The Kindly Mr. Epinoch (Semi-Closed)

[Askier]

“Dead. This one requests that you be utterly sure with what you are saying.” Jin’li stated calmly as he gazed at the raven seated on his desk. Jin’li stood in the middle of the room, his black eyes fixed on the bird as the miqo’te’s hands held a broom. Jin’li had refused to allow the staff of the “Drowining Wench” to clean his room, feeling they did not clean it well enough for his tastes and he was currently three hours into cleaning his room. On average the shadow of a living miqo’te cleaned for roughly four hours a day.

 

“Is sure! Is sure! Is sure! Dead! Dead! Dead!” the raven cawed harshly and Jin’li blinked. The discovery that ‘Fire’ was dead was an unhappy development. He had needed her to deliver his messages to continue escalating the tensions he needed to perpetuate death and chaos. The male frowned and then went to his desk and pulled out pen and ink. He wrote, over the course of about an hour, three letters. Once they were complete, he wrapped them neatly and stamped them shut with a seal.

 

As Jin’li rose, three crows hopped on his desk and Jin’li explained to them their instructions on how to find each of the three persons needed with each letter. Once the birds understood as best as their dark minds could fathom, they seized the letters and took to the skies to seek out their intended targets. Jin’li then took his broom in his hand again and resumed his cleaning.

 

Jin’li might be insane, but he kept a wonderfully clean room.

[Askier]

The man was dressed in all white and would have cute a clean figure.  But he was covered in blood.  Lots of it. His arms, hands, and chest were all crimson.  But it was not from a murder.

 

The man had just delivered a new born into the world and the hyur was grinning like a fool, his bearded face taking on a kind expression as he heard the babies cry silence into sleep.  The babe was a healthy girl and both mother and child slept as the doctor collected his belongings and lefts the room, his bag in hand. 

 

He stepped out of the hut at the edge of the water.  The gathered family looked at him and the hyur smiled and nodded.

 

"It's a girl and she will live. Both of them." An excited cheer went up from the crowd and several people walked forward to thank him.  When the doctor had arrived, the woman had been with complications.  The child had tried to come out feet first. But the doctor had managed with his skills, to change the babes course and save the mother.

 

All in all the hyur was pleased.

 

He quietly excused himself and began walking away from the crowd after he gave them instructions on how to treat the woman.  They already knew, he assumed.  Children were spawned like flies here in this part of the land.  But no matter.

 

The road back to his home followed the ocean and he had made a good deal of progress before he suddenly stopped as a black raven flew down, dropped a scroll off before him and took to the sky.

 

The doctor blinked behind his glasses at the spectacle and, after a moment of indecision, picked up the letter.  He looked around and, with bloody hands, unrolled the letter.

 

He read the first four lines and then hurled the document away from him before he looked at the raven that was staring at him with glowing red eye from a nearby branch.

 

"Hello, Doctor." the bird cawed.

 

The hyur turned and ran.

[Askier]

The boy had bought the gunblade in the ghetto's of Limsa.  The hyur lad with dark hair had needed something, anything.  And the white haired miqo'te that had sold it to him had been so willing to help.  So...kind! How rare a thing.  To have parted with such a fine weapon for only  a handful of gil...

 

The boy could have cried if he wasn't so gripped by terror and fear. Fear for his sister.

 

The bastards had her.  They had taken her last night from their small apartment down by the docks because they couldn't pay the protection money. They were gonna take her, enslave her in a brothel, get their money that way.  He had to kill the two brutes.

 

He knew where they would be. Its where he always delivered their weekly protection payments.  But this time, this day, the boy was going to pay in bullets. 

 

He had never used the weapon before, but he knew it was point and pull trigger and stab.

 

The boy's heart hammered in his chest, lungs filling quickly as he ran through the streets.  He came to the small door.  A sign in weathered paint said it was closed.

 

The boy's boot disagreed.  The boy kicked the door open, tearing the latch off.  Two figures turned, shouting in surprise.  The boy didn't stop. He aimed the silver gunblade and was screaming as he pulled the trigger.

 

So great was the boy's blood lust that he failed to see the rune etched into the side of the blade glowing a dull purple as the weapon fired.  He failed to see the flashes of ethereal light that glinted for the briefest of milliseconds as the bullet hit before the hint of something sinister and magical was lost as blood erupted from the men's bodies.

 

The gun shots subsided and there was screaming from inside the  hut. One of the men was only wounded, not dead, but the boy was stabbing away with the blade, blood oozing over the floor.

 

On the roof of the building, a crow cawed triumphantly as it's glowing red eyes says the dead souls departing for the afterlife.  The birds glowing red eyes saw as the souls were seized up and kept from crossing into Nald'thal's domain and locked away.  The bird cawed again and took to the skies.

 

There were others weapons with the rune circulating through Eorzea now, and there were so many souls to watch die.

[Askier]

Darkness.  Shadow. Nothingness. Freedom of all restrictions.

 

These were the true states of the universe.  The innate. The uncontrolled.  The purity called chaos.  Trapped outside the false walls of this "creation" it dwelt, pressing and pushing, chewing little tendrils of entropy into the small cracks it could create.  It was the universe as it always had been.  How it should be once more.

 

Jin'li opened his black eyes as the bitter mountain winds tore as his black garments.  Clouds hung low and a frigid wind howled out of them as the low pressure system battered itself upon the peaks of the north.  The pale albino blinked and feasted his black eyes upon Ishgard sitting far and below in the distance.

 

The hollow figure of Jin'li continued to stare as the ravens behind him cawed loudly as they continued to pick the meat from the bones of a dead figure, who, not moment ago, had had their soul torn from their meaty coil and hurtled into what waited beyond.

 

The rumors coming from Ishgard interested the little miqo'te and as his black eyes continued to gaze upon the sealed city, dark plots were given life inside the blasphemous little miqo'te's vile mind.

[Askier]

"You can't make me do this." the hyur glared through his goggles at the white-haired miqo'te that was gazing back back at him with unblinking, black eyes.  Between them rested a massive table covered in Bunsonburners, vials, tubes, and countless more alchemy tools.

 

"This is true." Jin'li conceded in his emotionless voice as he swept his gaze around the room.  They were in a large, stone building that housed all of the research of the hyur that Jin'li calmly referred to as "The Doctor."  The hyur had once worn a different face, but the individual's mind was what the albino miqo'te wanted.

 

"Though, why resist?  This could be your greatest truim-"

 

"I already achieved that working for you." The hyur snarled.  "I did the impossible.  You, you should be dead!  And what you ask of me now... its beyond murder!  Its blasphemous science! It defies nature, it-"

 

"Defies nature, my dear "Doctor"?"  Jin'li's soulless, black eyes swept back to transfix the hyur with his blank stare.  "This one wants it to.  This one desires-"

 

"What you desire is not my concern!" the hyur snapped.  "I'm done with you. You defy death, kidnap me, and now plan to sin against all concepts of morality!"

 

"This one would ask that you stop interrupting him." Jin'li blinked slowly.  "It's very rude."

 

The hyur stammered at the statement and Jin'li continued in a slow, monotone pattern:

 

"As this one was saying, you were brought to free those who have been imprisoned by these-"

 

"Imprisoned?" they hyur scoffed.  "Just as you did me? I'm not here of my own will."

 

Jin'li's face was blank.  Whatever thoughts were forming behind the miqo'te's black eyes could not be guessed upon.

 

After several minutes of ominous silence, Jin'li lifted his cane from the floor and pointed it towards the door.

 

"This one does not wish for you to feel imprisoned, dear "Doctor".  You may leave, then, if you so wish."

 

The hyur gazed at the tiny miqo'te from behind his glasses.  The "Doctor" knew better than most of the capable treachery this mad little male harbored inside his ruined mind.  But the unease of being in the miqo'te's presence was stronger than the alarm bells ringing in the "Doctor's" mind.

 

The hyur slowly edged towards the door, never taking his eyes off the black, onyx optics that watched him.  The Doctor seized the door handle and stepped outside into the night as he slammed the door behind him.

 

Jin'li heard the screaming that begin the instant the door shut as the thing he had left there attacked the hyur.  It took nearly a minute for the agonized screaming to fade into bloody gargles and then silence.  Through it all, Jin'li watched the growing puddle of crimson leak into the room under the door without moving.

 

Eventually, the male limped over to a large desk, covered in the late hyur's research.  Jin'li flipped through one book slowly before saying aloud:

 

"This one seems in need of a new scientist. Perhaps the next will not be so rude as to interrupt all the time."

[Askier]

"Mr. Oul."

 

Jin'li Epinoch turned.  He was dressed in a black suit made of silk.  A silver cane was in his right hand and a raven was perched on his shoulder, its glowing red eyes fixed on the elezen woman who had spoken.

 

The female paused to swallow.  It was obvious she was uncomfortable in the presence of the eerie miqo'te and his avian companion, but she collected herself and went on, her hands clutching tightly the large book in her hands.

 

"Mr. Oul, we have received a relatively large order to a client in Gridania, more than our current agents there can supply with their present stock, and I wanted your approval to shift the requested ordinance to the location as soon as possible.

 

Jin'li blinked slowly.  The female elezen never knew what her employer was thinking.  The little male was a mystery, who made even less sense in everything except how he ran his company.  He had been looking for an accountant and she had been in the right place at the right time.

 

She had never heard of Trythian Oul, or his arms company before the male had approached her, but she had come to find his company was already a well-oiled machine that somehow policed itself and operated without issue.  Trythian Oul Industries certainly wasn't the largest organization of its kind but it was becoming a very profitable one and, by the elezen's calculations, well spread.  At this point, there very few places a weapon bearing the Trythian Oul Industries' rune was not obtainable.  And with the possibility of coming conflict in the north, her employer had shifted a decent chunk of the companies' resources to distributing their weapons there.

 

And there was even talk of shipping weapons overseas to the far off lands.

 

"Miss Teara," Jin'li said finally, his voice devoid of emotion.  "Would you kindly see that our client has the required explosives as soon as possible?  This one would be an unworthy man of consumerism if we did not offer the goods as needed.  That would be rude, and we are never rude or unkind."

 

"Very well."  Teara nodded.  She had long since become accustomed to the strange male's odd behavior.

 

"Anything else, Mr. Oul?" Teara asked as she took a step back, eager to be out of the gaze of the bird that watched her.

 

"There is, actually." Jin'li replied slowly.  "This one has an appointment to keep near Ul'dah and will be absent for a few suns.  Would you kindly water the plants in this one's office and handle any business that arises while this one is away?"

 

"I.." Teara was unsure of what to say.  She ran a great deal of the company, tracking the flow of goods, money, and needed muscle, but to have full reign over the company to make decisions without her superiors approval, even for a few days was unexpected. She had not been working for Trythian Oul industries that long.

 

"I will do my best, Mr. Oul."

 

"This one is most pleased."  Jin'li said with a  bow.  "You honor this one with your acceptance.  Though, you need fear not, for you shall not be alone."

 

As Jin'li rose, the bird on his shoulder flew off and landed on Teara's shoulder.  The bird blinked and adjusted itself as if it belonged. Teara had to swallow.

 

"We will be watching you.  To make sure you do not come to harm."

[Askier]

Jin'li sat in is tower at the heart of Limsa, wrapped in the cloak of midnight.  The white miqo'te was leaning forward in his chair, silently studying the blank wall. 

 

The light of several candles flickered as a wind from a gathering storm blew in through the open windows.  In the shadows cast by these pale, ghost lights, dozens of ravens sat; their burning, blood red eyes peering at the miqo'te. 

 

His face was blank as the wheels of his twisted mind spun their dark plans.  He had no emotions on his face and his eyes were empty pits, devoid of anything.

 

He sat without emotion.  All that remained was a single, unwaverable purpose. 

 

Adin had seen to that. 

 

Severing the runt's soul in twain.  Cutting the weak, emotional part from him, attempting to leave the miqo'te powerless.  But Jin'li had endured.  He was now without any weakness of mind.  No emotions, no memories, nothing but a singular drive to destroy the ruined world he was trapped in and free the masses of mortal souls into the true void in which anarchy reigned true and even god's could not claim dominion.

 

More winds blew, stronger than before as the heart of the storm drew closer to Limsa, the mighty tempest heads rising up like the fingers of a furious god.

 

The gusts tossed pages of open ledgers frantically.  The pages were all covered in Jin'li methodical transcription.  Hundreds of pages revealed thousands of weapons and massive quantities of gil had been spread through out Eorzea and beyond.  Weapons bearing the mark of Jin'li's company now reached nearly every shadowed little crook this world could offer. 

 

And every person that died at their edges or points would never have their soul reach Nald'Thal's domain.  They were taken for the white miqo'te's singular, obsessive purpose. 

 

The Amassing.

 

The great act Jin'li intended to unleash upon the world was growing close to it's final stages.  Soon, nothing would stop the world's demise. And it would be the habit of mortals to butcher one another that would see it all happen.  Jin'li was a leech feasting upon the normal acts of mortal hatred and greed.  The plan was simple.  Like a tax collector, he let the little bees buzz about working, and take his share without their willing consent.

 

They would praise him when the false reality came crashing down. 

 

Thunder rolled.

 

There was only one hitch in his plan. One loose screw. 

 

"The White Raven." Jin'li stated calmly, his voice flat and devoid of any emotion as he black eyes stared into the wall.

 

The gathered black ravens cawed angrily and the tore out of the windows in a gathered mass as they were suddenly driven by the will of the white miqo'te.  Their red eyes glowed as they tore into the tempest int heir wild search.  They would hunt, they would find, and they would kill.