#mallius

Darcelyn oen Dremelus, the report reads. Signifer, unclassified.

Dead, then.

A queer numbness spreads through him, a distant pain.

"You know they're only sending me to Eorzea to get myself killed."

He blinks, shaking his head. Deaths are common where the savages yet reign; every day brings new reports of casualties - more and more since Dalamud's fall. An assignment to an Eorzean castrum is all but a death sentence: a fit place for tucking away lackluster recruits, underwhelming engineers... and fireball-flinging malcontents, forever shirking their duties and arguing with their superiors.

Needing a walk, abruptly, Mallius abandons his wait for his companions, walking out instead into the frigid air.

"Well, at least it'll be warmer there, I suppose."

It'd been years since he'd last seen them, when out of the blue Darcelyn had tracked him down and dragged him out for drinks, despite his protests that his work demands a clear head - but then, when had they ever cared about a hard day's work, theirs or anyone else's? For as long as Mallius could recall, Darcelyn had been a notorious slacker; how many punishments had it earned them? How often had their rations been cut, once their superiors learned hunger was a powerful motivator?

They'd been stick-thin when Mallius saw them last, that night; too thin to be drinking as much as they did. There had been a hectic light in their eyes that bordered on madness when there was a lull in the conversation - which came often; Mallius was no conversationalist, and they had little enough to talk about, having drifted apart since their childhood.

His mother will want to know they're dead, Mallius realizes. She's the closest thing Darcelyn has to a next of kin, what with old Dremelus dying a year ago. His mother had always been kind to the child so many others had dismissed as a half-breed or worse; more than anything Mallius himself had done, that was what made Darcelyn latch onto him in their youth - he hadn't wanted to befriend someone who would only make him tainted by association, but he'd been unable to shake them off, no matter how he tried.

He'd snuck them food, though, when they'd gone hungry - first because Dremelus' many other wards stole their food, and later when they'd been punished by teachers... and still later, in their training years, when they'd been put on short rations for disobedience and insubordination.

It hadn't even occurred to him to wonder what ever became of them when, inevitably, their specializations pulled them apart: he'd begun the extensive training necessary to become a link in Garlemald's extensive information network, binding the Empire together with spies and secrets... and Darcelyn, he'd supposed, had gone on to train with whatever it was mages trained with. Mallius hadn't spared them a thought.

And now...

"You know they're only sending me to Eorzea to get myself killed."

They'd sounded certain of it. He'd scoffed, knowing if they were wanted dead, there were ways to arrange it here in Garlemald without wasting the effort of sneaking covert agents into Eorzea.

But now...

"Damn it all," he mutters, shoving his hands into his pockets and scowling into the wind. "You should've just deserted."

How long might they have lasted, he wonders, if they'd just run? They looked Eorzean enough at a glance, and no one would mistake that mess for a Garlean spy. Assuming they could keep their head down and their mouth shut, Darcelyn could've easily passed for some vagrant, he's sure of it. He's heard enough about the chaos and madness going on in Eorzea to believe even they could pass unnoticed, for a time.

What a waste.

It hurts, he realizes, startled; it hurts more than it ought to, for someone he wouldn't even properly call a friend. They'd been miserable, unhappy - starved, literally and figuratively. Always seeking something they couldn't find here, never entirely certain what it might be-

And they'd sought him out at the last, he supposes, hoping someone might miss them when they were gone.

He's weary to the bone and cross with it; his head is throbbing. No food, that's the problem. Rations are short, when there are rations to go around at all. They're needing to go farther and farther afield to seek food, and every step deeper into the heart of the capital is a risk. It seems every other day one of them fails to return, be it desertion or death.

And all Mallius finds himself thinking is, Well, that's one less mouth to feed.

There's four more mouths to feed now, though, thanks to Jullus; Mallius, seated not far from Tertium's entrance, had seen the four of them arrive. He'd cast an incurious glance at them, wondering at their purpose here. Come to negotiate the legatus and the Ist's surrender, perhaps. It won't happen, Mallius knows; everyone knows. They're all holding out for word from the Xth, and once that comes... whenever that comes, any day now, they won't need a foreign army to reclaim their empire.

Mallius gazes into the brazier, too far away to truly feel its warmth, but too tired to rise and stand any closer. It's a slow death, waiting for word from afar, and freezing to death in the bargain. More than a small part of him suspects no aid is coming at all. That Garlemald, as she was, is dead and buried, and lost to the annals of history. A cautionary tale the savages will tell each other in the future, while they pick at the bones of a once-mighty empire.

Footsteps. Unfamiliar footsteps. He blinks, fire-blinded, trying to make out who it is.

One of the strangers. An Eorzean woman, from the look of her, or perhaps Ala Mhigan; he can't tell these savages apart. And her clothing. Garish in shades of reddish-orange, wholly inappropriate for the bitter chill; he wants to shiver just looking at her, and he thought he'd grown inured to the cold. How she doesn't appear to be frozen - nor even to feel the cold - is beyond him.

She's staring at him, with blue-grey eyes ringed in too much pinky-orange eyeshadow. It's a bad color for her, but she seems blissfully ignorant of it; she's decided to weave it into her ragged auburn hair, too.

"What do you want?" Mallius marshals as much disdain as he can muster, wishing he didn't sound weary to the core. "I haven't got anything to say to an invader."

She opens her mouth, but says nothing, looking baffled and foolish. Closes it. Opens it again. Asks, "You don't know who I am, do you?"

Is that what this is about?

He snorts. "Eorzea's champion, the legatus said. Are you trumpeting it about to every Garlean you meet?" Once upon a time, he might have dreamed of crossing blades with Eorzea's so-called Warrior of Light, but hunger and frostbite and hopelessness have robbed him of that dream. He doesn't even have the energy to spit on her impractical shoes. He can only hope she slips on the frost-rimed floor and cracks her skull. "I don't care who you are."

Something crosses her face, some emotion he's too hazy to identify. Sorrow, maybe. Regret. Serves her right.

"Well," she says. "I'm glad you're not dead."