By Lyra Zwahn

Content Warning: Action, Violence

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An azure expanse spread out before Lyra. Only a fine line in the distance served to separate the ground beneath her feet and the featureless sky above. It was a blue void, a pure and all-encompassing shroud of emptiness, bright in all ways, and purely inhospitable. She could only wonder if this was the end, if this was her final punishment: an empty, lonely place of nothingness.

“Is this the end?”

Lyra started to call out, but the words stuck in her throat. Instead, after a brief scan of every direction, she started to walk. The ground had little give. It felt like walking on stone, yet no features could be discerned from its vacant surface. She walked along and reflected on all that she had done. She thought of her early days, her youth, and her rise from orphan, to mechanic, to soldier. She thought of her hopes, her friends, her unfinished tasks, her mistakes, her failures… 

Most of all, she thought of Nim.

#

“I can handle this,” Lyra said with a soft confidence. She raised the ornate teacup to her red lips to take a short draft of the delicately flavored brew. Lyra pyr Zwahn was a fair-skinned, Viera woman with black hair; she was a newly-established Optio in service to Garlemald, a confidant and friend. Her dark, brown eyes shone only in the direct beam of the sun that peeked through the long and heavy curtain behind her commanding officer’s desk.

Nim leaned back into his embellished chair, his legs comfortably crossed and heels resting on the desk in front of him. He, too, sipped from his teacup while pondering the words of his guest. 

“You can handle it?” he rasped with a grin. “I have every confidence that you can, Lyra. That’s not the problem.” He composed himself, returning his feet to the floor and cup to the saucer. “It’s just that, as you know, you have units at your disposal for this very purpose.”

Nim quo Valius was a Centurio, which was quite impressive considering his Elezen heritage and Garlemald’s tendency to subjugate and restrict non-Garlean races within the Empire, let alone in service to the Emperor. 

Lyra was no different. But, that’s part of why the two outsiders had bonded over their years of service. Two examples of the impossible, together in one place.

“Nim, I need to continue to lead by example,” Lyra replied while placing her cup and saucer back onto the hardwood of the desk. “It’s how I do things. I can’t be one of those officers who point their fingers and expect everyone to jump, and before you say anything, I know it’s my job to do that sometimes, too. I get it. I do.”

Nim chuckled and allowed his head to rest back against the padding on his chair. He smiled, and his silver eyes smiled as well. Their brilliance and texture always pulled Lyra from afar.

“Stubborn as ever,” Nim said. He shifted forward to meet her gaze again, perhaps a moment too long to traverse the bridge between them. Across the desk, his hand skimmed ever so lightly to pour over Lyra’s fingers like water. 

“Please be careful,” Nim asked and squeezed her hand.

“I will,” Lyra said with a smile.

#

Nearly a hundred yalms above churning waters, a small unit of soldiers piloted Magitek armors, carefully stepping over boulders and leaping across gaps to navigate a slim rock ledge. Above them, the Crystal Tower stood ominously, glowing a pale blue against the indigo of the early hours of the morning, and Aether crackled in the air to form a strange, oily sheen in the thick mist. It wasn’t long before the soldiers realized they could progress no further with the machines and were forced to disembark.

Lyra clicked an ornate Gunblade into a holster on her back and secured a cluster of speed loaders to the inside of her long, black coat. She stepped off the side of her machine and deftly landed on the ground with barely a rustle. She slid her finger along the rim of her tall boot to straighten its fold and then glanced over the edge to the churning waters below – what she could see of it in the dim light, anyway. 

Lyra was confident that she and her team could deliver results, to find an alternate route into the Crystal Tower and bypass its deadly defenses completely. “Alright,” she said, “Flax and Nerina, you’re with me. Theodus and Chaffer? Stay here to cover the armors,” she huffed to their salutes.

Lyra pressed onward by the light of the small Ceruleum lanterns she and her soldiers carried; they tiptoed around a precarious bend, crawled up a twisted and steep slope, and dropped through a narrow gap. It wasn’t long before the sound of machinery became audible in the triangular passageway, which came as a surprise.

Ahead, strange drones performed tasks inside a cavernous, tubular structure, which, at least on one side, was lined with aether crystal. The team squeezed through a crack between boulders to gain entry to the hollow region where the blue glow had permeated every space. They all kept low and observed as drones buzzed about, cutting and somehow re-forging the crystalline support structure that created the Tower’s base. 

A jagged stone caught the toe of Nerina’s boot while she crept closer, which sent her tumbling into Flax just in front of her. Their lanterns collided, setting one of them free into the air. Lyra tried desperately to catch it. Her fingers grazed its metal box, but the device slammed into the stone. Its panels shattered loudly.

The maintenance drones immediately launched an attack with overwhelming force. The bulky arms of the machines were too large and powerful to defend against, and a single strike easily shattered Lyra’s weapon. The attack cut directly through to her chest, and as she dragged her wounded and bleeding body away, she watched the machine strike Flax dead.

Nerina managed to break free and squeeze back through the crack in the wall just as the drone returned its attention to Lyra. Using its repair tool, the drone welded Lyra against the crystal wall, sealing her within a prison of aether crystal just when the life left her body.

#

How long had she walked? How could one measure the passage of time in such a place: a blue void harboring no day and no night, no life and no death? Lyra could only wonder, only wander with one step in front of the other, never tiring, never sleeping, never eating or drinking. She felt a yearning to cry out build in her chest, but despite its strength, she never made a sound. 

“Is this what I deserve?”

In a kind of waking dream, she witnessed moments of her life play back before her eyes, but there was more to it than that. It wasn’t a simple recollection; it was as if she dreamed of a world that continued onward without her presence. 

Lyra dreamed as war ravaged the star, as fire and ice overwhelmed the lands. She watched as Nim wandered in exile within an arctic tundra – struggling, shivering, trying to survive. When the time came for his death, Lyra watched in disbelief as blurry faces lowered Nim’s body, all wrapped in white linen, into the darkest, coldest grave.

#

Lyra trudged on for what felt like decades. For years, she walked through fields of nothingness, past hills of nothingness, and eventually downward – slowly and gently – until she could hear the sound … of the sea. It was first a distant roar, but that collapsed into the simple rhythm of waves breaking against a smooth beach that extended outward into a sea as equally empty as the sky above.

However, directly ahead stood a woman looking out toward the horizon. She was a Viera, a soldier, an Optio. She wore a Garlean uniform, tall boots, and an ornate Gunblade on her back. Her tall, Viera ears were black vanes against the blue sky. 

“Who are you?” Lyra asked sheepishly. In truth, she stood before herself, but which of them was truly the broken echo of a former life? 

Much to Lyra’s horror, the figure turned slowly to reveal a face completely blurred as if erased from time.

“Tell me,” the figure groaned. She placed her hand on the grip of her Gunblade threateningly, “Is this the end?” She fired a Lightning Shot so quickly that Lyra almost couldn’t dodge it.

“Why are you doing this!?” Lyra shouted after the shockwave blurred past, mere ilms away.

The echo howled while swinging the weapon down from overhead to perform a Blasting Zone strike, “Is this what I deserve?” The intense force blasted the seawater aside in a searing flash of steam and mist. 

Lyra barely escaped, scrambling across the sand like a crab, terrified.

“Does my heart yet beat!?” The echo howled, readying her next strike.

Lyra launched from the ground with a primal growl and tackled the woman at the waist, sending her crashing backward into the frothy water. The pair wrestled underwater; Lyra twisted, then used her leverage to rip the weapon from the enemy’s hands. And, as the combatants sank deeper into what had become a whirling current, Lyra readied the weapon for a finishing blow. 

She pulled the trigger just as the blade made contact against her enemy.

The tremendous blast illuminated the dark depths and separated both combatants instantly. Lyra struggled to reorient herself among the boom and subsequent surge of bubbles. She swam desperately upward while her opponent sank, struggling with all her might to reach the surface, to breach its jagged waves, to breathe the air above, and just as she had raised her head above that frothy threshold to gasp for air, she opened her eyes to a most shocking sight.

A circle of surprised faces stared back at her.

The room broke into a frenzy. A team of chirurgeons struggled to hold Lyra down to the pristine, white bed surface, but her old wounds reopened. Her blood rushed out and across the clean, white fabrics, soaking them in the boldest red.

“Calm down! You must calm down!” unfamiliar voices shouted as the group struggled against Lyra’s strength. 

Mages shouldered in quickly to seal the gushing wounds, but never before had someone been discovered encased within aether crystal. And never had anyone tested a method to dissolve such a crystal without harm to the victim still inside, still possibly alive.

#

“Can you hear me?” a soft-spoken Elezen woman asked later that night. She spoke through a white, cloth mask, which made her voice even softer in the quiet. A fire crackled in the hearth, almost in competition.

“Y-yes,” Lyra whispered, her throat so dry and sore that she could barely speak.

“What is your name?” the woman asked. “You were imprisoned for a very long time, but do you remember it? Your name?”

“My … name?” Lyra replied. Her head felt as if it were spinning.

The woman nodded. A strand of her blonde hair broke free from her cap to dangle down against her cheek.

Lyra pondered for a moment, unsure of what to say. She knew not of where she was, but she certainly wasn’t in Garlemald. And she also knew she could not tell them, certainly not here in this safe place, that she was a soldier, an Optio of the Garlean Empire: Lyra pyr Zwahn.

“My name is…”

“Yes?” the medic asked enthusiastically.

“My name is Lyra … Zwahn.”

#