Her hands tremble. Is that excitement? Or fear? She doesn’t know, and suspects a mix of both. Her face is serene, almost blank in expression, but her eyes betray her. The man across the table takes notice, acknowledging her apprehension with a gentle smile. “You want to go through with this, then? No alternatives? Mayhap you should call on someone stronger. The other doctor, perhaps? The duskwight?”
Her eyes gleam in the firelight. Besides the barman and innkeep behind the counter, they’re alone in the Forgotten Knight. She trusts her conversations go unnoticed and never repeated, with the many secrets she’s entrusted to him over all these years. He’s been her sole confidant since the day he found her in the wilds of Coerthas and brought her to this very tavern, shivering and alone. “If what I know is accurate, this will be the only way.” Her eyes turn down to the kerchief spread over the oak tabletop, appraising the pair of crystals that lay upon it. They’re hot to the touch, like coals pulled from a raging bonfire. One is sizable, at least as large as her palm, smooth on its face like a diamond polished to a perfect shine; on its back, a sharp little spire. It’s exactly the shape she needs. Beside it sits a second crystal, considerably smaller, shaped almost perfectly like a needle, its head a flat impression of a rose. That same rose is engraved as if by the point of the finest chisel into the perfectly faceted face of the larger crystal. The needle is a few ilms long, a finger’s length, and perhaps about as wide as a marble. They’re a pair, it’s clear from the color of the wild sea that undulates within each, but the needle shines with a light like a tiny nova, where it’s brother only gleams like moonlight by comparison.
“The Conduit and the Shield,” he says.
She grins, a wry smile that only flickers in her eyes. “The rose is a nice touch,” she comments, examining the Conduit, turning its heat over in her fingers. She’s used to the burn, now; nothing could burn her quite as thoroughly as the Void, and that pain is nothing now. “I think I’ll call them something else. Truth,” she says, indicating the needle, “and Justice,” with a nod to the faceted crystal. “They’re powerful enough? Where did you find them?”
He waves a hand. “Aye, they’re powerful enough.” He pauses as though measuring his words and their weight, and adds softly, “The coil.”
A little shudder of sudden, unquenchable rage shivers up her spine and she swallows it, inhaling a shuddering breath; it’s sickening and sweet, it makes her stomach turn and her spine tingle. And, despite her utter terror as it sweeps through her, she’s more horrified by the thrilled pounding of her heart. “They’ll do. Time’s up, I’d best return to Molly.” She stands to depart and bows deeply to the weathered old Wildwood, her gaze never dropping. His eyes are just like hers, but gold where silver ought be. “Thank you. Really.”
Her vision is white. The pain is grounding, she can feel the skin of her breast beneath her fingertips, Molly’s steadying hand on her shoulder, the pure fire that floods her chest like a ship capsizing in the sea. Truth went first, it pierced her heart with the ease of a knife splitting water, and it burns. The sun itself is in her chest. She can feel her shuddering breaths, the cold air in her lungs conflicting painfully with the extreme heat radiating out of her heart. Purest aether, it tastes like dappled sunlight in spring, like desert heat. Her heart gives a great shudder, rattling against its bone cage, both protesting and welcoming the foreign presence amongst her flesh and bones.
The incision over her sternum is but a pinprick of mild pressure by comparison. Pure white aether pools around her, courses through her, flowing freely from her fingertips, and from Molly’s, as they battle a tide of blood and tears and the shadow in her veins. Both women have something to lose here, and she isn’t about to lose anything. She doesn’t lose, not anymore, not without cause. Her vision swims between black and white, static fills her ears. She will have to adjust. It will take time. She will prevail.
“Almost there.” A gentle whisper amidst a sea rushing by her ears, the crash of waves against a rocky, jagged shore. Her eyes flash, her teeth clenched, her jaw set. An island is swallowed by the sea and she watches with eyes of dullest slate.
Through her teeth she hisses, “I will not become a monster.” One final push, and Justice slides home.
Fire; FFXIV
Roses and Ashes 