Thoughts from the Otherworld

I think our hunting trip aiming to take down cockatrices in Meriphataud Mountains did not go too well even after we had managed to find out their general location from other people who had hunted them before. Those particular beasts seem to be more than a little rare, and both I and Kii Kalira were more than a little frustrated about aimlessly wandering about the right area, trying to find even one. I do think, however, that for Kii Kalira it was somewhat more frustrating than it was for me. After more than half a day of futilely trying to track down one of these beasts, she at one point started shouting whatever came to her mind, saying she was trying to attract cockatrices.
...I do not know if her preposterous words worked or if it was a mere coincidence, but afterwards we did manage to find several nesting on a cliff. Several was all we needed, although taking them down proved to be a bit more arduous task than we thought beforehands. Cockatrices are known for their ability to petrify anyone who looks at them for too long, and while we were prepared for this, it did present trouble. Nevertheless, we did manage to take them down and obtained quite a few feathers to sell in Windurst. They use them to decorate hats there, and the going price was worth the little hunting I think.

Once we had reached Windurst Kii Kalira received summons to the Heavens Tower for a mission from her country. It has been a while since her last summons, and this time her mission proved to be unexpectedly important, not to mention hard to complete in practice. Kii Kalira wasn't too clear on the details, but from what I gathered it was to strengthen some seal put on Castle Zvahl. The location of the seal is close by, in the underground maze of the Horutoto Ruins, so at first we thought this to be a walk-in walk-out type of mission. However, turns out that there is a gate difficult to open on the way to the location of the seal. Before the gate there are magic glyphs on the floor, and to open it you must either have an unlocking charm, or three mages, one of every major school of magic, standing upon the glyphs and channeling their energy into it. While we naturally had both white and red magic covered, this left us in want of a black mage. Thankfully a friend of Kii Kalira's was present in Windurst and was willing to help us out, thus letting us into this deeper part of the ruins. The process of unlocking the gate was surprisingly impressive. I wonder what is behind the locked doors behind this gate? We could not access all the areas there, and neither did we have time to look around much.
The area was full of skeleton-type undead. I suppose this was to be expected, but what we weren't prepared for was the relative strength of these ones. Who knows how long they had been there, fighting against each other, gathering strength to assault the next person to enter... After some struggling, Kii Kalira did manage to follow her orders, and we warped back out to Windurst once done. She intend to now acquire the charm required to open the gate without the presence of three mages of different schools, and is rather annoyed that the person who gave her the mission didn't give it out for free to her when she received the mission.

Upon our return from Elshimo Island not too long ago, we made the decision to go hunt for cockatrices in Meriphataud Mountains. The area being only superficially familiar to us from several trips to gather various items needed and numerous passings on chocobo-back on the way to Jeuno, we decided to look around the more remote parts of the region in order to familiarize ourselves with it a bit more. Not to mention that while we had heard cockatrices were present in the area, we hadn't heard where exactly to find these creatures. So we took it upon ourselves to head north.

This proved easier said than done, for high mountain ridges were facing us in most every direction. But luck was with us, for upon reaching the very eastern parts of the area we managed to find a pass north. What was before us I could not have imagined. It was a wondrous forest full of ancient trees - some wider than a house at their base - and mysterious stone or crystal formations gently glowing purple at their tips. I wonder what stone exactly they are, they seem like they could be very valuable. Not that any decent being would have the heart to cut out these stones, they are truly magnificent.
The forest was not only home to magnificent natural phenomena, but strong monsters. Coming into the forest from Meriphataud it did not seem too bad, but upon encountering a peculiar species of blue leech and a being that I later identified as a golem, we made the decision to turn back and head to Jeuno to find more information, both about cockatrices and about this mysterious forest we ended up in. I think this was a wise decision. Looking through maps upon our return I discovered that the area we ended up in is called the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, and it is relatively famous among scholars for housing incredibly ancient constructs and dangerous monsters the like of which cannot be found elsewhere on Mindartia. In this light, turning back was a wise decision indeed.

Having returned from our unplanned trip to Zi'Tah, we encountered a most curious hume who pushed upon us a task of advertising for his company from Aht Urhgan, the Salaheem's Sentinels. Why all this talk about Aht Urhgan recently?
He did not really give us a chance to refuse his request, so somehow we ended up walking all over Jeuno, advertising this company we knew nothing about. For our troubles, we only both obtained reference cards to the company headquarters in the - or rather, a - capital of Aht Urhgan. I suppose I should be thankful he was willing to reward us even with such an apparently useless thing.

The Eldieme Necropolis, once more widely known as the Coveffe Barrows. As a once-sacred resting place of the dead, more recently haunted by restless souls of the fallen in the Great War, I was naturally hesitant to enter the place, even for the brief time required to burn the incense given by the pilgrim friar in Windurst. Nevertheless, in we went. I am still glad we were not required to go in further, there is something about knowing that the place used to be a peaceful place for my ancestors to end their journey on Vana'diel, and comparing that image to the present-day situation that makes me extremely reluctant to even approach the place.
The burning incense meant to ease the spirits of the dead looked pitiful burning in the depths of the darkness of the necropolis, and I must admit that the scent was not too pleasant. Once we reported this to the friar however, he merely stated he would continue his studies on the matter and gave us a reference letter for friar Eperdud in the Cathedral. This was most unexpected, and we had already made plans to head to Kazham and its jungles after this, going so far as to bond with the home crystal in Lower Jeuno to facilitate our swift return, our intention to take the first airship to Elshimo Island after reporting on this matter. Thankfully, it appears that the letter is not urgent and can be turned in after our journey to the jungles of Elshimo.

Thankful for this small gesture of understanding, we headed to Jeuno where we were momentarily held up by a somewhat alluring offer. It appears that there is a rather similar offer to the Kazham airship pass one, but this to earn a ferry pass authorizing passage to Aht Urhgan, the nation on the eastern continent of Aradjiah. It was most interesting, and we discussed obtaining the items required for this pass with Kii Kalira, but decided we have neither time nor interest to head to the Near East for the moment. I wonder how long this offer stands.

We are now headed towards Kazham as planned, and will reach the city by nightfall. This time, we intend to see what the jungles have to offer for us.

Being able to attune your own energy to many different strong energy sources is a blessing of kinds. For this purpose, recently I and Kii Kalira have been practicing our skills in fighting differently from our usual ways. It started with Kii Kalira's fascination with the art of summoning finally overcoming her good sense after arriving in Windurst this time. I think I will be content in the knowledge it is possible for me to summon Carbuncle to aid me should I so wish, I have no intention of making use of such a skill. Indeed, I think I might rest easier knowing I had no such skill, for it is one forbidden long ago.
Yet I cannot judge her for being curious about it. I think she has a bond of kinds with Carbuncle that I do not have. I suppose that comes naturally with fighting with him by your side for longer periods of time.

While Kii Kalira was busy experimenting with the art of summoning, I took it upon myself to practice my physical fighting skills. I have known the very basics of hand to hand fighting for some time now, and since I now had the extra time on my hands I decided to try it out further. I think I've gained many skills in this relatively short time, and once Kii Kalira realized what I had been doing we ended up teaming up to see how the combination of a physical attacker would work with a mage aided by Carbuncle. It works surprisingly well, and we were able to take down opponents we could not have taken at this level of experience on our usual battle styles. I think our knowledge of battle and our adversaries made a difference in this, too.

I think we may be talked about in the Cathedral, and much more than I thought. After completing a task for friar Eperdur in Cathedral proper and arriving in Windurst, we heard word that a pilgrim friar had been asking if we had been in Windurst lately. Not wanting to keep a friar in waiting, we made haste to his reported location, and did indeed find him. He had a rather similar request for us, to place some spirit incense in a fire in Eldieme Necropolis.
We have never been to the Necropolis, and the stories I have heard of it are not too encouraging. Thankfully by his words we do not have to venture in too deep, so we agreed to burn this incense. It is for the purpose of calming the dead after all, and as such a good deed.

Gusgen Mines...I had no idea things were so bad deep inside. When we visited the place last year we only went a little ways in, just enough to see the hordes of undead that had made residence in the mines. It turns out that undead are not the only ones that call those mines home, but there are more than enough common ghosts in there. I think these might be the actual dead miners from when the place was still in use.
It is highly unsettling. Walking around in the mines, you see strange and unexplainable lights, hear voices and laughter the person beside you might not hear, see visions of horribly disfigured people that appear out of nowhere right beside you, and disappear just as quickly. And as if that was not enough to make Gusgen a truly inhospitable place, once you enter the deepest parts of the mine it appears to be almost impossible to get out. Once we entered, no matter how we tried we could not find the way out - tunnels that seemingly lead towards the exit mysteriously led past it. We could only longingly gaze down at the exit hub far down below, when we managed to find even that. The tunnel you could see it from was entirely too high to attempt descending, however.
I do not ever wish to enter that deep in to the mines again. Once we ascertained that something in the mines was preventing us from getting out the normal way, we took it upon ourselves to cast Warp upon ourselves. It is a good thing indeed that the spell worked, if not we would likely still be stuck within the mines, lost.

While I suppose it was a good thing we Warped, I wonder why we did not do it immediately upon replacing the old seal of banishing with the new one once we found it. We would have done that soon anyway, as it is the overwhelmingly fastest way to return to San d'Oria to report on the completion of the task we were given. Friar Eperdur who gave us this task was gracious enough to reward us with a rare spell, that of Teleport-Holla. Somehow, this magic homes in on one of the crystals at the Crag of Holla in La Theine Plateau, and transports the caster and possibly several others to that exact point, no matter where in the world they were before. I have heard of teleporting before - indeed, have used a kind of teleporting they offer for some cost to every San d'Orian citizen that wishes to use it - but we did not have access to such spells before.
I do not think I can use this spell for quite some time as it requires rather advanced skills with white magic, but Kii Kalira has the required skills and more. This is truly a gift from the Goddess, and will undoubtedly ease our traveling quite a bit. I cannot help but wonder if we would be able to obtain similar spells for other crystals in the world.

I think all that researching and synthesis I did in Bastok left Kii Kalira slightly bored. Hardly had I finished my business as she insisted we go hunt for treasures. I did not know what exactly she had in mind, though, and I think I mgiht not have agreed to this had I known beforehands where we were heading to. She had heard somewhere that the tomb of King Ranperre had treasures for the taking to anyone who happened to wander by. I do admit that the tomb has a bit of a monster problem these days, but to go there in search of treasure! Unimaginable.

Nevertheless, I did not discover her intentions until we were already at the entrance of the tomb, and it was too late to protest her intentions at that point. At least we managed to exterminate quite a few monsters from the tomb. Previously I had only gone a little ways in, but this time we ventured much further. I did not know the situation had gotten quite so bad in there. Goblins, skeletons, even some ghosts, and this in addition to the expected bats and worms that are more every-place pests than anything.
We did not discover anything too valuable, thank Altana for that. Although while wondering around by herself, trying out her new dancing techniques on anything that came too close, she somehow managed to acquire a cloak with some relatively weak enchantment in it. It is slightly worrying, but I do not think the tomb would have originally included an item of that quality, and must deduce from this that it is a spoil of battle some monster had brought to its nest in the tomb. And I do have to admit, the loot we gathered from these monsters, while cheap by themselves, when sold in volume were very helpful in making a little gil to help fund traveling.

It has been a long time, but I visited the Cathedral with Kii Kalira today. One of the friars there had heard of our achievements - from where, I do not know - and had a request for us. We are to replace a seal of banishing deep in the Gusgen Mines. I remember the last time we went there, the place was full of undead of all kinds. They must have pushed off replacing it for some reason. We will head out towards Gusgen in the morrow.

I think I have verified my suspicions. The place, that familiar yet unknown world that the maws take us to..that is the world of more than 20 years past, during the time of the Great War when the Allied Forces fought against the Shadow Lord's hordes of beastmen. I do not know how it is possible, but there is no other explanation.

Kii Kalira was initially most sternly against trying to return to a maw to see if it would let us through again. However, it turns out her sudden enthusiasm for dancing was to my advantage. By her insistence we went to see miss Laila of Troupe Brilioth the following day from our return to Jeuno. Much to my shame she had indeed heard of our failure upon the stage, and was willing to set for us a next task, upon completion of which she promised to teach us the basics of dancing. I am still not very convinced this is a good idea, but if it makes Kii Kalira agree to trying a maw again... well. The task she set for us was to bring to her a stone of some fame, called stardust pebble. Stones of that kind are practically impossible to find in the present, but that were plentiful enough in Lake Mechieume even as much as twenty years ago.
With some hesitating on Kii Kalira's part, we set out to the only maw we know the location of - the Rolanberry one. It was somewhat nerve-wrecking, but the maw did swallow us again, spitting us out in the Rolanberry of the past. From there we carefully made our way to Jugner Forest where Mechieume lies. On the way we saw many differences. The stone arches standing between the areas of Rolanberry and Batallia were intact. Many strange beasts wandered about the areas - upon reaching Jugner, we even saw a few of the fabled pixies! That was the last proof I needed to confirm my theory. I do not know how or why, but these maws do indeed transport you to the past.
On the shroes of Lake Mechieume we met a little girl who turned out to be miss Laila of the past. If I needed one more proof, that would have been it. I think it to be somewhat sad that such a sweet little girl could turn out to be that strict and unfriendly leader of Troupe Brilioth, although it is easy to see that her hard work on working on her dancing has paid off, her troupe being one of the most famed dancing troupes of current times. We did in fact find some stardust pebbles in the lake, and were able to complete miss current-day Laila's somewhat unreasonable request.

..what followed, I like not to think of. At least it can be said that if I was requested to do that dancing on stage now, I might not embarrass myself so thoroughly. Although I do wonder about the applications of this dance in battle. It sounds like this dancing, the Kriegstanz, has a long history. I find myself yearning to research it some more.

I am afraid that I have made an absolute fool of myself this time. Kii Kalira's enthusiasm for dancing did not seem to abate, and once we had reached San d'Oria right in time for her 19th birthday, she somehow managed to convince the proprietor of Lion Spring Tavern to let us dance upon the stage there. Needless to say, I had no idea what I should have done, and wished to stay far away. If only it hadn't been her birthday, I might have been able to evade this request somehow...
I think I might not show my face in the establishment for a while. Our joke of a performance ended up in us being nearly thrown out, it was clear from the proprietor's words that he wishes to have nothing further to do with us. I suppose at least Kii Kalira is excited, she wants to head back to Jeuno now to see Troupe Brilioth's miss Laila again, now that we have fulfilled her criteria. I am not too certain if this is such a good idea, convincing someone like that with an incident such as this. I do hope she won't be too severely disappointed if miss Laila ends up refusing her still.

On the way to San d'Oria we stopped by Valkurm dunes in search of more song runes carved on stone. Having extensively scoured the beaches near Selbina before and reasonably certain such a stone could not be hiding near the town, we ended up walking in an entirely unfamiliar area of Valkurm. While the way we picked brought us further away from the shore at first, it soon doubled back through a small tunnel to an isolated beach where we did indeed find an almost exact duplicate of the stone in Buburimu peninsula. But it was not only the stone that greeted us. We found there not only Lewenhart, the bard we met in Buburimu and later in Jeuno again, but the heartbroken Jeunoan bard had also made his way there. What a coincidence for us all to reach the stone around the same time - although I do think Mr Lewenhart had been there a while before us. It turns out he is a bard of much fame, legendary among other bards. To have been able to meet such a person entirely by accident!
We talked for a while, and I think Kii Kalira was much enchanted by his words. She has been humming suspiciously often these few days since that meeting. Sometimes, I wonder how so much enthusiasm can be held in such a small body. At times, she seems she could burst with the sheer power of her energy and interest.

This Vana'diel holds wondrous places and stories in it indeed. After leaving Windurst the last time, I and Kii Kalira headed to Buburimu Peninsula in search of these mysterious song runes carved in stone. It was no quick process, but eventually we ended up at a beach only accessible by from the sea, descending steep cliffs to it, or taking this hidden tunnel to it. There, we found a slab of stone carved with the words of this song, and met a wandering minstrel who told us he visits this beach often. The song and the view from the beach are both indeed worth coming.

While there, the thought of the broken-hearted bard in Jeuno came to my thoughts, and we decided to write down the words on the stone and show them to him, thinking it would ease his broken heart to sing this song full of love and longing. It appears this song might not be able to mend broken hearts after all. We did find the bard again, but he wasn't too pleased at being shown such an old song, thinking it would resonate with him. I have to admit, I am somewhat disappointed. Although something may come from this yet. From the same person who mentioned the song runes originally, we heard that there is another set of runes in Valkurm dunes. I am determined to see these runes for myself now.

Walking around upper Jeuno today we came across a troupe of dancers, the Troupe Brilioth, who put up a show in the streets. Kii Kalira was most excited over this. Before I could stop her, she had started talking to the leader of the troupe, almost begging for her to be taught to dance like the people of the troupe. I do not think that miss Laila, the leader of the troupe, was very polite. I do understand that she was working, but in a performace profession like hers it would be natural to be talked with every now and then.
Although I have to admit, even despite her attitude she did give Kii Kalira some hope. She told us to get some fame as dancers before she could possibly teach us anything. I do not know how it happened, but apparently I am to be included in this. Kii Kalira is as excited as she was to see this troupe, but I am somewhat hesitant. She will not make me try to dance, will she?

I have been honored with a proper audience with the Chieftainness of the mithra in Windurst, Perih Vashai. Kii Kalira, after hearing tales of her accomplishments in the Great War from the mithra in Kazham, became excited and wanted to visit Windurst. Upon our arrival she wasted no time to lead us to the Chieftainness, very excited about Perih Vashai's mastery of the bow. I did not know she was interested in archery. She has always been more of a healer type in my mind. Maybe this is a recent thing. She sure has changed a lot. Not that I would mind, it merely strikes me as a quick change.
Where was I. Ah, yes, the Chieftainness. When Kii Kalira insisted on talking to her that day she listened patiently and then sent us on a strange quest. It involved tracking down what I think was a kind of a sabertooth tiger graveyard in Meriphataud Mountains. I still do not quite understand her insistence on us seeing this, but we concealed ourselves and waited patiently, and in the end witnessed the last moments of an old sabertooth tiger.
Upon our return to Windurst the Chieftainness listened to our reactions to this event and taught us about the mithra way of living off nature while respecting it. It was a true eye-opener, and I think it affected Kii Kalira even more than she cares to admit. She signed up with the mithran rangers afterwards.
 
Something else happened too, on our journey to find this dying place of sabertooth tigers. Witnessing that event left us both thoughtful, and since night had not yet fallen we made our way to Jeuno, to spend the night much more comfortably before heading back to Windurst to report to the Chieftainness. As we had time left over before night fell even after arriving to Jeuno, we went to spend a pleasant evening in the Merry Minstrel in lower Jeuno. The evening turned out not so pleasant, as the bard was more interested in his own sorrow than entertaining the customers. As Kii Kalira remarked on it the mithra behind the counter told us about some old song that supposedly mends broken hearts. It was most curious. It only struck me afterwards, but that bard seemed very broken-hearted. If it could be healed with a simple song, would that not be nice? I think we should head to Buburimu Peninsula and try to find this song, apparently it is carved to some stone there.