wrecking_yard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wrecking_yard) wrote2014-03-22 11:05 pm
wrecking_yard) wrote2014-03-22 11:05 pm
Accidental Nano - Ch. 12
Fandom: FFXIV
Summary: Snowballed headcanon!
Chapter Summary: The actual mission; Louisoix needs to outfit Thancred with a kiddy leash, a tracking device, and a specialized Aetheryte shard, and maybe lodge a complaint with those of the Twelve that meddle with luck re: Thancred's. Ascians are Not Fun Things to get stuck in a room alone with.
Warnings: Near death experience, violence, emotional trauma
They took a few side routes, avoiding main thoroughfares and places they'd have too much risk of running into people that might spread the word to the wrong people; the Inspectors had already set up their cordons, at least, which would hopefully mean that even if someone did see them coming and dart back to warn the others, they'd just run into officers waiting to stop them.
Superstition and rumors were enough that there was a space around the fence of the place, even, that people had been avoiding; buildings gone run-down and ragged for lack of care, many of them crumbling, and a cast-metal fence that'd rusted half-away and collapsed in places. At one point in the past, there had been a statue of Thal just inside the gates; the hilt and point of the stone sword had long ago worn through, leaving the remainder in shattered, eroded chunks on the ground, and the head and one shoulder of the statue proper had broken off, in slightly more recognizable scattered pieces, dusted with snow.
Long ago, this had been sacred ground; now, he wasn't sure if it was something in the air or just knowing what they were walking into that made his skin crawl.
There weren't visible lookouts, but something with black wings fluttered off from under the eaves of a crypt further in, drawing the attention of the others for a moment. It wasn't big, but it was enough to get a concerned pause, and a “...We need to hurry.” from Papalymo.
The nearest entrance was a crypt off through some old hedgerows, now overgrown into thorns with only a narrow gap, bare of leaves for the winter. The door had broken down long ago, leaving the entrance with little beginnings of drifting snow and a narrow spiral staircase going down.
He took lead, but not by far; from this way, there was a straight tunnel with rows of shelves of urns, a few of which had been knocked or fallen down over the years, leaving stale ash drifting in the air with any passage. It opened into one of the larger tunnels after a while; Louisoix had one of the light-stones out behind him, but only dim for now.
He glanced down both ways; one led to a few more rooms of urns, the other, to a larger mausoleum. “There's not enough room that way for more than maybe stashing supplies, but if there's anything they need a lot of space for, it'll be down this way.” He kept his voice down, just enough to be heard by the others, and headed that way.
The air seemed thicker getting close to the room, and it definitely wasn't just unease setting his skin crawling; there was a dim, colored light visible around the door, flickering in a way that looked like something cast through some kind of dark fluid – not a lantern light or fire.
He hung back closer going through the door; it lasted for a half-second, and then he was reacting to movement and five feet away perched on a heavy sarcophagi, knives in hand. The gargoyle-like beaked “statue” that had been by the door hadn't been there last time he'd been there, and its claws had passed through empty air; it tracked his dodge, tensing to move. There was some kind of low sound that distracted it for a second from taking aim, and then the low sound was a loud, sharp chiming noise accompanied by an explosion of light centered on it that left little more than black ash dissolving into smoke drifting on the air.
Things hit what could be lightly called “chaos” immediately after; the three other “statues” took immediate offense, and two odd figures he didn't get a good look at toward the head of the room moved to cross scythe-like weapons in front of a large, pulsing mass of thick, shifting violet and black smoke that shimmered faintly, floating in mid-air. He didn't get a good look at whatever small shapes dropped off the ceiling; they didn't make it within sight or around the sudden spread of fire across the ceiling, Papalymo's doing if he cought who else was moving right.
He didn't know if they had the same soft spots a a human, but the gaunt thing definitely wasn't expecting him to sidestep a claw and grab its wing; the gaunt creature squalled in protest, flapping hard for altitude and trying to catch him with a claw.
From the sound of its complaints, vaulting up onto its shoulders was also not in its script of how this was supposed to go. It was throwing its weight to try to flip, but wasn't fast enough to stop him from burying a knife in the base of its skull; the wings went slack and it dropped, half-dissolving as it hit the ground.
Only one of the statue-things was left, and that was only long enough to see a black wing flapping feebly and a vaguely Yda-colored blur. The two in front of the glowing mass were looking significantly battered under half the broken up stone in the room suddenly deciding to take offense to their existence, Y'shtola directing it, and that was cut short by another low thrum and chime incinerating them; the shimmering thing twisted where the explosion of light touched it as Louisoix crossed the room.
Thancred slipped his knives out of sight, straggling in with Yda to join the others in front of it.
“...That's the voidgate Urianger was afraid of isn't it.”
“Yes.” Louisoix's answer was curt, and he was glaring at it as if its existence were a personal affront.
“...Can we close it?”
“I can, given time, but...” Louisoix was frowning at it, and Papalymo picked up where he trailed off.
“If the Ascian didn't turn up to defend it, then it's likely hoping it will delay us so it can do something else, or even escape; but if we leave it, we'll have more of them showing up at our backs.”
Louisoix sighed heavily, planting his staff on the ground in front of him. “The rest of you, go ahead; I can hold this room myself and seal it. You as a group should be able to handle our dodgy friend.”
“Well then.” Papalymo turned to look up at Thancred. “Lead the way.”
Somehow, it was a little more nerve-wracking without Louisoix behind him, as much as the others were solid backup. The other exit out branched more than one way; he paused at the fork, thinking. “Some of the flooded grottoes and natural caverns are down that way; Kataroon came from another direction without a problem, and he didn't see anything to know what he'd walked into. There's some other crypts down that way, and a messy tunnel with some wine cellars that don't go to the surface anymore down there.” He frowned, looking both ways. “The wine cellars get more traffic from people taking temporary shelter, so there'd be too much risk of getting noticed if there were more than maybe a supply stash.”
He headed off towards the crypts, everyone else following close behind.
There was a familiar, unpleasant popping sensation of pressure being released in the hallway, and he knew he wasn't the only source of swear words he heard before fracture lines lit up along the walls and everything shattered into exploding masonry and dust. There was a pair of jaws trying to catch Papalymo in the chaos, and his first reflex was to jump on whatever it was with a knife; it proved to be sturdier than the last one and he wasn't sure where he'd hit the thing but it apparently meant little more than a handhold on something that was a very awkward perch. It tried to bounce him off the ceiling, but clinging close and its own awkward coordination trying to stay airborne in a corridor a little narrow for it seemed to keep it from being more than a few bruises.
He knew he saw claws in the dust and confusion, and he was pretty sure that if he let go, he would get a much closer look at the flailing claws and the massive mouth of teeth he'd seen.
Calling what the thing did “flying” would be too much credit, it was more careening off walls like a ball bounced down a chimney; he managed to get one hand loose just enough with another knife to try to find some kind of weak point on it, mostly finding more rubbery hide, but jabbing in front where it looked like there was an eye got a screech and it flipping upside down in a flailing frenzy; he fell off onto the ground hard.
The thing was little more than a giant set of jaws and an eyeball with wings, a slender tail, and disproporitionate, rubbery clawed limbs; it was feebly fussing at the eye, and fled squalling down the hallway, a high alarm call.
“Found something!”, he called back over his shoulder, not sure it was within earshot or could be heard – but if he lost the damn thing there was no telling what turns it would take; he took off after it, occasionally dropping some of his spare throwing knives as he ran.
It went past a few of the wine cellars, into what had been the basement of some old keep long ago razed; familiar territory, it was an easy place to keep warm and secure. Several of the doors had heavy locks that hadn't been there before, and it was going for an old cellar, battering the door open before he got there.
It was almost pitch dark in there, without even the faintly luminescent moss that'd been growing in some of the hallway, but there was a human figure in the corner, and that was enough to get the one longer blade he had and dive to drive the point up between the limbs, “possibly within easy reach of its claws” be damned.
The creature spasmed a few times with an unholy screech, and then was dissolving into black mist and a few scorched-looking remains.
He blinked at the blurry, indistinct shape in the darkness, processing that it was about the same kind of thing as the one the Inspector had taken down at the church and mentioned as something bigger, and that he'd just taken it down.
“...The hell – Thancred?”
That was definitely Ives, and Ives having even more of a moment of incredulous disbelief than he was.
“Ives!”
He could make out enough of a blur to get that the lost, blank look of disbelief hadn't passed, but Ives was standing, which counted for something; he hurried over with something that was equal parts a rushed hug and a vague patting check for injury.
“You're okay? Mostly okay? You can walk?”
“Yes...what just happened?”
“I found help – to do something to stop the murders; when that thing went running off I needed to find out where it was going – come on, we can get out of there and get help for anyone else trapped down here!” He tugged at Ives's wrist to follow, heading back for the door; he wasn't sure he could follow the trail in the dark, and pulled out the light stone to be sure, blinking and squinting as it came on almost blinding.
“Out this w-” The words died in his throat as he looked back, Ives still covering his eyes against the light.
His shadow was stark on the ground. Ives had none.
Ives managed to lower a hand, still squinting at his expression, and scowled. “Was that really necessary?”
“...You knew? What it was doing?”
“Yes I knew, I'm not that stupid.”
It was still Ives talking, from everything he could tell; carriage, posture, body language, the disgruntled glare at the light, the tone and cadence of his voice. “...Why? What could it give you that's worth-” He gestured with his free hand down the tunnels, the vague direction of the grottoes where the bodies were dumped. “This?”
“A chance to do something besides rot out here waiting to get less lucky and starve!”
“...Do – what? Kill everyone around us? Get used by something that wants everything to burn?”
“Everything's going to burn, I at least know that I'll come out the other side with something when it's all over.”
He didn't quite close his eyes – a nagging prickling at the back of his neck, awareness that it would mean leaving himself open. “And the people that trusted you – Luilda? Larson? Aubrey? Mattye? Gib? What did they ever do to deserve this?”
“Oh like it's any worse. It's quicker than what's coming, and quicker than what would've happened to most of them; freezing to death, scraping by starving until some smuggler drags them away to get sold off or they get picked off and left for dead, and Luilda? What did she have, whoring herself out to any rich creep that didn't want to go to a high-class joint until she ended up leaving another kid like you?”
He flinched, taking a half-step back. “I didn't ...I've been looking for you, I was terrified you were dead...”
“Only because it was dramatic – if this hadn't happened, you would've gotten that commission to the college, and you would've turned into another Gib, forgetting I even existed unless you took some time out to take pity and act like you cared, and you probably would've forgotten I existed.”
He opened his mouth and closed it, a hand in the air. “We were going to get out together...”
Ives opened his mouth again, snarling, but it was cut off; his posture straightened, tension loosening, face calming with eyes closed, as if some kind of fast switch had been hit. There was an eerie light added, washed out in the bright light from the stone in his hand; an abstract pattern in red hanging in the air like a mask over Ives's face.
“That's enough of that adolescent bickering.”
It had the range and basic quality of Ives's voice, but everything else was wrong; he shifted weight, to leave and run back for the others, but it moved a hand slightly, and his feet wouldn't lift from the ground.
“Oh don't look at me like that; I'd prefer to not kill you.”
“What do you want?” He didn't have any way to fight this thing, he didn't even know if knives would hurt it, and would it do any good? It'd be killing Ives and it would probably slip off to find another host; as much as he was reeling from how much he didn't know Ives anymore, it was still an uncomfortable line.
“There are many things we want; if you mean for yourself? You have potential, and we would far rather see it put to use than destroyed.”
You can tell how much Louisoix is chasing a premonition from what he actually knows by how forceful and vague he is. Louisoix coming into the cell, ordering him released without any explanation – We think they're trying to bring about a Seventh Umbral Era.
The Ascian inclined its head. “His jealousy is a childish thing; it will fade with time. He won't hear this, either, so you may speak freely.”
“...Was this about me? Taking him, starting all of this trouble in the streets?” Trying to snipe off the people who might stop them before there was a chance.
“I had my own, other work to attend to in this city, but the choice of hosts and where to start was strongly influenced by this opportunity, yes.” It waved a hand airily. “I had hoped for less confrontational circumstances, but you've had a talent for being in all the wrong places at all the wrong times from the beginning.”
It hadn't meant for him to see Mattye's death; it had wanted to catch him off guard, convince him to side with it without setting him off against it, and it was trying to lure him over now. He didn't know how the ambush had gone, or how long Louisoix would be closing the void rift; they'd have to be looking for him once they realized he was out of sight – was the trail of knives enough? “Why should I trust you? After everything you've done...”
Keep it talking, hope it bought enough time.
“We would give you a say; you could ensure that some people were protected – they would remain untouched through everything to come. Ensuring something like that for a human lifespan would be a pittance, really. You're valuable enough that we are willing to make concessions.”
Something flickered across its face in the pause while he scrambled to think of a way to keep the conversation going without agreeing to anything, and it raised a hand, half held out to him – and likely half ready for a cast if he didn't accept.
“I don't have time to linger; what is your choice?”
Crap. Something was going on and it wasn't going to let him play that game; were the others on the way?
He opened his mouth, stricken, giving an uncertain hand gesture, then slumped his shoulders, willing the light to mostly go dark. “I don't... want to leave Ives behind...”
It tilted its hand, more of an offer.
There was faint noise echoing down the halls, too indistinct to tell how far off – some kind of nonhuman screech.
It'd have to be close enough.
He turned as much as he could with his feet still unmoving, putting all the will he could into the light and throwing it into the hallway; it flared out blinding, shattering against the wall with a high tone, as he put every bit of breath he could into a yell.
“DOWN HE-”
It cut off sharp, something hitting his chest, as if it passed through like he wasn't even there and then turned solid; his breath choked out, and it felt like his veins flash-froze.
Through spots and blindness, he could vaguely make out the raised hand, something darker than the dim shadows speared out through him; it vanished suddenly, and he dropped to the ground, struggling to breathe. Whatever binding it'd had on him to keep him from walking away was gone, no longer needed.
“So your true father really is too weak to protect you.” He vaguely saw the shape kneeling in front of him. “Last chance, Wanderer's child; come with me or die here.”
There wasn't anything else he could do; he hissed through his teeth, trying to pull away from it with everything heavy and not obeying.
It rose to its feet, a half-step back, lifting a hand; there were sparks from the darkness, flame forming. He tried to curl inward, waiting for it to land.
The spell went off; the room filled with light and heat as the flames flooded it, and it didn't quite sink in at first that he wasn't burning, but something had neatly kept it away from him.
It was followed by a flow of cold, ice forming across the room away from him and clinging to its feet; there was, suddenly, a hand on his shoulder from behind, faint claws digging in and pulling him back out of the room.
He recognized the bottom hem of Louisoix's robe as he was tugged out; the brief, low thrum came with an almost solid pressure this time, the light of it flooding out the hallway, and he saw Yda's armored boot passing by.
And then, the hallway suddenly fell away in a shimmer of blue; for a few seconds, it was as if there wasn't any air left, no solid ground, and he tried to cling closer to Y'shtola at the sudden sense of falling into nothingness.
There was snow, and the dim light of evening, and people shouting; he noticed a couple sets of hands, things teetering more and more towards passing out entirely, and he knew Y'shtola was barking orders through all of it. He felt the temperature change and caught the noise of doors heading inside, and finally having something solid under him again, a mess of voices and noise; then there was a cold brush that he almost flinched from, something cutting through his shirt and pulling it away.
“Gods be good -”
He caught the brief curse, then an odd sense of something he couldn't quite name shifting nearby.
The healing spell burned like alcohol on a wound that ran under his skin and through deeper than he thought could burn like that; he wasn't sure if he moved, he wasn't sure he could, but there was pressure holding him still, so it must've happened.
The burning numbed out to a dull, low ache that drowned everything out, a chill that ran through worse than he'd felt in years.
He as pretty sure he'd blacked out somewhere. There wasn't any kind of consistent sense of what was happening, even awareness of the noise of the infirmary had dropped off. There were blankets over him, and a hand over his forehead, voices and movement; he tried to crack his eyes open, then flinched at the light.
“Can you hear me?”
He managed some kind of mumbled moan.
“I want you to listen to me – can you try to sing? It doesn't matter what, it doesn't matter if you're just mouthing things, I need you to try to stay awake.”
Trying to breathe hurt; he couldn't bring in air, and he was pretty sure it was drifting, no coherent set of which was which or even what language, mouthing bits of lyrics and trying to catch hold of any one long enough to recognize it.
There was another cure spell, sinking in with a faint, aching warmth; it was starting to hurt less to breath, but actually getting air wasn't working still wasn't working. “Keep going – it'll be alright, I'm here.”
She tried again, and some of the cold faded.
Someone had caught her from the side, he was aware of movement, a male voice he didn't recognize. “Sit down and get something to eat; I'll see to him for a while.”
There was a larger hand on his forehead, and contact prodding at his chest, sore pain that made him flinch; Y'shtola had backed off with a small rumbling noise.
“Keep trying – this will be easier if you try to stay awake.”
There was a while of bits of cure magic while he kept trying to form and string together words; breathing started to come easier, even if it was still shallow, and there was finally a hand on his head in some kind of attempt at reassurance. “You'll be alright, you can rest.”
He'd barely stopped trying to keep focused before he passed out again.
Summary: Snowballed headcanon!
Chapter Summary: The actual mission; Louisoix needs to outfit Thancred with a kiddy leash, a tracking device, and a specialized Aetheryte shard, and maybe lodge a complaint with those of the Twelve that meddle with luck re: Thancred's. Ascians are Not Fun Things to get stuck in a room alone with.
Warnings: Near death experience, violence, emotional trauma
They took a few side routes, avoiding main thoroughfares and places they'd have too much risk of running into people that might spread the word to the wrong people; the Inspectors had already set up their cordons, at least, which would hopefully mean that even if someone did see them coming and dart back to warn the others, they'd just run into officers waiting to stop them.
Superstition and rumors were enough that there was a space around the fence of the place, even, that people had been avoiding; buildings gone run-down and ragged for lack of care, many of them crumbling, and a cast-metal fence that'd rusted half-away and collapsed in places. At one point in the past, there had been a statue of Thal just inside the gates; the hilt and point of the stone sword had long ago worn through, leaving the remainder in shattered, eroded chunks on the ground, and the head and one shoulder of the statue proper had broken off, in slightly more recognizable scattered pieces, dusted with snow.
Long ago, this had been sacred ground; now, he wasn't sure if it was something in the air or just knowing what they were walking into that made his skin crawl.
There weren't visible lookouts, but something with black wings fluttered off from under the eaves of a crypt further in, drawing the attention of the others for a moment. It wasn't big, but it was enough to get a concerned pause, and a “...We need to hurry.” from Papalymo.
The nearest entrance was a crypt off through some old hedgerows, now overgrown into thorns with only a narrow gap, bare of leaves for the winter. The door had broken down long ago, leaving the entrance with little beginnings of drifting snow and a narrow spiral staircase going down.
He took lead, but not by far; from this way, there was a straight tunnel with rows of shelves of urns, a few of which had been knocked or fallen down over the years, leaving stale ash drifting in the air with any passage. It opened into one of the larger tunnels after a while; Louisoix had one of the light-stones out behind him, but only dim for now.
He glanced down both ways; one led to a few more rooms of urns, the other, to a larger mausoleum. “There's not enough room that way for more than maybe stashing supplies, but if there's anything they need a lot of space for, it'll be down this way.” He kept his voice down, just enough to be heard by the others, and headed that way.
The air seemed thicker getting close to the room, and it definitely wasn't just unease setting his skin crawling; there was a dim, colored light visible around the door, flickering in a way that looked like something cast through some kind of dark fluid – not a lantern light or fire.
He hung back closer going through the door; it lasted for a half-second, and then he was reacting to movement and five feet away perched on a heavy sarcophagi, knives in hand. The gargoyle-like beaked “statue” that had been by the door hadn't been there last time he'd been there, and its claws had passed through empty air; it tracked his dodge, tensing to move. There was some kind of low sound that distracted it for a second from taking aim, and then the low sound was a loud, sharp chiming noise accompanied by an explosion of light centered on it that left little more than black ash dissolving into smoke drifting on the air.
Things hit what could be lightly called “chaos” immediately after; the three other “statues” took immediate offense, and two odd figures he didn't get a good look at toward the head of the room moved to cross scythe-like weapons in front of a large, pulsing mass of thick, shifting violet and black smoke that shimmered faintly, floating in mid-air. He didn't get a good look at whatever small shapes dropped off the ceiling; they didn't make it within sight or around the sudden spread of fire across the ceiling, Papalymo's doing if he cought who else was moving right.
He didn't know if they had the same soft spots a a human, but the gaunt thing definitely wasn't expecting him to sidestep a claw and grab its wing; the gaunt creature squalled in protest, flapping hard for altitude and trying to catch him with a claw.
From the sound of its complaints, vaulting up onto its shoulders was also not in its script of how this was supposed to go. It was throwing its weight to try to flip, but wasn't fast enough to stop him from burying a knife in the base of its skull; the wings went slack and it dropped, half-dissolving as it hit the ground.
Only one of the statue-things was left, and that was only long enough to see a black wing flapping feebly and a vaguely Yda-colored blur. The two in front of the glowing mass were looking significantly battered under half the broken up stone in the room suddenly deciding to take offense to their existence, Y'shtola directing it, and that was cut short by another low thrum and chime incinerating them; the shimmering thing twisted where the explosion of light touched it as Louisoix crossed the room.
Thancred slipped his knives out of sight, straggling in with Yda to join the others in front of it.
“...That's the voidgate Urianger was afraid of isn't it.”
“Yes.” Louisoix's answer was curt, and he was glaring at it as if its existence were a personal affront.
“...Can we close it?”
“I can, given time, but...” Louisoix was frowning at it, and Papalymo picked up where he trailed off.
“If the Ascian didn't turn up to defend it, then it's likely hoping it will delay us so it can do something else, or even escape; but if we leave it, we'll have more of them showing up at our backs.”
Louisoix sighed heavily, planting his staff on the ground in front of him. “The rest of you, go ahead; I can hold this room myself and seal it. You as a group should be able to handle our dodgy friend.”
“Well then.” Papalymo turned to look up at Thancred. “Lead the way.”
Somehow, it was a little more nerve-wracking without Louisoix behind him, as much as the others were solid backup. The other exit out branched more than one way; he paused at the fork, thinking. “Some of the flooded grottoes and natural caverns are down that way; Kataroon came from another direction without a problem, and he didn't see anything to know what he'd walked into. There's some other crypts down that way, and a messy tunnel with some wine cellars that don't go to the surface anymore down there.” He frowned, looking both ways. “The wine cellars get more traffic from people taking temporary shelter, so there'd be too much risk of getting noticed if there were more than maybe a supply stash.”
He headed off towards the crypts, everyone else following close behind.
There was a familiar, unpleasant popping sensation of pressure being released in the hallway, and he knew he wasn't the only source of swear words he heard before fracture lines lit up along the walls and everything shattered into exploding masonry and dust. There was a pair of jaws trying to catch Papalymo in the chaos, and his first reflex was to jump on whatever it was with a knife; it proved to be sturdier than the last one and he wasn't sure where he'd hit the thing but it apparently meant little more than a handhold on something that was a very awkward perch. It tried to bounce him off the ceiling, but clinging close and its own awkward coordination trying to stay airborne in a corridor a little narrow for it seemed to keep it from being more than a few bruises.
He knew he saw claws in the dust and confusion, and he was pretty sure that if he let go, he would get a much closer look at the flailing claws and the massive mouth of teeth he'd seen.
Calling what the thing did “flying” would be too much credit, it was more careening off walls like a ball bounced down a chimney; he managed to get one hand loose just enough with another knife to try to find some kind of weak point on it, mostly finding more rubbery hide, but jabbing in front where it looked like there was an eye got a screech and it flipping upside down in a flailing frenzy; he fell off onto the ground hard.
The thing was little more than a giant set of jaws and an eyeball with wings, a slender tail, and disproporitionate, rubbery clawed limbs; it was feebly fussing at the eye, and fled squalling down the hallway, a high alarm call.
“Found something!”, he called back over his shoulder, not sure it was within earshot or could be heard – but if he lost the damn thing there was no telling what turns it would take; he took off after it, occasionally dropping some of his spare throwing knives as he ran.
It went past a few of the wine cellars, into what had been the basement of some old keep long ago razed; familiar territory, it was an easy place to keep warm and secure. Several of the doors had heavy locks that hadn't been there before, and it was going for an old cellar, battering the door open before he got there.
It was almost pitch dark in there, without even the faintly luminescent moss that'd been growing in some of the hallway, but there was a human figure in the corner, and that was enough to get the one longer blade he had and dive to drive the point up between the limbs, “possibly within easy reach of its claws” be damned.
The creature spasmed a few times with an unholy screech, and then was dissolving into black mist and a few scorched-looking remains.
He blinked at the blurry, indistinct shape in the darkness, processing that it was about the same kind of thing as the one the Inspector had taken down at the church and mentioned as something bigger, and that he'd just taken it down.
“...The hell – Thancred?”
That was definitely Ives, and Ives having even more of a moment of incredulous disbelief than he was.
“Ives!”
He could make out enough of a blur to get that the lost, blank look of disbelief hadn't passed, but Ives was standing, which counted for something; he hurried over with something that was equal parts a rushed hug and a vague patting check for injury.
“You're okay? Mostly okay? You can walk?”
“Yes...what just happened?”
“I found help – to do something to stop the murders; when that thing went running off I needed to find out where it was going – come on, we can get out of there and get help for anyone else trapped down here!” He tugged at Ives's wrist to follow, heading back for the door; he wasn't sure he could follow the trail in the dark, and pulled out the light stone to be sure, blinking and squinting as it came on almost blinding.
“Out this w-” The words died in his throat as he looked back, Ives still covering his eyes against the light.
His shadow was stark on the ground. Ives had none.
Ives managed to lower a hand, still squinting at his expression, and scowled. “Was that really necessary?”
“...You knew? What it was doing?”
“Yes I knew, I'm not that stupid.”
It was still Ives talking, from everything he could tell; carriage, posture, body language, the disgruntled glare at the light, the tone and cadence of his voice. “...Why? What could it give you that's worth-” He gestured with his free hand down the tunnels, the vague direction of the grottoes where the bodies were dumped. “This?”
“A chance to do something besides rot out here waiting to get less lucky and starve!”
“...Do – what? Kill everyone around us? Get used by something that wants everything to burn?”
“Everything's going to burn, I at least know that I'll come out the other side with something when it's all over.”
He didn't quite close his eyes – a nagging prickling at the back of his neck, awareness that it would mean leaving himself open. “And the people that trusted you – Luilda? Larson? Aubrey? Mattye? Gib? What did they ever do to deserve this?”
“Oh like it's any worse. It's quicker than what's coming, and quicker than what would've happened to most of them; freezing to death, scraping by starving until some smuggler drags them away to get sold off or they get picked off and left for dead, and Luilda? What did she have, whoring herself out to any rich creep that didn't want to go to a high-class joint until she ended up leaving another kid like you?”
He flinched, taking a half-step back. “I didn't ...I've been looking for you, I was terrified you were dead...”
“Only because it was dramatic – if this hadn't happened, you would've gotten that commission to the college, and you would've turned into another Gib, forgetting I even existed unless you took some time out to take pity and act like you cared, and you probably would've forgotten I existed.”
He opened his mouth and closed it, a hand in the air. “We were going to get out together...”
Ives opened his mouth again, snarling, but it was cut off; his posture straightened, tension loosening, face calming with eyes closed, as if some kind of fast switch had been hit. There was an eerie light added, washed out in the bright light from the stone in his hand; an abstract pattern in red hanging in the air like a mask over Ives's face.
“That's enough of that adolescent bickering.”
It had the range and basic quality of Ives's voice, but everything else was wrong; he shifted weight, to leave and run back for the others, but it moved a hand slightly, and his feet wouldn't lift from the ground.
“Oh don't look at me like that; I'd prefer to not kill you.”
“What do you want?” He didn't have any way to fight this thing, he didn't even know if knives would hurt it, and would it do any good? It'd be killing Ives and it would probably slip off to find another host; as much as he was reeling from how much he didn't know Ives anymore, it was still an uncomfortable line.
“There are many things we want; if you mean for yourself? You have potential, and we would far rather see it put to use than destroyed.”
You can tell how much Louisoix is chasing a premonition from what he actually knows by how forceful and vague he is. Louisoix coming into the cell, ordering him released without any explanation – We think they're trying to bring about a Seventh Umbral Era.
The Ascian inclined its head. “His jealousy is a childish thing; it will fade with time. He won't hear this, either, so you may speak freely.”
“...Was this about me? Taking him, starting all of this trouble in the streets?” Trying to snipe off the people who might stop them before there was a chance.
“I had my own, other work to attend to in this city, but the choice of hosts and where to start was strongly influenced by this opportunity, yes.” It waved a hand airily. “I had hoped for less confrontational circumstances, but you've had a talent for being in all the wrong places at all the wrong times from the beginning.”
It hadn't meant for him to see Mattye's death; it had wanted to catch him off guard, convince him to side with it without setting him off against it, and it was trying to lure him over now. He didn't know how the ambush had gone, or how long Louisoix would be closing the void rift; they'd have to be looking for him once they realized he was out of sight – was the trail of knives enough? “Why should I trust you? After everything you've done...”
Keep it talking, hope it bought enough time.
“We would give you a say; you could ensure that some people were protected – they would remain untouched through everything to come. Ensuring something like that for a human lifespan would be a pittance, really. You're valuable enough that we are willing to make concessions.”
Something flickered across its face in the pause while he scrambled to think of a way to keep the conversation going without agreeing to anything, and it raised a hand, half held out to him – and likely half ready for a cast if he didn't accept.
“I don't have time to linger; what is your choice?”
Crap. Something was going on and it wasn't going to let him play that game; were the others on the way?
He opened his mouth, stricken, giving an uncertain hand gesture, then slumped his shoulders, willing the light to mostly go dark. “I don't... want to leave Ives behind...”
It tilted its hand, more of an offer.
There was faint noise echoing down the halls, too indistinct to tell how far off – some kind of nonhuman screech.
It'd have to be close enough.
He turned as much as he could with his feet still unmoving, putting all the will he could into the light and throwing it into the hallway; it flared out blinding, shattering against the wall with a high tone, as he put every bit of breath he could into a yell.
“DOWN HE-”
It cut off sharp, something hitting his chest, as if it passed through like he wasn't even there and then turned solid; his breath choked out, and it felt like his veins flash-froze.
Through spots and blindness, he could vaguely make out the raised hand, something darker than the dim shadows speared out through him; it vanished suddenly, and he dropped to the ground, struggling to breathe. Whatever binding it'd had on him to keep him from walking away was gone, no longer needed.
“So your true father really is too weak to protect you.” He vaguely saw the shape kneeling in front of him. “Last chance, Wanderer's child; come with me or die here.”
There wasn't anything else he could do; he hissed through his teeth, trying to pull away from it with everything heavy and not obeying.
It rose to its feet, a half-step back, lifting a hand; there were sparks from the darkness, flame forming. He tried to curl inward, waiting for it to land.
The spell went off; the room filled with light and heat as the flames flooded it, and it didn't quite sink in at first that he wasn't burning, but something had neatly kept it away from him.
It was followed by a flow of cold, ice forming across the room away from him and clinging to its feet; there was, suddenly, a hand on his shoulder from behind, faint claws digging in and pulling him back out of the room.
He recognized the bottom hem of Louisoix's robe as he was tugged out; the brief, low thrum came with an almost solid pressure this time, the light of it flooding out the hallway, and he saw Yda's armored boot passing by.
And then, the hallway suddenly fell away in a shimmer of blue; for a few seconds, it was as if there wasn't any air left, no solid ground, and he tried to cling closer to Y'shtola at the sudden sense of falling into nothingness.
There was snow, and the dim light of evening, and people shouting; he noticed a couple sets of hands, things teetering more and more towards passing out entirely, and he knew Y'shtola was barking orders through all of it. He felt the temperature change and caught the noise of doors heading inside, and finally having something solid under him again, a mess of voices and noise; then there was a cold brush that he almost flinched from, something cutting through his shirt and pulling it away.
“Gods be good -”
He caught the brief curse, then an odd sense of something he couldn't quite name shifting nearby.
The healing spell burned like alcohol on a wound that ran under his skin and through deeper than he thought could burn like that; he wasn't sure if he moved, he wasn't sure he could, but there was pressure holding him still, so it must've happened.
The burning numbed out to a dull, low ache that drowned everything out, a chill that ran through worse than he'd felt in years.
He as pretty sure he'd blacked out somewhere. There wasn't any kind of consistent sense of what was happening, even awareness of the noise of the infirmary had dropped off. There were blankets over him, and a hand over his forehead, voices and movement; he tried to crack his eyes open, then flinched at the light.
“Can you hear me?”
He managed some kind of mumbled moan.
“I want you to listen to me – can you try to sing? It doesn't matter what, it doesn't matter if you're just mouthing things, I need you to try to stay awake.”
Trying to breathe hurt; he couldn't bring in air, and he was pretty sure it was drifting, no coherent set of which was which or even what language, mouthing bits of lyrics and trying to catch hold of any one long enough to recognize it.
There was another cure spell, sinking in with a faint, aching warmth; it was starting to hurt less to breath, but actually getting air wasn't working still wasn't working. “Keep going – it'll be alright, I'm here.”
She tried again, and some of the cold faded.
Someone had caught her from the side, he was aware of movement, a male voice he didn't recognize. “Sit down and get something to eat; I'll see to him for a while.”
There was a larger hand on his forehead, and contact prodding at his chest, sore pain that made him flinch; Y'shtola had backed off with a small rumbling noise.
“Keep trying – this will be easier if you try to stay awake.”
There was a while of bits of cure magic while he kept trying to form and string together words; breathing started to come easier, even if it was still shallow, and there was finally a hand on his head in some kind of attempt at reassurance. “You'll be alright, you can rest.”
He'd barely stopped trying to keep focused before he passed out again.