Chapter Text
Bad Breath: Telegraphed conal AoE inflicting poison, nausea, slow, blind, heavy, silence, and paralysis.
At seventeen, Thancred’s life intersected with that of the Songstress of Ul'dah, a goobbue, and a young hyuran girl who'd just lost her father. Just seventeen. Young enough to make foolish mistakes, yet old enough to know his ignorance was no excuse - and that he'd be carrying the weight of the consequences through his lifetime. He thought of those moments often, not always by choice - a flash of F’lhaminn’s smile in the twirl of dancers welcoming travelers through the Ruby Road Exchange, even though he knew all of their names. The phantom smell of iron when he would pass the street where Minfilia’s father, Warburton, had saved his daughter’s life amidst a rainstorm of blossoms, though the blood had long since been cleared from the stonework.
The events of that day tied him to Ul’dah ever since: Ul’dah, her people, Minfilia and her grief, F’lhaminn and hers. And in the wake of their sorrows, loss, regret and guilt forever wove themselves around Thancred’s heart. He could never be Warburton to Minfilia nor Nielle to F’lhaminn, but he could be a guardian and an ally. And a friend, on a good day.
The day of the parade all those years ago was among the defining moments that made him Thancred Waters, as sure as a stream trying to find its way back to the sea. Stealing from Louisoix as a boy, the day of the parade, and… well, meeting the Warrior of Light.
Canto had been discovered in the Shroud, and as such, he’d been vouched for by Papalymo, who described a young miqo’te archer with the ink still fresh from signing his name at the adventurer’s guild. Yda too had taken an instant liking, and though Thancred trusted them both, it was his job to test their new member’s mettle and his integrity. He had yet to see their new member fight, and more than that, he needed to know he’d uphold the values Louisoix had encouraged in all of their members. That was why Minfilia had tasked him with Canto’s first mission, leading to the unfortunate events of the battle with Ifrit.
On the outset, Canto had seemed a little too green, a little too joyful about adventuring to understand what being gifted the Echo really meant. But then - that moment - after the battle, when Thancred revealed the fate of the soldiers that had been tempered, he’d seen something in Canto’s expression, a flurry of emotions that only flashed through his green eyes briefly before they flattened into a detached schooling Thancred had seen in too many warriors in his lifetime. Canto’s steps squared as he walked away, and Thancred knew: Canto had been military. And suddenly the story of the scar across his eye, the others Thancred had clocked on his arms and back as they’d traveled together, began to make more sense.
Considering his age, ten years his junior, Thancred hoped he was wrong, but he knew in his heart he wasn’t. He confirmed it later, scouring Gridanian records for his name among the Serpent soldiers at Carteneau, but finding it only once he made it to the casualties list - those that Kan-E-Senna and the conjurer’s guild had found on the battlefield and rescued. V’canto Tia, wearing not Serpent colors, but Flame charcoal blue.
Carteneau had taken much from all of them. But not it seemed, the warrior’s smile, not entirely.
Canto had grown in his time healing after the Calamity. Thancred had never asked about the records he found - it was improper- but Canto introduced himself with the breath of the free, and not with the loneliness Thancred came to expect from someone he knew once used a clan letter. He was someone that found joy in living, despite what he'd seen at Carteneau, despite whatever happened between him and his clan, despite being made to become a weapon, and despite their losses between the tempered and the Scions. Canto felt his grief keenly, but he didn't let it stop him from remaining steadfast and grateful. He still kept an outward smile, would crack a joke at Thancred's expense, ruffle the hair on Alphinaud's hair and try to tame the lad’s flyaways, roll his eyes at Yda while the scholarly of their group could drone on in their lectures.
Overtime, Thancred saw how Canto eased into their number like family, and how they’d started to fill the same void. He saw how opening himself to his songs, to his creative spark, helped him become a better fighter. His smile could move the heart of nations and he had a determination that inspired armies. No matter how many fights he was faced with, he'd steel his resolve, prevail, and come back with a story to tell and song to sing. Then, for all Thancred’s own failures: Canto had believed in him. He'd saved his life. He could've left him there in the Praetorium, the pawn of an Ascian, beaten and bloodied, but Canto had had hope for this old man still.
Thancred owed him everything.
And so, with the Scions gathered at the Rising Stones, F’lhaminn smiling while drying a glass behind the bar, and their Doman friends laughing at some joke or another, Thancred breathed a bit easier at the paths that had led them here. Canto himself had gone into the Solar about half a bell ago, called in by the Antecedent no doubt. Or maybe Alphinaud as well, if there was any Braves business about that Thancred may have missed in his late awakening that morning. Their rising diplomat had been quick to accept Canto's offer to help with the Crystal Braves. Thancred would admit, he felt more comfortable with Canto in their mix. He'd feel more comfortable if his precocious nephew stopped talking about their friend like a weapon to be pointed in any direction he pleased, and if Canto would act more himself to fight him on it.
The source of which… he should find out.
“You are distracted, Thancred,” Y’shtola prodded beside him. “I would like to read Canto’s report sometime this year if you would be so kind.” She did not look towards him as she spoke, her eyes locked on her own report, but he could tell from the tilt at the corner of her smile that she was joking with him - mostly.
“You have my deepest regrets, my lady.”
Thancred had asked Minfilia if he could be the first, even hearing through the Mor Dhonan grapevine that the Void was involved and knowing it would peeve Y’shtola to be second to learn anything.
“Oh, I most certainly do,” she hummed, taking a drink of the water in her glass before setting it back down again. Her sarcastic tone met his lack of sympathy in their usual comfortable banter.
He shook his head at her fondly and picked up the first page he’d left abandoned on the table during his musings - a first-hand account of Canto’s consultation with the Sons of Saint Coinach, and the details of the expedition of the Crystal Tower. It had been awhile since he enjoyed scholarly pursuits, as his skillset was better served in the field. But he’d earned his Archon marks all the same. Plus, this particular report excited him, not just because it was Canto’s and contained details on the Void, but also because the expedition had been the first mission he’d seen Canto choose for himself, spending just as much time at the camp nearby as he did on missions for the Scions, and it had certainly brought him joy.
As he began reading again, taking in Canto’s looping scrawl, the man himself marched himself from the Solar, passing all of them with a quiet nod, Minfilia following on his heels. They both smiled at their friends, but where Minfilia stopped once beckoned over by Tataru, Canto kept moving towards the public bar and out into the Mor Dhonan sky.
That had been a forced smile if he ever saw one.
Thancred was good at what he did because he was a worrier, and worrying gave him a unique insight into people, their body language, and the most obscure of clues to reveal their hearts. Mostly he worried about people, about the Scions, and whether he was doing enough to honor Louisoix's legacy (he wasn't and he could never). He worried about Eorzea - Ul'dah and the delicate state of her affairs, the health of her refugees, and those helpless to the dark pull of the worst of society, of which he knew all too well. He worried about Minfilia's forgiveness, even after all these years, about his honorary niece and nephew on unique journeys of their own.
But in that moment, either from being able to read Minfilia or being able to read Canto, he mostly worried about the Warrior of Light. Their friend.
“Minfilia?” Thancred called, placing the report back on the table and standing to join her at her side. “Where is Canto headed?” From his peripheral vision he saw Y’shtola snatch up his papers for herself.
“Truly, I do not know,” Minfilia answered, her concern deepening. “I told him to rest.” The disappointment in her smile cut him through the chest, an all too recent reminder of when that expression had been pointed in his direction, toward his failures.
He nodded. “I’ll catch up to him.”
Minfilia's tension visibly eased, which Thancred considered at least a good sign towards the Antecedent’s continued trust in him. This at least he could do. Tailing someone was his specialty, after all.
Thancred turned to head out to the public bar and the Aetheryte plaza in pursuit. Half expecting Canto to have started making his way either left towards town and Coerthas or right towards the Coinach camp, Thancred stopped short once he exited the Rising Stones.
Canto was still in the middle of the plaza. Distracted, the miqo’te hadn’t noticed him, his green eyes locked in the distance to the crystal spire that pierced through the clouds in a jagged tear across the sky. As small statured as he was (even by miqo’te standards), he exuded strength in his silhouette. Untouchable, especially with his gaze cast up towards the clouds.
And so Thancred hid in familiar shadows while he watched. And waited.
The Warrior didn’t move immediately, one hand clenched around the hilt of the knife at his hip. The other he pressed into his chest, fingers curling dangerously as if to claw at his own skin, before he suddenly realized he’d drawn blood and forced himself to relax. Thancred could see the strain it took to do so, the white around Canto’s knuckles receding as he squared his shoulders.
The look of horror slowly faded from his friend's face as he mumbled angrily to himself, and it was only Thancred's expertise at observation that he caught enough words on Canto's lips to deduce a location within the decisive nod.
What business did Canto have in Quarrymill, he wondered, even as Canto disappeared in a swirl of purple magics.
Thancred prepared to follow. As was standard across Aetheryte travel, for those that had the fortitude for it, a fee would be collected in the final destination, scaled based on the distance from the starting locale. Thancred pre-prepared 350g knowing that the amount would be more than sufficient for their proximity to the Black Shroud, as well as the cost to buy himself discretion upon arrival.
Thancred reached out to his memory of the Shroud and felt the aether pull in his gut as he was enveloped by purple magics of his own.
Thancred arrived among the trees, immediately inundated with the smell of sap and of the sweat that clung to the air. Silently, he exchanged his travel fare and took in his surroundings here in Quarrymill where he had not been for quite a long time.
He'd take the dry heat of golden Ul'dah over the Gridanian humidity any day. Even his hometown of Limsa would be a relief. As close as she was to the sea, there was freedom in her air, a fluid breeze that carried the mist home. Here in the Shroud, the air was thick, lingering in his lungs with every breath - clean and earthy, as if the trees longed to make sure they wouldn't be forgotten to those protected within their foliage.
Thancred understood how the land provided for those that dwelled in the Twelveswood. He felt sticky in his skin all the same, hating the way his tunic clung to the slope of his back.
There was a reason he preferred being assigned to Ul’dah.
The South Shroud's primary challenges were the bandits that frequented trade routes, occasional disputes with the Duskwights, and sometimes the Keeper tribes that refused to abide by the hunting edicts that maintained the balance between the people of the Shroud and the elementals. Stationed in town were a few more Wood Wailer postings than he remembered, and this far from the main city too. One of the Padjal was there also, with striking green eyes and his small horns revealed between strands of dark purple hair. There was a severity in his expression through the youth of his features. Thancred knew better than to judge the man by the age he appeared, as the Padjal could live long into their hundreds in bodies seemingly frozen in time. The man could be anywhere between the fourteen years of age he appeared and many centuries. Thancred knew better than to roll the dice on that gamble.
Two Wood Wailers in particular seemed to be part of his contingent, a plain-looking elezen woman and a blue haired hyur who looked to be the expeditionary captain, currently arguing with the Warrior of Light.
Now that he’d arrived after Canto, Thancred realized this must be the group responsible for the exploration of the Gelmorran ruins in the cave structure below the Shroud. Thancred had heard they desired the aid of the Warrior of Light to clear the places of its dangers, though he doubted Canto had had a chance. Minfilia also hadn’t received any reports of Canto’s progress, and though it wasn’t required for their members to submit personal endeavors to the Scion’s archives, uncovering the history of Gelmorra certainly qualified as benefitting their understanding of Eorzea at large. As had the Allagan tower of crystal.
No, more likely that this was the first time Canto had joined their number, and the lack of familiarity was palpable. While their voices raised, Thancred hid himself, leaning on the opposite side of the Aetheryte where he could see, but not be seen. He’d given the gil collector enough additional coin to warrant his silence.
“You wanted my help,” Canto was saying. “So let me!” his vanilla white tail flicked with impatience.
“Expedition parties enter in teams of four here. There are dangers in the cavernous depths you do not understand yet, adventurer,” the man said. “I cannot let you venture in on your own.”
“I am plenty capable.”
“It’s an unnecessary risk. Wait for others to answer our missive, or find some companions. With a healer among them if you’d prefer to stay alive.”
Thancred held back a laugh.
“I can go on my own,” Canto growled. Actually, growled, the words rumbling deep from his chest. “I’d think the Warrior of Light would be plenty able to clear your caves, Captain.”
That stole his breath. It was unlike the young man Thancred knew to use the title he’d been given in such a way that belittled others. While Canto had happily accepted his role to help Eorzea, Thancred had never once heard him refer to himself as the Warrior of Light, and especially not to express power over others or get his own way.
“You’re the -?”
“Warrior of Light, yes,” - then quietly, realizing how he'd spoken - “so they tell me.”
Ah, there it was. Thancred could hear the miqo’te’s shoulders deflating in the uncomfortable silence.
It seemed to work. The expedition Captain finally backed down from his refusals and offered Canto an update on the excavation, some of what they’d learned early in their dig but also what kind of monsters he could expect. Unfortunately, they had not been able to fully clear the first floors below. This was all shared while escorting Canto to the site. The entrance to the ruins was a small trek from Quarrymill, through the Upper Paths and to the west of Buscarron’s Druthers. Not quite ready to reveal himself, Thancred kept himself hidden until after they reached Issom-Har, keeping his feet light and trailing behind until after Canto had disappeared into the caves below.
“I’ll be going down with him,” he told the Captain as he stepped out of the shadows.
“Yer not here to kill him, are you?” His eyes narrowed.
Thancred raised an eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m here to kill him?” Do I look like I could? A compliment, really.
Sufficiently schooled enough for one day about misjudging others, the man’s eyes widened in surprise and recognition at the tattoos at Thancred's neck. Eorzea’s worst kept secret, indeed. And honestly, for as proud of his Archon marks as he was, a symbol becoming increasingly familiar was a liability in Thancred’s line of work. Unfortunately, it had been made to him clear by his mentors: he would not be able to undo years of tradition for secrecy. He could find ways to spy with them, or he wouldn't receive them at all. It hadn’t been a choice at all really, and Thancred did so love a challenge.
The man gestured towards the opening of the cave structure. “Try not to die.”
“I won’t.”
He let the Captain decide if his words had been confidence or dismissal; he’d lingered long enough and he had a friend to follow.
In a place that was essentially a descending maze of ruins and cave structures, you would think it would be difficult to find one another, and Thancred did worry for a moment that he’d tarried too long and let his trail go cold. However, thinking himself alone and not at all fearful of the creatures within, Canto’s trail was a metallic echo of knives and a path of blood and ichor left in his wake. Easy to follow by sound or by sight. Keeping his steps light against the stonework, Thancred caught up to him by the time Canto had almost cleared the second floor, and he had to step gingerly over the remains of antelopes and deathmice infesting the ground-sunken halls to avoid his boots squelching in the gore and giving away his position.
A wandering ziz approaching the adjacent room where Thancred could hear Canto dealing with the enemies inside swiftly found Thancred’s knife in its neck. The warrior could have very well dealt with it himself, but allowing him to do so risked him doubling back - and he was moving too fast through the halls, too fast for Thancred to stay truly hidden as he’d been on the surface. He wouldn’t let a wandering creature give him away. The creature’s eyes glazed as it fell, the thud loud to Thancred’s ears - and he winced, waiting to see if it had been heard - but the fighting in the other room had yet to end.
Through the other floors, Canto moved through the space with haste, an admirable ease in his fighting forms. He wasn’t using his whole kit - and not a murmur yet of the adjacent rogue skills like Yugiri’s - but he also didn’t need to. Most enemies were dispatched with just one or two slashes from his knives.
That was one of the changes Thancred noticed. The knives were new. Not the knives themselves; they were the same as the ones he’d seen Canto using for awhile - he’d been on the other side of them even, during a sparring session or two in the past few weeks. It wasn’t even that Canto didn’t usually use his knives; he did, depending on the situation. And this certainly seemed to qualify as a task that could have benefitted either way, whether it be the sharp edge of a blade or the point of his arrows.
No, what made the knives new was that Thancred hadn’t caught a whisper of Canto’s usual bow and arrow over the past few weeks. Presumably they were somewhere in the warrior’s effects, but the weapons that had carried him through Carteneau, and which he’d taken up as an adventurer, were nowhere to be seen, despite that they were skills he’d known all his life. Despite that Canto had a creative soul, not just in the bardic song only just recently woven into his skills, but also the tender touch as he fletched his arrows and the inquisitive tilt of his head as he listened attentively to artisans trading their wares.
Something was different.
Something they’d missed caused Canto to set aside his bow, and his songs, and his smile. And if Thancred was right - and he usually was about these sorts of things - whatever had tightened Canto’s fist around his chest staring at the tower of Crystal may also be the reason their warrior, their hope for the future, seemed to have detached himself from what made him happiest. Maybe if Thancred kept reading the report he’d left on the table he would’ve uncovered more. But he’d learned long ago to trust his hunches, and something told him he'd learn more by following.
From these first floors alone, Thancred knew a few things. First, Canto still had yet to realize he was being followed; while Thancred was willing to accept it as a testament to his own skills, his concern that Canto was distracted enough to leave himself vulnerable overrode the voice of his ego. Second, these were not the careful maneuvers of a strategic approach. Canto was moving much too fast for that, the injuries on his quarry too frantic to be precise. He may have been asked to help clear the ruins, but Canto’s purpose was not in history or excavation.
This was fighting for fighting’s sake, frantic and desperate. And, potentially, if left unchecked, exceedingly reckless.
Thancred frowned. He had a decision to make - he could reveal himself and either help or put a stop to the slaughter entirely. He could turn back, trusting the warrior to know his own outlets and limitations. That trust in the Warrior won in the end. As much as Thancred knew proceeding held unknown dangers, he remembered the pain he observed and ached for his friend’s struggles. For whatever reason, Canto needed this…
Maybe Thancred just understood, just a little bit, the instinct to step into the darkness and attack something in place of yourself. Even if he hated this for Canto. But he would remain a silent protector watching their flank from the shadows for however long they’d be here.
Eventually the damp brick and stone, broken where the pillared ruins shared their space with tree roots and the kinds of flora that flourished in coolness and shade, revealed the deep caverns below, a maze of rock lit only by the soft green crystal that glowed from within. Minfilia would’ve known the exact type of gemstone or mineral - something like malachite or jade, he ventured to guess, though he was no miner. Almost as common as the grey rock itself, the glow of the crystals lit their way forward even as they cast the Warrior of Light’s golden complexion through the gloom to become sallow in the low light.
Thancred watched him closely as he moved through the musty rooms, the air turning dank with the dead seedkin that frequented these corners of the deep. Sometimes Canto would double back to find the next passageways down, his hunt bringing him close enough to Thancred’s hiding spots for the spymaster to observe the tightness in his friends’ jaw, the lightlessness in his eyes, the blood and ichor covering his arms, smeared across his face, speckling his hair for the proximity to the deaths he’d dealt. Canto was a picture of ferocity, and still he yet hunted.
Phantom green orbs of light danced in his vision as Thancred shut his eyes and attuned himself instead to what he could hear of his friend’s fight nearby. The fight no longer seemed effortless, four slashes, then five. The creatures too had continued to change down here in the depths, no longer just bats and beastkin, but sticky-tongued toads and other water-based creatures, vines and roots grown ambulatory, cobras large enough to swallow them whole dragging their bodies over wet rock as they patrolled. Each monster felled died with a sickly squelch. Footsteps. Canto’s heavy breathing. The earthy hobbling of wandering roots - a biloko.
Thancred’s eyes shot open!
He’d let Canto get too far ahead of him, and the sinking he felt in his stomach told him that biloko was heading right for him. A familiar feeling - one that kept him alive. The one that warned him of danger. Fear. Instinct.
From a distant corridor, he heard it.
A howl of pain and panic.
Thancred raced towards it, surrendering himself to his base instincts - protect, save, survive.
When he rounded the corner, he saw Canto overwhelmed: two morbols and the biloko approaching from his flank. Although Thancred sent a dagger towards the monstrous roots to try to gain its attention as he ran towards the fray, the biloko, focused and angry, brought its thick arm down onto Canto’s exposed back before Thancred could make it. The miqo’te’s breath caught in a suffocating groan and he turned and fought back widely to take the biloko down before it attacked again.
Thancred launched himself at one of the morbols while its attention was on Canto, sinking his blades into the tender spots between vining tentacles to fell it quickly before it could expel its noxious gases.
“Ugh, who’s th-?” The words cut off with a choke as he froze. “K-key?”
Thancred spun on his heel, hearing his friend drop to his knees and the blades clatter against rock. There was still one more morbol between them, lashing out at what it deemed easy prey. Canto slowly raised his arm to protect his head, wincing as the attacks made contact, his eyes glassy and unseeing, as he scrambled with his other hand to find one of the knives he’d dropped.
Thancred had little time to spare. Before he’d arrived, Canto hadn’t made it out of the morbol’s attack. He’d gotten poisoned with it, been blinded, that much was obvious now. And once again Thancred had been too late. But no more; he was here now.
Thancred could see what Canto could not - it was preparing again to release its poisonous fumes.
Thancred dove for him, rolling them both out of the path of the foul air, coughing where it teased his lungs. The creature was not long for this world, still intent on Canto, but Thancred came up behind it and dispatched it as efficiently as he’d done the first. Its branches broke under Thancred’s feet as he returned to check on his fellow Scion where he’d left him trembling on the ground.
“...key,” Canto said again, most lost in the heave of his breath.
“I shall look for it,” Thancred assured him as he eased him upright and against the wall to help his heaving. “But now’s not the time.” He reached for his shoulders and squeezed.
Slowly, Canto reached up to squeeze back, blinking rapidly. “Thancred.”
“Aye. What happened, Canto?”
“I-I don’t… I dodged it. There… there was one, and then…” Thancred for his wrist as Canto answered, sensing the rising panic mirrored in the racing of his heart. “Oh gods, the smell. I can’t, I can’t.”
“You can.”
“Thanc-”
“It’s gone now. Just breathe, kid.” He sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly, calmly, for Canto’s benefit. Then, he repeated until he felt Canto’s panic had settled enough to accept what little aid he could offer. He was no healer, but he had at least a few healing potions in his pack, plus a concoction that could help with the nausea at least, antidotes to ease the symptoms but not cure them entirely. It would be some time before Canto felt clear of the effects.
There were morbols close to their new headquarters too, though Revenant’s Toll was still a distance from the Tangle. He’d warned them not to get too close to breath attacks. Canto had his miqo’te senses working against him, loss of sight and a hyper sensitivity to smell making the hit all the more debilitating. But it still would’ve felled a lesser adventurer, one without Canto’s constitution. One without the blessing of light.
Once the adrenaline rush faded, Thancred brought a healing potion to Canto's lips and wrapped where the injuries remained.
“I want to go home,” the warrior mumbled, grunting as Thancred pulled the binding tighter around his wounded arm.
“No, we are not teleporting with you like this.”
Canto shook his head. “No, not - ugh - please help me get topside.”
It was a struggle getting to the surface, but at least on the return journey Thancred had a decent memory of the paths that would lead them back and most of the residents had been culled. He kept his hand on Canto’s elbow to keep him steady, but when the miqo’te weariness caught up to him, he eventually agreed to let Thancred carry him on his back.
“Still having trouble seeing?”
Against his shoulder, Canto nodded. “Blurry. Shades”
“We approach Issom-Har. It will still be daylight.” Canto hummed in response. “‘Twould be best to cover your eyes from the sun. Just in case.”
They reached the top, the stale air of the ruins below replaced with the welcoming aroma of fresh leaves and grass. Both of them breathed in relief. Though Thancred could no longer see Canto’s eyes, tear tracks peeked through the bottom of the blinder he’d affixed to protect them. He looked rougher in the light. The worst of the injuries were hidden behind field bandages, but that still left the blood caked on his skin.
Canto noticed it too.
“River,” he said. “I need the worst of this off. Then - home.” He brought his fingers to his lips and whistled. Quite shrill too, Thancred thought, for someone left as breathless as he was. “Coda will know the way.”
Then, just as a friendly chocobo came bounding to them through the trees, Canto promptly passed out in Thancred’s arms.