Adult-FanFiction.org : Final Fantasy

Dragon's Prayer	By : WonderMint Category: Final Fantasy XIV > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 1892 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy FFXIV: ARR is owned by Square Enix and based on the creation of Hironobu Sakaguchi. May they ever walk in the light of the crystal. I own no right to the characters and settings herein and seek no profit therefrom.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
A/N: I promised that I wouldn't work on this until Bellyachin' was complete. But I am poor at keeping this sort of promise.
There are one-shots, there are short stories with very specific foci, and there are long works. Bellyachin' surpassed the NaNo goal of 50,000 words before I knew what NaNo really was. I consider it my first novel, but it has nearly ended, and when it's done I will of course want to be working on something else. Something perhaps a little more ambitious, now that I know what I can do if I set my mind to it.
I've been sitting on this story for a while, waiting for the right time. But when NaNo finished and I completed the 3.0 storyline, the time made itself manifest, whether my other works agreed or not. So I figure instead of sitting on it, I may as well put it out there, and demonstrate at least that I haven't gone anywhere. Fear not, I am still working on my other stories. The naughty scenes just require a gentle touch.
Regarding the Warrior of Light: he plays a prominent enough role in this story that I can't leave him ambiguous. So, as in an unpublished story that you will see Someday (TM), I invoke a specific version of him based on the Hyur in the opening cutscenes. #notmywarrioroflight #notmyshepard #sorrynotsorry
Spoiler warnings: This will spoil at least through the completion of the 3.0 storyline pretty much right off the bat. Likely further, as it goes on.
Trigger warnings: This is going to be much darker than before. If you are disturbed by talk of suicide, this is not the story for you. I mean it. Likewise there's quite a bit of blood and violence, and while I will never write rape, if you are sensitive you may be disturbed at some implications regardless, at least in this prologue. Religion plays a large part in this story, and whether you are for or against the religions upon which this imaginary faith is based, you may find some content objectionable. Additional trigger warnings for emitophobia, on occasion.
This is posted in the 3/plus section for a reason, so hopefully that's enough incentive for some of you to stick around. Reviews are welcome.

It felt as if it took bells. But eventually, Ser Aymeric awoke to the squeal of wagon-wheels against stone. And he wept.
He hurt. His entire body ached, as if some great creature had picked him up and plucked him like a chicken for a stew, pulling at his arms and legs until his joints popped free and his muscles stretched like broken strings. He bled. There were gaping wounds on his back, and stinging cold gnawed at his wrists where they had rubbed raw against the chains that bound him to the floor of the wagon, tearing through his gloves and his skin alike. Flakes of dried blood covered his face and stuck to his hair. Much of it was his, along with the throbbing pain in his tongue. That wound, he had caused deliberately. That pain belonged to him.
The sting of failure.
It was cold. Judging from the moist chill of the air and the occasional slide of the jittering wagon, he was still in Coerthas. His captors apparently didn't want him freezing to death. A blanket was wrapped tight around his torso, lashed to him with solid ropes that cut into his back and reminded him of the fresh wounds there. Of the abomination they'd wrought upon him, of the abomination he'd become.
Silently, he turned his mind away from his back, from his despair, and focused on his tongue. On the dull throb there, the ache in his mouth, held still and damp by the rag that had been forced into his mouth and tied in place. A gag to keep him from exercising his last act of freedom. A barrier to keep him from biting his tongue clean off and choking on his own blood, so that he may die, and enter willingly into damnation.
He worked his jaw feebly against the restraint, trying in vain to chew apart the gag and succeeding only in igniting the pain in his mouth. And he wept. Because he had no hope anymore. Not even for death.
His gaol had been lined with stone and rime, one of the fallen Vigils of eld, claimed by Dravania and left to rot. Once, the walls had been lit with torches and the hale cheers of Ishgard's strongest knights. Now, he was the only knight within its keep. In a place like this, Ser Yuhelmeric had met his death, condemning every man under his command to starvation and madness.
Ser Aymeric had thought that he would only die there. But instead, he lost his soul.
He had been defiant to the last. It mattered not that the Lord Commander had been captured by heretics. He would not betray his people. No secrets would pass his lips. He would not bow to any torture, nor tremble at incantations or heresies. The Fury protected him, and he did not fear a return to her embrace. Death was not a thing to fear, nor pain, nor the mummery of unholy magic. He would stand strong through their torture and give no ground. He would not let a single word pass his lips, not a man would he sacrifice.
When the heretics had at last fetched him from his stinking cell, binding him into a chair of weathered oak, split and splintered by the slow work of water and ice, he had felt no fear.
He had been grievously wrong.
The journey was a torture as well, though of a different sort. It might have been easier to know that there was some purpose behind it, some precisely calculated ponze of flesh that some cruel eye had wished to extract. Instead there was no purpose save transportation. He was jostled and cajoled with no care for the bruises he received and the wounds that were worsened. The chains that cut into his wrists did so with no malice, merely brutal efficiency. Ultimately, his captors did not care that he suffered now. They had already inflicted their brand upon him, and now, thought only how they might use him.
The thought made bile rise in his throat, a violent churning of his stomach that was only aided by the slosh of the wagon beneath him. He rolled slightly on the rough wood floor, and though he clenched his eyes tightly shut, he did not resist the urge to vomit. Rather he surrendered to it, attempted to feed the reaction, thinking of all of the horrible things he could to induce himself to retch.
It would have been a terrible way to die, breathing and choking on his own acid, but it would have been pittance compared to the suffering for which he was likely destined, after death. He could only hope that the Fury would see his resolve, and take pity. Suicide was a mortal sin. But it was much less terrible than what had already befallen him, and that which he now hoped, desperately, to avoid.
But it was not enough. As when he had bitten halfway through his tongue, his body rebelled, and self-preservation took over. Try as he might to think of corpses festering with maggots, of slavering jaws of dragons, of dung-heaps crawling with flies, of the horror he had endured not bells before or the slavery he now faced, he could not force his stomach to empty itself.
His mind was holy. It was his body that would not submit to Halone's gracious will. And without his hands and a blade keener than his own fear, he could not do the righteous thing. He could not die.
He had thought at first that Iceheart herself had come to gloat, but as he later learned, it was not she. The woman before him was a Hyur, raven-haired and twisted with malice. Her sneer was not one of quiet power, but of jealous zeal. She was not merely dangerous. She was deranged.
Still, he was not afraid. Because the worst he believed she could inflict upon him was death.
“Step forward, my most loyal,” she had said. From within the shadows, three men stepped forth, kneeling before her. Aymeric thought perhaps that he recognized them as the men who had taken him captive, wrestled him to the ground and knocked him senseless when he had fallen from his chocobo. They wore the armor of his own country, a mockery of patriotism and servitude. He willed himself to believe that they had prized it from the fallen, rather than having taken it with them when they had sold their souls.
The woman raised her hands high, delivering a foul benediction, dripping with chill reverence. “For your service to our masters, you have been judged worthy of the sweetest reward. Blood from our masters, blood to make you pure. Blessed blood granted only to they who prove themselves, from which you might rise again fit to look upon those we serve.”
A nearby table had held four goblets, and she took one in her hand. Gently, cradling it as an object most precious, holding it aloft with an expression of beatific reverence. Then she gave it to the first man, and he lifted the cup to his lips and drank.
She turned from him and held a second goblet aloft, carrying it back to the soldiers as if she bore an ark from the heavens, laden with gifts.
The first soldier fell to the ground, and clutched his breast in pain. No-one payed him any mind.
“Drink, my worthy companions, drink that thine souls may be uplifted, yea, unto the heavens themselves.” And she handed over the second goblet to the heretic who still knelt in the middle of the group. He drank immediately, thirstily, as if he had wandered Thanalan for years without a drop of water.
The chill maiden turned from them again, and as she did so, the second man fell to the ground, the goblet clattering forgotten to the floor and rolling across the stone. The man beside him grunted and shrieked, a constricted sound as if he were fighting with himself. As though he struggled to remain in command of his voice and his senses.
“By these gifts, oh masters, we know that we are blessed. By these gifts, oh masters, we purify our souls and burn away our bodies. By these gifts, oh masters, we become worthy to look upon ye and worship, with our tongues, with our claws, with teeth like steel and wings that stretch to the sky. By these gifts, oh masters, we are remade in thine image, and we rejoice.”
The final goblet was placed into trembling hands, and like the others, he too drank. He placed the goblet down with the calm finality of a man who was ready to die. But like the others, he did not die.
Like the others, he became a dragon.
Aymeric had heard tales. Tales of horror, tales thought too terrible and too fantastical to be true. Tales told to children who did not attend their eighth-day lessons, or girls who looked over-long in the direction of a handsome youth. Tales of men who had given their souls to sin and willingly taken the form of dragons. Tales of the blood that would tear apart their limbs and remake them, screaming, into beasts.
Aymeric now knew them true, because he heard their screams, and saw their anguish made real. He saw them writhe upon the ground and tear their armor, their clothes, and then their own pudgy skin until only leather and scales gleamed with their blood. And when their screams had stopped, there stood now only three hulking aevis instead of men. Unholy beasts where once had stood Elezen.
They licked flesh and blood from their teeth with tongues grown long and sickly, and they screeched, and in that moment Aymeric knew fear.
Still, he did not believe that their unholy magic could affect him. His prayers ran purifying circles through his mind, protecting him, dedicating his mind and his body to the Goddess. They could only mortify his flesh. They could not truly harm him. Soon he would look upon the face of the Fury and he would weep tears of everlasting joy.
He prayed now, too. But it was a different kind of prayer, a prayer for death, for the hopeless, for one who knew he did not deserve mercy.
But somehow, his prayer was answered all the same.
A loud crash rocked the wagon, tossing it sideways and sending Aymeric rolling into the far wall. The chains, still anchored against the floor, twisted his wrists and constricted his blood-flow dangerously. On any other day, he might have feared losing his hands. Now, he merely looked to the light streaming in above the door, and prayed with all his might.
There were voices outside. Shouts, enthusiastic and loud, reverberating as if against a cliff-side or within a cave. Indistinct but joyful. Full of life. Full of hope.
The day before, he might have hoped that his suffering was over. He might have wished for rescue, against all odds. Stranger things had happened, in the cold cliffs of Coerthas. Light-blessed heroes roamed the land, empowered by the Fury to wreak great miracles. It was not impossible that they had come for him now, that he had been saved from a fate worse than death and damnation combined.
Now, hope did fill his breast. But it was not rescue he prayed for. It was the release of death. The kiss of steel. A friend to bestow upon him mercy, that he might see the eyes of Halone for himself and feel no more regret.
He had thought, perhaps, that the fourth goblet was intended for the fell priestess. But there had been another possibility. She dismissed her thralls, now grown beastly and long of tooth, to feast on carrion and maggots. And then she lifted the fourth goblet in her small white hands, and carried it to him.
Aymeric tried very hard to remain impassive. But he could not keep his tongue still, nor hide the tremor in his voice. “That will not harm me, witch,” he said, and spit upon her as she stood over him with a mocking smile. But he did not say it to her. He said it to hear it in his own ears. Because he knew that she would not attempt it if she did not believe it would work.
His own belief was strong. But so was hers.
“Oh but it will, my lovely,” she had said, the sweetness of a maiden in love though her teeth flashed with poison and malice. “You are not worthy to receive this gift, but receive it you shall, all the same. We will burn your unrepentant heart until the rot and wickedness is but smoke on the wind, and all that shall remain will be a glory unto our lords.” And her eyes had gleamed, faith and madness, a glee that terrified him for the certainty with which she anticipated his pain.
His love for his Goddess never wavered. But for a bright, still moment, his faith did. Like the roll of a drum, low and sonorous, vibrating beneath the reach of hearing and making seconds expand to fill minutes at a time. He believed that Halone was just and true. But for a moment, his lungs emptied and he choked on nothing at all, because he was not certain he was worthy of her protection.
And then the moment passed, and he hardened his own spirit like a dagger of purest hardsilver. “You may kill me, but you will never harm me, worm. Halone is my refuge.” And he closed his eyes to the woman who sneered at him with coiling rage. He closed them to all the world, because it was naught but a vale of illusions and deceit.
He had expected her to strike him. But she had only laughed.
Aymeric tried to still the fluttering of his heart, the gasping of his breath. It only hurt him more to strive to inhale, and with luck his travail would be over soon. He closed his eyes and focused on the image of his goddess. He had thought her merely just, before. He had looked upon the statues and worshiped in the temple of his heart for many years, but he had never noticed. When he pictured her now, in his mind's eye, he could see that her face had always shone with mercy and love.
He felt it, in that moment. Peace. The sure knowledge that death was coming, and that this time, his soul would be spared.
And then a tremor passed through him, a long rippling shudder like a tickle or a chill. But it was warm and soothing, like a hot bath to rest his aching limbs. It was a familiar feeling, like holding the hand of a friend long-gone.
He was being healed. Not by the Fury, though her mercy was surely at work. Instead he opened his eyes again to regard his rescuer, and furrowed his brows in confusion. He had not been found by man or beast, but by a glowing light.
The voices without his prison still rang, muted and indistinct but loud with vigor. The door was still barred solidly shut. Only a wide gap remained above the ill-fitting door, and through it was seeping a strange glowing figure. Small, green and yellowish, alight with the quickness of a mouse and the grace of a dancing willow. It squeezed its way into the wain and then wafted towards him on fluttering wings, finally coming to rest on Aymeric's shoulder where it peered down at him with the face of a minute, beautiful child.
The creature lifted a hand and fluttered its wide butterfly wings, and with a sparkle of shimmering light, he again felt a surge of healing magic. The ache in his tongue ebbed away, his jaw no longer quite so sore.
“Dammit!” he heard from without the wagon, closer, more defined. “I lost Fairy again.” Indistinct laughter followed, and a chorus of friendly jeers.
The tiny maiden on Aymeric's shoulder turned away from him and walked along his side, steps lilting as if she might break into a dance at any moment. As she passed, craning her neck toward his back, another burst of light and fine particles of shimmering air spread out over his prone form. The searing, stringing pain of his back ceased, like the snuffing of a candle, only a wispy smoky soreness to remind him of its presence.
If only she could truly have healed his wound.
The voices outside the wagon played back and forth, arguing or cajoling. One or two of the voices seemed familiar. He knew now, it was no vain hope. His friends had come for him, he would be saved.
The difficult part would be to persuade them to help.
Ser Aymeric was secure in his faith, but that did not mean he would tempt the wrath of his Goddess. He would not suffer his lips to be sullied with their filth. He would not drink, though it was well evident that they believed they could force it down his throat.
He was bound too securely to thrash. The men at his side, swords drawn at the ready, were hardly needed. One did step forward, however, anchoring a hand in his hair and jerking his head against the solid oak at his back. Though he wiggled, he was weak, and he could not stop the witch from holding the goblet to his lips. She spilled only a few drops to sizzle against the front of his armor, evaporating with a whiff of bile and sulfur as if the foul brew could not bear contact with his sanctified body. But he would not open his mouth, he would only stare at her with eyes the blue of the ice that decorated the vast, echoing hall. He would defy her to the last, until the only thing she could do was commend him to the Fury's embrace.
But she just smiled, that simpering, worm-rotten, unholy smile. “Hold his nose,” she said tartly, and the soldier behind him had complied, cutting off all access to air.
Aymeric was well aware that he could not suffocate himself of his own free will. But he damn well tried.
“There she is, in the wagon. See the light?” said a familiar voice. A man's voice, possessed of strength and virtue, but light and airy. Untroubled by sorrow, too strong to let the cares of the world mar his spirit. “Shall we see what the heretics were carting along? My bet's on crystals again.”
“Captives,” said another voice, clipped, cool, and commanding despite the evident youth of the speaker. “Souls for tempering. Thank the Matron we arrived in time to save them.” Aymeric knew the speakers well. The Fury had delivered to him precisely those he needed most.
A loud concussion rocked the wain and Aymeric felt it in his bones, rattling down the chains that still constricted his wrists to numbness as he lay miserably on his side. A moment ago the shock would have made him wince, made him grit his teeth and choke on his gasps of pain. But a small creature now rested on his hip, casting her yellow light around him like a beacon of hope, and now it was but a small thing to suffer, waiting for rescue.
“What makes you so sure?” asked the first man, interest born of bemusement rather than care, clearly standing directly before the door. Another loud bang rang out, metal on metal on wood on metal, rattling through every surface.
The younger answered quietly enough that Aymeric could only have heard him because he, too, was mere fulms away. “Summoned creatures survive on aether, but they don't crave crystals like primals do. The fae is in there to heal. I don't understand how it carries a will of its own, however. Pray, might I examine--”
Another loud shock rang through the wagon, echoing loud in Aymeric's ears and making him wish, just for a moment, that the abuse would simply stop. Soon, though. He needed only wait a little longer.
It was true. Because with a tired, whinging creak, the door fell open. Aymeric was momentarily blinded, the light pouring in and overwhelming the dim shining of the creature at his side so thoroughly that it might have been the very grace of Halone. And in a way it was, because his rescuers stood basking within it, outlined in glory like the faded memories of the missing Warriors of Light, ready and waiting to deliver him from his suffering.
“Well,” said the Warrior of Light himself, “looks like you were right.” As the light faded to manageable levels and his eyes adjusted, the knight could make out a great axe being hefted to sit on the man's shoulder, perched like a loyal falcon.
“Aymeric,” said the other voice, cracking with the wonder of the moment. “It's you. You're alive!” And Alphinaud grinned at him, the pure smile of a youth not quite a man, not quite broken by the cruelty of the world though he had lived through his fair share of it.
The broken knight could only hope that he would not be the final blow to fell the boy's spirit.
To his shame, he had broken quickly. The sour air that filled his lungs was not enough, and soon, it pained him merely to hold. It pressed on his ribs and made his chest convulse, trying vainly to breathe though he would not allow his mouth to open. He needed not only to suck breath in, but to expel the last.
It burned to escape him. It roiled in his lungs like a serpent, pushing and thrashing and twitching in pain. And at last he expelled his breath, a quick huff of air over lips parted minutely, blowing a froth of crimson that rebounded across his face and made his skin crawl with insult, with fire and disgust.
The woman only narrowed her sharp green eyes, her narrow lips turned up in victory. Though he had not taken a drop, he had not won. His lungs were merely empty now. And the burning changed in character, became an aching maw, an emptiness, the hollow space where his soul should have shined but was now only a black space bereft of hope. And again his chest convulsed and heaved, and again his body fought his iron will. He clenched his eyes and struggled against the hand that held him, but it was not enough.
He had opened his mouth without even knowing that he had done it. And he tasted blood.
He inhaled then, a gasping breath of a man who would preferred to have died, inhaled not merely air but the fetid fluid at his lips. It burned his tongue and his lungs both, catching in his trachea and warring with the life-giving air. The witch had cackled with glee then, forcing her hand over his mouth and sealing it shut. He could have tried to bite her and likely succeeded. But his body was too focused on another struggle. For while he had a small amount of air, he also had drunk of the foul potion. The majority of the mouthful had not passed beyond his throat.
But some had. He could feel it, in his stomach, and even clinging wetly to his lungs. He longed to cough, to spit, to expel. He managed to twist his head to the side and force the blood from his mouth, but she merely laughed, filling the air with a sharp cracking sound like ice grown heavy and shattering upon the ground.
He could feel it within him. He could feel it. It was sick and wrong and unholy and disgusting, but he could feel it working.
The Fury would not protect him. He had failed to resist damnation. His body was sullied. He could feel it as surely as he could feel the breath that finally filled his lungs.
Alphinaud had wasted no time in crawling into the wain, leaping onto the ramp made by the open door with uncharacteristic speed. The fairy at his side had vanished, but it was alright. His saviors were here, a whole cluster of them milling about outside the wagon and conferring in joyful voices. Hikari didn't join them, leaning silently against the frame of the door in his barbarian's furs and his roguish grin, smiling at Aymeric like he'd won the weekly Cactpot.
After a moment and a few muffled curses, Alphinaud managed to loosen the gag, and Aymeric spat out the filthy rag that had dulled his taste and numbed his jaw. He tried to make his tongue form words but all he could emit was a rough groan of pain and relief both.
“It's alright, we're here,” said Alphinaud tenderly. Aymeric wished that he would stop smiling, but he returned the expression anyway, if sadly. “Hikari, we have need of your locksmith's pick,” and he indicated the chains that still stretched tight, holding the knight's wrists over his head.
The warrior hefted his axe once more, and too late Aymeric realized he had wasted an opportunity. The axe swung down and the chains snapped, and blood immediately flowed into his wrists, making them throb joyfully at their temporary freedom.
No. He couldn't allow them to believe. It would already hurt them too much.
He found his voice. It was an aching thing, frail, as battered as his soul and nearly as lost. But he found it and put it to use. “Alphinaud, you must listen to me,” he said. The boy was fussing with the cruel ropes that bound the huge blanket that surrounded him, but looked back to his face immediately. Perhaps he had picked up the dire gravity of his thoughts, even though his voice was not strong enough to convey his anguish properly. The youth was perceptive like that. Perceptive enough to still his hands and blink at him solemnly from beneath the white hair under which he hid his keen intelligence.
“I need you to kill me,” said Aymeric, feeling the pain he would cause the other man as keenly as if it were his own. “Now, without delay. Burn mine body, burn the wagon, leave no evidence of mine passing. Tell no-one, not a soul. The Inquisitors must never know.”
Alphinaud was silent, though he had heard the knight's words. His ashen skin conveyed his understanding, as did his eyes wide with confusion.
“Bullshit,” said Hikari. “You're safe now, and you're coming home if I have to break your legs and drag you there.” His smile had melted, his gaze turned fierce, the angular lines of his fair Midlander face turned hard and determined. It was not unlike the face that his enemies saw, right before they were felled by the Warrior of Light. But Hikari withheld that mercy from him, stubborn and kind to the last.
Finally Alphinaud found his own voice, unsteady but smooth enough to pass, to convey that he would not be convinced. “You are delirious,” he said. “You have not been tempered. We've arrived in time. If it were truly too late, you would not even think to ask.”
“I know,” said Aymeric, and still he wept, softly, silently, though he could no longer tell if they were tears of hope or despair. “And thus mine soul is saved. But in order to avoid damnation, you must needs allow me to die here. It is the only way, please. Please, have mercy on me.” And the tears would not stop. They could not stop until his heart ceased to beat.
Alphinaud turned away from him, kneeling by his side but still for a moment, unable to shake away the plea. Hikari too was silent, stepping away from the wain, leaving the two of them alone to contemplate the sins they had committed, had yet to commit, and weigh the stains on their own souls.
Finally the youth produced a dagger from his boot and cut the ropes at his back. “You are a fool if you think I could ever do any such thing,” he said, and Aymeric knew from the steel in his voice that he truly meant it.
He perhaps could have struggled, gone for a weapon, or even shrank away from the eyes of his friends, too pure-hearted to see what he had become or understand the necessity of what they must do. But he hadn't the will to fight any longer. So he lay still and broken as Alphinaud unwrapped him from the blanket that hid his shame. And only his tears made comment when the young man saw the truth.
It must have been but a few drops. But it affected him as surely as the entire benighted chalice, making his heart beat so loudly that he thought it would burst through his chest and coat the halls with his blood. He wished that it would, but he could not be so lucky. Because his eyes grew dim and unfocused, and a fire burned in his belly, and his skin seemed to crawl as though therein nested a thousand centipedes.
The witch stepped away from him, but it didn't matter. He had ceased to care for her or her wicked, bone-white grins. The ropes that bound him were cut, and he was shoved to the floor, to kneel as if in supplication.
And it was a good thing, because it was the perfect position from which to pray. To beg his Goddess for forgiveness and strength, for purity and mercy. With all his might, he focused.
A streak of pain flashed through him, solid and cold like a piercing blade through his gut. He wanted to scream but he hadn't the strength. He merely collapsed to the ground and gurgled in pain. But still he focused, on the shining face of his Goddess, on his love for her and his faith in her justice, no matter how cruel.
He thought he could hear words. The heretic priestess was speaking again, her words a cup of poison that he would not drink. He did not listen to her. He listened only to the song of Halone, the song in his heart. He tried to hum a hymn of devotion, but his tongue would not carry the tune through his pain. So he sang inside his mind, and ignored the twisting of muscle and crack of bone, cared not for the tearing of his skin.
Hands seemed to touch him, and he was confused for a moment, thinking perhaps they delivered him from evil. But though they did not harm him further, they did not touch with kindness. They cut at his clothing, pulling apart his armor, leaving him exposed to the heathen woman's eyes. Perhaps she wished to view his shame. But he did not give her the satisfaction. In the cathedral of his own mind, he focused on who he was. On the man who served the Fury with every last breath, and who loved his people more than he loved his own life.
Surprisingly, the pain had lessened with the cooling of his skin, like ice on a bruise. His skin still crawled, but the pressure of cloth and metal no longer cut against it as it moved. But he did not think it a mercy.
He did not have time. Because a splitting pain rent across his back, as if Rhalgr had reached from the heavens and plucked his spine straight out. A wet, sticky sound, the tearing of flesh and splatter of blood, and Aymeric was sure for a moment that he had been turned inside-out. The pain flashed red in his vision, making him waver for a moment, floundering on the floor and able to feel or contemplate nothing but agony, as if he were a single raw nerve plucked like a harp. He opened his mouth to scream, and found his voice no longer sounded like his own. It was almost a roar or a howl, a primal, animalistic sound. As though he were no longer a man, but an unholy beast
Still, heaving and retching on nothing, he returned to the sacred sanctuary within his soul. He would not allow himself to be lost, though his body be impure. He focused, eyes shut tight against the vale of sorrow, as if the only thing that had ever mattered was his own will. He was Ser Aymeric, champion of the Fury's will, bastard son of the Archbishop, of the line of King Thordan himself. He would not be swayed by unholy magic. Halone would guard his soul and keep him true, guard him until death could release him.
Eventually, he realized, it was over. And when he opened his eyes, he beheld his own hands.
They were his. Elezen hands, pale skin hardly touched by sun as he labored in the chilly North, though they were scarred and calloused by war and hardship. And for a frightful moment he almost believed that he had survived unscathed.
But then he unclenched his hands, released their white-knuckled grip that had drawn blood from his palms to flow out around his wrists. And he saw that his fingers had grown into black-tipped claws, and he was no longer entirely himself.
“Beautiful,” said the witch. “Amazing. Glorious. And... and...” and her words had failed her then, her thoughts leaping away from her so far that not even her expansive voice could contain them. Hands grabbed at his shoulders, rough and insistent. He was limp like a child's doll, too tired and weary to lift a finger in his own defense. The heretics held his arms and made him kneel once again, not fully naked but near enough that he'd have feared for a true maiden's virtue. The wicked woman who merely impersonated one clearly hadn't any herself. She was looking him over like an aevis might look at a corpse, bloated and half-gone to rot.
He looked behind him, with difficulty, to see what had become of his body. And from his shoulders had sprouted huge leathern wings. Not the scaly, chitinous abominations of an aevis, but long delicate things, finely-boned. The wings of a wyvern, a true dragon. The sort of creature for which a knight could earn several months pay by slaying merely one.
And there. His trousers had survived, but not intact. Because he now had a long tail, longer than his legs, coiled with muscle, thick and scaly. Black as his wings. As his pointed claws. As the terror in his heart.
The rest of him had seemed to remain Elezen, more or less. The Fury had protected him from a portion of the transformation. Perhaps by drinking only a little, he had retained a piece of himself.
“We will make of you a gift to the Lady Iceheart. Yes, yes, a fine gift. We shall deliver you unto Saint Shiva and dedicate you to her service. Your will is strong, so strong, and your blood is pure.”
Through the horror, a memory tugged at him. Though it seemed unlikely that his fate could worsen, something about her threat chilled him to the bone. What was it that Alphinaud had said? That Shiva could be summoned like any other primal? The people of his country cared little for such dangers, too concerned with the war to regard any other difficulty as anything but inconvenience. But he had heard of Garuda, grim and terrible. He had heard that primals could temper mortals to their will, be they beasts or men.
If Shiva was a primal, then he could be tempered.
Aymeric was truly afraid, then. Because currently he was in possession of his own mind, and possibly, his soul. If he died now, Halone might have mercy on him, might deliver him from the stain of his body. But if he were tempered, everything that remained of him would be gone. He would be a servant of Dravania, his body put to whatever foul purpose they might imagine. He would fight and murder his own people, without an onze of remorse. He would blaspheme his Goddess's name with every breath he took, because he would no longer have a soul at all.
He would, in short, be lucky merely to be damned.
The woman turned her head to the side, looking at him possessively, as if he were a chocobo to trade on the market. “Yes,” she said. “I've heard whispers about you. That you have the cursed king's blood in your veins. Who knew it could be so pure, though. I wonder. Could we use that blood? You would make a fine king yourself. Yes, very fine indeed.”
Aymeric didn't need to hear more.
Suicide was a mortal sin. It was enough to condemn his soul. But the fate he faced was worse than mere damnation, and the Fury was just. If he were to willingly throw himself upon her mercy, surely she would not turn him away. If she did, he could at least bear an eternity in torment easy in the knowledge that he had avoided losing the last vestiges of his soul as a mindless slave to evil and sin.
He took a precious few seconds to calm himself, turning once again the image of Halone, pure and unsullied in his mind.
And quickly, without mercy, he bit his tongue as hard as he could.
He had thought he could bear the pain, having come through so much already. But being self-inflicted, he had been as helpless to finish the job as he had been to starve himself of air. His mouth filled with blood and heat and wincing, brassy pain, but it had not been enough. He could not choke on his own tongue or breathe the blood until he drowned. He merely coughed and spit vivid red, drawing the woman's attention to his defiance.
“Do not allow him to harm himself,” the witch hissed in alarm. And a dull thud in the back of his skull rang, hollow, hopeless, the last sound he heard before he fell unconscious to the floor.
Alphinaud now saw what Aymeric had seen bells before. The blood had dried, though it still clung to his face and back, staining the rough brown blanket that had kept him warm and still. His clothing had largely been shredded or reduced to tatters, though his trousers and boots remained. But though his chest and arms seemed normal enough, skin pale but marked by scars of honor, it was impossible to miss the wings that unfurled from his back. They were huge, as long as his body even folded, and black as sin and death. And when the blanket had been unfurled he had twitched them wider unconsciously, stretching out and knocking the rough hemp aside to let his blood flow unimpeded. They were not merely the wings torn from the back of some monstrous wyvern. They were his, alive, feeling pain when they were constricted and feeling luxuriously free now that the ropes had been severed.
“Matron's teats, what happened?” said the younger man, blinking with astonishment and unable to believe his eyes.
Aymeric had been corrupted, defiled, broken. But he was still a knight, with a warrior's instinct. And so as the younger Elezen knelt by his side, he took advantage of his indecision and pounced. With energy he had not known he possessed, he grabbed the boy and wrested away his dagger. Alphinaud hardly struggled, too shocked and afraid, not knowing what to make of an attack from a man he had counted as an ally.
The knight wished, just for a moment, that he had had the time to count him as a friend. He sagged back against the floor, backing up and putting as much distance between them as he could manage with strength dulled by hunger and a broken spirit. “It isn't your fault,” he said softly as he held the dagger to his own throat. With the dispassionate memory of a man who killed for a living, he traced its tip to the root of his jaw, where his blood flowed warm and strong. “Remember, burn everything, or they shall damn me even after I die.”
“No! Don't you dare!” shouted Alphinaud, reaching out a hand but too afraid to do more. It was too late. Aymeric smiled, finally, a true smile through the tears. And he prepared himself to die.
And then he felt the familiar tug of magic on his body. And this time the spell did not heal.
He was asleep before he hit the floor of the wagon, knife dropped harmlessly to his side.
- 1
- 2
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Dragon's Prayer