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Hien was painfully aware of the fact that he owed the Warrior of Light favours. Many of them, even: her significant role in the liberation of Doma must have counted for at least ten alone, even if one was surely rendered null by him graciously not slicing her evil little cat-fox in twain when it tried to chew apart his topknot for the seventh time that sennight.
From the few informal conversations he had held with Eorzean Alliance members, he gathered that this state of immense debt was rather common. A war ended in Ishgard and averted in Limsa Lominsa, a merchants' conspiracy torn apart in Ul'dah, three independent primals laid low under the verdant boughs of the Black Shroud. Lyse counted herself a Scion before taking a position of power in Ala Mhigo, and she and Commander Aldynn had only the highest respect for their friend.
Yet for all the political weight her actions had lent her, she hardly ever made use of it. In the last Alliance meeting they were both present for, Akentriss was content to sit on the sidelines; she didn't say a word until Thancred collapsed, observing the proceedings with a blank-faced focus that reminded him of Yugiri.
Typically, she also sent word in advance on her formal visits and arrived for them at a reasonable time. Hence why he was surprised to find her pacing in the Kienkan barely half a bell past midnight, the horrible glowing cat-fox doing its best to gnaw through the base of an unlit lamp.
Adjusting his plain yukata (the closest piece of clothing to hand when the thoroughly-discomfited guardsman woke him, nervously explaining that the Warrior of Light had demanded an audience as soon as possible) he drawled, "I would hope that whatever tidings you carry would be worth the hour in which they are delivered."
Startled out of her thoughts, Akentriss whirled to face him, one hand flying to the sash he knew concealed an assortment of sharpened weaponry. She looked, to be frank, like a herd of dzo had chased her the length of the Steppe - darkened pits filled the twin valleys beneath her eyes, tangled hair hanging loose instead of tied up out of the way, and her left arm was tightly bandaged in place of a missing purple bracer - but her eyes held that selfsame glint of terrifying, incomparable resolve he once bore witness to during the Naadam. I see now why the night guards were afraid to bar her path.
When she caught sight of him, however, she abruptly slumped back out of a halfway combat stance. "Oh. No, unless you want to hear about Jim and Akebono."
"I do not," he swiftly decided, vaguely remembering ominous rumours which made their way west alongside Hingan trading vessels. "Then why, pray tell, are we conversing ere the first bell?"
"Because I need your help. Now."
Unfortunately for his sleep schedule, the stony set of her face implied that now meant right this second. After taking a moment to consider all the reasons he might refuse (her cat-fox was currently eating his furniture, it was the middle of the night, et cetera.) and those in favour of lending her his assistance (he was, as ever, insolvent in the face of the debts he owed her), he sighed, "Very well. Allow me a quarter-bell to dress and retrieve my blade, and then you can explain yourself as we ride."
After the Garleans were fully expelled from Yanxia, there was no need for Castrum Fluminis to be preserved. The wobbly spire still blighted the horizon, though the process of inevitable disrepair and concerted scavenging had marred its figure despite the scant moons that had passed since the liberation. The main doors were blasted wide and the interior raided long before their arrival, leaving the two to pick their way over the rubble of imperial might.
She had dissolved the accursed cat-fox into emerald mist upon their arrival, a flash of light and the burst of blazing ignition heralding her change into Allagan mage's attire. Vaulting over some manner of magitek corpse, he mused, "Are you afraid of the dark, Akentriss? I fail to think of any other reason why one of your stature would require assistance exploring a ruin as simple as this."
The jab failed to find its mark in her stiff back, though her fire demon crackled in displeasure as it bobbed ahead to light the way. "Or do you perchance fear the ghosts of Garlemald? 'Tis certain that my scouts assigned to watch the area report rumours of-"
"Stop it, Shun."
"-wraiths wandering the wreckage. The more fanciful tales even hearken to Yotsuyu's vengeful shade, her pale face a thespian's mask against the shadows of the new moon-"
"Shun."
"-and robes stained a bloody crimson from the Warrior of Light's assault," he persisted, a grin stretching ever wider. "Why, one of the Auri shinobi felt eyes upon her as she walked these halls, filled with gratitude for the ivory scales which marked her as not she for whom the shade held deepest fury-"
"Hien."
It was the use of his name - his real name, not the mocking childhood moniker she refused to relinquish to the past, which she had never once used in his presence before tonight - that truly stopped him in his tracks. The demon's flickering light danced shadows through the air, rendering him unable to truly see her expression in the sudden spate of silence, and so he was forced to ask, "Is something amiss? Your usual sparkling wit appears to have been left behind in Eorzea."
Crystalline limbal rings turned towards him, their brilliant glow the only consistent indicator of Akentriss' location. A quiet admission of, "I'd like to get this over with, please," whispered through the air, then the blue bands vanished in favour of the rhythmic slap of leather sandals on metal.
Quickly catching up, he tried to think of what might be causing the discrepancy: the economy of speech was rather typical, if uncommon in their one-on-one debates, but her overall impression of disorderly dullness was not. The race to find a cure for the ailing Archons likely served as a source of stress, as did intrepid Alphinaud's sojourn to Garlemald; Lyse had spoke to him of a beast named Omega that swallowed up the more combative Scions' time and energy for suns on end, but none of those indicated a reason for her to drag him out here at this bell of the night.
Narrowly avoiding a strut that buckled outwards across the doorway, Hien ducked through and into a sudden glare that scattered dark spots across his vision. Blinking them away, he laid eyes once more upon the central chamber of Castrum Fluminis, floodlights illuminating the area from above-
And glinting off the gilding of Akentriss' summoner's attire, as she returned to the site of a primal's birth and demise.
Now, despite his best efforts, Hien knew something of her favoured art. He understood that her manifestations each had different strengths and properties, justifying the need for more than one type, as well as the fact that they were far safer to bystanders than a true primal (courtesy of a lecture that came off as very well-practiced) despite being wholly formed from the essence of one. Nonetheless, a sense of dread guided his hand to Kiku-ichimonji's hilt, jogging up the suspended stairs to reach a platform scattered with the pristine feathers of the dead.
The Warrior of Light held one in her hand now, thumb brushing along the vane in a clear, unnatural note. Where she knelt, she could not see Hien's knuckles turn white as he said, "I hope you don't plan something foolish, Akentriss."
"All my plans are foolish to one degree or another." The reply was hazy, unfocussed. The demon traced lazy circles high above, watching for any possible interlopers. "That's why I brought you."
"To stop you?"
"To help me. I would ask Mhitra and Wolf, normally, but the journey from Eorzea is far too long to make for a single ritual that may not even succeed."
To think he had held out hope of being wrong. "I do not doubt your capabilities, but do you truly think it prudent to add Tsukuyomi of all entities to your menagerie of familiars?"
No response was forthcoming, his companion wholly intent on the matter at hand. Akentriss' grimoire was laid flat in the exact center of the platform, open to a page blank aside from a remarkably-accurate sketch of Tsukuyomi's summoning mirror and five lines of looping script - a tanka, if he counted the syllables correctly - written in neat Eorzean Common. Her eyes were faintly glazed, staring down at the words of ivory flowers and half-shadowed moons, and her fingers twitched where they were loosely curled around one of her kunai.
They were a gift, mostly for her role in Doma's liberation but partially because the nature of their relationship made it difficult to convey genuine appreciation. (That damnable cat-fox did not help matters, snarling up a storm whenever he came within ten fulms of its mistress.) Despite being unused to Ala Mhigan chromite and torreya, the shinobi smiths produced twin works of art, black and silver fading into gold as the blade met the ornate guard.
Originally, the hilts were unadorned, no leather or cloth to separate hand from metal. Now, it was different: tattered lengths of fabric had been wrapped around them from pommel to guard, dyed in violet and ebony patterns that rippled and shifted like dancing starfields above a moonless sea. Like the blackened tides, like a queen's regalia, a complementary accessory to split-monochrome skin.
When she shifted her grip, the weapon came alight; motes of light swirled lazily in pink and ivory white, the favoured colours of innocent girls.
Above, the floodlights sparked, their illumination threatening to flicker and fail. The shadows swelled deeper, each feather a feeble pool of moonlight in the creeping dark. Into the silence, Akentriss asked, "Did I tell you why I was kind to Tsuyu?"
"I do not believe so, no." He distinctly remembered the occurrence - her supervision far more blatant and far less cautious than Yugiri's, patiently answering questions and explaining Doman childrens' games to allow Gosetsu his periods of peaceful solitude - but they never honestly spoke of her interest in the amnesiac former viceroy.
The corner of her mouth twitched, twisting up and down without settling on a singular emotion. "That was me, once. But I arrived somewhere where even the concept of Xaela was near enough unknown, and was met with an abundance of friendly faces. She wasn't and didn't."
(Before the Naadam, he thought her conduct that of a girl who failed to live up to the tall tales cloaking her deeds: nigh-mute and clinging to Lyse's side, anxious and skittish in contrast to every other Xaela on the Steppe. She routed him in the hunting game but lost their one-on-one match later on, dropping her guard in a manner more befitting a child than the Warrior of Light.)
(You will be honour-bound to divulge one of your darkest secrets, they'd agreed. So she explained her crippled memory, only extending three years past; their inability to trace her obscured history with no clan or colours for reference, the lack of recognition as Reunion's residents failed to tell them anything useful.)
Hien was ready and willing to condemn Tsuyu for Yotsuyu's atrocities, and would have taken her head in retribution if not for Gosetsu's plea. Akentriss watched in silence, and proceeded to vanish from his sight alone for sennights.
Carefully, he said, "You worry about the ghosts in your shadow."
"Among others. And I thought that, perhaps..." Akentriss sighed, shoving her kunai back into its sheath. "As agreed, it's foolish."
He outright scoffed at that. "Are you about to tell me that I trudged across the Glittering Basin instead of resting for no purpose?" Reaching for a sudden burst of levity, he added, "'Twas my understanding that one as noble and mighty as the Warrior of Light would be uninterested in simply giving up."
For a brief moment, her eyes widened, and he worried that he made the wrong choice, but surprise quickly melted away into a frown. "Fine, then," she retorted, pushing herself to her feet. "If the warrior-king of Doma, that peerful swordsman, a high-handed and gracious lord-"
"Really."
"-longs for the peace of nap time," she continued, the faintest flash of mirth lurking around her lips, "then we can try the ritual and go home if it fails."
Were he less grateful for the familiar rhetoric, he would have mustered more insults. As it was, he only shrugged loosely, pointing out, "You are still yet to explain my role in all this, Akentriss, despite me asking before we left the Kienkan."
"Oh, right." Snatching her grimoire off the floor, she began, "In addition to egi, you've witnessed my command of Demi-Bahamut, yes?" Receiving a bemused nod, she tapped her knuckles to her right eye. "I can form a manifestation using the essence of any primal I've been personally present for the death of - usually because I killed them - with weaker ones forming stable egi and stronger ones only controllable through limited trances. Tsukuyomi is one of them, and Castrum Fluminis is replete with the polarised aether required to perform the process."
"Despite her strength, Tsukuyomi's summoning itself lacked power, with Yotsuyu's own emotions and drive providing the real focal point." Her voice was matter-of-fact, but the sharp edges of her grimoire dug hard into the crooks of her elbows. "The ritual could go either way. If it becomes an Austerities, then I'll need your help with the ensuing battle; if it doesn't, I'll likely pass out and need to be carried back to the enclave."
"I see." The thought of a spell so taxing as to render Akentriss unconscious from a single cast was daunting, to say the least. "Why, then, are we here instead of a locale like the Isle of Zekki? Surely there are more certain essences you could utilise."
"Yes, but..." she trailed off, feathers chiming with every shift of her weight. "There are primals that I'm never going to try and distill into summons, for personal reasons. Shiva, Alexander. Thordan."
The last name rang a bell in Hien's mind, though he couldn't place how or from where. "And Tsukuyomi is not one of them?"
"She was , but-" Akentriss cursed under her breath, roughly rubbing a hand along her horn, "-I'm not explaining this right. Suffice to say, my single reason to try outweighs my many reasons not to, and since tonight is both a quarter-phase and the bridge between the last day of an Umbral Moon and the first day of an Astral Moon it's the best alignment of circumstances I'll have for a long time. The details can wait." Glancing over to him, she finished, "Is that okay?"
A now-or-never situation, then. Hien gave her request the thought it was due, then unsheathed Kiku-ichimonji and tapped the tip against the platform. "I assume, Triss, that I will know which event is occurring on sight?"
"Trust me, it's obvious." Then she registered what he had actually said , and briefly boggled before blurting out, "Did you-"
"You conceded first, didn't you?" he grinned, moving into the opening position of his favourite warm-up. "'Tis a one for one basis, Akentriss, so I would not grow used to it."
With that, her expression turned to a true smile at last. "Of course, Shun."
The inner chamber of Castrum Fluminis was rent at all angles from the battle it bore witness to last, the platform scarred with dents and tears and the walls pitted and buckled. In one place, near the ceiling, a particularly powerful blow had struck clean through layers of steel and wires to lay bare the open sky, an expanse of black studded with stars and an expanse of white stone that loomed large and near.
The perigee moon found its entrance through that crack during their conversation, descending to pool in a gleaming pillar and defy the surrounding black. As Hien readied for what was to come, Akentriss stepped into the light and readied herself to begin.