The Dodos are Heroes of Ala Mhigo! [mature, story, ooc welcome]

[Twinflame]

((This thread takes place immediately following the Visit of the Incorrigible Dodo and significantly prior to the current RP timeline. It'll catch up to it over several posts, though.))

 

 

D'hein Tia was an exemplary member of the Dodo tribe in Ul'dah, a man of lustrous golden man and perfectly trimmed tail whose red robes shimmered with golden finery and immaculately cut gems. He often walked into things in the street, but did so proudly, even though he failed to notice his nosebleed after that wall sort of reached out and grabbed him. It was dark, and yellow lamplight is somewhat less effective than white, so onlookers should not hold it against him. D'hein Tia presented himself at the D-tribes humble compound, a set of lofty towers adorned in exquisite tapestry and rare foreign plants preserved in the hot Ul'dahn air by magic. It demonstrated its humiliated by having only one fountain, crafted decades hence by the finest artisans the Syndicate had ever possessed, instead of a handful of smaller fountains. More prideful communes would have at least five or so fountains, he was sure.

 

As it was night, D'hein was granted the luxury of solitude. Except for the dim lights and trickling fountains, all was dark slumber, except for the high tower somnus den where the Nunhs held their horrid soirees on a near nightly basis. D'hein tia paused in the courtyard, turning his green eyes up to the lit balconies and listening for the groans of unsatisfied women. he didn't hear any, of course, but he heard how the women talked. The Nunhs were secretly homosexuals, they said, and D'hein had confirmed this for at least one while he was seducing their women.

 

Which is why he only came home at night. A certain D'themia Nunh was still waiting for an excuse to kill D'hein Tia.

 

Halfway up one of the towers and across a bridge so thin it would make a Lominsan's knees shake, D'hein Tia pushed open a door and walked into a dark apartment. "D'ahl? D'ahl, are you decent?" It occured to him belatedly one should ask such questions before entering an apartment, and he was about to turn around when his thoughts were interrupted by a table that rudely struck his knee and toppled with a clatter of metal, glass and wood.

 

There was no pain. D'hein looked down and noticed a tear in his robe from the tables sharp edge, and stuck his finger in the hole with a frustrated expression. "Twelve-damned..."

 

"What! Who is-?" A woman ran around the corner in a thin nightrobe, a white and nearly translucent thing that billowed out from her form like woven spiderweb. She was perfectly proportioned, from her thin shoulders to the extra weight in her hips, and she was... familiar.

 

D'hein looked from her hips to her face and frowned in confusion. "Antimony?"

 

"What?" The woman took the glasses from her nose, gray-brown hair bundled up and hanging in braids below her ears. She sounded strangely excited, though her volume was a cautious whisper, "What's an Antimony? Is it a new kind of legal fee?"

 

D'hein's own voice did not respect the time of evening. "Ah, no. You're not... I mistook you for someone else."

 

"Ah, that's fancy," the woman pulled her robe tighter about her body, a show of modesty that had the accidental effect of making her shape more easily distinguished. "Being mistaken for someone else in my own home. Only you would make such a mistake, D'hein Tia."

 

He averted his eyes from the image. "Apologies, D'ahl. I can only assume you've been taking advice on your appearance from D'aijeen."

 

"Instruction, more like, at the pain of discipline if I don't comply!" She said this with humor and pride, her smile flickering in the moonlight that careened from one mirror to the next on walls that appeared drenched with sideways puddles. "The glasses are for reading, but the hair the hairstyle and hint of gray is all according to D'aijeen's very specific designs."

 

No matter where D'hein looked, he could see D'ahl in the mirrors. Even when he looked down at the floor, the mirrored shards of the glass-top table he'd broken reflected hints of of soft skin in sheer silk. D'ahl had never distressed him so, and in fact he had often hoped to catch such undefended glimpses of skin on her pristine body. Except D'ahl had suddenly become a doppleganger of D'aijeen's mother. It was strange that he'd never caught the resemblance before, but it was so exaggerated and accurate now that in the shadows of D'ahl's shimmering apartment D'hein could tell no difference between D'ahl and the woman D'hein had earned so much ire from.

 

D'hein took a steadying breath and inquired, "How long has she been-?"

 

"Years! It's a secret," at least there was the comfort that D'ahl's voice and manner of speaking was far removed from the woman she so resembled. "Which is the crux of my carelessness, D'hein Tia. This is a secret intimacy between D'aijeen and I, which you must not let her know that I revealed."

 

"Intimate," D'hein repeated, eyeing the mirrors, which were filled with D'ahl's body. "D'aijeen is here now?"

 

"Uhm. Yes, but..." The woman shifted in an uncharacteristic fashion, hands knotting in the folds of her robe and green eyes skirting towards the mirrors. Like D'hein, she would now discover that this apartment precluded all comfort from aversion. Her subtle attempt to look away was made obvious when she found D'hein's gaze waiting for her in the mirrors, and he saw the concern.

 

"But what?"

 

"She's begun a new habit of sleep-walking. I've never seen its like, except for the handful of times I've seen it in recent times."

 

"Recent times?"

 

"The past moon, perhaps," she pondered, nodding, "The first of the episodes was on the twenty-fifth day of the last moon. There have been five such episodes, and the seem to have triggers. I'm keeping track of circumstances to try and diagnose them."

 

"If she's been ill you should have told me!" D'hein bit, his ears laying back and his eyes squinting into the shadows. "You of all people should know that she-" He bit off his frustration when he realized that it was misplaced. D'ahl still looked like Antimony, a woman who had shown no openness to the possibility of her childrens' lives. That Antimony thought her children were dead was no excuse. D'hein, every bit D'aijeen's adoptive father, still found himself angry with Antimony.

 

It was unreasonable, and further unreasonable to let that anger slip against D'ahl. Particularly because there was no way D'ahl could know.

 

"Apologies," D'hein implored. "D'aijeen has long suffered from sleep-related abnormalities."

 

D'ahl nodded in patience, a gesture D'hein wished he had seen more often from the woman D'ahl resembled. "Perhaps you will recognize what she is experiencing, then. Come with me, I'll show you."

 

With that, D'ahl spun away to walked into her shadowed apartment, brown-blond tail swing behind her and throwing the robe away from her legs seductively. D'hein would not have looked were he not forced to. He may be perhaps a lecherous man to the women of his own tribe, but he did not wish to disrespect Antimony by objectifying her double. The thought was bizarre, and yet not as bizarre as the thought of D'aijeen doing so, and everything that implied. These ponderings disoriented D'hein and left him feeling as though he were trudging through water, reinforced by the shimmering of a hundred decorative mirrors on the walls of D'ahl's apartment. He knew the woman well enough to know that it was designed to specifically confuse, the mirrors interspersed with windows that were designed identically, causing one to question the difference between reflection and transparency.

 

By the time he arrived at the sitting room, his eyes no longer believed there was such a thing as windows. He looked out the massive windows that ran the towers outer wall and perceived them as mirrors, confusing his balance enough that he had to pause and breath. Inexplicable night wind blew in from opened windows concealed among the mirrors to his sides, soft moonlight reflected a thousand times. Glass wind chimes clicked like settling ice and through darting fragments of light over him, over the world. The view of Thanalan was reflected behind, above, below him. He felt like the floor around him were tumbling, but that he was stuck to it.

 

D'ahl watched him with a smile, patient with his discomfort. She enjoyed it. It continued for a long moment before D'ahl took a black tapestry -- a tribal pattern leftover from his tribes origins in the stony steppes west of Ul'dah -- and through it over what looked like a pane of glass in the room. But it had not been glass; it had been a mirror. And this simple movement stabilized the room in a moment. The mirrors and windows seemed to switch places in a sudden tumble, and only the floor beneath D'hein remained still. What he had thought were windows were in fact large mirrors, suddenly obvious, and there was now an open view of Ul'dah to his right through a small pair of windows -- in fact the only two in the room -- which he had not noticed before.

 

He heard humming in the suddenly static room. A large number of sofas and tables adorned it, shelves stacked high with glass figures that had been invisible moments before. He had also somehow failed to notice D'aijeen, who stood directly in front of one of the windows, staring tansfixed. His adoptive daughter, her skin the color of mud, her hair and tail a mossy green, was being attended to by D'ahl. The double-image of her mother, perhaps a few years younger, draped a silk night-robe over D'aijeen's otherwise naked body, the image bizarre. D'hein could almost picture D'aijeen being cared for by her mother, Antimony, out in the tribal wastes of the Sagolii.

 

The image took on a twisted air when D'ahl leaned forward to kiss D'aijeen's lips, and the man turned his gaze aside. The now-tamed mirrors in the room permitted the gesture, and he let himself feel the shivering ache of distress in his ribs.

 

The humming continued. Melodic, high in pitch, quieter than the wind. D'hein lifted his gaze back to where D'aijeen stood unmoved, eyes looking at the window as if she could see through D'ahl's body and watch the moon. For a moment, D'ahl met D'hein's gaze, and then she announced to him, "D'aijeen is asleep. It's distressingly adorable, isn't it? She does not wake from this spells until she is rested."

 

D'hein blinked at this, bundled up his resolve, and moved over towards the the women. He settled himself next to D'aijeen looking down at her face. The girl's blue eyes did not seem asleep. They wore a sad sort of wonder, and her lips moved. The humming was something exhaled from her throat, a slow and sad music. In her fingers, one of the glass figures -- a kind of drake, perhaps -- was being turned over and over between bother of her palms. Her digits moved over it strangely. She was feeling it, as though it were something unusual.

 

"What is she humming?"

 

"I don't recognize it," D'ahl answered, placing her face very close to D'aijeen's once more. "I've been listening. It's pretty. But I don't know the tune."

 

He turned to look out the window, "Is she looking at anything specific."

 

"Just clouds." D'ahl waited a moment before expounding, "She doesn't always look at the sky. She just stares at things in these episodes. There's no similarity between one thing and the next."

 

D'hein exhaled a sigh and brushed a lock of D'aijeen's hair behind her ear. "She's just sleep-walking, D'ahl." he turned his gaze on the woman, peering through his brown-blonde her to take her green eyes with his own green eyes. "I think we need to have a talk about your relationship with my daughter."

 

The woman looked D'aijeen over, was silent for a moment, and then smiled repulsively while she swooped forward, laying her cheek against D'aijeen's forehead and wrapping her arms around the the girl's shoulders. She eyed D'hein with an amused but unmistakable glare. "Your 'daughter' would disagree, as do I, D'hein Tia. And it is not why you came here tonight, is it?"

 

The ache in his chest resonated as he watched, and he tried to give it a precise identity. D'ahl was not a bad person. She was, in fact, one of D'hein's most trusted allies inside the tribe. And a good match for his daughter, normally. When D'hein had first found out about the intimacy in their relationship, he'd been glad, in fact. Why should such a simple thing as her hair change all of that? Because D'aijeen had requested it? It was not an unattractive hair style.

 

"You've become distracted, D'hein."

 

"Apologies." He shook his head slowly. "You're right, in fact, that I did not come here for this. Not that I would normally prescribe any reason to come to your home at night except I could not sleep but to see you." Even in his disturbance, the instinctive flirtation found his voice. Whether D'ahl was D'ahl or Antimony, she was still beautiful. "It's simply that we leave tomorrow for Ala Mhigo, you and I, so I wished to confer prior."

 

"Everything's in order," D'ahl said. "Poor D'aijeen will miss me, though, so I was letting her stay over."

 

"She'll have to go and stay with her sister and Drybone while we're gone. We don't want D'themia causing another incident if he decides he can force her to mate while we aren't around."

 

"D'aijeen and I have discussed this," D'ahl said, squeezing D'aijeen about the shoulders. The girl continued to hum and stare out the window. "She was frustrated but accepting. She is so enthralled by her sister I'm almost jealous."

 

"As am I," D'hein admitted, and shrugged. "There are some details I'd like to go over, but..."

 

D'ahl nodded to him, "But tonight I am dedicating time to D'aijeen. These spells only last an hour or two and then she goes back to bed. When she does, I intend to rouse her to discuss this." She fixed the Tia with a frown, "I do not believe this is mere sleepwalking."

 

"What does D'aijeen think?"

 

"That is personal," D'ahl's green eyes slipped closed, her voice turning boastful, "D'aijeen and I keep many confidences. Now, D'hein Tia, please leave. It is improper for a Tia to be in a lady's room after dark, and we would all be inconvenienced if you were to find yourself queued for punishment again."

 

He huffed, "Fair enough," and turned from the woman. As he did so, Dahl ceased giving him her attention, turning it instead to D'aijeen. As D'hein Tia walked away, he watched in the mirrors as D'ahl stared into the eyes of the supposed-orphan whom he had adopted. Years after taking her in, he had met her mother. Perhaps if he had not, he would not have realized the strangeness of D'aijeen's relationship with D'ahl. He made it all the way to the door of the apartment, catching steadily smaller glimpses of the girl and her confidant, glimpses of scandalous skin and strange closeness. He tried not linger too long on these things, choosing instead to assume that they were artifacts of assumptions on his part. Antimony was a lovely woman, so why shouldn't D'ahl resemble her? He had heard women were often attracted to men who looked like their fathers, so perhaps this was a similar thing.

 

"Oh, Aijee, why are you crying?"

 

D'hein stopped with his hand on the doorknob, glancing to an adjacent mirror. Through a series of a dozen fake windows, D'hein could see the sitting room, D'ahl staring into his daughter's eyes.

 

"Why are you sad?" D'ahl dabbed at D'aijeen's face with the sleeve of her robe. Her voice suddenly sounded very much like Antimony's voice. "My little Aijee. Don't be sad. I'm right here. Mom's here."

 

 

[align=center]*  *  *[/align]

 

 

It was not until they had been out of Ul'dah for a week that D'hein finally found it in himself to say, "You do know how strange it is, right?"

 

D'ahl gave him a sideways look, her sweat-dappled face no longer resembling Antimony in any way. Her hair down, her demeanor different, and after a week of riding a chocobo all day through hot sun and cold night, the differences stood out. Her clothes were thick leather, her hair not only unbraided but messy and several shards lighter, younger. Antimony was a soft, studious woman, and D'ahl was decorated in muscles and scars. Her facial markings were similar, but different.

 

And her voice was smooth and deceptive like a politicians, bearing no hesitance whatsoever when she feigned ignorance. "What is strange, D'hein Tia? The way you wound yourself to the point of bleeding but cannot be bother to notice?"

 

"Yes. That is a strange and fascinating thing which I do." He stared forward at the blue horizon, smiling to himself of his very masculine and impressive tolerance for pain, that was not in any way the result of a damaged nervous system as some people said. They would be arriving in Ala Mhigo the next day, and he found all of these days of riding pleasant. He shook himself, "Dammit, D'ahl! No! You're trying to confuse me!"

 

"It is very easy."

 

"D'aijeen has you playing the part of her mother! And you're in it." He point. "She coached you on how to talk like her, right?"

 

"Yes," D'ahl answered, as though it were something to be proud of. "D'aijeen designed all of it. My hair, my voice, told me to use less complicated phrasing, and such as that."

 

"And that doesn't strike you as unusual?"

 

"Oh, at first I was completely..." D'ahl pondered for a moment, swaying back and forth with the movement of her chocobo. The wind caught her long, straight hair and blew it against her face, where it stuck in her sweat. Her pale skin had begun to turn red with sunburn days back. In fact, she hardly seemed feminine at all, much less to resemble Antimony in any way, except perhaps vaguely in the structure of her face, the color of her eyes? "At first it seemed nothing more than an unsettling and honestly revolting perversion."

 

D'hein was torn between the want to agree with D'ahl vehemently and the want to defend his daughter from some sort of insult.

 

"After a time," D'ahl said, "I perceived it as cute, and then as very sad. But it makes sense. I appear and speak as though I am her mother, and tell her that I love her, and am proud of her, and that I admire and cherish her every whim. And she cries sometimes, and I tell her that it is alright because I will always be there for her."

 

The Tia's jaw moved strangely, trying to imagine what such interactions must look like, but he could not imagine D'aijeen requesting such things be spoken to her, nor such words being honestly delivered in D'ahl's voice. But it would not be D'ahl's voice, would it? It would be D'ahl imitating Antimony's voice.

 

"D'hein!"

 

"What?" He snapped his gaze up, and then his chocobo suddenly bellowed a shrill, dramatic cry of warning and jerked to the side. The bird failed to avoid the mole under foot and toppled, sending D'hein rolling to earth. The mole shot off in one direction and his chocobo ran in panicked circles as the Tia kicked his way out of a stand of succulents, grunting in protest. "Dammit D'ahl!"

 

"Azeyma have mercy!" he heard the woman call. "Stop writhing! You'll only make it worse!"

 

"I'm fine!" He said, and pitched himself to his feet, finding himself unsteadied by the lingering presence of fleshy, green vessels on his body. He flexed his arm, feeling his robe and skin shift oddly, and paused with a subtle, "Oh," when he realized that several cactuses were joined to his flesh by a few hundred cactus needles. Many in his face. It didn't hurt.

 

"What is wrong with you!?" D'ahl shouted, jumping from her chocobo to run to his aid.

 

He actually chuckled, "I think it might be about time for me to admit that I might have nerve damage," he said. Then he turned his gaze to D'ahl and demanded, "Listen! Are you or are you not knowingly contributing to my daughter's incestuous perversions?"

 

"It's not sexual," D'ahl said, pulling on thick gloves and reaching out to take hold of the succulents. "Well, it is, because she and I are, and it's... but it's not just..."

 

"Don't cloud the issue, D'ahl!" He grunted when she ripped one of the succulents from his arm. It still didn't hurt.

 

"Be quiet, Tia! Oh, I wish I could hurt you." She shook a cactus in his face, "Your daughter is very sad and I'm doing what I can to comfort her. I have absolutely no desire to hear your thoughts on the matter. Now cease speaking of it or I'll shove this in your mouth and you'll never taste anything but cactus soup again!"

 

"But she hates her mother!" D'hein protested. "It doesn't make sense. And what if her mother turned up? Imagine how strange it would be!"

 

"I will not warn you again, D'hein Tia!" She pulled another cactus off his body. "Actually, while I have power over you, I demand you tell me why we're going to Ala Mhigo! Are we to aid the resistance?"

 

"No," D'hein answered. "I'm going to try to contact my superiors in the Garlean Empire."

 

D'ahl froze. "What."

[Twinflame]

"What's your plan?"

 

"Have faith in me, D'ahl," the Tia smiled up at the city of Ala Mhigo, adorned with all the technology and metal magic of the Garlean Emprie. "I'm a hero of Garlemald, so it won't be a problem."

 

D'ahl's brown ears swept back and she ducked her head forward, hair sweeping in front of her features. "My faith in you is completely in violation of my sanity, D'hein Tia."

 

"Love is separate from sanity," Dhein spun towards her, brushing her hair out of her face to look into her eyes. "Why cling, then, to sanity? The only comfort there is that of philosophers who spend their lives lamenting the state of the world. And we do not lament, for have love and beauty, abundant, as far away as one another's arm spans."

 

The woman glared up at D'hein, her tail shivering in warning, "Sometimes I wonder what you would do if your flirtations were well-received by your daughter's lover."

 

"Flirtations? These are simply my feelings. If you perceive them as flirtations, then I am all the more glad." In truth he knew they were flirtations and would panic if they were well-received, not the least of all because he had once harbored designs on D'ahl which had been dashed by none other than his own daughter. The whole thing where D'ahl oft disguised herself as one of D'hein's employees so that his D'aijeen could act out incestuous fantasies was not to be though of in any kind of vicinity to these things, especially since D'hein harbored designs on his coworker who was D'aijeen's birth-mother.

 

D'hein straightened suddenly, "Actually! If Antimony and myself did work out reomantically, it would be as though Nymeia guided our coupling."

 

"Wait. Who is Antimony?"

 

"That would be D'aijeen's mother," D'hein mentioned off-handedly. "As fate, the woman who birthed the child and the man who adopted and raised her, all coming together to reconcile one another's bitterness and form a family together."

 

Shaking her head, tail shivering again, voice dropping, "Wait! You know D'aijeen's mom?"

 

"I have resolved myself!" D'hein punched his palm with one fist, "Antimony and I might not have the best relationship, but farbeit from me to question fate! I will give Antimony another chance, and we'll see just how readily love repairs all!"

 

"Wait!" D'ahl grabbed D'hein roughly and forced him to face her, "So because you can't get me in bed you're going to go hook up with someone who apparently looks just like me even though she's someone your daughter hates?"

 

"What!" The Tia cringed away from D'ahl. He could tell by the tightness of her grip that he should be feeling pain, even though he did not. "That's not it at all! I just thought... you know... fate... love... repairing..."

 

"And what happens to me when D'aijeen gets her mommy back while I'm still riding on the whole incest thing?" D'ahl growled, "What if I make a better mother?"

 

D'hein went wide-eyed, "By Thal! That is the most unsettling question anyone has ever asked me!"

 

When D'hein's shoulder exploded, he sensed it primarily as strange tingling and a visual splatter of red fluid across D'ahl's angry face. She flinched away from him heavily, letting him go, making a high-pitched, cute squeak of surprise as she through her hands over her head and fell to the ground. D'hein's only thought was to mutter a quick, "Oh! I'm sorry!" as though he had sneezed on her.

 

"You've been shot, you idiot!" D'ahl jumped to her feet and took D'hein his collar, throwing him behind a nearby rock.

 

He landed with a cough, and then observed, "Oh. Right," as machine-propelled metal began to slam in to the ground and rock around them with an unnaturally quick rhythm.

 

Loud and violent, the storm of the Garlean attack lasted for several seconds before subsiding. At which point D'ahl said, "D'hein, we need to go before they kill us. We're too close to the city."

 

"Right," D'hein popped up and raised his hands over his head, waving to the walls and shouting, "My name is D'hein Tia of the Eorzean Federation's Commerce Regulation Agency! I believe you've heard of me!"

 

Because he'd been hiding behind a rock, he hadn't noticed the approaching Garleans. They heard his introduction from about to yalms away and were upon him right before he bothered to see them, throwing him back in the dirt. "We've got you now, Eorzean!"

 

"Wait!" He protested, struckling pitifully as his limbs were moved in unlikely directions and bound that way. He could hear D'ahl sturggling and cursing nearby, sounding to be in a bit of pain. "I need to speak with the Frumenari!"

 

One blue-clad Hyur with a ridiculous leather helmet leaned down to look in D'hein's face, heckling, "That's a pretty typical like for you people."

 

"It is?" D'hein said in honest confusion as he was lifted from the ground. "But that's a really stupid lie. You'd never believe it!"

 

"Exactly."

 

"But I really do need to see the frumentarii, so if you'll just point me on my way we can get this all cleared up."

 

"Thal damn you, D'hein Tia!" D'ahl shouted as she was carried away by the Garleans. "I'll destroy you for this! I'm going to kill you!"

 

"I apologize, D'ahl," D'hein responded. He watched his golden necklaces swing in front of his face as he was hauled towards the city of Ala Mhigo. "I did not anticipate such rudeness from our enlightened conquerors."

[Twinflame]

The Garlean Hyur pressed his forehead against the bars, and his silly leather helmet shifted stupidly on his broad scalp. His smile was vacant, his eyes emptier still. His happiness was an artifact of his stupidity.

 

"What did you say to me?" He chuckled, his voice failing to realize his false offense.

 

"I wouldn't normally repeat myself," said D'hein Tia, poking at the the hole through his shoulder and grinning at the feeling of it. His grin was full of intellect, he was sure. His voice, at least, dripped with sincere challenge. "I am a hero of the Garlean Empire and an operative of the Frumentarii. I will be shortly free of this cell."

 

"Oh, you think so?" The man placed his leather-clad fingers upon the bar, clutched them tight like a puppy's neck. The metal hallways was disappointingly dull. D'hein had hoped for flickering lights and marvels of machination, but it was a jail cell, after all. "Would you like to hear what they're doing to your woman-friend right now?"

 

"Probably nothing." D'hein volunteered. "Such activities as your tone seeks to imply are not the habit of a well-managed military."

 

"We're real good at breaking the woman," the bore said slowly. Like the walls, the Garleans D'hein Tia had met were disappointing. Engineers and masters of mechanical magic they were not. He assumed it was an artifact of Ala Mhigo's resistance. "They start by-"

 

"You are an Ala Mhigan, aren't you?" D'hein said.

 

"Eh?"

 

The Tia took his attention away from his shoulder, wiping the blood on his finger off on the blanket next to where he sat on his bunk. The room was otherwise unfurnished, just blue and gray metal. "A collaborator. You an Ala Mhigan collaborating with the Garlean occupiers."

 

The man smiled, shifted his feet back and forth. He appeared as an indecisive, overweight opo-opo. "Yeah, okay. I'm a traitor. Born of Ala Mhigo. What's it you?"

 

"It is the source of my great disappointment," answered D'hein, standing and sighing. "You see, one truly acculturated to Garlemald would call themselves first Garlean, and Ala Mhigo only after that. Even among Eorzeans Ala Mhigo is a disreputable and filthy race. That your people do not cast off your ethnicity and allow yourself to be fully claimed by your conquerors is causing you to be a heathen-sort of mongrel. Uninteresting and ugly. Why, I can see how... it... Damn it, Dahl!"

 

"You're welcome," she said, as the Ala-Mhigan-Garlean's corpse his the metal floor, making a hideous sound with his last breath.

 

"I wasn't done telling him that he was stupid! You shouldn't stab people who are in the middle of conversations!"

 

"I didn't stab him," D'ahl said, her lips smiling and her tail swinging around behind her. She held up her bloodied knife, "Just dropped my dagger and the good fellow caught it between his ribs. It's not polite to blame the lady just because the man injured himself in his chivalry." She paced over to the door and began to prod at the lock.

 

"There's a sort of stiff floppy card thing in one of his pockets." D'hein explained. "It's a magic key. You're looking rather well for a prisoner. What have you been doing?"

 

As she crouched over the corpse to search it, the sleeves of the very new shirt she wore pulled back to reveal her muscled and very clean arms. "They never got me to the cell. I escaped once we were inside the city and joined the Ala Mhigan resistance. Made use of their facilities and resources, helped them assassinate a few people and free a few hundred slaves." She stood, having found the card, and went to open the cell. "I also managed to supply the resistance with a lot of stolen weaponry and food, and the honored my contributions with a brief feast before we were beset by Garlean hordes. Our victory in that battle set up the Ala Mhigan people with enough force of weight that a number of women and children were able to flee the city to safety."

 

The door swung open and D'hein stepped out, saying bitterly, "You attended a party without me, D'ahl?"

 

She nodded, "That is the most important part of what I was saying, yes." Then she pointed her knife in his face, "And I am very angry at you. I'm beginning to think you're not actually a Garlean spy."

 

"Of course I am. Obviously, though, my contacts have never actually been to Ala Mhigo." He crossed his arms over his chest, and the action caused several drops of blood to shoot from his wounded shoulder and stain the wall.

 

"And how do you know that?"

 

"If they had I would be recognized," D'hein stated boldly, "The reports my supervisors in the Agency send to our superiors in the Garlean Empire no doubt glow with many descriptions of my person and accounts of my good work. When we finally do arrive at the location of my overseers, I expect it to be staffed by intelligent person of culture who are well-versed in my exploits and eager to meet me."

 

"... Okay?"

 

"Let's go! We'll have to search the other Garlean bases!" D'hein began down the hallway boldly.

 

D'ahl shook her head, "Sure, let's just tour all of the- hey! Don't go that way! It's guarded!" She chased after him.

[Twinflame]

"What have you done!?" The Garlean soldier fell to his knees, whaling in despair. The defeat on the Hyur's face was undercut by the ridiculousness of those gods-damned hats they wear. "All is lost!"

 

"I don't know what you're talking about," D'hein muttered, watching D'ahl bandage his arm.

 

She pulled on the bandage as hard as she could. "Does this hurt?"

 

"I don't know."

 

"What about this?"

 

"Still nothing," D'hein's ears swiveled in alternate directions, his tail whipping around in amusement. "But I don't think it needs to be that tight."

 

"All is lost!" The Garlean announced again, falling onto his back like a child throwing a fit. "Doom! Doom! This is how my life ends!"

 

One of D'hein's ears pointed towards the man. "I still don't know what you're talking about." He sat on a large box made of some bizarre unnatural element while D'ahl stood in front of him. They stood in what the Garleans called a 'hangar' which was to D'hein more like an armory for weapons that looked like humans, and also some airships.

 

The Garlean soldier rolled to his feet, "You liar! I can't believe I trusted you! You don't work for Garlemald at all!"

 

"Hey," D'hein's ears lay flat on his head, glaring at the man. "I know that you're upset about something but I am a hero of the Empire!"

 

"Hero of Ala Mhigo's more like it!" He pointed at an item D'hein held in his lap, "Don't pretend you don't know what that is!"

 

"It's a souvenir," D'hein rolled the complicated, blinking metal item in his hand. "Your machines are complicated, so I'm sure there were plenty where this came from."

 

D'ahl muttered, "You don't actually work for the Garlean's, do you?"

 

"Rude!" D'hein snapped, then softened, "But you're still beautiful."

 

"Power's off throughout most of the base!" The Garlean rose to his feet. "And because the doors are mechanical, we can't even get soldiers to the vanguards! Much less get the vanguards out of the hangars! The Ala Mhigans are raiding the warehouses for supplies and the unit stationed there is cut off from all reinforcements! And forget about getting reinforcements to the Praetorium before it falls to the united Eorzean armies!" The man's voice quivered, chest heaving in panic. "With a failure of this magnitude I'm like to be executed!"

 

"Well," D'hein smirked at the man, "Maybe you should have been more proficient with your duties."

 

"Beastly Eorzean! This is all your fault!"

 

"Rude, again!" D'hein glared, gesturing with the random but most likely unimportant shiny magiteck thing, "You're just trying to defer blame!"

 

The Garlean pulled his weapon, "I'll take my vengeance now! Perahps I can still maintain my good name if I-!" He promptly fell over with D'ahl's knife sticking out of his eye.

 

"D'ahl! We've talked about that!"

 

"Be silent, D'hein Tia." She hissed, tying off the bandage and turning her back on him. Walking over to the twitching Garlean corpse. "I still don't buy that you're a Garlean spy but whatever. It sounds like there's a battle going on at that Praetorium place and the Ala Mhigans are using the distraction to make a grab for supplies."

 

"What's your point?"

 

D'ahl ripped the knife from the man's eye; it was wider than his eye socket so came came out with a gooey snap of bone. "One moment," she said, holding it in front of herself and staring off into space. "I'm fantasizing about the rugged chin of the Ala Mhigan's rebel leader."

 

Blinking and biting his cheek, D'hein leaned back and kicked his legs. "Alright, take your time." He waited a few seconds and then said, "Was he a clean man or a dirty man? How rugged are we fantasizing?"

 

"Mm," D'ahl looked over at him, squinting and bit a corner of her lip, "I'm sorry. In my imagination I'm telling him to do scandalous things with your daughter while I watch. Do you want me to describe him."

 

"You terrify me in every way possible, D'ahl."

 

D'ahl shrugged, grinning scandalously, and in the next instant she became very serious. She pointed with her knife, "I'm taking the lead, D'hein Tia. It's time to evacuate and head home. If you are lying about being a Garlean spy you'd best tell me now, for I intend to test your skill with machinery!"

 

"I will pass any test you place before me!" D'hein proclaimed, hopping off the box and crossing his arms.

[Twinflame]

D'ahl stated gravely, "You have failed."

 

"I don't know how to pilot an airship!" D'hein threw his hands in the air. "Why would you think I could pilot an airship!"

 

"Because I asked specifically if you could and you said that, yes, you could." At this point she was actually pointing at him with her knife, though just far enough away that she wasn't stabbing him yet. "Also because of the part where you proceeded to turn the airship on, steer it out of the Garlean base and fly it across half a continent."

 

"Well, yes, I did," he said proudly.

 

"And now you can't fly it all of a sudden!"

 

"I think it's just mad that I took one of its things," he held up a sparkling, blue rod. He thought it would make a splendid cane, and perhaps even a focus for thaumaturgy. "So it's not letting me steer anymore."

 

D'ahl growled, "And where did you get it?"

 

"From the thing," D'hein point at a wall of such things, which had once glowed blue and thrummed peacefully, but was now entirely dark except frustrating flames and sparking. "It's pretty but I think angry. These Garlean magics are so finicky. I can't believe they actually conquered anything with such dubiously precarious concoctions."

 

D'ahl hit him on the forehead, hard, with the butt of the knife. "You are not a Garlean spy! You're an idiot! I'm not going with you on these trips anymore!"

 

"Aw," D'hein frowned, tears growing in his eyes. "But... D'ahl..."

 

"How do I open the windows?" She pushed him out of the way. The bridge of the Garlean airship was a frustratingly dark room made of metal and other artificial materials, lit up by strange magic pods in the ceiling and all kinds of lights and levers on what they had assumed (rightly) to be the piloting tool-table. They hadn't yet figured out how to get the dark metal window shutters to open, though, so D'hein had spent the flight opening the door to check outside.

 

Now, though, D'ahl was getting impatient. She hoped on the pilot's tool-table and banged on the window shutters. "Open up!" She instructed, and tried pushing on them, "Maybe they're just old!"

 

"I'll use thaumaturgy to open it!" D'hein proclaimed, holding up the blue rod he'd aquired, smiling broadly at the thought of testing its use as a spell-crafting focus. Surely Garleans should at least make much better magical foci.

 

"Just don't crash the airship," D'ahl said, hopping down to the floor and getting out of the way. "I didn't even want to go to this Praetorium place. If I don't make it home in one piece you're really going to get it."

 

"Don't worry," the Tia responded. He grinned down at the rod, turning it this way and that to admire its sturdiness and just plain shininess. He wasn't sure about making a focus out of something so very not wood, but it had seemed to be resonating with energy before, so hopefully it would be just fine. if not, what was the worst that could happen? Oh, but if it did, what was the best that could happen? Maybe it magnified spells! Or turned them into megitech spells somehow! Or maybe instead of casting one fireball he'd cast two fireballs!"

 

"D'hein!" D'ahl shoutted impatiently, her muscled arms crossed in her green eyes smoldering. "Windows! Open!"

 

"Sorry, sorry. Swiftcast!" He held the rod overheard, and then swing it in front of him, "Fire three!" And the front of the bridge was filled with explosive fire in an instant. Then the middle of the bridge and then the rest of the bridge, and D'hein felt the ticklish not-pain of being slammed against the wall and burned.

 

As the fire subsided, D'ahl was shouting in fury, "You moron! What kind of uneducated amateur thaumaturge would use a spell like that in a metal room!"

 

"Calm, D'ahl. If you can speak you're fine." D'hein rolled to his feet and shook out his hair, nothing that he was only singed, mostly. Then he looked down at his hand, where he held the rod, and noted that the rod had been melted into a hideous mess of metal around his hand. His digits were numb and unresponsive, his flesh red. "Oh dear," he muttered. "My rod didn't survive the spell. Garlean craftsmanship is rather disappointing."

 

"Look!" D'ahl rushed forward, hopping back up on the pilot table thing. Where once there had been many closed windows there was now a vast open hole, through which they could see the Praetorium and the lands around it. What they saw was a battlefield. "It's the battle the Garlean in Ala Mhigo mentioned! I think I see... I think that's all of the Grand Companies!"

 

"What!" D'hein joined D'ahl at the makeshift window. "And still my superiors in the Empire hide from me! What are they thinking with such reticence? Do they not support the efforts of Gaius Van Balseur, the Black Wolf?"

 

As he finished the question, there was a sudden eruption from the heart of the Praetorium. It was unthinkable in power, such that D'hein was honsetly sure at first he was perceiving incorrectly. The main structure of the place seemed to bloom outward like a flower, stamen of flames launching from the cracks into the sky. Then the petals broke into dust, great chunks of debris smashing to the ground as a fireball rose into the sky.

 

"What was that?" D'ahl asked, standing transfixed.

 

"I think," D'hein muttered, forcing himself to speak calmly. "I mean, perhaps I am wrong, or perceive incorrectly, but if you agree then we can infer that the Praetorium has just exploded."

 

"The entire Praetorium just exploded!" D'ahl said, and cheered, jumped happily. "We're winning! Eorzea wins!"

 

"D'ahl, stop that! Obviously the Praetorium did not just explode! That is ludicrous!" He grabbed the woman's tail to stop her celebration. "It's obviously just Garlean illusion magic or something. Lull people into a false sense of victory."

 

The shockwave from the explosion hit the airship moments later, carrying with it the smell of acrid fire and ignited steel, the heat of the detonation, and enough force to push the airship up and to the side. D'ahl and D'hein were knocked away from the window as the airship pitched far back, and then corrected itself far forward. Its nose fucked down, and this time it did not correct. If anything, it accelerated. Actually it did accelerate.

 

As the ship began to make magical sounds which were very repetitive, loud and annoying, D'hein shouted, "I believe the ship is now falling!"

 

"Falling!" D'ahl shouted, clawing back to her knees and staring wide-eyed at the black pit where the Praetorium once was. "We can't crash! I refuse to crash!" She looked at D'hein and shouted, "Are you killing me, D'hein Tia? Are you killing me!?"

 

"At this point I honestly don't know anymore!"

[Twinflame]

D'ahl pointed and called out, "We're going to crash into those adventurers and that angry magic monster they're fighting!"

 

Below them, a number of Eorzean 'heroes' -- no doubt just exceptional enemies of the Garlean Empire -- were in a life-and-death struggle with some large, dark, magitech vanguard. Watching through the hole at the front of the ship as the last few seconds ticked by before their collision with the ground and their likely deaths, D'hein thought primarily of his disappointment in Garlean machinery and the unthinkably poor aesthetics of what was probably meant to be Gaius Van Baelsar's ultimate weapon.

 

He decided it was so ugly and ponderous it didn't deserve to be called an ultimate weapon even if that's what it was. No, it needed to lose a few letters. He decided to call it the ultima weapon instead of the ultimate weapon, because that sounded as unimpressive as the beastly thing looked. It should have at least had a cape, as long as it had shoulders to wear one, for instance.

 

Wait, was that a giant woman with feathers just now?

 

"Do something!" D'ahl shouted, "You didn't come all this way without an escape plan, did you? You're daughter's going to lose both her adoptive father and her mother!"

 

"Mother?" D'hein threw a glare at D'ahl.

 

"I mean girlfriend or whatever," She took him by the collar and shook him, "I can't have this conversation right now! The Syndicate is going to be throwing extravagant victory parties all month and I'm going to be too dead to attend because of you!"

 

"D'ahl, before we die, I need to tell you..." D'hein turned and took her by the shoulder's looking into her eyes. "Actually this is far too cliche and I'd rather die without last words than do this if that's alright with you."

 

"It's actually preferable, thank you."

 

"I'm going to utilize the Aetherytes and return us to Ul'dah now."

 

She gasped, staring at him wide-eyed. "D'hein Tia! You common swindler. You cannot simply use the Aetherytes to escape a death such as this! It's cheating to those like me who cannot!"

 

"I'm taking you with me, D'ahl. Of course, I've saved up plenty of Aethyr and paid all requisite fees before we even left for Ala Mhigo."

 

"Fine! But I'll have you know-!"

 

"Be silent, D'ahl," he boldly placed a finger on her lips. As the aura of fiery death washed over them and they careened towards the very battlefield where good and evil dueled as equals, D'hein purred, "Be at peace, for in this moment D'hein Tia, hero of the Garlean Empire, snatches you from the jaws of death and delivers you- ow!"

 

D'ahl bit his finger. "We're going to die! Go!"

 

And as the two dodos vanished into the Aethyr, an adorable Lalafel who was very bad at not standing where she was not supposed to was mercilessly crushed under the full weight of the airship.