In Which Solace Gets A Concussion and Hears A Godess

Sounds simple enough, but that was a bit of a tall order for someone who was dead, Sol thinks.

Oh wait. If he were dead, he wouldn't be thinking, would he? Or maybe  the afterlife was real after all. At least, he wouldn't be feeling like  shit—his nerves slowly come back online, and gee, all of them are  screaming to get into contact.

So if he wasn't dead, he was close to it. He wrenches his eyes open,  half expecting that Dalamud would still be devouring the sky above. It is not. The skies are still blanketed in a bloody grey tone of ash and smoke and  dust, but the imminent moon is nowhere to be seen. Sol coughs, his  nervous system strikes up a new song, and his coughing turns to  wheezing. The battlefield is far too quiet.

Hear, feel, think.

Except for the call.

It seems to be coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. If Sol  could reach into his ears and scratch his brain, he would. The words  tickle his mind. His thoughts still feel like they're stumbling  drunkenly home, but somehow it seems like he'd seen that moon fall  before—before now. Before this time. Sometime a long, long time ago. The  rational part of his conscious, which was still sipping a drink and  watching from the sidelines, points out that it doesn't make sense. He's  only twenty-five years old, but somehow he's imagining the skies  falling many centuries—many hundreds of centuries ago.

Solace groans with as much breath as he has to spare and figures if  he hasn't died already, he certainly will very soon if he doesn't get  out of here, and maybe some care for the dizziness and pounding in his  head. The words cycling through it, if a bit ticklish, ease the  disorientation a bit.

He's hearing, he's feeling, and regrettably, he's thinking. Those  bastards left him for dead, didn't they. Fled when they saw Dalamud  coming down on them with murderous intent.

This gives him pause. He doesn't actually remember if the red moon's  fall was a hallucination or not. Certainly some of those fragmented  images were—some seemed to be of the future and some of the past—central  to them all being a large crystal, like the mother of all aethyrites.  His memories weren't really behaving themselves right now, not following  a linear pattern of events.

At the urging of the echoing words in his head, he pushes through the  complaints of what seems like every nerve ending he's ever had the  displeasure of having, rolling onto his side and then into a push up.  Dried blood, presumably, makes itself known by the way the fabric of his  uniform has been glued to his skin, but he has little time for that.  Just moving those few feet into a sort of groveling position has his  vision swimming with floaters.

He studies the gravel for a minute. The plants here are small and tough, putting up tiny flowers through the hard, rocky soil.

Sol barfs on them.

"Urgh."

The interest of not collapsing in a puddle of spew has him sit up  properly on his knees, wavering a little both with pain and a persisting  dizziness. He breathes heavily.

This stupid uniform helmet is foiling his perception. In a fit of  impulse he tears it off and throws it away, suddenly beset by the  freedom from visual and auditory impairment, though his brain still  feels sluggish, the fresh air on his head feels good. As it bounces away  and stops next to a large rock, Sol notices a large dent in it - the  metal underneath making the fabric wrinkle strangely. Mind floating, he  wonders if that was there before he threw the thing. Yeesh.

He looks out across the destroyed plain, the overcast sky hanging  high overhead. His mouth feels dry. A soldier died here. He's going to  be whatever he wants now.

He could really go for a nice bath and a change of clothes. Forget  this Garlean thing, he's going to wear a ring on every finger and get  his ears pierced.