When one looks upon the chronicles of history, those immovable tomes of ages past,

one is certain to find the mark of a great many notable figures. Conquerors,
pioneers, heroes─men and women whose lives serve to punctuate the endless passage
of time.
I am not one of them. No builder of nations, me, nor less a savior of the
oppressed. I am but a humble engineer who had the good fortune to become the
eighteenth president of Garlond Ironworks. For two hundred years now, we have kept
alive the dream of "Freedom through Technology," passing on the legacy of our
predecessors to the next incumbent upon our retirement─save for one poor fellow,
who died after three days in the role.
In the end, however, the only name history will remember is that of Cid Garlond,
our own appearing as mere footnotes to his legend.
A legend we are only too happy to preserve.
Garlond Ironworks' first home was a workshop in Revenant's Toll, and I am told
there was a time when people would flock from every corner of the realm to gaze
upon its wonders. A stark contrast to our present operation. Our base now sits
nestled in what remains of the Keeper of the Lake, a monument which both time and
necessity have done much to diminish, a legion of scavengers having taken their
pick of what the elements saw fit to spare.
Indeed, the site is an utter shambles. And yet I can think of no better place for
us to have set up shop. The surrounding lake serves as a natural obstacle to
intruders, and the dragon whose sinuous frame still holds the whole hulking heap
together is said to have shared a storied history with an old friend of the
founder. In short, a site as apt as it is inaccessible.
It was there that our engineers and some few volunteers were enjoying a hard-earned
rest. After several sleepless nights, work in the Crystal Tower was at last
complete, and on the morrow it would be transported across time and space to
another world─the First. Meager though our resources were, we had laid on a
veritable feast to commemorate the occasion, and one and all had enjoyed the much-
needed respite to the fullest. Indeed, many had reveled to exhaustion, choosing to
sleep where they fell on the meeting hall floor.
Though I too should have been counting sheep, my mind was busy enumerating reasons
to stay awake─which were, it assured me, many. And so I sat there, staring into the
fire. Thankfully, I was not without company.
"I've always wondered," I began, turning to regard my fellow insomniac.
His crimson eyes seemed to glow in the firelight. A gift from the blood of Allagan
royalty, he called them. A gift by which the Crystal Tower had borne him to us. In
the morning, he would make another journey, this time bearing all our hopes and
dreams for a better tomorrow with him. And though he had assured us it was a
mission he gladly accepted, I could scarcely imagine the weight of that burden.
There was so much I wished to tell him, but I put it aside to first ask a question
that had long been burning in the back of my mind.
"Why did you do it? Why did you stay behind in the Crystal Tower?"
He blinked at me in disbelief before letting out a curt sigh.
"You would ask me this now?"
"Would you rather I asked you on the morrow?" I replied with a rather forced grin.
"I understand you were the only one who could have done it, and hindsight has shown
it to be the right choice. Were it not for you, our dreams would be just that. But
you couldn't have known that at the time. Not for sure. What if we had never opened
the tower?"
What a relief it was to finally speak the words aloud. I feared he would take them
as little more than idle banter, but the thoughtful swishing of his tail suggested
otherwise, as he returned his gaze to the fire.
An age seemed to pass as we sat there in silence, but I knew my wait for an answer
was over when a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. It occurred to me
then that he hadn't been gazing into the fire, but through it, at something far
brighter.
"I would have slept for all eternity," he laughed. "Which would, if nothing else,
have been ironic. For it was only as the gates of the tower were closing behind me
that I realized what it meant to awaken to one's true purpose."
"Go on..."
"In those days, I could but dream of being counted with the likes of Cid, Nero,
Biggs, and Wedge─indeed, I would still give my right arm to achieve half of what
they achieved..."
He proceeded to paint a picture of our forebears as paragons of invention, able to
race from concept to product in the time it would take him to put on his boots. And
then he spoke of his mentor Rammbroes, head of the Sons of Saint Coinach, and of
his pride at having been chosen to take part in the expedition to the Crystal
Tower.
He told me that the mission had taken a most unexpected turn when their party was
joined by a pair of scholars named Doga and Unei─whom they later discovered to be
clones born of Allagan technology which had lain dormant within the tower for
millennia. Apparently, when the structure was unearthed in the chaos of the Seventh
Umbral Calamity, the horrors within had awoken, prompting the pair to seek the aid
of G'raha Tia and his companions in thwarting the dark designs of the tower's
creator, one Emperor Xande. What began as a simple quest for knowledge thus became
a grueling climb to the top of the tower, culminating in a battle with darkness
itself. Yet far from laying claim to these feats, he was careful at every stage to
recall the pivotal role played by the greatest hero of the age. One immortalized in
song and script, and remembered to this very day.
"Before me stood the very embodiment of heroism, the fables of my childhood made
flesh. And in the light of so shining an example, I saw at last the part I had to
play. How could I do aught but remain in the tower?"
"Quite easily," I chuckled, "were you and your exemplar not cut from the same
cloth. Being of a rather less heroic disposition, however, I can tell you that my
first act, having endured such an ordeal, would have been to go home to bed. But
tell me...were you not scared?"
"Of course I was. But courage is not the absence of fear." He leaned back then, to
stare up at the ceiling. "It is the triumph over it."
The roof, I should probably mention, was in the process of being repaired, and not
without the odd gap. Clear nights offered small glimpses of the stars twinkling in
the sky, and G'raha Tia seemed entranced by them as he continued to regale me with
memories of days long past.
"So long as we were together, whatever foe stood against us, whatever twist of fate
conspired to undermine us, I believed with all my heart that there was nothing we
could not do."
I went to speak, but when I glimpsed him gazing up at the heavens, his eyes full of
steely resolve, I could only smile and wonder at what a fascinating life he had
led. At how a single individual could affect the fates of so many. G'raha Tia, Cid,
my grandfather, and the countless others who had given their all to see our plan
come to fruition. Would the Warrior of Light have believed that so many lives could
be changed? Or what inspiration others could take from so tragically foreshortened
a tale? Whatever the answer, the hopes and dreams we had labored so long to keep
alive would soon be realized. Even to think about it made my heart skip a beat. I
cleared my throat.
"And we have to keep believing. For a brighter future."
I proffered my hand in our customary manner, and G'raha Tia returned the gesture.
"That we do, my friend. That we do."
The following morning, the hour of his departure came at last. We stood upon the
precipice of an unknown future, contemplating the promise of a tomorrow we would
never see. Yet still we prayed. That our sacrifices had indeed sown the seeds of a
better tomorrow. That at journey's end, our departing friend might reap that joyous
harvest too. We prayed as the Crystal Tower stirred to life, and vanished in a
blinding flash of light.
I can't say for how long we stood there at the shore of Silvertear Lake. It wasn't
until the sun broke the horizon that I noted the passing of time─and the deafening
silence.
We could only assume G'raha Tia's mission would carry on across the rift, and that
we had played our part to its completion. Yet with our duty done, I couldn't help
but feel a part of me was missing, much like the Crystal Tower from the skyline of
Mor Dhona. I told myself that the void would soon be filled by a sense of
accomplishment...but I wasn't sure I believed it. For two hundred years we had
toiled and struggled, and our efforts had been met not with thunderous applause,
but the languid lapping of the lake.
In the end, it was one of my companions who gave voice to the question on all of
our minds.
"Will we be disappearing too, then?"
I would be lying if I said we understood the ramifications of altering history. In
the selfsame instant the tower had disappeared, it was quite possible we could have
been erased from existence. Yet there we remained. And while that came as something
of a relief, it brought with it the unwelcome suspicion that G'raha Tia had failed
in his mission...
Conscious that others were watching, I shook my head. Causality be damned. I
refused to believe our friend would allow our travails to be for naught. The Eighth
Umbral Calamity had been averted, if not for us then in a divergent timeline.
Unbeknown to me, the others were busy reaching the same conclusion, and a laugh
escaped the lips of someone in the crowd. Though the world yet remained in ruin, it
was ours. A comforting─even comical─thought, considering what very well could have
come to pass.
Expunction from the pages of history no longer seeming to be in prospect, we
enjoyed a moment of solace. Our forebears had overcome a great many trials that we
might live to see that day, gaining control of the Crystal Tower, taming the wings
of time, even harnessing the forces of the rift, and we were not about to let the
event pass unmarked.
Our moment of solace lasted exactly as long as it took the earth to begin shaking.
Plucked from our reverie, we frantically scanned our surroundings hoping to find
the source of the tremors even as someone cried, "Over there!" We followed his gaze
toward the Keeper of the Lake, and what we saw there left us speechless.
The wreckage we dared to call home was collapsing. Steel plating creaked and
groaned in protest as it broke apart before disappearing beneath the water.
Unbidden, the image of the rickety roof came guiltily to mind, and I wondered if we
had been too lax in our renovations. Then the whole pile began to move. The
serpentine frame wrapped around the ship was breathing, writhing, breaking free of
its resting place.
"By the gods!" a voice shrieked from the crowd, "Midgardsormr lives!"
Our panic was soon drowned out by a deafening roar that all but shattered the
heavens.
My ears still ringing, I looked up to see that Midgardsormr had taken to the sky.
After circling the lake, he bent his course toward us.
No one dared move, nor even speak. We could only watch in horror as he made his
approach. The engineer in me demanded to know why the great wyrm had chosen that
moment to awaken, and I dully recalled the Crystal Tower-shaped gap on the horizon.
Its departure had doubtless disturbed his rest... My blood ran cold at the thought
of what might happen next. But my doom-laden musings were soon interrupted by a
low, rumbling voice.
"The tower... Is this your doing, children of man?"
"A thousand apologies," I croaked. "We didn't mean...to wake you."
An agonizing silence followed. Before I knew it, my clenched fists were slippery
with sweat. I tried telling myself I had nothing to fear, that the dragon had been
a friend to Cid Garlond and the others once upon a time, but try as I might, I
could not escape the feeling that I was about to be incinerated. The wyrm grunted.
"Long have I waited. Watched as the world was shaped by your hand. Through war and
calamity have I seen you struggle, devoting your fleeting lives to a dream you will
never see."
For an instant, I contemplated pleading our case, but he spared me that
embarrassment.
"Such constancy in creatures so inconstant is impressive."
Midgardsormr loomed closer then, his eyes fixed on a young girl and the plaything
in her hands. I felt my stomach drop as I recognized it as my grandfather's Omega
replica. Old as it was, my colleagues jokingly referred to it as a senior member of
the Ironworks, and its age was certainly beginning to show. It randomly shut off
however often we replaced its power core, and faulty sensors ensured it haphazardly
bumped into everyone and everything, including Midgardsormr himself when his body
still served as one of the walls of our workshop.
In all honesty, building a new replica would have been less troublesome than fixing
it. Yet we had agreed that such niceties should wait until after work on the
Crystal Tower was finished. I cursed myself for not having stripped the infernal
thing for scrap.
Tilting his head down further to regard the faltering automaton, Midgardsormr made
a most unusual sound. And though I knew nothing of dragons, I was almost certain it
was a laugh.
Recognizing the wyrm's amusement, the trepidation I had felt but moments before
vanished in an instant. My blood was racing, and I could feel an unfamiliar heat
welling up within me. Suddenly, I remembered G'raha Tia's words from the previous
night.
"Courage is not the absence of fear, it is the triumph over it."
Gathering my wits, I began to realize that Midgardsormr's presence was not
frightening, but exciting; that his choice to appear before us at that of all
moments was an omen of much-needed change. His eyes shifted to regard me, then, and
I found the courage to return his unblinking gaze.
"Tell me, child of man. What dost thou see at dream's end?"
"I see..."
In my mind's eye, I glimpsed a world where the Eighth Umbral Calamity had never
come to pass, where Eorzea's champion bestrode the realm, unbroken. But just as
suddenly, I saw that this was G'raha Tia's future, and not ours. Yet the skills we
had honed to make that dream a reality were still ours to employ... Another image
flashed before me.
"I see a world pulled back from the brink."
This time, Midgardsormr's booming laughter was unmistakable.
"Very well. Under my protection shalt thou and thine rebuild, gaining newfound
knowledge and the wisdom to wield it. Thus shall the children of man usher in a new
Astral Era."
And so our journey began anew. Would that G'raha Tia could see all that we will
accomplish. Though we shall remain forever on different pages of history─and
different books, besides─I take comfort in knowing we strive for a future of the
selfsame brightness.