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[Wild Chocobo Chase - Crimes Against Nature Part Two]
Now I kow the taste and feel of Sun.
Beach-hot white sand beneath my feet,
In salt-sweet air, and carefree fun.
And endless smiles for all I meet.
But I cannot forget, or cease to care,
From where I came, and who I am.
Embittered cold, that all must bear.
From where I came, and who I am.
The howling gale; hope; despair.
Where cold-capped snow peaks linger still,
Where frost strong-clings to all it sees.
Where hearth and home bring warm goodwill,
Where love exists beneath the freeze.
The light notes of Aya's voice drifted into a quiet in which only the sound of babbling water and singing birds penetrated. Light blue eyes lingered on the sight of spring-fed stream falling into the distant pool below. The sight was loveliness, the very representative of the beauty that Shroud-memory meant to her. But her mind was elsewhere. Hundreds of miles apart, where distant mountains rose behind the snow-covered spires of the Tower City. Neither her birth home, nor her adoptive home. But her heart's home nonetheless: Ishgard.Â
The conversation within the Morbolvine Clan's lair had drawn her thoughts there. Reminded her of home. Miah never did understand Aya. Maybe she'd never had the chance. Maybe she never would. Heart strings played upon by one who never even knew they were there.Â
She let out a deep sigh. A slow, steady push of air upon which she hoped would carry every thought of home upon it. Away, away, and away.
But C'kayah was already concerned. A gentle look was upon his green eyes, a look he seemed to reserve for the quiet of private company.Â
"You're homesick" he observed adroitly. "The gate is open..." he left the suggestion unfinished, allowing the thought to simply float upon the air.
Aya lowered her gaze, leaning forward to rest her arms upon the ornately carved railing of the observation deck. "More or less, you mean," she corrected with that note of cynicism that always seemed to accompany her thoughts of Ishgard.
"I wouldn't exactly stake my life on the good fortune of just strolling in again."
C'kayah thought for a moment, his fingers upon the cut of his masculine jaw. "No," he agreed, "But, at the same time, you'd be able to see them again. You don't require a forged seal, either. You could, literally if you wished, stroll right in." C'kayah, was right, and knew just of whom she thought, of course. But Aya knew that no matter how sympathetic he was, he could not see the fullness of her plight.
So focused were her thoughts upon Ishgard that she could almost feel the chill; see the snow. A looming sense of dread crept through her heart, as did a sense of the powerful little seizures of anxiety that had once gripped her every time she cast eyes upon an agent of the Ishgardian Church and State. The fear that every Knight, every Inquisitor, every Priest or Adjunct could be preparing to steal her away to face mortal charges. The same fear for for her friends, her family, for everyone whom she had known. That daily terror that had slowly eroded every sense of normalcy.
"Are you so sure?" There was a barb in her tone, a sense of harshness at his own naivety. "They have opened their gates for their own reasons. To allow in the foreigners who bear with them goods, gil, arms. Who will aid in their Crusade, and help safekeep the city from foes Dravanian and Garlean. The Church does not rule with benevolence; Halone is a hard goddess. Her will is ice. Her faithful..." she cut her voice off mid-sentence, allowing words she may have later regretted to linger unspoken. Her fingers clutched tightly against the railing, her heart pounded with a sudden emotion of trepidation, of worry, and fear. "I do... I do miss.. I do worry about them. And, sometimes," she said with the voice of someone admitting her darkest secret, "I miss what we had, despite it all."
C'kayah took a deep breath. He wanted nothing but the best for her. Had he not risked his own life to deliver word to her family that she still lived? It was difficult to see her like this. It was always, so difficult. What could he say to comfort her? How could he encourage her to take that leap of faith: the only leap that would quiet her struggling heart. "Aya... I know I'm not the best source of wisdom on this..." he leaned against the railing, drawing himself nearer to her; his eyes casting their soft, caring gaze close upon her. "I haven't visited my own family since I was but seventeen summers of age. Still... you could Aya. It wouldn't mean that you have to remain..." he tried to assuage her, hoping her understood just what it was that had so inflamed the negativity she so rarely allowed to breach her unruffled exterior.
He watched as she closed her eyes. A look of such seriousness upon her features. Never did she seem so sad, never did she seem so serious, and so bereft of hope as when she spoke of home. "There are those who won't have forgotten me. Unsettled scores, unreturned debts."  She paused, "Unrequitted advances. Or simply, new amorous longings." She opened her eyes, light blue's unfocused as they looked out upon the splendor of the Shroud. "These are the things of Inquisition in Ishgard. The personal disputes that drive persecution by those able. Against those... well, my voice, it would mean nothing. Even less than it once did."
She let out a huff, half-amused, half-dejected; her eyes glanced briefly to his. "Besides; if they remember my performances they may even have a real case."
C'kayah watched, his own expression serene; his concern apparent. "A case? You mean heresy?"
She closed her eyes again and nodded. "Of course. It really doesn't take much when you're an 'Ala Mhigan Trollop.'" Those words rolled off her tongue with more than venom: an outright hostility that rose from a deep-seated anger. It was almost enough to take her Miqo'te friend aback, so rarely did she speak with such a forceful negativity.
He laughed... Aya glanced at him again, wondering at the inappropriate, awkward moment. "Well," he offered, "I would be your proxy once again, but I fear my own enemies have been making sure that I would receive a welcome of chains and a long drop should I ever set foot there again."
He seemed to sense that his laughter had been out of place. How difficult she was to judge in these moments, all he wanted was to calm her... "Aya, I'm sure there are ways. If you wish to see your family, or even just get word to them, we can find a way."Â
She nodded, closing her eyes again as she let out a deep sigh from upon the railing. "Maybe... someday... but I can't just stroll..."
C'kayah let out a breath of his own. That very real sense of disappointment upon it. "V'aleera sent me a letter. She mentioned concern for my family, and... well... the attack." Her voice trembled just slightly. Worry clutched again upon her heart, "I... it's..." for a moment her expression hovered on the verge of tears. Her cheeks reddened, her breath came ragged.Â
"The Dragoon...?" he asked, perplexed.
She tried to force herself to concentrate. This had never been supposed to be about Ishgard. There were important matters afoot. She focused... she forced her breaths deeper, slower. She calmed, as best she could, and then she changed the subject, "...there's something else for us to discuss."
"Business?" he asked, somewhat perplexed himself on the sudden turn of thought.
"Business? I don't even know what to call it any more... trouble seems to just have a way of finding us. But, I suppose this isn't so much our trouble unless we really wish to make it so."
C'kayah cast half a smirk, "Well, we could be selfish and ignore it. Open another bottle of wine, and just wile away the evening. But, lets here what the trouble is, first."
Aya watched the smirk, one that reflected suddenly as a very slight smile upon her own, red-carmined lips. "Trouble in the Shroud. And... its serious. I'm not sure that anyone who cares about it can afford to ignore it."
C'kayah narrowed his eyes, his smiling-smirk quickly fading at the mention of such a problem. He craned his head to look at her, "What sort of trouble?"
"Sinister things," she said in a soft, quiet voice that failed to betray the stake of it all. "Undead, Void-sent, a strange blood-like substance that seems to provoke the plants of the Shroud against others. Accusations against the Wailers. Murder. Intentional fires and destruction within the Shroud. Its as if someone is tempting fate. Testing, probing to gauge whether the Elemental threat, Greenwrath, still is."
"Greenwrath..." he murmured softly. "You know, after the Calamity, people thought the Elementals had forsaken the Shroud. It no longer provided the protection it once did. At the same time, it became a much easier place for those not in Gridania's good graces to live." He drew his fingers gently against his jaw, watching her, "It would be foolish to think that change was permanent, but it does mean the Shroud may be vulnerable..."
Aya nodded slightly, turned her gaze back up toward the waterfall and the coursing stream that fed it. "Either way, I don't think either of us feel that Void-sent are welcome within the Shroud."
C'kayah shook his head in emphatic agreement, "No!" for a moment he pondered the possibility of a connection. The Morbolvine had been dealing with their own Void-sent infestation, "I wonder if there may be a connection..." he mused quietly.
Her eyes followed his. Blonde eyebrows lifted at the suggestion of a connection, before her gaze moved back to the flowing water. "Does Kiht know of this?" he asked pointedly of the Keeper Huntress, his one-part nemesis, one-part dear friend.
Aya nodded, "She does, and she even asked after you." He couldn't suppress a grin at the thought. "Did she...?" he purred in that deep, luxuriant tone of which he was infuriatingly capable. "Well, perhaps the three of us should meet and discuss what best to do."
The blonde shook her head in disagreement. "I'd... well, I'd rather have some better idea of what's going on first. Kiht is best when she has a plan to carry out. Right now..." she hesitates about how just to put it, "She seems rather adrift. And I think we may do more harm than good until we can provide more exact direction."
C'kayah's eyes opened wide at the suggestion. "Adrift? I have never seen that woman adrift. Is she alright?"
Aya's cheeks reddened slightly, her expression flustered. "I hadn't meant it quite like that. She's always grounded, especially by her loyalty. But, when she doesn't know what she should be doing, she kind of flails about, trying to figure it out. She is always doing her best, and once she has a plan of action to follow she follows it to the very end, but... when she doesn't..."
C'kayah chuckled, nodding his agreement. "Yes, she does like action doesn't she? And she'll prefer any action over waiting. Alright, so we have some sleuthing to do, is that right? Who all knows about this?"
He had asked a question that she couldn't even venture a question on. She herself had only really learned about anything the day before, and Edda, from whom she had learned about it from, didn't really know her. Her conversation with Kiht had been so incomplete. There was so much still unknown.
"I don't know." she answered rather matter-of-factly. "Though, I first head about it a few weeks past, I really didn't know it. I think we should focus on what it is we know, rather than on who knows."
C'kayah furrowed his brow slightly, before gracefully stepping from the unknown and into the known.Â
"Very well then, what do we know?"
Aya turned her eyes away, concentrating for a moment as if trying to imagine how to present it all at once. "There is a common theme in these otherwise disparate events. It seems to be some effort to harm the Shroud itself. It started with the undead, raised from recently deceased by some force or individual. They were contained by Wailers with the help of a Leve, and defeated, but the Wailers seemed reluctant to allow any follow-up investigation."
"I learned of this from a Maelstrom Lieutenant who had been part of the Leve. She was rather insistent that she lacked the authority to investigate further, something that it sounded like she had been told by the Wailers themselves."
C'kayah seemed quite confused, "Maelstrom? Why the Maelstrom?"
Aya shrugged, "Happenstance, it seems. She must be a member of the Foreign Levy. There was another attack, the one in which Kiht was present. There was a woman, seemingly mad, accusing a group of Wailers she had attacked of something, 'They did it!' she shouted again and again. A blood-like substance had been spread in the area, bringing the wildlife alive, and encouraging it to attack the Wailers. All were slain, before the woman seemed to vanish into the very firmament itself."
C'kayah pressed his lips into a tight line. This didn't sound good.
"Some of Kiht's companions collected samples of the substance. They're being studied in Ul'dah as we speak. More than that, one of them was actually affected by the blood herself. She claimed it made her feel a very powerful sense of rage."
C'kayah turned all of this over in his head, remaining silent for a moment. "Do you know what the alchemists found, Aya? When they analyzed it?"
She shook her head, "As far as I know there are no results as of yet. They're still working on it. Hopefully we'll hear from Kiht if she learns anything. Now, both of these events seem to share the common theme of defiling the Shrould don't they? There's more still. A fire that was set upon a sacred tree of the Shroud, one that took a great deal of effort to bring under control. Another: a Chocobo-keeper has been murdered, and daily Chocobo are found missing from Bent Branch. When a group of adventurer's attempted to locate the missing Chocobo, they were met by a powerful force: individuals who overpowered them and forced their retreat, empty handed."
C'kayah nodded with puzzlement. It just seemed to keep getting worse. "And what was this about the Wailers?"
Aya's eyes widened for a moment before she nodded, "It was a hunch of Kiht's. She seemed very concerned about the way the woman was accusing the slain Wailers of misdeeds. Concerned enough that she is trying to investigate the Wailers herself to see if she can find any evidence of what they might be up to. Now, when she told me this I thought of two other things: One, that the Wailers had seemed to stymie further investigation into the first group of void sent, and secondly that in Bentbranch they are not following up with any real investigation of the missing Chocobo."
C'kayah fell into deep thought, offering only a slight nod. After a few silent moments he conjectured, "You want to look into the Chocobo, don't you Aya. You want us to look into it?" He cast his perceptive eyes upon her, she nodded.
"That," she couldn't help but smile at his power of deduction, "is where I would like to begin. Not so much, us, perhaps, but there are many Shroud Miqo'te about. Mistresses of the wood. Some of the best are even available for hire. Far quieter than a trampling team of adventurers, don't you think?"
C'kayah agreed, "There's a lot of truth in what you're saying."
She nodded, nearly lost in her own thoughts, "Something is telling me the Chocobo are important. It seems too strange an act to be random. There must be purpose, and whoever they are they killed to achieve it, and have fought to hide their tracks. That seems like the best place to start."
"Then that is where we shall begin! Or, at least, where the Huntresses we employ shall begin!"
He turned his eyes reflective upon the waterfall, lifting his body straight as he looked upon it, "The Shroud has always been important to me. To my livelihood, of course, but also... it was a refuge for me when I had nothing else. It may seem sappy, but I'll defend that."
She watched, smiling softly. "I thought you would. In its one peculiar way, the Shroud itself is Freedom. At least, that is what it has always meant to me. Especially when I spied it from the distance of Ishgard. Perched upon a tower.. dreaming.."
He watched her, a knowing smirk upon her lips. He had heard these stories before, and he had a feeling he was one of the only ones who had.
"Well, when the two of us are on the case..."
She flashed a grin his way. "A pretty unlikely pair of saviors, don't you think?"
She grinned playfully, "The unlikeliest!"
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