Feb 11, 2024
That ONE scene from chapter 3, finally drew it the way I intended it to look :P
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That ONE scene from chapter 3, finally drew it the way I intended it to look :P
muses who. their friend says "i can't believe you're concussed again. how many times has it happened now?" and the muse sits there, thinks very hard, holds up seven fingers and says, "Three?" because they think it will make their friend laugh
Stjarna wants to know, and of course, with honesty, how it felt to crawl out of the Praetorium, barely alive, what kept Gaius alive in those moments.
It is not something he consciously remembers. Like a word out of a reach, a thought once recalled but unavailable, the aftermath of his fall from grace exists - but not for him.
Valdeaulin does. It is the Duskwight's recollection that Gaius has memorized: the image of a corpse shambling from the rubble, helm shattered, body contorted in such a way that he believes the man to be but a twisted flame. But he lived, carrying himself on his own two feet.
Gaius van Baelsar hadn't died when Agrius fell; but to most, he did die in Praetorium.
The men scarcely had escaped the fire when the Legatus collapsed. Valdeaulin attempted to drag the man away from the rubble, but found the armored bastard to be too heavy for him alone: and there were too many around, clinging to life themselves. He would not rely on their dying delirium. If any of Gaius' soldiers caught him with their officer, Valdeaulin feared he would be followed and killed, too.
He ripped off layers of metal, hot and smoking. Gauntlets, their magitek communicators shattered, were thrown into the abyssal chasm left behind by Ultima. There was little left in terms of under armor on Gaius: the flames of death had burned so fiercely that it melted most of the ceruleum polymer.
By the time Gaius was in a state that could be removed from resting place of their soldiers, Valdeaulin had, well and truly, believed him to be dead. The corpse would still be a trophy the Garleans would search for, and the Duskwight had nothing to lose. If he could not have the man's life, he thought, his head was a suitable alternative.
Gaius' first waking memory was of a shack outside of Thanalan. The smell of sick and sweat had bile in his throat. For but a moment, he thought he had awoken alone, the early morning still quiet and calm.
The false hope did not last long. He heard whispering pleads, a hissed order, and then traction on his leg. No alchemical concoctions would have silenced the sound that burst forth from his lungs, ragged and burning from smoke inhalation, before he returned to his fitful haze of being.
Valdeaulin never told him who he had threatened. He never shared who the medics were that came and went, supplementing the Gridanian's own conjury, or if they had been alive to go at all: but the elezen was not the only one tending to him, that much was certain.
Maybe his suffering - those gasping, conscious moments when he awoke in agony, when bone was set and burns re-dressed - was deserved. Maybe this was to be his lot in life. He had spat upon Hydaelyn for over half a century: to be greeted by a roiling, furious mockery of the aetherial sea would be suitable for him. He would drown in the water just as he had suffocated in the flames, never greeting death and being allowed to slip under the tide.
But those blinks became more. He would surface, the sound of his own voice foreign and wrong. He would hear Valdeaulin's pacing, his mumbling. He would feel the sting of a blade upon his skin, the pinprick promise that he lived yet.
And, eventually, he would muddle his way to his thoughts. If he had died, he thought, his savior would not be afoot. If he had died, he would no longer feel the throb of broken bone nor the horrific itch of new skin.
Death was peaceful. Living was not. And so he had to still be alive, grasping at the edges of existence between one potion and the next.
Valdeaulin would state it took the fallen hero nigh two full moons to even begin to return. Gaius felt as if it took autumn and winter and further before his body felt livable and consciousness as if it were not a damnation.
(Valdeaulin had doubted he remembered any of it, he would say, until the night he roasted a hare, the smoke curling into their cabin, the smell of melting flesh and heated entrails enough to have Gaius finally - finally - on his feet, upheaving in a sound half-sob and half-fury.
He did remember.)
Olive got stuffed in some unknown pocket and now he’s crying.
New chapter of TBITW is out!!
Read Chapter 19 from the story The Boy in the Walls by Zelda1410 with 0 reads. gianttiny, giant, gt. Liam rode fast thr...
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At one time, Valdeaulin was as good with a longbow as he was with black magic. He used the physical weapon primarily for hunting game, not for fighting. After his confrontation with the Empire as a member of the Gridanian forces, however, his brain injury greatly cut back on his fine motor skills.
His hands shake nigh consistently, and it proves to make readying an arrow almost impossible - and as he angers, his trembling becomes worse.
Unfortunately, this also impacted his ability to tattoo, an heirloom skill passed down among his Duskwight tribe. If he were to relax and not become tense, the tremors would lessen: but with a blasting temper and too much self-hatred, Valdeaulin hasn't found a hint of peace in years.
Gaius's black rose tattoo is muddled. Despite only being a handful of years old, Valdeaulin's uneven technique left parts of the artwork blurry. He very well could go abroad and have the tattoo touched up - just as he had to do in order to get his memorial piece on the back of his calf.
But Valdeaulin wouldn't permit it, and neither would he. It is what it was meant to be, Gaius thinks. To have it cleaned up almost felt as if it were sacrilegious.
I think before Gaius knew the extent of Valdeaulin's history and injuries gained during his time with the Alliance, he just thought the elf was just a little bit Moogle-minded. Val struggles with shorter term memory and rapid mood shifts, and often isn't able to find the words he needs to speak, all of which infuriate him to no end and feed his emotional explosions.
It was obvious that Val had a personal vendetta against Gaius. To Val, Gaius was the closest to the heart of the Empire he could get - and, to his knowledge, had been the one behind the Black Rose testing.
In the depths of his darkest days, Val believed the only thing to mend his broken spirit was to break Gaius's. His wife and child had suffered an unimaginable death.
Valdeaulin didn't believe Gaius deserved that much - oh, no. He had to suffer, too, and to an extent that Val hadn't yet decided.
Throughout their travels and picking up Severa along the way, Gaius never mentioned his children. He explained his stance on the Black Rose project; he tried to express his empathy, his regret, his failings.
And while kicking up Valdeaulin's memories often cost him, throwing the man off kilter and forcing him to grieve when he simply wished not to, it ultimately helped them find a middle ground.
Valdeaulin didn't know of Allie and her siblings until they arrived in Werlyt. He had suspected the man had mentored youth in his service - given that he knew how to talk to Alphinaud - but had believed the man to truly be a lone wolf until the truth of the weapons project came to light.
And while Valdeaulin will never fully forgive Gaius - not for what he did and what he didn't do - his antagonistic, bitter hatred began to quell.
He dreamt of his own daughter, soul pulled from her body. He dreamt of many daughters and sons being taken from him, their spirit kidnapped, nothing left of their bodies to bury, just like him.
Maybe, he thought, they were more alike than he believed. Maybe his fury had disappeared because he looked into a mirror, seeing a man who had trusted his family and peers with his children and had returned to death and decay.
Seeing a man who had not been given the luxury of dying with them.
Many things are still wrong with Valdeaulin. His struggles with mood regulation and migranes. He struggles to sleep and to speak as he once did. But, under their differences are the men's similarities, and those weigh heavier than anything wrong with either of them.
(ANTONIA GENTRY, CISFEMALE, SHE/HER) In a city where every face has a story, NAME stands out. The TWENTY EIGHT-year-old may not make front page headlines, but they’ve got a presence that lingers like smoke in the air. With a reputation for being INSPIRING,they draw people in, but it’s the DEFENSIVE you need to watch for. It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it? A DIRTYcivilian on paper, working as a TRAUMA CONSOLTANT, but word is, they’re ALIGNED WITH THE GHOST RIDERS. In a city crawling with secrets, you never know who’s really holding the match. (LEILA)