#'cause Lohi was not leaving him be

[humblemooncat]

"I'm so glad you're okay..."

If they weren't in the middle of danger, Lohi would have jumped this man as soon as he saw him and tackled him to the ground.

Needless to say they had a totally platonic cuddle that night since Lohi could not separate himself from their returned companion.

You're so very good at hiding your feelings for him, Lohi. He's not aware at all. (He is)

[wispofwillow]

FFXIVWrite Prompt 16: Deiform

Prompt 16: Deiform

Characters: Aleia Alsentia; the forest

It was not enough.

Through the open windows, the sounds of night crept. Frogs, in the distance, the song of crickets calling, closer. Wind shush-shushing through leaves, lifting the light curtains to billow like a live thing.

Aleia Alsentia - not her real name, of course, but it would do, as it did for the others here who had adopted it - batted the billowing curtain away as she paced. Her long strides carried her far across the small space, cramped as it was with rough-hewn bookshelves and tables laden with crystals and inks and yet more tomes, and so she turned often, enough to make her almost dizzy.

This place, this camp that had become a village, had been meant to be a haven. But the hunters were closing in - she could sense it like a noose tightening around her neck. Not only her own neck, anymore.

She paused, then, stopping precisely before her overloaded desk to stare down at the journal laid open there - the one no one else had seen, not even Lohi. It was kept locked away and spelled when she was not working on it. Or, in past days, poring over its completion.  

Surprisingly apt pupil though Lohi had proved, it was not enough. Not enough mages had found their way here, and the children born here were not yet old enough to add their own strength. The shielding spell would not work with just their own aether, even amplified. It would drain them too quickly. 

And so, the years of work, the careful testing and preparation put in to hide them, to keep them from view and from the hunters that sought them all, would be in vain.

The first spell.

Aleia had hoped, uselessly, as all hopes proved useless, not to use the second. The one worked in secret from ideas whispered, overheard, and then learned directly, of the Garlean assassins.

The time had come.

Aleia shut out the surface noises of the night, and listened, instead, for the sounds beneath - the thrum of aether in the lives around her, person, animal, plant, carried in the air itself. And, then, beneath - beyond - even that. A rift, a void. Much death had occurred here, before the newer parts of the forest had grown up around it, though the oldest trees must remember. It was why she had picked this place.

In the dark of the room, candles blown out, lamps dimmed, as the spells, at last, chained and took hold, Aleia tipped her head back, and breathed, as she never truly had before. Aether, force, hummed through her, singeing her veins, swarming over her senses - darkness, whispers, words, deep earth, twisting roots grasping, a sense of the world opening - and, in the instants, seconds, eternity before she turned the power into the network of spells, Aleia knew what it was to be a god.

—--

It was not enough.

The shields and subterfuge were failing, and the hunters closed in. Aleia imagined she could smell the metal of their armor, the oil that greased and fed their machines, the particular scent of magitek. And beneath it, something else, something worse.

Or perhaps she could smell it, now, in truth, with her senses so open to the forest and the aether around her. And with them so close.

The forest was dying. Had been dying for years now, and she knew why. For she had caused it. Or, worsened it, to hold out this long.

Had it been worth it?

Perhaps. To see the village grow. Unexpectedly, to see the children grow.

And to have given enough notice - to hear the hunters' hounds baying in the wind. It had given enough chance to warn them all, to get them out. Bursting into Lohi's room, signing to him, shouting to Lenna, had been unseemly, but necessary.

She had made sure they led the others out, though the children, most of them, mercifully, had already gone. They would not need to see.

Aleia tipped her head back. 

Against the backs of her eyelids she saw Lohi and Polia, the de facto mayoress of their little town, looking back at her as they shepherded the others out, along what secret paths they could seek. 

A crack, a whine, followed by the fwoosh of flame erupting. 

Close, indeed, then. 

She was out of time.

But she would buy it, for others.

It was not enough, but it would do.

She released her hold on the tight-gripped aether that spun through her. The codex at her feet, inked so carefully, equation linked to symbol linked to diagram, caught flame, and curled to ash.

Had anyone been close enough to see the Elezen woman's upturned face, flame flaring across her spectacles, etching the lines in her face deeper, they would, in that moment, have thought they had seen a god.

The clearing erupted into fire, and shadow, and death.

[humblemooncat]

Popping an extra headcanon on this because I just realized I never shared why his arms are glowing. You can probably infer based on ShB context but- xD Over the course of defeating the Lightwardens, as Lohi absorbs what's left behind, his eyes begin to glow and get lighter in color with each additional warden, and a light begins to creep up his arms and legs (causing that static feeling, and a white-hot pain when it touches anything).

At the point they get to Amaurot, as pictured above, it has completely taken over his forearms and lower legs, and cracks of light have begun to form, threatening to tear him asunder. His eyes are also almost completely white in color.

When the light is finally expelled from him, he ends up with gold-filled cracks where the light had made them, and light-bleached fingers & toes with the nerves completely fried (leaving him with numbness up to the knuckles).

Sorry, Lohi. The narrative said I can bully you a little bit.

Copy-pasting a Lohi headcanon I had earlier and yelled about on discord. I had to do some gposes for it.

I was bopping around to Phoenix by Netrum, one of Lohi's theme songs, and had an idea for an alternate way for the light to be expelled in the Hades fight. :3c

Gposes & Headcanon under cut

Essentially, once he and Ardbert are rejoined as shards of Azem, he gains an old ability Helios had. The ability to shift forms (in a limited capacity), and to land the last blow on Hades, he uses this to transform into a lesser version of Azem's "true?" form, a bright orange phoenix akin to Suzaku, and corkscrew through his form to expel every bit of light he'd collected in an inferno.

In this process, his physical form is reduced to ash, thus the light can no longer claim him, and the power within Azem's stone restores him from the embers.

After these events, Lohi won't be using a mount to get places anymore, but will instead be using the Rising Phoenix as a second form for travel. (Like a certain ancient probably did. :3c)

Listen, I wanted to take Fist of the Phoenix to its most literal at some point. Lohi gets all the flashy, fiery stuff I couldn't do with my calm, internalizing catboy, since he got the darkness & smoke

Lohi was always going to be the one to go out in a blaze of glory. Willing or no.