Two nights before the second set of the Company Tournament. Â
The roof isn't really made for someone to be walking around on it but that hasn't seemed to stop Hammersmith from getting up there with a pen, some ink, and a lantern frame. He's busy pasting paper over wire, stuffing fuel into the basket, and humming to himself some ancient dirge with words that are half mumbled. It's mournful and hopeful. The sort of thing you hear at a wake. The sort of thing you start out with to try and dredge up better memories.
He's still up there as the sun starts to come up.
Watching that lantern drift into the all consuming light of the dawn.
Maybe we can follow that lantern.
Maybe we can read what's on it.
There's a name on it, so at least we know who it's going to.Â
Who's Flameson Henkersbeil?
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Hey Henk.
Been a while.
You mighta heard. Someone dropped a moon on...Everything. Reckon where you are you might of had a good view.
Shit here is absolute peaches and cream. Bunch of old vets and wet behind the ears pups rubbing each other all the right and wrong ways. I can't tell if I'm living in a fightpit or a brothel half the time. The other half of the time one of the fancy folks are talking hoit and toit and I remember what it was like War Dogging for people who had too much coin and time.
You remember that shit Henk? First contract we ever signed you farted so hard I'd thought you'd shit your pants. I had my fucking mouth open when you did it too. It was like someone had funneled everything filthy in the world and added more, just for giggles, and squatted it out on my tongue.Â
You just grinned and signed a name on the contract: "Fart Lord of Shit Mountain."  Think you dropped the Fart Lord name at the next contract. Min, Lihta, and me never really let it drop though. Too good a name to let die.
So, Fart Lord, King of Shit Mountain, why am I writing this? I think that's a good question, personally, considering you've been dead more than 30 years. Yet here I am, all this time later, still alive and still writing you letters in whatever version of hell you ended up in, telling you how things are going, and where they went.
Bad habit. But you and I both know I kind of treasure those. Guy with no vice is a grey, dead husk. Guy with no grounding is just an explosive waiting to go off. Vice give you a little of both. Something to wrap your tounge around and lick. Something to set you on fire inside.
You had the worst fucking vice, you know that right? It's why you're dead. You liked other people's shit. You liked picking fights.
It's not THEIR fault you were built like a 4 foot shithouse. Most people would just haul off one punch, or throw a quip, and let the entire thing buried.
Guessin a lifetime of short jokes for a Roe gets old quick though. Everytime someone opened their fucking mouth you tried to beat them to a bloody, oily pulp.
And the three of us had to pull you off before 'tried' became 'did'.
Then one evening you got with no one to hold you back. I guess someone put a beer on your head. That always set you off worse than usual.
They told us you'd killed a LOT of people in that fight.
They told us they hung you out in the desert. The sort of thing you do for the really bad souls out on Mihgo.
We told them we hoped they used a short rope and had a wake that evening. Kept drinking until the short jokes were a crying laugh.
I started writing letters. Min wrote your story and was revising it as a cautionary tale until the day we parted ways. Lihta just started working on her control. She turned into a gods-damned diamond hard motherfucker and I blame you for that, I really do. It's probably why she got caught in the Purge. No more reckless for Lihta. Always thought things through, always accepted what would come because of it.
Imagine my surprise finding your ass still alive when I was walking back to Ul'Dah nearly 20 years ago.
You were supposed to be dead for ten years before that.
And yet there you were. A hole in your lung. A bigger hole in your gut. Both your knees crushed.
Guessing you met Trouble on the road. If you'd bothered writing back (I found my letters in your camp you little shit. I know you don't know how to write but you could have hired someone you absolute little Shit King.) I'd of warned you not to fuck with her. Not unless you were a mile away and behind a big rock.
I'm guessing you tried a Stand and Deliver with her.Â
She probably made a short joke.
And then she probably shot you and snapped your joints with the other end of her gun.
I'm not sure I was supposed to find you. I'm not sure Trouble cared.  Â
I sat down while you wheezed, bleeding out from a gut wound and slowly suffocating from a lung that was perforated.
I told you what had happened. I told you where Lihta was buried and what had happened with Min.
You didn't say much. I know you heard though. Your eyes hadn't gone glassy yet. Always were tougher than a coffin nail, you were Henk.
Kept those eyes open right to the point where I crushed your skull with that rock.
Kept those eyes open while I put up a cairn marker.
Your eyes open now? You watching the shit that's happening in these parts, in this time and place?
I bet you are, you fucker.
Write back if you can. Otherwise I'll just keep penning and sending, using that hair I cut off you all those decades ago.
Here's hoping you got some rest, Henk. You always moved too hard and too fast. You always complained the four of us should be sprinting until we burned.
Well. I'm the only one left.
Maybe I should start running again.
I'll write yah again later Henk. Got a fight to do. Got some shit to make for that fight.
You take care. I'll see you and the rest eventually. Don't fear. I ain't plannin on goin quietly or easy.
Gotta keep causing trouble, after all.
Last one standing, and all that.
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Flameson Hammersmith