By Lyra Zwahn

Content Warning: Action, Violence

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Gneiss Cinnabar was a young mechanic from The Black Shroud, whose father instilled in him a passion for machines early on and, most of all, for flying. Gneiss eventually worked his way into the pilot’s seat of his father’s beloved airship, Silberstreifen – or Silber for short, and it wasn’t long after that his father gifted the ship to him entirely. 

Gneiss often used Silber to secretly ferry Ul’dahn merchants through Gyr Arbania and sent ample gil back to family in The Lavender Beds. The secret missions grew more dangerous, though, and it wasn’t long before he found himself working for Grand Companies as taxi for informants in occupied territory. 

Gneiss had just moored Silber and released passengers when a woman rushed onto the airship landing. The sounds of explosions echoed in the distance as war broke out at Baelsar’s Wall. She shouted, “Garlemald is attacking! They’ve crossed the water!” Gneiss froze in disbelief. 

“The Lavender Beds,” he rasped and took to the sky. 

Despite lacking weapons, Gneiss knew he had to draw the fight away from his family. He swung Silber out wide under stormy skies and cranked the throttle. His eyes watered in the cold wind, and the ship leaned steeply as it raced over treetops. Soon, the soldiers were in sight – headed straight for quiet homes with windows lit by candlelight. He swooped lower to get their attention, and it worked. 

The mobile armor pilot fired on Silber. 

A Magitek beam struck the ship, and another passed just over Gneiss’s head so close it seared his scalp and bleached his dark hair to silvery white. The airship lurched and flames engulfed the fuselage. Off the side of the flight deck and through driving rain, he saw the ground circling, and the giant Magitek armor charging its next attack. 

He knew what he needed to do. 

Gneiss righted himself as best he could, spun the controls, and pressed forward. He sent Silber into a steep dive straight toward the armor and outpaced the rain on descent. As the ship neared the ground, he stretched his arm out and pointed his hand at it like a pistol. He looked down his index finger at the shining sphere in the mouth of the mobile armor. 

“Bang.” 

The ship crashed violently into the mobile armor in an explosion of steel and aether. It was an impact so intense the very ground gave way and sent the entire Garlean force downward into the caverns below. The twisted mass of flaming metal landed on the hard bedrock in the darkness, and Gneiss’s body – broken and bleeding – sprawled on the cold stone nearby. 

Dark figures skittered in from the depths. 

Gneiss awoke in a musty tent to the sound of banging metal. His head throbbed, and his body was broken. A board was strapped to his right leg to brace its broken bones. A Kobold burst into the tent with a disgusting, green mush in a clay bowl. “Eat! Eat!” it exclaimed, and Gneiss obliged. 

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