intro/about post...thing

I keep meaning to make one of these so

welcome to @dawnslight-aegis, my ffxiv blog that is mostly dedicated to my dearest and most beloved lizard WoL, Kaede

here is a picture of her, please imagine me pulling it out of my wallet like a proud parent

anyway

I have a page for my most used tags here, Kaede's co-WoL and partner in crime can be found at @foamofthe-sea, and my fanfiction about both of them and also a couple of elf boys is primarily on AO3.

Kaede biography type things under the cut!

hello I kinda fell off the xivwrite wagon a bit BUT I accomplished something else cool:

I made a hair! it's a chunky braid! it's named after agrias! you should get it from here!

here's some race previews and some gposes (and maybe also a sneak peek of something I'm doing for the aymeric lovers out there)

27. memory

As long as someone remembers you, you will never truly die.

And so people etched names and deeds into stone, passed down stories that eventually became legend, or built cities at the bottom of the ocean. All to remember that once, someone had lived.

Alexandria made a mockery of that. To preserve the minds of their dead within a paradise was understandable, but to wipe the memories of them from the living? To leave them aching and empty, not knowing what they’d lost, only that something was missing? In attempting to spare her people pain, Sphene had truly murdered them all, leaving them to be remembered only by heartless, soulless automatons. Like Sphene herself.

Living Memory. It was a lie, an abomination. The only thing that lived there were the plants – as soon as the obelisks that powered the electrope were deprived of vital aether, the life force stolen from Tuliyollal, the mirage of happiness and joy and remembrance was gone, replaced with featureless grey stone. A dream world, inhabited by parasites.

What had Emet-Selch thought of this place, Kaede wondered. A dead city superimposed on the ruins of what was and could never be again, memories made manifest… It was all eerily familiar. But while Amaurot had been steeped in sadness, in the unending grief of a man who had seen millennia, Living Memory was bright and cheerful, turning death into a circus. All gilding, with no substance, liable to crumple as the slightest pressure, and needing to cause ever more death to preserve their mockery of life.

But the ancient world was every bit as false a utopia as this one, wasn’t it, for all that it had been made out of stone that survived the ravages of the waves and centuries.

Kaede sighed as her thoughts twisted in on themselves, consuming one another. Truly, Sphene was no real threat – they would lay her misused memories to rest, to finally rejoin the aetherial sea and be dispersed, just as they did Wuk Lamat’s nursemaid, and Krile’s parents, and Erenville’s mother. Sphene would never be permitted to consume the life force of any other star but her own to power her morbid menagerie.

But at every turn Cahciua bid them speak to what remained of the people of Alexandria, to learn, to remember them. How many dead civilizations would she be made to bear witness to? How many times would she be asked to look at a people long gone and preserve them within her own heart, within her own people’s histories?

How many peoples' immortality relied on her?

When Emet-Selch had bequeathed her his legacy, he truly had given her all of it, the whole heavy mantle of memory and duty that had slowly crushed a good man into a monster.

Kaede only prayed she would bear it better than he had.

26. zip

Kaede had always been good at blending in. Not physically – horns and a tail were hard to hide, as Yugiri had more than proven – but she easily adapted in most other ways. Her body language. Her speech patterns. Her fashion.

Which is how she found herself zipping up the back of a high-necked black shirt, made of a fabric that clung outrageously to every curve of her body. Immediately the prickles of static that had made her scales itch the second she stepped into the damned dome were dispelled, channeled away by the electrope woven into the very clothing she wore. Sighing in relief, she rolled her shoulders and looked into the mirror. A woman who might’ve easily passed for a resident of Solution 9 looked back at her – had there been any auri residents of Alexandria or Tural, at any rate.

The way her mother told it, the ability to assimilate while also remaining distinct was as intrinsic to being raen as the color of their scales, and the main thing that set them apart from their xaela cousins. Kaede wasn’t sure if she believed it went that far, but it was a trait that had served her well her entire life. When everywhere felt strange, in a way, everywhere also felt like home. She had traveled to the ends of the universe, broken bread with peoples from other stars, and they had become as familiar to her as the residents of Sharlayan or Thavnair.

Not even she could get used to the regulators, though. The idea of using souls as currency, disrupting the flow of life in such an artificial way… It made her wonder if this was what Emet-Selch had meant, when he asked her if she knew the state of the reflections. In life, his responsibility had been the protection of the aetherial sea. And having been bequeathed his legacy, Kaede felt honor-bound to do the same.

So of course she had found herself in the Arcadion, with the promise that upon her victory, they would release souls back into the lifestream as her victory prize. It had nothing to do with the thrill of stepping out into the arena, of being able fight at her full strength without the fate of at least one world hanging over her head. Nothing at all to do with rush of adrenaline or the high of hearing the crowds slowly turn in her favor.

Oh, who in the hells was she kidding?

Everyone in Eorzea knew her name, her face. It had been years since she’d been able to step onto the bloodsands as anything less than the Warrior of Light, so far beyond anything Ul’dah had to offer that it would have been unfair to even try. The moment she’d laid eyes on the Arcadion, she’d been itching to go inside. The fate of the imprisoned souls was merely a bonus, the carrot she’d used to convince Marz to serve as her partner.

Why else had she gone to such lengths to choose a suitably Alexandrian outfit, unless to be taken seriously as a competitor? Why else would she set aside her shield and defensive techniques for the acrobatics of the viper, unless to please the crowd? Shrugging into a cropped jacket and lacing her arms into her leather gloves, Kaede tipped her head and looked out the window, into the sea of vivid blue and violet light that was Everkeep.

Solution 9 was beyond strange, but it was giving her a place to display a facet of herself she hadn’t been able to in some time.

And what else was home but a place you felt comfortable enough to be yourself?

24. bar

(guest starring @aster-skies's yrja~)

Kaede sat at a table in a quiet corner of the second floor of the Bobbing Cork, a large sack of gil in front of her, as well as several weapons, a few loose gemstones, some rare alchemical reagents, and a ledger. How she had ended up being the one to divvy up the spoils from two separate adventuring forays, she did not quite know. It would have been simpler to take it to Tataru, and let the Scions’ coincounter do the work, but it was rare indeed these days to have the luxury of a job that wasn’t associated with the Scions – and their finders’ fee. She didn’t begrudge the organization their cut, but it was nice to do some honest adventuring again. Besides, after that nonsense with Leviathan, she was more than happy to keep her distance from Mor Dhona for a while. Fighting primals was one thing, getting skewered by a chunk of ship railing and almost bleeding out was entirely another.

By all accounts, Marz’s group’s cleansing of Amdapor had been considerably less entertaining – and more disgusting – than Kaede’s own visit to Halatali, but both had been lucrative in their own ways. Though she had to say, gladitorial prize money was a good deal easier to portion out than random artifacts and bits that might or might not have value to the right person.

The soft scrape of wood on wood drew her attention back up, to find the other side of her table occupied by a tall, elegant viera woman, her white hair drawn back into a ponytail and a tankard of mead in each hand.

Yrja Eruyt was likely the only person in the bar to draw more attention than Kaede herself – and so a strange sort of kinship had sprung up between them, shortly after meeting a few moons previous. Precious few people Kaede had met understood what it was like to be so completely surrounded by people so much different than oneself. Add in the mess that was the Echo, and, well – Kaede was certain that the only thing separating the two of them into “adventurer” and “Warrior of Light” was Kaede’s own tendency to let herself get drawn into other people’s problems, tied down with duty and responsibility. Yrja did not seem to have that problem, coming and going as she pleased. Sometimes Kaede envied her freedom.

…It certainly didn’t hurt that she was gorgeous, either, not to mention deadly with a bow.

She accepted the mug of mead the other woman handed her with a smile. “Have they entirely destroyed the bar yet, or are they simply well on their way?”

“Last I saw, my brother and his miqo’te friend were very loudly arguing about which of them could more successfully seduce Admiral Bloefhiswyn,” Yrja murmured with a smile over the lip of her tankard, and Kaede rolled her eyes.

“Of course they are. At least it’s not Kan-E-Senna, I think that might actually get us arrested,” Kaede muttered under breath, shaking her head. “And Marz?”

“Fleecing some men in Triple Triad, I believe. Though, to her credit, they had been quite crass to the waitress.”

Sighing, Kaede rubbed her forehead. Right on cue, shouting began emanating from the first floor, followed by a string of doman swearing.

Both women glanced over the railing to see the xaela with her hands propped on her hips, staring down several angry wildwood men as a small keeper of the moon girl nervously clutched her drink tray and looked back and forth between the groups. Yrja crossed her legs and tipped her head in a graceful gesture. “I believe that means you owe me five gil?”

Sliding one coin from her own pile to the viera’s, Kaede rose and began packing up hers and Marz’s share. Doubtless it would be needed to pay for repairs. Or bail. “I’m beginning to regret this recurring bet. Yrys always manages to wait until someone else causes trouble to jump in. And that someone… is usually Marz.”

The sound of splintering wood heralded the devolving of the situation into an all-out brawl. Another look down revealed a howling elezen man on the ground, Marz’s foot on the back of his wrist, a knife a few ilms away from his hand, a broken chair still held loosely by a red-haired viera man, and several bar patrons fleeing the scene entirely.

“How many bars is this?” Kaede asked as she slung her bag over her shoulder and tossed two pouches to Yrja.

“That they’ve started trouble in, or been banned from?”

“Is the number different?”

Tipping her head in consideration, Yrja chuckled quietly. “I suppose it isn’t. Shall we reconvene at the Seventh Heaven?”

Considering its status as a front for the Scions’ headquarters, sooner or later that would be the only tavern where certain members of their party were allowed to drink together, apparently, and Kaede sighed. “Sure. I heard there were a few leads on other jobs there, anyway. Turns out some of us might need the extra gil.”

“So it would seem,” Yrja replied, and together they descended into the chaos to retrieve their respective responsibilities.