2018-11-29: A Cry for Help

• Log: A Cry for Help
• Cast: Riesenlied, Seraph Ragnell, K.K.
• Where: Photosphere
• Date: 29th November 2018
• Summary: The Trial Knight and Ragnell approach the Photosphere to visit Riesenlied, yet what they find of her...

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<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

Elru has been a veritable hornet's nest of activity, within just the span of a scant month. In strategic terms, it's essentially a flash in the pan--

--and yet, within that microcosm of a moment, so much has happened. With the Trial Knight and Ragnell ostensibly allies to the Metal Demon effort, it would not have been difficult for them to have obtained news of the Demons' proceedings. Mother's continual awakening, the further mobilisation of war efforts, the Drifters on their doorstep...

... and... the re-acquisition of a certain 'asset'.

Rumours tend to spread like wildfire, and the rumour of a 'traitor' that had been folded back to the midst forcibly by Alhazred's hands only makes that spread even faster. Everyone's always nervous as to what it is Alhazred gets up to in his secret, secret lab, after all.

The figure that can be known as Riesenlied is quietly praying within a given chamber, bright and peaceful -- as peaceful a place can exist within the metallic domiciles of the Photosphere.

She has seen drastic changes since they last saw her. She is... unmistakably, in both appearance but also in air, Riesenlied -- yet the way an Alhazred-like crown drapes over her eyes, binding her sight... the way her clothes are dark, a twisted form of her usual Fereshte robes -- as if a mockery in plain sight.

And the sight of the fused Original Artificial Medium of Life, grafted horribly onto her skin where her necklet would usually be.

"... O Guardians... spirits of the Ley... oh fleeting will of the ancients..."

There is a stark difference in the way she speaks. Soft and genteel, as always, but as if something that shines within her empathy has been... stripped apart, and left doll-like and artificial.

"Let Lord Siegfried be safe...

Please let him find comfort...
Let this ongoing struggle, his captor...
Foretell a pleasant end... that it may one day be a fond memory..."

Even with her mind warped such... even with so much of what she no logner is... a daughter's familial love for her father... knows no bounds, it seems.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

"......"

With arms folded over her chest and a certain flatness to her red gaze, Ragnell watches the entity that is and isn't Riesenlied from the doorway of the chamber in which the Hyadean prays. She had, of course, heard the news. With the war between humans and Metal Demons amping up now that Mother is more or less awake, she's assisted a bit more with their efforts than she did before that side trip back to Lunar. She's actually awaiting a certain meeting with Siegfried in the first future--but that's another matter.

Right now, it's about the would-be doll that nonetheless has enough of a heart to pray earnestly for the wellbeing of her "father." Maybe it's the influence of the Original Artificial Medium grafted to her neck. Maybe some things just can't be erased no matter how much mad science you apply to them. Either way, Ragnell wonders, as she watches stone-faced, what Siegfried would think of this particular prayer.

It would be a simple enough matter to find him and ask. But for right now, the Lightning Seraph, who values freedom above all else, touches the brim of her hat and pulls it down over her eyes. "...Tch."

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

Wars can stretch years. Decades. Some have persisted for centuries. It is precisely why 'we may have lost the battle, but we will win the war' has become such an enduring turn of phrase. Conflict can not always be measured out within the tiny segments that compose it. But anyone who knows war well, knows one other, enduring truth:

The battlefield, and its tides, can shift within an instant.

And can change everything, going forward.

This particular Road to Damascus has been paved with the cause and effect of many events leading up to this moment, and yet it makes it no less decisive a turning point -- a path that has led a certain knight armored in white and ever-concealed with their distinctively horned helm deep into the heart of the Photosphere -- into the cradle of those who would proudly declare themselves the enemy of all mankind.

It is here that they made their pledge to Siegfried. And it was at the waters bridging this land and Ignas that they first encountered Riesenlied. Once finding herself. Once going through profound changes. Once coming into her own.

And now...

It's like gazing upon a deliberate perversion of what she was, seeing the Tainted as she is now. A portrait trying to make a bleak point through the grim incongruities of Riesenlied's new self, mangled into a dadaist mockery of what she once was.

And it is here, as she brings word to her loving if twisted prayers, that the heavy sound of a boot fall rings out throughout the otherwise empty quiet of this Hyadean domicile. The arrival of the Trial Knight in the past has often been a quiet one, declared only by the sound of their voice. Now, the drop of their heel rings like a gavel smiting its pulpit.

And there they stand, near the entrance. Their head cant towards the right. Their stance, stoic and unreadable, even for them.

Their fingers, spasming mildly.

"... Riesenlied."

Their tone vague, as if it the name were an open question.

<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

Metal Demons, in general, are not able to perceive the Seraphs.

But Riesenlied is far more than an exception -- the Lightning Seraph at the doorway was the very same who taught her how to perceive Seraphs, slowly; first through hearing, then through to sight, aided by what was then only a burgeoning little empathic sense that had so often torn control to her, which she could only describe as 'hearing the voices of the world'.

Now... it seems as if the voices of the world have come back to her, with the feeling of Filgaia's Ley flowing through her. Yet, perhaps not in a stature that is equal to each other; no, it perhaps more feels as if Riesenlied is acting like some kind of battery for the Ley.

The Ley... which powers the statues' Seals. It's clear what they plan to do with her -- to break the rest of the Statues and let Mother have free reign over the planet's lifeblood...

The disaster that would unfold would be catastrophic to everyone.

There is a soft suckle of recognition, as her name is called. She pauses for a moment, then quietly rises... brushing her gown down as if it were some kind of practiced motion.

Hands on her lap, she turns and 'faces' the two, covered as her eyes are. She pauses for a moment longer, as if something inside of her is registering... then she bows a perfunctory 45 degrees. So much of her movements almost seem pre-programmed, delicate and yet lacking that personal empathy of when Riesenlied meets people she knows and likes.

"Noble Seraph... esteemed Trial Knight," she whispers affectionately, yet in no manner she would address them were she aware. "Welcome, once more, to our halls."

A pause.

"I am to be your guide and servant... if there is aught you wish to request of me... please let me know."

'I am to be'... there seems to be a distinct ferventness in that phrase. I am to be. An instruction, through and through, a clear intonation of the imperatives set upon her.

This... is no bird that flies, let alone be able to question 'why' they do.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

Even without looking, Ragnell knows the tone and timbre of K.K.'s armor well enough that a single footfall alone is enough to tell her they've arrived. While she didn't come here planning on meeting with them, it's not a surprise to her that the two might have both shown up here by chance.

Riesenlied was always their first point of contact with the Hyadeans, back before she defected. To hear word that she's back in the fold is naturally to come see her. And in Ragnell's case, it doesn't help that she heard additional word via Noeline's terse yet desperate message in the Adventurer's Guild. How wonderful it is, to have so many points of contact with the swift flow of information through the ever-changing world.

She hadn't known if Riesenlied would be able to perceive her still in this state. There's no reason she wouldn't, but who knows what else Alhazred has done to her? Seeing her now, it occurs to Ragnell that of course he wouldn't remove such a useful trait from his new puppet. There's a war to win, after all.

She doesn't speak at first, though she does glance unnecessarily at the Trial Knight and give them an unsmiling nod of greeting, when they state Riesenlied's name. When Riesenlied addresses them both, though, she blinks in surprise back at the Hyadean, before letting her eyes lid again.

"You 'are to be,' huh?" she mutters. "Says who?"

...well, it's *kind of* a request.

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

"A servant, is it?"

The tinny voice that issues from the depths of that faceless helm has no real tone to be read. It is always warped, always masked, behind the metallic rung of that obfuscating mask. And yet this lacks even a perfunctory edge to it. As if it had been drained utterly of all intent to become little more than a cipher unto itself.

But it is careful. It is controlled. And it is deliberate. As if weighing something unseen and unknown at the very back of its pitch. Making a determination towards unknown ends.

There is only the slightest tilt of that helm in Ragnell's direction as the Lightning Seraph looks K.K.'s way. It is a body language that she, at least, would know all too well, if only for as rare as it is. The lack of address, the lack of any sort of talk beyond those barest essentials. It is the unseen behavior of a spring coiled too tight.

Of the Trial Knight very deliberately holding themself back as they take a single step forward on the heels of Ragnell's question.

"And towards what end, then, do you serve?"

<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

Riesenlied pauses for a moment at Ragnell's question, as if it weren't something they could answer immediately, instinctually. Who prescribed the state of 'being' to them? There is a quietness that feels like some kind of internal struggle for a touch of a second.

"It is by Mother's wont that I am..." comes a less than satisfactory answer, as if it were like a grade schooler guessing an answer to a quiz they clearly don't know.

Riesenlied has joined K.K. in being masked.

Yet there is a worlds' difference in how they are shrouded. No matter how much metal shrouds their true appearance, no matter how tinny and obscured their voice sounds, if there is one thing that can be said of certain to K.K. as a person... it is that their conviction is unshakeable.

There is no such thing here... but...

There is something in the way she seems to pick up on how that voice changes. Just a little something that makes her recognise, inside.

"My apologies... it is a busy time for us all here. Mother... Mother has been more mobile and sprightly ever since I poured more of the Ley to her. The time of her awakening will be soon and..."

A pause, as she laces her hands together. There is a visible tension there. The way she speaks of Mother is joyful on the surface, yet there is a lack of obvious affection and empathy the way she speaks of Siegfried.

"I am to be a vessel for her. Granted a form that will be able to sustain the enormity of the Ley... at least for a time... and allow her to sup that which she needs to... flourish. To bring about a new... world."

The rote-like manner in which she speaks it, even when talking about what is in not even particularly veiled terms her death. To be used by Mother, as little more than a weapon and a battery for her ascension.

'A new world'... a catchphrase Riesenlied speaks often about, yet lacking in conviction and the verve in which she expresses it.

This... will not be the new world she seeks. And no one will flourish in it but Mother.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

If there were anything to smile about right now, it would be that, as usual, Ragnell and K.K. are on the same wavelength. It's clear to the Seraph in that especially tight, controlled demeanor of theirs. It's amazing to her that Riesenlied can pick up on it in her state, but then, maybe that emptiness is its own sort of obvious to Servantlied.

She turns her flat stare back at Riesenlied. By Mother's wont, huh. "Then it was Mother who gave you that order?" she presses, pushing at that childlike uncertainty that flickers in the Hyadean's demeanor and voice. It's little more than bullying the way Riesenlied is now, but, well, let's be real: Ragnell is kind of a bully.

K.K. offers their own query. Riesenlied offers apologies in return. The difference in her now as compared to the moment before, when she prayed for Siegfried, is keenly interesting to Ragnell. Setting them side by side, it's apparent that one "joy" has a realness to it that the other doesn't. A spark of the real her, underneath that mask? Ragnell catches K.K.'s eye (so to speak) and tilts her head towards the Metal Demon with eyebrow quirked, as if to ask, 'What do you think?'

Of course, that's before Riesenlied brings up the whole vessel thing.

"You're WHAT?" she demands, a hot and fast and angry sound as her arms fall to her sides. "Son of a bitch!!" ...after all, not only is Riesenlied 'tainted,' there's no way she could survive being a vessel for a goddess. No doubt she isn't meant to. One last use for the traitor. Recyclers to the end, those Hyadeans. How environmentally conscious of them.

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

An empty vessel, to be filled and gorged upon as convenient for a tick that masquerades as something greater. That is the obvious ideal ascribed in Riesenlied's words.

But there's something else there that indicates that vessel does not quite live up to that platonic ideal of the blank slate. It is, ironically, in the emptiness itself -- or the way it contrasts with those more keenly observable moments of awareness. The way Riesenlied picks up upon the knight's tone. The way her voice hollows out its affection as she speaks of Mother in terms of shallow reverence.

The lack of fervor when she speaks of an ideal she had once dedicated her entire being to.

Ragnell looks towards them, quietly asking of their opinion before that revelation rips away her attention. But K.K. still feels fit to answer her. Not in word. Not in gesture. No.

They answer by taking another step forward.

By raising their right hand.

By commanding forth a flash of seething white light...

... by forging it into the sharpened, gilded tip of a spear pressed to Riesenlied's throat.

"A new world," they repeat slowly, as if one of those three syllables were engineered to turn a mirror upon Riesenlied's hollow assertion. "Would this, then, be the new world that was so visited upon Adlehyde hence? The crunch of bones filling one's ears? The heat of razed buildings licking one's skin? The iron stench of blood and terror invading one's nostrils? Is this the source of your conviction, that you would throw yourself upon the spear for such a world of ash?"

Their head tilts, slowly. Their fingers tremble in a subtle way around the grip of their weapon that edges involuntarily past their inestimable self-control. That ever-present spasm that inches all the way to the tip of clawed gauntlets.

"So be it then. If such is your dream, if your Mother's will is the reason why you so spread your wings, we shall make it so. You have my word. But such a world requires greater kindling. We shall make many orphans for your people's future. We shall throw a great many upon this spear's tip to build your world upon their bones. 'Twill be a small offering indeed for one already so resolved towards sacrifice. If such is your will. If such is the reason for which your heart beats. So then."

They hold firm. Resolute. But their voice is a controlled tight wire, a perfect, precarious balance that dares one to just imagine how far the fall might be if they looked down from it.

"Is this the new world you seek, Riesenlied?"

<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.

Perhaps, much like Siegfried, that Riesenlied can pick up on that is testament to how much she has interacted with the both of them. The tutelage and trial that K.K. has instituted upon her, the progress that she's made through hardship... whether it is the awakening of her Resonance, or the enduring she has done as her body degenerates further. The bond that they share... is not one that seems so easily broken.

Then again, Alhazred couldn't have had a /lot/ of time to spare on Riesenlied either.

Ragnell's outburst, however, catches her by surprise as she yelps softly and holds both her palms up. "I--I am sorry to offend you, noble Seraph..."

But indeed, it is in the hollowness with which they empty their words that such short-spoken people can communicate. Such is the way that K.K. speaks... and...

...as she continues to stammer, there is a flash-- as the gilded tip of a spear is suddenly pressed upon her.

There is a narrow breath, something akin to fear... then nothingness, as if some construct inside of her conflicts and tells her to override that these are allies, moreso than her sense of self-preservation.

They describe the new world such. A world built only through a purgatory flame, a crunching of bones and the iron stench of blood and terror. Perhaps, ironically, truest to the iron rhetoric that has so filled the newer of the Metal Demons' diet in doctrine...

... but now, especially as the Quarter Knights start to cast doubt upon their so-called goddess...

"The wings... that I spread..."

She whispers, bristling. Something inside of her is once more struggling, as she did in New Arctica. Over and over again, something inside is continually railing even as Alhazred continues to impugn her with more and more drugs, as more control becomes necessary.

"I..."

Another pause, as she lets out another noise of pain. An evident mental struggle within, as she seems to recollect just so many of those conversations she has had with both Ragnell and K.K. Of why it is one struggles, and is held to trial... and to what end that comes.

It's too much, though. She can't break free, not now. So she seems to fight back, in the way as noted before when her joy slips out of her voice, as she does now:

"The new world that... 'I' seek. I..."

Another fervent struggle. As if she cannot finish the line. As if she's barred from wishing the flourishing of all, regardless of race, stature, birthright...

Her lips purse.

"I wish to make Lord Siegfried happy. Now, and forever..."

'I wish'. It is all terribly subtle, yet the way she expresses that in the direct manner... it is not something that she is to be. The closest she can get, right now, to resistance, perhaps. By clutching it all on a familial love she knows won't be beaten. Like an anchoring point against the torrential cloud that plagues her mind.

She pauses, then quietly slips towards the door -- lest she's barred by the Trial Knight and their spear.

"I am to... abscond now, to the altar we have prepared to channel the Ley, down at the Gutter. It is... there... that we make our preparations due."

The way she struggles to say it perhaps makes it sound like something she shouldn't have said. Like leaking this little bit of op-sec is another way of hers to fight.

"... I am... sorry, noble Seraph, esteemed Trial Knight."

But it isn't the sound of someone resigned in their apology. As she departs, if she is allowed to...

It's the sound of someone crying for help in the dark.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Ragnell has posed.

"You're not *sorry*! You're not ANYTHING! You're just sayin' what you think I want to hear!" Ragnell spits at Riesenlied. She advances a stride--but then there is a flash of light, and K.K., ever eloquent, speaks volumes with that one weapon held to Riesenlied's throat.

Ragnell stills. She watches Riesenlied and K.K. both as the latter speaks, but while her gaze towards the Hyadean reflects only contempt, when she focuses upon the Trial Knight, on their tightwire self-control, on the convulsion that chronically afflict them, on their speech and their question in turn, there is admiration, affection, even the slightest of smiles.

/K.K., you're so cool./

hat smile is gone when she looks back at Riese, hand on her hip. She does nothing to stop the Trial Knight, nothing to help the little fluttering bird with the broken wings. But she does mark that message with slightly raised eyebrows, as well as her rote 'desire.' "Happy, huh? Then why make orphans, right, K'? That jus' implies survivors. Let's throw the children into the pyre after their parents. I know--" She spreads her arms as she faces Riese, tongue as sharp as an obsidian knife set to flense flesh from bone. "How 'bout we start with Janey an' Mikaia? Their 'mama' is good an' dead, looks like to me. Wouldn't it be a /mercy/ to let Mother crunch on their bones first, get it over quick so the li'l tykes don't have t' cry?"

But there she'll leave it, for Riesenlied struggles visibly, apologizes, and flees. Ragnell offers no further impediment, instead watching her go, assuming K.K. allows her to.

Once she's gone, she breathes out a faint sigh. "The Gutter, huh," she murmurs, stepping over to her companion. "Looks like the upcomin' battle is gonna be even more intense than we imagined."

<Pose Tracker> K.K. has posed.

To make Lord Siegfried happy.

The Trial Knight's fingers clench ever-so-slightly tighter around the haft of their weapon.

Even under such tight control, there are things that can be gleaned from a person when put under acute stress. Perhaps, especially then. And in this moment, K.K. sees a kaleidoscoping story of what has happened to Riesenlied, what will happen to her -- and what yet rages beneath the surface, losing but unrelenting, like a cornered mouse playing tug of war with a lion.

She says only the things that can slip through that carefully arranged series of filters, said in such a way as to be some sort of caveat for all the things she cannot say. She apologizes, in a way customary for a servant to, even as her face betrays the briefest slivers of fear and resistance even as she struggles with her words.

And it is in those struggles that the truth might be gleaned.

She bids her farewells. And the knight remains a bastion to the end even as Ragnell lashes with those harsh words she wields so well. To provoke something. To provide kindling to the struggling flame.

To inspire the sound of someone desperately reaching out, before she flinches back.

And when she does -- when she turns to depart, after providing that very salient information -- the Trial Knight does not stop her. The spear does not move until she has moved out of its path of her own accord, whether tugged by a puppeteer's strings or not; only when she's actually left the cold grace of its sharpened edge does that weapon lower, butt of it striking the earth and echoing in the air behind Riesenlied as she disappears towards the dark of the Gutter. The perfect accompaniment for K.K.'s final, parting words for the woman they have taught so much.

"We shall bring you the thing for which you so soar, Riesenlied.

"You have my word."

... And when Riesenlied is gone, when the room is empty save for themself and the Seraph, that faceless helm turns to regard Ragnell, quiet within the breadth of her sigh. The Gutter. A place where everything began for Riesenlied, now used as the altar to sacrifice her dreams. A cruel sense of irony.

"... Their mother's title fits her ill."

The tension rolls off K.K.'s voice, displeased. Disgusted. They turn, in the opposite direction in which Riesenlied walked.

"Mayhap she ought be relieved of it."

And with that, they walk, their spear breaking apart once more into light. Their hands are curled to fists. An intense battle, Ragnell remarks.

"And one that will brook no faint of heart nor passive onlookers. Let us away, Ragnell.

"There is much we must prepare."