Damn it…shit. They're here." She swore when several larger beasts burst through the small entrance to the Zertinan caverns.
"Fall back! Fall back!" Tabitha appeared, her cool and calculated demeanor unchanged by the battle.
The Ascended Blades began retreating, giving the ground they had fought so hard for in moments. Helen, Deneve, and Cynthia made their appearances, having already called their squads back long ago.
"Miria, we need to move! Those Titantoises will be in attack rage in less than three minutes!" Deneve urged her, several of her wounded soldiers escaping the battlefield. Their wounds would heal before they'd get to the defensive line.
"Riful's squad hasn't reported in!" Tabitha informed us, and Miria swore.
Just in the distance, I could see they were overwhelmed.
Dozens of redirected wolves and other monsters flooded the narrow bottleneck, and even the battle-hardened warriors couldn't fend off such a huge force.
Her squad-mates were slaughtered, and Riful herself was badly wounded and trying to keep away the ravening beasts.
"I'll get her." I jumped off the overlook, and sped towards the young soldier.
Just before I reached her, it only took me a second to realize that her dark energy had overflowed past her limits many times over.
She lifted her head, and gave me a simple glance. Her eyes glowed pure gold and she already begun changing.
Her claymore was cast away to the wind, slamming into a nearby rock wall. I barely stopped myself and landed a few feet away from her as the transformation occurred. Her uniform ripped away, and her body changed into a mass of cobalt-black strip-like tentacles.
The mass of tendrils began forming into a conceivable form, and the true Awakened Form of Riful was revealed to us.
She was nearly three times the size of the average human (not counting her base), and was composed completely of those tentacles.
Above her lower torso, she had the appearance of a woman made of the tendrils. She had breasts, normal but powerful arms, and glowing red eyes.
Her "hair" was long and merely part of the body.
"Well…that…felt so good." An inhumane but feminine voice that was much like Riful's echoed through my ears. She retained herself even in this form.
"Riful?" I asked carefully.
I was answered with an attack. Several tendrils of her body impaled themselves in me with ease.
I moved backwards in shock, and she took them out.
The Awakened Being lifted one of her comrade's corpse, and sniffed it.
To my shock and relative disgust, she devoured the entire body.
"Disgusting. It tastes like crap. You probably won't be any better…so maybe I'll get some normal people for dinner. I can smell several of them beyond those cliffs." She complained, and started off towards that way. Beneath her torso was simply a mass of tentacles organized into a circular pattern taking up several feet.
A blow to the back of the head was enough to give her pause.
"Sorry, but they aren't on the menu." I told her coolly.
"…Pfft. Fine, then. You may not taste so good, but you'll make a good pre-meal." Several tentacles lashed out at me, and I narrowly dodged.
Miria and the rest of the Five appeared, brandishing their claymores.
"Well, well…willing to kill one of your own? Shameful." Riful mocked her former leader, who clasped her sword tightly.
"You're no longer one of us. The moment you let your darkness take control you lost us as your sisters." She shook off the insult unflinchingly.
"Oh, come on! Try it! It feels so good…so exhilarating!" The former soldier smiled persuasively.
"Go take it up the ass, Riful!" Helen retorted, her usual colorful language already in play.
"I'll have to decline that offer. Sorry." Deneve shook her head with a smirk.
"I'm sorry about this, Riful, but you know what we have to do." Cynthia sadly responded.
"Sorry, but I'd rather not be a monster." Tabitha shook her head.
"Well…there you have it, Riful. None of the Blades are going to betray their humanity for something as cheap as that." Miria smiled triumphantly, and the Awakened Being flinched.
"Grr….You…you'll pay for this, Miria. I swear, one day…I will kill you myself." Riful growled angrily and she disappeared in a cloud of tendrils that simply sped off into the sky.
I, after a few moments, went after her.
It took me a full week to finally give up on the search for the Awakened Being. Evidently she was in hiding, biding her time.
Never again I saw Riful.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I jolted from my sleep.
We were still in the camp. I had dozed off a few hours ago, apparently.
"About time the sleepyhead's up." Tweed appeared, her eyes still daggers towards me. I shook my head irritably, and stood.
"Sorry. I haven't had a good night of sleep for weeks." I explained, and put my coat back on.
"…Thanks, anyway. A lot of people would've let Sienna die. The fact you went in after her without a second thought tells me you're not that bad a person." She spoke, her accent (English/British) cutting into her words.
"Which is why we want to join you." Christine appeared. Her mask was off, revealing the lower features of her face.
"The hyper one with the antler stick convinced us that we should merge our hunting groups." Tweed explained.
"Vanille? She…convinced you?" Hard to believe, but apparently true.
"Yup. Your girlfriend already agreed." She continued, to my chagrin.
"F-Fang is not my girlfriend." I stuttered irritably, and both women gave each other a smile.
"Either way, she told us the whole story. Fair, I suppose, since we're travelers like you and them. Your whole history and theirs. Figure we might as well stick together, since we don't have a house or anywhere to really stay." Christine dropped the matter with a smile, and returned to her explanation.
"…So we're forming a clan, now are we?" I couldn't resist letting out a raspy laugh.
"That's completely right. Of course, since you didn't have much choice on the vote, you get to come up with the name." Fang appeared. She was cleaned up, and her more serious wounds were bandaged up.
"…Dawn Blades." At first I was completely clueless to any possible idea I could've conceived, but I somehow just blurted out those two words. They just came to mind somehow. Almost seemed like providence.
My four other clanmates looked and each other and seemed to be in deep thought before letting out a loud cheer.
"Congratulations, Rank SSS. You're our new leader." Tweed tossed me my hunter's license. I hadn't even realized she had taken it.
"…Heh…it feels a lot like it did before, when I started the Circle of Umbra. But it also feels different. Like it's a new path. A rise to dawn. A chance to redeem myself." I spoke, looking at my new clan-mates as I gave them my speech.
"Twenty gil says he makes Fang his second." Tweed whispered to Christine with a mischievous smile.
"Fang, you're officially now the second of the clan. Vanille, you're third. Four Eyes and Tweed are the first official members of the Dawn Blades!" I announced, and the quiet sound of money changing hands was heard ever so briefly.
It was then immediately decided that it would be a good time to start the journey back, and that if we made good time the Dawn Blades would be back home before the darkness of night consumed the land.
We assisted Tweed and Four Eyes in taking down the camp and packing their gear up before starting the long journey back home.
I held my head high, the hope that dawn had brought allowing me to once again believe that redemption was possible for me.
Ironically enough, Fang was certainly acting weird towards me. Almost…flirtatious more than just respectful or her usual fiery personality.
Less than a day, conveniently enough, a letter arrived.
Unexpectedly, it read that the entire clan was invited to the upcoming royal dinner that was being hosted by the soon-to-arrive Vayne Solidor.
Apparently, the client that had hired us to slay the Khezu was a high-ranking Archadian official that wanted us to come along.
"I don't like it. Smells like a load of codswallop to me." Tweed voiced her disapproval the moment I finished telling the rest of my clan-mates about the invite.
I had met Vayne once, back in my Ivalice. It was during his original visit to Rabanastre. It was a meeting that I remembered still. His eyes were cold and sharp as a snake's, a trait I made note of immediately. I didn't trust his conniving personality and especially not his intelligence. Those two traits combined made for a very dangerous man.
"I don't know…meeting and getting to know a lot of powerful people might be beneficial for the clan as a whole. In the long run, it could get us a lot of contracts…or at least a night to remember." Four Eyes mused as she studied a book, one that the scientist had been reading since our first meeting.
"I'll agree with Christine about that. It could get us a lot of influence and reputation. Or, again, an excuse to get drunk on valuable wynes." Fang offered her opinion.
"I think it'll be fun! We should definitely go." Vanille broke in, invoking their collective sighs and my facepalm.
"I guess we're going to a party tonight, then." I finally decided, to Tweed's groan and the other three girl's smiles.
I dismissed them to prepare for tonight, and took my own leave to my quarters. I made a beeline for the Zodiac Blades.
Of course, just because it was a party, it didn't mean I wouldn't be taking my weapons. As I sheathed my twin swords after putting my coat on, Fang appeared.
"Sure you're going to a party?" She quipped.
"Archadians are slippery bastards…especially rich ones. I wouldn't trust any among them to hold a single gil for me." I explained, and looked in a mirror to check for any possible damage to my armor that I hadn't repaired from the recent hunt. To my ignorance, Fang had slowly been stepping closer to me.
"You know…I was a little shocked when you stopped the fight the moment I got hurt." Her voice got much quieter.
"Well, yes…um…of course…I had to make sure you weren't too hurt." I stammered, coughing to try to preserve my composure.
Her proximity to me definitely was making me nervous.
"Why so nervous, Abraham?" She whispered quietly, being very close to me.
I stepped back, stumbling on the second step, and coughed again.
"Ahem…well…I…damn it…" I stuttered, and silently swore at myself. The only other woman who'd ever made me so nervous and hesitant was Coela.
"Well? How about I give you a little hint, if you can't figure out why." She pressed me against the wall and kissed me. It wasn't a short and lustful one, either. It was long, passionate, and something I found myself liking very much.
She wrapped her arms around my body, and I found myself doing the same with her as she kept me pressed against the wall.
I wasn't sure how much time had passed, but she eventually parted her lips from mine.
"I-I…well…ahem…" I was unable to form a coherent sentence, and barely a word at that.
"See ya. Don't take too long getting ready." Fang teased as if nothing had happened before disappearing from the room.
I fell back onto my bed, still stunned from the kiss.
At some point I willed myself to finish getting ready, and joined my comrades downstairs.
They were dressed in their normal clothing, except Four Eyes wasn't wearing her gas mask, Fang had left her spear upstairs, Tweed had generally stashed away most of the armory of small but powerful explosives she had in her bomber jacket. Vanille had also put away her whip-antler contraption, and everyone had generally cleaned themselves up and neatened their appearance.
I had combed my hair back, straightened my short beard, fixed my eye patch, and my coat and armor looked much newer and cleaner than before. I proudly wore the Mask of Hunger's ring and the Zodiac Spear's pendant.
"Everyone ready? Let's go." I surveyed my subordinates, and led them out of the manor towards the palace.
Had I known of the disaster that would occur there, I would've stayed home, burned that damn invitation, and would never speak of it again.
Obviously enough, I had won Fang's affections and she had won mine. Ironic how similar my fresh start here was to forming the Circle of Umbra.