wolzenos — mare lamentorum

day twenty anon

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 20:51:20 +0000

#ffxivwrite2022 #ffxiv #prompt #endwalker #stelmaria #zenos #wolzenos

warnings: blood ; injury ; zenos being a creeper

general: honestly just wasn’t feeling this one ho-hum but stel/zenos is and always will be complicated

adverb

soon; shortly

The long years of pursuit were over.

Sparkling dawn crawls over the bare horizon, reaching to caress them with gentle tendrils of golden light.

Stelmaria is beautifully lethal as ever and the picture of serenity, save the white knuckle grip on her elegant epee.

Zenos’ wide smile is pure joy, his boyish dimples making a rare appearance, though incongruous in the presence of wild azure eyes. “My dearest friend. My beast. My only. The day has dawned! The promised ‘anon’ has finally arrived.”

She watches his every move, silent, so still she might be hewn of bright marble.

“Come, let us dance together at the end of all things. Sunder not that which the gods have joined, my friend. Nay! Dream with me of blood and fire, of ringing steel and galloping hearts! Let your fangs meet in my throat to sate the gnawing worm in your belly, the one that hungers for my demise!”

He stalks closer, pulse thundering when she does not step away. The smell of her; blood and ash and myrrh and crushed petals smeared on alabaster skin. His mouth waters.

Ignoring him, her gaze cuts to the side, toward her prone companion, the blood smeared across his tunic and crystalline weapon matching his brilliant crimson hair.

Zenos continues, memorizing the effect his words have on her, “I know you have desired this day as much as I. We are two of a kind, twin flames burning bright; seeing each other for exactly what we are—no more, no less.”

She pales, brow wrinkled, clearly thinking hard. It’s not difficult to guess what’s racing through her head.

Circling behind, his lips find the pulse at her throat, whispering into the soft, warm skin there, tattooing the words with the force of his will. “I need only you, my soul. Give into our desires and I shall not harm him further. Come and dream with me. Come alive with me; relish these moments on the knife’s edge as I know you do.”

“That I cannot deny.” Her smile is wry. Smug and twisted as a crown of brambles.

“Acceptance at last! We dance in darkness, love. We dance in the rise of the moon and sun, the implosion of stars, and the dying of the light. Let us consume the flames of our lives in the pursuit of violent joy, my dear!”

She laughs; the high, wild laugh he hasn’t heard in years. Not since Yanxia and the opium.

Spirits soaring, they draw their weapons and charge.

day thirteen confluence

Wed, 14 Sep 2022 15:54:12 +0000

#ffxivwrite2022 #ffxiv #shadowbringers #wolexarch #wolraha #wolzenos #stelmaria #graha #fel #zenos #nsfw #spoilers #warning

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.

day two bolt

Sat, 03 Sep 2022 02:37:11 +0000

#ffxivwrite2022 #ffxiv #prompt #stormblood #zenos #stelmaria #wolzenos #warning #spoilers #nsfw

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.”