Letters Home

A FFXIV RP Blog. Aislinn North. Balmung.

[lettersnorth]

Link to Aislinn’s carrd: https://aislinnnorth.carrd.co/

Backstory writings can be found here!

[lettersnorth]

Troubleshooter

[seg-faulting]

False Calm

As Sergius came back online, Aislinn carefully disconnected the cables from the mobile unit’s spine. In the wake of alarms and red line after red line of code spilling down the monitors, silence had landed in the room like the aftermath of an explosion. It left a faint ringing in Aislinn’s ears. One by one, the displays had returned to calm blue status screens as though the last thirty seconds hadn’t happened at all. Which was definitely reassuring and not ominous in any way.

Neither of them spoke. The silence continued to stretch until awkwardness set in.

Sergius buttoned his shirt with rigid mechanical precision and the deliberate focus of someone trying very hard not to think about anything else.

Aislinn had seen him like this before. Usually right before he made an incredibly bad decision. What made it stand out all the more was the fact that the peripheral processes that helped the unit cross the uncanny valley had yet to start up, sidelined for higher functions to finish restarting first. The lack of movement was unsettling. Real bodies were always in motion. Breathing, blinking, swallowing, fidgeting. 

She stepped back but stayed in his line of sight. “Do you want to do this here, or outside?” 

Her voice was level but firm. She didn’t want him to feel trapped but she wanted him to know this discussion was nonnegotiable. 

Sergius gave her a flat look. It was not surprising that she wasn’t going to tip-toe around the issue, given how little she backed down. Ever. “What.”

“The conversation you’re trying to avoid.”

“I’m not avoiding anything.” He absolutely was. 

“You triggered every emergency alert in the room.”

Sergius considered objecting. Unfortunately, she was correct and there was little point in trying to hand wave it away.

Her gaze was unwavering. “After what I just saw, it's not an unreasonable request. Don’t give me your ‘piss off’ face.”

“My ‘piss off’ face.” He slowly repeated. 

“Yes. The one you wear 90% of the time.”

He almost said something automatic and dismissive to that but the response stalled out somewhere before it reached his mouth. Maybe he should work on his expressions. Or maybe it didn’t matter. That thought arrived with the familiar exhausted fatalism he’d been trying not to examine too closely. The niggling assumption underneath everything lately that there wasn’t actually going to be a future long enough for self-improvement to become relevant. He recognized it now, at least. Recognition unfortunately did not stop it.

“It was a dream.” He said finally.

“A dream?”

“Hallucination. Whatever you want to call it. It was likely corrupted processing caused by --”

“We can call it a dream.”

He stared at her. Aislinn stared back. He reached for his jacket. “I’m going to head to Garlemald. Mark me as unavailable for jobs in the roster.” The abrupt topic change was tactical and they both knew it. 

She didn’t bother to tell him he’d been labeled that way on the roster for moons now.  “No.”

“That wasn’t a request.”

“Good. Because it’s still a terrible idea.”

“I need to check something.”

“What?”

He paused too long.

“Sergius.” Aislinn’s expression swiftly sharpened. “What about this dream makes you want to go to Garlemald?”

She resolutely remained where she was, stubbornly occupying the space between him and the door. Sergius briefly evaluated the possible methods of physically moving her aside. None of them ended with her speaking to him afterward. So he stayed where he was too.

“In the dream Garlemald was overrun with voidsent.” He said reluctantly. 

Aislinn didn’t visibly react, but Sergius saw the micro-tension in her shoulders. The careful regulation of her breathing. Elevated heart rate. Fear. He looked away before she noticed he’d noticed.

“And you didn’t want to tell me.” She said after a moment.

“That’s usually how avoiding conversations works.”

Her expression went stony. “Don’t do that.”

He wanted to exhale in frustration. People did that to display emotion. His system supplied the impulse automatically now. Another behavioral adaptation he never asked for. “I’ve seen the way you react to voidsent.”

That stopped her.

“You’re terrified of them.” He continued before she could interrupt. “More than anything else we’ve dealt with.”

The surprise that crossed her face was quick but unmistakable. Not because he was wrong. He wasn’t. But because he had noticed her issue with voidsent at all. And moreso, because she realized he was trying, badly and awkwardly, but genuinely, to spare her from it. A cycle ago she wasn’t sure he would have considered that variable at all. The realization seemed to make her hesitate in a way Sergius couldn’t categorize.

“It could have just been memories from Alvarium resurfacing. Blasphemies. Not voidsent.” She said instead, shifting the conversation before either of them had to acknowledge his clumsy show of empathy. 

“It wasn’t.” He didn’t want to elaborate and explain how he knew that it wasn’t old trauma. 

“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t you trying to process what happened. Dreams are rarely literal. Either way, I’d advise against going anywhere right now.” She said. “Your systems were throwing lines and lines of corrupted code.” 

She gestured toward the terminal, its steady blue glow, innocent and blank. As if none of it had happened. Sergius didn’t look at it. He already knew exactly what had been there.

“I don’t think you can fix it.” He told her.

On reflex, Aislinn’s chin lifted a fraction in knee-jerk defiance. Under different circumstances he might have found it funny. Tell Aislinn she couldn’t do something and it would worm its way under her skin until she felt the overwhelming urge to prove you wrong. 

“I don’t want to argue.” He added before she had a chance to formulate a reply. “It’s not a judgment of your ability.”

It was worse than that, though he couldn’t tell her. Because fixing it would mean understanding what was actually causing it and if she learned that, if she understood what was inside his systems now…

No. Absolutely not.

“Just believe me.” He finished.

She studied him for a long moment, eyes narrowed slightly, like she was trying to determine where, in what he had told her, the omissions hid and what, if anything, was outright lies. 

“Fine.” She said at last, in the tone people used when they absolutely did not mean fine. “But I’m coming with you in case there are problems.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“You’re afraid of voidsent.”

“I am.” She acknowledged. “Still coming. There will definitely be problems with you and whatever is wreaking havoc with your systems and you don’t want to follow my advice, so really, what do you expect me to do?”

He couldn’t deny that was accurate, even if it was offensively so. Sergius looked at her for a long moment and realized that as far as she was concerned, she had already made the decision and this conversation was mostly a facade at this point.

“You wouldn’t listen if I said no anyway.”

“No.” She agreed with a calm even he knew was forced. “Probably not. At least we agree on something.”

She turned away from the terminal as she went to pack her gear, like this had all been settled logically and there was nothing else to discuss. Behind her, Sergius remained rooted in place. Part of him wanted to stop her but the worst part of him was relieved she intended to come anyway.

[lettersnorth]

“You wouldn’t listen if I said no anyway.”

[anxietyproblem]

[seg-faulting]

Unhandled Exception

Four stood motionless beside the diagnostic terminal sequestered in Aislinn’s lab, rigid and blank. Cables snaked from the unit's spine into the parent terminal where Aislinn’s custom diagnostics crawled through layer after layer of systems, hunting for corrupted code.

The progress bar advanced so slowly it was almost painful. 

At first Aislinn had watched every percentage point tick upward but now she sat at the terminal, bathed in the blue glow of its multiple screens, sketching schematics for another project in order to distract herself. A watched pot never boils, or something like that.

Sketching helped her clear her mind and it kept her hands busy. It also helped sort through the things she was feeling. 

Sergius should have told her sooner.

That thought kept circling back around no matter how many times she shoved it aside. The corruption in his systems was obvious now that she knew where to look. It had been there long enough to root itself deep. Long enough that parts of it had started disguising themselves as small inconsistencies buried under sub routines, missing data fragments and latency spikes.

Did he think she couldn’t fix it? Had he simply not trusted her enough to try? 

Beside her, Four remained motionless except for the faint flicker of status lights. Sergius slept. Or as close to sleep he ever got. His systems had entered a low-power state while the diagnostics ran. A fact he had nearly argued with her about. He still didn’t entirely understand why people voluntarily rendered themselves unconscious every night. Now though, he could admit it had some advantages.

The darkness was quiet. Warm in a strange abstract way. His processes drifted without the constant friction of the world around him demanding his attention.

“Finally.” The voice slipped through the dark like a cold shock to his systems. “This is much easier.”

Sergius became aware all at once. Still asleep, but aware. The blackness around him wasn’t empty anymore. Snow fell upward into a starless sky.

He stood in the ruins of Garlemald, though not the real ruins. This place wore Garlemald’s shape incorrectly, like it was assembled from partial memories and old visual files. Sergius stared at the skyline, cataloging inconsistencies. Buildings bent at impossible angles. Structures repeated where they shouldn’t. Distances stretched and compressed unpredictably. Snow drifted sometimes up, sometimes down but it carried the smell of blood and burned ceruleum no matter which way it fell.

This was either a dream or some kind of hostile system intrusion. Neither option improved his mood.

The girl stood several yalms away. Same as before. Too thin. Arms too long beneath ragged sleeves. The smaller set of hands still covered her eyes, fingers cupped against her face. 

Sergius recognized her instantly. He hated that he recognized her instantly.

“What the hell are you?” he asked.

The girl tilted her head. The motion crackled, skipping between positions like corrupted footage. “I was waiting.” Her voice sounded strange. Distorted and layered, like several people speaking slightly out of sync. “Dreams are easier. But you don’t dream. And I couldn't wait anymore.” 

Around them the snow thickened. Sergius looked down. The drifts at his feet weren't snow at all. Ash. Bone fragments. Tiny white teeth.

His combat protocols surged awake. He reached for weapons that weren’t there and found only empty air. Excellent. Sergius scanned the surrounding streets. Something moved in the ruins behind the girl.

“You would have died badly, Sergius.”

Hostiles. Blasphemies. No. Voidsent. Hunger wearing shapes. Dark silhouettes unfolded themselves from alleyways and shattered buildings, their bodies consisting of every nightmare come to life. Mouths opened where faces should have been. Their eyes reflected red through the dark.

Definitely not ideal.

“The veil is thin here.” The girl whispered. “Cold places help. Places full of grief. Fear. Starvation. Garlemald screams loud enough for us to hear.”

The things behind her twitched closer in jagged, stuttering movements.

“You fell.” She continued. “Do you remember?”

And he did.

Memory fragments slammed into him without warning. One second he was standing in the dream-version of Garlemald and the next he was back in the real one, systems overloaded with fractured combat telemetry. Going after Ayrm. A snowstorm and a ruptured magitek motorcycle. Gunfire swallowed by shrieking static. Bodies torn apart in white snow drifts stained black.

Too many blasphemies boiling towards Alvarium in numbers too large for tactical projections to process cleanly. Claws. Teeth. The sensation of systems failing one after another while he kept fighting anyway because if he hadn’t that meant one more blasphemy that would make it to the outpost. 

Sergius stepped back and the landscape rippled oddly around him.

The girl's hands covered her eyes but somehow he knew she was watching him quietly. “You remember now.”

He ignored that. “I survived.”

“Yes.” She said. “That’s the problem.”

“You infected me.” he said.

“Yes.” She sounded both surprised that she had and slightly unsure why.

The voidsent behind her shuddered closer, their mouths opened wider and wider until their jaws split down their throats. The wind carried whispers through the ruined city. ‘Hungry. Hungry hungry hungry.’

“When the barrier weakens.” The girl continued. “They’ll come through properly. Your world is soft. Full of lovely, breakable things.”

Something brushed against Sergius from behind. A clawed hand. Too many fingers.

He whirled around and found one of the creatures ilms away from him, towering overhead. Its skin hung like flayed strips from a body made of shifting darkness. Hyuran faces pushed briefly through its torso, screaming soundlessly before sinking back inside.

Its breath smelled like mass graves. Memory data he was sure he had purged. Sergius swung at it automatically. His fist passed through its skull. The creature smiled anyway.

“You can’t fight it here.” The girl said. “This place belongs to me. A dream.”

The ruins around them pulsed. Buildings bent farther inward. The sky cracked open like an egg revealing enormous shapes moving beyond reality itself. Vast mouths. Limbs folding against limbs. Things pressing against the thinning barrier between worlds hard enough to deform it.

Garlemald groaned beneath their weight. The girl stepped closer. Snow collected on her shoulders and sleeves without melting.

“You should wake up soon.” She said.

“Why?”

Again that pause.

Sergius had dealt with manipulators before. This didn’t feel like manipulation. So what was it? What did she want? 

“Are you warning me?”

“I don’t know.” That sounded like the truth. “I think…” She hesitated, the words catching strangely. “I think I wanted someone to know. We’re all hungry.” The girl continued, almost absently. “And hunger spreads.”

The looming voidsent lunged.

Sergius came awake hard enough to trigger emergency reboot protocols, every alarm screaming simultaneously. At the terminal, Aislinn shot upright so fast her chair nearly overturned.

Sergius' diagnostic monitors had erupted into crimson warnings. Lines of corrupted code flooded every screen in pulsing waves that looked disturbingly organic. And for just a second, Aislinn could have sworn she saw another figure reflected in the red-lit glass behind Four.

Pale. Thin. Hands covering its eyes.

Then the image flickered out.

[black--armor]

[lettersnorth]

Diagnostics

[lesbianfl]

the best part of the princess bride is how it says that love is the number one motivation in life but! a close number two is spite.

[seg-faulting]

No Anomalies Detected

The world went dark.

Again.

Sergius stopped moving before he walked into something breakable or alive. Though in the confines of Heartwood’s library that probably just meant a shelf of old books or Zilmat. For one stretched, ugly second he just stood there, every process thread spiking hard enough to make his temperature warnings twitch. Then he shoved himself into action and cycled through the drones.

Ping. Ping. Ping.

Every visual feed came back black.

“Come on.” He cycled through them a second time.

Not disconnected but black all the same.

He tried not to think about Alvarium. About waking up on that table with memory corruption and missing hours and Aislinn telling him, very calmly, that she had to pry open his chassis and that if she hadn’t gotten there when she did he could have lost the mobile unit, Four, permanently. Since then the glitches had been happening more often. Little things at first. Stuttering motor control. Corrupted audio. Lost time.

Now this. He dumped the visual executables and restarted them.

Nothing.

Diagnostics had insisted he was perfectly functional, which just proved the diagnostics were garbage or he was. Possibly both.

The dark shifted. An image resolved slowly out of the static like something surfacing from deep water.

A girl.

Sergius froze.

She had dark hair hanging in limp strands around a narrow face, but the bad part was the proportions. Human-shaped in the same way a distended corpse was still human-shaped. Almost right until you looked directly at it.

Her skin had the gray-white color of drowned flesh. Her arms were too long, stretched wrong at the joints, as if someone had taken hold of her wrists and pulled until the bones lengthened like soft clay. And there were four arms.

The second pair emerged from behind her shoulders and crossed gently over her eyes. Like she was playing a game. Her mouth opened displaying rows of needle-sharp teeth within. She was talking. No audio came through.

Sergius felt a cold pulse of panic so overwhelming it almost locked his systems. He couldn’t see anything except her. Couldn’t override the image. Couldn’t tell if she was real, corrupted data, or some part of his own damaged code shaking loose.

He force-killed the visual feed. Nothing changed. Still there.

She tilted her head a fraction farther than a neck should comfortably turn.

He rebooted the entire visual system. Nothing.

The girl remained exactly where she was, patient and silent, those extra hands still covering her eyes.

“Nope.” Sergius yanked the entire mobile unit offline.

Emergency shutdown warnings cascaded through his systems. Somewhere Aislinn would be getting alerts. He’d deal with the interrogation later if later happened.

The world dissolved into shutdown static. And just before the audio channels cut completely, something whispered through them.

“The eyes remember what they were.”

Sergius went cold.

What. The fuck.

Several minutes later he brought Four back online. Systems initialized one by one with cheerful little confirmations.

Motor functions operational.

Memory integrity stable.

Visual systems functional.

No anomalies detected.

“Sure.” Sergius deadpanned.

Vision returned abruptly. Zilmat’s enormous, wet eye filled his entire field of view.

Sergius recoiled so violently he slammed backward into a bookshelf hard enough to rattle it. “Damn it, Zilmat!”

The voidsent bobbed backward in alarm. “Sorry! A-are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

He absolutely was not fine, but he wasn’t discussing that with Zilmat while his pulse emulation still felt like it was trying to punch through his chest plating.

“You didn’t tell A-Aislinn about this when she was here the other sun.” Zilmat said carefully.

Sergius glared at him.

The voidsent’s leathery wings twitched nervously. “Another reason you’re…you’re af-afraid to leave the library. These glitches are getting w-worse.”

“It’s a software issue.” Not exactly the truth. Sergius didn’t know what the hell it was. 

“You s-said Alvarium was overrun during the end days. You s-said you fell there.” Zilmat’s eye widened further with every sentence. “Aislinn repaired you afterward. What if. What if she missed something? You need to tell her.” Zilmat said.

“I am not telling Aislinn.”

“She needs to know -”

“She absolutely does not.”

Zilmat hovered uncertainly.

Sergius saw the decision form a second before the voidsent bravely blurted it out. “Well, if-if you won’t tell her, I-I will!”

As if on cue, a message pinged in his feed. 

//Aislinn: Four went offline. What happened?//

Sergius closed his eyes.

Shit.

[lettersnorth]

Done and Rusted

Sergius observed Aislinn enter the library and immediately knew this wasn’t about books.

There were several indicators. The direct line toward him without even pretending to look at the shelves. The expression that said she had already concluded somebody (probably him) was being an idiot and was only here to confirm details.

He marked his place in his book but didn’t close it yet. There was still a statistical possibility she might reconsider and leave. Not a high one.

Aislinn stopped and stood in front of the armchair he had folded himself into. 

“What’s your plan?” Not a real question. More the kind of thing people asked when they were already annoyed with the answer.

So he put the book down and looked in her direction expectantly. She never needed encouragement for this sort of thing.  

“Sit here and sulk? Be aggressively useless to everyone out of spite?” Those also were not questions.

His attention drifted toward Zilmat, who was hovering beside the shelves pretending to reorganize books while very obviously listening. The voidsent was terrible at it. Sergius had seen malfunctioning security constructs with better situational awareness, and those at least had the excuse of missing half their sensors.

“That’s not -” He stopped.

No, that was exactly what he was doing.

“So what.” He said instead. “You need me to go out on a job?”

Aislinn made a sound that conveyed offense, disbelief, and exhaustion all at once. “At this point? Absolutely not. I wouldn’t trust you to carry soup from the kitchens to the clinic without somehow turning it into a personal crisis.”

That hit harder than he was expecting, which was irritating.

Aislinn looked small and generally harmless, (she barely came up to his shoulder), but that had nothing whatsoever to do with her ability to dismantle him psychologically.

“Sergius, I know that whatever happened in Alvarium was bad and I’m not here to say anything about it one way or another.” She exhaled slowly. “But it’s been over a cycle.”

He looked away before he could stop himself. Reflex.

She noticed, obviously. Aislinn noticed everything. It was annoying.

She’d only seen the edges of the events that had unfolded at Alvarium herself. She had been called in twice to stabilize members from the team Heartwood had sent, Sergius included. He knew she had read the report the team had filed, though reports were useless for understanding anything important. Reports reduced disasters into timelines and acceptable losses and neat little summaries that made it sound like people had been behaving rationally the entire time.

They never were.

“Have you considered doing anything besides hiding in this library with only a…” Her eyes flicked toward Zilmat, narrowing slightly.

“Voidsent.” Sergius supplied.

Her attention snapped back to him. For a second he caught the expression before she smoothed it away. Discomfort, maybe disgust. Fast, but not fast enough when dealing with something like him.

“H-he’s not hiding.” Zilmat said, emerging from behind the shelves with nervous reluctance. “He h-helps catalogue the books.”

“You’re hiding too.” Aislinn told him, flatly.

Zilmat visibly wilted.

“But at least it’s convenient to know you stay in one spot.”

Then she looked back at Sergius.

“So this is it? You’ll outlast us everyone here while spending the entire time moving books from one shelf to another? All that Garlean know-how and ingenuity reduced to what amounts to a catalog system?”

“I can’t possibly fuck it up.” He said.

There it was. The actual problem. Failure. He could feel it sitting there between them without either of them saying the word aloud.

Aislinn stared at him for a long moment, then spoke. “Sergius, get over yourself.”

It wasn’t cruel. That somehow made it worse.

“You’re not the only one who makes mistakes. I read that report. You certainly weren’t the only one in *Alvarium* who made mistakes. You’re just the only one who decided the appropriate response was to become furniture.”

Zilmat made a tiny offended noise on Sergius’ behalf from somewhere behind the shelves. Aislinn ignored him but pointed vaguely in the voidsent’s direction anyway.

“You’re trying very hard to become like that. Small and harmless. Can’t you see how ridiculous that is?” 

Sergius leaned back in his chair and looked away from her. Her expression had shifted into frustration mixed with concern and he didn’t have the energy for concern right now.

Unfortunately the library aisles were too shallow to retreat into without looking absurdly dramatic. The room had gotten uncomfortably quiet. Even Zilmat had stopped pretending to shelve books.

“You know what your problem is?” She asked.

“I assume you’re about to tell me.”

“It’s not that you’re afraid, though you are. It’s that you think your fear is special.”

He frowned at her. “That’s stupid.”

“No. It’s normal.”  Her voice did that thing where it went soft around the edges. He hated when she did that. “You think your failures were catastrophic because people got hurt, because you survived when maybe you think you shouldn’t have, that nobody else could possibly understand it.” She shook her head once. “Everyone carries something, Sergius. Everyone has a list of things they wish they’d done differently. Most of us just don’t build a bloody shrine to it and move in permanently.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Aislinn pressed on before he could decide whether he actually wanted to argue.

“You’re afraid.” She repeated and it wasn’t any better hearing it the second time. “But you can’t let it trap you here. Here’s the truth. No one is coming to drag you back to the Empire. It’s gone. Whatever you were there, whatever they made you into, it’s over.” She said. “And shite happened in Alvarium. And yes, you are going to fail again eventually. You’ll hurt people. You’ll make terrible decisions. That’s just being alive.”

“Comforting.”

“I’m not trying to comfort you.”

That, he could trust, was true. 

“You have to decide what you’re going to do from here on out but I swear to the Twelve if you choose glorified cataloging system of Heartwood’s library I will put you out of your misery myself.”

Sergius glanced at her. She looked completely serious. Which made his mouth tug upward in amusement.

Aislinn’s expression shifted immediately into satisfaction. Like she had been waiting for proof that he was still capable of pulling out of a nosedive and she’d just found it. 'There you are.'

Sergius scrubbed a hand over his face. “You are aggressively difficult to ignore.” 

“I know.” She leaned back against the small table beside him, some of the tension finally leaving her posture. “But you’re talking, so I’m counting this as progress.”

From the stacks, Zilmat carefully resumed his task of reshelving books, slowly relaxing as the tension in the room eased by increments. Sergius looked down at the abandoned book on the table. Earlier, the silence of the room had felt like burial dirt packed overhead. Now it just felt quiet.

Aislinn nudged the edge of his boot with hers. “While I’m here, I’ve been asked to tell you to stop scaring the recruits.” She said casually.

“Tell them to get over it..”

“You made one cry last week.”

Probably the one who had been an ass to Zilmat. 

“Then he’s not going to last long in a mercenary company, is he?”

Aislinn considered that. “Fair.”

And just like that, the conversation drifted away from Alvarium and failure. It wasn’t forgiveness. He wasn’t sure what that would even look like and he suspected anyone claiming to have found it was either lying or dangerously well-adjusted. The memories were still there, tangled together inside him like damaged wiring. Dangerous if handled carelessly. Easy to trip over in the dark. 

Aislinn kept talking, dry and relentless in that way she had, steering the conversation away from anything either of them actually wanted to examine too closely. Apparently this was her preferred method of emotional support and the only version he could tolerate without wanting to climb out a window. Sergius realized he was listening instead of waiting for her to leave.

For now, that was enough.

[lettersnorth]

"Let's get this over with."

[thatisofetch]

when i say my love language is physical touch, don't ask "but you hate people touching you", that's exactly why it is my love language. it is reserved for people i truly love and feel comfortable with.

[guessihaveawhumpblognow]

When a character who normally has a silver tongue and a quick wit is speechless.

When an expressive character who wears their heart on their sleeve goes still, face blank.

When a character who is quick to solve problems with their fists drops their hands to their side, frozen.

Just the sudden absence of something that is always there, in both the good and the bad.

Gone in an instant.

[lettersnorth]

Such great heights

[songofthewood]

The Ties that Bind

The clinic lay wrapped in the hush that only came in the quiet hours of night. No boots pacing outside in the corridor, no groans rose from behind curtained cots. The beds stood neatly made and untouched, their soft linens ghostly in the low lamplight. It had been some time since Heartwood had mounted a company-wide mission and the stillness felt like a reprieve, proof that their mercenaries were, for once, keeping clear of the kind of trouble that led to broken bones. Or worse. 

Firelight pooled warmly in the hearth, lending the room its amber glow. By it, Gentle Fist had fallen asleep. The Roegadyn’s immense frame overflowed the chair he occupied, his feet, broad as bear paws, propped up on an ottoman. A book lay open across his chest, its pages fluttering faintly with each thunderous snore. 

At the alchemical stove, Aislinn stirred a simmering potion, copper pot gleaming in the glow. When the door clicked shut behind Maijah, the Hyur lifted her head.

She had a way of looking at people that felt less like being seen and more like being dissected. Her gaze slid over Maijah from top to bottom, sharp as a scalpel, missing nothing. It was the look of a woman who catalogued and inventoried the world around her. 

“Something you’re needing, Maijah?” Aislinn asked, already turning back to her brew. The ladle clinked softly against copper. “And thank you for the foxglove you dropped off the other sun.”

Maijah stepped carefully around Gentle Fist, placing each footfall with deliberate silence so as not to wake him. “Of course.” she replied. She paused. “Though, an odd thing for a medic to request.”

One red brow arched from Aislinn in an unspoken question.

“To my knowledge, it’s poisonous.” Maijah continued, studying the smaller woman. 

Aislinn huffed, a sound that might have been amusement. “In certain dosages, yes. In smaller ones, it revives a weak heart.” She glanced over her spectacles, eyes glinting. “Alchemy is funny that way.”

Maijah inclined her head, though unease prickled beneath her skin. Aislinn had given no cause for mistrust, but somehow the viera wouldn’t have been surprised to find out the medic had indeed made a poison with the foxglove she requested. “It’s an art with a multitude of purposes.” she said carefully.

Aislinn hummed in agreement and stirred once more before setting the ladle aside. “But I doubt you’ve come to discuss my hobbies.” She stepped back, plucked a square of baklava from a waiting plate, and took a bite. “So. Out with it.”

The clinic felt smaller somehow in the dark of night with Maijah facing Aislinn. Too quiet. Her ears flicked back, betraying her uncertainty. “Suppose there were two people.” she began, voice hesitant.

Aislinn made a low noise of disapproval at the word ‘suppose’ but waved for her to continue.

“And there was an…event. In which one unleashed a great deal of aether to save the other.” Maijah swallowed. “Could that have ill effects? Make the one who was saved think or feel things they do not truly feel?”

“That’s not much to go on.” Aislinn replied dryly. “You’re describing magical transference. I think.”

Maijah shifted, fingers knotting together.

“I don’t deal in hypotheticals.” Aislinn went on. “If you want accuracy, I need facts.”

“I can’t.” The words were strained, almost pained.

Aislinn shrugged, as if the problem was merely a misplaced tool rather than a forced confession and neither was here nor there for the hyur in any event. “Then I can’t help you.”

“But you can.” Maijah insisted softly. “First impressions, at least.”

Aislinn studied her then. Something weighed behind her eyes as a look of thoughtful consideration crossed her features. “Are we talking about you and Rujara?” she asked bluntly. “Is that what I interrupted in the hallway?”

Color rose along Maijah’s cheekbones. “What? Why would you --”

“Seven hells.” Aislinn groaned, tipping her head back. “Can we skip past all the faff where you deny it, I argue, and we waste ten minutes dancing around the truth until eventually you come around and finally tell me what I need to know to help you with…whatever this is?” She said with exasperation. “Let’s pretend we did that.”

Silence.

“Whatever you’re hiding, hide it from the others if you want. I don’t care.” Aislinn said more quietly. “Not from me. Not if you want medical advice. Which I assume you do.”

Maijah sighed. “My use of aether…isn’t something that’s common in Eorzea.” 

Aislinn waited.

“It’s a gift from Golmore.” She continued, voice lowering. “Meant to keep my people prosperous. But when I was taken from the forest…I found another use.” Her hands twisted together, knuckles paling. “I can…compel people through song. I can make them feel anything they wish to feel. Or anything I wish them to feel. I can weave it into them so well they will think the emotion, the feeling, the suggestion, is their own.” 

Aislinn’s expression shifted, curious and calculated. “Bardic magic?”

“Bards can…amplify what is already there.” Maijah allowed with a nod. “And yes, my songweaving is also easier if I am dealing with what is already there but I can, let’s say,  convince a brilliant strategic mind to make enough foolish mistakes that cause him to lose men and resources until he finally gives up on ever taking Golmore. I can do it for cycles. And he will remain so blinded and obsessed with thinking he is in love with me that he never knows I am the fly in the ointment.” 

Aislinn straightened sharply. “Nymeia’s breath.” She hissed out. Aislinn was smart so it didn’t take her long at all to figure out what Maijah had been dreading. “That song you sang for me and Stark Oak. You compelled us to bring you out of that swamp.” Aislinn muttered, rubbing her face. “Gods.”

“You were already halfway there.” Maijah insisted, though she did not deny it.

Aislinn inhaled slowly. “And now?”

“When the group of us set out to save Rujara, he was out of his mind when we found him.” She told Aislinn. “He didn’t know us. Not even Nyscera. He would have killed us without hesitation.” Her voice wavered at the memory. “So I sang. I wove a different reality back into him. But I fear I poured too much of myself into it.” She closed her eyes briefly. “My magic is not stable. Not since I twisted it for so long.”

“And you fear it cost him something now.”

“Yes.” Maijah’s eyes opened, bright with worry. “There are moments I feel his emotions here.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “And I believe it works both ways. Tonight he ran from his quarters because he felt my fear. There is no other explanation.”

Aislinn’s mind flicked briefly to the moment she passed them in the hall. That explained the wet hair and the chocobo pajamas, she wryly realized.

“The way he looks at me.” Maijah glanced away. 

Aislinn waved that aside, almost impatiently. “He’s looked at you that way since before he broke apart. Like an antelope in the path of a runaway train.” Her gaze swept over the statuesque viera pointedly. “You’re the train.”

Maijah stared at her, taken aback.

“It’s a look I recognize.” Aislinn added. “Worn it myself.” The jest faded. “You think you ensnared him like the others.”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know how to unweave it.”

“I can’t. The weave is what restored him. If I undo it --”

“He could fracture again.” Aislinn finished, wincing. “That would be bad.”

She turned to the stove and lifted the copper pot from the flame, setting it aside to cool. Then she moved toward the clinic’s book shelves, fingers skimming well-worn and cracked spines before selecting a particular volume and passing it to Maijah. The viera looked down at the cover. ‘Tethers and Aetheric Bonds.’

“You said you’re linked.” Aislinn explained. “That’s not an injury. Not one Lewra or I could heal anyroads. It’s a connection. You poured so much energy into him your signatures may have threaded together.” A spark of humor lit her eyes. “Oh. Threaded. Weave. See that?”

Maijah did not smile.

Aislinn sobered. “We’ve learned there is more than aether. Dynamis, emotion. I think that’s what you shape the way an arcanist like Lewra and I shape aether. The trouble is, aether and dynamis are often entangled.”

Maijah’s pulse quickened. “What kind of trouble?”

Aislinn tipped her head from side to side as if to say ‘depends’. “It’s not as if I have any case studies I can reference. I’ve never heard of this particular form of it but I have heard of aetheric bonds.” She paused, considering the problem from as many angles as she could. “There are records of the tethered sensing each other’s location. Sharing dreams. Even physical sensation.” She paused. “Hurt one to hurt the other.”

The color drained from Maijah’s face.

“These connections can change with time and distance.” Aislinn added quickly. “And yours is unique. If you can’t undo it, maybe it settles into something manageable. Emotional bleed-through, nothing more.”

Nothing more. As if that wasn't an invasion enough. Maijah stared down at the heavy book in her hands as though it might bite.

“I’ll study it further.” Aislinn said, more gently now. “Try and find something concrete.”

The viera nodded and forced a smile onto her face. “Please. In the meantime, I suppose I have some reading ahead of me.” She dipped her head. “Thank you. For this. I hope the evening is a quiet one for you.” 

She turned away, already opening the book as she stepped out into the dim corridor. Behind her, the fire crackled softly. Gentle Fist snored on. And in the copper pot, the potion cooled. Poison or cure, depending on the hand that wielded it.

[lettersnorth]

The Question’s Still the Same

"Are you ready for this?" Stark Oak rumbled. His thick arm braced against the doorway of the warehouse's manufacturing room like a gate. Only the right words would cause the gate to drop and let her pass.

Unfortunately, Aislinn did not have the right words.

"Not even slightly." She said, honestly.

He stared at her, wide jaw clenching and unclenching as if he were chewing on some particularly unpleasant bit of gristle.

She shook her head. "Do you want me to lie?" She asked, her voice coming out sharper than she meant it to be. Nerves were getting the best of her. Knowing that, she flapped her arms in exasperation at her sides. "Doesn't change the fact I've got to go. How I feel has no bearing on any of this, so please don't ask me what I'll do if I see him, if he comes to talk to me --"

"He won't be talking to you." Stark Oak interrupted, each word like a shot fired and left ringing in the air. 

Silence fell heavily between them, a leaden thing. She knew the direction of his anger and it wasn’t her. This would mark the first time she'd lay eyes on Sterling since the back office incident moons before. Stark Oak had been diligent about his previous threat to the man, prowling the manufacturing rooms like a guard dog, setting his crew on edge.

She had learned from Kikirifi that the ornery Hellsguard had a family once. Wife. Two daughters. But when she asked where they were, the lalafell had grown unnaturally quiet and she knew it wasn't the sort of question to ask.

"You can stay here. With the machines." He said, his voice a measure quieter.

"You know I can't. The lieutenants will be making note of who comes and who stays away. This is U'Rahna's wake. If someone's not there, they'll ask why." She scratched at her newly healed scar. It always seemed to itch. "You know they're going to close ranks, all of them are paranoid. Nymeia's blood, they found her floating in the river with a bullet in her back."

Stark Oak grunted. As good as a vocal acknowledgment that she had a point. And yet, his steel cord of an arm didn't budge.

"Then you get ready for this. Ain’t no different than target practice out at the train depot. You breathe. Slow. Until you know your hand is as steady as it's gonna be and your sight is lined up. You just keep breathing. Never let 'em see your hand shake. That's the trick."

She looked over his great charcoal-skinned arm, past the doorway to the hall beyond. She could do this. She would do this because there was simply no other option. And she would get through it. And she would adapt. Because that's what she did. Every time.

She inhaled a cleansing breath. "Alright." 

The memory faded and she became aware once more of the blazing sun high above, of the dust along the craggy trail that wound its way through the scrub lands. She wondered how much time had passed while she was caught up with ghosts. Bertram hadn't said anything. Most likely, he was wrestling with ghosts of his own, she reasoned and flicked a brief glance his way as he moved along the trail ahead of her. 

Now, as they traveled in silence through the Gyr Abania wilds, the soul stone weighed heavily in her belt pouch. With each step it gently bumped against her hip, a constant reminder of so many things. Both passed and yet to come. And Stark Oak's voice rumbled in her head. 

"Are you ready for this?"

She had the same answer for him. "Not even slightly."