Chapter Text
Ul'dah, "Jewel of Thanalan", in the late morning light. The warm scent of sun on stone; atop it, myriad layered odours wafting from the stalls of street vendors beyond count, their wares fragrant and sharp - and there, just at the edge of perception, a faint hint of animal dung carried in by the wind from the shanties just outside the city walls. At the gates, a lone traveller lingered: watchful, liminal. Thronging the streets before her were more people than she could remember seeing in one place, at one time, in all her life; a flood of features and colours that would have been overwhelming were it not for its latent anonymity. As it was, the surge of the crowd was both alienating, and comforting. The dissonance was familiar to her.
Strange dreams had mocked her, as she'd dozed uneasily in the cart shambling up the pocked roads to the city. Intimations of power, of great deeds, of herself wreathed in puissant fire and ice like some figure out of legend. Sleep came silent and colourless to her most nights, and the vivid vision lingered in her mind like a whisper of prophecy, insistent and...irritating. Self indulgent whimsy; absurd, and nothing she could afford to dwell on. Grimly, she closed her mind to it. No, she had meant what she said to the peddler who'd kept her company on the road. She'd not come here for glory, nor fame, nor any of the usual reasons that brought smallfolk to the city - least of all to be a bloody hero. There were none less suited. In truth, she wasn’t sure what she had come for, besides the fact that, putting one foot in front of the other, her road had led her here. There hadn’t been much need to think beyond that, until now. But she'd come this far, somehow, and here she stood at the threshold. If she meant to keep moving forward - if she meant to live - she would need to make a choice.
Simple. Straightforward.
A man lingering near the gates called out to her. He was bluff and friendly enough, but his eyes were concealed by lenses, dusty and dark. She answered his questions without inflection. Watch. Take their measure. Give nothing away. Clearly he was seeking a likely mark among newcomers, but whether put off by her greater stature, or unnerved by the coldness of her gaze, his demeanour shifted. For a seasoned player, his read of her was transparent enough: not young enough to be dazzled into misadventure; not naïve enough to be easily relieved of her purse, if she had one; not pretty enough to talk into a tumble. Not worth his time. She snorted; smirked.
Instead, with a sweep of his arm, he directed her across the concourse to the Adventurer’s Guild. What he had to gain by such a gesture, she didn't know. Some racket or other, no doubt. But she'd come this far, somehow, and had nothing to lose. No looking back. Armed with suspicion, she crossed the street and slipped through the door. It was as good a choice as any.
It was simple. Straightforward.
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Lingering near the entrance, just far enough from the doorway to be inconspicuous, she watched - taking measure, giving nothing away. The Quicksands, home of the Adventurer's Guild of Ul'dah, famed and infamed in tale and tome. Only an inn, much like any other, although well appointed, with rich, dark wood furnishings and even, finely cut stone floors. Wealth in the very bones of the place that was recognisable enough even to one such as her, more accustomed to the back of a wagon or a ragged, leaking tent. At the rear, a bar; stairs leading to rooms on the upper floors; administrative desks tucked efficiently in corners and alcoves. The place was busy, even at this early hour. A few green-gilled customers leaned at the bar, easing hangovers by the most obvious route - but it was the gathering across the room, swelling with every swing of the door, whereby the establishment revealed its true nature. Jostled abruptly by one of their number passing by with leaking ale in hand - frowning as they called some careless insincerity over their shoulder at her - she gritted her teeth, and moved away from the encroachment.
Clustered about a message board, it's surface pocked with holes, broken pins, and the faded remnants of unregarded billets, the crowd of likely patrons stood shifting and murmuring in obvious anticipation. As she watched, a lalafellin youth dragged a stepladder towards it with studied world-weariness. Shooing the mixed crowd of adventurers aside, he sprung up, pinning a handful of missives seemingly at random across the board, hiding the new amongst the old. His task complete, he made his way back down the steps with excruciating slowness, baiting the waiting crowd to the utmost. It was clearly an old dance, though, and he was wise to their limits. The moment his feet touched the floor, he shouldered the ladder and beat a hasty retreat before being swallowed by the ensuing crush of bodies, each eager to claim the most lucrative jobs, or those like to win the most renown.
Repositioned behind a pillar at the far edge of the room, she studied them. Students of the axe and blade, the bow, the fist. Conjurers in their whites, designed to catch the eye of any looking to recruit a healer. Practitioners of arcane and thaumaturgical arts she'd never even heard of, in fine robes and near-rags both. Most sported only the most basic of equipment, likely bought at the market just outside in the not-too-distant past - although some carried far more impressive weapons; enchanted, obviously storied. Common to them all, though, was the swell of camaraderies, of rivalries, connections years and moments old. An intangible excitement; a sense of shared purpose, of community, more intoxicating than anything served at the bar. It was both alluring, and utterly repugnant. The dissonance was familiar to her.
Pitiful, she thought. Whether she meant the bantering crowd, or her own contradictory self, even she couldn't say. But the threshold had already been crossed, her choice already made. No looking back. One foot in front of the other.
Simple. Straightforward.
The proprietress, a woman called Momodi, greeted her with a degree of warmth that took her by surprise. She had expected something of a more hard-bitten introduction; taunts, mockery, a verbal trial of some sort to prove her skin thick enough for words if not for blades, fit for the job - she had not expected friendliness. Maybe that was the trial itself. Initial pleasantries concluded, the woman's manner shifted to one of businesslike efficiency, pushing the guild register towards her with scant words of explanation. Few people made it as far as this desk without knowing what they were getting into, it would seem - or having no choice but to get into it. She thought again of the grifter at the gate - perhaps he had been her first judge after all - but it didn't matter now. One foot in front of the other. No looking back.
‘Right, then.' Smiling brightly up at her, the woman slid an inkpot across the desk, quill resting within. 'Sign here, or if you’ve not got your letters, just make your mark; makes no difference to us.’
She froze. She looked back.
The last time she’d signed her name in a ledger: at the docks in Old Sharlayan, not long having reached her full height, a woman grown who felt it not one whit. There by means only her uncle knew for sure; an old favour, some odious bribe or blood debt, no doubt. An innominate duskwight from the roads of the Shroud, no scholarly pedigree or achievements of note, and here to study literature, of all things. Their contempt was plain to her. But her fees were somehow paid, and her studies somehow approved - that favour again, she was sure - so they proffered the record to her, and she committed her name.
Taking a room in the students quarter, cheaply as possible: damp and dark, no aetheric lighting, a small fireplace, a desk, a bed. Keeping to herself, as she ever had; head down, face shadowed, taking pains to go unnoticed, knowing the alternative was only to draw scorn. Her subject unfashionable, her assigned mentor uninterested; seeing no advancement for himself, leaving her to her own designs. The room, the library, the straight path between: silent and solitary, her world.
In her mind, though: the dance. The exhilaration, the exaltation of poesy and prose. The profound, soul-deep satisfaction of mastery over her subject. So much to learn - but she was equal to it. Words leapt at her command; her recollection, flawless; her skill in drawing connections together matched only by her joy in it. Sense in texts that she had never found in people. Cautious of the scholar’s arrogance growing within her; tempered by the awe and respect she had for her subject. Truth was here, in these tales of eld; she would draw it out, perceive the pattern, the weave and weft of story and history, what tales made men, and how, and why. Lived and breathed, her passion, her life.
Months and years of study, of preparation. Then the work itself. “Living through Legends? Mythology, Historical Literature, and the Sociopolitical Discourse of the Age of Communion”. Writing until dawn, sleeping until noon, eating little, bathing less, speaking not at all. It did not matter. The work. Only the work, pursued with ferocious ardour. All that mattered. Walls grown taller, world grown smaller, smaller, smaller still. The work. Only the work. Only the-
Fraying. Unravelling.
Thoughts bleeding, unfocused. Meaning coming unstuck, referents adrift, adrift away, out of reach. Every new idea more important, less coherent than the last. Uncertainty, creeping and cold. Her trusted words, betraying her; all their cleverness become obfuscatory.
Dismay, doubt.
Sleeping half the day and waking exhausted, blood sickened with tension. Constant keening of her mind in her ears, constant ringing of her ears in her mind. Vision sharpened, strained, seeing nothing before her, sensing only low dread, hollowness, fear. Fear, as if for her very life; sourceless, needless, constant, real. Trapped by words on a page. Trapped in the gyre of her own thoughts, never resolving, never completing; the elegant, exhilarating, light-footed dance of idea to theory to connection to revelation broken down, down to an inchoate lurch of half-thought into malformed notion.
Days passing, weeks, months. Unfinished paragraphs trailing into half-sentences, broken off, their message lost. Then words. Solitary. Ideas. Vague, abortive. Desperate attempts to find a way back to meaning, meaningless as soon as written. Staring. Staring, dawn to dusk. Rigid with terror, terror at this inability to think.
Failing. Failing.
The grinding agony of a mind caught in terrible inertia, consciousness reduced to an endless litany: I can't, I can't, I can't. Unaware of exactly what it was that she couldn't, aware only that it was everything.
Failure.
Shame. Numb revulsion. Failure. Failure. The path from her room to the library, burdened with books she could no longer look at, would no longer need. A funereal procession on a dark winter afternoon. Welcoming the cold, the wet; concealment and punishment both. Uneasy entrance, as ever it had been. Hours spent in the place, over years, and not a sliver of recognition from the librarian at the desk. Resentment at their callousness. Acceptance that it was deserved. Wretched failure, abject, fleeing. The ruin of a self unachieved; a self broken, a self flayed, a self - a self - a -
‘Are you alright, love? Having second thoughts? Or just not used to the heat around here?’
Her vision swam. The Guild, the Adventurer's Guild. The Quicksand. Ul'dah. The proprietress was giving her a concerned look.
Give nothing away!. Though reeling, she kept her voice quiet, schooled her face to impassivity as she struggled back to the present, to calm. The best defence, she'd learned. ‘No, no. No second thoughts. Thank you for your welcome, Momodi.’ There was satisfaction in the fact she hadn't cried out, or thrown up, or collapsed to her knees - that was progress. But she'd flinched, enough to be noticed. That wasn't good enough.
‘’Tis a pleasure…’ An expectant pause from the woman, lambent eyes thoughtful, awaiting her name.
‘Zefiris.’ Idiot! "Give nothing away", for fuck's sake! Unsteady yet in the backwash of memory, it was out before she had a thought to conceal it - she was losing control of this interaction, of herself, and she spat inward venom at her own incompetence. But what was there to conceal, after all? Perhaps a handful of people in all of her lifetime had ever called her by her name, and most of them were dead. It was a name only, and meant nothing to anyone.
Wandering, homeless, worthless. Unclear even now, what she'd done after returning to Eorzea, or for how long - weeks, months, years? Years. How old was she? Did it matter? Nothing mattered - there was no 'matter'. Vague images, sense-impressions of dirt under her nails; the low susurrus of a crowded tavern; the weight of cloth bolts across her shoulders, dry and burning. The bleak attenuation of constant, stinking fear. Days of unthinking, unfeeling labour, bed and board, awaken, repeat.
All uncomprehending, why these years of her life were such a blank, sensations more than memories. The headaches she'd suffered since the accident in her youth, that had left her scarred and near-blind in one eye - had they burned it all from her mind, with her all unaware? Or was it the shadow of Carteneau, that had confounded the memories of so many, leaving them unfixed and adrift in their own lives? Had she simply chosen to forget? It didn't matter now. One foot in front of the other.
Clarity came only in the ruined aftermath of the Calamity. Everything changed, then. People everywhere brought low, sundered from their homes, their families, their lives, their pasts. In the stunned silence after the storm, they moved on instinct, to the steps of ages-old ritual: circling together for protection in makeshift camps, turned to settlements. Banded together in privation, against despair, eking out survival with their own rough laws and customs.
In such a place she found herself. Sound of body at the least; hale, and therefore useful. Tasks put in front of her - gather this, fetch that, deliver those, assist here, defend there. There was purpose in those acts; clear use, practicality that required no justification or explanation, that did not need to be analysed, not theorised around… Simple, straightforward.
She did as she was bid; watching, taking measure, giving nothing away. Saw the difference even the smallest of acts had on those she aided. Wary, she made marks on the world, small but sure. Her efforts met with words of kindness - the first to reach her ears since the death of her parents - with gratitude, with relief. Trusting none, she helped regardless. There was nothing vague or insubstantial in this way of life, nothing requiring inquiry…nothing that risked the spiral into madness she knew she could not survive a second time. It was simple. Straightforward.
She cleaved to it, a lifeline. No looking back.
The march of years, and the camps began to unravel, rivalries and petty kingships taking precedence over survival, people moving on to escape, to rebuild. She struck out as one newly wakened from a long and troubled slumber; wary of herself, and the madness that seemed ever a mere errant thought away; wary of others as she had been all her life, but needing them, needing her use to them to walk this way she had found. Mistrustful; altruistic. The dissonance was familiar to her.
Putting one foot in front of the other, her road had led her here.
Taking up the quill, she stared at the ledger. If she put her name to this, as she had on the docks that day…
Oh for fuck's sake. Idiot. The Calamity has come and gone; the world has ended and been reborn since you left that place. No looking back.
Momodi continued, encouraging. ‘Just Zefiris?’
‘Zefiris…' She paused, a wry twist to her brow, and announced a little louder than she intended: 'Winterheart’.
'Winterheart, eh?' The proprietress grinned, eyes alight, as if sharing in some private joke. It was beguiling; it was threatening. The dissonance was- 'Well, you've a warm enough smile for someone with such a frosty name, and ‘tis a good one for strikin' fear into your enemies. You a thaumaturge, by any chance?'
Recalling the dream she'd had in the cart, Zefiris smirked. 'Maybe', she responded quietly. Ridiculous. A great thaumaturge would not, of course, have spontaneously named themselves after the faded branding on a produce storage box that they'd slept beside for sixteen years in their trader parent’s wagon - ‘Winterheart’s Greens’, the first sight to greet her gummed eyes each morning, blurry and indistinct until she reached for her glasses and the letters resolved - but there it was. The absurdity of it pleased her, somehow. No looking back.
Simple. Straightforward.
With a sudden decisive motion, she scratched a cross into the parchment. Momodi gave her a studied look, before breaking once more into that practiced smile. 'There we go, X marks the spot! That's good enough for Momodi.' Taking the ledger back, the woman turned away, jotting the full name down herself in an adjacent column and spreading sand on the ink. ‘Just a tip, though, from one woman of the world to another - if you mean to look like one who can’t scribe, don’t go holding the quill like that - it don’t come so natural to those who’ve never learned.’
Zefiris frowned, and bit back a sigh. Idiot. All her years in the camps no-one had required more of her than a word or two, or a nod. Here, she would be watched, spoken to and questioned by cannier minds then her own. She'd need to become accustomed to conversation, to interaction - she would need to improve her defences, to watch, take their measure, and give nothing away. It had been naïve of her to assume otherwise.
When Momodi turned back to her, however, it was with a smile full of genuine warmth - and something that Zefiris couldn't quite recognise, something like the looks she'd seen pass between sundered comrades reunited around a campfire after years apart; or those exchanged by partnered thieves, ready to spring their marks.
‘Don’t fret. You’re far from the first that's come here to leave a life behind and find a new one, and you’ll not be the last. Make of your name what you will, Zefiris Winterheart, for it’s yours to write, or not, as it please you. Now go, and make your mark out there!’
Momodi pointed to the door, swinging wide, admitting the breath of the city: spice, sun's warmth, and shit.
Simple. Straightforward. With a decisive nod, she did as she was bid: Zefiris turned, putting one foot in front of the other, and followed her road out into Ul’dah, and whatever future awaited.
Chapter 2: Illustrations
Summary:
A series of illustrations to accompany 'Cross'.
Chapter Text
Velnica on Chapter 1 Mon 31 Mar 2025 11:42AM UTC
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SharlayanDropout on Chapter 1 Fri 11 Apr 2025 11:39PM UTC
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