[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/5r7OTIh.png[/img]
[b][color=Aquamarine]wordcount:[/color][/b] 2,239 (+3)
[b][color=Aquamarine]Midna: level 9[/color][/b] EXP: [color=Aquamarine]////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color] (135/100) (+1 bonus pending)
[b][color=Aquamarine]Location:[/color][/b] skyworld
[color=Aquamarine]Warp Charges:[/color] 1
[hider=warp locations]
Virgin Victory teleport room
Top of the Split mountain
Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage
Tostarena Town
S.O.U. Building
Seiran Clinic
Underground Roadway (Seiran Rebel Base Outskirts)
Below City of glass entrance (plate maintenance tunnel)
Vandelay Campus (Alleyway)
Arahabaki’s entrance
Deep Ground - the Source
[/hider]
[/center]

As twilight descended upon the Crystal Spire, so too did its princess. Though born on dragon wings, adorned with armor of blood and gold surrounded by black cloth, the princess did have one thing that made her fit in with the heavenly host. 

Her new [url=https://imgur.com/a/HUzqhvk]lyre[/url].

Admittedly she wasn’t very good with it yet, at least when it came to playing actual music. Her recently discovered hearing issues certainly weren't helping with that. Still the angels she had been working alongside this last week had not complained, for thorough the more or less on a whim fusion with the beautiful Norah had ironically not given her an ear for the melodic, it had given her a power entirely suited to war.

[hr]
[i]friday night[/i]

The princess and her flock wheeled through the skies towards a group of angels returning from the front. Their timing was odd, as was their low flight path that kept them out of sight of the battlements of the floating city, but it was hardly unheard of apparently. Their mission might have run long and their exhaustion could have been dragging them down.

Still, in light of the first devastating outbreak of corruption within the city walls, Midna had been requested to switch over from her old task of from simply saturation twilight volley bombing islands to acting as part of a newly formed night watch who were on the lookout for infiltrators. With darkness adapted eyes, she certainly was more suited to it than the day loving angels, but it was playing hell with her sleep schedule and ability to socialize with the other seekers.

Still, in this moment, it might all prove to have been a necessary sacrifice as she swooped down towards the group, a squad of the silver clad feathers following in her wake. 

[color=Aquamarine]”Or this could have all been a waste of time”[/color] she groused openly, only for her eyes to lock onto what by its weapon should have been the feather-staff in the squad they were approaching, but as they got closer she could see it was anything but. 

The figure, with feathers, gleaming armor, and hovering halo, might well be mistakable for an angel, but it was [url=https://i.imgur.com/6BAo4jb.png]avian in nature[/url] rather than being a winged human, which most certainly put it out of place amongst skyworld’s ranks. It wasn’t alone either, as two more of the avian angels were among the company, their more compact weapons and sticking close to the squad’s feather-shields causing them stand out less among the others.

A strum of the lyre she’d taken into battle was all the warning her squad (who’d she’d had since day 2 of her time here) needed to take up a battle formation, and just in time too.

At the sight of them approaching, rather than call out a greeting, the opposing squad’s feather bows drew, notched, and let fly a volley of arrows towards them. Their motions in doing this however were jerky and clumsy, as if being puppeted rather than acting under their own control. This slowed them down, which, combined with Midna’s musical warning, meant that rather than strike down her squad the arrows to slam into Midna and her squad’s 2 feather-shields’ shields as the other feathers moved to take cover behind them. 

As the arrows harmlessly fell away, Midna strummed strings on her lyre that had begun to glow the moment they had hit the shields, leading her to play a tune that caused the musical instrument to shoot out trios of musical bolts at one in three of the opposing bows. These joined the cactus needles her flygon was unleashing in a similar retaliatory volley in response to her being struck, and together they sought to make a stinging point.

Trying to hurt a princess’ people came with consequences.

[color=Aquamarine]”Return fire!”[/color] Midna commanded as she played, prompting their shield wall to split apart, and allowing their own bows to lose their own volley into the far less coordinated opposing squad. 

Musical bolts, needles and arrows struck the opposing feathers, their shields doing nothing to protect them and instead being physically dragged by the avian angels to protect them and only them. As a result the shots struck several of the enemy feathers, but when they did they did not flinch in pain or cry out in fear. Instead black sludge seeped from their wounds as the reanimated puppets of the corruption surged forwards to attack their former comrades.

[color=Aquamarine]”Hold!”[/color] Midna commanded her squad, before moving to the front of them and ordering her flygon to [color=Aquamarine]”Bug Buzz them!”[/color] 

The charging corrupted feathers ran into a wall of ear splitting sound, black ooze dripping from their ears, skin splitting and feathered ripped loose to reveal the rot within as the flygon unleashed the high pitched wall of insectile sound upon them.

It would have shattered a mortal charge, but the puppets merely faltered for a moment, before they pushed on heedless of their wounds. That reaction would in turn have shattered the nerve of a mortal company, but with unshakable faith, the feathers merely unleashed a battle cry of “For Father!” and counter charged.

Swords and shields clashed while feather staffs cast supportive spells of healing despite the dark smothering their day empowered miracles. In the skies, there were no neat battle lines however, especially with how the two sides looked far too similar to each other in the dark, and so the fighting quickly devolved into a chaotic and confusing mess where it was hard for the faithful to tell friend from foe.

But not for Midna. 

Her shield crashed into the side of a black bleeding feather sword, crippling its wing and sending it plummeting down towards the waters far below, while her flygon’s talons lashed out, cutting another down.

All the while she kept playing, every third block or bloody wound her troops made or received resulting in their attacker being hammered by a musical might that had no difficulty telling friend from foe.

[color=Aquamarine]”Hold fast, stick together! Let my song strike them down!”[/color]

In a twist of fate however, she was not the only one with magical music. Her bows, unable to fire into the melee for fear of striking their friends in the back, moved up and around it in order to take shots at the corrupted counterparts who had no such qualms. When they did however, a pair of [url=https://i.imgur.com/k49Rb34.png]trumpets sounded[/url], building up in intensity till the pair of  non staff wielding avian angels fired large pink and gold orbs from their instruments. Combined with the shields guarding them and the arrows of the corrupted feathers adding to their firepower, the feather-bows quickly found themselves in a losing battle.

So Minda intervened. 

She broke out of the melee and blasted down towards the corrupt ranged forces. Arrows flew and trumpets sounded in response to her charge. However, the flygon barrel rolled and weaved, while the princess shielded herself and played a song of consequences for every blow that did land as sand poured from the twilight realm to sing a song of incoming pain that could not be stopped.

[color=Aquamarine]”You will be swept away!”[/color]

The sand storm struck a few moments before she did, grains sandpapering away feathers and skin, before the princess herself arrived and blew it all away with the force of her arrival, for she did not arrive alone. A pair of portals opened, launching her wolfos and darknut out of them, both boosted to titanic proportions. The beast slashing and bit at the bows, while the undead knight delivered a sky shattering cleave that sliced a corrupted shield in half, before both dropped down into portals rather than plummeting down into the drink below. 

Midna’s strike was no less devastating, shadow hand smashing out in a wide angle slap, breaking through the corrupted feather shield’s defenses and launching it clear away from the avian angel, onto which her flygon pounced, tearing away its marble armor facade and truly exposing the [url=https://i.imgur.com/D4jsiLi.jpeg]nightmare within[/url]. 

[color=Aquamarine]”Disgusting”[/color]

Then she was away, rising up and away as the storm closed back in, smothering and blinding the shattered remains of the corrupt ranged forces. Yet rather than victory cheers Midna’s accent ran into screams that the sound of her own assault had rendered her already poor hearing deaf too.

Rather than protect the ranged angels, or provide support to its fighters like the feather staff it was imitating, the final angel had charged the way she had come. Now, ash and spirits of  feather swords falling around it, the avian angel was buckling the defenses of a feather shield with repeated unholily strong cleaves of its leathery sharp staff top, heedless to the musical bolts hammering into it and the shields own attempts to stab it.

[color=Aquamarine]”Dive, get clear of it!”[/color] she commanded, right before the spike of the avian angel’s weapon skewered right through the feather’s shield, tip stopping an inch from his visor slit. Credit to him, the shield barely flinched, and immediately abandoned his breached defense, raising two feet up and kicking off the back of his shield before dropping like a stone to do as she’d commanded.

The remaining swords also fell back, the action signaling out the few remaining corrupt from the righteous and allowing them to turn on them while the angel reached up and ripped the stuck shield off of its weapon. It then barely reacted as a volley of arrows from the feather bows failed to pincushion it.

[color=Aquamarine]”Focus on cleaning up the stranglers, I’ve got this one!”[/color] she called out, causing the avian’s eyes to snap to her.  

As the bows turned and started to pick off the sand storm blasted survivors of the corrupt ranged forces, the avian cried out a screeching warcry, the first sound the otherwise silent forces of the corruption had made, and dove towards her, heedless of the scorching purple dragon’s breath her flygon blasted up at it. 

The avian angel pulled its weapon back, and then swept it in an arc towards Midna’s unshielded side, only for her to roll her beast’s flight so she was upside down and could block the bow with her shield, earning it nothing but a retaliatory needle barrage for its efforts. She and it spun away from each other, banking around for another pass. She lashed out with a shadow fist strike on that, which it blocked with the wide flat of its staff head, before retaliating with a claw swipe that gouged a cut into her flying steed.

Again, song and needles only scratched its marble armor, and so as they closed to clash a third time, Minda committed to the strike with all that she could. She swept her shadow hand over head, but rather than in a slap or punch, the hand closed around the hilt of a blade, before ripping the several meter long sawblade covered the Dead End Express out of the twilight realm in a crescent moon strike, and slamming it down on top of the avian angel. 

[color=Aquamarine]”Get shredded!”[/color] 

The saws on the weapon once wielded by the angel’s kind’s nemesis ripped and tore, stripping away the foe’s armor and exposing its fleshy insides. Yet the massive strike wasn’t without consequence, as the princess herself lost her one handed grip on her steed due to the sheer mass and momentum of the mighty blow, and was sent plummeting towards her enraged foe. 

Rather than panic, she released the weapon and her shield, sending both spinning into portals, and then, still playing her lyre, unleashed a cyclone dive kick she’d charged with her sandstorm, slamming into her foe and stunning it for five seconds. More than what she needed to grab onto it, crescent moon slash and then stab a serrated blade straight into its monstrous neck.

[color=Aquamarine]”Choke on it”[/color] 

As it turned to ash below her, she went into freefall, down down down towards the sea below, sailing past where the feathers were working together to take down the heavily damaged avian angels. The one stripped of its armor fell with relative ease, arrows skewering corrupt flesh till it was overwhelmed, while the feather blades hacked away at its wings of the more intact one and remaining barrier bearing feather shield kept its focus, enduring its powerful claw strikes.

Soon enough it would fall too, but Midna would not be joining it in the drink below, for the feather shield who had lost his bulwark before dove down after her, joined hands with her, and then slowed her fall enough that she could land back on her steed without shattering her bones on impact.

[hr]
[i]back in the present[/i]

In the end, it had been a victory, but far from a bloodless one. It also had not been the most hard fought of such actions either, as each day the night attacks grew more and more bold and dangerous. 

There wasn't much of her squad left at this point.

So she should have been in full support of pushing forwards and breaking the corruption for good before things got any worse, and yet. 

And yet...

She remembered her dream, where victory in the dead zone had merely meant that D would come to destroy the victor inorder to start the cycle again. She remembered the news of the state of Peach’s castle they’d gotten, flame clock drained, no life left due to their ending of the conflict there.

[color=Aquamarine]”Is us being here, doing this, just making things worse?”[/color] she asked the others who had gathered for the attack. She’d picked the top of the the stands for their reunion point, one that they overlook the forces as they gathered, and conveniently give them something else to watch as people sparred down below if they didn’t want to stare at their destination hanging in the distance.

[color=Aquamarine]”The corruption’s spitting out more and more horrors in response to us breaking the equilibrium, and if we do fully shatter it, then death still comes here, one way or the other”[/color]