Crystal Advice
Serenity watches as the priestesses carry her mother's body down the steps, amazed at their sure feet. The cave is dark and the ground slippery at times, she's lost her footing at least once and the only thing she's carrying is a ring in her pocket.
Slowly, the four women at the corners of the silk stretcher reach the bottom of the small, earthen bowl. It's not a long nor steep descent; when Serenity joins them at the bottom her eyes land on the top step. Candlelight catches on the scattered glass forms ringing the steps around them, the remnants of priestesses going back centuries.
Upon their death, the women's bodies were fed into a ball of fire, which condensed them into crystalline items containing their souls. Ranging in color, shape, and size depending on the priestess, each new bit of glass, each perfectly persevered soul, joined that of her fellow priestesses in lining the dome.
Serenity looks at a particularly large, oblong piece of blue glass. Inside it, she makes out the rough shape of a priestess from long ago, her robes at least a hundred years outdated. It's not her right to pick it up and whisper a question to the glass, to get an answer back from the soul currently living in it, but any priestess could. Any one of the women carrying her mother's body.
But today, those souls are onlookers, just like the pallbearers. Within the glass, human forms flick to follow the living priestesses, to join their sisterhood regardless of death in watching the compression of a royal soul. To witness a holy ritual.
At the center of the amphitheater swirls the ball of fire. It's almost as tall as Serenity, coming up to her chin, but gives off no heat and its light barely reaches beyond the collection of souls around them. Yet, it gives off a sense of unmatched power. The closer she steps, the greater Serenity feels the need to fall into silence. No whisper, no harsh breath should leave her mouth. No step should make a noise. The desire to subjugate herself rises, to sink to her knees, but she refuses. Holy the fireball may be, but she will not allow it to bend her to its worldview.
If the priestesses struggle with the same, they show no indication. But they too are quiet, bowing their heads as they approach the ball of fire, keeping their gaze on the ground as they circle it with her mother's body. Five circles they make, and by the end of it Serenity gives in bows to relieve some of the pressure on her back.
With no warning, for how could there be a warning in a place of silence, the priestesses dip her mother's stretcher and her body slides into the ball of heatless fire.
It consumes Serenity's mother, consumes the Queen, and she lets the tears fall down her cheek. She doesn't need to say goodbye, her mother isn't gone, but what has left Serenity is seeing her mother smile. Sensing her warmth beside her as they make their daily prayer to the moon. Feeling her fingers tug Serenity's hair to braid it.
The magical fire flares bright and disappears, leaving behind a suspended, clear, red jewel.
Serenity reaches into her pocket for her newly crafted ring. Slips it on her finger. Then she delicately plucks the jewel that had formally been her mother from the air, pushing it into the waiting jewel setting.
Her first advice-jewel. The one she'd love centered in her crown, but the royal crown is filled with jewels from queens who rules many years ago. Queens who have helped rule the kingdom for centuries, whispering advice to their decedents as they sit on the throne. The only advice Serenity wants though is her mother's.
She'll wait twenty-four hours, as the magic requires, for her mother's soul to settle. But then she can whisper her question into the ring and hear her mother's response, just like her mother had listened to Serenity's grandmother.
She comes from a long line of deceased queens who still advise the living, but the question Serenity is most eager to ask, would ask every day, is "Do you know that I love you, mom?"
And every day, she knows her mom's voice will come from her soul jewel to say "yes".
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So, who are our previous incarnations? We got Tenzen as all but confirmed ... by 4 auspices and us wielding his legendary blade said to incinerate everyone else.
We have the theory of Haldrath, maybe that Padjal guy whose soulstone we have?
And my personal theory of Bardam of course.
Trying to think back through all the various history lessons we've had... We get so much random history from Eorzea but we meet so many of the characters from said history in actual form because of Shenanigans... XD
I don't think we have anyone from the War of the Magi who stands out, I think because a ton of lore was lost, and our interactions with things like Dun Scaith didn't give us much lore that was easy to jump on, or else whole civilisations were turned into immortal tonberries so we can't have been a Nymian who was present at the time. So I like to think that like Bardam, for lack of any actual lore except that she was There and has a statue, Kiribu of PotD buff fame, was one :D Thanks, past!me, for getting me through Floor 100 o7
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