A Broken Nose and No Family

A series of bite-sized vignettes detailing Solomon’s days spent soldiering with military free companies as a “young man," and his work beyond.

pissbaby.

Everything aches. Solomon is sitting with his back against a stone wall which is all that’s left of a blasted-out home in southern Valnain. He can hear the sea behind him, lapping at the shore. Marta sits next to him, telling a funny story about a time she made a fool of herself in front of the boy she fancies back home. Couronne sits across from both of them, tucked against a pile of rubble that was probably the home’s shed. He’s wearing an especially-elaborate, silken wedding veil he’d pinched from another house nearby, and is regularly joining in on the story by delivering playful, little quips and teases to Marta and letting her know how he would have wooed the boy.Adler is at Solomon’s other side, but all three of them are making a concerted effort not to look at her because they all know she’s passed now, and no one wants to confirm it yet. She’d been bleeding out for awhile now and there’d been nothing they could do, and so now they’re just passing the time. It’s been about three hours since the last Scouring, which means they’re due for another and they know it. Javaasi war mages are very regular, and very thorough.“...and anyways, so then there I was, in nuffin but me knickers and I says– and I says– and I–“ Marta stops and wrinkles her nose up at a smell in the air. “Mmmm, wait a sec, what’s that...” She looks at Solomon accusatorily. She affects the sweetest, most bullshit-motherly tone she can muster: “Sally-dear... did you... by chaaaance... piss your little bloomers again?”Solomon nods, deadpan and expressionless, not even bothering to look at her. There’s no point in denying it: they’d been decent not to mention the smell thus far, and so the two really did do their best. Couronne and Marta start laughing immediately.“Oh– oh, well– so what?!” Solomon barks back at the two, but their laughter starts to climb immediately. “I mean– I mean you two were so eager to fuck off like a pair of spring, green chickens that I ended up in the back on our last run, and since Marta here runs about as fast as a goddamn toddler with a broken leg, that– that– that last one got so close to me I felt the heat practically char my ass! You all would’ve pissed yourselves too!”The pair have worked themselves into heel-kicking and stitches– into an eager pitch of cackling and comedy-fueled crying and trading off affectionate little observations about Solomon’s steadily-pinkening cheeks or how wrinkled his smudge-nose and pouty potty mouth is getting, all interspersed with calls of ‘he may be a pissbaby, but he’s oooour pissbaby.’ By the end, Solomon has joined in, too. The outrage had always been perfomative, after all, because he knows they find it charming when he gets angry (it’s part of the bit) and he really wants them to laugh a little more right now.“Toddler with a broken leg,” Corounne echoes and wheezes. He’s still wiping the tears from his eyes by the time the earth beneath them starts to tremble again.“Shit,” Marta mutters. “That time already?”“Let’s get ready,” Couronne says.“Let me diiiiie,” Solomon croaks and hangs his head. It’s gallows humour, and another pretty usual bit for him – routine and familiarity is more valuable than comedic gold. The other two have already started packing it in and getting prepared to move.“Uh-uh. If I have to be here–” Couronne starts.“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Pause. “Oh, uhhh, what should we do about–”“Leave her.” Marta finishes.“Okay.”

not both.

“—some people don’t get a happy ending,” Nicholas states plainly but insistently as Solomon traces another sigil— another wound in the world, and how fitting: with his own finger, but someone else’s blood; the most intimate rituals have to be done by hand.Something in the air shifts. Something is falling into place.“For fuck sake, not this again,” Solomon murmurs, mostly to himself. He’s barely slept all week, their citadel is under siege, and he’s tired of wasting his time and emotional energy on these sorts of discussions.“Some people have to be satisfied with their busted smiles and broken lives, Solomon— with a tourniquet to stop the blood. Too much has already been stolen, it can't be gotten back." Solomon ignores him and continues to crawl on hands and knees to work another rune into the hard, stone floor.In the Far Distance, there is a steadily-building whine; the sound of reality beginning to ripple. It reminds Solomon of the northern front, moments before Garlemald’s airships would scream overhead.“I don’t know what you’re talking about— now are you going to help or not?” He knows, but he’s already decided he isn’t going to talk about it, or that maybe they can talk about it later, when everything is all said and done.“Sol— Sally, come on, man, this isn’t safe— people are going to get hurt—”“Safe? You wake up this morning and forget we’re in a warzone or something? Nothing is safe, and people are getting hurt every fucking minute— every minute our comrades are climbing that breach hoping— praying that whatever we’re doing in here is more than… than a couple dumb kids just beating off to, like, I don’t know— Rimbaud’s goddamn Eighty-Seven Precepts to a Noble War? They don’t give a fuck about that— I don’t give a fuck about that. All any of us are thinking of — besides you apparently — is how not to wind up dead or in a Garlean camp. You know what those aether-deaf cavemen do to mages?”“I’ve heard, yeah, but this is bigger than that— the fallout of this— dominos, you know how quickly this can spiral out of control, you’ve seen it. You’re a good person, I know you don’t—”“What?” He stops working but doesn’t look up. He just stares at the dark stains scrawled beneath him. He almost wants to laugh — a mean, bitter laugh.“Spiral, you know, like—”“After that.”“You’re a good person…?”“Yeah?!” Solomon snaps and whips his head around. The chamber quakes. Something bends inwards. “Huh, let’s see. I’m finger painting with this auri girl’s fucking blood, Nico — who, by the way, has started to fucking seize again so do your job and keep her subdued — but yeah there’s that so how do you figure? Sorry, but no, that’s you— you’re the ‘good person’ here, not me. Nooooo. No-no-no. That ship—” and there it is, that bitter, angry laugh “—that ship sailed with Hera and—”“We were fifteen—!”“And she was sixteen, and now she’s fucking gone and you know it— you know I’m a sick little freak, too, and just don’t have the good sense like the others did to ditch my ass. But I’m done feeling sorry for myself. Hera was weak, I don’t need you to fill her slot.”“Knock that shit off, S—“ Solomon slams a palm hard against the stone floor, flings his other wrist outwards, and hurls a wall of force into Nicholas. It sends him careening backwards. Solomon closes his fist and Nicholas stops, suspended and helpless in midair. Solomon gets to his feet and looks at him.“And that’s only because—” Nicholas tries to speak over Solomon, but Solomon tightens his fist more and forces the air from his lungs before continuing “—you never quite got it, Nishka. You never figured out what the rest of us already knew: you get to be either a good wizard or a ‘good person’— not both.”Nicholas doesn’t deserve this. His only sin is caring too much, but when you feel as tarnished as Solomon does, that becomes a suffocating, unbearable sin, and he really needs him to stop— so maybe he’s being a little cruel, whatever. He drops him with a hard, pained thud before turning back to his work.They can talk about it later, he tells himself.The eye is opening up.They don’t.“Not— fucking— both.”

capgun.

The HMS Barrows is a Vylbrandian ship of the line, 3rd rate, repurposed from a Werlyt ship of the line, 4th rate (different classification system), repurposed from a Bozjan ship of the line, 3rd rate (before Garlean occupation); culturally-speaking, it’s practically the ship of Theseus. Dwimmer-Captain Page stands on the starboard side in the absolute centre of the top gun deck, hastily scrawling a series of sigils into his grimoire while Gunner Poullain stalks up and down the line, barking orders, hurrying his crew to get the long 24s packed down. The ship is pivoting its broadside to its target— and so is the target.“…and do not ‘let fucking rip’ until you get the signal from Dwimmer-Bitch Page!” Poullain stops next to Solomon and whispers. “How are we looking for time…?”“It was about ten more seconds until you spoke to me and made me answer, now it’s about nineteen.” There’s no fluctuation in Solomon’s hushed, even voice; he’s not quite trance-like, but he’s right at the cusp.“Noted.” He continues his patrolling and shouting. “Tennys— why is your team so fucking slow! Don’t make me…”Solomon doesn’t register the rest. He’s making a right angle with his index finger and thumb, tongue jutted out the corner of his mouth as he uses it to eyeball-measure the distances between each cannon and their muzzle arch’s. He scribbles the necessary equations to account for the new data. He’s almost there, but he loathes Jazir’s Sigil with its stupid, intricate serif that he always struggles to get just right which always — well, almost always — eventuates in some weird, unforeseen alteration to his craft. He’s been practicing it all week, though, and he knows he’s got this down. Just this last, little—Thud. Thud… thud-thud… thud. Solomon feels the cold sweat hit immediately: that distant, muffled sound of cannons; there’s a world of hurt coming; it’s in the post. Fuck. He shifts gears and starts hastily adjusting a new pair of nodes and glyphs into his design. Fuck, Nicholas is probably faring better than him on his own vessel. Smug-ass piece of—“Master Page…?” It's Poullain. Tch, he always drops the “bitch” when he wants something really badly.“Just a sec—”Too late, too late. He can already hear the battery screaming towards them. One of the shots soars loudly two yards from him, close enough for its wind-tunnel to send his coat whipping wildly with it a second after shattering explosively across the deck somewhere behind him. He’s lucky he doesn’t get shredded with debris, but doesn’t have time to look. Another slams loudly through the wall of the second deck below him and towards the aft.“Fuck— fuck, just—” Solomon wildly snaps his quill up into the air and frantically flicks his wrist towards the other vessels “—just fucking fire!” The concussive crack of cannonfire erupts all around him as the guns roar back in their braces.Solomon stabs his quill-point into his central activation rune and— gods, there it is: that satisfying rush of euphoria as it sucks all the ambient aether from the air, floods through his sigils into him, and kicks back out into the atmosphere — changed, modelled to his design. It’s so intoxicating that he doesn’t hear that loud, awful shrieking and grinding, like metal-on-metal, as reality fights back, tries to refuse him, tries to say ‘no, this is not how things were, I will not change,’ only to be told ‘no, you will,’ only to buckle beneath the weight of this New Reality.It’s so intoxicating, in fact, that he ends up surprised— full of wonder— mystified, even, as he looks back up and sees the enemy’s own iron 24-pounder right there: elegantly suspended in the air; softly pulsating and rotating not even two feet in front of him; in line with all of the others like it — both those from the enemy vessel which have just started reaching them, and their own cannonade response. It feels almost spiritual, ecstatic: that absolute certainty that he is the total centre of the universe, and that every second of his life that universe has been spreading out from under his feet, only to now collapse back into him, waiting breathlessly for him, putting itself on pause for him.He reaches forward and touches it, light as a feather——and like arrows shot from a great bow, all of its brothers, sisters, and cousins go shrieking towards its target across the blue. A second later, it follows.Solomon screeches with joy and leaps onto Poullain’s shoulders at a dead run, who’s still hollering for his men to get cleaning for the second volley. He gives Solomon three more seconds than the rest to have his celebration before hauling him off his shoulders, petting his head, and sending him back to his station. Not because he’s more worthy of it.But because Solomon is fourteen.

brief interviews with hideous magi.

An interview that took place behind many walls and locked doors in a particular organisation in Ishgard.

Q:
A: Solomon Page. My background? Uhhh, well— well I guess that depends on who’s asking—Q:
A: Oh, right— that’s true I guess. Well, you know I’m one of the Pages, so there’s that. We’re not a founding family, but we’ve been part of the Order since— uhhhh, since great-great-great — maybe a few more of those — grandfather.Q:
A: Yeah, it's intentional — I was named after the Vicar. My parents get along well with him, so he's like, uhhhh, my godfather?Q:
A: I majored in Nymian Studies — Post-Convention Diplomacy — with a minor in Mathematics of Universal Structure. I’m currently doing my Masters on Metaphysical Architecture & Sacred Forms.Q:
A: I... don’t publish my ‘noteworthy’ works, no. We’re both wizards, aren’t we? Sharing knowledge isn’t exactly our strong suit. I have done a lot of work on Mehmedi’s Cage, though.Q:
A: Nymian precursor work? Streamlined later by Mehmedi the Lesser? Right. Mehmedi was one of those early magi that helped whip those Limsan seastacks into wizard towers, but the Cage would have— should have been his crowning achievement: a fourth dimensional metaphysical structure, one that could be overlaid on objects made of certain materials — white auracite, cold iron, whalebone, it has to be whalebone — and used as an exceptionally powerful soul-prison. There’s a lot to do with Hawker’s Theorem and time in condensed, aetherial spaces—Q:
A: Mm? Oh, well Mehmedi’s version remained largely theoretical... until I decided I didn’t want it to be anymore… whoops, am I smirking?Q:
A: That’s it? Ugh. Anyway, I prefer not to use that term for them. I find “Neighbours” more palatable, if you will, but yes, that makes up the primus. I work with the rule of three, though, to make sure it’s secure.Q:
A: Yeah, Neighbours. The other word assumes a lot of knowledge that isn’t always helpful or correct, which leads to, like, hazards.Q:
A: Come on — no. No, you’re intentionally misunderstanding me — with all due respect, of course. I’m not a lunatic or an apologist — I know as well as the next guy that they don't belong and that no good really comes from having them running around. Unfortunately, though, some sorcerers insist on pulling them through the Breach anyways, so we might as well put them to work, right? They can pay their way.Q:
A: When I was younger and more reckless than I already am now, yes.Q:
A: Oof. Quite a topic shift. Let me stop my head from spinning. Uh, right. Sure. I’ve done extensive work with the Abbey of St. Bastiano (& the Brotherhood in Tatters; they prefer it if you say the whole name every time, yes both the abbey and brotherhood portions, I know). So there was them, then the Company of the Gyve, and the Company of the Measure, and—Q:
A: Huh? Ah— we— we don’t really need to talk about that, do we? I was honourably discharged from the Gyve. Captain Moss and Seyyal-pasha can attest to my behaviour.Q:
A: Right, sorry, that was unprofessional. Just— just when people start asking about Hera it’s usually... pointed. And she was, like, one of my best friends.Q:
A: Wait, come again? Sorry, actually, can we take a break?Q:
A: I know we just started, it’s just— can we?Q:
A: I appreciate it. Just going to grab some water.