This is the beginning of a story to accompany a fresh Warrior of Light, my au ra girl Hisakine Kesshoumotsu. Consider this part a prologue leading Hisakine from Othard to Eorzea. There are probably some lore and location mistakes, but I felt the need to explain an au ra arriving in Eorzea before the race was officially introduced in Heavensward.
There shouldn't really be any spoilers, unless you count mentions of locations and events that occur before FFXIV. There will, obviously, be spoilers in future chapters/episodes as we reach the relevant plot points. Speaking personally, I've only reached about Level 58 MSQ on my main WoL, so there's a ton that I still don't know myself. Here's hoping that I accidentally foreshadow some things along the way.
If you're interested beyond this written story, I will also be streaming Hisakine's experiences starting tonight on Twitch as a way to enjoy the Dawntrail graphics update, where I'll also be thinking out loud about story beats and ideas and preparing future installments.
Thank you for reading!
Hisakine Kesshoumotsu forsook her identity the moment the glamour was cast. Piece by piece, everything that made her who she was faded away into a bland nothingness. Her horns were the first to go, no longer jutting past the back of her head, and in their place small pieces of flesh formed. Ears. Without points. Next, her tail faded from view. The prongs, both at its base and its tip, dissolved into the air as if they had never existed, and then the length of her tail seemed to shrink until there was nothing left at all. Hisakine felt unsteady. Off-balance. But her face remained stoic even though her eyes wavered. She could not see her own eyes, their surface beginning to glaze beneath a thin layer of tears, but soon the limbal rings dulled as the lilac of her irises spread over and replaced them.
Losing her scales let the first tear escape from the prison of her eyes. Her cheeks, forehead, and neck became soft. Became flesh. How could she bear the thought of another au ra looking at her featureless face? She wrapped her arms around herself in a soothing motion, but the act only released more of the tears that she was struggling to contain. Her arms were soft. They had never been soft. No au ra's arms should ever be soft. At least her hips and calves were covered, hidden from view, although her skirt and boots no longer fit right. They pressed hard against her flesh.
Her. Flesh. Not even the most battle-scarred of her Raen kin would have to bear this sensation. Perhaps, somewhere in the Azim Steppe, there might be a Xaela who understood. They still sought conflict instead of waiting for battle to come to them. Perhaps one of them was so horribly scarred as Hisakine felt now. And perhaps that had been the mistake of Hisakine's people. Was peace only temporary?
No, she thought to herself. The peacemakers are the most blessed of the Dawn Father's children. Reciting scripture brought some comfort. Faith was what had persuaded her to accept the matriarch's call to sacrifice her identity.Your task is assigned by the Dawn Father, they had told her. It was a great honor, one that would secure safety for her people in these troubled times.
Treasure hope in your heart, another had said, a gentle piece of advice meant to center her in her journey but did nothing to console her in this moment. Every kind word, every memory, every belief she had held since childhood felt as elusive as the parts of herself that were dissolving into the air like smoke. It was impossible to concentrate on why she was here when everything was being taken from her. All she could do was to repeat the name of her goal. Whether she spoke it aloud or only in her own mind, she didn't know. But she repeated the foreign name, a strange place on the opposite side of the world: Eorzea.
Doubt crept into Hisakine's heart as she traveled, a strange feeling for someone whose life had been so cheerful and simple until her calling. The waters of Othard, ordinarily a deep and rich blue, reflected a stranger's face. But the glamour that had stolen her appearance was only the beginning of her troubles. Traveling alone was both a mercy and a burden. Hisakine did her best to forget that the matriarchs had witnessed the change to her appearance. If anyone else she knew saw her now, it would reopen that wound in her heart. But traveling by herself was also unbearably lonely, especially meeting so many strangers who assumed she was the hyur she appeared to be.
At first, she walked with some of them. But secrecy about her identity and her upbringing created a wall that could not be overcome. Hisakine was a strange name for a hyur, although some hyur did have odd names. Perhaps one of her parents had been auri. Perhaps she had simply not inherited scales or horns or limbal rings. It was easier to let her travel companions form their own, often incorrect, assumptions. Conversation would quickly dry up. Questions were too easy to ask in return, and when one person isn't willing to answer them or says too little, it creates an air of discomfort.
Hisakine—who quickly began giving different, more hyurian, names—would inevitably excuse herself to take a side road or to scour the countryside for wild game. Only once did a travel companion offer to go with her, but the pained expression on her face must have conveyed her discomfort. It's not you, she wished she could say. But the upbeat and sociable girl she had once been was at a loss for words for the first time in her life.
That had been why she had been chosen for this task, she assumed. Her village was remote. That was the word one traveler had used to refer to the auri settlements. He had been a talkative one, and polite too, not put off by Hisakine's pervasive silence. Even though she thought he meant no harm, remote felt like a dirty word. Something about it sounded dismissive by its very nature. The man had been a peddler of some sort, lucky to be alive or so he said, and glad for the company and the offer of a meal. Hisakine had offered jerky, nuts, and berries with the hope that food would alleviate the discomfort of her silence. The offer of food had began as a friendly gesture to her first travel companion, a woman who seemed especially put off by Hisakine's demeanor, but the warmth that that woman expressed after receiving food taught a lesson that Hisakine would never forget. Generosity was always welcome and met with gratitude. The peddler had been gaunt when Hisakine met him, and she heard the respect in his voice when he spoke of auri settlements and their fairness when he traded with them. Most of the tribes were fair, at least. Apparently the last tribe he had met, a Xaela tribe of course, had chased him away and stolen his goods. The story fit too well with everything Hisakine had been taught of the Dusk Mother's children.
Remote. The peddler preferred life in the cities. Villages like Hisakine's were as far from the cities as one could get without traveling the seas and oceans. A part of her felt guilty that she could not forgive the peddler for that single word. He had been talkative in spite of her silence after all. He had told her about Rabanastre, the Desert Sapphire of Dalmasca, with descriptions that sounded impossible. He had been raised there, and he had grown to adulthood and began his travels long before its destruction at the hand of the Garlean Empire. Whenever he mentioned the empire, he would spit. The Domans fought the Empire now, he said, an act of rebellion that he prayed would succeed but feared would end the same as Dalmasca's. The picture the man painted of the world was bleak. The Garlean Empire sought to consume or destroy every nation, every people, every freedom.
"How do I secure travel to Aldenard?" she asked. He was the only traveler she had dared to ask the question to.
The peddler let out a long whistle. "Do you prefer a knife in the back or a sword through the gut? Pick your poison: pirates or the empire." He spat. Then, seeming to think his answer called for more, he spat again.
Hisakine chose the Garlean Empire. She had no skill in deception, but there was always a need for willing workers, especially with the Doman rebellion stretching men and resources, and more than one of the Garleans was willing to leer at her while she worked. She was a pretty hyur, apparently. Either that or hyuran men liked soft features and squishy bodies. But not too squishy, it seemed, when she compared the treatment she received to that of the heavier set women. Part of it made sense. After all, scales and horns and bones were immovable. Flesh yielded too easily. So it was sensible that hyur, having only bones and flesh, relied on their bones to decide what was attractive. Yet at the same time Hisakine—now going by the hyur name Lisa—felt both pity and a hint of envy for the fleshier hyur women. Often they were found undesirable for their appearance. And at the same time, Hisakine wished she had just a bit more flesh to let the mens' eyes slide past her. She wouldn't have been able to handle it, she knew. Her lack of scales left her uncomfortable in her own skin, and that discomfort had not faded in the weeks since her glamour. But perhaps it would have made her escape in Radz-at-Han easier.
She was not the first refugee to take advantage of the Thavnairan neutrality in the conflict with Garlemald. As long as there was no thievery, the Garleans' schedules were more important than one missing deckhand. So Hisakine traded her position on a Garlean trade ship for a similar position on a Thavnairan ship. Memories of her time in Valnain and Radz-at-Han blurred together by the time Hisakine set foot on the docks at Limsa Lominsa.
The salty air tasted sour, somehow, and the reek of fish tested Hisakine's stomach, but she told herself that this was the smell of freedom. It was quieter than Valnain, not nearly so disciplined as a part of the Empire, but it wasn't so loud as Radz-at-han. The Bulwark towered overhead like a small mountain, the first constant since leaving her home, and its presence made navigating Limsa Lominsa easier than the other cities she had been to.
Most importantly, she had successfully arrived in Aldenard, on the island of Vylbrand. This was one of nations of Eorzea. This was where she had been sent.
A part of her felt the deepest relief, and for one long, drawn out moment, Hisakine felt as lighthearted as she had before she had been glamoured. Her mission had been simple: go to Eorzea. But the matriarchs had not told her what she would do once she arrived. You will find your path, they had said. The words were cryptic. Unhelpful. At first, all that Hisakine found was an understanding for the glamour. There were not a single au ra here besides her, unless they were glamoured too. For the first few weeks in Limsa Lominsa she entertained the idea that she might find one of her own, an older sister or brother who might have found peace with the idea of looking too soft. Everyone was soft here. Hyur, roegadyn, lalafell, miqo'te. The cat people were especially strange with their furry ears. But they did have tails. Long, fleshy tails that seemed to wag at times. Would I feel more comfortable if I had been glamoured to look like one of them? Hisakine wondered.
She continued to use the name Lisa. And few in Limsa Lominsa pried about her past. It was almost unsettling that she missed those first travel companions in Othard. They had inquired about her out of innocent curiosity. These Lominsans, on the other hand, only inquired if it would benefit them or they thought they could deceive her.
One did deceive her, early on. Whether he was a pirate or not she couldn't say—Limsa Lominsa was apparently full of pirates and scoundrels—but he had been keen enough to pick up on her sense of generosity, and she had been foolish enough to give him every gil she had left. It was not a large sum. Little was left after securing travel from Radz-at-Han. But a few dozen gil was all she had, and rooms at the inn were not cheap. So she left, both out of necessity to find cheaper accommodations and also to put the bad experience behind her so that it would not dampen her spirits.
She did not go far, however. Vylbrand was only one part of Eorzea, one island despite its size, and Hisakine was no closer to discovering why she had been sent to this strange land. The Moraby Drydocks had a need for workers, loading and unloading goods that flowed in and out of a port that was smaller than the capital's. It was fair work that paid decently, and it was not so different here to how it had been in Valnain or Radz-at-Han.
During her time in the Moraby Drydocks, she learned about Nymeia, the Eorzean Goddess of Fate. Nymeia wasn't one of the kami, but despite being a false god, something about Nymeia resonated with Hisakine. The idea of life as a woven tapestry was beautiful. And the emphasis on water, on Nymeia's control of water, was a reminder of the ocean she had crossed and the waters back home. Hisakine's reflection was still that of a stranger's, and there were times where her reflection in a mirror or window would leave the sensation that someone was following her, but as long as she didn't look directly into the clear waters she could close her eyes and almost feel like she wasn't on the opposite side of the world from home.
Moreover, she had not found her purpose in coming to Eorzea. Treasure hope in your heart. She didn't know why those were the words that stuck with her, quietly uttered by one of the matriarchs that had been present during her glamouring, but she felt more at peace here on Eorzean soil than she had since leaving her home. Her scales were still missing, and her lack of tail kept her permanently off-balance, but she had found a rhythm to life here.
However, her mission was more important than stability. So she boarded a ferry to Vesper Bay. Ul'dah was much warmer than Limsa Lominsa, having a climate much closer to Othard's, but it was not so welcoming as its sister state had been. Refugees surrounded its capital, and Hisakine found herself being treated no better than those who had been displaced by the Calamity.
There had been plenty of talk about it during her time in Limsa Lominsa, but here in Ul'dah she saw the Calamity's long lasting consequences. A few years ago, somewhere to the north, just beyond the borders of Ul'dah, the Garlean Empire had called down the moon Dalamud in their war effort to dominate Eorzea. The very idea was mad. How could any military be powerful enough to call down one of the moons to fight for them?
Hisakine's time in Ul'dah's capital was brief, but one experience she carried with her was seeing a beautiful dress on display outside of Sunsilk Tapestries. It would not be practical to wear, completely unsuited to travel or hunting or any task that Hisakine could think of. But it was beautiful. Her only critique was its color: the blue was just a bit too dark. She forgave this fact when she heard one of the salesmen refer to it as Othard Blue. The salesman was right, in a way. When twilight began to settle, the ocean back home did become that dark shade of blue.
It was the only time she set foot so deep into Ul'dah. Her kind—the poor and impoverished—were tolerated only on the outskirts. Frivolous dresses and other finery were reserved for those who belonged in Ul'dah. The idea was repulsive. But the dress lived in Hisakine's mind when she closed her eyes. Perhaps Nymeia would bless her with an opportunity, just once in her life, to wear something like that. Surely the Weaver would want everyone to enjoy her creations.
Ul'dah's warm climate gave way to a more temperate one as Hisakine traveled northeast. She would miss the heat, but so far all she had found in Eorzea were self-interested people and the downtrodden. There were some honest ones, she knew. She had met some in Limsa Lominsa and worked alongside others in the Moraby Drydocks. And she recognized the same look in Ul'dah, the faces of people who worked day in and day out to live modest lives. But the suffering of others was what stuck with her. She had chosen to accept her burden, her glamour, to forsake her identity. The people she met and passed by here had not chosen the difficulties in their lives. The people who could alleviate that suffering chose to do nothing, so far as she could tell.
Perhaps Gridania would be different. Perhaps there she would find not only her purpose but also people who sincerely cared to help others. Perhaps she would find a land people free from the burden of the Garlean Empire whose hearts were willing to help and build each other up.