It is very late that night when Maitreya returns to her small chamber in the byzantine stonework of the Shrinemakers’ Guild in the Dvarata. …

Sirsha was an old, old woman, by now. The maidens that scuttled about this muggy place treated her with a quaint sort of hesitance — not of reverence, she knew, but outright caution. She was an elder, wise and commended, but now an outsider. She tended the very last Beacon…

It ached, when he pushed himself to stand after calling his companion from the formless aether, and left Running-Beyond-The-Sea to stand guard over Iman and their party’s magicked shelter. It ached, in the fresh wounds and the old, when he stepped away from them all to find the clear air…

Percy’s back hits the concrete wall, heart pounding, reining in his breathing as he listens to the Fallen war party meander through the town square. There’s a man next to him, looking just as put out. “Ay, Germaine,” he whispers. “Hey.” Their captain speaks in guttural tones. …

It’s a foggy day in the European Dead Zone. You’ve got a holo-map open to one side, replete with little pings. You’ve got your chair and a bad can of beer, and your leg aches something fierce with the splint, but it’s alright. Bang. Bang. Two pops. You won’t get…

To Desna, and all my fallen brothers and sisters. To the Black Butterfly. Hello, for the first time, officially. It’s good to meet you. Forgive me for bringing a candle to sit at your mural, here, but I can’t journal with the goggles on very well. I haven’t written in…

Late autumn in overcast Ishgard was not characterized by the deepening cold, or autumn leaves, or any fond thing to be found in nature; the reality of nature here was winter, interminable. …

The voice of your father is not a blow, but it shocks: the plunge of ice, seizing hold of your heart so fiercely it stabs with pain, with panic. …

The inbetween is no cold barren to him, in this liminal moment. A part of him feels affirmed, able to reach out and touch the high grass, relish in the shade; he is not so flighty that this can be taken from him. Another part of him knows it is…