lazybox | [voicetest] it's this guy

[voicetest] it's this guy

[To the surprise of absolutely no one.

Shadowbringers spoilers abound beyond this point.]

[There had been so many sandwiches waiting for Dakki, when she returned to her room in The Pendants. More than she could finish on her own, though not for a lack of trying. The efforts she'd been putting in to helping save the First were exhausting, and this was the first properly prepared food she'd had in days... but even a Warrior of Darkness has limits. And thus, leftovers.

She really doesn't want any of this to go to waste.

And she has a feeling that someone is lingering about the lobby even when, surely, he ought to have better things to do.

So it is why, after sighing and wrapping everything up neatly in a napkin, she makes her way down to where she last spotted Emet-Selch. Through all of this, she is starting to feel a funny sort of... almost-fondness for him. And being so ominous and dramatic had to be exhausting, too. Surely even an Ascian needs to eat...?]

She felt as if she were tearing apart at the seams, yet there was something strange as she walked the pathways, boggling up at buildings that loomed above her. Mind reeling, she stared up at the trees, to the ocean surface where light, so very far away, filtered through the water. Skull feeling fit to split and all her limbs ached as if made of crystal shards, she could feel tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.

“Why...why do I know this place?” It was a lie. She knew it the instant the words left her mouth. She didn’t know this place.

She ached for it with such a ferocity it stole her breath away. Far stronger than the need to return to her forest home that she’d long since been severed from when she stood in Fanow. Whatever this feeling was, there were no words for this pain. This sort of desperate, desolate longing of something long since lost. Raising a shaking hand to press her fingertips to her eyes, she gasped for air, fighting for each breath as her mind struggled to wrap around something she knew lay just beyond her reach, burning her with its loss.

“Why?” So many questions and she never had enough answers, and her body was going to burst from it all if she didn’t bite it down again.

[There's no sign of him, at first. It simply wouldn't do for him to be caught in the same place twice; he has a reputation to uphold, and no mortal role to play on this particular stage. The First requires his touch only due to the failure of its previous caretakers, and he can push things along perfectly well from the shadows.

But a bit of looking around will eventually reveal him well enough, perched on a ledge overlooking the comings-and-going of the little ants of the Crystarium. True to his words, Emet-Selch chooses to watch, rather than interact.

When he's inevitably spotted, he gives a bit of a smile and a little wave. Hello, hero, here he is, in perfectly plain view. Nothing at all suspicious going on here, no?]

"Is it not obvious?"

Surely she didn't expect that her passage through the city would have gone unnoticed; massive as the buildings are, this remains a tiny corner of the realm in the grand scheme, no trouble at all for him to oversee all of it. He has raised kingdoms, empires, domains far larger than this, but this is the only one that he has ever called home.

Footsteps echo behind Mykha, but come to a stop before he comes into her view. When she should turn, Emet-Selch looks not at her, but the buildings reaching far above them.

"When you throw a bottle into the ocean, the fragments remain glass, even when they've become sand," he says, before looking down and shaking his head. "So it is with your kind, the grains of sand that were once Amaurot. Even if you do not know it, you know it."

[Well. She should have known that this wouldn't be as easy and trotting down some stairs. She takes in the lobby with a frown, pondering to herself just where an Emet-Selch would go if he has no one to pester. It would be reasonable for him to want to keep an eye on things... and he's not likely to be be anywhere all that social, she guesses...

Out Dakki wanders, looking this way and that... and she almost misses him on his spot from high up above. She stops and double-takes... and then she finds herself frowning at that wave. No, no, there's nothing suspicious about him being up there. Just a bit annoying. How is she going to get up there fast enough that he won't just walk away?

He will see her tilt her head, see her gaze wander this way and that... then see her set off for a nearby stack of crates at a steady run. To hells with taking the stairs and the long way around. She's going to climb. Those crates will get her a boost to the top of a high fence, and that will get her within leaping distance of the balcony, if she gets a strong enough start.

She'd done far more ridiculously athletic things while in Eulmore. This is fine.]

"I—" Whatever it was she'd meant to say was snatched from her, lungs straining as she choked down the surging sensation that threatened to spill from her lips. Her insides churned, burning with an icy heat and she felt the whole earth tip around her as she teetered on the sense of knowing. His words echoed in her head and she reached for him with a trembling hand, needing some sense of stability in a world that reeled and spun without her.

"Emet, please—" Everything was too large. It was all wrong, she'd been—they'd all been normal why was everything so large? Her body was ungainly and numb. She wanted to unfurl the too-tight flesh and stretch her limbs, she couldn't stand the way it burned her a moment longer, trapped in a shell that writhed from within like something fresh to hatch from its chrysalis and she felt a sandal catch on the tile and she was tipping—

The world spun as they laughed, holding aloft their latest creation, beaming with pride and delight beneath the mask as they called to him to see—

Then the world jolted and the memory was gone, leaving behind a sickly feeling in its wake. Why wasn't there enough air? She choked on it, claws rending fur and fabric as she let out a shriek as her mind struggled to piece things where they belonged, fresh pain blossoming bright and hot along her scalp as she clutched her skull in a vain attempt to keep it from breaking.

It's been three days since Innocence. Three days since the Light nearly overtook her, and the skies went back to everlasting, blinding white. Since she became unable to wield the tools of her various and sundry menial pursuits, being largely unable to see them through the bright haze.

Since Emet-Selch betrayed her. Huge shocker, that - she'd expected the knife in the back to come much sooner. But come it had, finally, at the perfect moment to damn her and all her friends. Perfect Ascian timing.

Even monsters have to move, eventually, and so she had - following old, worn-in paths in her mind to give her body something to do that wasn't giving in to instinct. As those paths tended, it led her onward - and downward, into the depths of the Tempest. Into a city where giants walked, and talked, and generally treated her as one of their own - albeit a child. And she learned. Horrible, terrible truths that seemed utterly unbelievable, but the evidence was there - had been all along, if she looked back far enough. Hindsight is perfect, after all.

So now she wanders the too-large streets of a familiar-unfamiliar city, guided by nothing but vague non-memories and the urging of her friends and the kind words of a not-stranger who wasn't really there.

The pain was less, now, than it had been. Her head wasn't quite splitting, and her vision was actually somewhat clearer, down here beneath the waves. Away from the everlasting white above, the evidence of her failure.

She had one goal, now. Find Emet-Selch.

[Why on earth is she...?

If Dakki is expecting anything other than the 'are you fucking with me right now' expression by the time she arrives, she's in for a sore disappointment. Because there are not really words to express it, just that particular look that says that some mortal has done something both inexplicable and stupid yet again.]

In such a rush to see me, are you?

[After all, in the whole course of her climb up to him, other than his head following her movements, Emet-Selch hasn't moved in the slightest, legs still dangling over the edge of the ledge where he's seated.]

Era had tried to remain on the Source for a stretch, but until the Scions were returned along with her the option she had were quite limited. She visited her friends, giving them a bare bones explanation of what happened. She slew the Lightwardens and returned the night sky back to a world drowning in Light.

She breathed not a word of the danger she was in, nor the revelations that were revealed to her — not even to Edmont, though Era knows the man is aware she omitted a fair bit from her retelling. She spent most of her days lingering in Fortemps Manor, spending time with the only father she's known. Each day that passed she noted the lines of worry etched ever deeper upon his brow. She did her best to seem herself, and yet the man's intuition was particularly keen when it came to his children, whether they be his by blood or by choice.

Every night her sleep was restless, to such an extent that Edmont had taken to checking on her long after he should have been to bed himself. Era hadn't realized her dreams had been a bother to anyone else — not until she awoke from a terrible dream (memory?) to find the man hovering at her bedside, clearly concerned for his ward's well being. It took her some time to shake herself fully awake. To remember who and where she was.

It was then that she learned it was a frequent occurrence. Every time she drifted to sleep and dreams came for her, she would call out in a language not a single soul could comprehend. Edmont had taken to sitting in the chair at her bedside most evenings after she retired, ready to place a comforting hand upon her brow and soothe her back to sleep like any father would. Most nights, he said, it seemed to help.

When she asked if there was anything that stood out about what she said each night, and his answer told her precisely where she needed to go.

So Era packed up her things the next morning, readying herself to the journey back to the First. The Fortemps household made sure her inventory was fit to bursting with all manner of foodstuffs, freshly laundered clothing, and whatever else they deemed a necessity for her. It was as she was about to teleport to Mor Dhona that she was overcome by the uncharacteristic urge to give Edmont a hug. She does not, however she does pause to take one of his hands in hers, looking up at him with an earnest, thankful smile.

"I shall send word of my safe arrival with Feo Ul," she promises, then whirls away in a rush of aether.

-

"Did I say aught that stood out to you?"

Edmont fell silent then, hand a heavy, comforting weight on her shoulder.

"Hades."

-

The sight of Amaurot silhouetted against the murky twilight of the Tempest fills her breast with something she cannot quite put name to. The enormous streets do not feel quite so foreign to her, though that make sense to her as this is not the first time she's set foot in the phantom city. Still... She finds herself pausing at certain junctures she never paid heed to before, wondering why something seems to be missing from that plaza, or why she can recall the scent of roses when eyeing the remnants of a garden — a garden she has no logical reason to know existed, but her mind's eye tells her there were flowers of the loveliest shades of blue and violet all the same. A red fruit whose seeds burst like overripe grapes between her teeth. The scent of old books and ink. The feel of silken cloth against skin and...

Only skin.

Era continues wandering, fear and comfort warring for dominance within her chest. Every step fills her with a sense of déjà vu she cannot shake. She had always desired to know of her life before she was Era, but...

Her breath catches in her throat and she finds herself in desperate need of a seat. Something (memory) tells her one is nearby, but logic tells her it will too big, much like every other thing in this city.

Everything is too big for her, but —

Why does that feel so wrong?

In the end, Era finds herself sinking to her knees upon the cold, unforgiving stone in the middle of a deserted road. Hands pressed to her eyes, she inhales slowly. Exhales. Inhales. Does her best not to let this overwhelming feeling drown her. Focuses on the way her tail curls around her side. A tail that feels both comfortingly familiar and uncomfortably foreign.

Memories.

She always wondered what it would be like, if she could remember. Era would not call these flashes memories, but does not know what else to think of them as.

"Hades," she says, the name foreign and familiar on her tongue.

It occurs to her then, quite suddenly, what this feeling is.

Grief?

[There is a certain satisfaction to be derived from putting that look on his face. He can disapprove all he wants... if it means he's keeping his behind planted firmly in place, it is fine with her.

A soft 'hup', then she's up onto the ledge and standing next to him. Looming, but just barely, considering how tall he is even when he's seated.]

Yes. I am.

[She has always been a straightforward person of few words. Actions speak louder, don't they? Which is why she is now pulling that neatly-wrapped bundle of sandwiches from her pack, and holding them out.]

Are you hungry?

[She tries to look serious and aloof. She doesn't quite manage it. Fussing is also one of the things she does best, and this is definitely the start of fussing.]

If she had thought that he would be a help through her pain, for right now, she'll have to settle for disappointment. The nickname is enough to draw his eye to her, but not more than that; he stands just outside her reach as she jerks and trips.

Then he shrugs at the air, as though there were some other observer than her in this place. (Perhaps there is. You can never tell with Ascians, perhaps most especially this one.)

"Either you accept the truth of your eyes, or you don't," he says. "A choice that doesn't much matter in the time you have left, but a choice nonetheless."

The city is occupied by the particular sort of silence one finds when there are ghosts around every corner - never truly silent, but brooding with a definite melancholy nonetheless. To find the one truly living person in a city such as this might be an impossible task, if he didn't want to be found.

As it is... A door stands open, and the ghosts are happy to point her in the direction of it. The man inside faces away, his back to the entrance. Tall by the standards of the Source, he's not quite as towering here, surrounded by the specters of what were once his kin, who tower just as impressively over him as he ever has over her.

It is rare to see him with his back straight, but now his shoulders are back and proud, as though whatever burden he carries has been lightened. Not put aside, not ever that - he is no more capable of such a thing than he is of bending knee before Hydaelyn Herself.

But there is a determined set to him, when he turns at her footsteps. "Took you long enough," he says, but there's less bite in it than one might be expect. He's tired of waiting, and that's all.

The white was blinding, something was dripping down her face and she hoped, prayed it was tears. If it were anything other then it was over, but she struggled with her limbs, her mouth opening and sounds spilling out that were attempts at words. She knew they were supposed to be words, but the words wouldn't come it wasn't right this whole shell was broken and bleeding and she hated it with every fiber of her being and—

—it was small and round, vivid purples that they loved so much, with shining horns that would grow to fierce points when it grew large and its muzzle wriggled delightfully and they were so pleased, the blossoms filled the air and all they wanted to do was spend the day beneath the trees, spinning the air into something new and as fascinating as this strange little creature that was neither cat nor dog nor boar. They knew it would be a favorite and the tiles flew beneath their feet as they cradled the wriggling cub to their robes with his name spilling from their lips in a delighted shout—

"Hhhhhaaa—!" It was so close, she couldn't see past the white, past the memories that flooded her, claws sliding across perfect tiles as she forced herself forward, grasping onto something that was just out of reach.

"Hhhhhhaaaaaaa—"

It was there. She could feel it. Something just beyond her. The feel of it like crisp white robes and light dancing on gilded buildings—skyscrapers—of musical conversations and whimsical afternoons spinning things from thin air—not thin air, from pure aether, so much overflowing it was so easy to weave flowers and trees and green growing things and soft vivid creatures with jewel-toned fur and gems betwixt their ears and—a sound rasped from her, a name, it must've been, though she knew not if it was a real language she spoke or something else that was gasped between clenched teeth as a trembling hand clutched at the hem of his robes, clinging for something that felt real when she felt herself coming undone.

Why were they black? Shouldn't they be in white? It was the rule even in—

Her thoughts were shattering faster than she could make sense of them as her head felt crowded fit to burst, and still something spilled down her cheeks, wetting the tiles beneath her.

Please let it just be tears, let it be tears, please please pleasepleasepleaseplease...

Edited 2019-07-26 00:55 (UTC)

Ever had he towered over her, but she was used to that - she was short, even for a Lalafell. The set of his shoulders and the straightness of his back alerts her more instinctual side that this is not the mopey bastard suffering the world's banality she's come to know and, even a little, like - no, this is a man who knows his path and intends to walk it.

Shame she doesn't know hers, anymore.

"You didn't exactly make yourself easy to find," she says, sighing and wishing she'd thought to summon a Carbuncle before walking in here. The familiar glowing, fluffy friend of so many adventures would have been a great comfort, even if it was just a chunk of her own aether given form.

Why was she here again? To find Emet-Selch, that's right - but there he stands. What had she meant to do, now?

"I feel... strange. Why did you make this place?" Something lingers at the edge of her perception, like the ringing of tinnitus but more subtle. That wasn't the question she had meant to ask. There was something else - something important, or so it had seemed before.

She is, almost, alone in the city. The ghosts of the Amaurotines have not faded away; rather, it is as though they do not see her, preoccupied in whatever routines they are eternally embroiled in, bereft of their creator. They are nothing more than memories, after all.

But when she speaks that name, there is a faint chiming, as though some aether-construct lying in wait for her has activated. And, indeed, it has, for very shortly she's approached by...

Well, the Amaurotine undoubtably still towers over her, but in comparison to the height of the others, they are clearly a child. If Era thinks to pay attention to her aetherial senses, there is something different about this ghost, something more of the Ascian's personal aether. The child feels more like his creator than do the anonymous Amaurotines filling the streets and the offices; like Hythlodaeus, there is a touch more effort, or perhaps a touch of an accidental thought of something else.

And their voice, young as it is, has some touch of the familiar about it, too. "You called for me?" they - he - asks, in the same dense, nostalgic tongue as all the others speak.

[Fussing is not something one does with the Emperor of Garlemald. Please give him a moment, it's been some time since he last experienced it.]

You came all this way to bring me... What are those, sandiwches?

[He shakes his head, a little dismissively, but doesn't stop her from sitting beside him if she should so choose. Still...]

Isn't it a hero's job to give aid to the less fortunate? I assure you, I am perfectly capable of fending for myself; your care would be better directed towards, I don't know, some poor unfortunate soul orphaned by the sin-eaters, would it not?

Yes.

[That is the answer to both of his questions. How nice and neat and tidy is that? And with that question answered, she does indeed sit down beside him, a bit of polite distance between the both of them. She is trying to be friendly, but not overly so. She sets the bundle of leftover sandwiches upon her lap.

His retort leaves her considering his words, and her head gives a little tilt... but then she sets about unwrapping the bundle.]

I can't be everywhere.

[A truth that she has had to come to terms with. Warrior of Light or Warrior of Darkness, gifted again and again, she still has limits. There are only so few sandwiches, and so many orphans. There is only one moody Ascian lurking about. To her knowledge.]

So here I am. Have a sandwich! They're good.

[And such a selection, too! Egg salad, cured meats, bacon and lettuce and tomato... And she even managed not to squish them on the way up.]

She shouldn't be here. (She is meant to be here.) She should leave. (Stay.). This place is not meant for her. (He built it for her.) Her heart aches for something lost that was never hers. (It was hers nine times over.)

There is a ringing in her horns, faint and melodic, and Era barely registers it. It is only when she feels a weighty presence behind her that she unfurls herself and twists to see the source of it.

An Ancient — a child. She goes still, staring uncertainly at the small giant. His question confuses her.

"I called for no one."

There would be no point.

He almost turns away. Almost, for there is the half-formed, half-remembered shape of his name, his name, on her lips, and...

He can't. There is no way that he could, not from that name, from the precipice it represents. Even before her hands seize the bottom of his robes, for it would be as nothing to pull the hems from her searching hands, even before the glow of tears hits the pavement -

He cannot turn away, but neither can he simply let it go.

(He takes all the weight upon himself, and keeps taking more, even when what he carries is already too much to bear.)

"Now?" he asks, staring down at her, expression of rage the only mask he has against the hope that keeps his feet planted to the spot. "You choose now of all times to remember? Or is this another of Her games, some desperate appeal to save Her champion in her last moments?"

In spite of his words, he doesn't pull away. And, when inevitably her strength fails and her grip releases, it is only then that he deigns to bend, to catch her hand in his.

There is only one path left to him. In the end, he knew that, knew what kind of an ending this story would have - the touch upon him, and Her touch upon the woman opposite him, would allow for nothing else. They are ever to be opposites, with no middle ground.

(Why, then, was he compelled to try?)

"Nostalgia," he answers - not a lie, never a lie but not the entire truth. I wanted to see what you would do. "There are no ruins left from Before in the Source, not like this. You might call it the irony of ironies; the destructive forces of the Rejoining that you call Calamity have all but wiped away the very thing we seek to restore."

Who would remember them when they are gone? Who will remember, when they stand against Her champion and fall? Where once there were three, only two remain. Whoever would carry on alone, him or Elidibus, it matters not. It takes two people to create a world, to create anything of meaning.

Eventually, there would be none, if the woman before him continues on her path.

"You said my name," the child says. Rather than continuing to tower over her, he kneels down, and then with a slight whumpf, sits beside her, robe hem flaring upwards briefly to reveal plain, soft shoes before he smooths it back out. Seated, now, there's evidence that either more or less care was put into the appearance of this one, because the jawline visible under the mask isn't quite as shapelessly anonymous as the others.

"Are you waiting for someone?" he asks, still possessed of the gentleness of the Amaurotines, combined with the simple straightforwardness of children. "You seem lonely."

Everything was wrong.

This shape was wrong. The whole of it. Every piece broken and too small and not enough. He knows, he always knew what to do even when she (they? Who? Names and physical forms are so fleeting and they all slip through unsteady claws that are too busy tugging plaintively at his robes with a weakening grip they can't keep steady) faltered. Yet they'd been fighting, it felt as if it had been for forever and she was so tired all she could do was cling to the hem of his robe and take relief from the cold tiles she lay gasping on.

Everything was wrong. Hollow. Apologies should have passed her (their?) lips and yet something inside her was still uncertain. What had they been fighting over? Why was this form too tight and twisted when all they'd wanted to do was stretch as far as they could reach and take to the skies and the deepest places in the sea? Too numb by far.

The ringing in their ears was unbearable. Everything throbbing and aching and too much but still not enough.

Words that aren't words spill through their torn throat and the choked sob follows close behind. They're gagging on something, the acrid taste of unbalanced aether burning them as they drown in it, begging for help even though they can't force the words out.

They hadn't wanted this. None of this. They knew that if nothing else but they remembered being terrified. Wanting to save things, stop more pain. Something had gone horribly wrong and they couldn't remember and—

Mykha gasped, somehow she'd managed to curl herself up at his feet enough that she could bury her face in the comforting darkness of his robes, desperate to block out the blinding light when she couldn't stop the ringing in her ears. Her face soaked enough that her paint threatened to smear, but she was trembling all over. Still the word that wasn't a word and was somehow a name was spilling out of her like a prayer, as if it were the only thing keeping her pinned to the ground instead of unravelling in a grotesque ribbon of viscera and flesh.

"Who am I? I don't...I don't remember, but I do..." Sagging, her claws dragged down the robes, too dull to tear them with her grip weakening. She couldn't even hear herself speak over the ringing sound, over how she labored to breathe even as the Light threatened to overwhelm her. "I made things once...they were so warm..."

[He just continues to stare at her for a moment. But, then, with the most tired of sighs, he lifts a hand and takes a sandwich in between two gloved fingers - not even particularly caring to look at what kind it is, but simply taking the closest one to himself from her lap.]

To the spirit of cooperation, I suppose.

[Where did he get the napkin he unfolds with a snap of his other hand to lay across his lap? A good question, and one he's not going to answer today. Aside from the fact that he's still slouching so far forward that he looks like he might fall off the ledge if someone applied the slightest bit of pressure, he's downright dainty as he actually takes a first bite of the food.

Imperial manners, after all.]

That would certainly be the truth, if Hydaelyn's touch were the only one on her soul. But no - it certainly isn't. Every primal she has faced has left its mark - even if they couldn't temper her, they still changed her.

Light cannot exist without dark.

"Is that what this feeling is? I feel I knew it, once..." Like so many things, the edges of memory are unraveling. But where the new is scraped away, perhaps the old may be seen beneath - and the more of 'her' is subsumed, the more of another time she remembers.

Not enough to remember. Just the vaguest of feelings. But still there, just beyond reach.

She looks down at her hand, which had almost reached out to him. Of its own will? Perhaps. Someone else's, some long-forgotten shade? Much more likely.

"How long has it been..." A question begun, but not finished, and pain spikes behind her eyes. Familiar pain - but the vision does not come. Blocked? The Echo has shown her many things, but this is the first time it's ever failed.

"Why... can't I remember?"

He lets himself be pulled down by her weak grip, one hand still holding hers regardless of the dull claws threatening to rip his gloves. Whether it is her weight or the weight of the invisible burden that him hunched far beyond the apparent age of his body, he allows it to bear him down onto his knees. Once he's there, his other hand winds up stroking her ears, pulling the hair back from her face.

"...You did," he says, as though the words have been pried out of him, as though they're words he's been waiting a thousand years to say. "The soft, the affectionate - but not harmless, no. I remember..."

He remembers, so very much, that he has to stop in order to find the words, to express this great and terrible thing, the one thing that has gone so long unacknowledged, the person he has so long refused to think anything about that if it were possible, he would have unthought them from will alone.

"...Protectors for children, in a world where children needed no protecting. And how glad we were, when the end came, when we needed a word for orphans..."

The words are spoken quietly, as he pulls more of her hair back and allows her pained head to rest on his knees.

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[voicetest] it's this guy

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