#ilms chronicles

[an-epic-complex-deep-existence]

(Fuck, I was gonna post this first…)

Tried to incorporate 2000's emo fashion into these two girlies (Mel and Darla) cuz they grew up in the 2000's. Did I do good?

[kogetaikid]

A False Awakening is a phenomenon where one thinks they've just woken up when they're clearly still dreaming

Sup guys, gals and nonbinary pals! Feel free to call me KogetaiKid, Kogetai or Kiddo!!!

ALT/OC BLOG (Not in use at the moment.)

MY DEVIANTART MY YOUTUBE MY BLUESKY

I'm currently NOT taking any art requests at the moment.

-she/her; 🩷💛🩵pansexual🩵💛🩷

-Time Zone: PST/PDT

-minor.

-Only child (and I fucking HATE IT)

-Part-time conspiracy theorist

-I like Anxiety from Inside out two and Perseverance soul form Undertale :)

-Diagnosed Neurodivergent (Got that autism ✨D R I P ✨)

-Interacial

-Nihilist

-Psychology nerd

-Cross Country Athlete

-Very cynical

-No DNI, but will block anyone who makes me feel uncomfortable.

-I post both fanart and original art

-Self taught artist/writer (currently working (and possibly failing) on multiple projects)

SOME OC REFERENCES

(Not like anyone will care, but good to have them anyways)

D!0X!D3: TR!0X!D3 and X3’3N (Prologue-Chapter 3) Web Hell: Enera (Modern Utopia) IMLS Chronicles: Darla My Snowy Orphanage: Main Cast

WEBCOMIC STAND

D!0X!D3 HAS OFFICIALLY MOVED TO DEVIANTART

D!0X!D3: Prologue 1 D!0X!D3: Prologue 2 D!0X!D3: Prologue 3 D!0X!D3: Prolouge 4 D!0X!D3: Prologue 5 D!0X!D3: Abandonment; Part 1 D!0X!D3: Abandonment; Part 2 ILMS: Just Like Mel; Part 1 ILMS: Just Like Mel; Part 2 ILMS: Just Like Mel; Part 3

Epiccc Storiez!!

ILMS Chronicles: Yahaira's story ILMS Chronicles: 4/22/** ILMS Chronicles: Out In Nature ILMS Chronicles: Watching the Sunset

WRITING (Also EPICCC!!!!)

Sunrise Heights An Insect Before Its Death Contemplation Compilation Accidental ILMS Lore The Thirst for Cheap Dopamine

epicness gaLORE!

Epicland Studies #1: Universal Ketakomian Beliefs

TUMBLR OC MAKING CHALLENGES!!!

(My greatest success of getting something that was my own idea popular!)

LUNA

*Y don’t ‘cha see what ur gonna see in the future? (READ PROJECT DESC)*

EPIC CLUB (Main Project)

(TLDR: Some alien lore shit that involves goofy ahh aliens, goofy ahh adventures and trying to avoid nihilism)

No one knows how they've got here, but they have. In the middle of the universe in the andromeda galaxy, in a planet called Epicland. exist the color spirits to fight evil and bring colors to the world. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple and gray. (Andris, Lorgzee, Kedmile, Yodion, Imimika, Sotti, Zaxregea, and Enieu) One day, the red spirit wanted to become human-like. What happens next

…

Gray skin, red eyes, what the hell am I...?

Andris, now a nine year old girl named Melody Cohen, nothing much to say about her. Unless she was able to meet up again with someone, who might ve been, a secret true sister...

DIOX!D3 (On hiatus; pronounced "Dioxide”):

D!0X!D3 (pronounced “Dioxide”): ANARCHY AGAINST CONTROL. On an alien planet called Epicland, and abandoned child called Melanie gets adopted into an anarchist society called Syr-Ko’s Children Anarchist Society! (SKCAS for short). No adults allowed, you get kicked out when you’re 30. In this society, children run the game, with a plan to eliminate the ones who control us and make their world r0b0t!c. You’d wonder to yourself:

WH0’S THAT L!TTL3 R0B0T FR3!ND 0F Y0URS, K!DS?!

I Love My Sister Chronicles (Secondary Project)

(It's honestly more like a saga, but it wasn't until a few days ago that I remembered that word...)

Dreams are weird, especially when two simple hours could sometimes feel like an entire lifetime. April 22, 20**: A girl named Yahaira falls victim to this unfortunate phenomenon, thus creating me, us, everyone. In my early years, I always wanted a sister, but the never happened. My mom always says she wanted two girls. I tell her she ended up with me instead; an amalgamate of what could've been her two girls.

As I entered my teenage years I noticed something very off about the world, so very unreal, and I start to become lucid in this dream world.

I remember that I'm someone's little sister. Melody's little sister, Yahaira. I'm now piecing together the complicated puzzle of who I was, who Melody was, and what happened before I entered this dream. The first and most important thing I keep in mind:

I LOVE MY SISTER

(Coming "Soon")

VQ895

Welcome to LABORATORY! Here, many fusions of multiple organisms for all over galaxies called hybrids live. To these hybrids, Laboratory is the entire world for them, but to a hybrid named Vertā Quantin (half Artificially Made Human, half Wolfcat) unveils this lie. But it could it be…

SHE WAS NOT THE ONLY ONE?!

WEB HELL (TW: Dark humor)

8/5/2255 - The World Covered in Screens.

“WELCOME TO MODERN UTOPIA! THE MOST GYATT OHIO MEGATRONIC THEY/THEM UWU PLACE IN DA WORLD!!!!!!!! MY NAME IS FINLEY (they/them, if u m!$g3ñd3r u a h8 cr!mer)”

“T0DAY, HERE ARE [[10!]] REASONS Y U LOVE MORDEN UTOPIA!!!! :):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):):)(( “

…

In this world, you only have an illusion of humanity. You only have an illusion of decision, an illusion of freedom, an illusion of bargaining, an illusion of friends, an illusion of creativity, diluted by algorithm. You can’t escape, there’s no need to escape. YOU LOVE IT HERE…

One-off projects (coming soon):

My Snowy Orphanage: A VHS horror about a group of cartoon kids teaching children to kill.

A Very Necessary Story On A Very Lonely Kid: Born 4/23/1999. A young boy named Brayden Mendez. No friends, no sibling, Brayden hasn’t meet anyone besides his parents until kindergarten. Isolated from humanity, he’s left to rot in his loneliness until he finally breaks.

And even his afterlife doesn’t spark a friend.

The Last Feeling Child: In present day time, a young teenage girl named Esme Adler, mourns over the past she’s never experienced. A past before phones, IPads and immorality.

There are a few more in the making, but that’s all for now :)

[ziracona]

I know I say this every time I read my own work, but Speak for the Dead really is the best chapter in ILM.

“Well, you know for the first time in a long time this actually feels like fall?”

Jane Romero was smiling at him, sitting propped up against a tree in what had sort of become her usual ‘therapy’ corner in the past almost two weeks. And she was right, it did feel like fall. The air wasn’t as sharply cold as normal, and honestly ‘sharply’ cold was a nice break in and of itself when it happened—usually the weather here was somehow just cold—cold with no adjectives attached. But today it was nicer. It was the kind of waiting fall cold that came when it wasn’t biting outside yet, and it was almost pleasant. A promise of a change in the seasons. Tapp wondered why.

The trees hadn’t started to change color with it, or fall in piles, and as far as he’d gathered there weren’t seasons in here. Everything looked the same. Tall, thick woods, undergrowth and moss and rocks and fallen logs, a slight breeze on and off. Dark sky overhead, full moon, at this point long since throwing off everyone’s idea of what day and night were supposed to mean. All the usual. Except, somehow, the kind of cold in the weather. Who knew, maybe nothing had changed. Maybe they had just started to feel better.

LIKE. Those opening lines mean nothing but environmental flavor when you read them. But they’re a lead in for the thesis of the entire chapter.

“Well, you know for the first time in a long time this actually feels like fall?” - A promise of a change in the seasons. - Who knew, maybe nothing had changed. Maybe they had just started to feel better.

Like that’s it. Speak for the Dead is about a lot of things, but at its heart it’s about healing. It’s about forgiveness and healing, that exists between the living and the dead. It’s about how you can only speak for them, by speaking for them. Not how you want to punish yourself or live for them, but by how you know they would forgive you, or would ask you to live. Very little other than exchanges of information happen, but so much happens at the same time. All of it significant. It’s hope. It’s about how Tapp (and Meg) have spent every day here fighting in their own way to cope with the agony and failure of their lives, and the loss of people they couldn’t save, and have only dug their wounds deeper. About love. About nothing stoping the lambs from screaming except accepting that they want to let you go.

[kogetaikid]

ILMS Chronicles Be like:

[finalfantasyxivwritings]

The Future Past

Chapter 1: To Begin at the End

Summary: Instead of having their memories wiped at the end of Ktisis Hyperboreia, Hermes, Venat, Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch decide to send themselves into the future in order to learn how to save their present. Unable to return home and faced with the Final Days upon the horizon, they resolve to try and save the fractured timeline of Etheirys--its past, present, and future alike.

Other Chapters | AO3 Version | Future Past AU Tag

She is gone.

It happened all too quickly, one action after another blurring together until all that was left in its wake is a series of emotions that bleed like a gaping wound. Until all the group can do is stare up into the grand expanse of the universe from atop the highest layer of Ktisis Hyperboreia.

The dark ocean of stars had once seemed like an unending source of hope and wonder—and now it feels like a threat. It leaves a cold, heavy weight over everything, as if the pinpricks of lights are multitudes of dead eyes staring down at them. Waiting. Watching. Endless.

Hermes isn’t quite sure what he feels more heartbroken over: the dark, nihilistic revelations that had been promised from the edge of the universe, or the realization that Meteion—and Hermes himself in turn—had always been complicit to what would be known as the Final Days within the chronicles of time despite his best efforts to the very opposite.

Emotions of all layers and sorts twist painfully within the man’s chest. But he neither has the chance nor focus to begin untangling them as a voice rises from the silent rancor.

“That… is not quite how I expected things to turn out.”

Hythlodaeus steps up from the others—Venat, Emet-Selch and the time-traveling warrior yet looking up at the sky as if there is hope yet to catch Meteion—and lays a hand upon Hermes’ shoulder.

“Are you alright?”

Hermes merely stares at him. He can’t begin to form the thought let alone the answer in words; what would it even mean to be ‘alright’ after everything they’d seen and heard? So he shakes his head in simple but honest silence.

Before Hythlodaeus can say anything further, Emet-Selch’s stern voice cuts through the air and calls everyone’s attention towards him.

“So it would seem that we were unable to change the hand of fate,” he says tensely, “and as loath as I am to admit it, not even the help of a time-traveler was enough to stop this insanity from happening.”

Everyone is silent.

He speaks the obvious, yes, but the empty air feels so thick with trepidation that it needs the sound to make it thin and breathable again. Else one might fear to suffocate upon it. But to the seatholder’s frustrated resignation, Venat’s eyes have been filled with something hard to place.

“I don’t believe that is the case,” she says. Emet-Selch and the others cast a look of confusion towards her, but she doesn’t yield an ilm beneath the attention’s weight and continues. “As our visitor described it from their time, we were completely unaware of the origin of the Final Days. The fact that we know of Meteion and her sisters’ is enough to argue that this timeline has been irreversibly fractured.”

Emet-Selch’s eyes narrow. “And what might this mean for us?”

“And for our friend?” Hythlodaeus’ eyes glance towards the warrior of light, his mind already rolling with concern but comforted if only by the fact that they had not begun to fade away like dust. “Given that they are still here, can we assume their world has not been affected?”

Venat nods her head.

“By their actions, we’ve been given a chance to save Etheirys—a chance not afforded to the versions of us from the world of our time-traveling companion.” She turns her gaze towards the warrior, who in turn mirrors a look of worry. Venat smiles and then continues, “Fear not, your world will remain as it was when you had left it, for good and ill alike. The decisions made by the versions of us from your past have not changed,”

She looks across the platform. To Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus, and finally to Hermes.

“-but it means that it is our duty to help you overcome the threat, so that we may overcome it in our own time.”

Emet-Selch takes a step forward, his brows knitted tightly above his heavy eyes.

“What exactly are you suggesting we do to ‘help’?” he snaps. “Because if you think we can afford to pull the same foolish gambit that they’ve done in coming here, then I will have no part in it! None of you will have any part in it!”

Perhaps it is just a trick of the light, or perhaps it is simply due to the amount of aether he’d expended making his way this far into the facility, but the man… looks tired. Exhausted, really. Though he is without the eons-long weight of loneliness dragging his shoulders down, the warrior can see the same man they had spoken with in the world of the First, holding the same passion and love for his people. But only this time, there’s something else behind the man’s eyes that seems to separate him from the man who once masqueraded as the emperor of Garlemald: hope.

Honest and fearful hope that he would not have to make the same mistakes again.

Hythlodaeus breaks the tension in the air with a soft, but wary question. “If we entertain the thought for but a moment, then what exactly do you propose we do, Venat? Return with them to their present and aid in the forestalling of the Final Days?”

Venat nods her head solemnly. It’s clear that the idea weighs heavily on her thoughts, but her sense of determination burns like a fire through whatever doubts and fears that may have lingered upon them.

“Though that’s putting it rather lightly, yes, assuming we even have the capability to do so.” She looks at the warrior. “You said that the seatholder of Elidibus of your time—or what remained of his being—was able to send you here using a conduit?”

The warrior of light nods, then quickly explains the details of what had happened as best as possible. Even without knowing the finer points of how ancient allagan technology worked in tandem with the will of an ancient Etheirys’ soul, Venat’s expression morphs into focused thought than confusion. She taps at her chin and closes her eyes.

“A tower forged to collect and store the energy of the sun…? Well, I dare say that you’d be hard-pressed to find a better source of power. But the real question is if we have something at our disposal that can act in similar fashion.”

“I… am not a Chronologist by any means,” Hermes says, having found his voice once more from the tremor of his thoughts and woes, “but if you mean to find an abundant source of energy, then you should find none greater than the very facility we’re standing within.”

“Ktisis Hyperboreia,” Hythlodaeus echoes the name that sparks within everyone’s mind with the reminder that seems as obvious as the sun itself. “It has to amass a great amount of aether in order to function—in fact, I’m told that it's one of the best examples of how time and space manipulation can be utilized in the academic field.”

Hermes nods. “More of the latter, as you and your party had experienced while… making your way here. When aetheric energy is made extremely dense, it can be used to manipulate space in ways we believe only occur naturally on the very edges of the universe—time, of course, is a connected facet to that. One that we’ve not used to the same extent outside a few preliminary studies here in the facility.”

After a moment, Hythlodaeus lifts a brow towards the Chief of Elpis. “What? No attempts to see what wonders the future might hold?”

“If only it were that simple.” Hermes closes his eyes for a moment, arms crossing over his chest. “It is not unlike our need for aetherytes to traverse the aetherial currents of our star. We cannot transport ourselves without an anchor to bind our souls back to the material world. Traveling across time is similar, in theory. One cannot move forwards nor backwards without first having something to anchor our souls to.

And though the past could be easy in theory—had we the mind at any point to set up such a beacon and wait to traverse back to it—the future is complex and unwieldy. It would be no different than throwing yourself into the aetherial currents and merely hoping your soul falls out where you want it to. Assuming it ever would, without a proper destination.”

The group goes quiet.

Hermes’ words hang over all of them, heavy and stiff with a problem that on the surface seems utterly unsolvable. Even if they had all the energy on Etheirys and thensome, it would do nothing to change the fact that they had no way of connecting to the future in the same way that Elidibus had connected back to them—through memories so strong and beloved that they alone had kept a hollow soul with a semblance of purpose and life.

And in all this, Emet-Selch’s voice rings out once more, “You are not seriously entertaining this notion, are you?”

He steps into the center of their group, gesturing indignantly with his hands to the entirety of the platform around them.

“Assuming we could even find a way to make such a foolish plan work, what would we even gain from doing so? Saving their world will do absolutely nothing to save our own—and what will happen if we don’t return? What havoc will that bring to our own world when we are the only ones who know about this?”

“Hades…” Hythlodaeus murmurs.

“Don’t use my name like that! I cannot be the only person here who is trying to think this through rationally.”

Venat reaches out a hand and lays it upon Emet-Selch’s shoulder. In her eyes and words is not judgment, but understanding. She has worked alongside the man for long and has known him longer yet, so her words sit deep within the air of the moment as she speaks.

“You are not. But you must also admit that we have an obligation to help.”

“An obligation?!”

“From our own actions in another timeline, untold amounts of suffering has been unleashed upon a people who only wish to live their own lives. Not even that, but our own people will suffer for it too. If we are able to learn how to defeat Meteion and her song of oblivion by aiding the warrior in their time, then we will be able to return and do so here as well.”

To that, Emet-Selch is silent. He is silent for a rather long time, in fact, so long that Venat and the rest of the group thought he was seething with broiling anger. Hythlodaeus even reaches out a hand to offer some level of comfort of his own, but the seatholder’s voice rings out all too evenly and firm across the entire platform.

“…there may yet be an anchor,” he says, “to the future we seek to save. And we already have it with us.”

He points at the warrior of light.

Everyone’s eyes move to follow the man’s finger before, one by one, realization dawns upon their features—especially so for Hythlodaeus, who has eyes as unique in ability as Emet-Selch himself. To see the color of a soul, unique and branded in ways beyond the understanding of most people even in their modern academia.

“You are practically enmeshed in the aetherial energy of your time,” he continues. “And I do believe you’re also invariably tied to the point of which you came from—that very tower of which you described. If we were to truly go through with this concept, then our best anchor will be them.”

“It stands a very good chance of working,” Hermes admits, tone awed and expression similarly put—before a hurried fear falls over his eyes. “But we need to act quickly; there’s no telling how long that connection will last before it’s washed away by the ambient energy of the here and now.”

Hythlodaeus chuckles, “And here I thought I’d have enough time to pack all my best robes.”

The shift in the air from feelings of missed opportunity to vengeful hope is subtle, but unrelenting. It wells forth like a rising tide, higher and higher until it washes away all the lingering traces of doubt clinging to their thoughts. The plan put forth may not be the best nor the most sane, but it is the only one that they have available to them—and it simply must work.

Emet-Selch sighs. Though he seems exhausted, it is with a look of pure will and determination that his eyes meet Hermes’ own.

“Now that we’ve wholeheartedly decided to launch our souls into the theory of an entirely untested field of research,” he says, tone slow and undaunted, “What do you need from us to make it work?”

Hands, it would quickly seem to be. Lots of hands and much more coordination. Ktisis Hyperboreia may be a facility that regularly utilizes spatial reconfiguration technology, but not to the extent that Hermes needs. He has each of the group running about the endless rooms, gathering keys and pieces of machines they only scarcely understand and rerouting power sources that were never meant to be shifted.

The weight of physical exhaustion is already so heavy from the chase through and battle atop the facility—but it is ignored, each person seeing the mountain upon their shoulders as a measly addition to the already-monstrous thought of losing the chance to save their homes and loved ones alike.

This must work.

It can’t be more than a bell from when the group leaves the platform to when they return to it. Hermes stands at the center, hands cradling a brilliant crystal that, for a split-second, reminds the warrior of light all too much of the tower they’d been teleported from. The man turns his face towards the others as they appear, as if making sure they were each present and accounted for from their individual tasks across Ktisis Hyperboreia.

“I believe that was the last of things,” Venat says, glancing at Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch, who appear last upon the platform. “The power has been routed from each of the major wings within the facility.”

“And the operations of everything else have been directed to cease,” Hythlodaeus adds. “The silence on our return here was perhaps the most uncomfortable I’ve heard. Or rather, not heard at all.”

“Good,” Hermes murmurs, turning his gaze back to the crystal in his hands.

It’s barely larger than several of the man’s fists stacked on top of one another, and shaped not unlike the white auracite that the warrior had grown familiar with not all that long ago in their adventures. It glitters a brilliant blue and hovers just above Hermes’ palms, and each and every person can feel the immense sense of aetherial power that practically radiates from the object.

Luckily, the group is not left to engrossed confusion for very long, as the man quickly nods his head towards the crystal and answers the unspoken question, “ ‘Tis the heart of Ktisis Hyperboreia itself.”

And all at once, the air shifts. It feels as if the space around them begins to unravel into bits and pieces, leaving the sky as dark as an abyss and the world below them as little more than a child’s glowing trinket. All that shines through the darkness is the crystal at the center of the platform, rising higher and higher yet from Hermes’ hands.

He turns his eyes towards the warrior of light. In the twilight of the platform, they glow a green as vibrant and lively as the rolling fields of Elpis itself—there is fear somewhere in that gaze, but it is overpowered instead by hope.

“Would you stand here next to me?” he asks. The words are soft, barely murmured, but somehow the warrior can hear him clearly—as if there is not a single thing to muffle the sound and all too much to emphasize it.

Though it takes a few moments for the warrior to pull themselves from the look of awe upon their face, they nonetheless walk forward, stopping just beside Hermes. The heavy feeling grows stronger with every step closer to the crystal as it sits just above their heads and glimmering with aether. After a moment to take in a breath, Hermes speaks a gentle command,

“Activate manual command structure. Program: Ktisis Hyperboreia.”

“Initializing . . .” the noise—or voice, rather—originates not from the crystal, but from the void above itself. Each syllable echoes in a way that makes the air and even the floor below their feet shake. “ Warning. Request requires security authentication of user.”

“Chief observer of Elpis, Hermes.”

“. . . authenticated. Structure activated. Awaiting instructions.”

The man takes in a slow breath, his shoulders rising like the boughs of a tree amidst a powerful wind. The weight in the air only grows heavier, the void deeper above their heads.

“Activate subroutine Chronos.”

The system takes a breath of time before responding.

“. . . warning. Program: Chronos has not been authorized for use outside of primary testing states-”

“Disregard warning,” Hermes’ voice rings firm, cutting off the system and repeating the command once more. “Activate subroutine Chronos. Target: future. Anchor point: aetherial origin of subject. Subject-” his eyes turn, briefly falling upon the person standing beside him. “...Subject: warrior of light, undesignated visitor.”

“. . .command accepted. Target locking. . . Locked. Anchor point accepted. Subject accepted.”

As the reply echoes, it is with another immense shifting of the air, but one that can’t be felt physically. Venat, Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch peer around the platform as if searching for something, but the warrior of light is left engrossed in the pulsing light of the crystal set above them—for some reason, they cannot take their eyes away from the system’s core, as if their focus itself has been entwined. Even their heartbeat seems to mimic the rhythm of light echoing from the crystal’s body.

Pulse… pulse… pulse…

“Initializing time-space reconfiguration. Warning: please vacate the affected area.”

“A bit too late for that now,” Hythlodaeus chuckles, his words loud within the emptiness but quiet beneath the massive heaviness of the pulses that start to come faster.

Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.

The warrior of light can’t tear their eyes away from the sight even if they wanted to. Their heartbeat starts to race, still attuned to the crystal. They can feel a touch in their chest, tugging, twisting, pulling at every fiber of their aether in a way that sends a shiver down their spine—but they still can’t tear their eyes away.

Pulsepulsepulsepulsepulse-

And then. All at once. The world itself goes white. Slow-motion and fast-forward all at the same moment, light seeping into every inch of the void, the platform, and even into their minds.

They simply existed in one breath and did not in the next, wiped completely from the universe itself-

-and washed into a sea of brilliant and blinding aether.

-

Emerging on the other side feels like the reverse.

From blinding light comes a sudden sense of existence. The white recedes instantly from their minds, seeping out into the world and fleeing into the landscape—the sky, the earth, the entire setting around them as their feet touch solid ground once more and pluck them from nonexistence.

Venat is the first to feel that something is amiss, even as it takes several minutes for her eyes to adjust from the blinding brightness of just a moment ago. Somehow it is both a finite and infinite amount of time.

When her senses and stomach settles, she doesn’t think much of her thoughts scattering about, desperately compensating for how altered everything is all at once; how the wind feels to her skin, how the air tastes on her tongue, how it all seems so… lost. Like images from a dream, vague and sporadic in familiarity and yet undeniably alien all the same.

When she feels unsettled upon first glance of the world around them, Venat merely assumes it’s in the same breath as everything else. They had planned on things being… different.

“Is everyone alright?” she asks, peering around the landscape. It looks rugged, but not far from some of the places she had visited in her time as Azem’s seatholder. If it weren’t for the fact that she had been aware of their tumultuous shift in time or that the aether of even the ambient air felt thin, she could have been fooled for a breath.

Hythlodaeus is the first to offer a reply. “Other than feeling a bit ill and dizzy, I dare say we’re all in one piece.”

“Speak for yourself,” Emet-Selch growls. He’s sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, bent over in an obvious bit of pain. “I can’t even think without it hurting.” He peeks up for a moment, eyes glancing across the landscape before a fresh scowl twists his lips. “Please tell me this stupid idea didn’t simply teleport us elsewhere on Etheirys.”

Nobody replies to him. But then again, nobody needs to. The difference is stark to everyone who merely looks at the world around them.

Perhaps different is the wrong word, since technically every drop of aether around them was born from the very essence of their home. Even more, this world is Etheirys all the same… or at least a facet of it, albeit a very strong one despite the aetherial landscape being stretched farther than what most scholars would think possible. When one is used to seeing the horizon as a storm cloud, after all, it’s rather unnerving to find it as little more than a mist, so thin and fragile that it seems a stiff breeze could shred it apart.

“So,” Hermes murmurs, picking himself up from the ground. “The warrior of light was correct in their tellings. This world… is not the same as our own. Not entirely.”

To that, Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch agreed verily. Their eyes were sharp enough to note every detail as far as the horizon reached out in all directions—affirming Venat’s assumptions and the words of the future’s traveler as being correct: Etheirys had been sundered, fractured so completely that it seemed as shallow as a puddle where it had once been a vast ocean. But it did mean one thing at least: finding the present-day form of that traveler wouldn’t be a hard task.

Since Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch had both gazed deep upon that unique soul that visited them, such a color would be incredibly hard to miss, especially when they didn’t have to look past such vast pools of bright, competing aether. Considering that they had used the warrior as an anchor point in itself, they shouldn’t be too far from where the rest of the group had landed. Wherever they are.

The landscape around them is rough, grassy in sparse places—but what captures the attention first is the sharp crystals of pure aether that shoot out from places in the ground. Further on, the crystals coalesce until it looks as if they become the landscape itself, with a tower somewhere beyond that, shooting high into the atmosphere and glittering a brilliant blue in the hazy sunlight.

Where… are they?

“I’m not sure what state I expected to find this world in-“ Hermes murmurs, but Emet-Selch is quick to correct him.

“Our world,” he says. “Fractured or not, we cannot act as if this is anything but. And ‘tis our duty to ensure our time-travelling companion has fulfilled their promise.”

The fourth of their party, Hythlodaeus, merely hums in contribution. Then he turns his gaze about.“They’ve certainly done something,” he muses softly, “if there is yet a world for us to stand upon. We can at least surmise they didn’t die along the process of returning home.”

“We might as well try to find them,” Emet-Selch narrows his eyes after a moment. His tone is tense. “The sooner we get the assurance for the star’s continued prosperity, the sooner we can return to our own age of problems and discussions.”

The group agrees on that notion, at least. It had taken a gargantuan amount of aether to send them forward in time; it would be an insult to waste the opportunity with useless banter and debate. With a combination of Hythlodaeus’ and Emet-Selch’s eyes alongside Venat and Hermes’ familiarity to the traveler, it doesn’t take all that long to locate them—following a path opposite to the direction of the crystalline tower on the horizon, there seems to be a small outcropping of people. A settlement, if small, that glows dimly with the multitudes of people shuffling about within its walls.

And so it is with great trepidation that the four travelers of Etheirys come upon their wayward visitor, they themselves just stepping out of the entrance to the yet unknown settlement.

But where Venat and the others expect some manner of a surprised but friendly greeting from the self-titled ‘warrior of light’ of this timeline, the four of them only find confusion and hesitation instead in their eyes.

The face of the time traveler look upon each of them—Hermes, Hythlodaeus, Emet-Selch, even Venat—and there is naught a flicker of recognition to be found. In fact, the warrior of light looks a fair bit perturbed by their presence, and it only grows worse the more that Emet-Selch insisted on their prior meeting having been (to Venat and the others, at least) just a few minutes prior.

“I…don’t know you,” the warrior of light says, weighing their words with a tense look of wariness. “I don’t know anyone who looks like you—and I don’t recognize anyone by the name of ‘Emet-Selch’.”

This is the same person. Their soul is the exact same as the one they’d spoken to before having been tossed into the blinding light.

What could have changed?

How could they have forgotten…?

Suddenly, Venat sees the moment all too clearly for what has happened. How the warrior of light looks a bit younger than she had last seen them—less scars, less exhaustion, less weight upon their shoulders. Though she and the other three had jumped far into the future, it appeared as if they were gazing into a warrior that came before the one they themselves had met.

“Emet,” Venat says, her tone tight and careful, but soft enough that the words may be easily missed by all but her direct companions. “We’ve arrived too early.”

“Too early?!”

As the man finds his words of frustration towards such a notion, Hermes’ expression dawns with what Venat had deeply realized. He stiffens up in turn, casting his gaze to Hythlodaeus who seems to mirror his grim understanding of the situation; that in all their seeming flawless calculations, they had ended up in a time far before when the warrior of light had found will and a way to visit them. They are standing before a version of the warrior of light who has not yet faced the countless trials required to know the truth of the disaster they are one day to face.

So damn close. And all for absolutely nothing.

Venat’s expression remains careful and calculated, giving not a single onze of her true thoughts away. She takes a step towards the warrior of light and brings a hand up to her chest.

“Pray forgive us, dear stranger. You simply bear such a strong resemblance to a dear friend of ours, and we have grown so weary from such lengthy travels that I believe we must have forgotten ourselves for a moment.”

Emet-Selch opens his mouth—eager to refute the words, no doubt, but Hermes is quick to step up and fill the air with his voice while Hythlodaeus tries to reign the other in with their lie.

“We aren’t from around here, you see,” the soft-spoken Etheirys scientist has to force himself to speak loud enough that the to-be warrior of light could hear him. “Do you happen to know of a place we might be able to take rest?”

If the warrior had any lingering caution to the four strangers, the question seems to lay them far enough away that their expression softens and their voice finds an answer.

“Farther up the road, the settlement is called Revenant's Toll.” they say, pointing behind them. “In the main plaza you’ll find the entrance to an inn. Very friendly, they should have rooms to spare for all four of you.” They pause. There’s an emotion in their gaze that nobody but Venat can read—it’s an old emotion, ancient beyond years and bittersweet beyond reason. “Where… are you all from by chance? I don’t know you, but… ah, don’t worry about it. I suppose we see a lot of people when we travel.”

“Quite true,” Venat speaks warmly even though every word feels like ice pressing deeper into her chest. “We’re… from a city called Amaurot.”

A flicker of something moves across the warrior's eyes. “Never heard of a place like that before,” they finally say. “It sounds lovely though.”

“It’s rather far away,” Hythlodaeus smiles even as he has a tight grip on Emet-Selch, fingertips a warning as they dig into the man’s shoulder. “I dare say that few might even… remember it exists at times.”

The warrior stares at each of them for the span of a few breaths. Though the moment is truly brief, it feels as if it lasts a dozen lifetimes over, cold and desperate as each Etheirys time-traveler is forced to contend with a multitude of realizations one after another; they’re in the wrong time, their star is truly sundered, their world is… no longer theirs at all.

And still, the warrior's eyes hold such a stunning sense of hope that it’s hard to look away.

“Well…” the warrior coughs, stepping past the four strangers with a carefully quick gait. “I hope you all find safe travels, wherever they take you. May you walk in the light of the crystal.”

Venat watches them carefully—she can feel her own aether reaching out in near-invisible wisps from their soul.

“And the same to you,” she finally murmurs. “May we meet again.”

Soon after, the warrior of light has moved far enough to be out of sight, leaving Venat and the others to think among themselves as to what their next move might be. Not for a moment had they considered something like this happening—not when the warrior of light’s trail had been so strong leading to the ‘present’ of their time. Had something pushed their calculations to be amiss? Worse, had something changed the river of time, so much that there was no longer a proper ‘present’ to the warrior that they had met?

Whatever the answer, the four quickly move farther up the road towards Revenant's Toll, left with more questions than answers but an unyielding desire to see them through to the proper end.

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV: Quantum Shenanigans

Or, Baby ‘Buncles Break Physics (and Mom)

A/N: IT’S DONE AND JUST IN TIME.

Rating: T Word Count: 4009 Warnings: Mild spoilers for 5.1 MSQ and the Chronicles of the New Era side story Sorrow of Werlyt Cross-posted to AO3

--

“This is an abomination,” Nero snarled, flipping from what little Synnove and Krile had managed to put together of the Arch Ultima to the ones on the ravaged Ruby Weapon on a tablet. He was sitting at a heavy iron table in one of the Ironworks’s myriad workshops, fidgeting back and forth in one of the wheeled chairs Biggs had welded together on a whim one day, the chair swaying half an ilm side to side. “Absolutely repulsive. Of course the VIIth is involved somehow, that legion has always been full of lunatics.”

He was already ducking out of the way of Synnove’s hand, making to smack him upside the head for the pun, but it left him open to Cid’s hard flick against his temple. Nero yelped at the sting and pointed accusatorily at the other Garlean, yelling, “Hypocrite!”

Dancing Heron, knitting a shawl in the corner of the lab, pointedly cleared her throat.

The trio of scientists glanced over at her and then back at the tablet, subsiding into mostly-good behavior—for the time being.

Nero poked at one of the diagrams on the screen with a ferocious scowl, pinching his fingers together and then flicking them wide to expand the tiny line of code to magnification by five. He held up the tablet, nose practically against the screen as he stared at the close up of part of the recovered code from the Ruby Weapon, his eyes squinting half closed and tracking back and forth as he processed it. “Ah,” he finally said after long moments, “there it is.”

Both Synnove and Cid leaned closer—Synnove over Nero’s left shoulder, Cid over the right—and Nero pulled his head back to give them room, pointing at a small section on the screen with his pinkie finger.

“With most the Weapon melted slag and what remains of the code a scrambled nightmare, it’s hard to tell precisely what swiving nonsense they’ve wrought with my schematics of the original Ultima Weapon, but that isn’t anything either the Allagans had or what I added,” said the former tribune, voice grim.

Cid drummed his fingers on the worktable as he stared at the glowing code. “That looks eerily similar to what we managed to recover of Aulus mal Asina’s unique brand of horror,” he said. “Reversed, of course, since it certainly doesn’t seem like the Ruby Weapon’s oversoul system was ever intended for the pilot to survive.”

“Well, in order to implant the memory of an individual, one has to extract it from somewhere,” drawled Synnove. “But it’s similar to the Ultima Weapon’s coding for absorbing primals, as well. So: did the VIIth manage to get their hands on mal Asina’s research; did they reverse engineer Nero’s notes; or did they come up with it independently? None of these options are particularly comforting.”

(Over in the corner, next to Heron, Tyr suddenly jerked awake from his doze, a small *hic!* escaping him at the same time as his eyes crossed. Heron paused in her knitting and peered down at him, raising her eyebrows.)

“Either way, the results are revolting,” Nero said with palpable disgust. “Forcibly downloading and uploading souls at a whim, who would condone such a thing?”

“You would!” Cid and Synnove snapped in unison.

“The Praetorium,” Synnove said, jabbing Nero in the kidney with her finger. He yelped and jammed his elbow into her stomach, or tried to, as Synnove was already dancing out of range as she continued: “I distinctly recall you waxing poetic about adding mine and my sisters’ power to the Ultima Weapon!”

(Tyr reared up from his loaf shape to sit on his hindlegs; Heron, leaning over him, jerked back in surprise. The topaz carbuncle stared down at his stomach and carefully poked it with one paw.

Poke. Poke poke poke. Pooooooooke.

A deeply perturbed little nya? escaped him as he did.)

Nero paused and set down the tablet, then pressed his forefinger against his lips as he searched his memory. “…So I did,” he said at last, grudgingly. “Not my finest moment, descending into full on megalomaniacal mad scientist stereotype.”

“That implies you ever rose from the state in the first place,” Cid muttered. And then wheezed out a curse while doubling over and clutching at his stomach; Nero had taken advantage of Cid’s momentary distraction to ram his bony elbow into the other Garlean’s abdomen.

A ball of shimmering copper wool-and-silk yarn bounced off the side of Nero’s head. Synnove cackled and plucked the ball out of the air, and, without looking, threw it back to Heron. Nero, meanwhile, grumbled wordlessly, but tucked his elbows in and folded his arms across his chest.

(As Heron dropped the yarn back into her bag of sundries, Tyr slowly lowered his front paws to the floor to properly sit, blinking slowly as he did. He looked up at Heron and let out a quiet, very bewildered maow.)

“I am ruthless, not cruel,” Nero growled. “The Ultima Weapon absorbs entities in whole, yes, and I cannot say what happens to those entities while they are held within Ultima. But this?” He gestured to the tablet. “This is—this is using people as little more than batteries, in the most disgusting, agonizing way possible, likely for no other reason that I can discern except that it was likely the easiest way to—to do whatever the sodding hells it is the Legion wants to do. For all the shite I give the pair of you about your standard of ethics, I do have standards, and this is still a gross perversion of science and an unconscionable lack of morality.”

Silence settled on the workshop. Synnove, Cid, and Heron all just looked at Nero with various shades of bemusement.

Nero shifted uneasily, flicking his gaze from Cid, to Synnove, to Heron, and back to Cid to repeat the cycle. Finally. “…What?”

“I’m impressed, Nero,” Cid said. A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth and he leaned back against the workbench to look at Nero with shrewd blue eyes. “You’ve actually matured. I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Bathe in ceruleum, Garlond.”

“Choke on a lug wrench, Scaeva.”

HI MOMMY!

Synnove shrieked and jumped a fulm in the air, clutching her chest. Nero shoved his chair back to get away from the flailing Highlander, so quickly he rolled over his own toes, and he made a garbled, choked off sound of wordless agony. Cid didn’t have time to get out of the way himself and ended up taking the backrest of the chair into his already abused stomach, knocking the wind from him with another wheeze. Heron did not drop her needles, despite also jumping, but only because a lifetime of friendship with Rereha had trained her otherwise. Tyr jumped to all four feet with a thud!, fur bristling as his gaze darted around the room for a possible threat.

All five gazes swung around to one of the other iron tables in the workshop, the one upon which Synnove had unceremoniously dropped her gear when she and Heron and Tyr had arrived.

Poking out of Synnove’s ubiquitous hip pouch, the flap still buckled shut so that their faintly iridescent heads were forced to stick out from opposite sides, ears twitching in delight and dark eyes huge with glee and utterly heedless of the minor chaos they had wrecked upon the workshop, were Amandina and Roksana.

“What in the—girls, where did you even come from?!” Synnove said, scurrying over to them. She undid the buckle and, now with room to move, the twins tumbled out of the bag with high-pitched giggles.

Hi Mommy hi Mommy hi Mommy hi Mommy hi Mommy, they chanted continuously, leaping into her arms and snuggling close, their six tails between wriggling frantically.

“Synnove,” Cid said, still breathless as he forced himself to stand upright with a wince, “I know you can be more than a little single-minded when you’re on a tear, but surely even you should have noticed two baby carbuncles that have stuffed themselves into one of your pouches.

“This is the one with the void storage metafold,” Synnove hissed, turning around. She was supporting the twins’ chests with her hands and the rest of their bodies along her forearms; Amandina was in her right hand, Roksana in the left. Amandina gently headbutted Synnove’s chin, while Roksana looked around the workshop excitedly.

Cid’s face went blank in the manner that usually preceded him asking a question he would wish he had not in fact asked at all once he had the answer: “…Void storage metafold?”

“Yes,” Synnove said primly, bouncing the twins in her arms. They giggled. “It’s based on the one Khebi built for Carby, though the structure’s internal area is only about three square fulms instead of…whatever nightmare area Carby’s is. All you have to do to make one is calculate the Cartesian coordinates in four dimensions rather than three, then fold the aether along the proper axes and—”

Cid’s eyes were becoming suspiciously glassy.

“—Nero, kick him.”

Nero, using his non-injured foot, immediately did so in Cid’s shin while wearing a gleefully malicious grin. Cid shouted.

“Such an example to set,” Heron said, deadpan.

“Girls?”

The carbunclets chittered together, When Mommy is being petty, we should use it as an example of poor behavior and not emulate it!

“Good girls!”

Amandina and Roksana cheered.

(Wish Mama would take her own advice, Tyr grumbled. Heron made a sympathetic noise and patted him on the head.)

“What the hells was that even for?” Cid said, leaning back up against the work table to pick up his leg and rub his injured shin.

“Your eyes glazed over as I went on a brief aetherology tangent!” Synnove bellowed. (The twins made oooooooo Uncle Cid’s in trouble~ noises.) “I will not have it! You might be an engineering protoyping savant, but your aetherology theory is shite! You have lived in Eorzea for fifteen bloody years, learn some!”

“Your grand idea for overcoming the first line of aetheric defenses of the Crystal Tower was to throw a bloody rock at it.”

“It has been four years, are you ever going to stop harping about that?”

“No!” Nero and Synnove snapped in unison.

“Tangent!” Heron bellowed.

Nero and Synnove grumbled but settled. Cid began the motion of a particularly rude gesture, stopped, and looked at the twins. The twins blinked at him curiously. Cid dropped his hand and crossed his arms with a scowl.

“In any event,” Synnove said, “I left the twins with Khebi and Rere to babysit—stop looking at me like that, you two, Halulu was supervising—and teleported to Revenant’s Toll directly from my office.”

Now she twisted her wrists to turn the carbunclets around to face herself, and Synnove’s expression morphed into exasperated affection as the babies beamed at her. “I waved to you!” she said to them. “You waved back! How did you two get here?!”

We missed you, Mommy! said Amandina.

So, we decided to come find you! said Roksana.

And we tunneled! the black pearl carbuncle peeped excitedly, puffing out her chest in pride.

Yeah! the white pearl carbuncle said, mirroring her sister.

Synnove’s expression melted into faint confusion. The workshop was quiet for a few moments as they all stared at the twins in various degrees of bafflement.

“…Tunneled?” said Synnove, at last.

Yeah! From Elder Cousin!

To your hip pouch!

Synnove’s face blanked. Nero went white, jaw sagging open. Cid’s eyes widened to practically the size of teacup saucers.

Heron and Tyr exchanged bewildered looks.

“Before I say anything else,” said Nero, voice faint as he turned to look at Heron, “is ‘Elder Cousin’ who I think it is?”

“If you mean A’khebica’s Carby,” Heron said slowly, “then yes.”

“Shite,” Nero hissed.

(The twins gasped and covered their mouths with their paws. Bad word!)

“Carby’s a good boy,” Synnove said automatically, the tone of someone who had made the argument before and likely would again. “He’s strange, but he’s a good boy.”

Cid looked at her incredulously. “Just last week you were screaming about having to rummage in his void storage again for your aether chalk and how he was gnawing on your shoulder in retaliation!”

“Carby is not a good boy, Carby is halfway between a constructor-kit outer entity and an unshackled artificial intelligence.”

“He’s not that bad.”

“Yes he is!” Cid and Nero snapped in unison.

“At least Carby understands ethics,” Heron muttered under her breath. Tyr snickered next to her. Then, louder, Heron said: “Tangent.”

“Fine,” Synnove hissed. She closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose slowly; she held the breath for a few heartbeats, then let it out for the same count. When she opened her eyes, she immediately focused on the girls blinking up at her. “You tunneled. From Carby’s void storage metafold to the one in my hip pouch.”

Yes! the girls said.

We got a bit mixed up at first, though, Roksana said, ears drooping.

Yeah, said Amandina. We almost ended up in Tyr instead.

Tyr boofed, flabbergasted, his ears pricked completely upright in shock. That was YOU?

Synnove twitched.

Often as they had traveled through Azys Lla, the quartet of Warriors of Light had come across Allagan nodes glitching, five thousand years of constant functionality having degraded their circuits and systems. One type of cascading error turned the nodes’ vocalizations into a mess of garbled static, the pitch changing mid-word from high and piercing to low and growling, or vice versa. Listening to them had frequently led to the group gritting their teeth as the sounds dug into their minds and scratched like broken orchestrions.

Heron, Nero, Cid, Tyr, and the twins watched the visual equivalent of that noise happen on Synnove’s face. And in the case of Nero and Cid, it was occurring on their own faces, too.

“How?” Synnove said eventually, voice tight with tension.

Amandina and Roksana looked at one another. Amandina flicked an ear, the movement briefly iridizing the black fur on the appendage into deep purple. Roksana shrugged her shoulders, her own white fur momentarily shifting blue and then back. They looked back up at their mama.

We…pushed?

“Pushed.”

Well, first we accessed Elder Cousin’s metafold! Amandina said.

(Nero made a strangled noise of utter horror. Cid slowly slid down the side of the worktable to sit on the floor, knees bent and staring into the middle distance.)

Then we had to orient ourselves, said Roksana. That took a little bit. Elder Cousin’s metafold is very big!

We found Auntie Rere, too, Amandina whispered conspiratorially. We were playing hide and seek earlier. Elder Cousin said he had helped her.

Synnove closed her eyes and bit down on her lip, a snorting snicker briefly escaping her before she regained her self-control. Heron didn’t even bother to maintain the illusion of dignity, merely threw back her head and laughed from deep in her belly; Tyr, meanwhile, simply laid down on the floor and sighed heavily, covering his head with his paws. Nero made another horrified noise. Cid just wheezed.

Elder Cousin helped us, too! He told us about [subspatial aetheric sympathy tension paths].

Synnove froze. Her golden bronze skin had developed a worrying grey cast to it. “Say that again,” she breathed.

Roksana blinked. What? [Subspatial aetheric sympathy tension paths]?

The method by which all of Synnove’s carbuncles communicated with the people they and their mama generally liked wasn’t actual speaking, not with vocal cords and aspirated sounds to form words. Instead, they matched their aetheric harmonics with those of the individuals around them, with the end result being that the combination of the sounds they made, the body language they used, and the intent they held were “translated” into something the Spoken mind translated as “speech.” Most people initially found it odd, but quickly adapted.

This, however, wasn’t that.

Whatever Roksana had tried to tell her mama had…blanked. The concept was too big, too alien, too what the absolute swiving fuck for a meat brain in three dimensions to comprehend without shutting down as a defensive tactic to preserve sanity. But the little carbunclet still spoke, and whatever it was she had said had been further translated into a strange and obvious two-toned overlay of something that wasn’t quite right, but close enough.

Very slowly, Synnove turned her head to look at Nero, practically frothing at the mouth and his hands curled into claws as he grasped at air, and Cid, now aggressively cuddling a wrench he had gotten from one of his pockets like it was a comfort object. Deliberately, with precise enunciation, the arcanist said, “Please tell me I am not the only one who is hearing that harmonic as an approximation and not whatever it is my child is actually saying.”

“I know what those words mean individually,” Cid said. His grip on his wrench was white-knuckled. “I may even know what those words mean together. I am not ready to accept that. And I am most assuredly not ready to know whatever it is they are actually attempting to convey.”

“Blargle,” Nero agreed.

Synnove looked back at the twins. “Continue,” she said. The corner of her left eye kept spasming.

Sooooooo, Amandina began, once we knew where to go and how to sense the other metafolds based on Elder Cousin’s metafold—

“They sensed it?!” Nero yelled, outrage finally returning his ability to use vocabulary. He pushed himself upright and staggered over to Synnove and the twins, raking his hands through his hair. “How in the hells are they able to sense similarly constructed aetheric metafolds when each one is a distinct pocket dimension?!” He suddenly leaned down so he was nose to nose with the twins, frowning severely and blue eyes glimmering with suspicion. In a quieter, but no less manic tone of voice: “How in the hells are you able to sense similarly constructed aetheric metafolds when each one is a distinct pocket dimension?”

Dunno, Uncle Nero, Amandina chirped, wiggling her ears, her fur iridizing back and forth between black and purple once more.

Just can! said Roksana. She reached out and very carefully booped his nose.

Nero’s eyes crossed, staring at the white pearl carbunclet’s paw. He drew back with a huff—but booped her nose in turn, and then Amandina’s. The twins peeped happily.

“And then you pushed,” Cid said from his place on the floor.

Yeah!

It was easy!

It tickled!

And then we were here!

Synnove gazed sightlessly at the far wall, green eyes huge and unblinking. She untwisted her wrists and tucked the girls up against her chest, where they snuggled close. “My babies had a conversation about aetherospatial metaphysics with Carby,” she said in disbelief. “While they were inside his metafold.”

“Before they broke the laws of everything we know about physics and aetherophysics and quantum mechanics and traveled through space-time because they missed you,” Cid helpfully added.

“Congratulations,” Nero said icily. “You have mothered two more constructor-kit outer entities. If the fabric of reality unravels any time soon, I am blaming you.”

Yaaaaaaaaaaay! the twins cheered. The air popped and a bright light flashed between them, and suddenly aetheric confetti in a rainbow of pearlescent hues floated through the air, the pieces dissipating as they landed.

Synnove dropped her gaze to her youngest carbuncles, amused exasperation briefly flitting across her features once more. Nero and Cid also looked at the carbunclets, though without the amusement on their parts. Then the three scientists looked at one another.

And, finally, the hysterical yelling commenced.

--

Heron let them go at it for a while, finishing up her shawl and casting on a new one with the pretty copper wool-and-silk she had earlier thrown at Nero. After nearly a full bell of non-stop shouting, Biggs and Wedge arrived to investigate, and were dragged into the hysteria once they parsed through the trio talking over one another.

She did not even pretend to understand anything. There was quite a bit about aetherophysics and aetherology that she had picked up simply from knowing Synnove for so many years, but this was far beyond her ken. A few phrases stood out of the verbal melee (“quantum tunneling,” “Keltgeim’s absolutely ludicrous fringe theory about particles,” “aetheric entanglement”), but otherwise it was all Allagan to her.

At the two bell mark, however, with no sign of any of them slowing down, the Hellsguard decided it was time to call in reinforcements.

“Go get Jessie, please,” Heron quietly said to Tyr, “and tell her to bring the hose.”

Tyr boofed, amused. Yes, Aunt Heron! He stood and trotted for the workshop door, disappearing around it with a flick of his tails. The twins waved after him.

Heron eyed the group of frantically yelling nerds and reached up to her linkpearl cuff. She tapped a specific ‘pearl and leaned back in her chair as she waited for the other end to pick up.

A soft click echoed in her ear, and a familiar warm tenor came over the line. “Good afternoon, Heron,” said Aymeric. “What trouble has Synnove gotten into now?”

She probably should start calling her baby sister’s beau for reasons other than ‘come pick her up,’ but today was not that day. “She’s involved in a five-way discussion here at the Ironworks about theoretical physics that may not in fact be as theoretical as previously thought,” she said. “Please come pick her up.”

“Quite a lively discussion, then, as I can hear it,” the Lord Commander said drily. “On a scale of, created a more efficient theorem, to, about to write an “in response to” article rebutting a Thavnairian mathematician, just how manic is she?”

Heron hummed thoughtfully and turned to look over at the yelling scientists. Synnove was alternating with keeping Amandina and Roksana tucked close to her chest and gesticulating wildly with her hands with the twins still in her grasp, the babies going wheeeeeeee! every time with the later. Nero was pulling at his hair and so wild-eyed that she was becoming mildly concerned his eyes would actually pop from his head; her Echo was softly pinging in the way that meant Nero had lost his grasp on Eorzean Common somewhere in his tirade and had slid back into Garlean. Cid had his face in his hands, only raising his head to shout something in incomprehensible technobabble before dropping it back into his palms. Biggs and Wedge weren’t even coherent, with Wedge’s hands flailing so hard they were blurring.

But they all, each and every one but very especially Synnove, had a spark in their eyes that she well knew was going to mean trouble for someone in the near future. Hopefully just Jessie and Thubyrgeim.

“Once she’s calmed down?” Heron said into the linkpearl. “She’ll be at, rewriting the laws of reality.”

Something clattered on the other end of the line—a teacup, more than likely—and Aymeric swore softly, then sighed heavily. “Give me half a bell and I’ll be there to take her home.”

“Thank you,” said Heron cheerfully. “See you soon! Oh, and bring a towel.”

“Ah, hells. At least you warned me this time.” The ‘pearl line closed with a click.

And that was when Jessie entered the workshop, a firehouse braced at her hip. She waved to Heron, and the Hellsguard grabbed her knitting sundries bag and loped for the door.

The twins looked over, pricking their ears, then exchanged a glance. They nodded, and proceeded to wiggle free of Synnove, who was so deep in argument that she didn’t notice her hands emptying. Amandina landed lightly on her feet, but Roksana hit the floor with a soft plop! Her sister grabbed her scruff in her teeth and helped yank Roksana upright, and then the pair were scrambling for the safety of Heron, who scooped them up outside the shop door and dropped the carbunclets into her yarn bag.

With no collateral to worry about, Jessie turned on the hose.

[beemovieerotica]

It's because Industrial Light and Magic did the VFX on these films prior to its acquisition by Disney in 2012.

Pre-acquisiton ILM as a collaborator with Disney:

the Pirates trilogy

Wall-E

101 Dalmations

the Chronicles of Narnia

National Treasure

Post-acquisiton ILM as a subsidiary of Disney:

every marvel movie beginning with Joss Whedon's Avengers

every star wars movie beginning with The Force Awakens

the 5th Pirates film which we don't talk about

the live action Aladdin

box office flops Jungle Cruise, A Wrinkle in Time, and Tomorrowland

They still do fantastic work when contracted by outside studios (The Batman, A Quiet Place, The Revenant, Jordan Peele's Us, etc) but genuinely the stranglehold that Disney has over them for their in-house projects produces these washed out, pseudo gray-scale films which I'm 100% sure is used to hide rushed work in the midst of an insane level of pressure and unreasonable deadlines.

Credit where credit is due, ILM still does great work but just not when Disney is the one in charge.

Remember how bright and amazing Pirates of the Caribbean looked and felt and then compare it to what they're doing to Little Mermaid and Tinkerbell, and weep.

Please notice also that while Davy Jones is entirely cgi AND a water colored character, he still isn't totally fucking murky.

Remember when Disney had fucking lighting???

[ginger-nightmist]

18) Panglossian

Y’all this one is CRUNCHY and maybe consider that a forewarning in that I’mma tag this as: 

Exarch/F!WoL, one sided

So forewarned is forearmed if that’s not your preference.

It had all seemed to go as well as he could ever have dreamed, although he had, of course. We are all prone to impossible optimism in our heads. Still, amongst his priorities, he had achieved them all.

She had survived.

Norvandt had survived.

Lyna had survived.

The Crystarium had survived.

Impossibly, he has survived as well.

After all that, it seemed like he may as well believe the most impossible things could happen. Amongst the celebrations, G’raha realizes that she has slipped off and away from the others. Not a surprise, both that she would and that she could; most of the people here would think first of the other Warrior of Darkness, who wielded that power literally, who swept away sin eaters with mighty power and a fearless gaze. Oh, they knew that Kohanya was one as well, but her role to their eyes was smaller, supportive, magic not even particularly flashy.

Because none of them could recognize her slowly growing bloated and crackling with light, until she was hanging against being a monster by the slimmest nail, scraped towards it ilm by ilm, beautiful as the blade her existence became, held to their necks. She seemed to prefer it that way, too, which he struggled to understand. When he had first known her, she had no fear of being seen as a hero. The chronicles he had found from Ishgard’s ruins certainly painted her as one, tales of facing down dragons even greater than those the Allagans controlled. The records and tales had shifted their focus after that, but he had been sure, so sure. Yet when she came here, she preferred to fade away, stand back in other’s eyes. He still didn’t know why, when she still steps up, rarely questioning, to whatever challenge they put to her.

But he distracts himself. This is his territory, his home, and he can feel the traces of her aether, largely returned to normal, laying over the ground, luring him on like honeysuckle and spice on a hot summer breeze.

He finds her outside on one of the upper balconies, leaning against the railing, black cherry eyes on the inky interstellar medium, the brilliant sparkle of start in a range of pale hues. Out here in the dark, her hair is again almost as dark, the few lingering mismatched streaks disguised. As are the aberrations on her skin, with her high necked gown and long sleeves, covered from neck to toe. Grinning brilliantly, he moves to lean beside her, hand resting just so it brushes against the other miqo’te’s as he greets her, “You have achieved something truly miraculous. A hero unmatched in our history.”

Kohanya’s eyes turn to him, and they are colder than he’d expected, and weary. No pride or joy at her success. “I only did what I had to to be able to go home, G’raha, you should understand that notion.” There is a low hiss to her voice, especially at his name, and the Exarch gazes back, as wounded as if his own eyes truly were of blood.

Uncertain, he reaches to take her hand in his still of mortal flesh and bone, interlace fingers tightly. “Kohanya? Of course, I wanted to go home someday, but I wanted to preserve you far more. There was no home without you.”

Something cracks in her features and for the smallest moment he believes she is about to confess she returns his feelings and all will be as perfect as he could ever have dreamed. Then sorrow descends across her like a widow’s veil, darkening. “G’raha. You were my friend, not my beloved. We never spoke of such things. I did not believe you had felt much more, given how easily you left to sleep forever.”

His ears flick back as he swears he hears a distant sound, like a glass dropped onto a stone floor. “I didn’t think we had to! You… We… That night together!” The halcyon memory that had sustained him, had replayed over and over in his head a thousand thousand times a day, until the colors were truer than life, the sounds deeper, until the sense of it and her had been charged into the fundamental atoms of his self, flesh or crystal. How could he possibly have misremembered it?

Kohanya’s eyelids dropping, covering her for a long moment. “G’raha… No. Yes, we had sex, because you were my friend and I thought you wanted to. Then when it ended, you acted like you felt guilty and miserable for what happened.” She laughs, low and bitter. “Twelve! I wasn’t even sure you would still want to be my friend, I must have been so bad!”

“Kohanya. My love, no, no, you were wonderful, I—” G’raha pulls her hand his chest, clutching it to his heart, as if through word and force of body he can convince her to understand how her memory, her history is wrong. “I felt bad for seducing you, knowing what I might have to do, to leave you.”

She tugs at her hand, as if she wants to take it away, and he lets go as if burnt. “Yeah, that was pretty shitty, although I am not sure I would call it a seduction. We were friends. I was trying to make my friend happy.” She takes a step back, and he expression is the terrible gentleness of the divine. “I am not in love with you and I never have been. You don’t really love me either. You don’t even know who I am now.”

More shards of glass, ground underfoot, wailing, and his ears are flat on his hair, his eyes wide. “I thought — Surely —” He stills and a series of horrifying realizations occurs. Maybe he had created something more than what was really there in memory. Maybe he truly had asked too much. Maybe wanting everything and her heart too was a step too far. “No. I am sorry for my misunderstanding. I will give you your space.”

He turns, crisply, and walks away, ignoring the soft sigh behind him, that is as much sorrow and regret as exhaustion. Or so he wants, even now, to believe.

[starswornoaths]

The Deal We’re Making

Commission for @eremiss of Gwen and Thancred. I absolutely adore them, have I mentioned that? Thank you so much for your patronage, friend!

Spoilers for 4.4, however vague, below the cut!

Commission info!

For all the upheaval and mutiny that had shifted the tectonic plates of Ala Mhigan political landscape, Gyr Abania itself looked more or less the same as it always did from here. To observe the sandy, slaty plains brushed with autumnal foliage and freckled with pockets of civilization, Gwen could almost pretend naught had happened at all. 

Almost, she thought, and without conscious effort, spared a glance at her Scion accomplice.

Thancred’s eye could no longer catch hers, blind even behind the eyepatch as it was, but even still he must have felt her look at him. That he had to turn his head further to meet her stare was an adjustment he was still clearly not accustomed to, reluctantly craning his neck as he did. Still, his smile seemed easy enough, even as his eye glanced down to her journal, laid open in her lap. 

“Chronicling our adventures for future bards to turn to song, are we?” He asked with that familiar roguish grin. 

As if anyone but him read her journal. As if anyone but him were permitted. Gwen pursed her lips to hide her smile.

“Not unless you might be able to turn uneventful reconnaissance into a ballad to stand the test of time?”

“Challenge for the ages, truly. One that not even a bard of my caliber could manage— not even one with a muse so lovely as mine.” Thancred replied.

When his eye squinted shut oddly and sharply, Gwen couldn’t help but cock an eyebrow at him in confusion. After a moment of puzzling out what had happened, she chanced a guess: “...Was that...your attempt at a wink?”

“I am at a bit of a disadvantage, dove.” He blanched, offering her a plain look. “Cut me some slack.”

The bark of laughter that bubbled up from her throat felt sharp, and she barely managed to hide how the sound startled her with a cough. Just down the slope of the cliff, Duskfeather ruffled at the disturbed quiet, but resumed his vigil with minimal fussing. 

“You of all people, asking for some slack while on the job?” Gwen asked playfully, closing her journal.

She didn’t need to see both of his eyes to realize he winced at the comment, and she bit back a curse at her thoughtless words.

“Trying to get better at it, perhaps.” Thancred said in a voice just airy enough to tell her that she’d unintentionally needled at an old bruise. 

“I’m— I mean that it’s a good thing,” Gwen tried to hopelessly correct herself. “I should say— I’m glad that you’re—”

“I know, dove.” Thancred reassured her just as quickly, and despite them being afield, he reached over and gently squeezed her hand briefly. Nothing too untoward or unprofessional, but grounding. Solid, amidst ever shifting times. Enough, for the both of them. “It’s fine.”

The tentative but warm touch also reminded Gwen of why they were there in the first place. Check the patrol routes for the Resistance and Alliance forces, teach the locals how to protect themselves against the bigger threats they would commonly face, prepare them to stand on their own two feet— and all before the Eorzean and Doman Alliances came together to discuss a union of banners against the Garlean Empire.

But for such a monumental meeting to even happen, those in power, both within and without the Eorzean Alliance, had to take a hard look at their fault lines and begin to at least patch the cracks— and for that, the Scions were once more relied upon.

For all the apprehension that she had in dwelling on anything beyond the meeting itself, Gwen hoped their preparations would be enough.

Well, she hoped for that, and for a chance to breathe between now and that meeting. Ideally, to breathe alongside Thancred, but that was a fantasy, and she knew that. It had felt like they had just kept going, going, going, since the banquet— and while that distance had been crossed, Gwen wondered if she was the only one that questioned if they had really taken stock of how they had changed— together and alone. She wondered if he had allowed himself a moment to let it all catch up to him. 

“Dove?” Thancred inquired quietly. It was just loud enough to pull her from her reverie, enough for her to see he was watching her with concern writ plain on his face. “Are you alright?”

In his careful examination, he leaned close enough to her that her world only smelled of sandalwood, the wildflowers and fresh air fading in the background. All of her focused on all of him, and she swallowed heavily, even as she welcomed being swallowed whole by every ilm of his deceptively deep waters.

“I’m fine.” Gwen insisted, and straightened out the front of her coat as if it would right her thoughts along with it. “Just have a lot on my mind is all.”

Thancred nodded in understanding, his face relaxing into something more pensive.

“A lot’s been happening, dove— and I don’t just mean recently.”

Gwen nodded. Even as she noted the aching heaviness in her shoulders, she felt that pressure weighed as it should.

“I know what we’re doing out here helps— I know that.” She rolled her shoulders in an effort to readjust her burdens. “It feels like busy waiting all the same.”

“You’ve just described most of my job, dove.” Thancred snorted a laugh. “Surely there is more bothering you than mere impatience?”

Gwen took a moment to consider what her answer should be, tested the taste of some choice words she had wanted to have, but found none of them palatable in that moment. Swallowing them was nearly as arduous a task as spitting them out, difficult enough that she had to convince herself to press them down. 

“No, nothing.” She lied with no small amount of difficulty. 

Heaving a heavy sigh and raking a hand through her bangs, she tucked her journal away in her pack. Swinging the pack over her shoulders again, she took another sweep of the valleys below their cliffside vantage point.

“Come on, one more sweep of the perimeter should do.” She brushed dirt — imagined and not — from her pants as if the motion would sweep her thoughts away with it.

“Why not take a moment longer to observe the path from this vantage point?” Thancred countered, surprising her. “One can never be too careful when surveying a road, after all. In particular when one is meant to find fault in it.”

“We’ve seen plenty— we should check the blindspots near Castrum Oriens—” When she turned away from the cliff, intent on taking the path back down to Duskfeather, Thancred caught her hand in his.

“Gwen,” he called with soft insistence. “A moment.”

She twisted at the waist, intent on debating their need for haste as she moved back down the path, but when she met his gaze, every ilm of her grew still. He looked at her as if he were beckoning her back to him, struggling with every onze of himself all the while. He looked painfully cognisant of the time and distance between them in that moment, too aware of the grief that had muted him but for his anger.

With a hum of agreement, Gwen pivoted back on her heels, her whole body leaning toward True North, to home, to him.

“Thank you.” He sighed in relief.

Some of the tension in his shoulders bled off at her agreement, if only just. There was still a tightness to his gaze, not quite scrutiny, but something close. When the weight of it was finally more than she was comfortable with, she shied her gaze away. 

“You’re staring.” She mumbled for lack of knowing what else to say.

“Appreciating.” Thancred corrected with a roguish grin. “I’ve always been a purveyor of fine art, you know.”

“Thancred, please.” Heat bloomed across her face in spite of herself. Even as the stream of emotions that rushed in rapids in the space between them raged with uncertainty, Gwen reached across with the hand he wasn’t holding and laid it gently on his arm to bridge them together. Warmth suffused through her at the contact, even through her glove, and she soaked in what comfort she could at the familiarity of it, of him. “You know that isn’t what I meant.”

The facade fell away again with a wince, and his gaze was pulled to her hand on his forearm. “You’re right— and I think I can take a guess at what’s been bothering you so.”

Gwen hummed thoughtfully. “With everything that’s happened...with so much yet to happen, I feel as though I’m in freefall.” 

“That...sounds familiar.” Thancred admitted almost too quietly for her to hear, even as close as she was. 

“I know we’ve found each other again—” she squeezed his arm to emphasize how important it was that he was there— and perhaps in part, to keep him from being ripped away from her again. “I’m happy for that, you must know that—”

“I do.” He reassured her with a nod. “As am I.”

“But we can’t— we can’t pretend that either of us are the same after...after everything.” Her shoulders slumped of their own volition, and their weight dragged her head down a few ilms, just enough to tear her gaze away from his and stare down at the white band of leather wrapped around his neck. “It feels like we’ve scarcely had a chance to breathe, let alone…”

Let alone process everything that had come before this moment. All the loss, the oppressive weight looming heavy over them like a precariously hung guillotine. Had they given themselves— and each other— even a moment to breathe since they had supped on bitter betrayal in Ul’Dah? Did they even know who they were in the wake of all their grief, and if the people they had become were still able to go on as they had?

“Gwen?” Thancred pulled her back to the Fringes, back to the here and now. Anchored by his hand holding hers, she took a shuddering breath to calm herself.

“My thoughts got away from me.” She admitted with no small amount of reluctance. Gently, she took her hand from his grasp, let go of his arm, and pushed her bangs back. “It’s...a struggle to know what to say.”

Thancred nodded in understanding, though she noted that he was looking away from her now, eye fixed on the path leading back to where Duskfeather now preened his feathers as he awaited their return. Gwen couldn’t decide whether she preferred the intense scrutiny or him not looking at her at all. 

“I imagine I’ve not made that any easier.” He spoke up.

She felt akin to a ship with no anchor in this conversation, and before she even had time to consider the tumultuous waters they had not yet sailed through her palm sought to press itself over his heart like a ship in the night following the beacon of the lighthouse on shore. 

“War has not made that any easier.” She added.

“True enough, but I won’t pretend I’ve been...available. Not as much as I should be.” Thancred admitted with great difficulty. His face twisted into a grimace, though made a point to look at her again as his hand came to cover hers and press it tighter against him. “No need to make excuses for me, dove.”

She hadn’t been— or at least, she hadn’t meant to, though she could see his point. With him in particular, even the other Scions, since they had all reunited after the banquet, had been careful to give him a wide berth more often than not, emotionally and sometimes physically, depending on how foul a mood he’d given off. 

That distance had persisted leading up to them actually, unexpectedly being able to say farewell to Minfilia. After that, Thancred had needed space to process besides...so they had subconsciously made that the new normal. Just letting Thancred process his feelings in due time while still being close enough to know they were there for him. It had been all anyone could think to do.

Even Gwen had given him space in the early months following their reunion. She couldn’t help but remember how tense he had been wound up when she found him in the Carline Canopy, just before she was meant to make for the Carteneau Flats with Cid, Nero, and the others in search of information on how to unshackle Omega. Even as she had sat in the stifling quiet and struggled to find the words to reach him in the scant moments she had stolen for them. With her forehead pressed against his shoulder and his tension bleeding into her, she felt like there was an unfathomable distance between them in that moment. 

They had found one another some handful more times since, and the letters in the space between those collisions had helped smooth over many of the uncomfortable tension that had been there, though it was hard not to liken them to calluses forming on the heart. Were they healing, or just building familiarity with the same wounds over and over again until they couldn’t be hurt by it anymore? Could either of them even tell the difference at this point?

“Sorry,” Gwen said, and with conscious effort unwound her shoulders. Her fingers flexed against his chest. “I never meant to— I only meant it wasn’t only our own struggles making things harder.”

“A fair point.” Thancred conceded with a sigh. “Still, you’re right. We haven’t truly talked, and we need to. I might not like it, but I know that we do. We just haven’t...when has there really been time?” When she parted her lips to reply he added, “When have we had the amount of time we would need to sort through everything, Gwen?”

When indeed, she thought with a pensive hum. Between the both of them behind enemy lines on two different fronts and all of the fallout that has come since the liberation of Ala Mhigo, what time they had managed to steal away for themselves was scant at best, fleeting at worst. Not long enough to have an honest heart to heart conversation— let alone enough to recover from such a moment.

“We haven’t— I know we haven’t. Even now, we’re working on a schedule with little and less wiggle room. And I’m not saying that I’m upset that we haven’t, just that we should, and it just feels...I don’t know.” She blew her bangs out of her eyes, and when the stubborn lock sprang back in front of her she tucked it hastily behind her ear with her free hand. “I hate the place we’re stuck in right now.”

Thancred gave a grunt and nodded in agreement. Acknowledgement of their predicament made it too real for her in that moment, and she cut anchor and slipped her hand away from under his, away from him entirely and set herself adrift. It was difficult to define that place, where they weren’t okay enough to go on as before, thought it was not quite limbo because it was never a matter of if they could coexist as partners, but how they could do so comfortably and without this heavy, unspoken of weight in the air when they lingered in those quiet moments for too long.

Even now, as Thancred wondered at what he could say and took the time to choose his words, Gwen felt stifled by the oppressive pressure closing in around her, as if finally giving voice and acknowledging that it was there only made its presence worse. There was a lump in her throat now that made it difficult to swallow, and she couldn’t help but fidget with her hands, fingers idly plucking at the seams of her well worn leather gloves.

Say something, she wanted to plead impatiently, though bit the inside of her cheek to silence herself. It wouldn’t do to try and apply even more pressure when treading on such thin ice as this. Not to say she worried about him exploding in anger— far from it. No, what she worried about most in giving vent to her concerns was seeing him shut down again in the wake of them if she pushed before he was well and truly ready to talk. 

“Much as I agree that we need to work through it all, it’s as you said: we’re on too tight a schedule to make that time now.” Thancred began with care. If she focused, she could hear him mentall weighing each word before uttering it. “Though I’m not too proud to admit that I still don’t know what to say.”

“Neither do I.” Gwen admitted, surprising him. “It feels like I haven’t even had the time to think about everything, let alone…”

Thancred hummed a laugh and reached across that distance that she felt a little less keenly in that moment to take both of her hands in his. She could only imagine that he was comfortable with it because of their privacy— normally, they refrained from physical affection when on duty or in public for want of professionalism. Maybe it was because they were alone for malms in the Fringes, or maybe it was because he’d felt they had more than earned this much unprofessionalism. If the latter, she was inclined to agree after all the hell they were put through.

“I’m not faring much better, for what it’s worth.” 

“Still...we should be. Thinking about it, I mean.” After a moment of debate with herself— because while they were alone, they were also technically afield— she stepped close enough to press her forehead against his shoulder. “Would that we had the time…”

“Would that we had the time.” He parroted with a sigh. He leaned his head against hers, his temple gently bumping against her own. They reveled in their closeness, and like every other moment they had stolen away for themselves, they made that enough. “We don’t at the moment, but I agree that we should make the time. This meeting marks a milestone in the conflict— an important one. Important enough that everyone will need to regroup for the next step. And at the risk of cursing it: at its conclusion, the Scions will have a moment or two to breathe, I imagine.” He stepped away enough to look her in the eye while still grasping her hands with gentle insistence. “Let us make that time ours— gods know we’ve earned it.”

Gwen gave a hum of agreement with a nod.

She felt every taut muscle in her body slacken— it was no resolution, not by a long shot, but at least there was clear intent to find that resolution. That it would happen at all was a balm on her nerves. Of their own volition, her lips pulled into a soft, relieved smile. Thancred grinned at the sight of it.

“You’re already feeling better, then.” He said, though how he’d said it made it more of an observation than a question.

Despite herself, Gwen flushed. “Maybe a little. I’m glad that we’re on the same page.”

“Well, of course we are.” Thancred said with a sagely nod. Still holding her hands, he turned them over. “Have I not told you?”

“Told me?” She asked, even as she could guess at where this was leading.

With a tenderness normally saved for those stolen moments where it was only them— and really, couldn’t she technically count this one, too? — Thancred plucked at her gloves until he slid them off of her hands in one fluid motion. He tucked them temporarily in his belt and smoothed his thumbs over her open palms. 

“Have I not made myself clear? I’ve made it a point to turn every page in your mind over and over until I memorized every part of you that I could.” He peered up at her through his lashes in that way that made the heat rise to her cheeks. “These hands are the well worn cover of my favorite book.”

He brought her hands up to his lips to press a single kiss to each palm and left little pinpricks of levin to arc through her veins until she felt her heart stutter from the shock.

“It’s been a while since we’ve had that sort of heart to heart.” Gwen croaked out reluctantly, damning herself for how easily they slipped back into such endearing familiarity in spite of everything. “I doubt I’m still the same person you remember— or that you remember me correctly.”

“Even if that’s the case,” Thancred reassured her, stepping close enough that they were nearly chest to chest. “I’m more than willing to learn anew— and this time, I’ll choose to cherish every page of your story.”

“And if the story isn’t to your liking?” She asked in spite of herself.

“Gwen.” He sighed and gently pressed their foreheads together. She felt him let go of her hands and hadn’t realized that her eyes had fluttered almost entirely shut until she felt the smoothed calluses of the pads of his thumbs stroking her cheekbones. Flustered more than she liked to admit, she kept her hooded gaze on the front of his coat. “I know much has happened, but do you trust me when I tell you that for all the change that has happened, you and I are still worth fighting for? That I want to fight for you and I, and I believe that we’re worth fighting for?”

“Yes.” She didn’t even have to use the time it took to draw the breath her answer carried to contemplate it. Even with all the uncertainty, the time and distance and horrors that had changed them both, that one truth was unshakable. She stepped back enough to meet his eye again, brushing his bangs away from his eyes. “Do you trust that I feel that, too?”

“Absolutely.” He nodded firmly, and leaned into her hand when she cupped his face. “Without question.”

The feeling in her chest was indescribable— not quite relief, per say, more because nothing was resolved, but something close to reassurance, because for all the change that had happened, they were still here. 

“That’s...that’s good.” Gwen sighed, and she felt light despite her burdens. “We’d best be getting back. I’m sure the Alliance leaders are starting to arrive.”

Thancred nodded and let his hands fall back to his sides. A seemingly needless gesture; as they walked back to Duskfeather, his fingers lightly brushed hers with every alternate step he took. When she giggled and teasingly bumped his shoulder with hers, it felt almost like before when he let out a startled chuckle and nudged her back.

Riding back to the Ala Mhigan Quarter, feeling Thancred’s hands on her hips as she guided Duskfeather felt more solid than the ground they had left behind. When he leaned closer to point out that Alisaie was awaiting them not far from the predetermined meeting place, she felt a warmth blossom from the contact and closeness that she hadn’t been able to delight in for so long with him behind enemy lines and her running herself ragged between battlefields.

It was silly, coming the closest to giddy she’d felt in some time when Thancred hopped off Duskfeather’s back first and practically lifted her off as she dismounted. And yet, Gwen took a moment to feign righting herself from the landing to squeeze his shoulders a moment longer. He seemed to notice the subtle want for lingering contact, as his lips quirked in that roguish grin she adored briefly as he held her by the waist under the same pretense.

“Ready to head in?” He asked, an almost playful lilt to his words.

“Certainly not alone.”

“I’m with you, Gwen.” Thancred reassured her, and braced a hand on her back once they’d disentangled and made for the entry to the Ala Mhigan palace.

As they were waved through by the guard and resumed their respectful, professional distance, Gwen took immense comfort in the fact that he was here, and just this once she wasn’t made to face such a daunting task alone.

[linelpisffxiv]

FFXIVWrite2020 13: Reunions

Years pass. Lin disappeared for a few years, but Lyna knew she’d return. It can only mean that what she had mentioned in her hopes had come to pass.

But she returned, another weapon to learn. Many, in fact, over the time. Multiple forms of healing and casting for the most part, but after some time, she sets aside weapons and focuses on skills the Mean appreciates. She had done so during a time she revealed that the passage was unstable, but her skills weren’t luck any longer.

Almost a decade passes and for a few months, her visits become more common, but there’s something she plans, She asks for help from the Crystalline Mean (Especially the facets of smithing and gathering, but all have their uses).

Then, one day, she calls all the leaders of the Crystarium inside.

In front of her grandfather’s mirror, the portal Lin used to cross worlds most of the time, is an archway. It’s made of some metal Lyna doesn’t know, a handful of wires attaching themselves into the tower itself.

“Is this what I think this is?” Moren asks.

“It depends on what you think it is. Katliss and the Mean know the answer, as does Chai-Nuzz, given how they helped.”

Lyna speaks up. “This is a portal to your homeworld. One you hope will allow passage for any to travel.”

Lin nods her head. “I don’t know if any of you ever saw me look as if I’m speaking to myself. We’ve gotten the communication part down, but I wanted to keep it all a surprise for when I get to this point.”

She looks away. “I wish G’raha could be the first to step through, given how much he means to all of you, but this is untested, and we don’t know if my aethereal trail means it would work for me regardless of others.”

She flips a few pieces and gives a signal, her hand to her ear.

A few sparks arc between both sides of the archway, and then the area ripples to life, a spring turned on its side.

Lin takes a few deep breaths, but then starts to hold it.

Lyna finds she imitates the action. She hadn’t known what the plan was for months, but now?

Now all her hopes, everything she had written in letters, would come to pass.

A man steps through. White hair and beard, about an average height for a hume, though Lyna recalls hearing of a race that had passed away in the flood with that bead in the middle of the forehead. Another eye. Something about how they lacked a skill, or had a settlement too close to the flood’s origin to warn them in time.

“I told Nero we wouldn’t need to increase the power for a more stable portal. Everything Lin told us made me certain this world’s aetheric balance was not off any longer. I can’t wait to rub it in his face.”

The man speaks nonsense to Lyna. Who is Nero, and why is there an argument going on like that.

Lin chuckles. “I never doubted you, Cid. I will back you up when I return home.”

However, she turns to everyone. “If you have read the chronicles G’raha translated for you, then this is Cid. He’s the one who built the portal to the thirteenth when we sought to rescue three from the clutches of a powerful voidsent, the equivalent of Sin Eaters, but for darkness.”

Lin clears her throat. “And also the man who, in a timeline that no longer exists, sought to find a way to undo a helltorn world, wrote the first theory on how it could be done. Also my boss for the past few years.”

Cid’s cheeks light up at everything. “I cannot say much for the latter, but the middle point, I will remind you that apparently it took the better part of four epochs for me to write that theory. I only built on what you found of the papers. I will return to let those waiting to proceed. And ensure Nero does not try to fix the perceived power supply issue.”

It takes another few minutes, but the first to step through after Cid leaves is a face Lyna knows well from the sketches Lin frequently sends her way.

The aged face of her grandfather. Once upon a time, he was over a century in age, but had the face of a young adult. He’s an ilm or two taller, a longer face and wider shoulders, but the red hair and red eyes are the same. His hair still past his shoulders in a braid.

The man immediately finds her in the small crowd and hugs her. “I should have done this years ago, Lyna.”

She nods her head. Her arms wrap around him.

After a dozen years, she can talk to her grandfather once more.

“Now, I hear much of your children, I can only hope I get to meet the girl you named after me and her brother today.”

[an-epic-complex-deep-existence]

Haven’t shared this yet

[kogetaikid]

ILMS: Just Like Mel; Part 3

FIRST PREVIOUS NEXT

This part actually does have depictions of S.H. and some references to attempted s**cide. Please proceed with caution!!!

(P.S. About Yahaira's age, this mini-comic (if you can even call it that...) chronologically takes place a little before THIS)

LAST WARNING FOR SELF-HARM/ATTEMPTED SUICIDE!!!

[ziracona]

hello i just finished in living memory and i just wanna say i really enjoyed it:)) my heart is still in pieces over philip and vigo’s story, tho:( i don’t know about what you have posted here but in the story there isn’t much about vigo. he is very mysterious and i want to know more about him

Ah! Thank you so much! I’m really happy you enjoyed it. And I’m glad that Vigo and Philip’s relationship was impactful—I know the sadness though. TuT

(Spoilers for In Living Memory ahead for anyone else reading this)

There’s for sure a lot in the Vigo tag on my blog if you’re interested, but I’m happy to answer questions too! The short overview is that he’s from the 19teens/1920s, Sámi (and Ethiopian on his Mother’s side), and from Norway, ended up in the realm sort of on purpose—went monster hunting after hearing a lot of legends about a cursed place and some evil spirit, and got more than he bargained for. Was trapped in the realm, figured out how to create a lot of things like the hatch tunnels, and made the Entity regret taking him, which it had previously thought was so funny and clever, and eventually became such a problem it basically tried to assassinate him by sending killers out hunting for him. He met Philip after Philip was sent to hunt Talbot, who ended up misplaced when entering the realm, and Philip was one of the killers trapped by Talbot before eventually Trapper broke free and the Entity got him. Vigo met Philip a few weeks later, and mistook him for a survivor. They kind of speedran enemies to friends to lovers at breakneck speed. And tried to work together to kill the Entity, which, as you know from ILM, ended in an extremely upsetting failure.

Even after death, Vigo refused to totally give up, and the Entity was too proud to kill-kill him (because that would he like admitting a human truly was a threat), and so trapped suffering 98% dead in the void, Vigo used the little remaining energy he had to try and watch Philip (and the survivors in the realm) and do anything he could to influence, or at the least, chronicle, events to mark them with meaning even if everyone else eventually ended up dead too, so at least Philip would not be utterly alone (he’s responsible for some minor luck strokes, like Kate finding the tape. There’s not much he can do, but when he can, he does). Vigo is also the narrator/editor for In Living Memory itself, which is why the flavor is how it is, and he addresses the audience directly at least twice, and why the end becomes slightly scattered/nonlinear once they’re outside the realm, as his connection is weaker so he has to kind of hunt for memories of what’s happening looking for what he wants, instead of vicariously experiencing things simultaneously, and why the story finally ends once he knows his connection will be gone soon with them out and him in the void/realm still, and is able to see Philip is going to be alright, so he is able to let go knowing it’s okay to and his loved will be alright. It’s called ‘In Living Memory’ as a play on ‘In Loving Memory’ & ‘Living Memory,’ as it’s in a way a funeral gift, but it’s chronicling life ongoing and how significant their struggles and loves and pain and hopes and connections all were, no matter where it ended. There’s a prequel that I’ll do sometime called ‘Signifying Nothing’ (also narrated by Vigo), as a reference to the Macbeth monologue (life is but a walking shadow, a poor player, who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is seen no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’), as en expression of loss and pain in the face of his failure there, in a way naming it ‘About Nothing’ — that perspective comes full circle with ILM, which exists to mark meaning to Philip’s life whatever happens, and which is essentially called ‘About Everything’. Love and life and memory, and marked significance.

They’re very tragic and sweet. Both end up completing the other’s character arc for them. In SN, Vigo’s goal is to save everyone and beat the Entity, and Philip’s is just to be/reclaim being a decent person at peace, living an okay life. Philip throws both his personal quest and future away in ILM trying to finish what Vigo started (and succeeds/beats the Entity and saves everyone), and Vigo similarly fails utterly in life at his own goal, but spends his whole afterlife chronicling Philip’s story and recording him as the good person deserving of peace that he is in stone, and is largely responsible for Philip’s survival in Memento Mori/Vs, because he defended him viciously in the void to anyone with a problem. Which lets both characters end up happy and at peace. They saved each other, even when Vigo was dead, and Philip couldn’t remember him.

Anyway! I’m so happy you liked them; both characters and Vigojomo are close to my heart. Feel free to ask any specific questions if you have them!

[voidiots]

full name.  Una’to Bajhiri pronunciation.   Una-to Bajhiri (the jh is a sort of hiss noise) nicknames. none currently height. 5 fulms, 6 ilms age. 25 zodiac. Scorpio. languages. Common Eorzean

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.

hair colour.  white, naturally. eye colour.  Green based aqua dipping into mint tones at times skin tone.  pale, anemically so. body type.  upside down triangle leaning towards the slimmer side. dexterity build. accent.  a mix between a light Irish accents’s rolled r’s, the hissed s of an Arizonan accent, and the occasional purr. dominant hand. right-handed. posture.  what ever best conveys what he wants to come across in a moment. He’s theatrical. scars. small scars, thin and white on his hands from knife nicks. tattoos. traditional keeper tattoos, and warding tattoo’s. most noticeable features. red eye makeup. lion tail. bright eyes and hair.

CHILDHOOD.

place of birth.  South Shroud birth weight / height. unknown; sickly manner of birth.  vaginal in a body of water. first words.  “mama” siblings.   Una’a Bajhiri (Nyr Raiah), Kiri (deceased), Kana (deaceased), Vizha (half sibling), and many unknown T clan members. parents.  Una Bajhiri and T’ara Nunh parental involvement. Una’to stayed in his mothers care until he was nine years old, that winter was when the caretakers roles switched for a time. He took care of her before fleeing his home on his tenth birthday. T’ara was a wanderer and adventurer who would drop by once in a while to visit his families in the shroud while still being a breeding male in the T clan. He was never much involved with his Keeper raised children. After fleeing Una’to was raised by a surly and odd woman in the circus he joined for five years time, being considered mistakenly mature enough at the age of fifteen to be old enough to care for himself within the circus until he left it at the age of twenty-two.

ADULT LIFE

occupation.  Formerly a member of a circus, and worker of the worlds oldest profession, Una’to now only does tarot readings for his income. current residence.  Ul’dhan inns and The Goblet. close friends. Nyr, Nezha, V’nefaria (Neffie),  relationship status. Dating Nezh’a, FWB with Neffie. financial status. Comfortable. Nezh’a pays rent, and they both work. driver’s license. None, he’s too prone to most forms of transport giving him motion sickness.  criminal record.  None on record, though he has committed a few accidental murders. vices. Fogweed on occasion, lying, tormenting people, and most of all secrets. 

SEX & ROMANCE.

sexual orientation.  Pansexual romantic orientation.  Polyamorous Panromantic. preferred emotional role.  submissive | dominant | switch  |  unsure preferred sexual role.  submissive  |  dominant  |  switch |  sex repulsed libido. decently high turn on’s. Whispering, clever flirtations, dancing, reciting poetry, competition turn off’s. Stupidity by his standards, poor hygiene, necking, and strangulation. love language. Quality Time & Acts of Service relationship tendencies.  Listening to the problems of the other and trying to find ways to solve or offer comfort to them, mindlessly touching or caressing, flirty teasing, and unabashed vulnerability.

MISCELLANEOUS.

hobbies to pass the time.  Reading, writing prose, talking in circles, knife tricks, acrobatics, and researching. mental illnesses. Depression, anxiety, PTSD. physical illnesses.  Voidtouched, cursed, sickly in childhood. left or right brained. Both. (I can’t pick one or the other for him) fears. Sleep, spiders, losing Nyr again, the past, his curse.  self confidence level.  Confident enough to keep himself and others fooled. vulnerabilities. His nightmares and the blood he coughs up from his waking. Touches to his neck after Una hurt him. The smell of alcohol. Mentions of true love.True kindness being granted upon him.

Thank you for the tag @weaveroftruth!

Tag you’re it @xiv-endora @ramblingsofseh @thefoxiibox @blindkarakul @straypromises and @ruby-fantasy-chronicles! Of course if you’ve done this feel free to ignore it, or even if you don’t want to. Should you wish to do this, I’m tagging you officially! So please let me see what you do!

[brookston]

Holidays 10.16

Holidays

Air Force Day (Bulgaria)

Bells Across America for Fallen Firefighters

Blog Action Day

Clean Your Bug Zapper Day

Department Store Day

Ether Day

Global Cat Day

Learn a Word Day

Maintenance Personnel Day

National Cut Up Your Credit Card Day

National Department Store Day

National DGS Day

National Dictionary Day

National Feral Cat Day

National Report Truth in Negotiations Act Fraud Day

National Wolf Awareness Day

Pope John Paul II Day (Poland)

Population Control Day

Restart A Heart Day (UK)

Steve Jobs Day (California)

Teachers’ Day (Chile)

World Allergy Awareness Day

World Anesthesia Day

World Spine Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

National Liqueur Day

National Veterans BBQ Day

United Church of Bacon Day

World Food Day (UN)

3rd Sunday in October

Brown Ale Day [3rd Sunday]

Sunday School Teacher Appreciation Day [3rd Sunday]

World Toy Camera Day [3rd Sunday]

Feast Days

Balderic (a.k.a. Baudry) of Monfaucon (Christian; Saint)

Bercharius (Christian; Saint)

Bertrand of Comminges (Christian; Saint)

Blue Whale Contemplation Day (Pastafarian)

Colmán of Kilroot (a.k.a. Colman mac Cathbaid; Christian; Saint)

Eliphius (Christian; Saint)

Feast of ‘Ilm (Knowledge; Baha’i)

Feast of the Ingathering [21 Tishrei] (a.k.a. ... 

Feast of the Tabernacles (Christian)

Festival of Shelters (Christian)

Harvest Home (UK)

Kirn (Scotland)

Mell-Supper (Northern England)

Sukkot (Judaism)

Fortunatus of Casei (Christian; Saint)

Gall (Christian; Saint)

Gerard Majella (Christian; Saint)

Hedwig of Silesia (Christian; Saint)

Hugh Latimer (Anglicanism)

Junian (of Saint-Junien; Christian; Saint)

Lullus (a.k.a. Lullon), Archbishop of Mentz (Christian; Saint)

Malcolm the Lion (Muppetism)

Marguerite Marie Alacoque (Christian; Saint)

Marie-Marguerite d'Youville (Christian; Saint) >li>Mummolin (a.k.a. Mommolin), Bishop of Noyon (Christian; Saint)

Nicholas Ridley (Anglicanism)

Opening the Bosom of Women (Hathor’s Temple; Ancient Egypt)

Pamela Anderson Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Pascal (Positivist; Saint)

Silvanus of Ahun (Christian; Saint)

Thevarparampil Kunjachan, Blessed (Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, Catholic Church)

Victor III, Pope (Christian; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Fortunate Day (Pagan) [42 of 53]

Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]

Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [48 of 60]

Premieres

Bridge of Spies (Film; 2015)

Crazy, by Patsy Cline (Song; 1961)

Dare by the Human League (Album; 1981)

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train (Anime Film; 2020)

Electric Ladyland, by Jimi Hendrix (Album; 1968)

Fry Me Cookie, With A Can Of Lard, recorded by Will Bradley (Song; 1941)

It’s Only Rock N’ Roll, by The Rolling Stones (Song; 1974)

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (Novel; 1847)

The Kids in the Hall (TV Series; 1988)

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis (Novel; 1950) [Book 1 of The Chronicles of Narnia]

The Lobster (Film; 2015)

Pierrot Lunaire, by Arnold Schoenberg (Melodrama; 1912)

Practical Magic (Film; 1998)

Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw (Play; 1913)

The Sensual World, by Kate Bush (Album; 1989)

Today’s Name Days

Hedwig (Austria)

Hedviga, Margareta, Marija (Croatia)

Havel (Czech Republic)

Gallus (Denmark)

Siret, Sirja, Sirje (Estonia)

Luna, Sirkka, Sirkku, Stella (Finland)

Edwige (France)

Carlo, Gallus, Gordon, Hedwig (Germany)

Gál (Hungary)

Edvige, Fortunato, Irene, Margherita (Italy)

Daiga, Daigone, Dainida, Egils (Latvia)

Ambraziejus, Dovaldė, Gutautas, Jadvyga, Margarita (Lithuania)

Finn, Flemming (Norway)

Ambroży, Aurelia, Dionizy, Florentyna, Galla, Gallina, Gaweł, Gerard, Gerarda, Gerhard, Grzegorz, Radzisław (Poland)

Vladimíra (Slovakia)

Beltrán, Eduviges, Eduvigis, Florentino, Gerardo, Margarita (Spain)

Finn (Sweden)

Avice, Avis, Gerar, Gerard, Gerardo, Gerrard, Hedda, Hedwig, Hedy, Heide, Heidi, Jerard, Noah, Noe (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 289 of 2022; 76 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 7 of week 41 of 2022

Celtic Tree Calendar: Gort (Ivy) [Day 16 of 28]

Chinese: Month 9 (Júyuè), Day 21 (Red-Yin)

Chinese Year of the: Tiger (until January 22, 2023)

Hebrew: 21 Tishri 5783

Islamic: 20 Rabi I 1444

J Cal: 19 Shù; Foursday [19 of 30]

Julian: 3 October 2022

Moon: 60%: Waning Gibbous

Positivist: 9 Descartes (11th Month) [Pascal]

Runic Half Month: Wyn (Joy) [Day 6 of 15]

Season: Autumn (Day 24 of 90)

Zodiac: Libra (Day 22 of 30)