#autgar

End of Agent:  Revisiting the Dawn

(Events took place before End of Agent: Broken Tool)

After the meeting on the Agent’s next step, Reks, Autgar, and Viktor elected to visit the remaining two members of the Golden Dawn as they were continuing their recovery at Rhalgr’s Reach. The goal was to get Barais Steelshield to elaborate on the intelligence the Golden Dawn had acquired that led the Spinner’s Shears to wipe out his guild, though they also wished to ensure that the man and woman were doing alright.

Upon arrival they ran into Barais in the Barber. He seemed to be in much better shape both physically and emotionally, but the Roegadyn merely claimed that he was out of tears for now. Once again he assured the folks he had no desire for revenge as he rolled a golden linkpearl between his fingers. At Rek’s behest, he explained the way the the Spinner’s Shears operated when the struck and a few known methods and tools they possessed.

Eventually, Barais’ own health came up, and he explained the menders had discovered the poison remained in his body and would periodically flare up causing wounds to open once more and extreme pain until the doctors could cause it to go back to being dormant with aether and patch him up once more. Viktor pondered about the nature of a poison and remarked with a sample he could perhaps create an antidote.

Barais confessed he had a sample and borrowed Autgar’s knife to bleed his own arm enough for Viktor to gather a vial of his blood for further experimentation and analysis. They offered Barais and Jessie linkpearls incase they thought of anything else that might be useful for the Agents and escorted Barais to the tombs to find Jessie.

Jessie had not answered her pearl for a bit, but not due to any threatening force. She was sobbing and holding on to X’alan’s cesti at the small shine Rhalgr’s Reach had allowed them to put up for their fallen friends. Autgar spared a few more words to Barais before letting him go comfort his sister. The Agents left, unsure of how to help the broken pair but armed with new information about the Spinner’s Shears and tools to help cure Barais of his poison. A tool Viktor was unaware at the time he would need for some closer to the company.

An IC black and white sketch turned ooc colored portait for @dynamitecowboy​ , our resident Monk and Engineer, as a congratulations for his Promotion within our company heading into Stormblood! Here’s to the future of Blue Sky Ventures!

“We talked and we both think you’d make a good monk.”

The entire evening had been a blur. And not just because of Tarot’s speed in the matches themselves but--well everything that happened after that too. It kept speeding up and going faster and faster and was maybe proving to the man why he was always running everywhere; the world was catching him up. As he sat in the tub, soaking away the aches and pains of the brutal bouts, Tarot thought about it all--the feeling he had experienced. It had been as if he’d broken some wall and he had stopped breathing. He had become the air he was breathing. He had moved and darted and saw everything. And no cards--no tricks. It was him and his body and it was all by his own steam. And people had cheered for him and encouraged him.

Berrod had said he would make a fine monk.

Autgar had said he would make a fine monk.

The highlander dipped his head under the water to make the water in his eyes more bath water and less--well teary. He’d never been told he would make a fine ‘anything’ before by anyone other than his family. And sure he’d swindled those there at the meeting but not out of money and it had been a harmless little joke made more at his own expense. And then Berrod had told him about what needed to be done and Autgar had actually told him--

He was losing his breath. Sitting up, he coughed and choked back the water that had gotten in his nose. “Being a Monk is what everyone else does...” he told himself. “Everyone else does it.” It seemed like every other day someone else was suddenly training to be a monk and he had always seen it as being almost--well, rather more like it was in-vogue, rather than actually being something that most everyone but Berrod pursued. And people like Autgar and maybe the Tiger. That kind of thing--the real Monkhood--required discipline. It called for people who could focus. Tarot didn’t focus. Focusing slowed one down and it meant that everything around you was being ignored. He didn’t have time for that.

You would make a fine monk...

I need you to promise me something...

“Twelve take them both...” He kicked the inside of the tub petulantly and then sloshed backwards against the opposite wall. “And take their stupid Destroyer too.” Why wasn’t it for him? Autgar had made it very pointedly clear that no every Monk was like the old stories and legends of rigid master meditating under waterfalls in the dead of winter. And tonight he had seen a number of them weren’t like that either. The one--Crowd Chucker. And the Elezen with the metal-leg. They weren’t traditional Monks either. And he knew-- he knew that the Fists weren’t trying to be like they once were. He knew it from Professor Erik and his own time among this new Order and damn, damn DAMN them.

And then he thought about that one time, long, long ago when Berrod had take him on his Namesday--shaved his eyebrows and put him through the whole Coming of Age for an Ala Mhigan. His throat tightened as he thought about it and his eyes got hot again. And then about tonight and the embrace and that promise in the event that Berrod did whatever it was that he was going to do that made him think he wasn’t coming back tomorrow, maybe; incidentally, that wouldn’t happen. Tarot wouldn’t permit it.

Not now.

“You’re not dying down there. Not when I need to show you, you thick-skulled--person...” The muttered insult died on his lips as he smiled and slowly (painfully) got out of the tub. “That I can be the Monk you see in me--but in my own way. As per usual.” That was it--That was why Berrod was able to talk him into these things and even now on the verge of something truly and remarkably dangerous, Tarot was being out-conned (in a manner of speaking). The red head didn’t see Tarot as the person who he wanted people to think he was--and now Autgar didn’t see him as that either. And everyone else there too--they had all been happy for him. Applauding him and cheering on each other and their cause and people had asked him to fight in the Grand Melee.

For the first time in a long time he felt wanted and--he stumbled, headache returning. Nothing serious but--well the knock to the head wasn’t doing him favors. He was certain it wasn’t a concussion at least so some sleep would be alright. And then tomorrow would be a start of something else. He’d take that challenge and dig in those hidden depths and see whatever the hell it was that Berrod and Autgar thought they saw.