jiggery f*ckery
abandon all hope, ye who enter here

day thirteen >> confluence

#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.