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The song on the radio is a fitting ballad to an empire in its death throes, she thinks. It certainly makes her want to throw herself over the edge of the balcony the more she endures its sound.
She brushes snow off her shoulder and gives her jacket a shake, fingers stiff and creaking, so cold it feels as though her tail might snap off. It is so much colder here than in Ishgard, the chill much more vicious with its bite. Ishgard carries a certain beauty with it, a gentleness; Garlemald has nothing but bitter, wretched spite.
At her side, he shifts in place. Then, a lantern on the table is lit, its light quivering in the wind, the warmth negligible. Almost mocking in its uselessness.
“The cold will not be impressed by your stubborn refusal to acknowledge it,” comes the quip. She hears the smile in his voice, different now than it was mere months ago, “and I daresay my Lord would be dreadfully unhappy to hear of so mundane a demise from his treasured friend .”
She has no skill for thaumaturgy, cannot incense the fire to erupt in his face as she wants. So instead, she asks what he is doing here.
Slithering in Asahi’s sockets, those dark eyes find hers. Try as she might, she does not find a trace of Asahi’s seething hatred in them, only indifference. Perhaps a kernel of amusement.
“I had thought to look in on you, after that whole taxing ordeal at Zot. Bravo, by the way, for putting on such a marvelous performance. Lord Zenos,” he says the name with none of Asahi’s worship, but still, there is something humorous enough in his voice that it churns her stomach, “even managed to express a single emotion at the spectacle. Were I a lesser man, I might’ve taken offense at being so soundly upstaged.”
“Of course,” he continues, heedless of her narrowing eyes, “when it comes to you, our wayward prince has a rather singular…focus, doesn’t he?”
She sighs through her nose.
“And what of you?” she asks. Her breath fogs in the cold; his does not. “What’s your aim in all this?”
“Ah, but we do not speak of me.”
“We should.”
He flutters his eyelashes. Snowflakes rest on them as birds on a branch, barely disturbed. He is normally so animated, but today he is still, perhaps feeling no need to entertain when it is only her alone, with neither Zenos nor the Scions hovering at the fringes, watching the show.
“I’ve already told you, Warrior of Light,” he smiles. It must have been some sort of cosmic joke to bless a dangerous wretch such as Asahi with so lovely a face, she thinks. “I want to die, and I want to take the star with me as I go, laughing into the afterlife.”
“And what do the towers have to do with that plan?”
In the distance, far from their secluded perch, the tower in Garlemald pulses with malevolence. Camp Broken Glass has been quiet all day with everyone out and about, but with such a sight all around them, it is hard to find any respite. The only plan they have is to destroy it, as with Zot, but she has a feeling deep in her gut that she is missing something. She has always been more instinct than intellect.
The radio crackles, the song beginning anew. Endless. Fandaniel reaches over to adjust one of the knobs, turning up the volume with a nudge of his slender finger.
“You’ve been spending too much time with the unsundered, I must say, if you think I can be tempted to reveal my plans to you simply because you asked.” He leans back into the chair, kicking his feet up onto the table. As he speaks, her eyes trail up the elegant line of his legs. “A pattern of behavior that I struggle to understand. Ageless and powerful as they were, all became undone by you. How did you do it?”
In a moment of pettiness most unlike her, she reaches over and turns the volume back down. She would turn it off if she knew how to work the machine, but she does not want to risk amusing him even further should she make a mistake. To err in front of him now would be a humiliation she would not bear.
“I have inquired to Lord Zenos as to the nature of your hold over him , and what sort of magic you have that surrenders every powerful being in this universe completely to you. Alas, as you can imagine, I received nothing but a florid soliloquy, and no answer to my question.” He shrugs. “He is easily distracted when it comes to you.”
“I imagine you use that to your advantage, somehow.”
“Oh, yes.”
They stare at each other for a while. The wind howls around them.
“I didn’t do anything,” the Warrior of Light says, at last. “Even immortals make mistakes, or tire, or forget. I didn’t do anything but swing my sword, or listen. Whichever was needed.”
Often it is both. Ascians do so love to monologue, even when fighting. Perhaps especially when fighting. She does not imagine Fandaniel will be any different, when the time comes for her to defeat him.
Not today, though. She is cold, and she will not slay a man who seems wholly uninterested in fighting her at the moment.
“A simple answer. How refreshing.”
He stands and strides around the table toward her, coming to a stop at her side. Asahi was not especially tall, but as a hyur he still towered above her. Having to look up at him rankles her - and she knows he can tell, by the way his eyes glint in amusement.
“Though I don’t enjoy your frankness enough to reveal my plans to you, alas,” he waves, a fluttery gesture so at odds with what she remembers of Asahi’s body and mannerisms. She wonders if he would be incensed to see himself used in such a way, and almost hides away at the spike of pleasure the thought gives her. “So, I suppose you will have to experience my clever scheme as I enact it. Skipping ahead is a poor way to enjoy a tale, after all.”
“This isn’t a tale. This has consequences, and real people’s lives are on the line.”
“Even better. Low stakes make for stale performances.”
She nearly strikes him.
“Ah, it seems I am out of time,” he says, turning. “I thank you for the conversation. A tried and true way to pass the time, and as you can surmise, my Lord is a rather one-sided conversationalist. You are only marginally better, but you possess a charm he lacks. Though don’t tell him I said so, if you please.”
Her hand whips out to grasp his elbow, nails digging deep. That she is able to touch him almost shocks her for a moment; she half expected him to have been a specter all this time, something she conjured up to tease herself.
Head cocked, he raises a brow at her. Completely unthreatened.
“Why did you choose that body?” she asks, through her teeth.
“Convenience, mostly,” he says. “It is a rather wealthy corpse.”
“So for money, then.”
The thought of any Ascian even considering the notion of money seems absurd.
“Well, and I daresay the form is pleasing enough, wouldn’t you say?” he pries her hand gently off his arm, though he does not release her hand. Eyes on hers, he leans down and places a light kiss on her knuckles.
Damn him, but she shivers at the touch. His mouth feels warm.
“Well, this is certainly a surprise,” he studies her face with rising interest. “It would seem you agree.”
“Be quiet. Leave.”
He laughs and lets her go, walking away. The marginal warmth of him is gone, and her body locks with the sudden chill. The empty space behind him tears and twists, and he winks at her as a familiar dark portal swallows him whole.
“Until next time, warrior.”
Garlemald is too damn cold, she thinks, before picking up the radio and hurling it over the railing.
*
The house is, like so many in the town, abandoned.
Luckily, there is an old fashioned wood heater tucked into the wall on the floor upstairs. Cerulean machines are built sturdier, and provide better heat for less effort, but she is told that some homes still have antiquated fire heaters, especially the ones owned by poorer families.
There is a crate of sloppily chopped firewood next to it, and she breathes a sigh of relief. She will have to babysit the heater throughout the night, certainly, but it is much better than nothing. Everyone else is scattered throughout the camp and the homes nearby, recharging from the day’s exertions for tomorrow. The Warrior of Light was given the place all to herself, and she had been too exhausted to turn away the privilege. Privacy is a luxury these days, and it is one she desperately needs.
So she peels off most of her armour and scatters it around on the wooden floor, sitting down amidst the mess and lights a flame, using a survivalist technique with sticks that Thancred had taught her some time ago. One of these days, she figures she should learn some mage’s arts.
She watches the flames spread over the firewood, untenses her muscles, and tries to relax.
Tries .
Footsteps materialize on the ground a few paces away, followed by the faint smell of aether.
She frowns up at him, ears flattening on her head.
“I’m not in the mood,” she says.
“Then what a boon for me that it is not your moods I answer to,” he smiles, hands clasped behind his back. His walk is jaunty, all springy heels and light steps, and as he comes closer to the fire, the amber light dances in his eyes.
He crouches down beside her, robes pooling on the floor. Resting his chin on his palm, he gives her a long, long look. The smile does not leave his face, and she wants to push back the hair from his eyes.
“I’m in no mood for Zenos, either,” she says.
“Come now,” he rocks back and forth on his heels. The chains around his hips drag obnoxiously on the floor. Everything about this man is needlessly loud. “My Lord would never deign to send me to you, his most treasured friend, and certainly not without himself as a chaperone.”
“Why? Are you going to dishonor me?”
He stops rocking, and makes a show of thinking on it, eyes rolling to the ceiling and tapping his fingers on his cheeks.
“Hm, now that is a thought. A bit trite, perhaps: the nefarious Ascian, come in the night to tarnish the purity of a lovely young maiden, hero to all. Saviour of Eorzea…” he turns and his knees hit the ground, and his fingers pet along her jaw. “But then again, I am a lover of tales and a patron of performance. So, what do you say, fair Warrior of Light? Shall the curtains rise tonight? Shall your honor be put to the stage?”
This close, she could almost count his eyelashes, share his breath. It brings to mind a different time and place - away from the cold of Garlemald and back onto the humid shores of Doma, ages past, looking into those same dark eyes. Only, on that day, they had loathed her so much she half thought a primal would have been summoned to smite her. The memory comes as quickly as it goes, but she still feels the sting of animosity prickle all over her, and so she moves onto her haunches before tackling Fandaniel onto his back.
To his credit, he does not yell or even flinch. Simply huffs a quiet laugh, even as she hears the crack of his head against the floor.
She sits astride his hips and looks down on him with a severe look on her face, irises glinting in the dim light. At her back, her tail sways and curls over the tops of his thighs.
“There is nothing honorable about me,” says the Warrior of Light, grandly. “I am just another adventurer.”
“Does it comfort you to say that?” He looks her up and down, and she feels his thumbs rubbing circles over her bare ankles. “Humility was frowned upon in Allag, did you know? I haven’t much experience with it. It is genuine, I presume, and not some pretty little speech? I can never tell. This era does so love heroes that do not know their own worth.”
His touch is light, and it tickles. In her chest, her heart begins to race at the sight of him below her, hair splayed out on the ground like an ink smudge, his pale face glowing with curiosity. It tightens her insides, makes her warm all over. She does not tell him: she has no honor because she desires the most unsalvageable people, desires their black looks and seething hate. She desires to conquer them and make them hers, make them fall in line like everyone else .
Ugly thoughts. There is no honor there. Of course she tells no one, not even him.
Instead, she cuts through the drama. “Enough talk,” she says. “If you insist on bothing me, then I mean to make better use of your mouth.”
She shoves aside his robe. The heavy fabric falls to the floor, chains clanking against the wood like a gavel, as the fire crackles in witness. She places her hand flat onto his chest, feeling its shallow rise and fall. He breathes in very little air, she realizes, and his heartbeat is alarmingly slow. It is all a farce, all the barest effort to keep the body in motion. Ascians are immeasurably cruel, she thinks.
He is a thin, lean strip of a man, all narrow lines and sharp elbows. Dark nipples, tight from the cold. Pretty all over, just as Yotsuyu was, and just as dangerous. Had the siblings’ fates been different, Asahi might have been traded into a brothel, too, looking like that.
There are jagged scars marking his torso. Abruptly, the image of Asahi twitching in the air comes to mind, the sound of his teeth chattering in pain. Beneath him, Yotsuyu’s serene, smiling face. The dense smell of crystals and gunmetal heavy in the air. The Warrior of Light feels the awful, damning sensation of her groin growing warm at the remembrance. It had been tragic, but it had also been triumphant.
Fandaniel tilts his head, and raises his brow. Amused, as always. He trails the tip of his fingers lightly over the back of her hand, idly. In Asahi’s voice, he asks, “Had your fill already, then? Surely you are not satisfied with just looking .”
No, not so. But looking feels good, and he does not need to goad her into more, because she is too hungry now to stop. Even if he were to suddenly resist. She just hadn’t had much of a chance to look, before, when Asahi was alive, because he had loathed her and denied her looking so fiercely it angered her constantly. And Fandaniel himself, always in motion and never still, rarely gives her a chance to look either before she must attend to cleaning up the messes he leaves behind.
“Hm, how strange it is, drifting between the two of you,” he murmurs to himself, fingers traveling up the length of her arm. “Lord Zenos does so love the sound of his own voice, you see…always musing aloud in those dark and empty rooms of his. Always about you . He has yet to exhaust you as a topic of conversation.” He nudges the collar of her shirt away from her collarbone, and taps the ditch at the base of her throat. Light and ticklish. “And then there is you, O Great Warrior, never saying nearly enough, despite the slavering worship every being in this world throws at your feet.”
Fandaniel, accusing someone else of talking too much? How humorous. She drops her head down and licks up his cold, pale chest, because she can. Because no one living or dead can stop her. Because she does everything for everyone and this time, she will do something for herself, take something for herself. And it does feel good to take; she has destroyed ancient beings and brought gods down to heel - but this, she nearly croons aloud, this is power like she has never known.
The flesh jumps beneath her touch, and she watches the bump of his throat roll beneath his skin as he swallows. He fists his hand on her shirt collar, gloves creaking.
“Ah, old, familiar sensations,” he says, smiling. “It has been some time since I’ve indulged in such pleasures. One could almost forget, after so long.”
“Since Allag?”
His eyes are dark, they swirl with ancient knowledge. He asks, “Who in Allag? That hedonistic wasteland, so atrophied by sloth? Who would you imagine I would give such an allowance to?”
She hums, nudging the robe further off his shoulders. “Xande?”
“No,” the smile slides off his face. Suddenly, he looks far older. Crueler. “Never Xande.”
She does not respond. She does not care about Xande, nor the reasons for his reverence. There is no room in her mind at the moment for the legacies of long-dead emperors and their worshippers. She only wants to peel the clothes off his body and to sink her teeth into his borrowed flesh. For tonight, all of his worship is hers.
With a sudden tug and a shriek of fabric, Fandaniel rips her shirt down the middle in one motion. She is so caught by surprise that she simply stares at him, stunned. Cold air pricks at her skin. She feels the bare, naked hang of her tits like a brand: wretched girl, sleeping with monsters, and wanting it.
He shrugs, all smiles again. “I do rather enjoy looking, too.”
Gloved hands grasp at her breasts, ungentle, and she shivers at the feel of them brushing over her nipples.
She bends down over him, until they are chest to chest, naked flesh on naked flesh, and kisses at his throat. She noses along his delicate jaw, and takes in the smell of him: the sharp smell of aether that all ascians seem to carry, and the faint hint of something medicinal, herbal. Whatever was used to dress Asahi’s corpse, perhaps.
At her back, his hands sneak under the ruins of her shirt, gliding along shoulder blades, down her spine. A pause, and then he pulls sharply at her tail.
“Ah!”
Rearing back, she backhands him across the mouth.
Laughing, he raises his hands in surrender, eyes gleaming. “I meant no insult, truly,” his tongue runs across the front of his bloody teeth, “only curiosity. Consider the lesson thoroughly learned.”
“Don’t do that again.”
She grasps him by the chin and turns his face back around to hers, pulling his lip down with her thumb to inspect his mouth. So the corpse can still bleed, she muses as she pushes past his teeth and wrenches his jaw open. It is hot inside of him, at least. His tongue is red with blood, shiny with spit, and she presses down harshly onto that wet, squirming flesh until he gags.
Arousal rips through her. She squeezes his hips tightly between her thighs, hard enough that her muscles strain. Dark eyes roll in their sockets until their gazes lock. Fandaniel pants around her fingers, tongue writhing in her grasp. She can feel his teeth leaving marks.
Merciful, she pulls out - slowly, petting the fleshy insides of his mouth as she goes, her slick fingers gleaming in the firelight.
“Oh,” he breathes in Amon’s husky tones, now, lips wet, “Nothing honorable, indeed…”
He laughs. For a moment, he looks lost in another world, speaking not to her, but a specter - and she does not interrupt, curious where this will go. “Shall I tell you the story of Scylla? Of how I took her lovely head, and replaced it with hounds? If anyone were to understand…perhaps you …”
“I’ve seen Scylla. In the Crystal Tower. That’s rotten work.”
“Ah yes, of course, of course,” he sighs, coming back, “how could I forget? You’re quite distracting…but the thought that you’ve seen my works, my marvels…it does so fill me with delight.”
She watches him pull the gloves off and toss them aside, and admires the sight of his hands. Long fingers, elegant bones. Nails well-kept. She keeps watching as he glides his palms up her thighs, rubbing her tense muscles with his thumbs, until they disappear beneath her skirt. There is a touch at the edge of her smalls, inquiring.
“Hurry it up,” is all she says, before plunging her tongue into his mouth. Embarrassingly, it is she who moans as they move against each other, as he sucks on her tongue with deliberate slowness, his easy pace fanning her impatience. He smells good, tastes good. Feels good. And she is nothing but a burning knot of desire.
Fingers slide past the fabric of her smalls, idly stroking through her slick flesh. She shudders.
“This far along already…” he whispers into the kiss. “My, my, my…you must be so terribly frustrated. Is there no one among your dear Scions up to the task of relieving you, Warrior? My poor noble hero, so beloved and yet unloved.”
His other hand squeezes at her rear, and somehow that feels more impertinent than the fingers jerking knuckle deep in her cunt.
“You could have any one of them, of course,” he murmurs, mouth pulling away and nipping at her cheek. He bites down her jaw, leaves hot kisses down the column of her throat as he speaks. “Lord Zenos, as well, would not deny you, though I doubt the wayward prince knows what to do with a body other than killing it. You would have to instruct him, certainly.”
There is no notion of fucking Zenos in her mind, nor any of her friends. But he is correct about them. She could approach any one of them and take them to bed, if she had any inclination, but she does not, because she has never been interested in anything that was good for her, only things that were dangerous. Things that she had to chase down and capture with her teeth.
“Don’t talk about Zenos,” she gasps, feeling his fingers curl inside of her. “Don’t talk about my friends.”
“As you command,” he responds, cheerily, before pulling his fingers out of her and sliding his entire body downward.
There is no time to squawk in indignance because his hot, bloody mouth is on her, tongue winding through her folds with precision, and before she knows it, the Warrior of Light is burying her head in her arms, crying out as though gored, tail thrashing behind her.
Her hips jerk into his face of their own accord, chasing sensation, chasing him . It feels like annihilation, so good that she will surely die of it, and she can feel him laughing against her.
“What a taste,” his voice is muffled by her flesh, and the fabric of her skirt. “...and such lovely skin…”
With great effort, she grasps his head with her thighs and flips them both over, her on her back, him hovering over her with his head bowed as it should. This way, she can see him clearly, see Asahi’s face. His long, pale back behind him, with those sharp shoulder blades and the nice dip of his spine. Loveliness, that for tonight, she will make hers.
She nudges his robes with her foot until he gets the hint and shucks it off entirely, bearing the whole of his body to the cold and the fire. And her. The three elements.
The scars are more ghastly than she thought, etched deep into his lovely skin. There was not much time for them to heal before the body got taken over, it seems.
Her eyes trail downward, admiring the long, narrow waist and bony hips. His cock is flush against his thigh, dark and ruddy with arousal. She wraps her fingers around it, feeling out the velvety softness of his skin and the weight of him in her hand. It is a pretty cock, though what excites her most is knowing who it belongs to - the Ascian, yes, but more the wretched young man who hated her so much he could not stand the sight of her. Oh, how he would loathe to know that he could not escape her after all, that death only brought him closer to her than he could even bear the thought of in life.
Fandaniel watches her stroke him with avid curiosity, eyes glittering as he drums his fingers on her knee. He leans down, hands braced on either side of her, and looks her directly in the eye. They share the air between them, breathing in each other’s words.
“Tell me of this infatuation of yours,” Asahi’s voice again. He knows the effect it has on her by now. “With the considerable and esteemed company you keep…why the miserable young heir to the house Brutus, hmm?”
She searches for the right words, the proper way to convey her thoughts and still save face. Is there a way to do so? No, she thinks. Some things cannot be finessed. Some wrongs cannot be made right.
“I’ve never been hated,” says the Warrior of Light. “It was different.”
Different enough to matter. In a world full of the worshippers and the fearful and the agnostic, hate makes her head turn. It catches her attention. The indignant sting of it, that moment on the shore when Asahi revealed himself, looking at her with a tormented sort of hatred that looked like it might hurt him to carry. His pretty face had become so very ugly with it, a fascinating turn that made her toes curl even as she had been overcome with offense, guts churning violently at his goading - and then he was gone, aboard his ship, and she had been left standing there, fists clenched at her sides and blood roaring in her ears, feeling more ignited and interested than she had ever been at anything before.
But then everything else had happened in such quick succession, and before she knew it, Asahi was dead, Yotsuyu was dead, and the Warrior of Light had gotten no chance to untangle the knot of violent, burning emotion that had settled in her belly. Until now. Now, she does, and her partner is more than willing to dance to her tune.
Fandaniel tilts his head in thought. “Now that, I understand. Oh, do I ever understand…”
He closes the space between them, places a kiss at the side of her mouth - and by the twelve, she can smell herself on him - and adds: “The things we do when in the grips of suffocating, stale boredom …”
How often does he think of Allag, she wonders. Of Xande, of death. However many years gone and however many bodies removed, how deeply does he carry that desire within him?
“Your turn to tell me something,” she says, thumbing the wet tip of his cock. Feels him sigh against her face.
“If I must.”
“Why are you indulging me?”
He looks surprised. Perhaps even genuinely so. The moment passes quickly, and in the space of a blink, a breath, his smile returns. His eyes glitter in the darkness, reflecting amber firelight. They are so dark, so lovely.
Asahi, you worm, she thinks. That face was utterly wasted on you.
“While I await the death of the star, boredom…still leaves me dreadfully cold,” is all he says, before his mouth is back on hers, tongue against hers, their breath surging between them.
She sinks her fingers into his silky hair and lets herself fall until her back hits the wood floor, bringing him down atop her. He sinks into her a moment later, with a steady stroke of his hips, and she gasps into his mouth. Beneath her, her tail twitches, and she rakes her claws down his back in a particularly vicious sweep.
It does not take long for her to come, wound up as she is, and Fandaniel laughs softly into her hair, in the spot right between her ears.
“Already? You poor, poor thing.”
“Quiet,” she hisses, fingers tightening on his back. She makes sure her nails are deep into his skin, drawing blood. “Keep going. I want you to finish.”
That is the part she wants the most. She wants to feel his body weak against hers. They will not part until she has it, that satisfaction. The Warrior of Light repeats the order, firmer this time, and he laughs again, louder.
“As you say, my dear.”
He is not gentle. He fucks her with all the ferocity of a man ordered, though she can feel how much he is enjoying it; his sighs tell her as much, as does the flush that colours his face. His strokes go deep, hard enough to make the wood beneath them creak, and she moans each time he bottoms out, split open apart on a dead man’s cock.
It should not be exciting. She should not be here. The thought of it makes her come a second time, so hard her leg cramps.
When he finishes, he falls bodily on top of her, winding her for a moment with his weight. They are sweaty, sticky, and hot. Bodies in the awkward aftermath of coupling, twitching against each other.
She grasps his jaw and holds his face in front of hers, their bodies still connected. Searches for something, finds nothing. Nothing has moved, nothing has changed; the world is still in peril, the wind still howls outside. Asahi is dead, Zenos chases at her heels, and the end of days fast approaches.
The only thing that changes is this: when Fandaniel gives her one of his smiles, this time she smiles back.