084 » your voice resonates in the corners of summer

[dekinai]

[they had to have known that he wasn't what he claimed to be.

from the start, the man whom the scions of the seventh dawn welcomed into their own as just another operative, and then the warrior of light — from the start, his story was not one that could be believed. he was doman, clearly, by his appearance and demeanor, but not of the resistance; he was not someone yugiri or any of her people remembered from the garlean occupation. asahi, he called himself. just asahi. no surnames, no country of origin, because asahi oen brutus said too much, and asahi naeuri told more of his story than he needed them to know. but he knew they knew he was a liar. he knew they would learn, eventually, the awful and terrible truth of who their savior really was.

hand-picked and blessed by hydaelyn. it means nothing now that the doman resistance camp is engulfed in flames. y'shtola is lying a distance behind asahi, bleeding out; alphinaud and krile are doing their best to keep her alive, their trembling hands belying their fear, because y'shtola was always the better healer, and what will they do if they fail where she would have succeeded, if only she could save herself?

yugiri would scream in frustration if she had the voice for it now. she charges forward in one last desperate gambit, her hitherto collected demeanor falling to pieces as the weight of her country's plight crashes down around her and the whole hopeless futile struggle drives her to near-tears, but she's lost too much of her cool. a disinterested sweep of the crown prince's blade sends her flying, and then, when she skids to a halt in the rain-soaked mud by asahi's feet, she is too still. her arm is resting at too unnatural an angle. the rain stains her hair and her face and her tanto, and she doesn't get up.

coldly, asahi steps around her, his eyes keen and focused and unmoving on his prize.]

Alisaie. Take Yugiri and retreat.

Comments

[dekinai]

[alisaie stutters, stammers. it's not that she doesn't understand the severity of the situation; she has simply never seen him like this. he has always been careful to show her nothing but the radiant sun. "but — you can't be serious! i can't leave you to this!"]

That was no question, Alisaie!

[cold fury makes his voice tremble, and alisaie blanches. she grits her teeth, a muscle tensing in her neck, but cold logic tells her what he did not have to say: she won't be of use against zenos, and, a second thing — zenos is his.

so she drapes yugiri across her shoulder, and she retreats to where alphinaud and krile have stabilized y'shtola, at least for the time being. it doesn't matter to asahi — or rather, it matters, but not in the way that they think it does. what maters is the hunt. the adrenaline. the blood singing in his veins. his fluttering heart, beating out of time against the rhythm of the pouring rain.

how he's waited for this.

there's reverence and hatred in the way he half-snarls, half-whispers:]

Lord Zenos.

[unremittant]

[Here it is, in the same droning as the rainfall, the same earthly inevitability as the rainfall: the stuttering and the stammering. It's the same refrain as ever, as ever, as ever, as ever. Zenos does not hear it, because he always hears it, not once with something new or novel. They stutter, and they stammer. As ever! Rain, at least, rain--it changes the landscape. Plant life. Mudslides. Floodwaters, and the carving out of gullies. Rain has a point. But this... This? Broken bodies, and voices like fearful flutes. Living flesh and ambitions rent with equal ease.

Useless.

The truly unfathomable thing about the world has always been its inhabitants. Zenos cannot figure it out. Why does any of this exist when it's all so flimsy? He used to lie awake and wonder this, why, why, why any of it is here, such a gossamer world--but doing that is useless too.

Yet there are glimmers. Beyond the gossamer, there is such a thing as steel. And against the unchanging backdrop of the stuttering and stammering, a rarity may manifest: cold fury. Why, that is the most stalwart fury of all. It is a weakness to fight only with the heat of a forge's furnace. Zenos has watched the hottest furies spit at him, spew at him, and spill themselves at his feet and against his greaves. It's the equivalent of swinging the molten mess of an unfinished blade. Years ago, Zenos still had it in him to laugh at that sort of thing. What are you going to do with that? he'd think when they waved their red-hot, wavering iron at him. You're going to hurt yourself. So few of the furious have understood...

Only once a man's fury has gone cold and sturdy can he take it to a whetstone.

And on this day, in the rain, Zenos is not alone in knowing that.]

So I am. [His voice prowls forth like the rolling shoulders of a jungle cat.] And you?

[He doesn't wait for an introduction. That's not what he wants, anyhow. Zenos has gone quite still. Even the twinkling sounds that come with his saunters have ceased.]

And you... fancy yourself a hunter. [He could just as likely be appraising a bottle of wine, attempting to discern its year--is it a treasured vintage, or is it swill? He hums once, a round sound. That hum must be the same shape as his eye for how closely he is looking.] If you could see your eyes, you would know why I know that. They are... telling eyes. They tell me that yours is not a simple hunger. For all of your successful hunts, it is the hunger of a man who has been subsisting on rations. What you mete out for yourself. [Like the gullies carved out by rainfall, Zenos has spent years below sea level, full of dust where others till their farmland, but it would only take one monsoon to make him lush for a season.] Oh, then the ideal is this: if you conquer your big game, you will dine. You will be fed. You will be nourished.

[Inside his great helm, the corner of his mouth jumps up.]

Do you believe that?

[He holds out one of his hands from his side, showing the spread of his palm to this cold fury. Here are his twinkling sounds.]

Well. Come. Then come to me, and learn whether your fancy means anything.

[dekinai]

[it matters little to asahi that he still knows nothing of the face beneath that helm. little, that zenos did not wait for an introduction. he is not here to introduce himself to zenos, or to find out what lies beneath that skull-white mask. this is the face of the man who spurned him; this is the form of the man who chose his worthless sister and her harlot's heart over that pure and unfettered love which asahi would have offered him. yugiri has her country, and the scions have eorzea, but asahi — oh, asahi only has his pride. this is what he's strived for all along.

the grip of his hilt —]

How long I have waited...

[the draw of his blade —]

To sip at your blood —

[shoulders rising like the hackles of a beast, but still he is calm, deadly calm —]

Strip the fat from your skin —

[and he comes, just as zenos has asked. a beast for the hunting, blade at the ready, swiping for the only vulnerable part of zenos's armor: his neck. this is that rare breed of prey zenos has found only once in a thousand battlefields, the kind that is quick as lightning and forged by a master.]

Suck the marrow of your bones!