FFxivWrite 2024
Prompt #19: Taken
Prompt #22: (you pick!)
“‘S’this seat taken?”
The words stole her attention away from her half-emptied glass of wine and she peered up at the man who had approached, her gaze roaming over him from head to toe, assessing her prospective company before she settled on an answer. She apparently decided she was pleased with what she saw, the corners of her lips slowly curling into a coy grin and an easy, “I suppose not,” slipping past them. One gloved hand lifted lazily to gesture to the empty barstool next to her, inviting him to join her.
The man seemed equally pleased by her response, judging by his wolfish grin, and he took the offered seat. He didn’t bother to flag down the bartender for a drink. Instead, his focus was fixed wholly upon the beautiful woman beside him.
“What’s a gorgeous lady like you doing here all alone? Ya ain’t got somebody at home?”
She shook her head, another sly smile playing on her face. “I have a husband at home, but it seems he has decided not to join me tonight.”
“Oh yeah? Sounds like a real fuckin’ asshole.”
A noise better described as a flirtatious giggle than a laugh escaped her, and she propped her chin upon her palm, gazing over at the charming stranger. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’ve found far finer company tonight, haven’t I?” Her free hand crept toward him, daring to rest over his own.
At her touch, his eyebrows lifted into a look of surprise more feigned than genuine. “That how this is? Bored, lonely noblewoman lookin’ to lower herself for a good time with some commoner for a night?”
“It doesn’t have to be just one night,” she cooed, threading her fingers through his. “Why? Do you have any objections? I venture I wouldn’t be your first.”
“Nah, ya wouldn’t be. And not at all, gorgeous. Some other prick might leave you all alone, but I ain’t dumbass enough what not to ‘ppreciate a beautiful woman’s attention when I have it.”
“Good. It sounds like we’re on the same page.” She offered his hand a gentle squeeze, her opposite grabbing her glass of wine so she could down the last of its contents before setting it aside on the bar. “Should we get out of here and head somewhere quieter, then?”
“If that’s what you want,” he obliged, helping her down from her barstool with their still joined hands. “Ya sure your husband ain’t gonna be pissed? He gonna come beat my ass?”
“He can be rather possessive. I hear he’s quite formidable, too.” Only then did Faye dare to lean forward and steal a kiss from the man’s lips, the taste of wine still lingering fresh on her own. Her eyes met with his, a slitted pair of blue and gold. “But I’m sure he can make an exception, just this once.”
Theory: Junction Space, Irving’s Friends, the Serpents, and Ending 1
Buckle in, this is gonna be a long one, and probably the closest I’ll ever get to posting a 'complete' Oversomnia theory.
To begin, let’s recap what exactly happens at Junction Space.
First, you go to the southernmost part of Outback Roads where the screen darkens. If you successfully dodge the black and white monster roaming around the area and reach a rock formation that looks like a key, you can use the skeleton key effect to unlock a door there.
Doing this brings you a monochrome blue bedroom. From here, you follow a triangular-patterned pathway to a gateway with serpentine motifs, guarded by black and white monsters on either side.
This takes you to a space with 4 doors. On the left, a red door with one dot, then an orange door with two dots, a green door with three dots and a blue door with four dots. Each door has the same serpentine decorations as the entryway. A person with black hair and a blue-gray sweatshirt vanishes after entering the green door. Irving can go through any of these doors, and doing so causes a slowed down version of a phone disconnecting sound effect to play. This takes you to an extremely staticky void space where letters appear on screen. After seeing this, Irving is returned to the nexus.
The bestiary entry for this event reads: There was a glimpse of one of my friends in an area shrouded in an unwelcoming atmosphere. Perhaps I was no longer in my own dream.
That's a lot to unpack.
For starters, I think it’s pretty safe to say that each door represents a person here. Irving’s color is overwhelmingly green. His name literally means green water, and more importantly, his section of the Dreaming Serpents World is green. Green crystal trees, green doors, green river.
Junction Space is obviously a space either created by, managed by, or otherwise connected to the serpents. The doors all have serpent motifs that look nearly identical to those seen in the Dreaming Serpents World. So -- the green door is his. This is also why Irving notes in the bestiary that he is, perhaps, “no longer in my own dream” if his friend went through his door. Put a pin in that for now, we’ll come back to it.
We can also determine the owner of one other door using this color-coordination method. Dreaming Serpents World only loops horizontally; you can see other colors in the far north and far south. There are blue crystal trees in the south, and red ones in the north.
You wanna know what else is in the north? In a hard to access spot near the door that sends Irving to Lowest Point is an out of reach semitransparent version of Lucky. This would make door number one -- the red door -- hers.
This also means that Irving and Lucky have opposite colors from each other -- red and green are typically opposites from each other on the color wheel. Their dominant outfit color has no bearing on their serpent door color either, which is important to note when determining the owners of the other doors.
So, Lucky’s #1 and Irving’s #3. I made a theory earlier that the white monster outside of Junction Space is representative of Irving based on the fact that the racoon dog transforms into it when copying him. If we take this into account, there’s one other place in the game where Lucky’s #1 and Irving’s #3: their order in the bestiary.
This would make the alarmed person correspond to orange door #2, and Irving’s friend who we see at Junction Space correspond to blue door #4 (meaning the area in the south of Dreaming Serpents World is also theirs). This could also explain part of why the alarmed person is so prevalent in Irving’s dreams. Everyone else with a door is one of Irving’s friends, so maybe they’re a dream-version of a different one of his friends too, or a friend of a friend. Although, I don’t know why he wouldn’t mention that in the bestiary if so. I’ve previously speculated that the person with the beret you see at Vermillion Rooftops is perhaps closer to the “real world” form of the alarmed person since they bear quite a few design similarities (but noticeably lack alarms or other supernatural design aspects). However, that person doesn’t have a bestiary entry we can reference, so your guess is as good as mine.
I think it’s also safe to say the room we see in Junction Space belongs to friend #4. None of those decorations resemble how Lucky decorates her stall, and the computer on the desk isn’t the one we see in the Lowest Point event (which could be Lucky’s or Irving's, but we don’t see it anywhere in Irv's room). Note the stickers on the Lowest Point event computer, and the utter lack of stickers on the one on the desk.
Circling back to the actual events of Junction Space though -- the serpents tend to be heavily associated with phones. Entering any door in Dreaming Serpents World doesn’t prompt a door opening sound effect, but instead, a phone ringing. Similarly, the sound you hear after going through Junction Space is a telephone disconnect sound effect slowed down at 0.5x speed. You can hear the properly timed sound effect in one of the vents in the Ventilation Passageway, where Irving sits facing away from a black landline phone tangled up in an ominous red material.
Notably, that phone is NOT any of the ones Irving typically uses -- it's big, black, and has rounded speakers at both ends. His mobile phone is obviously small, rectangular, and blue. The one he uses to save in his bedroom is similarly small and rectangular (which you can see especially clearly in the game instructions). So, who’s hanging up on who here? It evidently doesn’t seem to be a good kind of hanging up either.
Possibility 1: The phone disconnect in Junction Space is represents a denial of letting Irving enter someone else’s dream. He’s not allowed to go into any of their spaces, even though (and possibly because) someone else is already in his.
Possibility 2: Irving calls his friends to talk with them about his dreams, which is why you save the game with the phone (that’s him checking in with them). The serpents, on the other hand, call Irving (and his friends) because they want favors of some kind, which is what the purpose of Junction Space is, and which is why the Dreaming Serpents World doors are represented by a phone ringing. Whoever went through Irving’s door was going against some kind of plan or agreement, and Irving’s is not happy about it (see: Ventilation Space, and the monster trying to keep people out of Junction Space).
As an aside, you might see information on the Oversomnia wiki about Irving being “part of a ‘dream club’ whose members share their dreams using different methods.” This is information taken from itch.io descriptions of earlier releases, which you can still find via let’s play footage and the Wayback Machine. I’ve attached both older descriptions below here for reference, but I don’t know how much you can consider this information “canon” since the creator of the game has said to ignore versions that came before the current one and the current itch.io description mentions nothing along these lines. Regardless of whether or not there’s a club though, I think there’s still definitely in-game evidence for the fact that Irving has friends, they also happen to talk about dreams with each other, and they also happen to go onto each other's dreams sometimes (even if they maybe shouldn’t).
Also, if they can all access each other's dreams, then friend #4 going through Irving’s door makes it hard to analyze Irving’s personality based solely on what he dreams about (not to mention any serpent influence) which is why I haven’t done a personality analysis for him yet like I did with Lucky lol
Anyways, I think Junction Space and the Dreaming Serpents World are opposite sides of the same coin. They both have doors created by the serpents and they both are spaces where Irving and his friends can see each other in their dreams. However, where Junction Space lets them hop into each other's dreams, Dreaming Serpents World actively separates them from each other with fences and castle walls. I think both spaces are set up by the serpents for some kind of endgame that benefits them at everyone else’s detriment. Serpents, in general, are NOT friendly forces in Irving’s dreams and are noted as being “harrowing” and “not good” by the bestiary. For example, seeing the embryo in the ventilation space sends Irving to Deathrow in a VERY literal way!!!
The serpent in Swamp World sends you to the Ventilation Passage, and there is NOTHING good there (besides the alarmed person chilling out with some tunes). The monster in the incomprehensible event -- who also bears a striking resemblance to the pillars in the Dreaming Serpents World -- dissolves another person there!!
Speaking of the incomprehensible event -- despite its name, the symbols spoken there actually aren’t all that incomprehensible. There are 8 symbols total: Z, a musical coda (or possibly just a really shiny star -- more on that later), the character 无, an eyeball, Xp, a clock, å, and a sheep.
Half of these have to do with sleep: Z as in zzzz the sound when you’re sleeping, sheep as in counting sheep, and a clock as in an alarm clock (or possibly just time in general). The character 无 (which is also the final “word” the monster "says") means “nothing” or “negative,” which would make sense since it's spoken when the other figure disappears at the end of the event. The musical coda, on the other hand, aligns half with this idea of 'endings,' and half with another serpentine motif -- infinity, looping, and repetition. A coda is used in sheet music to denote where the exit from a repeated section of a song is. There are two other things associated with the serpents and looping. The first is the title screen logo, which shows a serpent in the shape of an infinity symbol. The second is the background of the Dreaming Serpents World, which depicts an ouroboros -- representative of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
From all this, I think it’s fair to say the serpents control the dream. Their symbols are all dream related, or cyclical. Maybe they even derive power from dreams somehow…
It’s also worth noting that the serpents are just generally incomprehensible to the in-game characters anyways. That message at the end of Junction Space isn’t translatable. Take it from someone who’s run the event at least 10 times and has made multiple decoding efforts. The message is always different regardless of which door you enter. Each letter in each word is rolled from a set of 3 values not linked to any others. Each word always has the same number of letters, even if the letters themselves are different. Not to mention some of the “letters” don’t look like letters at all. The only word that stays consistent is the final four letter word at the bottom, which I always thought looked like “RANO” or something. Regardless, I don’t think there’s a message here you can translate. And if there IS a way to translate it, then I've got no clue... I'm out of ideas SOS...
Ok, so then what exactly is happening in the incomprehensible event? I personally think the event either depicts ending 1, or the serpents’ end goal (if they’re not the same thing). In the ending, Irving makes contact with the serpents, drowns in the green river, and vanishes from reality. In the incomprehensible event, someone makes contact with a serpent-headed monster, and then vanishes from reality at the serpent’s command. See the parallels? If it's true that the serpents work cyclically, then Irving jumping into the Green River at the end of the game possibly represents him giving himself over to the dream entirely (and the serpents, by extension). He vanishes from reality, but throws himself into this never ending cycle of dreaming and waking up. This is why you “wake up” after ending 1 and get a menu theme -- you’re not actually waking up in reality, you’re just waking up in a dream version of reality so you can continue the loop. Alternatively, Irving’s been stuck in that cycle, nothing was real the entire time (which is why the weather outside never changes, or maybe he just lives in Britain idk), and jumping into the Green River is a way of ending that cycle once and for all (even if it means erasing himself from reality entirely).
Ok, so how real is reality then? Was Irving trapped from the start? How many times have We done this? At that rate, was friend #4 trying to save Irving by coming into the dream? What the HELL is going on in the abduction event too? Triggering it is so hyperspecific (get to Boiling Water World at night and then find a specific place to stand) and immediately after you wake up, there’s a face in your window. It could just be sleep paralysis, or maybe reality was a dream too.
I feel like it’s safe to say that the supernatural is probably to real in some extent in Oversomnia (there’s people vanishing from reality and connecting to each other's dreams after all), but this is the only instance of something DIRECTLY affecting reality and not just doing weird things in the dreamworld. That is, besides ending 1, which also takes place in the real version of Irving’s room (note position of the pillows, the bag in the bottom left corner, and the fact the doorways to the bathroom and kitchen are still there).
Which brings up to what the hell Lucky is doing in ending 1.
I think Lucky's the first victim of the serpents, which is also why her door is number 1. She’s their first contact. This makes the incomprehensible event both a memory AND a premonition then -- it's what they’ve done to her, and this is what they WILL do to you. That’s also why she’s semi-transparent in the Dreaming Serpents World up north; she’s not there anymore, but she used to be. It could also be that the door order in Junction Space indicates the order in which people reach their section of Dreaming Serpents World, which could also explain why the alarmed person is Like That. They’re also stuck in the dream, but are just kinda chilling. Ending 1 also seems to be “Lucky’s ending” in some capacity -- the emerald theme you get from it has clovers at its corners, the text reading “ending 1” is in her special font color, and she’s literally there during it.
This could also indicate that we’ll get 4 endings down the line? One for each friend, one for each door maybe? And I’ll be shocked if ending 1 isn’t a “bad end” in some capacity. I don’t think Lucky’s dead though -- I don’t think the serpents necessarily want people dead. I think they just want to use people for whatever weird metaphysical shit they’re doing. And if they DO want people dead, it’s to send them through the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Death is not their main endgame; you don’t trap people in an ouroboros if you just want them dead. I think the serpents want people to move into the dream dimension. Permanently. My closest guess as to why they want that is the embryo in the Ventilation Passage -- maybe they need some degree of mental energy for incubating whatever the hell that is. Or maybe they just get energy from dreams in general. I’m honestly not sure.
Speaking of Lucky, there’s one other event that prominently features her -- the Lowest Point.
I don't know for sure if the serpents are aliens, but they’re linked enough that I think you could definitely make an argument in favor of it. The event at the Lowest Point is outer-space centric: Irving sees something in the sky, and then there’s green aliens blocking him from going behind his house. But you know what you have to pass by in the elevator that takes you to Lowest Point? Dragon ship.
I think Lucky saw something on that computer that connected her with extraterrestrial life (hence why she glitches out and her face vanishes during said glitch out) and now they’re all screwed. Maybe the serpents/aliens/whatever communicate via radio waves and that’s why they’re in your phone and your computer, and that’s why electronics are such a big theme throughout Oversomnia in general. If the serpents are aliens, it could also explain why they’re so incomprehensible. Speaking of the incomprehensible event, one of the symbols the monster-headed figure speaks is an eyeball. The other most prominent eyeball in the game is the planet that stares at you during the stargazing event. The stargazing event also gives you menu theme 7, which happens to increase your chances of seeing the event at Lowest Point too… If you don’t want to interpret that one incomprehensible symbol as a sheet music coda, you could also see it as a star or planet, which would be yet another connection. It even resembles the pattern on the ground where the abduction event takes place...
The Lucky we see at Lowest Point is also definitively linked to Lucky in the Nexus. After seeing that event, Lucky will always be gone from her shop, leaving a little sign in her place (presumably reading something like “closed” or “back in a few”).
On the other hand, Lucky from the shop and Lucky from the ending don’t seem to be aware of each other. If you talk to Lucky at the shop after seeing ending 1, she asks if Irving is alright because he looks worried about something. Lucky saw him drown in ending 1. If shop Lucky was the same as ending Lucky, she wouldn’t need to ask this.
I don't know for sure which one is more “real,” but I think shop Lucky might just be Irving's imagination. The bestiary even refers to her with different terms compared to friend #4, saying that shop Lucky “looks like one of my friends” vs friend #4 who Irving catches a “glimpse of.” Not resembles, not looks like -- that friend was there.
I think shop Lucky is an accurate representation of her as a person, but I don’t think it’s one-to-one where she’s literally IN Irving's dreams. That’s also not to say shop Lucky is completely unaware of the ending though. She cuts herself off before she can ask if Irving is something, which implies that she also knows something.
I think ending Lucky is trapped in whatever serpent cycle is going, and that look over the shoulder in the ending isn’t a look of disdain or annoyance, it’s a look of “I can’t help you and you shouldn’t have done this.” At the end of the day, seeing ending 1 is a choice. You have to collect all the effects, find the right door in the Dreaming Serpents World, and then offer it all up to the serpents… that’s a lot of work for what amounts to Irving playing right into their hands. This would also be why the game continues after ending 1 AND gives you a menu theme that’s very Lucky-themed -- you’re joining her in dream hell in a sense. I also don’t think it’s the true ending. Alternatively, maybe Irving was doing all this to try and get her out of there, but uh. My man cannot swim. I guess.
If you really wanted to put Lucky in a bad light, I think you could argue that she’s doing this to trade places with him. He gets to go with the serpents and she gets to walk free since there’s someone else in the river now -- he’s trapped in the dream instead of her. I don’t think there’s much evidence for that though, and I still don’t think Lucky’s malicious. She shows genuine concern at her shop if you talk with her after the ending (and if you just talk with her with certain effects too), and regardless of how much of a connection there is between shop her and real her, she knew SOMETHING was up before cutting herself off.
Alternatively, shop Lucky IS real Lucky, but since she’s trapped in dreamland she can be anywhere at any time and you’re seeing her soul or a representation of Irving’s memory of her or something along those lines in the river. It would also explain why she’s always at the shop regardless of when you go to sleep if she’s stuck there.
This could also be why, if you show Lucky the tuning fork effect at the shop, she remarks "I used to have one of those, too. What's up?" If she had her own dream quest to reach the Dreaming Serpents World and then dropped off her effects, no wonder some of them would be gone. Tuning fork is one of the effects you need to get other effects after all, so she definitely would have had to pick it up at some point. Could also be why she’s selling temporary extras if she has some leftover from exploring and knows from experience how to get them.
Well wait, if she’s helping Irving in his quest to reach Dreaming Serpents World, then that makes it sounds like she’s working for the serpents. But also, if she can provide him with effects that won’t count towards the final total to unlock the door, maybe that’s also working against them? What does she need the money for anyways? Money looks like moons, which looks like outer space, which is serpent themed… but you only really need money to buy stuff from her or the vending machines? I have no idea.
TO SUMMARIZE:
Irving has friends! At least two (Lucky and Junction Space guy), but possibly three (alarmed person).
Irving’s friends can enter each other's dreams through Junction Space, but it’s probably not a good idea to do that.
Junction Space is managed by the serpents, who control dreams and want people to vanish from reality, which is what happens in ending 1.
Lucky is probably already a victim of that, hence her appearance in ending 1.
The serpents might also be aliens.
And that’s all I’ve got for now..!! I think this will definitely change as the game updates and we get more info, but I’m pretty confident in a decent amount of the dots connected here. Please let me know what you thought in the comments, and thanks as always for reading!!
A lot of aspects of the Kargad Empire were fascinating, but one thing that caught me off guard as I was reading The Tombs of Atuan was the development of The Kargs. In Wizard of Earthsea, they didn’t appear much (if at all, can’t confirm) after their failed invasion of Gont, but the characteristics I got from their presence was that they were a large, fierce, and advanced people, and their home, being a fearsome empire, likely reflected this. I was surprised to find that their empire is not as well put together as I was expecting. As the priestesses and wardens of the tomb journeyed through the kingdom to find their reborn priestess, we get to see the kingdom outside of the walls, and it seems very rural and decentralized. Atuan’s largest city, I believe, Tenacbah, is “No more than a flea to a cow” when compared to Awabath, having “ten hundred houses” (Le Guin, 14). The rest of the island is populated by small towns and villages in the hill country, and further past that, the poor folk live “In lonely huts in the valleys of the hills,” who, being so poor, “kept no count of days and scarce knew how to tell the turn of time” (15), so education must not reach many in Atuan.
Even the high priestess, as we later read, would be expected to “Fetch water in the summer when the wells ran low” (19), an arduous task that I wouldn’t think royalty would be doing. Beyond that, though, I’m surprised that the high priestess would have to worry at all about not having water, and that Atuan wouldn’t have some sort of irrigation system to provide water more efficiently. All of these things just surprised me, as someone who believed the Kargad Empire to be more advanced. This may only be Atuan, but if that’s the case, why is the homeland of their high priestess not as advanced as the rest of the empire?
Two months- 61 days now. Decided to switch to voice recording on my phone because I keep breaking pencils and pens in my fingers without even trying. I got Evan to measure me with a tape measure, and-
*about a minute of no talking, breaking branches and splashing water*
I’m 9 feet and 11 inches tall now. I found an abandoned car, and apparently I’m strong enough to rip the top off, cause I did that and rearranged the seats so I could use it like a bed. Kinda nice, but I’m already almost too big for it. Sucks I couldn’t do this earlier.
A knock came to my door, followed by, “Stanley, you have a visitor.”
I looked up to see Wendy; my ex girlfriend. She wore a purple sweater, jean mini skirt, and a purple hat. In her hands, she held a bag in her hands from a fast food restaurant and another bag, which had two bottles of water inside.
She cleared her throat. “Stan, I came to see you. If that’s okay. I brought your favorite food for lunch- I know you really like your Marsh salad. Lettuce, spinach, chopped eggs, provolone, and vegan green goddess dressing,” she said.
What could it hurt?
For a while we sat at the table, eating in silence. I fiddled with the cap of the water bottle for a moment and softly asked, “Did you figure out who wrote that letter to me?”
“I did,” she replied, wiping her lips with a napkin.
“Well, who is it?” I asked.
She sat still then she pushed a cookie towards me, which I easily pushed back.
“Tell me,” I pressed.
I watched the way her mouth opened and closed to only open again, “Gary Harrison,” she replied.
I froze.
“Why would he threaten me?”
“That’s what Kyle and I are trying to figure out,” she said.
“Fuck...I know I was a dick to him at first and then he found out what really happened, but why would he even call me Raven?” I questioned.
“Stan, Bebe and I scanned everyone’s handwriting in the school from the past and present. All we could match up was him. At first we thought it was Butters, but he hearts his I’s not bubbles. Gary did that. Kyle and I are going to find out where he lives and give him a visit,” Wendy said.
“Alright,” I said.
We cleaned up without a word. Not even a glance at each other.
Before she left, she gave me a warm, tight hug. “I’ll never stop loving or protecting you,” she whispered.
I’ve been sitting here for quite some time at my desk, playing mindless games of rummy and slap jack with Tweek. However, I can’t concentrate. Gary. Gary is the one in charge of this. He started this all.
Raven lifted the crystal decanter, raising his eyebrows, offering a refill. Alain scoffed, “Gods, Alderscorn, if you honestly have to ask...”
Raven laughed, “yes well, I didn’t want to assume. Thought perhaps the House of Lords demanded a conduct befitting the station.” He refilled their glasses and sat the decanter on the large dining table against which the two elezen leaned.
Alain snorted, “could you imagine? Demand temperance of the Lords and we’d opt for monarchy.” They both chuckled and clinked glasses and stared off into the past, the weight of which sat heavily on their minds yet they danced around the subject in the way soldiers do. They sat in the warm glow of the hearth, surrounded by the stone walls of the manor and drinking fine bourbon. But they were also in the cold hills of Coerthas, huddled around the meager flicker of a campfire, dining on cold rations and sleeping in their armor.
Alain pointed with his glass at the curved sword mounted above the fireplace. “Wait...is that it?” He pushed himself away from the table and approached it. “Gerart’s sword?”
Raven’s nod went unseen, having remained against the table. “That’s it,” he said. It was *his* sword now, of course, and his own father’s before him. That mattered little, though. The ancient curved blade, unnaturally fast and sharp, had gained its legend in the hands of Gerart Alderscorn, Raven’s grandfather.
“Fury…” Alain whispered reverently. “Magnificent.” He turned to Raven then, “what was it your father called it?”
“Father’s Blade,” Raven said. “Bit of a family joke that just stuck over the centuries.”
“Right,” he smiled, “that legendary Alderscorn wit.” He turned his back to the blade, the warm glow of the fireplace giving his silhouette an odd, almost angelic glow. “I’m glad to see you’ve hung it up,” he said.
Something in his tone gave Raven pause and he furrowed his brow. “You’re not paying me a compliment on my choice of decor.”
“Indeed not,” said Alain. He sipped his drink and tucked a hand comfortably into his pocket, gesturing with his glass. “I was...concerned. We were.”
Raven resisted the urge to cross his arms. He could feel his cheeks warm and the hairs on his neck threaten to bristle. He sipped his drink and sat it down on the table with deliberate care, peering at Alain. “About?” Raven asked, knowing full well the answer.
“Come now, old boy. You’ve all the reason in the world to be angry, for what they’ve taken from you, for what they’ve done, but it’s...time to rebuild. These days,” he said pointing at the sword with his glass, “are over, Raven.”
“You’ve got to be joking, Alain. You’re going to preach peace to *me*?” Raven pulled away from the table but kept his distance. “My mother. My father-”
“Are dead, Raven, yes.” The truth hung in the air, feeling somehow sacrilegious to Raven that someone else would dare say it. “The were killed by the horde along with tens of thousands of others. Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. Villagers and knights. A thousand years is enough, don’t you think?”
Raven gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw bulging. “You dare come into their home and disregard everything they fought for,” he said. His voice wavered, straining to keep even. Breath came unevenly through his flared nostrils.
“It is not their home anymore, Raven!” Alain pointed, “It’s yours! And I disregard nothing. It is for this peace that they fought. That YOU fought.”
“Fight,” Raven corrected. “There’s always a fight.”
“Aren’t you tired of it? I mean...gods, Raven look at you. We’re the same age, you and I, but you look as if you’ve never stopped training.”
“Just because YOU got fat,” Raven said.
“And so should you!” Alain chuckled. “Get fat, get married, have short children,” he laughed, waving his arms about. “Read some of these books, for Fury’s sake. Wash off the blood,” he pleaded. “Help us rebuild Ishgard, return her to glory. You’re a good man, Raven. And smart. In your own way,” he teased.
Raven scoffed. “House of Lords. You would have me broker peace with those...monsters.”
A cold silence chilled the air between them as they glared at one another. Finally, Alain sat his drink down and approached a nearby wall of books. His head scanned back and forth through the stacks until he found what he was looking for. As he spoke, he hunted back and forth through the pages.
“Monsters, you call them” he said quietly. “An endless ocean of vengeance that pours into your lands. Armor blazing white in the sun, brandishing swords and spears that tear and carve in an endless thirst for blood, firing cannons that we literally call ‘dragon killers’.”
He flattened the page with his hand and dropped the book on the table with a loud thud that shook the silverware. “They’re monsters? Then what are we?” He brushed passed Raven on the way to the door. “If you ever decide to bury your parents, let me know.”
As the door slammed shut, Raven hurled his glass at it and a hail of crystal showered the marble floor. He thought to give chase, but what would he say? What possible defense could he mount in his favor. He turned to fetch another glass when he saw the open book. He reached out his finger and spun it to face him and read the passage.
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
Raven closed the book softly and carried it to the shelf, making sure the spines lined up neatly. He sat down in the soft, worn leather chair and watched the fire until it burnt itself out.
