Final Fantasy - The Rhodium Maiden Chronicles 001: Toska & The Children Of The Grey Father

Grl. Toska

Years ago, on my childhood, I used to think that no place could be colder than the northern coasts of Nordia and, were not for the ships that came back and forth from the north, I would have believed the world's end was there, where the grey dark waters blended with the white skyline, despite of what anybody would have told me. Yes, you could say I am strongly opinionated, but one could say that all turmagan children are like that: we are as stubborn as Lord Winter is. Now, however, as I come to the northernmost frontiers beyond the white blur, so far away from the black cities of The Grey Union, I have been proven wrong: Inberia is, by far, much colder than anything I had imagined.

Many are the legends of this fabled land of undisturbed white and ragefull winds that seem to suffer none but the hardiest or the plain mad. Blizzards that can tear away chunks of stone of the sturdiest fortress and break unreinforced masts as if the strongest woodworks were no better than a warm candle; temperatures so low that it is said, sometimes, that even tides freeze solid during the storms that break the utter and deadly calm of it's half frozen shores; beasts that lurk and stalk the waters, so hungry and desperate for a warm morsel that even the wooden beams of a ship are considered a dietary option to not be dissregarded... Like I said: who on it's sane mind would want to come to a place like this? Yet, here I am, here we are.

Curiosity, a word fitting to describe a different kind of greed, one that belongs to the mind. Isn't it, perhaps, the most powerful force that exists? It has propelled hume, naugrim, quendi, and turmaga alike to reaches beyond their grasp and right, to places sacred to forgotten gods and forbbiden truths. Now, The Grey Father sets his eyes in the untapped rivers of ancient vile that he has come to regard as valuable as the gems of the earth and the moon mirrors are to the naugrim, intending to wax the path of his ascension to a warmer tomorrow of uncontested might for The Grey Union, one that even the hume empires on the west might come to fear. But I wonder... Does the The Grey Union really know what powers are to be awaken for the sake of greed? Such, of course, is not for me to ask... but I can't help to do so, even if I know beforehand that no answer is to come and reassure me that I am doing the right thing. After all, I'm here as an avatar of the will of The Grey Union and such is all that should matter. My thoughts on it are meaningless, as the warm clouds of my breath in the middle of the hail storm that grants us a last warning to leave, as if a myriad of angry ghostfolk thrown pebbles and rocks to us, incapable of uttering word or scream, but making the metal hull of our crusier to "ketle" like a pot bearing a serving of fried corn.

-"I ask you not for your pardon, for you might be king of Lord Winter himself and mayhaps this ought to be his birthing country, but I do salute your might, Cruel Liege Of Frost. We are here to challenge thy might. We are here to stay."

- Toska Yudder, General Of The Grey Union's Sixth Expeditionary Force.