#ezen

015B - Seeker on the Clouds

Cover artwork and designed by Hajin Bae It will be released on February 24th! Coming Soon!!!!

Only wives were made widows and there was no word for someone who was left with a sapphire engagement ring, a box of Khotgor treasures, and yet another cruel tally on the wall of the mental mausoleum she kept for the fallen. Were she a myth, she would be the immaculate plague: flowers would blossom, but only on top of burial grounds; birds would sing, but only a sweet dirge; light would bathe everything in white, ignite it, and then burn it to ashes. The pristine curse for a worn priestess.

Of course she remembered the night he promised to come back from his mystic voyage unscathed, but a month had passed on the gust of a sigh and life moved forward whether or not it mattered that he was wrong about it. Faith yawned with its usual insistence on trust that there was some purpose for it all, and loss had become so routine that it was identity itself. Did it really matter if the endless creep of the Void claimed a life that had baited its bleak grasp so often that it became inevitable? Eulogize and move along, sister. Sorrow as natural as a phantom limb, always never there.

I’m what they call power-adjacent, a bit of an obscure way of saying that I like to be in proximity to, but never take power of my own. I’ve spent a lot of time with Luther Aldric, enough to rival that of his own wife. I could bury him with his secrets, but not without burying myself for the lengths I went to to keep them. That’s the tradeoff, isn’t it? I can bask in force strong enough to shape the world for better or worse, but I consequently can’t escape it.

I always knew this day was going to come, but I had foolishly envisioned it as being my choice. I had orchestrated a plan far bigger than myself using my ties with the Annelise and Katarina, had tried to encourage the pieces around the chessboard in the ways I’ve learned from my masters. I put the lockbox in the right hands and waited for the man with the machine in his head to act on its precious contents. The risks were never zero, but the situation was bursting with promise that maybe, just maybe I could pull this off.

Unfortunately, the student has not yet become the teacher; as a matter of fact, I still have a lot left to learn. When I showed up to Luther’s office that day with a fresh report of shipments arriving coming and going from Radz-at-Han for both his tidy little drug empire back in Eorzea and even more shit his treasure-hoarding wife was plotting to somehow pack into their comically overflowing manse that teetered between opulence and complete gaudy excess, suffice it to say that I was not prepared for the orders he sprung upon me.

“You’re going to kill Ezen.”

If I looked shocked, I prayed to the gods it didn’t show. I felt every muscle in my face lock up in an effort to preserve the nonchalance with which I entered. Of course I said yes, what other option was there? I didn’t dig this hole hugging my employer’s enemies into submission, that’s for goddamn sure, and Ezen had the weighty bollocks to try to assassinate Luther a second time all by himself. As if once hadn’t gotten us into this mess to begin with. Unbelievable, this man.

So what did I do? I tracked him down, of course. I look different now, move differently. I took my time, I prepared thoroughly, I pulled every string I could reach out and seize to get home unannounced and start the hunt. I staked out his home in Ul’dah shared with the priestess for far too many days before I finally made my move. I followed him at a distance, unrecognizable, and it wasn’t five minutes into the chase that he turned around and just announced in front of the gods and all that he knew I was there.

“Hello, Lolah.”

“Hello, Ezen. Let’s keep walking. No need to stop on my account,” I called back cheerfully, as though this were planned, as if this were a casual stroll between two friends who hadn’t been separated by time, distance, my own faked death, and loyalties I’m going to have a fuck of a lot of trouble explaining. “Come on, don’t tell me I was obvious.”

He didn’t budge. Instead, he held his ground and stared me down with one eye, the other covered strangely by a length of black cloth. “I knew you were going to be here today and I know why you’re here.”

“Don’t tell me someone tipped you off.”

“I saw you in my dreams last night,” he said almost distantly. Something wasn’t right about him; he seemed both there and not-there. “Luther sent you to finish what he started.”

It’s tempting in such a situation to completely lose your cool. To be caught out at whatever dirty deed you’re up to and throw caution to the wind, go all in on a hapless gamble. But the truth was far more complicated. There were a thousand questions in the face of just what the hell saw you in my dreams meant here, but it was most important to stay the main course. I could hear the moment threatening to fly past me with every second I said nothing.

“Technically a right answer, though not the right answer,” I finally conceded. “I’ve got some time to get the job done, so there’s no need to rush it. But you do need to die.” I paused, then tacked on, “At least, you’ve got to appear to die believably enough that I can usher along some other machinations.” Come on now, you didn’t really think I was going to do it, did you?

I owe Ezen my life, not just technically, but...sort of literally. It was at Luther’s beckon that he waded down into the River to pull me out of its deathly grasp with Inika and the vessel Lolah, herself. For months, I slept in his bed when the nightmares were too vivid, when I was held hostage to fear that if I went to sleep, I’d be back there. I was given purpose again, had life and direction breathed back into me by the Khotgor priest himself. I threw myself into his service out of love and gratitude alike. It was the absolute least I could do, and to kill him after racking up this insurmountable debt—well, it’s completely fucking unconscionable, you see. I don’t have many, but trust that the scruples I do possess are ironclad.

“I wasn’t sure,” he began, and I froze in place. He must have known, right? He must have understood that my return to Luther was complex, but that I still knew who had carried out his will in the end. “But I actually have to kill you, Carisa.” His hand went to his blade and my blood ran cold. That name. I was surely dead.

Kafiyesiz ve düzensiz şiirleri hayatın kendisine daha çok benzetmeye başladığım günlerde, gençliğin bitip, yerini anlamsız bir çağa bıraktığını fark etmiştim.

Şimdi sana bir soru bırakıyorum. Oturup, bir ömür üzerine düşünesin ve bolca ağlayasın diye:

"You're...gunpowder."

"Maybe we could try again, just for a little while."

"We know where that goes. It won't be different this time. But...You'll be drinking in a week. And it'll be even harder to quit once you start hating yourself. Because you'll know that you gave up from this point and went right back to it."

"A pretty stupid part of me just doesn't care."

When you stop drinking, you don’t stop thinking about it. It’s mine to carry now, a weight I will always need to make room for or risk getting myself caught under more than I can bear all over again. We’re forever entwined, me and my passenger. And I still catch myself thinking that I’m ready, I’m ready to try again, I’m ready to wet my mouth and this time I’ll know how to tread water instead of diving in and never coming back up. But then I look down at the depth and the darkness and the silence of the bottom and I remember the freefall and the lack of meaning that waits and for a moment it feels like an embrace from an old friend. For a moment, I really want it.