tabularasa_rp | (no subject)

Entry tags:

ffxiv: crystal exarch

(no subject)

Who: Crystal Exarch and YOU
What: Overgrowth versus Secretive Secret Keeper of Secrets. In other words, Grandpa has a problem.
Where: Merlaut Apartments/Mortis Lake
When: When overgrowth is a thing that happens, with prompts for different stages. Will match brackets or prose to whoever tags.
Content Warnings: Body horror, emetophobia, fear of death, and spoilers that are nearly two years old.

Feverish - Merlaut Apartments Lobby - Morning

Not another dizzy spell... the Exarch, meaning to head out for exploration, exercise, and continued documentation on the ever-changing nature of the Void finds himself hit by a sudden wave of dizziness and has to reach out to support himself on the nearest object to save himself from falling over. Well that's not a good start to the day! And if he's not mistaken, this wave of dizziness is significantly worse than those experienced the past few days.

...it'll pass, he's sure. It will pass, and then he can go right back to ignoring the fact he is quite definitely ill. He has never been one to let a little fever or fatigue or a bit of discomfort in his chest stop him, even if it does have him wondering how in the world he has become ill to begin with.

He remains leaning against the pillar for several moments more, until he feels that the wave of dizziness has passed. A few steps towards the exit, however, only causes another to hit him, and with nothing close enough to reach for this time he allows himself to drop to his knees, hand instinctively going to his chest as it aches. Oh, dear... perhaps this isn't really the best time to be wandering out into the forest. Lyna wouldn't let him hear the end of it, if she were here! A strained, wobbly smile crosses his face as he recalls how his adoptive grandchild always pushed him to rest, and he tries once more to get back to his feet, wavering far more than he would like. Is he even going to be able to get back up the stairs?

"Just this once, perhaps to bed..." he murmurs to himself, glancing up as he spies another person. "Ah! Forgive me, but might I ask your assistance? It will take but a moment!"

Flowers and Pain - The Lakeshore - Evening

There is no possibility whatsoever that a habitual workaholic like the Exarch will tolerate such an essential thing as rest for very long. Being cooped up indoors feels more like a death sentence than whatever this is. Fever, pain, dizziness, and coughing up the occasional flower petal isn't quite enough to make him want to remain in bed - if anything, he wants to be outside, with the fresh air and the cool wind on his flushed face.

Does he regret his venture outside, when the pain radiates out from his chest and he has found himself coughing more than simply the occasional purple petal and instead brings up entire flowerheads? A little, perhaps. At this point, even he would seek the aid of a chirugeon if he could.

He must be dying... but what is he to do about it? Every time a thought occurs to him he finds himself driven to distraction by the pain and this racking cough that brings up one bloodied purple flower after another. His coughing fit shakes him so much he barely registers if someone approaches him, unless they draw attention to themselves.

Pierced Through - The Lakeshore - Morning

Even should someone drag him away from the Lake, he finds his way back there eventually, his perch upon the rocks a favourite spot of his. By now the flowers have spread enough that they have pierced through his skin and through the front of his robes, bloody vines and thistles coiling around him. The pain is such a familiar companion by now that he has found himself able to stubbornly bear through it as long as he remains still. Even the painful cough is agonising.

He can't think. He hopes that remaining still and bearing through the pain like this will perhaps allow him just a moment of clarity, just a moment where he can think of some - any - action he might take.

He'll die here. The past hundred years will have been for nothing. The First will end. The Calamity will set the world on the path to ruin... and all he can do is stand here. After all he's done, he has nothing to show for it whatsoever.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Parsee wasn't supposed to be out this much, but she was, so there. She was recovering from a very nasty bout with the Overgrowth syndrome, so she looked like hell. There were rough patches of skin visible at the edges of her fabric, and she winced when she made the wrong motion. A couple sprigs of dead, wilted rose bushes still poked through at the collarbone and from inside of her weird tied-off arm sleeves.

But she wasn't pale like she'd been. She barely coughed. She just hurt like hell, which she supposed was her just desserts for worrying Rinoa quite this much. Seeing the Exarch, she made her way over and settled down, raising an eyebrow. Her voice was a ragged croak. "And who're you in love with, or are you hiding some other feelings?" Because she had the tact of a bulldozer.

That was... incredibly tactful, indeed. If he wasn't full aware the movement would be excruciating, Parsee would find herself on the receiving end of a most incredulous, confused look, but it only takes a sharp intake of breath for him to recall just how painful moving would prove to be. Red eyes look over Parsee and take in the wilted roses, and he makes a small sound of acknowledgement.

"...I am in love... with none. I assure you." His ears flatten back against his head, speaking a little too painful - going by the croak, he's sure Parsee will understand why his answer is kept brief.

The flowers on her are wilted, which means she has found some kind of cure. Which also means her question likely has a point to it... he hopes she'll elaborate without prompting.

"Stupid Overgrowth," she muttered as she settled into a seat next to his rock, folding one of her legs under her. Her green eyes stared at him like twin emerald orbs, taking in things she had never seen before. Breathing slowly she did note there was no real feel of love.

"Ngh... if not that. You're keeping something in. Hiding something." She squinted a little. "N you're pretty far along. Probably need to get it out of your system soon. Don't envy that. Hated it." Her words were coming out in clipped phrases, the breathing painful as she observed him, idly plucking at one of the shrubs connected to her collarbone. She wanted to yank but thorns.

Hiding something... oh, the Exarch hides many things. He grimaces, uncomfortable as she looks over him when he's in this state, but remains still even so. "You believe that is the... reason? For the plants?"

She must do, otherwise she would not say it! Whether the information will prove useful to him, however, he cannot say... if this parasite feeds on some hidden secrets, then the source could be any of a whole number of things.

"...I have... many secrets."

She was catching some of that 'it could be lots of things' as she looked him over. Her gaze turned away so that he wasn't in her field of vision. This whole empathy thing was taking getting used to, but there was a solution at least for the moment. Just don't look at him directly.

"Probably not just any secret. Probably something that you've got strong, unresolved feelings about. Ngh... Hence romance was a go-to. People don't talk about those feelings a lot." She glanced over at him, grunting. "So...what's bugging you? Cause, unless you want that to kill you. Gonna need closure." She snorted and chuckled before wincing.

"Closure sucks sometimes."

There is a strangled-sounding chuckle from the Exarch at that. "I believe," he says, slowly, "that 'closure'... is yet beyond me. My troubles... shall remain unresolved, for as long as I am here."

He spies Parsee looking away, and turns his own gaze downward to the lake, watching the surreal shapes of the sky reflected in the water's surface.

"There is something I must do... and the cost of failure is far greater than my people know. There is so much that they do not know."

"Well, on the one hand they're not here and you're basically separated from time. It's not passing back home. So you've got all the time in the world to worry about that shit." She coughed once, tossing some essentially potpourri while she squinted. "But on the other? You've been avoiding talking about it how long? It's eating you up inside."

She grunted, shifting uncomfortably. Her eyes glanced towards him and then away. Tell him or don't? Tell him or don't? She muttered to herself. "S...o if you want someone to talk't out. You can use me. Something changed recently. Apparently this place thinks I make a good listener or something. I don't know. I can see emotions, surface thoughts. Might help. Probably useless. I'm too used to working with jealousy."

Another glance. "You're not exactly brimming with that."

The Exarch very much doubts that time is somehow frozen on the First while he is here, if it is anything like the time discrepancy between the First and the Source. Beyond the rift, the flow of time moves without rhyme or reason and cannot be truly predicted, and while this 'world' is surely far from his there is no reason why it would be any different. The argument comes to him, but the moment he dares open his mouth to talk about it, his chest seizes and he finds himself doubling over as he falls into a bloody, flowery coughing fit.

It takes an embarrassingly long time to pass so the Exarch can straighten up and look to Parsee with a pained smile.

"How long... I believe it might be... in the realm of a hundred years?" Oh gods, his voice has been reduced to more of a pained rasp - he's still struggling for breath after that. "If there is a feeling I have spoken nothing of... perhaps..."

He takes a good long moment to think before letting out a shuddering sigh. An unresolved feeling that has lingered for a hundred years... loss. Loneliness. Regret. His complete separation from anything he once called home.

"...a touch of homesickness?"

"You've got this colossal thing you have to do, and you can't tell anyone about it or the last hundred years, and you're stuck in this vast empty void in the middle of nowhere trying to make a world out of our memories?" she said, turning towards him firmly with a raised eyebrow. Oh, that homesickness was there.

"Yeah, if it weren't for the fact that they brought my damned bridge, I'd probably be just a little homsick too. Look... I'm not from your world. Trust me. Cat people? Noooot a thing where I come from. Just the occasional bakaneko and nekomata. And there never have been, not for the last thousand years. So... if it keeps you from croaking in front of me? I'll agree to keep my trap shut about whatever we talk about today. You clearly need a talk." Ahem. Grunt. "What is it exactly you have to do?"

"I'm not a cat," the Exarch mutters quietly, his ears dropping low. Not being familiar with 'cat people', he supposes she would not know calling him a cat was rude, but it still rubs him the wrong way.

He's quiet again for a long moment, wondering if it is worth telling even just a small portion of his tale. That she comes from such a different world, one as far removed from his as everyone else's, would at least give her some kind of understanding.

"I might answer that in a moment," he says, quietly. "First, however..."

Oh, this is going to be difficult. It is something he has been so determined not to speak of that even when circumstances mean he must, he finds himself faltering.

"This is not the first time I have found myself in another world. The last was not so distant and alien as this, and nor was the journey unplanned, yet it has still been more than a hundred years since last I saw 'home'."

It didn't take empathy to pick up that reaction, but she wouldn't press for the moment. In her world, 'cat person' was accurate enough since both kinds she knew of were actual feline spirits. She'd never met one of the Mi'Qote before him. But she listened for a moment, her arms folded, considering and then grimacing.

"Yeah... a hundred years away from your world, from the place you consider your true home. That'd be ... again, I'm lucky. For a bridge princess, the bridge is everything. So... this thing you have to do. That's why you went to the second world?"

“Indeed.”

There’s another long silence as the Exarch tries to put together words that reveal something without revealing all - if his condition is truly tied to the hiding of secrets, he should try to be open, but old habits die hard and a hundred years of secrecy is incredibly hard to break. His thoughts are a little muddled, but ‘everyone placed all their hopes on me’ and ‘if I fail, all will be lost’ linger at the forefront as he recalls the dying, ruined, lawless land that he awoke to.

He can’t let himself die here. Too many people placed all their hopes upon him.

“I... seek to prevent a great Calamity that will see to one world’s end and set the other on the path to oblivion...” he finally murmurs.

Just that much for the moment - he contemplates, briefly, going on to add the details, but he is certain it would be a completely outlandish claim, and far too revealing for his liking. One does not just casually talk about travelling through time and changing history.

"So don't take this the wrong way, but that definitely sounds about par for the course. It's pretty much what I expected after our talk so far." She wasn't judging. Not at all, but somehow his sketchiness on the details had hinted that it was some sort of world-shattering thing, whatever it was.

A grunt and she felt the grind inside of her while she looked him over.

"You're under a crapload of pressure all the time, aren't you?" she was looking right at him. If he was trying to get closure, she could try and help him get that closure. And that felt like the sort of thing he really hadn't addressed at all in a while.

One strong grandpa coming right up! Samuel approaches the Exarch when he sees him having trouble staying upright, crouching down beside him.

"I'd ask if you're alright, but I think I already know the answer to that. Do you know what's wrong?"

He holds out his arm, offering both it and a broad shoulder for support. It does occur to him that whatever might be bothering the other man might be contagious, but... they can worry about that later. He's never let a little danger stop him from helping someone before.

"Ah, thank you!" The Exarch accepts the hand up with a grateful smile, even as he feels a little guilty for leaning on the man as he does - feeling like a burden is not something he is fond of, even if Samuel has offered him the support without complaint. "It has been many years since I was last unwell, I had quite forgotten what it is like!"

As for exactly what is wrong, however, he's simply not sure. He is hot, dizzy, unsteady on his feet, and there's a slight discomfort in his chest, but what those symptoms mean together could be any one of a number of things, so he can only answer the question with a shake of his head.

"Quite what the problem is, I couldn't say... I am, however, feeling rather light-headed, to put it mildly."

That's just part of being a community -- they lean on one another when they need to. 'Today you, tomorrow me' and all that. Though he's a bit of a hypocrite in this regard, as he would feel just as guilty if it were the other way around. You'd think, knowing that they don't mind being the helper, people would feel less bad about being the one to receive aid.

"Well, I do have some medical experience, even if human illnesses aren't my specialty." Or... whatever the Exarch is. He's close enough to human, anyway. "I can give you an examination if you'd like." He's not sure how it will actually help, especially seeing as the only real examination tools he has are a thermometer and a flashlight, but perhaps it'll give him a little peace of mind.

"But let's get you back to bed first. Or are you heading somewhere else?"

Edited (less repetitive) 2021-02-25 01:10 (UTC)

“Hmm... given the nature of this realm, do you suppose it likely to be a familiar kind of illness?” Nothing here is as it should be, after all, and the Exarch thinks on it for a moment before realising he is distracted and he offers Samuel an apologetic laugh, ears flicking back and forth awkwardly. “Sorry, just a thought! You need not examine me.”

Although, the Exarch supposes, it could provide some useful information given that this is something new here.

“I... had meant to spend my day out of doors, in truth...” It is probably not a good idea.

"Given the nature of this realm," he echoes the Exarch's words, "I'm sure it's familiar to someone." Since almost everything here came from someone's memories, one way or another.

Samuel accepts the Exarch's rejection of his offer well enough, but upon hearing his plans, he gently shakes his head.

"Surely that can wait until you're feeling better? You almost fainted just a moment ago, I wouldn't push your luck." But he can't stop him if that's what he wants. Well, no, he probably can, but he isn't going to.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only