theprototypes | #FFXIVWrite2022 30 Day Challenge

Master post for all my entries into the FFXIVWrite challenge over on twitter/tumblr!

prompt #1: cross | ✻ | Mauve + Zenos | ✻ | EW spoilers

prompt #2: bolt | ✻ | Mauve + NPCs

prompt #3: temper | ✻ | Mauve + Alphinaud + Alisaie + NPCs | ✻ | EW spoilers

prompt #4: Extra Credit / Free Day | ✻ | Mauve/Thancred | ✻ | EW spoilers

prompt #5: Cutting Corners | ✻ | Sarhnai + Hien | ✻ | SB spoilers

prompt #6: Onerous | ✻ | Mauve + Hien | ✻ | post-EW spoilers

prompt #7: Pawn | ✻ | Mauve/Thancred | ✻ | ARR spoilers

prompt #8: Tepid | ✻ | Zenos + f!WoL

prompt #9: Yawn | ✻ | Thancred + Ryne | ✻ | pre-ShB

prompt #10: Channel | ✻ | Gaius + f!WoL | ✻ | ShB spoilers

prompt #11: Extra Credit / Free Day | ✻ | Mauve/Thancred | ✻ | rated T for talk of mating drives

prompt #12: Miss the Boat | ✻ | Mauve + Lahabrea | ✻ | mild violence

prompt #13: Confluence | ✻ | Mauve + Thancred

prompt #14: Attrition | ✻ | Mauve + Zenos | ✻ | EW spoilers | ✻ | cw: blood + violence

prompt #15: Row | ✻ | Mauve/Thancred | ✻ | post-EW

prompt #16: deiform | ✻ | Lisette + Hraesvelgr

prompt #17: novel | ✻ | Sarhnai + Fandaniel | ✻ | EW spoilers

prompt #18: Extra Credit / Free Day | ✻ | Mauve/Thancred | ✻ | rated T

prompt #19: Turn a Blind Eye | ✻ | Mauve + Hatsuye (non-WoL)

prompt #20: Anon(ymous) | ✻ | Mauve/Thancred | ✻ | rated T | ✻ | if you know, you know

prompt #21: Solution | ✻ | Mauve + Thancred | ✻ | post-SB spoilers

prompt #22: Veracity | ✻ | Mauve + Zenos (and not!Zenos) | ✻ | post-SB spoilers

prompt #23: Pitch | ✻ | Mauve + background NPCs | ✻ | tw listed below

prompt #24: Vicissitudes | ✻ | Mauve/Thancred

prompt #25: Extra Credit / Free Day | ✻ | Mauve + Thancred

prompt #26: Break a Leg | ✻ | Sarhnai + Koharu + Zenos | ✻ | cw: canon-typical violence

prompt #27: Hail | ✻ | Mauve + Ardbert | ✻ | ShB spoilers

prompt #28: Vainglory | ✻ | Mauve + Zenos | ✻ | EW spoilers

prompt #29: Fuse | ✻ | Mauve/Thancred | ✻ | EW spoilers | ✻ | rated T; Mauve/Zenos +dubcon ref

prompt #30: Sojourn | ✻ | Mauve | ✻ | EW spoilers | ✻ | cw: implied character death

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Lisette was born, bred, and educated to hate the Dravanians without exception. From the terrible Wyrms of legend that continued to terrorize Halone’s children to their mindless broodlings that behaved as common beasts braying for blood, to the soulless killers and madmen who elected to believe in heresy over Her grace, they stood against everything the Church taught as good and for everything that was wrong with this millenia-old conflict.

And yet, upon her first meeting with Hraesvelgr, all that history and all those teachings that she used to steel herself for the confrontation—the crystal clear glass through which she had viewed them all her life, like precious relics of history preserved by their ancestors for the knowledge of those who came after—began to grow clouded. This was not the craven, bloodthirsty dragon she pictured, a spitting image of Nidhogg who hid behind his droves of underlings. At the sight of him—the size of him, the strange grace with which he moved and the steady tempo of his rumbling speech—she felt a flicker of fear, but not terror; it was more akin to awe, although she was no less wary. Like Estinien, she believed enough in Ysayle to follow her this far, but not so much as to lower her guard for even a moment.

Thou speakest the name of a creature that but awaiteth the release of oblivion. Leave me.

There was a bitterness in Hraesvelgr’s earth-deep tone that she expected, but the way he spoke didn’t strike her as something as heated as rage or hatred. There was anger there, disdain, but the ache in his words was not something born of enmity. Rather, he sounded… tired. Defeated. Sad, even, she might have said, had her own lingering feelings of grief and animosity towards his kind not blinded her at the time. His dismissal was less arrogance than distrust, she thought, and a peaceful one at that, all things considered. For a dangerous moment, she almost understood how the ignorant might deify his kind; the respect his presence commanded was not so terribly unlike what she felt in her most concentrated moments of meditation on the Fury and the faith.

And then, like the tendrils of frost snaking their way across her bedroom windows on the most bitterly cold days, Lisette's beliefs grew foggier still upon hearing his gruesome tale. And like Estinien, she rejected it immediately—

What thou choosest to believe is immaterial. The betrayal that yet haunts mine every waking moment is no less than the truth to my kind.

—and yet even three decades of faith couldn’t cloud her ears to the agony in the Great Wyrm’s voice, nor her mind to the simple fact that he had nothing to gain by convincing them of this. He spoke not as an arrogant god of the heretics, nor a vengeful beast, but as one who had loved and lost and been broken because of it—and right then, that was the most difficult truth for her to swallow.