Arden drifted in dreams of wandering the forest, ever fleeing some horror that lurked at his heels. He stumbled and fell into swirling blackness, where fourteen black robed figures laughed at him and mocked his pain.
"Pathetic weakling!" they jeered. "You think you can stand against the Unsundered and Zodiark, the dark one? We will crush your body and shatter your soul, both now and through eternity!"
He fled from them, but the pain of his wounds crippled him. He crawled on all fours, seeking a place to hide where the jeering masked faces could not find him.
The darkness gave way to light. Beneath his hands and knees a complex sigil blossomed into existence, its lines drawing itself outward until he sat in the center of a circle of protection. He rose to his feet, his breathing ragged. "What is happening?"
A blue crystal appeared in his hand. As he grasped it, a beam of light flowed from it to the circle's edge, where it ignited a smaller circle and filled it with its own essence. Other circles filled the edge of the ring, empty and waiting.
"My blessed child," said Hydaelyn's familiar, loving voice. "Thou bearest a crystal of light. Keep it close to thee and it will protect thee from darkness."
"I was injured by darkness," he told her. "I am sick and afraid."
"This crystal will assist thee," the goddess replied. "The Ascians will be unable to touch thee from now on. Sleep. Rest. Regain thy strength."
The dream faded. Arden sank into a dreamless, restful sleep, and did not awaken until morning.
When he awakened, he felt well and whole for a while. What was more, a blue crystal the length of his hand lay on the sheet beside him. He picked it up and examined it. It glowed faintly, flashing as he turned it this way and that. His conjurer training let him sense the Light within it. He had been trained to use earth magic, not Light magic, and it alarmed him somewhat. However, he had seen Hydaelyn gift it to him in his dream, including it in some kind of warded circle. It belonged to him, of that he was certain.
He rose, bathed, and dressed, making sure to slip the crystal into an inner shirt pocket. Then he went to the kitchen, where Yda served him a bowlful of overcooked porridge.
"How do you feel this morning?" Papalymo asked. He was busy sprinkling raisins and walnuts over his own porridge in an attempt to improve the texture.
Arden gazed out the window for a moment, taking time to feel the areas where he had been hurt. A touch of cold ache lingered.
"Better than yesterday," he said, "but not well."
Papalymo harrumphed. "I spoke to Minfilia this morning over the linkpearl. She says to come join her in Thanalan. Sunlight will strengthen you, and that's just what you won't get in the Twelveswood."
"But–but my training!" Arden stammered. "E-Sumi-Yan will have my horns if I quit!"
"Tell him to transfer your documents to the healer's guild in Ul'dah," said Papalymo. "There's no reason to interrupt your training. If you're to recover, you can't stay here. Minfilia was emphatic."
Arden thought of the unicorn he had befriended with a pang of regret. "Can I return?"
"Once you're recovered, certainly," said Papalymo. "The man in black is up to something, we still don't know what. Yda and I will continue to track him, and perhaps in a few weeks we'll know more."
"I love chasing shadows and rumors!" Yda said with so much enthusiasm that Arden couldn't tell if it was sarcasm.
Arden finished his breakfast and set out for the Stillglade Fane. Inside he was both nervous of having to transfer to a new place, and excited to be traveling and seeing new sights. Ul'dah was the biggest of the city-states, a city built in the desert and a massive trade hub. He'd seen many goods in the Gridanian markets, such as cloth and spices, that came from Ul'dah.
E-Sumi-Yan was not pleased when Arden asked him to transfer his paperwork. "You were ready to begin studying resurrection, Arden. What makes you think you can simply leave?"
"I-I was hurt yesterday," Arden stammered. "By a man in black. My friends say I must have sunlight to recover."
"What?" E-Sumi-Yan was taken aback, his boyish face paling. "Show me the wound."
Arden held out his arm and indicated his side. "A unicorn removed the curse, but I still feel weak and cold."
E-Sumi-Yan probed Arden's arm and side with expert hands, small pulses of aether flowing from his fingertips. Magic to diagnose a sickness, but much stronger and more focused than any Arden could perform.
"You should be dead," E-Sumi-Yan said flatly after a time. "This curse began corrupting your aether. You cannot survive having the very energy that composes your body consumed and destroyed. I wasn't aware a curse like this could be removed at all, much less by a unicorn. How did it do it?"
Arden told him the story, relieved that his teacher believed him. As he spoke, he found he had to sit on the floor, because his legs grew weary and shaky from standing. E-Sumi-Yan observed this and frowned, but did not interrupt.
When Arden finished, E-Sumi-Yan did not speak for a while. He stood gazing at nothing, one hand on his chin, thinking. Arden watched his fellow students arriving and settling on various floor mats for morning meditation.
Finally E-Sumi-Yan said, "These men in black have been polluting the Twelveswood with destructive magics of this kind. My conjurers will have to clean up their messes, I'm afraid, before the elementals grow angry and blame us. Meanwhile, I will pull your paperwork and have it delivered to your residence this afternoon. Go home and rest, Arden. Eat plenty of vegetables and sit in the sun if you can. Your aether needs replenishing."
Arden rose unsteadily to his feet and bowed his thanks. "I am grateful for your help, teacher. I hope that when I return, you will be pleased with my progress."
"They'll teach you resurrection in Ul'dah as soon as you enter the room," said E-Sumi-Yan with a grim smile. "The healers guild there work with the gladiators on the bloodsands, reviving them and keeping them alive. You're about to receive a lot of practical experience."
"You're truly a healer?" said a Lalafel in a white healer's robe, peering up at the towering Au Ra. "The arena sign-up office is down the street if you're looking to become a gladiator."
"I assure you, I'm an apprentice conjurer," Arden said, pulling a thick envelope out of a satchel he wore at his side. "Here are my records."
The Lalafel took the papers and examined them, eyes narrowed. Arden had time to look about him.
He had arrived in Ul'dah that morning via airship. The flight from Gridania to Ul'dah had been a delight, even when they met a storm with strong winds. Arden had cheered and whooped every time the airship bounced, for all the world like an ornery horse trying to throw him off. Even now Arden was scheming in the back of his mind to get an airship of his own someday.
Ul'dah itself did not disappoint. It was a huge walled city built of immense limestone blocks. The city was built in rings, each inner ring mounting higher and higher like the tiers of a cake, with the palace of the sultana at the top. The streets bustled with people of all sorts, and the hot sun had already burned Arden's fair skin, especially his bare shoulders and under his eyes.
The healer's guild occupied a building just off the huge fighting arena. Built of stone, the rooms inside were several degrees cooler than the air outside. Arden didn't sense any patients here, but these seemed to be main offices. The Lalafel examining his papers sat behind a desk littered with other paperwork, and there were chairs for waiting.
The Lalafel cleared his throat. "Well then. E-Sumi-Yan was most thorough, bless the man. I'll see about enrolling you in the healing roster. Can you start tomorrow?"
"Yes, please," said Arden. "I was hoping to graduate by the end of the year."
"It might be sooner if I know this guild," said the Lalafel. "The next season is starting in the arena, and the winners will go to the Wolves Den for further riches and glory. Naturally, there will be many losers, and it will be your task to save as many of them as you can."
"I was due to start studying resurrection," said Arden.
The Lalafel nodded. "That will be the first spell they teach you. Sign here and here, please."
Arden signed the paperwork, then took a copy of the admissions sheet, as well as his records, down the street to a side entrance of the arena.
A guard directed him down a cool stone passage and into a series of chambers beneath the arena's grandstands. Here were beds in orderly rows, as well as shelves of herbs, salves, potions, and tinctures, all designed to aid in healing a multitude of wounds and sicknesses.
A few beds at the far end had curtains around them, and a couple of nurses attended the patients there. A Hyur woman in a sky blue healer's robe bustled toward him. "Sir, I'll have to ask you to step outside, this is the hospital."
He held up his papers. "I'm a healer transferring from Gridania."
The woman marched up to him, took his papers, and thumbed through them. Then she looked him up and down, staring at his horns for a second longer than was necessary. Her head barely reached to his chest, and he almost wanted to apologize for his size.
"Arden Ardakim?" she said at last. "I am Inga, chief healer of the Ul'dahn bloodsands. Your records say you have passed your basic anatomy and healing exams and were preparing to study resurrection."
"Yes ma'am," said Arden.
"This way," she said, leading him through a door and down another passage. "We keep the corpses in the cold room, down here. Embla will instruct you on conjuring the resurrection spell. A strapping lad like you will have plenty of strength to draw on for this kind of magic. Please escort the newly resurrected patients to the hospital for examination, please."
The cold room was a long, dim room with cold magic drifting from ice-aspected aether crystals embedded in the walls and ceiling. Stone slabs stood every few feet, and five gladiator corpses were laid out on them.
Embla was a burly female Roegadyn as tall as Arden was. He was rather taken aback at first when he saw her jutting jaw and green-tinged skin. She also wore a healer's robe, and sized up Arden at a glance. "New healer?"
"Transfer from Gridania," said Inga. "Teach him the resurrect spell and send them to me once they're up." Inga bustled back to the hospital.
Embla held out a hand and Arden shook it. "We don't get many Auri chaps," she said. "Healing doesn't seem like their thing. We see them in the arena sometimes, though. Fight like devils."
Arden introduced himself, not sure if he liked Embla. But he listened closely when she took him to the first corpse.
"Resurrection has limits," said Embla, gesturing to the corpse. It was a male Highlander Hyur, with a tall stature and dark skin. He'd died of many wounds, probably blood loss.
"The spirit only lingers near the body for a few hours, at most, a day. However, you can't just conjure the spirit back into a wounded body. The fellow would only die again. Resurrection requires a Cure spell combined with a Draw Spirit spell. Show me your Cure."
Arden demonstrated by closing a wound on the corpse.
"Right," said Embla, rolling up the sleeves of her robe. "I'll conjure Draw Spirit, and you heal the fellow's wounds. Make sure to use a blood restoration variable and the additive rune for warmth. Once the heart starts beating, there needs to be blood in there."
Arden knew the theory of variables and additives, but had never tried them himself. He gave it his best try, however, and was gratified to see some of the wounds begin to bleed again. He closed them with passes of his shortstaff.
"Good," said Embla, watching closely. One of her hands was upraised with white light spiraling around her fingers. "I have the fellow's soul, just need his body to be ready. Now use Jolt to start the heart and lungs."
Arden obeyed and watched as the body twitched and gasped. Embla pressed her glowing hand to the gladiator's chest. The man's eyes opened and he gasped in a long, sucking breath. Then he lay still, panting, eyes darting every direction. "Where am I?"
"Cold room," Embla said. "Just resurrected you. Arden, haul him up to the hospital and we'll raise the next one."
Arden worked with Embla until all five corpses had been resurrected and sent to the hospital for further recovery treatment. Then Embla drilled Arden on each kind of spell, especially Draw Spirit.
"There will be lots of times when you have to perform resurrections by yourself," said Embla. "You have to know the steps upside-down, backwards and forwards. Now, show me your variables and additive runes again."
By the time the sun set and Arden was dismissed, his head was whirling with new magical techniques, and his aether was so depleted that he only wanted to eat and sleep. The remnants of the curse in his arm and side, which hadn't pained him in the light and heat of the desert sun, began to ache as the sun sank.
As he waited in line at a vendor stalls selling meat and vegetables in pockets of bread, a scruffy-looking man sidled up to him. Arden immediately dropped a hand to protect his knapsack, the other settling on the hilt of his sword.
The man smirked from beneath a tangle of messy fair hair. "Relax, I don't want your coin. You're Arden Ardakim, right?"
"Who wants to know?" Arden said, sizing the man up. He was a Hyur in all black, with the sort of cunningly baggy clothing that probably concealed an arsenel's worth of weapons. Ul'dah was well known for its organized crime, to which the city's Syndicate turned a blind eye as long as the murders didn't become too obvious.
This shady-looking young man smiled. "I was told to look for an Au Ra man in a healer's tunic. Not many of those around, I'm sure. Minfilia Warde sent me to guide you to her."
"You have proof of this?" Arden asked.
The young man grinned wider. "Plenty, but standing in line at a food cart isn't the place. Meet me by the palm tree in the planter over there." He sauntered off, leaving Arden to purchase his supper in peace.
Arden wasn't sure he wanted to speak to the young man again, whether he knew Minfilia's name or not. If Minfilia lived and worked in these parts, she was probably known to many. Arden had no intention of being lured into some back alley and knifed. When he bought his food, he approached the palm tree in its planter, but stood at a distance, his back to a pillar, watching for danger as he ate.
The shady young man approached the planter and looked around for him. Arden watched him, wondering whether to walk away, when an uproar at the food cart drew his attention.
The merchant had just shoved a young woman away from the cart, where she fell on her back in the dusty street, soiling her white tunic.
"Thief!" the merchant shouted, leaving his cart to march after her. "There's no way scum like you could afford that much food!"
The woman scrambled to her feet, looking around at the watching crowd. "I'm no thief!" she cried. "Twas my own honest gil. I only wanted to give my children a good supper!"
"You're one more filthy refugee!" the merchant shouted, now seeming to enjoy the attention. He smirked at the groveling woman. "I'll set the guards on you unless, perhaps, you have another means of payment."
The murmur that went through the crowd told Arden that this means of payment had nothing to do with money.
The woman only looked more horrified and bewildered, as if trapped in a bad dream she could not awaken from. "I did nothing wrong, I swear!" She scanned the crowd and her gaze met Arden's.
Pain stabbed through Arden's head, as it had that day on the chocobo cart. But instead of seeing a vision of Hydaelyn, he had sudden, vivid impressions of seeing through the woman's eyes as she toiled in a clothing shop, sewing until her fingers were too sore to hold a needle. Satisfaction as the head tailor praised her work and handed her extra gil. Feeling her happiness as she walked home from work, intending to bring her children a good supper in their tents in the refugee camp outside the city walls.
Arden emerged from the vision with a shake of his head. It had taken less than half a second, lasting only as long as the woman held his gaze.
"Please, sir," she said to him. "You believe me, don't you?"
Arden strode forward and placed himself between the merchant and the woman. "She's innocent," he said. "She received extra wages at her place of work today. She's no thief at all." He swayed a pace toward the merchant. "But speaking of thieves."
Arden stood head and shoulders taller than most people in the crowd, who were mostly Hyur or Miqo'te or Lalafel. The merchant, a smarmy Hyur with a goatee framing his mouth, retreated a step with an alarmed look. Then he recovered and barked, "Stevens! Gyna! Show this idiot Au Ra what we do to his kind in Ul'dah!"
Two hired thugs stepped out from behind the cart, each carrying a heavy club studded with metal. Arden wore his shortsword at his hip, and drew it with a rasp of metal. He glanced over his shoulder for the woman, only to see the shady young man in black hustling her to safety. Arden nodded his approval. Maybe he'd hear the shady young man out, after all.
Then the thugs came at him, swinging their clubs. Arden didn't want to kill them, although he could have. Instead he blocked one blow with the flat of his blade, punched the other thug in the jaw, took a blow to the ribs that knocked the breath out of him, and managed to trip one of the thugs with his tail. They retreated a few steps, and Arden took the opportunity to use a Cure spell on himself, healing the bruise he'd taken from the club.
"Filthy healer!" one of the thugs spat. "Get him!"
They ran at him, swinging their clubs. This time they meant to kill him, Arden could tell. He spun to one side and stabbed one man in the foot. As the man stumbled, Arden ripped his club out of his hand and used it against the other thug. A few light raps of the metal-studded club on the head and the thug was out cold.
"How dare you!" the merchant shrieked from his hiding place behind his cart. "You friend of filth and scum! You're never welcome at my cart again!"
Arden didn't grace him with an answer. Carrying the thug's club, he sheathed his sword and pushed through the crowd, headed in the direction the shady young man had taken the woman.
The young man and the woman were waiting a block down, half-hidden behind a shop awning. As Arden approached, the young woman stepped out and extended a hand. "Thank you, sir," she said, as he took her hand. "Nobody in that crowd believed me except you. I don't know why that merchant treated me that way. Is it because I'm from Ala Mhigo?"
"I don't know, ma'am," said Arden, looking into her wide dark eyes. He released her and opened his knapsack. "Here," he said, handing her the amount of gil the merchant had taken from her. "Buy your children a good dinner. But not from that man."
The woman's eyes filled with tears. "The exact amount! So you really did see…?"
Arden nodded. He didn't know how to explain that he'd seen her memories. It was enough to let her believe that he had seen the truth.
The woman hurried away, leaving Arden with the shady young man.
"Looks like you can handle yourself," said the young man, nodding at the club Arden still carried. "I'm Thancred Waters, an associate of Minfilia's."
"How thoughtful of you to clarify," Arden said. "I suppose you're having second thoughts about mugging me."
"I'm not going to…" Thancred trailed off and laughed. "Look, it's a long way to Vesper Bay, and it's already late. Spend the night at my place and I'll take you out there in the morning."
"Why Vesper Bay?" Arden asked. "That's all the way out on the seacoast."
"Because that's the headquarters of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn," said Thancred in an undertone. "Minfilia and the rest live out there. Ul'dah's politics got a little too hot for them to remain in the city."
"I have work tomorrow," said Arden. "I can't just skive off for a whole day."
Thancred folded his arms and drummed his fingers on his arm, as if counting up. "When is your next day off?"
"I don't know, seeing as I just started today," said Arden. "Not sure I trust you enough to follow you home."
"If you were a pretty girl, you might have cause to worry," said Thancred with a wink. "But since you're not, you're welcome to crash on my couch for the night. Believe me, you don't want to spend the night on the city streets."
Arden gazed into Thancred's eyes, trying to trigger another vision, as he had with the accused woman. If he could see into this man's memories, he'd know whether he was trustworthy. But the Echo refused to work a second time. Or perhaps Thancred's defenses were too high. Thancred smiled a little and tossed his fair hair out of his eyes, waiting for an answer.
Arden glanced around at the busy, noisy street. The sun had set, lamps were coming on everywhere, and the street was even more crowded than it had been by day. He had no place to stay, as he had gone from the airship landing straight to the healer's guild. As Thancred has said, this city would not be hospitable to a lone Auri adrift on the streets.
"All right," said Arden at last. "Lead me to your home. Tomorrow I'll find out my schedule and we'll determine when to make a trip to Vesper Bay."
