Chapter Text
It started with the barest feeling of a presence.
Incredibly easy to miss amidst battle, she hadn’t noticed until her voidsent lingered after dispatching the bandits, its presence simmering in the seam of its blackened tendril-like shadows. She had looked around the encampment, wondering if it was sensing more attackers she may have somehow missed, but it soon dissipated anyway. She failed to discern how the feeling of someone else present remained even still.
Then there were glimpses—of golden strands tipped in smolders, of angry red veins on an even redder clawed-tipped arm, of regal details stitched elegantly upon the leather of an armored coat—disappearing in the voided darkness just as quick as they appeared in the corners of her vision. A twirl of her scythe to land her attack and she could almost see the monstrous claws in the seconds everything spun and blurred, the hand possessively wrapped around her very own, both holding on her reaper weapon. Akin to someone close behind her, enveloping her, guiding her. Tutor and student. Hunter and prey.
The whispers came last, and only when she saw fit to merge with the void creature she’d struck a bargain with. The power she could feel throughout her limps every time she became one with her avatar was indescribably ecstatic, each of her attacks magnified in speed and lethality, and it was exactly the reason why she strived not to make a habit of it. The possible loss of control in that state, no matter how fully in charge she felt enshrouded, was too much of a risk to play with. But some encounters required it of her still and in those moments, betwixt the glowing red and black of her slashes, her heart beating so loudly and blissfully in her chest that only the song of battle remained behind her pulse, she could hear it.
Or him.
It was a distorted voice at first so even when she could discern the whispers, she thought of them as prattle from the creature bound to her. From what she could only assume were the caverns of the thirteenth shard, her voidsent was talking—to her or to itself she wasn’t sure. Gradually did the ephemeral words start becoming discernible, only at times and not at every fight, a gravelly breathed patchwork of more and decimate them and they’re all unworthy.
When she was particularly tired or unlucky, she could hear them even outside of battle. Alphinaud had noticed each and every time she’d walk further back from the group, fiddling with the grip of her scythe or rearranging her inventory, mouthing a reply to someone not there, looking over her shoulder and frowning, the shake of her head a telltale sign she was trying to ignore a persistent pest. She knew because she could sense the young Elezen’s eyes on her, the concern palpable upon her skin despite his good nature not to bring it up. She was thankful because she didn’t want to lie to him. Never him.
And, of course, the dreams.
She had stopped dreaming after her stay in Elpis, as if the ancients had unknowingly blessed her with a lack of nightmares, the ones she was sure to otherwise have under deep red, ever-screeching skies tolling the end of everything. She even continued with long nights of calm following Ultima Thule, her exhausted body catching up on blissful sleep and soaking up the simple act of dropping on a bed, closing her eyes, the gentle black making everything cease to exist until morning. Krile, when the Warrior had spent a few nights at the Baldesion Annex, had jokingly told her she wouldn’t even so much as turn in place throughout her rest. She would reportedly lay there, steady breaths and static eyes behind closed eyelids, the very image of peace.
It stopped two days after the Scions disbanded. Conveniently, too, as she would now often find herself alone in her quarters of this or the next city-state to have called to her adventurous spirit, in a run-down inn or a well-hidden alcove in the wilderness. She could be left to turn and fidget and fuss with her sheets to her heart’s content as the unremarkable nights started twisting, taking form once more. The ink of the shadows, it seemed to her, was sculpting monsters every night, giving features to villains piece by piece.
It didn’t surprise her to see the final guise made of dreams and nightmares both to be of him. Fitting, in a way, that the first person she dreamed of after months of emptiness was the last person she’d have done battle with.
And it was because she knew she was dreaming and nobody could judge her for her thoughts that she finally felt comfortable admitting this to herself: she had not considered anyone as a worthy enough opponent since him. Not even the Twelve, the very gods of the realm that had played the part of grand adversaries in the mythical halls of Aglaia, had held the prestige he had in their last moments at the edge of creation.
That’d be quite the shameful thought in the morning. Standing in front of him in this dream realm, however, did not bring all the crushing weight the world would undoubtedly place upon her if they knew.
The sculpture of Zenos yae Galvus, for it was a sculpture with the unmoving way he stood under the starry sky of her dreamscape, nary an eyelash moving, was deceptively angelic. She felt herself smile mockingly as she neared him, knowing what a farce it was for her sleep addled self to have ever portrayed him as such. He was standing, simply yet gracefully, looking off to the distance bored and uninterested as she knew him to. The likeness was there, from the curve of his nose to the very fabrics of his attire, yet something was missing.
She looked around the same moment she realized what it was: his scythe wasn’t secured on his back, or held by his hand, and as if it was only natural to look for it even inside this dream, like something important was lost she wanted to bring back to him, the Warrior attempted to scan the amorphous area with her gaze in search of the weapon.
“You are lost.”
Her sleeping form, unlike that of her dream, reacted to his voice with limbs going rigid below the covers. But she did not find it as surprising in the dream. It was a dream, after all, and a sculpture being anything but was the least astonishing performance her mind could conjure after all her encounters.
She only stopped looking (because she was, even as she heard him, looking around for the darned thing as if it mattered) when she felt a hand around her wrist. An incessant yet miniscule tug, not meant to actually touch her but only grab her attention. Hotter than skin, like condensed aether willing itself to existence. His demonic arm.
“You are lost,” he repeated with an imperceptible frown of annoyance, the pitch turning deeper, lower than his usual cadence if that was possible.
Danger, her mind supplied as aid. But she was, after all, only dreaming.
His eyes, she could note from this close, weren’t the usual hueless gray, but that of the Resonant or his enshrouded form. She stared at his face, surveying it and looking for more things her dream was not being faithful to its iteration. The scar on his neck, the one he had gifted himself in the Royal Menagerie what felt like so many lives ago, was present, jagged and off-white against his skin, the healed tissue slightly raised and catching whatever passed as light in here. His pendant, on the other hand, had not made the dream’s portrayal of the crown prince.
“Your scythe has gone missing,” she simply replied as it was plain obvious. It did not occur to her that maybe that, too, was part of this rendition, much like the pendant’s absence and his half-enshrouded form. He looked all wrong without a weapon; she’d never dream of him this way.
His frown deepened in a way she hadn’t ever seen him do in waking life, and she tucked it away as one more unfaithful characterization. “Why… have you come?”
“Me? You’re in my dream. I should be asking you.”
It was, despite everything, fun arguing with nothings like this. She continued taking inventory of him, unabashed at so obviously appraising him this way and that. She’d never dare attempt it were this truly him, and there’d be hardly any time to what with his inclination to attack often and liberally, but there was no reason to hold herself back now. The man was dead, this was a play her mind’s theater had decided to present her, and it was hardly the time to wake up just yet.
What was next? Would he break into song and bake rainbow-sprinkled muffins gleefully? The thought had her smiling widely. Nothing really mattered while you dreamed.
Below the covers, her limbs started loosening up and the flinching scowl begun melting away.
“Dream?” The phantom looked around, maybe finally noticing their backstage. “Tis no dream we’ve found ourselves in.” When he turned to her, his face settled back to the more familiar lidded gaze but without any of the mirth in the promise of battle that usually accompanied all his interactions with her. This Zenos was distrusting, uninterested in her. “How have you joined me? Our clash’s outcome was assured; our performances played out and concluded. You bested me.”
“I killed you,” she agreed.
“Then why have I found myself kindled once more?” He looked around again. Something was clearly bothering him. She just continued staring amused. Nothing had to make sense. “You… were ported to safety.” He was struggling for words. His real self had never had trouble finding the right thing to say. If she had to offer her opinion, the man had always had too much to say. ”I remained in that cocoon of dynamis until it was over and my lifeblood’s thread had been extinguished.” The small head tilt made him look lost but she knew better. “But I’ve seen you,” his eyes focused on her again, retreating from his memories, “I was there with you.”
“Until I returned to the ship, yes.” She knew the play-by-play already.
“No.”
His fingers, both of them this time, encircled her wrists painfully and he slumped so he could bring his face on the same level as hers. Slowly, the languid certainty this was her mind’s machinations started giving way to apprehension.
“When you killed that expendable vermin—I was there, with you.” She saw his teeth clench in a small, wolfish smile. His eyes widened ever so. She began feeling like prey and shuffled uncomfortably—not in the dream but in her bed. “We made quick work of them,” he lowered his voice in what sounded like a conspiratory whisper. The smile widened, the red of his Resonant irises deepened. “We were one, my mirror.”
She woke, with a start. Ragged breaths did little to calm her racing heart and she looked around the inn’s room as if she expected something or someone prowling for her. The subdued shades of the still-night’s ambience revealed nothing and no one. Her anxious gaze turned to her wrists, where he’d touched her. She did not find a mark. She did not even feel any lingering pain from his grip.
Of course not. How could she, when this was just a dream?
She did not return to sleep that night. As what only felt a natural course of events, she stopped using her scythe soon after. It wasn’t permanent and she was sure to soon enough return to the reaper soulstone Drusilla had bestowed her—she only required a mental break for a while. Some time away from it all to compose herself, think more clearly and without the lingering aftermath of an apocalypse weighing heavily on her thoughts and decisions.
Because this was, clearly, caused by her exhaustion and accumulation of everything that had happened during the Final Days coming to head in a well-overdue… psychotic break? Was that what Thancred had called it before she’d punched his arm with a roll of her eyes? He had laughed and then sombered somewhat, looking carefully at her. There was hard-etched concern on the planes of his face.
“It’s all too much for just one person,” he’d said. ”Even if that person is the Warrior of Light.”
She did her research, as was only natural. She was curious more than perplexed, or that’s what the gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach turned into after a month or two having passed with no more recurring nightmares. She even briefly thought to drop this matter altogether, to simply leave it be as this was just a stressful mind’s conjurations. Thancred was right. G’raha, when she’d asked for his guidance on certain texts, and after he’d masterfully and all too quickly (unfair, really) realized something was off, had told her much the same. Truthfully, she had dreamed of vastly more horrible things in her life—the reappearance of Zenos speaking to her as if he was aware of the unexplained phenomena around her void avatar wasn’t a monstrous ordeal.
She did not visit Drusilla to ask, even after Y’shtola offered it as a way for the Warrior to get some peace of mind. Confirmation, the miqo’te had said, that this was just another wound similar to all the others she had garnered already—just of a different nature. She already knew the leader of the Lemures would tell her that, indeed, sometimes voidsent were pricks that liked messing with you if you didn’t draw clear, strict lines in the sand. The fallen disgraced prince wasn’t haunting her or playing dollhouse with her avatar. He was dead and gone, his body rotting in a pool of dynamis at the edge of creation.
She knew this would be her mentor’s answer. So she never visited Ul’dah to actually ask.
An opportunity to hone the skills she’d overlooked the last few moons in favor of the scythe—that, too, she had picked up because of him and after his death, but she didn’t think on it, of it—she now stuck to the art of shorter blades; chakrams and daggers. She felt lighter not hauling the admittedly heavy weapon on her back everywhere the fight led her. This had turned for the best. She started feeling like herself again.
Ironically, it was maybe due to her lack of unceasing concern that it all finally unraveled.
It wasn’t the first friendly skirmish between Estinien and her. They had ended up falling in a comfortable routine after a while what with her frequent visits to Thavnair to help Vrtra with matters concerning the Bounty and lending a hand to the Arkasodara and the Hippo Riders. The dragoon had ample free time, only constrained by the dragon’s possible requests, and she was practically itching to do battle with anyone who wouldn’t fall prone to the ground in the first two minutes of their scuffle. And out of all the Scions, Alisaie included, Estinien was the one who wouldn’t pull his punches with her even in a practice match.
“I heard about your little problem,” the Elezen said across their makeshift training ground the disregarded palace room they had claimed for themselves the last few weeks was doubling as. He took a few careful steps in a curve, wooden lance in hand, attempting to circle around her. “Didn’t pay much attention to it until I saw you opting out of your harvesting sickle.”
Was she noting a hint of amusement in his tone?
“Is that so?” she only proffered, following the same path but exactly opposite of him as to not find herself prone to his next attack.
“Indeed,” his smirk widened enough for her to be able to track across the room. “Having trouble sleeping, o’ Warrior?”
She clucked her tongue against her teeth. Not that she’d outright forbidden them from discussing it, but she was suddenly insanely curious to know who of the three she’d talked to was responsible for now getting scaldingly mocked by Estinien. “And here I thought picking up a lance would grant me your favor.” She twirled the wooden pole, the same one he had, testing its flexibility. She had only tested the ways of the dragoon briefly and promptly dropped any and all training of the discipline when she realized the Azure Dragoon, the selfsame man now readying to jump at her with a bit more fervor than was probably warranted, was leagues ahead of anything she’d be able to achieve.
She was also, famously, bad at jumping high.
He barked a laugh, genuinely enjoying himself. “I might, were you to do it out of true interest and not because you’re running from something, my friend.”
The smile she had been wearing was completely erased at his words but he wouldn’t have really noticed anyway as he jumped the moment he stopped talking. She registered him in the air, impossibly high as to almost reach the already lofty ceilings (and she knew he could go so much higher if he so wished) and let out a readying breath through her lips, preparing to weather whatever assault he had readied for her.
It never came.
Instead, the deep black swirl of her avatar erupted as if from her own body letting out an ungodly shrilling cry that caused every hair on her body to stand on end. The dragoon’s descent found no purchase upon the ground but, dreadfully, against the voidsent’s own scythe violently slashing through the air in a wide upward curve and, consequentially, through the Elezen.
Estinien was shot across the room wildly at the exact same moment she did, the attack’s force having somehow pushed her away too.
There was awful ringing in her ear, like something devastating had gone off right by her head. In some ways, she guessed it had. She scrambled to her knees already trying to run to her companion’s side and aid him, but before she could even detect him through the rubble their bout had caused, her attention was swiftly stolen by the being before her.
The voidsent she had struck a bargain with, the one she had not called upon to help her—nor would she’d been able to with the soulstone nowhere in proximity—was staring down at her, unmoving. Confused and aching, a splitting headache quickly overcoming her, she opened her mouth to ask but before she could even get the words out, the avatar’s shape began changing.
The voided tendrils started shaping the monstrous, fang-filled skull she knew to be her twisted aid in battle. Before her eyes, and she somehow already knew before the transformation was even complete, the perfect visage of Zenos viator Galvus stood unmoving, his black sclera and scorching red eyes trained on her. His pendant, much like in her dream, was missing.
She gaped, the corners of her vision slightly filling with black, her focus shrinking until all there was in this room, in this world, was him. He slowly kneeled before her, still much taller than her even in this position, and she thought how this had been played out before, how he’d done the same amidst a snow-filled vista. This time, however, instead of harrowing words of butchery and devastation, he offered a claw-tipped hand at her.
“Shall we, my friend?” the deep timbre asked of her, and she saw his eyes, rather than mouth, smile through a languid gaze.