#mappingway

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Krile was at the head of the crowd with Tataru, the pair of lalafell sprinting forward with a tiny carbunclet each hanging from a shoulder, as the Ragnarok smoothly sliced through the waters of Scholar’s Harbor and towards the largest of the berths at the far end of the docks. Giddy relief surged through her; the strange double-sight of Sharlayan’s clear skies and the overlay of the burning heavens of the Final Days had faded to leave only blue behind, and she had dared not hope until linkpearl reports came in of the Ragnarok flying over Othard and Ilsabard and Eorzea. But hope now she did.

She and Tataru came to a stop at the edge of the pier, the Ragnarok gliding sedately into place. As they did, Amandina dropped from her shoulder all of a sudden, and Roksana from Tataru’s, the pearl carbunclets tumbling into one another and vanishing with a pop! of displaced air. Krile felt their pearls tingle on her wrist—Synnove had given the twins into hers and Tataru’s safe-keeping, foci stones and all, with strict instructions to head to Ishgard should the worst come to pass—and then the two returned. With a passenger.

Ser Aymeric, lacking his formal Lord Commander’s armor in favor of simple boots and breeches and a linen shirt beneath a doublet, stumbled a pace forward, dropping to one knee as he cradled the twin carbunclets in his arm. “Girls, we have had words with you about sudden teleportation,” he wheezed.

Sorry, Papa, Amandina squeaked.

It’s an emergency, Roksana added.

His head shot up, and Tataru and Krile’s both whipped around.

We gotta go, Amandina warbled, reaching up to press a carbuncle-kiss to Ser Aymeric’s cheek.

But we’ll be back! Roksana chittered, doing the same.

Take care of Mommy! they chorused, and then in a flash of blue-and-purple aether, they demanifested.

Ser Aymeric stared at where they had been in his arms just a moment ago. Tataru was slowly losing color in her face, and Krile felt the same, as her hands began to shake.

“Make way, make way! Healers coming through!”

Krile raised her head as a full company of city-guard pushed through the crowd, escorting a full complement of sages and conjurers and chirugeons, each wearing the sigil of the Sharlayan Medical Corp; a group of loporrits bull-rushed their way through just after them, pushing four long carts—mobile cots?—with multiple medkits and other boxes of supplies balanced on top of them. With the healers safely arrived, the guards turned towards herding back the crowd, calling for an order and creating a corridor back down the dock. Ameliance and Fourchenault ducked by them, but the guards gave them no notice; the Leveilleurs were beginning to look as worried as Krile felt.

She sprinted to the healers. “Master Healer,” she called to their leader; she didn’t recognize her, unfortunately. “What’s happening?”

“Ragnarok requested immediate medical attention upon arrival,” the Roegadyn woman said grimly. “I can confirm everyone is alive, but the Warriors of Light are in critical condition.” Krile closed her eyes, terror lancing through her even as Ser Aymeric gasped wetly behind her and Tataru cut off her horrified shriek. The healer continued, “Mistress Baldesion, I loathe having to ask, but I must request your assistance, in particular due to your familiarity with the medical histories of the Warriors of Light.”

Krile clasped her hands together in an attempt to stop their shaking. Oh, gods be good, please let this not be because of the decision she had made in allowing Zenos viator Galvus the chance to follow the Scions to Ultima Thule. “You need not ask, Master Healer,” she said. “Though I am glad I will not have to fight through your healers to assist my family.”

The Roegadyn nodded, and then both their heads whipped around as a hatch on the Ragnarok hissed, and swung open. Thancred hung out, grim-faced and blood-stained as he kicked a gangplank into place down to the dock, and Krile and the healers surged forward.

“We’ve got them stable, barely,” he said once they were close enough, ducking aside to let them through, and then leading them towards the bridge. “Alisaie nearly drained herself into her own case of aethershock, Y’shtola had to cast Repose on her to get her to stop. We’re all in minor cases of aethershock, but Synnove is the worst off, and that’s before the physical injuries.”

Krile felt herself go grey as Thancred rattled off the extent of the injuries suffered by the Warriors of Light and Scions both. It was a miracle they had even made it back to the ship and the Scions weren’t sure what had happened between the assumed defeat of the Endsinger and their arrival back on the Ragnarok, but Krile knew. She knew how those injuries had happened.

The floor of the Ragnarok’s bridge was covered in blood. The Scions and Healingway’s team of loporrit healers huddled around the Warriors of Light; even Alisaie, who had apparently bucked Repose, to Thancred’s exasperated sigh.

Krile immediately went to Dancing Heron, shooing an exhausted Alphinaud out of the way so that she and one of the Medical Corp healers could take over. A diagnostic spell told her the Hellsguard’s innards were essentially held together by prayer and fine silk thread; it was another miracle her blood wasn’t poisoned by the toxins from her perforated intestines, or what remained of them. As she settled to the task of blasting infection before it could take hold, Heron’s eyes fluttered open.

“Hi, Krile,” she croaked.

(“Oh, fuck you,” Healingway raged from where she was putting Alakhai’s chest back together. “Stop throwing off Sleep you fucking idiot! I hate paladins!”

“This is the first paladin you’ve worked with,” one of the loporrits muttered.

“Shut the fuck up!”)

“Oh, Heron,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Hey, none of tha’ now,” Heron said, slurring. Her eyes closed, her chest rising with the deep breath she took. “Hate to say it, but th’ bastard made ‘isself useful. An’ then we ended ‘im good ‘n proper.”

“You shouldn’t have fought him at all,” Krile said, reaching up to brush blood-crusted hair from Heron’s face.

“Was in—ugh. Was in-ev-it-a-ble,” Heron said slowly, deliberately. She reached up and gently patted Krile’s hands, her dark red skin too cool to the touch. “Better at th’ edge of th’ universe tha’ where someone could get hurt.”

“And you and your sisters count very much as someones getting hurt.”

“Nah, s’our job,” Heron said, nodding, as if that made it better. “M’gonna sleep now. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Heron,” Krile said, patting the paladin’s cheek, but Heron was already out cold.

Tension filled the bridge; Krile glanced up and saw Ser Aymeric kneeling next to Tataru, holding the young woman close as she cried onto his shoulder, his own eyes focused with horrible intensity on Synnove. Ameliance crouched on Ser Aymeric’s other side, one hand on his free shoulder and the other clutching tight to her husband’s as Fourchenault spoke quietly but firmly into a linkpearl. From the snatches she could catch during lulls in the orders and requests of the healers filling the space, the Leveilleur patriarch was throwing around the full might of the Forum to ready the emergency ward at the hospital.

She lost track of how long they worked, but eventually the loporrits brought over the mobile cots—stretchers, they were apparently called—and carefully they loaded a Warrior of Light onto each. Krile was small and light enough that she stayed crouched over Heron, modulating her conjury to keep her friend stable as they were wheeled out of the Ragnarok and towards the chocobo carts waiting to carry the whole of the Scions to the hospital. Two other lalafell healers did the same with Alakhai and Synnove, and Healingway knelt next to Rereha, frowning thoughtfully at the device she carried in one hand even as the other held the stasis spell steady.

Ser Aymeric followed along next to Synnove’s stretcher, one hand resting on her uninjured arm. The other Scions staggered after them; Estinien had Alphinaud slung over one shoulder, the young man passed out from exhaustion, with Alisaie hiked up under one arm and being fussed over by Ameliance, while Raha, Y’shtola, and Urianger leaned against one another with a pair of Sharlayan sages hovering next to them. Thancred carried a still weeping Tataru, smiling faintly as the coinkeeper scolded him between her tears.

A flash of blue overheard caught her attention, and Krile lifted her head to see a bluebird wing its way above the harbor.

--

The first sennight was the worst. For all that the four Warriors of Light were stable, any of their conditions could take a sudden turn for the worse, and more than one Scion took up a silent vigil at the side of one of their friends to ensure she made it through the night.

Kan-E-Senna, A-Ruhn-Senna, plus a number of Gridanian conjurers and Ul’dahn alchemists (among them Rerenasu Kukunasu, looking as if he had aged ten years before he even got to his daughter’s bedside), arrived by Ironworks airship the day after the Ragnarok’s return. The Elder Seedseer was immediately whisked into hushed talks with Healingway and the Sharlayan chirugeons who researched experimental treatments. And then they descended upon Rereha’s rooms to begin their attempts to repair the bard’s shattered spine, as the other healers were quickly put into the rotation to treat the others.

Aymeric spent those first days refusing to leave Synnove’s side, to the point the Master Healer, Tyrngeim, sighed heavily and ordered a cot brought to the arcanist’s room on which he could sleep. Not that he truly gained any rest, jerking awake almost as soon as he dropped off for fear something might happen to his lady in so fragile a state. The one time he managed a full night’s sleep was because Y’shtola had marched into the room, Urianger on her heels, and forced a sleeping draught into his hand while saying, “You’ll be no good to her dead yourself. Urianger and I will take the watch tonight.”

Synnove was so awfully still, as were her sisters; the healers were using a combination of thaumaturgical Sleep, conjuration Repose, and a cocktail of potions to keep them in comas. While everyone had returned from Ultima Thule in some state of aethershock—Estinien had been introduced to the disgusting horrors of aether syrup, and his brother had spent a solid two bells growling like a drake as he had kept otherwise silent vigil with Aymeric next to Synnove, grimacing with every tentative sip—Synnove was by far the worst off on that front. Her cheeks were sunken, her skin tight across her bones; any time the Warriors of Light were called to duty, Synnove dropped weight, the demands of her magic eating her body’s reserves, and the Scions had careened from the towers to Garlemald to Ultima Thule in mere moons, with Synnove (as well as the other mages) becoming almost frightfully lean before their journey to the stars. Now his lady was skeletal, and per the healers, her internal organs were badly damaged, particularly her kidneys and liver.

It took Aymeric two days to notice the arcanima sleeve tattoos were gone, and he stared, gaping, until Alisaie arrived.

“It was all the healing,” she said quietly, taking the brush from the bedside table to begin tending to Synnove’s now-brittle hair. “We had to practically shove aether into her and her body just gobbled it up, trying to keep itself functioning. At one point it was like a floodwater, so much magic at once it spilled over, pushed the ink right out of her skin. On her back, too, we had an awful fright when the colors seeped out onto the floor.”

“N’dhovaka is going to be furious,” Aymeric muttered, thinking of the Sun Seeker matron who had done all of Synnove’s tattoo work.

Alisaie snorted a laugh. “Synnove told me she had been wondering about some sort of alteration to the sleeves, refine the arrays. Suppose this is as good an opportunity as any.”

They both spoke in whens, not ifs, as if to do otherwise would invite ill fortune.

For now, all they could do for Synnove was keep getting aether syrup into her, trying to get her ravaged internal reserves to some sort of equilibrium, with healing sessions where the healers guided her own energies to focus on maintaining her brain and heart and lungs. Aymeric listened with trepidation as Tyrngeim and Healingway explained to him on the fifth day what they hoped to do once Synnove was stable enough that they could perform surgery.

“Her left kidney is completely shot,” the Master Healer said. “Now, an adult hyur can live with only one kidney, but given the state of her right kidney, she’s looking at potential failure in the future.”

“Fury preserve me,” he said, dropping his head into hands and pulling at his hair.

“Her best chance is essentially to perform a transplant surgery,” Healingway said succinctly, her small arms crossed. “There’s Allagan tech us loporrits have salvaged, plus what the Eorzean Alliance and Sharlayans have recovered over the years and studied, and there’s some genuinely useful medical uses for their cloning technology. Fuckers used it for some disgusting things—”

“—but my colleagues have had success with using it to grow new organs for badly injured individuals,” Tyrngeim interrupted before Healingway could get going. “Normally organ growth on the scale we need takes moons to ensure everything is viable with the power restraints we operate under—the original Allagan machines had power requirements we won’t be able to match for a couple generations as we reverse-engineer everything—but Healingway thinks since there is some healthy tissue remaining, we can use it as a base and jumpstart the process with loporrit creation magic. And since it’s Synnove’s own flesh, her body won’t reject it.”

“The liver won’t take much,” Healingway said. “Absolutely wonderful organ, the liver, it’s perfectly capable of regenerating itself over a period of time, but Synnove’s is at the point it’ll need some help. And far easier than the lung transplants we’re going to have to do for Alakhai. Honestly, I think the only reason we even have a chance right now is that there seems to be dynamis still lingering around all four of them, though even my tools are shite at judging how much. We’re going to have to do all the gross organ stuff right at their bedsides to harness it, we are literally fueling all this shite with high octane hope.”

Aymeric could not even begin to parse through what the two healers were discussing and the implications of it all. He rubbed his face tiredly and said, “Whatever it is you need me to sign, I’ll do it,” he said. “Whatever it takes to see her through.”

He still didn’t know if Synnove was better off than Alakhai and Heron, their bodies so badly wounded that the healers were still struggling to align bones and fish out stray shards and make sure the right pieces of meat were sewn together. It likely wasn’t wise to compare. It would take a long, long time for any of them to be back at full strength.

“This is going to be moons of recovery, once they’re out of danger,” Y’shtola said at the end of the first sennight, gathered with all the Scions, Aymeric, Rereha’s father, Heron’s mother, and a Lominsan in green by the name of V’kebbe, newly arrived that morning and “representing Alakhai’s family among the Upright, if you please.” They were huddled in the empty room in the same wing that their four family members were being kept that had become the communal space for them. A spread of coffee and juice and sandwiches from the Last Stand was laid out on the center table that they half-heartedly picked at.

Krile cleared her throat, and Y’shtola scowled, ears pinned flat to her head even as she obediently lifted her bottle of aether syrup and took a sip of the concoction.

“We do not ask any of ye to merely return to thy homes and await whatever sporadic crumb of news we can provide,” Urianger said. The other elezen was the most dressed down Aymeric had ever seen him, in soft pants and a thick sweater and knit fingerless gloves on his hand; his own aethershock lingered now in a persistent chill. “But ye will need to make the necessary plans if ye intend to stay in Sharlayan for long.”

“Considering the poor luck many of us have in multiple responsibilities, we’ll need to switch off as needed,” Rerenasu sighed. “As a note, Shushuha and I will cover all transport costs for everyone, airship and teleportation, and please do not argue with me about this, Opal.” Heron’s mother, Radiant Opal, rolled her eyes. “Ser Aymeric, no doubt Angharad will try to do the same, tell her she can argue with Shushu about it until they’re both blue in the face. Miss V’kebbe—”

The miqo’te rogue snorted. “Like Jacke’ll complain about one less thing t’ worry about with our coffers,” she said. “And thank you.”

“We’ve already got rooms set aside for everyone in the Baldesion Annex,” Krile said. “And no doubt Ameliance will do her best to send lunches for us all, no matter the time of day.”

Thancred sighed heavily and slouched in his chair. “Consider this the official first meeting of the Warriors of Light Family Support Group,” he snarked, ducking the swipe Alphinaud took at him and shifting to avoid the pinch from Alisaie.

“Likely not the last,” Alphinaud said with a sigh. But then he smiled, faint and hopeful. “But so far the signs are pointing to a positive outcome, and we must needs contain to have faith in our friends and the healers alike.”

--

It was the end of the third sennight, and Aymeric was startled awake by a hissing noise. He had fallen asleep in the chair next to Synnove, her limp hand gently grasped in his own, and now he snapped his eyes open, searching for the danger—

“—stupid fucking stubborn gods-be-damned older sisters I swear to Hydaelyn I will beat you bloody—”

That was the familiar tirade of a certain loporrit trauma specialist. Aymeric turned his head, and he stared.

Dancing Heron grinned back at him. She had huge bags under her eyes, and her skin hung lank on her frame, and she was slouching, one arm gingerly cradling her stomach, but it was Heron.

“Heron, what in the name of—” he gasped, scrambling to standing. “You came out of your third surgery yesterday, you’re supposed to be in a bloody coma—” He gently wrapped his lady’s elder sister in a hug, and she hugged him back with one arm.

Healingway raged at their feet. “This fucking stupid two-legger threw off the most potent cocktail of drugs I have ever had to mix and two layers of spellcraft because she had to check on her sisters. For fuck’s sake.”

“I was tired of sleeping,” Heron said mildly.

Healingway spat a curse that had Aymeric’s inner soldier blushing.

“Alakhai gave me a thumbs up,” Heron said as he drew back and pulled over a chair for her. “Then she dropped back to sleep. Rereha stole her mom’s knitting and is doing a cat’s cradle to test her range of motion in her fingers.”

Aymeric laughed as he helped ease the Hellsguard down onto the chair, the only reaction he had in his disbelief. Not even a few days ago, Kan-E-Senna had been fretting about the extent of any paralysis for Rereha, as she was still being kept in a coma, and Alakhai had had her own second surgery earlier today to begin fixing the disaster that was her torso.

“And it looks like Synnove’s doing better, too,” Heron rasped, a grin on her face as Healingway pulled out that strange scanning device of hers to go over the Hellsguard.

He turned, puzzled—and stared.

On Synnove’s other side, her aetheric glow dimmed to converse as much aether as possible, was Galette, tucked under her mama’s arm with her chin on Synnove’s shoulder. The carbuncle was nearly transparent, but she was there. And for the first time in three sennights, Synnove’s breathing was slow and deep, rather than the reedy wheeze that haunted Aymeric’s dreams, her chest rising and falling in steady beats with Galette in tandem.

The best, surest sign that her aether had finally begun to stabilize.

Aymeric collapsed into his chair, put his head on his lady’s shoulder even as he gripped her hand anew, and wept. In her sleep, Synnove’s hand twitched, and gripped back.

(On the tree outside the window, a bluebird began to sing.)