#kovalt

The first time you see Kovalt you are -- smitten.  Enamored.  You had not been outside the reach of your convent and Mother for long and you had always been curious about conjury. About Hearers. And there was something about his steady presence that drew you in, settled the nervous fluttering of your heart as you fought so desperately to keep the shape of girl.

It is embarrassing to think about, now that those feelings of infatuation of settled into a comfortable fondness. 

The first time you earned one of those brief smiles, the first time you startled a laugh out of him, the first time he sat in awe of something you had shown him. These are moments pressed to the fabric of your soul, giving its quicksilver nature molds to fit. Impressions to flood, grooves that say: Here is what you are. Friend and Student and Sometimes Teacher. Here, you are kind.  Here, you are smart. Here, you are stronger than you know. 

Here is my soul, take what you would need, give what you can. 

You have built yourself around his influence. Here was your first shelter since leaving the convent. Something at once familiar and new.

He is your oldest friend - and best, you think. 

Under Kovalt’s tutelage, you have come to understand that there is no rush and that shortcuts are rarely worth the trouble. The long-way home is usually better, the flower that blooms late is just as lovely, and the silly dancing of the ritual is actually very important. 

[CW: Mentions of violence, non-consensual medical procedures.]

 A Castrum in Ilsabard, A Few Years After the Calamity 

There was something wrong with the implants.

The hierarchy was trying to hide it. The vans and mals all the way down to the kirs. Even the quos, the fighting centurions who’d stand shoulder to shoulder with the troops and were respected for that, were part of this action. They’d say shite about “rates of attrition,” like the words would disguise it, but Kovalt knew was all bollocks. The enemy fought the same as they ever had (though sometimes they were weaker and thinner, he could tell, though he never dwelled on why).

No, the difference was in the other auxiliaries, the fresh ones in Kovalt’s cohort, who came with newer implants. They could lift more weight than he could, and their eyepieces were smaller than his own but with stronger acuity. They didn’t need to sleep as often and they could take more swords and magics to the torso before going down.

They could fight harder than Kovalt, but he wasn’t jealous of them. Some would scream at voices only they could hear; others would follow commands from these voices. Some would try to rip the metal out of their skulls. A few would run into the thick of the enemy as if asking them do it.

Kovalt did not know why they did these things while he did not—only that his age group has less of these anomalies, less attrition.

Sure, sometimes he hears voices, odd ones. But these voices don’t speak in words, nor do they seem to be coming from his eyepiece or armor. He half-remembers his mother telling him about the whispers of the wind and mountains and assumes it to be something along those lines: a misty malfunction from his savage past. He tells no one about that.

A centurion offers to put his name forward once, saying he can get a newer eye, more calibrated adrenal release mods. The reinforcements in his skeleton can’t be replaced at this point, but (the centurion reads from a console), some of the newer synthetic tendons might be a marked improvement.

Might. Kovalt heard it plain as day from the centurion, who stares evenly at him. He has three natural eyes to Kovalt’s two, but his optical implant replicates some of the acuity of the Garlean third eye. Even so, Kovalt knows this particular Garlean has sharper eyes than most: he’s seen the man shoot in battle.

“Given the status of things here—they are training replacements as we speak—it’d be a shame to lose you during the recovery,” the centurion adds impassively, as if reporting some routine gunfire. “If you accept, oen Arminius.”

Accept. If. Something in how the centurion looks at him emphasizes those words, followed by his rank and given surname. The fact that it’s a choice is surprising to Kovalt. He never chose the implants, the metal eye or reinforced skeleton or the tuning of his endocrine system. He was almost a child then (though he’d been a man in the eyes of his tribe, he thinks), newly taken from Gyr Abania and gifted Garlean ways. The gifts included the new eye, received at the cusp of puberty, and the injections into his limbs. There had been anesthesia, chems to make him sleep through most of it and take away some of the pain. That was also a gift from Garlemald. The infrequent headaches and racing heart were not a gift, but he’d learned to manage them all the same.

“I’d rather stay here,” Kovalt finds himself saying, though with the uncertain cadence of one who isn’t quite sure how to phrase a refusal. “My current level of combat efficiency would be sharply decreased by new implants—the recovery time, centurion.” The recovery time: relearning to walk, see, shoot once more.

The centurion doesn’t seem surprised. “Noted,” he says simply. He lifts his gaze from where it met Kovalt’s own and glances at Kovalt’s hair. It is neat enough, though on the longer side of regulation. There is a single braid, back and center.  

(See here for my cast of characters)

The Twelveswood 

A Few Years Ago

Kovalt stares fixedly at the parchment before him. This is one of the harder tasks of his new life, this parchment. Harder than the conjury lessons, which they say he does well at despite how odd it feels to sit somewhere for hours on end, listening, learning, meditating. Hearing.

Harder than the physical labor, shoveling manure or carrying sacks of seedlings to and from all corners of the Twelveswood. That he takes to easily enough. A life of hard training and following orders had prepared him for odious tasks, and there is a clean-ness to these new tasks that Kovalt appreciates. Even the nightsoil.

No, he prefers conjury and labor to working on this parchment. But he is a man of duty, and so he follows the exercise as Hearer Aeskyl has bidden. The elezen Hearer waits nearby, though half-turned away from him to work on something at his own desk. He will wait patiently, Kovalt knows, remembering the first time he did this. It had taken hours, excruciating hours—better to get it over with quickly.

“Today I Feel...” is written at the top of the parchment. It is followed by faces, so many faces, half hyur and half elezen, half female and half male. Each of them contorts into a unique expression, helpfully labeled in clear and blocky Eorzean letters: Astounded, Anxious, Doubtful, Happy, Sad, Lonely, Courageous, Content, Jealous, Proud. And more, so many more.

“Serious,” Kovalt announces, pointing at one of the faces: a solemn little elezen lad. That is an easy one.

Hearer Aeskyl looks up, then turns in his chair to give Kovalt his full attention. “Indeed,” he says, his lips curving up in that little smile (Amused, the parchment would call it). “But you said that yester-eve, and three days before that. What else?”

He’d expected as much. He points to another, a hyuran girl’s face. “Fine,” he says.

The elezen chuckles. “That’s a bit shite, don’t you think?” he asks, but this ribbing tone is familiar enough to him. “The kind of thing a soldier says when the conjurer asks about a cut or three.”

“Aye,” Kovalt replies. He looks down at the table (wooden, with uneven grains that twist and turn, unlike the unbending metal he’s used to), considering whether or not he should say anything more. “That’s the way it was for us too. With the medicus.”

“Seems common to all the Star’s soldiers,” Aeskyl says. He wears that same tiny smile even as he shakes his head. “Though the seasoned ones learn to report some of what ails them. Go on then.”

He knew his teacher wouldn’t be satisfied with the words so far—he usually wants a good handful of them. “Uncomfortable,” he says. This isn’t clear from his voice, which is solemn and steady as ever, or his posture, which is as straight as it can be while sitting at a desk.

But he prefers not to show weakness even if he admits it out loud. The Hearer has explained that this feelings-parchment is an important task, that it will help him interpret the forest’s whispers if he first knows the whispers from his own mind. Sometimes he thinks of this in the terms of his old life: the Twelveswood’s whispers are radio signals (often distorted ones, like when a transceiver’s power cell is nearly depleted) and his own mind is a source of interference. Interference garbles comms, bad comms get people killed. He understands this.

“Uncomfortable because this is difficult,” he goes on before Aeskyl can ask him to explain his choice. (He does that often, to Kovalt’s dismay.) “But they trained us to push past discomfort,” he adds. He thinks for a moment of garbled comms and the ponderous forest. “I am Determined to do so.”

The elezen’s head tilts slightly (Puzzled? But no, he wears the Amused smile still.) “You said ‘determined’ two days back—but we’ll let that stand. You’d have to be determined to have made it across the wall.”

Kovalt shakes his head before he can stop himself. “It sounds harder than it was,” he says, explaining. “Crossing the wall. There were less automated defenses. Since the breach had rerouted many of them. And there were supplies.” He doesn’t mention the details of that: the passcode that still (surprisingly) worked to open a few lockers. The rations and power cells scavenged from the fallen.

Hearer Aeskyl listens silently, and Kovalt decides that he would rather not talk any more about his journey over the wall. This preference might be unproductive of him—his memory of the climb brings many emotional responses, plenty of fodder to match with the faces of the parchment. But even so…

There is the twinge of something in his chest, and it takes him some moments to pin the feeling down and name it. “Frustrated.”

The elezen doesn’t seem surprised. “With the exercise?”

“Aye,” Kovalt replies, evenly as ever as he hopes the Hearer won’t ask—

“Why?”

Kovalt draws in a long breath, then lets it out. Of course he would ask. “Because…” This is often difficult. “Because the faces are all of children. You’ve said this is something Eorzeans learn as children,” he adds quickly, wanting Aeskyl to know that he’d been attentive. “But we never learned it.”

“Not with Garlemald.” Aeskyl shifts in his chair, crossing one knee over the other. Kovalt pretends not to notice this. The elezen has a bad knee, a wound from fighting Garleans many years ago. Sometimes Kovalt wonders whether he argued with his superiors at Stillglade when he was asked to mentor…someone like him. Probably not, he reasons. Hearer Aeskyl was a soldier once, like him. They both understand duty. “Why do you think that is?”

Kovalt finds himself looking at the parchment. There is a strain in the corners of his mouth, and he suspects his face looks akin to that of the scowling elezen girl’s. “Because it wouldn’t have helped us any. To think about that shite.”

“No, likely not,” Aeskyl agrees. Kovalt notices that he is not smiling anymore. Rather, he frowns, though this seems directed more at the situation than Kovalt himself. “It wouldn’t have helped with your duties.”

“It would have made them harder,” Kovalt says, and as he hears himself, he realizes that it’s true. It would have made them hesitate. It would have made them… “There is no face for Insubordinate,” he notes. “But there should be.”

“There should be,” confirms Aeskyl. “What would you want that to look like? The face for Insubordinate?”

Kovalt usually hates those what-if questions, but he finds himself answering this one readily enough. “A hyur lad. Gyr Abanian. With his hair in braids.”

“Like the ones you’re growing now? In the Ala Mhigan style?” Aeskyl smiles faintly when asking this. Kovalt doesn’t know why, but it doesn’t seem Mocking, at least.

Kovalt nods. “Last time I grew out my hair…” He pauses, thinking on how to explain it. “They’d tolerated it for a time. But there was a new centurion with different ideas on—grooming standards.” 

He can see that Aeskyl understands him, but there is something more he wants to say. “It took three to hold me down while the fourth shaved my head,” he adds, feeling his lips stretch a little as he grins to recall it. “Which I am Proud about.” He taps the matching face on the parchment. “Is that an odd thing? Being proud of it?”

The elezen takes a moment, his gaze lifting to peer at Kovalt’s hair. Some of his braids go past his ears now, and he’s even found a few beads and bands to thread into them. There are brown beads, blue beads. There should be a red bead or two, and he thinks that he might be able to find those at the market next week. (If the Gridanians don’t decide to execute him, as a part of him still suspects they might. He hasn’t seen anything like that since coming to this forest, but he can picture it easily enough: a firing squad of archers instead of gunners.)

(See the Cast of Characters here!)

Somewhat Recently [Endwalker-era], on the outskirts of Garlemald

“What’s that shite?”

“It’s a radio,” Kovalt finds himself saying for the eighth time that morning, over the gentle sound of a woman singing and the occasional bit of static.

He says this at the same time as one of the Ala Mhigan delegates, and the two share a sidelong glance and a similar wry look. It is a look worn by a fair number here, more than Kovalt would have expected before joining the Ilsabard Contingent. The look shared by many former conscripts of Garlemald, now walking the land of the once-conquerors.

It is a barren land now, but things look less dismal than usual this morning. The sun is out and the snow is not (yet) falling. The sky shines a vivid blue (so long as one doesn’t look at the husk of the city skyline, where a few strands of smoke waft lazily into the air). The wind has stilled, and the infirmary’s patient load is gradually becoming more manageable. It’s a situation that will change when the contingent pushes further into the city, but it’s been good to see some of the formerly tempered leave their beds behind.

The Sea Wolf who’d asked that sets a fresh pot of coffee on the table before taking a seat herself. “Meant the singing. Doesn’t sound Garlean to me. Or what I thought Garleans would sing like,” she half-grumbles to admit.

The voice on the radio changes to a male one, a resounding tenor, which brings an audible groan from the Ala Mhigan delegate when the woman and man begin to sing together. “Too early for bloody opera,” he says, shaking his head slowly.

Kovalt looks around the table to see similar sentiments on other faces before he reaches for the radio. “Can try to change the channel.” Out of habit, he explains some of the reasoning aloud: “Radios have different settings we can put them on, to hear different things being sent out at the same time. That’s the clearest setting we’ve found so far, but sometimes we can hear something if we push the dial over here.” He gently nudges the dial past the “LV” marking to rest a hair’s breadth from the “LX.” And, sure enough, the static forms into another song, a deeper-voiced man singing something with a slower pace than the song of earlier. It sounds akin to a dirge, but not quite. Kovalt waits for the others’ decision, but his hand hovers expectantly by the dial.

“This some kind of march?” This comes from a familiar face: Laurent, another of the delegates from Gridania, who’s been leaning against a nearby table. Close enough to hear the radio and just far enough to deny having wanted to hear the radio.

“Give me a second.” Kovalt tilts his head, trying to make out the lyrics. Trying to remember if he’s ever marched to this.

“Sounds like a shanty to me,” the Limsan woman argues. “It’s in the way he’s singing. Like he’s right knackered but still pushing.”

“They’re pushing something,” Kovalt makes out from half-remembered Garlean. “Pushing, counting down to push something else. Also some bit about how beautiful the frozen lake is, but that’s…” He breaks off with a shrug before he can go on too much about the nature imagery, only for the Ala Mhigan to pick up the explanation.

“That’s not unusual for Garlean stuff,” the Mhigan says, nodding to Kovalt. “Frozen lakes, mountain snow—heard a lot of songs about that.”

“That’s a shanty, alright!” the Sea Wolf grins triumphantly. “They’re not all about the barmaid’s tits.”

The dial remains on that channel, even as the lone Garlean singer is joined by a whole choir. They listen until the song fades, for there was something compelling in it, and when it ends, the signal fades into static. Kovalt feels strangely bereft.

It only takes a few seconds for Laurent to speak up, breaking the silence: “About the barmaid’s tits, though…”

Quality Father-Son Time in Gyr Abania circa 1557

"What's that?"

"No idea. Stand back."

Sharing this to dip my feet back into Tumblr: my FFXIV OC Kovalt as a kid with his father, watching the first days of the Garlean invasion from a remote village in the Peaks. 

~ My cast of characters for FFXIV Write 2022, featuring two main characters and some beloved backstory alts. ~

Kovalt - A conjurer of Stillglade Fane, known as a Hearer to some, still coming to terms with a grim past as a conscript of the Garlean military machine. A man caught between three cultures: the Gridania that welcomed him, the Garlemald that forged him, and a half-remembered tribe from Gyr Abania’s remote Peaks.

Cenodocia Vanlowe Varg - Ala Mhigan by birth, Ul’dahn by tax status. Ceno is a businesswoman with a knack for logistics, goldsmithing, and a few unorthodox magics that one need not bother dwelling on. Engaged(?) to her childhood rescuer, the fierce and pragmatic Dakkath Varg, and resolved to help him claim his family legacy while her own looms behind her.

Ser Amelot Martocq dit Leblanc - As a highborn knight of Ishgard, she fought bravely against dragons and mortal foes alike. She is known as a hero of the Autumn War, defending Gridania from the wrath of Ala Mhigo--and the greater threat of Greenwrath. She had an honorable career, a legacy to be proud of, save for rumors of a half-hyuran child and her enduring regard for the child’s Ala Mhigan father.