Our titular heroes get into a scrap with the Realta, and then meet Lifprasil once again!
After the eventful journey across the flourishing lands of Mesathalassa, this new region they were now crossing felt like a wasteland. It was not, there were small tribes of fisherman and hunters, but overall, it felt like nothing but an endless expanse of rocky plains with a few pockets of evergreen needle trees here and there.
In such a featureless land, the notion of progress was dimmed, with Mesathalassa distant in the east and the shores near Shalanoir still distant in the west, and in this situation, each member of the troupe was brooding over their own issues.
Salassar had a myriad of questions about Chroma, about Jvan and about what he could only describe as dream-eating. He had been freaked out by Chroma's way of battle all the way back to when they were in the jungles near Birbahar, however, when the girl told him that she was having dreams that belonged to others, he started to realize just the size of the issue.
Susa was constantly looking to a little leather charm with a deer and a hawk drawn in it. Someone placed it in her pocket when she was leaving the innkeep, and behind it, there was a secret message written in the wanderer's code. A location. She didn't know what to do, she could just keep on moving forward, not look back to her past life and ghosts of it like Marcelo, on the other, an incessant curiosity burned within her, the mysterious charm lured her like a flame to a moth.
Chroma was probably the only one still absent-minded. Spending her time stargazing instead. It was a good time for it, the night sky was clear and even the aurora had been absent recently.
"Whoa, lots of shooting stars today." she said innocently. The other three finally took their time to wonder at the phenomenon too.
"A meteor shower. They say that in distant times, when the moons were new, these were almost weekly events, but nowadays they are rare."
"I have s-seen them myself," Lakshmi explained, nestled happily beneath her wears. "V-vestecian antics destroyed a m-moon or t-t-two. I could n-never rememb-b-er."
"Ah, so you people already know what a meteor is." she jested, back in Iridia's history books it was said comets and such were seen as omens capable of hitting even the largest empire's stability.
The lights kept dancing across the sky. In fact, with some routes that felt odd for a rock falling from space. "Odd, some of them are moving in quite complex ways" Salassar noticed.
One of the stars started to get brighter and brighter instead of moving, the only one with the savviness to understand what it meant was Chroma who yelled "Take cover!" out of reflex. The others did exactly that, Susa taking Salassar with her as she jumped, as there was no way the mortal would be able to move away in time. In mere seconds after their act, something crashed right where they were, causing a loud explosion and lighting up the cold southern night with large flames.
Lakshmi had rolled away from the point of impact, pulling a shortsword from the furled inventory she had been carrying with her. The refined Alefprian metal glimmered against the tapering explosion, shakily transmitting a hue of crimson. "T-tired." the Alefprian hero sighed, complacent at the sudden disturbance.
Despite having dodged the attack, the impact alone was enough to make the quartet drop into the ground. Susa was the first to recover herself and the first to gaze at what attacked them. The creature was best described as a metallic angel in shape, but it had a fiery aura as bright the sun.
The Realta extend its hand and Susa by instinct, acquired back at the battle with the horde, knew it was going to release some sort of wave or spell, there was no time to warn the others to dodge, instead, she pounced forward, running across the flames, and reached for the arm just as it was about to launch the plasma.
She expected to be able to take down the metallic monster, yet she struggled to even lean the hand away from the direction of her friends as it fired its blast. Realizing she was outmatched in strength, she released her grasp and started to fall back, again, she expected that such metallic creature would be slow, but was quickly proven wrong as the Realta managed to punch her as she stepped back, launching her across the cold taiga landscape.
Lakshmi saw Susa in danger, and she grimaced, watching her comapnion skip across the wintery landscape with the force of the impact. Seeing her friend so easily trumped by the aggressor, Lakshmi resigned to using her Astartian arm; she extended a forearm, the immaterial surmising the limb then pulsated rhythmically. From a gap in her palm, beams of heat volleyed towards the winged Realta.
The wielder of the arm herself expected the Realta to be struck down by the attack, but the armorclad agent of Order dodged every strike sent his way with a flick of its heavy torso.
"D-damn," Lakshmi groaned, scrambling for her sword over her arm.
Chroma had regained her composure after the initial attack but when facing the Realta she vacillated. Deeply involved within her own imaginary, she had so far seen only simple fights, this one, however, brought her memories of different stories. Seeing her friends failing didn't help out, she was scared of the potential results of this fight.
"Salassar, what is this?" asked the huntress as she rubbed the blood, dirt and snow from her face.
"I have no idea, there is no tale about such beings in the parade"
She clicked her tongue but did not stop. "Take the opening I will make, Laky" she yelled before once again rushing towards the creature.
With finesse, speed and a recently, and traumatically, found idea of just how good the enemy was, the huntress leaped forward in a kick. Thinking the human was going to kick it, the Realta took a defensive instance and prepared itself to block and then grab the huntress. But that was not Susa's objective, with agility, she kicked the air near the Realta, and immediately spun into retreat. The armor-clad attacker's attention followed the human, giving the Lifprasilian the promised chance of attack.
"O-ok...!" exclaimed Lakshmi, running further forward with her strike, this time carrying her sword with her. She wouldn't miss, especially with Susa so close to the fray. With a well aimed, closer shot, Lakshmi fired a beam into the Realta's torso, managing to summon a stagger from the creature. She followed it up by driving a sword into its torso, bringing it to a knee.
Lakshmi was prepared to drive a second strike into where its head connected with the median of its shoulders, but she ceased when a second light made its approach. Like a white hot ball of fire, it curved and hit head long into Laki's side, pushing her to the ground, and driving her across the already scarred field. By the end of the collision, Lakshmi was a bloodied mess, laying still and unconscious from the unyielding offensive.
"A second one?" Susa yelled in surprise, but she was not allowed more than a few seconds to be fazed, as soon the barrage of fired turned her way.
She somersaulted back to avoid the first strike and pounced forward to avoid the second one, but the third one was barely avoided. Despite all her speed and sharp instincts, she found herself unable to keep on at that. Fatigue and heat started to pile up, and she found herself becoming dangerously slower. The stabbed Realta got the perfect aim on her and was ready to finish the fight.
But then something else attacked him. Chroma, finally finding courage at the sight of her hurt friends, charged into the fight and sticked her hand into the blazing wound. Immediately it morphed into something akin to a pear of anguish and slowly started to open its segments, ripping and crushing the metal-like shell until the previously small wound became far larger and fatal.
The second realta, still airborne, started to retaliate with blasts of plasma. Chroma was far slower than Susa, but the quickly shapeshifting nature of her body permitted her a more responsive maneuverability. She could create a patagium to glide instead of falling, she could extend her limbs to simply walk over the blast zone or to catapult herself across the air and she could also harden her body trough calcification for the purpose of surviving a blast or driving faster into the ground.
Though, even the quick adaptability was not enough to reach the Realta, who could still outmaneuver her offensive with ease. Chroma mustered courage and decided to take a risk. The only moment in which the Realta stopped was when it attacked her with the plasma, so she stood still, and when the hellfire was released, she catapulted herself to face it head-on.
Time felt like it crawled into a standstill while she was in the tunnel of fire, theoretically it would only take a couple of seconds, but it felt like an eternity. She didn't know for how long she would last, even with her transformed bone armor, the pain didn't work as a metric as it had been excruciating from the first moment. Finally, she felt the metallic hand, still firing its blast, drawing close. Her limbs wrapped it like a tentacle, and she found herself some holding against the floating monster.
The fire didn't stop, and she felt herself getting weaker, so she focused on her attack. A new pair of limbs was formed around her torso, and they retracted tightly, then she yelled the name of one of the attacks she had seen in stories back in Iridia. Nobody heard what she had said as it was drowned by two sounds, first was the one of the raging plasma, the other was the sonic boom heard when the newly formed member released its strength in a punch, similar to that of a mantis shrimp. The Realta didn't even feel its end, as almost immediately its head was reduced to shredded metal hanging on its back.
For everyone out of the fight, it felt like seconds, in one instant Chroma had been engulfed by flames, in the other, she and the Realta were falling from the sky along with a rain of smoldering embers.
Susa ran towards her friend and caught her before she hit the ground. It seemed that finally, the fight was over, at least their fight, the stars kept moving across the sky and slowly a red aura was being formed in the distant horizon. To think about this made Susa feel somewhat sick, it took three of them to take down two of these, and even so, both Lakshmi and Chroma ended up being knocked out in the fight, and she, the only one standing, was completely exhausted.
This whole ordeal resonated with Salassar's doubts. Chroma being both odd, with her transmogrifications and her brutality contrasted to her apparent aura of goodness, the attack of this fiery creature and other mysteries many which the Parade and Ilunabar alone could not answer.
The journey back to the warmth of Alefpria was a long one, the group circumvented the length of Galbar's oceans, only to find Occam's path into Lifprasil's domain, the only road into Alefpria. When Susa, Chroma, Lakshmi,and Salassar finally reached the first evidence of Alefprian civilization, they were met by two heavily armored cavalrymen, sentries posted just outside the cusp of the fortress at the end of the illustrous steps through the mountains. Susa and Lakshmi would be easy to recognise for the two, but they were curious about the strange creature of carefully shaped flesh.
"What is this?" they questioned, and Lakshmi looked back at their Jvanic companion.
"Introd-duce yourself." she requested, promptly.
Susa, after this hellish journey back, had no patience for such behavior. Before Chroma could even answer anything she said in a stern tone.
"She is my friend, and a good one. Treat her like you would treat me, in fact, the results of misconduct are exactly the same."
The sudden stern warning to the soldiers spooked Chroma a bit, Susa was typically more laid back. "Uh... The name is Chroma. Hero of justice." she said, with a bit less enthusiasm than the usual.
"Yes- Yes Huntress." one replied, motioning for the thick gate to be opened, and open it did, lifting with authority from the ground.
"T-that was brash," Laki commentated with a snicker, pressing past the two and into the extensive barracks inside. They kept walking, garnering stares, and the parting of the crowd of soldiers inside. It didn't take long to reach the end of their itinerary through the circular structure, and the opposite gate opened in the same nature as its predecessor. "F-ffinally," sighed Lakshmi, grinning at the sight of the bright cityscape of Alefpria.
"D-doesn't it feel nice to b-be home?" she asked Susa, before she then turned to Chroma. "S-speaking of which, w-what do y-yyou think of Alefpria?" Lakshmi asked Chroma.
"Technically I was at home before. But it is nice to be back here, especially after what we saw. I just hope Lifprasil knows something about it and what we can do to stop it."
"Eh... When you said a big city I expected a very big city, but I guess this place is fine too, it is very pretty, but also too foggy."
Lakshmi smiled. "You g-get ussed to it." she reassured Chroma, before they made their way to the palace overlooking all of Alefpria.
Once they were inside, Lakshmi retired her overbearing clothes to a Troll waiting at the entrance, tremendous halberd set aside to collect her belongings.
"Lakshmi, Susa," said Lifprasil, his refined voice carried along the unnaturally smooth work of the Goddess of Dreams nicely. He drifted down from a tremendous height elswhere in the Palace, floating in place as if on solid ground. Lifprasil's gaze carried from the people he expected to return from the excursion: Lakshmi, Susa, and Salassar, to Chroma, of whom trailed closely behind the three.
"Prosit." Lifprasil greeted Chroma, his feet finally touching ground.
While the other three were familiar with Lifprasil, for Chroma this was a new thing. She watched in awe as the emperor descended down into the ground just to greet them.
"Whoa... Ah?" she noticed she was the first one being greeted, and she had no idea of how to properly greet the local royalty. In a moment of panic, she knelt down and bowed. "Hail... uh... Your roya... I mean, your imperial royal maj... no no... uh... majes... long live."
"Prosit will do." responded the emperor, and then motioned for Chroma to stand.
"I do not enjoy having people beneath me. Where do you come from?" Lifprasil asked, uncaring for Chroma's strange figure.
She looked back to Susa to see if it was fine for her to tell exactly how things were, the huntress shrugged, which would have confused Chroma in the past but by now she already understood it meant yes.
"Prosit then. I come from a faraway place, not on this planet, perhaps not even in this universe." she dramatically raised one of her hands. "Beyond that it's a mystery, the human-thing that whisked me away from my place never bothered to explain anything beyond the fact that I had to do good deeds in this place."
Lifprasil's contemplative face turned to a gentler smile.
"You aim to do good? Then I believe you have come to the right place, especially in such a dangerous age. What is your name?" he questioned, his tone having become much more delicate.
"You know, beating up bad dudes, helping out the citizens. Hero stuff," she answered the question almost naturally, clearly without pondering about the topic at all. "The name is Chroma."
"It's not quite that simple, I've learned." Lifprasil said to Chroma, running a hand along a starkly grooved pillar, one of many aligned within the center of the vast entrance hall. Clouds had gestated in the arched hallway, fauna constantly shifted along the walls, but the tasteful sheen of the marble remained despite the ever changing surroundings.
"I think the line is pretty well drawn. she casually commented.
"Luckily for you, the line between what is good and what is evil remains clear, for now." he reassured Chroma, "Salassar, would you like to treat yourself to some wine? I would like to be alone with my heroes and my guest."
Once hearing Lifprasil's request the quara nodded "Of course sir. But if possible, I would live to discuss some private matters with you later."
Lifprasil nodded. "Of course, Salassar," he dismissed, a mannequin beside him, who appeared to be Salassar's escort throughout the lavish palace.
Once the Quara was gone, Lifprasil looked to Lakshmi and Susa, beyond Chroma. From a broad staircase, three strange creatures stepped down to take their place behind Lifprasil, each one a member of the Wardens Three. "In your absence, a project has foregone, I have created soldiers capable of tackling these Realta that threaten Alefpria, and more. These three behind me are just an example of the powerful flesh our mortal soldiers can be shaped into." explained Lifprasil, motioning for a single Warden to step forward, arksynth sinews driving heavy steps to a halt in front of the opposite three.
Susa didn't see much room to judge the creatures from looks alone thanks to her practical mindset. But one keyword caught her attention. "Shaping the flesh huh? I won't believe until I see them taking down one of those metallic fiends, but Chroma did win our fight by changing her flesh to something stronger. she mused.
"Huh? What are you talking about?" Chroma was confused at what Susa could possibly be referring to. Maybe the heat confused her mind. "Anyway, these soldiers are so neat." her "eyes" shone with enthusiasm "But, just between us, did you add some sort of kill switch?"
"That s-ssounds immoral," Lakshmi scolded Chroma, "I think this-s is f-ffantastic, how was th-thiss done?" she asked Lifprasil, looking over the three. "Niciel, Vestec, Jvan, and Astarte, a communion of Gods came together to establish this creation, and I command them. Now, any mortal I choose can attain power equivocal to yours, or even mine, perfect weapons to counter Logos' Realta." explained Lifprasil, and that was just the short of it.
Lakshmi paused, mortals stronger than she, or Lifprasil was unheard of, stronger than those things that so easily trumped her. It took her a second to process, as the utterance of the concept seeded doubts within her; then again, only good had come from the following of he, thusfar. She took comfort in this: trailing the trailblazer Demi-God himself.
"So they were created by a congregation of gods? On this case, I will join Chroma in her worry, last time the gods got together to make something they ended up creating the universe, and we all know how that turned out."
"Oh, I'm not worried. They are super cool, though, would look cooler if the armor was painted in red with some flames on the sides."
"It was a joke. For all, I know as long as they stop those things that attacked us they are fine... even if they have a hand from the god who made the horde." there was a hint of discomfort in her voice, however, it was not born from suspicion but from a certain jealousy that some mortal beings could become able to hunt those creatures in a day while she had been hunting for decades and was unable to even scratch their metallic shells.
Lifprasil chuckled, he enjoyed the dry humor of the Huntress, but chose to ignore her quip. "Very well, Chroma, I'll consider it. All that I do, now, is for the greater good of Galbar's express freedom, and to liberate mortals from a volatile power struggle. Vestec's involvement already speaks volumes about the dire straits we have been pulled into, and the addition of another Hero to my court will only help save thousands of lives more. Thank you for bringing Chroma to me, Susa, Lakshmi, and Chroma, thank you for coming here, together, we can make Galbar a bastion of good." he said, a genuine grin crossing his face before he set a hand on what looked like her shoulder.
"You seem to be one of the good guys, your prositlense. I look forward to helping you and your city" she saluted Lifprasil.
After the eventful journey across the flourishing lands of Mesathalassa, this new region they were now crossing felt like a wasteland. It was not, there were small tribes of fisherman and hunters, but overall, it felt like nothing but an endless expanse of rocky plains with a few pockets of evergreen needle trees here and there.
In such a featureless land, the notion of progress was dimmed, with Mesathalassa distant in the east and the shores near Shalanoir still distant in the west, and in this situation, each member of the troupe was brooding over their own issues.
Salassar had a myriad of questions about Chroma, about Jvan and about what he could only describe as dream-eating. He had been freaked out by Chroma's way of battle all the way back to when they were in the jungles near Birbahar, however, when the girl told him that she was having dreams that belonged to others, he started to realize just the size of the issue.
Susa was constantly looking to a little leather charm with a deer and a hawk drawn in it. Someone placed it in her pocket when she was leaving the innkeep, and behind it, there was a secret message written in the wanderer's code. A location. She didn't know what to do, she could just keep on moving forward, not look back to her past life and ghosts of it like Marcelo, on the other, an incessant curiosity burned within her, the mysterious charm lured her like a flame to a moth.
Chroma was probably the only one still absent-minded. Spending her time stargazing instead. It was a good time for it, the night sky was clear and even the aurora had been absent recently.
"Whoa, lots of shooting stars today." she said innocently. The other three finally took their time to wonder at the phenomenon too.
"A meteor shower. They say that in distant times, when the moons were new, these were almost weekly events, but nowadays they are rare."
"I have s-seen them myself," Lakshmi explained, nestled happily beneath her wears. "V-vestecian antics destroyed a m-moon or t-t-two. I could n-never rememb-b-er."
"Ah, so you people already know what a meteor is." she jested, back in Iridia's history books it was said comets and such were seen as omens capable of hitting even the largest empire's stability.
The lights kept dancing across the sky. In fact, with some routes that felt odd for a rock falling from space. "Odd, some of them are moving in quite complex ways" Salassar noticed.
One of the stars started to get brighter and brighter instead of moving, the only one with the savviness to understand what it meant was Chroma who yelled "Take cover!" out of reflex. The others did exactly that, Susa taking Salassar with her as she jumped, as there was no way the mortal would be able to move away in time. In mere seconds after their act, something crashed right where they were, causing a loud explosion and lighting up the cold southern night with large flames.
Lakshmi had rolled away from the point of impact, pulling a shortsword from the furled inventory she had been carrying with her. The refined Alefprian metal glimmered against the tapering explosion, shakily transmitting a hue of crimson. "T-tired." the Alefprian hero sighed, complacent at the sudden disturbance.
Despite having dodged the attack, the impact alone was enough to make the quartet drop into the ground. Susa was the first to recover herself and the first to gaze at what attacked them. The creature was best described as a metallic angel in shape, but it had a fiery aura as bright the sun.
The Realta extend its hand and Susa by instinct, acquired back at the battle with the horde, knew it was going to release some sort of wave or spell, there was no time to warn the others to dodge, instead, she pounced forward, running across the flames, and reached for the arm just as it was about to launch the plasma.
She expected to be able to take down the metallic monster, yet she struggled to even lean the hand away from the direction of her friends as it fired its blast. Realizing she was outmatched in strength, she released her grasp and started to fall back, again, she expected that such metallic creature would be slow, but was quickly proven wrong as the Realta managed to punch her as she stepped back, launching her across the cold taiga landscape.
Lakshmi saw Susa in danger, and she grimaced, watching her comapnion skip across the wintery landscape with the force of the impact. Seeing her friend so easily trumped by the aggressor, Lakshmi resigned to using her Astartian arm; she extended a forearm, the immaterial surmising the limb then pulsated rhythmically. From a gap in her palm, beams of heat volleyed towards the winged Realta.
The wielder of the arm herself expected the Realta to be struck down by the attack, but the armorclad agent of Order dodged every strike sent his way with a flick of its heavy torso.
"D-damn," Lakshmi groaned, scrambling for her sword over her arm.
Chroma had regained her composure after the initial attack but when facing the Realta she vacillated. Deeply involved within her own imaginary, she had so far seen only simple fights, this one, however, brought her memories of different stories. Seeing her friends failing didn't help out, she was scared of the potential results of this fight.
"Salassar, what is this?" asked the huntress as she rubbed the blood, dirt and snow from her face.
"I have no idea, there is no tale about such beings in the parade"
She clicked her tongue but did not stop. "Take the opening I will make, Laky" she yelled before once again rushing towards the creature.
With finesse, speed and a recently, and traumatically, found idea of just how good the enemy was, the huntress leaped forward in a kick. Thinking the human was going to kick it, the Realta took a defensive instance and prepared itself to block and then grab the huntress. But that was not Susa's objective, with agility, she kicked the air near the Realta, and immediately spun into retreat. The armor-clad attacker's attention followed the human, giving the Lifprasilian the promised chance of attack.
"O-ok...!" exclaimed Lakshmi, running further forward with her strike, this time carrying her sword with her. She wouldn't miss, especially with Susa so close to the fray. With a well aimed, closer shot, Lakshmi fired a beam into the Realta's torso, managing to summon a stagger from the creature. She followed it up by driving a sword into its torso, bringing it to a knee.
Lakshmi was prepared to drive a second strike into where its head connected with the median of its shoulders, but she ceased when a second light made its approach. Like a white hot ball of fire, it curved and hit head long into Laki's side, pushing her to the ground, and driving her across the already scarred field. By the end of the collision, Lakshmi was a bloodied mess, laying still and unconscious from the unyielding offensive.
"A second one?" Susa yelled in surprise, but she was not allowed more than a few seconds to be fazed, as soon the barrage of fired turned her way.
She somersaulted back to avoid the first strike and pounced forward to avoid the second one, but the third one was barely avoided. Despite all her speed and sharp instincts, she found herself unable to keep on at that. Fatigue and heat started to pile up, and she found herself becoming dangerously slower. The stabbed Realta got the perfect aim on her and was ready to finish the fight.
But then something else attacked him. Chroma, finally finding courage at the sight of her hurt friends, charged into the fight and sticked her hand into the blazing wound. Immediately it morphed into something akin to a pear of anguish and slowly started to open its segments, ripping and crushing the metal-like shell until the previously small wound became far larger and fatal.
The second realta, still airborne, started to retaliate with blasts of plasma. Chroma was far slower than Susa, but the quickly shapeshifting nature of her body permitted her a more responsive maneuverability. She could create a patagium to glide instead of falling, she could extend her limbs to simply walk over the blast zone or to catapult herself across the air and she could also harden her body trough calcification for the purpose of surviving a blast or driving faster into the ground.
Though, even the quick adaptability was not enough to reach the Realta, who could still outmaneuver her offensive with ease. Chroma mustered courage and decided to take a risk. The only moment in which the Realta stopped was when it attacked her with the plasma, so she stood still, and when the hellfire was released, she catapulted herself to face it head-on.
Time felt like it crawled into a standstill while she was in the tunnel of fire, theoretically it would only take a couple of seconds, but it felt like an eternity. She didn't know for how long she would last, even with her transformed bone armor, the pain didn't work as a metric as it had been excruciating from the first moment. Finally, she felt the metallic hand, still firing its blast, drawing close. Her limbs wrapped it like a tentacle, and she found herself some holding against the floating monster.
The fire didn't stop, and she felt herself getting weaker, so she focused on her attack. A new pair of limbs was formed around her torso, and they retracted tightly, then she yelled the name of one of the attacks she had seen in stories back in Iridia. Nobody heard what she had said as it was drowned by two sounds, first was the one of the raging plasma, the other was the sonic boom heard when the newly formed member released its strength in a punch, similar to that of a mantis shrimp. The Realta didn't even feel its end, as almost immediately its head was reduced to shredded metal hanging on its back.
For everyone out of the fight, it felt like seconds, in one instant Chroma had been engulfed by flames, in the other, she and the Realta were falling from the sky along with a rain of smoldering embers.
Susa ran towards her friend and caught her before she hit the ground. It seemed that finally, the fight was over, at least their fight, the stars kept moving across the sky and slowly a red aura was being formed in the distant horizon. To think about this made Susa feel somewhat sick, it took three of them to take down two of these, and even so, both Lakshmi and Chroma ended up being knocked out in the fight, and she, the only one standing, was completely exhausted.
This whole ordeal resonated with Salassar's doubts. Chroma being both odd, with her transmogrifications and her brutality contrasted to her apparent aura of goodness, the attack of this fiery creature and other mysteries many which the Parade and Ilunabar alone could not answer.
The journey back to the warmth of Alefpria was a long one, the group circumvented the length of Galbar's oceans, only to find Occam's path into Lifprasil's domain, the only road into Alefpria. When Susa, Chroma, Lakshmi,and Salassar finally reached the first evidence of Alefprian civilization, they were met by two heavily armored cavalrymen, sentries posted just outside the cusp of the fortress at the end of the illustrous steps through the mountains. Susa and Lakshmi would be easy to recognise for the two, but they were curious about the strange creature of carefully shaped flesh.
"What is this?" they questioned, and Lakshmi looked back at their Jvanic companion.
"Introd-duce yourself." she requested, promptly.
Susa, after this hellish journey back, had no patience for such behavior. Before Chroma could even answer anything she said in a stern tone.
"She is my friend, and a good one. Treat her like you would treat me, in fact, the results of misconduct are exactly the same."
The sudden stern warning to the soldiers spooked Chroma a bit, Susa was typically more laid back. "Uh... The name is Chroma. Hero of justice." she said, with a bit less enthusiasm than the usual.
"Yes- Yes Huntress." one replied, motioning for the thick gate to be opened, and open it did, lifting with authority from the ground.
"T-that was brash," Laki commentated with a snicker, pressing past the two and into the extensive barracks inside. They kept walking, garnering stares, and the parting of the crowd of soldiers inside. It didn't take long to reach the end of their itinerary through the circular structure, and the opposite gate opened in the same nature as its predecessor. "F-ffinally," sighed Lakshmi, grinning at the sight of the bright cityscape of Alefpria.
"D-doesn't it feel nice to b-be home?" she asked Susa, before she then turned to Chroma. "S-speaking of which, w-what do y-yyou think of Alefpria?" Lakshmi asked Chroma.
"Technically I was at home before. But it is nice to be back here, especially after what we saw. I just hope Lifprasil knows something about it and what we can do to stop it."
"Eh... When you said a big city I expected a very big city, but I guess this place is fine too, it is very pretty, but also too foggy."
Lakshmi smiled. "You g-get ussed to it." she reassured Chroma, before they made their way to the palace overlooking all of Alefpria.
Once they were inside, Lakshmi retired her overbearing clothes to a Troll waiting at the entrance, tremendous halberd set aside to collect her belongings.
"Lakshmi, Susa," said Lifprasil, his refined voice carried along the unnaturally smooth work of the Goddess of Dreams nicely. He drifted down from a tremendous height elswhere in the Palace, floating in place as if on solid ground. Lifprasil's gaze carried from the people he expected to return from the excursion: Lakshmi, Susa, and Salassar, to Chroma, of whom trailed closely behind the three.
"Prosit." Lifprasil greeted Chroma, his feet finally touching ground.
While the other three were familiar with Lifprasil, for Chroma this was a new thing. She watched in awe as the emperor descended down into the ground just to greet them.
"Whoa... Ah?" she noticed she was the first one being greeted, and she had no idea of how to properly greet the local royalty. In a moment of panic, she knelt down and bowed. "Hail... uh... Your roya... I mean, your imperial royal maj... no no... uh... majes... long live."
"Prosit will do." responded the emperor, and then motioned for Chroma to stand.
"I do not enjoy having people beneath me. Where do you come from?" Lifprasil asked, uncaring for Chroma's strange figure.
She looked back to Susa to see if it was fine for her to tell exactly how things were, the huntress shrugged, which would have confused Chroma in the past but by now she already understood it meant yes.
"Prosit then. I come from a faraway place, not on this planet, perhaps not even in this universe." she dramatically raised one of her hands. "Beyond that it's a mystery, the human-thing that whisked me away from my place never bothered to explain anything beyond the fact that I had to do good deeds in this place."
Lifprasil's contemplative face turned to a gentler smile.
"You aim to do good? Then I believe you have come to the right place, especially in such a dangerous age. What is your name?" he questioned, his tone having become much more delicate.
"You know, beating up bad dudes, helping out the citizens. Hero stuff," she answered the question almost naturally, clearly without pondering about the topic at all. "The name is Chroma."
"It's not quite that simple, I've learned." Lifprasil said to Chroma, running a hand along a starkly grooved pillar, one of many aligned within the center of the vast entrance hall. Clouds had gestated in the arched hallway, fauna constantly shifted along the walls, but the tasteful sheen of the marble remained despite the ever changing surroundings.
"I think the line is pretty well drawn. she casually commented.
"Luckily for you, the line between what is good and what is evil remains clear, for now." he reassured Chroma, "Salassar, would you like to treat yourself to some wine? I would like to be alone with my heroes and my guest."
Once hearing Lifprasil's request the quara nodded "Of course sir. But if possible, I would live to discuss some private matters with you later."
Lifprasil nodded. "Of course, Salassar," he dismissed, a mannequin beside him, who appeared to be Salassar's escort throughout the lavish palace.
Once the Quara was gone, Lifprasil looked to Lakshmi and Susa, beyond Chroma. From a broad staircase, three strange creatures stepped down to take their place behind Lifprasil, each one a member of the Wardens Three. "In your absence, a project has foregone, I have created soldiers capable of tackling these Realta that threaten Alefpria, and more. These three behind me are just an example of the powerful flesh our mortal soldiers can be shaped into." explained Lifprasil, motioning for a single Warden to step forward, arksynth sinews driving heavy steps to a halt in front of the opposite three.
Susa didn't see much room to judge the creatures from looks alone thanks to her practical mindset. But one keyword caught her attention. "Shaping the flesh huh? I won't believe until I see them taking down one of those metallic fiends, but Chroma did win our fight by changing her flesh to something stronger. she mused.
"Huh? What are you talking about?" Chroma was confused at what Susa could possibly be referring to. Maybe the heat confused her mind. "Anyway, these soldiers are so neat." her "eyes" shone with enthusiasm "But, just between us, did you add some sort of kill switch?"
"That s-ssounds immoral," Lakshmi scolded Chroma, "I think this-s is f-ffantastic, how was th-thiss done?" she asked Lifprasil, looking over the three. "Niciel, Vestec, Jvan, and Astarte, a communion of Gods came together to establish this creation, and I command them. Now, any mortal I choose can attain power equivocal to yours, or even mine, perfect weapons to counter Logos' Realta." explained Lifprasil, and that was just the short of it.
Lakshmi paused, mortals stronger than she, or Lifprasil was unheard of, stronger than those things that so easily trumped her. It took her a second to process, as the utterance of the concept seeded doubts within her; then again, only good had come from the following of he, thusfar. She took comfort in this: trailing the trailblazer Demi-God himself.
"So they were created by a congregation of gods? On this case, I will join Chroma in her worry, last time the gods got together to make something they ended up creating the universe, and we all know how that turned out."
"Oh, I'm not worried. They are super cool, though, would look cooler if the armor was painted in red with some flames on the sides."
"It was a joke. For all, I know as long as they stop those things that attacked us they are fine... even if they have a hand from the god who made the horde." there was a hint of discomfort in her voice, however, it was not born from suspicion but from a certain jealousy that some mortal beings could become able to hunt those creatures in a day while she had been hunting for decades and was unable to even scratch their metallic shells.
Lifprasil chuckled, he enjoyed the dry humor of the Huntress, but chose to ignore her quip. "Very well, Chroma, I'll consider it. All that I do, now, is for the greater good of Galbar's express freedom, and to liberate mortals from a volatile power struggle. Vestec's involvement already speaks volumes about the dire straits we have been pulled into, and the addition of another Hero to my court will only help save thousands of lives more. Thank you for bringing Chroma to me, Susa, Lakshmi, and Chroma, thank you for coming here, together, we can make Galbar a bastion of good." he said, a genuine grin crossing his face before he set a hand on what looked like her shoulder.
"You seem to be one of the good guys, your prositlense. I look forward to helping you and your city" she saluted Lifprasil.
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