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galvus · 2 years

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prompt: turn a blind eye • words: 597 • era: childhood • [ masterpost ] pretend not to notice.

“Don’t try to sneak,” Olivier whispered, his small voice quiet and harsh like a rub of sandpaper. “You’ll just make yourself louder.”

Annette stopped short and held upon her tiptoes, whipping her head over her shoulder to pin him down with a wide-eyed stare.

“What does that even mean?” she shot back. “Should I stomp in, then? I bet he’s not even asleep!”

Her constant companion rolled his eyes with such gusto that she swore they sounded like dice in a cup. They stood outside of Louisoix’s office in the lamplight, thievery on the mind, but Olivier knew better than she did how to steal into a likely monitored room.

No one expected him to be the better sneak, not clever little Olivier.

Clever little Olivier had been sneaking out of the orphanage for most of his life just for another chance to study at the Noumenon.

“Walk on your heels, stupid!”

“You’re stupid!”

Olivier clapped both hands — quietly — over his face. “Oh… gods, we’re never going to manage this.”

He was quieted with a frustrated wave and the opening of a door. Both of them knew that the door leading into Louisoix’s room creaked on its hinges, just as both of them knew that there was no way around it. Annette drew the door open centimeter by centimeter, wincing as it seemed to scream into the night, louder than it had ever been. She persevered until there was enough room for the both of them to sneak through and no more.

Sitting upon Louisoix’s desk was a plate covered with a simple, checkered cloth.

They knew the plate. They knew the cloth. They knew what was hidden beneath it. The matron often brought Louisoix treats for taking in the both of them and continuing to support the orphanage; she always used cloths of the same pattern.

Being quiet wasn’t their only obstacle, they realized upon entering the room.

While Louisoix’s desk was unoccupied, the same could not be said of the chaise that sat between two tall bookshelves on the side of the room opposite the fireplace. Their mentor was stretched out over the cushions, one leg stretched towards the ground while the other was bent, his slippered foot tucked down against the pillows. A book lay draped over his chest, held there by only one hand.

He was sleeping.

“He’s sleeping,” Olivier whispered at her, the sound louder than anything she’d ever heard in the quiet.

“Oh, really?” Annette asked. “I couldn’t tell!”

Rather than lingering and letting his friend further abuse him, Olivier scampered forward over the tiled floor and lifted the cloth from the plate of baked goods. Stacked upon the plate was a treasure trove of sugar, beginning at simple sugar cookies and ending at luscious-looking fudge filled with nuts.

He picked up two cookies and a shard of peanut brittle big enough for both of them, turning with absolute precision for the door.

“Take the fudge, too,” Louisoix murmured from across the room, both eyes still shut. “It’s much too sweet for my taste.”

Annette flushed. So did Olivier.

“I told you he was probably awake!” the former shouted. This time, she wasn’t committed to a pitched whisper. The sudden sound of her voice made Olivier nearly jump out of his skin. She rushed forward and stole a few pieces of fudge from the plate before rushing out of the room again. “Thank you, Louisoix!”

Olivier tucked his chin down against his chest, embarrassed.

“Yes, thank you, Louisoix.”

The old elezen man chuckled, then went back to his nap.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2022 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv fic #louisoix leveilleur #type: ffxivwrite #oc: annette #oc: olivier #ch: louisoix leveilleur #mine: writing

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galvus · 2 years

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prompt: vermilion • words: 1,019 • era: heavensward • [ masterpost ] a brilliant red pigment made from mercury sulfide.

The first time Annette saw a painting of herself was not long after the end of the Dragonsong War.

Night fell over Ishgard like a dressing screen, leaving only the flicker of stars and the glow of lamplight to pierce the darkness, but the city was alight with something else. The twinkle of laughter carried over the heads of the crowd that spilled out of the manor and down onto the street, punctuated with the quiet whisk of fabric over snow-kissed stone and the clink of glasses.

The party-goers made way for the Warrior of Light, curtsying and bending at their waists as she passed, scampering out of the way to avoid having their gowns trampled upon. They watched with owl eyes behind painted fans and colored lenses as she passed between them all without a word of acknowledgment.

If anything, being snubbed seemed to please and amuse them.

Annette rushed up the stairwell leading down from massive twin doors. The beautifully woven rug that spilled out over them like a tongue silenced her footfalls, but aided in carrying her up the flight of icy stairs nonetheless. Every huffed breath she took turned to smoke on the air until she reached the brightly lit and well-warmed interior of the home.

The invitation had been delivered to her last minute due to the host having only realized that afternoon that the vaunted Warrior of Light — and the reason for the celebration — was in Ishgard visiting with the Fortemps family.

The Fortemps family that had already been invited weeks prior.

Whispers sprouted up around her like weeds as she maneuvered through the crowd. She caught precious few words as she searched for Edmont and Emmanellain among them all — portrait, fitting, and red stood out among others. Such conversation wasn’t strange when found in the mouths of the Ishgardian elite. Another day, another painting, but the courier’s breathless insistence was what truly struck her in that moment.

After years acclimating to the way people stared in a crowd, Annette struggled to differentiate between the looks they aimed in her direction, to tell those who stared because she did not belong apart from those who stared because she was the center of their attention, to tell cruelty from kindness from awe.

All stares felt the same. Each of them twisted at her gut.

Those knots only tightened as she reached the very end of the crowd and was nudged out into a clearing around the edge of the chamber. The home’s walls were covered in beautifully painted paper to match the ornate frames of the paintings hung from floor to ceiling. Each of the works was from a vastly different era and all of them had been kept in pristine condition.

In the very center, leaned against a stand rather than hung upon the wall was a massive canvas.

Annette recognized herself immediately. Not from her windblown hair or the familiar desaturated blue of her dress, but the swoop of fiery feathers that covered most of the painting with its grandeur. From within her open grimoire rose the Phoenix, and all around her lay the charred bodies of the Heavensward. At first, she took the background’s horizon for a mountain range, but mountains did not have wings or bloodied eye sockets.

The hulking black figure in the distance was none other than Nidhogg.

Above them all, she stood triumphant, but in the middle of this stranger’s home, she felt her heart stop in her chest.

She opened her mouth. No words rose in her throat.

A gentle hand clapped down onto her shoulder. She whirled around, her golden eyes wide, only to find that Edmont Fortemps had found her among the crowd. He pulled her a step forward, then another, surging back into the crowd without a word.

She didn’t need them to understand what this was.

“Beaurond is a narcissist and a fool,” Edmont murmured to her as the crowd split for them. Only now did she see the giddiness in their eyes, each of them eager in their own way to watch Annette react to the painting they had all seen. “If he could take his own cock into his mouth, he’d suck himself dry.”

“Father!”

Both the furious comment and Emmanellain’s characteristic horror carried Annette’s anxiety away with a laugh.

It didn’t matter how weak the sound was. All that mattered was its existence, even with the wide swaths of fire and the bodies made of ash still glowing behind her eyes, even with all eyes laid upon her and few of them kind.

“Here, here.” Emmanellain hurried forward, snatching something up from one of the many silver trays. It was the smallest of crudites — a circle of toasted baguette smeared with herbed butter and a flake of white fish — but it gave her something to chew. “I’m sorry about the show, old girl. Patrons like that are truly a scourge. Why, only a year ago, I —”

The boy launched into a dramatic story about a former lover and her muse-obsessed father who mistook him for that very fellow. Stories about mistaken identities were his favorite; she’d learned that much during those few months of living with the family in Ishgard.

Chewing carefully on the hors d'oeuvre, Annette shut her eyes.

“I wish I could have protected you from this, darling.” Edmont’s voice was quiet and warm, as was the pressure of his arm curling around her shoulders as he guided her to stand right at his side. “I tried valiantly, but Beaurond’s courier is quiet as a thief.”

He paused, chuckling under his breath.

“She’s also a thief, if rumor is to be believed.”

Annette managed to form something of a smile on her closed mouth, drifting closer to Edmont as his son finished his elaborate tale of intrigue. When she opened her eyes again, no one was staring at her. No one was even looking at her save for the Fortemps.

She exhaled, and with that breath, blew out the memory of the painting and its vermilion fire like the light of a candle.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2022 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv fic #type: ffxivwrite #oc: annette #mine: writing

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galvus · 2 years

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𝚂𝙰𝙽𝙶𝚄𝙸𝚂 𝙿𝚁𝙾 𝙸𝙼𝙿𝙴𝚁𝙰𝚃𝙾𝚁𝙴.

#final fantasy #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv screenshots #garlean #garlean oc #type: screenshots #oc: weiss #mine: edits

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galvus · 2 years

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prompt: novel • words: 411 • era: endwalker • [ masterpost ] new or unusual in an interesting way.

Mare Lamentorum, for all its promise of tension and tragedy, turned out to be quite strange.

To breathe on the moon, to stand in the shadow of another Amaurotine, to watch with a terrified sort of awe as an ancient primal threatened all that remained — Annette had expected none of it. The events of Garlemald still lingered inside of her, like flakes of snow clinging to her lungs. They had been so very close to destruction, and they were there yet again for a time.

Every time she turned around, it was to face another impending apocalypse.

But they managed to fight Zodiark to its end. They managed to delay another world-ending threat only to be shown another and asked to react appropriately.

None of them had expected the Loporrits.

Not Annette, not Olivier, not any of them.

“I suppose it takes all sorts,” Thancred muttered as the group found a place to rest above the supposedly relaxing and rejuvenating forests of the Greatest Endsvale. A flickering rainbow of color illuminated his eyes. “Hydaelyn has something of an imagination, doesn’t she?”

Y’shtola’s laugh was as much a sigh.

“Apparently.”

The quiet hum emanating from the lights that made up the Endsvale’s vibrant forest made Annette’s skin crawl. She longed for fresh air and the scent of real trees rather than the manufactured smells that were pumped into the atmosphere here to give the impression of life.

“Everything feels so wrong,” she said, quietly enough for her words to be missed by most of them. “How are we going to live here?”

“With time, all will be seen as a…”

Urianger paused, staring out over the forests that would soon shelter thousands of people. On his face, she could practically see him imagining all of the children that would be born there, that would love those very trees and never have known the true feel of bark beneath their hands. He thought of the men and women who would live and die upon the ship, who would walk the forests of the Greatest Endsvale and remember fondly what it was they left behind.

“… mm, necessary sacrifice. Perchance some will even enjoy it.”

Annette could not imagine it. She could not see the children or the elderly.

In this place, she could only see failure.

“The novelty of the Burrow will fade.” She wound her arms around her legs, cradling them against her chest. “No one could be happy here for long.”

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2022 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv fic #type: ffxivwrite #oc: annette #mine: writing

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galvus · 2 years

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prompt: deiform • words: 1,543 • era: before the fall • [ masterpost ] conforming to the nature of God : having the form of a god.

To many, mentors were like to gods.

As Olivier and Annette stared up at the peak where Louisoix stood above the flats of Carteneau, their spells slowed and stopped, awe-stricken. They were not alone; non-Garleans and Garleans alike caught themselves staring, committing every moment to memory as much as history.

Above them, Dalamud hung low in the sky like an overripe fruit, its preternatural glow turning the smoke in the air a sickening shade of half-red, half-gold.

And in their chests hung the feeling of inclement change.

Nothing will ever be the same, Olivier murmured to her two nights prior, his glasses dropped low on his long nose. He stitched his fingers together in the fireside glow, unable to quite keep still in the face of the apocalypse. Never before had Annette seen him tremble, but tremble he did, as if he couldn’t stop if he tried.

He trembled when he spoke, when he looked her in the eyes, when Louisoix slipped his gentle fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck.

I can feel it in my throat.

Annette could feel it, too. She could see it as she stared up at Louisoix from below, as the sonorous hum of Dalamud reverberated between her ears. Fire rose to her fingertips and wind whipped through her hair and stone rose beneath her feet, but nothing felt as if it was enough. The fight was over. They were only biding their time, filling the moments before the end with meaningless everything.

Tucked inside of her ear, she heard crisp, clear orders given in different voices. Their leaders still believed they could force the Garleans out of Mor Dhona in the time remaining to them. Or… rather, they hoped they did.

With Louisoix at their back, they fought until they had nothing remaining to them, and then, they fought harder with the sweet flavor of potions in their mouths. The Eorzean armies pushed and pushed and pushed. The Garlean force died and died and died, but they had superior numbers, as well as superior technology. With every backward step, they surged forward again, crushing that hope in their metal jaws.

Magic could only do so much.

Just as that thought occurred to her, the sky exploded.

Dalamud crushed into the atmosphere in a rain of fire. Its surface cracked from point to point, sending down beams of purple and red light as the shell crumbled away only to plummet down to the earth.

… Shell?

Emerging from the cracked exterior of the moon were colossal, leathery wings.

Time stopped. The battle ended. No one had a breath to spare, even as meteors and shards of Dalamud crashed down around them.

Annette clapped both hands over her ears as the air around her rippled with the power of a mighty roar. Following that painful rush of sound was a torrent of flame that twisted through the clouds, splitting those that they did not evaporate in an instant.

Olivier whipped around to follow them with his eyes. They gleamed white with fear.

“Limsa Lominsa,” he murmured.

Over their shared linkpearl, everyone heard a familiar voice — Merlwyb Bloefswyn. “Oh, gods.”

One such pillar of flame slammed into the ground yards away from the both of them, sending a spray of white-hot sparks into the air. Moments stretched out for hours before them. Paths to be taken were summoned up from the ground, but there was only one that they could set out upon. There was ever only one option.

As the Garleans fled and a pale blue swell of magic filled their vision, Olivier’s terrified eyes snapped to hers.

No words were necessary. She knew what he wanted in an instant, and anyone who might refuse to give it to him was cruel beyond measure.

“Go,” Annette said, softly.

The massive creature soared overhead, and with every beat of its wings, more of those same trails of flame were conjured up out of the heat-thinned air. By the time the dragon reached the stretch of sky above the flats, the heavens were more fire than stars.

Olivier ran.

He ran faster than Annette had ever seen, his long limbs carrying him across uneven, war-torn ground as if he had wings.

As he ran, the dragon cried out a second time. The ground shook as it pulled its massive wings back before letting loose a volley of fire. The meteors hurtled down towards the earth with a chorus of deafening whistles, throwing up falls of dirt and spewing forth vents of lava that rose stories high.

The world trembled, shook, shifted, and Olivier was thrown forward, not just onto the ground but into the gnarled corpse of magitek armor. Panic surged through Annette a moment later when Olivier’s shriek of pain joined the rumble of those around her.

Just as soon as that heart-wrenching sound carried into the ears of Louisoix, their surroundings changed.

The magic of Louisoix’s magical shield made the hair on her arms stand on end, but the knowledge that they were safe for the moment pushed her forward on shaky feet. Her confidence waned and surged in a nauseating wave.

Shields did not last. They were easily broken.

“You all must go.”

Louisoix’s rich voice was untouched by the same fear that had burrowed into her heart. He spoke to the leaders who stood at his side, to the captains and the lieutenants and the foot soldiers of their armies.

He spoke to Olivier, who sobbed in pain and confusion.

He spoke to Annette, who collapsed into the dirt beside him.

“If the binding ritual does not come to pass, you all must go.”

The shield cracked. One stray meteor soared through the air before crashing into the mountain where Louisoix stood, raining rubble down upon the battlefield. Another followed. Then, a dozen more. Louisoix’s shield splintered and fell away, and the blue glow of hope turned the orange-red of fire.

“What does he mean?” Olivier shook violently as he poured what remained of his healing into his leg. Nothing would mend the tattered muscle of his calf, not enough for him to ever run again. “If… He never says if.”

Annette could not know.

“Now,” Louisoix cried out.

There was a murmur of acknowledgment from half a dozen familiar voices before the world’s palette shifted again around them, from the blinding heat of white and orange and red to watery blue. Pools of magic grew in a circle around the dragon as it hovered in the air in front of Louisoix, each marked with a symbol of the gods.

From those pools rose pillars of light, each of them crucial to the ritual of binding.

Annette and Olivier both stared skyward as they lifted into the air, higher and higher until they were level with the creature that had so recently been split from Dalamud. When they surged forward, piercing the dragon from every side, from every angle, Annette felt her heart leap into her throat. Ripples of lightning encircled the beast, forcing it to draw its wings close to its body as a threatening growl rumbled down into their bones.

A second version of Dalamud, swimming with Louisoix and the Scions’s blue magic, manifested around the creature.

They waited.

For a moment, all went still.

Hope buoyed inside of those that remained.

But as the symbols rose to meet the newborn Dalamud, to bind the creature again, the sphere that housed it began to stretch and splinter before it burst forth in earnest, particles thrown in every direction with a triumphant howl.

The dragon unfurled itself before them.

No creature surrounded by flame had any right to send ice into someone’s blood.

“Louisoix,” Olivier said, his voice choked with pain as he struggled to stand, tugging the split muscles in his calf away from the wreckage that tried so desperately to keep him still. Blood stained the ground beneath him, the torn fabric of his trousers, the metal he left behind. “I won’t leave you.”

Above the creature’s head grew a sun. Heat poured down upon Carteneau as the orb doubled in size with every passing moment.

“Please don’t make me—”

Annette laced her fingers through his. The blood from his palm passed to hers.

“You all must go,” Louisoix echoed.

In his voice, she heard a note of longing, of loss.

They were not the first to be teleported away from the flats; they were the last, as the beast’s final blast grew and grew.

Wind tore through Olivier’s hair as he trudged forward. He limped painfully towards the peak where their mentor stood, where his lover loomed above them all as a landmark of future sacrifice. Around them, men and women in varying stages of death and dying were spirited away to some place safe.

But there was nowhere safe for Louisoix.

There couldn’t be.

“You all…”

Olivier and Annette stood beneath him as the world buckled around them all, as the creature’s final attack menaced them from above.

With light pouring down upon him, Louisoix met their eyes, and on his face, he wore hope cloaked in adoration.

“You all must go,” he whispered.

And then, they were somewhere else.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2022 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv fic #louisoix leveilleur #type: ffxivwrite #oc: annette #oc: olivier #ship: louisoix x olivier #mine: writing

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galvus · 2 years

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prompt: row • words: 2,071 • era: endwalker • [ masterpost ] a noisy, acrimonious quarrel.

Annette never expected the other Scions to be agreeable when the matter of Zenos’s survival became the subject of debate for the day.

Each of them had their own private hatreds of the man that had plagued their lives for years now, and she understood each of them. They were all tired and ready to see a period put at the end of his sentence. They could not begin to understand how she felt, considering only a few of them even knew what he meant to Annette.

Having the conversation over linkpearl was an unfortunate consequence of seeing the Scions split up and hurtled in every direction across their world. She wished they could be together again, sitting around a table in the Rising Stones, so they might see the look in her eyes when she told them the truth of the matter. Maybe they would be gentler with her if they saw the tears in her eyes as she spoke of him.

Or maybe she would only be there to see their trust in her die.

But it was a necessary discussion about a tense topic, and recent events made the events of the past pertinent yet again.

Sitting alone in her bedroom, warmed beneath a pool of waning sunlight, Annette revealed all.

She started her story at the very edge of the universe where all life ended, where all life began. Two characters stood upon a precipice — her, relieved; Zenos, desperate and enamored and bloody-mouthed. It was there that their paths ought to have diverged. It was there that what remained of his life should have faded into unknowing.

“You must know that I did leave him there,” Annette whispered, throat tight.

Her hands curled into fists so tight that her fingernails turned to fangs rather than just teeth, tearing rather than biting into the flesh of her palms. They could not understand. The choice to leave Zenos behind was not one easily written; it was self-sacrifice.

“I abandoned him.”

“And we’ve been all the better for it.” Thancred’s voice rose above the quiet. A picture of him rose in her mind as he spoke. An inn room shared with Urianger, one with two narrow beds and a poorly lit hearth barely hot enough to brew tea. Him, back to one of the beds, pieces of his gunblade laid out before him for cleaning. He sounded distracted, barely there. Casual. “Has anyone slept poorly since coming back to the Source?”

Annette’s lips parted, but before she could respond, someone else did.

“The chill in Garlemald makes it impossible to sleep comfortably,” Alphinaud said. “I haven’t been warm in weeks.”

Alisaie chuckled. “You’re such a child.”

“Both of you,” Olivier interjected, his entrance into the conversation as smooth and swift as his voice. “I believe Thancred’s question was rhetorical.”

It took some effort to flatten her palms to the surface of her desk. The raw skin ached at the pressure, just as the rest of her ached at the echo of friendly voices in her ear. Perhaps it would be better if her intentions remained a secret, shared only between her and Olivier and the others who had traveled into the Thirteenth. The offer had been given to her by Y’shtola, and both Olivier and Estinien agreed that it would be better if only those who knew knew.

But Annette was stubborn and honest, and the Scions had been her friends for so long.

They had weathered so much together. Cutting the others off from such an important decision felt wrong, not that it was a decision that would be made by anyone other than herself. She couldn’t deal with the thought of someone trying to stop her.

She didn’t know what she would do to someone who sought to stand between her and Zenos.

Oh, you know, Annette’s darkest thoughts whispered to her. They were vicious, seductive things that she tried in vain to ignore at every turn. You would leave them a burned out husk. Flesh torn to shreds by wind. Bones crushed by stone. You wield the power of the Phoenix and Bahamut; they would not survive.

Her head bowed, brown hair spilling over her brow and cheeks.

When her voice rose again, it was stronger by half.

Her nails dug against the grain of the wood as words spilled out of her — from the tale of his end at the edge of the universe to their first meeting and the connection she felt, from duels in dusty Gyr Abania to rainy Yanxia, from secret meetings under the stars to letters carried by well-paid couriers. She told them everything, and she unveiled the truth to shocked silence.

For a single, painful, endless minute following the reveal, there was nothing. No one spoke. She could not even hear them breathe.

They were all of them staring at her, waiting, wondering —

Again, it was Thancred who spoke. His voice set her on edge. “Why bring this up now?”

He knew there was something happening. He knew that the supposed end of Zenos’s sentence had changed; it had become yet another comma the former Garlean prince did not deserve, in his eyes.

He knew, but he wanted her to say it.

Annette drew in a slow breath that trembled on her lips.

“I am bringing this up now because I am going to bring him back.”

The shocked silence became a storm following the lightning crack of revelation. Thancred shouted something she could not grasp among the sudden buzz of conversation. Quietly, Urianger urged him to calm himself. That only spurred Thancred on quicker and louder, and among the voices, she heard the slamming of a door.

Annette’s heart raced. Her eyes burned.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Thancred spat out. The texture of his voice had changed, shifting from casual distraction to fury carried on heavy footfalls. “After everything that’s happened, you’re bringing him back? How does that even work? I’m assuming it’s nefarious. Something that could bring him back would have to be, wouldn’t it?”

She moved to respond, and she heard Olivier do the same. But neither of them managed to say a word before Thancred filled the silence again.

“Don’t even get me started on how long you’ve been keeping this from us!”

Anger bubbled in Annette’s stomach. It boiled.

“Thancred, please. We understand your frustration, but—”

“My frustration!” Thancred cut through the word with its echo, his voice sharpened and stricken. “I am not going to be hushed and coddled by the man bending at the waist for Gaius van Baelsar!”

Slamming her hands down onto her desk, Annette hauled herself up onto her feet. She swallowed back the pain that shot up from her palms and instead used it to support her words.

When she spoke, she did not shout. She did not howl and claw at the walls to tear him down. Her voice was a quiet roll in her throat.

“You would be wise to pursue that topic no further, Thancred.”

What might have quelled someone else’s rage only served to farther incense him. Over the linkpearl, she heard another clatter of a door thrown open, followed by a grunt of, “Oh, that’s so like you.”

Urianger cleared his throat. “Thancred, thy tone—”

“You needn’t act like this with her.” Y’shtola remained behind in Thavnair, but she felt close-at-hand. Her presence — distant, but warm — was as much of an anchor as Olivier’s. “You know Annette as well as all of us.”

Thancred laughed.

“Untrue,” he said, bitterness wrapping itself around his throat. “Apparently.”

Annette leaned against her desk as tension unfurled down her spine. She had expected this. If everyone had simply wished her luck on her endeavors, she would have suspected that something was terribly wrong.

But that didn’t cool the burning of anger, not when it was Thancred at its point of origin.

Thancred, who so willingly took her to bed long before she regained her memories of him following the Calamity. Thancred, whose desperation to be useful made him a target for the Ascians. Thancred, who broke her heart and refused to let the wounds mend for years.

Thancred — Thancred was angry at her.

“Does this feel like a betrayal to you, Thancred? To you personally?” Annette asked him. She rubbed uselessly at her flushed cheeks as she peered through the darkened window before her. With the warmth of the sun gone, she swam in the light of stars. “If you’d like me to explain how it truly feels to be betrayed, I would be happy to walk you through it.”

Two linkpearls disconnected from the call. The topic for discussion was over, and she knew that most of them would not stick around just for a fight.

“I kept my feelings for him a secret because the world felt as if it was crumbling around me, and I didn’t have the energy to listen to you whine!”

Another left. She did not know who remained; she did not care, truth be told. Olivier would remain, and as long as she knew he was on her side, it didn’t matter who else stood behind or alongside her.

“This is going to happen whether you like it or not,” she continued.

The words rushed out of her mouth, giving him no opportunity to riposte. Any response he might have given did not interest her. He had ruined any chance he had at her being patient with him when he turned upon Olivier and bit down.

Now, she would show him that she could bite, too. That her jaws were stronger.

“The only reason you’re furious with me for bringing him back is because you know that you will have to live with it.”

Her breath shook in her chest.

“Because you know that you have no chance of beating him.”

This time, when someone disconnected from the call, she knew who it was.

Victory was a thing with a bitter flavor, and as Annette sank into her chair again, she spilled forward onto the desk, her hands trembling as her frayed nerves struggled to recover.

“I shall endeavor to speak with him,” Urianger murmured. She did not know where he stood, not from the sound of him or the words he imparted upon her, but she knew his storied history with betrayal… and loss. “Time will be of import.”

Olivier spoke where she could not.

“Thank you,” he said, gently despite the obvious hurt she found in his voice. When Urianger left only him, Y’shtola, and Estinien in the call, Olivier let go of a terse sigh. She could imagine him pinching the curved bridge of his nose where his glasses often laid. “We will return to the First soon. Then, to Elpis with the crystal. If anyone can figure out what to do with what remains of Zenos, it will be Hades.”

Alone in a puddle of moonlight, Annette’s chin trembled. As the fight bled away from her, something half-empty was left behind, something hollowed out and yearning to be held.

But there were no hands to pick her up, no arms to wrap around her. Only she remained to soothe the painful ache that Thancred’s fury left behind.

After all, Zenos was a pale, purple light in her peripheral vision, a soul in a crystal on a bedside table, and he could not comfort her.

“A week,” Annette whispered. She lifted her head only to rest a warm cheek against her forearm. The burning of tears in her eyes trailed away, and she peered through the glass to Mor Dhona. “I will meet you in the First in a week. We will progress from there.”

It could have been tomorrow. Her heart longed to run.

They still did not know if Hades was capable of returning Zenos to her. That was what forced her to slow down, to take her time, to give Olivier a much-needed week in Terncliff.

If they arrived in Elpis only to discover that Zenos was indeed lost or forever trapped within the crystal, Annette herself would be lost.

“Thank you,” she murmured weakly.

“Love is complicated.” Y’sthola sounded tired. “Thancred knows that just as well as many of us. He will come around in the end, and if he does not, he will be brought.”

Annette felt the corner of her mouth curl.

“Still… thank you.”

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2022 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv fic #zenos yae galvus #thancred waters #y'shtola rhul #type: ffxivwrite #oc: annette #oc: olivier #ship: zenos x annette #mine: writing

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galvus · 2 years

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prompt: attrition • words: 1,227 • era: stormblood • [ masterpost ] the action or process of gradually reducing the strength or effectiveness of someone or something through sustained attack or pressure.

She could not beat him, but she could withstand his attacks.

The concept of a stalemate left Zenos little more than a slavering beast, one chained by limits that had never before claimed him.

He stared across the rain-churned mud of their battlefield at the Warrior of Light, only barely visible through sheets of pouring rain. And in that rain — through that rain — he saw the powerful light of her grimoire. Flames untouched by the storm licked over the spine and the pages, pouring up her wrist without burning her or setting the fabric of her robes alight.

Yanxia smelled of fresh air and rainfall, of fields and paddies, of fresh fruits and flowers ripening, but he could barely fill his lungs between each attack. They ached. The sensation was as sweet as it was foreign and infuriating.

Zenos sucked in a sharp breath, lowering himself to the ground in an elegant arch that belied the searing heat that pushed through his muscles. That very breath tasted like iron — not from a wound or a bloodied nose, but from a bitten cheek, his molars grinding as he prepared to launch forward in Annette’s direction.

She did not smell like blood or rainfall, even with water soaking through the long locks of her hair. He knew what she smelled like.

The Warrior of Light smelled of ozone, of clove, of sweat, and every breath he took was full of her, as if his nose was buried into the hair just behind her ear.

Zenos surged forward with a growl. The Swell crackled with energy, arcs of wind energy slipping away from the katana’s massive blade in pale green ribbons. Rain never touched the metal, no matter how heavily the sky poured it forth. Instead, the droplets were flung away with the power of the sword.

The blade never touched Annette, either.

When the Garlean prince swung the Swell aided by the forward momentum of his body, the sharpened edge glanced off of a pillar of rock, thrown up from the muddied ground by the shadow of yet another primal.

Zenos threw his weight into another blow without missing a beat, cleaving the stone in two with a snarl that was drowned in a roll of thunder.

Rubble blasted into the distance, cracking through the thin glass windows of nearby houses and burying deep into the wooden slats of the same structures. What remained of the boulder collapsed into inert stones, with Annette nowhere to be found.

A rain-soaked lock of gold fell in front of one of Zenos’s eyes.

But nothing could conceal the almost delirious pleasure the man took from being outmaneuvered. He wore it plainly on his face — a joyful mask tied in place to cover the dour, unimpressed mien of someone with no equal. He did not have teeth sharpened into fangs, but his smile looked as if it could break skin without trying.

“Face me,” Zenos murmured. He turned, mud squishing around his greaves as he pivoted in the Warrior of Light’s direction. The rain slackened, droplets clinging to his brow and lashes and the long, curved tip of his nose. “Cast your cowardice aside.”

“Why do you consider this cowardice?”

His lips parted. Another droplet flung itself from his nose.

“Your ceaseless running is why I refer to this pathetic tactic of yours as cowardice.” Zenos lowered the Swell to his side. The wind picked up from the blade, sending ripples of mud away from its tip in waves. “Stand against me.”

Annette tilted her chin upward.

She was a stubborn woman. Time had shared with him that truth.

“Fine.”

Ah, she relents, came a whisper in Zenos’s mind. His heart thumped wildly in his ears, in his chest, in the wound he’d bitten into his cheek. This will be an execution. No more.

A newly discovered energy tore through him.

Zenos abandoned all previous efforts in favor of wielding fresh strength in the face of his greatest enemy. Adrenaline served as a constant companion, as familiar to him as his own reflection. He bit down; he bolted forward, sliding the Swell into the revolver that hung at his hip in favor of the most familiar of his blades. It bore the sigil of Garlemald rather than elemental magics.

The attachments he held to his homeland were the strings his father insisted on keeping tethered to his joints and nothing more.

But the blade’s weight was one he’d become well-acquainted with.

Plunging into the storm anew, Zenos’s hair flew back away from his face and the Garlean blade pierced through the air with a terrifying whistle. His prey did not move. She did not run or duck or plead with him to stop.

She stood. His blade was held at the perfect height to skewer her through the very center of her chest.

Tense moments before the tip found its home between her breasts, she fell into action.

With a clap of her grimoire and an upward thrust of her arms, Annette did not summon a barricade of stone, but a whirling colonnade of flame. The weeping storm sizzled and spat, sending up a thick fog of steam that blurred the details of her face…

… of her location.

Zenos dug his heels into the mud.

A glimmer of yellow-green shone from within the curtain of steam, and before Zenos could take a moment to decipher Annette’s next move, the summoned primal beat her slender wings and sent the pillar of flame flying forward. Garuda’s howl was not unlike the whistle of an inclement tornado. His ears buzzed from both the rattling cry and the sudden change of pressure all around them.

He leapt backwards, one foot sliding farther than the other and forcing him down onto his knee.

The fiery whirlwind changed directions like no true storm could, surging forward onto the very spot he’d stopped to catch his breath. He gathered his heavy weight onto legs that could still carry him, and he weaved around her attack as nimbly as he could manage, again and again and again until the fire was naught but a sinuous, sulfurous steam.

The weariness he’d beaten away with the excitement of a true fight returned with a vengeance. His shoulders sagged forward as he struggled to suck in a deep enough breath. Fury left his fingertips numb, his eyes bleary in the smoke.

She could not beat him, but she could withstand him.

And once she did, the elements could finally tear him to pieces, if he allowed it.

“Get this over with,” Zenos growled, tattered by the wind, tattered by the woman who stood wearily before him. “Kill me. Is that how this bout of dramatics is meant to end?”

On Annette’s face, she did not wear her anger. She did not wield guilt or pettiness like a blade. She simply stared at him, and her expression softened.

“You will not have the fight you so desperately want,” she said. He could see the tension that lingered in her broad shoulders, just as he could see the tired sag around her eyes. Their battle would not be glorious. It would be long and pathetic and stained with mud. Neither of them wanted that. “Not today.”

Zenos exhaled. Inhaled.

All he could smell was her, even on the rain, even yards apart.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2022 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv fic #zenos yae galvus #zenoswol #zenos x wol #type: ffxivwrite #oc: annette #ch: zenos yae galvus #ship: zenos x annette #mine: writing

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galvus · 2 years

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is lyon the bad influence here, or is it soliri? who knows!

#final fantasy #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv screenshots #lyon rem helsos #lyon x wol #type: screenshots #oc: soliri #ch: lyon rem helsos #ship: lyon x soliri #mine: edits #perceive them!!

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galvus · 2 years

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prompt: confluence • words: 476 • era: shadowbringers • [ masterpost ] an act or process of merging.

The sea of black and blue that swirled in every direction around her was dotted with glittering shards of memory.

The light that shone ahead caught their sharpened edges, and they glinted like glass under the midday sun, bringing a small amount of warmth to the interminable chill. Only for a time did the warmth linger, as memories tumbled past her in the shape of familiar faces. Tataru beamed at her, one of her small hands lifted into a wave that turned into an encouraging salute. She saw Urianger’s curious expression against a backdrop of beige stone that she recognized as Minfilia’s office. Behind him, at a distance, she saw a flash of familiar silver hair and heard a bright and boisterous laugh that made her heart tumble down into her belly.

Alphinaud and Alisaie floated alongside each other, coaxing her forward as they always had. Behind them, Thancred looked away, the slip of his memory shadowed. Y’shtola and Krile soared past, along with faces that left her heart aching.

Haurchefant.

Louisoix.

Between all of her comrades and the occasional companion, she caught glimpses of the places she’d visited across Hydaelyn. She saw Gridania, Ishgard, Ala Mhigo. She saw home with its white brick and its glittering blue harbor.

She saw a fireplace and a cup of hot chocolate. She saw the gleaming Gold Saucer.

But among all of the shards of glass, among all the well-kept memories, one stood out to her on the horizon. It first revealed itself with a flutter of golden hair, replaced with a bloodthirsty blue gaze. Beneath the delicate point of his chin dripped blood that glittered in shades of ruby red. Fire consumed Zenos’s face, turning his hair into tattered battle standards.

He stood above her weary body in shape alone, and when his lips parted, she could still hear Elidibus’s choice of words.

Annette pivoted as best she could, twisting around to instead glare out into nothingness.

The nothingness was warmer than the shade of her lover that she’d left behind. It welcomed her as she floated towards something distant and unknown.

Was this what the other Scions had seen once their souls abandoned their bodies? Had they floated endlessly between words, haunted by their various pasts? Had Alphinaud seen Ilberd? Had Urianger seen Moenbryda?

Had Thancred seen Minfilia?

Tears sparkled at the corners of her eyes.

Roads were paved with her mistakes. Mountains, carved from the earth by her failures. And all around her, stretching in every direction, were countless individuals who still looked to her as if she hung the sun in the sky.

She longed for darkness after the years of squinting into that very sun and making sharp-edged memories. But where she was going, she would not find it.

Still, even the exhausting light of an endless day would be preferable to being haunted.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2022 #final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv fic #type: ffxivwrite #oc: annette #mine: writing

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