2020-10-17: To Rescue A Dragonmaster
- Log: 2020-10-17: To Rescue A Dragonmaster
- Cast: K.K., Day Muirwall, White Knight Leo, Black Wizard Borgan, Kaguya, Margaret, Hilde, Pearl, Ghaleon, Elvis, Georg Heldalf
- Where: Outside Via Purifico
- Date: October 17, 2020
- Summary: A mysterious messenger delivers an important message to the Guard, and they mobilize to rescue a man thought dead. The Trial Knight stands in their way.
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
Spira, it could be said, is a land well-familiar with dead men.
That Dragonmaster Ghaleon sees blood draining from his wounds instead of pyreflies might be the only true difference.
He, however, is not the only person here who should be dead. No, the land is rife with them. From the Fiends, to the lingering Unsent -- even the Maesters. No, Dragonmaster Ghaleon is far from alone. In fact...
... he is in rather fine company right now, considering the figure stepping past the dust-obscured threshold is -also- someone who should, by rights, be dead.
White armor, immaculately polished. A faceless helm adorned with curving horns. The curved edge of a massive war scythe colored in almost divine whites, blues and colds, the massive blade held outward like the executioner's axe ready to plunge for an especially eager neck once the distance between them has been eliminated.
The fact that the Trial Knight is still alive is hardly a surprising thing, and hasn't been for some time.
Perhaps the fact that they are -here-, slightly more so.
The fact that they stand upon the threshold of that wall they just demolished, seemingly prepared to kill a man who should already be very, extremely dead?
Well, that might be a touch more surprising.
K.K. does not laugh. K.K., in fact, says nothing, as they emerge from the thick glut of smoke, their warscythe in hand, seeing ill-fit to even be polite enough to use the door.
Judging by the way they tilt that warscythe in their grip -just- so, they are likely not here for amicable conversation.
DC: Ghaleon switches forms to The Imprisoned Dragonmaster!
<Pose Tracker> Day Muirwall has posed.
EARLIER TODAY
Day was in the room at the time. He'd been the first one to pull a sword on Rangetsu.
As it turns out, it's a good thing he didn't get within range of the man.
NOW
The brilliant light ahead is hard to miss. Holding his shield and sword at the ready, Day proceeds towards the light - but as he realizes what's happening, he widens his eyes and holds his shield up, anticipating the coming burst.
It comes, and debris bounces off the face of the shield. It's been newly re-enameled and sealed, ensuring that this time, at least, the rearing white pegasus on its face isn't marred by the little impacts.
What's marred is Day's calm when he sees who's waiting behind the door. His eyes grow wide. So do the eyes of Seraph Vesna floating behind him.
"How can this be?" is the first thing out of Day's mouth. "You were--"
Someone else makes their presence known. Someone rather less welcome.
Seraph Vesna immediately lowers her eyelids behind her glasses. "Imagine my shock that it's this jerk," she sighs.
Day is less snarky about things. He lunges past Ghaleon without actually thinking about the wisdom of it.
The Trial Knight will have about a heartbeat before a large broadsword comes arcing in to try and chop their head off - or at least leave a big cut in their shoulder or upper body somewhere. Day has absolutely no intention of giving the Trial Knight leave to actually start monologuing, much less attacking them.
"Gh-- Dragonmaster, I'll hold them off! Please get to safety!" Day shouts as he presses the attack, bless his brave and foolish little heart.
GS: Day Muirwall has attacked K.K. with LEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY! GS: Day Muirwall has completed his action. GS: Day Muirwall has attacked K.K. with LEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY! GS: Day Muirwall has gained 1 Combo! GS: Day Muirwall has completed his action. GS: K.K. critically guards Day Muirwall's LEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY for 20 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
GS: White Knight Leo has attacked K.K. with Demon Fang! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 2 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action. GS: K.K. guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Demon Fang for 84 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
THEN
'Hey.'
That, for Leo, was the first sign that something odd was happening--a voice he didn't recognize, announcing the presence of someone he didn't hear as they entered. The White Knight's head snapped up, one hand darting for his blade as his eyes took in the new arrival. A Hellion?!
The dagger flew. It lodged itself in a very precise location--precise enough to catch Leo's eye. He gave the stranger a long, careful look before nodding once.
NOW
Leo is used to long hikes. His earth sorcery makes the treacherous terrain around Bevelle somewhat easier to handle; more than once, he smooths out unsteady ground, or produces earthen platforms to ease a climb. As they clamber up the last rise, Leo wonders--not for the first time--if he was right to trust that stranger. What if this is a trap?
And yet: Eryon is missing, and he is not the first Guard to have been captured on this campaign. The big Beastman takes the lead, easily, as the group enters the cave, the glowing light of the Crest around his neck providing light. A door. Leo frowns. "Prepare to breach it," he says.
That's all Leo gets out. He shields his head with his arms as the door explodes, and turns back as a figure stumbles out.
A dead man.
"DRAGONMASTER!" Leo cries. His ears shoot up; his eyes go wide with shock. That's all he says for a good long second or two--he's stunned speechless by the sight before him.
And then, a second familiar figure emerges from the smoke. It's odd, how K.K.'s armor seems wholly unstained, despite the soot in the air. "Away, you devil!" Leo roars, eyes narrowing. In a flash, his blade leaves his scabbard, cutting the air in an arc of gleaming steel. "DEMON FANG!" A wave of energy detaches from Leo's sword, flying past the wounded Ghaleon at his assailant.
The last time Leo and the Trial Knight crossed blades, it was in Krosse. He hasn't forgotten what happened there.
<Pose Tracker> Black Wizard Borgan has posed.
The Black Wizard Borgan is not in the habit of following directions given to him by random intruders in camp. He has other, better things to do, and he does not generally take orders from those beneath him - and if he's never heard of you, you probably count.
But of the group available to travel, he was one of the few skilled mages, and probably the best and most-educated of them (he certainly thinks so). He'd wanted to get a look at the Bevelle magical defenses anyhow. And so he put aside his books and came with.
He also did not want to be shown up by Leo. There has, in his opinion, been far too much of that.
That's why Borgan is here, now, despite the fact that he rarely goes to the field for anything less than a major action by the Guards. (He also gets to fly and avoid the difficult switchbacks, because he has a floating platform.)
"Hmm," he rumbles, in the cave. "Interesting workmanship. Do you suppose this goes all the way into the city? A back route in might - "
The wall glows. Borgan brings his staff up, holding it diagonally across his body, and when the wall explodes a chunk of stone bounces off a cylindrical barrier he's covering himself with. None of the dust gets in his eyes; it parts around him, leaving his eyes clear.
Which means he gets a pretty good luck at two dead men.
Borgan draws himself up to his full height (seven foot something, not counting the platform he's on, which raises him even higher) and looks down on the pair. "You!" The surprise is in his voice. "Get away from the Dragonmaster! Did they bring him here, after Mi'ihen? Did you?"
Borgan points the tip of his staff at K.K. "Duck," he suggests to the Guard, before he grips more tightly and says a word under his breath, the air around him rippling with violet energy. Icicles form on it and launch forward, rapid-fire, like a machine gun. The sound of shattering ice fills the air as it hits stone, wall - and, hopefully, armour, as he tries to drive K.K. away from Ghaleon as much by sheer mass of projectile as anything else.
GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked K.K. with Ice Driver! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has gained 1 Combo! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya hasn't been at the Guard camp all that long, compared to the others. She took the long way from Bikanel, by way of the Thunder Plains, getting a feel for the conflict in the south on her way and also shoving a particular man into mud. It was very important. But now she's here, and having refamiliarized herself with the situation and Hyland's cmmand structure in particular, well...
She's in the command tent when a guy shows up. She looks over, and there he is. Asymmetrical, kind of platey...
"Who the--" The dagger sticking into the wall obscures this word with the sound of impact, "are you?"
NOW
"Haaaaa, I knew it," Kaguya says, beaming as she lowers her hands from where she'd shielded her face from the explosion. What did she know??? She doesn't actually bother to say, instead starting to walk up immediately, looking over the Dragonmaster with a quick appraising look as she approaches. "You look terrible," she comments about her timing, but he looks back, and--
The small blonde turns her attention towards the emerging figure.
Kaguya cuts a striking if small figure, dressed in white and gold and green, the symbol of a noble house (hers) pinning her mantle together. At her hip is a holster for a strange white-and-black ARM; at her other side is a sheath that holds both of her butterfly swords. She has a bag of stuff. And she is now watching the Trial Knight K.K. walking out like everything is normal, and--
She was looking for them!! But she quickly surmises this isn't a good time to chat as she sees that war scythe and the way it's pointed.
In a blink she has out her ARM, and starts to aim it up at the scythe--which is when the others immediately start charging in. That's fine. Kaguya is fairly confident in her aim--straight for the weapon, to forestall the coming attack on Ghaleon, if it works out.
"Hey, I've got tons of questions, you're cool with that right?" Then she ducks.
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
THEN:
MARGARET, the BLACK PEARL OF NEO VANE, and CAPTAIN of the HOUNDS OF HELL, stares at the strange man from within the command tent. Her eyebrow twitches for a moment, the grayish smoke coming from the pipe she had been holding mid-conference split by the passage of the knife.
"Fair enough," Margaret muttered to herself, then.
BUT NOW:
Margaret has put on her armor and her hiking boots. The Hounds of Hell cannot travel up this pass, but at the tail of the cavern's access trail, VEREN - head beast-wrangler of the titular unit - waits, with several large and smelly creatures of the local ecology properly muzzled and petted as a baggage train and/or sacrificial lamb.
(Quoth Veren: "Was that man an agent of the Vile Tribe... or an augury of victory? Such things are beyond our simple ken, but the dragon stars rest in the sky without terror..." Yes, he always talks like that.)
But Margaret herself is up here. She had loosed the leather strap on her kusarigama long paces ago. She had wished that she could move faster, alone, but -- no, to hasten here might be a mistake. To say nothing of fatal. When the cavern was achieved, Margaret had breathed out: "As I suspected," she says: "A door."
Which then is opened FROM THE OTHER SIDE!
Margaret's ears lower and her eyes widen as the impossible figure of the DRAGONMASTER - "Lord Ghaleon! Praise the heavens, you live!" Margaret cries out, but he is clearly bloodied -- and behind him - Margaret's eyes widen even further. Her lips struggle to form some kind of word to express this shock, and in this momentary reel, in rush the White Knight and Day Muirwall.
"FOOLS! Don't line yourself up like wheat! THAT IS WHAT THEIR WEAPON IS FOR! Pull back, make yourself a - a - an orchard! By the Goddess! SURROUND, SURROUND!" is Margaret's final word, followed by a more resonant invocation with a crackle of force: "Thunder Road!" The sorcerous invocation of fleet foot ripples outwards towards the two knights --
-- and the Dragonmaster! "My Lord! Get free!" Margaret declaims, spinning the weighted end of her chain weapon afterwards.
GS: Kaguya has attacked K.K. with Riot Blast! GS: Kaguya has gained 1 Combo! GS: Kaguya has completed her action. GS: Margaret has attacked Ghaleon with Thunder Road! GS: Margaret has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
A mysterious stranger with an appearance remniscent of a demon had appeared, suddenly and without prior warning, in the middle of the Guard camp - in Lord Leo's command tend, no less. This was concerning - but his motive was not violence, but a warning, and a map. A map to a 'mutual friend'.
Though it could be a trap, Hilde went with the group that formed. Hiking up to a cavern on the outskirts of Bevelle, in full armor and accoutrement... well, it wasn't easy, but as they arrive, they see a familiar face.
"Dragonmaster Ghaleon...!" Hilde breathes out in surprise. ...And what's more, he's under attack. Sword and shield drawn, she moves to interpose herself between K.K. and Ghaleon. Her right hand moves as she murmurs a spell under her breath, casting a healing spell over Ghaleon.
"Can you stand, Dragonmaster?" Hilde asks. She doesn't look back - instead, she focuses her attention on the enemy before them.
"Who are you? What is your quarrel with the Dragonmaster?" Hilde asks K.K., her stance firm.
GS: Hilde has attacked Ghaleon with Champion's Litany! GS: Hilde has completed her action.
GS: K.K. critically guards Black Wizard Borgan's Ice Driver for 24 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: K.K. critically guards Kaguya's Riot Blast for 10 hit points! GS: Hilde has attacked Ghaleon with Champion's Litany! GS: Hilde has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
Pearl had been surprised when she found out someone had snuck into the encampment. Surprised, and angry at herself for not noticing them. But that was earlier today. Now her attention is spent focused on not getting snuck up on again.
The march there is arduous, made easier by Leo's magic. Occasionally, Pearl scouts ahead, as is her wont. She waited for the others to catch up at the cave wall. The order is given to breach, and then the wall explodes.
Pearl is her usual calm self (or has her usual inability to show emotions), but even her eyes widen when the Dragonmaster makes himself known. And then the enemy in white armour. Pearl drops into battle stance immediately. She does not charge straight in, since Day and Leo have that covered. Instead, she tries to get in position to come at K.K. for the side.
She charges and drops low, before making a lunge to try and catch K.K.'s hamstrings, if her claws can pierce that armour. It's a risk.
She doesn't say anything, she has no history with this mysterious figure, and also the rest of you have got the talking bit down fine. Pearl has nothing to add.
GS: Hilde heals Ghaleon! He gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: Margaret has attacked Ghaleon with Thunder Road! GS: Margaret has completed her action. GS: You do not meet the minimum Force required for that attack. GS: Ghaleon accepts Margaret's Thunder Road for 0 hit points! GS: Quick applied to Ghaleon! GS: Pearl has attacked K.K. with Leaping Claw! GS: Pearl has gained 2 Combo! GS: Pearl has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
"Yes, quite, Lady Margaret." His eyes shift from her, and then looks at Day. "This is far from the first time that I was dead," Ghaleon says to Day Muirwall, "and then decided to make an entrance regardless."
Lights from Leo's attacks shoot past -- shooting across the ground, and then straight on towards K.K. His eyes widen -- he looks to the side, then nods once to the White Knight. Then, Borgan says to duck, and Ghaleon has the wherewithal to duck.
"Please, Duchess Kaguya," Ghaleon says. "I always look fabulous. And this season's fashion is desolation."
Pearl rushes ahead, silently. He spares her a brief glance. Then, he glances at Hilde. He looks at her for a moment and nods. "I'm not that old." With Hilde's and Margaret's spells buffeting him, he stirs.
He looks back at K.K. He stands as promised, and there is some shakiness to how he does so; his legs shake. He looks weakened, which months of imprisonment might yet do. But there is more to it than that. Pyreflies swirl about them all within this space. And, somehow, Ghaleon seems weaker -- lesser -- than the power he commanded previously. He does not have the innate sort of magical might that defined him; even the legendary power of the Goddess seems more distant, somehow, here.
The pyreflies swirl, but they give no answer. He draws his sword -- with a gilded hilt, a distinct patterning, and a shining silvered blade -- and then slashes twice. Two sharp blades of light appear, then explode across the ground, hurtling towards K.K.
GS: Ghaleon has attacked K.K. with Double Demon Fang! GS: Ghaleon has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ghaleon has completed his action. GS: K.K. critically guards Pearl's Leaping Claw for 17 hit points! GS: Quick applied to Pearl! GS: K.K. critically guards Ghaleon's Double Demon Fang for 28 hit points! GS: K.K.'s Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Elvis has posed.
WAY EARLIER:
Elvis has once again found himself on Spira. He just went into a freshly opened ruin while a bunch of people were fighting, and eventually found himself here via Elw teleportation. "What I would GIVE to just have ten seconds to study those! Why must their precense be revealed only in dire moments! WAIT. I got it! It I just concentrate, with my perfect mind, I can recall every detail to the fullest!"
The giant Veruni clenches his fists, thinks real hard, and--
A BIT LESS EARLIER:
There may have been a bandage on his head, roughly where a forehead vein typically is on humanoid anatomy.
EARLIER:
Having re-established contact with Althena's Guard, the small Veruni presence has been keeping close-- without on-demand forces and firepower from Locus Solus, staying with allies is best.
Thusfar, Elvis has had little luck in reaching Amaterasu. Supposedly she remained, as she was not sighted back on Filgaia, and had not reported back.
He has been content listening to everyone else speak, be respond little, as was last time he arrived. THe pitched dagger gets his attention however. "Hm? Oh, certainly,"
NOW:
A battle has taken place. Or rather, is about to conclude. But fate has a funny way of proving itself to be an ultimately persistent thing, despite being refuted by lesser minds.
"Oho! What have we here?" Elvis bellows amongst the crowd. Ghaleon is a man who needs no formal introduction, as legend is plenty enough to make due. And their assailant is well known. "Trial Knight. I see you are brute forcing ideaologies again. And what wroth have you come to bestow this time?" he asks, one eyebrow raised.
Yet another weapon they bear, one of many from their ephemeral arsenal.
For now, he seems content to watch this unfold, though does have his arms crossed. Just in case something flies for him center mass.
As things often do in these kinds of fights.
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
A heartbeat is all they have.
A heartbeat, unfortunately--
CRACK
--is all they need.
"There is no respite from danger to be found here."
The words come from the tinny din of that faceless helm, warped beyond recognition, in the aftermath of the mighty stroke of Day's broadsword. It is not the Trial Knight's axe-like war scythe that meets the blow, however.
It is their clawed palm instead, fingers gripped fast around the edge of the blade in an interception that has seen them both dragged backward several feet before the Trial Knight gradually, inevitably, comes to a stop.
The hand gripping upon their war scythe tilts at the wrist.
It is, perhaps, the only warning Day himself will get before K.K. -shoves- him, back and -swings- that massive blade as if it weighed little more than a feather, turning it upwards in a violent, diagonal stroke, quickly followed by a second in the opposite direction.
It leaves two burning, cross-shaped arcs of brilliant blue-white energy burning in its wake to seek to sear through the knight seconds before that faceless gaze falls briefly upon the Seraph in the man's company.
"..."
K.K.'s head cocks, fractionally, to the right.
'Duck.'
And just like that, their attention turns in an instant to see the volley of frost chill their deadly path through the air. Their hands snap to either side of them. The war scythe flashes.
And within a blinding flurry, the Trial Knight begins to parry -every single one- of those icicles that manages to reach them, preemptively shattering one after the other in a dizzyingly fluid series of blows.
The glimpses of the short swords the war scythe has become can only be briefly seen in the lightning fast motions of their assault.
However, even as most of the force of that ice is diluted as it peppers pristine armor and ricochets off, it -does- accomplish what Borgan hoped; there are more than enough to keep the knight on the defensive, gracefully wheeling backward in flips and spins of movement to gain more distance between each spell-woven assault and, in consequence, creating yet more space between them and the Dragonmaster.
It's perhaps a momentary solace at best, before Borgan might make note of the shift of Althena's Blessing in the air. Or the churn of its energies around K.K..
Or the fact that their swords are now a book.
Or that they seem to be chanting something beneath their--
"IGNITE TERROR."
-- that. It's that. That's what they were chanting towards.
Glyphs of shadow magic open a portal by Althena's gift in an unearthly seem in the air.
It's only a second later that darkness-tinged magical energy pours forth in a deluge, intent to consume the great form of Borgan in its wake.
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
A shot fires out; the projectiles of Kaguya's ARM target not a scythe, by this point, but a book -- a book that immediately -shatters- into countless motes of light the moment that they strike home. The light swirls, spins, and -envelopes- the ARMSfire -- engulfing them within those strange, ethereal shards and diluting them of so much of their disarming power until they ricochet relatively harmlessly off the surface of the knight's armor.
All that light is reforming into something much, much larger by the time their faceless stare tilts the Veruni's way.
"'Tis not your get that compels my hand," they say, ever-cryptically.
"So ask what you might."
It is the sole thing they say before Pearl lunges; this is just about when Margaret issues her warning, and when that light begins to form into something much, much greater. Several things happen in rapid succession.
The first, the broad side of an immense, dual-bladed greatsword -impales- the ground in front of Pearl. It -rips- up, stony debris colliding with their assailant's eyes in a distracting, diverting motion that sees the knight twisting towards Pearl. Her claws strike the well-armored front of K.K.'s thighs instead in a broader arc, digging shallow wounds across its immaculately-shining surface.
The other --
DEMON FANG!
A demon fang -- and then a -doubled- demon fang -- scream at K.K. in tandem. They both in turn find the edge of K.K.'s double blades suddenly -whirling- forward in a cyclone of motion, disrupting the force behind the blows before the lion's share of Leo's CRASHES into the front of the would-be Adversary. They stagger back, a single step, chest smoking.
Their helm tilts, Leo's way.
"White Knight," intones K.K.. Their grip tightens.
"'Twould seem you have steadfastly screwed your eyes all the more tightly closed."
It is the only thing they, but they are already acting, using the momentum of Ghaleon and Leo's blows to suddenly -SPIN- in a sudden, violent motion. At the tip of the blades at either end of their weapon, gold light begins to glow. And glow. And -glow-.
It is as they reach dizzying speeds that that light -roars- forth into a double helix of gaping dragon's maws formed of radiant, golden light, spinning about gracefully wide around them -- and threatening to catch -any- unfortunate enough to be within their shocking reach.
"My wroth is as it ever is, scholar. My blade moves for what it ever does. This day, however, is of particular purpose."
Their spinning motion stops. Their unseen attention...
... is upon Ghaleon.
"You are a shade of what you once were. Tell me, most ancient Dragonmaster--"
that probably wasn't sass was it does the trial knight sass
"--do you think these people worthy saviors?"
GS: K.K. has attacked Day Muirwall with Obliteration Cross! GS: K.K. has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Ignite Terror! GS: K.K. has gained 1 Combo! GS: K.K. spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: K.K. has attacked White Knight Leo with Dragon Ascendant! GS: K.K. spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: K.K. has attacked Margaret with Dragon Ascendant! GS: K.K. spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: K.K. has attacked Pearl with Dragon Ascendant! GS: K.K. has gained 1 Combo! GS: K.K. spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: K.K. has attacked Hilde with Dragon Ascendant! GS: K.K. spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: K.K. has attacked Kaguya with Dragon Ascendant! GS: K.K. spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: K.K. has attacked Ghaleon with Dragon Ascendant! GS: K.K. has completed their action. GS: CRITICAL! Kaguya takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Dragon Ascendant for 100 hit points! GS: Margaret fully evades K.K.'s Dragon Ascendant for 0 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Ignite Terror for 154 hit points! GS: Disease applied to Black Wizard Borgan! GS: Day Muirwall guards a hit from K.K.'s Obliteration Cross for 105 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Hilde critically guards K.K.'s Dragon Ascendant for 27 hit points! GS: Hilde's Force Guard activates! GS: White Knight Leo critically guards K.K.'s Dragon Ascendant for 24 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: CRITICAL! Ghaleon takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Dragon Ascendant for 189 hit points! GS: Pearl takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Dragon Ascendant for 65 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Day Muirwall has posed.
Day manages to spare a glance back at Ghaleon. He had few opportunities to interact with the Dragonmaster during the earlier leg of the crusade; he was part of a different detachment. This is probably the closest he's been to the posthumous hero.
He's trying very hard not to be starstruck. It actually helps that he's got a foe in front of him.
One who just grabbed him by the sword. Day leans into it a little, not all that concerned with his own wellbeing as opposed to defending Ghaleon's - but his eyes do shift.
The Trial Knight swings the scythe, and the young knight rips his sword out of the white-armoured hellion's grip and brings his shield up in the nick of time. The enameled face of the shield absorbs the worst of what could very well have been a lethal slash. The blow hurls him back several feet nevertheless, the heels of his sabatons digging into the turf. Energy ripples past the shield to scorch at his face and shoulders. Clenching his teeth and squaring his shoulders, Day bears the worst of it.
It's not like he has many choices here.
"Let's try and keep you from dying again," Day answers with a glance back at Ghaleon, squaring his jaw. His focus snaps back to the Trial Knight, then. It's hard to carry on a conversation in the middle of a battle.
"I've heard about you," he declares as he levels his broadsword towards K.K. in something of a challenge. "Hearing you speak so arrogantly to Althena's chosen one is a disgrace! Know this - whether or not you or he shall judge me worthy, I will bring your blandishments to an end here, in the name of the Goddess!"
He hurts here more than he's letting on, but he surges forward anyway. "HOAAAHT!" he roars, voice revving in his throat as he unleashes a heavy blow towards the Trial Knight's dominant arm. With surprising speed and grace, he shifts his weight in an instant to snap the sword back, then up in a series of quick, descending blows.
It's a pretty bold combination attack - a guardbreaking move straight out of the Lion's Heart school, and one executed with skill. Day may not be the White Knight, but he's learned his lessons from Leo well.
GS: Day Muirwall has attacked K.K. with Rampant Sword! GS: Day Muirwall has gained 2 Combo! GS: Day Muirwall has completed his action. GS: K.K. guards a hit from Day Muirwall's Rampant Sword for 83 hit points! GS: K.K.'s Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Leo's mouth drops open as K.K. meets Borgan's might head-on. In a way, it's confirmation of what he himself knows--the Trial Knight is a being of terrifying martial skill, capable of holding their own against the mightiest of Althena's Chosen. "Do not relent!" he shouts, as Day is hurled back, and Kaguya's ARMsfire is stopped cold. "We stop them here!"
The White Knight does not drop his guard as K.K. takes that single step back, momentarily staggered by his strike. But as usual, it's their words that dig in the deepest. "My purpose here is clear," Leo says. Here, in this moment, it is--stop K.K., rescue Ghaleon, deliver the Dragonmaster to safety. But beyond that...
Anger flickers in Leo's eyes. It's a smokescreen for the seed of doubt, recently nurtured by Hiro and Leon. Doubt is poison, and it is starting to spread.
The Trial Knight fires back with a withering assault of their own. One of the dragons rushes Leo, blindingly fast. "HAAAH--!" he bellows, his blade crossing the distance in the blink of an eye. The shockwave around it rips into the phantasm's head, shredding it to shimmering motes. Leo sets his feet, and tries to make it look like that took less out of him than it did. Cutting into that power was like hewing through solid steel.
"Day!" Leo shouts. "Don't let down your guard!" He's heard others make such bold pronouncements, himself included, and it has never ended well. Could it be that the White Knight is being cautious? Is he afraid?
Either way, Leo charges, Distinctly Ronso-like features twisting in a snarl. He seeks to exploit the opening Day is trying to create, launching a single perfect slash to the Trial Knight's abdomen.
GS: White Knight Leo has attacked K.K. with Flash Blade! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 1 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo assumes the Stoic stance! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
Margaret lets out a brief sharp laugh at what Ghaleon says: "Your spirit's still strong, I see!" He can't be speaking quite so literally, right? But he seems weakened. Is it... magic itself? Is he simply spent? Even one such as Ghaleon or, grudgingly, Borgan could not simply battle forever. If he were sore pressed against the Trial Knight, then--
An erupting wave of interlacing Dragon Force flies towards Margaret as she breathes quickly, her spell having been spent. She raises up her hand and a gem on one ring flashes and -
- Margaret passes forwards, THROUGH the spell, to all appearances, and upwards; she seems to hang there for a moment, drawing up her legs as it roars past her - and then down she lands, exhaling with a sharp sound and twisting her chain's weight on a tight one-yard radius near her.
In part because she has to move round to the flank as the big men with swords engage the big personage with a scythe. As she moves with the lateral grace of the mighty crab, Margaret says, "Do you know, Great White," is that K.K.'s name now, "what beans, cabbage and opinions have in common?"
Margaret's answer to this riddle seems to be as yet withheld. Not withheld: a sudden twist of her forearm that moves that rotary chain forwards, loosening her grip so a tight rotary space turns into a sudden twisting arc, the vector of the five-pound weight at the end of the chain making it prone to loop and whip around any limb it should smash past.
GS: Margaret has attacked K.K. with Chain Wrap! GS: Margaret has gained 2 Combo! GS: Margaret has completed her action. GS: K.K. critically guards White Knight Leo's Flash Blade for 29 hit points! GS: K.K. critically guards Margaret's Chain Wrap for 21 hit points! GS: K.K.'s Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
"With all due respect, Dragonmaster, I was more concerned about your injuries than your age. What did they do to you?" Hilde asks, glancing back for only a brief moment. Is she talking about his armored assailant, or the people who imprisoned him? Considering the situation, it could be either. Or both!
She is surprised when their attacker's weapon transforms. That'll make it much more difficult to predict what they're capable of. They attack and Hilde moves to defend, her shield rising as the spinning, dual-sided bladed unleashes a brilliant dragon.
Hilde shifts her position, bringing up her shield. The dragon slams into it and Hilde grunts from the force of the impact, though she still manages to remain standing firm.
"You are strong indeed...!" Hilde murmurs. "But know that if your blade is to turn against those I have sworn to protect, my shield shall be ever there to meet it. Have at you!"
She takes a quick step forward, her blade carving a silver arc through the air as she uses the momentum to slash toward K.K. Without missing a beat she steps back, keeping her defensive stance held in place.
Her eyes find Leo for a moment.
"Lord Leo, you have faced this foe before? What can you tell us of them?" Hilde asks. She, for one, has only heard stories - and everything she had heard made it clear they were an opponent to be feared.
GS: Hilde has attacked K.K. with Silver Arc! GS: Hilde has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya grins, despite the tense situation, at Ghaleon's retort. "Oh, my mistake," she offers, pleased. "Super desolate!" The situation is starting to catch up with her a bit--the fact that Ghaleon seems shaky, that his power is less, that he seems weaker, all of those things alarm her. She had thought him better than invincible, the type not to stay dead even when killed, but this one actually seems...
Well, enough about that. Th Trial Knight's response is cryptic, but they are not wholly unclear to Kaguya if she's right in her guess. She watches the blast of light she fired ricocheting off the knight's armor, and listens to that response. It's... good enough. "Yeah," the Veruni answers. "You're all about humans."
She will ask questions. But first there is the question of living through the next few moments. The others strike in, and Kaguya busies herself opening the chamber of her ARM, pulling out a cartridge from her things that glows faintly. She slams it into the weapon and cla-CLACK closes it back up again, in time to look up and see that they are already spinning. Gold light glows, and glows, and Kaguya narrows her eyes. "Light," she mutters. "The things I do for friends."
The light crashes around her, but Kaguya is already moving. She jumps out of its path--and makes it partway. Only the edge hits her, but it hits, and hard, the dragon's jaws clamping down about the edge of her side as she moves away. Th blow knocks her from her feet where she impacts the ground hard a moment after, rolling back and hopping up to one knee. "I'm not much of a savior," Kaguya admits, "But I'm helping, even if you aren't after me. I know, very heroic."
"...So," she starts, running to the side, around closer to the wall and out of the previous firing range. She stays out of immediate melee for the moment, very heroic indeed--but watches the battle ahead, waiting for her opening.
"So, I'd had the impression, before, that Malevolence was a human problem." Kaguya hefts the ARM, its sleek futuristic design still reminiscient of a shotgun, but of ancient make. Her voice is wary, possessed of the dark tone of someone thinking and fighting. "But it affects Seraphim too, just--differently." With both arms she adjusts her aim, closing one eye as she looks down the sights and considers the arc of her projectile. "And things like what happened beneath the Baskar ruins..."
Kaguya finishes her loadup and pulls the trigger smoothly. There's a riotous blast of color next, a rainbow contained in a small ball of prismatic light, which explodes on impact with a noxious gas.
"So what is it, really?"
Kaguya moves, hit or miss or block, and starts to bank to the left.
"Ghaleon!" she calls next, more animated. "Are there more coming!? I can seal the hole back over with a bomb!"
GS: Kaguya spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Kaguya has attacked K.K. with Prism Canister! GS: Kaguya has gained 1 Combo! GS: Kaguya has completed her action. GS: K.K. critically guards Hilde's Silver Arc for 28 hit points! GS: K.K.'s Force Guard activates! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: K.K. guards a hit from Kaguya's Prism Canister for 54 hit points! GS: Poison applied to K.K.! GS: Cover applied to Kaguya!
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
The Trial Knight brings up the earth with their blade, and Pearl is too committed to the attack to pull back. She contorts herself to miss the worst of it, but the ground still slams into her ribs and she is sent tumbling as her claws barely score against K.K.'s armour. She has only moments to prepare herself for the might of the dragons unleashed by the enemy. She doesn't quite manage it, and the energy that touches her wounds her, and sends her rolling again, if soundlessly.
That did not go as planned. Not at all. She rolls to her feet and reassesses. She's limited here, and can't tap into all her strength, but it is perhaps the height of arrogance to think that would make a difference against a foe like this. "What manner of being is this?" Pearl asks, in the hopes that someone might drop a helpful hint, like 'they explode if you hit the weak spot on the back of their neck'. She suspects she will not be that lucky.
The martial artist shifts her stance minutely, as she goes over her options. Day has charged in to create an opening, and maybe now is the time to follow.
She does so, leaping in with a wild, desperate swing. It's really designed for use by a larger, heavier fighter, something designed to brute force it's way through an opponents defenses, to overpower and tear at the chest of an opponent. It is certainly not designed for a smaller human to try and tear through magicked plate with silvered claws. But those are the tools she has, and there's no point complaining.
GS: Pearl has attacked K.K. with Frenzied Claw! GS: Pearl has gained 1 Combo! GS: Pearl has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Black Wizard Borgan has posed.
Borgan's barrage does what he wants it to do - keep K.K. pinned down, for at least a moment. Stalling the Trial Knight isn't a win, but it helps them get one - or, failing that, get Ghaleon.
"Dragonmaster," Borgan calls, over the sound of ice. "Get behind us. I would not see you lost again." He looks at Ghaleon - really *looks*, for just a moment - and he frowns. Something about what he sees, he doesn't like. "Leo, take charge of him," he orders, despite the fact that he doesn't really outrank the other Hero - he sees something he's not sure the other can. "Kaguya, block the path once the Dragonmaster clears it." He can admit when other people have good ideas.
But the ice runs dry, and Borgan focuses on the Trial Knight once again. He reverses the staff, holding it horizontally, reforming the shield as the wash of shadowy energy blasts against it. The shield becomes visible, a flickery bubble, and then -
Part of the shadowy blast pierces through. Borgan and his platform slide back a good two or three meters, then stop the backwards momentum as he pushes through it with a pained grunt. K.K.'s spell is powerful, but Borgan is tough, and this time raw power is enough.
"You want to test magic against me?" Borgan sounds almost incredulous. "Well then, Trial Knight. We'll see how you do against the full power of the Black Wizard!"
Despite his words, Borgan does not immediately open up with a single enormous blast. He begins to draw power in - any of the mages can feel him gathering power, violet-black energy flickering around him as he pulls energy from somewhere - or nowhere at all. Perhaps it is just a blessing of Althena.
A fraction of that power lashes out as Borgan directs his staff not at K.K. but at the ground beneath the Trial Knight's feet. The stone rumbles momentarily, tiny pebbles and dust dancing on top - before stone erupts upward, great spikes of stone at mostly-upward angles, oriented to catch K.K. in a net of stalagmites and a spray of flying rocks.
But most of that energy remains within. Borgan is definitely preparing for *something*.
GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked K.K. with Earth Fangs! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has gained 1 Combo! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has completed his action. GS: K.K. guards a hit from Pearl's Frenzied Claw for 75 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: K.K. critically guards Black Wizard Borgan's Earth Fangs for 31 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
"Worthy?" Ghaleon repeats. "Worthiness isn't granted by opinions, or otherwise every mewling babe and irritating kitten--" Ghaleon hates cats. The history books write of this singular and tragic fact. "--would be worthy. Worthiness is granted by deed."
He tilts his head. Perfect elfin features are caught in a smile, the look in his too-dark eyes amused. He brings his sword up, ready for the golden light -- and then proves anything but ready for the twin, helix-locked dragons of golden energy. They slam into Ghaleon, bodily, and pitch the Dragonmaster backward. He smashes into the wall, stones crunching behind him, and his footing shifts.
He catches himself, then picks himself up to his feet.
"Ah," he says. "Perhaps I've grown sloppy in my old age."
His eyes glance to Day. His lips quirk into a smirk, and he nods. "Then I shall entrust my fragile being into your capable hands, Sir Day," he says. Then, he glances at Margaret, and nods to her. "I am not easily bowed!"
He glances at Hilde, then. "Months in prison, I'm afraid. It has a way of making a man weaker. But even weakened--" He cracks a smile. "--I'm no slouch." Then, his eyes turn, peering at Kaguya. "No, no others. I encountered them as I'd separated from some Drifters within, and made my escape."
His eyes turn, then, to Pearl. "A being known as the Trial Knight. K.K., they call themselves," Ghaleon adds. "Do not underestimate them."
Borgan gives Ghaleon a command. Ghaleon gives him a look that says, 'really?' But, to Borgan's credit, he does hurry, moving to put the others ahead of him. Even Borgan -- which, really, is also to Borgan's credit.
He holds his Goddess-granted sword aloft. Light dances up it, brilliant and golden, but with sparks shooting off every which way. A magical circle alights under his feet, shines upward, and fades. "Althena, grant unto me the fury and righteousness of thy storms!" And then, entirely necessarily, he shouts: "CHECK THIS OUT!"
A ball of electricity explodes into existence over his head. Then, it hurls down a column of electricity. It strikes the ground next to the Trial Knight, flash-burning sand there into glass, and then rakes across their form. "Thunderbolt!"
GS: Ghaleon has attacked K.K. with Thunderbolt! GS: Ghaleon has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ghaleon has completed his action. GS: K.K. critically guards Ghaleon's Thunderbolt for 23 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Ghaleon!
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
My purpose here is clear.
"No. 'Tis not."
Gold still flickers in trailing, dissolving wisps around the Trial Knight as they utter those simple words. Their eyes may not be able to be seen, but it is clear:
They are not even giving Leo the weighted respect of their attention as they speak.
"Nor has it been, for some time. Tell me, White Knight."
The sound of gushing air -whooshes- around K.K.'s weapon as they snap the dual-bladed thing to their side. The impact is as resounding as a judge's gavel.
"How much more debts of suffering must needs be fulfilled before you will deign to look upon the world you walk?"
They lift a free, clawed hand. Their fingers curl like a beckon.
And as they do, golden light begins to encircle them with bolstering power.
"Come, and we shall see."
Day and Leo come in tandem. Day's blade -swings- towards K.K.'s arm; the way that huge dual blade of theirs moves is uncanny and almost impossible, as if they were wielding a much smaller weapon, as they use the broad side to parry the blow -- but as blow after blow comes, it is enough to slowly but steadily wear down the knight's guard, blow after blow after blow, until --
-- the final sees that sword arm flung wide.
Leo rushes inward, to capitalize.
And that is when he might see the fact that K.K.'s weapon is once more shattering into a blinding flash of light.
CRACK
"This horn."
The horn they allude to is the one at Leo's forehead, currently caught against their gauntleted palm. His sword is carved into the armor of K.K.'s abdomen, close enough that he might feel what may well be flesh beneath, but the knight does not seem to notice, nor care.
"'Tis a point of pride and honor amongst the Beastmen of this land."
They grip tighter, as if they might simply -rip- the thing from Leo's forehead.
"Shall you cake it in their blood, too, and in so doing delude yourself that you deserve the same sense of pride? I imagine so."
And it is within the next second that they -pivot- forward, and -slam- their left fist -- now encased in a thicker bracer of gold and blue -- forward.
"Yes. I imagine you would lead all else astray in your delusions. Including this boy."
And from the sheer, abrupt force of that thrust, a brilliantly maned maw of a great beast rips forward, to crash into Leo and Day both.
Similar, perhaps, to that classic technique of the Lion's Howl...
... if perhaps much, much older.
The hand at Leo's horn releases at that exact moment.
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
It is only then that their attention shifts anew. Gauntlets dissolve from their hands, the storm of gold around them intensifying as their body tenses subtly for the next volley.
"You answer not the question," says the knight to the Dragonmaster.
"By deed, do you think them worthy?"
Their fingers spasm at their sides, little, uncontrolled twitches of their fingertips.
"By deed, do you think them -ready-?"
Hilde rushes forward. Margaret is not far behind with the loop of her chain.
"I think not."
'Do you know, Great White, what beans, cabbage and opinions have in common?'
"--Nutrient density, perchance--?"
This random, musing aside, and just how opinions might be dense in nutrients, will have to be tabled for a later date. As it stands, the words are practically mumbled under their muffled breath and made all the more inaudible by the slicing stroke of Hilde's blade meeting the sharp flash of two shorter swords, pincering them and redirecting her momentum such that the blow glances across their horned helm relatively harmlessly.
"... You," utters the knight, even as Hilde sweeps back.
"You, I know not. You claim your shield will be ever there to protect. What, then, is it you seek to protect? This Dragonmaster? Your comrades? The world?"
Their blades lift. But it is a question -- and a deadly blow -- that they perhaps don't gain immediate answer to, with Margaret's rotary whip sweeping forward not a second later. It CRACKS into their arm seconds before they can sweep in with those weapons; the chain snares, holding them at bay. Their head snaps to the side.
They hardly even wait a second before -yanking- upon that chain with every intention of -hauling- Margaret with it, until she is, potentially, sent hurtling Hilde-wards.
It is, at best, a delaying tactic; delaying, as Pearl swings wild, and Kaguya pulls the trigger of her prismatic burst of power. K.K. meets both in turn with their bare hands: claws meet forearms, digging deep furrows across heavy plate in a scream of metal and rain of sparks; they seek to -knock- Pearl aside, to open her up for retaliation --
-- only for them to react purely on reflex as that rainbow orb propels toward them. Their other arm snaps forward, intent to literally -bash- the thing away with brute force alone...
... only to pay for it, as it BURSTS into poisonous gas, leeching through armor to sink through whatever accounts for the being below with its potent toxin.
K.K. stumbles backwards -- but they bare the pain with remarkable stoicism as the vapors of the attack dissipate all around them.
"... 'Tis poison," they say, after a moment, perhaps appropriately. "Or mayhap a pollutant. With all your get have wrought upon the Blue Star, on top of man's mark, perhaps you know the nature of pollution well. It stays not with the source. It spreads. It seeps the ground. It befouls the air. It decays life all around it. Malevolence incubates within the impurity of the human soul. And from there, the taint spreads. And so the curse of man becomes the blight of the world's soul. You need but look to your companions to see."
Borgan summons up his power. K.K., too, can feel it, in the tug of arcane energies in the air. Their right hand rises as light surges upward.
"They all bear the mark of it. 'Tis the legacy of Althena's precious chosen."
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
And then, as that tome once more reforges in the air around them, they -smash- both hands forward, to -grasp- and -crush- the rippling stalagmites in their grasp evena s several more PUMMEL into their midsection with force enough to launch them airborne--
-- where words, ethereal and ancient, whisper through the air --
Glyphs of shadow form upon the ground. And from there, Althena's darkness-aspected blessing conjures forth a massive, mighty sword of pure, liquid shadow.
K.K. has landed in a crouch by the time the massive blade -SWINGS- outward with intent to cleave through Hilde, Margaret, Kaguya, Pearl and Borgan -- a tremendous blow of pure magical power that will cut straight past the flesh and into the soul, shivering down deep with the icy cold of its dark touch.
Slowly, the Trial Knight rises. And they feel, anew, the pull of magic. Their body lowers, their hands falling in front of them, as if prepared to grip something.
Thunderbolt!
And that column -rages- downward --
-- just in time to be caught upon the very tip of a freshly-formed spear of white, blue and gold metal.
Electricity conducts wildly across the edge of the Divine Artifact that K.K. brings to bear, like it was a lightning rod unto itself. It convulses shocks through them, but they still hold fast.
Still hold fast, as the pointed tip of that blade turns upon Ghaleon.
"... Very well," says K.K.,
"I have checked it."
maybe ghaleon just brings it out in them
It is not a second later that their charge, in an eyeblink.
Not a second later that they cut past -all- of those who would defend Ghaleon in an instant --
--with intent to run him through with the impaling tip of that electrified spear.
A second passes.
And then pent up, arcane energies will ROAR around both K.K. and whoever is caught at the end of their blade, lifting the person upwards, upwards, upwards -- before it all EXPLODES. Magnificently, and horribly, in a blinding flash of power.
GS: K.K. has attacked K.K. with Savage Beckoning! GS: K.K. assumes the Avenger stance! GS: K.K. has activated a Boss Action! GS: K.K. accepts K.K.'s Savage Beckoning for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to K.K.! GS: Mighty applied to K.K.! GS: K.K. has attacked Day Muirwall with Punishing Beast! GS: K.K. has attacked White Knight Leo with Punishing Beast! GS: K.K. has attacked Hilde with Negative Blade! GS: K.K. has attacked Margaret with Negative Blade! GS: K.K. has attacked Pearl with Negative Blade! GS: K.K. has attacked Kaguya with Negative Blade! GS: K.K. has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Negative Blade! GS: K.K. spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: K.K. has attacked Ghaleon with Ancient Requiem! GS: K.K. enters a Counter stance! GS: K.K. takes 18 damage from Poison! GS: K.K. has completed their action. GS: Day Muirwall guards a hit from K.K.'s Punishing Beast for 118 hit points! GS: Day Muirwall's Force Guard activates! GS: Day Muirwall enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: CRITICAL! Margaret takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 196 hit points! GS: Kaguya takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 69 hit points! GS: Kaguya's Force Evade activates! GS: Hilde critically guards K.K.'s Negative Blade for 28 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Black Wizard Borgan guards a hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 117 hit points! Disease prevents the heal! GS: Black Wizard Borgan's Force Guard activates! GS: Pearl takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Negative Blade for 68 hit points! GS: Pearl's Force Evade activates! GS: Hilde used Defend! She takes K.K.'s Ancient Requiem attack on Ghaleon on herself! GS: Hilde guards a hit from K.K.'s Ancient Requiem for 111 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Hilde has gained 1 Combo! GS: Day Muirwall has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Day Muirwall has posed.
"Yes sir!" Day calls back to Leo, eyes flashing with intent.
It's not lost on him that he's probably got the most armour on him of any of the Guard members present - and he's fully prepared to use it. He keeps himself in front of the Trial Knight as best he can. It's taking some doing.
It's helped by the little moral boost Ghaleon tosses him, however snarky it may be. It's still a vote of confidence from the Dragonmaster himself. Day clutches his sword all the harder.
"I won't betray your trust, Dragonmaster!"
There's a battle to be waged, and he wages it with skill even in the face of an opponent who wields such a huge weapon as if it were so much smaller. For just a moment he thought he'd opened the Trial Knight's guard - but what comes instead is an entirely too familiar maneuver. Or is it something merely similar?
It's enough to bother Day even as he drops back and raises his shield to guard, just the way he's been trained. The thunderous force slams into him and drives him to a knee, nearly tearing the pegasus shield from his arm. Power rips at him, pushing him hard enough that his knee and feet leave ruts in the flooring beneath him. It hurts like all hell.
In more ways than one. Hanging back, Seraph Vesna curls her hand into her collar and widens her eyes.
"Astray?" is all Day says, his voice quiet.
When he stands again, it's to step back and set the point of his sword to the ground. "What makes you think that I didn't choose this path?" he says, lifting his chin as he clasps both hands on the weapon's pommel. "Or that I would reject it even if you asked? I can see what you're doing, Trial Churl - I won't dignify your wicked ways with the name of Knighthood. You're trying as hard as you can to get us to doubt ourselves."
Bowing his head, the young knight closes his eyes. "But I cannot doubt the Goddess," he says as a gentle breeze begins to drift around him.
The breath of a spring wind ripples around the cavern as Day murmurs a soft invocation: "Althena, please, safeguard your servants in this moment."
The new season's kiss, carried on that tender tease of a wind, coils and breathes through the hall. A subtle shimmer of green dances with it as it curls among the ranks of a few of the more injured among the Guard - bringing with it a shimmer of healing magic.
From behind the lines, Seraph Vesna looks on, bright-eyed.
GS: Day Muirwall has attacked Day Muirwall with Mistral Litany! GS: Day Muirwall has attacked Ghaleon with Mistral Litany! GS: Day Muirwall has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Mistral Litany! GS: Day Muirwall has attacked White Knight Leo with Mistral Litany! GS: Day Muirwall has attacked Pearl with Mistral Litany! GS: Day Muirwall has gained 1 Combo! GS: Day Muirwall has completed his action. GS: Day Muirwall heals Day Muirwall! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan accepts Day Muirwall's Mistral Litany for 0 hit points! Disease prevents the heal! GS: Restore! Disease removed! GS: White Knight Leo critically guards K.K.'s Punishing Beast for 95 hit points! GS: White Knight Leo's Force Guard activates! GS: Day Muirwall heals White Knight Leo! He gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Day Muirwall heals Ghaleon! He gains 200 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
Kaguya, the Fun-Sized Frangible Font of Fear, begins to ask the Trial Knight about Malevolence. This seems, to Margaret's brain (the parts not focused in high speed maneuvers), to be ominous. Fortunately, Ghaleon then provides a clear explanation -- they likely had him chained to some horrible device and fed him pig slop, Margaret muses.
But then the Trial Knight addresses her.
It is Margaret who feels fear, but she has been answered, and so she replies, with a cold graciousness in her voice: "Wind, old fruit; wind." A moment later she is yanked forwards, and rather than resist she goes to it. She looks towards Hilde and realizes a moment too late that this is going to be simply miserable.
Margaret is in a sort of half armor - more of a frame, meant to catch incoming weapons and protect vital body parts. She is thus much less the durable target against Hilde's heavily armored frame; and so the strike between them is, to Margaret's perception, the worse for her. She doesn't cry out. Dignity, or a growing sense of spite, prevents it.
It was close, though!
It is the sword, a moment later, that bites deep. The pain does make her let out a strangled wail, even as she staggers away from Hilde. Then there are words coming from the Trial Knight-- no, Margaret thinks, what? They have to be lying, this is - what connection could Malevolence have to - to the thing that's put her apart from -
No, Margaret thinks, blinking a few times.
She swings the weight round her head, up high, away from others. She makes long looping plays, aiming to swing it round at oblique angles and harry the Trial Knight. As she does it she speaks to herself. It might sound like a pep talk, though Borgan would know better:
"Gaze within; the power rests; with faith, the sea will part. The rain will stop; the tide will turn -" It is an incantation, if one being slow-walked.
GS: Margaret has attacked K.K. with Blunt Banter and Sharp Reply! GS: Margaret has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
'How much more debts of suffering must needs be fulfilled before you will deign to look upon the world you walk?'
Leo's jaw trembles as the words echo in his heart. He sees K.K.'s maneuver a moment too late--and for a few moments the two of them end up in a deadlock. Pain stabs downward through his skull as K.K.'s fingers close, and he tries to counter, to push the sword deeper into the Trial Knight's gut. Leo sees himself in that mirrored helm--
--He's in Luca, seeing someone who looks like him for the first time since he left Raculi. There are differences, yes, but surely... surely just a coincidence.
--He's passing a line of Yevonite captives. One of them--a Ronso, he knows the word now--turns and spits at him. 'Hornless coward,' the man snarls, before the guards set upon him.
--He's remembering that strange family relic his father kept above the fireplace, a spear of a design no one could identify...
In the back of his mind, Leo realizes that Borgan gave him an order. Under normal circumstances, he'd be annoyed at the insinuation, but he's... not in the correct frame of mind at the moment.
Leo digs in his heels, and grits his teeth. The strength of the earth wells up within him, suffusing his skin with amber-gold light. The Trial Knight's beast slams into him at point-blank range, and sends him reeling with a thunderous crack; it takes every last ounce of skill to keep them from blowing him off his feet. He takes four stumbling steps, blood dripping from a fresh wound in his forehead.
'But I cannot doubt the Goddess.'
lead all else astray
Leo glances at Day, his face tight; the young man's sorcery washes over him, numbing the pain, but the worry does not leave his face.
"Whatever lies in my family's past," Leo says, "it--it changes nothing. Yevon must face justice for its crimes. The people of Spira will be free!" The words are forceful, but... they aren't delivered with the White Knight's usual bravado. Instead, he reaches out with a hand, twists it upwards, clenches it into a claw; the earth beneath the Trial Knight trembles, and then erupts. Jagged spikes of stone thrust upwards from the cavern floor, a forest of razor-sharp rock. Chunks of broken stone fly everywhere, potentially pelting K.K. with a rain of earthen shrapnel.
GS: White Knight Leo spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked K.K. with Grand Upheaval! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 2 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action. GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Margaret's Blunt Banter and Sharp Reply for 137 hit points! GS: K.K. guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Grand Upheaval for 96 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
Hilde is not as talented a mage as the others, but even she can feel the power that Borgan draws in. He's the most powerful mage among them, after all - besides maybe the Dragonmaster himself. His power was a thing to behold.
She looks toward Ghaleon, then, and nods. Weakened by months of imprisonment... that would do it, certainly. But, he says he's still no slouch.
"Excellent. I daresay we will need your help." Hilde replies with a nod as she begins her attack.
And then, K.K. catches her blade on two shorter swords. They're certainly quick - Hilde has to respect that.
"We have not had the pleasure of meeting, no - in combat or otherwise. I am Hilde, Knight-Protector of Hyland, friend. My apologies. I should have introduced myself sooner." Hilde replies to K.K. with a shake of her head... and then, a good-natured chuckle. "I am afraid my shield is not nearly large enough to protect the entire world. No, you had it right the first time. My oath is to my comrades-in-arms, and to those back home that I have sworn myself to."
Margaret is sent flying toward her, then. With a gasp of surprise Hilde sheathes her sword, moving to catch her and break her flight with her free arm. It might be a little less uncomfortable than flying right into her heavily-armored figured.
"Are you alright, Lady Margaret?" Hilde asks, glancing her direction. She'll help her steady herself, if she needs it, otherwise she'll turn her attention back to K.K.
And just in time, as well. They have something important to say about the nature of Malevolence... and also, a massive sword formed of shadow.
And then, K.K. brings their sword down. Hilde turns quickly, using the momentum to catch the sword with her shield. The sheer force impact cracks the ground beneath her feet, leaving a small crater ever as she lets the sword slide off.
But, even though she has not yet recovered, she sees a danger beginning to form.
"...Dragonmaster!" Hilde shouts. K.K. dashes past them... but Hilde moves, then, with surprising speed to interpose herself between them and their target.
Hilde lets out a grunt as she is impaled on the end of that spear, and lifted into the air. Electricity courses through her body... and then with a roar, an explosion sends her flying. For a moment, she flies limply through the air, consciousness absent... but, at the last moment her senses return to her. She adjusts her flight through the air, landing on her feet. She stumbles as she does, but manages to remain standing.
She's looking worse for wear - a break in her armor, her cape tattered and her hair mussed, but she's still standing. She fixes K.K. with her single good eye.
"...Allow me...to return the favor, friend." She says. She takes up her sword in both hands, then, and for a moment, her body is suffused with a blue aura. She charges forward, then dodges to the side. She brings the blade down, then, in a powerful overhead strike. The power is greater than it at first seems - this is a strike that has felled giants. From where it strikes that blue aura reverberates, magnifying her power even further.
GS: Hilde spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Hilde has attacked K.K. with Titan Cleaver! GS: Hilde has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Black Wizard Borgan has posed.
Borgan would not ordinarily give Ghaleon of all people orders, but this one is for his own good. So it's fine. Right? Right. He glances over to make sure Ghaleon is being taken care of, and then back. He knows what he's good for here.
"Trial Knight," he rumbles, twisting his fingers to shift the stone even as K.K. pulls the stalagmites apart. The pillars shift and split as Borgan tries to find a way through, but fails to find purchase; K.K. gets sprayed with fine rock dust as some of the pillars shatter, and others begin to pull back into the ground.
"I don't know you, and frankly I don't care to know you personally, but your words can't be trusted. Perhaps, if you care to deliver a warning, you can do so by one of the *usual* routes. A letter. A book. Visiting politely instead of attempting to kill a man thought dead."
Borgan smiles, and with his face it's a vaguely unpleasant thing. He's not a handsome man - they call him an ogre behind his back, and right now it fits. Especially because it is not a pleased smile, especially. "I am always willing to learn. But there is a time and a place, isn't it? And people aren't as ignorant as you hope they are - or at least, I am not."
Borgan twists his fingers into a position that looks uncomfortable at best, painful at worse. The stalagmites that withdrew, pulling beneath the ground, extend again - this time between him and K.K.'s great blade of shadow. The blade carves through the stalagmites with a crackling, snapping sound as they fracture into a hundred thousand pieces, but it does damp the blow against Borgan himself. Which is all he was hoping for.
It's Day's revitalization that gives him some energy back, and he takes it gratefully, turning what was just pain into a moment of intense focus. He spreads his arms wide, staff in one hand, and the flow of energy shifts - flowing to a point just in front of him, a ring of runes in the air that begins to fill with a tiny pinprick of what could be light inside glowing darkness. But it doesn't feel like the shadowy energy K.K. is using. The element is different:
It is Earth, but the energies of Earth formed in a manner so complex it is hard for an unpracticed user to tell what Borgan is doing with it at all. It's not quite impossible, but it's the work of a lifetime to create - and Borgan is doing it while conversing, if not easily.
While Borgan is doing this, something falls out of his sleeve. An orb, about the size of a volleyball; he probably didn't actually have it up his sleeve (there's not that much room in there) but merely brought it to him. The top half is red, and the bottom steely grey, and it's moving very quickly.
Directly toward K.K.'s helmet, in fact, where it attempts to bludgeon the Trial Knight in a series of whirling strikes before returning to Borgan's side, orbiting around him. And the orb isn't magical in the least - it is mechanical, some sort of technological device. It even has a camera lens visible, like a dark lens of an eye.
"But by all means," Borgan rumbles, his voice tight with the effort of whatever spell he is building a framework for by, to all appearances, sheer willpower. "Educate me!"
GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked K.K. with Assault Node! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has gained 1 Combo! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has completed his action. GS: COUNTER! K.K. counterattacks Hildewith Counter Attack! GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Hilde's Titan Cleaver for 159 hit points! GS: Hilde guards a hit from K.K.'s Counter Attack for 124 hit points! GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Assault Node for 160 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Kaguya is perhaps less formal than most of the Guard; it's well knoown though that she was a mercenary though, so perhaps that's to be expected. But for all that she seems detached and is asking her own questions, she's paying attention to the others--spots Leo's fury, and the questions the Knight has for him. Day's anger...
But Malevolence has long made Kaguya step back, and think. Ever since the great Dragon that struck Lastonbell, its power has been impressed hard upon her psyche, and her scientific mind still seeks to understand. In understanding, perhaps there can be a counter...
Borgan issues an order, and Kaguya thinks his timing is about right. Once Ghaleon clears it... Which means it might be a minute. "You got it!" she calls back. But first there is her blow--
Yes, maybe it is appropriate that that's when they respond. "I think I did a lot of that wrought-ing myself," Kaguya answers first, narrowing her eyes to examine the aftermath of her attack. Stoicism, of course--she wouldn't expect much less out of them. But it does seem to have had some effect. That'll do, t start.
"...But yeah, I know pollution. Real well. My people are familiar with it, too."
She talks as she thinks, and then mves as she thinks. She watches Borgan as th Trial Knight mentions the mark of Malevolence on Althena's chosen.
Then, she is obligated to attack. Where it once was light, now it is darkness, and darkness perhaps she has more familiarity with. Kaguya moves almost before she sees the attack, and while it cuts through, the blow is shallower than it could be--on the surface, where flesh and blood are concerned. Something cuts through deeper at the spirit, though, and Kaguya grits her teeth, stepping back again as she reaches into her bag with her free hand, ARM shifting to her side.
"I know decay, too." From it she pulls a small metallic device, rounded and suddenly flashing with small green lights as she flips a switch. There's a deep, whining hum in the air. "...Wait. What do you know about what my people did on--"
It's not secret. It might not be anything. It might not be something she's looking for. But the Knight seems to know... a lot.
It's absolutely a little bit ominous that she's having this conversation.
But Ghaleon also answered her question, "At least there's just the one then. It's just that they happen to be the super-powerful one as far as I can tell."
...She does check out his magic. She pauses, long enough to appreciate it a little.
Also to judge a good angle--Kaguya darts again, this time onto a convenient rock to get a higher vantage point. It's also a little more vulnerable, but omelette, eggs.
In the next moment she adjusts dials and meters, weapon holstered again since she needs both hands for this task. This gives her a good vantage point to view the others, too, not just her opponent.
"HEY LEO!" Kaguya calls. "Is that the best yelling you can do? Kick their ass like you mean it!" She shouts it like she's motivating a soldier, and maybe that's exactly what she's trying to do. She can see him faltering. It's familiar, after all.
Kaguya throws it--and it beep beep beeps its way over, bouncing into the cavern opening. There is time yet to affect it--rather than immediately hitting the blst, Kaguya pulls her ARM back out again and aims an energy slug towards the Trial Knight. With a burst of green, hardened light crashes towards K.K., crackling with electric power.
"Thanks for the answers, but... these are my friends."
GS: Kaguya has attacked K.K. with Riot Burst! GS: Kaguya has gained 1 Combo! GS: Kaguya has completed her action. GS: K.K. guards a hit from Kaguya's Riot Burst for 57 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Riposte applied to Kaguya! GS: K.K.'s Force Guard activates!
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
Pearl is hardly a weak woman, but K.K. is able to knock her back, even if she creates an opening for Kaguya to poison the being. She skids back, and looks up at K.K. and grins. "How interesting, to find someone this strong here." She muses. "Someone who can keep up with two of the four heroes, and let along the rest of us." She... smiles. It's not a nice smile. "I wonder which of the three is stronger."
She brings up her arms to block the blade of shadow, trying to summon up her own mastery of the element to dull the pain, but it's still enough to tear her back. Pearl does not seem to care if she is worthy, or about being led astray or any of it. Maybe this is just because she's not a knight.
Perhaps this is why she is unworthy of notice except as a violent nuisance. She charges in again, claws bared. And once again, she dives for K.K.'s legs, but this time with a sliding kick on the off chance she can sweep their legs out from under them. Much like her gloves, her boots are also adorned with silvered claws, and they are just as capable of cutting.
GS: You cannot act while you still have attacks in queue. GS: Day Muirwall heals Pearl! She gains 200 temporary hit points! GS: Pearl has attacked K.K. with Running Takedown! GS: Pearl has gained 1 Combo! GS: Pearl has completed her action. GS: K.K. guards a hit from Pearl's Running Takedown for 77 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
"Oh, I did not answer the question, did I? Perhaps you were unaware!"
Ghaleon replies easily. One might call it flippant, but that would be inaccurate. Insufficient, perhaps. His tone is commanding, more than anything. "I have frustrated many. Dragonmasters, Heroes, Shepherds. And even the Goddess herself." He lifts his chin, his lips curling into a smirk. "I am known for not answering questions, Trial Knight."
His eyes narrow; one surrounded by pale skin, the other by the mottled, otherworldly purple scarring. "Let them decide if their deeds make them worthy. Or ready. I won't speak for them."
And then K.K. tears into them. In the midst of that, Day's spell swirls about him -- holy light infuses him, his armor shining brighter, and some of his wounds healing -- and he lifts his sword. Then, K.K. rushes towards them, and Ghaleon takes a couple of steps backward; his sword raises.
"Gh--"
But then Hilde inserts herself between K.K. and him. Their spear slams into her shield, electricity exploding through her, and his eyes narrow. "Tch... well struck, Trial Knight. Hilde, I suggest that you stand up."
Then he looks at Leo, and there is a flicker of something there. Concern--or maybe something less. His jaw screws up, and he turns his eyes back towards K.K., as Pearl rushes them. He can appreciate Borgan's and Kaguya's technology, but there his approach is more... classical. Ghaleon extends a hand, and a magical circle explodes off it. Intricate lines form, one after the other, forming patterns and triangles within a trio of rotating circles.
"As a child, born of the true nature of Althena's grace!" Ghaleon shouts, voice echoing. Light flashes around him -- and the ground near him shakes, as four great depressions form. "Her chosen were given birth from this earth... and are destined to be untamed like its bounty!"
He raises a hand up -- and four immense boulders lift, with it. "Carrying that grace, we shall soar oh so high--and will seek to deny any death that take us from her Silver Star!"
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igvP806798U
Ghaleon raises up his hand a little further, then throws it down. Four rocks hurl off it, one after the other slamming straight towards the Trial Knight, trying to bowl them over or smash them against the wall.
"ROCK 'N ROLL!"
GS: Ghaleon has attacked K.K. with Rock 'n Roll! GS: Quick expired! GS: Ghaleon has completed his action. GS: K.K. critically guards Ghaleon's Rock 'n Roll for 32 hit points! GS: Cover applied to Ghaleon!
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
And so their spear finds its mark. Not in Ghaleon...
... but in Hilde.
"..."
The faceless helm of the Trial Knight watches the woman's limp form for a quiet moment. There is not consciousness there, not immediately.
When there is, though, it is the metallic ring of the knight's words that greet her.
"And what, then, shall you protect them from? From their enemies? Yours? From pain of loss?"
The sound of their bootheels crunching across ruined stone can be heard as they approach the stumbling, recovering Hilde.
"From defeat? From doubt and contradiction? From the Malevolence within their hearts? From thought and self-reflection? Perhaps you would let their ignorances and their sins simmer, so as not to stand against them. Would you smother them in your protection?"
Their spear snaps to their left. Something twinkles there. A lingering light from their attack. It resonates with something in Hilde, so subtly she might not immediately notice.
"Tell me, girl. What does it truly mean, to protect?"
And they lunge.
It is the Dragonmaster himself who intervenes before they can capitalize upon their offensive, providing Hilde the precious time she needs to recover and retaliate. Boulders fly, chunks of the earth of Spira itself. The one who would call themself Adversary stops in their charge, -snapping- their faceless stare towards Ghaleon.
They leap.
The space in which they can move is limited. But leap they do, soaring -high- above those boulders. Their weapon is already shifting by the time their heels land upon the first boulder.
It has already formed into a massive bow notched not with an arrow, but a -lance-, by the time they kick -off- the massive thing, sending it careening into the second.
They are already firing off that lance to IMPALE straight through the other two in an EXPLOSION of rock as they soar backwards, smaller chunks of debris -pummeling- them relentlessly as they hit the ground in a wild roll. Their armor is dented. But otherwise...
"... Mayhap there is some truth to that," they concede, after a time.
"But I would see the depths of them all the same, with my own eyes."
It is Hilde, next, finally recovered. They look her way, as she speaks. Their head cants.
"... Not one of you may lay claim to friendship with me," is their singular retort, before the woman charges.
And K.K. charges her in turn.
The bow dissolves. They have no weapon. They -still- charge.
Hildes blade swings downward, CARVING across their helm. It cuts off a horn. Carves a scar into the armor of it. Drags -all- the way down to their shoulder --
--and there it stops, dug into flesh, driving the knight to their knees.
They had no weapons. They do not defend themself.
They but reach out --
--and touch a single finger upon where their spear had struck Hilde.
It resonates with a tiny sliver of power left behind.
"Hilde, Knight-Protector of Hyland."
And it e x p l o d e s
"You are ever mine enemy."
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
It is here, then, that their attentions turn anew toward Ghaleon, intent to capitalize on this opening.
Until a glint of something catches their notice from the corner of their unseen eye.
"What manner of -- ball--?"
CRACK
This would be the sound of K.K. being bludgeoned roundly by a relentless mechanical weapon andor drone andor robot pet pal, the velocity of it driving forth incredible force which hammers the knight -repeatedly- and -mercilessly- across their helm and upper body. Armor cracks inward. Their helm fissures further.
The brief glimpse of a blazing eye can be seen before it swiftly seals shut, knit by spiritual compulsion.
The force of the orb is enough to send them staggering back. Their attention turns towards Borgan more fully now. Their hand snaps towards their side.
"... There is but a singular path for me, and such does not include correspondence. But I would rather know what it is you are planning, wizard," they say, slowly. In their hand is formed that war scythe anew. "What work do you weave--"
Beep beep beep
Whatever their intentions, the Trial Knight is stymied by a sudden EXPLOSION of green hard light, CRACKING across their armored hide. It pummels them hard enough to knock them upwards into the air --
-- positioning them perfectly for Margaret's follow up; each knock of that weighted chain rings almost melodically through the air as it crashes against that damaged-yet-brilliant white armor, like beautiful chimes of violence rippling outward with each powerful blow. The last launches them -backward- --
-- and it is just as they land that Pearl capitalizes, striking them with that sweeping kick with perfect timing to take their unsteady feet out from under them. They crash backward, striking ground roughly, only to -push- off it with their hands and into a roll.
"This is not strength," they utter in response. "'Tis power. Naught but a pale shade of the former, and an intoxicating deception."
They seem like they have more they might say to Pearl. But she had a goal -- and she succeeds in it magnificently. K.K. is still recovering by the time that Leo's earthborne assault ERUPTS into spikes of stone much as Borgan had done earlier. They cleave away chunks of it with the sudden swipe of their scythe -- but many more DRIVE into them, launching them upward anew. Some spear through armor to catch on what lies beneath.
They stay like that, pinned, like prey upon a shrike's trap, looking almost still, until...
"Your words ring as farcical as they do hollow."
A spark catches upon the edge of that war scythe. A flame.
"You preach salvation without even knowing the source. You cry for freedom while marching over futures. You cast judgment without even knowing the nature of the tools you use to cast it. By what means do you seal Spira's heresy, Althena's 'Chosen'? Like as not, you know it well."
And they -swing-.
"You but look aside to your own foulness. What shall they say of you, when it comes time to account for your crimes?"
And that rock EXPLODES.
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
It is through a haze of heat that the Trial Knight steps. Their armor glows now as they emerge -- it looks almost liquid, a nebulous, shifting thing of shimmery whites and golds that flows almost molten across their frame. It is a sight not so dissimilar to the form it took in the depths of Love's Cradle -- where they cast aside all pretense, for a brief moment.
"Enough. I shall not beggar your self-deceits any longer. Your uncertainty is a poor defense for your ignorance. And you--"
And here, that faceless helm turns, towards Day Muirall.
The full weight of their stare, all that rippling, spiritual presence, falls upon him for a brief, shining moment.
"I need not try anything. You are naught else but doubt, boy.
"Doubt, wrapped around a festering core of guilt. I see the truth of you clearly. 'Tis as naked to my eyes as the clearest skies."
Their war scythe snaps to the side, and the heat of it RIPPLES across the entire area.
"You are already astray. He but gleefully drags you deeper into the pit you are already well-ensconced within."
The scythe lifts. And as it does, that book, still hovering above, flips its pages. The air starts to turn a sickly shade of crimson.
Crackles of Althena's magic twinge the air.
"You believe yourselves convicted? I would see it. Come. Come, or I shall reave your Dragonmaster straight off your mortal coil. Come! And weather the storm, if you dare!"
And, heat exploding into a burning sphere encasing the blade of their weapon, K.K. -leaps-.
As they do, the air crackles more and more violently, until all around them, bolts of scarlet lightning SMITE everything in their blistering, magical path, cleaving the air as if electrified sabers wrought by the hands of the goddess herself.
That storm continues, ceaseless, relentless --
As K.K. -swings- their weapon downward, HURLING that massive, broiling ball of flame straight into the dead center of all of them.
They have little more than a precious handful of seconds to react to all this, before the burning ball of conflagration makes impact, exploding in a rippling wave of raw, incinerating force.
GS: K.K. has become ENRAGED! GS: K.K. has activated a Boss Action! GS: K.K. has activated a Force Action! GS: K.K. has activated a Force Action! GS: K.K. has attacked Ghaleon with Deicide Saber! GS: K.K. has attacked Pearl with Deicide Saber! GS: K.K. has attacked Kaguya with Deicide Saber! GS: K.K. has attacked Black Wizard Borgan with Deicide Saber! GS: K.K. has attacked White Knight Leo with Deicide Saber! GS: K.K. has attacked Hilde with Deicide Saber! GS: K.K. has attacked Margaret with Deicide Saber! GS: K.K. has attacked Day Muirwall with Deicide Saber! GS: Day Muirwall takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 88 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Day Muirwall gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Day Muirwall enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: K.K. spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: K.K. has attacked Ghaleon with Absolute Domination! GS: K.K. has attacked Pearl with Absolute Domination! GS: K.K. has attacked Kaguya with Absolute Domination! GS: K.K. has attacked White Knight Leo with Absolute Domination! GS: K.K. has attacked Day Muirwall with Absolute Domination! GS: K.K. has attacked Margaret with Absolute Domination! GS: K.K.'s stance ends. They enters the Avenger stance! GS: K.K. takes 22 damage from Poison! GS: Mighty expired! GS: Enrage purges all positive status! GS: K.K. has completed their action. GS: CRITICAL! Day Muirwall guards a hit from K.K.'s Absolute Domination for 208 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Day Muirwall gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ghaleon takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 199 hit points! GS: Ghaleon guards a hit from K.K.'s Absolute Domination for 151 hit points! GS: Ghaleon enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: CRITICAL! Kaguya takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 275 hit points! GS: Kaguya takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Absolute Domination for 125 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Kaguya enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Kaguya has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight! GS: Hilde guards a hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 116 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Hilde enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Black Wizard Borgan takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 189 hit points! GS: Black Wizard Borgan enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Margaret takes a solid hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 188 hit points! GS: Margaret enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Margaret takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Absolute Domination for 116 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Margaret has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight! GS: White Knight Leo fully evades K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! White Knight Leo gains 1 additional Combo! GS: White Knight Leo enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: White Knight Leo guards a hit from K.K.'s Absolute Domination for 130 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! White Knight Leo gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has activated a Force Action! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has activated a Force Action! GS: Pearl takes a glancing hit from K.K.'s Deicide Saber for 97 hit points! GS: Pearl's Force Evade activates! GS: Pearl enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Please react targeting the attack number in +queue. GS: Pearl fully evades K.K.'s Absolute Domination for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction bonus! FP up! GS: Day Muirwall has activated a Force Action!
<Pose Tracker> Day Muirwall has posed.
When he opens his eyes again, Day draws a slow, steadying breath. The soft touch of the healing wind helped not only others - it helped him, too. Not doing so would've been unthinkable. A knight's duty is to help.
His head of steam lasts until the Trial Knight rounds on him. Day opens his mouth to say something.
He snaps it closed, a flush racing across his cheeks. For just a second, his eyes dart to the side.
THEN
he could but collect her in his arms and sob. his tears joined the blood on his cloak.
NOW
From well behind the heat of the battle, Seraph Vesna watches that moment of flickering indecision. Her fingers curl at the collar of her tunic, but her expression is stoic and her eyes are intently focused. She is watching one person in the fight.
Day clicks his teeth together in a sharp hiss. "The path I walk doesn't matter," he growls, but the conviction behind it isn't the same fire it once was. It comes out more like a thin protest than a real statement of certainty - and he can't find the words to follow it up.
They don't come. Only memories and self-reproof, a cold feeling that the Trial Churl knows far more than they should.
Am I really an open book?
The Knight's attack is withering and dreadful, the sheer force of it enough to level lesser men entirely. So off his game is Day that he doesn't go for the more obvious choice of using his shield. He jumps backwards almost without thinking, reflexively tearing himself away from the scarlet lightning that comes bursting around him. Electrified air rakes across his back and shoulders, scoring his armour in places and leaving burns across his cheeks.
The burning fireball descends into the midst of it all - and the young knight is at the very heart of it.
"DAY," Vesna shrieks, her hair blown back by the violence of the detonation. Flame and heat consume Day in a lethal sphere of incinerating hell. He's lost from view, the last glimpse of him revealing a movement of his arm - as if at the last moment, he remembered what he was wearing, what he had.
That's right. This shield.
The flame rages around him - but it could have been far, far worse. The face of the tall kite shield holds. The enameled white pegasus, rearing boldly, remains intact against its red and black quartered backdrop.
The one relic he had brought with him from his former life was his heraldic icon. The arms of the House of Muirwall.
It's funny, he reflects through the blazing agony that shrieks across him. For all this time, I still carry this with me. And it's saved me.
Damn it all... they're getting into my head. I can't--
Day squeezes his eyes closed for a second and braces himself, focusing through the pain and the shame and the hurt and the loss and the doubt. The thoughts needle at him and he wrestles them to centre one above all.
Sir Leo, Dragonmaster Ghaleon... they're counting on me.
Counting on me to fulfill my duty.
Fulfill my duty.
My duty.
My duty.
Shouldering through the malevolent flame, Day surges upwards. His voice rises to a high, revving roar. Smoke and ash billow past him, his hair streaming behind him as he lunges forward as if in slow motion.
"All I need is this!" Day shouts as he leaps in. "A KNIGHT'S DUTY TO PROTECT! AND IN THAT, THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT!! HOOAAAAAAAAAHT!!!"
What he unleashes isn't a sword strike - not at first. It's a hard, rising slash, well away from K.K.
Energy leaps from it, brilliant and white. It twists, for just a moment, into the first hints of a vaguely leonine form-- it crackles, as if to howl--
--until it shifts its form in a second. There is, amidst the surging power, the energized silhouette of a great winged horse - and the sound that emerges is less a roar than an equine scream of defiance, before the shape of the pegasus is swallowed up into the churning wave of force that goes slamming towards the Trial Knight with all the power Day can push into it.
He follows the blast in. His hand knits around his broadsword as he swings once and once only - a blow that, if the Trial Knight were a lesser being, could cleave them from head to groin.
GS: Day Muirwall spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Day Muirwall has attacked K.K. with Forcene Pegasus! GS: Day Muirwall has gained 1 Combo! GS: Day Muirwall has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.
"Gh--too damned good for your own good!" Ghaleon snaps up, after the Trial Knight, as their aerial acrobatics and their bow knock aside his boulders. He scowls, then he steps backward. He tries to follow K.K., but that is hard -- and the Dragonmaster is more sluggish than usual. He sees when they leap, and then he cries out a shout:
"THEY COME!"
Ghaleon readies his sword -- scarlet lightning slam down into him. It strikes him, burning through his tattered robes and his blackened armor. Chunks of it fly away; he hisses, softly, before he stands, and then raises a hand. A shield of magic forms, the ball of flame slamming into it.
Then shattering through, and its explosion sends him flying. He smashes back, roughly and wetly, into a wall. "Ha... haaa..." the Dragonmaster laughs, as he forces himself up. He wonders, for a moment. If they burst out of here, would it draw his eye? Would it--
No.
No, he will not risk it. He glances out of the cave mouth -- spotting some movement, in the distance, though the glare of the sun blocks it. Then, there is a colossal explosion in the distance -- the ground rumbles, violently -- and Ghaleon turns his eyes towards towards the Trial Knight. "Come," he says. He spits blood onto the ground. "You've shown your might, Trial Knight. I would see what else you have!"
And then he throws a hand out. A column of flame explodes off it, washing over the ground and the cavern, and he directs it, sending it cascading towards the Trial Knight. It burns into stone; the worked stone of Via Purifico, behind K.K. glows red, and begins to melt. "INFERNO!"
The magic circle underneath Ghaleon flickers away -- and then fades -- and then, spent, the Dragonmaster falls down to a knee. "Nngh..."
But a war horn sounds, in the distance. Ghaleon blinks, in confusion, and glances back towards the entrance to the cave. A blur of black and steel flies in through the door.
GS: Ghaleon spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Ghaleon has attacked K.K. with Inferno! GS: Ghaleon has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Georg Heldalf has posed.
The figure moves with a speed that belies his age and his full plate armor. His leap takes him straight up a switch back, and a cape of purple, lined with fur, flutters after him. He is an older man; in his mid-late fifties, face lined and drawn, a great sorrow visible in his dark eyes. His blond hair is streaked with grey, and short, save for one long lock of hair. It would fall by the side of his head, but right now...
Right now, like his cape, it flutters back after him. The halberd in his hands is swung backward, and his armored body slams down into the ground, with the shocking impact that a leap in plate can make. The ground quakes, under him, as he looks at K.K.
He speaks with a voice that is deep and basso, a roar of adrenaline and fury: "ENOUGH!" he bellows. "Begone, villain!"
Georg Heldalf lands as he did two months ago: as a Rolance general thought to be dead, returned from retirement and mourning to the Goddess's call. A living legend, the Butcher of Sarvast Valley and champion of half-a-dozen wars against Hyland, here and in there flesh. He spares only a brief glance at Leo -- their first in perhaps a decade -- before he swings his blade up. The halberd's end flashes, gold and white dancing across it.
And then he unleashes the technique that he invented, and later perfected. It forms, into the roaring head of a lion, and slams upward at K.K., before exploding in a mighty blast of power that shakes the walls again.
"TRUE LION'S HOWL!"
DC: Georg Heldalf switches forms to Imperial General Georg Heldalf!
GS: Georg Heldalf spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked K.K. with True Lion's Howl! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 2 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Black Wizard Borgan has posed.
Borgan's orb - the ARM that he dug up himself, that he rebuilt from wreckage with his own hands; something he did with no assistance, nothing but his own work and his knowledge, the pleasure of doing something yourself and knowing almost nobody else could do such a thing; one of his most treasured possessions - slams directly into the Trial Knight's armour, and comes out the better for it.
Where the armour breaks, the sphere does not; some of the casing around the lens fractures, and the flight bobbles a little, but the orb flies back to Borgan and orbits, slowly. Simple as the exterior is, it's hard to damage without a concerted effort.
For a moment, Borgan is very satisfied with his life.
"What do I weave? I weave magic," Borgan rumbles. "I weave power. And most of all, I weave knowledge. I came to Spira to learn. My offer was true. But if you would rather keep your secrets, then *I* will keep *mine*. But I have already learned much today. Your magic, for one. I know what it is."
Sweat is beading on Borgan's face. Despite his tone, what he is doing is *work*. Holding the spell is hard as he draws more earth magic into the complex array of runes and symbols. And he has to hold it through the flames; he has little attention left to shield himself.
The sphere does some of the work for him. It pulls the flame into itself, like it was attracted magnetically - or gravitationally. As the fire strikes it, gravity in the area weakens for a split second; everybody feels fractionally lighter for about a quarter second until Borgan wrestles the energy down.
He is burned. He is barely standing; his platform has acquired a decided tilt to its hover. But he is still upright, still forming the spell. He has to shape it, just so. It would do no good if he collapsed the cave in. Borgan's lips peel back as he begins to recite, not quite snarling but the next point to it.
"O eternal soul of the earth! Open the gate to your heart of power and release the constrained force within! Let the energies of the world be unleashed!"
"GRAVITY BOMB!"
The sphere, released by Borgan, drifts forward. It looks slow. It looks lazy. It is not; it is an impossibly heavy globe of energy the size of Borgan's upper body pushing its way through the world. The air itself ripples around it, faintly.
And then
It
Explodes.
The blast is constrained, aimed deliberately at the Trial Knight. Borgan is holding it, preventing it from releasing its full force - physically as well as magically. His arms are spread, but it looks like he is trying to squeeze something invisible between them, and so the blast only radiates for perhaps two or meters. The shockwave ripples out with hundreds of pounds of force - and then bounces back in, compressing into the center of the bomb again, oscillating forward and back, out and in again.
On about the seventh oscillation, the spell bursts, a cloud of earth energy rising up in a faintly mushroomed shape. Force dances within it like lightning, but it is mostly dispersed; the rippling blasts strike only as hard as a strong man's shove now, and by the time it gets to the ceiling, it's not even that.
Borgan plants his staff against the ground, pushing his platform back to an even keel and recovering his strength. It's all he can do, even when Georg Heldalf roars right past him.
GS: Black Wizard Borgan has attacked K.K. with Gravity Bomb! GS: Black Wizard Borgan has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
'HEY LEO!'
The White Knight's ears twitch, and swivel towards Kaguya. At any other time, he would be annoyed by her flippancy, but these are hardly normal circumstances. "I hear you, Lady Kaguya." Leo takes a deep breath, reminds himself of what's at stake. Even if the Trial Knight speaks true, this is neither the time nor the place to ruminate on it.
Instead, he thinks back to what Hiro told him back at Bevelle. That he still believed in him--in what he represented--sparked off something that Leo is still trying to understand. The uncertainty fades from his eyes--K.K. can see it--replaced with a very different kind of resolve. He can't do a damn thing to help end this madness if he's dead.
"I know," Leo says, his jaw tightening. "I know." What's he talking about? The sealing rod? The war? his own doubts? All of the above?
There is no time to clarify. K.K. erupts into a tempest of sorcerous violence. Leo twists to the side and dances backwards as the air grows thick with ozone; a lightning saber flies past, missing him by inches. A second comes closer, and meets with Leo's blade. The White Knight knocks it aside in a shower of sparks, even as a crackling numbness arcs up through his hands. His heart hammers against his ribs. "BRACE!" he roars, as flame gathers in the air. He grinds a heel into the earth, and a wall of rock erupts in front of him.
It almost soaks the impact. The shockwave of K.K.'s fireball slams into the rock, charring it black in an instant. Chunks of stone break free, flying past Leo; one of them slams into his shoulder, and he winces, stumbles back. Flame roars through the cracks, trailing burns down Leo's arm and chest. Only when the flames die down does Leo cast his gaze around to the others--his heart sinks. "Day!" he shouts, as Ghaleon launches his counterattack "Evacuate the--"
He doesn't finish the sentence. A familiar sound pierces the din of battle. Leo's heart leaps against his ribs. No, he thinks. It can't be.
It is. Impossibly, it is. Leo goes slack-jawed as Georg Heldalf--a man he thought dead in a fire--glances at him, and then leaps into the fray. For a moment, words fail him entirely. Moisture beads in the corners of his eyes as he remembers the funeral, the grim procession with the Strelka brothers. "Althena," he whispers. "I--"
Leo doesn't know what to say, but he knows exactly what to do. He falls into step right behind the general, his lifeforce igniting around him as he channels it into his blade. The brilliant white glow illuminates the cavern, casting long shadows. His sword gleams like the sun itself. He steps forwards, flows into the strike, releases.
"LION'S HOWL!"
A second wave of energy rips free of Leo's blade, taking on characteristic leonine shape as it rushes towards K.K. It's so very similar to the one Heldalf just unleashed, but not as potent. Not that it matters much.
GS: White Knight Leo spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked K.K. with Lion's Howl! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 1 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo's Stoic stance ends. He enters the Avenger stance! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
What does it mean, to protect? The words were not spoken to Kaguya herself, but she hears them nevertheless. When protection turns to smothering--that is something she knows well. Is it what she's doing, too? Is she guarding them from a trial here that they should face themselves, without her 'help'? Is she doing it here, or farther out?
...Does it matter, given that she needs the allies?
Kaguya thinks on pollution, of the kind her people have brought and the kind others have brought. She thinks on it, as she detonates her bomb--she thinks on it, as she watches the others fight and moves into position once again, staying out of the direct fray and back with a ranged weapon, rather than charging in like one of the knights ahead. She is, for all her position, no knight.
But Leo is, and he answers her. Ordinarily, it's not how she'd try to address him.. but this isn't ordinary times. And it seems it was enough, for now. He knows, but what does he know?
There is this. Not strength, but power. Kaguya's eyes narrow at that. "They're different," Kaguya agrees. "But power..." The flame catches on the edge of the war scythe, and she sees it. She sees it and is out in the open still. "...Yeah."
The small Veruni certainly does not look like a valint knight, small and thin with no shining armor plating, no bright longsword but a pair of small blades and a gun. But then, the Trial Knight for a moment looks finished... and very much isn't. Cry for freedom, marching over futures. Judgement, without knowing.
'What shall they say of you, when it comes time to account for your crimes?'
These words make Kaguya's pale green eyes widen for a moment--and she sees the near-liquid armor ahead. She seeks to weather that storm--but in the open as she is, the first sabers cleave through the air and smash into her outright, her attempt to dodge completely vain for the moment. Her small frame is lifted bodily, the red electricity carrying through her armor and weapons. She soars up into the air, briefly totally dazed, and there is where the ball of flame comes.
High as she is, she is not in the center of the blast, and perhaps that is for the best, because even the edge of it she gets is enough to blast her back farther, hide her in the explosion until she hits the ground some yards back and rolls, without standing.
"Gh..."
Her vision swims. She feels a power on the edge of awareness, remembers its call... but... It's far away, right now.
"I guess..." Kaguya pushes up onto her elbow, looking over the battlefield ahead. "I guess... that tracks. I was here, asking questions.... Not really committed the same way." She murmurs this, and shakes her head.
"My crimes... Heheh. How much of this is mine...?"
Sighing, the small Veruni scoots back to a seated position, looking tiredly over the battle. "Still too weak," she mutters, movements loose and uncoordinated. There's a cough, and there's blood on her hand when she takes that hand back from her mouth. But whatever else she was going to say... She doesn't say it. She sees instead the blonde man ahead, ses him crash down and make that blast of power that she recognizes in the manner of having seen part of something, before.
"...Heheheh... Ugh."
She slips a small cylinder out of her bag, holding it near to the ground, but doesn't press the button. Yet.
The battle's not quite over, to look at it, even if her part in it is.
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
K.K. asks her a question. What does it truly mean to protect? Hilde pauses for a moment, considering the question. She frowns, for a moment. And for a moment, the blue aura surrounding her dims. She was not as well-versed in the spiritual matters as others.
"As I am now, I can only protect them from physical foes. Foes beyond their ability to survive." She admits.
And then they counter her words - none of them can claim friendship. Her frown only deepens.
"My apologies, then. 'Twas an attempt at politeness. Would you prefer I dispense with the niceties?" She asks. They deliver an answer in the form of a touch of a finger, leaving behind a glimmer of power.
...Hilde already knows this is probably going to be awful. And it certainly is - the power explodes outward, sending her flying back. Even having been able to brace herself, it's painful.
"...Very well. So be it, then." She says. She exhales, straightening herself up. K.K. speaks, accusing them all, and then... challenges their conviction.
Scarlet lightning, followed by a massive ball of flame. That blue aura around Hilde intensifies and she takes up her shield once more. Lightning and flame wash past her. It's... intense. A lot for one person to weather, and she's weathered a lot already.
But, by the end of it she's still there, still standing.
"...I still stand, my foe." She replies. Her sword and shield are drawn... but she pauses, for someone appears in their midst. Yet another person who, as far as she knows, should be dead.
"Georg Heldalf..." Hilde breathes out. Her feelings are... complex. She is a woman of Hyland, after all - this man is among her greatest enemies. A monster among monsters, if one believes everything those of Hyland say. And yet here he is now. She takes a deep breath.
...There really is no quarreling with him now.
She is no lion. But, she would be remiss if she did not do Hyland's own swordplay justice, in this situation. She charges against K.K., her blue aura flaring to life. And then, she unleashes a flurry of attacks, sword and shield lashing out in tandem. It is not an unpracticed fury - each strike leads smoothly into the next, a symphony of steel.
And every symphony must have a finale - a finale delivered with a quick strike of her shield followed by a thrust of her sword before leaping backward.
GS: Hilde has activated a Force Action! GS: Hilde has attacked K.K. with Steel Symphony! GS: Hilde has launched an attack Link! GS: Hilde has attacked K.K. with Finale! GS: Hilde has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
Pearl comes to her feet, turning to face the Trial Knight and prepare for her next assault. "Is there a difference for those who you wield it against?" The retort is not, perhaps, as impassioned as the rest of the guard.
She doesn't get to wait for that answer. as the waves of energy from K.K.'s attack require immediate attention. Pearl moves to evade, but she already knows it's too late. She's sent sliding back, and she notices the ball of fire heading towards them. She can do nothing to block that.
She can do something to evade it though. Magical darkness starts to encircle her, and she dashes forward, just as the fireball lands.
She reappears a distance further forward, singed but standing. Her fellows in Althena's Guard who are still fighting have taken the fight to K.K. Heroes have emerged to fight. How interesting. Pearl turns, and waits for the opportunity to strike.
She dashes forward, with a slash from bother her hands, before launching a kick to where a liver might be. Another slash, a knifehand strike, a backflip into a kick. Pearl's had some time to assess the guard of the Trial Knight now. The question now is if she can overwhelm it.
GS: Pearl has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Snipe! GS: Pearl has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip! GS: Pearl spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Pearl has attacked K.K. with Overwhelming Assault! GS: Pearl has completed her action. GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Day Muirwall's Forcene Pegasus for 303 hit points! GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Ghaleon's Inferno for 206 hit points! GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Georg Heldalf's True Lion's Howl for 210 hit points! GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Black Wizard Borgan's Gravity Bomb for 222 hit points! GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's Lion's Howl for 200 hit points! GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Hilde's Steel Symphony for 171 hit points! GS: K.K. enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: K.K. takes a solid hit from Hilde's Finale for 139 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! K.K. takes a solid hit from Pearl's Overwhelming Assault for 216 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to K.K.! GS: K.K. has Fallen! They is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
"I am not a creature for whom niceties ought be spared."
The Trial Knight's words ring deadened and metallic as they rise amidst the smoking ruin they have wrought. The ground glows fissuring orange beneath their feet, superheated rock burning at the metal of their boots to such a degree that their heels steam as they stand. The white skirts of their armor whip within the heated winds, their armor a liquid gleam of pure light, as if everything about them in this moment was somehow ephemeral. Less of this plane, and more of something less bound by the physical.
That faceless, liquid-light helm turns, reflecting nothing now but light as they look upon their work -- and upon the Guard and their allies rising up despite it all.
"..."
Their head cants.
"... Very well then."
And just like that, the light begins to bleed away from them, that tremendous presence fading as they once more ground squarely in the physical. Their armor once more polished perfection, reforged.
Their faceless helm, now reflecting the faces of those who surround them once more.
"Let us see what more mettle lies within you."
It is to Pearl their attention turns to first. She had asked a question, and now, she strikes. Incredibly sharp claws and perfectly placed kicks meet very little resistance -- to someone who knows what it means to take a life, Pearl doubtlessly knows what it feels like when there is no attempt to defend oneself; if anything, the knight seems to be moving -into- her blows, -pushing- into each carving strike that sheers off pieces of freshly-restored armor. Can she overwhelm it?
She already is. The gates are open, and that final kick simply blows them apart, sending them staggering in a way that leaves them perfectly poised for the others to capitalize upon.
'Is there a difference for those who you wield it against?'
"All the difference in this world," says the Trial Knight, in the seconds before the others bring their offensive to bear, their words spoken for Pearl alone.
"For those who you wield it against... and for those who know to wield it."
Hyland's swordmanship is brough to bear next; Hilde capitalizes on the Trial Knight's opened and overwhelmed defenses the very second that final word leaves them, blue aura empowering each blow to titanic heights, ringing the blows of metal against metal through the air in a perfect harmony of violence. They leave their mark in the countless wounds their score --
--and that final thrust buries deep within the knight's gut.
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
And that is when they grip her sword with one hand. -Hold- it.
And reach forward with their other, to place a clawed hand upon her chest, just over her heart.
"Learn you what it means to truly protect," their tinny words hiss, their tone so impossible to decipher past the warp.
"Or you stand to lose much and more, Hilde, Knight-Protector of Hyland."
It is hard to say whether their words are meant to be threat, or not; there is hardly time to say. Soon, they are -shoving- her backward by that hand, -ripping- her weapon free. Bright red splatters the ground in their wake in a thin pattern as the knight takes a single, strong, steadying step backward.
And it is here that they find themselves caught between a cage of gravity and flame.
Oscillating bursts of pure pressure ripple through the knight, holding them in place with countless pounds of exertion. They struggle against the gravity that Borgan brings to bear. Step forward once. Twice. Tiny steps, between each oscillation.
It is by the seventh step that they feel the sizzle of heat. That they see the wash of flames.
Their head turns, just as the bursted spell of gravitic force and the broiling heat of Ghaleon's conflagration all awash in a tidal wave of power, combining together until heat ripples upwards along the pathways of Borgan's mushrooming cloud of earth.
In the aftermath, K.K. is upon one knee, head bowed, their armor shattered here and there, smoke rising off of it. It glows now, but for a wholly different reason. This is the glow of flame and force heating it to inhospitable degrees. Whatever is inside should rightly be cooked alive.
Their cracked but faceless helm tilts upward all the same in defiance of logic, just as the warhorn blares.
They see the man. Elderly. Distinctively armored. Moving in a mastered form that is so distinctly Rolancian.
"..."
Their fingers spasm briefly, but violently against their knee.
Their faceless helm tilts, towards Leo and Day both. They say but one thing, as three men trained in the same style come bearing down upon them.
"... I yet see what you lack."
It is their last words, before two beastial lion's maws and a magnificent pegasus all COLLIDE with the knight in a brilliant, blindingly flash of force. All combined, it is overwhelming, winds -billowing- outward like a storm and awashing the Adversary of Man until they cannot be seen.
In the aftermath?
There is nothing left of K.K. to be found.
Ghaleon is safe, if singed. And now...
... they've a bonafide war hero in their midst.
<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.
---
It is some far off place within Bevelle, where the Trial Knight finds themself. Alone, sequestered, they sit high upon their simple perch. Their armor is cracked and crumbling. Half the faceplate of their helm is either splintered or simply missing.
A single, burning gold eye looks in the far off direction of where they they had just fought.
"... 'Tis a rude farce you play," they confide, to no one but the empty air. The right corner of their lips, visible through the fissures of their injuries, quirks upward.
It might be a smile. And if it is one...
"But a farce ultimately well worth the playing, when the people are worthy. Is it not?"
... it is a surprisingly warm one.
It lasts hardly any time, before light washes over them once more, spiriting them further away from Bevelle.
<Pose Tracker> Day Muirwall has posed.
The sound of that horn isn't one Day has heard - he's familiar only with the legend of the man, not the man himself. He was an infant when the story of his loss came. But some men are large enough to live beyond life.
"GENERAL HELDALF," Day exclaims without thinking as his eyes grow as wide as they ever have. His feelings are not complex here.
Day is a knight of the Church, but he is - was - also a peer in the nobility of Rolance. The name of Heldalf is a name he reveres. He lionizes the man enough that he trained in the fighting style he innovated.
A style which he's never truly been able to master - but in this moment, he has come as close as he ever has.
Panting heavily in the wake of the battle, the young knight lets his sword fall to his side, his shield following. His shoulders sag a little beneath his armour. He's sore, he's stressed and he's utterly exhausted.
But he nevertheless crashes to a knee, bows his head and plants the tip of his sword against the turf to bow to the returned General Heldalf with all the respect due to a hero.
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
"I cannot tell if that is self-effacement, or just a simple truth." Hilde admits, as K.K. claims niceties should not be spared for them. But she fights, and she manages to land what would be, against any other foe, a fatal wound. But Hilde believes differently, for this one. She receives evidence enough for that as they grab onto her sword, and place a hand over her heart.
She draws a deep breath, for a moment. It would be easy enough for them, at this close, to finish her in a single strike...
...But, they do not. Instead, they leave her with words. A threat? Or something else?
"...I will consider your words." Hilde replies, as they tear her weapon free. She backpedals, from there, as the others continue the fight. And then, K.K. vanishes, consumed by lions(and pegasus). Dead? She isn't sure.
But for now, at least, Ghaleon is safe. Hilde turns away, focusing back the way they came and trying to avoid catching any sight of Georg Heldalf in her field of vision, because she's not really in any condition to think any more about him right now.
"Come, let us escort the Dragonmaster back to safety. I am sure he must be famished after all of that - as are we all. I shall prepare us a suitable meal." She says.
...Does he even need to eat? She isn't sure. But right now, she needs a distraction - and something to do while gathering her thoughts.