FIMBULVETR: TERNCLIFF'S TERMINUS.
aka: give us a wrap up for werlyt, squex.
Terncliff had been on the cusp of desperation several times before Endwalker. First, when they believed Gaius van Baelsar came to colonize and eradicate the culture and heritage that the cliffside port had cultivated; second, when his towering form disappeared from the area all together, leaving tints of Garlean occupation without the promise of industry and technology. The magitek units had come, providing the men and women with goods and services beyond any they would have been able to harness on their remote stretch of Ilsabard, and then simply disappeared, leaving infrastructure half-built and their people without the skills to finish it on their own.
When Valens van Varro began to encroach upon Werlytan territory, they had well and truly believed it to be the final chapter for their people. Valens pushed forth magitek reapers, shattering windows and crumbling brickwork with ease. He had been the Imperial officer they truly had expected when Gaius came to their shores over a dozen summers prior.
Valens was the shadow they had feared, and the depths of his depravity saw no end, as violent and unpredictable as the waves against its jagged, rocky cliff side. He had come simply to beckon the wolf out of hiding, the greying hound's children puppeteered by their loyalty.
The strings that bound them to the Empire would gather around their throats, a noose made of good intentions and false hope, and one by one the Imperial Legatus strung them up and let them rot.
Gaius had nothing to bury but broken machinery and the echoes of children at war. When the Warrior of Light finally helped him seek solace for all that Valens had done, he felt as if there was just as little left of himself, too.
It came as a surprise, then, when the sky began to fall, that neither Gaius nor his remaining child turned into their own fear and uncertainty. As the remaining villagers began to transform, skin and bone into decay and death, he and his daughter remained.
What was the end of the world to those who had lost all but each other?
The blasphemy that haunts the forestry around Terncliff screams one night, a sound half torturous and half inhumane, a vicious, guttural laughter that those who encountered Valens van Varro could never forget.
It is dubbed Fimbulvetr. It is a beast not to be ignored, a beast borne of a boy who had his orphanage ravaged by Valens' mechanical soldiers. He had lived through certain death once, and when the sky began to turn red, his peers collapsing into frothing, soot-bleeding things, he believed the worst days of his life were returning. He had fled into the woods, running for his life, until - under the full red moon - he came across the skeletal remains of the Diamond Weapon.
Fimbulvetr towers past the trees. They are part machine and part person, as if it had simply began gathering up the scrapheap remains of a Garlean occupation. When not cowering among the foliage by daylight, they are calling out for whoever can hear them, mimicked laughter and scared sobbing on an endless loop.
With little and less experience in combat and the inability to put down a child the settlement had once known and cared for, panic and unrest becomes palpable. Even if those in Terncliff got aid from others in Werlyt, they were farmers and fishmongers - few had ever involved themselves in conflict by choice.
And so it fell to the man who had seen his own children laid to rest. The man that had slaughtered nine throne usurpers. The man who had extended an olive branch on the Empire's behalf over a decade before and now resided, desolate and alone, at the outskirts of town, still trying to pull the gristly remains of his existence from the broken corpse the Empire had left behind.
He had led before. He would do it again - just once more.
In the ensuing conflict between Fimbulvetr and their cobbled together militia, Gaius cuts down yet another malady of nature. Their wounds weep blood-tinged ceruleum: flesh carves away to steel innards. They laugh. They laugh. They laugh, sick and familiar.
Until they don't, and it is just a boy begging as he had less than a handful of summers before: Don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. Please.
When Gaius awakes, the sky is blue and the moon is silver and full, shadowed by the sun. In the moment he had hesitated, a father looking at a son begging to be put out of his misery, the beast had lunged.
He is told the Warrior of Light appeared. He is told the machina melted into boy and then into soot and ash, that - finally, finally - nothing remained of the Weapons in the cliff side.
When he awakens, it is the middle of the night. Allie is asleep at his side. Severa and Valdeaulin are snoring in chairs brought from his sitting room. There are flowers on his kitchen table and meals in his Garlean icebox.
He is glad to be alive.
Once he recovers and is able to walk again, he adds the boys name to their memorial, etched below the name of his own children.
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THEME SONGS.
ㅤ— i did something very similar to this recently so i'm gonna try to choose some different songs this time around!!
i.ㅤyoung and menace — fall out boy
we've gone way too fast for way too long
and we were never supposed to make it half this far
and i lived so much life, lived so much life
i think that god is gonna have to kill me twice
kill me twice like my name was nikki sixx
i woke up in my shoes again but somewhere you exist singing
oops i did it again, i forgot what i was losing my mind about
oh, i only wrote this down to make you press rewind
and send a message: i was young and a menace
ii.ㅤaspiring fires — mother mother
baby, you wanna see me crazy?
well i'll show you what that's like
and then i'll wave goodbye as you run for your life
a little advice for aspiring fires:
you'll get put out if you don't get a little wild
try again, try again, get it right
you don't got the due diligence to lose your mind
you're not getting it right
iii.ㅤbandito — twenty one pilots
this is the sound we make
when in between two places
where we used to bleed
and where our blood needs to be
i could take the high road
but i know that i'm going low
i'm a ban—i'm a bandito
iv.ㅤon — b.ts
나의 고통이 있는 곳에
내가 숨 쉬게 하소서 (please)
my everythin', my blood and tears
got no fears
i'm singin' oh
oh, i'm takin' over
you should know, yeah
can't hold me down 'cause you know i'm a fighter
깜깜한 심연 속 기꺼이 잠겨
find me and i'm gonna bleed with ya
v.ㅤssick — s.tray kids
i'm a player, 이 분위기를 바꿀 game changer
안 베껴 촌티 나는 스타��에 나는 back off
피 끓게 만드는 이 밤에 모른 척 쌩
하고 지나칠 수 없지 날 부르기 바쁘대
oh yeah, i know
that i don't have anything special
but yeah, did you know?
that i myself am really special, yeah, yeah
tagged by: @solitarysurvival ♡♡♡
tagging: @florafound / @nightiingaled (for whoever your feeling most rn!), @chronal-anomaly, @tamedgod, & anyone who hasn't been tagged yet but would like to be!!
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