2023-03-17: The Traitor Empress

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<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.

Chaos has erupted across Pentagulia.

The center of it was Marivel's attack on the city. Summoned automatons and phantasms, which did battle with visiting Drifters and Althena's Guard alike, caused no small amount of trouble throughout the city. Some fought Marivel directly; even more were involved in evacuating and rescuing people from the attack.

But there were other sources of chaos, too. Something happened in Pentagulia's library, with rumors swirling of intruders that had snuck in and haven't been found. There were also rumors of a robed figure, during Marivel's attack, that had been seen around the city.

That robed figure, it is said, occupied the Goddess's attention for a moment.

People have gathered in the Goddess's Square. Those who fought Marivel; those who helped rescue citizens caught in the fight; those arriving. Many of the guards here are weary; leaning against walls, leaning against homes, and exhausted. Some merchants and townsfolk chat, quietly; many eye the newcomers here warily.

But now, as the smoke is clearing, there is a flash in Goddess's Square. It is brilliant; a huge flash of white, which brings in two dozen men and women in plate armor, carrying halberds, swords, and shields. It also brings a woman in their center, with long black hair, golden robes, and an ornate golden headpiece. A few others are nearby.

She is recognizable instantly: the Goddess Althena, come at last. A moment later, the Dragonmaster appears; Ghaleon has a line of blood running down from his side, and his arms are crossed over his chest, as he appears at Althena's side.

Her voice booms out over the plaza. "What is the meaning of this!?" her voice booms. "We welcome you to Pentagulia -- our sacred city, our sanctuary in this besieged world -- and you repay our kindness with base violence? With an assault? We shall not suffer it! Kneel before the Goddess!"

<Pose Tracker> Lucia has posed.

Suddenly, Lucia arrives in the square.

She's been missing since they first arrived; and she and Ghaleon must have gotten separated, because she didn't teleport in with the Guard. No, she comes in from the edges of things, on a side of the square all her own, and can be viewed in profile by everyone else. She hastens, breaking into a jog, towards the one she has sought for so long.

Towards the end of her mission.

...and the end of more than that, truth be told.

But Zophar must be stopped, no matter the cost.

She is preoccupied, muttering to herself, as useless as ever at social mores, reading the room, et cetera.

"Something is wrong... the aura here, it's... it's not as I expected it to be. There's..."

She half stumbles, half staggers to a stop, between the Drifters and the Goddess. It's obvious she's been pushing herself towards this goal from the moment she hit the city. From the moment she hit the MOON. No matter how many delays there have been, how many detours, it seems that even the extra thirty seconds of hurrying are worth it to Lucia. That's how much this matters. That's how much is as stake.

And, as she catches her breath, she looks at long last upon the one she has sought with such tenacity and such desperation.

Everyone witnesses a transformation in Lucia's face. She had been... determined, mostly. Hope and resignation had otherwise cancelled each other out to that overriding middle ground of urgency.

But as she stares at the Goddess, Lucia's expression... softens, smeared out like a painter's thumb across the canvas, into... bewilderment. A familiar look; in just such a way has she witnessed her first sunset; her first baby; her first picnic. What first could this be that has transfixed her so?

Then comprehension dawns, and the sun sets in her face. Darkness rises in its place; a terrible expression. Many have seen Lucia frustrated, an essentially daily occurrence as her quest dragged out day after day. Few have ever seen her enraged. Her vivid eyes, green with all the life Filgaia should have, are almost black in her face. Her brows furrow thunderously. Her body is rigid, her lips a stricken line. Her heels lift slightly, tugging her off the ground, as she forgets about gravity in the heat of her dismay.

"You!" she shouts, louder than she's ever been known to raise her voice; and she's glaring at the gold-draped Goddess with the condemnation of the judge, the jury, and--

--power gathers in her palm, no element, not even ALL elements, something else, something older and more primal than any spell--

--the kind of power no one's ever seen but Hiro and Ruby, and few ever believed them -- it's been so long that they might even have begun to doubt themselves--

--it neither shrieks nor crackles; if anything it... hums, not electrically but beautifully, even musically, almost as though within her grasp she has tapped the essence of some celestial song--

"YOU ARE NOT ALTHENA!" Lucia roars, hefting this ferocious energy above her head like a storm god's javelin. It is still much less in magnitude than Hiro once witnessed, but so much more than the others have known her to wield.

It is not possible for Lucia to be more offended OR more distraught in this moment. Oh, it is so simple and so elegant -- everything that was so confusing in this world, everything that didn't make sense -- the mystery has fallen into place. All is explained: 'Althena's Guard' committed acts of terrible evil, acts Althena herself would have never allowed, because they were serving

SOMEONE

ELSE.

"Who are you?" she demands -- and then her voice cracks and gives up the ghost entirely, forcing her to hiss her final question, which somehow sounds even more dangerous than when she was screaming.

"WHERE IS SHE?"

She hurls the bolt straight at "Althena" with all of her strength. It vivisects the very air on its way to the Goddess' face.

Well -- the woman's face.

That mysterious new first: It turned out to be... Lucia's first imposter.

<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

Duty calls, it seems.

Among the truly immense numbers of Althena's Guard is a face that -- though it has been a couple of very important years -- is still familiar to many of the assembled Drifters. It might take a second to put together, though, since... well, she's changed and she's partially obscured by the enormous number of assembled Guard troops.

Gone is her usual schoolgirl-like black dress, in favor of an ornate blue and white robe with a black and white belt. (At the center of that belt's unusually oversized buckle -- itself covered with a glassy, translucent material -- is a red dot.) At her wrist is a similar device with several steel 'pages,' each containing a Lunarian magical crest.

Her fluffy hair has been straightened save for the very tips; she wears it in a high ponytail, out of the way.

She emerges from the ranks of the Guard when Lucia conjures that energy, stepping up with a once-familiar shout of, "Erase Magic!"

The bolt dissipates en route -- unceremoniously, as if it were simply never there. ... By the time it would have gotten there, though, Lemina is herself in its path -- if she hadn't overpowered it, she clearly would have been ready to take it.

"Lucia -- I'm sorry Hiro's spent so long blinding you to the truth that you can't even recognize Althena," Lemina offers, sounding legitimately dejected. "I don't want to see you get hurt here, but you're making that mega-hard!"

She reaches into the adventuring satchel she wears at her side, producing another Lunarian Crest. Holding it in a mostly-open hand to avoid obscuring the sword sigil at its center, she slides it into the slot in her belt's buckle. It helpfully reports, "Power!"

Her expression gradually flattens. "As for the rest of you, surrender or don't, but your odds are looking mega-bad." She looks to Althena, as if expecting guidance for her next move. 

<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.

    Rixia stumbles out of the gate to the Abyss, her face pale and withered; she literally looks like she's been lost for a thousand years, exhausted and damaged from her fight with Ouroboros. The gunblade is still in her hand, dripping with oils, gunpowder, smoke and magic. She's groggy and barely on her feet as the Goddess arrives -- someone she's never seen before, her voice booming out over the plaza. She's rattled, taking a few steps back dizzily.

    Then, Lucia arrives -- and she brings with her overwhelming power, something old and primal as she roars her own accusation: that the Goddess is not... Althena?

    "Um. Um-- uh" Rixia flabbergastedly looks between them, barely able to grasp what's going on; the bolt flies through the air, and she stares to the face of the woman.

    ... who is she?

    She doesn't know... nothing makes sense right now... she just wants to go home...

    Home? ... where is home, now?

    She doesn't miss that Ghaleon seems injured. "H-hey, mister... you're hurt," she points out the obvious. She has to latch onto pointing out obvious things right now, because they feel like the only bits of Fact and Truth that she can believe in right now. Because in a minute, everything she's privately feared might come true. Are her friends about to fight and hurt and spill blood over each other? Lemina arrives amidst more of the Guard's troops, and the situation just seems even more confusing. 

<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.

    Leo--White Knight, and Grandmaster of the Holy Order of Althena's Guardians--has not yet sheathed his sword. A tense presence lingers about him as he hurriedly walks about the square, collecting reports from his soldiers. He's beaten, bruised, and bloodied, but seeing the situation outside has granted him new strength, even if that strength will die when the adrenaline ebbs. Notably, he has not taken his eye off Marivel Armitage.

    The brilliant flash washes everything away; when it clears, both Leo and the nearby guards bow in reverence, as is expected of them. Leo in particular looks as though a tremendous weight has left his shoulders. The Goddess is here. She will--

    Something flickers through Leo's eyes as Althena makes her proclamation. He's... never seen her this angry, but... undoubtedly she's deeply incensed by someone deciding to terrorize her people. His face stays stern as he steps forwards. His gaze flicks back and forth among the Goddess' retinue--he does't recognize Lemina at a glance--before it settles on Lucia.

    Terror and rage shoot down Leo's spine. as this woman--the alleged(?) Lord of Calamity--makes her horrible accusation.

    Leo flies. With speed he did not know he still had, he surges forward, drives his sword's pommel, two-handed, at the crown of Lucia's head. Only the barest bits of Lemina's actions register, right now... just that she's a magus, that she protected the Goddess, and that she sounds deeply familiar.

    "Base treachery," Leo says, his eyes wild despite the Goddess' presence. "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!"

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Liath has posed.
<SoundTracker> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFrH9y_cpLg - "Elogia Cinerosa"

Marivel Armitage has made her presence unmistakably known in Pentagulia; it was only a matter of time before -someone- responded. After all...

... The Goddess' Throne no longer sits unoccupied.

For good or for ill.

The Goddess arrives. Her Guards arrive. Her Heroes arrive. Her Dragonmaster arrives.

And soon enough... her Prime Lord, too, joins the side of the one who sits upon the throne.

Liath arrives shortly after the arrival of the Goddess and her retinue, in a stream of multitudinous colors; they hit ground smoothly, pastel hues swirling together into a bright white silhouette that finally solidies into the green-clad, golden-haired Seraph herself. Her eyes shut, her expression as calm as a lake's serene surface in the eye of a great storm, Liath's armored hand rests upon Joyeuse's pommel as the grand, demanding voice of the Goddess addresses her intruders and interlopers. For her part, Liath remains ensconced in that closed-eyed grace--

    'You!

--at least, until events inspire that bright gold gaze to crack open.

Liath's attention turns towards Lucia. Palpable power rolls through the would-be Destroyer belonging to nothing known by mortal reckoning -- but Liath does not so much as budge as that lance is thrown with a simple demand: WHERE IS SHE?

Liath's fingers tense around the pommel of her weapon by the time Lemina Ausa makes that unexpected interception.

"..."
Her eyes have already shut again, as Leo roars his disbelief. 

<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.

There comes a time in every young man's life when they ask 'How did I get here?' Well in Hiro's case he knows, he made a bad call. What was that bad call? Letting a certain person provoke him into a fight. And so Hiro lays there, looking up at the rooftop he just fell from.

He's bloodied, burnt from a smoking hole in his tunic, teeth chattering from the melting ice that still sticks out of several points on his body. Truly hurt, he just lets himself breathe for a while.

What Hiro doesn't know is that it's even worse than he thinks, given where he fell. Dimly he hears something, and pushes himself up, crawling not far away. Vision blurred, he keeps on the move.

Thinking about what that certain person told him.

Trying to get up again, he stumbles, as he grips stonework to keep up the attempt, standing over the Goddess square, he looks down at the crackle boom of smoke. The appearance of the Goddess. Her pronouncement. Looking at her from the side, he's finds himself stunned by the Goddess of this world.

It is a shock of blue that draws his eye though. As he takes a step towards her. And finds there's no foothold.

He finds himself falling, striking a rooftop within the square, being pitched down the slope of the roof as he tumbles uncontrollably, striking it over and over and some might see the shape careening uncontrollably -

'YOU ARE NOT ALTHENA!'

'Who are you?

But no, in the end the shape just flies into the square, but it's so insignificant an event that compared to what's going on at its center it might not even draw many eyes, impacting the ground with an intense spasm of pain on his face, the wind knocked out of him and unable to even express his pain for a moment. Not even taking the time to roll over because PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN OH NOT-GODDESS PAIN his eyes wander around and...

'WHERE IS SHE?'

... fall upon her, beautiful, powerful, and incredibly angry. Angrier than he's ever seen her. Hiro sees the energy crackling about her, the primal essence of some song, and his eyes grow wide, "Lu... cia..." He knows the kind of spell she's about to cast. He knows. He knows. She hasn't been capable of this for so long, or, maybe she was, and he just never realized.

In the end, while having seen her at the zenith of her power, he still knows so very little of what she's capable of.

He forces himself to roll over, he wills himself to rise so he can get to her. In the end, if she's like this, then he wants to be at her side. Whether she needs him to be there or not. He wants to be there for her, with her.

'Erase Magic'

'Lucia -- I'm sorry Hiro's spent so long blinding you'

He can't. He can't get to her. He wants to, and can't. In this moment he feels anger at Lemina's words, anger at what he knows is going to happen next. And sorrow and guilt in the fact that even being here...

... he still isn't there for her. And it's all thanks to his own, STUPID, choices. As the pommel descends upon her head in a strike, he cries out, "How... dare you...! Lemina... LEO!" He croaks out one last residual effort. "She's here to... to save us and... you-!"

In the end, his vision blurs for another reason, as tears flood his eyes. And he can only manage a single other word, desperate, sad, angry and pregnant with regret, "Lucia..."

<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.

After escaping the library, Talia found Pentagulia under attack. She wasn't near the main fighting, but with her brother, she ended up helping to pull people out of the way of those strange assailants and a building that took an unfortunate hit.

She is in the square, exhausted and covered in dust. She wipes at her face, before she looks at Ivan. "This is a disaster, no?" she says. "I do not know where Lucia is, I do not know where Hiro got off to, I--"

The Goddess appears. Talia turns and stares at her. Her crimson eyes cloud over with anger, with rage, at being told to kneel. Her fingers curl at her side -- at the pointed lack of a hilt. She frowns, then, and her fingers slacken.

"Damn it--"

And then Lucia's voice echoes out, with such an accusation. Talia's eyes widen; she looks at Ivan, looks at Lucia, and then at the Goddess in time to see the woman they met in the library...

...just...

...dissolve Lucia's shot. "Oh--oh no," Talia says. She tries to start forward -- but then Leo hurtles for Lucia and she hears Hiro call out. Talia makes a call.

Get to the person she can. So she starts running towards Hiro. "Hiro!" she says, hand fumbling for an apple gel at her belt.

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Magilou... was not helping to rescue citizens. Nor was she fighting anyone, though certainly she met a grievous foe. She just disappeared, for a while. It's part of her charm as an outside cat.

    She saunters in, and, mysteriously, finds Margaret in the chaos. Magilou doesn't say she wasn't here, but she bears no characteristic scuffs of horrors witnessed. She grins, all too easily, as she leans on her side. "Heyyyy, what did I miss?"

    As if she was never thinking of leaving them here. Being fair: the theatre is full of half-truths from the outset. And did you know that Pentagulia has been getting fascinating shipments in? Magilou knows, now.

    But then -- FLASH!

    Out comes...

    Magilou's gaze veils, as she beholds the woman who approaches, and perhaps Margaret is familiar with how her expression goes to assessment so easily. "Hmm..?" She hums, in rising tone.

    And: "Oh," Magilou smiles, all too mysterious, as Lucia fails to the recognise the woman, and the pieces fall to place.

    "That's who they're calling Althena, these days, is it? Hahaha... isn't it as I've told you? She really woke up on the wrong side of the bed."

    In sly aside, she adds, "... take it as a metaphor, and I've spoken not a lie."

    But Lucia's rage is dissipated by someone much more familiar, and Magilou straightens, shading her gaze with a hand. "Eeeh? Lemia?!" She exclaims, before she straightens up, and wags her fingers. "No, not quite... Mia? No, no, wrong hair... Lemina! Right, this is the way!" She snaps her fingers, brightly. "Well, at least SOMEONE knows the meaning of a good resemblance!"

    Her gaze casts over Rixia, stumbling in, and Ghaleon, with that gash; the fox-girl isn't the only one weighing up the cost-benefit of a fight, in this scenario. Her eyes search for Liath's, across the way; she says nothing, but quirks her brow, in humour or sympathy or both. (She doesn't linger on it. Perhaps, she thinks, Liath doesn't want to see.) Even poor, beat-up Leo wants to make something of it... and poor, beat-up Hiro doesn't even have the strength to intercept.

    Magilou sighs, shrugging her shoulders, broadly.

    "Looks like we're cornered," she sighs, to her party. "Unless you want to fight this Goddess? Frankly, I'm feeling awfully tired out." Magilou's portrait displays herself as having full HP and SP.

    "But hey," she grins, and winks, to 'Althena', with two finger-guns pointing her way. "If you don't remember me, that means I have another chance, doesn't it? Come onnn. We could be such good friends! You know these sycophants don't appreciate your legs!"

    Margaret is standing right there, Magilou.

DC: Marivel Armitage switches forms to Crimson Noble Marivel!

<Pose Tracker> Lucia has posed.

The butt of Leo's sword makes a meaty sound when it impacts Lucia's head.

When her eyes roll back and close, normally one might observe that the world is just a little bit darker in their absence. But not today; no. No, everything is just a little bit brighter instead.

She collapses in a puddle of red robes and blue hair, and knows no more.

Leo, who was closest, saw her last thought, writ loud across her face:

The rage and terror of someone who thought they were about to be reunited with their greatest love -- and discovered they were lost, instead.

<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.

 
Emerging from the Abyss, Margaret was completely, utterly pancaked. Loyal old Dollie, who had been hanging out near the Abyssal entrance and was not in the best of shape herself, had immediately come over, but this had largely meant that Margaret was able to sit down, enjoying a pipeful of the weird herbal tobacco combination blend along with several belts of water and some sun-dried apple slices.

This mostly means she does not feel like she is ABOUT to die, but it is a migration from 'completely spent' to 'okay, I can journey now.' A short rest, one might say, but not a long one. Margaret wonders if she's getting old, with the unease of the elves. They do live longer, but every situation is different.

And this one is now very bad.

The arrival of the guards in a flash of sorcerous light makes Margaret lever herself up. Time to make like the tree and get out of here, but then there is someone with them. Margaret's eyes focus for a moment on Ghaleon. And then on the Goddess.

Margaret thought that she would, at this time, just immediately have a wonderful soliloquy. That she would demand justice and an accounting for the lives of her comrades, her friends, spent fruitlessly in Spira. That she would demand some sort of satisfaction. Perhaps she even thought that she might be willing to go to the last ditch. And yet, there she is, and she is shouting, and Margaret's ears twitch back, and she finds -- she can't speak.

The Goddess commands her to kneel. Margaret's will and endurance is sufficient to not heed the command. But nothing more. She does not call on her magicks and flee or strike or say something stylish. (Dollie braces herself on her healer's stave.)

But then Lucia comes. A girl Margaret has seen only a few times in passing. Woman, really; Margaret, a nifty fifty, has found she thinks of most humans in a slightly childlike manner now. Lucia speaks --

And it isn't the alienated words of a wounded old girl, nor the theories of the ignorant. Margaret looks again to the Goddess, and blinks twice, slowly.

Other things start happening. Lucia throws a dart - it's intercepted by a new arrival! Her brow furrows. "You!" Margaret exclaims to Lemina, but this cannot go much further than that, although she regains enough poise to put a hand on her hip. Stylish, perhaps, but does it resolve the predicment?

It does not. And that spell -- if I start running, Margaret thinks, I'm going to get tagged, and then I've got no advantage at all! Her teeth grind. Damn you, Magic Guild of Vane!! Coming through like THIS???

At this point, though, Margaret -- who had been perhaps understandably stunned by the arrival of the Goddess Althena, so-claimed -- can see, hear, sense Magilou. Her eyes turn towards her and she says through tight teeth, "magilou do not *flirt* with the *goddess* when the *authorities* are here in *force*" 

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    Seraph Lanval, the Mirthful Wellspring, looks more like someone about ready to dry right on up after throwing so much power - both his and channeling more from Schturdark than he normally would - against Marivel's ghastly gambit. He seems shrunken, limber, and like his beard could be too heavy for his neck. It's a heck of an effort to even hold his own drinking gourd. His present (meta)physical weakness doesn't see him retreat into a bottle to rest, beyond the trick he did to escape the Abyss 'in time.'
 
     There is no time to rest, when the Goddess Althena appears - and is heard, alongside her gathering forces of the loyal. Lanval only has one eye open, but is upright within the angles of allowance he told Ghaleon he'd need.
 
     So many things to say. So many things he wants to know. Graced with the presence of someone whose legacy is (was?) considered of bountiful kindness in setting this land for Her faithful, but whose acts roughly the last decade caused so much disarray in her wake. His stake and loss in those decisions is well-known.
 
     He does not bend the knee. He takes a step forward, and--
 
     Lucia takes that floor with raw unspoken bewilderment, shouted fury, and an aura of power undefinable and unrecognizeable (but not abominable - far from it).
 
     'YOU ARE NOT ALTHENA!'
 
     Lanval's eyes look like they could bug out of his face without the shine of color that oft accompanies it, darting between that vaguely musical power and its sudden cessation by a mega-masterful super-sorceress, and the White Knight's aggressive flight to strike down the accuser where she stands.
 
     It's all too fast, too loud, for a weakened Lanval to (meta)physically impose himself or flex much in the way of his own innate power as a Seraph when so much of that well has run closer to dry than it ever has.
 
     "H... how do ya even know ya can recognize Althena yershelf," Lanval manages to get something like that out, across the way to the one whose supreme sorceress-ing has undone a novel burst of power from Lucia, "yer a mortal, 'n... none of ush shaw her 'till the day she made her decreesh 'bout ten yearsh back...."
 
     Lanval makes some sputtering noises in a vague approximation of a dry throat hacking and coughing, because he is that unsteady from weakness.
 
     "'n I can vouch fer the lasht five hundred 'n sheventy of 'em... or shooo...!" Most of those years, directly in service of the Goddess in his reinforcing of the Boundary as a Lord of the Land. These vocal protests are all he can raise as he hugs his drinking gourd close. 

<Pose Tracker> Jean has posed.

Jean is one of those arriving in the Square, still walking quietly and calmly so as not to draw attention to herself or her friends. Hopefully they're doing the same, but if not, at least one of them is subtle!

And they're vry good at running away. A pity that today they have to run towards...

But she won't leave Lucia.

Jean skids to a sop as she stares forward, not at the many guards, but Althena herself--and the fact that Lucia has beaten her here. She doesn't kneel. She doesn't move. Not until she sees that look on Lucia's face, and hears her shout--

It's... not Althena. Finally Jean moves, but it's to take a step back from the sheer power Lucia seems to be wielding in the moment. "She's..."

For the barest heartbeat, Jean wonders if she's going to kill her. But of course it's impossible. It couldn't happen, not with all these guards, with Ghaleon here, with... with her. With--

"Lemina!" Jean can't help but call, despite the hurt she suffered from her minutes ago. And more to the point--Liath does nothing. Liath, who...

"Did you...?" Jean stares at Liath for a moment, in all the chaos. But no--she doesn't want to obligate the honest Seraph to answer that question in front of 'Althena'.

And that's when Leo advances on Lucia, and Hiro falls. "Hir--LUCIA!"

Jean moves, not on instinct, but with terrible intention.

It's while his arms are still up holding his sword that she strikes, appearing behind him in a blur. Jean slams the heel of her hand down into the back of his knee, and whirling up, crashes her hands at pressure points up his body through the joints of his armor--at both armpits, at the joint where the pauldrons join. Finally she hops off his shoulders and delivers a hard KICK straight for his chest, to knock him well backward of Lucia.

"Someone, grab her and run!" Jean hits the ground hard in a readied stance in front of Lucia, ready to protect her at the cost of her life if necessary.

...But something falls out of her clothes as she does. A demonic mask, gold and red and white, skittering across the stone.

The mask of the Shadow Dragon's Master.

"Gh--" 

<Pose Tracker> Mariel has posed.

Mariel has, primarily, been helping people.

The Drifters, of course; she has given aid to as many as she can (including herself; one of her sleeves is still bloody, though it has a bandage on underneath it now). Also civilians. ALSO she has been keeping an eye on Marivel so that nothing goes horribly wrong (again); the only time Marivel left her sight is when she was talking to Shige.

There's a lot of work that Mariel has to do and not a lot of time to do it.

Less, now. Mariel knew this was coming but part of her hoped it wouldn't happen so *soon*. And another part of her hoped it did; better to get it over with. Because she knows that no matter what the result is, it won't be easy.

Mariel is in the square when it happens. She has two things to carry; one is Marivel, unless she's decided to fly again, and one is the staff she's carried lately, a branch-like length of wood with a faceted crystal held at one end. It looks more natural than wizard-y.

But even though she had a feeling things may not go *easily*, she was not expecting the sheer, immediate brutality of Lucia's action, Lemina (is that Lemina? does Lemina have a sister? Mariel thinks to herself; the Ausas are a famous family, aren't they? she should know this) - well, probably Lemina's response, or someone falling out of the sky, or at least off a roof, several buildings along from her.

Whatever Mariel was going to do with Althena, she's not sure she can immediately get to her - not with the Guards, not with the crowds. Mariel is short, and not meant for pushing through crowds. She can't even see what happened to Lucia after her first attack! But she can push herself (and Marivel, unless she's bailed) toward Hiro, holding out a stronger deep violet berry immediately.

"Take this, it's better than the gel - what is going *on*?" Mariel hears yelling, hears fighting. "Marivel, is she right? I can't see from down here." 'Down here' is 'kneeling to make sure Hiro is not about to try to stand up with too many significant broken bones'. (Fingers are... okay, broken fingers aren't *okay* but he's allowed to stand up with them.)

She knows what she'd guess, but: "Is that Althena?" 

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    When Gwen went into the portal Marivel had opened, she had unceremoniously stripped down to what turned out to be her Filgaian garb, thus saving all the cloth she was wearing on her person as a sort of camouflaged investment from being inevitably shredded for what she termed 'Chrysopoeia mode'. At some point before all this, in fact, Gwen may or may not have joked to fellow Fiends, specifically Hiro and Ruby, that she may have found a new way of 'money laundering'.

    Because it distracted from the fact that funds may be the least of everyone's worries, and that Gwen herself, in some ways, felt useless, and out of her depth completely. Worse still, Lucia's foreboding hasn't lessened any since they neared their goal. She trusts Lucia, but she can't say the same for Lucia's growing anxiety.

    -------------------

    ... When Gwen comes out of the portal, it isn't under her own strength, but her limp body being carried out instead. She is still alive, as her breathing and the alarm red pulsing glow of the scar over her heart and ARM can attest to. However, the red color signifies just how weakened the courier is.

    There's a lot of be said of Gwen's perseverance and determination, but in fact, more should be said of the healer keeping her condition stable. It would have been better if Gwen had let herself remain in the bliss of unconsciousness as her body intended. Her body's done all that it can.

    The shouting and drawing of lines brings the courier's slack face to wince. She groans, and shifts.

    Gwen had made a promise to the Fiends, after all. All of her humor, her cheer, her money, her enthusiasm... it was to this point. And what use was she, if she couldn't even be there for it?

    'YOU ARE NOT ALTHENA!'

    Gwen's eyes snap open with a gasp. Blearily, she tries to sit up, unable to place where and when she is, but zeroing in on Lucia's cry.

    Ragnell's idle theorizing, and the conclusions Gwen had crystallized in her mind since then, bring to bear the part of her promise she desperately wanted to hold true to:

    _She has to protect them._

    Mutely, Gwen tries to rise up, propping herself on her left arm. .... Why is Hiro wounded? Is that Lemina? What is Magilou doing? How long was she out?

    As Lucia falls, Gwen raises her exposed metal ARM and shakily points her palm out towards the 'fake' Althena. Maybe she could manage one shot. Her ARM isn't magic. She's a stranger to here; their rules can't affect her.

    _But, if not a goddess, this Althena is still a person._ Possible even someone who took the mantle as a last means to stop war.

    Her right hand shakes as it lowers. She's wasted whatever ace she might have had up her sleeve now. She's too weak to move.
    
    "... So this is how it goes down..." 

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Things turned chaotic, quickly, but Ivan and Talia are helping the best they can with whatever seems most pressing in the aftermath of the attack.

He nods as his sister comments on what a disaster they've found themselves in, but then the Goddess makes an appearance. Ivan finds himself a little awestruck that they're really in her presence, if conflicted... But a familiar face catches his attention.

"Talia! Talia!! It's Lucia!! She's all right!" He pulls at her arm.

All right, but... just radiating fury like he's never seen. And that accusation... ... could it be true? Could a false Althena really have installed herself at the center of everything?!

A rush of alarming developments, then -- Lucia summoning great and terrible magics, the jerk noble from the library wiping those magics out of existence, and Leo rushing for Lucia. And then Hiro crashes down, looking wrecked!

Hiro is close enough to actually help -- Ivan rushes over along with Talia, trying to help him sit up so that Talia can feed him the gel.

"Oh no-..." he says, looking back to find Lucia fallen. 

<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.

Marivel has reverted to her bat form and isn't really putting out that she seems all too bent out of shape over the failed invasion one way or another--though those who actually went into the Abyss to fight her, or talked to her later, might be more aware of her true feelings on the matter. Kaguya in particular had helpful words to share.

"Huh," Marivel says when Lucia just outright opens fire on Althena. "Thought I'd be the one to do that." Her eyes slant towards Leo for a moment. "Guess Ragnell was on the money about this one."

Her head is a swirl of thoughts and emotions."Ah, Goddess Althena!" Marivel says, pulling free from Mariel to float in the air. "Now that's unfair, blaming Hiro? And his friends? When he fought to protect your city? Oh I'm sure they got a little rambunctious after all the confusion I sowed but..."

She hovers in place. "I was the one who attacked your city, that's all. And they stopped me! So really, the one you should be out here punishing is me." She pauses and then grudgingly, "And Lucia. Just the two of us, I'm afraid!"

Mariel asks her if it's Althena over there and she murmurs softly...

"Nah, but play along?"

She doesn't stop Mariel from going to help Hiro's wounds though she isn't going to linger near Hiro himself too much either. Best they don't appear 'together'.

"I throw myself on your mercy." Marivel says to the Goddess Althena. "All I ask is that you understand that these people simply tried to do the right thing by your people. They taught me valuable lessons about friendship, and trust, and believed in you till the last--Not that I have much room to ask much, but they are defenders of your people..."

Marivel doubts she can even muster an Aport righ about now.

She gives Liath a bat smile since she just can't help herself but other than that--

She glances again to Leo. "Isn't that right? They fought to stop me. They protected the people of Pentagulia admirably." 

<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

Chaos had broken out in Pentagulia. This, of course, was perfectly expected when you let loose a bunch of Drifters, rapscallions, and ne'er-do-wells on the city of order and perfection. It might be strange, then, that it's strange to Layna that said chaos came from one of their own number.

Well... a part of her was intending to just slip away and search the city on her own, but... She's been in the company of bad (good) influences way too long. Against her better judgment, her efforts turn toward evacuation.

At least she can look good doing it.

Things calm. And then, they get much less calm, as the square is filled with a brilliant flash. Two dozen soldiers, all hale and hearty compared to the battle-and-rescue exhausted Drifters... and, a very familiar face.

"...Well. This sucks." Layna comments with a mirthless grin, standing up straight from where she'd been tending to some of the damages. "Making me feel like an amateur again, gettin' caught with my hand inside the treasure chest."

Caught not by just the Guard's finest - but the Goddess herself, in the flesh. Can this day get any worse?

...Yes!

In fact, yes it can.

Lucia screams defiance - that this Goddess is not Althena... and she's stopped by...

"...Well, I'll be..." Layna murmurs, as none other than Lemina Ausa appears to dispel the terrible magic heading right toward the "Goddess's" face. ...It's been so long she's seen her. She hadn't expected this change in profession but...

...Time changes people, doesn't it?

Lucia's out cold, now. Layna spares a glance toward Lanval. ...He looks, and sounds, frankly exhausted. She's not getting out of here with him in that state... which means, she's not getting out of here at all.

...Besides, as she scans the surroundings, she can't help but notice that any possible avenues of escape are getting closed off pretty quickly.

She looks toward Magilou, then, and shrugs.

"Well, in my line o' work, we got a sayin'... 'Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em...' And I hate to say it, but I think it's foldin' time." She admits, cracking another mirthless grin.

She pointedly doesn't kneel, though. She's not the kneeling type. 

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.

    'YOU ARE NOT ALTHENA!'

    The cry echoes through the plaza, carrying far and wide.

    He had left to seek the Goddess but had found only an empty throne, as it were. Now, standing here in silhouette before the temple to the Goddess, the Seraph Harmaus might appreciate why.

    He does not move at first. Not when Lucia strikes at the one who would call herself Althena, and not when one of her chosen (anew) serves to deflect it. He stands there in the broad, clean, and empty avenues of Pentagulia and gazes alone at his Goddess.

    "...Ah," Harmaus murmurs, a sound perhaps swallowed up by the tumult.

    With a single blow, Lucia is sent sprawling across the pristine tiles. She, who would have been his 'Lord of Calamity' but was not-- would not.
    Laid low by the same who cut down his true master, at that.

    Lucia is not his ally. He would yet see her unmade for her refusal of his cause. And yet... and yet...

    Harmaus, for all his faults, has lived seven hundred and seventy-seven years. He is well-familiar with lies, both real and imagined.

    He had sought to destroy the Goddess and then tear down all she had crafted.
    But even in this, he is cheated.

    Auroric light limns his form, the only outwards sign of what is yet to come. Slowly, Harmaus begins to rise into the air. His gaze remains fixed on 'Althena'. He does not blink.

    "IMPOSTER! FALSE ONE! LIAR!!"

    He is quite literally incandescent in his fury, summoning his remaining strength in a blazing swath about him.

    The heavens will rain down upon the woman who pretends at being a Goddess, without cease nor mercy. That is, until the corrupted Seraph is stopped. 

<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.

"What?" Althena snaps. Her head turns to look at Lucia -- at her accusation -- and she stares for a moment. She looks dumbfounded. She looks about ready to take a powerful blast of magic to the face. Lucia's spell comes flying in as a square full of guards stare, dumbfounded.

One, simply, does not attack the Goddess.

This might be why Ghaleon isn't so paralyzed. After all, he has done that very thing in the past. He sees Lemina erase the spell -- and cracks a smile. Then, he look at Rixia. "I've had worse. Watch closely, Rixia," he says, as he looks at Lanval and sees him sputtering. That makes Ghaleon smile, for some reason. "Moments like this only come once in a thousand years."

Althena is outraged, conversely. Her dark eyes are wide. "They--they dare to profane my name! They dare to commit heresy, within Pentagulia itself!" she snaps. "They--"

Marivel throws herself upon her mercy.

"Foul, vile creature," Althena says. "I know not what you are, but damned."

She throws a hand out -- and the heavens open -- and a single beam of white, brilliant light flies own, slams into Marivel, and burns through her being in a flash. Althena watches this for a moment, before she cries out:

"ARREST THEM!"

The guards were frozen in place. They're not now; swords and halberds are lifted, and they're starting to advance, after Leo struck his blow upon them. A few glance at Liath, for her blessing; one looks at Rixia, to see what she makes of it. The events here have, clearly, shaken them.

"You... you dare mock me?" Althena snaps at Magilou. "A wretch such as you--I should not be shocked. But this is why Lunar requires a firm hand from her Goddess."

She looks to Liath.

"My Prime Lord," Althena says -- forcing some measure of control. "Ensure that all of them are taken in custody. And placed into the dungeons? Are my words clear?"

Ghaleon turns his head, towards Harmaus, and he stares at him for a moment. Dimly, he thinks: 'Goddess, I hate cats.'

"Mind your tongue, Hellion!" he spits -- and then sends off three huge javelins of rock towards the Seraph, trying to spear him through. Then, he turns and looks at a group of gawking guards.

He calls out -- seemingly inconsequential, though Layna's ears may catch a certain name. "Have Admiral Bladewall secure the harbor! And that cannon," he says with a flippant wave of his hand. "We don't want any rats prowling the ships, hm?"

Then, he walks towards the fallen, unconscious form of Lucia. He looks at her -- then at Jean, then at her mask. "My. You shouldn't drop things like that. They're rather hard to pick back up."

Then, he turns to look back at Lucia. Ghaleon holds a hand out -- and light surrounds her, as she falls. Then, there is a flash of light -- and the so-called Destroyer is gone when it fades. Afterward, Ghaleon turns towards Hiro.

"So," he says. "I would say you've shown yourself... unprepared. Just as I thought. Hm, hm, hm."

<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.

Talia rushes for Hiro -- and she finds she isn't the only one. Her eyes meet Mariel's; then, she nods her thanks. She puts the apple gel back where it was.

"I--I know," Talia says, looking at Ivan. "This isn't good, no?" she says. "But if Mariel can help get Hiro back up, then--"

Her head swivels at the clatter of that mask. She sees it -- she sees Jean -- and suddenly she realizes. This is a terrible coincidence, but it is terrible. "Jean!" she calls out. "You need to run, now!"

She sees Gwen try to help -- and do no more than try. Magilou is saying they're better off surrendering. Layna agrees. Talia feels something fall in her stomach. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

She looks at Lemina, eyes widened -- hoping for some change of heart -- but she looks away, deciding she can't even know what to look for. (And why would Lemina owe her that, after what she did? The whisper is louder in her mind.)

In the end, Talia's eyes are drawn towards Liath. She stares at the Prime Lord. She thinks of what they said: that she should come over again for dinner. They're almost family.

'Almost,' for Talia, is a powerful thing.

Her voice cracks as she calls out to the Goddess's Prime Lord, with her golden eyes closed. "Liath," she says. She finds a few tears in her eyes. "Liath, please. Please, help us, no?"

<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

Lemina's still human. She still winces when she sees Lucia fall. She did always like her -- rather a lot, in fact. If anything, she's found that absence has made the heart grow fonder.

Magilou addresses her directly -- by the wrong name, twice -- and she can't help but smile. "That's mega-flattering, actually," she offers with a smile. "Glad to see one of you --"

Jean drops that mask, and everything else falls away. "You -- I thought it was Pearl who wanted to take over the Shadow Dragon Cult! It was you!? I knew you two were working together, but Jean -- was killing Lunn not enough for the two of you!?"

(... hadn't she known, though, what the Shadow Dragon Cult did to Jean? Wasn't she there for so many of those revelations...?)

Desperation creeps into her voice... and her stance shifts. For Jean, it's familiar -- the way she plants her front foot but keeps her back ready to move. The movement looks wrong for her.

It'd look just right, however, on any number of Blue Dragon or Shadow Dragon apprentices.

"I guess it's the duty of the Blue Magus to clean up the Blue Master's legacy," she says, coolly. "Sorry, Jean. Hiro... ... not sorry!" Taking a deep breath, Lemina begins to chant and her belt starts to glow.

"Imprisoned by the coldest cold..."

... she's serious. 

<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.

When Talia rushes over to him, he's hardly paying attention at first, with the tears in his eyes, but when the Apple Gel is right in front of him, he accepts it in his mouth. Then before it's even fully swallowed, a berry too.
 
The moment he feels it take hold, he tries to get up but indeed, as Mariel guessed, there sure are a lot of broken and necessary bones after that that are only part healed. And he sure doesn't make it very far before he nearly collapses back down again, having to grasp Mariel's shoulder just to stay upright.
 
He sees Jean try to intervene, hears her call, and...
 
"Don't worry about me... get her... get Lucia out of here..." That is Hiro's plea to Talia, to Mariel.
 
Many try to make their case, some are in little better of a state. And some attack. The Goddess in how she responds, in her words.
 
She is not the Goddess he imagined. He believes Lucia wholly, completely.
 
She Is Not Althena.
 
Lemina calls out Jean, and Hiro is aghast, did Jean's friendship really mean so little to Lemina that she'd instantly assume the worst, "It wasn't her! There's no way-! Lemina! You know that's not true!"
 
Her attack is coming, 'Sorry, Jean. Hiro... ... not sorry!"
 
In the end, Ghaleon's comment, elicits an angry noise, as he stares at him, "You did this-!" For all his anger though, he knows that's not true, unless 'You did this-!' implies that he showed Hiro his own weakness.
 
Because in the end, it was not Ghaleon that attacked him. Hiro? He attacked him. He rose to the bait, the provocation.
 
He is absolutely correct in not leaving anything to him. In the end however, a breath seethes out of his throat, and his tear filled eyes just slide away. Because he absolutely knows the truth.
 
'I did this.'
 
Maybe he wouldn't have made the slightest difference given all that was arrayed against them, had the exact outcome. At least however, he would have been on his feet and able to do something, anything, to try and stop it.
 
And in this moment, even standing is too much for him.

<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.

    Lucia crumples. Leo half-expects her to uncoil into something dark and vile, something hissing with Malevolence. Instead--

    'How... dare you...! Lemina... LEO!'

    The White Knight turns to Hiro, his blade still raised to waist-height. His hair has fallen halfway across his eyes, but the incandescant fury in them is unmistakable. So is something else, something threatening to smother it--and Leo himself--in cold, bleak despair. "Hiro," Leo chokes out. Betrayal. Treason. But who is betraying who?

    It's then that Leo unpacks the other name in Hiro's words. His head whips back, his gaze focuses on Lemina. She is at once tremendously welcome and a piece of the puzzle that does not fit, resolutely.

    Of course, all this emotional tension gives Jean, a trained assassin, ample opportunity to get into position. Leo doesn't even see her at first--his leg gives way beneath him, and Jean's hands slam into him in a pattern designed to disable with ruthless efficiency. Helpless rage flickers through his eyes as they meet Jean's, and then--

    Leo hits the ground, back-first, and skids a good meter or so. His blade clatters to the cobblestones.

    Marivel Armitage is immolated by an enraged Goddess. Leo is left to wonder, briefly, if she can come back from that. "Ghk," the White Knight says, his voice a raspy choking sound. His hand trembles as he moves to plant it on the stones. Lemina is talking, now, but nothing she says makes sense. Pearl, Leo wonders, desperately. Pearl was--was she--did she know--what's even--

    Then Harmaus screams out, and Leo forces himself to his knees. His joints don't want to work. He has to rise. He has to defend Althena. HE HAS TO DEFEND ALTHENA

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Ah! There's Margaret! It took her a while, but she's finally oriented back into reality. Magilou smirks to her, entirely too scandalous. "See, this is why you've kissed zero gods. As for me..." She taps her fingers to her temple, and grins. "Oops! A lady doesn't kiss and tell!"

    Listen: Magilou has also kissed zero gods. She's just being a dick. She is being a HUGE dick right now. Why is she being such a jerk?! Probably for no reason, like always.

    But Lucia collapses, and Jean flows into action... and drops something. Interesting, Magilou thinks. We'll come back to that.

    First, she has to cock those finger-guns at 'Althena'. "Aww, you think I'm teasing you? When have I ever teased anyone?!" Don't answer that.

    With a veiled gaze, and a pointed lack of picking Lucia up and running, she turns to Jean and asks: "Where will you go? This city is hers."

    Magilou's grin turns momentarily savage, as she looks to Lanval. "Oh, no," she assures him, all too sharp, "she recognised her very well. Or, shall I say... she recognised what she is not?" She curls her hand at her chin, and tells the Water Seraph: "You might be five hundred and seventy... but I'm a thousand years old, Lanval."

    Her look towards Harmaus, as he unleashes hell, is... more complicated. "Even if I told you," she says -- and perhaps her voice carries, though it's more muted, in the way of proper dramatics, "it wouldn't have changed a thing." Perhaps it's an apology, in its way. There's regret there, certainly.

    It's a kind of surrender which... well, Layna can appreciate, surely.

    When this Goddess calls for their arrest, Magilou saunters over, and picks the mask of the Shadow Master up. "Fancy that," she remarks, cheerfully, as she slots it into the side of her book-skirt, effortlessly incorporating it into her Default Tales Costume as a Tales Accessory. "Who knew we could see any kind of shadow stand out against Lucia's aura..? Though..." She smiles, to Jean. "... not standing out is the entire point, isn't it?"

    She goes ahead and lifts her hands, with a broad shrug. "Looks like that took the last of my energy... oh, the humanity! The indignity! To be consigned to a grimy prison cell once more...!!"

    But Layna said you gotta know when to hold 'em, and know when to fold 'em...

    Don't you also have to know when to RUN?

    Magilou -- who is untouched -- really should know that, by now. She could do anything, to save herself. She might even be able to stop this.

    But she's totally willing to lie down and die...

    ... until.

    Until.

    Magilou knows the Absolute Prison. It is written into her bones, cold to her soul; in an instant her thespian theatrics fall away, as Lemina declares she's not really sorry, and begins her invocation. And perhaps Jean might recognise the way SHE closes the space, between herself and the newest Ausa, to grasp at Lemina's wrist with what she may find to be a deceptively tight grasp.

    "Spell Absorber," she invokes, as white light flashes around her in a flutter of lilac and baby-blue butterflies. It is faster than an Arte's invocation -- predator to them; in a sphere around her, Harmaus's rage is reduced to zero, along with any other magics.

    Like his.

<Pose Tracker> Mariel has posed.

Mariel gives Marivel a short nod as she takes off - she understands why she might not want to be seen in Hiro's presence, or rather why Marivel wouldn't want Hiro to be seen in hers. She's spending more of her time, at first, on treating Hiro.

Eventually, when he rises, using her for support, she does too, bracing against the staff for *her* support. She doesn't ordinarily need it as a prop, but she's already exhausted herself once today. "I thought things might go wrong," Mariel says - though admittedly most of her 'things going wrong in a violent manner' guesses involved the Guard. "But I didn't expect things to go like this...!"

She tries a step, which ends up being a weird five-legged step between her, Hiro, and her staff. They're not going to make any useful progress that way. Mariel normally has no issues with her height, but about six inches would be really, *really* convenient here, she thinks. Rather than try to step again, she pulls herself up on tiptoe to try to see what's going on past Guards and Drifters both.

"She's been teleported..." Mariel's anxiety is showing in the way she grips her staff, the tone in her voice. "Hiro, I can't get you there. I don't even think you should be walking, but I can't carry you." She looks at Talia, pleading, just as Althena speaks once more to Marivel.

If that didn't prove it before, Althena's words to Marivel do, but they're accompanied by a tremendous blast of energy. Mariel feels it building before it releases, blazing in the sky, and she reaches into her satchel, desperately rummaging. She only has one chance -

"Marivel!"

Mariel throws a handful of black, gritty powder, and wind catches it, scattering it upward toward Marivel. The powder seems to expand and diffuse at the same time as it goes, each little granule growing many times its size but turning into something like mist or smoke, the alchemically treated ashes darkening the sky to take at least some of that burning bright light. It's not enough to completely obscure Marivel but it should help, at least.

As Hiro slips to the ground, Mariel lowers with him so he doesn't fall painfully, then half-rises, holding her hand open. The one that isn't holding the staff that's holding her up, anyway. "I'm not going to fight the Guard," she says, as much to Ghaleon as anyone else as he approaches Hiro. "Neither is he. He couldn't, even if he wanted to. Don't hurt him!" Her ears flatten down against the sides of her head. 

<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.

    Leo flares out in a wave of violence and smacks his pommel over Lucia's head, and Rixia lets out a shrill little squeak. "M-Mister Leo? I-- why, that's not--" Her face gets even more pale. She wants to forget. She wants to forget... get her out of this, get her out of this...

    Hiro falls down from above and impacts with the ground, and her first reaction is to cry-- "Hiro! You're--" He cries out that she's there to save them and yet... and yet...? Talia and Mariel rush for him, though-- everything's happening around her at speeds she can't comprehend--

    The fox-girl's attention is on Magilou for a moment. Then to Margaret. They're going to get caught too... would Magilou let them? Probably. She probably has a plan upon a plan upon a plan she can't even observe. She doesn't want Margaret to get thrown in jail, though.

    Lanval brings a point -- how does she even know to recognise Althena herself? It brings to mind Rixia's own experience with that event. Being eight. Being so hungry and thirsty and dirty and wounded... staring at her face in the reflection of a brown, muddied puddle. How she promised she'd make the world wonderful and great. How much of a lie it was.

    Jean moves to kick Leo, and everything just starts to tumble into a horrifying mess. Shouts. Chaos. Marivel and Layna move to surrender, and the former is struck with a bright white beam. Harmaus seeks to descend from the heavens with incandescent fury. Ghaleon urges her to watch closely.

    "U-ugh-- but... but..."

    She decides to watch Althena, as she cries aloud, with dark, wide eyes. Daring to profane her name... daring to commit heresy... was this really the woman she was supposed to adore and revere? A goddess that did nothing for her at all.

    There are heroes and protagonists in a story, significant characters that make their play upon the grand stage and leave a mark in history. There are villains and antagonists in a story, who oppose them; then... there's any number of multitudes of extras, hidden and only existing by inference between sentences, their fates implied, their names unknown.

    A hero, in her place, could take up gunblade and move to strike the Goddess, no matter what the outcome may be, fatal or otherwise, for themselves. It turns out, when push comes to shove, when the closest people to her are being harmed, are at risk of harm, at risk of capture, Rixia decides to--

    --she chooses to run away.

    She moves to disappear into the sentences, to be inferred to only by circumstance. 

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Marivel comes forth to take responsibility for the chaos, and is... disintegrated. ... ... Ivan thinks he's seen her recover from things like that before, but it's still a thing of dread to witness.

There are pressing, mortal dangers as well -- Jean being fingered for involvement with the Shadow Dragons, and Lucia...

get Lucia out of here...

But Ghaleon has already stolen her away again by the time Ivan rises. There's calls for them to be arrested. At this point, it's all he can do to just stay and support Talia and Hiro... He unsheathes his umbrella and pops it open, readying its holy radiance to serve as a shield. Talia calls to Liath for mercy. Ivan... doesn't think it's likely she'll break ranks for their sake in such a public way, but maybe... she might come out with some weird creative Liath solution...? He gives her a hopeful, questioning, vaguely judgmental look with a subtext of 'could you bear to dissappoint Talia....!?' 

<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.

 
Margaret's eyes turn towards Mariel as she moves towards Hiro. The bat-form of Marivel slides forwards, begs for mercy, annnnnnnd

Somehow this action does not bring more or less terror to Margaret's heart, but it does change the *balance* of that terror. A reminder of what had haunted her throughout the last year, several years. A simple thought. A simple fact, often restated in different ways.

Why didn't you do that when it MATTERED, Margaret thinks, and she finds anger, but it is slow to kindle. Too slow. Maybe in this chaos she could run but -- agh! The initative!

("Do you have anything, Dollie," Margaret asides to Dollie. "No mam, shot my wad right and true," Dollie replies. "Don't put it like that," Margaret tells her. "Think the Goddess outranks you." "But what if she isn't--")

Both of them then say "WHAT?!" at the same time when Lemina reveals a CERTAIN HORRIBLE TWIST OF FATE, with Margaret actually adding a "B-but--" involuntarily at the end.

Aghast at the rest of it, Margaret reaches for solace. Mentally. Not physically. She looks towards Magilou as she makes an Implication, teeth setting and jaw tightening as she addresses Althena so airily. Impostor or not, this is no mere fraudster. But -

"I suppose a thousand years in prison won't be so terrib" Margaret begins, before Magilou flits off -- Margaret's eyebrow twitches -- but she's grasping their wizard. The Blue Mage. Wait. "Magilou!" Margaret calls out, but she doesn't dash forwards. It would be the simplest thing to dive in and do something amazing --

And then Leo would cut off her head and spin-kick it like a Blitzball and feel absolutely miserable about it for the rest of the days, Margaret thinks, and in that we'd share regret over what he did for the rest of both our lives, wouldn't we?

Margaret and Dollie find themselves moving nearer to Mariel. Perhaps from a lack of better options than anything else, but it does mean there is another healer at least getting somewhat near to Hiro. (Margaret gives Hiro a look of helpless, piteous sympathy, but this restores nothing at all.) 

<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.

"Ah, well, 'twas worth a shot," Marivel says but even she wasn't expecting 'Althena' to be quite so trigger happy.

The truth is that Marivel is actually very vulnerable right now. If Althena hit her full on with that blast of hers, Marivel would be incinerated, her soul would fail to find the strength to reconstitute a vessel and would eventually dissipitate. Fortunately for Marivel, she doesn't get hit full on.

Mariel shouts her name, Marivel gestures with a paw--the beginnings of a magic barrier is incinerated (Marivel's MP bar is not at full) and for a moment she sees oblivion coming for her.

Fitting, she thinks, right when she was about to look forward to the future...

But Mariel throws some powder, the dark smoke swirls around, dampening the light before it impacts against the small bat form.

Marivel, heavily wounded once more, drops down to the floor in a fWUMP.

I know not what you are, but damned.

Yes, that's plenty of proof, isn't it? If one wasn't going to take Lucia's word for it (but why shouldn't you?).

Althena asks the Prime Lord to arrest them.

"I am a demon that eats demons." Marivel says through pained teeth. "I wonder what you taste like."

She looks to Liath. Oh good, she thinks, they're finally throwing them in jail. Hopefully this goes as well as the last time a corrupt religious organizatino threw her and her buddies in jail. "Familiar story, eh Prime Lord? If I am imprisonedd once more after this I get a free ice cream."

She trusts Liath completely and makes no overtures. She just quietly extends her paws forward in case Liath wants to put the world's tiniest shackles upon them.

"I surrender." 

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Liath has posed.

In a matter of moments, things rapidly escalate.

Leo's blow incapacitates Lucia. And while others capitulate and express disbelief --

Jean acts.

A blur of motion, and the woman is behind Leo. A blur of motion and she is knocking him away from Lucia. A blur of motion--

    Someone, grab her and run!

And Liath's eyes crack open once again.

Her lips part. And in that crucial moment, where a distinctive mask spills across the promenade grounds like a slithering curse--

                               "O holy one,
          cast your purifying light upon these corrupt souls..."

The Church of Althena's Prime Lord acts.

The skies -- the very air and atmosphere around Jean instantly darken, as if light was literally being sucked away from the existence surrounding her towards a bright, burning glyph in the sky.

                                "Judgment!"

... before not a second later it comes crashing down in that brief moment of distraction, looking to smite Jean within a merciless pillar of blinding, white light bleeding hues of blue and pink and green at its edges. It is powerful.

But only so powerful enough to incapacitate; not to kill.

The mark of Althena's magic lingers in the air for a few seconds longer as Liath turns her gaze towards Jean, brows furrowing gently at the sight of the woman who had withheld that single question from her; she lingers for a moment on the Shadow Dragon Master's mask, the thing that gave way to that brief moment of weakness.

"... The Goddess wants these Fiends and their allies alive."

It is an unreadable but not dispassionate stare that returns to the rest of those gathered, even as Liath feels Magilou's attention upon her -- and hears those moments of levity that would otherwise make the Seraph of Light surely crack a smile, or at least, stare in bizarre bewilderment that would doubtless lead down some absurd tangent. Now?

Now there's nothing to be found, save an expression carved in a stone of most unyielding resolve. Marivel throws herself at the mercy of the one who sits upon the throne, but Liath knows, as must the Noble herself --

    I know not what you are, but damned.

There is no use.

Perhaps the only shift in Liath's expression comes when Harmaus announces himself in all his righteous, Hellionized wrath. Gold eyes dart upward, narrowing to slits as she feels the manifesting churn of Althena's Blessing. But unlike the last time they encountered each other, that naked disgust is not present when Liath looks at Harmaus -- instead, beyond the anger that burns at her features is... something like...

... pity.

In the end, it is Ghaleon who addresses the problem of Harmaus. Liath herself is given a different order altogether.

    Ensure that all of them are taken in custody. And placed into the dungeons? Are my words clear?

Liath's attention returns to the Drifters, so many of them ragged and weak after the violence they helped prevent. Few of them can truly fend for themselves, here.

"They are, Goddess."

But that confirmation comes without hesitation as Liath turns to face the subjects of the Goddess' ire fully. The Guardsmen look to her for her blessing. And Talia...

    Liath, please. Please, help us, no?

Despite herself, Liath's expression gentles for a few, precious seconds as she looks at Talia and Ivan, both of them pleading. So earnestly. So hopefully. For some sort of mercy. For... -anything-. Her armored fingers tense around her sword. "Talia..."

And it is with a fluid flash that she draws it from its sheathe, and points its tip at the throat of the girl she has enjoyed so many dinners with. Who has shown her so much promise. ... Who left her with so many happy memories, she never thought...

"... the game is up."

That gentleness is gone, then, replaced only with steel as Liath regards her, and Ivan, and all the rest. "You ask for mercy that is not mine to give. I told you once: my devotion and my loyalty is to the world my Althena loves. Surrender yourselves peacefully."

She tilts her head, towards the Guardsmen. "Take them. -Alive-."

Her blessing given, the Guardsmen mobilize.

"Ivan, Talia... your only fate now is the dungeons. If you truly love this world as the Goddess does... perhaps her mercy will find you there." 

<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

The guards start to close in. Layna, well... she knows the score. She knows full well, too, that 'running' is also part of the saying. She could.

But, to where?

Her allies are being struck down, or in the process of it - she should save her energy for now. At least... that was the plan.

It was, until she hears a certain name.

It takes her a second to register it - Layna pauses. And then, there's a look of recognition, then disbelief, soon followed by dawning horror that ill-fits Layna's face, usually brimming with confidence even now, in the darkest of circumstances.

...And then, that horror gives way to rage. She had been ready to surrender. At this revelation, however, that thought seems to have left her. Layna steps forward, reaching out to push away a halberd.

"ADMIRAL BLADEWALL!?" Layna shouts. "ADMIRAL!? You know what he is!"

She tries to force her way through the crowd, to Ghaleon, to get some kind of answer. She's unlikely to get very far at all. 

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.

    Even if she had told him, he wouldn't have believed her.

    "It knows all long," Harmaus says to Magilou. "It lies all this time."

    Is the fact that he delivers that remark so coldly and without any of his usual temper a sign of his grave disappointment in her... or is he merely that much more distracted by the one who has claimed the throne of the Goddess?

    Like rain, the stars fall.

    Not a single one touches the 'Goddess', all courtesy of Magilou's split-second incantation.

    This does not prompt Harmaus to hesitate for a second. Flicking with the light of dying stars, he strains -- for the second time in his life, falling in after that doomed attempt to save so many all those centuries ago -- to attempt to scour 'Althena' from the face of Lunar. Violet light flickers in his amber eyes and-----

    Blink, and you'll miss it. Stone missiles rip through the air. One of them strikes true.

    Blink, and you'll miss it. Harmaus thrashes against the stone javelin that has pierced him through and pinned him to the ground. There is no blood: a Seraph's body does not necessarily obey the same laws that a mortal's might.
    Indeed, he seems more furious than pained.

    "Hellion, I am! I sees now, clearly! I am Hellion, not one following a liar!" he spits at Ghaleon. Even from here, he tries futilely to strike at Ghaleon and his mistress with his artes.

    Weakened twofold by recent exertions and this latest wound, they fall far short of the mark. 

<Pose Tracker> Jean has posed.

Jean meets Leo's eyes or a single moment. She sees his rage--but she shows none at all. There is no emotion whatsoever in the assassin's eyes as she strikes at the man who has hounded her friends for so long. There is no malice. There is no hate.

There is only necessity.

Run? At first, it's unthinkable. But then Ghaleon approaches, and Jean turns to face him, too. She knows full well she has no chance against him, but it doesn't come to a fight. Instead, he looks at her, and then at Lucia.

"Don't--" She pauses. She shouldn't drop things like that... and then Lucia is suddenly gone. "Damn it--"

Ghaleon has words for Hiro. And Magilou asks a very good question. WHere are they going to run? ...Is she implying Jean is the Master after all? That she's the 'shadow'?

Lemina has words for Jean.

"WHAT!?" Jean shouts. "How can you even think that!?" It's another knife, but Jean has fought on with terrible injuries before. Except.... no. No, there's something strange. She hears that desperation, and--

"That stance?" Jean asks, blinking. "Why would you know that...?"

But the moment of weakness claims her; she doesn't even notice Liath's casting. That sudden, burning light slams into Jean and she is thrown from her feet, bodily tossed meters by the impact of the powerful spell while her eyes were entirely on Lemina. She does not realize that Magilou saved her from something worse--that Liath might have saved her from something worse?

She doesn't realize much of anything in the moment, hitting the ground hard, uncoscious. She won't be fighting any more Knights for the moment.

But she's alive. 

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    It just gets worse from there. Her own *captor* comes out of the woodwork, Jean drops that mask, an old enemy of Layna's is in a place of power.

    Gwen uses her strength to raise her voice, finally, as Ghaleon turns to Hiro.

    ".... Of course they were unprepared."

    Gwen props herself up on her right ARM, grey blue eyes vivid as she prepares to deliver a bullet of a different kind.

    ".... They were expectin' t'see the goddess. They had faith they would. All their plans were based on that assumption." Her voice cracks with effort she makes, but her chest burns with determination. "I'm a Filgaian. Didn't even know what an Althena was until they showed up on my doorstep. I've been with them ever since. I wanted to see this Athena for myself, even. Someone compassionate, who came down n' stopped a war from happenin'."

    She turns her head to Althena now, calmly. ".... Despite everything they've faced, they had faith that it'd be Althena at the end of the road. I myself got no way of tellin' an Althena from someone else, but... if you can't recognize faith when you see it, then maybe, there's a reason why they were surprised."

    She holds her hands up. ".... Anyways, I surrender. I had my say. Ain't like there's a lot I could do anyways."

    If they have any hope of getting out, Gwen will have to recover her own strength. At the very least, she has to protect their morale. 

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    Lanval's pleading of matters of mathematics and the sudden idea that maybe no one alive among the mortals could ever truly know Althena when they see them takes a quick backseat to further displays of sorcerous power and blindingly fast martial skill all piling up. (And Harmaus, once again, being denied what he seeks.)
 
     'I know not what you are, but damned,' and Lanval's eyes are darting again when Marivel is run through with brilliant light. With all the fussing about her sheer insistence of having known, and being betrayed, by Althena... it didn't strike him as something born of delusion*.
 
* To date, one of Lanval's favorite drinking buddies is an exploded chunk of a nautical mine. A completely inanimate object. This may render his judgement regarding this singular specific criteria to be suspect, at best.
 
     Magilou chimes in, reminding him of her age - over a thousand. "...Mmmmmph," he can only respond with an ambiguous and maybe not all that agreeable grunt.
 
     "Layna," Lanval asides as she seems like she's knowing when she's beat, he's never seen her just go along with something like this - but he does see how Rixia runs away. A young woman who held strong against the oncoming of a new Age of Chaos in the heart of the most potent Malevolent Domain of their lives (...so far!), cut and run.
 
     'ADMIRAL BLADEWALL?' Layna's shouting. Lanval has never heard Layna shout so angrily since the time he totally did not really didn't definitely hadn't never absolutely totally did drink all the ***REDACTED*** on the night of ***REDACTED*** following the historic ***REDACTED*** over a game of ***GREENACTED***. (what)
 
     It's further unsettling!
 
     "Layna." Lanval wheezes. "Whoever'sh lyin', whoever'sh mishleadin'," he says, trying to reach out with a hand into thin air that once had Layna but she's charging forward. "...Don't think Liath over there'sh gonna be goin' back on what she'sh shayin'."
 
     That they all be taken, alive.
 
     he staggers forward again, less the playful physical comedy of his usual existence and more like someone brittle of bone and bereft of balance in the moment, reaching out with a hand to try to slap it onto Layna's shoulder.
 
     "'m not gonna let ya throw yer life away in a fit of rage," he says, to both his Seer of Water and also his best friend. "Not like thish, not now." 

<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.

Ghaleon turns his head and stares, as he sees Magilou rush for Lemina. He is given pause, for a moment. He also knows that arte.

And he is surprised.

It only lasts a moment. His eyes are back on Hiro, and then he watches him. For once, the Dragonmaster doesn't have a witty retort. He just watches him for a moment.

Then, he looks at Hiro. "Faith often leads people astray. Consider this a favor, hm?"

Then he looks back at Hiro. "Well. I'm sure the Prime Lord will see to it that you're arrested," he says to Mariel. "I do suggest you not provoke them further."

Or perhaps he had one.

Ghaleon turns with a rustling of his great cape, and walks away from her. As he walks away, he finds that Layna Manydays is running at him, through the crowd. He looks at her, meeting her eyes for a moment.

"Hm, hm. So you don't think people can change? I'm wounded, Layna," Ghaleon says. "But I also know where he is--and where you are. I'd rather be where he is, hm?"

His eyes flicker to Lanval. "Maybe listen to him. Just this once."

Which is when a trio of guards, on Liath's order, rush her and Lanval both.

He throws a hand up -- and Harmaus's attacks slam into it, with flashes of light. He cranes his neck, looking at him. "A lie? Hm, hm. I doubt it," he says. "The ravings of someone desperate..."

He walks back to Althena's side. He stays there, looking at Marivel -- considering, as she surrenders. Harmaus can do little but watch as Marivel's powder and the remaining sparks of Althena's spell linger inthe air.

"Silence," Althena tells Marivel, before she looks at Ghaleon. "See to the rest."

"My Goddess," Ghaleon says with a bow. "The Prime Lord has it well in hand."

The Goddess -- or the impostor -- vanishes in a flash of light. Ghaleon cracks a smile, afterward, folding his arms, and watches. He spares only a brief glance at Harmaus. Nothing, for his efforts to reveal it all. Nothing for the Hellion.

Harmaus feels cold. It is so cold; so biting, running through him, like a wind billowing down from Zulan. There is something like Malevolence, in a feeling that is from within...

...and a voice, speaking to him from within. From around the stone javelins, impaling him against the ground. From the ground and the air itself. A voice for only him, giving him a command.

SEEK.

<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.

"Hiro, we can't get there in time," Talia says. She looks to Mariel, then nods, and then to her brother. She flinches at Mariel's panicked cry of Marivel's name. She can't do anything for the Crimson Noble.

"We have to get him up, brother," she says. "Before we're--"

Before they're surrounded? They're already surrounded. She looks at Mariel, as she speaks, and she tenses. She turns her head, looking back to Liath. Still hoping.

And it's for nothing. Joyeuse is at her throat. The blade under her chin, and her without a sword to fight back. She wonders if she even wants to fight back, this time. She stares at Liath for a moment longer.

But there isn't any of that old warmth there.

"You--you heard her, didn't you? This--this may not be--" She grunts, as a guard comes up behind her, and grabs her by the wrists. He starts to bind them with rope. "What if she's right, no?"

<Pose Tracker> Lemina Ausa has posed.

Lemina's magic never quite makes it out of the drafting stage, as Magilou seizes Lemina's leading wrist. The energy dissipates in an instant, melting away. The old Lemina would have been helpless against such a maneuver.

Blue Magus Lemina, however, has several options Lemina Ausa did not.

Her rear hand, abruptly holding a knife, strikes forward for Magilou's midsection without mercy. "Let go," she says, ice-cold.

For good measure, she delivers a stab, while at the same time trying to yank herself away from the older mage. "I liked it better when you were surrendering," she adds.

Jean's incredulity is a good act, but one Lemina has no time for once she's unconscious. She'll follow up with her later.

Margaret's protests finally draw Lemina's attention -- but she has no words for her. It's strange, isn't it, to find themselves positioned this way, now? But that's the hand fate has dealt. 

<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.

Liath is impassive, and places her blade at Talia's throat even as Ivan raises his umbrella in defense.

No, how could it have gone like this...! Ivan searches Liath's words for some secret message, but none comes to him in the moment. So she really can't do anything... but she does, at least order them taken alive. That gives them time to find their own way out of this. Some time when the attention of what feels like the entire city guard isn't upon him.

He forces a tense smile as the guards begin to restrain them.

"We'll be all right -- we'll find a way to set things back how they should be." 

<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.

Shige Kiwako has been watching this whole situation unfold. A dead-eyed tired stare that suggests she's about ready to just throw her arms up. Then things get worse and she's caught in a rock and a hard place. With that bad a hand dealt, she cashes in with the side she knows. She'd been busy, having immediately split for a brief bit to handle another issue. Maybe she can get a quick and dirty rundown after the fact. If there is one.
 
 There's a scowl at that thought, particularly when magic well above her paygrade gets thrown around. Ears flat, she has a moment of fear, similar to the dragon. She reaches up, touching her face, realizing she's left the mask behind and manages a scowl at that. No hiding behind that.
 
 She digs her claws in briefly, like she's waking herself up. Then pops her neck and lifts her lantern forward.
 
 An attempt to help that in her panic, comes too late. The idea of retreat comes up. She strongly considers it, hates herself for it. She tries to rationalize it as saving her medium. Of protecting the sacred thing. She twists on a heel, swinging the lantern like she's trying to brain anyone sneaking up behind her.
 
 It's not really the best weapon though and even with the help of a creeping shadow, she's knocked to the ground with a bullrush into an elbow, interrupting her focus. The shadow actually changes course, trying to steady her fall as she curls her arm in and cradles the medium.
 
 The shaman's bound up pretty quickly from there. She's not exactly a brawler outside of grabbing a drunk by the ear and she's restrained easily enough. Even if she does try to bite one of them when they pick up the lantern, removing the chain securing it to her belt to boot.
 
 She's still too tired for this. It's been a long while. They seem less woried than she is and... as she's prone to. She closes her eyes, focuses and puts on her professional persona. That mask she's always got. A neutral look rather than the hint of a smile. Marred by a split lip, but outwardly calm. Her eyes and tails give away just how agitated, confused and scared the feline beastfolk is though. 

<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.

He can see the conflict on Leo's face, he can. He understands what he must be going through. In the end, he made a choice though, didn't he? Magilou's nonchalance ends. In a moment where she moves forward to try and stop the Blue Mage.
 
Liath starts her incantation, and he looks Jean's way with alarm, "JEAN!" As it slams down into her. He takes a breath as she makes it clear, Jean's alive.

It is chaos out there, and Althena and her soldiers bring it to order. They take them down as if they truly were Vile Fiends, and in this place...
 
... aren't they?
 
Mariel pleads for mercy for him. Right now, he only feels shame, "Mariel..." It would be a mercy if he'd been struck by Liath's Arte. At least then, he could tell himself he'd done something. "... help me up... please."
 
He asks, knowing fully well he won't be able to take a step. Gwen speaks passionately to Ghaleon, and Hiro looks at him back. 'Faith often leads people astray. Consider this a favor, hm?'
 
And Ghaleon will see it, just the briefest flicker of it.
 
Understanding.
 
Despite his immense anger, there's just this, look his way, like a child who resents the lesson. And yet...
 
... more importantly he understands it. Ghaleon's final words in their duel still ring through his ears.
 
And his own, 'Why didn't you just say so?'
 
If he had, would he have listened? Even understanding it in this moment, even having some sliver of an epiphany, he still calls out his back, struggling, powerless, angry, desperate, "Don't... just... look away! Don't... walk away from this! Bring her back... bring Lucia back!"

<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.

    Magilou is glad, when Rixia knows when to run. She'd never say as much; it would ruin her image entirely to be concerned about her having to participate in something like this.

    Layna, she reflects. She's screaming. But distantly, distantly, as Harmaus's condemnation reaches her.

    And she doesn't speak a word to defend herself.

    She does defend the world against Absolute Prison -- and, inadvertently, this Althena from Harmaus -- and perhaps she could have conquered another Ausa, if it were that simple. For a moment, she meets Lemina's eyes. Hers aren't entirely green; there's purple, leaking in, from above. It isn't natural.

    There's a knife. Perhaps Lemina notices the way Magilou jerks, before it hits, as if she meant to drag her about. Perhaps she notices the way the shift in position changes the angle of her blade's entry, such that Lemina misses the bottom of her liver, and the inevitable bleeding-out which would quickly follow. Magilou calls no attention to it.

    Neither to her eyes widening, or her lips parting.

    "Gh," is the witty rejoinder she has to offer to Lemina's demand, as she gets in a good parting stab before Magilou collapses down -- wounded, but not mortally so.

    What she doesn't say is the desperation written in that blood.

    Magilou was able to stop Lemina from killing her, but she couldn't stop her knife.

    Clutching her side, teeth all grit, she just hopes Margaret won't do anything stupid. Or heroic. Oh, look at her, she's gone so stupid from actually getting wounded that she's repeating herself...

<Pose Tracker> Mariel has posed.

Marivel is still moving. Downed, but alive. That's as much as she can hope for, Mariel realizes, but it still hurts her that her friends are being hurt. Jean, in the distance, and Lucia. Nearby, Hiro and Talia.

Liath points her blade at Talia, and Mariel starts to step forward - before she realizes quite how many Guards are already here. (This is not positively inclining her toward Liath, regardless of what Marivel told her.) She drops back on her feet, flat, her ears about as flat as they go.

She keeps her hand up as the Guards approach. "I'm an herbalist. Please, let me keep my bag - if only to make sure nobody is too badly hurt. I won't fight you; I swear that, and if you ask White Knight Leo, he can tell you that that's true." Mariel looks up at Ghaleon - somehow she doubts that Ghaleon will support her as much as Leo might. "It is... never wrong to have faith in people," Mariel says, quietly. "Or at least hope. I learned that."

But mostly she's worried for the most injured nearby. Like Hiro, who wants to rise. Mariel hesitates - it's not really a good idea for her to do it, for a couple reasons - but she does try to give him a boost up, letting him use her staff for support while she braces it in place. It's stronger than she is.

"Hiro..." There's little Mariel can say to reassure him. There's little Mariel could do to reassure *herself*. She still hears violence, even now. 

<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

Ghaleon's comment is like a knife to the gut. She exhales sharply, and then shakes her head.

"...I know damn well how much people can change." Layna bites back. She wants nothing more than to charge at him, through the crowd, no matter the consequences... and then, she feels a hand on her shoulder. Lanval reaches out to her - points out that Liath, out of everyone, is unlikely to be lying. She can feel how difficult it is for him to act right now - and yet, he's risking it for her. He won't let her throw her life away.

Layna grimaces, her fists clenching... Her expression is conflicted... and then, her hands loosen and she slumps slowly to her knees, defeated. 

<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.

    Leo finally makes it to his feet. A nearby Guardswoman approaches, her palms face-up, bearing the White Knight's sword. He almost manages a look of gratitude as he takes it from her, and stows it at his side. His fingers are stiff, uncoordinated.

    "You heard them," Leo says, his voice loud, but raspy, instead of its usual proud bellow. "Take them all alive!" Most of them seem to have the common sense to surrender, at least. The White Knight advances on Hiro and Mariel, his eyes completely shadowed. His hair hangs partway across his face like a shaggy drape. "Please," Leo says. "Don't--make this any worse." The Guards at his back linger a moment. One of them steps forward, a pair of heavy manacles in hand. Symbols gleam upon them, all filigreed electrum and powdered opal. Runes that disrupt sorcery, like a lesser, less hungry version of what Magilou just did.

    "Hands behind your back," Leo says, his tone completely flat. He waits for Hiro to comply.

    The cuffs snap shut, sealed. They will remain there until Hiro is safe behind bars.

    Now they are both imprisoned.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.

    He snarls at Ghaleon, baring his fangs for all the good that it does him, thrashing against the stone that pins him. Even here, even now, even with all that he has left... Harmaus' power is not enough.

    Not on its own. If he were to reach deeper within--

    The day had been 'born' into the world had been cold, too. Life at the northern reaches of Meribus is seldom kind, which perhaps is why some its people tried so hard to carve out an existence into which kindness could dwell.

    The chill that comes over him, that stills his struggling, is far colder even than that.

    It comes from within.

    Seek.

    Thus comes his guidance, from the very world around him. Swiveling his ears, Harmaus listens, intent.

    He had always known that the truth was there, waiting for him. The very world itself impels him foward on his quest. 

<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.

Marivel is put in proper chains (they add several more on her just to be on the safe side). She'll get carted out with the rest.

Coincidentally, she ends up pretty close with Mariel. Marivel has absolute faith in Leo too. She doesn't say anything else. There's hardly any need. Althena's forces are making all the points she could ever make. Whether or not this was part of the schemes she had planned is unstated.

But Marivel has had enough schemes for a long while. 

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Lanval has posed.

    Lanval's half-lidded eyes watch to those trio of guards that come upon them. In better times, it would be sport to just elude even the most Resonant and aware. One by one, often in pairs or more, those who stood to question or defy the Goddess are brought under heel. Lucia's nowhere to be seen, she who decisively questioned Althena's legitimacy.
 
     And now he watches Layna, she who once triumphantly smiled as she struck the decisive blow against the Armatized form of Heldalf and Maotelus, fall to her knees in defeat. He can see blood over there from between Magilou and Lemina for a scant split-second before one of the three Guards just grabs him.
 
     The Mirthful Wellspring does not spiritually flow off the collective small joys of those gathered. No one seems happy with anything that's going on, but they keep going on with it. No one further following that line of explosive inquiry from someone utterly convinced that the Goddess who has re-emerged to them is an impostor.
 
     "...Mmmph," is all the Fallen Seraph can muster, taking in Hiro's pleading from afar. 

<Pose Tracker> Margaret has posed.

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI3qAWkCgNQ

Liath. Liath is perhaps their only hope now, barring something preposterous like Harmaus choosing this exact moment to finish taking a hit off of the old Malevolence Pipe and become a Fell Dragon *this moment*. That, Margaret thinks, might be enough --

But it's all happening too quickly. Margaret can't see what happens to Magilou immediately, but her eyes track over Lemina's own. Something about that girl. She grew, didn't she?

That's the damn mistake, perhaps, Margaret thinks. Not every growth...

Is good.

Magilou staggers and Margaret sees red. Her feet step quickly and --

She is kneeling next to Magilou. She tries to fumble with her sword belt, curses her cold and limp hand under her breath, and unfastens it with the left instead. She stays there, at a loss for words --

Maybe this is a moment like she spoke about, Margaret thinks. Her eyes flick towards the others. Damn, damn, damn. I could have --

-- what is beyond this?

Will the Goddess endure? Can a prison hold them? Will the future reveal some twist of fate? Will it be a simple tenure of waiting, waiting until she grows accustomed to the cold and the damp and is thrown, changed and forgotten, into an unsympathetic world?

Margaret doesn't know and she can't guess.

But she has enough in her to say --

"Oh, do what you want -- but put a cloth on her, can't you see she's wounded? Do you want to *defy your orders?*" Margaret says -- and maybe, perhaps, there's just enough residual recognition of Margaret's--

THACK!!

-- it was enough that the hand was open, but it was armored even so. Before she can quite recover, the fastest of witches has her hands clasped together. She has nothing more to say. 

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Liath has posed.

Guards swarm past Liath as the Seraph holds Talia at the point of her sword, unflinching. As one guard moves to bind her, another goes for Ivan in turn -- and it is only until they are secured, safely, that the cold tip of Joyeuse withdraws, finding its home once more sheathed at Liath's side.

"I heard the Destroyer clear," confirms the Prime Lord to Talia. She watches the Guards, to make sure they cause no undue harm. Her gaze lingers on Ivan as he offers those assurances to his sibling.

For a moment, she seems almost like she wants to say something -- anything.

But instead, she merely turns her back to the twins, armored hand falling to the pommel of her sword once more.

What if she's right?

"I know in my heart who my Goddess is, Talia. I know in my heart where my place is.

"And naught shall sway me from it."

She surveys everything, for a moment. Marivel bound. Margaret, surrendering. Magilou, wounded. Hiro, Layna and Lanval, all defeated in ways that go so much deeper beyond the physical. And Mariel...

Liath pauses, as the woman demands to keep her bag. She blinks, as she considers Mariel. Considers her features, those ears. For a moment, she is silent.

And then--

"Leave her with her bag," Liath instructs simply, regardless of whether Ghaleon allows it, before she parts from them all, to let the Guard do their work.

She only pauses, once. Once. Her gaze turns towards Harmaus' prone form, brows furrowing faintly.

"..."

Her armored pinky finger twitches in the tiniest spasm before her eyes shut, and she turns again. 

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

    Gwen, as brave as she felt in her little speech, is shocked by the response Ghaleon gives her in kind. ".... Surprised t'hear that comin' from a Dragonmaster." But, here they are.

    She doesn't resist when she's picked up by the guards, though the poor soul who tries to pick her up is surprised when it requires another soldier to get her into a more manageable position. Gwen won't be the one to tell anyone still resisting to stand down, however.

    If she wasn't sure that she'd be needed for when they have to break out--

    *clamp*

    When the manacles are cuffed on her wrists, the courier does momentairely look confused. .... Oh. OH. She quells the instinct to make a show of how useless she feels over _all that magic_ being sealed inside her.

    'Leave her with the bag.'

    Gwen cranes her neck towards Liath, then at Mariel as much as she is able from her angle. "...."

    It's going to be one advantage they'll need, and it's one in addition that Liath and Leo have given them in their orders for everyone to be taken in alive.

    Being alive is the first requirement of getting out of prison, after all. 

<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.

"Then--"

Talia feels embarrassed, almost, that she clings to some hope that Liath can be swayed. She looks at the Seraph, her eyes searching, wondering. She seems like she wants to say something more.

But she doesn't. Her head hangs, then. She doesn't manage a response. She could give them a small mercy -- Mariel's bag and their lives -- but there wasn't going to be an unexpected rescue.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

When Hiro cries out like that, Talia's heart lurches. She looks at him -- worried -- and then she looks down. She clenches her fist behind her back for a moment, but that's all she can do about it.

Leo moves in closer to them, to start securing Hiro. Talia's shoulders sag. They couldn't rely on him, either.

Talia listens to Ivan's words. How much has changed, she thinks, when he is the one telling her that everything will be all right? She looks down, for a moment, and then nods.

"...mm," she agrees. "Yeah... I hope so."

<Pose Tracker> Ghaleon has posed.

"Hm, hm. I don't know," he tells Mariel. "Faith in the wrong person can be damning, can't it?"

Ghaleon glances once at Magilou, as she goes down with a wound. A glance is all he can afford.

He looks at Layba, then, and sees her crumple. He watches for a moment -- and then he keeps walking away. Until a voice reaches. His footsteps come to a stop.

'Bring Lucia back!'

Ghaleon turns his head, looking briefly over his shoulder. Did he see that look earlier, from Hiro? Did he understand, then, that Hiro understood something? It's impossible to say. So many people are looking at them.

The Dragonmaster laughs. Short and harsh. "No," he says. Then, he turns, and takes two more steps -- and vanishes in a flash of light.

Harmaus can feel it, even after the Dragonmaster left. A pulse of something, like the voice that commanded him. Whatever he seeks... it is below. Far, far below.

Waiting to be sought.

<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.

'It's never wrong to have faith in people, or at least hope.' Hiro dimly looks at Mariel out of the corner of his perception, wondering if that's true. His mind swirling with the sheer depth of his failure here.

Leo approaches, and pleads with him not to make this any worse. Hiro leaning upon Mariel's staff is still glaring at Ghaleon, as he turns and speaks a single word. 'No,' with that short, and utters that harsh laugh.
 
Whatever he might have said, vanishes in the moment Ghaleon disappears, giving him the last word as it might be in that matter.
 
It's only in that moment then that he finally looks at Leo. Really looks. If there's defiance there right now, it's hard to see it. He lets go of Mariel's staff.
 
And promptly collapses to the street, making it simplicity itself to reach and grab his hands and cuff them.
 
He failed her. He failed everyone because of his blind faith and a moment of anger.
 
And now he has to live with the consequences of that.

<Pose Tracker> Mariel has posed.

Mariel looks back up at Liath. She doesn't say anything for several long seconds, while Liath examines her. It's hard for Mariel to meet Liath's eyes, but she does it.

And then she nods. "Thank you," she says. She wasn't expecting that response - certainly not from Liath. From Leo, perhaps; from Liath, who knows her less well, no. She looks after Liath for a moment as she turns away, uncertain. What was that look for? What does she know? Or was it purely Marivel's influence, or lingering courtesy from when they fought together before?

Then she kneels, to get to work once again.

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