#ffxivwrite 2019

[lukelxiv]

Trust

I don't think I could have stopped myself if I tried. The insatiable curiosity, the complexity of his thought processes, the way in which he lied so elegantly and effortlessly. I was interested in what made him tick, what it had taken to craft such a man. Perhaps I knew somewhere, in the deepest parts of my shredded soul, that this beautiful creature would eventually be my undoing, the death of everything I had come to know. My ending.

I didn't care.

I watched him fall and gods...I went in after him. I threw myself against the chains of fate that were inching tighter around him, I used everything I had ever learned trying to break just a single link. Just one would be enough for him to grasp and pull himself out. I wanted him to pull himself out but I wasn't willing to stand by and just let him slip away. I couldn’t let that happen.

Even when his face reflected shadow and destruction limned his eyes, I saw him. I saw who he could have been, who he really was. I knew They reached down and pulled out the very worst in people, the darkest and most vile parts to put on display and terrify the masses with. Yet I loved him even then - even at the end of the world. I had found the soul that had been drifting through the cosmos, waiting for me to arrive.

I thought I'd been too late, that it didn't matter if he was my mate, if his soul and mine had been created together in the darknesses past - I thought I would lose him and I found that to be entirely unacceptable. It did not matter to me if I hurt, if I bled, it did not matter if I had to walk through hell itself - I would find him and I would bring him back to me. Even if I was not what he wanted in the end, I would have done it a thousand times over just to see him smile once again. His happiness was all that mattered to me - a shocking revelation. Yet he did destroy me, he took everything I thought I knew and placed it on its head, he tore down my walls and broke through every offensive line I’d ever had in place. I thought I had burned out long ago, that I was simply an echo waiting for the sounds of the world to fade away once and for all, but for him I caught fire. I trusted him, I trusted in fate and for the first time - I trusted in myself.

I loved him and I love him still and in every reality and universe, he is my missing piece. Truth has never been an easy burden to bear but this one - perhaps just this one - will never feel heavy on my shoulders.

Mentions: @glowinggunmetal

[fair-fae]

#FFxivWrite 2019: Week 3

Week one Week two Entry #15: Kazex Voss - Faye Kazex Entry #16: Jitter - Faye Entry #17: Obeisant - Shadiyah Entry #18: Wilt - Faye Entry #19: Radiant - Faye Entry #20: Bisect - Faye Entry #21: Crunch - Aelius Third week down and still nothing missing or late, woo! I’m glad I’ve kept up this far because... I’m probably not going to be able to this week. I’m going out of town at the end of the week for a vacation to Orlando. I will bring the laptop and try to churn out a little something every day if I have time, but no promises (and anything I write those days will probably be short and not great ahaha). Please bear with me for the final stretch because things are gonna get a lil messy in the final days!

[ever-searching]

FFXIVWrite #17: Obeisant

(Part of the FFXIV September writing challenge; takes place a couple of years ago)

Man is made to serve, and clones in special have little life beyond fulfilling the wishes of their masters. So he had been taught, and so he had always understood.

For a long time, he had no identity beyond his purpose and the skills he had been given. He was number thirty-five: made to resemble the original who had succeeded in the training simulations and earned the right to be immortalized via copies. The original had most likely been a mercenary: so they had surmised from his tattoo, unless it was a reference to the original's name. The truth had been lost in time.

He remembered little of his time before the stasis, but he had vague memories of training. The weight of a spear and a sword were familiar to him, and he had fought against simulations and real aberrations. He had run, leaped, tumbled and dodged. He had been taught bits of history, and obedience; as if one led to the other. He wasn't sure if he had been taught anything else that would have helped in outside battle. Maybe some things had simply been implemented to him: he didn't remember being taught letters, for one. He just knew them.

Most of that had turned meaningless when his pod had been opened and he had found out that millennia had passed since he had been put to stasis. The empire was no more. His masters were no more. What was his purpose now?

He found a new master in the one who peered at him with curious yellow eyes. Even if the times had changed and the world with them, he could still serve, he deduced – but serving this master turned out to be more difficult than he had anticipated, and that alone was enough to confuse him.

He had been taught to follow very simple rules. He was to act with courtesy and elegance where he could, but in the end, efficiency mattered the most. Master's word was absolute, and master's commands had to be followed. The only options were success or disposal.

If master said "protect me", he would protect the master with his life. If master said "fight", he would fight until he or the enemies were dead.

The new master had first asked him to clean: he had done so with utmost dedication. Then the master had asked him to cook, then to take part in a conversation, then to smile, and then to tell a joke. Every request was more confusing than the previous and more difficult for him to fulfill. Finally he had been given an impossible task: to not call master 'master' but to address him by name – and to categorize him as 'friend'.

It made no sense. He was not a person. What purpose did he have if he couldn't serve?

Man is made to serve, and clones in special are not supposed to have a life beyond serving. Yet somehow he – in the course of millennia and through the wishes of one man of Meracydian descent – had changed from a clone, combatant and servant into an equal, confidant and companion.

What had once been a reference to the original turned into his own name, and what had once been mercenary clone number thirty-five became a real person.

[eyesofsteelandsky]

FFxivWrite 2019 Prompt 30: Darkness

CW: Violence, gore, weird shit, general grossness -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wind of her opponent’s swing sends waves through the hair not already matted to her face from sweat, embedding his axe in the sands next to the sea wolf’s foot. A window had just flung itself open for her, and she wasn’t about to miss it. One long, worn down primal shout rushes from her lips as she charges shoulder first into the armored man’s chest, knocking him from his weapon and on to the flat of his back. With the roaring crowd cheering her on, she plants her boot onto his breastplate and raises one of her hooked cleavers up high. The bloodlust of the crowd was infectious, and even the Gamemaster seemed to be leading a chant that filled the forefront of her mind.

“FINISH HIM! FINISH HIM! FINISH HIM!”

The point at the peak of one of her massive blades comes driving down like a pick, driving through the other fighter’s helm right between the eyes and sinking in like it’d been driven through loose dirt instead of steel, bone, and flesh. Blood ran like a river out of the back of his skull and through the thin visor as the entire arena erupted in cheers. Though she’s plenty vain enough to bask in the moment of triumph, something immediately set to nagging her even as the fuzzy words of her championship victory played at the edge of her awareness. With her boot still holding the bulk of his form in place, she violently rips her blade from the remnants of his head and then reaches down to pull his helm free to look her opponent in what was left of his face.

Staring blankly back up at the sea wolf was a familiar face, though not one she’d ever faced in the arena before. Where her blade should have left a bleeding gash, there was an old bullet hole, and most of the backside of his head was missing. Neither wound looked fresh, discolored with the draining of blood and set in notes of rot battered her senses. The man’s jaw hung slack, with the the torn root of where his tongue used to be hanging in plain view. Even as horror rushed in and sent her reeling away from the corpse, the audience and Gamemaster continued raining praise down upon her. Words like hero and champion continued to batter her mind as she stared at the half decayed body.

A violent jolt runs through the armored body, and then another. The movement worked it’s way to being focused on the opening on the back of the tongueless man’s head until finally a pair of jet black, pointed limbs push through. After digging into the sand there’s a roll from whatever hidden joint was still inside, shaking more of their length loose and pulling the wound further apart for more of the limbs to start pulling free. The body itself goes into violent flailing as it’s shaken around the arena to the sounds of a still joyous crowd, the motions matching a spider pulling out of an old skin while molting as more and more of the slime coated beast within pulls free. By the time the arachnid beast finally shakes off his split open frame the beast was standing more than triple Brem’s height and a dozen times as massive, somehow having been hid in the much smaller form before. 

In her terror she bolted to the nearest member the guard, screaming out for help in wild, wordless panic. The man only laughs and points her towards the Gamemaster, who’s holding a long blade of dark purple metal unlike anything she’d ever seen before. “What’s wrong, Champion? Do you not wish to receive your Boon? You deserve it!” A grin far too wide for his features stretches over his lips as he takes the hilt of the blade into one hand and stretches the other arm out. Though she tries to focus on the behemoth of a spider scuttling around the arena, and all of it’s empty eyes staying locked on her, it was if she was frozen watching the blood sport ringleader instead. The tip of the ceremonial dark blade sinks into his opposite wrist under his own power, though instead of the jet of blood that should come with it there’s a slow oozing of tar-thick black ooze, causing the skin it runs along to sizzle and the sand it falls on to blacken into glass. The carving works up the length of his arm, splitting the flesh open until he’s reached the inner bend of his elbow, letting ever more of the dark fluid run out. Pushing out of the sickly ichor is a pair of writhing limbs not unlike those sending the giant monster around the arena, jerking against the opening to claw their way to the sand and start hauling itself out of the laughing man’s body. “It’s not like you have a choice anyway!”

Even as the words leave his lips, a pressure builds against the back of the pale woman’s skull, starting as pulses and building to hard slams against the bone from inside. Her hands fly to the sides of her head as she collapses into the sands, acting if she were going to somehow quell things by squeezing her head tighter. Agonized, nearly breathless cries rock the giant as bone began to crumble and a pair of dark, slime coated points drive out of the back of her head. From that point the split out, dragging along her scalp to drip it open to make way for it’s exit, leaving her to do anything but scream ...

-----------------------------

The ceaseless grip of fear yanks the giant out of her slumber in the middle of those screams, dragging them from her nightmare into the waking world. It takes several lungfuls of panic shouts and scrambling before she’s pushed towards realizing she’s actually awake, with the help of two incredibly confused and worried miqo’te. By the time she’s settling back into her senses her screaming had been replaced by that of the baby in the next room. Del waits just long enough to make sure Brem seems to be leveling out before heading in to check on Alvin, leaving her wife to tend to their mate.

[ever-searching]

FFXIVWrite #12: Fingers Crossed

(Part of the FFXIV September writing challenge; takes place a few months ago, perhaps)

Of all the things Brenda might have expected to be asked, "would you like to jump through a portal with us" was definitely not very high on the list. In fact, it wasn't on the list at all.

Yet here their group of three was, in what apparently was called "the lost canals of Uznair" – although Brenda had no idea where this 'Uznair' was supposed to be and whether it really even existed. They had dug up a coffer in the Lochs and opened it, and somehow that had spawned a shimmering gateway, through which they had stepped. Now they found themselves in a complex of corridors, waterways and locked doors. With treasure chests. And monsters.

"It's going to be fine! I've done this before!"

G'ilas was ever the optimist, and truth to be told, Brenda didn't have so much trouble trusting in his words. Despite his carefree attitude, the Seeker was a skilled healer. Warm and full of life like the sun blazing over Gyr Abania, Brenda found themselves thinking. Just like Brenda's arrows found their target from the other side of the arena and stopped them in their tracks, G'ilas's words conjured stone and water from thin air, battering their foes and washing away their wounds. And Merces – the quiet and solemn guardian with a sword and a tactical mind who at the same time reminded Brenda of heroes of legends and felt somehow out of place – made sure that few enemies managed to lay their hands on either G'ilas or Brenda.

"That was the last of them," Merces noted after they finished another wave of frenzied beasts. “Master, do you wish to open the chest?” The Midlander showed little signs of fatigue and seemed almost oddly unperturbed as he cleaned his sword in the midst of slain giant toads and strange aberrations.

"Meercees... I've told you, don't call me that," G'ilas replied and crossed his arms with a pout. "You are my friend before my retainer. Besides, this is not cleaning duty or anything; we're here for fun, monsters and treasure."

Brenda gave him a look and hesitated for a moment.

"We didn't really come here for the monsters, did we?"

That earned them a chuckle and a pat to the shoulder.

"Not in that sense! They just tend to come with the treasure part," the conjurer said with a wink. Brenda should have realized that he was joking.

Thankfully, it took only a moment before the awkward feeling was replaced by curiosity as they searched the latest treasure chest and found another key. G'ilas inspected it for a moment before handing it over to Brenda.

"Your turn," he said with an encouraging smile.

They turned the heavy brass key in their hands and eyed at the two locked vault doors for a while.

"Left is the new right!"

"Master—G'ilas, given that the key is in their hands, they should make the decision."

Brenda decided to ignore the confusing instructions and went for the door on the right. The key clicked as is it slid into the lock.

"Oh, did you hear that? I think I heard a click!" G'ilas was almost jumping in excitement. "Fingers crossed, eh?"

Brenda crossed the index and middle finger of their left hand almost instinctively before they turned the key.

[ever-searching]

FFXIVWrite #9: Hesitate

(Part of the FFXIV September writing challenge; takes place approximately 10 months ago)

This was a bad idea.

The thought burned in the back of Cain’s mind as he walked across the yard of Polaris company building.

He had been in the middle of something when he had received the invitation via linkpearl, and he had been careless enough to say yes. It had initially felt like a good idea. He would get a chance to get to know the other company members. They could spend a relaxed evening together, and there’d be no need for him to prove anything.

Except when his brain registered the other word paired with 'invitation’, which happened to be ‘masquerade’.

Oh hells.

There was no way to excuse himself without making it look odd or suspicious, especially since he had agreed so quickly, and so he had had to procure himself a costume. After a fruitless search for something which would fit into his budget, Cain had resorted to asking for Storm’s help, and somehow Storm had happened to know just the right person for the occasion. Maybe it was thanks to all those business deals that “Stoneface” did.

Whatever was the reason, it had lead to Cain standing in front of the Polaris building, dressed in way fancier clothes than he was supposed to have and wearing a mask that obscured half of his face.

It still feels wrong.

The clothes had been borrowed (or rented - he wasn’t sure which) and made for someone a couple of inches taller and wider than him. The mask covered the upper half of his face, which hid some of his embarrassment (hopefully) but also made him think of the highwaymen in Thanalan. His scepter felt tacky and cheap sitting in the makeshift sheathe he had fashioned for it.

He stood by the door and hesitated. Despite the costumes, it was supposed to be a carefree meeting. They weren’t going to talk about future missions or everyone’s performance during past operations; they were going to chat about normal stuff, as much as experienced monster hunters and adventurers talked about that. What was the worst that could happen?

They could laugh at me, I guess.

He hated it when he started having conversations with himself.

Cain still didn’t feel like everyone’s equal. He hadn’t travelled to Coerthas and beyond, served any Grand Companies or befriended any mammets or other curious minions like they had. He hadn’t even formally finished his studies, like he assumed they had. Part of him still wondered whether he had been taken in by mistake and whether everyone saw him as more competent than he actually was. And there he was: wearing someone else’s clothes, trying to think what he could say to the worldly adventurers without accidentally revealing anything he didn’t want to show.

But how do you ever get started if you don’t take the first step?

He took a deep breath, grabbed the door handle and stepped inside.

And, in the end, the night went just fine.

[ever-searching]

FFXIVWrite #30: Darkness

(Part of the FFXIV September writing challenge; contains minor spoilers for early Shadowbringers)

Darkness is many things.

It is something that lurks in the depths of people's minds and sometimes threatens to engulf them. It's what he feels when his hands stop at the collar of his shirt or when he turns his eyes away from the mirror; it's what she feels when she dances with death yet is left numb at the end of the song; it's what he feels when he finds himself in danger and realizes that his first thought is "I could kill them if I wanted."

But darkness is also something that comforts, inspires and offers peace and quiet for those who want. It's when he forgets his flaws – the legs that won't move like he wants and the tongue that's too keen to stutter and apologize – and lets his creativity flow; it's when they climb to the hill to sing softly about their homeland or play the flute with the dim soulstone as their only companion; it's when he can focus on his work without interruptions or social obligations and is most at his element.

Darkness is the opposite of light, which he conjures, though he knows that dark does not equal to evil and doesn't judge whom he befriends. Darkness reminds of night, which she embraces when she lets loose and joins the others to party and have fun. Darkness is also associated with black, which he wears when he sneaks into manors to get what he wouldn't otherwise have access to.

Darkness is the Void. It's the epithet of the entity in the highest tier of the voidsent hierarchy. But it's also what the Dark Knights harness to bring justice to those whom no one else can touch.

And in the First – known as Norvrandt to its inhabitants – darkness is a legend and a hope they pray will come true one day. The name of their savior: the Warrior of Darkness. The one who bring back the night so they can see the stars after so many years instead the blinding light that engulfs their skies.

Darkness is deep, and darkness is everywhere – but darkness is also a part of life, always and forever.

[ever-searching]

FFXIVWrite #19: Radiant

(Part of the FFXIV September writing challenge; takes place a week or two ago)

Haldswys loved the first days of autumn when mornings were still bright but the temperatures had begun to drop. She sat on the pier with a sweater loosely wrapped around her shoulders, watching the mist make way for the rising dawn.

"Ey, Haldy. Thought I might find ye ‘ere," Ernabryn said in his usual laid-back tone as he sat down next to her.

Haldswys had always marveled how her little brother managed to feel everyone at ease around him. He was tall like everyone else in the family, with wide shoulders and big muscles that aided him in his work as a lumberjack-carpenter, and his angular face could have made him intimidating if it were not for his warm voice and the smiles that came easily to him. Whereas their sister Waembryda was ambitious and even a bit strict, Ernabryn had inherited their father's amiable demeanour along with their mother's tenacity. Haldswys herself was neither this or that – the one who preferred to roam, rumble and have a lot of fun – but it didn't make her love her family any less.

"Gotta come ‘ere at least once every time I come home," Haldswys replied with a grin before turning her gaze back to the sea. "It makes me feel rooted, y'know? A bit o' calm before it's time to get goin' again."

"Aye, I know the feeling," Ernabryn agreed. "Days are full o' work an' hassle, so it's good to ‘ave a breather every now an' then. Even more so if work means cleavin' kobolds or doin' other rough an' tumble work ye ‘venturers do." The comment earned a bark of laughter from Haldswys, and she slapped her brother's back lightly.

"At least we both bring an axe to work," she joked, "an' like to sit at the pier to watch the sunrise in the autumn."

"Aye, that we both do."

They fell into a content silence afterwards, both focusing at the sunlight that was peeking behind the horizon. It lit the waves and made them glimmer in radiant shades of gold, and the sky began changing from deep indigo into crimson and azure.

"It's good to be home," Haldswys murmured, a smile spreading almost by itself onto her lips as she basked in the first rays of the sun.

Ernabryn watched her for a moment; she couldn't see it through her closed eyes, but she could almost feel his gaze upon her as he spoke.

"Any man or woman ever told ye that yer smile is as bright as that big ol' disk over there, sister?" he asked, making Haldswys open her eyes and see him smile warmly. "It's good to ‘ave ye home."

Haldswys found herself uncharacteristically loss at words, but she gave her brother a pat on the shoulder to hide the fact and climbed to her feet.

"Now, let's go and see if Da ain't making ‘is famous rolanberry porridge fer breakfast as usual," she suggested. "He likes to do that from the berries o' the season, doesn't he?"

"Aye, that he does," Ernabryn agreed and stretched as he stood up and turned to head inside. "Sis is gonna come over fer visit with the kids later today. Ye're gonna stay 'round fer that?"

"Aye, fer sure," Haldswys promised, taking a deep breath of crisp autumn air before jogging back to her brother's side and heading back into the house.

It was good to travel the world, definitely, but it was also always good to come home.