[this is so much. gideon is - like listen, the first time gideon ever saw any sort of animal other than a fish it was here, in hell, so she is staring at this tiny creature like it's going to gnaw her ankles off. she's never seen a squirrel before. or anything squirrel-adjacent.]
No. [she says, hurriedly, because she's not about to have to be saved from a creature the size of a nut, she has some dignity.] I'd just rather not have to destroy your pet whatever, if I can avoid it.
[...]
Were you actually looking for me, or just wandering?
I was looking for you, as a matter of fact. There's something I let go by the wayside for the past few days, in the wake of everything else that transpired.
[like everything going straight to shit and gideon subsequently trying to let the ballpit consume her like a peat bog]
A certain look I seem to recall you tossing my way when I was asked to take my shirt off at trial.
They're fading, by the way. I'll have to make sure to refresh them soon.
[dangerous to say "this is the absolute last thing i want to think about" to a man with the power to keep talking about it as much as he so desires because it's not like either of us wants to talk about the art in this place]
So is the bruise, though I'm frankly content to let that one go unrenewed.
Yuck. Gross. Don't tell me about how you flopped your tongue against that elf guy's.
[gideon you are making it so much worse] I won't give you another bruise unless you deserve it, which let me tell you, you are working your way up to it.
[she is ignoring the paintings so hard that she's ignoring all of her surroundings, which is why a hole is probably going to startle the shit out of her when it appears.]
[oh if only we were both engaging in a basic awareness of our surroundings instead of dicking around with each other about nonsensical adolescent bullshi—
[peak outcome of this cr is gideon picks up eorzean swears by osmosis]
...Ah.
[Because presumably, he's seen this at least once before by now, and is sort of glaring with a dark and hooded look at the screen, waiting to see what tricks it will play this time around.]
[the screen flickers again, and then abruptly, it starts playing a memory. it's in the first person, and there's narration to accompany the video, too.
You're in the dark.
It's hard to see, in here. You are in a dome of perpetual bone (the rhyme makes you laugh somewhere in the back of your mind) and you are under fucking siege by the Lyctor outside, but the only thing you can really focus on is the parts of Harrowhark's face that you can see in the dim light the Sixth's dinky torch provides. It's mostly blood. Her face, you mean, it's just so bloody. It's coming out of her pores. And yet - you're proud. She's raised a solid wall of bone, six inches thick, and is holding it up to protect all three of you, and you're weirdly, wildly proud of her.
And also sick with terror, but not for yourself. For her, as she keels over.
You catch her. And you insist she take from you, but she refuses. No. Not ever again, she says, not after what happened to the Eighth, and you feel the frustration rise up in your throat because there's no way she can hold this for long, not with the Lyctor outside, and you realize - that's her intention.
"I don't have to hold it forever," she says, spitting out a clot of blood.
You tell her that her plan - she holds the wall, and you and Camilla jump off the cliff behind you into the sea, all you have to do is survive the fall - you tell her that her plan is stupid, and so is she, and she grabs you by the front of your shirt and hisses at you, you promised. You promised to go back and take care of the Tomb, and you think, wildly, fuck the tomb, fuck that.
You tell Camilla to shut up, too. She's not going to sacrifice herself. No, absolutely not, not after Palamedes - not after...
You try not to think about that, because you don't have time.
You look down at your necromancer. She has the heavy-lidded expression of someone who was concentrating in the knowledge that when they stopped concentrating, they would abruptly fall asleep. You know that if she goes under, she won't wake up again. She lifts her hand - it trembles - and taps you on the cheek.
"Nav," she says, "have you really forgiven me?"
"Of course I have, you bozo," you say, and you think. Well, if that wasn't an indication that you were all going to die, you didn't know what was.
"You know I don't give a damn about the Locked Tomb, right?" you say in a rush, like you have to get it all out. "You know I only care about you. I'm no good at this duty thing. I'm just me. I can't do this without you. And I'm not your real cavalier primary. I never could've been."
And here's the thing - she laughs. You're not sure you've ever heard her genuinely laugh. Ever, in all these years. It's softer than you imagined.
"Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my House," she says, hoarsely, "you are the greatest cavalier we have ever produced. You are our triumph. The best of all of us. It has been my privilege to be your necromancer."
And - that's enough of that. You stand up so suddenly that you nearly knock yourself out, and you start pacing. You look at the small, cramped space around you. The dead leaves, the cracked flagstones, Camilla - who was nice enough to pretend like she wasn't paying attention to the two of you - the powdery grey drifts of bone. The iron spikes of the railings.
"Yeah, fuck it. I'm getting us out of here," you say, and you take a deep breath. You pull off your black robe, you strip your gloves, roll your sleeves up. You are calm. It's just your body that's frightened.
Harrow makes confused sounds at you, but you just shake your head. "Harrow, I can't keep my promise, because the entire point of me is you. You get that, right? That's what cavaliers sign up for. There is no me without you. One flesh, one end."
"Nav," she says, suspicious. "what are you doing?"
"The cruelest thing anyone has ever done to you in your whole life, believe me," you say. "You'll know what to do, and if you don't do it, what I'm about to do will be no use to anyone."
And you turn, and you ignore any protests of anything else, you just - think. One last time, you are Gideon Nav, and you are not afraid, not anymore.
"For the Ninth!"
And you fall forward onto the iron spikes.
annnd gideon in the present is looking up, away from the screen, mouth twisted thin.]
[It seems like the world is always cruelest to girls like Nav and Harrow. Girls with a purpose. Girls with a calling. Girls asked to be something greater than themselves, who embrace notions like one life for one world without ever stopping to consider that they might be someone's entire world, themselves.
He was aware, in strictly academic terms, that Nav had once died for Harrowhark. It's so much more harrowing to see it played out before his eyes — to see the decision she arrives at and know what she's going to do before vision-Harrow does, because Nav always accuses him of being inside her head and, well, he knows what she's decided because it's the same conclusion he'd come to in her place.
I won't have you wasting that newfound resolve on me, he remembers saying once in similar circumstances. Go! Do what you came here to do!
Because that's what the ones like them do, in a situation like this. They buy time. They buy a chance. And they pay whatever coin it takes, on behalf of the ones they can't bear to live without.]
This is it, then.
[He says, sort of quietly, because on its face he knows Gideon will brush off sympathy and concern right now no matter how much she might want it underneath.]
You told me you died for her. This is how you did it.
I had to. [she clarifies, chewing her bottom lip.] That's how being a Lyctor works. It was the only way she was going to be able to kill the lady attacking us.
[...] Harrow was supposed to eat my soul and save her ass, save Hect's ass. It was supposed to work.
[It's almost reflexive, that protest. Sudden. Immediate. Denial born entirely of not wanting to acknowledge a hard truth, however certain it might be in reality.]
Don't say that. Surely something can be done. Some magic. Some — something.
[she looks over at him, from behind her glasses. she's unhappy to say it, but... it feels better than trying to pretend like it might not happen. it's scary. she has to get over that fear.
it actually pains her more to hear him protest. not in a bad way, but in that sort of way that realizing that someone cares about you feels a little like a punch in the chest, sometimes.]
One of the demons called me an optimist, the other day. [she says, finally.] I told them I don't think of myself that way.
[...]
Fucking sucks. I was kind of starting to like... this.
[For a long moment, he doesn't say anything at all. He can't seem to bring himself to, for all that he stands there giving every appearance of being still and unshaken. But he's got his tells, just like anyone else — the way his fingers twist into fists that dig his nails into his palms, the rough exhale of breath as his thoughts war in circles in a tempest that never seems to reach his tongue.
He knows better than anyone how unfair life is, and yet in moments like these, even he can't quite resist the urge to think it anyway. Nav, it isn't fair. Minfilia, it isn't fair!
But what she did — is it really so different than staying behind to hold off an incoming force of Crystal Braves and Brass Blades? Sometimes those are the choices you make, when you're like them. The ones who get in the way to buy others the chance to live.
He still hates that it had to be her.]
...Then. What if this is all you have left to you?
[The words don't even feel like they're his own, for all that he can feel his mouth moving to shape them.]
[she watches his fingers curl, watches him steady and even himself out as much as he can. she wouldn't catch it if she didn't know that sort of language so intimately, if she hadn't grown up speaking it the same.
she pushes off the wall and takes her sunglasses off. if he'll let her, she slides them onto his face.]
Take advantage. [she says, with a little smile. it doesn't quite reach her eyes, but she is trying - and it's not as hard as she thought it might be.] Someone told me to live a little, so that's what I'm going to do.
[What must I do? asks a high, thin voice from the video screen behind them. What pain must I visit upon you to make you surrender to despair?
Eight figures stand in the midst of a withered clearing at the end of all things, surrounded by stars and dead roots and broken fenceposts. Four figures with pointed ears, two tall and two short. Three with tails. One grizzled old bard, still dressed in his gunbreaker whites and looking much like he does in the flesh.
When the elven-eared girl in red walks forward to speak, it's almost like she's speaking directly to Gideon and Thancred, and not to the ink-black bird that hovers in her memory's midst.
No one is unbreakable! What pains one may weather may bring another to tears! But therein lies our strength — for when we fall, our brothers and sisters are there to raise us up. Again and again. Without end!
I see, remarks the bird, in a way that suggests it doesn't see at all, and soon the air is filled with a flock of them, swirling and coalescing together as her tone turns menacing: But no matter how much hope exists, ever will there be more despair. Ever will the living curse and lament the future. So shall we sing until life ceases to be!
The flock of birds becomes a swarm, becomes a torrent, becomes a hurricane; as they fly faster and faster in their ever-narrowing orbit, colors flash against the backdrop of the night sky like an aurora. More and more conjoin, until soon there are so many birds that it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins, and not long after there ceases to be any means of division, as the avian shapes melt and reduce into oily masses that all bleed together into one.
The Endsinger exists on a scale impossible to comprehend at a glance. Entire planets are her playthings, and two of them begin to form as she spreads her wings wide and shrieks of hatred and malice. The celestial spheres smash together shortly before their impact reaches the clearing where the eight heroes stand, and the shockwave is nearly enough to send them all sprawling as it threatens to blast them back into the empty reaches of space.
The tall elf in armor is the first to attack. He always is. He sees his enemy before him, and his lance is in his hands; what more could he possibly need than that?
He hurtles into the air, and the skies scream with the call of a great wyrm as the Endsinger manifests a new planet to bear the brunt of his attack — strong enough to all but vaporize it when it strikes.
Not far behind, of course, is Thancred. Of course he is; when has he ever been one to shy away from putting himself between an enemy and his friends?
History repeats itself, in variation on a theme; he lunges, and the elf with the tarot cards on his belt raises a shield around him — but this too comes for naught, as his strike shatters the planet in his wake and sends him hurtling back to skid along the ground.
The white-haired mage readies a spell; black-violet oilslick tears pour from the Endsinger's eyes and down her alabaster cheeks, down to the ground below where they turn into trails of roiling aether filled with the grasping hands of the damned. Thancred and the mage stand no chance of avoiding it; the agonized phantoms overtake them in an instant, swarming over them and bringing them to their knees, barely able to withstand the onslaught that threatens to overwhelm them in despair.
We die in pain, the Endsinger snarls. We die in suffering! Who are you to live?! Who are you to hope?!
They are heroes, the eight of them — and it shows in the way they instinctively seek to come to each others' rescue, one by one. The elf that had sought to shield Thancred before moves to deliver them from the writhing hands; when the Endsinger turns her sights on him next, the younger elf boy rushes in to shield him in his turn.
We cannot comprehend. We cannot know. We cannot know!
Just one good strike, the elf girl in red hisses, arming an attack of her own. The Endsinger's venomous tears fall at her feet and subsume her, forcing her to abandon her efforts in convulsions of agony.
We will not suffer alone. All will know our pain!
And now, at last, the Endsinger turns her attention to one of the last figures standing — almost too far from Thancred to make out the specifics of her features, but her importance is highlighted in the emotion saturating the memory itself. He's still trapped in the grasping darkness, she's undefended, he's not there, he's not there —
But someone is.
No you don't! shouts the redheaded mage with the glowing blue staff, his cat ears pinned back in determination as he plants a spectral sword in the ground — draws a shield of aetheric light to his arm — manifests a shield that looks like blue-white angel's wings that spread to cover the girl behind him —
It holds. And the Endsinger takes his defiance as a challenge.
Her second strike is a continuous one — a perpetual blast of force that seeks to overwhelm the young man's resolve as it bears down on his shields again and again and again. But his will holds — and it holds — and it holds — and when his shield finally breaks he stumbles backward and catches his footing and throws up his bare arms, in his determination to keep holding on.
They say that courage is fear that holds on one second longer. How courageous that boy is, to hold on one second more with nothing but his own body to throw in the way in defense.
The winds sweep them all off their feet, swirling them into the air above the clearing like bits of debris ripped free and thrown up into a tornado. The Endsinger continues her song. Their screams of pain and disorientation rock the empty void at the end of all things.
He can't swim free of it. He can't get back down there. He can't fight, can't help her, can't make it —
But it seems that for the first time — the only time — she doesn't need him to.
In the split-second before she presses down on the activation switch of the odd device in her hands, Thancred catches a glimpse of her, the last bastion of hope left standing against the Endsinger's despair. She seems to burn so bright he almost can't stand to look at her, even as he hears Alisaie cry wait!
That girl's strength has always, always been in the support of her friends. Of having her comrades at her side. Of having the ability to call for them even from far afield, to rush to her aid and lend their strength to hers.
But here, at the end of all things where logic has no dominion and emotion can be made a weapon stronger than any smith's hands could ever hope to forge, Thancred realizes:
[wow who is that red elf girl she sounds like the best character in ffxiv
anyway - gideon watches the screen, because she can't help but do it, her bright yellow eyes narrowed in her focus. there's so much to take in about this, about what's happening. she's never seen anything like the endsinger. but the area they're in almost feels a little like home.
her eyes are still on the screen, when she speaks.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Tell it to stop looking at me. [terrifying...]
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[The nutkin's tail flicks. It senses fear and weakness.]
I'll shoo it out of the building if it bothers you that much.
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[...]
Were you actually looking for me, or just wandering?
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[like everything going straight to shit and gideon subsequently trying to let the ballpit consume her like a peat bog]
A certain look I seem to recall you tossing my way when I was asked to take my shirt off at trial.
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Yeah, because you had hickeys and that's the absolute last thing I want to think about when it comes to you. I would rather eat dirt.
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[dangerous to say "this is the absolute last thing i want to think about" to a man with the power to keep talking about it as much as he so desires because it's not like either of us wants to talk about the art in this place]
So is the bruise, though I'm frankly content to let that one go unrenewed.
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[gideon you are making it so much worse] I won't give you another bruise unless you deserve it, which let me tell you, you are working your way up to it.
[she is ignoring the paintings so hard that she's ignoring all of her surroundings, which is why a hole is probably going to startle the shit out of her when it appears.]
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OH FUCK THAT'S A HOLE down we go, chums]
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Ow, fuck.
[elegance. she is beauty, she is grace, and she's fallen on her face. she just groans from where she's on the floor.]
Ughhh. I wasn't done making fun of you yet.
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Thal's blistering balls, where did that come from?
[so much for FADING BRUISES]
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Why are you asking me - did you just say Thal's blistering balls? That's incredible. [focus, gideon
the screen flickers, and turns on. neat.]
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...Ah.
[Because presumably, he's seen this at least once before by now, and is sort of glaring with a dark and hooded look at the screen, waiting to see what tricks it will play this time around.]
cw: suicide
annnd gideon in the present is looking up, away from the screen, mouth twisted thin.]
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He was aware, in strictly academic terms, that Nav had once died for Harrowhark. It's so much more harrowing to see it played out before his eyes — to see the decision she arrives at and know what she's going to do before vision-Harrow does, because Nav always accuses him of being inside her head and, well, he knows what she's decided because it's the same conclusion he'd come to in her place.
I won't have you wasting that newfound resolve on me, he remembers saying once in similar circumstances. Go! Do what you came here to do!
Because that's what the ones like them do, in a situation like this. They buy time. They buy a chance. And they pay whatever coin it takes, on behalf of the ones they can't bear to live without.]
This is it, then.
[He says, sort of quietly, because on its face he knows Gideon will brush off sympathy and concern right now no matter how much she might want it underneath.]
You told me you died for her. This is how you did it.
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I had to. [she clarifies, chewing her bottom lip.] That's how being a Lyctor works. It was the only way she was going to be able to kill the lady attacking us.
[...] Harrow was supposed to eat my soul and save her ass, save Hect's ass. It was supposed to work.
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[The ambiguity in the possibility makes something in his stomach twist.]
But — you said you remember more than Harrow does. So she doesn't remember this. And that means you have no way of knowing...is that it?
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[she leans against the wall of the hole.]
So it's either she didn't want it, didn't do it right, or I fucked up - or I've made this all up, somehow.
I don't know what happened. But I didn't expect to be conscious.
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[Consume her soul, take on her power. Not the sort of thing he's thrilled to hear repeated across two more girls he cares about.]
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gideon absently rubs at her chest, between her lungs. where a scar might be, if she hadn't healed when she got here.]
There won't be anything left of me.
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[It's almost reflexive, that protest. Sudden. Immediate. Denial born entirely of not wanting to acknowledge a hard truth, however certain it might be in reality.]
Don't say that. Surely something can be done. Some magic. Some — something.
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it actually pains her more to hear him protest. not in a bad way, but in that sort of way that realizing that someone cares about you feels a little like a punch in the chest, sometimes.]
One of the demons called me an optimist, the other day. [she says, finally.] I told them I don't think of myself that way.
[...]
Fucking sucks. I was kind of starting to like... this.
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He knows better than anyone how unfair life is, and yet in moments like these, even he can't quite resist the urge to think it anyway. Nav, it isn't fair. Minfilia, it isn't fair!
But what she did — is it really so different than staying behind to hold off an incoming force of Crystal Braves and Brass Blades? Sometimes those are the choices you make, when you're like them. The ones who get in the way to buy others the chance to live.
He still hates that it had to be her.]
...Then. What if this is all you have left to you?
[The words don't even feel like they're his own, for all that he can feel his mouth moving to shape them.]
What will you do with the time you have left?
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she pushes off the wall and takes her sunglasses off. if he'll let her, she slides them onto his face.]
Take advantage. [she says, with a little smile. it doesn't quite reach her eyes, but she is trying - and it's not as hard as she thought it might be.] Someone told me to live a little, so that's what I'm going to do.
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Eight figures stand in the midst of a withered clearing at the end of all things, surrounded by stars and dead roots and broken fenceposts. Four figures with pointed ears, two tall and two short. Three with tails. One grizzled old bard, still dressed in his gunbreaker whites and looking much like he does in the flesh.
When the elven-eared girl in red walks forward to speak, it's almost like she's speaking directly to Gideon and Thancred, and not to the ink-black bird that hovers in her memory's midst.
No one is unbreakable! What pains one may weather may bring another to tears! But therein lies our strength — for when we fall, our brothers and sisters are there to raise us up. Again and again. Without end!
I see, remarks the bird, in a way that suggests it doesn't see at all, and soon the air is filled with a flock of them, swirling and coalescing together as her tone turns menacing: But no matter how much hope exists, ever will there be more despair. Ever will the living curse and lament the future. So shall we sing until life ceases to be!
The flock of birds becomes a swarm, becomes a torrent, becomes a hurricane; as they fly faster and faster in their ever-narrowing orbit, colors flash against the backdrop of the night sky like an aurora. More and more conjoin, until soon there are so many birds that it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins, and not long after there ceases to be any means of division, as the avian shapes melt and reduce into oily masses that all bleed together into one.
The Endsinger exists on a scale impossible to comprehend at a glance. Entire planets are her playthings, and two of them begin to form as she spreads her wings wide and shrieks of hatred and malice. The celestial spheres smash together shortly before their impact reaches the clearing where the eight heroes stand, and the shockwave is nearly enough to send them all sprawling as it threatens to blast them back into the empty reaches of space.
The tall elf in armor is the first to attack. He always is. He sees his enemy before him, and his lance is in his hands; what more could he possibly need than that?
He hurtles into the air, and the skies scream with the call of a great wyrm as the Endsinger manifests a new planet to bear the brunt of his attack — strong enough to all but vaporize it when it strikes.
Not far behind, of course, is Thancred. Of course he is; when has he ever been one to shy away from putting himself between an enemy and his friends?
History repeats itself, in variation on a theme; he lunges, and the elf with the tarot cards on his belt raises a shield around him — but this too comes for naught, as his strike shatters the planet in his wake and sends him hurtling back to skid along the ground.
The white-haired mage readies a spell; black-violet oilslick tears pour from the Endsinger's eyes and down her alabaster cheeks, down to the ground below where they turn into trails of roiling aether filled with the grasping hands of the damned. Thancred and the mage stand no chance of avoiding it; the agonized phantoms overtake them in an instant, swarming over them and bringing them to their knees, barely able to withstand the onslaught that threatens to overwhelm them in despair.
We die in pain, the Endsinger snarls. We die in suffering! Who are you to live?! Who are you to hope?!
They are heroes, the eight of them — and it shows in the way they instinctively seek to come to each others' rescue, one by one. The elf that had sought to shield Thancred before moves to deliver them from the writhing hands; when the Endsinger turns her sights on him next, the younger elf boy rushes in to shield him in his turn.
We cannot comprehend. We cannot know. We cannot know!
Just one good strike, the elf girl in red hisses, arming an attack of her own. The Endsinger's venomous tears fall at her feet and subsume her, forcing her to abandon her efforts in convulsions of agony.
We will not suffer alone. All will know our pain!
And now, at last, the Endsinger turns her attention to one of the last figures standing — almost too far from Thancred to make out the specifics of her features, but her importance is highlighted in the emotion saturating the memory itself. He's still trapped in the grasping darkness, she's undefended, he's not there, he's not there —
But someone is.
No you don't! shouts the redheaded mage with the glowing blue staff, his cat ears pinned back in determination as he plants a spectral sword in the ground — draws a shield of aetheric light to his arm — manifests a shield that looks like blue-white angel's wings that spread to cover the girl behind him —
It holds. And the Endsinger takes his defiance as a challenge.
Her second strike is a continuous one — a perpetual blast of force that seeks to overwhelm the young man's resolve as it bears down on his shields again and again and again. But his will holds — and it holds — and it holds — and when his shield finally breaks he stumbles backward and catches his footing and throws up his bare arms, in his determination to keep holding on.
They say that courage is fear that holds on one second longer. How courageous that boy is, to hold on one second more with nothing but his own body to throw in the way in defense.
The winds sweep them all off their feet, swirling them into the air above the clearing like bits of debris ripped free and thrown up into a tornado. The Endsinger continues her song. Their screams of pain and disorientation rock the empty void at the end of all things.
He can't swim free of it. He can't get back down there. He can't fight, can't help her, can't make it —
But it seems that for the first time — the only time — she doesn't need him to.
In the split-second before she presses down on the activation switch of the odd device in her hands, Thancred catches a glimpse of her, the last bastion of hope left standing against the Endsinger's despair. She seems to burn so bright he almost can't stand to look at her, even as he hears Alisaie cry wait!
That girl's strength has always, always been in the support of her friends. Of having her comrades at her side. Of having the ability to call for them even from far afield, to rush to her aid and lend their strength to hers.
But here, at the end of all things where logic has no dominion and emotion can be made a weapon stronger than any smith's hands could ever hope to forge, Thancred realizes:
She's going to do it.
She's going to save them all.]
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anyway - gideon watches the screen, because she can't help but do it, her bright yellow eyes narrowed in her focus. there's so much to take in about this, about what's happening. she's never seen anything like the endsinger. but the area they're in almost feels a little like home.
her eyes are still on the screen, when she speaks.]
You talked about this. Fighting despair.
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