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ffxiv write #XX - This is not the end

I'm not done with this writing. Now I'm not 'incentivised' to do it, it may take longer, but I do at least want to finish my current planned ideas.

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FFXIV Write #28 – Deleterious

Yusi approached the racks upon racks of codices and picked one up. It was attached to something further back in the wall via a cable. The codex screen lit up, the harsh light dazzling her and deepening the blackness of her surroundings. A word appeared centred on the screen and a grid of letters appeared below, in an order that did not seem to correspond to any alphabet that Yusi could identify.

She pressed the letters randomly but that only left a large red cross on screen and the opportunity to try again. She flipped the codex over and, now knowing that the panel could be moved, tried to get it off. She tried prying, pushing and pulling but nothing bore fruit until she tried sliding it aside. It revealed another tomestone, identical to the one she had seen before. She tried sliding that one out too, and it came out easily. The item was the size of her thumb and made of a dark material that was smooth to the touch, like a hard leather pressed silk-thin.

She replaced the codex and made her way further into the room, gutting the tomestones from each and every codex that would disgorge its contents. She had tried to disconnect them from the wall at first, but the cables held fast to their tablets and did not stretch nor cut when she attempted violence to disconnect. She would have to be content with just the single one she had purloined from the console, but she could not let it lie there.

Her last attempt at destroying a cable ended disastrously. Her hard pulling was rewarded with a faint ripping sound before the darkness in the room was replaced with a harsh red. A loud alarm sound blared and she thought she could make out the word ‘intruder’ in the garbled voice coming from multiple places and echoing far. Loud clunking and clanging sounds crashed through the room and it began to drop, akin to the lift but nowhere near as gently.

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FFXIV Write #25 – Perpetuity

With the recessed ceiling lights shining bright, it was a lot less grim to navigate the enormous facility than it had been before she had found the security console before. Yusi needed to take notes on everything she could see – the metalwork bindings, the detail of the lighting, the shapes and various patterns of the engravings.

Any single one of these details, if the components within machinery were understood or the geological-looking patterns turned out to be more than just aesthetically designed, could further the understanding of her people. The problems therein were twofold – Yusi’s own lack of understanding, for how could one seek to understand the masterpieces of those who came earlier if they were only journeymen in the current field of knowing. The secondary issue was just how remote Sector Phi was – it was at least a week’s travel north to the closest civilisation and the aether-starved atmosphere would likely make ruin of any artefacts that were brought back.

That this building had stood, even dormant, for such a long time proved testament to the sheer difference in knowledge of civilisations. On the one hand, the grand empire of Allag which had spanned continents, and the other held pitifully small Kha tribe, which could be walked edge-to-edge within a bell. To really face – to be within a part of – the insurmountable wall of knowing itself was enough to drive a person to despair, but Yusi chose not to.

She had parchment, ink, and a quill stashed somewhere within her backpack and would note down everything she could. Maybe it would have been more convenient if she had brought a codex – a piece of technology that could record text and speech to be displayed or played back – but such things were all being used to store the clan’s archives and purchasing more would come at an extortionate price.

The very thought was crossing her mind as a familiar sight, similar to the security room wherein Yusi had caused the flood which had wiped out most of Sector Phi. Only the dangerous stuff, she hoped. It was a room enshrouded in darkness and a cold that instantly piqued her interest. She meandered in, adding its details to the little song she was using as a memory aid, and stumbled across another console. With the light from outside, she could read the text on the panels but it all seemed garbled eorzean – like someone had taken the same letters but ascribed different sounds to them. She might have been able to figure out the code, but she found something far more noteworthy.

A codex had been left on the desk, precisely the same as the ones used within her clan except that a panel on the back, one that normally sat so flush with the construction that nobody – not even Yusi herself – had even noticed it could be removed. Within the panel another familiar object. A tomestone, a small removable stick of electronics that acted as storage within the device.

“These codices contained tomestones all along?” She murmured to herself, and looked around at the darkened room. Her eyes had been acclimatising to the darkness and she could now see within; the racks upon racks of codices which all must have contained a lifetime of knowledge.

Maybe she had a way of bringing back more than written accounts of her journey.

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FFXIV Write #23 – Cloud Nine

Even through the heady cocktail of chemicals her body was feeding her, Yusi managed to drag the carcass back to the entrance to Sector Phi. The magicked carpet had fully unwound itself within eyeshot of the entrance and Yusi thanked the gods for the good craftsmanship that it had even lasted that far.

As the huntress and her prey re-entered the facility, the biting cold of the desert air was replaced with the clement air from whatever controlled the climate with this large dome. Yusi found it easy to give in to the rampant forces pulling her sanity apart and began singing a song that bubbled forth from the depths of her sleep-deprived, delirious, pained, and adrenaline-spiked brain. An old hunting song ripped from her soul at the top of her lungs.

When she came to her senses, she was laying on the floor beside a fire. Yusi figured that she must have gotten some amount of sleep, given the cold ache in her back from the floor. Her unconscious self must have dealt with the harder parts of separating the meat from the gristle, and for that she thanked as well.

When she stood up, she felt a weight shift off of her and a heavy clang rang out as the sphere dropped onto the floor and began rolling. Yusi swore and dove after it while it meandered threateningly towards the edge of the walkway. Not that it had enough momentum to bridge the lip that separated the walkway from an abyssal drop, but she was not going to take any chances with what might have been a person trapped inside.

She had no clue what tier of magic she was working with – this could be anything. She had heard rumours of a substitution spell from Yanxian residents that her tribe had made contact with, but the Allagan empire had been a powerhouse of magical research when it had existed millennia ago. It was not too large of a stretch for this to be a protective magicks that held Aras’ body and soul in a hard metal casing. The only question now was to find out – and Yusi had been itching for an excuse to explore this ‘Sector’ more.

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FFXIV Write #21 – Shade

During the investigation afterwards, it had been determined that the Moks’ self-immolation had been a byproduct of the spell that he had attempted to cast. It was found that it had great similarity to western thaumaturgy, but drew in a vast amount of aether from an unknown source. The great amount of power, more than he could handle, had sparked out of control and burned him alive from the inside.

Yusi was banking on that selfsame effect as she willed the selfsame spell into existence. The mixing of her and her target’s lifebloods and her magic tool embedded within the great sandworm gave her enough of a sympathetic link to alter the spell’s destination.

The sand worm attempted to burrow away but could not help but writhe in place as if it were shaking off a swarm of intangible creeping vilekin. Yusi’s spell had effectively lit a fire within its body, centred on the sceptre. She continued incanting the syllables turning the rhythmic syllables, which rent the air asunder and wrought countless sleepless nights, into a salvation. A keen shattering sound indicated the swift southward direction of this plan.

The simple bone sceptre had no chance of holding within the raw power channelled by the advanced spell and had shattered, scattering bone and crystal fragments. No longer with a focus to anchor to, the spell which had run wildfire once before did so again to its two participants. Yusi’s incanting had been cut off to protect herself from flying shards and she screamed as her blood heated. She laid flat against the cool sand and took deep breaths, making use of her wide vocabulary by stringing together an incomprehensible paragraph of multilingual swear words.

Yusi felt like it could have been seconds, minutes, or hours before the stupor of heat and pain waned enough for her to string thoughts together. She crawled over the dune and grabbed her spear, using the haft to support her as she shakily got to her feet.

She hobbled over to her backpack, which had gotten flung off in the entire ordeal, and tore into the few supplies she still had left. She was exhausted, famished, in terrible pain, deeply dehydrated. She was in no mood to plan or think critically, and so she unfurled another curio from the depths of her backpack. She pulled out the long carpet, laid it beside the carcass, and pushed with all her might to roll the sandworm onto it.

A small trickle of magic was all it took to get the carpet to lift briefly into the air. It would run out of its own power soon enough and begin unravelling – cannibalising itself for fuel. In Yusi’s opinion, it was going to hold. It would hold. Or else.

The lingering warmth, or deadened nerves, from the spell that doomed the worm shaded Yusi from the frigid desert air as she retraced her steps back to the entrance to Sector Phi. She could not have told why no further predators decided not to ambush, but in the moment, she felt certain that it was her terrible attitude.

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FFXIV Write #20 – Duel

Yusi had no time to think, not even to consider whether she was even avenging or helping Aras in the current state. He had dropped the sceptre of bone that she had given to him so Yusi scooped it up as she ran at the slaughterous sandworm. The thin aether would severely limit her magic capabilities, effectively leaving her without spellcasting – evening the playfield with the worm’s own lack of magic.

She may have been out of spells, but she was not out of options. The bone of her sceptre had come of a large fang and while the tip had been blunted and the haft was not suited, it had still once been a weapon meant for killing.

A one-on-one fight, Yusi had been taught, was a battle for superiority of options. First and foremost, Yusi needed to prevent her quarry from escaping. Sandworms, like most every creature within The Burn, preferred to ambush weakened prey or scavenge the bones from other creatures’ kills. This meant that after any attack – successful or no – it would immediately burrow underground to eat safely and escape ambushers.

Yusi would have to stop that by forcing it to fight her. She leaped on top of the sandworm and began stabbing at it wherever she could. It writhed violently below her, trying to shake her off and burrow itself underground. She prayed thankfully for the way time had progressed, for if she was covered in the sweat from a midday sun she may have been thrown off, but she held fast and managed to wedge her weapon between the scales of the beast.

With first blood undeniably going to Yusi, the sandworm forgot about any attempts to flee and instead rounded on her. It rolled over, pinning Yusi to the sand and squirming to get the dagger out of itself. It rolled over and raked its multitude of near-vestigial scythe-like feet against her, but dragging the tooth up and over itself only managed to open the wound further.

Yusi’s outfit was meant for protecting herself from the harsh weather than from the vicious bites of creatures – she had deviated far from anything she had originally planned with the Bairon people and was paying the price for it. The sharp feet dug into her skin, scattering her own lifeblood across the sand to mix with the sandworm’s.

The options of both duellists had been severely lessened. But Yusi still had more, even were it to come with a price she was not keen on paying.

She let go of the sceptre and kicked at the worm, buying the both of them space. The worm continued writhing to remove the sceptre, but Yusi banked on it staying in. The rough hide, which had been so adept at repelling the weapon’s entrance, was not so adept at allowing its exit. Yusi cast her mind years back to a disaster that still haunted her nightmares and began incanting the syllables that lead to Moks' self-immolation.

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FFXIV Write #19 – Taken

The sandworm they were tracking was particularly small. Relatively small in that it was likely only as long as Yusi and Aras were tall. Combined.

It would not have been dragging the desman corpse shallowly underneath the sand had it been any larger – it would have been more than happy to finish in a single bite and dig deep under the sand to avoid the rapidly cooling surface layers of sand. The fact that it had not meant that the sandworm was still juvenile and lacked the strength to carry it too deeply and that it could be ambushed.

Yusi rose to the top of a dune and checked on Aras behind her. He looked like he was taking the desert atmosphere about as well as a fish took to an open flame, even despite the forgiving temperature at these twilight hours. This concerned her, but she had little time to worry on it while their quarry was potentially getting further away – maybe he just needs to eat something more proper.

It took a few dunes more until she saw a continuous shifting within the sand which seemed consistent with a juvenile sandworm devouring its prey. Time was short before it hit the freezing temperatures of a nighttime desert, and Yusi waited impatiently for Aras to catch up.

“It’s there – just down the bottom. I’ll get it, you cover me – holler if you see or feel anything wrong.” She didn’t wait for an answer before launching herself down the dune.

Yusi’s leap took her to her target and she used the momentum to drive the spear, gripped tightly in her hands, into the centre of the disturbed sand. The spear felt resistance from the sand, then from a less consistent source below. Yusi kicked away sand below and jumped aside to avoid an incoming counterattack. The spear’s end was slick with blood and she did not feel the rumblings of an enraged sandworm. She had either gotten lucky with a fatal inciting blow, or scared the worm away from the desman corpse for her and Aras to recover.

She was more cautious with her following blows, careful to feel for any rumblings of incoming targets, but she continued to pull back bloody thrusts. She was about to start digging for the corpse, when she heard Aras’ brief shout.

“H-help!” He shouted, before disappearing over the other side of the dune.

Yusi screamed internally and dashed up on all fours – her spear forgotten by the bloody mess she had made in the sands. As she crested the top, she saw the sandworm biting down bloodlessly on Aras’ leg. He himself flickered, as if made of light instead of flesh, then disappeared. What replaced him, Yusi assumed it must have been a teleportation spell of some sort, was a sphere consistent with Allag design.

The worm, completely untouched by Yusi’s mad flurry, swallowed the sphere and began to escape with it captive.

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FFXIV Write #18 – Hackneyed

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took a few days off to mentally recover - burning the candle at both ends to get writing done only ends with a burnt wick, as I should have realised earlier >.>

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A dodo in your wrest trumps five in the nest, Yusi had been told once. Then again, by Ozbeg over and over, and by her fisherwoman friend Chakha, again and again. She hadn’t quite understood Chakha, for Yusi had always pulled the largest fish mooching with smaller ones instead of the tackle that Chakha preferred.

Yusi preferred spearfishing to angling though and though the harsh desert environment was just as far as you could get from underwater aquatic, the principles remained the same. Somewhat the same.

The hot sun from earlier in the day had retreated to leave the sand twinkling a shadowed blue underneath a pink sky, but the fading light did little to conceal the disturbed sand from the worm. The heat was a lot more manageable and while the thinness in the aether - which had felt like a thin veil wrapped around her lungs - would take reacclimatising to, it would not slow her down nor dull her senses. Her eyes were darting for any false tracks or confusion from other crossing creatures and the rest of her concentration was listening out for any signs of distress from her travel companion or any incoming signs of ambush.

Aras had no clue how Yusi still had the strength to continue. Even with the sand not scorching his feet through his boots, which he had full expected it to do, the dry air was threatening to burn his lungs to cinders. He wiped the budding sweat from his brow and gritted his teeth. She’s working off a day of travel already, I can’t lose to her so soon. His footing kept slipping on the loose sand before he slowly found his stride to keep up with the xaela.

He had to keep reminding himself that he was unused to this life and that she was, but he could not even be sure of that. He took solace in the fact that she even found him useful, though.

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FFXIV Write #16 – Third-rate

After a short rest to allow the pair’s mental fatigue to rest, Yusi guided Aras back to the ratty hole that she had used to enter Sector Phi. On the way, she shared some of the food from her pack and checked the water-gathering curio that she had stored. The residual water-aspected aether in the air from the flood-drenched floor before must have done it some good, as it was full and threatening to spill over. She decanted the contents into an empty waterskin and set it down upon the floor.

“The aether is thick in here – at least thicker than outside, so it should surely fill by the time we return. Successful or not.” Yusi said.

“Mhets ho-” Aras started replying through a mouthful of dried meat, but was struck by a coughing fit.

Yusi patiently waited for his struggle with his throat to subside and by the time it had, Aras saw that she had assembled a spear’s half and was attaching her dagger to the tip.

“I haven’t a clue how to hunt; just so you know.” He said.

“I assumed so, so you’ll be on support.” She replied, tossing her sceptre to him, “you seemed competent enough to erect a barrier.”

“I know the theory behind raw aetheromancy – not that I have the experience casting it in, especially when my very life is on the line! It’ll be life or death!”

Yusi rolled her eyes and lifted the dagger-now-spear, hefting it with an ease that made it look like the 2-yalms of haft had not changed the dagger’s weight a single onze. “So, you’re a third-rate hunter with a fourth-rate staff? I’m taking point, might be that the most you’ll need to do is yell at me if something appears from a dune.”

Aras made an incredulous noise at that, but gritted his teeth and followed Yusi to the hole she had entered through.

The sensation as the aether-starved atmosphere of The Burn hit Aras was like nothing he had experienced before; he assumed that he would hold some memory of this. It was as if a weighted blanket had been placed over him, both in body and soul. He tried cycling internal aether in his body – as he had after Yusi mentioned a general ‘enforcement’ spell – and it moved sluggishly, like moving syrup in slush.

“The desman is gone.” Yusi said, defeat notably absent from her voice, “but there’s a sandworm’s tracks we can follow.”

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FFXIV Write #15 – Free Day

Yusi, whose lips had been eager to spill any and every information mere minutes ago, had fallen into an uncharacteristic silence. Aras’ attempts to provoke her to speech had all fallen flat and he partially thanked her for the excuse for them to both finish the climb in silence.

The terrible ache in his muscles seemed to abate at the repetitive task of taking rung after rung, until he felt nothing but empty void within himself. Even gazing at the floor far below, which had set his chest alight once before, could do nothing to fill the yawning abyss.

Aras’ hand wrapped around thin air instead of cool metal and his other hand, already in the process of leaving its current perch, failed to regrasp anything. Aras screamed, falling back, mortal peril quickly replacing every other feeling in his body. Yusi’s hand grabbed his and pulled him onto the ledge where she was.

“You shouldn’t get lost in thought when your life may be lost instead, Aras.” She said, keeping the strange accent to Aras’ ears that told him she was speaking her own tongue to him.

“The top? We’re finally there?”

He collapsed onto the floor, his muscles feeling sore and utterly spent. Like there was acid running through his veins instead of blood, pain wracked him to the core. “Nngh. How are you fine?” He spoke through gritted teeth to the xaela standing over him.

“The aether in here is thick – I was enforcing my body with magicked strength. I could teach you, but it’s more a state of mind with trancing than an incantation.”

“Y- you can do that?” He asked, wishing that his own haze of memories – or at least Yusi’s memories that he had observed – had unveiled something so useful.

He heard her chanting and felt a refreshing breeze and the aches and pains of his muscles eased. He relaxed, feeling sticky with heat and sweat and once again relieved to be alive.

“It’s not good practice to use healing to stamina – your body won’t grow stronger from the exertions you’ve made,” Yusi instructed with an air of a tutor of hers. These words did not carry as through from Ozbeg, so Aras assumed that her magecraft tutor had been someone else.

“It also suppresses pain a little, at least your hunger. We still desperately need to find food – I just hope that something nasty hasn’t taken away that desman corpse I left.”

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FFXIV Write #14 – Telling

Aras was pulled from his stupor of foreign memories, rather literally, by Yusi’s hand grasping the scruff of his shirt and pulling hard. He found it difficult to breathe and panicked for his life. He grasped her hand in his and squeezed tightly on her wrist, forcing her to let go, but a second hand of hers joined the first, this one supporting under his armpit and pulling him upwards.

His confusion swiftly abated as he realised that his body had folded up further behind the ladder and that he was ilms from falling to his death.

“By the Twelve, Aras!” Yusi spoke through gritted teeth, “at least let me save you! Please!”

Aras could see that she was hanging upside-down, only supported by her legs wrapped in a vice grip. He scrambled to get some purchase on Yusi’s own arms, dragging himself up while his saviour groaned in effort and pulled muscles. He grasped the rungs above and steadied himself on the rungs below before any sense of safety returned.

“No more breaks, by the hells we’ll get to the top before that can happen again.” He said and winced as his aching muscles took up the strain of climbing again. “But what on Hydaelyn happened there?”

“I think you fell asleep? I heard you slipping and grabbed you before you fell, but I didn’t think that my father’s lullabies would send you at all– let alone so swiftly!”

“Lullabies? Hunting for a dead lamb is a lullaby?”

“A dead lamb? What are you talking about?”

“The story you were telling me! About you and Ozbeg hunting coeurls in revenge of a lost lamb!” Aras was starting to get annoyed at Yusi’s blatant denial, which redoubled when he reached for the following rung and got a palm-load of muddy, sandy and soggy boot. He looked up to see Yusi, who had stopped climbing, looking him in the face with confusion and fright.

“I wasn’t– Ozbeg isn’t my father, and that was not what I was telling you. I thought you wanted to know about them, so I was just telling... No, never mind. Di- what did you see?”

“You were tending to sheep, then Ozbeg came up with horses – one called chocobo or something - and took you to get revenge on the coeurls that killed a lamb.”

Yusi stepped onto the next rung and the next, continuing the pair’s climb in silence. After a while she spoke again. To Aras, her words sounded strange, like she had taken on another accent.

“Can you still understand me, Aras?”

“Yeah, pretty well. Why?”

“That was spoken in my own tongue. I think you’re dawntongued.”

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FFXIV Write #12 - Quarry

The sight of the Azim Steppe though Yusi's recollection struck Aras with an awe and a pride that felt foreign but right. It did not feel so much like he was hearing her tell childhood tales but truly feel them, though the subtle language barrier - his fluent Allag and her competent Eorzean tongue were akin to sisters, albeit estranged.

Yusi was tending to the tribe's herd of sheep by replacing broken fence posts. These would be used as kindling later, for a bonfire to mourn the recently deceased lamb.

The slow thudding of hooves approached her from behind and she turned to see that a tribesman had approached Yusi with a pair of horses, a large one for himself and a smaller gelding for Yusi. She recognised all three.

"Oz! Driver. Chocobo..." She proclaimed joyously, respectfully, and testily.

"Before you ask? No. 'Cobo is yours until you can deal with him every time." Ozbeg swiftly cut off the incoming protest.

"We're avenging the lamb, I know. I'm hoping the pressure of keeping 'Cobo under control will help you understand." He said and passed Chocobo the horse's reins to Yusi.

Chocobo was a horse - 4 legs, mane, tail, and more grump in him than Yusi could thought could fit. His name came from a species of flightless riding-birds that were native to lands elsewhere and Yusi wondered what menaces those things must have been to warrant their name being tied to this beastkin.

She gingerly put her left foot through the stirrup but fell when the nervous nag stepped aside.

"No no, you need confidence more than anything." She heard Ozbeg say as she sprang out of reach of the attempted bite Chocobo was aiming at her.

"Just pretend he's any other horse." They both said in sync, Yusi having heard it many times before.

It was not too long after that she had successfully mounted Chocobo and the pair were riding through the grazing fields, where a pack of coeurls had been sighted and had attacked just last night.

Oz retrieved the wrapped corpse of the lamb from his pack and unwrapped it, offering the creature back to the land that had born its ancestors, then lead himself and Yusi into a secluded place some ways away.

"Have you said your prayers?" Ozbeg asked and Yusi nodded solemnly.

"Now we hunt in kind, and our fangs are sharper." She answered.

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FFXIV Write #11 - Surrogate

Aras panted heavily as he and Yusi continued up the ladder, with still no end in sight. The strenuous exercise had him more aware of his hunger than ever. He longed for food, for his mother's cooking-

That was a start and a hopeful one! Aras had a mother! Presumably a father too, but his elation at sparking even a single fragment memory was more than he child hope for.

Yusi continued recollecting of her own history, ignorant to Aras' revelation, and while her recollection had helped pass the time, he needed to steer her to more useful endeavours.

"You spoke of this Moks person," Aras managed between gasps, "and elders and khat-somethings. What of your parents?"

Having heard his exhaustion for the first time in a long while, Yusi decided for the both of them that a rest was in order. She weaved her upper body between the rungs and twisted herself in a fluid motion that made Aras green with envy. He followed suit with much less grace but heaved an enormous sigh of relief as his back made contact with the blissfully-cool wall and his sore muscles got to rest.

Today truly had been non-stop. He wanted to take his time further, to let the savage hunt and bring him food - almost like a trained beast, he mused, but a twinge of guilt stopped that thought. They were using each other, Aras reminded himself, the girl wanted his knowledge and this facility's plunder, and he just wanted to survive. He should keep things cordial, treat her like he would another Allagan if there were any others left. The thought cut deep and unbidden, and Yusi, damn even her name was starting to feel normal - Allag, even - to his lips, cut the growing silence twofold.

"I didn't have conventional parents - well I had a mother and father, but they weren't my parents." She began recounting and Aras let his present become her past. He felt a headache come with her words and closed his eyes to again forget the present.

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Ffxiv write #10 - Stable

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Headcanon alert! As far as I recall, the only Kha that we meet in game is Jaliqai - the hunter-scholar who tells you about hunt marks within the Steppe. Aside from her, we only know that the Kha live of Ateppe fringes and seek out foreign cultures. I chose to interpret that further as a zealous mission to seek knowledge and understanding.

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It was always a celebration when the spring seasons rolled around and new blood joined the clan. New foals to one day become the dependable and fierce ranging stock, new lambs to provide the wools that made the basis of trade supplies - raw and spun. But most important was the new blood of man - babes born to the tribe and outsiders who joined, mainly temporarily, to seek tutelage from the clan scholars or to seek refuge from larger threats.

The majority of xaela clans viewed the Kha as other - that they accepted and outright sought foreign trade and cultural integration - and so they were simultaneously respected and reviled by those who lived closer to the 'pure' lives dictated by tradition and faith.

"Why don't we fight in the Naadam? If the other clans come to us to learn smithing and fighting and stuff, doesn't that mean that we're stronger?" A young Yusi asked once while given the opportunity to comb cashmere alone with the clan matriarch.

The Naadam was a yearly competition of power between the tribes, culminating in holding a position in the centre of the steppe against your rivals. The winner of which, the new Khagun, would rule the Steppe.

"Few of our people would even qualify to participate, little thinker, for few have completed the trials within Bardam's Mettle. Most years we don't get within malms and malms of it." The then-khatun had told her, "and even if more did, could they raise their swords in conquest? Hah! Our hands may as well have grown olives."

Yusi did not understand the idiom and resolved to ask at a later time.

"But if we compete and win, we'd get to tell the others what to do - we could tell them to stop fighting and work together." The little thinker thought aloud.

The Elder gave an exaggerated hum of thought before smiling in a way that creased her face pleasantly and said, "yes you have a point, but people also don't like change - to be xaela is to kill and be killed, they think - and such a way of life is as obvious as the sun rising at dawn."

She tickled the beastkin laying across her lap as a distraction. Yusi giggled at the startled beats.

"We'd win, for a time," she said with an utter confidence that halted Yusi's giggling.

"No doubt about it. But now we've shown ourselves as a threat - and other tribes will ally to tear us to shreds and put our codices to their wars."

The smile faded, and her face showed the weariness of age more severely than any scolding Yusi had suffered.

"You remember Moks? The tablet that he bought from that band of pirates - the Confederacy? The results of the spell that Moks had transcripted and performed?"

Yusi's stomach lurched and she had to cover her mouth before she got herself under control again. She had hoped to never recall that event again, that and the smell that haunted her.

"No, it's much better that we be the weird outsider tribe. The Khangun asks little of us, and we keep to our divine duty."

"So we leave the pot on the fire and watch, lest it boil."

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FFXIV writing #9 – Lend an Ear

Aras hadn't needed to hunt at all in his life; or so he recalled, and he truly hopes that recollection was true. He followed Yusi as they both trudged through a room wide puddle to the grand elevator that had taken them down to their current floor. He was enjoying the sensation of letting go. Even if their lives were in danger, it was not his area of expertise and it was someone else’s.

The pair got to the platform and Aras keyed in the top floor. No response.

“Was it the water? Is it broken now?” Yusi said, trying to decipher the writing on the console.

Aras only grumbled in response and wracked his brain to try and remember an alternate way up, or if he had seen any repair nodes, active or not, that might be called upon.

“C’mon,” the xaela woman grabbed his hand and lead him to the emergency access ladder at the side.

“If there are indeed hells, then it must not be so different to this.” He hissed through gritted teeth.

They both began climbing the ladder with the destination not even visible to them, being so far down from it.

The two climbed in silence for a couple of minutes before Aras, whose hot breath was already catching in his throat, broke it with a simple question.

“So I spilled my life to you. What’s it like being… you?” He said.

“Oh! I’m happy to tell you anything and everything! Like grampappy Khan says ‘to understand is to be define’. That’s even where I got my name from. It’s from another language – not sure which – but Yusi is ‘you see’. You see?” She spoke jovially and wholly unimpeded by the physical exertion, much to Aras’ dismay. Maybe if I keep her yapping she’ll also suffer this climb.

“I see, I guess. So what did you do at your home?” Maybe if he heard about her home and her life, some memories of his own would be jogged. He hoped, he pleaded, to Gods he did not believe in.

[caffsy]

FFXIV Writing #7 – Morsel

--- Only a shorter one today - I said I was going to try shortening them and bashed out two long as heck ones. Whoopsie~ ---

Now that imminent death and untold wanton destruction had been averted, Aras’ new immediate concerns were threefold – the emptiness of the facility, the emptiness of his stomach, and the empty feeling that had come of learning everyone he may have known was long dead, buried like rubble underneath millennia of time and myriad calamities.

Furthermore, he wasn’t sure why he had awoken alone. He had been roused alongside the rest of the facility thanks to Yusi’s meddling at a security console, but his spotty memory had him questioning the nature of his current existence. He hoped that his lacking memory was the aftereffects of a temporal statis spell violently breaking and nothing else.

No, Aras thought in the din’s lull, I must focus on what I can remember instead of what I cannot.

Yusi’s questioning of his homeland helped to ease his pain – she had even corrected him whenever he had spoken of things in the past tense, which he appreciated more than he let on.

“… and this facility – Sector Phi – it was,” Aras said.

“Is,” Yusi interjected on reflex. That made him scoff in laughter, “Come on, girl. Everything below us – fourty-five floors of specimens, are now destroyed or drowned or trapped. Phi is ‘was’.”

The xaela averted her eyes in guilt and the hyur continued, “this place was a chimera lab. We stitched together monsters from around the Star to better understand how they work. Then we wanted to know what would happen to those aetherochemical mechanics inside of them if they were even stronger. And so, we fed them power and we watched...” His words trailed off and his thoughts darkened again.

The pair both jumped at a low growling sound very close. Then Yusi burst into laughter. “Sorry that was my stomach. Where’d you eat here? I don’t want to break into my rations, who knows what else I’ll find when I’m out of here.” She got to her feet and offered Aras a hand. He felt a spike of ice in his chest at that thought – even if she was a savage, she was the only person around – possibly for horizons, considering what she had said of her journeys to this place.

“Ah, the main canteen is- it’s below us. Was below us. Not that any food would still be good after millennia.” Aras said, and his second immediate concern jumped up to a vital problem.

“We’re going to need to hunt.”

[caffsy]

FFXIV writing #6 – Halcyon

Yusi caught Aras before he hit the floor. She wasn’t expecting his burst of mania, but if he truly was a remnant of Allag then that changed the entire situation. He was out cold, though, and she still needed to help him – she had agreed to do fix the situation to the best of her abilities.

The elevator was taking them to where they would head off the oncoming tide and Yusi needed to tend to the growing multitudes of pains in her body. She placed her backpack down and rested Aras’ head against it, it would be softer than the metallic floor anyhow. She used the rest of the ride to eat, drink, and meditate her mana.

Yusi pulled Aras’ arms around her neck and hefted him onto her back as the elevator ground to a half with an ear-piercing squeal of metal on metal. When relative silence returned, she listened out and followed the echoing rumble. The rumbling grew louder and louder until she could feel the sound through her feet as much as hearing through her horns.

Aras was stirring back to consciousness, Yusi felt through the stirring on her back. Things were starting to feel rather dire – she could not see any of the button-tables similar to the room before that might control the doors. The only thing lining the walls besides the patterned metal and lines of blue were pods or chambers – maybe cupboards, closets, or closed doorways to offices or whatnot.

“Aras wake up – please!” She shouted and jostled him further. She kept proceeding on foot, jostling more as the roaring grew in the hopes that he would be woken from knockout that she had provided.

At last, she found a doorway whose height was only comparable to the Dawn Throne itself, with a table just nearby. The roaring of the oncoming tide was immense and she could begin to make out individual waves crashing amongst each other – it was close. Far too close.

She dragged Aras to the console and began again to try and wake him. No such luck.

She wanted to be angry at him, but this was all her fault – she couldn’t make things worse by mucking things up with these levers and buttons. All these physical attempts to resuscitate him had failed so she had to try a magical solution.

She drew her sceptre of bone and gem, an implement wholly unsuited to the channelling of healing magicks, and began the lengthy incantation over the all-encompassing sensation of imminent hydraulic death.

Unlike what rumours said, raising spells could only pull an unconscious target back to their feet; and if casting a simple curing spell from one’s personal aether supply was akin to offering your hand for someone’s nutrition, performing a raising spell was like spilling your guts on the off-chance that someone else could make better use of them.

Thankfully unlike the outside desolation of The Burn, this facility had plenty of ambient aether for Yusi’s spell to gather into a grand burst of healing. It was still a massive burden, both physically and spiritually, to focus and gather so much, but possible.

She could feel the aether being sucked into Aras’ body, which was pulled upright with a flourish of conjured wind, and flopped down against the wall.

Aras was brought back to waking suddenly and in front of precisely where he wanted to be. He thought, for a moment, that it might have been teleportation – that was an option for moving between facilities, but was only used within facilities sparingly.

No, he had not been moved by magic, but the savage. The heat of rage was still within his bones but he was the bigger man – he could let this feud wait until he was safe from the rising and rumbling tide. He leaned over the console and pressed the blast door locking mechanism.

No budge. The button was just as stuck as the lever from earlier.

He growled and unleashed his fury as a two-handed fist strike.

The door began to close, but agonisingly slowly. The millennia – oh Xande it must be so many – had not been kind to anything mechanical here.

The tide had appeared within eyesight and it was still a roaring wall of water that would crush them as surely as if the ceiling fell on them. He momentarily took solace in the fact that any other survivors wouldn’t also be crushed to death, then his anger came back. No I am not dying here!

Aras looked around and saw Yusi – the savage – slumped against the wall, relaxing like she had not just forced him to do the actual work; but more importantly than the xaela herself – her sceptre.

“Get up, savage. I’m going to survive this and then you’ll–” he could not put his thoughts into words and pulled her up by the wrist holding her implement. She groaned at the effort, the weakling, and he snatched the sceptre from her hands. Aras was no expert at aetheromancy but even with the unfamiliar implement he could layer barriers of aether.

He smirked at the savage and tossed her back her sceptre.

Yusi was not as experienced as the elders that had originally tutored her in the myriad magical arts, but she could tell that the barriers were not going to hold against the water. Not long enough for the door to close, anyhow. She rushed close to Aras and desperately channelled a barrier of her own, a reinforcement to his myriad layers.

“From the heart of the mountain; to the eye of the storm; so do the waters flow till lasting bridges form!” She incanted in an ancient tongue, and the barriers locked together, fixing themselves to cooperatively carry the strain instead of all crumbling individually.

The cacophony of noises came to ahead at the collision of doors, water, and spell – the roaring maelstrom, the squealing mechanism, and the ominous cracking of the barrier drowned out all other sensation before the flow slowed and ceased. The blast door held against the tide and locked itself into position and the water roared off elsewhere, to fill the rest of the deep subterranean facility.

Aras gave Yusi a sneering smile and said, “that’s the start of your reparations,” but his heart clearly was not in the same place as his expression showed.

“Can you tell me about your empire?” She asked.

“Oh I can – and you better remember every detail.” He said, “Because it was peerless on the Star.”

The dreg of an empire spoke of his homeland, of the beauty and the knowledge, and the wonders that they had made of the Star and its inhabitants. And the explorer far from home, whose own ancestors had been pillaged for test subjects, listened and remembered.

The both of them were sopping wet and exhausted down to their very souls, and so very alive.