Quote Originally Posted by Exodus-E View Post
Really?
I thought the austerities worked without the need of an aspected crystal (in fact, I don't think the Summoner quests ever mentioned it); instead, simply needing the defeat of a given Primal, and call upon their essence from an area where their aspect is strong.

Unless I'm missing something else (because, in Garuda's case, if her whole essence was inside Ultima Weapon, the we shouldn't have been able to call its Egi...would we?)...
It's not her soul that we need, it's aether that was used to create her body, when you defeat a primal the aether they were made of scatter around and return to the earth, but a part is also absorbed by all the living being in the area, in the case of Garuda although she didn't vanish we got her wind crystal which was made from her aether, so that would have been enough.


It's also possible that when we beat her she was already disappearing and we got some aether from her while she was trying to regenerate by absorbing Titan and Ifrit.