Jackscarab

Karen Albedo spoke in the freshly sound-warded Phrontistery room to her remaining grandson, her eldest remaining son, and her remaining daughter-in-law whom her son had brought along and who earned a scowl for being present. But Karen supposed she had as much a right to know as any. Kannadi and Torrent’s combined insistence was adamantine anyway. Kannadi listened as her grandmother, sitting up in bed like a more casual sort of monarch, spun the story of what Karen demanded and what Kannadi discovered. Most of it was even true. When Kannadi’s father Torrent raised various logical questions and emotional appeals, Karen settled them one by one. He thought of more than Kannadi did, but those too were shot down with characteristic finality. As for avoiding Inquiries, Rasim in his capacity as doctor would hide the truth in all necessary medical records. He tried to explain that “Magical Experiment” was an admissible cause of death under inheritance laws ever since the incident with the previous Ossuary chairman and the plague of toads, but Karen wouldn’t have it. It would only raise further questions that might have made Kannadi’s life uncomfortable. Kannadi herself held so firm to her stated confidence that her spell would work that she almost believed it. Her parents appeared to, anyway. Still, she qualified her self-assurance with the truth that she couldn’t be certain what age her grandmother would become. Saguaro, pivoting quietly in a corner, expressed no opinion. “I suppose I’ll need a caretaker if I’m subtracted to a drooling newborn,” Karen said. Her gaze fell meaningfully on Avani, Kannadi’s mother. “I am sure a suitable arrangement will be made,” Avani said with more ice than Coerthas. “But I haven’t held a child in so long. Any number of things might make me lose my grip.” To Kannadi’s astonishment, Karen withdrew. Kannadi looked on her mother with renewed respect. “And if you aren’t an infant? If you’re my age, say?” Torrent asked. “An easy one,” said Karen. “You will generously allow me the use of some of the property that you will inherit while I will pose as my illegitimate daughter.” Silence shrank the room. “I do not have an illegitimate daughter,” Karen said flatly. Everyone breathed again. You never knew, with someone like her. Rasim, who until then had absorbed the conversation with his hand over his mouth and his elbow on an armrest of his wheelchair, dropped his hand and sat up straighter. “So what you’re saying, Grandmother,” he said, “is that you are satisfied with results that end in you becoming younger and alive. But are you really content with the possibility of -- and I stress this so that you’ll consider the selfishness -- granddaughter-assisted suicide?” “I already agreed,” Kannadi said. “You agree now, cousin, but will you still wish you agreed if it goes so wrong you end up wearing her?” “Rasim!” Torrent shouted. “Kannadi knows what she’s doing!” “And what she’s doing has a nonzero chance of death!” Rasim pounded his armrest. “I’ve considered that possibility, cousin,” Kannadi returned with frost, “but I have a greater probability of success with Grandmother than any other... subject.” “Can you quantify it?” “No. But she weakens by the day. The worst that happens in all of this is that I hasten her schedule and you lie on paper. And speaking of, are you content with that?” “You have no idea how many papers I’ve lied on for clients richer than all of us,” Rasim said. “I’m fine with it, but I am telling you that assisted suicide is not to be entered into lightly.” “You have no idea how many people I’ve slain in the ordinary course of adventuring,” Kannadi said. “And did any of them have a hundredth of Grandmother’s value to you?” Not one, she admitted in silence. The silence spoke for her. “Just think carefully,” Rasim said, adjusting his glasses. “I don’t want to have you in here later taking tranquilizers for anguish. I’ve seen it happen.” “You won’t with me.” Kannadi looked to her parents first, to reassure them with a look, then nodded to her grandmother. “Will that be all?” Karen scooted herself off the bed. Torrent rose immediately to support her, and to Kannadi’s surprise she leaned heavily on him. “Nearly,” Karen said. “Doctor Albedo,” she said to Rasim, “you are hereby discharging me and allowing my clever and dutiful son, my brilliant and devoted granddaughter, and my daughter-in-law to escort me to my home. There, after an exquisite meal of something not served to Phrontistery patients, I will fall blissfully asleep to the sounds of music and the gentle fragrance of lavender, comfortably surrounded by loved ones--” Avani coughed sharply. Kannadi elbowed her. “--and enviable wealth, with all my worldly affairs in order.” Kannadi knew an official lie when she heard one. “But the life of Karen Albedo won’t end there, will it?” She asked. “I’m sure the paperwork will say so,” Rasim said. - - - After swapping her nightgown for a more becoming pantsuit, Karen made sure that she was seen using her son as a crutch on the way to the Goblet. She even took a circuitous and rather inefficient route through the city, but Kannadi didn’t comment aloud. It was all for the alibi. Kannadi and her mother communicated in knowing glances along the way. It was amazing what one could express by the position of one’s eyebrows. Avani’s registered concern. Kannadi’s registered placating confidence. And that was all they needed. Words were inefficient, sometimes. The Goblet seemed to spill new wards every other week. Karen’s estate had once been the only building in its ward -- she was an adventurer on paper, and most of that paper was a very large head-turning banker’s note. Now it had a mountain of neighbors. Witnesses. She wanted to pass each one. “If you want them to think you’re dead,” Torrent said under the strain of being a crutch, “we could put you on a stretcher.” Kannadi could hear a twang of strain in his voice too. He was trying for levity. “No.” “Maybe a cart? Sit you on a little stool in a big glass box like Ishgard used to do with their pontiff?” Karen closed her eyes. “Avani, please elbow your husband.” “Ow!” “Much appreciated.” The image still worked to lighten the mood. Kannadi tried next. “I suppose you’ve thought of a name for your legally new self? Something incomprehensibly Sea Wolf?” Torrent gently clipped Kannadi upside her head. Well, she had tried. “Funny thing, that,” Karen said. “The one-drop-of-blood statutes changed just before my arrival, so I chose to pass legally for Midlander.” Legally, Kannadi thought, but no one could make that mistake face to face. One-fourth Sea Wolf lineage wasn’t, for Karen, dilute enough, but Kannadi privately treasured her own one-sixteenth, recessive though it was. Karen continued, breathing harder, “The consonants no longer fit. I picked a name with a sound I liked. And then those residency fools spelled it such that anyone literate, which is everyone who matters, would pronounce it wrong. It stuck.” “What?” Torrent said. “You never told me that, Mom.” “It wasn’t important. The name I chose back then was Karrun.” A spark flared in Kannadi’s well-educated mind. “The Nymian psychopomp?” She laughed. “A homonym of it, yes,” said the almost-Karrun, who did not laugh. “I beg your pardon?” Avani asked, lost. “Charon, ferryman of the dead,” Kannadi said, chuckling unstoppably. “You would pick that, wouldn’t you, Grandmother?” “I liked the sound,” Karen said. She clenched her jaw. “But spell it right and they’d pronounce it wrong again…” She clutched her chest, making a fistful of ascot. Her family stopped cold. Her mansion loomed within sight. “Fine,” Karen grumbled. “I’m fine. Get me inside.” - - - The retainers had remained at the Albedo estate despite their mistress being held at the Phrontistery. A mansion didn’t protect or maintain itself, after all. Karen dismissed them for the evening, waving off their attempts to help her to her bed. Kannadi shut the door before Saguaro could follow her in. Karen directed her family to her basement. The house-length room was a firing range. She had given herself the heart attack by moving too many of the man-sized wooden targets by herself. Even down here, she had giant chandeliers. Kannadi looked up at one while her mother and father retreated to the stairs, on her insistence. “Even now is not too late, Grandmother.” Karen, at Kannadi’s side, unbuttoned her sleeves. “I’m sure it isn’t,” she said, moving on to unbutton her coat. Kannadi looked back down. “What are you doing?” “You said you had the oil with you, yes?” Karen dropped her coat on the shiny hardwood floor. “Yes, and a simple anointment should be enough.” Karen began unbuttoning her shirt. Kannadi slowly withdrew. “This is not the time for shoulds, Kannadi. Apply it everywhere.” Kannadi blanched. “You cannot be serious.” Over at the stairs, Torrent’s expression was a mirror of his daughter’s. Avani stoically closed her eyes. “Serious as a non-zero chance of death,” Karen said. Kannadi looked at the ceiling again, directly into the light. “I’ve already had several lifetimes worth of this sort of thing, thank you.” “You’re welcome. But it’s your spell, your process, your responsibility. Someone else might get it wrong.” Karen undid her slacks. Kannadi rarely showed skin below the neck or wrists. It was definitely not a trait she inherited from her grandmother. And as Kannadi forced her line of sight away from the chandelier, she was reminded of why. Karen’s skin was definitely her age, wrinkled and well-worn and spotty here and there. Time had thinned her muscle mass and softened her edges, but all of it hung on a frame of iron, like the memory of her prime was what she moved and her body followed it by force of habit. And her mannish height was the end result of decades of shrinking like any old woman; her name on the bloodsands had been Lady Pine, for good reason. It was a form to take pride in, and Karen certainly did. For an instant Kannadi wished she were religious so that she could have someone to thank for her grandmother keeping her smallclothes on. “Get to it,” Karen said, arms akimbo, unabashed. Kannadi unstoppered her flask of Oil of Time and massaged it into her grandmother’s skin, with much care and more reluctance and abundant evasion of the Smallclothes Regions. Karen took care of those herself, giving Kannadi’s selective blindness a serious workout. “I could just give you the flask,” Kannadi said, eyes clamped shut. “No, there’s enough to spread. Carry on.” Kannadi slit her eyes open toward the stairs. Torrent was thoroughly engaged in examining the masonry. Avani had produced a book from somewhere and read it very closely. As the work continued, the doubt Kannadi had banished began to leak through its restraints. Here she was, anointing her grandmother’s body for the grave. External embalming. The moment filled the present. Kannadi’s mind, treacherously observant, took in everything. The smell of the oil, the smell of spent firesand from weeks or moons ago, the shade of the light, the subtle squeak of her boots on the floor as she moved in place, the breathing of her parents a few yalms away, her own breathing. Everything she was, everything she wore. The details flooded in, unfiltered. Remember this. This is the last moment before you fail. Kannadi shut her mind again, restoring silence. She had worked her way down to the floor when Karen clutched at her sternum and made a choking noise. Kannadi bolted upright. Karen only grinned down at her, her skin shining under the chandelier. “The next one might be genuine. Hurry up.” Kannadi scowled. She heard a single loud clap from the stairs behind her, followed by a muffled grunt of a ribcage taking an elbow. “I’m done,” she said flatly. Karen turned her head to look at her son. He looked back. Kannadi could only guess what passed between them. Karen faced forward, gave Kannadi a studying look, closed her eyes and stood as straight as she could. “Then complete it.” Kannadi grasped her staff before doubt could slip back in. She breathed. Much later, when she tried to puzzle out what went wrong, she realized she should have washed her hands before casting the spell. - - - The news spread all the faster for being unbelievable. Karen Albedo was dead, having expired in her home among music and fragrance and loved ones and enviable wealth, with all her affairs in order. She had requested cremation, and so the funeral just outside the Ossuary featured a silver urn and a life-size portrait -- that is, as tall as her, but only portraying her head and shoulders. And so the Silver Giant’s dominant gaze looked down on the small procession of mourners and visitors. So very much like her. Lord Lolorito even spared a moment to grace the event with his presence on his way to somewhere more important. Kannadi watched him at a distance as he lingered at the urn and portrait, silently smiling victoriously at each. “Smirking little gremlin,” she said. “Let him smirk,” came a voice behind Kannadi. The formal service was over and the assembled had broken into small accretions. Kannadi’s parents were making the rounds, settling business and saying goodbyes. Kannadi loitered near an oil lamp with a specter of death: a very tall woman completely in black, veil and all. The lamp only added to the figure’s shadow. “You could probably give him a heart attack,” Kannadi said, inclining her tone toward suggestion. “Oh, he doesn’t startle that easily,” the standing shadow said. “Even if I stood by the painting and pointed at him.” “Perhaps if you carried a scythe.” “Much too slow a weapon for me, dear.” “’Dear?’ Do act your age, Karrun.” “Advice I could direct at you,” Karrun said. “Do act? You sound like a snooty old woman.” “I’ll grow into it, I’m sure.” “And you’re certain your spell won’t work on you?” “I told you before, it’s like trying to see the backs of my eyeballs or bite my own teeth or digest my own stomach. Vital aether just can’t bend itself like that.” The shadowy dress billowed as Karrun crossed her arms. “I still don’t see why it locks me out of another treatment.” Lolorito began to move on with his entourage. Kannadi rubbed her thumb over her fingernails, deliberately nonchalant just in case he deigned to glance her way. He didn’t. “I’d have to spend some time at my desk to elucidate on it in small enough words,” she said, “but it has to do with vitality convection and our, um, skin contact with the Oil of Time between. My body added a variable, or perhaps a score of variables. When my spell hit, it overshot the intended time subtraction and dragged you to my age. Another cast of the spell is impossible because it would think you are me, and recursion would keep me out.” Karrun waited until Lolorito and company were well out of sight before replying. “But you think for the aether of your spells, don’t you?” There was a suggestion of bunched-up eyebrows under the veil. “Can’t you just will it through?” “Think of it like a bullet, Gran-- Karrun. Physics does all it can to spoil the shot once you aim and shoot. Any spell cuts through an array of clashing forces just to work, and this is one of those that simply can’t be cast on the caster. It was hard enough to make it work on you. Frankly I must have some sort of... natural affinity to this sort of thing to have done it at all.” A large hand in a black lace glove settled on Kannadi’s shoulder. “The word for that is ‘genius,’ Kannadi.” “And the word for that is ‘inaccurate.’” The glove gripped. “Just take a compliment for once. I could not be prouder of you. You’ve given me an extra life.” Kannadi allowed herself to take the compliment without further contest. She supposed the life was hers to give, since she had invented it. Karrun was much too young to be Karen’s illegitimate daughter. Down in the basement, Karrun had begun a sentence which held the trajectory of suggesting to pass as Kannadi’s illegitimate half-sister, but Avani had stopped it without a word. She had glared so hard that Kannadi almost heard earthquakes in the distance. So Kannadi brought up the fact that she had a vagabond uncle who, though he had returned to his travels, was still alive… And outside the Ossuary, Kannadi looked far up at the dark veil, behind which she could see the shape of a smile. Kannadi returned it. “Race you to the end, cousin?”

She had completed the spell. Twist the aether just so, avoid aspectation by generating a Thamassian Fog first, pass it through the somatic barrier at the proper pulse rate… All parts were difficult, but the particularly difficult part had been projecting the wavelength of spiritbonded memory so that it persisted in the speci-- in thesubject, without damaging it. Kannadi’s learning process ended with the injections she intended, but it had started with bludgeons. There were many accidents. A jackal had exploded. Luckily there was never a shortage of monsters in need of culling, and practice quickly made perfect. The next task had been to apply Oil and/or Sands of Time to the given subject. Happily, the usual forging process seemed to be unnecessary for a living body. Unhappily, the body didn’t enjoy staying alive thereafter. The spell allowed for greater aetheric convection so the Allagan materials would work, but there were unexpected problems of reliability. The sea-scorpion had petrified, for instance. She still wasn’t sure why. The yeti had accelerated its age so fast it crumbled to dust. The kraken had melted into a foam of what turned out to be eggs, which were summarily killed with fire. The giant cactuar had shrunk to a week-old cutting and started following her around. Kannadi had named it Saguaro in a moment of levity. Saguaro bounced idly from leg to leg as voices carried on far above. “It seems your spell is sound, at least,” came the older woman’s voice. “Hardly, Grandmother,” the younger woman’s voice said. They both spoke softly. The physicians had been dismissed, and the door was shut and solid, but sound traveled. Kannadi was alone with her grandmother. She suspected the tiny cactuar wouldn’t spread rumors of what transpired. “Cactuars of that size take a very long time to grow,” said Kannadi, “and Gerolt’s memorybond only records the time of his masterworks’ completion. He hasn’t been a useless lush for that long.” Saguaro bumped Kannadi’s shin for attention. She kicked and sent it cartwheeling into the curtain of the elaborate breakfast cart. Its needles, though short, were still enough to snag it on the fabric and stick it upside down. It wiggled, gently clattering hidden silverware. “The time subtracted and the time between his peak and the present simply don’t equate,” Kannadi said. “There must be something else at play.” Her grandmother hadn’t yet touched the breakfast laid on the, yes, silver platter across her lap. She had hotel-quality room service in what several trusted and therefore well-paid doctors tried to prevent becoming her deathbed. It was so very like her. “But it works,” Karen Albedo said. Her face was drawn and gaunt, but at least it wasn’t ashen anymore. To switch one horror for another, her expression radiated hope. Hope in the unproven. It was so very unlike her. “It doesn’t work as intended,” Kannadi said. Karen gripped her lap tray for emphasis. “You can reduce the age of a living creature, Kanna dear. Have you the slightest idea--” “--How much people would pay, even for a chance? This is Ul’dah, Grandmother. If Lolorito--” Karen spat at the name, missing her breakfast. “If Lolorito,” Kannadi continued, “or any of the rest heard, do you really think they would pay for perhaps one chance in ten of being reduced to something asvulnerable as an infant?” Karen at last took up a bread roll. “They can afford bodyguards,” she said. “So can I. Even at cribside.” “You aren’t thinking straight.” “Of course I’m not. I’m confined, lest exertion finish what the heart attack started.” Karen tore into her roll. The rest of her breakfast was inoffensive grain and water, not an onze of the sausage she ordered, and Kannadi could tell it offended her. “Then think legally, Grandmother. What real estate rights does an infant have? What wealth is allowed of a minor? The law would no longer recognize you, presuming first of all that my spell even works so well as to leave you alive!” “Try it and see,” Karen said casually between bites. “I’m not about to turn you into a pile of dust or wet matter, Grandmother.” “I’m both at this very moment. All of us are. What have I to lose?” “Your life!” Kannadi punched the mattress two-fisted and leaned hard. Annoyance successfully dammed the tears. Not anger, that was important. It was definitely annoyance at how lightly her grandmother seemed to be taking the likely prospect of suicide. Karen stared at her, gray eyes to gray eyes. Carefully and without a fuss, Karen tucked her pinky fingers under her tray and lifted it off her lap. The water in the glass at one end wobbled. “Kannadi,” she said, “I will lose it anyway.” The tray hit the serving cart at speed with a satisfying crash and clatter that disentangled the cactuar. A nurse instantly threw open the thick oaken door, but Karen’s hand was already raised. “Muscle spasm,” she said. “My fault entirely. Take all of it away, please.” The nurse was Nadra, one of Kannadi’s cousins, younger than her. Nadra had initially served her brother Rasim the doctor as a pair of functional legs, but she had made herself a fixture of the whole Phrontistery. Even if her idea of responsibility made her a busybody. “I’ll get your waitstaff, Gramma,” Nadra mumbled, grateful that she hadn’t propped a cup against the door this time. It would’ve been too incriminating. “You will take it yourself,” Karen said. And she did, because one didn’t argue with a glare like that. Kannadi watched Nadra work in silence until she wheeled the serving cart away and gently shut the door. Saguaro peeked from under the bed, where it -- he? -- had scuttled. “I doubt if she heard much,” Kannadi said. “Lock and ward it, Kanna dear.” Kannadi complied even though Karen spared her a glare. Warding a door against sound was a time-consuming process that she had skipped before. Now it provided time to think, but Kannadi didn’t use it. What was there to think about? Killing her? It was out of the question. Kannadi always loved her mother Avani’s abundance of support, of course, always enjoyed having it, wouldn’t say anything negative against it. Karen, though, her father’s mother, always came off to Kannadi as... more compelling. If Avani was a mountain, Karen was a glacier. More mobile, to the perceptive. Moving with more foresight, more irresistible shaping strength. More hazardous to navigate. More dangerous. And yet equally on Kannadi’s side. Her mother was her strength to weather the ills of the world, but her grandmother was her strength to weather them, actively, to scour and erode and make disappear. Kannadi was a reserved child. Avani was a reserved adult. But Karen had taught Kannadi that holding back built pressure, built power. So she held many things back to power the turbines in her head. Kannadi was patient. Avani was patient. But Karen taught Kannadi that patience could grind peaks into prairie. So she ground away at mysteries until the vague future day when all horizons were clear. Kannadi hated surprises. She was alone on that. But Karen taught her that nothing surprised someone who was sufficiently prepared. So she prepared herself for everything she could. Except her grandmother’s mortality... Kannadi finished the ward after ten minutes. She knocked twice on the sturdy wood, to a resounding silence. “What is there that you have yet to try?” Karen asked. “The same process on hundreds more creatures,” Kannadi said, turning from the door. “I need more specimens, more practice.” “I will wait no longer. I have no time.” “I need more,” Kannadi repeated. “The ones your age or older, with a larger ‘time buffer’ as it were, are highly uncooperative. I have to beat them into submission, to near-death, before I can even get close enough.” “You can get close enough to me.” Karen beckoned. “Come, at least demonstrate how you would do it. Pretend I’m a monster.” Kannadi successfully kept her face straight and stepped forward. She extended her right arm, holding out an invisible staff. “First I project a simulation of the memory-bond from Gerolt’s masterworks into you.” “Very well.” “But to make it perceptible to the Allagan substances at all, the spell weakens the somatic barrier -- what is to your aether as skin is to your body.” “And this means what?” Kannadi lowered her imaginary staff. “It means that ambient aether can cross into your body easier than usual, which… muddles things.” “And it doesn’t work on dead bodies?” “I can attest with certainty that it does not.” “I see. The next step?” Kannadi rubbed her fingers as if dusting sugar. “Then I, well, sprinkle the stuff on you. It doesn’t require forceful persuasion as it does with objects. I think it may be due to vital aether galvanizing the differential convection of--” “--And this is done after the projection?” Karen cut her off, lest she recite a dissertation. “Yes.” “Why?” Kannadi blinked. Her lips parted. Surely not... “Well,” she said after a moment, “for practicality. If I dosed the specimen before it was subdued, the Oil or Sands of Time would have rubbed off or fallen away in the regrettably assured battle.” “Assured?” “Monsters, particularly older ones, are quite averse to small creatures throwing things at them.” “I guarantee I will not be averse to your process.” “The order of application oughtn’t matter,” Kannadi began, but her grandmother smelled uncertainty as a shark smells blood. “Oughtn’t it? Who are you to tell ancient Allagan science how it ought to behave?” “Fine, but I haven’t--” “--Haven’t experimented enough, yes? Then think. Wouldn’t this Timestuff have a more stable reaction to your spell if the subject were willingly exposed to it first?” Kannadi almost rolled her eyes. “This is science, Grandmother. What does will have to do with it?” “Will is everything, Kanna dear,” said Karen in a professorial tone. “Will is the capacity for freedom. Will is the border of life. Will is the very soul. And didn’t you tell me that aether could reflect aspects of the soul?” Kannadi hadn’t said that exactly, but she knew a good point when she heard one. Karen pressed her advantage. “And I guarantee you again, my soul will be in total focus. No ambience will trouble your spell, with me allowing you in.” Kannadi, mentally stumbling, secured her footing on fact. “But there is no proof that aether can carry the shape of will!” Karen moved under her sheets. “That is only because your device doesn’t tell you which bit is which. Did you bring any of the Timestuff with you?” “A flask of the Oil, yes, but Grandmother you really should--” “--I should do what I will to do.” Karen stood out of bed, dressed in a nightgown. “And I will have you work your spell on me, here and now.” Kannadi looked up, unmoved, which was difficult. Her grandmother loomed no less ominous for the demure frills and lace of her gown. Kannadi still managed a stolid huff. “You can’t force me to possibly kill you, your pride won’t let you reduce yourself to blackmail, I don’t even have my staff right now, and what if it does work? Do you expect me to reduce your age at regular intervals?” “I wouldn’t impose so much on your kindness, Kanna dear.” “Yes you would, Grandmother, and you’re already imposing a great deal. So please don’t lie to me.” Karen stared at her a moment, then smiled. “You’re so close. So very close to confirmation. So close to a truth never seen, never touched.” She spread her arms before her granddaughter. “A specimen stands before you, and you will never find another more willing. Its body isn’t much longer for the world. It is a perfect opportunity. How inefficient it would be to waste it.” Kannadi hesitated. Her grandmother knew everyone’s resonance frequency, and the words rang in Kannadi like a Sil’dihn temple bell, muting her internal protests. Inefficient. Yes, it would be, wouldn’t it. Spending resources was one thing. Wasting them was quite another. And wasting an opportunity to learn an unknown scientific truth? That was the closest thing to a sin the nonreligious Kannadi had. All right, so she hadn’t accounted for either willingness or order of operations before. She could try. And then what? She asked herself. What indeed? Kannadi hated mysteries, hated riddles. She felt that they mocked her for not knowing the answer. So know the answer, dimwit! Cast the spell! Learn, and be enlightened! Yes... she would try, and with a clench of her brain she banished all thought of getting it wrong. But even so, if anyone knew, there would be questions. Demands. Incarceration. Disappearance. And not just about the spell. “Grandmother,” she said, “I was witnessed with you in a locked room which I then warded against sound. If eighty-seven-year-old Karen Albedo disappears, by either my success or my failure, there will be inquiries.” Kannadi knew how to ring her grandmother too. “Inquiries” implied questions asked by paid-off authority in locked rooms, truth arrived at by tunnels and shade and sharp things. The old woman had made several, in her heyday. She had even been inquired after. It wasn’t a thing to inflict on a family member whom you liked. Karen reluctantly returned to her bed, failing to conceal the tremble in her knees. “Right as always, dear,” she said. “I will endeavor to be somewhere less conspicuous for you to cast your spell. Will that do?” “It should,” said Kannadi. “Then open the door and send for Rasim. And your father. I know better than you how to convince him of anything.” “That’s easy,” Kannadi said, “just tell him it’s rare.” “That may be nine-tenths of it, but he needs to hear it from me.” “Should I tell Nadra to come as well?” “No, the girl can’t keep her mouth shut.” Which was true. To tell Nadra would be to tell her sisters, and to tell them would be to tell the newspapers. “What is your plan, exactly?” Kannadi asked. “To wait here until you do as I command. I will not repeat myself.” It was a statement of fact. They knew each other well. Kannadi knew her grandmother would in fact repeat if asked, but Karen knew she wouldn’t. It would be inefficient.

Well gosh. Sorry I only now noticed this reply. The initial reception was crickets, so I never bothered to post the continuation and conclusion which I had posted at my FC's site months ago. Time to fix that.

The news spread all the faster for being unbelievable. Long-former Syndicate member Karen Albedo, née Cwaenwyb Helbyrtwyn, alias Lady Pine, alias The Silver Giant, alias That Bedamned Royalist (an appellation from Lord Lolorito) -- the quarter-Sea-Wolf who moved like a shark through Ul’dahn finance, gave away her power for the sake of an estranged son, survived the Calamity and prevented the total collapse of her family’s wealth -- lay dying. Kannadi Albedo, sixty years her junior, found it impossible. She continued to find it impossible as she ran down the avenue, having dropped her shopping at the news through her family linkshell. She remained firm that it was impossible as she barreled through the All Saints’ Wake costume parade, coming out the other side trailing fake cobwebs and wearing someone else’s hat askew on her shoulder. Her utmost conviction in the outright impossibility of what she had heard only grew as she slammed into the lift, shouted something incendiary at the attendant and rode to Ul’dah’s upper level. And so, adamantine in her confidence that her cousin the doctor was wholly, totally, completely and utterly mistaken and furthermore due a slap about the ear for telling her such lies, Kannadi stormed into the Phrontistery. Her monolithic certainty collapsed into sand when she saw the eighty-seven-year-old giantess lying prone on a bed barely big enough in a room that seemed to expand with the speed of horror. Kannadi had seen a few faces that she could describe as “ashen.” Most were on zombies. Karen’s was nearly there, pale and drawn and slack. Slack, that was what struck Kannadi: her grandmother was always poised, always alert, always at most an ilm away from predatory tension. Not like this limp thing with its hand being held by its eldest son. Kannadi tried to ask her father what happened, but the roughness in her throat from screaming and running had laced itself shut in horrified shock. Her eyes -- her grandmother’s, passed down -- shot the query anyway. “Heart attack,” Torrent Albedo said, with effort. He was fifty-seven. Kannadi heard roughness in his throat too. Doctor Rasim Albedo, Kannadi’s eldest cousin, had a better grip on himself. “I’m given to understand that she was moving her firing range targets by herself,” he said from his wheelchair. His body ended at the knees. “Heavy things. One of her attendants heard her collapse. That was close to two hours ago.” “Some people outside,” Kannadi forced herself to say. “Less than she’d like, I’m sure,” Rasim said. “She’ll recover,” Kannadi said, her self-control dancing atop a landslide in her head. Torrent kept hold of his mother’s hand as he looked at his daughter. The look was enough. Kanandi’s throat shut again. “She was able to speak not long ago,” Rasim said, wheeling himself closer to his cousin. “She asked for you the second I was about to call.” “What else?” Kannadi squeaked. “Nothing else. I rather hoped your presence would rouse her again.” Kannadi drifted to her grandmother’s side. Her father said not a word. “Mother at the Wells again?” she asked him. Torrent nodded, dislodging tears she hadn’t noticed had welled up. Her father rubbed his face on his shoulder rather than release Karen’s hand. Kannadi fished under the bedsheet and took her grandmother’s other hand. “Grandmother?” she asked. Karen’s eyes slit open, checked her surroundings and shut again. “Who else is present,” she demanded in a sigh without a question mark. “Just me, Kanna and Rasim, Mom,” Torrent said. “Door?” “Closed, Mom.” “Lock it.” “Yes, Mom.” Torrent rose and hurried to the door. Karen rubbed her hand on the top sheet. “And stop panicking,” the matriarch said, her tone slowed by a weakness Kannadi could tell she hated. “Your hands sweat.” “Sorry Mom.” Torrent locked the door. It wasn’t an expensive hospital room, not like the one that was nearly a hotel suite when Kannadi broke her arm in her youth. It was functional. Karen had gotten big on efficient functionality since the family finances took a Dalamud-sized hit. It saved money, she said, and it did. The fact that she was still richer than most could ever hope to dream of was a detail easily ignored. “Kannadi,” the old woman said. “I am dying.” “Everyone is, Grandmother,” said Kannadi, who tried to smile. “Then I may beat them to it,” said Karen, who succeeded. Karen squeezed her granddaughter’s hand. Torrent knelt on the opposite side of the bed and Kannadi knelt with him, shoving aside shame that she hadn’t done so already. Karen breathed deep and regained a small measure of her characteristic tension. Kannadi was glad to see it, but noticed her cousin’s professional concern and her father’s filial worry. “I keep informed,” Karen said. “Your father. My retainers. Old contacts. They tell me there are… items… that turn back the flow of time.” Several emotions ran so fast to the top of Kannadi’s mind that they collided and clanged out dozens of thoughts. No, Grandmother, they don’t work on living things. No, Grandmother, that’s just allegorical, they’re simply maintenance materials. No, Grandmother, don’t go, don’t be so damned soppy about this, you’re stronger than that, please don’t go, don’t be so depressing, there’s nothing I can do… “Allegorical, I know,” Karen continued, oblivious. “There was that man who drank that so-called Oil of Time, and he got…” her eyebrows knitted in a moment’s thought. “What did you call it, Rasim dear?” “Acute gastroenteritis characterized by frequent combustive paroxysm.” Kannadi’s jaw dropped in spite of herself. “What, actual combustion?” “Green flame, as I’m given to understand,” said her cousin with the straightest face she had ever seen. “And there was that man,” Karen said, “who swallowed a handful of so-called Sands of Time.” “Gastroenteritis again,” Rasim nodded. “Though it concluded in osteoporosis. He ended up vomiting far more granular mineral than he ingested.” “And yet on materials of ancient make, these substances work miracles,” said Karen. “Likely a trait of the original pieces and not the maintenance substance,” Kannadi said quickly. “They’re made of something that responds only in the presence of these Oils and Sands.” “Yes,” said Karen, turning her face to her granddaughter, “and they respond with creation. Not repair, renewal. Holes filled, not patched, tears unified, not stitched, thinness made thick, not layered.” “They don’t work on living matter,” Kannadi said as kindly as she wished and as sternly as she dared. “Then make them.” Karen’s gaze was horrible. Desperation mixed with stubborn strength and spun like candyfloss around solid fear. Kannadi wept in self-defense. “You study things,” Karen said. “Study this. You solve problems. Solve this. Examine what makes those substances work, then make it work on flesh. I will eat, drink, or otherwise take whatever you devise.” “Grandmother…” Karen turned her head to stare at the ceiling. She wept. Kannadi had never seen it happen. Judging by the look on her father’s face, neither had he. “I do not want to die,” her grandmother said. With her surge of energy spent, her face slackened again. Kannadi’s hand flew to Karen’s neck and bumped into her father’s fingertips, already there. A pulse remained. Both of them sighed. “Well?” Torrent said, staring hopefully over his mother. “Father, what she asks is…” “Entirely reasonable,” Rasim said, wiping his spectacles. “Oh come now, cousin, you’re a chirurgeon!” Rasim fitted his glasses back on. They shone. “She started her command with ‘study this,’ Kannadi. So study. If the rest of it turns out impossible, then so be it, but do not refuse to do what you can.” Kannadi blinked at her cousin, shedding lingering tears. This is a man, she thought, who witnessed a flaming stone from Dalamud kill his parents, and then witnessed the tower they were in come crashing down upon his legs, yet still had the wherewithal to stop the bleeding and save himself. He ought to know something about what one can do. Kannadi comforted her father and left the room some time later when it became clear Karen had nothing more to say. She walked in thought, apologized to the lift operator, passed another parade. Study, eh? She had already subjected the oil and sand allegedly-of-Time to analysis, for her own curiosity, and had hit enough dead ends that she had set well aside the question of how they worked. Nothing seemed to pierce their mystery, no matter what manner of test she tried. Sunlight exposure, chemical exposure, aether exposure, no answer came clear through the microscopes… The microscopes. Ah-ha… Expensive things, yes, but only bits of metal and bent glass. Common materials, regardless of the price for quality. But these weren’t common things her grandmother wanted studied. Perhaps the problem was one of equipment… How long could the old Silver Giant hold out? Kannadi raced to her apartment, her mind spinning with apparatus designs...

Can you believe I didn't see this thread until now? I can't. I'll talk to you in-game about it, but please put me down if you still have a space open.

Oh, I'll definitely be there.

“Hey Kanna, watch this!” “Don’t, Father!” Torrent Albedo flicked his wrist and the blade shot out, or would have if it fully occupied the same physical dimension as the hilt. Instead, reality split along a black seam and the blue of eternity followed to cauterize the wound and form the weapon’s edge. The Zantetsuken waggled as the curator showed it off to his daughter, who had, lightning-fast, taken refuge behind a titanic fossilized whelk. “Cool, huh?” The tall man said. “Cold as death, Father,” Kannadi said. Torrent sighted along the blade. The displays of rare animal bones at which the blade pointed appeared to skew in his vision; the left-behind weapon of Odin sliced the light like water in a glass. “Got it from Ro just the other day,” he said. “Finally traded in those bits you sent me. Good thing the hilt’s the only part with apparent mass. Pretty sure the blade would just fall through any display bar it touched.” Torrent drew his thumb to the light blue edge, slow enough for the intended effect as Kannadi burst from behind the shell and shouted “Don’t touch it!” Torrent grinned, flicked his wrist and sent the primal blade tumbling in the air. The universe snapped shut over the fatal length before its spin could take it through his torso lengthwise. As it descended he caught it without looking and twirled it over the back of his hand. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. The museum was the History’s Torrent, and history was a long and broad subject. Torrent Albedo, current heir to what remained of the family fortune, zigzagged it in bridges anchored on whatever rare pieces he could find. Now that he was in his fifties, his “finding” was limited to legitimate purchase, but it had once been more of a euphemism. He had been an adventurer before the Guild made that word a respectable profession. His rusty red hair had shortened and faded and a few glancing scars had morphed into wrinkles, but his gray eyes were still as sharp and, thank the Twelve, his hands were still as quick. “First of all,” Kannadi said, “those ‘bits’ were pieces of Odin’s mantle! Aether spun into cohesion by forces beyond modern thaumic science!” “And she wanted all five, can you believe it?” Torrent stuck the weapon in his long brown coat. Kannadi wagged an index finger that wished it had the nerve to be a middle. Her coat, too, was long and brown, but layered over black and embellished with antique brass. “And a Zantetsuken is not a toy!” she said. “It’s an eldritch object of unspeakable power and mystery! No one understands why body parts of primals persist after they expire, let alone weapons! Waving it round like that is only slightly less stupid than juggling bombs!” “Oh, have you got some? Used to be a dab hand at it.” The place was closed at the moment. The bag Kannadi had brought, a tied-off tube the size of her leg, still lay on the floor where she dropped it in her duck for cover. Torrent bent to it as his daughter bent her arms over her chest. “Honestly, Father,” she said, “you could have had a much more impressive display by stitching them together.” The bag was full of stones, faintly greenish gray lumps of masonry, none bigger than a hyur’s fist. Torrent sat on the hardwood floor and picked through the ones at the top. “And drape them over some hideous copy of his head and sword like on all the estates these days?” “No, I thought it would appropriately ominous as a backdrop for a display of other primal... er…” “Bits?” “’Remnants’ may be more appropriate.” Torrent removed a stone, held it to the light and put it back in. “Don’t have enough for an ensemble display yet. You kids keep mutilating them into furniture.” All adventurers were “you kids,” even though Kannadi knew of a few older than her father. “It’s how the fashion is,” she said. “Museum pieces one can sit upon, or mount on walls.” Torrent snorted and tied the bag shut. “Fashion’s for hobbyists. Professionals don’t need it. Help me up?” Kannadi took her father’s hand and he leapt to his feet quite without assistance, though with a pop and click of grudgingly aging anatomy. Kannadi frowned at him as he shook her hand, conveniently already there. “Thanks for this batch, hon,” he said. “Nice size for restoring the lanterns.” Kannadi primly withdrew her hand. “I could probably lever an actual lantern out of the wall the next time I’m there.” “It’s not the same.” Torrent hefted the bag. “I’ll take these back to my office and be right out. Won’t be a minute.” And it wasn’t. -- It was, however, a great many minutes between the walls of Ul’dah and the prayer site at Nophica’s Wells. Kannadi’s mother was already there, and had been there all day. The Sultanate’s tiny Nophican community would have been there with her but for the fact they were all visiting Gridania for the observance of changing seasons. Avani Albedo had chosen to observe it in her own way, alone, in a place where seasons were mostly optional. It was much harder. That was the point. Kannadi and Torrent had time to talk on the private coach ride. Kannadi had time to read and converse simultaneously. Their driver, a mustached lalafell, politely ignored the conversation. “So,” Torrent said, “any boyfriends yet?” “No.” “Girlfriends?” “No.” “Need help with either?” Kannadi turned a page. “No.” “All right then.” The sun was declining toward a set. The chocobo cart moved on, suspended under its lift-balloons, floating just above the dirt path. Stone and soil and scrub brush bordered the road. Torrent glanced at Kannadi’s book. It was all geometric nonsense. The ink shined like oil, easier to see where it laid thicker on the page. “You sure?” “Yes, Father.” Her voice rolled its eyes. “Well good.” Torrent sat back. “Don’t rush it like your cousin. I hear she’s made up for lost time, jumping beaus like dragons.” “Typical of her.” Kannadi’s smirk shaped her tone. Kannadi had four cousins whose whereabouts were known, but between father and daughter Leyla was the only one who was “my cousin” or “your cousin” instead of a first name. “And I hear Dima’s pregnant.” “Well! Good for her.” “Life goes on,” Torrent said. At which point the cart’s starboard balloon tried to explode. A long-headed arrow pierced the cart’s tarpaulin and the balloon spat light gas directly onto the burning rag wrapped around the arrow’s shaft. It was therefore fortunate for the riders that non-wheeled carts had years ago transitioned to a gas that didn’t burn. The driver heard the thump and hiss. “Again?” he sighed. “Bandits, folks, hang on,” he said louder, whereupon the cart’s balloon successfully exploded, not from combustion of gas but a fiery bloom of well-applied magic. The burst spooked the chocobos, which fled at speed without prompting from the driver. Kannadi and Torrent had already vaulted the side. Half a dozen shadows in the rocky landscape looked out of place. Father and daughter surveyed the field impassively. “Six, perhaps,” Kannadi said, holding her book open one-handed. “Rather shy for bandits.” “Bandits would have run at us by now,” Torrent said. A second arrow flew at him. It stopped short a fulm away from his body and a ripple of light revealed, briefly, a few glassy hexagons. The arrow dropped to the dirt, its momentum spent. “Not bandits, evidently,” Kannadi said coolly. “Seems not,” Torrent said, equally chill. He drew the Zantetsuken from his coat. Seeing that their prey was armed, the possibly-not-bandits slunk from their hiding places, each of them armed with blade or bow. At least they did camouflage well, Kannadi thought; one was a roegadyn who had somehow hidden behind a tree half his width. A pity to waste such talent, but holding to pity was a liability. “Six, then,” Kannadi said. “Won’t be a minute,” her father said. And it wasn’t. It had been far, far too long since father and daughter’s last little bonding experience. In that dungeon. With those monsters. The free days in their respective careers simply hadn’t aligned in… five years for me, ten for him, Kannadi realized. Something in her heart, that frustrated organ buried under so many books tumbling from her brain that they had cascaded over it and spilled into her stomach, twanged alive in the too-brief fight. This was… fun. None of the six were left standing, but one remained alive. The hide-and-seek-champion roegadyn stared at the fatally curving tip of the sword last owned by an alleged god. Torrent smiled like a shark, fixing his gaze on his captive. Kannadi had seen with her own eyes how he had moved like a shark as well, all efficient motion and hit-and-runs where one hit was all it took. He had shed twenty years when in action, but despite his flawless poise, Kannadi thought, surely some joint or other must be aching like hells. She kept her grimoire open, just in case. Torrent raised his voice. “Oh Kannadi, sweet child of mine?” “Yes, dear father?” Kannadi called back sweetly. “How much do you enjoy distractions?” “I would say I don’t enjoy them at all, Father!” Which was true. “And wastes of time?” “Oh, horrid things!” “They make you mad enough to kill, don’t they?” “Quite nearly!” Torrent smiled down his sword. The roegadyn bandit had gone cross-eyed. “She got all of her mother’s patience,” Torrent said. “You’d better make yourself useful in a hurry.” The roegadyn swallowed. “Whatcha want, guv?” He asked, risking a smile. “Your employer.” “Hyur fella. Never saw him good, never got his name. Bonny Lem did the arrangements.” “And where might I find Mister Lem?” “Well, can’t see where his head landed, guv, but it can’t’ve got far.” “That might be it there, Father.” “Yes, thank you,” Torrent frowned. “And the motive?” “Dunno, y’honor.” He swallowed. “Paid good.” “But not enough to deal with a mark that fights back?” “Hells no.” “It never is,” Kannadi said. “Honest work pays best, doesn’t it, Father?” “Too true. I suggest you find some, friend,” Torrent said, lifting the blade enough for the bandit to crawl away. “And get yourself some culture. Visit a museum sometime.” The bandit fled, trailing wet “yessir”s. The obsidian blade of Odin vanished. Kannadi closed her book. Torrent inspected a body that wasn’t his, but for which its owner had no further use. “You’ve kept in practice,” Kannadi said. “Sometimes the best treasure is the one you hunt yourself,” Torrent said. “How often do men try to kill you?” “If the treasure’s not theirs? Never.” Torrent crouched and bent close to a body. He gently tugged at the collar of the body’s tunic, seemingly unbothered by the lack of head beyond. “Well, there’s a thing.” “Don’t keep me in suspense, Father.” “The stitching’s Ishgardian.” He rubbed the collar between his fingers. Sluggish, tardy blood continued to ooze from where a collar was now quite unnecessary. “New, too. And in finer cotton than you’d see in dumb paid thugs, unless it was bought for them.” That was her father, Kannadi thought. The kind of man who would coolly identify minutiae of craftsmanship an ilm away from a severed neck. “Well,” Torrent said, clapping his hands on his knees, “we’ve kept your mother waiting long enough.” He was squatting low, balanced on his toes. Kannadi watched him try to unfold. “Help me up? Serious this time.” -- Avani Albedo stood in water up to her knees, eyes closed and hands out in supplication, facing upstream because that was what was proper. She was darker than her daughter, and thicker, and shorter, and had more reason to war with her sideburns. She mostly resembled Kannadi from the skull inwards. The current swayed her dark green dress. A wooden wand in full flower hung at her hips. “I certainly hope you didn’t leave the bodies like that,” she said to the air. Kannadi and her father sat at the water’s edge. Torrent said, “Some Brass Blades came up pretty quick, actually, when they heard from the driver.” “No doubt they’ve enriched themselves off the corpses,” Kannadi said. “One does what one can,” her mother said. “All day, evidently,” Kannadi said. They were silent a while. The sun touched the horizon, then sank below, but Avani wasn’t facing it. That would have made her Azeyman, Kannadi suspected. Nophica the Matron governed abundance, among other things. And so Avani faced upriver, toward the source and greener places, until the sunlight had ebbed enough to her satisfaction. “It is easy to believe in the Matron in a land of abundance,” Avani said, wading out. “In greater desolation, one finds greater faith. Earth and water, striving together. Never indolent. “Like both of you.” She smiled to her husband and daughter, beatifically, a picture of contentment. At which point an arrow tried to strike her in the head. It cracked thin air. The space between the cracks flashed a stony brown texture. The arrow fell. Kannadi and Torrent’s gaze followed the trajectory. An archer stood atop the cliff shadowing them. Avani closed her eyes and sighed through her nose. She unhooked the wand from her belt, turned to the cliff and swung her arm. A crack of dust raced over the soil, up the rock, over the curve. Stones erupted underneath the assailant, knocking him off his perch and into open air. Mother and father and daughter together did him the courtesy of watching him land. His bow bounced. He did not. Avani alone clasped her hands and bowed her head. “We seem popular today,” Kannadi said. She looked to her father, expecting some sort of quip, but he had turned away with his hand over his ear. “It’s me, Mom,” he said. “Are you safe?” He paused. “Through your window?” He paused again for longer, now the center of his family’s attention. “Twelve,” he said eventually, “you’d think they would know you had a range down there.” Another pause, and he laughed in relief. “Four shots and a haymaker? What, were you asleep?” Kannadi listened with one ear as her father relayed confirmations and explanations over the linkpearl. The sharpshot seemed to have been alone. Inspecting corpses didn’t bother her unduly; she had made many in her adventuring. Kannadi, though not half the appraiser her father was, knew an Ishgardian hem stitch when she saw it. “Right, Mom,” Torrent said at last, and lowered his hand. “Couple guys came after her too. Said she’ll have her people look into it.” “The archer’s tunic is of the same make as the others,” Kannadi said. “Did you rip it off him?” “Goodness no!” Kannadi looked aghast. “Just a mess of mud and blood, not worth a thing.” “And his pockets?” This was Avani. “Mother! I thought you hated looting the dead.” “For personal gain, dear. But evidence is needed now. I fear this business may be… political.” The dead man’s pockets were empty, as it turned out. Torrent had several choice words with the nearest Brass Blades, and a fresh cart was provided. Kannadi teleported home ahead of them; her parents, skilled as they were, simply couldn’t exercise aethernet travel after the Calamity. Kannadi had quietly attributed it to their bodies being unable to cope with the way the aether had subtly changed. Age, perhaps. -- Kannadi paced her apartment, arms crossed behind her back. Someone somewhere wanted her parents dead. But was that all? She had contacted her cousins upon arrival. Leyla was safe and between tasks in Revenant’s Toll, while the others were safe in the Phrontistery, there for either their jobs or a pre-natal examination. No one had so much as bumped them all day. So it had been her father’s side of the family. A “hyur fella.” Some vague connection with Ishgard, perhaps. Political? Her grandmother had no shortage of foes in her prime, but most were dead and many stopped caring once she quit the Syndicate. Quit, voluntarily. So easy to do, no one had done it before. Kannadi glanced at a cabinet. Buried in there were some rare foreign effects that her father’s younger brother had brought back from one foreign continent before setting out for another. He was probably safe. Linkpearls wouldn’t reach him that far away, so confirmation was impossible. That estranged uncle had caused her grandmother’s retirement. He had fallen out with her, loudly and legally renounced his inheritance, and departed for places distant. For once in her life the Silver Giant had felt regret, cut her Syndicate-admission wealth into thirds and given two to her remaining sons -- One of whom was already dead -- Kannadi paced quicker yet thought slower. She pinched the thread of thought and tugged it carefully, lest it snap. Unless specifically withheld in one’s will, one’s wealth goes to one’s eldest child through the sieve of taxes. That’s how it is. If no eldest child remains, then it goes to the eldest grandchild. That’s how it is. Father is the eldest child now. Should Grandmother die, her remaining wealth would be his. But he was attacked too. If he were dead, the eldest grandchild would be Rasim -- Kannadi froze, in motion and in temperature. Rasim, kind and brilliant alchemist and chirurgeon who ran out of body at the knees, was not the eldest. He was just the eldest who had been seen in five years. Kannadi braced herself on her desk. That man. He had once drawn Kannadi into a duplicitous scheme to claim and hatch a terrible subterranean dragon, to be tamed by his hand and used against the then-fresh threat of the Garleans’ return. He had fallen in with a cult of dragon-worshippers, all fangs and claws in shadows, a true danger not the least bit like the modern lunatics. By no means, Kannadi knew, would he have stopped at serving his country with such a pet. And so she had destroyed the egg, and weathered his rage as he swore to kill her and her side of the family if she ever told the story. She hadn’t, except in her safely-kept will, wherein she told all as a form of insurance in case her cousin thought to silence her. But the scheme was still half successful. The opening phase had killed that man’s wife, who willed him a great wealth of land in Coerthas. Land which, Kannadi had learned, he had sold off before the ice claimed it. But wealth had no upper limit, nor did his ambition. If he were to return miraculously alive when Karen and Torrent Albedo were freshly and simultaneously dead. . . “Zulfiqar,” Kannadi growled. But would he return? Kannadi’s family was still alive. And wouldn’t a man of such means have been able to hire a better class of assassin? Perhaps not, if he was in it for the money. . . Well. Today’s ambushes proved her parents could still defend themselves at least as well as her. Why had she ever believed that they would diminish with age, they who could handle adventures of their own in addition to each other, they who were her own better aspects? Her heart twitched with pride, under all the books. Should Zulfiqar show his face again, he would find her much less compliant. But first she had to tell everyone, should he expand his sphere of revenge one day. Where to start? Her whole family would have gone to bed already, but there were others still awake and aware. . . She touched a blue and yellow linkpearl. “Colleagues,” she said, “I have a story to tell.”

BlueGartr translated the interview. Among other items: What the heck is a Zodiac Weapon? Yoshida: To describe it simply, it's an upgraded Relic weapon. However, the system to upgrade it will take a considerable amount of time. Even though it will be time-consuming, is this the kind of thing that you plan for everyone to be able to possess if they work at it? Yoshida: Well, there won't be anything stopping you from doing it.... That said, the strengthening will happen in steps and it won't end with patch 2.2. This will continue with 2.2, 2.25, and 2.3. It's planned in a way that not many people will have finished the elements from the 2.2 patch by the time 2.25 is available. We also have plans to keep the weapons viable even in their final form. Right now, the highest level weapons can only be obtained by completing the Binding Coil of Bahamut, with another type that was obtained by accumulating tokens. This will be a third type of weapon that gets developed over a long period of time. I feel like items that correspond to Allagan Tomestones of Philosophy will basically be a waste after this patch. How are you dealing with that? Yoshida: After the patch, you won't obtain Philosophy anywhere - it will be replaced with Mythology. There will be a NPC available which allows you to exchange currency at a predetermined rate. What will happen to Darklight equipment which you were able to obtain for Philosophy? Yoshida: It will be changed to a normal dungeon drop. It will drop in the dungeons which are added to the high level roulette. Instanced dungeons will have equipment at level 70, Crystal Tower will be level 80, and Turns 1-5 of Bahamut Coil as well as mythology gear will be level 90. The increase in item level should lead to growth on the main job. When we raise the level cap with an expansion and add additional dungeons and field area, that will lead to overall character growth. Increasing the item level is just one direction, though, we also need to increase the breadth of items available at each level, which we plan to address in the future. About how much content do you have in mind? Yoshida: We have about two years' worth of content planned. We've actually been working on the design for 3.0 for a long time now. We've already come up with dungeon names and the number of dungeons, as well as the theme and the name of the new top tier dungeon which will be like the next rendition of the Binding Coil of Bahamut. We've also come up with the look of the city area, as well as the number and theme of the field areas to be added. However, if we look closer on the development schedule, things are more up in the air. For example, we haven't yet finalized the content for patch 2.3 because 2.3 is still in development and we want to have some level of improvisation available to us so that we can add things based on requests. So you're already hard at work on content planned for a few years out. Yoshida: Yes, we'll continue to working hard on it until we get told to cut back on our development costs.

In FFXI, goblin names ending in -ix are male (Fickblix) and those ending in -ox are female (Leadavox). It would be easy to carry that over to FFXIV.

... Enkidu. The green chicken's name is Enkidu. Calling it now. Also: Doma? First hint at a Samurai class, if I had to guess.

Kannadi's journal may be found in two places: on the Lodestone, and in the TALE forums. Posts to either one are identical.

“Three hundred million?!” “Three hundred twelve million, five hundred thousand.” “For the entire Goblet, is it?” “Once again you fail to understand the economics of real estate, Kanna dear.” Kannadi rubbed her forehead. Economics wasn’t where she expected small talk with her grandmother to end up. At least not that quickly. She touched the white linkpearl again. “Meaning what, Grandmother?” A day away by foot and half an hour away by aether shortcut, Karen Albedo sat on a private veranda. A windmill spun above and behind her, slicing the afternoon sun into handfuls of seconds. She sipped a cup of tea, more for punctuation than refreshment. “Meaning supply and demand. Constructions of this caliber are rare, and so they demand a significant price. Think of it as proof that an organization is ready to stand as a respectable member of the intercontinental community.” An ancient remnant of a wall leaned out of the sand, beaten into its angle by the hammering sun. Kannadi lay on her back in the tent of shade it provided as the air undulated to keep off the blazing ground. “I wasn’t aware you were a multitude, Grandmother.” “Corporations are people, dear. Quite literally, in my case. I am Albedo Holdings, a company of one.” “Still, three hundred million--” “--Three hundred twelve million, five hundred thousand.” “That much must have made even you flinch.” Karen beckoned for her Hellsguard servant, who dutifully poured more tea for her. The view overlooked the rest of the Goblet, Ul’dah’s new living space carved of a rocky island between rivers of empty space, a speck of civilization between canyons and cliffs. “Not really,” said Karen. “I just traded my share of Hammerlea for it. Plus, my investments entitle me to one-half of one percent of all land sales in the Goblet. I’ll recover enough.” “Still,” said Kannadi, a region away, “even at that rate...” “It and the rest of my portfolio will be enough to maintain my lifestyle. I don’t intend to live forever, dear.” Kannadi stared at the top of the lonely wall, the border of ancient stone and empty sky. “How long then?” She asked. “Long enough,” Karen’s voice said from the pearl. Kannadi sat up. To a casual observer, if she had any, she wasn’t dressed for the heat -- a doublet and sarouel too dark, too sealed, and too heavy of cloth. She wore them out of self-imposed modesty, a deliberate effort to not draw undue attention. That would be common, in her perception, and it was therefore a self-evident reason to go about covered neck to wrist to ankle regardless of weather. A marbled-eye stone, the core of any basic scepter, sat in her pocket. She palmed the stone, waved a hand vaguely, and a circle of sand a few yalms away froze hard. Two orbs of blue light manifested out of the aether and circled her at arm’s length. The ice on the ground wouldn’t last but a moment, but the insubstantial umbral aspects orbiting her at chest height would comfortably refrigerate her shade another several minutes. “Surely you have some idea,” Kannadi said while she bent black magic to the mundane purpose of air conditioning. “Some preference, if nothing else.” “I do not, and that’s the truth,” Karen said. “I leave delusions of immortality to fools like Lolorito. Quality of life is preferable to quantity.” Kannadi leaned her head on shade-wall. A notebook lay tucked behind her in the acute corner. Of course her grandmother was as mortal as anyone else, but... it was like living with the knowledge that mountains could vanish overnight. She glanced up. The wall had been Sil’dihn. And hadn’t they disappeared too? Everything did. Everyone did. Buried in sand and dust, or reduced to it, with no future but perhaps to be melted into glass one day, some future people’s windows or bent lenses on themselves, the past distorting the perception of the present rather than the opposite for once -- “And how has your quality been lately?” Karen broke into her granddaughter’s reverie. “Pardon?” “Your life, Kanna dear. How has it been?” Kannadi looked out onto the expanse of the Sagolii Desert. Steam rose from what little ice she had made between the sand grains. Its hiss-crackling was the only sound. “Fine,” she said. “Slightly lonesome, perhaps.” She paused and remembered herself. “Marginally so. On occasion. Not often. Sometimes. Irregularly.” “Even at work?” “I’m at work right now, actually. Chief ecological surveyor, remember?” “I do.” Karen sipped a full stop, or perhaps a semicolon. “I imagine cactuars are poor company.” “It’s mostly sandworms and anglers. Some bombs. A few fire sprites. Zombies.” “Sounds like a lovely social life.” “I enjoy the silence, thank you. It lets my mind focus.” Which was true. In the blessed hot shifting soundlessness, she could focus on anything at all. Sometimes multiple things at once. Threads of thought weaving separate contemplations was almost as good as a conversation. It was amazing what one could hear when all one could hear was oneself, by day in the heat or by night under the bridge of stars across the infinite -- “Take care that you don’t become a prophet out there.” Kannadi blinked and shook her head. “Very funny. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really must get back to work.” “I doubt that ‘must,’ what with your excess diligence. You should take more time for yourself, Kanna dear. Consider quality.” “I shall, in due time.” Kannadi stowed her linkpearl and retrieved her notebook. She couldn’t have written much more about the wall segment anyway. She blasted another blameless patch of sand into short-lived tundra and strode into the desert toward a leaning ruined spire. Due time. Quality of life. One worked toward quality and it came when it came. That’s how quality worked. Or at least how she intended it to work. But hadn’t it? She had comfort, independent wealth, career opportunities of value to the city-state... Opportunities for what? More work? Kannadi asked herself. Well, yes, she answered. More work toward what, exactly? Toward... Past ambitions crowded to the front of her mind for attention. With typical self-control she squashed them together and stretched them into a queue. To build a new school of magic based on aetheric reproduction of monster abilities. That had fallen flat. To catalogue all the monsters of Eorzea. Little chance of that now, after five years of mutations and invasive species and climate shifts. To discern the meaning of the lines and circles on Dalamud. Rather pointless now. To create and call my own Primal. That thought had lasted all of an instant, for fear that it might work if she put her mind to it. What’s wrong with you? Kannadi asked herself. All your goals were utterly daft. And now you’re working for work’s sake. Where will you go from here? What do you want to do with your life? What do you want? Kannadi stopped in the sand. She listened for a reply. Give me time, self, I’m thinking, she replied. Kannadi regarded the hot sand. There was a lot of it. It did not regard her back. Her orbiting umbral aspects evaporated. “Is working toward work really so bad?” She asked herself aloud. It’s uncommon, certainly, herself answered. “And is uncommon so bad?” Not at all. Father’s museum relies on that fact. And Grandmother is hardly common. “So it’s not bad to work for work’s sake.” What is this ‘bad?’ “Selfishness.” A too-easy answer. She really should have made it harder for herself. All right. And are you selfish? “Of course not.” Then for whom are you working? Ah, that was more like it. Kannadi sat on the bare sand. The sun was at her back. “I work for myself,” she said to herself, “but with the goal of aiding others.” How? Herself asked. How will poking around ruins and beasts help others? She hesitated, quietly baking. “I set an example. Productive attainment of information relevant to the public good regardless of circumstance. Professionalism. Others will take note of my work, and... educate themselves to be as useful as I.” Nonsense. Who shall take note? “My superiors at the garrison, and at Headquarters. And my colleagues, when I speak with them. And they will talk with others still.” Ah, so you mean to filter your experience through people with better things to do. To set layers of straining cloth between you and these “others,” to dilute your intent and divorce you from credit for it. I seem to recall a popular book without your name on it that came of such thinking. She was starting to get on her own nerves. Sweat formed at her hairline. Such an exemplar of good education and public service, herself continued, mockingly. Self-condemned to waste in obscurity for the vague possibility that someone somewhere might help themselves by sharpening their wits on facts you unearth, passed around hand by hand. But where is the byline in the fossil? Where is the maker’s mark in the ruined walls? “Is it really so important to be remembered by name?” What else are you, in unmet minds? “I am...” A drop of sweat hit the sand and spat apart. “Sand,” Kannadi said. “Sand that melts itself to be a window on the world. A lens to see.” But none will see, will they? No one but scholars like you ever see on their own. Sand never melts itself but through the hot focus of the mind -- and people, by and large, are too stupid for that. And so the people must be shown to the window, fitted with the lenses. Why else do teachers exist? “I’m no teacher. I can’t abide a classroom. I’m still sick of classrooms.” Then don’t use them. Be the education you wish to see in the world. Kannadi clenched the ground. Sand bit into her palms. “And how is that any different than setting an example as I do already?!” Because no one pays attention to you, least of all out here. You are reliable and nothing else. Easily overlooked. Plain and covered, covered plainly. What good is a buried mirror? Make them aware of you! “How?!” Beat it into them. Kannadi blinked, and became aware of her sweat. Damn. Heat leads to hallucinations. She knew better than to listen to them. She palmed her scepter-worthy stone. The rustling of hand and pocket filled the world. “Violence is the last resort of the incompetent,” she said. Why is that? “It is inefficient.” Kannadi waved her hand. Lances of ice burst out in a circle, and she was its center. Of course they were not real ice, as that particular spot of desert hadn’t seen much water in centuries, but that’s how magic worked -- real enough for long enough to trick physics into catching up. The ice broke away immediately, leaving even less actual frost than the minuscule amounts on the splats of chilled ground she froze before. Blue spheres of aether began a placid orbit around her shoulders. “Inefficient,” she repeated aloud, her magic already chilling her sweat and cooling her head. She stood. “Waste of effort. Only the incompetent rely upon violence, for it is too easy, too endearing to the stupid. It is therefore wholly unworthy of emulation.” Then make it difficult. Violence is the last resort of the incompetent because they get it wrong. Fight so well that none can match you. “That way lies madness,” she said to herself. “There will always be stronger.” When did I say you should be strong? I said fight well. Comfort returned to her through the circling spheres. No, this wasn’t a hallucination. There was a cold clarity in her thoughts now. They were hers, entirely hers, and always were, but now they were free and pouring out like sand. She pinched her focus like an hourglass and studied them as they spilled. Fight efficiently. Victory in one move. Target the task, not the foe. Seek power through tactics, power through movement, power through control. Economy of force, applied with skill. Surgery, not butchery. The edge of glass, not of iron. Not violence, but domination with all the appearance of effortlessness. Do not toil in quiet hope, for you will only attract others who already have wisdom enough. Useless! Inefficient! Do not let the wise come to you in curiosity, let the ignorant come to you in wonder and envy! Kannadi shivered. She dared not think such things in first person. But there was no competition for them in the desert, no sound but her breathing above her heartbeat. For when the bookless fools see your skill, her thoughts continued, they will ask, “Whence comes her power?” And they shall look upon you, and see themselves reflected in your example -- and find themselves wanting! And oh how they will see you then. What an exemplar you shall be! How they will emulate your bearing, your intelligence! What gravity you will exert on them! “By crushing them into submission?” She said aloud. “No. That way lies madness. And pursuit by authorities.” What if it were legal? An image flashed before Kannadi’s eyes. White rocks. A ship. A landing. A circle she had seen under construction. And her hot insistent thoughts turned cool and beguiling. Ah, you remember the Wolves’ Den? It is to be a place of training. And domination. And spectators. Ignorant lots, come to see battle, not expecting a lesson in how to better themselves beyond mundane force of arms. But a lesson they shall have... Kannadi began to smile. Not force of arms, but force of mind. Victory in one move, seen only by the most patiently observant and seized only by the most exactingly precise. True power on display, bent to lessons unforgettable: skill trumps strength. Might comes from knowledge. Show them your... no. “Show them my power. Yes. Hone it before their eyes and cut away their ignorance. Leave them in awe and respect, or shame and envy, either way it drives them to better themselves!” Her twin aetheric blue moons shifted red. She gripped her stone, and wished she had brought a proper staff. The declaration she felt lining up on her tongue would fly out better if she had something dramatic to raise. She made do with her fist around the stone. “Heat them to melt into shape with -- with my radiance! Yes!” Aetheric fire pulsed around her fist. She raised it. “And let them see the world as it ought to be!” Fire exploded in a perfect sphere, burning the heat away. Air fled the wavefront and sand melted to run away. The Flare spell was real enough for long enough, to all but her. It vanished as quickly as it came. Molten glass surrounded her, each former sand grain somewhat embarrassed that it had fallen for the magic trick. Up ahead stood the spire. Dark shapes moved in its shade. The gathering of zombies quickly shuffled away, wanting nothing to do with a fire-spewing madwoman. Kannadi looked from them to the bright yellowing splotch that enclosed her. She waved her hand, a circle of ice blasted in and out of being, and her satellites shifted back to blue. She walked crunchily over the hard-cooled shards of glass. She cleared her throat. Radiance? Really? “Well I’ll have to project confidence with all those people watching me, will I not? I’m getting into practice.” Then perhaps a change of wardrobe is in order. “One step at a time.” She looked out after the fleeing undead. She blinked. “Was that zombie wearing a coatee?”

Huh! I didn't know it would do that. Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out.

Of all the times to get a 90000 and an endless stream of 3102s...

The first documentable reference to the existence of Karen Albedo lied on an old immigration form. The paper was initially stamped “REVIEW” before being stamped “CLEAR,” but it didn’t need a government official to catch the oddity. Under “Race,” the applicant had written “Hyur Midlander.” Under “Name,” the applicant had written “Cwaenwyb Helbyrtwyn.” The second documentable reference took up a small portion of a vintage Bloodsands poster dated the following year. The poster advertised a bout between champion Victor Longdeath and one-quarter roegadyn newcomer “Lady Pine.” The odds were twenty to one against the young challenger: an immigrant miner who, judging by the betting stub attached to the poster, wagered her entire net worth on her victory. A framed coal-dust copy of a check from the Mineral Concern, dated two years later, declared that one “Karen Pine” was entitled to seven hundred thousand gil. It was the first dividend of her generous investment in a low-valued strike that had turned out to be the Drybone Silver Lode. Dried, yellowed newsprint under glass in different frames boasted of local events. A wedding to the successful private banker Mori Albedo. A mortal accident involving a dish of butter and a steep marble staircase. An immense transfer of wealth by a dramatic public reading of a last will and testament. Karen Albedo preserved little else that the papers said about her. Only after a gap of decades did the news resume. A front page told one and all that the Syndicate member and staunch Royalist nicknamed “the Silver Giant” had deliberately stepped down from power. An easy move, if unprecedented; all she needed to do was pare down her own wealth and keep it pared. The rest of the Syndicate was only too glad to bid her farewell. “It doesn’t say why you retired, Grandmother,” Kannadi noticed aloud. “It did, on a page I burned yesterday,” said Karen in her silk housecoat. Even at eighty-four, she could pass for hyur, because she was. Her height made calling herself a Midlander a bit of a stretch, though. “No reason to keep that memory at all,” Karen continued, “now that your uncle and I have mended things.” She sipped her tea. There in her parlor, she watched Kannadi rummage in an ancient naval chest that somehow creaked even though it was already open. It held memories. “And you have no sentiment attached to these documents?” Kannadi asked. “None, Kanna dear. Take all of them if you like,” Karen said between sips of tea. Kannadi rubbed a streak of clean through the brown grime on yet another pane of glass. “I’d think Father would be more interested, wouldn’t you?” She asked. “Your father would put them on display. With you, I know they’ll be safely stored among your books. I’m hiding trees in a forest, you might say.” Karen chuckled like an earthquake underwater. “Why hide them at all? Why not destroy them if you wish them forgotten?” “I want them nearly forgotten. Perched on the edge of memory and recollection. You’ll understand when you’re an old woman, dear.” “Will I?” There was a tease in her tone. “Yes, if you’re any granddaughter of mine.” Sip. “Which you are.” “The face matches the memory now, hmm?” “That’s not fair and you--” “--What’s this one?” Kannadi held out a framed single-sheet grid table. Karen squinted. “It’s from the first year after I shattered the bank. I’d rather not talk about it.” Kannadi examined the sheet under glass. It bore nothing but numbers and business shorthand under the heading Metal Mirrors Financing. She put it aside. “I heard business was troubled during my… absence,” Kannadi said. “It was.” Kannadi waited as Karen sipped her tea. She continued waiting. “Most of the records were lost,” Karen said after a pause so pregnant it carried a litter, “but I still had my ways. We still have worlds more than I had when I first arrived,” she insisted. “We do, we do.” Kannadi returned to the chest of papers, some framed and some not. All was quiet in the parlor safe for the occasional rustle and clink. Karen set her teacup down, light as a thief, atop the thick book that served as her coaster. “How did it feel?” She asked. “Your absence.” “It didn’t.” Kannadi kept her attention on the chest and its contents. “I can’t speak for everyone, of course.” “Then lucky for me that I’m asking you alone. What do you mean by ‘it didn’t?’” Kannadi flexed her fingers. The span of five years hadn’t touched them. Even her nails had been the same length when she returned…. “I mean there was nothing much to feel. There was a glow, and… remember when I was twelve, and we went to that beach in La Noscea?” “I do. I recall you were distressed.” Kannadi smiled. “I’d never felt undertow before. It frightened me so. That was close to how the transition felt. Like holding still and flying and falling all at once, but without fear. Not an unpleasant sensation. And then after that there was nothing.” “Nothing?” “Yes. Not a feeling of emptiness, but no feeling at all. As though everything there was to feel with had undertowed back and away into….” Into what? There wasn’t a word for it, even in her vocabulary. “Blue,” she decided aloud, vaguely. Karen’s broad eyebrows collided. “Blue? It has a color?” “No, that implies eyes with which to see it, and even an it to be seen. So… colorless blue.” Kannadi rubbed her temple. “I apologize if that sounds meaningless, but that’s the best I can do.” “That’s fine. And when you returned, how did it feel?” Kannadi stared a malm through a rental deed that had expired before she was born. “Like awakening from a dreamless sleep, only to remember moments later that you had dreamt after all. There were stars, I remember that much. And blue.” She rubbed her eyes for clarity that refused to come. “I’m sorry, it’s all mostly a haze. I’m still calculating it behind my waking thoughts. If that doesn’t sound meaningless.” “Don’t worry, dear.” Karen rested her hand on Kannadi’s shoulder. Kannadi hadn’t even heard her grandmother get up. “Have you calculated anything more about your non-experience?” “Only that I rather hope it’s what death is like.” “Come now, you’re much too young for that.” “I’m twenty-six, Grandmother, and thirty-one in parentheses. I’m old enough to contemplate mortality, far off as it might be.” Kannadi looked up to where Karen loomed, and the comparison that came to mind first was to an ancient mountain. One that had lost half its height and majesty by weathering, but whose hardest inner core, exposed by the ages, still dominated the environment. “It’s not productive, Kanna dear,” Karen said. “Trust me when I say that I know of what I speak.” “My apologies, Grandmother.” Kannadi rose to her feet. “But you have at least another decade in you, if I’m any judge.” Karen hugged her granddaughter with arms that were once stronger than any man’s. “One can hope,” she said, as Kannadi hugged back. She stooped her neck to rest her chin on Kannadi’s head. “And on the subject of hoping, and productivity, and quite the opposite of death, I have a gift for you to take with the chest.” “Oh?” Karen released her, returned to her seat and lifted her teacup. Underneath sat a book as large as a grimoire. Kannadi had seen and promptly ignored it when she first walked in; she took it as yet another long-winded adventuresome epic, based on the assembly of swords decorating the cover. Coaster duty was a fine use for that genre, in her opinion. “I thought this might interest you,” Karen said, handing the book over. “Take a look inside.” Kannadi took the oversized gift, clicking smoothly into the mental gears of humor-the-elder. She read the title aloud: “Twenty Blades and Twenty Sheaths, and How to Tend Them.” She blinked at her grandmother. “A manual?” “Of sorts,” Karen smiled. “Two books came out a year after you… went abroad. They gained enough quiet popularity that they were soon bound into one complete work.” Kannadi’s interest rose enough to continue being polite. She dreaded the task of catching up on five years of literature, but this was as good a place to start as any. “I suppose my sword maintenance skills have suffered over time,” she said, returning to her seat and opening to a random page. “Illustrated, I see.” “As one would expect.” Karen’s smile hadn’t left. And illustrated it was. At least one line of sequential drawings broke up the text on every page. Each art-strip demonstrated different techniques of bladecare. On the page to which Kannadi opened, a smiling lalafell showed off a dagger to a hyur woman who, in the next panels of the sequence, sharpened the full length of the edge. Her meticulously illustrated fingers seemed to be taking exceptional care with the weapon. Kannadi furrowed her brows. “The image is all wrong, you don’t hold a blade and a whetstone in the same hand. She could cut herself.” “Keep reading.” She turned a dozen pages in a pinch. Among the words, a drawing of a roegadyn woman proffered her scimitar scabbard to a male miqo’te, and in the next panels the swordsman’s fingers took inordinate interest in the strap ring above the scabbard’s open floral-carved throat…. Kannadi’s eyes widened at the speed of her blush. She turned pages. Men and women of every race and clan happily assisted each other with various ways of maintaining their weaponry. Quick skims revealed that the sea of text around them described the pictures’ procedures in innocent assessments of what to do with which and how. All it required was a simple substitution of words in the mind. Kannadi went from turning pages to flipping them. Her eyes darted. It was a thick book, and by her estimation, not one combination of two possible assistants across the range of civilized races and clans and genders was left out. She clapped the book shut and shot her grandmother a questioning look which found its answer immediately in the old woman’s smirk. “Ever so quick on the uptake, Kanna dear,” said Karen as she poured herself more tea. “And this was a popular book, was it?” Kannadi set it down as though it might bite. “Wildly, to those who understood it. I must say, it is quite thorough.” It took Kannadi several moments to assemble her thoughts in a coherent enough line to speak them. Karen took advantage of the silence to interrupt. “You haven’t had any beaus since you left school, have you? I thought you might benefit from the study.” The effect on her granddaughter’s train of thought was a derailment. “I know you like all kinds, all sides. Or have you settled on one?” The train crashed into a rock wall and exploded. “That is hardly any of your business!” “Isn’t it?” Karen coolly stirred a sugar cube into her tea. “How can I best ensure your happiness if I don’t know your proclivities?” “That isn’t-- I’m more than capable-- you can’t just--!” Kannadi’s opinions crashed into each other on their way out of her head. She soon stammered on no words at all, gave up trying to express them and hurried to the open chest. “Thank you for the documents,” she said, slamming the lid, “but you may keep that book.” “I don’t need it, dear, I wrote two chapters.” Kannadi flushed fiercely, grabbed the chest at both ends, hauled if off the floor and crab-marched to the nearest door. “Always a pleasure speaking with you Grandmother we really should do this again sometime so sorry must run you know how it is take care see you later good bye.” She slammed the door with a swing of the chest. Karen smiled and sipped her tea. “Well, there’s always her cousins….”

An Accounting is in order, for to better commit recent Happenings to memory via paper on this, the first page of my new Field Journal. It has been now three days since my return from the Battle at Carteneau, a return delayed some five years. I feel that I have sufficient evidence to say that the “Driver” of my “Carriage,” as it were, was Louisoix, by way of a Magic unknown. Such changes, in the past half-Decade. Such similarities as well. I of course found myself not aged a day past Twenty-Six. No hair or nail of mine had lengthened the slightest since the day of the Battle. No weight was lost or gained, or muscle atrophied. Save for the unusual dermal Patterning that had appeared below my neck & between my shoulders (discovered after some Contortion and examined more easily with a second mirror), I had no sign of Difference at all. It was naturally of no small wonder to Mother or Father. I stepped through their door, and my presence caused quite a terrible Confusion. It took the work of some minutes to return Mother to her senses. Father, having only recently returned from abroad, was beside himself with Joy. It was from them that After-Noon, as well as from Leyla (whom I later met at the Quicksands, same as ever), that I learned the present State & Condition of my Family, which I will here recount -- but only after one Detail of utmost relevance. It seems that my family had forgotten my Face. Evidently, all clear recollections of my Countenance had vanished from Memory -- and not only concerning myself, but all who were trans-ported. It is my further understanding that even our Names and Histories had been muddled into amnesia among practically all denizens of Eorzea. From what scant information I have gathered, only Adventurers present at Carteneau were Forgotten, and the Forgetting may have been a result of increased Aether following the Calamity, or of Louisoix’s spell, or both. Or perhaps neither. Further study is required. At any rate, my family had not been afflicted with Complete amnesia of me. Mother and Father still remembered that they had a girl-child, and that the child was I, and that my name was Kannadi. (Perhaps they remembered more than most because they had known me as more than a simple Adventurer, or could they have a natural Tolerance for Aether? -- Study further.) As for my face, they knew they were not mad, for Portraits of me had gone unaltered, thus proving (alongside their own memories, and the words in my old Journal) that I had existed. And yet they simply could not recall how I looked! I find nothing about my absence quite so bizarre as that. Father, Mother, and Grandmother too, described their memories of my face as little but Silhouette. Even when they beheld the Portraits of me for many minutes on end, they felt no spark of Recognition, no glimmer of Connection, as if they were portraits of Tea-cups instead. Very bizarre -- worthy of further study! But, I am happy to write, they completely remember all aspects of me now. As for them, and the rest of my Relations: Father yet maintains his Museum, the History’s Torrent (a play upon words after his Name), but has expanded in the sector of Business, viz. the Gridanian Markets. He took initiative to help them, after seeing many other Ul’dahns do so, for the ruin the Calamity laid upon the Black Shroud provoked a very personal Sympathy. Mother, after all, once called Gridania home. Regarding Mother: distressed at the loss of me, she redoubled her Faith, which was already great in quality and quantity, to Nophica, in the hope that the Matron would deliver me safely home. It seems Mother made Pilgrimage to the Wells, weekly at least and daily when possible, for the entire span of five years. So fervent was her Wish for my return, she now leads Liturgies as nothing less than a Priestess for the Nophican community of Ul’dah. Now that I have indeed returned, I suspect that not even one-hundred Dalamuds could shake her beliefs. Her brother Avinash is now a widower. Aunt Amrita was slain by bandits not half a year after the Calamity. Uncle soon became distraught at the Ruin that had become of Gridania, and sold complete ownership and operation of the Lahar family’s textile business to Sunsilk Tapestries. This he did without consulting Mother, or indeed informing her until he delivered her half of the generous Payment. With his own half he poured himself into the role of a Quartermaster with the Adders. The Twins, now my age, remained with him. They fill their days with busy Crafting for their nation’s Grand Company. Now I suppose is the place to mark that the Albedo family has suffered significant loss -- not precisely equal to Mother’s family in the Garlean invasion two decades ago, but comparable, and of sad Consequence by any measure. Uncle Alicanto and Auntie Aicha both perished in the very moment of the Calamity. As Leyla reported it, when I met her in the Quicksands, they had both greatly feared the Monsters roaming free in the streets. And so they had locked themselves within a Tower and barred the door to prevent Others, friend and fiend and stranger alike, from encroaching upon their Safety. When Dalamud broke, a stray flaming rock struck their hiding-place, and killed them both. I felt that the World was better for having lost them, yet I dared not state that opinion, so I had asked Leyla how she had come by that Knowledge. The answer was her brother Rasim. Rasim had the terrible luck to have been standing out-side the tower, shouting within at his parents at the moment of Impact. The tower’s ruin fell upon him, crushing his legs. He came to be rescued, in time, but nothing could be done for his unfortunate Limbs. In the years between then and now he had ascended to the rank of Doctor in the Phrontistery, all the more impressive considering his dis-ability. For want of legs, he travels about in a Wheeled Chair of his own design & construction. Despite that, I understand his life to be quite Comfortable, being that the Inheritance of his parents fell largely to him. Why to him? This is why: The eldest Albedo child, who has the name too bitter to write, has vanished. It seems he divested & sold all his Worth, privately, shortly after the Calamity. What Intentions he had, none know. No trace of that man has been seen in five years. And hopefully not for many more. I hope he found himself beset by Bandits as he fled the Sultanate. As for Haytham, the youngest, Leyla turned Grim in her reporting. He too is lost, but not to Death or Injury, though that is possible for all we know, and would be the same regardless…. It seems the Garleans do not murder all whom they capture. For fit children of Haytham’s age, they proceed to Indoctrinate them to their horrible Cause. Such they have done with him. His health & location can only be guessed at. None in the family hold hope for alleviating their ignorance. Nor do they wish to, for fear of the Horrors they may learn. The poor, blameless boy. So proud of his aim. Happily, though, Leyla reported that her Sisters survive. Nadra, still a “runt” yet evidently of a mellower and less-selfish Disposition than when I knew her, lives & works with Rasim, tending to his requests and opening his doors. Dima, now older than me by Body if not by Calendar, married last year a Roegadyn (by name of Zaenlahz), and serves with the Flames as a Culinarian of no small merit. Also, the family has regained one to help fill the Void left by the others. Uncle Rilo has returned. It seems the Calamity drove him home to see what had become of the Family he had once quit. I have yet to meet him again, but his return is well come. Only his distress at Ul’dahn Materialism had kept him away so long. And finally, Grandmother, to no one’s great Astonishment, has scarcely slowed despite her age of four-score-and-four. In the Calamity’s After-math, the family’s (which is to say Grandmother’s) wealth -- a product of Real-Estate and Lending and compounded Interest -- suffered a heavy blow, by the loss of many official Records in the very tower where Uncle and Auntie lost their lives. But Grandmother, Twelve bless her greedy heart and glass-sharp mind, leveraged decades of Experience and every last onze of her life-long Royalist Influence to mitigate the loss as best she could. The thrust of it is this: Metal Mirrors Financing was absorbed entirely by the Platinum Mirage, in exchange for a complete settling of all Debts. Grandmother’s personal assets, which shall be Willed to Father in the fullness of Time (and not to Uncle Rilo who was adamant in his Disinterest), are now: One lifetime S-Rank Platinum Mirage gaming membership (transferrable), & her home at 2 Garnet Street, plus contents thereof, & multiple shares in Black Brush Station, & a respectable stake in the Gold Bazaar mythril vein, & a few modest tracts of bare Land currently being developed near to the Silver Bazaar, & her own substantial savings in simple gil. All told, it is a considerable Diminishment of the wealth to which I am eventual heir, though I doubt if I shall ever call it that within ear-shot of my less Fortunate acquaintances. I also doubt if our sur-name will ever again attain such power as when Grandmother sat on the Syndicate, or even quite as much as we had antecalamitas, but what worth is that anyway? Through Father’s ventures and Grandmother’s maneuvering, we are happily content in our plushed seats, malms away from Bank-ruptcy. The Albedos shall be comfortable into the Eighth Astral Era. And now I have spent too long at this table. The Waitress looks impatiently at me. Another entry another time. I still have a reborn realm to explore… ~ Kannadi Albedo

Pity I can't make it. I'll be out of state at DragonCon until after Labor Day. Have fun!

Curious. I usually trust Eorzeapedia, but in this case I'd like to see a citation. Are there in fact Mamool Ja NPCs who reference Vana'diel in some way? If there are, hey, great. It shows that other beings can cross over into Eorzea from other worlds. It would also explain why there are so many FFXI and FFXII monsters suddenly running around. And if that is so, then it's easy to extrapolate into something interesting. Viera exist in FFXII. Mirrorknights, mantises, furry three-jawed crocodiles and other monsters exist in FFXII. Those same monsters now exist in FFXIV; therefore, precisely nothing prevents viera from showing up. Fans who wanted viera as a new playable race could very well have a canon explanation for them. Could.

As part of Kannadi's background, I handwaved a "Saint Branford's" high-quality high-tuition all-grades girls' school into some corner of Ul'dah that doesn't exist on the map. It's where wealthy families dump their young ladies for several hours a day over about a decade and a half. As completely non-official-lore as a thing can get.