Ul'dah was the rose of the desert. A bustling desert city of grand red clay spires and open vaulted stone ceilings to fight the unrelenting heat. Thousands of people from hundreds of far away lands were always hustling and bustling night or day from one place or another. From its elaborate and beautiful bazaars where all and any types of whatever material goods you could desire could be bought, to the blood sands of its magnificent underground coliseum. From the immensely wealthy to the intensely impoverished, all flowed like water to spend their often ill gotten gains on ill gotten goods. For while the inhabitants of Ul'dah came from myriad different backgrounds and cultures, Ul'dah herself only spoke 2 languages: Money or blood. Or as more often would occur than not, and blood.
Everything and everyone was in the process of purchasing or being purchased in one way or another. Even the city's law enforcement, The Brass Blades, were in the employ of the Syndicate. A collection of the most ridiculously rich inhabitants who directed policies and decisions of Ul'dah as a whole. The conflict of interest between the income of the syndicate and the safety of the general populace was often questioned of course. Questions that were often silenced with a handful of coins or a mouthful of steel.
Within striking distance of the criminal hotspot that was the market bazaars, the offices of these Brass Blades were a complex of clay-stone stands where the populace could field their grievances, and clay-wood squat building further behind where officers could rest and requisition arms and prisoners could be held for questioning and these quarters were used for drunks to sleep off a night of celebrating a successful business deal than to harbour anyone dangerous. That privilege was usually held by dark cells under even the underground coliseum.
Today however, rather than hosting a drunk, one of those sweltering holding cells held two very sober Roegadyn. One standing in full reddish Brass Blade regalia of chainmail and light cloth armour, sweating not all from the heat and one hand twitching on the hilt of his sheathed scimitar while the other held a sheaf of papers that he was desperately trying and failing to stay focused on. While the other Red haired Roegadyn was a woman sat on a strained to it's limit stool, clad in only a burlap sheet draped haphazardly around her shoulders in a meagre attempt to protect her modesty. An attempt the woman was making no effort to reciprocate. The indecency could have been the reason the Brass blade was sweating and unfocused, but more likely it was because even though the woman sitting and the Roegadyn male was standing, he was still looking her in the was a veritable giant even among roegadyn and as his eyes flicked up from his documents to the impassive face and meaty hands of the massive women before him, Grymopyl, captain of the Brass Blades had to remind himself to keep his unoccupied hand from unconsciously gripping his sword hilt
.
Grymopyl had thought that his career change from pirate captain, terrorising merchant vessels on the Rhotano Sea, to guard captain, terrorising the citizenry of the Sapphire Avenue would be both more lucrative and easier. Piracy had been banned in his home country of Limsa Lominsa and while it didn't stop people from trying and granted mostly succeeding at engaging in the odd act of pilfering, it was hardly worth pillaging the occasional vessel now that it came with the risk of invoking the wrath of the fearsome Admiral Bloefhiswyn.
No, he thought. It would be better to have the steady income of working for the Syndicate herding drunks and guarding the occasional caravan instead of raiding them, rather than the volatile environment of professional thievery. Or so he had thought.
While the pay was steady and his hulking natural presence ended most fights before they started, allowing him to climb the ranks quickly, the Syndicate and sultanate both were asking more and more from him each day! Silencing the occasional loudmouth and shaking down the frequent debtor for bribes from his higher-ups didn't bother him so much, in fact he had expected it. But while he had thought himself stone in the face of turning away the ever growing numbers of refugees from lands ruined by the calamity and Garlean Empire both from the city gates. The sight of the shanty towns outside the walls and the gaunt faces of starved children was wearing away at what little humanity he never knew he had left. That and the fire-crazed cultists roaming the desert waste, all sun burnt and wild eye'd, throwing themselves at any cart that even slightly smelled of aether crystals and pulling people screaming into desert brush to be brainwashed and in turn released into the wilds to cause more mayhem. Were making him miss the simplicity of the sea and the times when a bullet between his eyes was the worst fate he thought he could suffer.
So when two Elezen children brought this mountain of a woman to his station covered in blood and pulling a cart with one arm while holding a chocobo under the other, he had half a mind to get up from his desk and walk into the desert until the cultists found him, or he felt the sea lapping at his boots once more. But here he was having the poor beast squat in the only room she could walk into without crouching on the biggest stool they could find, reading to her the usual Ul'dahn writ of admittance.
The writ explained how visitors were expected to conduct themselves and general laws of commerce. No public spitting, no returns without receipt, etc. It was the other part of his job he hated. The paperwork. He liked it better when he could intimidate or browbeat someone without having to explain why or write down that it happened.
Again he looked up from his paper as he droned on about regulations he could cite by heart by now to gawk at his guest.
He had a female blade help clean her of the blood at least before sitting her down, and the driver of the cart, grateful for her assistance in ferrying them to the city, had furnished her with his burlap blanket he kept for his chocobos on cold nights to cover her modesty. A vain effort as it turned out, as she seemed entirely disinterested in participating and her hands sat in her lap, not bothering to clutch it to her. The blanket meant for two grown chocobos was acting as more than a shawl but less than a cloak. As long as she didn't move it served well enough but still the captain pointedly kept his eyes from wandering to certain vistas.
Large, intensely muscled women that could palm his head as easily as his helmet were not his type. But her face stuck out as strangely feminine against her frame and the combination of blood-red hair and clear sky blue eye's was striking if you ignored the giant stone grey body attached to it.
Those same blue eyes had been stuck to the floor at his boots since she had sat down and hadn't moved an ilm.
He stopped speaking halfway through the paragraph about proper transport of aetheryte crystals of middling to small size and just watched her reaction. Not even a twitch. He couldn't tell if she was listening to him or if she had even a single thought running through that giant head.
The captain sighed through his nose, suddenly less intimidated and more exasperated. The holding cell building had a desk next to the front exit that faced the cells so that officers could complete paperwork and watch prisoners at the same time. He threw the writ onto the pile of other admittance writs that were to be grabbed by officers at their convenience to read to detainees upon release and sat down noisily behind the desk on a roegadyn sized chair covering his face with his hands.
"Look." He finally said in his kindest gruff tone he could muster, reserved for lost children and dead men, emerging from behind his hands to smile with slightly crooked teeth.
"Let's start simple and see what ya can remember. Okay lass?"
When no response was forthcoming from the woman in a cell made for 10 rowdy drunks that she fit a third of comfortably, Grymopl sighed again leaned back in his chair. Pinching the bridge of his broad nose.
He wasn't cut out for this sort of social work. He really should have delegated this but the little Elezan with a red bow and matching fiery attitude insisted he look after her personally in return for her services ferrying them to Ul'dah.
"What's yer name?" He said more to the ceiling than to her.
"I don't know." Came the immediate, rich, baritone reply almost as soon as he had finished the last syllable.
It actually made the captain jump a bit and almost fall back in his chair at how sudden it was.
She had been unresponsive to most of any stimuli thus far but she was clearly paying attention. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up a bit for a reason he couldn't pin down but now he was back to standing and giving her his full cautious attention.
"Ya don't know what yer name is?" His hand resting as casually as he could manage on the hilt of his sword.
"No." The reply was as prompt and her face as unchanged as the last. Her lips barely moved to make the sound.
This was worse than he had thought. The twins had told him she seemed to have lost her memory. He had assumed they meant what she was doing in the desert or how she came to be nekkid as the day she was born and covered in a pint of someone else's blood. Not that she had forgotten who she was!
"Well what is that people call you lass?!" He asked. The realisation this situation was more of a headache than it already was painting the back of the question with his impatience.
"Seven Hells." She replied without a hint of irony or humour.
"Wha? Ah…" Grimopyl realised he had exclaimed that upon sighting the brute when she was led to his stand. He took off his helm and scratched his scalp in embarrassment.
"I'm sorry lass I… I was just shocked is all. Ya have to understand you were in quite the state when they brought you here lass. I didn't mean nothing by it!"
"The driver said it too. When he saw me. It is a curse." It was the first time she had said anything that wasn't a response to a direct question. Were he a more empathetic man he would have drawn meaning from it.
"Ah. Well that was unkind of him." The captain laughed a nervous laugh that died as quickly as it came and replaced his cap clearing his throat.
No response.
He decided this was best over sooner than later and fired off a slew of questions before the giant grew bored of him and ate him whole, he joked to himself.
"Do ya have any family?"
"No."
"Do ya have a job?"
"No."
"Why were ya in the desert?"
"I don't know."
"Why are ya so sure that ya don't have a family or a job but ya aren't sure what your name is?"
"I don't know."
The captain grumbled. This was going nowhere.
"Why were ya covered in blood?"
No response.
The captain was taken aback for a moment and frowned, she had been answering instantly up to now.
"Why were ya covered in blood lass? Were ya attacked?" He asked again a little louder this time.
No response, and no change in posture nor expression except for a slow blink. Which the captain only now realised was the first time he had ever seen do so.
More hairs stood to join the others on the back of his neck. His grip on his sword became more purposeful and he took an unconscious step back towards the exit.
"Can ya hear me lass?"
"Yes." Came the reply as quick as any of the others but this time her eyes flicked up to meet his own. She made no other move.
There was no threat in her voice, not so much as an edge, but in those eyes Grimopyl realised he had been mistaken. It was not the sky he had seen in those blue eyes, it was the whorl. Bottomless whirling depths that ate all and relinquished none.
"W-we'll come back to that question later lass. Now Excuse me, I have to do up some of your paperwork!" He stammered out before making a quick about face and exiting the sweltering holding pen.
He made 10 dignified steps before all but jogging back to the offices. Looking back at her in the holding pen over his shoulder when he believed he had reached a safe distance. Her gaze had returned to the floor like he had never been there. As placid and as dull looking as ever. He let go of a breath he didn't know he was holding.
It was only for an instant but back in the cell he thought she was going to lunge at him. To crush him between her fingers and devour him like he had joked to himself earlier if he had continued to prod her.
He made it to his real desk, not the modest one he sat in out front in the stands with the uncomfortable chair. But the gauche one made of Ishgardian Spruce in the largest of the clay offices behind the stands. He had received it and the matching hippogryph leather chair when he had incited and subsequently quelled a workers riot for lord Lolorito of the syndicate. That he had received the 'gift' for his maintained silence on the matter and not explicitly for quashing the workers told him all he needed to know. As he sank into the well worn leather he sighed in relief. Ill gotten gains almost always made him feel better. He was an ex-pirate after all.
Feeling that his life was no longer in danger but still having a potentially murderous, amnesiac, nine foot woman in an unlocked cell to deal with. He reached down to the closest left table leg and popped open a hidden compartment he had carved himself and pulled out his bottle of Radz-at-Han Reserve to help him work through this headache of a problem.
He had already sent out a Blade to perform a general investigation to see if anyone was expecting or lost a giant woman. But that was as likely to bear fruit as he was to become a priest. He'd have remembered if she had entered Ul'dah before, that's for sure. She'd be impossible to miss! And given that she was built like Rhalgr himself she was unlikely to be a merchant that was waylaid on her way to the city and bludgeoned into memory loss. He doubted nothing less than a hecatoncheir could hope to overpower the beast. And that look in her eye, he shuddered at the memory and took a generous pull from the bottle. That look was neither dazed nor confused. The woman was dangerous, there was no mistaking it. In his gut, he knew if she had been covered in blood out in the desert she would not have been the victim in that altercation.
The solution should be easy. With no family or sponsor he could easily declare her as destitute or dangerous and expel her. The real problem was those Elezen children.
Living in Ul'dah had provided him with more than just grey hairs in his beard and heavy pockets. It provided him with a nose for money, and those kids reeked of it. From the way they walked to the way they talked to him like he was the help. It was clear neither of them had gone hungry nor been so much as punched in the mouth in their entire lives. Money and strength were the only things that mattered in Ul'dah and if they had money it would be unwise to offend them. Lest they happen to know one of the syndicate that didn't employ his under the table services and questions were levied his way.
His bosses wouldn't hesitate to toss him aside the instant he became a liability.
That and they had promised to check up on her later, meaning he couldn't just disappear her into a private labour prison or kick her out without cause. Uldah wasn't exactly flush with social care programs and she seemed a little old for the orphanage.
"Argh!" he exclaimed violently, leaning back into his chair and glaring at the ceiling.
Absent the options to sell or abandon them, there really wasn't much to be done with a giant,penniless, violent, vagabond in Ul'dah.
"Sir?" a muffled feminine voice inquired from the curtains to the entrance of his office in front of his desk.
For the second time that day Grimopyl nearly startled out of his chair, this time in his rapid attempts to sit in a dignified manner.
Doors between adjoining weren't often a thing in Ul'dah to combat the ever present heat, outside of perhaps some light drawn curtains. A fact Grimopyl had never quite gotten used to. He liked to have some solid doors between prying ears and shady dealings.
The captain affected his best appearance of a fairly elected official. Back straight, one hand placed professionally on top of another on the desk.
"Enter!" He proclaimed with forced authority, quickly grabbing a random document to peruse.
One side of the curtains was quickly pulled aside and in stepped female Hyur in full polished brass blade uniform, including the face mask that no-one wore casually. She took two evenly spaced steps into the office, her impeccable black boots cracking purposefully heel-toe on the sandstone floor before stopping and saluting smartly Maelstrom-style.
The mask, ironically, immediately identified the woman as Grimopyls vice captain and first mate, Brictiva.
The captain immediately relaxed upon sighting her, the professional facade sliding off him like sand. She was easily his oldest and most trusted acquaintance. A rare case of a Maelstrom officer turning pirate, Brictiva never let go of her old military background and it showed in everything she did. A more no-nonsense woman and valuable ally than Grymopl deserved and he knew it.
The salute dropped and she clasped her arms behind her back and stood with her feet even with her shoulders.
"Visitor for you captain!" She announced with a voice hoarse from a thousand tongue lashings.
With a single step she stood aside to reveal a young silver haired lalafell dressed in heavily worn fighting leathers and a frown. A pair of simple steel hora wrapped in some impossible to identify hide, lashed lightly to his hips for easy access.
"I would have alerted you earlier, Captain, but he wouldn't relinquish his weapons."
She had maintained her ramrod parade stance, eye's looking straight ahead but her tone might as well have beat the lalafell over the head with a cudgel. The lalafells head jerked up at her, his frown deepening and his eyebrows knit together in a scowl. An almost imperceptible twitch in his fingertips as if he was grasping said weapons already.
"I have trained under the Holy Fist, my body is a weapon." The lalafell retorted, his smooth voice betraying how young he really was.
"If I was in my breeches I would still be armed. What harm is there in me carrying some accessories?"
He emphasised this sentiment by patting one of the hora affectionately and allowing his frown to twist into a smirk causing the vice captain to sneer at the wall.
"It's alright Brictiva, I was expecting this one."
The captain chuckled and smiled earnestly ignoring the obvious tension.
He's just a little early is all."
A little illicit work was just what he needed to perk up!
"You've got me at a disadvantage, Rurukuta!"
The captain called out and beckoned for the young pugilist to enter with a wave of his hand.
With great effort the lalafell, Rurukuta, tore his gaze away from the woman who despite looking straight ahead and over the lalafell was affecting an appearance that dared him to try anything. The lalafell obliged the captain, entering only a few steps so that the desk didn't obstruct the man behind it from his diminutive view. The captain reached into a drawer and pulled out a solitary piece of vellum, a map of Ul'dah, and surrounding Thanalan etched into its face.
"I hadn't finished up those documents we had agreed on just quite yet" He said waving the map about before pulling an ink bottle and quill towards him from the far end of his desk and pushing aside myriad papers and documents, some falling off the desk to roll up on the floor in his excitement.
Using a book of regulations and the bottle he had just emptied in his previous gloom, he held the map flat on the table and poised the ink soaked quill over it with his left hand while his right fetched another bottle from another secret alcove on the desk along with two glasses.
"However i'm sure ye won't mind if we discuss some business while I work thro-"
"I had prepared the necessary documents ahead of time, captain." Brictiva interrupted. The Vice Captain, in a single motion, turned to face the desk, stamped, and strode 3 paces before pulling a black leather cylinder from a thigh pouch and deliberately reached over the lalafell to place it on the desk before returning to her original place in the room exactly like she never left.
"I had hoped you would be able to make time to discuss what we would do with our new detainee so I prepared it as soon as she arrived. Now, if we could discuss it in private."
Rurukutas frown returned and he had to reach up on his toes to grab the cylinder from where it lay before strapping it to his back like a pack, before in turn producing a stack of gil from a pouch tied to his belt, that he carefully counted before pushing it onto the desk with the tips of his fingers. Clearly upset with the indignity the lack of consideration for his height was given.
"Pleasure doing business." He ground through clenched teeth.
Grimopyl, whose mouth was still open from his last interrupted syllable, so eager to take his mind off of his giant woman problem with a bit of under the table dealings felt the wind leave his sails with a single sigh. His vice captain was an expert at getting him back on track. Especially when he was trying to avoid logistical or political matters.
She strode past a glowering Rurukuta before shooting a:
"You are excused boy."
As she went, before placing herself between the lalafell and the captain, back in the parade stance. Making it clear the meeting was over.
Rurukuta's face moved from scandalised to rage. A finger slipped around his hora for a moment before retreating to his sides and balling themselves in anger. Not an idle motion when you're a pugilist but the two in the room with him didn't see or didn't care. This was typical…
"I had hoped to propose a solution to our recent inconvenient resident"
She continued without waiting for their guest to leave.
"We're under pressure from on high to solve the roadway murders in eastern Thanalan."
"I'm not finished."
Rurukata said as composed as he could manage. Which wasn't much at all considering his voice cracked in the saying. But Brictiva trucked over him. Grimopyl leaned forward in his chair, fingers steepled. Intrigued at where his vice captain was going with this.
The woman is clearly dangerous and without any family or funds it would easy to claim we have found a susp-"
"I AM NOT FINISHED!" He finally roared over her lecture. His hands having finally found themselves into the loops of his hora and breathing heavily.
Shocked, Grimopyl leaned to look around his vice captain to look at the seething lalafell, while the vice captain herself barely looked over her shoulder to glare daggers at him.
"Thal's balls lad!" The captain exclaimed.
"No need to shout! Out with it then!" and he motioned for Brictiva to stand aside so that he didn't have to lean.
It took her half a beat longer than normal but she obeyed, taking a long step sideways, her posture remaining perfect.
Unbelievable. He stood here, in a fighting stance, with weapons drawn and the two didn't so much as flinch. This had all but convinced him to go through with his plan.
The diminutive pugilist shakily returned his arms back to their loops and exhaled through his nose to calm himself down. Finally, he extended a pointed thumb back over his shoulder, in the general direction of the holding cells behind the offices.
"That woman you brought in earlier, the big one, she's my sister."
Silence followed the declaration and a few confused blinks from the captain and even a rare raised eyebrow from the vice captain to the side.
He had only meant to inquire about her, it's why Rurukita had come in early for their transaction but hearing that she had no family had changed his plans. Perhaps for the better.
The captain made a short trip of looking the lalafell up and down, at which the lalafell in question bristled before the captain asked flatly, clearly unconvinced;
"The amnesiac giant is your sister?"
That particular piece of information made him freeze for a moment but he played it off.
She had no memory? He couldn't figure if that helped or hindered his plan, but he didn't want to hesitate too long and ruin his initiative.
Rurukuta fished with one hand into his gil-pouch and pulled out a coin of sizable notation and flicked it onto the desk where it clinked to rest on top of the currency he had already provided from his most recent transaction.
"My older sister." He emphasised by moving his eyes from the gil pile to the captains eyes with intent.
The captain picked up his meaning as well as the coin from where it lay and grinned,
"I don't know." he drawled, twiddling the gil back and forth between his knuckles. His free hand rummaging through his desk drawers before producing a document, riddled with text, and placed it on the wood top.
"She doesn't much look like you lad."
Rurukuta grimaced internally but smiled sweetly externally. Greedy bastard.
He pulled another coin from his now considerably lighter pouch and tossed it once more onto the desk. The captain intercepted it and let it join the other to roll among his knuckle bones. Pushing the paper toward the boy.
"Ah, but I reckon she's adopted!" The captain laughed heartily.
—-
The roegadyn woman had remained in her cell, in exactly the same pose and position. Leaned forward with her elbow on her knees and unblinking vacant gaze fixed on the floor of the cell. She had retreated fully within herself. Hours or days since the questioning man had left could have passed and it would have made no difference to her.
The man had asked the same questions the twins had asked her when she was pulling their cart and carrying their bird.
Who are you?
What is it you are called?
Where are you from?
She had neither the ability nor the desire to answer these questions and they passed through her like she was incorporeal to them. Like a ghost she passed through the inquiries unaffected. One or two questions may… drag, a little on the way through. Certain words said certain way's would hold some substance. Leave an ache like she was supposed to know the answer but ultimately if her mind book didn't present her with an answer she had none.
Sometimes her body would act without her input like when she had seen the bird was hurt and she pulled their cart. Or when she had entered this settlement she had heard called Ul'dah and a market stand's wheel was bent, threatening to collapse, and her foot extended to nudge it into place as she passed. She didn't participate nor even have to agree with these actions, her body simply saw something out of place and then moved to fix. If she knew how.
The door frame that led to this cell was less than a week from crumbling completely, the iron bars would fall inward and likely harm whoever was inside. She didn't know how she knew this but she did, but she had no idea how to approach fixing it so the compulsion never came.
No less than twelve of the slightly dirtier people that she had seen transporting the cart past the gates into the city had some sort of sickness that would kill them and soon. Her body told her as much but she didn't know what it was or how to cure it so she walked on by.
These compulsions would come and go and every single one she wasn't able to fix, she remembered instead. The locations, the names and faces of the people involved, the problem. Everything she saw or did was picture-perfect filed away in a chamber of her memories should she muster the want to access it. But with this incredible power, this gift, she only ever pulled up one memory again and again. The unfortunate wasp and the intrepid but doomed scorpion.
It was the only memory and experience she had with any colour. On the way to her cell the captain had complained it was hot out but she felt nothing. She had heard a child exclaim loudly that kebab, spinning on an open rotisserie, smelt delicious but she smelt nothing.
Her body registered that her senses were experiencing these things but it's like it was an incomplete circuit. She knew the temperature was high but did not sweat. She knew what she was smelling was kebab but her mouth didn't water. But that memory… Even with her whole being engrossed in the outcome of the miniature fight to the death, she remembered how the cold night wind felt on her face and the sand between her fingers, the breath in her lungs when she gasped. She knew in the founding essence of her being that whatever she was witnessing was what she was meant to do.
So why… She felt a tremor pass through her body unbidden, so intense was her grief that it escaped the black hole in her soul before it too was swallowed.
So why, when her turn came to live and to die. To test her limits and set her soul on fire! To be who she was meant to be! Why was she forbidden to experience it?
The questioning man had asked her why she was covered in blood and the memory made her pause. The memory of the night she received proof that she would remain this unfeeling husk for the rest of her days.
—-
The Night Before - 18th Sun of the 6th Umbral Moon- Eastern Thanalan - 4:42AM
Thanalan was a land of extremes. There was harsh and barren desert, then there were lush and fertile oasis. In one moment you could be the only living creature for miles and the next you were swarmed by many legged horrors. It was punishingly hot during the day and now during the depths of its night, it was bleakly cold. Creatures used to these temperature shifts found warm refuge underground or huddled together to brave the bitter winds, but a lone scarlet haired giant walked against them naked and unheeded. A wall of muscle for the wind to break against.
Her header had been a flame she had spotted on the cliffs of the many rocky plateaus that dotted the desert, but somewhere along the journey it had winked out. She had hoped that the blaze would mean people. People tended to make fires. Or atleast her mind book had told her as much.
She had never met a person. Perhaps they would not be boring? Or even knew how to fill her emptiness? Surely not everyone felt as she did all the time? But now that the fire was gone she was just…moving. Moving where the fire had once been as best as she could guess in this darkness. it was the last and only mystery she would see to completion. And if it did not fulfil her, she would lie face down in the sand this time and wait for life to come to her. Or maybe she'd walk forever? She'd decide the method of her eternal apathy when she got there.
As it would happen, life did come to her, in the form of a particularly large bipedal lizard man brandishing an onyx black staff, stepping into her path.
The woman didn't stop. So focused on her task she was. Much to the surprise of the lizard man who was used to the terror his bulk and presence inspired.
"Stop and be judged or continue and be destroyed!" The beast man roared in a surprisingly flowing manner of speech to come from such a vicious snout.
The woman, who had been looking over the usually large creature's head and simply hadn't noticed him, startled slightly and gradually came to a stop. Blinking in innocent confusion at the beast who barred her path.
She had come much closer than the lizard man had prepared for and he took a few unconscious steps back to gain distance from her reach.
He had spied her from their camp on the ridge and thought her a defenceless traveller, more fuel for the fire. But up close even as unarmed as she was it was impossible to interpret her massive stature that dwarfed even him, thrice chosen high priest of Ifrit, as anything but a threat. No doubt it was wisdom from the Lord of the Inferno himself that made him wake his whole warband to join him in this capture.
To the woman this largish ebony lizard, painted and garbed in cloth and piercings and wielding a stick had simply jumped from nowhere.
'Amalj'aa', her mind-book provided unbidden. An unadorned version of a creature of the same species sprang to mind, an amalgam of blackened scales and taloned feet, though slightly smaller than the one before her. She cocked her head slightly and squinted through the dark to examine him better. She had expected people to be bigger for some reason, though when thinking about it realised she had no reason to do so.
The 'Amalj'aa raised his staff into the air and from a large red crystal affixed to it's tip, a spark erupted into the air with a whistle. Launching itself high into the night sky where when it finally reached its apex it exploded into a small star with a sharp crack, that began a slow drift back to earth.
The star itself was extremely bright and bathed the landscape in a red light the same colour as the crystal and threw any object that projected from the sand into sharp relief. Cacti, stones and the roughly twenty men and women of mixed fierce looking Amalj'aa, and unwell looking humans that surrounded the woman from varying vantage points, cast long and ominous shadows that writhed as the light descended.
The myriad races of Eorzea presented themselves to accost the woman in the illumination of the dying light. A menagerie of sickly Elezen, Hyur, Lalafels and Mi'qote made up the crowd interspersed among the amalj'aa. Wielding an assortment of roughshod weaponry that ranged from spears and half rusted swords, to nothing but their worn-to-the-bone fists.
They all wore their clothes in tatters on their rail thin and sunburnt bodies, be it wretched remnants of merchant silks or unkempt chainmail coifs from an errant brass blade, they all reflected the light of the falling star with hollow, burnt out and sunk in their sockets. Telltale signs of having been touched and controlled by the god of the Amalj'aa, Ifrit.
Tempered, is what these were called but that information did not present themselves to the woman, only that they were terminally unwell and could not be saved.
The woman frowned as her gaze passed over the tempered before her and the mind book gave her their genus, as well as their terminal diagnosis as she went, each time appended by 'cannot be saved'.
This sentiment was curious to the woman as it was the first time the book had supplied its own anecdote.
If it noted they 'could not be saved' should she be trying to save other people? Save them from what and how? Had she failed to 'save' these people somehow? Is saving people what she is missing from inside her? To this of course the book remained silent.
This existential quandary she faced and the general disappointment at the dishevelled and diminutive state of the first people she met had left her disillusioned and confused. To the high priest, thrice chosen of Ifrit, and the mindless tempered, upon being challenged by thirty armed cultists, this giant naked woman had merely looked at them and frowned like she had merely noticed dirt on her clothes and not been surrounded by enemies.
If the artificial zealotry of the tempering process had not removed fear from the cultists' broken minds, the lack of response to the woman's dire situation would be unsettling. But as it was, the cultists advanced on her unabated by self preservation to create a tight circle bristling with weapons.
The high priest, by fate or indeed by divine will, remained more lucid than his companions and therefore more cautious. He flicked his wrist and gestured to two nearby Amalj'aa that were nearly adorned as he was. Willing slaves of ifrit like himself that he had named his honour guard.
"Bind her hands'' he ordered.
"We shall bring her to be fired within the kiln of our lord's presence. She shall be a worthy servant."
He grinned as much as his face would allow at the thought of this behemoth acting as a battering ram to the gates of Ul'dah. Finally bringing the false rulers of 'The Jewel of Thanalan' to heel and razing Ul'dah to the desert from once it rose.
The two honour guards muscled through the thicket of cultists that had surrounded the woman, who still seemed lost in thought and unaware or unbothered by the veritable bushel of rusted arms pointing her way.
The larger of the two guards pushed aside a vacant eyed elezen speargirl who may once have been a merchant's daughter judging by the shredded silks that covered her person, with enough force to send her sprawling before seizing one of the giant's wrists with the intent to force them behind her back to tie.
Though the force he used would have broken the arm of a normal human, evidenced by the purple wrists of many of the cultists present, her arm did not budge an inch, nor did his clawed fingers even make the full circumference of her wrist.
Not quite believing that a person was unyielding to the amount of force he was putting into this he gave another spirited tug. It felt like he was trying to pull a mountain out by the roots. Like he was performing a task so impossible it would make him a fool for trying, so unyielding was her flesh.
He looked around her mass to his fellow guard on her other side and found a matching bewildered expression staring back at him. With both hands now the two of them tugged with all their might to prise this woman's hands from her sides. The high priest furrowed his scaly brow as he watched his two strongest men struggle. Unable to understand what he was seeing. Despite her size the physics of the natural world were not applying here, as she wasn't even swaying under their combined effort. It looked like a mummer's performance in its ridiculousness.
The woman, trapped in her thoughts felt less a pressure on her hands and more a presence and was as shocked, as much as her condition would allow, upon the sight of two large lizard men yanking on her appendages.
She raised her arms away from them more on instinct than urgency and the two were raised dangling for a moment before loosening their grips and falling to their backs. This was enough of an act of resistance to trigger whatever mechanisms in the tempered minds of the husks to respond with violence.
A withered roegadyn ex-miner swung half a pickaxe at her shins with enough force to cleave the rocks it was meant for, and the merchant daughter thrust her simple spear into the womans face menacingly. All the while the guards had since stood and roared for her to get on her knees.
The pickaxe flew out the mind controlled miners numbed hands, such was the recoil from the strike. It was like he had struck an iron wall. The blow to her shin went completely unnoticed but the spear however, hovering ilms from the woman's unguarded eye, caught her rapt attention.
The steel tip of the no doubt commandeered spear shimmered in the fading red stars light and at once she knew what it reminded her of.
A stinger.
The weapon of the wasp that had fought with the scorpion. These people were trying to fight her.
It was like a firework had gone off in her brain.
In an instant her knees bent and her tree-trunk arms raised in as much of a ready stance as she thought she should make. A thousand smells and a million sounds finally made a visceral connection in her brain as her senses took in her surroundings. The night air in her lungs, the cold on her skin, the stench of unwashed bodies closed in around her. No longer were they simple facts fed into the machine of her mind, she had opinions on them, made assertions as to what they meant or what they might mean. She felt them.
It was like she had been asleep and now she was awake. Just like the scorpion and the wasp it was finally her turn to play the game of life and death that was a fight to the death. Her body filled with sweet adrenaline and she couldn't help her lips curling back into a grin that was more a baring of teeth than a smile.
She was closely surrounded by weapons of all shapes and sizes. Her mind provided the names but none of the important things like how they were best or most often used and how to defeat them. She would relish these first discoveries that would be made on her own merit and couldn't wait to see how her opponents chose to employ them on her. But first she needed to escape this dire situation.
The scorpion was the victor of the only conflict she had ever seen so she modelled her style after its own and it had fought dearly to protect it's less armoured backside. Avoiding as many unneeded blows as it could manage. She did not have this armour but found not having an enemy at your back to be a sound strategy to live by.
The cultists behind and to her sides were using various implements to mindlessly hack away at her legs, hoping to fell her like a tree, while those in front were attempting to menace her backwards with their long polearms. The honour guard grappled with her midsection to pull her down. An Arkasadora, vaunted for their elephentine durability, would have toppled under such an onslaught but the woman was too high, mentally and vertically to notice this assault as any and all weapons skated off grey unyielding flesh.
She raised her arms, or rather 'pincers', to chest height in mimcry of their source creature and reached out to grab the merchant's daughter who happened to be the lead pikeman. Giddy and unsure of herself, the grasping hand was gradual and predictable and even in her burnt out state the daughter ducked under the clumsy paw grasping at her face.
The giant woman redrew her hand and stared at in wide eyed shock like it had betrayed her. This lasted for only a moment before her face erupted in joy once more, her body nearly vibrating in excitement.
"You are incredible my friend!" she exclaimed to the unfortunate spearwoman, her voice booming like it had never done before, flexing her hand and lowering it back into a ready stance.
"Of course! You just have to move out of the way if you are attacked! you're a genius!"
She laughed earnestly and heartily for the first time in her life like she was speaking to her best friend in a sparring match and not being hacked and stabbed at by twenty mind controlled cultists.
The High priest was incredulous to say the least, watching his raiding party of twenty strong trying and failing to scratch a single unarmed woman. It didn't look like she had even noticed. It was surreal to watch, like he was in a waking nightmare.
"Kill her! Kill her now!" He bellowed and began to gather ambient aether into the crystal of his staff.
Preparing to unleash a devastating spell, collateral damage be damned. He could find new subjects for Ifrit, he just needed this monster to die.
Now given full permission to kill, the mob of mind-slaved spearmen thrust at her with full intent to harm and not just cow.
The woman, in contrast to her size, deftly dodged low under the angry lance tips into a crouch, bringing the two large Amalj'aa hanging on to her lurching down with her. She sprung from this crouch out with a laugh at the lead speargil. Seizing her by the neck and propelling herself out of the circle of weapons.
The lunge was more powerful than even the woman herself expected and it rocketed her forward at incredible speed and distance. Dislodging the honour guard from her person and landing herself directly in front of the high priest who had backed himself away to prepare his spell.
An incredible distance of almost forty fulms was traversed in an instant.
To the high priest one moment she was encircled by his slaves that he was about to incinerate, and the next all nine feet of her was in front of him grinning up at the slack body of a spearwoman she clutched in a massive paw. Needless to say, causing him to yelp without a shred of dignity and take an understandable yet involuntary step backwards. Breaking his circle of power and causing his spell to shrivel on the vine, scattering the collected aether.
"HAHA! I'VE GOT YOU NOW! TOO FAST FOR YOU THAT TIME EH?" The woman shouted triumphantly brandishing the woman in a fist that nearly encompassed the poor woman's entire head.
The giant had become an entirely different person. In a million almost imperceptible way's from a slightly straighter back, to her scarlet hair flaring into a mane from the bedraggled mess it had been, to even the inflection of her voice, a completely different person had emerged from the enclosure of rusted steel weapons than had been encircled within.
"WHAT WILL YOU DO NOW EH?" She boomed happily at the bundle of brittle clothes and broken flesh between her fingers.
"I'M BIGGER AND I'VE GOT YOU IN MY CLAWS! IT WAS OVER EVEN FOR THE WASP ONCE IT HAD BEEN CAUGHT, SO WHAT WILL YOU DO? I CAN'T WAIT TO FOUND OUT AND TO STOP YOU, AND FOR YOU TO STOP ME IN TURN! FOREVER AND EVER MORE!"
The giant woman seemed to swell with each word in complete bliss. Breathing hard, feeling the power of her muscles, her mind firing in all cylinders taking in everything about her tiny opponent and everything they might do to escape. She was twelve moves deep into this game she had just had the opportunity to play and she wanted to play forever. But the woman in her fist did not move to release herself. She did not move at all for that matter.
The smile that seemed to be chiselled into the giant's face lessened slightly.
"FRIEND?" she inquired innocently and lessened her grip allowing the spearwoman to fall from her grasp, where she collapsed in a heap onto the uneven sand in a poof of dust to lay still.
For her the game had ended within the first move, when she had been gripped in digits that could rend steel. And then, with only her neck as a cushion for her body, was propelled forty fulm in less than a second, snapping that neck in that instant.
The scarlet haired woman surmised as much from a glance, as much her own intuition as it was a conclusion from the mind-book.
That her first playmate had died as soon as she had laid hands on her took the wind out of her sails a bit. A little bit of the woman she had been, vacant and despondent, was coming back and it sent panic racing through her heart. But some of the new woman remained and fought back at the returning emptiness with chiding words.
Of course, there had to be a loser in this game, that's what made her fall in love with it! Dancing on the edge between victory and defeat, the difference between life and death, a moment of hesitation or sudden intense inspiration!
These sentiments chased back her old self for now and she breathed a sigh of relief. She looked down on the unfortunate girl who had been subject to her first friendship and smiled sadly, kneeling and placing a hand on the coarse unkempt hair of the girl's head.
"THANK YOU MY FRIEND. I WISH WE COULD HAVE PLAYED LONGER." The sentiment was as sincere as could be and when the woman stood once more she was all of her new self full of incredible exuberance and love of life.
As it was she stood just in time to sidestep a strike from the high priest who had lashed out at her with his staff which incidentally doubled as a cudgel and was quite heavy for that purpose. A weapon that thanks to his great strength he could perform the necessary slight movements for spellcasting as well.
The thrice chosen high priest of ifrit had employed this strike in all three of his provings for his bid of high priest. In all three times, when a challenger appears to vie for his seat, they had mistook him for a mage of the black arts that of course the distance must be closed in order to avoid being scorched to the bone. And they were correct. He was a thorough practitioner of what he called the 'the breath of ifrit'. However each time they had sprinted to engage at a range where he had a disadvantage, he would bring down his staff of black iron onto their skull in a strike so quick and devastating it ended their bid for priesthood in that blow alone. It was this same strike that the woman dodged while barely looking at him. Just like when she had leapt from the ambush she was at first in the trajectory of his strike and within a blink, simply was not.
The crushing certainty of this attack and the momentum needed to carry it out was now working against him as it carried his body past the giant, leaving him fully open to counter attack.
To him the seconds lasted for an eternity as his blow sailed past her and her eyes met his with a terrifying joy. Her hand shot out and clenched around his throat with the force of coeurls jaws, lifting him choking and struggling into the air to meet her face. Only this time she wasn't smiling.
Her brows had knit together and her mouth had formed a thin line into the grey granite of her face.
"You're supposed to dodge." She chastised him impatiently.
He felt her grip tighten an ilm on his oesophagus, crushing even his ability to choke and leaving him to silently thrash his legs in the air and claw at her hands at his neck without success. Her voice had gone back to normal, which had been a rich baritone but compared to her new voice it was a whisper. Her shoulders had slouched a bit as well.
"BUT MAYBE YOU WEREN'T READY!" She posited happily, returned to her new self and dropped him coughing into the sand.
"I CERTAINLY WASN'T WHEN I FIRST MET YOU EH? HAHAHA!" The laugh was so close now it shook the high priest's bones at the volume.
By now the two honour guards had extricated themselves from the horde of tempered and had caught up with the woman now threatening their protective charge. Each having drawn hora of black iron and flamberged knuckle spikes, mimicking their god's carapace and flame. Now fitted through their impressive claws and ripped free from holster loops and raised to deliver crushing blows to the woman's vital areas that they could reach.
As the high priest fell to the sand gasping for air, once more, swifter than the eye could track, two massive hands reached out and enclosed around each of their necks, intercepting them in mid air. Their bodies swinging forward from their own momentum but their heads staying where they were, hundreds of ponze of forward force meeting hands of rock hard muscle. Rendering their spines between her fingers to dust, their limbs swinging slack in the air outside of a remaining spark of life leaving their bodies in the form of small twitches.
The transcendent happiness as well as the new woman was completely gone now and upon a quick inspection of each corpse in her fists she dropped them unceremoniously to the desert sand. She glared at each cadaver in turn.
"You were ready." She accused the bodies, her hands flexing at her sides. "You were armed and running at me. I used the same attack. Again! You saw it twice!" A flash of hurt and anger leaked into her chest cavity and drained instantly into the emotional black hole at her centre that had immediately returned upon the creation of a horrible conclusion that was beginning to percolate in her mind.
The mass of cultist bodies had followed close behind the guards and in her musing a roegadyn miner swung the haft of a shattered pickaxe up at her face.
Without even looking up at him the woman mimicked the motion of one of the guards that had meant to strike her seconds before. Her arm drew back and as if she had studied her whole life, and a fist as large as the miners head landed on his nose. In a horrifying instant his face caved in like a melon before exploding like a balloon. The fist had torn through the head like a bullet leaving no wasted energy to be imparted to the body and so even as she retracted her gore coated fist the now headless corpse remained standing for a few macabre seconds before it's balance betrayed it and slowly toppled backwards to land in the cone of brain and blood behind it.
Nothing. She felt nothing.
The man didn't have the time to move to stop her. She didn't even think of protecting herself if the punch had not worked. There was no dance, no game, just death. An execution.
Undisturbed by their fellow tempereds destruction, the remaining cultists advanced, undeterred by the threat of death.
A Hyur man in threadbare clothes, an ex-farmer or peasant of some kind, wielded what might have been a shovel with its steelhead broken down to a nub into a makeshift spear, thrust at the woman's midsection. In a single sweeping motion she grabbed at the haft left behind by the miner and swung it in an arc at the man, doubling him over the wood and sending him flying several fulms away to lie forevermore, his body broken.
When the next approached she reached for the spear. Then for the blade. Then for the axe. Back to fists. Then her teeth. Each time she wielded the weapon her opponent tried to strike her down with, mimicking their exact clumsy styles, trying to make them make sense, and each time she met and felt no resistance.
Death was instant and unsatisfying. She felt like she didn't earn a single one. It took as much effort as a breath in her great body to end their lives. As much thought as taking a single step and just as stimulating.
She continued this way until there was no more to challenge her and she was surrounded by the dead and dying. The falling artificial star long having burnt out, leaving the desert in total darkness once more.
The woman was covered in gore. Blood dripping from her skin matching the lustre of her fiery hair, and holding the handle of a sword that had shattered on impact with an unfortunate roegadyn skull. It dropped from her limp fingertips and sunk an inch into the sand before toppling over under its own weight.
Her face was blank, her eyes half lidded and staring at nothing, completely withdrawn into herself once more. While as massive as ever, she looked practically shrivelled compared to when she was on her high of life.
None had made moves to defend themselves and none could survive even a single half hearted blow from her. Not defending themselves had made her assume they would be unnaturally tough but it would seem they were instead particularly stupid. She had found no enjoyment in any of their chosen weapons either, nor did they express any joy in their actions.
They neither wanted to fight nor did they even like it. Then why do it? She snorted in short lived frustration. Had her joy even been real? Was she doing it wrong?
Was she wrong?
Caught once more during her introspection when she was most vulnerable, she heard an object slicing through the wind, a sound she had learned to associate with weapons over the course of her slaughter. She swung halfheartedly behind her, with more than enough force to pulverise them if they matched up to those she had fought prior. Turning to deliver a back fist strike to whomever was there to receive it.
In mid-swing, she had turned enough to see who was attacking her and she could see only a wall of black steel. The Amalj'aan high priest had leapt to bring down his heavy staff upon her head.
Despite his relative size he must have snuck quite close to her, as the staff was less than an ilm from her nose. Too close to dodge even for her.
He was in a similar situation, as her fist, even as lazily as it was swung, was moving at deadly speed towards his mid-air midsection. If it collided it would no doubt destroy him. But he knew this.
He had crept out of her line of sight while she had massacred his fellow subjects of ifrit, waiting for this chance to strike. He had been a child once and he remembered well what it took to avoid the attention of violent adults much larger than himself.
He watched her tear through them like they were made of smoke and not flesh, and knew just watching that he would be no different. He knew that even the Lord of the Inferno would not be safe if he was challenged by this monster. He knew this would be the last thing he would do in this world. But even if he only injured the beast, he would do it.
As the cudgel descended just a hair from her nose, the woman felt her excitement rise to the occasion. Her smile drew a slash across her bloody face once more.
She had been naive.
This one had sacrificed his comrades for this single opportunity. He was larger than the others and clearly commanded respect based on his garments. He chose not to run, he was using the same strike she had avoided before so he was confident in its ability to damage her. This one was strong. He had to be.
He was as fragile as the others, she had held his throat in her hands, she knew this, and so must he. This person played the game as she did and her complacency had led her into this trap. Into this unavoidable blow.
She was tough, she was confident in this, it would not kill her, but it would certainly impede her. It may even cease her retaliation and the game would continue with her on the back foot. Gods she hoped so, This mistake would cost her and she loved it.
She laughed with an insane timbre and forced an inhuman twist into her step, speeding her fist as much as she could in the nanoseconds her thought processes took place in. Their strikes would land at the same time now, she was sure of it. She would not be outdone and she wouldn't insult his efforts with a lukewarm defence. If this strike did not seriously injure her, her strike would obliterate him. It was the most she could offer to honour his resolve and patience.
The moment came. The black iron rod obscured her vision completely, she felt it tickle her eyelashes and the back of her hand felt the soft cotton of his garments.
It turned out she was right, and the instant the club struck her nose her fist struck his ribs.
With a thunderous follow through and speed that no manacutter could rival her fist ploughed through his flesh and bone alike, and all of his being above his waist essentially evaporated. His legs carrying their momentum, sailed past her to land with a wet plop onto the ground. His blood rendered to vapour and rained down onto her. Drenching her in a sanguine mist. The staff, which had been suspended in the air by the force its users hands had been ripped from, clattered to the ground at her feet.
Now there was nothing but silence on the desert plain.
She held her pose with her arm outstretched for a few seconds past when the ruby rain had ceased before regaining her neutral stance. Showing no sign of injury. But instead of victory, her face was warped in abject horror.
She reached down and retrieved the staff. As she handled the haft it was clear that its previous owner held it in high regard. Outside of the blood spatters that now adorned it, it was polished to a glossy sheen and was smooth to her touch outside of three intentionally made scratches in the form of tallies just below the spherical red crystal at its peak. The owner of this weapon loved it and had faith in it. It was tested and strong, an extension of a strong user. So when her fingers traced an indentation in the section of steel that had struck her face, an indentation that matched the bridge of her nose and the ridge of her brow perfectly, she dropped the staff and fell to her knees sobbing.
She was wrong. She was wrong.
Tremors wracked her body as she felt true despair for the first time in her life. She sniffled and sobbed, her hands covering her face, suddenly ashamed to be herself.
Heavy tears falling from her eyes, her right hand came down onto her muscled left arm, clawing at the skin. Her fingers indented the flesh and shifted the underlying muscle but her nails found no purchase and the skin remained unmarred. Even with all her strength she felt no more than pressure.
Her wails rose to a shrieking intensity and she beat at her arms and her face. Pulling at her hair and scratching at her eyes. But not a strand of hair was removed from her head nor a drop of blood from eyelids.
She grasped at the staff and meant to rain blows on her arms and legs, but with one strike it bent beyond use around her forearm and with a horrid cry she flung it off far into the distance, before collapsing completely.
So deep was her grief and her rage that she was allowed to hang onto it for a full minute before it too drained into the nothing within her, leaving her lying prone with her cheek in the sand staring out into the horizon. Drying tears caking sand onto her cheeks, her hair sticking up at odd angles from the blood and the pulling. No longer was she allowed even a sniffle to express her suffering. Just to languish in her grim thoughts.
That amalj'aa was truly strong, but she was never in any danger. It was her who wasn't playing the game. They could never have survived her. And she had no need to intuit their intentions or even avoid their attacks. This body could not be harmed. Any game she was a part of would be a farce. She would never be allowed to die and by consequence she would never be allowed to live. She was an aberration. A monster.
She lay there among the dead and their offal, as unmoving as those she had laid to rest there. For hours she didn't blink and she breathed only as a reflex. Her mind completely detached from her body. She would find no happiness there. As the sun broke free of the dark horizon before her eyes, her first sunrise to christen her day of birth, she wished for her death.
It may well have been forever she would have laid there. Wishing every breath was her last until this star darkened for all time. But, as fate would have it, an event of far lesser magnitude than the end of the world disturbed her hateful peace. It was a chocobo.
"Kweh!" came the distant pained cry.
The woman's eyes, outside of her input, blinked and looked down from the nothing she had been staring at.
In her journey to follow the flame from last night it seemed she had found herself on top of some dusty hillock that overlooked, even at its meagre height, was able to overlook a significant portion of the flat sandy waste. Including, what looked to be a Hyur man, little more than a speck in the distance, at the head of a cart being pulled by two… Chocobos. Her mind book provided for her.
A large bipedal bird. So far away it was either thanks to her supernatural body or some trick of amplification provided by the surrounding plateaus that she had been able to hear them at all.
She tried to let her gaze unfocus once more to grant her oblivion but as her gaze moved over the birds she picked out a particular detail that, other than the driver that had now descended from the cart and was cursing faintly, one of the chocobos was standing on only one foot.
Once more, without her conscious thought, her eyes focused in on the now monopedal bird like a spyglass and her book provided a new line of info for the chocobo.
Leg broken, advanced age, requiring immediate care.
It didn't concern her, she thought to herself. Letting herself drift back into nothing. She had no idea how to fix a broken leg either, the most she could do is carry the large avian creature.
Her body on the other hand was already standing on its feet and taking great strides down the hill towards the cart and the damaged bird. So she was somewhat shocked when she was disturbed from her reverie an indeterminate amount of time later by the touch of soft feathers on her skin and the sight of the terrified chocobo being plucked from the ground by her hands.
Now awake at least within her own shell. She was beholden to the faces of the upon closer inspection, quite wrinkly Hyur driver and two relatively small Elezens. All with faces that indicated a level of shock much deeper than her own.
One, a small girl, had even fallen over. A state she reached out and corrected with one hand before she had a chance to think about it. Dusting off the girl's clothes and setting her on her feet where she should be.
This seemed to do nothing to reassure them, and unaware why she felt she needed to do so, she spoke to assuage their fears.
"Your bird is hurt." She pointed out in case they hadn't noticed.
"Do you need my help?"
Present Day - Ul'dah - Brass Blade Offices - 7:28PM
Rurukuta stomped, as much as his short stature would allow, out of the sandstone office pavilion he had entered only minutes before. Muttering to himself angrily and checking the weight of his pack containing his well paid for documents, in case any intrepid pick pocket attempted to lighten his load on his way home. He didn't even bother checking the weight of his purse. Were it any lighter he doubt he would notice. The thought deepening his frown.
It was dark outside in the pavilion, despite it being almost fully day when he had entered his meeting only a short while ago and guardsmen had already lit oil torches that hung from black hooks on building terraces as well as their larger cousins on brass poles in the streets and market.
'Night comes fast in Thanalan but the dawn comes even faster!' Was a popular optimists phrase in Ul'dah which also happened to be quite accurate.
"I'll leave you to take care of your own lad." The captain had smirked as he left.
Having paid far too much and more to tie this stranger to him by paper if not by blood.
"She's in the largest cell in the back. Can't miss her!" The last thing Rurukuta had heard as he left was the corrupt captain laughing at his own joke.
The Lalafell grimaced but knew this is what he should have expected. He wasn't respected enough for anyone to even show him to her cell. He was an errand boy. An urchin to these people for the rest of his life.
He was used to taking four steps for everyone elses one. While he knew being a Lalafell didn't help, it wasn't why they didn't respect him. The wealthiest people in all of uldah were Lallafels and every business kept accommodating furniture and utensils in case of a visit from these affluential individuals. No. It was because he was poor. And because he was a pugilist.
He was better off than those living in the street nowadays, but it was indeed the street from where he had come originally. And he knew from his speech down to the way he walked everyone could smell it on him. He hated it. And he hated those that judged him for it.
As for being a pugilist, it was easy to underestimate pugilists even at the height of their reputation. Without the tell-tale hora on their hip it was difficult to even tell who was and who wasn't. Fists just didn't inspire fear and respect like a marauder's axe or a gladiator's sword. But now… Their reputation was in the gutter, and even though he was convinced he could have fought the captain and his stick-up-her-arse lieutenant to a standstill in a straight fight they stil treated him at best like a child and worse like trash.
But that would change, he vowed to himself and the gods, grinning and clenching his fists. That would change.
As soon as he had laid eyes on that woman, massive and imposing, fire red hair against stone grey skin and impossible to miss in a crowd, he knew that she would change things. And he would make sure she would change things for him and for pugilists everywhere.
When he finally made it to the cell despite having seen her before he couldn't stop his jaw from dropping. He had seen her at the gates from a distance and she had stood taller than anyone sure, but now up close he could properly take in her majesty.
She was only sitting, head down and docile but it was clear at a glance that she had perfectly formed fighters muscles in all the right places. No doubt the result of intensive training of course, they had to be. But no amount of training could have created what he was looking at. She was a born fighter. Even if she were scaled down to a Hyur size it would be clear she was not to be trifled with. Her hands were massive and no-one in their right mind would underestimate her were she to ball them into fists. For his purposes she was nothing short of perfect.
He composed himself and walked right up to her. Even with her head hung low he was able to stand under her and look right up into her face. Her eyes were open but she made no indication of understanding he was there. Perhaps she was worse off than he had been told, for a moment he felt his confidence falter. If she was brain dead that would mean he paid a relatively exorbitant sum for an impressive but largely useless doorstop.
"Can you hear me?" he called up to her, reaching up to her nose to snap his fingers.
"Yes." Came the immediate reply, making him nearly jump out of his skin and quickly retract his hand. Playing off his rudeness by pretending like he was just taking the long way to scratching the back of his head.
Well she was responsive, that was promising. He cleared his throat and stepped back a respectable distance to give her and himself space before continuing.
"What is your name then?" he inquired patiently.
"I don't know." Same tone, same immediate reply.
This one he had prepared for. Being told that she was an amnesiac and seeing her half naked he had fully prepared himself to teach her how to dress and behave from the ground up. It came as no surprise to him that she had no name.
"Well." he said, trying to project as much command as he could muster.
"My name is Rurukuta. I am your brother now. If you don't have a name I shall give you one free of charge."
Her head shot up at this. She herself didn't know this until right at this second but having a name was very important to her.
"Your name will be Cornelia. A name you should have no trouble growing into."
The name passed over and through her. Despite its significance to the young man it meant nothing to her.
"Like I said" He continued "I will give you the name for free but the rest of what I will teach you, much like your freedom will come at a price. Like everything around here." He made a grand sweeping gesture with his arms to indicate all of Ul'dah.
For your freedom you will pay me back in labour. You will do what I say when I say it."
He took a step closer and looked dead into her sky blue eyes with his mercury silver ones.
"For teaching you to be strong. You will give me the world."