Ser Aymeric de Borel, Lord Commander of the Temple Knights and Speaker of the newly-founded Ishgardian House of Lords, has always fancied himself a practical man. He has always had ideals, of course, which in conjunction with nearly unparalleled talent both on and off the battlefield was what drove him to his position, but he's always been the sort of person to understand the hardships of reality when trying to achieve his goals.

An end to the thousand-year-long Dragonsong War, and a peaceful one at that, was then quite beyond his reasonable expectations at first.

Nevertheless, he seizes his opportunities when they're presented, and one such opportunity was meeting the Warrior of Light and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. He needed them, and they needed him. A reasonable bargain, and one from which Ishgard stood to gain much.

Even so, the tales surrounding the apolitical group of heroes were wild and tall, and beggared belief enough times it was hard to credit them with anything but the truth. The Warrior, chosen of Mother Hydaelyn, had not only almost singlehandedly defeated Gaius van Baelsar and his subordinates, thus beheading the Garlean Empire's branch in Eorzea, but also defeated several primals summoned by the Beast Tribes (some of them multiple times) and then gone on to forge stronger political alliances with various factions within them. The first time the Scions visited Coerthas, they unmasked a heretic and crippled the Dravanian force holding the Stone Vigil almost as an afterthought, their goal merely to gain Ishgardian trust and rescue Cid nan Garland's legendary airship, the Enterprise, which had crashed nearby.

Beggared belief, as mentioned.

Some political faction in the Ul'dahn Syndicate then marked them as regicides, which was naturally a preposterous accusation, but traitors within their midst meant they had nowhere to go, which brought them to Ishgard's doorstep again, much to its fortune. Lord Haurchefant, may he forever be honoured in the Halls of Halone, once called the Warrior "hope incarnate", and the Scions' further achievements only served to prove him right again and again. They revealed the rot and treachery their war was founded upon and which the Holy See had hidden from everyone since its inception, then proceeded to find the most unlikely of allies in the dragon Midgardsormr himself and his brood Hraesvelgr, and eventually defeated Nidhogg and helped establish an accord of peace between the dragons and the mortals.

It was over. The Dragonsong War was over on the best of notes, all thanks to the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and most of all the Warrior of Light, Otohiko Yakata.

An Au Ra. Even through Aymeric's practicality, he felt a twinge of fear when he first saw the man's nearly-draconian horns and scales, his tail lashing left and right with the intensity of his eyes and his focus on the mission. Aymeric would learn to welcome the sight, though, and then anticipate and hope for it. Otohiko Yakata would become an inspiration to him and his nation, one of the only people with whom he would entrust the safety of Ishgard, as well as a close and stalwart friend.

Mayhap more than that.

Aymeric would be a fool to fail to recognise the feelings he had developed for the man during the time they spent together. He had not given such things much thought, before; there were always more important things, more pressing matters. But the Warrior of Light took care of most of them, and the Lord Commander found himself with something he hadn't had in quite a while: free time.

Again he seized his opportunity, and invited Otohiko to his manor for dinner, to celebrate the success of the peace talks, or so he claimed. Still did the wine loosen his tongue, and he became more forward than he would normally be. The thought of the Warrior of Light in his life, sharing moments with him, that unreserved smile when he recounted some silly anecdote about the Moogles' trials in the Churning Mists, those intense eyes that sought naught but the good of the realm, the faint traces of insecurity he reads between the hero's lines as if his deeds weren't enough to mark him as one of the most extraordinary people Aymeric has ever met...

There is, however, no rest for the righteous. They were interrupted, and news of another primal summoning grabbed Aymeric's friend's attention once more, and Hydaelyn's protection marks him as the sole hero fit for the job. With regret did the Lord Commander send him away and watch him disappear to the south, to rescue the realm from its own follies once more.