When Miziutte opened her eyes, she was unsure if she had opened them at all. Her body ached, and she felt almost weightless in spite of that. Her mind was a swirl of confusion, "Am I dead? Is this what it feels like..." she wondered aloud, noting that she could hear her own words. They echoed and warped in the unseeable surrounds, and she tried to pick out anything but darkness around her. The woman instinctively reached for her own hand, to spin at her ring, and found solace in that she could hear the words as they echoed, a twisted, uncomfortable sound. Regardless, she tried a few more words, testing her voice and surroundings, "Sable?! Min'to!" If this was a dream, maybe they'd wake her. It wouldn't be the first time she'd woken up from a night terror with Min'to staring down at her, white-knuckled hands to her shoulders, shaking her awake.

She swallowed hard, trying to retrace what had happened. She let the Allagan girl out, she told Eir no, she tried to break away and Eir had...what HAD Eir done? There was a vague recollection of a man (was it a man?) in a dark robe, shouting, Eir's bloody face, he pointed at her, at Eir, at her again, more shouting...It was all a fog, and she was running, running as fast as she could from the pair. She recalled pain in her legs, searing hot, and she remembered falling. Miziutte ran a hand down her thigh, indeed feeling torn leggings and dried blood. Whatever Eir or the man had hit her with had torn them up well, and she felt several cuts still bleeding.

The realization that she was still bleeding was sobering and terrifying, especially since she couldn't feel or see her surroundings at the moment. Any manner of creature could be lurking, and fresh blood was not a smell she wanted tied to her in unfamiliar lands. She kept her eyes open as far as she physically could manage, still straining to see anything as she tried to remember what happened. As she did so, Miziutte removed her jacket, hastily tearing some strips out of the inner lining to bandage her legs. She'd fallen, yes, but into something, not to the ground. Legs still burning, she'd fallen into...nothing? She remembered a shimmer before her eyes as she began to fall, like the ripple of an invisible curtain. Miziutte recalled the screams of both Eir and the Allagan girl as she fell.

The Allagan girl. That thought reverberated in the Elezen's mind. She thought a silent prayer for her, wherever she was, that she'd gotten away safely. In contrast, her next thought was a silent plea that Eir hadn't. Who was that strange man, she pondered as she tied the bandages, all quickly soaking with blood. Placing a hand over her leg, she attempted to cast her own weak Physick, something to help speed along the staunching of the blood. It was about all she was good for when it came to healing, and she wanted to do what little she could while she was still safe. Was she safe, though? Her face paled as the spell failed, and failed, and failed. Were her aether reserves tainted? Compromised? Why wasn't it working...?

It was then she heard a noise in the dark, a shifting, a shuffling, and any curiousity fell away in favor of a shivering fear. The instant and repeated failure of the only spell she'd cast since her...was it still something that qualified as a 'fall' when it put you into what seemed almost another world? In that moment, it dawned on her. Everything clicked into place as she realized, whispering, "This...this is the Void, isn't it..." Bile rose in her throat at the realization, panic setting in as all manner of voidsent ran through her mind, the concept of being in their home paralyzing. No wonder she felt weightless, formless. No wonder her Physick failed. There was no Aether here, a realm devoid of the lifegiving substance.

...

Well...not entirely devoid, she realized, her blood running cold. *She* was there, after all.

All manner of thoughts raced to mind, the sudden shifting sounds instantly more terrifying with this revelation. People didn't generally return from the Void, and if that was indeed where she was...she could only pray the Allagan Miqo'te truly lived up to her role as a messenger, and had gotten the message into Blind Eye's hands. The chances of most of the organization being able to free her would be slim, and the message hadn't mentioned anything about her falling into the Void, after all, but it was the only chance she had at this point.

Torn clothes and cuts aside, she began to feel a bit more whole as she put things in order in her mind. Miziutte swallowed hard, trying not to vomit as she worked to make sense of it all. The Void was mostly formless, from what she'd read, but she'd seen evidence to the contrary when she heard the tales of the warriors that stormed the place to seal the Crystal Tower. She'd not been lucky enough to be in the group, to see firsthand the Warrior of Light bungle the plans of such a high-ranking voidsent, but it was proof enough that somebody could come here and return. How had they fought, she wondered, considering that she couldn't see anything around her. Had the Warrior of Light been to some other plane of the Void? Her lack of knowledge on the subject was dauntingly clear, and Miziutte wished she'd spent more time researching it.

Bringing her knees to her chest, she huddled there in the darkness, simply thinking. It had been almost like the ripple of a curtain, what she fell through, and by logic, that dictated there could be others? Perhaps? But what if it was not a natural tear? The man in black had been there, which could have impacted...The Elezen bit her lip, thinking back. He was an anomaly, she'd thought, but upon further introspection, she HAD seen Eir with the man before. A scant few times, granted, such as when Eir had tampered with her Aether, any time that she'd been put under for an experiment herself, in fact. He had always showed up right as she was being put to sleep, and try as she might, she couldn't remember a face to the body, just the robes. It really was no matter, though, in the end. If he was the cause of the tear or not, it wasn't as if she could simply contact him and ask him to reopen it. Though... "YOU! The man in black! You're not here, are you?" Silence. It had been worth a shot, at least...

...Or not. A sound came from her left, something sliding, slick, and enormous, like the sound of a giant slug. Miziutte's eye straining still proved fruitless as SOMETHING approached, and in a desperate attempt to feel even a little safer, she found herself reaching for her tome, blind to the actual contents, and ripped her pen from the binding on the outside, sightlessly scribbling out her Tiger Eye Carbuncle. In a burst of light, the little thing appeared, the construct the only source of light in her surrounds. She almost wished she couldn't see still, as she looked towards the sound, and saw the shambling Mindflayer staring her down. Her skin paled nearly to ash at the sight, attempting to slowly rise. It hurt to put pressure on the leg, but it was stand now, or never stand again, she realized.

Tapping into the natural flow of aether was impossible here, with no flow to find, and the aether she had dammed would have to suffice her until she found a way out...but any combat would empty those reserves quickly. With no idea how long her time here would last, combat seemed an unwise choice. Still, faced with this creature before her, she wasn't sure what else to do. Bracing herself, she waited for it to make the first move, ready to entreat the Carbuncle for a knockback, when she felt the rush of air past her. The construct had begun to attack of its own accord, likely sensing the Mindflayer about to strike. Miziutte found herself attempting to move a few paces back from the fight, her surroundings shifting as she moved. The further from the initial landing spot she moved, the more she could see, and once she'd moved about ten fulms back, the world around her was clear.

An expanse of black surrounded her, but among it, floating crusts of earth and dust adrift in the air. The platform she stood upon could only be called that, no longer an actual landmass. A yawning abyss of deep purple gaped around the land, almost threatening to swallow it whole. On the same note, Miziutte turned from her awe that the scenery at the moment the Mindflayer crunched the Carbuncle, a pitiful squeal as the voidsent shoved it into its maw, and consumed the aether that had bound the construct, leaving nothing behind. The woman knew the construct would only buy her a little time, but she hadn't imagined it would have been *that* little. Its gaze fell upon her immediately after, and she found herself casting Painflare without a second thought, her survival instinct overriding her concern for wasting her aetheric reserves.

The Mindflayer recoiled, and she pulled at its aether, once, twice, draining back at least what it had taken by consuming the Carbuncle. There was no channel of aether to pull from to enter the Trance, however, she realized, and as she scribbled out the enhanced Ruin, time and time again, until the beast fell, it became all too obvious that her reserves would be spent as far as combat went after this one instance. When the voidsent finally stumbled and fell, dissipating back into the hazy air, Miziutte found herself collapsing as well, sinking to her knees in exhaustion. The aether wasn't refilling, her well mostly spent. The emergency flasks of ether at her hip clinked against each other as she fell to the ground, and she hastily grabbed at them, ripping the corks and downing them, one after another, until each of the three were empty. She kept the bottles, fastening them back to the band, and sat there, tired and confused.

It wasn't long before she could stand again, and she found herself wandering. The platform she was on seemed endless as far as her 'left' and 'right' went, though she had no way of finding her actual bearings in the place. 'Forward' and 'back'were less endless, with the huge nothing of purple below her clearly visible. All she could think of to do was walk, to follow the unending ground towards an end, and hope to find something there. After what felt like hours of uninterrupted walking, her mind fuzzy and blank, Miziutte saw a ruin before her, a towering black-bricked spire, half gone and unkempt, the walls glistening with aetheric taint. It was shelter, at the very least, and she found herself climbing the steps unthinking, finding a small, covered room near the top with a tiny window. The floor was bare stone, but it was something out of sight.

Miziutte let herself sprawl on the floor, facing the window and staring at it, bleary-eyed. She could see the entrance and the window from her vantage, which made her feel a degree safer. Lying on the floor, she pulled out her tome again, scribbling a weaker construct, a Topaz Carbuncle. It came small and thin into the world, drawn carefully from her limited reserves, and she bid it keep watch. Giving a curt nod, the Carbuncle stood at attention, its ears and nose and eyes all keenly glittering. Assured she'd done all she could, Miziutte let her eyes droop and mind clear, trying to find some rest among the dark stones.

Was it seconds, minutes, bells, suns, weeks, or moons that she slept? Miziutte didn't know. When her eyes finally opened again amid the white-tainted stones, it stung to open them. The Elezen grimaced, and her face burned. She shifted, and her joints felt like flame. Concerned, she lowered her gaze and found herself nearly throwing up again. The deep purple of the stone and air around her had seeped into her skin, glowing veins of color tracing every ilm of her. Miziutte jumped to attention, examining every part of her, and seeing clearly that it was indeed her entire body covered in this taint. She rubbed at her hand, seeing if it would smear, change in any way, to no avail. The veins of purple and white were hot to the touch, immovable, and her tears landed on her hands before she knew she was crying.

The realization was more than sobering, it was dreadful, it was dismal. Miziutte looked like one of her experiments, and she wondered how long she had before her insides were tainted as badly as her outsides. It was a wonder that the voidsent hadn't consumed her in her sleep. Perhaps it was the guard-construct-- It was then she realized she had not seen the Carbuncle as she awoke, and she searched for it, called it to heel. There was a whisper of a response, but the construct had clearly decayed to an unusable point while she dozed. Recalling what little aether of it she could, Miziutte curled back up into the corner, her only thoughts a desperate memory of home.

Home. A honeyed word in that moment, one that only made the tears fall harder. Home. Home was never further than in that moment, she feared. Far enough away she'd never see it again, most likely. Far enough away that Sable couldn't wipe her tears, far enough away that Min'to couldn't bring a blanket, far enough away that the stack of contracts would never be completed, far enough away that-- Her mind raced with everything she wanted, the mundane, the boring, the obnoxious, the domestic. In that moment, the idea of doing the dishes was appealing, of cleaning the Free Company stables even. Anything to feel the aether-rich star she knew as home around her again.

One never contemplates what it feels like to have no aether around you, ambient in the air, until there is none. For someone trained in arcane arts, the absence is even more noticeable, and it was suffocating. Choking sobs finally gave way to bile and she puked upon the stone, hands bracing against the wall as she retched. She felt no passage of time as she cried, as she climbed the stairs again. Miziutte stood upon the top of the ruins, wondering if she would even die if she jumped off. Was this truly all a bad dream? Would she wake? It all felt unreal, the world continuing to warp and shift ever so slightly as she stood there. From the top, the woman saw much further, and it was malms upon malms of wreakage, of twisted landscape unsure of itself. Sitting down, she sat and watched the swirl of color and of nothing around her, feeling no hunger, just a gnawing lack of aether throughout her whole body.