2019-03-16: The Dark Colossus
- Log: The Dark Colossus
- Cast: Sword Dancer, Ida Everstead-Rey, Catenna, Rosaline Calice, Lily Keil, Gwen Whitlock, Fei Fong Wong, Seraph Lanval, Jacqueline Barber, Chime Isa, Elvis, Tesni Inoue, Josephine Lovelace, Hiro, Elhaym van Houten, Xantia, Seraph Solanine, Cecilia Adlehyde, Jack van Burace
- Where: The Fallen Sanctuary, Elru
- Date: March 16, 2019
- Summary: The final dance.
<Pose Tracker> Sword Dancer has posed.
"They have grown strong."
Before
The wind that blows through this calamity-blasted wasteland is one of a parched kind of warmth. As if this stretch of Filgaia had been drained of any moisture to speak of, it suits the craggy stretches of rock and grainy swathes of sand that surround this stone-wrought ziggurat perfectly, yet stands in strange contrast to the lush greenery that grows over the ruins surrounding it. Like a juxtaposition of what was, and what could be.
It is here at the threshold of this temple that the Trial Knight stands, staring out over the horizon. In their hand, they hold a sword with a blade black as pitch. Its edges thrum with a beating pulse of nauseating violets and icy blues. Cold. And yet...
The knight turns the blade in their hand. Their fingers offer a slight tremble around the hilt. Their head tilts in pensive silence.
And then they lift their armored arm high --
"... But we shall soon see."
-- and plunges that blade into the earth.
"Stay here, for a time. I would bid you provide them one last dance."
The sword throbs, its spiritual illness permeating the sandy earth beneath it, wisps and whispers swirling around it as the knight takes a single step back.
"Perchance then you shall finally know your much-deserved rest."
... Before they turn, wading back into the dark recesses of this place once called a temple.
"... And, mayhap, the hand of a master more worthy of your steel."
Now
Once, this was a sanctuary.
It was beautiful, once. In many ways it still is. Forgotten by most save those Baskars who still dwell in these long-abandoned corners of the world, this fallen sanctuary was once place of power for all Guardians, even -- especially -- the Guardian Lords themselves. It is a confluence of spiritual strength, even now.
Which is no doubt exactly what has led the Trial Knight and their Seraph accomplice to this place.
The Fallen Sanctuary lingers in the in-between places of Elru, where greenery still exists and bleeds in some bittersweet way into the ruin of the rest of the land beyond its verdant borders. Plantlife has grown into the stone walkways and crumbling walls that still dot the landscape leading towards the great, aging shrine beyond. The remains of this temple provide pathways for those who know how to make use of them, for those who know the ways of the Guardians, allowing one to cut time to venture further, quicker, towards the focal point of this sanctuary long lost.
And there, as grassland crumbles away into desert, the entrance to that ziggurat can be found. Even here, the sense of wrongness that has begun to bleed into the spiritual fabric of this place is pervasive. Yet the great stone entryway is opened wide like a yawning maw. There is no one here. Nothing but silence.
Nothing, save a single, black sword, edges pulsing cold bruise hues, lodged firmly into an outcropping of rock just beyond that entryway.
Those who have experience with the Trial Knight might recognize that weapon.
(((pulse)))
The same one that inflicted cowardice upon the ruins of Lahan.
(((pulse)))
The same one that drowned Wehaca in despair.
(((pulse)))
The same one wielded with fury by the Hellionized Garret Stampede.
The Sword Dancer's blade. No. Not its blade.
i am...
The Sword Dancer.
Waiting. Waiting, for those who would seek to go further.
The final gate keeper between the Drifters and their goal.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida hasn't seen much of Elru, but it's left an impression--the Arctican tundra is splendid in its desolation, beautiful, yet increasingly lifeless. In some ways, it's the frozen mirror of the deserts of Ignas. Finding a little pocket of life anywhere on Elru was a surreal experience. After Captain Karlov pointed out it, Ida walked to the Endeavor's bow and just stared at it for a moment. Were places like that more common, once upon a time? If nothing else, it made things all too clear: this place is special.
Ida's armored boots crunch through the sand. Her armored duster blows gently in the wind, and the bodysuit she wears beneath it is freshly-mended, its dull blued-steel patina restored. It's unmistakably Hyadean in make. Ida's right arm is encased in a form-fitting gauntlet that some would know isn't actually a gauntlet.
About fifty yards away, Ida stops, raises her head, and scents the wind. "That's... familiar," she says. She turns to Rosaline, concern in her eyes, as if to ask if she sensed it, too. "Solanine, please--steel yourself. I think I know what the Trial Knight has brought here." Dread churns in her gut. She gestures for Rosaline to follow, and steps closer. It isn't long before the ziggurat's archway comes into view, and with it, the sword.
"The Sword Dancer's blade," Ida says. "The one that Garret--Jack--"
She knows what's coming next.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
Filgaia itself is in danger.
There is only one way to answer this menace.
And that is to set something aside, just this once.
/Something I value more than anything.
~
The journey here was a quiet one for Catenna and the Owlet. If anything has transpired between them, they haven't been keen to share it. They didn't come in with the others.
The Sanctuary of the Guardian Lords is before them - a place Catenna has been seeking since Celesdue whispered to her on the surface of Lunar. <I wish the circumstances of this occasion were not quite so unfortunate,> Saarda-Shanta finally observes, her tone level and cool as ever. If there is any emotion beneath the little Owlet's calm, she shows none of it.
Catenna nods but keeps her eyes forward. As she nears the temple, she frowns as she catches sight of something.
A sword pulsing in the ground. One that's entirely too familiar. The one the Trial Knight had tortured Cyre's village with.
Catenna's expression doesn't change - but in truth, there is no way to tell right now. She picks up her pace slightly and reaches for the item at her side. It is a weapon she doesn't normally carry: A three-pronged steel claw that straps on over her right hand. It's equipped over her usual archer's gauntlet.
It is not the only thing unusual that she has equipped today.
A sharp bootheel hits the ground. Someone squares up to the Sword Dancer, hair blowing the wind.
The person is unrecognizable. They're clad in a grey and blue gi with a tie about the neck, that claw jutting from beneath a flaring sleeve. Their face is hidden behind a round white mask painted across with slashing patterns in blue and grey and gold. The wind teases at long, thick black hair, streaming it out behind her a little.
Then she speaks, and it becomes clear.
GS: Catenna switches forms to Zortroa Shaman Catenna. "Die," Catenna's voice flatly demands of the Sword Dancer from behind the mask, "and get out of my way so that I can kill your masters." Her tone has never been like this before. The closest she came was during the fight with Mother.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.
At last, Krosse was free. And yet, there's no rest for the weary, as the Trial Knight has levelled a threat at all of Filgaia. Rosaline is among those who came to Elru to answer this new challenge. How could she not?
She is at Ida's side, knowing her friend must also be eager to settle the score with the Trial Knight. God willing, it might even be the final time, not that Rosaline is feeling so hopeful on that front. But like most hardships, it's best to take this one step at a time.
"I am sick and tired of all this corruption," Rosaline says, not bothering to hide her irritation. "But at least it hasn't worked its way in too deeply. We still have a little time." She speaks of the spiritual sense she's getting from the place, but also what she sees with her two eyes. So far none of the trees have tried to eat her, which she always takes as a good sign. Something nags at her, however, and she isn't alone in this.
She stops in her tracks when that sword comes into view.
"Is that..." She looks at Ida for a second opinion. Yes, it definitely is. Her nostrils flare, her eyes widen. "It's a shame Jack isn't here. He'll be upset that we destroyed this thing without him."
She draws and loads Esdras and Judith one by one. "...I mean, if we manage to," she adds in a lower voice, realizing too late that she's ruining the moment.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Dry, parched warmth--Lily Keil is accustomed to that much, has spent a great deal of time in the deserts of Ignas... but less, here in Elru. Less, here in these ruins that she searched before and then had no need to visit again, that she recalls learning stories about from those who were there to see it. Her boots crunch over craggy stretches of rock; her footfalls disappear into grainy sand. ....And ahead, there is the green. The beauty of it is something that Lily cannot fail to notice, even with her often utilitarian-seeming perspective...
But there is a strength here, and this in-between place matters. The sanctity of this place matters, its safety, what it was and what it could be...
Really, Lily knows she must take action regardless of her feelings; to her perspective, it's simple necessity, requires no thought, requires no emotion. And yet... And yet, as Lily puzzles her way with the Wolves towards the entrance across the strange pathways--
Perhaps it isn't fair, but the memory of Leon's wound is a knife itself, a blade within that keeps her sharp and stirs her onward because she is mad the closer she gets to this aura of wrongness, towards the silent maw of the entrance, towards... The sword.
Lily has not seen all of its depredations--but... She knows an opponent, when she feels one.
"All right then," the woman in red says, and pulls a simple blade from her side--double-edged, some three and a half feet long. She does not bring the Seraph's staff, this time.
"...Sorry, Elly," Lily says to one of her companions. "I don't think we can do this your way."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"It's here."
Gwen's been scouting since landing on Elru's shores, building on her previous knowledge to travel southward, keeping away from the mysterioys mercenaries(?) that linger near the southern top of the continent. Riding atop her stoic steed, Gullvieg, Gwen pulls the hood of her parka back on as they near the sword's whereabouts. "More or less. I didn't get any closer until we got together and compared notes."
At least it's warmer down here than in New Arctica. But now that they're closer, it's been getting chillier. "Beyond this point we're in unknown territory. Look alive, this is where things are probably gonna get hairy." She pauses, shrugging with a self-effacing grin. "Or lead t'absolutely nothin', but that's kinnddaa why I compared notes with folks?"
Either way, she's dismounting, undoing the buckles on her right glove, especially as Ida confirms it. "... So I wasn't just seein' things, then. Looked real familiar through my binoculars." She looks back to Ida, and then to Rosaline, a small smile on her lips. "He can take his complaints up with alla us when it's over. I'm sure he'll find it in his heart t'forgive us."
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei didn't chase after K.K because he hated K.K or even out of a concern for the planet. Fei chased after K.K because he had made a vow that he would not allow his mistakes to fuel other tragedies. It is Hiro, in fact, who set him on this path long ago when he informed him of the trouble at Lahan, a place Fei would never have gone back to if not for him.
He had caused enough pain. He didn't want to cause any more. Especially that mistake. And yet here he is, on the continent he had ruined. This may not be the location of that fatal blow but the destruction here led to destruction elsewhere which led to further destruction yet. It was as if a difficult uneasy balance had wavered here once but his alterego had set the tightrope aflame.
Seeking something to convenient to blame for your violence. You shall find it not.
"You're doing a good job making it convenient..." He mutters to himself.
He sees it. The Sword Dancer. His own actions empowered it. Perhaps back then he would not have said anything, but...
What is the nature of your fear, Fei Fong Wong? Did you conquer the trial without ever seeing it?
"So much to be afraid of." He murmurs to himself. "...But now I know it's fear, not an inevitable truth."
He shifts into a cautious stance as he approaches.
"...But is this why he empowered this blade? Just to...stall us in the end?" He finds himself glancing towards Rosaline. He smiles at her, briefly. Catenna is kind of unnerving her, but he stands at the ready, tightening those Devil Arm gloves around his hands tightly.
"You don't think Thermo Dragon will work?" He asks of Lily, misunderstanding what she means.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Lanval spent some time resting up after manifesting at a key time through the siege of Lahan to try and punch a Symbological barrier to allow the collected to accost King Krono and his court mage. It worked, but he felt it important to conserve his strength. A hardened spirit as he might have on top of his centuries of service in stopping the Malevolence concentrations from getting any thicker where he once sit aside, some precautions need to be kept.
It doesn't stop him from occasionally producing clean, fresh water for the desert travel.
"It'sh gettin' thicker," Lanval remarks from within his bottle vessel. Most of them are spiritually sensitive enough to 'get' what he's feeling, but as an entity attuned to spiritual energies, he makes a fine enough compass. "'m thinkin' it'sh gonna be closhe by. If ya shee anything out there..."
By the time he says this, mortal eyes will already be able to behold the ziggurat and the single pulsating blade that denotes the waiting Sword Dancer.
It may be the only element of humor afforded for the gathered, as the drowsy water elemental stirs within the bottle. A fresh cork jammed into the bottle's neck stirs and jostles, as if testing its security - a final stopgap to let him know that he knows why he's here, what he might expect to see, and be surrounded by. In some vague way, the spirit 'visually' sweeps the gathered - the majority of whom call this place home.
It's his home now, too.
The cork pops out with one last expulsion of watery power, the cork popping off and bouncing as litter off the ziggurat's archway to come to rest in the sand.
A flash of aquamarine light leaves the bottle, and there is the portly manifestation who has found it in himself to stay upright and on his feet today.
Both eyes open half-lidded as he has a drink from a gourd attached to a rope.
Ida speaks of familiarity of what it is. Rosaline expressed some doubt about whether they can. Someone whose voice resembles another he knows but has the similarities come to a halt states with certainty what she intends for what's in their way.
"Manage...? We're gonna." Lanval reassures with a stupid cat-like smile on his face. He doesn't dwell on what will happen if they don't - that's dangerous. Just what they're here for and what they're doing.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Upon receiving news of what it was the Trial Knight and Ragnell intended to do, Jacqueline and the Caravan Kinship set out immediately to try and track them down.
Their travels brought them to Elru, to the Fallen Sanctuary. Finding it was not easy. Few remembered its location, even fewer knew of its existence.
But find it they did. Need and desperation drove them further, taking in every bit of information that would help narrow down their destination.
And, eventually, they found it.
The temple looks as if it had seen much. When was the last time a human had set foot within the Sanctuary? Jacqueline could scarcely fathom.
But, something certainly had - the sense of wrongness pervading the grounds and that blade plunged into the ground was all too familiar.
"...Lahan...Wehaca..." Jacqueline murmurs, with a degree of shock. "...If it's here, then..."
Then there was one last obstacle to face before they could confront the Trial Knight. But, fortunately, she won't be facing it alone.
The first person that attracts her attention is the one in the mask. It's a familiar voice, one she would never mistake.
"...Catenna...?" Jacqueline whispers quietly. She was...a little taken aback. She could understand why Catenna was so, well, intense, though. A threat against the Guardians...
And something Ida says catches her attention, as well.
Solanine was here, too? And so was Lanval...she was a little concerned for them, but she was glad, at least, to know they were around.
<Pose Tracker> Chime Isa has posed.
Ever the sometimes random presence into events, Chime joined the group searching out the Fallen Sanctuary. Partially, because why not. Partially, because a lost place of legend. Mostly because the story didn't end at Krosse, simply turned a new chapter and a story unfinished was awful.
The short ARMs Meister tilts her head as she positions herself along the back middle of the group where she can mostly see ahead around arms and bodies, curious at the sword before them she'd heard some tales of but never seen herself. Of course, the creature it's with is more immediately important too.
Chime doesn't unholster through right away as she watches and listens for the moment to gather what information she can from the comments to decide what she could do to best help. And offer a cheerful, unfazed smile to any that glance her way.
<Pose Tracker> Elvis has posed.
This was it.
No more games. No more words. For such an implacable and inscrutable a foe as K.K. was, his wishes were made clear at Krosse. To poison this planet and finish the job Mother had tried to do. Yet questions linger. If he wanted to planet dead, why would the Trial Knight not assist the Metal Demon matriarch? Why would he simply not used the power of the Orb he had to destory his enemies? Why tell his foes of his scheme? Any sensible being would keep it hidden, all the more chance to be successful?
Sentinel Elvis is fairly certain he has K.K. pegged for what he is, but time will tell if it is correct.
It didn't take long to gain deployment from the nearby Veruni Control Zone. "Be wary of the lands around Garlyle. If things go wrongly, send word to Lord Volsung. This demands our attention."
---
Elvis has arrived on scene, making sure to be whole and ready for what may come. If this is the final act of the Trial Knight, he would be ready fo such an event. The lands around are decimated from past battles, and yet there is serenity to be held i nthis one place. Physically, rather.
Something is already amiss on the level of the soul. "We shall see this through," he comments to the oncoming drifters. "Or we must begin to count the days we lay our heads to rest." Eyes flick toward Lily, Elly and Fei. The talk will have to continue to wait. If they survive this endeavor, that is.
Same toward Gwen, but he offers her words. "This is dangerous. Are you certain you wish to be here?" he asks. He offers a smile. One could posit it was a rhetorical question. As if he knew the answer already.
"I have heard tales of this weapon in reports. It certainly won't be an easy opponent. Lest... wasn't someone supposed to wield it? Unless its bearer has yet to show themselves." He holds a ball of synthetic cloth in his hand and looks to it. "...Not today. No restraint..." he says, pocketing it away. A massive fist clenches, feeling waves of cold wash out from the sword's direction. An ancient heartbeat. It cloys and chokes slowly, and will strangle this land if left be in time. "How was it defeated before?" he asks aloud. It was time to assess the situation. Was it even defeated before, is a better one, left unasked.
<Pose Tracker> Tesni Inoue has posed.
There were so many things in this sealed forbidden system that turned how Tess thought the universe worked on its head. From things like gods or things close enough to be considered such, elder evils that only had a place in entertainment and legend. All of it really was this system some sort of filter to the rest of the universe at large? She didn't know. Yet she found her self sticking her neck out again and again for it. How much of this stuff was flotsam from the Federation or other Galatic powers? She didn't know and feared it went back to the very ship she has been searching for, for most of her life. She'd also harboured some dreams of high adventure as a child, well now she had it and then some.
Well she had her wish, and she was going to stick her neck out for these twins words that she had started to love nearly as much as Earth.
This place left with a mix of awe and sadness. This was a holy place once and now it's been desecrated.
her boots echo she walks cradling the Dead Man's ARM, the weapon is locked and loaded, she mutters a prayer and wonders if the god she worships is even listening today. There is much fear in her as she enters this place.
She ratchets the lever of her ARM and looks ahead.
"So this is it?"
Then she looks to see Catenna and she does know how serious this is she will turn to Jacqueline for a brief moment. There are no words with how intense Catenna is? That alone tells how high the stakes are today.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
The travel east has done little to stifle the fury that fulminates just beneath the surface.
Maybe it's projection -- as the Trial Knight had said, it was never truly them that Josie was angry at.
Maybe it's the factor of another threat, with unknown but certainly unpleasant if not existential effects for the planet.
Maybe, even, it's the presence of Malevolence itself, nagging like an old unhealed injury.
Maybe it's just a mixture of all the above, with a hearty dollop of frustration from her inability -- even before the business with her father, with Krosse -- to find a lead in the wastes.
Maybe it's also just for far, far pettier reasons than any of the above.
She comes to a stop in the greenery, following the trail that has to here led.
"I can feel it. Ugh," she comments, with a grimace. "It's enough to give a girl a first-class headache..."
It's completely, utterly silent. Even the birds don't dare sing.
If there are now birds.
"Hey, isn't that..."
Slowly, she sets the cannon she's dragged all this way.
(Another reason to twist the knife when she catches up to them, perhaps?)
"It's that sword. There was one like it in Lahan. Before..."
She trails out.
"Get ready. I'm guessing they've left us a little trap," she says, glancing between Fei, Elly, and Lily. Gritting her teeth, she slides her rifle out from its holster across her back.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
"What are you going to say to Ragnell when we find her?"
"... ... I don't know."
"Well I KNOW that I'm going to give her a piece of my mind!"
The wind howls, but Ruby is louder. Spelling out every invective she had to say about what Ragnell had done. Hiro didn't stop her. In fact - he listened to it all for once - he was just thinking about something else at the same time. He did so as calamity blasted landscape becomes that green liminal place, becomes desert again. "... and furthermore! I hate her crummy hat! ... ... ... ... Okay that one was a lie."
A good story. Too bad that story is a lie.
His eyes slide over to Ruby before squinting at the Ziggurat in the edge of where they were going.
Every word I said was true. But the story was a lie.
Across they went... the Ziggurat becoming higher and higher. The desert a contrast of Filgaia- of Elru's extremes. A perfect place for malevolence. Where both extremes of nature that seem like contradictions to each other do their best to kill you. Why shouldn't it poison you emotionally too?
Ruby had stopped chatting halfway to wind herself up on his shoulder and in his scarf.
"It's not a matter of believing in others. It's a matter of understanding them. They will not make it easy. They never do - because until you know the whole story..."
It can't be said that Hiro's expression has changed much as he enters. He's been quiet the whole way. Perhaps it's a sign that he's more focused - determined. Or perhaps it's a sign of something else.
"...Everything. Everyone is a lie by omission."
The sword is familiar from Lahan of course - with each sickening pulse he realizes it more and more, "Oh swell! This thing again!" Sure back then he'd left it to the Shepherd's retinue, while the rest of them went to try to draw Virginia out of her despair. Every pulse now seems to hold a different truth to it. One he just can't quite grasp. Why?
"Hey Ruby..." Hiro says as he draws out his blade, as he straps his shield to his opposite forearm. The little dragoncat had already fluttered skyward, but she looks back down at him, "Huh? What is it?" "... I know what I'll say to her now." Ruby looks at him like he's sprouted a new head. "... What the heck!? Don't worry about that right now! This thing is right in front of us! Not her!"
The youth opens his mouth a little - like whatever train of thought he had just came to a screeching halt. And suddenly he can only pay attention to the others who are here, rather than whatever his internal landscape had been. "Thermo Dragon is a really good spell." He agrees with Fei, also totally misunderstanding, "Though maybe Lily means the two of them should combine their magic because this thing is so tough?"
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly, of course, is here. She has been subdued in the transit. Her thoughts have turned back to the time she met K.K. in Bledavik, and how her leg still has the faint scars of the bite of the wolf, and how they might not come back.
She smiles at Lily at the joke. It is the first time she has smiled in the last week. It turns into an actual, stifled, but real giggle at what Fei says.
"No," she says, "I understand."
Elly's eyes turn towards her feet.
"I've thought a lot, after... that. I think that there is the challenge that comes up with anything, really... that people will know your strategy. Like... Fei, in RPS, you know how you can tell that some people will always pick P or S, right? That they just like those, or they have good luck with it... or you know that they'll always change it up, and you can use that. It might not always work but your chance is the best, and if you make your chances work for you..."
Elly sweeps back her hair. "... the problem with peace is that when the other people expect you to react that way... they can plan around that... and use it against you. So I suppose this is a place where what matters isn't your actions so much as your heart."
Elly looks to Fei now. "I learned that from watching you in the field," she tells him. "In all those digs. When someone usually does something... but not always... then it's much, much harder to beat them, isn't it...?"
At this point Elly quiets. Not least because other people are speaking. She looks at Catenna with some concern, but then her head turns at the encouraging sound of Ruby and her bodyguard, Hiro. Elly's cheeks flush slightly. ("... you don't have to praise it so much - I mean, I know it's effective...")
ANd in conclusion, she gives Josie one firm nod, and says no more. There is not much more to be said, not yet.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
It's a different kind of climate in Elru than last time Xantia was here. Or perhaps it's just because of the region. Of course either way, it doesn't change her choice of dress any. The only reason she's wearing something different than last time is that she's got this new armor, and that's just what you wear when going into combat. And also when you're not, because it would be a waste not to wear it all the time, wouldn't it?
Either way, these particular surroundings feel... special. All that she's seen of Elru so far has ranged from snow-covered to blighted beyond hope of recovery. Seeing any greenery at all makes this place feel a lot more alive by comparison. A patch of hope flourishing among devastation.
Somehow, it feels fitting that of all places in Elru, K.K. would seek out the nicest one. Ruining nice things is just what they do, she's pretty sure at this point. But of course there's more at stake here. Perhaps not all would describe Filgaia using the word 'nice', but either way there's only possible response to a challenge like the one the Trial Knight posed this time.
Not that Xantia would ever complain about needing to solve a problem with violence.
Though she has a bad feeling upon approach, she initially interprets it as the 'I hope we're not too late' kind of bad feeling, instead of what's really waiting for them up ahead. That is, until she sees that blade up ahead. She's well familiar with that one. She grits her teeth, experiencing myriad emotions as a result, but what wins out is simple... frustration.
"Not again." She turns to regard the reactions of her fellow Black Wolves. In spite of the tense atmosphere, a smile finds its way to her features. "Don't worry. All we need to do is smash it. Again. Nothing we can't handle, right?"
She should know it's not as simple as she's making it out to be. But Xantia's attitude always tends towards the most simple, most optimistic possible view of a situation. Sometimes one might wonder, is that just how she is, or is she consciously choosing to act this way to try and lighten the mood of others?
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Solanine has posed.
Seraph Solanine beholds in quiet wonder, a place on Filgaia that still grows green, that still flows with the power of its spirits, a power she can sense and though not the same make of her own, finds it a welcome respite from the usual experience of a world in daecay. But, she could feel it too, the hatred, the anger, the Malevolence. A plague from her world now blighting this one, and this place of all places.
Ida's warning falls on her welcome ears, and she thinks of her new Vessel they created together, a flower of living metal now tucked in the scarf around her neck.. Sola is touched for her concern, and heeds her warning. In response she nods and summons shadows to herself that manifest as plates of light armor, and a hooded cloak of shadow, to indicate that she is bracing herself, for whatever the Hellion now horribly visible before them has in store.
She doesn't recognize the focus of the Malevolence, but among them are those who do, and she listens to their warnings, their personal interplays, their advice, silently. There are many assembled here who the Shadow Seraph has crossed paths with before and regard with respect, if not fondness. It had been a long time since she'd faced a Malevolent entity of this level, and she's less sure of the Trial Knight save what she's heard in the legends and writings of her lost hero, but seeing those assembled here, and knowing what she's here for.. she's certain she's in the right place. She observes the Sword Dancer calmly, and waits for an opening.
<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.
Cecilia had gone to Krosse to try and plead with the King, to soothe the Malevolence ripping the country apart. That had worked out, in its way. But the machination behind it had been deeper than she expected.
Much, much deeper. Cecilia has not been terribly open about her thoughts regarding the Seraph Ragnell and what Cecilia can only see as treachery. She has been rather less jaggedly furious than the last several times someone has gone out of their way to betray her in person, which is probably a sign of personal growth. Probably, anyway.
She hasn't had the luxury to ruminate on it, admittedly.
> Shaman....
They'd been quiet for months - speaking to her rarely even after Mother's jamming had been ended.
> East, Shaman...
But the dreams had returned. The voices. The headaches weren't as bad as they were, but she still felt...stuffed. Like her skull were a sack full of too much flower.
> You have a work to undertake.
Cecilia approaches the Lost Sanctuary with the small band of those that would accompany her. She stares up at the fallen temple, her face quiet and unreadable. "We have to stop them," she murmurs. "Whatever it takes."
She sets her staff, drawing the Ley around her in preparation. "The blade," she murmurs. "I feel it..."
<Pose Tracker> Sword Dancer has posed.
The Sword Dancer. It was always the Sword Dancer.
The weapon -- the Helion -- looks inert, almost lifeless, save for the steady pulse like a heartbeat that makes its methodical thrum along the edges of its blade. Like any other object, magical though it might be. But it can be felt. The life there. The sensation. The feeling. Accumulated emotions, wraping themselves around the blade, directionless and spiteful.
Sentiment from a time long past, clinging like rust on a chipped blade.
And here it lingers, alive with the rust of sentiments not its own, sentient with the memories and feelings of others. Unmoving. Simply beating, one pulse at a time. Waiting. For them. Just... waiting.
Until Catenna approaches, her voice flat, her demand simple.
Die
And something within that tone resonates. The blade reacts.
you're still flailing around with that little stick
The words are felt more than they are heard, communication through sentiment that feels like seething frost crystallizing at the back of one's thoughts. They hardly even seem like a response to Catenna, specifically; the words are hollow, lacking weight. Like someone reciting the lines of a play they once heard. Retelling a story they were told a long time ago.
annoying
(((pulse)))
BGM: The Dark Colossus Returns - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCXs6GsWR3c
And a quake trembles outward from the blade with one, shuddering thrum of life.
(((pulse)))
we are hatred...
(((pulse)))
lost souls, trapped by wrath unsated...
(((pulse)))
a rusted blade...
(((pulse)))
have you the strength to free us...?
(((PULSE)))
Rage, cold as the most frigid tundra, ripples off the sword in a sudden, seething EXPULSION of raw and unfettered violence. Wrathful Malevolence rips through stonework and extends so far outward trees past the blasted landscape are torn out by their roots. The freezing hatred will catch anyone unfortunate enough to be in its blast radius, like the profound first beat of a heart reborn.
And within its chilling maelstrom, it comes.
Every time the Sword Dancer has come, it has come bearing the flavors of the places it manifests in and some unspoken intent, made most clearly manifest in the rubble of the temple it makes into its armor -- but most of all, in its blades. As the black, skeletal Hellion is reforged, veins of violet thrumming like veins woven through bone, curved horns glowing with the foul blaze of Malevolence as much as the burning points in its sunken, otherwise empty eyesockets, sword driven cruelly through its blackened skull, it arms itself.
A feeble, rusted katana, from places unknown.
A sleek Gebler blade, from Lahan.
A great broadsword forged like a pained lion's howl, from Wehaca.
And slowly at its back, two more skeletal limbs sprout forth, gripping their own weapons.
A simple longsword of immaculate, Arctican make. And...
... a sword designed in the likeness of the Guardian Lord of Love's.
Raftina.
Thrumming with the pulse of twisting Malevolence like a sign of where the Dancer's masters lie.
it was cold
O b j e c t i v e
The Final Dance
Defeat the Sword Dancer!
B o n u s O b j e c t i v e
have you the strength
Purify the Sword Dancer at < 33% Health!
DC: You switch forms to The Final Dance - Hatred! DC: Sword Dancer switches forms to The Final Dance - Hatred!
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Solanine with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Xantia with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Elhaym van Houten with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Hiro with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 2 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Josephine Lovelace with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Tesni Inoue with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Elvis with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Chime Isa with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Jacqueline Barber with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Lanval with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Fei Fong Wong with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rosaline Calice with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Catenna with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Cecilia Adlehyde with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Gwen Whitlock with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Lily Keil with The Third Dance! GS: Sword Dancer has completed its action. GS: Catenna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Catenna completely evades The Third Dance from Sword Dancer!
GS: Jacqueline Barber critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 32 hit points! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: Elvis guards a hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 91 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 78 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Josephine Lovelace takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 112 hit points! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 33 hit points! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Hiro guards a hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 110 hit points! GS: Chime Isa takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 83 hit points! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 87 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Fei Fong Wong critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 41 hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: Tesni Inoue guards a hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 99 hit points! GS: Rosaline Calice takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 80 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Xantia takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 93 hit points! GS: Seraph Solanine has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Seraph Solanine completely evades The Third Dance from Sword Dancer!
GS: Seraph Lanval takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 165 hit points! GS: Lily Keil critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 33 hit points! GS: Lily Keil has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Hiro," Fei says, looking over to him. "You look thoughtful."
But he is turned away from that in short order by Elly's own observations. She manages to make him smile more broadly, honestly even a little goofily. "I'd say you've gotten a pretty good grasp on the game now. Maybe soon I'll have to pass the badge over to you." You just have to beat Fei 5 times in a row (ties are skipped)! "Honestly I'm a little embarrassed...but I'm glad I was able to help you." He laughs awkwardly.
Catenna is kind of worrying him right now but well it's ok to be pissed off sometimes you know?
"It's good you've come," Fei tells Cecilia as well. "If they actually have some weird scheme in mind for a Guardian Lord, it might be something only you can really handle." He doesn't sound so sure that K.K was being wholly truthful there but it's not like has a choice to guess about it.
It seems Hiro knows what to say to 'her'. He knows whom he means. Fei is feeling rather conflicted about that himself right now, but luckily fighting a sword feels a lot easier.
Is it Raftina they wish to slay? That is a horrifying idea.
"Yeah," Fei tells the Sword Dancer, bracing against it. "I'm sorry for the curses I've given you."
Fei flexes his arms and pushes the malevolence away from his body.
'I'll free you."
He elects to do this by jumping forward and throwing a kick for its ankle. Apparently when the hellion mentioned 'freeing them', Fei thought 'from their balance'? Sure. Maybe that's it.
GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Sword Dancer with Hagan! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action. GS: Sword Dancer takes a glancing hit from Fei Fong Wong's Hagan for 62 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
The road my people go down is wrong.
But I can't shpw the Trial Knight a sign of fear.
The Knight always tries to revel in our uncertainty.
I won't let him have the privilege.
~
The mask isn't the standard Zortroa mask Catenna showed the CaraKin awhile back. This one is a little more ovoid and doesn't have the red wig attached, and the pattern painted across it has more pronounced crescent motifs. The emblem across the forehead may be recognizable to the arcanely inclined: She's painted Celesdue's emblem on it in brilliant blue.
This is a different challenge than the battle with Mother. There, there were Hyadeans to be saved from a malevolent god. There was her fear for Riesenlied and her pity for the Hyadean race in general. Some of them could have been saved. Her feelings were more complex.
Not so here. Catenna can centre a single feeling in a way she couldn't in that situation: There are two people doing this, and both of them need to be defeated, and one of them will try to test her and force her to jump through a bunch of bullshit trials designed to test her will and break her faith.
<Don't forget that you are a human,> Saarda-Shanta murmurs, a touch of worry showing though in her tone. <And that you were chosen to be a Shaman because you did not sacrificed the kindness and compassion in your heart.>
"I know," Catenna murmurs quietly from behind the mask. "But I cannot show the Trial Knight weakness. Please, if I begin to lose myself down that road, pull me back."
She doesn't have the heart to admit the more practical reason she wore a mask.
She doesn't want the Trial Knight to see anything like uncertainty in her face.
you're still flailing around with that stick
you're just a human, catenna
a stupid fucking human meatbag
The ground trembles ominously. Malevolence bursts out from the sword, and Catenna holds her hand out with a single utterance.
Silvery magic blooms in front of her - and the Malevolence divides around the dispelling burst like water surging around a massive boulder in the midst of a river. Catenna lifts her head, her eyes intent behind her mask. More Malevolence. More darkness that wants to feed on her emotions and twist her into something else.
I won't give it anything to twist. I have to not show the Trial Knight and Ragnell mercy. I have to become the weapon not of hatred, but of faith.
As the Sword Dancer bares its blades - one of them all too familiar in its form, Catenna takes a step through the darkness. "You stain this place," she says from behind the mask, her voice still like ice. "I am going to cleanse the stain."
Leveling her claw hand, Catenna curls her fingers as if clenching something - and the force of gravity begins to gather as she musters the arcana of Celesdue. Even in her efforts to hide her softer emotions behind the facade of her people, she hasn't lost her spiritual connection, and she unleashes it. Gravity crushes down around the Sword Dancer as Catenna tries to hurl it upwards, then slam it back down into the ground.
GS: Catenna has spent 1 Combo on Poison, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Catenna has attacked Sword Dancer with Grav! GS: Catenna has gained 2 Combo! GS: Catenna has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Chime Isa has posed.
As the fell blade pulses fully to life in response to the gathered group of drifters, Chime flinches slightly at the pulse of power coming off it mostly ducking out of it's way behind others but not nearly enough. But she takes it better than some, jade green eyes flicking around to see the results before actually looking at the Sword Dancer.
"Mmm~" she says to herself, more interested in the blades than the creature itself. Even as she surveys through she pulls out a crest from a pocket and holds it over her head invoking it's power. Blue-green magic swirls around her and out strengthening a couple she notice take what looked like the worst hits.
GS: Chime Isa has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Group Heal! GS: Chime Isa has attacked Seraph Lanval with Group Heal! GS: Chime Isa has gained 2 Combo! GS: Chime Isa has completed her action. GS: Chime Isa heals Seraph Lanval! He gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's The Third Dance for 33 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a glancing hit from Catenna's Grav for 46 hit points! GS: Cripple, Jam, Mute, Poison, and Toxin! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer!
<Pose Tracker> Tesni Inoue has posed.
She looks to the Sword Dancer as she akes one step forward as she raises the Dead man's ARM it's loaded and ready and she sees it making ready to go for Catenna. It wants to go for her comrade she can tell that much from what has just happened here. She feels a chill a par of the brain or is it, soul, that few born in the federation will feel. That horrible feeling when you run into the literal thing that lurks in the cracks of the world.
This is one of those time and is she asked if she has the strength.
"We'll find out and even if I don't I'll not be bowing down to the likes of you."
The shaking starts and then come to the swords it's not, the weapons are known to him but the Katana? That is a cause for some small bit of concern in the spacewoman's heart. Tess attempts to block it, but it's not enough she's hurt in the aftermath and there's a gash in her rifle from where she's had to try and use it to block.
She'll open fire and get on the move, the rifle ejecting shell casings with each pull of the trigger.
GS: Tesni Inoue has attacked Sword Dancer with Rapid Fire! GS: Tesni Inoue has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elvis has posed.
A well formed-group, this one. Elvis has bore witness to their attestations, their cares, their wants, their bonds. Some of which he would daresay he has as well...? Even if there is one or two he is rather miffed at. T'would be better to have those feelings than none at all. Like one of the futures they stare at, on this crossroads.
"Be ready for anything!" he commands. An odd sentiment coming from him. It seems in dire situations, he attempts to assrt himself as something of a leader or commander. A role he has had to assume before.
Someone familiar speaks to the blade harshly. It reacts in turn. "It is appearing! Steel yourselves!" And appear it does. In a silent roar of the spirit it comes, unveiling weapons both nondistinct and most powerful in design and form. They hold interest to him, but this was no time to be hunting for a weapon. The planet was in a dire way. What use is a blade when you are slate to perish?
As the beast readies itself, an immense torrent of Malevolence grips at Elvis' vitality, and has to shrug it off, though pained and staggered. "Aim for the weapons! Disarm it!" he calls, moving into action with great speed and urgency. Fists fly, and the sound of even being thrown can be heard quite well. With that many vicious edges, this fight would be quite dangerous. Though what of the one piercing its own skull? It gives him an uneasy feeling. What was this construct subjected to...?
GS: Elvis has attacked Sword Dancer with Rapid Punch! GS: Elvis has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elvis has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
The tensions ripple out from the creature along with thought and with wrath and pain and with a plea and then, Elly thinks, she can feel the storm coming, and it is enormous, almost beyond reckoning. Which is part of why a passing tree limb, ripped out from the forest beyond, strikes her from the side, knocking her over hard enough that she disappears from sight.
Except that the Wolves and their allies can no doubt see her because that tree limb has sprouted an additional rider.
I have no idea why I did this, Elly thinks as the cyclone of vortexual hate begins to fade and she is still on a piece of debris that is aloft. The residual tension in the air, though - her mind reads it as 'Wind Ether' and she grips the fading pattern, tightening it around, the tree limb rising upwards as Elly dismounts, landing with a clap of her feet and in a small crouch. Breathing out, she looks towards the Dancer from its (her?) flank.
Elly breathes in deeply.
She raises her hands with a flourish. The residual winds in the area - the inevitable aftereffect of air being given energy even if that pattern is gone, the motional inertia of the air as it seeks a stable ground in accordance with laws superficially greater than those of Ether or the Heart - all stop for a moment. (This is probably not very obvious.)
Disarm it, Elvis says. Elly smiles to herself. Her hands come together, the palms almost grinding together. The dust from the ground is suddenly drawn up violently, as are several strands of her hair - she winces in fact as one of them goes in there. The space between her hands tightens, though, and there is a brief burst of ill odor from the vortex before Elly reverses her hand motion --
And sends a crackling vortex of super-accelerated dust laden with the paramagnetic effect of stray dust particles grinding together, like the great winds of --
-- Elly feels like there's a word that was supposed to get her. She blinks, but the electromagnetic vortex is aimed towards the Sword Dancer, laden with both the vicious force of sandblasting-speed air and the lingering magnetic effect of such an intense electrical power-flow.
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Sword Dancer with Anemo Cyclone! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Thermo dragon is a really good spell. Lily sighs heavily, barely resisting the urge to bring her fingers to her temples. But Elly gets it--Elly gets it, and Lily turns her head slightly in her direction, and actually smiles. It's brief, but it's there.
And then she looks forward... and listens. She listens, until Elly finishes--even after the part where others speak, and Hiro praises the spell, and...
"Yes," Lily answers. "It's not that peace isn't worth looking for... But you can't always find it or make it without opposition. We won't give up on that approach, other days."
...But it is a good spell, yes. Lily glances again to Josie, and nods.
But here--the words. Felt, not heard, pulsing, trembling...
"Hatred," Lily answers, shifting into a defensive stance of the Kislev Six Hews, sword angled upward before her. Her golden eyes are set. "...Wrath. Soldiers, long forgotten..."
"I I feel it," Lily says. "Your hatred..."
"I'll answer it. I know it well."
And she does; Lily's response to that pulse of rage, that incredible Malevolent power, is to stand firm inher own; it freezes past her, sets frost in her hair, sets her blade to glistening... But she does not move. Hatred is not something Lily fears.
"Ruby," Lily directs, "Stay behind me." Not Hiro, naturally. But her off hand leaves the blade, extends to the side, towards Cecilia, and brilliant light erupts from her person, gold circuitry blazing at her collar and hands as she gathers power--
And a shield of nuclear flame erupts around Cecilia Adelhyde, fading into her in moments to shield her from harm.
"It's strong," Lily says to the others. "Hold on!"
GS: Chime Isa heals Josephine Lovelace! She gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: Lily Keil has attacked Cecilia Adlehyde with Lustre Drape! GS: Lily Keil has gained 2 Combo! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
A frigid wave erupts, the chill of many collected stories of swords bathed in feat, loathing, and hatred the announcement and arrival that demands a captivated audience - maybe even physically so, in some respects.
The immense temperature drop has a chilling effect, almost literally, upon the water elemental as the venomous hatred coalesces and presses down upon the manifested Seraph. Being water - an element that is sometimes called out for being none too hardy against corruption - the downturn in temperature seems to be a rare instance where corporeal physics appear to apply. The flowing silvery beard of the mystical wastrel hardens as a thin layer of lilac-rimmed frost tries to settle around him.
It looks uncomfortable and annoying. It's more painful than it looks. It is a direct assault upon his very being. Untold ages of misery, concentrated to try and devour a perfect host in which to convey and multiply its spread in monstrous form.
...In comes Chime's more light-hearted, easy-going self, eager to help keep people in the fight as restorative energies flicker around him. In a way, the wounds standing to be inflicted are not 'physical.' If one were to pick apart the semantics of what is going on, the assistance might be a token gesture, at best, to prevent the lilac-hued frost from consuming and freezing Lanval.
"...Mmmmph! Mmm. Hmm. Hmm hm hm." Laughter. A sense of being believed in. His form starts to return with fluidity and motion, as lilac-hued frost crackles and falls off to stain the ground below. The last of the rimes of frost fall off the hand that holds his gourd as watery energies start to build around him.
"Ahh... take it eashy... take it eashy," he starts, tilting his head upwards towards the skeletal monstrosity. One Seraphic Arte cast later, the gourd tilts towards the deathless warrior of uncountable battles...
And just sprays magical, clean, lustrous water in their direction like someone were throwing a pail of cold water at them.
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Sword Dancer with Spilling Goblet! GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 2 Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
The blade pulses repeatedly...until rage suddenly ripples off it. Physically, with enough force to tear through root and stone. Jacqueline reacts quickly - a stone pillar arises to protect her only to immediately be pulverized to dust from the sheer force of the Sword Dancer's wrath. It served its purpose, however.
...How much fury had it taken in to emit such power...? Jacqueline exhales, her hands trembling slightly. She's a little afraid, but...she decides to push through it.
"...I can make no promises, but I will do my best. We can't be stopped here..." Jacqueline decides.
She gestures with her left hand and a second column of earth rushes out, this time with the intent of smashing right into the Sword Dancer and forcing it back, as well as providing her a little extra cover.
"Stay strong, everyone!" Jacqueline calls out.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Sword Dancer with Pillar Crash! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.
Some wonder when the blade's wielder is going to show up. "You'll see... Just stay on your guard." Rosaline says, and... There is is.
Malevolence pulses out violently, and Rosaline can only just barely duck and roll behind a large piece of marble to let the brunt of it wash past her. She grits her teeth, feeling that hatred more keenly than ever before. She peeks up, hears the words, tightens her grip around her ARMs as the colossus forms, and blades come into view. Her heart sinks at the sight of the Arctican longsword.
"Don't hold back!" she calls out, for the benefit of those who have never faced this thing. "But we can..." She looks to Catenna and Cecilia, making some sort of vague mental calculation. "I think we can purify it. We can try, if we get the upper hand. Or else it will come back, again and again." There's desperation in her voice, but also a form of resolve. She wants to believe that this cycle can be broken. Her friends are here, people like Lanval and Gwen. She wants to share their optimism.
But a lot of ammunition needs to be spent before that dream can be realized, and Rosaline once again peeks out from her waist-high marble cover to spray a hail of SMG bullets from Esdras and Judith, pausing only to reload. She knows she won't likely be able to stay in this relatively safe position for very long, but she tries to make the most of it while she still can.
GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Sword Dancer with Spray and Pray! GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action. GS: Cecilia Adlehyde takes a solid hit from Lily Keil's Lustre Drape for 0 hit points! GS: Shield! Statuses applied to Cecilia Adlehyde! GS: Sword Dancer takes a glancing hit from Tesni Inoue's Rapid Fire for 53 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Elvis's Rapid Punch for 164 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Bit by bit, it unfolds. The pressure in the air.
One, two, three, four--
She tenses, preparing herself for the opening salvo.
Last time. Last time, she had been run through.
"Careful. It's got no sense of self-preservation," she murmurs, glancing at her fellow Black Wolves. At Cecilia. Is a princess going to be okay on the field?
Without her Golem, at least.
--five, six--
There.
But even forewarned -- even expecting something like this implosion of hateful energy -- even already leaping -- an escape from the malestrom only comes by inches.
And provides little shelter from the debris the hatred sets into flight. She's clipped by a severed treebranch and spirals to land and roll a distance along the patchy earth.
Even the cannon is set adift by the blast, rolling itself to find purchase amidst what had been a row of ancient trees.
Rifle cradled against her chest, Josie rolls first onto her knees then up, with the help of her left hand. "Tch..." she hisses, as she rises. About her descends a pulse of warmth inside the biting chill that radiates from the Dancer. Different from Lily's magic, but...
"Thanks," the archaeologist says, before her attention comes to rest on the creature manifest, itself. One, two, three, four...
Her gaze hoods. She stares the Dancer down as it draws its blade. Sword after sword. Battlefield after battlefield. There was an old story she heard that a sword that had been tested enough, used enough... a fraction of its weight was the blood it had tasted. Was that just a myth? Or can something old enough become...
"Don't worry," Josie tells the Sword Dancer.
"It'll all be over soon." The rifle comes up, held at the ready. "You won't be feeling anything, anymore."
Five, six.
'Disarm it', says Elvis.
"...No promises."
Yet she holds that shot, as she draws a bead on the creature's skull. As if she's watching, waiting.
The one perfect moment.
Which blooms bright the moment the vortex -- driven up by Elly's Ether -- begins to coalesce about the Dancer.
When she shoots, she shoots into the heart of that storm.
GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Sword Dancer with Out Of The Blue! GS: Josephine Lovelace has gained 1 Combo! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Jack van Burace has posed.
There are some feelings that are unmistakable. The tremble of the heartstrings when faced with the love of your life. The burning fire of anger as your home is threatened. The taste of ash and dust as your world caves in on itself. The despair of hitting rock bottom and the determination to raise above it again. Each feeling leaves a mark on the person, scars of the heart and the soul.
Some of those scars, those deep wounds and tears upon the fabric of a persons sanity can't be healed easily. They take time and sometimes solitude to mend themselves. Of course there are a few other things that help that process. A purpose helps. A reason to keep on going instead of sing down into the comforting mire of depression.
Still it requires that solitude. That introspection. That long moment to figure out just why one is still here. What it also requires though is a resolve to take action once its needed...
Behind Rosaline and Ida there is a sudden familiar pressure. A wave of wind and roar of sound as the air itself is rend, the pressure of the blade screaming towards the Sword Dancer itself.
In the quiet of the aftermath, the pressure wave having come close enough to Rosa's little hiding place to have ruffled hair and said hello there is a familiar voice.
"Darlin, you don't really think I would have missed this. Do ya?"
Light strikes off the hilt of a pristine blade, the pure clean lines of a second Arctican longsword. This one held in the hand of a tall, lanky, familiar figure whose long coat is just settling from the wind blast generated by that fast draw of his.
No, this is something Jack van Burace wouldn't miss for the world.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia hears the words, similar to the other times she faced this particular Hellion, and decides not to wait for it to fully emerge. Upon that final, stronger pulse, she launches herself forward, intent on smashing the thing as soon as it forms, before it can arm itself. Of course this is putting herself at risk, but that's fine - she'd much prefer to have attention focused on herself rather than the others.
A blast of spiritual force follows, as if in answer. Xantia initially attempts to force her way through anyway, but the cold and - to put it mildly - uncomfortable feelings this causes prompts her to change her mind, and she drops to the ground in a bit of an awkward roll.
Cold and negative emotions. Two things that don't rank very high on her list of fun things to deal with. Her mind muddled for a time, it takes her longer than she intended to get up from her prone position, following this. When she does manage to pick herself back up, it surprises her to find the Sword Dancer already fully formed and equipped.
She doesn't let it bother her. She can't afford to. She knows this isn't an opponent to be trifled with.
In spite of this, she charges in without fear, seeking to deliver a series of testing strikes with her fists, and speaks words of confidence.
"It doesn't sound like you even want to win. So you might as well give up now. Hatred is no match for Hope."
With that, her ARM activates, and she performs a dance of her own - quickly circling the Sword Dancer with acrobatic movements to attempt to avoid counter attacks while she maneuvers behind it, delivering a quick slash with her energy blade when she sees an opening.
GS: Xantia has attacked Sword Dancer with Frenzy Dance! GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: Jack van Burace has attacked Sword Dancer with Blind Draw! GS: Jack van Burace has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jack van Burace has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
'This is dangerous. Are you certain you wish to be here?'
Gwen looks to Elvis, and offers him another one of her wide grins. "Don't tell me Auntie's put ya up t'this too! I'll be fine. I mean, you'll be fightin' with us, right? We'll punch things right back into shape!"
Like Xantia, like many others, Gwen is trying to keep spirits up. But that, in itself, may make her easy prey for the Malevolence that pervades this area.
Because she's not entirely as cheery as she's trying to come off.
But she doesn't discount its value. Especially as her eyes stray to Hiro and Ruby as they walk away from their mounts. "Hiro..."
Should she even tell him, or any one of them about her meeting with Ragnell? It wouldn't do any good, but perhaps...
The courier's hand settles briefly on Hiro's shoulder, Gwen giving him a soft smile. "We'll figure it out. Just like we did with Janus, and King Krosse, and all the other battles we've been in." Her gaze then focuses on Ruby. "Ruby, if any of us starts actin' weird, I want you t'-" Gwen sees a vision of a desperate fire-spitting Rudy coming right for her face. "... t'nicely, uh, keep us on track."
She can't let what happened to Jack happen to any one of them.
It comes. Gwen's breath holds momentairely as the being stirs, (((pulses))), comes alive with a force that tears away at any facade she may have built up before now. The blades, the katana-
Gwen holds firm, her ARM's energy shield managing to shoulder a lion's share of that first attack. Rosaline's words filter towards her. Gwen nods. "Rosaline's right! This thing can't be beaten with force alone. It fights with hate. We have to weaken it, then purify it!" At least, ones like Cecilia, Catenna, and possibly Rosaline will have to.
But first, she'll need to face the cold breath of her own fear, and take on the Sword Dancer face to face. "We'll do it," she says, directly to the Sword Dancer. "Just sit tight!" Rushing ahead, Gwen ducks low, attempting to avoid one of those many deadly arms. Her ARM's hand balled into a fist, Gwen rockets up from her crouch, her fist punching upwards against the being's... chin?
She really wasn't thinking about that part because JACK IS HERE?! "Jack?!" she squeaks, looking away from the deadly dancer with the many many sharp swords.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Sword Dancer with Shoryu-gwen! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
"... I've had a lot of time to think since - Krosse." He replies to Fei, as Gwen puts a hand on her shoulder, and the youth manages a faint smile, "A keen eye - a keen heart is what it'll take Gwen." He murmurs, "Which is why I'm glad you're here." And Ruby calls out, "How weird are we talking - where you think I should step in? Scale of one to ten!? Because I mean- with for some of you anything around an eight seems pretty normal...!"
It's not in Hiro to say anything to Catenna right now. Perhaps any other time he might - but he can understand anger at what is happening. The sword reacts dramatically to her feelings all the same, and the emotional backlash catches him off guard - the malevolance slams into him like a bomb going off. The youth unable to dig his heels in, gets blasted off his footing. "Gah-!" Before he can smash into the stonework headon though, he turns himself in mid-air, planting his feet against a column. Then launches himself off, towards the ground, hitting it in a roll, coming up on a knee.
And there it is. Wielding so many swords that he cannot even recognize where each came from. Each with a promise of pain. A sword style he doesn't know. It's so huge. It feels like there's nothing that can be done against it. "I don't know..."
The youth answers to the emotional poison in the air, the single thought made coherent and manifest. It feels like doubt - after all he should doubt that he can do the slightest thing against this as it is now.
Slowly, methodically, he climbs back to his feet. "... let's find out." He's not the Shepherd. He can't purify malevolence. When has he ever let such a thing stop him though? If he can't purify it - he can endure it for others who can.
"You're... apologizing to it?" Ruby seems taken aback by Fei's reaction. But then upon second thought, she seems to understand it. "You've changed Fei..." The youth says - as if remembering how Fei used to feel about the malevolence in Lahan. The anger, and the despair... whereas Ruby suddenly just swoops right down behind Lily. Perhaps it's the pragmatism of her approach that makes her feel safer right now. "... Don't have to tell me twice!"
... he'd like to think he has too. Except... there's one thing he still knows about him that hasn't changed.
He doesn't give voice to it, instead he runs, trying to cover the distance that the thing blasted away from him. Leaping with a blast of wind, descending with a diagonal two-handed blow. He comes down with a strike meant to try to slip through the thing's guard and slice into a bone covered joint... of the arm holding the Gebler blade. "DODGE THIS!"
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Elhaym van Houten's Anemo Cyclone for 150 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Spilling Goblet for 118 hit points! GS: Hiro has attacked Sword Dancer with Poe Sword! GS: Hiro has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hiro has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida blinks, staring at the masked figure for a long, unsettling moment. That voice does not go with that mask, that demeanor. "...Catenna?" Ida whispers. She takes a step forwards, and then stops in her tracks. Words thrum through her mind, and the blade begins to pulse. It's a pulse that Ida Everstead-Rey knows well, because she lived with the man who wielded this blade for the better part of six months. Did Jack only add to this thing's corruption?
It asks a question. Ida takes a moment to answer. "I am a blade being tempered," Ida says, "and I will give you my best."
Malevolence rips outwards in a crushing, tearing wave. Ida digs in her heels, grits her teeth, raises her gauntleted arm to shield her eyes. A chunk of stone the size of a baseball slams into her right forearm, an audible crunch followed by the sound of scraping metal. More bits of debris follow, subjecting Ida to a barrage of minor impacts that her armor doesn't entirely stop. Dull pain follows, the worst of it in her arm. Her head begins to throb, as if pulsing in time with the blade. "We must," Ida says, to Rosaline. "And we can." She meets the Etone's eyes, and there is steel in her gaze.
A familiar voice.
"Jack!" Ida turns back to glance at the knight, a smile on her lips. Seeing him again... "I won't even ask where you've been." The hatred is still sharp, still stabbing--but this time, it's not overwhelming. Ida steps to the right, turns, and leaps behind the waist-high cover Rosaline is also using. She reaches for the second ARM-holster at the small of her back, drawing forth a heavy, long-barreled pistol that looks a little like Devil's Due. It's made of dark metal. A single crystalline sphere glows in a socket on its barrel. Ida breathes out, feels chi flow through her, into the Devil's Arm. She aims at the Sword Dancer's ribcage, and begins laying down fire, each bullet gleaming with chi. The sound of the ARM is a counterpoint to Rosaline's, slow and measured instead of rapid-fire and stacatto.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Sword Dancer with Chi Bullet! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.
The sense of it batters her. Cecilia sets herself against the waves of thought and spirit. She's beginning to understand how all this works. "Lost souls..." she murmurs. She doesn't understand, not really. It seems like so many have a full understanding of the Malevolence, and Cecilia struggles to grapple with its particularly idiosyncratic corruptions. "Yes," Cecilia says to Fei. "Hopefully...it won't come to that." Past precedent suggests it will, though, and if it does, she's here to...do...things. She'll figure it out. She does that.
Her eyes sweep around to the others on hand; Elly above and Lily nearby. Lily's words to Hiro make her hesitate in part, something uncomfortable crawling lizardlike through her thoughts. It is a good sentiment, she thinks.
She doesn't have to think about it much; Rosaline calls for purification, and Cecilia nods to herself, setting her staf to spinning. "Yes, I agree," she says. "I don't think its nightmare will end unless we do."
Is a princess going to be OK on the battlefield, Josie asks herself. Cecilia doesn't give an impression of confidence as her eyes lock on one particular sword, long and straight but ornate in key... "That sword," she breathes, unspecifically. "One of its swords! That's Raftina's blade!" The literal thing? No, she thinks; the Guardian of Love hasn't taken physical form in centuries, armaments included. But...the intent of it is unambiguous.
She swats at the waves of scathing Malevolence with her staff, bursting it like pestilence even as Lily's nuclear fire ignites about her. She reaches down to her case, producing one of the stone Crest Graphs she favors, thrusting it forward. As it hits the edge of her space, it ripples outward with power, drawing its own magical formula in the air; the icon of black magic uniting Muse and Wing, the unison point crackling with power before discharging a forking blast of lightning across the space, crackling across the Sword Dancer as it seeks to ground itself in magic.
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has attacked Sword Dancer with Spark! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has gained 2 Combo! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Solanine has posed.
Seraph Solanine's preparation rewards her, when the pulse of Malevolence comes, she's gone from her place beside Ida on the Endeavor, she's jumped, channeling the weightlessness of her Element, to a place where the wave has waned. Though she avoided a concentration of Malevolence enough to harm her, its rage and hatred still makes itself known to her, and she beholds its horrific manifestation with cold eyes. Eyes that disguise her sadness at what it has become, a sentiment reinforced by the way Josephine and others speak to it, as though this skeleton swordbearer were something they once knew personally.
A second call to steel herself from Elvis and yet another from Jacqueline keeps her from dwelling on those feelings for more than a fleeting moment, she summons a sword of shadow, a thrusting blade in the style she carries at her hip, and its blade splits into three, dividing like that of a swordbreaker dagger on a larger scale. She sends it down at the Sword Dancer with force, (perhaps to disarm it as some have suggested) before focusing on her descent back to ground, and regrouping with the others.
GS: Seraph Solanine has attacked Sword Dancer with Trianaea! GS: Seraph Solanine has gained 2 Combo! GS: Seraph Solanine has completed her action.
GS: Sword Dancer takes a glancing hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Chi Bullet for 65 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Pillar Crash for 120 hit points! GS: Cover! Statuses applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Jack van Burace's Blind Draw for 130 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Cecilia Adlehyde's Spark for 142 hit points! GS: Shield! Statuses applied to Cecilia Adlehyde! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Rosaline Calice's Spray and Pray for 61 hit points! GS: Weaken! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Josephine Lovelace's Out Of The Blue for 161 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a glancing hit from Xantia's Frenzy Dance for 60 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Hiro's Poe Sword for 146 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Shoryu-gwen for 74 hit points! GS: Break! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Seraph Solanine's Trianaea for 110 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Sword Dancer has posed.
we shined proudly
Slowly, the Sword Dancer bends backward at its spinal column. The calcified Malevolence that is its bones creaks with the effort, jaw hanging open at an angle that the Dancer's Blade can be seen within its maw from where it pierces through the creature's skull. It holds fast to its weapons, each blade different. Each blade significant.
Each blade an echo of the dance.
It is Fei and, of course, Catenna who join in that dance first. Despite the sluggishness of its movements in between the violence, it is, as alway, those moments of violence themselves that the Dancer is -improbably- fast. Its motions still feel lethargic, even as Fei leaps -- even as Catenna weaves the power of her chosen Guardian, inundating the space around the Sword Dancer in a well of gravity -- and yet --
--It all happens in an instant. As bones crush and fracture and start to re-mend beneath the pall of gravitational fluctuations, the lion's maw greatsword and the Solarian blade both snap out in unison. The first goes wide, barely even a flicker before a gout of Malevolent flame BURSTS from the ground to race towards the Shaman that seeks to so magically manipulate it. The other --
A flicker of motion becomes a whirling dervish of violence that threatens to sweep up Fei in a flurry of sharp strokes of a Gebler-issue blade the second his foot impacts. There is a crack. The Sword Dancer teeters.
And regardless of its own offensive, it is lifted up, up, up, and SMASHED into the ground not seconds later in a heap of Malevolent bones.
stain... curses... lose myself...
Slowly, it drags itself upward onto its feet once more. Shots ring out, ricocheting off its skull; hairline fractures form in the densely compacted Malevolence as the creature's head snaps towards its right. The burning violet within its otherwise empty eyesockets turn to regard Tesni Inoue.
bow... unbowed... we shined shamefully
The Arctican blade impales the ground. Seconds later, fissues crack in the cold, sandy earth beneath Tesni. Malevolent flame bubbles up beneath her, before -bursting-, threatening to engulf her utterly in a cold, spiteful flame.
And those fissures -would- travel after her endlessly, if it were not for a titanic fist that -pummels- into that downward-driven arm. Bone cracks and bends at an irregular angle as Elvis pounds into the Hellion with strength only a Sentinel of the Veruni could truly possess. A sigh heaves past the Hellion's lips, something like frustration and relief all in one coiling around the senses.
disarm...
The arm snaps back into place.
Not a second later, it sweeps UPWARD, a gout of black and blue and purple spitting forth from the ground around it, threatening to crash powerfully into Elvis.
disarmed... took us... used us wrong... master...
Water and wind. Magically compelled by Seraphic power and Ether, the twin torrents drill into the ribcage of the undying Hellion. Elly and Lanval's efforts, in concert, shatter several of the creature's ribs, forcing it into a backwards drag across the ground until it SLAMS into the edifice of the ziggurat. It slowly pushes backwards against electromagnetic force and glimmering water alike, its motions still so slow, so... tired.
take it
Within a second, it is gone.
With the next, it is standing between Elly and Lanval, blades spread.
easy
Spinning, and creating a virulent storm of Malevolent blades with which to inflict its weary fervor upon them.
they were screaming
Its head lurches forward, limply.
but it stopped
The sound of a bang. Its head rises.
Just in time for a bullet to into and -through- its damaged ribcage, blowing it outward in blackened bone fragments of malignant will. It lurches, bending backward at its spine until it is practically a downward, 45-degree angle. From its position, it stares at Ida behind it, upside-down.
familiar
Its maw opens wide. Wider.
i am a blade being tempered
Begins to glow with sickly light from the blade wedged at the back of its throat, grinding against its spine.
i am a blade chipped and forsaken
Before a broiling ball of pure SPITE ripples past its mouth, churning in a brief bright sphere that seeks to chew through Ida through nothing more than unfiltered, blistering HATE.
they stole it from us
It begins to intensify --
But a pillar of earth RIPS through the creature smashing it into its midsection with enough force to launch it off its feet. It rises into the air courtesy of Jay's assault, bones spilling through the frigid skies until they land in a reassembling pile just beyond. Sand kicks up, moisture freezing around each grain into little, violet snowflakes that drift with disconcerting beauty around the Sword Dancer.
can't be stopped
It only takes one movement. One movement that looks like it ought to be slow, and yet is blisteringly fast.
One movement to send pressurized air TEARING for Jay, tinged with Malevolence --
In a style, and form, identical to the one that -slices- through its neck not seconds later.
...?
Its head hangs loosely. Slowly, it reasserts itself, shadowy tendrils reconnecting vertebrae as the cold violet within its eye sockets twist towards someone. The one who held it for so long. The one it shared souls with.
...same...
Jack van Burace.
Malevolence coils along that Arctican blade in its grip. It turns to face the man fully. The impurity glints like a stark contrast to the pristine edge of Jack's weapon.
no
And instantly it -surges- toward, shadow-laced blade seeking to -drive- into Jack in a billowing plume of Malevolence.
not my master
It lands, not seconds later, wreathed in tired fury. Its blades rise.
trapped soul. chipped blade. cold. remember?
Gradually, it turns. Its strange voice an echo of thoughts and memories and sentiment -- none of it wholly its own, save for brief bursts. Just a reflection of those around it... and those within. Its a fact felt so very acutely as Crest lightning and SMG fire from Cecilia and Rosaline respectively -charge- through its chilled frame, shocking it still while simultaneously riddling it with bullets that blow off chunks of Malevolent skeleton and further still lodge into its bare bones body. It staggers backwards, its footing lost for a brief second.
And the content of its next words seem almost incongruous with the frosted deadpan of it.
ga ha ha ha
Blades rise upward, Raftina's crackling with pent up Malevolence charging towards its tip.
humans sound
Josephine's rifle fire blasts through its skull. It lurches lazily to its left, a hole exposing nothing but swirling emptiness and the pulsing edge of its blade giving it such lethargic life.
so funny
Their Guardian-simulated blade lifts high, high, high. Xantias blade CARVES through its spinal column, causing it to lurch unevenly towards its left as it glows with a seething orange light of fading heat around the wound.
And the blade
when they break
plunges.
And as Gwen's fist makes contact with its chin with a CRACK of bone; as Hiro falls with a mighty blow accelerated by wind, -carving- through the arm holding that Gebler blade and nearly cleaving it straight in twain; as Solanine;s blades of shade IMPALE into the back of it in a way that sends it lurching forward --
-- that blade embraces ground.
And in an instant, everything freezes over.
Sand becomes frost. Air becomes vaporous. Within the cold pall of the Dancer's hate, channeled into the earth, it is like a localized blizzard has been made manifest, sapping the heat and life and vigor from -everything- around it. The Malevolent magic turns into a snowstorm of hail and fury, intent to catch Josephine, Cecilia, Gwen, Hiro, Solanine all within its horrifying hoarfrost, crystallized shards of Malevolent ice forming and hanging in midair as the battlefield surrounding the Dancer and the temple it guards shifts dramatically.
cruel laugh
And the Sword Dancer hangs there, limp and inert.
feared it. despaired at it.
Blades gleaming with horrid light.
hated it.
GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Nightmare Instant! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 2 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has spent 1 Combo on Poison, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Catenna with Demon Fang! GS: Sword Dancer has spent 3 Combo on Headshot, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Elvis with Demon Roar! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Tesni Inoue with Devil's Maw! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 2 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Void Storm! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Lanval with Void Storm! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Raging Blast! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Jack van Burace with Shadow Fury! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Nightmare Instant! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: You cannot attack more than one target at a time with this attack. GS: Sword Dancer has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Extend! GS: Catenna takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Demon Fang for 77 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Catenna! GS: Sword Dancer has spent 6 Combo on Poison and Gatling, including 4 on Gatling! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Vengeful Frost! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Cecilia Adlehyde with Vengeful Frost! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Xantia with Vengeful Frost! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Lily Keil with Vengeful Frost! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Chime Isa with Vengeful Frost! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rosaline Calice with Vengeful Frost! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Vengeful Frost! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Hiro with Vengeful Frost! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Solanine with Vengeful Frost! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer takes 10 damage from Poison! GS: Sword Dancer takes 12 damage from Toxin! GS: Sword Dancer has completed its action. GS: Fei Fong Wong critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 37 hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Nightmare Instant for 36 hit points! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Elhaym van Houten critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Void Storm for 35 hit points! GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: Chime Isa takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Vengeful Frost for 94 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Chime Isa! GS: Seraph Solanine has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Seraph Solanine completely evades Vengeful Frost from Sword Dancer!
GS: Lily Keil takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Vengeful Frost for 180 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Lily Keil! GS: Hiro critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Vengeful Frost for 38 hit points! GS: Hiro has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Seraph Lanval completely evades Void Storm from Sword Dancer!
GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Vengeful Frost for 112 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Jack van Burace takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Shadow Fury for 210 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Elvis takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Demon Roar for 152 hit points! GS: Xantia takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Vengeful Frost for 189 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Xantia! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Vengeful Frost for 112 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Cecilia Adlehyde! GS: CRITICAL! Rosaline Calice takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Vengeful Frost for 114 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Rosaline Calice! GS: Josephine Lovelace guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Vengeful Frost for 116 hit points! GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Josephine Lovelace! GS: Josephine Lovelace enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Raging Blast for 147 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Tesni Inoue takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Devil's Maw for 73 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 0 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Well." Fei says. "Yeah I guess I am. I mean, no sword asks to be made. I'm glad you're here, Ruby. I don't think I'd be this calm without you here," Er, that he knows of anyway. "You really think I've changed?" Hearing Hiro say that kind of...feels like a burden has been lessened on his shoulders. He smiles goofily again. "I'm glad to see you're thinking things through. I know I kind of go off my gut more than I should, heh."
He nods once to Cecilia's own words. His own smile says what her inner monologue says. She'll figure it out. She does that but even he is surprised to hear that Raftina has a blade. In fact he says, "She has a blade...?" Under his breath. Love on Filgaia is more complicated than he knew but he supposes for him, Love is a pistol aimed but not fired at his face so, you know, to each their own.
Fei is forced to swing up a hand and catch several stabs between his fingers, stopping the strikes cold barely a centimeter away from his face. the blade still rips into his hand as it pulls back for repeated strikes but at least Fei manages to avoid a major injury.
Fei pants for breath afterwards, squinting for a moment.
Within a second, is is gone.
When his eyes open again, it's spinning in between Elly and Lanval. Is this... the fabled bone storm technique??
Fei's eyes widen at the Sword Dancer's quick short emotional essences, comments.
Then they soften. "It'll be over soon."
In moments like this, he probably shouldn't rely on his power so he sticks to what he's got under his belt rather than holding Id's hand this time. There will be times when the rage is warranted. Now is not one of those times.
The Sword Dancer is unleashing frost upon his friends so Fei punches forward with his fist and twists his hand to snap his finger, unleashing an explosive wave of flame towards the Sword Dancer!
He sees Ida's joy at seeing Jack once again and he smiles.
The smile doesn't fade when Lily feels the sword dancer's hatred. She's come so far and Elly's growth is put on display.
But it does stall a bit when he hears Lanval's laughter. He thinks of his conversation with Ragnell.
He breathes in and exhales his worry. He must know about it by now.
GS: Fei Fong Wong has spent 3 Combo on Headshot, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Sword Dancer with Kakei! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
it is hatred
I can't be. Not hatred. Not fear. Only righteousness.
"Yes. Help me purify it when the time is right," Catenna answers Rosaline. It sounds odd coming from behind the mask, in that tone like a knife just quietly waiting for the moment when it will be set at an enemy's throat.
Those who've traveled with Catenna have seen this tone in her only once: When she turned her back on the dying Yarobeleedt, deeming him too pitiful to bar her path anymore, and went to fight Mother.
used us wrong
Behind the mask, Catenna clicks her teeth sharply together. She lets out a soft hiss.
Malevolent flame sears from the creature, paying back the surge of gravity - and it catches Catenna in the midst of a brief flicker of sympathy that she simply can't bury fast enough. She grunts and lunges forward, leaping over the flames - but she starts the leap a second too late. Malevolent fire scorches around her legs, licking up the legs of her pants.
She does not make a sound, at least until she hits the ground and rolls forward. Sweeping her claw hand out to her side, Catenna crouches and waits, momentarily poised like a stalking animal. Still more Drifters are striking and firing, and the Dancer gives as good as it gets. And still she waits. Outwardly, it's unlike her to carry herself in such a way - like at any moment she could lunge at the Sword Dancer.
Inwardly, she's doing something the Zortroa would not do. Listening. Trying to focus on not just the way the Sword Dancer moves, but on the fragments of emotions rolling from it.
Is this what a Hellion sounds like when it breaks?
...Is this whole thing just another test?
Catenna clenches her right hand beneath the large talon jutting above it. Test or no test, the stakes are too high. They've always been too high. Here. Krosse. Wehaca - Cyre's village.
"Not broken," the masked woman says in a steady voice, straightening her shoulders with steel. "Not hate. Not trials or tempering. Not playing chess with tortured souls. Not trying to teach us lessons. Not smithing a sword or shattering it.
"Only this," she says as she levels that hand. "A weapon of faith to set you free."
Glimmers of magic dance around the tips of Catenna's fingers, bursting forth around her in a massive tidal wave. It surges across the landscape and crashes towards the Sword Dancer, ready to slam into it and sweep it away.
GS: Catenna has attacked Sword Dancer with Tidal Wave! GS: Catenna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Catenna takes 11 damage from Toxin! GS: Catenna has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Fei Fong Wong's Kakei for 234 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Catenna's Tidal Wave for 138 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Cecilia's observation isn't lost on Jacqueline.
"Raftina's...?" She questions, looking toward the blades the Sword Dancer bears. One of the Guardian Lords... Jacqueline frowns slightly.
It was hard to sort through the words it was speaking, but perhaps that was related to the suffering it was experiencing.
Jacqueline's pillar crashes through the Sword Dancer, launching it off its feet. It would be far too easy for that to be the end, and indeed, it lands, reassembles, and slashes in a blindingly fast motion, sending air tinged with Malevolence flying toward her.
In the past, this motion might have hit her solidly. But she's grown since then - grown, even, since her last encounter with the Sword Dancer. She reacts quickly to the motion, diving behind the lingering pillar and wrapping her cloak tightly around her. The projectile crashes through the pillar, shearing it in half, and collides with her cloak, forcing her back with a grunt of pain and dispersing.
Painful...but she managed to avoid a more serious injury.
"It's okay...let it all out. We can try to help you..." She murmurs. Violence hardly seemed a way to help...but in this case, that seems to be what it wanted. So, obliging, Jacqueline backpedals and gestures with her right hand. A spear of flame appears nearby, and with a thrust of her hand it goes flying toward the Sword Dancer.
Briefly, she glance over to Catenna, taking in her words. A weapon of faith...
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Sword Dancer with Profit Through Preparation! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elvis has posed.
"Heh. She might have! But you don't seem to be the type to walk away from something like this," the man says toward Gwen. "You've stood up to stronger!" he says toward Josephine. "Wasn't too long ago you were staring down the staff of your father. What's a skeleton with six swords?"
Fists connect powerfully. The arm gives way. "Hmph!" echoes Elvis puts everything he has into his bare-fisted strike. There is a moment of triumph in the hit. That is quickly snatched away, as the give reverses and mends. "What?!" he exclaims at seeing this.
Elvis barely dodges a nigh instant upward swipe of blades in midair, one passing centimeters in front of his chin. Unfortunately he has no momentum left to dodge the bruising flames that erupt out from below like a hateful volcano. The man is sent skyward and crashes into the nearby ruins.
When he emerges, its through a dilapidated section of wall. "I get it."
The words it says makes sense. If this is the sorrow built up from the battles of years past, then... "A blade has a purpose. It does one thing very effectively. Old stories of course say their edges they wield take on the traits of their owner. It might jsut be superstition, but looking at you, I could believe it. A blade used out of hate is no way to be used."
He is covered with burns, and wispy bits of purplish blue smoke still haze about him. Still, he soldiers on. "A blade is meant to defend those who cannot defend themselves. Wars are last resorts. I feel for you, creature. The amalgamation of discarded weapons borne from negativity. If only someone could show you a weapon could be used for good. Even now you are being used."
A fist is clenched, and powerful energies, same color as the ones used by the Sword Dancer, purples and blues, but much more full of fim and vigor surround his fist, as he flies again to throw a single destructive punch. "But you only perpetuate your own negativity! We cannot be stopped now!"
GS: Elvis has attacked Sword Dancer with Dropping Straight! GS: Elvis has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elvis has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Chime Isa has posed.
Chime watches the semi-coordinated efforts of the others, smiling cheerfully as the battle rages. Then everything begins to free, a localized blizzard of malevolent freezing magic exploding outwards. Chime does a tumble, eyes closed managing to avoid the worst of it even as she comes up shivering, rubbing her arms briskly.
"It's going good! Keep it up! If you need a brief pick-me up speak up and someone will be there with a healing crest~" she calls out.
The elf surveys the battlefield watching the actions as she continues to look for ways to help, while continue to call out encouragingly "It can't beat us all~ Don't quit! Hit it for all you're worth~"
GS: Chime Isa has spent 1 Combo on Inspire, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Chime Isa has attacked Rosaline Calice with Don't quit!! GS: Chime Isa has gained 1 Combo! GS: Chime Isa takes 9 damage from Toxin! GS: Chime Isa has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Tesni Inoue has posed.
Tesni Inoue wonders in the back of her mind did the Malevolence ever take root on her world long ago? She doesn't know but the idea will sift about the depths of her mind for some time to come. The Dancer lives up to its name is it fast, very damn fast. Also maybe some of her own cultural hubris has shown itself again. She's drawn The Sword Dancer's direct attention upon herself. She does not quite grasp what it says to her but there is some sense of it tried to fight whatever has taken hold of it? At least that's as much as Tess can gather.
The Blades come and Tess is faster on her feet now as she does keep moving and only gets clipped rather than full on hit with the latest round of attacks.
She raises one arm and pulls down her jacket sleeve one can see a wide array of symbology tattoos on the arm and they glow a bit as Tess focuses her powers.
This thing has said it is hatred given form?
She makes a mental note to keep watch on Rosaline and Catenna as they can. Power surges around Tess for a moment as she turns what is normally intended as a tool for her work again into a weapon and her mind lashes out sending a shockwave of mental force at the Sword Dancer.
She will take steps after she lets loose her attack to cover Catenna as best she can.
GS: Tesni Inoue has attacked Sword Dancer with TK Burst! GS: Tesni Inoue has gained 1 Combo! GS: Tesni Inoue has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Each different--each significant. But Lily does not join, at first. She shields Cecilia, listens to those who know of purification...
"Didn't think I would," Lily tells Ruby as she moves, sidestepping to find an angle of attack, to watch and judge their foe before she strikes. The effectiveness of Elly's Ether tells her something; the dancing of blades it undergoes tells her more.
"That cold light..."
Lily shifts her stance in an instant; the Black Wolf holds her weapon down at an angle now, at her side and pointing behind, and charges straight for her enemy. Her grip shifts, mid-motion--
One blade embraces ground, and Lily cannot move quickly enough to get out of the way, her instinctive shield of void offering no protection against cold; ice settles around her, reddens skin, stops movements, freezes the woman in place as she feels that cold settle on her, and halts where she is with a cough.
"You.."
Ice; ice, not water, not life-giving, but the inversion of heat itself. This is how Lily understands the element, and this is how she opposes it; her body gloves orange-red as heat envelops her, begins to melt the frost on her person... enough to move, but not to prevent the shards still stuck in her skin, or the blood that comes of such exposure's harshness.
She rolls her shoulders, lifts her weapon again, sets her jaw. "No," she admits. "My hate isn't like yours. ...Mine isn't cold. Cold is where I grew up--where I became a soldier."
Lily's sword glints in the light, as she steps forward. She is not lightning-fast, like Jack--she is not sacred, like those who follow the Sword Guardian.
her movements, are brutal as she hacks down against bone with all her force, black power exuding from her and strengthening her as she brings the edge straight at arms, at ribs, at another blade with a dark power over her own.
It uses weight, more than anything, this particular strike--but it is only a mortal blade.
"Haaah--!" ...Even if, where some would empower it with their own life energy, Lily's is shadowy and black rather than bright and vital.
GS: Lily Keil has spent 4 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Lily Keil has attacked Sword Dancer with Black Wolf's Claw! GS: Lily Keil takes 10 damage from Toxin! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Though the body of bones may break, shatter, and twist... the way it continues to rise, to dance, as though each blade it wields were but a foot leading the rest of the body along the recital of violence, the repeated words of Lanval's suggestion are met with a slow-paced nod utterly inappropriate to the severity and alacrity on display.
Where it suddenly appears between Elly and Lanval, the Water Seraph's only meaningful defense...
...is to flop on the ground, the storm of blades cutting the space just above his bulk. Where the lurching head droops, talking of screaming and how it stopped in the past tense, Lanval sneaks a brief drink. It is a delicate balance at play of conviction, purpose, and alcoholic content.
At any time, he could be run through. Ida's shot might be what saves him from that positional vulnerability. Something does come to him for that moment of safety afforded.
"Jusht throwin' our wordsh back... mmm." He slouches back up to a stand.
The ground grows colder, turning to frost, and that 'slouch' turns to an impressively acrobatic leap that sees him flopping belly-down a ways away. Whose words are they repeating? Are they words of people the rest of them know? He doesn't have any further time to himself to contemplate. The Blade Dancer could be back on him at any moment.
"There... there ish a place for a blade ta go," Lanval speaks up as he comes closer, weaving to and fro from the present expected span of their reach. This is a strange concept to fathom when up against an entity so soaked in contradictions, so barely there, that the idea of a static concept of 'reach' is implausible, but it is purposeful weaving.
...Until he pivots on a heel and falls back again, swinging an arm wide out as the gourd on its ratty rope swings out like a mace of far greater size and volume than it actually appears, an explosive splash of water on any impact it might make.
"What would it take fer ya ta let 'em go?" He gets that in as he flops over once more, water washing down around him as if to try and push away some of the surrounding cold and frost in the pooling water about him.
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Sword Dancer with Layabout's Lariat! GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action. GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Profit Through Preparation for 133 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elvis has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Sword Dancer completely evades Dropping Straight from Elvis!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"Raftina's blade?" Ida says, her gaze flicking to Cecilia. She recognizes the name, thanks to Cyre's comprehensive lessons about the Guardians, but the context only makes it worse. A moment later, regret curdles the thought wholesale. Why did she even speak up?
Ida hasn't forgotten how unsettling the Dancer is when it's in motion. She watches it bend, impossibly, its spine moving in a way that would snap a human spinal cord in two. She watches its Domain as it flows and shifts around it, seething with hatred. familiar, it says, without words. "I know," Ida says. "You were there, with us. Jack thought you were what he needed, he took you--" Her right hand darts into her duster, comes up with a second magazine, and ejects the now-empty mag from the Devil's Arm.
Light blooms from the Sword Dancer's mouth before she can slide the new magazine home. Ida twists on a heel, raises both arms to shield her face as Malevolence pours out, over her. Her skin blisters. Hairline fractures split the armor covering her right arm, and droplets of quicksilver well up from within, splattering the floor.
"Mother is dead," Ida says. "New Arctica lives." The words come out angrier than she intends. Jack makes his move, then. "Jack, watch yourself!" Ida holsters the Devil's Arm and twists upright, Malevolence rising from her like plumes of smoke. It hurts. It hurts almost as much as what the Dancer 'says' next. Ida's lips pull back from her teeth at the sound of that hideous laugh. The hatred that surges up in response is almost a mirror of the Dancer's. Memories, from her first weeks as a Hellion.
She broke his neck.
She watched as his broken body fell from the Pleasing Garden,
cut in two.
But that still wasn't enough to make her feel like she'd done something,
was it?
Quicksilver splatters onto the floor.
'My hate isn't like yours.'
"You're right," Ida says, to Lily. "This hates someone. Someone who made them useless, right? He's dead." That, Ida says to the Sword Dancer. "He'll never hurt anyone else, ever again." Something flickers in her eyes. Ida steps forwards, raising her arms and opening both hands. It's a stance she knows well, and she steps towards the Sword Dancer, circling it as though it were an opponent half its size. "I know," Ida says. "Even dead, I hate him." Her hands strike, again and again, making little flicks and taps--testing the Sword Dancer's defenses.
They look like little flicks and slaps, but Ida is doing something more--each strike injects a small seed of chi into her foe's body, disrupting its Domain, giving her openings. It's a refinement of a technique she learned as a Hellion, as Fei would surely note.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Sword Dancer with Lotus Sets Its Roots! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 3 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Elvis mentions her father. Josie's expression darkens. "Don't I know it," she remarks, the lightness of her tone not quite matching the look in her eyes. "This is just one last thing in our way--"
And then she can...
"Raftina's blade, huh," Josie murmurs, her gaze settling on the last sword the Dancer brings to bear. "Thought that one looked familiar. Heh." She glances sidelong at Fei, cracking a semi-smile in spite of current circumstances. "Ever hear 'all's fair in love and war'? ...Guardian of Love takes it a little seriously."
It's hard to tell if she's making a joke or if this is actually true.
But it's funny, isn't it. Hatred bearing a sword of love.
The bullet sweeps through the electromagnetic storm; perhaps it is even sped on its way by it.
"Come on. Don't hold back," she says, dipping her rifle low. Just once, she casts a plaintive look at her beleagured cannon, but...
Too far. Not enough time. Not enough of an opening. Would take too long to charge.
So be it. She's plenty capable on her own.
Its hatred is a palpable thing.
So is its despair. She would know best of all the hallmark of what laughter can hide.
"Always... wondered," she utters, into the howling gale as the icestorm whips up about her. "Call it an archaeologist's dread, or something--"
Lightning snaps around her at the utterance of a few simple words; with Symbological protection transitorially dripping from her limbs, she stands fast into the heart of the bitter snowstorm.
It's cold. It bites and nips at the soul.
But she has had worse. She has endured so much worse.
"--but do abandoned things hold a 'grudge'?" She breathes out, fogging the air. She shakes ice crystals from her hair and jacket. "Heh... maybe it's pointless wondering. Best we can do is see it off-like."
And in this moment as she stares up at the Sword Dancer, Josephine Lovelace, with determination in her heart, holsters the rifle.
"Hey kids."
The Reaper's Hand is drawn from where it rests, slung heavy at her hip. "This one just might knock it for a loop. You know what to do next, right?"
She tests the ARM's weight. It's light -- belying its strength. And with her thumb, she ratchets it over to its alternate mode.
Like this, it's essentially a short -- very short -- shotgun of a sidearm.
"Out of my way."
Breaking into a dash, she closes on the Sword Dancer.
Goes as close as she dares.
Before pulling on the trigger and letting fly that barrage of buckshot.
GS: Josephine Lovelace has activated a Force Action! GS: Josephine Lovelace has activated a Force Action! GS: Josephine Lovelace has spent 5 Combo on Gatling, including 4 on Gatling! GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Sword Dancer with Knocking On Heaven's Door! GS: Josephine Lovelace has gained 1 Combo! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.
People answer Rosaline's call for purification. She meets Ida's steely gaze, and offers a determined smile back. "We will," she answers. Meanwhile, the blades tell their tale. Have they always done that? Maybe it's just the first time Rosaline listens.
Her ears then perk up at the feeling of a familiar pressure, followed by the sound of a familiar voice. "Jack!" The situation is too dangerous for there to be much more of a happy reunion, but there is something comforting about the three former Furies being here to fight this thing. A bookend effect of sorts.
This would be a good moment, perhaps, to pose as a team because things just got real.
She misses her window, for now. The ground grows cold. The sick, malevolent gloom seeps into Rosaline's limbs, causing frost to crawl up her entire body. "Nghhh..." She looks at the Sword Dancer, having a good idea of what comes next, and with a momentous effort, coils her entire body into a leap atop a nearby fallen structure. She narrowly avoids the shards of swirling ice, but her strength is sapped nonetheless. Even from her perch, as fleetingly safe as it is right now, even breathing requires a monumental effort.
Her friends aren't even so lucky. Jack's dramatic entrance has been cut short, and as the snow clears, Rosaline can see he's hurt. This must be a familiar feeling for him, she thinks bitterly. Back so close to his homeland, in a desperate battle with so much on the line, the snows threatening to take him.
She hears encouraging words from Chime, a relative stranger. She clutches a hand to her breast, looking down, and nods. "Thank you..."
She closes her eyes, focusing. She can't afford to stay still very long, and yet she can't afford to waver on this. Luckily, the words come naturally.
"O Lord of Light,
Shine your brilliance,
Light the way for us humble sinners,
That we may break the cycles of hate."
"Grand Gospel!"
Miraculously, the light of Granas pierces through the cloud and gloom, shining briefly upon a select few Drifters in their hour of need. Naturally, Jack is among their lot. Rosaline breathes out in relief as the frost washes off of her habit, and...
Already, she is tumbling down towards safer ground. "No Fury left behind," she tells her friend from afar, with a tiny smile.
GS: Rosaline Calice takes a solid hit from Chime Isa's Don't quit! for 0 hit points! GS: Rosaline Calice gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Jack van Burace with Grand Gospel! GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Rosaline Calice with Grand Gospel! GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Xantia with Grand Gospel! GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Grand Gospel! GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Elvis with Grand Gospel! GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Lily Keil with Grand Gospel! GS: Rosaline Calice has attacked Chime Isa with Grand Gospel! GS: Rosaline Calice has gained 1 Combo! GS: Rosaline Calice takes 9 damage from Toxin! GS: Rosaline Calice has completed her action. GS: Rosaline Calice gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Rosaline Calice heals Rosaline Calice! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Chime Isa gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Rosaline Calice heals Chime Isa! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Rosaline Calice heals Ida Everstead-Rey! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Rosaline Calice heals Elvis! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Lily Keil gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Rosaline Calice heals Lily Keil! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Xantia gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Rosaline Calice heals Xantia! She gains 200 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
'A keen eye - a keen heart is what it'll take Gwen. Which is why I'm glad you're here.'
Gwen blinks at Hiro's comment, a modicum of doubt flashing in her eyes before it melts like snow. She smiles, and nods. "I'm glad I'm here. But I'm not the only one that fits that bill." Her eyes look over to Fei, to Elly, to many beyond. - And then back to Ruby. "I put all my trust in your judgment, Ruby!" Yeaaahh, Ruby should probably stay under Lily's protection for now.
Turning to Elvis, Gwen laughs. "I'm just glad we're fightin' on the same side for right now. Makes me understand why Auntie likes you!" ..... or his research. Gwen's never sure, with Auntie.
The Dancer is unnerving in its grace, coupled with the snippets of words that flow across Gwen's mind like sleet on a blustery day.
Gwen's brief boost of adrenaline, as well as the momentary joy at seeing Jack is quickly tempered as the Dancer stabs its blade into the ground.
And all is cold.
Violet toxin cuts into Gwen's veins like icy water. Gwen's breath hitches in her throat. Her ARM twitches, its temperature disagreeing with the warmth her body tries to maintain in this microburst of chill.
It is a wounded thing. End its suffering. Death is the only purity that can free it.
Out comes the knife, a spark of metal catching the light. Gwen moves over the distance she had previously gained from the Sword Dancer since her previous attack, her knife trying to stab into an open degree of what may or may not qualify as 'flesh'.
Her teeth clench.
...I'd be a hypocrite to embrace that fully.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Sword Dancer with Comet Clip! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes 9 damage from Toxin! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
"...Um! Well okay Gwen - if you say so!" Before Ruby cringes as her cover in Lily darts into melee and tries to follow in her effort to stay behind her. Hiro meanwhile says, "You sure about that?" He says with a smile - as if he has that much faith in Gwen.
"... Definitely." Hiro answers Fei - thinking of Ragnell's answer on what true strength is. Thinking perhaps that Fei is well on his way to obtaining that. "Usually I'd say - that makes two of us." On going off their guts, "Not today though."
It's a dance macabre in his mind with the emotions of the thing. Feeling how it feels within each malevolent pulse is just an unnerving experience. He nearly cleaves right through, hitting the ground, expecting an instant riposte from the lost souls and it's many swords. He doesn't expect the form it takes. The blade strikes ground a moment later. It feels like a clang...
And then the sand begins to freeze over - as humidity that didn't exist before shoots through the air. The youth hastens to say the words of a simple cantrip as his breath frosts over. And the wind around him smashes upwards in a heated funnel of rising air. It only takes the edge off the horrible icy hatred, keeps his entire body in being covered by malevolent rime.
Just enough.
"We won't break."
He vows with his own sort of determination - breath visible in the air. There's a grim finality to what the Sword Dancer had said to how people sound when they break.
But who is it talking about? The souls that have fallen to its blade? Or the sickening crunch of all the victims that became what stands before him?
Twisting to the side, he pivots on a foot, like he was winding up for a sword technique - but then he suddenly feints by flicking a boomerang with his shield arm. To complete the illusion, he dashes at the thing - trying to slide under its legs. Of course by then - the boomerang has already broken apart into two flying on separate paths. Both trying to strike at different joints of the arm holding the broadsword that's from Wehaca. One at the shoulder - the other at the wrist.
Perhaps... it simply reminds him of Leo. And such an image has him thinking of one of Althena's champion - impaled on K.K.'s blade. He does not want to think of the White Knight's sword joining this creature.
And thus he tries his hardest to disarm it.
Ruby meanwhile quips to Lily explaining her hatred, as she shivers from the frost in the air a little "I guess that explains how you get your fire spells so hot..."
GS: Hiro has attacked Sword Dancer with Cross Boomerang! GS: Hiro has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hiro has completed his action. GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Lily Keil's Black Wolf's Claw for 161 hit points! GS: Entangle! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Tesni Inoue's TK Burst for 70 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
There is a down side to a tendency towards fighting in close proximity to one's opponent. Which is the same as its up side: being in close proximity to one's opponent. It's easy to see the advantage of being able to strike cleanly with melee weapons. It's less easy to see what you opponent is doing in return before it's too late to do anything about it. Not for the first time, Xantia discovers this the hard way, caught in the middle of the area that is suddenly afflicted by unnatural cold.
There was a time when she would have reacted extremely poorly to being made to feel cold, seeking to escape it at all cost. It seems that time is past, as in spite of everything, she stands her ground. Arguably not the wisest decision - weathering the storm is far from comfortable, and Xantia is quickly covered in a layer of frost. By then it's too late to change her mind and try to escape. By then it's a struggle to move at all.
But move she does. It's slow, but she doesn't need to go far. The Sword Dancer is right there, a short distance in front of her, and stopped moving. Having the goal be so close, so clearly in sight, assists her in pushing forward. She takes one slow, struggling but determined step, while the storm is still raging fiercely. She takes a second as it starts to die down, already costing significantly less effort. By the time she takes the third, the ice covering her is already started melting, combated by a dramatic increase in body temperature.
At that moment, she is aided by a warm light - one that she's become familiar with to the point that she can identify the source. It prompts only a smile, that will have to do for now until she can thank Rosaline properly. For now, she has to follow through on what she was already intending to do.
The last of the icy remnants dissolve into the blazing fire that bursts from Xantia's body as she takes the final step putting her in range of the Sword Dancer, reaching out to grab hold of any convenient part of the Hellion's skeletal structure. Should she succeed, she'll will the fire to spread from there, continually burning the creature until forced to release.
GS: Xantia has attacked Sword Dancer with Elemental Fury! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Solanine has posed.
The Seraph of Shadow floats down to the ground slowly as she reasserts weight to her form, and slowly enough that when the hoarfrost spreads, she slips again past the more terrible of its waves, allowing her protective shadows to absorb their brunt. Even though she had been fortunate enough to evade its assaults twice now, Solanine doesn't lower her guard or her resolve. In the ever shifting, ever self-repairing, many armed Sword Dancer she sees a sort of reflection of her own style of war.
Provide unexpected distractions, attack from unexpected angles, create, misdirect, unbalance, and then when you've made an opening, strike with sudden and overwhelming force. She takes stock of the other Drifters - acquaintences, strangers and friends alike, and finds that their hearts or bodies have not broken either, though many are more battered than she'd like.
As she braces herself against the continuing cold, Solanine hears many she recognize speak the name "Raftina" but the name does not have a face for her, As she had so many times before, fighting those afflicted with Malevolence, she does her best to put out her mind its pain, its madness, its casual sadism.
Perhaps there is meaning in its ravings, a lesson to learn, perhaps not.
The time to dwell on its words is not now.
It is time to put it at peace.
Solanine keeps her distance from the fray, and instead draws upon her Element. Black Seraphic runes appear in spots around the Sword Dancer. They coalesce into spheres, the spheres detonate outwards in a cluster of shadow flares. Fireworks of darkness that bloom like bouqets of nightshade flowers.
<Pose Tracker> Jack van Burace has posed.
"Hunting this thing!" Comes the call back towards Ida. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to track an incorporeal spirit?" Jack now knows. He does though start to stalk forwards, his features stretched in a wide smile as he holds the blade of his out to the side. It does feel good, feel right to be here at the end. With Rosa and Ida and Gwen and Cecilia and everyone else that has traveled this road.
"Rumors of my death and all that, Gwen." He calls out over the din of battle. "I'm not quite there yet--"
He would say something else but suddenly, horrifyingly, the Dancer turns its gaze on him. He tries to dodge but the memory of the cold, the ice, the chill. The comfortable power of that darkness. It all mixes together. A moment of hesitation and that is all it takes for the Dancer to rip though him. Spirit energy clinging to the swordsman as he is discarded in favor of other targets. Frost rimes the sword again, Jack's eyes darken to near black. Memories of what he was and what he had done tear into him. Visions of what he could be again if he only...
A vicious shake of his head, frost falls away as he forces himself to move. To shift and change direction towards that overbearing corrupted presence. Memories linger, more painful than the corruption itself. More insidious, the promise of power in that simple blade impaled in the form of the Dancer. Only the light from Rosa's prayer washes over him, soothing the madness in his mind, stopping the whispers as he gives her a ghost of his cocky smirk. "Feels nice to have someone watching my fool back again."
Well. Someone besides Hanpan.
Then he's moving, slamming forwards with all the speed that his technique can manage. Ripping though the air to sink his blade into the insubstantial form of the Dancer, slicing into the area around the familiar blade in its form as if he could carve the blade and what is left of his soul out of the horror that once consumed him.
Pushing away, getting distance again, in and out between moments to free up the line of sight that others need to take it down.
GS: Rosaline Calice heals Jack van Burace! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Jack van Burace has attacked Sword Dancer with Wolf's Bite! GS: Jack van Burace has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jack van Burace has completed his action. GS: Seraph Solanine has spent 4 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Seraph Solanine has attacked Sword Dancer with Shadow Floraison! GS: Seraph Solanine has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Solanine has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
The blurring, whirling form of the Blade Dancer coming close gives Elly a sudden and unexpected spike of tension. She isn't wearing heavy armor. Her military training gives her some facility against opponents with weapons but this is not 'some opponent with weapons,' this is an entity communicating mentally while fighting a platoon of veteran Drifters.
She jumps back, naturally enough, body tensing up. She breathes heavily as the creature moves along, ice cold running down her spine as she swallows with similar weight.
Then comes the cold.
Elly seems to have an objection to this although it is not immediate even as the Malevolent fractals arc towards her. Her hands come up to cross in front of her body, an X of denial, and as the ice is about to reach her, there is a sudden soft 'thoomp' - a noise of a gas stove igniting, though that is a noise that has probably been heard by very few outside of (perhaps) Nortune or Guild Galad.
The brief billow of intense heat around Elly stands out in this sudden zone of profound cold. For a fleeting moment Elly wonders if that snow, that ice, is actually water vapor - like her own - or if the chill presented is profound enough to have begun freezing the air of Filgaia itself.
Some thoughts cross her mind.
One is more tactical. It is a sort of sorrow that everyone attacks that close up. She can, of course, 'guide her shots,' but to exert true force has side effects. Shrapnel. Backwash. Should they work out timing? Elly doesn't know.
The other is poetic. A memory again of being told that she was a destroyer. Perhaps that's true, she thinks, curling her left hand, feeling the silver cap with its lapis-lazuli false fingernail dig into the palm of her hand.
A final one comes - when she sees Ruby, and her eyes flash with sudden realization. Pursuant to her first thought, it comes to her in a radiant flash.
Ruby is flying.
Ruby is a dragon.
Dragons can fly... right?
Her right hand raises upwards. The billowing bow-shock front where subcritical Fire-ether is keeping her from getting flash-frozen creeps closer to her as she focuses her intention elsewhere. She then releases that plume of plasma that has been dubbed the 'Thermo Dragon' for its oscillatory nature up into the sky which... accomplishes... nothing? Beyond signalling, perhaps? Is she calling something?
Elly looks upwards even as the frost comes for her, and tugs at the soles of her boots. The invincible cobblerwear of Solaris is not heat-proof. Her feet tingle, then her legs, the stockings protecting her from frostbite's direct impact. By the time the coolth reaches her knees, though, she has apparently developed things sufficiently.
To herself Elly wonders if she should say something. If she should speak to this sword. She feels something obscure, a kinship she can't describe, a sort of similarity of tastes. The same energy, perhaps. But she doesn't know from where. Life has been frustrating at times, too, but...
Up in the sky, the rising plume of plasma brushes against a low-hanging cloud. That cloud, sensibly, immediately retracts. This is a cue for the dragon to extend out one arm, the plume looping around as the lingering tension of the electromagnetic sheathing loop that was stabilizing the Ether effect draws back downwards...
And so, from the heavens, falls five split rays of incinerating fire, coming down like the sky itself is struggling to mash in a keyboard code directly atop the Blade Dancer. Each plasma spike immediately dissipates in an intense hot wave of harmless superheated air, shortly after impact. Hopefully on the Dancer. Hopefully...
GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Sword Dancer with Thermo Dragon! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Lotus Sets Its Roots for 119 hit points! GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Josephine Lovelace's Knocking On Heaven's Door for 221 hit points! GS: Cripple, Jam, and Weaken! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer!
<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.
Cecilia shrugs to Fei's query. Ida asks much similar. "Sometimes love makes us stab people?" she offers, unhelpfully. "I didn't come up with the iconography! But Raftina is sometimes depicted as an armored woman with a sword! THAT sword!"
Mild huffing complete, Cecilia is immediately beset! She sweeps up her staff, trying to ward off the cold as a wave of it slams into her, sets her staggering. The freeze bites her bones, but she doesn't break from it, forcing herself to stand. She spies Jack out of the corner of her eye, smiling to herself. She had been a bit worried Harken had eaten him alive or something, but he seems as in good of spirits as ever. She stamps her staff, turning her attention on the rampaging Sword Dancer. "Keep it busy," she murmurs, not really a command or request so much as a prayer, as she reaches down to her case and produces one of her Mediums, the lightning-bolt etched across it filling with power. Lily's shield will hold, and Cecilia's magic is strong too, but she'd rather not test herself against that blade if she can help it. Until then...Cecilia thrusts her staff forward, the Medium's power shining through inner cracks before the thing explodes apart, power erupting from within.
Noua Shax stomps and roars. Cecilia slowly draws a breath of her own. "It is our responsibility to save one another," she reminds herself, quietly, and then sets her eyes to staring as Noua Shax's mouth yawns open, a roar burbling in its throat. Then it releases it, a penetrating scream accompanied by lightning energy formed and pressed into a coherent beam of power, tearing toward the Dancer's core.
GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has activated a Force Action! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has spent 4 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has attacked Sword Dancer with Material - Rage Hammer! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde takes 13 damage from Toxin! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has completed her action. GS: Sword Dancer takes a glancing hit from Xantia's Elemental Fury for 69 hit points! GS: Mighty! Statuses applied to Xantia! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Jack van Burace's Wolf's Bite for 149 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a glancing hit from Seraph Solanine's Shadow Floraison for 73 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Elhaym van Houten's Thermo Dragon for 202 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Hiro's Cross Boomerang for 141 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Layabout's Lariat for 164 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Comet Clip for 51 hit points! GS: Jam and Shieldbreak! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer! GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Cecilia Adlehyde's Material - Rage Hammer for 152 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Sword Dancer has posed.
blood and quicksilver
Slowly, the simulated blade of the Guardian of Love pulls from the earth, leaving nothing but a frosted wasteland devoid of love's warmth in its wake. Like a twisted inversion. Like a mockery.
All five of the Sword Dancer's weapons hit the ground in unison with the weary sag of its limbs. The one buried in its head -- the one creating and animating this body like its puppet -- glows brighter still.
stained us
Water and flame and blade wash past the Dancer in bursts of steam and eroding force and heat and a sharpened edge. Hiro's flying boomerang tricks the creature, the feint distracting it and Catenna and Fei's water and fire forcing it back just long enough for those flung weapons to SNAP through wrist and joints, dislodging, weakening the blade arm borne from Wehaca's flooded misery. Torrents of water pummel at its knees, sending it into a downward crash, bending the cut and fraying arm holding that great, lion's maw of a sword back --
-- until it -snaps- off.
Steam explodes across its face as the flames roll in soon after, broiling at bones and sending the Malevolence it is composed of burbling in liquid hate and contradiction that eats away at the elbow joint holding that Gebler blade aloft. Swords slam into the ground, embedding into ice-slaked earth to hold their owner upright as best they can. Its jaw hangs open, half-burning away, as a breath pools vaporous spite from between exposed teeth.
faith
free
The heat redoubles thanks to Jay, as if to directly defy the winter wasteland that the Dancer has made around it. The ice melts beneath it as a spear of flame impales through its chest, setting it ablaze. Weapons yank from the ground in splintering shards of violet frost as it wheels backwards, slow yet fast all in one improbable moment. Its right, primary hand clenches skeletal fingers around the hilt of its unimpressive, rusted-over katana.
It moves. Within an instant, it is gone. Within the next, it is behind Jay, it's feeble weapon held wide at its side, stance bowed in the traditional lightning draw of a Fenrir Kniht.
Jay has a tiny window within that sliver of a second to react to the blade of spiritual rust plunging for her heart.
try... help
It bends backwards. Its head turns around, literally, until it is facing behind it like an owl might. Elvis charges forth.
discarded
And it meets him, literally flying -backwards- within the fraction of an instant it takes for the arm brandishing that rusted blade to spin around behind it, as absurd as it is horrifying as it preemptively drives its weapon upwards. At the least, it aborts Elvis' momentum before it can truly begin.
At the worst...
defended
... Elvis will find himself impaled upon a sword far too sharp for all its accumulated rust.
Rust that seeks to sink right down into the very veins of his soul.
failed
And there it might ply more force and cold fury upon Elvis, if not for the raw shockwave of invisible magic that collides with it courtesy of Tesni not seconds later. Regardless of the results of its assault, the Dancer rips to its side, a horn tip cracking off and falling to the ground, piercing through ice. It destabilizes it, just enough --
-- to leave it utterly open for Lily's assault not seconds later. Black magic and a sharp blade -drive- through the limb holding that Gebler blade, loosening it further --
--until the hand handling that strange, rusted weapon of its sweeps upward in a tired yet instantaneous movement.
It is feeble. Brittle. Frail.
And yet it will -shatter- Lily's blade she wields against it almost carelessly just as easily as it will cleave its way straight through flesh and spirit alike in its upward arc.
it was cold
hate not like yours
Its sunken stare gazes, empty yet pulsing with festering, unresolved emotion.
struck down
by their own
weapon
Ida speaks out. Tries to reach the creature -- or the weapon that animates it. Perhaps its telling, what the source of this malignance is, as it pauses; as the blade driven through the Dancer's skull pulses, compelling it to turn its head towards the former Fury. She speaks to it. Tries to tell it that 'he's' dead. Its jaw hangs open.
a mirror
Testing strikes of fists. Chi bristling at palms. With each cracking blow of flesh and something else against bone, that Malevolence sputters, warbles -- weakens briefly, like palpitations of a heart.
reflecting everything
Ida creates an opening. And on her next blow.
yet nothing
The rusted point of a katana drives downward, intent to skewer her on raw sentiment and an improbably sharp edge just as that final blow disrupts the Malevolent aura around it -just- enough so that--
BOOM
you know what to do
A powerful gunpowder flash of buckshot delivered courtesy of Josephine Lovelace's handcannon RIPS through its side, blowing away the limb weakened by Lily and Fei and sending it toppling over until it collapses onto its left.
The Gebler blade blessed with the lingering regrets of Lahan strikes frosted earth near Fei Fong Wong not seconds after the Sword Dancer's collapse.
It is still recovering as Gwen pierces its defenses. An opening, it seems. The perfect moment. Her knife stabs into where its heart might have been, if it were not so devoid of anything save the thrumming pulse of Malevolence in its skull. Bone splinters on her blade.
bid you provide them
Just as a rusted tip drives upward toward her gut.
one last dance
It leans in close. The Sword in its skull throbbing a sickly hue. Its eyes churning nauseating novas of violet light.
they said no
but they would find ones who did
Fragmented, confusing thoughts spill from its spiritual voice. The katana starts to twist.
And from within and without its defenses, the Dancer is assaulted. Shadow pummels at its back in bursting flares of Althena's Magic, Seraphic power given form in darkness that explodes through bone and Malevolence alike in bursts of bruise-like magic. At the same time, Xantia, alight in blistering flame, breaches its defenses; its body lowered as it is, she manages a firm grasp upon its head, holding face with force enough to make its skull start to crack and splinter. Its entire head is set ablaze as it rears back. Katana-bearing arm sweeps up.
And the screams that echo from it sound not like its 'voice' as that katana literally -bends backwards- to try to impale Xantia on its rust-ridden edge. It sounds like memories. A cavalcade of people shouting and yelling. Rioting. Panicking.
It ends as swift as it began, with the downward plunge of its blade towards whatever of Xantia it can reach.
And then
it's
comes the heat.
warm
FWOOSH
Plasma drowns the space the Sword Dancer occupied. The blistering, superheated energy spikes into it in a merciless bombardment -- the wrath of a destroyer put into action as explosion after explosion ripples across its frame, driving it to its knees before Elly's assault. It's hard to describe how it looks, as it is slowly consumed in that raw, etheric energy. Spite ripples off it. And yet also
ahhhhh... tired...
... relief.
And yet it still fights. Because that's all it can do. What it lives to do. A blade with no purpose can only shed blood. A blade abandoned...
The sword and its spectral body rise within the blistering, blinding heat. Its katana, glowing raw with inducted, etheric plasma, sweeps to its right.
And the reach of that blade proves to be a truly frightening thing as Lanval's gourd flings outward. It CRACKS against the arm bearing Raftina's blade, bending it at a vile, irregular angle with a crunch of calcified Malevolence.
no place
Just as that glowing, heated blade EXTENDS from its hilt, stretching in a way impossible to -run- Lanval straight through.
no home
As impossible as how -cold- that rusted edge is, despite the heat that still clings to it.
What would it take? From them to let it go?
retribution
release
h o m e
And it is exactly then that Jack's blade bites into familiar, Malevolent bone, and not a moment sooner.
A flash of steel. Scarcely even a sound follows. A limb, flies through the air.
A second later, as Jack darts away, an Arctican blade collapses into the ice, the skeletal digits wrapped around it still clinging on tight as if it were something precious.
why?
Jack moves. But already, the immense colossus is upon him in speeds boggling. Its rusted blade is driven up. Brought down, like an executioner's blade.
To drive into the flesh and spirit of a man so familiar, and yet so different.
abandoned us
like the rest
cast us aside
WHY
Rage bristles. The wintery winds whip around the Dancer like a tempest, its fervor given life, given form in sorrowful hate that seeks to CONSUME Jack in bristling vengeance that can never, ever be satisfied --
And a crackling BOLT of ionized, Guardian-forged power CRASHES through its center and out its highest shoulder socket, bursting the limb holding Raftina's blade off like a bottle cap to send it flying until it IMPALES through the stone-wrought stairway of the temple.
The Dancer staggers. It hisses, a burbling sound. And yet its bristling, Malevolent core is visible in its ruined skull. It seems tired. Fatigued.
Vulnerable and exposed.
how 'bout
Backwards it stumbles. But the storm has not abated. It simply intensifies.
we put this little poker
One of its two remaining arms lift. The one holding no weapon. It grips onto the blade nestled within its skull. The edges churn bright with frenzied rage.
to better use
And the -second- it is ripped free, Malevolence BURSTS forth like an unopened dam.
Memories. Fragments of visions. A cold place. A castle. Quicksilver and crimson paint the snow. People fleeing. Knights fighting.
Demons wrought of metal in fast pursuit --
Specters of cold sentiments rush the battlefield. Of cowardice. Of despair. Of hate. All unfulfilled. All unresolved. Sentiments that lingered in snow for years. Sentiments--
--that seek to rush through anyone and everyone in their path as the Sword Dancer drives that blade DOWNWARD.
It pierces. Sinks into snow. And everything starts to bleed liquid black, as the ground explodes into a field of blades, all of them simulacrums of that blistering black sword, all of them throbbing with hatred, raw, wounded hatred.
abandoned abandoned abandoned useless shamed used us wrong wrong WRONG
That sword is the source. The core.
And it must be dealt with.
want to be free--
GS: Sword Dancer has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Extend! GS: Sword Dancer has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Lock On! GS: Sword Dancer enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Sword Dancer with Malevolent Coil! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has entered a Reflect stance! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Malevolent Coil for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer! GS: Mighty! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Elvis with Rusted Blade! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Rusted Blade! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Lily Keil with Rusted Blade! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Rusted Blade! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Rusted Blade! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Xantia with Rusted Blade! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Jack van Burace with Rusted Blade! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Lanval with Rusted Blade! GS: Sneak! You have gained 1 Combo! Only you see this message. GS: Sword Dancer has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has spent 3 Combo on Link, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Lost Souls! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Tesni Inoue with Lost Souls! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Lost Souls! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Hiro with Lost Souls! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Solanine with Lost Souls! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Lost Souls! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Cecilia Adlehyde with Lost Souls! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rosaline Calice with Lost Souls! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Chime Isa with Lost Souls! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Catenna with Lost Souls! GS: Sword Dancer has gained 2 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has launched an attack Link! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Tesni Inoue with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Josephine Lovelace with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Hiro with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Solanine with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Elhaym van Houten with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Cecilia Adlehyde with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Rosaline Calice with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Chime Isa with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Catenna with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Elvis with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Lily Keil with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Xantia with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Jack van Burace with Hatred! GS: Sword Dancer has attacked Seraph Lanval with Hatred! GS: CRITICAL! Catenna takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Lost Souls for 121 hit points! GS: Catenna enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Sword Dancer has completed its action. GS: Catenna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Catenna completely evades Hatred from Sword Dancer!
GS: Fei Fong Wong critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Lost Souls for 41 hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Fei Fong Wong takes an additional 45 damage from Reaper! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Sword Dancer's attack becomes clear! GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Rusted Blade for 114 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Hiro guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Lost Souls for 118 hit points! GS: Hiro enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Hiro guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Hiro! GS: Hiro takes an additional 45 damage from Reaper! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Sword Dancer's attack becomes clear! GS: CRITICAL! Jacqueline Barber critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Rusted Blade for 46 hit points! GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: Jacqueline Barber takes an additional 45 damage from Reaper! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes an additional 45 damage from Reaper! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Sword Dancer's attack becomes clear! GS: CRITICAL! Elvis guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Rusted Blade for 150 hit points! GS: Elvis guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Elvis! GS: Elvis enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Chime Isa enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Chime Isa has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Chime Isa completely evades Lost Souls from Sword Dancer!
GS: Chime Isa has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Chime Isa completely evades Hatred from Sword Dancer!
GS: CRITICAL! Elhaym van Houten critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Lost Souls for 49 hit points! GS: Elhaym van Houten has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: Elhaym van Houten takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Elhaym van Houten! GS: Elhaym van Houten enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: CRITICAL! Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Lost Souls for 258 hit points! GS: Josephine Lovelace has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Josephine Lovelace completely evades Hatred from Sword Dancer!
GS: Sneak! The true nature of Sword Dancer's attack becomes clear! GS: CRITICAL! Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Rusted Blade for 149 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes an additional 45 damage from Reaper! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Sword Dancer's attack becomes clear! GS: CRITICAL! Xantia critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Rusted Blade for 45 hit points! GS: Xantia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Xantia completely evades Hatred from Sword Dancer!
GS: Sneak! The true nature of Sword Dancer's attack becomes clear! GS: CRITICAL! Lily Keil guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Rusted Blade for 138 hit points! GS: Lily Keil guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Lily Keil! GS: Lily Keil enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Sword Dancer's attack becomes clear! GS: CRITICAL! Jack van Burace takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Rusted Blade for 127 hit points! GS: Jack van Burace takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Jack van Burace! GS: Jack van Burace enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Sword Dancer's attack becomes clear! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Lanval takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Rusted Blade for 278 hit points! GS: Seraph Lanval enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde has activated a Force Action! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Lost Souls for 114 hit points! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Cecilia Adlehyde! GS: Cecilia Adlehyde enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Solanine has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Seraph Solanine completely evades Lost Souls from Sword Dancer!
GS: CRITICAL! Rosaline Calice critically Guards a hit from Sword Dancer's Lost Souls for 50 hit points! GS: Rosaline Calice has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo! GS: Rosaline Calice takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Rosaline Calice! GS: Rosaline Calice takes an additional 45 damage from Reaper! GS: Seraph Lanval has activated a Force Action! GS: Seraph Lanval enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sword Dancer has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Seraph Lanval completely evades Hatred from Sword Dancer!
GS: Tesni Inoue takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Lost Souls for 207 hit points! GS: Tesni Inoue enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Tesni Inoue takes a solid hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Tesni Inoue! GS: Tesni Inoue takes an additional 45 damage from Reaper!
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
Catenna is catching glimpses of shocked looks. Her eyes dart to Jacqueline, then to Ida. She can't answer those fears right now, and the mask keeps her face from being read.
She turns her gaze forward again - and something clicks into place in her mind that slices through her like a cold gust of wind that blows straight down into the emotional part of her psyche.
"You really were an ordinary blade once," she murmurs. "Not a living being, but a weapon."
An abandoned weapon.
"you're just a human, catenna
"a stupid fucking human meatbag
"when you should be
"a weapon!!
"a dark weapon born from the womb of mankind!!"
"...I'm an idiot," Catenna sighs. Her masked head droops and her shoulders sag.
From the Moon Shaman's shoulder, Saarda-Shanta closes her eyes. <An idiot would not have pulled herself back from the brink. Allow yourself to make a mistake sometimes. It happens.>
The Sword Dancer takes a beating. Catenna swallows a self-reproving line she wants to say, just looking up through her mask at the sight of the Hellion's core so plainly exposed - and then that blade is torn free.
And the black blood flows into an endless field of abandoned blades.
Cowardice and despair taint those feelings, battering Catenna like a wave. She throws her arms up and growls as the swords rise up to slash at her with the cold despair of something long forgotten. Cowardice and unfulfilled longing slice across her legs and hips, tearing parts of the gi she wore to the battle and drawing blood. The feelings pour into her like water from a vessel. Throbbing hatred groans and pulses around her like a grim heartbeat, threatening to leech into her veins and stain her very being. The slashing blades and waves of Malevolence swallow her up, and she vanishes from view for just a moment.
behind the mask of the weapon, years ago in a place far from here, her human eyes close, and she feels the tears coming.
Something comes billowing out of the Malevolence storm, from a point right about where Catenna was standing a moment ago.
It's a torn, grey and blue gi. Shreds of fabric fly from it as the current and energy take it, rapidly reducing it to constituent threads.
Through the forest of blades, Catenna strides, Malevolence surging around her. With the gi gone, she is left with a sleeveless white underdress that reaches a little ways down her thighs. It is not the elegant garb she would like for this situation - not enough to protect her.
She lets the claw slide from her hand and to the ground. "I want you to know this much," she says as she lifts slender hands to her masked face, eyes intent behind it. "I believed that the only way to defeat the one who filled you with hate was to come with a heart of stone. That the only way out of a trial was to submit to no trial by having no heart to hurt. But it was a lie."
There is a soft click. Catenna shakes her hair out, and slowly slides the Zortroan mask away from her face.
The crystalline glint of tears comes into view. They run down her cheeks just as they did all those years ago.
"Thank you for reminding me what lies down that road," Catenna says with a simple, sad sincerity. "In that respect... you did something honourable. You were not useless to me.
"And I want to give you the only thanks I can give you." She holds her right hand up. The Silver Medium in her hand pulses with light.
"Let me set you free," Catenna whispers. That intention, at least, has not changed.
Steadily, the Moon Shaman begins to intone the familiar spell of purification. The silver light builds around her. It shines towards that sword. That core. It seeks to dispel the Malevolence that fills it with hate.
To sweep away the darkness and free the abandoned blade from a battlefield long gone.
GS: Seraph Solanine takes a glancing hit from Sword Dancer's Hatred for 0 hit points! GS: Reaper and Weaken! Statuses applied to Seraph Solanine! GS: Seraph Solanine enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Tesni Inoue has posed.
The battle rages onward against the Sword Dancer she's growing more concerned for Catenna too but there's no time to rest when they are facing something that might do worse than kill them. Magic, ARMs, and various other forms of attack are being slung around with a great deal of fury tonight and there's no sign of stopping she hears what this horror wants. It seems to desire to be free of this existence maybe they can she knows there's a plan to cleanse them if it's possible.
She's able to buy Elvis some breathing room with her own attack and she gets back on the move again trusting in his ability to take care of himself from that point onwards.
There is just bad stuff bleeding out of the Sword Dancer now and she's caught in the thick of it and Tess is not looking very good either from it she looks like she might drop but somehow the woman hangs on, though she knows her body is going to win out soon and they need to strike now.
Catenna is up still, good she thinks in the haze of pain she also sees Jacqueline is also still in the fight.
She loads one of her heavy rounds into her arm and she takes aim for the Core, she will lay down some fire just to aid in hopefully disrupting it so people like Cateena can purge it of this darkness.
She moves into postion to be able to act as a physical barrier to protect Cateena from any further attack or at least help shield her.
GS: Tesni Inoue enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Tesni Inoue has attacked Sword Dancer with Dead Man's Hand! GS: Tesni Inoue has gained 1 Combo! GS: Tesni Inoue has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elvis has posed.
It moves impossibly fast. A being most likely not comprised of any matter save for the weapons it holds. Or perhaps this form is an extension of the blade, a reverse of the old idiom where soldiers are taught their blade is an extension of themselves. These thoughts swim in Elvis' mind even in this harrowing few seconds as an impaling edge thrusts hsi direction.
Elvis has enough spin to prevent a direct impalement. His right torso recieves a huge gash however. Would it be deeper if he was Human for certain. His incredibly dense muscular structure giving him some amount of defense, but not enough. "Ghhh...!" he coughs. He bleeds no less than a Human, however.
A nice pool of crimson collects by his right foot. The Sword Dancer is distracted by other targets for the moment. "If only you were in service of the Veruni, blade," he stutters, reaching for a small pack full of green dust. A crunch of the package, and the powder applied to the wound. A painful wince. A slight glow of green. "You would know a good purpose..."
It would stymie the bleeding. It would need to be looked at better later. Yet the razor's edge of negative emotion is not yet done. An ocean of ebom ripples out, and all those whom the hatred share spill out, as do many obsidian-dark tips of the brandished sword. As they come, Elvis clenches his fists, and roars, bluish-purple energy rippling out, sundering the ground and pressing them back. "Your hate needs be purged, blade!" He can see others whom know this magic, and begin to work it to the construct's aid. "Pin it, now! Give the oracles of this land the time they need!"
His hands make a gesture as if he is holding a large ball, and large amounts of water accuminate i nthe air around the Sword Dancer. With a crushing motion, it all surges in towards one of the arms it last left to pin it in place, with the presure of the deepest leagues.
GS: Elvis has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Chime Isa has posed.
Chime's smile rarely falters. Her spirit rarely flags. And today remains one of those days where it will not. The tortured souls of the Sword Dance explode outward as it unleashes it's fury on those not nearby it, and then it's hatred follows. The sheer force of both rip the land around them, but Chime simple walks through, eyes closed as it washes over and past her.
"Cowardice. Despair. Hatred. Fear. Never a true answer to the problems of life." she says softly, a voice filled with cheer and hope. "The light that shines in us is a power we all have, and those emotions only seek to drown it. But even the smallest of flames brings hope in the darkest of nights." as she picks her spot in an area everyone can hear her.
"Though our bodies are weak and breakable, the spirit is indomitable." she calls out fairly radiating with her goodwill and hope, a beacon if nothing else for others.
GS: Chime Isa has attacked Gwen Whitlock with It's Okay!! GS: Chime Isa has attacked Rosaline Calice with It's Okay!! GS: Chime Isa has attacked Catenna with It's Okay!! GS: Chime Isa has attacked Seraph Solanine with It's Okay!! GS: Chime Isa has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with It's Okay!! GS: Chime Isa has attacked Jacqueline Barber with It's Okay!! GS: Chime Isa has attacked Hiro with It's Okay!! GS: Chime Isa has attacked Fei Fong Wong with It's Okay!! GS: Chime Isa has completed her action. GS: Jacqueline Barber takes a solid hit from Chime Isa's It's Okay! for 0 hit points! GS: Jacqueline Barber gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Elvis has attacked Sword Dancer with Hydro Pressure! GS: Elvis has completed his action. GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Chime Isa's It's Okay! for 0 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Chime Isa's It's Okay! for 0 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Rosaline Calice takes a solid hit from Chime Isa's It's Okay! for 0 hit points! GS: Rosaline Calice gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Hiro takes a solid hit from Chime Isa's It's Okay! for 0 hit points! GS: Hiro gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Catenna has gained 1 Combo! GS: Chime Isa has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Catenna completely evades It's Okay! from Chime Isa!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Jacqueline presses the attack, focusing on the spear of flame and intensifying it. Putting her willpower into it. But then, suddenly, it vanishes. Jacqueline's eyes go wide in alarm and she turns, her left hand moving quickly to invoke one of the Crests in her gauntlet.
It is behind her, and a blade is rushing toward her heart. ...It stops, punctured through her surcoat and putting a scratch on the metal beneath. Had she not acted quickly, it would have pierced all the way through - but now, tendrils of stone hold onto the blade, preventing it from going in any further. The steel was one thing, but the spiritual rush clinging to it...she can feel it.
Jacqueline's face is pale, and her breath is caught in her throat as she tries not to move an inch. As her spell wars against the blade for her life until, thankfully, Elvis distracts it and forces it to turn away.
But it is not yet finished. As it rages against them, it begins to lose limbs, and its core becomes exposed...but it is cornered - vulnerable, but all the more dangerous for it. Malevolence burst forth, filling her with memory fragments. And what's more, it takes these and strikes at her with pure, raw hatred.
It's enough to force Jacqueline to her knees. It was...overwhelming. She could feel its pain and hatred like she never had before. She hears a voice, soft, but cheerful, and full of hope.
Chime...she didn't talk with the ARMs Meister nearly enough. But she can hear the sentiment in her voice, and...she's right. In the end, it was because it felt this way that they needed to help it.
"...Thank you. I think I needed to hear that." She murmurs in response. She breathes deep and forces herself to her feet just in time to watch Catenna stride out of the Malevolence.
She seems to have realized something. Jacqueline smiles, just slightly. She knows what Catenna is doing - she has seen it before. She might not possess the same power she does...but she can do everything in her power to facilitate it.
She rests her hand over her heart, over where she safely stores a Medium of her own.
"Grudiev...please...!" Jacqueline entreats.
And at her call, the image of the Guardian of Earth appears. With one swing of Grudiev's mighty limbs, the earth itself rises on both sides, looking to sandwich the Sword Dancer and its core between it - not to crush and destroy, but to hold and restrain in an attempt to prevent it from interfering with the ensuing purification attempt.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has activated a Force Action! GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Sword Dancer with Material - Titanic Upheaval! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: Seraph Solanine takes a solid hit from Chime Isa's It's Okay! for 0 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Tesni Inoue's Dead Man's Hand for 171 hit points! GS: Break! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Elvis's Hydro Pressure for 178 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Material - Titanic Upheaval for 126 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lily Keil has posed.
Ruby meanwhile quips to Lily explaining her hatred, as she shivers from the frost in the air a little "I guess that explains how you get your fire spells so hot..."
"No," Lily answers Ruby. "Hatred fuels shadow. ...Fire is different--it comes naturally, another way." And Cecilia can't explain the sword, but, "Part of love is protecting what you love--the sword isn't strange to me!"
Granas is not Lily's God--but still His light is welcome for her, brought by Rosaline, and Lily is content for now that their goals are aligned. As that light shines, Lily feels herself gain strength, feels the ice that was still embedded in her skin melt away. To break this cycle...
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, is it?" Lily asks of no one in particular. No, to someone in particular--
Lily brings up her eyes on where Josie fires. "On it!"
Of course, it would be the limb with the Gebler blade. Lily strikes out with her weapon with a soldier's strength and a witch's power--but the rusted blade hacks upward. Lily keeps hold of her weapon, no novice to war-
That old, rusted blade hits the steel in Lily's hand and her weapon shatters completely, fragments spraying all around, the main hunk of the blade rushing past her--and leaving a great red gash up her cheek in its wake, bits of metal stuck in her jacket and through her clothes as the weapon hits at her, next. The strike hits true; Lily stumbles backward, holding the broken hilt of her weapon, teeth clenched as she gathers herself.
She hisses, faintly; Power keeps rippling everywhere... But she closes her eyes for an instant, focuses on her will, not her body. "...Seems so," she answers Ida. "You know its story, then?"
The voice--the things it says, the way it was betrayed...
"I, too, was betrayed."
"I've wondered, too... What else can a blade do, but fight?" The Malevolence has washed over her, and through her, and it is terrible and cold... but the visions--they tell her.
"You should have had better. ...You deserved better."
Lily breathes, then, and stands up straight, stepping backward and out of the way... and then lifts the broken sword before her, just enough to reach her other hand.
"...I can't give you peace..."
Shadow blooms around her, slowly at first and then more, and more; it encompasses her, drains away light, obscures ground and sky both in a hazy space near her that grows, darker than even the cold void of space.
"But... Riesenlied isn't the only one, who can acknowledge someone's pain..."
Lily's expression is thoughtful, locked in concentration--and she drags the ruined blade against her palm, spilling fresh blood towards the ground that her magic takes up, takes power with--
And her eyes turn black, without sclera or iris.
"You'd all better know what you're doing," she says, and then a point of power erupts into being above their foe, if Lily can manage it, up--a tiny point... that implodes, drawing everything it can closer--drawing cold, drawing power, drawing blood, sentiment--
Lily is cut with many blades--she knows hatred, she says, even if it isn't hers.
So if she can keep this spell going long enough to draw off attacks, then maybe...
GS: Lily Keil has activated a Force Action! GS: Lily Keil has activated a Force Action! GS: Lily Keil has activated a Force Action! GS: Lily Keil has spent 1 Combo on Disease, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Lily Keil has attacked Sword Dancer with Witch's Hammer! GS: Lily Keil has completed her action. GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Lily Keil's Witch's Hammer for 182 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer has been weakened by Disease! They take 0 damage, and burn off all temporary hit points! GS: Disease! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
The shot flies true. Others capitalize upon it.
But this just means that Josie is put into a perilous position, this close to the Sword Dancer.
There is no escape from the storm of blades. Not here. Like a house aflame, wherever she might attempt to turn or twist -- or bring up a shot of a spell as a barrier -- there is a blade to block her path. The cleave through spellcraft.
Carve flesh.
She had reached for the beam. She had seen her and reached for the beam. But it had been burning too. Her hand--
She screams amidst the thicket of steel, a pale shadow of her scream that night.
Blood patters the snow here and now. Gritting her teeth, Josie yet stands, fixing what remains of the Dancer -- the sword itself -- with a look that could cut through a Gear. "Not... yet..." she hisses, taking one stumbling step forward.
Not yet; behold a hundred thousand million eternal battles. No rest, no rest, no end--
Keep dancing forever--
and no one and no one and SHE IS HERE DEAD. All around is pain -- her own, not her own -- bubbling up about her like steam.
"Shut up," Josie murmurs to the heart of it, and just as she had reached into the fire, years and years ago...
She passes through the wave of despair and hopelessness and hate and abandonment. Just as then, there is a shock enough to jolt the nerves and then, nothing.
She had woken from a dark dream back then, too.
"So you lost everything that mattered, too, huh."
It was a blade.
So the stories were true, in a sense. Even an object can know the pain of loss.
"You want to be free? Heh. Join the club," she says to the source of it all. "...But I don't mind giving you a hand. Not like you can walk out yourself."
She lifts the Reaper's Hand, ratcheting it over into a more orthodox means of ammunition. A lopsided smile lingers on her lips like an overindulgent aunt. "C'mon. Go on ahead of me."
Drawing on the blade, she pulls the trigger.
We go into the circle by night...
GS: Josephine Lovelace has activated a Force Action! GS: Josephine Lovelace has spent 1 Combo on Poison, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Sword Dancer with Getting Away With Murder! GS: Josephine Lovelace has gained 1 Combo! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action. GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Josephine Lovelace's Getting Away With Murder for 166 hit points! GS: Slow and Toxin! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Lanval's posture looks less battle-ready by the passing moment as he follows through from the strike. Like water, he flows and twists about what surrounding environ would contain him. The nature of water is oft something that one can touch, but not quite pin it down. To stab a skewer into a lake is to just have the water itself flow about it, displaced but never quite stuck.
Raftina's blade skewers water, and pins Lanval there. It is gut-wrenching, run through a gut that technically isn't there in the physical sense.
no place no home
Lanval doesn't have words for the differences in temperature extremes, steam and frost alike somehow existing in tandem without so much as making the blade brittle. 'Pain' is adequate but not all-encompassing. His eyes shut, rather than widen. His mouth doesn't break into the typical exaggerated cringing it can.
retribution release
The Water Seraph holds as still as still can be.
h o m e
Further events transpire... and memories flood the field. Fear, confusion, a lack of fulfillment. To be subject to all of this at once, flashes of mortal lives snuffed out in a blink by the cruelty of foes that could not be stopped short of desperation and miracles. Miracles happened, but not for them. Heartbreaking. Tragedy. All of it washes...
...Past Lanval? Even if he's at ground zero, pinned by that sword, it mostly goes around him.
"...Mmmm." He mmmms weakly. His life might be flashing before his eyes. Over five-hundred years. How many generations of sadness and misery has he watched? None to this volume. None to this nature, but the core of the idea - the despair.
The level of detachment that does, and necessarily must, exist between the Seraphim and the mortals.
It took his everything, and maybe a little more than that, to have held that societal cesspit of a tavern for as long as he did after that piece of land took leave of virtually all piety outside of the scant scraps he clutched onto. The equivalent of dangling from a cliff by two fingers and a thumb on a branch that swayed against the wind.
There is a likeness he can recognize in the rush of despairing voices crying out to the local divinities for help that they never quite receive to the degree wanted - or needed. Even if in his case, as time went on, it was less 'a doubting church goer' and more 'the out and out dregs of society drowning in despair and resignation.'
"Mmmmph." Lanval grunts and shifts again as both eyes open half-lidded, looking upon the heated length of Raftina's blade. A Guardian, right? According to their Shaman. Raftina's one of the biggest names if he's understood it right. He knows the state Filgaia's in. He's overheard and witnessed a whole lot of skepticism and anger about their ability to help keep Filgaia going.
He blinks again. The Malevolence is still whirling around him, looking for a way to break in there. There should already be an opening through being impaled, but somehow...
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Then, his eyes open slightly, to a flash of aquamarine...
...and the air just grows a little more mirthful.
Weak, but genuine laughter escapes him. His free hand, his left, reaches across the length of the blade. Things are already bad. It can't ever 'get better' for the dead and their lingering resentments, deeply imparted upon this Blade Dancer.
"If thou can hear me..." The Hellion before him has been throwing around words and even engaging in concepts and ideas with brief coherence. His left hand reaches forward. Steam rises from the ratty manifestation of ragged, worn cloth he wears. Even this close to the super-heated, ice-cold blade, it looks like it wants to smolder and freeze.
...Then he tries to lay it down on the skeletal hand that wields it.
"Open thy hand." Lanval speaks, his eyes opening in full as his gentle smile (which still looks stupid and vaguely cat-like) looks to the Hellion in what little remains of a coherent skull of a face. "Would that not be but one release?"
He falls upon the nitty-gritty of the calling he took up from a startlingly young age and did not waver from until the Guard physically destroyed the place in which he presided. As those who can purify move to resolve the situation and put an end to the lingering sentiments of suffering...
He does what any Lord of the Land is charged to do - stop it from getting any worse.
With a patience practiced and hardened from centuries of living about and around folly and out-and-out unspeakable filth to virtually anyone, as the gesture and his wounds test the very limits of how much of himself he can hold before it might take him, he continues that warm, easy-going, mirthful laughter.
He's not going to take his hand off until the Blade Dancer simply releases Raftina's blade - as if trying to coax a blade itself to find an ease and trust in which to release their grip of their very nature as those with the power of Purification get to work.
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Sword Dancer with Open Thy Hand! GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Open Thy Hand for 0 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
"Oh-! I see." Ruby double takes, as if considering Lily in a new light. She's quiet for a few moments then whispers as surreptitiously as she can manage in the heat of battle, "Tell me all about your fire later please."
Hiro's sliding maneuver pays off in that the ricochet off the Sword Dancer brings the boomerangs bouncing back to him. He can see the moment that the blade snaps off.
And point blank though all he can do as his eyes widen - is to raise his shield. The heat of it feels like his skin is boiling off - that's just an illusion though from being so close. The screams echoing from within though as the Katana bends backwards just... he thought he knew true heat. Pure emotional torment from the Lost Souls lashes him, it gets inside his skull. It throbs inside his head. He can't even maintain his grip on his sword, which clatters on the ground - unable to even think of keeping his hold on it.
He had to deal with malevolence every day - but Lucia had no malice to inflict it. Here it's different. He yells like a child who's experiencing true torment for the first time.
Fragmented memories assail him like piercing knives - even before the blade sinks into the snow. The pure hatred of lives cut short - feelings never resolved, resentment without end makes his red blood feel black. Makes his whole being feel tainted for simply being alive. For simply having a chance to resolve his own feelings and memories and his being.
"I know you do... want that" He croaks - as his limitations sink in, he feels smaller than ever. "I can't... don't... understand."
He almost doesn't feel like he can get up. "I can only try to..." However then Chime's good will manages to fuel his optimism just enough - that he can try to get up. "Not an answer maybe... but... it's there all the same." He unsteadily lifts himself off the blistering black ground with wobbly knees.
He breaks into a walk, slow at first, but then starts into a run, ducking down to grab his sword - accepting the pain the blackened earth bleeds onto him for his negligence. He keeps running forth, his blade glowing red from heat - even before it ignites into flames. It's a trick perhaps - of air friction, either from his self-taught method of wielding a blade - or spellwork combined with bladework.
They're just flames though.
Lacking any purifying power himself, he can simply charge at the thing - that is the sword - that is the source. That is the core.
A tri-fold of blazing slashes that warp the air from a mirage haze of heat. Without true understanding of this thing. All he can hope to offer is distraction for those who would free it. And perhaps some small measure of resolution for the feelings of the souls within.
"...I can only try..." He whispers - in his hope perhaps - to understand. It is like a prayer from a youth who does not understand a great many things about life - about the people he knows.
What he offers, is his desire. Is it strange to offer that which he's fought so hard?
GS: Hiro has activated a Force Action! GS: Hiro has spent 4 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Hiro has attacked Sword Dancer with Battalion Sword!! GS: Hiro has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Solanine has posed.
Seraph Solanine watches as the Drifters assault the Sword Dancer with their power, with their hopes and their resolve, watches them all take down its arms and armaments one by one, until it is only left with one option: to wield its source as the weapon it feels itself to be.
In its desperation lets out a spiritual wail of its pain once more, and the Seraph moves ephemerally to once again attempt to find a weakness of passage in its crest.
To her relief and against all odds, she finds a safe-ish path through its energies again and yet it not as unblemished a blessing as the times before. Though not a concentration powerful to inflict immense harm, what of the wave that touches her, sticks and lingers on the shadows protecting her, at last the Hellion's hatred can corrode the Seraph that has eluded it. Her concentration is then taken by the field of blackness spreading across the ground, and what she suspects, comes to pass, as black swords erupt from the pitch below them.
Intimately familiar with this method of attack, she dodges it with a leap, as she would her own, and manages to just escape the length of black blades from her flank and below.
She lands, more quickly this time than before, as the lingering malevolence on her armor threatens her.
She concentrates on expelling it, projecting it out with the shadows, and struggles against it, perhaps the strongest expression of the Hellion's Malevolent Hatred it has sent their way.
It fights its way deeper, until Solanine hears Chime's words: "Though our bodies are weak and breakable, the spirit is indomitable."
"The spirit is indomitable."
Solanine bursts off her shadows, taking the lingering Malevolence with it, just when it felt it might breach.
The Seraph turns her attention back to the battle, and summons shadows anew. To herself, replacing her armor and cloak, and beneath the Sword Dancer, erupting her own swords of darkness to pierce it.
But more importantly. Solanine felt, as she watched, and felt the strength and purity of those channeling spiritual energy and the determination of those supporting them, to pin the Hellion down.
So that they all may end this being's torment.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
The dancer moves. It's already dead and it is fighting all of them at once, Elly thinks; if they were not so many would they all be dead now? Would it rip apart Gears like a vegetable processor? As her plasma rain smashes against the creature, she sags forwards. The creature cries out...
It's speaking to them.
Cold air and gun smoke fills the air. It has a nostalgiac feeling.
why
The scream shivers her bones, hurts her ears. She tightens her fists. She sucks in a deep breath before she feels a pang of sympathy, a sense that leads her to open her heart, however tentatively, on reflex. A moment later one of those blades of hatred slash her leg. Elly's eyes widen and --
some other time
Elly feels her head jerk to the side. They laugh at her. She can hear the sharp tinkling of her glasses breaking.
The world is a blur but she can see the colorful fabric of the balloon they shot down. The soldiers laugh at her, tall and distorted figures.
"This is gettin' sick," says one. Elly thinks of the twenty-two other balloons, hidden, waiting. They won't fly off from the aerie if the guns will shoot them down but if they wait there they'll shoot the aerie with the guns, the damnable, cursed, stupid, stinking, ugly, squat chamberpots that broke this library-fortress open. Then everyone will die anyway. She trembles. She wants to cough again but she can't.
"I dunno," says another. She kicks something over to Elly. "C'mon, kid. This is funny. Are you all they had left?"
"The last little monk," scoffs a third. This brings about general laughter.
Misery and helplessness fills her even as she picks up the stick. It's the wrong stick, Elly thinks. The real one - she's swapped them. For a miserable moment Elly stares, and a moment later the staff she'd intended to sunder swings into her side and cracks--
The bullying woman screams.
Elly looks up. (In the distance the staff flies across the great courtyard, amongst the enemy soldiers.) The cruel woman is clutching her arm, which is bending the wrong way.
"Huuuuuuuh," says Casimir, his gray hair clear in the firelight. "A kick like that isn't good for my hips, let me tell YOU!"
Casimir's wrinkled eyes turn towards her. "You must be lonely out here by yourself, ma p'tit rouge."
Elly makes a huge ugly sobbing sound.
"No time for tears. Come on," Casimir says, looking out. Elly hears the wheels of artillery pieces being turned, but -- they're turning, she thinks, and if they're all pointing at us, then --
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
501 CE
Elly comes back to herself, to a stronger if slightly battered body, with vision. The misery, the throbbing sense of profound abandonment lingers, even as the distorted memories of burning balloons and cruel artillerymen dissipate on the wind. But one thing yet remains.
The staff. She had to break the staff.
What does that mean, Elly thinks, putting a hand to her head as war continues. Am I having a stroke? That would just do it, wouldn't it.
I had the wrong staff, Elly thinks.
No, she thinks. Wrong word. I had the wrong rod.
She reaches to her hip and draws forth that moon-tipped scepter that has valiantly tried to end a number of battles. Thus far, though dutiful, the object has failed. Elly stares at the moon tip because - "It's not the right one either," she says aloud, muttering. "But..."
But...
"It's close enough," Elly says. There is a sudden indrawing of Etheric energy, unformed potentia, as she grasps the Lunar Rod firmly - one hand near the tip, the other just shy of the grip. Elly breathes in and then she brings the Rod down at the same time she brings the knee up.
There is a snap as a physical object dies but it's remarkably resonant, because it isn't the only thing that broke. The potential Etheric energy rises in an unusually prismatic color as Elly stares at the wicked sword -
????? ????? - Lunar Rod
once more - with feeling!
Some tiny part of Elly glories and lets go as the prismatic light spirals around and as pearl-hued energy snaps outwards, forming into eight long pins of shining silver force that fly outwards and slam down in an octagonal pattern - slightly distorted along a northeast-southwest axis - before each's head turns into a sphere of different intensities, from the northernmost pure white to the southernmost pure black, each pin intermediate forming an intervailing lunar sigil.
Within there is a sudden inward crushing feeling, the yearning to rest magnified immensely. A spiritual peacefulness. The sense of looking at the moon in a still mountain pond.
Elly's head slumps forwards and she sways on her feet. The broken rod pieces fall out of her hands. "oog" she says, but maybe she already said enough.
GS: Seraph Solanine has attacked Sword Dancer with Noalana! GS: Seraph Solanine has completed her action. GS: Elhaym van Houten has activated a Force Action! GS: Elhaym van Houten has activated a Force Action! GS: Elhaym van Houten enters a Counter stance! GS: Elhaym van Houten has attacked Sword Dancer with Sacred Elemental Boundary! GS: Elhaym van Houten has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Well, having to face this giant skeleton monster for the third time led to at least one positive development. Xantia can cross 'setting someone's face on fire' off of her bucket list now. One could argue if it counts as a face when there's only the skull, but she's counting it all the same.
Jokes aside, Xantia was aware that the way her Ether power seems to function, extended physical contact allows her to do the greatest amount of damage with it. She thus holds onto the Sword Dancer's skull for as long as she can, seeing no need to hold back or feel sorry for this monstrocity. Even as it cracks under the pressure of her grip, her face shows no emotion one way or the other. This thing has to go, that's all there is to it.
Only once a sword is swung her way is she forced to release, flames quickly dissipating as she does. The katana impacts with great force - impacts the energy blade generated by her bracer, scattering motes of red light and sending her sliding backwards. Yet she remains standing, deactivating the blade with a wave of her arm. She has a follow-up in mind...
...A follow-up that doesn't end up happening, when the Skull Dancer sends out a flood of Malevolence following the removal of the blade that was stuck in its head. In its wake, she experiences a series of past events in a flash. Memories... but, she instinctively realizes that they are not the memories she seeks. They are memories not her own.
With this realization, while the sentiments of hatred are indeed powerful, they don't manage to distract her for very long, and she's quick to react to what comes next. When the ground bursts open and swords emerge from all around, she's in the air, having taken a long leap backwards, entirely avoiding what could have been a very unpleasant experience. In the wake of this, she finally sees cause to speak once again.
"...I feel sorry for you. But I'm also a little jealous. At least you remember what happened. I can't change the past, but if you want to be free, then..."
...Then just punching it isn't going to do it. Even Xantia knows that. Mostly because she's already tried that twice, and it just keeps coming back. The calls for purification thus don't come as a surprise to her. That's not something she can do. But she can make it easier for those who can.
She hears Elvis's call to pin the creature down. "I have a better idea," she responds calmly. That idea is apparently to rush in and hit the Sword Dancer in the spine with the flat of her palm. One strike, a simple maneuver, nothing fancy. It just has the full force of Xantia's immense physical strength behind it.
Yep, she's trying to break its spine outright. That should make it pretty difficult for it to move, right?
GS: Xantia has spent 3 Combo on Headshot, including 0 on Gatling! GS: Xantia has attacked Sword Dancer with Shatterstrike! GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Fair enough," Fei tells Josie. "You've got a point there." He is smiling full of strange confidence thanks to Hiro's words. He's used to Ruby of all people picking him up when he's stumbling, but getting a hand from Hiro here... well, it's not bad at all now is it? He's a great friend too, after all!
And he has been feeling lighter hasn't he? He hasn't freed himself wholly from the net pulling him down, but he hasn't really felt anything like that deep despair of the Photosphere, that throbbing agony in the Photosphere, in a long while. It's still there, he can tell, but it doesn't feel like it's pounding quite as hard into his skull.
He has to endure it. He has to listen to the pained howls of those that died at Lahan. He closes his eyes to try and press it out, press it out, press it out.
Fei...
Fei's eyes snap open. He sees before him Timothy. He sees before him Alice. He sees before him the men and women of Lahan. All of them that died, staring at him as if from the blade itself.
"Hey come on man," Tim says. "Do you still think that this blade is carrying OUR emotions?"
Fei stares. "Tim... I... I'm sorry. I couldn't save you. I... I killed Alice. I couldn't stop you from being used to hurt people. Wehaca...Krosse...Jack... All I've done is hurt people, maybe I'm getting better but it's still so far away..."
Alice stepped forward, placing a hand on his arm. "Fei..." She says warmly. "I can't believe you have forgotten already. They just showed you a few months ago, and here you are...forgetting again."
Fei shudders. "I... what do you mean, Alice? I don't understand."
"Your friends forgave you, didn't they?" Alice says, encouraging.
"...Yeah..." Fei admits.
"Well, you dumbass...!" Timothy punches him in the arm. "Maybe you forgot, but we're still your friends too!"
Outside of Fei's vision, in the real, tears start flowing from Fei's eyes. He doesn't reach up to wipe them away. But back in his mind, he is weeping too.
"Fei..." Alice says. "Let us go. You are keeping us here as much as the sword is."
Fei nods once slowly.
"And...one last thing." Alice adds, allowing some frustration in her voice. "How long are you going to keep hiding that ring from her?"
"Don't rush me." Fei shoots back, smiling. "Rest well, my friends."
And in reality, Fei raises his arm up finally and rubs his eyes with his wrist. He nods slowly once and looks towards the Sword Dancer.
"I forgive you," Fei says simply enough. "And I forgive me. It doesn't erase what was done...but I let it go so I can live for the future."
And with that--
--Fei attempts to embrace the Dancer alongside one arm, wholly intent on pinning it down so the purification can happen without Cecilia getting a spear through her face.
"Goodbye." Fei says, eyes screwing shut once more. "My friends."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
The knife lands in its heart, or where it would be. Gwen cannot necessarily recall if it was out of chance or some fleeting murderous intention. The normally smiling courier is given a good glance at the Sword Dancer's face- or skull, as it were, the grim smile of bone, the swirling twin novas of glowing violet light. Gwen turns her head back, briefly ensnared by the reluctance of her knife in the being's chest cavity.
And the thoughts, broken and freed from context, bubble in the redhead's mind.
As other rush in Gwen manages to retract her knife and fall back, seeking a temporary refuge in whatever distance she can get from the Dancer.
But when the Dancer draws that sword from its skull, distance doesn't help. Scenes and memories that aren't Gwen's flood her mind, causing the redhead to hold her head and cry out. And, as the blades rip through the ground, the cry is jolted, and falls to silence.
Like the time Janus's bayonet sliced into her, her screams never reaching beyond her pierced chest. Dying like a dog in an alleyway, abandoned, her dumb horse and wagon just around the corner. The cobblestone feels so cold against her stomach, like all the warmth she ever had was just bleeding out of her. Just like the time she laid there, like a fish out of water, air coming into her lungs, but something refusing to beat enough, something in her chest refusing to live, but she knew that day would come. Just like the heat of that fire, lifetimes ago, more like a legend than an actual memory, no one came, no one cared.
And in the despair, the nameless blue-eyed assassin's little seed tries to take root. Gwen may not know Isiris's name, but this little bauble's itchy etching feels like a brand, a name-
It is time. Seize this moment and purify it through death. This is your power. Do not be ashamed.
Gwen hears Lily's voice. At first, they sound like noise, as much a product of seeming nonsense as the Sword Dancer's own projected thoughts. But, like the Dancer's thoughts, they gain residence, and as Chime Isa's power and words briefly keep the dark feathers brushing against Gwen's mind at bay, Gwen herself finds some space to speak. "I wish..."
But someone did come. Did she forget? People did come, when she was at her lowest. Because to be wounded did not mean you could not live. Where was this being's someone? Its someones?
Breathe.
Gwen holds her hand out, fingers splayed downwards. The kinetic build-up of energy over the course of the battle leaps up her arm, feeling like pinpricks of heat.
"I wish I could be one of the people purifying you. Since we're beyond things like words, all I really got left is the same language you have. And that just... I wish I could give you what others gave me." A field of electricity forms, ever expanding around Gwen, to the point where it encompasses the Dancer. If anyone else is in its path, they only feel a slight residual warmth, the field purposefully excluding them.
"I wish I could call you by a name that you tell me, and that I had the time to tell you that the world isn't just what created you. I wanna give you the parts you need to feel that, but I can't."
Gwen grunts, the field becoming harder and harder to hold. "But if us feeling what we just felt made you feel not alone, maybe, then, it's good that we felt that."
The purification needs to come soon. Gwen can't hold on to this field for long.
GS: Fei Fong Wong takes a solid hit from Chime Isa's It's Okay! for 0 hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Sword Dancer with Forgiving Yourself And Others! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action. GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: Gwen Whitlock enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Sword Dancer with St. Elmo's Fire! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 2 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"Amen," Ida says. The more mystical effects of Rosaline's prayer wash over her a moment later, easing the pain of bruises and cuts and scrapes. Hyadean tissue spins out metal-laced extracellular matrix, sealing off the hairline fractures in her gauntlet and the cuts in the flesh beneath. "I know," she says, as the weapon 'speaks' once more, and hatred clutches at her guts. Where is Riesenlied, it demands. Why isn't she here, no wait, she'll only make you
useless
Ida sees the opening, but can't seize it; instead, she breathes deep, feels the ghosts of old self-hatreds as they rise within her. It hurts. Remembering it hurts, but she lets out her breath and the edge is gone.
The Sword Dancer gets its opening. Ida sees it too late. Her right arm whips up, armor plates shifting, growing denser. That rusty blade catches her forearm, punctures through Hyadean armor like a hot knife through butter. Momentum carries it through, impaling Ida's forearm; the tip slams into her chest like the point of a spear, cutting through armor and flesh. Crimson and quicksilver stain it, once again. Ida's whole body jerks back from the force of the impact. She screams, raw and ragged, She grips the Sword Dancer's hand with her free hand and shoves, violently, two kinds of blood spurting from the wound as she pulls herself off the weapon. Inside her chest and forearm, Hyadean blood vessels constrict, and metal-laced intracellular matrix pulls tight around their human counterparts. reached blood vessels pull themselves tight.
"Berserk," Ida chokes out, as the Dancer hammers her with more hatred, more fear. "You--" Ida's eyes, already wide from injury and shock, go even wider. "You killed them. He made you. And now you're--" She doesn't finish the sentence. Specters from a long-abandoned battlefield wash over her, clawing at her. Ida reels back, screams again. Every nerve in her body has gone raw. A half-dozen blades fly at her, through her, passing through flesh harmlessly, and tearing through her mind instead. And yet, as agonizing as this is for her, she can't imagine how it must feel for--
"Jack! Garrett!" Ida forces herself upright, and looks at him from across the battlefield. "We're here." The act of reassuring a friend blunts the impact of the memories, as does Chime's honest, well-meaning voice. Ida takes a breath. "Thank you," she says, to the ARMs Meister, "but... that's not--I don't want to say you're wrong, but--this--"
"I hated someone," Ida says, "And I knew the only reason I did was because I thought she was a better person than I could ever be--because she did what was expected of me, what I couldn't bring myself to do. Ida breathes. Chi surges through her battered body, and she stands up a little straighter for it; whether she realizes it or not, Chime's given Ida what she needs to turn this around. "But even then, I didn't hate her half as much as I hated myself. I was a coward. I was a craven monster who would never be at home among decent folk. I was a violent, angry, awful woman, and nothing would ever change that."
"But even then," Ida says, looking at Rosaline, "I wasn't alone." She looks at Jack. "There were those who cared for me." She looks at Lily as she says that she, too, was betrayed. "Who never gave up hope in me--in us." She looks at Cecilia, Catenna, Lanval. The chi flowing through her pulses from her lips with every breath, flowing around her in a tangible aura. "And we--the three of us--we should have been there for you. Let us make it up to you."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida moves like she'd never been so much as touched by the Dancer's blades, or Malevolence. She weaves around the Arctican blade, ducking and twisting. That one isn't hers. She reaches for the hand bearing Raftina's blade, both hands open, blazing with chi. She does not strike. Instead, whenever the Dancer moves, Ida's hands are there to intercept it, to redirect its arm and blade with smooth, sweeping, circular motions.
"Garrett," Ida says. "The other arms." Her voice is calm, but it has all the authority and urgency of a shouted order--and at the same time, her cheeks are wet with tears. "Rosaline, once we have it in position, we'll be--"
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has activated a Force Action! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has spent 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, including 1 on Gatling! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Sword Dancer with Unbroken Lotus Fist! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Hiro's Battalion Sword! for 191 hit points! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Seraph Solanine's attack becomes clear! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Seraph Solanine's Fallax Aphelion for 111 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Elhaym van Houten's Sacred Elemental Boundary for 197 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Xantia's Shatterstrike for 204 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Fei Fong Wong's Forgiving Yourself And Others for 0 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's St. Elmo's Fire for 112 hit points! GS: Jam and Jam! Statuses applied to Sword Dancer! GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: CRITICAL! Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Unbroken Lotus Fist for 204 hit points! GS: Hyper! Statuses applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
<Pose Tracker> Cecilia Adlehyde has posed.
Noua Shax's drilling lightning blast rips into the Sword Dancer. The Guardian soon after scatters anew, the light returning to the Ley as Cecilia flickers back into place. She huffs breath, and nods to Lily's explanation. "Yes, I believe that's the intent," she says, a bit more focused. Her eyes focus in on the staggered sword dancer - just as it begins releasing its power. "MATERIAL!" she replies, slamming her staff into the ground. The Mountain Medium leaps out of her case, constructing a field between her and peril just as Lily's shield flares again as well, and Cecilia's own magic besides; a three-layer barrier for the Sword Dancer's horrible power to crash agains, Malevolence breaking against her. It hurts still; Cecilia's whole body tensing as counterforces wash against her heart and body. She finds herself wheezing for breaht, half-slumping as the darkness fades. The traumatic flashes of the Malevolence spatter to so much light against her bulwarks. Immune might be the wrong word, but...Cecilia has already had to set these demons to rest, at least. Even Her eyes slide to Jack, but she's got to trust him. Trust this strength he's found. "Hold it down!" she calls. "Jack! Help them! I'll handle purification!"
Well, not alone, of course. She stayss more toward the rear, where her gathered Ley has pooled into a leypoint. She stirs it up with her staff, the life energy of the world coiling about her and shifting between forms as she draws it up into a form she can use. The mediums pulse, beginning to flicker up into positions around her as emblems of her station and right, each bursting with its owne energy.
She thrusts her weapon forward and the Mediums shine their own light, warmer than the death they normally breathe, upon the creature's core, directed by their Shaman to heal.
<Pose Tracker> Jack van Burace has posed.
Jack says very little as the massive form of the Dancer rounds on him. Though there is a ghost of a smile on his face, a moment of satisfaction as blade cuts bone to relieve the creature of that precious and familiar longsword. A piece of his soul. Cut free from the corruption even as it sinks into the ice.
Why did you abandon us
"Because I found something else to live for. Other than vengeance." Comes the ghost of the reply as the Sword Dancer bares down on him, raising that massive blade to drive it down. Down. Down.
Blood stains the frost around them as it carves into Jack's shoulder, again the man too slow to dodge the creature powered by spirit and hate. Or maybe Jack was just distracted by the question.
"Because I realized I didn't want to be alone, and you left me no choice but to be. You are mired, Dancer. Stuck in time like I was."
Pain laces the words that Jack grits out, snarling them into the face of Hate as that rolling wave of emotion crashes into him. If not for Rosaline's quick thinking from before, that light of life, the moment to remind him that he isn't alone. That what has happened to him wasn't somehow his fault.
Still the hate sent against him erodes his will, the soul from him as it nearly burns him down to ashes. It might have, pinned as he was he wasn't able to move until that Guardian-forged bolt tears the Dancer free and with it...Jack.
Flung though the air to crash among the snow, again blood staining the pristine white. There is a slight smile though as he forces himself to his feet. People, familiar voices calling his name.
"You know, Ida." He calls as he grips his sword. "I think I've laid Garrett to rest. Jack will do me just fine now."
The sword of his is taken in both hand. "But you're right. We aren't alone, and we are infantilely stronger together." There is a glance towards Ida, towards Rosa, towards Gwen and Fei and Lilly and the others he's met on his mad journey.
Then a sharp nod towards Cecilia then before the man explodes into motion, flying across the snow fast enough to cause it to nearly explode before and behind him. Those eddies of frost suddenly swirl together to form mirrored images of the swordsman, splitting faster than eye can follow, leaving down in concert towards the creatures other arms.
"Rosa! Cecilia! You two better be ready!"
The voice comes not from any of the duplicates but from behind the Dancer as the real Jack slashes towards bone, even as his duplicates repeat the maneuver at the exact same time.
...mostly because he's pretty sure this is his last trick before he falls face down. But at least he makes it a good trick.
GS: Jack van Burace has activated a Force Action! GS: Jack van Burace has spent 4 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling! GS: Jack van Burace has attacked Sword Dancer with Guilty Blade! GS: Jack van Burace has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Rosaline Calice has posed.
Malevolence washes over the group. Painful memories and the emotions associated. The bubble shield Rosaline erects for herself is a cold comfort, as the resentment seeps into her very soul. She shuts her eyes, tears beading at the corners. She wishes she could turn it all off, but if anything, attempting to shut the images and sounds out only seems to make it worse.
Inky black swords burst out of the ground. Swords of light, Rosaline's own creations, appear out of thin air to intercept some of them, but not all. She isn't impaled, but one of the blades does tear into her leg, making her stumble and stagger as her vision swims. But here come more words of encouragement from Chime. Rosaline nods along, her hand casting healing light along her bleeding leg.
And soon, she's standing again, and near Ida, too. Her friend is pouring her heart out, briefly looking at her. Rosaline offers her a pat on the shoulder in response. This may in fact count as a component of posing as a team (because things just got real).
"A weapon tempered by tragedy," she muses, "I think we can all relate to that, more or less. But we'll show you that we are not the people we used to be!"
Ida and Jack fly forward. Rosaline meanwhile closes her eyes, cupping her hands as she incants a prayer, her tone solemn and even. A spark of light appears in her hands, flickering as if appearing to want to jump out of her grasp. She continues, unheeding, as the unruly flame grows in size and is soon hovering above her hands. Its radiant flame bathes her body, making her now billowing habit appear pale, almost white, even, and her long hair, waving in an invisible wind, almost appear to have caught in immaculate flame itself. The swirling purple miasma, even with no will of its own, avoids the light, forming a bubble of sorts around the Etone.
"The time for dance has passed," she says, her voice echoing faintly, "and the time has come to rest. If you dance again, I hope it will be a dance of joy."
She opens her hands, letting loose the brilliant flame and letting it flow along with the energy Catenna and Cecilia have already deployed. As serene as she might look as she keeps her arms open, however, one might notice that she's still sweating and staring unblinkingly. Now would be a very, very bad time to break her concentration.
GS: Sword Dancer takes a solid hit from Jack van Burace's Guilty Blade for 191 hit points! GS: Sword Dancer has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Sword Dancer has posed.
Blades bristle and split apart, creating a multitude of the Dancer's core throuhout the battlefield that seem to simply grow in number the longer they go on. Yet, using this weapon comes at a cost, too. It is weakened. And now, it is exposed.
This is the Sword Dancer. A weapon, forever doing what a weapon does.
living to fight
And in that moment, with it flagging, with the emotional core of it so exposed, they act. It feels it. A twinge in the air that shudders across the thrumming field of blades it has created. A flare of silver light. A fluctuation of Guardians' power.
...?
The Sword Dancer's battered, burned skull, eyes empty of their glow without the furnace of the sword within it, turns a strange, half-cocked stare towards Catenna. Her tears. Her words. Her sentiment.
Polished, and shining like a tempered edge.
The field of blades begin to dissolve away, as if retreating from that light.
Let me set you free.
have you the strength
it echoes,
to free me...?
It is a matter of strength. And strength comes in many different forms. It is not simply power. It is the emotions and honesty of a shaman coming to revelations about herself, about what she must do, and the sentiment that carries.
It is about a comrade, risking themselves to lay down suppressing fire, to buy precious seconds as the enemy rears itself.
It is supporting friends and allies in their time of need, when everything seems at their lowest.
It is the might one finds in that support, or in their own convictions, enough to rally the elements against their foe as it marches towards on an inexorable path only to be trapped between rock and water.
It is in understanding the nature of one's own hate, and finding understanding in another's. In the strength that can come from that resolve, allowing a few seconds of time longer as that single-minded foe breaks free of its elemental chains, only to be caught in the sucking grip of a singularity's wrath.
What else can a blade do, but fight?
And fight it does. It struggles, its monomaniacal power allowing it to forge past even Lily's efforts as Cecilia joins Catenna's cleansing chorus with an array of Guardians' warmth. But power is not strength. Strength comes from succeeding past suffering and betrayal, not growing mired in it.
It is in the warmth that one can still put forth even in the most dire of times, enough to melt away the biting frost of their enemy's hate.
It is in knowing oneself, for good or for ill, in sensing a kindred spirit even in one's enemy. In the steeled resolve it takes to pull a shotgun's trigger, knowing full well the consequences that can spiral outward from that very act.
Limbs try to pull themselves back together desperately. Warmth touches upon its bleak black blade as it lifts it high, its other, still available weapons at the ready. But buckshots rip through that weapon, diverting its path and making it SLAM into the ground in a blistering SHOCKWAVE of might that RIPS across the earth just to the side of Catenna, and Cecilia --
And now, Rosaline. Her cleansing fire adds to the crescendo, the heat of it bubbling away the Malevolence winding through the air. A hiss that sounds like fear and hate and relief and hope all in one seethes past black teeth as the Dancer's weapons rise.
But it does not have strength. It has fear. Uncertainty. Violence, undirected, purposeless. A dance with no meaning. It pales in comparison to the purpose Solanine and Hiro wield in their blades, conjured and real alike. In Solanine's resolve to end the blight torturing this Hellion interminably like it has so many others. In Hiro, understanding his limits, and doing all he can within them. Blades carve through the Dancer, forcing it back, as shadowy swords impale through its skeletal body, pinning it to the warming earth.
sorry... not an answer...
can only try
And its power cannot compare in one finding forgiveness in the past. Forgiveness in oneself. In the prismatic cage conjured by Elly, finding potential undiscovered in her wellspring of gifts, bleeding away the Sword Dancer's will to fight, creating a somber sense of peace even in its raging tempest...
... and it cannot compare to that very same sense of resolution that allows Fei Fong Wong embracing the beast one-armed, slowing its slowed march not through force, but compassion. Forgiveness.
It cannot compare to Ida and Lanval doing the same to the hand that so feverishly grips at Raftina's simulacrum of a sword, a hateful grip loosening around a hilt of love through their efforts, through one learning to accept herself and move past the doubts that once plagued her to find a true expression of strength.
In the other, embracing his old duty in a gentle urging to stymie the corruption, loosening and loosening that horrific grip --
--until the blade falls to earth, dissolving away in the purifying light even before it can hit ground.
It cannot compare to the strength Gwen finds in her compassion even as a devil on her shoulder urges her down a different route, the cage of electricity helping Fei, Lanval and Ida to hold the creature fast.
And it cannot compare to Xantia's admissions and the simple, calm purity of her efforts, finding a direct and simple route even in the most trying and complex of times, hamstringing the Dancer with a single blow that snaps its spine and sends it toppling forward.
And it cannot compare --
"Because I found something else to live for. Other than vengeance."
To a former knight, moving forward, free of the ghosts of the past that still chain the weapon he once wielded down.
In understanding that strength is not power.
Strength is...
...
A flash of steel. Harmony in motion. A knight finding his strength.
The Sword Dancer's rusted katana collapses into the earth, freed from it by Jack van Burace's hand.
what else is there
but to fight
It tries to claw forward, even still. Even past their grips. Its hand reaches out. Its black blade -- itself -- stretches forward, towards Catenna, towards Cecilia, towards Rosaline. The light of the Guardians, of the moon, of that cleansing flame, slowly wash over it.
oh
Until everything is warmth.
i see--
And the Malevolence EXPLODES off of it.
All of it released one layer at a time, like an onion peeled back further and further and further.
The layers of Garret Stampede, flashes of memories of him and a frost-choked wyvern, peel and burn away, happiness left in its place. The sword grows smaller.
Layers of Wehaca, of a village drowning, of a shaman bleeding corruption from the Sword Dancer's embrace until he becomes a beast mired in rage in despair, burn away, hope left in its place. The sword grows smaller.
Of Lahan. Of a people wiped off the face of the earth by war. By mistakes. Burn away, acceptance left in its place. The sword grows smaller.
Deeper still. Deeper. To the core of it. Memories bleed off. Deeper... into...
i am...
... into the core of it...
---
Its blade shines proudly in the cold light of the winter sun.
Its master fights. Glimpses of them can be seen. Arctican armor. A Knight of Fenrir. They are skilled. Strong. Noble.
"GA HA HA HA!"
It is not enough.
C R U N C H
Bone crushes against an unyielding hilt within the steel vice grip of a monster. Flashes of green scales. Wild white hair. Blazing yellow eyes.
"Humans make such funny sounds when they break!"
Its master still struggles. Fights. To the last. Defends his kingdom. His people. A knight in every sense of the word.
"Eh? You're still flailing around with that little stick? Annoying."
The knight is knocked aside. An alien grip steals the blade from its master. Raises it high.
"How 'bout we put this little poker to BETTER USE."
Its blade shines shamefully in the cold light of the winter sun.
Seconds before it is plunged down towards the top of its master's helm.
The sound of chortling laughter. The ground shudders beneath stomping feet at the knight falls to the frozen earth. The sword is left alone.
Shouts. Screams. The sound of fleeing feet crunching snow underfoot. Hands gripping desperately at the hilt. Yanking it free.
Its new master does not last long. The snow becomes its home once more.
Eventually the sounds bleed away. The bodies too. Eventually. The blade remains. Buried under snow. Its edge dulled and chipped. Rusted. Time bleeds away. Sentiments stay. They cannot leave. Sorrow and fear and retribution all go unsated and unresolved. The blade cannot understand it. It just lingers, abandoned.
And then, a pulse of violet.
Bruise-colored wisps cling to emotion like remora to the bellies of sharks. They funnel deep down into frost and ice. Towards a blade long abandoned. They give form and face to sentiment untended.
i am...
A white hand reaching through the daylight. A firm grip takes the weapon for the first time in years. A new master.
It wants to be useful. It wants to be free. Can they do it?
"No," admits a tinny voice.
"But..."
---
we are...
Light burns away. The sword, mere feet from Catenna, is engulfed in blinding warmth. The hand gripping it slowly dissolves.
free...
In the end, those holding fast find themselves holding nothing but empty air. The Malevolence is gone.
Nothing but contentment in its place.
Contentment, and a single blade of fine, Arctican make.
Polished. Shining.
Proud.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
Threads of will and strength bind together. Catenna finds the power she taps from Celesdue bolstered by the light Cecilia brings forth. By the light that Rosaline sends, presumably from Granas, a god Catenna could never honour. She inhales, that shared power like a wind gusting in her sails - and she continues to chant the familiar ritual, not in the language of the Baskar, but the language of the Zortroa.
She cannot share their lifestyle. But she can bring the best of it here. The companionship of nature. The understanding of the world of a people who know what it is to live alongside the spirits. An understanding that she can only truly grasp through a lens of humanity.
Atop Catenna's shoulder, Saarda-Shanta sits alertly. Her eyes glow with a soft silver light that drains them of their normal yellow colour.
The Malevolence erupts from the sword as the cleansing ritual is completed. Catenna draws in a breath.
Closes her eyes. Sinks into memories that are not hers.
And yet, memories that are hers.
she lies on her side amidst the rubble of the tor in the garden.
she's been half-crushed by the power of that massive mace.
she can feel the life pouring out of her.
she had disrupted the sealing rod bound to his arm.
but it wasn't enough.
it couldn't be.
until something shone before her.
the egg. the egg she had saved from the great white bird.
there on the field of battle, a tiny, weak thing blinked up at her.
The last of the dark light passes - the last of memories that play out alongside memories of their own, for the both of them. Catenna's free hand has come up to tenderly cradle the Owlet on her shoulder. To try and read her face defies easy verbiage. Her eyes are tight at the outer corners and there's a brief tremor to her lower lip - but she draws a rush of breath, straightens her shoulders imperceptibly, and simply nods. The emotions may come, but Catenna lets them live somewhere intensely personal.
"You were useful," she says quietly. "I am sorry it had to be like this."
Catenna is talking to a sword and she doesn't feel ridiculous about it. But then, she's had her fill of ridiculous antics today. This seems somehow less silly than the rest of it.
Stepping forward, the Moon Shaman stands in front of the shining blade and looks down at it. Pale grey eyes close for a moment more.
A thought flickers through her mind. She blushes slightly at the selfishness of it.
"It is funny," she says quietly as she opens her eyes again, looking off into the distance. "My biggest fear was that I would walk in here and this would turn out to be another of the Trial Knight's idiotic chess games, and that my only means to get around their foolishness would be to deny them access to my emotions. To reduce the encounter to the level of a fight with simple stakes. I suppose it is appropriate that it took an actual weapon to remind me that I could never be a weapon."
She smiles bitterly. "Did I actually walk right into a trial? I feel like I did."
The Owlet puffs her feathers out slightly. <Dear heart, everything is a trial. Literally everything.>
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"I know it hurts," Ida whispers. She is talking to a sword. She is talking to something that used to be an aninmate object, before Malevolence claimed it--a weapon. When it is purified, it will lose whatever consciousness Malevolence gave it, and become a weapon once more. But here, in this moment, it is a sentient mind, ridden with both Malevolence and its own guilt at being misused.
Ida grips the Dancer's arm with both hands, holding it fast. Beside her, Lanval is a steadying presence, his eyes blazing with light, his voice full of compassion and dignity. She looks at him, and a smile of gratitude lights up her face. She's pale and bruised and battered, but it's still like the sun coming up.
Malevolent bone dissolves from between her fingers. Memories flash past. In some of them, Ida sees herself, pale and white-haired and gripped with Malevolence. The rest, though--
"Oh," Ida whispers. She was right. She didn't want to be right. Fresh tears drip down her cheeks. What else can she say?
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0KfieEkIJo
Ida steps closer to the dissolving form of the Sword Dancer, stopping when she's close enough to touch the blade at the heart of it. She kneels next to it, placing her right hand atop the hilt. A union of human and Hyadean flesh closes atop the pommel.
The least she can do for it, now, is what others did for her--
"We accept this pain, and these memories," Ida says. "And from them, we learn. From them, we grow. From them, we learn the truth of what we were, all along."
--to see inside something that sees itself as ugly, broken, and worthless, and help it bear its pain.
Ida takes her hand away, and smiles at what remains. "A tempered blade," she says. "And a fine one."
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Through teamwork, they struggle against the Sword Dancer - struggle to restrain it so that it can be purified. Malevolence is whisked away, layer by layer, bringing with it memories of its wielder.
It's...a little overwhelming. She can feel its frustration, every bit of emotion clinging to it...but finally, after so long, it is free.
Jacqueline exhales. Its contentment now feels like her own. She holds onto this feeling for a time...and then looks over toward Catenna, quietly. She had been concerned about her, but...she had a feeling she would be alright now. Quietly she walks up to her, resting a hand on her shoulder.
"...I'm proud of you, Catenna." She comments.
<Pose Tracker> Elvis has posed.
When all is said and done, and the darkness fades from the place they fought, only contentment and light remained. The fight was won. An rxhausted Sentinel releases his watery grip in the air, now holding onto nothing. That wound of his still ached horribly, but first something needed addressing. He cups a hand to his laceration and walks over.
"Only ever used for and by men with hatred and sorrow. Makes sense that Malevolence would eventually hind home within it." A look toward Catenna.
"What do you think? Should it be hung up to rest? Or would it be happier being used for a just and heartfelt cause yet?"
He gives the blade a once-over. Hrn. His search continues. "Eh, I would be afraid to break it. Don't look at me. I need to uh, get this looked at before we proceed further."
His search continues yet, it seems. But he is no worse for wear for it. Mayhap one day he can find a suitable weapon.
"H-Hey!" he shouts toward... well, the culprits know who they are. Now might be a good time to get away from him while he is greivously wounded.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Lanval's hand stays where the skeletal hand starts to dissolve from existence once it finds the acceptance to release one of its manifested weapons. He looks into the eyes of those who might look back. To look into the eyes of someone who had seemed to lost in their perceptions of self-worth and weakness, to watch as they lashed out back in Meribia where he was nonplussed as to the lack of any local Lord of the Land stepping up to try and deal with any of it...
...to look upon the Silver Medium of Celesdue, reflecting upon how it was his decision to stand and protect that statue in acknowledgement of what great deed these foreign(?) entities did to save Lunar from something truly dire...
...To weather the memories and contexts of what all was held within the will given to a misused blade, and then... suddenly, just flop over onto his back as he rests within the purified area from whence the Sword Dancer was stationed to hold them all back.
...
As Jay steps by to see to Catenna's well being, all of a sudden there is a bottle of Brewte Force in Lanval's hand. Even for all the dignity of his former station...
He can't get enough of the stuff. He could use that hit. The pressure of the Malevolence that came within such razor-thin margins of piercing and consuming his psyche isn't there, but the wound inflicted a blade that went through him clean... well.
His eyes gently close. Emotions run high. He knows he doesn't need to say it, it's something they already know. They've got to hurry. They've got to get in there, stop the Trial Knight... stop Ragnell, too.
After another drink.
...
After all's said and done, moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year... going forward...
...
...
...
...
<Pose Tracker> Tesni Inoue has posed.
Tesni Inoue is not full of hate for something like this it had been a thin infested by liquid hate as far as she could tell and souls trapped in it she watches as things change. The explosion of Malevolence knocks the weakened Tess off her feet. Tess collapses and mutters something in a strange language. Those in the Caravan might know the sound of it it's the strange one she sometimes has been caught singing in. Still, that tormented existence is freed. For the meaning of what Tess uttered, it simply means go in peace. She's going to need some help to get home or at least back to her feet.
<Pose Tracker> Jack van Burace has posed.
It. Is. Over.
It's a near thing of course. It seems with this kind of thing it almost always is a near thing. The last strength of all of them together. The last gasp of power before darkness snuffs light. It seems to be what draws out the best in all those combined, all those there.
The knight himself lands from his strike as the last arm falls from the figure of the Sword Dancer. The simple landing from the strike nearly causes his legs to buckle from the strain but he catches himself by going down on one knee.
His part in the battle is over.
It is up to others to correct this imbalance...
...and they do.
Light flows in to peel back the darkness. Layers of memories. He flinches away from some, he watches others. Then the last one. The important one. The beginning of it all arrives. Even as he notices the final sword beginning to form.
His hand tightens over the hilt of his own blade at that laugh. Pain again lances though him at those familiar lines. His focus narrows as the final, pure, blade forms in the soft and pure snow. It focuses still more, the reast of the world seeming to fall away as he sees the blade.
As the recognizes it.
The crest on the hilt twin to his own.
Stumbling forwards he scatters the snow before him, falling down to both knees this time before the final form of the weapon.
"Armor," Slowly he reaches out for the blade. Gloved fingers brushing against the hilt, all thought of anything else gone as his focus narrows to the blade revealed before him. "Armor, you damn fool."
The last of the Fenrir knights reaches down to place his hand around the hilt of his brother's sword. "Come on. I'll take you home."
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei feels....at peace. He steps away from the purified blade and exhales out a long sigh, eyes closing for a moment. And in the back of his eyelids, he sees flashes of another time, images drowned out by a single phrase: You must be lonely out here by yourself.'
He takes a moment to help steady Elly, smiling at her. He doesn't seem upset or shaking. He seems like himself, like those moments when unencumbered he truly gets to be Fei Fong Wong.
He looks towards the sword. The sword that had been left to itself for so long. He closes his eyes and dips his head. "...Thank you for your service." He supposes he can say that.
He looks towards Lanval. He can imagine the surface of what's going on through his head, but the deeper thoughts? Perhaps that's best left unimagined for the moment.
He remembers what Ragnell had told him about Lanval, of course. It wasn't that long ago. His black eye has faded but his memory isn't that bad.
He approaches Lanval. "Hey man." He tells him.
Ragnell had worried that he would do something to Lanval, perhaps use him to gain his revenge. In a way, her fear there speaks volumes about what Ragnell herself has gone through.
He wraps an arm around Lanval's back and gives his body a small squeeze.
"I'll follow your lead, man." He tells him. "Alright?"
He gives another squeeze before making his way back to Elly.
<Pose Tracker> Catenna has posed.
Catenna lowers her head when Jacqueline moves in to give her that quiet, simple praise.
"Thank you," she says simply. Her right hand loosens a little.
The mask clutched in it falls away. It hits the ground with a clatter. "There will be a day when I understand what it means to be both a human and a Zortroa, and what we were like before we gave in to these dogmas. But being a weapon of faith is no different than being a weapon of vengeance.
"Because even if the cause is just, a weapon is a tool. And a tool's purpose is to be used."
When Elvis makes his way over, Catenna nods. Long fingers weave around her Medium as she gazes down at the weapon before them, proud again for the first time in what must have been ages.
"It wanted to be useful." She smiles up at the huge Veruni, the expression small, but genuine. "And I think we should give it what it wants."
But someone else has the same idea. As Jack falls before the weapon, Catenna nods, slow and grave, and clasps her Medium close to her chest.
"Please help it to be useful again," she urges the last of the Fenrir Knights, a man she knows only by reputation and association with the other two Furies. "I know that you will understand."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Solanine has posed.
Seraph Solanine beholds with wonder something truly new. Her first purification of a Hellion. The words of madness it babbled make sudden sense as its memories wash over her, and she sits in stunned silence at what has transpired. She'd heard faint word of the Shepherd and his ability to resolve Hellions in a manner besides the most direct, but such things barely caught her ear. A human with that kind of power and the heart and resolve to use it? It sounded like naught but a fairly tale from a fearful populace seeking comfort in their hour of need. A sweet and precious lie so that they may rest easy in what days remain, with a hope of justice and compassion in a world falling to corruption. But it was real. Perhaps she'd not seen the Shepherd himself do it, but those assembled here with a connection to this land's spirits had done it in his stead, and it is certainly the miracle that was promised, or at least seemed to be. In the relative silence that is the absence of a shrieking monster, she has the opportunity to overhear the spoken thoughts of those around, and through their context begins to divine some meaning to the Trial Knight as a being. As much as can be pieced together under the circumstances and words of those who have experienced him much personally than she.
Solanine takes a moment to reflect on Ida's words, of learning lessons and growing and finding what you were all along.(She also notes her wry almost-knowing tone when she comments on the presence of the tempered blade.)
She thinks on Catenna's speaking to the blade - "You were useful. I'm sorry it had to be like this." Solanine takes these words to heart as well. Perhaps she stood so strong in the battle because of that feeling. Her wanderings across Lunar and Filgaia both after she lost her home left her without purpose, and in this endeavor, she's found a purpose for as long as it lasts. A place to be, and meaningful tasks to accomplish. All the same she wishes the situation wasn't so dire, so fatal.
For all she's mustered in herself to see this through, and for as far as that inner steel took her, (fighting a powerful Hellon and for her certainty in herself and her action, survived the ordeal untouched by the blight itself). she too wishes it didn't have to be like this. She sees a man take the sword itself but his words and Catenna's suggest the blade has found its place, and she is satisfied by this if only vicariously.
She watches Elvis momentarily with interest, as she has before in the past, her fascination with him increasing, as he is here now in the service of what is right, as far as she knows. But she returns to Ida, and to Jay and Catenna, and Lanval, to be in the presence of those she'd come to know here, for she'd also found those she's gradually growing more comfortable being around.
Solanine watches in silence as Lanval indulges himself, unsure what to think herself about in light of what she saw, and what she learned, but wondering what he's thinking. What he's DRINKING seems obvious enough. She sees Fei's compassion towards Lanval, and wonders also what he knows, from what she's experienced of Fei in the past, she can foster a guess.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Lanval accepts the hug with all the give his manifestation seems to have. He's very wide, plenty to hug. It's good, he thinks as he drinks, that they might yet be able to all approach this next challenge before them with as clear a mind and sure a will as they can muster...
"My lead, mmm... all right... ya got it." He is going to have to take charge on some of this, where he's normally been content to laze around and just enjoy the company where he previously couldn't.
Seeing the sword be taken by a man who would know what best to do for it, Lanval rocks back and forth to get himself on his feet. No putting himself back in a bottle and letting himself be carried.
Whether he'll be able to walk about in anything other than a disgusting satire of the concept of locomotion has yet to be seen.
He turns his head over towards Solanine, who watches from within her arkness. He doesn't say a whole much, just keeping that dumb smile of his. He's not sure what she's taken in of all of this, of the mortals of the Blue Star and everything about it, but...
"...Well, if it'sh on my lead, then," he says as he staggers up against a wall next to the door leading further into the ziggurat. He likes the wall being there for support because he's still hurting from being run through with a blade. He throws an arm up towards the door.
"Weeee'd better go thish way." Presumably he means the door and not into the wall.
<Pose Tracker> Elhaym van Houten has posed.
Elly is braced up. She looks at Fei, and she smiles. "... Hello," she says, with a little laugh. "I... I'll be alright... just..."
Fei's gaze turns for a moment. Elly is alright with this. She puts her hands to her head again for a moment, but gingerly. It's disappearing, she thinks, but there's a lingering feeling. Something about the broken rod feels satisfying, even if, she thinks, it's too bad that...
That...
When Fei is coming back, she looks at him.
"... It's too bad, that this isn't the end yet, is it?" Elly says to him, before her eyes turn towards the looming ziggurat.
"... I hope you stay with that hair style, Fei," Elly says, a few moments later, as she raises herself up in reply to Lanval's exhortation. "It suits you really well..."