Author's Note: Sorry I am a bit late with this one-was away on holiday. Anyone still reading, please say hi and let me know!
Quel quivered with quiet anticipation like a taut lute-string.
His eyes searched the ocean beyond the airship's rail. He had not been back to Umbar in—how many years was it?
It didn't help that in the different lands he had travelled the seasons passed differently. It was summer in Dokan when it was winter in Umbar and South Frikia and Rakali, and winter when it was summer. And it hadn't been a sure, scorching, sticky summer like an Umbarian one, but a fickler, drier, temperamental sort of half-summer. In parts of Farr it practically felt like it was always summer, and in the Southern Waste it was always winter, some places spending whole 'days' of the year entirely in darkness.
All that had made keeping track of time complicated. It helped that most kingdoms now used the fourteen-month calendar system. And if you remembered the differences in how they counted the years—whether it be the Manolians counting from the year The One created Mid, to the Frikians counting down to the year they believed the great Eater would eventually devour the world, to the Morekemians and Farrians counting from the dates of the founding of their respective nations—it was just about possible to track how long it had been since he had left his homeland.
Eleven years. Nearly one for each of the great Jewels that he had been sent away to gather information about. The year 1873 by the count of his people, who started from the construction of the magnificent Temple to the Maker at Ammil.
How he missed his homeland, almost to the point of a physical ache.
But his long exile was nearly over. Soon he would be home.
This close to it, he allowed to surface the memories he normally fought to keep buried in the depths of his mind for the pain they brought him.
How glorious it would be to stand on the firm, fertile soil of Umbar again, fragrant with scent of heather and honeysuckle, unlike any other soil in the whole of Mid. To hike the hills and climb the mountains again, to run free through the dense, noisy forests brimming with life and colour. To swim in the fast-flowing rivers and resplendent lakes and hidden pools. To set foot in the vast, magnificent stone-walled House of the Maker and offer his song once again there. To be among his people, his tribe, the dark-skinned, deep-thinking Umbarians, the water-shapers, the Sapphire-keepers, the finest music-makers in the whole of Mid. To see again the faces of his adopted parents, Babb and Surj, his brother and sisters Elo, Wass and Drin, and his cousins, and his teachers, and the Chieftain.
To return this time not with his head hung low in disgrace but held high with pride, having fulfilled his mission and redeemed himself.
To maybe even see Quti again; just to see her face, even that would be enough—but no, he must not think like that, he must not even let himself think like that. That song had been sung. It had been eleven years and she was almost certainly married now, and he had no right even to hold out hope, even if he had carried around her memory with him in the secretest part of his heart for eleven long years.
"Land hooooooooo!" a voice ripped through Quel's reverie. The airship's Captain, Master Sagar, the arrogant one whom Quel could barely abide, calling from his place up at the helm.
Hold on—land?!
Quel looked, and his heart thrilled. There, curving through the water below like the green tail of a kraken, was unmistakably the Halean peninsula, gateway to the south of Umbar.
The Wanderlust began to descend, engine groaning as Sagar guided her lower, and the green tail came further into focus as forest.
"Is that Umbar then, Quel?" said the boy Ryn at his side.
Quel had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn't even noticed him approach. "Indeed, Master Ryn. The land of my people."
"So how far is it to the capital from the southern tip?"
Quel's eyes found a brilliant blue thread that worked its way through the leafy green. "Do you see that river? That is the Nozama, the longest river in the world, which runs the length of Umbar. If we follow it, as Master Sagar knows, we will soon reach Ammil, which is built right on the Nozama herself, on both banks."
"What's it like?"
"Words cannot describe, Master Ryn, nor songs do justice. Our watershapers have long since channelled the waters of the Nozama into a network of streams, waterfalls and canals. Canoes and gondolas line them, ferrying people to and fro about their business. Over many years we have coaxed the growth of vines and roots from one side of the river to the other to form living bridges. And at the centre of the city, built from blue stone, stands the Temple to the Maker, the Nozama flowing right through her, making a ceaseless music of praise with her rushing waters."
"Sounds beautiful," said Ryn.
"It is," Quel said. "You shall see."
The boy had the courtesy to leave him be after that, perhaps sensing that the lutist would rather be left to his anticipation than share his attention at this moment.
Sagar brought the ship down further still, in line with the river, so that they could follow its course north to Ammil. It would still be a few hours before they reached her, and they passed agonisingly slowly for Quel as he kept his gaze fixed always on the next section of river just ahead.
It crossed his mind once that it was odd that they encountered no other airships on their flight, nor flew over any boats on the river, but he dismissed the thought. Perhaps it was a feast day and he hadn't realised—he had long since ceased being able to keep track of the liturgical calendar accurately.
At last, in the middle distance the Nozama split into a lattice of canals and the root bridges and blue statues of Amil began to come into view.
Only, something was wrong.
Quel's guts twisted. At this height and in the daytime there should be boats visible on the canals and people moving about on the streets, even if it was a feast day. Maybe the chieftain had declared a solemn day of rest and fasting in respect for some tragedy, and people were inside their homes?
Then Quel noticed the buildings. Many of the stone structures had been demolished and were now mere piles of rubble, and most of those that hadn't bore black scorch marks like the leprous blotches of a dark disease on the face of the city.
Then he realised that there were people in the streets. But they were lying down, not standing up.
Quel's legs nearly gave way. He clutched the rail for support, stomach threatening to empty itself of its contents.
"Take her down, captain!" he managed to yell. "The airfield is on the south-east edge of the city—there by those trees!"
His companions were babbling about something. "Are you sure you want to?" called Sagar. "It looks like—"
"Take her down!" Quel shouted. "Whatever did this is no longer here—the threat has passed!"
He was not sure of that, but he didn't care. Anything to get the bedamned Imfisi to land the ship. He had reached his home at last, but it had been violated and decimated something. He needed to get down there.
Sagar found the airfield, scattered with the remains of a smattering of other airships that had been blown to debris, and brought the Wanderlust in to land in some clear space. Even before it had touched down Quel was leaping over the rail and calling water to slow his fall, the cries of his new companions a distant ringing in his ears.
He hit the ground running in a spray, and hurtled across the airfield. Corpses were strewn about the ground. He knew they were corpses because they didn't move, and some wore smaller versions of the same black scorch marks that marred so many of the buildings.
"No… No…"
He ran into the Street of Stonemasons. More bodies on the ground, most pointing towards the airfield. They had been fleeing towards it. From what? Quel's heart had turned to ice.
He ran down the Street of Silver Stars. Where were the harpists, the viol players, the hand percussionists? They were dead, dead, dead, all of them, lying on the ground in whole or in parts, smashed remnants of their instruments littering the street around them.
"No… No… No…"
The Lutists' Guild had been blown to pieces. Forenz. Jania. Eothasmi.
He ran along Straight Street to the Temple to the Maker. But he never got that far.
It was broken, big slabs of it leaning against each other in the water, which now ran around instead of under them. There was no Temple to the Maker left to run to.
"Animals!" Quel shouted, his voice cracking. "Monsters!" It had been one of the great wonders of Mid.
He ran past the ruin and turned into The Way, through to the bereft streets of the Traders' Quarter to the Street of Unvoiced Longings, the last place he had known her to take residence.
A body lay outside. Quel became dizzy. It looked as though she had been running to get home. She was lying on the floor facing towards her front door, a big black scorch mark all along the back of her dress.
"No…"
He knelt beside her. Her body was stiff. Her eyes were frozen open. He wretched. She had long since begun to stink of death.
The world began to spin. Quel put out a hand to steady himself, to catch onto something, someone, to hold onto, but he couldn't find anything, anyone. He couldn't find a stable point. He fell onto his side, the sky above still spinning all.
Killed. Murdered. Invaded. Wiped out. Gone. All gone. All dead.
His stomach heaved, and he vomited onto the cobbles, bringing up something acid and vile he had eaten that morning, and the stench of it was so foul in his nostrils he heaved again, and now he was crying, he knew because there were tears in the vomit too, little salt water rivulets in the torrent of sickness, and a flood was bursting from the broken gates in his stomach and behind his eyes and the whole of Mid was spinning and he couldn't find a stable point or an anchor or a rudder or a centre and he had lost them he had lost them and there wasn't a homeland for him to return to anymore and he had lost them all.
The others found him sitting on the ruined steps of the Temple to the Maker.
By now the first great tsunami of grief was spent and Quel was in the lull between the waves ofaftershock, but he knew there would be more to come—many more.
For the moment, though, he sat crossed-legged in calm, cold clarity, though he could not keep himself from trembling a little.
They approached him tentatively, like he was some spooked chocobo they were going to have to try to whisper.
The Efstanish boy was the first to speak.
"Quel…I am so, so sorry."
"Yes, troubadour Quel," said the Manolian. "As am I. All of us…"
Quel diverted the course of his ire, damming up his emotions again, his jaw stiffening.
"Do not apologise, new friends. You are not responsible for this. I think I knew, deep down, what had happened. But I did not let myself acknowledge it. There is a saying, is there not, 'You cannot go home'?"
Ryn sat next to him on the step. "I know a bit of what you're going through," he said. "The Empire destroyed my hometown too, and killed everyone I had ever known."
At that, Quel snapped.
"Don't patronise me!" he shouted at the boy. "You have no idea what I'm going through! You lost, what, your family and your town? My whole people have been slaughtered here! This is a genocide! Our capital city lies in ruins! My whole country has been laid waste by the Empire, you stupid little boy!"
The boy recoiled from him like a struck puppy, looking wounded.
Shame heated Quel's cheeks. It was not in his nature to get angry. It happened so rarely. "I am sorry," he said to Ryn. "I did not mean to lash out at you."
"It's alright," the Manolian said on Ryn's behalf. "You're allowed to be upset. What has happened here is truly atrocious."
That was right. The Manolian had experienced loss at the hands of the Empire, too. All of them had—or almost all of them. But the loss of her whole people? At least she still had a nation to defend.
"What did this?" said the Zerlanese girl, Elrann, who had first recruited him for this wandering collective, as she looked around at the destruction. "Lots of this looks like the work of cannonfire, but not all of it—some of it looks like what princess-girl did to the Imperials back in Farr…"
"But that's not possible," said Nuthea, clutching the Jewel where it hung on the pendant about her neck. "I have the Lightning Crystal. General Vorr only had it for a few days when he infiltrated Orma…"
"Unless he touched some other Imperials with it and despatched them from there," said Ryn. "He could have aligned some of his soldiers to lightning and sent them away to attack the water-aligned Umbarians."
"Perhaps," said the old Ermian, Cid, looking thoroughly worried. "Or it could be that the Empire have found or developed some sort of superweapon, to do this much damage. Emperor Kivvest is cunning and powerful. He is not to be underestimated."
An uneasy quiet fell upon the group. For Quel it was too much. While they had been speaking another wave of grief had been building up inside of him behind its dam. The possibility that the Empire could possess lightning-alignment or a superweapon, the academic discussion of his people's genocide, the reference to 'Umbarians' in the past tense…
The wave crested, and to stop himself bursting into tears or shouting at the others again Quel slung his lute-case round, took out the instrument, and began to play whatever came to him, fingerpicking notes like soft-falling rain, fingers finding the wordless language to express his sorrow. He began to sing over the notes, a new song that came to him now fully-formed.
Take me far, far away
from where my troubles
stalk my nights
and sorrows plague my day;
take me to a place
where I can face my fears
and fight them through
the passing of the years;
transfigure them into
the incandescence of a tale
'fore which my afflictions
all shall fall and fail;
tell me a story that
this secret fire fuels;
tell me the Saga of the Jewels.
The last notes faded away, his grief held back for a few moments longer.
No talking afterwards, no more chatter, just the sound of the waters of the Nozama river flowing ceaselessly around the ruins of the Temple to the Maker, Wonder of Mid, the former holding place of the Tear of Ammil, the Water Sapphire of Umbar.
The others were all looking at him.
"That was beautiful, Quel," said Nuthea at last.
"I know what I must do," Quel realised aloud. The song had crystallised it. "I must retrieve the Water Sapphire for my people in honour of their memory. And I must find if there are any other Umbarians who survived this slaughter or who are left elsewhere in the world of Mid. I will do everything in my power to help all of you to retrieve the Jewels so that the Emperor can be stopped. I will tell you everything I have discovered on my travels about the locations of the other Jewels."
"Thank you," said Ryn simply for the group. Quel would not have allowed him any other response.
"Where?" said the Manolian.
"Not here," said Quel. "I cannot remain here for much longer. There is little left for me here, if anything. I will tell you back at the ship. Let us go there, and I will tell you all I have discovered of the Primeval Jewels."