🙄 you build ONE funerary complex with 8000 life-sized statues of soldiers, horses and generals and suddenly you’re “the terracotta army guy.” 🙄 execution.
I'm just writing these as I feel like it, I'm faaaaaaaaar too late for FFXIV Write. Sorry for being a little self-indulgent.
The girl was elusive, as prone to wandering as racing clouds in the sky. She had no permanent residence, nor a true association to call her own. Perhaps the one-eyed pugilist only suffered the company of other adventurers if they offered her a free meal. He found it curious to think that though she had been a mere infiltrator, in writing her name upon their Free Company roster, the treacherous little cyclops might have gotten closer to setting down her roots than she ever had before.
Such wanderlust was not unknown to Albrechtht, no stranger himself to journeys of pilgrimage, frequently tasked by his masters to walk the length of the Pillars and deep into the mountains of Abalathia’s Spine. Of course, for him, the purpose was for meditation, as he understood it. Journeys to harden the body and mind, while she seemed perpetually destitute, infinitely hunting for her next meal. How the girl survived this long, barely able to string together enough words to speak to a Levemete, had always been a mystery to him, but Albrechtht imagined that such asceticism, even forced upon her through ignorance, gave her strength. In this, he liked to think they were linked together. That struggle, one he knew well as a man of Gyr Abania’s salted wastes, made her an opponent worthy of the Blood Fist.
Long had he awaited to challenge her formally. He penned a letter to an old sandblasted roadhouse along the lonely highway to Blackbrush, one occupied by a Company of little worth, where supposedly the eye patch girl had begun squatting again, but no answer came. He took a ferry to Vylbrand and rode deep into its countryside, where she had somehow previously made acquaintance with a wealthy benefactor, but their gates were closed, and the servants paid him less notice than a horsefly. He even retraced his steps to Ishgard, a changed place after his many moons of convalescence, and many moons more of training, but the city was alien to him. Albrechtht was not deluded enough to think them ungrateful, but they could have spared him a word or two, share with him whether the urchin fist fighter had visited there recently for training. Had their Free Company been such a destabilizing force to the hidebound institutions of the frigid Northerners, such that their hearts had frozen solid against him? No matter.
Then finally came his first fruitful lead. After a jaunt overseas to the isle of Thavnair for some unknown contract, the pugilist had last been spotted in Ul’dah once more, drifting about aimlessly before being confronted in the street by a notably angry woman, wrapped in furs and leather in the fashion of the steppes of Othard. After this, the one-eyed girl had once again fled to Thanalan and the road approaching Blackbrush, with her pursuer in tow. Albrechtht did not let the backtracking frustrate him. This too, was part of training. Perhaps the girl purposefully charted winding paths across the continent to inflame ill-tempered challengers to rash action, something a canny fighter could exploit. Such trickery would only rebound from his hardened mind with little effect. Besides, he had heard swordsmen from Hingashi brag about such ploys, arriving purposefully late to one of their often fatal duels, just to gain a mental edge. But was she not Doman? The distinction between the two nationalities often eluded him, a shameful reminder of his childhood in the countryside, far from Ala Mhigo and its wealth of traders and merchants from the four corners of the world, as well as its schools. The Domans and the Hingashi shared a tongue, didn’t they? What of martial techniques? Albrechtht often wished his masters would speak more of Jikki’s travel to the Far East that he might better understand the esoteric styles the ancient monk witnessed there. Perhaps then this minuscule warrior would not be such an enigma to him. At week’s end many fighters gathered by the large river rock to face one another. He never participated himself. Albrechtht cared not for vainglorious displays of martial skill, for had he such a taste, he could have easily fought in the Bloodsands when he was younger. He had watched such tournaments before and was certain the other adventurers there would prove poor sport for a true Fist of Rhalgr. Supposedly Master Wiedargelt deigned to train alongside a pugilist from the city, a drunken old lech, one of those foul debt collectors. Though other students spoke of glory days long past in the arena, Albrechtht couldn’t imagine how such decrepit strikes and rusty forms would prove useful to an elder monk so proficient he almost single-handedly revived their order.
Desire. Some might call it obsession. That was what separated Albrechtht as a monk from the simple pugilists. To see his homeland revived and flourishing, to pay tribute to the Destroyer with his martial achievements, to see the hated Empire broken and twisted at his feet. It was his desire for these things that set him apart from the moldy gladiators, the coin-counting pugilists, the irresolute adventurers waiting in lines at the riverside. Many things had changed since he recovered from the uncanny blow that sent him plowing through that Ishgardian cottage, and the one behind it, but his desire for all those things had not abated in the slightest. The liberation of Ala Mhigo, the collapse of the Empire, the defeat of the strange monsters that followed in its wake; none of these things had smothered Albrechtht’s yearning for a greater communion with the Destroyer’s power.
A remarkably short Hyur limped towards him in a hurry from the bridge as he approached, cradling her gut, concealing a face covered in bruises behind a thick glove laden with metal plates. Braided hair in black circular loops peeked out from beneath a cylindrical fuzzy cap, and her hunched figure was wrapped in a thick, comfortable traveler’s coat, lined with fur and embroidered with intricate patterns of running water buffalo and soaring condors. The woman’s eyes welled with the faint glimmer of tears. Though she spared Albrechtht not even a single look, something stirred within his chest.
Ahead of him, -she- was there, standing motionless upon the bridge. Her scarlet eye stole the the glow of the setting sun and trapped it deep within the prison of her unbroken gaze. She had yet to drop her stance, but there was no trace of exhaustion or injury. Albrechtht allowed himself some pity for the defeated pugilist, her inferior techniques clearly not up to the task of challenging the one-eyed girl. Not to mention, her desire for victory would have most certainly proven insufficient. There, again, was the dividing line drawn. The Blood Fist would not be found wanting.
As a young orphan without home or country, he reasoned that the one-eyed girl too must be drawing upon such a source of strength. The needle-sharp focus that came from unending yearning, and a thirst for strength that could never be slaked. There could be no other answer. How else could she have delivered unto him such a defeat before? But the Blood Fist was prepared. Under Master Hermundr Lionroar, he had drawn unto his chakra such power that his very voice could lay the diminutive pugilist low with the sheer force of rupturing air. Under Master Gunnarr Burne, his footwork had become so much faster that he could maintain swift movements despite his greater bulk, keeping pace with the spry shrunken creature and surpassing her in muscle. Night and day he stood motionless atop narrow stone pillars, elevating his balance to heights he never even considered possible before. Night and day he spent pummeling boulders to dust, seeking silence and clarity within the tranquil confines of the Temple of the Fist. When he finally deemed himself ready, he said goodbye to his mentors, who overflowed with compassion, fretting over him to such excess that Albrechtht might have thought it insulting, had he less respect for them. But he was ready now, ready this time.
He stepped forth before her, bellowing his challenge, his voice carrying across the desolate plains of Thanalan, shaking the dust from the rocky hills. The girl briefly dropped her stance, wincing and shying away from him, demonstrating more cowardice than Albrechtht expected. Why should a fist fighter of such strength be bothered by his yelling? All force came from the lungs, after all, or perhaps the chakra behind them, to be more precise. Surely she knew this.
But it was but a fleeting gesture. Just as he had witnessed before, the one-eyed girl lowered herself into a simple stance, fists raised and drawn close to her center line before her, legs splayed wide and stable. Albrechtht limbered up, feeling the galvanizing force of his aether flood his veins, flowing from chakra to muscle. The overwhelming power filled his veins like they were vectors of static, the Destroyer’s own lightning arcing from his soul. The Blood Fist was fully prepared for combat, fists raised, boots sliding forward in a dizzying martial dance. His eyes widened further and further, so focused upon the slightest change in her posture Albrechtht feared they might fall from their sockets. She does not return the gaze, instead glancing aside with her one uncovered eye, a perplexed twist of her eternally flat expression suggesting confusion, or distraction.
There was his opening. A brilliant flicker of light given flesh, his steps suddenly doubled until he was well within range to strike. His boot surged forth in a cleaving arc, the speed and power overwhelming. Aiming for her head, maintaining his advantage in celerity while not allowing for any conspicuous movements for her to exploit would secure his win. Her reaction is slow, stubbly limbs ponderously rising to meet his shin, boots shuffling leisurely across the ancient limestone beneath them like they were fastened with leaden weights. Like this, Albrechtht will never allow her a chance to strike again like she did in Ishgard. His kick will strike true, rattle her skull, jolt her brain, opening the sluice for a flood of strikes under which her stance will erode, her body will break, and she will most certainly fall-...
The unfamiliar monk crumples to the ground in a ponderous heap before her. His unconscious visage is frozen in a curious expression, like a fisherman who’d angled himself an old shoe. She lowers her extended arm, a wisp of smoke curling from between her fingers to the rapidly darkening, crater-like bruise in the man’s gut. He seemed to know her, but apart from his face, she can recall little. Though she maintains readiness for any and all challengers, she hadn’t been expecting two in one sun. A dull ache echoes through her extremities, her body’s rebellion already underway. It demands her attention, hungers for meat and rest. This was for certain the handiwork of the steppe woman and her vexatious circular movement, a parlor trick worth remembering. Following such deceptive footwork was exhausting on shorter legs. She pulls at her eyepatch strap absently and sniffs the air, her nose filling with the metallic tang of a coming storm. Best to get back to the roadhouse before the rain. Virara will sleep well this night.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, good sir, I think it’s finally come to me where I recognized your name.”
Kensuke could feel the scowl coming on and, because of that, his face starting to flush, for he had no reason to scowl. His accommodations in the village were meager but they were more than respectable, and he had chosen the village rather than to shelter in the Kato estate knowing they would be less than what the family could offer him. With much of the estate at least partially the scene of a crime in his eyes, he had chosen to sleep in the village to avoid contaminating it any further with his presence. And the villagers had been more than happy to help, giving him clean straw laid out in an old tool shed that he was quite certain lacked any spiders. As he saw it, things were all very nice.
And the woman at the doorway, Otoko, also gave him no cause to scowl despite the possibility that she was a murderer, somehow contriving to drag the master and mistress of the Kato manor out of their homes in the dead of night to pin them under a boulder in the wilderness and die of exposure days later. She was cheerful and kind, pretty in the manner of a peasant who had little time for the finer things afforded the spouse of Doman samurai of old, and nobody in the village had a bad word to say about her. This made her very suspicious to Kensuke, but it didn’t make her unpleasant.
Quite apart from all of that, he already knew what she would say, and that, too, was no cause for his expression. He tried to keep it concealed in the relative dark near the small, hooded lantern he was using for light before bed. “You do? You flatter me by remembering. What makes you say that?”
“Tobe Kensuke, you said. From the Tobe family, right?” She leaned forward in the doorway, clasping her hands to her chest in a delicate grip just where her neck and shoulders disappeared beneath her kimono. “Great Magistrate Tobe Sakai. Are you related, perhaps?”
The scowl sank further onto his face, threatening to become angry, and Tobe had to duck his head further back into the shadows to avoid being misinterpreted. Here, too, he had every reason to delight. He was proud of Sakai, and proud of the family tradition. Growing up, he had heard some of the stories of Sakai’s clever investigations, and how well he had served Lord Kaien. Kensuke wanted nothing more than to have his face light up in joy and let all around him see the pride he felt in his chest at his relation. But the kami had their way at his birth, and his spirit was all twisted.
“His grandson, actually,” he said, waving his hand where it could be seen in the light as if this were something to be dismissed. “You’ve heard of him?”
Otoko’s head bobbed, her eyes wide with delight “The master of the house read an old story to me, once. It was a story about a murder with a great prayer bell, and the magistrate showed how it could be lifted by one man with a pulley and a trick.”
“Ah, I know that one, that was a very good one. It was sad that he couldn’t stop all of the culprit’s murders, but at least he caught the man out in the end. Sometimes that’s how justice is, you know.” So Otoko had been in contact with the late master Toshiyuki. Perhaps his late wife’s insistence they were having an affair was true. He thought to press her on this, but she seemed in good spirits, and such a change of subject would have been unseemly. “I would offer you a copy of another,” he went on, “But I am sad to say they’re gone. Lost in a fire.”
She waved her hand as if chasing away the offer. “It’s all right, it’s quite all right. Please, don’t trouble yourself. It’s nice to meet you as Tobe’s Sakai’s grandson all the same.” Silent for but a moment, she soon twisted her fingers together in thought. “Did he ever handle cases involving magic?”
“Often,” Kensuke replied, settling back into his straw. The first wave of happiness had passed, and his face had settled into something neutral and flat, his mouth a thin line. “He didn’t have any talent for magic himself, but an onmyoji would come with him to see if magic had been done.”
“What about here, though, like at the manor? When there’s a witch involved?”
Closing his eyes, Kensuke’s mouth tipped into a slight smile. “Do you think there really is a witch?”
“That’s what everyone says, anyway.”
“Mm. Well, not a witch, but there were impossible cases where no magic seemed to be involved, and people said it was a kami or worse. They always turned out to be tricks, like that prayer bell. There’s magic, and there’s tricks, but he never saw divine acts like what you’re thinking.”
“Oh...so nothing like at the manor, then,” said Otoko, who lowered her head. “It seems like that will be difficult.”
“No, it’s exactly like at the manor. It’s more tricks, you see.”
“But if there is a witch - “
Kensuke sat straight and upright in his straw bed, illuminating his face well enough that Otoko could see. He had a wide and open smile and his eyes were a little too wide in apparent affability. “’That’s what everyone says’, I know. And it’s not a witch. That’s not what they say. It’s the Witch. Right? Do you believe that?”
Otoko hesitated. There was something about his tone of voice that didn’t match his face. She bowed her head quickly, wringing her hands together near her waist. “I’m sorry, I meant no offense.”
“Why do they want to believe that, hm? If not you, then all the other villagers I’ve spoken to this day. ‘The Witch of Doma cursed the Kato family’.” As he spoke, his voice rose, and the apparent joy in his voice increased. He had to fight to stop himself from shouting. “She wasn’t even a magician, you know that? No spells, no powers. Just a cruel woman who spent a year tearing the kingdom apart, and she’s dead. Lord Hien affirmed that himself. Surely they don’t miss her so much that they’d wish her ghost back just for the sake of hurting the Kato family. Surely you don’t. Do you?”
Otoko flinched backwards at the accusation, and the cheerfulness was gone from her eyes at once. Kensuke watched them for a moment; if they were filled with malice, or resentment, perhaps he would have to look into her further. Telling expressions weren’t evidence enough for him, but they at least gave avenues of inquiry.
All he received was a downcast head, and, from what he could see, the beginnings of tears. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should go check to see if anything else is needed.” She gave Kensuke a quick bow, and pulled away from the tool shed.
With a broad grin, Kensuke cursed to himself and fell back into the straw. That would cause problems later, he was sure. Try as he might to work around it, he feared the villagers couldn’t or wouldn’t see past the specter of the Witch.
...Pursuant to Order 3589-A, as declared by the Officium of Doman Viceroyalty, tribute to be increased by the following amounts, to be derived from aforementioned sectors of Fanged Crescent…
Takechi paused in his writing, and placed his left hand over his right, letting his wrist rest and his grip relax on his pen. It didn’t fit in his hand as well as a brush, and despite a year’s practice, he still felt the strain of writing in the Imperial fashion. It was better to let his joints rest every so often, and look at the work he had completed to date. It was much the same as one of a dozen such transcriptions he had completed in the name of Garlean holdings this day, and he expected a half-dozen more to be finished when the day was through. Often they concerned lands of which he’d only heard, like Nagxia and Dalmasca, and sometimes he had never heard of them at all, like Gyr Abania. He took care with each of them, but with the orders that concerned Doma, he was all the more thorough.
The strain in his hand was still too great, and after a few seconds he put down his pen and flexed his fingers back and forth. He’d only been in the capitol a year, but the chill seemed to affect them more and more, despite the small heater near his desk, whirring pleasantly in the background as ceruleum fought the cold outside. No, the Imperial Notary was far from a bad place to work, especially compared to that of the day laborers who hadn’t yet earned citizenry out in the fields, but still his hands ached.
When the small pain subsided, he took a deep breath, righted his posture in his seat and took care to place his feet flat on the ground, and took up his pen again.
...In accordance with increased tribute per Order 3589-A, rationing within affected sectors to be adjusted according to following guidelines…
“Glory be, Eques Felix was right. You do have a neat hand.”
Takechi had a regrettable habit of becoming absorbed in writing. At home in Doma, he could become so lost that outsiders thought he was meditating, and at times his brother would play little pranks like sneaking a spider onto him or stamping his feet. Every time, he had the same reaction, and even in his adulthood that reaction hadn’t changed: giving a great yelp and flinging what he held into the air above his head and jumping to a standing position, hands patting his clothes to see what, if anything, needed to be brushed away. Being in the middle of an Imperial office didn’t change that at all.
When he caught his breath and could remember where he was, he could hear laughter behind him. That, too, he’d been used to from his brother, but differences in decorum made for different experiences – where he had grown up hearing stifled giggles to avoid offending any adults, now he heard something deep and unrestrained. But it felt far, far worse here, in the center of Garlemald, where people whispered about savages, or at best, pitied the “good Domans” for bending the knee. Humiliation here was the same as it was at home, but here, enduring it truly couldn’t be helped.
Taking a deep breath, Takechi turned to regard the intruder in his partitions and offer his apologies for startling them, and saw a Garlean woman doubled over, holding her hands to her sides and trying to choke back her guffaws. “Oh – oh no, glory be, I am – I am so sorry, I didn’t think you’d do that!” She took hold of a partition wall as she righted herself, sweeping her dark hair back in place near her shoulders before wiping tears out of her eyes with her thumb. “I really am sorry. Are you well? Naught amiss?”
Red-faced, Takechi tried to focus on the wall behind the woman, but the third eye in her forehead kept getting in the way. Learning how not to stare was one of the first things he’d had to teach himself upon being sent to the capitol, but in his humiliation he forgot himself. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice. “It’s quite all right. No harm was done.” Keep his words short, clipped, and terse, and people praised him for it. There were quite a few rhetoricians in the Empire, but he found if he kept his words short, it was more respectful from a savage. “Can I help you?”
“I just wanted to meet the new Notarius. That is you, right?” She was still recovering, taking a few deep breaths.
Takechi nodded. “One of them,” he said. By his recollection, he had been part of a group of a dozen accepted into the Garlean civil service.
“But the only one deemed meritorious, right? At least that’s what the Eques said.”
“I can’t deny that,” he replied, furrowing his brow. The nature of Garlean society meant citizenship was available to all through service or merit. Service would have meant twenty years fighting in the legions, and his family hadn’t had time to wait for that. Merit, however, could be in many things. Most understood it as scientific or magical genius, which made sense. The Empire was vast, however, and sometimes that meant beating a hundred other Garlean applicants to the civil service in hand transcription with perfect Imperial script and no mistakes.
Merit also meant he couldn’t deny he was the only Doman admitted into the ranks. Neither of them mentioned it. He gave a short Imperial salute. “Takechi dux Kato.” He spoke the words with precision on each syllable. Repeating his name out of order hadn’t yet become habit, and he still had to practice.
“I’m sorry, Cato? I thought you were from Othard.”
“No, Kah-to. A coincidence.”
“It’s a good one. It sounds civilized.”
“It does. Did you have need of me?”
“I didn’t, but I just wanted to meet you. Eques Felix has had nothing but good things to say about your script, and he’s prickly about that, so I had to see.” She offered her hand out to him, and smiled, still red-faced in the cheeks but now having regained her composure. “Alypia dux Vita. I think I’m your senior by a year.”
Clasping her hand, Kato felt callouses in her palm, just beneath the base of her fingers. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“And you.” The smile remained as she looked past his shoulder to gesture with her free hand. “May I?”
Takechi acquiesced with a nod, and he stepped aside to let her into his partition. It was sparsely decorated, which had drawn some comment from coworkers in the office. Knowing that keepsakes of Doma would have drawn different comments, he told them he preferred a simple workspace.
Standing to his side, Alypia bent down over the half-completed transcription and examined its script, but not its contents. Even in mouthing out the words to herself as she read them, it seemed to Takechi she paid no mind to the nature of the order. “Goodness,” she said to herself. “It’s perfect. You could show this to the Emperor and the penmanship would bring him to tears.”
“If only it could be so,” Takechi replied. He knit his brow together, and folded his arms. “This intrigues you?”
“It’s silly, I know. But Imperial script can be a little flat. It used to have more flourishes when it was Corvosi, and you can find some of that in older texts, but the Imperial standard cut out all of that. It’s just nice to see it done well.” She turned aside to look up at him. He found himself glancing away. “Did you learn this so well from Doman script?”
“No, they’re very different.” He should have left it at that, but he went on. “It’s hard to describe. This has to be very exact. Good Doman script...there’s a flow to it.”
“Do you have any examples? I’d love to see them.”
It would be unwise, Takechi thought, to get involved beyond pleasantries. A stray word on his part and he could be reported for criticizing Imperial policy or maligning Imperial virtues. At best, she was just curious about a Doman in the civil service like he was part of a strange menagerie, and once she grew bored she would leave him alone.
Still, that wouldn’t be the worst thing. And he did miss his brush.
“I would be happy to show you,” he said at length. “But I do have a request, first.”
Her eyes widened just slightly – surprise, he thought, or perhaps she’d expected something else. “What?”
“Help me find my pen.”
----
The upper floor of the Kato branch family residence was in as poor a state as the rest of the house. From below, anybody could be heard above. From above, nothing could be heard below from the creaks of the floorboards. Takechi tuned them out the way he might an especially annoying cicada as he picked up the mess around him.
Old books had been scattered from neat piles onto the bedroom floor, and musty linens were piled up in haphazard masses. The small writing table – the one piece he’d kept in good condition from the main estate, the one thing he’d asked of his brother – was toppled over onto its side, his brushes and inks scattered around the room near their overturned case. It wasn’t the first time he’d found everything in disarray, and it wouldn’t be the last.
Nevertheless, he picked up each book, one at a time, with care, knowing exactly the order in which it should go. In one corner of the room, Alypia remained huddled into herself, her hands wrapped around her shins and rocking her legs back and forth. “I’m sorry,” she murmured from against her knees.
Takechi paused, holding a book in his hand, and looked up at her. “You needn’t be.”
“She scared me. She wasn’t supposed to be here.”
“You’re right, she wasn’t. The family didn’t tell me investigators were here regarding my brother.” The family rarely told him much, and rarely visited the branch residence. They were, he suspected, content to let them moulder. “You were right to be upset.”
“She scared me,” she repeated.
He closed his eyes, smiled, and nodded. Time hadn’t been kind to his wife, he thought, and he regretted it a moment later, for it wasn’t quite true. For most of twenty-three years, time had been kind. It had made them happy, as much as they could be.
And then all at once, time had yanked it all away in the space of a year. Doma fell, and his station and promotions were under threat. His family imposed themselves on him in exile. His brother told him the truth, for which Takechi would never forgive him. And then, as if trouble followed on their heels, the Empire collapsed, and in collapsing had broken her. Her hair had shocked itself to grey, her health failed, and, it broke his heart to say, her hands trembled. She needed better. All she could get was Takechi, and all he was worth, which was now very little.
“You didn’t have to feed her,” she muttered. “That was your food.”
He pushed a set of books neatly into one stack in a corner, making sure they were alphabetized from top to bottom. “Is that why you did all of this?”
“That was your food. You don’t get enough.”
He thought back to Order 3589-A. It was the first time he’d seen such an order in the Notary. Over a year, more papers like it crossed his desk. But they were inefficient, and he knew the land they referenced, so he made suggestions. The Empire listened.
“I can go hungry a night,” he replied. “But you did eat, right?” Alypia nodded. “Good. You need strength. Just a moment while I put things away.”
The rest of the clearing out was simple enough. He had done it a dozen times since returning. The hardest part was setting up his writing table again, and preparing his calligraphy sets. When his station was in place, he looked up at her while laying out two pieces of parchment.
“Come write with me.”
In silence, the two drew the same script together: one perfect and composed, the other trembling and amateurish, and Takechi envied her every error.
It doesn’t hurt until the teeth touch the bone. Perhaps I just don’t notice because I can’t allow myself to. Or the wounds I’d taken to that arm had already rendered the senses too deadened to register the moment it bites into me.
I’d not known sahagin to have a bite like that of a silver shark, but then again, it was no sahagin, not anymore. The creature’s dull, dead eyes stare up at me. I don’t know what it is I have done to enrage it so, but as soon as that thought crosses my mind, I’m shocked at my own clarity, even as I can feel the serrated edge of its fangs grind against something deep inside me. The creators of this place had rendered it a dull, blind, empty husk of a being. Could such a creature truly hate? It was no more capable of feeling than it was thinking. I draw my hand axe against its head. The blow severs tendons keeping the bear trap behind its desiccated lips shut, my arm dangling free and limp, useless. I’d have to go back to what I could only suspect was the medical ward. This hatchet was meant for felling trees. When I first registered for the Guild, on behalf of my brother, I had not considered another weapon. The Lominsans were fond of a labrys, twin blades like crescent moons. I hadn’t any need for it. Too large, and one blade was usually enough. You only ever cut in one direction. I had always liked it that way, simple.
My hand is slick with the blood flowing freely from my gored arm. When gardening, I consider carefully what tools I should make use of. The spade parts soft soil with a deft sort of finesse that I’ve always been partial to. Some seedlings prefer a certain kind of earth, and I have exhausted quite an effort procuring soil from the fertile Shroud for crops that I had to grow for Brother, back home in the Old World. I can feel the heat leaving my arm, the twitching growing slower. It won’t be long now, that familiar door is only sixty films down this passageway, illuminated by brilliant cyan veins. Seven Hells. The light curses my sleeping and waking bells. The wizard eggplant was Brother’s favorite. It was soft enough to pass his petrified lips, and I always made certain to overcook it a little. Nutritious, it’s savory enough to pass for a meat in many a kitchen, if you know what to flavor it with. Garlic from Ilsabard, dragon peppers from Vylbrand. I can grow them all. The spreading numbness is something I can ill afford to focus on. Was my hatchet always this heavy? I can hear the servitors’ clawed feet scraping at Allag’s metal flooring and I know they’re close. The air rushing through their dead lungs is too quiet to pass for breathing, but they’re loud enough. If I can just draw upon enough strength, pull a bit more out of myself, such that I can reach those machines, I needn’t expend any further aether from within myself to recover from these wounds. I know enough of the plant matter grown in this place that I can fashion my own medicine. The rest is up to what I’ve learned from Brother.
A forest beneath the waves. I could spend so much time there, among these trees. One had the gnarled shape of old oak, but the texture and color of the bark and the flesh beneath is unfamiliar. Sturdy and strong, they may be, but some are cursed to expire long before their branches have covered the vast space beneath them in shade. An invisible sickness rots them from within, insinuated into the tree long before they were born. Hydaelyn decided for that one oak to die the moment it could no longer be called a sapling. Her love is arbitrary and tainted with poison. My arm feels cold. I press my fingers upon the terminal’s glassy surface, smudging it with red, axe clasped beneath my arm, on the verge of tumbling uselessly to the floor. I hear the hiss of vapor from the door and hurl myself inside as the clattering of their claws grows deafening...
There are no thoughts present in her mind, and so the sensation of each chunk of gravel, rolling unevenly beneath her boot between the shattered cobblestones, are as present within her as her drunken reeling. Draw inward and burst outward, like unfurling petals. She’s not intoxicated, not truly. That coordination, that balance, it isn’t something that can be maintained while deep in the drink. Even Master admitted six to seven clay vessels of plum wine would make her hands slow. Even so, a challenger such as this is rare so far across the Indigo Deep.
The woman’s forms aren’t opaque to her. Master taught her about the ways of a sect in the the old country, a cadre of masters who had studied a most curious technique. Slipping, sliding, staggering, the motions of a lush. They would lay upon the ground as if in repose, the enemy’s violent strikes cleaving nothing but air above them, as if they were just a part of a drunkard’s hazy dream. Some would even strike with the gourd they always carried, though few actually allowed themselves to overdrink, lest it dull their edge. Her fists and clawed fingers race through the gap between her sinuous form and the violet girl’s much smaller body, but the crunch of gravel, grating on her ears, gives warning, and the space between them widens abruptly. Another pause, then a shuffling of feet. The prelude to a tumbling fall, arms outstretched, an unorthodox blow that nonetheless carried a crushing force great enough to pulverize her utterly. The urchin girl’s heels carry her backwards, the sensation of her tattered cloak heavy on her small shoulders as the wind tugs her towards her foe’s hands.
However, she’s prepared. Her body slides backwards, as if to retreat in fear of the spiraling, leaning blow, the girl’s opponent almost resting on the air, the motion of an immortal reclining upon a cloud, balancing upon one foot dangling towards the earth below. Reaching for another cup of wine becomes a clawing, drilling strike with enough force to knock the urchin out in one instant. But her foe is complacent. She counts upon her natural strength and agility, gifts the urchin girl has never been blessed with. Her stature diminutive, her legs stubby, her arms short. All that the urchin has was given to her by Master. If her reach is half the length, her steps will traverse twice as far at the speed of violet lightning. If her muscles are half as potent, her strikes will land twice as hard with the force of a falling mountain. What her body lacked at birth, Master carved into it with endless training.
Her swaying isn’t nearly fast enough to evade the drunkard’s strike, but the urchin doesn’t need to. Her dark, tattered clothes encircle her and meld with the foe’s own shadow as she dives into it, body sliding under the fist rushing towards her fast. Twisting her own body, the girl’s small fingers race towards the enemy’s leg, the leaning pillar her entire weight rests upon. In the span of a single breath, her gloved fingers, formed into a claw, race towards the unprotected ankle and-
Cidi shoots me a look like I’d just swiped the last grub from his plate, brow furrowed fiercely. I don’t blame him.. The suggestion is, after all, rather absurd.
“They’re not native here. Couldn’t it at least have been an aldgoat? Drybone isn’t far.”
I feel about in my pocket for my pipe. Nothing, of course. I promised her I’d try to stay off it. For my health, she says. What little of it I have left, I must preserve, she says. Tell that to Guldfyr Four-Fingers and his musket ball.
“They’re not native here. Couldn’t it at least have been an aldgoat? Drybone isn’t far.”
I feel about in my pocket for my pipe. Nothing, of course. I promised her I’d try to stay off it. For my health, she says. What little of it I have left, I must preserve, she says. Tell that to Guldfyr Four-Fingers and his musket ball.
“I’m just speaking my mind, don’t let it trouble you. I know we’re not in Vylbrand. My mind isn’t that addled from the sun.”
“Then why?”
The poor fellow lies before me, in a muddy pit. Half buried and soaked brown by the constant rain. He’s fresh. The vilekin haven’t yet made much a mess of him. No footprints about the body. A local being trampled to death wasn’t anything unusual. There is no shortage of strong beastkin in this corner of the desert. Eighteen suns, hyur. A busker, come to town briefly to entertain the local merchants passing through for a quick gil, I doubt he’d counted on an extended stay at St. Adama’s. His singing surely wasn’t that bad? A spat over a lover? No one saw him leave. None asked his name. Full in the night, empty in the morning. No identifiable paw prints. But of course not, I didn’t expect any. The body is splayed out, an animal’s headbutt, but he’s buried in the mud deep and hard. What of boot prints? None. A bandit’s hand? Brawlers skilled in their arts could easily knock a man down, or slay them with their bare fists. They have to contend with monsters after all, the muscle of a man isn’t nearly enough. I look at him and think of a body pulverized by an incredible mass of flesh and bone, charging at full force. Or Ryner, who stood too close to an Imperial grenado. That acidic scent rises, and I know it isn’t truly there. Block it out. Contusions across the chest, probably deep when examined closely. Swelling, like the circulation was fouled somehow. The chirugeons would have more to say. I’ve come to expect their words though. Last moon, in Bronze Lake, and before that, hanging from a rope in a crevasse near Falcon’s Nest. It isn’t surprising anymore. The regularity of brings to mind a daily routine. Pull the sheets off, stretch the legs, brush the teeth, wash the face.
The face.
I reach for his shoulder, like waking a man from sleep. A gentle tug pulls his averted countenance from the mud with a wet sigh. There it is again, the centerpiece of our investigation. The Flame Sergeant averts his eye but for a brief moment, and though I only barely catch his flicker of unease, I realize immediately that I’m taking refuge in a glance at him myself.
It isn’t simply that my stomach isn’t strong enough. At some point in time, when I wasn’t looking, the one I was born had to have been replaced with plaster. Dry and hard. It won’t turn, I know this. I look upon the nothing where the busker had once possessed a face, and run my thumb over my ring. I let the sharp contours of the little metal cross decorating it sink into my skin just long enough for it to hurt a little. It keeps me focused.
“It was decided in one blow. Here, just below the sternum. Strong and powerful, like colliding chest-first with stampeding beastkin. A dull hit, like a hammer, or club. But the bruising is distributed too evenly for it to be a hand-held weapon. As for the face, that maiming wasn’t fatal. He was already expired, bleeding him out would be pointless. Why they took it, then…”
Astrid. A man wears your ring who can gaze upon this lost soul and feel nothing.
Even if it weren’t night, I probably could be fooled of it just by looking up. I can feel the brim hanging down heavily upon my brow. I’d move it away, clear my beady little eyes, but my three fingers lack the requisite dexterity. They’re like tightly wound bundles of wire, thin and emaciated. My arm doesn’t fare much better. A cable holding a trunk of belongings down in a traveler’s cart would have more tensile strength. Still, when I sway them just so, I can keep my ungainly figure in perfect balance, all things in order, all things put in their rightful place. As if everything was made according to blueprint.
There’s a comforting order to it all, the way the starlight creeps under my helm. I can see the moon reflecting off the cold, white stone of the saltmoor. My body is slow to react but I cannot move myself that easily, not when only just starting to wake up, late as it is. I’m connecting. My thoughts and motions aren’t yet in true synchronicity. I can hear the stuttering false starts of my own pattering feet below me, muffled yet resonant inside my casque. I grasp the air, left and right, body swaying side to side, not unlike a toddler learning to walk anew. I do this every night, but it only gets easier in the faintest of ways.
I will myself forward, despite my groggy, insensate body, left and right. I can only feel the impact of my point-like toes in the thin, soggy layer of mud encasing the limestone beneath me. There’s some response there, the tapping of solid against solid like a conversation I’m listening to in another room, comprehensible but stifled. I haven’t got the courage yet to look into the puddles beneath me, for I can’t feel the cold of liquid on my “skin” yet without more study and I don’t want to see how [I] look at this moment.
With each stumbling step, every twist of my thin waist, every pull of my flailing limbs, the phantasmic lighting of sensation flows through my body. It’s invigorating, the feeling of response, the reassurance that something isn’t there. Tomorrow I will wake up again, when the sun is low in the sky and the coffee maker is hissing at me once more, and I’ll have forgotten this wonder. How easy it is to forget, to go ignorant of this marvel, that such a complex mechanism like a body can function so comfortably together with the helpless brain? If aught were to go wrong, if by noon the next day a piece of my spine was simply gone, it would be as if I had been sewn into a lifeless doll. No escape. No recourse. I often wonder what it would be like to see that waking nightmare, despite myself. That’s why I keep these midnight strolls to myself, and never spend more then a bell out and about.
It’s a marvel, then, that everything works as well as it does. I am nothing compared to Mother Hydaelyn herself, to create such disparate mechanisms of such incredibly varied complexity, nothing going awry. What’s a few mistakes here and there? The errors in the system sort themselves out. I’m running now.
My chaotic motion thrusts me forward with great lunges, more like stumbling more like tripping, and it must all seem like a horrible farce to watch, but that’s the point in doing this sort of thing in the dark. I can see circular holes behind me when I twist my body entirely around, head facing the direction of my arse, what little of it there is. The feeling is vulgar so I right myself as soon as I can. There’s nothing in any direction in front of me but endless mounds of limestone and mud, pools of shimmering water. I pass countless moons, innumerable stars, bathing in the salty brine beneath my tapping feet. The dull call and response of each step meeting with the stone below is faint enough that for a moment I could imagine myself as a most unimpressive morpho. My flight path the lowest ever seen, the fickle tumbling of my uneasy, foreign gait the uneven fluttering of my opal wings. Of course, there’d never be one so far west of Amdapor. Unless I got lost on one of those great migrations of theirs. Or was it their cousins who migrated like that? It’s all so distant now. I came here to see them, and in this moment, I can barely remember why.
A false step. The call and response stops. I feel myself grow numb below. Something is out of order. Not to blueprint. A spring coils and snaps. Falling now. I feel the great weight of my tumbling helm upon my head, my bulbous body descending towards the limestone below. The sense of weightlessness gone. I’m falling now. Falling. I want to turn, to stop it, but this me has no sense of balance. Falling. My helm talks to the stone and I hear the cracking response and the weight of my body becomes far too intense and the nausea sets in. For a moment I am still, imprisoned. No stimuli. Nothing but darkness. My face is stuck gazing directly into the earth below. Can’t even turn it. I will it to end, I cut the puppet’s strings, my wiry fingers and cable-like limbs and pointed feet and bulbous head and all their imprisoning numbness and I feel the rush of [me] becoming me again-
“UGHK-!”
I awake with a start. My dry tongue flaps uselessly against my teeth. Beads of sweat pierce my skin, filling my body with sensation and life. Cold, wet. My arm, deciding to talk to me at its customary speed now, fumbles for the chronometer. 3. I wiggle my fingers. 5. I wiggle my toes as well. Just in case. 5. I check the other half. Everything in order. Everything according to blueprint. Everything speaking to itself the way it ought to. I put myself in [me] and the experiment went well, but it’s dark and the saltmoor is full of things that would rather make a meal of me than discuss aetherochemical physics, so I don’t dare recover [myself].
“Same time tomorrow night then, Marco.”
No need for sleep, I suppose. I force my properly enslaved body upward and lurch out of bed, pushing hair I haven’t thought to comb properly in seven suns out of my eyes, finding my spectacles on the wooden crate I call a nightstand without looking. My parched throat yearns for water. A cigar might not be bad either. When my vision returns, I peer into the mirror, admiring the fetching dark circles under my eyes; I’ve worked hard at earning them.
A familiar urge to scratch tickles me from my lower back. Without much thought, my hand creeps down the small across my skin, finding the soft gauze bandage below and between my shoulder blades. When I find something underneath that’s hard, square and unyielding, I can’t avoid the desire to flatten two of my fingers against it and press-
The people of the North built their homes high. Rooftops were like daggers, daggers pointing skyward; did they expect the great scalekin to hurl themselves upon it? She doesn’t question the rationale of such a defensive tactic. They had, after all, hundreds of years of experience in the slaying of such creatures.
It occurred to her, when she first came North to train, that apart from the thin air that strained the body, slowed the movements, made conditioning far more fruitful than elsewhere, that she might perhaps learn of the ways of their dragoons, draw something from their tremendous jumping power. Leaping to the rooftop was easy enough, easily done, getting a grip less so, her black gloved fingers scramble for purchase, but soon enough she’s vaulted over and found herself four fulms away from her target on a drainage chute. The iron trough is full of ice and dirt, and her quarry flutters its wings once, twice, making a tiny snow angel in the slush.
“Megacephala Haillenartes”
She murmurs to herself, quite unconscious of her words. She’d read about it, years ago, in that moldy old shack on the island. Small, light on its feet, as all in its family are. Long, elegantly-shaped, white elytra. It makes its home in the snows of the Far North, not originally native to the region, but rather emerging, quite as if from nowhere, after the Calamity, and only receiving its name then. She knows of it, the way it uses its scavenging pincers to dig itself a humble hovel of mud even in Coerthan permafrost. Such methods of shelter allows it to survive the merciless Northern nights. A tiny infusion of fire aspected aether converted from the air itself, some believed, allows it to simulate the processes of warm-blooded beastkin in a limited way, thus remaining somewhat motile through all but the coldest of winter days, when the chill normally renders such vilekin torporific and eventually lays them low. On extremely infrequent occasions a boy may reach into his pocket and find an offended beetle, giving his probing finger a nasty retort. Perhaps due to the uniqueness of its circulatory system, it is not common, a prize that many vilekin fanciers to the South pay handsomely for. Perhaps something could be said of its tenacity, that it resembles that of its Spoken neighbors, eking out an existence in a land that refuses to accept them. But that was for a more philosophical mind than hers.
All she knows is that there are four fulms between her and the fluttering beetle, awakening from its nightly slumber, and she has a jar. This too is training. Surely.
She splays herself out upon her stomach, crawling closer with the slightest crunching of snow beneath her belly. Four fulms. She tightens her lips, to not release the clouds of steam deep from within her, the frost kissing her skin and leaving it pink and cold to the touch. Three fulms. The beetle shakes its wings, once, twice, twitches its antennae. Enormous compound eyes, curved like kidneys, peer at her, despite the large head of the beetle facing entirely another way. It’s likely noticed her by now. Two fulms. Vilekin were not bound to the same fallible senses Spoken were, so much of their minds occupied by useless data. They concern themselves with coordinates and movement and space and the wind about them and the dirt beneath them. One fulm. Thus does the fly evade the swatter and the cockroach the man’s bootheel, thoughtless and efficient. But its body is sluggish and needs time to shake off the frost that would surely kill lesser vilekin. Her black gloves silently unscrew the metal lid from the glass jar. She could poke holes with her awl in it later, but of course, not large enough that the beetle might escape. With each sliding push of her boots, the frozen slush beneath her belly grows colder and the chute creeks quietly as she passes. A larger Spoken, and one without such fine balance, would surely have fallen by now. Or even perhaps an excessively large child might topple the chute to the cobblestones below.
Half a fulm.
There it was, right within reach. She doesn’t look down at the street beneath her. The large, heavily decorated building the knights always gathered about lay a short distance away from her, but she hardly has a care for them and their strange, posturing ways, not while the Snow Beetle is so close to captured. If only she’d brought her net. It was of no concern that usually only Doman children carried one around with them, but it was a bother to pack it with all the other things her benefactor entrusted her with, the fancy dress that was too drafty, the earrings that made her soft, heavily beaten ears droop, the shoes that she had to step lightly in for fear of shattering them like a cicada husk.
She hears the mutterings of people coming and going before her, and a segment of the conversation catches her twitching ear. She pauses. The beetle is right within her grasp, and in a moment, one deft swing would imprison it safely within her jar to… do what exactly? She can’t think about it. No, thinking is unnecessary to begin with. But the words drifting up to her are curious. She feels as though they might have some import, something that the boring man would drone on about, words that were merely that to her ears, and she’d think carelessly about the next time she could secret herself away to train or eat. And yet she sat and listened. Why?
Perhaps it is that unwelcome, fugitive thought that leads her to listen, if only for a moment. She leans closer. Muttering whispers. Mentions of names that are familiar, regardless of their lack of value. A shared tone of voice that is difficult to place without leaning closer. A tone that perhaps suggested there was reason to not let others hear it lightly.
A tone that is replaced with the screech of old Ishgardian metal. Before she realizes her sudden weightlessness, she is falling. Her jar-gripping glove quickly swipes at the Ishgardian Snow Beetle, but her head dips out of sight and she can no longer see the object of her greed. Falling is of no object to her; her body is as light as a feather and no more sluggish in the cold than it is to her in the south. She twists, hands groping the uneven but finely cut bricks in the facade of the building, slowing her descent with a cascade of snow and upended iron plummeting around her. Her black boots bound from buttress to windowsill, then from window to balcony, then from balcony to roof tiles. The icy, slick surface rejects her and her feet squeak awkwardly about below her as she tumbles and thumps her shoulder and chest against the roof’s edge (sure to leave a fine bruise), but her grasp remains true, dangling from her left hand, jar in her right. Her body sways in the wind like a newly raised ensign from the wealthy house’s flagpole. She looks down to it to find....
A single, twitching white leg.
“Eh?”
An unfamiliar sensation roils up from deep within her, and she can feel her lips tightening of their own accord. Her mind goes blank. For the rest of that day, the taste of food was oddly dull.
Fifth Astral Moon, 1st Sun
I’m sure you’re exhausted hearing me rant on and on about her but the maid was dreadful as ever this morn.
Sometimes I wonder if she is nearsighted, that she can’t measure distance accurately by eye. She always puts the glass an ilm further than I can reach upon the nightstand. Every time she comes in I hear her tremendous feet clomping away like an aurochs. She doesn’t have decency enough to be quiet, but she could at least put my cup within arm’s reach, little as that might be. Last night, I was straining myself for it over and over again. It was a pitiful sight, I assure you. By the time the sun had risen and when I finally managed to twist my head far enough, I could see scratches there, like the tracks of slugs, across the lacquered surface. My fingers didn’t hurt. It’s been far too long since they have hurt.
My brother took me into his arms and sat me down, rolled me out after running a hot cloth across my face like he always does, cleaned my lips and teeth. There were no lectures of course, so we went down to the meadow. Thank the Twelve for his patience. I don’t think he could go more than a bell without at least ten to fifteen of my taps on his palm. Once for left and twice for right. He’s learned so fast. Like my thoughts have melted through my skin into his. With such alacrity I only wish he could devote more of his time to his studies. Even a few bells a day would be enough for him.A pair of girls approached us. I felt the usual ritual happen. A furtive glance downward, then a held glance over me. To his face. They dared not look longer than necessary. What if I stood up? What if I said something? Little did they know there was hardly reason to fear either.They exchanged a few meaningless words. The shorter girl, with her finely pointed ears and auburn hair, has a warm smile. I can’t remember anymore what it is they talked about, and it didn’t matter. I felt my brother’s hand grip mine, so far off, more distant and ephemeral than the feeling of water flowing around you when you’re submerged in a tub and someone’s undone the stopper.I tried to raise my chin and my flesh had turned to marble.
I became conscious of the wet spittle at the corner of my mouth her hair was so soft and had the lively color of tilled soil, yet I could only see the end of her ponytail my lips grew clumsy and flabby who am I trying to fool they were always so and I could feel them move I was conscious of them moving but my worthless swollen tongue and fleshy mouth can’t form words only blind dumb movements drowning in liquid fumbling blindly for the simple word fumbling but in vain I can form the H that’s good a little bit harder it won’t come out so easily but it’s just breathing you’re only half dead I can see her face in the blackness of my mind the faintest flicker in her unending smile the look of discomfort I spy I do notice it I don’t want to see it Twelve above I don’t want to see it next comes the E good easy E I can still hear damn it all and I swear I heard nothing so much as a bleating goat speak in my stead but still sound came out of me and that was more than I had spoken in days my teeth imprisoned my words and my tongue was soaked could I make even so much as an L?
I wanted to scream. My thick, useless tongue sat motionless in my mouth even as I strained against it, pushing it upwards, it was so trivial and yet it lay still, like a dead, fat worm behind my lips. Dead, putrefying foreign flesh.
My brother finished for me. There it was again, the perfunctory laughter, the simple giggling, the feigned smiles, did they think I really couldn’t see it? They left us as quickly as they had arrived. My brother’s grip tightened. I felt so sick. My stomach was turning itself inside out. Finish the sounds, finish the word, finish the sounds, finish them all, swive it.
But of course I couldn’t. He took me back to the hall, washed me, fed me, cleaned my underclothes. He tilted my head just so against the headboard and tucked me in like a swaddled babe, and drew the cup just one ilm closer, his fingers tracing the lines of scratch marks along the nightstand.
I could endure it, I could have, when we still could speak, when I could still see you. When I could write to you. I could have told them of my thoughts on Ateux’s theory from last sennight. I could have spoken at length with them on Uja Suja’s Golden Substances treatise, which they had struggled with so. I could have spoken about such trivialities as the pleasant weather or the fine colors in the garden or how pleasant it was to see them outside of the lecture hall. I could have endured it all when it was so much easier to speak above the tiniest throaty whisper, when I even have energy enough to form words. When you were there to form words for me. We didn’t need them, though, did we?
Select a single gif depicting a secret your character has that few, if any, know. Give zero explanation, be mysterious.
@liadanswhisper @gegenji @panda-ffxiv @tiergan-vashir @cfs-melkire @ayafoxheart @aigaiap @jancisstuff @lodsamone @sleeping-ranna
The girl squats on a flat, wide stone, shaped like an anvil, watching the alcove with a dark, glistening eye. The woman who was even less capable of words than her used to put bags of supplies in that space, but she isn’t around now. As an improvised corral, it leaves much to be desired. She has observed the subject cutting its way through solid rock and metal with its scimitar-like mandibles. Still, with a small, steady supply of sugar, it remains pacified.
She squints her eye into a sliver of ruby. She can trace the marks of its strained carapace, the twitching of its muscular jaws, the sort that a soldier typically used to defend its hive. Some had ponderous heads, perfectly sized to block passages, like a living door. This was not one of those, but she clasps strands of hair, dark like strings of ink, between her fingers as she considers how one of this overgrown breed would look.
The murmuring observations stream forth in monotone. Her brush strokes convey a distorted, disarmingly lumpy shape that hardly resembles the creature before her, and it wouldn’t be difficult to consider the artistic talents of an infant superior to hers, but she understands the diagram, and it’s the only understanding she values. The ant’s greedy mouth parts suck up a pile of white nectar, antennae drumming about in a constant beat, perhaps in search of others. Or perhaps, she hesitates to consider, it doesn’t think much like an ant at all. Perhaps it seeks to escape. Without a chemical trail to follow, she knows it would only wander randomly. This does not seem random. Not the way it tests the boundaries of its improvised corral. Another infusion of cheap white cooking sugar, dumped from a generous bag she had purchased in Ul’dah specifically for the creature, distracts it every time it begins to scrape with its bound mandibles. Does it think? Truly? Vilekin are not like Spoken. They function as they are built to, as they are meant to, their bodies twisted into the shape necessary to fulfill their task. Not like Spoken. They are creatures filled to the brim with the unnecessary. Only through diligence does she avoid overflowing with frivolities like the rest. Emptiness overcomes fullness, at least in this regard.
“Its movement, erratic.”
She’s thinking again. Not suitable. Observe its movements. Study the shapes. Log its behavior. No pondering. This too is training. Naturally. It has to be. Study that will prove useful in her technique. In reading other’s movements. In reading her movements. It is most definitely not a frivolity. Definitely not.
A low growl emerges from within her throat. Maybe this could be in some way called ‘frustration,’ but to her it means nothing.
“Mnn.”
Unconsciously, her fingers find the cool surface of entwined reeds of silver in her bag, slouching lazily against her curved back. She places the odd toy the fox woman gave her upon her head. She can’t say why. Perhaps it will help her think faster, get things done with sooner. Better to lead the creature away, up the Shroud, to the Gridanian Royal Organization for Sorting Scuttlers. The silver butterfly with jeweled wings peeks out between uneven layers of hair atop her head, wings slowly flexing up and down through some mechanism she doesn’t care to understand. She ponders heavily, despite herself, adjusting the hairpin in time with her pauses in note-taking and sketching. When her ink runs dry, she reaches for the rope once more.
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“Ant.”
The small, violet-garbed Plainsfolk insists in a quiet, breathy tone, staring up at him in a manner he’d rather not experience.
“Yes… I can see that.”
Davix fingers his observational journal in discomfort. She’s leading a hideously overgrown specimen, far bigger than any worker or soldier he’s ever observed, apart from the monsters at the infamous Cutter’s Cry in the south. Its jaws are positively *tremendous,* its exoskeleton near bursting at the seams. He has never been able to observe the compound eye’s glistening, multi-faceted surface up close, aside from the occasional dangerous Thanalan myrmidon (Already expired, naturally). The girl’s eye is as unfeeling as the ant’s, but there is an unspoken sort of energy underneath Davix hesitates to call enthusiasm...
“Certainly, young miss, you have found us a very odd specimen. Are you much interested in vilekin research?”
The girl’s dark pigtails flutter about as she shakes her head.
“... No.”
Wordlessly, she raises her hands, cupped. A gesture to request compensation.
“A-ah… I see… You seem to have come quite a long way to deliver us this sample, despite your professed lack of interest, and we’re naturally quite thankful, but…”
The girl’s natural frown deepens. Her single red eye blinks twice. Pinkish fingers hiding within half-gloves peek out from under sleeves too long for her, attached to the rattiest coat the Elezen man has ever witnessed. She raises her cupped hands like a beggar seeking alms. Not the most elegant negotiation.
“... It likes sugar. Take it.”
His skull whirring with thoughts, Davix frowns uncomfortably. He has no idea where the diminutive trapper has found her quarry. How far has she led the creature, with a rope about the neck and head, jaws bound, like an unruly dog? It looks tremendously robust. Where was the guild leader when they needed him? Certainly, he would be better able to evaluate a proper reward for advancing the general knowledge of vilekin. Davix ought to be home now, sipping tea and working on his field guide’s initial draft. He would much rather be in his study, rather than bear her empty stare and entreating hands. What would the girl accept? What did adventurers typically ask for these days? Their prices could be so inconsistent. What was five hundred gil on firesday would be fifty grand by watersday. What sort of adventurer took an interest in the study of vilekin? Were any species, so far unknown, slain for their parts to feed the voracious amateur crafters among them? Was she an adventurer? With that dress, could she simply be some lucky urchin who happened upon an overgrown ant? Was it a new species? Or a mutant? Ponera or paraponera?
The researcher’s mind turns to the specimen before him, counting the number of funiculi in each antennae and the bristles hiding the simple ocelli eyes upon its bold brow.
The ant’s mandibles strain uselessly against its thick rope bindings, and if it had a tongue to curse with, it surely would have curse being born with ample muscles to easily pinch its jaws with crushing force, but not enough left over to open them with any notable strength.
The lalafell girl frowns pitifully. Darix is violently shaken out of his fugue by what he thought might have been the grinding of earth beneath the swollen ant’s many legs, but is unquestionably the growl of an empty stomach. He looks down to her.
Fourth Umbral Moon, 17th Sun.
Today I saw a morpho, clinging to my window sill.
It wasn’t a common sight by far. I’ve done my time in vilekin studies. A particular variety gathers deep in the Shroud, near the ruins of Amdapor. They’re quite rare. Seeing one at the colony this far north makes me wonder if vilekin get lost too, sometimes. I know better of course. I’ve studied the books. They have very simple organs. One would hesitate to call the fleshy devices that control their actions a “brain.” But that is only so because they were surely built to a simpler design than us.
A cousin of the morpho too exists there. It flies southward, arranged in an endless armada, near the end of summer. Some thousandfold wings, blue and shimmering in the fading sun, flickering like a great stream of opal. Do they cross the sea? Fly to the southern islands, brave the storms over the Sea of Ash? Do they trek as far as distant Meracydia? I saw none in Haam. To Yorn, then? To the empty seas where lost Val once rest?
Bodies like spindles of black silk. Wings so delicate that the slightest touch will shatter them. Doubtlessly when Thaliak considered their shape, their design, He drew into their essence a mystic quality, to plumb the extremes of delicacy and beauty. Or perhaps they just grew that way over time. Some morpho, it is said, feed on the humors of the dying. Drinking right from open wounds with their spiraling mouths. It’s hardly proven, though. They’re no wamoura, after all. It would be a curious sight, but one I would welcome. Only for curiosity’s sake, naturally.
Everything is beautiful about these creatures. Why then, I wonder, did He think to include in his plan so helpless a birth, a childhood? Trapped, then naked, then crawling, hardly aware, hardly safe. They have poison, irritating hair, camouflage, but in all they are mostly defenseless. Wretched. Lonely.
How they must long to fly upward and join their siblings in the sky!
Of course the tragedy of it is they cannot long, not in a way you or I understand it. Or is it tragedy, truly?
Would it not be crueler if the cocoon, the larva, knew of its illustrious future, the million ways it could fail to come to pass?
Would it not be crueler if the cocoon knew it could never come to pass?
My hand aches. You’re not reading these anymore; I know this, but yet my fingers work unbidden. Fluttering across pages, writing thoughts, useless ones, complicated ones, foolish ones. Theories and ramblings and formula and all sorts of words traveling across oceans of parchment. They’re a terrible mess, as am I. Thinner and weaker than ever, shaking furiously.
The words drink from me. Drinking deeply of my humors, my heart, my mind. Drinking of the the last dregs of life’s nectar left within me. Drinking me dry.
I wonder if more morpho will come to visit me.
She remembered a curious moment from the island before. It was strange because after that woman appeared, not much came to mind. Shapes and sounds, colors, heat, thirst. It wasn’t so much that she couldn’t pull from those memories, but that she never had a will to do so. She could tug endlessly and every time the string would simply grow more lax.
A man, haggard, beset by gout, black hair like sodden, rotting leaves, curled over his fishing rod. Like a coastal arch, battered by waves, waiting to erode fully. But it was a long wait. His pot was far from empty. Every once in a while, the silver-backed fish inside brushed against its earthenware walls in a glint of light. The girl understood this man had more than one stomach. His was the least important among them. That was why she could see the bones in his cheeks.
That was also why she knew he’d be there a long while. That his pot would keep her full. The sun began to fall, and his head nodded for the first time. Her hands, gritty with sand, pulled her forward from the underbrush. Too much distance. Had to make it shorter. Even a single blink’s worth of distance needed to disappear on time, or she’d be covered in bruises, or worse, by nightfall, too weak to avoid much larger, healthier ones. The sand was still warm, but the sun had already grown red. He was turning, then, his sluggish body struggling to realize the sound of four limbs pawing at the earth was approaching him, of all things, upon this insignificant dot on the map.
Why had he come here? How did he use that curious stick? For what reason did he feed his stomach last? There wasn’t any need to consider those questions, for she had no mind, no thoughts to spare him. She remembered the shapes, the sounds, the sensations. Hands tore at dried, bloody skin. Teeth closed around foul tasting, sweaty flesh. All of her meager weight was on his broken shoulders. She could feel him struggling under her, already lifting. The pot teased her from below; he only needed to tumble and it’d be hers, it’d be hers in an instant. Her thick, callused fingers fingers found a soft spot around the wrist and dug in, pushed deeper, pushed in, pushed through…
The thunder lady, frozen in time, eyes wide with disbelief, crumpled in front of her. An untrained body, unaccustomed to the concussive force force far in excess of what a small fist could do, collapsing in upon itself like she was a paper doll. A gun in black steel, ungainly and small. A toy? Did children play with little things like that in the Empire? Expressions filtering a thousand confused demands, desperate questioning, trickling through an expression she was unable to truly see. What the mind forgets, the hands remember. So she was taught. Her hands remembered it then, the journey through flesh and bone. She didn’t see her face then, couldn’t see it now. Wouldn’t see it. It was shapes. Light and shadow birthing color between their entwined forms. Behind her, she could feel a man’s eyes pinning their bodies together. He had to flee far away, no matter how strong, from what the small girl was doing before him. He had to be anywhere but there. But his eyes wouldn’t allow it. It was a familiar sensation, one typically unworthy of attention. She noticed it.
It flowed somewhere from behind her sight, through her veins and nerves, through the twitching of her muscle, deep into the recesses of her fingertips. The same sensation of her hand breaking that woman. Her nostrils flared, though she knew there was nothing but salty air to greet them. From someplace unseen, the fragrance of apricot blossoms came creeping back. She became acutely aware of the rushing of blood in her ears, a roaring to shame the rolling evening tide. The smile that wasn’t followed her from a place far out of sight, warbling in a way that could perhaps be mistaken for laughter.
When she realized where she was, she found herself with a porcupine’s hand. The Hat Lady and that nosy man’s fishing rod lay in two pieces at the sides of her lap, the splinters deep in her thick skin. It was a characteristic of her people, her Master had told her once, to have rather soft skin. A stray like her needed to be told of her people, naturally. The calluses never stayed long. A shame. It would make it easier to hit without feeling undue feedback. That she had any at all was a mark of her diligence.
The girl pursed her lips and set about picking the wood from herself, more troubled by the waste than the pinpricks she’d long stopped feeling. The island had a way of distracting her. She’d neglected her stone-wheel training, digging deep furrows in the earth with the load she dragged by mooring rope, but unless she decided to play labor aurochs for the locals, it was off the table. She cast her gaze across the water, skipping it among the waves, watching the rise and fall of the surf against unfamiliar sands, rockier and less comfortable, but also cooler to the touch. They were not like pearl dust, like the white sands of her better known beaches. The trees weren’t covered in ivy creepers, their forms deciduous and gnarled, but rather storm-swept coastal pines. The waves had a different sound, the grass a different scent. The people weren’t constantly looking to disappear. And all of it would be occasionally ruined by the stench of blue slag, as well as its constant companion: that smog Imperials were so fond of.
“Not like my island.”
She had never been loud, but her voice naturally favored a whisper, and she oft needed to repeat herself. Of course, she didn’t, unless she had a mind to be heard. But much more could be accomplished simply by doing.
The calm that set over Gloam might have been a sign that it was time to resume the normal schedule. Move, fuel, rest. Never stay in one place. Always observe the schedule. Honor all debts. She had fulfilled her request, and it was now time to resume normal function, like she always did. She was a ray, forever pushing onwards in the same direction, without deviation, regardless of delays. It was time for her to get up, to take care of her final business upon the land she’d expended needless effort to keep intact. Still teeming with strangers, who talked a great deal about pointless nonsense Virara had no use for.
But the beach’s sand was soft, and her body remained still, hand clutched firmly at her side, raw and throbbing with the traces of splinters left behind.
