2022-12-03: Splendor Solis
- Log: Splendor Solis
- Cast: Seraph Harmaus, Elise Riesdale, Lucia, Jean, Hiro, Talia, Jacqueline Barber, Magilou, Dean Stark, Marivel Armitage, Lan Lilac, Ruth Pauling, Venetia Vuong, Azoth, Xantia, Ida Everstead-Rey
- Where: The Great Works
- Date: December 03, 2022
- Summary: In the heart of the Malevolent Domain stands the heretical Seraph Harmaus and his ally. In order to purge the domain, free those there captured and even save the Primarch of Geo, Odziozo, first these two must be defeated. But will it be as simple as all that?
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Here, in the depths of the Great Works -- in the midst of the Malevolent Domain that is the Rosary -- there is a white gazebo. It does not touch the ground: thorny vines bear it aloft above a sea of roses. Hanging from the inside of the gazebo's roof is a single large purple crystal, shot through with veins of an ugly red.
Each and every one of them blooms in dull bruisy hues, motes of Malevolence drifting from the petals. The Domain is thick here, redolent with the scent of the flowers and the presence of Malevolence.
A short while ago -- not more than a week by any measure -- Harmaus had stolen a syllabus pamphlet detailing the Great Works (a highly unusual and beautiful rock formation in the deep tunnels of a an ancient mine near Meria) from the School of Mineralogy in Guild Galad and vanished, after chattering that he had found the Primarch of Geo.
He hadn't been wrong. Below them, barely visible through the vines and blooms, can be seen one great open eye, studded in turquoise. Pinned down by the weight of the Domain planted in its very body, the Primach Odziozo cannot even move.
And there's more. After the event at the School of Mineralogy, people had begun to vanish. Fragments of the syllabus had been found where they had last been. Where are they now?
One need only look up. Overhead, bound in thorny vines looping from under the gazebo's ceiling and in various degrees of consciousness, are those whom Harmaus had stolen away. Some of them can be identified on sight: Hiro; Hicalu; Gwen; Eleanor's brother, Tristan; Marivel's servant and record-keeper, Belle; and others besides.
The Seraph himself is here too, of course. Bright-eyed, he gazes at those who have ventured into the heart of the Domain. He shivers -- trembles, even. The weight of this place must be horrendous on a spiritual being like him, yet he still stands, defiant of reality.
"Ah... joins me at last! See now-- see what garden I has crafted! From here, births the 'real world'!!"
He seems quite pleased with himself. There is only one thing that keeps him from being absolutely ecstatic. His gaze sweeps those who have breached into the heart of the Domain, searching, seeking.
"...But where is Lucia? Where is my Lord of Calamity, my Anitia reborn?"
As always, he seeks what he wants to find.
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
There is another presence, one that those gathered may have already guessed at from the illusionary gardens with roses that catch and grab like the claws of a tiger, or lure to oblivious thoughts like a fruit of a lotus tree. To those who have encountered her before, there is no need for introduction, for she has failed to change any, such is one of the potential curses of being a Hellion.
The veneer of gold, gemstone and silk finery laid over a statue of a petite, young woman, who looks even smaller slung in the sling of vines, her gold-dipped toes dangling in the open air above the party. Those with their own abilities regarding Hellions may see flickers of the true self underneath that the veneer hides.
Red eyes drift over the arrivals, and she gives vague smile that balances itself on the fence of being sinister, and fond. The fondness edges out the former as her gaze sweeps over Ruth, like spotting a dear friend you didn't expect in a crowd. Her red lips curl in a closed mouth grin.
Elise leans over, almost conspiratorially, to speak to Harmaus.
"..... As much as I liked the storyline of a young woman coming to save her prince, there is a charming novelty to a band of adventurers doing the same. What shall we do now, Seraph Harmaus? The soil is here, but it cries out. Should we wait any longer, the Primarch shall awaken and take their own prize instead."
She doesn't seem afraid of either outcome. These are all simply stage whispers, and they, the shadow puppets, no longer hiding behind the curtain.
She presses her fingers to her lips, considering.
"Unless.... is the heroine of our story somehow unable to come? The stage is set, and if she does not rise to the occasion, she will never get another chance, shall she? Shall you all be our Lucia, in her stead?"
<Pose Tracker> Lucia has posed.
EARLIER
Lucia was less distraught about Hiro's kidnapping than anyone might have expected. Those who don't know her well might have expected her to fall apart because they assume she's his girlfriend. Those who do know her well might have expected her to fall apart because this is one last extra delay on the road to Pentagulia; in fact they might have wondered if she'd continue on her vitally important mission anyway, without him.
Then again -- perhaps it's not such a surprise that she stays. She's stayed before, after all, on that memorable mountaintop. She is no longer someone who will leave a friend behind. No longer someone who can.
Still, that she hasn't complained about this delay of her mission even once is a little bit strange.
Though she has few friends of her own, only a small handful, mostly called 'Vile Fiends' by Althena's Guard, who are apparently incapable of using the letter R properly. Her distance and unapproachability are hallmarks of her existence, even if she has gradually become minutely less bizarre a being than she was upon her arrival to Lunar. Fortunately Hiro's rolodex (aka Ruby) is one of the biggest in the Drifter community, so when it comes to putting together a crack team of rescuers, she doesn't lack for resources.
Calmly, with only a little underlying edge of worry-for-Hiro-and-or-her-mission's-timetable, she reached out to his friends. Her explanation went something like this, repeated as needed:
"Hiro has been taken away by a cat. ...No, not Ruby. He is a most sturdy and steadfast individual, so I do not think we need fear for his survival, but I do not wish to leave him in unkind paws for an unnecessary duration. Would you kindly lend your assistance in effectuating his retrieval...? Yes? Thank you..."
---
NOW
<SoundTracker> Star Dragon Theme - Lunar 2: Eternal Blue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1duJ4pwkdk
Lucia's hand emerges from the back of the group. She's very tall for such a slip of a thing, but can't hope to compete with some of her companion. It is a very slender and very pale hand; a hand that might never have seen the sun, despite now a couple of years evidence to the contrary. A very smooth hand, for despite those years of adventuring, she has done very little of the lifting, or the cooking, or the fighting.
"I am not young," declares a girl who looks no older than her late teens. There's obviously truth to this assertion, however; her eyes, visible as she emerges from the pack, are as ancient as Filgaia and contain all the green verdancy denied that planet for an age. "And Hiro is not the descendent of royalty, so I do not know why you would call him a Prince. If this is a case of mistaken identity, please let him go at once, for he is needed for a very important--"
She pauses. Something glitters in those ageless eyes. It is not gold, but there is something precious in her voice, all the same, as she course corrects towards a more vital truth than even the imminent demise of two worlds:
"--because I need him."
She has tenderness for that truth, but not for Harmaus and Elise. Her expression is poignantly earnest, but entirely unsmiling.
"I am Lucia, and I am here."
The impossibly dense malevolence that surrounds her at all times, like a hurricane with her at the eye, accelerates in its churning; her intensity becomes its own. It makes her dueling jacket's hem flutter, her golden epaulet tassels and white cravat all the more. It makes her blue hair swirl like the world's most luscious and expensive cloak. It makes her ponytail holder fly off completely; she MUST be pissed.
The briars nearest her sprout vivid green buds, which swell, second by second, engorged.
"Give him back -- or I will take him." Her eyes narrow as she observes that he is not the only victim. "All of them."
The buds explode into roses of delicate and noble white -- and the Malevolent wind tears the petals off immediately, scattering them everywhere... and transforming them, in a single breath, to deepest black.
<Pose Tracker> Jean has posed.
EARLIER:
Jean has been moving quietly from the first, shadowing Lucia on their way down, down, down into the depths. Through the roses, through the illusions, through the monster's she's come. Jean is wearing a hooded cloak, black, over gray. Her limbs are clad loosely, her attire meant more for freedom of movement than anything, and her face is visible. Twin fans hang at her sides--though that's not all she's brought.
THEN:
Jean could tell how much Hiro's abduction bothered them all--even Lucia. It does not surprise her that she didn't leave Hiro, not after that snowy mountaintop. No, she wouldn't, just as Jean wouldn't leave her alone, any more than she would Hiro.
NOW:
Jean is close to Lucia, ahead of her where she can best shield her, but she doesn't stand in the way of her words. The woman in black pulls back her hood, green hair spilling free over her shoulders. "And she's not alone."
"You won't get away with this. With this 'real world' you want, you're only blinding yourself to the real truth. Lucia is Lucia, not anyone else."
---
Meanwhile, Eleanor Klein has led the way for a group down into these depths, despite phantom locations and deep, deep Malevolence. But as she returns to her elven form from her flight as an owl, she does not lead the way to this confrontation. Instead, she snaps her eyes to that gazebo, and looks around, looking for a way to get to the hostages. And then, she gets an idea.
The flap of her wings as she transforms is utterly silent, as is her flight towards the gazebo's celing. It will be a quiet while.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Hiro struggles. He struggles in vain, but he struggles. It's not just a physical struggle either. It's a mental struggle, to stay awake, stay conscious.
It's been a marathon, to which his eyes are hazy, but still open. Every so often he seems to lose, before they're wide open again anew. Thorns dig into his limbs, causing him pain if he so much as moves from the puncture wounds.
More oppressive the malevolence bearing down on him. He was used to a great deal of it from Zophar's curse on Lucia, but the domain felt like it was forcing what few contradictions he had to the surface, these little cracks in his armor, which felt like it was being let in.
His eyes slide over to his fellow captives every so often, checking on them. Mostly they're on Gwen, as he tries to mouth reassurances. The others he doesn't recognize, so it's mostly sympathy, between the little surges of pain that occur from trying to look.
Harmaus speaks and Hiro croaks out his reply, "... I feel sorry for you. Trying to... trying to realize the ideals of someone long dead, going so far you'd think someone can just have Lucia take her place." Hiro says, both angry and sorrowful, "She's gone. And you can't fix that with some scheme."
Despite the lack of color in his cheeks, he still manages a blush when he's called her Prince by Elise, "You- shouldn't just say things like that!" He likes those stories too but... Lucia speaks, the first time he's heard her voice here, and he freezes as he hears the phrase, '-because I need him.'
It's selfish, but despite the dire situation, he feels this surge of happiness. He wants to be needed by her... more than most things he finds.
Eyes like liquid amber look upon Lucia as the fear for her settles back in, "Lucia-! Get out of here! It's you he-"
'Give him back - or I will take him. All of them.'
And there's a hitch in that mental process, that idea of telling her to run away. He cannot help but admire her resolve. Even in the beginning as a love sick puppy dog, he admired her for that.
"... Alright." A thin smile appears upon his face, despite the oppressiveness of the malevolence beating down upon him, "When you put it that way, I'd have to be the stupidest guy alive to tell you not to."
He takes a deep breath, and despite his fear for her, adds, "We're..." Pause, "...I'm counting on you."
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia had a bad feeling when she first saw that gazebo. It hasn't diminished any. Her eyes, briefly, are on the Primarch of Geo; the dangerous creature that has a Malevolent Domain planted within it. She looks up, too, to see the people tied up in vines.
Her eyes widen more at Hiro. She tenses, before she looks back down at Harmaus. Her fingers curl, tightening about the sword in her hand. Not Mirage, after it broke; just a plain short sword, purchased from a shop in Meribia.
She looks back over her shoulder at Lucia, blinking when she responds to the two captors' description. She blinks her eyes, once, and then she hesitates when she sees the look in Lucia's eyes. She swallows, then, and she turns her head to look back at Harmaus. "Harmaus!" she shouts. "You've done enough, no? You're pushing this much too far! And for Ammy's sake, I should do something about this--and Hiro's, too, no?"
She angles her head back to Lucia. "And hers, too."
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
Gwen has seen better days. The blood from her right shoulder has still set in a stain against her white blouse, a clear sign as to how her visit with Harmaus went.
She gives Hiro a small smile back, but is too weak to state any words. Like Hiro, she struggled, and struggled, but pain from her damaged shoulder and the fragile connections it contains has made any attempt to get free a cost she couldn't afford.
And then, sleep claims her again, her smile and eyes turning dull again.
This is a good thing. The crow inside her is whispering things she'd regret if she said them aloud. There is only the sense of Hiro saying something, and sounds of words being spoken, but sleep is a jealous mistress when it comes to Gwen.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Jacqueline has encountered many Primarchs in her time. Her feelings on them have differed greatly. But looking down at that great eye, Jacqueline feels pity for the Primarch Odziozo. She alights on the edge of the gazebo and looks upward. She looks up at Harmaus and Elise, then up further at everyone they've captured. Her gaze returns, then, to Harmaus.
"...You've gone too far this time, Harmaus." Jacqueline says, shaking her head. "We're freeing those you've abducted, and the Primarch too - and then we're tearing your garden down."
She nods toward Talia as she says her piece.
"That's right." She affirms... and then, she draws out a bottle, hurling it at Harmaus's feet where it erupts in a splash of unpleasant liquid that makes doing anything feel just a little more difficult.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Trouble Bottle! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
The Baskar fennec-fox beastman up there -- Hicalu Wilwisp -- is tangled mostly by his legs, given the effort he put into running, before. He hangs there, beside Tristan Klein, looking a touch miserable about his existence. He's been crying. He's probably still crying.
He's the village baker, so he isn't really prepared for any of this. Neither was he prepared for an owl, but -- well, a helpful owl...
Anyway.
Magilou, for all she's joined the Vile Fiends' party despite their will or request, often travels apart from them; it's the privilege of the old, perhaps, to know just when and where she is needed, and when and where she is not. Here, she has appeared.
What that might say about whether she's needed, the severity of the situation --
Magilou is quite short, really -- five-foot-two, exempting the magnificent jester's hat atop her head, which she insists to this day is the finest witch's hat of all. Her festive clothing, hot pink and midnight blue, lends her a louder appearance than her height suggests. She even has a skirt made of books.
She steps aside, as Lucia reaches out; one toe taps on the fertile ground, as her hands lace, loosely, behind her head, and she watches her declaration with a veiled gaze and a sharp smile.
It grows larger, by shade and degree, when she declares that she needs Hiro.
There is so MUCH Malevolence about Lucia, but still Magilou does not shudder, feels no sickness in her throat; perhaps that part of her was broken long ago, or perhaps, under a lucky star, it never was. Hers is a pure soul, deeper than the Shadow's black, and this is not the first time she has stood beside such an overwhelming force with such a casual bearing.
"Oh, Harmaus," Magilou sighs, and her voice is strikingly fond, for the situation. "You really can't take an inch without taking a mile these days, can you...? If you keep going like this..."
She looks at that provincial boy she remembers, with eyes which should be green -- eyes with purple, leaking in from above, intruding, violating. Her words close a book, though the sound isn't violent.
"... not even I can save you."
GS: Seraph Harmaus fully evades Jacqueline Barber's Trouble Bottle for 0 hit points! GS: Cripple, Jam, and Mute blocked!
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
When Dean had approached that gazebo with Ruth and the others, he'd seen that turquoise-studded eye too, but hadn't paid it any mind. It was only when it turned towards him and focused that he realized it wasn't a decoration but something alive, something aware. He'd stopped and stood stock still to stare back.
Then he'd waved. "Hi, I'm Dean," he said.
No time for a conversation, though. The Primarch isn't the only one here. A patch of other color above makes him lift his head, and he gasps at the sight of all those people, including his friends, tied up in vines. "Gwen! Hiro! Everybody!" he shouts. Harmaus speaks, and he glares over at the Seraph.
"I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't care! Let everybody go!" he shouts at Harmaus. His anger softens into concern when he sees Elise near him. "Elise..." he murmurs. He doesn't say anything about how she doesn't have to do this. It's clear she's made her choice. But... it makes him sad anyway, for Ruth. Lucia steps forward from behind the group, and he turns to look over at her, wide-eyed. As she makes her proclamation, though, his will steels, and he faces back towards Seraph and Hellion as Malevolent winds bear up blooming roses of deepest black.
"That's right, we're not leaving without them!" he declares, Twin Fenrir flashing into his hands as he prepares himself for the inevitable fight.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel still hasn't given Hiro that water gem and maybe it's because it's because of time travel reasons considering he just got captured by someone she definitely wouldn't want to have it. Nevertheless, even Marivel wasn't really expecting Belle to be captured as well. The Crimson Noble arrives in bat form, fluttering down, poufing back into her humanoid form as she lands.
"Belle."
Belle is reading a book being held aloft by a thorny vine with a tired looking expression. "Mm."
Marivel crosses her arms, looking up. "Didn't even put up a fight?"
"We made a deal," Belle says, still softly. She is bound in a way that she can't really look directly at Marivel.
"Another lesson?" Marivel glowers at her servant.
"Won't you change?" Belle asks blandly. "Hiro feels sorry for Harmaus."
Marivel doesn't fall for Belle's indirect commentary. Her eyes narrow. Guillotine crackles into being into her hands. She holds it tightly as she turns her gaze languidly to look at Harmaus. That which is not said hangs heavily between Marivel and her servant. She stares for a long time. She isn't young either. Her nails lengthen and sharpen, a crimson pulse ripples around her arm. At this point, she knows, it's hardly going to be intimidating in of itself. She's paced out her horrors patiently but any new ones are on hold for the time being.
Then she lets her arm drop.
"His pain is his own. My pain is my own. I won't let you, or anyone, tell me when to let it go. Not even the dearest ones left behind."
She stops glancing up at Belle. "What I need is the opposite of letting go but tis not someting I can give myself."
The Malevolence doesn't seem to bother Marivel either. She dashsteps forward towards Harmaus, reaching out with a claw--
And expels noxious gas out of her throat and towards The Cat instead. Malboro-grade noxious fumes.
Her eyes slant back up.
GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Bad Breath! GS: Marivel Armitage has gained 1 Combo! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The path had been prepared for her. Her brother gone, her dearest friend gone, Lan had no choice but to traverse the Rosary to get them back. She's angry. She's so angry it hurts, the thorns holding Hicalu and the others echoed by the sting of exerting all her self-control over the black blood in her veins.
Lan knows better than to just show up, lose herself to the madness, and obliterate everything between her and them.
Even though a part of her really, really, really wants to.
--And it would scare Hicalu! So obviously she's not going to!
Instead, she rises up to her full height, the bow she found in a forgotten temple gripped in one hand; the other pulls back on a hair-thin string made of water, a similarly watery arrow swirling into existence at the apex of her draw.
"I should've killed you better last time," Lan grits out between her teeth, and releases.
GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Aquamarine Arrow! GS: Lan Lilac has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lan Lilac's stances have changed to Avenger! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth reveals her presence as a Hellion only when it is too late for anyone to do anything about it. She brings with her that aura of melancholy characterized as a muggy, rain-soaked fog that fights to make space for itself against the rest of the Malevolent Domain. It is no more pleasant than what is already there. Ruth's silhouette rises from parting fog as she lands, the form of that of a large-bodied gargoyle with only a single wing. Glowing violet eyes bear down on Harmaus and Elise alike, as she steps forth with the heavy bayonet-fitted sniper rifle of bloodiest legacy in hand.
"Elise," Ruth chokes the name out with distress. It has been many months since circumstances separated the two from them. Much has changed. Where Elise's eyes meet Ruth's with fondness, Ruth's gaze averts.
"You're in danger here," is as far as Ruth gets before Lucia appears. Lucia's presence drowns out lesser Malevolent Domains in her wake, turning frayed petals black as she steps forth and makes demands. Is this the mysterious presence Ruth and others sensed? Even Ruth's own rainy atmosphere curdles and evaporates before such presence... but no one looks to Lucia with fear, hatred, or scorn.
Ruth frees a hand from the grasp of her rifle to catch the blackened petal between her own hands as she sees the gathered hostages stuck within. Complicated feelings fester. A serpentine tongue flicks between Ruth's lips. She can taste the pain, the fear, the anguish.
"This place... it is unlike your dream," Ruth continues, keeping that hand clasped around the petals blackened by Lucia's aura. Whatever feelings define it all sink fangs into Ruth's own mind. She's lucid enough to see that Lucia herself is holding true, in control of her circumstances. Lucia knows what she's here for.
She does, too, knowing how at ease Elise is with the situation, the way she casually stage whispers to Harmaus. (Ruth can't hear it from where she is.)
Ruth's gaze rises gradually, letting the blackened petal drop. Her own native Domain attempts to reassert against the influence as intensity builds.
"Elise!! I'm here for you!" Harsh. Desparate. Loud. Raw. But true - she is here for Elise.
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
JUST NOW:
"Oh," Venetia says, "shit," as she realizes in a sudden motile moment that Odziozo, in his scale and might and glory, in his sheer enormity, was not simply an anthropomorizied geological feature - not simply the result of Ley energy tending to contort things into a vaguely humaniform shape, the same way that all intelligent life seems to have that similar bifuricate, head-on-top style.
ODZIOZO LIVES
And so does - "You!" Venetia says, pointing a finger up at him. "Put up your hands and back off this tripe or you're going to regret it!" It feels a little futile to Venetia; he's come so far, is he going to change his mind? But you have to make the attempt; you miss every goal you don't kick for.
The other animate figure - the gold-limned finery - this person is new to Venetia. Her accusing finger tilts towards her. "The same goes for you, chickie-la," Venetia continues, eyes flicking over the prisoners. Hiro! Dinoginos wept, she thinks; even if Tristran and Belle are the ones she has more specific accord them. "Turn them loose by the bottom of the minute or you're going to have hell to pay --"
Big words, of course, from a loud woman, but what can back them up?
Venetia has two tricks to play. One of them, at least, is rather underwhelming; a thinner-than-her-grand-sized Crests, drawn, and oriented towards herself. The ground around her hums faintly, and a disklike space appears - while it does not purify any Malevolence, subtle tendrils drifting towards her begin to drift away. It may have other benefits in a minute.
The other is that her right hand reaches for her hip...
And pulls a gun! She raises it up, takes aim, and pops off rounds of gunsmoke-propelled lead at the legs and feet of Elise, the statue-woman, turning herself slightly to present a thinner profile in that direction. As she does this, she glances for a moment towards Lucia (a new sight) and Jean (less new, reasonably familiar).
Ruth speaks up. Venetia is fortunately facing away from her because her expression, in so far as it isn't covered by a lace mask, absolutely reads: Did I just screw that blast up?
GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Elise Riesdale with Five Rounds of Standoffish Lead! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action. GS: Gamble: Moderate! Elise Riesdale suffers a terrible blow from Venetia Vuong's Five Rounds of Standoffish Lead for 135 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Friends stolen. A Primach imprisoned in roses. A Lord of Calamity beseeched. A Lord of Calamity, so they call her, that arrives.
Light still surges through Azoth's clothing, just under the surface of his synthetic skin. It dims and quiets as he shakes out his hand, squeezing at his wrist. The journey here was a precarious one, but he and those he traveled with made it in one piece. Fortunate. He doesn't think either Harmaus nor Elise are likely to back down by words alone.
They're good words, though. He does so admire resolved Drifter -- or Calamity Lord -- declarations.
The smile drops right off of Azoth's face when he spots Gwen among the victims, wearing the evidence of her own resolve versus her captors, for as long as it could hold out.
"...All right. That's enough," he says. He snaps his fingers, a sword of energy appearing floating and orbiting above his palm, perfectly upright. But Azoth holds it as Ruth speaks up toward Elise. He would rather give Ruth the opportunity to reach her, and unpoison what has been poisoned, if that's the case.
His eyes shine in the darkness, watching and waiting, expression gone blank.
GS: Azoth has attacked Azoth with Analyzing...! GS: Azoth has gained 2 Combo! GS: Azoth's stances have changed to Hero! GS: Azoth has completed his action. GS: Azoth accepts Azoth's Analyzing... for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Azoth! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Ruth Pauling with Her Knight Returns! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling's stances have changed to Hero! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: Ruth Pauling accepts Ruth Pauling's Her Knight Returns for 0 hit points! GS: Magilou has attacked Magilou with All Our Wayward Children! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Magilou accepts Magilou's All Our Wayward Children for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Magilou! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Marivel Armitage's Bad Breath for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Hex, Poison, and Slow applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Lan Lilac's Aquamarine Arrow for 91 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Charge!! You gain 35 FP! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Xantia was expecting to find something bad when she heard rumors of a garden that had sprung up out of nowhere and came to investigate. She wasn't expecting to encounter a Malevolent Domain, but that discovery connected a number of dots, and made her decide to conduct a more thorough investigation. Lucky for her, she soon happened to encounter another group, or this may have ended up going a lot more poorly.
The first thing that draws her attention, once the gazebo is reached, is not those waiting for them. It's the giant eye of the trapped Primarch below. While the creature does not speak, it still feels as if it's asking for help. And it appears to not nearly be the only one here who needs help. She didn't know there were captives involved when she came here. But now that she does, even seeing some of her own friends up there... well. Needless to say, if she wasn't motivated to put a stop to all this before, she certainly is ready to tear everything down now.
She takes the pair responsible standing before them. She doesn't know who they are, but she can tell what they are. The woman must be the Hellion one would expect to find at the center of a Malevolent Domain. But her apparent partner in this...
All Xantia knows of Harmaus is some minor hearsay. A Seraph who takes the form of a cat, that's where her knowledge begins and ends. It's all she needs to frown deeply, drawing the conclusion, "...This doesn't make any sense. Why would a Seraph be working with a Hellion? Isn't it super dangerous for a Seraph to even be in a place like this?"
And then, it turns out that she herself was in fact traveling with a Hellion all this time, without realizing. She openly stares at Ruth, almost subconsciously raising her shield of Light back up, just to have something between her and the now even further increased Bad Vibes in the area. However, she is a believer in the 'enemy of my enemy' idiom. Questions can wait. Right now, they have to deal with Elise, as Ruth seems more than ready to.
Xantia appears much more calm than she's actually feeling, as she points an accusing finger to the Hellion. "Make no mistake, you will pay for this. But before that, I have one question for you." She's had her suspicions ever since she got here. Now, she needs them confirmed.
"Was this really all your work? There was another, wasn't there?"
GS: Xantia has attacked Xantia with Brilliant Ward! GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Xantia accepts Xantia's Brilliant Ward for 0 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Xantia! GS: Hyper applied to Xantia!
</poem>
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
TWO MINUTES AGO
Ida half-leaps, half-flies across the bridge of withering petals, buoyed up by green-laced wind. Up she races, up and up, until she reaches a gap longer than the rest--and as she takes to the wind again, something flutters open beneath her.
A brilliant eye, turquoise-blue and very much aware, staring at her and the others with plaintive desperation. Dean says 'hi', and introduces himself. For a moment, Ida's guts twist as she remembers Rahab, Ixqic, Setanta.
But no one deserves what Harmaus would inflict on them, and the memory of Setanta's loneliness--their desperation--sinks into Ida's mind.
"Hold on," Ida says, raising her voice to the Primarch. "Please, hold on! We'll cleanse this place, and you. If you need us, we're right here."
It's perhaps a strange thing to say to an eldritch, Elw-engineered Ley-bioweapon, but Ida means it. Being a Seer means being there for the afflicted, no matter who or what they are.
NOW
"HARMAUS!"
Ida's voice pierces the gloom, loud and piercing. She flies the last dozen feet, in formation behind the leaping Dean and the diving Ruth. She hits the ground, takes a few steps, and braces into a fighting stance. Her hands clench before her. Ida's eyes glance between Harmaus and the Rose queen, but the presence of a second, even more immense domain immediately grabs her attention. And that voice--
"Lucia?!" Ida hasn't heard that voice in months, if not years, but the young woman's presence--her raw, focused determination--cuts right through the Malevolence enshrouding her. Hiro's here. So are the others. Ida looks up, and her stomach flips as she sees them. Anger swells within her. "Let them go, Rose Queen," Ida snarls, and exoskeleton erupts from her flesh, flowing across bruised, cut skin to form a perfect suit of armor. Bright golds and deep blues contrast sharply with the bruise-dark flowers; a brilliant white lotus forms above her heart.
Meanwhile...
A lone figure stands at the foot of Odzidzo's tremendous form, staring upwards at the hideous carpet of roses encasing them. Eyes the color of gas flame narrow in barely-contained rage. "Odzidzo," they choke out. "What have they done to you?!"
To those who frequented Guara Bobelo's coliseum of ill repute, they may be familiar--'Cole Cullen', a spearmaster with fiery Crest Magic, bombastic but elusive. They look up at the gazebo, and bare teeth. The silks they wear beneath their armor blow in a sudden, hot wind.
A few moments later, the flames start, relentless and powerful. But the roses are fed by a Domain of immense density and power, and they will not take to this lightly.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Third Method - Shaping the Battle-Forged Shell! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 5 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Ida Everstead-Rey's Third Method - Shaping the Battle-Forged Shell for 0 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Cover applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Jean has attacked Lucia with Lucia is Lucia! GS: Jean has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jean has completed her action. GS: Jean heals Lucia! She gains 87 temporary hit points! GS: Lucia has attacked Lucia with Lucia? Present!! GS: Lucia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lucia's stances have changed from Counter to Avenger and Counter! GS: Lucia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Lucia has completed her action. GS: Lucia accepts Lucia's Lucia? Present! for 0 hit points! GS: Talia has attacked Talia with Running In and Dropping the Pizza! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Talia accepts Talia's Running In and Dropping the Pizza for 0 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
MOMENTS AGO
It's hard to tell what, if anything, must be going through the Primarch of Geo's mind. That eye gazes back, though, and there is no mistaking the intelligence behind it. Or the pain, or the terror. But it can hear them. It knows it's not alone.
And so, it can hope.
NOW
BGM: Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse - Retreat from the Old One https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF7Pm9oKnJU
Where is Lucia? Will she come?
It would make things far more difficult if she did not, but of course he had accounted for such things. Even if no one had come, it would have been simply a matter of releasing those captured once they had absorbed enough of the Domain's effects, and then...
But there, breaking through the crowd.
There.
"Long has I waited for you! But here you are! Tell me, tell me you shall awaken! That you casts down 'Goddess Althena'! You are Anitia reborn--"
She is Lucia. And she is here.
And she will have Harmaus give Hiro back, or she will take him back. All of them.
Harmaus' eyes narrow into slits. "...Ah? Speaks it now of such things, here? Feel the force of truth! Reach out and take the power, your birthright! I plants this garden for you!"
She's gone, Hiro tells him, struggling against that which holds him, overwhelms him in this place. "Silence! It closes mouth and stays still!" he snarls back at him. "It knows not what it speaks!!"
This remark had cut close to the bone, it would seem.
"...Ah, there it is," he rumbles at Jean, as she makes her own threats. "I misses it. Tricksome, is dancing one! Hiding away from me... shame, shame. But it is here now. All is well, so long as it stays!" Motes of light erupt in the air around him before winging towards Jean in an abrupt volley -- he means to force her back in truth...
Closer to the edge of this platform.
'Let them go', says Dean.
"No," says Harmaus, quite simply. "No," he says again to Venetia's demand. "Already succeeds, I has! Foolish, I, turning back now!"
This is dangerous for a Seraph, isn't it? It wouldn't be the first that Harmaus has been in a Domain, but scarce has he been in one so long -- and without the protection that flesh can afford. Xantia isn't wrong: even now he seems to be affected, sicked by it in a sense. But he has yet to flee this place.
"My lady... listen not to it," speaks Harmaus, as Ruth makes her descent and makes her entreaties towards Elise. "It lies! It sows deceit and deception! This garden... this garden culmination of my lady's dreams! Of vision for better world!" He bares his teeth at Ruth, for all the good it might do, here and now.
Xantia, for her part, has an question for Elise, and it's one that Harmaus replies regarding. "Silence! My lady, heed it not!"
...There was another, wasn't there?
Talia moves to the front and directs her sword at Harmaus. "Ah... Amaranth's pet. Speaks Amaranth of its nature? Its past? Or keeps it secret, secret yet?" Cats can't smile. But that look in his eyes is as close to a wicked grin as anything yet. "Poor pet! Kept in darkness!"
Jacqueline tosses a bottle of some substance at him and, despite the way that the Domain drags on his very being, he still scampers nimbly to one side as it strikes, the fluid within spraying scant inches from his corpus even so. "Ah-- tricksy, tricksy!" he scolds her, as if somehow her attack on him were worse a crime than his multiple kidnapping spree and robbery from an institution of learning. "It needs learning its manners! It stands still and learns its lesson!" And he delivers a tit for tat towards Jay with a screaming bolt of light; it unwinds as it flies near to where she stands and splits into a dozen fragments as if to nail her shadow -- and hence also her -- to the ground.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Even Magilou can't help him this time. Really, she can't.
"Even it stands against me..." muses Harmaus, his gaze settling on Magilou -- Magilou, whose explanations about the nature of Lords of Calamity unwittingly set him down this fell path in the first place. "Jaeja. Then stands I against it! It does me kindness in past, but defends I now path towards rightness! Towards truth!"
And light explodes in a circular detonation of light around Magilou and Talia.
Perhaps, then... this means that he must wear her down.
"It understands. It shall sees!" he calls to Lucia. "Even if I makes it look!" Slowly, he begins to float into the air, as if plucked skywards by some invisible hand. "-Embrace what is hidden-," intones Harmaus in the Ancient Tongue, a streak of white phantasmic light flaring in an arc for Lucia; blue fire burns along its edges, as if to tear all her defenses down. "Synkatathesis!"
Which may be the self-same moment in which Marivel dashes towards him and he, arching his back in anticipation of an attack (oh how the body plays tricks on the mind) receives nothing more than a faceful of toxic gas!
With a snarl -- once the coughing and hacking fit is complete -- light erupts from his body in a sudden sharp burst for Marivel. "Die! Die, and stay dead!"
So on the offense is he that he does not notice Lan's furious sororial intrusion upon his space. A watery arrow takes him straight through the side, and if he had been a flesh-and-blood being, it would have been a grievous wound. As it stands, faint sparkles trail in the air for a moment, and then it is as if the injury had never been. Light flares like a halo around and behind him for a moment and then, in a sudden burst, erupts in Lan's direction.
The garden, in this moment, has just begun to burn, set aflame by a being of kinship to the trapped Odziozo. But it will take a long time for the fire to burn out all the rot and corruption -- a long time for it to reach this central point wherein Elise and Harmaus do battle with the would-be rescuers. Harmaus has not yet noticed the fire, but he will.
He will.
GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Jean with Bright Sequence! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Magilou with Burning Vision! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Talia with Burning Vision! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Radiance Shackle! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Lucia with Synkatathesis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Marivel Armitage with Glimpse Of The Sun! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Lan Lilac with Blinding Light! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes 34 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Harmaus has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Lucia takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Synkatathesis for 0 hit points! GS: Break and Slow applied to Lucia! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated! GS: Jacqueline Barber suffers a terrible blow from Seraph Harmaus's Radiance Shackle for 82 hit points! GS: Entangle applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated! GS: Jean suffers a terrible blow from Seraph Harmaus's Bright Sequence for 116 hit points! GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Glimpse Of The Sun for 122 hit points! GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated! GS: CRITICAL! Lan Lilac takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Blinding Light for 65 hit points! GS: Blind applied to Lan Lilac! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Talia suffers a terrible blow from Seraph Harmaus's Burning Vision for 107 hit points! GS: Magilou takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Burning Vision for 51 hit points! GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Evade bonus, and Gleam activated!
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Zeboim Era
A girl Marivel recognized as Sakura was throwing rocks at her. It was someone from Anastasia's class, which is how she knew her. Marivel had often been warned about society at large. The Federation Government considered her people as anathemic to humanity and so it was often the outcasts who found themselves drawn to Crimson Nobles--but the truth is, her experience with humanity so far had actually been quite splendid and frankly telling her otherwise. By and large, the class seemed to welcome her.
So she was inclined to believe that the girl throwing rocks at her was just engaging in some kind of acceptance ritual. Her own people had similar rituals. She kept reading the book Lumen lent her--to advertise that she could take it.
Unfortunately, this seemed to have the opposite effect. Something like fury entered the girl's eyes and she started throwing them harder and harder at her.
"Monster...! Whatever you're planning on doing to Anastasia, you better release her this instant!"
Another rock impacted against her forehead as she looked up at that.
Ah. Not a ritual. What her parents warned her about. The truth of it. She considered for a moment what to do before ultimately looking back to her book. This was just a vessel and eventually she'd tire herself out. A growing collection of pebbles gradually dropped down onto her book as Sakura kept throwing, desperately, and she'd in turn brush them off--
--until a shadow passed between them. Marivel looked up again.
It was Anastasia. Crying, arms fanned out to the side as she interposed herself between Sakura's throwing arm and herself. Why Anastasia was crying was beyond her but she said, simply enough, "Anastasia. You're blocking the light," without looking up.
Anastasia could get in trouble for associating with a Crimson Noble. Best to remind her--
Anastasia didn't answer that. Instead she said, "Stop it. Can't you tell you're hurting her?"
"I can't...!" Marivel heard Sakura shout. "I can't!!"
She finally looked up, watching Sakura run off with tears in her eyes.
"Anastasia." Marivel said. "Why did you do that?"
"Because you were crying." Anastasia sobbed. "I had to stop her 'cause you were crying!"
Marivel watched the tears streak down Anastasia's face. "...You're the one that's crying. I didn't shed a tear."
Ana shook her head fiercely, still openly weeping. "I'm not...! You are!"
Now
The sun bears down upon Marivel, punching a wicked hole through her chest readily, leaving an open hole that does not bleed but for black ichor pouring out from the wound.
Marivel exhales slowly, eyes slanting back up to Eleanor once more before twisting her own hand, drawing up shadows that ripple around Harmaus's legs, trying to grab onto him and pin him and leach off of him.
"Did you even know her?" Marivel asks quietly, eyes crackling with crimson energy. "Did you even know Althena? Or is she just the excuse?"
A little extra moment, she thinks, the Time Medium whispers one more moment.
GS: Marivel Armitage spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Marivel Armitage has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Boogiepop Phantoms! GS: Marivel Armitage has gained 2 Combo! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
'You're in danger here.' Ruth's words are not remarked upon. Elise closes her eyes. ".... As are you. The further you travel from my dream, the colder the world will be. You should be there, not here. I am here to oversee my promise made to a Seraph who came to me. Harmaus has something he, too, wishes to save. Shall you at least lend him your attention?"
Lucia appears. Elise's smile opens, red lips revealing white, slightly fanged teeth. "At last, you are at least willing to state your heart's will aloud. Be you maiden, sage, or elder, the heart's will is often overlooked. But. Harmaus is also being true to his heart. He had no friends or followers to band together to come to his aid. The stage is now made equal. Your tale can only proceed if you grasp it yourself.
"Royalty is but a dream away, here. I wonder if he dreamed of you, perhaps, in the moments when he closed his eyes." Elise's smile grows playful as Hiro objects. "A sweet note, a reason to endure all suffering. You can end it by taking the mantle Seraph Harmaus has laid down before you, or, lead the charge and take him yourself. But, that is the path of thorns, dear heroine."
It's then that Elise turns back to Dean, chuckling. ".... It is good to see you again. Have you gotten stronger, little hero? Shall I test you anew?" She leans back in her sling gleefully, as Venetia points to her. "Ah, it is you, too? How delightful! I remember your visit to my mountain. I hope you enjoy the nice garden grown here. So many wonderous forms here, thanks to this new source of power. But, alas, it is only a sip." A gunshot keeps Elise from focusing in on the magic Venetia begins to cast, clipping a shard of her exposed leg, which weeps gold.
Ruth's bellow cuts deep, the sling of Elise's swinging backwards as if she had summoned a windstorm. The short figure of Elise straightens, entwins her hands around each supporting vine. "... My dearest knight" she says, as if Ruth had simply greeted her, "You should have told me you were making a trip to see me," she says, gently. "I would have had my own Rosenwache personally escort you." Her gold plated claws extend out to her. ".... Ah, but, it must be that you came to test yourself. I could never understand why, as you are perfect as you are already." She bears no anger at Ruth's appearance, but her reasons follow a Hellion logic still.
Xantia asks about there being someone else, and Azoth mentions that it's enough. "Harmaus is correct. Perhaps it's no longer the time for chatting. No more questions." Elise's tidy hammock of rose vines, begins to lower down, until her "I have not stepped into battle in some time--"
The roses near Lucia, obeying her presence, bloom white, innocent. Unknowing.
Elise's gaze hardens with a snap, as her staff falls into her awaiting hand. ".... It is time for your test, heroes," she says, as cold as a winter's first snow.
"You cannot take what you have not earned!"
Spectral wolves fly out from Elise's scepter as she jams it into the ground, running in a wild race around Dean and Xantia, curiously bouncing off a wall to richocet around to Venetia and Azoth, then coming around to block Ida's approach. They avoid Ruth, and in their passing wind, a reflective light surrounds Harmaus: a shield.
"COME."
GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Segen! GS: Elise Riesdale has gained 3 Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale has activated Force Action: Extend! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Dean Stark with Die sechs Schwane! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Ruth Pauling with Die sechs Schwane! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Venetia Vuong with Die sechs Schwane! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Azoth with Die sechs Schwane! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Die sechs Schwane! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Xantia with Die sechs Schwane! GS: Elise Riesdale has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale has canceled their attack on Dean Stark. GS: Elise Riesdale has canceled their attack on Ida Everstead-Rey. GS: Elise Riesdale has canceled their attack on Venetia Vuong. GS: Elise Riesdale has canceled their attack on Azoth. GS: Elise Riesdale has canceled their attack on Xantia. GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Dean Stark with Die zwolf Jager! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Venetia Vuong with Die zwolf Jager! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Azoth with Die zwolf Jager! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Die zwolf Jager! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Xantia with Die zwolf Jager!
<Pose Tracker> Lucia has posed.
Maybe Lucia has more friends than she thought. Maybe, for the first time in her long and quiet existence, she has started to understand what friendship really is.
Some speak of it -- but everyone here stands for it. And just because they aren't all here for her, or for Hiro... they are here.
And he is here...
"HIRO!" shouts Lucia, in a larger voice than most anyone has heard from her, ever. Though she is comforted by his words to Harmaus; both the historian in him, and the saint in him, still seem to be intact. She could not bear to lose him; but to lose his compassionate heart, because of the cruelty of those who seek to get to her through him, would be even more unbearable.
Another new thought, that. Once upon a time the calculation would have been different.
Harmaus speaks to her then, this Seraph, this cat, this kidnapper. He speaks to her of power. Of rebirth. Of awakening. And...
"You are a false prophet," she replies with a crackling intensity. "Or you are deceived, as so many of Althena's children seem to be, by a strange propaganda. My mission is not to cast down Althena."
He says that he will make her see.
What he does is make her burn.
She all but walks straight into it, and Harmaus learns one of Lucia's many hidden truths: his magic is mighty, yet also rather useless, at least in her very specific context. That's because, unexpectedly, she had no real defenses to tear down in the first place.
Her only defense is hanging on the briars overhead.
"I choose the path of thorns," Lucia tells Elise, firmly. And although hers is often a literal mind, it seems likely that this time, she means it in both ways.
"My heart's will... I'm coming, Hiro," she breathes -- after coughing -- her promise somehow slicing clearly through the rising smoke and miasma, even if her lungs cannot contend with them so effortlessly. But there's someone in her way.
<SoundTracker> Holding Out For A Hiro - Jennifer Saunders - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLHCS6oL7lo
Zophar's curse is not quiescent; it is the stirring of her heart that is causing her Malevolent shroud to flare. Not easily can it be overcome. It is no picnic for those engulfed by its aura, but for Lucia, its actual target... it is like walking upon knives. It is like bearing up beneath an ocean of pressure. It is like being shackled by chains strung out of black holes.
It is why no one has ever seen her fight.
And it is now -- now, when she most desires her power, most desperately wishes for the strength she needs -- that she cannot grasp it. The fire in her eyes... banks, her gaze clouding. Distance surrounds her, almost palpable. She is surrounded by support and yet has rarely seemed more alone.
Rose petals drift into her hair, studding down that magnificent expanse like strands of black pearls in the Blue Star's seas...
Hiro is counting on her.
Hiro is counting on her. It's been the opposite, so many times.
She takes a step forward, her black boot making no indentation in the garden's ground. She has forgotten about gravity again, it seems. Heat of the moment. Forgive her.
"Strength--!" she gasps out -- and an icon like but unlike Althenic arts, a holy sword wholly distinct from the practice of the priesthood but, perhaps, very like that which the priesthood once stood for -- emerges from her. Hilt-first, straight from the heart. It cannot defeat the curse. It cannot defeat Harmaus or Elise.
But then, the sword of her soul is not for her to wield.
Matching symbology, glowing a pure and radiant white, appears overhead, above each of her allies. Then it sparkles into them, sinking beyond sight to a place of greater puissance within.
It is not that she is bestowing her sealed power upon them; if only that were something she could do.
It is rather that their own strengths flower beneath her light. They become more than they were. All that they are. And their potential is not the only thing that flowers. They, too, come to realize that the nearest briars are budding, and then, once they attack, will bloom. Not blackened by Zophar's cruel caress; and not in Lucia's noble white; but in their own true colors.
Hiro is counting on her -- and on all of them.
All of them, heroes...
And the air will become heady with the sweetness of blossom...
GS: Lucia has attacked Marivel Armitage with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Xantia with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Azoth with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Venetia Vuong with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Ruth Pauling with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Lan Lilac with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Dean Stark with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Magilou with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Talia with Power Charge! GS: Lucia has attacked Jean with Power Charge! GS: Lucia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Lucia has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! ROU|LET|TE: Moderate! Venetia Vuong solidly guards Elise Riesdale's Die zwolf Jager for 77 hit points! GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated! GS: Ruth Pauling accepts Elise Riesdale's Die sechs Schwane for 165 hit points! GS: Mute applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Marivel Armitage accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Marivel Armitage! GS: CRITICAL! Jacqueline Barber accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: CRITICAL! Venetia Vuong accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Venetia Vuong! GS: Hyper applied to Lucia! GS: Ruth Pauling accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: Shield applied to Lucia! GS: CRITICAL! Magilou accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Magilou! GS: Hyper applied to Lucia! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: CRITICAL! Dean Stark accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Dean Stark! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Lucia receives 100 temporary hit points. GS: Lucia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ruth Pauling used Defend! She takes Elise Riesdale's Die zwolf Jager attack on Azoth on herself! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Low! Dean Stark takes a solid hit from Elise Riesdale's Die zwolf Jager for 45 hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Low! Ruth Pauling solidly guards Elise Riesdale's Die zwolf Jager for 25 hit points! GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jean accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Jean! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Xantia takes a glancing hit from Elise Riesdale's Die zwolf Jager for 77 hit points! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Xantia accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Xantia! GS: Azoth accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Azoth! GS: Shield applied to Lucia! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Ida Everstead-Rey suffers a terrible blow from Elise Riesdale's Die zwolf Jager for 148 hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Lan Lilac accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Lan Lilac! GS: Shield applied to Lucia! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Talia accepts Lucia's Power Charge for 0 hit points! GS: Burst and Surge applied to Talia! GS: Shield applied to Lucia! GS: Seraph Harmaus accepts Elise Riesdale's Segen for 0 hit points! GS: Shield applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Mighty applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Marivel Armitage's Boogiepop Phantoms for 108 hit points! GS: Disease and Poison applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Charge!! You gain 35 FP! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Lan Lilac used Force Action: Mystic on herself! GS: Blind removed!
<Pose Tracker> Jean has posed.
Jean smiles at Hiro when he says he's counting on Lucia. It's good. She is... not, so sure what to think of the giant eye. But that's not her job here! Yet, anyway.
Tricksome, dancing one. Jean narrows her eyes. "I'm easy to miss whe I don't want to be spotted."
Motes of light crash toward her, and Jean throws her arms up in defense, her feet digging into the 'garden' floor as she holds herself in place to avoid falling from the great platform. It would... not be good, to fall here.
"Magilou," Jean says. "...I don't think he wants your help anymore."
She narrows her eyes at the way he addresses the others. Particularly as Elise, too, addreses Lucia Lcia makes her choice.
The heavy weight of Malevolence is something Jean has experienced often, but can never grow fully accustomed to. SHe looks in alarm hen Lucia's gaze clouds--but suddenly, strength. Hilt-first.
Pure, and radiant light washes over Jean, too. And the dancer draws up to her full height. "Right!"
Rising up from the roses, a haze begins to wash over the battlefield as Jean dances. A slow, methodical dance, its soporific steps bring gray and more gray from the blossoms as they open, clouds forming into spectral sheep before the whole mass crashes straight for Harmaus.
"Sleep it off!"
GS: Jean has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Dream Dance! GS: Jean has gained 3 Combo! GS: Jean has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
'No,' Harmaus says.
Well, there's something to be said about a simple and straightforward answer. Dean's not going to take that simple and straightforward answer, and he shoots back, "Then we'll make you let them go! What you're doing is wrong, and one way or another, we're gonna stop it!!"
Before he can leap into the fray, though, Ruth comes forth, approaching Elise. He looks at her again in sad sympathy, though he doesn't spend any words on them. This is going to be a fight, one way or another. But maybe... just maybe... with Ruth here, they can convince Elise, at least, to stand down. At the very least, Ruth tries her most earnest best, and Dean wants to support that.
"I've got your back, Ruth!" he thus calls. "Ida! I'm leaving Harmaus to you! Everybody, let's get our friends back!!"
But he doesn't charge in just yet. Instead, he looks towards Elise, talking again about dreams. There was that vision he'd had earlier of his hometown, reduced to a desert... and maybe some scraps of visions that he couldn't quite make out... that might just have been her doing after all. "It's nice seeing you too, Elise. I wish it wasn't like this, though," he replies. "If you wanna see how strong I've gotten since then, I'm glad to show you! But in return, make sure you listen to Ruth!"
Spectral wolves charge out from Elise's staff, whirling around Dean, among others. He stands his ground, crossing the combat rods of his ARMs in front of him defensively. Though many of the wolves knock into him, they don't knock him down, leaving him bruised but not battered. Not yet, anyway. He takes a step forward, then another, and then *runs* at Elise, swinging Twin Fenrir at her in a one-two whallop. Those rods heat up to scorching, intense heat by the time he reaches her; if he manages to make contact, then whatever he hits is going to get *quite* a burn.
Much like the garden itself. But it's on the outskirts still, and Dean doesn't notice it just yet either.
GS: Dean Stark spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Dean Stark has attacked Elise Riesdale with Burning Magazine! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia looks up at Gwen, too. Seeing her friend there, bleeding -- and with Hiro, and so many others -- she feels sick. She glances sideways at Jacqueline. "Jay," she says. Her voice is strained. "We've got to get them out of this."
Then, she looks back at Harmaus, as he speaks to them. Her crimson eyes narro.w
"She told me... she told me what happened to her, no?" Talia says. "But someone's worst day isn't who they are! It's not her nature -- it's just something awful that happened to her! That she has worked to move past!"
Light explodes between Magilou and Talia. It slams into the former assassin, blasting her across the way; she stumbles, rolls, and then pushes off the ground with her hand to land on her feet.
She looks up at Lucia, staring for a second more. She had always seemed so... distant. Part of her wondered, at times, if Hiro's hopes were one-sided. Not so, it would seem. A smile crosses her face, briefly. Talia looks up at Harmaus, as Lucia's spell settles into her her -- a faint glow of white light and a whiff of cherry blossoms.
"We're with you, Lucia!" she calls out, before Talia charges forward. She brings back her store-bought short sword, as she leaps in close to Harmaus. Her blade slashes up as she launches up at him, then slashes back down, with a trail of light left through the air in her wake.
"Tiger Rage!"
GS: Talia has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Tiger Rage! GS: Talia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Lucia shouting his name is like a balm on its own, even if Harmaus' denial and snarl back at him immediately causes his eyes to narrow and contract with frustration...
... and more importantly pity. "You'll never actually listen to anyone, will you?" He tells Harmaus, as if thinking of him as someone just permanently locked in place.
Elise however gets quite a different reaction as she cites his dreams... Hiro's startled eyes shift to the side as she mutters, red cheeked, "What is it with girls always trying to embarrass me like this..."
He's trying not to look at Jean as he says that but she'll almost certainly catch a glance.
Hiro admits to Belle with a mumbled, "Little bit." And a pained aside, before giving Venetia and Talia this almost apologetic look, "If it wouldn't be too much trouble."
Hiro quips Talia's way, with a thin smile. His eyes stealing a glance to check on Gwen.
Hiro gives Magilou a glum look from his position caught up in the thorny vines, "What did you... even tell him Magilou? I'm gonna assume he misunderstood it, but still..."
Hiro has to avert his eyes from the sudden light show, squinting against the bright shine. His eyes are STILL throbbing from the 'fight' which marked his disappearance.
Her heart's will? This is her heart's will? Despite the terrible dig of thorns into his limbs, he smiles - Hiro is holding out for a Hero there, and in his pained amber eyes there's one right in front of him.
Strength--!
And it feels like Lucia calls from a wellspring deep within herself to all of them. She always was so strong in his eyes. It's no wonder she can share that strength with so many people.
"Your heart's will is beautiful, Lucia."
Hiro says, voice pregnant with that awe and admiration he's held for her for so long. That he's the target of it in this moment makes him happy...
... but he'd think it's beautiful no matter who or where it was directed.
"... I know I can hold out, now that you're here."
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
Harmaus doesn't go for it. Well, that's not much of a surprise. Venetia holsters her gun as she fumbles through her Crest pouch, riffling her Crests in the protective space and she answers Elise: "This place was beautiful before you touched it. You've likely spoiled it; but I'm used to spoilers!"
Sweet words, for sure, Venetia thinks, but for who? And then as Elise begins to draw on her magic, something else comes outwards from that other girl, Hiro's friend, the one Venetia doesn't know. An invocation. What is it? Venetia doesn't know. She knows 'it exists' about Lunarian sorcery, for the most part. But power flows into her nonetheless...
So does a spectral wolf.
Venetia topples off the edge of the battlefield, and that little glowing disk of light she was sort of standing on goes with her.
Anticlimax.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6hmOsyJzVw
Or...
Venetia - slowly - rises upwards. Her arms folded, her head tilted downwards, the lace mask on her face tilted downwards as she looks distinctly, epochally smug. "Hm, hm... this Malevolence stuff and all your talk of dreams is blurring your head. Did you think that such spells and seductive speech would prevail against,"
Her head snaps up: "The world's greatest magician!?"
(Not shown: The 'Purified Ground' that Venetia is standing on is in fact pushing against the ambient Malevolence enough to, not exactly float, but fall very slowly; so slowly that she was able to bicycle-kick up the ledge, and at this point her skirt is mostly concealing the last few nudges of her booted foot necessary to get back over the edge.)
As she strides confidently forwards, Venetia tosses her hair back.
"I'm smiling," she says, "but I'm actually pretty furious. Because what you've taken from me isn't a precious person - but a precious place!" Venetia's hand sweeps outwards. "For the sake of every master of stone who has been inspired by this beautiful place, I'll pummel you as hard as it takes to see sense!"
NOW the Crest Graph is swung up - and it summons up the thirteen-and-one, the barrage of smaller (merely 'small yet tasty melon' sized) clusters of aggregated amethyst on weaving trajectories towards Elise, supplemented by a single enormous Venetia sized one hurled like a titanic if, it must be said, rather slow-moving dart. "Hyah!"
GS: Venetia Vuong has attacked Elise Riesdale with Amethyst Sign ~Second Month's Decision~! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
The satisfaction that curls in her chest, just above the diaphragm. It's not kind. But then, Lan supposes, there are still things left on this planet that can't be forgiven.
Light brilliant as the Badlands sun surrounds him like a halo, and it's strong enough for Lan to raise a hand to shade her eyes. Only when that halo bursts toward her - a sight her brain doesn't quite reconcile before it's too late - does she try throwing herself to the side. Heat and force burn where they pass, and Lan thinks that if it had been a direct hit she'd be beating out sparks on her clothes.
Everything's blurry. Lan frowns, rubbing at her eyes as she takes a step back. She stows that bow on her back and tastes the (cursed, cursed, cursed) air. What a miserable place. What a miserable monster! She wants to cry, and she wants to run past Harmaus to Gwen and Hicalu, and she wants to stop thinking about the things Harmaus deserves.
Behind her, roses bloom pale purple, and overhead, a symbol glows. The air is sweet. Find your center. Don't forget why you came here. Don't forget your family or your friends. Silver shimmers over her, across her skin, sparkling in her long pale hair, starlight soothing away the remnants of the sun's harsh glare.
A deep breath, filling her lungs with perfume. A heel pressed against the ground. And Lan bursts into motion, afterimages following her as she darts across the open space of an arrow's flight to pass Harmaus once, twice, again. The speed of her passing would pull and tug him each way, the wind opening slashes on what passes for his body.
GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Double Weave! GS: Lan Lilac has gained 2 Combo! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
"
GS: Gamble: Moderate! Seraph Harmaus takes a glancing hit from Jean's Dream Dance for 37 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus's Drowsy Ward may block the effect! GS: Disrupt applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Drowsy blocked! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Lan Lilac's Double Weave for 156 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Lan Lilac! GS: FP up! Guard bonus and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
Magilou's gaze slides, to Ruth, and she grins sidelong. "You're here, are you...? Interesting." She casts no judgement on her presence, and makes no requests; indeed, if Ruth were here to aid Elise, she wouldn't lift a finger to stop her.
It is interesting to see what she'll do, though.
"Maiden, sage, or elder...? What a constrained way of thinking. Why not all three!" Magilou chirps, all too chipper, to Elise's missives. She does still look like a maiden, even a thousand years on. What is her secret? (Skincare, of course, and dark magics.)
She watches Elise a moment longer, and her expression is complex, for a moment.
"... another garden of fake flowers, huh..."
As for what Magilou will do -- well, yes, one could blame her for what's come to pass here, certainly. She won't stop you! She didn't stop Harmaus, either, when she tried to give him that advice. She's here now, though, and her head tilts with recognition as he decides to stand against her. Or did she decide to stand against him? (Oh, she's just standing here. He can draw his own conclusions about what that means.) "We left you lonely too long," she remarks, quietly, ruefully, and she does not explain her regret.
"It's too bad, but that obstinate brat believes in me too much for me to stand aside today," she explains that much, to Harmaus, as she quick-steps back from his light, hop hop HOP, and she does not comment on the way the light blanches her stark colours for a moment. That she's talking about Hiro becomes obvious, a moment later: "I can't just leave the next generation of historians to hang!"
A joke in terrible taste. She's like that.
(She spares a glance to make sure Talia gets up from the same blast. Not that she cares!)
Hiro asks what Magilou told Harmaus, though, and she looks up at him, one eye closed. "Oh, nothing which isn't obvious on a long view," she remarks, casually. "Only that the Lord of Calamity can be considered as much a reputation as a power. It's a powerful story to tell the world, after all..." Magilou herself contributed to the stories, once upon a time. It was very funny.
"Looks like you're right," Magilou remarks, brightly, to Jean, as she spins on a heel; in the motion, a paper doll slips from her detached sleeve, to spin lazily at her wrist. "All right! It's a dance! Show me what you've got, Jean!"
Speaking of things like but unlike the artes Althena knows: a Seraphic glyph alights at Magilou's feet, a blustering, windy green, as she incants. "Is it hot, or is it just me? Crown Fire!" The tornado which swirls to catch Harmaus isn't just wind, though -- it's very much on FIRE, the elements married together to roughen his poor fur.
She lets Venetia have 'the world's greatest magician', meanwhile, because Venetia comes from another world. Magilou is so very generous.
(Meanwhile, Hicalu wriggles, in his nest of thorns. "L--Lan!" He cries out, though he is clearly very, VERY scared. "Lan, I'm h-h-here! I'm s-still okay! T-Tristan's looking a-after me, s-so..!" Though he's in no way a warrior, he still hasn't been claimed by the Malevolence -- not even as Lucia's determination enters the fray -- but it's all he can do to believe in them, right now.)
GS: Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Talia's Tiger Rage for 107 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Slow applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Magilou has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Crown Fire! GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo! GS: Magilou's stances have changed to Avenger! GS: Magilou gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Magilou enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Gamble: Very High! Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Magilou's Crown Fire for 153 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper and Mighty applied to Magilou! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
"We do." Jacqueline agrees with a nod toward Talia. She looks around. ...There are others gathered here. If they go for the captives now, they might draw attention to them - it might be better for them if they do what they can to keep Harmaus's attention on them.
She frowns, though, as Harmaus speaks, his words biting.
"Talia..." Jacqueline murmurs... but, then frowns at Harmaus as he speaks to her. "You're one to talk."
He sends out a bolt of light her way and Jacqueline moves to defend - but at the last moment, it splits. It doesn't hit her directly. It strikes at her shadow, but she feels each impact cleanly on her body. And where the bolts of light stick into the ground, Jacqueline finds herself unable to move.
The situation looks bad. But then, a different light, Lucia's light, shines upon her. Light shines down upon her, filling her with power - her own power.
"Thank you." Jacqueline says, exhaling. She still can't move from where she stands, but her body rebels against the binding light and she can move the rest of her freely. She casts her left hand out toward Harmaus with a gesture to cast one of her spells. A dark wind blows in the Seraph's direction. It doesn't harm physically, but enhancements fade in the face of it while the opposite is strengthened and reinforced.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Mysterious Wind! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 2 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Harmaus bares fangs about how it is Elise's will, and Elise... reminds her what danger she, herself is in - which is truth, and Ruth goes quieter at the entreaty. All she had to do was reach out to her and tell her. She could have gone back to see her at any time, even as it seemed Elise wished to retreat further into her Domain.
She doesn't leap when Venetia shoots Elise's leg, but her tongue flicks in Elise's direction. Her body tenses up, like a statue - which is the favored 'natural' camo of her kind of Hellion. Despair paralyzes, as it is its wont.
Lucia, over yonder, does not give it an inch. Strength--! She calls, and pure radiant white shines over the Hellion who has won the truly rare and precious designation of being a friend and ally to several here despite everything. It gives strength, just as it gives enabling to an aspect of herself she continues to repress by nature.
Elise throws down the gauntlet to those who would stand to her, and there...
Ruth hurls herself into it with a blood-curdling screeching hiss, wild swings with the bladed end of her rifle that bely her years of familiarity with its weight and challenges when it otherwise seemed too much for her. The spectral wolves cannot all be intercepted at once - the damage they do is largely done, aside from where she manages to step in front of Azoth before he's subject to any of it. Incidental, perhaps.
There is nothing 'incidental' about the violence otherwise - it is purposeful, as though she were an apex predator above a 'mere' pack of spectral wolves, eyes wide, wild, and hungry in the throes of added power before she stills herself with shallowing breaths and a discordant smile.
"Ever since the day I came to this body, after that day in that cave in Ignas," Ruth's voice quiets, perhaps because the wounding is a bit more thorough than first appears, "I kept... chasing this feeling. Surrounded by pain. Fear. The vulnerable... and that's not what haunted me," she starts to look up as she sees the wounds inflicted have drawn blood.
Purple-hued blood, fresh on her hands that she is transfixed upon as she lifts her right away from the rifle's shaft. "It always haunted me that someone... someone saw something more in a heartless monster. A heartless monster who was only good for how good she was at hurting, killing others... even when she was so hurt she couldn't do that. Yet she still did..."
"I chased that, Elise," Ruth confesses, "I... I chased it, back to Zoara. At my worst... I wondered if a monster found another chance to bring even more death around her. I let that weight in my heart be my reward, as I... lived." Another smile, as that bloodied hand returns to her rifle. "I cared. I cherished that... I never could've been that person before," her voice wavers.
"Then I met you, in Guild Galad. I remember your terror. What those thugs almost did... what I did to them. You had no reason to look at me like anything other than a heartless monster. I... looked the part of a Beastfolk, all right. I didn't know, then, that you couldn't see that."
Ruth's wing starts to fold around herself. "You didn't run from me. You let me stay by your side as you spoke of wonderful, beautiful worlds... of a hope and love for something that the Voids felt devoid of."
Ruth throws that wing open with a more intense gaze, her Domain fighting back against the earthen gloom - expanding the foggy, rainy air around her in staking her claim which is by and large posturing.
"This isn't the beautiful dream you spoke of!!"
GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
That Cat. A thought that many others here have undoubtedly had before, but it's the first time that Xantia's had it. It's vexing to hear much of what Harmaus says, but it's pretty overt how he's driving a wedge between Ruth and Elise. She doesn't know the story there, but regardless of what it might be, this darned cat is definitely not helping matters.
...And then he makes it personal, by actively interfering in her attempt to get her suspicions confirmed. Her mask of calm cracks as she grits her teeth, biting back the impulse to give this Seraph a piece of her mind. She can't not say something, but in the end, she yet manages to say it without completely flying off the handle. "No use hiding it, I already know what's going on here. You might as well admit it!"
She isn't interested in the reasons behind any of this. If the reasons Elise claims there are even exist, she already knows they're going to be stupid reasons. Nothing justifies all of this. It only vexes her more that Elise speaks in a way that's difficult for her to follow. Only to, in the end... not tell her what she wanted to hear. Instead, she is told 'no more questions'.
"...Really? All that talking, all that nonsense, and NOW you decide it's no longer time for chatting?"
Instantly, her entire bearing changes. The calm facade shatters, her face contorts in anger, and her hands burst into flames, the emotions flooding out all at once.
"WRONG ANSWER!!"
She is more than ready for her 'test'. She's already started running when the ghostly wolves are sent her way, and this doesn't make her stop. She dives aside, leaps over, and finally barrels directly through one of the wolves, ignoring the minor injuries she takes in the process of making it to Elise. As if this wasn't alarming enough, assistance from Lucia causes both her aura of light and the flames surrounding her hands to flare up in intensity. Just in time for the moment when Xantia reaches her target, upon which she immediately launches into a furious flurry of fiery fists.
"THAT'S what I think of your 'test'," she yells afterwards, fully prepared for an encore if one proves necessary. "Why not be honest and just call it a Trial, huh? I know that's what this is! Like, the Trial of Taking Your Friends And Corrupting A Primarch Because I Don't Know, I'm The Adversary Of Mankind, I Don't Need Reasons!"
Yeah sorry Harmaus, you'll be getting zero credit from Xantia here. She's already decided who the real mastermind is behind all this. In her experience, every time there's been a major attention-grabbing incident that involved a massive Malevolent Domain suddenly springing up out of nowhere, the Trial Knight has been involved. After their stated intentions, how could she possibly believe they aren't the one masterminding all these incidents?
GS: Xantia has attacked Elise Riesdale with Elemental Fury! GS: Xantia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xantia's stances have changed to Avenger! GS: Xantia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Xantia has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Elise Riesdale takes a solid hit from Dean Stark's Burning Magazine for 192 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale's Poison Ward may block the effect! GS: Poison blocked! GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated! GS: Elise Riesdale takes a glancing hit from Venetia Vuong's Amethyst Sign ~Second Month's Decision~ for 74 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Evade bonus activated! GS: Elise Riesdale fully evades Xantia's Elemental Fury for 0 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Xantia! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
'Ida! I'm leaving Harmaus to you!'
Ida glances at Harmaus, eyes narrowing sharply. She raises her hands, clenches them.
"I appreciate the thought, Dean," she says, "but we're doing this together." Her gaze falls on the self-proclaimed Rose Queen. "There was a time, Rose Queen, when I would've been tempted. Even now, part of me is so very tired of this cruel world. But what you offer is no release." Another step closer.
'Strength', Lucia says, and Symbological light ignites above Ida, shining down into her. Lucia's gift sharpens Ida's anger, hones her compassion. Inexplicably, pure white lotuses blossom from the nearby rosebushes.
"So, tell me! Who were you? How did it come to this?"
Elise answers with wolves.
Ida drops into a low stance, bracing for impact. This keeps her from getting pitched off the platform, like Venetia--her eyes track back towards the sorceress, even as her heart tightens, and the wolf's fangs dig deep into her armored shoulder. Blood drips down her chest, all crimson and quicksilver. Ida sets her feet, lets out a roar, and throws the wolf, using its momentum to pitch it back into the thorns.
"Seconding that 'listen to Ruth,'" Ida grates out. "She still cares. She saved you when you needed it most. That's why she's here--and why we are, too. Harmaus is using you to feed his fool delusions," and those last few words are louder than the rest, just to get under Harmaus' skin, "and I won't stand for it. And if you've suffered at my fellows' hands, then let it out!"
As Dean rushes Elise, Ida does, too, lingering behind just a moment or two to let him have the first strike. Once Elise is off-balance, Ida blurs through the last few feet--
Steps in low, dropping her center of gravity--
And sweeps Elise into an over-the-shoulder suplex, if she doesn't get out of the way.
What hero would dare suplex a queen?? This one, apparently. Xantia and Ruth did the verbal heavy lifting, she needs to repay the favor.
Meanwhile...
Moisture wicks on Cole's brow as they leap up the remaining petals encircling Ozidzo's prone form. Their spear trails out behind them, the blade blazing with white heat. "Come on," they breathe, coaxing more power out of their sluggish human body. They should already be up there, where the taint is the strongest. They can feel something--his power, the might of the so-called Guardian of Fire. And someone beyond that. Someone...
"...Gwen," Cole says in mid-leap, their eyes widening with terror.
No. No, they can't lose her. Not her, not their sib.
The flames are spreading.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Elise Riesdale with Overturn the Black Tortoise! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
There was another, wasn't there?
Harmaus demands silence, and Elise does not go against his will for her not to answer.
Azoth glances toward Xantia. The individual she was mumbling about before... who...?
At least what Harmaus is after has finally come to light, though Azoth's still lacking the data on how Harmaus expects this to work. It may be an impossible goal now, if Lucia is not the Anitia he so desperately seeks. And it would seem Lucia... is Lucia.
Fire catches in the gardens, eating at the roses and reflecting in Azoth's eye lenses. Even with Ruth, her knight, here... Elise demands a test. Azoth's thoughts flash back to the Domain they ventured through and the neon grid, the digital mode, a place he barely remembers.
It's always tests. "Sorry, I don't recognize your authority."
A white symbol appears above Azoth and he blinks once, holding out his palm as the sparkles descend, his core resonating with the energy. This is certainly becoming quite the fairy tale, isn't it? But if Elise won't answer questions, then Azoth doesn't want to waste anymore time, the way Gwen and the others are still struggling to hold on.
Azoth charges forward, blade following at his side, just shy of his actual grip. The brighter his sword flares, the more sparks tease his joints. It's been like this, lately: Azoth constantly tearing himself apart in combat, limbs threatening to blow themselves off, core nearly overheating. In the heat of battle, he can divide enough of his attention to glance Xantia's way in concern as she bellows out in rage. The Trial Knight...
He meant to keep an eye on Xantia, the way he noticed her focus escaping her in their battle before. This is... not that? Not yet. Her frustration is... logical.
But a spectral wolf rushes in, a knee bursts in neon sparks. Azoth falters. He pushes on. His blade cleaves out a distance from himself, past the wolf and for Elise, Azoth ready to accept the calcuated consequences, except --
They don't come. "Miss Ruth?!" She throws herself in front of him, absorbing the violence Elise deliberately tried to spare her of, and Azoth hesitates. A story of finding a place to belong, and a dream that followed. A dream that's not here. And rain. It soothes the sparks to a weakened sputter.
GS: Azoth has attacked Elise Riesdale with Array Slice! GS: Azoth has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Elise Riesdale takes a glancing hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Overturn the Black Tortoise for 97 hit points! GS: Elise Riesdale suffers a terrible blow from Azoth's Array Slice for 227 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper applied to Azoth! GS: Strain! Azoth takes 90 damage! GS: Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Jacqueline Barber's Mysterious Wind for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Dispel! Infect! Shield removed! GS: Hex applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Quick applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: Charge!! You gain 30 FP! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Tcha," snarls Harmaus at Jean. "Much and more trouble makes it for me! But it matters me not. It awakens, or it dies!"
But further attempts to force her off the gazebo are forestalled by Jean's grace and skill: she holds her ground firmly and resists his volley of spells. Another sneer of disgust crosses Harmaus' face but in this moment, he doesn't press further.
He may regret that later.
"It tries as it likes! But, ah... how long might it hold out, here?" he replies to Dean.
Hiro might have the right of it, in the end. For all that others entreat him otherwise, Harmaus has made his decisions, and has followed that path to the end... no matter the cost. "Silence!" Harmaus calls out to him again, as if this time it would take effect.
And it is that same reply that he directs towards Magilou, when she speaks -- not for the first -- that he was left lonely too long. "Silence, traitor! Turncoat! --Obstinant? I am not--"
She's not talking about him at all, and it dawns on him visibly; his gaze turns towards smoldering fury.
"Shh, shh, shh," he tells Jay, as if to wave her off as he awaits Talia's response. "Amaranth tells it willingly? Jaeja," Harmaus utters, as if taken aback in this moment. "...Ah, so it refrains from lies the once. Surprising! Surprising! But it lies to self, now! This one, Amaranth's pet! Darkness is its nature, and to darkness, it returns!" It's a prophecy, but as Lucia will soon say -- is he a prophet whose words can be trusted?
In any case, Talia makes her feelings well and truly known, cleaving into Harmaus with her blade. She connects firmly; were he not a Seraph, she might have well bisected him. His response instead now is to hiss in pain.
Into this moment, Jean begins a slow, slumber-inducing dance. For an instant, the world around Harmaus appears to blur.
But he leaps at the dancing sheep as it descends towards him, dispelling the whole work with only some strain to show for it. "It thinks its tricks works again?" he calls out to Jean.
He has more to worry about than Jean's moves on the dancefloor. Flames swirl up around him, egged on by the winds -- summoned up by Magilou and Jacqueline alike -- and here he is caught with a yowl in the wildfire that floats in the air with him. Worse, the wind neatly severs him from Elise' enchantments. The fire soon calms and the wind dies, though...
And in that moment, something passes him. He would have thought it but a trick of the light (dark?) but for the pain that blooms after. And again, the shadow. Again, the pain. Again, again.
He lands onto the ground, light already rising from him in an angry tangle, a line that travels from invisible point as it seeks to ground itself in his assailant -- Lan's -- body. "It dares?!"
Where there is light, there is darkness. Darkness swells off Marivel like a black tide, rippling up to swirl in eddies about his feet; though he struggles, for a moment -- and that is all that is needed -- he is held fast by her magic.
Did he ever know her, Althena?
His response starts out calmly enough. "No. No, I never knows her. Not when first I awakes. Not when I seeks her out!" But he has gone wide-eyed, his body rigid as he vents his spleen in Marivel's direction -- still under the stress of the Domain pressing down around them. "Absent is she, long, long time! And asks I-- asks I, what reason has she?! Why hides she so many, many years from us, from world! She lies! She lies!!"
Light erupts from the shimmering nimbus surrounding Harmaus' body as if to punctuate that last statement, roaring straight for Marivel.
He hears those words from Ida, just carrying over the din of battle. "My lady! Listen to them not! They seek turnings you against me!" he calls to Elise, as if he were worried about losing her support -- or the consequences such would bring.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
But Lucia addresses him, and his attention snaps back to her. Is it possible that she has, at last, accepted her destiny as--
'You are a false prophet,' says Lucia. Or else, he is highly deluded.
"False...? She calls me... 'false'?" Harmaus sounds no less than wounded when he is rejected, once again.
And she will not cast down Althena. It has never been her intention from the start-- and has never wavered from that point. She will not. Even now, she turns from him, she reaches out with her power for... Hiro. It borrows not a mote from the garden Harmaus has set for her to take from.
"You will not?! You-- after all I has...! You-- it-- refuse to awaken--!!"
He quivers, spasmodically. This is not a place kind to nearly any sort of living thing, but it is kindest least of all to Seraphim. To remain within this place and fail to succumb to it takes a great force of will and identity...
...which have just fallen out from under the wayward Harmaus.
"It refuses me! It refuses Anitia's legacy! I-- I cannot-- will not--"
He collapses in that moment to the gazebo floor, driven down by the spiritual weight of the Domain about him at last. Twitching violently, Harmaus curls in on himself; in this moment he makes no sound whatsoever.
Purple-red motes begin to shine from his corpus, and it is in this moment that he finally screams, born aloft by the power that is eating him away inside.
There is a brilliant flash, enough to make dark afterimages dance in the field of view of those present for moments thereafter.
What Harmaus has become sets itself down gently: first one armored foot, then the other. Clad in pale-grey plate possessed of a pearly sheen, the overall impression of the Hellionized Seraph might be a vaguely humanoid one, but even here there are hints of Harmaus' shape: see here the small suggestions of pointed ears on the helm.
In its hands, Harmaus bears a large sword, its blade gleaming white. It is the very picture of purity, the beacon he always wished to be and never was.
The only thing that offsets it is the burning violet-red eyes from behind the helmet's visor.
"...Heh heh heh... hahahahahahahahaha...! I has done it, I has! Stands I closer to the truth!! I has the power!!!"
BGM: Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse - Enemy of God https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-uT-MHifKU
It raises that blade ceilingsward, as if to call down the wrath of the heavens, but the heavens do not answer, nor does it invoke their aid. Rather instead, it sweeps the sword sidelong from right to left as if to cut an arc through the air. A rolling trail of dusky-hued color follows as space itself is cut, and when it crosses it again from left to right, that line is the color of chalk. Both cuts erupt forward for those before Harmaus, a wide 'X' of ebony and ivory ripping through the air for them: and yet it will not so much as scratch their bodies.
No, that honor remains for Lucia alone. "It calls me false! Ah, no need has it for it! False Lord of Calamity!!"
Even like this, Harmaus possesses vast control over light, and light erupts like a falling star from his outstretched left hand. But this light is no longer pure: it flickers on the edges with Malevolence's corruption.
GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Lan Lilac with Bright Sequence! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Marivel Armitage with Sudden Dawn!
DC: You switch forms to The Catalyst! DC: Seraph Harmaus switches forms to The Catalyst!
GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Jean with Melanosis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Melanosis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Magilou with Leucosis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Talia with Leucosis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has attacked Lucia with Novalight! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes 32 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Harmaus has completed his action. GS: Ruth Pauling used Defend! She takes Seraph Harmaus's Sudden Dawn attack on Marivel Armitage on herself! GS: Ruth Pauling has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: CRITICAL! Ruth Pauling solidly guards Seraph Harmaus's Sudden Dawn for 108 hit points! GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lucia solidly guards Seraph Harmaus's Novalight for 86 hit points! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated! GS: CRITICAL! Jean partially guards Seraph Harmaus's Melanosis for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Jean gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Drowsy applied to Jean! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Jean enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Magilou suffers a terrible blow from Seraph Harmaus's Leucosis for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Blind applied to Magilou! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated! GS: Jacqueline Barber solidly guards Seraph Harmaus's Melanosis for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Drowsy applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated! GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Talia takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Leucosis for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Talia gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Blind applied to Talia! GS: Lan Lilac solidly guards Seraph Harmaus's Bright Sequence for 64 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lan Lilac gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Lan Lilac enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
"I choose the path of thorns," says Lucia.
"So be it," Elise answers back. "Then I shall play the witch that blocks your friends' way."
Dean takes to the fray, catching Elise by surprise and throwing her offcenter, fire glinting off her waxen stone skin as she tries to bat Dean back with a savage thrust of her scepter. Ida uses that moment to her advantage, sweeping the little Rose Queen off her center of gravity and hauling her backwards in an ungraceful arc, flipping her over.
Thorny vines seep up some soil and try to lash at Ida, while a third and forth pull Elise to her feet like the hands of a worried attendent.
No, Dean's fire isn't the source of that smoke. The flames and smoke still poke at her field of vision, and Elise's attention spins upwards briefly towards its possible source further off. "...." More roses attempt to stir from wherever the ashes have cooled, but it will be a matter of time before the flames reach further inwards towards the heart of this rose bed.
The one spoiling Venetia's precious place. The way that Venetia states her title (that of _the world's greatest magician_) is enough to make Elise give notice, now that Venetia is smugly rising up from the depths just beyond the battlefield. "Come then!" Elise beckons with her sceptre. "Claim your title, and your precious place."
An amethyst barrage of specifically tastily sized bolts weave in a carnival of spinning lights, many crashing against a suddenly grown crystal hedge of leaves, but not all. More slivers of gold weep from Elise's stone skin. "'Tis my turn now." A wave of her sceptre and a beam fires back at Venetia in the shape of a curly cross.
No, no more answers or questions from Elise, even if Magilou's skin care routine is a source of mystery that should be solved someday for the good of all mankind. No answers for Xantia either, just allegories wrapped in fairy tales. It's enough to make a person... angry.
Or maybe, Elise refuses to answer, because Ruth's continued entreaty means dealing with her own contradictions spiderwebbing through her like the veins of crystalline formations in her skin, or the gold that has filled in the holes made by earlier attacks.
Like the ones all over her hands already.
"A queen is nothing without her word, and I gave him mine. It does not endanger my dream to enable another's." No thread of conflict enters her voice, but she winces as Ruth takes the blow for Azoth. "Your dedication to your craft and journey... is staggering, my knight." The corners of her lips dip. "... My beloved knight."
Xantia's explosion is a welcome distraction. "So, let's do just that! It's a trial, haha!" A second, and Elise gleefully levitates backwards in a twirl from Xantia's furious fists. "You must be tired after that.. a good night's rest, for you, mighty heroine..." Lucia's perfume will be overwhelmed by something more toxic and potent for Xantia, a red violet miasma coming out from Elise's languid waves of her jeweled rod.
Azoth is granted her attention next, by force. Gold spatters violently against Azoth's sparking, glowing form, oxygen crudling it to dull red as the illusion bleeds off the liquid. Elise stumbles back, summonly a furious assault of petals towards Azoth as she retreats backwards.
She will not retreat from Harmaus in his hour of need. Not until he ascends to his truest self, his most glorious realization.
".... Behold." The end of Elise's staff hits the ground, lending her blessing to the newly blessed Harmaus's form.
".... The final act has begun."
GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Dean Stark with Spindelriss! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Streublumen! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Venetia Vuong with Lilienkreuz! GS: Elise Riesdale has gained 1 Combo! GS: Elise Riesdale has completed her action. GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Xantia with Dornroschen! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Azoth with Venusberg! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Vergoldete Lilie! GS: Elise Riesdale has gained 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She hears him. Voice shaking, snotty from crying, and all Lan can think of is that Hicalu is awake, Hicalu is okay.
Hicalu is watching.
It sends a cascade of ice down her back. If Hicalu were to see her. If he saw her covered in ink... if she lost control, and Hicalu saw it.
He wouldn't understand. Because even Lan doesn't understand completely. But it would scare him even more. And he might not want to--
It's still pounding in her veins, along with her blood and the pulse of life itself. It still wants to come out. She still wants to use it, and use it to cut Harmaus down.
"Hicalu," she calls out, willing her voice to remain steady. "Hicalu, I'm gonna save you! ...Tell Tr--" Something white and fast as a cobra, as fast as instinct, ricochets at her; Lan swats away the trick of the light with the outside of her forearm, careless of the deep burn it leaves behind. "SO DON'T WORRY, and tell him thanks! --And make sure Gwen is okay!"
Save him. She will save everyone she can. That's right. That's what she really wants. Not vengeance, not to pick Harmaus up by his skinny neck and just make sure.
There is a crunch, somewhere behind her. And the voice of someone that she hasn't been able to talk to, the way she wants, for a long time now. That's right. She had wanted to--
Lan kicks off of the platform, and again off of the air itself, tumbling gently through the air - to land next to Azoth. "Hey," she tells him, smile tense but no less genuine, and rests a shimmering hand on his shoulder.
Ahead of them, Harmaus gapes, and mourns, and writhes -- and despite herself, Lan is conflicted.
GS: Lan Lilac has attacked Azoth with Starlight Shimmer! GS: Lan Lilac has gained 2 Combo! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Venetia Vuong takes a glancing hit from Elise Riesdale's Lilienkreuz for 71 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Venetia Vuong gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated! GS: Venetia Vuong enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Seraph Harmaus accepts Elise Riesdale's Vergoldete Lilie for 0 hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Blitz and Lock state applied to Seraph Harmaus!
<Pose Tracker> Lucia has posed.
It's all so personal. Hiro, hanging in the briars, even now using the last of his strength to try to strengthen her. The way so many of these people know Harmaus, know Elise. How they've been wronged by them. How even now some seek to make things right.
How impossible it is.
How impossible it all is.
It's impersonal too. One might think that the planets, existence hanging in the balance, would make Hiro's suffering less poignant; the stakes of the others rendered meaningless in the face of the immense background radiation of imminent apocalypse. That's how it used to be for her. No... that's how she used to be.
But she has changed.
And now... Harmaus is changing, too.
Its transformation fills her expression, literally, and in two ways; as it dies and is reborn, her sternness fades to sorrow; and her enormous green eyes become moreso, even as they contain and reflect the purple-red light of its transformation.
She holds up a palm to shield her eyes from the flash.
And looking upon it afterwards, it and its sword, not so dissimilar from the one she had conjured, she discovers that her sadness has transformed, too.
Lucia cannot be Harmaus' Lord of Calamity. She can only be herself.
Lucia is Lucia...
...and Lucia is furious.
"Look at this place!"
She takes another step forward, unconsciously a little higher into the air -- even now, though her attention is on Harmaus, her subconcious cannot so easily diverted from her path towards Hiro.
"Look at this mess!"
Another step.
"I don't understand why you people are all so determined to turn Lunar into hell... It was supposed to be heaven!"
<SoundTracker> Virtual^H^H^H^H^H^H^HBlue Star Embryology - Maki Kamiya - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfj4_IU968s
She thrusts her hand out in front of her, no longer veiling her eyes, and stares at him directly. Glares, in fact. No one's seen her like this in ages. Not since that time with Mother, with Siegfried. She looks like she's about to tear out her hair. It would take her a long time. Sans gravity, it is everywhere, all around her, exactly as blue as Filgaia looks from space. Her Duelist's outfit doesn't suit her at all. She looks very much like the very thing Hiro isn't and Elise called a lie: royalty.
The Lord of Calamity is a powerful story, indeed.
But it isn't the only story.
"A heaven I left!! For the sake of Gaia and her people! And now you've dragged that hell down here, too!"
She is aggrieved; she is dismayed; and yet, there is something beneath, a normally-tentative empathy made bold by the extremity of the moment.
And, though she is much too preoccupied to notice, those black petals surrounding her are beginning to gray.
"Look at yourself!"
Lucia is looking, and in her eyes is compassion, real compassion that could never have existed before she met Hiro and all the others. She is facing Harmaus dead on. She takes its Malevolent falling star full in the face-- and for a moment it seems like it might fell her star, too. Her 'stance' in the air is destroyed on impact, and she goes flying backwards, head over well-booted heels.
But she hovers -- not unconsciously, but much more with INTENT -- just before she would have gone face first into the garden. She is caught. She has caught herself.
And she rises.
Her Malevolence seethes and surges. But it can't stop her. It can't stop her from speaking. It can't stop her from going back to them.
Back to him.
"No one can save everyone," she says simply, and with an odd and tender gentleness. With a perspective from a thousand lifetimes ago, and a half-dozen heartbeats. "And I cannot save you from your own calamity. That is the truth."
Forward and upward again. Her voice strengthens, to address all.
"But so is this: hear me, everyone, and do not despair! Heaven is not a place, and so it cannot be destroyed! Heaven is a feeling! Heaven is something only you can make, with your own two hands!"
Lunar heaven!
Gaian heaven!
Solar heaven!
Stellar heaven!
Motive heaven!
GS: Lucia spends 1 Combo on Reload! GS: Lucia has attacked Lan Lilac with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Azoth with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Xantia with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Ruth Pauling with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Jacqueline Barber with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Magilou with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Marivel Armitage with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Venetia Vuong with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Hiro with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Talia with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Dean Stark with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia has attacked Jean with In The Name Of The Blue Star! GS: Lucia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Break and Slow expired! GS: Lucia has completed her action. GS: Hiro accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Hiro! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! activated! GS: Venetia Vuong accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Venetia Vuong! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! activated! GS: Jean accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Jean! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! and Sufferer activated! GS: Jacqueline Barber accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! and Gleam activated! GS: Lan Lilac accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Lan Lilac! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! and Gleam activated! GS: Lan Lilac enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Magilou accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Magilou! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! and Gleam activated! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Elise Riesdale's Streublumen for 101 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's Cripple Ward may block the effect! GS: Cripple blocked! GS: FP up! Power Burst activated! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! activated! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xantia critically guards Elise Riesdale's Dornroschen for 31 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xantia gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Drowsy blocked! GS: Healthy! For entering Condition Green, Xantia receives 100 temporary hit points. GS: Xantia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xantia accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Xantia! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! activated! GS: Azoth partially guards Elise Riesdale's Venusberg for 0 hit points! GS: Infect! Debuff durations extended!! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Jam applied to Azoth! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Azoth enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Lan Lilac heals Azoth! He gains 84 temporary hit points! GS: Restore! Jam removed! GS: Mighty and Quick applied to Lan Lilac! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Azoth accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Azoth! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! and Gleam activated! GS: Talia accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Talia! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! activated! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ruth Pauling accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! activated!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
To hear both Ida and Dean vouch and beseech that Elise listen to Ruth helps keep herself emotionally anchored... until Elise speaks again.
'...My beloved knight.'
Ruth seizes in that moment... until light erupts from Harmaus' shimmering body, and in that moment...
The silhouette of Ruth hurls itself in front of Marivel, hiding behind a wing. It drills, it burns, its shine might even visually pierce past the stone-like membrane even without breaking it. It might technically rob her briefly of sight, in a conventional sense, but she can never be blinded to pain, suffering, anguish, or any of that. There are low days where color and sound lose all sensory meaning to her.
Marivel will take note of tears hitting the ground nearby. Ruth doesn't turn to face her.
"You've cried enough," Ruth says to Marivel, knowing on the periphery of her great stresses and distresses. This defense is as much a message to Harmaus as it is to Elise. She will be heard, and no amount of shining light can make her image of terror fade. (As all Hellions, on some level, desire to be.)
As Elise calls the final act...
"You're not the first Riesdale I've known. No." A stressed hiss escapes Ruth's throat. It's a sore spot. "I never met him. But... during the final days of Celesti, his was a place far off to the north. He was one of the rich. The rich of Celesti... most were cruel, selfish." Ruth shakes her head. "But not him. No. He was said to be kind, who did everything to keep those who lived within that land safe. How he did as the rest of the world around it scorched to ash... I'll never know."
"It was safe... until the day it was said it was housing wounded soldiers of those cruel rich. With names like Heath Exon... a man invisible outside of the destruction he could bring. That place... was Siddim." This may send a chill up the spines of those who were at that Malevolent Domain of Ruth's, some time ago. Siddim Canyon, the site of--
"They sent a monster to hunt them. A monster whose call was that of four knocks on a door." Death's Door. Even the poor of Celesti... could be cruel." More tears, her voice wavering. Her tail coils further up the rifle, the tip of her tail (improbably) trying to reach for the trigger, which she has to account for with her natural hand to hold it back. "The monster wasn't told what Heath looked like. It was suggested their invisibility could be a disguise... so that monster killed everyone they saw." Her voice builds with a frustration of self-loathing. "Everyone they sssssaw!" She shrieks it... and it gives way to a smile. Calmed. Barely. "Heath Exon still got away. Were they ever there? Did they know what would happen when they would send someone like that there? Siddim wasn't the first time that heartless monster did such things."
More tears. Tears she doesn't deserve to shed after so much of it was from blood she spilled. That she is still here right now is, in many ways, a form of denial of justice to so many.
"Even after Celesti's fall, that monster... was only ever going to keep being one."
"...When I met you, heard your name... I thought of that person. What a kind place he protected to the very last." Ruth says of Elise, as she looks to Harmaus' upcoming ascension. "Your dream... if it was anything like his, perhaps... that was one way I could have atoned."
"It's... one thing, to give a place to those angry, lonely, frightened." Then, as Ruth rises, her wing dramatically flares out, as patinated bronze takes over the flesh, coating the clothes, even her hair, fusing it into some caricature of a deep-seated fear at the core of her being - that she can never be anything but a monster, a lasting sculpture to that fact as she hisses so strongly it might be a roar, though the rifle is not raised.
"They're scared! They're hurt! They're ssssuffering under your thornssss!!" Ruth screeches, defiantly. If she must, she'll protect everyone else here from Elise's machinations, but...
Maybe this is all part of saving Elise from Ruth herself, too.
As Harmaus screams about there being no need for a False Lord of Calamity, Ruth's voice falls to a whisper.
"...I wonder if I already have been that, to Zoara," a wisp of Malevolence escaping her that she eyes, "for all of this I brought to them..."
But she'll make good on the blessing Lucia gives, the only way she knows how.
GS: Ruth Pauling enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Blitz! Ruth Pauling has attacked Ruth Pauling with Heart of Patinated Bronze! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action. GS: Ruth Pauling heals Ruth Pauling! She gains 175 temporary hit points! GS: Dean Stark accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Dean Stark! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! activated! GS: Dean Stark suffers a terrible blow from Elise Riesdale's Spindelriss for 159 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Dean Stark gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Dean Stark enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Jean has posed.
Meanwhile, up above, an owl slashes at bonds; Tristan is partly free thanks to Eleanor's efforts but he says to Eleanor, "No--I won't leave without Hicalu!"
"Right." With a sudden glow, the owl presses a firearm into his hands, "Then look out for him while I go for the other captives." There are people here to rescue their precious ones... but some of these people don't have powerful friends to rely on. Eleanor will see to them if she can. Even if it's one at a time...
Jean spots Hiro and his little mutter. Her hearing's that good. She grins up at him. "Just wait til we get you down." Hiro can hold out; he's said as much, and Jean believes him. So...
It's time to push forward!!
Jean looks back to Magilou for a moment, and grins. Between the sheer walls of Malevolence here, the fire approaching at the edges, and how heavy it all is... having an audience helps her draw out her dancer's instincts, instead of the ones she had an assassin. She is here to help, not to destroy. "Think you can still keep up?" Jean challenges Magilou back, and whirls into action.
"And I'll make more trouble for you yet before I'm done," Jean assures Harmaus--but he lets her be for the moment, and she goes with that once she sees he has, weaving into the shadows of the garden. From there, she sees the exchange. From there, she sees a horror.
Lucia, ever stalwart despite everything, makes her will known, and Harmaus falls. Falling, falling, and for the first time Jean sees it, this change in a Seraph. Even he screams with it. That flash punishes her eyes, leaves afterimages before she sees Harmaus set itself down gently. Armor, and purity... a noble knight seeking the truth.
"This isn't 'truth'!" Jean calls at Harmaus. "It's delusion!"
Her tricks could've worked a second time. Instead, Jean calls, "You're just wallowing in the worst of what there is! That's not 'truth' at all!"
But it doesn't need Lucia...
Jean looks to Lucia who speaks of a emss. When she calls out. When she speaks of the heaven she left...
"We will," Jean promises her, of making it, and she feels that power strengthen her. The invocation of Heaven settles on Jean, and her eyes are aglow with it for a moment as she surges forward, out of the shadows. Her movements are graceful and deadly both. A jump into the air, whirling with her fans; she throws both, whirling toward what was Harmaus and scything through tainted vines along the way. Bouncing against the flames, they richochet towards his armor, and on their heels--
"Ruth!" Jean calls, as she surges forward, feet so light that she barely seems to touch the ground, arms out to either side. "Remember--remember you can be more than you were! Lucia is right!"
Jean suddenly somersaults into the air, flipping forward and forward until her hands come out as claws and she surges down towards Harmau's Hellionized form.
"And I will build that heaven again with these two hands!" Radiating martial power, Jean strikes--but her blows do not trail the familiar death of the Shadow Dragon. Something... else, shines within her. It must be Lucia's power.
GS: Jean has activated Force Action: Lock On! GS: Jean has activated Force Action: Snipe! GS: Jean spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Blitz! Jean has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Razor Step! GS: Jean has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jean has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean pauses, but only to smile, when Ida says they're going to do this together. It's as empowering as Lucia's spell earlier had been, minus the sparklies showering down on him, but including all of the emotional, spiritual, and physical bolstering--as empowering as her call is now, that Heaven is not a place but a feeling. Somehow, Dean knows instinctively she's right, and it fills him with strength. "Okay. Then let's do this!" he calls to Ida.
Xantia roars out her defiance, calling out Elise for the hand that (she believes?) the Trial Knight must obviously have had in this. That had honestly never occurred to Dean, so he blinks rapidly. "Huh?!" But a battle is a battle, and he turns towards Elise again. "Okay, we'll figure that out later!"
Except, over on the other side of the battlefield, Harmaus... changes. Rejected by Lucia, he finally succumbs to the massive Malevolent Domain all around them and becomes a Hellion in his own right. Dean would feel sorry for him--he actually does still feel a little sorry for him, despite everything--but given his attitude, he seems pretty happy about the change, over all. All the same, he retorts, "Looks like I held out longer than you did!"
He smiles over at Ruth, too, as she speaks of the past she shares with Elise, of the past that had existed before even that with her family--of how this isn't the beautiful dream they'd shared. He's not wholly sure if it's great for them to still be talking in terms of dreams, but if it's what it takes to get Elise to stand down, he's not going to cut in. In the end, this conversation is between the two of them. He's just helping out.
Even helping out, though, he puts his all into it. When Elise swings at him ferociously with her scepter, he takes it head on. There is an awful CRACK, and Dean might well be concussed, but while he staggers to one knee--he still gets up again. "Th-that the worst you got?!" he challenges her, even as blood pours down his face and the world spins.
Perhaps because of that, his next attack is mostly just wild swinging at her in every which direction. With the world momentarily askew--who knows if he'd even still be conscious without Lucia's earlier empowerment--his best solution for 'four Elises' is just hitting ALL the Elises.
GS: Blitz! Dean Stark has attacked Elise Riesdale with Assault Battery! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
Talia glances back at Jacqueline, giving a quick smile at her. But it's brief, especially given what they're dealing with right now. She looks back to Harmaus, and then she scowls. Her jaw sets.
That's not--that's not what will happen!" she snaps at him, her voice more heated.
His anger about Althena -- well, Talia can't quite blame him. She has her own anger at the world the Goddess gave them. She takes a step back, though, as Harmaus screams. His anger, his rejection; all of that, piled together, into an armored form.
A Hellion.
"Harmaus!" she shouts. "What--what have you done!? You know if you take this too far, then... then you cannot come back from this, no!?"
Brilliant light erupts at her, blinding and terrifying, and it leaves her blinking away afterimages. She shakes her head -- and she looks at Lucia, and her eyes blink. A heaven? A feeling? She hesitates, faltering for a second -- but only a second.
After all, they have friends to save. Talia goes sprinting forward, and then she jumps. She launches a rapid series of thrusts with her sword, as she gets in close -- the blade's strikes punctuated with blue white bursts of light. Talia's feet hit the ground.
"Stardust!" she shouts, as pivots on a foot. She swings the blade down in an arc -- and light explodes off the sword, as she cleaves down with a diagonal chop with the short sword.
GS: Talia has activated Force Action: Lock On! GS: Talia has activated Force Action: Full Clip! GS: Talia spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Blitz! Talia has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Stardust! GS: Talia has gained 2 Combo! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: Marivel Armitage accepts Lucia's In The Name Of The Blue Star for 0 hit points! GS: Blitz and Hyper applied to Marivel Armitage! GS: FP up! Lucia's Reload! activated! GS: Marivel Armitage enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
Hiro listens to Magilou's explanation of what she told Harmaus, and there's just the deepest sigh, "That's what I thought... that he just heard what he wanted to hear. Again."
The ebb of malevolence into him has slowed a touch ever since Lucia arrived, but he's definitely still not looking well. An eye twitches, and his body feels like its trying its best not to spasm in its bonds. As he tells Jean, "Can't... wait." He grins
Harmaus however, is far worse for his rejection. And the pity turns to horror as malevolence consumes him and turns him into the imposing pale-grey figure, clad in armor of 'purity'.
"Harmaus! ... You're not closer to anything other than... becoming a Fell Dragon!"
Hiro's never seen a Seraph turn from malevolence, so he's no expert, he only knows what Ragnell has told him.
His gaze turns to Elise in alarm and anger, "Was this your aim all along!? Stop! You can't let this-let this happen!"
Lucia's anger however, stops even him, that fury, and that statement - that anger of what should have been, "... Lucia." He says breathlessly, and it makes so much sense.
What Lunar was supposed to be. What they continually try to destroy.
What was brought here to Filgaia. He doesn't quite understand, the chain of events, the history. Not all of it, not really.
And the fact is he doesn't need to know. He's more focused upon Lucia's feelings, which he's always struggled to understand - even as much as he values trying.
'No one can save everyone,' is a hard truth. And one he's learned over the journey, even as difficult as it's always been to accept.
It becomes an uplifting one, in the message she gives.
"... A feeling." Hiro murmurs, and his mind thinks back fondly to this journey they set out on years ago. All the experiences had, all the lessons learned, all the time spent in the company of friends and loved ones.
And he knows it to be true, despite all the pain and sorrow. That Lucia is right.
"... Let's continue building it, together."
It is a statement that relies on him surviving this day but, for right now, he has full faith that he will. And as Jean speaks to Ruth about being more than she was... Hiro feels a swell of pride at how far Jean has come.
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
It's popping off now alright. Ida and Xantia are bringing out powerful techniques - martial techniques well extending the (somewhat ironic) eagle style kungfu Venetia picked up in secondary school. (What do you think they're gonna do in gym class, play on the grass? There's no grass underground!! You learn martial arts!! In case you get drafted to die for the Master!!)
"Hahaha!" Venetia laughs, in joyous scorn, echoing Azoth's comeback. But not for long.
She can't hear Marivel but somehow she has learned her well enough to guess what is being asked. Althena; another person Marivel knew of eld. And did Harmaus? A good question. The answer may be intriguing; but many have made great actions and done horrible things from a fundamentally mistaken premise.
Elise isn't just taking the gift of giant thrown rocks laying down. A glittering streak of curlycross light falls towards her; Venetia swerves to the side, the glittering Purified Earth field around her tilting. It isn't quite enough, but it means that her upflung arm means that the magic only nicks against her in a shower of coruscant sparkles, likely some disciplined countermagic in option. (Ow, ow, fdsgh, Venetia thinks.)
And whatever or whoever it is that Lucia truly is, she has power - drive - and a willingness to share. It is power that seems to be malevolence, but the words behind it are anything but. Venetia feels her back stiffen, almost involuntarily; though this time, at least, she does not laugh.
Not least because of what Ruth says. A glimpse of the truth.
What a frequent story, Venetia thinks. The wealth that makes Guild Galad the glorious place it is - the wealth, perhaps, that made it possible for her home to exist at all, for *her* to exist at all - did not come simply from the slow sedimentary accumulation of increase over centuries. It was gathered; taken in. Perhaps redoubled, Venetia thinks, but how much blood lubricated the machines? And how much more came from the Fossils?
For some reason it makes the rage fade.
"Perhaps it has," she says, about the Final Act, "but not the way you think. Behold!" Up comes another Crest Graph, held with a flourish. "If you're not going to listen while you can still thrash around and hurl your own sorceries, I'll block you off. Can you do it all off the top of your head?"
"Let's find out!"
A deep intake of breath - can she really do this in succession? Venetia thinks, time to find out: But in this place, SOPPING with the essence of Geo (or as Venetia understands it, by its secret name: Orykto), it is easier. And she is being inspired. You have to build your heaven, after all.
"Selenite Sign!" Shimmer -- an interlocking haystack of selenite crystals erupting from the ground, aiming to box in Elise. And with a rippling backbeat of Ley energy, a second one - slightly wider and squatter - an effort to box her in. And --
Yes! A third! Though this one's scantier, and Venetia wipes sweat from her forehead afterwards. "Heh!" she says to herself.
GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Jean's Razor Step for 186 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Purge! Hex removed! GS: Purge explodes for 78 damage!! GS: Seraph Harmaus's Mute Ward may block the effect! GS: Cripple and Mute applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Jean drains Seraph Harmaus! Jean gains 43 temporary hit points! GS: Venetia Vuong has activated Force Action: Full Clip! GS: Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Talia's Stardust for 220 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus's Drowsy Ward may block the effect! GS: Delay applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Drowsy blocked! GS: Venetia Vuong has activated Force Action: Fury Shot! GS: Blitz! Venetia Vuong has attacked Elise Riesdale with Selenite Sign ~Cavern of the Crystals~! GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 2 Combo! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
Harmaus... shushes her.
"You-" Jacqueline starts, raising her voice. She stops herself, though, exhaling through her teeth as she lets some of the spike of anger burn off. ...It's fine. It just means she's going to enjoy thrashing him a little more than she should.
They fight, and eventually, Lucia refuses Harmaus. This prompts a change - and not a change for the better. Jacqueline gasps and recoils back, putting the pieces together just in time for a change to cover over him.
"No...!" She says, shaking her head in disbelief. And yet, he claims that he has 'done it'. Malevolence washes over him. "Harmaus! Is this really the truth that you sought? Don't you get it? If this keeps up, there won't even be a 'you' anymore!"
It's like Talia says - if he takes it too far, he can't come back from it. Jacqueline grimaces. She's angry at him for dismissing her, certainly, but she never wanted this for him.
Harmaus is still powerful, perhaps even more so, in this form. From his left hand, light erupts outward. Jacqueline still can't move, but she's not defenseless. With a gesture of her own left hand a pillar of earth rises forth, providing her some shade from the Malevolence-tinged light - and giving her some protection even as his power blasts through the stone.
She's caught, now, but the strength of Lucia's words, of Lucia herself, as she urges them all not to despair. Heaven, huh...
Alright.
Jacqueline breathes in. She draws two Crest Graphs, slotting one in her left gauntlet and the other in her right.
"Harmaus... prepare yourself." Jacqueline says. With her left hand, she sends power tearing through the earth, sending debris crashing toward him from beneath his feet, rock and stone sent flying into the sky from the force of it. With her right hand, she brings down lightning from the heavens, crashing down upon him even as the earth seems to consume him - and striking the upheaved stones and sending them crashing back to earth, electrically charged.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has activated Force Action: Full Clip! GS: Jacqueline Barber spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Formation! Blitz! Jacqueline Barber has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Dualcasting Sequence! GS: Jacqueline Barber has gained 1 Combo! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
"She is pretty high maitenance," Belle asides to Hiro.
"Do you want to be saved??" Marivel snaps back.
Harmaus has never known her. And yet he is so angry at her. Marivel keeps her cool face. Even to this day she so rarely sheds tears. It is Belle's presence that holds back the rage, allowing other emotions to slowly bubble to the surface.
"I understand how you feel. Her absence wounds me too. Even after she betrayed me, I ache for her, long for her." Marivel whispers to the cat, but it is nonetheless quite easy to hear. Such is the power of the Crimson Noble. Or perhaps it is Lucia's support for so many, that opening heart, that gives her the strength to stage whisper in spite of her wounds. Her own strength or Lucia's? Perhaps the strength of one is a paradox in of itself. Nobody can truly stand alone.
"But she never told you.... That she'd be there. And that is why we hate each other. Because you desire what I wish I never had. That liiiieeeee..."
And she might have said more, but Harmaus transforms and someone interposes her body between that blast of light, back towards her.
Crying.
For a moment, Marivel feels she sees Anastasia as a monster. She blinks and the illusion is gone. A hellionized Seraph is a dangerous and dire thing.
Marivel hasn't shed a tear but...
Ruth tells her she had cried enough.
She also says she did some real awful stuff but that echo stakes Marivel in the heart enough that she actually listens to Lucia for once.
Lucia came to Filgaia. She came to Filgaia. That means...
Marivel lowers her head. It is not what she wanted to hear. She wanted an apology. She wanted HER.
Because she too would want it to hurt. She would want it to never stop hurting.
But even so... It still hurts. So much.
"This is it, Belle..?" She murmurs. Belle confirms nothing. She just stares while asiding to Hiro. "She needed to be here."
Marivel still sheds no tears. Instead she looks right at Ruth once more.
She straightens up, walks around so she can see her face.
"You are the one that's crying." She murmurs.
And she stands up on her tippie toes, her mouth briefly nearing Death Door's own--
Only to shift at the last moment, Marivel pressing her lips against Ruth's cheeks, Ruth's tears spilling into her mouth as she
*chu*
Ruth will feel the agony of Malevolence fade for a little while, an absence lingering for a bit as Marivel presses her lips there. It is a supernatural act as much as it is a warm one.
Marivel turns her head to look at Elise.
"You best show her the care she deserves," Marivel says to her. "Or I'll steal your knight away from your world. There is plenty of room for her in mine!"
You can only make so many Utena references around Marivel. She laughs maniacally, her old vigor returning to her. The laugh grows into a crescendo as the Dark surges out of Marivel and swirls around Ruth, lifting Marivel up into the sky towards Belle and the others, taking one keen swipe at the vines holding Belle.
"Your time is running out! Choose wisely!"
GS: Blitz! Marivel Armitage has attacked Ruth Pauling with Skill Drain! GS: Marivel Armitage has gained 1 Combo! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Ruth Pauling accepts Marivel Armitage's Skill Drain for 188 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
Regarding what's going on with Xantia right now, Azoth is completely correct. It's not the same as what happened back when they last fought. This is pure anger. Even though she has zero actual evidence of K.K.'s involvement, and her words were solely based on instinct and pattern recognition... it's all she needed to be completely convinced. Another blight on Filgaia, another attack on people's peaceful lives. ...She was made to suffer the feeling of being completely alone in the world again. And she can't even punch the one she ultimately holds responsible for all of this.
This is... a tantrum, pure and simple. Of one who has so much power, yet feels she can't use it for anything that truly matters.
Turns out, when your motivation is fully to vent frustration, you're easily tripped up. Try as she might, she can't land a single hit on Elise, composure easily winning out over lack of such. "What are you talking about?! I'm not--"
A red miasma surrounds her in that instant, phasing through her shield of light. She falls to one knee, feeling her consciousness fade. In the end, it's just as she thought. She couldn't do anything. Useless, after all.
She is only vaguely aware of the events that follow, seeing them with bleary vision, hearing them in muted tones. Harmaus undergoes a horrible transformation, yet is gleeful about it. Ruth relates painful experiences, yet remains defiant all the same. And... Lucia's indignance. That voice. Commanding 'look at yourself'. Those particular words were not meant for her, perhaps, but it feels as if they were.
She suddenly becomes acutely aware of her surroundings, steeped in Malevolence as they are. This is the danger, isn't it? It's what she was warned about - this is what it does. Preying on one's emotional weakness. Seeping through the cracks, trying to find purchase in one's insecurities. Is that to be her fate, too...?
"...NO!!!"
Xantia's dimming aura flares up brightly, its light shining stronger than before. Just like that, all her drowsiness has faded away. Though in a rare sight, she's visibly sweating, breathing heavily as she straightens up, recomposing herself. 'Do not despair', Lucia words echo in her mind. Was she really that close to despair just now? How could she let that happen? She balls her fists, tightly. Whatever she may or may not be able to accomplish with these two hands... there's certainly something she can do right now, isn't there. She looks to Elise with renewed resolve.
"...I feel like I understand you a little better now. Now it's time for you to understand me a bit better. I don't care to be a 'mighty heroine', or play a part in whatever fairy tale you think this is. All I care about is--"
Suddenly, she vanishes. Not really, she just moves so fast that it may look like she did for a second, reappearing at Elise's left flank, to attempt and land a single strike with the flat of her palm. A deceptively simple move, with energy-sapping qualities of a different variety than Elise's own, wreaking havoc on one's internal energy flow. Calmly, she finishes her statement.
"...Stop making people suffer. Just... stop. None of this will make your situation any better, and I think you know that."
GS: Blitz! Xantia has attacked Elise Riesdale with Essence-Rending Palm Strike! GS: Xantia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
A story takes shape, in Magilou's mind, as she hears Ruth's declarations across the way. A sad story...
"If you're going to be a witch to block her way," Magilou asides, to Elise, "there's no way someone like me can't get involved." She smiles, and adds, with her wyrd mystery: "I am, after all... the Millennium Witch." That Magilou doesn't do her full introduction here may be a dire portent.
Attention back to Harmaus, though -- "I never claimed to be on your side," Magilou shrugs, broadly, palms to the sky. "Why, I don't remember claiming to be on anyone's side, point of fact!" She's almost aggressively flippant; certainly she has no strong feelings about this situation, but if Magilou were to have feelings, they might even be hurt.
It's a good thing she doesn't!
"You know, you might look good in a choker," Magilou asides, to Talia, with a sly grin, as Harmaus continues insisting she's a Seraph's pet. She wears enough of them herself to know!
"Hmph... the cheek!" She exclaims, to Jean, with a sharp grin. "I'm not about to cede the stage to you upstarts!"
But Harmaus never knew Althena, and the ones she left behind didn't take care of him near close enough. Blame Magilou if you like; she won't lift a finger to stop you. She's never been the mothering type, no matter her dynasty.
(If only Eleanor weren't as mortal as she was. Hume, not Klein; she has rather the opposite problem. But then... the blessing of mortality's got them into quite a few problems, hasn't it? Oh, well...)
Speaking of death.
"So," Magilou murmurs, toneless, as she watches all the hope fall out from under Harmaus, "it wouldn't change anything... huh."
Dragons and the Lord of Calamity have met before. She knows the old stories; she was there to write them. But who remembers those historical accounts, left to mildew and rot and burned for the truth of their words?
She could say something.
She should say something.
But her voice wouldn't carry, and it wouldn't mean anything, anyway.
"He knows," she says, to Talia and Hiro, with none of the humour she carried in her last aside. "About the consequences, in any case."
Her shikigami extends, a tower shield to defend her, even as she watches Harmaus and his sick purity with dull and lightless eyes. "There you go," she assures him, and her voice, too is dull.
"You got there in the end... buddy."
She did try to tell him -- that Lucia wasn't the type of Lord of Calamity he was looking for.
Now he's finally listening, and she finds she feels nothing at all, hollow and cold against her heart.
She thinks again of mortality as she watches Lucia, in all her fury, as she lambasts what they've turned Lunar to; and she does not protest it. She's a historian, after all: for all her hand can be felt in some key parts of history, she has ever observed, ever chronicled. Perhaps she -- perhaps they -- were just absolving their responsibility.
But the kid fell silent, and the Reaper fell to his curse, and Eleanor fell to mortality, and the Lord of Calamity fell to her heart, and what was left, for Lunar? A bloodthirsty hellion, an evil sorcerer, and a wicked sorceress... they were never the sorts to save the world.
How wretched the world must be to beseech them.
She watches as Lucia catches herself; as her Malevolence roils. She knows it must hurt, distantly. She supposes she should feel sympathy. Most people would.
"You're right," she affirms, to Lucia. "Where Harmaus goes, he brought himself." Heaven is a feeling...
It's good, at least, that Lucia can hold onto a declaration like that.
But Magilou isn't -- can't -- operate in the realm of emotions, right now.
She broke a long time ago. It's okay.
Perhaps it suits her, though, hearing Ruth's own Malevolent pain. Siddim Canyon -- the place they rescued Yvain from. (She casts a glance to Dean and Ida, but she will not ask; Harmaus would never let them. A pointless thought. A pointless endeavour.) The Malevolence there... ah, yes, she thinks, gaze veiled.
"If you get out of this alive," she remarks to Ruth, frankly, "remind me to introduce you to a friend of mine." She leaves the pep talks to young pups like Jean; she's old, and her bones are tired.
She turns to Harmaus, and all his burgeoning Malevolence, and there is only one thing the broken weapon forged against it can say:
"Spell Absorber."
A flash of white and lilac, like butterflies, and she will take that power into herself, and she will bring it to nothing.
GS: Blitz! Magilou has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Spell Absorber! GS: Magilou enters a Counter stance! GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo! GS: Magilou gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Magilou has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
A fight is the only way they're getting through this haunted fairytale, and Elise cements it with her storm of gold and petals. His eyes flash red as its influence interfers with his circuits, core spitting out errors with every brush against his chassis. One eye shuts, the other sputtering with light until Lan lands beside him, her shimmering hand quieting the red back to blue.
"Lan?!" Azoth stares at her in wide eyed shock -- emotions, a thing he's willing to wear again. Thank Xantia. But, well, there's someone else to thank for his panic, and the fact that though she fixed some of that sparking and some of his errors...
Azoth's eyes go bright red again. "We'll save them -- the one calling for you. And Gwen, too. I -- Sorry!" He yanks away from her now that he has the strength to, because he has to. Because the overrides demand he do. His eyes aren't blue again until he's gotten some distance on the battlefield.
...Just stay away from her. Got it? This was an abuse of power, Loren! He hasn't even apologized for putting a hole through her chest yet...!
Ruth's words aren't reaching Elise, who sees no contradition in supporting Harmaus' tragically impossible ends. Nor does she balk as Harmaus falls, and then... changes. It's dangerous for a Seraph to be around this much Malevolence. Dangerous to be in the company of Hellions. Azoth has seen purification, but he's never watched hellionization.
But in the face of Malevolence, this Lucia, this so called Lord of Calamity, calls with fury. Fury, compassion, and hope. There's more to this story than he knows, but he's seeing it write itself now. And there's Ruth's story, much of it written, penned out in so much blood. Despair. Guilt. Atonement. He wondered once what Ruth saw when she had to close her eyes.
"This is someone who cares about you!" Azoth calls to Elise. "Won't you listen to that, at least? Fairytales are supposed to have happy endings."
Azoth aims with his finger. Light gathers, and Azoth focuses, then fires off in a heavy recoil in a beam of light intended to puncture into her staff, hoping the blow might cripple further attacks -- and blessings for the new hellion on he field.
GS: Azoth has activated Force Action: Lock On! GS: Blitz! Azoth has attacked Elise Riesdale with Signed Zero! GS: Azoth has completed his action. GS: Elise Riesdale suffers a terrible blow from Venetia Vuong's Selenite Sign ~Cavern of the Crystals~ for 107 hit points! GS: Cripple and Entangle applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated! GS: Elise Riesdale takes a solid hit from Dean Stark's Assault Battery for 190 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Thorned vines wrap around Ida's leg and forearm, jerking her violently to the side. A horrid scraping noise issues forth as she loses her balance and her grip on Elise. A trail of blood smears across the stone as the vines drag her towards the waiting wall of roses--
Ida's right gauntlet grows a bladed edge. She sweeps it through the vines holding her, ripping through them. The blade flows back into her armor just as swiftly as it appeared, and she plants her hands and shoves up onto her feet. Despite the pain, and the lingering stench of the Domain--a stench which has neither faded nor weakened--she smiles back at Dean. "Together!" But the moment she shouts, Harmaus cries out in denial--disbelief?--and Ida's heart seizes up.
"Shit," Ida hisses, turning to witness Harmaus' terrible transformation. There is no denying what just happened. "He hit his limit. HE HIT HIS LIMIT!" She and Dean could purify him, but Harmaus has to want to be healed. And would he want to be healed, when he thinks Malevolence is the source of some deep enlightenment? Will Magilou never stop being a font of useful terms? It's a good descriptor, even if what it's describing is awful. And then, Ruth--
Ruth pours out the viscous, curdled muck inside her soul. Ida knew most of it, but not Heath. Not that a Riesdale owned the land Siddim once stood on. Not that the Rose Queen was a Riesdale. When Ida looks back at Elise, she sees through her, and pictures a woman who was once much like her. A child of nobility, whose family line took a vastly different path. A woman who suffered through the War firsthand.
"A Riesdale," Ida says. "You lost your home--your world, your kingdom. And you made this." Her heart aches, even as her mind ventures down paths close to the ones Venetia's is walking. Ida doesn't know how many people have been ground up in the gears of the war machine, but she can make estimates. Her family are deeply embedded in it.
Lucia...
Flame ignites in Ida's hand, and she presses it close to her chest, heatless and bright. It flows in and out, tracing the blood vessels leading from her heart to her right hand. "And it will never be enough, because Lucia is right. Heaven is here." She taps her chest.
And in the next heartbeat, she lunges for Elise, purifying fire dancing from her fingertips. It's nowhere near enough to Purify her, even if Ida could so by force, but it will disrupt the flow of Elise's Malevolence. Ida knows how.
Meanwhile...
Someone launches themselves from below, arcing up over the platform and landing atop the gazebo. They sag, visibly, and dig their spear into the structure to keep their balance as they gasp for breath.
"Damn this flesh," Cole Cullen wheezes, between breaths that don't fill their lungs. Their silken shirt hangs ragged from their torso, and their bare chest is bleeding from countless thorn-pricks. "GWEN! GWEN, HOLD FAST! Don't let this corruption take you!"
And then they glance down at Ida and Dean, as if narrowing down the source of the power they felt earlier. Those are definitely Moor Gault's Chosen, in some capacity, and the thought of aiding them twists their guts.
But there's something about what Luisa's descendant just did there--something antithetical to the power holding their sib, corrupting them.
For the first time in a very long while, Setanta feels like their power is insufficient, even accounting for its synthesized flesh-body. They don't like it.
GS: Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Jacqueline Barber's Dualcasting Sequence for 277 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Magilou's Spell Absorber for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus's Mute Ward may block the effect! GS: Mute blocked! GS: Blitz! Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Elise Riesdale with Searing Ember Strike! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 5 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action. GS: Elise Riesdale takes a glancing hit from Xantia's Essence-Rending Palm Strike for 90 hit points! GS: Dispel! Mighty removed! GS: Cripple applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Elise Riesdale solidly guards Azoth's Signed Zero for 132 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated! GS: Strain! Azoth takes 79 damage! GS: Elise Riesdale takes a glancing hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Searing Ember Strike for 63 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple and Disease applied to Elise Riesdale!
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
Magilou's last remark, in those moments before the hope drops out from under him and the change takes over, receives but a snarl from Harmaus.
He always was the grateful sort.
Indeed, Dean lasted far longer than Harmaus did, though the Hellionized Seraph is no longer in any state to truly reply to that in any coherent way.
In the end, Elise does not retreat from him, whatever he might become.
"My... my lady," Harmaus speaks, and there is joy in its voice when it says again, "Look! Look at me!!"
'Look at this place! Look at this mess! Look at yourself!'
Slowly, Harmaus turns towards her, his plated head creaking as it looks her up and down. "Sees I only fraud and fakery! I, now... I has ascended! Look at me!!!" it exhorts, even in the face of such fury from Lucia. It is as if, in this moment, it can care of little else. It bares its sword for her, even as she plummets backwards under the effect of its spell, and...
Rises.
For just a moment, this transfigured Harmaus falters. "What... is it? Not Lord of Calamity. Not mortal! What is it!?"
And there is magic happening, even in a world well-suffused by it.
But even now Ruth calls out to Elise, begs for her to stop and Harmaus can only turn and roar, "My lady, listens not to lies! This place... this power...! I can loses it not!" For if this garden should die and go pale and dead, will he not...?
"Ah?" It turns, then, towards Jacqueline as she insists that this latest turn is hardly the good he is thinking it might be -- that it's not the truth he sought and instead something far more insidious and deadly. "Thinks it knows more than I? Thinks it knows better of what becomes of I? I welcomes this change! I have power! I feels it, flowing through me!"
Prepare yourself, she says, and though it braces and holds its stance there before her, still it is forced back by the torrent of stone, by the tumult of lightning.
Yet still, it stands.
There is nothing now that Magilou can say to reach Harmaus. But she already knew that. She already knew this was what he'd wanted, on some level, for some time now. Some might bring hell down from Lunar, but Harmaus -- indeed -- only brought himself. In the end, Magilou's response to him is a simple one.
But even her mighty magics seem ill-suited to sway the powers that course through the defiant Harmaus even now. Its gaze lingers on her for a long moment even so, its armored facade in this moment unreadable.
And it its focus, and sees for the first time that the garden is well and truly burning.
"No... no!"
It slams the sword into the flooring with a hideous crack: with a roar, a rushing tide of blue light comes up from below. It is not water: water does not hiss and singe the way that this does, but neither is it at all similar the rolling flame of burning gases. It is simply the essence of this particular wavelength, condensed into a unilateral wave, that comes for Magilou and Jacqueline and spills down into the burning garden besides. But can a color alone do anything for a wildfire?
"Who burns my garden? Who?? Do not LIE at me!!" It raises the blade and here the sword shimmers with a purity that Harmaus cannot possess in his current form. The light catches and refracts and in this moment there is a shining circular rainbow caught in the air, before it scatters in an eruption of prismatic light in Lan and Marivel's direction.
Indeed, if this proceeds from this point, there is no coming back. Harmaus, well-focused on the flames, almost does not heed Talia at all until she comes out swinging for it. Her blade cuts deep, cleaving through even the armor that the Hellion wears -- for it is not armor but its body altogether. Its wound bleeds white, tinged with the red-purple of the corruption in its veins. Harmaus hisses, and turns as if attempting to cut her in two with its blade, but for the interruption of Jean.
As the blade had cut, so too do the fans, slicing into an upper arm and thigh. It's delusion! "Lies and more lies yet! It is deluded! It follows false one! And I... will tolerates it no more! None! None!" It cuts not once but twice, swinging that blade for Jean and Talia in sequence. The trail of yellow that follows each blow lingers, as if it were seeking to congeal and stick to each of their wounds.
In spite of such exertions, Harmaus takes but a moment to pause and raise the sword before them as if in brief meditation of its luminous surface. Light flickers fleetingly upon the blade, shimming briefly in blacks, reds, and whites.
He's not closer to anything other than becoming a Fell Dragon, Hiro exhorts.
"And? And??" Harmaus retorts. "It matters me not! I tears down Althena, and topples her throne! I have gained such power!!" His gaze shifts from Hiro to Lucia, so close at hand to him.
"Lucia... Lucia... I will not lets it leave alive!" rings out Harmaus' distorted voice from beneath the helmet. Red light -- bruisy light -- swells around Lucia as the Hellion gestures with its mailed left hand. Squeezing its fingers to palm, so too does the red-violet light squeeze in about Lucia.
"Or any else!"
It swings its sword wide, and in this moment, it is not alone. Stepping out of Harmaus' shadow are a dozen or more copies of itself, golden images of Harmaus bearing golden swords. They seek to target everyone they can reach.
Everyone.
What their insubstantial blades cut, they leave behind only destruction on the metaphysical level: rending defenses and capabilties alike.
But there, atop the gazebo, is someone whose presence Harmaus can feel. Someone -- something warm and burning. With a snarl, Harmaus launches itself towards the ceiling of the gazebo as if to tear their way through it. Whoever it is, it will tear them asunder.
GS: Seraph Harmaus spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Magilou with Cyanosis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Cyanosis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 2 Combo! GS: Delay expired! GS: Seraph Harmaus spends 1 Combo on Interrupt! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Marivel Armitage with Cauda Pavonis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Lan Lilac with Cauda Pavonis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus spends 1 Combo on Interrupt! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Talia with Xanthosis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Jean with Xanthosis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 2 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Lucia with Iosis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus has launched an attack Link! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Magilou with Chrysosis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Jacqueline Barber with Chrysosis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Marivel Armitage with Chrysosis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Lan Lilac with Chrysosis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Talia with Chrysosis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Lucia with Chrysosis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Azoth with Chrysosis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Ruth Pauling with Chrysosis! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Chrysosis! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 2 Combo! GS: Blitz! Seraph Harmaus has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Khumeia! GS: Seraph Harmaus has gained 1 Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Harmaus accepts Seraph Harmaus's Khumeia for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Cripple, Disease, Disrupt, and Mute removed! GS: Lock state applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Mighty applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Seraph Harmaus takes 31 damage from Poison! GS: Seraph Harmaus has completed his action. GS: Ruth Pauling has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: Ruth Pauling suffers a terrible blow from Seraph Harmaus's Chrysosis for 0 hit points! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Ruth Pauling enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Lucia takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Iosis for 0 hit points! GS: Dispel! Hyper and Shield removed! GS: Entangle applied to Lucia! GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Charge bonus, and Sufferer activated! GS: CRITICAL! Lucia partially guards Seraph Harmaus's Chrysosis for 0 hit points! GS: Lucia's Mute Ward may block the effect! GS: Lucia's Weaken Ward may block the effect! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Lucia! GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Charge bonus, and Sufferer activated! GS: Lucia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Jacqueline Barber has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: Jacqueline Barber partially guards Seraph Harmaus's Cyanosis for 56 hit points! GS: Delay, Disease, and Poison applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Guard bonus, and Gleam activated! GS: Jacqueline Barber solidly guards Seraph Harmaus's Chrysosis for 0 hit points! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Jacqueline Barber! GS: FP up! Arcane Font, Guard bonus, and Gleam activated! GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Lan Lilac takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Cauda Pavonis for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Lan Lilac gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Disrupt and Interrupt applied to Lan Lilac! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Lan Lilac has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: CRITICAL! Lan Lilac takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Chrysosis for 0 hit points! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Lan Lilac! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Lan Lilac used Force Action: Mystic on herself! GS: Interrupt removed! GS: Lan Lilac used Force Action: Mystic on herself! GS: Break removed! GS: Azoth takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Chrysosis for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Azoth gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Azoth! GS: FP up! Gleam activated! GS: Azoth enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Talia takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Xanthosis for 0 hit points! GS: Interrupt and Reaper applied to Talia! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Talia has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: Jean suffers a terrible blow from Seraph Harmaus's Xanthosis for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Jean gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Interrupt and Reaper applied to Jean! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Jean enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Jean has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: CRITICAL! Talia takes a glancing hit from Seraph Harmaus's Chrysosis for 0 hit points! GS: Talia's Slow Ward may block the effect! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Talia! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Chrysosis for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's Cripple Ward may block the effect! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: Marivel Armitage takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Cauda Pavonis for 0 hit points! GS: Disrupt and Interrupt applied to Marivel Armitage! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated! GS: Marivel Armitage has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt!
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
Heaven is something only you can make, with your own hands. Elise knows this well.
That was her genesis, and why the mountain bloomed that night, after tragedy had struck.
"Ruth..." Elise says Ruth's name directly, a saline, very human tear dripping down her cheek. It joins its other, "... Please, go back to our garden. You have proven yourself over and over. Please. I don't want to hear anything else of this."
Hiro asks her if this was her plan all along.
"My plan is to allow Harmaus to achieve his dreams," she says, softly. "But the truest form that someone can take to attain their dreams... is as a Hellion. No human can be a Seraph, or wield magic. Not without the tools afforded to those of fortune, or birth. Your planet, in the sky... magic apparently happens there, but." She laughs, hollowly. "Even your Seraphs are suffering. Filgaia suffers. Humans suffer. But in my gardens... no one does. Because everyone is under my protection. I do not care what form they take. It is all beautiful to me. Their scars, their cries, their laughter. Their tears, their sweat... the roses will take all."
Marivel 's *chu* tears Elise's cone of vision back to Ruth. "...! Stand away from her!" A violent flick of her sceptre and a large black wolf comes bearing down for Marivel, hopping up in the sky if it needs to before its line of energy fades.
Won't she listen? Fairy tales should have happy endings. Azoth's fingerbeam manages to puncture Elise's sceptre. "... Happy endings do not come until the mountain has been climbed, the day been won! There is no sense in an ending that is not earned!"
Venetia, wielding the magic of Filgaia, comes next, building her own garden, her own heaven even, from scratch. Or glittering selenite, in this case. Elise cannot do it all off the top of her head, but, it seems, Venetia can, as her attack boxes Elise in.
This leaves Elise vulnerable towards a more sympathetic Xantia, who channels that sympathy into a strike that rings true like a bell. ".... GH!"
Dean's attack is next, as his epic battle with _Four Elises_ (Elisi??) nets him a lucky smack, throwing Elise clean out of the selenite cell, through the back.
This new form of Harmaus cries, calls out, for Elise to still be at his side. For her not to turn away from him.
"... Alas... I may be nearing my limit, little Seraph... but do not lament, for it is not because I went against my word to you..."
A thickening vine comes to the height of Elise's raised palm, giving her a way to raise herself up as her vines do the rest, rising Elise to her small height.
Elise does not call out for her knight. This is not her knight's place.
She only needed Ruth to be swaddled by her garden. The rest--
Vines erupt from all directions around her, with a rainbow of blossoms cast into the air. A hybrid of golds for Ida, an impossible blush of blue for Azoth, righteous red for Xantia, a sunny orange for Dean, a deep violet for Venetia. Each with their own thorns, coming to encase and squeeze all sense of sight and movement from all targeted.
ELSWHERE:
There are people calling for her. She's too tired. Why can't they let her sleep? She should tell Hiro to tell them. It's hard, tied up in this bedsheets, they're so rough, for some reason. What a cheap inn. Everything hurts, for some reason.
Gwen blearily opens her eyes, neck craning towards Cole. She gives him a lopsided smile, like she had just woken from a fever. ".... Ah.... another spar...? Hehe.... sorry... must've forgotten... Y'were lookin' forward t'it, too..." She nudges her head Hiro's way, then coughs, wincing. "... maybe Hiro can spar you... he's really good... kept me goin'... You'd like Ruby, I bet, too..."
GS: CRITICAL! Marivel Armitage partially guards Seraph Harmaus's Chrysosis for 0 hit points! GS: Marivel Armitage's Mute Ward may block the effect! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Marivel Armitage! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Marivel Armitage with Rotkappchen! GS: Marivel Armitage takes a glancing hit from Elise Riesdale's Rotkappchen for 63 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Marivel Armitage gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Elise Riesdale has activated Force Action: Extend! GS: Elise Riesdale has activated Force Action: Snipe! GS: Elise Riesdale has activated Force Action: Full Clip! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Dean Stark with Rapunzel! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Xantia with Rapunzel! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Venetia Vuong with Rapunzel! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Rapunzel! GS: Elise Riesdale has attacked Azoth with Rapunzel! GS: COUNTER! Magilou counterattacks Seraph Harmaus with Counter Attack! GS: CRITICAL! Magilou suffers a terrible blow from Seraph Harmaus's Cyanosis for 148 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Magilou gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Delay, Disease, and Poison applied to Magilou! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated! GS: CRITICAL! Magilou takes a solid hit from Seraph Harmaus's Chrysosis for 0 hit points! GS: Magilou's Mute Ward may block the effect! GS: Break, Cripple, Jam, Mute, Slow, and Weaken applied to Magilou! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Gleam activated! GS: Ruth Pauling used Defend! She takes Elise Riesdale's Rapunzel attack on Xantia on herself! GS: CRITICAL! Ruth Pauling solidly guards Elise Riesdale's Rapunzel for 92 hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling's Blind Ward may block the effect! GS: Cripple applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: Blind blocked! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling used Defend! She takes Elise Riesdale's Rapunzel attack on Azoth on herself! GS: Ruth Pauling solidly guards Elise Riesdale's Rapunzel for 76 hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling's Blind Ward may block the effect! GS: Cripple applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: Blind blocked! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: CRITICAL! Ida Everstead-Rey partially evades Elise Riesdale's Rapunzel for 135 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ida Everstead-Rey gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's Cripple Ward may block the effect! GS: Blind and Cripple applied to Ida Everstead-Rey! GS: FP up! Power Burst activated! GS: Venetia Vuong takes a glancing hit from Elise Riesdale's Rapunzel for 77 hit points! GS: Blind and Cripple applied to Venetia Vuong!
<Pose Tracker> Lucia has posed.
Lucia's allies -- her friends -- rise to the occasion more than she thought possible. Their hope gives her hope, a perpetual emotion machine. But she doesn't only feel hope from them, either. And she isn't fully equipped to handle -- or even understand -- some of their reactions. The discomfort. The quiet griefs. For all that Lucia's world is wildly, brilliantly more complex than it once was...
...she still very much exists in black and white.
What she is will remain a mystery to Harmaus; how can she be so powerful and so powerless all at the same time? She caught herself from the fall, but the Hellion catches her with ease, catches and grasps her with that terrible dark energy. She is helpless to evade the golden, metaphysical sword; it bisects her; were it a real weapon, her precious mission would have ended then and there.
She falls, afterwards. And this time she does hit the ground, limp.
Her eyelids flutter.
She looks... up.
And again she sees Hiro.
Harmaus has abandoned the fight for the moment, its back is to her.
There are useful things she could do. Other powers to invoke. Tactical efforts. With a simple litany, again both like and unlike Althenic arts, she could do much to ease both her own invisible wounds and those of the others. All the others. For all that the Malevolence has her in its grip, for all that she's exhausted, for all that from her perspective everything close by her is so dark that she can barely see her outstretched hand -- she has been abnormally capable today, by the standards of that curse, and she is capable of yet more.
But she doesn't do the smart thing.
I mean, come on.
Lucia is Lucia.
Once upon a time, that meant Lucia would run away.
Now it means that she staggers forward, limping up into the air, until she reaches Hiro. She has no way to cut him down; no sword of her own, not even a knife. There are just thorns, and Malevolence, and her bare hands. She cries out, but only his name; once when she reaches him, and again as the thorns both exit him, and enter her.
And then at last he is free; wounded, terribly, as is she, now, the briar-wounds joining her metaphysical ones. She lowers them both back down to earth and lays him gently to rest in a clear-ish patch of garden. Her hair falls around him like a hospital curtain. Like a waterfall cave.
She looks up at the still-raging battle, and steels herself to rise for still a third time.
GS: Lucia has attacked Hiro with Yes: Lucia Has An Area Widespread Restore But She's Cutscene Saving Hiro Instead Because She's Occasionally And Irritatingly Useless! GS: Lucia has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lucia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Lucia has completed her action. GS: Lucia heals Hiro! He gains 109 temporary hit points! GS: Shield applied to Lucia!
<Pose Tracker> Talia has posed.
"He's mad, then," Talia answers Magilou, her eyes widening a little more. If he knows, then he knows the risk that it would carry -- that he would stop being him. The very same thing that nearly happened to Amaranth, in the past.
She gives a worried glance at Jay. How long do they have? If Ida can't purify him, then--
To make matters worse, he seems incensed at his garden burning. She cuts through armor, but that doesn't stop Harmaus. She gasps, at the sight of the white blood, and then turns as the blade chops twice. Talia can't quite get out of the sword's way in time. She hisses, as that trail of yellow energy seeps into her wounds.
She stumbles, the pain of it overwhelming. She looks at Lucia -- sees her going for Hiro -- and then looks for Harmaus.
And she is, at the end of the day, a woman raised to be an assassin. So she leaps for him, at his back, and her short sword whips out. Weakened as she is, it's a stumbling leap, but she goes into a tight spinning slash. At the end of it, she does a quick thrust -- punctuated by a blast of force from her blade.
GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Blitz! Talia has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Light Spear Cannon! GS: Talia has gained 2 Combo! GS: Interrupt expired! GS: Talia enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Talia takes 56 damage from Reaper! GS: Blind and Lock state expired! GS: Talia has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Dean Stark takes a solid hit from Elise Riesdale's Rapunzel for 178 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Dean Stark gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Blind and Cripple applied to Dean Stark!
<Pose Tracker> Hiro has posed.
"You're... crazy!" Hiro rasps in alarm as Harmaus says it doesn't matter to him, "You think you'll have any kind of control...once-once that happens!?"
Maybe Harmaus is, and Lucia's words from earlier sink in further. Harmaus perhaps just cannot be saved.
Then Elise tells him exactly what her aims are, and Hiro just stares at her, "Noone suffers!?" As Hiro says, angrily, as his arms try to rip against the thorns, "Noone!? Just-Just...look around you! There's suffering every-everywhere in this garden! You did this! Your beauty is a de-delusion."
As much as he fights it, its getting to him too, his struggles are growing more pathetic, and the fight against it, even as he gives Gwen a pathetic sidelong look... "What're... you...?" Hiro tries to look up, then back at Gwen wondering if the malevolence is finally overwhelming her... "Hey Gwen... hang-hang in there."
The red light causes him to look away, as Lucia falls, and then... Lucia limps up into the air towards him. And reaching with her bare hands...
"Wait- what're you..." His eyes grow wide and his tone can't even gain the volume to actually yell at her, "Lucia... wait! I've got a..."
Her hands seize the thorns, and rip, and tear... "... in my... boot."
It's horrid, seeing her hurt herself to save him, there are so many other ways that would not hurt her. However at the same time it's also beautiful - just seeing her resolve, he can't look away. "Lu...cia...!"
And then he's free, as she lowers him back down, he sinks to the ground, her blue hair all around him.
He's got countless puncture wounds in his limbs, all of them seeping malevolence mingled with blood.
And yet, he still fields a smile, as he tells her, "My... hero." It's not a joke, it's said with a sort of boyish sincerity, but never quite gets it too far off the ground, like gravity is acting too hard against it, "... For as long as you... you need me... I'm... I'm yours..."
He'd been resisting for so long, but after he says that, he falls limp, and... goes blessedly insensate. He'll live, and he'll probably not hellionize, but it'll be rough going for a while.
GS: CRITICAL! Seraph Harmaus takes a solid hit from Magilou's Counter Attack for 242 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP! GS: CRITICAL! Gamble: Moderate! Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Talia's Light Spear Cannon for 231 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Interrupt applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Delay blocked!
<Pose Tracker> Venetia Vuong has posed.
Heaven, it seems, is a feeling - something that you create. A reward for goodness, but not the way you think.
He hit his limit, Venetia thinks. That should be good, right? If he can't go any higher and they're not there themselves, that means they can win and throw him into the rightful habitat of a cat (the garbage can).
But he's not quite that any more, is he? He's changing. He's becoming something... else. Something Venetia does not recognize. But he roars, he demands. He is the same being. The same voice.
Or at least, the same words. Blue light erupting. Horrible! But Harmaus isn't Venetia's enemy - right now. She is in a dreadful competition. Mocking words aside, this is a sorceror's battle if anything is. Half the trick of these things is not being killed.
Elise makes her move. Sharp. She's near her own limit - the same kind of limit? - but whatever it is, it doesn't matter because of those vines. A horrid floral overgrowth begins, decades of growth expanding outwards like a visible wave, the air itself growing somehow paradoxically fresher as the scent of flowers rises and the thorns come towards her. Venetia steps back. With the Cavern of the Crystals' invocation in her hand, she --
-- buys exactly two seconds, and the benefit of being encased with a bunch of salt. Her mouth dries out by sympathetic osmosis almost immediately.
But -- her right arm is free -- and there is a narrow spread through the meter or so of thick vines around her...
Venetia takes long seconds to lean, press, and wriggle. It is strange that such a simple operation as wiggling something out of your bag might be so critical. That the long seconds it takes might be the difference between life, death, victory, defeat. Venetia hurries as much as she can.
She tries to talk through it, of course.
"How tragic... and how foolish of you. A half-dozen hands are being held out to you and you push them all away... is it because you've cast yourself in the role of the wicked fairy of a fairy tale?" (Come on, come on, she thinks. Reach in... yes, it has a loop... yes, thank you Dinoginos and Mahabrahma.)
"I suppose it's monotonous of me. All of this... to push against the idea of a story. Stories are like the blanket of life, aren't they? Keeping in the heat, keeping out the cold meaninglessness..." (OK, now to pull it out without dropping it. If I drop this, I'm dead, and so are at least half of the people here.)
"But if you're going to cast everyone in a story... why not try something different? I like the cheap stories they have now. Have you ever read them? Just a gella and you get a half-dozen - serials, but they collect them now and then..." (Arm goes up, curl in, YES I'm around the curve, you are not my master, Gravity, I am *yours*, just you wait and *see*)
"It's lurid lies and gruesome trash, of course. Soaked with blood... and half of them read like your great-aunt who hates the Thirty-Fives for having their eyes too far apart! But they've got an energy to them. Everything's bright, and bold. The ARMS say BANG, the inventions are ingenious, and you always want to keep turning the page!" (And with this, Venetia gets her arm in the right position. This firing window sucks, she thinks, shifting to the side... no... I can see her but I won't be able to...)
(Hm. And with that 'hm' of thought, she tilts her arm down.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzkXyqVPpMA
"They say it's the cheapest form of art. Barely art at all. Anyone who writes them is just marking time until they do the true works, the things of beauty that will always be remembered. But here's the thing, my fairy queen - you always want to come back next week!" With this, something glows inside of Venetia's enclosure. An engulfing glow. There's a flicker in there, a steady flow of Ley. The man up there - who Venetia felt - may be helping a little simply by *pouring* out the breath of Frey.
"Next week isn't a threat if you look at it the right way, madame." Glow, glow, thrum, thrum: Gather, cancel, gather again before it can dissipate fully. The flower petals around Venetia's vinely tomb flutter; a few blow off from the back blast.
Her tone changes. "It's a promise! Hear me, O Guardians!"
"Lithos and Kaminos attend me! In the name of the stones of every star, I pray thee guidance. Mahabrahma, open the gates to victory, and liberate the myriad worlds from their sinful ways! World's Hope S" and if she said anything else it's cut off as the flowers and vines in front of her *disappear* in the frame of a movie picture, the incinerating light flying outwards--
Not TOWARDS Elise, but PAST her - narrowly, behind and a little to the left, and set down low. Down along the ground. It carves through the ancient overgrowth like butter, a hot streak of light roaring outwards with a strange howl; burning with the brightness of a gas torch made impossibly long, *sustaining* itself as it roars, the wind itself roaring outwards, blasting loose stray petals. There is *so much* material that the backblast is limited, but vines and flowers begin to curl upwards, to disintegrate, drawn along in the localized thrust vector, the inevitable windstorm that follows.
Forwards, further: into the far stone wall, slightly upwards. It rests there... Rests for long seconds... and then, at last, begins to fade from eye blinking darkness, having spoiled everyone's dark vision if they let it. Stepping out from a ruin of selenite fragments and the thin remains of what survived the Crest Graph's backblast, Venetia brushes off her shoulder. Stepping forward into --
-- The spotlight?
No, that's a thin beam of daylight shining downwards, coming at about nine and a half degrees, into the cavern.
"Maybe that's where heaven is," Venetia says. "It's always going to be next week -- but when it's heaven, it's worth the wait."
GS: Venetia Vuong spends 3 Combo on Headshot and Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Formation! Blitz! Venetia Vuong has attacked Elise Riesdale with World's Hope Sign ~Star Blazer~! GS: Venetia Vuong has gained 1 Combo! GS: Venetia Vuong has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
An explosion of flowers burst into existence all around Dean, shooting out their vines and squeezing him awful tightness. He's still too woozy to avoid them, so he crosses his combat rods to try to keep from getting simply crushed to death. It sees middling success. He doesn't die, but his bones will be feeling this tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, no doubt.
But even now, as punch-drunk as Dean is right now, it's hard for him to focus on anything beyond the goal right in front of him. As horrible as it is that Harmaus was become a Hellion, as horrible as the stories Ruth must tell are, as horribly as Elise has bought into her own illusions, he can only really deal with one thing right now. And that one thing is showing Elise how much stronger he's become since last time. (Has it really already been over a year?)
With a shout of defiance, Dean opens fire with his crossed ARMs and manages to shred away enough of the vines for him to break loose of his own strength. He even manages not to shoot himself in the process. Once his legs are free, he charges directly at Elise, hoping to tackle her with the thorns she herself brought into existence.
He'll have time later to get healed and/or pass out. (He should probably not pass out in his current condition.) Right now, it's all or nothing.
GS: Blitz! Dean Stark has attacked Elise Riesdale with Violence Vice! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It helps, that Azoth is wearing his Drifter face today.
The happiness in their reunion is brief; as quickly as he tries to reassure her, his eyes go back to that burning red. She can't help but freeze in place, hand still outstretched, as Lan's urge to follow him and demand answers wars with her very real and existing desire to not be impaled on a robot arm again. "Ah- wait--"
But he's talking to her again. (Sort of.) Lan can take hope from that. She needs hope.
Everybody does.
Even Harmaus.
Deluded and entitled, 'purified' by emotional filth. Warped and desperate and dangerous. Then why, as sick and maddened as it is... does Lan feel a little sorry for it?
we were the ones who were left behind
That's right. The Stranger had been--
Lan stops herself before she can remember too much. Hold on to your anger, and your pity.
A mote of color burns at her chest, lifted out and nurtured by Lan's spiritual power. An orb that grows, and molts, and peels away into hundreds upon hundreds of small winged things that swarm around Harmaus, sticking and draining and infecting.
That's right. Hope and pain are things with wings.
GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Lan Lilac has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Magic Lantern Butterfly Moth! GS: Lan Lilac has gained 2 Combo! GS: Lan Lilac has completed her action. GS: Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Lan Lilac's Magic Lantern Butterfly Moth for 235 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Seraph Harmaus's Drowsy Ward may block the effect! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Delay and Shieldbreak applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Drowsy blocked!
<Pose Tracker> Magilou has posed.
"I'm looking. I see you," Magilou finally affirms, all too calm, to Harmaus. "If this is really what you want, it seems there's nothing more to say." There's something sad -- about her saying that, when she's always had a quip or jape for the situation. Magilou always has something to say. Except...
"I'll remember you, too."
This isn't the first time.
And though Magilou's powers may resemble a Shepherd's -- vaguely, in part, the closest fuzzy match in a world otherwise defined by White and Black Magic -- Magilou is no Shepherd. She cannot purify Malevolence; she cannot save him. Her school is an older thing, a worse thing, and she has changed it so grievously from its roots that few would recognise her for her origins.
Harmaus would, though.
She all but told him.
The colour floods into Magilou and -- in a flash of that butterfly-lilac-white -- disappears, harmlessly, as Magilou defines an exclusion zone around her completely untouched by other's powers. Her own is something which annuls, all passions denied; the prototype of some forgotten, sick salvation.
The mana flows into her veins instead, and burns there, as she forges Harmaus's own power. She looks at him, and she judges, voice level: "Tetra Detonator."
It is not merely fire or wind which assaults Harmaus -- neither water nor earth; rather it is ALL of them, as each terrestrial element spins, about him. One orb is red as wildfire, another gold as the shifting sands; one as deep green as the most horrific tornado, one blue as abyssal ocean. They are stars, circling him, coming together -- and when they meet, the power which connects is nothing less than the birth of the universe.
The light of the explosion is white -- a white built from every colour.
"You won't die," she offers them pale assurance, though she looks to no one but Harmaus.
She looks to Elise, then.
"Hellions can achieve their dreams, yes," she allows, atonal. "But it is not the only end humanity may choose. If you would smother that choice... your garden, too, is good only for show."
Perhaps it's cruel, the way she looks back to Harmaus, even as she keeps speaking to Elise. Perhaps it's cruel, except there's no tone to her delivery at all.
"I hate flowers. Let it burn."
GS: Magilou has activated Force Action: Snipe! GS: Magilou has activated Force Action: Full Clip! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Blitz! Magilou has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Tetra Detonator! GS: Magilou has gained 2 Combo! GS: Delay expired! GS: Magilou gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Magilou takes 30 damage from Poison! GS: Mighty expired! GS: Magilou has completed her action. GS: Please react targeting the attack number in +queue. GS: Gamble: Low! Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Magilou's Tetra Detonator for 250 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! SOS Overdrive activated!
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
There's much rumination to be said about heaven being something only one can make, when the former elf lives almost every waking moment living with how they've made anything but for anyone. In Lucia's wake, the blackened petals seem to turn gray, and Ruth's own native Domain finds the familiar sound of rain becoming gentler.
'You can be more than you were!' An atoning assassin calls as she takes the call to build that heaven again with her two hands.
Elise begs for Ruth to go back to 'their' garden. She can feel the pleading. The same pleading that drew her when her life was in danger. Her eyes start to close--
Marivel takes a peck on Ruth's cheek, and pulls some of the Malevolence surrounding Ruth from her. It is numbing and enervating more than it is relieving, but it does take the pressure off of this corrupted land, of the searing light over yonder. Her wing rouses her out of otherwise motionless movement, touching at her face where the faint chill of Marivel's kiss gives her back, however briefly, the sense of chill that seeks warmth from others. (Somehow, patinated bronze can blush?)
(the reprisal is something she wisely does not jump in the middle of)
This 'gap' in the throes of Malevolence lets her better take in the sheer magnitude of crisis that Harmaus' Hellionization brings, and just how close Yvain came to hitting the point of no return. (Something she could have almost triggered by accident.)
Maybe it's different. Maybe he needs it... the same way Summer suggested, as it came to herself. Her native Malevolence starts to fill the metaphorical 'gap' Marivel left, as if reactionary to the overwhelming obsession of Harmaus' impending dragonification.
It's impossible to get a word over the obsessive contradictions knotting up and recreating Harmaus into a far more twisted imageh. (Strange upticks in a specific out-of-place Ley energy is something she does recognize, but it's passing compared to some imminent peril.)
"What does his shape change?" She says of Harmaus, simply - and that's all she has before rrails of golden Harmaus fly out, and Ruth's wing moves to protect her from something it cannot. Contact with those blades dislodge. Her wing flings open. The sheen of her patinated bronze body gives way to the usual colorations of her (still) oversized layers of clothing, to the stone-gray hue of her flesh and the mossy green of her hair. Her Domain shrinks, as if something of Harmaus' throes cut too true.
It could be a moment where Purification might reach, if Ruth truly wanted to let go. If she could believe there is anything beyond the rifle her tail has coiled around in a vice-grip.
A master of Crest Sorcery makes their case for where heaven is, and what it's worth waiting for as they force that beam of daylight into this deep, underground, dreary Domain. In this, the gargoyle-shaped Ruth reflects upon herself with Lucia's blessings still holding.
She has never made heaven for anyone with her two hands, as vines and brambles lash out for others.
She lurches forward, the blade of her rifle (that she has yet to fire) across the ground of the gazebo, as...
Malevolence-warped metal shrieks against the ground as it sweeps acros vines filled with a righteous red, cleaving the vines in twain before Xantia even as they shower her in thorns that pierce, thorns that drink. With a hiss, Ruth pivots and cleaves into the strange blush of blue that seems to be headed for Azoth.
Ruth is slowing down. At this rate, Elise might get her way - her chance to pull her knight back to their garden, together, like before. There's more brambles, as she hurls herself closer and closer to Elise to intercept them. Each one nearer and nearer.
To this, she says to Elise as she lifts her face, meeting her gaze with the Rose Queen's...
"I'm keeping heaven to my back." She declares. "As the heavens weep for what they see... all I've left to give them is my shoulder to cry on."
To either side, brambles that do not intend to take that real estate to weep, unless...
GS: Lock state expired! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Jean has posed.
Jean remembers Magilou, after Ivan. She remembers the Magilou she's seen in many quiet moments. But she doesnt try to force her out--instead she grins back at her. "Of course," Jean replies, "But we'll have to see who upstages who!"
But as the revelations come--Jean regards Marivel for a brief moment, as she lowers her head. Something was important there. Something mattered.
But she remembers the Magilou she has seen, as Magilou goes toneless. As she carries no humor at all. As she regards Harmaus, and Jean finds room, there, to feel for an enemy who had seemed thoroughly unsympathetic. What could Harmaus have been, if not this? Jean finds that she would have liked to have seen it, instead of this.
But 'this' is what she sees now, and 'this' is what she must oppose. This--and Harmaus has an answer for her, though it is the same answer. This one brings with it wounds that linger yellow-energy-sickly upon her arms as she raises them to block. The fans are lost; they cannot come back in all of this.
"LUCIA!" Jean calls, when Harmaus goes for her. She doesn't notice or care for much else in that instant--she falls. She falls, and--
What is Lucia? ...Lucia is Lucia. She stands by her mission. And this time...
"...Heh," Jeanvocalizes, and watches her tagger towards and help Hiro. She smiles, despite her own injuries--but not for long. The yellow energy suddenly burns through her wounds and Jean pauses in place, in the way of someone who cannot show pain. That old instinct remains--as does the instinct to join Talia in an assassin's swing.
In the same moment that Jean thinks of this instinct, Eleanor looks in surprise to the figure above--and as they call out to Gwen, Eleanor shifts back into her elven form, hanging on as best she can. "You..."
"If you're here to help," Eleanor says, "Then here--!" She extends her hand, and magic that is aspected to no Crest Element floods from her, starting to heal the figure's obvious wounds.
By this point, Jean has made up her mind. She has made up her mind, as Venetia has mad hers--that hot streak of light suddenly opens up the battlefield for her, and gives her options she simply wouldn't have had a moment before. And she'll use it.
"Harmaus!" Jean calls.
"I--"
She stops, sudenly, when she is there, and does not strike. Instead, she taps one foot--and begins a slow, winding rhythm. "I'm sorry," Jean murmurs, and begins a dirge of a dance, a funerary rite that wends darkness achingly slowly around.
"...But the world you want.."
Jean's movements speed, but the tempo doesn't, the world moving achingly slowly for a long moment--and another, an another, and another, until that darkness floods upwards towards Harmaus.
"It never was. And if I can help it... it never will be."
Jean's dance does not stop.
"I wish you could see it. The real truth. ...Because it's beautiful."
GS: Jean has activated Force Action: Snipe! GS: Jean has activated Force Action: Lock On! GS: Blitz! Jean has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Adagio Night! GS: Jean has gained 3 Combo! GS: Jean takes 50 damage from Reaper! GS: Drowsy expired! GS: Jean has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Jacqueline Barber has posed.
There's something here. A flare of something, up above her. Jacqueline looks up. As an accomplished Crest Sorceress, she can feel the ebb and flow of the Ley - especially here, so close to its heart. Up to this point this place has been filled with the power of Geo, to which she feels most drawn... but the presence of Fray has built, too, enough to be noticeable.
Jacqueline's eyes are drawn back down to Harmaus, then, and she stares at him for a moment.
"I do, actually." Jacqueline replies flatly. "This? This power you've obtained? It doesn't work for you the way it does for us. You might feel powerful now... but the more you chase it, the more you'll lose until there's nothing left."
But... Magilou says he knows. He knows, and he's going after it anyway...?
"That's... ridiculous." Jacqueline mutters, shaking her head. Why would he want that? Why would he seek it? ...To tear down Althena from her throne, it sounds like. But... she has more things to worry about right now, herself.
The garden is burning, and Harmaus swings his sword into the ground, unleashing a tide of blue toward Jacqueline. Just blue, but what a blue it is, turning the world upside down as it washes over her.
And then he swings his sword, and with it come numerous clones, images of light bearing swords. Jacqueline casts her hands out, her gauntlets flashing to life and forming a barrier. The insubstantial blade passes through it, passes through her. It doesn't harm her body, but she feels it to her core. She drops to a knee, gasping. Her energy, her strength, cut away from her.
It's hard to move, but.
"...We have to... stop him." Jacqueline manages to get out. Electricity builds in her right hand as she invokes a spell. It's all she can manage right now. She thrusts her hand toward Harmaus, sending a crackling bolt of lightning his way.
GS: Jacqueline Barber has activated Force Action: Full Clip! GS: Jacqueline Barber spends 1 Combo on Gatling, loading 1 into Gatling! GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Blitz! Jacqueline Barber has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Lightning Strike! GS: Delay expired! GS: Jacqueline Barber enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Jacqueline Barber takes 28 damage from Poison! GS: Drowsy expired! GS: Jacqueline Barber has completed her action. GS: ROU|LET|TE: Ruinous! Gamble: Very High! Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Jean's Adagio Night for 242 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Shieldbreak applied to Seraph Harmaus! GS: Seraph Harmaus suffers a terrible blow from Jacqueline Barber's Lightning Strike for 277 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Seraph Harmaus gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP! GS: Seraph Harmaus enters CONDITION GREEN!!
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel Armitage is not going to give Lucia a hard time over saving Hiro instead of worrying about all these other jerks, including herself as part of team jerks. Honestly that kind of choice makes her like Lucia more than if she had continued to just help 'everybody' the whole time. After all, Marivel would say that loving everybody equally is the same as loving nobody (Marivel might be rather biased in this regard). Still, whether or not she is biased doesn't mean much because that little gesture to loving One is not missed. Marivel knows it will be a long time before she can glimpse her own heaven because life will never be perfect without Her even if maybe it can get pretty close.
She swallows her envy for the hope of the youth and elden both.
Marivel's kiss, however, is still death no matter how lightly her lips touch. Marivel could no more change her nature than that of daybreak.
Similarly, though she can taunt, her vessels are meant for expelling sorcerous power not taking thick chunks of abuse and maybe she shouldn't have turned her attention of of Harmaus who explodes her left leg and thick chunks of her torso with a burst of light. If Harmaus becomes a dragon, maybe he could even devour Marivel in such a way that not even a soul remains, burning it away with the nuclear fire of a raging sun.
It wouldn't be so bad. Marivel wouldn't see her family again, but she'd be with them in oblivion. Not so bad.
There is another Primarch around but Marivel can't do much about that one. She might not be able to do much at all.
As her body burns even as metaphysical blades impale her from multiple angles, she looks at Harmaus.
Should she sing for him like she sung for Yvain? Would it help?
"o~ Now open your eyes while our plight is repeated o~"
"o~ Still deaf to our cries, lost in hope we lie defeated o~"
"o~ Our souls have been torn, and our bodies forsaken o~"
"o/~ Bearing sins of the past--"
Elise's wolf tears into Marivel's throat, ripping her head, neck, and spine free from the rest of her body. Marivel looks up at Belle as the words die in her throat.
Belle says, "Well, I think I have fulfilled the terms of our pact."
The vines constraining her atrophy as they blacken and darken for Belle is an ancient lich indeed and much like her partner, her very touch is death. Were it not for the battle so far, perhaps she could not have freed herself, if not for Marivel's cuts, perhaps she would have remained stuck. But as impassively as when she met Harmaus, she pries free from deadened vines and grabs ahold of Marivel's head with her palm, stealing her book free as she drops down with Marivel's skull and spine.
"I believe you had a talk with Ragnell about this." Belle said.
Marivel's vocal chords are severed so she can only roll her eyes.
"Well, I know not to ask for more." Belle says. "Or you'll throw your face into Althena's fist harder than if I simply let it be."
Marivel says nothing this time because yeah that's probably true though she does jerk her head to aim it towards Harmaus some.
Belle does so, swinging Marivel's head to the side like preparing a strike from a katana.
Before swinging towards Harmaus, a flash of red exploding out from that spinal chord to tear at Harmaus.
GS: Blitz! Marivel Armitage has attacked Seraph Harmaus with Guillotine! GS: Marivel Armitage has gained 2 Combo! GS: Marivel Armitage's stances have changed to Hero! GS: Marivel Armitage has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Meanwhile...
"Gwen!" Cole shouts, as soon as they catch their breath. She's not wholly lucid, but she's conscious, and that counts for something. "The taint--you can't let it take you!" Being so winded is deeply unpleasant to them, even though any rational mind would expect that as a natural consequence of singlehandedly fighting through this twisted hell. But Eleanor's sudden transformation catches them off-guard; their wounds knit, and they stare down at their form with a mixture of indignation and gratitude. It's a strange feeling.
But not entirely unwelcome.
'Who burns my garden? Who?? Do not LIE at me!!'
"I BURN YOUR GARDEN, CREATURE!" Cole shouts. A redness rises in their face as they sneer down at Harmaus, their fine, handsome features twisted with fury. "YOU STOLE MY FRIEND! YOU POISONED MY SIB WITH YOUR LEY-ROT!" They jab at Harmaus with their spear--a finely-wrought, gilt-edged, as flashy as it is functional--calling him out like a foe in the arena.
Cole Cullen is a new and rising star in the Screams of the Silenced, but here there is no doubt about who they truly are.
"...Setanta...?" Ida breathes. In that instant, Harmaus splits apart--refracts like a beam of light--and one of those beams slashes clean through Ida's midsection. She jerks forward violently, and though the blow is wholly bloodless, every nerve in her body starts screaming. She looks up, sees the vines coming in, and braces. There's only one way she can make it out of this alive.
Ida turns her fire on herself. The vines immediately meet with a wall of burning, Purifying flame, fire that won't harm Ida but will definitely harm them. It's not a perfect defense--Elise's will is a keenly-focused thing, and some of them manage to snake through long enough to dig saw-barbed vines into Ida's flesh. She bites her tongue to keep from screaming, but screams anyway.
"COME AT ME, VERMIN!" Cole--Setanta--bellows, from atop the gazebo. Their hair, already a fiery red fading to gold, catches flame, or perhaps transmutes. They meet Harmaus with spear in hand, and explode into a whirlwind of blades and fiery violence. Even weakened and diminished, the Primarch puts up a hell of a fight. It helps immensely that two of the people they care for are here, imprisoned in this hell.
And then Venetia, quite suddenly, puts a hole in the roof, and a good third of the gazebo flash-incinerates. Setanta falls, and as they fall, they see Ida, their eyes widening in sudden horror. She looks so much like Luisa, it's like seeing Luisa hurt and screaming before them. There's a faint THUD as they hit ground, but they get right back up and start running towards... Ida.
Eventually, the onslaught stops, and Ida looks up at Cole--Setanta--and then Elise.
"I'm sorry you've been hurt, Miss Riesdale," Ida says, her whole face tightening. Her hand darts behind her, and comes up with Devil's due. Purifying flame ignites within the ARM's chamber. "But that doesn't excuse what you've done here today." She aims the gun for center mass. "I hope some day we can talk, and you can explain what drove you to this."
She pulls the trigger. A roaring gout of blue-white erupts from the ARM, burning through the ambient Malevolence as it races to one of its sources. Not enough to purify Elise, of course--she wears her nature like armor against the world--but enough to leave a mark.
GS: Seraph Harmaus solidly guards Marivel Armitage's Guillotine for 125 hit points! GS: Charge!! You gain 40 FP!
<Pose Tracker> Xantia has posed.
The newly calmed Xantia takes the time to actually listen to the things Elise is saying now. Claims that the form of Hellion is the truest, and that there is no suffering in her gardens. She listens, but... there's no way she can agree with any of that.
"How about all those you were holding captive here? Do you really think they haven't been suffering after being ripped away from their friends, their family, everything and everyone they care about? That if they were to become Hellions, that would somehow make it better?"
She lets the statement hang there as they clash, her palm strike answered by a torrent of vines. Xantia can do little but bring up an arm to try and shield herself... but this ends up unnecessary, the attack literally cut short by Ruth. Slowly, she lowers her arm back down, finding that she may need to revise her known definition of what it means to be a Hellion. She'd be lying if she claimed to fully understand the differences between the both of them, but it seems pretty safe to present at least one conclusion to Elise.
"...Looks like someone doesn't agree with your point of view. And isn't this someone whose opinion you value? Why don't you try listening? Think about it."
She may be almost eerily calm now, but that doesn't mean Xantia has stopped being Xantia. Of course she's going to punctuate her words by leaping forward, hands brought together, to strike at the ground in front of Elise with a massive hammer blow. The pure light that emanates from her joined fists rapidly expands on impact - then detonates, shattering the twisted remnants of the mass of vines they were assaulted with and forcefully sending it all back to the Hellion. Afterwards, Xantia straightens back up, adding in her own opinion on the subject.
"...You should focus on making your own story better, instead of forcing others to share it."
GS: CRITICAL! Elise Riesdale solidly guards Venetia Vuong's World's Hope Sign ~Star Blazer~ for 155 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Guard bonus activated! GS: Xantia spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: Blitz! Xantia has attacked Elise Riesdale with Exploding Fist! GS: Xantia has gained 2 Combo! GS: Xantia gains 10 FP from her Daredevil! GS: Lock state expired! GS: Xantia has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth might not have a soul (or does he?), but Harmaus' metaphysical blades can sever energy connections through Azoth's wiring. Sputtering sparks begin to die away, his eyes dim and flicker, his posture threatens to fall, body not held up quite right. Electricity gathers at his finger tips, limb rattling with metal as he lifts it. He snaps his finger. Once, nothing. Twice, nothing. A third time, and he finally forms a blade.
"And how much suffering is enough before someone deserves it?" Azoth asks Elise. "How much for us, for your knight, for you? Do the denizens of your guarden have to earn their happiness? Is it not enough to be alive?"
Says the machine, who sometimes doubts that he can be, who just ran from someone who calls him a friend, all because of an instruction someone gave Azoth that he is compelled to follow. But this isn't about him.
He fans the one blade out into several duplications with a slow, weakened sweep of his arm. The way his elbow bends has become stilted and uncanny, like a poorly configured doll.
A prismatic overglow roils into being, blossoms and vines all, color coded in their violence. Azoth lets out a pnaicked sort of beep -- an alarm to the others, useless as it might be. There is not enough power in him to calculate any possible escape for himself, and even an android does not want to be split open on thorns or crushed in a vine's grip.
Ruth leaps in. Red and blue alike rain down from severed vines as the vegetation cascades harmlessly around him. It's an opportunity he cannot waste, and Azoth focuses a charge of power through his systems, forcing it out in an erratic burst that guides his series of blades in homing arcs toward Elise to collide into her, one explosively after the next.
This garden needs to burn. Their friends need to be freed. Odziozo needs to be freed.
GS: Azoth has activated Force Action: Full Clip! GS: Formation! Blitz! Azoth has attacked Elise Riesdale with Blade Server! GS: Azoth has gained 1 Combo! GS: Lock state expired! GS: Azoth has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.
"Thinks it knows more than I?" Harmaus repeats, when Jacqueline speaks of what will happen to him next -- that he'll lose everything. That it'll consume him until there's nothing left. Even a person leaves behind a body when they die. But a Seraph--
Harmaus has made his decision, in a sense--
Perhaps some cannot, will not be saved.
Perhaps some will only live on as memories.
In a history book.
Someone is singing for Harmaus, but it is no longer willing to hear.
Lucia is correct, Harmaus -- transfigured and possessed of strange urges and drives as he is now (wasn't he always?) -- has abandoned the fight against them all as it lurches with a snarl towards the ceiling of the gazebo, carving its way there with that brilliant sword. What fate awaits their strange bedfellow on the roof, should it reach them?
It may be best not to find out. Perhaps it's this thought -- along with the fact that even Harmaus' departure might not see him gone for good -- that drives Talia's decision to quite literally stab Harmaus in the back. With it distracted in its ascent, her blade finds purchase between the plates that cover its back (that are its back).
Harmaus roars, stalled for a precious moment in its climb, sword half-buried in the rafters. It's easy prey for the shimmering things that hunt after and sink into its body, siphoning away ever more of the power that Harmaus has claimed.
And still, the Hellion attempts to ascend.
Magilou has seen enough. Or perhaps, she has seen too much. Without further ado, it is her spell that slams into Harmaus as it breaks through the ceiling and reaches for the edge of the roof, her spell that causes it to bark in pain and nearly loose its grip.
He had a dream. It has a different sort of dream now, and it will not be dissuaded from it any more than he had been. Hellions can achieve their dreams. But it is not the sort of dream that is good for anyone else. A traum for one is a trauma for the rest.
It stops only briefly, as Jean calls out to it. Says she's sorry. Sorry he -- it -- can't see reality.
And it is then awash in darkness, consumed for a moment, its white lost in her black.
"It thinks... it still knows 'truth?' Hahahaha... ahahahahaha!! Such sights I now see!" And with that, it pulls itself up atop the roof.
Electricity crackles in the air. But whether that is truly metal in its body and blade or something else altogether, the Hellionized Seraph makes such a wonderful target for the bolt that races through the air to find it. It staggers after, slips, and only the sudden plunge of its blade into the white wooden roof keeps it from tumbling over the edge. Even that flash of red from what remains of Marivel (for now at least) does little more than evoke a grunt from the beleagured Harmaus, before its raises its head to regard the foe who has burned its garden.
Who boldly taunts it further.
With a jerk of the blade, it frees its weapon which soon resounds off of Cole -- Setanta's -- own with a ring of steel and a flare of light. The whole of the gazebo shakes from the impact of their duel, but it is destined to be short-lived.
Light drills a way upwards and above them, all the way towards heaven. Staggering, sliding, the Hellion attempts to keep its footing as the whole of the gazebo's roof tilts, unbalanced by its destructive climb onto the roof and Venetia's spell alike. With a howl of denial, Harmaus slips to fall off from the gazebo roof at last and plunges down into the burning garden below.
Then it -- he -- is gone.
There will be no sign of him after, not even when the fires die down. Once the Malevolence is purged from this place, all that will remain is the form of the Primarch of Geo who, finally purified of such a terrible contamination, will simply sigh.
And then, they will close their eyes to return to their slumber at long last.
GS: Elise Riesdale suffers a terrible blow from Dean Stark's Violence Vice for 175 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Break applied to Elise Riesdale! GS: CRITICAL! Elise Riesdale suffers a terrible blow from Xantia's Exploding Fist for 330 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Elise Riesdale gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper applied to Xantia! GS: CRITICAL! Elise Riesdale suffers a terrible blow from Azoth's Blade Server for 390 hit points! GS: Strain! Azoth takes 70 damage! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey spends 4 Combo on Poison and Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Blitz! Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Elise Riesdale with Breath Of The Fire Dragon! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 2 Combo! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey's stances have changed to Avenger! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Lock state expired! GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Elise Riesdale has posed.
Magilou's cruelness is taken plainly. ".... Few choices can come without pain to someone else. A garden is not a place of innocence." If there had ever been any white roses in this garden, they had not been from Elise's own design.
All the roses were red, in her garden. None were left unsplattered.
"His dream has been realized."
And, like Icarus flying towards the sun, the wax on his wings is beginning to melt.
Just like Venetia's burning commentary on the state of one gella dreadfuls and pulp novels, which draws a slight inch of a grin to Elise's face.
Venetia's epic BEAM is like the stuff of pulp as well, zipping past Elise's face with a whip of energy and the names of many gods, to literally reset the stage's lighting.
And let Venetia step into the spotlight like she's meant to be, in this precious sanctuary of stone.
Meanwhile, Elise's is crumbling. Ida's ARM sends a purifying missile to stun, while Azoth's blades cut through vegetation and Elise with the same level of ease. Xantia's twin fists strike the ground and break the thorny vines into pulp, while Dean ensures no attack can follow, slamming Elise's body first backwards.
Ruth, meanwhile, deals the dealiest blow of all, shielding her friends from Elise's own vines, gaining closer and closer to her queen.
Elise looks to Ruth, and slowly, tears begin to fall down her face.
Those with the power to purify, or those who can see past a powerful Hellion's illusions, will see a glimpse of the person deep inside.
It is a tear-stained young woman the same height and build as Elise, with blonde hair. The hair is hangs flat and unkept, her skin flushed and scarred, cheeks sunken. Her hands, worn and disjointed from some past accident, where her Hellion form had those injuries braced or filled in with gold-- not hiding them, but giving them the care she could have never afforded as a human, even if the illusion could never heal them. Rock dust from a mountain far off still clings to her, and her rags, rotted grey, cling to her malnourished form.
Her beauty is a delusion, yes. Hiro is right.
A person that only lives because she's a Hellion. Because she became a Hellion. Because, in her mind, this is the best gift that she could have ever been granted.
Those still grasp Ruth's head, and Elise draws herself to her knight, weeping on the dearest friend she has ever made. "This is enough, my knight..... you have made your petition clear."
Venetia made a hole in this garden, and Ruth, equally, made a hole in Elise's resolve.
"My end of the bargain is done." She raises those hands, and, with a snap of her fingers, whatever vines have not been torn, burnt or break away begin to wither, collapsing in a soft mass that the remaining captives can fall in.
"Please, direct all complaints to my kingdom, but... I must beg you all to let my knight rest. She has been faithful to the last."
She holds Ruth closer. ".... you will know it, when she comes back to greet you all."
The last of the petals obscure the two of them from view, and when they settle, the two are gone.
The Domain is gone as well-- all that is left is a sweet-smelling bed of petals and leaves, to cover the sleeping Primarch from the awaking world anew.