Dissidia Calamitas Infinita NT/Palace/Awakenings

==Angel Ataraxia==
Image	Description							
 	 							
 	
Like another beginning of a new life, or the realization that she was dreaming while still in the hazy sleep, the horned High Priestess opened her eyes to a new world, sat up in her bed of thorns, and heard the blackened, unyielding, almost orgasmic feeling of perfect silence - having nothing to hear - before anyone else in her mind could begin to whisper. She dared not even think to herself, but she knew immediately that this was a dream, and a beautifully blissful one. 
Then she saw there were two others in the tomb with her.
(...)
----
I wake alone, gutted, cold. The cold makes a thing weak if it is not built for it. The cold kills. It was the cold that told me, before my eyes had even opened, that I was not on my home planet. Asleep, I was not in immediate danger, so I kept my eyes closed and my body sleep-still until I felt I had all of my wits about me. Then I jumped to my feet, suppressing a yawn and a stretch of my muscles, and summoned my weapon in the same motion.
I am alone.
I lower my weapon, but do not dismiss it. The spear is familiar in my hands, warm and weighty. This is my lance. This is not my world. The material of the walls, the outdated (but ornate) decorations on the wall, the over-glamorous gold and jewels hanging from everything... this is the home of a king, or a god. And I am alone in it. 
There is only a bed, and a full-length mirror, and mirrors on the ceiling. Vision multiplies; the epochal chamber becomes endless. I witness myself, check for signs of illusion and find none. I am the same, or near enough to it that my perception is identical to the vague state of "before" that I can remember. Body untouched, muscles steeled and primed, weapon still at hand, faculties still in my grasp. Whatever has moved me has not harmed me.
I notice something behind me. The bed I was on is much too large for one person, and its entire surface is askew, though I only took up a third of it at best. I approach. I observe. There is a scent I do not recognize, and which does not propagate from my pores. There was another here. 
There are so many new scents - and so many missing ones. I am struck by the loss of smoke, and steel, and human waste, and humans. It smells almost like nothing. There is no sound, either; my every step rings through the walls unless I go out of my way to step lightly. I dare not speak, dare not breathe with the opening of my jaw, lest I endanger myself or - worse - crack this rare, perfect silence. I have never felt an emptiness like this before.
My weapon remains in my hand, and with my free hand I hold my armor-cloak around the small of my back and the curve of my arms. There is at least one other here, and I know not a thing about them. I must consider them my enemy; I have nothing to trust here. Not even the stars. The cold assails me again, as I prepare to leave the bedazzled chamber. This empty decadence intrigues me - even as I scan for other signs of life, even in the corridor I silently labor into, my virgin vision must marvel, must tremble at the power and the beauty of this place, so much larger than I, so grand in scale and detail - but this unnatural cold haunts me. My world never grows this cold; everything is controlled, every meter under that artificial sky is kept at perfect safety and comfort. No one is above me now, I know, even though I have yet to break out of this palace-coffin. I am truly alone. 
For now.	
Like another beginning of a new life, or the realization that she was dreaming while still in the hazy sleep, the horned High Priestess opened her eyes to a new world, sat up in her bed of thorns, and heard the blackened, unyielding, almost orgasmic feeling of perfect silence - having nothing to hear - before anyone else in her mind could begin to whisper. She dared not even think to herself, but she knew immediately that this was a dream, and a beautifully blissful one. 
Then she saw there were two others in the tomb with her.
(...)
----
I wake alone, gutted, cold. The cold makes a thing weak if it is not built for it. The cold kills. It was the cold that told me, before my eyes had even opened, that I was not on my home planet. Asleep, I was not in immediate danger, so I kept my eyes closed and my body sleep-still until I felt I had all of my wits about me. Then I jumped to my feet, suppressing a yawn and a stretch of my muscles, and summoned my weapon in the same motion.
I am alone.
I lower my weapon, but do not dismiss it. The spear is familiar in my hands, warm and weighty. This is my lance. This is not my world. The material of the walls, the outdated (but ornate) decorations on the wall, the over-glamorous gold and jewels hanging from everything... this is the home of a king, or a god. And I am alone in it. 
There is only a bed, and a full-length mirror, and mirrors on the ceiling. Vision multiplies; the epochal chamber becomes endless. I witness myself, check for signs of illusion and find none. I am the same, or near enough to it that my perception is identical to the vague state of "before" that I can remember. Body untouched, muscles steeled and primed, weapon still at hand, faculties still in my grasp. Whatever has moved me has not harmed me.
I notice something behind me. The bed I was on is much too large for one person, and its entire surface is askew, though I only took up a third of it at best. I approach. I observe. There is a scent I do not recognize, and which does not propagate from my pores. There was another here. 
There are so many new scents - and so many missing ones. I am struck by the loss of smoke, and steel, and human waste, and humans. It smells almost like nothing. There is no sound, either; my every step rings through the walls unless I go out of my way to step lightly. I dare not speak, dare not breathe with the opening of my jaw, lest I endanger myself or - worse - crack this rare, perfect silence. I have never felt an emptiness like this before.
My weapon remains in my hand, and with my free hand I hold my armor-cloak around the small of my back and the curve of my arms. There is at least one other here, and I know not a thing about them. I must consider them my enemy; I have nothing to trust here. Not even the stars. The cold assails me again, as I prepare to leave the bedazzled chamber. This empty decadence intrigues me - even as I scan for other signs of life, even in the corridor I silently labor into, my virgin vision must marvel, must tremble at the power and the beauty of this place, so much larger than I, so grand in scale and detail - but this unnatural cold haunts me. My world never grows this cold; everything is controlled, every meter under that artificial sky is kept at perfect safety and comfort. No one is above me now, I know, even though I have yet to break out of this palace-coffin. I am truly alone. 
For now.	
Like another beginning of a new life, or the realization that she was dreaming while still in the hazy sleep, the horned High Priestess opened her eyes to a new world, sat up in her bed of thorns, and heard the blackened, unyielding, almost orgasmic feeling of perfect silence - having nothing to hear - before anyone else in her mind could begin to whisper. She dared not even think to herself, but she knew immediately that this was a dream, and a beautifully blissful one. 
Then she saw there were two others in the tomb with her.
(...)
----
I wake alone, gutted, cold. The cold makes a thing weak if it is not built for it. The cold kills. It was the cold that told me, before my eyes had even opened, that I was not on my home planet. Asleep, I was not in immediate danger, so I kept my eyes closed and my body sleep-still until I felt I had all of my wits about me. Then I jumped to my feet, suppressing a yawn and a stretch of my muscles, and summoned my weapon in the same motion.
I am alone.
I lower my weapon, but do not dismiss it. The spear is familiar in my hands, warm and weighty. This is my lance. This is not my world. The material of the walls, the outdated (but ornate) decorations on the wall, the over-glamorous gold and jewels hanging from everything... this is the home of a king, or a god. And I am alone in it. 
There is only a bed, and a full-length mirror, and mirrors on the ceiling. Vision multiplies; the epochal chamber becomes endless. I witness myself, check for signs of illusion and find none. I am the same, or near enough to it that my perception is identical to the vague state of "before" that I can remember. Body untouched, muscles steeled and primed, weapon still at hand, faculties still in my grasp. Whatever has moved me has not harmed me.
I notice something behind me. The bed I was on is much too large for one person, and its entire surface is askew, though I only took up a third of it at best. I approach. I observe. There is a scent I do not recognize, and which does not propagate from my pores. There was another here. 
There are so many new scents - and so many missing ones. I am struck by the loss of smoke, and steel, and human waste, and humans. It smells almost like nothing. There is no sound, either; my every step rings through the walls unless I go out of my way to step lightly. I dare not speak, dare not breathe with the opening of my jaw, lest I endanger myself or - worse - crack this rare, perfect silence. I have never felt an emptiness like this before.
My weapon remains in my hand, and with my free hand I hold my armor-cloak around the small of my back and the curve of my arms. There is at least one other here, and I know not a thing about them. I must consider them my enemy; I have nothing to trust here. Not even the stars. The cold assails me again, as I prepare to leave the bedazzled chamber. This empty decadence intrigues me - even as I scan for other signs of life, even in the corridor I silently labor into, my virgin vision must marvel, must tremble at the power and the beauty of this place, so much larger than I, so grand in scale and detail - but this unnatural cold haunts me. My world never grows this cold; everything is controlled, every meter under that artificial sky is kept at perfect safety and comfort. No one is above me now, I know, even though I have yet to break out of this palace-coffin. I am truly alone. 
For now.	
Like another beginning of a new life, or the realization that she was dreaming while still in the hazy sleep, the horned High Priestess opened her eyes to a new world, sat up in her bed of thorns, and heard the blackened, unyielding, almost orgasmic feeling of perfect silence - having nothing to hear - before anyone else in her mind could begin to whisper. She dared not even think to herself, but she knew immediately that this was a dream, and a beautifully blissful one. 
Then she saw there were two others in the tomb with her.
(...)
----
I wake alone, gutted, cold. The cold makes a thing weak if it is not built for it. The cold kills. It was the cold that told me, before my eyes had even opened, that I was not on my home planet. Asleep, I was not in immediate danger, so I kept my eyes closed and my body sleep-still until I felt I had all of my wits about me. Then I jumped to my feet, suppressing a yawn and a stretch of my muscles, and summoned my weapon in the same motion.
I am alone.
I lower my weapon, but do not dismiss it. The spear is familiar in my hands, warm and weighty. This is my lance. This is not my world. The material of the walls, the outdated (but ornate) decorations on the wall, the over-glamorous gold and jewels hanging from everything... this is the home of a king, or a god. And I am alone in it. 
There is only a bed, and a full-length mirror, and mirrors on the ceiling. Vision multiplies; the epochal chamber becomes endless. I witness myself, check for signs of illusion and find none. I am the same, or near enough to it that my perception is identical to the vague state of "before" that I can remember. Body untouched, muscles steeled and primed, weapon still at hand, faculties still in my grasp. Whatever has moved me has not harmed me.
I notice something behind me. The bed I was on is much too large for one person, and its entire surface is askew, though I only took up a third of it at best. I approach. I observe. There is a scent I do not recognize, and which does not propagate from my pores. There was another here. 
There are so many new scents - and so many missing ones. I am struck by the loss of smoke, and steel, and human waste, and humans. It smells almost like nothing. There is no sound, either; my every step rings through the walls unless I go out of my way to step lightly. I dare not speak, dare not breathe with the opening of my jaw, lest I endanger myself or - worse - crack this rare, perfect silence. I have never felt an emptiness like this before.
My weapon remains in my hand, and with my free hand I hold my armor-cloak around the small of my back and the curve of my arms. There is at least one other here, and I know not a thing about them. I must consider them my enemy; I have nothing to trust here. Not even the stars. The cold assails me again, as I prepare to leave the bedazzled chamber. This empty decadence intrigues me - even as I scan for other signs of life, even in the corridor I silently labor into, my virgin vision must marvel, must tremble at the power and the beauty of this place, so much larger than I, so grand in scale and detail - but this unnatural cold haunts me. My world never grows this cold; everything is controlled, every meter under that artificial sky is kept at perfect safety and comfort. No one is above me now, I know, even though I have yet to break out of this palace-coffin. I am truly alone. 
For now.	
Like another beginning of a new life, or the realization that she was dreaming while still in the hazy sleep, the horned High Priestess opened her eyes to a new world, sat up in her bed of thorns, and heard the blackened, unyielding, almost orgasmic feeling of perfect silence - having nothing to hear - before anyone else in her mind could begin to whisper. She dared not even think to herself, but she knew immediately that this was a dream, and a beautifully blissful one. 
Then she saw there were two others in the tomb with her.
(...)
----
I wake alone, gutted, cold. The cold makes a thing weak if it is not built for it. The cold kills. It was the cold that told me, before my eyes had even opened, that I was not on my home planet. Asleep, I was not in immediate danger, so I kept my eyes closed and my body sleep-still until I felt I had all of my wits about me. Then I jumped to my feet, suppressing a yawn and a stretch of my muscles, and summoned my weapon in the same motion.
I am alone.
I lower my weapon, but do not dismiss it. The spear is familiar in my hands, warm and weighty. This is my lance. This is not my world. The material of the walls, the outdated (but ornate) decorations on the wall, the over-glamorous gold and jewels hanging from everything... this is the home of a king, or a god. And I am alone in it. 
There is only a bed, and a full-length mirror, and mirrors on the ceiling. Vision multiplies; the epochal chamber becomes endless. I witness myself, check for signs of illusion and find none. I am the same, or near enough to it that my perception is identical to the vague state of "before" that I can remember. Body untouched, muscles steeled and primed, weapon still at hand, faculties still in my grasp. Whatever has moved me has not harmed me.
I notice something behind me. The bed I was on is much too large for one person, and its entire surface is askew, though I only took up a third of it at best. I approach. I observe. There is a scent I do not recognize, and which does not propagate from my pores. There was another here. 
There are so many new scents - and so many missing ones. I am struck by the loss of smoke, and steel, and human waste, and humans. It smells almost like nothing. There is no sound, either; my every step rings through the walls unless I go out of my way to step lightly. I dare not speak, dare not breathe with the opening of my jaw, lest I endanger myself or - worse - crack this rare, perfect silence. I have never felt an emptiness like this before.
My weapon remains in my hand, and with my free hand I hold my armor-cloak around the small of my back and the curve of my arms. There is at least one other here, and I know not a thing about them. I must consider them my enemy; I have nothing to trust here. Not even the stars. The cold assails me again, as I prepare to leave the bedazzled chamber. This empty decadence intrigues me - even as I scan for other signs of life, even in the corridor I silently labor into, my virgin vision must marvel, must tremble at the power and the beauty of this place, so much larger than I, so grand in scale and detail - but this unnatural cold haunts me. My world never grows this cold; everything is controlled, every meter under that artificial sky is kept at perfect safety and comfort. No one is above me now, I know, even though I have yet to break out of this palace-coffin. I am truly alone. 
For now.	
Like another beginning of a new life, or the realization that she was dreaming while still in the hazy sleep, the horned High Priestess opened her eyes to a new world, sat up in her bed of thorns, and heard the blackened, unyielding, almost orgasmic feeling of perfect silence - having nothing to hear - before anyone else in her mind could begin to whisper. She dared not even think to herself, but she knew immediately that this was a dream, and a beautifully blissful one. 
Then she saw there were two others in the tomb with her.
(...)
----
I wake alone, gutted, cold. The cold makes a thing weak if it is not built for it. The cold kills. It was the cold that told me, before my eyes had even opened, that I was not on my home planet. Asleep, I was not in immediate danger, so I kept my eyes closed and my body sleep-still until I felt I had all of my wits about me. Then I jumped to my feet, suppressing a yawn and a stretch of my muscles, and summoned my weapon in the same motion.
I am alone.
I lower my weapon, but do not dismiss it. The spear is familiar in my hands, warm and weighty. This is my lance. This is not my world. The material of the walls, the outdated (but ornate) decorations on the wall, the over-glamorous gold and jewels hanging from everything... this is the home of a king, or a god. And I am alone in it. 
There is only a bed, and a full-length mirror, and mirrors on the ceiling. Vision multiplies; the epochal chamber becomes endless. I witness myself, check for signs of illusion and find none. I am the same, or near enough to it that my perception is identical to the vague state of "before" that I can remember. Body untouched, muscles steeled and primed, weapon still at hand, faculties still in my grasp. Whatever has moved me has not harmed me.
I notice something behind me. The bed I was on is much too large for one person, and its entire surface is askew, though I only took up a third of it at best. I approach. I observe. There is a scent I do not recognize, and which does not propagate from my pores. There was another here. 
There are so many new scents - and so many missing ones. I am struck by the loss of smoke, and steel, and human waste, and humans. It smells almost like nothing. There is no sound, either; my every step rings through the walls unless I go out of my way to step lightly. I dare not speak, dare not breathe with the opening of my jaw, lest I endanger myself or - worse - crack this rare, perfect silence. I have never felt an emptiness like this before.
My weapon remains in my hand, and with my free hand I hold my armor-cloak around the small of my back and the curve of my arms. There is at least one other here, and I know not a thing about them. I must consider them my enemy; I have nothing to trust here. Not even the stars. The cold assails me again, as I prepare to leave the bedazzled chamber. This empty decadence intrigues me - even as I scan for other signs of life, even in the corridor I silently labor into, my virgin vision must marvel, must tremble at the power and the beauty of this place, so much larger than I, so grand in scale and detail - but this unnatural cold haunts me. My world never grows this cold; everything is controlled, every meter under that artificial sky is kept at perfect safety and comfort. No one is above me now, I know, even though I have yet to break out of this palace-coffin. I am truly alone. 
For now.	
Like another beginning of a new life, or the realization that she was dreaming while still in the hazy sleep, the horned High Priestess opened her eyes to a new world, sat up in her bed of thorns, and heard the blackened, unyielding, almost orgasmic feeling of perfect silence - having nothing to hear - before anyone else in her mind could begin to whisper. She dared not even think to herself, but she knew immediately that this was a dream, and a beautifully blissful one. 
Then she saw there were two others in the tomb with her.
(...)
----
I wake alone, gutted, cold. The cold makes a thing weak if it is not built for it. The cold kills. It was the cold that told me, before my eyes had even opened, that I was not on my home planet. Asleep, I was not in immediate danger, so I kept my eyes closed and my body sleep-still until I felt I had all of my wits about me. Then I jumped to my feet, suppressing a yawn and a stretch of my muscles, and summoned my weapon in the same motion.
I am alone.
I lower my weapon, but do not dismiss it. The spear is familiar in my hands, warm and weighty. This is my lance. This is not my world. The material of the walls, the outdated (but ornate) decorations on the wall, the over-glamorous gold and jewels hanging from everything... this is the home of a king, or a god. And I am alone in it. 
There is only a bed, and a full-length mirror, and mirrors on the ceiling. Vision multiplies; the epochal chamber becomes endless. I witness myself, check for signs of illusion and find none. I am the same, or near enough to it that my perception is identical to the vague state of "before" that I can remember. Body untouched, muscles steeled and primed, weapon still at hand, faculties still in my grasp. Whatever has moved me has not harmed me.
I notice something behind me. The bed I was on is much too large for one person, and its entire surface is askew, though I only took up a third of it at best. I approach. I observe. There is a scent I do not recognize, and which does not propagate from my pores. There was another here. 
There are so many new scents - and so many missing ones. I am struck by the loss of smoke, and steel, and human waste, and humans. It smells almost like nothing. There is no sound, either; my every step rings through the walls unless I go out of my way to step lightly. I dare not speak, dare not breathe with the opening of my jaw, lest I endanger myself or - worse - crack this rare, perfect silence. I have never felt an emptiness like this before.
My weapon remains in my hand, and with my free hand I hold my armor-cloak around the small of my back and the curve of my arms. There is at least one other here, and I know not a thing about them. I must consider them my enemy; I have nothing to trust here. Not even the stars. The cold assails me again, as I prepare to leave the bedazzled chamber. This empty decadence intrigues me - even as I scan for other signs of life, even in the corridor I silently labor into, my virgin vision must marvel, must tremble at the power and the beauty of this place, so much larger than I, so grand in scale and detail - but this unnatural cold haunts me. My world never grows this cold; everything is controlled, every meter under that artificial sky is kept at perfect safety and comfort. No one is above me now, I know, even though I have yet to break out of this palace-coffin. I am truly alone. 
For now.	
==Green Tea Eorzea==
Image	Description							
 	 							
 	
The first thing that Iae notices when she wakes up is that this room is not hers. Instead of her humble wooden chamber, adorned with paintings of loved ones, she is adrift in a vast chamber of rose-gold marble and crystalline hangings. The bed dwarfs her Lalafell form - even the pillows are larger than her.
The second thing she notices is that Evon is lying beside her, fast asleep.
Not the Evon she knows. There are at least two scars missing from his face, and the one that remains is sharp, not faded by decades under the Ala Mhigan sun. Those cutting Elezen features seem blurred, softened by youth. He even seems to sleep more peacefully.
Holding her breath, trying her best not to wake him, Iae turns to the other side.
Reni.
He is still wearing the same armour he wore the last time she saw him, gallivanting off into the horizon like an idiot. For a moment, she does nothing but stare at his slumbering form. Ghosts like this do not faze her. She cannot count the number of times she has woken to see Tamago's smile, to hear her laughing voice, before it fades into morning mist. As much as she knows it is a weakness in her to not be able to move on from her past and face reality, a small part of her cannot help but rejoice in her dreams. Those moments are small, quiet mercies in her life. So long as she knows they are dreams.
But this dream refuses to fade. Reni continues to lie there, looking supremely comfortable in his Warrior garb, snoring slightly into his pillow. On her other side, Evon mumbles in his sleep.
Hating herself for it, she dares to whisper: "Evon?"
----
"Five more minutes..." Without opening his eyes, Evon knows the bed beneath him is the softest he has ever slept in. Softer than the Oasis Bed in his new home in Ul'dah (only installed because of Iae and Rei's endless reminders), than the meager blankets strewn on Ala Mhigan sand, than his family's slabs of stone in Ishgard, always austere, always wanting...
He dismisses any attempt at reasoning. It's a nice bed.
"Evon?" comes the fuzzy voice again. Hnnnrnghhh. Through half-sleep, he hazily processes the tightness in the whisper. A Lalafellin prank squad would probably be louder. Maybe it's important... A pair of golden eyes steal open, meeting first the velvet expanse of a pillow, and then Iae. She wears an expression that Evon thinks is relief.
"Uh." He blinks, and notices a roughly human-shaped piece of metal sleeping behind her. The fuck? Iae continues to stare right through him.
Evon decides to pick the safest suggestion. "...Are we at someone's housewarming party?" She shakes her head, catches what she is about to say, then speaks in measured tones. "I'm not sure where we are, but I'm glad you're awake. Let's find out." She remains still in the bed, eyes roaming slowly, inexorably, across what appears to be an ornate bedroom, occasionally passing back over Evon himself.
"Sounds good." If you don't know, I probably don't either. Evon scuffles off the side of the bed, legs barely touching the floor. The room is lit in the curtained shroud of pre-dawn, barely reflected in thousands of mini-aetheryte crystals descending from the ceiling. Huh. Did someone...? He considers the possibility of someone successfully getting him or Iae drunk. It is not very high.
He feels almost drunk himself, irritation at the unfamiliarity buzzing in the back of his mind. The windows are too high to reach even for him, as if made for giants, or someone who could open them with merely a thought. "We could use some more light. Do I have my staff..?" He peers around in the dimness, finding only fields of cold marble.
A pale green stave materializes in his hand a second later, replete with pale wings and a glowing jade orb at its end. The light imparts an almost sickly glow to the chambers, not the warmth he intended. His friend continues to inspect the area around his vicinity, searching for something that should be next to him. Evon is not sure whether he should be concerned. "You okay?"
Iae stands to her full height in the bed, slightly rising over the rhythmically breathing pauldron next to her. "I am here. Is Reni...?"
Oh. That makes it less weird. I think. Silently, Evon brings the light of Garuda's Van closer to the identified Mi'qote, who is geared more heavily than he is used to. Yup, Reni. The only catboy I know that can pull off blush. He pokes Reni rather callously. "Nice hair color."
----
He felt it long enough to appreciate it for a few precious moments. Something within him warned that the atmosphere was going to shatter; some unspeakable force was going to render this instant null in ways his half-waking mind couldn't yet imagine, but for now... resting on the warm bed with the voice of his two dearest friends surrounding him was exactly where he wanted to be.
A prod displaced him ever so gently from this nestle of comfort. "Mmmfh." With the coldness of realization that one is about to snap out of a dream of one's own making, Reni opened his eyes.
The starkness of the room hit him much stronger than he was expecting, the chill of the realization pulling him instantly out of his fog of comfort. His faculties slowly returning, he twisted his head around, the down bed gently giving way to his every languid move.
"Mmmhhuh?" he continued his formless oral gesticulation.
"Sounds like him, too," Evon said to the lalafell adjacent to him. He looked back down to the sleeping catboy, briefly wondering how he could be comfortable in all that armor. "You know where we are?"
The ceiling, so far away, twinkled. Reni brought his hands up to rub his eyes, wincing as the metal hit his orbits - why am I in armor still? - then blinked a few times while he pulled off his gauntlets. The blurred twinkling of the crystalline stars above him did not change. The walls, which somehow looked paradoxically further away than the ceiling, were decorated with arched windows so far off the ground it made the miqo'te feel somehow reduced in size.
"Where are we?"
"That's a no," Evon said. The voice of his friend pulled him further back into reality. He turned around again and, sitting up, drew the unmistakably familiar figures of Evon Taviane and Iae Kallinar into focus. The former looked down at him with his smooth, dark-skinned face that Reni, even after all these years, always had a difficult time reading. But Iae's face caught him by surprise. She looked at him through slightly pale cheeks and wider eyes than he remembered.
As though she were looking at a ghost.
"So, uh," Reni started, and let the question drift into the air unanswered. He stood up and stretched, then immediately withdrew with a cringe - his muscles ached, as though they hadn't been used for weeks.
"You all right?" Evon asked.
"Yeah, just tense. Don't feel right."
"None of this feels right," the elezen responded. He swung his glowing staff up, the green light faintly reflecting off the crystals above them and tinting the upper walls with a pale peridot glow. Reni noticed that Iae had changed her fixation from his visage to that of the sparkling glow of the ceiling above them. He had seen variations of this face before, in the depths of Alexander's heart and calculating life-or-death maneuvers within the boundless Omegascape, but there was something behind this glassy grimace that he couldn't pinpoint. None of Iae's gestures or stares could ever be described as "vacant", but this one was particularly strained, as though she were trying to discern some message hidden in the chaotic patterns and motions of light.
He noticed that Evon was looking at her too, and at Reni's best guess the elezen was undergoing similar pontifications.
Then, without a word, Iae looked down, pivoted on her heels, and started walking with some indiscernible deliberation towards a door some dozen paces away. It looked just as simple and unassuming as the stone walls surrounding them, the faint engraved border its only giveaway. Reni glanced at Evon, who looked back at him and shrugged. Both knew the pointlessness of speaking when Iae was amidst a tour of her mind palace. Evon turned and followed after her.
Reni moved to do the same, then stopped, catching a glimpse of his bone-white bladed axe propped against this mysterious bedframe. He reached to grab it, then paused, as though it might be a trap. All at once, a hesitation overtook him. All the questions he had been asking himself, that Evon had been asking him, all seemed to hit him at once, and his hand froze in extension towards his weapon, the implement with which he was so accustomed to cutting through the unknown. And what of the total silence of his inner beast, that voice from within that had led to such terrible and unspeakable consequences in the home he knew? Instinctively, he looked back at his friends, the shorter of which had already made her way through the door, a brilliant sunlight of sorts exuding from its vacancy. Evon looked back at him, and for a moment their eyes met.
Whatever this is, it's going to be fine. They will make sure no harm comes to me. And I will make sure no harm comes to them.
With redoubled effort, he grabbed his axe, his tight grip around the cold haft giving him some reassurance. He felt a stirring from deep within himself - the rousing of the inner beast served to give him a sense of reassured fortitude instead of fear of losing control. With his power in check and his friends at the ready, all would be well.
He turned around and made for the door.	
The first thing that Iae notices when she wakes up is that this room is not hers. Instead of her humble wooden chamber, adorned with paintings of loved ones, she is adrift in a vast chamber of rose-gold marble and crystalline hangings. The bed dwarfs her Lalafell form - even the pillows are larger than her.
The second thing she notices is that Evon is lying beside her, fast asleep.
Not the Evon she knows. There are at least two scars missing from his face, and the one that remains is sharp, not faded by decades under the Ala Mhigan sun. Those cutting Elezen features seem blurred, softened by youth. He even seems to sleep more peacefully.
Holding her breath, trying her best not to wake him, Iae turns to the other side.
Reni.
He is still wearing the same armour he wore the last time she saw him, gallivanting off into the horizon like an idiot. For a moment, she does nothing but stare at his slumbering form. Ghosts like this do not faze her. She cannot count the number of times she has woken to see Tamago's smile, to hear her laughing voice, before it fades into morning mist. As much as she knows it is a weakness in her to not be able to move on from her past and face reality, a small part of her cannot help but rejoice in her dreams. Those moments are small, quiet mercies in her life. So long as she knows they are dreams.
But this dream refuses to fade. Reni continues to lie there, looking supremely comfortable in his Warrior garb, snoring slightly into his pillow. On her other side, Evon mumbles in his sleep.
Hating herself for it, she dares to whisper: "Evon?"
----
"Five more minutes..." Without opening his eyes, Evon knows the bed beneath him is the softest he has ever slept in. Softer than the Oasis Bed in his new home in Ul'dah (only installed because of Iae and Rei's endless reminders), than the meager blankets strewn on Ala Mhigan sand, than his family's slabs of stone in Ishgard, always austere, always wanting...
He dismisses any attempt at reasoning. It's a nice bed.
"Evon?" comes the fuzzy voice again. Hnnnrnghhh. Through half-sleep, he hazily processes the tightness in the whisper. A Lalafellin prank squad would probably be louder. Maybe it's important... A pair of golden eyes steal open, meeting first the velvet expanse of a pillow, and then Iae. She wears an expression that Evon thinks is relief.
"Uh." He blinks, and notices a roughly human-shaped piece of metal sleeping behind her. The fuck? Iae continues to stare right through him.
Evon decides to pick the safest suggestion. "...Are we at someone's housewarming party?" She shakes her head, catches what she is about to say, then speaks in measured tones. "I'm not sure where we are, but I'm glad you're awake. Let's find out." She remains still in the bed, eyes roaming slowly, inexorably, across what appears to be an ornate bedroom, occasionally passing back over Evon himself.
"Sounds good." If you don't know, I probably don't either. Evon scuffles off the side of the bed, legs barely touching the floor. The room is lit in the curtained shroud of pre-dawn, barely reflected in thousands of mini-aetheryte crystals descending from the ceiling. Huh. Did someone...? He considers the possibility of someone successfully getting him or Iae drunk. It is not very high.
He feels almost drunk himself, irritation at the unfamiliarity buzzing in the back of his mind. The windows are too high to reach even for him, as if made for giants, or someone who could open them with merely a thought. "We could use some more light. Do I have my staff..?" He peers around in the dimness, finding only fields of cold marble.
A pale green stave materializes in his hand a second later, replete with pale wings and a glowing jade orb at its end. The light imparts an almost sickly glow to the chambers, not the warmth he intended. His friend continues to inspect the area around his vicinity, searching for something that should be next to him. Evon is not sure whether he should be concerned. "You okay?"
Iae stands to her full height in the bed, slightly rising over the rhythmically breathing pauldron next to her. "I am here. Is Reni...?"
Oh. That makes it less weird. I think. Silently, Evon brings the light of Garuda's Van closer to the identified Mi'qote, who is geared more heavily than he is used to. Yup, Reni. The only catboy I know that can pull off blush. He pokes Reni rather callously. "Nice hair color."
----
He felt it long enough to appreciate it for a few precious moments. Something within him warned that the atmosphere was going to shatter; some unspeakable force was going to render this instant null in ways his half-waking mind couldn't yet imagine, but for now... resting on the warm bed with the voice of his two dearest friends surrounding him was exactly where he wanted to be.
A prod displaced him ever so gently from this nestle of comfort. "Mmmfh." With the coldness of realization that one is about to snap out of a dream of one's own making, Reni opened his eyes.
The starkness of the room hit him much stronger than he was expecting, the chill of the realization pulling him instantly out of his fog of comfort. His faculties slowly returning, he twisted his head around, the down bed gently giving way to his every languid move.
"Mmmhhuh?" he continued his formless oral gesticulation.
"Sounds like him, too," Evon said to the lalafell adjacent to him. He looked back down to the sleeping catboy, briefly wondering how he could be comfortable in all that armor. "You know where we are?"
The ceiling, so far away, twinkled. Reni brought his hands up to rub his eyes, wincing as the metal hit his orbits - why am I in armor still? - then blinked a few times while he pulled off his gauntlets. The blurred twinkling of the crystalline stars above him did not change. The walls, which somehow looked paradoxically further away than the ceiling, were decorated with arched windows so far off the ground it made the miqo'te feel somehow reduced in size.
"Where are we?"
"That's a no," Evon said. The voice of his friend pulled him further back into reality. He turned around again and, sitting up, drew the unmistakably familiar figures of Evon Taviane and Iae Kallinar into focus. The former looked down at him with his smooth, dark-skinned face that Reni, even after all these years, always had a difficult time reading. But Iae's face caught him by surprise. She looked at him through slightly pale cheeks and wider eyes than he remembered.
As though she were looking at a ghost.
"So, uh," Reni started, and let the question drift into the air unanswered. He stood up and stretched, then immediately withdrew with a cringe - his muscles ached, as though they hadn't been used for weeks.
"You all right?" Evon asked.
"Yeah, just tense. Don't feel right."
"None of this feels right," the elezen responded. He swung his glowing staff up, the green light faintly reflecting off the crystals above them and tinting the upper walls with a pale peridot glow. Reni noticed that Iae had changed her fixation from his visage to that of the sparkling glow of the ceiling above them. He had seen variations of this face before, in the depths of Alexander's heart and calculating life-or-death maneuvers within the boundless Omegascape, but there was something behind this glassy grimace that he couldn't pinpoint. None of Iae's gestures or stares could ever be described as "vacant", but this one was particularly strained, as though she were trying to discern some message hidden in the chaotic patterns and motions of light.
He noticed that Evon was looking at her too, and at Reni's best guess the elezen was undergoing similar pontifications.
Then, without a word, Iae looked down, pivoted on her heels, and started walking with some indiscernible deliberation towards a door some dozen paces away. It looked just as simple and unassuming as the stone walls surrounding them, the faint engraved border its only giveaway. Reni glanced at Evon, who looked back at him and shrugged. Both knew the pointlessness of speaking when Iae was amidst a tour of her mind palace. Evon turned and followed after her.
Reni moved to do the same, then stopped, catching a glimpse of his bone-white bladed axe propped against this mysterious bedframe. He reached to grab it, then paused, as though it might be a trap. All at once, a hesitation overtook him. All the questions he had been asking himself, that Evon had been asking him, all seemed to hit him at once, and his hand froze in extension towards his weapon, the implement with which he was so accustomed to cutting through the unknown. And what of the total silence of his inner beast, that voice from within that had led to such terrible and unspeakable consequences in the home he knew? Instinctively, he looked back at his friends, the shorter of which had already made her way through the door, a brilliant sunlight of sorts exuding from its vacancy. Evon looked back at him, and for a moment their eyes met.
Whatever this is, it's going to be fine. They will make sure no harm comes to me. And I will make sure no harm comes to them.
With redoubled effort, he grabbed his axe, his tight grip around the cold haft giving him some reassurance. He felt a stirring from deep within himself - the rousing of the inner beast served to give him a sense of reassured fortitude instead of fear of losing control. With his power in check and his friends at the ready, all would be well.
He turned around and made for the door.	
The first thing that Iae notices when she wakes up is that this room is not hers. Instead of her humble wooden chamber, adorned with paintings of loved ones, she is adrift in a vast chamber of rose-gold marble and crystalline hangings. The bed dwarfs her Lalafell form - even the pillows are larger than her.
The second thing she notices is that Evon is lying beside her, fast asleep.
Not the Evon she knows. There are at least two scars missing from his face, and the one that remains is sharp, not faded by decades under the Ala Mhigan sun. Those cutting Elezen features seem blurred, softened by youth. He even seems to sleep more peacefully.
Holding her breath, trying her best not to wake him, Iae turns to the other side.
Reni.
He is still wearing the same armour he wore the last time she saw him, gallivanting off into the horizon like an idiot. For a moment, she does nothing but stare at his slumbering form. Ghosts like this do not faze her. She cannot count the number of times she has woken to see Tamago's smile, to hear her laughing voice, before it fades into morning mist. As much as she knows it is a weakness in her to not be able to move on from her past and face reality, a small part of her cannot help but rejoice in her dreams. Those moments are small, quiet mercies in her life. So long as she knows they are dreams.
But this dream refuses to fade. Reni continues to lie there, looking supremely comfortable in his Warrior garb, snoring slightly into his pillow. On her other side, Evon mumbles in his sleep.
Hating herself for it, she dares to whisper: "Evon?"
----
"Five more minutes..." Without opening his eyes, Evon knows the bed beneath him is the softest he has ever slept in. Softer than the Oasis Bed in his new home in Ul'dah (only installed because of Iae and Rei's endless reminders), than the meager blankets strewn on Ala Mhigan sand, than his family's slabs of stone in Ishgard, always austere, always wanting...
He dismisses any attempt at reasoning. It's a nice bed.
"Evon?" comes the fuzzy voice again. Hnnnrnghhh. Through half-sleep, he hazily processes the tightness in the whisper. A Lalafellin prank squad would probably be louder. Maybe it's important... A pair of golden eyes steal open, meeting first the velvet expanse of a pillow, and then Iae. She wears an expression that Evon thinks is relief.
"Uh." He blinks, and notices a roughly human-shaped piece of metal sleeping behind her. The fuck? Iae continues to stare right through him.
Evon decides to pick the safest suggestion. "...Are we at someone's housewarming party?" She shakes her head, catches what she is about to say, then speaks in measured tones. "I'm not sure where we are, but I'm glad you're awake. Let's find out." She remains still in the bed, eyes roaming slowly, inexorably, across what appears to be an ornate bedroom, occasionally passing back over Evon himself.
"Sounds good." If you don't know, I probably don't either. Evon scuffles off the side of the bed, legs barely touching the floor. The room is lit in the curtained shroud of pre-dawn, barely reflected in thousands of mini-aetheryte crystals descending from the ceiling. Huh. Did someone...? He considers the possibility of someone successfully getting him or Iae drunk. It is not very high.
He feels almost drunk himself, irritation at the unfamiliarity buzzing in the back of his mind. The windows are too high to reach even for him, as if made for giants, or someone who could open them with merely a thought. "We could use some more light. Do I have my staff..?" He peers around in the dimness, finding only fields of cold marble.
A pale green stave materializes in his hand a second later, replete with pale wings and a glowing jade orb at its end. The light imparts an almost sickly glow to the chambers, not the warmth he intended. His friend continues to inspect the area around his vicinity, searching for something that should be next to him. Evon is not sure whether he should be concerned. "You okay?"
Iae stands to her full height in the bed, slightly rising over the rhythmically breathing pauldron next to her. "I am here. Is Reni...?"
Oh. That makes it less weird. I think. Silently, Evon brings the light of Garuda's Van closer to the identified Mi'qote, who is geared more heavily than he is used to. Yup, Reni. The only catboy I know that can pull off blush. He pokes Reni rather callously. "Nice hair color."
----
He felt it long enough to appreciate it for a few precious moments. Something within him warned that the atmosphere was going to shatter; some unspeakable force was going to render this instant null in ways his half-waking mind couldn't yet imagine, but for now... resting on the warm bed with the voice of his two dearest friends surrounding him was exactly where he wanted to be.
A prod displaced him ever so gently from this nestle of comfort. "Mmmfh." With the coldness of realization that one is about to snap out of a dream of one's own making, Reni opened his eyes.
The starkness of the room hit him much stronger than he was expecting, the chill of the realization pulling him instantly out of his fog of comfort. His faculties slowly returning, he twisted his head around, the down bed gently giving way to his every languid move.
"Mmmhhuh?" he continued his formless oral gesticulation.
"Sounds like him, too," Evon said to the lalafell adjacent to him. He looked back down to the sleeping catboy, briefly wondering how he could be comfortable in all that armor. "You know where we are?"
The ceiling, so far away, twinkled. Reni brought his hands up to rub his eyes, wincing as the metal hit his orbits - why am I in armor still? - then blinked a few times while he pulled off his gauntlets. The blurred twinkling of the crystalline stars above him did not change. The walls, which somehow looked paradoxically further away than the ceiling, were decorated with arched windows so far off the ground it made the miqo'te feel somehow reduced in size.
"Where are we?"
"That's a no," Evon said. The voice of his friend pulled him further back into reality. He turned around again and, sitting up, drew the unmistakably familiar figures of Evon Taviane and Iae Kallinar into focus. The former looked down at him with his smooth, dark-skinned face that Reni, even after all these years, always had a difficult time reading. But Iae's face caught him by surprise. She looked at him through slightly pale cheeks and wider eyes than he remembered.
As though she were looking at a ghost.
"So, uh," Reni started, and let the question drift into the air unanswered. He stood up and stretched, then immediately withdrew with a cringe - his muscles ached, as though they hadn't been used for weeks.
"You all right?" Evon asked.
"Yeah, just tense. Don't feel right."
"None of this feels right," the elezen responded. He swung his glowing staff up, the green light faintly reflecting off the crystals above them and tinting the upper walls with a pale peridot glow. Reni noticed that Iae had changed her fixation from his visage to that of the sparkling glow of the ceiling above them. He had seen variations of this face before, in the depths of Alexander's heart and calculating life-or-death maneuvers within the boundless Omegascape, but there was something behind this glassy grimace that he couldn't pinpoint. None of Iae's gestures or stares could ever be described as "vacant", but this one was particularly strained, as though she were trying to discern some message hidden in the chaotic patterns and motions of light.
He noticed that Evon was looking at her too, and at Reni's best guess the elezen was undergoing similar pontifications.
Then, without a word, Iae looked down, pivoted on her heels, and started walking with some indiscernible deliberation towards a door some dozen paces away. It looked just as simple and unassuming as the stone walls surrounding them, the faint engraved border its only giveaway. Reni glanced at Evon, who looked back at him and shrugged. Both knew the pointlessness of speaking when Iae was amidst a tour of her mind palace. Evon turned and followed after her.
Reni moved to do the same, then stopped, catching a glimpse of his bone-white bladed axe propped against this mysterious bedframe. He reached to grab it, then paused, as though it might be a trap. All at once, a hesitation overtook him. All the questions he had been asking himself, that Evon had been asking him, all seemed to hit him at once, and his hand froze in extension towards his weapon, the implement with which he was so accustomed to cutting through the unknown. And what of the total silence of his inner beast, that voice from within that had led to such terrible and unspeakable consequences in the home he knew? Instinctively, he looked back at his friends, the shorter of which had already made her way through the door, a brilliant sunlight of sorts exuding from its vacancy. Evon looked back at him, and for a moment their eyes met.
Whatever this is, it's going to be fine. They will make sure no harm comes to me. And I will make sure no harm comes to them.
With redoubled effort, he grabbed his axe, his tight grip around the cold haft giving him some reassurance. He felt a stirring from deep within himself - the rousing of the inner beast served to give him a sense of reassured fortitude instead of fear of losing control. With his power in check and his friends at the ready, all would be well.
He turned around and made for the door.	
The first thing that Iae notices when she wakes up is that this room is not hers. Instead of her humble wooden chamber, adorned with paintings of loved ones, she is adrift in a vast chamber of rose-gold marble and crystalline hangings. The bed dwarfs her Lalafell form - even the pillows are larger than her.
The second thing she notices is that Evon is lying beside her, fast asleep.
Not the Evon she knows. There are at least two scars missing from his face, and the one that remains is sharp, not faded by decades under the Ala Mhigan sun. Those cutting Elezen features seem blurred, softened by youth. He even seems to sleep more peacefully.
Holding her breath, trying her best not to wake him, Iae turns to the other side.
Reni.
He is still wearing the same armour he wore the last time she saw him, gallivanting off into the horizon like an idiot. For a moment, she does nothing but stare at his slumbering form. Ghosts like this do not faze her. She cannot count the number of times she has woken to see Tamago's smile, to hear her laughing voice, before it fades into morning mist. As much as she knows it is a weakness in her to not be able to move on from her past and face reality, a small part of her cannot help but rejoice in her dreams. Those moments are small, quiet mercies in her life. So long as she knows they are dreams.
But this dream refuses to fade. Reni continues to lie there, looking supremely comfortable in his Warrior garb, snoring slightly into his pillow. On her other side, Evon mumbles in his sleep.
Hating herself for it, she dares to whisper: "Evon?"
----
"Five more minutes..." Without opening his eyes, Evon knows the bed beneath him is the softest he has ever slept in. Softer than the Oasis Bed in his new home in Ul'dah (only installed because of Iae and Rei's endless reminders), than the meager blankets strewn on Ala Mhigan sand, than his family's slabs of stone in Ishgard, always austere, always wanting...
He dismisses any attempt at reasoning. It's a nice bed.
"Evon?" comes the fuzzy voice again. Hnnnrnghhh. Through half-sleep, he hazily processes the tightness in the whisper. A Lalafellin prank squad would probably be louder. Maybe it's important... A pair of golden eyes steal open, meeting first the velvet expanse of a pillow, and then Iae. She wears an expression that Evon thinks is relief.
"Uh." He blinks, and notices a roughly human-shaped piece of metal sleeping behind her. The fuck? Iae continues to stare right through him.
Evon decides to pick the safest suggestion. "...Are we at someone's housewarming party?" She shakes her head, catches what she is about to say, then speaks in measured tones. "I'm not sure where we are, but I'm glad you're awake. Let's find out." She remains still in the bed, eyes roaming slowly, inexorably, across what appears to be an ornate bedroom, occasionally passing back over Evon himself.
"Sounds good." If you don't know, I probably don't either. Evon scuffles off the side of the bed, legs barely touching the floor. The room is lit in the curtained shroud of pre-dawn, barely reflected in thousands of mini-aetheryte crystals descending from the ceiling. Huh. Did someone...? He considers the possibility of someone successfully getting him or Iae drunk. It is not very high.
He feels almost drunk himself, irritation at the unfamiliarity buzzing in the back of his mind. The windows are too high to reach even for him, as if made for giants, or someone who could open them with merely a thought. "We could use some more light. Do I have my staff..?" He peers around in the dimness, finding only fields of cold marble.
A pale green stave materializes in his hand a second later, replete with pale wings and a glowing jade orb at its end. The light imparts an almost sickly glow to the chambers, not the warmth he intended. His friend continues to inspect the area around his vicinity, searching for something that should be next to him. Evon is not sure whether he should be concerned. "You okay?"
Iae stands to her full height in the bed, slightly rising over the rhythmically breathing pauldron next to her. "I am here. Is Reni...?"
Oh. That makes it less weird. I think. Silently, Evon brings the light of Garuda's Van closer to the identified Mi'qote, who is geared more heavily than he is used to. Yup, Reni. The only catboy I know that can pull off blush. He pokes Reni rather callously. "Nice hair color."
----
He felt it long enough to appreciate it for a few precious moments. Something within him warned that the atmosphere was going to shatter; some unspeakable force was going to render this instant null in ways his half-waking mind couldn't yet imagine, but for now... resting on the warm bed with the voice of his two dearest friends surrounding him was exactly where he wanted to be.
A prod displaced him ever so gently from this nestle of comfort. "Mmmfh." With the coldness of realization that one is about to snap out of a dream of one's own making, Reni opened his eyes.
The starkness of the room hit him much stronger than he was expecting, the chill of the realization pulling him instantly out of his fog of comfort. His faculties slowly returning, he twisted his head around, the down bed gently giving way to his every languid move.
"Mmmhhuh?" he continued his formless oral gesticulation.
"Sounds like him, too," Evon said to the lalafell adjacent to him. He looked back down to the sleeping catboy, briefly wondering how he could be comfortable in all that armor. "You know where we are?"
The ceiling, so far away, twinkled. Reni brought his hands up to rub his eyes, wincing as the metal hit his orbits - why am I in armor still? - then blinked a few times while he pulled off his gauntlets. The blurred twinkling of the crystalline stars above him did not change. The walls, which somehow looked paradoxically further away than the ceiling, were decorated with arched windows so far off the ground it made the miqo'te feel somehow reduced in size.
"Where are we?"
"That's a no," Evon said. The voice of his friend pulled him further back into reality. He turned around again and, sitting up, drew the unmistakably familiar figures of Evon Taviane and Iae Kallinar into focus. The former looked down at him with his smooth, dark-skinned face that Reni, even after all these years, always had a difficult time reading. But Iae's face caught him by surprise. She looked at him through slightly pale cheeks and wider eyes than he remembered.
As though she were looking at a ghost.
"So, uh," Reni started, and let the question drift into the air unanswered. He stood up and stretched, then immediately withdrew with a cringe - his muscles ached, as though they hadn't been used for weeks.
"You all right?" Evon asked.
"Yeah, just tense. Don't feel right."
"None of this feels right," the elezen responded. He swung his glowing staff up, the green light faintly reflecting off the crystals above them and tinting the upper walls with a pale peridot glow. Reni noticed that Iae had changed her fixation from his visage to that of the sparkling glow of the ceiling above them. He had seen variations of this face before, in the depths of Alexander's heart and calculating life-or-death maneuvers within the boundless Omegascape, but there was something behind this glassy grimace that he couldn't pinpoint. None of Iae's gestures or stares could ever be described as "vacant", but this one was particularly strained, as though she were trying to discern some message hidden in the chaotic patterns and motions of light.
He noticed that Evon was looking at her too, and at Reni's best guess the elezen was undergoing similar pontifications.
Then, without a word, Iae looked down, pivoted on her heels, and started walking with some indiscernible deliberation towards a door some dozen paces away. It looked just as simple and unassuming as the stone walls surrounding them, the faint engraved border its only giveaway. Reni glanced at Evon, who looked back at him and shrugged. Both knew the pointlessness of speaking when Iae was amidst a tour of her mind palace. Evon turned and followed after her.
Reni moved to do the same, then stopped, catching a glimpse of his bone-white bladed axe propped against this mysterious bedframe. He reached to grab it, then paused, as though it might be a trap. All at once, a hesitation overtook him. All the questions he had been asking himself, that Evon had been asking him, all seemed to hit him at once, and his hand froze in extension towards his weapon, the implement with which he was so accustomed to cutting through the unknown. And what of the total silence of his inner beast, that voice from within that had led to such terrible and unspeakable consequences in the home he knew? Instinctively, he looked back at his friends, the shorter of which had already made her way through the door, a brilliant sunlight of sorts exuding from its vacancy. Evon looked back at him, and for a moment their eyes met.
Whatever this is, it's going to be fine. They will make sure no harm comes to me. And I will make sure no harm comes to them.
With redoubled effort, he grabbed his axe, his tight grip around the cold haft giving him some reassurance. He felt a stirring from deep within himself - the rousing of the inner beast served to give him a sense of reassured fortitude instead of fear of losing control. With his power in check and his friends at the ready, all would be well.
He turned around and made for the door.	
The first thing that Iae notices when she wakes up is that this room is not hers. Instead of her humble wooden chamber, adorned with paintings of loved ones, she is adrift in a vast chamber of rose-gold marble and crystalline hangings. The bed dwarfs her Lalafell form - even the pillows are larger than her.
The second thing she notices is that Evon is lying beside her, fast asleep.
Not the Evon she knows. There are at least two scars missing from his face, and the one that remains is sharp, not faded by decades under the Ala Mhigan sun. Those cutting Elezen features seem blurred, softened by youth. He even seems to sleep more peacefully.
Holding her breath, trying her best not to wake him, Iae turns to the other side.
Reni.
He is still wearing the same armour he wore the last time she saw him, gallivanting off into the horizon like an idiot. For a moment, she does nothing but stare at his slumbering form. Ghosts like this do not faze her. She cannot count the number of times she has woken to see Tamago's smile, to hear her laughing voice, before it fades into morning mist. As much as she knows it is a weakness in her to not be able to move on from her past and face reality, a small part of her cannot help but rejoice in her dreams. Those moments are small, quiet mercies in her life. So long as she knows they are dreams.
But this dream refuses to fade. Reni continues to lie there, looking supremely comfortable in his Warrior garb, snoring slightly into his pillow. On her other side, Evon mumbles in his sleep.
Hating herself for it, she dares to whisper: "Evon?"
----
"Five more minutes..." Without opening his eyes, Evon knows the bed beneath him is the softest he has ever slept in. Softer than the Oasis Bed in his new home in Ul'dah (only installed because of Iae and Rei's endless reminders), than the meager blankets strewn on Ala Mhigan sand, than his family's slabs of stone in Ishgard, always austere, always wanting...
He dismisses any attempt at reasoning. It's a nice bed.
"Evon?" comes the fuzzy voice again. Hnnnrnghhh. Through half-sleep, he hazily processes the tightness in the whisper. A Lalafellin prank squad would probably be louder. Maybe it's important... A pair of golden eyes steal open, meeting first the velvet expanse of a pillow, and then Iae. She wears an expression that Evon thinks is relief.
"Uh." He blinks, and notices a roughly human-shaped piece of metal sleeping behind her. The fuck? Iae continues to stare right through him.
Evon decides to pick the safest suggestion. "...Are we at someone's housewarming party?" She shakes her head, catches what she is about to say, then speaks in measured tones. "I'm not sure where we are, but I'm glad you're awake. Let's find out." She remains still in the bed, eyes roaming slowly, inexorably, across what appears to be an ornate bedroom, occasionally passing back over Evon himself.
"Sounds good." If you don't know, I probably don't either. Evon scuffles off the side of the bed, legs barely touching the floor. The room is lit in the curtained shroud of pre-dawn, barely reflected in thousands of mini-aetheryte crystals descending from the ceiling. Huh. Did someone...? He considers the possibility of someone successfully getting him or Iae drunk. It is not very high.
He feels almost drunk himself, irritation at the unfamiliarity buzzing in the back of his mind. The windows are too high to reach even for him, as if made for giants, or someone who could open them with merely a thought. "We could use some more light. Do I have my staff..?" He peers around in the dimness, finding only fields of cold marble.
A pale green stave materializes in his hand a second later, replete with pale wings and a glowing jade orb at its end. The light imparts an almost sickly glow to the chambers, not the warmth he intended. His friend continues to inspect the area around his vicinity, searching for something that should be next to him. Evon is not sure whether he should be concerned. "You okay?"
Iae stands to her full height in the bed, slightly rising over the rhythmically breathing pauldron next to her. "I am here. Is Reni...?"
Oh. That makes it less weird. I think. Silently, Evon brings the light of Garuda's Van closer to the identified Mi'qote, who is geared more heavily than he is used to. Yup, Reni. The only catboy I know that can pull off blush. He pokes Reni rather callously. "Nice hair color."
----
He felt it long enough to appreciate it for a few precious moments. Something within him warned that the atmosphere was going to shatter; some unspeakable force was going to render this instant null in ways his half-waking mind couldn't yet imagine, but for now... resting on the warm bed with the voice of his two dearest friends surrounding him was exactly where he wanted to be.
A prod displaced him ever so gently from this nestle of comfort. "Mmmfh." With the coldness of realization that one is about to snap out of a dream of one's own making, Reni opened his eyes.
The starkness of the room hit him much stronger than he was expecting, the chill of the realization pulling him instantly out of his fog of comfort. His faculties slowly returning, he twisted his head around, the down bed gently giving way to his every languid move.
"Mmmhhuh?" he continued his formless oral gesticulation.
"Sounds like him, too," Evon said to the lalafell adjacent to him. He looked back down to the sleeping catboy, briefly wondering how he could be comfortable in all that armor. "You know where we are?"
The ceiling, so far away, twinkled. Reni brought his hands up to rub his eyes, wincing as the metal hit his orbits - why am I in armor still? - then blinked a few times while he pulled off his gauntlets. The blurred twinkling of the crystalline stars above him did not change. The walls, which somehow looked paradoxically further away than the ceiling, were decorated with arched windows so far off the ground it made the miqo'te feel somehow reduced in size.
"Where are we?"
"That's a no," Evon said. The voice of his friend pulled him further back into reality. He turned around again and, sitting up, drew the unmistakably familiar figures of Evon Taviane and Iae Kallinar into focus. The former looked down at him with his smooth, dark-skinned face that Reni, even after all these years, always had a difficult time reading. But Iae's face caught him by surprise. She looked at him through slightly pale cheeks and wider eyes than he remembered.
As though she were looking at a ghost.
"So, uh," Reni started, and let the question drift into the air unanswered. He stood up and stretched, then immediately withdrew with a cringe - his muscles ached, as though they hadn't been used for weeks.
"You all right?" Evon asked.
"Yeah, just tense. Don't feel right."
"None of this feels right," the elezen responded. He swung his glowing staff up, the green light faintly reflecting off the crystals above them and tinting the upper walls with a pale peridot glow. Reni noticed that Iae had changed her fixation from his visage to that of the sparkling glow of the ceiling above them. He had seen variations of this face before, in the depths of Alexander's heart and calculating life-or-death maneuvers within the boundless Omegascape, but there was something behind this glassy grimace that he couldn't pinpoint. None of Iae's gestures or stares could ever be described as "vacant", but this one was particularly strained, as though she were trying to discern some message hidden in the chaotic patterns and motions of light.
He noticed that Evon was looking at her too, and at Reni's best guess the elezen was undergoing similar pontifications.
Then, without a word, Iae looked down, pivoted on her heels, and started walking with some indiscernible deliberation towards a door some dozen paces away. It looked just as simple and unassuming as the stone walls surrounding them, the faint engraved border its only giveaway. Reni glanced at Evon, who looked back at him and shrugged. Both knew the pointlessness of speaking when Iae was amidst a tour of her mind palace. Evon turned and followed after her.
Reni moved to do the same, then stopped, catching a glimpse of his bone-white bladed axe propped against this mysterious bedframe. He reached to grab it, then paused, as though it might be a trap. All at once, a hesitation overtook him. All the questions he had been asking himself, that Evon had been asking him, all seemed to hit him at once, and his hand froze in extension towards his weapon, the implement with which he was so accustomed to cutting through the unknown. And what of the total silence of his inner beast, that voice from within that had led to such terrible and unspeakable consequences in the home he knew? Instinctively, he looked back at his friends, the shorter of which had already made her way through the door, a brilliant sunlight of sorts exuding from its vacancy. Evon looked back at him, and for a moment their eyes met.
Whatever this is, it's going to be fine. They will make sure no harm comes to me. And I will make sure no harm comes to them.
With redoubled effort, he grabbed his axe, his tight grip around the cold haft giving him some reassurance. He felt a stirring from deep within himself - the rousing of the inner beast served to give him a sense of reassured fortitude instead of fear of losing control. With his power in check and his friends at the ready, all would be well.
He turned around and made for the door.	
The first thing that Iae notices when she wakes up is that this room is not hers. Instead of her humble wooden chamber, adorned with paintings of loved ones, she is adrift in a vast chamber of rose-gold marble and crystalline hangings. The bed dwarfs her Lalafell form - even the pillows are larger than her.
The second thing she notices is that Evon is lying beside her, fast asleep.
Not the Evon she knows. There are at least two scars missing from his face, and the one that remains is sharp, not faded by decades under the Ala Mhigan sun. Those cutting Elezen features seem blurred, softened by youth. He even seems to sleep more peacefully.
Holding her breath, trying her best not to wake him, Iae turns to the other side.
Reni.
He is still wearing the same armour he wore the last time she saw him, gallivanting off into the horizon like an idiot. For a moment, she does nothing but stare at his slumbering form. Ghosts like this do not faze her. She cannot count the number of times she has woken to see Tamago's smile, to hear her laughing voice, before it fades into morning mist. As much as she knows it is a weakness in her to not be able to move on from her past and face reality, a small part of her cannot help but rejoice in her dreams. Those moments are small, quiet mercies in her life. So long as she knows they are dreams.
But this dream refuses to fade. Reni continues to lie there, looking supremely comfortable in his Warrior garb, snoring slightly into his pillow. On her other side, Evon mumbles in his sleep.
Hating herself for it, she dares to whisper: "Evon?"
----
"Five more minutes..." Without opening his eyes, Evon knows the bed beneath him is the softest he has ever slept in. Softer than the Oasis Bed in his new home in Ul'dah (only installed because of Iae and Rei's endless reminders), than the meager blankets strewn on Ala Mhigan sand, than his family's slabs of stone in Ishgard, always austere, always wanting...
He dismisses any attempt at reasoning. It's a nice bed.
"Evon?" comes the fuzzy voice again. Hnnnrnghhh. Through half-sleep, he hazily processes the tightness in the whisper. A Lalafellin prank squad would probably be louder. Maybe it's important... A pair of golden eyes steal open, meeting first the velvet expanse of a pillow, and then Iae. She wears an expression that Evon thinks is relief.
"Uh." He blinks, and notices a roughly human-shaped piece of metal sleeping behind her. The fuck? Iae continues to stare right through him.
Evon decides to pick the safest suggestion. "...Are we at someone's housewarming party?" She shakes her head, catches what she is about to say, then speaks in measured tones. "I'm not sure where we are, but I'm glad you're awake. Let's find out." She remains still in the bed, eyes roaming slowly, inexorably, across what appears to be an ornate bedroom, occasionally passing back over Evon himself.
"Sounds good." If you don't know, I probably don't either. Evon scuffles off the side of the bed, legs barely touching the floor. The room is lit in the curtained shroud of pre-dawn, barely reflected in thousands of mini-aetheryte crystals descending from the ceiling. Huh. Did someone...? He considers the possibility of someone successfully getting him or Iae drunk. It is not very high.
He feels almost drunk himself, irritation at the unfamiliarity buzzing in the back of his mind. The windows are too high to reach even for him, as if made for giants, or someone who could open them with merely a thought. "We could use some more light. Do I have my staff..?" He peers around in the dimness, finding only fields of cold marble.
A pale green stave materializes in his hand a second later, replete with pale wings and a glowing jade orb at its end. The light imparts an almost sickly glow to the chambers, not the warmth he intended. His friend continues to inspect the area around his vicinity, searching for something that should be next to him. Evon is not sure whether he should be concerned. "You okay?"
Iae stands to her full height in the bed, slightly rising over the rhythmically breathing pauldron next to her. "I am here. Is Reni...?"
Oh. That makes it less weird. I think. Silently, Evon brings the light of Garuda's Van closer to the identified Mi'qote, who is geared more heavily than he is used to. Yup, Reni. The only catboy I know that can pull off blush. He pokes Reni rather callously. "Nice hair color."
----
He felt it long enough to appreciate it for a few precious moments. Something within him warned that the atmosphere was going to shatter; some unspeakable force was going to render this instant null in ways his half-waking mind couldn't yet imagine, but for now... resting on the warm bed with the voice of his two dearest friends surrounding him was exactly where he wanted to be.
A prod displaced him ever so gently from this nestle of comfort. "Mmmfh." With the coldness of realization that one is about to snap out of a dream of one's own making, Reni opened his eyes.
The starkness of the room hit him much stronger than he was expecting, the chill of the realization pulling him instantly out of his fog of comfort. His faculties slowly returning, he twisted his head around, the down bed gently giving way to his every languid move.
"Mmmhhuh?" he continued his formless oral gesticulation.
"Sounds like him, too," Evon said to the lalafell adjacent to him. He looked back down to the sleeping catboy, briefly wondering how he could be comfortable in all that armor. "You know where we are?"
The ceiling, so far away, twinkled. Reni brought his hands up to rub his eyes, wincing as the metal hit his orbits - why am I in armor still? - then blinked a few times while he pulled off his gauntlets. The blurred twinkling of the crystalline stars above him did not change. The walls, which somehow looked paradoxically further away than the ceiling, were decorated with arched windows so far off the ground it made the miqo'te feel somehow reduced in size.
"Where are we?"
"That's a no," Evon said. The voice of his friend pulled him further back into reality. He turned around again and, sitting up, drew the unmistakably familiar figures of Evon Taviane and Iae Kallinar into focus. The former looked down at him with his smooth, dark-skinned face that Reni, even after all these years, always had a difficult time reading. But Iae's face caught him by surprise. She looked at him through slightly pale cheeks and wider eyes than he remembered.
As though she were looking at a ghost.
"So, uh," Reni started, and let the question drift into the air unanswered. He stood up and stretched, then immediately withdrew with a cringe - his muscles ached, as though they hadn't been used for weeks.
"You all right?" Evon asked.
"Yeah, just tense. Don't feel right."
"None of this feels right," the elezen responded. He swung his glowing staff up, the green light faintly reflecting off the crystals above them and tinting the upper walls with a pale peridot glow. Reni noticed that Iae had changed her fixation from his visage to that of the sparkling glow of the ceiling above them. He had seen variations of this face before, in the depths of Alexander's heart and calculating life-or-death maneuvers within the boundless Omegascape, but there was something behind this glassy grimace that he couldn't pinpoint. None of Iae's gestures or stares could ever be described as "vacant", but this one was particularly strained, as though she were trying to discern some message hidden in the chaotic patterns and motions of light.
He noticed that Evon was looking at her too, and at Reni's best guess the elezen was undergoing similar pontifications.
Then, without a word, Iae looked down, pivoted on her heels, and started walking with some indiscernible deliberation towards a door some dozen paces away. It looked just as simple and unassuming as the stone walls surrounding them, the faint engraved border its only giveaway. Reni glanced at Evon, who looked back at him and shrugged. Both knew the pointlessness of speaking when Iae was amidst a tour of her mind palace. Evon turned and followed after her.
Reni moved to do the same, then stopped, catching a glimpse of his bone-white bladed axe propped against this mysterious bedframe. He reached to grab it, then paused, as though it might be a trap. All at once, a hesitation overtook him. All the questions he had been asking himself, that Evon had been asking him, all seemed to hit him at once, and his hand froze in extension towards his weapon, the implement with which he was so accustomed to cutting through the unknown. And what of the total silence of his inner beast, that voice from within that had led to such terrible and unspeakable consequences in the home he knew? Instinctively, he looked back at his friends, the shorter of which had already made her way through the door, a brilliant sunlight of sorts exuding from its vacancy. Evon looked back at him, and for a moment their eyes met.
Whatever this is, it's going to be fine. They will make sure no harm comes to me. And I will make sure no harm comes to them.
With redoubled effort, he grabbed his axe, his tight grip around the cold haft giving him some reassurance. He felt a stirring from deep within himself - the rousing of the inner beast served to give him a sense of reassured fortitude instead of fear of losing control. With his power in check and his friends at the ready, all would be well.
He turned around and made for the door.	
The first thing that Iae notices when she wakes up is that this room is not hers. Instead of her humble wooden chamber, adorned with paintings of loved ones, she is adrift in a vast chamber of rose-gold marble and crystalline hangings. The bed dwarfs her Lalafell form - even the pillows are larger than her.
The second thing she notices is that Evon is lying beside her, fast asleep.
Not the Evon she knows. There are at least two scars missing from his face, and the one that remains is sharp, not faded by decades under the Ala Mhigan sun. Those cutting Elezen features seem blurred, softened by youth. He even seems to sleep more peacefully.
Holding her breath, trying her best not to wake him, Iae turns to the other side.
Reni.
He is still wearing the same armour he wore the last time she saw him, gallivanting off into the horizon like an idiot. For a moment, she does nothing but stare at his slumbering form. Ghosts like this do not faze her. She cannot count the number of times she has woken to see Tamago's smile, to hear her laughing voice, before it fades into morning mist. As much as she knows it is a weakness in her to not be able to move on from her past and face reality, a small part of her cannot help but rejoice in her dreams. Those moments are small, quiet mercies in her life. So long as she knows they are dreams.
But this dream refuses to fade. Reni continues to lie there, looking supremely comfortable in his Warrior garb, snoring slightly into his pillow. On her other side, Evon mumbles in his sleep.
Hating herself for it, she dares to whisper: "Evon?"
----
"Five more minutes..." Without opening his eyes, Evon knows the bed beneath him is the softest he has ever slept in. Softer than the Oasis Bed in his new home in Ul'dah (only installed because of Iae and Rei's endless reminders), than the meager blankets strewn on Ala Mhigan sand, than his family's slabs of stone in Ishgard, always austere, always wanting...
He dismisses any attempt at reasoning. It's a nice bed.
"Evon?" comes the fuzzy voice again. Hnnnrnghhh. Through half-sleep, he hazily processes the tightness in the whisper. A Lalafellin prank squad would probably be louder. Maybe it's important... A pair of golden eyes steal open, meeting first the velvet expanse of a pillow, and then Iae. She wears an expression that Evon thinks is relief.
"Uh." He blinks, and notices a roughly human-shaped piece of metal sleeping behind her. The fuck? Iae continues to stare right through him.
Evon decides to pick the safest suggestion. "...Are we at someone's housewarming party?" She shakes her head, catches what she is about to say, then speaks in measured tones. "I'm not sure where we are, but I'm glad you're awake. Let's find out." She remains still in the bed, eyes roaming slowly, inexorably, across what appears to be an ornate bedroom, occasionally passing back over Evon himself.
"Sounds good." If you don't know, I probably don't either. Evon scuffles off the side of the bed, legs barely touching the floor. The room is lit in the curtained shroud of pre-dawn, barely reflected in thousands of mini-aetheryte crystals descending from the ceiling. Huh. Did someone...? He considers the possibility of someone successfully getting him or Iae drunk. It is not very high.
He feels almost drunk himself, irritation at the unfamiliarity buzzing in the back of his mind. The windows are too high to reach even for him, as if made for giants, or someone who could open them with merely a thought. "We could use some more light. Do I have my staff..?" He peers around in the dimness, finding only fields of cold marble.
A pale green stave materializes in his hand a second later, replete with pale wings and a glowing jade orb at its end. The light imparts an almost sickly glow to the chambers, not the warmth he intended. His friend continues to inspect the area around his vicinity, searching for something that should be next to him. Evon is not sure whether he should be concerned. "You okay?"
Iae stands to her full height in the bed, slightly rising over the rhythmically breathing pauldron next to her. "I am here. Is Reni...?"
Oh. That makes it less weird. I think. Silently, Evon brings the light of Garuda's Van closer to the identified Mi'qote, who is geared more heavily than he is used to. Yup, Reni. The only catboy I know that can pull off blush. He pokes Reni rather callously. "Nice hair color."
----
He felt it long enough to appreciate it for a few precious moments. Something within him warned that the atmosphere was going to shatter; some unspeakable force was going to render this instant null in ways his half-waking mind couldn't yet imagine, but for now... resting on the warm bed with the voice of his two dearest friends surrounding him was exactly where he wanted to be.
A prod displaced him ever so gently from this nestle of comfort. "Mmmfh." With the coldness of realization that one is about to snap out of a dream of one's own making, Reni opened his eyes.
The starkness of the room hit him much stronger than he was expecting, the chill of the realization pulling him instantly out of his fog of comfort. His faculties slowly returning, he twisted his head around, the down bed gently giving way to his every languid move.
"Mmmhhuh?" he continued his formless oral gesticulation.
"Sounds like him, too," Evon said to the lalafell adjacent to him. He looked back down to the sleeping catboy, briefly wondering how he could be comfortable in all that armor. "You know where we are?"
The ceiling, so far away, twinkled. Reni brought his hands up to rub his eyes, wincing as the metal hit his orbits - why am I in armor still? - then blinked a few times while he pulled off his gauntlets. The blurred twinkling of the crystalline stars above him did not change. The walls, which somehow looked paradoxically further away than the ceiling, were decorated with arched windows so far off the ground it made the miqo'te feel somehow reduced in size.
"Where are we?"
"That's a no," Evon said. The voice of his friend pulled him further back into reality. He turned around again and, sitting up, drew the unmistakably familiar figures of Evon Taviane and Iae Kallinar into focus. The former looked down at him with his smooth, dark-skinned face that Reni, even after all these years, always had a difficult time reading. But Iae's face caught him by surprise. She looked at him through slightly pale cheeks and wider eyes than he remembered.
As though she were looking at a ghost.
"So, uh," Reni started, and let the question drift into the air unanswered. He stood up and stretched, then immediately withdrew with a cringe - his muscles ached, as though they hadn't been used for weeks.
"You all right?" Evon asked.
"Yeah, just tense. Don't feel right."
"None of this feels right," the elezen responded. He swung his glowing staff up, the green light faintly reflecting off the crystals above them and tinting the upper walls with a pale peridot glow. Reni noticed that Iae had changed her fixation from his visage to that of the sparkling glow of the ceiling above them. He had seen variations of this face before, in the depths of Alexander's heart and calculating life-or-death maneuvers within the boundless Omegascape, but there was something behind this glassy grimace that he couldn't pinpoint. None of Iae's gestures or stares could ever be described as "vacant", but this one was particularly strained, as though she were trying to discern some message hidden in the chaotic patterns and motions of light.
He noticed that Evon was looking at her too, and at Reni's best guess the elezen was undergoing similar pontifications.
Then, without a word, Iae looked down, pivoted on her heels, and started walking with some indiscernible deliberation towards a door some dozen paces away. It looked just as simple and unassuming as the stone walls surrounding them, the faint engraved border its only giveaway. Reni glanced at Evon, who looked back at him and shrugged. Both knew the pointlessness of speaking when Iae was amidst a tour of her mind palace. Evon turned and followed after her.
Reni moved to do the same, then stopped, catching a glimpse of his bone-white bladed axe propped against this mysterious bedframe. He reached to grab it, then paused, as though it might be a trap. All at once, a hesitation overtook him. All the questions he had been asking himself, that Evon had been asking him, all seemed to hit him at once, and his hand froze in extension towards his weapon, the implement with which he was so accustomed to cutting through the unknown. And what of the total silence of his inner beast, that voice from within that had led to such terrible and unspeakable consequences in the home he knew? Instinctively, he looked back at his friends, the shorter of which had already made her way through the door, a brilliant sunlight of sorts exuding from its vacancy. Evon looked back at him, and for a moment their eyes met.
Whatever this is, it's going to be fine. They will make sure no harm comes to me. And I will make sure no harm comes to them.
With redoubled effort, he grabbed his axe, his tight grip around the cold haft giving him some reassurance. He felt a stirring from deep within himself - the rousing of the inner beast served to give him a sense of reassured fortitude instead of fear of losing control. With his power in check and his friends at the ready, all would be well.
He turned around and made for the door.	
==Alto==
Image	Description							
 	 							
 	
Something was immediately wrong.
His mask was on, the room was made of marble, and morning birdsong could not be heard. Delta sat up on the unfamiliar space, looking around. Not at the room itself, nor for other people, but at the lack of greenery. It was not the isolation that bothered him, but the death of this room. How... fake it all felt. He could tell that it was made out of real things, that this was some sort of study used by people looking for genuine knowledge, but it felt like this place was missing something. It wasn't the odd lack of books, or the lack of people, but that this place hid lies within the knowledge surrounding him.
Though he may be alone -- Isolated -- it was only in this room. He felt a presence, deep within the walls of wherever it was he awoke. One that might hold answers.
"Be it by angels or demons, I must know what land I've found myself within." He idly commented, getting up and walking off. He knew nothing about this strange, marble prison. Nor did he know anything in regards to the unfamiliar magic hanging in the air. It was not like what he was used to, but he felt as though he could gather some kind of strength from it. He looked at his hand, wind circling around it, before safely dismissing his own magic and beginning his search into the palace for another life.	
Something was immediately wrong.
His mask was on, the room was made of marble, and morning birdsong could not be heard. Delta sat up on the unfamiliar space, looking around. Not at the room itself, nor for other people, but at the lack of greenery. It was not the isolation that bothered him, but the death of this room. How... fake it all felt. He could tell that it was made out of real things, that this was some sort of study used by people looking for genuine knowledge, but it felt like this place was missing something. It wasn't the odd lack of books, or the lack of people, but that this place hid lies within the knowledge surrounding him.
Though he may be alone -- Isolated -- it was only in this room. He felt a presence, deep within the walls of wherever it was he awoke. One that might hold answers.
"Be it by angels or demons, I must know what land I've found myself within." He idly commented, getting up and walking off. He knew nothing about this strange, marble prison. Nor did he know anything in regards to the unfamiliar magic hanging in the air. It was not like what he was used to, but he felt as though he could gather some kind of strength from it. He looked at his hand, wind circling around it, before safely dismissing his own magic and beginning his search into the palace for another life.	
Something was immediately wrong.
His mask was on, the room was made of marble, and morning birdsong could not be heard. Delta sat up on the unfamiliar space, looking around. Not at the room itself, nor for other people, but at the lack of greenery. It was not the isolation that bothered him, but the death of this room. How... fake it all felt. He could tell that it was made out of real things, that this was some sort of study used by people looking for genuine knowledge, but it felt like this place was missing something. It wasn't the odd lack of books, or the lack of people, but that this place hid lies within the knowledge surrounding him.
Though he may be alone -- Isolated -- it was only in this room. He felt a presence, deep within the walls of wherever it was he awoke. One that might hold answers.
"Be it by angels or demons, I must know what land I've found myself within." He idly commented, getting up and walking off. He knew nothing about this strange, marble prison. Nor did he know anything in regards to the unfamiliar magic hanging in the air. It was not like what he was used to, but he felt as though he could gather some kind of strength from it. He looked at his hand, wind circling around it, before safely dismissing his own magic and beginning his search into the palace for another life.	
Something was immediately wrong.
His mask was on, the room was made of marble, and morning birdsong could not be heard. Delta sat up on the unfamiliar space, looking around. Not at the room itself, nor for other people, but at the lack of greenery. It was not the isolation that bothered him, but the death of this room. How... fake it all felt. He could tell that it was made out of real things, that this was some sort of study used by people looking for genuine knowledge, but it felt like this place was missing something. It wasn't the odd lack of books, or the lack of people, but that this place hid lies within the knowledge surrounding him.
Though he may be alone -- Isolated -- it was only in this room. He felt a presence, deep within the walls of wherever it was he awoke. One that might hold answers.
"Be it by angels or demons, I must know what land I've found myself within." He idly commented, getting up and walking off. He knew nothing about this strange, marble prison. Nor did he know anything in regards to the unfamiliar magic hanging in the air. It was not like what he was used to, but he felt as though he could gather some kind of strength from it. He looked at his hand, wind circling around it, before safely dismissing his own magic and beginning his search into the palace for another life.	
Something was immediately wrong.
His mask was on, the room was made of marble, and morning birdsong could not be heard. Delta sat up on the unfamiliar space, looking around. Not at the room itself, nor for other people, but at the lack of greenery. It was not the isolation that bothered him, but the death of this room. How... fake it all felt. He could tell that it was made out of real things, that this was some sort of study used by people looking for genuine knowledge, but it felt like this place was missing something. It wasn't the odd lack of books, or the lack of people, but that this place hid lies within the knowledge surrounding him.
Though he may be alone -- Isolated -- it was only in this room. He felt a presence, deep within the walls of wherever it was he awoke. One that might hold answers.
"Be it by angels or demons, I must know what land I've found myself within." He idly commented, getting up and walking off. He knew nothing about this strange, marble prison. Nor did he know anything in regards to the unfamiliar magic hanging in the air. It was not like what he was used to, but he felt as though he could gather some kind of strength from it. He looked at his hand, wind circling around it, before safely dismissing his own magic and beginning his search into the palace for another life.	
Something was immediately wrong.
His mask was on, the room was made of marble, and morning birdsong could not be heard. Delta sat up on the unfamiliar space, looking around. Not at the room itself, nor for other people, but at the lack of greenery. It was not the isolation that bothered him, but the death of this room. How... fake it all felt. He could tell that it was made out of real things, that this was some sort of study used by people looking for genuine knowledge, but it felt like this place was missing something. It wasn't the odd lack of books, or the lack of people, but that this place hid lies within the knowledge surrounding him.
Though he may be alone -- Isolated -- it was only in this room. He felt a presence, deep within the walls of wherever it was he awoke. One that might hold answers.
"Be it by angels or demons, I must know what land I've found myself within." He idly commented, getting up and walking off. He knew nothing about this strange, marble prison. Nor did he know anything in regards to the unfamiliar magic hanging in the air. It was not like what he was used to, but he felt as though he could gather some kind of strength from it. He looked at his hand, wind circling around it, before safely dismissing his own magic and beginning his search into the palace for another life.	
Something was immediately wrong.
His mask was on, the room was made of marble, and morning birdsong could not be heard. Delta sat up on the unfamiliar space, looking around. Not at the room itself, nor for other people, but at the lack of greenery. It was not the isolation that bothered him, but the death of this room. How... fake it all felt. He could tell that it was made out of real things, that this was some sort of study used by people looking for genuine knowledge, but it felt like this place was missing something. It wasn't the odd lack of books, or the lack of people, but that this place hid lies within the knowledge surrounding him.
Though he may be alone -- Isolated -- it was only in this room. He felt a presence, deep within the walls of wherever it was he awoke. One that might hold answers.
"Be it by angels or demons, I must know what land I've found myself within." He idly commented, getting up and walking off. He knew nothing about this strange, marble prison. Nor did he know anything in regards to the unfamiliar magic hanging in the air. It was not like what he was used to, but he felt as though he could gather some kind of strength from it. He looked at his hand, wind circling around it, before safely dismissing his own magic and beginning his search into the palace for another life.	
==KStuff==
Image	Description							
 	 							
 	
A reflection on the floor—The first thing that greet my eyes. 
As nice as a polished floor is, it sure is a terrible bed. 
.... 
How did I even get here? 
A detainment? 
I picked up the sword beside me. Yep, mine. My coat, my gear.... Everything seems to be in place. Nope, too much freedom. 
An Old World relic? 
The surrounding architecture looks too pristine. 
A hallucination? 
I wrapped my fingers into a fist. I can feel the spark of Aether surging through. Just enough for a jolt. 
No deal. Magic works fine, though. 
A dream? 
I swung my arm. A wave of Aether blasted forward. 
Well, whether is it a dream or reality, at the very least, I can fight.
Might as well look around. 
The sun—The first thing that I saw outside the room. 
Jeez, even the horizon in nothing but sunlight. 
Weird, the sun is so close to the surface, but it doesn't feel hot at all. 
...Wait, is that even a sun? 
.... 
....A sound? 
I can hear sound...  
What is this feeling? I never heard anything like this, but it feels...familiar... 
It's calling me...It feels like every fiber of my being is yearing for it.
The direction of the sound comes from...there? 
...! 
A flash of white. 
I can see....the Fallen Cradle. 
The Fallen Cradle is calling me? 
Eh? Stick to what you know, I guess. 
Maybe I can retrace my steps on how'ed I get here from that place. 
Let's see...the direction... 
Crap. I don't know where am I now. 
Ah well, that yearning sensation is still lingering inside, I don't think I'll get lost. 
<beat> 
I hope. 
...At any rate, the sky looks as dull as ever.	
A reflection on the floor—The first thing that greet my eyes. 
As nice as a polished floor is, it sure is a terrible bed. 
.... 
How did I even get here? 
A detainment? 
I picked up the sword beside me. Yep, mine. My coat, my gear.... Everything seems to be in place. Nope, too much freedom. 
An Old World relic? 
The surrounding architecture looks too pristine. 
A hallucination? 
I wrapped my fingers into a fist. I can feel the spark of Aether surging through. Just enough for a jolt. 
No deal. Magic works fine, though. 
A dream? 
I swung my arm. A wave of Aether blasted forward. 
Well, whether is it a dream or reality, at the very least, I can fight.
Might as well look around. 
The sun—The first thing that I saw outside the room. 
Jeez, even the horizon in nothing but sunlight. 
Weird, the sun is so close to the surface, but it doesn't feel hot at all. 
...Wait, is that even a sun? 
.... 
....A sound? 
I can hear sound...  
What is this feeling? I never heard anything like this, but it feels...familiar... 
It's calling me...It feels like every fiber of my being is yearing for it.
The direction of the sound comes from...there? 
...! 
A flash of white. 
I can see....the Fallen Cradle. 
The Fallen Cradle is calling me? 
Eh? Stick to what you know, I guess. 
Maybe I can retrace my steps on how'ed I get here from that place. 
Let's see...the direction... 
Crap. I don't know where am I now. 
Ah well, that yearning sensation is still lingering inside, I don't think I'll get lost. 
<beat> 
I hope. 
...At any rate, the sky looks as dull as ever.	
A reflection on the floor—The first thing that greet my eyes. 
As nice as a polished floor is, it sure is a terrible bed. 
.... 
How did I even get here? 
A detainment? 
I picked up the sword beside me. Yep, mine. My coat, my gear.... Everything seems to be in place. Nope, too much freedom. 
An Old World relic? 
The surrounding architecture looks too pristine. 
A hallucination? 
I wrapped my fingers into a fist. I can feel the spark of Aether surging through. Just enough for a jolt. 
No deal. Magic works fine, though. 
A dream? 
I swung my arm. A wave of Aether blasted forward. 
Well, whether is it a dream or reality, at the very least, I can fight.
Might as well look around. 
The sun—The first thing that I saw outside the room. 
Jeez, even the horizon in nothing but sunlight. 
Weird, the sun is so close to the surface, but it doesn't feel hot at all. 
...Wait, is that even a sun? 
.... 
....A sound? 
I can hear sound...  
What is this feeling? I never heard anything like this, but it feels...familiar... 
It's calling me...It feels like every fiber of my being is yearing for it.
The direction of the sound comes from...there? 
...! 
A flash of white. 
I can see....the Fallen Cradle. 
The Fallen Cradle is calling me? 
Eh? Stick to what you know, I guess. 
Maybe I can retrace my steps on how'ed I get here from that place. 
Let's see...the direction... 
Crap. I don't know where am I now. 
Ah well, that yearning sensation is still lingering inside, I don't think I'll get lost. 
<beat> 
I hope. 
...At any rate, the sky looks as dull as ever.	
A reflection on the floor—The first thing that greet my eyes. 
As nice as a polished floor is, it sure is a terrible bed. 
.... 
How did I even get here? 
A detainment? 
I picked up the sword beside me. Yep, mine. My coat, my gear.... Everything seems to be in place. Nope, too much freedom. 
An Old World relic? 
The surrounding architecture looks too pristine. 
A hallucination? 
I wrapped my fingers into a fist. I can feel the spark of Aether surging through. Just enough for a jolt. 
No deal. Magic works fine, though. 
A dream? 
I swung my arm. A wave of Aether blasted forward. 
Well, whether is it a dream or reality, at the very least, I can fight.
Might as well look around. 
The sun—The first thing that I saw outside the room. 
Jeez, even the horizon in nothing but sunlight. 
Weird, the sun is so close to the surface, but it doesn't feel hot at all. 
...Wait, is that even a sun? 
.... 
....A sound? 
I can hear sound...  
What is this feeling? I never heard anything like this, but it feels...familiar... 
It's calling me...It feels like every fiber of my being is yearing for it.
The direction of the sound comes from...there? 
...! 
A flash of white. 
I can see....the Fallen Cradle. 
The Fallen Cradle is calling me? 
Eh? Stick to what you know, I guess. 
Maybe I can retrace my steps on how'ed I get here from that place. 
Let's see...the direction... 
Crap. I don't know where am I now. 
Ah well, that yearning sensation is still lingering inside, I don't think I'll get lost. 
<beat> 
I hope. 
...At any rate, the sky looks as dull as ever.	
A reflection on the floor—The first thing that greet my eyes. 
As nice as a polished floor is, it sure is a terrible bed. 
.... 
How did I even get here? 
A detainment? 
I picked up the sword beside me. Yep, mine. My coat, my gear.... Everything seems to be in place. Nope, too much freedom. 
An Old World relic? 
The surrounding architecture looks too pristine. 
A hallucination? 
I wrapped my fingers into a fist. I can feel the spark of Aether surging through. Just enough for a jolt. 
No deal. Magic works fine, though. 
A dream? 
I swung my arm. A wave of Aether blasted forward. 
Well, whether is it a dream or reality, at the very least, I can fight.
Might as well look around. 
The sun—The first thing that I saw outside the room. 
Jeez, even the horizon in nothing but sunlight. 
Weird, the sun is so close to the surface, but it doesn't feel hot at all. 
...Wait, is that even a sun? 
.... 
....A sound? 
I can hear sound...  
What is this feeling? I never heard anything like this, but it feels...familiar... 
It's calling me...It feels like every fiber of my being is yearing for it.
The direction of the sound comes from...there? 
...! 
A flash of white. 
I can see....the Fallen Cradle. 
The Fallen Cradle is calling me? 
Eh? Stick to what you know, I guess. 
Maybe I can retrace my steps on how'ed I get here from that place. 
Let's see...the direction... 
Crap. I don't know where am I now. 
Ah well, that yearning sensation is still lingering inside, I don't think I'll get lost. 
<beat> 
I hope. 
...At any rate, the sky looks as dull as ever.	
A reflection on the floor—The first thing that greet my eyes. 
As nice as a polished floor is, it sure is a terrible bed. 
.... 
How did I even get here? 
A detainment? 
I picked up the sword beside me. Yep, mine. My coat, my gear.... Everything seems to be in place. Nope, too much freedom. 
An Old World relic? 
The surrounding architecture looks too pristine. 
A hallucination? 
I wrapped my fingers into a fist. I can feel the spark of Aether surging through. Just enough for a jolt. 
No deal. Magic works fine, though. 
A dream? 
I swung my arm. A wave of Aether blasted forward. 
Well, whether is it a dream or reality, at the very least, I can fight.
Might as well look around. 
The sun—The first thing that I saw outside the room. 
Jeez, even the horizon in nothing but sunlight. 
Weird, the sun is so close to the surface, but it doesn't feel hot at all. 
...Wait, is that even a sun? 
.... 
....A sound? 
I can hear sound...  
What is this feeling? I never heard anything like this, but it feels...familiar... 
It's calling me...It feels like every fiber of my being is yearing for it.
The direction of the sound comes from...there? 
...! 
A flash of white. 
I can see....the Fallen Cradle. 
The Fallen Cradle is calling me? 
Eh? Stick to what you know, I guess. 
Maybe I can retrace my steps on how'ed I get here from that place. 
Let's see...the direction... 
Crap. I don't know where am I now. 
Ah well, that yearning sensation is still lingering inside, I don't think I'll get lost. 
<beat> 
I hope. 
...At any rate, the sky looks as dull as ever.	
A reflection on the floor—The first thing that greet my eyes. 
As nice as a polished floor is, it sure is a terrible bed. 
.... 
How did I even get here? 
A detainment? 
I picked up the sword beside me. Yep, mine. My coat, my gear.... Everything seems to be in place. Nope, too much freedom. 
An Old World relic? 
The surrounding architecture looks too pristine. 
A hallucination? 
I wrapped my fingers into a fist. I can feel the spark of Aether surging through. Just enough for a jolt. 
No deal. Magic works fine, though. 
A dream? 
I swung my arm. A wave of Aether blasted forward. 
Well, whether is it a dream or reality, at the very least, I can fight.
Might as well look around. 
The sun—The first thing that I saw outside the room. 
Jeez, even the horizon in nothing but sunlight. 
Weird, the sun is so close to the surface, but it doesn't feel hot at all. 
...Wait, is that even a sun? 
.... 
....A sound? 
I can hear sound...  
What is this feeling? I never heard anything like this, but it feels...familiar... 
It's calling me...It feels like every fiber of my being is yearing for it.
The direction of the sound comes from...there? 
...! 
A flash of white. 
I can see....the Fallen Cradle. 
The Fallen Cradle is calling me? 
Eh? Stick to what you know, I guess. 
Maybe I can retrace my steps on how'ed I get here from that place. 
Let's see...the direction... 
Crap. I don't know where am I now. 
Ah well, that yearning sensation is still lingering inside, I don't think I'll get lost. 
<beat> 
I hope. 
...At any rate, the sky looks as dull as ever.