So worried right now. My brother just got admitted to the hospital after swallowing six toy horses. Doctors say he's in stable condtion.
8
likes
3 yrs ago
Nice to meet you, Bored. I'm interested!
7
likes
3 yrs ago
Ugh. Someone literally stole the wheels off of my car. Gonna have to work tirelessly for justice.
4
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Bio
Oh gee! An age and a gender and interests and things. Yeah, I have those. Ain't no way I'm about to trigger an existential crisis by typing them all out, though. You can find out what a nerd I am on discord, okay?
They had all united at the square, where the box had told them to meet. Some were chipper, some were shaken, and some were even still tired from the performance they had just put. The gang was back together, at the very least, for better ...
Or for worse.
“Y'know,” spoke Juulet, her figuratively reptilian eyes locked onto Kaureerah with Leon getting a few glances. “if you're gonna sacrifice your best piece to win the match, at the very least TRY to get rid of the big bad.” she hopped until most of the gap was closed - it took a little, given she only had her spear as support. “It's one thing to be dumped in a latrine. It's another to end up with the turd still ALIVE!” she wasn't happy, not quite angry or maddened, but the discontent was being made very obvious. “That would've killed all of us if I were anybody else.” venomous were her words, just as was the glared she dedicated to the popular, piscine bard.
Kaureerah involuntarily took a step back - someone strong was angry at her. Then, she realized that that 'someone' wasn't strong right now. She arched an eyebrow and tilted her head. "I owe yoo saumtheng," she replied, with a slight bow of that same head. "I deed it because I thaught eet waus aur best chence too get reed auf thet theeng end, quite frenkly, I knew yoo'd soorvive." She grimaced slightly. "Yoo aulweys do. I'm... saurry for the deefecaulty." She met Juulet's gaze as evenly as she could.
Meanwhile, Xiuyang looked... about as well as could be expected, given who she had for company. Her left arm had been obviously and brutally crushed with a blunt object and hastily mended. She was still trying to heal painful micro-fractures, but such precision was beyond her when even sensing in this environment was quite difficult. She offered Seviin and Yuli a pained and apologetic smile, as though she felt like she'd abandoned them.
She was, however, unconcerned with Juulet. If the Mad Avatar hadn't abandoned her to die, she wouldn't dare to harm anyone here. "Well, I'm not going back down there." She put her foot down on that matter as she considered her options. Frankly, neither of the likely heavily-guarded locales appealed to her. Splitting up was the worst thing they could be asked to do when even their safety in numbers was already just a tempting illusion. Besides, she told herself, the Forge was the entire reason she was here, and it wouldn't do to give her classmates any opportunities to shut her out of it.
She snorted dryly. Just what had she called this, back in Cantativa? A little 'adventure?' A good excuse to escape the public eye for a while? Just what good was she doing, here? All she'd managed to do so far was save the life of her archenemy. It was with that weight on her mind that she joined Leon, Seviin and Yvain in the fog. She supposed that she would drop dead in tandem with one of the other, braver souls any minute. Or, perhaps it would be a long time before the horrors of this place allowed the first of them to die. Maybe the boxed voice's magic would even have worn off by then. She wrapped her arms around herself as she pondered her many possible fates.
She could do little but keep praying. Ipte reunite me with my love, in life or in death. Shune guide my steps. Oraff protect me from these abominations against creation. Eshiran deliver me from the hands of those who mock you from beyond the grave. Dami judge me worthy.
...
...Tyrel... live a long life, okay?
Seviin, for her part, had little to say. They'd all made it there, though Yuliya looked bad, like she was hurting. She simply... healed, as best she could with her magics muted. She healed, as best she could, through the feelings of anger towards the faceless horrors of this place. She healed, as best she could, through her sense of betrayal by the ones who'd sent her here. She healed... because people needed healing, and that was what a priestess of Oirase did.
But if you had just fought - protected them - they would not need healing, and they would know not to attack you again.
Horrified at the stray thought, she misaligned a blood vessel in Xiuyang's arm, causing a large purpling bruise. She shook her head and quickly fixed the damage. Seviin's fists clenched and unclenched. It was the animal in her speaking - the animal she would not let out, the animal who would only destroy. Besides, it was a false sentiment. She'd been nowhere near most of the others when they'd been hurt.
Perhaps it was guilt that drove her, then, or maybe just the familiarity of Xiuyang, but she walked into the fog with them. It certainly wasn't fear that she would not be able to fight for herself. Priestesses of Life did not fear Death.
What a load of dung, all of it seems like some messed up test from a Zeno that went crazy. Yvain looked upon the united group with annoyance. If they had time to argue, they had time to keep on moving.
The pain in his shoulder did not fade no matter what he or others tried, yet he did not check if the wound was real or not. Any distraction could make him lose focus on the task. "Let's get moving." He walked forward to dare the fog once more. There was no reason to pray, for may the gods witness his life and judge accordingly.
Most were entering the fog and out of sight while Juulet was still hung up on the previous abandonment. She wasn't as snappy as she normally was, though, with more effort put into the glares toward Kaureerah than anything else. This lack of reaction was becoming more apparent to her ex-colleague from Vyshta's Favoured, Pluurii, although their acquaintance dated further back than the games. “What?” an irate Mad Avatar turned her attention to the white haired Tarlonese, shooting her down with gaze and voice as effectively as the rifle held by the other candidate. The latter peered away, nervous and avoidant.
The numbers dwindled. Soon, they would only have the two one-legged Yasoi, Kaureerah and Yuliya. The Vossoriyan needed to take a seat on the edge of the fountain, passing off her condition as mere exertion. “Well, I'm not going anywhere near the water here.” she stated, her body twisting to find the leaning tower in the distance. “I'll take my chances up there.”
“I'll come with.” the sniper with the mousy voice insisted.
Juulet cackled sarcastically. “Ahah, uhhh-” with a bite of her lip, she sized up the Yasoi that slowly emerged back onto her feet. “With that gun and bucket leg of yours?”
Pluurii, silently, checked out Juulet's frame the same way she had been scrutinized. Emphasis on the spear and the lack of a leg. The Mad Avatar's cheek twitched. “Fuck off.” she growled petulantly. “I got my special sauce still working. You can just-” she made a shooing gesture.
Pluurii shrugged. “We Yasoi are pretty good at climbing, right?” she remarked semi-innocently. “And I like high points. It can help me keep track of everyone.” she smiled. For a moment she had looked toward the fog, right where Seviin had entered.
Xiuyang, for one, was glad to have the priestess' company, but she jolted at the sudden pain of her distracted blunder, and watched with tired eyes as she shook her head and clenched her fists. "Seviin, are you... okay? You seem a little..." She appeared to search for the right word, but regardless of whether she chose to say she was tense, distracted, or just 'off,' it was going to mean the same thing.
Leon had been in good spirits when it was just the first trio arriving. Yuli and Kaureerah seemed to have plenty to catch up about and Leon did the same with Yvain. Frankly, all four of them looked like hell. But the marvelous success of the performance had given enough joy and hope to turn their spirits upward. Whatever Yuli and Yvain had come from, they needed that... And then.
clackclackclack A discordant beat had been introduced to the melody of reunion. clackclackclack
The performer looked over to see the Mad Avatar was back from the dead. A plastic smile masked his growing sense of dread. Should he be smiling? Maybe he shouldn't be looking too happy around her? Hell if he knew what the right way to look was right now.
The exchange between Juulet and Kaureerah wasn't the end of the world, but the former was still giving the latter an evil eye. Of course his luna couldn't escape it by just calling it even. A poor soul had been sent to the Yarsese wilderness for less.
He and Juulet needed to talk before anyone reached the Forge. But that wasn't going to happen with so many around to see. In one moment, he met her gaze when the Avatar's glares at his love had switched over to him. It was a quick, unremarkable look that said 'we are going to be the last ones to leave this plaza.'
"Yoolee?"
The Vossoriyan was one of the strong - the destined people - and she had raced out ahead of Kaureerah. Now, the eeaiko had surfaced. There was a pocket of this godsforsaken place that hadn't been flooded and she had hauled herself up onto it, sitting cross-legged in the pitch blackness. Sporadically, she had felt Yuli's presence ahead of her as they swam, but then the distance had grown and Kaureerah had sensed the chemicals in the water burning at her skin and eyes. If they were bad for an eeaiko, they must've been hell for kekar and heroo. She'd put what little of the Gift she could muster into protecting herself from their effects, and had lost touch with her friend in the process.
"Yoolee?" she tried again, and it was cold here - eerie. She ran her hands up and down her biceps and pressed her lips together. She could feel her hair plastered to her back. Unlike that of kekar, heroo, and other land-dwellers, it bunched naturally, the oils in it causing it to stick, slicked back, against her back. A krin hep nah toas... It was as much for her as her friend.
As she had swam, navigating by a mix of energy sense, touch, and intuition, she'd thought she'd felt Yuli for a moment: a truly monstrous energy. It had to have been Yuliya, for what else could it have been? Yet, the energy had been behind her - well behind, to be sure, but behind her, while the sanguinaire had almost certainly been ahead. She stretched out her senses once more and found that it was gone.
The lingering unease it had created, however, was not. Preparing her lungs to switch to oceanborn, Kaureerah breathed in and out, emptying her lungs completely. Then, she slid off of the ledge she had rested on and into the cold burning water. She had gone no more than a handful of strokes - just far enough to reach the edge of the air pocket - when she felt it again.
The energy was massive, and it was following her, and it was not Yuli: not in this state. The eeaiko did the only thing that she could: she swam.
But then it was gone again, and Kaureerah could not tell, for the life of her, if it was because it truly was gone or if she was simply stretched too thin trying to sense ahead for Yuliya and neutralizing these toxic chemicals. She had never encountered anything like them. They were compounds that seemed to make... no sense, have... no use that she could discern, like so much in this strange dead city.
So, she swam through the pitch blackness, among the ruins, dodging fallen support beams and chunks of concrete and just wanting to be done with it - out of here! Then, up ahead, at the periphery of her greatly-reduced sensing range, she felt it: chemicals, heat, veins of magnetic energy like she had sensed elsewhere in this place! Most of all, however - and it crystallized as she drew closer still - there was a person: Yuliya!
It was about a minute and a half later when Kaureerah pulled herself through the end of a great pipe and landed with limited grace on the ground of a vast strange building. It was full of what she could only describe as... clockwork, and... furnaces, and... some form of engine, perhaps? It was like nothing she'd ever lain eyes on before and, for a moment, she was lost in the wonder of it. She stood there, dripping dry, and the cold began to take her.
Soft footsteps padded across the battered concrete floor and a cold wind rattled the doors. It was vast and drafty and abandoned, like everything else in this bleak place. Such wonders... just left to rot. Kaureerah wrapped her arms around herself and walked toward the familiar agglomeration of a person's energy. "Yoolee?" she called. "Yooooooollleeeeeee!"
There was no response but, as she continued in the Vossoriyan's direction, it occurred to her that this place was a bit less abandoned than others. The concrete had been patched in places around the massive chemical vats. It was a quick and ugly job, but it had been patched. There were fresh screws in the rusty old metal doors, holding them shut to the outside world. Some form of horseless carriage - different in shape than the rusted wrecks she'd encountered before - waited in a corner, looking old and battered, but functional, and there was a hum, too. That, she could sense. It was a faint thing, but it was everywhere, like being inside an enormous beehive. Only, there are no bees. There is nothing. It was uncanny.
Up ahead was a tall metal ladder leading to a metal grate platform. It was festooned with flaking yellow paint, though there were no cobwebs. Someone had climbed it recently. That someone had been Yuliya. She was up top. Kaureerah could see her and, now, the theoretical worry in her gut had become urgently literal. The sanguinaire was unconscious.
She had taken three quick steps up the ladder when she felt it again: the energy. It was overwhelming. It punched her in the stomach and her world swayed and she started to fall. Her wrist conked off of the metal and her knee extended painfully as she managed to half-soften her landing. She staggered forward and leaned against the ladder for support, trying to gather her senses. Something stronger than her yet again. Something that could crush her and no Yuliya to rely on.
Yuliya. She was unconscious, surely. Yuliya would die if this thing was an enemy and, in a place like this, that always had to be the starting assumption. Kaureerah's pulse pounded in her ears and she swallowed her discomfort and climbed the ladder like a heroo. Still, the titan approached.
She climbed.
Closer still, it drew.
She climbed.
Dust swirled about the dry cold air as Kaureerah instinctively ducked and shielded her face. Yuliya was still out and it occurred to Kaureerah that she was a sanguinaire and her manas were fighting each other. She would not be waking up anytime soon and, if the eeaiko didn't get her out of here, likely never.
The presence was colossal: an agglomeration of energy to rival the likes of Jocasta Re. Yet, where the Tan-Zeno was often a comforting big sisterly presence, this was anything but. Kaureerah did not waste time gawking and searching. Whatever the interloper was, it was an enemy. She used what little she had of the Gift to leap over to the next landing and alight softly, obscuring her presence as best she could. There was no running while carrying Yuliya. The Vossoriyan was safer up top while Kaureerah tried to find a way to...
What, exactly, was it that she was trying to do? She couldn't beat something like this. Moatu Suva had taught her that there were no victories to be had against people greatly stronger than herself. She could flee, right now, and likely outrun it. Strong as it may have been, it could not swim like an eeaiko.
The last of the rubble from the concrete explosion skittered off the walls and pinged off of the metal grate landings. The dust cloud began to clear as Kaureerah reached out to search for anything in her environment that she could use.
For a moment, she couldn't make sense of her enemy. It was... huge, its outline hazy as it stalked through the swirling dust. It... didn't make sense. It was...
The bottom fell out of her stomach: the Headless.
Societal biases had taught nearly all young mages that a large enemy is often a slow and cumbersome enemy. Kaureerah had to quickly unlearn this. The monster moved with uncanny speed. First, it was down below by the obliterated wall. Now, it was leaping onto the platforms, bolting towards her with all of its speed and might.
To be caught by that thing was death.
The young mage imagined a vine sprouting from the holes in the grate and tripping the onrushing titan, and the first part came to fruition. It was barely slowed at all: a slight hitch in one of its steps as it plowed past, always in pursuit.
Kaureerah stretched her senses out again, and this place was not entirely dead, after all. There were vats - massive holding tanks - full of volatile chemical compounds. It occurred to her, absently, though she did not have time to think on it, that they'd have long since gone inert if this place truly had been abandoned for centuries.
The Headless did not care for her contemplation, however. It landed on the floor with such force that the concrete buckled under its feet, throwing up a second, smaller dust and rubble cloud. There had to be a way to use those chemicals! She started to reach out with her senses, from her high-up and dubiously safe perch. That one's a powder - heh.
The Headless didn't even bother to climb or leap up. It grabbed the main support beam beneath her and ripped the platform down. It was all that Kaureerah could do to leap away.
The monster charged right after her and there was no reprieve from its relentless assault. It was only defense and she didn't know if this thing could get tired, much less be killed! This is what you get for doing the selfless thing! screamed her inner voice. Yuliya was one of the Titans, just like Juulet and, just like the Mad Avatar, she had been laid low here and made vulnerable.
She's your friend.
There was no more time to think on it. They thought had simply appeared and recentered her. Kaureerah reach out, this time, with a different idea. She concentrated and, from the floor, sprouted a large, slick carpet of moss. The Headless pushed off to jump at her and his prey did not have enough time to run.
He pushed off and his feet went out from under him. He landed with a colossal crash!
Nitric acid. That, she had learned in Zeno Silvestri's class. She could sense its telltale acidity. There were other chemicals too: oils, bases, and things that she did not recognize. She had sensed a powder earlier and, now, from her vantage point, she could see where it was located.
White powder: large and grainy. It struck her that she had seen it before. She had seen Rikard use it, but there was no time to think further. The Headless was up and barreling towards her, tearing up the moss as it went.
This was a game of brinksmanship. She darted around the back of the nitric acid vat, ready to rapidly disengage if the monster tried to just plow through it. She needed to start figuring out what his reactions were. She needed to establish patterns so that she could anticipate and -
The entire vat - hundreds of litres - shifted where it sat. It shifted and then...
It Lifted!
Kaureerah scurried away like the prey animal that she was as the enormous contained was ripped from its mountings and tossed aside. It occurred to her that there was a sort of rudimentary thought process to the Headless, but that it hadn't considered that the act of ripping a massive tank free would take awhile.
Nitric acid, Kaureerah repeated in her head, Nitric acid.... Up where the switch was, Yuli remained unconscious, though she had slid to the side and now lay there, arm and head draped over the edge under the simple guardrail, dangling.
A thin layer of nitric acid raced out from where its container had toppled and began to spread across the floor. A catalyst! She needed a catalyst. The eeaiko darted behind another vat but, when the monster came charging after her, she bolted. She leapt, settling on the white powder. She couldn't shake the feeling that it would react.
And then the Headless was there, right beside her. Its hulking form reared back and its hand reached out and she threw herself to the side desperately, sporepuff mushrooms blooming, ripening, and exploding along the side of the tub.
Too slow.
The Headless grabbed her around the wrist and, as if in slow motion, she could start to feel it lift. The force was incredible. Bones gave way. Her feet left the ground. Pain blossomed up and down the damaged limb and then she knew what she had to do. She could not hurt this monster.
Reaching out with her feeble kinetic magic, she broke her fingers and her hand and it slid through the Headless' grip when it tried to swing her into a pillar. Biting back a scream, she landed evenly and skidded back. Her attacker overbalanced and crashed into another vat, his hulking form starting to compromise it from the sheer impact.
Yuliya was about to fall and Kaureerah completed the process. The unconscious sanguinaire tumbled through the air and came to rest beside her saviour with only minimal impact. The eeaiko's hand was a mangled mess. It throbbed and tore at her focus but, now, her target was the pipe that she had come through.
The silo with the white powder that she was gambling everything on teetered. Yuliya hung limply across Kaureerah's shoulder. The Headless rose and blasted forward once more and a great thorny vine emerged from one of the grates to tear at its strange, tattered layered outfit. For a moment, it thrashed but, inevitably, began to break through, for there was nothing within the eeaiko's direct power to stop it.
She dived into the tube, Yuliya coming loose and tumbling limply in after. She dived and tugged at the vat full of white powder. She did not know its name, but it was decaborane, an incredibly potent ingredient in rocket fuel.
She did not see it explode, but water is an exceptional heat sink. Even so, the flash was blinding and the temperature rose close to boiling levels. She grabbed Yuliya and didn't look back, not even once until she was well away.
Seviin, in the meantime, had murmured something noncommittally confirmational Pluurii's way, but this one was one of Cascal and Esuul's hounds, for all her meek manner. The tyro priestess had seen her in Tanso and the sniper's presence made her uneasy.
She shot Xiuyang a smile that had no happiness in it. "I think 'okay' is a relative term right now." She shrugged, striding ahead, but her neck twisted a couple more times and her eyes pierced the murk slightly better than a huusoi's could to regard her fellow Tarlonese. "but how about you?" She blushed in embarrassment. "I made a mistake and left you with a bruise, Mother Oirase forgive me."
"I'm... better," Xiuyang decided. Not quite okay, but better, as she surely must be after relieving herself of Juulet's presence. Her eyes were evasive, like she'd been found out somehow. "It doesn't hurt," she added. The truth was that it hurt much less than a broken arm. She strained her eyes to see into the fog, but she wouldn't see anything more than Seviin could. "Are you hungry?" she asked suddenly, and somehow meaningfully.
But the weight behind her question surely must have been Seviin's imagination going wild, because Xiuyang was holding out some food. They were seaweed wraps with rolled-up dried meat, cheese and bean paste. "I uh, tried my hand at making... something. I don't know if you'll like it, but even Juulet said it was good, so I hope it at least... isn't bad. ...By travel food standards." She busied herself looking into the fog rather than at her friend's face.
Seviin's eyes darted to the offering and to the one holding it. "I, um... a'lethei, suunei." She bowed her head and reached out to take it.
She froze. She froze and nearly retracted her hand, for it was unmistakable. Her fingernails had always been thicker and sharper than those of huusoi - such was perfectly normal for yasoi - but they were claws. They were claws and a thin film of flaxen gold hair trickled down her forearm and across her hand. The priestess swallowed. She was hungry; there was no denial to be made, but...
You are not me. I am not you. You will not emerge. She stood there, for a moment longer, paralyzed by her reaction.
Xiuyang also froze, briefly, her survival instincts forcing unwanted goosebumps upon her. She herself belonged to a family of shapeshifters, and they were on good terms with a few sanguinaires. By now, she shouldn't even be surprised by this. It was almost comedic, how everyone close to her seemed to have some dark secret or other.
Her heart bubbled with empathy. She wanted to tell Seviin that it was alright, but the words were vapid and caught in her throat. What kind of person was Seviin, really? Could she ever accept herself as she was? Would she accept the Solari, if she knew? It seemed a simple solution, to just spill each other's beans, but that was very... merchant-like. *Transactional.* Seviin was different from her, and that left Xiuyang feeling a little uncertain—but, maybe a little uncertainty was okay among friends.
"Suunei." She spoke a single word. It was meant to be firm and grounding, but it came out harsher and more demanding than she wanted it to, like the next words she spoke would be a command, rather than the... what *did* she plan to say, anyway? Did she have a plan?
No. She realized that she didn't. She just felt a sudden urge to take Seviin's hand before she started spiraling, like Xiuyang knew she would likely have done if their positions had been switched, and Seviin had found her out. Her eyes were determined, as someone who knew what they saw and refused to brush it off or look away, but that determination wavered when she once again remembered that she didn't quite know what to say. "W-What... are you thinking right now?" she tried, her hand shaking. She let go of her hand, leaving the offering of food in Seviin's palm as she pulled the inferno blanket tighter around her shoulders.
"I..." Seviin's fists balled and unraveled and she didn't have words any more than Xiuyang had. "I am worried that... I am about to become something..." She swallowed. "...I do not want to become." She hated the squeak in her voice. It made her sound like a child - a 'precocious upjumped little pipsqueak with too much to say and no sense'. That was what cousin Esmii had called her, and her blood had boiled then.
She was not that person now - she was not the animal. She continued, voice unsteady. "There is a... wrongness inside of me that I cannot be rid of." She glanced down at her shoes and and then out into the murk in the direction that Pluurii had gone. "That one is an agent of the Diarchy and she is not here for innocent reasons. At the very least, she will try to make me... turn." Her eyes snapped back to Xiuyang and then to the food. "If I am overcome, if I become more beast than woman, promise that you will not risk yourself. Whatever happens is down to my will and that of the Gods." She reached out to take the offering in earnest this time.
Xiuyang blinked, like a thought had occurred to her, and she swallowed. "You're right about it being the will of the gods. Since Mother Oirase makes nothing that is unnecessary, right?" She tried on a smile, but positivity was a precious resource and she could not spare much. "We may not understand it, but what if it isn't wrong to be more than what we seem to be?"
Seviin went still for a good long moment. She breathed. Her muscles tightened. After an interval, she began to come out of it and a dozen different responses flashed through her mind's eye. She could feel the pressure building behind her nose and eyes and she knew that she would cry. She hated herself for it. Abruptly, she turned and stalked off into the mist without saying a word.
The tension in Xiuyang's heart dropped and created a pit in her stomach. She never knew what to say in a situation like this. She had a feeling that she'd just made her friend cry, but was it a good and necessary cry, or had she just wounded her more deeply than she could imagine, knowing nothing?
Should she give Seviin some space? It hardly mattered, because in this situation, she couldn't afford to. The best she could offer was to give her a bit of distance, keeping her within sight but giving her as large of a personal bubble as she dared, and to keep her footsteps quiet and unobtrusive. It wasn't difficult to make her presence small when this place engraved the feeling of smallness into her very being.
She longed to console her friend, but she bit her tongue and cursed herself for saying too much with too little information. There was no way she'd said what Seviin needed to hear. Once more, her own need for validation had caused her to harm someone she cared for.
It was on these terms that they wandered into the mist, the great oppressive shape of the tower fading into its listless depths. Seviin became disconnected, there. She simply wandered forward, vision swimming with phantoms in the fog, mind bleeding one paranoid thought over the other. She clenched her fists so tightly that blood dripped from them. Blood and pain. The pain would centre her. It would ground her. This was what the animal did: it caused pain.
It was not long before she had no sense of direction, but for a vague sense of Xiuyang behind her, and that began to pick at her conscience. Stupid yanii, she tried on for size, but it was a thought full of hate and didn't reflect her actual feelings. The presumptuousness, though! As if Salomé Xiuyang Solari knew the first thing about her! As if she understood what Seviin was, what it meant to be what she was, what she had done!
Then maybe you should tell her. The fifteen-year-old's steps became stiff and avoidant and she stalked forward a little faster. So much anger! The tears came down her face. So much! She wasn't like this. This wasn't right! How could she have so much anger in her? And, yet, had she not felt a white hot hatred towards the diarchy? Had it not...
Her mind reeled and she backed away from where that led. She backed away and just kept crying: crying and walking through the endless murk in this miserable place. I am sorry, Mother, she thought into the universe. I am trying so badly, but I am failing. Her friend... She had wounded Xiuyang back and she turned about to search for the Revidian, but she was nowhere to be found. There was only this grey... nothingness.
"Suunei?" she tried, feebly, but it was deadened in the mist. "Xiuyang!?" This came with a bit more urgency, and she waited, heart beating in her throat.
There was no response.
This place fairly pulsated with emptiness, but it was a ripe expectant emptiness that oppressed and bore down and promised ill if not offered the blood money of a response. "XIUYANG!! Seviin screamed into it and the mists swirling was her only response. Who would want her as a friend? She was no fun. She was heavy and dour and closed-off and refused to be anything else.
"Xiuyang..." She was being pathetic. The priestess reached up to dab her tears away with her sleeve and took a couple of steadying breaths.
That was when she sensed it.
The fog rippled and writhed and, charging out of it was a colossal white lionbear. It galloped toward her on all fours, grunting and snorting and she had a good few seconds to watch and know it to be herself. It neither stopped nor slowed and the girl's eyes widened. She dived out of the way as a massive paw came swiping for her chest, saved by instinct alone. She came up in a roll but it was already after her: relentless, rearing up and crashing down, and she threw herself back out of harm's way.
Seviin scrambled, once more, to her feet, springing away in a randomized direction. The bear stood on its hind legs and ripped through the mists with bellowing roar. The girl called upon what little of the Gift she had and tried to conjure a barrier, but it was too slow. It was no good and she knew it almost instantly. At a half-gallop, loping along between twos and fours, the beast crashed upon her and, once more, she twisted free but, this time, she felt a hard impact and her world spun and swam. The mists swirled and her scream deadened and she felt blood trickle down the side of her face.
She tried to calm herself. She tried to centre herself, but it just came at her again: something that she could not heal or placate or bargain with.
She reached up to heal the wound - a gash along her hairline - but it was slow going and she stumbled free of the beast's next murderous attack. Its eyes, dark and hot and full of hatred, bored into her and she could feel that it was not a mindless thing: it had intent.
Internal Chemical magic! With so little of the Gift, it was her best bet, and she sprinted away, blinking the blood from her right eye and trying to focus. There was nothing to climb! Nothing to hide behind! No safety to be had! Her limbs trembled with exertion and adrenaline and she tried to take that energy, to turn it on the animal.
How it burned amid these ashes: incandescent, defiant, but it meant her doom. It reared up again and let rip a snorting roar. She reached for its mind. She reached and...
How easy it would be to cause damage - to harm another living thing. She need only have unspooled some basic connections, changed a few substances around, and it would be irreparably damaged. How easy, and then she would be indelibly safe.
... until the next time something attacked her? Something like Pluurii? Something like Miret or maybe a Consoi who saw only an enemy, or a sanguinaire who saw only an enemy?
She tried to make it sleep and her magic had no effect. "Sleep, damn you!" she screamed. "Why won't you just sleep!?"
Heartless, relentless, it barrelled forward, and Seviin trembled once more. "...Sleep, damn you." her teeth hissed and scraped against each other and she shook and cried. "What have I done?" Her eyes snapped up and bore into the beast as it closed in. "Is it that thing!? she snarled. "Is it, you fucking animal!?"
The bear rose up on its hind legs and reared back with a massive arm and Seviin's own arm erupted with muscle and claws and flaxen bristly hair. She struck back at it with all of her fury: every ounce of her repressed rage, every resentment, every fear, every lie that she had lived by.
And she met it, strength for strength, and did not need to run any longer. She could not hate herself either, for she had lost that ability for now. Blow after blow she exchanged with the animal, healing nearly instantly, craving to rip its soft skin open, to gouge its eyes from their sockets, to tear into its neck and cover herself in its steaming maroon blood. The girl had become the beast.
It was some time later. It was hard to tell how much time had passed. The bear had torn through a half-dozen others like it before its violence had tempered. It trundled through the nothing, lost and angry and purposeless, sated but never sated. It stood on its hind legs and let out a long slow moan, its blood-soaked snout tilting first one way and then the other.
Dimly, in the furthest reaches of its simple mind, it began to be conscious of a girl named Seviin - a grim thing that had always hated it and kept it from life. She was looking for something. She was looking for someone.
It had nothing better to do and so it looked as well.
Somewhere, well off in the distance, it picked up the aroma of meat and beans. Another ways away, it came upon the ozone stench of something like lightning, and the oxidizing smell of rust. It did not know what the girl wanted and it hated the girl anyhow: the girl who used it only to fight and claimed to hate fighting.
It carried on for some time more, lost and lonely, rearing up and sniffing every once in a while, hoping for something green or warm or pleasant: for a meal, or a soft den, or a sunny glade or cool stream to drink from.
This was a dead place and those were not to be found here. Finally, exhausted and weary of a fruitless search, the bear could fight the girl no longer. It found a place as good as any other and went to sleep, not knowing if it might ever awaken again.
Every so often, one of 'those people' makes it into Ersand'Enise. Perhaps it's by mistake, sheer dumb luck, the will of the Gods, or some personal favour owed. While Svitlana Rudenko probably qualifies as one of 'those people', she would insist that none of the above factors had very much to do with her recent entrance into the City of the Bells as a biro. She is an absurd figure: a peasant girl whose family struck it rich, Beverly Hillbillies style, when they found a rich trivalium vein on their property. She is fast-talking, gregarious, opportunistic, frank in the way of the uncultured, and full of oft-dubious homespun wisdom and superstition. Beneath it all, however, is a keen social intelligence and cunning, an unscrupulousness balanced by a deep sense of loyalty and a fundamental decency, and - most importantly - a tireless work ethic forged on a remote farmstead in Menskuva. Svitlana often waffles between funny and cringe-inducing, endearing and annoying, boorish and insightful, but she is never - and I mean never - lazy. The girl is a determinator.
That's not to say that she won't ask for help. She'll take whatever is given to her, but she won't sit on an achievement. For someone who started right near the very bottom of society, each success is merely a stepping stone to a greater one. This isn't some sort of grand destiny. Fortune exists. Some things are fated, but her successes and failures are the fruits of her labour and what she has made of the gifts and challenges bestowed upon her by the gods. If she isn't the type to preach on about religion, she keeps the Veterite faith and attends church regularly, though her manner of belief would be considered grossly casual and uncouth by many above her station. While Svitlana pretends not to care about what they think, for better or worse, and holds a strong inner sense of self, she isn't deaf to whispers or immune to the occasional insecurity.
C H A R A C T E R A P P E A R A N C E ____ ___ __ _
Agreat bouncing ball of tangled ginger hair, a perpetual sunburn, and a gap-toothed grin that always seems to promise mischief and adventure, propelled through life by a pair of great big arms and shoulders that never seem to run out of steam (until they suddenly do): that's Svitlana Rudenko. There's a wheelchair, too: a beat-up reliable old thing that she eagerly tosses herself into each morning and out of each evening. She could have a newer one if she liked, but Svitlana keeps certain habits to the point of superstition.
At the age of seventeen, this young Menskuvite's appearance reflects the duality of her life experiences. Her hands are hard and calloused from work in the fields and the constant need to push her wheels. Yet, while she isn't quite what one would call 'buxom' yet, her recent access to fine foods has not only filled her once-rumbling belly, but softened it noticeably. Her hair is well taken care of these days, but it remains incorrigible under a brush, and the habit of wearing a large hat to keep the sun off of her back has stuck with her even long after her last time picking turnips. The impressively muscular arms, shoulders, and back that speak to her relentless energy and strength are the starkest of contrasts with legs that gave up on her during childhood. Bony, useless, and atrophied, she wraps them in a skirt or a dress and forgets about them.
There is beauty there too, however. She has big hazel eyes that seem to possess a natural twinkle, a wide smile that rings authentic without effort, and a chest that her grandmother has described as 'blessed by Ipté.' As a young girl, Svitlana always wanted a nice dress but never had one, and it would've been ruined, anyhow, by endless fieldwork. As a young woman, she has found that pretty dresses are a pain. She still loves the idea of them, but they are for special occasions, where she will doll up to the nth degree and then toss them in the closet. Wearing lighter colours is a sign to Svitlana and her peers that she has made something of herself and no longer needs to worry about dirtying her clothes. Unless she is dressing up, in which case they are yet another accessory to play around with, she rarely bothers with shoes. What's she going to do, walk in them? However, the pendant given her by her great grandmother is the one piece that she will wear with any outfit. Hanging from a simple leather cord, it goes everywhere with her. Prababusya is not around anymore. She gave Svitlana the pendant after the worst day of the girl's life and never lived to see what she could become. Nobody but the two of them know what it contains, but it is sacred to the young Menskuvan.
Svitlana is... a peasant. Well, more correctly, she was. She grew up in Menskuva speaking... Menskuvan and, when her family struck it rich, even became somewhat literate. She is conversationally fluent in spoken and imperfectly literate in written Vossoriyan due to proximity and attending St. Yuri's. In preparation for attending Ersand'Enise, she has been learning Avincian as best she can. It's... passable... when she speaks.
RAS Capacity: 7.12 Mana Type(s): Porous, Energizer
In her family of twelve, only Svitlana and her younger brother Yevhen were blessed by Vol-Shune. By the time that she had turned thirteen, her capacity stood at 4.52: useful for everyday life, where she had become accustomed to applying her Gift to the family's crops to help them grow, but not enough to join an academy. That was until her parents found a way to procure some aberrations. A 'growth spurt' was arranged and her intake managed carefully, and she went to St. Yuri's in neighbouring Vossoriya, where she built upon her basic knowledge to become a skilled healer, illusionist, and phytomancer.
B A C K G R O U N D ____ ___ __ _
Born on Ardanes the seventh, ASZ54, Svitlana Rudenko was the fourth child of twelve and second daughter of free peasant farmers in a small nameless village near the town of Lyubev, western Menskuva. They were, in nearly all respects, an utterly unremarkable family; there were perhaps another couple hundred thousand nearly the exact same in profile.
She grew up on a wide open plain, with a river dividing her family's small property from the one beside it, and the great snowcapped peaks of the Kuska Mountains rising in the distance. An energetic and talkative girl from the moment she could walk and form words, Svitlana was an eager and ready helper around the farm. She spent much of her time following her two older brothers - Taras and Yakiv - and older sister - Cheslava - around and learning the time-honed skills that any Menskuvan peasant would need to know from them and her mother, Solomia. A whole gaggle of younger siblings followed, and she often found herself informally in charge of them. On feast days and the last weekend of every month, she would help her parents and older siblings load up the family wagon and she would pile in with a great big grin for the trip to Lyubev.
It was there that she caught her early glimpses of the broader world: the great skeleton of a long-dead dragon stood in the square, supposedly slain by Stov-Eshiran himself in the beginning times, so that people might settle this region. The great spire of Lyubev Cathedral wowed her as a girl. She used to stand as close beneath it as she could, and look up, trying not to fall backwards. She played with her market day friends around the well, hiding in all sorts of places only a child would find. Most amazing, perhaps, were the stout solid hegelans who would travel into town with their great beards and shining metalwork. They were people who were not human and she wondered how that could be. Svitlana would always bring them an extra apple during the days of Rezain and they would never refuse, even letting her tug their beards, a couple of times (even the women had them!). The girl witnessed magic - real magic - from a traveling performer and the son of Hospodar Pavlo - for the first time, and tasted a tomato when it was given to her family as part of a trade. They sliced it into ten equal portions and each enjoyed a bite.
Yet, there were things in the town that were not so good, as well. She enjoyed eating in the open air market, where tables would be set out, but there were nobles there who ate in fine clothes, with cloths on theirs. They called her clothes rags and she was instructed to bow her head and refer to them respectfully. In church, they had their own special area, where they held their noses high and got to do things before everyone else. She did not see why they were any better. She both hated them and wanted to be one of them. At the opposite end of society, however, were the beggars. They were wretched things: blind or crazy or crippled, and dependent upon the goodwill of others, but they were never mean to her, and some would do little tricks with the bread or coin she gave them or talk with her. Showing these kindness, she was told, would earn her the regard of Dami-Nik and an easier time getting into heaven. So it was that she always saved up for a coin or a piece of a loaf to give a couple of them. Lame Lyuba, who could not walk, would ask only for help with things she could not do herself, and Svitlana was always happy to give it, since those things were quite easy for her.
And so would end a trip into town: arriving as the sun set back on their small farmstead, sometimes already asleep in the wagon. She would always rouse herself to help carry things in, for it was hard work that had freed them from serfdom in her great-grandfather's time, and hard work that might see them prosper still further. Then, the girl would tumble into bed with her sisters, always racing them for the best spot, and sleep would find her until the sun rose the next morning. She would enjoy a quick breakfast, with an egg from the hens on Taldays and an eye to keep yayechna vidʹma (the egg witch) away, and she would head out to the fields. It was a simple life, but it was a good one.
That was until shortly after she turned nine years old, when everything changed.
Svitlana's great-grandmother, Zenoviya, was eighty years of age at the time, and she was the last among them who had lived to adulthood under the thumb of a lord, though Pavlo's family was not so bad. What had made her unique - aside from her husband's personal bravery in saving his lord from raiders - was that she had a bit of the Gift. It was little more than the ability to make her steps easier or lift heavier items than she should've been able to, or light a fire, and it paled in comparison to the big magics of the nobles. Still, its possibilities filled Svitlana's young mind each night. Still, it was hoped by each successive generation of Rudenkos (named for the red hair that was common in their family) that some child or other might possess the Gift in earnest, or at least as much as prababusya did. That child was Svitlana.
She was no prodigy - far from it - but the sheer energy that had always powered her to a degree that stood out from her siblings finally manifested itself one quiet Somni morning shortly after her ninth birthday, as the family house had grown excessively cold and her father - Kostyantyn - was trying to start a fire. Svitlana, not feeling particularly cold at all (for she was inadvertently drawing plenty of heat to herself), crouched beside him and began mimicking his attempts to spark a flame. Though her efforts should have been completely fruitless, she succeeded, and the fire grew quickly. Three days later, when her family went to market, she gained a brief audience with the Bishop, where he confirmed what they had all eagerly suspected: she had some of the Gift!
It was a joyous month. She tried to use her magic wherever and whenever she could, lifting great big boxes that strained her arms and back, leaping much further than her springy little legs would normally have allowed, and sparking fires on command (and sometimes not on command). Her parents would not have the money to send her St. Yuri's, even though they were reasonably prosperous, and she wasn't enough of a magician anyhow to warrant it but, already, there was talk of marrying her to Lukyan, the blacksmith's son in town, who would one day inherit his father's business. She sat shyly with him in the small room where his father kept his tools while their respective parents talked, dressed in her nicest dress and warned not to ruin it. In the end, he'd grinned at her and, once that dam had broken, they had played endless hours of tag, hide-and-go-seek, and climbed on just about everything they could find.
Whatever came of those negotiations, Svitlana would not know, for Somni grew cold and bitter and she went out one morning, taking great big footsteps through the deep, freshly-fallen snow. These were the last footsteps she would ever take. She, Cheslava, Yakiv, and Borys were playing in a fort they had made when she dived from a large snowball with the intent to backflip onto her feet. She overbalanced and felt a sudden sharp pain in her back that drew a startled yelp. She lay there, trying not to cry as her brothers teased her about being a suck and her sister exhorted her to get up or the boys would win. It hurt, though: a lot, and there was this weird tingling, like when her foot had fallen asleep, only it was around her waist. Svitlana had always been tough, though. Cheslava held out a hand to help her up as Yakiv peered in with an equal mix of annoyance and curious concern, and she reached up to grab it and rise.
Nothing happened.
Cheslava pulled and it was agony! With a strangled cry, Svitlana fell back. She lay there in the snow, tears streaming down her face and pulse pounding behind her ears. She tried to push herself up on her hands but she nearly blacked out from the pain. Her siblings had stopped playing and were clustered around her, worried and unsure of what to do. Cheslava and Yakiv tried to get a shoulder under each of her arms and help her up, and that was when she realized that there was nothing there. Well, there was - she still had legs, but she couldn't move them, or even feel them. Thankfully, she was spared any opportunity to consider the implications, as the pain did overwhelm her this time, and she knew only sleep.
In her dreams, Svitlana ran and played but, when she woke up, the girl's reality had changed profoundly from what it had been when the snows had first fallen. She had been playing two miles from home - further than she should've been. Her siblings had carried her as far as they could through the deep snow, and then they had dragged her. Finally, as they drew close and the sun had dipped below the horizon, father had come and found them and rushed his precocious nine-year-old inside.
The old women of the village pored over the young girl, prodding here, bloodletting there, administering the remedies they knew and building a brace. Mostly, however, they prayed, which was the first thing that Svitlana remembered upon waking up. At first, it was hoped that she might recover once her back was set. Uncle Vitali, who was a carpenter, made her a special bed to heal in and placed her by the window. If she could not go out and play and people treated her as if she was made of fine porcelain and might break at any moment, she counseled herself that the cold months of Hundri were fine ones to miss so that she might be recovered on time for the Stresian plant. Father moved her bed into the big room and she made sure to spark a fire for the family every morning. Nobody did much of anything at that time of year, but they gathered around the hearth and talked and laughed and played cards.
If Svitlana was bored and frustrated by having to stay in one place and let people do things for her, this redoubled as the Stresian plant began. Yet, she was not morose. People came in and out of the room all the time and she practiced her magic and moved things with it. They would speak with her for a bit and squeeze her shoulder and tell her that she would have the brace off any day now and would have to work extra hard to make up for lost time. When the apothecary from town asked her to turn over this way or sit up straight or move her legs, she learned how to do the first two and convinced herself that she was doing the third by wriggling her hips. When he poked her in the foot with a little sharp thing, she let out a yelp and they looked each other in the eyes.
Yet, it only continued: everyone bustling about and working and Svitlana on her own in a stupid bed, ordered not to move while her back healed. As the seeds and dirt were piled in the front room, father was forced to move her, temporarily, to the storage room and, though she understood why, the girl did not like it. At least, sometimes, Alina or Andriy would come and talk and play beside her bed, or little Yevhen would be placed there to crawl about. Yakiv and Cheslava did not come around often, however, for they had to work hard in the fields and she could not join them. Mother, who had been heavily pregnant, gave birth to baby Myroslava, and grandmother was needed for the planting as well. So, it fell to prababusya, who was eighty years old, to lift her great-granddaughter from her bed a few times a day and take her to the privy and help her change her clothes. Only the two of them saw how the girl wet herself no differently than Myroslava. Only the two of them knew that, sometimes, when prababusya was too sore or weak to lift her, Svitlana sat up on her own and dragged herself, sitting, across the floor where she needed to go. Not in front of mama, papa, or her siblings, though. Never in front of them.
Once a week, when the weather was nice, she was moved outside, and people would smile and ask her how she was doing and reassure her that she would be back on her feet soon. Why, she was skipping all the work of the plant, the little rascal! They would stay and talk for a bit, but never long enough and, when she asked if there was some simple work that she might do with her hands, Svitlana was told, always, that she must rest and recover and not strain herself, and that she must pray. Then, they would walk away where she could not follow and go back to their work and speak in low sad voices that she could sometimes hear a little bit of. It was going to be a bad year for the crops, she was told, a bad year indeed.
If it was, Svitlana could not say. The leaves grew thick and green on the trees and her brothers and sisters went out on those long excursions to the river and the forest whenever they were not needed to tend the fields. On the last weekend of every month, they went into Lyubev and - she counted - it had been five months (half a year) since she had come along. At first, mother had stayed back with her and little Myroslava, who was too young to travel, but when the baby was old enough, it was only her and her great-grandmother. The rest of them kept on living, but she remained frozen, watching and talking, while others occasionally helped her to do the things she could not do herself. She thought of Lame Lyuba and how easy it had been to be on the other side and she cried. Every day, however, Svitlana talked with prababusya, who taught her all that she knew in magic and who secretly let her out of bed and allowed her to help with the chores she could do. Quickly, she learned how to use magic to make them faster and easier, so that there was not very much she could not handle that she hadn't before. Through trial and error, she learned to control her body so that she could go to the privy when she wanted. Yet, sometimes, she was alone. The old woman would disappear for a couple of hours, and the girl always worried - for she was largely by herself and could not walk, and because prababusya was so very old and her health might decline at any moment. Every night, to this effect, Svitlana prayed that she might just heal, as she had ever since that day in Somni, but the apothecary had stopped coming and the adults had shaken their heads and flashed her smiles that had lost all power of reassurance. Now she prayed a bit less fervently for herself than she had before, and a good deal more for prababusya, that she might remain strong in those hours she was away, and for many years to come.
It was on Asanyy the thirty-second that Cheslava awoke to a crackling hearth with a pot set to boil, mother to a cleaned kitchen and chopped vegetables, and father to three large sacks of flour loaded onto the wagon for the trip to Lyubev in two days. At first, each of them was confused, waking and asking the others who had done the work. Eventually, they thought to open the door to the storage room that had become Svitlana's to ask if she had seen anything.
Prababusya had, in fact, been working on a project during those mysterious hours each day. It was a simple thing: a long plank with leather straps for Svitlana to secure her legs to, some upholstered padding for her to sit on, and the slightest lip of a footrest and one for a backrest. It had smooth skids on the bottom so that she might pull herself along with less effort, a quartet of handles to make carrying her a bit easier when needed, and a pair of simple axles running across the skids so that small wheels might be attached for her to move around with more easily indoors. With it had come a simple locket, and none but Svitlana and old Zenoviya knew what it contained.
The girl was outside, in the closest part of the turnip field, pulling weeds. She had, with the help of her magic, pulled as much as she ever had before. Her brace was off and the sun was on her shoulders and she looked up and brushed some hair from her eyes. Perhaps they should've noticed the darkness of her skin already had they not been too busy for her. Perhaps they would've seen how strong her arms had gotten. Either way, after some discussion and a stalwart insistence that she would go to town with them in the wagon this month, things simply returned to normal, or... a new normal.
The warm months wore on and, as everyone had joked awkwardly with her before, Svitlana worked extra hard to make up for lost time and, perhaps, to allay some of those uncomfortable glances that she regularly received. Should not the invalid daughter be sent into town to live where the nuns might care for her? Shouldn't they at least not force her to work in the fields with her frail body? She would go mad in either case and, so, she worked as she always had. Each day, she would be carried by father or Taras and set somewhere to work for the next couple of hours before being moved but, gradually, as her arms grew stronger and those around her more comfortable with the idea, when she received a tough pair of gloves to protect her hands, they simply let her slowly make her way wherever she needed to go within the property. Occasionally, she would get stuck and spend the next half hour trying to hide her shame before being rescued, but this happened less and less as time wore on. The warm months stretched long and off went Yakiv and Borys and Cheslava, Alina joining them sometimes now, on their adventures down by the river or the forest. Yakiv and Taras had started trapping, and Cheslava and Alina picked berries. Svitlana, with too much energy and not enough to do, set her attention to a pair of new tasks: to learn her letters and to find something that would allow her to move more easily than the board.
Father had not been lying, however, when he said that the harvest would be a tough one. Svitlana found most of her attention drawn its way, and the family suffered endless anxious hours tending to the fragile plants. The menana that she had received from the monks in Lyubev and the book on blacksmithing she'd gotten last year from Lukyan sat unread as she focused on the problem, but Svitlana's Gift was decisive. She spent countless long days out there, coaxing water from far away into their soil and finding the minerals in the ground that the turnips needed and craved. After some instruction from prababusya, she managed to create a smell that a marauding swarm of locusts did not like and father pushed her frantically around the farm on a small wagon as she spread it. If it was still not their best harvest, all in all, the Rudenko family had enough to eat while others were skipping meals or borrowing from bankers.
So came her tenth birthday, and so it went. In one year, she had gained the Gift, ended up a cripple, and recovered herself as best she might. Leaves fell and so did temperatures and Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and the three oldest daughters: Cheslava, Svitlana, and Alina, sat by the hearth sewing clothes and stockings and shoes. She made herself a thick pair of gloves, with leather grips on the outside so that she could make fists and push herself along. Soon enough, snow replaced the leaves and, when it was firm and smooth, it proved a godsend. Strapped to her plank, how freely and easily Svitlana could slide! She had not moved with anything approaching speed or ease under her own power since that day last Somni and, though it was still a far cry, it was... something, at least. Yakiv fashioned a rope to pull her with when she got tired and she essentially had a sled. A year after she had lost her legs, she sat there in the snow, in the same place, a hint of frostbite on her cheeks and a smile on her face as she ducked behind a fort and made snowballs to throw at her siblings.
It was a year and a half later on one of these excursions - though not one where she was present, for she rarely went during Stresia on account of the mud making it hard to move without being carried - when Alina found something. She had been peering over the blacksmithing book with Svitlana earlier, the older girl lamenting that there had been no further meetings with Lukyan, and so she recognized the particular lustre of a particular metal from its illustrations as she was digging. It was a deep hole and father was annoyed, for it was on the new land they had purchased from a failing neighbour the year before and the girl was pocking it. Cheslava, Yakiv, Borys, and Svitlana were roped in to see the discovery that the girl insisted on showing them, however, and the book was brought along, carried reverently by Borys, for whom it was a great and arcane thing mostly beyond his comprehension.
There was, indeed, something shiny down there and, over the next few days, Alina and the two boys - plus Cheslava when she wasn't looking after little Miroslava and mischievous Yevhen, and Svitlana, when the ground was hard or they had the energy to carry her - excavated an ever-expanding gash in the corner of their property. Once they could be sure that they had found a vein, they compared the simple drawings and, one by one, Svitlana sounded out the more difficult words. Gone were her days playing by the well in Lyubev. She now spent five hours of each visit learning her letters with the nuns, since her Gift made her useful and her lameness made her tenuous. She tried her best to make sense of the book by candlelight in the evenings, Borys or Alina often leaning over her shoulder.
After three days of intense study, and Taras being cajoled into chipping off a sample with father's pickaxe, she and Alina proudly presented their conclusions to father, mother, and prababusya. It was a vein of extremely rare and valuable trivalium. Svitlana made a well-reasoned case, full of evidence, and showed off Taras' sample.
The next few weeks were a scramble. Svtilana still shudders to think of sheer exhaustion. It taxed even her seemingly boundless reservoirs of energy to their limit. Various family members must've gone into town a half-dozen times, where Father consulted with people who were duly sorted into three groups by the family each weekend around the dinner table: trustworthy, self-interested, and rotten. Svitlana could not help but run into Lukyan a handful of times, who had given her the book nearly three years ago and disappeared from her life since, but he showed no interest in the girl he had chased and climbed and played with before. Instead, she spent plenty of time with the nuns, who she heard were keen to have her join their order.
Father negotiated with people but, in the meantime, much as she appreciated them, Svitlana did not want to be a nun. While there, often left on a bench with a book and a slate to practice her writing, she wondered at the casual way that those with noble blood among them used magic. Sometimes, as an incentive and so that she might care for herself, they taught her their magics of Binding. To be able to heal wounds and close flesh with the Gift was something almost beyond comprehension. It was the purview of the Gods! Eagerly, she asked the nuns if she might heal her legs somehow, Lukyan's awkwardness as much as the myriad of other reasons occupying her mind. The holy women shook their heads regretfully, however, explaining that Svitlana's Gift and knowledge were not enough for such a major complex injury and that it would only have been possible soon after the accident had happened. That night, she cried again, but she went to sleep with a clenched fist and an idea in her mind.
It was three days after that when Mother and Father brought her to a well-appointed room in Lyubev where they placed her on a soft chair at a large table. Three important men dressed in fine clothes came in and they spoke with father about how much money he would get for selling his land and the rights to the trivalium under it. The crops had just been planted, and Svitlana thought it wasteful to sell the land before they were ready, but the amounts of money, she realized, were fantastic! They passed out a long document and father put it in front of her and asked her to read every word carefully and out loud. The girl's palms went slick with sweat and she breathed unsteadily, but she read it all, pausing on the strange words or phrases. Then, her father made his mark beside the nobles' fancy swirling signatures, mother made her mark, and Svitlana wrote her name with simple but neat penmanship. That same evening, Lukyan came back around, but father and mother sorted him into the 'self-interested' category, and said that she should think of other boys instead.
It would be four more months before the land changed hands and a new fence was built. In the meantime, Svitlana cared for the crops with her usual dedication, especially as mother was heavily pregnant and soon to give birth. Rezain came with fancy new clothes, a new sister named Maryna, and a special purchase given to her on her birthday. She had been lent books from Hospodar Pavlo's private library, and learned all about different mana types from them. She had learned of the tethered, whose magic was great and powerful but made them lame, and the 'wheeled-chairs' that many used to get around. This, then, was what father went into town on his fine new wagon with their two new horses to bring back. This was what Svitlana eagerly unstrapped her legs - skinny useless things they'd become - from her board for. It felt weird and floaty to sit there and there was a moment where she did not like it, but then she pushed herself forward and moved, like on her sled on the slipperiest of show-covered places, only... she could stop and turn quickly, and look people in the eyes at sitting height! A world of possibilities that had been closed off to her for the past two and a half years reopened in her mind's eye and at least the tears that came were happy ones. She spent that night racing her siblings down the packed dirt track outside their home. It didn't matter that she only beat Yevhen and Myroslava.
Svitlana was now twelve years of age and it was important to begin considering a future marriage or career. If her ability to use the Gift had altered her prospects drastically, and her sudden lameness even more so, the wealth that her family had come into positively revolutionized both. The mine on the Rudenko family's former land proved to be a mind-bogglingly rich one, and they managed to purchase not only a fine house in town, but also a new plot so that Taras, who was due to marry the miller's daughter, might have his own land. All of the Rudenko children - and even mother - were soon being tutored in their letters, but Svitlana's case was unique.
She would likely not marry, on account of her lameness, she was reasonably well-read already, and - most importantly - she had the Gift! Her mother set her eyes towards St. Yuri's but, as much as Svitlana had begun to grow (her first blood had come a few months prior and she now had something of a woman's shape), it was not enough. When she was measured by the nuns of St. Zoya, her capacity on the Rahman-Albanda scale (another new term for the former farm girl) came in at 4.92, more than a half-point shy of the prestigious magic school's minimum requirement and, if she could read, she could not do so like the noble children.
No matter. For his daughter's thirteenth birthday, Father ordered a new wheeled-chair for her designed by those same hegelans who she'd brought apples to as a child. Their wares, which had always seemed out of reach, were imbued with further manas and, seated in her new chair, Svitlana now stood (or sat) at a mighty 5.44. She was still a tiny bit short. Surely, she might grow a bit more, but the school was exacting and the examiner was due to come in a month. Pavlo's son, Artem, was to attend, and she would be the second from Lyubev and first outside of the nobility to make it in.
If she could not grow fast enough naturally, she went to work on Taras' farm. There, she enhanced her muscles with what she now knew to be kinetic magic, lifting heavy sacks and transporting water and getting stuck in the mud enough times that her brother eventually so lost his patience with having to come and rescue her that he forbade her to go further than two hundred yards from him while working. While her upper body grew even more impressive from the effort and she lost the softness that had been building in her midsection, it wasn't enough.
So, the family took a risk. A golden future lay ahead if she could just get into that academy. They contacted a man named Zhadan who supposedly worked for the masked ones and he, in turn, contacted a Kozaky named Oksana who also worked for them. She was able to procure a thing forbidden by Svitlana's books, but she had read up well and knew that aberrations were not dangerous if consumed in small amounts over an extended period. She found her deliverance waiting beneath an oak tree near the family's old farm, where picks and shovels scraped and hammered in the distance. She took it and it filled her with power and energy and how she wanted more! Cheslava grabbed her by the hand as if she were a greedy child and pulled her away. Svitlana's capacity was now 5.88. She took a wagon train and left for St' Yuri's. Books, clothes, both of her wheelchairs, mementos from home, and the plank that prababusya had made her four years ago were loaded into the back. The old woman rode with her as far as Kharlaiv, both of them seeing the great city with its towering cathedrals, grand plazas, and bustling harbour for the first time. There, they parted, for the last time.
Zenoviya Rudenko passed away three weeks after her return from the journey, in her sleep. She had been, lately, sick with a cough and a fever. While little Vitali, who was all of two years old, could not share her name, the youngest of the Rudenko children, a girl born two weeks after her passing, was named in honour of her. For Svitlana, this death was a blow that shook her greatly. The days before she could return home for a brief summer break were excruciating in their wait. When she did, she cried once more, but also found that she did not have much time for it. The penmanship was terrible and the letter was short but, with Alina's help, Zenoviya had written her beloved great-granddaughter a short final message. Of course, there was the baby who shared her name, and rambunctious Yevhen was showing signs that he, too, might have the Gift.
Still, Svitlana was not strong enough, she confided in her family. She had been among the weakest students at her school and, though some of her failures had come from her anxiety and depression at her beloved prababusya's passing, she knew that she needed more power. It was the way of things and it was yet another decision that she would make and live with the consequences of, for better or worse. So, her family found a solution, as they always had. She took a second aberration under the tree and trembled with delight, Cheslava taking time off from her wedding preparations to peer over her sister's shoulder with a concerned face.
Svitlana was now 6.39 on the scale. She was there for the wedding and a few easy weeks in a familiar place with familiar people, and then she was back at St. Yuri's, working on her Vossoriyan and her Avincian and thinking, the more that she read and learned, that she would very much like to see Ersand'Enise someday. Her grades improved, but there was only so far that she could go, though instructors had pinpointed why it was that she seemed to have an odd, patchy drawing and casting range: the same thing that had allowed her to move more easily in some areas than others, or had let her pull weeds in the same places she'd previously been from distances she should not have been able to. She had a truly rare mana type - not tethered, as near everyone assumed, but porous! It was little understood and perhaps not valued as it should've been and, yet... it got her thinking.
The next year, as Svitlana came back from a decadent Caldores celebrated with Hospodar Pavlo and his family, she found herself at Ersand'Enise for the annual Trials of Thaumaturgy with four other mid-ranking students from St. Yuri's. While her team did not fare well, the city itself was like nothing she had ever seen: a place where everything happened, where the world's great heroes and villains and eminent authorities congregated. How small her village and Lyubev, and even Kharlaiv and St. Yuri's seemed!
She wanted it. Svitlana had applied for Ersand'Enise two years previous, simply because she had applied for all magic schools, though she'd known she had no real hope of getting in. Back then, she'd had no listed mana type. Back then, she'd been just above a five on the RAS. Her chest swelled with possibility and ambition. She began studying Avincian in earnest and, when it was not enough, using her mana type to cheat on exams. She ordered up a third aberration that got her to 6.65 and, after a wait just long enough, a fourth that boosted her to - well, almost seven. With her wheelchair and a new hat that she'd gotten, she had broken through the ceiling. However, a school of such renown was looking for classically useful mana types and, thanks to a dozen or more cases of people assuming that she was a tethered, Svitlana was intimately acquainted with the type's abilities. She began studying the two tethered at her school, figuring out how to use her porous abilities to mimic them. She had Alina commission a set of mana kites for her, which she picked up during the warm months. Finally, after some digging, she found an Arch-Zeno who had few scruples and sent a little extra... funding his way. Her family had money to burn, these days, and none of them knew much of what to do with it except to spend on all manner of luxuries. She was more purposeful.
She was accepted. So it is that Svitlana Rudenko, peasant, paraplegic, and porous, or perhaps lady, scholar, and tethered, makes her way to the greatest magic academy in the world. What further adventures she will have there remains to be seen!
Svitlana doesn't believe in fate or fortune. Things simply... happen because people or nature or the Gods make them happen. Then, the way that people react to those causes consequences. She is, perhaps, not so detached and scientific about it, but this is the gist. She was born with the Gift because it ran in her family. She broke her back because she had been playing dangerously and stretched it too far. The trivalium that had always been on that land came into her family's possession because Alina, who liked digging, had made a choice to dig in that spot because there were pretty purple flowers nearby. That land had become theirs because Svitlana had used her Gift to help that year's harvest while others' had failed and they'd been able to buy it. Father had always wanted more land, since he had plenty of willing hands to work it and more food was always a good thing. Svitlana had learned how to use the magic that had saved their crop because she had been idle and with prababusya after breaking her back and she had needed something to do. It was all the result of people's actions. The Gods gave them free will.
Svitlana is not the type to preach, but she believes in her ability to do just about anything that she sets her mind to. She doesn't know for certain what kind of outcome she'll earn or where the journey will end, but she's resolved to make the absolute most of it and lose nothing to idleness or a lack of will. If she fails at anything, she either accepts it or finds a different solution. Life is an upward journey, and the challenge is rewarding. Will she become Queen of Menskuva? Will she ever be an arch-zeno? Likely not, and she isn't sentimental enough to dream of either except in passing or worry deeply about her legacy or mark on history. She simply chooses goals as they appear attainable before her, and works towards them with the same effort that she formerly put into field labour and regaining her life after breaking her back. Other than that, she wants what any young woman of her day and age might want: wealth, security, romance, and a loving family - in short, happiness. Svitlana does not expressly seek out adventure, but will not shy away from it either. If a job needs doing and she thinks that she might have a way to do it, she will. Unacknowledged, lies something inside of her that relishes a challenge and will pursue it a bit more than is strictly healthy. Maybe she has something to prove - a disabled foreign girl from a far-flung peasant family - but one only rarely gets the sense that there's a chip on her shoulder.
I N V E N T O R Y ____ ___ __ _
Svitlana tends to travel lightly, relying on her Gift, her allies, and a lifetime of hands-on experience to see her through most situations. She packs pointedly for where she is going and what she is doing instead of trying to cover every base. Beyond that, she brings bloodletting tools, for the sake of her medical practice and to make use of her porous mana type, small collapsible mana kites to extend her range with, and a mini toolkit for her wheelchair. Somehow, all of these items fit in the backpack that hangs off the back of it, and she jokes that it is actually a VOID backpack. Whether or not this is more than mere jest is open for debate. She also, variously, can be found with at least some of the following on her person at all times:
❖ A tough pair of leather gloves with enhanced grip; ❖ Packets of fast-growing seeds; ❖ At least a few tomato seeds; ❖ A special pair of gloves and a bin that allows her to pick up and carry small aberrations; ❖ A wheelchair of advanced hegelan/sirrahi design; ❖ Hyperdense energy pills ostensibly to fertilize seeds; ❖ A wide-brimmed sun hat; ❖ A series of glass lenses that seem to focus and reflect light; ❖ An old tarnished silver locket of simple manufacture on a leather cord.
Not on her person but always under Svitlana's ownership can be found a great many seeds, cutting boards, beakers, bowls, and cooking tools, as well as a spare wheelchair, plenty of dresses, a few pairs of shoes, many fine hats, and a collection of useful books, including the blacksmith's materials guide that she received for her ninth birthday. She still keeps a small chunk of trivalium from her family's original property, her great-grandmother's last letter to her, and the 'plank' that she used to get around as a child.
S T R E N G T H S & S K I L L S ____ ___ __ _
❖ [Determined and tough]: when it comes down to it, there's just no quit in Svitlana; ❖ [Excellent knowledge of healing]: she seems to know a lot about how bodies of all types work, particularly internally; ❖ [Strong and versatile mana types]: Porous and energizer allow her to fake being a tethered, and offset each other's weaknesses well; ❖ [Hard-working]: Svitlana will not slack or get lazy. She will always put in the work to get the results; ❖ [Insightful]: She's good at recognizing patterns, being socially perceptive, and having attention to detail; ❖ [Good cook]: plenty of time in the kitchen with her mother, grandmother, and beloved prababusya has made her an excellent cook; ❖ [Practical knowhow]: Svitlana has worked with her hands for most of her life. She knows how to find simple solutions.
W E A K N E S S E S & F L A W S ____ ___ __ _
❖ [Dishonest]: Svitlana is very willing to lie to get what she wants, at least to strangers; ❖ [Unconvincing]: She is not always the best liar in her second and third languages, and tends to 'oversell' things; ❖ [Provincial]: While not stupid, her lack of exposure to the broader world shows in her bluntness, superstition, and lack of sophistication; ❖ [Paraplegic]: Svitlana lacks any feeling or movement below her waist. She relies heavily on the Gift for mobility and many basic tasks; ❖ [Poor Avincian]: Despite her enthusiasm, she is less than fluent in her third language, particularly in terms of the written word; ❖ [Poor impulse control]: When Svitlana wants something, she really wants it, and does not self-regulate well.
M I S C E L L A N E O U S ____ ___ __ _
❖ Tomato is Svitlana's speech colour code. ❖ Coral is her thought colour code. ❖ The similarity between the two serves to reflect how little filter she appears to have. ❖ Incidentally, tomatoes hold a special place in Svitlana's heart and are her favourite fruit. ❖ Svitlana loves singing, though she doesn't stand out in terms of talent, and can play a bit of the bandura and balalaika.
@Gunther Yeah, I think they'd know each other! Jason still probably does those sports and, potentially the inverse. He's headed nowhere as a person, though, sadly. Any ideas for what they'd think of each other?
Oh no! I derped and posted mine in the Char tab to start with. I assumed I was accepted because you'd accepted them in the first iteration of this. I can make any changes you'd like if this iteration of the story requires them. Sorry about that!
T H E S P A R L I N G F A M I L Y T H E S P A R L I N G F A M I L Y
"They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. They say..."
[ ❇ ] B R I E F F A M I L Y H I S T O R Y
The Sparling name is an old one in Huddeen. Faded headstones in the town's graveyard bear testament to that. However, their line has been rather sparse over the past couple of decades as successive generations have left for the greener pastures of Boston, Providence, and New York. Then, a dozen years ago, family matriarch Hattie passed away and the old family house ended up in the hands of her granddaughter, pregnant young grad student and former wild child Alana, along with her growing family. Moving back from Boston to the town where she used to spend summers with her grandma after her parents' divorce, she brought her husband Devon, a stereotypically geeky storyboard artist, and her children Lila and Jason. While the grand old home was everything they could've hoped, vintage 1970s-era decor and some electrical issues aside, their first few years were difficult, as Devon had to switch jobs, Alana had to delay setting up her own practice when their youngest daughter Winnie was born, and Lila suffered an accident that confined her to a wheelchair and necessitated the installation of a ramp and extensive renovations. Things have calmed down since then, and the family has flourished... at least outwardly.
While Devon's career has taken him to conferences across the country and Lila has gone off to the Juilliard School in New York to study violin, small-town star athlete Jason doesn't see much of a future, Winnie grows ever stranger and more introverted, and Alana continues to fray at the edges as she wears too many hats, commutes for too long every day, and juggles too many responsibilities in her desperate determination to make sure that her family won't go the way that her parents' did. Add to this the recent arrival of Devon's older sister Carina from Boston, fresh off of some serious controversy, as well as Lila back on holiday, and things are... volatile. Oh, then zombies. Zombies have happened too. Is there any way that this fraying family can pull itself together long enough to survive and maybe even be an asset? I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Growing up, Alana was just about the most obnoxious possible version of a ca. 1995-2003 first-gen edgy gamer girl. She never thought she'd be a psychologist. She assumed her job would be something in a creative industry but, here she is, and there's a kind of art to patching minds back up, she supposes. She's certainly had to do more than her share of that over the course of her life. As an ex-urbanite, this mother of three commutes into Manchester for work whenever her job requires it. While she was born in nearby Nashua, Alana's parents broke up when she was small and she bounced around. She spent much of her later childhood and early teens in Huddeen with her grandmother before moving to Boston with her dad and becoming a child of the early internet. Luckily, her most absurd exploits were pre-social media and, just after her twenty-second birthday, she was a mother anyhow and her crazy days fast faded. After inheriting her grandmother's house a dozen years ago, she packed her young family up and moved out to Huddeen, with its lower cost of living and safer streets. Now into her early forties, Alana's weathered far more storms and is a lot number to it all than she imagined that she'd be at this point in life. She'll often go on about how she loves this town, and is an active member of all the relevant community organizations. Embarrassed about her wild past and her husband's at-times immature behaviour, she tries as hard as she can to fit in, never quite feeling like she manages it. Secretly, her interest in her marriage is waning but, remembering her childhood, she's determined not to let it fail. You know how they say that shrinks are as much of a mess as their clients? At least she's not abusing prescriptions... yet.
If Alana eventually grew up, Devon never quite managed the trick. A storyboard artist and gig worker, he pursues jobs in the videogaming industry with particular gusto and has built up a fairly impressive portfolio. A proud nerd and daydreaming creative, he lives for his work and loves his family, very much in the mold of the 'cool dad'. He convinces himself that it's natural, but he works hard at it. Yet, he can also be a bit of an avoidant husband and father: enthusiastically there for the good times but absent for the more challenging ones. While he's certain it's only an unfortunate coincidence, he's beginning to understand how bad it looks and how much trouble it's causing his loved ones. Devon's never quite mastered the fine art of 'adulting', but he's trying. He's always been somewhat awkward but has grown socially and in confidence over the years and has become unused to failure. Sometimes, however, in his more anxious moments, he suffers from impostor syndrome. He constantly worries that his creative spark is leaving him and that he might end up embarrassing or holding back his family members, particularly his daughter Lila. As his career has finally started to take off in recent years, he's been seeing more of her in New York and they've grown somewhat closer. At the start of our story, Devon's trapped in Boston where he was attending a conference. He calls his family on the phone at every opportunity while they still have service. He's trying to get someone in the Boston Quarantine Zone to do something or, barring that, to make his way back, but he doesn't quite know where to begin.
▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅ "Okay, right. So we can definitely go with the personal interest and inspiration angle and that's good, but - hear me out - could we maybe focus on my like... music a little?" ▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅
S P A R L I N G, L I L A || O L D E S T C H I L D S P A R L I N G, L I L A || O L D E S T C H I L D
A surprise child and the reason that Alana and Devon are married, Lila is twenty-one as the story begins, and was visiting home from university in New York when the epidemic struck. A perfectly average, if somewhat rambunctious, kid before being paralyzed in a tree-climbing accident at the age of twelve, she was forced to reinvent herself and find new purpose. Since then, with her mother's relentless support , the oldest of the Sparling children has become the sort of inspirational story that's a magnet for bursaries, scholarships, speaking engagements, and interest pieces by local new outlets. An extremely talented violinist from an early age, she has already featured in major productions and boasts nearly a hundred thousand subscribers on her YouTube channel. Living the young, sophisticated urbanite's dream, Lila has left her small-town roots behind and flourished in New York: a young virtuoso headed for success. Yet, deep down, vicious insecurities about being a burden - about being incapable and unattractive - tear at her, and the constructed world and its many obstacles act as constant reminders that she cannot just do many of the things she would like. In truth, she is much like her younger siblings, though they may not think of her as such. In her dreams, she's still a spontaneous creature, wandering the neighbourhood with Jason in tow, climbing trees and hiking in the ravine, pulling Winnie in a wagon, and playing games of tag or basketball that stretch into the night. There's a shared history with her family and she loves them, but she hasn't spent much time with them in years. She loves her mother, who pushed her hard to pick herself back up and to succeed, but there's something else as well: resentment at stealing her away from her childhood with endless practice, rehearsal, and travel, for moulding her into an 'inspiration' instead of a person. With her friends, in their little shared apartment, Lila's fun, irreverent, and vivacious, always ready with a quick quip or pithy observation. Here, at 'home', she increasingly feels like the odd one out in her family of lovable losers. Huddeen is a pleasant place full of fond memories, but it's part of her past, not her future.
Three and a half years younger than Lila, Jason was always playing keep-up with her when they were kids: in school, where teachers went on glowingly about her; for attention, where she seemed to lap up their parents' love with her musical talent and witty remarks; and in the little pencil marks measuring height on the doorframe, where he could never quite catch her. Then, after she had her accident, he won the third of those battles definitively, and lost the others. As his parents' and, especially, his mother's attention reoriented itself toward Lila, and his playmate returned home less able to... play, the boy found other ways of entertaining himself. Where his father is a genuinely creative person, Jason merely aped and dreamed. Instead, his talents lie elsewhere. A natural athlete and good with his hands, he is a mediocre student at school, but well liked by both teachers and other students, co-captaining the basketball team to the state's final four in his junior year. Yet, the scholarship offers from major universities haven't exactly been flooding in. He enjoys shop class, gaming, and skateboarding more than anything else, and is just able to dunk on the basketball hoop in the driveway. In between occasional games of Horse with his dad or his sisters, it takes relentless punishment while the curbs and railings in town see similar treatment from his skateboard. At the end of the day, Jason is pretty edgy, with a mohawk, a couple of tattoos, and a fondness for music that would make his once-rebellious parents blush. This, he blasts out the window of his 2007 Buick, recently purchased from an estate sale for $1700. While nothing academic really interests him, he can play shooters and survival games for hours and, yes, he has a (very humble) sword collection. With little to no direction in life, a secret part of him is... weirdly kind of excited that the apocalypse is nigh. He's already constructing traps and barriers and he practices with his knockoff katana in the backyard. Perhaps the dire nature of the situation just hasn't dawned on him yet, so the question is: when will it?
Six years younger than Jason, Winnie was - like her sister - an 'accident'. Her parents hadn't intended to have a third child, but her older siblings were thrilled. At eleven years of age, she's a quiet, socially awkward, and very active girl who doodles, explores, and daydreams as much as her father ever did growing up. He'll never admit to it, but she's the child he understands most and he spoils her with new games, art supplies, and the sort of long solo father-daughter days out that Lila never had the chance to get. Lanky, gangling, and much taken with idiosyncratic fashion and scary things at a young age, Winnie is greatly enamoured with Minecraft (and Roblox... and Fortnite). Both in-game and out, she tags along with her older brother when he lets her and tries to recreate that sense of adventure in real life. He's become a more reluctant partner in crime lately, though, as he heads toward adulthood, and she's started playing more mature games in an attempt to keep up with the person she most admires and wants to be like (though she'll never admit it, of course). While not actively disliked or bullied at school, the youngest Sparling daughter is definitely not one of the popular girls either, and she catches some flak for spending as much time with the boys as she does with her assumed tribe of rambunctious pre-pubescent girls. A characteristic of both ADHD and autism, Winnie goes through intense monthly obsessions, gobbling up every bit of knowledge that she can on random subjects of interest. A cultural magpie plucking greedily from the fertile environs of tiktok, discord, reddit, wikipedia, and YouTube (where she's dutifully subscribed to her sister's channel), she is almost uncannily knowledgeable about random trivia and it is the one thing aside from minecraft that she will reliably and enthusiastically speak at length on. Out of necessity, she has now set her mind to the task of zombie apocalypse survival and relentlessly marshals her family to do the same.
▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅ "To me, 'bossy' is not a pejorative at all. It means somebody's passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn't mind leading." ▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅
Z A N E T T I, C A R I N A || P A T E R N A L A U N T Z A N E T T I, C A R I N A || P A T E R N A L A U N T
Carina never set out to live up to her name. She never wanted to be a 'Karen' and she cringes inwardly (and outwardly, for she can do nothing with subtlety) at the thought that people might consider her one. Three failed marriages, a circle of friends as superficial as they are materialistic, and repeated run-ins with the glass ceiling pushed her to the edge. One ill-advised incident broke her. As a girl, Carina was always the favourite child, and quiet, awkward, artsy Devon ever her shadow. Popular in school, she looked out for him, she protected him, and when he was getting his start as an artist, she let him surf her couch for months on end. More than one potential boyfriend was scared away in that manner, but she never said a word about it. Carina loved her little brother. Rather, she loves her little brother, and her nieces and nephew. She just wanted a family of her own, but she fell for jerks: handsome jerks, badboys, rich jerks, and just, well...pigs. She'd seemed never to make a bad choice growing up and, even as her career advanced and she made all of the right connections, everything seemed to go wrong outside of ever-fancier job titles. The men in charge said that she was bossy, but was she really? The first time that she was passed up for a promotion, she held it in, waited, and didn't jump to any conclusions. It happened again, though, and again, and she took her story to the media. Not much happened except a couple of articles and a horizontal move to a new firm. Again, she was passed up, despite giving her all to the company and sacrificing her marriage for it. A third job and a third marriage ensued, and then came the fateful day when she'd just had too much and a Starbucks employee gave her this smug little smile as he knowingly shortchanged her on her Venti. There were cameras but they didn't pick up any of the nuance and she went viral. She was publicly released from her job. She was doxxed. She was divorced. She was canceled. Carina was even sorry at first, but not after how vicious they all got. So, she bought herself a gun for self-defence, sold her apartment, and moved out to Huddeen to lick her wounds once the worst of it died down. She will see if her brother is as generous with her as she was with him.
Once upon a time, Ceboyan had been a small place. Thatch-roofed huts had perched upon stilts in the tidal flat and fishing boats had been the only traffic through its harbourmouth. As night had fallen, hearths and bonfires had winked out until there was only the faint twinkling light of the stars and the five moons.
There was nobody save, perhaps, for the very oldest among the residents of the sprawling, ramshackle city who remembered those times anymore. They fell increasingly within the realm of cultural myth, a fraying thread traceable to a distant and disappearing past: before the Virang had come.
And so it was that the sun set over this vast metropolis of some four hundred thousand souls, muted and moody behind a shoal of softly mumbling clouds. The bray of stray dogs traveled through the narrow winding streets and the clank and groan of cranes carried from ships being unloaded - even by night - at the docks.
One by one, the lights winked out and a soft rain began to fall. Yet, not all disappeared into the newly brooding darkness. There remained thin bands of light along the city's few large avenues. Within the port district, in particular, torches flickered amid the gloom as crews continued to work. Liveried security - the gleam of their brass buttons made mute in the prevailing conditions - hunkered in their guardhouses. Others grudgingly patrolled around the Royal Palapar Trading Company's warehouses, clinging beneath the awnings wherever possible. Back and forth swung the tremulous orange lights of their whale oil lanterns, greasy smoky spots of light that wavered as they walked.
The soft rains became a downpour and the torches began to falter. The arteries of light that snaked across the city and up the hillsides toward Mount Bantay retracted until they laid bare the truth of the this place. The docks remained lit - tentatively - and, now, one might behold, even as they disappeared for the night, where those veins of light had led. High up on the hills, overlooking the city, were palaces of a distinctly Virangish architecture. These roosted there, illuminated with magical light, defiant to the wants of nature. From more than one could be heard the sounds of music, conversation, and laughter. Ladies in fine dresses, too drunken to walk with grace, were helped into waiting carriages under umbrellas. Gentlemen, fancying themselves possessed of more daring stuff, made a dash for it in the rain, sliding in beside them. Others stood out on covered colonnades and verandahs, the tiny orange glows of their cigars lost amid the glow of the palaces. It was these events and the conversations held here that moved the city, after all.
Yet, there was two more places of note. The first was lower down, within the city, an oasis of greenery, garden, and light: the Royal Palace of the Queen of Palapar. If it was sleeping for the night, well-accustomed to the monsoon rains that had not quite yet come to a close, it retained some light for practical reasons. This grand old building, however, was rendered impotent by the second.
This loomed above even the retreats of that foreign aristocracy. Further up the mountain that the locals had always considered - and named - a guardian, lay the headquarters of the Royal Palapar Trading Company, who were not from this country but owned it in all but name. Though they had named their complex the Beacon Centre for its great domed tower and constant illumination, the locals had another name for it: Masamang Mata - the Evil Eye.
Introductions
How long had it been? The rains continued to drench Mahal as her anxiety rolled off her. Her eyes rested on the main house wedged firmly between the coffee fields and native jungle. Like a jewel set in the center of a green crown. One built of stone, ironwood, and hand crafted tile. Yet underneath its surface, Mahal knew the beauty to be skin deep. She remembered the screams and blood she shed within its wall and across its grounds.
Lost in the memories, a soft whine drew her attention. The girl twitched to life and looked down. She saw both her young dogs studying her intently, their tails drooped and ears perked. Their forms waiting impatiently for her next words. Something wet slide across her neck causing her eyes to look at her shoulder. The familiar red skin of Diyablos clung to her shoulder and seemed to touch her cheek. This broke the spell over her. She turned her head forward, inhaled then walked toward the house. Shortly all four slipped under the wooden roof.
"Ipte-Zept's Blessing." A burst of heat flushed her body and evaporated the water into steam. Meanwhile the dogs shook themselves, scattering droplets across the floor. Supok yawned then half bowed, stretching down upon her front legs. As she rose back up, her head glanced about causing Mahal to click her teeth. "Stay with me. Don't go wandering off."
The pup stared at her before something caught her attention. Noticing the distraction, Mahal followed her companion's gaze. It rested on the farthermost corner of the room. Slowly, one by one, the shadows began to detached themselves from the darkness and stalked into the light. Goma cats, about six them, circled about the intruders. Mahal tracked each one before the largest, a male, drew uncomfortable close. He waited for something. Cautiously, she stretched her palm outward. The feline purred then rubbed his whiskered cheek across it.
"Forgive me in advance for this question, Imam," said the recent convert, "but I wonder why you are showing us yourself when you certainly must have much else of great importance to do." He was a younger man, local and properly pious. He bowed as he spoke, though it was not necessarily the custom here. Old habits died hard.
"You are not wrong," the holy man replied with a soft smile. There was none of the air of judgment about him that most of the locals had come to expect from the Virangish. In any event he had made this place a home for over two decades. "I have much else to do." He nodded slowly as he took them past the Silver Gate. "But none of it is nearly so important as welcoming new brothers and sisters." He spread his hands. "Others can do the paperwork and it will be done all the same. I wish for you to be welcomed as a brother deserves."
From the distant Sky Dome, echoed the soft sounds of a hundred or more prayers. Natural light filtered in from the east and people greeted each other and caught up away from the holier areas, among the columns and alcoves. Imam Tikli led them past the Chamber of Sleep and onwards, further, into the Chamber of Giving. There were no questions asked here. People left what they did not need for others. Those others took what they needed. A fountain burbled softly in the middle, hundreds of silver coins shimmering beneath the water's surface. Branching off of the main chamber were hallways, secondary chambers, and guard stations. One of the first cohort, in particular, was strongly gated and watched over by six janissaries. What could possibly have lain down it?
Not all of them were Palaparese. This was unusual.
The Thirsty Bull was infamous as a place of rough sailors, dockhands, and general labourers. The booze was cheap, the location was convenient, and it was almost clean. If there was often gambling, fistfights, and drunkenness, there was also a sort of code here. Nobody took - or was allowed to take - their squabbles further than a single night... at least, not with each other.
Two outsiders were among them, however. One of these men was masked in the way of the Revidians some had heard of. One or two had tried to get him to take it off. Others had forestalled their efforts before he'd had to so much raise his voice, let alone a hand against them. The other had come in a hooded cloak, for such was the rain this night.
It came down in torrents on what was likely Ceboyan's darkest night in years. From the sprawling terraced farms of Bundok to the squat stinking warehouses of Arangal, the vast city hunkered down against the onslaught, shutters drawn, doors closed, embers glowing faintly in hearths. It was a place of ghosts for the time being.
The men inside were more than the usual rough sorts. There were merchants and skilled craftsman as well, even a handful of farmers. All had been pouring out their anger with their drinks when the two interlopers had arrived: cheap wages, high prices, draconian law enforcement, and double standards for the Company's men. Worst of all, there was no way out: no ability to form their own companies or undertake any enterprise that could rival those of the Company and Virang. It had reached a boiling point and tonight, perhaps, the fury of these men matched that of the heavens.
The arrivals did not seem to be Virangish, at least. They seemed cut from an altogether different cloth, though it was hard to tell. The guard station was not so very far away, and they had resorted to underhanded plays of late. It would pay to be cautious.
It was late in the darkness, the rain that lay over Ceboyan and Arangal only now starting to make its way to neighbouring Kalingnan. Dogs, left out in it, howled in protest, and drops pattered against thatched roofs. In the great manor house that roosted on the hill, servants were bustling about, bringing furniture and plants in, locking up sheds, and closing shutters. In rapid succession, the lights winked out. The great evil eye that gazed over Aziz Mesud was closed.
"Dali?" whispered a voice. A moment passed. "Dalisay!?" It came back louder.
"Yesss, Bato. I'm here. Are you trying to wake the whole farm?"
"Well, you could answer the first time and I wouldn't have to be louder." A teenage boy could be seen slipping into a large hut. He was wearing a wide straw hat and loose canvas pants patched a few times.
"This takes focus, you know." A girl, perhaps a year or two older, could be seen sitting cross-legged on a bed made of planks and some hay. Presently, she opened an eye to glare at the boy.
"Can you sense them yet?"
She nodded. "But only one," she admitted, with some consternation. "Gani said we'd have real help." Dalisay opened both eyes and leaned back, posting her weight on her arms. Long greasy black hair was draped over one shoulder. The boy bore a striking resemblance to her as he joined her sitting on the bed, though his hair had a slight wave to it.
"Maybe he's just that good," Bato suggested, pausing for a moment. "Or 'she'." He tried a hopeful smile.
"It's a man," Dali corrected. She furrowed her brow. "A mage, I think." She nodded after a second.
"He must be some mage!" Bato enthused, only to be shushed by his older sister. "Oraf only gave you loud and mute, didn't she?" the girl chided, and the younger of the pair grimaced by way of apology.
Dalisay glanced about warily and her eyelids fluttered shut for a second. "Well, I sure hope he is. It's a mad idea."
Bato was already rising, but some of the simple cheer faded from his face for a moment. "If you ask me, doing what they did to Alad was the mad thing." He began to walk away.
Dali's eyes opened. "I know," she sighed. "I'm sorry." She took a deep breath and glanced down. "We all wish it hadn't happened. We all wish that things could be different." She shrugged.
"And they will be, Ate, once this man comes and shows us what we need." He turned on his heel and crouched down before where she sat on the bed. "Then we can do the rest ourselves."
"Would a healer not be better for Alad?"
"How long until the next Alad?"
Dalisay sighed and nodded glumly, but she made sure to flash a smile for her little brother. They were but a year and a half apart, though sometimes it felt like more and, other times, she felt the younger of the two. "As usual, wisdom from the mouth of babes."
Bato winked and she blew a raspberry. "I meant his head, as well." She shook hers. "You know he's never been quite right. Anyway, go now," she urged him. "Tell Gani and Kidlat that he's coming along the west road. He's tall and has a pack and some... kites." She estimated his walking speed. "He's about two miles away. Hurry and you three can pull him into the old shed."
For a moment, Bato's eyes flicked to the wheelbarrow in the middle of the hut. "Do you..."
Dalisay smiled and shook her head. "Go, totò!"
They would find him there, every morning, on the same bench in his garden. It was not a new behaviour, but not an old one either. One day, about a year and a half ago, he had started doing it. Now, it was part of his routine.
Osman III, called 'Prudent' by allies and enemies alike, was eighty years of age and had reigned for sixty-one. That all men of wisdom and decency respected him was a given. That many of those same men - and women - whispered in secret that he was not the man he had been five years ago - or even two - was also true. Did their whispers reach his wizened ears, or had time rendered him deaf to them?
Dorrad and Hundri were very much alike in Gandacar, and bees and hummingbirds hovered between the delicate blossoms, some cultivated by Osman's own hand, some as old as his reign itself. He sat among them, and who could say if he found his peace there?
Yet, this day, the tranquility of the garden was not to be his. This day, his viziers - the two of them - approached, and a gaggle of others. "But if only they could see what I have grown here," the old sultan murmured to himself before they arrived, "they would not be so quick to urge me to war."
"The young conqueror surveys his new empire and crows that it is vast, like Lake Albadón, but he knows nothing of its depth."
- Firrazene Proverb
The road west from Torra Corda stretches on into inner Torragon, straight as a line in some places. To one side is Lake Albadón and the sparse greenery upon its shores; to the other lies a vast and cruel desert, bleeding off into the horizon, seemingly endless.
It was into this scene that Ayla Arslan, a daughter of one of the greatest noble houses in the country, arrived. From the dust and winds, the endless mirror of the lake emerged, flamingos and other waterfowl dotting its surface, peering up from their animal activities at the new arrival.
Not so far from its shore lay a gazebo. A simple wooden structure, it cast a rhomboidal shadow across the whitish sands as whitish curtains fluttered in the stifling breeze. Just outside was a horse. Just within was a man. He waited at a table. The girl arriving knew who he was.
The sun impaled itself on the belltower of the Sala del Commercio, more peach, now, than grapefruit. People scurried about the business of the day, getting in those final purchases, cleaning their shops, and meeting with friends before the shadow of the Palazzo Ducale covered the plaza below. A group of boys wound their way about the place, playing a ball game, their excitable calls piercing the general din. Once, perhaps, some of the people in the Palazzo had been among that number. Now, they played a different sort of game.
One with much higher stakes.
"There are many angles, but the issue is simple at its heart: some trouble for Virang is good for us. Too much trouble is not." Prospero Malatesta, called by some L'Anguilla, leaned on the windowsill, gazing calculatingly out across the vast piazza.
Maurizio Tartarello, Minister of War, rapped his knuckles on the table, as if to draw the Doge's attention. "If this spark ignites the Twins, La Mossa Verde will fail." He scowled and shook his head tightly. "We are not yet ready."
There seemed to be a general sense of agreement on that point. The clock on the wall ticked. Shadows stretched rhomboidal. The servants replenished platters and brought drinks, but not so very many, for this was not a formal war council, but rather, a personal session afterwards with the Doge's brain trust and a few newer faces he'd invited.
Count on her, then - the only woman in the room - to be the one who broke the easy agreement.
"I think we should press every advantage we have to the hilt." Francesca la Volpe flipped her feet off of the table where they'd been resting, and placed her cigar into the ashtray. At least her boots weren't muddy this time. "Gooey Rouis' not as stupid as he looks." She picked the pineapples off of her pizza. "Is a foreign war in support of slavery going to galvanize his people enough to attack Revidia!?" She leaned back and kicked her feet up again. Prospero smiled. "Other opinions?" he offered, taking in the room.
The bells of Taicuuma rang across the Sidoilean, a final goodbye to the twenty ships who flew the Jaadas banner. Fort Ensuumax fired a rolling salute and thousands lined the capital's piers, singing, chanting, waving tearful goodbyes. If they were the Golden Generation and might achieve more than any before, more was asked of them than any other as well.
Cascal'uumii'anthan, emperor of Tarlon, knew this well. "Brothers and Sisters," he began, appearing atop the walls of the fort, "it heartens me greatly to see you here in such numbers and with such spirit." He bowed his head in momentary thanks, the Empress Esuul appearing at his shoulder, a silent beautiful apparition, hands knit before her.
"Our brave soldiers and our brave sailors do not need more strength." He nodded. "For one thousand years, this land we call home, that we found wild and hostile, that we brought to heel and coaxed an empire from, has made us the strongest people on Sagand." He smiled and spread his arms. "We have had no other choice."
"What they need most now," said the empress, stepping forward, "Is faith." Between her fingers were curled the beads of a levenii. "Faith that they will have a home that lifts them and welcomes them back, faith in the righteousness of their actions. Faith that the Gods stand behind them." She raised her fist into the air. "We have given them arms and armour, brothers and sisters, and now I say that is our final great Gift as we leave their fates to Damy and Vyshta."
Esuul bowed her head. "Let us pray." Cascal bowed his head. "Let us pray."
"Ypti," called the empress,
- "Ypti," refrained her people -
"from whom flows the love and beauty that makes life a joy and wonder,"
"from whom flows the love and beauty that makes life a joy and wonder,"
"we humbly ask of thee to hold these young women and men in your heart, to set before them reminders of what it is that they fight to protect, that they may not lose themselves to the warrior's rage or the widow's mourning."
"Shiin." Cascal's voice carried out across the piers and he, too, was echoed by his people.
"who is the light of learning, the pique of curiosity, and the sage wisdom of experience."
A thousand voices followed that of their emperor.
"We ask of thee, in humility, to let not these young souls be dulled by what they will do and witness. Bathe their senses in wonder and foresight so that they may find new and clever ways to law low their enemies and stand triumphant."
"Mother Oirase," came Esuul and a multitude more after, "from whom all that lives and breathes springs, it is our most humble request that you carry these whom we have sent on a journey close to your bosom, that you grant them the privilege of many more years alive among us."
"Exiran," thundered Cascal's voice, "Lord of War and bringer of death." All knew the opening words. "Fill thy people with vigor and violence that they might be a fighting force like none this world has ever seen, that they may lay waste to their enemies and bring victory to our people and our most righteous cause."
"Dami," said all, "Lord of Lords, we ask that you judge us and our cause worthy. We beg of you the wisdom to choose, always, the true path." As one, they dropped to one knee. "As one, we ask you to guide us to..."
"Jaadas!"
Juuras!"
"Tan'daxii!"
When they looked up and rose, the Dawn Fleet had passed the horizon and there was only ocean: pure and endless.
Oh gee! An age and a gender and interests and things. Yeah, I have those. Ain't no way I'm about to trigger an existential crisis by typing them all out, though. You can find out what a nerd I am on discord, okay?
Stay awesome, people.
<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Oh gee! An age and a gender and interests and things. Yeah, I have those. Ain't no way I'm about to trigger an existential crisis by typing them all out, though. You can find out what a nerd I am on discord, okay?<br><br>Stay awesome, people.</div>
pantothenic
Jumbus
Crimson Flame
princess
Suicharte
Fallenreaper
Lildear18
BlackRoseSiren
Carlyle
