S’olahr acquires spots for you all to sleep in the conjurer’s guild tonight, away from any prying ears or eyes. There are four hammock-like beds for each of you, and one of them has been thoroughly decorated, clearly belonging to S’olahr full-time. Above his headrest is a carving of Nophica’s emblem, and along the wall are sketches of S’olahr with Phekda and various members of the guild.

On the other end of the room, K’yoko has continuously inspected her neck in the dresser’s mirror for the last half hour or so, gently tracing her fingers over a scar that managed to form in spite of your timely healing. After a while, she tugs her undershirt further up so it can barely cover the mark. Her carbuncles nuzzle at her ankles, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“…Are we going to…talk about any of that?” S’olahr asks, sitting up from his bed. Erden is silently staring out the window and watching the cloudy sky, while you quietly look up from your grimoire to gaze over. S’olahr leaned forward and looked at Erden directly. “That…dark attack, that was you, right?” Erden shrunk into himself without looking back. “Say something!”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her.” He confesses, still watching the sky. “I heard more people coming, and I knew if we waited too long, they would kill us all.” He finally turned and looked at K’yoko directly. “I’m sorry you were hurt. I couldn’t think of any other way to help.” K’yoko seems to take a moment to internalize this before turning towards the three of them.

“…Could you all step out for a moment so I can change?"

The three of you head out of the room and wait patiently for K’yoko to invite you back in. S’olahr inspects Erden a bit more closely and notes that absorbing the energy in Tam-Tara has increased his already overabundant astral aether, and at this point other conjurers will likely begin to notice. To help reduce the chance of this happening, you position yourself between him and any that happen to walk by so that it will ‘feel’ mostly neutral.

K’yoko invites you back in and is now wearing a white blouse that she found in the room’s drawers. It’s visibly a bit too big on her, but she remarks that it’s pretty comfy, at least for pajamas.

The room feels awkward pretty quickly. It’s clear that nobody really wants to talk about what happened earlier today, yet S’olahr breaks the silence once again.

“So...everything K’yoko told me must’ve been a lie, right?” S’olahr turned to K’yoko. “Were you helping cover for him?”

“Huh?” She seemed a bit confused. “Um, sorry. Everything has just been so much today-- could you explain everything from the beginning? I don’t understand a lot of what I’ve seen and heard recently...”

You look down at the ceiling for a moment and get ready to speak, before Erden raises up his arm in front of you. He sits down on one of the hammocks and gets comfortable before speaking.

“My family works on a big section of land in Wineport. My parents, they moved here from the far east-- wanted a quiet life, away from all the violence of our home. So they packed up, settled down in Eorzea, and had me. For a while, a long while, that’s all there was to it.” Erden looked solemnly toward the ground. “They didn’t expect much of me. They just wanted me to stay out of trouble, to grow out of the ‘habits of our bloodline.’

“I was happy to live the simple life. I learned all sorts of skills, met lots of nice people, be they adventurers or other farmers. It was good.” Erden clasped his hands. “But...eventually, the man who was renting us the land-- after the calamity, when Bacchus Wine went extinct, he wanted to do something else with it. Wineport wasn’t the cash grab it used to be, so he grew desperate. He grew greedy.

“He collected a renting fee from everyone who lived on the land, and also took a cut of our profits in exchange for maintaining the area.” His voice grew ragged and fierce. “He contacted each of his tenants, and told them they had to start selling higher quality crops, or he’d need to drive up rent to compensate.” Erden teared up slightly, but kept himself composed. “My parents couldn’t afford a new set of crops, they could hardly afford his damned rent, so it went up. My dad started picking up more work with the marauder’s guild, and so he drove up rent again.

“I didn’t know what else to do. We were going to lose our land, and we were too poor to meet his demands, the fucking leech.” He paused for a moment. “So. I began to look for outside help. I knew better than to go digging for loans, since that would only make us worse off in the long run. I tried to pick up...odd jobs. One day, I met this woman. I’sh…” Erden cleared his throat. “We’ll call her Ishi. I worked a few jobs for her as an escort, and one day she asked me what ‘troubled’ me.

“When I told her my story, she told me that she could help me do something about it, but only if I really wanted to.” Erden gripped his forearm. “If we lost the farm, we wouldn’t have anywhere else to go. My mother, she’s a lovely woman, but farming is all she knows. My dad is a fine marauder, but not fine enough to support a whole family alone. We couldn’t go back to the east, they’d kill my parents for deserting the tribe, and me for being an outsider.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“So I had to.” His voice grew a bit nasally. “I had to stop us from losing our home, no matter the cost. Ishi taught me how to be a dark knight. To take what I needed for my family and I trained alongside other people, other desperate souls like me. One by one, we all took what we needed to live. One night, my time finally came.” Erden trembled. “And I killed that man. What a fucking nightmare that was.

“I didn’t mean to make him suffer. I wasn’t any good with a claymore, I could barely even use an axe at that point. He just kept screaming, swing after swing...I can still hear his voice sometimes.” Erden stared down at his own arms, which he couldn’t get to stop shaking. “I vowed never to do it again. This cost was too great, I decided.

“But...but then I realized that if I just stood by, and let awful people exploit the weak and poor of the world, then...then more people will need to do what I did to survive. Or worse. They won’t, and the evils of the world will grow stronger for it.” Erden tightened his right hand into a fist and banged it on his leg. “And so I took up the mantle. Halone’s Champion-- embodiment of The Fury. I would right the wrongs of this world that the systems of power were too weak to fix.”

“But there aren’t many Au Ra in Eorzea, especially Xaela. It’s only a matter of time before they catch you.” S’olahr interjected. “So you needed a cover story, right? Did you fake your injuries, too?”

“No.” Erden said sharply. “None of the recent developments were planned. I simply met a foe who was much stronger than I am.”

“But…” K’yoko tapped her cheek. “S’anah’to, you must’ve known, right? You’ve spent so much time with each other. Were you helping him on his...killings?”

“Not quite.” You say, leaning back against the wall. “I...I realized it had to have been him during our trip to Ul’dah. It just didn’t make any sense for it to not be the case. I didn’t help him directly, but I didn’t stop him after that either.” You pause and look to S’olahr directly. “When I found Erden yesterday, I was just going for a walk and happened upon him. He was badly hurt, really badly hurt.

“His armor had been broken off, and I didn’t have the time or the strength to stash it all away. So I had to come up with a story that would explain how he got hurt while also not making it obvious that he was Halone’s Champion.” You brush your hair out of your eye. “I needed to get him to Limsa for medical care, but if they knew he was the wanted vigilante who has evaded the rogue’s guild for this long, they probably would’ve killed him then and there. So I lied, and I’d do it again.”

“Were you ever planning on telling us the truth?” K’yoko asks, and she nearly sounds offended by her own question.

“No.” Erden says firmly. “Now that you know, you could get in trouble if I’m ever caught by the rogue’s guild. For your own safety, you must never let anyone else find out that you know.” Erden crossed his arms. “In the crypt, I had to choose between keeping my secret or keeping your life. It was hardly a choice at all, even if things didn’t go exactly as I’d hoped.”

“...” K’yoko pauses for a moment. “...Thank you.”

“Alright, fine, I understand why you’ve done what you’ve done.” S’olahr says with a welcoming smile. “But...who did you run into to hurt you so badly?”

“I didn’t catch his name, but he introduced himself as ‘Nophica’s Savior.’” Erden sighed. “He was a paladin, and had the ability to create flying blades of light using his aether. It was...intense, and well beyond my capabilities. His attacks cut through my shadows and armor like they were nothing at all, and I barely escaped with my life. I would’ve died if I hadn’t run into S’anah’to.”

“Nophica’s Savior, hm..?” S’olahr thinks about such a title out loud for a moment. “I wonder if he adopted it in direct opposition to you. Nophica is the known enemy to Halone, after all.”

“How do you know he won’t hurt us?!” K’yoko gasped. “I-If you can’t stop him, what if he tries to hurt the ones who are closest to you?”

“That wouldn’t exactly be in character for a paladin.” You remind her. “When I was hiding from that man, he said something about Erden’s aether being too shadow-like, so I bet that’s what he truly cares about. ‘Banishing the darkness’ or somesuch.” You hang your head and shake it. “I need to try and find out who the hell gave him a soul crystal. Perhaps an investigation with some help from my mother is in order.”

K’yoko seemed a bit unnerved by the entire dialogue. As if she didn’t have enough on her mind from the events of the day, there was now a whole new world of secrets that had been revealed to her. You pick up on this discomfort, and try your best to wrap up the conversation.

“Maybe it would be best if we wrapped things up for the night? We’re all very tired, it may be in our best interests to get some rest before we pass out.” You nervously chuckle. “That way we all have a bit of time to process everything, and we can resume dialogue in the morning.” K’yoko quickly nods and moves to the hammock on the other end of the room next to S’olahr’s, while you and Erden take the two closest to one another.

Something you are extremely grateful didn’t come up in this discussion is ‘what will Erden do if they tell other people.’ You’re confident that he wouldn’t do anything rash, but...it is an uneasy hypothetical nevertheless.

You try not to let these thoughts cloud your mind as you drift off to sleep for the night, praying that for once, the next day not be so gods-damned eventful.