#WHERE I COME OUT OF THE WOODWORK TO WRITE A SHIT TON OF DRABBLES

[sea-and-storm]

FFXIV Write Prompt #1: Cross

A hissing sigh of frustration left Ghoa’s lips as she angrily crossed out yet another failed formulation.

Leaning forward in her chair, the Mankhad returned her quill to its inkpot and returned her head to her hands. It had been bells now since Estrid’s handmaiden Luri had left her to her thinking and hypothesizing. The Raen’s suggestion of using some manner of alchemical concoction to induce a fit in the lady significant enough to draw her gods-be-damned brother out of his laboratory had sparked in her mind no shortage of ideas. Yet for all her nonstop laboring in the hours since, Ghoa had yet to find a formulation that seemed theoretically sound. 

With these perilously high stakes, Ghoa would not be satisfied until she was certain her potion would work to perfection. After all, it could very well be the only opportunity she would have if things went poorly.

“Seven hells,” she groaned as she squeezed her eyes shut and clenched at her hair. “Think. Think..”

She hadn’t any spare materials or tools available with which to tinker and experiment as was her usual means of arriving at successful alchemical invention. Any textbooks and treatises she might have to lead her in the right direction were locked away in their inn room. There was much she did not know about the Lady Estrid - her weight, her height, her constitution, or just how volatile her condition was. Worst of all, each passing tick of the clock made her exponentially more aware of the excruciating crush of time weighing down upon her shoulders.

As she released her grasp, the Xaela instead slumped back into her chair and directed her gaze up towards the ceiling as if searching it for her hidden answer. While it yielded nothing of good use, a dark thought instead crossed her mind in its place.

What if she took the need of Lady Estrid’s safety out of the equation? Poisoning certainly widened the acceptable margins for error. If she didn’t have to worry about moderating the potion’s effects nor having a remedy at hand, those were important factors that Ghoa could easily be liberated from in her calculations. Whatever happened, happened.. just so long as it gave her enough time to convince the Doctor that surrendering Nabi and allowing them to leave unmolested would win him an antidote that she needn’t even craft with aught but hollow, silvered words. 

Long, tense moments passed by as she silently argued with her better self about doing whatever she had to do in order to free Nabi from her detainment. Her stomach twisted itself into knots she tried to convince herself that she could do just what the shadowy whisper in the back of her mind suggested.

But suddenly her mind was pulled back to just days before they had come to this awful place when she stood in the plaza affronting the Alchemists Guild in Ul’dah, wracked by the uncomfortable reminder of all the missteps she had taken upon the wayward path that had led her there. She had subdued those thoughts with the reassurance that while she could not change her past ill wanderings, that she would henceforth stray no further. There were too many people whom she cared about that she dared not disappoint by falling into old habits, taking the easy way out. Most importantly, she dared not disappoint herself.

Ghoa didn’t want to hurt Estrid any more than was absolutely necessary to enact their plan. She had been earnest when she had said that she wanted to help free the woman from her affliction. What she suffered was imprisonment of its own right, though her prison possessed no iron bars or chains. Being locked away in one’s own tortured mind with no hope of escape.. The Mankhad could think of little else worse than that, and such was a fate none deserved to suffer.

No, there had to be an answer that did not simply use the already suffering woman as fodder for her own needs. She just had to think harder.

Even with her renewed determination, the alchemist’s mind still struggled to find the right solution with just the right balance. Once again, frustration began to mount within her mind and tension coiled around her body like a snake. Involuntarily, the Storm within seemed to stir in kind as often it did when her mind was in a state of tumult. She could feel the telltale tingle of electricity brimming underneath skin and scale. She could smell the faintest hint of ozone in the air around her as the Storm threatened to swell and break over her.

Wait, she thought as her eyes widened. Could it truly be that simple?

When first she and Nabi had performed, Ghoa’s aether had crescendoed into a thunderous flourish meant to impress, but had instead sent the Lady Estrid into a frenzy. The answer was right there in front of her all along. She needn’t worry about finding just the right strength of potion nor concocting any manner of remedy.. but nor did she have to resort to endangering Estrid’s life with poison.

She only needed be afforded an encore of sorts.

Amongst the papers and tomes that she had borrowed from the Alchemists Guild in regards to the research of aetheric corruption, no few had talked of their methods in which to simulate such factors when subjects for experimentation were - understandably - not in ready supply. 

Particularly, she recalled one such paper that detailed how its author had tried to induce a state similar to full-blown corruption within a test subject with a formulation that had temporarily pulled their aetheric alignment sharply out of balance towards one element or another. Of course, the effect hadn’t been as profoundly volatile as that which was found in true corruption.. But regardless, the study had been cut short prematurely for safety concerns when the subject struggled to maintain control of their roiling aether to a nonetheless dangerous degree.

In true scholarly fashion, the author had detailed the steps they had taken in formulating the tincture.. presumably so that none would repeat their mistakes, or at least would find means to improve upon them before making another attempt. But for her purposes, the recipe as written would more than suffice.

Leaning back over the desk, Ghoa plucked up the quill and began to scribble out her calculations. Instead of having to make estimations of Estrid’s height, weight, and other such factors, she scribbled in those far more familiar - her own.

As it was, the Storm was hard enough to control when she was fully in her right mind. To purposefully induce a surge of such magnitude could very well wrest the wild levin out of Ghoa’s hands entirely. But if she struggled to control her aether, it stood to reason that Estrid would succumb to another fit of her own until there was enough distance between them for her to no longer feel the Storm’s bite as it had the first time when they had left the manse after her failed dance.

It was impossible to extinguish a flame whilst someone continued to pour ceruleum over it, after all.

But even if Ghoa were to successfully coerce the Doctor into surrendering Nabi and allowing them to leave in peace, there was still the matter of how to right the state she sought to put herself into to achieve it. And unfortunately, that answer was somewhat less clear to her.

In the study, the author had mentioned that their subject had received aetheric treatments in order to bring them back to a state of elemental balance. Of course, given that the treatments hadn’t been alchemical in nature, the author hadn’t seen fit to detail them any further than in simple anecdote.

Yet if it was matter of simple aetherology and elemental conquests and submissions, Ghoa’s working theory was that a surge of electrified aether would gradually reach equilibrium in the presence of grounding earth aether. And as it just so happened, the very woman she sought to free had the most inexplicably profound connection with the earth that she had ever seen. 

Gods, it was such a risk.. But far more than her desperate, half-cocked plan to fake a kidnapping, this idea seemed to hold much more weight as she ran through it over and over again in her mind. And if worse came to worst and things went awry? She’d certainly be in a fit state to make a stand to try and fight their way out.. and it would’ve given her no small amount of pleasure to wipe the sour look off of face of the guard outside her door in particular.