Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Martyn knew a red flag when he saw it, and this was less of a single flag than a military parade for the Maelstrom. Unfortunately, that wasn't going to stop him.

For this and that reason Martyn owed a significant sum of money to a dubiously legal group called the Lemures. The group was headed by Drusilla Varus, a stern faced older woman named with nut-brown skin and an accent Martyn couldn't begin to place. Usually Drusilla threatened him with having his ears sliced off when he came up short. This time, she'd approached the matter with surprisingly calm and a sharp smile. Even poured him a cup of tea, which just added to the pile of flags.

But it was this or losing his ears. Or worse, going back to restaurant work.

Drusilla had offered to nullify a large clump of Martyn's outstanding debt to the Lemures, more than he'd put together in six months on his own, if he'd but spend an hour in a specific individual's company. The agreement bound him to doing whatever the individual pleased, without saying a word to another soul about what he saw or did, with the promise that Martyn would end the session 'intact and uninjured' - which wasn't the most encouraging phrasing.

Martyn was man enough to read between the lines on that one and tired enough that he could barely protest the suggestion.

Money was money, and it wasn't as if he'd never had some weirdo pawing at him before. Drusilla had refused to tell him what kind of bizarre bastard preferred scrubby late twenties men with a patchy goatee and weak eyes for their prostitutes, but it couldn't be that bad, right?

And yet, the further they walked on through the echoing stone halls beneath Ul'dah, the more Martyn began to wonder if he was in over his head.

Not that it would be the first time.

Ul'dah and the cities it was built on top of had lasted several Calamities, each successive generation stealing building material from the last. There were hidden passageways and walled off apartments pockmarking the city like ant nests, as the residents built over the old world again and again throughout the millenia.

At the mouth of the tunnels Martyn had walked past representatives of the city's least fortunate souls, who watched him with wary milky eyes as they huddled in their careful assemblies of tarp and stacked rubble. Below that, painted and carved graffiti had at least provided some sign of human life.

As deep as they'd now gone, Martyn couldn't even hear the sound of rats anymore.

"Don't make a fuss when you see the client, right? They've sent our people away for screaming, so if you scream you're out the entire deal," Drusilla said. She had a lantern in one hand, and perplexingly, a pot of irises tucked under her free arm. Gift for the client, maybe. Or just doing some personal shopping on the way to deliver the escort.

"Right, right." Martyn pushed his pinch nez back up the bridge of his nose and tried to smile.

The gem on his caster's cane lit the way before him in a sapphire glow.They passed underneath iron grates that likely predated the Sultanate's entire dynasty, into an open area where a rusty chain hung beside a large, round slab of dark metal. Drusilla hefted her bag over her shoulder, balanced the pot of irises she'd been carrying on her hip, and yanked hard.

From the other side of the slab, Martyn could just barely hear the sound of chimes. The slab rolled slowly aside, stone creaking against old wood.

The chamber beyond was lit by lamps in the center and cloaked in shadow along the edges. It was made from hewn sandstone slabs, with the kind of architecture that the upper city hadn't seen in centuries. Tiled azure and white mosaic lined the arches that reached towards the ceiling, reflecting the lamplight back down to imitate the patterns of a sunlit sky. The floor was bare and worn stone, but there were several pieces of surprisingly nice furniture scattered about, as if guests were meant to be entertained there. A large door to the left was cracked open, but Martyn couldn't see anything in the shadows through the narrow gap.

At the back of the room, crystal lamps illuminated a small fountain, reminiscent of those that Martyn had seen in the foyers of rich merchants. The shelves above and around the fountain were ringed with potted flowers in various stages of life. To the right was another large doorway, and next to it was an altar to Nald'Thal, the twinfold patron god of Ul'dah who oversaw commerce and death. The symbol of the closed eye was carved in brass above two stone figures of the god's split incarnations, Nald with his curved sword and Thal with his straight blade. Both statues were hung with strings of gold chains. Before Nald sat an ornate bowl filled with coins, and before Thal sat a darker bowl that, assuming the owner was a traditionalist, contained scented oil and dried flowers.

The only occupants of the room were a Lalafell man seated on a plush chair in the middle of the room, his legs gently swaying in the air above the floor, and a massive broad-shouldered Roegedayn standing beside him. The Roe was likely a bodyguard, from his stiff and immobile stance, but his face was hidden by the shadows, which would make his tiny companion the client.

Martyn's shoulders relaxed down. All right, this wasn't too bad. The Lalafell seemed attractive enough, from what Martyn could see in the dim light, unless there was some hideous scar on the other side of his face. And at such a small size Martyn would probably barely even feel–

Something moved in the shadowed doorway to the left, and it took all Martyn's grace to hold his scream silent in his throat.

The creature emerging from the far doorway was a gleaming black like polished obsidian, as long as a chocobo cart and at least twice as tall as Martyn. The back end of its body was thick and sinuous with two pairs of limbs ending in clawed feet jutting out to the side, like a Desert Peiste that had eaten far too much. Fleshy spines sprouted from its back, up to the base of a long thick neck. Further up the neck were two additional sets of smaller limbs, with thin fingers adorning tiny hands. At the very end of its neck rested an unmoving white face, like a porcelain mask, eyes closed and mouth sealed.

The monster approached the seated Lalafell, laid those four small hands on either side of his unresisting head, and with no sign of effort popped the head off its stalk.

Martyn bit the inside of his cheek to stay quiet. Drusilla made a thoughtful grunt, as if she hadn't just witnessed an act of brutal dismemberment.

"Oh," chirped a voice. "That does feel odd indeed." It took Martyn a moment to realize that it was the Lalafell's head talking. The head's eyes were open, taking in the sights as the monster carefully lifted it onto the neck of the Roegedayn man - who, as the shadows shifted, Martyn saw did not actually have a head at all. The monster patted the head into place and curled both hands around the neck, pressing down as if it were clay.

"Dollmaker, they call the thing. The black market's blackest little secret. If y'can't afford a fantasia, it'll do you almost as good," Drusilla leaned in to whisper. "Make a man into a woman, make an Elezen into a Miqo'te. Or just give you a better nose than you started with."

"Ah," said Martyn, who was still working his way back from what was sadly neither his first or last panic attack of the day, and not doing his best at words. When the monster's hands pulled back from the Roegedayn's body, it was as if the flesh had never been seperated to begin with. Martyn watched as the man, now a Roegedayn with a slightly rounder than average head, flexed his new hands and commented how wonderful it felt to be tall.

"Lovely work, I must say. And you can keep that old thing," the man said, gesturing at his former body still seated in the chair. "I won't be needing it anymore."

Dollmaker pressed its two pairs of hands together and bowed its head. Its voice was almost comically high pitched for such a massive creature. "I promise to tend to it with care. And since I believe we've already handled payment, you're quite free to go, my dear. I hope your new form brings you joy." The features on the porcelain mask stayed inert as it spoke. The sound seemed to simply be emanating from the creature's body as a whole, with the pitch of a large man doing a falsetto in a pantomime show.

The Lala-headed-Roe made a sweeping bow, nearly banging its new arms against the ceiling. "And with you, Master Dollmaker," he said brightly, and strolled out of the cavern with his arms stiffly swaying at his sides in the way many Lalafell were wont to do.The creature's gaze followed it out, and then as almost an afterthought swept around to focus on the new arrivals.

"Oh! Drusilla! You're here too."

Drusilla barely seemed to put in the effort to tilt her head back and give a casual nod of greeting. "Hello, Dollmaker." Martyn wondered if she was just violently repressing her horror or if being an organized crime boss made you immune to such weirdnesses. He quickly copied her, giving a casual nod with a small bow to the monster. Beneath the hand pressed to his abdomen, he could feel his stomach fluttering.

Dollmaker paced towards them, the wide bent lower limbs carrying its shadowy body quickly across the floor. "I thought you were coming in the evening, Drusilla."

"It is evening," Drusilla said. She offered the flowers, which the creature delicately took with the topmost pair of limbs. "Here. For your garden."

"Thank you, my dear. Are you sure it's evening?" it asked, the mask canting to one side.

"Quite sure."

"Ah. I may have lost track of time. I was–anyway, come in, come in." The leftmost upper hands gestured towards them as it turned towards the fountain.

Dollmaker set the irises among the other potted plants, and ran a delicate fingertip over one blossom. Martyn saw a barely perceptible slit open across its neck, a slender maw whose edges reached almost to the base of its first set of legs. Color began to drain from the tiny flower, purple fading to an ashy grey.

As a mage, Martyn had trained himself to sense changes in the currents of aether, the energy that filled the world and supported all life, whose elemental aspects and channeling made up the basis of nearly every martial art, craft, and academic discipline. The pull was weak, but if he focused he could feel the way the flower's aether was being drained from its petals, flowing in a gentle current into Dollmaker's fanged mouth until nothing was left but dust in the creature's fingertips.

"Wait, that's...that's the…one that you want me to--" Martyn's brain was finally catching up to matters as he pointed to the creature with a shuddering hand. "That's a voidsent!" he hissed under his breath. A predator upon living aether, one of the horrors that had clawed its way across the veil between worlds to ravage helpless mortals! Not a friend!

Dollmaker brushed a fond hand over the other flowers, contemplating them, but their colors remained intact as it pulled away.

"It's an easy gig, Martyn," Drusilla murmured back. "Dollmaker does most of the work anyway. Just indulge it."

"Indulge it in what?"

Dollmaker was tidying up the space now, running hands over the now headless Lalafell body. The voidsent gave the decapitated form a friendly pat on the shoulder and it wiggled off the table, walking confidently off to the other chamber.

Martyn let out a nervous whimper. It echoed louder than he'd intended, and Dollmaker's neck snapped around to let that porcelain mask stare into his soul.

"Who's this one?" it asked. The slit at its neck rippled, flashing the bases of those fangs again. "I don't recognize this one."

Drusilla beamed and slapped Martyn on the back as if they were best chums and not victim and victimizer. "This'd be your new doll for the evening. All yours to dress up and play with as it pleases you."

"What happened to the last doll?" Dollmaker skittered over to Martyn, long neck bending to inspect him from all angles. Martyn forced his spine to be ramrod straight, his skin to not flinch when the cold fingers reached towards him.

"Oh--out on business, I think?" Drusilla offered. "Out of town, I don't really know. Does it matter?"

The porcelain mask tilted, its gaze lowering for a moment. It walked around him, looming over Martyn with that empty, unsettling gaze. Martyn opened his mouth to say something witty or brave, and instead found himself yelping as Dollmaker abruptly lunged towards him. The voidsent stopped just short of tackling him to the ground and went back to the same appraising look.

Martyn's heart was raising, and his fingers were white-knuckling his cane. "Puh. Pleasure to be here," he managed. "At your service, Master Dollmaker."

Dollmaker did another lap around him, coiling in tighter. The cold fingers ran over his hair down to his shoulders. "Voice is decent enough, I suppose," it grumbled. "All right, go back to your little hole in the wall upstairs, Drusilla. You can get your payment at the usual time."

Drusilla had the gall to give Martyn a jaunty wink and a 'enjoy' as he departed. The gate swung shut behind her with a jarring finality.

"All right then, new doll. Come along and let's see what we can make of you." Dollmaker's resigned sigh spoke of 'I guess you'll do'. Martyn felt his legs abruptly begin to move of their own volition, carrying him after Dollmaker as it skittered into the next chamber.

The door opened into a long, high-ceilinged corridor lined on either side with shelves that went up even higher than Dollmaker’s head. Carefully arranged on the shelves were rows and rows of still figures, lit from flattering angles by carefully placed lighting.

The figures ranged in size from towering Au Ra with polished horns to pudgy, diminutive Lalafell, with a few small animals scattered about in jeweled collars. Many of the figures were standing but some were arranged on chairs or couches as if they were captured in a moment of pleasant idleness. They were dressed in an array of high fashions, trending towards ornate dresses with full poofy skirts and crinolines, but all of them were adorned in a veil or mask that hid the top half of their faces from view.

Martyn knew better than to assume they were mannequins. That would be too wholesome.

"It's, um. Quite a spread you've got here," Martyn said, trying to fill the silent corridor with sound. His legs wouldn't stop moving, even when he set his hands to his thighs and pressed down.

"My doll gallery? Yes. I've been collecting them for some time."

Martyn passed by a tall maiden arranged as if she were having tea with her companions, one hand resting upon the black coeurl curled in her lap. The skin of the fingers was the bright green-blue you saw on Sea Wolf Roegedayn, but the hand itself was the color of tanned leather, and those were definitely Xaela horns poking out from the sides of the veil.

Dollmaker stretched out one of its topmost hands towards the figure Martyn was inspecting. Martyn jerked backwards as the figure slowly unfolded herself from the chair, grasping her skirt in one hand to give a low curtsy before sinking back into the chair and going still.

"You collect corpses?" Martyn asked, taking a few steps back. (Gods, he hoped they were just corpses, and not living beings trapped inside their own skin.)

“Ethically sourced, before you get yourself in a twist,” said Dollmaker, sounding a bit huffy. "Your city throws the corpses of paupers over the walls to feed the jackals, at the very least this gives them more dignity. I even pay the fee to Thal. And of course there are many who are happy to trade the part they don’t want for the part they do.”

It gestured at the headless Lalafell standing at the end of the row. Martyn found his treacherous eyes wandering to the stump of its neck - the cut was smooth and bloodless, sealed over with skin as if the head had never been there at all.

"You can just…take people apart and keep them alive? How?" Against his better interests he approached, trying to see

The two sides of Martyn were already warring - the fearful part that said this creature would rip him to shreds for entertainment ,and the greedy part that noted how useful such a spell would be in the arena.

“My own special skill, my dear. Your body is made up of aether, as all things are. I simply control the flow and movement of it, or freeze it in place to shape the individual parts. Don't fret, doll, it never hurts." One of Dollmaker's stray hands patted his head.

"I see. Um." Martyn forcibly averted his gaze, which meant instead he was looking up at the voidsent scuttling before him. This did not help his anxiety. "I'm a bit new at this, should I be calling you something specific?" My lord? Master? Daddy?

Dollmaker made a confused noise. "They call me Dollmaker here, you might as well too. Or he, or it. I rather like 'it', gives me an exotic flair. But you won't need to worry much about your words, doll. A good doll only needs do as it's told."

At the end of the corridor of horrors was another chamber, this one featuring racks and racks of fancy clothing, wardrobes stacked on top of each other at double height. Across from the shelves was a large, slightly inclined worktable, with shelves above it lined with wig-heads and ribbons.

"Up you go, dear doll," Dollmaker chirped. It grabbed Martyn under the arms and lifted him to lay flat on the table.

With brisk efficiency the several sets of arms plucked his clothes away, forcing limbs to move as needed. Humiliation twisted in the pit of Martyn's stomach as the last of his garments were unceremoniously dragged away from him. Only his eyes could move now, and even then only to squint against the bright light of the lamp angled to shine down on his exposed body.

"Now, let's see..." A hand darted forward and Martyn abruptly lost all feeling in his left arm. As the hand pulled back, Martyn realized what Dollmaker was holding was that very arm, bloodlessly severed from his body.

Even in his horror, Martyn couldn't help but be fascinated as he watched the voidsent remove his limbs like a veteran mammet crafter replacing damaged parts. Dollmaker hummed to itself as it worked, holding different limbs up to Martyn's immobile body as if to see how well they matched.

After some time laying there, squinting into the light, Martyn felt sensation begin to return to his body. Dollmaker raised him again and he felt cloth against his goosebumping skin as an embroidered red dress with velvet sleeves and puffed skirt was pulled on over his head.

"Oh, that does look lovely on you."

Stockings - the luxurious feeling of silk said this voidsent had expensive tastes - were drawn up his legs, followed by buckled shoes and satin gloves. His hair was brushed and a silk flower pinned above one ear. Finally the voidsent set him on his feet on the worktable, clasping both sets of hands together and staring at him with what felt like…fondness.

"Now curtsy, dear doll." Martyn stumbled as the paralysis of his limbs suddenly released. He staggered, his first impulse being to run or call some spell to his defense…but then he thought about the debt, and the money, and that this voidsent might well devour him if he backed out halfway through.

From what little he knew of voidsent, contracts were the one thing that they would heed, bereft of morals or ethics as they allegedly were. And this was Ul'dah, you didn't need to be a monster from across the rift for someone to murder you for breaking a contract.

With great force of will Martyn stood up straight, smiled, and lifted the lace hems of his skirt to dip his knees into a curtsy. The expression on the voidsent's mask never changed, but Martyn could see how its body seemed to shiver in delight.

"Now a twirl, show off your pretty dress."

Martyn spun again, keeping that stiff smile on his face. His body felt strange as he moved - no surprise, he supposed, when it wasn't even his own - but it moved all the same, and all the sensation was intact. His fingertips were lighter and smaller, and his legs felt far too thin. The phenomenon would be fascinating, if it wasn't being done so some bizarre monster from another dimension could play dollies.

Dollmaker patted his hair gently and picked him up, carrying him back to the room of silent figures. As they walked, two veiled figures - a delicate Lalafell dressed suspiciously like the current sultana and a slim elezen whose ears had been replaced with Hyur-style round ones - stepped off their platforms and followed in Dollmaker's wake.

Martyn was placed in one of the little dioramas, this one containing a painted table with matching chairs. The veiled dolls took seats in two of the chairs, while Martyn was carefully placed in the third.

A china tea set sat on the table, along with a vase of silk oldroses. The teapot was modeled like a mother Chocobo, with the cups as her chicks and the sugar bowl as her nest. Martyn made a weak noise in the back of his throat, the only action he could take of his own regard.

"Let's sit with all our friends," Dollmaker was muttering to itself, taking the utmost time in arranging the other two dolls. If he focused, Martyn could pinpoint the moments when Dollmaker's focus turned and control briefly returned to him, flexing his toes frantically inside his calfskin shoes so his freedom of movement would go undetected.

Martyn had encountered monsters that paralyzed their prey before - one had to, to collect the spells that would do so to your enemies. Still, he'd never encountered anything this precise, done this casually. Each time Dollmaker retook control of his body he focused, trying to acquire the spell for himself, to analyze it. If Dollmaker noticed Martyn's efforts as its toys played through their routine, pressing cups of tepid water to their lips and smiling appreciatively, it didn't comment.

As the tea party went on, Martyn found his mind was starting to check out - to simply observe passively as the world drifted by. It left him in a state of strange calm that served as an anesthetic to his anxiety.

The time passed easily. Dollmaker would speak and Martyn would nod in return, sometimes clapping his hands in childlike delight. The fingers on them were long and slender, with painted nails cut to perfect curves instead of his own rough and freckle-splattered digits. His posture was perfect.

This was…this was all right. He could tolerate this. It wasn't safe but it wasn't painful, and it wasn't work. Martyn surrendered himself to the helplessness of the situation and poured his friends another mug of tea.

Eventually, a set of tinkling chimes pierced the soft fog in Martyn's brain. Out of the corner of his eye Martyn caught sight of a wooden clock at the end of the hallway. Tiny figures were dancing around its face, hitting bells with their tiny little hammers. Dollmaker's neck sagged as it grumbled. "Fine, fine."

Martyn was yanked out of his chair and dragged back to the worktable, where Dollmaker reconnected him with his usual parts with grumpy efficiency. It even put his boots back on and tied the laces up. Exactly five minutes later another set of chimes sounded, and Martyn nearly fell off the work table as full control returned to his body all at once.

"Gah," he grunted. "Mmmph. Oh. Is…what?"

"Your hour's up," Dollmaker said testily. "And the money is by the door."

"Oh. Oh!" He'd forgotten he even had a time limit. Martyn tried to think of something customer servicey to say in parting but it was hard enough work remembering how to make his legs do the walking again. His tongue felt thick in his mouth.

Drusilla was there to meet him in the parlor, already holding Martyn's payment. She didn't speak to him until they were out in the shadowed tunnels, and her hand was on his jacket to keep him from walking into walls.

"You all right, lad?" she muttered. "Breathe slow, don't rush it."

"Mmhm. Just." His hand wandered, touching the joins of his wrists, elbows, shoulder. Confirming they were there, that they were his. In the dim light he couldn't entirely see whether his familiar scars were in their proper places.

"You've got all your parts, don't worry," Drusilla said. "The contract binds Dollmaker to put it all back where it was before."

"I know. Just. Feels weird."

"So I've heard. But you're not behind in your payments anymore, so take that as a comfort. Dollmaker pays on time and pays well, which is more than I can say of most of the pricks I know."

Martyn took a deep, bracing breath, one arm around himself as he walked. "All of those things in there…those are people?"

"Were people." Drusilla gave him a sidelong gaze in the lamplight, and Martyn forced himself not to flinch in case she judged him for it. "The fresh dead are just raw materials for it to shape - I wouldn't think too hard about it."

When some of that raw material had been on his body just minutes ago, not thinking about it was a difficult ask. "Did Dollmaker kill them?" Martyn asked, squeezing the fingers of one hand with the other. His hands. Right? They were always that shape, right?

"No. At least, none that I've seen. Ul'dah has no shortage of the unclaimed dead. Don't misunderstand, nothing about that thing is safe, but it has…standards. Not morals, but things it finds distasteful."

"Ah. Suppose that's something. So what's with the–the whole–" He gestured vaguely, sending his cane's glow bouncing around the tunnel.

Drusilla snorted. "The pretty princess playtime schtick?"

"Yeah."

Drusilla shrugged. "Fetish thing, I think," she said, so bluntly that Martyn couldn't help but spit out a nervous laugh. "As long as it pays and doesn't eat anyone it shouldn't, the customer's motives aren't important."

They emerged out from behind another grate, hidden behind a clumsily hung tarp. The grate's hinges creaked against the crumbling stone as it begrudgingly bent to allow them to pass through. The wind blew harsh down the back alleys, bringing the smell of garbage, refuse, dust, and the barest hint of baked goods. In the distance he could hear the sound of the late night bar crowd arguing with each other.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Master Goodfellow," Drusilla said. "And I don't suppose I need to remind you to keep mum about what happened today."

Martyn held up a hand against the sudden glare of the streetlight, squinting behind his pince nez. It seemed like ages since he'd seen the sun.

"Don't worry about me mouthing off," Martyn grunted, "Even I don't want to know about what just happened." By the time his eyes had adapted to the sunlight, Drusilla had vanished off into the back alleys.