But k, Belo'll let her NEET for a few days longer~
Remind me though, NoCo, cause while the OOC stated that we would all automatically spawn within the capital cities of our respective deities, we all sorta ended up...not doing that. How much GMing would you do for us in general then, and how much stuff can we do to ourselves, in terms of NPC interactions, plot events, etc?
"Mm, if it's orcs upon which Sir Renar will make his claim to fame, I'm sure the title of 'Orcbolg' has laid quiet enough to be foisted upon another."
The soft spot the terminally-cynical knight had for his little brother was of such indulgence that it was like a melted milk pudding. As some silence was brought within the cavernous hall, curiously empty for the time of day, Serenity shrugged, her own gaze settling upon the successive paintings of Tyaethe across the decades, each rendered by a different painter.
"They threw away their honor, and still died like swine." Such a restrained expression, such a restrained tone. "Suppose it was the Goddess's mercy that dulled their wits, when the advantage would've been theirs in but a few more hours."
From the gloom of the arcade stepped forth a girl that could only be described as battered. Dark bruises showed up even against her dark skin, as strands of black hair clung limply against a sweat-slicked face. Her eyes, an uncommon blue amongst the citizenry of Japan, were heavily bagged with sleep deprivation, while the steps she took were slow, deliberate. Perhaps to hide a sprain or a limp. Though she looked similar in age to Homura herself, the difference in their chosen attire couldn't be any more different.
Homura dressed for appearances. This blue-eyed strange, cradling unnamed injuries though? She dressed for the outdoors. Zip-off cargo pants and mud-stained sneakers for her bottom; a rainproof jacket zipped all the way up for her top. The smell of dirt and sawdust accompanied the faint undertone of dried blood, and perhaps it was only her youthfulness that made her appear harmless despite such a exterior.
Strange shadows were cast upon her face as the fluorescence of the claw machine illuminated her, and she placed a closed fist against the plastic border separating girl from bear.
Floating above the waters that consumed him, the rage of the storm insufficient to alter his spiritual form. And yet, it had not been death that surprised him, that had changed his world so greatly. No, it had been the understanding that the winged being towards him, pale-skinned and black-haired, was not the prophet that he had veneered, that his family had spoken of. His presence was warlike, his countenance disdaining humanity. Belo had expected hell. He had received another world instead.
And as that winged being placed their hand upon his chest, Belo’s hand reached up to grab them by the wrist. Not squeezing. Just a firm enough grasp to remind this creature who plundered this drifting soul, lost at sea of a single thing.
He was not taken by Allah.
But he never worshipped Drasil.
If he kept his eyes closed, his ears shut, perhaps he could imagine that he was back home. Coarse sand and small stones scratched at his skin, and the salt in the air tickled his nostrils, a brininess that at once whetted his appetite and pulled at his consciousness. But even if he was blind and deaf, he could smell it too, the iron tang of blood in the air, mixed with vomit and fire. He could feel it too, the tremors in the sand, the thrumming in the air, the weight of pounding feet of pursuer and prey. Even if he was blind and deaf, he knew something was afoot.
His ears, now huge flaps of skin and cartilage, were far too big for him to profess deafness. His eyes, beady and black, absorbed the light in terrible clarity and granted him a much too sharp awareness of his surroundings.
Plumes of smoke stained the clear skies as blazing spheres rolled along the beach, leaving trails of soot in its wake. Long-limbed creatures, cloaked in a fabric that sparkled like steel, shouted out commands in a foreign tongue, as the more well-armed of them rushed forth with slender sabres, cutting down those that fled or those that fought. A strange witchcraft seemed to seize the limbs of the burlier race, their movements arrested mid fight or flight, before their blood contained to soak the white sands a sanguine pigment. Chaos was abound, the chaos that confounded an organized defense. He had seen the work of bandits before though. He had been a pirate himself, knew all about the practicality of a shocking attack.
They were not collecting their plunder though. They were not taking hostages for ransom, not using threats to force surrender and submission.
No.
Those pale-skinned soldiers were in the business of sawing off ears, of setting ablaze a village and all its goods, of running through their targets with a lethal grace entirely at odds with the brutality they marketed. Belo felt his own blood sluggishly ooze down his crown, slip down his pudgy nose, splatter upon the sands. Had that winged creature hurled his soul into a vessel that had just lost their own?
Was there anything more to expect though, out of a creature that desired war and conquest, conflict and…
You’ll have a new family to protect very soon!
Bastard!
He hurled himself forwards, his body so much lighter and stronger than he was accustomed to. He could hardly register the gawkiness of his own limbs, the strange way that his teeth did not fit inside his lips, the ways his clawed feet dug into the sand as he charged shoulder-first into one of the soldiers. They tumbled into the ground together, a tangle of limbs, but Belo had the advantage of surprise and the knowledge that if he did not act swiftly, his own body would be paralyzed by the witchcraft that these invaders wielded.
It was a quick thing to do then, pulling out the small knife that he had somehow known was there and ramming it into the open mouth of his stunned opponent. Blood, the same sanguine ichor, gushed out from tongue and throat. An instant death, swift enough that it was only a terrible heartbeat later that Belo registered who it was that he had just killed.
A woman, in the spring of her youth, one who couldn’t have been even twenty years old. Her long-lashed eyes subsumed with a blank, deathly terror. Her unblemished skin drenched with sweat and blood. Her features of such refinement that he thought he had gotten things wrong for a moment there. That he had somehow attacked the wrong person.
The shouts of others, in a tongue neither Somali, Arabic, or English, snapped him out of it, and he remembered why he had broken out from his feigned death. His expression hardened and he scrambled up once more, picking up the pudgy, pig-like child by the neck and tossing them over his shoulder. She had been the one to pull a blade on a child. She was the one who ought to have expected all this! And though his own skin now shared the color of the shaytan whom tempted humans to sin, his own religion did not apply to this new world and devils did not bleed red.
He did not drown, did not become forsaken, did not become reborn, simply to die once more.
But, in pursuit of life, of life saving life, Belo left that burning beach as well, left the gleaming ships and the glistening sea, for the shelter of a forest so dense that the greenery itself was blinding. He delved into the forest, one hand warding off the branches and twigs and brush that impeded his path, another hand grasping firmly upon the soiled loincloth of the child he had plucked out from the massacre.
Knowing nothing, nothing at all, of how it was the woods that the elves were most comfortable in.
If they had more time, it would've been funny to jump Valen together. Give him the left, right, good night.
But alas, time do be ticking, and the super funny scheme of opening a Door beneath him and dropping him into Otis's dungeon can't work if they also need to retrieve chairs from that same dungeon.
The situation was evolving in a favorable direction.
Valen Leuvalt was intent on portraying himself as the villain in all of this, the epitome of aristocratic pride and prejudice. Even if he had exaggerated things, he had still presented himself as the singular enemy to all other students here. By aligning against him, then, Ciara, Iraleth, and now Hildegunde, had all presented themselves as individuals who cared for their fellow students. Even students as rotten and pathetic as the lot that stepped forth with claims of virtue, and those three now became their champions. Otis would not have stepped forth, of course. A Fireball was one of the simplest destructive spells out there, a weapon that was only leveraged for mass destruction against the masses.
Against any competent student in the arcane studies, however, it was one easily severed. To perform such movements so slowly, to leverage it as only a threat, revealed the red-headed noble’s intentions. Otis would not have acted until the ignition. Otis too, cared not for the fates of swine.
But he would take a step forwards, nonetheless. The heel of his boot clacked with a resounding echo, the elevation of the stage he was on giving him the ability to look down upon Valen. Amber met crimson, distinct and divergent legacies intersecting upon the academy that unified all. The Strigidae had no words for him though, and after holding that gaze for a moment, it diverted towards the shield-summoner instead, the one that the bespectacled boy had held in such high regards.
“That is enough.”
The signs of rebound were evident. He clearly did not have an Ethos suited for transporting the incapacitated, not in the same way that Otis did.
“Take your seat and do with it what you will.”
And from the wings of the auditorium arrived a familiar form. A Mannekin, holding with it a wooden seat. Its limbs clicked and whirred, steel strings in its chassis guiding its motor movements with an artificial precision, as it strode towards Rio, lifting the seat out for him to take. The Strigidae’s silence had not just been one to impose pressure upon those desperate few, not just to categorize those who would make it, and those who would not.
He had been simulating the spellwork necessary to seize control of the Mannekins inside his own Workshop, repurposing them as servants who could retrieve those chairs for him. Hidden off in the back of the auditorium was that open Door, the cosmos from which the Mannekins that Ciara had thrown in returned, a new puppeteer grasping their strings.
“Little time remains. Those who remain incapable of acquiring a chair, form three orderly rows, and stay silent. Come up when your name is called. Your position in those rows do not matter, but if there is any effort to forcibly take a seat from those who were gifted one, I will cease this process until the perpetrator is removed from the premises. This goes for all further threats of violence and disruption.”
He had originally planned on simply arriving to the auditorium first and then barring all entrances with the entirety of the seats in the auditorium, the sort of scheme where by forcibly entering, the students would have destroyed their own chances of admission. It was only owing to his companions’ presence that Otis’s plan had diverged so much from its original form.
“And I will remind you. This year, you did not earn your seat. But if you fail here, next year you may be able to.”
The remaining cave group is just Unknown at this point, who hasn’t logged in for a week. Might be appropriate to move on from there too, unless you’re waiting for a Kazemitsu.
mickilennial
Feyblue
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Emberdawn2
VirgoDrago
