The Burdens We Bear

Tales of the Dragonsong War Quest Template:Quest

Walkthrough

???

Steps

• Speak with Matoya.

• Visit Helix in Azys Lla.

• Search the airship landing.

• Visit Tiamat.

• Visit the Aetherochemical Research Facility.

• Pay respects to a friend.

Journal

• Slowfix is a goblin beset by troubles great and small.

• "To ye who ask of things to come:
  Give thought to what is past and gone.“

With the long-dead poet king's words still ringing in your ears, you continue your pilgrimage, retracing the steps you took in the days following your exile.

Having made peace with the goblins, the travelers returned to their original purpose. The reclusive Master Matoya waited somewhere beyond, and with her a means to breach the barrier shielding Azys Lla...

• She was the sum of everything that had come before. Triumphs, failures─all essential, all indispensable. Had things unfolded differently, so too would she. What use, then, to mourn the Matoya who never was? There was only this time, this place, this choice...

• The battleship loomed before them, a gargantuan mass of steel, bristling with cannons, each trained on the Enterprise Excelsior. Cid's knuckles were white as he gripped the controls, straining to steer the tiny vessel through the storm of ordnance. They fell about as the deck lurched hither and yon, each explosion inviting a cry of protest from the battered ship...

• A thousand thousand fires blossomed around Ysayle as she fell towards the battleship. A crimson starshower midst the impassive clouds. Then came the azure light, faint at first, soon blinding, then shattering, casting motes of diamond to the four winds...

• Perhaps there was hope for them. Perhaps, this time, they would learn and remember. But Tiamat's part in the tale had ended long ago. Within this monument to hubris would she remain until the end of days...beyond redemption...

• The undying ones were defiant, disbelieving, even as death embraced them. Then the knights too succumbed, loyal to the last to a cause long lost. His body growing light, the archbishop looked upon the arbiter of his fate, and knew not what he saw. And then it was over. Over save for the eyes. Thinking to bear them away from the covetous hands of men, Estinien took the accursed baubles in his own and was duly bent to their will...if only for a time.

At a friend's behest had they embarked upon their journey, and so, after their triumphant homecoming and all the inevitable pomp and circumstance, there was but one way it could end...

• The shield still rests against the marker, and below it, fresh lilies. Closing your eyes, you kneel, and breathe deep of the cold northern wind. There you remain for no more than a moment, before rising to take in the view. The city still stands, and so do you.