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What struck the Eikon Slayer as she returned to the waking sands was not the people outside of the building, or that Tataru was absent from her table. It was the familiar smell.
The one of the butcher's shed, of the process of death, of the blood draining away to be mixed again with the soil in the vegetable garden next to the house. Papa had made its work Brandon's job, lately, though anyone old enough for a knife knew the basics. Rita couldn't stand the crack of splitting joints. She had a knack for making herself scarce, when the shed was occupied.
In the wooden shack the stench escaped with the forest breeze, but in the desert the stones clung to it. No air in, no air out, the Waking Sands was built tight, tidy for it's secrets; a draftless crypt as Deidre searched the aether for something living.
There was one. She stepped around the pools of blood. Around things that once were people, but weren't now, and now would never be to her. She hadn't known them. She stepped into the solar.
Noraxia was dying. The White Mage wasn’t sure how to heal her. The Echo didn’t allow the time to figure it out. Eventually, the vision passed; but so had the Sylph.
So the Empire wanted her now. How kind of them to call.
Deidre straightened up. She had two options, as she saw it. She could go to the church, as she was told. Do as she always did. Do as what had caused this. Or she could leave. To where, however? Would the Garleans have cause to search for her if she stopped killing Primals? Would their trail go cold?
Would the Scions track her instead?
Thancred, Yda, and Y’shtola were all still unaccounted for, neither at the sands nor seen being taken away. One for each City-State. None of them were options, then, and Ishgard had cut themselves off some years ago, apparently. Deidre couldn’t imagine herself doing particularly well there anyway, unless she could contract as an instructor for Conjury. She opened the door that led to the stairs. She turned around, holding it open. She stood there. She stared at the carnage. She remembered when her father’s parents had passed. She recited Oshcon’s prayer for those travelers in the lifestream. She went on her way.
Father Iliud seemed unsure what to do to help, other than give her shelter. The man he had assigned as Deidre’s caretaker seemed even less prepared. Marques, the haunted looking man who had survived the Calamity, but never recovered. A combatant, they all assumed, based on what he remembered. He asked her where she had been when the moon fell, trying to make conversation, however grim. She’d been in the cellar with her siblings and father, and that was all she told him, but Brandon and Caelen had been doing their damndest to help her keep the little ones from crying, and there was only so much one could do to calm them with Papa sitting in the corner, casting lead for the musket their great-uncle had left when he died. When the ground had stopped cracking and the voidsent started to appear he dragged Brandon, the oldest son at barely 12, up with him and his old lance to make sure their livestock were safe. Little Rita had tugged on her sleeve and asked her if Mama would be okay, in town; if they had a cellar where she worked for all the women to hide in. Martha had cried, wishing Mama could have come home. Deidre was secretly glad she had stayed at the brothel. Having to do all of this with her and Papa arguing all the while would have helped none of them, but the twins were only five, then. They didn’t remember that Mama used to come home more often. They didn’t understand yet what it meant when she returned home with another child for Deidre to raise in her place. They thought Papa got angry because he missed her and she was having to leave them again. They understood it, now; but understanding would never really help.
They kept giving her chores, making her earn her keep, Deidre supposed. Her silence unnerved them more than Marques’ did, and with the hood of her robes up against the sun she looked like a ghost trimmed in red. When it was time to retire for the night she went down the hill to the chocobo stables, fed Baby his dinner, and curled up in the hay. Marques apologized profusely when he found her the next morning, thinking she hadn’t known they had set her up with a bed. She had assumed as much. She just wanted to spend time with her chocobo.
Eventually she was sent back to the Waking Sands to assist with transport. She looked at the eight fallen that had been left behind. She did not know the faces. She did not know anyone who may miss them. She took a deep breath.
A body alone did not a person make.
She handled the corpses with the same care as the bodies of the livestock she had raised, for they would sustain her family and serve their purpose, and these that were no longer people would still hold the memories of the living when looked upon by those who had held them dear. When she was finished, she washed her hands, and returned to the lichyard.
How the funerary rites were handled were inconsequential to her. When Marques voices his worry that someone from his past was watching him, like checking beneath the three beds and closet for voidsent or whatever horrors the little ones and sometimes Brandon had dreamed up, she went on a short patrol of the yard. Longer because this was not the bedroom of the cabin she had grown up in. Shorter, because this time, she found something.
Livingwood was sturdy. All it took was a solid blow, and with a crack the man in imperial garb crumpled, neck bent at a killing angle. Deidre took the sword as proof.
If it weren’t for the Elezen boy’s dramatic arrival, she would have assumed the man had been there for her. If it weren’t for the irritating boy’s accursed arrival, she may have gotten away.
But of course not. Garuda had been summoned. The Scions were alive in him, acting alone; and as long as they existed in any form Deidre would not know peace, until their sole weapon against the gods was sent, at last, to her death.