Chapter Text
Paralysis. Paralysis and a cold, enduring whiteness.
"Lauden?" Jacinthe's voice. Cautious, and caring.
Hands, on her shoulder and hip. Hands touching her armor, her body. She wanted to scream but she couldn't find her voice. She couldn't find her mouth, or her muscles, or anything at all. This was her body, and it felt completely wrong.
More so than usual.
"Lauden, talk to me. Please." Jacinthe's hand, brushing snow off of her face. Tenderly clearing her hair out of her eyes. Her voice sounded distant, distorted. Her touch felt numb, and far away.
Everything sounded wrong. Her ears were lying to her again.
She had dropped to her knees, and she had fallen face first into the frigid snows of Garlemald. She was a puppet with her strings cut. She had snow in her nose and there was a growing crowd of people around her and they were all transitioning from relieved and congratulatory to deeply, deeply concerned.
She wasn't dead. Jacinthe felt for a pulse at her wrist, and her neck. She held a lens of her spectacles under her nose, presumably to watch her breath fog it up.
Where were her glasses?
Oh, there. Covered in snow. Someone picked them up, and cleaned them off, and she could feel Thancred or Alphi or somebody tucking her spectacles into an empty belt pouch. She had more of those, these suns. A gunblade used munitions at a slower pace than her Machinist's handgonne ever had. Even that sniper rifle she had worked on with the Ironworks crew, the one they used to shoot down Garlean airships. Bolt action, breach-loading... it fired about as fast as a sunset and it still burned through more ammo than a gunblade.
Why was she thinking about this? Now, of all times?
"She is alive. She is present within her body." Y'shtola's voice. "Something is wrong with her aether. We need to get her out of here, quickly. We could fly her to Sharlayan, maybe. They have the most advanced medical facilities. They'll be able to figure out what's wrong with her. I want to dig into this but we simply do not have the time. Who has communication with our air support? Lucia? One of the captured scout airships should be sufficient."
A hushed discussion, as if they didn't want her to hear anything. Thancred gazed down at her, worry creasing his brow. Jacinthe bit her lip, and shook her head slowly.
"At least she's blinking," her sister Warrior of Light sighed gratefully.
Yes. There was that at least.
A whine and a low metallic keening and an airship painted in the colors of the Eorzean Alliance was screaming overhead, coming in for a landing nearby. She could feel the heat of the ceruleum engines. She could feel snow, melting through her trousers. She could feel her gunblade, digging into her back. She could feel her chastity belt.
Now was definitely not the time for such things. Though she didn't have much choice in the matter. G'raha Tia held the keys, and she hadn't talked to him about the belt since she had joined up with the expeditionary force.
They stripped down the airship, and they loaded her onto a stretcher and carried her onboard. Y'shtola sat beside her as the pilot lifted off for a quick hop to the fuel dump, a short distance south of Camp Broken Glass. With a full tank at maximum speed they'd make Sharlayan in a few bells. They'd make a lot of noise, but there was no one around to complain. No one around to shoot at them.
Garlemald was dead. The nation had gutted itself. The corpse of the Empire towered over the ruined city, taunting the expeditionary force. She didn't need to see it with her eyes, she could feel that horrible thorned tower, even from here.
She could feel Fandaniel, laughing at her.
"We can't sustain maximum speed for longer than an bell. The engines will melt." The pilot sounded cross, and put upon. Y'shtola was asking him for the impossible; Lauden knew exactly how he felt.
"That doesn't matter," the pale woman stated coldly, flatly. "Get us to Sharlayan, as fast as you can. I'll have a landing site for you by the time we get there."
And they were airborne, and the engines were cycling up to a high-pitched screech that rattled her bones.
Good. She could feel her bones. She was in her body. She was in her body and Y'shtola was holding her hand and she couldn't squeeze back.
The blind mage had a linkpearl connected to the communications room beneath the Forum in Sharlayan. She got ahold of somebody, who got ahold of somebody, and so on, and by the time the engines had begun to hiss, by the time the miniscule cargo bay had begun to grow uncomfortably warm, she had everything arranged.
She ran out of words, and the pilot had nothing to say. He flipped open a vent, and cold air briefly filled the cabin, cooling the temperature down to something more tolerable.
Lauden was sweating. She could feel sweat beading on her brow, and trickling down, into her long pointed ears. Y'shtola mopped her clean with her sleeve, and she shouted, above the din of the squealing, violently objecting engines. "I do not know what is wrong with you, dearheart. I imagine it has something to do with your behavior before you fell over. You were not yourself. Your aether was completely wrong. You were emitting patterns and colors I'd never seen within you before. You looked... a lot like Zenos, come to think of it."
A moment, while she relayed that realization via linkpearl.
They were over the ocean. They'd been over the ocean for awhile. She wasn't sure how she knew that. Had the pilot said something? Had Y'shtola? She wanted to sleep, but she wasn't tired. She wanted to go away for awhile, but she couldn't seem to allow her eyes to glaze over. She was here, stuck in some sort of horrible eternal now.
Time passed. The pilot grew concerned with the engines; they were redlined, and he had no idea if they'd hold together until Sharlayan. Y'shtola held her hand, and soothed her, and she kept looking forward, presumably through the cockpit viewports.
"There. The flat platform west of the Forum. Can you land there?" Loud enough for her to hear.
"Take us down." And they were descending, and the engines sounded like rending metal, and it was hot. It was so hot.
A thump as they touched down, and then Y'shtola was kicking the hatch into a gangplank. There was shouting, there was yelling, there were large Roegadyn men squeezing into the ship to lift her up, and carry her out.
Y'shtola kissed her, and then she was being carried away.
She had never been to Sharlayan before. The Scions had business here; they were based here for the time being, she had been told that, but she had been deep into her retirement when their ship had sailed. There was a lot of talk, and a lot of stone ceilings, and something about Labyrinthos. That was a new word. She was transferred to what felt like another stretcher. Someone rolled her onto her side and pulled away her gunblade.
I'll want that back! The thought formed, but it couldn't find her mouth.
Women orderlies now. Carefully undressing her. There was some confusion over her collar, and her belt, and her belt's control cuff, as none of the magical objects had fasteners. None of them could be taken off. Not without keys or special spells, anyway.
Some part of her shrieked as they brought in something from someplace called the Advanced Materials Group. They cut her belt off. They cut her collar off. They snipped off the control cuff like it was nothing. She was dressed in some sort of loose, flowing robe and she was transferred to a bed and there was a lot of talk about aetherology and aether experts and aetherometers. Words like Ascian and Allagan were thrown around. She heard Zenos mentioned more than once; a partial, not entirely accurate recap of what Y'shtola had yelled into the linkpearl.
Finally, sleep came.
She awoke to poking and prodding. and a painful prick in her arm as something called 'intravenous nutrition' was attached to her. There was a bit of a mess with her bowels; she wondered if she was blushing, but she had to admit... she didn't really care at this point. She felt awful. She missed the security of her belt and her collar. She missed how they made her feel.
Right now she felt alone, and exposed, and apparently her aether was out of alignment. Not all of it, just a little bit. Right... there. Do you see it? The flow between her mind and her body. No, I have no idea how it got swived up. I just know that it shouldn't look like that. It should look like this, see? Hold still, nurse. Hold sti- yes, thank you. See? Right there? That's what it's supposed to look like. I can think of one expert aether manipulator that might be willing to help. I have no idea how to find him, though. I think he's in Ishgard? Maybe we've got somebody here that's up to the task.
And the voices faded, and the room became empty and quiet.
There was a window to her right, and sunlight, or what felt like sunlight, slowly brightened and faded, while the angle of the light remained steady. That was odd. That was very odd. She had plenty of time to think about how odd that was. She had plenty of time to think about her ordeal. About her time in that conscript's body.
That woman conscript's body.
To feel dead and desperate and profoundly right at the same time. It had been too much. It had been far too much. She was still making sense of it all.
Maybe now that she knew what rightness felt like she could get better results from a third phial of Fantasia, if one came her way.
If Fandaniel had put her in a conscript's body, and he had put Zenos in her body, then the conscript must have been in Zenos's body. What had she done with it? How had she felt, if she was alive enough to feel?
Eventually, Lauden ran out of thoughts. Eventually, she ran out of will, out of focus. She was paralyzed, only she could still feel. Dimly, distantly. She couldn't move her eyes, or her mouth. Everything sounded wrong, everything felt wrong.
Suns passed, or possibly bells.
Someone came in with a bottle of something, and did something with it just out of her field of view.
At last, the murmur of voices. A familiar voice, a familiar face. A masculine Miqo'te with black hair, and yellow eyes.
"Greetings, Lauden," T'zuki Tia smiled down at her hopefully. "I'm here to make a small but very important adjustment to your aether. Don't worry; this won't hurt a bit."
A nurse took out the needle that someone had stuck in her arm. Orderlies rolled her over, and then T'zuki was gripping the back of her neck. She felt something turn inside her head and suddenly she was gasping, she was groaning, and the totality of what had been done to her finally caught up with her.
She curled up in a ball, and she wept. She covered her head with her hands and she flinched and screamed whenever anyone tried to touch her.
A chirurgeon or somebody said something about a sleep spell. She felt aether wash over her. She felt her body begin to relax.
She felt nothing.
Time passed.
There was no indication of how much time had passed, but the light had been relatively bright when T'zuki had fixed her and the light streaming in through the window was now a dim blue-gray.
Sitting up seemed easy enough.
Standing was almost as easy. Her bad knee creaked, and for a moment she thought that it might not hold her weight. Fortunately, it did.
What had Zenos done to her body? Her muscles hurt. Both knees hurt. All of her joints hurt. She felt like she had been broken into pieces and glued back together.
The room was large for what it was, but it was still pretty small. A bed, a couple of chairs. The intravenous nutrition stand next to the bed. An end table with several thin drawers of what looked like chirurgical supplies, and a small refuse bin. Two doors. One to the left of the bed, one on the wall next to it. The one next to it was open, revealing a ceramic tile floor. But first, the window. The entire right-hand wall was a window that looked out on... what, exactly?
Some sort of giant dome, enclosing a world of green. A world of buildings. A giant fan-shaped structure in the center, beneath some sort of dimly glowing globe that hung from the ceiling, some distance away. The window was steeply angled; from her vantage point it looked like her room was very high up, near the top of the dome. A dome that was some sort of enormous phasmascape, presenting the image of a pre-dawn sky.
That... was a lot to think about. Later, maybe, when thinking was possible. Right now she wanted a sandwich. Sticky buns. F'lhaminn's breakfast mash. Anything would be amazing right now.
A peek inside the door next to the bed revealed all of the important parts of a water closet - a toilet, a sink, a mirror. A small shower stall. Towels.
Hot water.
A switch near the door controlled a thin tube of blue-white light mounted above the mirror. She looked ghastly. She looked like she had been dead for a moon. She knew it was the lighting, but still, the sight made her blood run cold. The deep shadows beneath her nose and chin reminded her of her long gone beard shadow.
Lauden stripped off the robe they had given her and she took a long, hot shower. She bathed quickly, hissing and grimacing as she touched herself. It was her body, they were her hands, and still. Everything felt wrong. She felt like she still inhabited the body of the dead or dying Imperial. She felt stiff. She could smell death, as if the scent of it was lodged in the back of her throat. She gagged, and retched, but her stomach was empty. There was nothing to bring up. Nothing to expel.
Her body felt wrong without her collar. It felt especially wrong without her belt. She felt empty, and hollow. She felt a slow, smoldering rage for whoever had made the decision to cut her equipment off of her.
A low, rueful laugh as she sank against the wall of the shower stall, skidding down the tiled surface until her bottom touched warm, wet tiles.
Zenos knew she wore a chastity cage.
There was nothing he could do with that information. Half of Eorzea had seen her wearing it, and the collar, and nothing else. She could not be shamed, or controlled, or coerced with that information. Yet it felt embarrassing nonetheless. It felt like a deep violation of her privacy.
This whole thing had been a deep violation of her privacy. Of her sense of self. That had been the idea, apparently. Zenos had wanted to play, in his own swived-up way. And Fandaniel had obliged him, in order to swive with her.
Why her? Why not Jacinthe?
Well, Zenos knew her, in a very intimate way. She had killed the bastard.
Unfortunately, she hadn't killed him enough.
And now he had imprinted on her like a swiving evil puppy. It would be sad, and pitiable, if it wasn't so swiving horrifying.
Her skin felt rotten. Her bones felt decayed, and porous. They felt like they were fragmenting, and crumbling. She still felt the Imperial's body. She could still smell the decay. It filled her sinus cavity like a thin, noxious smoke.
She was hungry. Her stomach was empty and she was very hungry.
Weakly, she turned off the taps. She toweled herself as dry as she could. She put the robe back on and she tried the other door.
This one was locked. From the outside.
She was a prisoner. She had no weapon, no armor, an empty stomach, and she was a prisoner.
No. No, she wasn't. She was a patient. She felt like a prisoner but she was a patient.
There was a difference.
The bed wasn't particularly comfortable, but it was warm, and sleep was something she could at least try to do until someone came to check on her. She could teleport, yes, but to where? The Scions were based here now. Someplace called the Baldesion Annex. She needed to get free. She needed to find a local Aetheryte to attune to. Then she could teleport back to Revenant's Toll, and sleep in her own bed. Then she could come back here when the Scions were done with whatever they were doing in Garlemald.
Maybe then she wouldn't feel like week-old shite.
Back under the blanket. Curled up facing the door, with her back to the massive window and her damp hair moistening the pillow.
"Lauden?" A strangely familiar voice. A voice she hadn't heard in awhile.
"'m hungry," the Warrior of Light whined. She had rolled over in her sleep; her back was to the door and her head was under the pillow, blocking the queer sunlight.
"I figured you might be. I brought you a breakfast bowl from the cafeteria. It's... not great, if I'm being honest, but it's not Archon Loaf. Though if for some reason you enjoy that, there's certainly plenty of it available." The voice sounded quiet, and compassionate.
"Whuz Archon Loaf?" Lauden blinked groggily, and sat up. A squat Midlander woman in a white coat, hat, and gloves stood next to the bed, holding a bowl with a spoon tucked into it. Cautiously, she offered the bowl to Lauden.
The graying Elezen rubbed her eyes, and smacked her lips. She combed her fingers through her hair - now dry, and scraggly. She held out her hands, and accepted the bowl. Popotos, scrambled eggs, some sort of sausage, some sort of white cheese. She held the bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other and it tasted like the one time she had snuck a bit of F'lhaminn's breakfast mash before the elder Miqo'te had seasoned it.
A meal from the hell of blandness.
"Svana." The squat woman's name finally popped into her mind. "It's been awhile."
"You look good with long hair," Svana sat at the foot of the bed, with her hands folded in her lap. "It was shorter, when Jacinthe and I found you at the Ironworks."
"Mmm," Lauden grunted. The food was disappointing, but filling. And right now she needed filling more than she needed anything else. Her body ached for fullness. It ached in all of her private places, but right now her stomach ached the most. "Where am I?"
"You're in a hospital, in the office block that encircles the upper portion of Labyrinthos. That's what we call the biosphere on the other side of the window." Svana pointed over her shoulder with a gloved finger. "Labyrinthos is beneath Sharlayan, which is... some distance above. I do not advise taking the stairs on your way to the surface." A dry chuckle, a slight smile.
"I'm not a prisoner, then?" Best to address that feeling right away.
"Heavens no! No, your door should not have been locked. That was a mistake on somebody's part." Svana's brow knit slightly. "They wanted to lock you up, but I insisted that you are who Y'shtola said you are. As a Warrior of Light, you have free access to... most of the island. Once you're fed and clothed I'll take you to the Baldesion Annex, and from there you may do as you please."
"You cut my armor off." And my cage, and my collar...
"We had to give you a full examination, and we had to make sure nothing you were wearing was interfering with your body, or your aether. I was surprised that such a small kink in the flow of aether could result in the full paralysis of all voluntary muscles. Do you have any idea how that may have happened?" The squat Midlander gazed expectantly at the graying Elezen.
"Fandaniel." Lauden resisted the urge to spit. "The Ascian that's been wreaking havoc with the remains of the Empire. He... played some kind of magical shell game. He put Zenos in my body, and he put me in the body of a recently deceased conscript. I don't know what he did with the conscript. Put her in Zenos's body, probably."
The meal was bland, but the cheese was good. Lauden continued to tuck into the breakfast bowl. She could easily go for another, and maybe a third, and... no. No, she could indulge herself again when this disaster was behind them.
"That may explain... quite a bit, actually." Svana gazed at Lauden thoughtfully. "The flow of your aether doesn't quite fit your body. If I had to guess I'd say it was adapted to a different body, and now it's having difficulty adapting again. The conscript was... shorter, I'm guessing?"
That didn't matter. Not really. "The conscript was a woman." Lauden couldn't remember if Svana knew about her hen or not. Whoever cut the belt off knew. A lot of people that didn't need to know knew. It was probably common knowledge in Eorzea by now. "I felt... I felt like I was dead or dying. I felt like I was broken, and twisted... and at the same time I felt so profoundly right. I felt like I belonged in that body. And I had to fight to get back here. To this."
Her mouth contorted into a disgusted grimace.
"This is good cheese." Anything to change the subject. If she talked about her body any more she was going to scream.
"It's from our Aether-Rich Milk program." Svana smiled thinly. "You have experience with Fantasia, yes? Is that something that you'd be willing to talk about?"
"Uh." That was unexpected. "Uhm. Yes. I've used Fantasia. And because of a prior incident... I wasn't able to get the full effect of the first phial. I was wearing a chastity cage for the second; I imagine that made a difference. That or I'm stuck like this." She glanced down at her length, hidden beneath the blanket and her robe.
"You've experienced Fantasia twice?" Svana's eyes widened slightly. "I would know of your experiences."
"The first time I almost became who I'm supposed to be." The less said about that, the better. "The second time... brought me out of retirement. It rendered me fit for duty. I was very out of shape, and I had intended to stay that way but -" Venat "- someone convinced me to make myself ready for battle."
"I see." The stout mage nodded. "So when Fandaniel somehow placed you in the body of a woman..."
"I felt right. In the only way that really matters." Lauden sighed glumly. "Getting back to myself - playing Fandaniel's accursed game - meant giving that up. I knew the body he'd placed me in was in horrible condition but I didn't want to go back to this."
"I wouldn't either." Svana frowned sympathetically. "I didn't know an incomplete Fantasia experience was possible. Fascinating. My own experience was... quite thorough."
"You..." Lauden couldn't think of a polite way to phrase the question.
"I have some idea of what you're struggling with," the stout woman smiled sadly. "I know what right feels like and I know what wrong feels like... and I wouldn't want to go back to wrong either."
"I had to." The graying Elezen sighed. "I didn't have a choice. That body was dead or dying, and I needed to do something about Zenos." She felt gross. She was probably going to feel gross for awhile. "It feels like he broke my body and did a terrible job of putting it back together." She finished her breakfast, and set the empty bowl on the end table next to the intravenous stand.
"On a happier note," Svana clapped her hands together. "Let's get you over to the Advanced Materials Group to talk about new clothing and armor. I believe they've been working on something for you."
Lauden nodded, and stood up, and shrieked as her bad knee gave out. She dropped to the floor like a sack of popotos, clutching the offending joint as tears streamed down her cheeks.
Fortunately, the Advanced Materials Group (AMG) had all kinds of joint braces. With Svana Cotter and Mahiwa Gunji acting as intermediaries, they were able to equip Lauden with a brace that eliminated most of the pain, while retaining nearly all of her mobility.
Once she could walk again, Svana escorted her to the AMG labs. An androgynous Roegadyn named Baralon walked her through what they were doing with materials, and the progress they had made on a new suit of armor. It was loose and flexible, yet exceptionally resilient. It had thermal properties that echoed the suit of armor that had been made for her in the First. It looked like a simple tabard with a long-sleeved undershirt, tights, and knee-high boots. Baralon demonstrated the tabard's resilience by slashing it with a machete. The blade stopped, without harming the material. The tabard shrugged off a blowtorch; they wanted to shoot it with a hangonne but Lauden didn't want to deal with hearing protection. She accepted that the armor was, in fact, very advanced.
AMG had her gunblade, and the remains of her collar, her belt, and the control cuff. They appreciated the workmanship that had gone into the magical accessories, and while they had nothing available to replace what had been destroyed, the head of the AMG - a Xaela everyone called Tai - just so happened to have a leather collar that she could have.
"My partner is collared," he smiled knowingly as he fastened the soothing assembly of leather and metal around Lauden's neck. "I've seen how distressing it can be to be without it, once you've gotten used to wearing it. Keep this." He gave the ring a playful tug. "May it soothe you until your dominant can find you a proper replacement."
The collar mattered more than her armor. It made her feel secure. She liked how Tai looked at her; she liked the fact that he was tall, and handsome, with a bit of a belly. She wanted to touch him, to hug him, but he had mentioned a partner, and she just wasn't up for a discussion right now. The collar felt good, it felt soothing, but she was still in a fair amount of pain and as the memory of the conscript's body faded, she began to grow distraught, and depressed.
Bara and Tai found her in one of the AMG offices, curled in a ball in a corner, crying.
She was grateful for the armor, and the collar, and the knee brace. She knew better than to ask for a new chastity cage - that was a matter to discuss with Cheria and Y'shtola, and possibly G'raha. She needed town clothes, and she needed lunch. Svana guided her to the Weavers, who supplied her with traditional Sharlayan garb that was warm enough for the chill weather on the surface, and then Svana was guiding her to the elevators, and they were ascending to the surface.
Sharlayan was gray, and bleak. Flurries descended from an overcast sky that was almost the same shade of gray-white as the stone that the city was built from.
Their first stop was the Baldesion Annex, where they left Lauden's armor and weapon with a Lalafell named Ojika Tsunjika. Ojika insisted that it was an honor to meet a Warrior of Light, and he assured her that quarters would be made ready for her by the time she was done with lunch.
After that came the queer-looking Aetheryte. Finally, she could go home if she needed to. Well, home to the Rising Stones. If she wanted to return to Vesper Bay she'd have to teleport to Horizon and walk. She could leave for Camp Broken Glass if she felt like it, but right now she'd just get in the way. The expedition didn't need a depressed, moping Warrior of Light. It needed a Warrior of Light who was comfortable in her own body. It needed the sword and shield of the gallant Jacinthe Des-bois.
Attunement, and then it was down the stairs to the Last Stand. A restaurant on the harbor with a heated pavilion and quite a menu.
Lauden craved comfort food. She ordered a creamy pasta with chicken, while Svana asked for lemon chicken on a bed of rice.
"I imagine you want to rejoin the Scions," Svana hypothesized as they enjoyed their respective meals. "I'd recommend staying here for a few suns, until your aether has stabilized. When your body feels like it belongs to you again, I'll sign off on allowing you to leave. I know you can teleport any time you'd like, but if you leave against medical advice, I promise you. We'll be very sad." Her lips quirked into a subtle smile.
"I'll stay," Lauden agreed. "Until my knee heels or the Scions have need of me. Whichever comes first."