Warren Castille looked into the bottle but it didn't hold any answers for him. He placed it down next to its siblings, all equally silent in the face of his questions, and reached for the next. If there was a prodigal son in all the lot, he was intent on finding it.
He'd long since cast out the thoughts of his course being unfairly set, or his circumstances being inflicted on him through a means of Higher Power. For all this cursing that Menphina was cruel, he was suddenly and painfully aware that he was a fool. Mistaken and weak, he had simply failed to overcome the trials set before him.
"If I coulda waited..."
He shook his head and uncorked the bottle. No use in rehashing the thoughts, yet he was powerless to stop himself.
He'd ripped out part of himself after months of trying to reconcile that she was gone. He thought at first that he would prove himself worthy, and she would return. He thought that he was strong enough to wait, loyal enough to endure. He buried shards of himself deep, hoping to cut off the pain in his heart and find a way to go on.
He did. He thought he'd found a way to continue. He thought he was forgotten, forgiven. He thought those parts of him were dead and buried and gone. He should have known that those sorts of things don't just die, but he didn't.
She returned like a lightning bolt out of the blue sky; No warning, no signs. Howl had promised him long ago he would help drag Warren out of the Hells and somehow, against all manner of obstacle, Howl had seen that through. His plea to Sei in her darkest moment had saved something in her, salvaged a piece of her from the fires. She returned and confessed and those pieces of himself he had hidden away were torn from the earth, and the walls and sandbags he had erected in hopes of keeping himself safe were demolished, annihilated.
He loved her. With every fiber of his being, he wanted to be hers. For one marvelous, beautiful day things were on that path, but he turned her away. His heart was clouded, overjoyed as it was, and omission had damned him. For all that Howl had sacrificed, for his entire ordeal and all of this heartache, Warren had simply done the deed himself. He'd lied and betrayed the one person he loved more than anything.
Behind him, for all of his hopes and ideals and wanting to protect and do good, were ashes and bodies.
The bottom of the bottle didn't hold any answers, but the emptiness in his chest urged him to keep looking. Just one more...
A hand swooped in and liberated the next bottle before Warren could get it to his lips.
"Peace! You shouldn't drink alone. You stink of ale."
Howl shrugged and gave the bottle a good pull. Mmm, Momodi's good brown ale - always hit the spot, even mid-morning. But then, between the two of them, they'd made a significant dent in their liquor reserves. Howl's tactic since Warren's Meteor-sized, Dalamud-like bombshell of the other night had been to ply Warren with liquor and try to make sense of it all.
Warren had lied to him - had concealed the truth from him for months, that Warren had not only gotten with Crofte, but slept with her. Warren had done the same with Snow, though unlike Howl, Snow hadn't been on the scene the entire time, so by Howl's judgment, it was a bigger violation that he hadn't been told. Snow had predictably flown into a rage when she found out. Warren had claimed, somewhat lamely, that he had already considered the liaison over - though Howl wasn't so sure about that. Howl rather suspected the relationship ended the second Warren saw Snow again.
A man wants who he wants, loves who he loves, after all. Can't fault him for that. But did he have to lie about it to me...?
He stifled a sigh and took another pull on the bottle. He was caught as usual in the cleft stick of what he wanted and his duty to Warren. And as usual, the duty part was winning out. Warren had made him certain promises in the past few days that Howl was fairly certain weren't genuine. Howl was getting good at burying it all deep within himself. He was well aware he was the only reason Warren had made it through these past few days. He was all but physically carrying Warren around.
It ain't earning you anything. When was the last time you rolled dice? Or played a game of cards? How long are you going to wait around for something that ain't gonna happen? How long are you going to sacrifice and hurt and serve, when all that did before was drive him to Crofte's bed? It doesn't matter how good a person you are, how good a friend you are. In the end, you're bottom of the totem pole.
He reflexively buried that as well. There was no time for anger, bitterness, fear, disappointment, whatever. Warren needed him.
"Look, here you are wallowing in despair again," he chided Warren lightly, polishing off the ale and redirecting Warren's hand away from the next in line with the toe of his boot. "Quit it. There's always hope."
"No's not," Warren mumbled drunkenly. "She hates me. Won' even come talk to me."
"You don't know that. The girl cares about you or we wouldn't have gotten this far anyway. It might take some time, but you've got an in." Howl paused, scratching his ear idly, thinking. "I'm gonna go to her and negotiate."
Warren barked a short, incredulous laugh. "Negotiate? I don't have anything she wants."
"Well, maybe I do," Howl answered lightly. "I make a mean necklace. Think I can buy her off with pretties? Mythril earrings, maybe? What's her favorite gemstone? Or I can polish her spear, kill a rival of hers... maybe if I offer her your head on a pole--"
Warren shook his head, slumping further. "C'mon, this ain't like you," Howl said again, giving him another nudge and stealing another of his bottles. "You gotta fight. You can't give up. As long as there's life, there's hope - and I'm not gonna let you die." He grinned. "Yeah, you made a mistake -"
Betrayal. Everyone betrays you in the end.
He buried it. "- but everyone makes mistakes. You're a man, and a knight. You're going to conquer this thing and kill it, and drag its corpse over to her and show her the monster you killed for her. Right? Right." He downed the ale. "And she'll be so overcome with joy that she'll toss off that Siben guy and come running back. You'll see."
And in the meantime... I gotta work on that, too.
That thought he let be.
The steady bang of the hammer on anvil was lost amidst the same noise resonating around him. The pits in the Bloodsands always played host to a number of smiths working on repairing what arms and armor had been used beyond safe limits, crude iron and fine steel alike mended and repaired to play their parts. It was the unending unlife of a weapon made to threaten lives; Even when the parts had finally given out and the strength of the metal depleted, there was always someone there to find the pieces, reforge it and send it back. Despite cracks in the armor, sometimes pieces torn clean asunder, despite being torn to shreds and leaving shattered parts of themselves in the dust and the blood, there was always another blow of the hammer to set things right. Weapons and armor, condemned to march on forever, killing and being killed again and again.
Does a shattered sword love the hammer or fear it?
--
Warren's eyes were open. The first thing he was aware of was the soft throbbing pain in his neck and he absentmindedly touched to it; Tender flesh cried out slightly under his fingertips before a small mind of comfort set in. He woke alone and reasoned that Howl was already back at his toolkit, working out a fine spool of delicate wiring or perhaps cutting a gem for fastening. His fingers turned to the fine mythril loops in his ears and he smiled. They were finely made, but more importantly they were his. Creation bred meaning into things, Warren believed, and there was little more important to him now than that bond.
Returning to the ground floor, Warren's eyes turned to the table that served as the sole eating surface in the main room. His desk was still covered in ledgers and paperwork, documents pertaining to the upkeep and incoming costs and expenditures, but the table was covered in empty bottles. With nothing else on his plate until later that afternoon, he collected them all and began lugging a crate full of empties back to town. Though not required, Warren always felt returning bottles was a courtesy that needed to be upheld.
The sun was bright and the air warm, bordering hot as it always was, but a cool breeze permeated that made things seem cooler than mercury would tell. Warren considered his predicament as his feet carried him along the pathways, his attention diverted while his mind wandered.
He'd been wounded moons ago, and his estimation was that it had been mortal. His heart had been torn from his chest cavity while still beating and for days he lumbered along, refusing to die but unable to be whole again. The thought of it still caused his chest to ache, his neck echoing the sensation, and despite the distance from the attack he could still feel it. Powerless to stop the thing he feared most from coming to life and making off with the only thing in the world he considered true, he stared his monsters in the face and could only witness his world erode and fall away.
Howl had found him among the dust. It was happenstance, but Warren wondered about that. The man was unshakeable in his beliefs and his affections, and Warren knew in the empty spot his heart belonged that Howl would follow him to the ends of the world and into the depths of hell. He was a true companion, through thick and thin, and Warren couldn't express how grateful that made him. With Howl's help he was able to staunch the wound, stuffing cotton and straw and plants and mud into the hole. Howl gave selflessly to insure Warren's recovery, but there was more to it than that.
He owed him.
Warren really couldn't hold his booze now. Howl waited until the steady rhythms of Warren's breaths had slowed to a sleep-like level for nearly half a bell, then crept upstairs, Warren's belt pouch and his own in his hands. He waited until he was in the quiet of his private rooms to light a lamp, setting Warren's pouch down on the table and rifling through it with the casual disregard of a boundaries-challenged relative until he found what had to be what he was looking for.
He held it up to the light, inspecting it with a detached artisinal eye; it was a shell ring, plain and old, with the marks of age and much newer marks of damage and fire. It was cracked down the middle, scorched badly. Howl set it aside and laid out his tools, ornamental hammer, grinding wheel, dark matter, crystal shards. He donned his magnifying glasses that made him look like a particularly eccentric Elezen, kneeling by his small work table, and positioned light and tools all around as he studied the problem.
His mind detached as he worked.
He had had perhaps the nicest night of recent memory, a quiet night out with Warren, a meal, some wine, a lot of conversation ranging from serious discussions of Warren's future wife, to eating chocobo eggs over baby Moogle in Ishgard. Warren was starting to smile again. Howl had far too many memories of Warren's depressive states, from when they first met through just the other day when Howl had met him by the fireplace in the Duskbreak.
And that, too, had led him here, fusing aether and crystal and ring and dark matter in the dead of night.
No promises had been made, and he wasn't the type to ask for them anyway. He wasn't even particularly sure what kind of promise he'd ask for. All he'd really wanted was to be important - if not first in the race, then a close second. The past few moons, he'd figured he was dead last, the chocobo that should be taken out back and put out of its misery after the race. But so much had changed. He damn well didn't know what way was up anymore. He'd been betrayed, then forgiven him, now was trying to grope to some sort of new accommodation, some new balance between them. And Snow, too. No wonder he was repairing rings in the middle of the night.
He held up the finished work, pleased with himself. It was still worn, still old, but the scorch-marks were gone, the crack sealed invisibly. It was, perhaps, his best work; while he was far from an expert Goldsmith, he was skilled enough to work on solo pieces for high-value customers, and had nearly finished a custom chandelier the other day that he expected to bring a pretty penny.
The owner of this ring and himself had never really seen eye-to-eye - but he felt bad about that. She'd probably never know this was his apology, but he knew. He tucked the ring away into Warren's belt pouch, packing away his goldsmithing apparatus, and crept back downstairs to the basement.
Warren's self-appointed role in life was securty; minding the safety of those around him and the places he occupied. He'd been working to that end for years, and that's without even mentioning the unscrupulous years of his youth, spent sleeping in beds he shouldn't have and needing to be wary of guards or worse, angry fathers.
Howl hadn't gone two steps from bed before Warren's consciousness returned. The list of bodies that could move around him while he slept without waking him was one name long, to his knowledge, but he reasoned if the miqo'te had a reason to slip away that he should leave him to that. The telltale sound of clothing being rifled through sounded in the night and Warren smiled to himself. He knew what Howl was up to.
A short war was waged in his head. He'd made a determined decision to stop allowing Howl to selflessly sacrifice himself to help carry Warren's burdens and problems, but he also knew that rendering such services satisfied a need and a want in his younger counterpart. The discussion of the ring had come up over dinner, the contents of the letter made mention and the nature of the delivery weighed. Warren wanted to do the task himself; It was his responsibility because he had been trusted with the artifact, but it was also true that he didn't trust his own skills with the delicate work.
Letting the ring fall into disrepair was his own fault. Another mistake due to his own weaknesses. It caused no small wound in him that he allowed harm to come to it, though he considered perhaps it was a fitting physical blemish to mirror the emotional one he'd inflicted. If that was the case, he knew Howl would be the more capable of the two of them to repair it; Howl was a healer, even if he styled himself as a brawling gambler.
At some point, Warren drifted off. He slept soundly and his dreams were of the glorious sunrise.
There was work to be done.
The prior days were a whirlwind of activity and reflection. He'd been in frequent counsel with both Sei and Howl and they were both tending to his wounds in their own ways. Of course, that wasn't entirely acceptable; It had been Warren's own lack of honesty that had hurt them in the first place, and anything that was happening now was just him picking up the pieces. He could see clearly how dumb his decision to not be open was, but he could also still see the trails that led him to that mistake in the first place.
How do you tell somebody who's been there for you the entire time they've known you that you've chosen someone else?
Warren wasn't unaware of Howl's feelings. He'd clued Howl into them first; On some level Warren had been expecting it, another person to follow the trend of anyone he let in after he and Sei went their separate ways. It wasn't the same, though. Howl was selfless in his care and genuinely seemed to only want to help Warren through the dark, and in his weakness and vulnerability Warren accepted it, greedily letting the miqo'te take those burdens on himself to help the recovering process. Howl had asked for nothing, but hoped for everything, and Warren had turned him away time and time again. To be open about his decision and his feelings would have decimated the man, and Warren couldn't bring himself to reveal it.
So much pain could have been avoided had he been more caring or brave.
The decision to keep Howl in the dark by omission haunted him. He could see the tension from both Coatleque and Howl on one another, and they both thought the same things, likely; Here was someone else who doesn't understand the dynamic, and it was Warren's fault neither side knew. The realization of it now made him feel even worse about the situation and he knew that he was a scoundrel for it. That was without even considering Sei's return.
Warren had convinced himself that she was gone. Following the arc in Coerthas, she returned alive and changed to Eorzea and had never sent word or showed a sign of herself. She was Snow, now, so Howl had said, and she had thrown away everything that made her up from her past life. When Howl warned that she would return, and likely to kill him, Warren refused. He felt his connection had finally been severed; Like everything else that died on that mountain, her feelings for him had been thrown off of the cliff as well. He thought he finally had closure, and that the chapter was finally closed. He was wrong.
He remembered her suddenly being in the main room. She was smiling, blunt as ever, wanting to reconnect. He didn't believe it, and all at once the careful construction that he and Howl had been working on to repair his heart was swept away. He felt guilty for it but his world was forgotten; Before him was Sei, looking at kind and sweet as ever, though different. She wasn't the same woman, but she told him how Howl had gone to her at her darkest moment. He'd told her that no matter what Ryuuga said, no matter what despair she felt in her heart, that she had someone who would always love her no matter what. She told him how those words saved a part of her from the fire, and she wanted to reconnect with him.
He couldn't do anything but accept. His feelings for her, long ignored and hastily discarded, eclipsed anything he thought he knew or felt. Those wants and needs don't just vanish into the dark, and her sudden appearance dragged them back, the entirety of them crashing down on him like Dalamud. He had always belonged to her, and he was reminded of that, he could feel her emblazoned on his soul.
Of course, his deception destroyed that. It was in some ways best that he'd tried to do the right thing and send her back to Siben first; She had wanted to break things off but he could see in her face the worry when she thought she'd hurt him. She had uncertainty in her still, and Warren wanted her to be sure. A day later, he confessed his infidelity and she turned away from him. It was what he deserved.
Things happened quickly, then. He broke things off with Coatleque, suddenly knowing deep down that he wasn't for her, couldn't be. He apologized to Howl and worked to repair those bonds, hoping he could return even a fraction of the love Howl had shown him. As important to him, however, was rebuilding himself in Sei's eyes. She had chosen him before as her knight and even after her departure, he continued to carry the small white knit square she'd given him the night of the Ul'dah ball.
He was disgraced. He was a letdown, a mistake, a disappointment. But Warren would not give up. He couldn't.
Almost as soon as Howl stepped into the Quicksand, Ha'ural was by his side.
Howl felt a frisson of shock pass through him as his older brother grabbed his arm, pulling him over to his table. It was his right arm - his linkpearl side - and he didn't dare reach for one. Likewise, when they sat, Ural was on his right side, sitting close enough to him to nearly be touching.
Reluctantly, Howl raised his eyes to look at his older brother for the first time in moons. Ural had always been the pretty one of the family, with uncharacteristic dark, soft locks framing deep blue eyes, but there was a sameness about their faces, their jawlines, cheeks, and noses, that suggested the same father and mother genes, rare in a Seeker tribe, and especially rare for two nunhs. One nunh, Howl supposed; he was hardly worthy of the designation anymore.
"Finally we catch up, Uruh," Ural said, his voice soft but full of power. Howl averted his gaze guiltily. "After what happened to the tribe... I had no hope left, but I had heard you were still seen around these parts. What... what happened to your eye?"
Howl shifted in his chair. "Well, um... various things... since then..."
Ural waved over a serving wench without shifting his gaze away. "Wine, and let's talk."
Howl couldn't well refuse. He wished mightily for Warren or someone to appear and save him. Ural was unimposing physically, but he was a gifted Thaumaturge, and he had a kind of terrifying charisma about him - a mastery, a way of making you do what he wanted you to do. The last time Howl had seen him, Ural had been watching him from the center of the Ha-tribe encampment, watching him leave, stony-faced and condemning. It's all your fault if the tribe is destroyed, Uruh. And so it had come to pass, the tribe scattered to the winds in fire and destruction, though the perpetrators had never been truly identified. Howl felt another twinge of guilt at his own lack of effort there.
So he drank from winecups Ural put in front of him, reluctantly sharing his story, leaving out whatever he could, though Ural's snake-intense stare seemed to worm more details out of him than he had wanted. His mind raced the entire time - he knew Ural might not have good intentions, but what could he do in the midst of a crowded bar, with Momodi's watchful eye over there? He just wanted a moment alone to call up Warren on the linkpearl and warn him - but the wine seemed to be going straight to his head, even though he began looking for excuses to take fewer and smaller sips.
Finally, Ural got up to excuse himself a moment, and Howl fumbled out his pearl, nearly dropping it. His head felt packed full of wool, his tongue a shriveled mess from all the wine - Did I really have so much? - and all he knew was that he had to tell Warren, had to warn him, but he couldn't seem to quite remember what it was he was going to say. He mumbled a few disjointed sentences, trying to comb through the snarl of his thoughts, but no sooner did he have the linkpearl in his hand than he saw Ural coming back toward him from across the bar, the entire room seeming to lurch over.
As the linkpearl rolled from his hand and consciousness left him, he had one last lucid thought - He drugged the wine.
----
He was walking somewhere, up a long hill, in twilight. His legs and arms felt so heavy and tired, as if someone were pressing them down. He could hear distant, muffled voices shouting, surprisingly loud in the empty space, but he ignored them; he knew he was alone here, and he had to keep pressing on to where he was going. Those people weren't where he was.
"... took poison!"
Not his problem.
He wished he had something to drink. His throat and mouth felt so dry. He thought about eating some of the snow around him on the mountainside - mountain? I thought it was a hill? - but he'd done so much of that before - he couldn't quite remember when - that he had no desire to do that now even to purge the taste from his mouth. His whole body felt so heavy. But he had to get to the top. He struggled on, continuing his climb.
"... have to save him - have to..."
Where was this place? It didn't look familiar to him at all, this dark dune that seemed to stretch up endlessly into a black desert sky. He squinted up but couldn't see any stars. The air felt stale somehow, and close, not at all like the Sagolii at night. He missed it sometimes, the true desert, not like the half-tamed lands around Ul'dah. His feet had grown so heavy from not being accustomed to trudging about in the sand anymore, sinking deeply into the loose sand of the duneside as he plowed onward and upward.
"... some kind of crystal. The Thaumaturge made it before he died..."
Boredom really was what made him start listening to what the voices were babbling on about, though it was like listening to conversations in the Quicksand while loitering in the alley outside. Someone was caught in some sort of prison that a Thaumaturge had made before taking poison, it seemed. He only felt the smallest prick of surprise when he realized they were talking about him. He recognized Snow's high-pitched voice, then another person's voice, a neutral tone that he didn't recognize, then very occasionally, Warren's baritone rumble. He stopped walking to listen, the wind rustling the grass all around; he knew that tone in Warren's voice, despair and anxiety and muted fear all in one. Was that for him?
He considered sitting down to wait. If he was in a prison, that made more sense than walking about and getting lost. But he didn't feel trapped. It was strange here, but not unpleasant. He just felt so heavy, so tired.
Had Ural somehow made this? None of this made much sense - but his mind, half-awake and half-asleep, accepted everything without much question.
Howl stood silently, staring up at the unrelieved black of the sky above him, straining to listen for voices. If it was a prison, he had to find a way out somehow. He had complete faith that Warren and Snow would find a way to get him out - but he had to do whatever he could do as well to fight it. They would be counting on him to not give up, as he was sure they hadn't.
And he did feel a faint unease, in as much as he could feel anything, for Ural's fate, for he was sure that if Ural had put him in some sort of prison, Warren would have made sure Ural paid for it.
and the principle notion that aether can be condensed and reinforced to become more than its base components; fire that burns without fuel and frost that survives desert heat
He was close. Warren had already burned through two candles and his eyes were aching from being forced to read delicate script in poor light. He should have bought torches.
suffusing an element with aether of a life force can however be hazardous, as elemental energies do not care how they are fueled and will consume aether without concern for mortality
The books had been borrowed from the Ossuary. When he arrived the previous day asking about crystal containment and how to dispel it, he was met with blank looks and seemed to be rambling like a madman. In hindsight, Warren reasoned he likely was sounding like a lunatic, but he'd been directed to some books written on the theoretical ability to create corrupted aether. The anomaly had been recently recorded as a result of the Calamity, but there was always the study of it in lesser amounts. Regardless, Warren took everything on the subject and made off with it, returning to the desert cave that housed Howl's prison.
The subject matter was beyond him. Seeds of despair and hopelessness were planted in his heart, and as he read on theories of elematerial values and aetheric energies both suffused and diluted with life energy, he wondered how he was ever possibly going to come to a solution. S'ereno had confirmed that the crystal block was siphoning energy from Howl and would kill him if left untouched, but that did him no good. The thaumaturge's magic had done nothing, left no mark, and Warren himself knew so little about destructive magic that he couldn't surmise where to even begin.
magnified aether gains properties beyond the element's ordinary scope. Enhanced elements have been known to yield in the presence of more powerful magical elements, however, and
Warren sighed and pinched his fingers on the bridge of his nose. He didn't understand what he was reading, but he couldn't stop from trying to get something, anything gleaned. Sei was curled up on the rocks beside him sleeping and for a moment he wondered how she could be comfortable like that. Within a moment he was reminded of the ordeal she'd shared with Howl in the mountains of Coerthas and reasoned this must be far easier in comparison.
He felt his heart shiver at the thought. They'd both been through so much, and there he was feeling worn down from just reading. He was angry with himself for being so weak when Howl needed him. With a faint growl, he turned the page and recommitted himself to learning anything he could to help.
There was no time in the prison, no sense of change, or of urgency. Howl contemplated this, watching the scenery alter from time to time, never when he was watching it, and when it adjusted, it was as if the entire time it had been a field, or a mountainside, or a desert. Sometimes the places were quite pleasant. He laid down when the surroundings were an orange grove in La Noscea, though he didn't allow himself sleep despite the exhaustion that constantly tugged at his body and mind; he was still lying down when he was surrounded by waist-high grain blowing in a warm summer breeze, and when he was in a field of flowers bobbing over his prone body.
Sometimes the surrounds were more terrifying. He revisited the training grounds in Coerthas more often than he would've liked, every detail correct down to the bloodied flogging pole near the edge of the cliff, the ominous glow from Ryuuga's cave. It was always twilight when he was there, the ground covered with day-old snow, and he'd burrow into it as he had before, digging himself a hollow of snow and loose dirt in the ice-hard ground, balling up to preserve every last onz of warmth. Other times, he was on the side of Mount O'Ghoromo, or deep within Sapsa, the sting of the sea on his face and the sickly-sweet smell of rotting seaweed all around him.
But usually he didn't recognize where he was, and he spent time - if time it could be called - in a half-dreaming fugue state, his mind adrift, sorting through his memories as if they were almost real enough to touch. He didn't linger on any one thing, didn't struggle to hold on to one memory over another, and to an extent they felt like someone else's memories anyway, someone else's life. His father, his brother, his tribe, his life in Ul'dah - none of those felt precious, or special to him in some way. They were just people he knew, was bound to by blood, things that had happened. His mind skirted around recent history as if it had never happened, lingering instead on his childhood, his flight from his tribe, and his tribe's eventual destruction.
Perhaps Ural had been right. Perhaps when he'd fled, the destruction of his tribe was inevitable. Not because losing one nunh was that much of a blow - there were plenty of tias waiting for a chance, even a few older former nunhs from other tribes that they had absorbed when they had relinquished their roles according to their tribes traditions, for not all nunhs battled to the death with tia challengers. No, it wasn't the loss of him as a person, but rather, the reliance his tribe had had on him and his immediate family. Howl had always been expected to become a nunh someday, to succeed his father and continue his father's vision for how the tribe should go. The tribe was still young, only a generation removed from the H-tribe, still struggling to define itself. His father Oran's vision had been unique, a tribe where the old had a place as well, a tribe guided by auguries and in tune with destiny, a tribe that valued creative as well as destructive prowess. But that vision couldn't stand up to the realities of desert life. With the entire weight of the Ha expectations on his shoulders, Howl had killed his father in their match, and had fled rather than face the consequences.
Here, in this place, forced to gaze over and over again at what he had done, at the expectations of that moment, he felt deeply ashamed - in as much as he could feel anything with his heart and soul asleep. Had he not fled then... had he taken responsibility for what he'd done... his tribe would still -
The scenery changed around him.
Howl froze, his heart suddenly thudding loud in his ears. He was in his old tent in the desert. He recognized the scene immediately - it was that day that both he and Ural had challenged their father for leadership. The other nunhs had passed or stepped down and left the tribe; only their father was left, so he had issued open challenges to tias ready to test themselves, and he'd made it clear that Ural and Howl - Uruh - were expected to do so. He remembered how nervous he'd been, wrapping his fists over and over again, unable to watch Ural's fight, nervous for his brother as well.
As if in a dream, Howl drifted from the tent, leaving his younger self behind, and moved to Ural's.
Ural was there, the younger Ural, in the traditional light desert garb but with a Thaumaturge's heavy cudgel at his belt. And Howl watched as Ural anointed the cudgel with the contents of a vial, his hands encased in protective gloves. He didn't need the faint whiff in the air to know what it was - a local poison made from basilisk venom. It was absorbed through the skin, so a single blow from that cudgel would start the process - sentencing their father to hallucinations, seizures, and a painful death.
Howl didn't need to watch Ural's battle. He didn't want to remember his own. His father had been reeling already, and some had said it was because of the blow to the head Ural had struck with the cudgel. He'd been urged not to fight, to rest and accept challenges another time - already one nunh had won his spurs. But Oran had insisted, bawling for Howl to take the field, for Uruh to become a man this day as well. And Howl had reluctantly fought, terrified by his father's punch-drunk viciousness, by the vacantness in his eyes and the way he seemed to swing at things that weren't there. In the end, Howl had landed the blow that had sent him reeling and thrashing to the floor, the blow that won him the contest, and his father was dead within the same bell. He had always blamed himself.
Was it because Ural had created this prison that he at last saw the truth of what had happened that day?
Grief, guilt, blame, and anger all felt far away, but they scraped at the edges of his mind, and Howl drifted on, walking from the memory of the Ha tribal lands. Ural had been the one in truth to kill their father, just as he had killed himself, just as he had killed the Ha tribe. Ural was reaching from the grave to claim one last victim, to keep Howl in this prison until he too was gone. And he could do nothing more than wait, and turn these memories over and over again in his mind.
Torchlight flickered and sputtered in the lowest reaches of a lonely cave hidden in Southern Thanalan. The midday sun was burning some yalms above, but secreted away in the depths of the cool rock there was only darkness and fire. At one end of a yawning chamber stood the crystalline structure that had vexed Warren for a sevenday now; Fulms thick, perfectly clear, with Howl encased in the center, suspended in the block like some sort of guarded treasure. An apt metaphor, despite the grotesque way in which it manifested.
"Sorry I'm late today. I was speaking with someone from the Ossuary, and I think I've got a lead."
Warren had explained what he'd been reading to the best of his abilities; He clutched snatches of notes and furiously scribbled translations that were attempts to break down the bits he didn't know into parts that he did. The cowled hyur seated opposite him in the quite confines of the library listened quietly, offering nothing while the highlander spoke and explained.
"Your understanding of thaumaturgy is dim, but you're grasping the base tenants with unlearned hands. It's not unlike how you say. In our world there is fire, combustion when proper parts of heat and fuel meet one another. Oil will burn as long as there is oil, but magical fire - that is to say, aetherial fire - is fueled by aether itself. There is no shortage of it, and this fire will burn even when it should not. It is how water elementals may be set alight by skilled hands. Beyond even that, however, is the truly primal element of fire. You spoke of 'denser' aetherial magics, and such things exist, though they are beyond our means to procure. If a campfire is the mundane, and the roving Bombs and Shrapnels are the aetherial, then the truly powerful magic you are referring to would be the likes of Ifrit's flame, or dragonfire."
"I haven't talked to Sei about it yet, but don't go thinking we're going to try and summon a Primal here or anything. That's the back-up plan."
Warren smiled and crossed to the prison, placing a hand on the edge of the crystal. It was still warm, like flesh, but hard and unyielding like before. Howl's eyes opened as the highlander drew closer, unseeing and unaware but looking in his direction again, as they had the days prior. It was a promising sign that tore out Warren's heart. Seeing his friend in such a state was difficult, even if answers were on the horizon.
"She's on her way now, I think. She's still going through a lot of things back home, so I'm giving her space. She knows I'm here for her, but..." He smiled sadly and breathed a small sigh of resignation. "But she's going to be there for him. We're in the long game, Howl. I've got to prove myself again, and it won't be done so quickly."
The crystal pulsed in a mockery of Howl's heartbeat. The damned thing was eating him, feeding on his aether and his spirit to keep itself conjured, and Warren was powerless to break it open for the time being. He tried hard to maintain his composure.
"I meant what I said, you know. This sort of thing, it puts a lot in perspective. So I'm going to have that talk once you're out of there, and recovered. Gods know I've been dragging my feet, but you deserve the option. Maybe something good will come out of this yet..."
He removed his hand and looked the crystal over, folding his arms. "She asked me last night if we could just run away together, the three of us. She said it was a dream, but it sounded so nice. Living on the land? I could see how much of the old trade routes I remember, we could see the world together. Just a dream, though."
Warren sighed tiredly. He had plenty of road before him yet before he could properly lay his burdens to rest, but in the meantime, he had dreams to help ease the load.
A rare rain had settled over Ul'dah and Warren Castille was entirely sure it was on account of him. It had only been a few hours since he'd left Howl's side and had spoken to Sei over pearl, but time didn't have much of a meaning in Ul'dah's back alley bars. He knew the Quicksand was off-limits to him now, especially now, and he knew that she wouldn't be visiting him tonight, and maybe not tomorrow.
"Poison, she said. Infiltration. They haven't been evacuated and the whole thing smells funny. But I can't force her away from him, and... I don't want him in the Duskbreak. So I have to let her go for now."
He's spoken to Howl before he left, pressed his hand to the crystal once more in parting and set off to be back to civilization by dark. The numerous torches and alchemical lighting would have never let you know, but the sound of rain and roar of thunder and crack of lightning cast a peculiar sense of awareness that made the artificial light seem more disingenuous.
Warren's head was down in his cups; A bar he didn't know the name of, but it wa dark and he was unarmored so he expected to blend in. If anybody recognized him they didn't say and that was how he liked it. He lined another empty shot glass in front of him and sighed then replayed the events of the week.
He was without bearing again. He hadn't felt that lost since Sei had left him the first time, and without a rudder he was adrift in the stream of the world once more. He wanted to talk with Howl; Howl always seemed to know how to phrase things or look at them. Howl was a healer with his words and Warren needed that now almost more than anything. The only thing close he couldn't have, either, on account of her being saddled down with a sick man who couldn't even remember her.
He felt guilty casting suspicion his way, but it was an excellent alibi. Memory loss would garner sympathy, hurting her would cause those who might question it to try and comfort her. Suddenly, poison. Why not? Everyone was a possible suspect, and he was unable to lift a finger to investigate. None of them would trust him, either, and the strangest part was that everyone seemed now to know there was a spy, yet they were still cozied up in their homes waiting for an explosion to kill them all. There was precisely one person in the Beds he trusted, and she couldn't leave to be with him. He cut the thought off before he could ask the question if she ever would.
More accurately, the clearing throat to his side cut the thought off.
"Ser Castille." His name on lips he didn't recognize. Warren turned his head in the direction of the words and felt his eyes eventually follow, the whiskey already going to his head.
Damn. Should have eaten.
He took in the image of a polished and attentive Sultansworn; Elezen, and wearing the tabard of the Elite. If Warren had been paying attention to his surroundings he would have noticed the bar cleared out in a hurry when Ser Longneck arrived. Flanking him on either side were two more of Her Resplendence's guard, though they weren't the same rank as the speaker. Flunkies, Warren had to bet.
"...'I know you?" Warren asked after a moment. He suspected what was coming.
"Likely not. You're not the type to pay attention to anyone but yourself, but I know who you are. We all know who you are, the sort of man you are." Ser Longneck's tone was equal parts cordial and seething. There was a reckless fire in his eyes that Warren recognized.
"...I'd hope so. You guys hear about me stopping that assassination attempt some moons back? Look, I don't do autographs."
Warren chuckled to himself and raised his glass in a toast. Ser Longneck didn't seem jovial all of a sudden.
"I was hoping we could discuss something with you. Outside." The elezen's eyes narrowed, and his tone was implying it wasn't an option. His guards moved to either side of Warren and he sighed, setting the glass down and rising with his hands in the air.
"I suppose I've had this coming to me."
"Oh, you have no idea." A look of sadistic glee on Longneck's face.
Warren had only just made it out of the doorway when he felt the blunt force of gauntlet meet his kidney. He staggered forward and met the wall of the far side of the alleyway; Their particular arena only gave them a few fulms in which to maneuver. Back-alley bars seldom cared about their entrances being accessible, after all.
He felt hands on his shoulders right away and he was spun to face his attacker, Ser Longneck feeling bold and empowered in his ceremonial armor. Warren took hold of that glorious tabard, the mark of illustrious service, and leaned forward to smash his forehead into the mouth of the long-eared knight. It never worked in the Grindstone, but foppish elves steer clear of the real fights.
To Ser Longneck's credit, he wasn't swayed. Warren took the worse of the exchange and paid for it as the elezen's knuckles cracked across his jaw in a vicious backhand, the weight of the armor doing the bulk of the work. He could feel his teeth shake and knew his lip was split, the fire of raw nerves familiar enough to him.
It rained down on him both figuratively and literally. A blow to the stomach doubled him over and an elbow to the back drove him to his knees. The knight's greave drove into him and sent him sprawling backwards against the wall and the paladin settled over top of him, raining alternating lefts and rights down. Warren got his arms up to block a few of them, but the beating was intended to be savage.
The highlander was left sputtering on the ground and the elezen gestured to his men. They roughly picked Warren up and he slumped against the wall, then the knight was back in front of him, pressing a forearm against his neck.
"I hope you've learned a lesson from all of this, Ser." The elezen sneered, smiling cruelly and wanting to hear submission from his quarry.
"You know she's not going to sleep with you over this." Warren smiled through cracked lips and mustered up his final act of resistance. Before the words fully registered to his oafishly long ears, the highlander drew back and spit his own blood into the elezen's finely shaven face.
The scenery didn't change as much now, and Howl was left to wander an endless desert not unlike the one he'd grown up in, but as unfamiliar as Coerthas had been to him at first. Something was changing; he felt more and more tired, yet more and more compelled to wander, unable to sit still, even to rest his aching body, and thirst stabbed him now like graters taken to the soft tissue of his digestive tract.
It was somewhat funny how the prison adapted to whatever was happening to his body. He would search for water in places he knew it would be - hidden wells, crevasses in rock, inserting stiles into cacti. Each time, either there was no water where there should be, or the water was fouled in some way so that despite his thirst - thirst he was well aware was killing him, if it was real and not just another illusion of this strange place - he couldn't drink it. He wasn't hungry at all, and he felt no real need for sleep, but his body ached with a nameless exhaustion, the weariness you get when you have a high fever yet lie awake burning.
It was really then that he understood that the prison was killing him, slowly and surely, moment by moment. Even so, he couldn't really feel afraid, or interested. Emotions felt malms removed from his situation. There was just the next dune, the next rocky ridge, the next bit of shade or warmth to attain, the next place where there might be water. He was aware he would likely never find it, but he had to keep moving anyway, so he might as well try.
He was dimly aware that he should never give up. There was someone who would be sad if he gave up - he was pretty sure of that, anyway.
Sometimes the voices came again, but they seemed dimmer and dimmer each time. Warren's voice sounded most often. Whenever he thought he could hear that distant baritone rumble, he would stop walking and lift his head, as if Warren were in the sky somewhere. He'd reach, strain, with his entire body and mind, trying to probe or push at whatever enchantment was holding him. Sometimes he thought he could see something else, something laid superimposed on the desert sky, a dark place lit only by a single flame. Whatever Warren was saying usually made no sense to him, but some phrases came through. The Ossuary, and Snow, and poison, and promise after promise to save him.
Of course Warren would save him. If he couldn't, Howl reasoned in his enchantment-addled way, either it was impossible, or Howl himself had to find a way out from within the prison. Both seemed equally likely, and equally acceptable.
Wait, no. He couldn't think that way. Someone was counting on him to find a way out.
But the voice always stopped before he was ready, and then he was alone again. He dug in his heels and kept walking. Water, or Warren, or some sort of way out. He would find something eventually if he just kept looking.
Warren turned a box of matches over in his hand without thinking about it. He was back in Southern Thanalan, not quite to the territory of Little Ala Mhigo but pushing it. The crystalline prison that contained Howl was at his back and he was leaning against it, smiling. It pulsed warmly against his armor and he couldn't tell if he was actually feeling it or just wishing badly he could, but the comfort was there. Warren smiled to himself, ignoring the line of pain as his lips split open from the gesture.
"Should have seen his face. Oh, he was so mad..."
He'd regaled Howl the tale of his confrontation the night before. Warren looked all the worse for it; One eye had swollen shut but eased slightly with bed rest and his other had a shining black ring around it. His mouth had cleaned up a bit but his lips were still raw, and the effort of speaking and smiling caused the wounds to re-open too frequently. He couldn't not talk, though. His linkpearl had been silent through the night and there was nothing for him in the city now, so he'd struck out for the cave at first light. There was an emptiness in him he couldn't refuse, so he filled it with words and conversation.
He recognized the ailment afflicting him. It took some thinking, but he wasn't able to deny the loneliness that had settled into him or the uncertainty of the future. He knew in his heart he would rescue Howl, and he'd grown to realize quickly how important their bond was to him, but there was a lingering shadow in his mind. S'ereno had told him a week, perhaps two depending on Howl's willpower, and Warren had never met a more willful miqo'te in his life.
Well, maybe one.
But time was ticking by, and the first week was nearing an end. Howl was still receptive when Warren approached but there was still a dimness to his eyes; He looked but didn't see. Pangs of fear sapped at him when he thought what he would do if he returned and Howl didn't look for him, if the crystal had gone cold, if he felt that pulse and then it stopped, the light growing dim.
Warren struck a match from the box. His research was sound, and he had nothing else to go on, so it would have to work. Ordinary fire, the kind that he was holding, the sort that burned at the end of the torches he'd brought to keep the cave alight, wouldn't work. Mundane fire wouldn't do anything to melt aetherial permafrost, and he lacked the means to attempt to combat Ural's magic head-on.
The match burned down and Warren flicked it away before the flame could lick his fingertips. He struck another match absently and continued to think out loud.
"I might not have been joking about summoning a Primal. I've been chasing rumors of those who are learned into the arts of Allagan sorcery; They can summon purer forms of the primals if the stories are to be believed. If that's the case, maybe I could convince one to bring a fragment of Ifrit's power here, see if that would do anything..."
There was another way, though. The one that first got him thinking, the one that caught his ears and made him wonder.
"There's always dragonfire. I could... Capture one? Lure one here, maybe. The drakes of the desert aren't related enough to your kin and belch alchemical fire from glands in their throats and stomachs; Trust me, I checked. But dragons...? I need to talk to Sei about it. You're both linked, and I know you aren't actually dragons, but if there's a part of it dwelling inside of you... There's a chance. There has to be a chance."
Sei. He wanted to talk to her, too. There was a pull in his chest that was almost unbearable at times when she was away, and he felt himself missing her like a limb.
"...it was cold in Coerthas. But you got used to it. The numb would set in, and you'd forget what your face felt like, and the wind would tear at you until you couldn't feel anymore. I know it's dumb to tell you this; You went through even worse, but you know what I mean. The cold gets into you, it becomes a part of you. Every day she comes back, I'm given warmth again. I feel my face, my lips. I feel my limbs. And then... She's gone. And the cold sets in, and I dream of the sun."
The match sputtered and bite his fingers. He flicked it aside and pressed his back against the crystal. He needed the warmth.
Despite all of the candles having been snuffed bells earlier, Warren laid awake in his bed in the Duskbreak. The house had been quiet for days and days now; Where before there was the soft sound of slumbering breath or the joyful mirth of drinking long into the night, there was only cold sheets and empty chairs. Sei had been kept away again due to her own business and while Warren did find comfort in his time spent with Howl, there was still an empty hollow spot inside of him when he was apart from them.
He was aware of the precipice he was situated on; Movement forward meant forever there would be going back. A small part him was terrified by this. There was safety in the status quo, there was a comfort in keeping the same. He knew that would never fulfull him, though, and that empty hole in his heart would grow and grow until it consumed him and despair devoured them all.
Warren knew he was of jealous heart. He recalled seeing Howl with Rinh'a months ago and it bothering him, though he would never have admitted to it at the time. Warren needed Howl's affections, and while they had initially been heaped upon the highlander in an attempt to help him repair the damage to his spirits, Warren had come to rely on them. There was an innocent warmth to Howl's feelings and Warren was not only unable to turn them away, but missed them when they were gone. It was easy for him to not notice, and now that he felt truly alone it was baldly before him. He needed Howl back, and for good.
The terrified part of him continued to wonder and try to find fault. Warren was too jealous, too protective. How could he even consider sharing that with two people? What madness possessed by that made him think he wouldn't be conflicted or torn? The quieter part, the bits of him which were resolute and unyielding, knew better. Sei had championed him, twice over, and he had sworn fealty to them both. He recalled sealing that most sacred of covenants and how his chest had swelled with duty and pride, and while there were uncertainties floating about that nagged and pulled at his armor, he knew better.
He wasn't giving up, and he was done fearing unknowns. He knew what was important to him, what he needed, and what the future would entail. The first step was saving Howl from that prison, and he believed her finally had the means to do so. There was risk, of course, and failure might mean the death of them all, but the same part of him knew there would be no failure. Unacceptable. Not an option.
Warren laid awake for some time longer, the moon drawing lines on his body through the windows.
Steam floated off of the surface of the water, the highlander soaking inside of the tub unmoving except for the slow rise and fall of his relaxed breathing. Warren's eyes were shut as he tried to will the tension out of his bones and muscles, finally feeling for once that he could let his guard down.
It felt like it had been a lifetime since he last had no worries on his conscience. His current awkward steps forward with both Sei and Howl, preceded by Howl's prison and his brother's death, preceded by trying to make amends with Sei and make it up to Howl following his confession of the true nature of his relationship with Coatleque Crofte.
Even prior to that, Warren had carried the weight of their business in Coerthas. His hands were stained with the blood of a heretic, spilled during a long search that had eroded parts of Warren's morality in his lowest points. The search had been kicked off due to Sei going off, giving up, losing herself to the whispers of a madman and throwing as much of herself away as she could. Howl went after her and Warren had been left alone with the bill of his deeds; His inadequacy drove her off and his inability to move on set him after her.
Before even that, his tensions with Howl. It was an abusive relationship and he knew it, and that haunted him. Howl had freely given devotion and love and admiration, and Warren returned his kindness with ice. Howl's tribe, little as it was, had been eradicated because of his choice to remain by Warren's side. He still thought of the little girl and her stuffed dog, probably one of Ace's younger brothers, and he tried not to think of Ural turning his staff on her and immolating her.
And even before that, trying to deal with Sei's departure in the first place. The bits of it he could remember through the constant haze of drinking were lonely, quiet scenes. Running before dawn. Keeping long shifts in loud places to drown out the words and memories. Before she left, there were the tense times, the foreshadowing.
Things seemed better for him now. Howl was free. Sei would return to him. The three of them were bound, would be bound, and he was sure of it. The highlander sat in steaming water with his eyes shut and let go of his worries, let go of the world behind him, and he looked to the future, at beaming faces of adoration and love. There wasn't any way to move backwards, no direction to go except forward.
Ever onward.