2021-01-22: A Banquet of Ash
- Log: A Banquet of Ash
- Cast: Gwen Whitlock, Ida Everstead-Rey, Isiris Shango'Ra, Talia, Fei Fong Wong, Ivan, Eleanor Klein, Xantia, Seraph Boudicca, Azoth, Seraph Lanval, Zed, Citan Uzuki, Jacqueline Barber, Hiro, Fafnir
- Where: Luca - Port District
- Date: January 22, 2021
- Summary: Hours have passed since the demon fled, and damage is being assessed. Fires are being put out, and the civilians that were affected by the pockets of fumes have recovered, seemingly unaware that anything traumatic had happened in the first place. In a warehouse near the docks, crates are ripped open, spilling colorful produce out over the floor. As a fruit is snatched up, its insides are already cooked by the time the entity begins to gorge in earnest. Fire continues to spread from where the creature dines, the hungry flames having a feast of their own...
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
( BGM:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yOrf6L6mpI&)
A few hours after the Fire Thief had left, the fires had mostly been put out. Between the Guard's deploying of water and ice magic, as well as help for those who may have suffered injuries in the fire, whatever effect the initial firefight may have had was greatly diminished by the swift actions of the Drifters that charged in. And they were anonymous Drifters too. Somehow, the captain of the Guard Unit didn't want to be know to have gotten his life saved by none other than the vilest right hand of the Lord of Calamity, as well as her human assistant, who is also the Lord of Calamity's right hand, as well as several others who may or may not be seen as being part of the Vile Fiends by sight alone.
But that may not exactly be the worst of everyone's worries, right now.
Random sputters of fire happen over the course of the day, as do sightings of a strange female entity with fading long curling bands of hair and skin as grey-black as cooling lava, streaked with glowing cracks with red. She's kept to the rooftops for the most part, leaping from one to the other with a random trajectory, though one vendor of meat skewers is seen, lamenting her now burning stall. It was after this that the thief's speed increased, making it harder for those who pursue more quickly on her trail to keep up.
Perhaps it wasn't necessary; it was evident from the Thief's stops that she needed one thing, and one thing only: food, and lots of it.
And with the areas leading outside the city onto land on alert, all that remains is the oceanside parts of the city, and a wall of ocean beyond.
---NOW---
The thief is crouching now on a pile of spilled produce, colorful fruits rolling over the warming stone of the floor. Fruit begins to sizzle in Gwen's hand as she bites into it, quickly desiccating pulp falling in black flecks from her mouth as sweet steam fills the air in the warehouse. Fire licks at the wood of the crates, setting ablaze the straw inside.
With each fruit consumed, the hair elongates like ribbons on a maypole, the cracks grow brighter.
Her worries, her regrets, her sadness, her pain begin to leave her, replaced by the soothing roll of fire over her skin.
But one concern still remains. It can't leave, as her own form serves as a reminder of it.
"Setanta... I'm... sorry..." Her voice rattles through the remaining parts of her body like reeds against a wildfire. Her voice, temporarily regained, is now lost back to fire.
Uncertainty leaves her, but hunger doesn't. She claws through more, her hair slicing through the wood of crates to litter the floor with sweet tides of color.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida Everstead-Rey steps into the burning warehouse, approaching the Thief like one would a wild animal. Tension marks her every move. She's a coiled spring, ready and waiting for the inevitable. She hasn't even changed her clothes--patches of blue and gold have been charred black, contrasting sharply with the silvery patches that mark her burn wounds. Ida's guts tighten with a mixture of dread and anger and terror. She knows who the Thief is. She recognized her, during that all-too-brief moment of lucidity. She knew what Gwen had taken into herself, and tried to warn her.
But did she do enough?
Ida can't contain herself any longer.
"GWEN!" she cries, reaching a hand out for her friend.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
The Thief is oblivious to Ida's presence, at first. Ida could very well land the first blow, maybe even land a crippling shot that could help decide her friend's fate, if others behind Ida join in.
That is, until Ida calls her name. When the Thief looks up, Ida may very well see some hint of recongition. While her eyes were briefly visible as she cooled down, many hours ago, they have become reclaimed by a cloak of flame. This cloak brightens in response to Ida's presence, like a warm campfire being stoked by a patient hand.
Gwen reaches out her hand, longingly, head tilted, heedless of whatever damage her flame could bring, if their hands could touch.
Instead, a rustle of obsidian feathers shoot out as an extension from Gwen's hand, closing that distance and bringing the soothing cold of deep waters as it touches Ida's own hand, speaking cooling words Gwen doesn't have the chords, or words, to say.
'Look at this beautiful world, Ida.'
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Head-on Attack! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with heMelasseesOneirosyou! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Gwen Whitlock's heMelasseesOneirosyou for 0 hit points! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Gwen Whitlock has canceled their attack on Ida Everstead-Rey.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
There's no time to warn the others. Ida's vision skews sickeningly, as if the world itself were tilting around her; a harsh buzzing fills her ears, drowning out the crackling of flames, and everything else. Ida's fingers clench, tightening around nothing. The buzzing gives way to a deeper sound, rhythmic and all-consuming. A heartbeat.
Ida cannot tell if it is hers.
Brilliant, liquid darkness slicks across Ida's eyes, dripping down her face like teardrops. Her face contorts in a rictus of agony and terror, but no sound escapes her lips. She sways and wobbles bonelessly, but her feet remain rooted to the spot--it's as though she's become a marionette, dangling on unseen strings.
Braided-steel cables tighten like a serpent's coils around her heart.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
-----------@^#&&_______^_____.-----and then for some--
In the end, it came down to a single feather. A man wouldn't notice it at all, the light glinting off of a single black mote as it drifts through the curtailing wind. But it alights on you, the faintest kiss of a hand, the touch of a cheek. In the end, it's enough to fold the world in on itself.
She gives in to it, in the end, that twisting madness. You are there to see them. You can see everything, one moment. And then in the next, the rest of the world follows, and steals it all away from you, folding up on itself like a dying spider.
The docks of Luca are twisted up and mad, criss-crossing over one another in a confusing Escherian labyrinth weave, with ships moored in every configuration, at every possible angle and port. Those dockworkers that are here are absent-minded, throwing line over hooks that never quite catch, hemp never quite meeting steel. Even in this routine act, there is palpable danger in the wind, in the taste of the air. The sun is hung low, impossibly low in the sky, casting long shadows and depriving the world of truest noonday light. Where once dusk meant spectacular pinks and blues watercoloring the sky in romantic hue, the sky is cold and gray and foreboding as you navigate the pier, the color and verve bed from every vein in the once vibrant world. It is almost as if a spell were cast that already ended the world long, long ago.
The color is filtered through the great smoke baling from the warehouse where she and they rest, an ultimate goal that remains tantalizingly in sight. The roof has partially caved in, throwing off plumes of catastrophic gray. However, no amount of urgency can carry you to the ultimate 'there.' You could run, you could climb, you could swim. But once the birds took flight, the future that they thought was so important ended. There are a thousand paths along the pier, and they all lead to one place.
"'Investiture' is a glorious, agonizing thing."
You are nowhere where you want to be. The man in the grey coat stands at the far end of the pier, overlooking the burning warehouse beneath the monstrous sky. A pier that stands higher and greater than many at the docks, with a commanding view of even the crow's nests of smaller ships moored nearby. Thick pilings and polished, ancient cross-hatching of support struts zig-zag beneath the stone and metal fascia of ancient structural work, marked with the polish and pomp of the merciless advance of the commerce-driven port city. At first he faces away, towards the sea.
"For all who were left behind, they must bear the weight of cruel ascent. This is only the first step."
Old drifter's boots click softly against the stonework as he turns. There is a distinct buzz in the air, like the harsh hum of cicadas. The pier lists dangerously beneath a wind that cannot be felt nor heard, the ground seeming to tilt several degrees as his attention refocuses, head bowed and inky black bangs hanging low over sick eyes that are never quite visible, casting an eerie blue pallor over his cheekbones. His voice is entirely inviting, honeyed and resonant as his attention settles somewhere it shouldn't, the force of his attention generating twisting knots in the air, the blood, the mind, the dreams. Everything we ever were or are has been a hopeless, cruel lie. With the utmost care, he opens a hand, slipping it around a hilt that doesn't exist, drawing a white saber from nothing at all.
"Hopeless, heathen iscariot," he soothes. "Kneel before the throne, and celebrate."
That is when the monstrous sky finally turns against you, in a rush of tidal black.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia had been worried about Gwen. But an effort to follow her had been in vain; at a point, she had to admit defeat and go to a different strategy of searching.
She did find the trail eventually. This entailed coming with Ivan and Hiro. She is a little ahead of them -- she is surprisingly fast, surprisingly agile, and surprisingly bullheaded. Maybe she doesn't know Gwen Whitlock that well, but... she is a friend of Hiro's. And, the times they did speak, Gwen was kind to her. A little voice whispers to her, though: this might be more about doing some good to make up for the bad.
She mostly ignores that. She also doesn't see the feather. Her eyes, really, are locked on how Ida drops like that.
"What in the--" She slows to a stop, then she calls out: "Ida!" Her eyes snap to Gwen. "Gwen! You--you have to get a hold of yourself! We can help, no? But we need to get you -- and her -- out of here right now!"
GS: Talia has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Running In and Dropping the Pizza! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei Fong Wong has calmed again. He walks the streets of Luca as if he doesn't even notice the strange configurations of the city. Maybe he doesn't. Regardless, he has been searching for Gwen--but finds Ida stepping into the warehouse. He rushes over, making an imossible run across an upside down street as he does so. Is it stranger or more frightening that he doesn't seem to notice the labyrinthian twisting of the city? Or would it be more frightening if he panicked? Regardless, he navigates Luca as well as he always did which, to be fair, isn't TOO well in the first place but he knows how to leap across a few rooftops and land in front of the warehouse.
He sees a crow's feathers slam into Ida. Or does he? Either way, his eyes narrow. He rolls his shoulders back and makes his way inside.
"Gwen," Fei says.
They're all broken people. Broken puppets.
"When I lost control, do you remember what you told me?"
He extends his hand towards Gwen. Feathers don't reach him. "You told me that the world is flawed, cruel and full of pain--but it never ceased to surprise you with the sheer depths of its kindness."
He curls his hand into a fist. "You told me that even that demon inside me wouldn't let you drown, and that he was kind to you."
"Whatever he's feeding off off you, breaking inside of you, whatever other Gwens you've got going on in there. Do you think... Do you really think we're in any position to refuse them?"
He shakes his head. "I'm not gonna let you drown in fire either."
And with that he slides forward, placing a hand towards Gwen.
"..."
And then sort of aims to just kinda pick her up and lift her into the air while blowing repeatedly on his hands because Gwen is hot hot hot.
"Is this better?" Fei asks. "You never really told me you were going through all of this. I know how unfair how that is now." Pause. "Please let Ida go? She has to deal with enough crap honestly."
GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Gwen Whitlock with LIFT! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan picks up his pace, trying not to fall too far behind Talia and risk her running headlong into trouble without him. He rushes up a few moments after her, eyes widening as he sees Gwen bursting with flames again and Ida writhing in the grip of some strange spell.
"This is bad!" he points out, needlessly. But it feels like it needs to be said. "What happened to you? Please talk to us!"
He draws forth his umbrella and releases a holy pulse that aims to knock her back, away from Ida, who he draws closer to and makes an effort to steady.
"Are you all right??"
He looks to Hiro and Ruby. "Uh -- has Gwen ever done anything like this before?!"
GS: Ivan has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Umbrella Rebuke! GS: Ivan has completed his action. GS: Talia has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Running In and Dropping the Pizza! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Not that I've seen," Fei admits in an aside to Ivan. "I thought she was the chill no-psychological-damage type but maybe everybody I know is actually crazy except for Ruby and Doc." He is keeping an eye on you Hiro.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Maybe everybody I know is actually crazy except for Ruby and Doc says Fei.
"That seems more likely to be true than I want to dwell on right now..." Ivan asides back. He gives Ruby a subtle respectful nod for the distinction.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor Klein is behind Ida, not quite fast enough to keep up with her, particularly not after the few hours she's had. But as she steps closer, she sees--the figure, oblivious at first. Ida, calling out to her. The words she couldn't identify before ring in her ears, and she sees again what she saw before.
"No--!"
Cool rain against hot fire. Ida sways and wobbles. "Ida, get back--get ahold of yourself--!"
The world folds. Eleanor's vision of the future is replaced by a twisting everything, and the world folds and folds and folds until the doors become a labyrinth. The tangle of ships dizzies; the danger lurks. Cold, gray, foreboding...
"What?" Eleanor says, and for a moment she is sure she is having a vision. Except that she can move; she can act. And that shouldn't be possible. But so many things shouldn't be possible, here.
The young elf moves at a sprint, but the world is curved, and she cannot reach the warehouse. She tries to move to the side; she tries to move down, and even up. None of it works. She is not where she wishes to be.
"There's no time for this," Eleanor starts, angry and frustrated by the unreality around her. She does not notice the glow in her yellow eyes in this darkness, not at first.
Cicadas again--like before. But not like before. Eleanor watches reality be what it isn't, and she feels that sense of hers open. ...It is overwhelming, or should be. The tide of black smoke assaults her mind, and Eleanor's eyes glow as she stares into it, coughing more because of the idea of smoke than a smoke that hits the mind instead of the body. She reaches for her Crests, and focuses, pulls one--Geo, twinned, the gold-inlaid card a sign of stability as she stretches out her hand, Graph between her fingers.
Memory flashes of a different spell being cast, a different time, and visions of death plague her mind. She cannot put them aside, but she can add one thing.
"Broken by the dust of all things--Crag Essence!"
Earth erupts in the plain, gigantic rocks sailing towards the man(?) who all Eleanor's instincts call out as wrong.
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Crag Essence! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
By the end of the previous encounter, Xantia needed a moment to fully clear the cobwebs from her mind. A cursory examination by a conveniently present simple country doctor didn't turn up any lingering symptoms from her temporarily altered awareness, so she seemed good enough to go and help track down Gwen - after having been caught up on the fact that the Fire Thief was, indeed, Gwen.
Even though Xantia is perhaps not exactly the first person you'd think of when you need an expert tracker, tracking places that have been set on fire is a little easier than most. And she's certainly well-suited for noticing a pattern that involves food. It didn't take very long at all for her to realize that being really hungry was at least a significant part of Gwen's actions right now. And so her course was clear. ...Not that it may have been entirely clear to everyone else, since she just said to those she was with that she had to do something and ran off on her own.
And so it is that Xantia gets there a little late, busting in after a bunch of people have already arrived at the warehouse. Literally busting in, kicking down a heavily cracked and fire-damaged section of the wall to make her own entrance. Conveniently, the Fire Thief is right in front of her as she does so, so she can immediately start yelling.
"Gwen! I'm sorry I didn't recognize you! I wasn't thinking right!" Not that she probably would have even if that didn't happen, but that's not important right now. What's important is rushing over to Gwen so she can show off the thing she brought, removing a box from under her arm and holding it out in front as she opens it.
Inside the box is... well, it was probably already obvious looking at the kind of box it is. Those types of boxes are typically used for transporting baked goods. And considering a certain long-standing promise... what else could it be but a cake?
This particular one is the sort of cake that people would most commonly think of when they think 'birthday cake'. It lacks the usual decorations like candles and birthday wishes in frosting that would normally be there, but still. It's the most 'cake' kind of cake that Xantia could find, so that's what she went for.
"You're usually the one saying it, but... special delivery~"
It only takes one second for Xantia to go from acting the confident courier to being openly doubtful about whether she's doing this right. "...I know you suggested the whole cake thing, but, this is fine, right? Me buying the cake is not against the rules, is it?"
She's pretty much laser-focused on Gwen right now, but she'll probably get a read on who else is there and what's going on with them soon. Probably. Cake is more important right now, as this is bound to solve whatever problems Gwen may be having right now.
GS: Xantia has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Don't Forget Your Promise!! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
I wanted to know
"Oh, Gwen."
Kneeling by dying embers, a gauntlet through the ash. The Seraph Boudicca is late. Due to leave Luca; to other places, go. The wind carries smoke. Here she has come.
the ending to this story
She rises, all uncoiling; she steps away. She steps closer. These are greaves which do not strike the ground; let the ashes puff into the air, made plumes by these pockets of air.
who they were
Finally, there she is.
"Gwen," is the word Boudicca speaks.
Gwen is the word Ida speaks.
Once with volume, once understated, twice for the world.
is your own
This world is underwritten by feathers. Birds built the world, did you know? On a million wingbeats they hatched the mountains and the plains, a great roc soaring. Here the blackness, blood of the earth, it pierces,
how they felt
"NO!"
I see you
I really do.
And here she leaps, and the wind can close the gap of centuries. No wonder, then, a net might catch her, thrown from the docks into the air; this is where the fish dwell, did you know? Did you know? Did you know there is a stair which descends down from dock three to dock one, tumble-tumble-tumble, until one finds her feet and picks the shadows off her skin?
The net is smoke. The world is smoke. Where is the stair? This is flat ground.
Stand-straighten and unfurl the wind, scour smoke, bring in fresh air. "I knew," says the Seraph who is Boudicca, "there was another."
The breeze curls around her, extends without her, and she is enforcing her own will on this space which is not quite.
Smoke chokes the lungs, but her voice is clear and stern as steel.
"Show yourself."
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Buffeting Headwind! GS: Seraph Boudicca has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Boudicca assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
It was Gwen. The familiar traits he couldn't place -- and still can't quite, even with the data -- were because the Fire Thief was Gwen. Regret spikes in Azoth's core with errors in having attacked her, especially so brutally with the strange energy that somehow recharged him, flowing through his circuits in glitched discomfort.
He doesn't know what they can do if they catch up, only that they will try, and Azoth will be there to try and protect them while they do. And then maybe Gwen will get home safe.
At least, that was the plan.
Bright, blue eyes illuminate the area in a flash of panic at the sight he finds when he catches up, and Azoth cry is such that it glitches with a choked reverb in its unintended volume. "Miss Ida!"
It's all he has time to say before the whole world shifts in disjointed, grey horror. He does not perceive the world the way organics do, but his sensors are no less prepared for the terrible spike of energy that warps his perceptions and floods him with error after error for his effort to make sense of it. Azoth staggers, wildly looking around as he tries to regain understanding. His eyes land on Isiris, hollow and wide and red in his body's perceived(?) malfunctioning.
"What did you do?" he demands, then louder until it glitches again. "What did you do to them?!"
Lines of light crawl over his body as he explodes with warped crackles of energy. A massive sword forms, flickering from red before managing to stabilize as blue. Azoth throws his arm down to cleave a beam of energy from it through this bleak reality. "Let them go!"
GS: Azoth has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Overvoltage! GS: Azoth assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Azoth has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Lanval's in the area exactly by chance. Well, not entirely chance - Fox Company's found some very good work niches as of late, what with a way to go between the worlds at will - but one's not here to wax about economics and opportunity. He's been going to Luca through the waters of Spira, braving any number of swirling masses of pyreflies that he used to shy away from out of not knowing what they are. He can feel there's something wrong going on up there, and it's something he doesn't want the mortals around him to have to deal with on their own. No one should deal with what power is being felt alone. Felt from within that burning warehouse--
The sky and its color change. The distance, depth, and width of the water surrounding the Oracle of Schturdark... not what he knows of water. It is his lot to know the water of Filgaia, and he operates on an educated guess that Lunar's water is not much different on the whole (beyond the uptick in its quality).
He's 'moving' but also 'nowhere.' The sense of displacement, among docks twisted into something physically nonsensical... enough to make an entity whose very existence violates many of these same physical laws feel just as lost.
Only that he emerges from those twisted waters exactly - and only - from rejection that he was not in the water any more, he surrenders his presence to the idea of standing on something. A proper footing for him to lose.
From there, the Water Seraph - under the usual shameless appearance of a shoe-less, heavy-set, long-bearded wastrel who has happened upon nice swanky robes as of late - takes a sip from his drinking gourd to center for those words about who were left behind. He does not get that luxury when that world tilts underneath him. He does not center, but he keeps hold of it.
Cruel lies. How many has he been subject to? The tidal black of the sky rushes to him, the cacophony of sensory overload. A meditative moment is never enough to dull this relentless, contorted slice of reality being force-fed through him.
A sleeve wipes at his mouth. A noise equivalent to coughing, as he all but spits out a lot of it, parsed in the way he knows - as if trying to translate all of this into a liquid medium he simply expels.
As Boudicca rejects the smoke, Lanval soon reasserts what the water is around the docks with the Seraphic glyph underneath him.
"I know... plenty 'bout celebratin'," Lanval says as the waves crash against the twisted docks. "Thish ain't... nothin', ta celebrate." A swing of that self-same hand, and another wave rises - navigating the unreality to crash against the swarming skies of smoke above him, and an attempt to reassert control of some of this space.
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Reasserting The Water! GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
How and why Zed knows that Gwen might be in trouble is immaterial. He has heard and so he has come, because there exists no force between heaven and earth and a scant few beyond that would be able to stop him.
The sword Doombringer, hurled from its masters hand, hurtles through the sky like an airborne buzzsaw. It slices through the sweltering air and parts the glowering flames and--
Cuts through the shadowy, raven-black feathers tying Gwen to Ida. Doombringer is a strange and terrible blade, a Demon Blade, with all that the title implies, and its edge is as keen today as it ever has been. As its path ends, buried deep in the dockside concrete, a shadow hangs briefly over it--
And lands atop its hilt, a wave of force pressing out in all directions upon its arrival.
It's-- well, who else could it be? There's only one person with that sword, only one person who'd think a good way to make an entrance is to land on top of your hurled demon sword.
It's Zed, of course.
But he's not smiling.
"Why does it seem that so many of my friends have things living inside them that should not be there?" He asks, his tone as grave as the expression on his face as he hops down from atop his sword and, with a single motion, tears it from the ground. "I don't know exactly what has taken roost within your heart, but I promise that I will do everything I can to excise it."
Doom Bringer glints, a flicker of ill-portuned light dancing ominously across its edge. "...Gwen. One of my first friends--" He lifts it high, a pulse of that same terrible radiance pouring outward-- and then abruptly inverting, becoming a void that swallows in all heat and all light like the hungry revenant of a self-sundered star. "--I'm sorry that I didn't notice. That I took so long to find you. I have been a bad friend."
"But I will still do everything that I can."
DC: Zed switches forms to Manic Blade Master Zed!
GS: Zed has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Saint Arts - Voidwalker's Resolve! GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo! GS: Zed assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Zed has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
Gwen had vanished, and an effort to find her had proven untenable. Between the presence of the Guard here -- even if the current crisis afforded them some degree of leeway -- and the other various stressors also here arrayed, the doctor had opted to think things over and attempt a different approach. Obviously, with her current powers she would not stay hidden long. It was more a matter of reaching her before any others could... and if she could be rescued from this state to begin with.
To think that the ill omen he had proved to be true... to think that she'd succumbed after all...
Citan is, as is often the case, not far from Fei when it happens.
He's too far away to see it happen. There is a nearly palpable twist in the fabric of the world about them, though, one that sets the doctor running for the warehouse. He might not have seen it happen, but he can still see what has happened. "Gwen! --Fei, you must not--"
In a sense, he's already too late to stop what's underway. But there's a difference -- considering those now present -- between too late and too late. He appears to vascillate for a few moments there on the threshold of the warehouse.
Then Citan makes his decision as Fei grapples with Gwen, hurrying to Ida's side much as Ivan does. "Miss Iverstead-Rey! Are you alright?" He reaches out towards her, perhaps to similarly attempt to steady her.
Which is, yes, what he's trying to do. He's also however trying something on a more subtle level, as perceptable as a small rippling pulse of water vapor -- healing Ether, whatever the form in which it's encased -- upon Ida's person. There is no wound he can see, but he knows there are even physical wounds that leave no mark.
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Sazanami! GS: Citan Uzuki has gained 2 Combo! GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action. GS: Citan Uzuki heals Ida Everstead-Rey! She gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
'It hurts'.
That's what the Fire Thief - Gwen- had said, like a shout in Jacqueline's mind. It was hard to forget. She couldn't forget. She wasn't the sort of person who could ignore someone else's suffering. And so, the very moment she could, she resumed the chase. She didn't know what she could do. But she had to do something. There had to be something she could do.
Actually keeping up with her is out of the question, but it's easy to make connections to Gwen's various stops. It helps. She can anticipate where she'll end up.
And she arrives, like many others, to find that Ida has gotten here first. Jacqueline arrives just in time to see Gwen reach out a hand to Ida, and to see the swarm of feathers that suspend the latter like a marionette.
"Ida!" Jacqueline calls out. "Gwen, stop! Don't-"
And then, the next moment, Jacqueline finds herself somewhere else.
Where once there was color, everything has faded into grey. She is far away from where she once was, in a place that looks like a twisted, labyrinthine mockery of the piers of Luca, filled with dockworkers that follow the same pre-programmed routines in a way that doesn't feel Right - that disturbs her. Time after time, she sees a bobber land in the same exact place, follow the same exact patterns of movement.
She doesn't like this place. She doesn't want to be here. She needs to go back.
And so, Jacqueline runs. But no matter how long she runs, the smoking warehouse in the distance never seems to get any closer. Is she even going anywhere? Is she the one running, or is it the world itself moving around her, carrying her to a specific location?
Whichever it is, she soon finds herself at a pier, along with others in front of a man in a grey coat. Jacqueline inhales, her breath caught in her throat. Blackness fills the air. It's hard to think. She shuts her eyes tight. Tries to focus, clear her head.
"...S-sorry. I've never been the kneeling type." Jacqueline replies, her tone a bit shaky. "...Is this your doing? What are you after? Why are you doing this?"
As for the others who have found themselves here in this twisted reality...
"...Can you hear me? Are you really there?" She adds, a bit more quietly. She really doesn't want to be alone in this.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Hiro immediately booked it, for reasons which are pretty obvious, being in a city under the control of Althena's Guard. But he didn't head straight for the city limits. Instead he's been bolting across town, this way and that way, trying to follow Gwen with a sort of singlemindedness. Of course, despite his best efforts they all lost her...
... he's been running the whole time.
And into the warehouse he goes. Panting, not out of shape - but merely pushing himself. Seeing Gwen doing something over to Ida, Hiro calls out just after Talia, "GWEN STOP!"
Hiro says with a certain forcefulness. Before he plants his blade down in the stone, grimacing at both Ivan's question(Small headshake.) then giving Fei a look which seems like the personification of(Really?) at his implication.
He'd be pretty amused on any other day.
"Gwen you've been going through a lot that I... don't understand. Not really, not in the way I'd like to." He struggles for a moment, "This... this is a lot." He says with a small laugh, like it isn't really funny.
"You told me once that... 'he' wants something from you. Something only a few people can give him. And I feel like... right now, it's kind of like that, with this thing inside you too. You've got a great big heart... so when someone needs you. You give, and give, and give..."
Hiro says it with a certain admiration in his voice, before his volume drops a little, "Maybe too much... even when it's not in your best interests. Maybe especially so."
Putting his hand on his sword, "But that's why we're here right now. To look out for what you need. And right now, you need to stop... so we can figure this out, together."
Ruby is perhaps pretty delighted at being the sane one in the room, but she only joins in at the end with her own assessment, "Gwen please... we're not gonna be upset with you - or even disappointed. You said you were worried that it's selfish to reach out like this... but we can all forgive that kind of selfishness." A beat, "Especially when it's you. So don't worry... we're here to get you out of this hole - no matter how deep you've dug it."
Neither Ruby nor Hiro are calling off the others to attack or anything, but for now, he simply stands there in place... and waits.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's body remains stock-still for a frighteningly long time, upright but unresponsive to the outside world. Her chest rises and falls, each breath shallow and arrhythmic--as though she were struggling for breath, fighting off something that was trying to strangle her. Her heart pounds out a frantic rhythm, and the color drains from her face as blood reroutes to keep her core organs warm.
That look of agony and terror does not leave her face. Citan and Ivan might as well be speaking to a puppet, held upright by an invisible puppeteer. When they reach out to steady her, her skin is ice-cold to the touch, as though she'd been standing in the rain on a chilly day.
Doom Bringer cleaves through the feathery tether connecting her to Gwen, and for a moment, there might just be hope; it shatters into so many etheric fragments. Citan's more rarefied senses can see something left behind--a clinging cloud of foreign energy, Ether, cold and deadly. And then it's gone, leaving only the sense of something deeply, profoundly unclean.
what...?
Ida lets out a breath so cold it forms a cloud of white, even in the burning warehouse.
it's so cold...
The fingers of her right hand go twitch-twitch-twitch. Her body jerks upright, as if the invisible puppeteer had applied sudden tension to those strings. Her face is still locked in that rictus; the left eye is blue-grey, and unfocused in primal terror. Green creeps in across both her irises, not quite overtaking the hue of the right. Her eyes blink, and when they open again, the left one is emerald-green.
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=64&v=wvFmOIkuOfg&
Bright crimson markings trace their way upwards from Ida's hand's fingertips, marking the bare flesh.
"Hhhh..." The voice that comes from her throat is muted and raspy, a dull rattle that never quite forms words. Her mouth moves regardless. Her gaze flicks across the burning warehouse, landing on Fei for a moment--terror and confusion flash through those eyes before they spot Gwen.
where is this...?
Citan applies his healing art. Ida's mouth moves again, but all that comes out is a raspy. "K--hhhhh---!"
..how did i...
...i...
There has always been a latent, dormant 'I' in the back of Ida's skull, since the graft took hold of her. But for the first time in centuries, the 'I' within the graft can recognize himself. It's like being dragged out of torpor, inch by inch.
Those eyes fall on Fei again. That mouth moves, but no sound comes out.
Hyadean tissue erupts from Ida's pores, rippling down both her arms and hardening into exoskeleton in a heartbeat. From the elbow down, the armor sharpens, forming deadly blades out of Ida's hands and forearms. The biometal gleams in the firelight.
Ida's body effortlessly slides into a fighting stance. Zed would recognize it instantly--one of the postures common to all the schools of the Orphan Blade. During the war, it was a style marked by grief, rage, and retribution for a dead world. Afterwards, it became associated with martial pride, anger, and overwhelming confidence--as well as intense competition.
Ida should not know it. Her body moves fluidly into its first form anyway, blurring across the space between it and Gwen. Another raspy rattle emanates from her throat as her body twists into a spinning upward slice, slashing at Gwen with both bladed arms. Her feet barely seem to touch the floor. Ida's mouth opens wide in what should be a battlecry. All that comes out is air.
DC: Ida Everstead-Rey switches forms to Ashen Orphan Fafnir! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Raging Maelstrom Form! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 2 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Isiris Shango'Ra takes a glancing hit from Seraph Lanval's Reasserting The Water for 70 hit points! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra activates Arcane Font! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Azoth's Overvoltage for 97 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Isiris Shango'Ra gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Quick applied to Azoth! GS: CRITICAL! Isiris Shango'Ra guards a hit from Seraph Boudicca's Buffeting Headwind for 62 hit points! GS: Delay applied to Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra activates Guard bonus and Arcane Font! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra critically guards Eleanor Klein's Crag Essence for 22 hit points! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra activates Arcane Font! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Fei Fong Wong's LIFT for 0 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Ivan's Umbrella Rebuke for 143 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a glancing hit from Talia's Running In and Dropping the Pizza for 0 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a glancing hit from Xantia's Don't Forget Your Promise! for 0 hit points! GS: Weaken applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Zed's Saint Arts - Voidwalker's Resolve for 141 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a glancing hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Raging Maelstrom Form for 74 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
In the curling, blasting morass of black, a single beam of shining light crawls along the edge of steel.
"There is no path back for what comes next," he replies, his voice incomprehensibly mild, as the black scours even the grime from the cobble. "All that can be done has already been done, ages and aeons ago. Every crime has already been committed, every sin relished."
The wind and the rain peal against the beating black, churned by the machinations of they: vagabond and spirit stir the water and the skies to beat against the killing curtain, filling the space between with the fresh, sweet scent of breathable air. It would be pleasing to those who truly breathe. Layer upon layer of mad black recede, chasing to that awful light, and in it, him.
His hair is stirred by the typhoon of the two Seraph, hinting at the awful blue behind it. Serenity, as he steps forward into the breach.
"All that remains is for those left behind.. to rejoice in their own repentance."
He speaks of an awful world that has already come. And as he describes it, so too does it flicker into existence, in brief and stabbing flashes of painful recognizance. Those sensitive to the hissing underworld buzz that surrounds him can feel it like an ice cold knife in the back of the spine. A harsh world, where the wind always blows, a world that is too much in the sun and too bright to be real. Sometimes, the dark does not need the shadow, and though the sun is shining overhead, there is no corner of the world that cannot see 'it.' And in the world that is and will be, even the vaguest glimpse of that incomprehensible 'it' is enough to cause the mind madness.
Against him, there is a swath of 'dead zone' nearest his eyes. To look him directly in the eyes is to become fully aware of the world he merely hints at. Every fiber in a sane man's being will tell him to turn away from those eyes. Those deeply inviting eyes. But then ... is this truly a sane world?
The powerful injection of force into the open chrysalis erupts through him, as he is forced to hold up his hilt at the last moment, breaking the massive outpourings of storm-driven stone against an unseen barrier, flares of light emanating from across him before Azoth's blade of energy surges through, cleaving through all of his defenses and finally through his sku--
"...You should celebrate," the man repeats, quietly, instructively. "I've come to save you."
pain
The energy of his mind being split on a curtain of stone, rain, wind and energy is subject to a sudden, harsh paradigm shift in the mind. You can feel him bleed, in ways that no one really should be able to. You can feel pain, as if it were an audible thing. But at the same, though one could see him die, for even a moment, he is not dead.
The curtain of dark swirls, receding at the fine edges, pushed back by the force until they chip away, becoming obsidian sharp at the very edges of the world, at the very edges of the subconscious. One glove lifts soundlessly.
The birds form out of the shreds of black left from the symphony, surging through the battlefield in a rebuke of the sorcerers, claws and talons threatening to pull away memories and emotions and thoughts all the same as blood. It's hard to tell if the unknowable threat is just the feeling of the moment, something illusory. But the surge of crows that screech and flutter through the storm are an ill omen, a conjuration of nothing at all that is natural.
Throughout all of it, Jacqueline speaks.
And he hears her.
"If you are lost, come to me," he invites her, his voice only inches away, only just barely out of sight.
And then, stepping into the breach, the nameless man comes forward to begin.
The ephemeron of light that crawls along his blade reaches the tip, and then refracts, becoming an awful, shining light as he moves. The crows surge past him as he moves, screeching powerfully as he moves into the space of the ancient machine. One stroke, one blade, to meet the cleave of that abominable, lovely thing. The scintilla of light traces along, forming an arc as he moves to cut the machine down. And then the awful light becomes its own thing entirely, his blade tracing a line through the machine's position and onwards towards her -- they. As the crows surge around the pier, threatening Lanval, the blade of the killer erupts around, tracing lines of that awful, shining light through Eleanor, through Boudicca. He at once, is into Azoth, and at once, past him. He whispers in your ear. But there are no words what he tells you.
In an instant, madness and steel.
He always seems far, far closer in truth.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Black feathers seem to litter around the warehouse, there and gone in one eyeblink. The crow feathers that sprout from Gwen's hand seem to operate on the same principal, there and gone the moment it registered in the mind's eye, if it does at all, dissipated with the throw of Zed's sharp Doombringer and a blast from Ivan's umbrella.
Its effects are less temporary, in Ida's case, and just as bewildering to Gwen herself, as she realizes what's happened, as well as the increasing presence of a familiar cool presence, coming down as dark as the moon's light is white.
The Stranger, the Blue-Eyed Assassin, or whatever he's called is firmly here.
What other people may now notice, if they were aware of any others who were rushing beside them, is that fewer now here than before they neared the warehouse. But this could be easily overlooked, seeing as how the warehouse is quickly filling with fire.
Gwen can hear their attempts to reach her, her actions and manner serving in the place of words. For one, she doesn't attack, at least immediately, even after Ida is released. Or was that due to everyone pleaing with her? A sizzling steam falls away from where her eyes would be, a far cry from the laughter and merriment she had earlier. Now unmasked, and placed into a corner, she seems to consider their words, mutely hanging her head.
The steam increases even more when Xantia delivers that cake for Gwen to see, cracking into rivers of lava on her pulsing face at Hiro and Ruby's pleas. Hot hands clap over her glowing face. And it's enough for Zed's sword to bring a doom just as sweet to Gwen's burning shame, slicing through her body like a sonic blast slicing into flame.
It's child's play, at this point, for Fei to lift her up now, at first.
There is a body, as Fei hoists her up, one with some weight to it, but not enough that would suggest the weight of a Gwen underneath all that fire. It's much like lifting a burning log, permenating with glowing white fire, and immediately, it carries the same consequences.
'Please let Ida go?'
The flame that is Gwen's body slides off him like lava, collecting back into its Gwen form, hair shooting out like the fronds from an exquisite set of fireworks. She motions to Ida, once, twice, and shakes her head towards Fei.
It would have been better if Gwen had kept her eyes(?) on Ida, who comes at her with a set of equally unanswerable questions, slamming her body backwards.
And the fire that is Gwen flares back up and out like a signal, attempting to blast Ida back, with equal amounts of force.
The song is here in the Thief's mind, and when she opens her mouth to try to warn them all, her dear friends, all that comes out is more of the same, pouring from her like water from a receptacle.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Orphan of Flame! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Stolen Spark! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Talia with Crow's Lullaby! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Ivan with Crow's Lullaby! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Xantia with Crow's Lullaby! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Zed with Crow's Lullaby! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Citan Uzuki with Crow's Lullaby! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Hiro with Crow's Lullaby! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Orphan of Flame for 178 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Power Burst! GS: CRITICAL! Hiro critically guards Gwen Whitlock's Crow's Lullaby for 0 hit points! GS: Hiro activates Guard bonus! GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Crow's Lullaby for 0 hit points! GS: Drowsy applied to Zed! GS: Xantia critically guards Gwen Whitlock's Crow's Lullaby for 0 hit points! GS: Xantia activates Guard bonus! GS: Ivan takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Crow's Lullaby for 0 hit points! GS: Drowsy applied to Ivan! GS: Ivan activates Evade bonus! GS: CRITICAL! Citan Uzuki guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Crow's Lullaby for 0 hit points! GS: Drowsy applied to Citan Uzuki! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Seraph Lanval with Nevermore Mantra! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Azoth with Those Left Behind! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Gwen Whitlock gains 5 FP from Sufferer! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Delay! Attack weakened! GS: Azoth guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Those Left Behind for 43 hit points! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Savior Phenomenon! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Eleanor Klein with Slaughter Proxy! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action. GS: Eleanor Klein takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Slaughter Proxy for 134 hit points! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Savior Phenomenon for 60 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Seraph Boudicca activates Power Burst! GS: Fei Fong Wong guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Stolen Spark for 108 hit points! GS: Fei Fong Wong activates Arcane Font! GS: Delay! Attack weakened! GS: Seraph Lanval fully evades Isiris Shango'Ra's Nevermore Mantra for 0 hit points! GS: Talia takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Crow's Lullaby for 0 hit points! GS: Drowsy applied to Talia!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"I think something is very wrong, no?" Talia says with a glance back at her brother. And a brief one at Fei, though she decides this may not be the time to debate the merits and sanity of their comrades. She glances sideways at Hiro, as he calls out to her. She looks back at Gwen, opens her mouth, and then she closes it for a second.
"Ah, we all do things that hurt others, no?" she says. "I don't think any of us would turn on you, no? We'd all be hypocrites, that way!"
She says that -- and she sees Gwen reply. Her eyes widen for a moment, and then her mouth opens. When she does, a wave of force slams into Talia. She can only halfway jump over it -- and her hop then lands. She looks at Gwen, then she hesitates for a moment, and throws out a hand. "Hiro... I don't want to hurt her--"
A magical circle spins up under her feet. It flashes, light white-blue, and filling in with Althenan runes. "--but I think we have to stop her! She isn't under control, no? And... if we want Gwen back, then--"
She looks pained, for a moment. "--we've got to break through whatever this is!"
A wall of ice explodes around Gwen. It flashes into existence -- on three sides, penning her in for a moment.
GS: Talia has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Ice Wall! GS: Talia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Real things, true things--Eleanor can hear other voices and she puts her focus on them instead of on the darkness itself. 'Show yourself,' Boudicca says, one she spoke to just earlier today of something else. ...Eleanor pushes that thought away rather than let it be used. If it's possible to avoid that at all.
"I'm here," Eleanor says back to Jay--she thinks, and focuses on that, too. On Lanval talking about celebration. On Azoth's demands. No path...
'All that can be done has already been done', the voiec says, and Eleanor's yellow gaze sharpens. That's a familiar sentiment--in this mad world, is it the same?
The vision that comes staggers her for a long instant that might only be a second or might be a few. She can't tell, dizzied with the view of the gigantic stone, the old chain, and her head hurts from seeing it. Whether she looks or not she sees it in the moment, and she cannot identify what is wrong. Even closing her eyes doesn't do away with the ache. And keeping her eyes closed... Is unwise here.
"You're--here to save nothing!"
Eleanor feels bleedin, but she sees the curtain instead of only the strangeness. Birds surge through, and Eleanor's anger almost fades as it's nearly torn away. Beneath it is a wellspring, though, a fear and a fury both that bleeds like a vein. "I'm here!" she calls to Jay.
...She doesn't pull her Crests, next. She stops, and her eyes widen as she recognizes what's happening--but recognizing it only means she feels it twice, hit hard by traces of that light, as if one of her didn't make it through. But there is only the one.
"Your future... cannot be allowed," she's certain, though she's nauseous as she considers it. Her spell he deflected, so she puts her trust in something else, something that doesn't waver like the corrupted fabric of this place.
She places it in her gun, pulling the large rifle from her back and searching around for him again. There is pain, to be sure, but she has learned of pain. She lets the pain guide her for the moment where her eyes won't, and takes aim for the killer. She holds steady--she sees him in more places than one, but thinks she feels him here. Eleanor fires.
"She wasn't supposed to face it without--"
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Dead Shot! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei looks at Hiro with a sheepish shrug because following a girl around who is the enemy of all the authorities of your planet sounds like something that Fei would do, and as such is definitely nuts.
He looks to Ida as Hyadean tissue erupts from Ida's pores. He's not sure if this is different from normal or not. Ida frequently has strange struggles around her 'Hyadean' half, but when it seems like Ida can't speak that's when Fei gets concerned.
Fei's hands burn but he seems to endure that well enough--perhaps thanks to his own pact with Moor Gault--but what gets him is that spark of fireworks bursting into his chest and bowling him over. He hits the floor, back first, and grimaces.
"Alright," He says, looking up at the ceiling. "...I'm sorry, Gwen." He says. "I don't think... I'm in the right state of mind... To try what I did yesterday."
He pushes himself back up to his feet. "Talia's right. We wouldn't. But maybe that's not entirely the issue here. After all,"
He stretches out his arms behind him. "Someone's pushing you to do this isn't he? Id's always been better at this sort of thing than me, s'why everybody goes to him for advice. So I guess I'll try to do what he'd do."
He darts forward suddenly, crackling with dark ether energy as he throws his knee for Gwen's chin.
"And hitcha until the path forward is clear. I'm real sorry that it's the best I can do."
GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Infinite Darkness Ether Channel! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida's eyes remain locked on the burning abomination. Her arms sweep forwards as she rushes Gwen, seizing on the opportunity. Again, Ida's mouth gapes open in a wordless scream, but nothing comes out but breath.
Gwen's substance snaps back, slams into Ida's body head-on. Runes of red flare to life around her body's right arm--the Red Gauntlet, providing protection even now--but it's not there to guard. Ida's face contorts in another soundless scream, pain and fury mingling in eyes that have gone almost wholly emerald-green. The column of fire smashes through the warehouse wall with a crackling crunch of burning timber. Ida's body hits the street outside, still smoldering. It lies there for a moment, convulses, coughs up smoke.
Something approaching lucidity creeps into her body's eyes. Slowly, the I pushes himself upright, wincing in pain. He looks down at himself, and through the haze of dreams and smoke, he sees... something. Burns. Quicksilver blood mingling with an alien crimson. His body is all wrong. He feels... small, weak, inflexible--like he was when he was a runt.
What hell is this? thinks Fafnir, staring at his own hands.
Someone is standing over him. It's a young man--an elf, he recognizes, from the ears--in a uniform he doesn't recognize, staring enraptured into the flames. A pair of short swords sit in idle hands. Unacceptable. The bladed exoskeleton breaks free from Fafnir's hands, the burned parts crumbling away to reveal sleek gauntlets of red, gold and black. One hand connects with the entranced man's chin in an open-palm strike. As the alien soldier flies back, the blades fall from his hands. Fafnir surges forward to grab them before they hit the ground. He almost fumbles the left one; his left arm feels oddly numb in comparison with the right.
Fafnir opens his mouth to scream, but once again, no sound comes out. His expression flashes through surprise, shock, and horror in quick succession before being buried by rage. He drives both blades forward, once again aiming for Gwen's center of mass. First the right one stabs forwards, then the left one--and then both try to tear free, opening what would be a hideous, gory wound were Gwen wholly human at the moment.
GS: Fafnir spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Fafnir has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Liberation of Rage! GS: Fafnir has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"I am here," are the words for Jacqueline. Those are Boudicca's words, hewn from Boudicca's breeze.
Blue his eyes -- do not transgress. Hers the clouds, grey-green, that elemental imprint flooded with a hundred sorrows. "Been done? Been done?" These words report like a carbine, pull the trigger and loose a dozen holes. "You love the prelude overmuch! I tell you they relished nothing, flooding in from the front lines; I tell you they fled!"
And of what the telling? These are things in the came-before, these are stories already written. The authors are dead and the legacies worn. This is a shoe left by a cliffside, long-abandoned, a bridal veil caught on a gnarled branch.
There are a dozen stories in the eyes. Look and find vines weaved together, warnings to old travellers. Look --
and find what bleeds, what bleeds, the earth would stem its wounds crows pouring, one for sorrow, one for sorrow, one for sorrow, one for sorrow, one for
Burst! The wind blows against what-is-like-him; to the left of him, Boudicca looks. Have you heard? Have you heard? It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. "Your salvation at the end of a noose," she interjects, "a cruel lead to keep dear Gwen on!"
And here, the birds.
There are more things in this world forgotten than remembered; a life led by years forgets the days. Hers is a life led by impressions made upon her.
A crow grasps the concept of 'sickness' and cannot quite pull it away. It is too large, too nestled-in. Clench talons and flap, and grasp a child, looking up at that drake without comprehension. Who are you protecting?
Charlotte told her papa she felt better. Still she died. More painful, this - the hope - the ending.
But these are things which came-before; these are stories long since told. Face into the wind. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
A sword, through her. It ought have ended the entire argument; it comes out bloodless. Come to me, he said, and Boudicca follows through on the blade, pushing forward through it, tonfa to strike up from below and down from above. Slightly to the left of him. She is slightly to the left of him.
What could he say to incite her? Certainly her eyes narrow, a stab of heat to her voice.
"Leave them untouched," is her demand. "Release Gwen and away from here!"
GS: Seraph Boudicca spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Cerberus Strike! GS: Seraph Boudicca has launched an attack Link! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Soaring Blast! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
There's no recognition from Ida when Ivan tries to help her; she seems frozen in pain. And then... something happens. The exoskeleton bursts forth, and she's fighting again, though -- trying to shout or scream?
He gives her a brow-furrowed look of concern before his attention goes back to Gwen.
Given her body language, it seems like she can hear them this time. Maybe that means they can get through to her...
Trying to jump off of Talia's entreaty, he nods. "You aren't the only one in the world who has tried to set their associates on fire," he says, with a small a 'guilty as charged' raise of his hand. "It's... it's still a thing you can walk back from, if you want to. Even if it doesn't feel like it. But why are you burning? Isn't there any way we can help?"
Meanwhile, she is raging at them. While fire is unleashed at some of the others, some strange energy saps at Ivan's strength. It feels dangerous to go all out and tear into her in this situation. He doesn't want to make her feel they're only trying to pacify or distract her so they can go in for the kill.
He keeps hold of his umbrella as his only weapon drawn, and propels himself past her with a one-handed cartwheel, during which he tries to clothesline her with the umbrella and knock her off her feet.
GS: Ivan has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Circus Trick! GS: Ivan gains 5 FP from Sufferer! GS: Ivan has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia tilts her head in confusion when Gwen doesn't respond in any kind of typical Gwen way to being offered cake. "Aren't you hungry?" She thought she'd manage to piece that much together. If anything she was expecting to not get a share, which would have been awful, but if it made Gwen happy she could've been alright with that.
But then all these other things happen, and she finally starts to get a slight sense of who else is there, and that things may be a little bit more complicated than she hoped. Fei's words make it pretty clear what's going on here. She sighs, stepping back to place the cake box on a nearby crate, before turning back to to Gwen.
"...alright. I don't exactly know what's going on, but, it doesn't look like you can control this. Even so, when you did the thing back there, with the flowers? I could tell you knew who I was. So I know you're there, we just have to... turn this thing off, right? Any idea how we can do that?"
So far, she managed to stay pretty calm, in spite of everything. Maybe it's because Xantia has a different perception of 'normal' than most people, that this doesn't seem to alarm her as much as it probably should. Something finally changes about that when something barrels directly into Gwen. "Wha--"
That's... Ida, isn't it? No, it's not. She finds herself readily responding to her own question. That altered appearance... it stirs something in Xantia. An uncharacteristically grim expression flickers across her features, before her eyes go wide. Just then, she felt a strong surge of animosity towards Ida. Not even seeing her as Ida anymore, but as something else. The moment was brief, but disturbing.
Thankfully the moment has now passed, but that doesn't mean that she's okay with what's happening. "Wait! Stop! Is this... is this really what we're supposed to be doing right now...?" She was hoping Gwen would have a better answer.
Unfortunately, the only answer Gwen can give is in the form of... something. She's not about to find out the exact nature of the seemingly unintended attack, not wishing to risk her mind getting muddled again. Almost subconsciously, she emits a pulse of bright light to counter the wave of darkness. The light continues to surround her afterwards like a protective shield.
"...okay, maybe don't try to talk, that seems like a bad idea. Maybe you can just nod or shake your head or something - is this what you want us to do? You want us to punch this thing out of you? You've gotta tell me if you don't want to be punched!"
GS: Xantia has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Lustrous Aura! GS: Xantia assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth looks directly and he searches. His eyes whir with the effort, pupils dilated, mechanical eyes zooming in and out and flipping between several different sensory modes. Awful energy bites at Azoth's every effort. He does not see as organics do, but he does not see things any more right. There is color beyond color, yet no color at all. All is too cold and at once too hot. There is a world, nonexistent yet verified as real in impossibly high calculations beyond reasonable confirmation.
Pain.
He doesn't know what it's like to bleed, but he knows what it sounds like -- the exact frequency dancing in his memory to overlay the new memory being formed over and over and over. He doesn't know what a knife through a spine of flesh and bone would feel like. But Azoth, despite his uncertainties expressing the contrary, knows pain, and that's the only word for the way errors explode through his systems.
It happens twice over when the man(?) is there and then he isn't, and damage cleaves into his chassis from a strike he never saw, sparks arcing from his body as if in place of blood.
Where is he? Where is his target? Where is anyone? Ida and Gwen and all the others. He came here to help them. They're in pain, too.
"This isn't salvation. It's isolation."
But he hears a voice in the darkness. "Miss Jay, I'm here...!" There's other voices, too. "We're here." Light blossoms, bright blue-white, trying to cut through the grey of the world, and envelops Jacqueline Barber in protective light while Azoth himself tries to glow like a beacon in the madness. "We're not alone." Their data is the only data that makes sense. The only consistency.
GS: Azoth has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Spike Guard! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth has completed his action. GS: Jacqueline Barber accepts Azoth's Spike Guard for 0 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: Quick applied to Azoth!
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Hiro gives Talia an appreciative look as she tries to call out to Gwen too. "Absolutely." Before giving Ivan a sympathetic look, at the way he tries to reach out empathetically at Gwen. "... please." He whispers, as if hoping that Gwen would respond to his entreaty for giving them something they can do to help.
Coughing in the smoke filled warehouse, Hiro watches Gwen, squinting and rubbing his eyes as he sees the black feathers drift. Like he's seeing some strange static overlay of the world. Blinking his eyes drowsily, he finds himself looking at Gwen and the sizzling steam rising off of her, the rivers of lava pulsing on her face.
Searching... for any sign that she hears it, even as the others act.
Even as Ida changes. He looks at that sudden Hyadean metamorphosis and changing rush afterwards with a certain horror.
"Wait! Don't make things wo-"
Too late. He doesn't know what happened, just that things are worse. As Gwen retaliates with flame, and chaos reigns, pouring out of her mouth. Hiro suddenly wrenches his blade out of the ground. "I don't want to either Talia." He gives her a look, "But... you're right." Taking a deep breath, "I'm pretty sure if she could talk to us - she'd be asking us to." As Talia's ice wall forms, Hiro responds, "Hey good idea - I'm going in!"
Hiro has a bad feeling that 'someone' as Fei refers to isn't necessarily singular in this case from his conversations with Gwen. Hiro jumps up and briefly kicks off a burning stack of crates. To leap up and over it. "Hey Gwen-!"
Rather than saying his usual catchphrase as he descends into the narrow space... he slashes downwards with his blade across one of the lines of molten fire along her body. "-sorry..."
He's not saying sorry for attacking her, Gwen and him spar often enough after all that Poe Sword is basically a handshake. He's more sorry that things got this far, as if blaming himself for not trying to do something - for not understanding Gwen's situation enough that he could do something.
As he hits the ground, and rolls himself to face the back of a wall of ice, as if he were using Talia's arte as some small amount of protection while he's in this close, "...but... promise we'll be laughing together about this some day."
That's a bold claim to make, given how awful this must be for Gwen, but perhaps... he just likes to think, that Gwen could be that much of a glass half full even about terrible things like this after she has some time for reflection and recovery.
GS: Hiro has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Poe Sword! GS: Hiro has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hiro has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
If it hadn't already been clear, a single touch makes it unmistakably plain that all is not well with Ida. Her skin feels as cold as ice -- an inverse of Gwen's own temperature when he'd last checked up on her at her request, many weeks ago. And that asks of Citan a particular question: if what had become of Gwen is standing before them now, as the warehouse catches flame, then what might become of Ida?
Particularly since the energy that clings to her is without question Ether.
And it's familiar.
And then it's gone.
Ida stirs. No, jerks upright; Citan draws back, one hand hanging for the moment in the air before him.
And he remembers also what Ida had once come to him to ask about. Slowly, he exhales a breath. His gaze for a moment flicks downwards at the lines that trace first her hands--
Before the Hyadean tissue takes her over completely.
He stands after, rising rapidly to his feet in the same moment that 'Ida' lashes out at Gwen.
It is approaching the point where I am increasingly certain that an echo of the arm's owner remains, she had said to him.
"...So it has woken up," he utters quietly.
Gwen, the one who has become as a wick of a candle, still burns. As does the warehouse. She opens her mouth
and sings.
The world tilts sharp on an axis and does not seem to wish to stay fixed on which impossible slant it wishes to occupy. For a moment Citan staggers, fighting to retain his balance in a place which his brain has declared that what he sees and what he feels are telling him two vastly different stories.
So instead he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
When he exhales, the breath carries more than carbon dioxide into the air about him.
"Fei-- Miss Iverstead-Rey is not... Ida is not herself right now! But our main concern remains Gwen!"
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Zed is not remotely familiar with such esoteric topics as 'what is a soul' and 'where is the mind' and 'how the blue blazes did a copy of an ancient Hyadean's consciousness end up surviving inside his arm.' The physical and metaphysical bio-sciences are all the domain of much more intelligent individuals than he. Like Kalve! Kalve is good at at least half of those things. Zed wishes very much that his friend was here right now.
But he is not.
But someone is and it is someone that Zed did not expect to be here.
Ida explodes into a style Zed recognizes in an instant. Unless Kalve has been teaching her things that he knows Kalve wouldn't just be handing out to someone already studying the Method, there is no way she should be doing the things she's doing-- and even less ways that she should be so proficient in that technique.
"Is it the arm--" Zed murmurs, but then...
A wave of force thunders through him. Gwen has sung a song of murder(s, of crows) and the note splits the air and brings Zed briefly to his knee.
But he does not topple. He forces himself upright, Doom Bringer screaming with that strange inverted light. "It's stolen your voice, too...? But those are tears, aren't they? Even if your mouth cannot speak... I know what it looks like when you cry, Gwen Whitlock! How could I not hear your pain!?"
He sweeps forward--
And appears again, almost instantly thereafter, behind the burning woman.
Only then does is the 'impact' of his passage obvious. A cut, traced across her form. "Fei is right. I don't know if this'll help... But if beating you into submission is the only thing that we can do until we find a solution, then that's what we'll have to do! We'll bring you to your senses... PHOTOSPHERE STYLE."
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Citan Uzuki with Renki! GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Fafnir with Renki! GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Zed with Renki! GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Ivan with Renki! GS: Citan Uzuki has gained 1 Combo! GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action. GS: Zed accepts Citan Uzuki's Renki for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Drowsy removed! GS: Citan Uzuki accepts Citan Uzuki's Renki for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Drowsy removed! GS: Zed spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Zed has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Secret Sword - Lightning Flash! GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo! GS: Zed has launched an attack Link! GS: Zed has canceled their attack on Gwen Whitlock. GS: Zed has completed his action. GS: Zed has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Miracle Strike - Phantom Bite! GS: Zed has completed his action. GS: Fafnir accepts Citan Uzuki's Renki for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken removed!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
The words from within the black speak of the depths of oppressive sensations - it is, in paradox, a moment of clarity to Lanval, who finds the sheer volume of this the sort that simply couldn't be held within a singular mortal's heart, mind, or soul. Only a moment. It may not even be that. A tiny measure, of insufficient length to lead to further communication or creative thought on the matter. The breathable air that Boudicca and himself provide in the moment is as ephemeral as the epiphany.
Not even the cruel arrogance - witting or not - afforded to creatures of lifetimes exceeding that of a singular mortal generation is enough to withstand the depths of 'it,' in that moment the Seraph's eyes nearly meet with the stranger's. The only response afforded to Lanval is a flinch - and the instruction they should celebrate.
The winged darkness, on many wings, screaming of many beaks, slicing of many talons, descends. There is no space around them one can flee within the open air, as the Seraph stumbles back as if cornered...
...and plunges, back-first, into the water he has wrested his will over. In this time, he disappears, as if beaten back by the crows. Crows that find no purchase other than the water itself... but there is that remaining sensation there. The sensation of water in all of its forms, great and not - but there is no one presently there to take credit (or shame) for this sort of presence.
The water crashes up against the docks, again... and then once more. It seems impotent, at best, other than allowing water to collect along the docks as isolated puddles that did not have the fortune to seep back across the cracks. Another, third wave... then a fourth.
A fifth follows, and Lanval arrives again - if not gracefully, sweeping along the dock on his back as he gestures with the sweep of an arm with a glyph forming underneath. "A world defined by all the bad that'sh already been done... mmm."
The purpose for the antics with the crashing waves is revealed thus, as they shine and pull together in a vaguely placed whirlpool that does not seem to be reaching out to anyone in particular. The others are safe from its pull, and yet, it swirls where it is, attempting to pull something towards the very center.
"'m of the thought... a world defined by a joy that keepsh repeatin'... not one shame, continued joy, but a bunch of 'em... 'd do all of ya a whole lot better 'n goin' down a checklisht of everything that could go wrong, havin' gone wrong," Lanval sits up.
Boudicca's talking about releasing Gwen - he hasn't been able to see into what's going on in the warehouse. Both of his eyes flutter a bit, then gradually open a little more.
"Releashe 'em all," he's assuming someone of this vast... depth... has more irons in the fire than just one mortal.
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Hallowed Tides! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Beat.
The air stirs. Zed breathes more easily as Citan's breath (and Breath) resonate in the world. The Hyadean looks over and shrugs, "It's just Fafnir, probably. I'll talk some sense into him once I get a chance, promise!!"
REASSURING!!
<Pose Tracker> Fafnir has posed.
Fafnir's head tilts, almost birdlike, in Zed's direction. Mostly-green eyes glance at Citan, then at Zed. He says something--or tries to. 'Talking sense' might be difficult.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Zed said Talking Sense, not 'having a dialogue about sense.'
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Jacqueline asks if the others are there, and they respond. It may be surprising, or maybe it isn't, how much that assurance helps. How three words - 'I am here' - make all the difference. The assurance from Azoth that they aren't alone. Jacqueline stands up a bit straighter, breathes a bit easier, as a blue-white light envelops her.
She'll be okay - at least for now. She'll be okay because she isn't alone.
She takes a deep breath. Even so, as the man speaks, she can feel it. Those flashes of that awful world. It makes her shudder. And, those eyes...
This isn't her first time seeing those eyes.
"And what do you mean by that, exactly? How do you intend to 'save' us? From what?" Jacqueline asks. "All of this... it means something, doesn't it? Did you show this world to Gwen, too?"
'If you are lost, come to me,' the man says - from inches away. Jacqueline takes a few steps back.
"...Sorry. Thanks for the invitation, but I've already found a beacon, I think." She says, with a glance and a slight smile Azoth's way. Lanval speaks of a world defined by joy. She's inclined to agree with that.
"We're going back. Please don't try to stop us." Jacqueline says. She brings out a bottle full of lavender liquid - bearing the same color and scent. It's hard to pinpoint where the man is - it feels like space doesn't...work in here in the way she's used to. So she shuts her eyes - rather than relying on her physical senses she trusts in her sorcerous ones, before hurling the bottle in the direction she thinks he is. The bottle explodes on contact with a surface, bursting into a plume of lavender-colored flame that releases smoke that causes drowsiness if breathed in for too long.
...But, will that even work...? She isn't sure.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Apothecary's Fire! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: Gwen Whitlock fully evades Fei Fong Wong's Infinite Darkness Ether Channel for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Evade bonus! GS: CRITICAL! Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Talia's Ice Wall for 105 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Weaken applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Arcane Font! GS: Gwen Whitlock enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Xantia's Lustrous Aura for 53 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cover applied to Xantia! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Guard bonus! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Ivan's Circus Trick for 120 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra guards a hit from Eleanor Klein's Dead Shot for 97 hit points! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra activates Guard bonus! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a glancing hit from Jacqueline Barber's Apothecary's Fire for 21 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Isiris Shango'Ra gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Drowsy and Poison applied to Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra critically guards Seraph Lanval's Hallowed Tides for 16 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Isiris Shango'Ra gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra activates Guard bonus and Arcane Font! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra guards a hit from Seraph Boudicca's Cerberus Strike for 86 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a glancing hit from Seraph Boudicca's Soaring Blast for 30 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Isiris Shango'Ra gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Slow applied to Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Hiro's Poe Sword for 111 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Fafnir's Liberation of Rage for 104 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: CRITICAL! Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Zed's Miracle Strike - Phantom Bite for 179 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple applied to Gwen Whitlock!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
As flame licks up the walls and onto the beams in the ceiling, there is a shudder, and a part of the roof come crashing down. Moonlight peers through the small hole made, peering through escaping smoke with yellow white light like sheer, still curtains.
It would make it easier, perhaps, for Xantia to see Gwen as the smoke begins to clear, helped further along by Xantia's pulse of light.
She kneels over the cake now, trying to delicately place the top over the now browning edges of it. It's a resolved, definite gesture, the lid beginning to fall to embers, but her gestures as clear as if the lid still remained. Looking up at Xantia, and then Zed, she shakes her head to one, then nods to the latter, bowing her head towards them, her hand over her heart- or, at least, where it would be.
Words may not be in her power, but actions still are. But what could they say, to someone as equally as invested in such goods as Gwen?
Fei apologizes. If a face of flame could look full of gratitude at that moment, it'd probably register as something a lot more visual than Gwen attempts, her flames a coaxing soft yellow.
Then, as Fei is particularly skilled at, his control of the moment is speared through the moment he mentions 'what he did yesterday'. nonononono no
The yellow flame brightens to orange-red, and the Fire Thief cringes back as Fei advances, a complusive pulse of hot air shot straight out of the air in Fei's direction.
-- Straight into Ivan's path, his deft maneuver knocking her straight off her feet, leaving plenty of time for Talia's rising ice wall. The wall holds her for precious moments, before it bursts under Gwen's desperate heat, the shards of ice mixing with her flame. The blast disrupts the roofline even more--
And it collapses into itself, to rain on those below.
Hiro's sword meets Gwen's body full on, her hand reaching out to go for his head. She flinches back just before, instead pressing her weight down on Hiro, to try to knock him down-
and under her body , as she manages to blast the debris backwards with a blast of hot air, away from him, Talia, and Ivan, moonlight highlighting the edges of her body.
It's a temporary glimpse, fleeting as a winking star disappearing behind a night storm.
Fafnir's rage is felt as he connects through Ida's body in what results in an explosion of kinetic energy, the blast radiating from them to the edges of the warehouse, to Citan and Zed.
And above, now, the moon shines on them all, the roof completely gone in the exchange.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Exposed Nerve! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Talia with Fire and Ice! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Ivan with Fire and Ice! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Hiro with Fire Devil! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Fafnir with Muspelheim! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Citan Uzuki with Muspelheim! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Zed with Muspelheim! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Xantia with Muspelheim! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock gains 5 FP from Sufferer! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Talia takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Fire and Ice for 175 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Hiro takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Fire Devil for 178 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hiro gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Riposte applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Gwen Whitlock gains 5 FP from Sufferer! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Fafnir takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Muspelheim for 85 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Fafnir gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Disrupt applied to Fafnir! GS: Fei Fong Wong critically guards Gwen Whitlock's Exposed Nerve for 29 hit points! GS: Ivan accepts Citan Uzuki's Renki for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Drowsy removed! GS: CRITICAL! Ivan guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Fire and Ice for 150 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ivan gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ivan activates Guard bonus! GS: Xantia takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Muspelheim for 177 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Xantia!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia isn't really sure what is happening with Ida. Nor, all told, is she sure that she can do much about it. Ida seems to be moving on Gwen.
She can hope they can deal with it after.
Talia looks at her brother and nods once at him. Ex-assassins know things about this, it's like she wants to say. Her eyes shift, looking at Hiro. She seems him leap in, and in a way, it makes it easy: if he can, then she can too.
She draws Mirage, the blade spinning in her fingers, before coming up to be gripped in front of her body. Gwen's heat tears through her ice wall, and then hot air explodes at her and her brother. "Ivan!" she calls out. "Move!"
She leaps, and it still nicks her -- singing her coat and side, and leaving her arm an ugly red. Then, Talia surges in. She leaps until she is by Hiro, and her blade trails red light with it. Then, she leaps.
And she cuts up in a spiral, before she stabs at Gwen. "Gwen! We're not going to give up, no? We'll help Hiro... and whoever is doing this to you, we will stop them!"
GS: Talia spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Talia has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Light Spear Cannon! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Citan Uzuki takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Muspelheim for 129 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Citan Uzuki gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Disrupt applied to Citan Uzuki! GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Muspelheim for 176 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Zed gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Disrupt applied to Zed!
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
The surge of heat rushes toward Ivan too quickly for him to shift his trajectory; he pops open the canopy of his umbrella and shelters behind it as best he can, a shimmering golden shield of light keeping off the initial burst before ultimately being overwhelmed; the rest of the blast pushes past it, and sears into him, which he weathers with a quiet hiss.
He watches Hiro and Talia leap in with their blades, and gives a sigh of resignation before doing the same. He trades his umbrella for a short sword called magically to his hand, and boosts himself in a powered leap toward Gwen on fiery jets from beneath his feet, as he slices in an arc.
"I can share some potions with you when this is all over," he says. "They make everything you eat taste like bubblegum for a couple of hours after you take them, but they're otherwise safe and fine!!"
... ... he might be tinkering with the recipes a little on purpose out of a fondness for such strange emergent side effects.
GS: Ivan enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ivan has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Rocket Boosters! GS: Ivan has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ivan has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
'You're here to save nothing,' they tell him.
'This is isolation,' they say.
"That depends on you," he replies, gently.
The world above him is barely perceptible, and though those who live below it are subject to it's inimitable influence, the exact description of the great and ancient thing defies, something that is simply unimportant in the grand scheme -- as it is now. But the promise of the thing itself, the thing that hides in the crumpling black is something that lies just beyond his eyes. Lanval comes the closest of them all to meeting them, an obscene blue that asks him plainly to look. He does not, and the world, for the moment, stays as it is.
He is shot through by the simple and effective thing itself. The blast from a rifle almost rocks his offense from its moorings, his body whipping sideways from the blast, opening a ghastly exit wound. The wound is exotic, unnatural, something that bleeds dark and shivers in indistinct ways the longer one looks at it. The admixture mixes with this, blasting the nameless agent with a flare of chemical suppressives, flame and sleep dragging his mind down along with it. The world rasserts itself violently, bucking beneath him, rejecting his control. The energy around him flexes, pulses in one grandiose heartbeat. The world is still mad, but for one insane, twisting moment, it no longer enjoys a conductor, and that is enough.
Mad images and shadows coalesce as the water drags him into place, his body sagging as his attention to this place wanes, his body drawn to one point, one place, for one mad moment--beneath the hammer. As his blade is stuck fast in her, the wind Seraph brings him the mad drum of steel and ancient wood. He is crushed, his limbs splaying wildly as she smashes him from the left, his sword stuck fast in something that only tenuously exists by the terse recognition of his own mind.
How many times is he struck? In his mind, he barely can count, drawn back to the same place, time and time again. He returns there for an eternity, an eternity to suffer, an eternity to consider.
'Release her,' they beg.
'Release them all,' they say.
He steps off the pier, his boots alighting on pure nothing. His soujourn is slow and quiet, an unarmed man stepping away in the dark, water that doesn't exist rippling away from each bootfall. The blade is not in his hand.
It is all like a dream. His blade is stuck fast, buried in the bones of the long-dead, the ancient Seraph battering him with baton lengths as he violently reintegrates, drawn to the center via the whirlpool, water ripping through him as her batons crush him, his coat sagging around his boots as he crumples beneath the onslaught, the long hiss of that woman's smouldering flames crawling off of his body, his breath long and slow, as if it took all of his patience -- all of his will -- simply to remain cognizant of the world that is, the world that is now.
"It is good," he thinks aloud, "to dream that someone still knows the world that was."
He grips the hilt of his blade, and the world tilts out of control.
His blade comes alive where it is, shining steel that he splits flesh, bone, stone, steel with as easily as anything else. Even a stroke of his blade is catastrophe in itself, and with one great cleaving stroke, he shears his way fre, cutting through the end of the pier itself, the blade's ephemeral flash cutting through pilings hundreds of feet below like grass. He is in one space, one moment, his mind suddenly cogniant of all of the stars beneath him, the vaunted 'normalcy' that they reach for, the hands that held fast. With one great cleave he moves to cut through the Seraph that stands before him. With the next, he moves to split the next, sending flares of steel skyward with the audible violated shriek of stone that can be heard from a league away.
Massive hunks of stone and madness-laced steel smash catastrophically into swirling water below, as if the agent aggresses the magic that stymies him directly. He moves, stepping into each stroke of the blade, and his attacks send plumes of water skyward, folding ships far below in half and smashing them to pieces, causing a great tremor throughout. The agent moves onward, cutting through everything. Azoth is the last barrier, the last of the artifice. His blade will entreat him.
- What will I save you from.. -
- I can only show you the way. -
Ruining the pier and reducing it to a nest of struts, lurching platforms, and barely-held pilings, he reaches her.
"You must take the final step," he tells Jacqueline, breathing slowly, measuredly.
She is the one that he has been told of. She is the one who his eyes have fallen upon before.
He is ever kind, ever gentle, as he steps forward, to lay his hand on her shoulder.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Ruination Pact! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Seraph Lanval with Boundless Pressure! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Azoth with Nemesis Limit! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has gained 1 Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Peerless Whisper! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes 29 damage from Poison! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra gains 5 FP from Sufferer! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action. GS: Riposte expired! GS: Gwen Whitlock gains 5 FP from Sufferer! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
DC: 1 turn has elapsed in the battle against Isiris Shango'Ra! 4 turns remain! DC: 2 turns have elapsed in the battle against Isiris Shango'Ra! 3 turns remain! DC: 1 turn has elapsed in the battle against Gwen Whitlock! 4 turns remain! DC: 2 turns have elapsed in the battle against Gwen Whitlock! 3 turns remain!
GS: Sneak! The true nature of Isiris Shango'Ra's attack becomes clear! GS: Jacqueline Barber guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Cold Trespass of Paradise - Trivium Climax for 118 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Boudicca takes a glancing hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Ruination Pact for 96 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Boudicca gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Boundless Pressure for 150 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Azoth takes a glancing hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Nemesis Limit for 83 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Yeah, I got it!" Fei shouts to Citan even as Citan says a lot of ominous stuff under his breath while Fei is actually close enough to hear it but he just imagines that Citan got told things because he's a respectable guy and he's used to that sort of thing. Doc just knows stuff and knows people. It's Fei's job to hit stuff and rely on him to know WHAT to punch. "Right...! Hang in there, Ida!"
Fei is blown back out of the air by Gwen's assault but the heat seems to waft around him. A true knight of fire, perhaps. Fei pushes it all down and away from his body.
Then he uses the heat to propel himself into the air as he brings his hands back as if intent on firing the kamehameha wave.
"Gwen!" He shouts. "I know my head is up my ass pretty much the whole time! But you've always been a good friend! Thank you for being our friend!" He smiles brightly as he unleahes a series of brightly colored energy blasts down towards Gwen before his legs crackle with electricity as he comes crashing down towards Gwen, intending to give her a shock straight to the head!
"I get it! It feels like us small town folk are over our head...! But we still need you!"
GS: Fei Fong Wong spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Fukei ! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong has launched an attack Link! GS: Fei Fong Wong spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Kokei! GS: Fei Fong Wong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Hey maybe listening to the shady country doctor to tell you who needs to be punched is maybe not the best plan, but at least said shady country doctor shows up to boss fights. It'd be even more shady and suspicious if he didn't.
. . . .
A wave of blistering heat blasts Zed back, sending him sprawling into a warehouse wall. The concrete cracks in a distinctly Zed-shaped pattern as the Metal Demon is blasted clear and out into the docks...
The roof is blown off the building.
It is no surprise, then, how Zed makes his reentry.
"I don't know if this is even helping, but it's something we've still got to do!" Zed roars as he appears, silhouetted amidst a halo of moonlight as he descends from on high. Darkness floods outward from the cursed blade of fallen Hyades, swallowing up the glow of the silver star like an encroaching eclipse. Shadow and void writhe around him as he falls... But not for long.
"Gwen... If you can hear us, why are you still fighting?! Do you have control over your body? Nod if you do! Shake your head if you don't! Also..." The gathering moonshadow thickens to the point that it has swallowed the image of the moon up entirely. At that moment, Zed swings his sword.
...And deluge of dark energy, suffused with the stuff of ancient curses and twisted fate and vile misfortune, floods downward as if the moon had shed a single umbral tear. "Please don't die! I don't want to think we killed you while we were trying to fight you back to being corporeal and sane!!"
GS: Zed spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Zed has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Unsealed Blade - Demon Breaker! GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo! GS: Zed has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
As the ice wall bursts into a hail of ice shards, Hiro finds himself grateful for it taking the edge off that blast of heat... because Gwen's hand is reaching for him. He's not fast enough. That hand would have made contact with him, had she not flinched.
Instead he gets knocked heavily onto the ground as her weight smashes into him, his head striking the warehouse floor. Dazed - mildly concussed he can see the hail of debris falling overhead.
He can't avoid that either.
He doesn't have to though. As he sees Gwen blasting it all away. Flinching as the sheer heat sears at his eyes even in this indirect way.
"Gwen - you...!"
She saved him. He's certain of it.
But it doesn't mark an end to the fight, as much as he might wish it were so. Perhaps it's a childish thought that Gwen exhibiting such a thing, means that the fight is done. "Come on... keep showing us you're in there."
Rolling out of the way as the light of the Blue Star shines on them, Hiro comes up to his feet, wobbly as he staggers backwards... and plants his blade down in the ground as violet runes spread out from around him. Erupting from it as shadowy inkblots, "Oh lightless blades - sever!" They then turn, before firing at Gwen in a volley that seeks to overwhelm any magical protections she's calling forth by sheer volume of projectiles.
"Talia... Ivan. I can't be sure, but Gwen told me about a... blue-eyed assassin, that's been... getting into her head somehow." It's a longshot, but he clears his singed throat and asks, "Don't suppose either of you learned about that in... school?"
Hiro must think that dealing with Brainwashing is an upper level elective.
GS: Hiro has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Dark Sword! GS: Hiro has gained 2 Combo! GS: Hiro has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Strike! This-Is was the first voice of the world, who spoke into existence all things.
Strike! This-Is spoke all things which were: This-Is-Sunlight fell from her lips, This-Is-Ocean tumbling after. This-Is-Wheat wore her dress of fine spun gold, and This-Is-Blood was gracious.
Strike! All things were in accordance.
Strike! Until one day another voice spoke.
Strike! This-Cannot-Be woke screaming.
Strike! She saw what was and she saw what laid beyond.
Strike! Her screams became laughter.
Strike! This is not the name of that story. This is a step to the left. We speak in metaphors.
Strike!
But if This-Cannot-Be were her name, it might look a shade like this. Lay into what is like flesh, once and once and once again, all for sorrow, all the first time. Boudicca forms around that blade, consumes it as it cuts. Until, one day --
-- is this just the same day? --
To carve, perhaps to dream, she cannot hold it by its edge. Boudicca now is in two parts - and she shines - she is light. Was there a scream? Perhaps it was the birds.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
Except...
"Do not go gentle," are the words carried on the wind.
The wind -- the wind ITSELF -- it builds, it builds, a front of pressure and changing temperature, a gale sighted on a sigil which pours out from the ocean to crash into that measured breath of what-is-he.
With it carried a ribbon, tossed past him on the winds, to catch about Jacqueline.
"You do not stand alone."
So does the wind rage, around her, against the dying of the light.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
"Well it's not me! I don't know anything about psychic stuff!" Fei says defensively. "And I don't have blue eyes. Only brown or yellow!"
GS: Seraph Boudicca spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Howling Gale! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Fafnir has posed.
Fafnir does not know who Gwen is. He's seen the woman she normally is in faint flashes--glimpses of her in moments where his dream-world seems to thin. He's seen some of the others here, too--the man who could be a body double of his longtime enemy Lee Byong-Ho, and the irrepressible young warrior with bizarre mannerisms. Mostly-green eyes glance sideways at Xantia, reading that moment of hostility with a warrior's gaze; his lips curl in a snarl that is at once daring her to fight him, and deeply, deeply tired by the prospect.
He's been fighting, in this nightmare, for what feels like an eternity. He doesn't know when it started, or when, precisely, his scattered memories gave way to disturbing dreams and visions of violence.
But he still fights. It's what he was born to do.
Gwen's flame-body parts before his blades, and erupts in a counterattack. This time, Fafnir is ready. He feels the surge of heat on his face, blowing his hair backwards. He glances up, twirling to the side to avoid a hail of roofing tiles--but he didn't need to. His foe saw to that. Fafnir doesn't have the time to wonder why. In the next heartbeat, his Breath erupts from him in a great cloud, all the colors of flame. He crosses his blades, momentarily forsaking his relentless offense for something marginally more concerned with self-preservation. The kinetic wave slams into him, rolls over him in a surge of broiling heat. It blows him back across the warehouse floor, teeth gritted, bootheels skidding on the blackened tile. Fresh burns mark his face and arms, but they're minor compared to what he endured earlier.
Fafnir sucks in a breath, lets the heat fill his lungs. A mixture of regret and wistfulness and anger fills him--if he wanted to, he could shift, and rip his aggressor to shreds.
The humans seem reluctant. Why are they even here? Fafnir thinks, frustration filling him. He opens his mouth, and his lips try to form words, but once again, control of his own voice eludes him. Anger grips him; he lashes one of his stolen blades to the side, where it slams into the floor with a loud crunch.
Fafnir looks at the man who looks like Lee, as he advances on Gwen again. He meets Fei's eyes. He shifts up his grip on his left sword in a flash of shifting flesh, holding it in a reverse grip so the blade can guard his forearm. He stabs it at Gwen, while its mate joins it in a series of quick slashing strikes.
Fafnir mouths something. It's awkward to make out, but it's... a name. The name of someone who showed up in the dream alongside Fei, the man who looks like Lee. The man who defended one of his heroes, for reasons Fafnir does not understand.
'...Lombardia?'
GS: Fafnir has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Grieving Husk Form! GS: Fafnir has gained 2 Combo! GS: Fafnir's Avenger stance ends. GS: Fafnir has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia shows the most alarm she's shown yet when Gwen, still on fire, tries to close the lid on the box containing the cake she brought. "Waitwaitwait, nonono, it's gonna burn!" She waves her hands in a vague effort to protect the cake, though she doesn't even really know what she's trying to accomplish. In the end the box is left to smoulder a bit, but it seems to be holding... the lid is just gone, though. She's sure the contents are still alright though, it's only a little singed, it's still good!
Xantia watches Gwen's reaction to what she said... and then looks confused. "...wait, does that mean no I don't wanna be punched, or no, I'm not telling you not to punch me?" Argh, that's too many negatives! She should have asked a simpler question!
Well, regardless, through those actions it's obvious that Gwen is there and aware. Being aware but not having complete control over your actions... Xantia knows a little bit about that. Gwen seems to have at least a little bit of control, that's heartening. Now this fire just needs to go away.
Unfortunately, it returns in greater intensity due to the battle with Fafnir. And Xantia's reflexive action is... a little unwise. But she can't herself. She jumps in front... of the cake.
A defensive stance and a shield of light only do so much to protect from a conflagration. But, rather than worry about herself following this, she immediately looks behind. She smiles faintly upon seeing that little spot directly behind her having remained untouched. She coughs a few times, grimacing, but... worth it.
"...Come on, Gwen. You gotta watch it. Even if you can't do it now, you're gonna eat that cake with me. I won't forgive wasting food."
For now... looks like she'll have to take a chance on this. She briefly glances at Fafnir again, now with hesitant eyes, not sure if she can something about whatever this is that happened to Ida. But Gwen. That stuff that's surrounding her is the problem there, isn't it? All this should stop if that goes away. And the best way she knows how to make things go away is to hit them, hard. She does give early warning that it's coming, at least: "If I get this wrong, sorry...!"
With that, Xantia dashes towards the Fire Thief, covers the final bit of distance with a leap, right arm drawn back... to deliver a single palm strike aimed for the sternum. A simple, straightforward attack, but given that she commonly smashes rocks into tiny pieces with this particular strike, she sure hopes that this isn't overdoing it. Gwen's been taking all these hits already, so it's fine, right? It better be fine!
GS: Xantia has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Shatterstrike! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
The disorientation clears thereafter, giving Citan a more metaphorically-oriented breathing space.
It's just Fafnir. Probably, says Zed, earning him the doctor's attention for the moment. "Fafnir? Did you know him, before...?"
Before his arm ended up grafted to -- and apparently taking over -- Ida. Whose current situation is... another problem.
But less immediate than the problem that is currently setting fire to the warehouse...
Which is to say, the problem that Gwen has become.
Will they be able to restore her? Or will the only option be to...
He doesn't voice this aloud. How could he?
But is there anyone at all left inside that body?
The explosion of energy that follows Ida/Fafnir's collision with the bonfire that Gwen has become is tremendous; Citan ducks behind a pillar in the hopes of shielding himself as the blast unwinds but even that proves no safe harbor.
The blast simply unmoors the pillar in the same stroke that it takes the roof off, and it's that which joins the doctor when both are flung for the wall.
The first thing Citan does when he stirs under the rubble that's all that remains of the pillar (and some parts of the wall possibly) is go for his glasses, which are... aha, there. The second thing he does is check for any serious injury (some bleeding, nothing that seems dire) and then push his way out from under the remains of the pillar.
"That was a little too close for comfort," he remarks with a shake of his head, returning his glasses to their proper position, perhaps to anyone who might have just seen him get hit by an entire support pillar. "It only missed me by a hair! Do be careful!"
The fact that he did get hit by an entire support pillar appears to be a malleable truth...
He takes but a moment to regard the situation as it stands now and again exhales a breath; Fei's wellbeing is his responsibility, yes, but he is not the only 'black wolf' of which he is currently attending. There is one other.
Xantia, who addresses the Thief that Gwen has become and tries again to reach her.
The breath -- the Ether that follows its trail -- is vapor. The breath is ephemeral: there and gone, greenery in the early spring after the flowers fall. But it's stabilizing even if it's an eyeblink in the flow of time.
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Xantia with Ryokushou! GS: Citan Uzuki has gained 1 Combo! GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Who fled? Who ran? ...Eleanor doesn't know. What Boudicca says seems important, in the moment, but her mind is fractured still, the vision too much. It 'depends on them'. Or is it depends on her? Which is it? Which could it be?
Eleanor looks on the wound long enough to see it shiver strangely. She sees the energy around him pulsing--for a moment, he's gone, and she wonders if he can be gone, when the world is still like this. It is still mad.
"Lanval..." He speaks of a world defined by joy, and Eleanor lets that thought buoy her some, though she is reluctant to think of joys for fear that they could be somehow targeted here. ...But maybe that's itself a trap. Maybe all of it is.
But back here, away from the killer with her rifle, Eleanor finds the ground around her is quickly beginning to quake and fall and turn to chunks smashing into the swirling water. Eleanor breathes for a moment--and calls on the magic in the anklet she wears, leaping from one rock to another and another. She stows her rifle, scrambling for places to go as she instead pulls something different.
The wind builds, and Eleanor knows what wind can carry. She pulls her flute from her bag instead of any more of her crests, and when she finds a place closer to stand, she takes it. Boudicca is in two parts, but the wind builds, and Jacqueline is Eleanor's focus as well. "Hold on!" she tells her. "Whatever he's doing--"
She can see it, she thinks. And she knows only one way to counter it. Eleanor breathes in, and when she exhales she does so over the mouthpiece of her flute. She begins to play a strange tune, haunting, one that does not belong in this dark world. Something meant to weaken dark influences, to try to hold onto something against power such as this.
The notes are high, winding, rolling. And Eleanor will not have very long to play. But as long as she's able...
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Azoth with Shielding Melody! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Seraph Lanval with Shielding Melody! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Shielding Melody! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Shielding Melody! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Eleanor Klein heals Jacqueline Barber! She gains 210 temporary hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Lock State applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: Eleanor Klein heals Azoth! He gains 210 temporary hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Shield applied to Azoth! GS: Eleanor Klein heals Seraph Lanval! He gains 210 temporary hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Shield applied to Seraph Lanval! GS: Xantia accepts Citan Uzuki's Ryokushou for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Disrupt removed! GS: Lock State applied to Xantia! GS: Eleanor Klein heals Seraph Boudicca! She gains 210 temporary hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Lock State applied to Seraph Boudicca!
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
The more Azoth tries to see and hear and feel of the world around him, the more errors rake across his circuits. Every input of data is a paradox, and every attempt to observe, to analyze, only introduces a greater margin of error. It only worsens as the world that shouldn't be is cleaved apart.
He tries to call out as he watches everything torn apart. The others -- protect them -- yet no where he dives or leaps to means anything, like he were stuck in place while his calculations run short of data to come to any conclusion at all. Azoth's paralyzed until the surest moment, when the blade is nearly upon him.
It rakes against his chassis, like striking a flint that screams with sparks and screeches a sound that burrows into the ear and scratches at the spine. Something inside severs, and a splatter of fluid too dark and colorless to be blood is lost in the stormy nightmare.
Save them. Save him. In some sick way, Isiris isn't wrong, but not about Gwen. Not about all this. He has to get out of here, whatever here is. He has to see that the others are all right -- to help them be all right, if he can. "You're hurting them," he says, increasingly convinced he doesn't know the words to communicate with this... entity. "Whatever you think you're doing -- you're hurting them."
Azoth's calculations, usually so precise, cannot determine when, exactly, he came to kneeling on the ground. His body's getting too hot. His range of motion is diminishing. He squeezes his side to squeeze tubes shut and prevent it. Through the madness, however, comes a song: Eleanor's flute.
He shoves himself back up, beeping tones mimicking the melody quietly to himself. There's no being sure of anything except that to do nothing will lead to failure. Something, anything, is at least a chance. Light pulses under his synthetic skin, and, eyes bright, he conjures several blades of light. With a snap of his fingers, they fire out in a spiral, orbiting one another until they merge into a single, radiant point as they try to strike for Isiris.
GS: Azoth spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Azoth has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Signed Zero! GS: Azoth has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
The whirlpool is torn asunder. It is water's nature to be at the mercy of the forces about it, and these forces - many unable to be truly defined or contained within physical law - are without even mercy. The blade moves from Boudicca's side, disincorporating her manifestation. In the next moment, Seraph Lanval suffers an identical fate - a ball of aquamarine light forms between disincorporating halves, disappearing into the rapidly scattering debris of the pier. Their enemy moves forward past the both of them, as if having mastered the elements whose rejection of his reality has been thoroughly rebuked.
'Do not go gentle,' comes the words carried on the wind.
The water does not speak, unless it is screaming. Was? It is silent now, left to stew in the ruins of the pier. A slurry of those struts, lurching platforms, and barely-held pilings, as if discarded and no longer of need for this roll-out of a colorless carpet of catastrophe.
Something floats out of the water, spinning as no more than another piece of debris - but it is intact. Something made of glass, something both empty and devoid of what it was meant to hold... but filled with something else, in its stead. It is a curiosity of seemingly no further import in this world that exists within this space.
"One fer the road," comes a voice among the water. The still waters stir again, not with destructive intent - though water may crash at the ankles of those still gathered, it is not cold, clammy, and lifeless. There is a warmth there, a life. (Also a bit pungent. Not the bad kind. But it is a smell.)
And then, the bottle starts spraying forth bubbles. Shining, colorful bubbles, as the mouth of the bottle foams like a freshly opened bottle of champagne. Bubbles that flit towards Jay and try to intercept between the stranger inviting her, popping and imparting something of a, shall one say...
Mirthful air, watery sparkles flitting towards her.
"A road yer gonna walk, the way ya wanna... ha ha ha!" The water laughs, as if trying to impart humor, a little bit of light. A little bit of courage, even as the bottle itself spins adrift in this drink full of ruin and misery.
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Liquid Courage! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action. GS: Jacqueline Barber accepts Seraph Lanval's Liquid Courage for 0 hit points! GS: Quick and Shield applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Talia's Light Spear Cannon for 168 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a glancing hit from Ivan's Rocket Boosters for 74 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
"...The world still exists out there." Jacqueline replies, as the man thinks aloud to himself. "Every crime and every sin, yes... but it's kindnesses and warmth, and joys, too. And there are so many yet that have come to pass." Jacqueline replies.
They attack the man, and he weaves through their barrage, until eventually, he's right in front of her.
'You must take the final step', he says, laying a hand on her shoulder. Jacqueline's eyes open wide, fear evident in her expression. To the outside it's as if she's frozen in place, taking deep, struggling breaths.
And then, she feels a presence. The wind builds, and something catches about her. Subconsciously, one of her hands reaches up to it, grasping it delicately for a moment.
A ribbon. Boudicca. She does not say her name, but mouths it. She feels her presence, supporting her and reminding her she's not alone. And then, a strange tune breaks through. High, winding, rolling... and something about it reminds of her of Eleanor. And then, shining bubbles, bringing a splash of color to this dark, grey world... this feeling of mirth, it can only be Lanval.
This kind of support... it's what anyone would wish for at a time like this. With some effort, Jacqueline's right hand reaches shakily for one of her bags...
...and then draws something out, thrusting it forward toward the blue-eyed man. It's a knife - non-magical in origin, but expertly crafted. It's more a sign of defiance than an actual attempt to wound - accompanied by a mental push to try and force him back.
"G-get out... of my head. Those aren't... for you..." Jacqueline breathes out before stumbling back, her body shaking. She takes a deep breath - though the fatigue doesn't seem like a physical one.
"...Everyone... thank you." She says, in between breaths. If they weren't there to support her when she needed it most... she doesn't want to think about what could've happened.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Harvester! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Hiro's Dark Sword for 138 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Arcane Font! GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Fei Fong Wong's Fukei for 106 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock critically guards Xantia's Shatterstrike for 19 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Guard bonus! GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Fafnir's Grieving Husk Form for 84 hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Guard bonus! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a glancing hit from Zed's Unsealed Blade - Demon Breaker for 79 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Zed drains Gwen Whitlock! Zed gains 40 temporary hit points! GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Fei Fong Wong's Kokei for 109 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Talia's command to Ivan causes Gwen to look up and take notice, wary of the siblings' tactics. Talia moves, leaping up in an artful spiral, with Ivan the reluctant backup, boosting his moves with his own fire as he cuts in an arc to complete their sharp performance, with the promise of bubblegum.
Gwen falls back from the assault, her fire dimming just so for Hiro's command of shadow to burst through, surpressing anything in the way of a counterattack.
Fei delivers a series of blasts, ending with a leg of lightning, leaving Gwen on the defensive, barely able to throw up fronds of hair as a shield. By the time Xantia comes in with a tactic Gwen would be extremely proud of (a punch to the sternum), Gwen's hair holds fast, then collapses against Xantia's fist, causing Gwen to leap back.
... close to Ida, perhaps, out of force of habit. This turns painful, as Fafnir cleaves through Gwen's protective shield of layered banners of hair, temporarily leaving her body wavering, uncertain, like it were about to collapse.
And then Zed's sword comes in, nicking some of that infernal flame from Gwen's body.
It's enough, as something seems to change, in that glowing fire.
( BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_VSTJZ5QLo& )
Setanta. If your fire radiates pride, thirst, and violence, what would my fire radiate? Is that what it would be, to be more weapon and wielder?
What is my weapon? What is my fire? What is my spark?
... Of course, it's--
Gwen draws her hands close to herself, her body continuing the motion, waves of hair undulating like the waves of an ocean, or would it be a sea of pale red wheat?
It expands further, and sharply contracts, the Thief's body throwing her arms wide, and straightening.
The field expands with transparent embers, delicate threads of their voices echoing out like gold string. Their kindness, their bonds, their need to reach out no matter how thin the connection may be, or how painfully close. Small towns, big cities, wastelands, ice drifts, lush jungles, verdant farm fields. How these threads laid across one another in a weaving that could expand to encompass the world-- both Lunar, Filgaia, and maybe, even that--
All embers must become ash, and never were embers to begin with
Fear. Fear. He's coming. Go away. Go, please. Go now. GO. Go away. Go AWAY. This is her curse, not yours, she's going to save it all, because if she doesn't, how will Lan? Everyone, no, please don't go, no please go--
The moonlight seems so bright as she collapses briefly in its light on the hot stone. Fruit sizzles and bursts, sickly sweet and overdone.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Talia with Thank you for the flowers! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Fafnir with Thank you for the flowers! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Ivan with Thank you for the flowers! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Zed with Thank you for the flowers! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Hiro with Thank you for the flowers! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Thank you for the flowers! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Fafnir with Thank you for the flowers! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Xantia with Thank you for the flowers! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Citan Uzuki with Thank you for the flowers! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 2 Combo! GS: Hiro critically guards Gwen Whitlock's Thank you for the flowers for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hiro gains 1 additional Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Zed takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Thank you for the flowers for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Zed gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Pray grants a random effect! Hex and Hyper applied to Zed! GS: Fei Fong Wong takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Thank you for the flowers for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Pray grants a random effect! Mute and Quick applied to Fei Fong Wong! GS: Fei Fong Wong activates Arcane Font! GS: CRITICAL! Citan Uzuki takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Thank you for the flowers for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Pray grants a random effect! Break and Quick applied to Citan Uzuki! GS: Xantia takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Thank you for the flowers for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xantia gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Pray grants a random effect! Jam and Quick applied to Xantia! GS: CRITICAL! Fafnir takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Thank you for the flowers for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Pray grants a random effect! Poison and Quick applied to Fafnir! GS: Fafnir enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Gwen Whitlock has canceled their attack on Fafnir. GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Jacqueline Barber's Harvester for 123 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Isiris Shango'Ra gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Quick applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has activated a Force Action! GS: CRITICAL! Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Seraph Boudicca's Howling Gale for 286 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Isiris Shango'Ra gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes a solid hit from Azoth's Signed Zero for 162 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.
Feelings are strange things. How do you quantify a feeling? The sights and sounds you experience, the unique sensations that only belong to you, how do you really describe these things to another person and truly communicate their meaning? Words fail; how could they ever hope to succeed? But...
Riese could do it. But then, her connection to the Dragon's Tear and the Ley are unique things.
Cecilia could do it- sort of- with the very essence of the world.
And Gwen... Gwen can do it too. Or this strange power that has overcome her can do it. Strands of heat and emotion spool out from the young woman's burning body. They catch on Zed like wisps of spun sugar build into a cotton candy cloud around a cardboard stick. But there is more than empty, insipid sweetness here.
There is...
...Fear.
Zed's jaw sets. He takes in a breath and moves forward, throwing his shoulder into the onslaught of emotion, the tidal-wave of feeling. He breathes sharply with every step, terror prickling at the back of his neck, threatening to overcome him, to sweep his mind away in the substance that makes up the one called 'Gwen.'
He presses onward. He'll only have one shot. One attempt. He just needs to get close enough.
'He' is coming.
Who is 'he?'
Zed doesn't know. Zed doesn't care. What he sees is his friend suffering in front of him, crying her eyes out and shivering with fear.
But...
Do you remember, Gwen Whitlock, what you taught him all those moons ago?
There is only one technique in his repertoire, one weapon in his arsenal capable of fighting fear and sorrow alike.
GS: Zed enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Zed has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Hug! GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo! GS: Zed has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
"The world doesn't understand that it is lost."
In the end, they come, at every realm, at every angle, to protect her from his touch. The surging magic of it all recedes the influence of his mental penetration, his hand slipping away from her shoulder and slackening to his side, the wrists of his coat hanging over his knuckles as he stands beside her, those awful, ugly eyes turning away from her to face those split away, his face hidden by the collar of that grey coat as he looks over a shoulder absently.
"A blameless world, an abandoned world. But a world that does not understand nonetheless," he explains. She stabbed him through, though the sequence of events do not tell entirely the same tale, depending on which angle you look at it from. Her blade is buried in his middle still, and whether she is actually still holding the knife is somewhat immaterial to his stance. He stands there, as if she had stabbed someone else entirely. Blood slips down the corner of a lip, accumulating at his chin as he speaks. He doesn't scream, he doesn't cry, even though the blade is clearly buried in him.
"Pain is the natural state of all denizens of the now. The 'joy' that you are so fond of... a grey and ignoble thing, compared to the shining light of the glory that lay before and beyond."
The collusion blades of catastrophic wind and force drops onto him, surging and tearing away at pieces of the pier as it batters him, homing blades intersecting onto him as his body is thrown up and away from Jacqueline, sheared into with surgical precision, the moment the woman is clear. His body is shorn in half, torn to pieces, torn to shreds --
He raises a hand, and the world tilts, rotates on its axis. Vertiginous, the world from her perspective seems to tilt, shifting, twisting away from a fatal end. To them, the flow of 'what is' continues on to its blasphemous future. To her mind, time loses precious relevance by the moment. She can see it now, the slow curtaining rip of that body as it tears apart into its individual components, blackbirds tearing him into pieces as the blades rip into and through him. She can see him, as he stands near her, as she continues to weave that song, note by note. As the Seraphs rebel against the reality they've been given, she can see the shadowy form in the distance, the one that stepped from the pier what seems like an eternity ago. She can see him draw a black device from his coat, and hold it high into the sky, as it catches the curse-laced light from the warehouse below. Whatever that mad thing is, it catches the light just so, and beams reflect from it, prismatic, in the distance. It is something beyond them, something they are not watching, something lost in the chaos of the moment. Chains made of blasphemous sunlight jet into the warehouse below, piercing the thick veil of smoke, as the roof no longer holds against it, as the fires and fields of embers and memories rail against what is inevitable.
Inside the warehouse, the unforgiving sky grows limbs of moonlit ephemeral steel and sun-scorned links. Chains that have no form will attach to parts of the Thief that do not exist, to anchor points that never were. There is no physical force that drags at her. But the pull into the otherworlds is all the same.
- It is time to go. -
They can all see it now. He stands close, so close to Eleanor, as a body -- an idea of him -- simply dies in the tide of the machine and the thunderous cavalry, the memory of all that came before pulling him apart at the seams until the birds scatter the idea of him to the four winds. He watches them kill him with some reverence, some mild impression. Madness is a thing that is impressed with the efficiency with which they have killed him. It is enough that even the man in the sky bleeds. It is enough that even he wipes a tear of blood from his face, questioning absently if it means that he, himself has died.
"You spend all of your time whiling away, so determined to consign yourselves."
He raises a hand, the light of the sky shining in his palm. It splits, just as it had for the man who stands in the sky. And light whiter than any other rips through the pier, spearing along and through the struts and pilings, shearing along other adjacent piers and punching through the spars from ships. The blasts strike in an eyeblink, faster than a thought. Inside the thought of one twisting note, time struggles to be at anything more than a standstill.
He stands by her, atop a falling piece of pier, the world seeming to slide by in transitory slow motion.
The origin of that light, the light that massacres the world wholesale, is at his hand. And his hand is only inches from her as she plays, one long suffering note drawn out as he intends to simply cast his spell -through- her, cutting into the bodies and shadows of her, Azoth and Jacqueline all, the magic enough to cause the shadows of those it affects to shiver in place.
"Saa. Come now. I will show you the true song of the mother."
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has activated a Force Action! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Selene Cannonade! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Azoth with Selene Cannonade! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Formation! Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Eleanor Klein with Obscene Miracle: Terror Equation Absolute! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has launched an attack Link! GS: Formation! Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Eleanor Klein with Evince Transmigration - Mirrormad Synthesis! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra takes 24 damage from Poison! GS: Drowsy and Poison expired! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra gains 5 FP from Sufferer! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action.
DC: 3 turns have elapsed in the battle against Isiris Shango'Ra! 2 turns remain! DC: 3 turns have elapsed in the battle against Gwen Whitlock! 2 turns remain!
GS: CRITICAL! Eleanor Klein critically guards Isiris Shango'Ra's Obscene Miracle: Terror Equation Absolute for 51 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Boudicca used Defend! She takes Isiris Shango'Ra's Selene Cannonade attack on Jacqueline Barber on herself! GS: Eleanor Klein takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Evince Transmigration - Mirrormad Synthesis for 210 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Boudicca guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Selene Cannonade for 99 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Boudicca gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Boudicca enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Boudicca has gained 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei brings his arms forward as heat surges around him. The feelings burn harder. He feels a deep melancholy, a longing flame. Fei brings his hands up and places them on his face. He doesn't know about psychic power. He doesn't know it. He doesn't understand it. Trying to push feelings into Fei always causes some strange feedback loop as if something within him just ... refuses to play along with the conceit.
And perhaps, after Gwen's seen the scarecrow, she might be perfectly fine with that.
But he catches a hint of the Fear. This is her curse, not yours.
Her curse.
Her curse...
HER CURSE?!
Fei grits his teeth in a snarl. "How...How dare you...?"
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ByyFkp374&ab_channel=CasinoCar
"I get it now..." Fei says. "Why this happened. You all told me... Again and again... You lied again and again..." There is no strange aura around Fei this time, no unusual power. It's just Fei right now. Sometimes even Fei Fong Wong can just get angry on his own.
No yellow eyes. No red hair. Just plain old Fei. He doesn't seem to notice Isiris. He doesn't seem to see him. Maybe he's not allowed to see him. Maybe that is for Isiris's own good. Those that tug at neural strings have tried to reach into Fei before. Make the world as mad as wonderland but Fei will see the world that is.
And that world is far more terrifying. At least to Fei, at least to him. Zed goes in for a hug. Fei clenches his fist tightly. He senses something pulling on Gwen. No he's not sensing it. He didn't murder all those people.
She watched us.
Fei runs forward.
She fed us.
Fei swings his arm back.
We know her song. Like the sickly fruit. Not right. Too many angles
"We were supposed to carry the weight together!!" Fei shouts, tears welling in his eyes. "How DARE you lie so you can just martyr yourself! How dare you!!"
How did she have so much blood inside her How could so much fit in such a small body?
Fei aims to plow his fist into Gwen's cheek. "You...COWARD!"
GS: Fei Fong Wong enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Fei Fong Wong has attacked Gwen Whitlock with That's Right You're A Coward! GS: Fei Fong Wong gains 5 FP from Sufferer! GS: Fei Fong Wong has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Zed finds his hug returned, happy tears of steam radiating from her cheeks.
It's probably for the best that it's someone like Zed or Ruby who does this, as he is likely... about to burst on fire.
And could probably take the sharp shove that Gwen suddenly pushes Zed back, her hands held out to ward off anyone else who comes.
He comes.
He comes, in the moonlight, the threequarters moon swollen to an impossible weight.
Ink falls from the side, dripping down and splitting into several branches, which stab through and into Gwen's back.
Fire, like blood, drains out through the channels like water into divets in the ground, reaching back up into that dimming moon.
Gwen's body begins to dim, and she wavers, her own fire fading to black.
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
It's emotion that blazes forth from Gwen, burning bright. Run. Run, it speaks, echoing again and again. Not here. Not you. This is mine to bear. Get out of here. Run. RUN.
It's fear, whatever form it might cloak itself within. Enough to scratch against old scars, to trace the outline of what was excised long ago. Shuddering down the spine and seizing for the heart.
It's not that Citan Uzuki fears nothing. It's not that he's somehow grown innured to it. There are things that he dreads with each passing day, that might come to pass or that he might need to do. But fear untethered and wild, in such a primal and naked form like this--
He leans into it even as his chest seems to seize and his eyes burn. He lets it take him for the moment and then like the fish
swims through it.
He's breathing hard, right hand pressed to his chest. There in the middle of the ruined warehouse lies Gwen, huddled on the steaming warehouse floor. She may be crying.
There is... pressure in the air. Something is not right--
And it quickly takes a backseat to everything else when Fei lunges at Gwen, with those words spilling from his lips.
"Fei! STOP!"
He moves quickly, attempting to intercept the young man or, if necessary, pull him off of Gwen.
"You cannot do this!"
GS: Citan Uzuki has attacked Fei Fong Wong with Fei-Wrangling Technique! GS: Citan Uzuki has gained 1 Combo! GS: Citan Uzuki has completed his action. GS: Fei Fong Wong takes a solid hit from Citan Uzuki's Fei-Wrangling Technique for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Fei Fong Wong gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
As proud as Gwen would be of Xantia's attack, so too would Xantia be proud of Gwen's reaction to it. Managing to deflect her strike in such a way that it can't bring out its full potential... she may have complimented that, under normal circumstances. But these circumstances are hardly normal. She's trying to make them be normal again, which makes good reactions highly frustrating! She smiles, all the same.
"...You must know this isn't good for you, that we're trying to help you. And yet, you still can't help but struggle, huh. I understand, that's like you. But maybe it isn't us you should be struggling against."
She's certain, now. Gwen can overcome this, if she chooses to fight back with all she has. It's just that there's... something going on, something which she has no way of knowing the exact nature of.
Getting the sense that Gwen is trying to make something clear about all of this, she just lets the field wash over her, welcoming it. Though she has some protection in the form of Citan's Ether, she may well have chosen to do that either way. Because she wants to understand.
There's one thing she can conclusively determine from the experience. The emotion behind everything. Fear. Slowly but resolutely, Xantia begins to step closer to Gwen.
"...I don't know why this is all happening, but there's probably a reason why you think you can't give up. Why you think stopping this would even be giving up in some way. The problem is... we can't give up on you either. Sorry Gwen, but look around you. The people who care about you have you outnumbered."
It's strange even to Xantia how calm she's been about all this. She understands how Fei feels. But she just can't shake that feeling she's had this whole time. That there's something she's missing about all this. Something she's not seeing. ...seeing...?
To the outside observer, it may not clear exactly what's going on with Xantia. She just froze up, perceiving... something. Something is attached to Gwen. Something that should not be, that isn't and yet is.
Out of nowhere, she suddenly circles Gwen, and slams her palms into her shoulders from behind. Gwen may not feel much of it, the strikes just kind of leave a numbing sensation in their wake. This isn't aimed to do harm. She's using Ether to attempt to disrupt whatever this connection is.
She's seen the strings. This is her attempt to cut them.
GS: Xantia has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Essence-Rending Palm Strike! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Fei Fong Wong has posed.
Fei feels Citan's hand on his arm and his fist stops in an instant, like an emergency brake just kicked in.
"It isn't fair," Fei says softly, sinkinng back against the Doc, practically for support. Many of you have seen what an enraged Fei could do to say nothing of what Id could do.
But Citan Uzuki with one touch instantly douses that raging flame, like water dousing out a campfire. As quickly and easily as that. Perhaps his mastery of the element goes beyond the etheric.
Or maybe Fei just knows that Citan is the only person from Lacan who is still his friend, one who was always there for him even when he didn't really deserve it.
"They promised." Fei protests, not unlike a child.
"Its too much pain, Doc. Do you feel it? It's too much for any one to bear."
But he doesn't raise his fists in anger again.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
There's music on the wind, and the wind carries it far. Where is Boudicca? How much is Boudicca? There is that ribbon which must be her; is it?
Air does not weigh so much, cannot be kept so easily.
It's right behind Isiris, a voice eminating. "Adrift," a word like being lost. "And this, you think a failing?" Without expression all meaning is tied to tone; a shade quizzical, behind its steel. An honest attempt to understand. A belief -- perhaps -- that there is a person, under there.
"They are Drifters," diffuses the air, "and this rambling world is kind to them. That you cannot see... is sad." Clouds for sorrow, crows for sorrow. All the world grieves.
In bravery: "I will defeat 'Pain.'"
But first, defeat this world.
It tilts. The air has no alignment to care for; one cannot turn the wind upside-down, always exactly the direction it intends. Because the wind does not stop in place: it courses through. Rushing-tearing-flensing. Turn, turn, until the picture resolves --
"Away from her!" Is the note of desperation the wind plays.
Not quite as musical.
Not quite as strong.
Until a wound tears in the sky and light pours out and out and out.
Jacqueline grasped a ribbon, here not unlike a lightning-rod; it pulls the wind into itself, concentrating itself, and that scattered green becomes light and the ribbon weaves itself into braids, and all a sudden there is someone here, no matter the impossibility of the shining dark. Grasped and now grasping, she turns and puts her arms around Jacqueline, turns her back to the light.
Her knees bend. She forgets to emulate the process of breathing. She forgets to emulate the process of hearts beating. No. No, one heart. Humans have one heart, and so must she.
One heart, many shadows, split into scattering by light which pierces. But it does not pierce through to the mortal woman. It does not do that.
"Ah," Boudicca says, remembers to breath, looks to Jay. "Are you all right..?"
It's only once she's checked on her that she turns, one hand still holding Jacqueline's, to face Eleanor and her dark passenger. "You are concerned overmuch with teaching," Boudicca says, eyes narrowed. "Your lessons worth little. What offer you but shame and guilt?"
A Seraphic glyph alights beneath Eleanor's feet, and with it, winds which buffer about her, swirling protection. She may not be by her side, but she is the wind. Does she have to be?
GS: Seraph Boudicca enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Eleanor Klein with Fortifying Tailwind! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Eleanor Klein accepts Seraph Boudicca's Fortifying Tailwind for 0 hit points! GS: Burst, Quick, and Shield applied to Eleanor Klein!
<Pose Tracker> Citan Uzuki has posed.
One hand goes for Fei's shoulder, as if to thereby steady him. Citan is a father. And despite his age, in many ways, Fei is very much like a small child.
They promised, he says.
"...I know. It is an unfair thing, to shoulder a burden this large all by oneself."
Her pain is...
Briefly he closes his eyes.
"We will put an end to this here, Fei. And afterwards... we can speak with Gwen. But right now, you must not..."
The pressure is building. The same thing that Xantia is attuned to -- the thing that Citan had to ignore just moments ago. Slowly, he lifts his head and looks to the sky.
"...!"
<Pose Tracker> Fafnir has posed.
Fafnir grits his teeth, and prepares to strike again. Gwen's retaliation, such as it is, catches him completely off-guard.
Fafnir once commanded the Ash Legion--he literally wrote a book on total warfare, and he's seen more than his share of crying humans. He's caused more than his share of grief and rage and hatred. But something in Gwen's tears feels strange--off in a way he can't put his finger on. He raises his blades--
And then whatever aggression he was about to muster dies in his chest as Gwen's emotions wash over him like a tidal wave. The sense of connectedness, of oneness--it's been centuries since Fafnir felt anything remotely similar. His heart aches for Astrid. His jaw trembles as he stares at Gwen. He feels like his chest has been torn open, revealing his heart for all to see. It's like he's a weak, sobbing neonate again, and--
"Khh--" Fafnir chokes out. He recoils, bringing both blades up to guard himself, futilely. He wants to finish her. He should finish her. She's weakened, she hurt him--
He can't finish her.
As Gwen's friends and allies move in to comfort her, Fafnir's heart tightens, like it's caught in a vise. He turns on a heel, and runs, fleeing the burning warehouse with all the speed he can muster.
Weakling, hisses the traitorous voice in the back of his head.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
The world is still out there, Jay says. There is a smell of living water. And Eleanor feels something continue her music and seese the light pulsing. And there, he speaks...
THe young elf sees that Jay used a weapon outright in this way, a knife. The blade is buried in him, isn't it? But he speaks of...
Abandoned by who? She wonders it, as she plays. She feels anger at this talk of pain being so natural, his talk of what joy is. And she watches him, as time fades. The device touches the sky... No--something jetting down, down, far below.
Another 'him'. The light of the sky shines, and blasts come in a blink. But the strange man is close to Eleanor now, and she looks with alarm. Slow motion comes. The strange man's body is shorn to pieces, and the world tilts. Everything stops. Eleanor sees the killer move, hears him as she continues her song. She sees the strange device. She sees the way the light catches, the way it goes down.
No--
But she cannot speak, in the moment. That alone drives. She has seen this, and sees it again. It could break a mind; it should break a mind. But as Eleanor feels that driving crack in her mind, agonized with it, her eyes blaze yellow-bright. She stares into nothing for an instant, and she attempts to scream out some feeling.
She doesn't trip; she doesn't fall. She is still falling, but upright. How long is it here? How long does it take?
The scream comes out when time is suddenly there again, but is cut off quickly--that spell lances through her and the sorceress wavers on her feet, hearing...
She thinks her shadow disappears for a moment. Her glowing eyes blaze the harder as the music stops for her, and she starts to fall towards the water. She thinks. Is it towards the water? Is it upward? Is it towards what remains of the dock? Stop. Start again. It all repeats in her mind, or perhaps she simply is unmoored in time. The spell hits again; the sense of madness tries to crack down again. Stop, repeat. Repeat. She tries to pull something, and finds herself pulling it from her things a dozen times, stuttered all together.
Did she die, in the moment? Is it like back then, in Macalania, pierced through by a bullet close to her heart? Or did it only feel that way? She doesn't know. She floats in darkness for an indeterminate time, or perhaps her sensation of time is broken still. Until the wind--a glyph that alights about her, winds that swirl around her.
The wind answers her unspoken prayer, and Eleanor lifts the Crest towards the foe who she knows by feeling. Her hand moves, as if on its own, and the power of Wing bursts all around her to try to rocket her away, whatever direction it takes, from him.
...Only then does she notice the blood at her side. Where...?
Only the wind knows.
GS: Eleanor Klein has activated a Force Action! GS: Eleanor Klein spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Isiris Shango'Ra with Mistral Judgment! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
As the bottle floats, the way the stranger turns their head over their shoulder, the sheer threat of those eyes peeking over that collar, puts their possible line of sight distressingly close to meeting the mouth of the floating bottle. The bottle turns where it floats in order to avert having to look any closer into it.
It's more disconcerting unto itself to see where the blood falls. Something about its presence feels more definitive, more real, than the individual it comes from. It should be some sort of relief, some sort of idea that this strange person has the fallacies and weaknesses of mortals when they are wounded. It is the exact opposite for Lanval - and like many Seraphim his age, mortal blood spilling on the ground is not a novel concept. It proves useless for actually tracking where they are at a given moment - only that it is there.
All this, to the backdrop of what they have to say about a blameless, abandoned world. Pain being the natural state of all the denizens of the now. Lanval cannot be fully blind to pain being something much of the water of Filgaia itself feels. The constant strain and burden of what is done to it, what keeps being thrown into it.
Boudicca makes her declarations - her desire that she will defeat 'Pain,' both as an embodiment of the breeze itself, and the one who feeds the very flames of Filgaia so that it may provide warmth.
The world turns about. The water goes with it, by all appearances, as the world and its true nature is reasserted in the strange puppeteer's hands and beliefs.
"Whilin' away... ya know," a bubble floats along with a bottle inside of it. A curious, even humorous image in this bleak land of fractured crows, indeterminate space, and a potential spoken alreay as though the very past, "we ain't... all meant ta live, encompasshin'... all of the time at once." He can't promise an end to 'Pain' like Boudicca can. Whether it is because the promise comes off as too lofty, or he has a completely different idea as to what his answer is...
The bubble pops. The bottle goes into free-fall, landing - or still falling? - somewhere near Eleanor. "Ya can't treat a whole life as a 'whilin' away,' I shay." He's not sure where his words may be intruding in her time-displaced suffering, but what she can know right now - if she is able to perceive a now...
Is that she has allies here who will see her through the hard times with something resembling a smile. The bottle emits a hearty laugh, tilts towards her in free-stand-fall-place, and splashes outward a refreshing mist. There's a lot to take in. He can see what's been going on over there - some good friends of Gwen want to fight past that misery and help drag her out towards those she calls friends.
His part is to give a little piece of not-misery - albeit to someone else trapped in here.
"We don't wanna shee yer true shong," Lanval slurs, in perhaps of continued quiet defiance for the misery that Althena's creed Herself has laid upon the land of his origin, "I'mma shing shomethin' rude 'n funny over it. I'll do it," a bottle threatens, "'n if that mother'sh there... 'll make her laugh."
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Eleanor Klein with Happy Hour! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action. GS: Seraph Lanval heals Eleanor Klein! She gains 100 temporary hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Seraph Lanval!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Jacqueline's knife strikes true, and it's perhaps the most terrifying thing that could've happened. She stands there, her knife buried in his middle. It feels... all to real. For a moment she thinks - fears - she may have killed him... and yet he stands there, as if she had stabbed nothing at all. She retreats back, the knife still grasped like a lifeline, as Azoth and Boudicca's power tears into him.
...But he does not die. He's there, near Eleanor, holding light. Light that erupts from Eleanor and rushes to her. It's too quick - she can't protect herself in time. But just when she thinks that light is going to tear through her...
...It never reaches her.
There, once more, is Boudicca, her arms around her. Jacqueline's eyes open in shock and concern.
"B-Boudicca...!" Jacqueline gasps, worry in her voice. "I... I'm alright, thank you, but what about you...?"
Boudicca grasps her hand, and Jacqueline grasps hers in turn. She casts her eyes out, looking for that man again. ...But not to attack him.
"...You call 'joy' a grey and ignoble thing. If you truly mean that, then... whoever you are, I pity you. You can't have experienced many joys in your life. They might seem a small, simple thing to the outside observer... but they can mean the entire world to those who experience them." She says.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Through their efforts, though it's like tearing the veins from a delicate cyst, likely to rupture at any moment, but all that violence, all that contact, all the words, now and from before--
They lead to something, for sure.
A dim body, her fronds falling off like a wilting plant, hangs there, the barest slivers of red magma present, over her chest.
The sinew is separated and flails like a screaming thing, and Gwen collapses, her hand shallowly clutched over her heart.
A body, covered in charcoal, matte black against the dim moonlight.
"...."
Pulse.
".... k..."
Pulse.
There's a sound.
It's Gwen's voice, scratchy, imminating from a raw, impossible throat. "I won't die. ... Promised...."
As long as there is something at the other end, be it fleeting, a hope, a promise.
An eye opens from her side, painfully blue-grey, focusing at the ground. A piece of charcoal falls off her cheek, revealing freckled, raw red skin.
She'll find a way.
She'll find a way back to her friends.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra accepts Eleanor Klein's Mistral Judgment for 220 hit points! GS: Jam applied to Isiris Shango'Ra! GS: Quick applied to Eleanor Klein!
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
Chains cut from white light drag glory from her veins. The lines trawl magnificence from her sinew, and supremacy from her spirit. Four in total, one for each of them, pulls and drags the thing that rails against the world from what and where it remains. He stands there, adrift in the sky, while he invokes the horrific blaspheme, the spell that shears the holy and the abyssal alike. Awful blue eyes look down from the sky into the warhouse, as those assembled around her fight the tremendous pressure that settles on the water, the force of the chains tightening enough to cause the timbers to shudder beneath the feet. The work of those on the ground to break her bonds causes him pause. It gives him only a moment, it takes from him only a second of concentration, a second that proves the better of him.
Reality shifts, his curse's grip loosening on it by barest increments, and in those increments, those in the sky bear precious moments to regroup. They knit against him, linking arms and shields against his enmity. Inspired, they unite. Dimly, he realizes even the drunken one spurns the truth and the light. And in so doing, the inspired wind tears through the iteration of him that was merely false, the moorings of his cursed realm breaking thread by thread as his concentration and connection to the world flags with the events of the ground.
Chains the size of a wrist snap viciously in gunshot-like aplomb, trailing fire and blood as they unsubstantiate. There is never any particular configuration that they reach where they resemble a line, the failure of his spell to maintain full power resulting in the beams cast from the mad device shivering in place. The twist in the world decompresses as a spine might, and though it only reflects in fractions of degrees, the world starts to refract to normalcy. What once seemed impossible becomes possible, and the return of sanity to the jangled maze of piers and docks is only a degree away from madness in the end, as if one simply had to look at it through one particular lens to see one way or another.
There is only one of him left, mildly discomfited by the invasion of the waking world.
"This 'joy,'" he reflects to the gathered assemblage.
He raises a hand, a single ephemeron of seething inbetween his fingers.
"... is nothing compared to the glory that left us all."
He smiles into the baling winds, as sharing a secret with her.
Then he releases the formula into the living world. It spreads, virulently, violently destabilizing what's left of the irrationality complex. Geometry that was just barely reasserting itself turns to knives. The air turns to fire. The world convulses as it purges the mad curse from it. Retches, heaving, reality disgorging the mad imagery, the nightmare wholesale. But as the agent kills the illusion, in its throes it attempts to rip the assembled apart in the sky, energy tearing through the ether to cast all into the waters and smouldering fires below.
And then, with that, he is eaten by the rationality of a world that realizes that something is violently, completely wrong.
GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has activated a Force Action! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Crisis Seed! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Seraph Lanval with Crisis Seed! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Eleanor Klein with Crisis Seed! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Crisis Seed! GS: Disrupt, Mighty, and Slow expired! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra gains 5 FP from Sufferer! GS: Isiris Shango'Ra has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Eleanor Klein critically guards Isiris Shango'Ra's Crisis Seed for 41 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber guards a hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Crisis Seed for 85 hit points! GS: Jacqueline Barber activates Guard bonus! GS: Seraph Boudicca fully evades Isiris Shango'Ra's Crisis Seed for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Boudicca gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval takes a solid hit from Isiris Shango'Ra's Crisis Seed for 154 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Lanval gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
'This 'joy,' comes that increasingly (...decreasingly?) singular entity speaks with that anger in his gesture. '...is nothing compared to the glory that left us all.'
The Seraph within the bottle threatens to cut through the weight of the man's belief and conviction, speaking his own 'line' a few words too soon - he's starting to gelt it out somewhere between 'the glory' and 'that left.'
"...warned ya..." Is he in a position to threaten the master of this collapsing illusion? They are, for the moment, still within his world.
I shay ya only hear what I tell ya~
Ya shay I'm nice so all the time, shooooo?
A pause, because he legitimately forgets what the words are. He has a tune in whatever passes for a head when it comes to Seraphim, who technically do not have brains.
'n I thought what ya heard wash shimple...
'n I thought that I don't mean it
'n now that I'm honesssssht~
Now that he's honest, he doesn't even remember what the joke was, or what the dirty parts were, or what parts would get him sued by a famous musician's lawyers (what?).
Now I know that I did shomethin' right 'caushe I disshed ya~
Yeah, I disshed ya~
The reintroduction to reality cuts this awful rendition of a popular song mercifully short, the bottle coming into contact with the destabilized reality... and it shatters, leaving a free-falling ball of aquamarine light effectively naked as it plops into the Spiran waters below.
There's the sound of laughter as if they were proud of themselves for accomplishing nothing of note other than just the joy of singing something terribly in spite of whatever song was about to be shown.
It'll recede after a bit once he catches himself and thinks that maybe he'd better make sure everyone else there's okay, some things... you just... don't laugh off.
Once it all settles back in, it's hard to say if that sort of laughter will keep. What went on in the (former) warehouse over there... is far from funny business.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
A lot of things begin to happen. It seems like reality is returning, if gradually, but they aren't quite out of it yet.
'This joy', he says, 'is nothing compared to the glory that left us all.' That statement gets a curious look from Jacqueline.
"...What do you mean by that, exactly?" She asks. She hopes for more information - something she can use, to try and unravel the mystery in front of her. She gets none. What she gets is a song from Lanval - not to mention, energy tearing at her from all sides. She curls in on herself a little to try to minimize the damage... and soon finds herself falling back into reality.
There's not much more she can do but cling to Boudicca after that, and drag herself coughing and spluttering to the water's surface. Drenched and cold, but alive.
"L-looks like we're back...somehow. Is... everyone alright? Do you think they were... able to do something...?" Jacqueline asks, her concern now turning to those who had been left behind, here in reality.