confusion will be my epitaph

Don't be alarmed by the gift tag; it's just kinda my thing. I like making things with people in mind! Anyway...

Minoth stopped believing in miracles sometime after the experiment and sometime before the tree. Stopped thinking anything was going to come of this world unless good people got going into good work and turned over the bad earth with their raw, bare, death-fearing hands.

His were none of the three.

No one ever did any work in Indol. Nothing honorable, nothing elbow-greased, nothing any messier than intellectual turmoil. And there's something to be said for purity, sure, but not when it's flown through abstinence.

Haze was pure, was kind, was true, but only as perfect counterpoint and counterpart to Lora, and to Jin as well in a different kind. Haze was the kind of person Minoth would hate to ever see stuck in to Indol, because it was the kind of place that would use you in every case except the one where you used it first.

Used it. Used it, used it, used it. The threat was looming larger than Minoth would ever like to admit. Amalthus had already assassinated both Baltrich and Rhadallis, the former a rare if sardonic ally and the latter a power-hungry fool who had it coming to him if any in this world did, for not even letting his self-interest bar the way to this newest, freshest, vilest impasse.

It was one thing to let Malos sink Coeia. It was another to let Malos and Mythra sink Torna together, under the guise of putting a stop to the world-ending destruction. It was quite, quite, quite a third to use the confusion of a literally war-torn world as a cover for perpetrating mass murder and rocking down yet another titanic firmament of the world in Spessia (rather, maybe attempting to, maybe not, but still giving all the practical - well, no, more emotional - effect of it being sunk even if it was in fact still standing).

But Amalthus did all those things. Had done them. Amalthus had put his own hands, smooth and servile as surgical instruments are, to work in burying the spark of creation that was in fact the only thing that prevented the world from exemplifying the hell he'd so dryly spoken of.

Hell of a way for a nihilist to go out - accelerating the end as if there was any sum hopable to be gained from it. Why hadn't he just jumped off the cliff himself, if he hated it so much? What was he trying to prove? Quod erat demonstrandum, God is dead - and nearabouts, effectively, I killed him. Wonderful niche, Mr. Not-Nietzsche.

But I digress. I? Minoth? Whoever is the narrator. It matters not. Our set setting is Spessia - not sunken out just yet, and perhaps not ever, as we reviewed above, but still at least half as dead as Temperantia. What little towns - villages, even - remain are desolate, dinnish. The homeyness of Hyber perhaps had once been reflected in them, but that was to be no longer.

Minoth avoided them wholesale regardless. Yes, he was back to his time-honored shtick of avoiding people, civilization, prying-spying eyes, in much of the same way as Jin and Lora had done. He couldn't bear to stay with Addam, the most golden standing reminder of all they'd lost, and after all it was possible that maybe - maybe, maybe, maybe - there was at least some modicum of change he could effect as a freelancer.

What was that Jin had said? No, he hadn't been there, but Addam had related it to him all the same. Addam knew that Minoth liked to keep a handle on all the wisdom, all the viewpoints, that went around. Is that a will to power? By way of word, and word to God? To amplify the voices of others who speak in sounder sense and make your reputation formidable before those who seek baser things?

Baser things. In other words, Amalthus deigning to wake up in the morning after his most devout beauty sleep and crater another Titan because no one - no one, no one, no one - dared stand him down when it counted. And that's not...ugh. Not your fault, cowboy, but you'd better get a move on before it happens to you anyway. Dig, dig, dig. Dig for your dinner and eat your words later, if you can stomach them.

Digging was something Minoth had been good at from the very awakening. Though his past lives had been writers, playwrights, theatric vehicles of radical love for the world all the same, he'd had to relearn those techniques, those flairs, those very burning cores of his personality. The digging, though? Intrinsic, inherent, always and everpresent. He was persuasive, capable of just about anything, and not so much efficient as fast and fabulous. It all fit, didn't it?

But we're not here to discuss Minoth. We're here to discuss what Minoth found in the dregs of the swamps, prying and plying at anything he could to see if there was a countermeasure to be taken that didn't just involve sitting at a country home in Leftheria and helping Flora and Addam raise the most spunky, well-behaved, fun-loving kids Alrest had ever seen.

Damn it. So there's some place you'd rather be, huh? But it's no good. Can't be getting sentimental now, Minoth. Of course you can't. You know that'll only do you in when you find...

Her. Core just come un-dormant, glowing ever-so-faintly green, nestled among a nook of Nine O' Cattails. It's too perfect, isn't it? But if Minoth could be genre-savvy in knowing why he'd have to look for her, why, he could excel just the same in being prescient of the presence of their favorite Wind Blade. Of course he could.

After all, do you want to bother with the case of him not having that all-important moment of realization? Of course not. His legs quake and again the winds, the winds, the winds arrive. They always do. There is always change coming. That's part of the beauty of life, isn't it?

Haze. You won't remember me, won't remember Lora, won't remember Jin, even though one's dead and the other must be at least as good as (he told me, he told me, he told me), won't remember anything, but at least I know - at least I think I know, at least I hope I can trust - that you'll be in safer hands with me than with anyone else walking today.

You're better than Amalthus. You goddamn have to be. And with the greed that bastard's got on him, you know that's the only place else she'd go. So it's now or never, something or nothing, life or death. It's all the same, in the end. Or isn't that the point?

As Minoth reaches for the Core with bare palm, raw with the insistence of slightly self-inflictive fingernails digging in and grounding him among the world at each of the many, many moments when he'd wished to fly elsewhere, spread sundred with his pitiful wings, he remembers to fear death.

Who's to say he can even awaken a Blade? He's thought of himself as not such a one for so long that it had seemed only natural, in this aftermath of the destruction-desecration of the place that lied a promise to celebrate the difference if it ever took notice at all, to simply not be one. But what if that's not so true?

What if resonation, integrity checks and all laid in place by the Architect who never designed for aberrations, who didn't care enough to allow for them (for what he knew humanity would always do), would tear Minoth in all corporeality limb and cell from cell and limb? What if Haze, gentle Haze, would rupture his insides more fully than anything Amalthus had ever done himself? What if this goodwill mission ended up killing them both, for good?

For good. More say permanently. Don't say that it's good. Don't aggrandize and aggregate destruction, the same way he does. That can't have been the only thing you got from him, after all.

Without even touching the Core, Minoth's skull has half become to splitting (again in half, and the poetic wordplay truly never stops with this one). If he doesn't awaken Haze, because this surely is Haze, then Amalthus will take her and toy with her and tool with her and retool with her and goddamn it, he'll ruin everything somehow even worse than has already been done. And if he does awaken Haze, or try to, anyway, the both of them might get blown to smithereens in an instant.

It's a false dichotomy and Minoth knows it, because Addam is still alive, and so is Flora, but Addam would absolutely refuse, like any sane person, and even if Flora wouldn't, this would probably be one of the rare instances where they acted more like traditionally gender-roled husband and wife and not equal partners in life's best friendship, and Addam would forbid it.

We won't retread any further; the long and short of it is that Minoth decides to risk it. No matter what happens, it'll be far from the worst apocryphal, arcane tragedy that's been staged upon this world.

On the Blade side of an awakening, Minoth had seen light, and dark, and a sort of flushing-flickering up in the lighting booth. It had hurt, a fair bit, particularly in the back of his cranium right around where his ponytail stuck, but on the opening of his entrance things had overall been looking up. His Driver had seemed in awe of his presence, already excited to make good use of his powers, and Minoth was nothing if not eager to please.

Obviously, things had taken a fair turn after that, but the after is irrelevant. The before has already been seen and said and done. It's the during that we want now: the meat of it, the climax, the action that rises and falls as the director lives and breathes. Minoth takes the Core in his hands, lifts it up to an even line of sight, and then pulls it in towards his chest. Futile foley, to try to contain something that definitionally cannot be contained, but he does it anyway. It's all he can do.

So now he's a Driver. Maybe. And what that means is that the wind comes around him, rather than flowing from without or being installed within. It's he who is being encased, encapsulated, enshrined, within something else larger that needs this external component applied. It is Haze who latches onto him, and cannot let go without dying, or being killed. I would say that's a hell of a thing, if it didn't feel to Minoth like a little something come down from heaven.

"My name is Haze. Can I ask your name?"

If you can believe it, there's nothing he's worse at than introducing himself. He's had no practice; if it matters, someone else has always done it for him (even before it mattered, Amalthus preempted, because of course he did). But nevertheless, Minoth nods chin-first and says lowly, "My name is Minoth. Are you feeling alright?"

Haze is looking around, examining her robes and peering into the air. She sniffs it one, twice, three times, and then decides that the scent and atmosphere is quite disagreeable, and seems to shut the nasal passages like a particularly particular cat. Minoth smiles; his heart breaks.

Cognizant of her little display of becoming assimilation, Haze smiles herself, directly in time with the mood, and replies, "It's nothing. Let us keep faith, and our path will become clear."

It's not a platitude, per se, but it is a little...a little bit like shaking off inquiry in order to speak of consequence, and so on, and never actually say anything that is of any consequence. Architect above, Minoth thinks. She was probably like this before, but now, like a duck, she's imprinted onto me. Fabulous. Couldn't be better.

Then a worse thought strikes. Through me, she's become like Amalthus. From my guardian to my ward, the avoidant tendencies and the frivolous language...oh, god. People are people, but when the taste is sitting pretty in his mouth, it all becomes a little bit too much. You're overanalyzing, aren't you? Surely you are, Minoth. And if you're not, you'd better stop it anyway.

"I can agree with that," he says at last, making doubly sure to open up his body language and communicate contentment with Haze's being a being again. She seems to receive it well, so the next decision is between offering her his arm or taking her hand directly. Whatever he does, he's not going to lose her like Lora did. That's not blaming, that's not judging, that's not bemoaning, it's just the straight facts.

On. Torn again, but now between revealing that he knew her and glossing over any apparent memory of her habits. Minoth settles on a middle ground: "You're a healer, I kn- I can tell that much." Haze nods, happy at the correctness of things. "But I want you to know that it's as much my responsibility to protect you as it is yours to protect me. We're a-" a what? a team? a family? a pair of lost souls? "-going together, now. Right?"

"Right." And then Haze takes his hand herself, only waiting the slightest second for the physical indication of consent when her broad cuff is hovering near his wrist, and Minoth's got no choice but to walk on. Back to Addam it is, in the end, because no matter how insecure the prince will shrink on his own behalf, he'll never stop Minoth from acting out his own future. That prerogative is duly precious to him.

"I've got a friend we'll go and see," Minoth starts. It's vague, but it's true, and it's attention-catching. Haze makes an interested noise, left hand busy plucking at the stitches around her Core. "He's good people - him and his wife, and their kid."

And... "And your old Driver was good people too. I knew her."

Haze's hand clasps, clenches, tighter, but she makes no more outward sign save turning over and up to look Minoth in the eye. Their soles squelch in the mud, and hers can be washed later but his, leather or the approximation, might require a little more trepidated care. The port's not so far. They can work it out.

Good people, huh? Sure. And we are too.

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