A new nightmare awaited her. The waking world came back with a sudden, cutting clarity, assaulting her senses on every front. The ground shook. Dust filled her lungs, clung to her throat and irritating her eyes. The sound was deafening. 

The Ronka ruins. The Golem… 

Y’shtola!

“Miso’no! Gods forfend, I cannot hold this forever!” she heard her beloved shout in a ragged voice above her. Miso shook her head, trying to return to her senses quickly. Shtola’s back was to her in a protective stance, her arms flung out in front, holding her staff in a vice grip that was beginning to waver with the effort of protecting her during her little episode. The air around them shimmered, shielding them from the imminent collapse of the tunnel, but it would not hold for long. “I need you to wake now!” Y’shtola’s voice held a note of concern, over her usual critical tone. 

“I’m up, I’m up!” Scrambling to her feet, Miso’no’s stomach turning with the effort, she flung out a hand instinctively to add her aether to the barrier to give them time.

“Thank the gods,” Y’shtola said, equal parts relieved and urgent, “Do not waste your aether on the barrier. It won’t hold when this place collapses… which means we need to get out of here. Now if you please!”

“R-right…” 

Drawing in a deep breath, Miso focused her life energy, seeking out the aether currents that flowed through all things. It was a simple matter to travel via aetheryte… usually. But under duress one had to be all the more careful; as Y’shtola had learned the hard way. Twice. That thought (and adrenaline probably) was motivation enough for Miso’no to sharpen her focus to a diamond clarity… especially since she would be taking a passenger with her. 

She sought out the familiar energy of Fanow and its breathtaking aetheryte held aloft on the branches of a great tree. The lifestream flowed forth from the tree like roots and Miso reached for them, beginning to feel the familiar tug that would soon bear her away. She briefly opened her eyes as purple light enveloped her, “I have it! Hold on!”

As if speaking to herself, she reached out and wrapped her arms about Y’shtola’s waist, holding tight. She closed her eyes and prayed… to whom she did not even know anymore. 

Suddenly her consciousness seemed to compress into a single point… and just as suddenly expand. Gasping Miso fell a few feet to land flat on her back amidst soft grass and glowing blue flowers. In her arms, which were still firmly wrapped around her slender waist, was Y’shtola. The Warrior of Light let her head loll back against the ground, catching her breath. “Thank the gods… That was… too close.”

“You missed,” her beloved, equally out of breath from exertion, rolled off to one side to lay sprawled next to her. “Didn’t quite make it to Fanow.”

“At least we made it. Wait–” Sitting up, Miso realized Shtola was right. She looked around at the forest floor, shrouded by the massive, almost primordial trees of Rak’tika. It was night, but all around was the bioluminiscent blue and yellow glow of various flora. Gentle moonlight streamed in from, brushing all it touched with ghostly fingers.

“But this isn’t right… shouldn’t we be adrift on the lifestream? How did we end up here?”

Y’shtola opened her eyes and said, “Ah… I think I know why,” but did not elaborate.

And with a sinking feeling in her stomach, it struck Miso as well. This was the exact spot where Emet-Selch rescued Y’shtola’s soul from the lifestream. Plucked it like a precious gem from a river. She instinctively turned her face from the woman she loved, hiding whatever emotion she feared was plain on her face – not that it would do her any good. Emet had done a kind thing that day; something she couldn’t help but be eternally grateful for despite her suspicions at the the time. 

So why then did she feel… like this?

“My love, what troubles you so?” came the gentle, soothing tones of Shtola’s voice. A softness she did not show often. And yet Miso steeled herself against it, not feeling worthy in this particular moment. 

“My recklessness almost killed us,” she lied. “I’m sorry.”

“Hm, interesting deflection,” Y’shtola noted, sitting up next to her. “Perhaps this was simply the path of least resistance, since my soul has traveled it before. Aether behaves much like water at times, so when Emet–”

“Stop,” Miso’no interrupted, uncharacteristically. She threw a hand over her eyes, as if shielding them from the image that name conjured. It haunted her mind’s eye no matter how hard she tried to shut it out. Hearing his name spoken aloud in this moment was too much to bear. 

“As I thought,” Miso heard the woman next to her sigh. “Not only was the timing of the Echo incredibly troubling, but the subject matter as well. Did you learn ought of value at least?”

“No…” the Warrior of Light muttered, muffled by her hands over her face, “... yes? I don’t know… maybe. I think he might be taunting me from beyond.”

“How so?” Shtola said mildly. She would draw the story out of Miso, slowly but surely.

Unlike with G’raha, there were no complicated feelings regarding Emet-Selch on Y’shtola’s part. She did not care for the Ascian on principal, that much was obvious. But the hatred was not so deeply personal, as it was with the Exarch. And there was no jealousy in it. Her beloved seem to understand that when it came to Miso, somethings were simply… not simple. And she wanted to learn as much about the ancient Ascians as Miso did, though their reasons differed somewhat. Shtola found the history that Emet revealed to them that day in Qitana Ravel deeply troubling; that their beloved Hydaelyn was simply one of the first Primals. The Scion meant to unravel the mystery of it; they both wanted the truth but for different reasons.

And so they had gone back into the Ronkan ruins together to see if more fragments of that history could be found.

“I saw,” Miso’no began, voice trembling, “The moment where my soul began to break apart. When the change was beginning to take me.”

“I see.” Shtola said, reaching out to put a hand on Miso’s arm, just to steady her. ‘Twas not a moment that Y’shtola would have cared to relive either. The transformation to become a Sineater was a brutal one. To watch a loved one experience it was unthinkable.

“I did not see it from mine own eyes,” she continued. Miso hesitated then, dropping her hands away from her face, but yet unable to look at Y’shtola. She laced fidgeting fingers on her chest before drawing in a breath, and the strength, to press on: “I saw it from Emet’s eyes.”

“Oh,” she heard Shtola exclaim softly, moving her hand from Miso’s arm to her trembling hands instead. “Well that is an interesting perspective…”

“To say the least,” Miso chuckled miserably.

“What did Emet see then… that we did not?”

This was the part, aside from the emotions that threatened to closed around her throat, that she struggled to explain. “It was the moment Ardbert joined his soul to mine. This Emet did not see, but after…” Miso’no shook her head, “when Ardbert and I were one, it was so bright… and for a moment it was as if Emet saw me… as someone else.”

The squeeze her hands received in that moment offered more than words could. Miso shut her eyes against the sting of tears threatening to emerge. Very wisely, Y’shtola said nothing. 

After a long moment, Miso found her voice again, “I was right…”

“He did recognize you after all…” Y’shtola murmured.

“Yes…” she breathed, barely a whisper. “Or at least the bits and pieces of someone he knew. An Amaurotine… like him.”

Emet had said a lot of things to Miso in his time haunting the Scions that made her suspect he found her familiar. That she was one of the things he spoke of when he said he could see the world he once knew in shattered pieces, broken and wrong. He frequently implied she could be different, that she would benefit from the rejoining. He even snarkily made mention, when talking about the grandeur of Amaurot… not that you would remember. She’d thought then he’d been teasing her about her amnesia. 

“So… if Ardbert is a fragment of your sundered soul,” Y’shtola mused aloud the things Miso had been struggling to say, “Then it may make sense, even if only for a moment, that Emet-Selch saw a glimpse of who you’d been when he would have considered you to be, for lack of a better term… ‘whole’.” 

“And he rebelled against the idea,” Miso’no sighed, “strongly.”

“Indeed. There are few things that might illicit such a reaction.” Daring to look in Shtola’s direction, Miso saw her brows raise a fraction. “Love, hate, pain. Mayhap all of the above. Regardless of the emotions involved, clearly there was something in it he could not, and would not, accept.”

“Well… whoever it was wore a mask, as they all seemed to in Emet’s Amaurot, so any other hints as to their identity… that I do not know,” Miso’no groaned, clutching both hands to her forehead. “So I am no closer to knowing anything about who I am.”

She could hear Y’shtola’s wry smile in her tone, “Hence the ‘no’, ‘yes’ and ‘I don’t know maybe’?”

   “That is not the whole of what the Echo showed me either.”

“Oh?” Y’shtola had turned fully on one side to face her as they reclined in the gently glowing flowers; she began to idly run her fingers through Miso’s hair; something she found incredibly soothing. 

“Well… it did not behave the way the Echo normally would, so mayhap I am wrong,” Miso’no began, voice carrying the distant tone of trying to recall a memory, “But it was after Ardbert and I struck down Emet together. When he bid me to remember them.” 

“That does not seem so odd,” mused Shtola.

“No that seemed to be as it was, but then he came toward me, grasped my hands, nearly shaking me. He begged me to remember. But I told him… I didn’t know how.”

“Hm,” murmured the Scion, but nothing more.

“He left me with a parting gift, as he had once before. An apple. Then he told me I should probably wake up.”

“That is interesting, love.”

“Not the word I would use…”

“Soul-crushing? Heart-breaking? Terrifying?”

“Better,” sighed the Warrior of Light, rolling into the comforting embrace of Y’shtola, who welcomed her without comment. “It was as if… something were influencing the Echo. Or mayhap it was more a dream than the Echo in truth. Mayhap a rock struck me in the head.”

“Hmm,” Shtola purred into the top of her head, Miso felt the gentle press of her lips there momentarily. “I cannot say I’ve heard the Echo behaving as such, but stranger things have happened. We will decipher this together, I promise.”

Feeling comforted for the moment, Miso drifted into silence a while. They gazed up through the trees at tiny pinpricks of stars. “You know how after the battle with Emet… the damage to my soul appeared to be healed?”

“Mm-hmm…”

“Is it… is it crazy to think that Emet-Selch might have… done something to fix it?” Miso felt her cheeks turn very warm, her heart hammering against her chest. It was not something she would have ever dared say to G’raha Tia, given they had found a measure of peace on that front. But Y’shtola was different. 

“Do you think that sounds crazy?” it was just like her to turn her question back on her. 

Miso’no sighed audibly, burying her face into Shtola’s nape as if that would hide her flustered state.  “Would I be asking you if I thought otherwise?”

“Both Ryne and I did think it was miraculous that there was no lasting damage to your soul…” mused her beloved aloud, “It didn’t seem likely simply using up the light would have reversed what damage had already been done. But with Emet-Selch’s mastery over creation magicks beyond anything we know, his knowledge of souls seemed vast as well – not to mention the fact he clearly recognized you in the end… your hypothesis might very well have merit.”

Releasing a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, Miso’no relaxed more completely into Shtola’s arms. It felt as if she could finally breathe. 

The idea that Emet might have cared for a broken, barely-alive being such as she felt… farfetched. But it was possible he cared insofar as he was capable. That he might have care for the being she had been in his time… that felt plausible too. She wondered if it was why he suggested cooperation of all things. Not a distinctly Amaurotine concept, but a quality he clearly held in high regard, for it reminded him of when the world was whole and, in his eyes, perfect. But she also wondered if, for all the hope it inspired to see glimmers of someone familiar… likely it hurt, too. For Miso’no was not really them. Not anymore.

She wondered also, about the expectations he’d clearly had for her in their time together… and, in the end, she felt as though he’d given her a dying wish. 

What that was… she had no idea.

Caring level not withstanding, Emet-Selch saved her. She couldn’t help but feel as though that were true. And if that were true, he had a purpose in that.

Miso’s mind took to wandering, away from the elusive Emet-Selch and his  mysterious machinations. The pair drifted into a comfortable silence as they gazed above at the strangeness of the First’s night sky in each other’s arms.

“Do you think mayhap,” Miso said aloud suddenly, “That fragments of my soul have found fragments of yours, even on other worlds?”

Shtola favoured her with one of her rare laughs; the kind that catch her unaware and ring out with gentle surprise. “My dear heart, when did you get so philosphical? Have you been spending too much time with Urianger?”

“N-no! I just thought,” Miso stammered, “it was a nice thought!”

“It is,” Shtola replied, placing yet another kiss on the top of her head. “Speaking of nice thoughts, how did it go with the Exarch?”

“About… as well as you might expect,” the Warrior of Light sighed, rubbing her eyes with her hands, “We talked of a great many things, some good… some more difficult. I do think there’s more we left unsaid but… we left off in a good place.”

“Did you tell him?” Y’shtola asked, her tone light but there was a slight warning edge in it.

“Yes,” Miso’no replied, muffled through both her hands covering her face, not that any kind of physical hiding helped where Y’shtola was concerned. Her cheeks burned hotter than Dalamud. 

“Good,” said her beloved, with a stern sort of approval.

“You’re not… mad?”

“My love, I would have been upset only had you held back on my account,” the Miqo’te scolded, “Events as of late remind me how short our little lives truly are. I would not think to hold your heart so selfishly to myself, not unless it was your wish.”

“I know, I know…”

“As I’ve said before, you hold enough love in your heart for ten people, and if you wanted to love that many or more… I would not stop you.”

Miso allowed herself a small smile. She wrapped her arms around the Scion and held her close. “I know. Same with you and Runar.”

“Well,” the woman’s voice stuttered, uncharacteristically, “We shant talk about that now.”

Knowing when not to press the subject, Miso’no whispered, “We could sleep out here you know. It’s very… private.”

“Oh I think not,” scoffed Shtola, rolling away to dust off her robes and fetch her staff, “after the day we just had I should like a hot bath, a hotter cup of tea and a soft feathered bed.” 

“A bed does sound nice…” admitted Miso’no, rising to her feet and brushing away bits of grass and luminous flower petals from her garments. “Shtola?”

“Yes?”

“I… even called him Raha.”

“Did you now?” Miso’no could hear, but not see, the smile of amusement in her voice as Shtola turned towards Fanow. She held out the crook of her arm and Miso took it with a squeeze. “Did he turn as red as his hair?”

“He did,” she laughed as she remembered it.

“I would enjoy hearing more of it,” she purred, “later.”

Arm and arm, the pair walked back to the village, empty-handed but hearts full.