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blackestnight · 3 years

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13: made manifest

Prompt: Oneirophrenia

Word count: 1230

Her grasp on her soul has always been tenuous, even at the best of times, so it’s no surprise that it starts to slip when she’s dying. Or: if there’s any idiot who would still wall-pull while undergoing light corruption-induced organ failure, it’s probably Hanami.

(Gonna slap a tentative content warning on this one for Shadowbringers-typical levels of body horror re: sin eaters and light corruption.)

Idly, Hanami scraped her fingertips across the rough stone of the ground. Hard to tell if the white lines spiderwebbing across her gauntlets were frost or something worse, in the flickering lights from the falling stars. Or if they were real. Maybe just her imagination. Maybe the stars were all in her head, too. It didn’t seem right, for the sky to be collapsing underneath the ocean.

A voice, muffled. She had to strain to hear it over the sound of crackling glass in her horns. “Up you get, lazybones.” Genial, a strong hand under each of her arms, tugging her back to her knees. “No dozing off here. Ryne, a moment, please.”

Was she sleeping? She didn’t think so. Hadn’t slept in—a while. Days, maybe. If she stopped thinking about breathing she started to choke on glowing ichor. Sometimes she could only close her eyes and think about keeping her skin from splitting apart. Hard. Her thoughts slid out of her grip like wet marble.

Focus. Keep steady. Breathe deep through your nose—let the air fill your lungs and pass from your lips...

More hands, a smaller voice. Too quiet to make out over the shattering. Her airway cleared a bit. She found her feet long enough to get them under her.

“There you are,” the first voice said approvingly. “Come along, then. Stay near me—just like we agreed, yes?” The hands released her, and a white shadow danced in her vision, moving off into the hoary fog that licked at the corners of her eyes.

She licked her lips. Hunted for the shadow’s name. It took her two tries to speak because her tongue froze to the roof of her mouth. “Thancred?”

“Yes?”

“I cannot see the ground,” she admitted. Magnesium sparks drifted across her sightline when she looked around. More little falling stars.

The hand returned, cupping her chin and tilting it up. The stars drifted accordingly, and the little branches of ice in her periphery did not. “Well, that looks unpleasant,” he said. She made a questioning noise, too occupied with the constellations floating behind her eyelids to bother with words. “Not to worry. We’ll simply have to go a little slower. Take my—there. Hold on tight, and we’ll be on our way.”

Her fingers were numb, where they wrapped around his wrist, but that was fine. He pressed his arm to his own back and she followed on his heels. Not practical, she thought, because he used two hands for his sword. So did she. Urianger would be a better guide, or Alphinaud. She almost asked him where they were and remembered. They had to stay back, away from her and her creeping cold, in case it cracked her open. Thancred would stay with her instead. Just like they’d agreed.

He sounded so calm, guarding a dying woman who would scour the world like a heat death, but she supposed he was good at lying.

One foot in front of the other, over and over again. To the ends of the world.

When he stopped, her toes collided with the heels of his boots. She recalled how her hand worked and freed her grip on his arm. Didn’t need to wonder why. The black holes in her vision were like warm balm on her strained eyes. Her mouth watered. Her body ceased its shutdown to remind her what hunger was.

Her sword was in her hands without thinking, and she fell on the shadow beasts like a starved animal. Famished. They were made of fire and darkness and when she ripped their aether from them they warmed her from the inside, better than any hot drink, better than a hearth, they were alive and she was slavering for it, driving her blade deep and bathing it in black blood that slipped over her hands, ignited and burned in flashes of light that limned her. Levin crackled over her head and magic flashed past her horns, and somewhere at her distant back she could make out the sound of explosive ammunition, but it didn’t matter. She was hunting. She was feasting. She drank deep, and her body crowed in delight. Something nestled over her ribs sparked.

—a sudden whip-crack of pain at her back and she sprawled, her chest meeting the ground before her hands could think to catch her, and her lungs were empty, her fingers scrabbling and useless. Something in her hearing smashed to pieces again and the ammunition noises cut off but maybe that was because she couldn’t even hear her pulse anymore, only her gasping breaths and the sound of her soul coming apart at the seams.

Listen to my voice, you fool! Listen to our heartbeat!

Her arms wouldn’t hold her, and her shadow churned beneath her, a perfect outline of black in the brittle whiteout—

And if you can’t do it yourself—

—somewhere at the end of the world, a scream, so loud she heard it even over her own shattering—

—I’ll have to take the reins.

Her shadow reached for her, dripping antilight from its arms like hot tar, and placed its tender hands over her shoulders.

Then it seized her, rolled her, caging her under its silhouette so a grasping tentacle could crash to the ground where her body had been.

One of these days, it murmured, not even a voice in her useless horns but a presence inside her ruined mind, you are going to have to start cleaning up your own messes.

And then it was gone, no movement to mark its passing—laying atop her, and then behind her, one hand dragging her upright by her hair, heedless of her gasp of pain. Throwing her back into the bedlam. It remained only in flashes: a grasping hand, a jet of darkness, a ruthless overhand strike, a chest pressed to her spine when she stumbled. A ghost hovering just out of sight, with pitch hands steadying her grip, covering her back, and with every point of contact, every reassuring touch, warmth seeped back into her like ink in white water.

She didn’t realize the last beast was gone until the shadow vanished, too, collapsing to its silent knees and resting its forehead against her hip. Be well, it begged her, and melted. It was there, a solid outline in bold black, and then it oozed back around her feet like water forcing its way out of a cracked pitcher.

Probably like her soul looked, she thought, hazy. Or whatever was left of it by now. Her arm trembled with exertion when she resettled her sword on her back.

A solid hand on her shoulder—not as hot, probably more real. Thancred’s voice. “Good you’re still in one piece. I oughtn’t have let that Idolizer get between us, but you...seemed to handle yourself, as it were.”

There was something there, something in his tone, like a question he wasn’t sure how to ask, but if he was making a face at her she couldn’t see it. She only shrugged, and he guided her hand back to his gauntlet and led her in careful steps further down the road to ruin.

Her sight was useless, so she closed her eyes while she waited for his next signal, the better to relive the blackened dream behind her. Good to know her shadow wouldn’t abandon her to the light just yet.

#ffxivwrite2021 #final fantasy xiv #oc: hanami hagane #thancred waters #and #gee i wonder who that is #drk things #writing - mine

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