#f:xiv

[farplane]

DAY 7: PAWN

The high summer sun blistered down upon the palace grounds, and Saskia hoped beyond hope that the Censor would not feel her sweating through the stiff fabric of her gown when next he found some pretense to touch the small of her back. The royal terraces were crawling with legionaries in red and black and white-robed dignitaries, all arranged in perfect lines; the soldiers faceless under their helms, like puppets awaiting the tug of command on their strings. 

Saskia had chosen for her own armour a somber dress in the current Nhalmascan style—a gift from the Censor himself—far better suited for the dreary Ilsabardian mountain climes than the dry highland summer. Miserably, she hoped her mother would never see what imperial taste had wrought upon her homeland’s traditional fashions.

She was not alone in wishing the assembly would end before it had even begun. Behind her, a bureaucrat complained of the heat and openly longed for home; his neighbour muttered back snidely that “we wouldn’t have gotten this horrid little posting if not for your indiscretions with Lord Nerva’s favourite, Magnus,” which Saskia committed to memory in case it proved useful. She lifted a hand to her forehead under the pretense of shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked about the terrace, and surreptitiously wiped sweat from her shining brow.

“I hope you’re not feeling faint, my dear,” said goe Tullius; how artfully he spun himself a fable to justify his steadying hand on her back.

“Thank you, Censor. It is quite hot today.”

“Indeed. I have been invited to the palace by the viceroy’s entourage after this little display; you should join me for refreshments. I shall see to your every need.”

He had worn his most expensive cologne today, likely for her benefit; Saskia could smell the notes of vetiver on the breeze. She smiled, as she always did.

“You are too kind. I wish I could accept, but surely the viceroy—”

“Would be a fool not to wish to be graced by your presence. You have been a staunch ally to his rule; a provincial flower grown beautiful under His Radiance’s sun.” A traitor and a liar and a seductress. A Resistance spy. “I must insist, for your company is the sweetest of my days in these uncivilized lands.”

“Then I would fain accept, my lord.”

The Censor nodded, showing his most handsome smile, and tucked her hand into the crook of his arm with a pat that was almost paternal. Heat drummed inside Saskia’s ears, but she forced herself into closer contact with him.

“Ah. At last,” he said as the viceroy’s airship landed.

The commander of the XIVth Legion came shadowed not only by his tribuni, but by soldiers in uniforms Saskia had never seen before. Imperial black plate showed on their torsos and arms, but the arrangement was piecemeal, reminiscent of a mercenary’s mismatched armour; the colourful sashes and fabrics they wore as accents reminded her of the Arroways, which brought on a sickening lurch of her stomach. They were not helmed like imperial soldiers; their heads were covered by beautifully adorned turbans, and their faces hidden by horrid, beaklike masks. Ala Mhigan colours and fabrics corrupted by imperial austerity.

She scarcely heard the specific words with which the viceroy introduced his new force, comprised entirely of young Ala Mhigans who had traded service for citizenship. A fresh sort of panic underlay her shaken state: she was meant to listen, not to lose her cool like some frightful little novice.

The commander of this new Crania Lupi was just a slip of a girl, but her gaze was cold as stone.

“Van Baelsar is certainly eager to make us forget his little debacle with the Agrius,” said goe Tullius amusedly in her ear. Did he feel her shiver? “A bit late on the draw, perhaps, but cleverly done nonetheless. Obedience comes easier when loyalty is instilled from a young age; and what good is insurgency when one’s children wield His Radiance’s authority? They will only break themselves.”

Saskia simpered and watched the young commander and extinguished Morgana’s memory from her mind every time it welled at the sight of the girl’s hard eyes. She envisioned, distantly, punching holes with the blade of Neesa’s needle into the Censor.

When she freed herself come eveningtide, she went straight for the theatre. She opened the trap door underneath the stage with shaking fingers and descended into the hidden room that housed the Palm door, sat down on the bed, and hugged the pillow tight to her chest until it puffed into pockets of resistance. With her right hand, she slowly drove the needle into the pillow, over and over again, until she was covered in feathers.

[farplane]

DAY 6: ONEROUS

There are no mirrors in this broken world; no men like him in its reflections.

Only a man with a face may see himself in another. The Emissary has long since forgotten the shape of his own. Too many he has worn, too many he has seen; he has been and been and been, endlessly, until all he knows to hold himself together is that he is a saint of duty.

The Griffin is in his own way without shadow; he is also teeming with ghosts. He is all broken memories, chipped away by time: a faceless man living behind a mask, hooded in white. Not a mirror, but a fragmented retelling.

His burdens have voices and cries the Emissary almost recognizes. Lesser beasts—but beasts nonetheless.

/

The Emissary is no merchant, and the Griffin no haggling buyer. They speak not of the cost.

/

Under the cold light of the moon—and the blind, chained gaze of the one true god—a man gives his heart and the lives of his people to a new god, and it is not enough.

As She has done for eons, She sings.

It is always the same story.

[farplane]

DAY 5: CUTTING CORNERS

“I’m done,” Sihtric said, unfurling from the positively crustacean sitting position he had been working in.

Pavane held out a hand. “Let’s see it, then.”

Sihtric slid over his worksheet with an expression that was just short of smug and immediately began spinning his pencil on his thumb. He was a smart lad, and Pavane knew for a fact that he was already making quite an impression with his professors—no small feat in the Studium of all places—but he still went so chaotically about writing down his reasonings that decoding his worksheets just about required a cipher key. It was impossible to separate one formula from another at a glance.

What Pavane did notice at a glance, however, was the name Sihtric had written at the top of the page, alongside his student identification.

He looked up.

“What?” Sihtric said warily. “I thought I did good.”

“Does Sairsel know?” Pavane said, turning the worksheet over and tapping a finger against his name. “Sihtric Selsson.”

Sihtric got that darling little look on his face he had when he felt sheepish about something and shook his head. “You can’t be in the Studium without a surname, turns out. And I didn’t want them to just saddle me with ‘Salt’ like I was nobody’s child, so…” he said with a shrug, pulling his knees up to his chest. “D’you think he’ll be all right with it, like?”

“I think he’ll be honoured, Sihtric.”

He might not have spoken to Sairsel in moons, but he’d known him well enough to at least be certain of this much of his heart. And none of this concerned him, really, but he felt a blossom of pride and affection for the two of them nonetheless.

“You should tell him,” he added gently. “He ought to know.”

“I will! I will,” Sihtric said.

“Waiting for the right moment?”

“Yeah.”

Pavane made a noise at the back of his throat, then returned to the worksheet. After a moment, he handed it back. “Start over.”

“I got it wrong?”

“You got it right at the end there, but you shouldn’t have; you skipped two steps. And no, I’m not telling you which. Brilliance doesn’t excuse sloppiness.”

Sihtric blew out a sigh and dipped back into crustacean mode.

[farplane]

DAY 4: [EXTRA CREDIT]

On the empty, unseen stage, Zenos laid his hands upon him, and it felt nothing like how Sairsel had expected. The skin was tipped with cold—then again, it was winter, and so was his—but warm with blood underneath; the touch was curious rather than violent.

With him Sairsel had a strange freedom to speak his thoughts, so instead of wondering he said aloud, “Have you ever even touched someone you weren’t fighting?”

“No,” Zenos said, fingers splaying out against the stem of his neck. Then he amended, “The Butcher. Her deference was a poor act; she bowed her head to me when she ought to have been snapping like a caged beast. I made her look at me.”

Sairsel shuddered under his skin for Fordola, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. He was a statue, locked in stone; a tree, rooted deep in the earth. Zenos covered the marble of his throat with his palm, thumb to the running sap of his pulse, fingers to his jaw. For the first time, vulnerable as he was, he wasn’t afraid. As simple as it might have been, Zenos crushing his windpipe was unthinkable in that moment.

“What about me now?” he asked the empty theatre, because Zenos was pressed against his back. The shape of him was palpable, perfectly defined by touch alone.

One hand moved down his chest to pause pressed against his heart and feeling his breath. He wanted to be touched.

Zenos’s hair fell feather-like against his neck as he bent his head to his. “I do not know,” he said, and brushed his lips against the shell of Sairsel’s ear.

[farplane]

DAY 3: TEMPER

This was his last attempt at killing Emet-Selch.

Sihtric hadn’t kept count; every one of his failed assassinations had been provoked by unfettered emotion, the product of rage or fear or heartbreak spilling over and out of him like boiling water from a pot. Impulse made for poor planning, and even poorer recall of one’s missteps.

(By Emet-Selch’s count, the boy’s fits of aggression numbered, at this point, thirteen.)

More often than not, he’d been reactionary, and if Sairsel had been there—his belly made a knot of itself and tears pushed hard behind his eyes every time Sihtric thought of him—he would have reminded him that an impatient hunter was a hungry hunter. And he would’ve been right, of course, because Sihtric was hungry: vengeance was a starving thing.

I name thee Theron, my Lightwarden, he heard Emet-Selch say in his nightmares as Sairsel transformed over and over and over again, and forgive thee thy wandering. He both feared and wanted to understand why there had been such dissatisfaction in the Ascian’s voice, how he could be so rueful of the success of his own cruelty as if it were Sairsel’s fault.

For once, though, Sihtric’s fear was greater than his curiosity. If Emet-Selch died before he understood, he could live with it, because he’d at least have succeeded, and he wouldn’t have to live with him.

The plan wasn’t a very elaborate one, but it was at least a plan. Rather than bite and snap like the feral little thing he’d been when he first met Sairsel, or opportunistically try to push Emet-Selch off of one of the tall buildings in his dead city, he waited for the right moment. And while he waited, he stole a stylus off of the absurdly tall desk in the Bureau of the Architect—

“I will pretend I saw nothing,” the shade called Hythlodaeus said, with a lilt to his strange echoing voice that sounded almost playful—

and sat by himself and remembered the Dark. He traced the runes tattooed on his arm with the stylus, recalling how something inside him had come alive when the Saintsmaker had inked that call to the Dark into his skin, until he could just make out a faint glow under the black lines.

It ached like a bad fever to pull it to the surface without letting it free, but he could endure it. He could survive as long as he had to if it meant he could free himself and bring Sairsel back.

Emet-Selch still slept, though Sihtric knew Ascians didn’t need to. Maybe he still looked to pass the time, somehow, to show that he could wait for an eternity while Sihtric grew older and more complacent. He didn’t want to let himself be broken, but he was still too human to beat Emet-Selch at this game. That meant he had to act while he could; to strike that perfect hunter’s balance of patience and decisiveness.

 He stayed awake one night until he knew for certain that Emet-Selch had himself gone to sleep; until long enough passed that, if whatever the Ascian’s body was worked like a person’s, he’d be deep enough not to notice his approach. Those were really the only elements of his plan: sleep, stealth, his knife, and his own Light. He crept by Emet-Selch’s bedside and gripped his knife with both hands, willing his outpouring of Light forward until his hands looked like he held a star in the shape of a blade, and he stabbed Emet-Selch in the heart.

Or he would have, if not for Emet-Selch’s ribs. He bungled the angle: his knife skidded over bone and cut only through superfluous flesh, the Light searing Emet-Selch’s skin without ever penetrating his black heart the way it should have. The glyph flashed a foreboding red over his face before Sihtric’s eyes, and there was a brief moment where he felt warm blood spill over his hands as he wrenched his knife back in an attempt to get himself away.

But he was a barely formed speck of a cell before Emet-Selch’s primordial existence. He was done the moment metal had touched bone. Emet-Selch swatted at him as one might a fly, making him scream out a yelp like a kicked dog as the Darkness speared him; he curled up on the floor around where it faded in his middle and gasped great big gulps of air, only belatedly realizing that he was sobbing at the pain.

Not just at the pain. At his loss, too—because he knew this was his last chance even before it was spoken into being, and he’d lost.

“Now, boy,” Emet-Selch said through gritted teeth. He stood over him like a lengthening shadow, his white glove stained red as he pressed a hand to Sihtric’s little insect bite with Light spilling between his fingers. “This has gone on long enough.”

Sihtric didn’t apologize, and Emet-Selch didn’t make him. After all, Ascians never apologized.

[farplane]

DAY 2: BOLT

the locked tomb au.

The room they locked him into wasn’t exactly a cell, per se.

Well. It wasn’t a prison, ontologically—though it did lock from the outside, he didn’t get to choose when he left it, and they had put him in there because he was a flight risk. But there weren’t bars on the window (mainly because there was no window, and that was the primary factor that would chip away at his sanity; the solitude wasn’t much of a punishment) and his toilet and sink were both separate and inside a little cabinet rather than in the room where he slept, so there was that. 

He was given the illusion of agency through a shelf stocked with nutrient paste and basic dry ingredients so that he could manage his own meals, bland as they were; they also let him access the sonic cleaners every other day for the sake of hygiene, which he had to admit was much more diligent than he was in washing with water when in the wilds. His cot was thin and hard and the blankets scratchy, but it was clean and free of vermin. He had a little lamp by his bedside and the ceiling fixtures first attuned to, then maintained, his circadian rhythms. 

The House of God, the Necrolord Prime, was infinitely generous with its indentures, and its Kindly Prince immeasurably epithetical.

Sairsel could almost have been happy in this particular state of captivity, if not for all the captivity. And the fact that he had been visited by one of God’s Saints after the first full day they had left him in pitch darkness, which had suitably unhinged him, and told in the Abyssal Celebrant’s disaffected voice that plucking him out of his refuge with his family had now given them quite an easy target to mete out punishment if he stepped even one toe out of line.

When he’d asked exactly what the line was, the Second Saint to serve the Emperor Undying had fixed him with a blank, red-masked stare and said, “Figure it out, Septem.”

“It’s pronounced ‘Sairsel,’ actually,” Sairsel retorted. 

His family had never taken Seventh House names, and when he did use something alongside his familial name he used Arroway, the alias his mother had worn in place of her House name. His father had never said where she was from, or why she hid, but this remnant of her was something he held close in her perpetual absence. Hearing the generic Seventh arithmonym they saddled him with always chafed.

Probably that was why the Saints used it at all. 

He hadn’t asked why they bothered with a nobody like him in the first place. At sixteen, he wasn’t particularly tall or strong or showing much promise at anything beyond hunting and climbing: nothing that was beyond a half-decent construct to mimic without the cost of housing a living, breathing, shitting being. The Cohort had no need of sagittarii with the experience of wilderness and a spirit that bucked against military discipline; God and his Lyctors could make perfect constructs out of an ossicle and give it a bow if they so wished.

So, why was he even here? Why, if he was so far beneath the attention of the Saints and the First at large, did he even get these audiences with the buggers, in God’s House? He’d been afraid for months before he even thought of running back to his family in the first place, and a big reason for that had been that there wasn’t even a fragment of an idea in his mind for how he could be worthy of the Emperor’s attention at all.

He’d soon find out, though.

[farplane]

DAY 1: CROSS

cw: gore

They had not stepped out into the World—here the wide corridors and tall halls of the palace beyond their cold and quiet Walls—for years until it was all empty. There was a war on, apparently, and it was all because of that little quirk of their family of cannibalizing itself; Glauca’s words, not Absidia’s. Glauca had the way with words.

It was Absidia who had listened from the spaces between the Walls and said, “The Emperor is dead again,” as though the Emperor had only ever been one man who was meant to die again and again. Little difference did the man’s name make to them: they spent the first reign in confinement, and the second in confinement, too. Politics were made not to touch them, for they were political pawns, gone to dust before they could ever join the burned-down board.

But when the second Emperor died—not the first who had been three men, but the one who had only ever been half of one—Absidia attached meaning and gravity to that fact, and they crawled out from behind their Walls and into the World.

Absidia walked and walked. Glauca stood still. She drifted through the World only moments and found the Emperor in the empty throne room, this place which begat another war and this corpse that had begat them. It was the first time their lord father was a thing of flesh before her, blue-lipped and stiff and crusted with his own dark blood.

His flesh fascinated her. She would have liked to see it when their darling brother’s work was fresh and Father’s skin did not slough into the split cavity of his neck, to have gotten a clearer view of the tendons and white bone that still connected his head to the rest of his body. As it was now, a gory black mess, she missed a great deal of detail.

“Baby, this is vile,” Absidia said chidingly when she returned to Glauca’s side after her exploration of the World yielded nothing more than different sorts of Walls. She reached for her sister’s thin arm and hugged it with both of her own, tangling their bodies into one in remembrance of their time in the womb. “Why did he not finish the job?”

Glauca did not answer. Her head tilted to mimic the angle of Father’s on his corpse, so that Absidia could not help but tuck the fall of colourless hair back from her face and behind her sister’s ear.

“All this talk of Brother dearest’s strength and he can’t even go through beheading Father proper,” Absidia went on.

“I don’t think he cared.” There was some dignity in a beheading. Not so in ending a sprawled, miserable corpse with a dangling head. “Sweet stupid baby, don’t doubt he is everything they say. He never cared about anything, that’s all.”

“Admire. Please. I would be curious to meet him, but—admiration, Abse? That’s for little children.”

Absidia affected a grimace that looked more a pout. “He got everything,” she whined. “And you make it sound like you admire him.”

She might have gotten her wish, had Absidia not heard footsteps then and grabbed Glauca’s hand to drag her out of the World and back into the Walls.

/

As the Tower forms out from the World and around the Walls, Absidia catches a butterfly with wings so blue it may well be charged with ceruleum. Glauca sews and sews while Absidia lays out the insect ever so carefully and pins its wings.

“Look,” says Glauca, turning over her work.

“What is that thing?”

“It’s Brother’s pet monster.”

Glauca is very proud of her work. She trails the pad of her finger down a cheek. Absidia presses her own cheek to Glauca’s shoulder, slipping into brief reverie, then says, “Would you like to pin it with my butterfly?”

“You do it.”

Diligently, Absidia spreads the arms of Brother’s pet monster like butterfly wings and pins its hands, then its feet together. Glauca tilts her head to contemplate the pair like she watched Father’s head clinging on to the rest of his flesh.

“Pretty.”

Much prettier than the rest of the Tower.

[farplane]

DAY 5: [EXTRA CREDIT]

There was no hero’s welcome as they passed through the White Aisle’s gates; only a greeting from the younger gate guard to Arenvald, and a wary look from the older at Fordola. The former was easily returned, and the latter easily ignored—both commonplace enough for any old homecoming.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” said Arenvald as they walked, taking their usual path to the palace.

“We haven’t got all night,” Fordola replied. “I have to be back in the barracks by sundown.”

“Very funny. No, but, like—if he’s an insect, yeah, what’s with the whole… battle-worship eternal war philosophy? Aren’t insects all about collaboration?”

“They’re the beastmen’s gods. They’re not supposed to make sense.”

“Aye, perhaps,” Arenvald said, clearly unsatisfied with the response. “Suppose if I had four arms myself I’d make the most of it with… four arms to match.” He nudged Fordola’s elbow. “Arms. Swords. Get it?”

Fordola made a sound of disgust and picked up her pace to distance himself from him.

“Come on!” Arenvald called after her. “That was a good one!”

As he jogged to catch up, Fordola stopped dead just short of turning a corner, and pressed her back to the nearest wall. She’d gone ash-pale, a choked gasp caught in her throat, and Arenvald could see her chest heaving with suppressed breath.

“Are you all right? What’s going on?”

Fordola just shook her head. Arenvald reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, then decided against it; he knew her enough, by now, to be sure she would just shrug him off. So he took just one step past her and peered around the corner, heedless of Fordola hissing his name—and saw the cause of her shock.

It wasn’t right, that he should recognize Fordola’s mother from her memories, but it was the way of things. And maybe it was right enough because they were equals in it; likely she had seen his mother in his memories, too—more than once, knowing the strength of her Echo and the ragged hole his mother had left inside him.

“What’s her name?”

Fordola bit hard on the inside of her cheek. “As—Astrid.”

That knocked something loose inside Arenvald, if only for an instant. It was his mother’s name, too. But he swallowed hard, and pulled his focus back to Fordola. 

“Do you want me to stop her while you catch your breath?” he asked quietly. “So you can say hello?”

Again, Fordola shook her head—this time, almost frantically. “I can’t,” she said, so vulnerable it ached. “I can’t, I can’t let her see what I’ve—”

—become, something in Arenvald’s mind whispered when she couldn’t finish. Not the Echo, but something. He could only look between Fordola and her mother’s retreating back, fearing he might lose her in the crowd.

“But all the things she must’ve heard…” he said. “Doesn’t she deserve to know you’re all right?”

“I can’t,” Fordola snapped, her voice hard with grief.

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Arenvald said, and decidedly turned the corner. Maybe Fordola hissed his name; maybe she said don’t; maybe she said please.

He hurried down the street, dipping a hand into his pocket for a coin. It was an old trick, one he’d used for drastically different purposes, but it would work for this, too.

“Excuse me, Astrid,” he called, and crouched down as though to pick up the coin already in his hand as Astrid turned. She looked tired and not a little wretched, carrying a basket on her hip as though it weighed a tonze. Arenvald held out the coin in his palm. “You dropped this.”

The hard wariness around her eyes reminded him of Fordola, in a way, but maybe even sadder. “Thank you,” she said, carefully taking the coin; her eyes never left Arenvald’s face. “Do I know you?”

“Er, no. I’m sorry,” Arenvald said. He pointed to himself. “My name is Arenvald. I’m an adventurer, with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn,” and Twelve, that always felt so reassuring to say. “I’ve been working with the Resistance. With your daughter.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Astrid said immediately, and made to walk away. She hid her flinch well when he touched her arm.

“Wait, no, it’s—I don’t mean any ill by it.” He held both hands up. And he wished he’d thought it through, worked out what he was going to say beforehand instead of just opening his big mouth and babbling. “I just wanted you to know she’s doing well. I’ve been… I haven’t been assigned to do it, really, but I’ve been looking after her, sort of. We’re of an age, you see, and we’re— alike.”

Astrid said nothing; she just let him talk. But something settled on her face as emotion overtook her glare: something Arenvald didn’t know how to name. It wasn’t relief, really, or acceptance. Nor even appreciation of what it was saying. But it was something, and it almost made him waver.

“She did bad things, but so have I. Hurt people. But everything I’ve been doing for—for years, it’s always been just to be better. And I think she feels the same. It won’t erase what she’s done, but I think she deserves to try, if there’s goodness ahead of her. Don’t you think?”

“What do you want me to say?” Astrid asked tremulously.

“I— I don’t know.”

Arenvald’s lips parted without sound. 

Astrid hoisted the basket higher on her hip, her other fist clenched tight around Arenvald’s coin. “Then I can say nothing to you,” she said. And for a moment, all he could do was just watch her leave.

“She’s saved countless lives, you know,” Arenvald said to her back, not wanting to raise his voice too loud. The stones in Ala Mhigo always heard too much. “Just in the past few moons. The imperials did something unspeakable to her and she’s been using it to save people. One of them was a father, and that’s one that I know of— all because she knew that somewhere, there was a little girl who needed him.”

He swallowed hard again, unsure of why his throat was so tight. “I don’t care who she was; only that that’s who she is now. And so should you.”

Astrid had slowed her steps to listen, at least; Arenvald saw a tremor in her shoulders, running down the line of her back, but it was gone in an instant as she straightened and went on her way. Still pressed to the wall, Fordola was listening, too: a hand clamped over her mouth, the other a shaking fist, as tears streamed incessantly down her cheeks.

She was wiping at her eyes with the heel of her gloved hand as Arenvald returned, feeling battered and drained in ways that had little to do with their earlier confrontation with a primal. But he had meant everything he said, and he hoped Fordola knew that. Not that there was much he could do to lie to her from the inside.

And neither could she lie to him; not with her face a blotchy red around the nose and eyes, and her cheeks still pale. Arenvald wanted nothing more than to wrap her up in his arms and force her to let herself be a person, but she would just push at him and maybe even bite.

“It’s all right,” he said gently, without touching her. Fordola’s mouth was pinched tight, and she wouldn’t look him in the eye—and even though he’d just stopped himself from reaching out, all the reasons why he shouldn’t seemed pointless and stupid.

So he pulled Fordola into a hug, right there in the middle of the bloody street.

“Don’t,” Fordola said, muffled by his chest. She didn’t shove at him; she just stood there, her body ice against his, and all at once she was clinging to the back of his shirt and gritting her teeth so hard he felt the muscles of her jaw harden against his shoulder.

There was nothing he could say to her, really. He didn’t know if his own mother was alive: he hadn’t dared to ask around, because he didn’t know what he would do with the answer. But if she was still somewhere, he did hope she could make some peace with the suffering she’d endured at the hands of the Empire now that they were free to rebuild their lives.

It didn’t mean he knew whether he would want to stand in front of her again, or be brave enough for it after all the fear he’d felt, at the end.

Maybe one day Fordola could return the favour—tell his mum that he was doing all right, too. And maybe she’d even hug him when he was a mess, after.

[farplane]

DAY 7: SPECULATE

If I crawled out from the dirt of my own tomb: what then?

If I stood on the edge of a sea-beaten cliff just to feel the salt spray on my skin: what then?

To feel anything besides the fire, or the ash—the way it clings to my hair and the clothes my father buried me in—or the rot that is fated to become of me; to know freedom by my open eyes and my cold hands. To know him by the sellsword’s coat he left behind on the clothesline, even if the smell of him has been overtaken (like moss atop an undisturbed grave) by wind and smoke.

To trace a finger over the soft bumps of the embroidery thread I used to mend his ripped cuff, and to maybe even say: here is where I put a bit of myself on his sleeve, so that he would always have some of me to touch on his heart. I was nearly as skilled with a needle as I was with a sword.

If I walked halfway across the world I once knew, like he walked across broken earth to find me a home, and I found what is left of him: what then?

If I got to hear my name in his mouth, even if only for the last time—mine or his, it does not matter; only the shape he made of Steorra like I was not just one star in the sky but all of them—: what then?

(Then Ala Mhigo would not be free)

(It would always be too late: too late to stop his hand, too late to stop his heart from opening great and wide and empty for something that cannot fill it)

(The story exists only if I am buried in it)

[farplane]

DAY 20: PETRICHOR

Every time it stormed, I thought of my father’s god.

Maybe it was wrong to think of a god as his; not mine, not ours. But I knew his faith like I knew a poem or a story: something sweet, something familiar, something that was real because it took a shape that left traces—and still unreal in all the ways it couldn’t be palpable. We grew up in a place where faith was a story, my brothers and I.

But not him. His faith was real, his superstitions certainties, their stories fact. And what I believed in most was him, because he was my father, and he believed in me.

So I loved thinking of his god as his. I found comfort in the rumble of thunder because he heard in it Rhalgr’s promise, and in the lightning that flashed across the sky, he saw His hand. Like I loved seeing marigolds in a field because they were my mother’s favourite flower.

I remember one night when a storm hit right at the twins’ bedtime: how our father had stayed in their room the whole way through to tell them of the Destroyer because Balder was afraid of thunder and Nedric was afraid of Balder’s fear. My grandfather, he told me once, had no respect for fear; but my father was wiser, as sons tend to be when they strive to undo their fathers’ harm, and he taught his sons (and most of all, his daughter) how to know their own fear.

He had sat with the twins until the clouds took the thunder away. By the time I heard his footsteps on the creaky floorboards between my brother’s bedroom and mine, the rain had almost entirely subsided, such that I could open my window and let the cooling, still-wet air in. I had crawled into bed to watch the storm in the dark, so I called out to him with the blankets snug around me.

His footsteps stilled outside my door. He pushed it open, almost warily, because I had my mother’s temper and worsened it tenfold in my adolescence, especially in defense of my personal space; any man would be careful not to intrude uninvited. He called my name in a whisper; maybe he thought he’d mistaken the wind for my voice.

“Will you come in?” I asked.

He shut the door behind him, like I always insisted: with two brothers like mine, trusting an open doorway with a private conversation was a fatal mistake. All of us under the same roof knew this well; I, to this day, never managed to decode the cipher my parents used to speak secrets in our presence.

“What is it?” he asked. “You’re in bed early. Are you feeling unwell?”

“I’m fine. Can I ask you something, Da?”

“You can always ask.”

That was his way: we could ask anything. He wouldn’t always answer—oftentimes our questions were too hard, too thoughtless, too hurtful—but we could always ask, at least once.

“Do you think He’ll tell us?” I said, gesturing outside towards the remnants of the storm. “The Destroyer. When it’s time to go home.”

He took a breath that already told the beginnings of an answer: I had daunted him, and he needed a moment to think. He ambled forward to stand in front of my window.

“I don’t think He will,” he said, and I know now—maybe I knew it then, too—that it was the honest truth, because it hurt. “I think we have to decide that for ourselves.”

“Do you still want to go home?”

“Always,” he said, turning his head to look at me. His certainty, even gently spoken, was sharp with longing; it was him it cut the most. “Why are you asking me all this now?”

I shrugged. Still I remember the loose thread in my blanket that I twirled around my finger, tight enough to turn the tip white, as I said, “Will you let me fight with you? When we do go home?”

Another deep breath. He sat on the edge of my bed, his back to me, and reached out to brush the hair from my face. I didn’t slap his hand away, because— because. I may not have been afraid of the storm, but maybe, like the twins, I needed his comfort, too.

“I would be afraid. Every minute, every second, I would be afraid to see you hurt,” he said, and my hopes sank with the thought that he denied me the honour of bringing him home. But then he said, with a growing smile, “But if your heart is set on it, I could no more stop you than stop myself, could I?”

I smiled back. “No.”

/

Of this moment, I have no memory; it is not a memory.

But I can still hear the storm raging around us (wrong: there was a clear, full moon in the sky, like a herald of what was to come), quieting the cacophony of death beyond. And inside the storm, stillness. In the stillness there is a humming, heavy with sorrow.

The Griffin’s mask is not my father’s face. And me? I am not the Warrior of Light—the one to whom he turns his rage.

In his daughter who stands before him, he sees a revenant.

“Banish your shade, Arroway!” he shouts, unwilling to know me; too near to madness to see anything but me. “There is no stopping this.”

“Don’t do this,” I beg. “Please. Not for me. We can go home together.”

“There is no stopping this,” he says again—

“Da,” I plead. And I know we won’t go home.

“—no stopping me.” 

I read a story, once, of a daughter whose duty was to avenge her father; whose self was made up wholly of her grief for him. And I thought, one day my life may come to this.

Instead, I have come to this moment. I swallow my tears of— rage, grief, love— and draw my blade. 

Either he will break the haunting of his daughter, or I will kill my father.

[farplane]

DAY 6: AVATAR

The Dark does not hunger. The Dark does not cradle.

The Dark answers, and the Dark calls.

/

The first of the children who earns them the name of Saintsmaker watches them wait; she may be a Heart-Seer, and she may not. They are not yet certain. She watches the world with a Heart-Seer’s eyes; it is said, too, that she has been found in a trance outside the catacombs—where the air is yet thick with the primal’s aether, even years after its slaying—but she has not yet spoken a prophecy.

The Saintsmaker does not need her to. They have their own prophecies to speak enough, become more vivid than ever in the child’s proximity. In truth, they have taken her into their keeping for the rumour of the catacombs alone: even without a Heart-Seer’s gift, she is an amplifier. Of this they are certain.

When the Dark speaks, it is their duty to listen. In the catacombs it has whispered her into being, called her to its bosom as it once called the Saintsmaker themself.

In the time when they were still purely and utterly flesh and bone. In the time before Blackram’s callous, misguided usurping of the Dark. Now, their right hand is cold and unfeeling—but sensate in its own ways—where Blackram’s was death. 

Never will it rot. The Dark will ever live on in the hand they have given to it; they will reclaim it if they must purge the catacombs of Blackram’s primal with their own.

Their little would-be saint says, “What are we waiting for?”

And the Saintsmaker replies, “Why do you say we are waiting?”

“Because you are.”

There: the Dark shows itself through her. She stares at the Saintsmaker as though they are every question and every answer.

“We are waiting, child,” they say, touching their right hand to her hair, “for the blood of the first martyr to return home. And it will, in due time.”

/

“I feel like I’m doing some kind of wrong,” Gawain confessed.

“To the boy,” Avis asked keenly, ripping up the last of the bloodstained floorboards, “or to Wulf?”

“I— Both? Wulf? I’m worried he’ll see it as a betrayal. Like we’re getting rid of…”

“I don’t know about you, Gav, but if I died in a tavern, I wouldn’t want a bunch of drunk bastards trampling and spitting and spilling ale over the place I died. And if I owned a tavern—which Wulfric does—I wouldn’t want to have a blood-covered floor welcoming folks in.”

“I know,” Gawain sighed.

“And maybe it isn’t fair to say, but if Wulf wanted to have a say in what we do up here, he’d have stayed,” Avis said—a remnant of bitterness, of hurt.

Gawain met this with a dark look. “No, it isn’t fair.”

“Well, it’s done. We’re all going to have to live with it.”

He considered the pile of blood-dark wood a moment, then said, “Best burn them. So all of him can rest.”

Avis nodded as she rose, dusting her hands off.

“We could ask Wulf if he wants to be there. He didn’t even show up to the funeral.”

If he hadn’t even been able to get himself up a hill, Avis had no high hopes for Wulfric crawling out from whatever hole he’d slunk into in his grief now, but she didn’t say that. She just put a hand on Gawain’s shoulder and said, “Let’s put them outside while I finish up here, yeah? Then we’ll go look for him.”

Gawain helped her carry out the old wood into the alley, and they laid the new floorboards together, clean and quick. The new wood was far paler than the old, unworn and untouched by years of sun; once Gawain pushed himself up to stand and considered their work, he took the sight in with growing unease. Maybe the blood was gone, but the place wouldn’t let go of the boy Marco’s death. It would not let it be forgotten.

When they returned outside, the bloodstained boards were gone.

/

“See?” says the Saintsmaker, both hands on their little saint’s shoulders. They stand together on the edge of the Saintsmaker’s territory, watching as the martyr’s blood returns home. “It is as I said.”

“How did you get them to find it?” asks the child.

“I did nothing of the sort, my dear; my hands were still, and did not toil towards an end. I only knew he would come back to us.”

“How?”

“I listened to the Dark.”

[farplane]

DAY 3: SCALE

The captain had agreed to meet him off the coast of the Jade Sea.

It might have been simpler to choose any old plain outside of Radz-at-Han, but he had long since understood his home was no longer a refuge and harboured no desire for his dealings to take place in its proximity. And besides—the one who had gone through the most trouble getting to the meet was him.

He didn’t have a bloody airship to fly him halfway across the Continents in a matter of hours. When he lamented such woes to Nairel, she snorted and said, in that delightfully flat tone she took to put him in his place: “You are the very spirit of penury.”

“I am horribly skint at present, I’ll remind you.”

“But skint isn’t poor, is it?” Nairel retorted effortlessly, as if it made much of a difference to a woman who lived in the bloody woods.

She had a way of easing his nerves. 

Though he prided himself on his ability to be in command of most situations, there were two things wrong with that belief: the first being that it had only been hammered into his mind since tender youth by a man whose word he wished never again to live by; the second that, of late, his life had been a veritable unravelling of any control he might have ever had over himself and his own fate.

It was as though he’d constructed the very circumstances that were sure to make him nauseous with dread. This was not Radz-at-Han, but knowing his family’s reach, he may as well have been standing right at the heart of it. He could have picked any place—distant Kugane, some miserably dusty point in Thanalan, even drab freezing grey Coerthas—and instead he had wandered so close to home, like a lost little boy running to the last place he had seen his nursemaid.

He was halfway through regretting his choice of locale for, oh, the eighth time when the Merlose touched down at a careful distance. Nairel, bless her heart, caressed the hilts of her knives as the captain approached.

To her credit, the Merlose party only outnumbered his by one—and their third member didn’t seem a fighter at all. She was slender, slighter than the aging captain—still strong with corded muscle, and no doubt as deadly as her reputation made her out to be—and wore a complicated loupe on a threaded silver chain about her neck. Most likely the captain had preferred an appraiser to a killer for these particular dealings.

It was the long-limbed Elezen at the captain’s right hand who concerned him, but Nairel at his back lessened his fears. Even with a mess of Void churning inside him, he could still bash heads in without magic, and he had the most vicious five-fulm-and-then-some(-she-insists) forestborn in Eorzea at his side.

“Pavane Malichar,” said the captain, as though the name meant something to her.

“Captain. I trust your journey was—”

“You’ve brought the payment?” asked the Elezen, no-nonsense, eyeing the very conspicuous coin pouch at his belt. Then, evidently critical of its size: “All of it?”

Pavane untied the laces, but didn’t part with the purse just yet.

“I understand and empathize with your wariness—in fact, I very much share it. Mine is a difficult package to conceal without glamours, and I neither see it nor sense its aether.”

The aether part was a bluff, but normally, it wouldn’t have been. And that was the reason Pavane had been grinding his teeth enough to ensure they’d be worn down to nothing by the turning of the next era.

“I am not in the habit of robbing downtrodden nobles just standing on a beach,” the captain said with a dangerous smile, and paused long enough to give power to the sound of waves breaking onto shore. “Not much challenge in it.” She turned her head to the Elezen: “Bring it over, Madelaine.”

Madelaine cast him one last dark look—a pirate’s trade-tool, he supposed—then turned on her heel. Pavane tossed the captain his coin pouch, but she didn’t hand it to the appraiser until her right hand had returned with a long coffer under her arm.

Already Pavane could feel some whisper of power stir within him, stoked by a boyish excitement for the relic that was so close to becoming his.

“I understand my first mate’s apprehension, lord,” the captain said, keeping her eyes on him as she passed the pouch to the appraiser. “That purse seems quite light.”

“Yours was a steep price, Captain. I’d have broken my back carrying the full payment if it was only in coin.”

He was confident in what the appraiser would find when she opened the purse, nestled among the absurd amount of gil that was only a portion of the price. The medallion had been forged, it was said, in the stone-heart of Mhach in the last days before the Flood—the first of House Malichar had made herself, then, the inheritor of her city’s great legacy. And it had been passed down through the generations, from heir to deserving heir, to wear her two-headed serpent upon their chest and signify their birthright.

Never had it been lost. Pavane, as a student of history, knew that it had changed hands outside of his family a number of times—but any thieves that stole it had only ever met gruesome ends. That was House Malichar: his ancestors had set a horrifying precedent for the exercise of their own power, all to the singular end of its preservation.

And he was giving his birthright away for another piece of Mhachi power—to make, on his terms, his own legacy.  

The appraiser fumbled her loupe twice in her haste to inspect the medallion. She took a moment, her expressive eyebrows shifting, then whispered something in the captain’s ear; and, finally, dropped Pavane’s whole life into her weathered palm.

“This is a precious thing you are treating as currency, lord,” said the captain of the Merlose, weighing the precious metal in her hand.

“It more than covers your price.”

“To be sure. Even melted down or hacked to pieces, which would be the safest way for me to dispose of it.” Her grave eyes met his. “Are you prepared for that?”

Pavane didn’t waver, though it seemed to him she spoke from some deep place of knowledge for precious, irreplaceable things. He put on his best, most charmingly twisted smile. “Not to worry. I’ve another,” he said, pulling back his sleeve.

The black scales of the snake wound in ink around his forearm shivered and writhed, a mirage of badly-rendered aether. Even when it was wrong, it was precious. It was his alone.

Nothing showed on the captain’s face; her dark brow furrowed no more than if she were merely trying to read something in a viciously small script. Surely a woman of her age—a pirate, a liberator of immeasurably rare weapons; an Ala Mhigan, by the newly-familiar shape of her words—had seen her share of strangeness. With a small gesture of her head, she ordered her first mate to lay the coffer at Pavane’s feet.

“A deal well-struck, then,” she concluded.

Pavane crouched down with wonder coursing up and down his hands, weighting them as he opened the coffer to reveal his prize: a long-bladed scythe, unadorned in the Mhachi style he had come to know from his family’s archives, brimming with power to harness the Void.

“Indeed,” Pavane said as he rose with the scythe in hand. In his breathless appreciation for the weapon, he felt a twist of envy for the captain and her crew—and the adventure they must have had finding it. He pictured ruins, ancient knowledge, a dark thrill of threat.

The captain nodded to him, satisfied with their business, and said little else before she turned back towards her ship with the appraiser in tow. But Madelaine, the first mate, lingered. 

“Thinking of all the harvesting you’ll do, lord?” she asked with a smirk. “Grass? Wheat?”

Nairel, who until then had been so utterly quiet, said, “Or the one it will protect,” in a tone that gave nothing away. “Do Hearers’ daughters know much about harvesting, actually?”

A flash of irritation passed across her face, barely noticeable, before her expression settled into something else. Curiosity, perhaps.

“You’re Nairel?” she said, with an air like she was almost entirely sure of the answer.

“I am.”

A pause. Madelaine glanced over her shoulder at her retreating captain, then made half a step towards turning before stopping to look at Nairel again. “Is your brother well?”

“He’s alive. For now.”

“Aye,” said the first mate, nodding. She turned to walk away. “I knew he would be.”

Pavane blinked, trying to piece together the familiarity that had just passed between her and Nairel. Why had she asked about—

“Wait, what the fuck?”

Nairel stroked his arm. “Let’s go. I’ll tell you once we’re in the shade; my head’s bloody spinning in this heat.”

sigrid keane belongs to @onwesterlywinds; madelaine lachance belongs to @ink-long-dry

[farplane]

DAY 13: ONEIROPHRENIA

What follows is but a fable, a jest, a dream!

But truth is to be found even in the most fantastical of mummeries, over-bright and extravagantly staged as they may be—

Find here the adventurer, the lover, the mother: the hero whose sword would rest at home while the younger journey on. There shows the place she may never see, all made up in colours to fill her matter-of-fact eyes.

Let her be lost a while, for even in dreams do the lovers meet, and the ever-young are so fond of dreams.

/

The king had brought their sapling—yes, in this little tale she is their adorable sapling!—a gift. When they said this to her, she scarcely reacted, for she was a surly old scion of a tree who would not let herself so easily grafted, like a poorly trimmed leafman with no mind for merrymaking or mischief. 

(So had the king been known to bemoan, though none shall be revealed who had heard this.)

The gift was, they proudly announced, how they planned to remedy this grey-cloud look of hers.

“I don’t see a gift,” said the sapling.

Her beautiful branch scoffed. “[Lovely sapling],” they said, and it may have sounded more like a threat than a mark of fondness, “is my sole purpose as your [beautiful branch]” (far more lovingly spoken, for the king held themself in high regard as any happy pixie should) “to keep you in this cold, bleak room? Am I to leave you penned in like a misbehaving porxie?”

“...No?” the sapling suggested flatly.

“No!” insisted the king. “You must be taken from this cheerless place, and find your gift in my domain.” And there, another peevish reproach: “Where you are always welcome!”

The adventurer stepped away from the summoning bell and tied on her sword belt, long-suffering. “Will you pay my aetheryte fees, at least?”

“Och!” said the king with a click of their tongue, and whisked her away to the Kingdom of Rainbows.

/

Morgana’s expectations were, to say the least, low. She knew Feo Ul meant well, as a child might mean well upon deciding to wrap the sword of a parent in ribbons and bells to make it prettier. Their kindnesses were simply… culturally misplaced.

She figured their gift would be something wildly impractical that they would insist she take back to the Crystarium and make frequent use of. Like some gigantic bowl endlessly filled with fruit punch. Or a water slide pinched from Lyhe Mheg. Or a whole stained glass window from somewhere deep in Lyhe Ghiah that would allow her to glimpse herself in the form of a pixie—anything someone more freely frivolous than she might genuinely appreciate.

What she was not prepared to see as she climbed the top of the hill that made up Lydha Lran was Raubahn, flesh-and-blood and horribly out of place in a paradoxically peaceful sort of way.

She would never have done it in Ala Mhigo. Even in the Crystarium, among the strangest of strangers, she might not have dared it. But here, under the pastel sky and surrounded by dream-pink flowers, she ran to him like a lovesick maid and launched herself at him, arms flung around his shoulders with such force that he stumbled backwards.

That rumble in his chest—she had missed it more than she knew. And the scratch of his stubble on her skin, and the warmth of his breath in her ear, and the mountainous solidity of him.

“Are you real?” she asked, muffled against him. “Or are you just—”

All at once, her throat tightened as she pictured him lifeless like the Scions, wasting away in soul-empty slumber—

“Real enough, aye. It feels like a dream, but your friend was adamant enough that I lose weight for the next time they’re forced to carry me across worlds that I’m certain I haven’t fallen. Mostly certain.”

Morgana pulled away to look at Feo Ul over her shoulder for confirmation.

“I will have to return him before he’s missed,” they said. Then, their voice turning to a lament: “How my kingly arms ache! Ah, but there is no need to thank me, my beautiful sapling.”

“Thank you all the same,” Morgana said earnestly, smiling in a way Feo Ul had surely never seen as she looked up into Raubahn’s eyes again.

“Now go on and frolic before these meddlesome pixies decide to keep you!” Feo Ul said with an urgent gesture of their hands, spinning around to hiss helpfully at the residents of Lydha Lran who were presently gathering to watch with great interest.

Morgana mostly ignored this. She lifted a hand to touch Raubahn’s face, to feel him leaning into her touch, and smirked as she fingered the petals of the flowers crowning his head.

“They entertained themselves with you while you waited, I see,” she said.

“They mean to make me stay. Apparently, as your consort, I am to be their May Prince,” Raubahn said. Then he added, in conspiratorial Ala Mhigan: “Whatever that means.”

Morgana snorted. “Well, they’ve made you rather handsome.”

He grinned and bent his head to kiss her, more unburdened than he had been in… far too long. There was no weight on his shoulders, here; only him and his easy smiles, his loving touch. His hands on her waist, and—

The realization gave her pause. Morgana pulled back again, flashing him a perplexed frown, and lifted his cloak: in place of the now-familiar absence of his left arm was a new limb attached to the vestigial, made out of what seemed to be unnaturally supple bark and twined ivy. And from that would-be flesh grew flower buds and sprouting leaves, as vibrant as anything in Il Mheg.

Morgana turned stormily to the clutter of pixies hovering about them.

“What the hells, you lot,” she said, “you can’t force a limb on someone! And him too bloody polite to say anything—take it away. Now.”

A number of pixies cowered; others insisted that it had been very hard work, and it was so very pretty, and her consort had not protested.

“It’s all right, Morgana,” Raubahn said pacifyingly, running his hand down her arm—the flesh one. He flexed the fingers of the pixie’s gift with a pleasant creak of bark. “It’s only for a few hours; I can at least try. Besides, I’m sure it will come in—”

“Do not.”

“—handy,” Raubahn finished, eyes crinkling.

Morgana shoved at him, then turned her head towards Lyhe Ghiah, calling out: “I’ve changed my mind, Feo Ul, you can put him back.”

The king did not bother to peek out from their castle, for Morgana had pulled Raubahn to her by a fistful of his cloak and kissed him very deeply, smiling all the while.

/

“Are they pollen-drunk?” asked Uin Marn as they watched the mortals, hanging upside-down from the branch of a very fine pine. “All they do is grin and stare at each other and barely even frolic.”

Iala Tyr, sitting in their favourite bough with chin in hand, considered this with mild disinterest. Things had been altogether very quiet since the unpredictable Feo Ul had taken Titania’s crown and scepter—and it was not that they disliked the king, but they were so irritatingly possessive of their favoured mortal. And Iala Tyr had promised their bush court some mischief, and a May Queen.

A slow smile spread across their lips. “My gentle Uin Marn, I have something far more interesting in mind for our beloved Titania’s sapling than pollen.”

/

Uin Marn returned from their mission quite satisfied, presenting themself to Iala Tyr with an exaggerated bow. “The deed is done, your dear friend has had their fun!”

Being a pixie of some pride, Iala Tyr did not cackle their joy, but it was a very near thing.

“So you put the petals on their eyelids like I asked?” they said joyously, already imagining the animal-rutting romp that would overtake Titania’s mortal and her consort—and so near to the Fuath’s waters, too! It would fall out better than they could devise.

But Uin Marn only gave them a worryingly blank look. “... The petals?”

“I told you to give them some of the purple flower,” Iala Tyr insisted.

“Make them cakes,” Uin Marn said slowly, repeating what they had understood from Iala Tyr’s instructions. “With the purple flour.”

“Purple flower!”

“Purple flour!” said Uin Marn, distressed.

“Useless moon-blind pixie! Now they’ve awoken and the chance for secrecy is passed—” grumbled Iala Tyr. They shook their head. “We will have to find another way. Aye, we will surprise them both with the flowers, and Titania shall know their mortal is not theirs alone to amuse themself with,” they said grimly. “Now, find the consort!”

“I go, I go!” Uin Marn said, by now quite irritated by Iala Tyr’s reprimands. They twirled sarcastically. “Look how I go!”

Iala Tyr followed closely behind to supervise Uin Marn’s second attempt. It was near the banks of Longmirror Lake that they found the mortals; they approached from a distance, carrying sundry branches and shoreside plants to mask their presence.

The sapling was astride her consort, both mostly unclothed and entirely unaware of their surroundings. It was the desired outcome, and it should have greatly amused Iala Tyr, but at present it greatly confounded them.

“I thought you said you didn’t give them the flower,” they said. “What have you done now?”

“I did nothing!” hissed Uin Marn in return.

Before they could argue further, Titania was behind them both, pinching them by the wings to pull them away from the bank.

“They are mortals,” they said, ignoring Uin Marn’s meowing whines and Iala Tyr’s grunts. “That is what lovers do when they miss one another.”

And so were Iala Tyr and Uin Marn both unceremoniously flung back towards Lydha Lran, so that Feo Ul might leave their beautiful sapling to her deserved furlough from loneliness.

/

“You mean to tell me,” said the Crystal Exarch, in that slow pondering old man way of his he used when he was trying to make sense of something particularly intricate, “that you pulled someone from the Source, whole and without prior prompting, and then sent them home with little more than the memory of a pleasant dream—all this within twelve bells of time in the Source?”

The king tilted their head, blinking innocently. “Should it have been harder?”

The Exarch’s mouth opened. He couldn’t think of a single thing to reply, which, to him, was neither a familiar nor comfortable feeling.

“Might you, then, agree to lend your talents in assisting me to send the Scions’ souls back to their bodies before they have no living vessels to return to?” he said at last.

It was not out of any ill will that Titania gazed at their nails and smoothed their skirts with an evident lack of interest. It was simply in a pixie’s nature that they should reply, “I cannae un-fuck your fuck-up, mate.”

The Crystal Exarch heaved a great, long sigh.

[farplane]

this body is too small a chamber

avril 2021: (warrior of light sairsel au) words for a shard; or, a conversation with a part of yourself. ffxiv:shadowbringers (5.0) spoilers. 470 words. (read on ao3)

“I dreamed of you last night.”

You say that like I’m gone.

“I can’t touch you, so what would you say you are?”

Is that all there is to it? Touch?

“To tangibility, aye. Touch.”

How is that different than before?

“Maybe that’s the thing—maybe it isn’t. You can dream of things you’ve never had, places you’ve never been; I dreamed I was by your side.”

I’m always at yours. We have that.

“I dreamed of your heartbeat. I put my hand on your chest, and I could feel it. I touched your scars.”

Which ones?

“The ones you wanted. Would you have let me?”

You’re a part of me, I’m a part of you; of course I would.

Why? Does that bother you?

“I don’t know. It feels like a trespass. Like saying your name, or you saying mine.”

Intimacy isn’t a transgression.

“Intimacy.”

Yeah. It feels good.

“It’s not… me. I don’t know that I’m made for it. Maybe it’s why I can only dream of it.”

I thought you dreamed it because I was gone. Because you could have it if I wasn’t, couldn’t you? We’re all made for it.

“Then why did you stay so far when you were still here?”

Ha. Now that’s the question.

I didn’t know I could. I didn’t think I deserved it.

“Funny you should lecture me, then.”

It’s easy to lecture you. Who else do I know like I know you?

Hey.

If I could put your hand on my heart, I would.

Would you let me?

“

Aye. I would.”

See? Maybe you are made for it.

“I think you might be making me better than I was on my own.”

Don’t say that like it hurts.

"It does, though."

I was already dead and gone and lost. You were always enough on your own.

“Once, maybe. It doesn’t feel like that anymore.”

I’ll be with you every step of the way. Don't forget that.

“You don't have much of a choice.”

I already made it. I'd make it again.

I was alone for so long. The silence, it gets so bloody loud, you know. But your kind of quiet—it made everything bearable again.

“I wish… I wish things could have been different.”

I know. But I’ve made my peace with death a long time ago.

"Maybe I should start, too."

Not yet. Not you.

“What if I’m already tired of fighting?”

You don’t need to fight. Living’s enough.

That was always what you were before you ever started fighting, wasn’t it? The balance in every living thing. The balance in you.

“Did you find that in my head or in my heart?”

Maybe I always knew.

“Promise me you’ll stay. You’re the balance in me.”

You don’t need any promises from me. I’m here.

Dream of me again, Sairsel.

[farplane]

DAY 8: ADROIT

From the desk of Ashelia Marco Riot, Grand Steward of the Riskbreakers

The Sandsea, Thanalan

I know it’s only been a few days, but I have to ask. Are you eating enough?

From the “desk” (kitchen table) of Sihtric, Wild Child of East End

yea

From the desk of Ashelia Marco Riot, Grand Steward of the Riskbreakers

The Sandsea, Thanalan

I’m glad to hear you’re doing well in such consummate detail. It’s just like reading Sairsel’s reports. Do you need anything?

From the “desk” (garden bench) of Sihtric, Ghost of the Sprawl

gold saucer money

From the desk of Ashelia Marco Riot, Grand Steward of the Riskbreakers

The Sandsea, Thanalan

no

From the desk of Pavane Altos Dionys of House Malichar

Radz-at-Han

Grand Steward Riot,

Let it be known firstly that I am not in the habit of reading the private correspondence of any under my roof regardless of their age; however, I could not help but glance at the letter my young charge left on a chair in my study when I very nearly sat upon it. Therefore, I must assume that he has no great concerns regarding its confidentiality, and so permit myself to comment upon its contents.

You may rest assured that the boy’s needs and comforts are seen to with the highest care under my roof. In fact, I am told he haunts the kitchens at all hours of the day, and sometimes late at night. He sleeps in a warm bed, wears clean clothes, and washes daily—all improvements upon daily life alongside an adventurer whose nature you are evidently familiar with.

I have also taken upon myself to give him informal lessons on geography, history, literature, calligraphy, mathematics, alchemy, and theoretical thaumaturgy. He is an apt and eager pupil; in spite of the hardships of his childhood, he retains well the learning that was previously imposed upon him, inappropriate as it was for his age. We continue his physical training, as well, and there is not a night where he does not retire contented. His spirits are high, though he sometimes misses wandering; we have made plans to go exploring the city and its environs together to remedy this.

I was not asked to make such reports to anyone when the boy was entrusted to my care, but I hope this missive will ease your concerns and unburden you to continue your usual responsibilities. I imagine there is much for you to attend to; the management of a free company and a seat on Ala Mhigo’s council surely must leave you little time to pine for the return of our mutual friend.

Cordially,

From the desk of Ashelia Marco Riot, Grand Steward of the Riskbreakers

Keane House, Ala Mhigo

Thank you for your detailed report. I admit I was surprised to see you even had time to compose something so lengthy for my sake, what with Sihtric’s education and care taking up so much of your daily life, but it was nevertheless appreciated. It’s good to know you are both enjoying each other’s company.

Though, between you and I, I would not say I am the one who pines for Sairsel.

From the desk of Ashelia Marco Riot, Grand Steward of the Riskbreakers

Keane House, Ala Mhigo

Remember, you’re welcome at the Sandsea or at the house any time. Stella misses you.

So do I. And I miss Sairsel, too.

From the desk of Sihtric not-Salt

do you think he’s all right?

From the desk of Ashelia Marco Riot, Grand Steward of the Riskbreakers

Keane House, Ala Mhigo

I would be lying if I said I didn’t worry for him, because I love him, and that’s what you do when you love someone. 

But yes. I think he would let nothing stop him from coming home to you.

From Sihtric

Thanks, Ashe.

Love you.

[farplane]

DAY 24: ILLUSTRIOUS

(cw: mild sexual content at the end of the first part)

“Anything yet?” Seax asked from the bed.

Wulfric, sitting by the dwelling’s sole window, stifled a yawn. “No trace,” he reported. “How long did you say we had to watch for?”

“I didn’t say.” That was why Wulfric had asked; he was trying to be polite. “It’s not very complicated. We just wait until that fuck Véland shows up, we teach him a lesson, we leave. Did you have to have your boot daddy explain simple assignments to you over and over back in your soldiering days, or are you just like that with me?”

Wulfric ignored the sour taste in his mouth and huffed out a breath, stretching out his legs. He kept his eyes on the movement out in the Sprawl; his focus on the Undercity always rooted out any discomfort he might have with the past before it could take.

“Far be it from me to be callous towards your friend’s plight—Véland does sound like a prime cock—but isn’t it entirely possible that he just won’t show? I mean, she’ll want to sleep in her bed eventually, won’t she?”

“She won’t be sleeping in that bed if she’s afraid he might come to steal into it,” Seax replied with a chill to her tone much unlike the unaffected attitude she had towards most things. “I’ve got her somewhere safe; she’ll be sleeping fine there.” 

And maybe she understood something Wulfric didn’t intend to communicate when he glanced at her, because she shook her head, clicked her tongue, and added, “Number of favours I owe her, I’ll stay a moon in her place to knife a man who’s got her scared if that’s what it takes—are we clear on that? If you’re so bored with being warm and dry for a few hours, I can stand watch on my own and you can fuck off.”

“That’s not what I was saying at all, Seax,” Wulfric said, as reasonably as he could make it sound, once it was evident Seax had finished speaking; if he’d learned anything from her since coming to the Undercity, it was that you didn’t interrupt someone like her, even if it was with the intent of correcting a misunderstanding.

“No? What are you saying, then?”

“Just that there are more efficient ways of fucking up a guy when you know his name, his face, his haunts and his friends.”

Seax liked that; her voice edged back towards the unbothered. “Ever so proactive,” she said lightly. “Normally, I would agree with you, but this is different. He gets a knife in a gutter, and that can be the work of any rotten fuck he’s gotten on the wrong side of this week. But he gets it in her house, and that teaches the whole neighbourhood: no one fucks with Eda and gets away with it. Not on my watch.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Wulfric said. 

Perhaps for the third time since he had sat down by the window, he pulled his dagger from the sheath at his thigh to busy his hands, running through the balance drills he’d learned from his blademaster as a youth. Easy as breathing.

Seax watched him flip the knife again and again, twirling it with the flat of the blade between his fingers, shifting his grip from forward to reverse. Then she said, “I know you’re eager to bloody your teeth, little wolf—” and in this she was wrong about him: he’d never been eager for blood, not really, just for anything to keep him moving— “but you’re going to drive me up the walls. Come here.”

He stilled the knife and pointed to the window, questioning.

“We don’t need to see him coming. If he shows, we’ll know.”

Wulfric supposed that was true. He shrugged, sheathing his dagger as he stood and crossed the short distance from the front of Eda’s home to her bed, which she separated from the rest of her place with a curtain Seax kept drawn back. At Seax’s invitation, he sat across the foot of the bed and kicked off his boots.

“She won’t mind us being in here?” he asked with some remnant of topsider modesty—or whatever it was Seax called it.

“I owe her a lot of favours, but still not enough that I’ll sleep on the fucking floor just to avoid her bed while I’ve got her good and cozy in my hideout.”

At that, Wulfric chuckled and stripped off his coat, boyishly satisfied when he managed to toss it over the back of Eda’s lone chair. Again Seax watched him, chin tucked in her palm, as he rolled up his sleeves. Without warning, she reached out to trace a finger over the thin band of black ink revealed just below his left elbow.

It wasn’t the first time an Ala Mhigan had touched his tattoos—he’d had enough lovers follow the lines on his skin to adjust from the feeling of wrongness to appreciating their touch, but Seax’s curiosity felt different. Sharp, like the rest of her; and he liked that about her, that rough loyalty that was conveniently devoid of affection. He simply hadn’t been prepared for it to come in contact with the still-raw Nhalmascan parts of him, even though she’d already bedded him more times than he could count.

“These are so strange,” she said, tilting her head as she studied the lines at the side of his neck. Her thumb brushed the pattern down the shell of his ear. “Are they from the glorious soldiering days? Battle marks?”

“What does it matter?”

Seax shrugged and dropped her hand to his lap. “Doesn’t,” she said, giving his thigh a squeeze. “Bloody touchy all the time.”

Unceremoniously, she shifted her weight to lean towards him and began to unlace his trousers. Wulfric raised his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Passing the time,” Seax said simply, slipping a hand inside his trousers. “Why, you got a better idea?”

He shook his head. “Not one,” he said; his mind had very quickly emptied. “Carry on.”

“Good boy,” Seax said. She drew closer so that her mouth was close to his ear, but refused any reciprocal touch. “Hands to yourself. Remember: you’re done when I say.”

Wulfric bit back a reflexive aye, sir. With her, it was always better to say nothing.

/

(Marco had stuffed more coal into the stove than was reasonable in anticipation for his return; Wulfric saw the thoughtfulness in the gesture the moment he stepped inside the cellar, but didn’t comment on it. He never knew how to say the simplest things, these days.

“How was it?” Marco asked, sitting up in bed. The movement made Montblanc groan at his feet and huddle closer, laying his head on Marco’s lap with no acknowledgement of Wulfric’s entrance.

“Bad,” Wulfric replied wearily. He gestured to his half-soaked clothing, but said little more, not wanting his foul mood to infect Marco when he was so close to sleep. As he yanked off his boots, he said, “Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing to be said about Bernt’s incompetence that can’t wait until morning.”

Rather than watch Wulfric hop around on one leg while he peeled off his wet trousers, Marco leaned over the bed to toss him a dry pair. “Here. These’ll keep you warm while yours dry.”

“Thanks. Fucking freezing.”

Wulfric removed his shirt next and laid out his clothes to dry; for a moment he lingered in front of the stove, shivering as the heat warmed his bare chest and arms. He shook out the wet tips of his hair, too, fingers catching on the beads threaded into his braids.

“Hey, Wulf. Can I ask you something?” Marco asked carefully. He scratched Montblanc’s head with an idleness to his hands, just for something to do that wasn’t staring at the black lines under Wulfric’s shoulder blades.

“Of course you can.”

“Your tattoos. They mean something, don’t they?”

At first, Wulfric meant only to nod and leave it at that, knowing Marco wouldn’t push; instead he sat at the edge of the bed, folding his hands together, his thumb running back and forth across the line running down the center of his middle finger.

“They’re… my fate,” he said with something of a shrug, because he could think of no better word. “In Nhalmasque, we have seers; we seek them out before adolescence to hear a pronouncement on our fate, and then they draw our life lines on our bodies. We preserve them throughout our teenage years, and when we come of age, those we didn’t let fade get tattooed. I kept all of mine.”

Marco nodded, serious. “What did the seer say they were?”

“She didn’t. It’s up to us to give them meaning; some of them I’m still not even certain of.”

Wulfric could feel Marco’s eyes on his back, and the question he was too polite to ask.

“These I know,” Wulfric said, crossing an arm over his chest to tap a finger over his shoulder. “Avis and Gawain. I trust them with my back.”

“I get it,” Marco said, and Wulfric knew that he did—knew that he was thinking of Ashley and Élodie. If he was Nhalmascan, they might be lines on his back, too.

He didn’t ask which ones Wulfric hadn’t figured out yet, and Wulfric didn’t wonder; one day, sooner than he expected, he would know the Undercity for one of the lines down his neck, like a blade at his jugular.)