2023-06-02: A Wish is Not Enough
- Log: A Wish is Not Enough
- Cast: Riley Arwell, Hannah Curie, Xander Lovell, Solitaire Collier, Dean Stark, Ruth Pauling, Erzebet Lefanu, Eleanor Klein
- Where: The Cape of Breath
- Date: June 02, 2023
- Summary: The Fangs of Valmar attempt another ambush... only to end up in a battle with those who, despite Xander's best efforts, might still call them friends. But how much longer can this song and dance continue?
===========================<* The Cape of Breath *>=========================== Stretching from the edge of the slowly-spreading northern desert, the Cape of Breath is the lush southern region of Meria Boule. Farmland and livestock take up much of the hilly region, dotted with the estates and castles of Merian nobles, often at the height of elevation, but across temperate land to the west great forests begin, still part of the great resources of the Merian nation. In places the badlands of the north find mirrors here, hotter regions with accordingly sparser populations... where people could move. To the farthest south and east are the wide coastlines, each marked with large cities. Only the fortress nature of many estates at the hearts of settlements recalls much of Meria's more warlike history, after the great efforts of the late Queen to ensure peace for all Meria Boule, and the spread of knowledge. Nevertheless, the increasing spread of monsters can make travel without caravan or guards a perilous undertaking indeed. BGM: Wild Arms 2 - Field ~ Wandering
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Traveling alone can be perilous, and Riley is doing his best to appear to be a victim of such peril, rather than its perpetrator, sprawled out alongside the road as if sick or injured. It's only halfway an act -- when the Fangs of Valmar demand blood and those demands go unheeded, they begin to extract it from their two hosts in the form of unnatural thorns growing within their bodies. Riley's found their way into his lungs this time, so the weak, blood-spattered coughing that periodically shakes through him is real.
Unfortunately, the only cure for it is the life of whatever passerby whose attention he might manage to draw. He's hoping it could be someone ill-intentioned, someone aiming to rob him, perhaps, and has scattered a few coins about in the hopes of seeming like he has more where they came from. But it's just their luck that he might draw a helper, instead, or another wagon full of powerful sorceresses or whatever.
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Travelling alone can be perilous. But Hannah has had far better success than most in that endeavor. Though really, she does it by not travelling alone, thanks to a red-tailed hawk, Zephyr, that is commonly found perched on her shoulder. The sorceress herself is wearing a black cloak, concealing her bag and rifle underneath it.
She stops as she sees..s someone on the side of the road. Zephyr chirps, and Hannah nods. "I see him. Could be a trap." Without another word Zephyr takes off into the air, circling overhead. Hannah readies her rifle, undoing the safety and holding it down but visible as she starts to approach on food.
"You alright?" she calls out from a safe enough distance away. Gold coins scattered around. Suspicious, but...
Then she sees the coughed up blood.
A sense of urgency grips her, and she approaches more quickly. The rifle stays down, though. "Are you sick or injured?" She asks as she draws closer, settling her rifle down as she looks over the stranger. "I'm not a healer, but tell me what's wrong and I'll do what I can to help."
Zephyr keeps vigil overhead. He's not much of a fighter, but if something happens, he'll be off like a shot to find someone and try to draw them near.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander has looked better, to put it mildly. Ordinarily a man of ashen complexion on a good day, the sickly blue undertones paint a special picture of unwellness. Pronounced dark circles, blue lips, and bruised blotches peaking out of his clothing tell a story of someone who should not still be standing.
But he is. And he is, at this precise moment, not someone who wants to be looked at or seen in that effort. He takes advantage of the lusher region as he waits, hiding in nearby overgrowth by the road to see who takes Riley's bait.
He would also prefer if it was someone of ill intent -- not that he finds death a fair retribution for robbery -- but he doesn't have the luxury of caring if it's someone who wants to help. Their life must be forfeit, or he and Riley won't last much longer. His hands aren't clean enough for it to matter, anyway.
Someone approaches, wisely wary until she notices Riley's poor condition. Xander breathes in deep of the fragrance spritzed on his collar, pre-emptively trying to dampen the smell of blood that he grimly hopes is about to spill.
Xander leaps from his position, unarmed one moment, and scythe of withered wood and blackened vine springing from the earth and coiling into form in his hands the next. An ensorcelled wave of death trails with its swing as Xander makes to reap his target with a sweeping cleave. It's only the way he disrupts the brush and the wind as he attacks that makes any sound: Xander himself offers only silence.
GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Hannah Curie with Death Spiral! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Solitaire Collier has posed.
Solitaire arrives at the worst possible time. She isn't following a bird or anything. Rather...
I smell blood. The Demon Axe on her back speaks into her mind.
Frowning, Solitaire adjusts her travel plans slightly to take the fateful road...
What she sees, of course, is her precious classmate (Riley) on the floor coughing up blood. She sees gold coins scattered around him, suggesting that there is a robbery afoot. Then she sees Xander, swinging a scythe at the ... robber? She doesn't know Hannah but--
--ahh, a bird above. An ambush. ... Those assassins Riley warned her about that were after him and her teacher! Is this one of them?!
That's as much as Solitaire gets through her head as she moves from a jog to an outright sprint, running right for Riley, Xander, and Hannah--her face a mask of rage and fear--and considerable determination.
"Don't you touch them!" Solitaire shouts as she spins through the air and throws the axe head first for Hannah's gut.
"Teacher! Classmate! Are you okay?? Flee now, I will cover your escape!"
Soli... Remember...
Solitaire doesn't say anything. She just hopes that Xander's incredible medical knowledge will be enough to save Riley!
GS: Solitaire Collier has attacked Hannah Curie with Left Wing Tableau! GS: Solitaire Collier has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Normally, a beautiful, wide-open countryside like this just begs for a ride on a monowheel. Dean's monowheel is in the shop currently, though; nothing major, some of the spokes were just getting rusty and need replacing, and so he's getting the oil replaced at the same time too.
While that's going on, he's on a walk through the countryside instead. No particular reason for it; it's just a nice day, and Rebecca and Avril are on a little walk of their own (it may or may not be a date (but Dean would never realize either way)).
A short ways away down the road, he happens to look up and spots a red-tailed hawk in the sky. "Huh!" he utters. "That looks like Zephyr! I wonder if Hannah's around?" He raises an arm and waves to the bird. "Heyyy! Zephyr, is that you?"
A bunch of crackling and a WHOOSH the next moment draws his attention back down to earth. "Huh? What was that noise?" A bunch of running and shouting follows, and this gets Dean into a run too, Twin Fenrir flashing into his hands--just in case.
Good instincts, too, because when he reaches the site of the conflict, he sees Hannah getting attacked by a beastfolk he doesn't know, and two faces he knows very well. Two faces that look *very* worse for the wear, and he understands immediately what that means.
"Stop! Get away from Hannah!" he shouts, opening up a warning shot on Xander. He grimaces afterwards and adds to him and Riley, "I'm sorry. But you know I can't let you do this!"
Solitaire gets a glance. She seems to be helping them out? Dean doesn't know what's up with that, but he assumes she's a friend of theirs who wants them to live. He... can't blame her for that. Not really.
GS: Dean Stark has attacked Xander Lovell with Dual Shooter! GS: Dean Stark has gained 2 Combo! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth isn't far out, by happenstance. Not all that long ago, she was with a weary Lunarian soldier on the verge of a life decision not to be made nor embraced lightly. She'll be going with her to Mt. Gagazet before long.
The Zoaran sharpshooter is in one of her rotating places of shelter away from society and the beaten path. Places deemed safer to let her true self out and minimize the impact of her spiritual presence on the world around her, having already done just that atop a long-abandoned, derelict church.
A spike of distress to her senses is equal parts a sharp jab to a shoulder and a hot meal delivered to her doorstep - metaphorically, as she looks up and makes sense of color and shape underneath the underlying way she parses the world around her these days. (Zephyr instinctually would not want to draw any closer beyond enough to confirm a visual, most likely.
"Zephyr?"
A SURPRISINGLY SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME LATER
There is a deafening bang in the distance, a rifle report that several gathered would already be keenly aware as to what it is or who wields it. To the spiritually sensitive, there is no stealth to their presence. A faint rain builds a ways away, the rising miasma and glowing of eyes ensures their advantage of long distance will not last long.
But there is the matter that the sound report means there is a shot, and that shot has a target - somewhere along Xander's upper body.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Xander Lovell with Door Knock! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Erzebet Lefanu has posed.
And with Solitaire is...
ERZEBET MARA LEFANU, OBLIGATE HEMOVORE!
D
Erzebet is wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and has apparently cut off the legs of her white uniform slacks, which at this point are an overwashed gray anyway. She has also lost her jacket, but the good news is that she's sorry. No, wrong topic: the good news is that she did find another military surplus jacket, this one navy blue, and one day she may even buy a second camisole. She has been walking in a rather crabbed way to minimize sunlight presence on any patch of skin, clearly regretting not getting longer pants.
This has kept her from really paying attention to the world around her.
But then Solitaire starts to run.
"Huh?" says Erzebet, before she --
-- jogs up alongside, before appearing there and throwing her hands up as she stares at Hannah from behind her funny glasses. "Well, I'm sure there's a perfectly sensible explanation for this," Erzebet says even as Solitaire throws an attack. Erzebet seems to be hesitant to get engaged, but then--
-- Another person lunges forwards!
And someone shoots Xander! Or at least 'at' Xander.
Erzebet does get out her gun even as Haborym's lenses feeds her information, but --
bring the dawn
-- doesn't quite shoot, because that young man seems to suggest there's something else going on. "What are they doing. What?? Is this some sort of stacking doll of robberies?!"
GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with I feel normal.! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has gained 4 Combo! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has completed her action. GS: Erzebet Lefanu accepts Erzebet Lefanu's I feel normal. for 0 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor Klein sees Zephyr in the sky, and her blood chills immediately.
She had been out traveling, intending to visit the Chasm again to try to investigate what she sees in her dreams. But instead, she sees Zephyr, and--
Crackle. WHOOSH.
Eleanor is an owl in the next moment, sweeping her wings out beside herself to fly beside Zephyr back to the battle. It is a useful spell. There is no time for wise dialogue now, though. In that short time later--
In a whirl of feathers and light, the owl spins wing-first and then is an elf again, Eleanor standing there, the very picture of vengeance in the moment.
"Hannah!" Eleanor calls. "And YOU!"
She doesn't strike at any of them; instead, she closes her hands into fists and focuses magical energy, much like the Crest Sorceress's Mystic--except requiring no item at all except her own heart.
"STOP!"
Light and energy well up within Ruth, Dean, and Hannah all. Eleanor herself adopts a ready stance, one hand forward and one back, as light begins to gather at her fingertips.
"Of course it's you two again..." She sighs, and some of that anger bleeds away. Only some, though.
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Dean Stark with Mystic Surge! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Hannah Curie with Mystic Surge! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Ruth Pauling with Mystic Surge! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 2 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Ruth Pauling accepts Eleanor Klein's Mystic Surge for 0 hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Surge applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: FP up! Eleanor Klein's Reload! activated! GS: CRITICAL! Dean Stark accepts Eleanor Klein's Mystic Surge for 0 hit points! GS: Pray grants a random effect! Amplify applied to Dean Stark! GS: FP up! Eleanor Klein's Reload! activated! GS: Hannah Curie solidly guards Xander Lovell's Death Spiral for 46 hit points! GS: Hannah Curie partially evades Solitaire Collier's Left Wing Tableau for 97 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hannah Curie gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple blocked! GS: Hyper applied to Solitaire Collier! GS: Xander Lovell takes a solid hit from Dean Stark's Dual Shooter for 81 hit points! GS: Cover applied to Dean Stark! GS: Xander Lovell solidly guards Ruth Pauling's Door Knock for 51 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Zephyr is willing to give Dean a sharp cry, that should sound alarmed to most people, even those who don't understand animals particularly well. He may not like Ruth, but he (and by extension Hannah) understand that Ruth has some sort of interest in Hannah, so is willing to get close enough to deliver the same warning to the sniper. But he's seen one last friendly face--he dives down towards Eleanor with a sharp cry, making a tight turn around her before taking off back where he came, trusting in her to follow along, which she does.
Meanwhile, Hannah is ill at ease. Something doesn't feel quite right, and when that wave of ensorcelled death comes for her, she pulls out a crest graph and draws it in the path of the attac. A line of force trails in its wake, and the attack breaks against it, absorbing most of the impact--though some of that deadly energy flows around it and cuts into her, causing her to stagger back and clutch her chest. "Nggh... If you're after his money, I won't let you--"
But someone new enters the fray, coming at her with an axe and shouting not to hurt-- "Them?" She has little time to ponder that as she throws herself to the side, away from the blow, but it still takes a slice out of her arm. "What the hell..." But as she's trying to figure out the tactical situation, there is aid coming her way.
Dean, and a rifle shot she is familiar with now, and Eleanor, casting some kind of strange magic that she does not have enough time to ponder in the moment. Dean and Eleanor seem to know what's going on, at least.
"What the hell is this all about?!" she calls to those coming to her rescue. From her pouch she draws another crest graph, glowing bright red, and swipes it in Xander's direction. A spray of twinkling sparks of fire are released in his direction, and as they get closer, they explode in a dizzying array of light and sound.
GS: Hannah Curie has attacked Xander Lovell with Flashbang! GS: Hannah Curie has completed her action. GS: COUNTER! Xander Lovell counterattacks Hannah Curie with Hidden Knife! GS: Xander Lovell solidly guards Hannah Curie's Flashbang for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Xander Lovell's Blind Ward may block the effect! GS: Mute applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Blind blocked! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Ah... here comes somebody. Alone... armed, but wary, which means maybe, hopefully, that gun is all she's got for defense. Maybe. Riley's not counting on anything, anymore. There's the usual roil of shame when she draws close, asking what's wrong.
He shakes his head, both to stall and to avoid eye contact. Sick seems like it might spook her further, so...
"I was attacked... I think some kind of poison..." Mercifully, Xander doesn't make him wait long trying to talk to their intended target, springing from the brush to attempt his reaping. It seems she does have magic, unfortunately, and turns back much of his fury. But then --
Nggh... If you're after his money, I won't let you--
Riley goes as red as a person with blood pneumonia possibly can at the misunderstanding, both shamed and weirdly touched.
He is prepared for a lot of different things to happen, at this point. Perhaps Xander will strike her down and they'll get their next ill-won reprieve from the curse. Perhaps she'll unveil unfathomable powers and send them limping back into the wilderness.
What he is absolutely not prepared for is for Solitaire to appear and rush to their aid.
"Oh my god," he sputters, scrambling up to his feet. Does she really not realize what's going on yet? Is there any way to keep it that way?? "What are you doing here?! This is bad! Dangerous!" he interrupts himself with a cough. "You need to run far away and we'll meet up with you and explain everything!!"
Please listen...! His eyes flash to Xander in concern. Xander doesn't need to lose his protege on top of everything else...
In all the rest of the tension, Riley hadn't thought to be concerned with the hawk, which turns out to have been a mistake, as it ends up signalling a sudden tide of reinforcements, all of them familiar faces, and several of them gunning for Xander.
"Xander!" he shouts. "Back off! Please, just let us..." A glance to Solitaire. "Just leave us alone!"
...'Hannah.' Oh god, are they friends with the target? Dean and Eleanor seem to be, at least... this is already going so sideways -- how are they already at disaster number 10?!
He offers a shaky, guilty smile to the two of them. "Could you have bumped into us again at any other time??"
Riley fumbles for his bow and when his hands refuse to steady amid his coughing, he instead aims it... skyward? An arrow made of darness soars up toward the clouds before splitting into many, the sharpened shadows raining down at the approaching group and cutting toward Eleanor, Dean, and even poor Erzebet, although she hasn't properly picked a side yet.
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Arrow Rain! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 3 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Dean Stark with Arrow Rain! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 2 Combo! GS: Weaken expired! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Arrow Rain! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! ROU|LET|TE: Moderate! Erzebet Lefanu accepts Riley Arwell's Arrow Rain for 240 hit points! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Low! Eleanor Klein takes a glancing hit from Riley Arwell's Arrow Rain for 33 hit points! GS: Eleanor Klein's Poison Ward may block the effect! GS: Poison applied to Eleanor Klein!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander's scythe finds no flesh or blood to reap, only a crest graph's power. He hisses, throwing his strength uselessly, desperately into it until he's forced back with a lurch and his scythe withers away for the moment. She thinks he's robbing Riley! Protecting Riley! From him!
A familiar axe flies, and the world grows more absurd. Protecting this sorceress from Xander --
There's no time to reflect on the absurdity. Retribution is immediate. Dean's warning shots bite into and overgrowth of twisting vines that take over Xander's arm, soaking up the bullets, but not without a struggling wince.
Hannah's second crest graph goes off in an explosion of light and sound, but he does not have to see her to sense her pulse and dive for her veins. It's too uncomfortably easy to dart straight for her, knife deftly in hand to swing out at her in bloodletting reflex, and then again for her throat.
...But the Knock.
A hauntingly familiar sound, painful in the knowledge of what it is and who it is for more reason than one. Time slows to a stop as the bullet strikes where its deadly sniper intends it to, and it is only by his brutal hunger and grim resolve that Xander only staggers and does not fall. Xander knows she's out there, somewhere, here to stop him. She should but he won't let her. Worse, she knows. She knows exactly what will make Xander stop, and he can't have that. Sinking his fingers into the wound she made, Xander grips blood, then slams his fist into the ground. Through the earth, bloodied, hungry thorns roil, trying to burst from the ground under Ruth's position in a wild attempt to shred against her.
He looks over everyone's that gathered, with Dean and Eleanor's shouts to stop not gone unheard.
"Again," he says to Eleanor. "And again... and again... and again...!" He spits at the ground. "Your explanation," he starts, going ahead to answer Erzebet in the conversation, "Is that we stop, we die." Xander spins a handgun into his grasp. "So we don't stop."
Solitaire is here. Defending them. Xander looks to her, finding it difficult just to breathe. He huffs a sound, dragging his fingers across his face, and then he starts to laugh. A low, rasping chuckle at first before it breaks into something he doesn't know how to control.
It dies off abruptly.
"Solitaire."
Xander points his gun to her first.
"This is your only warning. Leave."
He pulls the trigger.
GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Hannah Curie with Hellbent! GS: Xander Lovell enters a Counter stance! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 2 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell's stances have changed from Counter to Counter and Hero! GS: Xander Lovell spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with Rosaceae! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Solitaire Collier with Your Trust Was Misplaced! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Xander Lovell's attack becomes clear! GS: Solitaire Collier accepts Xander Lovell's Bloodtinged Bullet for 278 hit points! GS: Strain! Xander Lovell takes 100 damage! GS: Riley Arwell has adjusted their boss level for 3 opponents!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
...It's no mere warning shot that Solitaire receives. The bullet loaded in Xander's gun is cursed with the same blood he sacrifices to the Fangs for power, and it roils with an overgrowth of thorny vines into her flesh where it strikes.
A cruel facsimile of the curse, and further explanation onto itself: both why this is happening, and who he's willing to cut through. But for all the steel and storm Xander tries to put in his gaze, there's a teary glimmer reflecting off of it.
GS: CRITICAL! Ruth Pauling takes a solid hit from Xander Lovell's Rosaceae for 216 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: FP up! Charge bonus and Sufferer activated! GS: Strain! Xander Lovell takes 100 damage! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Severe! Dean Stark solidly guards Riley Arwell's Arrow Rain for 75 hit points! GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated!
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean's not the only one who came running when he heard the fight break out. There's that vampire lady he's seen around a couple times wondering what the heck is going on, and there's a shot from a distance that suggests Ruth, and there's Eleanor right there, also shouting for everyone to stop. Hannah's also asking what's up, so:
"Hannah, get back! They're out to kill you!" Dean tells her (and by proxy, Erzebet) succinctly. "Not to be mean, they do it because they don't want to die, but--" And here he looks at Riley and Xander, grimacing. "--still!!"
It looks like it's been a while since their last kill. Riley's coughing up blood, Xander looks like he's about to turn into a Reaver at any moment... He appreciates they must have tried their best to go without doing this, but there's no way he could just turn around and pretend he didn't see this, either.
It's a situation with no good solution for anyone.
Riley and Xander shout their own explanations. Dean makes another face at Riley. "Yeah, I wish we could've run into each other when you *weren't* doing this kind of thing again..." Not that he regrets stopping them from committing murder, but obviously the rest of this encounter is not going to go well. Not with Xander clearly teetering on the edge.
It probably doesn't help anything, that wretched look Dean gives him as he breaks into that broken laughter. "Xander... Look, this doesn't--"
Perhaps thankfully, he cuts himself off. He knows what the stakes are for them, just as he knows that he wasn't able to find a way to help them, no matter how hard he tried.
Or that he hasn't yet found a way to help them. But they clearly have little time left, and all three of them clearly know it.
Eleanor's magic flows up and into him, strengthening him for the coming battle. Dean gives her a decisive nod and a brief smile. "Thanks! This is gonna be a tough one to break up... They look in really bad shape--"
But that's when both Riley fires an arrow that becomes a bunch of arrows into the air, and more importantly Xander points a gun at the mouse girl who'd just been trying to help him, which *really* shocks Dean. Those bolts shower down towards him, forcing him to defend himself by snapping around his ARMs to catch the worst of the arrow rain and gritting his teeth against the lines of blood others he doesn't catch slice through his body. But his attention snaps back to the 'warning shot,' which turns out to be anything but.
"XANDER!! What are you doing?! She was trying to help you!!" he shouts, leaping into the fray literally, combat rods extending from the butts of his guns. As they rapidly glow white-hot with searing heat, he sweeps them around towards Xander, or rather, towards whatever vines he inevitably conjures in an attempt to burn them away and ward them off.
"Not that I wanted her to help you with murder but you should treat your friends better than this!!" Dean adds as an afterthought.
GS: Dean Stark spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Dean Stark has attacked Xander Lovell with Burning Magazine! GS: Dean Stark has gained 1 Combo! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Solitaire Collier has posed.
Solitaire learns in this moment that the world is more magical than she thought since people can turn into owls (or is it owls can turn into people?). The world is a little less harsh in her eyes with this realization. Did Eleanor always have the ability to turn into an owl? Why isn't she, like, an owl all the time if she can do this?
Solitaire gets a confused look in her eyes that manages to persist despite her usual trend towards non-reacting to much of anything. "...Eh? .... But you're the one robbing? Xander wouldn't rob Riley. They are..."
Xander is pointing a gun at her.
Solitaire turns to look at him, in clear disbelief--and even more confusion.
The bullet hits her dead on in the chest and she's thrown back away from Xander and goes crashing to the ground, thorny vines ripping out of her body as she lays on the floor, tears streaming down from her eyes as she barely starts to understand what just happened, blood pooling along the floor under her.
"What...Why...?" She croaks out as more blood spills out of her mouth.
Her gaze turns to Dean.
For the first time in her life, SOlitaire thinks... maybe she should just give up.
Riley said they'd explain. She tries to say something in response. She really tries.
The Demon Axe speaks, with words, "Soli!! No... no, why--why why???"
Solitaire reaches into her pouch and draws out a small item and tries to pour it down her throat. She gets about half of it in there.
"M..mrurrhk..."
GS: Solitaire Collier has attacked Solitaire Collier with Xander's MIRACULOUS minor Healing Potion! GS: Solitaire Collier has gained 1 Combo! GS: Solitaire Collier has completed her action. GS: Solitaire Collier heals Solitaire Collier! She gains 88 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Erzebet Lefanu has posed.
Riley addresses Solitaire and bids her to GTFO (Go Towards Fajita Obelisk) in anticipation of a future explanation. Riley is coughing but they don't seem quite sick in the way Erzebet expects. Her eyes turn towards the ones throwing grenades and gunfire.
>_>
And then they turn back towards Solitaire, Riley and Xander.
c_c
'If we stop, we die. So we don't stop.'
"Well," Erzebet says a moment before a rain of sharpened shadows descends upon her with sudden flesh carving vigor. While Erzebet is a reasonably large target and has some meat on her bones, this is still a pretty big barrage; her black top and blue jacket are tattered and both are stained with red as the force ends up hurling her to the ground, laying in the midst of a lingering pool of disintegrating shadow, eroding in the good clean light of Filgaia. There's blood everywhere! It's awful!
Of course, Riley and Xander wouldn't be fooled for a moment. Other people might be, because Erzebet just takes this moment to reflect on how stupid her life is. And then...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8UNfJ1wMwc
... she sits upwards, breathing a little heavily as the last of the shadows fade away. There are still cuts on her body but they are a lot smaller.
Erzebet takes out the long-barrelled pistol that had sat in a holster on her hip... and then, with thoughtful pause, slides it back where it was. She gets up to one knee, then to her feet. "Alright, boys," she says, before stalking towards Xander with remarkable speed.
She reaches out for his gun hand with her own, empty hand. Her weapon remains in the holster. If her hand connects, Xander will have a sensation of a hand that feels like animate marble more than flesh grabbing his wrist hard enough to bruise and then aiming to just flip him over and directly into the dirt.
"I guess I'm a Drifter today!!" Erzebet howls, which probably makes no sense to others in the area.
DC: Erzebet Lefanu switches forms to Vampir razboinica Erzebet Mara Lefanu! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Xander Lovell with Judo Flip - Potence 3! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has gained 1 Combo! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
It's the one shot. From where the gargoyle Hellion roosts at a (soon to be far less than) safe distance, she seizes herself from going through all four. The Granasian rosary, squeezing itself taut about her right arm, seems to sting in places more than just where it is. Xander and Riley, again, bearers of parts of Valmar who still love another enough to keep going through with it. What does that say about her, the venomous whispers drag her thought train as her tail keeps holding the rifle steady. It's inches away from deciding to try and shoot again for her.
Her eyes catch Riley raising a gun at a face she hasn't seen in some time - the young mouse Beastfolk, a sudden urgency atop that of her incoming rescue of Hannah.
"Ssssolitaire!" A coherent word only manages to form itself out of the shrieking hiss as she takes off running closer, running into the bloodied thorns that thirst for blood in transit.
Another pained shriek, as Eleanor's blessing as the Sage of Light falls upon her. (Not because of it, though the imagery would check out if she were one of Ganondorf's minions.) It doesn't do anything to blunt the pain or the enervation as purple blood stains the earth to be consumed, but there is a pulse of some sort of breath, an energy.
A serpentine tongue flicks towards the conflict, and her eyes shut while knotted-up sorrow compels her to just be. A wave she rides as she struggles another step, clawed feet wrestling against other emergent patches of brambles trying to keep her still to feed off of it.
She even steps on one of the shafts of Riley's fired arrows, at one juncture.
She closes in, eyes flaring open with a bright shine of violet as she bears down upon Riley with disconcerting thoughts as to how much of Ruth is currently there as the bayonet blade of her rifle strikes and slashes across the earth before striking upwards for He of the Cursed Shovel.
GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Riley Arwell with Scarring Blow! GS: Ruth Pauling takes 31 damage from Poison! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
"Riley! Xander!" Eleanor calls. He... offers that guilty smile, and Eleanor sighs. "No," she says. "Apparently I couldn't."
She watches Xander as he slams his fist into the ground, as he staggers, and she looks with pity as she does. "I wish that..." She sighs. "A 'wish' is not enough. Yes, again. Again, and again, as many times as it takes, Xander. I cannot allow this. Even if she weren't my friend."
She shakes her head, as Solitaire is affected, as Dean calls out. "None of that matters now to him." Then she calls, "Solitaire! Hang on! I can help you!" But she has a potion of her own, as it turns out. So the calculus changes.
As it does when--"Erzebet--" Eleanor blinks. SHe knows the transformation well enough, of course. But that Erzebet is helping?
"Why are you--" She stops. "All right!"
But she has no time to explain. She can only act.
"O Sacred Light!" Eleanor weaves the spell with her hands, closing her eyes to focus. "I call upon you! Suffuse my ally with might!"
Then, she draws off a little of that conjured Light, her hands continuing to fill with it, as she moves forward faster than she has a right to move. Eleanor weaves across the battlefield, becoming a shining beacon of power that is by no means Crest Sorcery, but something old and primal. Something divine.
"I've never done this before, but..."
She knows; from Rauru's teachings, she knows the way. She is only one Sage, but perhaps one is enough. She pulls a golden amulet, and leaves it in her left hand.
"I am one with the Light," Eleanor intones, her eyes starting to glow. "And I call upon it now. By the power of the Ley--in the name of The Power That Shapes The World--"
"I SEAL YOU, XANDER!"
All she has to do is touch him, and hope. She reaches out her palm, and grabs. Could it work?
GS: Eleanor Klein spends 1 Combo on Link! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Ruth Pauling with Blessing of Light! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 2 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein has launched an attack Link! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Xander Lovell with Seal Evil! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein takes 22 damage from Poison! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Ruth Pauling accepts Eleanor Klein's Blessing of Light for 0 hit points! GS: Hyper, Quick, and Shield applied to Ruth Pauling! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Hannah Curie solidly guards Xander Lovell's Hidden Knife for 50 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hannah Curie gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hannah Curie takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Hellbent for 55 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hannah Curie gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Riley Arwell used Defend! He takes Erzebet Lefanu's Judo Flip - Potence 3 attack on Xander Lovell on himself! GS: Xander Lovell suffers a terrible blow from Dean Stark's Burning Magazine for 116 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Poison applied to Xander Lovell! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: COUNTER! Xander Lovell counterattacks Eleanor Klein with Hidden Knife! GS: Xander Lovell solidly guards Eleanor Klein's Seal Evil for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Xander Lovell's Blind Ward may block the effect! GS: Weaken applied to Xander Lovell! GS: Blind and Drowsy blocked! GS: FP up! Charge bonus and Sufferer activated! GS: Riley Arwell suffers a terrible blow from Ruth Pauling's Scarring Blow for 142 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Riley Arwell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Mute applied to Riley Arwell! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: CRITICAL! Riley Arwell suffers a terrible blow from Erzebet Lefanu's Judo Flip - Potence 3 for 188 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Riley Arwell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Eleanor Klein solidly guards Xander Lovell's Hidden Knife for 49 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Quick applied to Xander Lovell!
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
The problem, of course, with using the Flashbang spell in such close range is that it obscures her vision of the target too--which is dangerous when facing someone who doesn't need sight to focus on her blood, who's willing to charge through the attack just to get at her. It might have been deadly for her, but Zephyr's keen eyes see the attack incoming, and she rebuffs the attack a crest graph, deflecting the worst of the blow to glance at her side. The second strike she attempts to sidestep, letting it glance against something far less vital than her jugular.
He declares 'We stop, we die'--and when Riley joins the fray at least that part of the situation becomes more clear. And further clarity comes when Dean shouts that they're out to kill her.
So that's how it is. Before, she was just trying to stop what she thought might have been a mugger, trying to discourage but not injure.
That goes out the window, now. Zephyr keeps in motion in the sky, deftly avoiding Riley's arrows, keeping an eye on the ground for her... Hannah draws out a crest graph that begins to glow bright red. Eleanor and Erzebet have focused their attacks on Xander, so she switches targets to Riley to assist Ruth.
The corruption in her magic roils a bit harder as she brings the crest graph up just under her mouth. "Ruth!" she shouts--a warning before she inhales deeply, and then spews a ball of angry red fire in Riley's direction.
GS: Hannah Curie spends 3 Combo on Gatling, loading 3 into Gatling! GS: Hannah Curie enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Hannah Curie has attacked Riley Arwell with Fireball! GS: Hannah Curie has gained 1 Combo! GS: Hannah Curie enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Hannah Curie has completed her action. GS: Riley Arwell takes a glancing hit from Hannah Curie's Fireball for 118 hit points! GS: Hyper applied to Hannah Curie! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Dean echoes Riley's sentiment that it would have been nice to meet under other circumstances. "Should we make plans for later...?" this offer is somewhat undercut by Riley accompanying it with another arrow shot toward Dean; again, his aim is... questionable with the inability to keep his hands steady, but Valmar seems to fill in, guiding the arrow almost relentlessly toward its target. There isn't going to be a later for friendly plans if you shoot Dean in the heart, Riley!
Riley is as shocked as anyone to see Xander pull a gun on Solitaire and fire. Oh no, oh god, how is any of this happening, why would you do that, Xander, to Solitaire, to yourself, why is it too late to put the bullet back in the gun and just carry you off and apologize to everyone and ask them to pretend none of it ever happened...
Panicked, he sort of grasps at Xander's shirt like he might shake him, unsure what to do with him, and stares at Solitaire in horror.
"H-he cares about you, I promise, he's just embarrassed for you to learn that we're evil like this and being an idiot and trying to chase you away, probably... probably?!..." He stares at Xander with uncertainty at this assessment, and then interrupts himself with coughing again.
Xander tells everyone they won't stop, they'll never stop. Riley takes a different tack, and completely contradicts him, a plea in his voice. "That's not true. We only need one more life. This is the last one." It's stupid and futile. Even if Dean and Eleanor had it in them to look the other way, they aren't going to let their friend become a sacrifice, final one or not.
He's not going to get permission. He's better off hoping for forgiveness. His attention turns to Hannah with murderous intent right around the same time she realizes his real role in the situation and sends a fireball for him. There's a rush of fear at the sight of the onrushing flames; a summoning of roiling vines from his arm allows him to shield his face and torso, though the fireball still sears his shoulders as it rages by, and he gives a small cry. The surviving vines tangle toward Hannah in a swirl of slashing thorns and newly born red flowerbuds that burst open to release cruel poisons of various kinds.
Something.... strange happens with Erzebet, who seems almost to be felled amidst a roil of shadow. But then instead she rallies charges forward.
"A-are you saying you're not even with them and you're making an exception just to fight us?!" Well, he did start it. As she reaches for Xander, Riley rushes to intercept, finding his wrist locked in a cold grasp and then the ground rushing up to meet him, knocking what little air he'd managed to get into his lungs back out with a whumph!
While he's shaking off the daze, he hears: I SEAL YOU, XANDER!
"Wh-what? What are you doing to him?!" He pushes back up with trepidation. Can she do that? Will it work?? If it does, is it going to take his life along with it...??!
He lunges at her with a poison-tipped knife, in a race he's bound to lose.
Ruth, meanwhile, has a bayonet with his name on it. She slices into him, halting him with a yelp of pain and surprise.
"Come on...why...! don't you like us?" Another futile plea.
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Hannah Curie with See What Blooms! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Poisoned Knife Bite! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Dean Stark with Homing Arrow! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Dean Stark solidly guards Riley Arwell's Homing Arrow for 77 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Dean Stark! GS: FP up! Guard bonus activated! GS: Dean Stark enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Eleanor Klein takes a glancing hit from Riley Arwell's Poisoned Knife Bite for 79 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Eleanor Klein gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein's Poison Ward may block the effect! GS: Poison blocked!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Solitaire bleeds, and even Patience is shocked enough into pleading agony. And she drinks a potion -- a potion he taught her to make. Which he was even banking on! Betting on the idea that she'd learned well enough to fix up whatever violence he inflicted and survive the battle! Xander's whole face falls into his hand, nails raking his skin as he laughs again, tears spilling down his face. He heaves out a breath to cut it off. "It's a miracle I didn't kill you the first time we met. ...People are calling for you. Stay by them."
He does not look at Riley, even when Riley coughs through his attempts to 'fix' the situation. To which Xander only adds:
"Don't ever look for me again."
Dean has faith that Riley and Xander did their best to avoid this. That faith... isn't misplaced. That would be more mortifying for Xander to know, if he did. Xander failed. After everything, after all his promises, all his efforts. He failed. Again. Now they're here, attempting murder on the innocent.
It's only natural everyone would try to stop them. It's only natural that Xander keep going, keep fighting, keep gnashing and keep killing. And it's only natural Dean God Damn Stark gives him a (well deserved) lecture on friendship in the middle of everyone fighting for their lives while burning rods tear through whatever defenses Xander can muster for himself, threatening to burn flesh and leaving Xander exposed.
"She's trying to help a monster!" Xander snaps. "Those instruments Moor Gault spoke of -- it's been too long, there's not enough left --" He seethes as he says it, hating the way it sounds like he's given up when he hasn't. He hasn't! "I need more time! I need options!" To Riley, he snarls: "This isn't the last time!"
These aren't coherent arguments, or even Xander trying to convince anyone of anything. There's nothing to convince. Everyone is set on their course. He's merely lashing out with words while he lashes out with violence, desperate and aimless.
Erzebet approaches, and Xander prepares himself. She's a Drifter today. "My favorite," he remarks dryly. But then Riley -- that idiot -- is suddenly between them and getting thrown about in his place. "Riley!"
The scythe sprouts from the ground for Xander to rip out of it, and his previous cold silence is exchanged for a feral yell as he rushes Erzebet, swinging in wide, wild cuts and hurls the scythe after Ruth like a boomerang, and it is surprisingly obedient with this behavior.
"You don't get to take him from me!"
Eleanor finds her opportunity to grab onto him. Xander stops, eyes wide, with only a flash of warning pulsing in his skull as the words of her incantation catch up to him. He turns, a surprise knife in hand swinging out at her in ineffectual attempt to stop it. He can't stop it.
The Sage calls upon her Light, and it pours over Xander, at complete odds with the darkness tangled and woven into his soul. His mouth opens, but the scream is soundless. Under the Ley's power he claws at his own head, trashing, choking, veins burning. Flowered vines burst from his joints, his eyepatch pushed off as red petals bloom from his eye. But then they begin to wither -- rapidly, falling in browned, shriveled shapes --
Could it work? Could it seal the darkness? Would it seal Xander with it? But the Fangs of Valmar are a split piece. There is not one, but two. And only one is caught in the seal, Riley's presence enchoring the tug on Xander's soul.
Xander chokes out a broken sound, hand pressed to his now bleeding eye, his other wounds drizzling red. His balance stumbles, shaken and disoriented. There's only pain.
But he's still standing. His flying scythe finds its way back to him, embedding into the ground by his side.
He does not yet move to take it, shaken and staring into empty space.
GS: Xander Lovell has activated Force Action: Extend! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Solitaire Collier with No Room for Remorse! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 2 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Enduring Will! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with Enduring Will! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Recover! Mute and Poison removed from Xander Lovell! GS: Xander Lovell spends 1 Combo on Reload! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Riley Arwell with Resolve! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Erzebet Lefanu suffers a terrible blow from Xander Lovell's Enduring Will for 150 hit points! GS: FP up! Power Burst activated! GS: Xander Lovell drains Erzebet Lefanu! Xander Lovell gains 73 temporary hit points! GS: Ruth Pauling has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: Ruth Pauling solidly guards Xander Lovell's Enduring Will for 74 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Ruth Pauling gains 1 additional Combo! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated! GS: Ruth Pauling enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Xander Lovell drains Ruth Pauling! Xander Lovell gains 34 temporary hit points! GS: ROU|LET|TE: Low! Hannah Curie solidly guards Riley Arwell's See What Blooms for 40 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Hannah Curie gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hannah Curie's Mute Ward may block the effect! GS: Misery inflicts a random effect! Interrupt applied to Hannah Curie! GS: Mute blocked! GS: FP up! Arcane Font activated!
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
"Are you sure Xander's gonna like that?" Dean asks Riley dubiously, of making plans for later. "He doesn't seem okay right now--NEITHER of you seem okay, but he seems REALLY not okay!"
Pause.
"I don't mind if you guys don't, though?"
Yes, even as Riley shoots another arrow at him--and for as relentlessly as it seeks its target, maybe those shaking hands make it a little easier for Dean to shift to one side and partially deflect the shaft so it digs into his shoulder instead of his heart. Dean hisses in pain--but he understands, and he forgives them, even as he can't simply stand idly by.
Solitaire looks in *real* bad shape, though. Even Riley seems shocked, and he's closer to Xander than anyone. Then again, the two of them seem especially out of accord right now. Riley claims this is the last life they need, and Xander immediately contradicts him; Riley tries to make nice with Solitaire, and Xander immediately contradicts *that*. Dean looks back and forth between them, the pain in his shoulder growing only more intense. And of course... there's the fact that there still isn't any good solution for the Fangs.
So he goes with the one thing he does feel sure of: "That still doesn't mean you had to shoot her! Would you shoot Riley?! No! Of course you wouldn't!" Dean insists. "Never mind the curse for a second! You owe that girl an apology, Xander!"
But then Eleanor makes her own bid for the outcome of this battle. 'Hey, wait, that isn't Crest Sorcery,' Dean thinks right before she sweeps forward with an amulet and calls on the power of the Light to seal Xander.
He gasps out loud as she indeed makes contact, and that light *shears* through Xander, bleeding not just liquid but brambles and petals. It looks horrible. Is this the sealing that he'd been told about, the one that would burn away Valmar's power but also Xander's life?
It might be the only real solution. But that doesn't stop Dean from shouting in concern, "Xander!!"
When he survives it, it's a genuine relief. But then Xander calls back his weapon and breaks away from Dean to charge at Erzebet. Dean almost follows, but then Riley goes after Eleanor with a poisoned knife. Not that Dean *knows* it's poisoned, but he knows Riley and Xander, and he knows the sickening numbness that's spreading through his own body, and Dean Stark isn't actually stupid, he just thinks differently from most.
He thus turns to full-body tackle Riley rods-first--they have already cooled to tolerate temperatures, another mechanical miracle of how they were made, thousands of years ago--and attempt to ram him away from her. Maybe especially not great for Riley, with Ruth coming in with that bayonet.
"I do like you guys. I know how hard and how awful this must be for both of you," Dean says quietly. "I'm really sorry I haven't been able to help you two more. But you *know* I can't let you kill people. Last one or not."
Futile indeed. But maybe they can still talk about it later. (They will probably not be able to talk about it later.)
GS: Dean Stark enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Dean Stark has attacked Riley Arwell with Violence Vice! GS: Dean Stark enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: Dean Stark takes 30 damage from Poison! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Solitaire Collier solidly guards Xander Lovell's No Room for Remorse for 0 hit points! GS: Mighty applied to Xander Lovell! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Guard bonus activated!
<Pose Tracker> Solitaire Collier has posed.
It's so noisy.
Solitaire isn't sure she understands what's going on. Eleanor offers to help her. But when she needed help, Xander was the one who helped her. Was she wrong to put her trust in him? He just shot her. He doesn't seem happy about it, the way that Kartikeya had been--but she might die here and it won't even matter. Alternatively, Erzebet might just give in and eat her too. She supposes that's a possiblity.
The healing potion...helps? It's a minor healing potion but this is a major injury.
She hears Ruth say her name. Why, she wonders, is it her enemies who always...
She grabs Patience's handle and presses the head of the axe into the ground. Actually, she thinks, they aren't really enemies anymore. Odessa has fallen apart and she's just trying...to do something for one town right now.
She grits her teeth hard as she she uses Patience as a kind of crutch to stay up on her feet. She's seeing triple right now.
He cares about you, I promise, he's just embarrassed for you to learn that we're evil like this and being an idiot and trying to chase you away, probably...
"These...the people you didn't want me to kill...chasing you...?" Solitaire presses her forehead against the handle of her axe. Don't cry.
Don't cry. If you let them see you cry, then the man Yue called Kartikeya wins. He gets to laugh and you get to cry. He smashes the handle of the axe into her forehead until the pain focuses her. She brings an arm up to wipe those tiers away.
"Evil...?" She asks.
She looks at Xander's laughing face. She sees the tears. It's a miracle I didn't kill you the first time we met.
She blinks her eyes a few more times.
It's a curse, Solitaire thinks with absurd relief. He's being made to do these things. The curse is just a mystical form of Master that takes away the will of the people. This is the sort of thing that Solitaire can understand. She has had to fight servants herself--she tries to avoid it, like when she warned all those workers away from the Family Head she was attacking but...
Can she even reach Xander in this condition?
"...Who are you?" Solitaire asks Dean, reaching for another healing potion which she downs cutscene-style, wheezing the words out.
"Teacher..." She says, slowly, trying to find the words.
"There are plenty of people who deserve to die. I don't think...she's one of them. But I...see you..."
She takes another ragged breath. "As someone I cannot abandon."
She doesn't take another swing at Hannah though whether that's because she can barely stand right now is the question of it.
She looks at Ruth for a long moment, but holds her position mostly because she's not sure if swinging an axe at Xander will help matters or not.
She's still considering it, being actually patient for once.
GS: Solitaire Collier has attacked Xander Lovell with An Attempt At Reconcilliation???! GS: Solitaire Collier has completed her action. GS: Xander Lovell partially evades Solitaire Collier's An Attempt At Reconcilliation??? for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Hyper and Quick applied to Solitaire Collier! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Erzebet Lefanu has posed.
Erzebet finds she has grasped the wrong foe, but she doesn't stop over it. She's not the kind of person who stops because of that. She looks at Riley with dull surprise before straightening up. "Huh," she says, and then --
"That's right," she answers Riley.
"Because I may be a horrible monster," Erzebet continues, "and I may be a curse on Filgaia, don't know for sure, but I know that Solitaire is my comrade and you two have hurt her feelings. And not only did you hurt her feelings," she straightens up, "You shot her with a gun."
At this point Xander makes a pretty compelling argument which is that he slashes Erzebet open kind of like a fish. She sees him coming and is already starting to jump out of the way so -- well, Hannah, don't look that way for a few seconds and it'll be fine. There is a glittering spray of red droplets, which may give Xander a little something more. The power to go on.
Erzebet hits the ground again. Time #2.
"blgh," Erzebet says to herself. She sweeps herself together and hyperventilates for a few moments. It hurts! It hurts ten times more since the sun is up! But if she curls round and -- there, she thinks, laying down in the bloody grass for a moment.
There.
BP: 65/335
I'm hungry, Erzebet thinks, glancing upwards. Her gaze rests on Hannah for a moment, but then - with some effort - turns away. She looks at the two men in contention. Haborym feeds her cryptic data.
What a bloody irritation! Erzebet thinks: I could probably try to kill them but if I DID kill them these other ones would fall on me and Solitaire would be inconsolable. Did the ancient Jehennans anticipate non-lethal tactics? Erzebet thinks in vain, as she pushes herself up with increasingly tatty and blood-stained clothing.
And she looks at Solitaire. And on some obscure level she is relieved that the young mouse-girl is moving, walking, talking again. She bounds forwards, telling her as she goes, "Careful, Soli!" and approaching Xander.
"You should know something," she tells him.
Erzebet swings one arm forwards with tree-shaking power, following up with a back-handed smack with her palm that could juice grapefruits. But she's holding back. It's patently obvious.
"I'm immortal," Erzebet tells Xander. How much of a bluff is that? (Erzebet herself wonders.)
GS: Erzebet Lefanu has attacked Xander Lovell with The Three Fireballs Are What I Call My Armbar-Palmstrike Combo! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has gained 2 Combo! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
'Ruth!' That's Hannah's voice, as a gout of flame tainted by some unknowable force comes short of striking her en route to Riley, and the shock of it brings her out of dipping that much further into the reverie of bloodlust and tears with a flinch.
'Come on... why...! Don't you like us?' Riley's distress tantalizes that flicking tongue, but Xander flings a scythe. Ruth has the benefit of the scythe coming in from her far stronger right side, her wing folding inward as the blade scythes into that and draws blood in a long but otherwise shallow gash.
There is the quiet horror of a small mouse girl ultimately shrugging being shot and holding fast to her beliefs of what the world is and how it needs to be addressed, and Ruth's gaze parts when Solitaire looks at her.
The way Dean speaks in earnest and honesty - he always has - about how much he likes them but accepts he can't let them kill people in a way that feels like putting a mirror on herself in the moment.
The way Erzebet has made complete peace with her other-ness as she nonetheless recites her values and continues about living the way she does, however disconcerting and frightening to those now lower on the food chain.
Ruth pauses as she draws her rifle inward to herself, resting the stock against the ground with the bloodied bayonet blade pointed up.
Light suffuses Ruth's form with all the appearance of a creature trying to hide themselves from it. Some of the mounting gloom of contradiction-filled sorrow manifested as a ceaseless rain parts under an ancient power, leaving a gargoyle-like creature overdressed in clothing still too large for her like a nearly ridiculous contrast to the sanctity of what surrounds her.
"Me," Ruth mouths quietly, in the throes of clarity. "You'd give me more than just your fear." Eleanor is one of the few to never have put Ruth at arm's length, despite everything, though certainly Ruth is not wanting for those willing to give her a chance at all. The Light of a source of old bears down upon her in a wholly indescribable feeling.
She doesn't hate it, and it doesn't seem to reject her. But it feels like something's watching her, no matter how she sometimes might try to hide herself behind her wing in which to linger her gaze upon her rosary.
So she'll let herself be seen.
"Hannah," Ruth's voice is disarmingly gentle despite her monstrous shape. "I watched how you dealt with those highwaymen. They lived, even with... your power." Ruth might not be on the level of Venetia (who is?) in terms of Crest Sorcery mastery, but she knows enough there's something wrong and dangerous about it.
"You spared them." They were alive, each and every one. "You're strong..."
She was evasive, when confronted. Something Hannah was agitated and afraid of sharing. The fear was answer enough for her.
"And scared, aren't you." Ruth's eyes fall upon the shaft of her own weapon. "You don't want to have to hurt anyone, do you. Not even before the Darkness itself... it's frightening what you do when you give yourself permission to hurt." A discordant smile. "And find yourself too strong to be stopped."
Conflict roils in Ruth's heart again. Riley's feeling of hurt and betrayal, Xander's disdain, knowing how much danger Solitaire and Hannah are in, and...
"That doesn't have you to be you today," Ruth rises and lowers her wing from her view of the world around her as she takes the dangerous step to once again consciously give herself permission to embrace everything that she simultaneously rejects, Light shining and accentuating the ugly, unsightly, bloodied rifle as she tries to run it through Riley as he's preoccupied with drawing blood from the intended victim, and carve that blade right back out.
She'll bear the guilt of having to do something like that so Hannah doesn't have to hurt someone today, while the Light bearing upon her - and emboldening her - watches.
GS: Ruth Pauling spends 1 Combo on Poison! GS: Ruth Pauling has attacked Riley Arwell with Scars of Celesti! GS: Ruth Pauling has gained 1 Combo! GS: Ruth Pauling's stances have changed to Hero! GS: Ruth Pauling takes 25 damage from Poison! GS: Ruth Pauling has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor grabs on. That knife in hand is a surprise to her, and she can't fully guard against it; the magic of her jacket is overcome to leave a bloody wound on her where the knife passes, but it is not enough to stop her. She doesn't flinch as she sees her magic take effect, but she wants to. And that leaves her vulnerable to a brief moment with Riley, and while he does lose the race, the knife still scores across her skin. Her amulet glows, preventing further poisoning, but it doesn't help that she's bleeding from another wound.
"Gah--"
It fails. Eleanor's heart sinks as she senses it. She realizes her mistake immediately. Perhaps she could've only sealed the evil within him, prevented it spreading, but of course, he is tied to Riley. "I'm sorry," she says, and she isn't apologizing for hurting him this time. Eleanor stumbles back, still bloody. "I can't--"
Her shoulders sink in frustration. "I can't do it alone!"
"I know it doesn't matter," Eleanor says to Riley and Xander both. "But this isn't what I want, either. I wish we could avoid fighting. I wish I could invite you to my wedding. ...But if I can see an opportunity to stop you dealing this harm, I have to try."
Eleanor looks to Solitaire hesitating. "Solitaire! He'll attack you again if he has to! You should run!" She doesn't hate Solitaire; the reason they were enemies is no more. ...Though they may be again, of course, gven Solitaire's philosophies. But for now...
Well, Erzebet has a compelling reasoning. Solitaire is her comrade. Eleanor doesn't try to argue that. Indeed she says, "She's right. I've tried to kill her before."
That's helpful, right?
Eleanor has no time to worry about Hannah's magic for now. She's too busy trying to save Hannah's life, and now her own for meddling. "I couldn't," she says to Dean. "But I had to try. ...I agree. It's terrible. But we seem to feel the same."
And Ruth--Ruth, who bears up under the light that Eleanor perhaps cruelly shines upon her. Ruth mouths it, and Eleanor turns to look at her, for just a moment, to try to catch her eyes. SHe probably won't, given Ruth's nature. "Yes. Because I believe in you, Ruth."
Permission to hurt.. Could Hannah understand Ruth so well?
"....Very well," Eleanor says then, making a decision. "I can't stop you today."
She pulls a Crest instead, with Geo and Muse emblazoned upon it in golden threads, and lifts her free hand to focus. She should probably use a rod or something else, but she uses just her hand--and while it is recognizeably Crest Sorcery... It is more powerful than such a spell should be, infused with a primal brilliance.
"O starry heaven that watches over us all! Turn your gaze, and turn back the wheel of Fate! Anamnesis!"
All around Eleanor, Time shifts; wounds that were dealt roll back as if they'd never been. Potential energy thrums instead in each of her allies, even Erzebet and Solitaire.
"...But I can damn well make it so troublesome to try to kill any of us that you can't manage it."
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Ruth Pauling with Anamnesis! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Anamnesis! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Solitaire Collier with Anamnesis! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Dean Stark with Anamnesis! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Hannah Curie with Anamnesis! GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Eleanor Klein with Anamnesis! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 3 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein takes 29 damage from Poison! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: Gamble! Eleanor Klein heals Eleanor Klein! She gains 177 temporary hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Gamble! Eleanor Klein heals Ruth Pauling! She gains 242 temporary hit points! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Gamble! Eleanor Klein heals Erzebet Lefanu! She gains 206 temporary hit points! GS: CRITICAL! Gamble! Eleanor Klein heals Dean Stark! He gains 221 temporary hit points! GS: Gamble! Eleanor Klein heals Solitaire Collier! She gains 183 temporary hit points! GS: Solitaire Collier enters CONDITION GREEN!! GS: CRITICAL! Xander Lovell solidly guards Erzebet Lefanu's The Three Fireballs Are What I Call My Armbar-Palmstrike Combo for 85 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Xander Lovell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Mighty applied to Erzebet Lefanu! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Erzebet Lefanu enters CONDITION RED!! GS: Gamble! Eleanor Klein heals Hannah Curie! She gains 165 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Hannah has a lot of questions. A small sampling includes 'Why is this one person talking about making plans later?' 'Why did this other person attack the person trying to help them?' and 'Seriously, what the hell is up with Eleanor turning into an owl and casting non-crest sorcery magic?'
Riley's declaration that Xander is just trying to chase Solitaire away because... because he's embarrassed about his condition, however, provokes a much more personal and unsettling question of herself.
Could this be me if I keep avoiding everyone?
There's something clearly not at all right here, if their murderous goals are survival and not cruelty as Dean stated. Even if they profess to being 'evil.' But thoughts of her own fate are far too painful to contemplate at the moment--she has to survive, first, if she wants to change her behavior later.
Riley begs them that this is the last one. "They'd never agree to that. And neither do I," she adds with a snarl.
Riley summons vines to block her fireball, and then retaliates by sending them at her. She's still holding the crest graph, so she inhales sharply and lets loose with a quick spray of frames--not as large as the fireball she just sent, rushed as it is, but it burns through the center and takes out the bulk of the vines and thorns. The rest score a bevy of glancing scratches, leaving her looking rough, but still in decent shape overall.
Eleanor's magic does... Hannah has to cringe a little. She knows Eleanor would never intentionally inflict all of that pain in that way on someone--those plants must be coming from him, instead, but what sorts of powers are at play that could cause such an interplay?
More questions for later. And also, 'Why is Dean trying to play therapist to the pair of attempted murderers?'
But she's keeping an eye on Solitaire, though the girl doesn't seem to be making for an attack. She still seems in pretty bad shape, but she won't counter her out as an opponent just yet. And she catches that look from Erzebet, too, wary and on her guard.
But then Ruth addresses her, pulling her thoughts back to the fight with the brigands, to their previous (and awkward) conversations. She is ready to be annoyed--she doesn't want to bring that all up again, and especially not now, of all times, but then...
'And scared, aren't you?'
She wants to help--or at least it seems that way to her mind. And she's here, fighting on her behalf. Yes, she could also just as easily be fighting Xander and Riley on moral grounds, but at least a little bit of it has to be for her sake too, right? With the way she's talking about her not having to be the one to hurt anyone today.
Her voice is soft, her head turned away still, but her eyes looking in Ruth's direction. "Let's... talk later, okay?"
But she's listening to Ruth, and she almost misses Eleanor's words--
"Wait, wedding?!"
Shouldn't she and Monty have gotten engaged already?
She inhales deeply as Eleanor's magic wraps around her--this is something she recognizes, at least--she remembers Eleanor's work and study in time magic. Her scratches and wounds seem to reverse, leaving her bloodied, but more whole than before. And when she lets that breath go, her expression is more determined than before.
"I will not take your lives," she declares, slipping the crest graph into her pouch and withdrawing another one. "But neither will I let you take mine." The crest grows brown with power as she channels her magic through it... and then she stomps on the ground. A line of force rumbles dangerously through the ground headed straight for Riley. Dust and pebbles kick up in its wake, and then earthen spikes stab out of the ground. They are polished smooth and sharp--almost seeming more made of iron than stone--as they come at him in rapid succession from underfoot.
GS: Hannah Curie has attacked Riley Arwell with Tremor Spike! GS: Hannah Curie has gained 1 Combo! GS: Interrupt expired! GS: Hannah Curie has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Riley Arwell accepts Xander Lovell's Resolve for 0 hit points! GS: Protect applied to Riley Arwell! GS: Riley Arwell is now being protected by Xander Lovell! GS: FP up! Xander Lovell's Reload! and Sufferer activated! GS: CRITICAL! Riley Arwell solidly guards Dean Stark's Violence Vice for 79 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Riley Arwell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Break applied to Riley Arwell! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Protect! Xander Lovell takes 20 damage! GS: Riley Arwell solidly guards Ruth Pauling's Scars of Celesti for 73 hit points! GS: Dispel! Protect removed! GS: Poison applied to Riley Arwell! GS: Disease and Disrupt blocked! GS: FP up! Sufferer activated! GS: Interrupt! Attack weakened! GS: Riley Arwell fully evades Hannah Curie's Tremor Spike for 0 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Riley Arwell gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Cripple blocked! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Sufferer activated!
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Erzebet has choice words for the Fangs concerning Solitaire. And not only did you hurt her feelings. You shot her with a gun. Riley did not shoot Solitaire with a gun. But even so, his eyes shine with wounded defensiveness on Xander's behalf. "It's complicated!" he says. And then: "We're sorry."
The whole thing is... awful. Is she going to be all right? Emotionally, he can't begin to contemplate. But even physically, it looks dicey. Xander tells her never to look for him again. "Xander!" A panicked look at him. "He doesn't mean that...!" This time Riley does shake him a little.
I wish I could invite you to my wedding.
When Riley looks back at Eleanor, his eyes large. "Your wedding...?? Is it soon? Can we come?" She just tragically said she couldn't invite you, Riley...! A beat. Another important question has occured to him. "You can be an owl now?"
Dean also expresses mixed emotions, and seems to be actually entertaining the offer of a friendly hangout. "Xander's not very social, but... he likes it deep down!"
Dean reiterates that he just can't allow this, whether he likes them or not, which he underscores with tackling Riley to the ground. Riley grasps at the ground and his dark Shovel of Valmar obediently springs forth from the earth, and he retaliates with a wild swing to try to push Dean away again. The physical heft of the shovel is chased with a deathly aura that saps at strength and vitality. "I know, I know, I know!! But look at us -- we're like this because we wasted so much time trying to find another way. But I know it doesn't matter. You can't stop, we can't stop, it's just-- aaah!" That outburst wasn't good for his breathing. He doubles over in another coughing fit.
Hannah is particularly unimpressed by Riley's insistence that she would be the Fangs' last kill, and answers it with spikes from the ground. Riley pushes off the ground with the shovel as if it's a vaulting pole, narrowly avoiding the bite of the spikes. "You've got every right to hate us, but..." he doesn't bother to finish the sentence -- there's no justification to finish it with that would be strong enough. Instead of words, he drives the shovel into the ground, which pulses with dark magic. Vines spring up from the earth, taking shape around her into a spiked cage in the shape of a coffin that seeks to slam shut with her inside before burrowing into the earth.
For this cruel maneuver, he is rewarded with Ruth's blade in his back, giving a startled gasp and pulling away in a stumble before it manages to plunge too gravely deep, though it's still a serious wound. He gives her another look of betrayal, but can't seem to find any words to put behind it; they all know who the ones really at fault are.
Eleanor tries her sealing magics against the power of Valmar entwined with Xander's soul, and the result is... horrifying, as the powers seem to fight one another with Xander's body as the battleground. He shoots a look at Eleanor that holds a mixture of anger and desperation, lashing out at her with a sweep of the shovel's life-stealing aura before setting his jaw with sudden determination and stepping toward her.
"If you want to seal us, can you find someone to help us make this?" he says, and pushes a folded piece of paper into her hand. It's an alchemical recipe, calling for rare ingredients. "I wasn't lying when I said we were almost finished. The Garden we're feeding is almost complete, and that's as long as... Valmar needs us to exist. When the end comes, this purification potion might let our souls go free at least."
Riley rushes over to Xander, then, his arms going round him. "Xander... Xander..."
GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Dean Stark with Brush with Death! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 2 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell has attacked Eleanor Klein with Brush with Death! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 2 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell spends 2 Combo on Headshot! GS: MYSTIC ARTE! Riley Arwell has attacked Hannah Curie with To Hell with You! GS: Riley Arwell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Riley Arwell takes 31 damage from Poison! GS: Riley Arwell has completed his action. GS: CRITICAL! Eleanor Klein takes a glancing hit from Riley Arwell's Brush with Death for 103 hit points! GS: Break applied to Eleanor Klein! GS: CRITICAL! Dean Stark solidly guards Riley Arwell's Brush with Death for 88 hit points! GS: Break applied to Dean Stark!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander is very, very far from the defintion of 'okay'.
"I won't insult her with one," Xander tells Dean of apologies, pretty much exactly as Riley apologizes. "I was given a choice and I made it." There weren't many options to choose from, no. But they were there, and Xander did choose. In Solitaire's case, hurting her feelings was the point, which Riley unfortunately understood immediately and Xander is hoping if he ignores Riley hard enough on that, so will everyone else.
Solitaire is still here, suffering, and Xander doesn't allow himself to turn away. He's waiting for it, that moment betrayal and sorrow sets in, or her rage, or anything that would be useful in keeping her from --
Teacher. Xander bristles, fangs bared. Solitaire always speaks slowly, but each word now comes painfully dragged one after the next, puncturing with everything she's not supposed to say. She won't abandon him.
"Why are you all like this?!" He snaps his gaze to Riley. "This is your fault!" Is he accusing Riley of being the reason people can't stop liking them? Won't give up on them? Talk about inviting them to weddings? Yes. Absolutely. Entirely. "Can't you stop charming people for two minutes? What am I talking about, of course you can't."
But on the heels of Eleanor's plea, Xander fires on Solitaire again. "Listen to her, Solitaire!"
Erzebet says she's immortal, and after that bloody display, Xander is inclined to believe her. To punctuate the point, she tries to juice his face with the back of her hand. That will bruise later, and Xander cuts his lip on his own fang in the staggering impact. He looks back at her with a growl of annoyance instead of the fear he should more rightly be feeling in the face of what she is -- something like him, maybe worse, maybe better. Maybe they could have been friends about it. Not now.
"Then leave. I need someone to murder."
He thrusts himself forward, not with a blade, but with his foot, aiming to kick her squarely in her center and knock her away from him. If he's trying to swat her aside, he sure is having to use all of himself to do it... But he's trying to knock her back into the sudden maw of thorns of a flytrap that's erupting from the ground behind her, the grotesque, throbbing plant intent on snapping her shut its blood-starved jaws.
Ruth makes her dive for Riley, and all of Xander seizes in panic. She knows. She knows exactly why he lives and exactly why he'll die and he wishes he could hate her for that. What he does do is scream his protest, leaping for her, trying to get between her and Riley --
And failing utterly. The blade goes straight through Riley's back. Xander whirls his scythe back in his grip and leaps for her with an overhead swing.
...An assault that ends with Xander staggered and struggling. His fights to stand, every movement wavering. Eleanor is, unfortunately, making good on her word of stopping this assault through sheer force of preventing death. Hannah also refuses to die, even if she won't fight back hard enough to kill them n turn. If Xander can't manage a kill, he could end up killing himself on the symptoms of the curse trying. One way or another, Valmar will have its due.
But he needs to, he has to --
The rest of the battle ceases to exist as he looks up at Riley handing the paper to Eleanor. Making something. To seal them. The purification potion. Xander stares at Riley, his scythe slipping from his grip and hitting the ground. It wilts fully as the anger and violence bleeds out of Xander, making his ill complexion and struggle to keep himself upright all the more obvious. Dean might be starting to realize the depths of why he's seeing Riley and Xander so far out of sync.
"Where did you..." But it isn't like Xander hides his belongings or his notebook from Riley. He just never thought --
Strength is in short supply all of the sudden. Xander falls into Riley.
"That's... not what that's for," he protests, voice suddenly small and fragile. "I made that to save you." Xander finds his volume again, but not enough anger to push out the growing despair. "You can't use that to let them kill us! I made that to save you!"
But he was wrong. He was so, so wrong. He failed. But this was before he ever took a life. A Xander that didn't deserve this existed, and that recipe was everything to him. This mistake isn't allowed to haunt him like this...!
"You can't -- You can't do this to me!"
GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Solitaire Collier with I WILL kill you!! GS: Xander Lovell has activated Force Action: Fury Shot! GS: You have activated the Force Action Fury Shot! GS: Xander Lovell spends 1 Combo on Interrupt! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Erzebet Lefanu with Dionaea! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 2 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell has attacked Ruth Pauling with No...!! GS: Xander Lovell has gained 1 Combo! GS: Xander Lovell has completed his action. GS: Erzebet Lefanu takes a glancing hit from Xander Lovell's Dionaea for 144 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Erzebet Lefanu gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Interrupt blocked! GS: FP up! Evade bonus activated! GS: Erzebet Lefanu has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt! GS: Ruth Pauling has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Xander Lovell's attack becomes clear! GS: Ruth Pauling solidly guards Xander Lovell's Dance with Death for 198 hit points! GS: FP up! Power Burst and Sufferer activated! GS: Sneak! The true nature of Xander Lovell's attack becomes clear! GS: Solitaire Collier solidly guards Xander Lovell's Beyond the Veil for 21 hit points! GS: Reaction switch bonus! Solitaire Collier gains 1 additional Combo! GS: Disrupt and Interrupt applied to Solitaire Collier! GS: Quick applied to Xander Lovell! GS: FP up! Power Burst activated! GS: Solitaire Collier has lost 2 Combo from Interrupt!
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
...Ruth's vision is obscured in a sudden whirlwind of petals, and the sting of death upon Xander's scythe pulses with volatile force.
The Darkness of Valmar consumes the area, only Xander's one eye visible before several whirling swings of his blade come at once from seemingly impossible directions.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
...But this time, Xander's firing around Solitaire, not at her, with the intention of disrupting her misguided, reconciliatory advance rather than drawing blood or inflicting serious injury a second time.
The more she holds her ground, the more obvious this is, and Xander's arms are shaking violent with every effort to set his misdirected aim. Solitaire has a pulse, and the Fangs are begging him to take it from her.
Hypocritical. Stupid. Pathetic. Useless. No one deserves to die, someone has to, if not one of them, then Riley Riley Riley Riley...
GS: Hannah Curie has activated Force Action: Guard! GS: CRITICAL! Hannah Curie solidly guards Riley Arwell's To Hell with You for 140 hit points! GS: Poison applied to Hannah Curie! GS: FP up! Arcane Font and Guard bonus activated! GS: Strain! Riley Arwell takes 60 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean meets Eleanor's eye, and his gaze softens in mutual understanding. "Yeah. It sure does," he agrees. Later, he brightens. "Oh, you're getting married? Congratulations!" ...not the best time, but you have to say these things when you can.
Eleanor will make that easier in a variety of ways when she calls up that healing magic--that *time* magic?--that rolls back the clock on his wounds as if they never existed. Riley's arrow is rejected from his shoulder, and it clattered to the ground without fanfare. ...the poison is still there, though, and it is Not Great.
Solitaire asks him who he is. If she means anything deep or poignant, it's lost on him, for he simply calls back, "I'm Dean! Dean Stark! And you're--Solitaire, right?" He heard Eleanor and Ruth calling her that, and others called her Soli, so it seems like a good bet.
Ruth meanwhile addresses Hannah. Specifically, she says a lot of very insightful things that Dean does not at the present moment put together. But she seems to be doing relatively all right for someone involved in a pitched battle to the maybe-death (*he* doesn't want to kill anyone, at least), and it least *sounds* like she's being nice to Hannah, and that's enough for him for the moment.
It *is* an unsettling portrait of a potential future, though, isn't it? Never mind all those other questions Hannah's got, too. Those are just going to have to wait.
Erzebet meanwhile takes a LOT of damage. Dean was too busy tackling Riley to see the moment of, but that's a ton of blood in her wake. Good thing she's... immortal?? Really?? But Eleanor says it too, so Dean only looks bewildered for a moment. The important thing is that she's on Solitaire's side, and that seems like a good thing to him after she was shot through the heart, with Xander to blame.
Riley at least apologizes for the Solitaire shooting, but then, *he* wasn't the one who did the shooting. He laughs a bit when Riley insists Xander likes the hang-outs deep down. It'd be nice if that were true, but these two... They both keep saying opposite things, right after one another. He gives Xander a concerned look and wonders, "Are you two really on the same page?"
The two of them go down, then rapidly get back up on their feet. Riley pulls a shovel--and so Dean does too, Twin Fenrir flashing out of his hands and reaching behind his back and under his jacket for the Devil Shovel, Ace of Spades. Just in time to block Riley's vicious swing, he brings it up to parry. This might stop a direct blow, but it isn't enough to ward off its aura, and Dean's footing buckles as it saps at his strength.
Ironically, he's saved when Riley shouts and breaks down coughing. "H-hey, don't yell too much, okay? You're coughing up a lot of blood!" Dean protests, brows knitting with concern.
Several things happen in rapid succession. Riley calls up that tomb of flowers for Hannah; Ruth stabs Riley violently, to which Xander retaliates; Riley hands a written recipe to Eleanor; and Xander loses all will to fight to run to Riley's side. Seeing this last thing in particular, Dean lowers his shovel, watching them with open distress in his blue eyes.
"Xander... Riley..." he murmurs.
Their despair is so thick it's nearly palpable. It's painful to watch. He looks over at Solitaire; then he hurries over to Hannah, to try to chop down that arboreal tomb enough to help her out, or help her help herself out, however it shakes out.
"Hannah! Are you gonna be okay?" he asks, offering her a hand if possible.
GS: Dean Stark takes 32 damage from Poison! GS: Cover and Poison expired! GS: Dean Stark has completed his action.
<Pose Tracker> Erzebet Lefanu has posed.
Erzebet's head turns for a moment when Haborym's lenses give her a heads up on an incoming sorcerous working, but when it strikes her it instead infuses her with -- with -- ?
What? She's already forgotten some of the sensations.
But when the blood first moved within her, she learned how to be as stone. Her arms sweep upwards, empty hands held outwards as she adopts a rather aggressive pose for a moment. "Yes! Hahahah!" But...
There's a wedding afoot? This is baffling, perhaps, to Erzebet, who has probably not thought about getting married in a long time. Then again, she always was a weirdo. It seems to be throwing people off.
And then Riley is talking. It's increasingly clear to Erzebet that Riley is the talker in this power couple, and perhaps the sweetheart, too. And what he says is--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDL3UYn3mE0
A plan for death. Valmar? Making a garden? It's nearly done?
Somehow Erzebet can't feel rage when she hears that.
They're going to die from it, whatever it was, and it doesn't seem as though it was their choice.
Erzebet does not quite go limp. She's been in too many fights for that. But her guard slackens and her aggressive posture fades. Xander is probably pretty relieved when he's able to kick her backwards and into a horrible carnivorous plant, which does briefly completely engulf Erzebet and dig fangs into her flesh.
But her melancholy expression remains even when she sort of casually thrusts out one arm and rips open one of the lobes and chooses to roll tactically outwards, hopping upwards afterwards, still gently smouldering and bleeding from a few dozen places where the fang-needles get into her.
Erzebet doesn't really look at Xander or Riley. Instead, she says something in a language that sounds something like ancient Zeboim, but isn't. What she says is cryptic but what can be understood is that she says "Valmar" several times, even if one time she is using some kind of alternative-but-recognizable enunciation.
Behind the lenses, Erzebet reads: NO DATA.
Erzebet raises her hands and folds them behind her head. "... Well," she says, "I'll figure it out, I suppose. There's time."
At least for her. Somehow, perhaps improbably, she smiles in the vague direction of Dean, and lets out a sigh; her hands rest on her hips, and after that she looks towards Solitaire.
<Pose Tracker> Solitaire Collier has posed.
Solitaire really just had no idea who he is and a name is all she asked for. "Yes." Solitaire says, committing it to memory for later. Are Riley and Xander on the same page? In her experience, yes they are on the same page but that doesn't mean the text on that page are agreeing, they are pretty aware of the differences between their text.
Solitaire's eyes widen at Riley's words. If he's right, they don't have much time. They're going to die they're going to die.
"It's not fair," Solitaire says quietly. "...You have the same look in your eyes, it's not fair."
In the end she's still, basically, a kid and she doesn't know what to do here. She doesn't want to hurt Xander or Riley and she doesn't want to die.
It is a strange feeling, too, not wanting to die. She never felt she wanted to die before but she was pretty relaxed about her end but now she's keenly aware that she doesn't want to die.
Not until she accomplishes her own goals. And far away from the people she likes so they never know...
"...I know," Solitaire says to Riley, even as she's in the process of still bleeding pretty heavily. She might keel over at this rate just from the blood loss.
Or at least, until Eleanor unleashes that crest sorcery and restores her wounds, rewinding time considerably so that the heaviest of wounds are turned back. She's still--not looking great, woozy from the sudden restoration but she stays up for now.
I may be a curse on Filgaia, don't know for sure, but I know that Solitaire is my comrade and you two have hurt her feelings. And not only did you hurt her feelings, you shot her with a gun.
Solitaire laughs a bit sharply this time, hefting the Demon Axe out of the ground. She can't abandon her comrade, she realizes. Even if this is so terrible, Erzebet didn't eat her.
"I...don't want to leave." Solitaire says. "If you're doomed, I want to be with you until it comes."
She runs right for Xander. The bullets shoot around her, hitting her arms and legs. She is a badass in some ways and one of those ways is recognizing that Xander doesn't want to hurt her and that means she can get into his range a bit more easily than others.
She swings her axe for Xander's neck in a smooth motion and--
--she stops, Xander is struggling even to stand. Well before it gets there.
Instead Solitiare turns and takes a swipe at the Scythe, trying to clobber it hard enough that it goes flying out of Xander's hands.
Listen to Eleanor he said.
"I'm sorry," Solitaire says. "But I have to be me. I can't be a version that runs from you."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
The utter betrayal in Riley's eyes meet Ruth's, for a second - between a monster cursed by Valmar and one by their own internal dissonance. Tear-stained eyes scarce conceal a feral thrill as her hands' grip on the rifle start to loosen. (Her tail, acting both as counterbalance to the single wing and effectively an extra limb to hold the rifle, instinctively compensates.)
Eleanor believes in her. It helps her re-assert her grip, in that second as a weight starts to pool into her chest as Xander's anguished, frightened screams for what Ruth nearly accomplishes brings her out of that wavering moment of contemplation.
It saves her life as she hoists the rifle up to block the overhead scything swing that opens the assault, a small amount of patinated bronze-green hair flitting off as some small droplets of blood leave her forehead from a shallow scratch, as the Light's infusion flares around her and her Malevolence.
A whirlwind of petals blinds her sight, fills her one good ear with the sound of an ill omen... but it does not obscure Xander's desperation.
She whirls, catching the majority of those swings between her wing serving as a shield that flexes outward, once more swinging the bayonet blade up to try and catch it. Fresh stains of purplish blood seep into her heavy overcoat, heavier wounds lightened through Eleanor's Crest Sorcery through her chosen allies and champions against the darkness in the moment.
As the whirlwind disengages and more conventional senses return to Ruth, she watches as several show such care and concern for the two of them - and the uncertain, terrifying fate that seems to await Hannah from that coffin where she misses Riley trying to give Eleanor the thing he's certain will be a form of salvation.
"Hannah--"
She's too late to stop whatever happens from happening.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
"Ah, thank you!" Eleanor says to Dean. Then to Riley, "It's soon, but I--" Eleanor frowns. "Yes! I can be an owl now!" That is a welcome distraction from the question of whether they can come, which means she hasn't actually said they can't. Eleanor may have answers for Hannah, meanwhile--but not yet, not here. Except for--
"Ah, ha ha, I haven't mentioned my new engagement, have I?" Eleanor says to Hannah. "It's a long story!" Assuming they all live, she'll tell her about it! But for now, at least, Hannah's declaration is... reassuring.
But Riley... Riley she can't blame for being horrified; Eleanor evades that first sweep partially--she avoids the shovel, but not the aura, and coughs loudly when Riley uses it--but he then hands a paper out. She accepts it in her hand with surprise.
"...I--I see," she answers, still shocked. "Yes," she says. "I will. I'll do that."
Xander does not stop her. He protests, but Eleanor sees it. "Xander..."
Her face tightens as she draws herself up in resolve. "Very well."
She looks around at the others. She still has her disputes with Erzebet, but... she sees that melancholy. They all feel it here, don't they? In this, they are the same, even if in so little else, and Eleanor finds that she feels that connection even with the enemy who she fought at her home school. Ruth, in her Light and in her Darkness is still standing, as always, a shield before them. And Dean is seeing to Hannah. Eleanor can only hope she comes through that attack all right. As she hopes, she works a second spell, of Wing and Geo. She makes no chant this time, does not focus with words, instead holding the Crest and letting dynamism and stasis both halt the poison, anchor power within her.
"...I'm going to go. Anyone who comes with me, I'll see to your wounds."
Her expression is pained, and not from injury. The betrayal in Xander's eyes...
GS: Eleanor Klein has attacked Hannah Curie with Reversion! GS: Eleanor Klein has gained 1 Combo! GS: Eleanor Klein takes 25 damage from Poison! GS: Poison expired! GS: Eleanor Klein has completed her action. GS: CRITICAL! Hannah Curie accepts Eleanor Klein's Reversion for 0 hit points! GS: Restore! Poison removed! GS: Lock state applied to Hannah Curie!
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Those vines erupt so fast, and they threaten to drag her off to--well, somewhere assuredly not very present. There's just the barest glimpse anyone can see of Hannah drawing her cloak around herself as she slaps a crest graph to herself, a shimmering field of force encasing her body just as the vines do. That coffin closes tight around her, but it meets resistance as Hannah pushes back against it with that shielding spell, several long tense momentsof waiting as the two wills battle it out...
Dean comes to help, but all of a sudden the coffin bursts apart from the inside, like a morbid flower in sudden bloom, and Hannah staggers out. Her cloak might be beyond repair this time, thorny vines and spiky cage both having rendered many long gashes in it. Gashes that are replicated on her arms and legs, that she used to try and keep the worst of the damage off of her face and body.
She is a bloody mess, and she sways as she takes a step out of the wreckage of the coffin, poison coursing through her veins.
Her eyes are fixed squarely on Riley, but to Dean she says, "Stand back."
She is breathing hard, and inside of her her own darkness is churning, whatever dark force that corrupts her magic growing stronger as her anger grows, as her fight-or-flight response is triggered, as a very palpable fear surges within her. But she takes a long, slow breath.
She doesn't need to kill them. Perhaps it might be a mercy--both to them and to other potential victims--but Riley seems to suggest there is a way to help them, handing Eleanor a piece of paper, and until she finds out more...
But Eleanor's magic washes over her, and her breathing eases as the poison is flushed from her system and she stands upright.
All she has to do is convince them that she is not the target that is worth killing. That she can give just as much as they can. From the pouch on her waist come two crest graphs, both shining bright. One a brilliant brown, strong and earthy, and one a sparking yellow-white, charged with lightning.
Does she seriously intend to cast both at once?
Her gaze is stedy as she levels it on the two Fangs. "I don't know what your story is or why you need to kill, but I will not be brought down by the likes of you. I suggest you leave. Now."
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Dean fights shovel with shovel, and even amidst the melee, expresses concern for Riley's cough. Riley's eyes sparkle as his heart is moved by this. "Thanks... I just wish you weren't standing between me and getting the thorns out of my lungs." It's unfair to say, but so's everything he's said to anyone today.
Eleanor agrees to Riley's grim request, and he gives a nod of thanks, his features tight in an effort to hold back his usual emotiveness. "Despite everything, I hope we can still make it to your wedding..." Riley, she didn't invite you!
Hannah bursts free of Riley's coffin seeming mostly intact, but understandably angry about the experience. She threatens to unleash a new level of her power against them, and indecision flickers in Riley -- whether to double down on this reckless attempt, or admit what's been obvious all along, that this is just another disaster with no change of an ending that gives them a reprieve from the curse.
The decision is made for him when Xander breaks down with Riley's betrayal, leaving himself open to disarmament by Solitaire. Riley tries to weather his broken words, but seems to shudder a little at the weight of that pain, drawing him against himself and mouthing "Go. Just go" to the others. No one is willing to let them kill anyone and they're not willing to kill the Fangs, either, and so they're just stuck in the same trap as before, the vice growing that much tighter.
His eyes soften with a look at Solitaire, who has been receiving all sorts of horrible and painful mixed messages. But he doesn't mean to tell her to run away and never come back, as much as the instruction might sound that way. He dares to raise his voice to a whisper. "Find us again another time."
To Xander, he says softly, remorsefully, "Didn't you tell me to? Wasn't that our deal?" He knows it doesn't matter. Who is he to make deals about when Xander should live or die? Xander forgave him for betraying him those years ago and pulling him into the curse, not because it was okay, but because he never really accepted the whole of what it meant. And now the price is coming due...
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Dean asks if they're on the same page, and that might hurt more than anything else that's happened so far. They're not. They haven't been for a while. Xander doesn't know how to get it back. He thought stabbing a train won him that. Then he failed again. Lost it again.
Pathetic. Useless. So, so stupid. This all started with that god forsaken potion. Digging through tomes and research, piecing together the theory, gathering the ingredients while trying to keep Riley stable, both probably having more brushes with danger and death during that time than their naive, hopeful hearts wanted to acknowledge... He poured everything into that potion, so confident it would save Riley from Valmar's evil and his life with it.
And all it did was make it convenient to kill him while the church thanked him for it.
Eleanor is walking away, and Xander lets out a halted wail, reaching out as if there was any way for him to cross the distance that way. There isn't. He's too weak to scramble out of Riley's arms. In an awful moment he wishes would end, he's not Xander the Fang of Valmar, resolved to slit throats of sacrifices, he's Xander the Softhearted Alchemist, dedicated to the art and science of medicine, desperate to keep his work -- this unforgivable mistake -- from being used to kill his best friend.
Being disarmed does not matter. A powerful spell threatening to batter him beyond repair does not matter. Riley's attempts to calm him, indeed, do not matter. Only one thing matters, has ever mattered, and whenever he forgets that, they both suffer for it.
"It's not yours! I didn't make it to kill him! You can't! Please!"
They can try to kill them by any other means. Seal him in Sage's Light. Burn them to ash with Moor Gault. Stab them and let the Fangs take whoever as a new host, it doesn't matter. Xander will fight it all with everything he is, but their use and any success would be fair. This isn't. This can't. They can't they can't they can't--
There's nothing he can do to stop anyone, and no more will for violence left to give. Xander can only plead futilely with an uncaring universe that's never once answered his prayers.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Dean's mouth twists at Riley's wish. He doesn't say anything to it, though. There's nothing anyone can say to that, unfair as it is.
And so the battle comes to an anticlimactic close, and Dean goes to help his latest friend. However, she bursts out of her prison of greenery on her own, albeit with a lot of damage. "Woah--Hannah! Are you...?" Dean starts to say, already moving to offer her a shoulder to lean on. But she bids him stand back instead, and although he's confused, he does see those Crests. Uneasy, he takes a few steps back... but fortunately, Hannah reads the mood of the battle and only threatens violence, rather than following through.
But Riley bids them go as Xander breaks down and begs them not to use that potion. Dean looks over at Eleanor and the others uneasily. Riley had said that Xander would like the company, but... at this point, Dean suspects he's either lying or just plain wrong.
Either way, he says quietly to the group, "Let's get Hannah and Solitaire out of here. They're hurt pretty bad..." Eleanor can surely tend to them, but--somewhere that's not here, he thinks. He'll gently herd the group away to the extent that he can, one last pained glance over his shoulder at the Fangs before they go.
<Pose Tracker> Solitaire Collier has posed.
"I...don't understand, why would it..."
Unfortunately it's out of her hands. She's not in a condition to fight someone who can turn into owls either. She isn't really in condition to fight Xander either.
Find us again some other time.
That can get Solitaire to relent, for a moment. Or maybe it's the exhauhstion. She won't resist Dean or Eleanor or even Erzebet's attempts to extricate her at this point. If she even could.
She will never forget Xander's pleadings or the knowledge that she just did not have the Strength or Power to answer them.
Does the Demon King have such power?
The thought doesn't leave her.
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Being allowed to leave, under these circumstances, is also an acceptable option, Hannah thinks. She sags wearily as she puts her crst graphs away, taking a few deep breaths to try and calm herself, but more importantly, to steady her magic. It'll take time, it always does, but getting away from the scene of battle helps.
Zephyr comes down to land carefully on Dean's shoulder, since Hannah is busy being helped away. (Thankfully, he's very careful with his grip and knows how to perch without digging talons into sensitive flesh. Good thing, too, since after Hannah puts her crest graphs away, she staggers dangerously to one side, hopefully to be caught and helped away by Dean--she's ready to accept that help, now.
Dean gets a very quiet, but sincere, "Thanks," as she's helped away from the field of battle. She'll make sure to thank the others once they're somewhere more safe.
<Pose Tracker> Erzebet Lefanu has posed.
Erzebet, for her part, is tired, injured (it would be nice if it were dark), hungry, and has generally been battered.
She recovers her straw hat (do you think that thing stayed on?) and then, without words, walks with the others. Hopefully, this won't get too awkward.
Maybe they have a horse they don't like.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
"Riley..." She doesn't have the heart to tell him not to come. Especially not since he sounds like he'll be dead by then anyway.
But Xander's plea reaches her. She turns, from where she'd started to go, and looks at him.
"..."
She has no words for him. She turns, and does not do away with the paper. She isn't sure yet what she will do... but she knows she has to do something.
She turns to Dean, and quietly says, "Thank you." She doesn't specify what for.
Eleanor will pull Solitaire away, as needed, and look in worry at Hannah.
"..." she starts to talk, and then just looks at Erzebet. "..."
She doesn't have words for her, either.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth watches as Hannah escapes her coffin and the seeming fate of death, but she is paying close attention to the sheer power that exudes from those crests. Malevolence roils along Ruth's self as there is fleeting consideration in the discordance as to whether she will - no, whether she must - save Hannah from having to utilize something she is so cagey and fearful about.
...
Eleanor's help puts a stop to the last of the bleeding and incidental poisons where Malevolence has yet to fill in for breath and blood, the knuckles of her exposed (and, curiously, clawless and perfectly normal-looking aside from color) hands white as she holds her rifle, and herself, rigid - watching how the others eventually slink off and disengage while the last of the Blessing of Light takes its leave of her.
The anchoring weight of her heart keeps all else in check as she serves as the momentary buffer between the Fangs and the others that disengage, before slinking off herself in an obscuring cloud of muggy, foggy rain.