[Story] CHAOS THEORY

[Dante Abigor]

[PRE NOTES: An experimental attempt at making a horror story within FFXIV. Much harder than it sounds actually. Feel free to comment or drop me a message about the story, I'd really appreciate it.]

 

 

_{CHAOS THEORY}

 

Bonslette could not help but sigh impatiently at hersisters, animated as they were while they carried out their shopping activities with seemingly no inkling that they were carrying about in a veritable den of danger-a city of pirates! Shrugging to an equally appalled Luna seemingly shrinking even further into her robes with each passing moment, Bonslette finally reached the limits of her patience. “Gods, you two!” She sternly hissed at Pheria and P’Lami both, “At least think about where we are! Would it kill you two to be a little quieter? Other people are shopping too, and….” She continued her rant as the two groaned and shared an expression of disdain towards each other before stumbling over in defeat, leaning on each other for support in a messy heap that was so perfectly timed one might think it were practiced.

 

 

Truly, anyone watching the four of them from the outsidewould assume they were public entertainment of some sort. This near fact was a source of disdain for Bonslette; she had great pride in her family, and did not wish to see it viewed as a collection of fools, despite the obvious setbacks that her livelier sisters seemed to intentionally cause. Perhaps what added to her troubles was not only that her sisters all seemed to lack some form of social common sense in one way or many, but that they all looked completely and utterly unrelated to one another.

Pheria, the eldest, is a tall and beautiful hyur, with deepviolet hair, and easily the most distinguishable among the sisters from her personality alone. Despite her tendiencies to speak of enjoying the finer things in life, she usually wears an unremarkable garb lightly dyed a feminine color, or hides altogether beneath the robes of a beggar. She also takes us with her sisters along with her as she goes about the realm as a “Wandering Maid”.

 

 

P’Lami, the second youngest of the sisters, is an energeticand playful type that almost never listens to anyone, the only constant exception being Pheria. The young Sun Seeker took full advantage of her new life of luxury and indulgence, at this point nearly collecting the many shiny trinkets at the marketplace and adorning them on herself like a massive “Please mug me” sign.

 

 

Luna was the most suspicious of the group, as well as theyoungest; covering herself in robes and bandaging any exposed flesh, leaving only her mouth and alluring eyes peeking out from underneath a shabby hood made to look half visored thanks to the bandaged horns. She claimed to be Hyur, but something happened to her, and as a result she appears to be quite bestial in a number of places on her body, most notably her rather new horns and runes covering her body.  If P’Lami’s demeanorwas that of one encouraging theft, then Luna’s was a scream of “approach at your own risk”.

 

 

Finally there is Bonslette. The second eldest and an Elezenamong the sisters, she dressed to match the general common man, preferring drab cream colors and a “worn” appearance. Bonslette despised standing out; sadly thanks to her strikingly red and short hair, as well as her pasture green eyes and nearly porcelain pale skin, she usually did so anyway, her sisters doing little to absolutely nothing to assist this issue. Her current growth spurt did nothing to help her either, nearly to Pheria’s shoulders by this point.

 

 

As she continued her rant, something caught her eye. A robedman stood a distance away, sneering rather crudely at her. While this normally would not be enough to break her concentration, what he brandished in his hand certainly was. An emblem carved into the side of a chunk of wood used to fence in cattle and livestock. The edges were charred, but she could still make out that emblem-she would know it anywhere. Darkened edges from the Suns on end of caking and dragging mud into the crevices with one’s finger, a few imperfections where the wood failed and bit painfully into frail and thinned, brittle flesh. The crooked designs of a fingernail being dug and dragged across the surface again and again….

 

 

Yes, it was the emblem she fashioned for herself as a child,the house she dreamed would be hers meant to proudly adorn it, a distraction to dream of better things to forget the world around her at the time. It was at this moment that everything came crashing back to her at once, the memories and pain of the past drilling into her head all at once. She had already put those days behind her, or so she was sure until now. That emblem was supposed to have been burned to ashes with the life she left behind. So why did that man have it?

 

 

The idea of anyone else having survived that fire proved toomuch for her to bear. It was meant to be gone-forever. None-and nothing were to remain. Still midsentence of her lecture, she swiftly brought her hands to her belt, drawing the dagger and wand she kept on her person for protection and charging faster than she knew she could after the man. As if expecting this, the man turned and fled to the nearby docks, but Bonslette was not about to let him escape. She ducked and twirled through the market crowd, again surprising herself with her physical prowess, but no longer than the complete execution of each movement. She lost sight of the man for but a moment as a large lumbering Roegadyn seemingly appeared out of nowhere carrying a crate, and being unable to stop herself in time, she crashed into him, not even stopping to apologize as she jumped to her feet (stepping all over the poor man in the process) to dash off for the docks again. Her stride widened with every step as her desperation seemed to multiply with each movement.

 

 

Before she knew it, she was somewhere she did not recognize,the wooden planks beneath her feet damp and rotting, and the sun hidden from view by a bricks overhead. It seemed she had been lead into a dank and shady part of Limsa Lominsa. Barely managing to gain hold of her senses, she attempted to salvage her blundering into what was obviously a trap by backing away slightly, bringing her hand to her pouch to retrieve her linkpearl. As she removed the pearl from the pouch however, a dagger came screaming through the darkness, knocking it out of her hand and biting painfully into her hand. A squeak of pain and irritable protest escaped her lips, as slowly but surely she was beginning to realize the amount of danger she had charged headlong into.

 

 

Strangely however, she did not mind. Even should she perish,she would at least see that no one else would return again to harm herself or P’Lami. Her determination renewed, she walked fearlessly into the darkness, her wand and dagger clutched into her hands with confidence. In the darkness, she could see nothing at first. Next, her sense of direction began to fail her, and she could no longer feel the weapons in her hands. Finally she could not feel herself at all, save for the sensation of falling for a very long time.

 

At the time, she could not imagine the horrors she would have to endure.

[Dante Abigor]

CHAOS THEORY- Cat in a Box

                You have been here before….

 

Ache settled in as Bonslette slowly returned to consciousness. The aches in her limbs she had all but forgotten she had, the impact on her forehead from the fall that must have occurred…..the many scratches and scrapes on her hands from...wait, from what? Settling herself onto her knees, hazy eyes did gaze at the somewhat bizarre scenery around her.

 

 

It seemed to be a carnival of sorts, but very dimly lit. There were hushed echoes of laughter sounding around her, almost mockingly just beyond her ability to pinpoint. She had no strength in her legs, finding that she had to crawl with much difficulty to move from one spot to the next.

 

 

“Why are my legs so lamed?” she thought idly, desperately attempting to recall the events that may have put her in this condition. Upon closer inspection of herself, her legs were quite battered, as if something blunt had crashed repeatedly into them. Her simple clothes were torn here and there, and her left elbow had something stuck inside of it…..which noticing brought a great deal of pain. Cursing her senses that seemed to be working against her, she noticed something else: Her dagger and wand seemed to be missing; she could not find them no matter how much she searched her person or squinted at the dark floor before and around her.

 

 

Finally, her gasps of pain and the sound of dragging herself across the floor caught the attention of one of the patrons, what appeared to be a man in a garb of a jester just a ways away. His footsteps echoed, which was very strange, considering they were surrounded by a plethora of sounds to mask it. “What is going on?” She thought as he shuffled closer, an action that would soon bring horror as his features became clearer.

 

 

The man-if it could be called that, was certainly not a jester. While dressed as one, his gnarled and patchy haired hands only housed three fat and clawed fingers. His garb was a faded blue, unsewn holes and filthy looking stains adorning its entirety. His face, although somewhat veiled in the dim lighting, was like that of an imaginary being, with eyes like that of a chocobo but with a snout in place of a beak, three cracked and rotting teeth visible inside, and decorated with what appeared to be a series of burn scars along the nostrils.

 

 

Upon seeing her clearly, his features darkened into one of hunger, turning towards the empty darkness behind him and calling out, “Hey, she is over here now! Gonna take her for myself this time!” With his statement finished, he grabbed her by the legs, much to her pained protests and weak thrashing. Excitedly, he dragged her along towards a light, where a number of sickening looking tools lay on display upon the wall; Rusty saws and what appeared to be long and thickened syringes, along with a healthy supply of dirty looking bags and an unpleasantly strong scent of iron. The “thing” plopped her against the wall, fingers running along the bottom of his snout as he savored choosing his tool. Deciding the bag would be the best thing to start with, he snatched one from the wall, pressing it clumsily against Bonslette’s head. Her screams of protest echoed hollow in his ears, and even further away in her own; she found that she could not move, and her vision was slowly beginning to distort and whiten. With the sound of a sickening “pop”, her consciousness faded again altogether, a familiar feeling of all of her bodies’ weight going into her head overtaking her.

 

 

“Why am I here?” she thought as she let herself be guided to and fro by the darkness, unquestioning and without a second thought.

“I wanted to…..do something. Stop someone…..but where? Why? Ah…that’s right…..the man I was chasing. I walked into a trap…but where am I now? What is happening? And why....why is my face so hot?”

 

 

Bonslette abruptly forced herself in a panic onto her feet, the hot cobblestones underneath her now bare feet an unpleasant, but altogether welcome shift from what was happening but moments before. Looking overhead, she could see a beautiful dark blue sky; it appeared to be night out despite the heat. Checking herself over, she found she was far less injured, save a cut on her cheek and a bloody nose. Clutched lovingly into her left hand was her wand, although it still seemed her dagger was missing in action.

 

 

Around herself, it appeared to be an alleyway overlooking a river; she was in a city made up of stones and silence. “What is going on?” She thought, attempting to wrap her mind around the drastically changed scenery and feel of her surroundings. Sighing to herself as she tried to remember, she received naught but a horrible headache for her trouble, the distinct feeling of her head splitting in two overcoming her. Deciding that trying to force it was not a good idea, she attempted to gather information about her surroundings instead; this proved to be a waste of an effort, as there were no one in the city to even converse with, no matter where she looked.

 

 

As the night waned on, the heat began to rise considerably. She found that she had to rip the sleeves off of her tunic to wrap around her feet to protect them. What initially brought her relief was quickly bringing her dread. Bonslette knew not where she was, only that it was only getting hotter. What would happen if she were here during sunrise? The thought brought no pleasant feelings into her bosom, only the clear understanding that she absolutely must not let that happen. But how would she leave?

 

 

So much of what has happened was already so far out of her understanding and ability to comprehend that simply attempting made her woozy. She was hungry, she was exposed, and nothing about the situation she was in made any sense. She should be in some trashy dark alley in Limsa Lominsa, not trekking in dead city attempting to find a way out before she were boiled alive in a city shaped sun bowl.

Realizing that fatigue and thirst had worked against her, she stumbled her way into a nearby building, attempting to rest in the warm shade. Her wand still clutched in her hand, a realization came to her:

 

 

“I can make some ice to cool my body! When the ice melts in this heat, I can use it to slake my thirst. If I cannot make it out before sunrise, I can at least hide in one of these houses and continue to keep myself cool until nightfall comes again!”

 

 

No sooner than after she made this grand plan, she heard something rattle and move in the distance; a brief pause before whatever the source was began to move towards her.

 

 

[tak tak tak!]

 

 

Her night was just beginning.