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Sid still dreamed of Fray, sometimes. In the thinning of the night’s weft, when stars were black and snow fell in hushed whispers over Ishgard’s needled spires, his mind turned over in its bed and reached for a memory that wasn’t there. A dark shape at the foot of the bed. A bared shoulder in the mirror. Skin that was dark, or pale, or freckled, or scarred. A hundred shifting shapes that denied the man in his mind’s eye.
It was a symptom of his wandering mind. He was getting senile in his old age, Rielle told him, nevermind that he was still in the prime of life. Sid wasn’t so sure. When he called upon Esteem in battle, it felt warped, thin at the edges. As if some part of it longed to escape.
He sat up late in the Forgotten Knight after Rielle had gone to bed, nursing ale that was never finished. Some part of him had been knocked loose—he didn’t know where or when. If pressed he might say it coincided with the Warrior’s return from whatever far-flung lands he’d visited, but the telling of that tale had seemed fantastical, far beyond the scope of his daily life. Too difficult and oblique to examine directly. So he forced himself through the motions, training Rielle, keeping his meager account books, taking whatever leves the Church would grant him, and waiting for… something. Some answer to his dreams that would explain everything.
Rielle’s sixteenth birthday came and went. For the most part she still looked like a child, but her stamina grew by leaps and bounds in training, balanced against periods of lethargy and low spirits. The persistent cold of Ishgard was no help, so when he’d saved up enough they traveled south to Mor Dhona. The land here was just as rugged, but the beasts they faced in the wilds were unfamiliar to her. Training wore them both out. His sleep was deeper, and his dreams more vivid, as if he stepped wholesale into another world the moment he closed his eyes.
The shape he knew to be Fray had changed. It was Esteem, but it was someone else, too. A hyur man, tall for his race but still shorter than Sid, with sad, serious eyes he recognized from mirrors. He wore Fray’s armor, but his hauberk was tattered and in disrepair; his head was bare to a shimmering sherbet sky.
Where are you? Sid asked. His own voice tunneled strangely through the air, as if it crossed a vast distance and arrived small, shrunken, a shadow of itself.
Lyhe Ghiah, was the reply. The echo of a pebble dropped at the bottom of a well. Where are you? Who are you?
I am Sidurgu Orl of Ishgard, he said. He clung to the feel of his own name in his mouth, layered with another’s. I am Fray Myste of Nowhere.
A soft, confused chuckle came back to him and then his eyes were blinking open. He stared at the ceiling for a while, heart racing. He wished he had thought to ask the other man’s name. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t fall back to sleep to ask.
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“Daydreamin’ again, sinner?”
Granson stirred himself. The petite dwarven maid at his side—at his knee—was tapping her foot impatiently in the grass. Ahead, the waters of Longmirror Lake rippled in wide, silken waves all the way to the feet of Mithai Glorianda, whose dark sheer sides stood proud and sturdy beneath the castle’s arching wings. He rubbed his eyes and blinked, but the vision was gone.
“Sorry. I’m ready.”
He loosened his greatsword in its sheath across his back and pointed his feet south. The shimmering fields of Il Mheg spread around them like a vast rose-tinted blanket, but the inhabitants of this strange land stayed well away. They were here on the King’s business, after all.
The request had come from Titania themselves: a great winged sineater had been spotted on the shores of Longmirror Lake, and the faeries were too frightened by its prickly back and vaguely beaverish teeth to do away with it. Granson was familiar with the territory after laying Dikaiosyne’s spirit to rest, and Giott had no fear of anything large or small, so they had been sent into the kingdom of Il Mheg together. Granson wore a braided strand of looking grass around his neck, just in case, but so far he’d had no cause to use it. Perhaps Titania had issued a warning to their subjects not to disturb the hunters at their work.
But here had been no sign of the thing. As the day wore on, his mind wandered farther and farther afield; this daydream, as Giott called it, was only the most recent. There was something about this place—the lake, the castle—that felt different, and he wasn’t sure he could blame it on the fae or the night’s return.
They had swung back up in a loop to the fragrant pine forest that clung to the hillsides behind Lydha Lran when they finally caught wind of their prey. A speckled trail of pure light glistened on the ground like drops of blood. Either some band of faeries had grown bold, or the creature had managed to hurt itself some other way, leaving a helpful trail to follow.
“I’ll take the lead,” Giott whispered, hammer in hand. She shuffled deeper into the underbrush, lent a little stealth by her stature. Granson shrugged and followed.
A tickle in the back of his mind stopped him in his tracks. The wood around him seemed to freeze into a deep stillness—every leaf, every branch as perfectly frozen as if turned to stone. A blueness rushed around him, hard as flint, crawling up tree trunks and hanging heavy in the boughs above. His head ached. He felt as though he were trapped between one moment and the next, left foot in the forest, right foot… somewhere else. Somewhere hard and blue and barren.
Then Giott gave a great war-cry, shockingly loud for her size, and Granson was wrenched forcibly into motion. The forest surged with sound and color. A flock of birds launched themselves into the sky, shrieking. He charged, greatsword already in his hands, thin low-lying branches whipping against his face and armor.
He broke into a small clearing. The sin eater had holed up here, or had chewed a place for itself with those enormous teeth. It wasn’t much bigger than an amaro, even with its glistening spines raised high and its wings beating the leaf-litter into a whirling froth—too stumpy for flight, but big enough to wreak havoc all the same. Giott held its attention with ease. She’d backed it against a massive tree, and was swinging her hammer in ever-widening arcs, chipping away at its defense. She might have even been able to tackle it on her own, but there was no need to risk it.
Granson reached into himself and pulled on a dark, knowing thread. A shadow bloomed from the ground like a blackened rose, boiling with soot-black smoke, its head crowned in horns. Wait, what?
“A little help here, Ketchthane?” Giott bellowed.
Enough waffling. He hefted his claymore and charged. The sin eater, faced with a second opponent, gave an unnaturally loud shriek that boomed in his ears as if someone had rung a church bell directly over his head.
The sword penetrated hide, then flesh. Pure liquid light spurted out, hot against his gauntlets and blinding him until he turned his face away. At his right hand, his shadow, his inner darkness, came down hard on the eater’s head with its smoking blade. Usually he recognized it for a twin of himself, but today the shape was all wrong. Taller, broader, with two pinpricks of blue-green light where the eyes should be. Two horns formed a crest around its head, a demon made dark.
What are you? Granson thought, and drove his blade deep. Who are you?
I am Fray Myste of Nowhere.
><
“Well, it’s definitely dead.” Rielle sounded far too delighted by the prospect. Surely a girl her age should be window shopping and learning the finer arts—poetry and needlework and such things. Instead she was leaning over the corpse of the hapalit they’d just slain, face small and round above the borrowed armor she wore. He hadn’t yet scraped together enough coin to get her properly outfitted; and, truth be told, he was dragging his feet on that front. Every morning he half expected to find her halfway to her adult growth, outpacing any alterations even the best blacksmith could make.
“Yes, very well done.” Sid leaned harder on his sword than he ought, feeling strangely winded. The battle had been brief—as promised, he let Rielle take the lead, watching her movements carefully and calling out corrections when warranted—but he felt as though he’d helped slay a dragon instead of a troll. “Now harvest the parts like I taught you.”
Though they walked on two legs like a Spoken, hapalits were bestial creatures, driven by a predator’s instinct. For the most part they kept to the nooks and crannies of Mor Dhona where the corrupted crystals were thickest, but sometimes they wandered farther afield and had to be dealt with lest they become a danger. Regardless, once one was dead, it was wasteful to leave their corpses solely for the birds. With grisly determination, Rielle got down on one knee and began sawing at one of the beast’s enormous horns, a useful ingredient for alchemists and weaponsmiths.
While she worked, Sid’s mind drifted. It had felt so real. For a moment, when he was debating summoning Esteem just in case, a strange warmth had rippled over his scales like a summer breeze, and he’d smelled pine and leaf-litter. The hyur from his dream seemed to stand at his side, blade drawn. A claymore, old-fashioned but well-made. The blade was stronger in his mind’s eye than the man’s face.
“Done.” Rielle trooped back to him, the work done. The rest would be disposed of by natural scavengers, including other hapatli. Sid nodded and turned on his heel.
The hike back to Revenant’s Toll was quiet. Rielle wasn’t a chatterbox most days, which suited him fine. But there was a weight to the silence today, and he kept catching her staring at him out of the corner of her eye.
“What is it?” he said at last, gruffly. “Have I not put you through your paces enough today?”
“It’s nothing.” She stared at the trail ahead, at the walls of the keep rising gray and unforgiving in the distance. “Have you been sleeping okay?”
Sid glowered. “Yes.”
“If you say so.”
She’d picked that phrase up somewhere, and had started wielding it as effectively as her greatsword, calm and disinterested on the surface but thorny and barbed beneath, digging under his skin. Teenagers. “What does it matter if I am or not? You’re not dissatisfied with your training, are you?”
Rielle scowled back at him as if he’d accused her of thievery, or some far greater sin. “I’m not dissatisfied, Sid. I’m worried. There’s a difference.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted. The lie blistered on his tongue. “Stop fussing, mother.”
“Hmph.” Her strides lengthened, and she pulled ahead of him on the hill up to Revenant’s Toll despite her shorter legs. He let her. The best cure for a sulk, he’d found, was to leave it alone. If it festered, they could talk about it, but more often than not it burned off quick like mist in the early morning sun, and she was no worse off for it.
As he passed beneath the open portcullis, a chill swept over him. He stopped and looked back. For a moment the path before him shimmered, a long stretch of grass and flowers; the Crystal Tower in the distance grew wreathed in purplish fog, erect and blazing like a pillar of blue fire. Then the vision passed. He blinked it away and breathed in the smell of forests, of deep lakes and wildflowers.
Who are you?
But it was too late. The moment had already passed. With a grunt, he shouldered his sword and stomped into Revenant’s Toll, cursing Fray’s ghost. Of all the hauntings he’d experienced, this was by far the queerest.
><
It was nearly full dark by the time they made it back to Lydha Lran. The faeries who dwelled there were delighted by their success, and it took a great deal of convincing to be permitted to return to Lakeland.
Giott wanted to make straight for the Crystarium by aetheryte, but Grandon hung back. He had unfinished business here. With permission from the locals, he struck out across the open fields to the Bookman’s Shelves. It was near here that he’d faced down Dikaiosyne for the last time, the Warrior of Darkness at his side. The Warrior, a stoic drahn, had been the one to teach him of Esteem, and of the other shard from whence he’d traveled. The inner shadow, Granson called it. Born of years of grief and anger, now coalesced into something useful. Something that could aid him, instead of wear him down.
It had only ever taken the form of a hume, as best he could tell. It was a reflection of himself, the Warrior had said, a physical manifestation of his deepest motivations. Early on it had seemed slighter, almost feminine in shape, perhaps affected by his old worn-out longings for his wife. Over time he had healed, and the shadow changed with him, stoic and familiar. A mirror of himself dressed in shadow.
So who was this, now, that stalked first his dreams and now his waking hours? Who cloaked themselves in the memory of grief, and called themselves Nowhere ?
It was nearly full dark by the time he made it to the Bookman’s Shelves. The faeries had lit the lamps for him—he could hear them giggling in the rafters when the glow flickered and changed color at random—but otherwise the interior was dusty and disused. It had been abandoned in a hurry: piles of books still littered the dining table, and copious notes littered every surface, scrawled in the same elegant, left-leaning hand. He picked up one and held it close to his nose, trying to make out the words.
…and if one considers such presuppositions to possess the light of fact, it is not far-fetched to imagine that the transference of more than the soul may be possible. Reapers who form pacts with voidsent are capable, after much study and training, to summon their avatars into existence on the Source; this, if Y’shtola’s theories are correct, proves that yet another layer of existence lays cheek by jowl with our own, many multifarious worlds mixing and communing without ever breaking the barriers between them, except to worry away little holes here and there in the weft of reality to permit the passage of such small, aetherically diffuse beings as voidsent.
Granson blinked away the swarm of text and rubbed his brow. What on earth was this nonsense? The ravings of a madman? He eyed the shadows around the room distrustfully. Perhaps the faeries had darker designs here than he had believed.
He combed through the house for any sign of habitation, but it was well and truly abandoned. He scattered fronds of looking grass about the window frames and door-lintels, flipped the blankets on the bed inside out, and sprinkled a bit of salt under his pillow before turning in. Little tricks his grandmama had taught him from her youth in the Kingdom of Voeburt. Then he slept. And he dreamed.
He stood at the top of a crenelated wall looking down, down into a chasm filled with fog. It was bitterly cold, the sky overhead bruised with a coming storm. When he turned, a great city rose up before him, spire upon spire built up to a great grim castle whose silhouette felt eerily familiar. The air smelled of snow and old ash.
“You.”
He turned back. A man stood before him, a drahn dressed in black armor, silver hair like a mane around his wintry face. His arms were folded, dour and unimpressed.
“Me,” Granson echoed. In the waking world he might have worried about being approached by such a towering, fierce warrior—the blade strapped to his back was no toy—but he knew he was dreaming. This grey, snow-scoured city was no place that existed in his world. Have I passed through the weft after all? “Granson Ketchthane, at your service.”
The drahn glowered. “How are you here?”
Granson shrugged. “Dreaming, I think. Where is here?”
“Ishgard, of course. Have you never been?”
“I… don’t think there’s an Ishgard where I come from.” Granson tilted his head, examining the man’s prickly silhouette. “Are you Fray?”
He was pale enough already, but the blood draining from his face bleached him bone-white. “How do you know that name?”
“You told it to me. Before. And so did someone else, a lifetime ago…”
“I am not,” the drahn said stiffly. “I am… I’m Sid.”
“Just Sid?” Granson asked, amused.
“Sidurgu Orl, if it matters.”
“That doesn’t sound like any drahn name I’ve ever heard.”
“What in the seven hells is a drahn?”
Seven hells? “You speak like someone I used to know… this is the Source, then?”
Sid’s brilliant eyes narrowed. “Wait. You… I know you. The Warrior spoke of you, and of his journey to another star.” He came closer—two quick strides were enough to bring them nearly toe to toe. “How are you here? What do you want? Why do you dog my footsteps so determinedly?”
“I don’t know,” Granson said patiently, hiding a flicker of alarm. Sid was bloody tall , and when he was wrathful it scorched off him like solar flares, hot and scintillating. Granson wondered if drahn in Ishgard—in the Source—breathed fire. “But you’ve been dogging me just the same, so if you could try and avoid distracting me while I’m on a hunt, that would be much appreciated.”
“Oh.” Sid faltered, looked away. A softness came into his expression—not exactly an apology, but something boyish and abashed. It made Granson’s breath catch for reasons he could not explain. “I guess I didn’t realize it went both ways.” He looked back and frowned. “You’re getting… thin.” He lifted one mailed hand. Granson watched it come toward him, then pass through him, moving into his chest as if he were made of smoke. “Sleep well,” Sid told him, an odd half-smile tucked into the corner of his mouth.
And he woke up.
><
Sid blamed his inattention later on lack of sleep, but that wasn’t quite true. He slept, long and deeply—but his dreams were so vivid, he woke feeling as though he’d spent the night hours walking in another world, leaving him worn and restless.
It was enough to wear him down. A moment’s inattention at the exact wrong moment, and a hefty claw caught him in the side, batting him across the snow like so much moogle fluff. He wheezed out a breath when he landed, and then couldn’t draw it back in again. Something in his shoulder popped unpleasantly.
“Sid!”
In a burst of furious energy, Rielle drove her blade into the golem’s rocky body and twisted. Chunks of limestone flew as she struck the golem’s buried heart and pried it free like a clam from its shell. The beast staggered and collapsed. Sid finally drew in a ragged breath and immediately coughed it out again, lungs ablaze.
“Well… done,” he wheezed. He whetted his lips and tasted limestone. “Any reinforcements?”
Rielle was running to his side, but stopped mid-stride and looked around, exasperated. “No, Sid, there are no more golems in this odd little corner of Dravania. In fact, there seems to be no living thing for malms.” She stomped the rest of the way over and knelt beside him. Her seaglass eyes were wide and worried beneath her overlong fringe. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“I was… clumsy.” He bit back the word stupid, which was not a helpful or educational term in this context. “I wasn’t paying attention. Let that be a lesson to you: never let your guard down. Ah. ”
Rielle paused, one hand still hooked in the back of his armor. “How bad is it?”
“Not bad. Just landed funny.” He gritted his teeth so hard they creaked and sat up with her help. His side and back screamed in agony. “Might’ve cracked a few ribs.”
“Hold still, you great lug.” Dark knight in training or no, Rielle still had an easy familiarity with low-level conjury. She tugged her gauntlets off and pressed her hands to his plate armor. A faint mint-green glow began to build between her fingers; her eyes fell closed, brow furrowed in concentration. “Two are definitely broken. You’re lucky they didn’t puncture anything.”
Sid waved her off, hiding a wince of pain at the movement. “I’ll be right as rain in a day or two.”
“You will not. You need to see a chirurgeon, a proper one. I can take the edge off, but knitting bone together is a bit beyond my capabilities.”
She’d grown so much, Sid reflected. He watched her brush the hair from her face as she worked, noting the lightening freckles, the point of her chin grown longer this last year. Combat training suited her, made her less awkward in her own skin than most teenagers were wont to be. She was growing up, he realized—if not necessarily in height, then in every other way that mattered. He felt a sting of pride, then of sorrow. Fray would have been so proud of her.
“Okay.” She sat back on her heels, breaking the spell. He blinked back the unexpected swell of sentimentality and hoped she hadn’t noticed. “That’s all I can do for right now. Can you teleport?”
“Aye.”
“Then let’s go.” She helped him to his feet, struggling only a little bit. “I’ll see you in Ishgard.”
Despite its place high in the clouds, the temperature of the Churning Mists was milder than that of Ishgard. Teleporting into the aetheryte plaza was like a slap in the face. Sid leaned hard on his sword, coughed, and swore at the bite of broken ribs protesting the journey.
“All in one piece?” Rielle asked. She sidled right under his good arm. She wasn’t quite tall enough to support his weight in any meaningful way, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “Off we go.”
He let her lead the way, footsteps meandering along in the well-worn track of muscle memory. He knew these streets like the back of his own hand, every scale and stone accounted for, but it seemed particularly beautiful today. A storm was blowing in, coating everything in a fine film of white, but the sun was still in the sky, beaming determinedly behind the heavy cloudbank, and its light caught on stray flecks of snow and shone out like the streets were paved instead with diamond-dust.
His eyes swam briefly and he blinked hard. Between one step and the next a waft of flowery perfume swept over him, as if some noble lady had passed by but recently—not likely, in this part of town. He lifted his nose and sniffed the air, despite its frigid bite. Lilies, he thought, and orchids, the little curled-up kind that actually smelled of something even if they weren’t as pretty as the ornamental sort the nobility grew in hot houses.
Granson? Are you there?
No response. He hadn’t seen or sensed him in his waking hours since their first proper conversation a few weeks past; the only time he saw or spoke with him was at night, when the layers of reality between their worlds sloughed away, and they could see one another face to face.
It was surreal, at first. Now he looked forward to their nightly conversations. Granson had told him about his wife, and the Flood of Light, and everything that had come after in far more detail than the Warrior had imparted on his last visit to Ishgard. Sid in turn had told him of Fray and of Rielle, how he was trying to raise and train her the best he could. Granson had been reticent to give advice at first, having no comparable experience with a young protege; but his instincts were good, and over time his input on Rielle’s training—and their daily life as pseudo-father and not-quite-daughter—had improved, giving Sid a firmer foundation on which to stand with her.
Sid in turn listened raptly to Granson’s description of the First. He was fascinated, and not a little jealous, of Granson’s work with the Crystarium’s hunting guild, whose occupation with cleaning up stray sin eaters felt more impactful and interesting than tramping about the bitterly cold Hinterlands and beyond in search of rogue Dravanians who still wished Ishgard ill. He always felt a pang of guilt at striking them down, even in the face of centuries-long rage and rancor. They weren’t mindless beasts, after all, like the sin eaters Granson described. They were just people underneath, people who had been wronged and then driven to merciless slaughter by a more powerful force, just as Ishgardians had.
“It’s complicated,” he had said, after a stumbling explanation of the Dragonsong War and its lingering after-effects. They had been sitting together on the battlements of a grand white-washed castle, watching the sun sink over rose-tinted hills in what Granson called Lydha Lran. One good push and he would have plummeted hundreds of feet into the lake below. It was a little pinch of exhilarating vertigo in the face of an otherwise peaceful mirage, keeping him anchored and present in the dream, or vision, or whatever it was.
“So it seems.” Granson sounded not pitying, but thoughtful. His warm red eyes reflected the setting sun, turned to flame-kissed rubies that were difficult to look at directly. “The situation here is… relatively black and white. We have no method of reversing the process of becoming a sin eater once the transformation is complete. Whatever personhood they had is gone. Striking them down is the best solution. I can’t imagine what it’s like to look a creature in the eye and know, despite all the history between your people, there can still be no forgiveness.”
Sid blinked away from the memory and frowned at the double doors they were fast approaching. “This isn’t the Forgotten Knight. Rielle, are you lost?”
“No I am not.” She reached out and rapped smartly on the wood. “A little help here, if you please!”
Sid watched as the doors swung open and a beaming young Elezen girl stood there, wild brown curls flying in every direction in contrast to her pin-neat pinafore and tidy white apron. “Hullo, I’m Maelie, and welcome to Saint Vaindreau’s Grace! How can we help? Oh! Rielle! It’s you!”
The self-professed Maelie smoothed her already straight apron and stood aside, taking in the tableau before her with wide eyes. “Hullo, Mae,” Rielle said with uncharacteristic brusqueness, shouldering past the other girl. Sid went along quietly, surprised into complacency by this unexpected development. “Sorry to drop in unannounced, but Sid’s hurt and I didn’t know where else to go.”
The entrance of the… hospital? or whatever it was, was thankfully empty but for a pleasant-faced young woman standing behind the counter. There was another workstation beside her, empty for the moment, but a steaming cup of tea sat ready, so presumably its occupant was expected shortly.
“I’m not sure…” Sid began, trying to excuse himself and Rielle both. He felt a little dizzy, still, half-hung between two stars. His side and back throbbed painfully.
“What seems to be the trouble?” the woman behind the counter asked. Her tone was calm, professional, and kind; despite himself, and despite his confusion, Sid felt himself relaxing.
“He got swatted by a golem. Two broken ribs at least, and a few are bruised or maybe even dislocated,” Rielle said, rattling off the list like she was heading to the market. “I did what I could, but I’m not a chirurgeon, just a novice conjurer.”
“That sounds like something we can handle. Why don’t you come along to the back and I can take a look?”
Sid went along quietly, made docile by bewilderment. “What is this place? It—I mean I know the name, that girl, Maelie, told us, but… what is it for ?”
“To give aid where it’s needed,” she said simply. She guided him down the hall and into a simple room with frosted-over windows and several cots lined up, curtains hanging between each. Everything was of simple make, but well-kept and clean. A curtain was drawn around a cot in the back of the room, but otherwise they were alone. “Do you need help with your armor?”
He probably did, but he was too proud to say so. “I’ve got it, thanks.”
“All right. I’ll step outside. Just give a shout when you’re ready, or if you need help.”
She drew the curtain around his designated cot and departed. As soon as she’d gone, Sid sat down on the edge of the cot and drew in a deep, dizzying breath.
You need to take better care of yourself.
Sid’s head jerked up. “Granson?”
Aye, came the amused reply. Who else would it be, talking in your head? Or do I have competition?
“No,” Sid grumbled. He steadied himself and began removing his armor, beginning with gauntlets. Not unless you counted Esteem, but unlike the Warrior of Light, he’d never experienced such a… physical manifestations of his inner darkness. “Never took you for a voyeur.”
“You have clothes on,” Granson said mildly. “Relax.”
Wait. Sid’s head jerked up, and there he was, sitting on the other end of the cot. There was a hazy, dreamlike quality to him, but it was him, practically in the flesh. Unlike the previous times he’d met with Granson, in dreams or waking visions, he wore a simple long tunic in dark green, over which was buckled a pair of pauldrons and a light leather harness for his conspicuously absent greatsword. His hands were bare, feet shod in worn leather boots to the knee. When Sid reached out, his fingertips brushed wool and leather.
“How are you doing this?”
“I called in a bit of a favor with the King of the Faeries.” Granson reached back and took hold of his wrist. His skin was cool to the touch, as it was for most people—Au Ra ran hotter than any of the other Spoken races—and surprisingly gentle. “Have you heard of the Dreamkeepers of Lydha Lran?”
The name rolled off his tongue like a song. His accent was difficult to place, most days, somewhere between middle class Ishgard and backwater Shroud, but when he spoke the language of faeries, his tongue got all twisted and he developed a lilt in the back of his throat that made Sid want to… something. Dance, or smile, or some other frivolous thing.
“I haven’t,” he said stoically, instead of doing either of those things. Granson had found the catch of his armor in the back and was helping pry him out of it, slowly, like a lobster from its tender shell. He hoped he couldn’t smell the pong of sweat through the dream.
“They mostly busy themselves with the dreams of children, but Moren—that’s the keeper of the Cabinet of Curiosities—thought they might be able to help with our little ‘veil between worlds’ problem. They’re experts in that sort of thing.”
“Are they?” Sid wheezed.
Granson hefted his breastplate away as if it weighed nothing at all. “Well, sure. What are dreams but another world?” He turned back and knelt at Sid’s feet to start on his greaves. Sid’s face flooded with heat. Get it together, man. “That we dream of one another with such clarity is proof of that.”
Sid watched him, unsure what to say. His tongue felt heavy, clumsy in his mouth. “Why are you here?” he asked finally. All other questions led to that one.
Granson’s hands paused. “Do you want me to go?”
“That’s not what I said.”
He moved again, more slowly, working open the clasps one at a time until his greave could be pulled off and set aside. Underneath, his leather boot was imprinted with the shape of metal, ribbed from the snug straps that held it in place. “I don’t know,” Granson said at last. “I just wanted to see you. Is that wrong?”
“Of course not.” Sid’s belly flip-flopped behind his sweaty gambeson. He could feel the subtle scales along his spine lifting, a vestigial display of aggression—old instincts rising to the surface. Fight or flight. But what if he didn’t want to do either? “Surely you have better things to do than baby me.”
“Someone ought to, once in a while.” Granson climbed stiffly to his feet, job done. Even his dream-self was not immune to aching joints, it seemed. He gave Sid a bemused, muted smile. “Seeing as you rarely take care of yourself.”
“That’s what Rielle is for.”
“Rielle is a child. You mind her, not the other way around.”
“You’re taking the place of mother, then?”
Granson was unruffled by the weak jab. “I prefer to think of it as partner.” He reached out unexpectedly and put a hand to Sid’s chin, lifting it just slightly to look him in the eye. “I see what you’re doing, you know. I did the same, once upon a time. But you can only throw yourself at the same wall so many times before you break.”
Sid recoiled, from words and touch both. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure.” Granson’s smile was tinged with a knowing sadness that stuck in Sid’s craw. “I’ll see you again soon.”
“Maybe.” Sid bristled, impotent, as Granson’s ghostly form wavered and then blinked out of existence entirely, leaving behind only the smell of pine and the vague sense that he’d done something wrong.
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Granson was in search of a vice.
He’d lived rather monastically, before defeating Dikaiosyne. He couldn’t afford a muddled head, so he’d steered clear of drink; the thought of women made him sick to his stomach. But he’d developed other, unsavory habits. On long marches he was reduced to the bare minimum of human, scavenging what food he could, barely sleeping, forgetting to bathe for weeks on end. During one particularly difficult hunt he’d lowered himself enough to steal grain from a tiny Kholusian town barely clinging to life on the rocky coast. He’d eaten it raw by the handful, hunched over the pitiful bag, and been sick for days afterward. That town was no longer there, and he’d never had the courage to investigate the reason. If it was sin eaters, or missing stores at a crucial moment.
He still had no taste for alcohol, particularly beer and other grain-based liquor. Giott had offered him a “toke” once, whatever that was, but he couldn’t get past the bitter undertone to the otherwise pleasantly herbal leaf, and he’d turned her down. But still he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. Some spice to life that til now had been drab and uninspiring.
A few days ago he might have asked Sid. But he hadn’t seen him since their… discussion… in the infirmary. Sid was half the reason he wanted something to take the edge off. Some indulgence that would smooth the thorny tangle in his breast.
He was reminded, that evening, nursing a watered-down cider and watching the barmaid flirt outrageously with Katliss, that he hadn’t had a warm body in his bed since his wife was alive. It had held no appeal for a long time; then he was simply too busy. Mopping up the aftermath of a century-long, slow-creeping apocalypse was hard work, even without the burning drive of vengeance keeping him awake at night.
He could admit to himself, now, that he missed it. But he felt years and malms away from the humble country huntsman who’d wooed a pretty milkmaid from Wright with flowers and bad poetry. How did one indicate interest when one was a middle-aged, rough-edged sword for hire with no pretty manners to speak of?
He considered his options. He refused to ask Cerigg for advice on principle. Lue-Reeq was too young. Giott was loudly and flagrantly disinterested in men, and in the taller races besides—there was little in common there. He had other friends in the Crystarium—acquaintances, really—but he wasn’t about to approach Moren over matters of the bedchamber, and Katliss was currently well-occupied with a conversation that appeared to be leading to more, so it would be rather rude to interrupt.
“You’ve got a mighty furrowed brow there, sinner.” Glynard, proprietor of the Wandering Stairs, hoved into view like the great galley ships of old, busily polishing a tankard. “Is there aught on your mind I can assist with?”
“Not particularly,” Granson said automatically, but then his mouth caught up with his brain. “That is… perhaps.”
“Perhaps.” Glynard’s eyes twinkled. “Well go on and tell me your troubles, and then we’ll know for sure.”
Granson sincerely considered asking for a shot of something strong and astringent for courage. “How does one… approach someone for, er, companionship?”
To his credit, Glynard did not guffaw in his face, though Granson rather thought he deserved it. “So that’s the way of it, eh? Any specific sinner in mind?”
Granson opened his mouth to say no , and stopped. His mind’s eye swam with a pale, black-scaled face half-hidden by a mane of silver hair. What? “N-not really,” he said, but it was clear Glynard saw through the lie.
“I always find it helps to be straightforward. With them, and with yourself.” Glynard pulled out a fresh rag and traded the gleaming tankard for a dull one. “Tell ‘em you’ve an interest, and whether it’s serious or no. An’ if you’re not sure, don’t ask. It ain’t fair to them if you don’t even know your own mind.”
Granson put his head in his hands. “Thanks. I think.”
“And if you’re in need of a bit of fun, well. I might know a cove or lass who’d be more’n happy to warm the sheets of a handsome hunter like yourself. Just say the word.”
Granson thanked him, but couldn’t quite bring himself to pursue the line of inquiry. The vision of Sid had shocked him out of the urge—not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t want to with someone who wasn’t Sid. And wasn’t that a confounding puzzle.
He doesn’t even inhabit the same star, he told himself as he paid his tab and slunk away to his room in the Pendants. This is nothing that can last.
In his room, he lit a few candles and undressed by starlight. He felt restless in body and mind both, fidgeting and dissatisfied. He missed his friend; he missed his wife. He missed the simple feeling of falling into bed with her, her bright laughter and sturdy arms. How their bodies fit together. He growled at himself and sat on the edge of the bed, simmering.
If you’re not sure, don’t ask.
Well, he was sure of one thing: he thought of Sid as more that just a friend. And how serious could it be, with the veil of reality between them? How could their stars cross the rift to grant them more than what their dreams could weave?
His mind was made up. But there was still the matter of falling asleep. Granson opened his trousers and got a hand inside. The emotional baggage was pushed aside in favor of raw intuition: skin, spit, heat. He gasped aloud in the empty room and teased it out over long, sweaty minutes, until exhaustion finally rose its head and he felt safe enough to fall.
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Sid had to be dreaming. And not the lucid, world-traversing sort of dream, but the real kind, where subconscious thought and half-formed memory twined together to paint strange, lurid shapes in the mind’s eye.
Had to be, because he was kissing someone. They were sturdy against him, a shifting shape he couldn’t quite hold onto. Their body was cool to the touch, but warm to kiss, and warm between the legs where they rubbed against his thigh and sighed. It wasn’t Fray—couldn’t be. Bedding them had been like bedding a live coal. He used to swear they had auri blood in them somewhere, somehow; or else the blood of dragons, as if they needed any further excuse to be labeled heretic .
“Sid,” breathed a voice, suddenly, and electricity rocked through him, nearly jerking him awake. He stared down into Granson’s eyes and threw himself backward at the speed of a plunging blade.
“You.”
“I—what?” Granson’s face, muddled with sleep and arousal, sharpened with sudden clarity. “Oh, gods.”
Sid’s mouth worked as he tried to come up with something to say. “Some work of your fae folk?”
“N-no. No. Just… I was dreaming.” Granson rubbed sleep from his eyes. They weren’t in Sid’s room at the Forgotten Knight, but in a cozy, lumpy bed piled with blankets hidden away behind a screen. Moonlight poured in full through the open window, revealing a starry sky and the bending, sighing rush of treetops that brushed against the lintel. “I can’t tell if I still am.”
Sid shrugged wordlessly. He looked down at himself. He’d never been so undressed in front of Granson before. Always in their dreams and the collusion of their waking hours he’d been in full plate, or at least… half-full plate. He thought of the infirmary and winced.
“I owe you an apology.”
“I owe you a shirt.” Granson wriggled back a little to sit against the headboard, the blankets piled self-consciously in his lap. He was bare to the waist, and Sid had to force himself not to stare at his sturdy chest dusted with hair, the vulnerable hollow of his throat. “And an apology, I suppose. I shouldn’t’ve pushed you. Your grief is your business.”
Sid made a quiet noise of dissent. “You weren’t wrong.”
“Never said that.” Granson’s mouth quivered into a half-smile. “But that ain’t cause to pick at you. I just… I see a lot of myself in you, and I’d hate for you to struggle the way I did. After.”
“Too late for that. I’ve been grieving far longer than I’ve known you, sinner.”
There was something about that Firstborn slang on Sid’s Sourceborn tongue that sizzled nicely under the skin. He glanced up at Granson through his lashes, checking his reaction, and found the other man staring at him as though he’d never seen him before. “I know. And far be it from me to tell you how to handle your own affairs.”
“But I’ve asked you to before. With Rielle.” Sid didn’t want to talk about her right now. “Just take the bleeding apology, will you?”
“All right, all right.” Granson made to get up, and then seemed to think better of it. “I can still get you that shirt, though.”
A frisson of courage sparked in his gut. “Don’t bother.”
Granson’s brows lifted. “Leaving so soon?”
“I can’t. Dreaming, remember?” Sid took a breath. “Might as well make the most of the time we have.”
“Aye.” Granson reached out and traced a hand over Sid’s bare chest; the scales that underlined his pectoral muscles, the deep groove of his sternum. “Is this a mistake?”
“Maybe.” Sid licked his lips. “But I’ve been dying to make it for weeks.”
Oho. That lit a fire in his eyes. Granson leaned forward, so near their noses brushed. Sid let him squirm a moment before he leaned in too and closed the gap.
Maybe it was just a dream, but Granson felt solid. His mouth was warm, teeth blunt and honest where they buried themselves in Sid’s lower lip. When he pushed against Sid’s shoulder, Sid allowed himself to be lowered to the pillows and straddled at the waist, where Granson’s weight and warmth grounded him. He moaned and grabbed at Granson’s hips.
“You—wait. Have you been with a, er, a drahn before?”
Granson drew back a bit; his face did something complicated. “No.”
“Do you… want a primer, or go in blind?”
The reservation on Granson’s face bled into a smirk. “That sounds intriguing. S’pose I like a little mystery, if you don’t mind me fumbling around.”
Sid grinned weakly. “I trust you.”
Granson leaned down and kissed him, and slid a hand into his smalls.
It was the only thing he was wearing, in the dream. Or the vision. The… hallucination? Sid gasped as strong fingers parted his slit and slid shallowly inside. His prick was still waking up, but when Granson nudged against it with his knuckles it throbbed and began to ease into the open air. Sid panted and shut his eyes. His tail thrashed against the sheets as Granson worried bruises into the column of his throat.
“Granson…”
“Am I doin’ the right thing here?” His voice was rough-edged and low. It sent a shiver down Sid’s spine.
“Yeah. You can… mmmmm. Touch it. Just like yours…”
Granson was a fast learner. He kissed Sid deeply as he jerked him off, reading Sid’s every gasp and whimper and adjusting to compensate. His own erection prodded insistently into Sid’s hip, but apart from the occasional grind he stayed rather still. That was not acceptable. With eager hands made clumsy by need, Sid pushed his sleep pants down and took Granson’s cock in hand. It was smooth and dry, like Fray’s had been—he felt a brief pang of guilt for thinking of Fray in this moment, and then brushed it aside; Granson would understand, and Fray would likely want to join in—with a sheath of skin that pulled back and forth nicely. He rubbed his thumb around the soft pink head, smearing the little moisture that eked out and squeezing tight, wrung-out sounds from Granson.
“I’m almost,” he began to say, between huffing breaths, and then he was there. He let go of Granson’s prick in favor of his waist and clung to him hard enough to bruise. Granson murmured sweetly, encouraging; his hand slowed and then stopped, and Sid whined at the loss.
“I think,” Granson said, “I’m waking up.”
Sid blinked his eyes open. Above him, Granson hovered, braced on both arms, a lick of silvery hair falling into his face. A shaft of early morning light spilled through the window and over his shoulders, bathing him in buttery yellows and soft pinks.
“You seem pretty real to me.” He reached up, caught his chin in one careful hand; his claws had gone untrimmed a few days too long. Granson tipped his head into the hold. “Don’t back out on me now, Ketchthane.”
Granson huffed a little self-conscious laugh. He straddled Sid’s waist again and touched himself, slow and indulgent. He seemed to weigh a little less than before, but the warmth was still there. It burned into Sid’s hip scales as he fucked his own fist and spilled, finally, across Sid’s belly. The vision wavered, and Sid grabbed at his thighs uselessly, pawing through empty air.
“No,” he whispered. His breath felt tight and hard in his chest. “Don’t leave me.”
But he was already gone.
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Granson stared into the flat of his blade where it caught the sunlight, hoping for a pair of blue-green eyes to glare back at him through the white-hot sheen, but there was nothing. Only himself, when he tipped the blade just right.
“Hey, sinner. Ready to get going?”
Giott had stowed their breakfast things while he drifted off in the midst of oiling his blade. Across the empty firepit, Cerigg was breaking camp. Another busy day, brisk and damp and smelling of old leaves. The Greatwood sang around them, cacophonous; he was amazed he’d slept through the predawn chorus of birds and frogs.
“Yeah. Ready.” He stowed his blade and hefted himself to his feet, waving Giott off when she offered a helping hand.
Two months since he’d last seen Sid. Two months since he’d touched him, kissed him, held him. It had been brief, but so sweet. Every night he closed his eyes and hoped to find himself there again, or, barring that, anywhere and any when, as long as Sid was by his side.
Nothing. It was as if their paths had never crossed. Nothing but his own memories, which seemed to blur and waver as the days passed, taking with them the touch of scale, the scent of snow and ash.
It hurt worse some days than others. Today was somewhere in between. A delusional corner of his mind hoped to wander into Sid’s dreams again someday, to cross the veil that separated their stars; but the rest of him, the more practical part, was determined to press on without him, to take each day as it came. To learn how to live with just himself, without Sid, without hate, without vengeance.
Cerigg tossed him his pack and he buckled it on methodically. It was a tough sin eater on the docket today, an old one that had stayed well-hidden for nearly a year, feeding on slow streams of aether from the surrounding landscape to stay undetected. But the forest wardens had reported it to the Crystarium, so here they were.
A guide had been sent from Fanow. She met them at the trailhead just outside of Slitherbough and led them southeast, into the thicker parts of the wood where the trunks grew bigger around than houses and the undergrowth had to be beaten back with blades.
The beast, when they came to it, was coiled-up and vicious, a massive serpent that wouldn’t have been out of place on the steles excavated by the local Qitari tribe. Its scales were pure white, and the poison it spat between fangs longer than his sword was liquid light, hot and scalding. A strand of it splashed across his gauntlet, burning through the first few layers of metal like acid.
Despite the danger, he was not afraid. The thrill of the hunt sang in his blood; his blade felt light and natural in his hands, an extension of himself. When the shadows grew thick about him, he drew them into himself and expelled them again in a bitterly cold rush, a gust of wintry wind in the middle of summer. They coalesced like oil on water, billowing out of the ground to form a familiar shape, writ in shadow: a tall, featureless drahn, horned and armored, a massive greatsword slung across one shoulder.
Granson smiled through bloodied teeth, and charged.