WHAT'S LEFT FOR LYDIA THANE

a character blog that feeds into strigwrites.tumblr.com

[lydiathane]

Revenant

A sharp whistle cuts the tension before I can take the first steps toward making a fool of myself. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say I'm lookin' at a ghost," a sailor's shit-eating cant calls out.

"You ever seen a ghost with an ass like mine?"

"Turn around, let me think about it."

A tree trunk of a man leans on a shovel and shields his eyes from the light. I see the blotchy ink of sun-scorched tattoos snaking up his bronze arm, naval mythology merged with flesh just the way I remember. I can feel the dread-thump of a resistant heart being violently kickstarted by an absolute dream, jolting me awake. It's a perfect, cerulean day in La Noscea, and the chaplain himself is shoveling shit on several acres of the island's best volcanic soil. Spectacular.

"How's it going, Leon?"

"I've had it worse. Still kicking, so I can't complain."

"You look healthy."

"I am healthy. But what about you? Last I saw you…"

"I was blasted on drugs and dancing on the edge of disaster. Bet you thought I danced right off the dock and into the ocean." It's a joke, but it's not.

"That's...one way of putting it, yeah." Leon scratches at the short hair on his chin and cheek with a free hand and looks me over as he mulls what exactly to say to a screaming heap of unfinished business made manifest on his humble yard. I can see it in his eyes that he's wary, the walls being bricked as high as he can make them before the bad humors get in and asphyxiate everything they touch.

"I know this is out of the blue," I admit, in the most obvious possible fashion. Fuck, I am so stupid. "I guess I could've sent a letter or...messenger bird. Smoke signals..." I'm trying to joke again, but unlike Arius, this one gives me a pitying smile. Grow up, Lydia. You fucking idiot.

"What are you here for, Lydia?" The smile fades fast as I watch him try to piece together my intent with a swell of suspicion, and I can't blame him for the outcome. "Listen, I know things happened on the Basilisk, but I...don't live like that anymore, and I have no desire to go back. The drugs, the debauching...I'm not proud of what I did there, but I'm set on a better path these days. I'm making up for lost time."

"No, no. Hey." I'm moving before I can stop myself, boots sinking into the supple field, treading on his work in a way I am all too keenly aware of. "Listen, I'm not here to drag you back, I swear to you. Actually, I'm drying out too, in just about every conceivable sense. I don't want that, either."

"I looked for you, you know. Looked for a body more than anything, expected to find you face down in the current. Didn't find out until later that you'd walked off with a stranger. I didn't understand it."

"Yeah, well…" I begin, ready to deflect with more sour humor and then immediately turn away from the vulnerability this perilous conversation requires. Instead: "I'm…sorry. I'm sorry you had to do that. That was fucked up, the way I walked out of all that. I don't have an excuse, and I'm not going to make one. I owed you more than that."

I see his brows raise, but he doesn't voice his surprise. He doesn't need to. "I appreciate that."

"You're...such a good fucking man, Leon. You're one of the best. You didn't deserve it. It's that simple. I kept thinking about you after I left, and it's not to excuse how I walked out, but even before then I knew I was an anchor and I was dragging you to your death. I was poison. The Basilisk was...it was..."

"A cataclysmic fuckfest," he completes on cue. "Yeah, it was a disgusting, sweaty, nihilistic shitshow and everyone there knew it, but you didn't do anything to me that I wasn't already on the way to doing to myself. It was a dark time, Lydia. We lost our minds when faced with the end. In a way, I'm grateful it happened, because it showed me who I really was."

"You never seemed lost to me."

Leon unfurls an endearing smile, his eyes crinkling up with easygoing mirth. "We're born lost, Lydia. We're all just stumbling around in the dark trying to do our best with a little bit of light and direction until we die and get the big picture." He's been building up to this line, I can see it in his expression that he's pleased. "Thankfully there's a divine Navigator."

I smile back reflexively and feel my heart punch madly against my ribs, beating my dumb ass internally with every blow. Part of me wants to cover the spot with my hands as though he can see it, but I settle for crossing my arms casually instead. We stand there staring at each other stupidly for far too long as seagulls scream in the distance.

"Hey, so can I just…" I begin. "I don't expect anything out of you. Let me be clear about that. I don't want money or favors or anything, okay?" I've got his full attention and it's making me nervous, but I'm committed now and there's no turning back. "But...maybe you wouldn't mind giving me a little bit of your time? Let me buy you a drink or dinner or both." I can feel the color creep up my neck, which is abso-fucking-lutely undignified. This isn't like me, but I can barely hear my own higher thought over the steady wardrum going off in my chest. "You can absolutely tell me to go fuck myself if that's where your heart's at, but if there's even a remote chance--"

"Sure."

"Sure. Sure? What's that mean, sure?"

"You're as thick as you always were," he scoffs, turning to walk his shovel back toward a freshly-painted barn, leaving me to scramble after. "You can't just tell me you want to talk or that you're feeling some kind of way, so we've got to do this song and dance where I pretend I don't know you and you get to pretend you're getting away with something. It was the same deal when I first met you on the boat to Terncliff, you were scared shitless, but had to come at it all sideways." He leans the shovel against the wall and ignores me to work the knot on his bandana to wipe the sweat from his forehead. "I know you want to say some things, you think I might want to say some things, and you want to put a cap on this open chapter one way or another. So let's do it. Take me on a date, Lydia Thane."

Leon takes his time to pull the bulky gloves from his hands and throw them on a workbench, finally glancing over his shoulder to see me looking dumbstruck. His laughter is loud enough to echo all the way down to the shoreline.

[lydiathane]

Growing Up

The trek out of the armpit of Ilsabard wasn't silent, at least not at first. The gruff hum of a taxed engine filled the cabin as we bumped along the uneven hills in search of the main thoroughfare we'd rolled in on days ago, supplanting the need to make small talk with monotonous thrumming and occasional remarks about the rough ride. The vehicle was oppressive with a stale musk of blood, sweat, and sex, the accumulation of weeks of spotty bathing being held back by cold weather layers no longer. We've been living on a diet of tinned rations and dried foods, leaving a trail of refuse unceremoniously tossed by the wayside after every meal for some future archaeologist to trace our foolish path and scratch their head over what we could've possibly been up to.

We stalled true intimacy until it was no longer possible: just as the snowline began to vanish behind us, our beleaguered machine began to bear signs of its final collapse after being taken through hell and back in a most literal sense. We shuddered up one last foothill, and then coasted in freefall down the other side until we could rattle to a stop at the nadir. Nobody had to say anything. Arius lifted the hood and looked down with acceptance when our suspicions were confirmed:

"Dead," he declared without emotion.

"Lucky she got this far," I mused, and that's that.

We packed up what was left of our belongings, much lighter than how we set out, and pointed ourselves toward the faint tendril of smoke indicating civilization at least a few malms down the road, the final stretch giving us plenty of time to contemplate all the ways things had gone wrong. Broken, lumpy roads unfurled before us, painted dark by two slumping silhouettes trekking shoulder to shoulder with the sun glaring at our backs until the silhouettes grew longer and skinnier and somehow farther apart. Arius' beard had grown unruly and tangled into a greying nest, making for a formidable mask to cover his thin grimaces when I tried to lighten the mood on several occasions. The jokes don't sound the same now in the aftermath, and I suppose the precarious deal I made affirms that I'm not exactly the same, either. I guess I was lucky he could look me in the eye at all. I know what I am.

"What's the plan?" he asked me after an hour of silence marked only by the crunch of boots over loose gravel. My debts to the stoic carpenter who dug a hole to hell for me to be rebirthed in had been on my mind, certainly, but I'd started to let my mind wander to more dangerous territory: after all, I've owed my share of debts before, but far more unsettling than that was the potential of a future I actually wanted that was possibly already out of my grasp. I wonder, even now, if he was doing the same.

"The plan," I repeated slowly, drawing out the moment like I didn't already know what it looked like. Once I say it, it's real. I'd like to pretend that I was naive enough not to know what he really meant by that, but I owe him much more than a charade. I'm not the one slinking off the ship called Basilisk this time, cutting out while the crew sleeps off the hangover. I'm not jealously watching an ex-lover move on to something better while I sink deeper into self-loathing. It's time to grow up, Lydia. You've had hundreds of years to do it. "I think for you, it's pretty easy. You should go home to your kids. You've been gone a long time and I know you haven't exactly been writing letters. Let them know you're okay."

The outskirts of the city had been creeping up on us fast while my mind wandered, and after that it's the point of no return. When we set out on this impossible voyage, I never really thought I'd see the other side of it. Like all other parts of my unnaturally long life, I was sure I'd be able to skip the real ending, dodge the uncomfortable closure, and pretend it was never an option.

"And for you?"

"And for me?"

"I didn't do all of that for nothing, did I?"

"You mean to ask me if I'm gonna go throw it away."

His silence answers me perfectly.

"I owe you an absolutely fucking colossal debt. There's no amount of money I could give you -- I could spawn a hundred generations named in your honor, and it wouldn't be enough. This wasn't an average favor, it was a nightmare that just kept getting worse, and you carried me through it." It was the first time I'd been able to vocalize the building pressure in my gut after the rift closed behind us, but once it starts, I can't stop it. "I don't know how I keep running into good hearts like yours. I always dreamed of being that good, but it's always just out reach. I don't have the stuff it takes to make it come naturally. But you..." I turned to look at the side of his weathered face and found it illuminated in gold by the fading daylight. I couldn't help but laugh, but it's genuine now, untainted by caustic wit. "Even now, man. You're fucking luminescent."

Arius kept his dark eyes affixed at the rooftops that drew closer into view. One of those has a bed, a real one, the first we'll have seen in months. After that, there will be a ship in the harbor that he boards and it will sail him back to Kugane, where the dazzling red sunsets and fresh ocean air will make this all seem like one long delirium as he sweats me out in an eastern sauna. The memory of Lydia will fade like a bruise and become prettier until it's nothing at all. "I love you," I state plainly, without flourish, and without the expectation that I'll hear it in return. "Always will. I've already asked too much of you to saddle you with more of me, and the parts you'd have aren't the ones you'd want. But you knew that."

After a long pause, he nods as surely as he did when he saw the smoke coming off the engine. Dead. He slips his calloused hand into mine and we take our last steps into the real world that awaits. When he lets go, it's to pay for passage, and that's the last I ever see of Arius. I wish him the best. I'm growing up.

[lydiathane]

Prompt #21: Solution

You can’t bring the dead back, but that which cannot die simply waits. In a few centuries of accumulated hunting, I’ve been carrying it all inside, and it's no wonder I've been a mess. The emergent persona is a product of thousands of slain creatures whose essence I devoured, and somewhere in there was the cut prism at the center of it all, projecting the dead in a thousand directions through the lens of Lydia. It's raucous and twisting, a storm toiling within. Now, it's quiet.

This was my bright idea all the way back in Eorzea, with gratitude to a certain bastard magus who shared a few quiet moments on the beach with me where the idea was planted in the first place—back when I knew this was inevitable but still couldn't bring myself to acknowledge it. The second my mortal thread frayed, my shadow took my hand and made the exchange; she, too, was carrying this curse of half-life, tired of the turmoil, and most especially tired of carrying only half the required humanity to stave off the worst of it. Arius was the one who hunted her down in this cursed realm while I succumbed to void psychosis and it was him who forced the deal that would ultimately save me in a one-in-a-million alignment like three cherries on a slot machine. If death is anything like undeath, then there's little to fear: I barely had to do a thing but lay there and sink into the darkness, as easy as breathing when they finally told me to release. My only thought while the living continued to move around me was this: I hope I've done enough. I have worked ceaselessly against my nature my whole, long life, not always to the desired result, but has it been enough to justify going on?

I feel the contract forged in my blood as the warmth returns like tide to shore. The irony of being reborn in the back seat of the armored car where I experienced my share of little deaths with the Garlean who's gunning it back toward the broken gate is not lost on me, but I know my driver won't appreciate the joke just yet. Hot on our heels is the veritable horde of demons that I've unleashed in purging myself of their consumed aether, and as I sit up in a daze to look back at them through the rear window, what I feel most is this: pride. I wipe the acrid pitch from my mouth and watch them give chase with a detachment only the isolation of near-death can bring. I don't remember killing all of them, but it's like watching my magnum opus unravel in glorious abandon, the accumulation of my life's momentous efforts laid out before me in screaming, shrieking, wing-beating relief. I can't help but laugh.

[lydiathane]

Prompt #20: Anon

A crumpled form waits at the top of the gatehouse, collapsed against the embrasure in the brick that lets in the dim glow of the gloom outside. A pair of violet eyes glow with a dull luminescence that belies deeper fading, searching her environs with uncomprehending flicker until they fall on a looming silhouette that’s been waiting for some time. She follows it up; ah, yes, it has a face.

“...Do you understand what’s about to happen?” The face inquires in a voice that sounds like her own.

“We struck a bargain before coming. It’s what has to happen.” This one comes from elsewhere. This one holds undeniable radiance that stirs the only remaining ember left in her hearth: hunger.

“I’m going to die,” she mutters.

She feels her limbs move, but not of her own will. There’s only light, there’s only a surfeit of aether flooding her beastly senses that taunts her to simply reach out and tap it. It would be so easy.

“Keep your eyes open, Lydia.”

“I don’t know why you look so miserable. We’re both giving something up.”

The world flits in and out of blackness like a candle fighting wind. One little snuff and she can give up willpower all together. Wouldn’t that be nice?

“I’m not ready.”

“Look around you. Do you think it matters?”

The only warmth in the room is her hunter companion who regards her with a pained sort of pity as he carries her limp body down the stairs. “Am I going to die?”

The answer comes in stereo from her shadow and one of her last friends in the world. “I don’t know.”

[lydiathane]

Prompt #18: Ashes

(CN: Gory depictions)

The broken cobble makes a fine canal for a steady stream of blood, the jagged gaps filling from an upstream source of black and purple pitch. Bone fragments and broken teeth litter the ground beside dusty pink meat bashed flat and mixed with gravel, the sign of a brutal rout. Further along this path of destruction is the smoking char of a winged body that puts off a savory, oily stench that’s almost appetizing to the mortal host passing through, an association disturbing enough to turn his gut if he lingers too long. This gargoyle met its untimely demise head-first into the ground, torn from the heavens by a streak of fire, and left a twisted frame still glowing with embers that will soon be no more than an ashy husk.

This grisly trail leads up a crooked pathway, up crumbling stone stairs that wind toward a lone gatehouse still standing sentinel before an abandoned courtyard. The wicked swath cut through to reach its entry ends at the wrought iron teeth of the gate pulled down in what must have been a terrible haste; after all, it seems unlikely anyone would have planned to catch the imp that still squirms there, pinned to the ground where it was skewered clean through. A lone man stops there, gazing down at the screaming creature with what seems momentarily like pity. It stares back at him hatefully, screams to bare a row of tiny, sharp teeth, and beats its torn wings against the metal, and yet this defiance only serves to rip a bigger gash into its grotesque, worm-grey form. He sighs and picks up a fallen chunk of the gatehouse brick.

[lydiathane]

Prompt #13: Confluence

A blood-smeared door hangs off the hinges, its macabre paintwork laid in carmine handprints and abstract impact spatters, and a twin lies broken and charred in its shadow. At the threshold of the frame snakes a length of ancient chain, links bent and broken by forces unseen. To step through is to invite absence, to take a breath without promise of release. Air stale, unmoving; a sky gone rancid in its twilight, never to recover from all-encompassing darkness. A man soaked in dark viscera stoops to collect the fallen wood slab that’s been bashed to splinters and leans it upright, a formality at best. Behind him, an armored vehicle once painted in winter camoflauge now bears a new decoration of smeared pitch, the machine idling calmly while a leathery husk disintegrates under its back tires and several more break down into dust in its wake.

His charge is loose now, a danger that was a known possibility before arrival, and yet is no less disturbing to consider now that it’s become reality; is there still a fragment in there that knows his humanity, or has the last barrier against madness been shattered? His brows sink as he gazes off in the distance at a floating courtyard bearing a rotted garden, where flashes of light and terrible screams erupt. Flocks of winged terrors dive from mist that perpetually hangs overhead, talons outstretched before a bolt of levin erupts and sends them spiraling into the indifferent empty beneath them all.. It was the untainted man’s abundance of life essence that was thought to be in greatest need of protection upon entry, but what they hadn’t accounted for was a deathless voidhunter’s reputation in the place from which her prey had come. And judging by the growing morass under a crumbling gazebo far ahead, she would need help soon enough.

[lydiathane]

Prompt #11: Descent

I woke in darkness, to the sound of a shovel persistently scraping into hard dirt. When I pushed myself upright, I found myself in the back seat of the car, draped in a coat that wasn’t mine. What a gentleman. Night had fallen on the mid-continental foothills, but still my companion worked by lamplight with no signs of having stopped since I passed out to avoid the pain of a gnashing aether hunger that felt too deeply to be purely physical. It creeps on you like choking ivy, this rancid curse, one vine at a time until you realize you can no longer move or breathe like you used to. My supply of ethers dwindled a few days ago; I tried my best to ration them, but the journey had its share of hitches that extended out the trip past what I anticipated, and I’ll admit that I might have been greedy early on. If I can tell you one thing about this tainted state, it’s this: you’re utterly compromised. You can justify anything that gets you another meal, you can make impossible leaps of logic until you give yourself the go-ahead to do something truly fucking stupid, and worst of all, the whole process is completely seamless in your mind. I have to take it slow to avoid a misstep, and it really is that precarious, because one slip can mean a person’s life gone in a flash.

It hurts to move, but I have to get out, I have to say something, I have to keep moving forward. I risked it all for this, and I only have to keep putting one foot in front of the other for a little longer before it’s out of my hands. Just do it, already. I can feel the heat of a living source, but Arius has thinned out over the days as we run ourselves ragged. I know there’s no way to safely indulge the way I used to, neither by stopping myself before it becomes lethal, nor by having someone with enough to spare in the first place. But fuck, I want it so bad. The cold air hits me like a wall, and I take the shock to my system as a blessing. “We both know what I am,” I call out into the night. “But I’m starting to question what kind of creature you are. How the hell are you still at it? You’re a madman.”

The digging stops and after a few moments, I see a bearded face appear over the lip of a wide hole and turn toward my voice. This joke is innocuous enough that he absorbs it, even gives a slight smile. I wish I could appreciate the gesture more, but I’m fighting with myself every minute. “I had a nap and a bit of coffee while you were asleep. You seemed comfortable, so I left you alone.”

I know there’s an unspoken question. How am I feeling? I’ll spare him needing to ask it. “Let me take over. I’m alright now.”

“There’s not much left to do. Come here, you’ll see.”

He’s completely correct. This insane man has dug out a wide ramp leading into the earth, a mouth into a stone cellar under the foundation of the house. He’s built a fire at one side of the space, and the enclosure’s grown respectably cozy to the point his coat has been neatly discarded, leaving the mastermind himself mopping sweat off his brow in little more than a thermal shirt and suspenders. I’d swoon, but there’s a black cloud in my head that’s poisoning my capacity to feel anything innocuous. He leans on his shovel and lights a cigarette with the strike of a match, staring into the darkness past where the fire can illuminate. “I’ll need to make sure the vehicle can clear the ceiling, and that the gate is wide enough to accept it. After that, it’s just a matter of waking it up.”

It hits me just then that the tang of rust on the air isn’t just the age of the ruins around us, and it sure as hell isn’t the cigarette. The sour decay is unmistakably voidal: we’ve hit the motherlode, and the thing we’ve ventured so far for is right there. My heart misses a beat. I’m moving before I understand why. “Grab the lantern, you can see the entrance back there,” Arius offers, lingering right where he is. “It’s delicate, so we’ll need to have care.” The lantern squeaks as I lift it and send light pouring over the broken stone and dirt. Old jars of discolored preserves and canned produce line the walls and I recognize a rusted scythe hanging from an iron hook near what used to be a wheelbarrow. It’s all just set dressing for the main event. Beyond all of this, buried at the back of this hole in the ground, I see it: an archway beset with twin wood-and-iron doors held fast by chains, utterly out of place.

I keep moving forward, forward. “I thought we could take some time to eat and rest, then get at it by first light.” I should be listening, but I’m not. I’m within eight fulms, four fulms, three - two - one...I reach out and touch the metal links, and they nearly sing in my palm with a shrill tone as sharp as a sword being drawn. Blood was here. “Hang on,” I hear him say from ten malms behind me, an echo down a long hallway that only barely reaches me. I rattle the chains to test, and then nod to myself, because I already know what it wants. There’s a knife in my boot, why don’t we go ahead and grab that? “Lydia, wait.” The plan’s gone out the window.

[lydiathane]

Prompt #10: Channel

The detritus quickly stacked up as the hours slipped away. It was easy to forget I hadn’t slept, working with monk-focus on the repetitious act of picking up refuse and moving it all to the discard pile over and over again; broken furniture, metal scraps, crumbled brick. I tried to recreate the home in my mind, reverse-engineering the outcome to the origin. Who lived here? What did they want for, what did they hope? The old Garleans were rural bumpkins, the bottom of the food chain. Even knee-deep in their old home, sorting through their ruined bedrooms and chasing mice out of their moldy bassinets, it was hard to fathom that before the iron spires, there was just a rickety bedframe on the old farmstead. There were raised garden beds on the east end, and a well just beside. No ceruleum, no revolution, no empire.

“Hey.”

My head turned swiftly, caught by surprise. My back was turned to the farm, and I was staring at a patch of frosty bramble, clutching a rusted iron pot in my gloved hands. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Go get some rest. I found the cellar, but it will need some work to get the vehicle down there.”

“Wait, when’d you do that?” I rounded to inspect his work and realized that we’d transformed the slouching memory of quaint country life into a picked-over square of bare foundation flanked by trash, that old life fully disassembled by a carpenter and his haggard assistant who apparently, on several occasions, seemed to forget what she was doing in a stupor. I know it’s the hunger. I know. I wonder if he thinks about it, too, like when I offered to take a shift at the wheel so he could sleep. Did he get any rest, or did he just wait to see if I’d lose it when I heard the first deep breaths of slumber? I’ve lived this way before. I was an ascetic, and it crippled me for decades. Memory shot, identity a jumble. All I knew was the military discipline I’d been given, and it was by that grace of purpose that I didn’t become a full-fledged monster. But now, I ask, what’s stopping me?

Arius is staring at me. I’ve drifted again, embarrassing. I know whatever he just said, I didn’t hear a word of it. “I’m sorry,” is all I can muster, my resignation as heavy as the house we just moved. This man’s got kids, and I guess Lydia fucking Thane makes one more. He’s not old enough to be my father, a laughable notion especially on time scales as long as mine, and I can’t remember the first thing about my own to compare, but I what I do know is that I don’t want to disappoint someone who’s channeled so much effort just to get me here, and for what? What’s this man getting out of this except a threat on his life while he’s got daughters who love him, safe in Kugane? I can’t understand this man’s integrity, but I admire the absolute hell out of it. I don’t want to fuck this up. I don’t want to be this way, I don’t want to hurt anyone, and I don’t want to die.

[lydiathane]

Prompt #9: Yawn

The perimeter of the old stead in the transitional topography was easily missed. Out in central Ilsabard, where the mountainous ranges give way to more rolling and rugged foothills, the valleys are hidden by the land, tucked between crests. We drove in circles while Arius consulted a scrap of an old map, the wildest search I’ve ever been on with next to nothing to guide us. The only thing standing between me and a certain death or permanent madness is hearsay, ain’t that a bitch? He promised that if things got bad, he would forge a pact with me, courtesy of the old arts, as the proud descendants of Garlean yokels like to call it. With me, Lydia fucking Thane, voidhunter extraordinaire. It’s humiliating to think about. It’s a desperation move, he said, a lifeline if all else fails. I told him I hoped for his sake he didn’t still want me after that, because I’ve got a thing about fucking the Void, which is to say—don’t. He’s never found it very funny. I’ve spent so long with his straight-faced honor that I’m starting to question if I’ve ever been funny in my life.

“Whoa, turn here,” my passenger commanded so suddenly that the whole vehicle jerked with my sudden brake, twisting to point to a modest valley where overgrowth had taken over several buildings and dragged them to the earth. Everything was covered in rime, dreary browns frosted white, but it was unmistakable that in this little opening, something once was. It happened so suddenly, it took even the navigator by surprise. “This is it. It’s got to be. We’re in the right place, it lines up. Go ahead and ease it down the hill, we can start searching.”

“Hard to believe there’s a gaping maw into hell under all of this. How do you figure?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. They had to hide it back in the day, as well; it was how they armed themselves, it was precious. If it were easily found, they’d lose their main source of defense.”

It’s a strange thing, to reach a destination where both the best and the worst case could play out from the same hand. The thrill of discovery gives way to the yawning maw of dread. The dread gives way to a fleeting sense of hope that you really could do this, just like you always have, just as it feels sometimes you were destined to do. The hope is squashed under the boot of fear that the last thing you’ll see on this star is a run down ancestral ground. That fear escapes your control, slips through your fingers, and morphs into terror that the hunger you’re quietly harboring will split you in half and emerge from your steaming carcass some other beast all together, and it will devour your long journey’s best companion, this bearded savior who hates your jokes.

[lydiathane]

Prompt #7: Pawn

A serene light turns snow to gold on a particularly blustery morning on the tundra. Trees heave and bend with the weight of the ice glazing their boughs, sending crisp crackles with every slight shake and jostle of the wind. Overhead, streaked clouds race fast and sweeping tracks through a painted sky toward the horizon. Dawn breaks in defiance of the storm that whipped through overnight in darkness, revealing a landscape that still quivers, but none so much as the armored car nestled against a rock face serving as a windbreak. Even on treads, the carriage of the vehicle twitches with motion, bouncing not with the gusts outside, but motion within.

-

Heavy breathing fills the humid interior, the only sound of life over the grumble of the motor. A middle-aged man with the bulk and muscle of an honest laborer reclines in the back seat with his eyes closed in respite, running a hand through the thick, black tangle under his chin that’s gone unshorn since they set out on this venture weeks ago. His companion swings her tawny legs over his lap and dismounts, coming to rest next to him in a spent slump.

“I haven’t been fucked like that since the last time I was getting ready to die,” Lydia offers, and surely it’s meant as a joke, but the delivery doesn’t quite lift her voice above a flat, raspy murmur. Silence greets her awkward attempt at levity. It stretches so long without answer that she finally turns her glance over at Arius to read his reaction more directly. “No...? You’re right, wasn’t very funny,” she concedes at his lack of expression.

“Stop doing that,” he responds plainly. It’s not annoyance, per se; she’d come to provoke his ire intentionally a number of times, but this disapproval was subtly different enough to cut short the smart-assed remark lined up behind the first and force her to actually listen. “Just...stop talking. Enjoy a moment for once without saying something to make it less vulnerable. Don’t say anything at all.”

She rolls her head forward and stares at the back of the seat ahead, slowly tugging the grey waffle-knit over her bare breasts, just one layer of what feels like a thousand in such an unforgiving environment. The breathing slows and soon it’s only the hum of machinery and the howl of arctic winds pounding to get in. The man’s chiding doesn’t last; he reaches over to take her hand and spares her a look of acknowledgement, as though to say, See? Isn’t that better?

“People like me...” She begins again, this time with a different level of candor. “We’re used to being tools. The person who does what needs doing. I’m a mammet, you know? Wind me up, give me a purpose, and I’ll do it until I break down.” There’s a long pause, hesitation that is unusual for someone who normally fires and forgets. “Every time I’ve been off the clock and left to my own devices, it’s a disaster. I get a notion in my head of doing things differently, and that’s the beginning of the end. I’m not a thinker, I just want a fucking purpose. And I hope...” Her mouth presses together in time with the hitch in her voice. “I just hope you’re right about all of this.”

[lydiathane]

Prompt #5: Cutting Corners

The times were getting dire and I knew it. I think about it constantly, ruminate on how I let it get so bad, what the turning point was where I became a danger. I’ve never looked at myself that way, you know? All my life, I’ve been a predator for one thing only, and I would never characterize it as being afraid of me, because what can the Void really fear when all it knows is appetite? What did it ever have to fear when it could just as easily drag me under, too? For the longest time, I was controlled even when I knew I was compromised; I worked out a system, albeit something of a shameful one, and I kept satiated on the aetherial table scraps of what devils I slayed. Fair’s fair, isn’t it? It was my one way to prove my worth to the world in exchange for letting me live this unnaturally long, shitty little existence. Where did it go wrong?

At the cusp of annihilation, I let myself go. When the blasphemies came, I had one last burst of courage to face what came and try to live with a modicum of dignity in case it all went to shit. And when I couldn’t take the pressure of putting my sword through beasts who had only just been children, or families I had only just tried to comfort right in front of my fucking eyes, I walked away. I turned tail and became a glutton on The Basilisk to watch the sunset of humanity from the center of an orgy and grew sloppy with my discipline from there on out. Even when the apocalypse was cancelled, I never came back from that. I let the hunger and madness take root like some shitty little weed, and what started as a perfectly manageable issue became a spread of pernicious, deep-rooted tangles slowly killing me within.

What started as intrigue after a motley group of Garleans rescued me into their autocarriage became a smoldering coal, and technology quickly filled the role of the first real hobby I ever let myself have that didn’t involve gambling or getting fucked up. And when I finally had the chance to turn my newly-kindled interest in magitek into a job, I jumped on it without hesitation, because who in their right mind wouldn’t? But it was about more than just passion, I wasn’t ready to go back to my former life, I wasn’t ready to face what was waiting for me, and most of all I wasn’t even sure it was safe for me to do it. So instead, I spent my days in the old man’s garage with my arms buried in machine guts, inhaling fuel vapors until I’m sure my insides turned blue (thankfully, decades of smoking prepared me). Did you know combusted ceruleum puts off aether? It’s noxious, but what about me wasn’t at the point I was huffing dregs to ward off the growing chasm of hunger? You’d think this was a red flag for me to turn my shit around, a complete five-alarm fire blazing bells at me to pay attention to my needs, to stop trying to run from the rot and just turn and face it. The days were a blur. I didn’t face it.

At this point, I was doing periodic tours back in Garlemald to meet with a rescue corps comprised of native Garleans who knew how to operate machinery, and Eorzean aid groups who were still reaching remote parts of Ilsabard to convince the locals to come out of hiding and save them from a certain death. I had a clever system in place, one that I thought harmless. No, even worse, I thought it was for the greater good. I volunteered for the longest hauls, the loneliest stretches where I knew I’d be driving for twelve, fourteen hours at a time. Nobody wanted it, but where else do I exist except at the margins? I volunteered gladly for reasons nobody could comprehend, but what better time to safely take my fill of a living entity than when they were sleeping in the passenger’s seat? This unique means of sating myself meant my extra provisions could be shared with them since I didn’t need it. It meant that if the vehicle broke down in the middle of that white hell (and it did, on more than one occasion), my odds of survival remained higher than if I were any ordinary fuck.

With every route, I found myself less satisfied with the measured amount I was taking, so I’d keep pushing myself to work longer days, to pick up more passengers, always more. The problem with this plan is that at some point, you start doing your job so well that the passengers become fewer and farther between as a natural result, and any normal fucking person would’ve been happy about that. There are not an unlimited number of people who need help when fleeing a dead nation, but me and this hunger, we had no bottom, we saw no end. It had been at least a week that I was driving and refueling and driving and refueling when I found a remote farm that had yet to be checked over for signs of life. My wicked heart skipped a beat when I saw fresh footprints leading around the property...

There’s a lot here you can call a confession, but how fucked is it that the worst part of it all is something I still can’t bring myself to say? I’m not ready to talk about it. I thought I was, but I can’t, and I don’t think anyone would understand even if I tried. I’m still too ashamed of the result of letting my curse fester, and anyone can put two and two together about what happens when a wolf tends your flock. They needed me, and I’ll never forgive myself.

[lydiathane]

Prompt #4: Snowblind

A hare tracks across the sloping drifts, pauses, and scents the air. Its nose twists and twitches as it tries to get the read on the landscape, the rest of its wiry body stock-still save for the soft ruffle of its ivory fur. Danger? Beady eyes glisten against the snowblind landscape, searching, suspecting—and all at once the tension abates like footsteps in the snow, gone as fast as it was made. Maybe it even heaves a little bunny-sigh. All’s well on the horizon, at least until the thrum of a massive engine snarling to life shatters the peace, sending our furry friend sprinting for the foxholes. Fuck this nature, specifically.

“About damn time,” I call over my shoulder, rising to inspect the work under the hood like this man isn’t the one who catalyzed my love for machines. It’s nice to know I can still be touched by other people. It’s nice to know they can still surprise me in the best ways, that they can impart goodness. He’s a good one.

“It would’ve been twice as long were it you in my place,” he responds with the complete self-seriousness I’ve come to find absolutely charming. Sometimes he even couples it with an irritated glance at me, but even that’s no final judgement on me; there’s a 50/50 split on whether or not that glance transforms into a humored smile or a rueful shake of disapproval, and I’m a gambler at heart, so obviously I’m happy to hedge my bets.

“Come on, I’ve learned a few things without you,” I insist, sidling up next to the Garlean wiping oil on his coveralls. “Built half of this monster myself before I called you. Aren’t you proud?”

“It is something of a monster,” he muses, looking over the armored vehicle with a quiet note of amusement that he never draws attention to, but sometimes he will look to see if I’m looking, and I am. But enough on him. Where are we? I’m glad you asked. It’s the middle of fucking nowhere on the continent of Ilsabard, some sixty malms from what I hope will be our destination, which also happens to be in the middle of fucking nowhere. Exciting, right? This is the home stretch, if you can believe it. We’ve been driving for days, swapping on and off in the driver’s seat of the military-issue T1-Chelys that I—we modified together for a journey that’s going to be longer still when we get where we’re going, possibly even for the last time. For now, I’m content to enjoy the ride.

[lydiathane]

The Tattoo

CN - Mild sexual content, drug use

It's the end of the world on the Basilisk, a Maelstrom frigate—whatever the fuck that means—of both sea- and bowel-churning repute to the salty dogs who give a shit about that kind of thing. Indeed, this mighty naval vessel once carved the waves in hot pursuit of pirates like Leviathan himself licking at their boots, and blah, blah, blah, do you really care about this? I don't. The Basilisk, as it stands in this moment, is floating haven for naval deserters, a guy who voluntarily calls himself a huckster (which I instinctively know isn't the same as a snake oil salesman, but for gods' sakes at least try to call yourself something that doesn't invoke the willies), his unfortunately smoking-hot girlfriend who also smokes all the fogweed and absolutely never contributes more; and me, Lydia fucking Thane.

The point, at least for the moment, is not how I got here. The point, at least for the moment, is what the hell we're doing here. And tonight, dear reader, what we're doing here is a potent form of hallucinogenic caecilian grease, which is an attractive way of saying someone milked a rare and deadly snake out in the Golmore and now it's everyone's problem. Ah, shit. Now that I'm stating it like that, it really does sound like this guy brought us literal fucking snake oil, doesn't it? Here's how it's supposed to work, in theory: you rub it on the inside of your cheek and gums, he said, and then you hang on to your tits, because you're about to go places. It only takes a minute before your mouth is seeing colors, or so he claims. And at the cusp of complete annihilation, if the walls of reality are collapsing in on you by the day, why not make one last voyage to the limits of consciousness? I won't be inhabiting it much longer, it should see some proper use.

"Heard the rabbit-girls out there brew this shit and then use it to dart mates they want to steal sperm from. They drag you home while you're seein' stars and ride your dick until you're shooting blanks."

"Shut the fuck up, Gordon."

That's the chaplain. No, not fucking Gordon. Gordon's the guy who made it into the military in his horny prime and has been riding the razor's edge (among other things) ever since. He's made a challenge out of putting his cock into as many willing holes as will allow it without losing his job, persisting on the underside of his superiors' notice like an ass polyp while he feasts at an all-you-can-fuck buffet on every ship he boards. That's kind of disgusting to put it that way, I'm sorry, I've really gotten off-track here. Let me get back on subject...

"No, you shut up, no. I swear it's true! I heard it from a buddy who was gonna visit while he had shore leave. He said he knows a guy who's got like twelve kids now. We should make a trip before it all ends."

"Who the fuck would want to steal your sperm? Listen. Listen, Gordon. Gods love you, from the bottom of my heart, you're a solid 8 outta 10, and that's gotten you pretty far—"

"Thanks, bud..."

"—But you've got the skull content and common sense of an ashtray."

Isn't he dreamy? The chaplain is an unlikely ray of sunshine that beamed into my stupid little life while I was puking over the side of a tossing ship. He hooked his tree-trunk arm under my waist, dragged me away from the side before I could get thrown overboard along with the lunch I lost, and then laughed when I made him promise not to judge me by how I looked in that particular moment, because I'm normally extremely attractive (which I am). I haven't been able to get him off my mind since the days we spent crossing the sea to Terncliff, the prayers to the Navigator he uttered with his hand snaring mine, his infectious grin pulling the side of his mouth askew with anticipatory mischief when he noticed I was about to tell a dirty joke. I think I'm in love with him, and if we're all about to get snuffed, if this is really the end of days, then I want to drink deep before I never get the chance to taste it. Louis' name might still be inked on my wrist—which I'd rather not talk about, if it's all the same to you—but it's the chaplain who's got a real chokehold, here.

"You don't think those ladies would be fighting over a piece of this?" Gordon's shirt is coming off, and once the abs are out, the rate of fuckery only increases exponentially from there. We're in for a long night.

"C'mon, nobody would be fighting over you. If anything, you'd be begging 'em to take it, and they'd have to chase you out of the village for being a fucking pest."

An argument erupts to universal guffaws, but I stand aside and let them bellow in favor of soaking in pure, molten daylight. It's just past two in the afternoon and there's already a pile of drained ale bottles climbing higher and higher on the corner of the deck where we sun ourselves and talk our shit. The waters off the high coasts of Terncliff are crisp sapphire, as flat as a perfect pane of glass, and cousin to brilliant and cloudless azure skies that crown our little stretch of ocean. Huckster's girlfriend's tits are out, and if the breeze gets any sweeter, mine are going to come out and say hello, too. We pass around a tin filled with a smear of murky balm and take turns dipping our fingers and thrusting the goop into our eager maws. Now that we've been released from the burden of carrying on, the crushing curse of choice not just in what to feed ourselves or what to wear, but of how to live, what to believe in, where to go from here...now that we're well and truly free to see ourselves off the mortal coil unburdened, why shouldn't we? The chaplain palms my ass with an audible clap when the tin comes to me, and when I jump at his squeeze, my finger digs a little...too...deep...

--

Moonrise over the bow of the ship is as still as held breath, and breaks through a night as dark as death. The lap of waves leaves me wet, leaves me sticky with sweat, washes and unwashes and washes again. Smooth me like sea glass, sink me like a stone. The quiet beneath the ocean like water of the womb, beckoning, burying. All is well on the last ship to paradise, where I'm being bent over a railing to stare down into the lazy undulations below and politely drift while someone finishes up behind me. I surface from the haze with a gasp, a mouth on my neck tattooing me red and purple and bitten once they slide out from between my legs. I unstick from the wax paper of another body, I pull like taffy out of the tangle of limbs, and I flow like syrup across the bobbing planks and into the arms of the huckster's hot girlfriend who perpetually smells like patchouli, whatever the fuck that is.

"Let me do you next," she drawls, the fogweed curling from the sides of her mouth as she perches the dregs of someone else's joint and leaves the paper stained pink. Did we even say hello? She's wielding a crude tattoo gun with a glass pot balanced precariously on one knee, filled so full that the ink quivers on the rim like the glass is fit to cry. Passed out in front of her is a sailor whose chest now bears 'port' and 'starboard' under her right and left tit, respectively, and at first it's the intricacy of the cursive that stops me in my place—but then it's unease. I hold up my hands, studying the L-shape between my thumbs and forefingers as I attempt to siphon the mud filling my skull for any nugget of gold that might clarify my confusion. "Don't they say to use this trick to tell which one is port and which one is starboard...?" I ask stupidly.

She laughs, and the sound rings like church bells in the north, crisp clangs against icy blue, echoes across the peaks and spires that thrust skyward. My head is swimming in the reverberation. "That's for left and right, silly!"

"Fair point, but I think you put them on the wrong way," I protest, and instead of giving any air to my grievance, she pats the space beside her and the gravity of the gesture drags me involuntarily to my knees before I can make the case any further. "Sit down. I always wanted to be a famous artist. Your skin is going to be dust soon anyway, let me paint it."

"Can you fix this?" I plead, thrusting out the looping name of 'Louis' taunting me on my arm, the letters rearranging to tie themselves into a noose. "Can you make it into something else? Anything else. Put the chaplain's name on there. Make it say 'Leon' instead. How hard can it be?"

A voice close enough to startle rumbles in my ear. "Don't do that." I snap around to see who's there, but instead I get an eyeful of a tawny ass, and I see that Gordon's terminally empty brain is not a dealbreaker for the sun-kissed sailor who's sliding a hand down his mast from the crow's nest, if you catch my meaning. Good for him, truly, but who the fuck just said that? I scan to the left, where a small gathering of people as naked as the day they were born are holding hands and singing at the sky, and judging on the level of talent and sobriety present in tandem, they appear to be baiting the gods on high to end us then and there. If the gods won't do it, I just might.

"...what does a basilisk look like, anyway? I could put that on you, in honor of this ship that brought us all together."

She's been talking to me the whole time when my mind snaps like a rubber band back to the moment I'd mentally exited. How long have I been spaced out...?

"No. I don't want a basilisk," I counter quickly. "What the fuck do they look like?"

She doesn't skip a beat. "What about a constellation? I could ink a sunrise on the horizon. Or a beautiful bird, flying free..."

We're both ripped on snake oil, staring each other down in a slack-jawed, heavy-lidded deadlock as the inkpot trembles with anticipation, winking with warm glimmers from the nearest lanterns. But our reverie doesn't last before another reveler staggers through the door; judging on the angry red carving over his heart, he must've paid the huckster's girlfriend a visit earlier in the night.

"I propose a toast!" he bellows, and before he can have his theatrical moment where all eyes are on him, the sound of a woman's orgasm rips through the cabin and the throng of doomsday partygoers explodes into laughter and applause. The toastmaster smiles sheepishly and waves his arms impotently until the initial wave of giggles recedes, then makes a second attempt at his prime endeavor.

"A toast, everyone. We don't know when, we don't know how, but...Here's to the end of the world. Whenever it gets here. Uh..." He scrambles for something meaningful to say, sloshing half his hooch down his arm as he tries to keep it aloft so he can deliver something heartfelt to every face turned in his direction. "After all is said and done..." He pauses to take a toke from a rolled cigarette passed over his shoulder, and before he can carry on with what's sure to be a milquetoast ode—

"Fuck it!"

There's silence at first, and then a startling chortle from the peanut gallery. I turn to look and it's the chaplain—Leon—and he's grinning at me like I'm made of gold and just promised to suck his dick. Who said that? I said that. It was me.

"Yeah. Fuck it," he echoes, splitting ear to ear like he's about to pour light from every pore. I love him. I do. I love this fucking guy. I love the way he looks at me. I love his huge dick, sure, but I also love his calloused hands and his faded tattoos. I love his stupid chuckle. I even love his faithfulness, his piety. I love the love he has for all the world, and I'd love for him to love me, too.

"Yeah. Here's to the end," I call triumphantly in what must be the most ludicrous act of divine inspiration ever recorded, but I'm tits-over-face high and the words sizzle like a live wire. "Fuck it!"

"Fuck it," he repeats, hoisting his glass of cloudy ale. Isn't this the life? Isn't this all I could have hoped for? I feel something. I could die now, and wouldn't that be alright?

"Fuck it!" the choir of fucked-up angels sing.

The end is coming, and I think I'm gonna be alright.

[lydiathane]

Prompt #13: Oneirophrenia

(CN: Mild NSFW)

Would you believe me if I said drying out means diving in? More powerful than a line of gobpowder is a hunger that makes taffy of my insides and pulls me threadbare turn by turn. I defy it to the sweat and ache of nights spent lost in fogweed, numbed by rum and reason, a bitter meal that cannot sate. This curse, this case, this past of mine present like passenger, this dark appetite that goes sour like voidal tang on the tongue, it demands satisfaction and won't sleep (won't let me sleep) until the toll is exacted.

Neither of us come from the north, but that doesn't stop me from kneeling at the altar of Chaplain Leon Blackwater and accepting sacrament when the opportunity comes after days isolated together on the fitful sea. He is brimming with light, with a shimmering pool of aether that beckons like oasis on the horizon and gods love me, I am dying of unslakable thirst. He treats me as patient master when he takes my chin into his calloused palm and opens my jaw like a hinge with a push of his thumb into my mouth. His hand twists, reshaping, and three fingers plunge into the darkness until I choke.

"Again," I sputter and plead when the discomfort recedes, and merciful man, he reaches deep into glistening jaws with saltwater skin until tears glisten at the rims of my eyes. I seize and cough the way a drowned man comes back to life, the way that cleansing breath on battered lungs burns with renewal. When he looks down my throat, past my tongue, satisfaction only makes his kindly features sharper. He sees a hollow that can be refilled with something pure. He was made for this kind of exorcism.

[lydiathane]

Prompt #5: Bare

"Your ass looked bigger in your leather pants."

"Thanks, maybe I can be a reverse-stripper. The kind where I put my clothes back on and wind up more attractive for it. You can be my first customer."

It was meant to be a barb that let this grinning beardo know that his time was up, but he lingered instead with his arms spread on the back of the sofa and laughed from his belly. "You've got a fuckin' terrible attitude for someone trying to work for my gil," he responded, all teeth, his eyes fixed at my bare breasts with unhidden intent. In retrospect, I realize this was a declaration of admiration and not one of derision, but I did what Lydia Thane always does and ran my mouth just a little too long. "Who told you I was gonna be nice? The attitude's part of the package deal. Maybe lower your wild expectations at this price point, buddy, you look like you're on a coal miner's budget. Kindness costs extra."

What you have to know about Terncliff is this: they're fucking poor. That's what happens when you've had an Empire-sized boot lodged in your mouth for long enough, and I knew that. The strip club was my genius idea, and it was only by the grace of a local pub owner with an empty basement that I was able to see it executed at all. Our clientele consisted primarily of Eorzean soldiers who were thrilled to have something salacious to mosey into while stationed so far from home, but every now and then a local who'd been eating just a little less leather than the others would drop in. Like this guy.

His smile disappeared and I knew right away that I hit a nerve. He tore his eyes away from my skin and shook out a few coins from his gilpurse, piling them on the empty cushion to his left with a dejected clink. "It's getting late," he rumbled and pulled himself up with the last dregs of dignity afforded to him. I tongued my cheek and watched him make for the stairs, already keenly aware of what would come next. I remained planted there until I heard the heavy pub door creak open and then collapse again. As soon as the latch caught, I was bolting after.

"Hey. Hey," I called, twisting to see where he'd gone and caught sight of his back as he followed the cobble between two buildings and disappeared. "Hang on. Wait!" My footsteps picked up as I scurried to catch the wounded man before he could escape, forever-and-ever too much of a tenderheart to be as salty as I am. By the time he turned to see which lunatic was yelling at him, I was jogging to close the gap, and I watched his expression morph in real time, from grim line to shit-eating grin. Something about it touched a nerve, and the apology on my tongue evaporated instantly.

"What are you grinning about, are you some kind of fucking joker?"

I followed the line of his gaze down, thinking I had something on me, but that's just it: I didn't. I bolted from the pub basement with my tits out, running no less, in front of the gods and a handful of civilians milling through the square who are now privy to the size and shape of my nipples. Enjoy, everyone, this one's on the house. My eyes rolled up and back, searching for strength. I was out there for a reason, and I was going to see it through.

"I was a dick—hey, can you just look at my face for a second? Thank you. I was a dick back there. Uncalled-for. I'm sorry."

Louis let his grin recede, morphing into something more genuine and kind. For the first time that night, I noticed the warmth in his features, the twinkle of mischief in his eye. It wasn't love at first sight, but that's alright, too.

"Thanks. Lydia, right?"

"Lydia."

"Louis. You want to throw a shirt on and get something to eat?"

[melaschasma]

[ohbeauregard]