warnings: hurt, no comfort ; body horror ; violence ; drug abuse ; death

general: raha surfs the waves of space and time with a crystal board ; spoilers for shadowbringers and tales from the shadows (kinda?) ; feels ; hurt, no comfort—yes again quit complaining

noun

• a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point
• the flowing together of two or more streams

The Ocular’s crystal walls fade to shining rainbows and thence to blackness. Streaks of light speed by, flashing like schools of fish dancing in the deep

The whispered goodbye dies on G'raha's lips, lost in a howl of pain as the crystal crawls ravenous over his skin. Ilm by horrifying ilm it spreads and grows, pulsing outward from his heart to methodically emtomb him, down to each finger and toe, in shining azure.

Eaten alive.

He begs for a swift end to this maddening torment, either through his own death or via his successful arrival on the First.

The tower and the river of time upon which it rides grant him no succor, nor could they. They care not who directs the tiller or why. They only ride the currents.

They simply flow.

Time's river bears him onward as he gazes transfixed and helpless at hurtling infinity, the constant undulating threads of fate, the shimmering fragments of unrealized potential mingling with painful memories.

Past, present, and future overlapping, tangling, melting into each other, merging the real and recognizable with the fantastic and strange. He sees them all, bound together like pearls on a radiant webbing, ensnaring his mind as surely as the crystal feasts upon his limbs.

His physical agony shrinks to insignificance against the weight of this knowledge. The mind, beholding the fabric of the universe, can do naught but fray; no mortal can withstand the face of god.

He breaks and the tide takes him, inhabits him, experiences him.

And he—it.

Huge golden doors slam closed, the glimmer of sealing magic over their surface punctuated by a single lament which then rises to a trembling crescendo—a thousand, thousand voices crying out for salvation.

A pitiless moon hangs gravid over a blasted horizon, stripped branches reaching corpse-like fingers to the bleeding sky. Wide fields of colorless gas grow the dead rather than flowers, each futilely gasping, desperate to prolong a meaningless existence. Death comes to claim the Warrior and she breathes her last, the violet sweep of her lashes falling closed to rest against a sallow cheek. Her armor becomes flowing cloth of silver and gold, a crown of red and purple blossoms nestled amongst her locks. The world falls apart, reality disintegrates, unmade in an instant, until her beautiful corpse is all that remains.

In a small room filled with blue haze, the Warrior lays spread-eagle on a pile of crimson silks, opalescent skin glowing and pupils blown wide. A blond man with the Garlean third eye fucks her torturously slow, broad hand switching between cupping a bouncing breast and squeezing her windpipe, his blue eyes fixed upon the ruby curve of her lips. The pale Doman woman at the Warrior's side is beautiful as the dark side of the moon, the long pipe at her lips exuding thin smoke from a tiny bowl. It smells of burning petals, sweet but not cloyingly so. She seals her mouth over the Warrior's but neglects doing the same to the Garlean.

Both have eyes only for her.

The Warrior again, but alone, her smooth skin unnaturally pale, streaked with shining gold in a grotesque mockery of veins. Ethereal wings like those of a moth wrap around narrow shoulders, burning hate like a cold sun, a majesty of blinding white emptiness behind her eyes. Where once there was life and laughter now there is only stillness and bland ennui, drained away much like the vibrant heliotrope of her hair and eyes. A goddess of gluttonous lethargy, her clawed hands and gaping jaw encrusted with blood and fouled by dripping viscera.

Flashes come faster, what is muddled with what could have been.

Himself and the Warrior in the tower and yet not, fighting back to back with sword and spell against clockwork beings nearly 8 fulms in height, their glass cores filled with a swirling magic sandstorm.

The Warrior and another miqo'te, holding hands as they watch a small dark-haired kit—doubtless their child—play in the sun. The man's slate skin bears heavy scarring save his left arm, which is not flesh but a facsimile wrought of delicate machinery. The pair share a smiling kiss, soft and sweet—the sight of it makes his heart ache.

Himself again, tangled with her in soft sheets. Hands grasping curves slicked with sweat, his mouth filled with the taste of her skin, her sex. Chests pressed close enough to feel the leaping beat of her heart as if it was his own.

His mind reels, sanity almost gone to tatters, tears streaming down his face. He screams, collapsing to the chill crystal floor and screaming more. Even after he goes hoarse. Even after the never ending tears make him retch. Even after the walls return to crystal and the tower beneath him returns to solid reality.

He screams. He dreams of screaming, though he's not sure he slept, much less dreamt.

Finally, feeling hollow as an insect's molted carapace, he falls into ringing silence, more certain than ever this plan must succeed and he must sacrifice himself to see it done.

The First awaits.

warnings: animal cruelty ; description of a corpse ; murder of a loved one ; ptsd triggered by trauma

general: that time fel missed the boat with stel ; feels ; hurt, no comfort

idiom

• to lose an opportunity to do something by being slow to act

“Stel?”

She tucks her nose beneath the line of his jaw and leaves a kiss, “Hmm?”

He runs the edge of his thumb down the soft skin of her shoulder, so pale as to glow in the moonbeams sneaking in through the fluttering curtain. “Do ya ever think abou'—”

Fel doesn't finish his question. The words seem to have gotten lost in his stomach somehow on the trip from brain to mouth. They linger there, acidic and unpleasant.

Somewhat used to his antagonistic relationship with expressing himself by now, she settles close against his side to wait. Content to explore with fingers and lips the beautiful jagged streaks and broken stripes of shiny, mother of pearl scars, scattered like constellations over his slate skin.

He struggles to wring a coherent thought from his pathetic dishrag brain for a long moment before giving up completely. Fel digs hard into her hips, dragging her atop to sheathe himself.

Her gasping giggle sets his pulse leaping wildly, blood screaming, a golden knot in his belly tightening as his words finally untangle. “Run wit' me... I wantcha ta be wit' me...”

She pulls his broad hands, calloused and scarred, up the cage of her ribs to fill his palms with her breasts. The gentle tug behind his navel is the pull of her gravity, every ilm of him alive with desire. Menphina’s beauty glows from her moonstone skin; the steady tidal rolling of her hips a slow and inevitable push toward strange, unfathomable waters.

A swirling maelstrom on the edge of an abyss.

Flush spreading over face and breasts, she smiles, soft and sweet, then kisses his fingertips, “I'll go anywhere with you, Fel.”

The maelstrom claims its spoils, wet heat pulsing from him in waves as he grinds his hips hard into her at an angle. She moans loud and long, shuddering with every twitch of his length. He fill his empty hands with every ilm of her he can reach, desperate to touch beautiful curves shivering in pleasure.

She bends to kiss him, eyelids, chin, the tip of his nose, the corner of his mouth that always seems to be grinning slyly, as though it keeps secrets the other corner can’t know. “Tomorrow maybe?”

Another sundown wrought of flame and dark velvet sky.

Another moonlit night to pass the bells with her. With Stel.

A fluttering over his heart, a morpho caged by ribs just by thinking of her. Soft skin, sweet laugh, and tender kisses.

Stel.

Stel who wants to run away with him.

The lightness of his soul a pleasant distraction, until he comes across the deer.

Maggot infested and rank—even the eye sockets—beautiful hide sliding into liquefaction, returning to the patch of Eorzea that gave it life. Other than missing antlers it’s whole. Poached solely for the trophy.

It turns his stomach.

When the corpse becomes a young duskwight woman he gags, stumbling back into a tree. He clings on for life, splinters embedding beneath fingernails, head spinning and pulse pounding.

Blood runs from her belly, the knife buried deeply not hindering the flow in the slightest.

Breathe. It ain’t real. Breathe. It ain’t real.

BREATHE IT AIN’T REAL.

The ravaged deer returns. He slides down the trunk of his tree to rest his ebony head in his bandaged wrapped hands, struggling to rein in his breathing and his breakfast.

Can’t do this again. Can’t protect anyone. Fifth sons ain’t good for nothing ‘cept breedin’, as his mother always said.

Does Stel really mean to come with him?

It’s only pillow talk. He’s no knight, no mate, no nothing.

What if she’s pregnant now? She must be; been cumming in her for moons there’s no way it hasn’t happened yet. Even then, it’s just a matter of time.

He’d be endangering a kit by bringing it with him, her too. That’s why men don’t hang around… they aren’t needed beyond this. This is all they’re good for.

His heart sours, the warm flutter in his chest going cold. Dalamud hangs low against the flaring stars, as if leering.

He’s been here far too long. She could be matriarch of this village one day, and he’s doing her wrong with his selfishness, spending all the nighttime bells with him rather than hunting or working.

She’s too innocent to know she deserves better.

He turns on his heel and vanishes back into the darkness, melting into shadow as if he’d never been there at all.

Stel adds her nicest dress to the half-filled travel bag, along with several clean sets of smallclothes.

After a moment, a simple set of tiny clothes, blankets, and swaddling materials join the dress and extra smallclothes.

Her cheeks color as she roams her little cottage, a hand resting low on her belly. She and Fel won’t need much, but a kit will.

“Never hurts to think ahead,” she hums.

warnings: dubcon, animal cruelty, sadism, obsessive behavior, violence

general: touch starved, frottage, fingers in mouths, zenos is combatsexual and i love that for him

noun

• a lightning stroke, a shaft or missile designed to be shot from a crossbow or catapult
• a wood or metal bar or rod used to fasten a door, the part of a lock that is shot or withdrawn by the key
• a metal rod or pin for fastening objects together
• a roll of cloth or wallpaper of specified length

verb

• to move suddenly or nervously, to move or proceed rapidly
• to break away from control or a set course, to dart off or away
• to secure with a bolt
• to eat hastily or without chewing

Even as a boy, Zenos yae Galvus lived for the thrill of the hunt.

To catch a vermin one must first understand its way of thinking, its desires and its fears. This understanding allows for anticipation, and anticipation for preparation. Only then can the trap be sprung.

In the frozen wastes of his native Garlemald he'd spent an infinity of bells tracking the small, nervous snow hares as they fled hither and yon, his broad shoulders hunched against the endless howling wind, following the meandering, panicked paths back to secret boltholes where he dispatched them.

He would watch in rapt silence, breathing fast, pink tongue moistening dried lips as red wetness crawled over soft, white fur, the blood in his veins thrumming to a fever pitch. He observed every twitch, memorizing the signs of impending death until the final stillness reigned. The young man meditated upon the heart's fickle flutters, its frantic headlong rush through the last of its allotted beats, as though the creature was excited to die.

Between those fleeting seconds he could understand somewhat the misguided barbarian obsession with the divine. Magnificent were the violent delights which blossomed from this sort of power. His breeches would tighten, imagining what thrills might be savored if one could achieve power like unto a god.

It was the first taste of what would eventually consume his life's flame.

Many years had come and gone since Zenos found any sort of challenge in the minds and spirits of his prey. It seemed he'd reached a zenith where no other could reach or touch him. The clear path from which he had not strayed now became lost in a shroud of heavy fog, a veil separating his current state from the godhood he deserved.

An emotion sprouted within him, one he had no name for; a great gaping emptiness which chilled his blood the way the Garlean winters never had, a greedy worm festering within the ripened apple of his heart. He floundered there, lost and searching, devoid of the contentment he found only in the ringing clash of blades.

In the end she was the one to name this feeling, and in so doing she gained absolute power over him. In so doing she was named friend.

At first she cowered, crawling away on hands and knees. He put a foot on her back and pinned her to the blood-spattered soil but quickly lost interest when she retreated into herself, growing still and silent like the rabbits of his youth.

When he saw her again in Yanxia she had changed so much he did not recognize her. She looked sickly, pale and sweating, her eyes bright and pupils dilated but when her sword met his...

Fate.

It was but a matter of a few scant seconds by all accounts, however for Zenos each moment stretched onward into shining infinity. She fought with the strength of ten men and the shock of each blow ringing in his bones made his blood sing and his soul take flight.

He laughed and so did she, the wild cacophony of their joy mingling into one transcendent experience he would do anything to experience again. They danced in beauty, together, blood slinging heavy and wet from the moon bright edges of their swords with every mad swing. Her breast heaved in time with his own, the synchronized beating of their hearts bringing them closer to divinity.

To revelation.

He caught her sword hand and swung her around hard, closing his mouth over the leaping rabbit pulse at her throat to bite down and claim it as his own. The taste of her blood muddled his senses, a high better than any wine or drug he'd ever tried. She screamed in pain and stomped savagely on the arch of his foot before driving the curve of her rump against him.

The stars overhead exploded, their light reflected in her skin and hair, glinting off the fangs in her open mouth. Her wamth presses close, a being of fury whose skin smells of opium smoke. His achingly hard cock grinds into her, pulsing bliss, releasing spend, as wild as an animal in rut.

She licked her parted lips and whispered, voice strained, “Are you lonely, Zenos? Does it frighten you to know you are unloved and unwanted?”

The fog on his brain clears, the tightening pressure in his groin vanished like morning mist.

Fear. That was its name.

“Yes,” he grunted, struggling to master himself but unable to release her.

She waits, still and quiet, once more the rabbit of his childhood hunts. He buries his nose in her violet hair, redolent with the scents of starlight, spices, and sex. Her small figure is soft, just as her sword's edge is deadly sharp. A gauntleted thumb slips between the sinful curves of her generous lips, hooking the lower line of white teeth.

He jerks. She follows, moaning.

He shoves her away roughly.

Fear.

She tumbles to the packed earth, streaked with dirt and bleeding from the mouth. Her eyes pin him, strange in color and luminosity—one onyx, the other amethyst, both giving a faint glow of reflected moonlight.

A realization strikes him as he gazes at her, the gravity of it growing larger with every passing moment; collecting certainty as a planet gathers accretions: this is his destiny.

Her.

Her face is the last he shall ever see. His demise is hers to witness. The fading thrum of his heart, the dwindling number of its alloted beats is hers to savor and hers alone.

Zenos sees his own death. He now knows its shape, the curve of her breasts, the taste of her skin, the weight of her sword. The mania that spawns from a single perfect moment gone too soon.

Only now does Zenos truly understand the frantic impatience of the rabbit's final heartbeats. How one can long for the presence of another called “friend.”

warnings: murder by knife, descriptions of stabbing, blood, brief mention of torture (fingers), grief, revenge

general: fray takes the wheel, is that a motherfucking telltale heart reference?, 3.0 spoilers

noun

• A mark, object, or figure formed by two short intersecting lines or pieces

verb

• Go or extend across or to the other side of (a path, road, stretch of water, or area)

adjective

• Annoyed.

She crosses the wide, glittering expanse as the forms of Thordan and his knights return to their original proportions. Her swift stride carries her to the far end where the Archbishop, still in his finery, crawls upon his belly like a wounded hound, keening, “Who are you? What are you?”

Estinien stops to catch his breath, watching the Warrior with curiosity, relief, and elation at discovering the battle already won and the Warrior alive and well.

Then Stelmaria speaks and every syllable buries a sliver of cold fear deep within his brain, “Retribution, your Holiness.”

Quick as the spark consumes tinder she falls to one knee and draws an unseen dagger, dark as swirling shadow save the keenly silvered edge.

It winks at him as he tries fruitlessly to goad his exhausted body into a sprint.

Her knife parts flesh, slipping neatly between ribs with nary a squeak of steel on bone. She leans, whispering into Thordan’s gnarled ear, the old man's face twisting into a hideous grimace of fear. His wide, dimming eyes slide to hers and remain, fixed, until he shudders and grows still.

The knife retreats. A torrent of steaming wet red flows to the gleaming floor, worming its way into the folds of her clothes, bold crimson smearing across her face and hands—a sharp contrast against her moon pale skin.

She rises, uncaring of her state and oblivious to his presence, then stalks toward the crumpled figure of Ser Zephirin, who scrabbles desperately at the smooth floor, trying to skitter away like a trapped rat.

Estinien steps to block her, seizing a thin wrist. “Warrior?”

An unfamiliar laugh rasps from her throat, an utterly alien sound unlike any he's heard before. “Leave us to our reward Azure Dragoon, and we shall leave you to yours in turn,” She says, turning to face him.

His mind reels in horror at this waif of a miqo'te.

Though her form is unchanged, it is most certainly not Stelmaria.

In place of the Warrior of Light is a creature wrought of hardened steel and burning coals, eyes bright and mouth aflame as if all hells' legions dwell deep within. She twists in his grasp, moving as though her flesh has separated from sinew and bone, turning the tables by wrapping her thin fingers around his forearm. The scales of his armor grind against each other like the screeching of a thousand, thousand demons.

The Azure Dragoon has faced countless wyrms in his time, emerging triumphant again and again, but now he fails against the cold sweat trickling beneath his elegant mail. “You know as well as I this is not the way, woman. The dead are gone. They do not grieve. An eye for an eye achieves naught but the death of the soul, a wound that cannot be closed.”

Again she laughs without mirth. He must bite down lest his teeth rattle loose from his jaw.

“We care not for our soul, ser; we seek justice for those condemned to silence... or worse. These liars, swindlers, and hypocrites cannot leave this place with their throats uncut.” She smiles but it’s strange and feral, all fangs and too much tongue, then sidles closer, as though imparting a great secret. Her breath tickles his cheek, her tone is sweet as birch syrup, but she reeks of clotting blood. “You would deny us the satisfaction of a foe dispatched? A true debt repaid in kind? How noble to share this sentiment with us when your own nemesis was unceremoniously cast down moons ago... Or so you believe.”

The demon's languid gaze flicks to the eyes of Nidhogg, discarded and brooding far across the room's expanse.

They call to him, even now.

A reverberation inside his skull forces him to close his eyes and swallow. He masters the urge to look again.

She continues, a virulent whisper spreading tendrils in every corner of his mind, “We know what we are about Estinien Varlineau. We are in control. Can you say the same?”

Those damnable eyes.

The great wyrm lies slain. The war is won.

Yet still they call his name in the soft velvet purr of a lover.

So long as they exist, Nidhogg lives.

Unable to resist he drops her arm and hurries toward the eyes, deaf to his ringing footsteps. The mad, feverish peals of her laughter go unnoticed. Any anger he feels at her assessment of his weakness is lost in a frantic need.

All he sees, all he knows is the eyes.

He bends to grasp them just as Ser Zephirin begins to scream in pain, the knife relieving him of his fingers one by one.

In an instant, Estinien shatters beneath the wave of Nidhogg’s overwhelming rage, a lone cork bobbing upon an eternal expanse of roiling seas.

When he claws back from the edge of nonexistence, some moments or eons later, the screaming has stopped.

There she is.

The silent Warrior, bow strung across her back, the knife shining like a crescent moon in her slim hand, her expression inscrutable beneath the streaks of blood. Rosy gold glints upon her third finger, spattered with scarlet ichor once more. He recalls seeing it smeared with Haurchefant's blood before, her hands soaked in it as he breathed his last.

The irony.

Next is the great Midgardsormr, unafraid of the monster beside him. He speaks softly, the Draconic weighted down by the millennia of grief he carries for this wayward child. Me, in a manner of speaking, muses Estinien, dimly aware of his predicament.

At their feet lie a pile of thirteen corpses, mouths and throats gaping wide as fresh caught fish, the pure white of their raiments gone red, sullied with gore.

cw /// paranoia (stalking/voyeurism); psychosis; body horror; self-harm; eye injuries

Unseen eyes watch from each corner.

At the brightly lit grocery store, on the silent street in the evenings, and from the shadowed doorway of the office supply closet. The eyes rake over every inch of her, their gaze an almost physical weight capable of tearing straight through her thick coat and rubber boots, her layered shirts and pants.

They can see her naked flesh.

They can even see her bones.

Bare, dry joints clicking and clacking in a parody of life as she goes about her daily routine. Trying to ignore the gazes resting upon the bleached white of her exposed shoulder blades.

She cannot escape them but she tries all the same.

Refuses to leave her apartment. Installs her own blinds. Adds extra locks to the door. Quits her job. Cuts all social ties.

They still watch.

She can feel the pressure on her skin.

How anyone could find her insignificant drudgery so interesting, she can’t say, and she certainly can’t ask; she’s never seen them. Ironic, considering how much they’ve seen of her.

But then.

Once.

Just once.

She sees them.

Wavering, shadowy humanoid shapes, edges ragged and blurred, as though cut haphazardly from a sumptuous cloth of deepest ebony. They go about their business exactly as she does: standing over the overflowing sink, sitting on the couch or on her unmade bed, leaning against the dirt streaked wall by the door.

Floating directly behind her, about 3 inches in the air, as if suspended on a hook or rope, toes pointed downward. A thing made of cloying darkness, drawing rattling breaths and staring.

Staring.

Eyes glowing like banked embers set in a featureless black face formed of smoke and fear and night.

Teeth.

White and sharp and glinting. Winking at her in the muzzy half-light of her apartment as if they are both in on a private joke.

She smells wet earth and a faintly fermented sweetness.

Like rot.

She holds two spoons over what appears to be a flickering orange blossom, sprouting incongruously from her oven burner. When the metal glows red with heat she presses the convex sides hard into the sunken pits of her eyes.

Sizzling so bright and painful she screams, even as what remains of her ruined eyes dribbles down her hollow cheeks and onto her shirt.

Into her mouth.

Tasting of blood and pus and salt brine.

Only then does she realize her mistake.

Seeing them was one thing.

However, now that they can no longer be seen they whisper.

That air reeking of the grave wafts gently past her ears, carrying words that she cannot fully make out but then, suddenly she can understand…

She wishes she had not.

They aren’t words.

They are vessels in the guise of words. Filled with no meaning, simply madness.

The whispers never cease, even in her new darkness.

They will never leave and neither will she.