#my fic: helenne

[weatheredpileoftomes]

passed pawn

For FFXIVWrite Day 13, “check”. Helenne, end of A Realm Reborn patches, major spoilers for 2.55, ~550 words. Warnings for, in fact, 2.55.

A very sound tactical mind has planned all this.

Helenne learned to play chess as part of her education, as a pursuit befitting a noble; she excelled at it, because she has what her colleagues in the arcanists’ guild assure her is an uncommon grasp of mathematics. She is familiar with arranging pieces to trap, and eventually to capture.

She had even considered how those pieces might feel, if they were real queens and knights, bishops and castellans, foot soldiers dragged into a grand war to defend a feeble king. She’d liked to consider them as people, and the stories they might live. The gambits, the captures, the valiant defenses, the battles of attrition; the final victory as the king, tipped over, rolls across the board and into stillness.

Nanamo’s crown had chimed, faintly, as it hit the tile. Raubahn’s armor had hit the ground with a clash.

They never say what happens to the pawns left after the endgame. Helenne had never considered it, but now she knows herself pursued. She’d been promoted, maybe; she’d found herself a knight, or even a queen, but with her side defeated all she can do is inch forward again…

“Helenne!” Thancred snaps. His fingers bite into her shoulders.

Helenne blinks, and focuses on his face.

“Come on.”

They run. Helenne doesn’t think about board games of strategy, just about the torchlit stone of the hallways—gilded bright, but with deep shadows—and the thick pile of the carpeting—soft enough to muffle footsteps. She glances back at Papalymo once, but he’s keeping up as well as the rest of them, though he’s older and shorter and inclined to leave the vigorous activity to Yda.

She wishes she’d worn something other than white. She’s covered in Raubahn’s blood, a crimson spray as loud as a shout that will make it impossible to pretend she’s some other Elezen just passing through the city.

“Wait,” she blurts suddenly. “I need to—”

Yda is bouncing on her toes with impatience, but they do wait, just long enough for Helenne to trace a familiar circle on the back of her hand and re-summon Larkspur.

She does come. One of her wings is a little askew, and she glares up at Helenne with her arms crossed, but she comes, alive and well, when she’s called. Helenne holds out a hand in overwhelming relief and Larkspur ignores it, but deigns to perch on her shoulder instead, half-tucked behind her hair.

She’d saved Raubahn’s life, and Ilberd had known it. Helenne had felt her aether dissipate as he grabbed her; she hadn’t known whether Larkspur had un-summoned herself, or been killed, or whether if she was killed it would be permanent.

“Shall we?” Y’shtola asks. There is clear in her voice the implication that the only acceptable answer is yes; fortunately, it’s the one Helenne already wanted to give.

They run, defending and defenseless, and the chessboard comes back to Helenne again. She has sacrificed pieces, and she knows the wisdom of it, but leaving Papalymo and Yda feels wrong, even if it might be wise. Leaving Y’shtola and Thancred feels worse.

When Minfilia says she needs to stay, Helenne trusts her, but then she’s alone again under the bitter stars, and this time—unlike last time—she knows enough to be lonely.

[tavplum]

Tall Walls, Gentle Hearts

Shoutout to my dear friend @an-alternative-savespot who just posted her amazing one shot fic for GreedFall. The work features her original female character, Helenne De Sardet and Kurt as they navigate their first night together it’s an incredibly sweet and vulnerable piece. 💜

If you want to give it some love you can do so here! Tall Walls, Gentle Heart (account on ao3 is required to read, warning: This work features explicit sexual content, additional tags on ao3.)

I made two pieces to go along with her fic, that hopefully portray the tenderness between these two characters!

Enjoy! 💜

[weatheredpileoftomes]

the essence of style

For FFXIVWrite Day 12, “dowdy”. Helenne, early/mid-A Realm Reborn, ~550 words. The thing about summoner gear is from Encyclopedia Eorzea II; I love lore.

There’s a lot to be said for arcane geometries.

“I hope you don’t consider it impertinent,” Y’mhitra begins.

This is either a promising or a distinctly un-promising start to a conversation, in Helenne’s experience. She gives Y’mhitra a look of polite interest.

“Was that the sort of outfit you were wearing when you defeated Ifrit?”

What an absolutely baffling question. Still. “It was,” Helenne says with caution. Y’shtola values practicality highly, never mind that Helenne is perfectly capable of imbuing clothing with arcane protections, and has in fact done so; and never mind that wearing longer sleeves or longer skirts would do no good to protect her from magickal fire, whether from a primal or a Garlean thaumaturge, any more than it would protect her from arrow or sword or spear.

Y’mhitra nods, though. “Excellent. You may have noticed that other mages have a preference for heavy robes.”

Helenne has noticed, without delight. Some of the robes have a certain charm, like Mistress Thubyrgeim’s overgown, but none of them are the sort of thing Helenne particularly desires to wear herself: for one thing, she could have worn them any time under her parents’ watchful eyes; for another, it is far too warm in La Noscea, or Thanalan, or even here in the Black Shroud, for anyone accustomed to the biting cold of Coerthas to wear that much cloth. Helenne has gone for walks in snowstorms in the sort of clothing that people around here seem to find suitable for a sunny day at the markets.

“It is practical, as a rule,” Y’mhitra says. Helenne nods, resigned. “However, our research indicates that summoners, in particular, found the opposite to be true—that the fewer barriers between the summoner’s skin and the defeated primal’s essence, the more easily that essence may be absorbed.”

“Fascinating.” Helenne holds her arm out in front of her and considers it, front and back. It looks the same as ever, to her—perhaps a little more brown, with the sun, but in the end perhaps not. It doesn’t look as if she has absorbed Ifrit’s essence, though she has no idea what that would look like. Glowing cracks in her skin? Unsettling. A fiery glow, perhaps, like the shifting blue-orange of the Bowl of Embers itself.

She runs a finger along where she knows the veins lie, imagining fire and magma running through them. What is a primal’s essence, anyway? Would it have soaked into her in one of Ifrit’s bellowing bursts of flame, or more slowly, more sadly, with his dying groan?

Y’mhitra says, “There are limitations to many forms of equipment, though the Allagan summoners had particular attire designed most specifically for their purposes, with arcane geometries worked into the fabric and perhaps even painted or tattooed onto their skin.”

“I see,” Helenne says. She considers her arm again. She is a reasonable hand with a paintbrush; she is not sure how she feels about tattoos, which would be impossible to change later if she wanted to. Perhaps a healing magick could restore her skin to its original properties, though, and it might be interesting to try. “Well! I’d feared I would be treated to a lecture on dressing properly for the job, not offered the opportunity to consider how my own aether can best interact with that of the world around me.”

“You have found the right place, I think,” Y’mhitra says with a smile. “And in the interests of securing it, allow me to explain the Austerities of Flame…”

[weatheredpileoftomes]

book of magic

For FFxivWrite2022 Day 17, “novel”. Helenne, the start of A Realm Reborn, ~1000 words.

So you want to be an arcanist?

It might be considered folly for Helenne to have brought any books at all with her, but it might also be considered folly for Helenne to have fled a betrothal to Lord Valtemont de Foncacier. She had wanted…not only something to read, but also the promise that her favorite novels offered.

In them, however much peril loomed around the heroine, however impossible the path ahead seemed, there was always an escape: a powerful ally, a hidden wellspring of resolve, love, recognition.

She had left most of her books behind, after all. Surely just three were not too unwieldy a weight—and they clearly had not been too unwieldy a weight, as she had made it from Ishgard to Coerthas, Coerthas to the adventurers’ town of Revenant’s Toll, Revenant’s Toll to Gridania, Gridania to a ferry to a ship to the shores of Vylbrand and finally here, to Limsa Lominsa, shining as if it had been freshly-scrubbed under a sapphirine sky.

The hustle and bustle of the busiest port in Eorzea strike dizzyingly on Helenne’s ears, and she takes a moment at the docks to get her bearings, clutching her bags and looking around, wide-eyed, knowing she must seem the veriest rube.

It is hot. Everyone back home—everyone back in Ishgard—would be scandalized at the bared shoulders and open shirts, the skirts kilted up to show calves or replaced entirely by hose, but Helenne herself has already turned her mending kit to making something that might hopefully pass for a day gown out of the nightgown she had brought. She had seen stranger garb in Gridania, and sees it again here in Limsa Lominsa, and that’s just as well; she likes the night-day-gown.

People shout and laugh, argue and kiss. Music floats on the air, tunes from pipe and fiddle and harp all fighting for the listeners’ ears. When Helenne makes her way a little further from the docks, she sees that the musicians are fighting for the listeners’ coin as well.

She buys a pastry (fried in some sort of leaves? how very unusual) from a street vendor with some of her dwindling stash of coin and considers her options. She needs to find lodging, and probably some sort of work clothes she doesn’t mind dirtying. Although…Roarich had really seemed to consider that her accounting was worth something, of all things, as if it weren’t the sort of thing that everyone learned if they needed to keep a household. If she could find work as a clerk, perhaps, or a governess, she could do those in any clothes she pleased.

Well, almost any clothes. The governesses in the woodcuts in her favorite novels might wear gowns like the one Helenne has made, but she suspects that real governesses might be expected to wear something sturdier, and for that matter that anyone responsible for small children might want to wear something sturdier. Lominsan children in particular, perhaps, she thinks, looking up at a Roegadyn child climbing a lamppost while shouting about the mainsail.

And perhaps…perhaps she might find a stall in the market selling used books, and once she can find someplace safe to leave her bag perhaps one visit to one of the famous taverns of Limsa Lominsa. Or perhaps employment first, so that she can enjoy herself better knowing that any purchase she makes doesn’t leave her at the mercy of strangers’ charity again.

She has to make her way through the markets trying to find the business district, and gets distracted by a stall that is selling used books. She’d left all her histories behind, her chivalric romances, her plays, her books of chess strategy, her memoirs, her folklore, even most of her beloved imperiled-damsel tales.

Perhaps just one book… She’s read the three she brought so many times she has them half-memorized, old friends that they are. Just one fresh story, if she can find one cheaply enough, to ration out in chapters while she works out how to make a life for herself here.

“This lot here’s four gil each,” the merchant says, seeing her hesitate over the piles. “A little accident on the road, the crate got damaged, but the ink’s mostly not smudged and all the pages are there.”

Helenne sorts through them with careful fingers and picks out a chunky volume whose leather binding is stained almost black, thanks to the accident on the road. It seems to have been saltwater and nothing worse; the pages are buckled near the front but the ink has, in truth, only run a little. It is one of the Sharlayan puzzle novels that occasionally make their way to Ishgard, and she would not have expected to find one here in Limsa Lominsa for four gil.

“This one,” she says, handing over the money before the merchant can change his mind. “Thank you.”

Clutching her prize, she wanders on.

“Oi! Adventurer!”

The streets are less celebratory here, but not much quieter; merchants dragging carts or laden with packs work their way through the streets, and Helenne frowns at them in puzzlement.

“You, Elezen in the white dress!”

Helenne looks down at her gown, and then around, just in case.

A middle-aged Roegadyn woman in a flour-covered apron nods when she catches Helenne’s gaze. “You’re going the wrong way for the Arcanists’ Guild.”

“Pardon?” Helenne wonders if there might perhaps be a different girl this woman was expecting.

“Well, you’ve got your grimoire, don’t you? And you’re fresh off the boat, aren’t you? You want to go the same way those lot”—she jerks her head at the steady trickle of merchants—“are headed to Mealvaan’s Gate same as you. Follow them and you can’t possibly lose your way.”

“��Thank you kindly, mistress,” Helenne says. She might as well see what, exactly, is expected of an arcanist, and perhaps if they’ll supply her a grimoire in truth.

[weatheredpileoftomes]

fearfrost

For FFxivWrite2022 Day 19, “turn a blind eye”. Helenne, mid-A Realm Reborn, ~500 words. Spoilers through lv 38 msq; warnings for [gestures at the Halonic Inquisition].

Helenne hadn’t wanted to come back to Ishgardian lands in the first place.

It had always been obvious that Alphinaud and Cid were not of Ishgard, a simple fact, but Helenne thinks it has never been quite this clear.

Lord Haurchefant should know better, though. He is of this place: its harsh winters and thin summers; its white snow and grey stone; its barren fields and unrelenting, unforgiving cold. Lord Haurchefant should know that the Inquisition isn’t safe to fight, and yet, somehow, he does not.

It isn’t that Helenne herself is fond of them. She has no particular dislike for heretics.

But what is anyone to do against the Halonic Inquisition itself? Since her earliest childhood she’s been warned not to draw their attention; not to be too outspoken, too independent, too inclined to curiosity; not to question authority, when disobedience of a parent’s orders might suggest that she would be equally willing to disobey the Fury’s. The fact that the Inquisition has never set foot so far south as Limsa Lominsa, and has no authority there even if they were to, has been like breathing without tight-laced stays.

Helenne has feared the Inquisition. She had spent years skating along the fine edge of rebellion, careening away from too much of it and stopping only when she couldn’t. They sniff out heresy and sin in the hearts of all like hunting dogs tracking prey.

And Lord Haurchefant wants to snatch that prey from them?

In spite of herself, Helenne considers him. He is the commander of this fortress, a settlement large enough to have its own aetheryte and kept in meticulously fine repair. He is clearly respected by his subordinates, as well, and from what she can tell they keep their weapons and armor in fine condition—not unused, but cleaned and mended—just as he does.

A good commander, then, not simply an unwanted bastard pushed off to somewhere he might not embarrass his trueborn family. He would not have gained their liking, or survived this long at their head, if he had a tendency to take risks without first being sure the reward was worth them.

They are some distance from Whitebrim Front, too; Helenne mistrusts any allies of House Durendaire, but the only shields she has seen around Camp Dragonhead bear the unicorn of Fortemps or the rose of Haillenarte. If it came down to it, she supposes an inquisitor might have an accident amidst the icy crevasses of the central highlands, as long as he had sent no report naming Lord Francel back to his superiors already.

But he would have, most likely, would he not? A son of one of the High Houses, even such a house as Haillenarte, even such a son as Lord Francel, is no trivial target. Even knowing no one here would have the resolve to strike him down, the inquisitor would want it known.

“Well, adventurer?” Lord Haurchefant asks with an encouraging smile.

Somehow it is that smile, that encouragement, that decides Helenne, and not her careful consideration of Lord Haurchefant’s position. “All right,” she says, checking to be sure her grimoire is in easy reach. “Let’s be off, then.”

[weatheredpileoftomes]

bishops’ pawn

For FFxivWrite2022 Day 7, “pawn”. Helenne, pre-Calamity, ~750 words.

Some call it the game of kings.

Helenne loves her mother’s chess set. The pieces are finely-carved of bone and ivory, each one a tiny work of art in itself. The knights on their strange beasts wield lances that look sharp enough that she could prick a finger on them, though time has worn away whatever needlelike edge they might once have had. The keeps loom, their towers soaring toward the heavens from foundations shrouded in trees. The bishops glower, and the pawns trudge.

And yet, even a pawn, persistent enough if it is, might reach the far side of the board and become a queen.

That is, at least, how Helenne’s tutor Master Parcemel described it when he taught the de Fiermont children the game, and the baron and baroness had nodded their approval when Solelle told them of the day’s lessons. It appealed to Helenne too, at first.

The queens—one white as old bone can be, varnished though it be, the other dyed a deep brown that begins to fade around the edges—are lovely pieces. Their crowns are real silver and gold, filigreed confections carefully attached with no backing at all, and their gowns trail elegantly behind them.

They move, and they act; so too must a lady of Ishgard be prepared to do. That much makes sense; Helenne finds no fault with that lesson.

But—persistent? It takes but a single game lost for her to realize persistence is not the only virtue. Her opponent will need to overlook the threat of the pawn, or have greater threats to deal with elsewhere; she herself will need to have no greater concern than inching that one tiny piece closer and closer to…if not to safety, then certainly to a more powerful kind of danger.

All the same, she finds she likes chess. It is a suitable game for young nobles: it teaches strategy; it rewards patience and planning at least as much as it rewards risk; it permits for conversation between the players, if they seek an excuse to converse; it allows the owner to flaunt their wealth with a fine set.

More than that, though, it makes a puzzle. Helenne has learned to keep account books and pore over a factor’s report looking for signs that they are cheating their lord; now she looks at the map of the chessboard and the shapes and ranges of each piece’s movement with glee. Place a knight here, and there are eight squares it could move to next, then—oh, not sixty-four, for some of them must overlap— Take that bishop, and leave those squares undefended for the next turn. Move the king to his keep, yet leave him exposed on the flank…

“I would rather not play with Helenne anymore!” Instead of tipping his king, Ciceroix pushes the board toward the center of the table, rocking the pieces still standing on it.

Helenne picks his king up herself. “A knight of Ishgard is generous in defeat,” she says sweetly.

The kings are the finest pieces, to her mind, with their fierce and solemn faces; Ciceroix’s defeated king’s crown gleams silver, a solid wing of metal brighter than that of the queen she’d helped corner him with. His pale robes had been painted with silver leaf once, but much of that has worn off and what remains has tarnished darkly, leaving only a few inky swirls of color across what had once been brocade. The dark king’s gilding has endured better, still glittering bravely in places.

“A knight of Ishgard isn’t supposed to lose five times in a row to his little sister!”

She starts setting the board up again, restoring the fallen soldiers to their squares. Here is the true game of chess: the idea that it could ever be that simple. Even at eleven, Helenne knows it isn’t.

Ciceroix looks around. “Solelle, you play her.”

“Absolutely not,” Solelle says, not looking up from her embroidery. “Even Master Parcemel loses to her half the time now. I have more sense.”

It’s not a difficult game, if you simply consider the patterns; Helenne supposes Master Parcemel is too busy to try, and her siblings too uninterested. “We’ll do something else, then,” she says. She likes puzzles, but she doesn’t want to fight.

[weatheredpileoftomes]

runaway bride

For FFxivWrite2022 Day 2, “bolt”. Helenne, shortly before the beginning of A Realm Reborn, ~900 words. Threat of coerced marriage, fear of spousal murder, past OC deaths, heir-related sexual politics.

There have to be better options than marrying Lord Foncacier.

Helenne certainly knows that vanity is unbecoming to a noblewoman of Ishgard, and unpleasing in the sight of the Fury withal, but she must be in possession of eyes, ears, and a working mind for a reason.

She is an attractive young woman.

She would like that to matter for her, much the way as it does for the heroines of her favorite novels, or the housemaids giggling about their suitors, or even the tavern wenches who might grant an evening’s unsanctified congress to a vocally hopeful footman or boot-boy. (Unsanctified congress has, from Helenne’s perspective, at least as much to recommend it as holy wedlock: for one thing, it would not require she spend the rest of her life with one man for the political advantage of House Fiermont.)

But, although prizing sentimentality over duty is also unbecoming to a noblewoman of Ishgard, to say nothing of the thought of prizing enjoyment—of any kind—over duty, and she had never expected to be madly in love with her affianced…

“My lord father,” she says, as demurely as she can, “are you certain that my lord de Foncacier is the husband you wish for me?”

She also wants to know why Valtemont de Foncacier is to be her husband, and not her elder sister Solelle’s, but she hardly dislikes Solelle enough to ask that. Lord Foncacier must be over sixty years of age, though Helenne doesn’t recall the exact number at the moment. His first wife died a bit less than ten years ago and was replaced with indecent haste, and although House Fiermont’s losses have kept them from mingling in society since the Calamity, they do still hear the gossip.

There have been two brides of Foncacier since then, neither has produced an heir, and they are both dead. The first perished shortly after the Calamity itself, having taken a chill: very well, it might happen; the bone-clawing cold of the new Coerthas was difficult to adjust to. But she had been Lady Foncacier for just over five years, with no child, and when the third Lady Foncacier perished of a sudden illness after four…

Helenne does not wish to become the fourth Lady Foncacier.

The first Lady Foncacier might, or might not, have died of a true accident; she was of the right age for Valtemont de Foncacier to realize that she would never give him an heir, which seems suspicious only with the benefit of hindsight. Each of the second and third Ladies Foncacier individually also might, or might not, have died naturally. That all three of them might, so quickly, beggars belief.

Helenne can not only count, she can reason. If a chocobo is set to cover another chocobo, with no hatchling to show for it, the fault might be either parent’s. If a chocobo is set to cover three different chocobos, and none of the coverings give the breeder a hatchling to show for it, the fault is almost certainly the stud’s. If Lord Foncacier is removing wives until he can find one who can give him an heir… Helenne would like to live to see her twenty-second nameday.

This consideration does not appear to have occurred to her father, who glowers down at her. “Lord Foncacier is a cousin of the Count de Dzemael,” he says coldly. “As I have no doubt you recall, House Dzemael is one of the High Houses”—Helenne bites the inside of her cheek—“and an alliance with them would be deeply beneficial to my attempts to rebuild our own family’s fortunes.”

But not mine, because I’ll be dead. “But why my lord de Foncacier? And why me?” Her parents had been much warmer toward her until a few years ago; Helenne is not out of the habit of arguing with them yet.

“He expressed a preference,” her father says. “The matter is settled, Helenne.”

There must be other lords who would be willing to marry her, and not plan to discard her like last week’s rubbish. Lord Foncacier is not the only man who has found her looks pleasing, and Helenne would be willing to try to charm lords with even higher connections than he if she were asked, if those lords might not be planning to murder her.

“His wives…” she tries; one last, desperate attempt. “Isn’t it…a little strange?”

“You read too many novels.” Her father’s frown deepens even further. “I’ll thank you not to repeat that slanderous gossip where anyone might call us to account for it.”

Helenne might read too many novels, by her father’s accounting, but right now she thinks the number is closer to just enough. If she leaves Ishgard—leaves Coerthas entirely—a man as obsessed with continuing the line of House Foncacier as Valtemont de Foncacier is would likely refuse to wed another man’s leavings, even if they did find her and bring her back—

If she could only leave, go somewhere sunny and warm, as far from the chill grey of the Highlands as possible. The pirate city of Limsa Lominsa, maybe, which would no doubt help her persuade anyone that she was far too ruined to be the next Lady Foncacier anyway.

If she can run, far enough and fast enough that she never has to persuade anyone regardless…

“My apologies, my lord father,” she says softly. “I will take care not to do it again.”