Slam

“No! No! I refuse! I am not doing this right after killing that mother. Fucking. DRAGON!”

All attention from the upper floor of the free company house was drawn away at one very angry women on the bottom floor. It wasn’t odd to see people get angry for one thing or another, but if this is who they thought it was, the house might need repairs by the end of it. They heard bang come from the bottom floor, followed by something hitting the ground. Alun, her mind suddenly realizing it was sober, looked to Lucia. Both of them knew exactly what was going on.

“Darling.”

Without waiting, Shinji rushed to the sliding door, throwing it open and running downstairs. Alun followed right after, knowing just how destructive her friend could get. She had commonly heard from adventurers during travels throughout Eorzea how hard Darling was to deal with at times. Refusal to raise, taunting the enemy, things that Alun wouldn’t have expected a year or two ago. Deep down she was still Darling, Alun knew it, but stress and being overworked by everyone around her has caused the once reserved White Mage to become a quick tempered nightmare.

“Darling? You okay?” Alun called out, watching as her friend, in an unusually calm state for this situation, continuously hit her head against the counter. The materia melder behind it looked to the Au Ra, noticing a distinct lack of robe or bra currently on her. “Is the lamp alright Shinji?”

“I’ll have to ask Amy, but it looks fixable,” He said. “For twelves sake Darling, you think you can control yourself just a little bit?”

“I’ll have you know, Shinji, that this is all the control I can currently muster,” Darling replied, hitting her head one last time before letting it rest on. “I’m at my wits end with all these damn requests.”

After handing her a glass of water, Shinji and Alun waited for the others to come downstairs. Lucia was the first to make her way down, doing her best to keep her thoughts towards the Viera in her head. Bushi and Matthia followed not long after, both looking on as Darling down the glass in one gulp. Her hand slammed into the table, nearly shattering the bottom of the glass from the impact.

“So… request?” Alun asked her friend.

“Next to the lamp, torn in half,” Darling said, pointing to her right.

“Guess I’ll have to postpone trying to hook up these two,” Matthia muttered to himself as he made his way over to the fallen lamp.

Picking up both pieces of parchment, he laid them on a nearby table and aligned them next to each other. The writing was messy, rushed no doubt, meaning that whoever had given this to Darling wasn’t going to her because she was a hero, but because she was the only one that they had the chance to reach. Perhaps not exactly that, but the general idea was that the writer didn’t have time to wait around, they needed help badly. Matthia, now knowing that this wasn’t just someone looking to dump their chores on the Warrior of Light, finally focused on the actual contents of the letter.

Dear Darling Nia, the so-called Warrior of Light

Though I know you must wish for rest after your recent battle - a spectacle I was happy to watch from the snowy field outside the great bridge - I have no choice but to come to you for help. I come from a place very far from Eorzea, one not even of your realm, but I need a warrior of great strength. An old threat has come upon my people, one which your kind may know as “primals”. Me and my sister know what these primals do to those ill-equipped to fight them, and we wish to avoid losing someone in such a way. Yet I sense that you have something inside of you, something that I know for a fact can keep you safe. So, I ask of you, please help me. Please help my sister.

Luna

“Guess even otherworldly beings find you impressive, eh Darling?” Shinji jest, trying his best to lighten the Warrior of Light’s mood.

“Indeed, and how wonderful it is,” Darling replied, finally turning to meet the rest of her companions. “Don’t you just love it when people come up to you, compliment you, say your amazing, and then shove their own damn problems down your throat?! I already ruined my own day by taunting a dragon and nearly losing my favorite outfit, and now this “Luna” expects me to, what, do it again?!”

“You do realize you have the ability to say no, right?” Alun asks.

“I doesn’t work like that, Alun,” Lucia replied with a sigh. Sometimes she forgot that, despite having slayed a primal herself, the young Au Ra girl was still a novice. “Tell me, if someone said that the world was about to end and you were the only one who would save it, would you say no because you “didn’t feel like it”?”

“I… no,” Alun answered, looking to the floor in embarrassment.

“If we were to just leave a primal be, sucking up the aether around it, all life around it would be lost,” Lucia continued. “Meaning that, given what we just heard, Darling has no choice but to accept.”

“Sadly, yes.”

The addition of an unfamiliar voice drew everyone's attention to the door. There having entered without anyone noticing, was a Miqo’te slightly younger than Lucia. Her dark blue hair, round pupils, and slimmer tail told Lucia she was a Keeper of the Moon, a clan different from her own. The Miqo’te smiled to them, not noticing Matthia and Bushi’s shock at her presence. When her gaze shifted to the two, they quickly hid there reaction, the former turning to the latter.

“I’ll check the aetheryte,” Bushi says.

As Bushi moved passed the Miqo’te and out the door, Matthia finally spoke.

“Luna, I presume?”

The Miqo’te nodded in reply, and that was all Darling needed to lose her cool. Before Luna had a chance to speak, Darling grabbed her shirt and pushed her back to the door. Luna looked into the Viera’s eyes with fear, having not expected her chosen hero to act so aggressive, or at least do it this directly. Darling wanted nothing more than to punch the girl in the stomach, but she was smart enough to hold back.

Lucia was right.

She couldn’t refuse Luna’s request, not unless she wanted to sleep with the knowledge an entire world of people might die. A small part of her, one that she had only recently dealt with spoke for her to do it, but she ignored it. The letter might have enraged her, but Luna was correct about her observations. Only those with the echoes could face primals safely, and she was the most well known individual with such a gift. Even if Luna hadn’t seen her battle with Nidhogg, Darling knew that word of her actions would reach the girl eventually.

She hated having to say yes to it, but she was too sane to say no.

“I want a briefing, now!” Darling commanded, letting go of Luna and allowing the Miqo’te to slide to the floor in terror. “The name, origin, and manner of the primal. I’m not waiting till we get to your world to hear this. You want to see your people live, then you play by my roles. You understand you entitled shit?”

“Darling, your scaring her,” Alun replied. She wanted to stop her friend more directly, but she was afraid of getting to close.

“I’ll… I’ll be f-fine,” Luna stammered, getting to her feet. “A-and if those are the requirements, I th-think I can handle it.”

Darling and Luna walked over to the rest of the group, the latter suddenly aware of every glance and look directed at her. None were anywhere near as hostile as the girl in front of her, but all of them judging, and the person they belong to strange. She didn’t have much time since leaving Equestria to get a grasp of what had happened in the past many years since she and her sister first came to this land, but she knew enough. The last time she was here was moments before the third umbral calamity, and now she was in the seventh unbral era. What was merely a thousand years of time for her world was possible four or five thousand here. To see people she had never seen these Au Ra, people she had no idea existed back then, it was both curious and frightening.

“Hello Luna,” Matthia replied with a slight bow, noticing the girl’s look of discomfort. “I’m Matthia Gryffine. Now tell us about this primal.”

“R-right,” Luna nodded. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she took one last look around at the group of adventurers she had found and explained. “I guess, it would probably be best to explain how this all happened.

“About a thousand years ago, north of my home country of Equestria, there was a country known only to history as the crystal empire. It is said that, long before Equestria’s founding, the Empire was forged by a celestial being using her own body, creating the towering spiral castle in the center. Of course, as time passed and emperor and empress lived and died, some saw the crystal energy of the empire as a means to absolute power. One such individual… was a st-man named Sombra.”

Luna knew she was lying about some parts, but she was accurate in the areas that Darling had wanted her to be. These people knew nothing about Equestria, it’s citizens, or if she was even telling the truth to begin with. She was lucky at all that they seemed to believe her, and she was well enough aware at how even the mention of a world run by ponies would make anyone look insane. She just had to hope she was convincing and put more emphasis on fact than fiction. Even if that included covering up how Celestia and herself were involved in this whole mess.

“Sombra was a horrible man,” Luna continued. “For unlike all before him, he got the power he wanted. He killed the former emperor and empress, and then, with the help of a strange figure, used mind slaving helmets to make the masses bow before him.”

“Could you describe this man to us?” Lucia asked.

“Not accurately,” She lied. “You may not see or believe it, but the means by which I came to this world changed my body into that which your kind would better recognize. That said, the general description in text and history books describe him as a bipedal figure much like yourself, wearing a dark coat and hover above the ground with a mark covering his face.”

Matthia gritted his teeth at the description, recognizing it all to well from Darling and Lucia.

“I think we can discern what happened than when this Sombra enslaved the people of this empire,” Matthia respond. “While I’m curious what you mean by “bipedal figures much like yourself”,” Luna swore under her breath. Equestrians were many things, but liars was not one of them. “How much do you know about primals?”

“They feed on magic, “tamper” people to serve them till death, but that’s it. As far as we know Sombra is the only one that exists,” Luna answered.

“Here are the other bits and pieces, and considering what you’ve told us about this empire, this was bound to happen,” Matthia replied, leaning over to meet Luna at eye level. “Primals, as you are aware, feast on aether, but because these primals are no longer mortal beings they need a ton of it to even form their bodies. Here, in Eorzea, the main method used by everyone, whether they be a beast tribe or not, is crystals.”

Luna quickly caught on to what he was saying. “And if they were to have an entire city made of crystals, they wouldn’t need to gather it.”

Matthia smiled, glad to see that Luna was understanding what he was telling her.

“Of course, considering that this was a thousand years ago, I’m guessing Sombra is no longer alive,” He summarized, earning a nod from Luna. “That leaves me with two questions: how did he die, and what did you mean at the beginning when you said that there was a Crystal Empire.”

“Those two are connected, actually,” Luna explained. “Two twin sisters, rules of Equestria, personally saw to Sombra’s end. In his last dying breath, he whispered a curse on the Crystal Empire, causing it to vanish and lay in a temporal slumber for a thousand years. We were never able to save all the citizens, meaning-”

“That when it returned a thousand years later, those still enslaved, or most likely just tampered at this point, prayed for his return,” Lucia finished. “This Sombra, he is the one we’re hunting?”

Darling blinked in surprise at Lucia’s choice of words. “We?”

“You don’t think I’m not gonna take the chance to explore an entirely new world, right?” Lucia said. “Besides, you dragged me into this Warrior of Light mess, and keeping you alive is just my way of making sure all your work doesn't get dropped on me.”

“I’ll be going too,” Shinji replied. “Sounds fun. New primal, unknown dangers, bit different from knowing exactly what you are going to get fighting a giant rock beast every time the Kobolds get mad.”

“As long as she’s fine with it, sure,” Darling shrugged, walking away from the group towards her private quarters. “Why the hell not? Matthia, Alun, you two coming as well?”

“Hm, new species, new world, possibility to study an entirely new culture the likes of which Eorzea has never seen,” Matthia said to himself. “Not to mention these people will need to be prepped and prepared in the future for further possible primal encounters. Luna, I’m guessing that you’ve got some sort of connection to your worlds government, correct?” Luna nodded. “Then all I ask is some time to help tutor your generals and tacticians in how our governments handle primal threats in later instances when we aren't around.”

“I’m sure that Captain Armor would be more than relieved to have that help,” Luna replied.

“Alright, then yeah, I’ll go,” Matthia smiled mischievously.

“You already know my response, Darling,” Alun says with an child-like smile on her face.

“Then you might want to get dressed,” Darling replied. Alun’s eyes widen as she looked down, seeing that she had forgotten to put her robe back on. “I’m not waiting around. We leave as soon as everyone is packed and armed.”

“In that case, I’ll wait outside,” Luna said, bowing clumsy.

As Darling entered her quarters and Luna exited outside, Lucia, Matthia, and Shinji all looked at each other. In truth, despite having been given exactly what Darling asked for, there were pieces that Luna seemed to leave empty or missing. What sounded might sound like a slip of the tongue to most Matthia couldn’t help but see holes and contradictions. They were already trusting that this Miqo’te wasn’t just some crazy idiot who was stuck in a world of her own imagination, but one thing in particular struck them as odd.

“Who wants to bet that she’s lying about this Sombra being the only primal on there world?” Shinji asked.

“You noticed it to, huh?” Matthia said. “Sombra had to die in order to truly become a primal, nothing but Ascians live for a thousand years. Still, if he is the only primal, how does she know about their ability to drain aether? Or that such a creature can exist in the first place?”

“You think she’s in league with the Ascians like Thordan was?” Lucia asked.

Matthia sighed, upset that he couldn’t give a definitive yes or no answer.

“Only one way to find out.”

Author's Note

So... last chapter didn't show up in the update feed... that was weird. Don't really know why that happened.

Anyways, don't really have much to mention this time around. I'll probably slow down on uploading after this chapter because of college and stuff, though I don't want to abandon this story. I have a lot that I want to do with it, and we got a primal to deal with after all.

Anyways, like, comment, and give me feedback. Until next time!