2022-06-18: Whetting The Starvation
- Log: 2022-06-18: Whetting The Starvation
- Cast: Xander Lovell, Riley Arwell, Ruth Pauling, Eleanor Klein, Ida Everstead-Rey
- Where: Zoara Badlands
- Date: June 18, 2022
- Summary: The Fangs of Valmar demand a blood price, and in the depths of the two accursed souls' 'debt,' horrifying new avenues of payment are born out of desperation. Accosted by two ARMS agents called by circumstance through an empathite radio handed to a candidate, it seems there is no avoiding spilling blood... or averting the curse without new bearers in which to take it. All have more than their fill of difficult realities where no right answer seems to exist beyond letting the problem continue.
==============================<* Zoara Badlands *>============================== Most of Zoara's interior is a vast expanse of desolate earth. A handful of areas receive just enough rainfall to allow the growth of foliage, but by and large, this place is almost as inhospitable as the wastes of Ignas. Ghost towns dot these dusty plains--many of them are settlements that dried up and died during the Celesti Civil War. Most of the remaining settlements have forfeited their sovereignty to Guild Galad in exchange for their continued survival. Rail travel is the easiest way to cross the Badlands. Guild Galad's military maintains a tight grip on most of Zoara's rail routes, ensuring that transit is reasonably safe, if extensively-policed. Outside of the rail network, travelers band together in caravans to keep themselves safe. Centuries of war have scarred this land, and attacks from bandits--or worse--are an unfortunate fact of life. BGM: Wild Arms 4 - Over the Wind
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
After beseeching the help of Moor Gault, the Fangs of Valmar did not get the answers they hoped for. Anything that could not help them in the timeline of this week was going to end in problems.
So. There's problems.
Specifically, there's a pair of problems wandering the roads of Central Zoara. The wastes are easier to hide in, but also have enough travelers coming through to make conceivable hunting grounds. And if they do make a kill, there's at least half a chance it'll get blamed on banditry.
But Xander's gait is off. Not quite a limp, because favoring either leg exclusively is equally terrible, and there's an unfortunate drag to his feet. Yet he still tries to keep most of his attention on Riley, who he has covered in a thick, hooded cloak, one hand constantly on his partner's back to help guide him. Or maybe it's for his own support at this point. He's trying to pretend it can at least be both.
"We have got to keep you from walking through brambles."
His intended annoyance comes out exhausted instead. The bag under his eye is visible from across a room instead of face-to-face, and Xander's awareness and perception demonstrates itself to be unusually poor: he's not poised for an ambush. At the moment, he isn't even planning one. He's just trying to walk across a wasteland.
But there's two Fangs.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley is still Riley. Sort of. He's different in some very visible ways. Beneath the hood, his face is ghastly pale, a network of roots branching out beneath his skin almost like veins, with vines and flowers crossing overtop here and there. The color of his irises is washed out almost to white, with small red points within his irises, scalloped like the silhouette of a flower.
His own gait is also strange -- not dragging along like Xander's, but unsteady and almost too light, like a marionette moving on strings. Which is sort of what he is, at the moment -- it's the roots and vines networked around his body doing the moving right now, and not his muscles.
So, no, he's not quite his usual self. But as he walks along with Xander, he's chatting and teasing him like always. It's not until he smells blood on the wind that he changes.
He told Xander that next time he'd try to stop himself. But the transition is so instant there's no real moment to do the trying.
"I only have a couple of senses left, Xander," he's saying. "I don't want to waste one of them constantly watching the..." He trails off, his gaze going distant as he picks up that that scent.
Hope. A sacrifice. The vines ringing him begin to run riot as he charges ahead toward its source. Another thing that is different about this current Riley -- he doesn't just need to spill blood, he needs to taste it.
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Riley Arwell with Unbearable Thirst! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has entered Avenger Stance! GS: Riley Arwell gains 10 FP from his Daredevil! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Riley Arwell accepts Riley Arwell's Unbearable Thirst for 216 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Riley Arwell!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
From a certain perspective, all of Zoara is already the hunting grounds of a terrifying apex predator of the region's blood-stained history whose influence - as of a few years ago - has seeped into the ailing spiritual ecosystem. The rumors (and confirmations!) of the return of that traumatizing sound - the Four Knocks on Death's Door - feeds into the fears and worries of a land that has no shortage of them.
It wasn't that long ago that Ruth indulged in a taste of those urges that goad her on. There was a young mugger that was insistent on taking. She shot them, twice, with her revolver... but nowhere fatal. She stopped herself from killing, and let them run.
Run, that mugger did, a young not-even-twenty man with reddish hair clutching his right shoulder from where two revolver slugs may have disabled his ability to ever hold a weapon ever again. He saw a look in that overdressed woman's eyes that shook him to the core. He doesn't know where he's going, he doesn't care. He's running for his life from that distant silhouette and it's never going to be far enough, looking down to the ground as blood seeps past the sleeve he's pressing his left hand on. Droplets feed the lifeless sands below.
"Help... help me," the now former mugger begs as he sees two people walking... limping along, filled with fear. But there's that sweet scent of hope. That gift of a future sacrifice.
Over yonder...
Ruth stops watching them run. Other senses indulge and feed back to her as she lets the buzzing in her mind drain down to her heart in guilt...
There's something else. Looking up, she recognizes the two of them among the wastes. She would know, she helped them. She didn't want them to suffer alone from one another...
She knows where this is going. In her grasp, the empathite radio Marivel gave her. She doesn't know how it works beyond seeing it worn. She puts it in her right ear - her good one - and makes the attempt as she speaks aloud.
"ARMS...? This is Ruth." She puts the call out, gives the situation. The former mugger cannot be saved from what will come next, but...
She keeps her distance and waits, continuing to wear the skin of who she once was.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The moment Ida got the call, she sprang into action. Fortunately, she'd been spending the day talking with union representatives at the Boneyards, and her trusty steed--a Model 501 Tempest, with black paint and chrome detailing--wasn't far. All she had to do was make a quick stop to pick up Eleanor, and then burn rubber down the main road into the wastelands. Ida's car is fast for modern-built machines, topping out at 40 miles per hour, but with the rough roads out here, she can't go that fast all the time.
But as she approaches the final stretch, and sees those three figures, she knows what she has to do.
Ida doesn't honk. She doesn't signal the Fangs in any way. She presses the gas pedal to the floor, bracing for impact.
The Tempest races at the Fangs, a good two tons of steel backed by a cutting-edge gasoline engine. Ida grits her teeth and hopes, silently, that the horrific resilience the Fangs have displayed will keep them from being killed outright. That would cause a new problem.
GS: Blitz! Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Xander Lovell with Step on the Gas! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has canceled their attack on Xander Lovell. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Xander Lovell with Step on the Gas! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has entered Avenger Stance! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor Klein was already in Zoara; there's much to keep track of out there, much for ARMS to do. But when Ruth called... Well, aside from being surprised that Ruth called at all, she was immediately alarmed by the news of who was there. She not only came to Ruth's position--she came running.
Eleanor is in orange, wearing sturdy boots and a traveling dress, belated for her ARM. And she stops short as she sees the strange way the two are walking. Well.. 'walking'. The way Riley--
She sees it all very quickly because she's in a car. With Ida. It didn't take long to pick her up; it's as if Eleanor was expecting Ida to show up in a car. It's as if Eleanor expects a lot of things, actually.
"Ruth!" Eleanor calls from the passengers' side, "be careful!" She sticks a rod out the window, holding her Crest in the other hand, emblazoned with Geo and Fray, and a burning shield of molten stone erupts before Ruth, fading into nothing. Its protection, however, remains very real.
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Ruth Pauling with Stone Targe! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Ruth Pauling accepts Eleanor Klein's Stone Targe for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Shield applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: COUNTER! Xander Lovell counterattacks Ida Everstead-Rey with Blood for Blood! GS: Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Step on the Gas for 118 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey solidly guards Xander Lovell's That'll Buff Out for 77 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Power Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Riley rushes off and Xander curses, Riley's strength too much for Xander's grip on his cloak to remain. He stumbles, then breaks into a run, failing to keep up and instead stumbling on a grim, yet oddly fortunate scene... if you're the Fangs.
It should be easy. Xander's honed his instincts over the years for his grim convictions. He hunts. He murders, even those who have begged for him to stop. That's the path he's chosen to walk. But for all his life before this happened, Xander was being trained for an entirely different life's purpose.
Help me, the man beseeches, and Xander's awareness slips even further, from today to years ago when he was someone else. Help me, and he wants to, lungs cold and vision darker as that wars with his own bloodlust. "Riley," he calls, his voice unsettled and urgent. But Xander does not move to stop him.
The buzzing of pain in his thoughts is slowly drowned out by a new sound: a motor vehicle, getting closer and closer, so surreal and bizarre that Xander takes even longer to parse the idea that he and Riley are about to be run over by an oncoming car.
Finally, he moves, wordlessly hurling himself at Riley, tackling him as much as shoving him to throw him aside, but not with enough momentum to get himself out of the way. The Tempest slams into Xander, who lets out a horrible sort of sound mixed with a tenacious growl. He cleaves a blade into the wheel as he's struck, trying to force the vehicle off course (with what he hopes it unpleasant jostling for its occupants).
Xander tumbles violently aside, left lying face first in the ground with his fingers curled around the hilt of his dagger. Names are being shouted. He doesn't hear the content of it, only that there's other threats and dangers. Riley knows about the car now, surely. But the other, where's the other --
His blood seeps into the earth, limb shaking with its command. A stain crawls through soil toward Ruth, and overgrown tendrils covered in bright, sticky acid erupt from the ground, reaching for her to latch on and slowly eat through whatever they can come in contact with.
GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with Drosera! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Xander Lovell's Drosera for 109 hit points! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley has no second thoughts or warring impulses about helping himself to the lifeblood of the figure calling for help, and rushes onward, vines reaching ahead of him to spear and entangle. But before he can capture the injured man in his grasp, the backup called by Ruth arrives, and a goddamn car containing Ida and Eleanor comes screaming toward them.
But it's Xander who ultimately impacts with Riley, pushing him safely to the ground and then being torn away from him by the impact with the vehicle.
The sound of his pain cuts through Riley's haze, but not completely. A swirl of anguished fear and anger mingles with the bloodlust, and where ordinarily he might rush to Xander's side, instead rage explodes outward, in the form of a swarm of thorny, sharpened vines that wind into the workings of the vehicle and pierce through the air toward its occupants, who also smell of blood to Riley's limited, yet heightened senses. He is aware that they hurt Xander and also that their blood can fill the emptiness inside him -- their lives could win them freedom from this terrible manifestation of the curse.
He half climbs, half lets himself be pulled up the webwork of greenery into the vehicle, clambering toward them with fury and glittering hunger instead of recognition in his eyes.
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Verdant Riot! GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Verdant Riot! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell gains 10 FP from his Daredevil! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Gamble: Lowest! Eleanor Klein partially evades Riley Arwell's Verdant Riot for 92 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Low! Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Riley Arwell's Verdant Riot for 159 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Power Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
From this distance, Ruth can barely make out what Eleanor's saying thanks to the radio being put in her good ear - but she notices and recognizes the motor vehicle. They did answer... and she removes the radio just as Eleanor's boon reaches her.
The powers of the crests of Geo and Frey settle upon Ruth's otherwise motionless form. The warmth of the molten stone shield should be a comfort, a reassurance - but she doesn't feel it as a hand comes to her chest.
There's a smile and a chortle most bitter as she descends from where she was perched at a measured stride.
The former mugger is having a horrible day. He's paralyzed where he stands when he sees what's coming for him... and then screams, as a car comes barreling down towards the 'help.' He falls to his seat, clutching the wound and leaving a trail of blood that these... creatures can sense him from. When he thinks to look away...
That same woman who shot him is walking their way, stopped only by a stain that crawls past him as overgrown tendrils erupt around Ruth's right leg. The acidic qualities are neutralized by Eleanor's protective spell, but they pierce, they drag. They draw blood. Blood that - at the present - is 'correct' in terms of color and taste.
Her eyes don't deceive her. They answered her call. What pain that does shoot through her leg and roots her for the moment, it doesn't stop her from drawing her revolver and leveling it again.
The mugger cowers anew, thinking his ticket's going to be punched.
Feelings gnaw at Ruth again. The look on Xander's face, it goads wordlessly but through understood instinct. She opens fire with two shots against Xander in his prone position.
The look on Xander's face when he is beset upon by someone he trusted to help him with his beloved.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Xander Lovell with Betrayal of Kindness! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell solidly guards Ruth Pauling's Betrayal of Kindness for 57 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida feels the sickening THUD of flesh hitting the front bumper. She pulls the brake as Xander--Riley? She can't tell--tumbles out of the path, after the other. A loud SCREEEEECH echoes across the wastelands as the car's front wheels come to a stop; its rear wheels swing out and around, carried by momentum. For a few seconds, the car is almost hydroplaning, but there's no water, only Ida at the wheel. After spinning almost 270 degrees, it comes to a complete stop.
Xander's knife slams into the hubcap, and lacerates the tire. It doesn't pop, mercifully, but it does unleash the air inside. There's no time for Ida to curse about it, because the second figure is erupting into hideous, thorny greenery. "Out! OUT NOW!" Ida shouts. She reaches over to undo Eleanor's seatbelt before attending to hers. The moment she opens the door, the thorns pour in, piercing her coat and digging into her flesh. Ida leaps out, trying to cover her face. She lands in a crouch on the side of the road, teeth gritted. Blood trickles from dozens of little cuts.
And then...
Silvery-pink flesh pours from the heiress' wounds, sluicing across her frame. It hardens with remarkable speed, shaping itself into a blue-and-black exoskeleton with bright golden trim. It's baroque and tasteful, but unmistakably Hyadean bio-armor. She needs every advantage if she and the others are going to survive this encounter.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Third Method - Shaping the Battle-Forged Shell! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 4 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Ida Everstead-Rey's Third Method - Shaping the Battle-Forged Shell for 0 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Cover applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor finds hitting someone with a car to be very unpleasant, even before the blade. She decides she never wants to do that again. But Riley comes. The tendrils--are those worse than before? Eleanor is pretty sure they're worse. But she doesn't have much time to react; Ida undoes her seatbelt and Eleanor throws her door open, throwing herself out of the car a moment later. The vines wrap about her arm as she does, and she tears free painfully, bleeding from a dozen jagged small cuts. "Ah-!"
It hurts quite a bit, actually, even before Eleanor hits the ground and rolls. "Riley--what happened to you!?" she asks, because that hunger in his eyes is chilling. He isn't like himself at all--is this the inevitable result of what they are?
She doesn't call this time to Ruth, though she winces as she fires at Xander while he's on the ground. She can't help it. There is only one thing she can do for now against these vines, this power--
"Riley!"
She channels Mystic power, and the ring on her right hand glows, its ruby shining before she spins, hurling a fireball straight for Riley and his tendrils.
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Riley Arwell with Mystic Fire! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Riley Arwell solidly guards Eleanor Klein's Mystic Fire for 62 hit points! GS: Riley Arwell activates Arcane Font!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"Riley!" Xander shouts once he has his face enough off the ground for it, half panic and half scolding, like Riley were a house cat that had gotten loose. It's a lot like that, but it's also so much more dire than that. Each one of these people is a known danger, and Xander does not like their odds fighting all three at once, especially with Riley's wits barely about him.
To say nothing of the fact that if Riley maims or kills Eleanor, he'll be inconsolable.
"Riley, it-it's fine, I'm fine." He punctuates this with a terrible unconvincing cough. "We need to go. Now!"
But it's becoming increasingly likely retreat is not going to be so simple.
The first of Ruth's bullets punctures into Xander, calling for him to act to the second with a burst of tangled thorns. It shatters, but protects him, his now unshielded gaze leveled back at Ruth. His eye sharpens with conviction, but without reproach. This was inevitable. Maybe that sentiment is heavier, the miasma of his feelings never believing he deserved her kindness in the first place.
He doesn't. He doesn't, and he'll remind her if he must. Blood oozes from the wound, smeared at Xander's fingertips. He tears into his own wound and flicks excess blood out at the ground toward her, the splatter better at closing the gap between them than he could. Where it hits the earth, thorny vines lurk forward, joining the cursed garden he's already spawned to seek Ruth with sharp brambles.
Xander glares toward Ida as he watches her prepare her strange armor. The wanderer they faced before, with the spirit of the winds aiding her. The look he gives her is one of a man preparing for deadly intent as the situation rapidly slips out of his control, and she may feel an unsettling vibration in the air...
GS: Xander Lovell spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with Rosaceae! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Stern Gaze! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Sneak! The true nature of Xander Lovell's attack becomes clear! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey solidly guards Xander Lovell's Nail in the Coffin for 87 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Power Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
...The Fangs of Valmar summons its dark boon. Xander's gnarled, cursed scythe whirls into his grip like a chakram, cutting past Ida on its flight to its master.
Or its servant, depending on your point of view.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Xander's voice. He's 'fine,' but even in Riley's current state, he can hear the pain. They need this, need to end it. Can't let another chance slip away...
Eleanor and Ida jump free of the vehicle before Riley can reach them, and he whirls, seeking to lock back onto a target and give chase.
It's Eleanor who catches his attention with the calling of his name and the gleam of a fireball blazing toward him. Some of the vines still bursting from his body serve to diffuse and absorb the blaze, burning away in a sacrificial blaze, but flames still lick through to lash cloth and skin.
There isn't so much as a flinch of pain in his expression even as the fire leaves visible damage in its wake, only frustration as the force of the impact buffets him back and breaks some of the stems used in his locomotion, setting him even more off balance.
A slow and murky realization dawns on his face. "...Eleanor? We're friends, right...?" His expression twists into something equally readable as hope or dismay. "Aren't we... aren't we friends?"
Then he leaps for Eleanor, trying to knock her to the ground and sink his teeth into her neck or whatever limb he can get hold of. "I need your blood... please..."
GS: Riley Arwell spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Bloodletting Bite! GS: Mighty expired! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Xander Lovell's Rosaceae for 221 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Sufferer! GS: Strain! Xander Lovell takes 87 damage! GS: CRITICAL! Eleanor Klein suffers a terrible blow from Riley Arwell's Bloodletting Bite for 233 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Eleanor Klein! GS: Riley Arwell drains Eleanor Klein! Riley Arwell gains 100 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Eyes meet. Where Xander's gaze sharpens in resignation, there's a flood behind her eyes that bitter smile is keeping dammed up.
To say nothing of the confusion and horror of the injured mugger who does not understand what's going on. He edges away from where Ida appears and assumes her Hyadean armor, as if counting her among the day's gathering of monsters. (He may already be wondering what sort of horrifying thing Eleanor might turn out to be under the skin as whatever of Riley that is makes a plea.)
"You don't deserve to suffer alone," words of kindness from someone who just visited cruelty upon someone already hurt and ailing. "You won't. He won't." She breaks her gaze from Xander, as if rationalizing something to herself on an axis completely different from the simple binary of 'saving someone's life from blood-thirsty monsters.'
Blood flies across the distance just as Ruth is able to get her leg out from the grasp of the first set of thorny roots that slow her approach.
New ones spring. Sharp brambles wrap themselves around her. Tellingly, most concentred around her right forearm where the rosary rests - proving incapable of being meaningful defense against the brambles.
A breath leaves her as she stands limply. Crimson escapes.
As does a tear.
Then, something else. Motes of blackish-purple, streaming around her with the distinctive feelings of guilt. Shame. Regret. Despair. What is and should be crimson takes on a darker purple hue, the recolored blood dribbling down the vines. Her form contorts in the expected ways, incompatible items adorning her extremities shedding free.
The mugger is looking right at her without seeing anything but does not need to in order to be convinced that she's a monster worth running from, if he could stand up. One vine erupts close to his position.
The larger single-winged gargoyle-shaped Hellion that emerges doesn't quite break free of the bindings of the vines, as she draws the rifle at her back that has adjusted its shape accordingly under the throes of Malevolence.
The rifle is leveled, and a shot rings out - a feeling of relief, if not release, and the mugger freezes. In the back of his mind, in a long-buried childhood memory, he recognizes that rifle's report.
"I won't let either of you wait long," that thought holds her steady from indulging further when there's another prospective victim right there. And right there. And right there.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Xander Lovell with Anticipated Knock! GS: Recover! Poison removed from Ruth Pauling! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell partially guards Ruth Pauling's Anticipated Knock for 140 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida did not like that, either, Eleanor, but she can't shake the feeling that someone might be dead if she hadn't. But even that is cold comfort, considering the hideous torments the Fangs are suffering. The Claw merely suborned Tio to its will, and Elena--God, where is she--seemed to have a tenuous peace with the Wings. But the Fangs...
Are they the embodiment of Valmar's fell bloodthirst? Is it their nature to consume everything around them, even their bearers, in their unending hunger?
Ida's gaze locks on Xander's, meeting his killing intent with a steely gaze of her own. But she hears something, a faint whipping in the air behind her; she leaps to the side--
The gleaming blade glances off her, cutting a line down the armor of her right side. Shards of metallic exoskeleton pepper the ground, but there's no blood. Still, even the slightest delay could've ended in that blade cutting her open. She can't take any chances with these two.
Riley moves like something feral. He speaks, but so do Reapers every so often. The tiny handful who remain lucid beg for food, for blood, for anything to stave off their hunger--
"ELEANOR!" Ida shouts. She rushes at Riley, her leg lashing out to kick him in the ribs and knock him away from her friend.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Riley Arwell with GET AWAY FROM HER! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Sneak! The true nature of Ida Everstead-Rey's attack becomes clear! GS: Riley Arwell takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Devil's Draw for 283 hit points! GS: Riley Arwell enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The moment Ida's foot makes contact, something emerges from her palm. The flesh there splits open, ejecting something that gleams in the light. The shape half-unfolds into its true form: a heavy pistol, really more of a rifle hacked down into something smaller than a carbine. Ida levels Devil's Due at Riley's knee, and pulls the trigger at point-blank range.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Xander is trying to get them to just leave. Eleanor can hear him. But it's not working. She wishes it would, but there are many things in this world that do not operate accoding to her wishes. This is one of them. But not the last for these few minutes.
Eleanor has no way of helping Ruth at the moment; she has her own matters to contend with. Namely: Riley. The vines absorb much of the blaze, and there is no pain in it. That would be nice... in any other kind of circumstances.
"Y-yes," Eleanor starts, hesitating. "We're friends! A gunshot rings out from Ruth, and another, and she flinches. And that's the moment it takes. Riley rushes forward and knocks her straight off her feet, latching into her neck with his teeth. "Aaaah!" It's fear as much as pain from the fall, though she recovers herself at the shock of the bite. "Get--get OFF of me!" she cals, and tries to push--but he's stronger. Her mind comes up with another solution. She reaches down to her belt, and pulls her ARM--
"Gh!"
As Ida moves to kick, Eleanor is already firing, the angle hurting her arm quite a bit but six shots firing out in quick succession at near point-blank range.
GS: Eleanor Klein spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Riley Arwell with Abundance! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein takes 34 damage from Poison! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Very High! Riley Arwell solidly guards Eleanor Klein's Abundance for 136 hit points! GS: Jam applied to Riley Arwell! GS: Quick applied to Eleanor Klein!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Ruth's words awaken a panic in Xander, one he masks with fury as he snarls back at her. "I do and I will!" he declares, as if the suffering hasn't already spread. As if his existence doesn't spawn it constantly. As if Riley isn't suffering right now. Yet Xander means every word of that promise in his own way, however impossible and foolish it is. Making others suffer isn't the goal. It's the consequence. And he knows, equally, that's no comfort to anyone.
He's already running for Ruth as she readies her rifle, another bullet firing. He bites out a cry, staggered by this one, but relentlessly pressing on despite it to leap up and cleave down with the blade of his scythe with his determination keeping him stitched together and upright.
"Don't you dare," he snaps, as if all her attempts at kindness burned him. The shame and regret. Those tears. That burrows into him more than the bullets, and he lashes out with one overhead arc, brutally and incessantly following up with another swing. "I intend to keep suffering!"
Xander snarls, hearing Ida shout and whipping around to see her dive at Eleanor. It's hypocritical, the way she's screaming for her friend in desperation, for Xander to respond with the same panic laced in his movements as he rushes her. The scythe is gone because he's more comfortable with a knife at the end of the day, desperately trying to find a weakness in her exoskeleton to jam a blade and get her attention off of Riley.
GS: Xander Lovell spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Xander Lovell receives 100 temporary hit points. GS: Xander Lovell enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with As You Sow...! GS: Xander Lovell has launched an attack Link! GS: Xander Lovell has entered Link Stance! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with So Shall You Reap! GS: Xander Lovell enters a Counter stance! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Enduring Will! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Guard! GS: Ruth Pauling suffers a terrible blow from Xander Lovell's As You Sow... for 182 hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst! GS: Strain! Xander Lovell takes 60 damage! GS: Ruth Pauling solidly guards Xander Lovell's So Shall You Reap for 105 hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst! GS: Ruth Pauling enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Strain! Xander Lovell takes 53 damage! GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Enduring Will for 113 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Power Burst! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xander Lovell drains Ida Everstead-Rey! Xander Lovell gains 56 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley manages to taste Eleanor's blood, and for a while, that's all that matters to him. The flavor washes color and life back into a world that had been drained of most sensations, and brings with it the promise of more -- that he can buy his own life back with hers.
If he succeeded, then Eleanor would be gone. But that's not something that feels real to him right now.
The desperate struggle to get him to stop feels very distant to him, even as Ida's gunshot bloodlessly blasts apart important components of his knee, and Eleanor unloads her own array of point-blank shots. It becomes more clear than ever that he can't feel any of this, but those shots that bore into his shoulder sever key connection points in the webwork of vines that give him motion, weakening his grip on Eleanor enough for her to finally push him away.
That's what finally gets his attention, and he makes a sound of surprise and protest.
"No, no, no, please..." He reaches out again, but the bad leg won't hold him to let him stand and walk toward her. More vines, snakelike, grow out from his arms instead to bridge the distance, forming a loose spiral around Eleanor that suddenly tightens and tries to tug her closer, wrapping her torso and even around her neck if she doesn't manage to protect it.
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Deadly Entanglement! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Eleanor Klein has activated a Force Action! GS: CRITICAL! Eleanor Klein fully evades Riley Arwell's Deadly Entanglement for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein activates Evade bonus and Gleam!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Xander's rebuke is as verbally stunning as it is physically, the blade of the scythe tearing unopposed across the left arm and across her torso - decorating that blade with her Malevolence-altered blood. (It will dry to the 'correct' color, at least.) A shrieking hiss resounds as Ruth is held upright by the thorny brambles that presently bind her. Though the shade of a nearby rocky outcropping obscures it for most, Xander will be able to see what's under the sleeves of an overcoat that remains too large for a Hellionized Ruth that towers over anyone else here.
'Don't you dare,' and in that moment, eyes meet. Ruth thrusts the shaft of her weapon to catch the scythe from stabbing deep into her solar plexus, though it draws blood from the shallow puncture. Her glowing eyes are widened with equal parts horror and excitement to look into the determination behind Xander's eyes. His intention to keep suffering.
A weight grows in her chest that anchors the unrelenting urges of her Malevolence from snapping back, allowing him to disengage and face Ida and Eleanor alike. The way the both of them seem ready to dive upon and dogpile the people of ARMS who came to her aid.
The distinctive exoskeleton of someone she was prepared to channel all her emotional rancor against over the last year.
The glint of light off of the ring on Eleanor's hand.
Her tail starts to snake around the shaft of the rifle as it works to drag her out of the combined weight of guilt and the weakness of bloodloss to continue being, as is the birthright of all Hellions.
"Do you... Xander?" She asks, a widening fang-filled smile as a serpentine tongue flicks for the taste of the panic, distress, and pain in the air. "Do you want to continue suffering?"
She doesn't want him to.
The sniper rifle's barrel points towards the pleading Riley, and that deafening report happens again without hesitation.
The mugger, an afterthought in the melee, screams aloud. "It can't be!!" He knows the sound. Anyone who lived through that time, no matter how young, can never forget that report - even if it's been only two single shots.
GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Snipe! GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Riley Arwell with Door Knock! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: Riley Arwell suffers a terrible blow from Ruth Pauling's Door Knock for 195 hit points! GS: Riley Arwell has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The good news, if there is any in this tiny little hell, is that Ida's shot took out Riley's knee, and limited his mobility. The corresponding bad news, which goes on the stack with all the other bad news, is that it doesn't seem to slow him down much. "GET AWAY FROM HER!" Ida screams, her voice raw with anger. She can't kill either of them, or the Fangs will just pick someone else to possess. Ida wouldn't wish that fate on her worst enemy.
But Xander is still up and mobile. Ida sees the glint of metal in his hand, and twists to the side as he comes at her. The knife glances off intact exoskeleton before cutting into the gouge left by Xander's scythe. Blood wicks from the wound, equal parts crimson and quicksilver.
BANG.
For a few seconds, Ida hopes, with all her heart, that the man in the throes of horrific bloodlust is not dead.
But Xander doesn't allow her the luxury of distraction. Ida spins on her heels, putting Ruth's voice--her words, the snake-like flicking of her tongue, the creeping certainty she's indulging in this like a bottle of fine wine--out of mind. Fiery Breath condenses around her fingers, and she drives them at Xander's sternum. There's a snap-crack of energy, and if it hits, the burning Breath will pour out of her, and into him. It's nowhere near enough to disrupt Valmar's terrible hold on his soul, but it is enough to make him hurt.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Riley Arwell with Searing Ember Strike! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 2 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has canceled their attack on Riley Arwell. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Xander Lovell with Searing Ember Strike! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 2 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor, even when she's gotten away, has lost a lot of blood in a short time. She wobbles on her feet once she gets to them, and hears Ruth talking of suffering. She doesn't say much, but Eleanor hears it. The light glints off her engagement ring. She turns back to Riley--
he seems to beg. That sound, it's as if she took food from a starving man. ...Which she did, in a way. But she doesn't dwell on that for now; the vines grow from his arms, and Eleanor sees them coming. They start to weave around her, and she turns, bolting outright as fast as she can take herself. The vines barely miss her, snapping shut on where her neck was an instant ago, as she draws on the residual magic of her spells to rush away. She keeps running, pulling a small blue berry from her bag as she does, and throwing it up into the air. Its magic shines over the three of them.
It doesn't stop her bleeding, though.
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Mystic Berry! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Ruth Pauling with Mystic Berry! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Eleanor Klein with Mystic Berry! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein takes 25 damage from Poison! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Eleanor Klein heals Ida Everstead-Rey! She gains 215 temporary hit points! GS: Eleanor Klein heals Eleanor Klein! She gains 215 temporary hit points! GS: Quick applied to Eleanor Klein! GS: Xander Lovell suffers a terrible blow from Ida Everstead-Rey's Searing Ember Strike for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple and Disease applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer! GS: Eleanor Klein heals Ruth Pauling! She gains 215 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander, in all his fury and savagery, widens his eye a fraction as he catches sight of the Ruth beneath her overcoat. "What?" The surprise falls out of his mouth unthinkingly, and in a brief moment he's looking to Ruth with a mix of horror and... respect? But then everything else is happening too fast for his train of thought to stay on those tracks.
Ruth cleaves through his words with her own retort -- not a verbal one, but the way her rifle lifts up and takes aim. Do you? she asks, as if she knows exactly what she has to do in order to crush his tenacity to dust and turn his answer to no. The world stops, or maybe it's only Xander's heart that does, in a silent, terrible moment before the gun fires, his scream lost under the sound.
No. Please no. And it's not even enough. In horror, he realizes it won't ever be enough. Riley, in his cursed condition, will keep going until there's nothing of him left, crawling and ripping himself apart piece by piece as long as there's blood in the air. Is there enough left now to salvage? Can Xander possibly stitch this all back together?
Ida's purifying flames engulf him from within, and Xander finds his thoughts strangely of Moor Gault, of Dean's pyre, of how the flames could only burn away the curse if it burnt them with it. That's what it feels like, seared from the inside, an agony ravaging him enough to send him stumbling back, barely standing.
Everything hurts. Even before the bullets and the fire, Valmar's curse had woven pain through Xander's every nerve through its infestation in his spine. His thoughts are fuzzy with it, a constant noise demanding attention. Focus. Think, god damn it. He needs to get his head screwed back on and think.
They can't stop Riley. They can only fight him until he rips himself to shreds.
Xander will have to be the one to stop him. And there's only one thing that can. Xander huffs out a broken sound -- a laugh, maybe -- and slowly pulls himself up to straighten his spine. Oppressive darkness subtly lingers in the area, and the breeze the sweet smell of grave flowers. His scythe emerges again, blossoming into his grasp, and then he tears across the battlefield in sweeping motions and crescent arcs, darkness and petals trailing after the blade that craves arcs of blood.
...It's all a dance of deceit, and though he'll cleave those present -- Ida, Ruth, and Eleanor each -- without holding back, they're not his real target. The injured mugger is. The savage performance comes to its finale with a reaping. A sacrifice to Valmar. A dark prayer for one more tomorrow.
GS: Xander Lovell has activated a Boss Action! GS: Xander Lovell spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Dance with Death! GS: Xander Lovell enters a Counter stance! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with Dance with Death! GS: Xander Lovell enters a Counter stance! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Dance with Death! GS: Xander Lovell enters a Counter stance! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Force Action! GS: You have activated the Force Action Guard! GS: CRITICAL! Ruth Pauling suffers a terrible blow from Xander Lovell's Dance with Death for 286 hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Power Burst! GS: Ruth Pauling enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Eleanor Klein takes a solid hit from Xander Lovell's Dance with Death for 255 hit points! GS: Purge! Poison removed! GS: Eleanor Klein activates Evade bonus and Gleam!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Another gunshot rips into Riley, severing more connections crucial to movement as it punctures his torso. He can barely move, but nor can he let himself stop. He pulls himself along in a broken crawl, looking more and more the shambling corpse the curse seems to have reduced him to.
Meanwhile, Xander's scythe finds the mugger. A life is offered up at last, sating the Fangs again for a time.
The vines winding their way through Riley's body crumble away in forgiveness and reprieve, and with them, the damage brought by the curse is healed -- life floods back into him, his own blood filling his veins and bringing back his ability to feel his surroundings in full.
It would be overwhelming even if it wasn't dominated by pain. But there is pain. Fresh and searing -- the burnt skin, the many gunshot wounds now streaming blood, the blasted knee. Broken ribs from the fight before. He collapses to the ground immediately, curling into a ball and wailing softly.
He's alive, he's alive... why did he want this!
GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey suffers a terrible blow from Xander Lovell's Dance with Death for 283 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Power Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Among the gathered, Ida knows that more keenly than almost anyone else can ever know. Once you are a Hellion, those urges can never be caged forever. The ability to do so is the providence of those not fully overtaken by Malevolence. Outlets need guidance by conviction as they are found, and in that moment - a dark one - that may have been the only solution to present itself.
Eleanor gives her aid unquestioning to all three of them as she provides the essence of a Potion Berry through her power, but that is the only reprieve of the storm of emotion that follows. Emotion. Darkness... and steel.
Xander cleaves through all of them, and Ruth may well - deservedly - bear the brunt of much of it as it severs and frees lifeblood that Eleanor's gifts can offset. That... and Ruth's own heart, providing Malevolence that fills in for blood and breath.
In the chaos, the mugger seems to disappear... were it not for the unsightly, ghastly remains where they once lie begging, their final conscious moments spent reliving a distant horror. Ruth can tell something happened to them when she doesn't feel his emotional presence any more.
A life is taken. A price is paid, and the debtor is satisfied with this periodic payment... and then, there is Riley's wailing. He's alive, he has his senses back - for better or for worse, mostly worse, with all the pain and anguish.
Ruth's tongue flicks again as she turns away, facing her right side - the one side with the over-large wing - as if to separate herself emotionally from all of it.
"He needs you." She says, gentler, a sharp one eighty from what just happened, curling into herself as she finds calm in the present ambience. "Be with him... I don't want either of you to suffer alone."
Alone. When she was just poised to do that by her own hands. Hellions are creatures of contradiction.
She's looking to her rosary as the last of the conjured brambles leave her... but as she's hiding under her wing, it may not be immediately clear that she's now trying to talk to the two of ARMS who came to her aid.
"You're hurt. You're scared. You're angry. I'm sorry."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Eleanor scrambles to safety, slipping free of Riley's grasping brambles. That's one fear temporarily removed from the enormous pile of them.
Ida, meanwhile, backs away from the Fangs, stepping towards the car; it's still threaded through with vines, and those will be absolutely wretched to remove, but it's cover. "You'll suffer until you die," she says, her voice tight. "And then Valmar will choose someone else. Is this how you want to live? Is this living? How many need to die before you realize--"
Xander laughs. He sweeps across the field, and his scythe cuts through the armor protecting Ida's chest. Blood sprays from the wound. A look of shock flashes through Ida's eyes, chased by pain, then fear, then rage as she sees the mugger's grisly end. Her cheeks pale. Silvery-blue Hyadean tissue erupts from the wound, stitching it shut; beneath, blood vessels seal and reroute to keep oxygen and nutrients flowing. Flakes of exoskeleton fall to the ground as Riley starts screaming.
"This isn't fair," Ida says. "Valmar set this in motion. But damned if I just sit by and LET YOU keep this FARCE going when you should be SEALED AWAY--" Ida's right hand trembles as it curls into a fist. The tendons stand out in her neck, gleaming silvery-blue. Her heart screams and weeps at the sight of the horror unfolding around her, but all that makes it through is the anger. She can't even begin to process Ruth, and what she's done.
"Look at me," Ida demands, of Xander. She's covered in her own blood. She's light-headed. If she weren't augmented in the way that she is, she would be woozy from bloodloss. Instead, she clenches her glowing, burning fist to her chest, as if swearing an oath. She says nothing--she merely meets Xander's gaze, letting him see all the pain and anger and grief churning within her.
It's a brief, heartwrenching introduction to the violence that follows. Ida is a blur, churning up clouds of wasteland dust as she charges Xander. Her motions are a little wild, a little unrestrained--puffs of Ruth's Malevolence cling to her, but never sink in, like water off a lotus leaf. Her eyes glow bright. Her lips part in a roar, revealing gleaming white teeth. Her fist drives forward, her entire body aligned behind it in a single, cataclysmic strike.
The shockwave blows the hellish foliage around, and kicks oup a dustcloud.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has activated a Force Action! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 5 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Xander Lovell with Unbroken Lotus Fist! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Cover expired! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell takes a glancing hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Unbroken Lotus Fist for 182 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Xander Lovell activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
A laugh, maybe. Eleanor can't think of it as funny, even before the darkness lingers, that sweet scent fills the air. Eleanor thinks she's prepared for it. She is not, especially. Sweeping motions hack across her, staining her dress red, but they aren't fatal; the lingering magic of the Berry sees to that, absorbing most of the punishment except for relatively superficial wounds. But the mugger...
Eleanor knows. He died afraid. Afraid of Ruth, afraid of the others... And they couldn't save him.
Eleanor finds herself on the ground, hands holding herself up as she tries to breathe. The pain is significant, but the bleeding has slowed. And Riley... Riley seems to be himself again. Eleanr squeezes her eyes shut for a second to hold back what she's feeling, the overwhelming emotion of the moment--and she doesn't even feel the others', like Ruth does. Only what sheimagines they must feel.
But she looks up at Ida's voice. The way her hand tremples, the way she xemands wat she does. She is woozy from bloodloss, but--
"IDA!" Eleanor calls. "Ida, STOP!"
She pushes herself to her feet, still feels dizzy, and shakes her head. "If we kill them, we inherit their curse. And we don't have any way to seal them today."
"...I can't condone what they've done, even though I know why. But until we find a way to cure or seal them..."
Eleanor lifts a hand, and in her other is suddenly a Crest, drawing on the power of Geo and Muse. "...Harm, begone; return to what you should be."
Some sparkles rain over Riley. It won't be much compared to his wounds, but it will stop him from dying.
"Until then, Ida, I won't let you become cursed like they are."
GS: Eleanor Klein enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Riley Arwell with Auspicious Mend! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 2 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Gamble! Eleanor Klein heals Riley Arwell! He gains 150 temporary hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Shield applied to Riley Arwell! GS: Riley Arwell has Fallen! He is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
It's sickening how quickly relief arrives. How the curse subsides, and the infestation taken root inside Xander fades away, crumbling and finally, finally giving him freedom from the constant pain that had taken him these past weeks. Even with lingering purification and the bullets burning in his flesh, it's a relief. The cursed scythe crumbles too, because Xander lets it. Because the sacrifice is done and he doesn't need or want it.
But the wounds are all still there. The sacrifice was step one. Escaping with their lives is step two, and Xander hurries toward Riley's wailing body. He glances to Ruth, incredulous. Whenever he thinks he nearly understands he, he learns he doesn't at all. But she's right. Riley needs him, and Xander grits his teeth to pull himself forward.
Look at me, Ida demands, and Xander does -- unapologetic and unrelenting -- as he charges her. Even in the face of her pain, anger, and grief, he does not flinch. He steels himself as they meet. There's a motion in there, something to protect his vitals perhaps, but she strikes him, knocking him to the ground with brutal force as the world around him billows from the force.
Xander does not give one of his usual lashing counter attacks. He needs his strength for something more important. With great effort, he pries himself back up off the ground and lurches in his steps, pressing on toward Riley.
He rips a vial from his belt, injecting alchemy into his system and tossing the syringe away. He falls into a collapse at Riley's side, trying to assess how bad it is, only to see Eleanor's healing magic wash over Riley. Xander stares at her, then back to Riley. This is just logical, she says, but Xander's starting to think they'll say anything to justify their foolishness.
Carefully, slowly, he lifts Riley up over a shoulder, looking to the others warily before he gets up, and if not attacking again, drags himself and Riley away.
"No. It's not fair," he says as he goes. "...But it's worth living like this. I hope you find someone that makes you understand that someday. And then I hope the world never asks you to prove it."