Yay, I did it!

Shadowbringers Week - Ran'jit

it is a crime that Urianger doesn't rescue hostiles in trusts

✧✦✧ "Fragments" - episode 30 ✧✦✧

This hero's deaf to the loud cries for salvation, but a gentle plea of a friend will reach him. Probably.

Part of the story details Ran'jit's father, Zal'bard, and his transformation into a Lightwarden after dealing the killing blow to one. And then I remembered Huracan.

Huracan is a Rank A Hunt target, a giant red flying snake creature, similar in appearance to Ran'jit's familiar (and the Alte Roite model out of the Omega raids). The lore entry from the Clan Nutsy guys is:

Are you familiar with General Ran'jit's familiar, Gukumatz? It is a creature born of forbidden foreign magicks, passed down from general to general. Familiars such as these are usually sustained by the aether of their master, which is why when they fall in battle, their minions fall as well. There are, however, certain notable exceptions. Ran'jit's father commanded a familiar as well, but when he was slain by a sin eater, Huracan somehow survived, and has been seen on several occasions since. One theory posits that since the master was transformed into an eater, the familiar endures, though it is no more than conjecture...

The old General's aether persisted in some form in Norvrandt while the Lightwardens were active.

In the fairytales, grand castles struck a clear silhouette. The body often evoked its surrounding landscape, whether it was baileys emerging from the cliff shape below or spires towering over the forest trees nearby.

She couldn't deny the possibility that the artist's hand willed the buildings to play nice with their backdrops. Still, architecture was also an art, and many creative minds were cross-discipline by necessity. Those illustrators might've gone on to erect castles with that same harmonious intent.

Not Eulmore's architect. The beast of a fortress had no body, instead a greed of buttresses spiralling aimlessly towards the sky. The bottom barely supported its overgrowth of limbs. Its designers may have cited the yew tree as an inspiration, but she knew better; the city was a hand grasping at the sky. It couldn't get more manmade than that.

It was futile to compare Eulmore to a fairytale, of course.

Reading the same five books repeatedly was an art Minfilia had mastered beautifully. Over the years, she found ways to appreciate them for more than their legible contents. This time she spent ages poring over the illustrations, something you weren't really supposed to do when you were being introduced to advanced reading, but it was a last resort. The last time she'd "read" this one, she indulged in the coarse texture and compared the worn corners of each page systematically. Books had become vessels of sensation in a flavorless room, where all vibrant colours blended into a dull brown.

"Um... I'd like a new book." How diligently she had practiced this request. How easily it crumbled at the sight of him.

Ran'jit didn't match his surroundings well either. He stood grey amid rich maroon and shimmering teal, and for that he was impossible to ignore. No sunlight found its way into this part of the building despite light's abundance, yet he cast a sharp shadow everywhere he walked. He only ever looked straight through her, like there was someone else more important to perceive.

"Few books remain. What do you want to learn about?"

He was always willing to answer her questions, until he wasn't. Her lips pinched tight as she weighed the pros and cons of asking. She had been diligent in her training all sennight, so she decided to ask in earnest. (Had it been a sennight? She could never tell.)

"I want to know about the outside world. What's happened in the last few years... What it looks like."

Ran'jit's silver gaze winked out of sight.

"No."

"B... But..."

She said it before she thought it. He was well on his way to the stairs; he stopped dead before the first step. She cowered away from his shadow, ready for the bite—

"I forbid it." His final reiteration. She never knew what she was scared of when it came to him, because he never, ever hurt her. Perhaps it was that she cared for him, and she knew he would so happily die on this hill. She wanted desperately to spare him the pain of saying no to a girl who had nothing.