For who shall Mourn
After reuniting with Gosetsu, we made for the Ruby Sea with the help of a Kojin named Soroban.
The open sea, a city underwater, and even a primal were the things we encountered there. It was also there, that we had our first encounter with the appointed viceroy of the Empire. A woman whose eyes held only hatred and whose actions were fuelled by cruelty as she ruled over a broken people.
Only when we set foot into Yanxia itself, did we come to understand just how broken...
Steps echoed through the air as S'eni walked through the set of caves that served as the hideout of the Doman Liberation Front. The House of the Fierce as Gosetsu had called it. To say that it was in a sorry state was an understatement to say the least.
The Front as it were, were perhaps a handful of brave souls whose spirits still longed to free their homeland, not even remotely enough to take back a country so fiercely under control as Doma.
And with the greeting they had received in Namai earlier, S'eni wasn't so sure if there would be any more than that.
"Never again, do you understand!?" the words of that young man from earlier echoed in the back of her mind. "We've had enough of you and your kind! Whatever it is you're plotting, leave us out of it!"
She could tell that he was scared and couldn't even blame him after seeing the viceroy in charge of Doma in the flesh only a couple of hours ago.
Yotsuyu... The woman was as cruel as she was beautiful, and by the gods she was painfully beautiful. Her eyes held a coldness that could rival that of Coerthas itself, only lighting up when she could make the people under her rule suffer.
S'eni was sure that there was a story to it all. There seldom wasn't. But there were more important things to worry about right now.
Namely how they would proceed now.
As she walked into the main hall, her eyes fell onto the large Aetheryte at the center of it, its glow missing and bits and pieces broken off it. In front of it stood Alisaie, arms crossed and tapping her foot.
"How's it looking?" S'eni asked.
"As you can see, they went to great lengths to disable it. Apparently, in the last days of the rebellion, they feared Zenos might send unattuned conscripts this way," Alisaie explained. "It's hardly irreversible, though. They have the materials here but lack the proper knowledge. Now if my brother were here..."
Alphinaud for his part had stayed behind in Kugane to see if he could coordinate some help from the Alliance.
"Alright." S'eni nodded. "So that's some good news then."
The young Elezen responded with a rather humourless chuckle before walking away, muttering something under her breath.
She watched her for a moment, then shrugged and did the same, heading over to where Lyse was currently sitting with a member of the Liberation Front.
"S'eni," her friend greeted her. "You should hear this. He was just telling me about Zenos."
Eyebrows rising in interest, S'eni sat down next to her friend. The man sitting in front of her looked between the two of them.
"First you should understand that it wasn't a matter of numbers. The bulk of the XIIth legion didn't take to the field. It was all Zenos' stratagem that won the war," he told them, then proceeded to go into detail how it had first looked like they had him cornered and were about to send him back to Garlemald, when all of a sudden the roles were reversed and they became the ones being cornered. "He then stood before us, alone and unarmed. He beckoned us to come and fight for our lives. One by one my comrades charged...and one after another...He made us watch, do you understand?"
"Gods..." S'eni breathed out. She was beginning to understand just who it was with whom they were dealing with.
"What kind of monster enjoys killing people?" Lyse's eyes were widened in horror.
"I don't think there was any joy in it. A challenge had been issued and he accepted. And when he found us no challenge at all, he left. To find a new battle. A new challenge. The hunt as he calls it. A hunt without end."
Her face darkened and she found herself thinking back to when he had left her lying in the dirt, carelessly dropping his broken blade to the ground as he walked away.
Bored.
But as much as her pride had been bruised by it, it was nothing compared to what he had done to Y'shtola. And for that, he would pay.
Looking at the man in front of her, his eyes far away as they relived the horror of those days, she gave him a nod. "Thank you for telling us. That couldn't have been easy."
"It wasn't," he admitted. "And I doubt it will ever be."
Taking her leave again, S'eni then made her way to the part of the House of the Fierce where she knew Yugiri would be. She found the Shinobi standing in front of a big table, bowing over a map of Yanxia.
"Yugiri," she said in greeting, making the Au Ra look at her. The corner of her lips twitched and she had to force herself not to smile when she saw just how much she looked like that older woman from Sui no Sato that had asked if she knew her daughter. Perhaps, when things were quieter, she should tell Yugiri that her parents missed her.
"S'eni. I hope you managed to get some rest."
"More or less." She shrugged. "Just heard a little story about Zenos. And here I thought the Resistance got hit hard."
"We lost a lot of good and brave people back then. Nevertheless, it's good that you have spoken with someone that was there. One must first know their enemy to defeat him," Yugiri said and turned back towards the map. She tapped a finger on where the House of the Fierce was located. "Just like the Resistance, we are struggling. We are outnumbered and weakened, yet with your help I believe there's nothing we can't achieve...I only hope our predicament hasn't shaken your commitment."
S'eni walked over to the Au Ra and placed a hand on her shoulder. A smile formed on her lips when Yugiri looked at her. "I've been in worse situations. What are a few bad odds?"
The other woman mirrored her expression. "Well spoken."
"So, what's on the agenda?" she asked.
"I have been away from Doma for some time now and the search for Lord Hien commanded my full attention since I returned," Yugiri said. "Perhaps it would be a good idea to see the reality of Doma with my own eyes. After all, didn't my lord command me to?"
After they had arrived, Yugiri had been quick to inform Gosetsu that Lord Hien was alive and well, but refused to return unless the people of Doma were willing to fight. If they hadn't, then he would offer them his head instead.
"Then let's do that," S'eni said, punching her palm.
A knock against the doorframe made them turn around to see Lyse standing there. "I'd like to come too if that's alright."
"Of course," the Au Ra replied. "I would be glad to have your company, and your perspective."
Together, the three of them left the House of the Fierce the same way they had arrived, through the hidden underwater tunnel. Though with the blessing they had received in Tamamizu that was hardly any issue at all. Being able to breathe underwater sure had its perks.
"You know," Lyse said as they emerged from the spring on the other end of the tunnel, grabbing her ponytail and wringing it out as soon as they stepped onto land. "I get the feeling this isn't the most practical of entrances."
S'eni hummed in agreement, shaking the water out of her tail.
Meanwhile, Yugiri strode over to a set of shrubs and reached inside, digging around for a moment before pulling out a large sack. "Don't worry. We will use these," she told them as she walked over to them, opening the sack to reveal to them sets of plain clothing that each of them could wear.
"Ah, good thinking. As expected from a Shinobi," S'eni commented, then pointed at the clothes currently clinging to her body. "But where are we going to put these?"
The Au Ra nodded towards a set of rocks. "We can change over there. By the time we return they should be dry again."
As soon as they stepped behind the rocks, S'eni and Yugiri began to undress. Only Lyse hesitated.
"Uh, is this really alright?" she asked as S'eni dropped her black scarf and red haori into the grass.
"Hm?" S'eni glanced over her shoulder, hands already undoing the waistband of her pants. "Oh, don't worry. We're all girls here, you don't have anything I haven't seen before, right Yugiri?"
"Very much so," the Shinobi replied, not the least bit concerned about her own advancing state of undress.
"See?" Dropping her pants, she bent over to step out of them, entirely unaware of the pair of blue eyes moving down her form, before snapping back up.
"Yeah, uh, right!" Shifting from one leg to the other, Lyse began to undress as well.
After putting on their new clothes, they came out of hiding and began making their way up the path leading away from the spring.
"This should help us to not stand out too much," Yugiri said.
"Really? Because I don't know about you but—" She pointed towards her ears and tail. "I'm definitely going to stand out. There weren't any Miqo'te living in Doma last I heard."
"There aren't. That's why we will pose as traveling merchants."
"Well, I'm not really the merchant type, but I'll try!" Lyse said.
"Just try to mimic Hancock. That ought to work." S'eni gave her friend a wink. A thoughtful look crossed her features then. "Though without any wares to present we'll have a hard time convincing them..."
Her face lighted up as an idea sprang up in her mind. Pressing her thumb and index finger together, she put them between her lips and whistled loudly.
Almost instantly, that familiar "Wark!" echoed back towards her and not long after, Zack came flying down from a nearby cliff.
"You...brought your Chocobo?" Yugiri asked, clearly taken aback.
"Uh-huh. And a good thing too," S'eni replied, reaching for one of the bags tied to his saddle. "These are going to be our wares."
"That's a good idea!" Lyse commented as she was handed one of the bags. She opened it and peeked inside before pulling out a stack of cards tied together with a small ribbon. "Triple Triad cards?"
"It's a long story." And not one she had any desire to reiterate. Instead, she looked her Chocobo in the eyes. "Now let's do this and I'll see if I can't arrange a little bit of alone time with that lady friend of yours."
"Kweh!"
"Good." S'eni tugged on his reins and began leading him up the pathway. When their group arrived near Namai, she gave Yugiri another one of her traveling bags.
"Alright," Yugiri said after inspecting the contents. "Let's begin."
Almost as soon as they entered the village, all eyes were on them and hushed whispers began to pervade the air.
"We should split up. That way we will cover more ground," Yugiri whispered.
S'eni nodded, then put on her friendliest, most charming smile and raised her hand in greeting. "Greetings good people of Doma! Might I interest you in some of my wares?" she called out.
The reactions were only more hushed whispers followed by everyone going back to what they were doing. Sharing a look with Zack, she shrugged and walked over to a woman that was sweeping her doorstep.
"Hm?" the woman looked up from what she was doing, tilting her head to the side and narrowing her eyes slightly. "Hey, weren't you the one who came with the General earlier?"
Uh oh, S'eni thought. Someone actually paid attention to more than Gosetsu. Better think fast!
"General?" she asked with added confusion in her voice. "I'm sorry, but the only General I keep company with are the items I peddle!"
She laughed at her very terrible joke. The woman simply raised an eyebrow.
"My mistake then," she said and began sweeping again. "We don't see your kind around here often. Guess it's hard to tell you apart."
Actually it wasn't, but S'eni wasn't going to tell her that. "So would you like to see what I have to offer?"
The woman shook her head. "While it warms my heart to see you merchant folk return, you can undoubtedly see that we don't possess much. And what little we do, we need to survive."
"Has it always been like this?" S'eni asked.
"It wasn't much better before, but it's only gotten worse since the rebellion..."
"I see. Have a good day then."
After bidding her goodbye, she began to ask around the rest of the village, with very much the same result as far as peddling wares went. But she did manage to at least acquire the information they were looking for, and a little more on top of that.
So they were from here, she thought to herself and glanced over her shoulder at the wolfman she just spoke with. The same kind as they had encountered at Rhalgr's Reach.
She met up with Lyse and Yugiri at the outskirts of Namai. And from the looks on their faces, they had encountered very much the same reactions that she had.
"I expected frustration and even disillusionment, but not this much," Yugiri said after S'eni told them the words she had received. "With things as they are now, I doubt I can convince Lord Hien to return, and without him..."
The Au Ra shook her head. "No. Let's not lose hope just yet. The situation in Namai may look bleak, but perhaps not elsewhere. I say we talk with others outside of the village."
"If you say so," S'eni replied, not entirely convinced by the notion but also not yet willing to simply give up.
"Then it's decided. Lyse and I will look for farmers in the east. I'd like for you to look south."
"Alright." Watching her friends leave, S'eni turned around to head southward, Zack dutifully following by her side. They had just left the vicinity of Namai behind when a high-pitched scream echoed towards them from further south. Someone's in trouble!
Breaking into a sprint, she soon saw the source of the scream, a girl being attacked by two large caterpillars.
"Oh no you won't!" S'eni shouted as one of them poised to strike the girl with one of its sharp horns and sent it flying with a swift kick. Wasting no time, she dispatched the other one as well, before turning towards the cowering girl.
"Are you alright?" she asked, holding out her hand.
Realizing that she wasn't about to be caterpillar food, the girl raised her head and blinked a few times. Her eyes then landed on S'eni. "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! If you hadn't come along I don't know what I would've done!"
"What is a girl like you doing all alone out here anyway?" She couldn't be much older than Yozan and the other kids at Revenant's Toll.
"Looking for flowers," the girl replied while S'eni helped her up. "I need some for my parent's grave. The ones my brother and I usually gather are yellow. Because it was my mother's favorite color. You haven't seen any, have you?"
"No." She shook her head, then smiled. "But how about I'll help you look? That way any nasty critter will think twice before hassling you."
"That would be really kind of you, uh..."
"I'm S'eni."
"Soo-eh-ni..." the girl repeated, clearly having trouble with such a foreign-sounding name. "I'm Azami."
"Nice to meet you," S'eni said, then turned her head to look towards her Chocobo, currently busy plucking something off the ground. "And this is Zack."
A look of amazement formed on Azami's face, showing her once again that the fluffy birds were entirely foreign to this region.
"Want to ride on him?" she asked the girl. "I'm sure you'll easily spot the flowers from up there."
"I don't know..." Azami looked unsure of the prospect.
"Don't worry. He's a friendly one. Back home he was playing with kids around your age all the time."
"If it's really alright, then yes!"
Chuckling to herself, S'eni helped Azami onto Zack's saddle and together they began their search for the yellow flowers they were looking for. It didn't take particularly long to find them and S'eni picked up a few especially pretty looking ones to hand over to the girl.
"Thank you so much." The girl beamed. She then became a little shy, dropping her gaze onto black feathers. "Um, if you have some time to spare, would you like to come with me? I'm sure Mother and Father would like to meet you too."
"Well, how could I decline such an invitation?" S'eni smiled.
Azami brightened up immediately. "We buried them on a cliff west of the village. I'll show you!"
Following her instructions, they headed through the farmland surrounding Namai, built into terraced paddies to make the most of the land that they had. S'eni watched as the people worked in the water, tirelessly try to provide for themselves and their loved ones even in these trying times.
Soon enough, they had reached the cliff. Blades of grass that moved at the slightest gust of wind covered almost the entirety of it. A few rocks and a singular large tree broke this deep green pattern, making for a beautiful landscape that was sadly disturbed by the buzzing of the Magitek coils that had been grafted onto the inside of the three masterfully crafted portals of red stone nearby, creating barriers to keep undesirables out.
The Dairyu Moon Gates, as she had been told.
"Over there!" Azami pointed towards the tree, where a small hill of dug-up earth rose from the ground, slowly beginning to be covered by grass as well. Coming to a stop nearby, she helped the girl off Zack. "Just give me a moment and I'll introduce you."
She watched as Azami put the flowers on top of the grave, then raised her hands in prayer. After she was done, she turned towards S'eni and waved her over. "They loved to meet travellers and hear stories of faraway places. Maybe you could tell them about your home?" the girl asked.
But before S'eni could respond, a voice called out, a note of panic in it as it drew close. "Azami! Are you there? Azami!"
Turning around, she spotted the form of a young man running up the path. The very same young man, who had told Gosetsu and the rest of them to leave Namai in peace. Isse, if she recalled correctly.
"There you are, you had me—what in the—" his eyes widened. "Get away from my sister!"
"Don't be so rude, Brother!" Azami chastised him as he rushed over to her. "She saved me from monsters. And helped me pick flowers?"
But Isse didn't listen to her and instead put himself between her and S'eni, pushing the girl behind his back.
"Go back home. Now," he told her.
"Y-you're scaring me..."
"I said go! Stay inside and lock the door until I return!"
Azami looked between S'eni and her brother as they stared at one another, before doing as she was told.
"Don't think I'm ungrateful. She's the only family I have. If you saved her, then thank you," Isse said once Azami was out of earshot. He then shook his head, his brown hair moving with the motion. "But it changes nothing. I asked you to leave and now I'm doing it again. I promise I won't be reporting you to the Garleans, but I'm begging you to just leave us alone!"
S'eni's face darkened at his words, but she found herself unable to reply and instead looked at the grave. "Your sister said your parents were buried here..."
"Yes. They both believed in the rebellion and left to fight for King Kaien. They came home on a cart driven by imperial soldiers, " he told her. "They demanded that the families of the insurgents present themselves, or they'd burn down the village. So we did."
She could tell that he didn't want to but he still continued. "They beat us in the village square, while we were begging for mercy, and made us denounce our parents. Say they deserved to die. Then one of them leaned close and whispered to me what he'd do to Azami if they had to come back."
S'eni's head snapped towards him, a look of horror on her face. "Those—" but whatever she wanted to say died on her lips when she saw the look in his eyes.
It was the same look Conrad had when he was about to truly give up in the wake of their defeat at Rhalgr's Reach.
"Whatever you came here to do...leave us out of it. If you want to fight the Garleans, then go and fight them on your own," Isse said, looking her dead in the eye. "You can't help us. No one can. And this is all we've got. Don't take it from us."
With these words, he turned around and left, leaving S'eni to her thoughts. It seemed they had underestimated the suffering these people had gone through.
A deep sigh passed her lips and she turned towards Zack, who tilted his head at her.
"Let's go back to the others," she said, gently took hold of his reins, and began walking back to meet up with the others.
Was this it? Was their mission to liberate Doma ending right here in this small village?
Or was there still a way for these people to regain their fighting spirit?
...
...
...
Little did she know, that one such way was on its way to Namai, dressed in black and gold uniforms.