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She was not Azem. Elidibus knew this.
Still, there were many things that reminded him of her, as if he looked at a vague approximation of the woman who had demanded so much of his respect an age ago. So much of his affection.
Every so often, he would lie awake and consider her in the endless darkness, when he was allowed to keep his own counsel for brief stretches. He would recall how Azem had everyone around her trapped in her orbit, eyes locked to her endless dance, wishing and waiting for the moment her eyes landed on them so she might share a bit of her astonishing wisdom and grace.
He could barely recall her laugh, her smile. She had been so long ago, far longer than he had ever expected to live. Not that his memory of her made such a large difference in light of his endless strife towards salvation of the star. Zodiark ate at the edges of his memory every day, every new refresh gifted by his own soul crystal feeling more and more like a flimsy bandage over a fatal wound. He would bleed out before he clotted.
But he remembered how Azem made him feel — felt it like an echo of an ache in his chest, like a smell long forgotten, the feeling of a day and place he’d never find again.
But this Warrior of Light — this D’fhiri — she was not like that. Not better or worse, just… different in ways that he noticed, and found himself coming to admire. She was unfiltered sunshine, full of energy and vibrance, all mystery shed in favor of rage. Despite her preference for silence among her Scion comrades, her face and body language spoke measures. She had no tact, no poise, had little sense for when to tell a joke or keep her mouth sealed. She slept like a cat, curled in a ball, tail twitching. She liked children, and was always kind to them. She fought with peerless strength, wielded the echo with ease despite her handicaps with aether. Elidibus had wondered on more than one occasion what it might feel like to have her teeth raking down the inside of his thigh.
A desire made all the more ironic, considering it was what he was currently doing to her.
Another day, another stuffy meeting with world leaders, that prickish Elezen boy carting the Warrior in tow. While Elidibus was inclined to enjoy the verbal sparring and mindgames of any political encounter, these meetings were tedious even to him. He imagined the Warrior would simply die of boredom, were he not there to alleviate her ennui.
Being intangible and undetectable by most had its perks, after all.
From her angle, she peered down at him with heavy-lidded eyes. He could not recall the last time he’d kneeled for anyone other than Lord Zodiark.
He reached around to the small of her back and pulled her closer with haste, almost to the edge of her seat, her elbows thudding softly on the wooden table above him. The conversation paused, she muttered a half-chuckled apology about clumsiness, and it resumed again.
With leather-gloved hands, he spread her knees wide, ghosted his lips along her soft, sensitive skin there, back towards the center. Her vulva, tucked pretty behind a lacy pair of smalls with a visible patch of wetness, radiated an elevated warmth. The heady aroma of her arousal had his erect cock twitching beneath his own underclothes. She shifted toward him ever so slightly, a silent betrayal of her desires. A soft groan escaped him.
Oh, that she had chosen to wear a skirt, today of all days. A blessing from the heavens themselves.
With delicate touch, he used a silver-plated claw to tug aside the strip of fabric separating her from his ravenous mouth. Her labia were the most delicate pink petals of skin, a beautiful sight hidden safe in the shadows. He traced the back of his claw between them, parting them, and they unfurled with what seemed a sigh of release. He admired her pussy with unbridled adoration. A delectable feast, all for him — he hardly knew where to start.
For just a small taste, he dipped his tongue into her glistening opening. The beak of his damnable mask bumped into her, and with a small chuckle, he dissolved it into thin air, preferring to do away with modesty in lieu of intimacy. He buried his nose into the dark blonde thatch of hair curled there, thick and smelling of sweat and musk and ambrosia. Gently, smiling, he rubbed the tip of his nose against her clit, a tease for what he had yet to offer.
Although he couldn’t see her face, he could imagine the creeping flush on her neck and cheeks, the bob of her throat as she swallowed nervously. Was she controlling the tempo of her breath, clamping her jaw shut?
Although they’d only been sleeping together for a little less than a moon, Elidibus had already made effort to memorize each of her small sounds, her every reaction to his touch. And despite the scars riddling her skin, she preferred a gentle hand, it seemed. Understandable, for a girl just shy of twenty summers. Perhaps he would need to guide her, open her up to the possibilities of pleasure, pain, and everything in-between.
The best part of his newest obsession was, perhaps, that when he lay with her, the flood of sensation drowned out the hungry whispers of Zodiark, albeit temporarily. He could remember what it was to be a person again, if only for those moments.
She shifted again, hooking her legs over his shoulders to provide him better access. Rewarding her for such generosity, he responded in kind, licking a slow stripe up her center.
From up above, she gasped. Her thighs tightened around his ears.
“Is everything alright, Warrior?” asked the Elezen boy, distinguishable from his tone, which was about as high-pitched as his horse.
“Sorry,” she said, “I just didn’t… hadn’t realized that.”
There was another awkward pause before the conversation continued. Elidibus laughed breathily. He resumed sampling her addictively savory taste, raking his claws down the outside of her right thigh, visualizing the red streaks of blush blooming in their wake. There was a next-to-zero chance that she was paying any attention to the proceedings going on above-table.
With greater insistence, he pressed his tongue into her entrance, stretching the velvet skin in a way that had her clenching her thighs against his ears.
He delved into her, earning himself the tiniest buck of her hips as reward for his fervor. He found her tail, drawn politely beside her thigh, and tugged it very gently. Stay still.
She responded by providing him with a faceful of blonde fur, wiggling the tip of her tail in his face. He snorted a laugh, pulling back just for a second to stifle himself, although there was only one person in the room who could hear him.
There were many things about this arrangement he liked. As he dutifully dragged his tongue over her swollen clit, he considered that the ever-dour version of himself, the version that never laughed for being so lost and forlorn in the dense fog of Zodiark’s will, was nowhere close to the real Elidibus. To the person whose name he couldn’t recall, but who had once inhabited this soul.
Elidibus often felt like he had one day awoken in a house that wasn’t his, where a pall of grey dust had settled over everything, leaving only the looming presence of the reigning god. All the shape and motion of a person was there, with little of the detail. When he was with D’fhiri, though, it was as if a bit of the grey was stripped away to reveal the color and pattern beneath. Tidbits of memory emerged. A light blue crystal. Wind tousling his hair. The smell of oranges. Smooth marble forming the surface of a desk. The taste of champagne on a dear friend’s lips.
Not that it meant much, but he couldn’t recall anyone making him feel this way before. And that was what kept him coming back for more. He held no illusion of romance or soul partnership. No, his acts were entirely selfish, rife with manipulation, with the scheming that had become second nature.
When time came to strike her down, he would not hesitate. Lying with her was but an opportunity to know his enemy intimately, to hear her breath hitch and her blood sing, an overture to the death he would one day bring her.
But she, who lifted her sheets with a coy smile to invite him into bed, who trusted him so thoroughly that she allowed him to devour her cunt beneath a meeting table without a single word of warning, might stay her blade for but a moment when their denouement arrived. And that moment was all he would need.
And still, the fact remained that being with her was simply pleasurable. Where a primal drive for duty and kept promises had taken over, he had lost his memory, faded into the fog of continuing a forward march. The more he recalled the truth of then, the more he realized that this was exactly what they – the Ascians - had been fighting for all along. The human connection, the fleeting moments of pleasure, the restoration of self in every interaction with another. It was not a selfish need, to seek reflections of oneself in a peer. But who among these sundered men could provide him with anything more than the jagged shards of a frosted-over mirror?
He only wished he could recall just who had been his own reason. At some point, he had decided that his people, those dear to him, were worth dedicating himself eternally to serve them ad infinitum and restore their idyllic world. Who had been his dearest loves, his family? Emet-Selch spoke often of loved ones, and Lahabrea was quiet, but Elidibus knew at the back of his mind that the man had a family, too. So who was his? Azem, as he remembered her? No one at all?
Then again, he supposed it had stopped mattering a long while ago. Only his drive towards duty remained, only his steady, thundering footsteps on the lonely path of sacrifice.
Regardless, it was nice to be granted these small tidbits of fun, once in a while. A fleeting break from the monotonous shroud of dark. If all things except Zodiark were ephemeral, then they would have to be caught like motes of dust on the air. Someone had to remember what it was to feel affection, warmth, intimacy. If not Elidibus, then who?
He removed a glove with his teeth, then his mouth ventured back downward to her tight, plush opening, the furl of skin within giving way to his seeking fingers. As he stroked upward, seeking that patch of nerves which would flood her senses with liquid pleasure, her legs only tightened around him. If her face was not flushed cherry-red, her mouth open with ecstasy above the table, he would be truly astonished.
Her hips flexed towards him, her legs tightening around his ears. The wetness of her pussy was beginning to make a delightful, quiet squelching sound as he inserted a second finger. Grinning, he bit the inside of her thigh.
She squeaked, straightening her spine, and the conversation came to another abrupt pause.
“Ah, forgive me, your majesty,” she said with a hasty breathlessness. “Might I excuse myself to make use of a nearby powder room?”
Such formality coming from this feral lioness, who would rather battle out her feelings than use her words. The Sultana must have demanded a great deal of respect, despite her cushy position, her lack of personal action. Elidibus leaned back as she stood, extricating himself from under the table as she went.
With a Sultana’s handmaid leading the way, he followed D’fhiri with hands clasped behind his back, the three of them making a charming row of ducklings trundling down the hall. The sway of her hips beneath the rare skirts had him yearning fiercely, in a different way from her bare muscled arms, her tight sleeveless top leaving little about her prodigious upper body strength to imagination. As D’fhiri glanced over her shoulder at him, Elidibus smirked back.
At some point, he’d grown used to being in a room full of people whose eyes went straight through him. Unless he was puppeteering a body — a rare occurrence he preferred to not undertake unless absolutely necessary — he preferred to work in his more subtle ways. An observer, cataloging the balance of aether between worlds.
With her, however, he did not mind being perceived. In fact, it stirred something in his stomach that was unfamiliar, an alluring twist of satisfaction. Her piercing gaze shot through him like a bolt of levin. He craved more, more, endlessly more.
The trek was a few winding halls away, as D’fhiri had been escorted to what must have been the Sultana’s luxurious receiving room. Handcrafted furniture was littered with gemstone-encrusted trinkets, embroidered throw pillows and glittering lamps of exorbitant, if not entirely unlikeable, taste. The maidservant informed D’fhiri she would be waiting in the corridor outside, gesturing with a curtsy towards the washroom.
D’fhiri ducked through the door, yanking Elidibus in behind her by the lapels. Cocky in his eagerness, he grinned. “Ruffled your feathers, have I?” Flicking a finger to magically bolt the door, he allowed her to drag him across the room. He caught a glimpse of the two of them in the mirror above the pale stone counter, for all intents looking engaged in a dance.
“I am going to kill you,” she growled, quiet enough that none outside could hear.
Using the momentum of his stumbling gait, she threw him with impressive force onto a velvet chaise beneath the open window on the far side. If he had a physical body, the wind might have been knocked from him. Instead, he straightened his spine, spread his legs in a relaxed posture. At the apex of his thighs, his erection blatantly bulged beneath his robes. Gauzy, glittering curtains billowed in the pleasantly fresh Ul’dahn breeze.
Elidibus crooked a clawed finger under her chin, enjoying her petty rage thoroughly. “I beg your elaboration,” he said.
Eyes narrowed, tail lashing in a spectacular display of irritation, she bared her fangs. Oh, how intriguingly expressive she was, how wild and feline. “I haven’t thought of how,” she said. “But if you continue to embarrass me in front of the most important figureheads in Eorzea, you can be sure I’ll gut you, slow and painful.”
“How intriguing,” he said, voice lilting. He traced a line down her arm, cradling her bare hand in his gauntlets. She tensed beneath his touch, like a coiled spring. “And what weapon will the Champion of Eorzea use to undo me? Will you begin with your claws, I wonder?” He pressed a silent kiss to her fingertips, careful to give each one the attention it demanded. Her pointed nails dug into his upper lip. “Or your fangs?”
She tried to pull her hand away, but he held fast, even tugged a little to bring her closer. “Maybe you don’t get the honor. Maybe I’ll use a dagger.”
Elidibus hummed in appreciation. “The noble knife, a time-honored workhorse in passion and practicality alike.” He ran the tips of his claws along her bare forearm. His pace quickened at the sight of goosebumps rising under his touch. Under his ministrations, she was so malleable, clay to his firm guiding hand. A beast to tame, to bring to heel, like so many before her.
“So you are elbow-deep in my viscera,” he said. “What next, Hero?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you like to leave any surprises uncovered?”
His eyebrows twitched upward beneath his mask. “Of course I do. What have you hidden up your sleeve?”
At the waistband of her skirt was attached a small satchel, and from it she removed a tiny knife. It was no longer than three ilms. Silver and delicate, crafted for perhaps herb-harvesting or letter-opening, with a laughably small crossguard and golden flowers along the hilt. “I’ve been learning goldsmithing,” she explained.
“You made this?” Few imperfections could be seen even in this harsh daylight.
“I thought it might be nice,” she said, her teeth no longer on display. Instead, her admission was near sheepish.
“You made this for—” he choked on the phrase, “—for us?”
“That is, if you aren’t opposed.” She ventured carefully, pressing the cool flat of the blade against his throat.
“You need not worry on my behalf, Warrior,” he said. “You are the only one of the two of us who might spill blood and never recover.”
Nonetheless, he was excited by the prospect as she drew the knife firm, slow, across his skin. More than simply a fondness of adrenaline, was his affinity for this dangerous-feeling play.
“But certainly you can still feel pain, Elidibus,” she crooned. That cool tone had slipped into her voice once again as she pressed the tip of the dagger into the soft spot beneath his chin. His breath caught in a surprised hiss through his teeth. “I spent the morning sharpening it, you know.”
“You prepared this?” Returning to the thought sent his mind reeling.
“Is that so strange — that I might fashion a weapon for my enemy? That I might forge a blade that thirsts for only your blood?” The point of the knife wandered back down his bare throat, scratching faintly down to his collar. She tugged the bottom of his hood taut, and the fabric there peeled away, parting like water at the touch of the deadly razor.
“Strange, yes,” he said, voice strangled. But other words were difficult to choose, as arousal, fear, and elation flooded him all. “I am an Emissary. A blade meant for me is… is….”
She flashed a wicked grin, feline ears wiggling in delight. Her careful control over the knife hardly reassured him as she traced a lazy line down his chest.
He was meant to be manipulating her, was certain he had accomplished such a feat. And yet, had her mind wandered to him as often as his had to her? The thought was unbecoming as someone he had immediately marked as an adversary. She was taken by this same strange obsession, bordering on distracting from the drive of duty?
“Be still,” she murmured. He swallowed air, attempted to cease his trembling. As she cut lower, to his navel, the heavy pauldrons on his robe caused the garment to sag off his shoulders, revealing the pale plane of his chest.
This was not their pre-ordained path. This was not the way things were meant to be between a Paragon of Darkness and a Warrior of Light. An aberration, was this thread that they had tangled between themselves. A titillating, if not somewhat concerning, predicament.
Titillation was winning out over concern at the moment.
D’fhiri pressed her knee into his crotch, drawing stark attention to his erection there. She coaxed the robe off his shoulders, until the metal bits clunked onto the chaise on either side of him, white and lilac fabric pooled around his waist. His hair was exposed, his skin — typically, their trysts thus far had not culminated in him coming unclothed. He was not married to the ancient ideas of modesty, but rather, often felt his individuality was of no consequence. If Zodiark wished ill of his couplings with the Warrior, it would be known to Elidibus. But his carnal desires did not make him any less the Emissary.
The flat of the blade dug into the softness of his stomach as she ran a lock of downy hair between her fingers. “Almost white,” she said. “I’d imagined it would be inky black, with all your talk of divine darkness.”
“Mind the knife,” he rasped.
“Hm? Oh, I am,” she said, dragging it in a mindless line over his tensed belly. She studied his face — or rather, his mask. “What else are you hiding under there? A terribly monstrous visage? Scars and tattoos, perhaps?”
“I fear I’m under threat to reveal that to you,” he said, quirking a corner of his mouth.
She tsked softly. “Of course not.” Then she dug the blade in again, pausing her playful caress to add an edge of danger to her voice. “Unless you’d like to be.”
He ran his hands up her thighs, beneath her skirts, squeezing her thighs. The sharp metal tips of his gloves were not far off from her little toy — perhaps they had been her inspiration. “Perhaps I tire of this game,” he said.
With one swift motion, he hoisted her up against his waist. She laughed, unbridled and joyous, tail twisting behind her. Something nostalgic buzzed within him. He eased her ass onto the counter, watching himself over her shoulder in the mirror as he nibbled on the space between her neck and shoulder, to the effect of many small whimpers of approval.
When had he last seen his own body bare, his own hair, his own face? Could he even recall his own features, if pressed? His skin was unmarked, near porcelain, not even marred by freckles or the scars he knew he should have collected over his eons of adventuring, fighting battle after terrible battle in the name of his god. He knew his body was but an aetherial construct, ungrounded by stardust or crude matter. To be reminded of it so blatantly, though, made him dig his fingertips a bit deeper into the Warrior’s skin. Not to her complaint, mind.
He shrugged off the rest of his robe and kicked it away, vanished his gloves, leaving him only in his ornate boots and podea, which were quickly unbuckled and pushed down to free his cock. The knife clattered onto the stone of the counter. Fumbling hands made quick work of all obstructions. With controlled hand, he rubbed the head of his penis against her slick opening. Overcome by the anticipation, by the sweetness of the silence before the plunge, he held onto the precipice for as long as he could.
“Elidibus, please,” she whispered. His patience thawed, and with a few short thrusts he was inside her to the hilt. He wrapped his arms around her torso, and they gasped for air together.
D’fhiri pulled back slightly, determination burning in her violet eyes. Her slit pupils were blown wide. He couldn’t remember ever enjoying the catlike features of these shards called Miqo’te, never found them anything but amusing additions for the sundered, oddities that found their origins in the non-Amaurotine civilizations Etheirys once hosted and their myriad deities. But with Hydaelyn’s chosen, something about the color of her features, the way her expressions read so clearly in her ears and tail, fit just right in his mind. For once, he found the features amenable. Even, dare he think it, becoming.
“I want to see your face,” she said. The request was so genuine, and her cunt around him so delicious, he couldn’t deny her anything. He bowed his head in a gentle, consenting nod.
As he found his rhythm in the movement of his hips, she leaned back on one hand, using the other to ease the crimson ceramic off its seat. Snowy bangs fell into place over his brow. Once she’d placed the mask safely aside, she brushed the hair back, jaw falling open further.
“You’re beautiful,” she breathed, cradling his face, a smile like sunlight stealing the breath from his lungs. “Angelic.” Such tender touch was not what he had grown to expect from her, nor from anyone, truthfully.
“I am no angel, Warrior,” he said, never once ceasing his ponderous pace, savoring every soft breath the breadth of his cock drew from her.
“Right. Emissary.” He flattened his lips at the title, of which he was normally so proud.
“Elidibus.”
“Elidibus,” she said, pressing her forehead against his. She was so warm and soft, and she smelled of lavender and the provocative musk of desert sweat. Tingles flooded his back, traveling over his shoulders and down his arms.
This was not like the other times they had fucked, making a play of their antagonistic relationship, finding release and entertainment in the mockery of a battle. Sex was like sparring in so many ways. It was a test of one another’s stamina and strength, a way to find weaknesses and sensitivities. Perhaps it had been a mistake to have allowed himself to fall into this pattern with her. Perhaps he should not have—
“Fhiri,” she said.
“What?”
“My name. It’s D’fhiri, but when we are close to someone, my people drop the clan syllable.” Her expression was even, serious, nostrils flaring in time with the glide of his hips, taking his measure. “You took off your mask, so I’m taking off mine. Call me Fhiri.”
A flood of raw emotion coursed through Elidibus. His heart may as well have been rent open by her claws, his vulnerability was so on display. To be trusted in this way by someone who was not his own, even with something so small as a pet name, a signifier that he was a proven companion, was not a privilege granted him by even his brothers, whose private names he had long forgotten.
“Fhiri,” he moaned, crushing her chest flush against his, clinging to her with all his might. Although she still wore her clothing — a desperate hunger turned, ironically, to saccharine lovemaking — the fine silken weave of her skirts were still too thick a barrier for his liking. She hooked her ankles around his back, and they stilled in this embrace.
“Would that I had something of equal value to offer you for this gift,” he murmured into her neck. Her ear flicked in acknowledgement, but she said nothing, expected nothing in return.
She wiggled her hips against him, desperately seeking friction, release. “Don’t stop,” she whispered.
This, at least, he could do.
He ground into her, angling his pubic mound against her sensitive clit, reveling in her shuddering breath. Her fangs latched onto his shoulder, not enough to break skin, but to muffle her heightening cries of ecstatic pleasure. He dipped his head and kissed along her jaw, then she found his lips with hers, moaning into him as he felt the ridges on the roof of her mouth with his tongue. Every inch of her, he would memorize in a desperate bid against his faltering memory.
With mounting elation and cravenness, they rutted together until they both came undone, fitted together like lock and key. Their duet came to a close with unison melodic peaks, a crescendo into the falling silence, fortissimo despite the way she clapped her hand over her own mouth in an effort to stifle her rhapsodic descant to his baritone. He pressed his forehead to hers with a tenderness that surprised even him.
Elidibus made a promise, once, to provide salvation. He never promised that he would save himself.
When this moment would fade into nothing but ghosts and murmurs at the edge of his mind, there was no telling. He would break her heart, and he would continue on unknowing, uncaring of her pain. His mind unraveled at an alarming pace these days, and it was difficult to tell timespans apart. Forgetting her was an inevitability. But he hoped it wouldn’t be within her lifetime — not if he stayed by her, if he dedicated himself to her touch. A departure from duty that his soulbond to Zodiark, which never faltered, would not allow.
And when the time came to kill her for the good of the star, the destiny of the people, he would not hesitate. Oh, but he wished that he would.
A sharp rap came at the door. “Mistress Jinh?” called the faint, weaselly voice of the handmaiden. “Is everything alright? You’ve been a while and I — I heard something.”
D’fhiri, to her credit, didn’t laugh aloud, despite the sly grin growing on her face. She coughed loudly — he felt it even in his cock, still inside her — harsh enough to cause him to raise his eyebrows in concern. “Food poisoning,” she croaked in a convincing facsimile of sickness. “Please give me a few more moments.”
“O-of course, Mistress Jinh! Shall I send for a chirurgeon?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary!” she squeaked, ears perked tall. He covered his mouth, stifling his laughter. When was the last time he laughed? What had she done to him?
He kissed the corner of her mouth, and thought he might be happy. For the moment, at least. At least.