Chance
Wind whipped through the drahn’s hair, violent and unabating. The smell of the sea, the silence of the rock, of the motionless water, washed over her senses. She descended rapidly, eyes closed to the blinding, unnaturally-radiant light that suffused the sea around her and her horns, through the whipping of the wind, the shouts and angry clamour of men from above as it grew more and more distant, eventually drowned out entirely by the rush of air.
Below her lay not water, but rock. She knew well where she was destined to touch down, headfirst. She knew she would not survive. Doubts welled in her mind, but she tamped them down. She wanted to struggle, to stop her descent, but failure, in her mind, rage in her soul, and a horrible, aching corruption welling in her body for not the first, but the second time, all told her one thing: death was her best chance.
Taking a breath as the rocks grew closer, she held it, squeezing her eyes shut as she felt the presence of the ground drawing near…
Holly Morningtide, known once as Hali Naras, or even Asashio no Haruhi, had been given an assignment: as a guard of the Crystarium - the last bastion on Norvrandt against the force of primordial Light and its terrible sin eaters, creature much like voidsent, but aspected to the light, rather than a corrupted, dark nothingness - she was tasked with gaining information on Eulmore.
Tensions had been growing thicker over the last few years, Eulmore’s trade becoming somewhat-strangled by its lord, Vauthry, whose decree had been to focus on enjoying the supposed last days the world had. Eulmore’s Free Citizens and their “Bonded” - indentured slaves, as Holly understood it, bound to their masters for a chance at a “better life”, or at least to spend their last days in relative comfort as they worked for those who did nothing - made the woman somewhat ill, the more she watched them. They had no interest in trade, anymore, but, military might they once were, some still engaged out of courtesy. She was to figure out why things had taken such a turn. No other could enter - not without becoming a citizen - and so it was that she would become one… after gaining entrance.
Trained as a shinobi, a ninja, she made a good spy for the Crystarium Guard. She touted her skill and showed it well, earning her a place of importance as the first of the Crystarium’s agents to sneak into the island. She was to observe the citizenry, to emulate them and take on a persona for as long as she could that would get her ingratiated, then slip away once she could find any information on the goings-on.
For three days, by her reckoning, did she watch the city, hiding amongst the shantytown nearby, watching and listening. She gathered information as best she could. The city itself was accessed by a single bridge, leading to a guarded stairwell. The beach around the small islet was best by yet more of the shantytown: The Derelicts, she learned. She’d find no allies, here. To a man, she surmised, any of them would sell her out for their place amongst the elite, living easy in the gaudy city above. Swimming up to the shore would be difficult without being seen. However, there would be no easy way to get past a guarded gate with nothing but cliff to either side. Being noticed would not be to her advantage, and she was not to cause a fight. Thus, for two more days, she waited…
After nearly a week of camping in squalor, dirty and uncomfortable, she witnessed a ceremony at the gates that drew her attention and gave her what she needed: her in. A pair of jesters, dressed in red and blue and speaking in insufferable rhymes, presented themselves to the shantytown’s residents like saviours, handing out a strange food that felt strange to her. It felt of nothing, and even beholding it from afar, it turned her stomach. They called it meol, and the people were elated. They lined up for it, then they performed, promised, begged to be let in, to earn their keep. In the end, one was chosen: a young drahn girl - a Xaela, she’d have been called back home - was taken in for her cooking skill, presenting a dish she’d made from gathered herbs, meats and vegetables. It was deliciously fragrant, gaining the attention of quite a few, given the living situation. She had to have been saving those ingredients for some time. Holly gazed on from her place in the shadows and felt a pang of familiarity with the girl. Despite the ragged ingredients, the dish was expertly-made. For a moment, she even felt proud of the girl. Then, she was let in. At that point, the guardswoman followed from the shadows. Following them might be her way in, so long as she could remain unnoticed.
Undetected she remained. Up through the doors into the bottom level, she had to take a moment to slip aside and allow herself a moment’s respite from the culture shock. In an instant, she had passed from broken stone and wooden planks from the derelict military ships that once served as part of the nation’s great navy to a decadent, colourful - garish, even - and altogether clean place. All-too-suddenly was she aware of the smell she’d accumulated while hiding with the paupers of the shantytown for so long. Stealth would avail her no longer if she could be sniffed out. She would have to make her entrance somewhere…
She found it. A queue for registration. It was unsupervised once behind the city walls, and so she slipped into the line where a gap formed only briefly, just behind another blonde woman. She quickly patted her hair about to make it as close to identical as she could, given her silver streaks, and there she stood. She encountered little resistance, the man seeming to be preoccupied with the riches that had already surrounded him - promises of a better life… while it lasted - and before long, she was at the registration booth. The other drahn girl had already come and gone, hurried along to meet with her new “owners,” as Holly understood it.
“Name?” rang the bored, vapid question, rousing her from her thoughts. She found herself before a rather well-to-do-looking mystel man with blue hair and very a look on his face of boredom surpassing even his tone.
“...Leah,” she spoke quickly, assuming a familiar role - the anxious, shy girl, so similar to how she’d been so many years ago - before she cleared her throat and stuttered, “L-Leah Arlon.”
“Talent?”
The first word to her mouth wanted to be “chef,” but with the dark-scaled girl having come and gone, that might be too soon…
“Songstress.” This gained a pause from the man, who checked his records then shrugged. Holly’s heart raced.
“Uh… to whom?” he asked, gaining a bitten lip from her in response.
“I-I don’t remember, sir, I… I-I-it was… only mentioned once.”
The man sighed, then pulled up a monocle to check the papers, muttering, “...well, we’ve… two Citizens expecting a songstress. In high demand of late, aren’t you…? Anyhow, you’re either for Ryn-Tokka or Madame Haylin.”
“O-oh! I- I was to see M-Madame Haylin,” she says quickly, “S-sorry, I, ah-”
“Mgh,” the man muttered, looking irate, “You weren’t scheduled until the morrow… Well, whatever. I can take it up with them later. Go on, then. Get yourself made proper. Madame Haylin is on the north terrace, all the way up the stairs once you’re… presentable.”
The man’s disgusted face at her made her want to snap back, but she kept the persona intact, nodding and sputtering apologies before being lead, blessedly to a room with showers and fresh changes of clothes, where some other number of Bonded milled about, ushering those who had been registered along. She, too, was hurried on and shown to a shower and given new clothes into which she could change with some additional commentary on her state of cleanliness. Again, though, she bit back comments and hurried along, eager, really, to get cleaned and refreshed. When she changed her clothes, she bundled up her old pauper disguise and left it. It had nothing she needed, given her gear and weaponry were hidden beneath, in bands of kunai and shuriken. She had elected not to carry any larger weaponry, given the nature of the mission.
So it was she was shown up to the upper levels… and that was where she disappeared once again. The Mistress to whom she was supposed to report, undoubtedly wouldn’t know any better, though she had to feel sorry for the registration clerk who had to explain the next day why a slot had already been filled by someone who wasn’t there. Regardless, she had her mission. It was time to find what she needed to blend in.
A trinket here and there, stalk this woman or that man, then take a bauble or an outfit from their drawers when they’re not looking… and there she was. In just under a couple hours, she’d assembled the perfect look for a free citizen. She restyled her hair, pulling it back out from the long ponytail it’d been in before and up into a tight Ishgardian-style chignon that Dahlia - Odellia, here - had taught her, and, with a bit of pilfered makeup, she was a different woman. Finally, the air was hers to take, and so she puffed out her little chest, lidded her eyes ever-so-slightly, batted her eyelashes and took to a confident swagger around the city.
The difficult part of the mission was over. She was in, engaging in small talk with the citizenry, snooping with what her sense for aether could tell, every little detail finely standing out for inspection in such a barren, sleeping world, so frozen as it was by the Light, and taking notes in private. A day passed, and she remained awake for the whole time. Exhaustion wore heavy, but she continued with her mission.
She’d learned much, and all of it was written in her notes. She was resolved to hear more of their Lord Vaurthy, though, and so she stayed a bit longer… and then she saw her once more: the waifish, black-scaled drahn girl - the chef - from before was being lambasted by a lanky man with a grating voice and an all-too-familiar sneer, both speaking on a nearby balcony.
She knew the sneer. A man, once, with such foul intentions as to traumatise her at every turn, to belittle and crush her as best he could with every step, had worn the same. She dared not recall the name for the fury it brought in her. Fury, however, would not be denied.
“And you expect to call yourself a chef?” the man asked, a mixed drink in his hand, freshly delivered by the girl, “The dodo was good, of course...”
The girl looked confused, piping up as if to ask for clarification, a confused look on her face. She didn’t get a word in before the drink was splashed on her, staining her shirt, soaking her hair, and pelting her with ice. She gasped, flailing as if to try and defend herself against the liquid offence.
“Do I look like I want good, girl?” the man hissed in her face as she began to sob, shaking her head and giving a choked “no, sir,” as she reeled from the suddenness of the assault.
“I want phenomenal. We are going to have another talk,” he said, grinning sadistically, pointing to her, then grabbing her roughly by the wrist, which, Holly noticed, was already bruising, the girl’s pale blue skin already mottled with a few bruises that briefly flashed in the part of her dress as she was yanked along.
Fury, however, would not be denied. She was too tired, too worn from the atrocious, ignorant opulence of the place. To see such an abuse, the threat of more atop it, brought back memories within her that brought a terrible flame to her heart, dark and angry and vengeful.
Vengeance, too, came quick, nor would it be denied. She’d already drawn stares as she felt herself move. She was no longer in control. The dark craved vengeance. It called for blood. The girl was no longer real, but a spectre of her past, whimpering and struggling, soaked in alcohol and fruit juices. The man became as Crawford.
The drahn saw her advance first, eyes wide at the woman who approached, wreathed in darkness that drew hushed stares from nearby and eyes ringed with hateful red that caused people to part like butter for a knife. A knife.
That was all it took. With one practised, fluid motion, she loosed a kunai into her hand and let it fly with deadly aim. As the man turned to see the cause of the hush, he found himself struck dead, a black, foreign blade lodged in his temple and out the eye of the other side of his head. His grasp fell limp and the girl was the first to scream. As she scrambled, a panic ensued, and guards came storming the area, several spears thrust within inches of her head before she could react.
The Might of the Eulmoran military… she thought to herself, then raised her hands in obedient surrender.
“Move!” She was jabbed roughly in the back. Though it didn’t tear cloth, it hurt.
“Now!” A soft cry rang out from elsewhere.
“Take them to Lord Vauthry!”
Them? she thought, then froze, realising the other cry, causing her heart to skip a beat and her blood to chill. Looking toward the girl, she, too, had been surrounded by guards, and in much the same manner. There was no choice but to go along. She would damn the girl if she fought, let alone her mission. Even if she escaped, which she could have, the innocent girl whose life she had just taken from bad to worse in the sake of deluded vengeance would suffer even more. Slowly, she began to march in time with the soldiers, on across the balcony, up a lift, and toward a massive room.
Her senses burned. Sin eaters were surrounding the room. Sin eaters. At the other end, across a vast, empty floor, sat a man more gargantuan and more grotesque than some monsters she had seen: Lord Vauthry sat, reclining against a great, winged lion of an eater, another stroking its plaster-like mane softly.
“Hm-hrmh?!” the man exclaimed in surprise, massively obese form wobbling from the shocked motion he made as the doors were flung open, “What is the meaning of this? Explain!”
“My Lord,” the guard at the head explains, “This woman has murdered a fellow Free Citizen in cold blood. The deceased’s Bonded was brought, as well.”
“Well, what do you expect me to do about this, hrm?!” the man rumbled irritably, “You are here for a reason!” “Y-yes sir, but… she is clearly guilty. Many here witnessed it. It was done in plain sight.”
“Wha- how unbelievably brazen! I can’t believe my ears! You! Woman! What is your name? Speak, this instant!”
She spat the first pseudonym that came to mind: “Vivian Blake.”
“And why, Miss Blake, are you under the presumption that your magnanimous lord would allow you to… to murder another? In my paradise?”
She remained silent, the red still burning in her eyes, ever so faintly. The man felt an awful presence. It was like he was part sin-eater, though, with the whole room practically withered with static, Light-seared aether, it was hard to tell.
Vauthry flailed his meaty arms in anger, setting himself aquiver again, “Answer me, you harlot!”
“I beheld… a wicked man who would harm an innocent. A criminal in, as you say, your paradise,” she said in a low rumble.
This brought a befuddled noise from him, though he looked no less angry.
“You are not here to serve as a guard, woman!” he shouted, already throwing aside her name, “You are here on my good graces to live out your remaining days in PEACE! PEACE! And you have the gall to bring violence upon another? Bring her to me! At once!”
“W-what of the girl, Lord Vauthry?” asked one of the guards.
The globular man turned his head back to look at the guard with a suddenly-bored expression, then grunted, “There’s no more use for her. There is no place in my paradise for the worthless and the craven. She goes over.”
The girl began to weep bitterly, begging for her life, and as she was ushered out into the room and beyond the line of lounging eaters toward the edge of the open-air room’s edge, Hali shot forward an ilm before she was clubbed on the back of the head and sent staggering forward, dazed.
“Ohoho! So eager to see the death of the girl you damned?” crooned Vauthry, “No. You must be… redeemed…! Come! Come to me, my pet.”
At his command, the eater that had been stroking the lion rose and gracefully stepped through the air as if walking on land to float at the grotesque lord’s side.
“You-... this is… insanity…” Holly grunted as her head spun.
“No, my dear Vivian,” the man retorted as his guards escorted the girl to the edge, “This… is paradise.”
A trailing scream from off the side of the balcony was suddenly met with a sharp one from Holly as the eater reached out and sunk spindly, gold-tipped fingers into her chest as though they were knives. They felt like knives - worse than knives - and she knew what was happening immediately: she was being corrupted.
“Leave her with me,” Vauthry commanded, “I will watch her redemption… myself.”
The hand pulled back and she slumped forward, gasping for breath as the guards filed out of the room in an orderly fashion. A hand gripped at her chest, no open wounds of which to speak as the gleaming, burning light from the touch faded.
“What- what did you do?” she barely wheezed. Her chest burned within like something had been left in her.
“Redemption, dear Vivian, is an agonisingly slow process, normally, but within my company, and that of my sin eaters, you will turn more quickly,” the man explained with a ferocious grin that plastered his several chins together against his chest and spread his overfull cheeks into a bizarre mockery of a hume’s face, “Oh, it will be gruesome and painful, but when it is done, you will have atoned for your grievous sin… this… atrocity that you have committed against me. Then, you will ascend.”
The Seed of Light, as it was called, was a slow and torturous way to die, body and soul. Those afflicted were doomed to spend days, weeks, even months, sometimes, in horrible agony as their skin began to petrify and their minds slipped away. It was so similar to that day that she had met an eater bearing what felt like a fragment of herself. She had died, then, too, infected with the Light, only saved by her wife’s grief and rage, destroying both Holly and her killer and fusing them back together in a maelstrom of tormented magicks. She had no such saving grace, this time.
“Holly,” Vauthry cooed. She looks up, only to see him, hands resting on his gargantuan gut, a smug look of satisfaction on his face.
“Yes? If you wish to thank me for this chance, you may,” he said, then chuckled, wobbling about as he did.
“-Holly.”
Before she could retort, she heard her name called again. Looking out of the corner of her eye toward where she thought she’d heard it, she spied a brief glimmer.
“Mum!”
“Mum…!” “Hali. Mes etoiles. Come home safe,” Dahlia cooed softly as Light began encroaching upon her vision. Two young half-drahn girls stood with her, one on either side: their twins, Suisei and Ryuusei. When she looked straight at them, they vanished.
Vauthry laughed, “Yes. She’s gone. Over the edge to oblivion, if she’s lucky. Go. See for yourself... while you can.” The smug look made her want to drive a kunai right between his eyes, but she barely lacked the strength to stand.
She glanced back once more. The images were gone, likely a hallucination from the searing pain blossoming in her chest. However, the flame was lit once more. With a groan, she lifted herself to her feet and began to stagger over toward where the girl was thrown. Slowly, she paced toward the edge and leaned against the railing. The girl was gone.
“You see? Consider yourself lucky,” Vauthry said from behind her, still lazing where he was on the great bed-like couch.
One foot made it up onto the railing.
“What are you doing?”
She pulled herself up to kneeling.
“Get down from there.”
She turned. “What are you doing?!”
She looked directly at Vauthy and croaked through the searing pain climbing up her throat from her chest, “Defying you… my Lord.”
“What?!” Vauthry roared in anger, his corpulent arms slamming down on either side of him, causing a surprising amount of rumbling that caused Holly to stumble, “You would cast aside this gift?! My mercy?!”
“Oh... Just... you... watch me,” she rattled, arms outstretched… and plunged backwards off the balcony, eyes closing…
Taking a breath as the rocks grew closer, she held it, squeezing her eyes shut as she felt the presence of the ground draw near. Was it too late? Would she turn anyway? Would she come back at all this time?
No, she thought, No time for questions.
Her final thoughts had her body dashed against the rocky beach below, a gruesome cacophony of crunching and splattering heralding her end. Then, moments later, in wisps of darkness like smoke, all that she was coalesced into a barely-visible ball of writhing darkness that drifted off to sea… and down into it.
Within time, her soul found what it sought: the girl, half-drowned already, her body beaten and bruised as if from a bad impact from the water, and her leg twisted and maimed. She would die within minutes just from the lack of air.
There were no thoughts that passed through her disembodied soul. She had no time to deliberate in that strange liminal space in which she existed. A moment of thought could be hours that the girl could drift if she was unlucky. Within the space of a moment, the soul met the body of the younger drahn… and flesh began to twist. Slowly, painfully, it reorganised itself. Slowly and painfully, the leg mended wrong. Slowly and painfully, lungs filled with water began to function in a new way, for which she had to thank the Kojin of the Blue and her history in Blitzball back in their old home, wherever - or whenever - that was.
Pain shocked her awake as she drifted. Reforming a leg so had left it still mostly shattered and even more deformed. She swam as she could for the surface, but with the strength that she had expended to get where she was in the first place, she couldn’t keep going. As her arms gave out, unable to be aided by one twisted leg, all went black.
“You,” said a familiar voice, “You ruined my life.”
When she opened her eyes again, all around her was yet another familiarity: a manor room, massive and sprawling in every direction. Behind her was a long carpet, two bodies lying on it, spaced out a ways behind her, one crystalline and the other a mangled form of burning, gleaming light that barely looked human. More littered the carpet much further back, but they were shrouded in a strange shadow.
“Are you listening to me?” came the voice - her voice.
She turned forward and peered down at herself. This version of her was slightly shorter, hair tied in a chignon, makeup running, glasses broken, and a simple, but almost gaudily-ornate sundress, splattered with stains of alcohol and fruit juice. Her horns were adorned at the base with golden earrings, set in the centre with black pearls with an amethyst and ruby dangling from the hoop of each. Beneath her were two legs, on which she could only stand on one, the other mangled and twisted.
“You ruined my life,” the smaller Hali repeated.
“I… I’m sorry,” she replied, looking visibly confused.
“I’d waited to get in for so long,” the younger said, and, as realisation dawned, she found herself looking at a different figure altogether: the black-scaled girl, “Why? Why did you kill him?”
Hali found herself unable to respond.
“I didn’t need saving. I… I could’ve made it.”
Hali nodded in concession, sighing and looking away, “I… suppose I should understand that.” “Then why, damn you? How could you do such a thing? Even if he was cruel to me in that moment, you didn’t know him! He was a person, just like you or I were!”
She didn’t have a chance to respond before the girl cried out, accusingly, “Revenge! Is that all you cared about then? Was I just… just some bystander for you to toss aside?”
“No, I-”
“Am I just some body for you to claim?”
“N-no! Listen-”
“What gives you the right?” the girl spat, gritting her teeth and taking a step forward on that maimed leg as if nothing was wrong with it at all.
“I’ve-”
“Got a family. You’ve your… your wife, your children. I see that, now. You do it because you can, because you’re some… bloody pompous immortal creature. How are you any different than the people up there? Better than people like me because you have what I wanted! What I could have had!”
“No, you don’t-”
“No, I get it. Deny it all you like. I see you now, Hali Naras,” the girl seethed, “That was your name right? Your original name. Not any of those fake ones you spout.”
“How do you-?!”
“Know? You made me part of you,” the girl said through clenched teeth, though her lips quivered, betraying the tears that would start soon.
“Not your soul!” Hali protested.
“No, but mine isn’t gone yet… Not yet... “ the girl relented, taking a step back, then asked again, “What… gives you… the right? I didn’t want this…”
“Nothing,” came Hali’s voice again, though it came from beside her.
She turned and saw a most horrifying sight: the remains of her last body, seething with darkness, nought more than splatter and gore with clothes loosely fitted around it, though it soon began to congeal into a single creature. That creature, however, was decidedly not her, but the elven bandit whose body she last stole.
“You have no right,” the man said in Hali’s voice, “Don’t deny your guilt. You’ve gotten too good at forgetting, Hali Naras.”
“Too good. Too good for us, too good for anyone,” the younger girl continued, “What happens to your family? Will you be too good for them, too?” “No!” Hali spat in anger, now, “How dare you!” “How dare I?” the girl said in shock, “How dare you! Thief of flesh, murderer!”
“Murderer!” the elven man echoed.
The guilt was overwhelming and the darkness in the room grew thicker. She sank to her knees and looked up. For the first time, she saw what was behind the girl: a door. A great door that once stood chained before her. She had broken those chains long ago, but still, she had no way of opening it.
“Murderer! Monster!” the two chanted, their voice beginning to echo with the phantom of others’ from long, long ago that she didn’t even recognise.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I… what choice did I have?”
“Let go, Hali Naras,” the bandit said softly.
“N-no… no, I- why damn myself when…?” she practically wept in grief over the guilt weighing on her, crawling across her back and threatening to crush her wholly.
“Why damn us?”
“I- I didn’t want to! I didn’t! I- y- you were- the things you did! A-and you would’ve died in any event!” she protested in tears, pointing at each of the two.
“That does not make us yours,” the girl said.
“No… It… it doesn’t…,” she conceded, “It doesn’t…”
There was a long pause where the two left her to weep, her sins weighing on her as she was lost to reflection, before the girl spoke again, “I cannot stop you.”
“Just as I could not,” the bandit added.
“So what will you do?”
“What?”
Hali knelt on that carpet in silence, darkness closing in as she muttered, shaking her head, “I don’t know…”
“Your selfish fear and desire for vengeance nearly drowned you once,” the bandit spoke, “Look around you.”
Raising her head, the drahn peered about, watching as the room was slowly being devoured by writhing black darkness, as if smoke filled with hues of crimson and violet had begun to choke out all in sight.
“You would return to your family. We no longer can,” the elven man said, shaking his head.
“Remember us, Hali Naras,” the girl said, “Remember that we lived.”
Every life is sacred, she had been taught by Kaori long ago, Even if you can’t comprehend them, you must respect them. From her knees, she fell prostrate, forehead touching the blood-stained carpet as she wept, “Forgive me…”
“Forgive yourself,” the two said in unison before, though she couldn’t see, she knew, they crumbled to black ash, leaving two more bodies behind her, “Learn...”
Slowly, she rose, a hand over her face.
No more, she thought to herself in that encroaching darkness, No more. Their names… their faces… I can’t let them be lost. Not like they were. No matter who they were. They died so I could live. No more.
The guilt weighed heavy on her as she stood straight again, saying aloud, “I won’t be a monster to protect those I love. I’ll live to protect them. I’ll live to honour those who I took away that I could live.”
With a shuddering crack from before her, a flood of darkness came pouring out of the great manor doors as they came slowly swinging open, the doors themselves just barely brushing past Hali. The wave of darkness washed over her, but beyond, she saw that flame once more. Crimson and violet in the black, burning bright, were four figures: Dahlia, Vivian, Suisei, and Ryuusei - her flames, her life.
She reached for them, staggered forward against the flood of darkness that threatened to devour her for her avarice, her hubris, and all faded to blinding white.
“Hali, mes etoiles,” echoes Dahlia’s voice in the recesses of her mind, “Come home safe.” Then, white melted away and left only the cold blackness of oblivion.
The door is open, but, this time, I have to earn this chance.
