#apologizing in advance to whoever is gracious enough to reply to this | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

onwesterlywinds · 5 years

Text

Words Upon the Scales

The Prima Vista hung in Kugane's sky with as much presence as Bismarck. Priscilla had left her on Tasogare Bridge only for a moment while she ran off to find dango, and Ashe could not begrudge her the indulgence: she, too, wished for something to take her mind off of the massive red barge that seemed to obscure so much of the horizon.

And then there was nothing left to do but to greet their informant.

They strode to the airship hangar together, the Ala Mhigan and the Garlean, speaking not at all; Ashe found herself grateful for the skewered sweets that Priscilla thrust into her hand and the silence that eating afforded them both, at least until the sugar threatened to invoke mutiny in her already nerve-racked stomach.

At the airship hangar, a woman in decidedly Garlean clothing stood watch in a corner by the ticketing booths. Ashe signaled for Priscilla not to approach at once and instead surveyed her to determine whether or not she seemed to be relaying word of their arrival via any sort of hidden communication network. But the woman remained staid, hands clasped before her; Ashe could determine no means by which she might have alerted anyone to their arrival in advance. Sure enough, as Ashe pushed her way through the crowd with Priscilla at her side, she thought she saw the woman's eyes widen.

She nodded to the ship still in the distance. "I daresay that ship behind us is as red as a Galbana."

The woman took in a deep, shaking breath. "Indeed so." Her voice was light, accented; Ashe turned to Priscilla, but nothing in the woman's face registered recognition. This, then, was not their informant. Still, the woman ushered them past a gate and onto a small shuttle - one that would bring them aboard the Prima Vista.

As the shuttle left the hangar and crossed over the placid sea, Priscilla slipped one of her hands into Ashe's own for only a moment before she recoiled. "Do you always sweat when you're nervous?" she quipped.

Ashe scoffed but wiped her palms upon her jacket.

For all her qualms about boarding a Garlean vessel, the Prima Vista thrummed with a far different energy from her expectations. Even before she had exited the shuttle in full, she could discern none of the magitek that so obviously powered the ship; Priscilla, too, surveyed the marvel of engineering with a fond sort of smile. The harsh blue glow of ceruleum was all but absent, and the broader mechanisms were silent in their operations. The only audible sounds were those of life and laughter.

Priscilla had been right: this was a strange place for any informant to hide - or perhaps it was among the best. She strode through a set of double doors leading to a central workshop area and found artistry in every sense of the word. There was a breathtaking sort of magic to the place, what with the massive dioramas along the ceiling and walls, and outlandish costumes strewn about, and scores of people moving and speaking with such volume and grace. Ashe felt as though she had stepped into a different world entirely - one ruled by chaos, in which Garlemald brought joy to the world rather than misery.

And then her eyes fell upon a small woman in a far corner, only barely visible from behind a rack of silk fabrics but nonetheless conspicuous for her Ala Mhigan face-

"ALMA!" she screamed.

Her cry made hardly a dent in the commotion throughout the workshop, but the woman's head turned from her tasks. Ashe barreled past a wide-eyed girl, nearly upended a man scribbling furiously into a book, to reach this person from whom the Black Shroud had separated her over twenty years ago.

The woman did not lift both arms to embrace her, laden as they were with yalms upon yalms of fabric. When Ashe had at last sprinted the length of the workshop, her own empty hands found the woman's shoulders; she merely held her there and could do no more, because now she was sobbing - sobbing as she had cried so rarely throughout the years since Ala Mhigo's invasion.

"My dear girl," the woman whispered in their native tongue. She placed her right hand on the side of Ashe's face and Ashe leaned into the touch, starved for it and for the memories that that simple gesture brought back to the fore of her mind. "I wept much the same when I learned the name of she who had killed Gaius van Baelsar."

Most of the attending thespians had since returned to their business, or else had pointedly turned away from the emotional scene transpiring in their midst. Yet someone approached from behind and Ashe gave a start, relieved to find only her companion.

"Priscilla," she said, trying and failing to stem her tide of tears with the back of her hand, "this is my aunt."

Priscilla nodded. "What a coincidence. This is my informant." With that, the Garlean began to bawl.

Malla, her aunt had insisted on being called in public. Not because Alma was dead, but because there was already an Alma aboard the Prima Vista. She brought Ashe and Priscilla to her quarters: a converted tailoring space on the ship's port side, cramped even for one person. There, in whatever semblance of privacy they shared, she apologized to Priscilla for her earlier secrecies and introduced herself as Alma dus Velius. She spoke the title with such assertion that Ashe squirmed.

"I first came aboard as a means of offering what intelligence I could to the captain," Alma explained. She sat upon her bed with several yalms of heavy silk still draped across her left arm. "But most days, I help with the costuming. The Majestic's best costumer elected to remain in Garlemald."

Priscilla nodded knowingly to this statement, but the intricacies of the Majestic's relationship to their home nation remained lost on Ashe. "And the captain is... with the Dalmascan Resistance?"

Alma shook her head. "Not in the least. Jenomis' goals... run parallel to the Resistance's, and he's as anti-imperial as any highborn Garlean can be. Not unlike your friend." She gave a gracious sort of nod to Priscilla, who mimed a curtsy in her trousers. "Yet while Jenomis would doubtless welcome the Riskbreakers, he does not yet know that I have reached out to you."

"You're acting alone, then."

She hesitated, her somber face drawn further into a frown, but Ashe could detect no semblance of a lie upon her features. "My summons is at the behest of a single leader of the Dalmascan Resistance: one who realizes that their movement may only succeed with the help of those with proven victories against the Empire. Even so, I am not an official member of the Resistance. Rather, I've spent the better part of twenty years feeding them information on Garlean movements... while I worked alongside a dear friend."

"Twenty years," Priscilla repeated. "And Dalmasca has been occupied for more than thirty!" She pivoted to face Ashe, hands on her hips, and let out a single nervous laugh. "I don't mean to question your methods, Ashelia - but how does one even begin to remedy such a thing?!"

And Ashe could find no fault in the question. She herself stood in silence for several moments, until she lowered her eyes to the deep purple quilt upon which Alma sat, bound in an achingly familiar whipstitch. "You take down the man responsible."

Alma nodded. "And do you know of the man responsible?"

"Legatus..." She had heard it often enough over the years, though only ever as a passing reference: over imperial broadcasts, amid extensive reports, within a magitek holding tank. "...van Gabranth."

"I have served under Legatus Noah van Gabranth for five years," Alma replied. "And in that time, not a single detail has escaped his notice. The man is strategic, ruthless - but above all else, he is devoted to order and its maintenance. He has ruled over Dalmasca as viceroy since the bell of its subjugation, and his intelligence department - the 9th Bureau - consistently outperforms the Frumentarium in every respect. Yet I happen to know that van Gabranth will soon depart Rabanastre, the seat of his order, to attend to a highly confidential mission in Valnain. What this mission is, I do not know - yet it presents the Riskbreakers with an opportunity to reach Dalmasca's capital. And after all, you do have a habit of breaking into even the most fortified locations and emerging unscathed."

The memory of her Garlean capture came to her once more with a shiver. "Not always unscathed," she murmured.

Alma stared up at her with violet eyes identical to her own. "One final supplication, then: I was never one to believe in fate, even before Ala Mhigo fell. But it has struck me so strongly that our reunion should intertwine with Dalmasca's freedom; there are coincidences that line up too well to be anything but destiny." She nodded toward the door that led out to the hall, and to the workshop beyond. "The red-haired girl whom you encountered is Alma. Her late mother, Tia. And the one who has requested that the Riskbreakers come to Dalmasca bears the moniker 'Princess Ashe' - Ashelia, after Dalmasca's heir, murdered thirty years ago."

Priscilla let out a whistle. "Whoever wrote this one really loves their parallels," she quipped. "Or maybe this is all some big faerie tale: another set of actors to finish their namesake's work. Poetic."

For the first time, a smile - sad, as though the very action pained her - crossed Alma's face. "You loved your father's faerie tales as a girl, Ashelia - though you would be forgiven for thinking less of them now." With that, Alma stood, throwing the silks across her shoulder to reveal a dark metal prosthetic arm with a hand like a claw. "Think on it. Above all else, you are Grand Steward, and you have done far more against the Empire than I ever could. If even Ala Mhigo's liberators feel themselves incapable of this task thirty years in the making, I will surely not protest otherwise."

"I'll consider any ways we might be able to contribute," Ashe promised. Her heart soared at the mere prospect of continuing the fight, of beating back the Empire ever further, of empowering others to succeed as Ala Mhigo had - but she would first need to return home, to tell her family of all that her first glimpse at Dalmasca had had to offer.

"Your mother," Alma said then, as if she had sensed her thoughts. The two words pulled her from her reverie, back to her aunt's apprehensive, tear-filled eyes. "What became of her?"

And though the answer was as painful as ever, for the first time, the answer alone did not bring Ashe to weeping.

"She has never stopped missing her sister." She glanced over her shoulder to assess her companion's reaction to the words that she knew would need to be spoken, committing her once and for all to the secrets worthy of her family. "And neither has my father."

#Ashelia Riot #Priscilla Scaevola #Phantom Pains RISK

24 notes · View notes