Nine_Thena

PICTURES OF NINE

Here is some art of Nine.
Images will be a mix of art owned by me, art from FFXIV and screenshots. If an image does not belong to me, it will be mentioned in the comments, which can be accessed by clicking on the image

ART BELONGS TO ME!

BACKSTORY

Nine’s story begins among the snowy, stone walls of Ishgard. Her father, Ameux Demitaux, worked as a diplomat for the Orthodoxy, dealing with Dravanian affairs. Her mother, a Keeper of the Moon Miqo’te named Naih, lived within Tailfeather. Following her retirement from Clan Centurio, she tamed and hunted chocobos for a living, though she still kept her ties with them strong. When the two fell in love after one of her visits to the area, The Orthodoxy made things incredibly hard for the young couple. Motions against them returning to the city were called for, even if nothing came from them. They effectively barred them from a great deal of the privileges many of the city’s elite citizens were able to afford, damaging the reputation they once held. However, this was of little consequence to the two when their union resulted in their daughter, Ninna Demitaux. While Ameux and Naih were concerned about her lot at first, they wanted nothing more than to make the city they lived in a better place for their daughter, an ideal they would instill into her the moment she could grasp it.

Calling Nine’s childhood unorthodox would be an understatement due to this mix. While taller than most miqo’te, being shorter than most Elezen put her awkward. Ninna took to education well, proving exceptionally proficient with literature and history. Good-natured and well-mannered, Ninna learned how to deal with the brunt of the disdain or teasing she got from her fellow students by silently keeping these feelings bottled up until she had the chance to confront them about it and vent that anger. More surprising, she’d often speak up for those who couldn’t fend off their bullies. And it was through this that Nine met her closest friend, Raitmeaux. Unlike the outgoing miqo’te, he mainly remained introverted, taking on more of a scholarly role. So when push came to shove, he would be unable to defend himself. Of course, that didn’t stop the Keeper from fending them off when one of them tried to fight him after school. Needless to say, that selfless act began a friendship unlike any other. The two remained inseparable! Over the next few years, Ninna helped him explore the city and become less shy, while Raitmeaux helped Ninna with her studies and education.

However, being a young scholar could only do much for Ninna’s future. Her aspirations lied outside of the stuffy libraries of Ishgard. What she wanted to be was a dragoon. Every night, her father would regale her with the tales of brave dragoons throughout the ages and the heroic acts they delivered in defense of those living in Ishgard. To Nine, they were an inspiration, and it reminded her of her mother, who used a polearm in his hunts with Chocobos. Though she refused to train her initially, wanting her to take up a more peaceful occupation, her mother eventually relented and taught her what she knew. Knowing that her daughter would likely face larger or stronger opponents throughout her life, Naih prioritized teaching her how to use her speed, size, and skill to outperform them with more unorthodox techniques. Along with this, she also educated her on wearing heavier armor and wielding a weapon her father once used, a greataxe, in case she needed to protect several people. While her father lacked these abilities currently, Ameux taught her the importance of keeping a level head and remaining in control of her emotions, as well as passing on the disdain they held for the current structure of Ishgard, hoping that one day, Nine would shake up the order by achieving her dream. Soon became an ambition that both Ninna and Raitmeaux shared, the pair of them sparring and practicing with one another. While she always managed to beat him, he vowed to her that he’d be the one leading her into battle one day.

Ninna’s parents had worked hard to help fund her daughter’s aspirations in these formative years. They needed to build up their credibility if their daughter would be a dragoon. While the other members of the nobility found excuses to bar her year after year, they eventually relented and allowed Nine to join, provided she continued her studies at the same time. Of course, being the runt of the litter made things hard for her. It was arduous to compete while surrounded by nobles that stood three or four heads above her. While she lost her first few spars to the more experienced students, she adapted to their strategy quickly, allowing her to slowly claw her way up the ranks of the class with every meeting. However, the sacrifices made by her parents to get her into this position made failure not an option in Ninna’s mind. Every day, she’d begin reminding herself of everything she messed up the day prior, from a simple misstep during a drill with her spear to messing up a report on some historical documents. While Nine intended to help herself improve with this habit, the short-term success began to root this habit deeper into her psyche. While Raitmeaux also got into a group of prospective dragoons, the disparity in Ninna and his skill became even more apparent, much to his frustration.

As the selection process whittled down more and more of the candidates, the training began to wear away at Ninna’s values. While she often helped advise other class members and sparred with them to help them improve, the miqo’te couldn’t help but feel responsible when her victory in assessment duels came at the cost of their ambitions. As the Keeper’s fear of being unable to pass these trials clashed with Raitmeaux’s desire to impress her, this tension came to a head after Nine lost a duel in her class to one of the other students. With Raitmeaux talking about how happy he was about his progress, Ninna finally snapped under the weight of her failure. Telling him off furiously for what she perceived as gloating, all of that rage, anger, and frustration, she demanded that they duel once more to settle this. Though, it seemed she had forgotten some of her father’s teachings. And for the first time in their many sparring matches, she lost. Overcome with the anger of his best friend lashing out at him like that; he took it upon himself to remind her that someone like her doesn’t belong among the ranks of the dragoons before storming off. What had once been a long-lasting friendship had blossomed into a bitter rivalry while leaving Ninna to beat herself up over this failure again and again.

Nevertheless, both Ninna and Raitmeaux remained in the small handful of candidates for one final mission. Ninna was more than up for leaping this final hurdle. In the Keeper’s eyes, she would go down in history as one of the few miqo’te that we’re able to become a dragoon. Tasked with leading the charge against a keep full of heretics, the group departed into the snowy wastes of the highlands. Typically, the enemy would’ve been no problem for the elite team of lancers; however, these were not your typical heretics. Sowed deep inside a frozen keep, this cloister of thaumaturges proved to be more than a match for the aspiring dragoons. The recruits were able to hold their own against the mages at first, but slowly... one by one, they began to fall. As Raitmeaux rallied the remaining forces to retreat, Nine and a handful of others continued to fight against the cultists in a bid to buy time. While Nine began to thin their ranks, the remaining cultists prepared one final spell to seal their attacker away. Suddenly whisked into the air as the chanting became deafening, Nine barely had time to shout as the planar fissure engulfed her vision. In one last desperate attempt, she plunged her spear into the wall nearby as it slipped free from her grasp, and the portal pulled her into the yawning abyss.

As brief as her stint in the other realm was, it drastically changed her body. Submerged in nothing but that pure, festering energy that began to burrow its way into her body. The thick scale mail adorning her body did little to prevent this, more and more of her form becoming wrapped up in the dense, choking aether. As it warped and changed more and more of her condition, the faintest glint of her spear’s shaft became apparent. Nine needed to hold on for just a bit longer. Nine began to claw her way back to the weapon as she drifted further into the sea of darkness. The portal wouldn’t hold for much longer, shaking as reality tried to correct itself. But Nine’s desperation won out in the end, with the miqo’te barely managing to swim her wounded form over to the spear. The corrupting influence continued to pollute her body further as she felt a new voice ringing in her head, begging her to let go of the spear.

Every breath began to feel laborious, crushing her chest every time it rose and fell. Nine’s thoughts remained locked on her friends as the shaft of her lance floated beyond her reach. That’s when the dread began to settle in, freezing her in fear. All of this had been for nothing. Nobody would know what had happened to her. Or that she ever existed. Naught but whispers carried on the wind, dying with a whimper. She needed to listen to that person calling to her. To help them by letting go. With that, Nine closed her eyes and allowed herself to surrender to the umbral well around her, all while that voice thanked her. But soon, the darkness parted, revealing a dazzling sight before her. A burning sky full of falling stars and a mysterious voice calling out to her as a massive crystal came into view. As Nine remained frozen in awe, a soft, overwhelming voice crashed over her. While its words were simple, they stayed with Nine for the rest of her life.

“Hear. Feel. Think. Continue the fight, my child. Your resilience will be indispensable for those you hold dear. To yield to the darkness is to forsake those you might save.” The voice encouraged her before an overwhelming surge of fervor overcame her body. Of course, she had no idea what this vision meant. But it delivered the motivation she needed to survive. No...Nine couldn’t let her ambition, her hard work, fade away into nothingness. With the last ounce of her strength, Nine put all of her weight into one previous pull, violently tearing both her human form and the very essence of her soul out of the Void. The resultant aetheric eruption managed to wipe out the rest of the cultists in the room, tearing their forms asunder as Nine crashed into a wall, losing consciousness.

Everything faded around her as her body crumpled, the miqo’te now mere inches from death. While injury locked her in this vision, time passed around her, giving her time to recover from her injuries. Yet, this recovery came at a cost. While this gift managed to purge her of the aether preparing to overtake her body, it did not restore her soul. Having taken something in from the Void, the continuous intake of this umbral aether over time would become a mounting issue later on. As this protection slowly began to fade, Nine woke up a few days later from this hibernation. The aether released from the fissure had finally started to wear off, allowing for the cold air of the Western Highlands to seep back into the ruined building. Though broken and beaten as she awoke, Nine now faced the prospect of surviving alone in the treacherous glacier. Using the broken end of her lance to prop herself up, Nine began to slowly bundle up in the cloaks and outfits of the heretics and her fallen allies alike to keep herself warm. Glancing out at the snowstorm raging just beyond the walls of the hideout, Nine kept the words from her mysterious vision close to her heart. She needed to stay alive.

The trek back to Ishgard served as a reminder of just how badly her brief visit to the Void had gone. Laboring to get back home would’ve only lasted for a few weeks if the heavy snow and ferocious wildlife didn’t make the trip a living hell. Unable to return until the snowstorms died down, Nine was indeed on her own. While the rousing speech from her vision laid the foundation for her resilience, the harshness of living in the tundra forged Ninna into something completely new. Barely surviving each scrap with the ferocious wildlife, having to bandage her wounds and rely on herself for even the most basic of resources only reinforced the strength that came to define her. At the end of this month, the miqo’te eventually made her way back to Camp Dragonhead, where a host of Temple Knights were waiting, weapons at the ready.

Rather than the warm welcome home she expected, Ninna instead found herself charged for heresy and treason. With the rabble in Ishgard being talkative as ever, her accusers postulated that the doomed mission resulted from her being in league with the cultists, something that a few of the other dragoons backed up at Raitmeaux’s insistence. Worried that this accusation might lead to the Orthodoxy exiling her mother and father on the same grounds, Nine spent her time in detainment fraught with distress as whispers of her fate lingered in her mind. Thus, upon her return, her condition had deteriorated substantially, making her unfit to stand trial for the time being. Thankfully, her family’s connections allowed her to bide her time and recover until Nine could devise something else, as they let her recover at home.

The finest chirurgeons and conjurers tended to her once she arrived in Ishgard proper, pulling her back from the brink of expiration as they began their work. Though the bevy of injuries dealt with her body remained superficial, the more aetherically inclined became aware of the troubling condition of her aether. With Nine’s form imbued with this umbral essence, it had twisted to reflect the sordid state of her soul. Her jet black hair had taken on a purple hue, while her eyes had lost the deep, oceanic hue they once held. Instead, it froze over, leaving nothing but icy orbs forged in the ceaseless motion of the umbral aether. The scars along her body had most vanished with the application of magic, save for two of them remaining on her face. Along with this, the dragoon-to-be complained of hearing another person within her, as well as periods of impulsive, often reckless behavior. With all of this information compiled, one of the conjurers delivered the news to the miqo’te, explaining that she needed to find a way to balance her aether soon. In the meantime, these healers worked to smuggle her out of the city, using her mother’s connections with the Keeper clans in The Black Shroud so that she would be able to live freely and find a solution to her condition. In the meantime, she would rely on another name to keep her identity concealed: Nine Thena. While traditionally pronounced as Neenay, a mispronunciation of a Twin Adder soldier led to her simply being referred to as Nine from that point forward.

Nine’s integration into Gridania proved to be a smooth one. Relying on the connections her mother had to start with, Nine soon became a prominent member at the lancer’s guild, honing her spear work further and further. Nine undertook several commissions to come up with the funds for her treatment, finding that the adventuring life suited her quite well. Sure, it was fraught with danger and uncertainty, but along with it came a freedom that nothing seemed to match. Along with this, it allowed her to help those in her community, making her efforts that much more fulfilling. But despite the treatments, the voice of the other being within her continued to remind her of the disgrace she was how she’d be stuck in this exile wallowing like this until the support for her treatments dried up. So, for the time being, work as a lancer became all-consuming, so long as she could stand on her feet and silence that reflection through actions rather than bickering with her. The aether sickness worsened, forcing her to spend the cash she made on adventuring to pay for these treatments. As jobs began to dry up more and more, she knew that something had to change to keep her medicines stocked.

A few months later, rumors began circulating about a tournament in Ul’dah with a strange prize, a stone that granted its user access to a new type of magic. One that directly channeled aether from within, giving its user control over their aether. In other words, an end to Nine’s condition. While the conjurer’s guild members expressed doubt of its efficacy, the miqo’te ignored their wishes in favor of such a portentous opportunity. She used the remainder of her treatment funds to pay for the airship ticket to Ul’dah. Once she arrived at the arena and paid the entry fee, the tournament met her with her most arduous trial yet. Each fight against these seasoned warriors frayed the miqo’te more and more, threatening her mind and body. Her reflection, as always, seemed to revel in the fury of combat. But with her prize dangling mere inches from her, that burning conviction to save her own life proved strong enough to harbor her to the semi-finals.

At this point, Nine had fought back everyone around her experience level. But her opponent for this round, an outrider dragoon, proved her match when it came to wielding the lance. Any tactic Nine tried was known to them and easily countered, the dragoon themselves mocking the miqo’te for imitating Ishgardian techniques. It wasn’t long before her patience wore thin, and her father’s advice went out the window. Though not of her own accord. The voice within her lashed out, furiously trying to snuff out the dragoon as it nearly wrested control from Nine herself. Ultimately, this put the crowd in danger as these attacks grew worse, her spear barely missing the stands as the spectators began to evacuate. No, this wasn’t what she wanted! As Nine pleaded with the entity within her to stop, the spectators were fortunate enough to watch the bout end moments later. A single calculated strike from that lance cut open a deep gash along the side of her body while the miqo’te’s head was being pressed into the ground by the heel of his boot. Just like that, this dragoon had snatched a chance at freedom away from her. And he let her know it too, tossing the stone into the crowd while giving her a smirk. He didn’t even need to mock her anymore. The contempt in the eyes of the onlookers was enough.

Utterly humiliated by this defeat, Nine left her lance in the ring once her foe knocked it out of her hands. She would never wield one again. To her, all of the victories she held before no longer mattered. She remained broken, beaten, and ultimately, hadn’t changed for all her resilience. All the while, that darker voice inside of her continued to belittle her. Slowly taking her time to walk out of the gladiatorial pits, a stranger unexpectedly grabbed Nine’s shoulder. Expecting trouble given the city’s reputation, Nine readied herself for combat, only to find the face of a tired man staring back at her. Placing his hand on her other shoulder, he began to lean in closer to her face before mentioning that he could help her. Ushering her aside before asking what was going on, he explained that he could sense that the aetherical imbalance affecting her was of an extraordinary magnitude. Something that could only temper with proper training, rather than just acquiring the job stone of a dead art form. He knew from her display that she was discouraged but reminded her that fighting was the only thing paying for her treatment. What choice did she have once her strength failed her? While the miqo’te remained hesitant about accepting the deal, Nine couldn’t think of another option at her wit’s end like this and agreed to join him. Thus began her descent into the study of the dark arts.

The mysterious stranger took her on several contracts across Ul’dah and for the next few months. While they assuredly were mercenaries, the pair carefully selected each job to avoid harming the innocent. Through dealing with criminal elements and the feast and famine income that came with bounty hunting, Nine learned how to deal with failures as they came, thanks to the help of her mentor. Though his regimen remained unflinchingly strict, he allowed her to wrest control of her aether, purging the umbral corruption from her soul momentarily. Along with this, she now knew the source of that nagging voice in her head and this imbalance. Her stint in the Void had done more than just damage her soul. It had made it more robust by rejoining one of her reflections to it. Of course, this boon came at the expense of her aether requiring manual modification to maintain its balance. The man assured her not to worry, though. He would get her through this.

The fighting style Nine learned was unconventional, but it granted her far more perspective regarding the flow of combat. For a while, her view had been limited to that of a skirmisher, wielding a weapon great for putting her enemies down from a distance. However, introducing a scythe as her primary implement of offense and lighter armor as a defense forced Nine to reconsider her perspective. Now, combat had a rhythm, an ebb, and flow that would measure who lived and died. To master it was to control the outcome itself. Timing the heavy swings of her weapon with her defensive magic, Nine became attuned to the rhythm of combat. She could now contend with the enemy head-on, repurposing her old armor for more flexible protection. He reminded her that along with her scythe and armor, Nine now carried the lives of those she must defend. This burden, he said, was her proper duty as an adventurer. She would be the one to protect those forsaken by everyone else.

At the end of this training, he gave Nine one last item; the job stone of her instructor, though she never received his name. To him, the value of his actions overrode personal glory, something that he hoped the young miqo’te would learn in time. He explained that as one of the last wielders of such a stone, it came with the duty to uphold the peace outside of the law, as virtue itself was the most critical ideal to keep. With that, her mentor seemed to vanish into the wind itself, lost to the gales of Coerthas. Nine wasn’t perfectly in control of her dark reflection, of course, but at the very least, she could reign it in.

At last, with her condition able to be maintained, Nine took the words of her instructor to heart. Joining back up with the adventurer’s guild, she began to take jobs with other people who shared her passion and motivations. Guiding her companions through dungeons blossomed into connections with both adventurers and the communities she helped along the way. Despite the nagging of her reflection at times, they became quite the team as assignment after assignment completed itself. All of this cumulated in her participation in Operation Archon, working with the Maelstrom and the Scions to take out Castrum Marinum and the defenses at Cape Westwind. Of course, as word of her deeds spread, those in Ishgard investigating her disappearance soon began to pick up on her trail, forcing her to keep up her nomadic lifestyle. It wasn’t long before the miqo’te had nowhere else to run, being pursued into the highlands of Coerthas and cornered by an entire squadron of knights. Rather than risk the lives of her pursuers, the miqo’te came quietly, allowing them to apprehend her and bring her back into Ishgard on the charge of heresy.

Her trial was held almost immediately after her capture, having to face down the many inquisitors of the Orthodoxy in this court of law. Unable to indeed defend herself with a proper lawyer, she instead requested that she prove her innocence through the rite of combat. They did not want to waste any time with one of the Knights of the Round Instead; they decided to go for a more surefire method of victory. Their champion happened to be the same outrider that had bested her before, now with the permission to kill her. Noticing that she wasn’t using her lance anymore, he expressed how little that shocked him, only proving that Nine lacked the conviction to become a proper dragoon. This comment was enough to throw her off balance, giving the opening of the fight to him as he flung insult after insult to her. Pathetic. Weak. Second rate. All of them continued to layer on and break her down further.

Right as all seemed lost, Nine remembered the cold embrace of the Void. In particular, the voice she had heard in her vision. No, she could not fall here. Grasping onto that feeling, Nine endured while not allowing her foe to maintain their distance. Biding blow after blow, she survived the shame she had faced in the arena and waited. One miscalculated leap sent her scythe through his armor. Flicking the blood off her scythe, she dared not turn herself around, but she knew she had to face the man she had slain. Nine would face him one last time. The mysterious dragoon removed his helmet, at last revealing his identity as none other than Raitmeaux. While this wasn’t the first time she mortally wounded someone, Raitmeaux differed from the nameless bandits she fought. Holding her fading friend in her arms, Nine tried her hardest to bandage his wounds as she had always done. But no amount of cloth or gauze would not quell the deep rivers of Raitmeaux’s ichor. The pair shared a last embrace with the elezen consoling Nine for these final moments as the tears rolled down her cheeks. Despite the hatred he held for her at that moment, he wanted her to remember the friend she had. Perhaps a final sign of forgiveness, as he gave the soul stone, he possessed to Nine. Nine had traded her old shackles for something much heavier as the judge declared her innocence.

Following her trial, Nine found herself spilled onto the streets of an entirely different Ishgard. No longer having the net of her parents to fall back on, she now lived in the Brume, performing meager assignments to get by. Of course, with the news of the Scion’s alleged betrayal of the Alliance, this too was put on hold as Nine fended for herself on the cold streets of Ishgard. Her time in the Void had hardened her to the reality of this sort of survival, leaving her a capable member of the community that a few people still remembered fondly from her helpfulness as a teenager. As a result, many were eager to support her with what little they could offer. All the while, she continued to dwell on her killing Raitmeaux. It was not something she could forgive. But what had killed him was the same beast that exiled her parents, the same beast that accused her of being a heretic after buying time for her allies to escape: the Orthodoxy itself pitting the people she loved against her. Her motivations seemed more apparent than ever from that day forward: expose the crimes of the system that had been holding her back all her life.

With the dark arts being an undeniably taboo practice, Nine needed a place with more gainful means of employment. Around this time, Clan Centurio had opened its doors to prospective new hunters, allowing her to hone her skills with an ax and heavier armor without much issue. Along with this, it proved to be a great way to vent her frustration and make some decent coin on the side. As she followed the instructions of her fellow clanmates, Nine soon became intimate with the primal fury wielding such a weapon nurtured. Something her less-experienced self might succumb to more often. But now? She could wield it as a weapon. And for her reflection? It provided her a means of release as well. Able to teeter on the edge of control to unleash the most furious of attacks, Nine became one of the top hunters of the guild, earning her respect throughout the clan and Ishgard.

During her time as a hunter, Nine was quick to listen to the gossip floating around the Forgotten Knight surrounding the Knights of the Round, especially when she learned that some of the Scions had made it into the city. The stories about mysterious correspondences between the Archbishop and these newcomers was enough to arouse her suspicions and actively lend her services to the Scions and House Fortemps in more of an auxiliary role. Eventually, when the true nature of Thordan’s deception came to light, she was quick to take the fight to oust the Orthodoxy from those loyal to Thordan in the ensuing chaos. Helping secure the city after the raid on The Vault, she took it upon herself to ensure that those perpetuating this conflict were responsible for their actions. So the moment Ser Aymeric began to reshape the foundations of society, she was ready to apply herself to become a proper knight. With her family’s idea of a more open, allied Ishgard, he felt inclined to grant her a position as a temple knight. However, it wasn’t long before the miqo’te surprised her superiors. Using unheard-of thrusts and methods to evade, bait, and decisively strike her opponents allowed her a swift completion of her assignments alongside her typical heroics.

It was only a few weeks afterward when Nidhogg’s brood members began to attack the outskirts of Dravania, causing her to come to Tailfeather’s aid to prevent the settlement from being overrun by dragons. This dispatch went far more successfully than her first, allowing her to secure the borders of Ishgardian land for the duration of the war. While there, she reunited with her parents, who had feared that she had died during her trial. For the next few months, she spent her time dealing with the occasional dragon attack and helping those around the village. Compared to her other life, this relative peace brought her journey into perspective so far, as her parents recounted stories from her childhood around the table with some of her comrades in arms. All of this came to an end when Nidhogg’s brood seemed ready to attack the city one last time, forcing Nine to return, this relative peace compared to Ishgard with the rest of her unit. On the Steps of Faith, she helped hold the line against that final assault by confronting the final opponent of the war: Nidhogg. Their fight was long and arduous, and joining this last bastion of heroes to strike down the wyrm mortally wounded Nine. While the strength of her ax felled the beast, holding onto it became a burden she could not bear. The sounds of the celebration grew dim around her as she stared into the snowy tundra around her. The place that had forged her into the woman she was today. Rather than criticizing her for such a foolish move, her reflection instead held her in a tender embrace as the world grew dim around her.

Nine remained in intensive care for the next few weeks as the flames and fire died down once more. Afterward, the miqo’te stayed behind for a time to enjoy her victory over the wyrm. Yet Nine couldn’t resist the lure of adventure for long. Upon expressing this concern to Aymeric, the Lord Commander decided to grant her a position as an Outrider Knight. While still loyal to Ishgard, she had far more agency than other knights. Able to take on independent commissions as an adventurer during the lulls between assignments, Nine’s main work would involve representing Ishgard in foreign matters or diplomatic missions. A new chapter of her life was waiting to be written with her acceptance of the offer moments later. But this time, the Keeper would get to chart her path.