2023-06-09: The Legendary Beast
- Log: The Legendary Beast
- Cast: Talia, Acacia Saitani, Shige Kiwako, White Knight Leo, Magilou, Layna Manydays, Ruth Pauling, Ashiya Khaimova, Rixia
- Where: Mount Gagazet
- Date: June 09, 2023
- Summary: Rixia discovers a lead that leads her to the depths of Mt. Gagazet, below where the mountain's fiercest battle between Yevon, the Guard, and Georg Heldalf once transpired. What she finds there is...
==============================<* Mount Gagazet *>=============================== This snow-covered series of peaks is the northernmost location on Spira... save one, whose name is not to be mentioned. It represents the last settled land on a Summoner's Pilgrimage... and, for many Summoners, its end as well. Mount Gagazet has been christened as a holy place by Yevon, and as a holy land it has guardians in the form of the Ronso - fierce fur-clas Beastmen with powerful bodies and a single, spikelike horn atop their head. Ronso are known for three things - their raw power; a deep, abiding faith in Yevon's teachings; and strange techniques which allow them to copy the fiends' way of fighting. They also like Blitzball. Because who doesn't. BGM: Final Fantasy X - Servants of the Mountain
<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.
The depths of Mt. Gagazet run counter to the summit path, arguably the most-traversed path as one that brought Summoners on their Pilgrimage beyond and to the holy land of Zanarkand. Large portions of the mountain lay uncanvassed, due to the relative dangers, unless a rescue needs to be mounted, and today...
Rixia isn't here at Mt. Gagazet with the thoughts of a rescue in mind. Dressed in a thick white fur coat with the hood up, she's still shivering as she plods through centimetres of wet snow, her boots hardly keeping her steady. She's not sure if she if she preferred the slippery ice or the mushy terrain. She's reached out to some friends -- Ashiya she called, Shige promised she'd come, the members of ARMS she was in touch with, such as Ruth and Acacia... and, of course, she did put a post up on the Adventurers' Guild just in case.
The excited Ronso youth pointed out a certain part of the mountain where he spotted the Fiend -- a particular crevasse which many unfortunate climbers are prone to falling into, due to its position above many of the perilous ledges above. Including, say... where unfortunate victims in a battle between the Guado and the Ronso, interrupted timely by the Althenan Guard and Georg Heldalf and the Drifters once occurred.
This isn't something Rixia knows, though. That was two years ago, and her journey hasn't even begun then. No, what she does know now is... the air is thick with a sensation that should be alien to Spira. At first faint, and then more palpable, as the group moves further in towards the valley...
Then they see it. An enormous creature, standing roughly three meters in height and just as wide; it once was a Ronso, dressed in a battle-coat and armor, and now... it chokes the air with the denseness of its Malevolence, around which it repels the ambient Pyreflies around it.
The excited Ronso youth mistook it for a Fiend, but Malevolence and Pyreflies -- the very building foundation of a Fiend -- are mutually incompatible. This is no Fiend. This is a Hellion.
And from the innumerable bodies of both the fallen and the dead Fiends around it... it has hunted for quite some time.
"P-papa...?" Rixia whispers, suddenly gripped with the familiar sight. "Papa!"
It's a horrible decision. The fox girl hurries forward upon seeing the Hellion, calling out, "It's me! It's Rixia. Do you recognise me?" Didn't she come here to say goodbye? Can't she tell, that even an animated body is sometimes just a lie?
Perhaps she wanted to believe in the lie.
The lie lets her guard down. The beast rushes forward, an ice-shattering roar escaping his maw. He stabs--
-SHLURK-
The enormous silver gunblade's tip catches her abdomen, with enough heft to lift her straight off the ground--
"Aaggg--"
And then it twists, wrenching her over its shoulder as it pulls the trigger and sends her flying deeper into the chasm, where she disappears amidst the sea of the fallen.
The Hellion turns, eyes both shimmering with pure Malevolence. With a casual heft, it rests its enormous gunblade on its shoulder. It's different from Rixia's image of the weapon, created by the Sleeping Lion... this is a massive, heavy weapon, stained with blood.
(BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMqb3qhXLvw )
This is no longer a Ronso. This is no longer a father, either to his Ronso brethren, nor to the fox girl he adopted. No, it now has become a Legendary Beast... a Fiendbreaker, a being that repels very Spira's lifecycle. And it will not allow you further passage.
(OOC: Feel free to come in swinging!)
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia wanted to check up on Rixia, after she heard. The former assassin-turned-Mystic Knight was worried when she heard she was going to Gagazet. So, she comes along; she has a heavier coat on for the weather, today, and it's dusted with snow as she walks.
Her sword -- her new sword, two-toned gold and silver -- is sheathed at her side. She looks sideways at Rixia, and then she looks ahead at what was once a Ronso.
Now, it's something else.
A Hellion. Her stomach drops for her moment, as she looks over the bodies around it -- and then she sees Rixia charge forward. Her crimson eyes widen. "Rixia, wait--!"
The blade throws her, and Talia gasps, before she goes bolting forward. She leaps close to the Fiendbreaker -- and then Talia's jump ends with her sword tearing free of the scabbard, and thrusting out with three rapid slashes that leave streaks in the air.
"Stardust!"
GS: Blitz! Talia has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Stardust! GS: Talia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Talia takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Mighty and Shield expired! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Talia has canceled their attack on The Fiendbreaker. GS: Talia has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Stardust! GS: Talia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker partially guards Talia's Stardust for 131 hit points! GS: Hyper and Riposte applied to Talia! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Charge bonus activated!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
Acacia still doesn't know Rixia all that well, truth be told, but she can't help but feel a bit of sympathy for the strange young woman who showed up at Klein one day battered and beaten up from her travel luck and begging them for a place to stay. The reporter hadn't meant to take her under her wing or anything like that, but she can spot the hallmarks of someone trying to get away from the life that was ascribed to them. She can get behind that.
And she had a few days off to do what she wanted, and she's been meaning to go to Spira now that the Endless Calm is here because she can sense an opportunity in being a reporter and guide-writer who's knowledgable enough about this 'new world' that's opened up that she can combine Kamui's oldphotos and her scattered, half-started articles and pull together a feature for her newspaper.
Also, uh, she doesn't necessarily trust that Rixia can find her way to Spira without tripping into an interdimensional portal and ending up in the Sorcery Globe or something. And it's been a while since she punched a deadbeat parent, you know?
She kind of wishes it didn't have to be up Mt. Gagazet of all places; she pulls her puffy vest around her and sinks her chin into its neckline, tromping through the snow as best she can. Every so often she gets grumpy and a glint of light precedes part of the snow around her hissing with heat and melting away. Her grousing sets her up to notice the odd feeling in the air; she frowns to herself as Rixia forges forwards, and one hand curls around a twisted, broken pistol in her pocket.
"--eh?-- wait, you dumb--" those are some last words to really regret and beat herself up over later, as Rixia's body (oh so nice of you aki sure just count her out already) sails out of view in a blink of violence. "Weapons up!" she yells urgently. Her own ARM is nothing but a rusted, pitted pile of slag, the barrel too encrusted and melted to even spin.
It doesn't matter; she dives to the side to try to avoid the incoming charge as several lines of light slam into the hellion's knees and ankles. "Bring it down if you can! We--" she hesitates, chewing at her lip. It's not her call to go 'we should probably leave it alive'. It might be an incredibly stupid idea.
GS: Acacia Saitani has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Bury the Lede! GS: Acacia Saitani has gained 1 Combo! GS: Acacia Saitani has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker critically guards Acacia Saitani's Bury the Lede for 27 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple blocked! GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.
The feline did in fact offer to help Rixia find the creature that might have been her adoptive father at some point. Shige had reservations on what they'd have found, but she didn't say anything at the time. She's in her cold weather gear, which admittedly is lighter weight than some would be wearing. She likes the cold! A fur lined cap with goggles and a snow mantle wrapped around a long coaat pants and boots. Hardy enough and cozy in a familiar nostalgic way.
The miasma lingering in the air alone put the shaman on edge. That frazzled cat look pretty unmistakable. She unhooks her lantern from her belt and lifts it high. Long shadows drawing from the ethereal light source. This was timed poorly as Rixia darts away from her, "-Rixia stop!" she fumbles and tries to grab at the girl's hand too late. Giving chase after her. Grimacing as she's stabbed and thrown away. Coming to a stop just out of reach. She checks both sides. Trying to find a way past. Trying to think of a way to get close enough to at least stabalize Rixia. That kind of wound, they're on a time limit and she'd honestly rather not walk a friend home in that state. Been a bad enough few weeks as it is.
With the light raised before her, those shadows begin to move. Taking on the appearance of shades, of those fallen around them. Her resposne to Acacia is a blunt, "Dead or alive, it's coming with me." The shadows manifest, enraged looking shades. Silent, grabbing at the beast. Bitter and cold.
GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Mute Horror! GS: Shige Kiwako has gained 1 Combo! GS: Shige Kiwako has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
The White Knight should not be here. Sin might be gone, but nothing remains in Spira for him but awful memories. Althena did not send him here. His ties with his ancestry are now tenuous at best.
So why is he here? In a word: Rixia. In more words: he heard that Rixia had finally found a lead on her long-lost father. Even if she hates him for what he did, he owes her that much.
Leo is not part of Rixia's party, but he's been following their trail. His long, white cloak blends in easier with the terrain, and the time he spent training here gave him an idea of what to expect. The perilous path, the howling wind, the snow--all of them, he expected. But--
Leo stops in his tracks. His eyes widen, and for a moment he's back here, with Seymour, and--he watches, in horror, as Rixia runs towards the Hellion her father has become. "RIXIA, NO!" The words are a pained howl, and too late, besides. "RIXIA!" He charges forwards, reaching for her, but the Hellion throws her aside. She vanishes into the mist.
"No," Leo says. His ears flatten against his head. What's one more, dead? says the treasonous voice. You've already killed so many. Was it just that you--
"MONSTROSITY!" Leo roars, spittle on his lips.
--knew her? Knew her, because she came to you? Knew her personally?
Leo's blade clears its sheath. He swings with raw violent intent, and the air cuts open. A wave of vacuum force races at the Hellion's head.
GS: White Knight Leo has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Demon Fang! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 3 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Miss Magilou! Miss Magilou! Isn't that Madam Rixia's pawprint?!"
"She has hands, Bienfu. Come on, you know those boards only ever have the dregs of anything."
"But Miss Magilouuuu!!"
"Oh, very WELL --"
Magilou isn't someone it's particularly EASY to contact. Carrier dove is her preferred mode of contact; she'll respond to smoke signals; at a pinch, she might mistake your emergency flare for fireworks and come check it out. And sometimes, her -- secretary? -- let's go with secretary finds appointments for her, too.
Anyway, she's here, now. And she's -- "Freezing, freezing, sneezing, displeasing!" -- normal. She's totally normal, actually.
The weird thing is how her jocular jeering of the weather and Rixia's decisions all kind of set on pause when she finally sees what became of him. Magilou sighs, and brushes some hair, from the side of her face. "... yup." This was never going to be a story with a happy ending, she supposes... not with what's happened, around here.
She recalls what Armatisation was like, before they made it easier on a human. She wonders what she might have said -- if she hadn't already known he was a monster. Would she have asked questions like these, if she had a heart?
Anyway.
Rixia might still have a heart, but Magilou's been stabbed in the belly herself, not so long ago. She happens to know that one or two important bits are in the squishy part, too. Terribly painful, she reflects, as the light doesn't reflect from her eyes -- watching Rixia defy gravity.
Her lips thin to a pressed line.
"Take care of it, if it pleases you," Magilou issues Talia and the others, all too dry. "As for me, I've found all a sudden that I don't much care. I'm out of here."
She hops on her shikigami, and glides in a swooping arc past the Legendary Beast... and further down the chasm.
Is it a coincidence that she's exiting the same way Rixia fell?
She'll tell anyone it is.
GS: The Fiendbreaker suffers a terrible blow from Shige Kiwako's Mute Horror for 0 hit points! GS: Interrupt and Mute applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards White Knight Leo's Demon Fang for 63 hit points! GS: FP up! Power Burst, Guard bonus, and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Rixia's looking for someone, huh... Well, Layna's glad to lend a hand. Mt. Gagazet is a dangerous foe, no matter what one's reason for visiting is. The more people, the more preparation, the better. She tips her hat to the others, tagging along...
They're pointed to a crevasse and ultimately, they do find something.
It isn't a Fiend. It's...
"...Rixia, careful. That's a Hellion!" Layna warns. ...But Rixia rushes toward him anyway.
Layna can't say she blames her. But in the end... Rixia is stabbed. Layna's anger flares.
"You...!" Layna hisses. A green aura surges around her and she rushes forward, body wreathed in wind as she drives a fist right toward the Fiendbreaker.
Acacia doesn't finish her sentence, but Layna can put two-and-two together.
"...Yeah. I'll do what I can." She replies.
GS: Layna Manydays has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Dread Momentum! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 2 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays's stances have changed to Avenger! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Some days ago, Rixia confided the depths of what she was going through... and Ruth confided something about herself in turn. Ever since, Ruth has done her best to keep near with Rixia through her journey back from Klein towards Spira. (She gave ARMS due diligence in letting them know she was going with them and why it was important she did so.)
One of the few unambiguous perks of her spiritual condition - extreme of temperatures do not bother her, even if she arguably already is dressed heavily enough for the weather.
Ruth has kept her concealed shape going up largely because it's difficult not to when the pyreflies are so thick and pushing against any Malevolence of hers that might escape. This, and dealing with Fiends is a decent funnel for the predisposition towards violence all her kind have to deal with. (Emotionally speaking, it's like junk food - you can eat it, and it might feel good in the moment but is ultimately empty colories.)
When the Hellion among them suddenly looks up with eyes widened at the sheer concentration of Malevolence making itself known in one of the places where pyrefly concentrations are especially high, that clues in a lot of things to the Filgaian sharpshooter. Ruth herself is not a lightweight among Hellions.
"Rixia!" Ruth's tone of voice is suddenly sharper and more severe than she normally is conversationally. She doesn't have enough time to articulate to the young woman who has that single tie left to her as to why.
To watch a father strike down a child...
...
Magilou makes her carefully carelessly care-free statement as Magilou swoops along the direction Rixia falls - something not lost in Ruth's keen eyesight.
Some moments later, more pyreflies vacate from the space near Ruth with sharper prismatic color trails suggestive of spiritual friction as another Hellion emerges among them. One who does not come up nearly as tall as the Fiendbreaker, a shriek-filled hiss filling the air as a drawn sniper rifle doubling as an effective polearm sweeps across the ground into an upward, cutting blade aiming for the torso of the far larger Hellion.
Ruth, now in the shape of a single-winged gargoyle-like form, can only be who she is in this moment of growing tragedy.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Scarring Blow! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Layna Manydays's Dread Momentum for 70 hit points! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker suffers a terrible blow from Ruth Pauling's Scarring Blow for 99 hit points! GS: The Fiendbreaker's Jam Ward may block the effect! GS: Jam blocked! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Ashiya Khaimova has posed.
It's been a long couple of months for a certain blue-coloured cat-person. Why would she disappear for any length of time like that? What possible reason would she have? Well... let's just say word reaches the academic board slowly, and being marooned on a distant planet is no excuse for not turning in your thesis. The age of remote work exists out there in space, too.
***
Still clutching message in hand, Ashiya takes the uneven steps three at a time on her flight up the path of Mount Gagazet. A woolen shawl bounces around her shoulders with each step, and little puffs of snow hang on the crisp breeze in her passing. It's been an awfully long time since she last set foot in the mountains, and a dozen thoughts mill in her head. Will they remember her? Will she make it there in time? Will her cover story still hold any water?
(To be fair, maybe the Ronso were just being polite: nobody would -really- believe someone with a Fellpool appearance is any kind of Ronso, even if they have the same colour scheme going on.)
Gold eyes scan the snow-capped peaks above, lingering on something flitting upwards. The telltale glow of one of those odd, spiritual pyreflies. Not a truly unthinkable sight, but then, what is this feeling of anxiety...? Why does the soul scream in warning, of standing before a yawning chasm?
"Ugh. Calm down, heart." Ashiya mutters, running a hand through her windswept hair and electing to sprint straight up a cliff rather than take the long way around. "You're just crushing. Nothing bad's gonna happen. Bad things don't happen to us!" she thumps her chest, declaring empty promises to herself as she pauses atop a rocky perch to look about. Which way to go? Her eyebrow quirks of its own accord. Without knowing why, she quickly holds a lonesome and leafless branch for support.
There is a tremendous roar from deeper within the mountain. The sacred mountain shudders and groans in response, snow tumbling from the peaks. Stoic tears of the land, shed at the sight of such a loss. "Guh." Ashiya vanishes from her perch in a blink of anxiety-driven teenage speed. Footprints dot the snow atop the peak for a brief moment, their owner nothing but a blue and grey blur.
---
Whereas Magilou is possessed of uncountable magical gifts, and could fly to Rixia's aid with fairy-tale speed and precision, the fool in this pose has no such poise or ability. Mere moments too late, she plunges towards the roaring Hellion with a very plain-looking steel sword in one hand. It's just Helm Breaker, let's be real. The intent is such: cleave this clown on the way past, and use her greater velocity to catch up to the fallen Rixia in the ravine.
How's she going to get out again afterwards?
Shut up, that's how.
GS: Ashiya Khaimova has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Waxing Moon Strike! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ashiya Khaimova's stances have changed to Avenger! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker critically guards Ashiya Khaimova's Waxing Moon Strike for 41 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Ashiya Khaimova! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> The Fiendbreaker has posed.
Multiple people prudently call for Rixia to wait, but everything horrible happens in the blink of an eye; Magilou, thankfully, has the means to cut past the Legendary Beast and rush off. She doesn't care! Not at all! It's just a complete coincidence that she's headed off in the same way Rixia fell. Don't worry, Magilou, she won't tell, your aura of cool indifference will be preserved.
A tiny sliver of mercy for Leo, perhaps, is that she got to see that Leo was here, as she flies across the cavern -- that he cared, at her seeming end.
Talia immediately leaps to action, drawing her sword as she goes; Stardust leaves three starry streaks in the air, each slash ripping into the coat of the Hellion with surprisingly solid purchase -- but the blood drawn just seems to nearly-rapidly evaporate and become something... powerful and dangerous.
Acacia calls for weapons, which is a great warning; her rusted pile of garbage nonetheless draws on her Ether and rips light into the flesh of the Beast, rippling fabric and metal underneath as it's stopped underneath her assault for just a brief moment. A louder snarl.
"Machina..."
It speaks, voice a mixture of gloom and cement mixture. And yet, it doesn't feel like it has much consciousness -- it more feels like instinct bubbling up underneath a surface of Malevolence and undeath.
Shige's shadows move, drawing on some of the fallen around her -- she finds the remnants of some of the Ronso, some of the Guado... as far as the fallen of the battlefield go, they aren't particularly old ones. Sentiments still linger here. This is a pit of death. Nonetheless, they grab at the beast, bitter and cold -- but the Beast is just as much a lingering will of the fight, bristling... listening, to its fellow fallen. It stops for a moment.
Leo calls the Beast for what it is -- a monstrosity -- and rips open with a Demon Fang, filled with violence; the Fiendbreaker seems quite knowledgeable of the technique, performing a step-technique that bears the brunt of the worst of the blast while not giving ground.
"White... Knight...!!" it roars.
Leo sees a flash of metal from his neck, as he attacks -- he recognises it for what it is.
An Althenan Guard dog tag.
Here was a creature of contradictions; a Yevonite, trapped in Glenwood and Meribia for so long, who had to sail with his enemies to return back to his homeland. He served under the Althenan Guard banner, despite his conflicts... and in the end...
Layna's own power surges in the form of a green aura, and she wreathes her body and fist in the flow of wind and drives it right into the heart of the Beast. It hits with enough force that it buckles back for a moment, its confident stride disrupted.
Something about Layna has it on edge. Is it her connection as a Seer, to the Oracle of Water?
But Ruth's own transformation has its full attention -- it definitely senses Ruth as another Hellion, though it doesn't seem inclined to do less violence. No, if anything... the way in which her own Malevolence starts to lace against its own just seems to spur it further into bloody combat, even as the air cracks with Ruth's hiss and rising slash, further drawing blood from its armored torso.
More blood flows. More blood evaporates. And that blood evaporates... into power.
Ashiya may not have shikigami or magic, but what she does have is a sweet katana and a finished thesis, and where Ruth is coming in low and rising up, Ashiya is coming in high and going low; it's tough going to try to get past its zone of control to hurry past to where Rixia's fallen, but it's not impossible. It'll just take... a bit of manoeuvring.
Manoeuvring that's going to get harder in just a second, because in response to all these attacks, the Fiendbreaker plunges its gunblade into the ground -- a wellspring of power trickles out of the blade, forming numerous uncountable little fissures of light within the snow.
Those little cracks of light is the only advance warning before violent blasts of power erupt from underneath, dramatically altering the snowy battlefield as clouds of powder snow and gunpowder and Malevolence alike mix into a deadly combination.
GS: The Fiendbreaker spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked The Fiendbreaker with No Mercy! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker's stances have changed to Avenger! GS: Interrupt expired! GS: The Fiendbreaker has activated Force Action: Lock On! GS: Interrupt! Attack weakened! GS: The Fiendbreaker accepts The Fiendbreaker's No Mercy for 0 hit points! GS: Amplify, Hyper, and Poison applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Talia with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Acacia Saitani with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked White Knight Leo with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Shige Kiwako with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Layna Manydays with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Ruth Pauling with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Ashiya Khaimova with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: The Fiendbreaker takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has completed her action. GS: Layna Manydays takes a solid hit from The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 300 hit points! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Ashiya Khaimova partially guards The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 225 hit points! GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Ruth Pauling suffers a terrible blow from The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 337 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker!
GS: Acacia Saitani solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 187 hit points! GS: FP up! Charge bonus activated! defence again' and it's like 'oh... defensive charge, force charge...'"
GS: COUNTER! Talia counterattacks The Fiendbreaker with Blizzard Blade! GS: CRITICAL! Talia solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 187 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Charge bonus and Gleam activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Talia's Blizzard Blade for 53 hit points! GS: FP up! Power Burst, Guard bonus, and Sufferer activated! GS: White Knight Leo suffers a terrible blow from The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 337 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker!
GS: CRITICAL! Shige Kiwako takes a solid hit from The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 300 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"Magilou, I swear to the Goddess, this is not--" Talia steps back from the Foebreaker, as the blood she drew begins to evaporate. "--the time!"
Talia's eyes snap towards Leo's howl. She feels a flush of concern; the last they saw the White Knight, he was fighting them. Did he really regret all he had done? Or was Mystere just a mask? She cannot be sure. But, he seems to be helping today.
Talia glances sideways at Layna, after a moment. "Do--do you think you can purify him?" she asks, hesitating. This one seems rather far gone, but...
She has seen miracles before.
She jumps back with surprise, then, as Ashiya comes plunging down suddenly -- and she takes a moment to realize this must be the Ashe that Rixia had talked about. (She figured it out from her appearance.)
Another Hellion, too -- though this one is on her side. Talia can accept that. Blood evaporates; the little on her sword vanishing, and then she rushes in. She sprints across the ground even as it breaks, ducking and weaving around the blasts of light from the fissures, before one catches her.
She goes into a spin -- leaps -- and does a tight spin. Her sword swings down, ice exploding off the blade, and then exploding upon contacts into a number of crystalline shards. Then, she sweeps her sword out twice.
With each blow, a fang of white light explodes off her sword, and comes crashing down for the Fiendbreaker.
GS: Talia has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Double Demon Fang! GS: Talia has gained 3 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action.
GS: The Fiendbreaker takes a solid hit from Talia's Double Demon Fang for 108 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cover and Hyper applied to Talia! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
The snow stings at Acacia's skin as she turns her haphazard dive into a roll, pushing up with her knees as her muscles protest at the cold. She can feel how long it's been since she did this, and she hisses slightly under her breath. There's a confused moment where she hears Leo's roar from behind them and for a moment imagines them surrounded between two Hellions; she's not sure how much better it is being pinned between a Hellion and the Guard, but right now she'll take all the help they can get.
"Sure you don't," she mutters back to Magilou as the woman dives after Rixia; the reporter has an innate sense of how aloof nearly-immortal beings work after spending so much time around so many of them, and she's not about to get phased by someone now when she has much bigger concerns to concentrate on, eyes fixed back on the Fiendbreaker.
"Machina my big ass!" the reporter immediately snaps back, a phrase(?) which is meant as a positive(??) taunt(???) but ultimately just acts as a way to burn off some of the sudden tension that runs through her frame. She'd already suspected from the creature's mad charge at Rixia, but the way it rumbles out the word Machina makes her think that whatever it's seeing, it's not seeing them. It's seeing an accumulation of memories and feelings and maybe nothing real at all.
"You really shouldn't listen to me!" she yells back to Layna as the violence erupts around them. "It's a really terrible idea--" that's as far as she gets before the ground is buckling beneath them with an spiderweb of cracks running through it, and it all explodes upwards into her. She has enough time to cover her face, but the impact of the explosion sends her back with a lurch to her heart. There's a moment of empty air around her, and a million terrifying thoughts - getting sent off the edge of the mountain, an avalanche being set off...
Her back hits reassuringly solid stone, so there's that. It gives her a chance to dimly recognize Ashiya's descent and Ruth's-- Ruth. "I'm gonna tell you about every single person who was mysteriously following you one by one and watch you squirm like hell later," she rumbles to herself, gathering herself where she's leant against the wall.
She lifts up to take one step forwards - and then slams her foot down in almost an impression of the Hellion's last move. The fissures that still exist, that haven't quite lost their glow, suddenly flare up again with light - but this time each visibly feeds backwards to where the Hellion still stands in the centre of them all, a dozen loops of energy rising up to pull at the creature's limbs.
GS: Acacia Saitani spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Acacia Saitani has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Stop the Press!! GS: Acacia Saitani has gained 2 Combo! GS: Acacia Saitani has launched an attack Link! GS: Acacia Saitani has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Hit Piece! GS: Acacia Saitani has gained 1 Combo! GS: Acacia Saitani has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Acacia Saitani's Stop the Press! for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Break and Hex applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Acacia Saitani's Hit Piece for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: The Fiendbreaker's Weaken Ward may block the effect! GS: Weaken blocked! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.
Shige's a bit close to the epicenter and this doesn't really do her any favors for fancy footwork, especially as she had been looking for a way to try and get eyes on Rixia. Flung into the air and back by the blast, she lands roughly. The other feline of the group not landing on her feet unfortunately, despite any efforts to preventing that. Laying there in the snow, dazed. She watches the sky for a moment. The shades fading away. She tries to chase the ringing in her ears away. There's some familiarity in laying in the snow after some powerful attack. Surrounded by the dead, the scent of blood in the air.
By memory she lifts her free hand, expecting a ticket there again. With it empty, she works her fingers a few times. This didn't last as long as it felt and the sound almost rushes back in. Sitting up sharply, she ignores the dizziness that came with it and forces herself to her feet.
A thumb brushes away blood and she lifts the lantern again. "Not again." is all she says. Dragging those shades lingering in the area, her memories and her own collection of better times. An old surgeon wearing older armor appearing behind her, the muted sounds of some forgotten mamrching song just at the edge of hearing as the spectre raises his arms, wreathed in energy and begins to work to try and help the situation. Rather than lapsing into despair, she's tried something else. She's tried to bring about the resiliance of those past, those who had their own hardships.
Memories, shades, it doesn't matter. They magic's its own kind of healing.
"Keep on your feet, we're taking him down and saving her!" Magilou had already started that process. She hopes they're in time. She doesn't let it show on her face. She can't lapse into dark thoughts, not here. Not now.
GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked Ashiya Khaimova with Rousing Spirits! GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked Ruth Pauling with Rousing Spirits! GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked Layna Manydays with Rousing Spirits! GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked Magilou with Rousing Spirits! GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked White Knight Leo with Rousing Spirits! GS: Shige Kiwako has gained 2 Combo! GS: Shige Kiwako has completed her action. GS: Shige Kiwako heals Layna Manydays! She gains 178 temporary hit points! GS: Regen applied to Layna Manydays! GS: Shige Kiwako heals Ruth Pauling! She gains 182 temporary hit points! GS: Regen applied to Ruth Pauling!
<Pose Tracker> Ashiya Khaimova has posed.
Ashiya's plan to dive into the crevasse after Rixia without so much as a dramatic shout runs into a hitch. Namely: the gargantuan creature which once was a Ronso, with friends and dreams and loves of its own, and the fact that it isn't going down that easily. Her diving cut is in fine form, but a nightmare such as this calls for far more than well-polished basics. By the time the blue-haired catfolk has yanked her sword free and pranced back onto one foot in preparation for departure, the howling monster has plunged that Gunblade into the ground and pulled the trigger--both literally, for it is a weapon with a trigger, and metaphorically, where we refer to the execution of a special move. Duh.
There's a moment's recognition before the blast wave hits. Ashiya glances sidelong at Talia, who she doesn't truly -know-, per se, but has a good feeling about. Would that they could meet under better conditions. "Oh. Watch out," she helpfully points out before the Gunblade's raidwide goes off. The shockwave catches the poncho-wearing catte and flings her into the crevasse wall, where she leaves a person-sized network of spiderwebbing cracks.
She leans forward with a groan. "Don't be too mad at her," Ashiya quips at Acacia from afar, as if they were old buddies all along. It's just how she rolls. "Trouble just kinda follows her, and I didn't keep up this time."
One hand breaks free of the rocky bed, and cups something invisible in the air. "Sorry, pal, but I'm no purifying priestess. You can tangle with these guys." she mutters, eyes on the Breaker of Fiend(e)s. There's a moment of concentration. Pallid runes the hue of green grass and spilled ink dance in the palm of Ashiya's hand, becoming infinitismally smaller and denser with each moment. Less a beautiful tapistry of runes as you might know them, and more like a smushed line of computer code.
One gloved hand clenches, and shackles of burnished emerald light whip out of thin air around the Gunblade-wielding monster. Let him contend with student-level warcrime magics! She's got a cute girl to save.
Ashiya spreads her arms wide and falls into the ravine.
Again.
"Rixia! Hold on!" she hollers, which is cute, because she's not usually a name-hollerer. Awww.
GS: CRITICAL! Shige Kiwako heals Ashiya Khaimova! She gains 230 temporary hit points! GS: Regen applied to Ashiya Khaimova! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has attacked The Fiendbreaker with CODE: Hazard! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ashiya Khaimova gains 30 THP from Regen! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker takes a solid hit from Ashiya Khaimova's CODE: Hazard for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker's Jam Ward may block the effect! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Mute and Slow applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: Jam blocked! GS: Hyper applied to Ashiya Khaimova! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Shige Kiwako heals White Knight Leo! He gains 176 temporary hit points! GS: Regen applied to White Knight Leo! GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
The gunblade plunges into the ground, and Ruth does not move from the epicenter as she recovers from the inertia of her swing, her glowing eyes meeting his as it drives the worst of her forward. There is someone here who did not wish harm nor wrong to someone Rixia loved enough to keep her going, her discordant heart feeding into the Malevolence as an abortive attempt at a follow-up tackle finds its foil in the immense explosions from the cracks.
Ruth's purple blood in this state stains the ground, fresh cuts and burns that won't receive greater attention to detail in this moment. The horror is not the wounds themselves, but that the friendly(?) Hellion among them flinches from it for all the span of a second and little more, clawed feet digging into the snow and ice to prevent her from losing too much ground as adrenaline papers over the level of grievous injury standing in all that did.
For Hellions in the throes of instinctually-driven mutual violence, this is a normal sight and why it is not a life lived lightly (or, more often than not, for long at all).
Shige is already on the ball in seeing to those already hurt, shades of soldiers long gone clinging to cause where blood and breath no longer exists for them providing their backing. None of whom Ruth could have known, nor they her. That she has the glint of her own tags against the light gives that connection between them of soldiers still fighting.
"You were her world!!" Ruth's pained screaming is just able to be made out over the hissing escaping her throat as she spits blood-laced saliva on the ground, bared fangs and all like a beast. (That Ruth can articulate herself and hold to a reason to not descend fully into it is a grace.)
Tears stream down her face as her Domain fights to find purchase against the Fiendbreaker's own. Near Ruth, the moisture in the air goes from the shape of snow and ice to warmer, clammier rain that starts to downpour in greater concentration and pool where she stands.
"Sssshe lovesss you!!" Words just above monstrous hissing, sweeping her wing out wide in threat posture as that pooled rain floods into a wave of water outwards towards the Ronso whose heart was overtaken by conflict.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Deluge! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling gains 32 THP from Regen! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker suffers a terrible blow from Ruth Pauling's Deluge for 78 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Delay applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: Riposte applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Layna's fist makes an impact and she leaps back to ready herself for a second charge - which is right when the Fiendbreaker stabs its gunblade into the earth. She hears Ashiya's 'watch out' just a little too late. Energy leaks out, and then explodes all around them. Layna leaps back, cursing as one nearly detonates betwen her feet. She lands - only to immediately get consumed by the next and blasted back.
She hits the ground, but quickly rolls back up to a standing position. The healing presence of Shige's spirits washes over her, and she sends her a nod before looking back toward the Fiendbreaker.
"...'S a strong one, aye?" Layna mutters, rolling her shoulders. She looks toward Talia, then, and considers the question.
"...Good question. Ultimately, that's gonna depend on him. ...And honestly, I can't tell that there's much left. I'll give it an honest shot if I get the chance, but..." She stats, trailing off uncertainly with a shrug. As for Acacia, Layna sends her a grin.
"Unfortunately, I live for terrible ideas. The worse, the better." She replies. Case in point - she rushes in toward the Fiendbreaker again. She swings her fist - but this time, wind scythes off of it, slashing at the Fiendbreaker with the sharpness of a blade.
GS: Layna Manydays has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Cutlass Gale! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 2 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays gains 31 THP from Regen! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker critically guards Layna Manydays's Cutlass Gale for 49 hit points! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
The Fiendbreaker has unknowingly given Leo something to focus his rage on--a monster he can bring to justice. His ears twitch as the thing's voice reaches them--is there some remnant of the man's consciousness in there, or is this a body, reanimated by Malevolence? It feels--
'White... Knight!!'
Something flashes in the dim light. Leo instantly recognizes it. One of his first acts as White Knight was to commission them. Some called it a frivolous expense, but at the time, Leo had simply wished for his soldiers to be identified, and to make it home--even if they were grievously wounded, or killed.
This one made it home. Guilt tightens around Leo's heart like a spiked vise.
That second of hesitation--Leo's reluctance to strike one of his own soldiers, his own kin--costs him. The ground beneath him erupts, riddles his body with ice and stone. The White Knight lands on his back, his breath leaving him in a cry of pain.
The light of Shige's lantern washes across the battlefield. A hazy silhouette appears, towering over Leo, arms crossed. Biran Ronso looks down at him, the arrow that killed him still protruding from his throat. Very pointedly, he makes no move to help Leo. His gaze says it all: is he really so weak as to die here?
The chirugeon's power sinks in a moment later, dulling the pain. Leo plants a gloved hand on the snow and surges to his feet, leaving splotches of red on the churned-up earth. "Layna," Leo chokes out, his voice almost as desperate and despairing as Ruth's. "Can you--can you save him?!" Is there anything left to save?
Leo gestures downwards. The rock beneath him rises, a pillar of Mt. Gagazet bearing him up. Once it reaches about fifteen feet, Leo leaps from it, driving his blade for the Fiendbreaker's chest. A flash of brilliant light hits mere moments before the weapon itself.
GS: White Knight Leo has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Light Spear Cannon! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 1 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo gains 28 THP from Regen! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> The Fiendbreaker has posed.
Can the Hellion be purified? One fact known to them now is that the Hellion must be willing, but... what becomes of a Beast that hardly has any reasoning of his own any longer? It doesn't even feel like there's anything vaguely cognitive there any longer... brief flashes of insight and--
"Must eradicate..."
Perhaps it rejects that notion, even as Talia's combination attack between her blizzard-charged blade followed tightly by dual fangs of white light all crush into him; he's stepped through those once more, enduring the pain, and slashes in return at her -- even if the slash misses, he leaves behind Malevolent glyphs, a technique Rixia's similarly used with Fire ones, which explode in mere seconds after his circular motion.
Acacia's taunts... seem to fall on deaf ears. At the very least, it doesn't seem like they care about big butts, and they're not lying. Still, Acacia's counterattack comes in square and effective -- returning the technique of the Beast against itself, foot driving ether into those fissures and drawing loops of energy to attempt to bind it down. It... works, for a few precious scant seconds--
But then there's a flare of Malevolence, as it violently drives back against her and uses that surprisingly long sword and the natural reach of its arm to launch a surprise attack against the reporter, and where blade touches the ground, another burst of disaster threatens to catch her under her feet.
Shige reels, but rallies all the same, surrounded by the dead. The old surgeon comes; wreathed in the energy of those departed, she brings power into the air, providing succor and motivation to the group. She's not completely spared attention; just freely unfettered from Acacia's bindings, a burst of energy lashes back against the spirit guide, this Fiendbreaker operating on more than just physical combat -- it also operates on manipulating energy to deter those at range.
"My... brethren..." it seems distracted, still, by the souls of the departed. In particular, the spirits of the Ronso around him...
Ashiya's persistence is starting to pay off -- its attention is divided some seven ways, and a non-physical assault like she does with her Symbology (?) or perhaps just mysterious suspicious smartphone code further shackles the Fiendbreaker for long enough for her to drop a floor down into...
Well, it's more corpses.
It's not actually that far from the battlefield, all told; she can see the bodies of the Guado, the Ronso, intermixed in with the dead Fiends... and even one or two Rolance and Hyland soldiers here, their banners of red and blue in tatters where their blood doesn't cover.
She's not free, though. The heat around her starts to climb at alarming temperatures as the Fiendbreaker thrusts its arm out, even bound -- and the sensation of Althena's Black Magic can be felt as it bombs the area Ashiya's fallen into with Firaga, in the shape of a cross.
That's the kind of edgy detail we like to see.
Fire is very swiftly followed by water, however; Ruth's wave crashes against its form, eliciting a rather pained snarl -- pain that very much seems to motivate it. The Hellion punctuates her spell with barbed words, which seem to find just a little bit more purchase against the immense fog that is its conscience.
His daughter loved her. Enough to follow him to the end of the world.
"Daughter...?"
This was a man beset on all sides by conflict. The adopted daughter he took in reluctantly, and grew to love. The family he equally loved, back in Mt. Gagazet. His loyalty to Yevon, as a relic-hunter, wielding a heretical Machina-weapon in the way Yevon's Flamethrower Corps once did; and his recruitment into the Guard, something that eventually turned into a war that encompassed the continent.
His roar is his response, but it's one tinged with emotion and conflict, pushing Ruth physically back with its sheer force.
Layna isn't giving the Fiendbreaker any quarter -- her persistence in closing in pays off, with the others binding him down and preventing him from using his natural reach to deter her approach. Her fists strike, but it's with additional range this time, winds scything in and causing it to misjudge its guard, another rip tearing through its torso.
Can she save him? It seems that words are having some kind of effect, and perhaps with time, he could be worn down to the point where some measure of acceptance is found, but... time is not their ally in this situation. Time will not wait for anyone.
Reluctance may have cost Leo, but he's not out of the fight; rock rises underneath him, and he launches close to the Fiendbreaker's chest, striking him with the very brilliance that suffuses him. In that moment, perhaps because fate deigns it, he sees the imprint on the dog tags clearly:
ALWAID RONSO
2nd Lt., 4th Division
Much like Layna, some measure of recognition and pain is disrupting his ability to fight well, and it's with that roar that he physically drives Leo back. At the same time, he's inching further towards that lower floor that Ashiya and Magilou have gone to, as if there's still something there he intends to protect...
He can't fail at this task too, now can he?
GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards White Knight Leo's Light Spear Cannon for 66 hit points! GS: Cover applied to White Knight Leo! GS: FP up! Power Burst, Guard bonus, and Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Ashiya Khaimova with Firaga Cross! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked White Knight Leo with Royal Rebuke! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Ruth Pauling with Royal Rebuke! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: Delay expired! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Shige Kiwako with Royal Rebuke! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Acacia Saitani with Zone of Ruin! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 2 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Talia with Ill-Fated Circle! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Layna Manydays with Royal Rebuke! GS: The Fiendbreaker gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: The Fiendbreaker takes 21 damage from Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Layna Manydays takes a solid hit from The Fiendbreaker's Royal Rebuke for 183 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Layna Manydays gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: CRITICAL! Acacia Saitani solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Zone of Ruin for 216 hit points! GS: Acacia Saitani enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Acacia Saitani! GS: CRITICAL! Ashiya Khaimova solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Firaga Cross for 127 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Ashiya Khaimova! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: CRITICAL! White Knight Leo takes a solid hit from The Fiendbreaker's Royal Rebuke for 144 hit points! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Ruth Pauling has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: Ruth Pauling solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Royal Rebuke for 59 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: CRITICAL! Shige Kiwako takes a glancing hit from The Fiendbreaker's Royal Rebuke for 88 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Talia fully evades The Fiendbreaker's Ill-Fated Circle for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Talia gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Disease blocked! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"No argument from me, no?" Talia tells Shige.
She grimaces as Ruth lays into the Fiendbreaker. Pained, angry. There isn't a particular sense of betrayal from Talia, though. For her, a father's loyalty and love is alien; something read about in stories, heard about from others. She just sets her jaw.
The best she can do is try to make sure Rixia survives this, and that this Fiendbreaker doesn't take any more lives.
She looks at Layna, as she rushes in, then Talia nods. "Right. Well... first thing's first, then, no?"
She glances at Leo -- and Talia hesitates a moment, before she ventures: "We'll have to wear him down to have even a chance! Let's focus on what we know we can do!"
The Fiendbreaker's Malevolent glyphs explode. When they do, though, Talia isn't there -- she becomes a suddenly blur of white-gold light, that shoots in a straight line away from the Fiendbreaker. She hits the ground, skidding across it, and then she turns around.
"You don't have to eradicate anything!" she says. "The war, the fighting... it is done!"
She charges in close to him, swings her sword back -- and there's a crack-BOOM of thunder -- and a bolt of lightning slams down into her. Then, Talia slams the sword down for the Fiendbreaker, and sparks explode as her sword strikes down for him.
GS: Talia spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Talia has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Thundara Blade! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Leo's light glints off the tag. He can't not look at it, the guilt inside providing its own magnetic pull as he reads it. Everything is still clear and legible. Another soldier who fought and died in Spira, under his command.
At least now Leo knows his name.
"Alwaid Ronso," the White Knight chokes out. "I'm--
The Hellion that was Alwaid ROARS, and the raw force of it sends Leo stumbling back, his ears ringing. A bright red spot appears in his right eye. A bit more blood trickles from his nose.
"Alwaid," Leo says. His ears have flattened. "I'm sorry. The men who did this are dead." But the man who instigated the war is right here, fighting him, and Leo knows it.
The White Knight falls to his knees, and presses palms into the earth. The stone and strength of Mt. Gagazet flows up his arms and legs, but slowly--thanks due to Leo's roiling emotions disrupting his focus, but a brain used to thinking in meaning and symbols parses it another way.
His ancestral home is so reluctant to help him, now, and rightly so.
GS: White Knight Leo enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked White Knight Leo with Earth Prayer! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 3 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: White Knight Leo gains 32 THP from Regen! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! White Knight Leo accepts White Knight Leo's Earth Prayer for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper and Shield applied to White Knight Leo! GS: Mighty applied to White Knight Leo! GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
"Strictly speaking, I'm not mad, I just want to see her squirm. It's pretty funny," Acacia quips back to Ashiya, though she says it with a particular style of stubbornness that suggests that actually she's kind of mad. Layna too gets a flat stare. "Drifters. I mean, I'm just part-time, so I only get a few ancient immortal beings and heads of state following me around, and my jump-off-cliffs quota is pretty damn low--"
Ashiya jumps off the cliff, and her lips tighten in an 'oh come ON' kind of gesture. "All I'm saying is you're fairly warned."
For all her grousing, for all her feigned aloofness, Acacia can be a very raw kind of person at times. She's not unaffected by the things around her - she just prefers to retreat from things and work through them at her own pace in her own time. Sometimes she lives in her own head a little too much, sometimes she keeps too much back. Watching Ruth explode into a Hellion for Rixia's sake, to scream and roar her feelings out, it's something that she holds a quiet awe over.
"This doesn't feel like someone who wants to be saved," she mutters plainly back to Leo, and that thought of Ruth and her feelings is what injects the note of sympathy in her voice; she raises her useless pistol, training it on the Hellion as it roars again. Her brow furrows; she can't really relate to this very well if she imagines her parents - her father is a banker and the most threatening thing he faces are getting his falsies into his morning sandwich - but she can picture a tired, terrified Kamui very well. "... but save him or not, either option is gonna be better and kinder than this."
She grimaces as the Hellion rallies; a sword comes sweeping in for her, and it's only raw adrenaline that makes her shift and twist aside to try to avoid the word of the blow, her spare hand coming up to try to slap and divert the blade aside. This would probably have worked better if it weren't quite so riddled with power; she gets a burning sensation and a hiss of pain for her troubles, disoriented enough to get engulfed by the energy building beneath her.
Wrenching forward provides her relief, because she can immediately plunge her singed legs into the cool snow. She gasps from the sensation, then again at the unpleasant feeling of snow in her jeans. This may have been a terrible idea, she decides - but as the creature retreats towards the cliff the weapon in her hands starts to keen and glow with a building energy, and she braces against the ground as she sets the pistol and launches a bright, crackling line of light at the Hellion's face.
GS: Acacia Saitani spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Acacia Saitani enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Acacia Saitani has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Mightier than the Sword! GS: Acacia Saitani enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Acacia Saitani has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Talia's Thundara Blade for 123 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Talia! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker takes a solid hit from Acacia Saitani's Mightier than the Sword for 201 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.
Focused on the others, she's not exactly in the best shape of her life and Shige is once again reminding herself that she needs to work on her footwork. There's probably more admonishment there, but that's for later. Adjusting her grip on the lantern, seeing the confusion on the face of the hellion. She dredges up those shades again. Swinging her lantern around to try and protect another again. The figure of another soldier's shade. A medic of some kind stepping from the aether, restorative magic cast. The echo of some past battle to try and protect Acacia. The grey feline ignoring her own injuries for the time being. She had said she wasn't afraid of the other side. She had said she'd protect others. She'll do so until the bitter end.
Talia's comment gets a wry look, "I guess it was kind of cheesy-" she glances back at the fleeting shades, fading away from the last spell and adds, "Caught up in the moment. Sincere though." She's trying to stay focused admittedly and sounds distracted. No longer leaning into one persona or the other.
Either way, she's skirting the edge of the brawl, trying to get towards where Rixia went over the edge. She's a healer, she can help right? Adding to Ruth's comment, "You hurt her again." accusatory, short. Straight forward. "Let us help both of you." Maybe they can jar him out of this rage?
For Leo, she calls out to both him and the hellion, "Call out to her. Give her hope." She definitely could use some. They all could really, but this is... she's trying. They're both something a father figure to her to right?
Shige's lantern keeps casting long shadows. The shades vaguely visible. Something she'll hae to take care of. She can't do anything yet though. She's focused on the living first
GS: Shige Kiwako spends 1 Combo on Inspire! GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked Acacia Saitani with Healer's Phantom! GS: Shige Kiwako has gained 3 Combo! GS: Shige Kiwako has completed her action. GS: Shige Kiwako heals Acacia Saitani! She gains 93 temporary hit points! GS: Acacia Saitani gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
<Pose Tracker> Ashiya Khaimova has posed.
Into the sea of bodies she goes, a tornado of action whose regrets can be sorted out later. Twisted energies from the Hellion above surge and pop, the air itself coming alive with dread intent, but none of it is enough to stop her. "Record casualties for later," Ashiya mutters into a little black case strapped to her arm as she plummets. In midair she spins, instincts feeling the oppressive heat of the oncoming fireball long before it grows near enough to be an issue. The Goddess's gift bares itself before the starfarer, as terrible as any space-age weapon out there.
The sword leaves Ashiya's hand in a heartbeat. A slender steel missile, it departs the orbit of her person like a loosed arrow. By the time it reaches the oncoming burst of magical flame, it is little more than a molten jet of metal. The two collide, the force of the explosion rippling the banners and cloaks of the fallen. Sparks and stone chips fill the air, a dreadful confetti for a party nobody wants to attend. Ashiya's feet finally make landfall at the crevasse's bottom. Tendrils of flame wash over her still, the shockwave of the burst pushes her into the wall, but she doesn't fall. Gold eyes look back upwards at balefully.
There are faces down here of people she knew. Suspicious as they were, they broke bread with her all the same. It's not a trauma she's had to process yet, truly.
"Rixia? We're down here! Where are you?" she calls, again. Ashiya scans back and forth, then hisses quietly again into the box strapped to her arm. Slick and black, it is the size of a pack of cards. Maybe. "Low light. Record."
Heart in her throat, Ashiya glances back upwards. She can feel a pressure, a mental one, pushing down on her. A weight on her shoulders. Before her eyes can perceive it, she knows the threat is advancing towards them. Time to act, which means the making the magic less vulgar isn't really on the cards.
"You--where'd you send her? She's gotta be down here somewhere! Answer me, dammit!" hands ball into fists, and the air shimmers and whorls above the Fellpool's head. It thickens, fading into a hazy blue light, which in turn burns brightly into the shape of a phantasmal sword. It is joined by another--and another, and another. Four swords. They orbit the girl's head like watchful wraiths. A fifth fades into being above them, spins, and flies directly at the form of what was once Alwaid Ronso.
"And if you can't, just--leave me alone! I'll protect her!"
(You already failed at it once...)
GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Ashiya Khaimova receives 100 temporary hit points. GS: Ashiya Khaimova enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Gathering Petals! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has gained 3 Combo! GS: Ashiya Khaimova enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ashiya Khaimova takes 34 damage from Poison! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Ashiya Khaimova's Gathering Petals for 175 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Even something as simple as a roar has the full weight of the Hellionized Ronso's power behind it. No matter how much Ruth hisses, screeches, and otherwise makes noise, that roar completely drowns out the world around her.
Ruth plants the blade of her weapon into the snow to mitigate the force of it trying to throw her back... but has all the appearance of being cowed, her wing wrapping around her as the weight of that lingers. A force that demands to be, no matter how contradictory or self-defeating, lacing some of that into her own emotional baggage.
It's always a challenge to hold oneself. Greater, yet, before a larger, stronger Hellion whose Malvolence is of far greater quantity and concentration.
'This doesn't feel like someone who wants to be saved,' are words that miraculously reach Ruth's good ear from over by Acacia.
"He can only be who he is," Ruth's voice is uncharacteristically measured and sober in the moment, like a different person. "He can decide, or... it was decided for him." It might have been that way years ago.
Her tail wraps around the shaft of her weapon and tugs it free from the ground, urging and working it into her grasp like a tempting serpent wanting her to keep biting into an apple already eaten several times over.
A little bitter laugh, a wicked, fang-filled smile, an itch in her exposed trigger finger. She can't give Rixia, a young girl subject to the horrors of war with almost no emotional support for it, succor from it. She couldn't protect her from something she all but seemed willing to be disappointed by. There's only one good she has, as Ashiya pleads with the far more powerful Hellion taking them all on.
Ruth raises her rifle, nudging aside her wing, and makes peace with pulling the trigger and drowning it all out with the one singular sound her left ear can hear as part of Malevolence's gift to her.
That single deafening report of the Gae Buidhe/Dearg DC4, crisp and loud as the first time she ever fired it and believed she found 'herself' through it, aimed a bit higher along the Fiendbreaker's center of mass.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Anticipated Knock! GS: Recover! Poison removed from Ruth Pauling! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Acacia's flat stare gets a grin right back in return.
"Aye, well, lass, we'll have to get those numbers of yours up, won't we?" Layna replies. ...She can't help but laugh when Ashiya punctuates her statement through action. "I like the way she thinks!"
She nods toward Talia, then.
"Aye. First things first." She agrees.
...But he certainly won't make it easy. Layna grimaces, flinching back against his attack. It's crushing, devastatingly so. She can weather the blow, at least - she has to.
"Aye! All's said and done by this point, lad. Nothing left but dead men." She says, pauses, and tilts her head in the Fiendbreaker's - Alwaid's - direction. "...Deader than you, even."
She shakes her head, though, and shrugs.
"But, if you still wanna fight...! If violence is the only salve to soothe that shattered soul of yours... then fight me! I'll take any blow you can dish out, aye!?" Layna challenges.
It's true, though - it doesn't sound like someone who wants to be saved. But she still owes it to him to try.
Layna rushes the Fiendbreaker down again. This time, rather than going in for another strike, she swings her hand out in a grasping motion - rather than attacking on a physical level, she seeks the steal the power straight from him.
GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Ruth Pauling's Anticipated Knock for 50 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Layna Manydays has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Plunder Power! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 1 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays gains 29 THP from Regen! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Layna Manydays's Plunder Power for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker's Weaken Ward may block the effect! GS: Weaken blocked! GS: Mighty applied to Layna Manydays! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> The Fiendbreaker has posed.
For Talia, a father's loyalty and love is alien; there was -- and still is -- nothing but cruelty and manipulation, from Lubov Yemelin. Is it better to have had love, and then be abandoned, or for there to have never been any love? That's something Rixia would weigh, but she really shouldn't compare those things. These are difficult situations and...
It's best to bank them in on a plan. Wear it down. Focus on what they can do.
Talia's disappeared from the glyphs -- and she punctuates it with cutting words: the war is over.
"The war... over?"
BOOM
The electrified sword scores across the Fiendbreaker's back -- Alwaid's back -- and very physically stumbles him, nearly down to one knee; he persists. For a moment, as Leo informs him that the men that did it are dead, he offers a question of inevitable lament:
"Then... what did I die for?"
It's extremely vulnerable words, but Ruth understands more than anyone how it's in these moments of extreme vulnerability that the contradiction rises highest. When guards are down, unexpected pain leads to even stronger emotions, harsher rebukes--
Violent releases, as his palm thrusts against Leo and Talia to reject them with Firaga, once more in the shape of a cross to add to its trickery. His commitment to the attack leaves him open for Acacia, however; her pistol tears through him, that same lance of light ripping through a shoulder and prompting him to start to slow down. There's only so much energy, so much punishment that even a Malevolence-born creature can endure.
"Begone!"
His response is still agitated; a bare-handed blast, a technique stemming from Demon Fang, which feels, at this point, more like flailing rather than pointed combat, threatening to bowl Acacia over if she's not careful.
Shige's coming up on the edge; she, too, sees just how many bodies are down there. The Summoners could not reach here safely; there's so many that haven't been Sent yet. They'll want their customs, the way it's done in Spira. But there are yet others, foreigners who died on foreign land. Call out to her -- to Rixia, she urges Alwaid and Leo, and that stills him for just a moment.
Enough for it to be upsetting -- and with the contradictions roiling inside of him, it all bleeds out in violence. As it always has. Another rupturous blast from his palm, towards Shige, half-hearted and yet still deadly. He's an agitated beast, in every shape and meaning of it.
Ruth speaks of the nature of Hellions, of how for some of them... even before becoming a Hellion, some people have no choice but to follow the only road they've been given. Perhaps there truly was no choice. Perhaps both choices were horrible. Perhaps the forks further down the road only offered more horrible choices. There's an illusion of agency, but there really was none.
It is time, however, for the four knocks that haunted the Celesti Civil War. The Gae Buidhe/Dearg DC4, the Hellion gazing down her scope... a deafening sound that threatens to envelope his world as much as his roar did hers.
The bullet pierces, in one go. It is a severe, awful thing.
"The war is over, the perpetrators... dead," he repeats Leo's words earlier, questioning Layna. "Then is the mountain... protected?"
He can't see. He can feel the sensations of the departed around him, but he can't see them for what they are -- fallen. Their memories, their resonance, lingers around him, vague and uncertain. It doesn't bring him salvation. As Layna rushes him down, her hand comes for a grasping motion, and she steals that power that he's been building, all into herself. It's a rush of power, with a sensation of blood and gunpowder... and more roars erupt from them, as he invites in Layna's challenge.
Below, Ashiya's sword is gone as she spends it to defend against Althena's Fire, but it doesn't mean she's defenceless. She voices her frustration, not immediately finding Rixia where she's fallen -- but she creates phantasmal swords, in turn, to protect herself -- and one of them stabbing against the Beast, what was once Alwaid. Ephemeral energy punctures his Malevolent flesh, dissolving into smoking blood.
But then, something extremely urgent changes the hopeful situation to one that potentially turns into a nightmare.
Ashiya finds her -- her head of white-pink hair, her white clothes stained red; miraculously, Rixia's wounds have been knitted, and she's not in immediate danger. What sort of mysterious Supreme Sorceress passing by could've done that? The mind boggles!!
Being healed, however, didn't immediately wake her up; she's just stirring now, sitting up, groaning, "Ashe...? Where'm--"
She looks, and yelps. There's corpses around her! And next to her, on the ledge she fell into--
A dead Ronso man, dressed in the robes of Yevon, his body riddled with numerous arrows with the telltale blue mark of Hyland. He's clutching a younger boy, also a Ronso, with blonde hair -- perhaps fifteen years or so -- and he looks to have taken a blast of magic where his chest has horridly caved in.
Where there was something approaching calm in Alwaid, the clear line of sight to Rixia next to these two twig something extremely base and afraid within him. He roars:
"STAY AWAY FROM MY FAMILY!!"
He is a big, black blur in one swift motion, aimed straight at Rixia, bearing down with unmitigated force.
He can't see his family for what they are: dead, and departed.
He can't see her for what she is: his family, alive, clinging on.
There is a HORRIBLE sound, one of two metal blades clashing. Then, an equally audibly horrible sound of flesh ripping. Then, an awful stillness. It's the first few moments of extreme uncertainty that are most gruelling; not having a good, clear view of what happened. Not knowing who lives, and who dies. Alwaid's body is so large it's impossible to tell, but then--
He slowly twists to one side, on his knees, still moving -- but with no aggression left in him. A gunblade is punctured through his torso.
It's not his own gunblade, but the gunblade made in the image of his own. The Sleeping Lion. Rixia's.
"Rixia..." he speaks.
Rixia's pupils are tiny at this point, eyes as wide as saucers. The blood of her father is on her hands. She's not harmed... physically.
GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Shige Kiwako with Royal Release! GS: The Fiendbreaker spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked White Knight Leo with Firaga Cross! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Acacia Saitani with Royal Release! GS: The Fiendbreaker spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Talia with Firaga Cross! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Layna Manydays with Royal Release! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Ruth Pauling with Royal Release! GS: The Fiendbreaker gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: The Fiendbreaker takes 30 damage from Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Talia suffers a terrible blow from The Fiendbreaker's Firaga Cross for 250 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Talia gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Talia! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Sufferer and Gleam activated! GS: Acacia Saitani suffers a terrible blow from The Fiendbreaker's Royal Release for 190 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Acacia Saitani! GS: Ruth Pauling has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: CRITICAL! Ruth Pauling solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Royal Release for 92 hit points! GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated! GS: White Knight Leo suffers a terrible blow from The Fiendbreaker's Firaga Cross for 176 hit points! GS: Poison applied to White Knight Leo! GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"Ah, it has its charm, no?" Talia says, with a quick grin -- and a wink -- at Shige. But it's a fleeting thing; the Fiendbreaker demands her attention.
Her crimson eyes cut to Ashiya. "He can't! He's a Hellion -- lost in his thoughts, his regrets, his emotions!" she says. "He doesn't have control right now--" Not like the other one, Talia thinks, with a glance at Ruth. "--so we'll have to find her ourselves!"
She hits the ground after her strike. Her feet stumble to keep herself upright, and she turns -- eyes on the Fiendbreaker for a moment -- and she grits her teeth as he conjures up a massive blast of flame. Cross-shaped, it explodes out towards her. She throws a hand out.
A barrier of green light erupts, and it impacts it, before the barrier cracks -- and she gets blasted backward. Talia stumbles, rolls, and then hops up again.
"Died...?"
She feels a worry form in her stomach. Malevolence could keep the dead from moving on. Undead Hellions are far from uncommon. She narrows her eyes -- then she launches forward, trying to intercept him before he can get to Rixia.
But she's too late. She crashes down to her feet, just as Rixia's gunblade slams through his chest. Talia's eyes are wide. The color drains from her face. She knows what this moment is like.
Her sword rattles in her hand.
"W-We need a healer!" she screams, her voice hoarse.
GS: CRITICAL! Shige Kiwako partially evades The Fiendbreaker's Royal Release for 157 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Layna Manydays partially evades The Fiendbreaker's Royal Release for 154 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Layna Manydays gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Layna Manydays! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Layna Manydays receives 100 temporary hit points. GS: Layna Manydays enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
The reporter can feel the wash of warmth over her; she's a little busy right now to really pick out where it might be coming from, but she gives the air a solemn nod of thanks on the basis that's probably going to be spotted by whoever did it? Right? It lets her shake her head from where she's still a little blinded by her own blast, sparkly spots dancing in front of her eyes.
"Yeah. I'm not making any judgement, don't get me wrong. Sometimes the world just sucks," she mutters as she tries to dispel the last of the glinting motes, blinking twice in quick succession. "Sometimes the most sympathetic thing you can do is something that doesn't feel all that sympathetic in the moment." Her mouth is fuzzy from the crackling static of her blast; her tongue feels furry and too big as she looks over. If she has anything to say or judge about Ruth's transformation, she doesn't voice it.
There's a hanging moment where the Hellion responds to them all in a more lucid tone, where roaring aggression gives way to a flickering beat of introspection. Still lying in the snow, the reporter can't bring herself to relax, but can't bring herself to move either - her mind roars to her to get up, that the battle isn't over, but she dares not do so in case it breaks this terribly fragile spell over the battlefield.
She pays for that with a blast to the face. There is no hope of dodging this, not when even trying to get herself rolling to one side; she's stiff, the snow's piled in her way after her wild skid earlier, and there's even a little hillock blocking her. Instinctively, she reaches for it and digs in her hands as best she can, ducking her head to curl into a ball - only for her handhold to immediately fail as the impact knocks her backwards.
She's never fighting on a mountain again, she promises herself as she scrabbles for purchase before she ends up going right off the edge. It's by some miracle that she manages to halt her backwards progress, and she can't bring herself to look behind her. Her feet and lower legs are not dangling, thank you, she thinks as she forcibly discards some of the sensations she's feeling and starts to haul herself back onto a better foothold.
The roar from the Hellion pulls her up better than any self-absorbed panic ever could. "Shit--" she scrabbles for purchase, sliding almost on all fours as she clears the space to the curve of the cliff where Rixia fell off. Her mouth opens at the sight beneath her - and then she slowly closes it again, her brow furrowed as she watches, as she forces herself to watch. This is a reporter's duty. This is something that needs to be remembered.
*** You've been idle for two hours or more and are being sent OOC. ***
<Pose Tracker> Ashiya Khaimova has posed.
Too little, too late. Always has been, always is. Seems like it always will be, at this rate.
Dogged own in the grim task of rifling through the sea of bodies for one particular body, Ashiya is too slow to spot Rixia. Too slow to take her to safety, like she'd planned. When she does find her, the moment's relief is as though the world's weight has vanished from her shoulders. "Where's--you mean...?" her mind races to catch up, but it's swimming through a sea of cotton. Exertion and pain make for a slow journey of discovery.
There's the distant roar of the body that belonged to Alwaid Ronso, whose soul has all but snapped in twain at the sight of his own discovery. Wrath supplants all, and he charges the two of them with blade held high. The phantasmal swords around Ashiya's head twirl and spin, pointing at him. Then reflexively, they launch. And each is sundered into plumes of blue-white wisps and fading smoke by the unstoppable force of the berserk Ronso, little more than feckless stones tossed at the oncoming train.
By the time the girl in the grey poncho has lunged forward with hand outstretched to alter the course of this tragedy, it has sped too far down the rails for any change to happen. "Rixia--" she's begun to shout again, but her voice disappears behind the great clashing of blades. Her outstretched hand touches nothing but a viscous arc of dead blood as Rixia's outstretched blade pierces the hulking man's side. Whatever outcome she might have hoped to find: this one wasn't it.
It's as though time resumes afterwards, the Fellpool gal grabbing Rixia by her shoulders. As if to keep her from rocketing away in shock after having done this. The silence is direly uncomfortable. There are no cute phrases, wisdoms, or words she can lend. Just a gulf of powerlessness.
What... did you ever hope to accomplish here, you silly girl?
<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.
She knew it was risky standing on the edge. Holding that light out over the side, trying to get a better look. Healer save thyself is a lesson she should probably take up at some point. She may have evaded enough of the blow to avoid anything permanent, but that doesn't mean she's keeping her footing. A boot slips and she briefly tries to reach out with her claws, trying to grab the hellion, or anything else really. Landing roughly on the same ledge below, wind knocked out of her and more than a little battered. Lapsing back into the past again.
The shadowy figure over her looks at her blank faced. She doesn't know how to read the look there. It looks up and vanishes at the roar, leaving her wondering if it really was there and revealing something she'd rather not see. An enraged hellion, the remnants of a friend's family lost in it's grief. A creature too far gone to see past its nose. She rolls out of the way, trying to get to her feet, trying to figure out what she can do to help. One hand free, claws out and back ready to attack-
It's unnecessary. Sadly. Surrounded by more of the dead and at this point, the dying. She just stands there. Hands at her side, slack with her lantern dangling at the side.
Talia's call for a healer goes unheard at first. It feels like everything was going too slow. Fingers tightening, she grimaces, pain being the first thing to drag her back to the real world. Her brain finally realizes someone was calling for a healer and with a limp, she brings the light up to Rixia, casting the glow across all of them. That same surgeon appearing, crouching down. Trying to save someone he never could have possibly known. One shadowy hand seeming to try and check the state of her injuries, the other casting the magic he's used so many times before on others for the sake of a shaman. Silent, face hidden away by the shadow cast by his ancient helmet. She still hasn't tended to herself and won't be for some time.
Shige's fingers tighten again and she looks to Rixia. Moving to crouch by her. Assisting the spirit, ears twitching as she listens to some unheard commands. Trying to keep Ashiya informed too. "Careful moving her too much- let me work." Short and clipped, clearly relayed. "Stay with us Rixia." She finally gets out, tone shaky. She's still playing catch up. This had gone worse than she had thought even with her earlier misgivings and she had failed to protect her.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
'What did I die for'...? Layna frowns, just a little, at that. That's certainly a rough set of words. And then he asks a question - is the mountain protected?
"...It was pretty bad." Layna admits. "But the Ronso live on, if that's what you're asking."
She rushes him still, and then leaps back defensively in the face of his counterattack. She meant it when she said she'd take it - whatever he needs to be ready.
But the battle is moving, and so is he - and soon, he comes across a terrible sight. That shout...
"Wait, stop!" Layna calls out. It's hard to tell if she's warning Alwaid or Rixia...
...But in the end, it's too late. There's a terrible, terrible sound... and in the end, Rixia's blade is stabbed through Alwaid's chest. The chest of the man she called her father.
"...Rixia, lass..." Layna starts, but the words die on her lips. What does she even say? Does she tell her that he was already dead before she stabbed him?
...Cold comfort, that - compared to the blood on her hands and her blade. Layna grimaces, tipping her hat over her eyes for a brief moment. It's rare to see her at such a loss for words.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
'Then... what did I die for?'
Leo has no answer. His jaw trembles as he rises, Alwaid towering over him. His mouth opens, but no words come out. Alwaid thrusts out his palm--
Fire washes over Leo, and the rock encasing him starts to crumble away. The White Knight pitches forward into the snow, and rolls to douse the fire. Empowered as it is by Alwaid's nature, it takes longer to go out. Every second feels like an eternity. When he finally rises, smoke streaming from his smoldering form, he sees Alwaid moving towards where Rixia fell. A fresh burst of desperation helps him get to his feet. Leo runs after Alwais, and the others, screaming between each gasp for breath!
"ALWAID--! RIXIA! ALWAID, STOP!"
He clambers over the ledge, and sees the bodies. He sees the Hyland fletching on the arrows, faded and tattered from months of exposure to the elements. The banners. Some of the corpses are Hyland soldiers, murdered by Heldalf and his troops and left as 'evidence'. They still haven't been Sent or buried, just like the civilians.
"RIXIA!" Leo sees her.
'STAY AWAY FROM MY FAMILY!!'
He sees who she's sitting next to.
"NO!" The anguished scream tears from Leo's throat. He takes off at a sprint, but trips over the frozen body of a Hyland soldier, and goes tumbling through the charnel field. He hears the sound of a blade piercing flesh. He ends up sprawled on the ground next to the former Guardswoman. His head snaps up.
She's alive. But at the same time, he couldn't spare her. "Rixia," Leo chokes out. He doesn't know what else to say.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
'Then... what did I die for?'
Hearing that question stings ever harder for Ruth, who knows all who fought for Celesti - each and every last one - would ask the same had their lingering sentiments be given voice. This is not Celesti, this is far from there, she has to remind herself consciously which is hard when the Malevolence-fueled urges and their voices are ever louder.
The sequence of events beyond overhearing this is not otherwise meaningfully altered.
Holding her ground against the release of emotion parsed through flame, blood, and gunpowder isn't any easier the second time around as the fallen Ronso's presence hasn't lessened, the smaller Hellion (whom still towers over most here anyway) leaving a muted shriek as she falls lower to a crouch, dragging the claws of her feet, the conspiculously claw-less fingers of her right hand, and the bayonet blade of her rifle raked across this part of the battlefield that snow has yet to reclaim under this Domain of gunpowder and flame.
It's enough to halt her from being blown clean off the mountain, but not enough to put herself between Alwaid and the others. The screaming says all. Ruth's doesn't come in the form of words as she comes to the edge of view of that ghastly scene where a horrid crime took place, just in time to watch...
The stabbing.
Ruth's entire body seizes up, lowering her gaze away from view. The flicking of a serpentine tongue betrays the stillness, knowing what it tastes in the air. Her rifle's blade is stuck into the ground again as she tenses her grip, the elasticity of her Granasian rosary sorely tested as it presses into that exposed right forearm. Her tail squeezes around the length of the weapon, her wing folding up.
Ruth's own Malevolence presence starts to slowly overtake where she stands, a clammy, foggy rain from where she stands. The presence of pyreflies will ensure it doesn't spread far, and Malevolence historically travels much, much more slowly through ice.
Beyond internalized memories threatening to interpose themselves against events actually happening, she yet holds where she stands in unrelenting discipline burdened with a specific piece of foreknowledge Rixia entrusted to her.
There are others suited to be by her.
<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.
Died.
The words leave Talia's lips, but the truth is becoming clearer and clearer. When Seymour Guado and the Yevon forces clashed with Kelk Ronso and the mountain's defenders, only for Georg Heldalf and the soldiers of Hyland and Rolance to turn it into true chaos, from which only the intervention of the Drifters prevented it into an outright massacre...
And the truth is...
Alwaid Ronso fell, on that day, along with his husband and adopted son, to Hyland's arrows, to Yevon's spells, to... circumstance. The method of death truly doesn't matter, at this point. The men responsible are dead.
This is a truth that should be known, Acacia. A truth that should be known as part of the steps that led to the Endless Calm, a turbulent and chaotic series of events that no small amount of people will try to spin to their own ends.
People died here, giving themselves to the mountain. And some people, like Alwaid Ronso...
... had borne enough Malevolence and contradiction to his heart that he wasn't even allowed to die by his own customs, by Spira's customs. He could not be Sent. He could not go to the Farplane. The Malevolence within him repels the Pyreflies, refuses him death, as his beliefs understand it. Something Shige would understand -- the way lost souls are unable to find their path to repose.
Leo's warning, tragically, doesn't come in time -- though the echo of his pained, clipped 'NO!' and his calling her name doesn't go unheard and unseen.
Did Ashiya accomplish nothing, though?
She was here. She's holding Rixia, through the worst of it; she doesn't recognise it right now, she doesn't recognise the tactile feel of blue hands on her shoulders, supporting her. As Shige comes closer, urging her to stay with them, and working at her wounds -- Magilou lifted her out of the danger zone, but there's yet still more work that a healer like Shige can do.
"A-Ashe... Mister Leo... Shige... everyone..." Rixia whimpers, her head spinning from her near-brush with death, the immediacy in which she had to be mended, the frigid cold of the base of the mountain... everything. "Papa..."
Layna explains that the Ronso live on. There's a faint look of relief on Alwaid's face. "Oh... ...good..."
He lowers his head. "I have... one request... Shepherd lass," he asks of Layna, mistaking her role -- he doesn't know of the Seers and Oracles, and only has an outdated frame of reference from someone who frankly didn't brush all that close against it.
"Purify me... that I may return to the Farplane. It rejects me... and that pains me..."
Having addressed her, he turns to look to Rixia. The Malevolence binding his corpse together is starting to unravel -- and perhaps Ruth, and Layna, can sense it quickly making its way into the nearest open vessel that will gladly receive them:
Rixia.
Rixia, who already has a large share of Malevolence on her person, from Pentagulia, from the battle with Heldalf, and is in no emotional position to reject the feeling it amplifies within her right now.
This is a story that started from a father going absent on his daughter.
Eventually, she will reflect back upon it and understand, deep down, that people were there for her.
Ashiya, the strange but funny girl she has a crush on.
Shige, who she befriended and stuck with and shared drink tips.
Talia, who's rescued her several times, a friend through and through.
Acacia, so rough and tumble, but understanding of the difficulties of family.
Ruth, who understood the side of her enticed by the dark.
Leo, and by extension Hilde, who she clung onto as a father figure and role model in Alwaid's absence.
Layna, and by extension Lanval, both guiding figures in her life.
Magilou, and by extension Margaret, in their infinitely strange but great capacities as a mother figure and mentor.
But right now? The heart bleeds, profusely.
Ruth asked if Rixia had to let herself out. Rixia told her that she had something she had to settle first. And at this point...
<Pose Tracker> Ashiya Khaimova has posed.
It's all a little much to take in, isn't it? Ashiya's snapped back to reality by Shige's insistence that she let her work, and in this instant, it's clear that any kind of learned chirurgeon in these parts is a better bet than nothing. She acquiesces quietly. "You stick around with us now, okay? Just hang on there for a bit..." she tries to be reassuring. But she also knows nothing of the matters of the heart, and especially nothing of how they work on this world.
Clueless to the reality of what force is passing from father to daughter, the cloaked Fellpool kneads Rixia's shoulders gently. "Came running fast as I could, and so did everyone else..." she mumbles. Jeez, it's cold--it's been excitement and anticipation and then danger, up until now. As the elation is replaced with anxiety, the frigid air begins to bite harder.
Were there less medical work to be done, she would share something warm to wear. Alas. Not so much, right now.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Alwaid may have already been dead, but it still hits too close to home for Talia.
Her feet stumble backward. She can register that Shige ran forward, but it's all much too late. Her mind jumps to the day she murdered her mother; there's the flash of a shattered window, of rain spilling inside, of ink running down the letter in her hand, of water and blood mixing on the floor. She can't shake that.
Even as she sees the sight in front of her. The color is gone from her face and her sword's tip hits the stones, with a clink.
Talia stares at Rixia, registering the way that Malevolence floods into her. But she can't find words; she can't seem to make herself say anything. It feels like she is watching herself watch this.
She feels, in the face of the tragedy, empty. Words and actions don't come.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Alwaid Ronso was already dead. So was Georg Heldalf, after a fashion. Leo's heart breaks, once again--for Rixia, and for Alwaid, both of whom trusted him. He plants a hand against the ice, and forces himself up. All he can manage is seating himself by Rixia as the others rush in. Alwaid's Malevolence starts to seep out, towards her; there's plenty in the air, despite the ambient pressure of Pyreflies.
"Rixia," Leo says. "Alwaid. I'm sorry." And despite his wounds, he bows so deeply the tip of his horn brushes the ice. His hair falls forwards, hiding the tears in his eyes.
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
As carefully as she dares - again, it feels like moving might suddenly dispel the magic that holds the scene hanging in time like this - Acacia slips her way down the cliff. Her face is drawn, but her body has lost the tension of combat. There's nothing here anymore but dim memories of things that were; her gaze sweeps across the bodies arrayed here, and then to the Hellion as his ire fades.
'What did I die for?'
Her mouth thins into a line once again, and then she looks up with her face set in a determined frown. Layna may have provided some relief by saying that the Ronso live on - but she knows that there's more to the tangle of Spiran history, and she shakes her head. "Not just the Ronso. Mt. Gagazet lives on, and so does all of Spira. Seymour's dead. Sin is gone for good. The Eternal Calm has come. ... so you can rest easy. I'll make sure no-one forgets what happened here," she adds with fire in her eyes.
She's not sure if she has the right to say anything more than that, not when Rixia is in the state she's in, when silence ripples through the air around them. Maybe this isn't the time to offer words of comfort to someone they were just fighting tooth and nail against. But there's a good chance they won't ever get the opportunity again, and if she can do a little to ease his path to the Farplane, so be it. Even if she doesn't feel it, she forces herself to stand tall and face it down.
... if there's something indulgent she adds, it's the way her expression flickers at the moment of silence between the two. She is not good at sensing Malevolence, and possibly wouldn't even care if she were. Because right now, there's something much more important. "Don't... leave things unsaid," she mutters quietly, as much to herself as to the ill-fated family.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Layna looks up again as Rixia speaks.
"...We're here, lass." Layna assures. "We're here."
And then, her attention turns back to Alwaid. At her news, there's relief on his face. ...That's good. She's glad, at least, that she could offer him that much before the end.
And, he has a request for her. She's no Shepherd, but right now, that distinction means little. She is capable, and she is here - and she can't ignore the situation before her. She nods.
"...Aye. Be free, Alwaid Ronso - be free and find your way to where you're meant to be." Layna assures. She extends her left hand, and the bracer pulses a bright blue. Water - pure, clear water - shimmers into existence and falls over Alwaid, swirling around him to wash away the Malevolence binding him to this world.
...But, indeed, Layna can sense the Malevolence escaping him, and she can determine where it's ending up. She's concerned... but right now, if she doesn't tend to Alwaid's request, the situation will only get worse.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth is not unfamiliar to the sensation that comes from lingering in the presence of a fallen Hellion before oneself. Even if you don't outright consume them - something Ruth hasn't done (...as far as she knows) - parts of that disembodied mass of Malevolence from slain Hellions feeds into one's own. It's always another small thing to juggle and focus into one's own emotions, desires, foibles, and traumas.
Malevolence-fueled raindrops roll down the hill, coming to a terminus where the way down to Rixia and the others joining her without fully reaching over. She keeps the urges - to feed into the despair that she can never be anything but a monster - by satiating herself on the growing tension, horror, and lingering hurts of all involved and using that guilt to drain that buzzing from her mind into a weight in her chest. Quietly, prayer for the dead is given to gently lower herself down from the highs of that fight rather than completely emotionally crash.
Rixia has those who care for her right there. One of them seems almost intimate, even. There's a Seer of Water present, doing their sworn duty.
The gargoyle-like Hellion holds where she is, her shadow looming. If any Fiends draw near on them... well, they won't.
<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.
"Y-yeah... thank you, Ashe," Rixia whisper-coughs into Ashe's hands, very quietly. She's already got warm clothes on, but it doesn't feel like they're enough -- the biting cold of Mt. Gagazet is truly relentless, but the coldness she feels is truthfully not one of the mountain, frigid as it is.
She's feeling the coldness of the world open up on her.
"Talia... I'm so sorry," she murmurs, perhaps reading a little of the way the older girl seems so far away, like this is hitting home -- though not in a way she could feasibly guess herself how. How could she, after all? Patricide -- matricide -- can't possibly run so commonly amongst them... right?
The world isn't that callous... right?
Seeing Leo like this, however, drives a pang of guilt in Rixia's heart. "Mister Leo... I-- after Pentagulia... I said things I can't take back, but..." She can't really hold it all in anymore. Tears are forming, even against temperatures that threaten to freeze them.
She thinks of how the world conspired to turn her against Leo, someone she cared about.
Alwaid himself looks, fading as he is, towards Leo. "... in the end, I could not obey my orders, sir. I had to protect my people. ... I apologise. But... I was full glad to serve under you, no matter what." He gives him a very stilted salute.
Ruth stands, her shadow looming, deterring the Fiends from disrupting their moment. The raindrops that is her Domain drips ever close, and she quietly offers a prayer to the fallen, that she may still herself rather than crash. Rixia, too, acknowledges her -- a silent glance towards her, but a respect for the distance she wishes to keep.
Rixia thinks, privately, of how it was the world that turned Ruth into what she was, even long before Malevolence was in the picture.
Acacia explains in greater detail of what has happened, now that he's of a mind to. And the way his expression softens at each miracle that he hears -- of how Sin has been defeated for good (how? he wonders, but privately he knows he has no time), and Spira will usher in a new age of peace... and she urges him, importantly, to not leave anything unsaid.
"... I did something unforgiveable to you, Rixia." His furred hands place ever so gently ontop of her shoulder, ontop of Ashiya's hand. It's a pile of blue on Rixia right now. "No daughter wants to see her dad abandon her, and it tore at my heart every day..."
Layna's power as the Seer of Water starts to wash over him -- and though it undoubtedly liberates him, Venomisation occurs as well, the way it desperately tries to flee and cling to life in Rixia. The incredibly fickle and elusive nature of Malevolence is, after all, how it spreads like a meme, from one person to another. In times of despair, sadness can't help but replicate itself, not unlike a virus.
"I asked 'what if?' so many times. If I'd brought you along with me. If I'd just stayed. Those are useless thoughts right now, so..."
As his form dissipates entirely of Malevolence, he starts to lose coherence and corporeality, the Pyreflies suddenly echoing through his body. His time left on this world can be measured in seconds.
"... you have so much wonderful family here, Rixia. It heartens this old man to know the world didn't give up on you."
Rixia visibly stills at that, feeling the contradiction well up on how she feels about the world.
"... farewell... and..."
And... he never finishes that sentence, because the rest of him separates rapidly enough. Time will not wait... and as the rest of the Pyreflies rise up into the air, as part of his self-Sending as an Unsent, all that's left in the wake of what was once cradling Ashiya and Rixia is...
The blood-stained gunblade, almost comically oversized in how it's as tall as Rixia, and next to it... its smaller counterpart, the Sleeping Lion.
Two gunblades, and two generations.
Like father and child.
Rixia slowly grabs hold of both of them close to her and wails wordlessly, anguish echoing into the setting sun of Mt. Gagazet.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia wanted to check up on Rixia, after she heard. The former assassin-turned-Mystic Knight was worried when she heard she was going to Gagazet. So, she comes along; she has a heavier coat on for the weather, today, and it's dusted with snow as she walks.
Her sword -- her new sword, two-toned gold and silver -- is sheathed at her side. She looks sideways at Rixia, and then she looks ahead at what was once a Ronso.
Now, it's something else.
A Hellion. Her stomach drops for her moment, as she looks over the bodies around it -- and then she sees Rixia charge forward. Her crimson eyes widen. "Rixia, wait--!"
The blade throws her, and Talia gasps, before she goes bolting forward. She leaps close to the Fiendbreaker -- and then Talia's jump ends with her sword tearing free of the scabbard, and thrusting out with three rapid slashes that leave streaks in the air.
"Stardust!"
GS: Blitz! Talia has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Stardust! GS: Talia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Talia takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Mighty and Shield expired! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Talia has canceled their attack on The Fiendbreaker. GS: Talia has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Stardust! GS: Talia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker partially guards Talia's Stardust for 131 hit points! GS: Hyper and Riposte applied to Talia! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Charge bonus activated!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
Acacia still doesn't know Rixia all that well, truth be told, but she can't help but feel a bit of sympathy for the strange young woman who showed up at Klein one day battered and beaten up from her travel luck and begging them for a place to stay. The reporter hadn't meant to take her under her wing or anything like that, but she can spot the hallmarks of someone trying to get away from the life that was ascribed to them. She can get behind that.
And she had a few days off to do what she wanted, and she's been meaning to go to Spira now that the Endless Calm is here because she can sense an opportunity in being a reporter and guide-writer who's knowledgable enough about this 'new world' that's opened up that she can combine Kamui's oldphotos and her scattered, half-started articles and pull together a feature for her newspaper.
Also, uh, she doesn't necessarily trust that Rixia can find her way to Spira without tripping into an interdimensional portal and ending up in the Sorcery Globe or something. And it's been a while since she punched a deadbeat parent, you know?
She kind of wishes it didn't have to be up Mt. Gagazet of all places; she pulls her puffy vest around her and sinks her chin into its neckline, tromping through the snow as best she can. Every so often she gets grumpy and a glint of light precedes part of the snow around her hissing with heat and melting away. Her grousing sets her up to notice the odd feeling in the air; she frowns to herself as Rixia forges forwards, and one hand curls around a twisted, broken pistol in her pocket.
"--eh?-- wait, you dumb--" those are some last words to really regret and beat herself up over later, as Rixia's body (oh so nice of you aki sure just count her out already) sails out of view in a blink of violence. "Weapons up!" she yells urgently. Her own ARM is nothing but a rusted, pitted pile of slag, the barrel too encrusted and melted to even spin.
It doesn't matter; she dives to the side to try to avoid the incoming charge as several lines of light slam into the hellion's knees and ankles. "Bring it down if you can! We--" she hesitates, chewing at her lip. It's not her call to go 'we should probably leave it alive'. It might be an incredibly stupid idea.
GS: Acacia Saitani has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Bury the Lede! GS: Acacia Saitani has gained 1 Combo! GS: Acacia Saitani has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker critically guards Acacia Saitani's Bury the Lede for 27 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple blocked! GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.
The feline did in fact offer to help Rixia find the creature that might have been her adoptive father at some point. Shige had reservations on what they'd have found, but she didn't say anything at the time. She's in her cold weather gear, which admittedly is lighter weight than some would be wearing. She likes the cold! A fur lined cap with goggles and a snow mantle wrapped around a long coaat pants and boots. Hardy enough and cozy in a familiar nostalgic way.
The miasma lingering in the air alone put the shaman on edge. That frazzled cat look pretty unmistakable. She unhooks her lantern from her belt and lifts it high. Long shadows drawing from the ethereal light source. This was timed poorly as Rixia darts away from her, "-Rixia stop!" she fumbles and tries to grab at the girl's hand too late. Giving chase after her. Grimacing as she's stabbed and thrown away. Coming to a stop just out of reach. She checks both sides. Trying to find a way past. Trying to think of a way to get close enough to at least stabalize Rixia. That kind of wound, they're on a time limit and she'd honestly rather not walk a friend home in that state. Been a bad enough few weeks as it is.
With the light raised before her, those shadows begin to move. Taking on the appearance of shades, of those fallen around them. Her resposne to Acacia is a blunt, "Dead or alive, it's coming with me." The shadows manifest, enraged looking shades. Silent, grabbing at the beast. Bitter and cold.
GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Mute Horror! GS: Shige Kiwako has gained 1 Combo! GS: Shige Kiwako has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
The White Knight should not be here. Sin might be gone, but nothing remains in Spira for him but awful memories. Althena did not send him here. His ties with his ancestry are now tenuous at best.
So why is he here? In a word: Rixia. In more words: he heard that Rixia had finally found a lead on her long-lost father. Even if she hates him for what he did, he owes her that much.
Leo is not part of Rixia's party, but he's been following their trail. His long, white cloak blends in easier with the terrain, and the time he spent training here gave him an idea of what to expect. The perilous path, the howling wind, the snow--all of them, he expected. But--
Leo stops in his tracks. His eyes widen, and for a moment he's back here, with Seymour, and--he watches, in horror, as Rixia runs towards the Hellion her father has become. "RIXIA, NO!" The words are a pained howl, and too late, besides. "RIXIA!" He charges forwards, reaching for her, but the Hellion throws her aside. She vanishes into the mist.
"No," Leo says. His ears flatten against his head. What's one more, dead? says the treasonous voice. You've already killed so many. Was it just that you--
"MONSTROSITY!" Leo roars, spittle on his lips.
--knew her? Knew her, because she came to you? Knew her personally?
Leo's blade clears its sheath. He swings with raw violent intent, and the air cuts open. A wave of vacuum force races at the Hellion's head.
GS: White Knight Leo has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Demon Fang! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 3 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Miss Magilou! Miss Magilou! Isn't that Madam Rixia's pawprint?!"
"She has hands, Bienfu. Come on, you know those boards only ever have the dregs of anything."
"But Miss Magilouuuu!!"
"Oh, very WELL --"
Magilou isn't someone it's particularly EASY to contact. Carrier dove is her preferred mode of contact; she'll respond to smoke signals; at a pinch, she might mistake your emergency flare for fireworks and come check it out. And sometimes, her -- secretary? -- let's go with secretary finds appointments for her, too.
Anyway, she's here, now. And she's -- "Freezing, freezing, sneezing, displeasing!" -- normal. She's totally normal, actually.
The weird thing is how her jocular jeering of the weather and Rixia's decisions all kind of set on pause when she finally sees what became of him. Magilou sighs, and brushes some hair, from the side of her face. "... yup." This was never going to be a story with a happy ending, she supposes... not with what's happened, around here.
She recalls what Armatisation was like, before they made it easier on a human. She wonders what she might have said -- if she hadn't already known he was a monster. Would she have asked questions like these, if she had a heart?
Anyway.
Rixia might still have a heart, but Magilou's been stabbed in the belly herself, not so long ago. She happens to know that one or two important bits are in the squishy part, too. Terribly painful, she reflects, as the light doesn't reflect from her eyes -- watching Rixia defy gravity.
Her lips thin to a pressed line.
"Take care of it, if it pleases you," Magilou issues Talia and the others, all too dry. "As for me, I've found all a sudden that I don't much care. I'm out of here."
She hops on her shikigami, and glides in a swooping arc past the Legendary Beast... and further down the chasm.
Is it a coincidence that she's exiting the same way Rixia fell?
She'll tell anyone it is.
GS: The Fiendbreaker suffers a terrible blow from Shige Kiwako's Mute Horror for 0 hit points! GS: Interrupt and Mute applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards White Knight Leo's Demon Fang for 63 hit points! GS: FP up! Power Burst, Guard bonus, and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Rixia's looking for someone, huh... Well, Layna's glad to lend a hand. Mt. Gagazet is a dangerous foe, no matter what one's reason for visiting is. The more people, the more preparation, the better. She tips her hat to the others, tagging along...
They're pointed to a crevasse and ultimately, they do find something.
It isn't a Fiend. It's...
"...Rixia, careful. That's a Hellion!" Layna warns. ...But Rixia rushes toward him anyway.
Layna can't say she blames her. But in the end... Rixia is stabbed. Layna's anger flares.
"You...!" Layna hisses. A green aura surges around her and she rushes forward, body wreathed in wind as she drives a fist right toward the Fiendbreaker.
Acacia doesn't finish her sentence, but Layna can put two-and-two together.
"...Yeah. I'll do what I can." She replies.
GS: Layna Manydays has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Dread Momentum! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 2 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays's stances have changed to Avenger! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Some days ago, Rixia confided the depths of what she was going through... and Ruth confided something about herself in turn. Ever since, Ruth has done her best to keep near with Rixia through her journey back from Klein towards Spira. (She gave ARMS due diligence in letting them know she was going with them and why it was important she did so.)
One of the few unambiguous perks of her spiritual condition - extreme of temperatures do not bother her, even if she arguably already is dressed heavily enough for the weather.
Ruth has kept her concealed shape going up largely because it's difficult not to when the pyreflies are so thick and pushing against any Malevolence of hers that might escape. This, and dealing with Fiends is a decent funnel for the predisposition towards violence all her kind have to deal with. (Emotionally speaking, it's like junk food - you can eat it, and it might feel good in the moment but is ultimately empty colories.)
When the Hellion among them suddenly looks up with eyes widened at the sheer concentration of Malevolence making itself known in one of the places where pyrefly concentrations are especially high, that clues in a lot of things to the Filgaian sharpshooter. Ruth herself is not a lightweight among Hellions.
"Rixia!" Ruth's tone of voice is suddenly sharper and more severe than she normally is conversationally. She doesn't have enough time to articulate to the young woman who has that single tie left to her as to why.
To watch a father strike down a child...
...
Magilou makes her carefully carelessly care-free statement as Magilou swoops along the direction Rixia falls - something not lost in Ruth's keen eyesight.
Some moments later, more pyreflies vacate from the space near Ruth with sharper prismatic color trails suggestive of spiritual friction as another Hellion emerges among them. One who does not come up nearly as tall as the Fiendbreaker, a shriek-filled hiss filling the air as a drawn sniper rifle doubling as an effective polearm sweeps across the ground into an upward, cutting blade aiming for the torso of the far larger Hellion.
Ruth, now in the shape of a single-winged gargoyle-like form, can only be who she is in this moment of growing tragedy.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Scarring Blow! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Layna Manydays's Dread Momentum for 70 hit points! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker suffers a terrible blow from Ruth Pauling's Scarring Blow for 99 hit points! GS: The Fiendbreaker's Jam Ward may block the effect! GS: Jam blocked! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Ashiya Khaimova has posed.
It's been a long couple of months for a certain blue-coloured cat-person. Why would she disappear for any length of time like that? What possible reason would she have? Well... let's just say word reaches the academic board slowly, and being marooned on a distant planet is no excuse for not turning in your thesis. The age of remote work exists out there in space, too.
***
Still clutching message in hand, Ashiya takes the uneven steps three at a time on her flight up the path of Mount Gagazet. A woolen shawl bounces around her shoulders with each step, and little puffs of snow hang on the crisp breeze in her passing. It's been an awfully long time since she last set foot in the mountains, and a dozen thoughts mill in her head. Will they remember her? Will she make it there in time? Will her cover story still hold any water?
(To be fair, maybe the Ronso were just being polite: nobody would -really- believe someone with a Fellpool appearance is any kind of Ronso, even if they have the same colour scheme going on.)
Gold eyes scan the snow-capped peaks above, lingering on something flitting upwards. The telltale glow of one of those odd, spiritual pyreflies. Not a truly unthinkable sight, but then, what is this feeling of anxiety...? Why does the soul scream in warning, of standing before a yawning chasm?
"Ugh. Calm down, heart." Ashiya mutters, running a hand through her windswept hair and electing to sprint straight up a cliff rather than take the long way around. "You're just crushing. Nothing bad's gonna happen. Bad things don't happen to us!" she thumps her chest, declaring empty promises to herself as she pauses atop a rocky perch to look about. Which way to go? Her eyebrow quirks of its own accord. Without knowing why, she quickly holds a lonesome and leafless branch for support.
There is a tremendous roar from deeper within the mountain. The sacred mountain shudders and groans in response, snow tumbling from the peaks. Stoic tears of the land, shed at the sight of such a loss. "Guh." Ashiya vanishes from her perch in a blink of anxiety-driven teenage speed. Footprints dot the snow atop the peak for a brief moment, their owner nothing but a blue and grey blur.
---
Whereas Magilou is possessed of uncountable magical gifts, and could fly to Rixia's aid with fairy-tale speed and precision, the fool in this pose has no such poise or ability. Mere moments too late, she plunges towards the roaring Hellion with a very plain-looking steel sword in one hand. It's just Helm Breaker, let's be real. The intent is such: cleave this clown on the way past, and use her greater velocity to catch up to the fallen Rixia in the ravine.
How's she going to get out again afterwards?
Shut up, that's how.
GS: Ashiya Khaimova has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Waxing Moon Strike! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ashiya Khaimova's stances have changed to Avenger! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker critically guards Ashiya Khaimova's Waxing Moon Strike for 41 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Ashiya Khaimova! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> The Fiendbreaker has posed.
Multiple people prudently call for Rixia to wait, but everything horrible happens in the blink of an eye; Magilou, thankfully, has the means to cut past the Legendary Beast and rush off. She doesn't care! Not at all! It's just a complete coincidence that she's headed off in the same way Rixia fell. Don't worry, Magilou, she won't tell, your aura of cool indifference will be preserved.
A tiny sliver of mercy for Leo, perhaps, is that she got to see that Leo was here, as she flies across the cavern -- that he cared, at her seeming end.
Talia immediately leaps to action, drawing her sword as she goes; Stardust leaves three starry streaks in the air, each slash ripping into the coat of the Hellion with surprisingly solid purchase -- but the blood drawn just seems to nearly-rapidly evaporate and become something... powerful and dangerous.
Acacia calls for weapons, which is a great warning; her rusted pile of garbage nonetheless draws on her Ether and rips light into the flesh of the Beast, rippling fabric and metal underneath as it's stopped underneath her assault for just a brief moment. A louder snarl.
"Machina..."
It speaks, voice a mixture of gloom and cement mixture. And yet, it doesn't feel like it has much consciousness -- it more feels like instinct bubbling up underneath a surface of Malevolence and undeath.
Shige's shadows move, drawing on some of the fallen around her -- she finds the remnants of some of the Ronso, some of the Guado... as far as the fallen of the battlefield go, they aren't particularly old ones. Sentiments still linger here. This is a pit of death. Nonetheless, they grab at the beast, bitter and cold -- but the Beast is just as much a lingering will of the fight, bristling... listening, to its fellow fallen. It stops for a moment.
Leo calls the Beast for what it is -- a monstrosity -- and rips open with a Demon Fang, filled with violence; the Fiendbreaker seems quite knowledgeable of the technique, performing a step-technique that bears the brunt of the worst of the blast while not giving ground.
"White... Knight...!!" it roars.
Leo sees a flash of metal from his neck, as he attacks -- he recognises it for what it is.
An Althenan Guard dog tag.
Here was a creature of contradictions; a Yevonite, trapped in Glenwood and Meribia for so long, who had to sail with his enemies to return back to his homeland. He served under the Althenan Guard banner, despite his conflicts... and in the end...
Layna's own power surges in the form of a green aura, and she wreathes her body and fist in the flow of wind and drives it right into the heart of the Beast. It hits with enough force that it buckles back for a moment, its confident stride disrupted.
Something about Layna has it on edge. Is it her connection as a Seer, to the Oracle of Water?
But Ruth's own transformation has its full attention -- it definitely senses Ruth as another Hellion, though it doesn't seem inclined to do less violence. No, if anything... the way in which her own Malevolence starts to lace against its own just seems to spur it further into bloody combat, even as the air cracks with Ruth's hiss and rising slash, further drawing blood from its armored torso.
More blood flows. More blood evaporates. And that blood evaporates... into power.
Ashiya may not have shikigami or magic, but what she does have is a sweet katana and a finished thesis, and where Ruth is coming in low and rising up, Ashiya is coming in high and going low; it's tough going to try to get past its zone of control to hurry past to where Rixia's fallen, but it's not impossible. It'll just take... a bit of manoeuvring.
Manoeuvring that's going to get harder in just a second, because in response to all these attacks, the Fiendbreaker plunges its gunblade into the ground -- a wellspring of power trickles out of the blade, forming numerous uncountable little fissures of light within the snow.
Those little cracks of light is the only advance warning before violent blasts of power erupt from underneath, dramatically altering the snowy battlefield as clouds of powder snow and gunpowder and Malevolence alike mix into a deadly combination.
GS: The Fiendbreaker spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked The Fiendbreaker with No Mercy! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker's stances have changed to Avenger! GS: Interrupt expired! GS: The Fiendbreaker has activated Force Action: Lock On! GS: Interrupt! Attack weakened! GS: The Fiendbreaker accepts The Fiendbreaker's No Mercy for 0 hit points! GS: Amplify, Hyper, and Poison applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Talia with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Acacia Saitani with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked White Knight Leo with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Shige Kiwako with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Layna Manydays with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Ruth Pauling with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Ashiya Khaimova with Sunder the Sky! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: The Fiendbreaker takes 23 damage from Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has completed her action. GS: Layna Manydays takes a solid hit from The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 300 hit points! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Ashiya Khaimova partially guards The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 225 hit points! GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
GS: CRITICAL! Ruth Pauling suffers a terrible blow from The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 337 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker!
GS: Acacia Saitani solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 187 hit points! GS: FP up! Charge bonus activated! defence again' and it's like 'oh... defensive charge, force charge...'"
GS: COUNTER! Talia counterattacks The Fiendbreaker with Blizzard Blade! GS: CRITICAL! Talia solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 187 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Charge bonus and Gleam activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Talia's Blizzard Blade for 53 hit points! GS: FP up! Power Burst, Guard bonus, and Sufferer activated! GS: White Knight Leo suffers a terrible blow from The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 337 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker!
GS: CRITICAL! Shige Kiwako takes a solid hit from The Fiendbreaker's Sunder the Sky for 300 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"Magilou, I swear to the Goddess, this is not--" Talia steps back from the Foebreaker, as the blood she drew begins to evaporate. "--the time!"
Talia's eyes snap towards Leo's howl. She feels a flush of concern; the last they saw the White Knight, he was fighting them. Did he really regret all he had done? Or was Mystere just a mask? She cannot be sure. But, he seems to be helping today.
Talia glances sideways at Layna, after a moment. "Do--do you think you can purify him?" she asks, hesitating. This one seems rather far gone, but...
She has seen miracles before.
She jumps back with surprise, then, as Ashiya comes plunging down suddenly -- and she takes a moment to realize this must be the Ashe that Rixia had talked about. (She figured it out from her appearance.)
Another Hellion, too -- though this one is on her side. Talia can accept that. Blood evaporates; the little on her sword vanishing, and then she rushes in. She sprints across the ground even as it breaks, ducking and weaving around the blasts of light from the fissures, before one catches her.
She goes into a spin -- leaps -- and does a tight spin. Her sword swings down, ice exploding off the blade, and then exploding upon contacts into a number of crystalline shards. Then, she sweeps her sword out twice.
With each blow, a fang of white light explodes off her sword, and comes crashing down for the Fiendbreaker.
GS: Talia has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Double Demon Fang! GS: Talia has gained 3 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action. @chan/g/ag @CHANNEL doesn't know switch AG. @chan/gag All channels have been gagged.
GS: The Fiendbreaker takes a solid hit from Talia's Double Demon Fang for 108 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cover and Hyper applied to Talia! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
The snow stings at Acacia's skin as she turns her haphazard dive into a roll, pushing up with her knees as her muscles protest at the cold. She can feel how long it's been since she did this, and she hisses slightly under her breath. There's a confused moment where she hears Leo's roar from behind them and for a moment imagines them surrounded between two Hellions; she's not sure how much better it is being pinned between a Hellion and the Guard, but right now she'll take all the help they can get.
"Sure you don't," she mutters back to Magilou as the woman dives after Rixia; the reporter has an innate sense of how aloof nearly-immortal beings work after spending so much time around so many of them, and she's not about to get phased by someone now when she has much bigger concerns to concentrate on, eyes fixed back on the Fiendbreaker.
"Machina my big ass!" the reporter immediately snaps back, a phrase(?) which is meant as a positive(??) taunt(???) but ultimately just acts as a way to burn off some of the sudden tension that runs through her frame. She'd already suspected from the creature's mad charge at Rixia, but the way it rumbles out the word Machina makes her think that whatever it's seeing, it's not seeing them. It's seeing an accumulation of memories and feelings and maybe nothing real at all.
"You really shouldn't listen to me!" she yells back to Layna as the violence erupts around them. "It's a really terrible idea--" that's as far as she gets before the ground is buckling beneath them with an spiderweb of cracks running through it, and it all explodes upwards into her. She has enough time to cover her face, but the impact of the explosion sends her back with a lurch to her heart. There's a moment of empty air around her, and a million terrifying thoughts - getting sent off the edge of the mountain, an avalanche being set off...
Her back hits reassuringly solid stone, so there's that. It gives her a chance to dimly recognize Ashiya's descent and Ruth's-- Ruth. "I'm gonna tell you about every single person who was mysteriously following you one by one and watch you squirm like hell later," she rumbles to herself, gathering herself where she's leant against the wall.
She lifts up to take one step forwards - and then slams her foot down in almost an impression of the Hellion's last move. The fissures that still exist, that haven't quite lost their glow, suddenly flare up again with light - but this time each visibly feeds backwards to where the Hellion still stands in the centre of them all, a dozen loops of energy rising up to pull at the creature's limbs.
GS: Acacia Saitani spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Acacia Saitani has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Stop the Press!! GS: Acacia Saitani has gained 2 Combo! GS: Acacia Saitani has launched an attack Link! GS: Acacia Saitani has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Hit Piece! GS: Acacia Saitani has gained 1 Combo! GS: Acacia Saitani has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Acacia Saitani's Stop the Press! for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Break and Hex applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Acacia Saitani's Hit Piece for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: The Fiendbreaker's Weaken Ward may block the effect! GS: Weaken blocked! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.
Shige's a bit close to the epicenter and this doesn't really do her any favors for fancy footwork, especially as she had been looking for a way to try and get eyes on Rixia. Flung into the air and back by the blast, she lands roughly. The other feline of the group not landing on her feet unfortunately, despite any efforts to preventing that. Laying there in the snow, dazed. She watches the sky for a moment. The shades fading away. She tries to chase the ringing in her ears away. There's some familiarity in laying in the snow after some powerful attack. Surrounded by the dead, the scent of blood in the air.
By memory she lifts her free hand, expecting a ticket there again. With it empty, she works her fingers a few times. This didn't last as long as it felt and the sound almost rushes back in. Sitting up sharply, she ignores the dizziness that came with it and forces herself to her feet.
A thumb brushes away blood and she lifts the lantern again. "Not again." is all she says. Dragging those shades lingering in the area, her memories and her own collection of better times. An old surgeon wearing older armor appearing behind her, the muted sounds of some forgotten mamrching song just at the edge of hearing as the spectre raises his arms, wreathed in energy and begins to work to try and help the situation. Rather than lapsing into despair, she's tried something else. She's tried to bring about the resiliance of those past, those who had their own hardships.
Memories, shades, it doesn't matter. They magic's its own kind of healing.
"Keep on your feet, we're taking him down and saving her!" Magilou had already started that process. She hopes they're in time. She doesn't let it show on her face. She can't lapse into dark thoughts, not here. Not now.
GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked Ashiya Khaimova with Rousing Spirits! GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked Ruth Pauling with Rousing Spirits! GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked Layna Manydays with Rousing Spirits! GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked Magilou with Rousing Spirits! GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked White Knight Leo with Rousing Spirits! GS: Shige Kiwako has gained 2 Combo! GS: Shige Kiwako has completed her action. GS: Shige Kiwako heals Layna Manydays! She gains 178 temporary hit points! GS: Regen applied to Layna Manydays! GS: Shige Kiwako heals Ruth Pauling! She gains 182 temporary hit points! GS: Regen applied to Ruth Pauling!
<Pose Tracker> Ashiya Khaimova has posed.
Ashiya's plan to dive into the crevasse after Rixia without so much as a dramatic shout runs into a hitch. Namely: the gargantuan creature which once was a Ronso, with friends and dreams and loves of its own, and the fact that it isn't going down that easily. Her diving cut is in fine form, but a nightmare such as this calls for far more than well-polished basics. By the time the blue-haired catfolk has yanked her sword free and pranced back onto one foot in preparation for departure, the howling monster has plunged that Gunblade into the ground and pulled the trigger--both literally, for it is a weapon with a trigger, and metaphorically, where we refer to the execution of a special move. Duh.
There's a moment's recognition before the blast wave hits. Ashiya glances sidelong at Talia, who she doesn't truly -know-, per se, but has a good feeling about. Would that they could meet under better conditions. "Oh. Watch out," she helpfully points out before the Gunblade's raidwide goes off. The shockwave catches the poncho-wearing catte and flings her into the crevasse wall, where she leaves a person-sized network of spiderwebbing cracks.
She leans forward with a groan. "Don't be too mad at her," Ashiya quips at Acacia from afar, as if they were old buddies all along. It's just how she rolls. "Trouble just kinda follows her, and I didn't keep up this time."
One hand breaks free of the rocky bed, and cups something invisible in the air. "Sorry, pal, but I'm no purifying priestess. You can tangle with these guys." she mutters, eyes on the Breaker of Fiend(e)s. There's a moment of concentration. Pallid runes the hue of green grass and spilled ink dance in the palm of Ashiya's hand, becoming infinitismally smaller and denser with each moment. Less a beautiful tapistry of runes as you might know them, and more like a smushed line of computer code.
One gloved hand clenches, and shackles of burnished emerald light whip out of thin air around the Gunblade-wielding monster. Let him contend with student-level warcrime magics! She's got a cute girl to save.
Ashiya spreads her arms wide and falls into the ravine.
Again.
"Rixia! Hold on!" she hollers, which is cute, because she's not usually a name-hollerer. Awww.
GS: CRITICAL! Shige Kiwako heals Ashiya Khaimova! She gains 230 temporary hit points! GS: Regen applied to Ashiya Khaimova! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has attacked The Fiendbreaker with CODE: Hazard! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ashiya Khaimova gains 30 THP from Regen! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker takes a solid hit from Ashiya Khaimova's CODE: Hazard for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker's Jam Ward may block the effect! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Mute and Slow applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: Jam blocked! GS: Hyper applied to Ashiya Khaimova! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Shige Kiwako heals White Knight Leo! He gains 176 temporary hit points! GS: Regen applied to White Knight Leo! GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
The gunblade plunges into the ground, and Ruth does not move from the epicenter as she recovers from the inertia of her swing, her glowing eyes meeting his as it drives the worst of her forward. There is someone here who did not wish harm nor wrong to someone Rixia loved enough to keep her going, her discordant heart feeding into the Malevolence as an abortive attempt at a follow-up tackle finds its foil in the immense explosions from the cracks.
Ruth's purple blood in this state stains the ground, fresh cuts and burns that won't receive greater attention to detail in this moment. The horror is not the wounds themselves, but that the friendly(?) Hellion among them flinches from it for all the span of a second and little more, clawed feet digging into the snow and ice to prevent her from losing too much ground as adrenaline papers over the level of grievous injury standing in all that did.
For Hellions in the throes of instinctually-driven mutual violence, this is a normal sight and why it is not a life lived lightly (or, more often than not, for long at all).
Shige is already on the ball in seeing to those already hurt, shades of soldiers long gone clinging to cause where blood and breath no longer exists for them providing their backing. None of whom Ruth could have known, nor they her. That she has the glint of her own tags against the light gives that connection between them of soldiers still fighting.
"You were her world!!" Ruth's pained screaming is just able to be made out over the hissing escaping her throat as she spits blood-laced saliva on the ground, bared fangs and all like a beast. (That Ruth can articulate herself and hold to a reason to not descend fully into it is a grace.)
Tears stream down her face as her Domain fights to find purchase against the Fiendbreaker's own. Near Ruth, the moisture in the air goes from the shape of snow and ice to warmer, clammier rain that starts to downpour in greater concentration and pool where she stands.
"Sssshe lovesss you!!" Words just above monstrous hissing, sweeping her wing out wide in threat posture as that pooled rain floods into a wave of water outwards towards the Ronso whose heart was overtaken by conflict.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Deluge! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling gains 32 THP from Regen! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker suffers a terrible blow from Ruth Pauling's Deluge for 78 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Delay applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: Riposte applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Layna's fist makes an impact and she leaps back to ready herself for a second charge - which is right when the Fiendbreaker stabs its gunblade into the earth. She hears Ashiya's 'watch out' just a little too late. Energy leaks out, and then explodes all around them. Layna leaps back, cursing as one nearly detonates betwen her feet. She lands - only to immediately get consumed by the next and blasted back.
She hits the ground, but quickly rolls back up to a standing position. The healing presence of Shige's spirits washes over her, and she sends her a nod before looking back toward the Fiendbreaker.
"...'S a strong one, aye?" Layna mutters, rolling her shoulders. She looks toward Talia, then, and considers the question.
"...Good question. Ultimately, that's gonna depend on him. ...And honestly, I can't tell that there's much left. I'll give it an honest shot if I get the chance, but..." She stats, trailing off uncertainly with a shrug. As for Acacia, Layna sends her a grin.
"Unfortunately, I live for terrible ideas. The worse, the better." She replies. Case in point - she rushes in toward the Fiendbreaker again. She swings her fist - but this time, wind scythes off of it, slashing at the Fiendbreaker with the sharpness of a blade.
GS: Layna Manydays has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Cutlass Gale! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 2 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays gains 31 THP from Regen! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker critically guards Layna Manydays's Cutlass Gale for 49 hit points! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
The Fiendbreaker has unknowingly given Leo something to focus his rage on--a monster he can bring to justice. His ears twitch as the thing's voice reaches them--is there some remnant of the man's consciousness in there, or is this a body, reanimated by Malevolence? It feels--
'White... Knight!!'
Something flashes in the dim light. Leo instantly recognizes it. One of his first acts as White Knight was to commission them. Some called it a frivolous expense, but at the time, Leo had simply wished for his soldiers to be identified, and to make it home--even if they were grievously wounded, or killed.
This one made it home. Guilt tightens around Leo's heart like a spiked vise.
That second of hesitation--Leo's reluctance to strike one of his own soldiers, his own kin--costs him. The ground beneath him erupts, riddles his body with ice and stone. The White Knight lands on his back, his breath leaving him in a cry of pain.
The light of Shige's lantern washes across the battlefield. A hazy silhouette appears, towering over Leo, arms crossed. Biran Ronso looks down at him, the arrow that killed him still protruding from his throat. Very pointedly, he makes no move to help Leo. His gaze says it all: is he really so weak as to die here?
The chirugeon's power sinks in a moment later, dulling the pain. Leo plants a gloved hand on the snow and surges to his feet, leaving splotches of red on the churned-up earth. "Layna," Leo chokes out, his voice almost as desperate and despairing as Ruth's. "Can you--can you save him?!" Is there anything left to save?
Leo gestures downwards. The rock beneath him rises, a pillar of Mt. Gagazet bearing him up. Once it reaches about fifteen feet, Leo leaps from it, driving his blade for the Fiendbreaker's chest. A flash of brilliant light hits mere moments before the weapon itself.
GS: White Knight Leo has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Light Spear Cannon! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 1 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo gains 28 THP from Regen! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> The Fiendbreaker has posed.
Can the Hellion be purified? One fact known to them now is that the Hellion must be willing, but... what becomes of a Beast that hardly has any reasoning of his own any longer? It doesn't even feel like there's anything vaguely cognitive there any longer... brief flashes of insight and--
"Must eradicate..."
Perhaps it rejects that notion, even as Talia's combination attack between her blizzard-charged blade followed tightly by dual fangs of white light all crush into him; he's stepped through those once more, enduring the pain, and slashes in return at her -- even if the slash misses, he leaves behind Malevolent glyphs, a technique Rixia's similarly used with Fire ones, which explode in mere seconds after his circular motion.
Acacia's taunts... seem to fall on deaf ears. At the very least, it doesn't seem like they care about big butts, and they're not lying. Still, Acacia's counterattack comes in square and effective -- returning the technique of the Beast against itself, foot driving ether into those fissures and drawing loops of energy to attempt to bind it down. It... works, for a few precious scant seconds--
But then there's a flare of Malevolence, as it violently drives back against her and uses that surprisingly long sword and the natural reach of its arm to launch a surprise attack against the reporter, and where blade touches the ground, another burst of disaster threatens to catch her under her feet.
Shige reels, but rallies all the same, surrounded by the dead. The old surgeon comes; wreathed in the energy of those departed, she brings power into the air, providing succor and motivation to the group. She's not completely spared attention; just freely unfettered from Acacia's bindings, a burst of energy lashes back against the spirit guide, this Fiendbreaker operating on more than just physical combat -- it also operates on manipulating energy to deter those at range.
"My... brethren..." it seems distracted, still, by the souls of the departed. In particular, the spirits of the Ronso around him...
Ashiya's persistence is starting to pay off -- its attention is divided some seven ways, and a non-physical assault like she does with her Symbology (?) or perhaps just mysterious suspicious smartphone code further shackles the Fiendbreaker for long enough for her to drop a floor down into...
Well, it's more corpses.
It's not actually that far from the battlefield, all told; she can see the bodies of the Guado, the Ronso, intermixed in with the dead Fiends... and even one or two Rolance and Hyland soldiers here, their banners of red and blue in tatters where their blood doesn't cover.
She's not free, though. The heat around her starts to climb at alarming temperatures as the Fiendbreaker thrusts its arm out, even bound -- and the sensation of Althena's Black Magic can be felt as it bombs the area Ashiya's fallen into with Firaga, in the shape of a cross.
That's the kind of edgy detail we like to see.
Fire is very swiftly followed by water, however; Ruth's wave crashes against its form, eliciting a rather pained snarl -- pain that very much seems to motivate it. The Hellion punctuates her spell with barbed words, which seem to find just a little bit more purchase against the immense fog that is its conscience.
His daughter loved her. Enough to follow him to the end of the world.
"Daughter...?"
This was a man beset on all sides by conflict. The adopted daughter he took in reluctantly, and grew to love. The family he equally loved, back in Mt. Gagazet. His loyalty to Yevon, as a relic-hunter, wielding a heretical Machina-weapon in the way Yevon's Flamethrower Corps once did; and his recruitment into the Guard, something that eventually turned into a war that encompassed the continent.
His roar is his response, but it's one tinged with emotion and conflict, pushing Ruth physically back with its sheer force.
Layna isn't giving the Fiendbreaker any quarter -- her persistence in closing in pays off, with the others binding him down and preventing him from using his natural reach to deter her approach. Her fists strike, but it's with additional range this time, winds scything in and causing it to misjudge its guard, another rip tearing through its torso.
Can she save him? It seems that words are having some kind of effect, and perhaps with time, he could be worn down to the point where some measure of acceptance is found, but... time is not their ally in this situation. Time will not wait for anyone.
Reluctance may have cost Leo, but he's not out of the fight; rock rises underneath him, and he launches close to the Fiendbreaker's chest, striking him with the very brilliance that suffuses him. In that moment, perhaps because fate deigns it, he sees the imprint on the dog tags clearly:
ALWAID RONSO
2nd Lt., 4th Division
Much like Layna, some measure of recognition and pain is disrupting his ability to fight well, and it's with that roar that he physically drives Leo back. At the same time, he's inching further towards that lower floor that Ashiya and Magilou have gone to, as if there's still something there he intends to protect...
He can't fail at this task too, now can he?
GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards White Knight Leo's Light Spear Cannon for 66 hit points! GS: Cover applied to White Knight Leo! GS: FP up! Power Burst, Guard bonus, and Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Ashiya Khaimova with Firaga Cross! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked White Knight Leo with Royal Rebuke! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Ruth Pauling with Royal Rebuke! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: Delay expired! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Shige Kiwako with Royal Rebuke! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Acacia Saitani with Zone of Ruin! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 2 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Talia with Ill-Fated Circle! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Layna Manydays with Royal Rebuke! GS: The Fiendbreaker gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: The Fiendbreaker takes 21 damage from Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Layna Manydays takes a solid hit from The Fiendbreaker's Royal Rebuke for 183 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Layna Manydays gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: CRITICAL! Acacia Saitani solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Zone of Ruin for 216 hit points! GS: Acacia Saitani enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: RUIN! All positive status effects and temporary hit points purged from Acacia Saitani! GS: CRITICAL! Ashiya Khaimova solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Firaga Cross for 127 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Ashiya Khaimova! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: CRITICAL! White Knight Leo takes a solid hit from The Fiendbreaker's Royal Rebuke for 144 hit points! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Ruth Pauling has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: Ruth Pauling solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Royal Rebuke for 59 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: CRITICAL! Shige Kiwako takes a glancing hit from The Fiendbreaker's Royal Rebuke for 88 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Talia fully evades The Fiendbreaker's Ill-Fated Circle for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Talia gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Disease blocked! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"No argument from me, no?" Talia tells Shige.
She grimaces as Ruth lays into the Fiendbreaker. Pained, angry. There isn't a particular sense of betrayal from Talia, though. For her, a father's loyalty and love is alien; something read about in stories, heard about from others. She just sets her jaw.
The best she can do is try to make sure Rixia survives this, and that this Fiendbreaker doesn't take any more lives.
She looks at Layna, as she rushes in, then Talia nods. "Right. Well... first thing's first, then, no?"
She glances at Leo -- and Talia hesitates a moment, before she ventures: "We'll have to wear him down to have even a chance! Let's focus on what we know we can do!"
The Fiendbreaker's Malevolent glyphs explode. When they do, though, Talia isn't there -- she becomes a suddenly blur of white-gold light, that shoots in a straight line away from the Fiendbreaker. She hits the ground, skidding across it, and then she turns around.
"You don't have to eradicate anything!" she says. "The war, the fighting... it is done!"
She charges in close to him, swings her sword back -- and there's a crack-BOOM of thunder -- and a bolt of lightning slams down into her. Then, Talia slams the sword down for the Fiendbreaker, and sparks explode as her sword strikes down for him.
GS: Talia spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Talia has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Thundara Blade! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Leo's light glints off the tag. He can't not look at it, the guilt inside providing its own magnetic pull as he reads it. Everything is still clear and legible. Another soldier who fought and died in Spira, under his command.
At least now Leo knows his name.
"Alwaid Ronso," the White Knight chokes out. "I'm--
The Hellion that was Alwaid ROARS, and the raw force of it sends Leo stumbling back, his ears ringing. A bright red spot appears in his right eye. A bit more blood trickles from his nose.
"Alwaid," Leo says. His ears have flattened. "I'm sorry. The men who did this are dead." But the man who instigated the war is right here, fighting him, and Leo knows it.
The White Knight falls to his knees, and presses palms into the earth. The stone and strength of Mt. Gagazet flows up his arms and legs, but slowly--thanks due to Leo's roiling emotions disrupting his focus, but a brain used to thinking in meaning and symbols parses it another way.
His ancestral home is so reluctant to help him, now, and rightly so.
GS: White Knight Leo enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: White Knight Leo has attacked White Knight Leo with Earth Prayer! GS: White Knight Leo has gained 3 Combo! GS: White Knight Leo enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: White Knight Leo gains 32 THP from Regen! GS: White Knight Leo has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! White Knight Leo accepts White Knight Leo's Earth Prayer for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper and Shield applied to White Knight Leo! GS: Mighty applied to White Knight Leo! GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
"Strictly speaking, I'm not mad, I just want to see her squirm. It's pretty funny," Acacia quips back to Ashiya, though she says it with a particular style of stubbornness that suggests that actually she's kind of mad. Layna too gets a flat stare. "Drifters. I mean, I'm just part-time, so I only get a few ancient immortal beings and heads of state following me around, and my jump-off-cliffs quota is pretty damn low--"
Ashiya jumps off the cliff, and her lips tighten in an 'oh come ON' kind of gesture. "All I'm saying is you're fairly warned."
For all her grousing, for all her feigned aloofness, Acacia can be a very raw kind of person at times. She's not unaffected by the things around her - she just prefers to retreat from things and work through them at her own pace in her own time. Sometimes she lives in her own head a little too much, sometimes she keeps too much back. Watching Ruth explode into a Hellion for Rixia's sake, to scream and roar her feelings out, it's something that she holds a quiet awe over.
"This doesn't feel like someone who wants to be saved," she mutters plainly back to Leo, and that thought of Ruth and her feelings is what injects the note of sympathy in her voice; she raises her useless pistol, training it on the Hellion as it roars again. Her brow furrows; she can't really relate to this very well if she imagines her parents - her father is a banker and the most threatening thing he faces are getting his falsies into his morning sandwich - but she can picture a tired, terrified Kamui very well. "... but save him or not, either option is gonna be better and kinder than this."
She grimaces as the Hellion rallies; a sword comes sweeping in for her, and it's only raw adrenaline that makes her shift and twist aside to try to avoid the word of the blow, her spare hand coming up to try to slap and divert the blade aside. This would probably have worked better if it weren't quite so riddled with power; she gets a burning sensation and a hiss of pain for her troubles, disoriented enough to get engulfed by the energy building beneath her.
Wrenching forward provides her relief, because she can immediately plunge her singed legs into the cool snow. She gasps from the sensation, then again at the unpleasant feeling of snow in her jeans. This may have been a terrible idea, she decides - but as the creature retreats towards the cliff the weapon in her hands starts to keen and glow with a building energy, and she braces against the ground as she sets the pistol and launches a bright, crackling line of light at the Hellion's face.
GS: Acacia Saitani spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Acacia Saitani enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Acacia Saitani has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Mightier than the Sword! GS: Acacia Saitani enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Acacia Saitani has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Talia's Thundara Blade for 123 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Talia! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: The Fiendbreaker takes a solid hit from Acacia Saitani's Mightier than the Sword for 201 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.
Focused on the others, she's not exactly in the best shape of her life and Shige is once again reminding herself that she needs to work on her footwork. There's probably more admonishment there, but that's for later. Adjusting her grip on the lantern, seeing the confusion on the face of the hellion. She dredges up those shades again. Swinging her lantern around to try and protect another again. The figure of another soldier's shade. A medic of some kind stepping from the aether, restorative magic cast. The echo of some past battle to try and protect Acacia. The grey feline ignoring her own injuries for the time being. She had said she wasn't afraid of the other side. She had said she'd protect others. She'll do so until the bitter end.
Talia's comment gets a wry look, "I guess it was kind of cheesy-" she glances back at the fleeting shades, fading away from the last spell and adds, "Caught up in the moment. Sincere though." She's trying to stay focused admittedly and sounds distracted. No longer leaning into one persona or the other.
Either way, she's skirting the edge of the brawl, trying to get towards where Rixia went over the edge. She's a healer, she can help right? Adding to Ruth's comment, "You hurt her again." accusatory, short. Straight forward. "Let us help both of you." Maybe they can jar him out of this rage?
For Leo, she calls out to both him and the hellion, "Call out to her. Give her hope." She definitely could use some. They all could really, but this is... she's trying. They're both something a father figure to her to right?
Shige's lantern keeps casting long shadows. The shades vaguely visible. Something she'll hae to take care of. She can't do anything yet though. She's focused on the living first
GS: Shige Kiwako spends 1 Combo on Inspire! GS: Shige Kiwako has attacked Acacia Saitani with Healer's Phantom! GS: Shige Kiwako has gained 3 Combo! GS: Shige Kiwako has completed her action. GS: Shige Kiwako heals Acacia Saitani! She gains 93 temporary hit points! GS: Acacia Saitani gains 2 Combo from Inspire!
<Pose Tracker> Ashiya Khaimova has posed.
Into the sea of bodies she goes, a tornado of action whose regrets can be sorted out later. Twisted energies from the Hellion above surge and pop, the air itself coming alive with dread intent, but none of it is enough to stop her. "Record casualties for later," Ashiya mutters into a little black case strapped to her arm as she plummets. In midair she spins, instincts feeling the oppressive heat of the oncoming fireball long before it grows near enough to be an issue. The Goddess's gift bares itself before the starfarer, as terrible as any space-age weapon out there.
The sword leaves Ashiya's hand in a heartbeat. A slender steel missile, it departs the orbit of her person like a loosed arrow. By the time it reaches the oncoming burst of magical flame, it is little more than a molten jet of metal. The two collide, the force of the explosion rippling the banners and cloaks of the fallen. Sparks and stone chips fill the air, a dreadful confetti for a party nobody wants to attend. Ashiya's feet finally make landfall at the crevasse's bottom. Tendrils of flame wash over her still, the shockwave of the burst pushes her into the wall, but she doesn't fall. Gold eyes look back upwards at balefully.
There are faces down here of people she knew. Suspicious as they were, they broke bread with her all the same. It's not a trauma she's had to process yet, truly.
"Rixia? We're down here! Where are you?" she calls, again. Ashiya scans back and forth, then hisses quietly again into the box strapped to her arm. Slick and black, it is the size of a pack of cards. Maybe. "Low light. Record."
Heart in her throat, Ashiya glances back upwards. She can feel a pressure, a mental one, pushing down on her. A weight on her shoulders. Before her eyes can perceive it, she knows the threat is advancing towards them. Time to act, which means the making the magic less vulgar isn't really on the cards.
"You--where'd you send her? She's gotta be down here somewhere! Answer me, dammit!" hands ball into fists, and the air shimmers and whorls above the Fellpool's head. It thickens, fading into a hazy blue light, which in turn burns brightly into the shape of a phantasmal sword. It is joined by another--and another, and another. Four swords. They orbit the girl's head like watchful wraiths. A fifth fades into being above them, spins, and flies directly at the form of what was once Alwaid Ronso.
"And if you can't, just--leave me alone! I'll protect her!"
(You already failed at it once...)
GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Ashiya Khaimova receives 100 temporary hit points. GS: Ashiya Khaimova enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Gathering Petals! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has gained 3 Combo! GS: Ashiya Khaimova enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ashiya Khaimova takes 34 damage from Poison! GS: Ashiya Khaimova has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Ashiya Khaimova's Gathering Petals for 175 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Even something as simple as a roar has the full weight of the Hellionized Ronso's power behind it. No matter how much Ruth hisses, screeches, and otherwise makes noise, that roar completely drowns out the world around her.
Ruth plants the blade of her weapon into the snow to mitigate the force of it trying to throw her back... but has all the appearance of being cowed, her wing wrapping around her as the weight of that lingers. A force that demands to be, no matter how contradictory or self-defeating, lacing some of that into her own emotional baggage.
It's always a challenge to hold oneself. Greater, yet, before a larger, stronger Hellion whose Malvolence is of far greater quantity and concentration.
'This doesn't feel like someone who wants to be saved,' are words that miraculously reach Ruth's good ear from over by Acacia.
"He can only be who he is," Ruth's voice is uncharacteristically measured and sober in the moment, like a different person. "He can decide, or... it was decided for him." It might have been that way years ago.
Her tail wraps around the shaft of her weapon and tugs it free from the ground, urging and working it into her grasp like a tempting serpent wanting her to keep biting into an apple already eaten several times over.
A little bitter laugh, a wicked, fang-filled smile, an itch in her exposed trigger finger. She can't give Rixia, a young girl subject to the horrors of war with almost no emotional support for it, succor from it. She couldn't protect her from something she all but seemed willing to be disappointed by. There's only one good she has, as Ashiya pleads with the far more powerful Hellion taking them all on.
Ruth raises her rifle, nudging aside her wing, and makes peace with pulling the trigger and drowning it all out with the one singular sound her left ear can hear as part of Malevolence's gift to her.
That single deafening report of the Gae Buidhe/Dearg DC4, crisp and loud as the first time she ever fired it and believed she found 'herself' through it, aimed a bit higher along the Fiendbreaker's center of mass.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Anticipated Knock! GS: Recover! Poison removed from Ruth Pauling! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Acacia's flat stare gets a grin right back in return.
"Aye, well, lass, we'll have to get those numbers of yours up, won't we?" Layna replies. ...She can't help but laugh when Ashiya punctuates her statement through action. "I like the way she thinks!"
She nods toward Talia, then.
"Aye. First things first." She agrees.
...But he certainly won't make it easy. Layna grimaces, flinching back against his attack. It's crushing, devastatingly so. She can weather the blow, at least - she has to.
"Aye! All's said and done by this point, lad. Nothing left but dead men." She says, pauses, and tilts her head in the Fiendbreaker's - Alwaid's - direction. "...Deader than you, even."
She shakes her head, though, and shrugs.
"But, if you still wanna fight...! If violence is the only salve to soothe that shattered soul of yours... then fight me! I'll take any blow you can dish out, aye!?" Layna challenges.
It's true, though - it doesn't sound like someone who wants to be saved. But she still owes it to him to try.
Layna rushes the Fiendbreaker down again. This time, rather than going in for another strike, she swings her hand out in a grasping motion - rather than attacking on a physical level, she seeks the steal the power straight from him.
GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Ruth Pauling's Anticipated Knock for 50 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Layna Manydays has attacked The Fiendbreaker with Plunder Power! GS: Layna Manydays has gained 1 Combo! GS: Layna Manydays gains 29 THP from Regen! GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action. GS: The Fiendbreaker solidly guards Layna Manydays's Plunder Power for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! The Fiendbreaker gains 1 additional Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker's Weaken Ward may block the effect! GS: Weaken blocked! GS: Mighty applied to Layna Manydays! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> The Fiendbreaker has posed.
For Talia, a father's loyalty and love is alien; there was -- and still is -- nothing but cruelty and manipulation, from Lubov Yemelin. Is it better to have had love, and then be abandoned, or for there to have never been any love? That's something Rixia would weigh, but she really shouldn't compare those things. These are difficult situations and...
It's best to bank them in on a plan. Wear it down. Focus on what they can do.
Talia's disappeared from the glyphs -- and she punctuates it with cutting words: the war is over.
"The war... over?"
BOOM
The electrified sword scores across the Fiendbreaker's back -- Alwaid's back -- and very physically stumbles him, nearly down to one knee; he persists. For a moment, as Leo informs him that the men that did it are dead, he offers a question of inevitable lament:
"Then... what did I die for?"
It's extremely vulnerable words, but Ruth understands more than anyone how it's in these moments of extreme vulnerability that the contradiction rises highest. When guards are down, unexpected pain leads to even stronger emotions, harsher rebukes--
Violent releases, as his palm thrusts against Leo and Talia to reject them with Firaga, once more in the shape of a cross to add to its trickery. His commitment to the attack leaves him open for Acacia, however; her pistol tears through him, that same lance of light ripping through a shoulder and prompting him to start to slow down. There's only so much energy, so much punishment that even a Malevolence-born creature can endure.
"Begone!"
His response is still agitated; a bare-handed blast, a technique stemming from Demon Fang, which feels, at this point, more like flailing rather than pointed combat, threatening to bowl Acacia over if she's not careful.
Shige's coming up on the edge; she, too, sees just how many bodies are down there. The Summoners could not reach here safely; there's so many that haven't been Sent yet. They'll want their customs, the way it's done in Spira. But there are yet others, foreigners who died on foreign land. Call out to her -- to Rixia, she urges Alwaid and Leo, and that stills him for just a moment.
Enough for it to be upsetting -- and with the contradictions roiling inside of him, it all bleeds out in violence. As it always has. Another rupturous blast from his palm, towards Shige, half-hearted and yet still deadly. He's an agitated beast, in every shape and meaning of it.
Ruth speaks of the nature of Hellions, of how for some of them... even before becoming a Hellion, some people have no choice but to follow the only road they've been given. Perhaps there truly was no choice. Perhaps both choices were horrible. Perhaps the forks further down the road only offered more horrible choices. There's an illusion of agency, but there really was none.
It is time, however, for the four knocks that haunted the Celesti Civil War. The Gae Buidhe/Dearg DC4, the Hellion gazing down her scope... a deafening sound that threatens to envelope his world as much as his roar did hers.
The bullet pierces, in one go. It is a severe, awful thing.
"The war is over, the perpetrators... dead," he repeats Leo's words earlier, questioning Layna. "Then is the mountain... protected?"
He can't see. He can feel the sensations of the departed around him, but he can't see them for what they are -- fallen. Their memories, their resonance, lingers around him, vague and uncertain. It doesn't bring him salvation. As Layna rushes him down, her hand comes for a grasping motion, and she steals that power that he's been building, all into herself. It's a rush of power, with a sensation of blood and gunpowder... and more roars erupt from them, as he invites in Layna's challenge.
Below, Ashiya's sword is gone as she spends it to defend against Althena's Fire, but it doesn't mean she's defenceless. She voices her frustration, not immediately finding Rixia where she's fallen -- but she creates phantasmal swords, in turn, to protect herself -- and one of them stabbing against the Beast, what was once Alwaid. Ephemeral energy punctures his Malevolent flesh, dissolving into smoking blood.
But then, something extremely urgent changes the hopeful situation to one that potentially turns into a nightmare.
Ashiya finds her -- her head of white-pink hair, her white clothes stained red; miraculously, Rixia's wounds have been knitted, and she's not in immediate danger. What sort of mysterious Supreme Sorceress passing by could've done that? The mind boggles!!
Being healed, however, didn't immediately wake her up; she's just stirring now, sitting up, groaning, "Ashe...? Where'm--"
She looks, and yelps. There's corpses around her! And next to her, on the ledge she fell into--
A dead Ronso man, dressed in the robes of Yevon, his body riddled with numerous arrows with the telltale blue mark of Hyland. He's clutching a younger boy, also a Ronso, with blonde hair -- perhaps fifteen years or so -- and he looks to have taken a blast of magic where his chest has horridly caved in.
Where there was something approaching calm in Alwaid, the clear line of sight to Rixia next to these two twig something extremely base and afraid within him. He roars:
"STAY AWAY FROM MY FAMILY!!"
He is a big, black blur in one swift motion, aimed straight at Rixia, bearing down with unmitigated force.
He can't see his family for what they are: dead, and departed.
He can't see her for what she is: his family, alive, clinging on.
There is a HORRIBLE sound, one of two metal blades clashing. Then, an equally audibly horrible sound of flesh ripping. Then, an awful stillness. It's the first few moments of extreme uncertainty that are most gruelling; not having a good, clear view of what happened. Not knowing who lives, and who dies. Alwaid's body is so large it's impossible to tell, but then--
He slowly twists to one side, on his knees, still moving -- but with no aggression left in him. A gunblade is punctured through his torso.
It's not his own gunblade, but the gunblade made in the image of his own. The Sleeping Lion. Rixia's.
"Rixia..." he speaks.
Rixia's pupils are tiny at this point, eyes as wide as saucers. The blood of her father is on her hands. She's not harmed... physically.
GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Shige Kiwako with Royal Release! GS: The Fiendbreaker spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked White Knight Leo with Firaga Cross! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Acacia Saitani with Royal Release! GS: The Fiendbreaker spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Talia with Firaga Cross! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Layna Manydays with Royal Release! GS: The Fiendbreaker has gained 1 Combo! GS: The Fiendbreaker has attacked Ruth Pauling with Royal Release! GS: The Fiendbreaker gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: The Fiendbreaker takes 30 damage from Poison! GS: The Fiendbreaker has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Talia suffers a terrible blow from The Fiendbreaker's Firaga Cross for 250 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Talia gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Talia! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Sufferer and Gleam activated! GS: Acacia Saitani suffers a terrible blow from The Fiendbreaker's Royal Release for 190 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Acacia Saitani! GS: Ruth Pauling has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: CRITICAL! Ruth Pauling solidly guards The Fiendbreaker's Royal Release for 92 hit points! GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated! GS: White Knight Leo suffers a terrible blow from The Fiendbreaker's Firaga Cross for 176 hit points! GS: Poison applied to White Knight Leo! GS: FP up! Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"Ah, it has its charm, no?" Talia says, with a quick grin -- and a wink -- at Shige. But it's a fleeting thing; the Fiendbreaker demands her attention.
Her crimson eyes cut to Ashiya. "He can't! He's a Hellion -- lost in his thoughts, his regrets, his emotions!" she says. "He doesn't have control right now--" Not like the other one, Talia thinks, with a glance at Ruth. "--so we'll have to find her ourselves!"
She hits the ground after her strike. Her feet stumble to keep herself upright, and she turns -- eyes on the Fiendbreaker for a moment -- and she grits her teeth as he conjures up a massive blast of flame. Cross-shaped, it explodes out towards her. She throws a hand out.
A barrier of green light erupts, and it impacts it, before the barrier cracks -- and she gets blasted backward. Talia stumbles, rolls, and then hops up again.
"Died...?"
She feels a worry form in her stomach. Malevolence could keep the dead from moving on. Undead Hellions are far from uncommon. She narrows her eyes -- then she launches forward, trying to intercept him before he can get to Rixia.
But she's too late. She crashes down to her feet, just as Rixia's gunblade slams through his chest. Talia's eyes are wide. The color drains from her face. She knows what this moment is like.
Her sword rattles in her hand.
"W-We need a healer!" she screams, her voice hoarse.
GS: CRITICAL! Shige Kiwako partially evades The Fiendbreaker's Royal Release for 157 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Layna Manydays partially evades The Fiendbreaker's Royal Release for 154 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Layna Manydays gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Layna Manydays! GS: Hyper applied to The Fiendbreaker! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Layna Manydays receives 100 temporary hit points. GS: Layna Manydays enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
The reporter can feel the wash of warmth over her; she's a little busy right now to really pick out where it might be coming from, but she gives the air a solemn nod of thanks on the basis that's probably going to be spotted by whoever did it? Right? It lets her shake her head from where she's still a little blinded by her own blast, sparkly spots dancing in front of her eyes.
"Yeah. I'm not making any judgement, don't get me wrong. Sometimes the world just sucks," she mutters as she tries to dispel the last of the glinting motes, blinking twice in quick succession. "Sometimes the most sympathetic thing you can do is something that doesn't feel all that sympathetic in the moment." Her mouth is fuzzy from the crackling static of her blast; her tongue feels furry and too big as she looks over. If she has anything to say or judge about Ruth's transformation, she doesn't voice it.
There's a hanging moment where the Hellion responds to them all in a more lucid tone, where roaring aggression gives way to a flickering beat of introspection. Still lying in the snow, the reporter can't bring herself to relax, but can't bring herself to move either - her mind roars to her to get up, that the battle isn't over, but she dares not do so in case it breaks this terribly fragile spell over the battlefield.
She pays for that with a blast to the face. There is no hope of dodging this, not when even trying to get herself rolling to one side; she's stiff, the snow's piled in her way after her wild skid earlier, and there's even a little hillock blocking her. Instinctively, she reaches for it and digs in her hands as best she can, ducking her head to curl into a ball - only for her handhold to immediately fail as the impact knocks her backwards.
She's never fighting on a mountain again, she promises herself as she scrabbles for purchase before she ends up going right off the edge. It's by some miracle that she manages to halt her backwards progress, and she can't bring herself to look behind her. Her feet and lower legs are not dangling, thank you, she thinks as she forcibly discards some of the sensations she's feeling and starts to haul herself back onto a better foothold.
The roar from the Hellion pulls her up better than any self-absorbed panic ever could. "Shit--" she scrabbles for purchase, sliding almost on all fours as she clears the space to the curve of the cliff where Rixia fell off. Her mouth opens at the sight beneath her - and then she slowly closes it again, her brow furrowed as she watches, as she forces herself to watch. This is a reporter's duty. This is something that needs to be remembered.
*** You've been idle for two hours or more and are being sent OOC. ***
<Pose Tracker> Ashiya Khaimova has posed.
Too little, too late. Always has been, always is. Seems like it always will be, at this rate.
Dogged own in the grim task of rifling through the sea of bodies for one particular body, Ashiya is too slow to spot Rixia. Too slow to take her to safety, like she'd planned. When she does find her, the moment's relief is as though the world's weight has vanished from her shoulders. "Where's--you mean...?" her mind races to catch up, but it's swimming through a sea of cotton. Exertion and pain make for a slow journey of discovery.
There's the distant roar of the body that belonged to Alwaid Ronso, whose soul has all but snapped in twain at the sight of his own discovery. Wrath supplants all, and he charges the two of them with blade held high. The phantasmal swords around Ashiya's head twirl and spin, pointing at him. Then reflexively, they launch. And each is sundered into plumes of blue-white wisps and fading smoke by the unstoppable force of the berserk Ronso, little more than feckless stones tossed at the oncoming train.
By the time the girl in the grey poncho has lunged forward with hand outstretched to alter the course of this tragedy, it has sped too far down the rails for any change to happen. "Rixia--" she's begun to shout again, but her voice disappears behind the great clashing of blades. Her outstretched hand touches nothing but a viscous arc of dead blood as Rixia's outstretched blade pierces the hulking man's side. Whatever outcome she might have hoped to find: this one wasn't it.
It's as though time resumes afterwards, the Fellpool gal grabbing Rixia by her shoulders. As if to keep her from rocketing away in shock after having done this. The silence is direly uncomfortable. There are no cute phrases, wisdoms, or words she can lend. Just a gulf of powerlessness.
What... did you ever hope to accomplish here, you silly girl?
<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.
She knew it was risky standing on the edge. Holding that light out over the side, trying to get a better look. Healer save thyself is a lesson she should probably take up at some point. She may have evaded enough of the blow to avoid anything permanent, but that doesn't mean she's keeping her footing. A boot slips and she briefly tries to reach out with her claws, trying to grab the hellion, or anything else really. Landing roughly on the same ledge below, wind knocked out of her and more than a little battered. Lapsing back into the past again.
The shadowy figure over her looks at her blank faced. She doesn't know how to read the look there. It looks up and vanishes at the roar, leaving her wondering if it really was there and revealing something she'd rather not see. An enraged hellion, the remnants of a friend's family lost in it's grief. A creature too far gone to see past its nose. She rolls out of the way, trying to get to her feet, trying to figure out what she can do to help. One hand free, claws out and back ready to attack-
It's unnecessary. Sadly. Surrounded by more of the dead and at this point, the dying. She just stands there. Hands at her side, slack with her lantern dangling at the side.
Talia's call for a healer goes unheard at first. It feels like everything was going too slow. Fingers tightening, she grimaces, pain being the first thing to drag her back to the real world. Her brain finally realizes someone was calling for a healer and with a limp, she brings the light up to Rixia, casting the glow across all of them. That same surgeon appearing, crouching down. Trying to save someone he never could have possibly known. One shadowy hand seeming to try and check the state of her injuries, the other casting the magic he's used so many times before on others for the sake of a shaman. Silent, face hidden away by the shadow cast by his ancient helmet. She still hasn't tended to herself and won't be for some time.
Shige's fingers tighten again and she looks to Rixia. Moving to crouch by her. Assisting the spirit, ears twitching as she listens to some unheard commands. Trying to keep Ashiya informed too. "Careful moving her too much- let me work." Short and clipped, clearly relayed. "Stay with us Rixia." She finally gets out, tone shaky. She's still playing catch up. This had gone worse than she had thought even with her earlier misgivings and she had failed to protect her.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
'What did I die for'...? Layna frowns, just a little, at that. That's certainly a rough set of words. And then he asks a question - is the mountain protected?
"...It was pretty bad." Layna admits. "But the Ronso live on, if that's what you're asking."
She rushes him still, and then leaps back defensively in the face of his counterattack. She meant it when she said she'd take it - whatever he needs to be ready.
But the battle is moving, and so is he - and soon, he comes across a terrible sight. That shout...
"Wait, stop!" Layna calls out. It's hard to tell if she's warning Alwaid or Rixia...
...But in the end, it's too late. There's a terrible, terrible sound... and in the end, Rixia's blade is stabbed through Alwaid's chest. The chest of the man she called her father.
"...Rixia, lass..." Layna starts, but the words die on her lips. What does she even say? Does she tell her that he was already dead before she stabbed him?
...Cold comfort, that - compared to the blood on her hands and her blade. Layna grimaces, tipping her hat over her eyes for a brief moment. It's rare to see her at such a loss for words.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
'Then... what did I die for?'
Leo has no answer. His jaw trembles as he rises, Alwaid towering over him. His mouth opens, but no words come out. Alwaid thrusts out his palm--
Fire washes over Leo, and the rock encasing him starts to crumble away. The White Knight pitches forward into the snow, and rolls to douse the fire. Empowered as it is by Alwaid's nature, it takes longer to go out. Every second feels like an eternity. When he finally rises, smoke streaming from his smoldering form, he sees Alwaid moving towards where Rixia fell. A fresh burst of desperation helps him get to his feet. Leo runs after Alwais, and the others, screaming between each gasp for breath!
"ALWAID--! RIXIA! ALWAID, STOP!"
He clambers over the ledge, and sees the bodies. He sees the Hyland fletching on the arrows, faded and tattered from months of exposure to the elements. The banners. Some of the corpses are Hyland soldiers, murdered by Heldalf and his troops and left as 'evidence'. They still haven't been Sent or buried, just like the civilians.
"RIXIA!" Leo sees her.
'STAY AWAY FROM MY FAMILY!!'
He sees who she's sitting next to.
"NO!" The anguished scream tears from Leo's throat. He takes off at a sprint, but trips over the frozen body of a Hyland soldier, and goes tumbling through the charnel field. He hears the sound of a blade piercing flesh. He ends up sprawled on the ground next to the former Guardswoman. His head snaps up.
She's alive. But at the same time, he couldn't spare her. "Rixia," Leo chokes out. He doesn't know what else to say.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
'Then... what did I die for?'
Hearing that question stings ever harder for Ruth, who knows all who fought for Celesti - each and every last one - would ask the same had their lingering sentiments be given voice. This is not Celesti, this is far from there, she has to remind herself consciously which is hard when the Malevolence-fueled urges and their voices are ever louder.
The sequence of events beyond overhearing this is not otherwise meaningfully altered.
Holding her ground against the release of emotion parsed through flame, blood, and gunpowder isn't any easier the second time around as the fallen Ronso's presence hasn't lessened, the smaller Hellion (whom still towers over most here anyway) leaving a muted shriek as she falls lower to a crouch, dragging the claws of her feet, the conspiculously claw-less fingers of her right hand, and the bayonet blade of her rifle raked across this part of the battlefield that snow has yet to reclaim under this Domain of gunpowder and flame.
It's enough to halt her from being blown clean off the mountain, but not enough to put herself between Alwaid and the others. The screaming says all. Ruth's doesn't come in the form of words as she comes to the edge of view of that ghastly scene where a horrid crime took place, just in time to watch...
The stabbing.
Ruth's entire body seizes up, lowering her gaze away from view. The flicking of a serpentine tongue betrays the stillness, knowing what it tastes in the air. Her rifle's blade is stuck into the ground again as she tenses her grip, the elasticity of her Granasian rosary sorely tested as it presses into that exposed right forearm. Her tail squeezes around the length of the weapon, her wing folding up.
Ruth's own Malevolence presence starts to slowly overtake where she stands, a clammy, foggy rain from where she stands. The presence of pyreflies will ensure it doesn't spread far, and Malevolence historically travels much, much more slowly through ice.
Beyond internalized memories threatening to interpose themselves against events actually happening, she yet holds where she stands in unrelenting discipline burdened with a specific piece of foreknowledge Rixia entrusted to her.
There are others suited to be by her.
<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.
Died.
The words leave Talia's lips, but the truth is becoming clearer and clearer. When Seymour Guado and the Yevon forces clashed with Kelk Ronso and the mountain's defenders, only for Georg Heldalf and the soldiers of Hyland and Rolance to turn it into true chaos, from which only the intervention of the Drifters prevented it into an outright massacre...
And the truth is...
Alwaid Ronso fell, on that day, along with his husband and adopted son, to Hyland's arrows, to Yevon's spells, to... circumstance. The method of death truly doesn't matter, at this point. The men responsible are dead.
This is a truth that should be known, Acacia. A truth that should be known as part of the steps that led to the Endless Calm, a turbulent and chaotic series of events that no small amount of people will try to spin to their own ends.
People died here, giving themselves to the mountain. And some people, like Alwaid Ronso...
... had borne enough Malevolence and contradiction to his heart that he wasn't even allowed to die by his own customs, by Spira's customs. He could not be Sent. He could not go to the Farplane. The Malevolence within him repels the Pyreflies, refuses him death, as his beliefs understand it. Something Shige would understand -- the way lost souls are unable to find their path to repose.
Leo's warning, tragically, doesn't come in time -- though the echo of his pained, clipped 'NO!' and his calling her name doesn't go unheard and unseen.
Did Ashiya accomplish nothing, though?
She was here. She's holding Rixia, through the worst of it; she doesn't recognise it right now, she doesn't recognise the tactile feel of blue hands on her shoulders, supporting her. As Shige comes closer, urging her to stay with them, and working at her wounds -- Magilou lifted her out of the danger zone, but there's yet still more work that a healer like Shige can do.
"A-Ashe... Mister Leo... Shige... everyone..." Rixia whimpers, her head spinning from her near-brush with death, the immediacy in which she had to be mended, the frigid cold of the base of the mountain... everything. "Papa..."
Layna explains that the Ronso live on. There's a faint look of relief on Alwaid's face. "Oh... ...good..."
He lowers his head. "I have... one request... Shepherd lass," he asks of Layna, mistaking her role -- he doesn't know of the Seers and Oracles, and only has an outdated frame of reference from someone who frankly didn't brush all that close against it.
"Purify me... that I may return to the Farplane. It rejects me... and that pains me..."
Having addressed her, he turns to look to Rixia. The Malevolence binding his corpse together is starting to unravel -- and perhaps Ruth, and Layna, can sense it quickly making its way into the nearest open vessel that will gladly receive them:
Rixia.
Rixia, who already has a large share of Malevolence on her person, from Pentagulia, from the battle with Heldalf, and is in no emotional position to reject the feeling it amplifies within her right now.
This is a story that started from a father going absent on his daughter.
Eventually, she will reflect back upon it and understand, deep down, that people were there for her.
Ashiya, the strange but funny girl she has a crush on.
Shige, who she befriended and stuck with and shared drink tips.
Talia, who's rescued her several times, a friend through and through.
Acacia, so rough and tumble, but understanding of the difficulties of family.
Ruth, who understood the side of her enticed by the dark.
Leo, and by extension Hilde, who she clung onto as a father figure and role model in Alwaid's absence.
Layna, and by extension Lanval, both guiding figures in her life.
Magilou, and by extension Margaret, in their infinitely strange but great capacities as a mother figure and mentor.
But right now? The heart bleeds, profusely.
Ruth asked if Rixia had to let herself out. Rixia told her that she had something she had to settle first. And at this point...
<Pose Tracker> Ashiya Khaimova has posed.
It's all a little much to take in, isn't it? Ashiya's snapped back to reality by Shige's insistence that she let her work, and in this instant, it's clear that any kind of learned chirurgeon in these parts is a better bet than nothing. She acquiesces quietly. "You stick around with us now, okay? Just hang on there for a bit..." she tries to be reassuring. But she also knows nothing of the matters of the heart, and especially nothing of how they work on this world.
Clueless to the reality of what force is passing from father to daughter, the cloaked Fellpool kneads Rixia's shoulders gently. "Came running fast as I could, and so did everyone else..." she mumbles. Jeez, it's cold--it's been excitement and anticipation and then danger, up until now. As the elation is replaced with anxiety, the frigid air begins to bite harder.
Were there less medical work to be done, she would share something warm to wear. Alas. Not so much, right now.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Alwaid may have already been dead, but it still hits too close to home for Talia.
Her feet stumble backward. She can register that Shige ran forward, but it's all much too late. Her mind jumps to the day she murdered her mother; there's the flash of a shattered window, of rain spilling inside, of ink running down the letter in her hand, of water and blood mixing on the floor. She can't shake that.
Even as she sees the sight in front of her. The color is gone from her face and her sword's tip hits the stones, with a clink.
Talia stares at Rixia, registering the way that Malevolence floods into her. But she can't find words; she can't seem to make herself say anything. It feels like she is watching herself watch this.
She feels, in the face of the tragedy, empty. Words and actions don't come.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Alwaid Ronso was already dead. So was Georg Heldalf, after a fashion. Leo's heart breaks, once again--for Rixia, and for Alwaid, both of whom trusted him. He plants a hand against the ice, and forces himself up. All he can manage is seating himself by Rixia as the others rush in. Alwaid's Malevolence starts to seep out, towards her; there's plenty in the air, despite the ambient pressure of Pyreflies.
"Rixia," Leo says. "Alwaid. I'm sorry." And despite his wounds, he bows so deeply the tip of his horn brushes the ice. His hair falls forwards, hiding the tears in his eyes.
<Pose Tracker> Acacia Saitani has posed.
As carefully as she dares - again, it feels like moving might suddenly dispel the magic that holds the scene hanging in time like this - Acacia slips her way down the cliff. Her face is drawn, but her body has lost the tension of combat. There's nothing here anymore but dim memories of things that were; her gaze sweeps across the bodies arrayed here, and then to the Hellion as his ire fades.
'What did I die for?'
Her mouth thins into a line once again, and then she looks up with her face set in a determined frown. Layna may have provided some relief by saying that the Ronso live on - but she knows that there's more to the tangle of Spiran history, and she shakes her head. "Not just the Ronso. Mt. Gagazet lives on, and so does all of Spira. Seymour's dead. Sin is gone for good. The Eternal Calm has come. ... so you can rest easy. I'll make sure no-one forgets what happened here," she adds with fire in her eyes.
She's not sure if she has the right to say anything more than that, not when Rixia is in the state she's in, when silence ripples through the air around them. Maybe this isn't the time to offer words of comfort to someone they were just fighting tooth and nail against. But there's a good chance they won't ever get the opportunity again, and if she can do a little to ease his path to the Farplane, so be it. Even if she doesn't feel it, she forces herself to stand tall and face it down.
... if there's something indulgent she adds, it's the way her expression flickers at the moment of silence between the two. She is not good at sensing Malevolence, and possibly wouldn't even care if she were. Because right now, there's something much more important. "Don't... leave things unsaid," she mutters quietly, as much to herself as to the ill-fated family.
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.
Layna looks up again as Rixia speaks.
"...We're here, lass." Layna assures. "We're here."
And then, her attention turns back to Alwaid. At her news, there's relief on his face. ...That's good. She's glad, at least, that she could offer him that much before the end.
And, he has a request for her. She's no Shepherd, but right now, that distinction means little. She is capable, and she is here - and she can't ignore the situation before her. She nods.
"...Aye. Be free, Alwaid Ronso - be free and find your way to where you're meant to be." Layna assures. She extends her left hand, and the bracer pulses a bright blue. Water - pure, clear water - shimmers into existence and falls over Alwaid, swirling around him to wash away the Malevolence binding him to this world.
...But, indeed, Layna can sense the Malevolence escaping him, and she can determine where it's ending up. She's concerned... but right now, if she doesn't tend to Alwaid's request, the situation will only get worse.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth is not unfamiliar to the sensation that comes from lingering in the presence of a fallen Hellion before oneself. Even if you don't outright consume them - something Ruth hasn't done (...as far as she knows) - parts of that disembodied mass of Malevolence from slain Hellions feeds into one's own. It's always another small thing to juggle and focus into one's own emotions, desires, foibles, and traumas.
Malevolence-fueled raindrops roll down the hill, coming to a terminus where the way down to Rixia and the others joining her without fully reaching over. She keeps the urges - to feed into the despair that she can never be anything but a monster - by satiating herself on the growing tension, horror, and lingering hurts of all involved and using that guilt to drain that buzzing from her mind into a weight in her chest. Quietly, prayer for the dead is given to gently lower herself down from the highs of that fight rather than completely emotionally crash.
Rixia has those who care for her right there. One of them seems almost intimate, even. There's a Seer of Water present, doing their sworn duty.
The gargoyle-like Hellion holds where she is, her shadow looming. If any Fiends draw near on them... well, they won't.
<Pose Tracker> Rixia has posed.
"Y-yeah... thank you, Ashe," Rixia whisper-coughs into Ashe's hands, very quietly. She's already got warm clothes on, but it doesn't feel like they're enough -- the biting cold of Mt. Gagazet is truly relentless, but the coldness she feels is truthfully not one of the mountain, frigid as it is.
She's feeling the coldness of the world open up on her.
"Talia... I'm so sorry," she murmurs, perhaps reading a little of the way the older girl seems so far away, like this is hitting home -- though not in a way she could feasibly guess herself how. How could she, after all? Patricide -- matricide -- can't possibly run so commonly amongst them... right?
The world isn't that callous... right?
Seeing Leo like this, however, drives a pang of guilt in Rixia's heart. "Mister Leo... I-- after Pentagulia... I said things I can't take back, but..." She can't really hold it all in anymore. Tears are forming, even against temperatures that threaten to freeze them.
She thinks of how the world conspired to turn her against Leo, someone she cared about.
Alwaid himself looks, fading as he is, towards Leo. "... in the end, I could not obey my orders, sir. I had to protect my people. ... I apologise. But... I was full glad to serve under you, no matter what." He gives him a very stilted salute.
Ruth stands, her shadow looming, deterring the Fiends from disrupting their moment. The raindrops that is her Domain drips ever close, and she quietly offers a prayer to the fallen, that she may still herself rather than crash. Rixia, too, acknowledges her -- a silent glance towards her, but a respect for the distance she wishes to keep.
Rixia thinks, privately, of how it was the world that turned Ruth into what she was, even long before Malevolence was in the picture.
Acacia explains in greater detail of what has happened, now that he's of a mind to. And the way his expression softens at each miracle that he hears -- of how Sin has been defeated for good (how? he wonders, but privately he knows he has no time), and Spira will usher in a new age of peace... and she urges him, importantly, to not leave anything unsaid.
"... I did something unforgiveable to you, Rixia." His furred hands place ever so gently ontop of her shoulder, ontop of Ashiya's hand. It's a pile of blue on Rixia right now. "No daughter wants to see her dad abandon her, and it tore at my heart every day..."
Layna's power as the Seer of Water starts to wash over him -- and though it undoubtedly liberates him, Venomisation occurs as well, the way it desperately tries to flee and cling to life in Rixia. The incredibly fickle and elusive nature of Malevolence is, after all, how it spreads like a meme, from one person to another. In times of despair, sadness can't help but replicate itself, not unlike a virus.
"I asked 'what if?' so many times. If I'd brought you along with me. If I'd just stayed. Those are useless thoughts right now, so..."
As his form dissipates entirely of Malevolence, he starts to lose coherence and corporeality, the Pyreflies suddenly echoing through his body. His time left on this world can be measured in seconds.
"... you have so much wonderful family here, Rixia. It heartens this old man to know the world didn't give up on you."
Rixia visibly stills at that, feeling the contradiction well up on how she feels about the world.
"... farewell... and..."
And... he never finishes that sentence, because the rest of him separates rapidly enough. Time will not wait... and as the rest of the Pyreflies rise up into the air, as part of his self-Sending as an Unsent, all that's left in the wake of what was once cradling Ashiya and Rixia is...
The blood-stained gunblade, almost comically oversized in how it's as tall as Rixia, and next to it... its smaller counterpart, the Sleeping Lion.
Two gunblades, and two generations.
Like father and child.
Rixia slowly grabs hold of both of them close to her and wails wordlessly, anguish echoing into the setting sun of Mt. Gagazet.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Rixia was one of the people who left Leo clinging to consciousness in the depths of Pentagulia. He remembers the look in her eyes when she unleashed the full of her sorcery. But despite her worries, there's no anger in his eyes as he slowly rises from his bow--just tears.
'Our home,' Leo wants to say, to Alwaid, but it sounds hollow. His voice trembles, as he speaks. "Go," he says. "Rest well." His hand rises in a shaky salute.
Alwaid's form comes apart. Rixia howls with a grief he knows all too well. He doesn't have the words for her, as much as he wishes he did.
All he can do is be there.
<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.
Shige's tuning just about everything out. Intent on the spectre's advice. Intent on saving a friend. Berating herself once again for being too passive. She could have done.. something. The hellion was purified. The bodies here, their lingering spirits angry, abandoned. Forgotten. Things she rails against, but how do you handle pyreflies, sending them on their way when it's not your territory? She'd gotten something of a history lesson, but what do you do?
She's clumsy about her work. Stress, injury, confidence all things dragging her away. The chirurgeon's spectre stops long enough to glare at her. She stares back. She tenses briefly. Looking through the ghostly figure at the myriad of bodies. She looks to the living as well. Lingering on Leo, a leader (And one she would happily say was better at it) wasn't flawless. The figure she'd been leaning on for help had been dead for some time. She'd never looked at the details. Taken for granted. Mistakes happen. You can't stop that.
Rixia's cries causes her to pause. Watching the last of the figments of light disappear.
A look to the others. Silent. Her shades vanishing. Leaving the hints of the local spirits at the edges of vision, at the edge of the lights. Each slowly fading away as they step away. Leaving two figures standing behind. Close to the two bodies Rixia's father had tried to protect. The look of concern on their faces obvious. They had family they hadn't known about. Family who's suffering is similar and they can't help. Either of them. They fade away too.
After a squeeze of Rixia's hand if she allows it.
<Pose Tracker> Shige Kiwako has posed.
Shige stands and begins doing something far too familiar. Even before her calling as a shaman. She begins to try and give the dead their dignity. Wisps trailing behind her as she gets to work.