2021-06-19: You Can (Not) Advance
- Log: You Can (Not) Advance
- Cast: Georg Heldalf, Seraph Harmaus, Day Muirwall, White Knight Leo, Seraph Boudicca, Marivel Armitage, Hilde, Kaguya, Seraph Ragnell, Margaret, Pearl, Hiro, Seraph Lanval, Ivan, Gwen Whitlock, Brad Evans
- Where: Mount Gagazet
- Date: June 19, 2021
- Summary: Some help isn't what it seems... ...and sometimes, things never change. The Guard is faced with a difficult moral decision, as the situation at the mountain turns from bad to worse.
<Pose Tracker> Georg Heldalf has posed.
The skies over Gagazet have smoke in them, from where spells and the occasional ARM have been fired. The grounds are scattered with wounded and dead, from both sides. The timely arrival of Drifters and Althena's Guard stopped what should have been a massacre of the Ronso.
"Yenke!" Biran Ronso bellows, as he spins about -- and sends a massive, meaty punch into Biggs Guado. The armored Guado Guardian is hurled backward, his body thrown back, and he rolls a few times. Biran looks down at him, eyes blazing. Earth, in the distance, rises up into the Guado ranks from Leo's command. Biran continues speaking to his comrade. "We seem to be holding!"
"We are not small and weak... we are like Kimahri!" Yenke Ronso answers, before he whips out a throwing axe. He throws it -- and the weapon goes spinning through the air, only to strike into (and brutally split) the head of another Guado Guardian, who drops.
The Guado, indeed, are faltering. They start to back away -- Gon's fall, perhaps, breaking their spirit more than the monstrous Seymour's fate -- and move back towards the valley near the entrance to Mount Gagazet. They hold, though -- and a trio hold their hands up, a fiend summoning. Pyreflies swirl, and take form: forming the thick muscle, the fierce black mane, and the terrible open maw of a behemoth. It roars, shaking the whole valley.
"By Yevon..." Kelk whispers. "That--"
"Look!" Yenke shouts. "More of them come! More otherworlders!"
He points -- and they can be seen. A line of charging cavalry, mounted atop destriers not unlike the ones that Day rode into battle. They come rushing in, and a fighter breaks from their lead: Georg Heldalf, wearing black steel plate and red coat, which flaps after him. His halberd is swung free, as he charges forward. He cries out, loudly:
"ROLANCE!"
And then he swings his weapon. It plunges into the Behemoth -- drags along as he charges along it -- and then, with a cry, a blast of golden light explodes out. It tears out, forming the head of a lion, and the fiend explodes into so many pyreflies. Heldalf rushes ahead, with a stern look on his face on his face. "Today, we break the back of the Guado! We break the backs of the traitors!"
And, indeed, they come.
A line of soldiers charges after him. They each have greatbows, and each have an arrow nocked. As one, with a cry, they raise them. As they run, their horses bounce -- and there's a flash view of something blue. Then, the arrows loose. They fly up, over the Guado.
And then down towards the Ronso.
Biran cries out in sharp surprise, shoving Maester Kelk back -- and then three arrows strike him. Two in the chest; a third in the neck, buried deep. Red blood spills out, his mouth working. The arrow has blue-dyed feathers fletched into it.
Hyland blue.
As do all the arrows, on a field of fallen Ronso. Yenke turns from Biran, as his friend chokes on his own blood, and looks back at them -- and roars with anguish and sorrow, wordlessly.
One of the Rolance soldiers -- and then another, and another -- tosses something down onto the valley's ground. Corpses, clad in Hyland blue.
Heldalf looks at Leo. His expression is empty -- and grim. "Leo... after our failure. After the losses we have suffered. After we were broken. We must be reforged."
Biran's corpse crumples forward, in a heap.
"Sacrifices must fuel the fire of that forge."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Always, always, it keeps on about it," Harmaus sighs, as Boudicca brings up the fact of the death of his previous body, as if it doesn't trouble him in the slightest. "Would die, soon enough. Mortals live but short lives, yes? Sooner it learns this, the better!"
The man is dead.
And Harmaus would do it again, if he had but the time to crush another to his will.
"Its right?! It is but a child, understanding nothing! It has no room to judge!" snarls the Seraph from within that body, mere moments before hurling that knife.
"Death? Tcha. My goal is not death! If some must die, yes, yes, let them die! But not death--"
Hilde raises her shield, glowing now with its own light.
'Go on', Boudicca had said to him. 'Come out'.
There is nowhere for him to go. Instead, devoid of all weapons save that still glowing hand, Harmaus stretches his sole functioning arm out wide, as if to embrace her as she comes for him.
There is an almost fluorescent explosion of heatless light as her shield impacts his body, as if the tomato-plant figure had become a sort of active magical bomb.
This is not terribly far from the truth.
The body lies limp on the ground in the aftermath, unmoving.
Then the air stirs above it, shimmering with milky green-purple light. Tail lashing, the true form of the Seraph that had animated the body appears atop it, yellow eyes narrowed to slits.
"It takes its time..." he murmurs cryptically, seemingly holding his ground. His gaze turns elsewhere.
Cats don't smile. They don't have the muscles for it -- and even though Harmaus is a Seraph, the body takes its constraints from that form. Still... does he seem almost pleased, squinting his eyes, when the cry of 'Rolance!' echoes through the air?
And then, he's gone, off and trotting towards the man leading the charge.
"Ah. Heldalf. Here at last, I sees. Just as promised, yes?"
...What game has the Seraph been playing?
<Pose Tracker> Georg Heldalf has posed.
"It shall be so, Seraph Harmaus," Heldalf says. He turns his head, his empty eyes regarding Harmaus for a moment. His eyes narrow -- and then he looks back to the others.
"You did well. Now, to finish this."
<Pose Tracker> Day Muirwall has posed.
'Sacrifices must be made to fuel the fire of that forge.'
Ronso fall, sprouting arrows fletched in Hyland blue. In the middle of it all, Day Muirwall, Knight of the Church, is left staring with growing horror as he realizes what's happening.
"Lord Heldalf," he breathes, his eyes growing wide. "This is... that you of all men could...."
Not for the first time recently, but more keenly than ever, his nature comes home to grab him by the throat. For all that he has walked away from his inheritance, he is still Daillan Muirwall V, son of the late Margrave Armeric IV, sister to the current Margravine Lucilla of Muirwall, Duchess of Redwater by marriage. A noble of Rolance by birth. A noble who trained in the style of swordsplay Heldalf pioneered - who viewed him as a hero, albeit from afar.
And now he's watching Heldalf commit a war crime. A war crime the great hero clearly expects Day himself to go along with.
Day swallows a lump in his throat - and he throws his hair back with a scowl as he makes his choice. It is no choice at all. He takes a step forward. "The Knights of Althena will not stand for this," he declares, raising his shield as Seraph Vesna brings his horse around to his side. He reaches for his warhorn. "Cardinal Forton... Sister Domitia... and now this...! No more! No more tarnishing Rolance's good name!" He raises his voice. "KNIGHTS! TO ARMS!"
Nothing happens. Day looks back over his shoulder with a look of horror. "Are- are you meaning to tell me--"
[BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDhUB2kWkOo]
Of the dozen knights on the field, the other 11 are still standing. None of them form up. They've all drawn weapons, but they're not moving into any kind of formation. Indeed, two of them move forward, one - an older man with a heavy beard and a facial scar - pushing his visor up. "It would have been better if you had fallen during the battle outside Luca," the knight says grimly, hefting a huge war axe in both hands.
"Sir Goran," Day begins, eyes widening with realization as the other knights turn towards him with drawn weapons.
"I'm sorry," Goran answers, only the faintest hint of regret colouring purposeful stoicism. "Duke Moregal sends his regards." He advances and raises his axe for a single fatal blow.
And drops it with a sudden rasp of steel as Day abruptly runs him through the chest.
"I'm sorry too," Day whispers. Tears stand in his eyes, but he blinks through them. He knows all too well what's happening.
Duke Moregal of Redwater is a peer of Rolance - a particularly unscrupulous and villainous one. More than that, he's a nobleman who claims Day's inheritance through marriage to his sister. And the best way to deal with someone holding a strong claim to your title - especially one you claim by jure uxoris - is to eliminate the claimant.
The ensuing melee is short and brutal. All at once, the other knights in Day's retinue turn on him by force of arms. Only his skill and the the fact that Seraph Vesna is hurling spells from astride Guingryph keeps Day from being overwhelmed and cut down immediately by the Knights of Rolance he's been leading until now.
Day's so preoccupied with a million anguished that it takes him a moment to notice that only one other knight - an elegant woman with flowing blonde hair and a heavy mace - has taken his side.
Dame Orielle, he realizes. The only one who came here as a peasant.
In the heat of the moment, he's not sure if that gives him relief or makes him all the more sick to his stomach.
DC: You switch forms to The Heretic Son! DC: Seraph Harmaus switches forms to The Heretic Son!
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Leo kneels in the snow of Mount Gagazet, his homespun Spiran cloak blowing in the wind. He took grievous wounds fighting Seymour Guado, and likely wouldn't be conscious--and, possibly, alive--if not for the efforts of Mariel and Ivan. As the Guado retreated, Leo had sent them on their way with a rolling wave of earth.
And now, the unmistakable sounds of thundering hooves fill the air. Leo's ears swivel towards the noise. He blinks, shakes his head--as if trying to confirm that he's really seeing a unit of Rolance cavalry here, months after the war ended. It takes effort, but Leo forces himself to his feet. "General, wait--!" he calls out. He can see Heldalf from here, and he sees those arrows. He knows Heldalf has... changed from the man he knew as a boy, but slaughtering an army in retreat is too far. The White Knight raises his hands.
Arrows arc high overhead. Time slows to a crawl as Leo realizes they weren't meant for the Guado at all. His mouth falls open. Horror squeezes his heart like a vise. He watches as the first volley hits home, a sickening tension creeping up his throat. His mouth moves as he turns to face the man who taught him, but he has no words. Again, it feels like someone's driven a knife into his back, and twisted it.
"General," Leo finally says, his voice trembling. "I..." He looks past Heldalf, sees the soldiers dropping the corpses of Hyland soldiers on the ground like refuse. "I..."
'Sacrifices must fuel the fire of that forge.'
Leo remembers. He remembers Azado, and Mi'ihen, and Luca, and the Highroad. He remembers watching through a Sphere as the rot within Yevon was laid bare. 'Sacrifices', all of them.
Slowly, Leo pushes himself upright, meets his mentor's eyes. Everything else has fallen away--it might as well just be the two of them on this battlefield. "You intend to frame Hyland for this," he says. It's a statement, not a question. "This... atrocity. General, Master Heldalf--this place--"
Leo dips into his last, desperate reserves of strength. In a flash, his blade is in his hands. "This world has seen enough of your sacrifice! Guards, to me!"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"I may be young, but this -- this I believe." Boudicca may speak defiance, but for those key, horrible moments, she is pinned to the board by that knife leaking light. She is witness to that explosion which is Harmaus, but it's not her who drags him out of it.
It's -- "Hilde, no!"
Finally she manages to throw the dagger from her chest, tonfa gesturing out to either side of her; she rushes to the side of the woman, such a commendable shield, and gathers her up, rushing away from what seems for all the world like a monster's corpse.
She doesn't trust how dead it looks. She has good reason not to.
"The world exhales," she incants, Seraphic glyph around them as she places a hand to Hilde, eyes taken by the green glow of wind magics. "Soothing Breeze!" Settling back in a crouch, she starts: "Hilde..."
But she has no time to finish that thought, as the cavalry arrives. A word -- 'ROLANCE!' -- and Boudicca stiffens, hand to her knee as she turns to face the same thing the true Harmaus watches with such satisfaction.
She is not so satisfied, still so young.
Blood chokes the rest of him, Biran, who fought so bravely. Blanch her face as she watches, frozen to place; all locked up, as Vesna's vessel is betrayed, she can offer him no assistance, either.
She can hear Leo calling for solidarity. After so much time, she might even have been able to join him, again.
But she can't move.
War has come again, deserters to the mountains.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel's eyes widen as--the unthinkable happens.
Well, all too thinkable. All too predictable. not predictable in the sense that Marivel knew this was coming--she certainly did not--but predictable in how readily humanity turns on each other.
Her gaze slants towards Harmaus. Or creatures that aren't quite human at all. It's the same. IF her people still existed, Marivel believes more than ever, they certainly would be doing the same exact bullshit by now. Old lessons would have been long forgotten by now. The fresh wounds inflicted upon these worlds, though, they would be remembered forever and ever and nobody would ever be allowed to forget about the crimes. Never the crimes.
The Crimson Noble closes her eyes.
Of course, Marivel never thought she herself was innocent. "It seems the only innocence left belongs to the extinct. If you wish to behave as dogs do--"
She is wounded but there is a flicker of TIME that seems to revert Marivel's condition back mostly to what it was before the initial battle. She seems winded after doing it--a particularly potent Canceller.
Lord Phareman of Alderdownsford is a patient man. Rather than try to outmatch Day in swordplay, he waits for an opportunity, an open guard. When he thinks he sees it--
---a Hound as if from Hell leaps out from Marivel as she releases it. A creature of shadow with sharp teeth that blends into the natural patches of darkness that shimmy between the ground. It tackles Lord Phareman mid strike, throws the startled and now screaming noble into the air and catches him back between its fangs.
"Please, no, please. Please no...! Not like this--this was supposed to be--" Lord Phareman begs.
Before the wolf clenches its jaws and rips the young nobleman into half. The blood seems to find itself drawn into the hound, even here, leaving a significantly tidier mess than this had any right ot be.
"Humans turning on one another like beasts is far more ancient than I am." Marivel says. "But to think that so few of you, such a small number... had even a speck of honor."
She raises her hand to her head and says, "Children fighting with sharpened sticks." She says. "But I've brought a Brad."
Into her radio she says, "It's time for these dogs to meet some wolves."
She anticipates Brad will know what to do from there without further direction. That's the nice thing about Brad. He's an adult and, as such, does not need Marivel supervision.
She makes her way towards White Knight Leo, fully intent on protecting him from any other treachery. It's the same technique as what she did yesterday, pressing a brief hand upon Leo to augment his defenses and power.
"I'm sorry, Leo. Day. That it ended up like this."
This is kind of awkward for her plan A too but she'll worry about that later. Her Plan B seems more reliable lately anyway.
"Are you too a seeker of 'truth'?" Marivel says. "Or is this something else?"
GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked White Knight Leo with Booster! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
The plant body housing a Seraph explodes. Hilde is hurled away... but rather than being sent crashing to the ground, she is gathered up protectively by Boudicca. The wind gathered around her, easing her pain. Hilde exhales.
"...You have my gratitude, Lady Boudicca..." She murmurs. She stills feels drained... but it helps.
And then, she hears a sound. 'More otherworlders.' Hilde turns toward the sound of cavalry to see Georg Heldalf, the enemy of her people, accompanying by mounted Rolancian soldiers. She is not happy to see him, but if he's here to aid them...
...For a moment she thinks that may be the case, as they combat the Guado's fiends. But then they fire - they fire at the Ronso. Hilde's eyes open wide. Blue arrows - Hyland arrows. She's confused for a moment... at least until corpses clad in the colors of Hyland are thrown down. Each body that hits the ground is like a sword being thrust into her chest. Hilde's eyes open wide, the breath stolen from her throat. She stares in disbelief... and then Heldalf speaks. Her eyes snap to him.
BUTCHER!" Hilde cries out, forcing herself to her feet. She feels drained completely, but adrenaline forces her forward even still. A blue light suffuses her body, as if the flames of her conviction, set ablaze by Heldalf's treachery, are the only things pushing her forward. She moves, her eyes set on Georg Heldalf - on the enemy of her people.
She sees, in the distance, Day being turned upon by his men. She hears Leo's words to Heldalf, disbelief and then conviction. This, she dimly registers. All else is as white noise to her - the rest of the world may as well not exist. She reaches up, grasping her cloak tattered by the battles. She tears it off and casts it aside, revealing underneath the armor of a proud knight of Hyland.
"How dare you!? How dare you!? My people, nor the Ronso, are not sacrifices to fuel your flames! This will not stand! If you wish to be reforged, then let it be at the end of my blade!" To emphasize this point, she points her blade defiantly at Heldalf, fury in her eyes.
It takes everything she has to stop herself from simply trying to plant it in his chest. But even now, with her fury at its highest, her honor demands she first challenge him directly.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Hyland forces should have been long gone from this place. Kaguya had business of her own remaining in Spira--and in Aquvy--but just now, a few loose ends failed to add up... and so she's been walking the Calm Lands, emerging from the ravine again where she'd once left supplies and up towards the peaks of sacred Mt. Gagazet. The first sign of something wrong was the army present that she came up behind... but not the only.
The Behemoth. The darkness in the skies. And then--
'ROLANCE!'
Kaguya looks upon the bodies, with her superior Veruni vision. She looks upon faces she'd searched for, looks upon uniforms and insignias she knew. Biran falls... and so do knights of Hyland. Knights who shouldn't have ever been here in the first place.
A small woman in white and green steps forward, Hyland blue marking her own colors. She steps forward, and forward, looking to Seraph Harmaus, another failing of hers. Biran has toppled....
"TRAITORS!" Kaguya roars in a voice that echoes through the valley, rage and pain both causing her to half-stumble as she looks to faces she knew.
"You--" Kaguya throws her arms wide, shouts, "You were sent here as a united Glenwood, for your Goddess, and you can only wait this long to turn on one another again!? What kind of monsters are you?"
But Leo--precious, good Leo.... "Yeah," she says, calling out to him. "White Knight, Duchess Alathfar here to back you up!" She spots Marivel there... "I'll handle his Seraph buddy. Armitage! You let my Knight get killed off and I'll be real pissed at you!"
Kaguya kneels down, reaching into her bag, and starts to cobble together bits and bobs of machinery until she holds up a mass of glowing plastic and metal, glass lights within gleaming green.
She hurls it forward and it blink blink blink blinks until it sails straight for Harmaus and perhaps even Heldalf talking with him--and bursts into green cloud of smoke and fire.
Kaguya steps up behind Boudicca then, reaches out and puts a hand on her arm. "Hey there, big lady. Breathe."
GS: Kaguya has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Bomb That Cat! GS: Kaguya has gained 1 Combo! GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
"Mm, mm, mm. Well, ain't this a hell of a sight."
That's Ragnell, strolling up almost casually from the rear with Hiro and Gwen, pulling up the edge of her cowboy hat to get a better look at the slaughter in progress--and how it immediately rips Althena's Guard apart. Her gaze takes the whole thing in, then settles on Georg Heldalf (at whom she squints) and Harmaus atop his horrible, horrible tomato body (at whom she squints even harder).
"Doin' a genocide in the name o' th' Goddess... Looks like that bug up Althena's ass's crawled clear through her intestinal tract, up her throat, and out her mouth. Right, Mr. Vile Fiend?" she drawls at Hiro. She flashes a toothy grin over at Harmaus. "But obviously it's sanctioned, since we got Althena's most loyal servant Harmaus here. Mm, mm, *mm*. What's a wayward Seraph t' do?"
That's a joke, and one with a scalpel-sharp edge. She gives Gwen a slight nod and a subtle jut of her chin towards Boudicca, even as she's already drawing her paired pistols and pointing them over at Heldalf. From there, she focuses on him with a glinty-eyed smile.
"Now then. I wonder what *your* real goal is here, General? Guess I'll have t' shoot you a few times to find out," she drawls, just before opening fire.
She pointedly ignores that her inquiry was not that different from Marivel's. Ms. Crimson Noble can stay RIGHT OVER THERE, THANKS.
GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Georg Heldalf with Twin Bullet! GS: Seraph Ragnell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Georg Heldalf takes a solid hit from Seraph Ragnell's Twin Bullet for 150 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
SO WHAT WAS UP WITH MARGARET, THE BLACK PEARL OF -- SOMEWHERE?
Well, the big thing about Margaret is that she loves her troops - her friends - in a very real sense, her family, depleted as they are. The project of she, and the greater body of the surviving Hounds (at this point heavily over-representing the beastmaster group, simply because they did not die as fast as Fast Attack and were not as widely spread out as the Runner Squad) had been to procure enough of the Elw teleporter keys to have everyone - NO EXCEPTIONS - get to Filgaia, outside, Margaret assumes, any plausible counterstrike or punishment for desertion.
The problem here, of course, is that in a real sense, therefore, *they were still in Spira*. As were the aforementioned Runner Squad, making use of the Hounds of Hell's exciting long-distance running enchantments to serve as swift couriers.
Those guys weren't able to just ditch out - or were unwilling - and besides which, Spira's still their problem. And so it is that there were eyes on Mt. Gagazet from a brush-heavy hillock nearby.
"... Jack?" says one of these people.
But not Margaret. Margaret has been watching with her ears cocked to let her grasp at least some of what is going on out there rhetorically, using cheap optical equipment bought in Guild Galad which is a minor revelation to her but not worth furhter consideration. Her jaw has been steadily tightening. She can't quite hear Heldalf *but she can read lips pretty well*, and that is when she snaps the binoculars in half.
"Enough of this," Margaret says, rising up to her feet with a flourish of a dun-colored tarp serving as a cloak. "I'm not going to sit here with my fingers up to the third joint in my nose in the face of this. Dolly, bring them round. I'm going on ahead."
Margaret raises up her fist, a pearline ring gleaming -- a moment later, in a cloud of darkness and thunder, she streaks forwards --
WHICH IS ALL PRELUDE TO WHAT HAPPENS NOW:
Which is that in a crackling burst of thunder, Margaret snaps forwards, having literally leap-frogged over the back of several people in the melee who had no idea what was happening due to linear motion at an unusual speed, and declaims, "LEO! You are not -"
Margaret is briefly stymied at Marivel, right near her, to whom she looks, and then double-looks, and then frowns, and then at last concludes, "Whatever."
"If you love sacrifice so much, why don't you go first!" Margaret retorts to Heldalf, with a wide-eyed glower that might not need much. But then from beneath her cloak she produces, first, a weapon, and then (as the chain unspools), a horn. Not of cow or bearcow, but brass - cheap, secondhand brass, but it DOES have a sound when she blows on it, along with a *potentially heretical but also potentially significant* short chord.
"This had better go better than last time, woman," Margaret says to Marivel, even as she hands the trumpet to her without looking. "Or I'll wear your half-sized guts for garters in whatever dried-out Hell your star has!"
GS: Margaret has attacked White Knight Leo with Premonition of Darkness! GS: Margaret has attacked Day Muirwall with Premonition of Darkness! GS: Margaret has gained 1 Combo! GS: Margaret has completed her action. GS: Day Muirwall accepts Margaret's Premonition of Darkness for 0 hit points! GS: Day Muirwall gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: White Knight Leo accepts Marivel Armitage's Booster for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield applied to White Knight Leo! GS: White Knight Leo accepts Margaret's Premonition of Darkness for 0 hit points! GS: White Knight Leo gains a Combo from Inspire! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Bomb That Cat for 123 hit points! GS: Cripple and Jam applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP!
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
As the arrows fly, the Aeon and Summoner who had charged in to harry the enemy fall back at speed, moving through air as though it was water, surging back to safety.
There aren't heroes. There are only the butchers and the lambs.
Some of the last words of Blue Master Lunn echo in her head as the Rolance armies slaughter indiscriminately. As one of Rolance's greatest 'Heroes' throws the corpses of supposed allies on the ground. Was that really how it was? It seemed like it. The Red Priestess was insane. The Black Wizard not bound by ethics. Her eyes turn to the White Knight... And he shouts his defiance.
Perhaps there's one.
Pearl leaps down from atop the sea serpent, which curls loosely around her, looking at the cat that was a tomato. "Interesting. Are you mastermind, or pawn?" He says Heldalf came as promised, and he had served Seymour, but...
Let's just say she had practice serving multiple masters. And betraying them.
Regardless, she new a threat. She raises her staff, and points it at Hrmaus. "Regardless, you are a threat and party to this. You would be best eliminated." A sphere of water starts to surround Harmaus, looking to encase and then crush the cat, before it dissipates.
She pretends not to notice that Kaguya is fighting the same opponent at this exact second. But she's sure she'll have questions too.
GS: Pearl has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Watera! GS: Pearl has gained 1 Combo! GS: Pearl has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Hiro crests the hill just in time to see Rolance's cavalry charge, with a legend in the lead. Leo's swordsmaster. "That's..."
And arrows of Hyland blue litter the Ronso ranks, cutting them down.
"... what..."
Hiro finds himself stunned. You see. He thought he knew war and all of its horrors. His mind locks up at the notion of how much worse it can get, when ambition drives one's actions.
"... how could they!?"
Hiro gives Ragnell this look of... it's hard to say, his expression is blank, but there's this smoulder of anger, "Is this really in the name of the Goddess?" He says with a look at the blue arrows.
Whatever the case... that's in pretty poor taste Ragnell! Though I'll forgive you..." Ruby pauses, "...If you shoot him enough to make him talk!"
Which Ragnell is going to do anyway, so maybe this is Ruby's way of saying she accepts her anyway?
Hiro then looks at Leo, and starts moving in his direction.
To do what? He doesn't know. His focus is on Leo. What he might have said in that moment isn't clear.
But he's just in time to hear Leo's call. His sword is halfway out of his sheath, as Leo gives him the reminder he needs, that the world is not such a dark place. Not when good people exist even in the worst of places.
Hiro begins to say something to Leo and Marivel, "Sorry we're..." And then pauses, he can't finish saying what he was saying. Not while the Ronso bodies are still warm within these cold foothills. "... I hope you don't mind some backup."
Only then does his sword leave his sheath, and he looks first at the menacing, meddling cat, gaze sharp - wondering what his game is here, and whether it's to get him to Althena, before then turning on Georg Heldalf. "You're the famous General Heldalf? The one who taught Leo swordplay?" There's a pause, as he seems to size him up, and after a moment, says quitely. "I expected more. Oh you're strong. I can tell... but..."
Hiro suddenly dashes in like a blur of footwork, bringing out his blade in a quick feint before bringing it down in a clanging blow with the flat, the burst of erupted force on impact meant to try and knock him off-balance, "... You've just proven you're not even half the man he is."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Seraph Lanval had been keeping a tight watch on things ever since the general crowd of Drifters have once again put more notice on developments regarding Spira and what may yet become of Obsession (with all hopes, of course, being 'it is destroyed and stays destroyed'). Even with Spira's natural spiritual ecosystem preventing Malevolence from getting too clumped up, there's still a major threat to Filgaia at play from here - and it's probably for the best he keeps a low profile until such time he can intervene. (He trusts Layna and Talise to do their parts, whatever their parts in this might be off-camera if any.)
When the betrayal happens by Georg Heldalf, there's that twinge of the very, very young Lanval who spent his formative years believing everything south of Meribus was this horrible Malevolence-filled wasteland (...in a spiritual sense, not entirely wrong) and made up his mind to become a Lord of the Land, but, that much and what transpired after five hundred odd years is well-documented.
"They're gonna do what they're gonna," comes Lanval's voice - speaking, in broad terms, of mortals. In a world where almost none can see or hear you, and your ability to influence them outside of raw bursts of elemental power are limited, that much is a truth as regards them - a bright aquamarine ball of light escaping from a well-hidden bottle in the snow as Seraph Lanval's form emerges not all that far off from the cat-shaped Light Seraph.
"But there ain't nothin' good 'bout eggin' 'em on ta do that," Lanval has a sip of his drinking gourd while a Kaguya bomb goes off a little too close to him for comfort. He opens up an eye half-lidded to the Veruni's declarations and her support of Boudicca in her time of emotional turmoil, and then - a growing sensation of powers of two worlds course through him. The Water of Filgaia, and his own nature as a Water Seraph, intertwine through a Seraphic Arte glyph underneath him... and then, with an extended hand, he mimes squeezing something with a finger.
Like a spritz bottle.
That is exactly what happens, as Harmaus gets sprayed like he were being disciplined.
GS: Hiro has attacked Georg Heldalf with Poe Sword! GS: Hiro has completed his action. GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Seraph Harmaus with No - Bad Seraph! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action. GS: Georg Heldalf guards a hit from Hiro's Poe Sword for 72 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Georg Heldalf gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
The forces of Rolance arrive, led by a man Ivan knows only by the fame of his exploits. Ivan isn't much for politics -- he couldn't begin to guess at their purpose for throwing themselves into this conflict as the battle is ending. He assumes it's to snatch some piece of the credit for saving the Ronso, until those arrows fly, too far and too high, and marked with the wrong colors. It's Leo who puts words to it that Ivan can get his head around.
You intend to frame Hyland for this.
Ivan gapes at him. "What?! They're going to slaughter everyone here just to make themselves look better when they start another war?"
It's not as if -- as one of his father's assassins -- he's any stranger to how lightly people with power will use others' lives as pawns in a political game to get more. But the sheer scale of this 'sacrifice' is staggering.
He hears a familiar drawl as Ragnell arrives, along with Hiro.
He gives them a nod that turns questioning and faintly nauseated at Ragnell's colorful metaphor. "Good to see you... I think?" Ivan says. Then he turns his attention to Heldalf, pointing his umbrella at him and releasing a golden burst of energy as it unfurls.
"You've made a mistake trying this. The only thing you'll sacrifice here is your reputation."
GS: Ivan has attacked Georg Heldalf with Umbrella Rebuke! GS: Ivan has completed his action. GS: Georg Heldalf guards a hit from Ivan's Umbrella Rebuke for 91 hit points! GS: Seraph Harmaus critically guards Pearl's Watera for 28 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Arcane Font! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's No - Bad Seraph for 100 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Charge!! You gain 35 FP! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
'Sacrifices must fuel the fire of that forge.'
What a time to arrive to the scene of what is undeniably a war crime.
The sight brings Gwen to bring her hat to her chest, pained tears flushing red her speckled cheeks. "... I don't know, Hiro." She sniffs, rubbing her red eyes along the sleeve of her winter coat. "But we're in a position to still keep things from goin' real nasty-like. We ain't Roland or Hyland, after all, we're the Vile Fiends. We ain't bound by loyalty or desperation. N' Leo.... I think he may appreciate some help, makin' the right decision."
Which is likely a better set of words to say than what Ragnell says, but Gwen isn't just trying to stifle her crying in that sleeve. .... Because that was kind of a hilarious image, and Gwen feels guilty already for imagining it, despite it snapping her out of her own fugue.
More importantly, people need their help, Boudicca among them, which Ragnell subtly nods to. Gwen gives Ragnell a nod back, her short curls long enough now to shift as she bobs her head. Moving to breaking away from the three, Gwen says, over her shoulder, "Y'all be good, eh?"
Gwen imagines there will be people who would call taking hints from Ragnell not such a great idea. Those people are likely the sort to hate any sort of spice in their food.
More seriously, Boudicca needs her help. Boudicca, who came to help Gwen in her hour of need.
Gwen pulls a pack of spices from under her vest, courtesy of Aunt Frea's newest batch of terrible chili creations, which she lobs like a baseball at the seraph.
"I need to go punish a *very bad kitty*."
GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Auntie Frea's Fire Chili Spice Special! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Auntie Frea's Fire Chili Spice Special for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Hex and Mute applied to Seraph Harmaus!
<Pose Tracker> Georg Heldalf has posed.
"I do. Hyland... it is a weak link in the chain of the Goddess. And the Goddess would send us to do her bidding. I know not what lies that snake Ghaleon has whispered to her -- I know not what squabbling the Four Heroes have done to make them weak. But a united Glenwood... is all that will save our lands, and blood is what oils the machinery of empire!" Heldalf says back to Leo, his voice only rising towards the end. His eyes narrow, as he sees Leo draw his blade.
He looks at Marivel, then cranes his neck to the side. "Truth will be written by pens. Reality by swords," Georg Heldalf says. He spins his halberd, Gaia Cleaver, up and grips it in both hands -- pole raised protectively across his body. He looks at Ragnell. "To bring about another war. The same end Rolance has always pursued."
He looks at Hilde, then, and lifts his chin. His countenance remains steely. "Your people? Your people are about to be nothing more than a footnote, when the next war is finished. Rethink your stance and shed these foolish notions!"
His eyes turn towards Kaguya -- then shakes his head once. "You would call me a traitor? Perhaps," he allows. "But this is necessity."
His head turns -- towards Margaret -- and he scowls sharply. "I think not. I save the sacrifices for others. I have made mine," he says, with a rumble. Then, he turns his head, and looks down at Hiro. He nods once. "I did. And others, too -- and I see that some lessons... may not have been absorbed."
Ragnell's bullet fires, the round slamming into the black steel plate. Sparks fly from where it hits, a deep scratch left. His head tilts to the side -- his eyes narrow -- and then he bellows out: "WE BEGIN!"
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XSuoy7FpDw
He swings up Gaia Cleaver, the weapon's long haft catching Hiro's sword, the impact knocking the plate-wearing man backward... but not down to his feet. "Hngh!" he grunts. "I see that you have some strength in you!"
He turns, then, and swings up his weapon -- cutting through the golden burst of light from Ivan's burst of light. "Ah," he says. "Duke Yemelin's whelp. One of them, at least. You have done well, boy -- and need not pretend any longer. Your ruse... you helped lead us here. As a good hound did."
His voice is a rumble. Even. Calm. Unflinching, like he is sure that he is speaking the truth. "I shall report this to your father, and I am sure that all will be forgiven."
Then, he slams his hand out. A ring of dark brown light appears, but it crackles, too, with green light around it -- and then shoots out like a shockwave that ripples through everyone facing him. It induces a sickening feeling; it makes the snow underfoot turn grey; it seems to make the land loose a little luster.
"If you would face me..." Heldalf roars, "THEN COME!"
GS: Georg Heldalf spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Day Muirwall with Geostigma! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked White Knight Leo with Geostigma! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Marivel Armitage with Geostigma! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Hilde with Geostigma! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Geostigma! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Margaret with Geostigma! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Hiro with Geostigma! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Ivan with Geostigma!
<Pose Tracker> Brad Evans has posed.
Sometimes, one holds soldiers in reserve. There is strategy to it, and tactics to. Sending every man you have out onto the field to bash each other with sticks is the battlefield of a child, not a general. This he knows.
Still, to see what's going on at the foot of Mt. Gagazet from afar reminds him of grimmer days. The men of Rolance falling upon a people in retreat...It reminds him of Slayheim's king, a man who decided to make a graveyard of a nation rather than surrender it. His jaw sets. Despicable.
Stay. Steady. The reserve doesn't rush in on their own choice. The reserve--
His empathite radio buzzes to life.
The reserve get called in.
Brad throws off the cloak he'd been hidden under, his dark skin an immediate highlight against white snow. "Understood," he declares, rolling to his feet and rushing to a nearby Refractor-powered sled. ...snowmobile. It's a snowmobile. Don't worry about it. "Evans," he declares, slotting the radio into its position on the dash. "Moving in!"
The device roars to life and launches Brad into battle, accompanied soon after by the high whistling of explosives from Brad's ARM soaring high into the air and crashing down amid the Rolance line. He presumably bullseyes a cat at some point in this process.
GS: Day Muirwall guards a hit from Georg Heldalf's Geostigma for 0 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison applied to Day Muirwall! GS: Day Muirwall activates Guard bonus! GS: Georg Heldalf has completed his action. GS: Brad Evans has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Mini Scud! GS: Brad Evans has completed his action. GS: Hiro takes a glancing hit from Georg Heldalf's Geostigma for 0 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison applied to Hiro! GS: Hiro activates Evade bonus! GS: Marivel Armitage guards a hit from Georg Heldalf's Geostigma for 0 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison applied to Marivel Armitage! GS: Seraph Ragnell fully evades Georg Heldalf's Geostigma for 0 hit points! GS: Hilde guards a hit from Georg Heldalf's Geostigma for 0 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison applied to Hilde! GS: CRITICAL! White Knight Leo critically guards Georg Heldalf's Geostigma for 0 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Day Muirwall has posed.
"Lord Leo, I'm- I'm with you!" Day shouts over the din of battle. He's trying to fight his way towards the White Knight and Heldalf.
He has to fight his way through his own retinue to do it, and they're not making it easy for him. Only the help he's getting from outside is making it even remotely possible.
Marivel is a big part of that. Day widens his eyes at the sight of Lord Phareman, a man he thought a friend, being torn asunder. It's the move he need to buy him time. He bites down to his lower lip.
"I'm sorry too," he says. His voice is hoarse with a thousand emotions he wishes he could give more time and verbiage to, but can't.
Another knight comes in swinging - Countess Aelina, Day realizes with a sick feeling - but she's quickly thrown back by a burst of wind before Lady Orielle comes sweeping in, shield and mace at the ready. With a thunder of hooves, Guingryph tramples down another knight as Seraph Vesna makes her own contribution. "Day!" she shouts. "Go, help Lord Leo!"
"Right!" Day shouts back, almost on autopilot - but it's the resound of Margaret's horn that shakes him out of the moment of confusion. Inspiration surges in his stomach - a sudden shock of realization that he has to act.
He hesitates no longer. Whirling, he surges out of the thinning fray even as a couple of Hyland soldiers move to intercept the remaining Knights in his stead. Between them, Orielle, Vess, Guingryph and Marivel, he's got the window he needs to bear down towards Heldalf.
It puts him in position for Heldalf to make a move. He's just inside the ring of dark light that comes shooting out from Heldalf's position. Raising his shield, he growls as he tries to shoulder through it, but the snow itself curdles beneath him and the rest of him does too. He has to fight to suppress the urge to retch, his face growing a little more pale.
"You think this is what will lead to a strong Glenwood?" he growls up at Heldalf, eyes flashing with indignation and pain. "A continent propped on a pedestal of dishonour and lies?! How-- how can this be coming out of the mouth of Georg Heldalf, a man of honour?!"
Pushing into range as quickly as he can despite the pulse of Geostigma, Day sweeps in to one side of Leo--
Leo, he realizes, the sickening feeling only amplifying. I only looked up to Heldalf from a distance. For Leo--
Day clenches his teeth, the thought stuck in his mind as he comes in to flank the White Knight. He's hurting, not just physically, but he fights to channel indignation and pain into strength. With a snap of his blade he strikes out, once, twice, again, a series of heavy blows aimed to try and cut in beneath the guard of Heldalf's great halberd and strike at his shoulders and upper body.
"To think I walked away from my inheritance because the March of Muirwall deserved an heir with more honour than I," he growls bitterly. "And it turns out all of you are willing to murder honour in the name of bloodshed... how could you?! Why do you?!"
GS: Day Muirwall has attacked Georg Heldalf with Sejant Cleave! GS: Day Muirwall has gained 1 Combo! GS: Day Muirwall takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Day Muirwall has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Margaret takes a glancing hit from Georg Heldalf's Geostigma for 0 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison applied to Margaret! GS: Margaret activates Evade bonus! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a glancing hit from Brad Evans's Mini Scud for 58 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Brad Evans! GS: CRITICAL! Georg Heldalf guards a hit from Day Muirwall's Sejant Cleave for 136 hit points! GS: Ivan takes a solid hit from Georg Heldalf's Geostigma for 0 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison applied to Ivan! GS: Ivan activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
He has but a moment to regard those arraying themselves against their own kin. Then Harmaus looks back up at Heldalf. "Seems they has not stomach for it, Heldalf." He pauses, beginning to briefly wash his own face. "Pity. Now--"
Something bounces on the permafrost nearby. The Seraph lowers his paw for a moment, and has just enough time to eye it before it
explodes.
"Kaguya!" the Seraph snarls as the smoke begins to clear in the wake of the bomb's detonation. "Has She poisoned it so?!" Aside from a few astray hairs, Harmaus looks as intact as ever, but well away from his usual calm. "It wants for succor?!" The rest of his retort comes in the form of the brilliantly blazing grey-gold solar fire that washes into her lane, a manifestation of his fury towards her. "Blinding Light!"
He catches, as it happens, Ragnell's comment on the wind, and growls low in his throat. "Silence! It knows not what it speaks!" Perhaps he would have vented more of his ire Ragnell's way, but soon he has a more immediate problem with which to concern himself with: the sphere of water currently encasing him.
It detonates mere seconds later with a blaze of ethereal light, the dampened Seraph glancing hither and yon as first someone lets fly with a packet of spices that explodes with a most burning content (Harmaus sneezes) and then there comes the gravest insult of all:
Lanval spritzes him with water, dead-on.
"Enough...!" snarls the absolutely livid Seraph, tail on end. "It ends, now!"
BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxTm9pVep7w
"-Only that which is true is fit to grasp. Now, prove yourself!-" intones the Seraph, beginning to hover a short distance in the air. Around him burns light as brilliant as a halo. From that glowing ring come rays of light that dot the mountainside; they look at a distance to be light, airy things but will burn and scour should anyone amidst that field have the misfortune of coming into contact with one of them.
But the Seraph isn't the only one with cover fire--
From the heavens, there comes a great missile, one which the small Seraph narrowly evades a dead-on strike from and instead is send flying to one side...
And comes to a stop, hovering in the air, before he strikes anything dead on.
"Ah, another," Harmaus murmurs. "Bright Sequence!" Greyish gold light rips from the space around him and tears towards Brad, because the Seraph is not at all in a good mood right now and may have even fingered Brad as the one responsible for the missile just then.
GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Kaguya with Blinding Light! GS: Seraph Harmaus spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Phantasiai! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Seraph Lanval with Phantasiai! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Pearl with Phantasiai! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Phantasiai! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 2 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Brad Evans with Bright Sequence! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Ragnell winks at Ruby, crooking a more sincere smile her way. "Damn, girl, you drive a hard bargain. But I *s'pose* I can do that, if it means your forgiveness." To Hiro, she raises her eyebrows. In a serious tone, she wonders, "What, you think it's *not*?"
Oh hey, Ivan's here too! Her smile turns wry at his reaction to her colorful metaphor. "You say that like it's not *always* an honor an' a pleasure t' see me," she drawls. "But nice seein' you too." She smirks. "I think."
Gwen catches her drift and goes off to help Boudicca and punish a bad kitty. Ragnell's smirk widens, then twists into a sneer at Heldalf's declaration.
'To bring about another war. The same end Rolance has always pursued.'
Ragnell rolls her eyes. Even if the war is specifically, supposedly, to unite Glenwood, it's just such a tiresome excuse. Because: "Ain't *that* the truth. Eight hundred years ago an' y'all were pullin' the exact same bullshit. I only wondered for a minute if maybe you weren't precisely as *boring* as your ancestors." She flashes an unpleasant grin Harmaus's way--who got exactly as annoyed at her blatantly false accusation of being the Goddess' faithful servant as she hoped he would--then adds to Heldalf, "So if this is *actually* in the Goddess' name, exactly why're you cooperating with Harmaus? He very openly hates the Goddess. Makes me wonder if your line about unitin' Glenwood under the Goddess is just a steamin' pile o' bullshit!"
Heldalf tells Ivan he doesn't need to pretend any longer, that his father will surely forgive him. Ragnell barks out a laugh at that, but otherwise lets Ivan has his own say in response. Instead, she dashes to one side, swiftly evading the encroaching earth spell that would have otherwise crushed her down against the rocky mountainside, then unleashes a barrage of lightning bullets that seem to home in towards Heldalf as she goes.
GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Georg Heldalf with Storm Runner! GS: Seraph Ragnell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action. GS: Brad Evans guards a hit from Seraph Harmaus's Bright Sequence for 90 hit points! GS: Kaguya takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Blinding Light for 65 hit points! GS: Blind applied to Kaguya! GS: Kaguya activates Sufferer! GS: Georg Heldalf critically guards Seraph Ragnell's Storm Runner for 32 hit points! GS: Pearl takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Phantasiai for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Poison applied to Pearl! GS: Seraph Boudicca guards a hit from Seraph Harmaus's Phantasiai for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Poison applied to Seraph Boudicca! GS: Seraph Boudicca activates Guard bonus and Sufferer! GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Seraph Harmaus's Phantasiai for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Poison applied to Gwen Whitlock! GS: Seraph Lanval takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Phantasiai for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Poison applied to Seraph Lanval! GS: Seraph Lanval activates Evade bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
Heldalf refutes her statement - declares that Hyland will be nothing more than a footnote. Hilde shakes her head.
"I refuse! There is nothing to rethink. I am Hilde, Knight-Protector of Hyland! For as long as I draw breath, I am Hyland's iron wall - your ambitions shall be dashed to pieces upon my shield, Georg Heldalf!" She challenges.
Heldalf declares the start of the battle, and with a thrust of the hand, a ring of light spreads across the ground. Hilde finds herself caught in it. She feels suddenly ill. It's unpleasant... but she tries to fight through it, charging toward Heldalf to meet his challenge.
She comes in, striking out with a quick shield bash. She may hate the man, but his talents as a warrior are impeccable - she must approach this battle carefully.
"Sir Day, Lord Leo... I understand this may be difficult, but know that I stand with you!" She calls out. She recognizes the presence of others, as well - people she may have fought, or fought alongside before, but at the moment she cannot afford to take her focus off of Heldalf for too long.
GS: Hilde has attacked Georg Heldalf with Shield Bash! GS: Hilde takes 24 damage from Poison! GS: Hilde has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Your ruse... you helped lead us here. As a good hound did.
It's unsettling to be recognized, much less as Lubov's son, a fact that's far from widely known. Why does he know? Did Lubov say something to him?
At the accusation, fire flickers from Ivan's shoulders as his face heats with shock, indignation, and a bit of doubt. He knew nothing about this plan. But was there something he might have done that aided them somehow? Could they have tailed him specifically? "Wait -- what? How did I help you? I wasn't trying to help you! And I don't want to be forgiven! The old man never claimed me, and I don't recognize him either, he's just a -- shitty employer I left on bad terms!" The terms were a landslide.
Almost without thought, Ivan channels the fire already leaping from his body, sending it for Heldalf in a corkscrew spiral.
GS: Ivan spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Ivan has attacked Georg Heldalf with Inferno Heart! GS: Ivan enters a Counter stance! GS: Ivan takes 24 damage from Poison! GS: Ivan has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Facing Heldalf alone would be near-impossible for Leo in his current state. It's a good thing, then, that he isn't alone. "Marivel," he whispers, glancing at her as that bloody power flows into him once again. "Thank you." It draws him out of himself, lets him take stock of the battlefield as a whole. The others are joining him, as he bid them do--he has no idea where Kaguya came from, but he's as glad to see her as he is to see Hilde. As Day breaks free of his own knot of treachery, Leo spots him, salutes with his free hand. Even Margaret--Goddess, where has she been, Leo thought she'd been killed, or was rotting in some damp Bevelle gaol--Margaret is here, sounding the horn to charge. For some reason, Leo doesn't care it's on the verge of being forbiden music.
"The Goddess," Leo says, disbelief plain in his voice. "You dare invoke her to justify this--this butchery!?" Hiro, too, would notice something different in Leo's tone--this is deeply, deeply personal.
And then Heldalf threatens Ivan, and Leo snarls, baring sharp Ronso canines right in his face. "You won't lay a hand on him, and nor will Lubov!"
Heldalf's sorcery seeps into the earth. Leo feels its sickly energy coursing through the ground beneath him, and for a moment, the White Knight wobbles unsteadily as vertigo threatens to overtake him.
-pulse-
He sets down a foot, planting it deep into the snow, feeling the earth beneath. His own power pulses down through his body in response, driving off the debilitating magic before it can take root. The snow around him glimmers as motes of green light rise from the ground, and wink out of existence.
Leo does as Heldalf bids. The White Knight rushes forwards, in what looks, on its face, to be a hot-tempered charge. To Heldalf, a skilled warrior, it's visibly different--Leo leaves him few openings, and when he lashes out, slashing at him in a sweeping strike, he's quick to sink into a defensive stance again.
It's testament to how grim things are that all Leo feels at Hiro's praise is a vague sense of inadequacy.
GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Georg Heldalf with Flash Blade! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 1 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo assumes the Stoic stance! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
The Goddess would send them, Heldalf says, nails in the coffin of her gaze. Her lips move. There's nothing there.
For the benefit of the lip readers:
'She... will.'
As a Wind Seraph, Boudicca is, in one sense, breath itself. (In another sense, she is a person not unlike so many of the corpses bleeding out. Both of these things can be true. Only one is so horrifying.) Many times she has reminded her dear friends -- one in particular -- to remember to breathe.
But when there's a hand on Boudicca's arm, it's because the air around her has gone deathly-still, as if the sky itself has forgotten how. Breathe, Kaguya says, and vitality returns to the breeze as it stirs; that Boudicca's chest, under her plate armour, moves as well, is really just the fairy tale they believe.
"I... I am still with you," she responds, faint of voice, reaching up to pat Kaguya's hand briefly before it pushes down on the earth to levy herself up. Her tone is strained and quiet, but one might get the impression she is barely more present than Hilde is, screaming defiance not so far away.
(Boudicca is still deeply concerned about her, but all a sudden Boudicca's heart will shatter and BREAK for all the concerns draped about her. Why must humanity commit such errors? Why, over so many years, again and again --)
But it is not only a case of Boudicca being with them; THEY are with HER, the Summoner and Leviathan, her fellow Oracle, a trustworthy courier delivering on time. Boudicca looks to them -- to Kaguya, again, searching her out to make sure she's all right -- and steels her shoulders, looking to Harmaus.
Harmaus, who isn't happy about any of this. She hears him, of course, takes a step forward; they look like airy things and they burn airy things just the same, but she brings her tonfa up in a defensive gesture, swiping the rays as if she could knock them aside. There's something Harmaus needs to get aside of, too.
Here, her eyes widen. Boudicca knew Brad was alive, of course, given she has one of those clever little radios too, which she even manages not to break by fiddling with the knobs too much half the time. But Boudicca hasn't seen him since then, since it all weighed over her entrance, that horrible reminder of death -- and perhaps it is a little hope, in this place with so many corpses.
(She does not question the snowmobile. They're ARMS, after all.)
"The truth is all that is worthy to you, is it?" Boudicca issues, to him; perhaps, in the process, she can provide some measure of translation for her mortal allies, too. "We need not prove ourselves to one so twisted! Your approval, or Hers -- I have no care for either, any more!"
The heretical edge to her phrasing is one kept in its edges, informed by the motivations of Heldalf; perhaps she does not speak it for his benefit.
Another step forward, and Boudicca launches herself toward Harmaus, on the wind, tonfa lashing out in a strike to send the levitating cat all a-spin in the air which is her domain.
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Soaring Vortex! GS: Seraph Boudicca has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes 20 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Georg Heldalf takes a solid hit from Hilde's Shield Bash for 109 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Georg Heldalf gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cover applied to Hilde! GS: Georg Heldalf takes a solid hit from Ivan's Inferno Heart for 206 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Georg Heldalf gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a glancing hit from Seraph Boudicca's Soaring Vortex for 78 hit points! GS: Entangle applied to Seraph Harmaus!
<Pose Tracker> Brad Evans has posed.
The shot from Harmaus forces Brad to sweep his vehicle, which takes a hard hit from the shot and tumbles. Brad bails out as it flips end over end across the field.
The distraction, perhaps, serves to get him some space. "Enemy magic user. It's a ...cat." Brad grimaces. "Seraph? I guess?"
He grabs his Mechanical Glove and levers it up, as the firing mechanisms inside start to buzz. "Opening fire!"
RATATATATATATA
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel looks at Margaret like 'who me?' for a moment. "If he ever makes it back home, then I'll let him rest. Away from whatever bonkers afterlife system this place has." There's some kind of pact between Jack and she. One of hte benefits of being in the form of an actual hound from hell is that you can just go around snacking on nobles and nobody complains.
Well, nobody complains for that long.
Hiro has gotten better at speaking like a ... ... hero, Marivle thinks with a faint frown. Admittedly when your name is Hiro you don't have a lot of options in life but it makes sense that he'd fill into the role nicely.
"You've nothing to apologize for Hiro." Marivel says. "I'm glad you're here."
She looks towards Ragnell, throwing a wave but does not immediately make quips while, yeah, the bodies are still warm. Marivel respects the dead generally. That's part of what makes Seymour so bloody frustrating.
She sees Belize (no Marivel it's Pearl) is still lending a hand. Good!
"MORE Wars? Haven't you had your fill?" Marivel says. "This kind of violence only invites calamity, whatever shortsighted aims you might have--"
Her head is throbbing. And it's not just because of that brown light Heldalf released. Earth magic, she thinks.
"Legends rarely match the man." Marivel says. "Honor often given to those that provide results."
She takes a moment to ensure Brad s abusing a cat. This is happening, so all is well there.
"And I won't have you say a naughty word about Ivan! He's a lovely one!" Right? He is right? This wasn't part of a scheme right?? Well to be honest, despite Heldalf's words--Marivel does pretty much just overtly trust Ivan so if he's gonna stake a vampire now's a pretty good time to do it.
Marivel gets thanks for Leo but in truth she feels like she failed him. She never wanted him to be hurt like this. To see these truths. The truth is important, of course, but sometimes lies are important too. You can make new worlds out of lives, better ones, better truths. Justice, Love, Desire, Courage--these are lies forged day after day in truth.
"You claim this is Althena's doing then. Do you have proof that this is her edict? I wasn't aware that Harmaus was someone with a very positive opinion of her."
She does not comment on Ghaleon. Ghaleon clearly is keeping things close to his chest for a reason. Marivel won't reveal them to a man so clearly adept at treachery.
"When did the Goddess gain such pleasure from subsisting off the blood of those who loved her?"
She gestures with a hand and Leo--vanishes?
--he isn't gone, he's just higher up into the air. She has fought WITH the man and alongside him both and has a feel for how he'll react without having to give a sign of it. Instead she presses in to try and occupy Heldalf's sightline as she drives Guillotine towards Heldalf's shoulder.
"When did she get a kick out of treachery and murder!?" It's hard to tell if she's mad at Althena or for what Heldalf is saying about her.
GS: Brad Evans has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Iron Fist ! GS: Brad Evans has completed his action. GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Georg Heldalf with Enhanced Aport Riposte! GS: Marivel Armitage takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action. GS: Georg Heldalf takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's Flash Blade for 162 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
'You're the famous General Heldalf? The one that taught Leo sword play?' Ah, Hiro, if you look at just the right angle, you can see when Margaret's soul left her body.
No, she resolves to herself. He's doubtless fast, but you too are fast. And you have an advantage, Mag old girl, don't you.
She does not verbalize about this advantage yet. She spins the weighted end of her weapon for a moment, watching the great knight as he speaks. She breathes out through her teeth. Mentally she tracks down. How long will it take Dolly and the others to come up? Too long, even with the chocobos.
Heldalf speaks his aim frankly. Margaret's ears pull back. "By the goddess," she says to herself, not having the gall, it seems, to snap back the way that she might in other circumstances. "You see why I'm moving, Leo, I'm sure," she continues, more or less without the engagement of the thinking portion of her humors. Then her head whips round with a gasp at Heldalf's 'gratitude' to Ivan. Her eyes go wide again, buglike.
Fortunately, before she can respond further to that, the ground sickens. This is not, normally, fortunate; but it does mean that Margaret's eyes face front again, and she breaks off to the side as Leo surges into the attack. The spinning of the weight upon its chain accelerates. A peculiar whirring in the chaos of the battlefield.
Wait... wait... "Hmfh. Do you think there's something other than that, then?" she says to Marivel, again without real thought, before -
The chance! She twists and casts the chain forwards, aiming to snake it forth - into the melee, and around Heldalf's limb to yank it away from true!
GS: Margaret has attacked Georg Heldalf with Chain Wrap! GS: Margaret has gained 2 Combo! GS: Margaret takes 18 damage from Poison! GS: Margaret has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"You're damned right I would!" Kaguya calls back to Heldalf. "But no, you're worse than a traitor. You think it's necessary. You're not primitive at all. You're all too advanced."
She ducks down, glaring Harmaus's way as she lands, and grins at him. "Nothing to do with Her," Kaguya answers Harmaus. "I just decided I don't like you very much after all." But she suffers for it--the blinding light that crashes her way sears her eyes, and Kaguya covers her eyes instinctively as stars dance along her vision.
Kaguya is not a close friend of Boudicca's, but she is here, now, at the necessary moment. When Boudicca responds, Kaguya inclines her head. She knows this kind of horror well by now--is familiar with it, no longer given pause by it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. There are many things, at the moment, that matter...
"Pearl," Kaguya says calmly. "Why, the fuck, do you have an Aeon."
She has fewer questions for Lanval at the moment, though she notices his presence all right--quickly has to calculate whether she expects him to help or get in the way. His help is something that's more welcome, though it's not as if she gets along well with him--but her priority right now, after all, is a problem that she's helped to make worse.
"If the 'machinery of empire' requires blood, then I say starve it! Let it rot and rust!"
Boudicca can see Kaguya easily, now; she is all right enough, somewhat battered already but alert, active. "Yo!" Kaguya says to Brad then, "Big man with the big guns! Tell me you've got some more artillery in there!"
Kaguya pulls a strange device from her bag next, a green orb affixed with lines all over, and hurls it Harmaus's way next--vines much like his old body spill out, tomato-y with great bladed thorns that seek to grapple, to grasp, to enclose.
"I happen to think lying is great. You can do all kinds of great things just by bending the truth a little!"
"Your face is green!" Kaguya says to Harmaus. "The sky is purple! I'm six feet tall!"
GS: Kaguya has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Bladevine Orb! GS: Kaguya has gained 2 Combo! GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
'Are we?' Hiro's look to Gwen might have said, if it were just his expression alone, but instead... he simply says, "... We better get to it then."
Before Ragnell... ... ... "I hope not." He whispers, but that is as much as he dares allow. She stopped the war between Rolance and Hyland didn't she? It's a faint hope, but one he must cling to right now.
"Glad you're here too, Marivel..." He bets, that because she is... that many lives were saved today. "Let's take care of this fast." The faster they are - the more Ronso they can save, perhaps. That thought looms large in his head.
-=-=-
"Ivan!" Hiro seems relieved as she sees him come at Heldalf's flanks with his Umbrella.
Before Heldalf's statement on his involvement... "As if! Ivan would NEVER be a part of this! Ragnell requesting that you shoot him someplace sensitive next volley!" Ruby calls out from her position over the battlefield - where she's hastily avoiding arrows.
But Ivan's response... "He's just trying to get under your skin Ivan! Don't fall for it!"
As Heldalf slams out that ring of brown light, Hiro tries to dive away and send out a gust of wind to crash right into it, but the sickly pulse strikes him head on. Nauseated, he realizes that his own tactic of trying to throw Heldalf off-balance only resulted in all of them being thrown for a loop.
Yet something has stuck with him. "You think that if he'd been a better student... that this atrocity is something he'd stand by and allow?" He tries to shake off that sickly feeling, and finds it difficult. "How dare you! Cut him to pieces-"
Hiro's stance shifts, like he's going to charge back at him, before he slices his sword forward, "-Wind Cutter!" Though it is not his sword that obeys. Instead a current of wind shifts, slicing down at intense speed - blowing by him like one intensely sharp, razor thin blade.
Hiro does indeed know that there is something different about this with Leo. The way he's playing it so cautious, careful, he seems rattled, insecure facing his own master. "Leo... no matter what he says. You've grown. And if he can't understand that..." A look towards Heldalf, "... well... I guess being a poor mentor... is the least of his crimes right now."
GS: Hiro has attacked Georg Heldalf with Wind Cutter! GS: Hiro has gained 2 Combo! GS: Hiro takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Hiro has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
These are not people Pearl ever expected to fight alongside. One of them is a woman who helped retrieve the children of Taben's Peak. A heretical Seraph. And the others, with whom she has less experience. And Duchess Alathfar, of course. That was a... strained relationship.
Leviathan goes to ground, but not fast enough for beams of light to sear the Aeon's scales, and for pyreflies to fly from the wounds. Pearl grimaces, but a defiant roar from the Aeon assures her they're alright. But she can see, that damage is going to continue to harm the Aeon, and there's little she can do but go on the offensive. That's what she knows.
A question cuts through. Pearl pauses. "Later!" She responds, because she does not want to explain everything here and now. Not yet.
"Leviathan! Strike him down!" She shouts, and the Serpent lunges forward like a spear, crashing towards Harmaus before trying to loop back towards their summoner. It leaves the two separate for a moment, and Pearl holds her staff defensively, while Leviathan swims through the air.
GS: Pearl has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Crashing Serpent! GS: Pearl has gained 1 Combo! GS: Pearl assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Pearl takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: Pearl has completed her action. GS: Georg Heldalf critically guards Marivel Armitage's Enhanced Aport Riposte for 26 hit points! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Guard bonus! GS: Georg Heldalf guards a hit from Margaret's Chain Wrap for 67 hit points! GS: Cripple applied to Georg Heldalf! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Guard bonus and Sufferer! GS: Seraph Harmaus guards a hit from Brad Evans's Iron Fist for 72 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Guard bonus! GS: Seraph Harmaus critically guards Kaguya's Bladevine Orb for 9 hit points! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Guard bonus! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Pearl's Crashing Serpent for 144 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf takes a solid hit from Hiro's Wind Cutter for 154 hit points! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
When the light shines from the angered Light Seraph, Lanval whirls back as the burning sensation finds its purchase within him - a disruptive, pervasive sensation as it lances through him but doesn't achieve greater than the mild discomfort. The 'personal' pain sensation is numbed by watching and hearing so many grapple with the will of the Goddess and whether She would truly allow for something like this to happen.
He's long since made his own sort of peace with how the Goddess indirectly(?) wronged him when he spent the better part of five hundred years maintaining his reinforcement of the Boundary, only to see the Guard remove him from his seat of power (which was, in fairness, a horrible place by mortal standards) and to watch as Malevolence snuck through the slightest weakness to start infesting that place.
The Water Seraph takes another brief sip from the drinking gourd as unease and shouting fills the air - there are no real small joys here to amplify in a place like this, as Harmaus declares that only that which is true is fit to grasp. He gives Boudicca a look over as she finds her resolve to push forth - no need to prove herself to Harmaus or Her.
"Mmm," Lanval puts on a bit more of a patient smile, stroking away at his chin and letting those beard hairs of his part and flow, "one thing'sh fer shure, lookin' at 'bout everyone here."
He finds a place to wedge in a little levity, as is his nature, even as he channels something so vast as the power of Schturdark as the scorching of light continues to have him a bit off-center, staggering along up to the floating Harmaus as a darkness fills the (rather, asmall part of the) sky, and warmer, harsher, clammier moisture starts to descend like little pin-pricks of watery spears that build in intensity and focus - as if to out-and-out drench Harmaus in a heavy, punishing rain.
"Fer all the dishagreementsh we got goin'," he eyes Kaguya with one half-open eye, and "shure looksh like we ain't keen on lettin' any of ya do ash ya will, 'n hey... that many fightin' back."
A widening smile, a serene dissonance from the weight of the rain's disapproval. "What'sh happenin' will only be true if we let it be."
GS: Seraph Lanval spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Rain of Terror! GS: Seraph Lanval has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval assumes the Avenger stance! GS: Seraph Lanval takes 22 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen looks up, hearing the unusual sound of a snowmobile, which would be unusual, here on Lunar.
But this is a Brad, and that explains many, many things. "Whoaah, nice shot there!" At the broad man's seeming confusion, Gwen helpfully fills him in. "Cat-shaped Seraph. He's taken other forms too. He has a human form too, I think? There was some deal with that... Can't remember..."
She's too distracted, thinking back to the look on Hiro's face before they split. The level of distance afforded to her as someone from Filgaia is both a blessing and a curse, here.
They're still people, whose lives were ended in a conflict. That's a tragedy that can't be taken back, no matter what they do here.
Gwen looks back towards Boudicca, nodding her discrete thanks to Kaguya and she stands by the Seraph and Veruni. "Boudicca... we ain't gonna let this tragedy be fuel for another war." She looks up to Lanval, another Seraph who helped her in Luca. .... Two friends who had the right to call her a lost cause, after the pains they had made to help her before then.
She smiles softly, nodding at Lanval's assessment. "... I think you hit the nail on the head there, Lanval."
The courier delivers herself further into the fray, barreling through what seems to be rays of light, something Gwen initially mistakes for some effort from a Seraph like Lanval or Boudicca, or the strange Leviathan creature(?), until one of them scours against her skin as she tears past it.
"He's a Light Seraph, Gwen, you dummy!" She admonishes herself as she closes in, aiming to clock the cat seraph across the head.
This is why Gwen had to make it clear that this was not a normal cat.
<Pose Tracker> Georg Heldalf has posed.
"Tell me!" Heldalf snaps back at Day, even as Day's blades snap out. They slam into the heavy plate armor; obsidian-colored steel dents and has gouges torn in, slashes leaving it chipped. It doesn't break yet. "Do you think honor saves us? Do you think honor, alone, can change this world?"
He swings up the halberd. The half-moon blade slashes up at Day, in an upward strike, and the blue outline of a roaring dragon's head leaps off and strikes at Day, when he slashes.
"I will achieve results, first--and I find that selecting only tasteful allies would leave me quite alone," Heldalf answers. A few lightning bullets fly -- and he lifts a hand, and grabs one. Lightning crackles up his gauntlet, before he throws the bullet aside.
Then, the earth quakes under Ragnell's feet -- and stones explode up underneath her, sent flying into the air by Heldalf's spell.
"I have no such intentions, Lady Hilde," Heldalf answers. He turns, and he meets the shield bash, slamming a fist into it. It still sends a rolling, tense shock of pain through his arm -- a surprise to him, now -- and then he slams his weapon down in an overhead arc.
Red chi ignites behind it, driving the halberd blade down for her from above. "HYAH!" he shouts. "I will break you, if I must!"
Flame explodes away, spiralling off towards Heldalf. It splashes across his armor, shooting every which way and burning it deeply. He turns, his empty eyes looking at Ivan with a certain... detachment. "You would deny it? I would call you a traitor to all of them... and perhaps give you an opportunity."
His eyes narrow. "Or would you throw it away? A chance to have status? Recognition?"
He swings the halberd down twice. Two blades of light fire off -- and shoot across the ground, hurtling towards Ivan in rapid succession.
Leo shoots into his territory -- fangs bared, quite literally. There is no easy way to strike through his guard as he charges -- no, it seems, Leo was taught well. His blade slams against his armor, denting it inward again.
"The Goddess will suffer butchery... if it produce a better world for her, I think!" he answers. "And the age of heroes, Leo, is dead."
He swings his halberd upward, and another dragon's head of blue-violet light leaps off the blade, and strikes for the White Knight. His eyes narrow, as he looks back at Marivel. "I do not claim that. I act in the Goddess's name -- to do what must be done. What she cannot."
Leo vanishes -- teleported away -- and Marivel's strike hits, striking the armor with a spray of sparks. He spins his weapon up; then, another head of a dragon erupts off with blue light, exploding at Marivel.
Heldalf is fast. He has the sort of speed that belies his heavy armor -- turning quickly, and sees the chain. It clatters about his armed arm -- and he flexes it, gripping the chain. His arm is twisted, but he yanks on Margaret in turn.
Then, he swings his halberd twice. A pair fangs of light explode off the halberd blade, loosing across the ground and towards Margaret.
Then he turns his head -- to Hiro and Ruby -- and his eyes narrow. "So confident, are you?" he demands. And then Hiro is on him. He strikes at him, wind exploding off his sword. It strikes through, slashing into but not past his armor, but batters it forward.
Heldalf roars then. "Call it what you would like--this world has no room for such idealism!"
The halberd sweeps up. The dragon's head roars to life, an outline of blue and filled with fury, and then rams off towards Hiro.
GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Day Muirwall with Beast! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Geo Rumble! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Hilde with Infliction! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Ivan with Double Demon Fang! GS: Georg Heldalf enters a Counter stance! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked White Knight Leo with Beast! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Marivel Armitage with Beast! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Margaret with Double Demon Fang! GS: Georg Heldalf enters a Counter stance! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf enters the stance! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Hiro with Beast! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 2 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf has completed his action. GS: Day Muirwall guards a hit from Georg Heldalf's Beast for 100 hit points! GS: Day Muirwall activates Guard bonus! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Gut Reaction! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes 25 damage from Poison! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Hiro guards a hit from Georg Heldalf's Beast for 92 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hiro gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Georg Heldalf's Beast for 173 hit points! GS: Hilde guards a hit from Georg Heldalf's Infliction for 88 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Hilde! GS: Margaret takes a glancing hit from Georg Heldalf's Double Demon Fang for 57 hit points! GS: Seraph Ragnell takes a solid hit from Georg Heldalf's Geo Rumble for 135 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Georg Heldalf! GS: White Knight Leo fully evades Georg Heldalf's Beast for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! White Knight Leo gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Seraph Lanval's Rain of Terror for 116 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Arcane Font! GS: Seraph Harmaus guards a hit from Gwen Whitlock's Gut Reaction for 63 hit points! GS: COUNTER! Ivan counterattacks Georg Heldalf with Counter Attack! GS: Ivan takes a solid hit from Georg Heldalf's Double Demon Fang for 126 hit points! GS: Ivan activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Day Muirwall has posed.
How did it come to this? Day can only reflect. Hilde calls out to Leo and him, and he bites down firmly to his lower lip.
Fighting against a Rolancian hero alongside a woman who did so much to put him here. Alongside Hiro, too, of all people. It hurts. It hurts more than anything.
But what more can he do?
When Heldalf turns to threaten Ivan, Day clenches his teeth. "Stop that," he growls. "You're twisting things around."
He can say no more before Heldalf rounds on him with that draconian blast. With a shout, Day swings his shield into the burst and braces. Blue power explodes across the shield's enameled face, the battle-scarred image of a forcene pegasus upon a party cross field of black and red. As energy bleeds around the shield and forces him back bodily, leaving him straining and sore, Day can only clench his teeth.
"If I didn't believe that, I would have stayed in Muirwall," he growls, his stomach twisting with more than the sickness of geostigma. "I won't be a part of adding to the hate and dishonour in this world. I couldn't live with myself!"
Maneuvering out of the spray of light, Day tries to keep himself on Leo's flank, but Heldalf's fast - and far more skilled and experienced than the much younger knight. A flicker of thought occurs to him. Day trained in Lion's Heart - but he isn't Leo's equal. He's far from Heldalf's equal. He's wildly out of place in a fight like this, isn't he?
That's about when Heldalf claims he's acting in the Goddess's name.
Day's eyes widen with a sudden surge of indignation. "The Goddess would never condone murder!" he shouts, his voice revving with anger.
Doubt and anguish are suddenly cast aside by a wave of righteous fury. Day storms forward like a charging pegasus and pushes in on Heldalf's flank, broadsword darting as he plunges for the first opening he sees. "You excuse your acts of evil in Her name - you commit war crimes for the most cynical reasons and call it necessary!" he spits. "How could I have ever-- gh, seeing you like this-- these words--!!"
Day's grip is tight around his blade as he lashes out furiously, unleashing a violent flurry of blows down upon the glorious general of Rolance. They come from above, from the sides, a veritable storm of sword and steel as the young knight pours his emotions, his hurt and pain, betrayal and anguish, honour and righteousness, into a bold assault against a man he ought to have no right standing in combat with.
He does not even understand the skill and finesse he attacks with. The speed, the crispness and sharp eye of a warrior many years his senior.
"--To think I ever admired you!" he roars, his voice cracking. "What you show us today --
"--IT MAKES ME SICK!!"
GS: Day Muirwall enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Day Muirwall has attacked Georg Heldalf with Rampant Sword! GS: Day Muirwall has gained 2 Combo! GS: Day Muirwall takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Disease and Poison expired! GS: Day Muirwall has completed his action. GS: COUNTER! Georg Heldalf counterattacks Ivan with Counter Attack! GS: Georg Heldalf takes a solid hit from Ivan's Counter Attack for 125 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Georg Heldalf gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Sufferer! GS: Ivan takes a solid hit from Georg Heldalf's Counter Attack for 163 hit points! GS: Ivan activates Sufferer! GS: Ivan enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Georg Heldalf critically guards Day Muirwall's Rampant Sword for 32 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Georg Heldalf gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Boudicca's declaration is met with a growl from the cat-shaped Seraph. "None other is! If not 'truth', what other has meaning? Without it, meaning is all!"
In his particular dialect, it should be noted, as a result of linguistic shifts and so on, the word 'all' does not mean 'everything'. It means 'gone'.
The fury of his fellow heretic can be felt in the next instance; he may be a Seraph affiliated with light, but that does not mean that the air is his domain. On the other hand, it is very much Boudicca's. While he struggles to keep his balance and float, he is still buffeted about by the vortex and only slips its pull after many long moments. Erupting from its grasp all ashimmer with light, he bares his teeth as he leaps through the air towards her.
"Sudden Dawn!" It isn't teeth or claws that he meets her with but rather a volley of the sun's rays, pouring forth from the halo about him. They burn with a glorious pink-white, as if to greet the morning all over again.
He sails past her, righting himself in mid-air as if to attempt another pass. Cats, as Brad knows, don't usually fly like that. Thus, the guess that he's probably dealing with a Seraph is a good one--
As is the part where as he opens fire on Harmaus, the projectiles pass right on through him, leaving clean holes in their wake. They fill in after a moment, of course, but...
"Ah? Nothing doing with Her?! After what it says!?" says Harmaus, their last meeting apparently one that grates on him still. "Matters me not how feels it! Our agreement -- I breaks with it!" he snarls, touching ground.
Just as that device rolls on in. "What trickery--" He tries to leap out of it. He's far from fast enough, caught in the vines for the moment as he thrashes. "Argh! Cease this... that silliness! Not even lies!"
But he blazes with light, the vines burning away as the beams eradicate what had once held him. "-A true existence needs no support!- Autarkeia!" he intones in the Ancient Tongue, the beams of light washing far and wide across the field to similarly tear down and eradicate whatever the Seraph deems standing in his path.
But he had probably not expected the very sudden intrusion of the Aeon, for Leviathan intrudes quite quickly, indeed. Harmaus has all the span of a moment to turn to try and look upwards at the source of the dark shadow falling upon him before it is upon him. ...But while he is well and truly crushed by it, a Seraph has no true limitation of the body: he stands there in the crater the Aeon leaves behind, shaking off the effects of that strike. And countering it with one of his own. "Unyielding Light!" The aura surrounding him coils into a halfdome before him, from which there erupts a spear that cuts the distance between himself and Pearl.
"Strong words speaks it!" crows the cat-shaped Seraph, as Lanval speaks up. "Knows it! Knows what befell it -- and it minds Her not, yet?!" It would seem that what had happened to Lanval hadn't escaped Harmaus' notice, even if he has not spoken of such to the Seraph before now. "Fighting, are they? Let them try!" The rain has begun to fall and it does not quickly let up. But deep within the storm there is a glimmer of light.
"-Embrace what is hidden-" he intones, from deep within the rainstorm. The solar fire that roars from between the raindrops for Lanval is tinged with blue. "Synkatathesis!" It scares seems real, but should it touch him, it will burn.
Erupting from the rainstorm that had pinned him, the Seraph is fleetingly damp as he roars back onto the stage of the snowy mountain. ...And right into Gwen's path. Even as that fist swings out for him, though--
"Bright Sequence!"
--light erupts from the cat's golden mandala, scorching as it darts through the air to complete its circuit with Gwen.
He, knocked to one side by her strike, lands atop a stone jutting up from the ice and snow, tail lashing madly as he regards the field before him.
GS: Seraph Harmaus spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Sudden Dawn! GS: Seraph Harmaus spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Kaguya with Autarkeia! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Brad Evans with Autarkeia! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Pearl with Unyielding Light! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Seraph Lanval with Synkatathesis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Bright Sequence! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes 26 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Harmaus has completed his action. GS: Brad Evans takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Autarkeia for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Brad Evans gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dispel! Mighty removed! GS: Poison applied to Brad Evans! GS: Pearl takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Unyielding Light for 154 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Pearl gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
'I hope not,' Hiro whispers. Ragnell's expression briefly turns to one of pity. Then it hardens, and she returns her focus to the battle. (In which there is of course an Aeon, and an unusually huge one at that, but Ragnell has seen an Aeon before and doesn't know Pearl well enough to realize it's weird for her to have one. Leviathan is thus taken in stride.)
"Either your head's unfathomably deep up your own ass, or you're really doublin' down on the lyin'," Ragnell retorts to Heldalf. "But whatever. I'm gettin' what you're layin' down, an' that's that it's a waste o' time nigglin' over the particulars with you." She snorts at Ruby's request, and calls her way, "I would, but I'm gettin' the sense he's hard-skinned all over!"
As is his spell-casting. Rocks, both heavy and jagged, erupt up from the ground and catch Ragnell before she has a chance to evade. Sure enough, impact is rough and painful, and she staggers a couple of steps once the volley subsides. She looks up and over at Day as he screams at Heldalf, and glances towards Vesna. Whether she manages to catch the Wind Seraph's eye or not, she quirks a half-smile. She laughs outright, a deep and rich guffaw, when Kaguya harrasses Harmaus with a bunch of petty asshole lies.
As she does, she charges power in her paired pistols. When they're ready, she fires straight up. That power bursts overhead and rains down, literally, over Heldalf in the form of a rain shower and lots of needle-like lightning.
GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Georg Heldalf with Squall Shot! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Kaguya takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Autarkeia for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Kaguya gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Kaguya! GS: Kaguya activates Sufferer! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Sudden Dawn for 88 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Boudicca gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Boudicca activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
"--Moving?" Leo says, ears tilting Margaret-wards for a moment, just to be sure he heard that right. The confusion only lasts a moment, because Heldalf responds with words that make the White Knight's blood boil all the hotter. "If it is dead," he says, "it is men like you who killed it." Marivel's still there, near him, and he senses a familiar swell of sorcery from her. For a moment, the White Knight holds perfectly still, even as his former teacher strikes at him with all the violence he can bring to bear.
Then Leo is simply gone. The force-dragon roars through the space he occupied mere moments ago, slams into the ground, flash-boils the snow. Clods of permafrost and chunks of rock fly like shrapnel. Heldalf's strike carved a fresh crater in the landscape, and looking down, Leo doesn't want to think about what it could've done to him.
The big Ronso takes a split-second to size up the battle from here; it's clear that Kelk and his troops have wounded, at the minimum, and there's no way they can hold off the detachment forever. Like it or not, he's going to have to deal with Heldalf. Cut off the head, and the body dies with it.
Air whistles past Leo's ears as he falls, straight downwards, towards his teacher. "Spare us your blandishments!" he roars. "You tempt us with luxury when there's blood on your hands!" The White Knight's blade whips through an intricate series of blows, each one sharp and fierce enough to cut the very air. A torrent of screaming projectiles rains down on Heldalf from above, followed by a deep, plunging strike. Leo lands in the snow next to him, blade already raised to defend himself. His injured side screams in protest, but he grits his teeth and bears it as best he can.
GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Georg Heldalf with Buzz Blade! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 1 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action. GS: Gwen Whitlock takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Bright Sequence for 162 hit points! GS: Seraph Lanval fully evades Seraph Harmaus's Synkatathesis for 0 hit points! GS: Georg Heldalf guards a hit from Seraph Ragnell's Squall Shot for 78 hit points! GS: Cover applied to Seraph Ragnell! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Guard bonus and Sufferer! GS: Georg Heldalf takes a solid hit from White Knight Leo's Buzz Blade for 155 hit points! GS: Disrupt applied to Georg Heldalf! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Leo, Marivel, Ruby, and even Day all speak up on Ivan's defense, and some of the fire flaring off of him is probably now from self consciousness, his face as red as the flames as he gets called 'lovely' by Marivel and Leo snarls not to touch him.
Also, he feels ill for some reason that may be related to why the ground around him is wilting, when did that happen...?
Ivan would NEVER be a part of this!
Not now, he wouldn't. But the old Ivan -- the coward -- might he have done it if Lubov had demanded it? He can't say for sure. The question shouldn't bother him -- does it really matter? He committed more than enough sins in that time to quibble over whether he would have found his spine if the line had been pushed too far.
Or would you throw it away? A chance to have status? Recognition?
"I--I can barely stand to be recognized by my own allies!" Ivan sputters. Which is true, he is almost literally whistling like a teakettle from the words of trust from people he would not quite dare call friends. But, more seriously...
"It's too late for me to want status in Rolance. I've seen how rotten the nobility is -- I've helped to spread that rot! I couldn't live in that world even if it did suddenly decide it wanted me-- I wouldn't be able to breathe from the stench!"
Fangs of light tear across the battlefield, and Ivan calls his sword to his hand, fire surging over his body and down the blade, and rushes for Heldalf, heedless of the fangs of light tearing through him. As he swings his sword for Heldalf, the fire enveloping the blade sparks off into distinct motes that pop and fizzle before enveloping both Ivan and Helmdalf in a constellation of explosive bursts.
Somehow in this battle fury he has overlooked Leo, the explosions firing off dangerously close to his former commander.
GS: Ivan has attacked Georg Heldalf with Stars of Fury! GS: Ivan takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Disease and Poison expired! GS: Ivan has completed his action. GS: Georg Heldalf critically guards Ivan's Stars of Fury for 43 hit points! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
Margaret's chain wraps -- and then she's pulled inwards. Ah, she thinks as she is hauled up: This isn't great, now is it?
Margaret is not small, and she is in some light armor, and yet she is hoisted forwards like a landed weakfish. She leans into it, head raising upwards as she answers Heldalf: "Piss on that!!"
The dual demon fangs come towards her. Margaret's heart speaks even as her eyes and her body twist. "Nothing good comes BUT from that idealism, you miserable minion of orthodoxy! Don't you have a single note of music in whatever pad of dottle you call a soul?!"
Margaret twists at the last moment. She almost puts herself directly in between the two Demon Fangs; one of them is slightly too fast, or at an angle she slightly miscalculated. It takes its toll; a nick along the ear, a severed hank of black strands of hair as she comes up nearer.
Her eyes flick towards Day in his anguish but only for a moment. Because instead of drawing too close, Margaret chooses to abruptly twist and smash her OWN self into the ground, the chain growing slack before she whips it forwards, tightening it and lunging inwards, sickle in the other hand, ready to shove tip or blade in whatever gaps arise.
"Titles? Lands? What you grant, or make to be granted," Margaret answers Heldraf (even as something in the pit of her stomach tells her that she is close, perhaps closer than she has ever been, to total annihilation, every moment she stays within twenty yards of this warrior): "you can take away just as swiftly, is that not so? Ideals may be poor coin, but they are coin you hold yourself!"
GS: Margaret has attacked Georg Heldalf with Why Don't You Come And Get It?! GS: Margaret enters a Counter stance! GS: Margaret has gained 1 Combo! GS: Margaret takes 30 damage from Poison! GS: Margaret has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
Heldalf's fist meets Hilde's shield. The reverberation pulses through her shield arm, as well, but she fights through the pain. The halberd swings down and Hilde raises her shield as it descends toward her. There is a terrible sound of metal upon metal as they clash, the sheer force and power behind the swing sending cracks spider-webbing out through the ground beneath her feet.
"...Never! For as long as there is a citizen of Hyland who stills draw breath, for as long as my fallen countrymen still cry out for justice, I will not break nor yield!" She retaliates. She backpedals, taking up her sword now and rushing him down.
Her sword flashes outward several times - strikes aimed not to inflict damage on the flesh, but to create weaknesses in armor that can be exploited.
GS: Hilde has attacked Georg Heldalf with Rend Armor! GS: Hilde takes 19 damage from Poison! GS: Hilde has completed her action. GS: Georg Heldalf guards a hit from Margaret's Why Don't You Come And Get It? for 24 hit points! GS: Cover applied to Margaret! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Sufferer! GS: Georg Heldalf critically guards Hilde's Rend Armor for 15 hit points! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
"What! You're not used to getting through thick skin with those barbs of yours? I'm disappointed Ragnell!" Ruby quips at Ragnell before flying in closer to Ivan, and... perhaps it's something about his words, his stammer, but her advice to him is... "Ivan! Breathe!"
It's two simple words, but perhaps it's saying... that he's in a place now where he doesn't need to abide the stench. ... Or maybe she's just worried he's going to have a panic attack if Heldalf keeps talking to him like that.
Maybe both!
Heldalf's Halberd sweeps at Hiro, and Hiro suddenly shifts into the defensive, as if perhaps showing some mimicry of Leo's caution. The Dragon head of Heldalf's fury nearly rips through his guard cleanly anyway, blasting him backwards a good half a dozen yards from the Rolancian General. "That's... what you have to say? The world has no room for such things?"
The first things Hiro learned of Althena was not doctrine, but kindness, justice, mercy... these ideas that made up an image of her benevolence... to be seen as childish idealism... it's shocking.
Hiro's waves his shield arm as if its numb from taking that impact, trying to regain feeling in it, before holding his sword at a tense guard. "Tell me then General... what in your view does it have room for? If you come upon a chasm, is your first inclination to ponder how many corpses you need fill it with to cross?"
It's not really a question he expects an answer to.
Hiro then suddenly advances, moving in what starts as a slow rhythm of strike after strike. Slash after slash tries to push Heldalf's guard, to test it. His momentum building with greater speed, and strength. "What kind of madness drives you..."
Until he whips himself and his blade back for one final slash that attempts to plunge his blade right into Heldalf's armor.
"... that butchery would be seen as a step to a better world?"
GS: Hiro has attacked Georg Heldalf with Sword Dance! GS: Hiro has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hiro takes 19 damage from Poison! GS: Hiro has completed his action. GS: Georg Heldalf takes a solid hit from Hiro's Sword Dance for 156 hit points! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel glances to Margaret. She's rather growing fond of Margaret. She didn't have much of an answer for her there--unfortunately when it comes to matters regarding Althena she's having a harder time discerning her motives. It sounds like Heldalf is just claiming to be doing something terrible on her behalf without actually asking, though, which is frankly a RELIEF. There is enough that seems outright sanctioned by her that is giving her grief.
And as she hears more of these stories, bears witness to more of these dire and more dire works yet--she is rapidly finding herself having an easier and easier time understanding the Althena of today, and a harder and harder time of remembering her friend. There was more than one reason why Marivel would always get PISSED when others talked down to Althena. She just didn't want to hear it, yes, but she also wished to protect those precious memories--as best as she could in spite of everything. In spite of...
Loving a memory doesn't protect her from what comes next. Blue dragon light rips THROUGH Marivel's midsection and she's sent tumbling backwards--there's a reason she thought that Leo might be the one to kill her one day. Heldalf is giving suggestion as to why.
Marivel hits the floor, her body ripped asunder and unable to really properly move. She could smoke out here but it's still bright enough yet and she daren't try.
Instead, the Hound of Hell steps forward to protect her body. It howls like any beast would, but there's enough intelligence in its eyes to suggest the Jack behind it all.
It does not say things like 'We died fighting for you, for your war, for your goddess' since Heldalf surely knows all these things and does not seem to understand or care about what that might means.
But the Hound understands the language of violence from well before Marivel took him. He leaps forward, positioning its body between Margaret's and Heldalf's as it lunges forward, trying to clamp its jaws down on the General.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"Yours is naught al-oneli," Boudicca retorts, all lonely, all by itself. "Who hears yon singuler preire?" When he prays in solitude, who could possibly hear him? This is the question Boudicca lays into him, with words their world left behind centuries ago.
The sun's rays are an entirely appropriate thing to lay at a Wind Seraph's feet; fire is her weakness, not light, but they are kin enough to each other. As she springs away from the radiance, they spark smoke into those silks which burn so easily; the orange flecks of her cloak light, bright as Moor Gault themself, as she finds her feet under her again.
There is something to be said, she thinks, for the youth of Kaguya, and the power of levity Lanval holds so dear. It is not something she can grasp so easily; but still, it is strong.
And Boudicca realises, as Pearl's Leviathan leaves her to strike Harmaus, just who she is. It's recognition locked in a gaze, and finally she finds words: "I -- I am glad you fight with us!"
Not just her, but Leo, Hilde, Day... even Margaret, it seems...
Well, Boudicca has always struggled to see them as grievous foes. Her hereticism isn't an old thing, the way she is. (The way she is not, laid against Harmaus.)
Perhaps the best gratitude she has she shapes through the air, as a Seraphic glyph lights beneath her feet. "Whim of wend!" She incants, hands clasping together: "Thousand Sky!"
And so the breeze does travel -- twisting around Pearl, around Kaguya, around Gwen and Brad. They might not all be mortal in quite the same ways, but they're all worth defending, against the light of --
"Then what 'truth' do you make of this butchery, Harmaus?! What sense is there in this -- this base treachery!" One hand lashes out, to indicate the warfield, all the corpses which lay there.
GS: Seraph Boudicca has activated a Force Action! GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Georg Heldalf with Bloody Mari! GS: Marivel Armitage has gained 1 Combo! GS: Marivel Armitage takes 21 damage from Poison! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action. GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Pearl with Thousand Sky! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Brad Evans with Thousand Sky! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Kaguya with Thousand Sky! GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Gwen Whitlock with Thousand Sky! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action. GS: Brad Evans accepts Seraph Boudicca's Thousand Sky for 0 hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Lock State and Shield applied to Brad Evans! GS: CRITICAL! Georg Heldalf critically guards Marivel Armitage's Bloody Mari for 43 hit points! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Sufferer! GS: Kaguya accepts Seraph Boudicca's Thousand Sky for 0 hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Lock State and Surge applied to Kaguya! GS: Kaguya activates Sufferer! GS: Pearl accepts Seraph Boudicca's Thousand Sky for 0 hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Lock State and Shield applied to Pearl! GS: Gwen Whitlock accepts Seraph Boudicca's Thousand Sky for 0 hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Lock State and Shield applied to Gwen Whitlock!
<Pose Tracker> Brad Evans has posed.
Brad has relatively little play to do with a cat spirit and its heresies...but it's involved with this atrocity, and this he cares about quite a lot. The razing light pierces him, but does not undo him; he falls to his knees, breathing deeply for several moments of the icy wind. "...don't know your deal," he admits.
Boudicca's magic winds around him, helping his muscles find strength to stand. "But you've made my team mad," he says, and levels the Mechanical Glove again. "And ended a whole bunch of people. Don't much care what your reasons are, at that point."
The Glove frosts over, briefly, far colder than the biting snow of Gagazet's slope, as a Shrine's blessing shines out of the enchanted Glove and releases as a frozen-cold shell from the barrel, blasting toward Harmaus. Shooting at a cat-shaped, cat-sized cat with an anti-material weapon...well, he guesses he'd prefer this than the cat being some kind of mountain-sized hell monster, at least.
GS: Brad Evans has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Coldcock! GS: Brad Evans takes 22 damage from Poison! GS: Brad Evans has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Georg Heldalf has posed.
"Am I? Or do I merely speak truths shown to you... that you did not wish to face, Day of Muirwall?" Heldalf demands of Day, even as he rushes in. "You find yourself victim of your own incongruencies! The gap between your values... and what you must do!"
His blade swings up -- and Heldalf launches an enormous backhand, armored gauntlet catching Day's sword just before it bites deeper. Sparks fly, as he bounces the blade backward. Lightning rains dwon a moment later, dozens of needle-like lightning bursts striking him -- then exploding into arcs that dance over his armor and to the ground. It blasts him backward.
"HRAH!" he shouts, slamming a hand against the ground. A magical circle expands outward, Althenan runes turning inside it -- and then a chasm explodes, shooting towards Day and then Ragnell, sending up huge shards of rock as the very earth splits.
He turns, then, and looks towards Margaret. The chain slackens, then titans, and she rushes in. Her sickle strikes, almost hitting between two plates, but the old warrior turns -- and it skates along the armor instead, with a spray of sparks.
Hilde, then, strikes. Heldalf recognizes it -- a blade meant to break at his armor, and so he moves -- swings up Margaret's chain to meet her blade, and Hilde shears through it as he steps backward. "Kingdoms fall! Royalty dies! Your kingdom means nothing!"
He swings out his axe. Purple light dances off the halberd's blade, crackling with energy -- and then releases as the snarling, terrible head of a great bear, fangs beared. The blast of violet light explodes outward, at Margaret and Hilde both.
Marivel comes for him. Heldalf turns, eyes on her for a moment. He looks at her broken body -- and then at the hound of hell. His eyes narow. "Begone, beast... I will not suffer you! I would enact my will upon your mistress, instead!"
The hound's fangs bit onto his gauntlet, wrenching a plate free -- and he swings up the halberd. A massive white fang erupts; the Demon Fang tears through the earth, instead, and sends up enormous rocks that slam into the hound. It continues on.
And, as Marivel lay there, a massive spike of stone explodes from the ground and up for her.
"Brought low... by your own reticence. THERE IS NO PLACE FOR THAT ON THE BATTLEFIELD, BOY!" Heldalf shouts at Ivan, even as the fires roiling off Ivan crackle and burn his armor. He punches his gauntleted fist out, for a mighty punch across Ivan's face--
--even as his breastplate is dented inward, sharply, by the blow of the fist. Then, Ivan's flame shoots off, sparks hitting and tearing into the blackened armor.
Heldalf stumples backward from Ivan. He swings a hand back -- and light gathers into it, as he looks up at Leo. Leo's blasts rain down from above, before his blade strikes -- and rends through the armor.
He turns his head, then, and looks at Hiro. Heldalf's eyes narrow for a moment -- and he does, indeed, not answer his question. "I answer butchery with butchery! You think this is not the way of things? You think that this not what this world has been brought to!"
Hiro's blade slams in, too -- and cuts through the armor, then in. It rips free, and it's wet with blood.
Blood flows, running down Heldalf's armor. He raises that fist backward, light glowing and burning off it. He lets out a roar, after that. "LION'S HOWL!"
A titanic lion's head erupts off his fist as he punches it outward. Flame and force combine, tracing out the lines of the roaring lion, which hurtles out for Ivan, Hiro, and Leo with raw, explosive promise.
GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Georg Heldalf with The Butcher of Rolance! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf accepts Georg Heldalf's The Butcher of Rolance for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Cripple and Disrupt removed! GS: Hyper and Lock State applied to Georg Heldalf! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Day Muirwall with Earthquake! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Seraph Ragnell with Earthquake! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Margaret with Punishing Beast! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf assumes the Stoic stance! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Hilde with Punishing Beast! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Formation! Georg Heldalf has attacked Marivel Armitage with Grave Fang! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Formation! Georg Heldalf has attacked Marivel Armitage with Grave! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 2 Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf has launched an attack Link! GS: Georg Heldalf has completed his action. GS: Day Muirwall takes a solid hit from Georg Heldalf's Earthquake for 261 hit points! GS: Hilde critically guards Georg Heldalf's Punishing Beast for 57 hit points! GS: COUNTER! Margaret counterattacks Georg Heldalf with Counter Attack! GS: Margaret takes a solid hit from Georg Heldalf's Punishing Beast for 285 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Margaret gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dispel! Cover removed! GS: Georg Heldalf guards a hit from Margaret's Counter Attack for 59 hit points! GS: Georg Heldalf activates Guard bonus! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked White Knight Leo with Lion's Howl! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Ivan with Lion's Howl! GS: Georg Heldalf has attacked Hiro with Lion's Howl! GS: Georg Heldalf has gained 1 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo critically guards Georg Heldalf's Lion's Howl for 40 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! White Knight Leo gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hiro critically guards Georg Heldalf's Lion's Howl for 41 hit points! GS: Ivan takes a solid hit from Georg Heldalf's Lion's Howl for 210 hit points! GS: Ivan enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ivan has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"Okay, that's fair," Kaguya says to Pearl. "Later is fine." "...Heh." Kaguya is not exactly comfortable with Lanval's power--but she can appreciate the irony of the moment. Lanval eyes her with that half-open eye, and the Veruni nods back his way. "Yeah. We've got a lot to say about what's 'truth' here."
Kaguya has started to come to understand Harmaus's way of talking though--what he snaps back at Boudicca gets a growl out of her, "Life has meaning! People have meaning!"
"I break with it too!" Kaguya snaps back at Harmaus as he snarls, though he escapes her vines, much to her displeasure--he intones something in an ancient tongue she doesn't have to know to recognize, and the light crashes against her--the burns are nasty enough, and despite her affinity for starlight Kaguya has no particularly special resistance to Harmaus's power.
But Boudicca's wind does travel about her, buoys her where she'd been standing. What base trachery--what brutality...
Kaguya pulls a weapon, finally--a white-and-black ARM, of strange design, resembling little other than a shotgun in terms of modern weaponry, but clearly of Veruni design to those who know it. The TK-38K gleams in the darkness, and Kaguya loads it up with pumping action, narrowing her eyes as she starts to point it upward. Power hums as energy charges.
"He's bad news," Kaguya supplies for Brad. "Just chalk it up to that."
She lifts her ARM and points--and then suddenly there's a great blast of green energy that erupts from her weapon, the recoil sufficient to knock her a few feet back.
"...The people of Hyland are my friends. That has meaning."
GS: Kaguya has activated a Force Action! GS: Kaguya spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Kaguya has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Riot Break! GS: Kaguya takes 30 damage from Poison! GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
The Goddess would never condone murder!
"Do you really think that?" She doesn't yell it across the battlefield, merely a question for those close enough to her. For what she's seen... The goddess condones just about anything. even the most vile of monsters.
But now is not the time to further damage morale.
The spear of light heads straight for Pearl, and she braces, but in a moment Leviathan is between her and the beam, taking the hit and pyreflies bleeding rapidly from them. They let out a massive roar of pain, and worry washes across Pearl's face- an expression most have never seen her have. She glares at the cat Seraph, and places a hand on her Aeon, gauging their strength. Her strength. They have been battling a while now, and this is yet another. Can she keep it up? She could easily cut and run, she has no side in this fight.
But she's up against a powerful foe. And a part of her soul would never forgive her if she ran.
Boudicca's eyes turn to hers, and Pearl notices. She expects disdain, and expects some from herself, but her words... "...You are the first to say so and not one I would have expected." How non-commital.
Pearl raises her staff to the air, and Leviathan roars as water surges around them. "I don't know your goals, feline. But I do not believe they can be of any good to anyone." Spears of water gather like a crown around the Aeon's head. Pearl points her staff at Harmaus, and the spears fly forward, piercing from all directions.
GS: Pearl spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Pearl has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Ocean's Spears! GS: Pearl has gained 2 Combo! GS: Pearl takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: Pearl has completed her action. GS: Seraph Harmaus critically guards Brad Evans's Coldcock for 19 hit points! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Guard bonus! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Riot Break for 198 hit points! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a glancing hit from Pearl's Ocean's Spears for 86 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Arcane Font! GS: Day Muirwall has activated a Force Action! GS: Seraph Ragnell fully evades Georg Heldalf's Earthquake for 0 hit points! GS: Seraph Ragnell enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Marivel Armitage critically guards Georg Heldalf's Grave Fang for 45 hit points! GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Georg Heldalf's Grave for 242 hit points! GS: Marivel Armitage has Fallen! She is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
From within the rainstorm, a light builds that turns the very rain into steam, and further evaporates it into nothing - that what is hidden makes itself known as the solar fire with its blue hue expands and consumes the ceaseless rainstorm underneath, and the Water Seraph of such a clumsy, pratfalling character makes a graceful backwards leap as the light erupts underneath where he was, gaze averted from the blinding shine - only the faint sensation of heat underneath reaches him as a harrowing reminder of what he just backflipped over.
He lands in a handstand in the snow, one arm pressed against the top of the drinking gourd.
Boudicca gives her support - even to one who normally would be barred from such a thing - and Lanval gives a bit of a side-eye in Harmaus' direction (though his back is facing him). "Well, if yer givin' them permisshion ta try, thanksh a bunch... ha ha ha!" He laughs there at Harmaus' expense, but it's difficult to muster laughs with the raw emotion coming over with the legendary general Heldalf and those who once believed in him. He thinks, for a moment, about Seraph Vesna and knowing how much she cares for the mortal who is putting everything about his life on the line - and what should rightfully be filling the air in the wake of this conflict.
He drinks from the gourd again (from a handstand, on one hand, with a gourd that is hella heavy - and he looks so heavy on top of that) before setting the gourd down, wiggling his legs back and forth.
"All 'n all... 'm gonna drink ta that." What's 'that?' Does there ever need to be a 'that?' With surprising strength and grace, Lanval springs back up into the air, towards Harmaus' direction.
"Jeeeeeeeeeersh!" Lanval slurs as he grabs at the gourd directly with a hand - that ever-metaphorically-and-metaphysically-heavy drinking gourd, filled with a piece of the very water of Filgaia itself - and comes at Harmaus with all the weight and grace of a drunken lug throwing their entire weight behind it with questionable martial technique but plenty of force.
GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Jeers!! GS: Seraph Lanval takes 20 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Day Muirwall has posed.
A ways down the battlefield, Seraph Vesna - astride Guingryph - is in the process of throwing a knight across the field via a tornado. She's able to catch Ragnell's look, though, then glances towards Day. With a bite to her lower lip, she blushes just a little and moves a hand to her collar.
Then she smiles a little, too.
Day doesn't notice. Not with his emotions running hot - and the more fire they pour into him, the more flame he has to channel into the keen of his blade, into the snap of his strikes, the quickness of his movements. His armour, heavy and scarred as it is, doesn't encumber him anymore. His body, aching and battered from the battle, is hardly on his mind anymore.
Action is. Doing the right thing is.
Through his teeth, Day growls with growing indignation. "I know what I must do know," he grates. "And it's stand up to you. Someone has to want a future that's more than wallowing in disgrace like a pig!"
He moves to pursue Heldalf as the general is hurled back - but Heldalf pulls out one of the biggest tools he has that Day does not: Offensive magic. The earth yawns open, a vast chasm spewing shards of rock forth. Day clenches his teeth and holds his shield up and tries to power through it.
One of the shards comes up beneath his shield. The sheet of metal tears off his arm and goes spiralling into the air, thrown away into the field.
The stalagmite doesn't stop there. Day bucks and coughs up a throatful of blood as the lance of rock punches through his armour and up into his stomach, then out his back. He folds over the rock shard before still more chunks of earth jut up, engulfing him.
"DAY!!" Vesna screams from across the field, her eyes wide and her face going pale.
Heldalf has all the time in the world to unleash his power on Leo, Hiro and Ivan. No one from that flank is going to stop him.
Until the pile of earth is suddenly divided in half along a horizontal line - and shards of rock and dirt explode outward.
Bleeding and breathing heavily, Day comes surging out of the pile. A chunk of rock is still sticking out of his back, and blood's still gushing down his flank. It's all he can do to stand up - but he has to. He has to. To die here would prove Heldalf right. Prove that honour doesn't matter. Make a mockery of everything he stands for. Let down the only people who have given a damn about him - who have helped him to feel like he does have value. Like he's more than just a man who has sinned.
"GEOOOOORG HELDAAAAAAAALF," he screams, his eyes ablaze. "I'LL SHOW YOU THE WAY TO CHANGE THE WOOOOOORLD!!" And he swings. Swings with all his might.
"LIOOOOOOOOOON'S HOOOOOOOOOOWL...!!!"
Day's tried this before. It has never worked. But here -
Just as when Heldalf did it, flame and force combine. The power bursts from Day's sword and traces out the shape of a roaring lion that goes bearing down on the man who originated the technique. But just before it arrives--
"...PEGASUS... HEAAAAAAAAART!!!"
The lion suddenly folds in on itself in midflight. What Heldalf receives instead is a fiery white blast - one shaped like a massive winged horse, rearing and screaming in indignation.
The pegasus is the emblem of House Muirwall. Right now it's barreling down on Heldalf like the wrath of God.
GS: Day Muirwall spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Day Muirwall has attacked Georg Heldalf with Forcene Pegasus! GS: Day Muirwall has gained 1 Combo! GS: Day Muirwall has completed his action. GS: Georg Heldalf guards a hit from Day Muirwall's Forcene Pegasus for 201 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Harmaus is a Light Seraph. _Harmaus is a Light Seraph._
HARMAUS IS A LIGHT SERAPH, WHICH MEANS HE ATTACKS WITH LIGHT.
Gwen flinches backwards with a sharp cry of pain, as her sight is ripped from her with a bright flash of sheering, piercing light. She falls back, her eyelids firmly held shut.
Fumbling to her feet, Gwen rubs tears of a different sort against the inside of her sleeve, taking two very panicked steps backwards.
If it weren't for the calm breeze of Boudicca's magic, Gwen would have had to turn to other methods of navigating as her sight painfully traveled back in place from its temporary sabbatical. "Oh, Guardians, ow." Gwen rubs her face, then slaps her cheeks for good measure.
"Haha, Harmaus, it takes more than that to knock me down!" she crows now, to the very Seraph who actually did just knock her down. "But I got one more message t'deliver, n' it's a doozy!"
Gwen is clearly unsettled, if she's joking around like this this early in the battle.
Especially as she's coming in, just to slam her powering-up glowing fist at Harmaus _again_.
GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: Gwen Whitlock spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Gwen Whitlock has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Special Delivery! GS: Gwen Whitlock has gained 1 Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock takes 19 damage from Poison! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
The fire surging from Ivan's body burns brighter, some of its light seeming to concentrate and radiate from deep within his chest. He finds it difficult to focus on anything in this moment except bringing down Heldalf. A heavy punch connects with his face with a crack and a burst of pain that feels far away, and he yells wordlessly, swinging his sword again.
Ruby shouts at him to breathe, but that seems irrelevant, unimportant -- less important than getting another strike in. And another! Nor does he see any reason to take any heed of the surge of light and flame forming into the shape of a lion around Heldalf's fist.
But reality doesn't care about Ivan's singleminded focus, and the massive, energetic burst pushes into him and though him, throwing him into the air and sending him crashing back down again some distance away.
That... still doesn't matter. It doesn't matter! He pushes himself up and begins to run forward again as if nothing had touched him -- but his body remembers what his mind refuses to accept, and his legs simply give out beneath him, and he slumps forward in a heap.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
'I answer butchery with butchery! You think this is not the way of things? You think that this not what this world has been brought to!'
Ragnell clucks her tongue, though it hadn't been her that Heldalf had been addressing. "I'm not the vengeful sort, but... maybe it would've been better for everyone if I had been," she remarks to the air, a rather ominous comment for anyone who happens to know the context of it.
She otherwise doesn't explain herself, instead opting to give Vesna a little salute. She then backsteps multiple times in rapid succession when Heldalf calls up a powerful spell beneath her and Day, one that tears the earth on which she'd just been standing asunder. A very good thing that she got out of dodge real, real fast. Heldalf is *really* not someone you want to get a direct hit from. Hiro and Leo manage to defend themselves against it; Marivel and Ivan, less so.
"Haww hawww--suck it, Marivel," Ragnell jeers at the Crimson Noble. She abruptly goes silent, eyes narrowing, when Ivan is engulfed by the force of that Lion's Howl. However, she otherwise leaves Ivan be--after surreptitiously positioning herself between him and Heldalf, anyway--and calls over to Ruby, "This goes way beyond jus' thick skin! But far be it for me to *disappoint* you--"
Ragnell twirls both pistols up into the air and catches them deftly as a Seraphic glyph of brilliant gold materializes beneath her feet. A matching one glows under Heldalf, and it helps guide Ragnell's bullets as she opens rapid fire onto the general. A hail of bullets, firing left-right-left-right-left-right so quickly they might be shooting at the same time, pours forth like shooting stars from her guns. "You ready for this? It's jus' you an' me right now, sucker!"
She snaps one arm back, and with wrists crossed, the muzzles of her firearms glow brightly as they draw in massive amounts of energy. Ragnell snaps them both forward and fires two massive bolts that twist and spiral into one, aiming to collide with intense force on the Butcher of Rolance.
"PRISM TANGO!"
GS: Seraph Ragnell enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Ragnell has attacked Georg Heldalf with Prism Tango! GS: Seraph Ragnell has gained 2 Combo! GS: Seraph Ragnell has completed her action. GS: Georg Heldalf critically guards Seraph Ragnell's Prism Tango for 31 hit points! GS: Seraph Harmaus guards a hit from Seraph Lanval's Jeers! for 73 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Mute applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a glancing hit from Gwen Whitlock's Special Delivery for 66 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Hex expired!
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel is focused on supplying energy to Jack the Big Bad Wolf there--IT is able to avoid the massive blast from Georg chiefly, avoiding the worst of it, backflipping back in ways that wolves generally aren't known for--
--but Marivel is literally unable to really move from her position as a spike of stone finishes tearing away what still connects her top half to her bottom half. The lower half disintegrates into black smoke as Marivel, basically now a head with nothing remaining below the ribcage, says, "Fuck."
She stares up at the sky. "Ragnell, give me some advice, my lovely friend who is always happy to spend time with me," She says.
"Should I dramatically fall backwards into a pillar of light and flame, leaving only my skull behind or should I kind of smile as the light engulfs me only to show up a few weeks later being super gay? The being super gay a few weeks later is happening anyway. I know that since we're so similar, you'd know what is best for both of us while I am trying not to utterly disintegrate."
Marivel seems too busy giving Ragnell shit to fall back.
"It's so kind of you to protect me from this villainous blackguard now that I can no longer defend myself. Thank you Ragnell, I always knew you cared."
She is going to do this until Heldalf crushes her into ash if someone doesn't do something.
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
It seems that Heldalf is aware of the Giantslayer's arts... Hilde supposes she should have expected that, but it still complicates matters.
"I speak not of royalty, but of its people! For as long as its people live, Hyland endures!" Hilde replies. "But perhaps I have been shortsighted - your butchery threatens more than just Hyland. Where does it end, Georg Heldalf? How much blood will it take for you to be satisfied?"
Heldalf swing his weapon, and a monstrous great bear charges Hilde's way. And in response Hilde... puts way her shield. She stares down the head of the bear as it descends, fangs bared... and charges right into it. Right as it is about to consume her she swings her blade to meet it, to cleave the head right in two around her.
And she continues onward, charging down Heldalf himself, body aglow with the blue light of her resolve, as she swings with the blade that has felled titans.
GS: Hilde has attacked Georg Heldalf with Titan Cleaver! GS: Hilde takes 25 damage from Poison! GS: Cover, Disease, and Poison expired! GS: Hilde has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Georg Heldalf takes a solid hit from Hilde's Titan Cleaver for 250 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Georg Heldalf gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Heldalf feels like a being of violence incarnate, as he tears across them. On a field of Ronso corpses. The way he punches Ivan as if he were punishing him. This whole affair is making him feel sick in ways beyond the arte that's taken hold of his bowels.
Heldalf declares this is the way of the world. This violence, this bloodshed. This endless cycle. He's seen so many people that believe that this world is an endless cycle of death and bloodshed.
He's seen so many examples of it. On Filgaia. On Lunar.
Is it then... what the world has been brought to?
Lion's Howl punches outwards. It's not the first time he's seen it. Leo has used it against him plenty of times. Yet Georg Heldalf is a master of it - and there's a certain anxiety at seeing it bearing down on him.
Like it might swallow him whole.
Hiro plants his feet just before the massive Lion's visage makes contact, sorcerous energy gathering in his hands. The energy consumes him in one great detonation of powerful violence.
And he stands his ground.
It looks like he's vanished in the aftermath, "Thanks Leo." It's quiet. Leo may not even hear it. "I don't think I would have lived through that... if you hadn't challenged me over... and over again."
Twin spirals of shadow and wind energy rise around him like currents of wind, and he looks at Ivan's position in alarm as Ruby rushes over to him. As he sees the results of Marivel being struck by his spell... "Marivel... Ivan..."
Yet, he simply has to trust that Ivan is tougher than this... butcher for the moment. At least... Marivel will likely be okay. He hopes.
"Ivan! Oh... Oh!" Ruby as worried as she is though, is committed to spite. "Good. Make him hurt. I want him to hurt!"
"For all of your strength you just went along with what you thought was a way of the world, became a part of that cycle of bloodshed, rather than challenging it. Rather than planting your feet." Hiro seems... disquieted, but also, resolved, "When I heard that you trained Leo... a genuinely good man... I expected..."
There's this hitch in his voice, a pause, and then... "... I don't know what I expected." In that moment, he unleashes his gathered spell. And in the space of an instant, a great Maelstrom of wind currents and blinding shadow buffets into George Heldalf in this sudden, unexpected storm of great intensity that only lasts a second or two.
Hiro's already running at him, his sword snapping as it lights aflame, roaring into an arc as he snaps it forward. "More than this..." He says, as he follows up the spell by using his upwind position to drive him straight down into the Rolancian General's position. "...so much more than this."
GS: Hiro spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Formation! Hiro has attacked Georg Heldalf with Black Storm! GS: Hiro has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hiro has launched an attack Link! GS: Hiro spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Hiro has attacked Georg Heldalf with Battalion Sword! GS: Hiro has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hiro takes 25 damage from Poison! GS: Disease and Poison expired! GS: Hiro has completed his action. GS: Georg Heldalf guards a hit from Hiro's Black Storm for 129 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Georg Heldalf gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf guards a hit from Hiro's Battalion Sword for 144 hit points! GS: Georg Heldalf has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Was General Heldalf a good man? Leo doesn't know, now, and it's eating at him like acid. His earliest memories of the man are of a noble knight on pilgrimage, humble enough to stay the night with a simple farming family in Raculi. He was just a boy, then, and Mauri even younger.
Mauri...
Goddess, his heart hurts. It hurts so much.
Heldalf lambastes Hiro some more, and Leo looks at the younger man, regret in his eyes. It only lasts a moment. He whirls back to his former master, the anger returning. "This man," he says, "was tarred as a heretic, cast out--marked as an enemy of all the faithful. And even now, he has the strength to try and reason with you!" Talking buys Leo a moment to focus on his breath, to force the essence of Earth through his cracked ribs. Every move he makes risks opening the wounds Mariel tended not ten minutes ago.
And then, Heldalf gives Leo a more personal demonstration of how ruthless he can be.
"DAY!" Leo shouts, as he sees the young knight, all but skewered on a pillar of earth. "MARIVEL!" Leo sees what's coming next in Heldalf's bladework, in the same form he's executed dozens of times. "HIRO! IVAN! BRACE!" The White Knight stomps a foot into the earth, and a wall of rock erupts from the ground before him. Even it isn't enough to block out the sight of the roaring, phantasmal lion as it races at him. Stone splinters on impact, pelting Leo with shards. The White Knight grits his teeth and sweeps his blade forward, meeting Heldalf's power with his own. The impact jars Leo's arms in their sockets, and sends him skidding back an inch at a time. He remains resolute up until the moment the phantom detonates...and his blade goes flying. It whips up over his shoulder, twirls end over end for a good thirty or so feet, and lands, point-down, in the snow.
But at least Leo and Hiro weathered the storm. Ivan--Ivan seems fine up until the moment he collapses, and in that moment, something in Leo's brain snaps.
MONTHS AGO, AT THE SIEGE OF BEVELLE
Smoke billows on the horizon. The survivors of a unit of Warrior-Monks beat a hasty retreat, hauling their dead and wounded with them. All they've left behind is a single automaton, a strange construct twice the size of Leo himself. It steps forwards on lanky disjointed legs--it has no arms to speak of, and its slouched posture looks almost comical, but Leo senses menace in its movements. He motions for the rest of his troops to stand back.
His worries prove warranted. The automaton rushes him with a little hop-step, brings a leg up, bends it at the knee.
In the next heartbeat, that leg rushes out to sweep Leo off his feet. With effortless followup, the automaton slams that same foot into Leo's center of mass. The White Knight barely has time to meet it with his blade, and even that isn't enough to stop him from rocketing backwards, into the formation.
It was not his proudest moment.
NOW, ON MOUNT GAGAZET
Leo's first instinct should be go get his weapon, but he is angry in a way words cannot describe. And without prompting, he remembers how easily that machine dispatched him that day--and how it did it. If he can just...
To outside observers, Leo does something extremely stupid--he charges Heldalf head-on, arms held limp at his sides, mimicking the weird little hop-step of those bizarre combat automatons. And yet, there is undeniable martial skill there, which Leo brings to bear the moment he's within range.
First--sweep the leg. Leo crouches, strikes out with his right leg to trip Heldalf up, or at least destabilize his footing with a battering to the ankles. Next--snap-kick, center mass. Tension coils in Leo's muscles as he draws that leg up, and then SNAPS it forwards, striking for the very center of Heldalf's chest. It's not a precise copy by any means. Leo was raised on an entirely different continent, and thus did not receive any sort of training in traditional Ronso combat techniques. Nevertheless, he's a quick study when it comes to violence.
Heldalf would know.
GS: White Knight Leo enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked Georg Heldalf with Thrust Kick! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 2 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Marivel gives Ragnell a bunch of shit. She rolls her eyes, lip curling. "Uggggghhhh. I don't care what you do as long as you *shut up*, Marivel."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Ah? It has meaning? It says it has meaning, but what is the meaning? What value is it?!" Harmaus replies to Kaguya, snarling at her from atop the rock. "Just lives! There, gone again! Meaningless!"
That great burst of fire catches him where he stands; he doesn't manage to even move an inch from that rock before it consumes him. He stands still as the flames finally burn out, flicking his tail to swish the last of them away. There is no immediate sorcerous retort to that save for the aura about him glowing brighter, more gold.
Who will hear the single prayer of this lonely son of Althena?
None. No one will hear it. No answer has come to Harmaus in all his seven hundred and seventy-six years of life. Not once has the Goddess answered him.
"SILENCE!" is his retort to Boudicca, his teeth bared as he just about spits in her direction. "It has no right-- it speaks but lies!"
But in this moment, who is the liar and who is the oracle?
"Only death!" he snarls in reply to her accusation. "Only inheritance of mortals! It lies to itself, proclaiming care! Look around! Look around! Look at inheritance of mortals!"
Indeed, this place has become a warzone proper, another one for both Seraphs to witness.
"Boudicca... -do you not grow tired of their false and wicked ways?-" he says to her in the Ancient Tongue, hovering still a moment in the air. "-But already I know you will not listen. ...Be counted, divided, excluded!" About him, blazing suns rise in the air, hovering a moment before streaking for her like brilliantly-burning meteors.
It's here that Brad intrudes, explaining exactly why he takes issue with the Seraph before ejecting a shell towards the hovering cat-shaped cat-sized being. Harmaus swivels to look directly at him. The shell hits. It just also rebounds off of the sparkling golden shell that surrounds the Seraph, burning brightly in the air. "Its concerns," says Harmaus slowly, eyes narrowed, "matters me not." There is no immediate retort from Harmaus; instead, its aura seems to intensify somehow, gaining in brilliance measure by measure.
"Any good? It knows not what I intend," he similarly replies to Pearl, a sentiment perhaps undercut by the point where the water rains down upon the Seraph like spears, piercing him in several places. Though, just as before -- it's a body only as much as he wishes it to be a body. It is not bound by the same rules as a mortal, for good or for ill. His aura glitters more brightly yet, shining as if it were aiming to eventually challenge the sun.
"Permission?" he says to Lanval. "I needs not give permission! Was it not 'Lord of the Land'? Now but 'lowly lord'!" says Harmaus, perhaps frustrated that his attempts to needle a sensitive point have meet with little success. "Blames it not her?"
The wave of water that rolls towards him might count as a sort of exemplar of Lanval's feelings on the matter -- or at least the current situation. Harmaus is washed a short distance away from his rock... and that aura blazes ever brighter still.
"Ah?" he says, when Gwen calls out to him. "I tries harder next, yes. It is--"
And this is when, as he rights himself and leaps upwards, aura burning, she clocks him right in his little cat face.
"Tcha..." snarls the Seraph, points forming on his aura as it gains in intensity after he pulls himself back up. "Annoying, yet. But matters me not." He closes his eyes. "-Untroubled by insignificant things, your heart is steady-," utters the Seraph; the glow that grows around him and twining with the golden aura is a brilliant, heavenly blue. Small particles of it are shed about him as it descends into his form, strengthening his corpus.
And leaps into the air to there hover, the aura unfurling in full in a complete circle about him. He is the star cresting the horizon, the sunlight blazing out from the origin point. He in this moment is the vanquisher of all things of the nighttime.
He is the dawn. And the light flashes
Green.
"First Light!" the Seraph intones, his brilliance seeking to scour all before him.
GS: Seraph Harmaus enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Seraph Boudicca with Adiaphora! GS: Seraph Harmaus enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Ataraxia! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 3 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus accepts Seraph Harmaus's Ataraxia for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Cripple, Entangle, Jam, Mute, and Poison removed! GS: Quick applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Mighty applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Seraph Harmaus has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip! GS: Seraph Harmaus has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Lock On! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Pearl with First Light! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Kaguya with First Light! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Brad Evans with First Light! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Seraph Lanval with First Light! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Gwen Whitlock with First Light! GS: Seraph Harmaus has completed his action. GS: Kaguya guards a hit from Seraph Harmaus's First Light for 146 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Kaguya gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Kaguya activates Sufferer! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Boudicca takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Adiaphora for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Boudicca gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Blind and Drowsy applied to Seraph Boudicca! GS: Seraph Boudicca activates Sufferer! GS: Brad Evans guards a hit from Seraph Harmaus's First Light for 147 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Brad Evans gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Lanval has activated a Force Action! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Lanval takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's First Light for 151 hit points! GS: Pearl takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's First Light for 119 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Pearl gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.
Margaret sees the chain of her weapon break. Ah, she thinks. That's where that feeling came from. She is left with half a weapon. That's enough for her to throw herself forwards and hold it up into a backwards grip, but Heldalf is yielding ground as well.
This is not in the manuals for kusarigama combat. Margaret improvises, hurling the chain and weight after Heldalf in the hope that it will at least bother him briefly; a moment later his artes surge forwards, the violet wave of demonaic, bear-wrought force smashes into her, something like a tidal wave... something... worse behind it.
This power, Margaret thinks: It's *draining*. Where does this COME from? I can all but hear Spira complain about it and I don't even LIVE here and I think impure thoughts at church services. Why is he --
That is the most she can think; that is the most that she can do. The storm is upon her and she can feel herself twist and smash and thrust against the ground before she is left bereft and eroded in its passage, and -
Margaret opens one eye. Her mind washes down her body. Her legs feel numb but they *feel* numb - she can feel leather and copper complain when she tries to move them - good enough - she rolls to her back, pushing upright with a grimace and a faltering sensation. A rib, she thinks. Not... pressing out, but...
Her teeth grit for a moment. SOMETHING familiar is nearby. Why is it there? She can all but hear --
Jack, Margaret thinks, looking towards where Marivel -- is, was?
By the Goddess, I have to, Margaret begins to think, before coming up short. Wait a minute, she thinks to herself: There I went again. He may say the age of heroes was past but I was thinking like one already. Sweet heavens, he's going to storm through all of us the way he took out these Ronsos and have what remains of the Bevelle monks for an apertif.
Margaret kips to her feet, looking round through blurring vision. Hm, she thinks, is this... my blood? She flinches for a moment at the sight of Marivel, before Marivel's smart mouth reminds her - yes, she's a devil of some kind - but that accused lad, Ivan. Margaret grips her sickle's handle harder. She looks over her shoulder for cavalry and sees none.
She looks back ahead. She raises a hand to her mouth and twists it out in a slash afterwards -- and a ribbon of *SOMETHING*, a swirling goulash of garish colors, spreads out in front of her. Some new deviltry?
Hardly: It is an illusion. An air kiss.
"Live, damn you," Margaret says - to the White Knight.
And she says something much airier, distorted behind this barrier of particolored madness.
"Even if you should prevail here - O ye general of slaughter - you have made a *fatal* mistake in your ambitions. You might shed blood to soak the land, but what need is land to one who can make castles in the air? The Black Dragonmaster, living reckoner, builder in the sky; do you think you can outpace Borgan, or assail his citadel?"
(Margaret, behind her veil, scoops up Ivan into a fireman's carry. Marivel gets a moment of hesitation, at which point Margaret just grabs her by the hair and hopes for the best.)
"I tried to bring him down for twelve years! If we've any luck at all, he's already executing his counterschemes..."
... which seems to hang in the air...
Because Margaret, with her precious cargo, *is departing post-haste*, down Mt. Gagazet.
GS: Gwen Whitlock guards a hit from Seraph Harmaus's First Light for 152 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Gwen Whitlock gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Gwen Whitlock activates Guard bonus! GS: Georg Heldalf guards a hit from White Knight Leo's Thrust Kick for 116 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Georg Heldalf gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Georg Heldalf has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Georg Heldalf has posed.
Day strikes into Heldalf with a white blast, shaped like Muirwall's crest. It slams into him, armor blasted into -- and edges fraying and burning away -- as Heldalf stands there. Ragnell fires, then.
The pistols fire, two bolts of light that merge into one, and he raises his still armored arm -- and the blast pushes him backward. His teeth grith through it. Hilde rushes in afterward, and her blade swings into him.
The blade tears into his armor, sending shards of it flying. Heldalf grunts, sharply. He swings his weapon up -- and then Hiro sends wind, that blows him back. Hiro descends, smashing his sword into him brutally.
"The Black Wizard? What--" Heldalf says. His eyes turn to look at Leo, approaching him.
Heldalf knows much of Leo's fighting style. He knows much of how the White Knight uses his blade and armor. He can predict most things; he cannot, however, predict a Spiran one.
Or a Ronso one.
The kick slams into his chest. Heldalf's eyes widen. He shouts out a cry, wordless--
--and vanishes over the horizon in a moment.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
"I don't think I could be so cruel as to deprive you of my voice,"
Marivel is huffed up by her hair and kinda dangles like one of those shrunken heads but not shrunken so ... like a head. The Hound, limping, follows after. Marivel continues to talk to Ragnell for all of this, trying to maximize the amount of time Ragnell is forced to hear her voice.
"After all, I have the voice of an angel and the reputation of a beautiful songstress and I've clearly charmed you--"
A microphone held by smoke is held up to her mouth as she gets too far away to simply shout at her normally.
"And believe me, seeing you fight so valiantly on behalf of these mortals was a real treat that I will never ever forget and--"
Okay at about this point her voice starts to fade.
Into Brad's empathite radio.
"Tell Ragnell I'm glad she missed me---!"
Okay now she's out of range.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Ragnell shoots at Marivel. Right for the head. Mostly because there's nothing else left of her, but also because that's where the noise is coming from.
<Pose Tracker> Day Muirwall has posed.
Day was not expecting Leo to superkick Heldalf over the horizon.
Fortuitously, it's enough. Day pants heavily at the sight of Heldalf taking blow after blow before Leo finishes it off with a kick that is in no way an element of the Lion's Howl style. As the great general goes sailing away, the young knight is left to stare after him, breathing still slow and deep.
"Lord Leo," he begins.
He never finishes the sentence. With a gasp, he doubles over and drops to one knee before sagging the rest of the way, barely managing to keep himself balanced by driving his sword into the snowy, blood-soaked turf. He's pale, the stream of blood gushing down his side from the grievous wound he's suffered steadily sapping his strength and lifeforce.
There's a thump of hooves as Vess and Guingryph gallop up. "Day," she gasps as she jumps out of the saddle to rest her hands on the knight's shoulder. "Day, you're hurt... don't try to move."
Day doesn't answer, just closing his eyes and pressing his lips together in a tight line.
He wants to go comfort Leo. Wants to get up and chase Heldalf. Wants to do something. But the break in the battle - the sight of a foe vanquished for now - lets his rational mind catch up, to remind him of what was at stake.
Whatever he may have proven here, the fact remains that he's just been betrayed by the knights of his own homeland and made himself a traitor in the realm of his birth.
"I hate this," he manages to whisper.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Boudicca gestures, with anger, to the fallen of the battlefield. "You would call the youth who ran so far to find our aid meaningless?! Decades still to their lives! These are centuries, to their reckoning! Even ours cannot be so limitless!" Ragnell had to tell her, you know, that they could. Perhaps it explains her fearlessness.
Or perhaps that's simply her nature, impetuous as the breeze blows. Do as I say, not as I do: she's always leapt first.
She is not silent.
She is not silent... but she does look.
Maybe there is a little lie, here, that Harmaus can sniff out, even if he can't quite grasp where it muddies the edges.
"-I'm not alone!-" It's a higher register to her voice, less-used, as Boudicca denies his chant; the sun BLAZES, and Boudicca does not falter, as she leaps forward, scoured by one, another, another. "-Even if they're wicked -- they're still my friends..!-"
Even Kaguya, who has caused such trouble? Even Pearl, who beat her to the ground?
In this moment, maybe that doesn't matter.
She charges in through the light to the place it eminates: to him. The wind comes with her, hot with the future she sees; swirling around him, rising up, a tower of spiralling wind to signal his existence.
"No matter how hard you try," Boudicca promises him once again, though the light sizzles at her edges, "I shall not let you!"
GS: Seraph Boudicca has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Beaufort's Prediction! GS: Seraph Boudicca takes 25 damage from Poison! GS: Poison expired! GS: Seraph Boudicca has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel is shot directly in the skull. "No...!" She cries out. "No!! I had a whole song--!! Nooooooooo!!!" Smoke rapidly engulfs the head as it pours out of the wound and Marivel's mouth as the head disintegrates in Margaret's hands. The HOUND is still there, following, so she must not be dead but--well--
It's a very effectivve method for shutting Marivel up it turns out.
GS: Seraph Harmaus critically guards Seraph Boudicca's Beaufort's Prediction for 18 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Quick applied to Seraph Boudicca! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Guard bonus and Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Brad Evans has posed.
Brad, as always, blames magic for interfering with his magic, and he grimaces, jamming a lever to shift configurations in the Glove. "Then we understand each other," Brad says coldly.
Then Harmaus blasts him with a mass of scathing light, which scorches across him, burning. He grimaces, hissing and cursing, but bears the worst of it without bowling completely over, though the snow around him melts. He hears Marivel hollering and takes a look. Oh she's been vaporized. That's... ...
...kind of routine, honestly.
He doesn't hear much of what comes across his radio, though, because he's busy deploying some giant horrible apparatus from the Mechanical Glove. "Most people, they find a moral dilemma a real problem, I guess. Me..."
The massive barrel of his Thunderbolt finishes constructing, the cannon mechanisms the size of a small house next to him. Brad peers at Harmaus through an eyepiece it has put in front of him, securing targeting data.
"There's a certain calm in knowing for sure who's a target."
The weapon releases a horrible KZZZAK with the blast of a thunderclap, and belches a beam of light that turns the snow to vapor and the rock beneath to glass.
GS: Brad Evans has activated a Force Action! GS: Brad Evans has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Thunderbolt! GS: Brad Evans takes 24 damage from Poison! GS: Brad Evans has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
With a solid kick from Leo, Heldalf is sent flying, vanishing into the horizon. Hilde watches, waiting for him to return somehow... and then, exhales.
In the distance the battle with Harmaus continues, but for now her contribution seems complete. Adrenaline and tension releases and the blue aura around her starts to fade. The aches and pains of the day finally start catching up to her. Her body feels like it's about to give out.
...But, not yet. She can't yet. She drags herself over to the bodies of the Hyland soldiers, slain by Heldalf and his men and discarded.
"...I am... so sorry, all of you. I... could not protect you. I did not realise his aims until it was too late..." She murmurs, a hand resting over her heart. Would this have changed, if she had voiced her misgivings about Heldalf sooner...?
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"If you can't even see that much then you don't have the sense to see truth when it hits you in the face!" Kaguya shouts back at Harmaus.
"You don't have to be mortal to inherit death and destruction," Kaguya continues to Harmaus sourly. "You've done plenty well at that yourself, haven't you Harmaus? Well, I'll tell you--"
Light sheds. Light crashes outward, blazes brightly, and Kaguya steps towards it, even as Harmaus gathers power. The aura unfurls, and the blazing vanquisher of night crashes into Kaguya, a green and alien first light for a girl born under the light of all stars and none. The light blasts into her--
Kaguya feels it burn away, and Veruni armor beneath is visible as fabric billows and burns. She narrows her eyes, sunburnt and pale, and actually smiles through the pain of it. Through blood--
"You don't understand 'truth', Harmaus. You think the absence of lies is the presence of reality, when each of those lies is just another piece of the puzzle. No matter how much 'power' you have, you'll never get the truth you want because the problem isn't out there in the world--the problem isn't out there where the Goddess has things to say or do--the problem is in you!"
"And you..."
Kaguya reaches into her bag, and pulls a small capsule, a set of them, and loads them up into her ARM to launch them forward. Cla-CLACK, and there is a sign of something red within them. She then aims for him.
"...Should've stuck with the tomato."
She fires, and there's a flash of green energy--before the capsules burst in mid-air, becoming a great big mass of curling implosions that sends the sky chased for brilliance.
...And there she catches sight of Hilde, and her heart hurts for it. "....Your blood won't serve as oil today."
GS: Kaguya has activated a Force Action! GS: Kaguya has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Attack Of...! GS: Kaguya takes 22 damage from Poison! GS: Blind expired! GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
Her eyes track to the other battle, only briefly. But it's briefly enough. Leo stands. Hiro stands. They fight an enemy together. Someone else... does not.
"Ivan!?" She houts, and she shows concern again. Something she never did. But then again... Ivan was one of the first people to consider her a friend. To show concern when she was in trouble. Much to her surprise, she cares.
It's been barely a week, and these new emotions are hitting her like a truck. She almost preferred closing herself off.
"Correct. I don't," she says, eyeing the Seraph, trying to work out his next attack. "But your choice of allies does not fill me with confidence. I just wonder if you are a monster against Althena, or one sanctioned by her." It's not a question. She doesn't expect an answer that isn't violence.
The light sears Pearl and Leviathan both, and while Pearl covers her eyes, Leviathan roars, and the two look up at their enemy. She's not sure how she feels about even being potentially being called a friend. But that doesn't matter, and Leviathan raises up. "Lord of All Waters, let us wash away this beast!"
OVERDRIVE
tAnd Leviathan breathes, and a beam of pressurised water that might as well be a laser slices across the ground around Harmaus, aiming to slice through him with relentless forces.
GS: Pearl spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Pearl has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Overdrive: Piercing Breath! GS: Pearl has gained 1 Combo! GS: Pearl takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: Poison expired! GS: Pearl has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Harmaus takes a glancing hit from Brad Evans's Thunderbolt for 130 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Evade bonus! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Kaguya's attack becomes clear! GS: CRITICAL! ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Untested Prototype for 232 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dispel! Mighty and Quick removed! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Mute applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Seraph Harmaus enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Harmaus takes a glancing hit from Pearl's Overdrive: Piercing Breath for 158 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Pearl!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.
Pointed statements and pointed questions come with the emergence of daylight in its purest expression - the peeking of the sun out from the horizon, as if the Cat-form Seraph were the daylight itself. (This is, in a way, entirely true - the Seraphim do embody their elemental alignment.)
Lanval pivots and comes up to a raised rocky outcropping without putting sufficient cover between himself and Harmaus, the brilliance of the dawning day smothering what it can reach under blinding, burning, bright light.
From over there, Day huddles in pain. Lanval did pick up how Day was more or less betrayed by his own. He watched that fight from within a bottle, before emerging on Heldalf's appearance - how he and his unit all seemed to be as one until Day stood tall and said 'no, I will not do this' to one of the most famed men of his country. Uncomfortable parallels, if not exacting, to his own situation.
"That much ish true," he has to concede, soberly, because it's tough to speak with the spotlight of a (cat-shaped) sun bearing down on him - as if exposed. "I gave everything 'n more... 'n by Her decree, I wash relieved of my duty." His eyes are closed. "Shtood up 'n ashked why ta the Dragonmaster. Shtood againsht the Red Priestess hershelf." The Fallen Seraph, his story is known - he is anathema to Her now.
He has a drink before continuing. "Mmmph. 'm gonna put it in wordsh we both undershtand," he makes throat clearing noises not out of necessity, but because - like breathing - that's sort of a hobby for him. (Breathing is one of his favorite hobbies!)
Watery power starts to raise, regulating his temperature (such as it is, or matters) as he looks to Harmaus with a growing smile and eyes that never quite fully open because that light is awful bright and indeed, he has tos top and cover his eyes once before continuing.
"-The Goddess Herself and Her scorn shall not stand in my way to keep small joys in the hearts of those who discover them.-" He finds the gumption to approach, an elemental fury building as light filters around a watery aura of all things great and... not so great about water, raising up a hand when he is in clear line of sight, and with a mighty Seraphic Arte glyph spinning underneath...
Makes spritzing motions with a finger and sprays the brilliant sun.
"-Such as good humor.-" He laughs. "Ha ha ha!"
GS: Seraph Lanval has activated a Force Action! GS: Seraph Lanval has activated a Force Action! GS: Seraph Lanval has attacked Seraph Harmaus with No - Bad Seraph! GS: Seraph Lanval takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: Poison expired! GS: Seraph Lanval has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
"We're imperfect, that much is true."
Gwen seems to have collected herself, focusing on Harmaus's words as he pointedly aims for Boudicca's own faith in humans.
"We make mistakes, we hurt each other. We get scared, we are driven by blind pride n' rage, n' our lives are too short to learn from our mistakes, when compared to Seraphs. .... I've been guilty myself, of many of these things." She stops herself from saying the next words on her tongue, wincing back the taste of her unease.
'I can't guarantee that it won't happen again.'
Light scours the land, almost feeling like a punishment against that seed of uncertainty in Gwen's heart. She tries to put up her arms to shield against it, but it winds past, blasting her back onto her side with a force that unsettles the gravel next to where she lands.
She breathes in, then out, propping herself on one now exposed right ARM to rise to a stand.
A now charged, glowing right hand, pulsing with inner fire.
"For Boudicca, n' everyone who still believes...."
She points her palm towards the glowing, green light Seraph.
"For the sake of that faith--!"
Orb lightning brightens the area again, sparkling against the drops of Lanval's water spritz.
It condenses back, Gwen now planting and positioning her feet against recoil that's soon to happen. "I will show you the fullest extent of my own light!"
She blasts the extent of her slowly gathered lightning, aiming straight for the lone Seraph.
GS: Gwen Whitlock spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Gwen Whitlock enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Poison expired! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Quasar Palm! GS: Gwen Whitlock has launched an attack Link! GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: Gwen Whitlock has activated a Force Action! GS: Gwen Whitlock has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Corona Discharge! GS: Gwen Whitlock has completed her action. GS: Seraph Harmaus critically guards Seraph Lanval's No - Bad Seraph for 20 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Guard bonus and Arcane Font! GS: Seraph Harmaus critically guards Gwen Whitlock's Quasar Palm for 0 hit points! GS: Seraph Harmaus activates Guard bonus! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Gwen Whitlock's Corona Discharge for 192 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Not good enough. So brief, so destructive!" he tsks at Gwen, going so far as to shake his head. "Apologies meaningless! It looks around itself! I asks it again!"
The fighting is in fact slowing in quadrants, the fight against Heldalf perhaps presaging the direction of the rest of this battle.
"Decades? Tears in rain," retorts the Seraph to Boudicca, apparently dismissive still of the value of mortal lives. But...
"No," Harmaus tells Boudicca, calm suddenly, as she speaks to the span of their own lives, a moment of calm within the storm. "Everything ends. This is a truth. It minds it well." Even a Seraph cannot possess eternity. Someday, at some time...
"Kahaha," laughs the Seraph, then, as Kaguya makes a similar point. "We knows it. Poor, dying starborne child... yet, soon knows it a truth I will not. Not for some time, thinks I."
Boudicca insists that she's not alone. But more to Harmaus' interest, she insists that even if they're wicked... "-Ah... so you cling to them still, Boudicca. Mark my words, yours is a trust you will come to regret.-"
"--It not allies me with Her!" snarls the cat-shaped Seraph at Pearl, a return to furious form for Harmaus. "It speaks not Her and Hers at me!" Pearl might not have expected an answer, but she receives one nonetheless; the Seraph has a few glaring trigger points and it seems she has found one of them.
"Then it knows it. It knows the cruelty well this world! But I asks it again," he says, that aurao of his gaining in intensity, "why?"
Why does Lanval stand by mortals?
As the scouring light of dawn ceases, there is at last just Harmaus hovering in the air. Only a thin halo surrounds him; he gazes at all those who would stand against him. And those he would call his allies. Heldalf is defeated, but the Seraph still remains.
Kaguya speaks to him first.
"...Starborne child," he answers Kaguya at last, narrowing his eyes. "It thinks it understands truth? So young and so knowing of the world? It misunderstands. After all I tells it, it misunderstands. I knows where problems lie. I tells it already: the Goddess Althena!"
Green fire, then, burns him once more. The sky is lit up with explosions from the barrage; perhaps at a distance one might think there were a celebration taking place in Spira. But...
He floats there still when the light and brilliance ends: battered, scorched (even his corpus cannot keep up entirely with the attrition, now) but still very much a threat. The light about him shines.
And the wind, then, rises to meet him.
Boudicca included.
The light about him flares; though he is cast about for the moment by her advance, the air soon moves around him and the transparent shell he has conjured. "It will not let? I sees about that!" And there is a fell promise in the gold that surrounds him,
before it is interrupted by no less than two different directions on the field. One comes from Brad's corner of things, as the battle-hardened man remarks how this is the sort of situation he finds easy and unleashed a beam that.
Well, it cuts through the Seraph's barrier and sizzles through to the other side. That alone redirects Harmaus' attention Brad's way.
And the other comes from Pearl. The temporarily stunned Seraph is simply bowled over by the Aeon's pressurized burst of water, sent flying through the air for a distance. He lands as it happens not terribly far from where Lanval has taken up and quicky rights himself, hovering there in the air a moment before his fellow Seraph. And it's here that Lanval gives Harmaus his answer.
"-So you have decided to limit yourself. A pity-," says Harmaus, eyes narrowing. "-Your 'Lordship' was clearly wasted on---"
And here he makes a sound remarkably close to 'ack' as he's again spritzed right in the face.
And it's there, with him freshly soaked, that Gwen, her fist glowing with an awesome power, intrudes.
"What--" is as much as he gets out as Gwen's laser slams into him.
The Seraph is summarily launched high into the sky, the only thing of him that is visible his glimmering aura like a small star in the sky. And then, as he flies further, not even that.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Whatever Hiro expected, turning around following his assault on Heldalf, to see Leo charging weaponless at his old mentor... and snapping a kick that launches him into the distance.
Hiro's gaze follows him to the horizon, surprised when Harmaus follows. Then looks back at where Heldalf stood to make certain it isn't some illusion cast by the Light Seraphim, or some sword technique to create Clones.
Then he finally looks back Leo's way.
The sights of today are going to be seared into his memory. Perhaps the only positives of the day for him are that the bloodshed was staunched before the Ronso were wiped out... and that Leo took a stand. A stand Hiro always knew he had in him. And had simply been waiting for.
His faith in Leo had always been that strong.
Having heard Leo praise him... to Heldalf takes some small edge off those negatives, adds another positive. His eyes move over to Day in alarm as he sinks down - wondering if the day might claim another victim, but Vess gallops up to tend to him...
"So many..."
Hiro takes a moment to breathe, staring at Leo, perhaps waiting for the anger to die down in his eyes.
He doesn't ask if Leo is okay. He knows the answer to that.
"I have to see to Ivan..."
Not far away Hiro hears the BANG of a gunshot, and Marivel's wail. "Ragnell what did I tell you about shooting Marivel?! Just because it feels good doesn't mean you should do it!"
"... and Marivel." Hiro adds, somewhat sheepishly. "And see what we can do for the Ronso. But we should talk... soon."
He starts to walk away, but then stops, looks over his shoulder as if he rethought things and couldn't actually let it slide without saying something now, "You know... Leo... in any just world... it'd be him telling you this right now, not some stupid stubborn kid you met out in the middle of nowhere that's brought you no small amount of trouble..."
Hiro's lips tug into a brief smile, which seems tainted by the horror of the day, but still... able to smile at him, "... but I'm proud of you."
It might be no comfort at all right now, or just a small comfort... but it is what he can offer him, so offer it he does.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.
Marivel's skull smokes away into nothing. Ragnell smiles widely and holsters her guns. That smile only widens further into an outright grin when Ruby chides her. "Didn't you hear, Ru? I do lots o' things I shouldn't do."
Kaguya, over on the other side of the battlefield, tells Harmaus he should've stuck with the tomato. "NO HE SHOULDN'T HAVE," Ragnell shouts over her way.
But Harmaus is then ejected from the battlefield, much like Heldalf. For all that there are Ronso corpses strewn all around them, Ragnell is pretty satisfied with how things turned out. Ragnell might be a little messed up.
Hiro says he should check in on Ivan. Ragnell glances at him, then at Margaret, who hefted him (and technically Marivel but she is No Longer A Concern) off the battlefield and down the mountain. She considers saying something; she decides not to interfere. Instead, she strolls over to the edge of the mountain and stares thoughtfully at the horizon toward which Heldalf had been ejected.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
The kick connects. The impact travels up Leo's leg, jarring him; his Breath, in turn, races downwards, imparting the strike with far more power than it should, by rights, impart. As Heldalf goes flying, Leo's eyes light up with surprise, which fades to grim satisfaction. Moments later, Harmaus follows him. What's more, the Rolance forces don't seem nearly so willing to fight, having been stripped of their leadership.
The White Knight looks back at the ranks of the Ronso, and a cold knot forms in his stomach. They managed to avert a slaughter, yes, but this never should have happened.
His eyes fall upon the bodies of the dead. Leo knows what must be done, even though the thought adds further stress cracks to the makeup of his worldview. "I--we should--" he says, looking at Hilde. His gaze falls to Pearl. "The Pyreflies. If something..." Leo grimaces, clutches at his side. "If something isn't done, they'll form more Fiends. They must be Sent..."
And, irony of ironies, she's the only Summoner they have on hand, unless the Ronso have one in their back pocket.
But then, Hiro speaks. Leo looks up at him, then looks away. A hot flush of shame rises in his face, and he tries to stand, but can't quite make it. "...Thank you," he says, finally. "I..."
And then his knees give out, dumping him unceremoniously into the snow of Mount Gagazet. Someone's going to have to help him to the medics.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen, meanwhile, is now on the ground, limp. Is she wounded? Hurt?
"..... *snrt*....... *snrt*......"
She's..... sleeping.
Gwen *did* promise to show all her light, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen, meanwhile, is now on the ground, limp, as snowflakes begin to gather on her. Is she wounded? Hurt?
"......" An exhale of mist comes from her open mouth in slow, calm breaths, telling a different tale.
She's..... sleeping. Hurt, but not to the point where she can't fall asleep.
....... she'll probably need to be carted away, though, thick coat or no.
<Pose Tracker> Pearl has posed.
Ah. An enemy against Althena. She's still reasonably certain they won't be allies. Leviathan leans down to her, and she strokes their scales, before it dives into the waters that have formed below, and disappears. Pearl sags, obviously tired and drained. It was the longest she had summoned for, against two powerful foes. And only the second time she's done it. Pearl showing weakness. Another first.
She gets ready to turn, and walk, or perhaps run away from the battlefield. She readies her grapnel, just in case.
And then Leo's words cut through her like a knife. She's a Summoner. That's all she is now, the identity she has chosen to wrap herself around while she works out who she is. Can she do this, she'd been taught the steps but..
But most Summoners aren't rampant murderers.
There is a stirring in her soul, reminding her what is she if she doesn't try. She turns around, and nods to Leo. "Very well, Com=" She stops herself. Surely that's not the case, after what she's done. "White Knight. But... I must be allowed to leave when I am done. I cannot answer your questions yet. And I have a promise to fulfill."
She clearly assumes the White Knight's agreement, because she move into place, and readies the staff. She knows the prayer. She knows the movement, the dance. But she had never put it to use.
"I E Yu I... No Bo Me No..." The pyreflies rise, as she dances, chanting the Hymn of the Fayth. She knew it by heart now. "Re N Mi Ri... Yo Ju Yo Go..."
<Pose Tracker> Hilde has posed.
"...Yes." Hilde murmurs quietly, looking up to Leo. ...Something has to be done. The last thing she wishes is for her countrymen to become Fiends after this. Bad enough that they had to fall so far from home, through betrayal.
She looks up to Pearl, then. She assesses her quietly... and then, nods.
"...Yes. Please, do this for them. You have my word that I will allow no one to detain you." She says.
She still doesn't know why or how Pearl can do this... but right now, that isn't what's important.