#anyhoo uhhhh sometimes i still get feels about noraxia!!

[elliewiltarwyn]

FFXIV Write 2023 | Prompt #7: Noisome

1: noxious, harmful; "a noisome pestilence"

2a: offensive to the senses and especially to the sense of smell; "noisome garbage"

-1,815 words -content warnings: canon-typical violence aftermath and blood, one heavy swear (it's basically the Waking Sands raid aftermath, so you know what to expect)

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Mia is padding behind Elilgeim from a small distance, granting her a wide berth after the blistering spat they just had, when it hits her.

She stops short before she crashes right into Elilgeim’s back. “Wh—Elilgeim?” She blinks. Why’d she stop? She ducks around her, frowning—and sees the small crowd gathered outside the Waking Sands before she sees Elilgeim’s raised eyebrow at the sight. Outside their secret headquarters.

“...Something’s wrong,” Elilgeim says softly, her brow furrowing in concern. And she’s right this time, Mia realizes; there’s an odd tension in the air and a strange buzz amidst the gathered onlookers, murmurs and whispers and furtive glances at the building.

And then she smells it. Rustlike, metallic. Noisome. Her stomach churns. It’s like the scent that follows them after every battle, but more pungent and fetid. The stench of blood. She swallows and shoots another glance at Elilgeim, and for the first time since their argument the previous day, the roegadyn looks back at her; the grimace tells Mia she’s not alone. She smells it, too.

She and Elilgeim suddenly begin to move; ‘tis fortunate that Mia’s rather tall for a hyur and Elilgeim is a roegadyn, because it allows them to carve a path through the crowd quickly and easily, and they reach the door in seconds. Elilgeim reaches out to push on it, but it holds fast, and she frowns. “What in the…”

“The hinges,” Mia realizes, seeing them broken and twisted on the side of the doorframe.

“...Shite,” Elilgeim curses. She grabs her cane, steps back, and jabs the bottom against the wood; earthen stone forms from the aether and bursts, shattering the door into pieces. Ignoring the gasps and even more excited murmurs from the crowd, she ducks in past the door’s remains; with a brief glance over her shoulder, ensuring no one wishes to follow them, Mia follows suit.

The smell is even stronger within, though there’s no sign of any distress… although there’s also no sight of Tataru, cheerily winking and waving at them to welcome them home after a long day’s work. That only disquiets Mia even further as they keep moving, descend the stairs to the underground hallways that form the Waking Sands. When Elilgeim wrenches open that door—she suddenly coughs and slaps a hand over her mouth. It hits Mia a second later, and her eyes widen as she covers her nose before she can gag. The two of them look at each other again, and Mia can see dread writ plain in Elilgeim’s eyes.

“Minfilia,” the roegadyn whispers as it dawns on her—and then she whirls and sprints through the door, into the darkness. “Minfilia!”

Mia swallows and gives chase, her own dread magnifying too quickly. She hates when it’s right.

She nearly trips over the first body, stops short, and stares at the dozens more littering the hallway. Adventurers, diplomats, friends—cold and still like the grave. Strewn all over like discarded trash. Blood pooling against corners and underneath larger bodies. Down here, this close, the smell is overwhelming, unbearable. “No,” she whispers in horror, and her stomach churns and bile rises and she clamps her hands to her mouth. Fury, no, please…

She spies one specific corpse lying in the center of the hall, across a young elezen woman—one of her fellow Scions. But the body on top wears the dull grey and rust red armor… of an imperial legionnaire.

It hadn’t escaped Elilgeim’s attention, either; she had stopped short again, staring at the body in horror as the gears clearly turned in her mind to process what it meant.

“They found us,” Mia whispers, her voice and her whole body shaking. “The Empire found us.”

Elilgeim stares at the dead legionnaire for another few seconds… and then her shoulders coil, tense up, as she looks further up the hallway. Upon the double doors to the solar…which were wide open and hanging off the hinges as the entrance was.

“...Minfilia,” she mutters again—and again, she’s off, sprinting desperately towards the solar—if there’s any chance, Mia realizes, her friends, or their Antecedent, still breathes among the bodies… and again, Mia gives chase, running as fast as she can as her heart falls to pieces in her chest.

To her shock, it’s not Minfilia’s body they find in the solar. It’s Lilyana’s and Noraxia’s.

The young, bright, and chipper miqo’te rogue, who had been there with them as Minfilia inducted them into the Scions in this very room, whom they hadn’t had a chance to go on a mission with yet but was always there to greet them with a smile and her cheery attitude when they returned, a young Echo-blessed warrior like her and Elilgeim who always seemed delighted to see her—she is curled up against the front of Minfilia’s desk with a small but very bloody bullet hole in her stomach. In her lap is a small form of what Mia absurdly thinks is a pile of leaves before she realizes it’s Noraxia, just as limp.

“No,” Elilgeim utters, a sob wrenching its way free from her throat. “No—”

And then Lilyana groans and rolls her head to the side, her eyelids weakly fluttering open to reveal glazed pupils that shakingly attempt to focus on them. “Eli…geim? Mia…?”

“Lily—” In an instant, both Mia and Elilgeim are at her side; Elilgeim grabs Lilyana’s hand with one of hers and lifts her cane in the other. “Yes, Lily, it’s us! We’re here!” She sounds more desperate than Mia’s ever heard her. “I’ve got you—you’re gonna be okay!” She grits her teeth as her staff glows, and elemental energies swirl around its head and begin pouring into the two limp bodies below them.

It’s the same look of determination on Elilgeim’s face, Mia realizes—the same look she wears every time the two of them have an explosive argument about how to carry out their mission. But this time it’s in pursuit of something markedly different.

“Mia, stop gawking and put your hand here so we can stanch the bleeding!”

Mia starts like she’s awoken, and she grimaces as she obediently presses her hands on either side of the bullet wound on Lilyana’s stomach. She holds her breath, forcing the bile down, putting aside all else, ignoring the stench of blood as much as she can. It’s the most agonizing moment of her entire life, and she can barely help, and she has never felt more helpless or horrified.

“Forget me,” Lilyana murmurs, “Noraxia’s… she crushed Noraxia ‘gainst the wall…”

“I’m getting her too.” The determination blazes in Elilgeim’s eyes. “Stay calm, just keep breathing—I’ve got you, I promise, you two’re gonna be okay.”

“No—” The three women start as Noraxia stirs and blinks wearily, weakly, up at Mia. “Walking ones…must stay safe…”

And then Elilgeim and Mia shout in unison as their heads pound and the Echo brutally kicks in for them—and shows them just who is responsible for the the deaths, the abductions, the carnage before them. Who diffused the stench of blood across the Waking Sands.

When they come to, Lilyana’s staring hopelessly at them—but Noraxia presses on. “Antecedent one… left message. Sanctuary in… eastern church, near… Drybone… Friends of walking ones.”

“Saint Adama Landama,” Mia says automatically, sucking in breath, fighting down the gag urge as the smell enters her mouth, and then latching on and holding this tiny pinprick of hope tightly to her breast.

Elilgeim blinks in confusion briefly, then shakes it free and presses one hand to Noraxia’s tiny torso. “Got it. Thank you, Noraxia. Don’t talk, you need—”

“No,” Noraxia breathes again, “this one…has spent all strength…but this one is glad…to deliver message…”

“Noraxia,” Lilyana moans, weakly lifting her hand to try and brace the tiny sylph’s head, “no, no, she’s—she’s got you, you’re gonna be okay…”

“This one…tried to protect Antecedent…from imperial ones…Forgive this one…” And the tiny sylph lifts her twiglike arm up towards Elilgeim’s face, even as the roegadyn stares down at her in horror, even as elemental energies pour forth from her hand to… as far as Mia can tell, no effect… no… “Save…h…”

And then the little sylph Scion falls limp in Lilyana’s lap, and Lilyana lets out a wordless scream of pain and anguish that shatters Mia’s heart into pieces.

“No—she didn’t—” Lilyana howls and slams her head against the front of the desk, and both Elilgeim and Mia flinch backwards, “it should have been me, I hid like a coward and she flew out in front of Minfilia and now she’s dead and Minfilia’s GONE, NO, I SHOULD’VE—”

“Shut up!” Elilgeim shouts suddenly, grabbing the front of Lilyana’s shirt and yanking her forward, away from the desk—Mia falls back, stunned, horrified, as Elilgeim focuses her glare directly in Lilyana’s face… with her glowing, healing hand now on her stomach. “You shut the hells up and listen to me, Lilyana Tsuki!” Elilgeim clenches her teeth, breathes in deep, closes her eyes that are now shedding a steady stream of tears, and says, quickly, furiously, even as the glow on her hand intensifies, “We’re going to this sanctuary, we’re going to lick our wounds there, and you are going to live, and we’ll get everyone back and we’ll save Minfilia and we’ll drive the godsdamned Empire out of Eorzea—there’s too much you have to do, so don’t you fucking dare enter Thal’s realm now!”

And Lilyana stares, horrified, guilt and shame swimming in her eyes, and Mia opens her mouth prepared to deliver a blistering rebuke, how dare she— and then Lilyana nods, and the words stick in Mia’s throat.

“We’re going to live,” Elilgeim repeats, and as she does the hole in Lilyana’s stomach finally closes up, though the elemental energies continue to flow forth from Elilgeim’s hand. And the roegadyn looks up at Mia, exhausted, furious, relieved—there are a billion emotions swirling through her face right now and Mia can barely process her own, let alone what she sees. “...Aren’t we?”

Mia stares back. After all the arguments, all the glares and sneers, the sheer rage in her eyes in those moments of determination… she can’t even begin to understand why now Elilgeim looks upon her hoping to grasp onto something.

…Onto anything. Anything so they can live on.

“...We will.” Mia nods firmly and reaches out, and clasps Lilyana’s hand; the young miqo’te’s head whips around to stare at her in relief. “We will.” She swallows and pushes the bile back down again and clenches her free hand into a fist. The Empire will pay for this. “...Come on. Let’s get the hells away from this stench.”

Elilgeim nods and mutters, ���couldn’t agree more,” and she quickly and easily scoops Lilyana into her arms—eliciting a shocked yelp from the miqo’te—and stands, and the three women quickly make good their escape to sanctuary.

Moons, even years later, Mia still remembers that noisome stench.