D'aijeen collapsed on the ground, the shadow that poured out of her crashing down in front of her, having taken form. Fetid innards glistened inside its ehpemeral body. It clawed at the ground with the ribs that had been harvested to shape its toes. The overburdened drake spine that gave its back its crooked curve clacked and shifted, pulled along by the best. It opened its mouth, needlee teeth craft from the beaks of vulture skulls embeeded in its maw.
It turned its head towards the fallen Roegadyn, the vulture skulls floating inside the sleek shape of its head turning to regard her. Then it looked at Ulanan. The skulls of the scavengers shifted, and took two steps forward, and lifted its head like a dog sniffing the air.
Behind it, D'aijeen lifted herself and gagged. The mask on her own face rose to look at the beast that had ripped out of her body.
Still prey of horror, Ulanan wrenched her book towards her side, aether forming above it. She pointed with the other hand at the monster, and the golem warding Antimony floated straight in its direction, maw open and clearly wanting to bite.
Illira heard the foul noises behind her and looked over her shoulder, eyes widening, as she tried to wrestle Antimony's face into her shoulder so that she couldn't continue to stare at what was happening.
The older miqo'te continued to struggle against Illira's grip, but they were useless in their weakness. She screamed for her daughter though, over and over.
"I don't want this to happen." D'aijeens voice seeped from the green mask before her features. She pushed herself upright. Darkness stained her face and chin, chest and stomach, where the monster had ripped out of her. But the darkness sunk into her form, and left no wound behind. Her dress was ripped and burned, her skin burned and mutilated beneath. Her neck hung open with that same hideous wound.
She pushed herself up, looking weak. But she'd always been weak. The fetish of rodent bones hung from her fingers once more as she stared at the monster. "I don't want this to be happening. I don't want any of this to happen. I don't want you. I don't want you!" She swung the bones in front of her, and the earth beneath her feet began to move in response, rushing up against the monster.
Sensing an oncoming attack, the skulls of the scavangers spun once, and D'aijeen fell back against the steps like animal bones dropped from a shaman's hands; eyes that knew the secret ways might be able to tell the future from how she fell.
The ephemeral canine turned in a flash away from D'aijeen, snapped its maw at Ulanan, and turned towards the Lalafel's construct as it came near. It pounced at it, bringing its teeth and claws to content with the paper.
Looking over his shoulder, D'hein stared at the monster wide-eyed. "... An animal attack. She did kill D'ahl."
The pet rushed to it with its own maw open and wailed silently when they met, the claws tearing and sinking into its structure, deforming its shape and bringing it down to the ground. The torn borders turned orange first, and soon the whole golem changed to that color.
A purple mist materialized and vanished at the same time the creatures hit each other. The aether contained sought to settle on the bones of the voidsent and corrode them. Another cloud, green this time, followed with the same purpose. Ulanan moved her tome high up as soon as she was done casting those, preparing for another.
Illira knew she wasn't enough of a swordsman to take on the voidsent beast that stared the lalafel down. Antimony had been a shaman though, at least that was what a background check on the woman had turned up, and what her brief encounter with a couple of her tribesfolk had told her.Â
So she shook the miqo'te's shoulders, in hopes of cutting through the hysteria. "Can you do anything here? Or will you continue down this hole your digging?"
"Aijeen!" Antimony cried out, not immediately processing Illira's words. Tears dragged wet lines down her cheeks, settled and spread into the creases of her skin around her eyes, her mouth, dripping into the collar of her robe. She hung in Illira's grip, sobbing, and then made to lunge to the side, to attempt to make it to her daughter's side once more.
She froze in Illira's grip, however, when her actions brought the skeletal beast into view. Familiar. The color drained from her face. Her ears shook, and she let out a whimper with her daughter's name again. And then came the anger. "DEMON!" She shrieked at the thing. "Demon, I'll banish--I'll banish you! You'll not shadow my family again!"
Illira pushed Antimony aside and towards the beast, "Then -do it-. Clean up your daughter's mess."
The skulls of the scavengers destroyed the construct beneath it, and pitched upright, throwing its head into the air as though to howl. It made no sound except for the clattering of its bones. The ribs that composed its claws began to decompose. The beaks that made up its teeth discolored. It showed no notice. It was distracted by Antimony for an instant, turning and making an expression as though to snarl. The vulture skulls inside its head just stared, blank.
Then it turned and rushed Ulanan, ready to rip her apart.
D'aijeen pushed herself to her feet once more, glaring first at the monster, and then the fallen Roegadyn. She shivered, though, and turned away. She couldn't run, too exhausted, but she staggered down the steps and turned towards the sea.
Ulanan concentrated her spell over her book, not releasing it. When the creature was only a meter away from her, ready to destroy her, her last envelope vanished from her pocket. A barrier materialized in front of her, looking like a tall wall made of paper bricks. The force of the impact broke it just like a real one, making the structure bend and half of the bricks on top of it fall. Though instead of hitting the ground with the full strength of gravity, they gently floated in all directions.Â
She released the accumulated aether then, all around her, spreading it to the wall. Circular, bulky eyes and a smile formed in each of them and, in the next instant, they flew out to hit the monster as if catapulted.
Antimony staggered forward, nearly toppling to the ground from Illira's shove. She simultaneously cowered and glared with wide, green eyes at the demon, and then cringed back when Ulanan's attack struck it.
The shadowy canid stopped short in its tracks as it found itself assailed, snapping at the various things that struck it. Still, it made no sound. Brittle bones cracked inside its body, but hung in place unnaturally. As though the bones were conforming to the shape of the monster instead of the other way around. The canid thrust its head upward and snapped at the air, then dropped down again and shook and spun and bit. Finally, it jumped to the side, not freeing itself from the attack but giving itself slightly more room. From this new angle, it rushed Ulanan again, not significantly damaged.
Illira drew her short sword and dirk, knowing that her preferred weapon would be useless here. And though she was far too rusty, she didn't trust those that were conscious to hold out. D'hein and K'airos were dumbstruck, and Antimony wasn't much better even after the burst of energy. The lalafell was likely running on her last legs... and her legs were short. So the Elezen strode towards the short woman and the beast, past Antimony.
Bowing over herself, clutching with both hands to her chest, Antimony whimpered a string of desperate prayers, words with a rhythm and meaning far more ancient than the stone beneath their feet.
Ulanan used the beast's brief moment of confusion to put more space between it and her. "D'hein! Ice! I need time to summon something bigger!" she yelled while running away and plucking pages out of her book, throwing them into the air like a chicken losing feathers rabidly.Â
Her paper bricks kept following the creature and flinging themselves at it. Those that failed to hit it made a circle, floated and then flinged themselves again until they did.
D'hein pet K'airos's head. "Stay here. Stay down, please." He rose and took his scepter in hand again, putting a couple of yalms between himself and his daughter's sister. He spread his stance, giving a tired gaze to the monster, as though he were looking at something he knew to be a dream. He began to conjure a spell, feeling slow and outclassed.
The monster continued to follow Ulanan, only momentarily slowed. It gained momentum, found it in itself to ignore the distracting bricks.
Seeing the monster chasing the Lalafell, D'hein unleashed what of his spell he had conjured, casting for once in silence. The bolt of ice stuck the beast's feet and slowed one of its legs. Most of the delay this provided was thanks to the creature's confusion. The spell cast, D'hein lazily and belatedly muttered "Ice spell" as he began to conjure another.
Picking up a run, Illira dashed towards the leg that D'hein had iced, slicing at the back of the near the hollow of the knee before moving back out, dragging her longer blade against the ribcage as she moved towards behind it.
This distract the monster far more, as it immediately jumped away from Illira. Bricks slammed into its body the whole way, but it focused on her, turning back and pouncing at her like a great wolf threatened, going for her long neck.
D'aijeen reached the pier where the boats to and from Limsa Lominsa would dock several times a day. Now it was empty. Vesper Bay was not a fishing town. There were no small boats currently docks. The pier was empty. D'aijeen stood on the edge and stared down at the water. Black and deep.
K'airos did not stay down, nor there were she was. She rose up and walked, staring at the creature, recognizing it. She had trouble breathing, but still she shouted angrily. "I need a weapon!" She wasn't sure who she was yelling at, or what she expected. She looked around in a state of frenzy.
The lalafel noticed the beast change of focus and turned around. "Illira! Watch out!" she warned loudly, still throwing pages up into the air. They and those that she had thrown before started to move as if pushed by the wind, slamming into each other on the ground, an aura of aether slowly building up on them.
It really had been too long since Illira had done such things as she was tonight. Already breathing hard, the middle aged elezen was knocked down as the beast pounced on her, she'd brought her short sword up though, aiming for its the gap between its wolf-like bone jaws. She tried to pull her head to the side away from the snapping teeth as its paw pinned her down.
D'hein glanced behind him. "K'airos, no! Grab your mother and get her away!"
The beast opened its mouth to bite at Illira's head. When the sword stabbed into its mouth, it showed no concern, letting the blade pierce its body. It bit down on her arm instead of her head, though, the beaks that were its teeth stabbing into her flesh. The tip of Illira's sword stabbed into the monsters head, pressing against the skulls behind the canid's immaterial face. The skulls of the scavengers did not react.
The sharp teeth bore down into her thin arm, causing her to yell out with the edge of pain on her voice, "Just finish it. I won't be bait for long!" Her fingers were forced to drop the hilt of the short sword, leaving it hanging from the beast's head as she tried to drive her dirk into one of its eyes.
Ulanan's crazy flinging of papers into the air ceased. Her book had only one empty page left. She cringed at it with one hand over it, gathering into it all the aether that was left on her. Then she tore it and threw it up. The mass of papers that had been piling up in the street reacted to this, lifting themselves high up and quickly taking the shape of a sphere. It inflated, its surface solidifying and cracking, the empty spaces between the sheets shining with a white light. The last of Ulanan's pages disappeared between the cracks and then the paper meteor came crashing down towards the bone beast.
The beast saw the light and flinched away from it, like a shadow being pushed away by the cresting of dawn. It dragged Illira by her arm several paces, and then released her to try and evade the meteor. D'hein launched his second ice spell then, this one fully formed, catching the monster across all of its legs and stunning it for the briefest moment.
The meteor struck the monster sideways, having arced over Illira to get to it. The thing was knocked back, hard, at first born by the meteor itself and then further from the concussive force of its detonation. As it careened it seemed thinner, almost immaterial, the bones of its body tumbling end over end and only loosely held together.
It landed on the pier, immediately behind D'aijeen, and she turned to look at. The monster didn't lay still for long before it began to reshape. D'aijeen flinched at it, stepped back, almost off the pier. She looked back at the water, cold and dark as a sea of ink beneath her. A sea of shadow. "I don't want you." She looked back at the monster, the thing rising. The canid form turned towards her moving its head. "I don't want you! I wish I'd never made you!"
Shadows churned beneath her, suddenly dark, suddenly thick, and suddenly powerful. They grew and fell, stretching out beneath the pier. And then they broke it. The pier collapsed under the weight of the monster, all of its braces and pillars snapping into splinters. The monster fell into the water, and D'aijeen fell with it. Shadows rose around them as though the sea were lifting itself to catch them. But the shadows lay over D'aijeen and the monster and pulled them down beneath the surface of the water.
Cypress's hand twitched, fine etchings where the magical fire took to her skinshowed through as if she were the burnt wood that she had been named after. It was faint, just below the surface, but ready to be reignited in any given moment.Â
Her eyes shot open, seeing only the sandy flagstones, she quickly tried to shove herself upwards with a grunt. Sitting up against the cracked pillar as she scanned the area. Nothing of interest, except for the same scattered people that had been there earlier. Except D'aijeen.Â
A roar of a splash brought her head whipping around as she scrambled to her feet, dizzy with the sudden movement. "Where is she?" The woman yelled out, desperation and angry making her cracked voice worse than it normally was.
Illira's dirk fell to the ground as she clutched at her torn arm. She pulled herself upright into a sitting position, hissing at the movement. It felt like her arm was broken. Or perhaps just dislocated. It was impossible to tell in that moment.
K'airos stood still and silent, paralyzed again as she watched her sister, sink with the pier and the beast.
Ulanan dropped to the ground into a sitting position. She was too exhausted to answer the Roegadyn, so instead she just pointed towards there.
The crashing of wood and water tore Antimony's head up from her cowed position. Her eyes caught the dwindling waves, splinters, and inky shadow, and she didn't have to see D'aijeen to know where her daughter had gone. She cried out brokenly and bolted for the ruined pier.
D'hein lingered in a stupor for a moment, idling on the verge of casting another spell even several seconds after the monster and the woman fell into the water. Then he shook himself free. "Antimony!" He ran forward, trying to catch up to the woman before she got too far away. He was far less desperate in his charge than she was, however.
Shaking the fuzziness off, Cypress ran towards pier as well, though not alongside the others, stopping at the steps, only to see nothing there, but a too-short dock and the last of the darkness vanishing below the waves. She stood there for a moment, watching for any other movement before letting out a howl. One that could have rivaled any Coerthas dragon in its ferocity. It was a marvel that she didn't spit fire as they did.
"Mom!" K'airos snapped out of her own and ran towards her mother to stop her, fearing the beast would come back at any moment.
Ignoring both D'hein and K'airos, perhaps not even hearing them, Antimony flung herself to her hands and knees as far as she could go along the shattered remains of the pier. She stared down into the churning, black water and then let out a choked sob.
When Antimony didn't immediately throw herself to the ocean in despair, D'hein slowed his run to a trot and came alongside her, standing with the others and staring down into the water. He searched, seeing nothing but darkness and some floating wood debris. Then he turned towards the Roegadyn. "What are you angry about? She's dead. That's what you wanted."
K'airos shook at that, not understanding it. She didn' think about it either. She took her mother's shoulders and tried to pull her away. "Mom...it's..." Her words died in her mouth, and she just crumbled, kneeling and hugging her.
Cypress gave D'hein a sidelong look, the etchings in her arm pulsing with a deep orange color. "Her body is dead. But it was before too. A little water won't keep voidsent down. There is method to what I do."
Antimony did not turn from the slowly settling water, but she did shift her arms to clutch at K'airos. Tears shook her body, and her grey tail curled against her remaining daughter's side.
Letting a hand rest on Antimony's shoulder, D'hein snapped at Cypress. "My daughter is not a Voidsent! She didn't get possessed between today and yesterday. Or today and last year for that matter! And she certainly wasn't dead."
Illira pulled herself up from the ground after shoving her dirk into its sheath, making her way to the others as her arm hung bleeding and limp by her side, "She is dead, D'hein, I can attest to that much."
Snapping at the man, Cypress's normally patient demeanor gone, "That was the entity I found occupying my grandfather's body all those years ago. I am its keeper. I am sorry for your loss, but my hunt is not finished."
K'airos cried on her mother's shoulder. "She created it in the Sagolii." she barely managed to explain between the tears. "Maybe...maybe she died when she left to the desert... and..."
Her cry was more forceful, breaking her words and not letting her speak. But at least she had found something to excuse her sister's actions: it had never been her sister.
"You," Antimony's voice choked out, and she bent forward until her head nearly hung past the edge of the splintered pier. Her ears buried themselves in her hair, shoulders trembling. "You will not... desecrate her body... any further. You've already--already denied her... the sands."
D'hein's ears fell flat on his head, both of them. He scowled. "I want you to tell me about this entity."
"I threw it back in the pit. I do not know how it got out the first time, for it was when I trekked up to ensure my grandfather's safety was when I found it. Though his body was too sick and weak for it to do much." She paused, thinking, "It remembered and spoke of pieces to me. Though it puzzled over the memories."
Tiny footsteps reached the group and stopped some distance away. Ulanan looked very tired, and was not holding any book. She kept quiet.
K'airos tried to make Antimony stand up. "I don't want to be here."
With no strength in her limbs to resist, Antimony bowed to her daughter's urging. When she stood next to K'airos, she felt as thin as parchment, as ephemeral as the dunes of the Sagolii. She held her daughter weakly to her and could not stop her tears.
D'hein shirked his robe from both shoulders, leaving himself standing in a thin shirt and extraordinarily tight white pants, like the kind D'aijeen used to wear. He turned to Illira with his robe in hand like a rag, gesturing. "Wrap this around your arm, and then I want you to go with Antimony and K'airos back to Horizon. See a healer there."
The elezen's jaw tightened, but she took the offered material anyway, pressing it to her arm since she couldn't wrap it one handed. She turned away from D'hein, not offering a thank you, but perhaps the absence of snide remarks was as much thanks as she was willing to offer. Stepping down towards the mother and daughter she said, "We should leave now."
K'airos didn't even nod, but she did move away from the pier, holding Antimony's hand with her own. Antimony walked with her daughter in silence, head bowed.
The lalafel walked past them and stood between D'hein and Burned Cypress. She crossed her tiny arms over her chest and waited.
The hellsgaurd looked down at the small woman, "Did require something?"
"You seem to know what was going on." was the lalafell's blunt answer. "So what was all this?"
"I do not have the answers to everything. But it was not simply a girl who lost control of something that was too much for her to contain. She had a voidsent within her, beyond that... I do not yet."
"Well what are you going to do about it?" D'hein stood with arms and tail limp, turning his gaze back to the water.
"I don't think there's much to do at all." the lalafel said, taking a short glance over the edge.
"I will find it again. I only need time once more."
D'hein took a very deliberate step back. "Then perhaps we should return to Horizon as well."
Ulanan nodded, turning  with D'hein and heading towards the entrance of the Bay.
"Perhaps you should." With that Cypress walked down the the pier, significantly calmer than she was when she first came back from forced oblivion.
D'hein stopped when he realized that the woman didn't intend to come with them, eying her. Then he looked down at Ulanan. "I don't like just leaving her to wander. She knows more than she says."
Ulanan, with tired expression and movements, nodded as if she had just accepted a tiresome task. "I'll stay with her." she said, not walking anymore. "You go with the others. Don't wait for me."
Cypress stood at the edge the wooden structure, looking out on the waters that D'aijeen had vanished into, looking very out of place.
"I will trust your talents and thus-far limitless altruism, then. Thank you." D'hein turned away to follow the others back to Horizon. "I would insist that I stay, if not for Illira."
"Yes." Ulanan found what she identified as a comfy wall and headed to it, keeping her head turned towards the Roegadyn. "You will do better at comforting them, and you'll need your own share, too. I'm sorry for this." she added.
When she reached the wall, she sat against it with her hands hanging to the sides lazily. She'd keep watch on that woman and hopefully not fall asleep.
It turned its head towards the fallen Roegadyn, the vulture skulls floating inside the sleek shape of its head turning to regard her. Then it looked at Ulanan. The skulls of the scavengers shifted, and took two steps forward, and lifted its head like a dog sniffing the air.
Behind it, D'aijeen lifted herself and gagged. The mask on her own face rose to look at the beast that had ripped out of her body.
Still prey of horror, Ulanan wrenched her book towards her side, aether forming above it. She pointed with the other hand at the monster, and the golem warding Antimony floated straight in its direction, maw open and clearly wanting to bite.
Illira heard the foul noises behind her and looked over her shoulder, eyes widening, as she tried to wrestle Antimony's face into her shoulder so that she couldn't continue to stare at what was happening.
The older miqo'te continued to struggle against Illira's grip, but they were useless in their weakness. She screamed for her daughter though, over and over.
"I don't want this to happen." D'aijeens voice seeped from the green mask before her features. She pushed herself upright. Darkness stained her face and chin, chest and stomach, where the monster had ripped out of her. But the darkness sunk into her form, and left no wound behind. Her dress was ripped and burned, her skin burned and mutilated beneath. Her neck hung open with that same hideous wound.
She pushed herself up, looking weak. But she'd always been weak. The fetish of rodent bones hung from her fingers once more as she stared at the monster. "I don't want this to be happening. I don't want any of this to happen. I don't want you. I don't want you!" She swung the bones in front of her, and the earth beneath her feet began to move in response, rushing up against the monster.
Sensing an oncoming attack, the skulls of the scavangers spun once, and D'aijeen fell back against the steps like animal bones dropped from a shaman's hands; eyes that knew the secret ways might be able to tell the future from how she fell.
The ephemeral canine turned in a flash away from D'aijeen, snapped its maw at Ulanan, and turned towards the Lalafel's construct as it came near. It pounced at it, bringing its teeth and claws to content with the paper.
Looking over his shoulder, D'hein stared at the monster wide-eyed. "... An animal attack. She did kill D'ahl."
The pet rushed to it with its own maw open and wailed silently when they met, the claws tearing and sinking into its structure, deforming its shape and bringing it down to the ground. The torn borders turned orange first, and soon the whole golem changed to that color.
A purple mist materialized and vanished at the same time the creatures hit each other. The aether contained sought to settle on the bones of the voidsent and corrode them. Another cloud, green this time, followed with the same purpose. Ulanan moved her tome high up as soon as she was done casting those, preparing for another.
Illira knew she wasn't enough of a swordsman to take on the voidsent beast that stared the lalafel down. Antimony had been a shaman though, at least that was what a background check on the woman had turned up, and what her brief encounter with a couple of her tribesfolk had told her.Â
So she shook the miqo'te's shoulders, in hopes of cutting through the hysteria. "Can you do anything here? Or will you continue down this hole your digging?"
"Aijeen!" Antimony cried out, not immediately processing Illira's words. Tears dragged wet lines down her cheeks, settled and spread into the creases of her skin around her eyes, her mouth, dripping into the collar of her robe. She hung in Illira's grip, sobbing, and then made to lunge to the side, to attempt to make it to her daughter's side once more.
She froze in Illira's grip, however, when her actions brought the skeletal beast into view. Familiar. The color drained from her face. Her ears shook, and she let out a whimper with her daughter's name again. And then came the anger. "DEMON!" She shrieked at the thing. "Demon, I'll banish--I'll banish you! You'll not shadow my family again!"
Illira pushed Antimony aside and towards the beast, "Then -do it-. Clean up your daughter's mess."
The skulls of the scavengers destroyed the construct beneath it, and pitched upright, throwing its head into the air as though to howl. It made no sound except for the clattering of its bones. The ribs that composed its claws began to decompose. The beaks that made up its teeth discolored. It showed no notice. It was distracted by Antimony for an instant, turning and making an expression as though to snarl. The vulture skulls inside its head just stared, blank.
Then it turned and rushed Ulanan, ready to rip her apart.
D'aijeen pushed herself to her feet once more, glaring first at the monster, and then the fallen Roegadyn. She shivered, though, and turned away. She couldn't run, too exhausted, but she staggered down the steps and turned towards the sea.
Ulanan concentrated her spell over her book, not releasing it. When the creature was only a meter away from her, ready to destroy her, her last envelope vanished from her pocket. A barrier materialized in front of her, looking like a tall wall made of paper bricks. The force of the impact broke it just like a real one, making the structure bend and half of the bricks on top of it fall. Though instead of hitting the ground with the full strength of gravity, they gently floated in all directions.Â
She released the accumulated aether then, all around her, spreading it to the wall. Circular, bulky eyes and a smile formed in each of them and, in the next instant, they flew out to hit the monster as if catapulted.
Antimony staggered forward, nearly toppling to the ground from Illira's shove. She simultaneously cowered and glared with wide, green eyes at the demon, and then cringed back when Ulanan's attack struck it.
The shadowy canid stopped short in its tracks as it found itself assailed, snapping at the various things that struck it. Still, it made no sound. Brittle bones cracked inside its body, but hung in place unnaturally. As though the bones were conforming to the shape of the monster instead of the other way around. The canid thrust its head upward and snapped at the air, then dropped down again and shook and spun and bit. Finally, it jumped to the side, not freeing itself from the attack but giving itself slightly more room. From this new angle, it rushed Ulanan again, not significantly damaged.
Illira drew her short sword and dirk, knowing that her preferred weapon would be useless here. And though she was far too rusty, she didn't trust those that were conscious to hold out. D'hein and K'airos were dumbstruck, and Antimony wasn't much better even after the burst of energy. The lalafell was likely running on her last legs... and her legs were short. So the Elezen strode towards the short woman and the beast, past Antimony.
Bowing over herself, clutching with both hands to her chest, Antimony whimpered a string of desperate prayers, words with a rhythm and meaning far more ancient than the stone beneath their feet.
Ulanan used the beast's brief moment of confusion to put more space between it and her. "D'hein! Ice! I need time to summon something bigger!" she yelled while running away and plucking pages out of her book, throwing them into the air like a chicken losing feathers rabidly.Â
Her paper bricks kept following the creature and flinging themselves at it. Those that failed to hit it made a circle, floated and then flinged themselves again until they did.
D'hein pet K'airos's head. "Stay here. Stay down, please." He rose and took his scepter in hand again, putting a couple of yalms between himself and his daughter's sister. He spread his stance, giving a tired gaze to the monster, as though he were looking at something he knew to be a dream. He began to conjure a spell, feeling slow and outclassed.
The monster continued to follow Ulanan, only momentarily slowed. It gained momentum, found it in itself to ignore the distracting bricks.
Seeing the monster chasing the Lalafell, D'hein unleashed what of his spell he had conjured, casting for once in silence. The bolt of ice stuck the beast's feet and slowed one of its legs. Most of the delay this provided was thanks to the creature's confusion. The spell cast, D'hein lazily and belatedly muttered "Ice spell" as he began to conjure another.
Picking up a run, Illira dashed towards the leg that D'hein had iced, slicing at the back of the near the hollow of the knee before moving back out, dragging her longer blade against the ribcage as she moved towards behind it.
This distract the monster far more, as it immediately jumped away from Illira. Bricks slammed into its body the whole way, but it focused on her, turning back and pouncing at her like a great wolf threatened, going for her long neck.
D'aijeen reached the pier where the boats to and from Limsa Lominsa would dock several times a day. Now it was empty. Vesper Bay was not a fishing town. There were no small boats currently docks. The pier was empty. D'aijeen stood on the edge and stared down at the water. Black and deep.
K'airos did not stay down, nor there were she was. She rose up and walked, staring at the creature, recognizing it. She had trouble breathing, but still she shouted angrily. "I need a weapon!" She wasn't sure who she was yelling at, or what she expected. She looked around in a state of frenzy.
The lalafel noticed the beast change of focus and turned around. "Illira! Watch out!" she warned loudly, still throwing pages up into the air. They and those that she had thrown before started to move as if pushed by the wind, slamming into each other on the ground, an aura of aether slowly building up on them.
It really had been too long since Illira had done such things as she was tonight. Already breathing hard, the middle aged elezen was knocked down as the beast pounced on her, she'd brought her short sword up though, aiming for its the gap between its wolf-like bone jaws. She tried to pull her head to the side away from the snapping teeth as its paw pinned her down.
D'hein glanced behind him. "K'airos, no! Grab your mother and get her away!"
The beast opened its mouth to bite at Illira's head. When the sword stabbed into its mouth, it showed no concern, letting the blade pierce its body. It bit down on her arm instead of her head, though, the beaks that were its teeth stabbing into her flesh. The tip of Illira's sword stabbed into the monsters head, pressing against the skulls behind the canid's immaterial face. The skulls of the scavengers did not react.
The sharp teeth bore down into her thin arm, causing her to yell out with the edge of pain on her voice, "Just finish it. I won't be bait for long!" Her fingers were forced to drop the hilt of the short sword, leaving it hanging from the beast's head as she tried to drive her dirk into one of its eyes.
Ulanan's crazy flinging of papers into the air ceased. Her book had only one empty page left. She cringed at it with one hand over it, gathering into it all the aether that was left on her. Then she tore it and threw it up. The mass of papers that had been piling up in the street reacted to this, lifting themselves high up and quickly taking the shape of a sphere. It inflated, its surface solidifying and cracking, the empty spaces between the sheets shining with a white light. The last of Ulanan's pages disappeared between the cracks and then the paper meteor came crashing down towards the bone beast.
The beast saw the light and flinched away from it, like a shadow being pushed away by the cresting of dawn. It dragged Illira by her arm several paces, and then released her to try and evade the meteor. D'hein launched his second ice spell then, this one fully formed, catching the monster across all of its legs and stunning it for the briefest moment.
The meteor struck the monster sideways, having arced over Illira to get to it. The thing was knocked back, hard, at first born by the meteor itself and then further from the concussive force of its detonation. As it careened it seemed thinner, almost immaterial, the bones of its body tumbling end over end and only loosely held together.
It landed on the pier, immediately behind D'aijeen, and she turned to look at. The monster didn't lay still for long before it began to reshape. D'aijeen flinched at it, stepped back, almost off the pier. She looked back at the water, cold and dark as a sea of ink beneath her. A sea of shadow. "I don't want you." She looked back at the monster, the thing rising. The canid form turned towards her moving its head. "I don't want you! I wish I'd never made you!"
Shadows churned beneath her, suddenly dark, suddenly thick, and suddenly powerful. They grew and fell, stretching out beneath the pier. And then they broke it. The pier collapsed under the weight of the monster, all of its braces and pillars snapping into splinters. The monster fell into the water, and D'aijeen fell with it. Shadows rose around them as though the sea were lifting itself to catch them. But the shadows lay over D'aijeen and the monster and pulled them down beneath the surface of the water.
Cypress's hand twitched, fine etchings where the magical fire took to her skinshowed through as if she were the burnt wood that she had been named after. It was faint, just below the surface, but ready to be reignited in any given moment.Â
Her eyes shot open, seeing only the sandy flagstones, she quickly tried to shove herself upwards with a grunt. Sitting up against the cracked pillar as she scanned the area. Nothing of interest, except for the same scattered people that had been there earlier. Except D'aijeen.Â
A roar of a splash brought her head whipping around as she scrambled to her feet, dizzy with the sudden movement. "Where is she?" The woman yelled out, desperation and angry making her cracked voice worse than it normally was.
Illira's dirk fell to the ground as she clutched at her torn arm. She pulled herself upright into a sitting position, hissing at the movement. It felt like her arm was broken. Or perhaps just dislocated. It was impossible to tell in that moment.
K'airos stood still and silent, paralyzed again as she watched her sister, sink with the pier and the beast.
Ulanan dropped to the ground into a sitting position. She was too exhausted to answer the Roegadyn, so instead she just pointed towards there.
The crashing of wood and water tore Antimony's head up from her cowed position. Her eyes caught the dwindling waves, splinters, and inky shadow, and she didn't have to see D'aijeen to know where her daughter had gone. She cried out brokenly and bolted for the ruined pier.
D'hein lingered in a stupor for a moment, idling on the verge of casting another spell even several seconds after the monster and the woman fell into the water. Then he shook himself free. "Antimony!" He ran forward, trying to catch up to the woman before she got too far away. He was far less desperate in his charge than she was, however.
Shaking the fuzziness off, Cypress ran towards pier as well, though not alongside the others, stopping at the steps, only to see nothing there, but a too-short dock and the last of the darkness vanishing below the waves. She stood there for a moment, watching for any other movement before letting out a howl. One that could have rivaled any Coerthas dragon in its ferocity. It was a marvel that she didn't spit fire as they did.
"Mom!" K'airos snapped out of her own and ran towards her mother to stop her, fearing the beast would come back at any moment.
Ignoring both D'hein and K'airos, perhaps not even hearing them, Antimony flung herself to her hands and knees as far as she could go along the shattered remains of the pier. She stared down into the churning, black water and then let out a choked sob.
When Antimony didn't immediately throw herself to the ocean in despair, D'hein slowed his run to a trot and came alongside her, standing with the others and staring down into the water. He searched, seeing nothing but darkness and some floating wood debris. Then he turned towards the Roegadyn. "What are you angry about? She's dead. That's what you wanted."
K'airos shook at that, not understanding it. She didn' think about it either. She took her mother's shoulders and tried to pull her away. "Mom...it's..." Her words died in her mouth, and she just crumbled, kneeling and hugging her.
Cypress gave D'hein a sidelong look, the etchings in her arm pulsing with a deep orange color. "Her body is dead. But it was before too. A little water won't keep voidsent down. There is method to what I do."
Antimony did not turn from the slowly settling water, but she did shift her arms to clutch at K'airos. Tears shook her body, and her grey tail curled against her remaining daughter's side.
Letting a hand rest on Antimony's shoulder, D'hein snapped at Cypress. "My daughter is not a Voidsent! She didn't get possessed between today and yesterday. Or today and last year for that matter! And she certainly wasn't dead."
Illira pulled herself up from the ground after shoving her dirk into its sheath, making her way to the others as her arm hung bleeding and limp by her side, "She is dead, D'hein, I can attest to that much."
Snapping at the man, Cypress's normally patient demeanor gone, "That was the entity I found occupying my grandfather's body all those years ago. I am its keeper. I am sorry for your loss, but my hunt is not finished."
K'airos cried on her mother's shoulder. "She created it in the Sagolii." she barely managed to explain between the tears. "Maybe...maybe she died when she left to the desert... and..."
Her cry was more forceful, breaking her words and not letting her speak. But at least she had found something to excuse her sister's actions: it had never been her sister.
"You," Antimony's voice choked out, and she bent forward until her head nearly hung past the edge of the splintered pier. Her ears buried themselves in her hair, shoulders trembling. "You will not... desecrate her body... any further. You've already--already denied her... the sands."
D'hein's ears fell flat on his head, both of them. He scowled. "I want you to tell me about this entity."
"I threw it back in the pit. I do not know how it got out the first time, for it was when I trekked up to ensure my grandfather's safety was when I found it. Though his body was too sick and weak for it to do much." She paused, thinking, "It remembered and spoke of pieces to me. Though it puzzled over the memories."
Tiny footsteps reached the group and stopped some distance away. Ulanan looked very tired, and was not holding any book. She kept quiet.
K'airos tried to make Antimony stand up. "I don't want to be here."
With no strength in her limbs to resist, Antimony bowed to her daughter's urging. When she stood next to K'airos, she felt as thin as parchment, as ephemeral as the dunes of the Sagolii. She held her daughter weakly to her and could not stop her tears.
D'hein shirked his robe from both shoulders, leaving himself standing in a thin shirt and extraordinarily tight white pants, like the kind D'aijeen used to wear. He turned to Illira with his robe in hand like a rag, gesturing. "Wrap this around your arm, and then I want you to go with Antimony and K'airos back to Horizon. See a healer there."
The elezen's jaw tightened, but she took the offered material anyway, pressing it to her arm since she couldn't wrap it one handed. She turned away from D'hein, not offering a thank you, but perhaps the absence of snide remarks was as much thanks as she was willing to offer. Stepping down towards the mother and daughter she said, "We should leave now."
K'airos didn't even nod, but she did move away from the pier, holding Antimony's hand with her own. Antimony walked with her daughter in silence, head bowed.
The lalafel walked past them and stood between D'hein and Burned Cypress. She crossed her tiny arms over her chest and waited.
The hellsgaurd looked down at the small woman, "Did require something?"
"You seem to know what was going on." was the lalafell's blunt answer. "So what was all this?"
"I do not have the answers to everything. But it was not simply a girl who lost control of something that was too much for her to contain. She had a voidsent within her, beyond that... I do not yet."
"Well what are you going to do about it?" D'hein stood with arms and tail limp, turning his gaze back to the water.
"I don't think there's much to do at all." the lalafel said, taking a short glance over the edge.
"I will find it again. I only need time once more."
D'hein took a very deliberate step back. "Then perhaps we should return to Horizon as well."
Ulanan nodded, turning  with D'hein and heading towards the entrance of the Bay.
"Perhaps you should." With that Cypress walked down the the pier, significantly calmer than she was when she first came back from forced oblivion.
D'hein stopped when he realized that the woman didn't intend to come with them, eying her. Then he looked down at Ulanan. "I don't like just leaving her to wander. She knows more than she says."
Ulanan, with tired expression and movements, nodded as if she had just accepted a tiresome task. "I'll stay with her." she said, not walking anymore. "You go with the others. Don't wait for me."
Cypress stood at the edge the wooden structure, looking out on the waters that D'aijeen had vanished into, looking very out of place.
"I will trust your talents and thus-far limitless altruism, then. Thank you." D'hein turned away to follow the others back to Horizon. "I would insist that I stay, if not for Illira."
"Yes." Ulanan found what she identified as a comfy wall and headed to it, keeping her head turned towards the Roegadyn. "You will do better at comforting them, and you'll need your own share, too. I'm sorry for this." she added.
When she reached the wall, she sat against it with her hands hanging to the sides lazily. She'd keep watch on that woman and hopefully not fall asleep.
![[Image: AntiThalSig.png]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179079766/AntiThalSig.png)
"Song dogs barking at the break of dawn, lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm; and these streets, quiet as a sleeping army, send their battered dreams to heaven."
Hipparion Tribe (Sagolii)Â - Â Antimony Jhanhi's Wiki
