Chapter Text
In the first few days following your triumph over Ifrit, you realize a number of things in quick succession. The first is that you are the only person anybody knows who is capable of facing a primal without dying or being tempered. The second, what tempering actually means and why Minfilia’s mission is what it is. The third, that Thancred misinterpreted your efforts to cheer him up by asking him out on a date as an invitation to pick up women whilst club-hopping together in Mist.
You are not good at picking up women. True, there will be the rare occasion when a Roegadyn or Viera lady who towers over you will pick you up during Mist’s nighttime festivities and scritch you behind the ears just right (it’d been going so well while you and Thancred were getting drunk together, but then he wandered a different way before you could clarify the misinterpretation) but for the most part, you prefer the attentions of other men. Perhaps Thancred. Perhaps next time, the mighty Niko Kivin, slayer of gods, will be able to face his crush.
In any case, once the partying is done, Thancred goes off tracking down whoever that black-robed villain Minfilia called an Ascian is, so you try to focus on using your Echo to help Minfilia and the Scions’ efforts. This apparently involves joining an army, and joining an army apparently involves listening to a lot of speeches.
The speeches by each of the city-state leaders are ostensibly part of a memorial service for the Calamity, but they all end up sounding like patriotic rallies in the end. The two Elezen teens you run into at Gridania’s Amphitheatre make it plain they agree with your assessment, not without some small measure of disdain, and once they introduce themselves, it is apparent why. Of course relatives of the great Louisoix Leveilleur would take offense at his name being used in such a manner. Having heard tales of Louisoix growing up (not to mention the five years of helping your mother rebuild your village in the Shroud board by board post-Calamity) all you wanted to do was become a great mage like him, with the power to save those that needed it. Given how Minfilia has explained your power, the Echo is something that should be in service to Eorzea as a whole, not just one part. To take the sacrifices at Carteneau and use them to drum up support for individual city-states may not be in the best taste.
The power you have is not what you expected it would be, and you don’t know how joining an army will help to save people, but you still must do what you can, so you have to make a choice in the end. The Adders are easy to cross off the list because if you had wanted to fight for Gridanian ideals, you would not have left the Shroud the moment you had enough gil and opportunity to do so (no matter the sourness of your mother’s expression). You consider the Flames and the Maelstrom, but not for very long; you get along well enough at Ul’dah’s Thaumaturges’ Guild, but there’s just something about Limsa and its promise of freedom that calls to you. It’s not quite the same pull under your skin that you get whenever you turn a corner in the road and watch the horizon open up, but it’s close enough to do the job over the other options and the Admiral seems a charismatic and capable commander who cuts a strong figure in her coat, so that's what you pick. That, and you can earn your very own chocobo if you turn in a portion of your numerous crafting projects to the requisitions officer.
Both Minfilia and the Maelstrom are satisfied with your decision, and the chocobo truly is useful. What you spend or hoard in crafting materials (your retainer has the patience of a saint, or at least enjoys the very steady pay), you more than make up for either exchanging for company seals or selling to other adventurers, which Tataru assures you will be both more practical and profitable in the long run. The self-sufficiency that got drilled into most Keeper children born into dirt-poor villages in the Shroud didn’t escape you, so even as you begin your mission to search for the Ascian Lahabrea in southern Thanalan (Thancred has been given a different area to search. You try to contain your pouts to only the times Minfilia isn’t looking), you spend many of your spare moments honing your artisanal skills such that you can make nearly everything you wear or own instead of having to cut tail holes into every damn robe you buy.
Martial skills are also honed, of course; while thaumaturgy and the endlessly-deep well of darkness inherent to black magic remains the burning heart of your power, you also pick up the lance and the cane. Nothing quite brings the joy and satisfaction of a particularly devastating and well-timed spell, but it’s difficult to avoid the fact that you are the only person you ever go into a dungeon with who is so reliant upon others for defense or succor from the monsters within. Sometimes a man is confident enough in his powers of destruction and trusting enough of the adventurers who answered his advertisement to investigate an abandoned mine or a mansion of voidsent to keep everyone in one piece, and sometimes a man wants to stab the ten-eyed chitinous monster of the woods of his youth with a lance not to preserve friendly beastmen relations but so he can see the blood, and sometimes a man gives in to pressure and learns how to heal his own damn self so he doesn’t end up like Avere and then finds out he can’t back out because the survival of the entire Twelveswood is now dependent upon his skill as a white mage.
Fresh from a taunting by Lahabrea and still picking stray bits of diremite gore off your clothes, a moogle delivers to you a letter. Your mother writes that A-Ruhn-Senna told her all about your accomplishments healing and making peace with the sylphs, and she’s so happy you’ve finally stopped with those violent, destructive powers and accepted conjury into your heart like she did. You do not, actually, stop learning about black magic, nor do you wring A-Ruhn’s smug little neck like you want to, but you do manage to help Meffrid get a healing remedy to his comrade Gallien (dear Gallien) despite what the Hearers say. You’re pretty sure the Twelveswood does not appreciate your efforts to keep those in it alive (as with the Ala Mhigans, Gridanian Hearers are not above using the elementals as a reason to avoid helping your people, and if your mother remembered that’s why she learned conjury herself, you’d write back more often), but you bite your tongue about it because Minfilia is also linkpearling you about how Lahabrea tricked the kobolds into summoning another primal in La Noscea. For some reason, defeating Titan involves collecting an important wheel of stinky cheese with a capable team of fellow adventurers and attuning to a kobold aetheryte under Y’shtola’s careful instruction, but you do it anyway.
(Sometimes a man experiences enough pressure and frustration and sorrow that he stops biting his tongue and picks up a claymore his own damn self, but that won’t be until later. Anyway, let’s go back to the time you ran an endless list of errands for the sake of a Costa del Sol party and your reward was having to kill another god all by yourself.)
You return to the Waking Sands after your victory over Titan to find almost everyone inside the building dead. Noraxia dies in your arms. Your Echo gives you a vision of the carnage and Minfilia’s capture, and once the vision is over you move the dozen or so corpses one by one into a chocobo-drawn cart so as to bring them to the church near Drybone and lay them to rest. Alphinaud Leveilleur finds both you and amnesiac master engineer Cid Garlond at the church, and thankfully brings both news and a plan. The news is bad, namely that the Ixal have summoned Garuda, but the plan to find Cid’s airship and defeat her is probably better than anything you can come up with. He’s a bit… comfortable ordering you and Cid around (bossy, he’s bossy), but you kind of need direction right now, so you don’t mind his attitude as much as you might otherwise. Alphinaud is also alarmingly unconcerned about the very real banemite threat on the road from Fallgourd to Coerthas, but keeping him out of harm’s way is a good way to keep yourself busy while you search for Cid’s airship.
Coerthas has a lot of unfriendly and stuck-up Ishgardians in it who are all extremely obsessed with who is a heretic and who isn’t, but it also has people like Haurchefant, Francel, Alberic, and Drillemont in it, so it can’t be all bad. Haurchefant especially is so friendly and welcoming, like he knows how his other countrymen have been treating you and is trying to make up for it. Whether it’s gratitude for saving Francel from a false accusation, admiration of your deeds in Eorzea, or simply because he wants to help, Haurchefant is quick to express his confidence in your skills and lift your mood with a flirtatious joke or mug of hot cocoa, and he doesn’t mind your largely quiet demeanor save the occasional insistent pressing for information about the qualities of a perfect gratin (the creaminess of the cheese is most important, but he’s always had it with extra paprika for spice because that’s his little brother’s favorite) so you can prepare it at the Bismarck for an important dinner. You’d truly like to linger at Dragonhead for longer, but Garuda won’t wait, so you set into the Stone Vigil in search of Cid’s airship.
No one dies or gets permanently maimed, but the godsdamned paladin won’t slow down for anything despite you asking him multiple times, so you spend the entirety of your time in the Vigil sprinting and trying to heal him and trying not to cry and resolving to never ask anyone except your lancer friend back for future expeditions and to never heal in a foreign place again unless A-Ruhn gets on his knees and begs for you to do it. Once that’s over with and you’ve managed to rescue Biggs and Wedge as well, Y’shtola verbally boxes your ears until you admit that healing is still a useful skill to have when you need it, stupid paladins or no. In any case, after helping Cid gather a particularly annoying set of materials to repair his airship, you fly off with Alphinaud and Cid to Garuda’s lair while the others track down the kidnapped Scions.
You battle with Garuda until it becomes apparent that the prayers of her subjects have made her invincible. Gaius van Baelsar — the Black Wolf of the Garlean Empire — solves this problem by slaughtering all the Ixal present and using an ancient Allagan monstrosity called Ultima to consume Garuda whole. Garuda calls both Ifrit and Titan to her aid as she clashes with Ultima; you yank Alphinaud back onto the airship and shove him reflexively behind you when Ultima starts eating primals (Alphinaud yelps, but you’re shaking more than he is).
As Cid flies you back to Gridania, Alphinaud says that Ultima is a weapon van Baelsar will use to conquer Eorzea, and only the full revival of the Scions will inspire Eorzean leadership enough to make a plan to fight back. You accomplish this revival with use of possibly-aware magitek armor, clever disguises, and Alphinaud’s brilliant stratagems. You jump off a cliff into Cid’s airship and have to hold Minfilia back from falling off the ship when Lahabrea reveals he’s in league with van Baelsar and has taken control of Thancred’s body.
Because you have been smitten with Thancred since he defended you at the Sultantree, and because Minfilia has had a very bad day, you promise her that you will do everything you can to save him. By the time you reach Ul’dah’s chamber where Eorzea’s leaders debate, Minfilia is bolstered and Alphinaud has come up with another speech.
A grand plan to drive back the Empire and destroy the Ultima Weapon unfolds, with you at its center. You create the team that will be the spearhead of this operation, attacking such dangerous places as Cape Westwind, Castrum Meridianum, and of course the Praetorium itself. You remain a black mage, obviously (Kan-E-Senna thinks she’s being polite by calling you a thaumaturge or simply a mage, but we know it’s really so no one’s forced to arrest you for using “forbidden” magic); you also bring as your team the Roegadyn lancer you met while learning conjury who obliterated many a Longstop salamander while laughing her head off, the actually flawless Lalafellin warrior in pigtails whom you met in Toto-Rak, the Hyuran bard wearing exclusively pink, the Roegadyn conjurer who is also your fellow Maelstrom soldier (you actually met in Mist, but nobody has to know that except you and him), the scantily clad Miqo’te scholar who fears neither death nor Garleans nor her skirt on a windy day, the Auri paladin who is slightly insufferable but who was willing to come when no one else would answer your summons, and the Lalafellin monk who refuses to wear a real shirt because he says it distracts from his martial arts combinations.
The Westwind portion of the mission ends in a messy one-on-one duel; you don’t enjoy how things with Rhitatyn conclude, but he doesn’t give you much of a choice and you’ve got to keep advancing the plan. Cid helps your team in the Castrum as much as he’s able, though it ultimately falls to you to defeat Livia sas Junius yourself in order to gain access to the Praetorium. You know from your Echo vision that it was Livia who led the bloodbath at the Waking Sands, and though she takes offense at the mere idea of you challenging Gaius, she does not express a single hint of remorse for what she did. She is, like Rhitatyn at Westwind, ultimately no match for you, and so you lead your team on.
You fight Ultima’s engineer Nero, Eorzea’s would-be conqueror Gaius, and Ultima itself with Cid providing support over comms, but it’s Lahabrea from whom Hydaelyn must intervene to protect you. Your uncertain journey of collecting Crystals of Light from primals and communing with the star Herself in the heart of the aetherial sea reaches some sort of conclusion, and it is Hydaelyn who empowers you with the Blade of Light (it’s hard to tell if She’s referring to you or the Blade when She talks about Her Weapon) with which you banish Lahabrea from Thancred’s body. You cling to Thancred, unconscious in your lap, as you careen out of the Praetorium on Cid’s magitek armor before everything collapses around you completely. Your exertions demand convalescence or recovery for most involved, but Thancred is alive, Eorzea spared from the Garlean Empire, and the Seventh Astral Era declared begun.
People start calling you Warrior of Light.
You find you don’t enjoy celebrity and try to avoid recognition where possible. You’ll still help people as you’re able, though, whether it’s helping Alphinaud find a home for Doman refugees in Mor Dhona, thwarting Lolorito’s attempted sabotage of a dinner at the Bismarck between the Admiral and the Sultana, imploring both your alchemy teacher and Edda Blackbosom to stop raising the dead, fighting the realm’s other chosen dragoon until he comes to his senses (it won't be the last time), or tying two boats full of crystals to each other and defeating the giant sea serpent primal Leviathan. You even help Alphinaud and his sister Alisaie lay their grandfather (and your own childhood hero) to rest for good, though Urianger says it may be best if the truth of Bahamut and the Meracydians is kept to yourselves, for now.
In between missions of larger import, you meet back up with your childhood friend Nashu Mhakaracca to solve a mystery involving her missing boss Hildibrand, a pack of gentleman zombies, and a phantom thief. Hildibrand’s father Godbert turns out to be the mysterious master goldsmith you helped out at Bronze Lake while waiting for news of Titan, and you stand in awe as you watch him take out a basilisk with a hammer in nothing but his smallclothes and sunglasses. His mother is just as deadly with a frying pan as her husband is with his hammer, and Nashu, as you well recall, is never without her explosives and delights in their detonation via your fire spells. By the end of the adventure, the whole Manderville family joins in to save Ul’dah from a zombie plague; Nashu thanks you profusely (albeit briefly) before dashing off after Hildibrand as he sails through the air to lands unknown.
You also come to the conclusion that Thancred is never going to notice you. Y’shtola lends an understanding ear and reassures you that you will find someone else; Thancred unintentionally twists the knife by trying to be helpful and set you up with one of his ex-girlfriends, which is predictably awkward.
“Thancred. You inebriated idiot.” Y’shtola is not nearly as sloshed as you and Thancred are at this latest Scions party, but she’s not exactly sober, either. “Niko likes boys.”
“Huh,” Thancred says, blinking. “Really?”
You mumble somewhat glumly that you make exceptions if she’s tall, but yes.
“I had no idea,” Thancred says (obviously). “Well, I don’t have any ex-boyfriends to introduce you to… hmm. What about a lovely lady I know named Fhilwyda?” You agree because you really want this conversation to end as quickly as possible. The date isn’t anything world-shaking, but ultimately it won’t be difficult to recover from.
You continue to hope. Haurchefant is fun to tease, especially when you find out how many men it took to stop him from chasing after you when you used an experimental and therefore unstable aetheryte to fight Iceheart (Ysayle) who’d turned herself into Shiva, but you know it’s just friendly teasing in the end (it isn’t). The Temple Knight commander Aymeric is also breathtakingly handsome and already an avid follower of your exploits to boot, but his politics ultimately preclude any possible friendship (for now).
Actual romance catches you unawares, hidden from view until landing directly at your feet and demanding your full attention. Literally. He follows you unseen through the trees, challenges you to a contest he deliberately forfeits, and then jumps down from a ledge to land right in front of you.
“G’raha Tia, at your service,” he says with a grin. Rammbroes, Cid, Y’mhitra, and the others investigating everything Allagan are varying levels of amused or exasperated, but you can’t help but swoon just a little. Maybe a bit. Maybe a lot.
Y’shtola tells you nobody normal actually tries to reenact behavior found in cheesy Miqo’te romance novels, but you don’t even care. You could listen to G’raha talk about fucked up Allagan shit and the Students of Baldesion all day, and he is equally as eager to hear tales of your past adventures and your current investigation of the labyrinth surrounding the Crystal Tower. G’raha’s a bit put out that Rammbroes won’t let him help you map the labyrinth and neutralize its denizens, but it doesn’t stop the two of you talking late into the nights while watching the gloom over Mor Dhona shift purple and pink, and it doesn’t stop you from pulling G’raha into his own tent and getting to know each other in ways that don’t require as much verbal communication.
One night, G’raha asks you about the scar above and below your right eye. It shouldn’t be so easy to talk about, but you quietly explain about the time you were eleven and a diremite attacked you and your younger siblings (Twins. A girl and a boy. You tried crossing the river to get away, but they weren’t fast enough. It grabbed and ate them right in front of you. You had to return home with pieces and a slashed face, and it was on your watch, so as far as anyone else was concerned it was your fault), and he doesn’t call you a monster for it. That’s nice. You tell him you left home to become an adventurer so you’d have enough strength to keep people safe next time.
“I didn’t know it was something like that. I’m sorry for bringing up such a memory,” G’raha says gently. “But, if I can offer some consolation, I hear you sort of saved all of Eorzea.”
You tell him you mostly did what Alphinaud and Minfilia told you to do.
“I doubt those whose lives were saved care whose idea it was.” He nuzzles your cheek, and a bit of your tension disperses.
That doesn’t make the praise easy for you to handle, though, so you ask G’raha to tell you something about his childhood instead.
“About me?” G’raha asks. You voice an affirmative and begin unbraiding his hair for him, since you were both too preoccupied to do it earlier. “Well… I didn’t always live in Sharlayan. I was born in Corvos and sent away by my father when I was young, because of the Garleans.” You rub behind his ear and he sighs. “I was terribly bullied by the other children, you know, for my eye, but I still cried when I left.”
You ask him about his eye.
“My father had it, too,” G’raha says. “He said before I left that it was important, but…” he sighs again. “I am still searching to make sense of it, forgive me.” He gives you a similarly apologetic smile. “Mayhap when this business with the Crystal Tower is done, I’ll have the time to focus on other things like that.”
You tell G’raha that when the business with the Tower is done, he should go on an adventure with you.
“With you?”
It doesn’t have to be anything complicated if he doesn’t want it to be, you explain. Just a little adventure, just the two of you. You’ve gotten pretty good at healing too, so he’ll be perfectly safe, and all the Tower research and Scion business and everything else will still be there when you get back. And you could have another race, you tease, no forfeits this time.
“I…” G’raha returns your smile. “Yes, let’s have an adventure after this.” You nod. “We’ve just got to puzzle out how to get the Tower open first, and—“
You tell him you have faith he’ll figure it out, but that he should kiss you again first.
The doors to the Crystal Tower open with the arrival of Unei and Doga. You scale the Tower itself and defeat King Xande with a capable team of expert adventurers, but when the truth of the Allagan eye comes to light and Unei and Doga are captured within the void, it’s you, G’raha, Nero (of all people), and Y’mhitra who are the ones to venture into that dark world to rescue them and end the voidsent covenant threatening your realm. Unei and Doga sacrifice themselves to end the covenant and bestow the power to control the Tower upon G’raha, and your four-man-team barely escapes back to your world in one piece. Nero is somewhat worse for the wear, so Y’mhitra starts hauling him back to the camp for more intensive healing with Cid’s fretful assistance and Nero’s halfhearted protests. G’raha peels away from the group, staring out at the Crystal Tower. You follow him and ask him what he’s going to do about his eyes. G’raha tells you he’ll come up with a plan; you ask him what you can do to help, but he just kisses you once and then tells you to be patient and report to Rammbroes in the meantime. You’re a complete idiot and listen to him.
G’raha shuts himself within the Crystal Tower until such a time as technology has advanced enough that its power won’t be a danger to your world.
“The future is where my destiny awaits,” G’raha says.
You smile back and tell him you’ll wake him again soon because you know that’s what he wants you to say. He turns his head in profile and mouths something you can’t hear over his shoulder as he walks towards the throne where he will sleep, and you watch his receding back until the doors to the Tower shut between you.
You try and fail to find a moment alone at the Rising Stones.
“Niko?” Y’shtola is frowning at you, gaze sweeping over you critically. “Whatever is the matter? I thought you and Mhitra were still on the expedition. Have you hit a setback?” You awkwardly explain to her what happened at the Tower before it becomes too much and you run away to help her sister heal Nero the rest of the way because that at least is something that can be fixed. You let Alphinaud drag you into Eorzean and Coerthan missions about private armies and Garlean spies and dragon problems because all you’re expected to do there is be a Scion and kill monsters and make Alphinaud look more important. Midgardsormr cuts you off from Hydaelyn’s voice and you watch Moenbryda sacrifice herself so that you have enough aether to kill the Ascian Nabriales. Elidibus introduces himself as some sort of Ascian ambassador, apologizes for Nabriales, tries to kill you (anything but shocking at this point), insults Lahabrea, and then promptly leaves without a trace.
Ul’dah throws a party, and you watch the Sultana choke on her poisoned drink in front of your eyes, a witness in one moment and the only suspect in the next. Alphinaud’s army betrays him and locks up Raubahn, now sans one arm. Yda and Papalymo, Y’shtola and Thancred, and Minfilia stay behind in succession so that you can flee. You don’t know what Hydaelyn told Minfilia to make her stay because you can’t hear the Mothercrystal anymore. You run to Coerthas and Dragonhead with Alphinaud in tow and explain to Haurchefant in as coherent a babble as you can what happened.
You didn’t know where else to go, you tell Haurchefant. You watch Haurchefant’s eyes soften at the corners as you look up at him, and you let your hand linger when he gives you the hot cocoa. You watch Alphinaud have a minor mental breakdown hunched over in a chair and realize you don’t care what happens to Eorzea as long as you can keep him safe. Haurchefant jokes about the Falling Snows, but he also rouses Alphinaud from his morass with the words you can’t find yet and reunites you with Tataru and gets you in touch with Yugiri and the Domans. Haurchefant says he will find you asylum. You drink a lot of cocoa for at least a week straight and fuss over making Alphinaud a warmer coat. You borrow the Dragonhead kitchen and make a gratin while you wait for Haurchefant to come back from pleading your case to Count Fortemps.
Haurchefant says the gratin is delicious and that you, Alphinaud, and Tataru are to become wards of House Fortemps in Ishgard. You bundle up against the bitter cold, pass through the Gates of Judgement, and move from one part of your journey to the next.
