#|| muse | fourchenault ||

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@ichoric asked: 🩸 alphy @ dad Send 🩸 to find a wound that my muse was trying to hide || Accepting

Fourchenault had been a healer for most of his life, now. For two lifetimes, in a way, and certainly for long enough to know that healing a wound and healing properly a wound were very different matters. And for all he knew that an effort of will and an extension of aether might have turned a wound into a scar in a matter of heartbeats, he also knew better than to do it.

So he'd bandaged it, the hum of his nouliths making sure only that it would not get worse, and he was letting his body repair itself, trying to be patient, using aether and magic only as much as he dared. A minor wound might have not mattered, but Fourchenault needed full use of his hands as a Sage. And so, with a cut as long as that one, he wouldn't risk losing long-term mobility by being hasty.

He still hadn't let anyone other than Ameliance know about his most recent wound. It was far from the first time, and it might be far from the last... at least until he felt the bandage start to bleed through, and he was forced to retire to his study in a hurry, before the wound stained his Forum clothes.

He should have expected someone to notice, he thought. And there was little hiding as he changed the bandage one-handed, with the kind of practice that came from someone who had not forgotten the lessons of a field medic.

"Alphinaud." He greeted, nevertheless, as he saw his son enter the study through the door Fourchenault had not closed, in his hurry. "Is aught the matter, son?"

He knew far too well than hiding the wound would only have been even more suspicious, after all.

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@pcndaemonium asked: “ They will consume you. Change you… into something else. ” ( from Ascian!Hege to Emmerololth)

Has it not happened already, he wonders, and oh how sudden, unwanted laughter blooms in his chest. There's no mirth to be found within it.

"You too have changed, Hegemone." He replies, in the end. "What is to say this is not for the better?"

It's a lie, and it tastes as such as he speaks it. He should be the healer of eld, not a scholar far too young to hold the memories of an immortal.

And yet they are, both ghosts.

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(stcrblessed) Sevestre played absent-mindedly with Fourchenault's braid. "You should support my submission to the Forum. If you agree with me, we will get it approved in nearly no time."

@stcrblessed He barely twitched at the hands on his hair, so focused as he'd been on reading the newest series of proposals, submissions and papers that had made their way to his desk. Not when he realized whose hands were. At Sevestre's words, however, he hummed.

"I shall see what I can do." He spoke, at last. "I am in favor of it, and you know that. But," he sighed, "the Forum is far too used to seeing me as an extension of my father. I cannot be hasty."

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they're smaller than the other shades. masks on, whereas faint copper hair peeks through -- an odd splash of color amidst black and grey. both stand by a tree off to the side, alone and barely moving, though their eyes are unmistakably resting on the ascian. ( haunts u )

Every step is a memory, and few of them are kind. They might have been, on another lifetime, before the end. Before he remembered the Final Days and what came after. And yet, curse his no-longer mortal soul, he remembers, and walks this monument to their lost people.

Emmerololth might oppose bringing them back at the cost it would demand, and nobody would call Fourchenault a sentimental man, but oh how he misses. How it hurts.

And amidst so many memories, and many of them theirs, how would he not notice them? They are shades, the moment of hope breaks as soon as soon as he regards them properly, and he doesn't know if he wants to thank Emet-Selch, or stab him himself.

"Artemis. Apollo." He speaks, his voice a broken whisper.

He failed them, so long ago. Do their ghosts even remember him?

Should their ghosts even remember him?

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Thinking at the moment about Fourchemmerololth, Galuf Baldesion and Eureka. 

About Galuf being a mentor to Fourche. About Fourche wanting to use the weapons in the Isle of Val against the Unsundered, and Galuf attempting to destroy it all to prevent an Ascian wearing the face of his pupil from accessing them. 

About Fourchenault almost not surviving, but living with the guilt. And him discreetly funding the Students of Baldesion afterwards.

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Fourchenault vc:

"Please do not throw my children in battle."

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ARE YOU A SOLDIER, A POET, OR A KING?

PoV: Fallen Azem

The Soldier

"There will come a soldier Who carries a mighty sword He will tear your city down" Righteousness. Strength. Violence. You see a door and break through it. You wonder, sometimes, if anger is the only thing you can feel. Remember : love is passion too. You made your own rules and will follow them to death. You try and forget that there is only one rule, and that it is "FIGHT". You are tired of fighting. You try to forget that, too, and keep going. You dream of quiet. Your love is where you heal. God knows you deserve to. (Really. You deserve to.) 

PoV: Emmerololth (Fourchenault)

The King

“There will come a ruler Whose brow is laid in thorn Smeared with oil like David's boy" Duty. Strength. Resignation. You were told to do things and you did them. The world is something that was put into your hands and that you must deal with - so you will. You have a rigid back and steady hands, either metaphorically or physically. Is it nature or nurture ? You don't know. You are tired of being steady. You dream of feeling alive. Not that you aren't, but, sometimes, it's hard to remember that there is a heart between your ribs. Your love is where you breathe. Come on, breathe. In. Out. It starts now. 

tagged by:  @pcndaemonium tagging:  @starsfreckled @primalvessel @morganaux @seatedsacrifice @charmingbrute @ichoric @ritterblood @minarcana and everyone else who sees this :3

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Second HC of the day: 

Young Fourche greatly admiring Galuf Baldesion, and even seeing him as a mentor figure of sorts. 

Particularly in the Emmerololth verse.

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⚠ also amaya for big brother fourchenault,,

Send me ⚠ to find my muse at the end of a trail of blood. || Accepting

Fourchenault was more than familiar with blood, in this life and in his previous one both. It was the duty of a healer, after all, to be where the injuries were.

This time, however, he was who the injuries were on. And the greatest clinical eye could help little, could change little, if he did not have the strength to summon his nouliths and knit together what a blade had chosen to shatter, very particularly his shoulder.

It had not been a normal blade, the one that now saw him slumped against the wall of a long abandoned house. Now only a shard of it remained, still lodged on his shoulder. Still absorbing every drop of aether he tried to use to heal himself.

Once again he tried to pry it out, and once again he failed, in this land so far from his homeland, so far from his wife and his children and behind a red mask that he had once donned with pride, and now only with derision.

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@seatedsacrifice liked for an Emmerololth! Fourchenault starter!

"You were once the youngest among us, weren't you?"

It may be a dangerous question, after all these years. After all that was done, after all that was sacrificed. But Emmerololth has not been long in his seat, and his memories were not yet something he trusted blindly.

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@ichoric liked for an Emmerololth! Fourchenault starter! (So have one for Alisaie too because I couldn't decide)

"Sharlayan is not a city of soldiers."

He would know it well, despite his experience in as a Sage. He had long done all in his power to ensure that was the case, he had long expressed his derision regarding foreign conflicts.

"It would be foolishness to send scholars into war."

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@ichoric liked for an Emmerololth! Fourchenault starter! (So have one for Ryne)

"I have long wondered how much does She discuss with Her Oracles." He asked, regarding the young woman from behind his mask, keeping a polite distance.

He didn't often interfere, and the First was not his to affect, but with his children here, how could he not?

"Are you mere servants, or something else?"

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“I hope you know your friendliness towards those barbarians will bite you into your backside sooner or later,” Sevestre reminded the other young man and brushed a couple of pale blonde strands behind his shoulder. Even though, technically, whatever Fourchenault was doing was none of his concern, he worried about the outcome of these relations. Not far from their border, barbarians fought a bloody war with dragons over an incident a millennium ago – seemingly without any solution in sight. But he and the other Sharlayan citizens of the colony did not pay any mind to Sevestre’s warnings as usual. “They aren’t interested in peace and understanding. I genuinely doubt they understand our language in the first place. The only language they speak is that of blood and death, how can you believe to come to an understanding with them? It’s madness.”

@avalcn sent an ask for a young and idealistic Fourchenault

"If they do not understand our language," Fourchenault spoke, warring against the part of his mind that very frankly believed Sevestre had a point, "then is it not on us to make ourselves understood?"

He was holding a stack of books on both dragons and Ishgardians, and one on Dravanian flowers, but he shifted them to hold them on one hand, leaving the other free to emphasize his words.

"I fail to believe that there is not a solution to be found, nor that these people want to live in this perpetual state of bloodshed. Mayhaps they do not speak peace because their forebears have forgotten it. But they might be able to learn it again."

It was not the first time he defended them, despite his growing doubts. He had not yet grown jaded, he had not yet grown cold to the madness around them. And while he understood where Sevestre came from, he did not yet share that view of those beyond Sharlayan.

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❤️ + Sev hates me for this but for Fou in younger years…

Would my muse date yours? || Accepting

I think I could see them go from vitriolic friends to a couple in all but name, to being a couple.

Whether they last as a couple or whether they become a couple of three, who knows.

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“ That wasn’t so hard, was it? ” / uhhhhhh hm. Fourchenalt!

@seatedsacrifice || Have a recently Ascended Emmerololth Consequences of Advanced Spellcasting || Accepting

Fourchenault had been secure in his knowledge of magic and the world, before he has learned of the Ascians. He had been aware that much knowledge had been lost, of course, and yet... Sharlayan understood their world. He'd been certain of it.

Now, with Emmerololth's memories hounding his every thought, with knowledge that was now his (not his, not his!) he could understand just how little they were aware of. And the Rift, he thought, and traveling through it, was not even the larger unknown.

"It felt," he admitted, regarding the Paragon before him, "unexpectedly natural. If perhaps potentially imprecise."

Part of him, the part that remained Fourchenault, was rather rattled by Elidibus' very presence. The rest? Oh, how Emmerololth remembered the youngest of those holding seats. It was hard to be terrified when one remembered as he did. He felt intrigued, instead.

He mourned.

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@archaeoelysian from here

There was a stern look in Louisoix's features, and while it had been a long time since Fourchenault had been in any way cowed by his father's demeanor, it was something jarring, coming from a ghost. An illusion, perhaps, the current Emmerololth considered, his own words but a lapse of judgment, and yet...

Fourchenault had been an Ascian for more than a decade now, and so he knew how to see beyond what his eyes showed him, beyond the flaws in matter. And as he heard his name -not his title, but his name, spoken by a voice he had mourned- he looked, and he saw, and he recoiled, not at the question, but at the truth that had stabbed him through the heart.

"Bahamut." He growled, sudden fury overtaking the shock until it burned away all else in Fourchenault's heart.

"What has become of me?" He echoed, voice taut with anger. "What has been done to you?" He asked instead, even though he knew the answer.

Just as he knew, and that froze all the rage and the raw desire to break composure and scream -at Louisoix, at Bahamut, at the world and the Paragons-, whose fault it could all be traced to, the guilt just as fresh as the very first day, as he clenched his teeth and looked away.

After a moment, and a breath, he removed the mask, and it vanished into red mist, as he glanced upon his father.

"You serve a Primal now." He commented.

And that meant only one thing, one he didn't dare consider just yet.