2021-04-24: Holding Out for an Antihero
- Log: Holding Out for an Antihero
- Cast: Xander Lovell, Riley Arwell, Magilou, Margaret
- Where: Mi'ihen Highroad
- Date: April 24, 2021
- Summary: The Fangs of Valmar sacrifice a few bystanders, but their sins do not go unnotice. There is hell to pay.
============================<* Mi'ihen Highroad *>============================ Many years ago, a man named Lord Mi'ihen, commander of a mercenary group known as the Crimson Blades, was summoned by the Grand Measter to Bevelle to answer the challenge that his group was a threat to Yevon. Though his followers suspected he would be executed and begged to follow, Mi'ihen ordered them to stay behind and walked along an old path to Bevelle, without stopping to rest. Moved by the display of piety, the Grand Maester formally adopted Mi'ihen and his soldiers into Yevon as a defensive force, known now as the Crusaders. In recognition of the momentous moment, the path Mi'ihen walked now bears his name. ...except not really, because the original one was wrecked by Sin a few hundred years ago. You can still see bits of it as you pass along the Highroad, on which the Djose Temple can also be found. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwY8vl0GFYI&ab_channel=Ultimatefighter343
DC: Magilou switches forms to Lil Miss Witch Who Smiles Around You But Stabs You In The Back When You Are Not Looking! DC: Riley Arwell switches forms to Smiling Gravedigger! DC: You switch forms to Unlucky Reaper! DC: Xander Lovell switches forms to Unlucky Reaper!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
With the war dying down, there is finally a chance for reunions for the people of Spira who had been separated by its dangers. That's what brings a middle-aged couple to travel the Highroad today, with things having quieted enough for them to meet their daughter's new baby in Luca. Travelers can often be beset by dangerous fiends, however, and so they've employed a guard to help ensure their journey is a safe one.
Unfortunately, Fiends aren't what they find tonight, but instead, the Fangs of Valmar. An arrow of shadow whistles through the air from where the Fangs lay in wait behind one of the ruined structures alongside the Highroad. The guard gives a yell of surprise as the arrow catches her in the leg, dropping her to one knee.
She calls out for her clients to find cover, but a one-eyed, dark haired man springs from the shadows of the ruins. In a motion so quick the human eye can't catch it, he sinks a dagger into her chest, cutting off her warning.
Not that the couple needed to hear her to know to flee. Xander darts after them in heated pursuit. The earth trembles, thorny vines bursting from them like snakes, coiling and twisting together to form a pole where a curved blade grows to form a scythe, readied for the kill while he closes the distance between himself and his targets.
Meanwhile, the guard claws at the ground, blood flowing from the wound in her chest in pulsing gushes. The wound may well be fatal, but she still struggles, trying to stand or crawl. A second blade finds her, this time driving deeply enough into her back that she sinks back to the ground with a last, rattling breath as a red-headed man withdraws his dagger.
Riley would like to call it mercy, but it's about something else. With this offering of life to Valmar, the thorny, flowering vines growing from within the skin of his neck and face crumble and fade away to dust, the wounds sealing.
Riley breathes a sigh of relief as the pain fades, and his attention immediately goes to Xander, his heart lifting in hope that the thorns winding through Xander's lungs have finally crumbled away as well.
But of course, this isn't over. His eyes come to rest on the sight of Xander running down the fleeing couple like the shadow of death.
They have the life they needed. They could stop right now. Spare them. Should he call out? But Xander must have felt it too -- or if he didn't, then he needs this, needs more blood before their voracious god will let him breathe. And even if he is healed, each life they take will buy them more peace.
So Riley holds his tongue. But there's a flutter of fear lingering at how similar this seems to the carnage he found at Cereza.
Xander only needs one swing to catch them both. Two corpses fall, face first, into the dirt.
He lets the silence of death sink over him before he breaks it with shaken, delirious laughter while splattered in the blood of his kills. This should make him sick, but the pain is finally gone. No more thorns crawling through his insides and out of his chest to bleed him from within. Xander promises himself he'll never take being able to draw a clean, painless breath for granted ever again.
"Xander! Xander! Is it over? Are you all right, now?" Riley rushes up to him, first putting his hands alongside his face and searching his expression. At the first sign of confirmation, he throws his arms around him and laughs with joy. For a moment, the dead are forgotten as the weight of dread he's been carrying for weeks finally falls from his shoulders.
This delighted embrace is, altogether, a strange sight to find for anyone who was drawn to the scene of the crime by the screams of terror.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
People have different screams for different situations. There's the, 'I can't believe you just proposed to me in the middle of a crowd!' shriek, equal parts pressured and excited. There's the, 'a spider is on my person RIGHT NOW' shriek, a sound of unbridled primal terror. Then there's, 'I can't take this any more', 'is this really worth it', 'how could you have hurt me'...
And, of course, the screams of the dying. They're different, too.
Magilou loops her hands around the back of her head. She's coming from Luca, not towards it; it's a different path, so it leaves her far enough from the proceedings to hear it without seeing. Her breath leaves her chest in a motion of collapse; there is a uniformity to her dull eyes, which do not blink to listen.
"... too bad..."
~*~*~
BGM: Nevermore - Dead Heart In A Dead World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVP4CqJ7SK4
One does not expect a woman dressed as a jester to be any sort of 'stealthy'. And yet, here she is: Magilou has managed to slip in closer to this deathly concordance, without a word of notice. Perhaps they're distracted. Perhaps she's very good.
Magilou, who is many things but not a murderer, does not use her stealth advantage in quite the same way as Xander or Riley do.
Rather there comes a clapping, slow and rhythmic, as a woman all a sudden steps out languid from behind a pillar. "Congratulations," she tells them, and the words could easily have been sardonic; more striking still is the fact that they are NOT. "If you didn't pass that test with full marks... then hey," a bright grin lights up her face, "you know your instructor's got it in for you!"
She takes a step forward, an ill light across those eyes, half of purple, half of green. "You must need the encouragement... greenhorns, right?"
Another: "... as long as you ask if it's over..."
And there's a paper doll in her hands, a glyph of power around her as all a sudden she makes closing the rest of the distance an issue: "Ready to feel the burn? Fire Mine!" The glowing hot ember roils between the murderers and their jester, as taunting as the dead smirk plastered over her jaws.
GS: Magilou has attacked Xander Lovell with Fire Mine! GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo! GS: Magilou has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
That middle aged couple had run into some happy ramblers, a couple of hours ago. People in eclectic garb, walking down the road at a leisurely place. They were dressed like the outlanders, but they didn't seem to actually be; but two of them had outlander instruments. They had given the couple a fancy decorated cookie to enjoy, and their periodic trumpet and saxophone could be heard in the distance.
And that means that the screams could echo backwards.
How long does it take? Sound isn't instant, you know. The travellers might be as far as a league away when the shriek rips through the Spiran night.
A heartbeat.
Another heartbeat.
And back along the road, beneath the moonlight, a hand raises upwards and draws upon something of the stars... AND...
R I P S its way up the roadway, leaping, vaulting, moving past subtle obstacles, kicking up rocks and leaving footprints yards apart.
It would sound like a motorcycle without an engine, were motorcycles more common. As it actually is, the last crackles of the invocation fade just as Margaret vaults herself upwards, slinging out her kama on its chain as a hook, swinging upwards to land on top of one of the ancient stone pillars and look down upon...
Ah. How nice of that other person, to throw a burst of fire.
Margaret's eyes close for a moment. The gray shock of blood and the sight of the sprawled-out dead, visible from this height so clearly. It is not unfamiliar. Oh, if only it were. And yet, while there is a certain numbness to it, a certain tolerance coming from long reserve, multiple exposures, that doesn't mean it feels GOOD.
And she could swear she recognizes... yes, she thinks sinkingly.
"Do you know something," Margaret speaks from her high perch, "I was thinking - I was *THINKING* - that oh, how sad; here are these two stout young lads and they're working together, perhaps looking for something medical for the sickly one, and now, well, I see that I had fallen for a romantic dream yet again."
Margaret leaps down and lands in a deep crouch, rising upwards while leaning forwards, sweeping her chain around her arm as she gazes dead on forwards. Her eyes do that subtly luminous reflective thing in the dark, that little elf quirk that gets blown up, sometimes, into infravisual spectra, into magical eyes of fire.
"Ah, I shouldn't get involved," Margaret says with a clap of her hands. She half turns, back the way she came.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRIjzGbQXmg
She turns back to face the young men again. "Except," she says, "that this is a little bit my fault too, isn't it? I remember that. I remember it INCREDIBLY WELL! IN FACT! You were stuck in a hole with a DECIDED LACK OF NICE PEOPLE WHO HAD FINALLY GOTTEN MARRIED."
At this point Margaret turns her head to look at Magilou. "I assume you're not with them," she says, "given the fireball. But I thought that I would check things straight before I made... ASSUMPTIONS."
She swings the weighted end of her kusarigama around, and slings it casually forwards at a slightly peculiar time, as if to pre-empt an effort to rush for the bushes.
GS: Margaret has attacked Riley Arwell with Why Don't You Come And Get It?! GS: Margaret enters a Counter stance! GS: Margaret has gained 1 Combo! GS: Margaret has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Moderate! Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Magilou's Fire Mine for 104 hit points! GS: Drowsy applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Charge!! You gain 35 FP! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Riley Arwell takes a solid hit from Margaret's Why Don't You Come And Get It? for 41 hit points! GS: Cover applied to Margaret!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
It's a disrespectful moment of celebration over the dead, but not nearly as disrespectful as making them dead.
It's that slow clap has Xander uanked back to reality. What a short lived moment to breathe. "Damn it." His eye narrows and his jaw tightens, all of him on guard with his scythe still in hand. There's danger enough in being caught. But the way she's going on, and that unsettling look on her face --
"Get back!" he snaps at Riley with a shove just before Magilou's flames erupt against him, the force enough to stagger him as he pinches his eye shut from the heat. Fire licks at Xander's scythe, which seems at once constructed of plants with its thorns and flowering shaft, yet carrying a deadly blade with a dark, chilling aura. Xander growls, fangs on display, and he wipes away what might have been an ember from his eye. "Sorry. No witnesses," he manages through a wince. A simple, matter-of-fact statement.
But with the voice of a familiar elf, Xander curses again. Two witnesses. He shoots an annoyed look toward Riley as if this is somehow his fault. He breathes a sigh and shakes his head as Margaret goes on about her disappointment in them, and Riley gets another look of Xander's suffering. "I get an 'I told you so' after this one, too."
After. He's confident, isn't he?
Once Margaret turns her kusarigama on Riley, Xander whirls his scythe into place and charges for her. "I'd tell you not to listen to him..." He brings up the weapon and makes a brutal cleave as he tries to dash past her, the dark influence of Valmar thirsting for blood and hungry to soak it into the scythe's flesh if it can draw any.
"...But you won't have to worry about that much longer!"
GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Margaret with Reaper's Grudge! GS: Xander Lovell enters a Counter stance! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
At the sound of Magilou's approach, with her clapping and her strange congratulations, Riley pulls away from Xander with alarm. Someone saw them? And what's worse, she is behaving very... unpredictably.
Get back! His eyes widen as Xander pushes him clear and takes the brunt of the flames.
Just then, Margaret explodes onto the scene, and her words do bring a wash of shame for Riley, his face reddening slightly. "We were looking for something to help Xander, it's just that what we needed was blood--" Xander charges for her. "Ah, but I guess we're just going to be killing you now, damn it..."
I get an 'I told you so' after this one, too.
"You're literally saying it right now!!"
As for the other one... an arrow made from shadow appears between Riley's fingers, and he nocks it into his bow, releasing it toward Magilou. Just before the moment the arrow might impact, it separates into three, each headed for a different part of her torso.
His eyes narrow with spite. "Please do not set Xander on fire. He is very delicate and we just healed him."
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Magilou with Split Arrow! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Magilou fully evades Riley Arwell's Split Arrow for 0 hit points! GS: COUNTER! Margaret counterattacks Xander Lovell with Counter Attack! GS: Margaret takes a solid hit from Xander Lovell's Reaper's Grudge for 153 hit points! GS: Xander Lovell drains Margaret! Xander Lovell gains 76 temporary hit points! GS: COUNTER! Xander Lovell counterattacks Margaret with Counter Attack! GS: Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Margaret's Counter Attack for 90 hit points! GS: Charge!! You gain 35 FP! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Margaret takes a solid hit from Xander Lovell's Counter Attack for 97 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Barely has the arrow loosed when Margaret's kusarigama swings into Riley's sightline -- he jumps back, trying to angle his body--and his bowstring--away from it, and it rakes the side of his arm in a deep slash.
"Gah-- okay, yes, I get it, you're disappointed!"
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"No witnesses? Rude! I'm right here!" Magilou exclaims, before she taps her shikigami to her temple, as if she's just realised something. "Oooh, right, okay, with the murder."
She seems alarmingly settled with the idea of Xander apologising for her imminent death, as she points out in very plain language what he's promised to do.
BUT THEN--!! "Okay," Magilou holds up a hand, in the wake of Margaret's arrival, "can we like, go back so I can re-do my dramatic entrance? Because I just got shown up."
Beat: "I kinda wanted to see where they were going with all this," she adds, to Margaret, "but yeah, no, I'm totally on your side now. Plus, I'm getting this weird impression they don't like me. Me! The world's most likeable woman!"
For all her ranting, though, she is seeing where they were going with this; they needed something to 'help', and that something was blood. "I bet she'll appreciate you crying about it when she's dead," Magilou chirps, chipper, as Riley damns the situation. "I know I'm saving all my gratitude for after I'm six feet in the ground. It's way more efficient!"
For her cheerful efforts, she receives..! Shadow arrows. Dancing is forbidden by Althena, but Magilou apparently doesn't care: with a hop, skip, and a twirl, she makes a show of escaping one arrow, then another --
-- and then her arms pinwheel wildly in the air as the last gets way too close, and she almost overbalances in her theatre. "Whoa-oa-oaaaa!" Those hands clasp to fists, and she stomps a foot, which doesn't make much noise at all because she's really rather slight. "Hey! Don't tell me not to set people on fire and then try and skewer me! You two are cute and all, but I'm not about to stand aside in the face of this grave injustice!!"
There are still corpses, just, right there. Magilou has not made a single comment about that particular injustice.
"But fine," she huffs, rising a hand up. "Let's go in the other direction. Look, a shooting star!" All a sudden her hand comes down, and the Hidden Arte manifests into an icy meteor, crashing down in a gale right... for Riley's... face.
GS: Magilou has attacked Riley Arwell with Spirit Drop! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Magilou has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
"Oh, no witnesses, is it? That's extremely normal and good to hear," Margaret says, grasping her kama's hilt and watching Xander. "And it's also a little arrogant of you to think that you're going to get away with this. I'm not going to claim to be some sort of free-roaming do gooder, but this IS on me a little bit, is it?"
And then Xander charges -- Margaret sweeps her chain up. And if Xander had a *sword* instead of a scythe, he might well have accomplished nothing, his arm jerked and a scythe sunk into his chest, perhaps ending this curse or setting that murder to naught! Instead, of course, Margaret ends up with the blade skittering over her bare shoulder and lets out a shriek and a twist, one foot coming up to kick at Xander while leaning backwards, keeping that blade away from her body even as -
Margaret's magical alignment is as follows:
* Darkness
* Lightning
* (developing...) Wind
And as you can see, the senior of these is darkness, which means that the power draws into the scythe all but ready converted. Margaret blanches, her ears flattening back as her teeth bare in pain. The chain wrap on Xander loosens and Margaret--
-- did she just flash step back three yards? (Yes.)
"So I had, like, if you'll excuse me, a thought," Margaret says--
-- before she pauses to wink, if a little tiredly, at Magilou. "Oh you're too kind. I'm Margaret. Really I just had a good approach, if you'd been coming from the southeast you could have done it too."
-- and then back to Riley, and she says, blankly, "Fine," while snapping her less-cut-up arm back to cast a more general-purpose full-body chain wrap at Xander-- if, we must say, at more or less the maximum extension of the chain. She has learned respect for the scythe's blade.
GS: Margaret has attacked Xander Lovell with Chain Wrap! GS: Margaret has gained 1 Combo! GS: Margaret has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell critically guards Margaret's Chain Wrap for 21 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Gamble: Low! Riley Arwell guards a hit from Magilou's Spirit Drop for 79 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Riley Arwell gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"You're literally saying it right now!!"
"I'm going to tell you again later! And stop trying to explain this like it matters. Just focus!"
A sob story doesn't change anything, which Magilou's mocking already has caught onto. Is it mocking? Either way, three people are dead, and two witnesses are here to put them in deeper trouble than they're already in if they don't outright kill or injure them first.
"Take whatever responsibility you want," Xander says to Margaret with disinterest.
Margaret and Xander are briefly caught in a tangle of chains and curved blades, his scythe at her shoulder, then her foot solidly smashing into his chest, and his own wild swings of bladed and blunted ends alike in a savage effort to take her down, animalistic snarl and all.
Her chains release, and Xander makes another attempt to strike only to hiss with frustration as he cleaves through empty space instead of living flesh. She gets her moment to talk to Magilou mainly because Xander's struggling to catch his breath from her kick earlier.
Words like 'cute' and 'delicate' are being tossed around the battlefield, and Xander can feel his eyelid twitching. This is all taking far too long for his liking.
Margaret's chains lash out again, and Xander whirls himself around, proving obnoxiously slippery as he catches the chain against his scythe and twists, using it to keep from being tangled before lunging back. With a firm planting of his scythe on the ground, he vaults from there, launching, instead, toward Magilou.
"Do not look at the shooting star."
Does he really expect Riley to fall for that? (Maybe a little.)
Xander makes to land on top of Magilou himself, his scythe coming down for her face. The air around the blade seems to bend and twist slightly with the force of its dark nature, and trails of smoke follow his movements from her previous fire spell.
GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Magilou with Grim Scythe! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Sneak! The true nature of Xander Lovell's attack becomes clear! GS: Magilou guards a hit from Xander Lovell's Nail in the Coffin for 106 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
... Or he flings his scythe aside, letting it whirl through the air before it embeds into the ground beside Magilou while Xander lands behind her, thrusting a dagger for her back.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
And stop trying to explain this like it matters. Just focus!
"It matters while they're still alive... we can't all get closure from grunting and snarling at people, Xander!"
Hey! Don't tell me not to set people on fire and then try and skewer me!
"Who skewered you? Not me," says Riley, still boggling a bit at how deftly she danced aside from the arrows. Are they going to be able to kill these two? He wouldn't hate it if this ended without any more death... but starting to collect Drifters who know they're killers like some kind of weird catch-and-release program is likely to eventually get them killed.
But another important matter has caught his attention. "Xander, did you hear that? She called us cute!"
An icy meteor comes for him. He throws an arm up in defense again so he won't literally absorb the impact with his face, but it throws him from his feet and sends him tumbling until he comes to a stop some distance away. After a small delay to collect himself and test that nothing's too broken to hold him, he rises back up to his feet, dizzy and bruised, with his head ringing.
He surveys what he's missed, and finds Xander and Margaret locked in an exchange of blades and chains that seems entirely too dangerous for his liking. Shit.
He looses another shadow arrow, this time aiming for Margaret. During its flight, it bursts apart into a green and red tangle of flowering vines that slither around her body and tighten in an attempt to pin her arms to her sides. This is usually something he does to set Xander up for a kill, and his face sets in resignation.
"I'm sorry. I really liked you." Don't talk to people in past tense, Riley!
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Margaret with Entangle Arrow! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Margaret takes a glancing hit from Riley Arwell's Entangle Arrow for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Margaret gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Entangle, Shieldbreak, and Slow applied to Margaret! GS: Margaret enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"That's Magilou to you!" Magilou Magilous to Margaret in cheerful reply. "Loving the danger chain."
Xander does not appear to love the danger chain quite as much, but that's okay, Magilou's opinion matters much more. She listens to him snarling, and it's delightfully nostalgic, really. "Aww," she issues, to Riley, a hand to her hip, "but isn't it cute when they snarl like that? Rawr! I'm a scary beast of a person and I have no humanity left! If you don't think that's charming, you really are lost."
She even does the little clawing hand motion as she says it. That's attention to detail.
"It was a good try," she says, to Riley's boggling.
And in the wake of Xander's excellent advice, Magilou protests: "Don't listen to him! He wants to hog all the stars to himself!" As she hops in place to emphasise her point, though, Xander doesn't waste any time, and descends on her --
A LONG TIME AGO, A PLACE LONG SINCE CRUMBLED,
though that hardly matters, because they're not there, right now,
Right now they're here, in a forest. They: Magilou, and an unspeakable beast. Lankier, more awkward: a teenager. She raises her magical shield to defend against that crashing tail --
-- she collapses at the pain of a wound to her side, unseen, unknown, unresponded.
When there becomes here and she is in a different place -- is it more of a real place, or another layer? -- she hears her error: "This world is unpredictable, Magilou."
(That is why he is the master, and she, the student.)
A LONG TIME TO NOW, WHERE WE'RE BLEEDING,
The air twists around the blade. Illusions have many tells, when they fray about the edges; Magilou has seen so many. Her mind is already expecting trickery, as he comes down.
Is it fair to Xander, when he flings his scythe aside? It isn't, not really; almost anyone would have fallen prey to a feint like that. Almost anyone --
-- but Magilou turned around.
Xander finds his dagger stabbing into a beehive-shield of magic, rather than the soft flesh which covers her spine. In that moment of turning there is nothing to her expression at all; a stark, hollow emptiness which threatens to take him in and in and in, if he looks into those eyes, that green-purple gradient so unusual to the world.
"Huh," she says, and the noise is air huffing from her lungs. The motion stabs a wan grin across her face, and the humour on her face is not only sick in its content. "Heh. Haven't had to do that in a while."
There's the scent of blood. Magilou, in the turning, cut her leg on that discarded scythe in her haste to interrupt Xander's true attack. It stains the pink of her tights, a little extra warm shade.
"Paint the town red," she grins, to Xander, as she springs back, and perhaps he will notice the way she stubbornly thrusts her wounded leg into the ground rather than favouring it. That glyph about her warns of what's coming, as red light builds around him -- "Blood Moon!"
Apparently she's just, totally reneging on not setting Xander on fire, because that's a LOT of fire, localised right to his person.
GS: Magilou has attacked Xander Lovell with Blood Moon! GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Riley Arwell used Defend! He takes Magilou's Blood Moon attack on Xander Lovell on himself! GS: CRITICAL! ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Riley Arwell takes a solid hit from Magilou's Blood Moon for 249 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Riley Arwell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Disease applied to Riley Arwell! GS: Riley Arwell activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
"Lovely to meet you," Margaret says to Magilou again. She'd shake hands or give a brief hug, but, well: The Ells.
As her chain wraps round Xander's weapon, Margaret says rather grimly, "You've been doing this for a while, haven't you. This isn't desperation. Tch. Goes to show you, I - WHAT??" This when Xander's motion puts enough slack in the chain for it to fall off and he vaults free.
He's pressing his attack on Magilou but Margaret has her own problems. Arrow problems. The incoming shot takes her by surprise, as she wove away from the arrow but not the flowering vines, which snap her hands back and tangle her up, trailing chains as she thrashes like a prisoner resisting execution.
OH, YES, Margaret thinks, sweat running down her back. They've done this before. Well oiled machine.
How undignified, Margaret thinks, hair falling in her face. No, she thinks, he's probably going to leap up. I wonder what it would feel like, she thinks further, before her fingers tighten.
Damn it, Margaret thinks to herself, don't get like this right now. If you're caught -
Could this work? Margaret thinks, before she staggers backwards to try and hook the thorns against one of those stone pillars overlooking the road. She really digs in there. Is she... helping them? Well, why didn't they just ask for volunteers.
"So where are you REALLY from?" Margaret asks Riley, looking up at him. As she does this, she loops her weapon round and through the enchanted vines, getting everything good and tangled up against the stone. Enough to, she thinks, ground those bindings, to make them in a philosophical sense separate, or at least to buy time for when:
Her hand with the ring curls into a tight fist. She seems to abort a lunge forwards EXCEPT the wind kicks up and in a flash of sea green -
She's two yards up from where she was. Unarmed, but free!
... no, she brought the thorns with her. But at least they are disabling her arms, not holding her in place. Her heels spark as she digs in and tells the siblings, if siblings they be, "I'm not going to claim any kind of a high horse, because I've been robbing and stealing half the time and I've probably made it possible for untold amounts of Yevonite bushwa to occur, but even an evil witch like me knows that stabbing some people on the side of the road is wrong."
"And you've made it quite clear how willing you are to slay further... I don't even have any damn MONEY, the most expensive thing I had was the frigging KUSARIGAMA," which falls to the ground with a clank at this point, "and yet, AND YET, not even the profit motive--"
"So! Let's see how you like it!"
A nebular bloom around her as Margaret brings back her other arm to kick off and aim a double-legged flying kick at Xander's side! Which would be bad enough in its own right, but has several additional side bonuses:
* Riley's bindings
* Margaret is not a small woman
* The burning fire of justice (maybe)
* A skitter-lunge acceleration through magic
* Three pounds of sharpened copper (combined) on the bottom of those shoes
* And a possible disease from whatever has been on the road to Luca, all this time.
GS: Margaret spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Margaret has attacked Margaret with Premonition of Air! GS: Margaret has launched an attack Link! GS: Margaret accepts Margaret's Premonition of Air for 0 hit points! GS: Burst applied to Margaret! GS: Margaret has attacked Xander Lovell with A Frank Expression of My Sentiments and Feelings! GS: Margaret has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Margaret's A Frank Expression of My Sentiments and Feelings for 147 hit points! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Xander Lovell receives 50 temporary hit points. GS: Xander Lovell enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Drowsy expired!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"FINE." Xander grunts with a snarl -- because he's Xander -- before making his announcement to the general area. "We die if we don't kill, blah blah blah murder or get devoured by a curse from a dead god. Basically we're monsters so on and so forth. Happy now?!"
Whether anyone is or isn't, that's all they're getting for the moment. Xander's blade smashes into a magic shield. He grits his teeth, baring his fangs at Magilou as he presses his strength against it as if he could crack it. But Xander's physical bulk is barely anything. He doesn't have raw strength so much as grim grit backed up by the powers of darkness. The smell of blood makes Xander's nostril's flare, but his one eye locks with her gaze, widening a little. There is something, however faintly, he recognizes.
It roots him in place.
Margaret flies into Xander with both feet, and more threatening, those sharp copper blades in her shoes that punctures into him as the augmented blow sends him tumbling. Blood smears against the ground and he growls again, shoving himself up and digging his fingers into the dirt. Where his blood drips from his wounds, blossoms begin to sprout. He shoves himself up though he seemed distanced from his scythe, it merely decomposes rapidly where it was to regrow from the earth back into his hand.
He seethes, blood on his fingers as he squeezes his wound. "The world doesn't operate on right or wrong. If it did--" Bright, red blossoms begin to grow around Margaret, and Xander rushes forward with a swing, clean sweep of his scythe, severing them all in half -- and trying to sweep across her in the process -- while the harvested blossoms burst open with dark power, shrieking like damned souls. "--none of us would be standing here right now!"
But Magilou's prepared her spell in the same amount of time, and Xander tries to move, only to stagger from his new wound. "No--!"
GS: Xander Lovell spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Margaret with Bloody Harvest! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Happy now?!
"...Oh, you actually explained it to them." If not very clearly. He spares a curious glance at Margaret, specifically to see how it landed. Magilou seems hard to read regardless.
So where are you REALLY from?
"I-- did we lie about where we're from? We said Filgaia, right...?" He glances to Xander for confirmation, trying to untangle the WEB OF LIES he's left in his wake while posing as a Drifter (and a newlywed) across Spira.
But isn't it cute when they snarl like that?
"Well... yes." He calls to Xander again. "Did you hear that, Xander? She says your snarling, specifically, is cute! Or maybe I said it. We both said it!"
But helping him tease Xander doesn't mean he can go easy on her. He holds his hand with his palm facing upward, and gives a small wince as a red flowerbud bursts from his palm and unfurls. He runs his knife along the petals, where it picks up a strange sheen, and then he lunges for Magilou with the now-poisoned blade. This poison carries an icy bite, chilling the recipient's blood and causing shivering and numbness, should it manage to take hold.
Magilou defends against Xander's sneak attack, and jumps backward, summoning a glyph, that issues forth...
"I said not to set him on fire!" Riley yells. He throws himself bodily at Xander, wrapping his arms around him and pushing him forward as he makes a shield of himself, his back to the flames as they roar to life. It is... a lot of fire.
His hands tighten around Xander and his face goes white as he gives a strangled cry.
GS: Riley Arwell spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Magilou with Poisoned Knife Bite! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Magilou takes a solid hit from Riley Arwell's Poisoned Knife Bite for 159 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Magilou! GS: Margaret takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Bloody Harvest for 94 hit points! GS: Margaret enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Baby, we're all monsters," Magilou waves a hand, and there's something to the lilt which could almost be read as comforting. "Wolves gotta eat. I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. But I'll tell you this for free... the way you are, you're gonna die anyway."
There's something uncharacteristically serious to her warning: "You're not cut out for this."
It might sound like fury signifying nothing; inarguably, Xander and Riley have the PHYSICAL prowess to keep on with their murders. But she heard the joy in their voice when it was over. She's heard...
... so much, of that voice.
How Magilou could claim that the murderers are not cut out to murder is a mystery which lays deeper and deeper, and perhaps Xander catches a glimpse of it, in her eyes, when she meets his blade. His is not the only one she must meet: she springs away from Riley's knife, but her leg is treacherous territory, now, and she cannot quite keep that deep gash from her arm, where it moves to protect the more-tempting target of her core. She's numb. She's always numb.
The motion of 'shivering' does not necessarily carry with it the emotion of 'cold'. Look in from the outside and guess.
She guesses. Here Magilou gasps, as if that vacuous emptiness hadn't reached out to Xander at all: "You're an evil witch? I'm an evil witch!" Perkily she turns to Margaret, as Riley burns and cries out. "We should be witch buddies!"
A beat: "Oh," she belatedly recognises Margaret's complaints, turning back to Riley and Xander in their suffering, "yeah, and hurting people is wrong. You shouldn't do that. Tut-tut." She wags her finger, only to grasp her shikigami within them.
Hurting people is wrong, but Magilou is VERY good at hurting people. She springs over to Xander and Riley, in their pile of agony. They might be able to smell it, the way the muscles of her leg pump out that blood through the gash, as if Magilou is ignoring the damage entirely. She's smiling like she isn't being carved to ribbons at all.
"Hey," she interjects, brightly: "... look what I found!" And all a sudden the shikigami in her hands stretches out to a comical size, as it scoops up to knock Riley away from Xander, like a magic carpet she sweeps under his feet only to sweep him away.
GS: Magilou has attacked Riley Arwell with Hellrise! GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo! GS: Magilou takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Magilou has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
"So it is killing," Margaret answers Xander after she ends up on the dusty ground. "I was afraid of that."
She sees the blood; sees the flowers. Her eyes take it in. She sees it, she believes it, but does she BELIEVE it? She is busy getting up again, unentangling her legs. "It doesn't, no," she answers Xander, who is now at an advantage given that he has a scythe and Margaret has a bad attitude and some cool boots (neither of which are weapons).
"Even so," she says, before throwing up one hand with splayed fingers as if to vogue dynamically at him. "Tch--!!!" The darkling force ripples outwards, colliding against invisible drawn-upon power, but the blade still hits her ear, notching it with a rather impressive gout of blood as she comes up to her full height.
After this she just... bleeds.
Margaret seems to be at loose ends for a moment here. Riley and Xander might not quite 'get' it as it is perhaps more of a 'Lunar thing,' but Magilou can probably infer from the lack of dramatic fireballs despite at least four excellent opportunities to throw a blast, that Margaret *has* no blasts -- that she is in the 'white' alignment, with regards to magic.
Also her weapon is now ----> over there.
Her eyes cut back towards Magilou. "I prefer 'sorceress' but I mean, there's overlap here. Quite so, hang around if we're alive after this and I'll get you a drink. Oh, and: This is abrupt," she says, "but you don't have a brother or a cousin, do you, ey? Named Jack, perhaps? Or perhaps Nick, or F-"
At this point Margaret's notched ear twitches up again, which gives her a truly impressive look of controlled pain but seems to reveal some sub-critical sound to her.
She raises her left hand to her mouth and slides fingers into her mouth. Pinky and middle finger. And then she blows some sort of discordant, piercing whistle note that... echoes... and which is pretty clearly a Signal to Someone.
Margaret's lip crooks up as she gazes at the two young men. "It's probably moot now," she tells them, "but, honestly, you little murderers, you're advertising it. You might as well put up a sign or wear ice jewelry, with that attitude." Ah, confidence. This is the true face of an 'Evil Witch'.
GS: Margaret spends 1 Combo on Inspire! GS: Margaret has attacked Magilou with Premonition of Darkness! GS: Margaret has attacked Margaret with Premonition of Darkness! GS: Cover, Entangle, Shieldbreak, and Slow expired! GS: Margaret has completed her action. GS: Margaret accepts Margaret's Premonition of Darkness for 0 hit points! GS: Margaret gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Magilou accepts Margaret's Premonition of Darkness for 0 hit points! GS: Magilou gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Gamble: Lowest! Riley Arwell takes a solid hit from Magilou's Hellrise for 84 hit points! GS: Riley Arwell activates Sufferer! Riley Arwell enters Critical health and gains 25 FP! GS: Riley Arwell enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Magilou drains Riley Arwell! Magilou gains 42 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander shrugs at Margaret. "If only blood were enough, we'd be in a different line of business."
When Riley glances to Xander for confirmation, Xander balks at him. "Don't look at me! You're the one who went around making up stories and lying about being married!" He's still mad about that, but Xander's mad about a lot of things.
"Yes, I heard it," Xander says through clenched teeth. He's wishing very badly he hadn't. Despite everything, his face is red.
That's knocked out of him with Magilou's words -- and her eyes. The fear in Xander's gaze meeting hers steels into something harsher. There's a grim acceptance when she says they'll die anyway, as they are. She has no idea how right she is, if for the wrong reasons.
"You're not cut out for this."
"He isn't," Xander says, quiet perhaps so Riley doesn't hear it, or perhaps because Xander's snarling face softens for those words and those words alone. "But I am."
It's not a resolved statement that he makes a good show of, given the carnage of brutal kicks and flame that follow. Or flame that Xander braces himself for before Riley's body collides with his, shielding him from the arcane fire. Xander's entire body seizes up, eye widening with the realization that comes with Riley's pained cry. Xander can't even speak until his own grip on Riley slips when Magilou's shikigami rips the two apart.
"Riley!"
He's blind to the world for a moment. To sorcery and spell work, to idle witch banter. He trembles, his scythe growing from the earth and blossoming back into his grip with a predator's eye turned on Magilou.
Then Margaret whistles. A signal. Xander leaps into a spinning whirl in a panic, scythe moving hand to hand in deft motions to make him a whirlwind of blades and thorns, tossing disorienting petals all the while. But it's too late -- she's already made her call.
GS: Xander Lovell enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Margaret with Death Spiral! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Margaret takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Death Spiral for 77 hit points! GS: Margaret activates Evade bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
You're the one who went around making up stories and lying about being married!
"We're basically married!" Riley protests.
Margaret seems... dissappointed, maybe a bit resigned, to learn of their predicament. He isn't sure what he expected. Sympathy? Dismissive scorn that they'd make a play for pity? He hasn't seen very many people learn about it so far.
All that aside, he's a bit irrationally relieved that she's still up, despite being bound and disarmed. But that signal... if she calls her whole company here. Well, he and Xander couldn't take them all, probably, but they wouldn't stand and die, would they? They'd run, right? Maybe he sort of wants that?
That's around the time that Xander and Magilou agree he's not cut out for this, and he makes a grumble of protest even though he was pretty much embodying the accusation in the privacy of his thoughts. "Xander! Don't tell me you're going to cut me out and go around killing with her!"
But then... BURNING.
After taking the attack, Riley sags against Xander for a moment, before Magilou sweeps him away with the shikigami. He lands on his back, his full weight slamming against the fresh burns with such a shock of pain that his vision goes blank for a moment as he gives a gasp.
Sight returns in stages, and he slowly pushes himself onto his side. The ground stirs beneath his hands, and a polearm slowly emerges from the earth. He grasps onto it, letting it lift him onto his feet as it rises up, though he leans heavily against it.
It is a dark weapon, glowing with with magenta sigils. It puts off the very breath of death itself, with an aura that carries with it the chilling whisper of the end.
It is, also, a shovel.
"I think it's time to put you in your grave," he says to Magilou, his voice quiet and a bit ragged.
A red line extends from the shovel to her feet, and the ground beneath her softens like quicksand, as thorny vines from the Blood Garden grasp at her legs, thorns ready to pierce and carnivorous flowers trying to drink their fill of her blood as they pull her downward.
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Magilou with Your Funeral! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Disease expired! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Magilou guards a hit from Riley Arwell's Your Funeral for 152 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Entangle applied to Magilou! GS: Magilou activates Guard bonus and Arcane Font! GS: Magilou enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Sure," Magilou agrees with Xander, easily, "you'll be great at it, once you lose him."
Her smile is eternity, "... just like her."
In the violence which follows, she does not explain. (Neither does she offer to ditch Riley and go killing with Xander, because if Bienfu ever gave her crap about replacement goldfish, she'd die on the spot.)
Margaret has no blasts, and Magilou is ALL blasts. They must use White and Black magic respectively, right...?
"Why, I'm also a wise sorceress," Magilou agrees, "it's a broad category, don't you think? Jack, though, Jack," she taps her hand to her chin, thoughtfully, a big 'HMM,' "I don't know that I had a cousin named Jack."
Had?
"I might have had a grandson like that, though."
Oh, right, Magilou is an elf too. She's probably cheating on the age metric.
Margaret sends out a signal, but Magilou's backup is ensconced entirely within Magilou.
She's terribly cheerful, as she hits on their weakest points. Separating them, even though they're basically married: it's terribly unkind. She's just as enthused as Riley pulls out such a weapon of unholy might, roiling with dark power. Not Malevolent power, though, which is interesting, to a Lunar native.
"A shovel! Finally! Everyone keeps telling me to 'Dig', but no one ever hands those out!" Magilou claps her hands together, only to hear Riley's quiet remark. "Ohhh," she simpers, sympathetic, her grin gloriously Backpfeifengesicht. "I made you mad, huh..?"
The lines extend, and the next time Magilou repeats that sound, it isn't quite so mocking: "Huh." A step back, another -- and, "wait a second hang on gah!", she isn't nearly fast enough on that cut leg to escape the shifting sands. Her hands plane outwards, and the two shikigami she holds lengthen to tether her at either end of her antlion's pit, but that does little to help the way those vines coil around her legs.
"Oh no," she cries, in perfect melodrama, "is this the end of Mazhigigika Miludin do Din Nolurun Dou?!"
It's totally disconnected from the way her blood is draining from her legs, away from her. That lightheadedness of blood loss... and it must hurt, of course.
It's got to hurt.
It just makes her --
laugh.
Magilou starts laughing, cackling even as her handholds sink in the yawning earth. Sinking down, precariously, until the humour of the situation lifts long enough for her to say:
"Spell Absorber."
It's a flash, purple and white and blue almost like little butterflies, coming into herself, and she glows a bright, bright white...
... as Riley's dark magics are taken, drawn into her, inexorably drained into the endless abyss of Magilou.
GS: Magilou spends 1 Combo on Interrupt! GS: Magilou has attacked Riley Arwell with Spell Absorber! GS: Magilou enters a Counter stance! GS: Magilou takes 27 damage from Poison! GS: Poison expired! GS: Magilou has completed her action. <Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
Margaret can of course see Xander - the moonlight is clear to say nothing of magical auras and so forth - but she is not, at present, underneath any of her signature speed-enhancement enchantments. And so her leap backwards is not enhanced, and he gets several passing snicker-snacks before she can scoop up her kusarigama and
SHING!
... OK, his sickle is way bigger. But it looks cool. And the curved blades throw sparks before Margaret rolls clear, or at least past easy step-and-strike reach...
This entire festival of mishaps, Margaret thinks as her ear makes another iron-spike twinge of pain and drips more blood, could have been avoided if--
... Actually, Margaret reasons, it probably could not. They might be able to prey upon condemned criminals under this strange and florid curse, she reasons. But past that...
It's a tough go, really, Margaret thinks, before she looks upwards and says, "Is that a SHOVEL?" before adding with sudden haste, "LOOK OUT!"
And then she simply takes it.
Falling, absorbing; gathering the energy - Margaret feels this tug at her own enchantments, a subtle gravity on her boots and the ring on her hand even if it is not a Consumption or a Seizure. Her eyes turn towards the murderous men and then back to Magilou, to whom she says, "Not if I have anything to say about it." At which point -
Dash!
SCOOP?
And then Margaret, clutching Magilou to her chest, raises her ring-bearing hand aloft. The pearly gem gleams sea green and
yeah
that's why she can dash jump
someone get a lightsaber
The effort, and perhaps the burden of Magilou, makes this take three 'dashes' before Margaret reaches the top of another pillar, whereupon she slaps a palm atop Magilou's largest shovel-inflicted injury and shouts down, "YOU'D BETTER THANK YOUR LUCKY CUCCOS, KILLERS!"
"Relish the time you have remaining! Within the minute my HOUNDS OF HELL will be here and they shall carve you up like so much rat meat. And it's too damn bad because if Dolly had been here instead of me - why, you'd be dead already, and your victims would live!" Her lip curls. "Any LAST WORDS, lads? They know enough - they might slay you before you even see them!"
MEANWHILE AT THE HOUNDS OF HELL:
They are jogging at their accelerated, 'thirty miles per hour and it is in fact a vigorous jog' pace, crackling with lightning from the invocation known as 'Thunder Road'. Dolly (whose face is caked in white paint, perhaps earning her title) is holding her healer's staff desperately, her cloak's hood flapping in the wind.
"Come on--!! It's a dragon or something--!!"
The signal got slightly garbled. But why? A quirk of Spiran geology?
GS: Margaret has attacked Magilou with A Dream of Flight! GS: Margaret has gained 1 Combo! GS: Burst expired! GS: Margaret has completed her action. GS: Magilou accepts Margaret's A Dream of Flight for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Entangle removed!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"You'll be great at it, once you lose him."
Xander meets Magilou's smile without flinching as the fun house mirror he's been looking into shatters. If she aimed for his heart, Xander knows -- or believes -- she's missed entirely. And yet there's something deeply wounding in that. But that's how it is, isn't it? It's hard to take aim at what's already been broken.
"We're basically married!"
... And then Xander responds to that with another one of his growls. And when Riley accuses him of running off with 'her', the hair on Xander's neck stands up. "Don't make it sound sordid!" And maybe he's feeling guilty about all of that after Riley ends up nearly burning alive for him.
Much as Xander would prefer to kill these two witches both (and don't, he tells himself, focus too much on that word, on claiming to be a witch, of home and of learning every illusion and trick he has up his sleeve) and any company they would call, his injuries and Riley's are adding up. Where Riley considers running, Xander starts trying to piece together every possible way he could still spill their blood against the earth.
Magilou's cackling madly and drinking in Valmar's dark energy from Riley's stupid fucking shovel while Margaret is threatening them with her company arriving. Xander sets his jaw.
If they can't finish this, it's over...!
He dashes for Magilou, leaving a trail of blood and blossoms in his wake. But it's not with Valmar's power he strikes. It's with another one of his daggers, lunging at her to drive the blade into her chest before she can, he hopes, use any of what she consumed back at the one who fed her with it.
GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Magilou with No Surrender! GS: Xander Lovell assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: COUNTER! Magilou counterattacks Xander Lovell with Counter Attack! GS: Magilou guards a hit from Xander Lovell's No Surrender for 33 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Magilou enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Magilou's Counter Attack for 118 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Oh, Magilou thinks, in the morass: that Margaret warned me. That's sweet. It must be nice to care about things like that.
Magilou... doesn't.
Certainly she sounds as if she does. She cries out with all the vim and vigour of a thespian in her prime. She is astoundingly expressive, amazingly alive, and it's all. so. fake.
She isn't BEARING THROUGH the pain of her leg, the pain of her arm, the pain of remembering, the pain of familiarity. That implies that Magilou feels the pain, and ignores it. Rather Magilou does not feel it at all; feels nothing at all. Nothing compounding into nothing, as each pain layers onto the next. She is not connected to her nerves, shivering and prickling. She is an island unto herself, apart from herself, perfect and alone.
She does have some talent, after all.
If she could feel anything at all, as she consumes Valmar's magic, negates it with the force of her own power, she'd have to say it's... self-disgust.
It's easy to say that's a function of the magic she's absorbing. Easy, but wrong. Valmar's magic of course is an unpleasant thing to absorb, but the power of Spell Absorber is only partly taking; it is also negation.
Negation which lets Margaret swoop in without being caught by the same sink-trap as Magilou.
Magilou doesn't quite realise she's been rescued for a few moments, though. One moment she's sinking into despair, and observing that from the outside it's really quite funny; the next she's -- scooped up -- and all 5'2" of her suddenly seems far less intimidating when she's not on her own two feet.
Also they are dashing through the air. Note to self: investigate that later? Yeah, Magilou is just going to have to put that on the 'things for later' pile.
A little blearily, she mutters to herself: "... 'Hounds of Hell'... man, that's good..."
Finally her mind catches up to the fact that someone RESCUED her, and laughter rips out of Magilou's throat. "Hey, hey, don't get so handsy on the first date!" She blusters, in the wake of Margaret healing her leg. (Thorns fall away, denied the blood they still wished to take.) "Geez, you'd think I was dying or something!"
(She was dying. That was what was happening there. Riley was killing Magilou. That is just a factual statement Magilou has framed as a joke.)
She manages to wriggle out of Margaret's arms, though, astoundingly, she pats her on the arm before she steps away -- well, maybe that's not quite so astounding, she might have been worried her legs wouldn't work after that meeting with those vines. Or maybe Magilou is flirting, because Magilou cannot be stopped. "But hey, nice job flaunting gravity back there. Breakin' the law!" This is probably as close to gratitude as Magilou is going to get, no matter how much Margaret's intervention has brought her back to what passes for an even keel.
(That's because Riley did not succeed in burying her six feet under, obviously. Pay attention, she already explained this!!)
"But hey, trust me, you're gonna love this. Oh -- and I can do that, too!" Magilou... cannot actually dash jump. What she can do is elongate one of her shikigami dolls, jump on top, and... and...
surf it down the pillar on a current of air.
Who let Magilou fly? Who would do this?
Why she would bring herself back down into the pit of vipers, as well, is an open question which scholars have surely debated for centuries. Down and down, and Xander charges for her, and Magilou --
It's a strange mirror of what he did, really. So much that he might expect her to toss her shikigami aside, in the middle of her descent into him, and appear at his backside for a sudden sneak attack. Perhaps more alarming is the fact that she does not do that: he charges with his knife, and she runs into him, head-on, like a game of chicken --
The noise of a knife squelching into a shoulder is precisely that. It's damp and meaty and there's a thud at the end.
Magilou, grinning like a madman, does not scream or cry out or even go, 'oof', the way anyone is really supposed to.
Instead, she says: "Calamity Flare"
It's not a very heroic name for an attack.
It turns out that charging Xander only put him at the epicentre, as if he was the one being trapped in the first place. Valmar's stolen strength becomes flame, roaring high into a tidal wave, rising five, ten, fifteen feet into the air. It begins at her -- and therefore at HIM -- but that is not its ending.
No: it fans out, grows larger and wider and broader, and Riley isn't safe, either. It is a pyre to cook their very bones, roaring in their ears and their throats, too hot and too dry, a consumptive conflagration.
Magilou looks thrilled.
GS: Magilou has activated a Force Action! GS: Magilou has activated a Force Action! GS: Magilou has attacked Xander Lovell with Calamity Flare! GS: Magilou has attacked Riley Arwell with Calamity Flare! GS: Magilou has gained 1 Combo! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Gamble: Lowest! Xander Lovell guards a hit from Magilou's Calamity Flare for 97 hit points! GS: Xander Lovell has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight! GS: Gamble: Very High! Riley Arwell takes a solid hit from Magilou's Calamity Flare for 268 hit points! GS: Riley Arwell activates Sufferer! GS: Riley Arwell has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Don't make it sound sordid!
"It doesn't have to be sordid to be abandonment!"
A grave is opened. Riley watches blankly as Magilou keeps herself from being pulled into the earth long enough to slurp up his magic.
"...the grave got sucked into you," he breathes, with a weary blend of dissappointment and wonder. "I've never seen that before."
Any LAST WORDS, lads?
"It was... nice seeing you again?"
Nothing about this is nice. His back is screaming. He can barely hold himself up. Maybe her company is about to show up and kill them like she said. But he gives a hopeful look to Xander that he intends for him to interpret as 'maybe we should cut our losses and run away?'
Instead, Xander rushes in.
"X-xander, dammit, I can't get us out of here if you fall...!"
Magilou unleashes the power she collected into a massive wall of fire. "Xander!!" Riley finds a burst of strength and rushes toward him, but this time the fire is coming for him, too. He presses on as the flames surround him, no clear goal except to reach Xander. Maybe die together if that's all that's left.
He doesn't quite make it, collapsing at his feet as he draws close.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
It wouldn't be the first time Xander's recklessness threw him directly into the worst position possible. He can tell by the look on Magilou face: he's already fucked up.
The fire erupts, and Xander would scream if it wasn't for the heat stealing the voice from his throat. Flames lash into his pale flesh, threatening to devour him, and still he thinks, fuck them, fuck this, he's not going to die. Determination keeps him on his feet, even when his quivering grip is too weak to twist the knife in Magilou's shoulder.
But he hears Riley calling out, and his blood, despite the hell around him, goes cold in his veins, time frozen.
"You'll be great at it, once you lose him."
No.
No, you don't understand. None of them understand. Even Riley, that -- that idiot, that absolute moron, doesn't get it.
There isn't a Xander without Riley.
A flower bursts from the ground under Xander's feet, the giant petals wrapping around him as a cocooned shield, though it would be utterly unseen in all the fire. Any natural flower would burn in these flames instantly, but the blood red blossom holds firmer against the fire, fueled by the same darkness. The edges are eaten away, and the heat is still there, agonizing, impossible to breathe, even if he hasn't got Magilou's localized apocalypse directly devouring his pale flesh.
He coughs, feeling like he's swallowed brambles and like his lips are splitting apart, and reaches out to gather Riley's fallen body into it. Xander takes his fanged teeth to his own wrist, spilling blood onto the burning ground.
Thorns and brambles spill out from the ground around him, forming a wall of cursed vegetation. Thick smoke rises, carrying an unnatural scent of death and obfuscating all visibility. Every thorn and flower Xander conjured will have burnt away to ash by the time it's all over.
But the Fangs of Valmar are no longer anywhere to be seen.
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
"Well now you're just buttering me up," Margaret tells Magilou, as she looks warily down to the two dark fighters. She does not clarify to which, although Magilou soon enough channels her spiritual antecedent - the cat - and escapes. Margaret does not force her -- SHE is rather woozy herself.
Why am I going like this? I could just call up Starlight Express and run back, Margaret thinks.
...
She has no good internal answer.
"ALTHENA'S LOCKS," Margaret swears in the face of the C A L A M I T Y F L A R E. She even falls off the damn pillar, although she, too, avoids crashing into the ground. By the time she has recovered, the two young men have clasped each other and Xander is erupting in the brambles and flames and --
-- they're gone.
It's just her, Magilou, and the dead people.
AND...
They come up terribly quickly, especially if you're used to things moving at speed of foot or chocobo or strong wind. Dolly is ahead of the two men who are still carrying visible brass instruments, although one of them has a hunter's bow out and a nocked arrow with a barbed head. (The other appears to be willing to use the trumpet direct, or had some other method.) All of them are wearing cheap garb suitable for chinpira in Guild Galad, in purple. Dolly has her cloak.
"Goddess! You're spraying blood everywhere!" Dolly exclaims.
"Am I?" Margaret says, looking over her shoulder. She also points at Magilou: "Heal her please."
Dolly looks at Magilou with visible suspicion. "But why?"
"Saved my life, what," Margaret says, still trying to figure out if she is in fact SPRAYING blood anywhere.
Dolly raises up her stick.
* HP Restored!
Margaret snaps her fingers at the guys with the brass, one of whom provides her with her over-decorated pipe and some sort of shredded plant matter. After igniting it and taking an enormous hit that seems to soothe her tension, Dolly turns to face Margaret and raises up the stick.
* HP Restored!
"I suppose you're going the other way," Margaret says, "but I was thinking of sitting down for a while and you're welcome to join us."
"You want a meat bun?" offers the guy with the saxophone.
"Do any of you have a shovel?" Margaret asks.