Nightmares and Ice

Another salve gone and the pain has yet to subside. Between oceanic waves of unbearable torment that sear their way up crisscross patterns of angry, raw red flesh, Enambris works, trembling fingers diligently crushing herbs, mixing and grinding and eventually applying. But each one does naught to quell the pain, and after another failed attempt, she braces herself for the coming fire.

Right on time it begins. The stick she had broken off of a now-defunct wand is all she has to grit her teeth and bear what comes next. It starts at the tips of her fingers, rapidly snaking its way up her arms to her shoulders, jumping over the parts of her skin that had been fortunate enough to have cover from the whatever-it-was, down to the tiger stripe lines on her stomach. Her eyes clench shut as it blazes its path across her skin, tears coming unbidden and streaking along trails down her cheeks. Enambris screams through  the stick clenched desperately between her teeth, the howling winds that blow over the height of Zenith the only sound by which her pain is muffled. Healing magic is no good here.

One, two. One, two. She counts her breaths again to focus her mind on anything else. One, two. The last rays of sunlight dip below the distant horizon of soft white and painted clouds. Her heart skips a beat, she can hear it pounding in her head, the blood rushing in her ears. One, two. Another scream rips from her chest, long and feral and pleading. She would pray, but the gods were not wont to answer the calls of the desperate. Only the diligent.

One, two.

Trembling comes next, the pain-wracked tremors like an earthquake shake her bodily. She draws her knees to her chest, presses her forehead against them and screams again. How long has it been since she slept? One day, perhaps two now, though she does remember managing a short respite sometime early in the morning. She needs rest, needs to find someone to treat this madness.

One, two. The burning fades, the trembling slows. She rubs her face dry with the remnants of a dress she’ll never wear again. It’s gone, subsiding for now. It will be back.

 

 

“I want you to sing to me.” The words are simple enough, a statement, not a request. They hang on the air behind a bloody hand and icy eyes. She opens her mouth, but no sound comes forth; there’s ice in her throat. Silver eyes are wide, they see the ice, the mist, the wind. They take in the details of his face, the resonance of his voice, the sudden change behind blue that drew ice from fire. Silver eyes are full of fire, blue eyes full of ice.

“For me.” She tries again, coughing. The ice is choking her, it fills her chest and heart, it tries to fill her mind. Silver eyes see something black on periphery, never quite able to glimpse it fully it but certain that it’s there. The black, the void, the yawning maw of oblivion. It waits around the edges, ever-moving, ever-watching.

“Only me.” There’s a finality in that statement, and she tries to sing, frantic, her lungs devoid of air again, ice clinging where oxygen ought be. The grip on her throat tightens, the ice spreads hoarfrost across cheeks smeared with blood, eyes full of fire. It threatens her, the blackness, tries to swallow her.

“Hello darkness, my old friend…” the words finally come, soft as a prayer and they reverberate through the ice, through the air. There’s a shiver there, it hangs on the wind, paints it red like her hair. “I’ve come to talk with you again.” Tears roll down porcelain cheeks, dragging trails through the hoarfrost blooming there. A plume of steam escapes icy blue lips. “Because a vision softly creeping, Left it’s seeds while I was sleeping…”

Another gasp, another cough, more steam issues from her mouth. Ice gives way to a gentle flame, she feels it in her core as it tears through the frost that coats her slow-beating heart.

“And the vision that was planted in my brain… Still remains within the sound of silence.”

 

 

The world swims back into focus, and she finds herself clawing at grass and dirt and stone. The pain surges again, fingertips onward, another trail blazing up painful, now-bruising bands of deep red and purple. She grits her teeth, fire blooming where silver used to be. She won’t cry this time. She pushes herself to her feet, fists clenched tighter than her jaw, and she screams, a raw pulse of aether exploding from her body, radiating outward. The stones tremble, and the storm begins anew.

 

Kindling

Burned

The poultice smells herbal, vaguely fragrant the pungent odor stings her nose, an aroma that mixes with the sweet smell of hot iron that is her blood. She walks, limps rather, one foot before the other delicately, as though she were floating across glass. Perfect stitching runs the length of her leg, her back, and her collarbone, her stomach, expertly-knitted flesh held fast from where the tip of a blade had seen it separated.

As she guessed, it was more telling than she could have imagined. She just isn’t sure what to make of the soul she had glimpsed. The cascade, fire and ice, just like he’d said. Except where she was all fire, kindling threatening to become an inferno, he is a war of ice and fire, a battle done in his heart, the equilibrium threatening to tip and send all into darkness. It’s a precarious line he walks, the edge of a knife.

“My lady, are you quite well?” asks the haggard-looking gentleman behind the counter as she passes. She waves a hand dismissively, offering the ghost of a smile and a nod.

“Aye, well enough. Just need some rest.”

“You’ve a guest in your room,” he calls after her. She pauses, stiff, breath caught in her chest.

“Thank you,” she says over her shoulder, and limps through the door.

 

 

Warsong. The music encompasses the bridge, fills it with light and color with each note. She feels herself sing, feels the words leave her lips, but she doesn’t hear the song. She feels the music shiver on the air, hears it vibrate through her chest, from her lips, into his ears.

The fire envelopes them both, ties them together, blankets the stone beneath them. But the ice creeps in, choking out her song. She gasps for air, but no air comes, her lungs remain painfully devoid of oxygen. The ice swallows the fire, snuffs out the warm light and blazing heat, replacing it with cold and silence. The song stops, the wind goes still. She falls, all the while staring into frosty blue eyes.

“NO!” she shouts, startled, snapping upright from her prone position on the stone. Wind whips red tangles around her face, only the glimmer of a sliver of moon casting a dim light onto the great structure around her. Despite the low light, she knows where she is. How she got here, however, is another story altogether. It’s not entirely unwelcome, finding herself at the summit of Zenith, but unsettling it most assuredly is.

Burns. That’s right, she was burned. Haleine hadn’t appeared to treat the burns beyond a layer of salve or poultice, but now they’re on fire. She strips off the pauldron coat rapidly, fingers fumbling for the fasteners and nearly ripping them apart, desperate to remove the cloth from her skin. The moment the burns are exposed to the air, though, her vision becomes white, the world turning to snow for two heartbeats, and another two heartbeats more. The pain is unbearable.

Trembling hands search for a piece of cloth, a discarded stick, anything, to absorb the sound. But she finds nothing in time, and throws her head back to loose a guttural, heart-wrenching scream. Shuddering breaths. One, two, one, two, she tries desperately to count out her inhales and exhales; her arms are shaking, body-rocking tremors. It’s only a wave, it will pass, she tries to tell herself. It will pass.

More gasping breaths, more frantic counting, another surge of pain that runs up her arms along solid red tracks of flesh. She’s never had burns like this, and Enambris is more than familiar with flame.

A flash of lightning illuminates the horizon, a bright, sudden surge of aether across an umbral sky. There’s a storm brewing. And just like that, the pain subsides, the rapid rise and fall of her chest eases, the thundering of her heart softening. There’s a lull in the pain, and she must take advantage of it. Whatever this is, whatever was waiting inside the starglobe, she knows the pain is only just beginning.

 

FFXIV; Balmung; Kindling

Stoking Embers

She’s been sitting there for some time now, cross-legged upon the hearth, quietly staring at flames licking the fireplace, dancing to and fro across smoldering logs and lapping hungrily at fibrous flesh. The pub around her is mostly noiseless, the occasional murmur of conversation the only sound beside the crackling fire, none of it really loud enough to wake her from her trance.

It’s not until a few bells have passed that a man enters the pub and stands over her, bronze skin becoming copper in the firelight. He drops down to sit beside her, the thunder from his movement rattling her awake. Eyebrows raised in surprise she grins widely.

“Where’ve you been, Kra’yg?”

A massive hand sweeps over pitch braids and loops and he simply shrugs. “Away. I see you have been getting into trouble.” His accent is thick, but his deep bass carries with it a nobility that his tribal heritage might otherwise suggest. He called himself “Warden’s Blood”, which she could only surmise had something to do with his people’s line of succession, but had never really wanted to pry too much. Kra’yg is an intensely private man.

“A bit, yeah,” she says, patting the damaged helm in her lap. “I’ve been hoping you’d come around again, actually, I’ve been meaning to speak with you.” Her silver-grays rest on his face a moment before turning back to the fire. They’re a little brighter than they were before.

“Speak and I will listen,” he says mildly, the vestiges of a grin playing across his face as he settles in, back leaned against the stone of the hearth and legs crossed.

“I have some… concerns. Well, ‘concerns’ isn’t really the right word. Thoughts? Anyway. I’ve been set back on a course I had thought lost to me. The path itself doesn’t bring me any great concern, but…” she trails off, chewing her lower lip, and her words. “I feel that I’ve been overlooking something, and my trust, as you know, is not often easily won.”

“Of this I am well aware,” he confirms with a nod.

“The man responsible, I know very little about. I hadn’t thought to question his motives, his past, even his driving fire. He’s worked so diligently to rekindle my flame that I hadn’t though to look at the kindling itself.”

“I feel you are beating about the bush with so many words,” Kra’yg interrupts with a hand. “What you need is not to ask questions. What you need is to know a man’s soul. True intentions, flowery words, they are nothing. Know the man’s soul.”

She blinks and turns her eyes back to meet his amber ones. “Know a man’s soul?” she echoes. “I don’t follow.”

He leans forward, palms facing the ceiling as though he were effecting the great scales. “When man is still, or with inaction,” he begins, the words coming a little broken, “he finds himself able to wear many masks.” She quirks her head as he speaks. It’s clear that he possesses a great intelligence, trapped beneath the barrier of language, one that is slowly breaking away. “But when a man enters into combat, true combat, it is then he undresses his soul and his heart is laid bare. You remember when we met?”

She grins. “Aye, and I remember it fondly. One of my favorite brawls, as I recall.”

“That day, you laid bare your soul to me. I saw your heart’s inner workings, those things that drive your passion. Warriors see warriors. Do you understand?”

She gazes at him for a long time, almost scrutinizing. “I think I do,” she says at length. “There are many kinds of intimacy, and few understand that it is more than simply physical gratification. Engaging in a real fight… I see.” She closes her eyes, a new smile flickering across her lips. “Thank you, Kra’yg.”

He nods and pushes himself back to his feet, arms folded over the expansive musculature of his chest. “Always a pleasure. Now, maybe you can repay me by pointing me in the direction of a particular feline who stole something of mine?”

 

FFXIV; Balmung; Kindling

The Cold North

The Ruthless

“I don’t care what you have to do,” the woman snarled, feral and wolf-like she snapped her jaws. The man withering under her gaze looked up meekly at her. He was brawny, his physique described as “like a wall” by his fellow knights, but the hurricane of a woman before him had cowed any arrogance his form might have otherwise armed him with. Intense amber eyes did not blink, their gaze did not waver, instead they bored into him like a drill through ice.

“My lady, it is simply not-”

“I said, I do not care!” she bellowed; her boot came up and thrust into the man’s  chest, sending him off of his knees and onto his back. “The fleet will be ready to sail by dawn.”

The man lay sprawled on the floor. He said nothing, only managing a meager nod, before rolling onto his stomach to clamber meekly to his feet. He hobbled away, passing a gleaming white suit of armor on his way out of the chamber, closing the door heavily behind him. The suit of armor cleared its throat pointedly, a noise vaguely feminine despite the masking echo of the helm.

The woman, amber eyes ablaze and red hair wild and untamed, turned her fiery gaze on the armor. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. Her hands found their way to her narrow hips, and the suit appraised her for a moment. She was a little shorter, perhaps one or two ilms over 5 fulms, despite the size her immense presence might otherwise suggest. Her cheek bones were high, almost etched, and sharp. Her nose was pert, her lips thin. She looked like Halone remade, a goddess who mongered war and reveled in it.

In all, her daughter looked only a semblance like her. Where Ana D’mira was narrow and sharp, Enambris was distinctly not. Their faces held only the barest traces of matrilineal similarity. Her uncle had always told her she had her father’s eyes, silver-grays that outshone the fiery amber of her mother.

Slowly she tugged off the helmet, stowing it under one arm, and turned to face her mother. “You called for me,” she reminded her flatly, her face and eyes devoid of any expression at all. Her jaw was set, mouth a hard line.

Ana D’mira held her gaze for a few moments, as though challenging her to speak again. “So I did,” she said at length, the fire softening for but a moment. “You will go with the raiding party.”

Enambris blinked. “Beg pardon?” she asked incredulously, almost petulantly. “Since when?”

There was something in Ana D’mira’s expression she’d never seen before. Surprise, perhaps? Mingled with rage, and a dash of shock, her visage was twisted into something a little ugly, lined and haggard, like an ancient tree about to catch fire.

“I said you will-”

“No.”

The fire exploded. “What did you say to me?” she thundered, the hurricane sweeping the room again. The girl stood fast, narrowing her eyes.

“I said no.”

 

Finding Purpose

The dull sound of metal striking the floor reverberates through the walls, but by now most anyone staying at the Forgotten Knight had grown quite used to the ceremony of the foreign Hyur woman removing her armor and letting it drop heavily to the floor upon returning for the night. She stands in her room, pauldrons beside her on the floor, and sets her jaw. Usually, removing her armor takes but a moment, so familiar with the rote of it as she is. This time she fumbles with the fasteners, bolts of pain making the trembling in her fingers worsen. But Enambris doesn’t flinch. She just needs to get this bloody plate off.

The plate unbuckled, it hits the ground with a loud thud and she exhales her relief, slowly wiggling out of her mail and gingerly wiping away blood from the inside of the chain shirt, lips set into a hard line. The wound was bleeding again, the stitches, despite being expertly sewn, somehow still blooming tiny trails of blood. She exhales, her breath becoming steam despite the roaring fire in the hearth.

Her sword and shield are leaned safely against the wall, over which is draped a pair of gauntlets and a belt. She drops the chain beside the rest and leans briefly against the wall, eyes closed, swallowing the pain. She’ll heal, she reminds herself. This is nothing.

A smile crosses her lips. The meeting itself, while being a somewhat awkward and revealing affair, had only in its aftermath served its ultimate purpose. She had been called Enambris of the Embers. She was embers now, barely smoldering on the surface. But it was intended for her to be stoked, to stir the ashes and reveal the blistering coals beneath; adding kindling to the heat and sparking off the great bonfire she had long ago shone. That thought prompted another: if her fire had gone out, what had doused the flame?

With care and caution she would never reveal to another living soul, she gingerly makes her way to the bed, sitting on its edge as though preparing to sit upon hot coals. How long had she been aimless, a wandering soul with no rest, a blade with no opponent to hone itself against? Had she lost her spark before coming to Eorzea?

In her life, Ana D’mira the Ruthless had spoken to her naught but three times. First as a child, clinging to her uncle’s breeches and staring at the severe woman from behind his towering form; second as an adolescent, the exchange polite but terse, as Ana D’mira questioned the girl thoroughly of her intent when she eventually ascended to take her birth right; and finally, the last, the cold water that doused a growing flame.

It was only days before the woman’s death. Enambris had been growing into her own womanhood, still a rose yet blooming. By then she’d taken up her armor. It was different from the knights, from the lords and their vassals, who lived to serve The Ruthless. Her armor was, to them, unique; a prize brought home from the nearest sovereign nation, gifted to her by her uncle. He called it “Ishgardian”, an heirloom from a distant land. It fit her glove-like, perfectly fitted and with enough give to allow her to grow. She wore it daily, trained in it, lived in it. Ana D’mira had not approved.

A wry smile overtakes Enambris’ lips. She had never burned hotter than the day she defied the woman that had given birth to her. The biting words flung viciously from the woman’s mouth as Enambris had stood triumphantly over her low form had served to change the girl, but not in the way intended.

A sudden, but expected, knock at the door interrupts her thoughts, the wry smile becoming a wolf-like grin. “You can come in,” she calls.

“Hey Rosen’ash… er… you busy?” a voice behind her asks with embarrassment that cannot be masked. She pulls her robe up over slender porcelain shoulders and sashes it at the waist.

“That’s why I asked you here.” She waves absently to a small chair perched next to an equally small , rickety table, and as he takes the seat awkwardly, she strides across the room, rifling through her pack for something yet unknown. She turns, and triumphantly slaps a folded handkerchief onto the table.

“What’s this s’posed to be?” he asks incredulously, running a hand through pitch hair.

“Open it,” she says, the fire in the hearth reflecting little sparks in bright grey eyes. He examines it closely; there’s blood on it. Gingerly he pulls the first fold back, then the second, spreading it out on the table to reveal…

A black spot?

“No seriously lass, what is this supposed to be?”

“A knife,” she says plainly, her gaze unwavering, unblinking. “Part of one, anyway. One that found its way here,” she points to the general location of the surgery stitching beneath the white cotton robe. He deigns not to look, though, as she gestures to the back of her right hip. He clears his throat and delicately lifts the tip of the blade pinched between the kerchief and his fingers.

“So this is the shiny, or not so shiny, bit that was stuck in your guts, then,” he comments, turning it over. It’s like nothing he’s sever seen; black as the darkened sky, tiny pinpricks of light appearing and vanishing as quickly as they’d come. It doesn’t reflect light, just a patch of night hanging in the air. “You want me to find the whoreson, then?”

“No,” she says, the glint in her eye unsettling him. “He’s already dead. I want to know who made this, and who paid for it.” Her jaw is set, stormy gaze boring into his.

“That’s doable,” he replies, scrutinizing the piece. “But it won’t be easy. It’ll be a pretty penny, kid.”

“Done.”

He stares at her, brow furrowed. “That… are you sure? This may take some time, an’ I can’t promise it’ll lead anywhere.” He pauses and adds, “You feelin’ alright, lass?”

She leans on her hands over the table, scooting a small pouch of gill across the pale gray of the wood. “Better than I have in ages,” she replies. “I had a brush with death, thought that I’d become a ghost. Turns out, I’ve been a ghost for some time now.” Confusion evident on his face, she leans back again and folds her arm across her chest. “I had a reminder recently. When we met, do you remember what I said I was going to do?”

He snorts. “Save the world. You finally wake up?” he asks, tone thick with incredulity.

“Nope!” she replies brightly. “Just found the road through the mist, is all.”

He continues to stare at her for another heartbeat longer, and finally shrugs. “Alright then,” he folds the piece of knife away and tucks it into his vest. “I’ll be in contact.” With that he leaves, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

Alone once again, she sits back down upon the bed, smile still tugging the corners of her lips upwards. The pain grounds her, keeps her mind centered. She hasn’t thought this clearly in years, that burning that travels through her veins and makes her heart pump. But despite her smile, despite the exhilaration pounding in her heart, despite the flood of memories and reminders washing over her like the heat of the hearth, there’s something else she knows she must address.

Enambris isn’t fond of deceit, and that’s not what this is. Or at least she hopes it’s not. But she’s also not a fan of being in the dark, she ponders to herself. There was no obvious reason, at least not on the surface, to drive a spark into her smoldering embers, no real need to throw more fuel on her fire. If anything, there were dozens of men, usually the absurdly wealthy men who were so often impacted by her work, that wanted to see her little flame extinguished altogether. So why? She has some semblance of purpose now, however daunting or impossible it seems. An errand that won’t be completed in her lifetime, a purpose that will not only draw attention to the already-present target on her back, but light it up like fireworks. That part she doesn’t mind.

But damn it if he isn’t being cryptic, and damn it all to the seven hells if she isn’t going to find out why. She has questions she intends to have answered.

 

FFXIV; Balmung; Kindling

A New Understanding of Life

He was so small, she observed, five tiny fingers curled around her pinky. The rash that wound its way around his chest like a band was angry and red, but it was far less severe than it had been just a few hours previous. Had she more time to devote to him alone, maybe she could have cured him without Victoria returning with the ingredients she desperately needed.

But then another mother had arrived with a coughing infant. And another, and another yet. Now she sat amidst a makeshift nursery, rocking one tiny little human life while others slept soundly in the mostly-quiet. For their illness, they were surprisingly calm, and that worried her.

Enambris Rosen-Ash sighed heavily. The baby she cradled gasped a tiny, almost inaudible yawn, and she finds herself smiling. But he closes his eyes again and drifts away to sleep, leaving her alone to wonder: what has she missed?

It’s not with fondness she recalled the wailing and screams that pocked the dark winter nights of Ereden’s south ward, the incurably, terminally ill and the woefully displaced. Sobbing children robbed of their parents, screaming victims robbed of their dignity, all while men and women too high-born to care and too terrified to let through the supplies desperately needed by an all-but-decimated population watched from their lofty towers as the poor suffered and died. Even then, there had been some medicines that had reduced the symptoms, made the passing of the victim a little easier, but there was no cure. Even then, she had read books and scrolls and tomes of every shape and size, looking for something the ancient city and its impossibly magical walls held secret that would deliver them from such hell.

There had been nothing then. But now, now was different. Victoria had come back with the ingredients, and she put her to work crushing the Terse Moss into a fine powder. It had to be exactly perfect, she surmised. The aloe had been expertly crushed and milked of its healing liquid, and the King’s Weed had already been set to be turned into a fine paste. Time was going to tell if this would work. Still though, she felt something was amiss. She had overlooked… something.

The paste, then finished, was hauled back in by Victoria, her explosive enthusiasm a welcome change to Enambris, who despite her initial dislike of the woman, had started to grow fond of her. That Victoria had any drive at all, especially to help children, only helped that along. She took the stone mortar, filled near to full with the pungent paste. She could tell the babe in her lap wasn’t enjoying it, because he scrunched up his face. He didn’t cry though, so she went about her work, carefully dabbing the paste over the rash, around his glands, and on his forehead. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, and she worked patiently and diligently, the occasional presence of Victoria peering over her shoulder the only minor distraction. The mothers had been ushered away, the doors locked; Lavi and her curiously-wounded pirate subordinate had been banished to another room, a problem she would have to resolve later. The rash began to fade, and so she set Victoria to work dabbing what was left of the paste on the cloth over the babe’s forehead.

Enambris picked up the next child, a tiny little girl that was worse off than she had originally understood. She set to work, steadily spreading the paste, cooing and soothing the baby girl with soft humming and little songs as she went. Beginning with the uppermost flash, the rays of the sun in her Caste mark ignited, and the light of Dawn illuminated the room. Whether or not Victoria had taken notice she didn’t know, so wholly wrapped in her work as she was. The second child done, she moves to the next.

As she picked up the yawning, swaddled bundle, a thought occurred to her. The light of her Caste mark cast a soft glow on the babe’s tiny face, illuminated it by the essence of her dawn’s light.

“I think I can…” she muttered softly, picked up the rag, and set to work. Her fingertips began to tingle, where tiny motes of essence had pooled there. Under those tips, she could feel something. A little current, just a stream, yet to become a river, but she could feel it. She felt the ebbs and flows, the curves in the stream, and where the stream had been dammed, its flow stopped. That was it.

A flash of light filled the room; Enambris pressed her forehead, and the glowing symbol of the dawn’s light, against the babe’s forehead, and, still singing softly, lifted something from her, tiny and inky. It dissolved, the light dimming with it, but by then she had already captured that moment, held it in her hands. With a wide grin she turned to Victoria. “I can finish this right now,” she said. With that the bonfire erupted and the rising nova cracked; her wings split from it, spread wide, molten gold made to form, and she set to work.

 

EXALTED; Dawn-Caste Anima Banner; Medicine Charms

Conversations with Ghosts

The repair work on her armor is just visible in the flickering light of the slowly-dying fire, a seam of melded metals so fine that it almost appears to be the work of a shadow. She sits upon the hearth, heat washing over her in small, shiver-inducing waves, fingers gently tracing the place where the axe had shorn through heavy adamantite and stopped just shy of smashing its way through the chainmail underneath. She still has the remnants of bruises from the blow, once sickly purple-green and now mostly faded.

Gently she rubs the bandages wrapped tightly around her waist; they, and the gauze, have been freshly changed, the stitches and wound beneath cleaned and dressed anew. It will be an ugly, agonizing recovery process. Magic can only go so far when the damage is so severe, and whatever blade had lodged itself there must have had some magic of its own, with the difficulty she’d had in getting the wound to stitch, let alone close. She presses her back against the chair behind her, choosing to sit on the ground instead of upon the uncomfortable, petrified wood that made up the ancient piece of furniture. She’s lived out of this room since her arrival in Ishgard, and by now, it feels more like a tiny apartment than an inn room. Her shield is leaned up against the wall, blankets draped unceremoniously across the feather bed and uncomfortable chair, the curtains only opened by the barest effort. The large rug on the floor is well-worn, the stone beneath it equally traveled. The remnants of a white silk dress, colored by coral lace and bloodstains, is in a crumpled heap beside the wardrobe that stands open, various cotton tunics, skirts, and breaches haphazardly piled into the bottom of its wooden floor.

Her fingers trace the repaired metal again, and drift idly up to the breast of the armor, running along the grooves and notches and rivets; even in the dim firelight, the metal almost glows a pale, dusky white.

“You think you could have avoided this?” a voice, almost a whisper, brushes past her ear. She sets her lips to a hard line.

“Why would I?” she asks the room, the darkness, the whisper, the flickering shadows. They seem to dance on the wall, reflected in the plate of the armor. It seems to smile.

“Because you always think that whenever things go awry. You’re always quick to assume responsibility.”

“Aye, and must do so again.” Her reply is short, a little bitter. Eyes of brewing thunder-heads seem to ask the shadow, dare it, to oppose her.

“You shoulder far too much responsibility. Did your mother teach you that?” The voice sounds innocent, almost. But she glares, eyes narrowed irritably.

“No one learned anything from Ana D’mira the Ruthless except for how to destroy a strong nation and die.” The bitterness is so thick on her voice it could choke a full-grown man. “She took a great nation and turned it to ruin in just my lifetime, a place that stood proud and strong for almost a thousand years. No, I learned nothing from her, except to be grateful that she didn’t raise me.”

The flickering shadow undulates a moment, before stretching back across the floor to settle before her knees. “Did you kill her, then?”

“Of course not.” She rubs her temples and closes her eyes, but the shadow persists.

“But you ran.”

“That I ran has no bearing whether or not I committed the act. And I didn’t run. I was made to leave, and even now, have no desire to return.”

The pregnant silence hovers in the air for a moment as the fire withdraws an inch. “What of your people?”

Her response is the heavy thud of metal striking the floor. “I don’t know,” she admits irritably. “I’ve only just learned of the fate that befalls the people who defy the empire’s wishes. My uncle bade me leave until it was safe. The nobles demand I marry to save the land. The people wish for us to fight back. The men and women of Eorzea need protecting, too. They ask us to be the guardians at the gate.” She sighs heavily and lets her hair fall in front of her eyes like a thick red curtain.

The shadow doesn’t respond at first. It hangs on the air, a mist more than a shadow now, and expands as though it inhales deeply. “Why does it matter what they want? You are strong enough to forge your own path, are you not?”

Her shoulders sink just a fraction. “I’m not sure anymore.”

“Fear not that which one learns from. It is only the sunlight by which the briars grow and the new rose blooms.”

 

Enambris’ eyes snap open. The fire in the hearth has extinguished, and the first rays of the dawn peek through the frost upon the window panes.

 

FFXIV; Balmung; Embers

Work in Progress – Enambris Rosen-Ash

Here’s the progression of base to detail, yet unfinished but coming along.

 

 

The Longest Road Traveled

The water is cold, it bites her skin as she plunges beneath its glossy ebon surface with a tremendous splash. The perfect glass-like spirals and ribbons of jet and silver foam are marred, mingled with crimson that inks the water and disperses in its churning current; her body feels as though yet more knives are plunged into her chest, and she desperately wants to gasp for air, but knows it would be her end. The shaft of an arrow slips by her, its trajectory ruined by the rapids. She’s carried away, far from the manor on its magnificent cliff-side and her wounded assailant. There’s no more time to think on it though, vision blurry and extremities numb, and eventually the black of the water swallows the rest of the world.

It’s not until the first pinks and lavenders paint the sky that she’s aware of herself again. Her chest is on fire, erupting water that sputters from her mouth; she chokes and gasps several agonizing, wheezing breaths and rolls onto her side, coughing violently to expel it from her lungs. Not her most graceful morning, certainly. Her matted ruby hair is splayed around her, somehow coming loose from the tight, elegant knot it had been the night previous, now interwoven with seaweed and small, glossy pebbles picked up from the river’s mouth. It’s only a wonder of the gods themselves that she had not been wholly swept out to sea, and Enambris knows that if she had been, she’d surely be dead.

“Where in Althyk’s balls am I…” she mutters aloud to no one in particular, paying no attention to the fishers and beach-goers that have taken notice of her alarming appearance. Some stop to whisper amongst themselves, audible enough for her to understand that she must certainly look a fright, skin of porcelain, pale as death, bloody clothes and ruby hair a wild, tangled mess. She probably looks like a drowning victim, and wonders to herself how that was very nearly true. By the white sand, temperate climate and scores of people, she surmises she’s likely somewhere along the shores of La Noscea, probably near Limsa. How did she wind up here?

Enambris clambers slowly to her feet, pain wracking her inside and out as her muscles pull against severed tissue, the wound reopening anew and blooming fresh, slick crimson against wet silk. Whatever is left of her dress, it’s mostly a tattered mess now, the bottom torn away in the midst of a very-nearly-lethal brawl, and she wishes a little desperately that she still had that fabric now, if only to further wrap around her waist to stem the bloody river threatening to spill from her back. The wound burns, sears her like fire inside her body racing its way to her heart to stop it cold. But she can’t. She’s not ready to let go just yet, and she has favors yet to call. With a resolve so great it might strike down a god, she takes a step, one trembling, painfully-explosive step, against all the agonizing protests of her body. Then another, and another, each more difficult than the last, but builds her the momentum to keep moving. She can’t hold the mouth of her wound, and time is of the essence.

Four steps become eight, eight becomes twenty, and twenty becomes a malm in what feels like the space of all eternity passing in tandem, too long and yet precariously short, as she pushes herself to take another step, and another. She’s near the Mist, and the houses upon their gently-sloping hills are within sight. The doctor’s clinic is near, she only need take a few more steps. Through the gate, down the lane, a sharp left, she loses track of the steps she’s taken, only knowing she needs to take just a few more.

Just a few more steps…

The house is in view, the door of the clinic lay just beyond. Victory in this battle is almost hers, but the jaws of defeat, of death itself, are snapping ever persistently at her heel. The jaws close in, she can feel the bite tingling at her back. Past the first door, one more hall to go. Three doors. Two. She reaches out, one bloody fist, and musters the last of her strength to collapse, loudly, against Doctor Molly Harlan’s door.

 

FFXIV; Balmung; Embers