#papanan kir sosonan

[driftward]

Title: FFXIV Write 2023 - 3. Soulmate Characters: Liana kir Vaux, Papanan kir Sosonan, Datum lux Lorimus Rating: Teen Summary: The Nyx Project has run into some problems, but its newest member may have found a solution. This happens approximately twenty years before ARR. Notes: Thanks to @yzeltia for the word prompt for today. CW: Mild gore, frank discussion of an autopsy-like activity

The dead body of another hybrid Allagan creation lay on the bench in the Garlean laboratory. It looked for all the world like a Miqo'te, a Keeper of the Moon, with rounded pupils and skin a shade of deep blue so dark it almost appeared black. Giving away its artificial nature was the pulling back of the flesh as rot had set in, and in those places where the flesh had pulled back far enough, one could see the dark goldish hue of what was presumably Allagan technology. Flesh wrapped around what had previously been an ambulatory metal skeleton, an automaton of some sort.

It had lasted for three days after activation. The rot had started at thin black lines on the creature's skin, initially too thin to be seen, but those lines were where the flesh had first pulled away from the skeleton as the thing degraded. And as its flesh rotted, so too seemed its mind. While it had initially been able to follow simple orders, it rapidly grew to misinterpret them, or to seem to not hear them at all. And then, at last, it had collapsed, twitching and flailing in violent seizure, as its body collapsed to the floor, and some hours later, stopped moving.

Three days, and those three days represented a new record for for how long those scientists working on the Nyx Project had managed to keep one of the creatures running. The project, overall, was an attempt by the Garlean empire to capitalize on their ownership of certain Allagan ruins to bring new technology to life for the empire.

It was not going well.

Liana kir Vaux and Papanan kir Sosonan were now looking the construct over, to see if they could determine what had gone wrong this time. Liana's hands traced over its body, her eyes half-lidded as she attempted to find any thread of aether that might still be coursing through the thing. Papanan in the meanwhile had peeled back layers of polymat skin and artificial muscle to now examine the fine lines of fibers and tiny workings of machinery and circuitry that existed deep within.

Neither of them looked up when the door to the area opened. The only people who came this far into the Castrum, who were even permitted into the space, were those working on the project. And neither of them paused in their work when the swearing started, followed by the exclamation of their fellow scientist.

"Emperor preserve, that smells awful. Find out why it failed yet?" Said Datum lux Lorimus.

Papanan just glanced up at Liana, who nodded and stood with a sigh, stretching her back out as she did so.

"Same as number six. Everything appears to be in order, but the organic components refuse to maintain their vitality. And I believe Papanan has found that the fiber harness is all intact, but with no signals, there's no motion."

Papanan harrumphed. "Going to have to crack this one open too, I suspect."

Liana looked over to Datum. "I thought you would still be working on translation."

Datum went over to the nearby console. "Not anymore. We're fortunate. There's been a breakthrough. Some original tomestones have been found that I believe are related to whatever work was being done here, and I came here to review them in the original Allagan. Whatever work it was that E'lan jen Tia did is practically a waste. He was translating a translation of a translation - others' interpretations of what they found when they came across these ruins over the eons."

"Too many layers removed, then, I take it?" asked Liana mildly. Papanan barked a laugh.

"Well, unless you want to try to wake up the next unit and find it a soulmate using a spiritual fishing hook. All we have to do is dangle it in the deep blue sea and wait, apparently, according to what E'lan had translated. Ah, if it was only that easy. Maybe I'd have stayed in dear sweet Thanalan and found myself a wife instead of a calling," said Papanan.

"Careful," warned Datum.

"Please. If the Frumentarium wants me gone, they know where to find me, and I'll hand them the noose."

"I just would rather not have anything happen to either of you," said Datum quietly, as he sat down at the console and connected the tomestone to its interface.

"Come around on us savages then?" asked Papanan.

"Don't antagonise him, Papanan," said Liana, to Papanan's shrug.

"...whatever happened to that E'lan fellow, anyroad?" asked Datum, gently shifting the topic as the tomestone loaded in.

"I rather suspect he found he could not stomach what we were doing to what looked rather uncomfortably like kin to him. This work is rather gruesome. Macabre, even. Morbid, if you will. Ghastly. Downright ghoulish."

Liana just sighed and Pananan chuckled to himself.

"You know," he continued, "It's interesting. Every single one of these we've dug up has looked like quite the fetching young Miqo'te woman. It's weird. It's like how, you know, most Spoken undead seem to be Hyurs for whatever reason."

"The running theory is that the Hyur constitution is balanced in such a way as to favor necromantic energies," said Liana. "I do not know that there is any truth to that. I think it's perhaps just bias. You can find Hyur almost anywhere, so you find plenty of Hyur undead. There are plenty of Duskwight undead in Gelmorran ruins, as a counterpoint, but you do not find my people far from there often."

"Hmn, just so, maybe."

Datum just nodded as the tomestone finished loading, and he began to read carefully through its output. Liana and Papanan returned to their work.

It was nearly a bell later when Datum sat up suddenly. Neither Liana nor Papanan noticed, both of them still deep in the work of disassembling the construct.

"What was that you said earlier. About a soulmate?" he asked.

"Eh?" replied Papanan, who had only been halfway paying attention. "Oops," he said a moment later, as he dropped a spinal linkage.

"Careful," admonished Liana quietly. "It won't hold as well now that we've detached the myomer."

"Soulmate. You mentioned earlier that E'lan thought that these constructs needed soulmates."

"Oh, right, that. No, it was really ridiculous. He thought we needed to attach a spiritual fishing hook into the main assembly, then dangle it into a deep blue sea until we got a soulmate for it."

Datum frowned, and he turned back to his console, rapidly flipping back and forth between different sections of his reading.

"Was that exactly what he said?"

"Hells if I remember."

"Close, as I remember it. Not just any sea - he specifically said the depths of the Azure sea," said Liana.

"Which is ridiculous. They're all blue."

"... oh, he was close," said Datum, a trace of excitement in his voice.

Liana and Papanan now both fully stopped in their work. "Datum?" asked Liana. "What have you found?"

Datum just turned and looked. "Can you get flip it over? Open up the back of its main chassis? I want to see something."

"...sure. Hang on, let's back up, it's heavy. Let the arm handle it," said Papanan.

Liana nodded, and went over to operate a big crane with a large hand at the end of it, flipping the construct over. Once it was flipped, the three scientists moved back in, and Liana reached her fingers in underneath the shoulder blades, and pulled off a large panel of muscle and skin off its back.

Datum covered his nose, and moved in closer, his fingers tracing over the exposed metal that had been hidden in the torso.

"Can we open that?"

"Sure, hang on," said Papanan, as he picked up a nearby tomestone and started connecting it to the construct using fiber cables.

Liana looked over at Datum and raised an eyebrow.

"You know that thing that's over in section three - the so-called Cauldron Boundary Unit?" said Datum.

Liana nodded. "We've had no luck making any use of it. It claims to be a forge, but anything we drop in it just gets dissolved into aether and byproduct."

Datum nodded to the construct as Papanan finished hooking up the wiring. "I think it was meant for these."

Liana frowned at Datum, but he ignored her as he just stepped forward to watch while Papanan thumbed some controls on his tomestone, opening the metal inner shell of the construct. The areas where its shoulder blades had been folded upward, revealing its inner workings. A deeply complicated nest of wiring and unrecognizable machinery, dominated by a central sphere that it all seemed to either be connected to or harnessed around, suspended in the chest cavity. Datum reached out, and touched a hand to it, glancing back and forth down at his own tomestone.

"Artifacted nethicite."

"E'lan was pretty sure that word was meant to be 'auracite'," said Papanan idly, and Datum just shook his head.

"We've no other translation for it, but the phonetics in the original Allagan are obvious. Whatever it is - that serves as a core for these things. Do we have access to the aether transfer array here? I want to try to charge it."

"I can take care of that," said Liana. "What are you trying to do?"

"I just want to see what will happen."

"Might want to see what will happen a bit further back, if you think this will get it going again," said Papanan. "You weren't there for the seizures, but don't be fooled - it looks like a little Miqo'te, but that thing's muscle density is way higher than it should be, and it's a fast bastard when it's up."

"It's got nerves different from we do," said Liana, explaining as she set up the aetheric array. "Faster or broader or something. When it moves, it really moves. Its twitch motion is nearly twice as fast as any other Spoken."

"I... think I shall be over here, then," said Datum nervously, and Papanan went with him. Liana ducked down from where she was standing.

"Ready when you are."

Datum took a deep breath, and nodded. "Fix release."

Liana triggered a switch, and a steady beam of aether flowed from a crystalline array in the ceiling, aimed at the torso of the construct. Rather than flowing around it or dissipating into nether, the aether seemed to just flow into the core and stop there.

For several long minutes, nothing further happened. Liana stuck her head up over the console, while Papanan leaned out from where he was hiding. Datum, however, just watched intensely.

"Can't keep this up much longer," said Liana, looking over her readouts. "We got another minute before I'll need to turn it off and let our stores refill and the system recharge."

"Keep at it," said Datum.

And then, the core gained the faintest glow, hard to see from around the aether stream pouring into it. The construct began to twitch violently, seeming to vibrate in place as its whole body twitched, its fingers and toes violently and rapidly curling and uncurling. It began to make a low, unsettling guttural groan.

Datum grimaced. "That's enough. Shut it down."

Liana did so, and as the aether stream faded away, so did the glow from the construct's core, and its body settled back down to become still.

Papanan put his hands on his hips, and nodded, looking to Datum. "Well well well! That's progress. What is it you've got, then?"

Datum stood up, and began to fiddle with the accoutrements to his lab coat. "Well. I think that has proven several things. We won't be able to get the core online with just aether alone. But I know what will, now."

He looked to the other two. "We don't need to find them soulmates. What we need is to mate a soul to them - to quicken their cores. E'lan's translations were from secondary sources, but I see how he got them. It's not a spiritual fishing hook. It's a soul gig, and it's part of the Cauldron Boundary Unit. It's called a cauldron because it's the last step in forging one of these to completion. As for the boundary part - the cauldron leads deep down, we know that much. How far down has been a matter of speculation, but I suspect I know now. Far enough down to reach the aetherial sea."

"That's preposterous," said Papanan, but Liana just frowned and looked thoughtful.

"And that's the last puzzle piece of E'lan's translation. Not a deep blue sea, but rather, into the Azure Sea - a common enough name for the aetherial sea by civilizations past, owing due to the nature of its color."

"I understand," said Liana. "By using the cauldron to go past the boundary of the material, the Allagans thought to perhaps attach a soul to it to help power and maintain it."

"Ridiculous," said Papanan, but there was no real dissent to his voice as he looked up at the crystal transfer idea. "The idea that we would be attaching a soul to this thing seems quite beyond what even the Allagans were capable of. But, we have one of the most powerful aetheric transfer systems that have ever been devised in the modern era. I propose instead that if this cauldron does lead to the sea, or even if it does not, it leads to somewhere with deep aetheric capability. I suspect what we will be doing instead is simply charging the core. Hardly needs a soul for explanation. We saw it start moving."

Liana crossed her arms. "Perhaps leave the theorizing on the nature of aether to the aetherlogical expert."

"Oh, sure, if you'll leave the machinery to the mechanical expert. I'm telling you, this thing doesn't need a soul, just some juice, and maybe something to keep it from rotting. A dense source of aether just might do the trick."

"In either case, we know what we have to do next," said Datum. "I shall inform Kyb mal Donos. Perhaps we can get another extension while we retrieve more of these... frames."

"It's just a body. No need to get prissy about it," said Papanan, grinning up at Datum. Datum just shook his head.

"Whatever the case is, we know what we need to do next."

"Do we?" asked Liana. "And what of the current experiment? We've not gotten one to start moving again before."

"It's still half rotted. You two may be used to the smell, but we'll need to show these things to the Legatus eventually. Once the system's recharged, try again, make sure we can replicate the findings. Liana, maybe try to see if you can bind a familiar to it, we'll see if that's enough to keep them moving without having to resort fully to trying to see if we can get the Cauldron Boundary Unit to do what we want. But when you're done, just consign it to the graveyard. I'm going to report back to Kyb. Any questions?"

"No questions." "Nothing from me."

Datum just nodded, and then looked down at the weird hybrid construct once more.

"We'll get one of you to life yet," he said.

#ffxivwrite2023 #final fantasy xiv #liana kir vaux #papanan kir sosonan #datum lux lorimus #soulmate #202309-04 #biot writes #cw: gore