2019-03-19: Blue Bird

From Dream Chasers
Jump to navigation Jump to search
  • Cutscene: Blue Bird
  • Cast: Riesenlied
  • Where: The Fallen Sanctuary
  • Date: 19th March 2019
  • Summary: Riesenlied is separated from her group in the struggle at the Fallen Sanctuary, but finds reprieve from Odoryuk to do what it is she can do for the crisis affecting the world...

    r u n . . .

Those were the last words of Raftina -- the Guardian of Love -- that echo through Riesenlied's mind. Echoes that become noise as she lost her footing and weakly tumbled through anomalous space.

everyone... where...

A wispy band of Malevolence wrapped around her wrists; her neck, her eyes, her lips--

She resisted with all her might, with the strength Uzda il-Jam grants her. With all that she awakened to and chanced to see...

It wasn't enough.

Her eyes blurred open to a hazy, uncomfortably cold place. A world of blue, where the Ley crystallised and melded into stonework; she shivered as the pulse of the very Ley coursing through her body began to resonate.

It's too much.

Malevolence on its own... she could handle. The Ley on its own... her body will buckle under the sheer force of the planet's lifeblood, but she could handle it.

Together, with the Ley so choked with Malevolence...

It's too much.

Someone saved her through the murky, anomalous space; Noeline, reaching out to her through their rings of promise... other members of a team that came with her that she cannot quite grasp at present. Without their help, she may well have been consumed into the very cradle.

But now she was separated, alone...

The faint footsteps of a butterfly-winged unicorn.

"O...Odoryuk?" Riesenlied called faintly. Her eyes stirred to focus. She choked, then pushed herself as excess tendrils of the Ley seep into her body, into the lines traced between her scales. The sensation was harsh and cris like frostbite; a horrifying and numbing sensation of contradictions all at once filtrating into her.

But she pushed through.

I cannot falter here...

She stumbled onto a Ley-entangled altar, a chamber in the Fallen Sanctuary. But... she recollected, for a moment--

"I have... been here..."

The sigil of the Fereshte, embossed within the forgotten and consumed by time, lay imprinted upon the dais which the altar rested on. And upon it-- the mark of Odoryuk.

"Did you lead me... here? Here, I can..."

The tendrils of Malevolence approached once more, further threatening to choke and envenom. To poison her very soul, and snuff that which still resists... there is no time for rest.

"... I must do what I can... however I can."

The Heritor of the Fereshte knelt, garbed in the forgotten Baskar tribe's ritual vestments. As she has been wearing for so long now, chosen or not, as one of its only survivors. She let a breath out.

If I have done it once, controlled by Alhazred and Mother...

Riesenlied pressed her knees and hands together, huddling in curled prayer as she held the light of the Dragon's Tear into her palms.

...Then I can do it again... in service of the world.

She thought of the Trial Knight -- of K.K. Of their last words at Krosse's Castle halls, before she was struck down by a glimpse of something so unknowable.

   Do you know what it means
      to truly love a thing, Riesenlied?

Riesenlied thought of love.

All the kinds of love she has encountered in just the last few years.

The love she always had for her father, Siegfried. Even if it were a strained and unvoiced love, a timid and fledgling one threatened to be crushed by duty and distance. How it was stretched to the point of shattering by...

The love she thought she had for Mother, their goddess. A desperate and frightful faith that she had for a being that never existed -- the Mother in her mind that was all-peaceful and loving...

The love she borne to the myriad Drifter friends and comrades she met since her venture to Ignas in pursuit of Id. The impossible struggles they had together, her desire to understand and help them with their own challenges even across species and ideologies...

... the love she has for cuccos and round things, roooounddddd-- focus, Riese...

The love she bore for the Outreach, the Black Wolves, and all her brethren, even those who reject her. Of how she valued the depths of which Hyadean culture has developed -- and how she wholeheartedly believed in its growth past Mother's shadow.

The love she had for her burgeoning, resplendent family. Of those who were similarly cast away by their families and harsh circumstances. Janey. Mikaia. Lydia. Those she would love unconditionally, no matter what, to the end of the world.

And the love she held deep and true for Noeline, through all the ups and downs of their relationship, through all the little things unsaid and not done. How wonderful the spark of her carved identity as 'Crimson Noble' lit a desire to be her own person, too...

...

"... K.K. Ragnell ..."

...

"I have struggled deeply in these past weeks.
 I have long been afeared by what I feel and what it is I must feel..."

She squeezes her hands tighter together, as she feels her body starting to distort and mutate.

"I have long teased the prospect of whether I can choose to stop you and still love you...
 Adlehyde and Arctica have poisoned my thoughts severely. I fear hypocrisy...
 Perhaps too much to the point where I am paralysed..."

She feels palpitations as the Ley gathers. Her jaw and the back of her skull are beginning to twist and stretch in opposing directions.

"But now I have my answer. Of what it is one must do if they truly love someone..."

Her lips pressed thinly. She was short of breath.

"I have learnt in love to let my children grow and trust them to be their own person...
 I have learnt in love to care for myself, lest they have naught but memories to shield themselves...
 I have learnt in love to not fear and avoid conflict, that we may sometimes disagree and find a stronger path forward..."

Her mouth hung open, as the wings upon her back erupt painfully.

"You two have been dear to me, quickly since the day we met.
 Of the days when I could not even perceive you, Ragnell...
 Of when I was a fledgling lost in my path, K.K...."

She stumbled from her praying position. Her legs and arms sprawl around her, massed and clawed.

"I now... know how to proceed. I will lend my strength to these Drifters... to Filgaia.
 Not out of justice or retribution, for I see..."

Her horns thrusted outward in a massive spike, sprawling to branch-like appendages.

"That I shall fight with mercy and empathy in my heart.
 That I shall continue to believe that there can be another way."

She choked out a final set of words:

"That... I shall never give up on the both of you...
 Even if the... two worlds should."

Her jaw popped open as the transformation takes place, and she uttered the word once tainted so black:

"Accession."

The Ley -shifted- through the Fallen Sanctuary. The remnant of the Ley Dragon arose once more, in service of what it is Mother once made her do:

To channel the Ley.

To cleanse it, and filter as much Malevolence from the world's lifeblood as she can.

No matter the cost. No matter the outcome. She was not alone...

So that is why... she can fight.