Of Endings and Beginnings

“

Biggs has been reflecting on your final confrontation.

— In-game description

Rewards

Having successfully escaped from the heart of the colossus, you share a moment of relief and reflection with Biggs, who remains somewhat rattled by what he saw within. The moment is short-lived, however, as a sudden linkpearl transmission from Cid reveals that Roundrox has gone missing from the Shortstop. Fearing for the child's safety─and state of mind after losing her best friend─you agree to split up and go in search of her, with Biggs tasking you to investigate the Collectors' Quarter, where Roundrox and Mide often traveled together.

You find Roundrox standing at a lookout point in the Collectors' Quarter, where─as the goblin child explains it─she came to do some thinking. She then shows you a stone fragment that somehow fell into her possessions as she was fleeing the colossus. It is one of her precious glowstones─a shattered fragment of the Enigma Codex─and yet, she explains wistfully, it glows for her no more. Cid and Y'shtola arrive, and upon hearing the story, the former posits that Roundrox's experiences inside the colossus have fundamentally changed the girl─she is no longer a naive child, but one who has seen both the wonders and horrors that technology can give rise to in the single-minded pursuit of an ideal of perfection. Roundrox, her eyes firmly fixed on the future, expresses her desire to deliver the Codex shard back to Mide and Dayan, a sweet gesture which Y'shtola laments as impossible, as the barrier surrounding the colossus is now all but impenetrable. With uncanny timing, the coeurl kitten Shanoa returns to the scene, mewing as if she were offering to carry out Backrix's wish. Thinking that it wouldn't be the strangest thing to have happened in recent days, you look on as Roundrox entrusts the Codex shard to Shanoa, who happily bounds away. The threat of the primal now passed, Cid and Y'shtola take their leave, the latter entrusting you with a weathered tome to be delivered to Backrix. And so you set off back to the Shortstop.

Backrix's eyes light up at the sight of the tome, which he explains is a Sharlayan book of legends he had requested of Y'shtola. He reads from a chapter containing the legends of the Hotgo, a tribe of blue-haired Au Ra. According to their myth of creation, the Hotgo trace their ancestry back to two children─a boy and a girl─who emerged from the belly of a great steel giant in days of yore. All present are astounded when Backrix further reveals that, according to the legend, the two children were named Dayan and Mide, and that they are said to have emerged from the giant holding a curious black stone that glowed at the touch of a hand. Though you can only speculate as to the wrinkles and twists of time that have brought such implausible events to pass, you can once again look to the future knowing that the primal threat has been subdued, and history set back on its proper course.

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