#bryn

A stupid name for a thing so serious, but it felt odd to just try and describe it without a name. And despite his attempts to come up with a better one, The Gloom had stuck. Perhaps it was more apt than he had realized it was, or maybe he was just too lazy to come up with a different one, but even now, after the forced taking of Baelsar's Gate, he had to tip his non-existent hat to his younger self.

Gloom described everyone far too well.

When the primal had risen, forced screaming into existence by The Griffon’s sacrifice, panic had swept the ranks of soldiers on the Shroud side of the wall. A panic that had subsided when it seemed as if the primal appeared and almost immediately disappeared. Or so they thought. Things happened fast, faster than most knew, that Bryn only knew because he was there, in the meetings, side by side with allies and friends who were mourning the loss of one of their own, and yet, pushed on. Pushed on and rallied to finish off the primal a life had been given to stop.

All of which led to now.

The Eorzean Alliance held Baelsar’s Gate.

Bryn was walking among the soldiers stationed within the gate with heavy, tired footfalls, and no matter where he looked he could see it. The Gloom, the realization of how many had died to take just this tiny piece of Garlean tech, to breach a wall that had separated the Black Shroud from Gyr Abania for years. And now they were expected to hold it, while Garlean attacks against it were nearly constant. It weighed on too many a soul, and Bryn knew it. They couldn’t hold this fortress if the men and women in it didn’t believe they could.