2021-04-14: If You Meet a Traveler on the Highroad... Kill Them
- Log: If You Meet a Traveler on the Highroad... Kill Them
- Cast: Riley Arwell, Avril Vent Fleur
- Where: Mi'ihen Highroad
- Date: April 14, 2021
- Summary: Avril happens across a familiar wounded figure on the Highroad... unfortunately, he tries to kill her. She defends herself but loses something in the process.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley is making his second attempt at hunting alone. Normally, he would approach his targets with a friendly smile, make small talk, and try to slip them poison or a surprise knife. It's not particularly honorable, and involves getting way too close for comfort to people he intends to kill, but in a twisted way, he prefers that to never knowing who they were.
But either way, that's off the table today. When Valmar doesn't receive sacrifices on the schedule it demands, the Fangs begin to exact a price from their hosts. For Riley, on this occasion, the most vibrant consequence of this is spontaneous bleeding from the eyes, which complicates any plans he might have to make "friends."
But Xander is in worse condition, with thorny, flowering vines currently growing inside his chest. They won't escape these symptoms until they can make a sacrifice, but the longer they go on and the worse they get, the harder it will be to kill anyone. Xander already seems in too bad of shape to fight, so Riley needs to kill someone quick before they end up in a doomed feedback loop.
But, he's a bloody mess. He's decided to work with that, and is curled up on the side of the road, moaning softly. There is a faint dread that this tactic means he's probably going to end up killing the kind of person who would stop to help an injured stranger ... but it's not like he's got any illusions that he's making the world a better place by clinging to this compromised existence he has. And who knows, maybe he'll get lucky and lure in a bandit instead.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
All she was doing was a bit of courier-type work. Luca is still recovering, after all -- as has much of Spira from the war -- and so it falls to Avril and the other members of the Outreach to see that supplies are sent along at a regular pace. Normally, this would take the form of a caravan or something similar. There would be guards, other people.
Today's delivery is a little bit of an urgent and unusual one. She has a small set of Remedies that someone requested -- there was an incident with a Malboro, apparently, and they're out several of the basics. It seemed fastest to borrow a chocobo and run the road south herself.
And so she had opted, being in Spira and available, to do exactly that.
It had been as uneventful as she'd expected.
Until she sights the bloodied body on the side of the road. A Fiend attack, the young woman considers, pulling her chocobo up to a stop.
"Are you all right...?" she calls out, approaching the fallen figure on foot. He looks badly wounded, surely he isn't--
Oh, fortunately he's still alive enough to make sounds about it.
Avril however stops for a moment. Wait...
"...Riley? Please, allow me," and she kneels at his side, Medium already drawn out and resting atop her lap.
"This shall only take a moment." The disc shines with an inner light, radiating the power of the Guardians.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley?
Riley's eyes widen at the familiar voice. Avril. One of his so-called 'Drifter Friends,' as Xander puts it. He only met her and her two companions the once, but... he liked them. And it seems like they could become something like friends, if their paths kept crossing under the right circumstances, in a way that let him go on pretending he and Xander were ordinary drifters. These are not the right circumstances.
He could let her go. He doesn't have to do anything to her. But there isn't a lot of time to decide. Does he play along and pretend he was really injured, try again later? How many laters are there going to be? Xander has thorns in his chest.
Okay, but Xander liked this woman. He wanted to help her. He wrote a poem for her! And people will miss her. He saw the way Rebecca was acting...
It would have been fun to see them again as fellow travelers, to build on that start of a friendship under false pretenses...
But Xander could be dying. This life they have could be on the verge of collapse. And friends... friends are replaceable.
These deliberations, fraught as they are, only take a couple of seconds. Riley reaches out with a hand, thorny vines bursting from beneath his skin that seek to wrap around Avril's arm and hold her within reach. His other hand reaches for his dagger, driving it up toward her chest.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
In one instant, the Medium is on her lap.
There isn't a premonition as such. Time simply slows to a crawl to her perception, each moment moving slowly enough that she feels as if she were watching what happens play out on some distant screen instead of right before her eyes. He reaches out for her, vines bursting beneath his skin and snaking out to entangle her right arm. She's hauled forward at such an angle that her chest is exposed and in easy enough reach
for the dagger.
There is a dagger.
Oh, Avril's very distant thought runs, and it's an easy, simple matter to reach out towards the still-widening gap in her mind and beckon it outwards.
In the next instant, the Medium is on the ground, its shine diminishing.
The dagger impacts, rather than her chest, the sudden outburst of an ice crystal in that space between her and Riley; frost and ice erupt from the the earth around Avril in a still-spreading array.
The look in her eyes is, for a lack of a better word, cold: she regards him as one might a mouse come walking in the front door. But there is not fury in her eyes, not quite.
"Release me," Avril says to Riley, and it is not precisely a request as much as it is an order.
DC: Avril Vent Fleur switches forms to The Ice Queen!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
The dagger hits something solid and ricochets off of it, and a wave of cold spreads out around them. For a moment, Riley imagines that the chill running up his spine is merely from locking eyes with her after what he just did.
But no. Ice magic. Well, she is a Drifter. Did he think she was going to be defenseless?
...he was kind of hoping as long as he struck by surprise, it wouldn't matter...
Release me
He gives her an embarrassed smile, like she's caught him in a much less consequential act of rudeness.
"Sorry, I'm a little committed, now... I promise this is nothing personal. Xander and I both--" Unable to find a quick way past the ice shield, he focuses on the vines instead, calling to the Blood Garden for something to help him get the advantage back. A red-petaled bud grows at unnatural speed upon the vine and unfurls, releasing a poisoned mist. Where Avril summoned cold, this toxin brings heat, in the form of a strength-sapping fever, should she breathe it in and prove susceptible. "...really enjoyed meeting you...!"
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
He apologizes, actually, for what he's about to do to her. But he does not obey her.
There is still no fury on her eyes. She does not call curses upon him or scream to the heavens: instead, Avril's expression grows that much more pinched. She could be said to be frowning, if only minutely. "So you do not intend to stop," she says to him, trying to shift her still-trapped arm. "Very well. I do not intend to die here. Let us see which of us shall prevail."
It is a statement that may at best be only slightly undermined by the red red flower that spews actual poison into her face. Grimacing, she pulls back, shaking her head as if to dislodge what is already beginning to affect her, and swiftly so.
"A poison," murmurs Avril, eyes narrowing. She pulls sharply away from him, as if attempting to rip the garden emerging from his body out by its roots. But the toxin is a fast-acting one: even like this the power of her body is limited by the poison that is running through her. She seems a little flush. And yet, it doesn't deter her from trying.
She is strange like this, stranger than the young woman he'd met with her friends in the gemstone caverns. Almost as if she'd been carved from stone herself and then polished to a high gloss: there is nothing extraneous about what she says or does. Everything is honed towards a singular deadly edge. She doesn't ask him what he's doing. She doesn't seem shocked or horrified. She just asks him to stop, and when he doesn't--
The air around them is already heavy with ice crystals, shedding up into the air from the widening spread of frost at her feet. They become seeds: collection points for more of their kin, and very soon after that, sharp-edged projectiles that streak towards Riley.
The chocobo at some point during all this lets out a scream and takes off running, precious cargo and all. Avril doesn't even seem to notice. Every part of her is directed towards the task at hand.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Her behavior is strange to him, in the seamless, emotionless transition to the businesslike matter of fighting for her life. It's hard to contextualize it as unnatual in the heat of the moment, and instead he finds himself taking it a little personally. "Do you get betrayed a lot, or did you just not like us much after all...?"
The vines can be pulled free with enough force. As she yanks away, half of the strands are snapped.
This seems, at first, to be a victory for Riley in keeping her from escaping. But it means when she goes on the offensive and summons a storm of ice shards, he is also fastened in place.
Riley lets out a surprised yelp and raises his dagger-arm to protect his head and face as several of the ice shards bury themselves in his shoulders and torso. How did he get stabbed first...!
He reels for a moment with starbursts of pain dancing in his brain, but there's enough adrenaline in his system to keep him on his feet. He lashes out with the knife again, this time slashing at the arm he's got hold of, trying to make a cut as long and deep as he can. She's powerful, but if he can whittle her strength down, maybe he can still do this. Her mount is gone, that much is working in his favor. And he has his bow if she decides to run, although that didn't work out so well for him with the last one... And given that she pincushioned him already and doesn't seem particularly sentimental about their meeting in the gem cave, maybe he shouldn't be assuming she'll run at all...
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"I have been betrayed before," Avril tells him matter-of-factly. "Perhaps I have been betrayed many times." She isn't sure? "...It is inconsequential. I do as I must. That is all," she says, continuing to struggle with the vines as she stares straight at him across her protective ice crystal. "There is a promise I must fulfill, and I will not break my promise. I will not die here."
Some of the vines snap. That is something. But she is still pinned to him and cannot quite reach her blade. This is frustrating: she's limited to only her magic and her (dampened, thanks to the poison in her veins) raw strength to free herself.
Ice swirls about her like a leaves caught by the wind; as the moments drag on she's able to cycle more of her power out into the world and back again, a self-perpetuating loop. The deeper, more secret part (the thing in the dark, the thing that is herself) whispers her an offer for more yet. All she needs to do is give herself up to it. Crack the wall further, peel off that which binds--
Fleetingly, Avril winces, the exact look in her eyes shifting between all-too-present and far away. She exhales sharply, trying to remain in the here and now. It's the story of the lady riding the tiger, isn't it...
"I will tell you one thing, Riley. Whatever you do is not of concern to me," she says. Yes it is, a part of her calls out. Yes it is! But what she is now ignores that altogether. "However, should you harm Dean and Rebecca... I will find you."
In this, just about all of her is united regarding.
He dashes out with his knife then; she tries to bring the vines binding her towards him in such a way that they might be diced. But even if it works, it will come at a cost: red wells from her arm, spatters onto the ground. Avril wheels towards him, the air shimmering with light caught in the storm of ice crystals about her. They explode with brilliance even as she staggers briefly, affected by the poison in her.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
I will not die here.
"I understand you must have a lot of unfinished business... but I really need a kill today." Another apologetic smile, this one with a wince in it, and not just because he's full of ice spikes.
However, should you harm Dean and Rebecca... I will find you.
"I don't want to hurt them. I'd love it if they never found out I even do this kind of thing..." Although it's a ghoulish thought to think of playing friendly with them if he succeeds in killing their companion. Could he really do that...? "I would have liked if you didn't know, either, but I guess fate--"
The blade connects, both with Avril's arm and, thanks to her maneuvering, the vines tying the two of them together. The remaining tendrils snap free.
"Shit!" Soon after, she fills the air with shimmering ice crystals. He stumbles backward as another wave of them fly into him at close range.
That takes the wind out of his sails, and he sinks to his knees, trying to rally for another strike but finding his body sluggish to obey. It's an opening, should she choose to use it.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"You need 'a kill'...?"
Even this Avril cannot help but ask after a statement like that, it would seem. But then again, there is nothing about this that seems particularly familiar to her -- as much as somatic memory can attest for an occurance precisely like this.
"Then refrain from hurting them," she tells Riley, as if it were a simple prescription. "Then desist," she says again, when he says he would have liked to have known her. The fact that it is beyond his control is not something known to her (how could she know) so it follows that her suggestion (order, really) follows such an unwavering line.
Unwavering might be a good word for her now as she goes as far as to wound herself in order to slip the ties that bind her to him. It hurts quite a bit, in fact. But 'the pain of the body' is something this body remembers and accepts. It is only temporary.
With that wounded arm she draws her blade in the moment following. He'll find her standing above him where he kneels, Absolute Zero pointed directly at him.
There's a word for an expression like the one she wears now. It's 'imperious'.
"Farewell," Avril tells Riley, but before she can do anything with that sword, shock blooms across her face. She appears to visibly struggle for a moment. Her stance shifts, she drops a step back, blade still held before her. Perhaps it's more of a warning than intent now, but if she were to strike, then maybe...
"Riley... why are you doing this?"
She's visibly a different person than she was moments ago, somehow less 'polished' at the edges. "What does this all mean? I do not wish to hurt you, but if you continue in along this path... I will not hesitate."
The underlying feeling is the same, between the halves of herself. She will strike him down if that is what is required. It's just that this Avril now has more questions, is less willing.
There might have been a sort of stalemate presented here: her unwilling to finish this. Him, still in need of a life taken.
But what happens is that something bellows from a nearby ridge. Fiends! A small group of them...!
Avril takes all of a moment to glance their way, then back at Riley before taking the opportunity their advance presents to break away at a run.
...And in so doing, abandons her Medium, a fact that she will only realize once she's clear of the area.
DC: Avril Vent Fleur switches forms to The Amnesiac Girl!