Three years before Calamity

The keep in the southern part of the Highlands of Coerthas was a decently pleasant place, this time of year, but that actually meant less about the weather and more about the lul of activity in the Crusades. Most of the knights and dragoons assigned to the keep were present, or nearby on patrols, and they had not had a skirmish of any kind in the past few days. An inquisitor had come and gone, leaving the nobility that ran the keep on high alert and the dragoons in a very serious mood, as they took these things very seriously.

Just a knight herself, though a dragoon in training, and not yet grown into the nobility that would require her to pay strict attention to inquisitions, Lyrique Midichant was able to shrug off the staunch air of the crusades. She had a certain air herself, one that was evident in her straight-backed posture, her perfect grooming. The woman was all gleaming red hair and pale skin, blue eyes and red lips smiling. The armor she had to wear was an unsatisfying color, but she wore it as well as could be expected, accessorized with rings and ear-clasps.

The armory was near the stories, and near the Chocobo stables, and she loitered near them since she had no duties to see to at present. Her lance hung on her back casually as she made her way down the hallway and then took a hard, sudden turn into the storeroom, where they kept the food. Supplies weren't always good this far out, but the best would be here, and since her father was in charge of the place it was only right if she took them on her whim.

Wine in casks did not suit her. They came out tasting earthy and artificially thick to her, and Halone knew the tannins would be closed tight, breathless. No, she wanted corked bottles, which she knew her father kept stashed in the back. She would worry about the morality of this habbit if she had not once found a special case of wine with her name on them, along with a note from her mother praising her good sense. The other knights need not know of her extravagance, but because of her parentage, such things were her privelege. And if she did not take them, what right had she to them in the first place?

Lesson learned, the habit had become ritual. Wine and cheese whenever she good, a gesture of manifest destiny over the keep and all in it. Thus it was especially offensive to her when, as she turned to walk towards the back of the room, she thought she heard... breathing? Movement?

An interloper. A lesser knight or servant reaching well beyond their station or rights she was sure. Her fingers tightening on her helmet, her pretty red lips dipping into a scowl, she narrowed her green eyes and barked into the room, "Who goes there? Come out!"

Shelter from the elements. That was what he had looked for. None of the knights had offered aid or succor when they saw him. Everyone here knew him as a nuisance. Half of them even mistook him as a girl. With a name like U'tania and a scrawny frame, the only thing that gave tell-tale of his boyishness were his gentials and his facial markings; the former of which no one saw and the latter of which no one understood. While it wasn't particularly cold yet, it was particularly windy and the boy known as U'tania had no where to hide from it. He was starving and covered in thick dried on blood. If Halone could only have mercy on him. All he had wanted was to fight in her name, to be a dragoon, was it so much to ask? Was a Miq'ote really so much less than an Elezen? He couldn't understand. He had never understood it.

U'tania sat shivering in the back of the food cellar. He hadn't helped himself yet to any food or wine. He was too cold, too shocked to partake in it until his body forced him to. He had eaten in bits and pieces when he stowaway back to Coerthas, and had found himself in the storerooms for the last day. 

His small body shook somewhat violently. Although he was tall, he was thin and now even thinner than before. Perfectly white hair and pale skin stained with dirt and grim and blood. Soft cries and sobs echoed softly through the cellar, and while most knights had ignored it as the wind, Lyrique had not and called out. U'tania thought he might have recognized her voice, but they were all beginning to sound the same to him. He sat still, shivering and crying in the corner of the very back of the cellar.

When she got no immediate response, Lyrique set her helmet on a nearby barrel and loosed her lance from her back. She didn't do this in a thretening or defensive way; she simply set the blunt end of it against the floor, blade over her hit, and held it while looking around and trying to decide what she was hearing. It was no knight, for sure, for none of them would ignore a call like that.

One of the servants then? She took small steps towards the voice. "What? Nothing? I can hear you!" It wasn't just breathing, she decided. Was someone crying? It sounded like a girl, but there were no children in the keep. "If you come out I'll show mercy," she said, trying to make this as easy as possible. She wasn't really excited by the idea of walking right up to a strange person alone in the storeroom. Especially two days after an inquisition.

Lyrique blinked, and her brow furrowed.

The blade of her lance suddenly fell forward, and she growled out, "I'll show you mercy, unless you're an agent of the dragons. Then you're good as skewered!"

Should he come out? That was really the question he was trying to decide. Would she show mercy if he did? Or was it just more lies to make him leave? If he had only abandoned the foolishness in the first place maybe he could have... no. That was ridiculous. He could barely fight himself, much less have fended off a Garlean partrol. Or whatever Garlean force took his family. It was lucky he wasn't there in the first place, else he would be slaughtered with the rest. But his luck didn't feel so lucky right now. Part of him almost wished he had been. 

U'tania grapsed at the small white stone that hung from a cord around his neck. His mother's gem. She said it was very important. And to never loose it. But even the pure white stone was stained in caked on blood. 

After a few moments of continued quiet crying, U'tania weakly crawled out from his small hiding place and to the edge of the light. He sat, still quietly crying.

It took Lyrique several moments to determine what exactly she was seeing, and during this time her lance wavered threateningly before her. When she realized it was a person, and noticed the blood upon him, she flinched back a few steps and pointed the alnce at him once more, very near to him. That was too much blood for a simple injury. That was violence she was seeing upon him.

She took a moment to consider summoning more knights. This deep in the storerooms at this time of day, who would hear her if she called? She would have to step into the hall and shout, giving the person more room, easing off on her threatening posture. Did she have some kind of training the covered this? The person was familiar.

He was familiar. She knew him. But who...? Not someone who belonged here, but not threatening either. A youth. Lyrique noticed the tail and the ears, and she realized, "You... I know you. ... Ou Taene?"

"U'tania..." He corrected pitifully, voice cracking high mid-word. With a loud sniffled he wiped the tears from his face with a forearm, though they were almost immediately replaced by more. Finally he lifted his face and squinted into the light at the Elezen. Prim and proper looking, just like the rest. He couldn't tell them apart with his eyes so blood-shot and puffy, so he didn't even try. He just sat there and sniffled and cried pitifully while awaiting judgement.

Lowering her lance, Lyrique wore an expression of bemusement for a moment, and then she slowly muttered, "U'tani. What in the twelve hells... happened to you?" Even the blood being beside the point, she recongized his general state of distress. She couldn't tell if he looked healthy or not, because he had always been short and odd-looking to her. But she definitely recognized the boy she'd thrown stones at last time she'd seen him, and while she was internally disgusted byhis reappearance, the puzzle he presented overwhelmed it all.

"U'tania." He corrected again. It had become a habit as the knights and dragoon always got his name wrong. It was habit now to simply say it again whenever it was said wrong. So pretty much everytime he was addressed by name. 

"They're dead." Was his second response, wiping at the tears across his face again. "I went home... and they're all dead. Mama... papa... my entire village..." Again his voice cracked and he pressed his hands to his face. "Everyone's dead."

"... I don't..." she said, her lance hanging in front of her. The look one her face was indeterminant, evidencing surprise and nothing else for certain. She wasn't sure what she should feel, or what she did feel. There was no doubt the boy was telling the truth, judging from hsi tone and demeanor. The truth of his words and the depth of what he was enduring struck her in the gut and seemed to knock her back a step or two.

All she'd wanted was some wine.

"Stay here," she said, and turned on her heel, putting her lance on hr back as she went to the hallway. Before leaving, she called out an afterhtought, "Make yourself presentable!"

Presentable? The word echoed in his head and made his head numb. How could he even do that? He was covered in thick caked on blood and dirt and general grime. It was so thick on him he could feel it over his skin, crackling when he moved. His clothing was the same. But numbly he removed his disgusting shirt and tried to wipe off some of the things covering him. Although he really only managed to move it around before pulling the even worse looking shirt back on and shivering.

Lyrique was gone for a period of time that she thought was within the bounds of fashionable, but would likely seem like multiple eternities to poor U'tania. 

By the enternities later that Lyrique had returned, U'tania had collasped back onto the floor while he shivered. It was so cold, and with the tiny amount of body fat he had left it was hard to stay warm. A shifting in the door and the sound of footsteps growing closer made him lift his head and try to sit up, looking as Lyrique returned.

When she did return, she came with two servants, one carrying a bag of first aid supplies and the other carrying a bucket of warm water and a ponge. Lyrique let them enter the storeroom first and followed after. Two knights entered behind her, swords and shields in hand.

The daughter of Midichant stood with her legs shoulder-width apart, arms crossed, looking haughty over nothing. "I thought I told you to make yourself presentable. For the next ten minutes, you are in my noble court."

One of the knights behind her smirked and gave his companion a sideways look.

"I..." U'tania tried to argue but it died in his throat. Instead he looked at Lyrique with zero understanding of what particularly she meant by that.

As she watched, the two servants propped U'tania up in a sitting position and began to cut his clothes off his body with scissors, not bothering to ask permission or if he liked the clothes or anything. Not really concerning herself with the modesty of some scrawny, non-Elezen peasant, Lyrique stared straight at the boy's face and said, "Ou'Taene, tell me what happened to your family. Everything. In return, the nobility of Midichant will provide you a meal."

U'tania didn't fight back. He really didn't have the strength to. So he just let them do whatever it was they were doing and promptly corrected Lyri again as she said his name wrong for the millionth time. "I came home from Coerthas and I saw bodies everywhere. The forest was drenched in it. I found my father slain by some sort of axe, and my mother was still impaled through the chest by a lance. She was still alive. Some sort of Garlean patrol came through the area and killed them. My sister... mother said she ran away but... they sent other after her. Mother said they were calling them Ala Mihgan rebels but we never even talked to those people... They must have mistook us for someone else... but mother..." U'tania paused to wail loudly as he remembered his mother's last shuddering breaths beside him.

Her haughtiness wavering into a frown, Lyrique shifted uncomfortably. The servants had began to wash the blood off of U'tania's body and tend to his wounds. He was such a skinny thing that he wasn't even good to look at. Lyrique distracted herself from the boy's wailing by thinking up a few people she'd rather see disrobed and sponge-bathed in a secluded corner of the castle. Well, fate was cruel to her and U'tania both today.

Finally, when all she heard was wailing, she said, "Come on, O'taeni. Pull yourself together. That's enough. Were you followed? By Garleans maybe?"

"U'tania." It came automatically and quieted down his wailking for a short time. He sniffled and wiped at his eyes, wincing as the other men cleaned and stung him with their process. "I wasn't followed. I made sure." Of this, he was confident. Mostly because he was sure he would already be dead if he had been.

"Yeah, you made sure. I'm supposed to trust a Miqo's assurances." As soon as she said this, she threw her palms in the air to halt any possible reply. "That's fine. I said you'd good food, and you'll get food." She took a few steps to a nearby barrel and pulled out a raw popotoe, tossing it to U'tania, "Don't say that Ishgard turned you away when you were in need."

The potatoe hit U'tania's head and rolled to the ground where he shakily picked it up and held it. One of the knights laughed.

Lyrique waved her hand at the knight, "My father will be penalizing your rations tonight. Laugh more."

The poor man did not laugh any more. At least the asshole servant got penalized. U'tania stuck his tongue out at the man before looking back to Lyri. 

"I did make sure...." he mumbled, before looking back down to the raw potato.

Returning to the center of her 'court' and crossing her arms again, Lyrique looked down upon the lowly, dirty Miqo'te sideways. "Why did you come here? You know you aren't welcome here. Or did the whelts from the last time we chased you off heal too quickly to drive our point home?"

"I didn't..." U'tania stammered nervously, cringing away from her like she would hit him again. "I have no where to go. Everyone I know is dead. I-i have nothing. I have no one. I didn't... I-i just came here out of instinct... I guess..."

"Instincts," Lyrique said, shaking her head, lustrous red hair flickering in the light. "That's ridiculous. You ahve animal instincts. Your instincts tell you to run into caves or trees and eat bugs. That's ridiculous."

"They do not!" U'tania protested, looking earnestly at Lyrique. "Why would you say that? I've never done that, nor have I ever felt I had to do that!"

She waved this off as unimportant. Around this time the servants stood U'tania up and began to cut off his pants, once again, with perfectly perfunctory poise. Her green eyes continuing to stare at U'tania's, Lyrique began to pace, "What did you think was going to happen? Your sob story was finally going to thaw our frosty hearts and convince us to tolerate you?"

"I thought... that my family was dead but Garleans might still be around so I needed to get far away from that place." U'tania answered lamely, shivering again without clothing in the cold. "I always came asking to be a dragoon but... what about another job? Isn't there something I could do to earn food and shelter?"

"All those jobs are taken by worthwhile people," Lyrique answered, her tone unmistakable. "I doubt we even have a jobd that's lowly enough for you, and we don't need any more vermin."

"Why am I so lowly? I don't understand... what did I ever do to you that you hate me so much...?" U'tania asked, ears pressed to his head. No matter how often they said it was because he was a Miq'ote, he couldn't understand. What did that have to do with anything? Why did they hate him so much?

With a sigh, Lyrique muttered, "Nobody hates you, O'danieh. Lowly's just what you are, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can begin to leave a perfectly productive, humble life." She paused for a moment, smiling at something, and then began to pace again. "I've been granted the ability to show your mercy, but it is so rare that anyone outside of Ishgard ever warrants mercy. You do understand that, don't you?"

"U'tania." His voice was small, but not angry. He was never particularly angry with the Ishguardians. He simply didn't understand them. 

Still, he looked to Lyrique and shook his head no. "I don't understand..."

"Oh, you are absolutely pathetic." She declared, around the time the servants finished cutting his pants off to continue treating wounds on the lower half of his body. Lyrique turned and looked him over, "Pathetic indeed. Well." She turned her back on him and continued to ponder.

U'tania looked to the ground. Pathetic... he was. Truely. "I know... but that's why I want to be a Dragoon! I don't want to be pathetic! I want to be strong! Like a dragoon!" He pleaded again, looking up to Lyri with his ears perking up again.

"I'm not a Dragoon," she said, looking at him sideways, and this time frowning. "Do you think you're better than me? Or my equal?" With a little chitter of a laugh, she smirked, "Honestly, boy, do you think you even come close?"

"I could." U'tania replied defiantly. "I could be as good as you. I just need training!"

 "Oh, he's so sad," Lyrique shook her head, put a hand to her face as though she couldn't bear it. She held this demeanor for a moment before crossing her hands in front of ehr and smiling at U'tania. "You may, if you wish, exist as the assistant of the most lowly laborers in our stable. That is all you may be, and it is all you will ever be. Or you can leave, but you'll have to give back the popotoe."

"I'll stay. And I'll learn! You'll see! I can be just as good as any of you!" U'tania declared defiantly, brows furrowing. It was... he was sure, what his mother would have wanted. To stand against hatred and prove it wrong with doing good.

"Mm," Lyrique hummed, unconvinced, but allowing him to be who he was. She turned her back on the boy, and said, "Just don't get your hopes up. And do not forget who showed you this mercy."

"I won't! You'll see!" U'tania called back, a little happy in all of his misery.

Lyrique waved over her shoulder and looked to the guard whose rations had been cut, saying, "Get him clothes and show him to the stables. Set him up with a pen of his own to sleep in," and touching his shoulder, she said with a pout, "And help yourself to a popotoe you poor, hungry man."

Then she swept out of the storeroom with a flourish and declared, "The Lady of the court will hear no more audiences today! Good afternoon!" She would've loved to continue playing the noble lady and torturing the poor Miqo'te, but she had to be on guard duty within minutes, and she'd already abused her father's indulgences too much.

. . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Mitari paused in his steps. Even in the freezing cold that numbed his sense and body, he could smell the thick aroma of blood. Of fighting. Of dragons. He had come back to the keep, yet again. Whenever he was lost, he always seemed to come back to that place. Even when they had treated him poorly for the most part. Even when they refused to listen to his new name or teach him anything or even recognize he was a damn boy half the time (Some of the people thought it was funny and gave him women's clothing a lot), he came back here. It was hell... but it was also home. And to see through the blizzard scales and lances, Mitari felt something ache painfully in his chest. 

Grasping at his lance he charged through the snow, hoping to join the fray before it was too late. 'Lyri...!' he thought somewhat desperately. She was an asshole, but she was probably in danger. And for all her bullshit she had helped him out more than she knew. (He especially liked the lances he had stolen from her trashbin and some of her clothing and such as well, spoilt brat that she was.)

Great cries and men in half-worn armor fought, staining the snowy ground black and red with their blood. Mitari came upon the keep in a frightful state, his eyes falling immediately upon the dragon half-embeded into the keep's stone walls. He cursed beneath his breath and ran faster. He could jump, but not as the others could. He had no soul stone of his own to draw power from, and thus could only rely on his own strenght to muscle through the line of heretics that stood in his way. 

With a great cry, the thin but muscular male swathed in black and purple armor tore a line through the back of the heretics, burning lance ripping through scale and armor alike. His head was covered by a turban, and his eyes shielded by a mask. It was far too cold and white for him to see well without it, and even he knew that looking directly into the eye of a 'heretic' or a dragon would be good cause to get himself even further ostracized. 

At the center of the Keep was a tower, and every window in the tower had been broken out the first time the dragon had crashed its great body into it. The Midichante patriarch stood in the ruins of one of the windows, lance in hand, but armor unworn. The attack had come so suddenly that he had been able to give no orders to the soldiers before the gates had broken and the walls themselves had been surmounted. Heretics charging out of the blizzard, madmen wearing the frostbite like they wore their cursed necklaces, had brought bloodshed to his home.

His old eyes narrowed as the dragon arched towards his perch, and his thin hands gripped his lance tightly. There was no mistaking his intention.

Lyrique Midichante pulled her father out of the window roughly, depositing him on the floor. She chided him, "You're too old to fight and too young to die. Brother's not ready to take over the family just yet."

His fury was unmistakable, but even from such a slight topple, he'd lost his grip on his lance. Concern overrode his anger as he rolled to his knees. "Lyrique. Don't look in their eyes! Their scales-!"

"I know, father," she said, put one plated boot on the windowsill and launched herself out. Lyrique flew like a harpoon at the passing dragon. Her armor was decorated with gold-capped spikes and number of superfluous glass gems of her own addition, which caught the ambient light but failed to warn the dragon in time. She dug her lance into its hide behind one arm, drawing a groan from its maw and causing it to flail in the air.

She was dislodged when it threw itself up against the tower, her lance coming free and trailing dark, unholy blood behind it. Lyrique arched her back to control her fall, but even so, the roof of an outlying building struck her shoulder and the side of her head. Or, really, she just landed that way, and she plowed through a number of cross-beams before she was able to get her lance in front of her.

Lyrique's momentum threw her clear of the roof and into the keep's main wall. She landed with her feet and one hand against the wall, crouching parallel to the ground. She hung there for a moment before dropping into the courtyard.  A great deal of her red hair had shuffled forward in her helmet during her fall and now fell over her eyes, so she removed her helmet and shook her hair to see. This was just in time to notice the heretic that was coming straight at her like an oversized crossbow bolt.

Mitari's eyes searched through snow and bodies and dragons for a haughty woman, much taller than him with flaming hair. Mitari's eyes caught her hair, and his nose caught her scent beneath the thick smell of battle. In a strange way, she was a friend to him. Sort of. Maybe. In any case, he knew that he did not want her to die. 

He saw her form, and the raving heretic running towards her. 

"Lyrique!" Mitari bellowed before jumping as high as he could into the air and tossing his lance with all his might. The lance soared true and impaled the heretic into the ground at her feet, blood pooling. Landing somewhat clumsily, Mitari shoulder tackled his way towards her again, mostly to retreive his weapon.

Stepping back as blood splattered onto her feet, Lyrique pulled her hair back and put her helmet back on her head. Seemed her hair was out to get her killed. The helm masking her face was painted over with the many-pronged sigil of Midichant, so that the symbol seemed to replace her features. Tufts of red hair still poked out of its fringes.

Moving forward, she took the strange, burning lance from the body and considered it. A magical weapon. Where had-?

A roar too bestial to come from any throat but a heretic's, more unholy than even that of the dragons, drew her eyes upward. Dark elezen forms flew briefly through the air overhead, vaulting the keep's walls as though they were jumping over a fallen branch. Not once did the feet of the heretics touch the ground, colliding instead with the walls of the keep's inner tower and clinging there as though by talon and claw.

She bit down on her teeth painfully. Corrupt Dragoons. Betrayers. Between they and the dragon, the walls might as well not even be there. She counted four and hoped there weren't any more.

Mitari skidded to a halt in front of Lyri and grapsed for his lance from her hands. He too, had seen the dark elezen forms flying over head and crashing into the keep's inner tower. There was no time to explain his return if she even cared or recognized him. The keep was in trouble. There were so many too... 

Even with all of the well trained dragoons, Mitari knew an invasion this size was going to mean being wiped out. If nothing else, he wanted to save Lyri and her family. As much of them and their history and records as possible. That was something  he knew was important. Even if Lyri's family never accepted him, he found their history and family a very important thing. 

"Lyrique!" Mitari called again as he looked to her, face obscured by the visor attached to his turban. "Go! I'll cover your back!"

The sigil of Midichant turned towards Mitari, and was silent for a brief moment. Then she reached out in a quick motion an knocked the visor up off of his eyes, her clawed gauntlets flicking close to his face. She leaned her head back and looked down at him from behind the mask on her helmet . "U'daenia"

Mitari stood akwardly for a second, his brows knitting together while she stared at him. What was it? He looked the same he always did. Still pathetically girly. And if she was going to call him a girl again, she was going to get a lance up her damn ass until she figured it out.

"Don't stare, move!" He snapped, pushing his visor back down and gripping his lance harder. "More important things than me to worry about! Go!" Mitari hissed, turning around to punch a heretic in the face with a gloved hand and send him sprawling on the ground.

Lyrique Midichant pushed against Mitari, hard, throwing his lance against him and throwing him away from her, heedless of the heretics. "Watch you tone with me!" She barked, suddenly furious. 

Mitari let out a forced breath as Lyrique shoved him away with his lance, pushing the metal weapon hard into his chest. It took a moment to get his barrings and stagger upright again before he ran into someone's blade or something. When he had collected himself and looked back to Lyrique, he scowled and barred his teeth. What the fuck was that for? She was a collassal bitch, but even that was uncalled for. 

"And don't think you are worthy to 'watch my back'!"

Oh yes. Of course. He had to roll his eyes beneath his visor. The Pretty Pretty Princess of Dragoons couldn't have a lowly miq'ote orphan watching her perfectly scupted ass. Right.

She pointed at the tower, where the dragon circled and the heretical Dragoons were disappearing through the open windows. "Those corrupt Dragoons need to die or what's happening here will occur elsewhere. Still want to be a Dragoon, U'taneh? If you can kill even one of them I just might make you a knight!"

And kill just one? He was going to smother that bitch in the bodies of all the heretics he killed today

Her red lips flashed a smile at the boy, though it was crooked with some concealed emotion. She crouched on the ground and then launched herself into the air, trailing a flurry of snow and dirt behind her. She left Mitari in the courtyard and landed on a distant parapert adjacent the main tower.

Mitari muttered angry curses as she jumped away, just to show off no doubt. "Lyrique!" He yelled back angrily at her. He had a comeback for her, but the wit died in his mouth as he looked across the courtyard for another way to get across and up the tower. Ah yes. Through a sea of raging fights and heretics. Well. There was only one way through. 

Mitari pulled his lance tight to his body and took up a running stance. He was going to charge straight through the damn line and swekwer the heretics in his way. And hopefully miss the innocents fighting. Although telling the difference was difficult sometimes. 

On the tower, Lyrique took the briefest of moments to linger on one knee, bent with her face to the ground. She wasn't gong to let anyone see her terror. Imagined images of her father's corpse flickered in her mind, her siblings and friends executed in the cold. The keep had fallen so quickly, she never would have imagined it. Corrupt Dragoons. She frantically wiped the heretic blood from her boot, a meaningless gesture.

She could die today. Her father and her siblings could die. The line of Midichante could fall into the pit of history.

Fear or no fear, though, she tightened her grip on her lance until her fingers hurt and stood. Then she flew, the windows of her home greeting her coldly. Inside there were heretics, Dragoons whose skills may exceed her own, and she would either slay each of them, or she would die.

"Get outta my way!" Mitari roared, lunging forward with a burst of speed. It was more difficult than he thought, and by the first skewered heretic he had to stop and bash the man's face in with his elbow to actually kill him. Then came the task of getting the body off his lance, while simultaneous trying not to get stepped on and murdered by everyone around him. It wasn't going well, but he managed to finally get the body off and beat off the rest of those who were attacking him. 

This time he tried a slightly more stealthy approach, crawling through the tangled bodies and legs until he got to the door and used his lance like a baseball bat to smash the head of the men at the door and knock them out of the way. 

Inside the tower wasn't much better off. In fact, maybe it was worse because the whole thing seemed to be crumbling with bodies and heretics and minor dragons littering the stairs. 

"Fuckkkk." He groaned loudly, grunting as a small dragon charged at him. Mitari braced himself and skidded backwards against the wall as he was hit. He was already scuffed and cut and bruised in a lot of places from the act of getting to the tower, but now climbing the billion stairs against all of these? He was probably going to die. But with that in mind he steeled himself and shoved his hand forward, grasping at the dragon's eye and pulling it. It caused enough pain to make the dragon wail and stagger back, and enough time for Mitari to skewer it through its soft underbelly. 

He glanced up the staircase and kicked the dragon off his lance. Only a billion more to go until the top.

The cartographer was nowhere to be seen. Lyrique crouched to the floor and scooped up fallen maps, stained with black and red blood, ripped and creased. Her hands felt numb and distant, the action thoughtless. She wasn't completely conscious of the act. The maps were beautiful, intricate both mathematically and artistically, organized by topography, geography, ecology. The feverish work of the cartographer, to catalog once more every inch of Coerthas' new face in the wake of Calamity, lay abandoned like worthless scribbling.

It made her ill. More than the fear and the death, this struck her with bizarre ferocity. She was dizzy and pale, and she could see the maps quivering in her unstable hands. Lyrique stacked them neatly open the angled drawing table, then lay the scattered quills and pens straight.

On a nearby desk, a statuette of a scholar whom the cartographer revered lay broken atop a splash of black blood. It looked like a broken body at the bottom of a crevice carved through the Highlands.

Was the cartographer alive, or had she made it out alive? What of her father and siblings? How many of her attendants could she imagine surviving? Why was she listing the names of the servants in her head like a casualty report? Since when did she even know the names of the servants?

Lyrique Midichant threw herself to her right so forcefully that the bricks in the wall cracked upon her impact. Her armor still bore scratches from the lance she'd barely evaded, a dark weapon that ripped through the room and shattered the cartographers' workplace. Splinters of wood clattered against the ceilings and walls, and torn pieces of maps -- each particle of ink invaluable -- fell over her like confetti at a parade ground. There was laughter, too: a dark chuckle.

"Oh no. I've made a mess." The humored voice of a madman slithered into the room. One of the four heretic Dragoons she'd seen earlier swaggered into the light, snow dappling his pale features. His skin was too cold to melt the snow. It was as though he were dead.

Lyrique pulled her spiked body free from the wall and point her lance at him, strands of hair sitting over her red lips beneath the sigil of Midichant upon her mask. The woman absolutely glittered with gold filigrees and gemstones. "You will never have another day past this one. Repent and your soul may find peace on the morrow."

"Hm," pale lips smirked at her from behind a mask laden with scars. "You think you are worthy to challenge me? Minor noble of a minor house. We all take the dragons in for a fragment of power. How much more powerful am I than you, then, for my life is the dragons'? Would you like to see how much I have taken in?"

She answered directly, "Yes I would."

The room shattered around them.

Amidst the rubble of broken walls and snow swirling in the air, Lyrique Midichant stood with the man's helm in her hands, his mutilated body at her feet. The gold filigrees had become covered in blood, dark, unholy. She couldn't wash it off.

"One," she counted, "leaving only three." And she went through the door through which the Heretic Dragoon had come.

Mitari snarled as he slammed his way into the room, several dragons pierced through his lance before pinning them to the wall. He spent the next several minutes beating them to death with his fists before sinking to the floor in a pant. He looked bad already. Bleeding and open wounds throughout his body. His armor wasn't doing as much as he'd like, and it had ripped over in several places to expose wounds to the cold and dragon blood and what not. 

The tower shook heavily as there seemed to be fighting still above him. Mitari looked up and got to his feet, glancing around the blood soaked room he was in. He was never going to beat Lyri to the top. Not that it mattered. 

Shoving his foot into the pile of dragons, he pulled out his lance with a mighty effort and took a moment to catch his breath. 

"Right... just... another... million stairs to the top..." Mitari groaned again and started up the stairway in a run.

The foyer of her father's seat of power was a broad, open room with windows on all sides, two stairways entering from below and two leaving above, a number of pillars, and a monument to Halone. The room took up an entire floor of the tower. Gold-lined bronze was erected in the center of the room, a shield on a stand with three ornate spears standing on end behind it. Chains of gold and cut glass draped over and between them, blowing in the wind, flickering with light. Glass decorated the floor, bright with reflected snow and fire. Every window was broken, and drifts of snow lay against the bronze monument.

"Halone does not hear the prayer of heretics," Lyrique Midichante's words sounded like they'd been forged in a kiln concealed behind her ribs, echoing empty through the steel mask she wore. Cracked glass beads hung from her shoulders by gold chains. Dented ornaments over her body made her look like a monument to Halone herself, the skin of her face carved from white marble, her red lips artfully paints.

The heretic dropped his hands from their posture of prayer, put them on the ground before him, bent so his forehead touched the bronze shield. The skin of a heretic upon the monument a sick image that did not linger. He stood suddenly, but did not turn when he said, "My family tells a tale of an ancestor of mine, a Dragoon so devoted to Halone that the dragons could not corrupt him. He had three arms, and used three lances. But I think..."

Lyrique walked forward with a measured pace, slow and silent, her lance held to one side. Its point was sharper than the bite of cold.

The heretic spun on her, "I think Halone was holding him back!" and drove his lance towards her.

Her only response was to press that sharp point of lance away, nudging it gently to the side and sliding her blade down the shaft of his weapon. There was a great screech of metal on metal, a few sparks in the snow. She was hoping to take his fingers, but the heretic aborted his attack when it stabbed only the air beside her head, and when she pressed her blade forward he leapt away from her.

Hanging from the ceiling like a taloned beast, the heretic Dragoon said, "How much greater could my ancestor have been? If he had disregarded Halone and fully embraced the dragons?"

Lyrique jumped backwards, not wanting to linger beneath her enemy. There was a flurry of snow when she landed near an open window, flakes dancing about her as gold and glass swayed and sparkled. "I've heard that story," she said calmly, with heat, "Told by the head of the Tidarei family. I will drag your corpse before you father that he should know your blasphemy and make reparations on your behalf."

The heretic tore one of the bronze-and-gold lances from the monument with a clatter of decorative chains and glass. He held it in his off hand, a strange contrast to his bleak armor and dead appearance. The curl to his lips was not sane. "I will exceed my ancestor. The future descendants of Tidarei will tell my legend to their children."

A great shadow passed over Lyrique as the dragon circled outside. She glanced at it, but it was hunting something else. "House Midichante has a tale as well," she said, turning her green eyes back to the heretic. "My ancestor had six arms."

"And you!" The heretic Dragoon bellowed as he charged her, "Will have none!"

Glass was torn up from the floor and broken anew.

Shards of glass and gold decorated the ceiling like quartz in a cave when they were done. The shield on the monument in the center of the room was shattered, but all three of the gold-adorned lances stood point-down in the chest and gut of the heretic, their shafts swaying in the air. The heretic dragoon's corpse did not move, turned black with its own blood. Its shoulders ended in limbless stubs.

"I can only count to two on your weak arms," said Lyrique Midichante as she kicked the man's dismembered limbs out a broken window, into the courtyard. "But that's high enough. Because there's only two of you left."

"This is... total... fucking... chocobo shit..." Mitari panted, the sounds of raging battle above him. No doubt Lyri outdoing him. Not that it was really important for him to be the hero of this battle. He'd done enough already, rescuing a few small children and helping the elderly and injured out of the castle and down to the cellars for safety. But that also meant running up and down the stairs hauling people and occasionally kicking the shit out of the lesser heretics and dragons on the way. Mitari was, rather proud of his accomplishments so far but...

The staircase to the upper portion of the tower on the fifth floor was shattered. And that left Mitari was one option. 

Which was scaling the wall using his lance and another fallen lance he picked from the ground and a dead body. A lance he was planning on keeping, of course. It was a really nice lance actually...

Swinging himself up and around, he managed to perch on his own lance before stabbing the second one into the wall again. He jumped forward and hung off the second lance, grabbing his own and hauling it out of the wall before repeating the process.

"Chocobo shit!" He cursed loudly again. "And I know what that fucking smells like damn it! Would you people just give me a damn gem already!?"

Her father lay on the stairs, his armor broken. It was a sad mirror of the way she had left him -- why had she left him? -- when she'd gone to attack the dragon. He'd moved, it seemed, but he'd never made it off the stairs.

Something inside of Lyrique broke, and she could feel herself bend as though she'd lost all support. Her lance was suddenly too have for her hands, and she heard it hit the steps, and then stumbled stupidly over it and hit her knees. She clambered forward like a cripple, watching drops of water fall on the inside of her helm, teardrops dangling from the facemask where her family's crest was emblazoned.

"Father," she heard herself say. "Dad!" She was at the old man's side. He wasn't dead, but he wasn't moving either, and his eyes looked like they weren't seeing anything. There was blood underneath him. Was it his?

"I'm trying to keep count!" A strange voice said.

Lyrique looked up in time to see the point of a lance coming at her, and she put up a hand in instinctive, ineffectual defense. The offending blade caught in the crease of her gauntlet, though, and while she felt something inside her hand break and watched the filigrees on her arm snap outward as her gauntlet warped, she stiffened her arm to hold the blade away from her.

"Seven! Six! Five! How many of you am I killing?!"

Her thin body was slammed against the steps, and she felt them break beneath her. Snow and gray debris filled her vision, clouding her sight of the maddened face that was screaming at her. "Seventy-five! Fifty-seven!"

Her head collided with her own dropped lance, and her hand reached out to catch it just as it was about to be knocked out the nearby window. Wordless and thoughtless, she brought it in front of her and swung outward. The heretic dragoon's chainmail gave way, but Lyrique's gauntlet gave way at the same time. Bent metal crushed her wrist as lukewarm innards poured out of the heretics body and onto her own. The dark blade crashed into the stones next to her face, a millimeter from cutting her ear off, and Lyrique could feel the subtle shift of hair freed from her head.

"No more than seven!" Shouted the dying, maddened dragoon, blood frothing on his teeth. "Midichante. Every last one of you! I can't keep count."

"I can," Lyrique said, her voice shaking with adrenaline and pain. She held her arm against her chest like a diseased limb. "There were four of you. Now there is only one."

"Midichante!"

Lyrique left the corpse on the stairs alongside a few drops of her own blood, a line of it running down her chin from a cut on her face. Her lance on her back, she knelt by her father and turned the man over. "Dad?" He did not respond, but he continued to breathe. She put one shoulder under his arm and her good hand around his chest, and began to drag him up the stairs. His legs were stained red with blood. Her legs were stained black with other, dark, unholy blood.

Right, to the cellar then. Again. Mita wasn't really sure how he was going to get down to the cellar after presumably breaking some ribs but...Lyri's dad was in bad shape. If he didn't move him carefully and quickly, he was going to die. Mita had been through that. The last thing he wanted was to watch someone else go through it when he could help.

Forcing himself to move, Mitari pushed forward towards Lyri's father, only to have his spine chilled with the words of the last heretic dragoon. He stopped in his tracks and turned behind him to look wide-eyed at the beast. No longer was he hyur, or elezen, or whatever he was. A monstrous dragon was all that was left, lusting after power and only power.

Lyri's command jumped his senses and he lunged forward towards her father. Checking the man's wounds for a moment, he wasted no time pulling the man carefully into his arms and starting for the stairway.

The Dragoon laughed at Lyrique and pressed the point of the blade on his against the blunt end of her own and dragged it down the shaft. He didn't so much as flinch as Lyrique's blade cut into the side of his face, just swinging his head away with a grin. Lyrique's blood hit the floor at her feet, warm enough to steam on the stone. She barely felt the pain in her numb hand, her fingers simply feeling strange, and she didn't look for fear that they'd been severed completely.

The Dragoon's arms and head swung from his spine like a corpse on a pike, and he said, "Midichante. We've been counting down on your siblings. You're the last one."

"Blasphemy!" Lyrique swung her lance at open air.

Ice and snow broke around her in the wake of the Dragoon's leap, the dark form launching into the sky and away from her attack. His heckling chuckle trailed behind him like a heinous stench, even as his silhouette vanished into the white haze of the storm.

Her thumb and two primary fingers still had gripping power on her lance, and she hooked it against her opposite elbow for support as she pursued the Dragoon, throwing herself blindly into the white static sky.

Meanwhile, Mitari ran as fast as possible without hurting the old man, or himself, down the stairwell. Rubble and debris was falling past his head as the tower seemed to be falling in on itself. He cursed loudly to himself, and could only hope Lyri would be okay. She would never forgive him if he left her father though, and he wasn't sure he could do that same. So down the spiraling staircase he went until  he came to the broken stairs. 

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." He cursed, panicked, to himself. He glanced down towards the ground. It wasn't that far. If he positioned himself right he could... He didn't have time to think. "Hold on tight old man!" He winced and dived off the side, keeping the old broken man close and his back to take the impact. He landed hard on the rubbled ground, but solidly at least. Blood spewed from his mouth as he tried to take in air again. The old man... Mitari looked to the man, but he seemed relatively unchanged. But Mitari... he was going to have trouble getting up again.

There was a silence that Mitari found a certain peace to. Where he could focus on breathing and pulling himself back together as much as possible. The pendant the hung around his neck glowed faintly, but it was obscured by the armor her wore. Slowly, he pulled from the endless aether of life around him to tape back together his ribs and body. Enough to walk. Enough to keep moving. He had to keep moving. 

And finally he shuddered and moved to sit up, but it was too late. The tower shuddered violently and through the roof crashed a figure of blood and steel. The ceiling gave to its weight, and then the floor and Mitari was sent falling. 

Lyrique was a star of gold, glass, black ichor and red blood, and she left a tail of swirling snow as she fell. With an unnatural speed she descended, like a bolt thrown to earth. She struck the roof of the tower head-first, and her helmet shattered on impact. Shards of the crest of Midichante that had decorated her facemask now cut into her face, or spread themselves about the ruins.

Her crashed flat against the stone of the roof even as that stone cracked and splintered, fell inward and became ruin. In a brief moment that seemed to slither by, the roof gave way under the force of the impact, and Lyrique was falling again.

This time the stone from the floor preceded her, crashing into the weakened floor below her and caving it in before her own body reached it. Lyrique was limply rolled up in between rubble below and above, massive chunks of the building pressing down on her as -- one floor at a time -- she fell through a thousand tonnes of stone.

This ended at the ground floor, the cellar reinforced enough to endure the incredible blow. With a crash that rolled ike thunder, rubble hit the ground and began to pile up, large chunks of stone being thrown to the sides and knocking holes in the walls. The whole tower sagged, but it stayed standing, now little more than a hollow urn with stairs wrapping its insides.

As the stones settled in the bottom of the tower, a chunk of a wall rolled free and collapsed to reveal Lyrique Midichante half-buried in the rubble. She was arched improbably with her feet over her head, her arms hanging down, red hair pouring from her scalp like blood. Red drops pelted the stoned beneath her, falling from steams that ran down both arms and criss-crossed her face. Her green eyes stared tiredly ahead at nothing.

She breathed shallow and fast. Gold chains and broken glass beads hung from her chest and shoulders, the flayed remains of her sundered armor.

On her way up the tower, Lyrique Midichante collected one of the golden lances from the monument to Halone. It wasn't the most effective weapon, but anything less than a lance built for a Dragoon's use was likely to be insufficient, and she'd lost her best in the fight earlier. The golden lance was imperfectly forged for use, but it would have to be sufficient, just as her broken body would have to be sufficient.

Lyrique exited the roof of the tower in the reverse of how she'd fallen into it, launching herself into the same skies where minutes before she'd been swarmed by an unexpected number of heretic dragoons.

The Lady of Midichant no longer felt like a Dragoon should feel. Her body had been shattered, her armor defaced, all ornamentation twisted into ugly patterns, and so covered was she in heretical dragonsblood that she thought she must look like a wyvern as she moved through the air. Mitari had gone mad with the heretic's soulstone, and she felt her body had been debased by his healing.

She might as well be a heretic herself at this point. Her hand tightened on the golden lance, monument to Halone, but it could not help that she felt very far from grace. No amount of washing, fasting, prayer or humility could get this black blood out of her body. But maybe if she died...

Finding the skies empty, Lyrique fell. She dropped past the tower's summit, watching the parapets flash past her on either side. The dragon no longer circled the tower. The minor beasts and common heretical cannon fodder were either dead or gone. As she came close enough to the ground to see through the whiteout of the storm, she saw nothing but corpses, and a great many of them.

But no Dragoons. None on her side, none on those of the heretics. Had the Dragoons of Midichnate really betrayed her? So many of them had been her friends, confidantes, allies; more than a few had secretly been lovers. She rejected it. These Dragoons were something else. But then where were the Dragoons that should be protecting the keep?

She hit the ground hard, but her body held together. Snow flew away from her impact in a maelstrom. From the golden chains that had once born glass beads, drops of frozen blood now flicked in the light. Her sweat had turned to frost in her eyebrows and hairline. Sick black-blood icicles hung from her hair, patches of it clinging to her legs and greaves.

The absence of the enemy was like a threat uttered by the world around her. It settled into her bones and lay there like the snow piled up against the tower walls. Lyrique pointed her lance at strange objects as though they threatened her, sating her instinctive need to find a threat. But it was ephemeral, and uneasiness overtook her.

They would not just leave.

Lyrique jumped sideways, throwing a trail of snow as her greaves flew just over the snow cover. She hit the outer wall of the keep and pushed off of it, moving to a different side of the tower. But there was only emptiness there, as well. At once infuriated and fearful, Lyrique moved in strange silence. She decided to return to Mitari and the survivors he was escorting.

With quiet and tentative steps, Mitari led for the congregation of wounded and frightened Elezen. None seemed pleased to follow a Miq'ote, but also none argued since he was the only one there with armor and a lance and the ability to wield it. 

He lead them from the rubble of the keep towards the stables where they might be able to round up some Chocobo to flee towards Dragonhead on. Surely, Dragonhead would aid the Midichnate Keep in this time of need. Slipping inside the stables, Mitari indeed found a few Chocobos and instructed the young and the elderly and the injured to have first take of the Chocobo flock. 

It took a few minutes to make sure everyone was settled, but as they were it left only the middle-aged and uninjured. Which was good, because they could run faster than the children or the severely injured. 

Mitari peered out the door, eyes scanning for any sort of darkness on the horizon. But there were none. Everything was strangely... quiet. 

So he lead the way, chocobos and Elezen behind him. They managed to make it out of the keep without much incident however, it was only moments outside the keep where they had found where the horde had gotten off to. Minor dragons and heretics doing Halone knew what and it was all Mitari could do to command the civilians to make for Dragonhead fast on foot. 

And with that he leapt up high into the air and crashed down, lance first into the center of the horde, grabbing their attention with a fantastic Dragonfire Dive. Flames licked and burned the creatures, all of their attentions moved towards the single Miq'ote while the others were able to run. He could only hope that would last long enough. 

And that he wasn't going to be ripped to shreds instantly.

How?

Lyrique saw through the whiteout, just a flash of a moment before the snow blew in and obscured it again, a white-haired Miqo'te attempting to fight off a swarm of heretics and lesser dragons. How had the heretics tracked down the survivor's so flawlessly? How had they moved as one to intercept them, evading Lyrique entirely? How was Mitari even thinking to fight them?

The Lady of Midichante hit the snow with a great thud that broke the dark stone beneath it, leaving a white crater with cracked black earth in the middle. Then she launched herself into the air again, flying towards the heretics and the single defender in their midst.

By all good reason, Mitari should have torn his own body apart in his first attempt to use the power of the soulstone untrained. The might of dragons was easily enough to shatter one's own skeleton, to immolate one's own innards. And yet Mitari was using it. He was a clumsy novice at best, but he was surviving.

This meant two things. First, that Mitari was a liar: the orphaned Miqo'te had been trained at some point, albeit clumsily. Second, that the heretic dragoons had not yet descended upon him: he would be dead the moment they did.

Lyrique hit the ground on the outskirts of the heretics, landing directly on a lesser dragon's head and crushing its skull beneath her greaves. No sooner had she realized that she did not see the heretic dragoons among the group than she saw the plumes of snow thrown by the dragoons' advance. There were five heretic dragoons, not counting the three Lyrique had successfully killed and the one who had somehow managed to die while fighting Mitari. They launched themselves parallel to the ground, throwing snow behind them as they flew with lances out directly at Mitari.

The orphan Miqo'te stood fighting at the heart of the heretic horde, and the five dragoons drew a five-pronged star of snow thrown high in their wake, converging as one on the place where Mitari stood. If he had wanted their attention, he had gotten it. They had already done too much damage to the house of Midichante that day, though, and Lyrique wasn't going to let them do any more, even if it was just to some errant stable boy.

She crouched and readied her lance to intervene.

The dragon crashed down in front of her, black and glistening, eyes aglow with unholy fury, and its maw opened to bellow in rage at Lyrique. Black blood spilled onto the snow from the wound Lyrique had given it earlier. Its teeth were terrible. Its gaze sought to corrupt her.

Lyrique did not hesitate. She threw herself forward just as planned, but her lance preceded her, the point embedding deep in the dragon's throat. It made a viciously sick sound and spat blood, its wings shaking, its body convulsing as it threw itself backward.

She ducked low and managed to pass just beneath it, one of the spikes on her armor embedding between its scales and breaking off. She left it behind and continued on, flying over the snow and throwing up a plume of white behind her as she went. Disarmed, she bundled one hand into a fist and opened the clawed fingers of the other into a talon.

There were now six dragoons flying at Mitari, one of whom did not intend to kill him, and the only warning he received was a roar from Lyrique's thin throat, "Mitari! Move!"

His fight with a horde of dragon heretics was not going well. How could it be expected to? Mitari had fought before, away from the Keep, and with a soulstone before, but never with this intensity. Every move he made, lives were depending upon him, and it was frightening. But as frightened as he was, he was also furious. Furious that Lyrique's own knights would turn against her and become corrupted. Perhaps the Ishguardians were not right in their fight against the dragons, but the dragons certainly weren't correct either!

Mitari was only picking sides with the lesser evils. 

After he had landed, he had set to using the lance like a baseball bat and swinging it hard in a circle to knock everything around him off its feet. And he had succeeded at the cost of dislocating his shoulder. Next came the wave of dragons, whom had a faster reaction speed and were upon him in seconds, tearing at his armor and flesh. They ripped into his armor easily and claws dug deep into his chest and limbs. The armor around his head came ripping off in a needlessly violent fashion, and it was all Mitari could to flail and roar angrily. He flailed his arms and legs, the immense power from the soulstone making for a powerful movement that managed to shake loose the dragon's very teeth from their mouths and free Mitari, albeit with dragon fangs and claws stuck into him like a pin cushion. 

He breathed hard, and it was then that he heard Lyrique scream. Well it wasn't like he had planned on standing still particularly, unless he wanted to be a Miqabob. Which he did not. While Lyrique's screech was noted and heeded, and so he jumped up high with all his might, lance in bloodied hand. 

There was a breathless moment as he glanced down at the ground form high above, overlooking the scene. He hovered in the air for what felt like a millennium, watching below before he began falling straight down again.

After Mitari jumped, Lyrique found herself looking across a hundred meters of snow and heretics into the face of an oncoming Dragoon. A familiar face, once bright with color, now pale and cold, the hair thin and brittle, the eyes pale. But it was him. She knew him. It made sense. It made her sick.

Lyrique went limp mid-charge and fell at full speed, hitting the rough stone earth that the snow concealed and tumbling hard. Snow and dirt flew up as she careened like a metal-clad ragdoll for nearly twenty meters before she came to a stop right where Mitari had been, laying face-down with her limbs skewed in painful directions.

The heretic dragoons continued on as the had been, only now they were going to converge on her instead.

She stirred, slowly, her limbs straightening out one by one.

Too slowly. If she were to get up now and run away, she could escape.

But Lyrique only pulled herself to her knees, returned her gaze to the heretic dragoon with the familiar face. And that face smiled at her as five unholy lances extended towards her, and they converged on Lyrique Midichante in a rush of snow and black metal. A small blizzard erupted outward from that point, spiraling upward into the sky to consume the descending form of Mitari.

In the blind column of white, several seconds after it swallowed him, Mitari would be struck by the rapidly ascending form of Lyrique Midichant. The momentums of the two bodies momentarily negated one another, causing them to hang in the air for another second. Clinging to Mitari with one hand covered in black blood, Lyrique's helmet was missing, along with massive chunks of her armor. Her red hair shook in the wind, failing to hide the dead look in her eyes. She watched the white around them in complete disinterest. Her off-hand was unarmored, and her thin fingers were holding by its hair the dismembered head of the familiar heretic dragoon.

"Mitari," she said, while they lingered in the air without sight of the ground. "Can you still fight?"

He could see nothing of the fight below or what had happened. A flurry of snow blocked his vision, and the heavy impact of Lyrique as she shot up and ran into him confused his brain and senses. He vaguely felt a hand clinging to his ragged form and straightened himself to recognize words and Lyrqiue herself at least.

"Yes." The answer was simple, straight-forward. He was badly injured like she was, but his body wasn't completely broken yet. Probably a mixture of adrenaline and healing magicks had him thinking he could still move when in reality he should have been dying on the ground. 

But the moment of silence and clarity was broken by the dying roar of the dragon. It hurt Mitari's ears, and he cringed at the unholy sound. But not for long, as the dragon's powerful wings knocked away the snow that covered them. The dragon's roar was barely an instant's warning before the teeth and the lances were upon them. One dragon and four heretic dragoons rose to them as they fell to earth. And they were at the mercy of the dragon and his heretics. 

Mitari did the only thing he could think of as the dragoon's rush for them. He threw his body in front of her as best he could in mid air and watched with nothingness as a lance from the heretics impaled itself through his chest. His body convulsed for a moment. The moment had felt so long, but it was only a short few seconds and again they were falling, spiraling towards the infested unholy ground.

Lyrique noticed Mitari's seeming death with half a glance to one side, registering it dully. She was not so cold that she did not care. But compared to everything else that happened, what was this? Just one more thing for her to lose.

She put similar emphasis on her own life, lazily catching an extended lance in her chest, the point smashing through her ruined arm and pushing into her flesh. She could almost feel the black heretic blood on her clothes mingling with her own red blood. Her expression was bored, her lips turned down and insult.

The dragoon that had struck her smiled for a moment, and then his head snapped to one side as the toe of Lyrique's sharp boot ripped a jagged line through his helm. She stomped on his shoulder with shattering force, knocking him off of her and pushing her back up into the air. His lance pulled from her flesh, and her pierced lung began to fill with blood. The dragoon fell away and was knocked aside by the dragon that still ascended.

Lyrique still held onto Mitari by his shirt, the dragoon that had killed him hanging near them in the air and tethered to them by his weapon. The teeth were coming.

Dead, perhaps not. Dying, perhaps so. Mitari went limp in shock for a few moments, hardly registering what was happening. All he could see in front of him was the pointed jagged teeth of the dragon and his minions, faint specks of black hovering around them. 

He inhaled sharply, muscles moving on their own accord. If this was to be his death, then he was going to die in a blaze of glory. 

Mitari reached down and grasped Lyrique's hand, moving to free his shirt either by ripping the fabric to just unfurling her hand. 

The dragon that had been below her blasted past her with a violent thrash of wing and claw, but it did not do more than shake her, and Lyrique's expression did not falter. She spied the shaft of her lance between its teeth, still lodged in its throat. A streak of black blood bubbled from the wound as it rose away.

"I'm going to do it." Mitari whispered, just barely loud enough that Lyrique might hear him. "I'm going to kill that dragon. And when I kill it, you'll believe me that I could have been a great Dragoon." And with that, he pulled himself together, pushing his leg off Lyrqiue to rocket her downwards and him up to the dragon.

Lyrique didn't even spare the thought to which him luck, nor to wonder if he would succeed or not. The heretic Dragoon still held the lance that had impaled the Miqo'te, but as Mitari kicked off of her, she took the heretic by an eye socket with her clawed fingers. Under such pains, the man let go, and let Mitari keep the lance, too. He pulled the lance from his own chest at the same time and bellowed a roar back at the dragon, heading lance first for its teeth.

Lyrique was thrown downward, a decapitated head in one hand, and in the other was a head with a writhing heretic at the end of its neck. She did not concern herself with the fact that Mitari had injured her in using her as a launching platform. The disrespect of his action was far worse than that, and it did not measure near the other insults of the day.

The Dragoon whose eye-socket she held struck at her hand with supernatural strength to dry and dislodge it. Lyrique too the blow and added her own strength to the gesture, and ripped her claws through his skull. The man's helmet shattered, bits of bone and dark gray brain splattering into the air. She let go of the man as his body seized violently, leaving him to die either before or after he hit the ground.

Mitari launched skyward, lance forward as he rushed to the dragon's maw. Air rushed past them, and suddenly his body tremored from the impact upon the black bloody teeth. The teeth, and it felt like every bone in his body, shattered and still the momentum from his jump pushed him forward still. Through the mouth of the beast, his lance ripped through flesh and blood shot out like foutains at him, coating Mitari in a thick hot black blood. Yet still the force pushed through, his lance carved through the soft internal flesh of the dragon. Its throat sliced to bits and still Mitari flew straight through. First the lance appeared at the back of its throat, and suddenly the flesh blew open with the greatness of Mitari's force. 

A shower of black blood hissed as it settled upon the snowy landscape and Mitari just another large drop of blood. The dragon could make no noise other than to flail and die as it fell to the ground with a tremendous thud, crushing a good portion of the remaining heretics and minor dragons.

Lyrique was crouching on the ground not far from where the dragon fell, and she watched the Miqo'te shaped glob of gore fall into the snow. The heretics and the lesser dragons were not harassing her. The last two dragoons -- she'd glanced their faces as they passed by, both familiar -- had continued into the sky away from her after she had killed the last, abandoning the dragon to Mitari's attack and, from what she could tell, vanishing. Though she didn't trust it.

The Lady of Midichante stood up crookedly and walked. She did not run, leap, or fly. She walked to the corpse of the dragon, to where she'd seen the orphan fall. The heretic forces and dragons began to disperse around her, neither attacking her nor pursuing the survivors, but universally moving back towards the keep. Likely to occupy it again, or finish demolishing it. She couldn't bring herself to care.

"Mitari!" she called, looking into the black-bloodied snow.

There was silence that only the muted snow could bring after a battle. Laying mostly broken and drowning in dragon blood, Mitari was somewhere. His head swam and he knew not where he was, only that he had done the one thing he had always set out to do. He could die like this and he would be alright. He had become a real dragoon. He had killed a dragon. He had saved so many people. It would have been what his mother wanted. She would have been sad to see him die, but happy he could die in such a way. Not gunned down by Garlean scum as innocents, but a brave and mostly honorable man. 

Fading somewhere on the line between death and life, his body choked out the blacken blood from his mouth in a singular sick cough.

The sharp point of Lyrique's boot kicked Mitari's arm. "Stop being lazy. If you've got a soulstone on you then you need to act like it."

Mitari coughed heavily again, spitting up black blood and bile and rolling over to his side to vomit what little remain in his stomach. It took a few moments to try and shakily regain some sort of consciousness, but he managed to look hazily up at Lyrique.

The Lady Midichante waited patiently. She pulled herself up into a proper posture and gazed at the horizon, but inwardly she was in ribbons. It showed only in her eyes, which bore a tired despair, and her shoulders which heaved in desperate need of breath. When she noticed Mitari looking up at her, she spoke in a strained voice that sounded either pained or angry, "Can you move or not?"

Mitari let out a long soft breath. He just laid there breathing for a few moments before slowly pushing himself onto his knees. "I... can..." he breathed out slowly, feeling dizzy and half dead.

"Then find me at Dragonhead and I'll see to it you receive medical care. If you aren't mistaken for a heretic and killed on sight." She turned abruptly stumbled and reset herself. Inhaled and exhaled and began to walk away. The decapitated head still dangled from one hand.

Mitari only let out another long exhale before his eyes fluttered shut and his broken body slowly became limp.

After a few steps, Lyrique looked over her shoulder. When she saw Mitari slumped down in the snow, she turned to look at him and said, "Don't sleep here or you'll freeze to death! Don't make me carry you to Dragonhead!"

Mitari didn't reply, only remained still as the falling snow slowly began to bury him.

"Mitari!" And she paused, "Did you die?" After another long moment with no response, Lyrique let her composure snap like a stressed buttress, first sagging forward and then collapsing completely into the snow. The head she was carrying slipped from her fingers and she pitched forward, falling on her face. For a moment, she just lay there like this, her shoulders shaking. The snow muffled the sobbing until she stirred, and then the woman's crying was unfairly loud in the snow.

Vauge sounds flittered past Mitari's ears. He heard the sounds of a woman crying. The movement of snow, something that had become familiar to his ears over the years. But they died on his mind which didn't yet stir, although the sound of a crying woman always bothered his very soul. 

Lyrique pulled off her last gauntlet and threw it away like something worthless, and washed her hands in the snow. She lifted snow and pushed it into her face repeatedly, scrubbing frantically to get the black blood off her features. Ice froze in her eyebrows when she was done. Icicles hung from her hair.

Slowly, she composed herself again.

Then she stomped over to where Mitari lay in the snow and unburied him. First, she checked to see if he was alive, finding that he was, however vaguely. Then she sought the soulstone of the heretic. Her intention was to take it from him, but she hesitated when she realized without its power he would likely die before he received any medical attention. Not that she was in the habit of caring, but...

With the decapitated head back in her right hand, she took Mitari by the collar in her left hand and began to pull him through the snow.

Eventually, the feeling of rough movement across the landscape and the black blood being wiped from parts of his body as he was dragged stirred Mitari's mind and he wearily reached up and grabbed at Lyrique's wrist. 

"I can walk..." he slurred at her stubbornly, as he could only assume it would be Lyrique dragging a half dead man through the Coerthas snow.

The Lady stopped walking and looked back to Mitari, her green eyes framed by ice-laden red hair as she stared down at the man for several seconds. And then she said, "You don't need to. I can get you there."

"No... I..." Mitari half-frowned, slapping weakly at her wrist before his arm limply fell back to the ground as it was dragged along again. There were a few moments of silence before he could muster up the energy to speak again. "A lady shouldn't... carry her... disobedient servant through the... snow..."

"No she shouldn't," Lyrique agreed, directing her gaze forward and continuing to walk. "And a knight should not let himself be dragged. But we'll not speak of it."

"A... knight..." Mitari repeated the words in a slurred somewhat delirious haze. Was she really calling him that? It was as much acknowledgement from her as he could ever hope to get, and somehow... he felt less like dying now.

Lyrique wordlessly dragged him on. She found the trail left in the snow by the survivors who had left the keep and began to follow it, using all of the strength in her soulstone just to keep walking forward in the snow, maintaining her grip on the broken man.

Mitari remained wordless like Lyrique, just letting her drag his body somewhat roughly through the snowy fields. He could only hope that they didn't run into anymore dragons, heretics, or corrupted dragoons.

Year 1 of the 8th Astral Era
Two weeks go

The anonymous person writhed briefly beneath the thin sheet, and then bolted upright so suddenly that Lyrique Midichante was brought fully awake, eyes alert. She didn't recognize the woman who was in bed next to her, though that had been introduced. The woman was Maelys, a gift that Anaelle had escorted into her room well after midnight, and after affixing a blindfold over Lyrique's eyes. The red blindfold still hung limply from the Lady Midichante's thin neck, almost lost in the long hair that lay over her naked skin.

It was impossible to miss the air of distress around Maelys. The muscles beneath the thin woman's dusky skin were stretched tight; Lyrique had never seen those shoulders before, but she had felt them. The shoulders of the anonymous, silent woman had been soft and controlled, but now tense, strong muscles stood out against the tips of the woman's dark hair. Her small fists clutched the sheets where they pulled about her lap, the exposed line of her spine a straight line from her haunches to her neck.

Lyrique Midichante sat up slowly, sheet sliding from her body, green eyes wide open to take in Maelys' face for the first time. The dark woman's eyes were wide and awake, but looking at nothing. They were pale in color, murky, blind. She ground her jaw, teeth audible, as her body almost shivered in readiness to move. She spoke suddenly, her voice surprisingly small, little more than a breath. "Anaelle. Lock the chamber door."

In a sudden snap of movement, Anaelle burst from the bed to Lyrique's opposite side. The woman went from repose to fast motion in an instant, tearing the sheet from both of the other women in the process. Anaelle's tall, pale body was as white as the ice that lined the massive windows of the room, the snow drifting against them. Her her was red like blood in the snow, shifting about her angular shoulderblades. As Anaelle moved, the padding of her barefeet was audible in the large stone room. It could be hear just over the shuff of the falling sheet, over the held breath of the two women on the bed.

Lyrique shook herself from her half-asleep daze. "What's-?"

A grey palm slapped her leg, thin fingers curling over Lyrique's thigh. The touch was familiar, shivering similarly to how it had last night, bu now Maelys' gesture was unmistakable warning. Lyrique's brow dropped, watching the hard lines of Maelys' tendons, the way the wrinkling on her hand gave away the woman's advancing age.

When she reached the chamber door, Anaelle threw the bolt. No sooner had the mechanism clicked into place then the mass of the door crashed against it, pushed by some external weight. The wood slammed against the metal, but held fast. The sound echoed in the room, shook the window, shocked Lyrique to her feet where she stood wide-eyed in a broad stance, hands open. Anaelle flinched away from the door, retreating backwards. She looked over her shoulder, her blue eyes catching Lyrique's and showing the same sense of shock. Anaelle crossed her arms tied around her body. She must've felt just as exposed in her nudity as Lyrique did.

The only one of the three women to maintain her composure was Maelys, who remained sitting on the bed, staring at nothing. "There are soldiers outside. I can hear-"

There was another slam against the door, louder than before, heavier. The metal of the bolt and hinges groaned. That slam was followed by another, and then another. The sound shook the room, making the window and the light coming through it shiver. Anaelle turned from the door and ran back to the bed, taking up the fallen sheet in her hand and throwing it around Maelys.

Lyrique turned from the bed and took several quick steps towards her wardrobes, throwing open a large cabinet door. She didn't bother with hiding her body, instead sliding her hands immediately into the armored gauntlets of her dragoon armor. The soulstone concealed in her right gauntlet pressed reassuringly against her skin, the power contained within filling her.

A shadow flashed across the floor an instant before the window burst inward, throwing shards of glass, snow and ice, and frigid air into the room. A human body hit the floor of the room, landing in a crouch so forcefully that the stone beneath him cracked. He wore the armor of the dragoons, shining in the white light. Two more dragoons landed near him an instant later, slightly behind him, all with lances drawn.

The glass falling everywhere, brilliant snow and reflected light dancing through the air, the room seemed for an instant to be made of light. Anaelle, perfectly pale and seeming to glow, wrapped the white sheet around Maelys' shadowy form and bent over her protectively. Lyrique required no such protection, and would have rejected it. She took her lance from where it was stored and turned to face the intruders. Reflected light danced over her form like flying diamonds, but Lyrique was as pale as the light, her hair as brilliantly red as rubies cascading over her shoulders, her eyes like inset sapphires glowing with challenge. She took a single step forward and stopped at the feeling of broken glass beneath her feet. There was no pain, but a glance down revealed blood trickling from beneath her toes.

For several seconds, the falling glass made the sound of a hailstorm, and then it died into silence. The pounding on the door had stopped. Gradually, the wind blowing through the window began to howl. It carried in snow that settled in Lyrique's hair and eyelashes, lay itself over Anaelle's body. Maelys didn't move, sitting limp and blind where Anaelle shivered around her. Lyrique shivered in the cold as well, though she tried to keep it in her fingertips only.

The three dragoons that were suddenly in her room stood with the clattering of armor. Two Elezen and a Hyur, faces hidden behind dark metal plates, all men. She didn't need to see their eyes. It didn't matter to her. Lyrique Midichante presented her lance in front of her, decorated with gold and gemstones but no less threatening as she held its point towards the men. If they didn't give the weapon due attention, it was to their own detriment.

One of the dragoons turned and paced nonchalantly to the chamber door, throwing the bolt and pulling it open. It swung with a heavier groan, hanging from damaged hinges and scrapping the floor. The outer finish of it, once bearing the carved seal of the House Midichante, had been defaced by the pounding of armored fists and feet. Two more dragoons entered, both as anonymous as the first, along with a man in a rich blue robe and relatively humble ornamentation. This robed man walked with the poise of a priest and the business-like coldness of a politician.

This man was not a stranger. He stepped into Lyrique's personal chamber, letting his eyes peruse the nudity of the Lady Midichante and the women in her bed. His lips parted like a bloated corpse splitting open. "Lyrique. I say, this is an interesting state to find you in. Not exactly a chaste woman, are you?"

Lyrique tightened her grip on her lance, the clawed fingers of her gauntlets clicking against it. "You will answer for this disrespect, inquisitor. You will answer for everything."

"Tut," he said. His eyes lingered on Anaelle's shivering back. Lyrique wanted to cut them out, but withheld her anger with great effort. The inquisitor continued his idle meandering into the room, the eyes of the dragoons watching him for some cue. "We have reason to believe you are working with the dragons. You are required to submit to trial."

"Are you insane? I am the head of House Midichante!" She cut the air with her lance. Two of the dragoons, the smart ones, took this gesture as a threat and reached for their own lances. The others, the idiots, had yet to look away from her body. "You already judged my father, and he passed! He was innocent and is now dead for that!"

"Yet by your own admission it was your brother who betrayed your House's keep to the dragons." He lifted a hand and pushed aside a predicted objection, though he still wasn't looking at Lyrique. "Yes, I know, you didn't want us to find out about that, but we did. You can't prove you were not working with him. The only witness to your supposedly valiant defense was a Miqo'te, and he disappeared mysteriously, didn't he? Rather incriminating."

"I'm not going to submit," Lyrique snapped. "If I die, who will lead the House? My cousin is just a child! She-"

"The cousin you speak of," the inquisitor observed, finally turning his dead-looking gray eyes on Lyrique, "The little girl? She underwent judgement yesterday. She did not pass."

"What?" Lyrique shivered, something even colder than the ice and frigid wind sliding through her belly. "You... judged a child...?"

He spread his arms, "We threw her from the cliffs. She summoned dragons and they saved her from the fall, but the dragoons took care of the lot of them. We believe that your father may have been working for the dragons as well, and merely allowed himself to fall to his death to throw off the investigation."

"You... killed her?" Lyrique moved her lance closer to her body, wrung her hands upon it. This was not an outwardly threatening gesture, but the two intelligent dragoons recognized the shift in stance and glanced at one another.

"Lyrique," the inquisitor walked towards her. "You are the last of the original bloodline of House Midichante. You are the only one who can ensure that whatever new bloodline takes over from you, will be able to do so with honor. And the only way to do that is to be judged and found innocent."

"To let you murder me, you mean."

Lyrique turned her eyes to the bed, where Anaelle had now fully concealed the darker woman from view. Maelys was bent forward with her head in Anaelle's lap, and the pale, lanky Elezen was folded over Maelys with the sheet swaddling the woman completely. The shrouding was complete. It was not completely necessary; after all, it was not as though Maelys were a Duskwight or anything like that. But with the way Anaelle kept her face against Maelys back, and her pale hands held the woman face, made it obvious how precious the blind woman was to Anaelle. The blue-eyed woman on the bed watched Lyrique carefully, not afraid, and did not seem to request any extra consideration or protection.

Exhaling, Lyrique recalled the touch of Anaelle's cheek upon her own the night before, as her attendant had tied that blindfold about her head and purred, "I've brought you a present." It had been a good present. Lyrique had made gestures of affection for Anaelle that no other had ever warranted.

The Lady Midichante turned back to the inquisitor, raising her head high. The wind caught her hair and pulled it out behind her, a ruby veil behind her naked form. Her armored hands lifted the dark lance in front of her. "I once asked you, inquisitor, how many of my family you would have to throw from those cliffs before you were satisfied. I now have my answer. But the heinous actions you have taken this morning endangered not only myself, but those under the protection of House Midichante. Your manners need work."

The inquisitor's pale lips smirked, and he showed her the palms of his hands. "I stand chided and will make due recompense to your harem for their humiliation."

"I do not believe that you will."

The man's smile vanished. "Will you submit or not?"

The wardrobes next to Lyrique were reduced to splinters, the ground beneath her cracked, as she launched herself with incredible power towards the open window. In an instant, she was sailing through the white air, snow pelting her face, the bones and flesh of her body crying out in pain from the suddenness of the movement. Purple dots lay over her vision for a moment, shadows darkening the edges, and she felt incredibly dizzy as she flew. It was all she could do to hold onto her lance. 

Lyrique had hoped her body would be able to handle the strain, that her senses would come back, but they continued to fade. Of course, she hadn't predicted just how cold it would be. Even as she fell from the tower she had been in, she felt like her hair was freezing against her scalp and face, and her senses darkened all the more. One of the cruxes of the use of her soulstone was making sure that she did not take action that would exceed the limits of her body. This jump was powerful enough, sudden enough, insane enough that it should have taken her well away from the reach of any pursuers, well outside of civilization, at the sacrifice of her health.

But she hadn't had a choice. If she had tried to fight, the inquisitor might have hurt Anaelle and Maelys. At any rate, the end result was the same: the church would say that Lyrique had fled her trial, and declare her a traitor. If she evaded suspicion, Anaelle would be placed in temporary control of the House. If nothing happened to her and to Maelys.

Lyrique closed her eyes and prayed. Her eyes remained closed when she was done. Her body went limp and still, pale and icy. By the time she reached the snow-covered ground, she was unconscious.