undyingflames | Open Post // Overflow

[It is a testament to Dion's stubborn determination that he makes it as far as he does in his rented boat. He's used to pushing himself through exhaustion- more than once, he's had to use his halberd as a support to keep himself upright after priming, so that he wouldn't collapse in view of his Dragoons.

He'd pulled the same trick when he'd hobbled away from the Hideaway's angry healer, Lady Tarja, though he doubted she'd been fooled, given the curses she's lobbed after him.

Dion really had thought... well, maybe the problem was that he hadn't thought... but he'd assumed he could paddle himself to shore and find his way back to Twinside, that the hard part would be what came after that.

More fool, him. His shaking hands can scarcely grip the oar of Obolus' boat, much less keep paddling. Everything hurts, except for his right arm, which is concerningly numb. He's too far out to call out to anyone on the Hideaway's docks, even if his pride allowed it, but the shore is still so far away. All around is blighted water, dark and poisonous.

He sits in the boat and bows his head, trying to keep his breathing steady. He's stuck. He needs to get home, needs to see what is left in the wake of his rampage, but he can't. It is beyond his reach.

So he sits, boat floating in the dark water of the lake, and cradles his head in his hands, trying not to break down.]

[Between the fall of Rosalith, Sanbreque's fate, and Joshua's revelations, Jill's mind should be in a state of action, analysing and integrating new information and old. There's a need, she knows, to figure out where to begin making sense of the many implications now rising to the fore, and what role she and the others will play in encouraging the good and thwarting the bad.

Yet she struggles to grasp a single productive thought, never mind following it down however many tangents it may sprout.

Even as she and Clive leave the infirmary, even as they part to set the next stage of their journey into motion, Jill just can't summon together enough focus to try. Something else pulls at her. It's the tickle of Joshua's Eikon, the near impersonality that's defined their interactions thus far as tragedy keeps asserting itself over the miracle at its centre. It's the warmth and worry and love and light that guide her heart in a singular direction.

At first, she ignores it, prioritising the mission as she so often does. But as departure looms ever closer, and focus remains ever evasive, she does something rare for her: she asks Clive to go on ahead with Torgal, assuring him that she'll join him in Tabor, but that she has something to attend to that simply can't wait.

He understands, easily, even if she doesn't offer any specifics.

So, as Clive sets sail, Jill returns to the infirmary, carrying within herself a nervous sort of energy borne on the same excitement she'd felt when she'd learnt that Clive had survived all those years ago. And so it goes that as she had waited on one side of the infirmary door for him then, so too does she await Joshua on the other side, now.]

The sun is slinking down the horizon, by the time Clive manages to extract himself from a conversation with Mid. He didn't entirely follow the details of it, but he gathers she's got a new plan fermenting. He expects she'll ambush him soon enough to ask for favors to go about creating whatever it is. They're lucky to have Mid amongst them at the Hideaway, lending her talent to their cause. But her sheer energy sometimes makes Clive feel older than his years.

Though that's not much of a feat of late. Most nights by the time he finds his bed - assuming he does - he's tired right down to his aching bones.

Clive stops on the way to his room, greeting this or that person, and ending a squabble between a pair of new Cursebreaker trainees, sending them off sheepishly to get a drink together and work it out. But he does finally find his way inside, checking through his messages, and then following his instinct outside.

His instinct proves right. But then, it usually does when it comes to Joshua. Since they joined as Ifrit and Phoenix in battle, Clives feels as if he always knows where Joshua is. As if some vestigial sense of his brother came into full fruition and left him hyper aware of everything about Joshua.

That comes with its downsides as well, but for the moment, Clive just feels a sense of relief in Joshua's presence. He watches him, knowing it's a second too long and too intent, but after a moment crosses to stand beside him on the balcony. He follows Joshua's gaze to the new, malignant crystal floating above the waters in the distance. "It doesn't seem right that they're beautiful, does it? When their purpose is so ugly."

[ The skies are dark and grey ever since Ultima cast his spell, but that doesn't mean the gloom stops them from working. If anything, the Cursebreakers have been working harder than ever before, likewise everyone in the Hideaway. Everyone plays a part, all help is worth something. Instead of the blight spreading across their lands, it's the akashic that know no sleep. They loiter and drift within the concentrated aether, sometimes in spots they shouldn't be, only ever stirring to action when others approach or at beck and call to their god.

Today, it isn't quite all work. They're on a pilgrimage of sorts... After a visit at their father's makeshift memorial, Clive proposed they visit what once was the Duchy to pay proper tribute to his memory—perhaps it's a trip for themselves, too. They can see what is left of their home and picture the future where the Twins, no, their whole star knows true freedom. Change is coming. They're carving their way there.

... It is a farewell in many facets, for better or worse. A farewell to what Valisthea once was and perhaps farewell to home, but Clive holds out to hope. They go to Origin, they return, and live the rest of their lives as they so wish without foreboding skies hanging over them.

Those thoughts are pushed behind while they're traveling. On chocobo, they pass by the fields that welcome them Eastpool. They are not much to write about, but there are crops sprouting and a number of people tending the land. The same can be said to the structures in the distance... They don't tower in the glory they once had, but they're cared for. They're trying, everyone is.

And with people trying, Clive peeks over his shoulder at Joshua, who must be trying his very best. ]

How are you faring, Joshua?

[ Just to check on his baby brother to make sure the traveling hasn't burdened him overmuch. Clive is already thinking about some safe rest spots if to say they plan to trek to Phoenix gate after, but already has the mind to stay the night at the settlement. ]

[ The Hideaway has ever been a busy place, but now it's even moreso as the skies have grown dark and aetherfloods have begun sprouting up in more and more places across Storm. The Cursebreakers are run thin between them and needing to rescue bearers, and their allies from bandits and the akashic. As is Clive, as he tries to be everywhere at once. So Joshua and Jill offered to take up some few of these missions in order to ease Clive's burden while he was needed elsewhere.

And it's here now that they find themselves at Martha's Rest, having spent days walking along the familiar roads of Rosaria to the next newly reported aetherflood. It was far into the evening when they finally arrived, deciding to travel the extra few miles to make it and rest in a bed rather than camping by the roadside again. And as soon as they make it to their room, after making sure Jill has settled, he lays down on his own bed, a dull pain thrumming in his chest, making his whole body feel heavy, a prickling pain and soreness in his muscles in using his aether to fight as they've traveled.

Fatigue takes Joshua more quickly now, travelling long distances and fighting slowly getting more difficult as his strength wanes even more with each passing day because of Ultima. But he doesn't complain, and does his best not to let it show, lest he worry Jill and Clive more than he already does, and because there is no choice but to keep moving.

And he falls asleep quickly, but tonight his rest is anything but the peaceful nights sleep he needs.

Hours pass, and he dreams of fire.

But not the comforting, healing fires of the Phoenix, but the destructive ones of a terrified child who'd seen his own father die right in front of him, his head cut off and land in the dirt but a few feet away. His own flames setting Phoenix Gate ablaze. It's a dream, but a fear, a panic rises up in his chest as if it were real to grip at his heart as he watches helplessly, unable to stop it, even as he tries, as he begs, as his flames kill the men, Sir Tyler, Sir Wade, Lord Murdoch, his own countrymen trying to escape, raining balls of fire, of death down on them.

Sparing no one.

And then he sees a young Clive in the middle of the those same flames, looking up at him as the world falls to death and ruin around him. The fire not yet consuming him, but surrounding him, flames licking at his cheek until eventually they burn him, leaving behind a mark, the brand of a bearer. Though his brother does not flinch as Joshua watches in horror. Instead his cobalt blue eyes reflect the yellow of the fires around him, looking a color of that of a Dominant who's lost control, gazing up at him with an expression so blank, and yet at the same time so deeply inlaid with sorrow, with hurt.

He yells for his brother to run, cries, begs for forgiveness as the castle comes crashing down around them in a blaze, for failing to keep his promise to his brother, to protect the duchy, his people, to protect their father. Failing to protect Clive. But all he hears is the Phoenix screech in his ears.

A tear rolls down his cheek as he sleeps, and a swell of heat and aether emanates from him as he lay curled up on his side as if he were a furnace, stoked with the hottest flames. A surge of fiery aether starts to course through his entire body, filling his chest, his lungs with the flames of the Phoenix as he gasps a soft cry into his pillow, his breath as hot as if he were a dragon about to spit fire. Cracks of molten fire start to spread across his skin, into his hair.

He's starting to prime.

But he doesn't know it, his usual sharp awareness completely swallowed up by the fear that's gripping his heart. And he won't be waking up on his own. ]

Edited 2024-01-10 14:38 (UTC)

[ Joshua's been to the North only but a handful of times in his search for answers, the truth about Ultima, but in the few times he traveled there, there was naught but silence and black, lifeless lands. Even when he was a child he knew that much of the North had already been lost to the Blight. It's people waged a war against Rosaria during his grandfather's reign, the previous Phoenix, in a desperate bid for their Mothercrystal and lands that hadn't yet been darkened as the Blight consumed ever more of their own.

So when they'd learned of Mysidia, when they passed beneath the glamour and Joshua saw for himself the mountains of the North still somehow, impossibly, teeming with life, he was stunned beyond belief. That only but a boatride away from Oriflamme, the holy capital of Sanbreque, across the bay, was this. Hidden and kept secret from the rest of the world. And with it, Leviathan, the only Eikon long since lost to the annals of history, and his Dominant, the secret of Drake's Eye and how another of Shiva's Dominants was forced to create a spell to freeze time itself, and the people of the Motes of Water, a people long since believed gone, exterminated by the Gregorian faith.

And now, thanks to Clive, after almost a century, the Eikon has finally been calmed, as well as his Dominant, and finally returned to his people. The threat of the tsunami that once loomed over Mysidia, frozen at it's bay as a constant reminder in the same magicks that held Waljas, no more.

But no sooner had Waljas been reunited with the Motes of Water, had a heaviness settled back over them. A reminder of what it is they need to save, a future for all of those in Valisthea, a future now for the people of the Motes of Water, and a future for Waljas, that he might finally live a life, free and of his own choosing. The reality that lay on the other side of the glamour, somehow more easily forgotten under the blue skies.

So, in asking what she means to do next, Clive offers the support of the Hideaway. That in the coming days, as they step into a future that none have dared tread before, without magic and bearers and Dominants, without he comforts of the crystals they all once knew and their glamour falls, they'll help them rejoin the world and provide them with whatever they need.

Shula agrees, on the condition Clive helps in a ceremony to help welcome Waljas into the community as family. Something he'd been denied when he was first born, being seen as nothing more than a means to an end. To which he agrees.

So, they send for Gav to meet with Shula by stolace and make arrangements for him to be brought from Northreach to Mysidia by one of Shula's people. An idea believed might be best, as Gav's to be the next Cid in Clive's absence when they leave for Origin, and to help give the people some peace of mind, wary as they are around outsiders.

While Clive helps to prepare for the rite, being one of the witnesses, Joshua goes to meet with Gav when he's set to arrive. He stands at the top of the mountain, above the docks where they'd come in before, and stares out at the ocean and clear, blue, glamoured skies in quiet thought as he waits. ]

Edited 2024-09-02 11:15 (UTC)

Joshua pls come rescue your prince

no subject

Brothers on a balcony.

trip down memory lane

for @reasonandrime as we add to the angst pile

@anoseknows Homecoming