wordsworn | #FFXIVWrite2022 30 Day Challenge

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

(Anything explicit or requiring cw: will be marked as such; everything else should be SFW.)

Prompt #1: Cross | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) + G'raha Tia ✧ | ShB spoilers
[Just a snapshot of my wholesome catship LOL]

Prompt #2: Bolt | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) + Emet-Selch + Hermes (+ mention of Hythlodaeus) ✧ | EW spoilers
[Total crack, written in an hour-long flurry of feverish writing, as usual if I don't feel super inspired by the prompt things get dumb, fight me, but it's still fun/funny to ME, CATTE IS CATTE, KNOCKING THINGS OFF TABLES, SIZHU GETS THE ZOOMIES LMAO, I might want to expand this one later idk LOL]

Prompt #3: Temper | ✧ Warrior of Light + Minfilia + Thancred ✧ | EARLY ARR spoilers ~~and maybe hints at some other spoilers but nothing obvious unless you Know Things already~~
[What if Thancred hadn't been late to the fight when you faced down Ifrit for the first time? AU, written to make Phase scream. CW: Tempering, brief violence, implied impending major character death]

Prompt #4: Free Prompt - θάρρος (Thárros); Courage | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) x G'raha Tia ✧ | Spoilers up through 6.1
[More wholesome catship; on her return from another trip to Aglaia, G'raha is taken by surprise at Sizhu's attire.]

Prompt #5: Cutting Corners | ✧ Hades + Hythlodaeus (implied Hades -> Azem) ✧ | EW spoilers
[After assisting Azem with saving that island and its grapes, Hades confronts Hythlodaeus about the indisputable part he'd played in the whole fiasco--but their conversation does not go at all the way Hades had planned.]

Prompt #6: Onerous | ✧ Mikh'a Jakkya (non-WoL adventurer, WoL's twin brother) ✧ | SB spoilers
[What happened to Sizhu's twin brother when she was snatched away to the First? Mikh'a tells of it in his own words.]

Prompt #7: Pawn | ✧ Emet-Selch (Hades) -> WoL (& Azem) ✧ | ShB spoilers
[Emet-Selch always plays the long game. Musings on chess pieces and the Warrior of Light.]

Prompt #8: Tepid | ✧ Cres Shatterheart (non-WoL adventurer) ✧ | ...no spoilers really? stuff from a minor sidequest is mentioned
[The reasons vary from person to person, but most adventurers are somewhat the same, deep down. No matter how arduous or tedious, sometimes the task itself is its own reward.]

Prompt #9: Yawn | ✧ Talys Shatterheart (WoL) ✧ | EW Spoilers
[In this timeline, the WoL is a f!Viera Sharlayan scholar with zero battle experience, who is doing a Forum-funded field study about adventurers for her thesis...and who is pulled into being Very Personally Involved in everything when she realizes two facts: 1) she's actually pretty badass at this fighting stuff, and 2) somehow, the whole world needs her.]

Prompt #10: Channel | ✧ Hermes -> f(Miqo'te)!WoL ✧ | EW SPOILERS ALL THE WAY DOWN
[He wants her, even though he knows that he should not. But she’s the only one he’s ever met who truly understands how he feels...and his emotions have always proven difficult for him to tame. Why should these sorts of feelings be any different? EW spoilers, takes place during the Elpis questline. CW: depression (it's Hermes), slight dom contemplations/mild sexuality (no actual sex tho)]

Prompt #11: Free Prompt - Embrace | ✧ Hermes -> f(Miqo'te)!WoL ✧ | EW SPOILERS FOR DAYS, YO
[I enjoyed that last drabble so much, I picked up right where that one left off and did another. c:]

Prompt #12: Miss the Boat | ✧ Sarhnai Dotharl + Koharu Sumeragi (WoLs) + Scions ✧ | EW spoilers OF COURSE
[FINALLY wrote some Dargon Girls AU! In which there are TWO WoLs who are both shards of Azem, who both ended up on the Source--soul-sisters, if you will. c: Koharu is mine and Sarhnai belongs to my friend, the wonderful

incontrast. <3]

Prompt #13: Confluence | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) + Ardbert ✧ | ShB Spoilers
[Phase gave me this idea, so these feels are her fault.]

Prompt #14: Attrition | ✧ Crystal Exarch (-> WoL) ✧ | Shadowbringers Spoilers LIKE WHOA man

Prompt #15: Row | ✧ Emet-Selch (Hades) + Azem (Persephone) ✧ | All The Endwalker Spoilers

Prompt #16: Deiform | ✧ Koharu (WoL) x Hien ✧ | EW role quest spoilers
[My soft dargon-girl has dokis for Hien pretty bad, and finds a way to show him a very small bit of just how badly. I still think it's kinda "eh" but Phase likes it, so it can't be terrible.]

Prompt #17: Novel | ✧ Koharu (WoL) x Hien (continued from previous prompt) ✧ | Spoilers for a Stormblood Dungeon, I Guess?
[Continued from the previous drabble, very short but my head is killing me, so. This will do. :c]

Prompt #18: Free Prompt - Fruit | ✧ Hermes -> f(Miqo'te)!WoL ✧ | Endwalker Spoilers OBVIOUSLY
[I wanted to keep writing more for that same Hermes idea...and it's a free prompt, so I did.]

Prompt #19: Turn a Blind Eye | ✧ Elidibus (Themis) + Azem ✧ | All The Spoilers, Especially for Pandæmonium
[Themis is concerned about Azem's censure, only to find that he needn't be. Pandæmonium spoilers, plus a hint of my own predictions about where that questline might go...]

Prompt #20: Anon | ✧ Aymeric x/+ unnamed F!WoL ✧ | ARR Spoilers, oh noes
[...Yeah, I hate this one. But, sucky prompt, sucky drabble. Only makes sense.]

Prompt #21: Solution | ✧ Talys Shatterheart (WoL) ✧ | No Spoilers, Lots of Anti-Garlean Feels

Prompt #22: Veracity | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) + Emet-Selch (Hades) ✧ | ShB & EW Spoilers
[I don't much like this one either, but it's there.]

Prompt #23: Pitch | ✧ Fandaniel (+ hints of current one-sided and possible future-life Fandaniel/WoL) ✧ | Endwalker Spoilers FOREVER
[Get ready for a feels-punch, that is all]

Prompt #24: Vicissitudes | ✧ Thancred + Urianger + CATBABIES ✧ | No Spoilers, Just Headcanons
[This is really bad and really dumb, but these two catbabies are headcanon for me now...]

Prompt #25: Free Prompt - Halcyon | ✧ Hermes -> f(Miqo'te)!WoL ✧ | Endwalker Spoilers
[Con't from the previous free prompt~]

Prompt #26: Break A Leg | ✧ Koharu Sumeragi (WoL) + Sarhnai Dotharl (WoL) vs Zenos yae Galvus ✧ | SB spoilers
[COLLAB WITH PHASE \o/]

Prompt #27: Hail | ✧ Koharu Sumeragi (WoL) + Sarhnai Dotharl (WoL) ✧ | SB spoilers
[Con't from yesterday's. Koharu has a mad, and Zenos is 100% it.]

Prompt #28: Vainglory | ✧ Emet-Selch (Hades) i.e. "Solus zos Galvus" ✧ | All Spoilers, All The Time
[PHASE AND I PLAY CATCH WITH THE GARLEAN HATE BALL AGAIN. Uhhhh, I mean...Emet musings RE: building the ~~stupid bull$h!t that is the~~ Garlean Empire.]

Prompt #29: Fuse | ✧ Hythlodaeus (-> Azem) ✧ | Endwalker Spoilers
[Mehhhh this one is so unfocused...but oh well, it's done. Might revisit and turn it into something else later.]

Prompt #30: Sojourn | ✧ Sizhu Jakkya (WoL) + Venat ✧ | Endwalker Spoilers ;_;
[A good place to end. :c]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When they’d first met, with the Ascian sweeping in theatrically, presenting himself as if he were a player on the stage rather than an enemy with whom they were at odds, Sizhu hadn’t trusted Emet-Selch in the slightest.

His every word weighed heavy with meanings that she couldn’t understand--that he knew she couldn’t understand, that some part of him plainly despised her for not understanding. And yet the sound of those words was light, at times even flippant, as if he cared for nothing and no one.

At first, she didn’t trust a single word that came out of those smirking lips, remembering the other Ascians she’d encountered before, rejecting them all outright.

And yet, as time went on and they couldn’t be rid of him, as he continued to waltz in whenever he pleased, tell them a tale or drop some hints about something they were looking into or reveal some sort of otherwise shocking information, and then make his dramatic exit...Sizhu started to listen. Grudgingly at first, but she was nothing if not damnedly curious, and Ascian or not, Emet-Selch was an incredibly deep well of information.

By the time he brought Y’shtola back to them, she was not only listening, but intrigued by what she heard. She could not be certain that anything he said was true, of course, but...it did make certain pieces fall into place, and for all the further questions that his answers spawned, having anything answered at all was still progress in her book. He also claimed that he had no reason to lie, that the truth was damning enough for his purposes--and he had a point there as well.

In any case, any liar who stated that he had no reason to lie was either insane, or just insanely bold to the point of idiocy. She couldn’t really say that only someone who was being truthful would use such a ploy, and yet...somehow, something about his words rang true. It wasn’t as if she already knew what he was saying...and yet...there was, at times, a strange feeling of familiarity, and if she had glimpsed snatches of something like it in a long-forgotten dream.

Perhaps that was why Emet-Selch himself also felt oddly familiar at times. Not quite as if they’d met before, not really...but something in his eyes caught at her in a way that she couldn’t understand, much less explain, making her heart leap strangely even as she felt her blood freeze beneath that piercing stare--as if he could see all of her, right down to her very soul, and he was not impressed by what he saw.

Long before she summoned Emet-Selch--no, Hades--and Hythlodaeus to her with Azem’s stone out in Ultima Thule, she had come to realize that he really had been telling the truth. That he’d guided her along, giving her answers enough to bait her further, to keep her pushing forwards. Perhaps it had been unintentional; or perhaps he had simply grown tired, tired of the struggle, tired of grasping in vain for a past that grew increasingly faded as the millennia slipped past.

Perhaps he had wanted to lose.

...Perhaps he had wanted to lose to her...or perhaps he had known that his heart would not permit him to do otherwise: not when faced with even a fragment of the one he’d once called my dearest friend.

As to what the truth was...she had a feeling that this was one question that Hades would never give her, though perhaps that refusal itself would have been answer enough.