AO3 (FFXIV, Stargate Atlantis, Baldur's Gate 3, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Love and Deepspace.)
Prompt-based ficlets: #ink and silver stars.
WoL
A Seeker of the Sun miqo'te, whose canon universe is the Seasons and Promises verse, an MSQ adjacent story where a plan thousands of years in the making culminates in a reunion in Ultima Thule. A mother of three, married to Hades and Hythlodaeus. Main battle classes Dancer and White Mage. Enthusiastic baker and botanist. Azem's reincarnation.
Tags: #stitched by starlight // #aesthetic: stitched by starlight.
Azem
The Fourteenth seat, who adores her people and their city, yet cannot help but see their flaws. Rumours of her being a creation and 'not real' have followed her since childhood. Content to bend the rules as suits the purpose to aid others; unrelentingly kind in the most stubborn of ways. Married to Hades and Hythlodaeus. Main classes Dancer and Paladin.
Tags: #woven in sunlight // #aesthetic: woven in sunlight.
Izeira
What happens when a tangle of Azem's most extreme emotions stored in an unidentified concept crystal meet a new soul in the aetherial sea? A sweet girl burdened with increasingly desctructive powers, Izeira is yet attempting to learn how to lean into her 'gifts'. When not adventuring, she resides in Ishgard. Married to Aymeric and Estinien.
Tags: #spirit of hearthlight // #aesthetic: spirit of hearthlight
Yskari 'Kari' de Riva ('Rook')
A Crow originating from Clan Lavellan, given to the Crows in her teens following quiet warnings from her Inquisitor cousin. Heartsblood is an AU that tells her canon story, while the Moonlight and Midnights universe follows game canon. Soft heart underneath it all – big fan of hugs. Involved with Lucanis. Codex entries.
Tags: #heart of firelight // #aesthetic: heart of firelight
MC
Tags: #elixir of midnight // #aesthetic: elixir of midnight
Writing for prompts:
FFXIV
Azem/Emet-Selch/Hythlodaeus + pairings within the trio.
WoL/Emet-Selch/Hythlodaeus + pairings within the trio.
Izeira/Aymeric/Estinien + pairings within the trio.
Opens with Darling, set during the Final Days. After learning the truth of the future from Venat, Azem tells her daughter stories about her family and attempts to work out a way to save her from being sundered.
The continuation begins with One Step Closer, where the WoL tries to work out what life looks like after the choice she made in Ultima Thule.
A look at some of Antonia's (WoL's previous but one incarnation) story, As Sun Upon the Snow, fits within this universe, but contains no direct references to it.
Fics and aesthetics: #seasons and promises verse.
Reflections
Azem/Emet-Selch/Hythlodaeus, Modern AU.
Reflections in Stardust
Of course Hythlodaeus' new roommate and oldest friend is a musical theatre snob and playing in productions of Shakespeare at the National...
Fics and aesthetics: #reflections verse.
Regency
In which there are myriad rumours surrounding the taciturn and anti-social Hades, but fellow not-quite-outcasts Azem and Hythlodaeus are not one bit deterred.
Is a marriage of convenience really a marriage of convenience when it's also quite plainly for love?
Fics and aesthetics: #for want of a ribbon.
Fate Eternal
A soulmate AU detailed here, in which soulmates can feel one another's intense pain and both the WoL and Emet-Selch endure more than one sort of agony over the course of the MSQ.
Fics: #fate eternal.
Betwixt the Stars
A sci-fi AU detailed here, in which Amaurot's civilisation is divided amongst a fleet of starships, with much of its key functions and defense centered on its fourteen flagships, captained by the Convocation. Hades and Hythlodaeus command The Underworld, while Azem's ship is The Shepherd. Their marriage is the worst kept secret in the fleet.
Fics: #betwixt the stars.
Souls in Bloom
A WoL x Hades x Hythlodaeus flower shop AU, in which the so-called Witch of Elpis is a sparingly spoken florist who has an uncanny ability to know which flowers her customers need, something Hythlodaeus and Hades discover when the former insists on seeing if the rumours are true.
Fics: #souls in bloom.
Of Tea and Tempests
A reincarnated Azem crosses paths with Emet-Selch during a protracted conflict between the people of her nation and that which he has decided to lead into battle. Stems from drabble six of Metempsychosis.
Fics: #of tea and tempests
Royalty AU
The crown was never meant for Hades. Azem and Hythlodaeus were never meant to return to court. After ten years apart and a decade of heartache, is there anything of what they were that they can save?
Fics: #a dance by heart
Supernatural creatures AU
When a so-called witch nurses a rather tame 'wolf' back to health, it brings a vampire to her doorstep. And it turns out that the wolf would quite like to stay...
To tell him of what had dragged her from sleep with a near inhuman howl of fury and denial would be to have to tell him of the rest of it.
The whole of it.
For Hades would know, once she began, if and when she were to falter. To attempt to obscure and conceal from him that which she would not have him know.
(Hopes he does not already know.
Did not see.
Notice.)
Perhaps it is the guilt that refuses to let her put the whole affair to rest. Not that she did not act – that she gazed up at the creature she had felled amidst storms of darkness and longings for home as it became Zeromus once more and she did nothing – but that she had not known what to do. Had not managed to lift a glaive. Take a step. No, she had fallen beneath that wave of despair she had not succumbed to in what could have been the star’s dying days, and found herself unable to fight free of it.
Unable to see anything but year after year of...
Battle after battle...
Plea after plea...
And now, with the remnants of her nightmare still tangling about her and threatening to trip her up, and his frustration at his inability to do anything more constructive to help her very plainly roiling through him, it is in to the dark of night they have fled, where they...
He demands her attention with a crackle of lightning that jolts through her, coiling about her spine in an ever-tightening fashion that hurts; that declares to her that he does not mean to play.
No, he understands what she needs and what her agitation and pain has brought out in him, and knows there is but one way that they know how to restore equilibrium without having to talk and pick apart what neither of them are of a mind to manage this night.
She affords him a brief tilting of her head by way of acknowledgement, refusing, as she is sure he has predicted, to let him see that he has succeeded, and instead leans into a moment’s hesitation that draws him a half-step closer.
An arc of flame cuts through the darkness.
A sharp hiss becomes a low, pleased growl of sound, golden eyes molten in the flash of fire.
And they fall into the push-pull whirl of bleeding power and aether that has existed between their souls for aeons.
(No weapons tonight, she distantly realises.
...What need have they for them, after all?
For focus and structure when what they both are at the core is nothing that can be politely channelled or contained for long?)
She aches, heat crackling high enough to aggravate old wounds and set up a sharp and terrible blaze beneath scars in their various states of weeks-months-years healing.
Yet it is glorious still – the rightness and the wrongness of it – as it burns through her and leaves a sweeping, serene chill in its wake. An easy quiet where once there was a clamouring soon to escape her control.
Gasping for breath, she lifts a hand to ease the edge of her thumb over her bloodied lips.
A stumbling handful of steps brings Hades out from between the trees and into the moonlight, bruising already darkening across one eye.
Wordlessly, he closes the distance between them and lifts both hands to cradle her face, the pad of a thumb grazing over the slice etched into her bottom lip.
“Enough, now?” he murmurs, resting his forehead against hers.
She closes her eyes by way of yielding, fingers curling into the fabric of his ruined attire.
The kiss he claims is nothing but gentle, yet it stings nonetheless.
For XIV Heatwave Festival, Week 5: Beach. Follows on from these two ficlets.
She wakes from a heavy sleep to warm sunshine bringing to life the rich hues of the silks above her, the soft blankets beneath her giving way a little as she stretches and the sand upon which she lies shifts, rearranging itself into new waves and hills and valleys.
A tent. The island. The beach.
Away from the world; a place that is known to so few - and a few who understand very well that visits are by invitation or owing to star-ending emergencies.
Somewhere she need not worry about kindness or trouble coming to find her before she is ready to face them.
Golden light slants across her as Hades slips into the tent, his gaze settling immediately upon her with a concern that he plainly tries to reel back and better conceal when he realises that she is no longer sleeping.
Folding himself down beside her, he lifts a hand to gently brush back her tousled hair, thumb lingering against her temple in an idle caress.
“How are you feeling?”
It must be that her eyes answer for her before she can find the words - some flicker of anxiety and embarrassment that she cannot tame - for he tucks an arm around her, hand slipping beneath her loose shirt to settle warmly in the small of her back. A solid, anchoring touch that blessedly does not have her wanting to shove him onto his back, pin him beneath her and–
The rush of remembered pleasure has her averting her gaze as she demands her thoughts not go racing along paths to summon back an assurance of an adoration she could drown in, half-drunk already on recollections of days of no measured or restrained love and affection.
…How could she have let herself want and demand more when she knows very well how much she is loved?
“None of that,” he murmurs, all soft tones and quiet reassurance of the variety that he reserves for when they both know that she cannot summon even the most flimsy of masks (no teasing smile or wry remark to dance around the subject) to hide behind.
“...I enjoyed it,” she utters in hushed tones, as if she must confess.
“Yes.”
“It will happen again.”
“Yes.”
“And–”
“And do you remember what our husband said?”
Colour rising, heat blossoms across her cheekbones as it is her turn to murmur, “Yes.”
That there is no shame in it. Her loss of control has not made her less. It was no duty or demand that she settled before them and expected them to deal with.
No, those she loves made sure she felt safe. Ensured that she did not feel foolish when she could not even make it through so simple a thing as a bath or shower without needing their hands on her. Never let her believe that the needs she could not rein in were too much or anything they would not gladly answer.
“...Do you remember it happening before?”
A tentative question, carefully devoid of weight.
“...Once. If it… occurred more frequently before that, it’s…”
Gone. Lost. Somewhere with the rest of who she was. All those little fragments that have tumbled out of her mind as years have passed and battles have insisted upon a price for victory and survival.
“I don’t… I don’t know… enough to…”
She has never spent a great deal of time with her own race. Has deliberately cultivated a distance from her body to force it into compliance with what has been necessary. Made herself not care about it as more than a means to an end. A weapon. And now, once again, there is a price to pay for that distance and disdain.
Does she ask a healer? Might they be able to suggest how often or when next she might experience all that she has over the past few days? Should she be worried that whatever it is that has brought it on will have nullified the blend that she drinks to prevent further additions to their family?
Another flicker of brighter light, then a warmth at her back; an arm draped over the both of them in a fashion that would have elicited a very particular response from her not a day earlier.
Hythlodaeus, who kept her cradled against him as they spirited her across the star for some peace and quiet, and now promises, “Then we will learn. All of us.”
Perhaps she nods and murmurs something of assent before she tucks her head beneath theirs and lets time unspool as she concerns herself with nothing more than the nearness of them and the soothing sound of the waves washing upon the sand.
“We can collect the children from Ameliance and bring them here when you’ve had a few more days to rest,” Hythlodaeus tells her, pressing the lightest of kisses to the edge of one of her ears. “Until then… Would you like to see the sunset?”
Hades bows his head to bump his nose against hers, his fingers wandering through Hythlodaeus’ unbound hair in a lazy, idle fashion.
“Yes,” she replies, no louder than a whisper. “I’d like that.”
Getting to his feet, Hythlodaeus reaches a hand down to help her up, then encourages her to let him carry her on his back, where she drapes her arms about his neck and leans into the reassuring warmth of him as they strike out across the beach.
Hades orbits them as they go a-wandering through the shallows, never straying too far, returning with shells and pretty stones that Hythlodaeus teasingly accepts as ‘tribute’ in exchange for their husband’s need to hold one of her hands or settle a hand at Hythlodaeus’ hip or elbow, seeking almost immediate contact the moment that the both of them are within reach.
…Maybe it is not she alone who is yet tangled up in a continued longing for simple closeness, for, as the setting sun glimmers over the water, it seems that each of them cannot bear to be distant for long.
And maybe whatever she is to find herself at the mercy of in the future is not so much heat as warmth.
