The Second Coil, Prologue

Man was not made to traverse such a place, though it was clearly brought low by something much greater, much darker. Perhaps light, marred by the workings of the dark. The way the grey clouds presided over the runic grounds with crevasses of red glow peaking between each of their meeting points, and how the distant lightning heralded no thunder; an aetherically malevolent force was at work here.

There was no draft, no heat, no "feeling" to what this place wrought. No art, no love, no understanding. The architect behind such chaos followed no particular path.

Which meant the Ascians were afoot.

And thus did such thoughts occur that a new dread swept over the wandering dreamer. She noticed, in no particular pattern of placement, lances crudely impaled upon the red, runic ground, creating cracks in the shuddering ground. The lances were the works of a great mind of long ago, tailored for piercing strikes upon any defense, and tall as any man.

But it wasn't the lances themselves that demanded the horror of the eye, but rather those ceremoniously skewered upon them.

"Missy..."

A pang of taut fear struck at the lalafell as recognition dawned.

The voice of Garflex the Conjurer tried words once more. "M-Miss..."

It was the first lance on the left where her fellow lalafell was barely able to lift his head. He was motionless save for what seemed to be labored breaths that fell from his mouth like clogged death.

She came close, close enough to touch, but dared not to. He did not seem to mind, however. There was no concern in his expression, no fear, no pain. While every ounce of his limp form told a story of devastation and battle trounced upon a white mage's robes, Garflex seemed complacent to dangle upon the spear of his demise.

As Missy summoned the courage to speak back to him, the other lances alluded to motion.

Two other lalafells, dressed in a dark caster's robes, wriggled upon their skewers like trapped insects. They did not demand attention, or even casually ask. They, too, seemed complacent upon their soiled graves.

Just behind Garflex was the heart-wrenching image of an Elezen once dressed resplendently in his scholar's gown, now face-up and dangling, in the tattered remains of it. Blood had once congealed at his mouth, and dribbled over his chin and forehead, but dried overtime. Yet the wound through the lance had gone through was fresh and yielding blood running down the pole of the lance and into the red-runed ground.

To his left was a Mi'qote, concealed within the armor of his draconic profession, yet defeated and nearly lifeless with his face downward. The fire of his hard facial features was drained by the loss of blood in his face, and the clear mark of loss of life jutting out of his back.

To the scholar's right was the warrior, fully merged upon his lance against the ground, his helm just feet in front of him. The only movement he made was in his fingers' twitching and the feint sound of rusted steel between them.

Far off to the right was another Mi'qote with blue hair, wearing white bard attire, streaked with the blood of his entrails. One could look closely and see that he was still sliding down the lance he had been impaled upon. Mayhap he was the last to be broken.

One spear had fallen over, and a hyur clad in the pallor plate of the paladin had gone with it. He was on his side, staring blithely into the clouded sky, wondering at nothing in particular. One of his hands seemed to clutch at the handle of his spear, perhaps trying to wrest the spear from the paladin's gut.

Missy trembled at each sight, not because of the lone trepidation every fallen warrior of the light represented, but the known strength she had witnessed within each of them in their living days. The tears flowed freely then at the hopelessness of the situation, the powerful darkness that would soon sweep the land, and loss of life that would be incurred. She blinked.

The elezen scholar was up and standing beside the splayed Garflex. "The Coil that Binds," he said, a frosty breath exiting between his dried lips. "It has bound us as well."

And then she saw the frightening process by which each former combatant freed themselves from their lances. Gut-wrenching, mind-numbing, squelching noises reached her ears in a frightful chorus. The mi'qotes pulled themselves upward and over the blade of the lance, while the lalafells crawled down and uprooted themselves. The hyurs simply stood and discarded their spears, leaving a gaping hole in their chest where blood and bone should have been.

Shane Farlander's Fabled Vagrants had done much worse than fallen in combat.

They sustained the fate of serving the will of Bahamut.

---

A chill ran upon her spine and shuddered Missy awake.

The dried tears upon her cheeks meant she had been audibly sobbing the whole night through. It explained why Shane entered her room moment later with concern in his eyes, yet a smile on his face.

Even so, for an all-too-broad moment in her mind, he was drenched in the pale skin of his undead, dreamlike counterpart.

"You're not sleeping well," he said, the grin now easily falling away from his face.

Missy did not respond. The silence drew outward into mystification.

The scholar lit the candle upon the table and continued to wait. When he sat down, he placed his grimoire upon the table and went to re-reading the runes upon them.

Allagan runes.

"Take your time, Mis--"

"Don't go to the Coil again." Terse, unfettered of worry, fear, or dismay; this was a voice Missy did not take on lightly.

Shane adjusted his bifocals, paused his reading, then continued. "I've told you why we must go, didn't I?"

"I forbid it." While the authority in her voice was unfitting, it did not falter.

"You? Forbid me?" He stood up and mockingly swept a hand out. "On what grounds? To what end?"

"You will die if you go, and I don't think Haedelyn can bring you back this time."

To that end, Shane exited her bedroom with a wave of his hand.

She knew it was pointless to talk after him, or pursue the argument. The stern furrow in her brows turned to anger, frustration, and then to sorrow. "Don't leave me," she said more in prayer than anything she had ever uttered before.

And then she began to sob in earnest.