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sundered-soul · 1 year ago

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sundered-soul · 1 year ago

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Saints and Sinners

// Note: Takes place after slaying the final Lightwarden

“He’s coming!” Ardbert shouts from ahead, where she cannot see.

The eternal sun she’s swallowed threatens to come back up and she chokes on it. It drips past pursed lips, a bitter draught, a holy poison.

“If you’ve aught planned, now is the time! He’s aiming for the Exarch!”

She gags on the light threatening to burn its way back up, melting flesh from bone, inside then out. In your darkest hour, in the blackest night, think of me. Think of me. She closes her eyes and forces her aether—burning, twisting, deforming, the monstrosity that it’s become and makes her—and wills it to move. Wills it to obey. For who else could I love but you? It’s only a second but her aether is her own again and not the Lightwarden it made her and she slaps a bloodied palm onto the ground.

Bang!

No. She’s seen this before, heard the same sound of her world shattering. Her vision is stained white from the light, but all she can see is red. The red of his hair, his eyes, and the red that stains the front of his robe and forms rivers down his front to pool around him. It’s the ugliest color she’s ever seen. It doesn’t belong there—it’s too much red for him. His staff clatters to the ground and he follows with it.

It didn’t work. Her hands shake, her body shudders and her world trembles. Emet-Selch is talking, but she cannot hear him over her own ragged breathing, over her world crumbling apart. He kneels down in front of her, but she doesn’t see him. Just the red that trickles down the gold patterns carved in the floor by his feet.

Listen to my voice.

It didn’t work. Why didn’t it work?

Breathe.

She practiced it day and night until her legs gave out and her aether all but left her entirely. She practiced that ability until they found her body slumped over exhausted. Until there was no aether and she resorted to using her own life to fuel its magicks. Because that was fitting for a shield meant to save somebody from something fatal. A shield for when their own broke because she knows she cannot protect everyone, but she has to try. In your darkest hour, in the blackest night, think of me. Think of me. Think of me.

Listen to our heartbeat.

She practiced it until she could do it with nary a thought but to whom she might use it on. So why is it that the ones she wants to protect the most are the ones that lie dead? She practiced it to save him! To save somebody! Anybody! Why. Didn’t. It. Work?! Woe betide the man who stands with the Weapon of Light, for death will be his reward. Death for him and his kin and all that he holds dear.

Listen—

Would his staff find home next to a broken shield?

She screams. Bloodcurdling despair because she cannot unsee it. Cannot unsee the shield, shattering; his body falling to the floor. Cannot unsee the staff falling and his wide, red eyes as they looked at her in both pain and worry. Worry not for himself but for her. Always for her. They always die for her! Why?! Why do they always die?! She is not worth dying for!

The sun spills from her mouth in a sound so twisted that it brings everyone to their knees. Makes them clutch their ears and curl in on themselves. Agonizing like the light tearing her flesh and burning the color of sin into her skin.

Slow down. Breathe. You’re spiraling. Let me take over, I’ll—

Emet-Selch wanted a monster? She’d become the holiest monstrosity he’s ever seen and purge this star along with all the others! Wipe them out of existence until there was nothing left! Until there was nothing they could use for their sacred rejoining and then—then—!

Flesh tearing, bones breaking, her entire body feels hot. A fever boiling and blistering broken skin, consumed whole by the light she swallowed. There was no ugly red pooling from her torn flesh as her body tries to reshape itself in an image fit for the reckoning she would unleash. Fit for the holy fury that not even Halone could compete with. Not a single drop of red—just burning, white light too hot to touch and too blinding to look at pooling around her like a misshapen halo.

Stop, you don’t want this!

What did she want, then? If not this, then what?! If she could not save him, then there was no point in saving anybody! The world deserved to burn for their silent suffering!

“Enough.”

A hand, dark and familiar, covers her eyes and blocks out the light. Brings darkness to the wretched light festering from inside as liquid gold drips from beneath. It trails down and fills in the cracks of her skin in silent weeping.

“I warned you not to drink too deep.”

An unholy chorus of cries spills out of her; gargled, monstrous. The sound of sin stained sun, of flames fueled by an abyss from the depths of her heart. The hand over her eyes tightens and cold, clawed steel digs into the glittering gold tracks of her tears and holds fast. Refuses to let go. Refuses to leave her alone and anchors her humanity to her in shackles.

You will be the star by which I chart my course to when I wake. She is a star burning from the inside out.

#ffxiv #ocs; astra mercer #ffxiv wol #Had this sitting in wips for over a year #wanted to continue it but idk #head empty

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sundered-soul · 1 year ago

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