#oc: taigat | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

arcann · 3 days

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Well tumblr ate the ask at the last minute because I guess a draft this long, + an image and links is too much for the hellsite 😔

Jeremiah @tragicomedykitty asked me about my reaper headcanons so here they are! Thank you so much for the ask ❤

This got a lot longer than I thought it would but here are my thoughts and headcanons! Content warnings for discussions of cannibalism, gore and self harm, nothing descriptive though.

About the usual pact with a voidsent:

In an average communion with a soulstone the reaper doesn't get to choose the voidsent, they send a call to the void and the inhabitants there can choose to accept or reject it. The encyclopedia says it has to be a voidsent that shares an extremely similar soul and I agree but they also imply it's likely part of your ancient counterpart's soul which I only partially use. It just needs to be similar. To me that means that it spent time eating and absorbing or being eaten by the voidsent that shares the reaper’s soul. They leave an impression on each other no matter how many more voidsent they ate (you’re eating another person, they become a part of you, that must be an impactful process).

The voidsent from lower hierarchies never answer. There is nothing a single being could offer that would satisfy a being as powerful as them. Meanwhile the weakest voidsent don’t understand the call. It’s usually a voidsent from the middle ranks that was killed a short time ago and has come back, searching for a new way to get a constant source of aether.

Canon says it’s just an avatar that reaches through the void, which the reaper has to open every time they need its powers. I changed it so that the voidsent actually becomes a type of parasite/ghost in their body that siphons aether from the reaper, their surroundings or the people they kill. A part of it stays inside the reaper at all times and they have to teach it how to leave their body to attack. Some might be able to leave and roam the source or return to the void if they wish to. However they do submit to the reaper’s will and if they’re under control they will return to their side immediately.

I like to think they prefer to haunt the reaper’s liver when they’re inside them :)

Their personalities are unpredictable and one takes a lot of risk from the beginning. The reaper can get a beast who wants more and more aether and plans to take over their body and might outright attack them or plot to get back at them in the long run. This type of voidsent think they are owed the reaper’s soul for giving their help. The reaper has to choose if the reason they made the covenant is worth fighting for their soul permanently or decide when it is time to cut the voidsent out before they slip up and lose themselves.

The voidsent that kills their host improves their level in the hierarchy. They’re evidently more powerful but there’s a degree of separation in their soul that doesn’t make them become a fully united being like after the ascians’ Ardors. They take the form of their reaper and can only slightly modify it, but it’s like they’re stuck inside their body still. It counts as possession even if the two beings are more intrinsically tied to one another than the usual necromancy.

The reaper can kill their voidsent but their soul is sundered permanently and their soulstone cracks. If they try to do another pact it won’t respond. This also happens if something else provokes the death of their ally.

They can like you a lot though. You can be friends. They’re just people after all and most are very tired of their immortality. They enjoy the novelty of the Source and having someone that might care for them.

Enshrouding is a very difficult process that requires either complete control over the voidsent or a very solid relationship filled with trust. It should be used in short bursts during combat so that both sides don’t get used to having their souls intertwined in such a way. The more experienced combatants could stay enshrouded for more time but even they should be wary.

Enshrouding modifies the reaper’s body into a shape the voidsent is more comfortable in. If the reaper allows it, the voidsent can “design” this state more thoroughly so their powers can flow easily and their combat aptitude improves. This changes the form the reaper came up with first, which usually looks more like them.

Evil voidsent don’t get to play designer, they will fuck you up and possession will become much more easier if you let them.

This is the moment where the souls of the duo fuse. The process is voluntary so the soul of the reaper becomes denser with the voidsent soul being a perfect match for theirs. It’s a much more powerful bond than when the voidsent absorbs its host.

About Garlean reapers before the empire:

Garleans who become reapers can use aether as any other person would but they can only perform dark aspected magic unless their own voidsent could manipulate other types of magic before they fused. They can be just as powerful as the average mage but they need to siphon more aether from their surroundings or their victims.

Before the empire, there were clans of reapers that would be in charge of roaming around Garlemald to protect other communities. They would live away from them when times were peaceful. People from other clans would sometimes seek them to be granted their powers and they were tested to see if they could survive the process. If they failed a reaper would simply accompany them to solve the problem and pay attention to that area in case another conflict occurred there. If they passed, after their crusade was done and their loved ones were safe they would have to return with the reaper clan that had adopted them. This was done to prevent them from either abusing the rest of the community with their newfound magic or becoming possessed and harming others with no one to stop them.

Elder reapers with more violent and manipulative voidsent became pillars of strength among the clans and they incurred much more respect. Their lives were not easy and their endings were rarely happy but their experience spoke for them and they usually became much more efficient (yet much more stern) mentors.

If two reapers fought to the death it would most likely conclude on partial or complete cannibalism of the defeated party. The logic inside the void is that you eat other voidsent to survive so those old instincts would easily kick in a fight similar to the ones that happen in the 13th. This usually destabilizes the reaper’s relationship with their voidsent and either they would be encouraged to have a long period of reflection or cut their relationship entirely. The reaper clans were careful in keeping the peace inside their group and tried to solve their problems in any other way but combat.

If the eaten voidsent was very powerful (and the battle was lost due to the eaten reaper’s lower combat experience) the other voidsent might really have to fight to “digest” the enemy and if they are not capable of doing so the eaten one might burst out of the winning reaper, xenomorph style. The host would most likely die unless very quick and powerful magical action was taken, which the garlean reapers had no access to. This was the worst case scenario for a clan.

Cannibalism and necrophagia could also occur when the reaper was losing in combat and nearing death so the voidsent realized the only aether they can take is from corpses or their enemies and a much more direct solution would be to put the aether running through the other bodies inside theirs immediately instead of spending energy siphoning it. The reaper clans looked down on this too but the truth was that the voidsent acted pragmatically and in benefit of their host. Everyone who went through that situation knew the feeling. It was an uncomfortable truth.

Some voidsent caused only mischief in their free time and those were the ones that allowed their reapers to grow older much more easily, so they spent more time in the Source. They had myths that turned into oral stories built around them and holidays which would be the garlean equivalent to All Saints’ Wake (FFXIV’s Halloween) and the Roman Lemuria. The empire forbade the celebrations after the assassination attempt against the emperor but Drusilla (the reaper mentor) and her Lemures keep them alive. They’re several and some serve as a commemoration to the reaper clans’ achievements or tragedies while others are for fun.

About reapers during the empire:

When the empire was in its nascent period the reapers were an important part of the military. The frumentarii (imperial spies) were founded by the first reaper clan that swore fealty to Solus and slowly all the clans were involved to some degree of spy work. The soon to be emperor was recognized as a tactical genius and his first strategies in the conquest of Ilsabard would usually involve sending reapers after the heads of important leaders of other countries before the battle began.

Pause to think about reapers in Garlemald’s cringe fail military armor. They really took the L in this period of time.

The few reapers that refused to join the empire were hunted down by black masked ascians or escaped Ilsabard before that happened.

Solus pushed for all the frumentarii to become reapers for a short time but that was a failure in his eyes, they were never enough to push forward all of his plans. The administrative positions and spy work in places where conflict was unlikely had to be filled with the average rank and file. Behind closed doors the demands of the emperor were traumatizing for elder reapers since they sent many young people to very grisly deaths. They didn’t have a cause they believed in and there was no time to train them thoroughly so they got overwhelmed easily and had to be executed. The ones who survived would end up bonding more with their mentors and would easily choose them over the ideals of the empire.

My headcanon is that Drusilla was one of those younger people but luckily her grandfather Rullus was one of the frumentarii with higher standing so she knew what to expect and stayed with him most of the time. Her voidsent was also friendlier than most and it genuinely wanted to protect her.

Hater intermission: the encyclopedia gave Drusilla a dead husband and child and like 🙄 she’s a lesbian SE I care not for it. She’s officially 52 but I refuse to believe she’s younger than 65. Give me that vintage old woman. She mentions that her grandfather’s hair was black but turned white after the assassination attempt and yet she is shown as a young woman with white hair. Hell no, she had black hair. She also says 20 years ago her grandfather tried to kill Solus because he thought the cunt was going too far but by then Garlemald had completely conquered Ilsabard, most of western Othard and Ala Mhigo. He would have gone too far so many decades ago. Also Emet clearly doesn’t look 68 in the flashback.

Enjoyer intermission: they did describe Rullus as the greatest reaper ever. I like that the tyrannicidal guy who saw Emet’s nonstop push for conquest and was like “oh fuck” was the mvp. 😎

SO… Drusilla Varus, the 65 year old lesbian living in Ul’dah who used to have black hair but it turned white because that’s what happens when you get older, ten years after the 7th Umbral Calamity, tells Taigat that 40 years ago, when she was 25, her grandfather Rullus, the most powerful reaper of his age, had to accept that he was getting old and everything around him had taken a turn for the worse. He had to recognize that the Empire's purpose had never been to stop their conquest at the reclamation of Locus Amoenus, and even that had never been a good reason for the atrocities committed. All of Ilsabard was under imperial control and western Othard would soon follow once progress with more powerful magitek was achieved. It was only a matter of time and in his conscience were thousands of deaths that now seemed evidently unnecessary. Maybe some of it had been the influence of his voidsent Orcus, always eager for more violence but if so that would have meant Rullus had been losing control over his companion for an unknown amount of time. In any case the responsibility was in his hands and he had to make a huge change while he could do something.

Orcus was a very powerful yet difficult voidsent. He plotted to make Rullus kill more than he intended so the man had to keep complete control over him all the time. However, as Rullus got older and questioned more of his own actions, his grip faltered and it gave Orcus room to think.

Even if the impulses Orcus pushed forward were very subtle, Rullus decided to plot the assassination of the emperor on his own because of him. In the voidsent’s mind either he ate the emperor after killing legions of his men and sent an entire country to the brink or he would finally consume Rullus, as revenge for stifling him for decades.

Rullus was desperate to prove that his foolish dream of watching his people returning to the land they were ousted from hadn’t been twisted by a man who was building a monster worse than the one that clawed at his mind, that he could stop Solus from tearing down more nations and he was being eaten away with the guilt of everything he had done, so he was in a very precarious mental state.

The assassination did not go as either of them expected. By then, Emet Selch had already figured out that reapers were a thing of the past, a volatile element to be discarded and replaced as soon as possible. Garleans should look only at its military for protection, not at ghosts looming in the edges of society. The attack was the perfect excuse for him to denounce every reaper as traitors to be hunted.

For that Solus needed to kill him in a… public yet controlled space. He easily pushed back Rullus’ assault in the privacy of his palace’s chambers but ran away until his tribuni found them locked in fierce combat. After a bloody fight the surviving soldiers thought they had killed him but in reality Orcus had already taken control of Rullus and was playing dead. He could tell he wasn’t capable of defeating the paragon so he chose to have his revenge against his master. Emet knew he was pretending but outside of keeping Rullus’ soulstone he didn't bother to finish the abomination. Alone, voidsent don’t take on a challenge where the odds aren’t in their favor. It worked for the emperor because while he was publicly executing reapers, Orcus slipped into the darkness and began hunting Rullus’ remaining clan members. Without any warning (since Rullus told no one what he was planning) the reapers in service of the empire were massacred.

My headcanon is that the Magitek Reapers were developed a short while later and either Solus or someone who wanted to please him named them as a nod to the elimination of the traitors. The empire never loses anything, it improves and evolves.

So in my timeline Rullus never returns to Drusilla since he died fighting Solus. When Orcus attacked, he ate her parents in front of her, taunted her with the fact that the emperor was so much more than a man who would destroy everything she loved and decided to kill her last, by slowly siphoning her aether. This was all because in life she was the person Rullus loved the most and Orcus thought it was insulting to use his powers to protect her for decades. When it was her turn, he didn’t notice that he exhausted the energy of Drusila’s voidsent instead of hers and while he killed it, she lived through the attack, barely. She is the only survivor of that clan and she didn’t know if any other reaper got away.

About Drusilla specifically:

Drusilla took the soulstones she could find of her clan and her grandfather’s ancestral scythe (which Orcus couldn’t care for in the least) and ran west. It didn’t take Orcus too long to figure out she was still alive so he hunted her from time to time until he just grew bored or she managed to escape without his noticing. In the beginning she would make new friends that ended up in her enemy’s claws or his thralls. After that there was a period of her life where she gave up on living with other people but she slowly accepted that deep inside her she wanted to be in a group she could call her family and she never gave up on the idea.

She never really forgave Rullus for not trusting her or anyone in their clan with his insurgency and when she was younger she blamed him for what happened. She now understands that thinking on what ifs just hurts her more but she is right that more people would have survived if they had all been involved, even if there was no way to defeat the emperor. Still, she misses him the most and Orcus mutilating his body more and more as time goes by didn’t help.

Ul’dah was the almost perfect place for her to keep Orcus away since the arid city filled with light was antithetical to the voidsent. Both Drusilla and Rullus preferred cold places and the abomination apparently adopted those preferences. Meanwhile Drusilla adapted and began to unite garlean remnants that had escaped the empire one way or another and took them all under her wing. She finally had a base of operations but still misses the colder weather.

Besides, Ul’dah is filled with people who know how to deal with voidsent (thaumaturges), people who would be eager to uno reverse Orcus and start a huge hunt for his head to gain fame (gladiators) and people honor bound to kill voidsent if they knew one had entered the city (paladins) so he has to think twice before alerting those groups. Drusilla would never ask for help from any of them but she could hide her nature better, especially since she doesn’t have a voidsent with her anymore and Orcus wanted to stay as he was more than he wanted to toy with her.

However, Orcus did make killings around Eorzea to show that he was still waiting for her to slip up. Drusilla investigated the murders that sounded suspicious like she did with Gridania but she only managed to catch his minions. Orcus probably slayed the most people in Ala Mhigo because an elite mark is named after him (like. they retconned the used name so it would be his namesake) and Drusilla wouldn’t be able to reach that area before Stormblood happened.

She wouldn’t accept payment since in her mind it’s her fault the murder had happened in the first place, so Drusilla would let herself be hired as an assassin for the people close to the Syndicate that could pay for her services to make ends meet. She never worked for the actual members because she didn’t want to risk being investigated thoroughly and becoming a public enemy which would ruin what she had built for the Lemures. By 1582 she had a reputation in the ul'dahn underworld but she was in no way infamous, and that’s how she liked it.

She told every member of the Lemures about her decades old conflict with Orcus. She wouldn’t want them to think she was tricking them into getting into something actually dangerous. No one left after they learned the risk. I think they romanticize her quite a bit after they knew of her crusade.

This is not about me romanticizing her 😳

About the reaper sidequest:

Orcus thought kidnapping Drusilla inside the Lemures’ base to get her and Taigat was worth leaving a huge trail to follow plus it was incredibly horrifying for everyone in the room.

In my timeline, the other scions need a lot of time to heal from being in the First so Taigat spent half of that time with Drusilla and when she was abducted they stayed with the Lemures to search for her without other distractions.

Orcus dragging her to Dusk Vigil at the reaper’s story’s climax always had those “it looks meaningful but maybe I’m reading too much into it” vibes because it's the closest thing Eorzea has to Garlemald’s climate and it has a story of failed rebellions against people who abuse their power, cannibalism and possession. Puts the mic on the reaper quest’s writer was this on purpose???? Please answer my emails and calls asap. Still Orcus sees it as the perfect setting to reenact Rullus’ death.

Anecdote intermission: First time I did the final mission I made Taigat cross the Coerthas Western Highlands from south to north in their Nightmare mount without flying. It felt so badass and I’ve done it the two times I’ve run through the storyline. (flying through that area looks like a nightmare anyway).

Taigat does go alone once they reach that point for the same conclusion as in canon: they’re the only one who can use magic and have combat abilities able to match Orcus. The Lemures are mostly civilians and the few exceptions have never seen close combat with that type of monster.

Insane to me that Orcus took out her eye. Anyway I made it so that he was mocking Taigat’s missing eye but also to taunt her about how she lost Arnegis so close to her base that she was losing sight of the real danger out there. Anyway we hate Orcus in this house, we kill him with hammers, we let Drusilla decapitate his musty ass.

Afterwards the Lemures insist a lot on doting her and letting her rest, sort of implying she should retire and they would take care of her. She’s like “why the hell would I retire” and keeps hunting voidsent that scare the nearby settlements when she feels better. Soon after the war ends and although the animosity against garleans won’t be gone for a long time they can be certain that at least one of their enemies is gone.

Now more specific Taigat and the voidsent blorbo headcanons:

Taigat had a lot of aetherical imbalances after absorbing the lightwardens and even while united with Ardbert their body wouldn’t get used to having a stronger leaning into the light aspect. I think the symptoms were fatigue and faintness along with prolonged pain from their old battle injuries. They also would not react as quickly as they were used to and wouldn’t reach their usual power levels with magic.

They didn’t want it to get out of control in the worst moment so they needed something that would grant them more dark aspected magic to compensate. Drusilla’s proposal was really interesting to them since they had already dealt with someone being inside their body and reaching a point of harmony with them.

Drusilla was hoping Taigat would attract a very powerful voidsent but instead they got one of the middling tier and she was a bit wary that it could drag them back during their training. She changed her mind when she watched them fight Orcus and how adequately they acted the first time they merged. Afterwards she suggests Taigat that they give it a bit more freedom to design a more powerful enshrouded form.

At first the voidsent didn’t talk much. That was because it had been eaten for a very, very, long time. No one listened to it and its sense of self was maladjusted so it took a while to get out of that mindframe. It understood that it was undertaking a covenant with Taigat, it just didn’t realize by then how many more privileges it would have in this new state.

It very much enjoys the freedom and the power that comes with being partnered with the warrior of light. In the beginning it got very excited easily. It might choose to never eat Taigat. No well, maybe it might. Well, not really. Maybe. noitwont. It just gets to bite them real hard, as a treat.

The voidsent loves to eat like an average living being and its favorite food are rolanberries, especially when Taigat cooks them into a pie just for it.

When they’re bored Taigat pulls the tips of their cloak and watches it wobble around in the air. It does that just to amuse them.

It always supports Taigat’s first impulses and more improper wishes. If they’re embarrassed maybe they should listen to that part of them that wants to run out of the room and cry where no one is watching. If they finally reunite with someone they missed a lot, they should run to them and hug them as much as they want, ignoring that they need to make a speech in front of the troops and there’s a battle ahead or that just isn’t the relationship they have with that person.

Maybe Fray would have liked the voidsent, once. Now he’s just bothered that Taigat will one day start listening to it and take it seriously so if the knight does appear he dismisses most of its ideas with a glare.

Taigat told it early on that they would be given it a name but when it felt ready to pick one for itself then it could choose a different one, following Viera tradition. Its name is Ageusia. For now.

The voidsent doesn’t care much for its new name but it answers when called. It enjoyed the act of being named more than having it.

Ageusia spent millenia being a part of Scathach and momentarily inside Diabolos Hollow when he absorbed her. It remembers some of their memories as if they were its own. It likes to pretend the acts of terror the nobility enacted were done by its own hand and it loves to exaggerate its influence over them. It has forgotten most of its life and who it was before the 13th fell to darkness.

In my timeline the Shadow of Mhach raids were done by Dyulgor, Taigat’s father, around 80 years before the beginning of ARR. Dyulgor was marked by the experience and he sort of inherited those injuries to Taigat, like shades in their souls to put it metaphorically. Both of them have a much easier time using dark aspected magic and in the voidsent’s senses they can wield a power similar to Scathach.

Ageusia was expelled from Hollow Diabolos’ body after his death and wandered the void with many difficulties. When Taigat bonded with their soulstone, Ageusia, who was just a leftover of Scathach, saw those shades in Taigat’s call, and itself reflected on them. That’s why it was a viable candidate for Taigat.

After the reaper storyline, Drusilla knew their path would take them back to Garlemald and there really wasn’t a better weapon she could give Taigat but her grandfather’s, the death sickle. She didn’t say it but she hoped that scythe would be the one to kill Solus’ heir and Taigat got the message. They have always wanted to impress her so they silently swore it would be done, truly this time around.

Taigat briefly thought about hiding the voidsent’s existence from others but they know they suck at lying and with the scions it gets worse, plus he just came back from surviving the consequences of Urianger and G’raha hiding things from the group so after Werlyt they just came out and told them.

Before that, the first person outside of the Lemures that he told was Cid, a bit after the Ruby Weapon had appeared in Ghimlyt Dark.

Still undecided about how Taigat tells Gaius but I’m leaning on Cid recommending they do not tell him because he was there when Rullus tried to kill Solus. The irony when they reach a point where everyone but him knows makes me smile like a shark. And it hurts because I’m thinking the ghost of Alfonse inside the diamond weapon is the one to tell him.

Ageusia is busy redesigning their enshrouded form inside Taigat’s body so they have to fight as a dragoon when dealing with the first three Ultima Weapons.

The first person they fought with their improved enshrouded form was Gaius and the diamond weapon. Ageusia got mad they couldn’t brag about how good they beat them. Taigat as expected, felt torn to shreds.

After Werlyt was free and the scions were back from the eorzean version of soul physiotherapy, Tataru made a little meet and greet party and all the scions got to shake the voidsent’s hand. It was awkward af and no one was too pleased but they couldn’t deny that Taigat looked much more healthy than the last time they had reunited.

Taigat’s enshrouded form looks very different in my imagination and to be honest I’m sometimes undecided about the details but the big themes in their look are sharp teeth, the moon and stained glass. Scathach is obviously an inspiration, as well as… Bloodborne’s Moon Presence. Here’s another inspiration. [body horror cw]

About Zenos:

Everyone and their grandma’s neighbor’s cat knows I don’t like Zenos but I do find him choosing to become a reaper interesting. The shb patches was the only time the story made me wish we could learn more about him and watching him blunder in ew was. Well... At least the possession quest was creepy. Because of his crazy scientist from Stormblood, not him. Whatever man I gave him a chance. You’re about to enter my hater’s dungeon… A bit. I just added a bunch of decor but his fate stays pretty much the same. Whom care.

Zenos picked the scythe because he knew a reaper was one of the first rebels to attempt to dethrone his great grandfather and the one that got closest to doing so. He thinks that reapers lost their strength by becoming covert assassins and if they had focused on honing their skills to fight against large groups of people they would have had the upper hand. The scythe is, after all, one of the weapons that causes the enemy as much damage and pain as fast as possible. And he finds it amusing that a tool meant to care for the land was transformed into a weapon of violence and fear. They wasted their power in his opinion.

Fandaniel shares with him more secrets the reapers kept to themselves and finds Rullus’ soulstone in the palace’s treasure vaults for him to use. Before Zenos makes a covenant Fandaniel tells him the chosen voidsent is one that is possibly their 13th counterpart from the same ancient’s soul and he offers to focus the call on the most powerful voidsent available. Zenos refuses and orders him to call for the strongest voidsent that mirrors the soul of Taigat. That turns out to be Zero.

Future lore wondering intermission: I will probably get contradicted on this but I do want Zero to be Azem’s shard in the 13th. I will be open to their explanation when the time comes because who would have guessed they could turn around Ardbert like that but if I don’t like it I have a backup plan. thx z-nos. For now these headcanons will treat Zero as part of Azem.

I think Fandaniel was very normal about finding out the Warrior of Light used to be his beloved Prometheus by enslaving a part of them to a man he thought was beneath him by virtue of being Emet Selch’s heir. Thousands of years later and he still manages to find ways to hurt Metti without even trying. He hides it though. He’s so fucking normal. (Hermes and Azem were together in my timeline)

Zenos’ control over Zero is much more violent and intentionally sadistic on his part than when a reaper makes a covenant with a treacherous voidsent. Here there are no similarities between the souls so Zero is forced to assimilate to his own, modifying her own body and spirit to somehow find a way to enshroud with him. If anything he’s the one possessing and designing her. She could never rebel against him. On the top three misogynist Zenos moments.

I think in the “choosing a weapon” scene he picked a scythe that was used as a trophy but Fandaniel forged him a completely new one built especially for him.

Zenos was thrilled when he was informed that by virtue of choosing to become a reaper he was offending Taigat and in the dinner scene the conversation takes a turn with Taigat not really controlling their anger well and screaming at the wall about how he’s bringing dishonor to the people who learned how to live with voidsent to protect the people they loved and that he’s nothing but a cosplayer. The garlean wall does not care.

In my timeline, Zenos in Taigat’s body does manage to get inside the Broken Glass Camp but given that he openly attacks Alisaie and G’raha (Alphinaud shields them quickly enough so they’re fine. healer W) they have a town shootout against Zenos. He could have won if he had learned how to sneak around. There are several dead and wounded but Maxima, the guy Fandaniel told Zenos to target since he’s the main advocate for garlean remnants, survives.

On to their final battle: Taigat eats him.

Ageusia takes several bites out of Zenos after he lands a few hits on Taigat (which amount to them not being cut in half only because the voidsent held them together) but once he’s defeated they do eat him. Fucked up fugue moment Taigat internalizes and doesn’t tell anyone about for months. It heals them just enough to not immediately drop dead. They should have stayed in bed with the best Sharlayan doctors nearby for months.

Now about the most recent history:

Zero could have outright consumed Ageusia and make Taigat blow up if she hadn’t been bonded to the most fucked up reaper in history for months. She has to deal with her own sundered essence and it takes a great deal of energy to heal herself bit by bit while also stopping Ageusia’s attempts to consume her. World’s worst food intoxication.

Reminding everyone that this is my house so Ultima Thule is actually Athena’s wrapped up dimension in outer space where nothing and no one gets out. Zero would have been trapped if Zenos had just been left there. This had to happen. I made it so oops.

Taigat didn’t know what was happening but their voidsent barely responded and soon enough it stopped being able to leave their body while the viera felt pain through it. Despite the long period of repose they feel weaker and weaker.

The only one they told about it was Gaius. How the tables turned…

When things get much, much worse they leave Terncliff (don’t ask them what they were doing on Terncliff, don’t tell them they should be in Sharlayan, don’t remind them there’s probably a rescue team searching all over Eorzea going crazy just for them) and just tear themselves open with a knife, where their liver is.

You all have watched the first silent hill movie right? Of course you have. Huge thing for me. And literally no one else. Anyway, the way Rose gets stabbed on purpose to let Alessa inside the church? Big inspiration.

Instead of blood, Zero’s essence comes out, slowly remaking herself into the corrupted form Zenos gave her. She’s just as weak as Taigat so when Gaius finds them he easily slays Zero, which sends her back to the void.

Drusilla couldn’t even imagine that Taigat would encounter a reaper so close to their power level so she didn’t tell them about the possible cannibalism situation. She did tell them not to lose their nerve if they were in a dire situation and the voidsent took a bite from their enemies, but not that it could happen to them. She felt terrible after Taigat asked her about it, months later.

Before that however, they brought back Rullus’ scythe and his soulstone as a gift, which Drusilla appreciated very much. Taigat fulfilled their little wish of impressing her. *final fantasy victory tune*. The Lemures made a little homecoming party and celebrated Drusilla having a part of her grandfather back. It’s sweet to me that, outside of Fray and his unique situation, Drusilla is the mentor Taigat feels closest to.

And that’s most of it! If you went through all that, thank you for reading!

#oc: taigat #rel: hurt suffer heal #caracora

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