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fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

i hear it is wip wednesday?

#fearnefic | #arina

"You're provoking me."

"Like you did when you put a knife in my hand? It was cruel, you know," he said.

There was an anger in Thancred's eye Arina had not seen before—not the distant, forlorn wrath she'd grown used to, the one that swelled like a sulfurous sea at any mention of Hydaelyn, but a raw and present fury aimed straight at her.

The Echo tugged at the edges of her senses. She shoved it down with force and clenched her fists. She did not need his rage tainting and compounding her own.

"What would they do if they knew their hero's capacity for cruelty?"

There was no aether behind her fist when it connected with his cheekbone. Only a sickening crunch as it sent him reeling backward into the table, knocking a glass of water clean over to shatter on the floor.

October 29, 2025 at 7:19 PM Everybody can reply

11 reposts 17 likes

4 11 17

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

thancred/minfilia
3.4k
mature
spoilers through post-ShB
tags below

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/73135666

#fearnefic

altar
almandines

Summary:
At the top of the ramp, memories waited like knives in the dark. A better survivalist would have avoided them. He would have avoided them, were things the same as they were a year ago.

But he had no other reminders now, so the knives would have to do.

a long-building grief

also so this can be filtered for people who have the term muted: thanmin

October 26, 2025 at 8:10 AM Everybody can reply

25 reposts 1 quotes 46 likes 10 saves

4 25 46

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

back at it (yes at the panera)

#fearnefic

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" the Exarch said in a practiced, even voice. It had become a script of sorts, a verbatim greeting each time the Archon burst in, and it made him feel much like a territorial predator circling his competition, waiting to see who struck first.

But he had barely enough time to brace himself as a raised fist shot toward him. This time there was no crack of crystal on crystal nor skull-shaking impact—only the muffled thud of a gloved fist meeting the wall above his head.

Thancred planted his other hand beside the Exarch's head, thoroughly caging him in. The Exarch glanced up just enough to see desperation in one golden eye.

October 20, 2025 at 10:58 PM Everybody can reply

5 reposts 19 likes 1 saves

3 5 19

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

shoves my calamity history HCs at everyone at every opportunity

#fearnefic

For better or worse, G'raha Tia had been a historian. Of all things from the distant past, it was this to which the Crystal Exarch clung the tightest.

Deep in the bowels of the Tower, the Ironworks had left him a library, stocked full of every text they could find from cookbooks to magic texts to schoolchildren's notepads, and from it he had carefully curated his own private collection: a single shelf of rare and esoteric tomes preserving the history of a long-dead world's dark future. He'd obsessively read every page that even so much as mentioned the Scions of the Seventh Dawn in passing, committing the words within to his mind so thoroughly he could still recite many of them from memory if asked.

"Thancred Waters" was a name he knew only in ink. He was a ghost who haunted the margins—a handful of words in the dark and little more. This, the Exarch had long surmised, was by design.

October 17, 2025 at 12:17 AM Everybody can reply

9 reposts 33 likes 1 saves

4 9 33

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

fearne in the panera, what will she do

#fearnefic

"Ere I elaborate," he said, "I would have you tell me what you know of her. Not of our Oracle of Light, but of Minfilia."

Thancred's eyes never left him, unblinking and wrathful.

He took a breath and swallowed the bone-deep despair. Necessity, he told himself. Circumstance, and nothing more.

"Do not think you are the one with power here," the Exarch said. "I will end the spell, and you will speak. Do not mistake this for kindness, nor weakness. Should you lash out again I will not hesitate to take what measures I deem necessary. There is work to be done, and I will not suffer you to interfere."

October 15, 2025 at 11:07 PM Everybody can reply

8 reposts 22 likes 1 saves

3 8 22

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

#fearnefic

Grief could make monsters of even the best of men; this, the Crystal Exarch knew well.

He could see it in the way Thancred's eyes narrowed each time anyone mentioned the Oracle, in passing or otherwise, in the ripple of defensiveness and the flexed fingers; in the way he hid behind the shadows cast on his own face by a curtain of hair he refused to cut though it had begun to grow long and unkempt over the months since his arrival—a subtle attempt at what the Exarch himself had mastered with the help of magic: total concealment of emotions, made all the easier with shrouded eyes.

Few things had grown as familiar to him as grief. He'd witnessed it in the fallen shoulders of a brother mourning a sister's sacrifice; in the hands of a mother who could never again hold her child; in the heavy, dogged steps of ten thousand men whose losses built the foundation of this city moreso than any stone or brick.

October 16, 2025 at 12:29 AM Everybody can reply

8 reposts 29 likes

3 8 29

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

cw: violence, blood, dubcon
(or: the consensual stabbing / consensual murder fic)

ShB wolcred
5.1k
explicit
tags below

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/72332161

#fearnefic | #arina

Emery and Ash
almandines

Summary:
It had been one night—only one night of poor foresight a decade ago, yet here he was, lost in her labyrinth, tangled in thorns all over again, still navigating the consequences without a compass.

And he hadn't the strength to pull himself away.

the past does not stay buried

October 12, 2025 at 5:13 AM Everybody can reply

17 reposts 2 quotes 31 likes 5 saves

6 17 31

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

i like writing

#fearnefic

Arina woke with a rattling gasp fit for the halls of a haunted tomb, and the sound climbed Thancred's spine with frigid fingers.

"Good morning," he said flatly, though it was neither good nor the morning, and he watched her shakily prop herself up on her elbow and slowly sit. The blanket fell forward, exposing the bloodied mess of her clothing—a woven green top without sleeves, stained beyond rescue.

She turned to face him.

Her eyes were dark and sunken, heavy little bruises forming beneath them. She looked utterly terrible—gaunt, exhausted, bloodless—and it struck him just how much she looked the same as he did on the rare occasions he allowed himself to meet his own eye in the mirror.

October 9, 2025 at 9:27 PM Everybody can reply

11 reposts 28 likes

3 11 28

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

love it when they love each other and they both fucking hate it

#fearnefic (shb arinacred)

"No," he cut in. "Absolutely not. I don't know what you came here thinking you'd achieve, but you won't."

He made to pull open the door and usher her through it, then lock it behind her, but her fist beat him to it and held it firmly shut.

"I will," she said, and he fought not to roll his eyes at the insistence. She'd always been headstrong, stubborn, and infuriating. Years ago, he'd found it charming. A challenge to be conquered. Now it was just an obstacle, a frustration that stood between him and his drink and his silence.

Or so he told himself, because maybe one day he might be able to believe it.

October 9, 2025 at 5:24 AM Everybody can reply

4 reposts 14 likes 1 saves

1 4 14

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

sorry mocha it's just that my hand slipped last night you must understand

#fearnefic

"I thought it best you acclimate to your surroundings first."

"Acclimate?" he snapped, closing what distance remained between them.

"Acquire a weapon, armor, the like—"

The words were snatched from his mouth when Thancred's hand gripped the base of his hood. For a moment he feared the man might try to rip it down and expose his face, though he'd long ago perfected the enchantment that made that impossible. Instead, he found himself thrust off balance.

"You'll come to find I'm perfectly capable without a weapon," he growled, then shoved.

The crystal scar bisecting the Exarch's cheek cracked hard against the hard surface of the Ocular's mirror, and his skull followed quickly after. A lightning flash of pain shot through him, and he tasted blood on his tongue. Thancred's arm pinned him there, solid against his collarbone.

"I'll acclimate when you explain this—" He shook the book with his other hand and let it dangle in front of the Exarch's face. "—this farce. Am I supposed to believe this is anything but a cruel joke? You say you know of the Source? The Scions? Then you know of her. You make mockery of her memory."

The Exarch planted his feet and pushed against the force. He may have been a small man, but the Tower's blood flowed in his veins, and there were certain advantages to sharing one's physical being with a structure of stone and crystal. What little headway it gave him was enough for his arm to slip behind his back and grasp the staff that hung upon it.

In one swift motion and a burst of unrefined aether, he drew the staff and pushed with a force that sent Thancred staggering backward five fulms. That he kept on his feet was a testament to his dexterity.

"You—" he growled as he found his balance again.

Forgive me, the Exarch thought, brandishing the staff in front of him. "Break."

October 7, 2025 at 4:36 AM Everybody can reply

31 reposts 1 quotes 91 likes 6 saves

14 31 91

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

back on my post-ARR bullshit it seems

#fearnefic | #arina

Thancred had not allowed a woman to wake beside him in the morning for nearly a decade.

Leaving had become muscle memory much the same as the twist of a dagger or the exact way he'd taught himself to smile to pry trust from a stranger. He'd used that same smile not so long ago on the woman who now slept with an arm over his waist, but for some cursed reason, neither the smile nor the leaving had managed to stick this time.

He should pry himself out from under her arm and steal away on silent feet. At least, that was what he told himself every morning, every time she'd knocked on his door for the past three moons, and not once did he have the strength to do it.

He couldn't leave. He owed her that much, didn't he?

So he stayed put, eyes fixed on the ceiling while he listened to shallow, ragged breathing, feeling almost less himself than he had when someone else entirely steered his hands.

October 5, 2025 at 4:29 AM Everybody can reply

8 reposts 25 likes

1 8 25

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

ShB exarch/urianger
3.7k
mature
tags below

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/71622871

#fearnefic

Secretkeeper
almandines

Summary:

Three years he had prepared for this. Three years to steel his heart and paste a mask of iron upon his face. Three long years, still so few they paled beside a century of meticulous planning.

His own desperate heart should be silent. So he willed it; so it roiled regardless.

an ending, and an unexpected beginning

October 1, 2025 at 2:53 AM Everybody can reply

19 reposts 1 quotes 32 likes 6 saves

5 19 32

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

heavy sigh. i guess we continue

#fearnefic

"And to that matter," he said, turning away from the mirror once again as the Exarch, eyes shrouded in a familiar way that nonetheless closed tight around Urianger's heart. "I would leave nothing unsaid."

He swallowed hard. "Nor I."

For he had done it before and would not walk the path of that particular grief ever again.

The Exarch stepped up to him slowly and placed both hands on his chest, then wrapped his fingers around the narrow silken sleeves of his robes and pulled him downward.

"Please," Urianger whispered. "Not with eyes thus hidden."

September 28, 2025 at 10:53 PM Everybody can reply

5 reposts 10 likes

3 5 10

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

preemptive grief

#fearnefic

"You're to depart at sunrise, then."

The Crystal Exarch's words fell heavily in the silence. It was a different sort of quiet than the usual calm found here, and it would not take a scholar to deduce the why of it.

In the Exarch's private chambers, a humble repurposed storage room just off the Ocular, a single small window bored meticulously into the crystal hung open, shutter rattling in the breeze and a calm beam of moonlight piercing the dark.

Urianger stared at his hands, folded tightly in his lap as he sat perched on the edge of a bed he knew he would never wake in again beyond the morrow.

"Indeed," he said. "So sayeth the Warrior of Light. Time floweth ever forward."

A soft sigh drifted from across the room where the Exarch waited beside his desk, hood pulled down and fingers running slowly through his own hair, and perhaps the most comforting part of all of this was Urianger's knowledge that tomorrow would be the final time his companion would ever have to don such a disguise and walk beneath the shroud of secrecy.

Would that he had the same luxury, he thought. But he pushed it away. He would bear that burden gladly should it mean preserving the legacy that crystal hand had wrought.

"So it does," the Exarch said. "Though this is not yet farewell. The sun will rise, and who is to say what is to come with the morning?"

Urianger shook his head and shut his eyes for a long moment. "A dubious question, thou must admit."

The Exarch only chuckled. "Perhaps."

Three years he had prepared for this. Three years to steel his heart and paste a mask of iron upon his face. Three years, so few they paled beside the century of life and love poured into this plan. His own desperate heart should be silent.

So he willed it; so it roiled regardless.

September 28, 2025 at 2:51 AM Everybody can reply

17 reposts 1 quotes 35 likes 2 saves

6 17 35

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

vomited out some shb and i feel better now

#fearnefic | #arina

"So, 'the others,' is it?"

Thancred ran his fingers through his hair. It was poorly kept, clearly chopped short with careless hands and then allowed to once again grow nearly to the length it was when she'd found him in Dravania. His new weapon—new only to her, if the notches and scuffs on the metal were anything to go by—lay between them on the ground.

He did not look at her.

"It's been five years, Arina."

She'd been warned. The Exarch had told her, and so had Alisaie, who had been there at home right there with her while she sat vigil by Thancred's bedside just a week ago.

"Three weeks," she said softly. "Since you—since the Alliance meeting, I mean, when—"

"Five years," he repeated, and she swallowed her next words. "If you came here with hope, I am sorry. Hope is for those with the luxury of time, and I'm afraid we've run out."

He gestured to the sky above them, a green and yellow haze drifting just beneath the roiling endless daylight.

"I had hoped," she said. "After everything, I'd hoped we could just be. Finally, just be. They told me how long it had been and I still hoped…"

"That I'd hold a candle for a long lost lover I didn't think I'd ever see again?" His voice was low and so, so tired.

She shrugged, though he didn't turn around to see it.

"I suppose you're right," she said. "It's just… a lot to process. These 'others,' then…"

"You'll recall your own others, in my absence of only a year, won't you?"

Arina bit down on her tongue.

She shut her eyes and took a deep breath of the air filled with unfamiliar florals and aether just light-soaked enough to be sour, and opened her mind to him. She'd told herself she wouldn't—that it wasn't worth the toll on her own psyche, that now that she had a choice when to pry into the mind of her… friend, she wouldn't do it. She supposed she'd lied to herself about that, too, then.

Unconscious, soulless, lying still and breathing shallow, he'd carried nothing for the Echo to latch onto, and so it was almost a relief when the familiar taste of rust flooded her mouth, and under it simmered resentment, sweet in the way vegetables become sweet as they begin to rot. But it was the aching feeling of a fist squeezed tight around her heart that compelled Arina to tamp down the Echo once again, and with another deep breath, shut herself away.

"That was different," she finally said as the heartache faded, leaving behind only her own, similar but gentle, like a mimicry beside his which had festered and atrophied for half a decade.

"Was it?" he said.

"We weren't together then, there was no—"

"Were we not?"

Arina dropped into silence once again.

We move forward. Together.

We're in this together one way or another, aren't we?

September 16, 2025 at 5:45 AM Everybody can reply

9 reposts 1 quotes 21 likes

2 9 21

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

post-ARR wolcred
4.3k
explicit
tags below

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/70575221

#fearnefic | #arina

Midnight Air
almandines

Summary:
She knew it was a terrible burden to place on him, but they both knew it was a burden that could not be placed anywhere else.

Honesty did not bring her the clarity she sought, but at least it meant that on nights like these she had a place. Sometimes it felt like she spent her nights in Thancred's bed more than her own, while he sat vigil as she drifted back to sleep.

misery loves company

September 9, 2025 at 7:30 AM Everybody can reply

22 reposts 25 likes 3 saves

2 22 25

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

anyway more wip because i'm diseased

#fearnefic | #arina

"You owe me nothing."

Arina pulled away from his hand and sat upright. "If I owe you nothing, Thancred, then you owe me nothing either. Or do you forget that I nearly killed you when I was in control of my hands?"

Rust, iron, blood, copper, so thick and overwhelming she could choke on it.

She put her back to the window and let the blankets fall away, his swirling self-hatred mixing with anger that rose like bile in her throat to meet it. "Do you think you deserve to suffer? Because if that's true, then so do I."

He shot upright and closed the distance she'd made between them.

"Stop talking," he growled, and in an instant his hands grasped her shoulders and his lips were on hers, tearing the air from her lungs for a frenzied few seconds. He broke the kiss before the fear of breathlessness could set in and leaned his forehead against hers, his own breath heavy and measured. "Stop talking."

September 9, 2025 at 12:59 AM Everybody can reply

6 reposts 16 likes

2 6 16

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

(whispers) is it wip time?

post-arr wolcred

#fearnefic | #arina

"They think we're a couple," she said in lieu of an unwanted question.

"Hard to convince anyone otherwise, what with the number of times you've been seen leaving my bedroom in the mornings, you know."

She smiled at that. "I'm not tying you down," she said. "If you miss your old ways, I'll survive a bad night or two alone."

Thancred pulled the blankets up around his shoulders, and beneath them his hand found her waist. His thumb met the hem of her shirt and slipped under it. She watched the way he ran his tongue over his teeth, how his eyes focused on the wall rather than her face, and how none of his visible consternation reflected at all in the gentle way he touched her. She wondered if he feared what his hands could do if he were less careful.

September 8, 2025 at 3:20 AM Everybody can reply

11 reposts 19 likes

2 11 19

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

pre-ShB exarch/urianger
4.2k
mature
tags below

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/38064286

#fearnefic

A cover image for the fanfiction linked in the post, featuring text atop the floor of the Ocular in the Crystarium

August 28, 2025 at 6:01 PM Everybody can reply

16 reposts 2 quotes 26 likes 1 saves

1 16 26

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

yeah re-outlining and allowing myself some PoV swaps feels like a magic fix. breaking news update, local editor's woes all fixed by structure

#fearnefic

Thancred was well-accustomed to walking in shadow, but not when that shadow belonged to a man.

Cut loose to wander the Crystarium alone, he'd drawn strange glances but little more. The place fair bustled with the displaced and disheveled, and a crowd was as good a camouflage as any, but it was rather impossible to slip by unnoticed when that crowd instead parted in reverence and respect for his hooded escort.

The eyes upon him dug beneath his skin like a bone-deep itch he could not scratch as the Crystal Exarch paraded him through the city, up ramps and stairs to its uppermost levels where rays of scorching not-sunlight beat down hot at all hours.

They walked for an eternity until the sounds of voices—"Exarch!" "My lord!" "'Tis good to see you about!"—finally drowned in the ring of hammers on metal and the full-bodied rush of air through a blacksmith's bellows.

October 21, 2025 at 1:03 AM Everybody can reply

1 reposts 9 likes

2 1 9

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

post-HW wolcred
3.9k
mature
tags below

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/45479410

for @ievaxol.bsky.social

#fearnefic

a cover image for the fic linked above, edge of the world, with a shot of the walls surrounding Ishgard in the snow

August 28, 2025 at 6:24 PM Everybody can reply

6 reposts 6 likes 1 saves

1 6 6

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

fray/wol/sid
5.3k
explicit
tags below

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/45651382

#fearnefic | #wolsid

A cover image for the fic linked above, featuring a lamp on a table in a dark space, plus the title and author name from the post.

August 28, 2025 at 6:10 PM Everybody can reply

14 reposts 1 quotes 18 likes 1 saves

1 14 18

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

cw: noncon, violence

ARR wolcred (+lahabrea)
17.6k, complete
explicit
tags below

🔗 archiveofourown.org/works/698504...

#fearnefic | #arina

Revenant
almandines

Summary:

"I didn't know," she said, her voice low and aching, the tears returning in full force but this time out of anger. "If I had known, I never would have…"
"I know."

damage is done and begins to mend

Notes:
read the tags, thanks

August 28, 2025 at 6:26 PM Everybody can reply

21 reposts 1 quotes 35 likes 4 saves

1 21 35

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

I wrote about it, as one does

#fearnefic | #anora | #wolsid

“Listen, Anora.”

There’s a strange waver to Sidurgu’s voice as he says her name.

“Hmm?” she hums, pausing her slow morning ritual to set down the steaming mug of tea he’d brought her on the bedside table in favor of offering him her full attention.

He lingers for a long, silent moment, staring past the open door of a battered armoire—one of the only items yet remaining in the bedroom that had belonged to him alone.

“I… I wanted to offer you something. I, uh, kept it from before.”

And when he turns she sees in one hand a bundle of fabric adorned with a dull, tarnished metal which looks like it may once have gleamed gold. In the other, he holds pair of small plate pauldrons, pockmarked and battle-scarred. A set of light armor, nondescript but terribly unforgettable.

“It’s an old set,” he says. “Not in great shape, and it would never fit me, but… couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it.”

She raises an eyebrow. He’s never been a materially sentimental person, really, quicker to fall back on asceticism and simplicity, and preferring to scowl at what things irked him over ever putting words to desires.

“That’s awfully sentimental of you,” she says softly.

“Yeah, well…” he says, taking a hesitant step toward her with the armor set held out in front of him as if he’s afraid to bring it too close to his own chest. “Anyway. It might be a bit big, but I imagine with some adjustments you could probably get some use out of it.”

He drops it into her arms rather unceremoniously the moment she holds them out.

“Just, do whatever you want with it.”

She frowns at the cloth as it spills over her lap onto the unmade bed, but Sidurgu has long made up his mind, and knows it isn’t worth stopping him as he takes a few purposeful strides toward the door.

“If you’re sure,” she says as he pushes through it out of the room.

It takes three days of a smith’s effort to refit the armor closer to Anora’s size, and a hefty amount of her own to convince him not to polish and replace the dull and damaged pieces in the process.

It’s oddly cathartic to put the thing on, but at the same time something about seeing the angular cut of the fabric and rich, uncharacteristic blues of the trim on herself floods her with a feeling she’d long forgotten—like two souls walk together, though this time there is no struggle to know which one is hers.

But it isn’t the armor or even the feeling that causes her heart to seize before opening the front door of the run-down apartment, wondering whether the figure Sidurgu sees enter their home will be more of her or a ghost.

She isn’t given an opportunity to tell, as when she finds him sitting on the end of the bed, he only looks down at his feet.

October 2, 2025 at 11:23 PM Everybody can reply

6 reposts 10 likes

6 10

fearne

@almandines.bsky.social

to be known is to be loved. please know I sobbed over this art hitting my inbox because I literally just put "you know me, go wild" in my request, and Pach referenced this old snip completely unprompted

#forfearne | #fearnefic | #anora | #wolsid

A screenshot of text:

There are four stoneware plates on the counter. Two are chipped. One is properly broken, a jagged fissure running straight down the middle, its repair job shoddy but effective enough to keep using. One is intact still, somehow, withstanding the trial of far more years than simple dishes usually see.

Sidurgu Orl has never been one to replace things.

At least, not until absolutely necessary. He knows the reasons, and so do the people who matter. He doesn’t dwell on it—not anymore.

And so it does not matter that the towels are ratty and torn, that the glass of the window is cracked and stopped up with a rag to keep out the drafts, or that the handle has broken clean off his old favorite coffee mug. It only matters that he has a favorite mug, that the apples are fresh, and that there is now a tiny herb garden growing in little clay pots along the windowsill, drafts be damned.

He’d tried his best over three and a half years to make this place into a home—to keep it warm and safe and functional, even if he hadn’t the time nor the resource to make it anything more than sparsely furnished and decorated. But, he supposes, it never really felt like one. Not until—

“I’m home.” Two quiet words accompany the click of the deadbolt on the front door.

Hearing it in her voice—home—could perhaps convince him.

September 9, 2025 at 12:31 AM Everybody can reply

4 reposts 7 likes 1 saves

1 4 7