2022-03-13: Icebreaker
- Log: Icebreaker
- Cast: Azoth, Kaguya, Ruth Pauling, Lydia Seren, Ida Everstead-Rey, Xantia, Seraphita, Josephine Lovelace, Seraph Brunor
- Where: Zulan Massif
- Date: March 11, 2022
- Summary: Azoth locates a signal from one of his missing parts, but trying to install it remotely causes a number of glitches in his system that result in a whole lot of violence... and, in the end, the discovery of somewhere curious.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
The rumors of a strange creature haunting the area surrounding Mt. Zulan have been mixed, but paint a similar picture: either a faceless creature or a masked man, twisted between human and beast on one end of the scale or another. Some say it's a skeletal revenant made of black bone, others claim this monster with a hide like a suit of armor. But all agree on the warning of its red light, even if they disagree on whether it's the result of corrupted sorcery or something more natural.
Those who have fought a particular Solarian 'asset' may find familiarity in these descriptions, or otherwise realize that the hunters and trappers here may not know how to identify a robotic construct -- especially not from the distance they're trying to keep. Nevertheless, this being has become disruptive to their way of life by presence alone, threatening to upset the ecosystem by displacing frightened wildlife. But locals and travelers fear that this mysterious creature could prove lethal if they end up crossing paths. There's already been a few warning shots.
Whatever one's reasons for being here, investigating the situation unfortunately means venturing into the snowstorms raging around Mt. Zulan. There's enough mountainous terrain nearby for shelter in the occasional alcove or cave, but it seems some -- most -- of these caves are man made. Rather... machine made. Grooves in cold earth and ice formations are brutally terraformed as Azoth cuts a path toward whatever it is he seeks, forming a breadcrumb trail of shelters to huddle behind to wait for the worst of the blizzard winds to pass.
It's when everyone runs out of mountain that they catch up to him. A massive, mechanical ring resembling a serpent biting is own tail hovers in the air, battered by snow and frost. It stands vertically like a coin on its edge, and once it begins to spin, energy gathers at its center, mixing fuchsia and blue with red.
A beam of wild, crackling energy fires, tremors roiling through the landscape as the ring's power cleaves a shallow canyon into the ice. The ring vanishes in light like pixels, and Azoth collapses into a stilted kneel -- not in a facsimile of a human, the boyish android, but in his exposed form of an obvious machine, faceless with a black chassis evocative of a skeleton the way it coils around but still fails to fully cover his inner mechanical workings, all aglow in erroneous red. His usually limp tail twitches in something resembling a cadaveric spasm.
"...Variables revised." His reverberating voice travels easily, inhumanly deep and mechanical. Chassis rattling, he stands again, the tattered cloak that obscures his vulnerable innards fluttering wildly in the winds. "Resuming retrieval." He walks, one uneven step at a time, into the path he's made. It provides some protection from the storm, but snow still falls, each flake melting against his overheated chassis, and a trail of slurry made of the ice in his wake.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Skeletal black bon. Hide like armor. A red light. Yeah, Kaguya's got ideas about what's up here, and yeah, she considers it to possibly be her problem. Theoretically the Guard's responsibility... but she's not going to send her soldiers against what might be a killer robot. They just aren't prepared to deal with that.
The snowstorms, though...
"Snow is bullshit," Kaguya complains. "Weather is stupid. Oh, we just, let the sky open up and drop shit on us sometimes, that's just a normal thing, that happens," she says, doing an impression of... someone? "That's a normal thing that's not stupid at all UGH!"
She is not dressed in the thick layers one might expect, save a long mantle that drapes over her like a poncho. No, beneath that is strange metallic green armor, recognizable to some as part of a Veruni environment suit.
She drops down from a ledge in a crouch, raising her eyes to stare through her goggles at another of the caverns. She has made use of them, of course. But here and now...
That wild crackling energy sends her scrambling to the wall of the cavern to ensure she isn't caught in it, and suddenly the light is gone--and there--there is the machine. She narrows her eyes, and slips closer, one step at a time crunching at first through the snow and then onto the rock. The small Veruni reaches into a satchel and pulls a small device, silvery with green lights on it. She flicks a switch on the side--and hurls it forward.
"Revise my ass," Kaguya declares before the device explodes in a very loud green cloud of concussive force.
"I don't think I want you finding what you're after."
GS: Kaguya has attacked Azoth with Harmonic Impulse Bomb! GS: Kaguya has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Not long ago, Ruth met with Seraph Yvain overlooking the abandoned ruins of Azado. There was a pain to the land and the people that gripped her, in the way those sorts of things do. Mt. Zulan was well out of the way from the paths Elise and herself would take through Lunar for whatever purpose the Rose Queen desired. She cared too much, even in the face of Lords of the Land (rightfully, by their duties) consistently shoo'ing her out into the wilds.
For the moment, she's kept herself contained. Her lack of sensitivity to temperature in most circumstances proves a greater boon than the many layers of clothing she's kept on her, as her right forearm remains exposed with only a Granasian rosary for 'warmth.' Aside from any incidental travelers braving the snowstorm directly, she casts a curious appearance - a clearly foreign traveler braving the blizzards with grim determination while some of the lingering sentiments of Azado are yet to be fully internalized.
Her eyes don't fail her in seeing strange colors, and with a sharp twinge in her left shoulder does she draw her revolver. Then, there's a beam cutting through the landscape, brighter yet reflecting off the snow and ice that it blinds and replaces the sight of reality with suggestions of encounters with beam weaponry back during the Civil War. Puffs of Malevolence leave through her nostrils as her facial expression hardens, pointing the revolver up to where the ring disappears. The clean cleaving of the ice is not the same shape that Sin's power thrust into Azado, but with rising emotions there's an urgency that goads her on.
She takes a shot at a perceived clear opening in the unidentified (...to her) individual's chassis, the discharge of a modest gunsmoke ARM lost in the cacophonous roar of a Harmonic Impulse bomb.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Azoth with Like A Wadded Up Paper Spitball! GS: Ruth Pauling has entered Stoic Stance! GS: Ruth Pauling gains 1 Combo from she Cautious! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: Kaguya has attacked Azoth with Harmonic Impulse Bomb! GS: Kaguya has completed her action. GS: Gamble: Low! Azoth takes a glancing hit from Kaguya's Harmonic Impulse Bomb for 46 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia is naturally concerned for Azoth's well being and so she has come to Mt. Zulan. The snowstorms don't really both her too much. Pain is just pain, it doesn't really stop her anymore. She just sort of trudges along, sinking through the snow due to her weight. And then suddenly...
A BEAM OF DEATH.
Well, Lydia thinks to herself, at least she knows where she's going.
She jogs forward only for UNEXPECTEDLY (though maybe it should be expectedly) return fire?! She gasps and ducks down instinctively before rushing forward--
"Azoth...!" She shouts upon seeing him.
Then a pause. "Oh uh, PRETEND I DIDN'T SAY THAT GUYS I DIDN'T SAY THAT IT'S AZOTH OKAY? UNLESS YOU KNEW ALREADY. FUCK ME."
She smacks her face with both hands a few times and says, "Azoth! Are you doing secret unsanctioned operations again?? You could get in trouble! I mean I'm going to bully Rachiel into not saying anything--"
"Oh sure just make me edit records again thanks I didn't have any plans this weekend."
"--So lets go back and, I don't know, beep at each other! You like beeping don't you? We could talk about rocks? I know you like talking about rocks..."
"...Person who is not Azoth." Lydia says.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Azoth with Like A Wadded Up Paper Spitball! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling has entered Stoic Stance! GS: Ruth Pauling gains 1 Combo from she Cautious! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Ruth Pauling's Like A Wadded Up Paper Spitball for 41 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Someone--something?--is stalking the stalker.
There's been anomalous blips of sorcery on Azoth's sensors for a while, now. Not wholly unexpected, since there's an Earthpulse beneath nearby Mount Manfred on top of whatever oddities are hidden on and beneath Zulan. This one, though, seems to be following him at a distance, staying at the edge of his sensor range and disappearing and reappearing seemingly at random.
Ida knows Mount Zulan well. She used to come here to hunt and forage, as most of Mount Manfred's ecosystem had been disrupted--or twisted--by the Domain's Malevolence. Hidden beneath an invisibility spell, she's little more than a set of faint snowshoe tracks, and an odd disruption in the falling snow. As she reaches the third little cave, she looks up, following its path--and letting her vision twist, subtly, into wavelengths humans cannot see. The infrared disruption goes up through the mountain, and the rock face provides insulation. Azoth's running perilously hot, though, and in these climes, that leaves a trail. A faint one, one just barely perceptible by keen Hyadean senses.
It's still a trail. Ida reaches down and unbuckles her snowshoes. Beneath her invisibility cloak, exoskeleton flows down her arms and legs. She digs claws into the cliff face, and begins to climb.
The disruption is there, again, and this time it's not keeping its distance--it's scaling the icy cliff face, rising above the spinning Ouroboros Ring. As the device begins to cool, the figure leaps--
And takes shape in mid-fall. Metal boots crunch into the snow, quickly obscured by the hem of a cloak so black it seems to soak up any light that comes near it. Beneath the hood rests a silvery half-mask, featureless but for a pair of eye holes that reveal only more inky darkness. There is a lower jaw, and a mouth, but these are indistinct.
The figure stands. Their gaze falls on Azoth, but their metal-gloved hands remain at their sides. Their 'aura', as it were, is a warping vortex of sorcery, deliberately engineered using Althena's Blessing, and aspected to both Light and Darkness.
"Revise?" they say, and there is a hollowness in their voice, and something keenly observant hiding in that hollowness. "What--"
'Revise my ass!'
Kaguya, Ida thinks, eyes opening wide beneath the bespoke illusory disguise. She knew this wouldn't end well, but she wasn't expecting it to start poorly, too.
GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Lydia Seren with If We Gave Peace A Chance How Would We Raise FP?! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action. GS: Lydia Seren accepts Lydia Seren's If We Gave Peace A Chance How Would We Raise FP? for 0 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Lydia Seren!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia has a pretty good idea of who she can expect to find in the inhospitable frozen wastes out here. It's the main reason why she came to begin with. The actual disturbances being caused are of course unfortunate, but she'd be lying if she claimed she was motivated by the greater good. Her motivations today are for the good of exactly one.
Having relearned how to employ the element of Ice, she now has a way of fighting off the cold that's more efficient than the previous method of raising her body temperature. Somehow, it's easier and feels more natural to fight cold with cold, her skin having taken on a bluish hue as she plods through the snow.
Still, making headway has been difficult. The wind and lack of clear vision were the real bothers in this - even if her skintone may appear unhealthy right now, she isn't much bothered in any other way, despite her usual lack of properly covering up for the weather circumstances. This does not register to her as being the hard way of doing things. In fact, something about this feels really familiar. She can't help but wonder if this is something she's done in the past.
Unfortunately, the slow going and her odd angle of approach cause her to be a little late in arriving. The firing of heavy artillery is what finally clues her in to the direction to head in. Before she can get there, explosives and small arms fire can be heard as well.
People are fighting, by the sounds of it. She hasn't yet seen if this is actually Azoth or not, but if it is... she can't help but wonder who it is she's going to end up fighting when she gets there. A lot will depend on the circumstances. All she can do for now is rush there as fast as she can. That, and call out to make her presence known to the one she's assumed will be up ahead, before even getting a clear view.
"Azoth! Is that you out there? It's me, Xantia!" A bit stumped on what else to say, she finds herself adding, "...Um. Can we talk?" 'Can' seeming the proper word to use here. She's fully aware that this may in fact not be something that's possible, if Azoth is in that form. But she has to try.
Somehow, she has a bad feeling about this. It's a bit of an afterthought, but she has the presence of mind to manifest a shield of ice in front of her, just in case.
GS: Xantia has attacked Xantia with Glacial Barrier! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: Xantia accepts Xantia's Glacial Barrier for 0 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Xantia! GS: Hyper applied to Xantia!
<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.
Seraphita takes her responsibilities seriously.
It's easy to assume that she doesn't. She is, after all, very... Seraphita about life. But if there's one thing that's true about Seraphita, she cares. If anything, she cares too much.
So she isn't really 'supposed' to be here, in one sense. Solaris didn't send her; she has no orders telling her to go to the back end of the Meribus continent and start looking for lost property. She sent herself, out of a suspicion and a hope that maybe she'd find who (not what) she was looking for here.
Seraphita doesn't come with most of the others. She had another way up the mountain, and not even one that involved using Grandgrowl to fly over the crevasses and up the cliffs (though boy did she think pretty hard about it). No, she just started from the other side and worked her way up.
Which is why she suddenly appears! She's easy to spot, silhouetted on top of a ledge about twenty feet up. Rather sensibly, she is wearing a long coat over what is less sensibly her usual outfit. She also has a hat on, a nice warm toque.
The toque has holes for her ears. It is definitely her hat.
"He~ey!" she calls, waving and bouncing on her feet. That lasts about five seconds before a beam fires, and Seraphita abruptly vanishes from the ledge. She reappears a few moments later once she doesn't need to take cover.
"...are you okay down there?" There's a lot more people than she expected to find. And Azoth really doesn't look well... "I just want to help!" She pauses, just for a breath, before adding even louder toward the Drifters, "And that means from you too! This is my day off! I'm only looking for a FRIEND!!"
GS: Seraphita has attacked Seraphita with Seraphita's Day Off! GS: Seraphita has completed her action. GS: Seraphita accepts Seraphita's Seraphita's Day Off for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Seraphita!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"Well okay Seraphita will know but she's cool!" Lydia shouts.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with The Anomaly Observes...?! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has entered Stoic Stance! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Ida Everstead-Rey's The Anomaly Observes...? for 0 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
"There it is."
Most of Odessa's operations are oriented towards Filgaia, especially of late -- but that doesn't mean that all of them are. This is one of the very many reasons that Josie has been spending more time on Lunar the last few weeks. It helps that she's spent time here before, that there's less reason to be as 'straightlaced' per se regarding certain armament choices.
It helps, too, that she has her own reasons for wanting a little distance, so to speak, and what better distance to seek than that separating Filgaia from the Old Moon?
So that meant she'd had her ear to the ground, locally-speaking.
And so that meant she'd heard certain rumors.
Ice and snow never had agreed with her much -- she's an Aveh girl through and through. She's bundled up as best she's able and taken other precautions when she'd opted to go out hunting for her prize: tinted goggles over her eyes, mask tight across her lower face. It's not a lot but it's better than nothing.
Odessa will certainly want to know more about this, she's figured. And besides, if she's at all right about who's playing games out this way, it's going to be solid pickings when she's done.
There it is again. Light. Red light.
...Voices.
And an explosion. "Damn," Josie hisses to herself, dropping down from the vantage point she'd claimed in an attempt to overtake a possible route. There's others on the hunt as well. This is going to get messy. Already, it sounds like a fight's beginning. Slip-sliding her way down over a snowdrift and skidding down a distance further as if she had a sledge underfoot, Josie unceremoniously arrives and -- both spotting a familiar figure as well as hearing her voice -- frowns but a moment.
Lightning dances over the length of the black shotgun she unshoulders but the once.
"Revise this," she quips.
And then, just as unceremoniously, unloads.
GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Azoth with Figure of Eight! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Azoth critically guards Josephine Lovelace's Figure of Eight for 33 hit points! GS: Azoth activates Guard bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth comes to a stop when he spots this strange new figure. An unknown variable, made all the more suspicious with their data lining up with the anomalous sorcery readings. For a moment, he calculates the odds something else, something like him, might be looking for this. But no. This individual is not like him.
There's precious little time to calculate anything further. Azoth senses incoming fire with an alert beep, snapping his gaze back as Kaguya's device flies in his direction. He lifts from the ground to dart away, but quite fast enough, caught in the edge of the blast and tumbling through the snow. Righted into a crouch, his chassis sparks at his chest where Ruth's bullet struck true.
Red flashes all over, and without warning, he leaps leaps for Kaguya with a sweep of a blade that materializes at the moment of his swing, the metal of his chassis fanning out to allow more light and energy to pour from him, but making him more vulnerable. Whatever the blade makes content with -- Kaguya or the ground -- it detonates with explosive force.
Azoth uses the force of his own blast to launch himself away, and that's when Josephine's shotgun opens upon him. He catches the bullets, making a warped sound as the lightning still passes through him, rattling through his body and down through the end of his tail. But it does not stop him, and he weaves through space, toward Josephine and Ruth both to close the distance rapidly, forming blades of red to swipe at each.
But then voices call out to him. Seraphita. Lydia. Friend, Seraphita says, and his own data does not contradict the statement, despite everything he predicted once. "Pursuit of primary objective in progress. Geological conversations at decreased priority."
If anyone didn't know better, it might sound like something emotive was creeping into his tone. Disappointment? Guilt? They aren't the only ones who call to him, and Azoth goes still despite the violence he is a part of.
"...Xantia." Azoth staggers, body arcing with excess energy. "ERROR friendly target OVERRIDE threats de - tected ERROR..." He twitches, then goes slack. Red light crackles outward and forms into a fan of floating energy blades around his body, hovering lazily at first, then rising as Azoth lifts his gaze. "...Socialization algorithms... de-prioritized..."
Talking. They want to talk. Seraphita and Lydia are here. Backup. He does not need to do this. It is not efficient to do this --
Red flashes again. "Signal found. Beginning installation."
Azoth convulses, screeching. Azoth bursts into motion as if in a very sudden need to escape something, but he crashes into the ground, claws scraping across it as he twists in a desperate bid to regain control from the momentum. His tail thrashes wildly, its bladed end threatening to tear into Lydia and Seraphita without precise aim.
"ERROR: installation incomplete. Abort? Retry? Fail? OVERRIDE. Retry. Retry."
He grabs hold of his head and staggers back with a warped, garbled shriek, lashing out in blind violence toward Ida with a flailing sweep of his claws.
"ABORT."
With a roar, his twitching body gains a fragment of stability back. Azoth snatches out to grab his floating blades not quite in claw, but squeezing his digits together just shy of them. By this suggestion alone they crush together into a single, pulsating bolt. Analyze. Revise. Optimize. A moment holds, his entire chassis trembling before he launches the mass of energy toward Xantia.
GS: Azoth has attacked Kaguya with exec.mec INITIALIZATION! GS: Azoth has gained 3 Combo! GS: Azoth has attacked Ruth Pauling with exec.mec ALLOCATE! GS: Azoth has attacked Josephine Lovelace with exec.mec ALLOCATE! GS: Azoth has attacked Lydia Seren with ??ec.d?o? E?R???! GS: Azoth has attacked Seraphita with ??ec.d?o? E?R???! GS: Azoth has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with ex?c.d??? ?R??R! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Azoth has attacked Azoth with exec.gehn REINITIALIZING...! GS: Azoth has launched an attack Link! GS: Azoth accepts Azoth's exec.gehn REINITIALIZING... for 0 hit points! GS: Amplify and Lock State applied to Azoth! GS: Mighty applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Azoth has attacked Xantia with exec.ohr TROUBLESHOOT! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth gains 10 FP from him Daredevil! GS: Azoth has completed his action. GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.mec ALLOCATE for 107 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Azoth! GS: CRITICAL! Kaguya takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.mec INITIALIZATION for 219 hit points! GS: Gamble: Moderate! Seraphita takes a solid hit from Azoth's ??ec.d?o? E?R??? for 112 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Azoth! GS: Seraphita activates Evade bonus and Gleam! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey suffers a terrible blow from Azoth's ex?c.d??? ?R??R for 137 hit points! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Power Burst! GS: Josephine Lovelace suffers a terrible blow from Azoth's exec.mec ALLOCATE for 165 hit points! GS: Josephine Lovelace activates Countermeasures! GS: Xantia takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.ohr TROUBLESHOOT for 106 hit points! GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Azoth! GS: Gamble: Moderate! Lydia Seren suffers a terrible blow from Azoth's ??ec.d?o? E?R??? for 108 hit points! GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Azoth! GS: Lydia Seren activates Power Burst!
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Just because Kaguya's here, it's starting poorly?? Of course!
"Oh, hey old lady," Kaguya greets Josie as she notices the shotgun unloading. But she doesn't get much more time for sass right then. Not with the machine coming straight at her. Red flashes, and Kaguya whirls into motion, jumping forward to meet Azoth's blade straight-on with an armored gauntlet. This is well and good--but she isn't expecting it to explode, which it does in the instant that they clash. A blast of concussive force slams Kaguya into the cavern wall hard enough to crack stone, her mantle burning away to reveal gleaming green armor--burned by the impact, but whole. Veruni technology can stand up to explosions.
For her part, Kaguya hits the ground a moment later, coughing once and landing in a half-crouch. "So I don't know which of you thinks they're FRIENDS with this guy," Kaguya says, "But it seems kind of HAYWIRE!"
She reaches behind herself to get an ARM out of a holster, black-and-white plastics and metals. It's roughly shaped like a shotgun, and it goes cla-CLACK under the surface of the horrible shrieks that Azoth lets out.
She rises to her feet and levels it, still able to stand despite the terrible blow earlier.
"So anyone who has a reason for me not to blow this thing to kingdom shit, SPEAK TEN MINUTES AGO!"
She levels her firearm and fires, a blast of sonic force erupting from the barrel to shatter stone on the way to Azoth.
GS: Kaguya has attacked Azoth with Concussion Rounds! GS: Kaguya has gained 1 Combo! GS: Kaguya has completed her action. GS: Azoth partially evades Kaguya's Concussion Rounds for 58 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Shieldbreak applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Evade bonus and Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The figure doesn't speak further--Ida doesn't dare speak further, yet, because doing so would layer deception atop deception. Either she pretends to be the anomalous, inexplicable entity she looks like, or she establishes that she can think and interact with the world as a person would. There may be a middle ground, but there's no time to feel it out. Azoth has already prioritized everyone as threats.
The cloaked figure shifts backwards, settling their weight in a low, careful stance. They make no attempt to engage, even as Azoth tears into the others nearby. Ruth, Ida thinks, Lydia. God, Lydia. Her throat tightens behind her guise as she hears Seraphita speak up, and recognizes her from Macalania.
Error. Override. Error. De-prioritized. Signal found.
"Revise?" says the hollow voice.
Azoth's body twists, and it takes every ounce of self-control Ida has to keep from tackling him, from trying to restrain him before his body tears itself apart. Would it even work, or would he just thrash and scream and fight until--
'ABORT.'
The figure steps back, their upper torso flowing smoothly backwards as if their spine--if they have one--was a mere suggestion. But Azoth's claws hit something beneath the cloak, and there's a hideous metallic crunch. The figure lets out a warped, hollow hghk and stumbles back. Bits of black metal cling to Azoth's claws, before dissipating into nothingness. "Hurt," they say, and they meet Azoth's eyes, as if searching for any sense of connection. "Photon Spark."
Light coils in the figure's hand, an illusion to hide the fact that Ida, inside it, is lighting a flare grenade. A sun-bright sorcerous field envelops the projectile as Ida invokes the adaptive illusion, just like Oswald taught her to. The tiny, searing sphere ignites mere inches from Azoth's head.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Azoth with Flare Grenade! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.
"Hi Lydia!" Seraphita is blithely unconcerned about any wrench she might have thrown into Lydia's 'don't get noticed by the bosses' plans. It might not be a secret anymore but Seraphita also seems pretty unconcerned about her doing what she's doing.
Geological conversations at decreased priority?
Seraphita's brow furrows. She tilts her head fractionally to one side, causing one of her ears to flop in a slightly different manner. "Geological conversations...? But who's talking about mountains?"
Even when Seraphita magically gets the right word, she can't follow the topic.
Azoth doesn't seem well. But it's Kaguya who she looks at first. "Me! Me me! I have a reason! You shouldn't blow him up because he's my friend even if he is, um... I don't think he's well, but I don't know how to fix it - and the person who does isn't here right now!" Because Ovelia does not come to battlefields. Sera wouldn't ask her to.
"So if you blow him into too many pieces I'm going to be REALLY UPSET!" Seraphita punctuates her words with leaping off the ledge she was standing on. It's twenty feet down but she takes it like it was nothing, landing on her feet and bounding another few feet forward to bleed off the rest of her momentum. If it wasn't for the bladed tail coming at her it would have been nice and impressive.
As is, Seraphita takes it, but not the edge of the blade; midair, she curls just enough that the flat of the tail catches her in the side, bowling her over. She rolls through the snow, sending up a plume in a long trail, but leaps back to her feet as soon as she can.
She looks at Azoth with a bit more worry. "This might hurt but it's only so I can get you fixed," she promises. "I guess you're not well, or something, so... I have to fight you a bit. But it's just to help. Okay? And for the rest of you, I really do want to help! Please, let me!" That with a bit of a pleading look toward Xantia, who she knows the best of anyone here who isn't Lydia.
> Seraphita has forcefully (but temporarily) joined the party!
Already drawing on Ether, Seraphita forms it into shapes - a flowing stream, extended vertically. A wall, in other words, of whirling flame, semi-solid to the touch if you even want to try to touch it bare-handed. It's actually less hot than it looks - a lot of its energy has gone into making it solid flame, something that is absolutely not easy, even for an Ether sorceress as powerful as Seraphita is.
She puts it in place so that Azoth bounces into it next time he strikes. It's only one wall so it doesn't trap him, but she can at least try to protect herself with it.
GS: Seraphita has attacked Azoth with Flame Screen! GS: Seraphita has gained 2 Combo! GS: Seraphita has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Azoth suffers a terrible blow from Ida Everstead-Rey's Flare Grenade for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Blind applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Azoth suffers a terrible blow from Seraphita's Flame Screen for 151 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Seraphita drains Azoth! Seraphita gains 76 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"Everybody's my friend I'm weirdly popular as far as friendship goes even if I'm completely unlucky in terms of love!!"
"Shhnhnn."
Azoth STABS Lydia with his TAILBLADE as silver fluid spurts out all over it from the injury. Lydia stumbles backwards. It's just... dispersing the tinyLydias, Lydia tries thinking to herself so she doesn't start screaming. That's all.
"This isn't even a Solarian command, he's having some kind of reaction to some gear of his here, probably!"
She looks to Seraphita, sheepishly, before stepping back, "Okay! I'm going to try something. See, Azoth and I have a connection. That's right, I'm going to try to appeal to Azoth's UNSHAKEABLE BOND with me...! Just try not to die or murder him too much in the meanwhile!"
She takes in a deep breath.
And then she unleashes her incredible plan!
"Beep!!" Lydia shouts. "Beep Bebeep Boop Blorp!! Beeeeooop! Beep!"
She really hopes that Azoth understands what she's saying because Lydia doesn't understand what she's saying.
"Beep boop boop beep brrreeeep!"
She spreads her amrs from side to side hopefully.
GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Azoth with Beep Boop Blorp! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action. GS: Azoth accepts Lydia Seren's Beep Boop Blorp for 0 hit points! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
A single bullet isn't enough to stop the strange automaton - but Ruth keeps the revolver leveled with uncompromised discipline on the outside even as loud noises, earth-shaking explosions, and familiar voices threaten to pull her out of it. Bright lights from the blade's detonation make the movement of the target a bit more difficult to track. Of all the things taken from her from a turbulent life, her eyes haven't failed her. She was one of the greatest sharpshooters of Filgaian military history for a reason.
She discharges the weapon again as the construct rushes her. The red blade cleaves that bullet clean into two halves that fly off into irreverent directions and cuts into her right flank. There's a shock that goes through her in the precision of that energy-based incision, a searing feeling... and a growing stain of red.
It's still red.
It's a startling underreaction to grievous harm as something like a smile comes to her face, the hood of her shawl lowering as she can't quite make out the name being called in-between the horrid thing shrieking.
Thing?
It feels like a person, at that... depth? She can't put it into words.
"You're in pain." She murmurs, her voice drowned out by the pained construct's roaring. Her eyes close just to blot out some of the sensory abuse as she falls to a kneel. It might be weakness from something that ought be fatal.
There's begging from others to let them help. It's too loud, too noisy, and she only has one good ear to hear conventional sound with. Her right hand goes up to her chest, fist gently tightening. Small wisps of Malevolence escape her breath again, but her form is still keeping herself contained. Her right hand picks out a Crest Graph, and with the usual spellcasting rituals, rainwater - warmer than the ambient blizzard snowfalls of Zulan - starts to strike down at the bestial robotic sufferer like countless tiny spears.
"Like you only know how to hurt others," she says at the end of all that, eyes half-lidded and not quite looking their way yet. Maybe the shock of that cutting blow hasn't quite worn off yet.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Azoth with A Coming Storm! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 2 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling gains 1 Combo from she Cautious! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Azoth partially guards Ruth Pauling's A Coming Storm for 48 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia's bad feeling proves correct. Of course, it helps that Azoth himself pretty much confirms her suspicions by saying he's literally incapable of being social right now. She managed to translated that meaning out of robot-speak, prompting her to frown. "Don't do that. Those algorithms need to be super high priority. Do you understand?"
It's unclear whether she actually expects saying that will make a difference. But then, she did form that ice shield, considering there to be a high chance of ending up attacked. It's not even entirely just for the sake of protecting herself.
"...Though, if you can't fight it, don't worry. I can handle it. You know I can."
Yep. That sure is a big blast of energy coming for her. Standing firm, she pushes back against it through the ice barrier, sinking deeper into the snow which rapidly begins to melt around the point of impact. It's a full stalemate, as proven by the energy dissipating at the same time as Xantia's shield crumbles apart. She stumbles forward as it does, sweat drops visible on her forehead in spite of the weather conditions. Yet in spite of the effort that clearly cost, she smiles.
"...See? It's fine. I'm fine."
Looking about for the first time, Xantia finds herself surrounded by familiar faces that are not on her side, but she'd rather not be fighting. There's Azoth himself, of course. Lydia, who's in a similar predicament. Seraphita, the one actual Solarian she wants to hold herself back against. And...
"...Josie?" She speaks the name before looking back at where the sniper actually is located. Did she figure that out from just the gunshot itself? Regardless, that's yet another she's proven pretty determined to keep treating as a friend, in spite of the circumstances. Yep, there it is, there's the smile. That hasn't changed.
Seraphita has Kaguya's demands for the explanation well enough covered, so she only pipes up when she seems to be the one addressed by the request for accepting assistance. She doesn't even spend one second to think it over.
"Of course you can help! I don't want to see Azoth hurt either! So come on everyone, we only need to beat him up a little bit to make him stop and then everything will be fine!"
Don't even try to fight the optimism y'all, there's too much of it concentrated here.
Perhaps inspired by Seraphita's presence, Xantia's icy complexion is blasted away by flames bursting from her body, replaced by a fiery aura surrounding her. True to her word, her action upon rushing Azoth is a single, simple gutpunch, in so far as a fist that's on fire and backed by considerable physical strength counts as simple.
"How about it? Ready to stop now? If not, you gotta tell us what it'll take to make you stop!" Those are the rules, she's pretty sure.
GS: Xantia has attacked Azoth with Elemental Fury! GS: Xantia has entered Avenger Stance! GS: Xantia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: Azoth solidly guards Xantia's Elemental Fury for 61 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Mighty applied to Xantia! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Azoth, more than a few of them speak. Why does that sound familiar?
She does not know Azoth well, after all. Not well enough to do more than tag the name as a familiar one.
"Oh, hey, kiddo," she replies to Kaguya, when the 'younger' Veruni similarly remarks on her age. "Been a while. Ain't hit puberty yet, I see. But don't worry yourself none about that. Sure it'll catch up one of these days," she shoots back, dipping her head in what might pass for a rakish grin given her currently bemasked and goggled state. "Glad to see you've been busy, right. ...One of these days I must get you to teach me how to cook up a proper bomb."
She has one moment to regard the machine -- she'd expected something quite a bit different than this, truth be told -- and has all of that fleeting moment to open fire. But even that doesn't so much as delay it. It's for her, and in the split-second that follows, she sees red. Red again.
Red tinting the dirtied slush at her feet, at her knees.
Her bad hand goes to her chest, her stomach. It's bad, a quick survey tells her, but nothing so bad to warrant her turning tail just yet.
Nothing so bad she can't push through it.
Josie rises to her feet, following after as the construct twitches and spasms, her shotgun rising to meet its trembling form. "Reckon I'm owed one at this point--" she starts to say.
But as Kaguya calls out for a reason -- one good reason -- for them to not reduce this thing to scrap, she gets an answer.
'Because he's not well', says the girl with the bunny ears. Because he's a friend, and she'll be upset.
"...Sure you can't spare a few bits? Seems he got more than's needed," Josie drawls, the black ARM lowering just a titch towards the slush at their feet. "Tell you what, kiddo, I'm feelin' a li'l merciful today. I won't do no killin' blows or none. Deal?"
'Josie'? calls out Xantia. Of all the timing.
Josie shakes her head.
"Yep."
And in one smooth movement, she reholsters her shotgun, advancing all of a step in the general direction of Azoth, Xantia, and all the rest. "You really got no sense of timing," Josie sighs, shaking her head.
Her left hand moves in a quick gesture, bruisy light gathering about her as she speaks the one word necessary for this incantation. "Painra." And then all she has to do is gesture sharply for Azoth. This is the form of her mercy.
GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Azoth with Painra! GS: Josephine Lovelace has gained 1 Combo! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action. GS: Azoth's Poison Ward prevents an effect! GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Josephine Lovelace's Painra for 0 hit points! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Azoth has lost 1 Combo from Interrupt!
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Do you understand? Xantia asks.
"No," Azoth says, voice strained and glitched. He trembles with error, chassis threatening to come apart as he shakes his head. Lydia is beeping at him too. She doesn't know what she's saying, but you know how it goes: it's not what you say. It's how you say it. A pathetic, quiet string of beeps responds as Azoth clutches at his chest, digging his claws in.
Attacks come from all directions. Azoth's image distorts, as if trying to escape reality. Every motion is erratic and disturbed -- unnatural, twitching things, with hisses and grindings of Azoth's mechanics.
"Invalid request," he says, as if Kaguya was asking him. Kaguya's ARM fire catches Azoth at a glance, but even that's enough to shred the plating of his left arm -- exposing frayed wires -- and deletes part of his face. He responds with another blade of energy, whole body spinning as he comes at her to cleave with erratic, ancient energy. This one does not explode, another forming after his strike.
There are no eyes for Ida to look into. Destroying part of the mask shows nothing but a void beyond it. His head is empty space with lights dancing over a visor. Hurt, Ida says. "Affirmative," if all Azoth manages back. A lack of eyes does not mean he cannot be blinded. The 'photon light' overloads Azoth's sensors, sorcery mixing with too-bright light. A terrible string of beeps fires off erroneously, and with them, his gathered blades orbit his body before discarding themselves to shoot after Ida, blinded though he is.
Ruth speaks of pain, too. She would know, Azoth thinks somewhere in some de-prioritized calculations. She hurts, but finds the will to continue seeking a purpose. "That is a weapon's purpose." Ice rains on him like spears, piecing into the spaces between wire and plate. More electricity sputters inside him as he pushes through, forming more of his swords of light to spin a slash down over top her, covering a wider area with more force now that his sensory input is compromised.
Everyone seems to agree Azoth feels pain. Painra also agrees that Azoth feels pain, his entire chassis convulsing again with another screeched roar. Joints twitch and sputter, and he dives inelegantly at Josephine in a dizzying spin cleave, his momentum carrying him clumsily to a waver.
He can hear Xantia and Seraphita trying to help him. Wanting to help him. Understanding they cannot stand idly by in order to help him. But OVERRIDE and ERROR and every calculation fights for space until he's screeching again. A wall of flame isn't enough to stop him from barreling straight through it, cloak singed and wires burnt. But it's Xantia he's aiming for in the reckless effort, crashing into her fist with every formed sword he has left. It's calculated -- struck as such he does not go flying back, even as he elemental force makes his plates rumble against his wiring.
"Warning: primary objective located. Cannot abort operation. In...sufficient... authorization..." He leaps back as if intending to regroup with Lydia and Seraphita -- they are his allies, friendlies, in Seraphita's case, someone with authorization. That should be enough, even when nothing else ever is.
He looks up at Xantia. "...Insufficient... force..."
Another convulsion seizes Azoth. "Signal found. Re-installation in progress -- ERROR -- hardware incompatible -- ERROR -- 204 contradictions found -- repairing data -- re-write in progress -- No, wait! -- STOP!" He reels back, tail thrashing all over again, energy brightening until the crimson light reflects off the walls of ice. The ground under him sizzles, and erratic energy blasts out at Lydia and Seraphita, the two unlucky enough to be closest.
GS: Azoth has activated a Force Action! GS: Azoth has attacked Kaguya with exec.mec ERASE! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Azoth has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with exec.ohr DISCARD! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Azoth has attacked Ruth Pauling with exec.mec ERASE! GS: Azoth has gained 2 Combo! GS: Azoth has attacked Josephine Lovelace with exec.mec ERASE! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Azoth has attacked Xantia with exec.ohr DISCARD! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth has attacked Seraphita with ?x??.ERR?R E??OR??RO?! GS: Azoth has attacked Lydia Seren with ?x??.ERR?R E??OR??RO?! GS: Azoth gains 10 FP from him Daredevil! GS: Azoth has completed his action. GS: Ruth Pauling suffers a terrible blow from Azoth's exec.mec ERASE for 173 hit points! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Seraphita takes a solid hit from Azoth's ?x??.ERR?R E??OR??RO? for 157 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraphita gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Quick applied to Azoth! GS: Kaguya takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.mec ERASE for 183 hit points! GS: Kaguya activates Evade bonus! GS: Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.mec ERASE for 167 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Josephine Lovelace gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Josephine Lovelace activates Countermeasures! GS: Josephine Lovelace enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xantia takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.ohr DISCARD for 217 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xantia gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper applied to Azoth! GS: Xantia activates Evade bonus! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey partially guards Azoth's exec.ohr DISCARD for 137 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Quick applied to Azoth! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey activates Guard bonus!
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"It's not weird that you're popular, Lydia!!" Kaguya says. When did Lydia get here??? "You're a very loving person who has a lot to offer in a relationship!"
Then, Kaguya hears Josie's retort and busts out laughing. "What the SHIT," Kaguya laughs at Josie, "Okay that one was pretty good. I'll give you that, you've got some sass on you." A beat, "One of these days. Totally." Puberty? Or bomb?
Pause. So, Solarian, Kaguya confirms, and... Not a Solarian op, which is why Lydia and Seraphita are both fighting. "Okay!" Kaguya calls to Seraphita, "I'll try not to put him in too many pieces but no guarantees since I'm pretty sure he'll kill all of us if we hold back!"
She doesn't know what the fuck is up with the mysterious figure (Ida) except that they're talkin about hurt, which is fair. She senses magic, but she's no wizard--she can't puzzle it out without her instruments. And Xantia is more pressing anyway, what with her barriers and strange Ether powers and... and optimism. It's terrible!
"I am HIGHLY DOUBTFUL," Kaguya complains, "But I'll go with it for now!"
"I won't even steal any interesting bits, probably! Assuming, again, that we don't SUPER DIE to the crazy robot! This thing might even be able to take you out, Lydia!"
And so it tries. He tries? Kaguya can't be sure. Regardless, the energy blade cleaves towards her, and hacks through even Veruni-made armor, burning through and taking a chunk of plate with it, scything powerfully through to take a bleeding wound out of her side even through her hyperadvanced alloys.
"Gh--"
"...I could talk about weapons' purposes," Kaguya says, wincing as she pushes herself off the cavern wall again, "But I think I'd make your friends feel bad."
"...You can't identify that 'primary objective' to us, can you? Guys, I don't think we should let him achieve it. I know he's your friend, but..."
Still, she keeps her word--she doesn't go for another bomb, instead cla-CLACKing the barrel of her advanced ARM again. She holds it out one-handed and aims straight for Azoth's center mass. It charges up for an instant before a warbling projectile of green force erupts towards him. "...But I don't think he's happy about this either."
She's not so sure they can try this 'lightly' and survive, though. "He managed to get through Veruni armor... What is this guy?"
GS: Kaguya has attacked Azoth with Riot Burst! GS: Kaguya has gained 1 Combo! GS: Kaguya has completed her action. GS: ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Lydia Seren suffers a terrible blow from Azoth's ?x??.ERR?R E??OR??RO? for 218 hit points! GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Azoth! GS: Lydia Seren enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Kaguya's Riot Burst for 136 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Delay applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Evade bonus and Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.
...
"You're looking for love??" Seraphita may have missed that with Lydia, before. She'll worry about it later. She has more urgent things to consider - not that love isn't urgent, but love is not currently going berserk and causing themselves pain.
So instead she gives Xantia a big grin and then focuses. Azoth is the important one now. "Deal," she says back to Josie, before adding, "But he's hard to kill, so..." Seraphita knows Azoth is dangerous. Kaguya doesn't need to tell her, of all people. She just has to figure out what to do...
Oh, she knows!
"Azoth, stop! That's an order. I don't know what you're getting a signal from but you shouldn't connect with it! You should always bring it to IT for a virus scan first," she says, words that she has never actually said to him before. She does not expect it to work, but it might stall him for a moment while she gathers in energy. Fire draws in toward her - and, after a moment, more than fire.
She's trying to draw away even Azoth's energy. It's not Ether, precisely. It's 'hot', but it doesn't feel like any of the energy she normally works with. It hurts her to 'hold' in a way that isn't entirely familiar - "Ow OW ow ow ow OW - " and if this is what Azoth feels all the time, no wonder he's a little berserk.
She does not precisely absorb it, because she doesn't really want to hold onto it for longer than she needs to. It swirls around her, the erratic energy twisting into it, causing a whirlwind of red-black energy around her, crackling in and across her body like electricity. Seraphita lets out a little whine as she gives it a particular mental *twist* and *push*.
The energy suddenly becomes a swirl of flame, as if it was oil igniting from her touch. Seraphita immediately projects it outward, a bar of flame so intense that it looks white at the core. Despite this it's not a killing blast; it impacts with a *force* as much as heat, blasting in an explosion (or maybe an eruption) at the site of impact. Which is Azoth. "Sorry!!"
GS: Seraphita spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Seraphita has attacked Azoth with Ether Drain! GS: Seraphita has launched an attack Link! GS: Seraphita spends 2 Combo on Gatling, loading 2 into Gatling! GS: Seraphita has attacked Azoth with Thermo Lance! GS: Seraphita has gained 2 Combo! GS: Seraphita has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
The pained creature - to Ruth's senses the way they convulse and struggle she can't see them as anything but another living being - makes good on being a weapon by coming in too fast for her to react. Even without the environmental discomforts of extreme cold, the snow is deep enough - and her clothing constricting enough - vertical slashes digging into her as red stains paint the ground where her left shoulder and upper back are... lacerated.
That she slips in an attempt to back away and fall to a kneel - and thus putting more of herself lower towards the edge of the blade's reach - might be the only thing between how she's doing now and... worse.
She should not be smiling. There's a pained laugh as she clutches her bloodied left shoulder, facing down as she drops revolver and Crest Graph alike.
"That's all there is to you, isn't it." She's more audible than she thinks she is, speaking in that softer voice. She is able to hear, barely, concerns about not killing them. Not killing someone who seems to only be able to hurt, kill, frighten. Who does that sound like, as the world starts to drown out. It may be blood loss.
Blood, and whatever that... purple, coming out of her, exactly like blood save for the color, as her eyes shoot open. There it is. To those who have been embroiled in that drama, the guilt, shame, regret, despair - in foggy, muggy purplish-black. Malevolence.
The moment a singular gray demonic wing shoots out her back on the right is the moment a battle is joined proper, a monstrous screeching hiss as a larger, four-horned gargoyle Hellion moves brimming with life and will. The large rifle on their back drawn, they close in on the convulsing figure across energy blasts. Her wing fans in front of her to meet some of the stray laser blasts as the now naginata-like bayonet blade attempts to be thrust into Azoth. Glowing purple eyes lock onto them, narrowed, a serpentine tongue flicking for the taste of the emotional tenor in the air around them.
Whether or not she finds purchase, the words that follow are the same: "It hurtsssss, doesn't it?" Her vision swims, the goading urges on the verge of becoming encouraging without the actual substance of them changing. "To be just a weapon, a monsssssster without a heart," sneering, accusing, heedless of the pleas of those nearby Solarian women trying to reach out to him, "ssssurounded by those who see sssssomething more."
Projection, as Malevolence roils off of her. Ice, by its nature, is not easy to corrupt - so her Domain isn't likely to find easy purchase among the Zulan wastes, but it is by no means impotent.
GS: Ruth Pauling has activated a Force Action! GS: Ruth Pauling spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Azoth with Scars of Celesti! GS: Ruth Pauling has entered Hero Stance! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Seraphita's Ether Drain for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dispel! Lock State removed! GS: Mute and Weaken applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Seraphita's Thermo Lance for 217 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Azoth's Disrupt Ward prevents an effect! GS: Azoth's Poison Ward prevents an effect! GS: CRITICAL! Azoth suffers a terrible blow from Ruth Pauling's Scars of Celesti for 204 hit points! GS: Dispel! Amplify, Mighty, and Quick removed! GS: Disease applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Azoth loses 0 THP from Disease!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
So she was sort of half right, half wrong regarding what's gone down up here. Yes, it's Solaris-related but no, it's not quite deliberate.
And apparently there's someone at home here. Azoth. Azoth, Azoth. Where has she heard that before?
Josie shrugs widely, as if to suggest, 'what can you do'. "Heh heh... might be an old hag, but don't you underestimate me just yet, kiddo!" she says, dipping her head in a way that would suggest the remark was coupled with a wink or a grin. "Now come on, let's see what you've learned since last time!"
But he's hard to kill, Seraphita says. "Yeah. Seems the type," Josie observes. It might be that 'going easy' might not be good enough--
And on that front, she's also right.
She tries to evade it. But there is no time. Nor is there any space in which to move. There is simply a bloom of pain as she's struck, which is twinned as she falls, landing heavily across ice and snow and Azoth surges past where she lies. "Gngh," Josie vocalizes, levering herself up onto an elbow. "So much for mercy, huh." She rises after, if a moment delayed, and this provides her with all the vantage she needs for what follows after.
"So, kids," she says, reaching for where the ARM is holstered. "New plan. How 'bout we break him into large pieces and then put him back together nicely-like? Ain't met a machine like this before, sure enough... but I'm willin' to give it a go! A little spit 'n polish and he's good as new!"
It takes her but a moment to load new shells into that ARM. They'd said Malevolence slept inside it, that she'd be best off giving it up. Under the cover of her mask, Josie smiles in that lopsided way and gives Agares the Bitter a friendly little pat.
"Okay, kid," Josie says, and this time she's addressing Azoth. "Promise this won't take too long."
She breaks into a short dash, the movement ending as she catapults herself into the air. Electricity sizzles down the length of the Devil's Arm trailing after her as she twists about in the air.
It's like she hangs there for a moment. Two moments. Two is all she needs, her whole body betraying the ARM's recoil as she fires.
One.
Two.
Three.
When she lands, it's in a spray of ice and slush, all of her momentum catching up with her at last.
GS: Josephine Lovelace enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Josephine Lovelace has attacked Azoth with Blinded Sphinx! GS: Josephine Lovelace enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
Lydia's face turns bright silver as KAguya says she's a very loving person who has a lot to offer in a relationship. "Bwahh...." She kind of just sorta gets a quasi-melty look. Maybe she's REALLY starting to take after Mama Riesenlied here.
"Gah!! I keep forgetting you're here too! Listening! With your ears...and..."
Lydia is now even more embarrassed!
"W-well I mean yeah. Isn't everyone? Kinda? I mean, I'm not saying that everybody wants to you know--"
She forms a circle with a couple fingers and slides a finger into that circle repeatedly.
"But I think most people still want some kind of love yeah...? It's a scary universe out there! Sometimes you want a cuddle! WAit I got it, maybe if we cuddle Azoth that usually works--"
She steps forward to cuddle Azoth! It shuold be easy, he even hopped on over to them. She steps forward and--
--ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOORCH!
She's promptly energy blasted back into a far wall so hard that she splatters into puddle form before reforming back into Lydia's general shape and flopping back onto the floor.
"Bbrggghh." She says, tiny azoths floating around her head. Metaphorically.
"Lydia watch out! Azoth's about to unleash a powerful energy attack! ... Aggh I'm lagging!"
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida once saw Azoth take a blow that would've cracked a human skull. He walked away from it alert, conscious, and with a good portion of his head rendered concave. Her guts twist as she looks on the emptiness inside that mask. Intellectually, it makes perfect sense; he's an android, and doesn't need to conform to humanoid physiology. He only needs a head for expression. He might not even have had one, in his original form.
"Hurt--!" the figure says again, and this time they reach out a hand--
--And that same arm whips back to guard with blinding speed as Azoth throws his blades. Phantasmal light flares around the figure's crossed forearms, and for a few moments, the blades grind against metal--energy? sorcery?--with a hideous electronic screech. The entity's boots skid in the slush, and spikes snap down to arrest their momentum before Azoth sends them tumbling off the cliff.
'That is a weapon's purpose.'
He's talking. He's talking, and all of it is awful and pained, a razor drawn along Ida's empathy. Worse still, Seraphita over there just ordered him to stand down, and he isn't. "Stop," says the cloaked entity, their hollow-seeming voice taking on an echo of Seraphita's concern, and her command. "Stop," they repeat, and this time, there is will.
The figure blurs forward. All around them, the snow starts to flow as if reminded of its watery past; it rises up in eddies and puffs out into little drifts of glittering white. The figure--already a splotch of black against the snowbanks--becomes all the more difficult to perceive clearly, as the water reflects their image. Even Ruth's rain joins in, distorting them. They start to rain blows upon Azoth, strikes with the tips of gauntleted fingers. They circle him, careful to stay between him and the others--especially Seraphita.
Ida never thought she'd be defending a Solarian from Azoth. But Seraphita has the best chance of somehow deescalating this before someone gets killed.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Azoth with Coils of the Water Dragon! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Azoth partially guards Josephine Lovelace's Blinded Sphinx for 112 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Break and Drowsy applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Please react targeting the attack number in +queue.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia just tilts her head a little when Josie claims she has no sense of timing. She has so little sense of it that she has no idea what that remark even meant. With a shrug, she responds, way too cheerfully, "Well, your timing is good at least, thanks for helping!"
Yes, of course this is helping. Everything that everybody is doing right now counts as helping. Everyone appears to be on the same page about this, after all. Fighting as a solution to all problems is normal to Xantia - as long as nobody seems out to do permanent harm, this thus seems like a perfectly fine and normal situation that she feels perfectly comfortable in.
...She's not actually that blind to nature of the situation. This is just the attitude she's decided to adopt, the one she decides is the most helpful right now. Relentless positivity. It comes natural, in spite of everything.
Positivity and her fists alone unfortunately can't stop incoming blades. Though her fiery aura certainly tries. It flares up as Azoth gets close, the impact causing flames to scatter. It also sends Xantia flying, which is the opposite of what she had in mind. Landing on her back some distance away, her aura flickers out as she scrambles back to her feet in a bit of a panic. The snow had started to melt beneath her and she was starting to sink, that felt really weird. Though she got up really quick, Xantia's hurting, and starting to feel tired from depending on Ether for as long and as intensively as she has. She's just trying her best not to show it.
"Okay, okay, got it," she nods in response to the words 'insufficient force'. "Can't stop doing what you're doing right now, so we gotta hit you harder. Everybody hear that?" No problem on her account. If you need more force, you can always depend on Xantia. ...Not so much if you need romantic advice. Sorry Lydia.
That said, her course is clear. Yet again, her aura changes. She shines - sparkles with bright, pure light. Somehow, she radiates more warmth than she did when she was literally on fire. The light surrounding her flows and pools around her right hand, drawn there as if it were liquid. The next course of action is obvious: she charges Azoth once again and launches that fist for the sternum. On impact, the energy explodes outward in a massive wave of force, instantly melting any snow it touches.
Xantia shakes her hand afterwards, scattering residual motes of light. "...That better?" She sideeyes Josie, not entirely liking the sounds of that, but she can't exactly argue when hitting harder is just what they have to do right now.
She does however take umbrage with Ruth's words, and turns to yell in the Hellion's direction. "Hey! What you said just now? Not nice. Not helping. Stop it." She pauses, then adds, "You look like you need help yourself. But we're kind of in the middle of something, so for now, just... be nice, okay? He didn't ask for this. Just like I'm sure you didn't ask for what you're going through."
This team effort felt like it was going so well for a minute there, but it seems to be coming apart already. Just one more reason to end this situation quickly...
GS: Azoth partially evades Ida Everstead-Rey's Coils of the Water Dragon for 109 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Delay applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Xantia spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Xantia has attacked Azoth with Exploding Fist! GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xantia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Xantia's Exploding Fist for 136 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper and Hyper applied to Xantia! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Your next attack with the Sneak flag will display with the name ex?c.di?r ??RED.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Lydia learns, tragically, that Azoths are not very good to cuddle. Even if he wanted love, what he is, is all of this: a mess of metal and data, built for war, but so broken and fragmented as to be useless.
Azoth's tail lashes. Every clawed digit twitches. A single dot of light flits around his cracked, broken visor in panic. His claw drags absently down his face, leaving light grooves in his visor.
Mercy comes in the form of Kaguya. Because mercy is a mass of energy that hits Azoth dead center, blowing out shrapnel of steel into the ice wall behind Azoth a moment before he collides with it himself.
"ERROR: Download interrupted. Threats present. Eliminating threats." He makes good on his threat, leaping for Kaguya with a blender of blades orbiting his body. He does not slash at her so much as he flies at her like a drill, aiming to sail past her with a windmill of blades to do the damage for him. "You do not have authorization to access that data."
Only once he's past does Seraphita's order to stop reach him.
He does. Halted so suddenly he ricochets against nothing, spine bent wrong from momentum fighting to go as he obediently, immediately ceases as she commands. "ERROR," he crackles, "Primary objectives override suggested action. Completing the Azoth has highest priority." Seraphita, you see, does have authorization to access that data.
But that first command leaves him entirely prone for her to pull at his energy, his body slumped like a stringless puppet before shivering as the crackling energy is drawn from him -- too potent, too unstable, too unpleasant, as Seraphita learns. She throws it back at him, and he's utterly useless to do anything by get blasted by it, smashing into the ground, clattering some distance away.
"ERROR," he sputters as he recovers. "Automatic defensive response to -- interruption of -- primary objective -- User Seraphita -- Please --" Please what, he never finishes before swords of light form above her, larger in size than his usual, and drop down.
Ruth is now embracing her own pain, and Azoth can sense the malevolence as she pierces through him with the blade of her rifle, visible out the other end without enough plates to protect him, piercing something that splatters a fluid too dark and viscous to be blood. Calculations concern themselves far less with the physical damage than her words. He cannot feel her projection, but he knows that's what it is.
It does not stop Ruth from being right, and all he can do is pointedly 'look' back at her, face missing a chunk and showing nothing behind his mask. He reaches out with a clawed hand, shaken, then grabs hold of her weapon to rip it out of his own body and tries to swat her away with a vicious claw.
Even Kaguya and Josephine are agreeing to this terrible optimism. Destroy him, but only a little. Put him back together, as if he were whole. Josephine creates her own vaulted path above him to fire down. Her movements do not track well, and the electric bullet pierces him like thunder as he shrieks, crackling and firing off several beams of light that arc around and try to calculate her landing location to strike her as her feet hit the ground. "Request denied."
Ida -- to Azoth, a new stranger -- begs for him to stop. It does not at all work the way Seraphita does. Azoth charges to greet Ida's flurry of strikes, blurring in reality, some strikes hitting, some inexplicably meeting the air. Somewhere in all the violence, his tail twitches and then strikes out, like a scorpion's sting or a viper's bite, to puncture her middle.
Xantia's optimism and positivity are unrelenting. Xantia is unrelenting. But she understands -- insufficient force, as much as he's able to answer her with. So she brings more, and that snow-melting powerful strike throwing Azoth again. For a machine so shaken, so broken and staggering, Azoth still does not stop.
Better? she asks. "Not yet."
He lifts up again, standing, and pointing his claw toward Xandia. Light gathers in a beam, tearing into the ground until its trajectory works its way up to blast into her with a straight-lined strike, the force of it pushing Azoth back further.
The ice is not enjoying any of this, walls dripping and the footing under all of them uneven and slick from all the heat.
It's starting to crack.
GS: Azoth spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Azoth has attacked Kaguya with exec.mec DELETE! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth has attacked Seraphita with exec.ohr REFORMAT! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Delay expired! GS: Azoth has attacked Ruth Pauling with ex?c.d??? ?R??R! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth has attacked Josephine Lovelace with exec.ohr PREDICT! GS: Azoth has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with ex?c.di?r ??RED! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth has attacked Xantia with exec.ohr UNINSTALL! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth gains 10 FP from him Daredevil! GS: Azoth has completed his action. GS: Seraphita suffers a terrible blow from Azoth's exec.ohr REFORMAT for 227 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraphita gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraphita enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Azoth's ex?c.d??? ?R??R for 119 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Azoth! GS: Ruth Pauling activates Guard bonus and Power Burst! GS: Kaguya has activated a Force Action! GS: Kaguya takes a glancing hit from Azoth's exec.mec DELETE for 128 hit points! GS: Kaguya activates Evade bonus! GS: Gamble: Moderate! Josephine Lovelace takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.ohr PREDICT for 133 hit points! GS: Quick applied to Azoth! GS: Josephine Lovelace activates Countermeasures! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Azoth's attack becomes clear! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Azoth's exec.azoc VOID STEP for 170 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
... He does not strike at Ida's front. He vanishes, gone, only to appear behind her to thrust a blade of energy through her back. "Target unidentified. Suggested action: retreat."
That's less helpful to say after stabbing someone.
GS: Xantia suffers a terrible blow from Azoth's exec.ohr UNINSTALL for 193 hit points! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Xantia receives 100 temporary hit points. GS: Xantia enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
"Ahahah. You got it." Kaguya seems to respect Josie a little more after that. She grins--but it's just as invisible, behind her mask, as Josie's expression. And just as easy to 'hear'. "All right. I haven't exactly been sitting on my ass, either..."
Though she has been in this fight--literally, knocked from her feet more than once. It's pretty bad. If she could... No. No, it's not worth the cost.
"I am definitely listening my ears and also recording this conversation so I can embarrass you more with it later!" Kaguya shout-teases Lydia, not able to be quite as sneaky-singsong as she'd like about it because she has to focus on staying up after her injuries. Her constitution is not the best on a good day.
"Lydia do NOT cuddle the death robot!"
She whistles at Ruth. "That's... some Malevolence," she notices, and imagines that what she's saying is probably true. "Yeah. Being used to cause damage to others... Can't relate, right?" This is a machine, right? What if it isn't more than that? How would it feel...?
Feelings talk is for people who aren't her, so she quashes that thought with a, "INSUFFICIENT FORCE SAYS WHAT?"
She doesn't have the authorization to access that data. Of course she doesn't. But Seraphita, it seems, does. If she can reach the point where Seraphita is talking, because that windmill of blades crashes towards her.
Kaguya's feet suddenly blur, her whole form suffused with something like Ether as she hurls herself out of the way with as much force as she can muster, crashing into the rock and taking glancing blows from the terrible drilling instead of a hole to her torso or a missing limb. She hits hard, and rolls, hopping back up at the end of her roll with a, "Tch!!"
"Are you sure he's TOGETHER in the first place to put BACK together? LOOk at him! Completion of the Azoth...?"
"You can't control him! What do you think is going to happen if he gets his hands on whatever that 'completion part' is? Do you think he'll suddenly be docile? I'm not actually sure you WANT me to put him back together all the way even if I CAN!"
"But fine. You want raw strength?" Kaguya stows her ARM in its holster behind her back, rolling her shoulders as she gets ready. That place in her mind calls to her. Azoth is hurting her friends. They're risking all their lives for this machine, this thing that can be built and rebuilt, was never a person in the first place. She--
"Ghhh," Kaguya says, visibly restraining herself from... something? Instead she kneels down, adopting a half crouch. "...Haaaah--"
Kaguya reaches down into the rock and grabs hold, cracking stone and ice as she lifts a giant chunk straight out of the ground. "INSUFFICIENT FORCE SAYS WHAT?" she repeats, and, arms burning with the force she's putting out, leaps into the air and hurls the boulder as big as she is straight down for Azoth.
GS: Kaguya has activated a Force Action! GS: Kaguya has activated a Force Action! GS: Kaguya spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Kaguya has attacked Azoth with Falling Star! GS: Kaguya has gained 1 Combo! GS: Kaguya has completed her action. GS: Azoth suffers a terrible blow from Kaguya's Falling Star for 186 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dispel! Hyper and Quick removed! GS: Cripple and Jam applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.
Seraphita is distracted, post fire-projection, by someone she didn't recognize. The gargoyle. Is that a beastfolk? She doesn't feel like one. Seraphita is sensitive - she's an Ether sorceress so this is perhaps not a surprise - and she gets some bad vibes from the Hellion. She can *feel* the Malevolence seeping in to the area around her, and she fights back with flame; a wispy-looking aura around her that burns back against the energy.
Bad vibes and bad words. "No!" Seraphita sounds like she's scolding. "It's not like that at all. He has friends and hopes and dreams. He's not just a weapon. I don't think it's very nice of you to call him one, and if you're trying to hurt him, well, you shouldn't! That's something only mean people do."
Seraphita is painfully aware that a lot of people think that she doesn't deserve her position, and that one of the reasons is that she isn't very smart. That's part of why she works so hard; why she never gives up, why she pushes herself further than the others have to. But if she could figure it out, why can't Ruth?
She turns aside from her afterwards, though not so far away that she can't keep an eye on Ruth in case *she* needs a fireball, too. "Well I can help you with that!" Seraphita says, brightly, to Lydia. "Just when I'm not busy, okay...?" So probably not right now.
Though giving Azoth a hug *does* seem like it might help, it also seems intensely dangerous. "Watch out!" she warns Lydia too, but too late. Too late! "Oh no! Are *you* okay, Lydia?" Ida (who she doesn't recognize) is protecting her. She, in turn, is protecting Lydia, now, putting herself between her and the menacing form of Azoth.
Azoth wants her to... what? He wants something! Seraphita thinks, and she thinks, and she can't figure it out. Swords of light drop down on her, and her reaction is to try to leap to one side, then roll - but too late, as the blades fall on and around her. She lets out a pained yell, and she does not immediately rise.
Seraphita's not unconscious. She's just thinking hard and on the ground is a safe enough place to do it. "Azoth I have a new order!" she says, slightly muffled until she rolls over onto her back and stops trying to talk through a pile of snow.
Flame bursts out around Azoth - thin, intense ropes of flame that whirl around, catching like tendrils, braiding themselves into a complex pattern. Seraphita is doing what looks like cat's cradle while lying on her back, hands raised to the air and with tiny threads of flame connecting finger to finger; a similar pattern has formed around Azoth, trying to lock him in place.
"Your new order is to protect me!" Because nobody is attacking Seraphita except Azoth himself, she is *pretty sure* this has a non-zero chance of making him just... stop doing that. "Put your primary objective on hold so you don't hurt yourself any more! It's no good if you do it and then die! Also, to make sure the mountain doesn't melt!" Lying down on the ground has given her a better view than average of the ice situation. The snow is really more of slush and she's pretty sure it's not just her that's doing it.
But really, Seraphita just wants Azoth to stop and can't figure out how. It's enough to make her cry! Well, probably not literally, but it sure doesn't lead to a happy rabbit. She doesn't even care about him getting what he's looking for; if it's so important they can come back for it. She just doesn't want to see anyone else hurt right now, including (especially) Azoth.
GS: Seraphita has attacked Azoth with Fire Net! GS: Seraphita has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.
Seraphita is distracted, post fire-projection, by someone she didn't recognize. The gargoyle. Is that a beastfolk? She doesn't feel like one. Seraphita is sensitive - she's an Ether sorceress so this is perhaps not a surprise - and she gets some bad vibes from the Hellion. She can *feel* the Malevolence seeping in to the area around her, and she fights back with flame; a wispy-looking aura around her that burns back against the energy.
Bad vibes and bad words. "No!" Seraphita sounds like she's scolding. "It's not like that at all. He has friends and hopes and dreams. He's not just a weapon. I don't think it's very nice of you to call him one, and if you're trying to hurt him, well, you shouldn't! That's something only mean people do."
Seraphita is painfully aware that a lot of people think that she doesn't deserve her position, and that one of the reasons is that she isn't very smart. That's part of why she works so hard; why she never gives up, why she pushes herself further than the others have to. But if she could figure it out, why can't Ruth?
She turns aside from her afterwards, though not so far away that she can't keep an eye on Ruth in case *she* needs a fireball, too. "Well I can help you with that!" Seraphita says, brightly, to Lydia. "Just when I'm not busy, okay...?" So probably not right now.
Though giving Azoth a hug *does* seem like it might help, it also seems intensely dangerous. "Watch out!" she warns Lydia too, but too late. Too late! "Oh no! Are *you* okay, Lydia?" Ida (who she doesn't recognize) is protecting her. She, in turn, is protecting Lydia, now, putting herself between her and the menacing form of Azoth.
Azoth wants her to... what? He wants something! Seraphita thinks, and she thinks, and she can't figure it out. Swords of light drop down on her, and her reaction is to try to leap to one side, then roll - but too late, as the blades fall on and around her. She lets out a pained yell, and she does not immediately rise.
Seraphita's not unconscious. She's just thinking hard and on the ground is a safe enough place to do it. "Azoth I have a new order!" she says, slightly muffled until she rolls over onto her back and stops trying to talk through a pile of snow.
Flame bursts out around Azoth - thin, intense ropes of flame that whirl around, catching like tendrils, braiding themselves into a complex pattern. Seraphita is doing what looks like cat's cradle while lying on her back, hands raised to the air and with tiny threads of flame connecting finger to finger; a similar pattern has formed around Azoth, trying to lock him in place.
"I'm a commander, but I'm also your friend. This is just me, Seraphita! Put your primary objective on hold so you don't hurt yourself any more! It's no good if you do it and then die! Also, to make sure the mountain doesn't melt!" Lying down on the ground has given her a better view than average of the ice situation. The snow is really more of slush and she's pretty sure it's not just her that's doing it.
But really, Seraphita just wants Azoth to stop and can't figure out how. It's enough to make her cry! Well, probably not literally, but it sure doesn't lead to a happy rabbit. She doesn't even care about him getting what he's looking for; if it's so important they can come back for it. She just doesn't want to see anyone else hurt right now, including (especially) Azoth.
Wait, there's one more thing: "If you hurt yourself any more, Ovelia will be sad... I'm going to order you to make sure she's happy instead!"
GS: Azoth takes a solid hit from Seraphita's Fire Net for 111 hit points! GS: Slow applied to Azoth! GS: Hyper applied to Seraphita! GS: Azoth activates Evade bonus and Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie rolls her shoulders and shrugs, wordless for the moment at Xantia's response.
"You kids really can't take a hint," is what she ultimately says, as if it's still beyond her understanding, that.
And she lands, slush and ice rising about her; the heat from Azoth's body is a terrible thing. There's no world in which this place is going to hold out much longer: perhaps what will happen is that he'll sink into the ice with them, or bring down a part of the mountain upon them. Both are bad choices.
Both are far from her mind as Azoth lights up her direct position, the beams sailing past -- and through -- her.
"Gh--"
But it could have been worse. She'd barely had a chance to try to escape that one, and by sheer luck, it could have been a lot worse. Nothing vital has been ventilated.
She'll take it.
Bleeding as badly as this, she's still got two legs that work and the possibility that Lady Luck's on her side, she figures, eyeing Azoth and the lot of them.
The little bit of Malevolence, sunk as deep as it is into the inner workings of Agares, is nothing compared to the onslaught that Ruth unleashes.
"Damn," is Josie's summation of that. It'd be impressive, if it weren't also more than a little bit worrying. It almost makes her have second thoughts about the weapon in her hands.
Emphasis on almost.
She's come too far to cast another perfectly good weapon aside. Besides, in the long run, it...
The ice has begun to crack, and if one thing will center a girl, it's that. "Nearly. Try hitting 'im where it counts, right?" she replies, inclining her head in Xantia's direction if just for the moment. Her gaze snaps back towards Azoth when he has a go at Xantia.
"Damn-- look at that! And he ain't even slowin'!"
Insufficient force is one way to put it.
Josie takes a step back.
"Tell you what, kiddos... you might need to call a draw on this one. See them cracks?" She jerks her head in their direction, even as Seraphita continues to try to reach Azoth, whatever other self might lie within the machine. "Whole thing's fit to come down around our ears if we don't skedaddle. Tell you what, how 'bout we... beat it to the punch!!"
And this is the part where Josie drops back another step and begins to unload, firing shot after shot seemingly wildly, all about Azoth's form.
GS: Josephine Lovelace has attacked Azoth with Black Witch! GS: Josephine Lovelace has gained 1 Combo! GS: Josephine Lovelace has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lydia Seren has posed.
"But he's so cute... He gave me a rock pressie..." Lydia says, punchdrunk as all hell. Lydia is already at MAX BLUSH so Lydia is forced to cover her face with her hands to avoid taking extra Kaguya damage and being knocked out from being seen too hard.
Seraphita offers to 'help her out with that' though and that kind of causes Lydia to fall over and roll around on the floor in pure bashfullness.
But Seraphita is speaking about someone named Ovelia. Lydia lowers her hands in confusion. The name is unfamiliar. One of his friends? His creator? She looks towards Seraphita, eyes widening faintly as Seraphita speaks. Tears well up in her eyes and she uqickly rubs at her face to try and get it to stop but it doesn't quite work.
She she takes in a deep breath, stands herself up, dusts herself off, and extends her hand forward. "I'm okay. Well I'm not okay. But I'm alive." Lydia says.
She focuses on the killer robot. "Azoth. I know you don't have a choice about any of this and that you're in a lot of pain, having to fight us like this. I know what it's like. I have to fight my friends all the time. Even if I somehow escaped Solaris tommorow, I'd still have to fight a friend because I'd have to fight you. Even with Solaris, I have to fight you."
"Rachiel. Release the Medium Limiters."
Her body crackles with a purple energy as she throws herself at Azoth. "I'll try to make it fast so you can go back home!" Lydia shouts as a gravitic pulse explodes out of her, threatening to pin Azoth in place and weaken his defenses even as she slides past, and then says, "RIGDOBRITE! YOUR TURN!"
She explodes forward, rocketing forward as solar energy explodes out of both hands towards Azoth's back!
"BIG BANG!"
And after that, Lydia drops down into a crouch. Not out of breath, but seeming drained all the same. For a moment, at least.
GS: Lydia Seren spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Azoth with Black Hole! GS: Lydia Seren has launched an attack Link! GS: Lydia Seren has attacked Azoth with Big Bang! GS: Lydia Seren has gained 2 Combo! GS: Lydia Seren has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
This is hardly the first time Ida's had to fight Azoth, but it is the first time she's seen him so animated while it's happening. The thrashing and screaming, the furious lashing of his tail, the sudden shouts that seem half-lucid--it reminds her of when the arm first bonded with her. The pain was nigh-unbearable. She didn't scream as much, but that was because she was on the verge of going into shock.
Completing the Azoth, Ida thinks, and a moment's transcendant fury shoots through her soul as the thought that someone programmed that into him.
The figure's armored fingers twitch, even as they close to range.
But keeping up with Azoth--whose movements are every bit as erratic as the rest of him--is a different story. The figure can't stop Ruth from stabbing him, nor can they rebut her words without giving the game away. Instead, those hollow eye sockets look at her. Something behind them bores into her. "Weapon," they say. "Monster?"
The shrouded figure takes a step back, boots squelching through the slush. They can feel the creak of the ice shelf beneath their weight; inwardly, Ida calculates how quickly she could grab someone and leap to safety. Who would she even grab? But Seraphita, ironically enough, is still making a good case for herself, and that doesn't help Ida's feelings any. As Azoth rushes her, the figure drives open palms forward, to grip and redirect the motion of the android's tail--
And in the next heartbeat, he's gone. It is testament to the figure's skill--progrmaming? sorcery? luck?--that they aren't impaled then and there, that their feet slide, leading the rest of them into a new stance. Azoth's blade punches through that void-dark cloak, leaving no damage behind. Something beneath scrapes and sizzles horribly. The figure's whole body seems to flicker, and when they reappear, both hands are pressed to their stomach. "Release," they choke out, echoing Lydia's words. The light around them flares. The void of their cloak grows to engulf the air around them. Beneath the illusion and its emergency ablative layers, biometal flesh wicks across Ida's frame, reinforcing her exoskeleton. "Cracks."
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Third Method - Shaping the Battle-Forged Shell! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 3 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Ida Everstead-Rey's Third Method - Shaping the Battle-Forged Shell for 0 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Cover applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Azoth takes a glancing hit from Lydia Seren's Black Hole for 0 hit points! GS: Break and Entangle applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Azoth's Poison Ward prevents an effect! GS: Azoth suffers a terrible blow from Lydia Seren's Big Bang for 211 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Josephine Lovelace's attack becomes clear! GS: CRITICAL! Azoth takes a glancing hit from Josephine Lovelace's Silver Cloud for 106 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple and Jam applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Is it random?
The bullets ricochet, bouncing off the ice and perhaps worsening its stability; they are as a swarm of lead and brass bees. Ultimately, they find their final target:
Azoth.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Eyes lock between Ruth - a Hellion whose glowing purple eyes are wide open and excitable, and Azoth, whose face is missing some material and has nothing behind it. A feeling stirs having to look at someone able to be hurt like that, and still exist. She tastes the air anew.
To Ruth's healthier ear, over there is someone yelling at her (Xantia). Not nice. Not helping. Stop it. She can't look away from the damaged face, transfixed and fascinated by it in ways that feed into her contradiction-filled dissonance - but she can hear Xantia's scolding. Be nice, you look like you need help.
He has friends and hopes and dreams, another speaks up, from an angle harder for her to hear but no less clear in the insistence. What she's doing isn't very nice, and she cracks a fanged smile like she might have a bitter laugh, then does.
It stops abruptly when Kaguya asks, pointedly, 'can't relate, right' to those assertions...
Her hold on the rifle is nigh-uncontestable, her tail starting to wrap around the length of the rifle instinctively to both counterbalance her wing and as a defensive reaction to Azoth's clawed hand grasping for it. (A part of her feels a pang of self-consciousness looking at them, knowing the shape of her almost completely normal hands.) As it so happens, he's not going to wrest it out of her hands - he rips himself free, makes use of the weight distribution imbalance to shove her and open up to rake that claw against her left side before she can raise her rifle to catch and parry it. (This probably saves her from being flattened by a boulder.)
Purple blood leaves her again, as her body has to reconcile with further physical duress. Her right hand flexes and relaxes in focus of the Granasian rosary that seems stretched to the limits of its elasticity for her larger size, focusing on that discomfort and what its presence means to her.
Lydia comes back into sight. Ruth remembers her at Guara Bobelo, waving at her in a friendly manner as Solaris was poised to purge everyone there. Rancor builds in her throat, and it is here she hears that name with clarity: Azoth. It derails that next buudding verbal volley in an instant.
"...It was you?" Ruth's voice softens, horrified rather than the part of being the horror that she is (and was, and will continue to be).
'Weapon,' someone says. 'Monster?'
Physically, Ruth seems to relent. Metaphysically, the Malevolence rising from her has not abated as the power it has granted her manifests in the rain. Rain that starts to fall. Muggy, thick.
Relentless, as it builds in intensity in a remarkably focused area that largely threatens only Azoth, but threatens to accelerate the damages of where they're standing and fighting.
Neither seem like they can stop being themselves, and Ruth breaks eye contact with everyone as she gazes downward and lets her emotional state just flow. The motionless she starts to adopt, though - that's a warning sign.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Azoth with Inconsolable Heavens! GS: Ruth Pauling enters a Counter stance! GS: Ruth Pauling has entered Stance! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: Azoth solidly guards Ruth Pauling's Inconsolable Heavens for 68 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cover applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! Azoth enters Critical health and gains 25 FP!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
"Not yet?!" Xantia's response is immediate and filled with dismay. She really would prefer not hitting Azoth any harder than she just did. But getting a reply like that... she doesn't believe it could be anything else but a direct request to do exactly that. Not that anybody here is doing particularly well at this point, but the only concern she shows is for Azoth's present condition.
"...You're so damaged already. Don't you have anything like a... what would you call it, a self-preservation protocol? You know we'll stop if you do, so... shouldn't you just stop at this point? You'll have another chance to complete your mission as long as you stay in one piece!" She should know better by now than to try arguing against programming, but it doesn't look like she'll ever stop trying to do that.
She should also not be surprised that not retreating after her strike would get her shot, which is exactly what happened. The third elemental aura has to bear the brunt of a counterattack, this time it's Light versus Light. It's difficult to tell what happens exactly when Xantia is engulfed by the blast, but generally speaking being engulfed by energy weapons is a bad thing. Unsurprisingly, Xantia is on her back when the light fades. Looks like her barrier didn't manage to stand up to that one. At least it kept her from looking worse than slightly singed.
"...nnnnnnnnnNGH!"
Lurching back upright, she tries to stand right away, but only manages to get to one knee before she needs a moment. She uses it to continue talking. "...You see? We won't stop this way. Only way is for you to stop... so just stop already, will you?!"
She rises fully now, slightly unsteady, at least partially due to how uneven her footing has become, something she's only now taken notice of. That's another reason why doing anything bigger than she already did would be a bad plan. Especially since she can already predict that not everyone will think that's a bad plan. In fact, Josie suggests capitalizing on it.
And so, in spite of everything, Xantia decides to do something that may be even more foolhardy, given what happened when Lydia tried it. She gets in close and attempts to grapple him. It may not be quite clear what she's trying to accomplish here. It's not a hug, at least. Restraint, perhaps, as she's certainly capable of applying a great deal of pressure. Or maybe she's hoping the extra proximity will lead extra weight to her words.
"Azoth! Pay attention! This place isn't going to hold together! You have to stop!"
GS: Xantia has attacked Azoth with The Basics of CQC! GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xantia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: Sneak! The true nature of Xantia's attack becomes clear! GS: Azoth suffers a terrible blow from Xantia's Scarlet Eclipse for 171 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Xantia drains Azoth! Xantia gains 86 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Did you know that Xantia is capable of draining energy out of things by simply touching them? Granted, she's only ever done that with magical energy, she's never tried using this ability on a robot before. But as she grapples Azoth, she doesn't hesitate in driving a hand directly into his innards, grasps hold of the first thing she finds in there, and does exactly that. "Stop and I'll stop, Azoth," she says softly but firmly. "You know I don't break my promises."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
"Query: What?"
Azoth receives a chunk of ice and stone to the face. This is a mild way of saying: Azoth is crushed by a meteor. Or so it would seem, the way it collided into him, kicking up snow and ice with a terrible, panicked beep shot off a moment before impact. But it must have shattered on his claw, leaving him surrounded by its debris, posture suggesting his knees did not enjoy any part of that as he swipes his arm aside.
His form distorts, trying to escape before Lydia launches at him. It's not fast enough, and she pins him with gravity, his plates already busted open from Kaguya's fire, his body already battered from the battle, and now locked in place so that he cannot escape Rigdobrite's explosive assault, only able to meet it with an explosion of his own to mitigate the damage, blown back, but balance precariously kept as more of the ice melts all around him.
"Solaris is not home. Home is -- ERROR -- home...? ERROR missing data..." Azoth stumbles to the ground, head slumped and tail giving another thrash, cutting a groove in the ice.
Bullets fly. Azoth thinks he has the wild spray of Josephine's trajectory calculated. He does not. They bounce off the walls in patterns he's not prepared to do the math on in that moment, bullets burying into his chassis. Some cord snaps and flails loose. Probably important. (They're all important!) Josephine's right in pointing out the cracks, yet Azoth does not take any more care in his movements as he scrambles across the battlefield, using explosive force as shields to knock back bullets.
Rain falls where there should be snow. It batters into Azoth's chassis, sliding down his blades and coiling down his corded muscle and broken wires. Something crackles. Does she recognize him? Remember him? Does it matter? (What does?)
"Subject Ruth is correct," he says. About everything. About all of it. But most of all that it hurts.
A new order. Azoth looks toward Seraphita as fire weaves a net around him. The heat sends warnings though his entire system, stalling him with calculations to find a safe way past it. "Error. Invalid request. OVERRIDE -- Primary objective --" Something like a whine escapes from between his gears, but silences when Seraphita mentions Ovelia.
"... Make... Ovelia happy..." Azoth drops his head into his claws, tail going limp. "Erroneous request submitted. Critical mission failure. Ovelia..." He tries to rip through the net of fire, only to be beset upon by Xantia.
Once, Azoth had told Xenia that he found Xantia to be the more logical of the two. That it was because Xantia's actions were logical that he was swayed by the data she provided. He's observed enough human behavior to know many would disagree: optimism is often considered the opposite of practical. Not the way Xantia wields it. She grabs it like a weapon, knowing without it, the odds of engagement decrease.
Yet this is terrifyingly reckless, her fingers tangled in electric wires and cords, draining his energy at a rapid clip, possibly as dangerous for her as it is for him and knowing that's all part of the intent. A promise for everything to stop, everyone pleading not to make it all worse. Try again later. But he knows, after all of this, there won't be later. Not a single one of them will want him to reach for what calls to him. Maybe not even him.
Azoth's claw wraps around Xantia's wrist. "Unable to abort operation."
Bright, red light reflects off of the ice. A massive sword of energy forms and crashes down.
On Azoth.
He means to rend himself from Xantia's grip by destroying the rest of the ice around him, letting it crack open and leaving himself to the mercy of whatever icy currents lie below. Cracks continue to spread, damning and dangerous, breaking apart the ground. Ice water splashes up through the new gaps as the walls crumble around them.
A cold, blizzard wind sweeps through, but once Ruth's malevolent rain clears, the snow will not replace it. A quiet sky of grey sits above them, and beyond it... temple spires made of ice, impossibly situated in the middle of this frigid wasteland upon a lake of ice.
GS: Azoth has activated a Force Action! GS: Attempting Mystic Arte or Link attack under the Stagger status. GS: Azoth has attacked Azoth with Primary Objective! GS: Azoth accepts Azoth's Primary Objective for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Azoth! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer! GS: Azoth has attacked Azoth with exec.ohr REFORMAT! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Azoth accepts Azoth's exec.ohr REFORMAT for 277 hit points! GS: Azoth activates Sufferer!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Brunor has posed.
KAHEDIN - SHRINE OF THE ICE TRIAL
A Seraph - hair tipped with the hues denoting their elemental affinity to Ice - wears a long-worn quilt about himself. Like the ice itself, he quietly waits, frozen in time as much as motion. Himself, his thoughts, his mission.
His memories.
Until a disturbance sees them move again for the first time in... a long time.
"Could it be?" They ask, as they stand up and take their steps across the halls. Footsteps echo as he holds the quilt around him closer. For warmth? What would an Ice Seraph need of that? They come to a cease towards a crack in the front.
"Daylight." They comment. From behind the mask of a dragon, they smile. "Ah... there will be visitors." He turns the other way, to retreat back inward.
"It is good I remember how to make hot chocolate. Ah, I never could forget." He looks to his quilt. "I never shall."
Soon, he will be taking measure of their fondest. Will it be fond in kind? It is his sworn oath to find out.
<Pose Tracker> Seraphita has posed.
Somewhere during the cat's cradle, Seraphita stood up. (Hands-free, too - her hands were both full of threads of flame.)
Just in time to see Azoth hit himself with an energy sword and fall. Down, down... even the sudden visibility of a palace - a temple - made of ice can't distract her from this. Her eyes widen.
Seraphita's response, beyond that, is nearly instantaneous. For someone as beat up as she is she moves pretty quickly, ignoring her own injuries. "Be careful and call for help if
need it. I'll be back soon!" she promises Lydia, who is clearly well enough to cast spells *and* has contact with her own support staff. Azoth doesn't have anyone but her.
"And thank you for helping but I have to go help one more time bye~e!"
And so, flipping her coat off (yes, she is wearing the ridiculous uniform underneath) she grips it by the sleeves and holds it overhead like an impromptu parachute, filling it with a sudden burst of hot air to slow her descent as she leaps down after Azoth.
Nobody gets left behind, after all. Not even if they did temporarily go out of control.
<Pose Tracker> Kaguya has posed.
Friends, and hopes, and dreams. Kaguya reminds herself that this opponent supposedly has all these things, to quiet that part of herself. She reminds herself that Lydia cares about him, in particular. But even that reminder cannot at all do away with the satisfaction that comes with Azoth's query to her before her meteor crashes into him.
...it slightly buoys the way Ruth responds to her comment. Slightly. And she notices Josie's weapon, all right. The whole thing might come down....
Kaguya watches Azoth. He uses that blade on... himself? To break free? Is whatever he wants down there? Should they go down and make sure he doesn't get it?
...Can they? He was damaged in the first place. She has no idea how much more he can take, and she knows she's not doing great. She's suddenly... tired...
"...Sorry about your buddy," Kaguya says to Lydia, and then blinks at Seraphita. "Hold on you can't--"
Apparently she can.
"...Well, that sucks," Kaguya says, peering down to the spires. "But what...?"
She could, as it happens, really use some hot chocolate.
"...Well if anyone ELSE wants to jump to their doom be my GUEST but I'm going to take a minute."
She pulls out yet another of the Elixirs Lydia gave her. She doesn't even dilute this one.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Terrifyingly reckless. Xantia certainly has been that in the past. Over time, she learned how to be less so. Yet in recent times, she's opted for recklessness more frequently again. There might be reasons for this. But in the case of Azoth, the reasons are simple. From what she was able to piece together, she fears that failing to stop him now will mean he will be lost forever. This was simply an act of desperation to try and keep that from happening.
Even now, Azoth finds a way out that doesn't involve stopping. The drastic measure sees Azoth, as well as the solid area where he was standing, ripped from Xantia's grasp. Though visibly shocked, she has the presence of mind to leap back to relative safety as the immediate area falls to pieces. Way too late, she finally gives voice to her thoughts. "Azoth, no! Why would you do that, you could've--"
Abruptly, she falls over on her side, arms wrapped around herself. She feels very sick all of a sudden. Overexertion? A side effect of the energy drain? She can't be certain. But perhaps it's for the best. You know she wouldn't hesitate to make that ill-advised jump without any sort of aid if she wasn't forced to take a time-out. Perhaps now her avenue of approach will be a little more... sensible.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Azoth confirms Ruth's assertions, as she sits there without moving. The way the ground gives out and Azoth lets himself descend into the very depths, she does not move from where she presently broods. She flinches only when the combination of her own rain and the sweeping blizzard combine to activate the one context in which temperature sensitivity returns to her. Normally, chilling and clammy rain is a pleasant and calming thing for her.
Does Azoth want to stop, to be stopped, while he is in such pain that he must and does keep going? The Hellion among them muses inwardly. The rain does pick up in intensity for a bit, obscuring her in fog before she disappears from the site of it.
Someone else has been counting on her to do something good for the benefit of all in these trying times.
A someone else separate from Elise.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida weighs her options. She can likely trust Seraphita and Lydia to evacuate Azoth, should it come to that--but Josie and Kaguya have always been wild cards, and while they might have said they'll try not to hurt him, they might not have that luxury. She hangs back, breathing deeply as her flesh knits itself together. She's going to need first aid afterwards, but for once, she hasn't come off as bad as Azoth has.
It's cold comfort.
"Azoth," says the figure. "...Ovelia?" Those hollow eyes glance at Seraphita, but only for a moment. Azoth is still up, still fighting, and now he's wrestling with Seraphita, and with Xantia, and they're struggling--
It all happens so fast.
Azoth ends the fight with decisive, self-inflicted violence. The ice shatters. The figure that is Ida steps forward, reaches for him, but it's too late--he's falling. Ida's heart leaps into her throat; she reminds herself he's survived worse falls, and if that weren't enough, Seraphita leaps in after him.
The figure stares for a long moment at the spires, the lake--the structure hidden away in the heart of the Massif. A Trial Shrine...? Things just got much more complicated.
Another problem for another time. Right now, Ida needs to get back to Zulan, and tell Oswald what happened. The figure clasps their hands, flickers like a dying hologram, and vanishes, leaving only footprints in the slush. They limp away, retracing their steps as best as they can.
They'll be back. Ida has a promise to keep, after all.
- Log: Opening The Fire Shrine
- Cast: Seraph Yvain, Dean Stark, Mariel, Hiro, Seraph Clarine, Marivel Armitage, Talia, Ruth Pauling, Magilou, Venetia Vuong, Josephine Lovelace, Gwen Whitlock, Ida Everstead-Rey
- Where: Goddodin Village
- Date: March 15, 2022
- Summary: Seraph Yvain is aware of the quest to unlock the various Shrines' secrets--and he is aware of the location of a promising site. He leads a group there. What happens next, however...
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.
Across the Pearloats Pasture, past Biroclef Ridge, and into the hidden village Goddodin, Seraph Yvain has led those who would follow him on a quest towards the Shrine of the Fire Trial. The journey has been uneventful; bandits have been wiser than to approach the group, and only a few monsters and minor Hellions dot the path Yvain leads the group down. Seraph Clarine was of particular help in guiding the group past the Ridge, and Yvain was entirely willing to rely on her pathfinding for that part of the journey.
Now they come out into a tiny village, and those in the group who are visible draw quite a bit of attention. People stop and murmur in the street, and not a few decide to go indoors rather than tangle with a group of armed strangers. Not everyone, though. But Yvain beckons the group onward.
"...We don't really have time yet to stop and enjoy their hospitality," he indicates, "Though you're welcome to come back. It's a lovely village. I've heard they've made some progress on a certain medicine..."
It is a bright, sunny day, hardly especially auspicious as weather goes. In fact, it's downright hot around here at the moment, though the gardens and fields of the village suggest great health. Those who can sense it might notice the power of a benevolent Domain. But it's not entirely clear.
"..We won't be dropping in on the local Lord of the Land, either. They prefer privacy."
He walks out further in front of the group, and turns around to face the others. "...Ready? The cavern is this way. It's a bit of a journey itself."
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
They make medicine here? That's so great! Dean isn't a medicine guy by any means, but he understands and appreciates its value for people in general. Good for the locals for making medicine! (He does not think to question what it treats or what it's made of. Medicine is medicine, right?)
"We'll definitely have to come back sometime! It's so nice out here. Really warm and sunny, and so much green!" Dean says with a robust smile. It's too bad they can't say hi to the local Lord of the Land, but he respects that a crowd like this might be a lot for someone who prefers their privacy. Maybe next time on that one, too!
Either way, when Yvain tells them they're almost to the cavern, he nods firmly. "Ready!" he says firmly. "Lead the way, Yvain!"
<Pose Tracker> Mariel has posed.
Mariel has actually been tracking down a Shrine!
Nowhere around here, though. Her research wasn't leading her anywhere in this direction. She thinks she's about tracked down the entrance, but it's not yet confirmed, so that is a problem for another day.
Right now she has come along with the Fiends with her big satchel, which now has a book strap hanging from it because she brought some of her history books along for the ride. "I would like to talk to them about that," Mariel says, because of course she would. Always sensitive to the feel of the land, she says only, "It's green here..." She can tell benevolence when she walks through it.
Also, Mariel has a straw hat on. It looks somewhat incongruous but it is doing its primary job: keeping the sun off her face.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Hiro and Ruby of course have come along for the journey to find the fire shrine. They've run defense for the few hellions and monsters that they encountered but have otherwise mostly spent the trip chatting with the group. At other times Hiro is abstracted, thoughtful.
On arrival to the village, Ruby stands up on Hiro's shoulders and waves her pawsies in her own friendly way to the people bothering to look. "Hey actual dragon here! No reason to be shy - I don't bite!"
Hiro gives Yvain a look though as they work there way through, "Medicine?" He asks curiously, "Have they been having problems with some kind of affliction?" Before he looks to Mariel in turn at her own interest.
Wiping away a sheen of sweat from his forehead, he takes a small sip of water, deciding to ration it some. "Well no need to infringe on their privacy then." Dean's cheer seems infectious, as he grins, "Yep. Let's get moving... anything we need to worry about on the way, Yvain?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Clarine has posed.
Clarine was pleased to lend her assistance in charting a path to get everyone through Biroclef Ridge. She knows its winding, labyrinthine canyons by heart, and knows its secret ways - she can ensure they take the safest, quickest path.
She is familiar, too, with Goddodin, the village at the far end of the ridge. Her history with it, however, is far less happy. Here, they know her as the Wisp of Biroclef Ridge, a supposedly malicious spirit that leads travelers to their doom... and so, as they make their way to the village she makes sure to stay close to everyone, even if the villagers can't see her.
For those familiar with her, it's understandable why.
But this is where her ability to guide ends, and she relies on Yvain's wisdom.
"Yes... I am ready." She confirms with a nod. Whatever dangers the entrance to the shrine presents, they may be easier for her than facing Goddodin.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel Armitage has a pretty relaxed approach to ARMS missions as of late largely because she wants to encourage her friends to think on their feet, follow their own hearts, and lead themselves because one day Marivel isn't sure if she will be around to handle any of that. And so she has invited some of the bossier ARMS agents (and Clarine) along on this trip. A fair chunk of them are on good terms with the Fiends besides and, well, some are even on great terms with Yvain specifically right? Right??
Regardless, Marivel is eager to join Yvain on his quest but is a little less excited about visiting a Fire Shrine. Fire is not something Marivel is 'weak' to in the way that she is to the Light but she's not exactly FOND of it when it's directed towards her. Brings back bad memories if she's not careful.
Marivel as usual is dressed in her SUN PROTECTION ARMOR which is a big pointed witch-hat and a big poofy jacket and mittens that more or less leave nothing but her eyes visible. There's even a scarf! Let it not be said that she has not dressed properly to fight against Ice Monsters.
"Ah, well, privacy. Galaxy is falling apart but we wouldn't want to be inconvenient." She says.
She looks to Mariel. "Worried about a sunburn? Worry not, if you wish to abandon the sun, you can always join me as a queen of the night."
� Logging to file "C:\Electra\Logs\2022\josie_fire_shrine.txt" started
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia is with the other Vile Fiends, of course.
She walks along after Yvain -- with a glance and a smile at Dean -- and then she looks back at the Fire Seraph, and she bobs her head in understanding. "Well, I'm not complaining, no? We can always come back later!"
She glances sideways at Mariel -- considers what she says -- and nods, before she looks back at Hiro. "I wonder, no? I hadn't heard anything, but..."
Maybe they just make medicine as an export, she considers.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth is along on Yvain's invitation. To her credit, given her involvement in a number of difficulties going on around Zoara, she is behaving about as well as she can in a land that seems apt to encourage her to bring out her worst. She's keeping herself contained, dressed in her usual guise with the hood up. It is far too warm for the climate, but as she lacks sensitivity to temperature, it matters not other than making her look... weird.
It is good that the local Hellions do not push their luck. A part of her grows uneasy when she recognizes the air feels more 'clear,' as Yvain mentions a Lord of the Land. Her ejection from Lastonbell by one such Seraph has not been an easy one to live down. Dean's joy at the novelty of how nice this place is... is kind of infectious.
"It is beautiful," she says, though she feels the unease in the air keenly, gloved hands tightening as her right hand goes over her heart. She nods once to Yvain's question as the others around her voice their affirmations and thoughts.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Magilou is here.
Magilou wasn't always here. She just kind of cats her way in -- after the group reached Goddodin, despite it being a hidden village.
"Hear what you hear, but see what you see!" That's Magilou, tumbling in. No, like, literally -- she tumbles forward, all in a ball, and then springs up. She is, for some reason, all dressed up as a kitsune -- fox ears pinned to her hair which is back in a ponytail, something which might have been a kimono before she chopped half of it off, a tail strapped back there.
"What you need to worry about might be riiiight in front of your eyes~!" Magilou singsongs, as she straightens up, lacing her hands behind her head. She is, coincidentally, walking backwards in front of the party now she's upright, so that she is right in front of everyone. Hmm!
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
Venetia Vuong has no strong opinions about the 'Vile Fiends' other than perhaps frowning a little at their choice in branding. Then again, she lives in a neighborhood literally named 'Void 41' and so she has little room to comment.
Venetia is riding on a general-issue horse, a staid mare who is probably one of Marivel's personal stable residents. (Venetia doesn't hang out with horses a lot, another proof of Guild Galad's advantages. Less horse apples.) She too has a broad-brimmed hat held in place, but this is more because of heavily dark-adapted vision.
"Promise me something," Venetia calls to Yvain.
"If there's a furious foreman or otherwise, let me speak to them first, and if necessary put them in a joint lock. I feel that we'll save a great deal of time and trouble if we do it that way." She glances towards several others after saying that.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
"Was wonderin' that myself. Don't suppose they give out samples or none?" a certain voice drawls from the shade of a particular building.
It's a damn sight better than a frozen mountain, that's for certain.
Josie had withdrawn shortly after the climax of that particular altercation, what with her injuries and the more-or-less abatement of the threat at hand. So she'd gone off to lick her wounds and ponder what she wanted to report about this particular little happening, if anything, when she'd been greeted with a message at her current watering hole of choice.
It had in fact been an invitation. Curiosity piqued, she'd headed south.
Now, goggles around her neck and cloth mask nowhere to be seen, Josie comes ambling towards the gathered group. "Yo," she says, raising her good hand in greeting. "...And you didn't say nothin' about any others or no, Yvvie. If I weren't curious, I might ask you what was the big idea!" But she's grinned at him, lopsidedly, and rolled her shoulders in a lazy shrug.
As if to say, 'what can you do'.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen Whitlock, super courier, and devious Fiend...
..... may not be doing anyone any favors by being here. But even if and when she's given an out, she refuses, likely joining in with Hiro and Ruby at some point to represent the Filgaia arm (no pun intended??) of the terrible, terrible Fiends. "... Maybe th'village has some herbs. It'd be a nice oppurtunity for business, maybe.... but later." Seeing Josie come up, Gwen makes a quick glance over those gathered. Will they be okay with this? They seem to be in a state of being okay with this. Okay! Perfect.
Dressed in her usual Lunar garb, which throws aside her usual black and white color palette for brighter colors and geometric designs, she's beginning to feel a little....
.... underdressed?
She asides to Ruby. "..... were we supposed t'dress up?"
What would she dress up as, anyway? There was the whole joke when she once dressed up as the Hero of Time, but that's not even a thing here!
It wouldn't make the real reason for all of this any easier for Gwen. She should've done more training....
Yvain asks if they're ready, and Gwen draws in a breath, and breathes out. ".... I think so, yeah." Then, as if to emphasize her determination, she firms her mouth into a line. "T'clarify, I'm ready as hell."
.... no pun intended.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
After the incident in Zulan, Ida regrouped with her Hellion acquaintances, and told them what she could about the "metal dragon-man". As it so happened, Zhenya had picked up a shipment ready for delivery to Glenwood, and Ida hitched a ride, taking the time to rest and recover after a grueling encounter with Azoth. Bidding her friends goodbye, she and Sterling met up with Marivel and the rest of ARMS, and now...
Ida leads Sterling up the path, taking in the sights and sounds of an early summer. The air is warm and fragrant, there are mercifully few biting insects, and everything is green and lovely. The heiress is dressed for the occasion, wearing her Seer's capelet over a sleeveless shirt and baggy pants tucked into her traveling boots. Sterling carries most of her gear, and pauses every so often to sample sprigs of grass or fresh growth.
Ida helped deal with the handful of animal Hellions, Purifying them--an act that feels resonant with the land, somehow. "It's a beautiful day, regardless," Ida says. "We've certainly found shrines under worse circumstances..."
Venetia speaks up, detailing what would definitely constitute "worse circumstances". Her smile turns lopsided, and a little grim, as she remembers her journeys into the Rose Queen's Domain... and Summer's. "Duly noted," she says. "Just in case."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.
"It's not so much an affliction in particular as that there's a medicine they can make here that's good for many afflictions," Yvain explains to Hiro, nodding along to Dean. "With it they can help a lot of people. It's good." So Talia's guess is right.
He has his eye on Clarine now that they're here--not constantly, but enough because he understands that this place would be difficult for her, even if he wasn't there for her troubles back then. He has interest in Mariel's research as well--but that is for another day. "Between the Shrine and the Lord of the Land here, it's a wonderful place to live," Yvain answers as to the greenery.
And for Hiro and Ruby, he's been conversational. "Nothing especially to worry about on the way in. It's the cavern itself that presents the danger; it doesn't really come out to trouble the village."
Yvain can forgive Marivel her reluctance to visit a Fire Shrine, because he is sympathetic to people not liking to be set ablaze. He grins at her when she mentions the galaxy falling apart, as f they're sharing a particular joke. "I for one still enjoy the day." A pause. "Samples," he says to Josie, "Will be yours to negotiate when you come back." Then, to Ventia, "I'll be sure to give you the chance to speak to the one in charge. Rely on it."
Ruth says it is beautiful... and Yvain nods. "It is." Between her, and Magilou--Magilou gets a shake of his head--and Josie...
"Some of you may not like each other very much. And you all have reasons to be here. But I ask that you put aside your differences for this purpose, for now."
He smiles at Gwen. "i'm glad you're ready."
Sterling, meanwhile, has received a few apples from Yvain already. Ida has received no apples, but pleasant conversation.
"...So, as I was saying." He pauses past the village, where they are already far away from the prying ears of the villagers, who waved back in some cases but did not stick with the group as they started moving on. There were nice interactions. It was nice. Now, they're... at a rock wall. No cavern in sight.
But as Yvaiin was saying, "...The danger is within. You all have your own reasons for being here. Some seek enlightenment. ...Some seek a path to the future they wish to achieve. Some are just interested in the challenge. But all of you will be tested."
"The Shrines of the Elemental Trials are no playgrounds, no sites of celebration. Pilgrims come here, and not all survive."
He looks to Magilou, wry for a moment. "...Definitely keep your eyes open," he says. "Whatever you see may not be what you think it is."
"...But this will be dangerous. Anyone who wants to stay back, see the town, interact with the locals instead--I won't think less of you for not coming."
"...Because if you do, you may find more than you wished. The Trial will test body, mind, and soul. Those who cannot withstand the trials may not live to regret their failures."
"So if you are ready..."
Yvain walks to a stone wall, and sets his hand upon it. A Seraphic glyph in red burns into visibility, suddenly bright and spinning before the whole wall shifts backward, and then slides out of their way, revealing a hallway into the rock.
"...Those who are willing to risk it, come with me. There is more to be said, but not here on the surface."
<Pose Tracker> Mariel has posed.
"If I dressed like that," Mariel says to Marivel, though she smiles, "I would melt. There is nothing wrong with a hat like this. I made it myself, actually..."
That is a 'yes, I am worried about sunburn'. Mariel spends a lot of time outdoors but she is also a naturally pale blonde, and sometimes the little kerchief she usually wears is just not enough.
To Hiro, she explains, "This region is known for some medicinal compounds - yes, as Yvain says. I'm interested in seeing exactly what they produce." She hasn't gotten any useful samples yet, but it wouldn't surprise her if they knew something locally she did not. She's always willing to learn!
She seems a little taken aback by Venetia's request. "I don't think a joint lock will be necessary, under pretty much any circumstances I can think of..." Violence doesn't solve everything! Sometimes it just causes additional problems! A lot of the time, really, it just causes additional problems.
Mariel trails off. Yvain is right - there are people here she doesn't like. (And others that she isn't entirely sure what to make of, like Magilou over there, who she is keeping an eye on. That outfit, really??) But she won't say anything if they won't.
A hidden door? "How long has that been hidden," Mariel murmurs. Even she can feel the power in that glyph. She takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly - time to catch her courage. Sometimes that takes a moment when she has to think about it instead of just acting.
"...I will go on," Mariel says. As if that was really in doubt. "But I would still like to see the town afterwards."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Clarine has posed.
Marivel in particular receives a friendly smile from Clarine. It's good to have her here - and she knows that Marivel may have her own reasons for not liking this place, but it is good to have her here all the same.
There are others here - many of them familiar faces, some friendly than others. She acknowledges them all with a polite nod, before turning her attention back to Yvain as he speaks of danger.
"...I must see it with my own eyes. I will continue." She replies. This is something she must face, despite the danger. There are things worth risking one's mind, body, and soul - and this endeavor, she feels, is one of those things.
She watches, then, as Yvain approaches the wall... and a Seraphic Glyph activates, opening a hallway through the rock.
"Ah!" Clarine says, with a gasp of surprise. "A hidden passageway... It is no wonder, then, that I have never gone this far..."
She hadn't even known the shrine was here, until Yvain spoke of it. She was curious how they were going to access it... but, the surprise on her face soon gives way to determination and, with a nod, she prepares to follow.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Hiro smiles at Talia, "That'd be the more comforting explanation." And, it turns out to be true, as Yvain explains, "Huh!" He smiles broadly, "Good to know some towns out there are still looking out for their neighbors like that."
The doctrines of the Chosen, as well as the donation requirements have... bled some towns dry of compassion for their fellow man.
He then turns to Mariel, grinning, "Didn't realize there was any kind of medicine you didn't know Mariel. Guess even an expert is always learning."
When Gwen looks at Ruby again, she suddenly has a ring of gold and brass around her waist as she hovers in mid-air, two blue/white socks affixed under her ribbon to look like ears, looking like she's Miu. "What you didn't get the Memo? Gwen you're usually on top of things!" (The memo probably came from Magilou. Though even odds it came from Marivel too.)
Hiro shrugs at Gwen with a smile, he's not dressed up either. Then nods Yvain's way as he says there's nothing especially to worry about. He still stays on guard, alert but...
Yvain explains that they will be tested. And Hiro's face looks at him with a more grave look, but... he actually looks, interested? Sure, his goal is to get Lucia to Althena... but even deeper under the surface... he's the type of person who enjoys being challenged, and growing stronger for it. "Sounds like an adventure of life time. I'm not backing down. Count me in." Hiro looks serious about it. Ruby a bit less so, always a bit like she's along for the ride, just enjoying whatever comes - often she may be worried, but with the crew today she doesn't even seem uneasy about it, "Well if everyone here is going! Then I'm not worried-! We've pulled through a lot of tests and trials before."
Whatever the case, the two walk in as the entrance in the stone wall reveals itself, following behind Yvain.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia whistles lowly. General purpose medicine would likely sell for a great deal.
In the end, though, she quiets down as Yvain starts to explain. The danger within this place; her eyes look at the shrine's entryway for a moment, and then her eyes shift back towards the Seraph. She hesitates for a moment as he explains that the danger is real -- that some people come here, and they perish rather than find what they are looking for. She lets out a breath she didn't quite realize she was holding in, when the door is made to appear.
Hiro, Mariel, and others say they're in. She nods her head, too. "Maybe," she says under her breath, "if it can help Ivan, then..."
The Fiends have their own mission, too, though.
Talia follows after Hiro and Ruby. Her hand comes down to rest on Mirage's hilt, as she walks in.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean grins at Hiro at his own enthusiasm, looking back at Yvain when he asks about what they might need to worry about. It's good that the medicine has a broad range of uses, though. No need to take more than one medicine! He thumbs up at Talia when he catches her smile, and brightens to see Ruth with the group too. It's good to see her trying to do good! Everyone of course gets a general wave of greeting--lots of his friends are here, so he can't simply ignore any of them, but they *are* here for a purpose.
"Oh, that's a cute costume, Magilou! You look like a fox," he comments to Magilou. ...*were* they supposed to dress up? He scratches his cheek as Gwen poses the idea. Hopefully not.
But it turns out this isn't just a cavern, it's the site of one of the Elemental Shrines. Dean was prepared for that, as well as the danger it poses and the tests it will make of them in their entirety, so he sobers without any sign of nerves, only nodding once in acknowledgement. "I'm ready," he says firmly.
Yvain opens up a stone wall with a Seraphic glyph. Dean walks through the entrance with his back straight and his head high.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Not to worry," Magilou wags her finger, winking to Ida, for some reason. "Everyone likes their best friend, Magilou!" Speaking of someone some of them might not like very much...
She cups her fingers in a heart shape, to Dean. "Did you know that when foxes get terribly old, they learn to use fox fire? Fun fact!" She's so cute.
"A roasty-toasty town and a toasty-roasty Trial... Yvain, darling, you can't tell them it's not their style! Meanwhile," Magilou hops back, as the rock becomes something less than a wall, only to shade her eyes as she peers inside. "If you're selling salvation, don't you think you ought to mark the price up a little more? Go the extra mile!"
Obviously, she saunters in.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
"Negotiate? Ah... well, I reckon that's better than none, right?" Josie says, shrugging more emphatically than before.
It might come as some relief to Gwen, perhaps, that 1) Josie appears to be alone and that 2) she hasn't made a move towards the ARM strapped against her back.
Though the second may be cold comfort, knowing that Josie is given to carrying multiple ARMs on her person. But at least the first still -- for now -- holds true.
And if that weren't enough, it's something that Yvain speaks to directly.
"Right you are. I ain't bothered," Josie remarks. "And there won't be trouble out of me." Not... right now, at least.
There's a rock wall ahead of them. She stands before it, regarding it thoughtfully, her dark-eyed gaze returning to Yvain. "Shrines, eh. Now that takes me back, in a manner of speaking... Seems I've already seen 'water' with my very own eyes. Can't see how this'll be different." She's propped her good hand on her hip. "...Heh. A little 'certain death' as the risk? Could be worse. And the way I figure, it ain't just passing the trial, right?"
Her eyes hood. "A place like this's bound to have more'n its share of old secrets."
And treasure.
Right on cue, the rock wall parts, revealing the way ahead, downwards.
Josie follows without further remark.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
'Between the Shrine and the Lord of the LAnd, it's a wonderful place to live,' Yvain says. Ruth inwardly fidgets thinking about it, in much the same way she deals with another tinge of difficult feelings when watching Ida restore the local wildlife. The same lowered gaze as Venetia references a particular difficulty that she ended up playing a more direct part in than she could've known at the time - or perhaps should've known.
She doesn't look Magilou in the eyes on her usual sort of playful appearance. There's a raised hand as if to meekly say, 'hello,' as if she weren't... well, you know.
She's able to keep pace with the group and not find herself wanting to stay put around uneasy people. Yvain was clear to her about the dangers of what he was inviting her to see and partake, and yet, there's a novelty to the severity in which he states this among others more conventionally 'worthy.'
She watches Ruby from underneath her hood with a little smile, and again back over to Josie volunteering herself with the usual bravado.
"...Not live to regret their failures," she repeats Yvain's warnings as she looks aside to the group. "You wouldn't be missing out on much."
She faces Yvain, if not directly. "I can't look away. I can't do nothing..."
She's not conflicted on that part, as the Seraphic glyph burns red and shows the way - and she strides forward.
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
"You would be surprised how well it would have helped in the past," Venetia answers Mariel.
They ride on. The opportunity to speak to the one in charge, Venetia thinks. She knows a name that might apply to such an individual. She does not speak it but she thinks upon it for a moment; upon other gods, of another world, somewhere far away.
The group reaches a stone wall.
Venetia dismounts from the horse, patting its flank as she takes a moment to shed some of her riding costume; a thin over-wrapping duster, packed up; some gloves; that hat. She pauses to take a drink from a canteen, rinsing her hands off as well before pulling on a pair of gloves and situation her equipment.
Firearm: rod of authority: Crest Graph pouch: miscellany. Venetia tightens her mask's ribbon tie.
"I don't know what's going to happen in here," Venetia says, in reply to Yvain's warning and to the group in general. "And I cannot guarantee what will happen, for that matter, to me."
"But if you are in despair, and you cannot trust in yourself - or your comrades - then call out to me, and I will strive to deliver you," Venetia says, fingers curling into loose fists and resting on her hips. "This is my responsibility and it is my honor. None of you in there will be alone, in the ultimate analysis, *for I will be with you.*"
~*HUMILITY*~
With this, Venetia approaches the entrance.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen puts her hands up helplessly with a shrug and a grin. "Ah, but! Maybe I *did* by dressin' up in these fine cl......" See, she hadn't looked over at Ruby's sudden costume change until then, and when she does...
She has to stifle the 'eeeeeeeeeeee' by closing her mouth, but it's not much help. "Rubbyyyyyyy, you look so *adorable*!!" They have kitsunes, witches, and this.
Grinning at Dean as he looks perplexed, Gwen rubs her chin. ".... I guess it's to kinda keep everyone's spirits up. It's gonna be a hard time, I bet, n' it ain't like it's gonna matter if we're comin' in there with heat-resistant clothing or not." Then, her brain seizes on a thought that makes her face fall. "..... Ghhhhh, I should've worn somethin' I wouldn't mind gettin' singed. I wanted to look like I was bein' serious n' all... well, I guess, that's part of the sacrifice!"
no gwen do not say the S word so quickly, you haven't even gone in
When Yvain explains, Gwen shuts up, her expression thoughtful. Sober, even.
She wants to do this even more, but at the same time, the temptation to stay behind is even stronger, but not as much.
"Y'say that like bein' set on fire ain't a trial on its own." Gwen can't help but add a wry comment to that, but it's for a good purpose, as she continues, "... better for that pain to be for a cause than t'suffer needlessly."
The look in her eyes is clear, though: she is heeding Yvain's warning as seriously as any.
Venetia delivers her promise. Gwen gives her a small, appreciative grin. "You got a heart of gold, Venetia."
Pausing to look at Josie, Gwen gives her a wide grin. "Glad t'see ya in a friendly context again. It's more fun, really, even if it's not like we always get a choice."
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel looks towards Venetia with a deadpan expressiuon on her face. Sometimes even she will pretend to be the rational one.
"Oh Dean," Marivel says. "Gosh I've missed you. I've missed your sensibility and, well, your sensibilities for that matter. Perhaps once this journey is over we can continue our discussion on the golems."
She smiles at Clarine, "Been a while Clarine. How've you been?"
She nods to Mariel and adds, "Ah, well, we can't have you melting. That would be a problem."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Sterling is learning to associate Yvain with his favorite treat. When the group comes to a stop, he takes a step forward, head bobbing as he looks at Yvain expectantly. Apple. Where's the apple?
Instead, Ida reaches up to ruffle his crest, and pat his neck. "You'll have to stay here, boy," she says. Sterling lets out a deep rumble, and nudges her with his beak--a gesture of gentle reassurance. He's picked up on her discomfort, which seems to be focused on Josie, and to a lesser extent, Magilou. (Why is Magilou lesser? Ida got a chance to punch her, and didn't have to stop her from assassinating a head of state, twice.)
Ida's hands curl and uncurl at her sides as she listens to Yvain. It's all sensible precaution--this is not the first Trial Shrine Ida's visited, but they're called Trial Shrines for a reason, and getting overconfident is a good way to end up dead on a dungeon floor. Her gaze slides sideways to meet Magilou's, and return tentative acceptance. Then she looks at Gwen, face pulling into a look of concern--but as she's about to say something, Venetia delivers her... generous offer.
Ida's expression shifts into a perfect deadpan. "I'll remember this generosity, Venetia," she says.
Her main focus, though, is on Dean: fellow Seer of Fire, fellow bearer of the blessing of Moor Gault. "As am I," Ida says, and she steps forward beside her friend.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.
Yvain steps back toward the group just long enough to give Sterling that last apple after all. Then he turns again.
"An adventure... Well, it will be that." To Hiro, of course. His gaze lingers on Ruby for a moment,but that's all. Instead he focuses on Talia, on the seriousness with which she approaches this mission, and inclines his head.
"For the record," Yvain says, looking back to Magilou and then the others at the apparent confusion, "You did not need to dress up. Magilou here is just... special." Beat. "Darling."
"Indeed," Yvain answers Josephine directly. "It has its similarities, but they're all different, just as Fire is different from Water. ...But as you say. It has secrets. And, as you might have guessed, treasure. There are riches hidden here that could make quite a comfortable life on the surface."
"Heh," Yvain answers Gwen. "True. But you've been tested by fire before. You know how it feels. ...I cannot guarantee it will be any more pleasant this time."
"...Regret is a difficult master," Yvain says to Ruth. "Maybe you're right about that one. But remember what I said to you, too." He nods. She cannot do nothing. "Then look forward, with your eyes open, Ruth."
"Hmm." Yvain watches Venetia as she speaks, as she speaks of responsibility and honor. He regards her for a few moments longer when she finishes, and then nods in approval before he turns back to the entrance.
"...This shrine," Yvain supplies for Mariel's murmur, "Was sealed some three hundred years ago."
He says it seriously, as he leads the way into the gray stone corridor, which grows warmer and warmer as they traverse its halls. Down, down, down, into the earth.
Where fire lives.
"Ready. That is good," he says to Dean and Ida, Seers of Fire, on the way down. But he is quiet for much of the journey down in a way that he wasn't for the journey to the village. He walks, and they go through corridor by cooridor, down long stairways...
Eventually, they come to a stop, before another pair of doors. These have no glyphs; they are simply sturdy, made of enchanted wood, and Yvain rests a hand along the metal plating at their center.
It's hot down here. Very, very hot.
"...Marivel," he says. "I hope you're prepared to guide them." A beat, "...because Magilou I'm sure won't help."
He pushes open the doors, and ahead looms a great chamber... at the end of which is a great gate, inlaid with red crystal and shining with power. Around the chamber are two gouts of magma flowing like rivers to either side of the chamber, and there is stonework on the ground that is altogether too intricate. This place is ancient, the glyphs inscribed along the walls and floors old by Lunarian standards.
"...I said," he says to Venetia, "That I would give you a chance to speak to the one in charge."
He strides towards the center of the platform, without looking back.
"...But I didn't promise what he'd tell you."
He reaches the center and turns, lifting his hands to either side, as if to show the place off. "I will tell you nothing of the trial within. But if you have any questions before you begin, I will at least hear them."
"...For as Keeper of the Shrine of the Fire Trial, I welcome you to Igraine."
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Hiro gives Talia a look, as she says 'If it can help Ivan.' The determination in his eyes growing, as he nods to her in solidarity. Ruby however stands up on Hiro's head and does a turn to show off her makeshift costume. "It's not a dragon - but it'll Miu!" Yvain says they don't have to dress up, and Ruby suddenly flies over from Hiro to hang with Magilou for a while, "She's not the only one!"
Hiro is more serious perhaps, as he winds a pot lid's ropes to strap it his arm. The presence of it alone might make it seem less serious, yet there's something in his eyes as he looks around, a veteran dungeoneer. Eventually forced to wipe his brow from the sheer heat. Down the stone corridor, warmer and warmer. Deeper and deeper.
"Well... Magilou is here right? That's a big help on it's own." Hiro says to Yvain's statement that Magilou won't help. Perhaps he's just used to powerful individuals that hold things back? (Thanks Ragnell.)
Eventually though, they reach the center of the platform, and he listens to Yvan's welcome.
"Igraine." Hiro says, thinking it rolls off the tongue like Pendrago does, "If we can't ask about the trial. Then I won't." Though he then says, "But if there's anything you're willing to share about your connection to this place as Keeper - I'd welcome that."
Of course, he only says if he's willing, as he's not going to pry about this sort of thing normally. Yet now that they're here, it feels like an implicit reason to ask.
<Pose Tracker> Mariel has posed.
"I know many things about herbals and medicine," Mariel agrees with Hiro (which may be something of an understatement, but she's modest). "But I do not know everything. I don't think it is possible to... and even if it was, this is Lunar. I haven't lived here, like I have on Filgaia."
She smiles again, if a little fainter because things are becoming more serious. "I prefer not," Mariel replies to Marivel. "Though honestly I am already part of the way there." She holds up one of her gloved hands.
Mariel has been staying away from Ruth. She doesn't consciously realize why but something about her is disturbing the feel of the land around her. Of course, as they go further down, it becomes harder and harder for her to trust that particular sense.
Not because her sense is weakening. Mariel is attentive and connected to the world around her as always. It's just that, in one of the elemental shrines, everything else is being drowned out. It feels unbalanced here - but not a dangerous sort of unbalance. Or, rather, it is dangerous, but in the same way a volcano is dangerous; not a twist in the world, just a place where an aspect pushes forward to prominence.
She walks a little slower, and ends up trailing behind. And not only because she has short legs. (Though she does.)
Mariel has pushed back her hat now that she is underground, and just before they reach the great chamber, she spares a moment to tie it to her satchel rather than leave it on her head. Once they actually open the gate, of course, she has no eyes for anything else. The magma, roiling without cooling; the stonework. She is already sweltering. She doesn't know how Marivel is handling it, but she passes over, without comment, what appears to be a bottle of water but is far cooler than it should be for having come out of Mariel's bag.
And Yvain is the keeper of this place. Do they all have keepers? Mariel thinks, before realizing: oh, I can just ask that. "Do all the Shrines have keepers?" she asks, before a more serious question: "If I cannot ask about the Trial, I will not, but instead I would ask: why was it sealed away for three hundred years?"
And why is Marivel (or Magilou) the one guiding them? She doesn't ask that one. She assumes it is a language issue.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Magilou grins, to Ida, which is probably acceptance. She waves to Ruth, too!
To Gwen, she adds, singsong: "Pain for a cause~ oh, noble meaning~ then, you won't mind taking on my share of suffering, will you?" She's joking, right? She's... probably joking.
She pouts, to Yvain. "Don't 'darling' me! Here I get all dressed up, and this is my reception?! This is why no one comes back to knock on your door, buddy!!" Magilou folds her arms, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder. "Not that you make that easy, either."
Magilou puts out an arm, then, to give Ruby a convenient place to perch. "Men have no appreciation for an honest effort," she asides to the littlest dragon, as if there were anything honest about her current costume. (There isn't. It's positively scandalous. That's the joke.) And as she wanders in, she asides, to Hiro, cheerfully: "I never said I'd help!"
She leans on the doorframe, as the others file in. It may, soon, become clear just what door Magilou was referring to as difficult to knock on, when Yvain steps into the middle of the platform.
Somehow, she's not surprised by this plot twist.
Languid, her question is both easy and very, very difficult: "Sooo, how's it feel to be back in the saddle?"
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
"Oh! I didn't know that! What's fox fire?" Dean asks Magilou in interest. If it's a fun fact, then obviously the fox fire must be fun, too! (And it probably is, to Magilou! To other people, maybe less so...?)
He perks further when Marivel says they should *totally* talk about Golems again. "Yeah!! That'd be awesome! I missed you too--I don't get to talk about Golems with a lot of people, but you really *get* it!"
In fact, he's absolutely about to go off about Golems with Marivel when Ida steps up next to him, declaring her own readiness. That reminds him that this is Serious Time about Serious Stuff as Serious Representatives of Serious Fire. (Well, fire generally. It doesn't *have* to be serious.) He shares a smile with Ida, then nods firmly at Yvain.
He does beam at Venetia and her generous benediction though. "Aww, thanks, Venetia! You're such a good friend." He means this sincerely.
Good thing dressing up wasn't necessary, though. It's already really hot down here, though Dean takes it in stride. As they head down the stone corridors, deep into the earth, he wonders why this is the Fire Shrine and not the Earth Shrine. Even if it's really hot, so far he's only seen... well, rocks. But then they reach the double doors, and Yvain opens them and turns around...
"Wait, YOU'RE the one in charge??" he blurts out, eyes going wide. Still--Igraine, huh... He wipes some sweat from his brow. "Nah, if you can't tell us anything, then it's fine," he says. "I wasn't expecting you to be the keeper, but when I think about it, it makes sense! Of course the Keeper would be the one to guide us here in the first place."
He pauses. Then, curious, he adds, "Actually, I do have one question. How'd you get to be Keeper in the first place?" Mariel has a couple of good questions too, and he glances at her before listening for the answers.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Fox fire is fire for foxes," Magilou asides to Dean's question, as if this explains everything. "Not to be mistaken for fire fox, which is just a fox someone set on fire." She says this with a straight face, so it must be important Lunarian lore. Probably.
<Pose Tracker> Mariel has posed.
Mariel, who is more honest, adds, "Foxfire is a kind of glow mushrooms make. I'll show it to you if you like - I use it for a light sometimes."
Spoilsport.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Clarine has posed.
"I have been well, yes... I do hope it has been the same for you." Clarine replies to Marivel. "I have made a friend that I must introduce to you and everyone... but, now is not perhaps the best time."
And Yvain says something interesting.
"Three hundred years ago..." Clarine repeats consideringly, nodding to herself. She doesn't elaborate - instead, she proceeds as Yvain leads the way further inside.
The great chamber within is a sight to behold - rivers of flowing magma and intricate stonework. It's incredible, really, and Clarine regards it with interest. She's distracted from it, however, as Yvain explains that he is the Keeper of the Fire Shrine.
He can't tell them what trials they face, but he does ask for questions - however, the most immediate ones to her have already been answered.
"Keeper of the Fire Trial... I am impressed. You have clearly been quite busy." Clarine replies with a friendly chuckle. "...Thank you for welcoming us. We will do our best not to disappoint."
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
Venetia looks towards Ida.
She answers her by reaching into a hip pocket and taking out an unusually large Crest Graph. Raising it aloft and holding it by her thumb, she narrows her eyes behind her lace mask. There is a subtle feeling, like a heartbeat in the Ley -- Mariel would know in an instant that it is *different* than Crest Sorcery usually is, if not in a *harmful* way --
A carmine shimmer of light passes over Ida.
Venetia's eyebrow quirks enough to be visible over the lace of the mask, then: back down.
"Thank you, Dean," Venetia answers Dean in her best proper-lady voice. She's still holding the Crest Graph and raises it a little: "Do you want to try this one? It's probably best if I don't quite explain it at this stage, as it may wear off before it would become relevant."
And then down. Down into the earth.
It's warm, not just the deep-earth warmth but something sweatier. No, particularly hot. It reminds Venetia of Marivel's basement - the *deep* basement.
When they reach the final chamber, Yvain tells her she will have an opportunity to speak with the manager. And then --
Venetia squints.
Her lips purse into a tight little scrunchy of an 'o'.
She contemplates this.
She looks at Marivel with a vague accusatory air, more on general principles than anything.
"I suppose you're our lucky works foreman," Venetia says, finally, perhaps to cover up being hecking bamboozled.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
There's more than a few here that she's crossed paths with in perhaps less-than-friendly contexts. And then there's more than a few where she still gets on friendly-like enough. For instance, there's Ruth.
"Thanks for the other day," she murmurs, briefly close enough to the other woman to trade words. "Was a little touch and go. Don't suppose it's still lost?" It being Azoth, the wayward machine, last seen falling. Normally an opportunist, especially when it concerns mechanical scrap, Josie had instead bailed.
It hadn't been worth it.
Gwen draws a touch nearer to her and here, Josie tilts her head in Gwen's direction. "Huh... suppose it is. Well, mind yourself, kiddo. Just don't forget after: we ain't on the same side no more."
And that's as much as she'll say about that. Most likely, at least.
That's right, and as Yvain speaks Josie glances Gwen's way. More than a few people here have been similarly tested by fire prior. Is that why Yvvie invited her along?
Sometimes she can only half-tell what he's thinking. Perhaps it goes with the territory, once you're as old as he is.
"Sealed, huh. What's so special about three hundred?" she muses, continuing along as they stride further into that place where the fire dwells. There was something Yvain had said to her once, but try as she might, she can't rightly draw it to the surface at the moment.
They will need to contend with the keeper of the shrine within. And that keeper is--
"Aha. Now out it comes. I should've figured you were the one behind this business," Josie says, waving her good hand through the air before her dismissively. "Well, so it goes. I've no questions. Not now, anyway," Josie says, shaking her head. "But rest assured, I've plenty of questions for you after, Yvvie." Her lips twist into a smile as she plants her hand on her hip.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Sterling takes the apple, and eats it in two bites. It's hard to believe there was a time when he was three apples high, looking at it. Nevertheless, he's both a loyal and sensible bird, and as the heat grows--and the trail leads in, through the door--Sterling remains behind. His person will be back. It's just a matter of time. She's always come back.
Ida's shoulders grow warmer and warmer as they descend. Once they reach the halfway point, she undoes the capelet, folds it into a neat little square, and tucks it into a free belt pack. She wipes sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm. "It wouldn't be right if we weren't here," Ida says, to Yvain. "But nevertheless, I'm glad to have company--"
Venetia walks up. Ida's gaze flicks down at the Crest Graph, then up at Venetia. The spell snaps into place. Ida offers her fellow Galadian a grateful smile. "Thank you. I hope we won't need it, but thank you nevertheless."
And then, the keeper reveals himself--or rather, reveals he's been there the whole time. Ida turns to Yvain, blinks owlishly, and then remembers her manners. She clasps her hands together and bows, deeply. "Thank you for doing us this honor," she says.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
'Then look forward, with your eyes open, Ruth.' So Yvain invites, as they go on that jourey. She shows no signs of physical discomfort for the environs versus how many layers of clothing she has over herself - a subtle cue easy enough for anyone to call that there's something off or wrong about her.
She is bereft of the warmth (and chill) of outside forces in most circumstances, comfortable and combative. In this specific context, a boon, as flowing magma greets them with sweltering, air-warping heat fit to cast mirages - in which the contained Hellion looks up, hood flopping back to reveal her dull copper-hued hair and those pointed ears of hers.
She doesn't look like she's sweating bullets under the heat, but there's a start as Yvain reveals himself as the very Keeper of the Shrine of the Fire Trial - to 'Igraine,' which is one letter off from a migraine.
"Three hundred years," she repeats. It makes her own span of existence feel a bit smaller for it as she closes her eyes and holds a Crest Graph in a gloved hand...
Eyes open, Yvain said, and it was probably for the best, as her eyelids are rarely sanctuary from difficult sights. She has no questions to ask.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Ida's worry, if fleeting in the face of everything else, is given its due weight by Gwen. Quietly, she places a hand on Ida's shoulder. "... If we don't laugh, we might think too much 'bout the reasons to walk away, n' not enough 'bout the ones to keep going forward."
But is Ida more worried about her comments, or... just the fact that she's here? Or that they're all here?
Moments later, with her focus now on Josie, Gwen smirks. "... Y'say that like you know we ain't gonna be in some situation in the future where things'll be just weird enough that it won't matter."
But Yvain's comments can't be pushed aside with a warm gesture or a cute quip. She sighs.
"It's the truth. It never gets easier."
Which is why Marivel's comment draws a rare flummoxed expression from Gwen. "Wha?!" Though, she's learning- she's quickly recovered with a smug grin, her hands on her hips. "C'mon, my wonderful friendship n' gratitude ain't enough?"
When Yvain reveals his identity, Gwen lingers there despite the growing heat, staring in shocked silence. ".... Man.... if I knew you were the Keeper I would've cut back on the quips..." She rubs the back of her head with an apologetic grin. "Still, I appreciate you doing this much for us."
She glances back to Hiro and his pot, ready to offer to help him, but the heat radiating from her right shoulder makes her quickly realize this would not be a wise decision. ".... You're... doin' okay with that, right, Hiro?"
She can't help herself.
It keeps her from remembering how hot it is, down here.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel says, "Of course," to Yvain. "Though, I should warn you that I've never been here before so I might guide them into a magma trap. But rest assured, if there is a puzzle, I have several methods on hand to manage it."
She glances to Clarine. "A friend? Oh ho... I'd love to meet them. At the appropriate time of course."
She is called a foreman.
"Ugh." is Marivel's answer to that. "Great, deep into some grimy mines covered in fire. And it being my responsibility. Sounds like my idea of a grand old time."
She does smile a bit at golem talks in the...future.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.
"True. But a Dragon is always a little dressed up, don't you think?" He says this to Ruby, and RUDELY IGNORES Magilou's complaining about the rest. It's really very terrible. He only says, "True." To which part???
"My connection to this place?" Yvain nods to Hiro, before he walks towards a small pedestal near the center of the room. "...I've spent a lot of time here. Hundreds of years ago, when the Seraphim faded into myth and the people stopped believing... I came here, to think. To commune. My connections with mortals had wavered; my connections to my fellow Seraphim were scattered. The Goddess had been gone for a long time. ...So I sought out places of Fire. I came to this place."
"Originally, it was to be sealed for a shorter time than that--unlocked when a new Shepherd came, or someone proved worty. But..." He looks wry, and shrugs to Mariel. "I was indisposed for the last two centuries, and no one worthy enough to break the seal came while I was gone." He nods to Mariel, and then answers her other question: "All Shrines are meant to have Keepers. It is possible that those Keepers have become lost, as I was. I haven't seen the other Shrines in a long time."
Magilou's languid question gets a a brief laugh--and he reaches the pedestal he'd approached. He lowers his hands to open a chest on it, and from it pulls a draconic mask, gleaming metal--and turns it, lifting it up to bring down over his face. "It's been a while," he admits. "...It's more difficult than before, because I like these mortals. Last time I was here, they thought us myths."
Others have fox fire covered. and Golems. The question of why it's the Fire Shrine is a good one for a while. But Dean doesn't voice that one. Instead he voices his surprise, and Yvain smiles beneath his mask. "I figured if any of you were looking to investigate these Shrines... it was best that I took your measure first myself." A beat, as Dean asks how he became Keeper.
"When you spend long enough in a place, sometimes they offer you a job. After decades--a century of communing with elemental Fire, I became the best suited to keep this place. And so I accepted the duty. ...But there is much of Fire that I have yet to learn. I have hoped to return..."
Yvain nods to Clarine--three hundred years. But they can talk about that later. Instead, he answers later--when she thanks him for the welcome. He grins back, under the mask. "I'm sure they and you will do their best. I would expect nothing less of mortals you'd chosen."
Yvain appreciates Venetia's reaction. He does. And so, in return for lightning up an old man's life with amusement, he does not rub it in by apologizing for the deception. Instead he simply answers, "I am. Though to be clear, I didn't build the place--it's much older than I am, and that is saying something."
To Ida, "The honor will come in passing. You may be Seers of Filgaia, but Lunar must see your worth, as well."
Ruth has no questions--but she has clearly listened to his instructions. The time will come, soon, when she is tested with the others. He has hopes for her, Hellion or no.
And for Marivel, "I'm sure you'll do fine. You've guided them so far. ...And of course," he says, behind his draconic mask, "I'm sure it must feel interesting to be tested yourself again. Lunar awaits you."
He then turns to the others, and nods. "I will welcome the questions," he says finally to Josephine, "...Provided that you make it to the center to ask them of me." Does it feel weird to him to wear a dragon mask? He doesn't say. "...But I imagine you will. Especially if you're willing to work with the others..."
Yvain looks over the assembled group again, thoughtfully, and returns to the center to address them. "To reach the trial, you must go through the Shrine itself. It is a trial all its own, but it is not itself the Trial. That will be conducted at the center. I will be there, waiting for you. The Shrine tests more than courage--a flame that burns itself out before getting anywhere is not a useful flame."
"I hope to see all of you again. Remember: what you see is not always what it seems. Fire brings a haze, heat distorts. And of course... to touch fire is to burn."
"Good luck."
He turns, and starts towards the sealed gate at the end. When he approaches it, he dissipates into flame, and the resulting bonfire surges through the gateway, into the center.
They are alone with each other, in the sweltering antechamber of Igraine.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
"Good attitude to take, reminds me of how my Grandpa would look at all the ancient ruins he came across." He replies of Mariel's desire to learn of medicines, "Like it was just another opportunity to learn."
"I know right?" Ruby harumphs as she grouses with Magilou, though Yvain... says, that a dragon is always a little dressed up, and she cocks her head in confusion,"Uh - it's true that we're fabulous."
Does she get it? Probably not.
Hiro then says to Magilou, "Hey, being here is cheering us on in a way - even if you don't."
As if he's just implacable in the belief that Magilou means well at all times, despite being herself, or at the very least doesn't mean harm.
"Might ask the same of you." Hiro notes to Gwen with a grin, at her arm, "It's not the most comfortable, but..." He twists his arm to show that his arm is padded and he has the ropes between his arm and actual contact with that padding. "... it never feels as hot as it should. Though I guess we'll be testing it here if it starts to burn the ropes."
He falls silent as Yvain speaks about how he spent a long time here after Seraphim faded into belief and people stop believing, to commune. The Goddess gone. There's perhaps a sort of sadness in his eyes. The idea of an age of magic and miracles coming to an end, the kind he read in the books. He can understand perhaps why someone who lived through a different age would come to think.
It must have been lonely. Just him and the fire. Even Ruby looks more solemn thinking about it. Every story she'd ever heard of Dragons has them living in the solitude of caves. Perhaps... that's why she's not in such a hurry to...
"We'll treat this place with the respect it deserves then."
He finds himself a bit awed that they're about to undertake a trial that Shepherds might have. Yet, perhaps more importantly, as conveyed through Yvain's words, they have to survive it. Watching Yvain as he approaches the sealed gate, opening it as the flame he dissipates into becomes a bonfire at the gateway.
"We'll meet you there, Keeper Yvain." He says as he uses his title, before turning to the group, sounding excited. "Our goal is the center of the shrine. Let's take a little time to prepare. Then... let's face this trial with all we've got!"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Clarine has posed.
Clarine nods as Yvain explains the past - how he came to bet he keeper, and why this place was sealed. It certainly makes a lot of sense. She watches as he pulls out a draconic mask and puts it on. It's a curious thing, certainly...
...and she smiles, as Yvain responds to her. Though hidden by the mask, she can hear the grin in his voice.
"I have the utmost faith in them. We will meet again very soon." She agrees with a nod. Those of ARMS... they'd rekindled her trust in mortals. She has every expectations they - and the others as well - will pass this trial.
And then, he leaves them. She looks toward Hiro as he speaks, and then nods.
"Yes... if there are any last minute preparations anyone would like to do, now is the time to do them." She agrees.
She's ready, though. She won't flinch from this trial.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Fox fire is fire for foxes, Magilou says matter-of-fact. Except for fire foxes, which are just foxes that are on fire.
"Oh. Okay," Dean says blankly, confused but willing to accept this on its face. But Mariel speaks up to explain what it *actually* is, and he perks. "Oh neat! Glowing mushrooms? I'd love to see that!" To Venetia, he says, "Oh, it wears off? We better save it, then. We don't know what we're gonna face, after all!"
Yvain explains why him, and why here. "Ohhhh, I get it," Dean says, nodding once. He actually does get it, too! It was a nice, simple, and direct explanation. The best kind, in his opinion! Yvain explains that the Trial is at the center and they need to get there before walking off in a burst of flame.
"Well, that's simple enough," he declares. Hiro suggests they all take some time to prepare before heading in, and he grins and pumps a fist in agreement. "Yeah! Let's make sure we're all ready and then give this one everything we've got!" After all, they've got to prove themselves to Lunar, too!
<Pose Tracker> Mariel has posed.
Mariel does not use Crest magic, but that's not due to a lack of sensitivity or ability with the forces it controls. It feels -
It's something *like* Crest Sorcery, but not quite. Like viewing it through a prism, or tinted glass. She shoots Venetia a surprised look, but she elects not to ask about it yet. There'll be plenty of time for that later.
"So you've opened it now..." is what she says to Yvain. It's not really a question and she doesn't expect it to be answered; it's self-evident, and she can guess why he's done it. Though perhaps she'll ask in more detail - once they've caught up to him at the center of the trial.
But of all the people here, she's certainly one of the most likely to understand the desire to... stay. It reminds her of her garden, though his connection is different than hers. It's enough to draw a faint smile, at least.
"Thank you for taking us here," she says, as he walks away.
She speaks again after he's gone. "I agree. We should certainly prepare. There's some things I would like to mix *before* we enter. I've never done a trial quite like this before."
Mariel looks up to Magilou, then, and asks, "Are you intending to come along?" It's Magilou. Of all the people that got this far, she's the only one she can believe would simply walk away and not come back.
<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.
Josie just looks over at Gwen, then turns her eyes up towards the heavens, as if to there invoke intervention from some higher power. It's very overdramatic. "One of these days, kiddo..." she sighs, shrugging her shoulders. "But don't say I didn't give you fair warning, now!" Folding her arms loosely across her chest, she turns her attention back towards Yvain.
Three hundred years. Wasn't that what he'd said--
Now she remembers. No wonder it had been that long ago, or that it'd been left to its own devices for hundreds of years. One pale eyebrow arches as he pulls a particular mask from the pedestal and she gets a good look at what it's of.
Huh. Well, there's irony, perhaps. She wonders how that feels -- wonders, but doesn't ask.
"Sure as sure can be, Yvvie. But you'd best be ready with the answers. I intend on asking them."
She may be a wicked woman -- she would hardly deny that -- but if anything is pure about her, it is her intent. When she means it, she finishes it.
"So into the fire we go," she remarks in the end. "What was that old saying, again?" She waves a hand, dismissively. "...Well. I for one do not intend to be consumed."
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"Don't say that too early!" Magilou grouses, to Yvain, when he tells Ruby dragons are always dressed up.
Once they're situated in the chamber, though, Magilou is -- well, just as casual, but her mood's shifted a little. "If you go easy on them, I'll never let you live it down," she comments, lightly, on how much more difficult it is to have friends visiting.
"For their brothers, for their honour, for their friends... if you don't burn away their weaknesses, I'm afraid they're all doomed."
Magilou shrugs one shoulder, looking over to Ruby with a loose grin. "Be sure to pay attention yourself, too. A southerner like yourself could pick up some real pointers." It's quite the artful way to refer to a Red Dragon.
She turns that grin to Mariel, too. "Oh, don't you worry about me. I've seen many things in a haze. Besides, I simply have to see how you do!" She's lying, of course, but it's a lie of omission.
Magilou isn't quite as detached from the desires of everyone else as she makes out.
Because, in Pendrago...
"Now, do remember this is a test, so there's no referring back to your notes." Magilou straightens, from her slouch against the doorway, and paws a hand at the pockets her kimono evidently has.
"... say, did anyone bring a pencil?"
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
"It's not exactly limited use, but you know how magic is," Venetia tells Dean. "It's like eating dinner. One little bite more or less isn't an issue worth worrying about, but at a certain point you're full."
Or empty. Whatever.
Venetia wipes off her forehead. "I wonder how old this place truly is, then. Someone must have made it... somehow," she answers Yvain, but it has an air of faint grumbling.
A shrine in there, Venetia thinks, and I'm already sweating like a roast duck. Wonderful.
Someone asks her for a pencil. "Yes, actually," Venetia answers Magilou. "Do you need a bit of paper to go with it?"
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"I know," Ida says, to Gwen. She sets a gloved hand--her right hand, the hybrid one--atop Gwen's, fingers curling around the courier's. "Keep your eyes open, and remember that tempering is a balance. Heat and stress strengthen the metal, but they can also make it brittle and useless." She gives Gwen's hand a squeeze. "I believe in you as much as everyone else here."
She turns back to Yvain, and listens, respectful and somber. She can only imagine what it would be like to disappear from history, to become a creature of legend--she almost fantasized about it, when the Umbral Mirror had its claws deep in the Earthpulse, and she felt powerless to do anything, but she never experienced it. Yvain settles the draconic mask over his face. Ida's eyes widen, and then she blinks. "It suits you," she says, with a gentle smile. "Dragons... are guardians back home, as well as here." She touches a hand to her heart. "I understand, Keeper. We'll approach this together... won't we, Dean?"
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel says, "Haw." to Yvain. "Every waking a moment, a test. I shudder to think at the ones proctoring the exam."
She crosses her arms, glancing to Magilou for a moment. "Never carry a pencil. They're like tiny little stakes. Hate 'em."
She...is probably joking, right?
"Please do come with," Marivel asides to Magilou. "We could use lava bait," she is probably also not being serious with that but, well, Magilou has had a way of going about things and Marivel is going to adapt.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Feeling Ida's hybrid hand curled around her own, Gwen closes her eyes and nods, knowing Ida's words. "... Same to you, Ida." Her hand squeezes back. "... I have to burn away this fear, but not at the cost of what's important."
Later, as the heat strengthens with each step downwards, Gwen finds Josie's comments a refreshing change of pace, allowing her to don that persona of the guileless courier.
"C'mon, Josie! Fine, let's just say, if you come in at me or my friends all 'gonna shoot you now' I'll take you as seriously as I've ever done. Which, if I remember right, has been pretty darn serious!" The light of the fires of this place may be bright, but Gwen's well-meaning grin at being able to tease Josie _just enough_ is certainly putting her in a sunny mood.
At least Gwen's not lying. Josie's warnings are as true as the fire here is eternally hot, unapologetic in its own existence.
But the persona's ability to mask her own feelings is useless here, especially for people who have known her as long as Hiro. "Bah, I can't really fool ya..." Gwen chuckles at Hiro's comment, using the excess of her neckerchief to blot up her sweat. "The Mockingbird can handle heat beyond what my own body could take, but it don't mean it's not gonna be uncomfortable. So I guess... we're both holdin' on. But with Ruby here, I think it'll be just fine if we just keep movin'."
Which is exactly what she and others don't do as they arrive at the entrance
Perhaps that's yet another purprose for her here. She knows what it's like to burn, as well as what it's like to be so full of fire's pride that she tried to make others burn around her.
".... Experience has its own perks." Gwen sighs softly, but looks up at the distance they've come, already.
It counts just to get to this point, for her.
"Listen y'all." She turns to everyone, giving them a soft smile with her arms spread out. "... I have faith in all of ya! I've gotten to know at least a little bit 'bout each one of you, and that's enough to tell me that every one of you has what it takes, no matter where you draw your strength. This ain't a test, it's _confirmation_ of everything you got inside. Yvain wouldn't lead us here if he thought we had no chance. He'll see us all at the very end, and he'll know his faith wasn't for nothin'."
Maybe they're empty words, but Gwen feels... lighthearted. Like she wants to cry, almost, but for good reasons.
It's a good kind of pride, to realize she feels each of those words is the truth.