[center][h2][color=0054a6]Witch[/color][/h2]
[i]Level 2 (3/20 EXP)
Location: The [i]Avenger[/i]
Word Count: 1812 (3 exp gained)[/i]
(Featuring Tora and Poppi by [@Lugubrious])
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Goldlewis may have stood out in a crowd, but what did that matter? To the Witch he was nothing more than another fool, another case of life wasted on a mind that did not deserve it. She could see it in his eyes, in the way they judged her without hesitation and painted her in colors of fear and revulsion. She hadn’t even laid a finger upon this man, but already he had decided she was too strange—too different—to ever be trusted.

It was nothing new to her. She’d faced stares like that ever since she was a child, sickly and friendless and brimming with inappropriate questions. Good little girls weren’t meant to wonder about how living things worked, or what happened to your body after you died. Good little girls should be reading their storybooks and reciting their prayers, so that they grew up to be good little wives. The young Witch had needed to go hunting for the answers all by herself, and in the pulled-apart guts of captured animals she uncovered more fascinating questions still.

With every year that passed after that, the strange girl grew steadily stranger. She ventured places she wasn’t meant to go, opened books she wasn’t meant to read, and learned things that nobody was ever meant to know. She became so strange that the good people of Oriath began to fear her, to lash out against her—first with mockery and condemnation, and then with fire. No doubt this Goldlewis was also a good person, and no doubt he’d just as readily cast her into the flames, if she didn’t do the same to him first.

So, that was to be their relationship. The Witch kept up her blank smile and listened closely to his tale, never showing a hint of surprise or apprehension. It all sounded rather convenient, actually: just kill seven underlings and then she could carry out some well-earned retribution. If anything, the extra steps would make this even more fun.

[color=0054a6]“Why don’t I come along, then? You won’t be disappointed.”[/color]

All together they left the city, partners in deicide, united only by their desire to bring this whole world crashing down. Another soon joined them, and the Witch greeted her with the usual eerie stare. Just how many of these Seekers were there? She could only hope that some of them fell in the battle against Galeem, or else it would be quite annoying to clean them all up afterwards.

Her irritation only increased when the woman promptly shot down her zombies. [color=0054a6]“Those were my servants, Sandalphon! Mine to raise, and mine to dispose of.”[/color] The tips of her hair rose up and floated in the air as she stalked towards the angel, her tone laced with poison. [color=0054a6]“Interfere with anything that belongs to me again, and I’ll have to teach you the consequences in person.”[/color] Now only a foot away from Sandalphon, she locked eyes with her and held her gaze for an uncomfortably long moment before turning away. Just because these people were useful to her for now, it didn’t mean she’d allow any slight against her to go unpunished. The others would do well to take note of that next time they had any qualms about her choice of assistants.

Fortunately for everyone, the sorceress didn’t linger on the matter for long. She was more interested in the Fulton device, which she examined with naked curiosity while she strapped it around herself. [color=0054a6][i]This is new.[/i][/color] Though it bore vague semblance to a pack or parcel, she’d never seen any quite like it before. At some point in the future she’d have to ferret one away somewhere private, and puzzle it apart until she understood how it worked in its entirety. For the moment, at least, the other Seekers seemed to think it safe enough to rely on, so she’d trust that it functioned as intended.

[color=0054a6]“Up we go…”[/color] She tugged her cord, and then clenched her teeth tight together as the earth shot away beneath her. Her stomach roiled, her vision began to fade away at the edges, but had it not been for the whipping winds and the sheer force of acceleration rendering it impossible she might have cackled with wild delight. To fly, and be free as a bird—to see the world splayed out in miniature underneath, like a toy she could break or rearrange at her pleasure. The Witch treasured the sensation for as long she possibly could before the rush overwhelmed her mind and forced her back into the dreamless dark.

[hr]
She awoke alive, already a lucky thing. So many took life for granted, ignoring the gift that it truly was. The Witch breathed in deep as she came to her senses, and took in her new surroundings by degrees. Her new ‘friends’ were all here, along with that ignorant angel from before. None of them greatly interested her for the moment, though: it was the [i]place[/i] that caught her attention, the walls and floors hewn from solid steel. The entire room vibrated softly with a barely contained power, and a glance out the window revealed a sight not too dissimilar from what she’d witnessed before: the earth at a distant remove, and the clouds all above and around her. The Seekers’ base was a castle in the sky, and for the first time the Witch found herself frankly impressed by the crew she’d chosen to join. With such might and resources at their command, they might truly have a shot at bringing down the Lord of Light, even without her generous assistance.

More than anything, she wanted it now for herself. What better throne to rule from than one that perched among the clouds, far beyond the reach of the benighted masses below?

All for a later time, once the present situation was dealt with. In the moment, she kept herself cool and impassive, and directed her attention to the chart of the sky-castle’s innards. Many of the names held tantalizing fragments of meaning, but by and large she couldn’t make much sense of it all. No matter: if they saw fit to let her roam here as she pleased, then she would exploit that privilege for all it was worth. Without another word to Grimm or any of the other unfortunates in the Deployment Bay, she slipped off through the entrance to the engine room, following her intuition towards the thrumming source of the [i]Avenger[/i]’s tremendous power.

When the Witch stepped through the aperture, the angular, metallic confines of the airship's halls opened up into a chamber of unanticipated size, like a cavern at the end of an underground tunnel. Its true bottom, carpeted in dark mechanical miscellanea and clearly not meant for human traffic, lay a dozen or so feet below the entrance, but the platform that extended before her served as the room's functional floor. Before anything else, though, the newcomer was obliged to take in the Engine Room's namesake: a colossal, three-floor contraption of smooth, rounded metal and bulbous, reinforced glass, housing a suspension of luminous, bubbling fluids that surrounded various mechanisms within that twisted and turned in inexplicable patterns. With no pistons, turbines, magnets, or crankshafts in sight, this was a marvelous feat of engineering so far beyond the modern man as to be utterly alien, which in a very literal sense, it was.

For a scion of a medieval era, of course, it might as well be magical. The yellow-green glow emanated from its tanks, the strangely sonorous hum, and the subtle but bizarre smell given off by the engine did little to dissuade this impression. From its exterior ran a number of cables and trusses, stretched out with the lethal beauty of a spider's web. Though it did not beat, there could be no doubt that this fantastical construct was the Avenger's heart, the source of the power to defy gravitational law.

Indeed, she’d never seen thaumaturgy quite like this, though the structure wasn’t so unfamiliar to the Witch as one might at first assume. Even in her time, magi and madmen had combined science with nightmare to forge metal creations of horrifying potency… For now this vast engine remained beyond her comprehension, but with sufficient time and study it might not have to remain that way.

After a moment of staring wonderment, she moved on. In the eerie glow of the engine lay two workstations, one at either end of the chamber. Closer to the entrance the Witch found a square formation of sophisticated machines, arranged like the standing stones of some archaic ritual circle. This electronic perimeter almost completely enclosed the actual work zone, where a pair of strange inventors were fiddling with an elaborate prototype device.

One looked like an aged human, albeit with bizarre proportions. Short and squat, with a head almost as big as his torso and a spiky white beard that reached his knees, he tinkered with deliberate confidence, making him look like the one in charge. In sharp contrast, his understudy appeared to be an [url=https://i.imgur.com/LAZp45e.png]egg-shaped creature[/url], only a few feet in height and wearing denim overalls over a coat of short, stripy brown fur. While his body featured only stubby, underdeveloped limbs, the four-fingered wings that extended from his back offered the reach and dexterity his actual arms lacked. Ruddy brown eyes with no whites peered out from his neckless, noseless head, absorbing every motion made by the hands of the older engineer.

Perhaps fortunately, they were so fixated on the task at hand that they had yet to notice the Witch. The same could not be said, however, for the third person nearby. Though shaped and dressed like a girl of around fifteen years, with a spiky ponytail of lavender hair and big orange eyes, the bevy of artificial materials clearly visible in her construction -particularly her limbs- outed her as an automaton. She lounged against the railing just outside of the research station, tapping away at a handheld device until movement caught her eyes.

"Oh, hi!" The robot girl lowered her phone as her sensors adjusted. "Poppi not seen you before. You new? Well, welcome to Avenger. Poppi is Poppi. What your name?"

The Witch regarded the animate creature as one might observe a particularly interesting rock. [color=0054a6]“Nobody ever really cared what my name was,”[/color] she said slowly, [color=0054a6]“so I didn’t see a point in remembering it. And I won’t remember yours, either.”[/color] She walked past the chirping automaton like it wasn’t even there, and approached close enough to the bearded engineer that he’d have no choice but to acknowledge her. 

[color=0054a6]“Take a look. You should be able to tell what I am, yes?”[/color] She gazed down upon him coldly, with one narrow black eyebrow slightly raised. [color=0054a6]“That’ll do for introductions. Next, you’re going to tell me all about this place and how it works.”[/color]