#real frostmantle hours

[zodiarksbeloved]

preface/pinned

i think most everyone over the age of 30 knows what i am referencing in this FFXIV playthrough but on the off chance you have no idea what is going on here:

my immortal is an infamously bad harry potter fanfic written roughly 15 years ago. it is legendary not only for its badness but for the fact that both its author and the actual motivation behind the fic (as in whether it’s meant seriously or as an elaborate prank on the HP fan community) are still a mystery. there’s been several hoaxes throughout the years on tumblr and elsewhere.

we may never know and honestly that’s ok. sometimes solving the mystery spoils the fun.

anyway. 

a friend of mine hosted a crossover challenge on our shared discord server this month. normally i am a fic writer for the final fantasy xiv fandom, but i elected for my challenge answer to play through the entire story of FFXIV as ebony dark’ness dementia raven way the isekai protagonist, having accidentally yeeted herself through the rift and into eorzea after the, uhhh... ambiguous ending of my immortal.

the name of this... fic? let’s play liveblogging?... comes from ‘famous last words,’ one of the tracks from my chemical romance’s black parade album. whatever else she is, miss ebony is a huge MCR fan (as those of us who have read her origin story know very well) so i thought it would be apropos.

(yes it is also a play on words referencing the last line of my immortal.)

as for the original fic itself, some blessed soul has preserved my immortal in its entirety on ff.net. you can read it here if you need some background but i will warn you up front it is.... definitely a ride. 

if you’re still here, thanks for sticking around, and i hope i can make this as entertaining as possible!

--frost

#ebony dark'ness dementia raven way plays ffxiv #real frostmantle hours

[chrysalispen]

re: upon pale dawns -- temp hiatus [moving]

HEY FOLKS i’m putting upon pale dawns on temp hiatus. i have no intention whatsoever of abandoning it (i literally have rough drafts/outlines for the next five chapters on my hard drive) but my wife took on an awesome job offer, so we’re moving from texas to the pacific northwest. the thing is, we have two weeks instead of the six weeks we thought we had to get everything done that needs doing. so i’m doing that thing nearly every panicked individual with ADHD does when we have an unexpected deadline: hyperfixating hard on Everything Must Be Ready By The Appointed Hour. i am also having to sell my house so i can have the down payment to buy another one, AND i have plans to start work on my own original fantasy novel, among other projects.  in short, i have no mental spoons to commit to the longfic process on top of all that, and i legit do not know what my internet connectivity will be like while my wife and i are getting settled. i will probably still be posting small one-shots and flash fics here and there, because i’m not comfortable if i’m not doing something LMAO but once i edit and post chapter 4 up here, that’s gonna be it for aurelia’s retelling of the ffxiv MSQ for a few weeks. i’d like to say i’ll be back at it by the end of august, but realistically it’s going to be closer to the end of september before i can guarantee anything. we’ll see though! i might end up self-soothing by posting chapters before then LOL

#real frostmantle hours #upon pale dawns #going on temp hiatus

[silversiren1101]

Test Your Mettle - Haurchefant & (Clueless!)WoL

A request by @chrysalispen / @frostmantle regarding my Xaela WoL, Sanga, having to deal with Haurchefant’s “chaotic, horny self”. I actually got super carried away with this one! Here’s almost 1.4k words on the blessed Elezen boy pining over one rather clueless Xaela beserker! I stopped it where I did because I like the idea so much I’m probably going to incorprate it into my main story, so thanks for the inspiration!

Test Your Mettle

Words: 1387

Shards of ice spray into the air as the Warrior’s heavy axe slams into the cobblestones of the sparring ring.

Or what’s left of it anyway.

She’s been steadily hewing away hunks of the already meager circle for the past few bells, sparring with his men.

Though ‘sparring’ may be a bit disingenuous choice of word. She hasn’t been sparring with his men so much as utterly thrashing them.

He’s watched some fair number of them ejected from the ring in all many of ways, arses thoroughly handed to them by a woman half their size. The looks of amusement that’d previously been on their faces, the lot of them thinking her an easy target, a mere girl attempting to punch upward at giants, have since fallen away to open-mouth gawking in awe-stricken horror.

This current man of the minute, one of his older soldiers, a Hyur gentlemen of some forty summers and just as many Dravanian heads, gets a rather… undignified exit. For as soon as the Warrior’s axe haft stands upright, a salute to Halone herself, she braces herself against it with a firm push off the ground.

And promptly mule kicks the man halfway across Camp Dragonhead.

He goes flying with a pained yelp, limbs flailing in the air like a child tossed before crashing into a heap just adjacent the keep door. The impact rattles the Fortemps’ crest emblazoned shield just above him, and for a second the unicorn seems to stare down at the poor man with mocking disapproval.

A scathing “Hah!” echoes across the now dead silent camp, all onlookers having fallen silent at the spectacle before them.

A spectacle known as Sanga Dotharl, the Warrior of Light.

“Is there anyone of any real strength here?” The Xaela woman’s thick accent cuts through the crisp Coerthan air as subtly as her axe has been chipping away at the stone floor. “I thought you all dragon slayers? Or do you mean to kill them with upset bellies after being eaten?”

“Oh-oh my.” A small voice whispers from his right, accompanied by a rather distinct, metallic rattling that his keen, Elezen ears pick up on immediately. The sound of a man shaking in his armor.

Hauchefant turns, finding that his youngest brother, accompanied by his adopted attendant, has finally joined them outside. A surprise. The young man’s more… temperate… disposition has him indoors more often than not, leading him to be the more sheepish of the Fortemps sons. It must’ve been the racket from Sanga’s sparring that’s drawn them outside.

And from his reaction, this must be the first time he’s seen the Warrior of Light in action.

Haurchefant chuckles then, that delighted grin at home on his face as always. He shakes his head at his brother’s reaction. ‘Oh my, indeed, Emmanellain. Oh my, indeed.’

Though he can’t exactly blame him for the awe-struck look on his face, Haurchefant has had one on his face himself for the past hour or so, watching Sanga beat his men like they’re no more than boys yet untested against the horrors found here in the Coerthan wastes.

But the awe beating beneath Haurchefant’s breast is of an entirely different beast. He can tell Emmanellains is born from a sense of fear, almost. Like when a recruit first beholds the might of a Dravanian tearing through their comrades. But Haurchefant’s?

That sharp, boisterous laughter cuts through the crisp air, one he’s somehow grown so used to hearing now that he and his family have taken her and the other exiled Scions in, and yet it strikes the chord in his chest every time.

“Really? Is there no one that will stand against me?” Sanga turns then, looking over her shoulder with her head cocked, a lopsided grin pulling at those pixie plum lips revealing those fangs he’d toss himself on as many times as she’d ask. Her blazing crimson eyes narrow from the force of her grin. “Or have I truly dealt with all you have to offer, my lord?”

Oh! How that look hits him so. How he has to resist falling to his knees, hand pawing at his stuttering heart. And the mocking bite of his title! Never has he been the type to lord his birth over any other, being a bastard or no, but something about her sheer disregard and scorn for this foolish hierarchy his nation calls a system of government just does something to him!

Her moxie! Her bravery!

Her… everything!

Does she even know this effect he has on him? A dragon woman enchanting a loyal son of the Holy See? Scandalous!

He remembers the day she first strolled into Camp calling to see “the preening lord in charge”. How innocent she’d been, a scaled, horned woman walking into an armed keep full of men who’ve spent their whole lives at war with dragons. The concept of an Au Ra seemed a sick joke at the time. Really, a whole race with Dravanian features living across the sea on the continent of Othard, completely distinct from the Horde fighting his people tooth and nail for centuries now?

And yet, here she stands.

Those bewitching eyes hold his pale-blues as if hand-in-hand, practically glowing from their contrast against the dreary piles of snow and ice all about them. Her dusky blue-grey skin, just like how the clouds darken before snowball, glisten with sweat despite the frigid temperature here in the heart of the Coerthan Highlands. Even her breath billows from her lips like smoke, only making her seem ever more like the dragons he and his men have spent their whole life-fighting.

Though he couldn’t exactly fault anyone for thinking that. Not with the scales accentuating parts of her body, swathes of midnight sky that even twinkle as the stars do when freshly polished. And certainly not with the fierce horns jutting from her head and from beneath her silver-blue locks, so sharp she could gore a man should she choose.

From her stories, regaled to him over those mugs of chocolate he so loves to whip up for her after a long day in the brutal Coerthan cold, he has plenty reason to believe she has.

“Sweet, brown… liquid? This is... this is like chocolates! How did you do this? Magic?!” She had been so amazed at the time, impressed by something as humble as his homemade hot chocolate. Was it then he’d started to see her in a different light? She’d always been a wonder to him. From the minute he first saw her- standing arms crossed, an unimpressed look on her face as his men welcomed her into camp at spear point with hands shaking in fear at this dragon-turned-woman -he’d been terribly curious about her. But then? Seeing her eyes go wide in wonder at a simple Coerthan treat?

His heart had thudded against his sternum like a behemoth attempting to break free.

Just as it’s doing right this instant.

“Well?” He distantly hears the clanking of her axe. A metallic sound as it’s wrenched from the cobblestones she’d embedded it between. She swings it in an arc before holding it aloft, pointed it straight in his direction. “Would you like to test you mettle against ‘the dragon’, Harche?”

‘Oh, would I ever.’ His face flushes at her challenge, thoughts going to a different type of sparring he can only he’ll ever be blessed enough to experience. And, Fury, that nickname she’s come up for him. Why does it tickle his belly so? She has one for most of the Ishgardians she’s met with more… traditional… names, the silent letters coming as a struggle to her foreign tongue.

‘Arr-she.’ He sounds it out on the tongue in his mind, this delightful pet name she’s assigned to him, until it dances in his mind as she herself does on the battlefield, brutal yet beautiful all at once. ‘Harche, Harche, Harche, Harche, Harche!’

It strikes him then that he still hasn’t answered her request, and he’s thankful that the pregnant pause between them hangs more like tension than him being so lost in the torrent of fluffy, lewd thoughts in his mind.

He breaks back into that grin, and brings his hands together in that signature gesture of his. “Test my mettle, eh? I don’t see why not!”

#FFXIV #haurchefant #sanga dotharl #emmanellain #fanfiction #warrior of light #do we burn bright

[chrysalispen]

i’ve finished roughs for my day job backlog! and completed a commission! and i’ve got two more on the docket to complete which i will be working on between drafting for pale dawns. i feel like it’s been forever and a day since i did any proper writing for myself tbh so i really need to rectify that ;_;

#real frostmantle hours

[chrysalispen]

a note about current longfic,

i will upload the next chapter here sometime later today. <3 i’m still working on part 3 due to a lot of real life things happening at once this next couple of weeks (spouse going out of town, memorial day weekend things with family, brain weasel things, and pain depriving me of sleep) so it will probably not be up until next sunday.

#this message brought to you by frost needs to finish cleaning her house #also i don't do my best work on tylenol 3 #real frostmantle hours

[chrysalispen]

i’ve hit 100 followers!

sdlfjsld thank you all, it means a lot ;_;

#real frostmantle hours #i appreciate the support! thank you all so much

[chrysalispen]

ok so this is going to sound weird

but i’ve been on a de facto temp hiatus this last couple of weeks and it’s because my house is a wreck. i had a depressive crash late last summer during the pandemic and couldn’t keep up with basic tasks, and the mess has been making me more and more anxious until it got to the point where my brain effectively went on strike. ;;; so i have been spending the last two weeks trying to clean my space enough that i feel less anxious about writing. i’ve made some headway, and my house still isn’t *entirely* clean but it’s a huge improvement on where it was before. 

anyway, all this to say that i’ll be picking back up on pale dawns this week hopefully, along with some commissioned pieces <3 thank you all for being patient with me :c

#real frostmantle hours #yeah sorry y'all my mental health has been a wreck #sometimes self care is deep cleaning your living space