HereComesTheSnow

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

A familiar sensation washed over him from somewhere behind, that of waking up to a warm breeze in the midst of a summer's dawn— his accumulating ails sliding away as they came, taking things somewhere that felt more or less sustainable. He caught the minty green glow casting itself softly onto his drawn steel before he whipped up another surge of profaned fire—

"Shit—"¹

He'd barely begun to brace himself for the impact of the Wroth's true power hammering down onto him. Even in the barest instants of it all, this Thundaga was clearly a level far removed from the errant fulmination that had been drawn his way by chance and conceit. He had readied himself to put that hasty, instinctual bet of his to the test—

And then, as though a bolt from the blue herself, Izayoi had appeared high above, catching the falling hammer on her blade and adding its strength to her own, rending straight through the steel that cloaked Adrammelech's essence. To draw and counter the storm itself... He had only just written that idea off as foolhardy, bordering on impossible, if he tried it. He'd found about four reasons in as many seconds why... yet there it was. The sight of his doubts being so simply, almost pointedly shattered would surely stick with him for the rest of his days.

Adrammelech roared in fury, snapping the entrenched young man out of his awe as he tried to take advantage of the sudden gap that had been torn into his armor, his greatsword whipping around at speed to cast another projected wave of fire forth even as the spirit cast both dragoon and samurai into one another and sent the pair flying— and then with a clap of thunder, disappearing altogether.

"Izayoi, Gala—"

No time. Your sustain is in danger. He's above, and looking at your healing!²

It was a damned good thing Selene's speed was still upon them all. To his credit, Rudolf snapped to, immediately pivoting and reacquiring the two story thunderhead into his vision once more. Not an instant too soon, either— the last moments of Adrammelech's gaze sweeping over where he and his attaché stood were all he got to herald the lifted fingertip and thin arrow of lightning that burst forth, trajectory terminating a few feet past his left shoulder. Just enough to react with first impulse, and no more.

Story of his life.³

"EOS, HIT THE DECK!" he roared, wrenching himself to the side and reaching out, trying to add at least one more layer of defensive insulation to the tiny green firefly than just a warning— interception by way of sword, arm, or body was a damned sight better than one of their two healers going down in a fight like this—

As for the other...

For the moment, she had gotten a layer of frosty stalagmite between herself and the falling spirit, but he needed to recapture full attention as soon as he could. The distance wasn't all that far— maybe if he could cut it off—

The bolt struck him in the shoulder, and his jaw clamped shut, teeth gritting at he let the wards eat most of the burn and instead cast a souring curtain of fire a few feet above the razor tip of the icy punji spike— depending on timing, he could either obscure it just before the moment of impact and buy Miina a second of broken visuals to get out of dodge, or follow up the collision with a heavy, lingering cowl of the stuff while Adrammelech was still occupied with the six feet of ice that he'd suddenly dropped into.

---

---

• _{1. It was only ever psyching himself up to go out there. The thing about putting on a brave face is that, at some point, it always comes back off. But this is the path we chose.}
• _{2. All things being equal, even he has to admit that it's a damned good thing that I, in moments like these, can now communicate much more effectively than just pointing danger sense in a barely-specific direction and letting his body figure things out from there. Being eyes in the back of somebody's head is a lot easier when you're allowed to get the interpretation of the stimuli part done instead of waiting for them to hopefully guess right at your meaning.}
• _{3. Prior to voicing any complaints, please refer again to 1. That means you.}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

The hand of misfortune struck heavy and with relish, Miina's well-intentioned but all too faint warnings dashed to pieces by the hammer of high heaven about Rudolf's ears, the errant Thundaga as loud as any cannon that had ever drawn a rose's hue onto Eliane's cheeks. His ears rang, and the stench of ozone and smoke filled his lungs— but her protection had overlayed onto his form just in the nick of time and no sooner. Taking the cloven-hooved titan's heralding fulmination right to the damn dome had hurt for certain, but proven survivable— his fingers flexed when asked, and his breathing hadn't gone erratic even with Selene's Swiftness embossing his movement.

Good, all good. That said, though, the undirected strikes of lightning were hard to predict even with that haste applied— and he couldn't get around the sense that it wasn't quite so effective as it had once been. He'd been grappling with that inkling feeling all through the moments were the Kirins had torn through the blightbeasts like scythes through wheat, but it didn't stand to reason that the purple fairy's boon had somehow been weakened, so much as—

Another thread of lightning crashed against his back, the third in nowhere near as many seconds. It obliterated the idle thought before it could really complete, leaving again the strange impression that maybe he wasn't taking to outsourced haste quite so well as he used to. That being the case, it had proven again that he couldn't quite rely on dodging, given that these were the incidental threads of contact. A long blade of steel upon his back, and a yawning chasm where he had once held at least meager fortune— between them, lightning seemed to quite readily strike twice, and then some. His mind raced... and found itself taking a very different tack than the suggestion he'd been too momentarily deafened to hear.

I have an idea. You might not like it.¹

There was the disembodied sensation of a nonplussed blink. Evidently, somebody in this equation wasn't used to being on the receiving end of that sentiment.

Huh?

"I've got the front," he called, swallowing a lump of fear in his throat even as his hands rose to grip the pommel of the tall, smoking greatsword at his back. He stepped forward, a deep puff of air loosing as he exhaled, trying to purge that sensation of clammy palms and pale complexion from his body. They were just all the lightning, he told himself, that was the only reason his hair was going wild, and the hammering heart was just the haste at work. Sword drawn, the young man set off at the head of the group, breaking into a charge. The alternative, he dimly realized, was probably completely locking up. It had been this way for so long he had almost forgotten how to recognize it— that the ideas he verbalized were probably more for his benefit than any one of theirs. "I'll do what I can to draw the lion's share of the heat onto me! You guys encircle him, attack from the flanks! We faced down Leviathan— just one attendant's in reach if we play this right!"

His guard was high, an exaggerated Vom Tag. Lightning liked three things most of any: high places, metal, and Ithar's blacklisted. While Adrammelech's direct attacks wouldn't be rerouted, even pulling the errant, incidental sparks away from his comrades would give them a lot more breathing room atop the Barthunder² that coated them all.

Hold on, what happened to smartly approaching your problems? Your first thought is turning yourself into a lightning rod. Even with the Nulshock, you're playing a dangerous game to maximize the hits you take. You saw what happened to your blonde friend last time lightning was allowed a free point of entry.

This is smart, Rudolf countered, letting his will flood the six-foot empty vessel above even as another bolt careened into it, running down the length of steel before crackling at the edges of the arcane barrier around him. They were right, of course— each shot still felt like getting brained with a sledgehammer, to put it mildly, to the point where it felt a shame that his armament might not retain the charge afterward. Even if the Eidolon's mighty servant almost certainly held immunity to the element it commanded. But all the same, Etro had afforded him at least one rare blessing at birth: a really hard head. We're buying openings! Listen, just worry about keeping the fire burning and whatever you can do to shield my heart and my brain!³

I can't guarantee anything, but you dying means me dying. I'll try and figure something out. This is what Arton, and that materia you chucked him, are for.

Not happening! You've seen the state he's in same as me— and with him out of the fight, I'm the next most robust person we've got. I don't like it either, you know that damn well!

With the fae boon still upon him, it was a simple matter to close the distance between him and his quarry— now came the hard part. He whipped the blade around into an uncharacteristically weighty slash to Adrammelech's right leg, attacking the joint of the knee with the physical force he could pull out of the empowerment— and letting the high-spiraling tornado of blackflame in its wake ravage the titan's torso as it climbed. He would need to get close to contribute meaningfully to the battle anyway, and with him not being terribly confident that his speed was completely up to snuff compared to before and them down their usual bulwark... pivots needed making.

There was a great crash as steel met steel, and he craned his neck to lock eyes with the thunder elemental. He hid the nerves behind a grimace, he hid his grimace behind a growl— Izayoi's master had been bad enough already to stare down. The ram of thunder was easily three times as tall. Basically the size of a house, and actively crackling with the power it held that made your every hair stand on end, made your instincts scream at you to run away and not draw this thing's attention.

And Rudolf had to make himself the most pressing target on the board, so his teammates could swarm him and take him down, or at least prove they stood a fighting chance against him. He summoned the image of his brother from within the recesses of his mind. The broad back he always chased. That man was so like those brief glimpses of Arton he'd seen before the Blight infection had truly metastasized; even if faced with a primordial like Ramuh himself, or Leviathan before, he wouldn't falter. He would meet this challenge, even if the very storms their Midgar blood knew to above all else respect were the hurdle he had to overcome.

Of that, the young swordsman was sure.

"You're in our way, goat!"⁴ he roared, bringing the length of the greatsword back across his field of view a moment later, another line of ink⁵ drawn upon the arc he cut through the air, a spray of onyx flame spreading towards Adrammelech's head, his eyes, high above. Hopefully, the smell of ozone and singed flesh would mask the scent of deceit— the constant hammering of Dhinas's smiting judgement all around him cloaking the same of his pulse. "We've got places to be!"

Those opening moments were precious for setting the tone of a fight. Even with seven of them versus one of the wrathful thunder spirit, he prayed that he had at least extended the first stanza by enough for everyone to reposition well enough to bring their full ability down onto their foe— while they were still warm from the fight with the Blightbeasts, maintaining tempo was crucial. that was the lone upside to having this test dropped into their lap with neither warning nor processing time, to the point where he wasn't even sure if he'd had a moment to internalize any of what Cid and Ramuh had revealed of the former's particular, strange existence. He didn't know what he thought of that, or how he weighed it against the Grovemasters issue, or how it played into his running tally of everything that had happened in this forsaken jungle. He'd not had the time to think.

And that was likely what pushed him here, to trying to buy Izayoi, Galahad, Esben some time to come up with an actual strategy beyond this opening. If he had known this was what he'd be facing, had time to sit with it, would he have made the same choices? Would he have swam, or sank?

Wasn't that what it always was? Sink or swim, with no time to see what was coming until it arrived? They hadn't expected Leviathan to turn out this way, either. Nor their ride here, nor their expedition into the desert. It was always this. Think fast, nimrods! The scariest shit you've ever seen is right on top of you!

If you stop to realize that, you're already dead. That's the lesson.

So the test then was... were they ready to keep having to ask "how high" when the world they wanted to save told them to jump? No matter when, no matter where?

For his part, Rudolf hated every second of it. He wanted a damned break, he felt like he'd proven all this twice over.

...And that probably meant he was in for the long haul.

---

---

• _{1. Huh?}
• _{2. Nulshock. In civilized tongues with real, respectable understandings of magic, it's called Nulshock, not Barthunder. I thought this vessel of mine was the educated one.}
• _{3. At this point, my mind is racing as quick as it can to try and turn my aether currents around to put some passable buffer between those two (in fairness, most immediately vital) organs and whatever electric rolloff makes it past the ward his mage has so kindly bestowed onto him, likely knowing the type of nincompoop she was tagging along with beneath his facade of pursuing most effective tactic available. It's obvious to me that this 'all or nothing' approach is the idea he's latching onto as a response for the need to act immediately— a plan that he can put into action before he terror spirals. One of these days he'll realize that this is what he's been doing the whole time, but that's a discussion for moments where I'm not about to learn if I can use the expression of my presence to reroute the path lightning takes as it tries to ground itself. This is a bit more complicated than simply digging a channel through the side of a riverbank, Rudolf.}
• _{4. Obviously the genuine article is more draconic, but those ancient scribes and artists that most of the continent's religious iconography stemmed from probably had a hard time getting their heads around depicting that— and went with a ram's head because they felt some connection to the astrological Capricorn was poignant, or because that was the closest thing they could think of that they had seen that had horns. You'd be appalled to learn how much of your understanding of history and myth is just heavily mangled guesses made by sheltered idiots.}
• <sub>5. I burn more luck, he gets more flame, the lightning and the lizard man get more inclination to strike him twice, thrice, and so on, instead of his pals. Everyone wins! This is some ruthless calculus at play, even if it works. I'd be over the moon with it, of course, if my continued existence weren't tied to the idea that this team can outpace the punishment we're inviting onto ourselves. The principle of taking a clear cause-and-effect chain that's dumpstering you from most reasonable outlooks and bending it over your knee until you pull some kind of advantage from it is what I'm all about. These systems are made to be tamed. It's fun viewing when somebody clues into that.
  
  I just don't appreciate having my essence tied to the margins being played. It's little wonder I keep being compelled to chime in.</sub>

Falling Skies

LTJG ROY KILMER, CALLSIGN "COMMIE"

---

<<Yo, Bunny. You still alive?>>

The harsh midday sun had painted his cockpit gold, as the Shrike circled the stricken Sparrowhawk's crash site, his presence thankfully enough to ward away most any bright-eyed Coalies that fancied themselves battlefield executioner. He had been busying himself with, putting it bluntly, staring into the sun— cycling through each sensor array and photographic filter he had available to him in those brief moments he felt safe to take his eyes off their foulmouthed Rabbit, the rubble of the poor building beneath her shifting as her systems came to. That shot had come from somewhere within the glare— new prey loitering on high, picking away at them and the Helldogs from a nasty angle for any attempts at reprisal. He had more or less triangulated where the shots were coming from, even as he squinted behind his opaque visor.

But orders came in. His pound of flesh, once again, had to wait. That was... fine. Not to his liking for a single second, but his opinion didn't matter in an offensive of this scale, let alone in the face of their CO. They were here for the long haul anyway, so he didn't doubt his chances of this being far from the last bleeding edge Coalition opponent, same as thing werr up in High Atmo. He had a job to do— and he'd been told, in no uncertain terms, that it needed doing in a way that didn't hold him back.

<<Understood, Vulture. Be back in a moment.>>

He had breathed in deep, after giving his hails through the comm line, barely a moment after Sab's lilting French tirade had assailed their ears. Bit of a shame, he'd not found any time to deliver her his favored ripostes as their usual repartee had spooled up before she'd gotten her flight surfaces thoroughly scrambled. But nevertheless, if she was treating their ears to it that meant she was more or less fine— and he had places to be. His targets were painted, at the far edge of the city. Rear guard, in the middle of setting up a sniper encampment. If allowed to persist, the high-caliber munitions would create an untenably deadly crossfire between them and their mysterious newcomer on high— and the latter was already evidently watching their movements specifically for the potshotting. He'd been keeping count of the lines of yellow while he'd loitered, whatever it was up there that was trying to pick them all off was being particularly judicious.

Fine. If he was on the lookout for the fast movers of the drop... then Kilmer knew how to get attention. His muscles tensed, his posture sank forward, his blood boiled as lightning ran through it... and he punched the throttle, like he was trying to rip it all the way off.

As the Sparrowhawk dug itself out of the rubble, it would see the Shrike give a slight waggle of the wings from high above, like it were Commie's idea of a cheeky wave...

And then it was gone, as a long-tailed Comet streaked through the dust-choked Gelcastre skies. The air ripped open with AA fire, flak nets and rotary guns trying their damndest to catch the blue-white line his afterburners dumped onto the picture. They had already netted their share of Sparrows for the day, so surely this wouldn't be too different, they no doubt reasoned.

As if taking offense to the notion, Kilmer yanked hard on the controls, and grit his teeth as he burned past the triple digits—

<<Stupid bastard must have gotten hit! That's another down!>>

And the Shrike hit the deck, diamond dust in its wake as he dropped below the city's skyline, weaving his line of blue through the gaps in Coalition zoning code.

His breath hitched, the corridors of residential and office buildings streaking past on either side of his cockpit, the wind that bounced off cement and glass whipping against his airframe. You had to feel for whomever didn't have the foresight to move their car the hell off the street before the Union offensive had gotten here— The pressure front in his wake was already wreaking havoc on some of the cheaper windowpanes high above.

His head was on a swivel as he rolled his bird through the city's main streets, checking his clearance and course for split-second corrections. It was a tight weave, no doubt about it, but in Commie Math it was worth the risk— ducking down to street level kept him below the angles of attack the Coalie flak nets could muster, the buildings would conceal his vector of approach from the rear guard sniper-spotter and artillery teams he'd been sent to deal with, and...

[WARNING: ENERGY SPIKE DETECTED.]

His arms flashed over the controls, firing retros even as he banked hard away from a city park, one splotch of greenery in the concrete jungle— one that was promptly torched by another beam of sunlight, a half-second (and thusly a couple towers of the financial sector) from nailing him.

... It limited their voyeur's opportunities to take a shot that didn't have a very ugly set of consequences attached.

He blinked a bead of sweat out of his eyes, mind and body continuing to race as the Shrike chewed up distance, click by click, second by second, ducking its way through an unspeakable gauntlet of execution tests as Gelcastre's city center came and went. All that benefit, for the low, low cost... of just a few Gs. He strained even as he craned his neck to keep his vision active, muscles screaming out against the insistent momentum with each maneuver. His organs threatened to paste themselves against hius creaking ribcage, his heart pumped in double time, fighting to keep those dark corners of his vision from completely taking him...

<<Commie, engaging enemy fire position!>> he growled, voice thick with exertion, as his screaming chariot cleared the last of the skyscrapers, a pair of 50mm salvos streaking out from his beak and colliding with the mobile missile platforms, detonating their payloads prematurely as the Garmr and Skollr, to their credit, tried to hop to when their enemy had suddenly arrived on their doorstep. The Shrike swooped high, finally gaining a little altitude for the first time in what felt like an eternity—

This is gonna hurt.

And her psychotic man in the box ignored ache in his chest and the taste of copper on his tongue, as she unfurled from aircraft to MAS proper even as she tore through the distance between them. By the time the beam saber had sparked to life in the prototype's hand, it was practically atop the Skollr, too quick by half to allow it to tear itself free from the cannon emplacement.

<<FUCK! WHAT THE FUC--KZZZSSSHH—>>

Two shots rang out, drying the last of the flyboy's magazine even as the blaze of the cored mech billowed high, a brief second of a curtain between him and the ill-fated spotter— both rounds shearing through the monoeye camera. Barely a breath later, Kilmer's blade closed the book.

Backlit by three blazes, the Shrike's visor returned to the sun, the spot of gold on black hunting for the spot of black on gold.

<< Vulture, Commie. Long range bombardment teams scuttled. Requesting clearance to intercept.>>

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

An eyebrow rose, as hidden from view beneath his visor as the nonplussed expression he imagined on the pale waif's face, moments before her silent contemplation had been broken when one of the smaller, weaker interlopers of the hunt had broken ranks and charged him ahead of schedule. That weapon she had pulled free from her sternum, like a hand out of a glove... evidently, it was ample sharp, no matter how oddly constructed at first glance.

"As you wish, then," he spoke, eyeing the two halves of the slain figure for a mere moment before stepping through the middle, his boots stained with the drying red. His strides were even in tempo and measure, nothing sudden, nothing shifty. Brazen, almost. As he closed the gap between them, he let his idle thoughts fall away one by one, the voids in their wake clear, open, ready to house focus. Her abilities were still mysterious— he would note and use every clue he could before they could be brought to bear against them. Chiefly, the speed of her slice had been enough that it had at least looked like she may have cut the wretch in two from afar— and storing the blade within herself as she had, and its bonelike appearance... those also left room for the idea that it was some grotesque manipulation of the body at play, as well. That would possibly mean alterations to the length or rigidity of her blade or her body itself.

His sword rose, slowly, in a mirror of her posture once they were but the length of their armaments away from one another. He nodded, seeming to believe a wordless, expressionless understanding reached between them.

In all cases, minimizing the distance between he and her would help mitigate those advantages such qualities would give her over him at distance. It was earnest pageantry, sure, but not always impractical in being so polite. Two sides to everything— where his battles against mundane men had seen him fall to a hot fury so often... against the supernatural, mystical things he always seemed to encounter beneath moonlight (in one way or another), frosty reason was every bit as dominant.

"En garde."

He tapped the flat of his sword's point against hers, before pulling it away into ochs, as mayhem began to rain down around them.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

The assignments didn't shock him. He was damned sneaky in his own right, and had plenty of tracking experience— but more than once had proven the odds stacked against him in the endeavor in recent memory— be it Izayoi feeling his eyes on her when he'd tailed her to Kurogane's Smithy, despite his best impression of how Esben moved (which he had since attempted to continue refining, because failing bugged him), or just days ago, when the world itself had seen fit to conspire against him when he moved in a much more familiar element than city streets, among crowds. Even in his best condition, trees were all but falling on his head at this point. The vaunted skills of Osprey's shinobi were always a better pick, even before the black cloud that hung around him— one that likely would have given him away to any of the targets no matter how well he hid.

They'd just smell the twisted aether.

"Mm. That makes sense to me. Galahad, once we're inside we should beeline for where we tooled those deserters— a whole fight in there didn't really draw any attention that I remember. Plus, it'd have to be fairly close to where they themselves were lying their heads— probably somewhere empty we can set up without too much issue."

Another sound of tearing parchment covered the silent interplay between their two Skaeller representatives, and as the discussion broke down from group to between individual cells, one withering glare being endured surely lead to two¹, as the young swordsman shifted to face the newcomer's direction. He didn't meet her gaze with his own, with good reason— the dark stick in his grasp was moving across the fiber, beginning with a steady arc that became an orb, then casting carefully considered lines atop it— construction principles, each as thoroughly beaten into his muscles as the arcs, whirls, and lines of his swordplay². His brow furrowed, conjuring memories to take the place of life reference, which he always preferred— it was easier to capture the intangibles of emotion, expression, gesture when you saw them.

Granted, the last was irrelevant for this first page. But to that end, the impressions he pulled forth were not of their enemy, spitting bile at whatever devil she believed Cid to be, but of the kindly mentor he'd sought at camp— regardless of how he or the party now saw her after they'd cast themselves on either side of that line in the sand... that would be the person Isolde would show her flock. No reason to think it would even be ingenuine in Brightlam and for the people of her homeland, but at the very least, she would need to keep playing that role so long as she held it.

As he let the charcoal glide along, he addressed the viera in a clipped tone, not hostile but pointedly all business. In his experience, the best thing you could do when met with someone like her was meet them at their level. Friendliness would have to wait for the day his accent didn't knot her brow from the jump.

"I'll have your references done for you in a couple hours— this'll be a headshot at 3/4ths, then I'll map out another one for full body. Won't be comprehensive, but I have the silhouette and most of the louder details of her robes and frame down fairly well."

A momentary pause, as he raised the charcoal stick to his temple, mulling something over. He liked how a lot of his hatching turned out when conveying value and dimension, but when it came to identifiers... monochrome was something to work around.

"Given the medium, I'll leave notes as well, for gaps in what I can portray. Hair color, eye color, gait, so on. If there's any part of your process that needs that kind of specific detail covered, please let me know now. I wanna knock this out while the idea's fresh."

---

Blightbeasts. Bears and wolves, mostly, but he noticed the odd gorilla in the mix— warped and monstruous as they all were, a tier above most wildlife even at their weakest, he was surprised at just how numb he had become to their howls over the past seven months. The first few days of their spread into Edren's borders had been nightmarish for everyone, even the Sagramori who had cut their teeth taking down their noncorrupted counterparts. A coward like him had only escaped the scorn of desertion by being scared too stiff to run in the first place— then forced by fear of death to defend himself.

And then, as some of the most storied exporters of hirable muscle in the country, those days rolled into weeks, into months, and then into nearly half a year, constantly on call to try and fight an eternal war on these invasive pests that didn't even have the grace to be good eating, for all the fury in their flesh and blood. By the time he had joined the Kirins, the protests that his village were more than monster hunters seemed to only be for his own sake— even he had pitched one of his strengths as being an old hand at dealing with the Blightbeasts up close and personal.

So. Three days on the trot, slowly stripping away the distance between them and Brightlam, mile by brush-chopping, sweat-drenched, and hard-fought mile. The roll of thunder and crack of lightning had called them here, as though Himstus's war drums— and who was at the center of it but mighty Ramuh, Dhinas's chosen... and Cid himself? Man, they had to stop meeting like this. Would that tiny church be the only time a fight wasn't hot on their heels when they ran into this guy?³

Rudolf breathed deep, and cleared his mind of the idle chatter. The heat was sticking to them even worse as they trudged south, and when they were caught in the denser jungles it felt like each broad emerald leaf overhead was the roof of a sauna. Smoothed the brain over if you let it, as did mindless traveling. Maybe it was a lucky thing that they had a horde of these malcontents to fight— the rushing blood would resharpen the mind, and with it being a favor for Cid and another eidolon, maybe they could get a little more in the way of answers once it was through— or at least perspective.

"Nothing crazy. Not for us. Regular blightbeasts, just a lot." he reported with a breath, fishing his materia from its twice as roomy pouch before drawing his twinned Wings in close. Was he still nervous? Of course. He always would be, really, were the monsters real, imagined, or made more vicious than they were ever supposed to be. But, if they had been a familiar foe before the quest, by now...

"I'll set the table, if nobody minds."

... He barely needed to work up the nerve, especially since he wasn't staring down the business end of the eidolon in the mix. Ridiculous sentence. Funny how life worked.

The materia flooded with will, and in a surge of purple energy he was gone, springing forth into a mighty leap that carried him, blades whirling end over end, into the midst of the clearing. The world spun around him, and he spent that moment of flight relishing the cooling touch of wind that velocity granted, a reprieve after the long hike— before the whiff of storm's passage on the air told him his arc was about to terminate, as he was passing close to Ramuh. The tightly held swords swung out into a spinning, whirling slash at the very end of the journey—

And he crashed into the Blightbeasts' midst, the impact knocking a good chunk of them off balance, or even off their feet as the tightly commanded Gravity was cut loose.

---

---

• _{1. Blatant assumption on his part. He really does live like everyone he can't see gives him the stinkeye unless they beat him in the head with a hammer the notion that they're alright. As an aside, I regularly feel like a hungry man being slipped a juicy, paranoid steak despite being more or less disembodied. It's great.}
• _{2. I know it's generally accepted between us to not be my place beyond serving as eyes in the back of the head during a brawl, but I enjoy having opinions on everything under the sun. If he really wanted to cart out this metaphoric comparison, he'd be served well to be smart about taking it further than just shapes. If he was as relaxed behind a sword as he was behind a piece of parchment, he'd be a lot more like what he's wanted this whole time— I guess that's why they say the pen is mightier.}
• _{3. Yes.}

Falling Skies

LTJG ROY KILMER, CALLSIGN "COMMIE"

---

<<Yyyyou got it, Boss.>> the planet's most serene flyboy to ever drop hot drawled, kicking off his plate like a pair of worn-out sneakers as the raven-black MAS folded its silhouette into something far closer to a traditional aircraft, afterburners flaring as he took an immediate, sharp bank off to form up with Sab. <<Commie, dropping plate and forming element. Rabbit, I'm your playdate for the evening— you keep the Garmrs off our guys, I'll keep 'em off you.>>

In contrast to the undeniably hectic comm chatter surrounding the 7th, once they had genuinely hit atmo Commie had leaned back in his seat, shut his mouth, and settle in for the long ride down. He had trouble explaining it, whenever he was asked why he settled into that lax silence, because it wasn't like hearing the metal creaking or feeling the insistent, sporadic shove of high-altitude jet streams slamming into your airframe for a moment before you burned past them was all that therapeutic— he shared their CO's opinion on them at least that much. But maybe within those moments, where all you could really do was fall, he found his skill and obsession falling with it— a freedom that came with it all being out of his hands, for once. Let go. Sit back. Breathe, and appreciate the hues of flame. Whatever happens, happens.

But that was then. This was now, and well past kickoff. Back to work.

<<Tally ho on a flight of two Garmrs, five o'clock low from your position. Break right, I'll peel them off.>> he spoke again, his prized swaggering sangfroid once again on his tongue, throwing his bird into a tight corkscrew downward to engage the pair of would-be sneaksters. Riding the Gs like he'd slipped on an old glove, it was child's play to line up the shots with how the trajectories played out— by the time their Sledgehammers had caught up to where the Sparrowhawk had been before he'd spoken up, Roy was depressing the trigger.

The autocannon roared to life, directly below him now after the variable geometry had given him a plane for the price of a mech, and a tight salvo of 50mm rounds rained upon them, tearing into their control surfaces. The immediate smoke trail was a good sign that they wouldn't have a real chance of catching someone of the rich girl's caliber any time soon, nor indeed his own.

First, they'd have to survive the hail of crossfire between the ongoing UEE drop and the Coalition's own defenses.

<<Carlos, what the fuck is that thing that just hit us? My camera's out, I'm gonna have to RTB!>>
<<Some kind of prototype! Like those fucked up Sentries it was dropping with— Oh no mames, speaking of fucking Sentries——>>

Two fireballs bloomed from below, close to the city's ground level, adding small claps to the symphony of percussion and brass on high. The Shrike continued to loiter somewhere that kept it poised to intercept anything that wanted a piece of the Sparrowhawk, heedless of their fate. Eyes on the prize, and all that.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

"Horse," Gerard's monosyllabic reply came swift as ever, undercut with the sharp ring of drawn steel as he stalked forward, sword catching the light of the high moon. He could tell who Renar's little reminder was aimed at by now— it was likely enough that this had already simply become a pre-battle ritual between them. Luckily, he had come to a similar enough conclusion— and was confident that surviving Cyrus in any respectable capacity would mean surviving the Hunt wouldn't be so impossible as it once seemed to him. Behind the shadows of his visor, his eyes narrowed even as he took in the field before him, leading up to the veiled woman atop her gaunt steed.

A clearing like this was... well, horrid, putting it bluntly. So easy to get encircled here, but the nature of this little quest had more or less put better options out of the cards, as he'd been grumbling about earlier. Only thing to do with it was do as he always did— see the good in things. At least here they could track their foes clearly, after all. The thicket would have been nightmarish, for all it cut down on lines of attack, by making that much damned impossible.

What was more, the current locale offered them ample opportunity to maneuver through the massed hordes of the lower-ranks, and find gaps to close in on and lock down the obvious big shots that had appeared from the throng— in the depths of the forest, those paths might have been filled by branch or bush or entire hardwood. "Good hunting, boys."

So, those elites... Many of them had readily available indications of what sort of nasty tricks they had to pull that had earned them the elevated stature. A Man of Many Traps, Feathered and Furred Beasts on retainer... But his was a different story. Her veil and dress were pure porcelain, as though spun from threads of the same moonlight that cast them, and the many leering fae folk between, in washed-out tones of grey and blue. The horse she rode upon was gaunt, in his estimation too gaunt by half... Maybe some tie to famine? Hunger? She was a Pale Rider, after all...

"Reon guide me. May her light show me truth." he intoned below the beginning clamor, raising the flat of his sword to meet with his brow in one part prayer, one part present arms. All he had were guesses, meaning she was an unknown element on the field. None of these folk could wisely be left free to their own devices, obviously— so without any other recourse, the Knights would have to force her to show her hand while trying to keep her from interfering in Tyaethe's grudge match.

Of the lot of them, he had the fewest natural advantages to bring to bear against the other elites on the board— Fionn and Fleuri both had weaponry and skillsets better suited for area denial against the bestial hangers-on presented by the man with the bird and the man with the dogs. By process of elimination, that left him to deal with Miss Pale Unknown.

A very lucky thing that he had gotten quite, quite adept at keeping himself alive in the process of Finding Things Out in battle. A pair of the unarmored, grey-skinned men launched forward to cut off his advance— one was felled swiftly by a bolt from Rolan's crossbow raining down from high above, the other cut down mid-lunge by a quick line drawn from shoulder to hip. With a wrench of his wrist, a dark crescent of blood splattered onto the earth as it cast off the steel.

"Shall we dance, madam?" he called across the field, pointing the tip of his now-clean sword at her seemingly-delicate form. He spoke as though neck-deep in a bit he was running, but one could doubtless rest assured that he didn't take her quite so lightly as to assume her appearance told all."We've all night to get to know eachother."

Times like these, it was only the mission that kept him from asking himself what the hell he was doing.

First things first, he needed to know if these foes communicated— and if he was getting himself into a fight where her voice might carry arcane weight that demanded he silence it.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

"So be it."

Sure enough, there it was. He'd had his immediate suspicions anyway, even knowing how young this Chisato looked from the jump— after all, invasions tended to file off the edges of what 'too young to fight' really meant for the nation on the defensive. He was content to leave his thoughts on the matter there, and not dwell on why else he didn't believe himself terribly surprised his first guess was right.¹

He closed his eyes and furrowed his brow, killing the urge to shoot the ninja a return salvo of dagger-eyed glaring as it came. No different from double checking how close his hand had drifted to his knife in the chapel with Cid when Izayoi had first set him down this train of thought his mind was trying to derail into— but he'd taken his moment to be so temperamental and burned it already while on the beach. The Kirins didn't need two, potentially three people trying to ignore the bigger picture in favor of indulging grudges. It was founded on partial information, and atop that five years in the books. He was better than that.

The sound of shifting parchment saw him pin his coppery gaze instead on the map before them all, poring over the layout of the city, retracing steps once Izayoi had denoted their lodestone of the council chambers. He folded his arms. The same objective and obstacles as their initial approach to Kugane before they'd made contact with Chisaki, but structurally it was a whole new game. They traded high city walls for tall, flowerlike mangroves, sitting high above a spirited river instead of nestled between dunes of dead sand. The only commonality, aside from the need to hide their faces from probable sentry nets, was that it was damned warm around both capitals.²

The immediate instinct was to insert from below, taking advantage of the waterways to meander upstream until the were beneath the city itself, shaded by the petals of those impossibly sturdy flowers from any perimeter watch... but boat traffic was going to be spotted and likely vetted from a ways off, and a group their size would be hard to slip below that initial notice unless they split into smaller cells that could maybe pass as fishermen. And provided that worked, there was still the ascent to contend with— he could see maybe an easy river or riverside approach, but scaling the stems thereafter would doubtless draw somebody's attention. The guard forces would be hopefully on alert regarding the threat Valheim posed to begin with, but they'd definitely be on the lookout for their lot. He had his doubts, without a better scouting report available. In hindsight, he should have paid more attention on their way in when they had a referral on hand.

"Regrettably, no. We actually got quite lost." the swordsman leaned forward, the wry edge to his voice not even remotely reaching his expression. Reaching out, he began at the council chambers before sweeping his arm across the parchment, more or less drawing a meandering path that winded through the many disregulated and seemingly organic corridors, alleyways, nooks and crannies. More than once, it doubled back on itself, or sharply deviated from a general trend— the leaf-wrought buildings had really done a number on them, in retrospect. Once he had the trail locked in, though, he began tapping intermittently along it. "That said, from what I remember: here, here, here, and ...here, though this one's a tight fit for the eight of us— All good and dark nooks and crannies that we could use once we're inside as stakeout, staging, or meeting points. They're quieter than the surrounding foot traffic, well-obscured, and a couple of them aren't too far if you actually know where in the maze you're going. Worst we'll have to deal with are maybe pickpockets and common muggers, but they're a good sign. They wanna evade the law same as we do, after all."

Pulling away, he reached into his nearby pack for a moment, both to store his blade oils and to procure his stick of charcoal and an unmarked section of parchment. "Getting there's the hard part. I've only come up with the obvious idea so far, that being... one sec. I more or less remember the base."

He pressed the page into the earth, and his right arm began to glide across it, confident strokes in its wake. After a minute or so, a rough markup of the profile view of the city's support structures had come together, an arrow sweeping up from the river and along the stalk. With this copy, they could scribble whatever the hell ideas came to them during the meeting without obscuring the actual proper map of the city.

"Approaching on the river until we're beneath is where my first thought went, but I have trouble believing we get up and into the city without somebody noticing. And that's provided they don't have the river under heavy watch to vet unfamiliar vessels. Hearing Goug tell of how busy Isolde's been, it wouldn't shock me if waterside checkpoints are being set up."

---

---

• _{1. You know, now that I think about it, it's all but outright the proverb of casting stones in a glass house. I won't press the issue, since he's more pliable like this, but he was upset that he didn't get to go have "wartime experience" as a wee lad. Not exactly leaving much ground to stand on. You chose wisely, kid.}
• _{2. And the bunny ninja! You just brought the first one up, don't forget that you've had a bunny ninja tag along for both. I'm looking forward to the hat trick in Skael, when the average height and average bust brunette viera named Chisame smuggles everybody into Solitude. Maybe she'll be a SEED.}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

"... No complaints from me so far." a flinty grunt floated in from across the clearing of the two Ospreyan nationals, as the smaller of the two men that had caught a sharp edge to the diminutive hare's gaze bit into a chunk of dried, spiced meat— the first batch of bear jerky they had wrought from making use of the tribe's smokehouse. His hands busied themselves in anointing the blades on his person with oil, having just sharpened three in turn as Izayoi was hers.

He stayed quiet while his jaw worked, letting Esben handle vetting the newcomer for now— all the message Rudolf needed on that front was the care in which the SEED had chosen his words with her in earshot. They couldn't necessarily bargain on what they'd given away already before they knew she was there, so he wouldn't volunteer any specifics right out the gate. Even if she seemed authentic enough at first blush, it didn't hurt to exercise caution with where they were now— hell, doubly so, given the last time their ragged group had gained a new hanger-on. Let the specialist in clandestine affairs take the lead— if any of them would be able to spot a thread while talking, it'd be him.

And she did seem authentic, at the very least, to where she should have hailed from. On an even more basic level than accentation, garb, or the seals emblazoned onto her red and black robes¹, Rudolf's redoubled efforts to be vigilant had caught the difference in how she beheld he and Galahad from the rest of their number. Disgust on its own was simple enough to fake once you understood how to wear a mask, that much he was well aware of— but few could manage the nuance of barely missing the mark in hiding it away as a deliberate affectation. Forged tells couldn't be too subtle, for fear of going unnoticed. And you didn't hide our feints. You showed them, in service of building up and breaking down expectations.

This had that uncomfortable pang of familiarity from a place far drier than here— from a person he'd been too fearful to draw the ire of, the same regard that he'd once held Izayoi in. At the very least, he bought the Viera as hailing from Osprey, just as her taller, blonder, and almost-identically named counterpart had when she affixed Robin with a rancor-filled glare, seemingly a lifetime ago. It was a good thing she wasn't here to try and greet this one.

A silver lining to that, at least. For all it seemed he had always been dumping a bucket of icy reality onto her bright-eyed idealism, there was a part of him that took no joy in watching history catch up to her the way it seemed it was everyone else, this one through no fault of her own. Her will to fight wavered with its sudden arrival... and then she was off. A hollow victory, for all the times he argued things were greyer than she saw them.

Asakura. He wracked his brain, searching back through what he had learned after the war's end for the name. He found little, beyond the overview of ninja and how they worked that had survived first contact between their two nations— rogues by any other name, assassin, informant, and scout all in one. In the opening weeks of his training under Cadmon, they had gotten the threat they posed him in particular out of the way—

"Izayoi," he began after finally downing the jerky, his narrowed eyes not leaving the bowing girl and his hands still tending to his blades. His tone was controlled, neutral, inquisitive at an arm's length. "You recognize this one, by chance?"

As Rudolf Shilage, that had evidently been quite timely of his instructors, for he was far more of an exploitable asset than any of them had likely bargained for. Perhaps this little hare would have some personal skin in the game on that front, if her story checked out. His father had rampaged through their countryside, after all, in an attempt to get at the very same woman he was intending to pry a little enlightenment from.

As with the departed Songbird, if such were true. As with her, and him, and Izayoi, and Galahad— even Miina, now that they were here: A man could run away from anything, but nobody can run from their past. He suspected his cast-off heritage would be revealed to her before the moon had even risen, at this point.

They'd see how much the professional, curt tone was genuine— at least compared to someone else they all seemed to know. He'd made a habit of sleeping with his knife in reach for too long to stop now anyway.

---

---

• _{1. I've always loved the red and black color combination. It's brooding, and violent, and speaks of the primordial flame that burst forth from the darkness that was once all. It might be why I like this idiot, too. Our aesthetic sensibilities pair wonderfully. Anyway, it should be noted that whatever that symbol is about an inch and a half above the haramaki is some sand rune I never took the time to properly learn, given that I'm fairly sure neither Osprey nor Viera had really developed writing in my day. At the very least, they never wrote to me— so I'll warn you right now that I'm not here to provide translation notes if it's not a kanji our daring hero here already knows.}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore and Esben Mathiassen

---

True to Rudolf’s predictions, the short dunk in the placid sea nearby the cove and bout of furious scrubbing hadn’t quite rid his pale hair of all the hemoglobin tinge— but it felt miles better all the same. Clean enough to get back to work, at the very least.

With two days’ travel at minimum ahead, and everyone off in their own worlds or otherwise indisposed with tasks of their own, Rudolf had ended up enlisting the help of the most proven commodity of their number he knew of, behind the inspired recruitment drive that only came from familiarity.

“Hey, you’ve got a steady hand and you’re good with a knife. Bears aren’t built too different from people, gimme a hand and we might get this guy broken down in time for setting off.”

While taking a dangerous beast like this down on his own was more than proof that he was stronger than the average joe, even the steel-bodied auxiliary definitely needed an extra pair of hands to divide labor on something this big and tough— as well, Esben’s eyes were just as keen as his dexterity. If there was anyone Rudolf trusted to double-check his work before he went and did something stupid like cut too deep and slit the belly prematurely, it was either him or Izayoi.

“So that was a real shitshow, wasn’t it?” He idly muttered, some time in the midst of them carefully working the pelt off with gentle, considered draws of their blades. “Whole country’s just been going from bad to worse for us.”

And between the two, if they had a few hours to burn the former was much easier to shoot the breeze with, to use an understatement. While he couldn’t deny that his opinion of the Mystrel woman had been shifted drastically for the better over the course of this journey, the place they had left off was…

Ground not worth treading. Not right now, but maybe at some point later. He doubted he’d properly processed either of the main admissions she had offered in Costa del Sol, let alone reconciled them with how he now judged her.

A sigh. Not a big one, heaving the lungs out with the shoulders, but that slow release of breath through the nose in between spouts of work.

“…You see it coming? You didn’t sound too surprised by her.”

He had his doubts on that subject too— judgement.

Esben’s knife passed smoothly beneath the bear’s skin, severing connective tissue and freeing it for Rudolf to pull it just that little bit further towards complete freedom. ”I expected something of the sort,” he replied, going in with his blade again. ”Whether from one or all of them. But Isolde, specifically? I can’t say that.”

He’d chosen his position in skinning the bear carefully. While he and Rudolf were both working with their knives to free the pelt, Rudolf was the one in a position to actually put the effort in to pulling it back, keeping it taut and out of the way. Of course, the younger man had still chosen his partner well—Esben’s skill with his blades extended towards both keeping them sharp and pristine, and in using them for mundane tasks like this, so Rudolf wasn’t having to fight it nearly as much as he may have otherwise.

”It makes sense, though. Think about her reaction when Izayoi dropped Cid’s name in front of them. Zacharias’s reaction would be hard to fake so believably, and he didn’t strike me as such a good actor. Alambert made a point not to react at all. Unless all three are all compromised in entirely different fashions, Isolde was the only one with a response that suggested she saw something to gain out of it. I’m doubly unsurprised that came at our expense.”

A pensive pause, the two quietly continuing their work while the smaller man digested Esben’s words behind the ghost of a grimace. They were making good time thus far, but had yet to get towards the real nitty-gritty— knuckles, paws, anywhere where they had oblong bone and dense tendon to contend with and work around. Those were where they’d run into the most sunk cost of time and knife sharpness— so best to keep a steady pace through the easier tasks.

“I see.” he finally grunted, adjusting his grip as they worked their way towards the arms. “On the other hand, I was completely blindsided. I even brought him up in passing when I entreated her guidance for breaking the seal on that sword of mine,” a nudge of the head in the direction of where the offending article of defanged steel lay. “But I paid little heed to the way it seemed to give her pause then, too. That’d make twice.”

The words left his mouth almost colorlessly. He accepted these things as being on him, as much as they were anyone.

“Careless of me. I let myself get disarmed too easily, I’ll have to be better about that. It feels… telling that, for all the mess it was back there, I was the only one who thought there’d be reason in her to appeal to.”

An unkind memory appeared before his eyes, prompting a furrowed brow.

“I should know better, with her type.”

Esben stopped, looking up at Rudolf with a raised eyebrow.

”Did she give you any concrete reason not to trust her?”

He didn’t meet the look, replying after a moment’s consideration.

“Well, no. Not without the benefit of hindsight. If anything, her reaffirmations of faith that I’ve worked to pull myself out of the holes I’ve dug, would keep the greater good of those I’m responsible for in mind—”

Here his knife drew a lazy circle through the air, rolling the concept along.

“— left me more inclined to trust what she said, at least that night.”

”Hindsight can be a dangerous thing.” He’d been nodding along as Rudolf answered, but after the momentary break he got back to skinning the bear that lay between them. ”It’s easy to lend it too much weight. If we fall into that, at best we can delude ourselves that we won’t let whatever happened come to pass again...something we can’t guarantee.”

The worst case, of course, he doubted he even needed to say. The Edreni swordsman wasn’t a helpless idiot, after all; he’d likely already come to any number of reasonable conclusions as to the dangers of letting himself get consumed in analyzing the mistakes of the past. Indeed, if there was much that he could stand to learn from hindsight, Esben figured the white-haired swordsman would be better served learning how not to focus on it too much.

He peeled back the skin further, holding it up for Rudolf to take in hand. ”Hers is a position that is supposed to inspire trust, even beyond her role as a Grovemaster. That she would prey upon that isn’t your failing, and it isn’t a failing to have hope that she might change her course even to the last. Or do you think my arguments were only for the benefit of those behind her?”

Rudolf took hold of the flap of integument, shrugging his shoulders.

“I think what sets you apart from the rest of us is a clear eye on what’s in front of you, and knowing when best to cut your losses. A white mage like her with a full head of steam isn’t easily dissuaded from going after the profane— by neither the threat of violence nor pleas for calm.”

He made a face that clearly came from realizing that sounded bitter. Esben, as was his wont, was largely correct regarding the younger man’s tumultuous relationship with the rear-view mirror, and long battles against letting it consume him. He had lost many, and in this most recent ideation of exercising his frontal lobe, was trying to redouble his efforts in winning them.

It was going to be a lifelong process. That much was clear.

“So to answer, yes, I really kind of did. I was even wanting to start picking your brain regarding not being lead around by the nose by impressions and emotions in those moments, since so many of us seem to already. Compartmentalization, if I remember right?”

”It sounds insollan put that way,” Esben quipped after a moment. ”Maybe it just is.”

A distant, thoughtful look. Rudolf didn’t seem terribly unfamiliar with that idea. “I wouldn’t doubt it. One of the things my father always told me was that a good soldier has to kill some of his sollanity to function in war. That it was why he took to it so easily.”

The knife stopped halfway along a pass, Esben falling almost completely still, but for the slight movement of his chest as he breathed. ”Ja?” he replied, quietly. He hadn’t expected Rudolf to interrupt him so rapidly, he’d been about to follow up with the rest of his thought, but now—

He looked up, icy blue eyes locking onto copper. Entirely expressionless, he studied Rudolf for a moment, before shaking his head.

”And would your mother deign to dally with something so profane, then, if that were so true?”

Rudolf tried not to flinch at that. He really, truly tried.

“I see you’re putting some things together. I was about to call you on it, after you told me what you knew on the docks.”

”Indeed, and I also know that your father was the chief influence on Earl Demet after the death of his parents, and he was rather young when that happened—István, too, for that matter. Was it an accident how the earl turned out, I wonder? Or an accident that you were supposed to learn from the man?”

Esben pulled the knife along the last of the pass, continuing to free the pelt. Damnably large animal. ”I don’t necessarily mean to say your father is a shining paragon, and I don’t doubt that on some level he believes what you just said—but when we’re stuck in this business of killing, we shouldn’t be looking at other opportunities to kill off parts of ourselves. If our success hinges on the ability of anybody in the group to do so, then leave that to me, and focus in on the core of what you were taught before all this.”

He looked back down at the corpse, adjusting his seating as he began to strip the flesh from one of the beast’s legs. ”I wasn’t in the best mood myself, leading up to that meeting with the Grovemasters. So I stayed quiet when I already knew I should have been one of the ones to lead that discussion. What can we do with any of that in the past, but take the lesson at face value and keep moving forward?”

“We’ve bled a lot of people in the past week.” Rudolf replied, electing to address the prior point first. His gaze drifted to regard a passing songbird, pensive frown on her brow as her blade seemed to fight her steadying hand. “If we’re invoking what I was taught, there’s value in redundancy and contingency. With the state our lot is in, the party is practically at half-strength already— I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at that, and believe it’s time to make sure we cover as many bases as we can. I don’t mean to kill my emotions off completely, but…”

He returned his eye to the work, taking a breath and carefully applying tension to the leathery, claw-lined pad of the bear’s foot, giving the Skaeller ample space to sever the cartilage and sturdy tendon that jointed it to the leg they had stripped down.

“At the same time, I think it’s reasonable to expect I can try harder to keep on top of them, if only to help counteract the thunderhead and powder keg in those situations. It was no accident that the Earl’s fury still never did see him burn half the border down, he can still plot a sensible course through it. If anything, a moody kid like me should have learned that more than anything from him.”

He wasn’t quite sure how shocked the SEED expected him to be regarding the throwaway connections he had made to begin framing his broader point. It being folly to assume incompetence, and doubly so with someone he both knew this well and was aware knew so much already, he expected it likely wasn’t all that much.

“...Anyway, the advice I received from him to ask you for help in keeping a low profile was in retrospect obviously pretty doomed, but the spirit of ‘Enlist Help To Cultivate Weaker Skills’— learning opportunities, to your point— still holds as well as any.”

”I’ve never really gotten the feeling that you’re so distracted with whatever your emotional responses are that you lose track of what’s important in front of you,” Esben countered. ”Out in the desert, even, I think it was that same knee-jerk response that saved us, given that you saved Izayoi. Maybe you just need to trust your instincts more, rather than thinking so hard through everything?”

The knife paused, and faintly rosy brows furrowed. The narrower lines of the young man’s face betrayed how the last line seemed a spike through his train of thought, even as a wry quip floated out his mouth. A flippant defense, but one no less ineffectual for it. He probably knew as much, the way he seemed more comfortable staring into the bloody steel beneath him than the clear blue ice on high.

“Ha! There’s a shock. The spy’s telling me I should let my guard down more.”

That much would have been enough to ward off a few people they both knew, either in turning the face of what they said back onto them quickly and confidently, or in simply frustrating them off in a huff by refusing to engage on their terms. Either way, a conversation could be killed if he kept at it.

But reality and experience were both quick to reassert themselves when this pair got into the weeds. Rudolf knew that sharp tongues were no different from the knives they held— waving them about randomly, with no follow through, only scared off people that didn’t know what they were doing.

See? There was a failure of instinct playing out right in front of you, Master Cadon. A brittle reaction that you can just stare down with a flat affect and beat.

“Respectfully, I think your confidence is misplaced. Those same instincts told me to let go when Siren had me. They told me to run to the deepest point of the ruins of a kingdom at least a thousand years under the ground and start taking whatever deals the new voice in my head offered. You had Eos follow me when I was tracking this thing down, because you know my instincts get me into just as much trouble as they get other people out of. Because I get scared, confused, and start trying to run— or worse, I just become a passenger on the road to self-destruction.”

A wet pop sounded from below, as the thick joint was finally wrenched apart. There was, of course, an elephant in the room— the logical part of him he was so covetously trying to safeguard, asking why? from his very own back line.

“Lucking into the right move one time doesn’t change that. It’s not reliable— luck never is. Definitely not for me, after I went and trashed whatever ties I had to Etro and Ithar. I need the structure. I need to be sure.”

”It’s not luck,” came the flat reply. ”Nor was it the only time. Your struggle isn’t one with your instincts, it’s one with keeping your focus when it isn’t down to the wire and with trusting yourself after everything is done. This conversation seems an obvious enough example of that.”

With the foot severed, it was simple going to strip the rest of the leg free, just to move on to the next leg for the same process. Between the two of them and their familiarity with their blades, it was a very good thing that it wasn’t a complicated or difficult task—losing a finger because they were busy chatting didn’t seem like something Eos or Miina could easily fix. Nor, whichever of them it happened to, did it seem like something Rudolf would be likely to forgive himself for letting happen when the conversation was his idea.

”Whenever we’re not in the middle of something, you’re focused on everything else around you. Siren’s ability to manipulate minds was enough to pull Eve out of the fight, even. I sent Eos with you because I was worried you’d convinced yourself that you deserved sequestration away from us, and didn’t want to risk something happening because of what you think you should get. And I’m sure Earl Demet would have some words for you regarding that choice to run off in the face of everything he was trying to cultivate in you, and I sincerely doubt it would be blaming your instincts rather than your thought process.”

“So— I should exercise greater focus on what I can control. That being getting the reins in on how I actively synthesize my conscious reactions when I’m faced with a revelation I don’t like.”

He didn’t care how informed the man across from him was. Unless he had met the Earl personally, he couldn’t have any cause to be that sure of what Rudolf’s mentor would have to say about the psychological trainwreck he’d spent eighteen months trying to foster into a respectable second son. Esben probably did at least believe it, knowing him and his hatred of lying.

But that being the case, the swordsman instead chose to pick at what they were arguing instead of letting that detail bog him down. It was good bookkeeping on more than one level to note that the part of him on the inside that always kept score logged the pivot as an implicit concession— he could muster no satisfactory counterpoint, beyond simply reiterating his beliefs on where the problem truly lied. He knew what he had felt of himself.

In the face of stalemate and deadlock, of course, real or perceived, the best course of action was to reorganize the field. Find a different angle that could take you forward. Mechanically, this suddenly sounded pretty similar to his original thesis, if you boiled it down past this contextual disagreement. “Planning better and more actively is probably good” was an easy truism to return to, regardless of where they respectively attributed the hangups. Downwind of “getting the head on straight” all the same.

“What was the saying from the Garden, then? ‘Trust but verify’? I’ve run into a couple regular SEEDs sellswording before you, I think that was how it went.”

He could offer a draw.

Esben let the silence drag on between them as he continued working at the next leg. He did, of course, have a chance to let the topic end and move on to another; Rudolf had started getting at the point he was making, after all. Not entirely, but it was close. All the same, he didn’t entirely want to let up when so near the finish.

Perhaps it was some pent-up frustration boiling over making him not feel as charitable as he normally might. Perhaps he was just greedy, and would sooner try for a mate than take the guaranteed not-losing. Either way, he didn’t let up like Rudolf possibly hoped—merely changed tactics.

”You’ve also talked with others about some of this, ja? Izayoi? Galahad?”

“Some of it, yes.” the younger man replied readily, seemingly unperturbed by the pivot— new angles of attack, after all. His knife seemed to glide along with the reply, heedless of the muscle it pared off as he seemed the greed. “You’re not the only person to field concerns and questions regarding how we’re to move forward in this place.”

With the methodology already having passed its trial run a leg ago, in short order they had mirrored their stripping of meat from bone, and pried the pelt away. Somewhat terrifyingly, this was the cleaner work of the carcass— the torso was going to be much, much more involved, even though it was where the traditional idea of the best cuts sat. Rump, back flap, all that— it would be a lot of Rudolf maneuvering and maintaining position of the carcass so Esben, the defter hand, could focus solely on the knife work. Downside of working on a sandbar— at least in Sagramore, there was no shortage of stone you could work into an ad-hoc butchery table.

“It was really enlightening.” He quipped out the side of his mouth. “From the former, I confirmed that one more drop of sin in the bucket was a small price to pay for getting the mission done, even if that drop was reliving the time she almost kidnapped me or another of my family. From the latter… well, I found myself playing devil’s advocate for why the Grovemasters might have sent us off on the trial in the first place. The ceremonial adherence and withholding of Neve seemed to grate, to the tune of active obstruction. From there it was into making good on my promise to report in when I thought my ill-gotten gains might become an active problem.”

Esben winced at the off-hand mention of Neve and Galahad’s reaction to her sudden re-departure. Indeed, he’d been suspecting that her loss was part of their ostensible leader’s downward-trending mood, after what he’d seen of them aboard the ship. That was just another source for the things that were troubling him as of late. ”So, in another sense,” he started slowly, electing not to comment on those troubles, ”Stay focused on what’s in front of you, not on castigating yourself for any past transgressions, perceived or true?”

It was a pretty sudden extrapolation from the little portion that Rudolf had said, but imagining the pair of them in private conversation...it made enough sense to Esben’s mind that it could well have boiled down to that. ”Otherwise, he trusts you. We all do, and when the chips are down you’re often one of the soonest of us to act. Who was it that kept Ciradyl from outright murdering Mizutani Tane? Who was it that I chose to join me infiltrating Hien’s prison?” He lifted his knife from the bear’s corpse, one finger lifting from the grip to point at his target.

”That ‘trust but verify’ applies to yourself, here, not just to everything else. Take some heart in the things you do right, rather than just focusing in on the things you do wrong out of some misguided attempt to be perfect. And it applies to how you look at all of us, too, though I’ll be charitable and assume this is you verifying that our trust in you isn’t blind. At the very least...”

The knife shifted in his grip, now becoming the implement with which he pointed at Rudolf. ”Remember that there are multiple of us who would not hesitate to inform you if we felt you weren’t pulling your weight, or were becoming an absolute detriment. Neither of which has been the case, nor is it the case now with this latest betrayal. We were all taken by it, and the only benefit some of us had was that we were either angry enough with the Grovemasters to want them to give us more reason to be, or were expecting any one of them to be the sort that Isolde proved herself to be...but none of us suspected her specifically.”

At some point, what felt like a fair while back now, this had stopped being quite about Isolde. Rudolf realized that promptly, finding himself all but handing the material over with a deep breath through the nose. Instead, his new line of defense was simple to the point of seeming childish—

“Yes, that’s… what I meant. Trust but verify. Me.” he replied, his knife coming to a standstill.

—But earnest in that simplicity. What the hell? That was what he’d been getting at the whole time. Trust his gut instinct more? Fine, but make damn sure he could follow it through without it blowing up in his face.

“Look, I’m well aware that perfection isn’t attainable.” he began to hedge, sensing the loss in tempo a moment too late. “But refinement certainly is, even if I need to focus on what’s in front of me primarily. Because that’s still the situation we’re in right now, and it’s gonna take a lot of legwork to pull ourselves out of the hole. Whole country’s against us. We should all be trying to play our cards as wisely as we can, especially since we’ve got more than one ‘murder Mizutani’ impulse to be worried about.”

He glanced to a shock of pink further down the sandbar, hard at work trying to cobble together her greatest joy in life.

“So she finally got those all dug up. That must’ve made for a fun date.”

Esben sat in silence as Rudolf worked his way through trying to fully articulate his thought process, laying off the attack for the moment. It almost seemed like he wouldn’t need to point out just why he felt the need to turn Rudolf’s words back on him, when instead—

”Hva?”

Rudolf said something so disconnected from the conversation that it was like he’d started stacking dominos between his pieces and Esben’s on the chess board. Esben’s forehead furrowed in a frown that didn’t quite reach his lips. ”Sær.”

A beat.

Of the two of those, Rudolf had definitely figured out “Hva” by now, and thus chose to work with what was familiar.

“A long walk on the beach is a nice followup to the day out in Costa del Sol. I’d thought that one was just for the audience’s sake, but there’s no guards here to sell it to.”

A smirk crossed his lips, even as he set his blade down and began to lift the bear’s hulking frame. It had been an idle thought given voice much sooner than an actual planned path of escape, but…

“What were you guys getting up to, anyway? I was kinda surprised the arlettes actually happened.”

Esben stared for a moment. His head cocked slightly.

”What are you insinuating?”

The head tilt was more or less mirrored now, owing to the power of suggestion. You didn’t need to be from Skael to feel the fundamental human impulse to mimic an odd movement, but maybe you did to understand the full breadth of how they operated after all.

“Oh, was that actually just for the bit?”

Painful as his Mom was to think about, she did always say it was a lot easier to take the blood out of Midgar than Midgar out of the blood.

Esben’s furrowed brow remained for a moment longer before finally relaxing. ”You really do get some strange ideas,” he mused after another moment of silence, turning to look down the beach at the woman Rudolf had just been asking him about. ”I really have no clue what she and I were talking about before you showed up. She said it wasn’t anything important, at least. I don’t think she would lie to me about that.”

Well, not intentionally. Rudolf quietly chose not to say. Though he’d hardly spoken more than twice with her, it was clear that pair had very disconnected ideas of what was “important”, even if he’d evidently misread one angle of it.

Esben cocked his head again.

”The arlettes were Elly making good on something she promised me on the ship. I wonder if she knows a good recipe for krumkaker...”

“You really just zoned out the whole day?” Rudolf asked, somewhat shocked that there wasn’t even a cursory idea beyond ‘nothing important, I’m told’. “What, like a sleep thing, or…”

Hey, maybe you were on the right track after all.

His eyes narrowed as he casually redirected his gaze back towards the carcass. So that had prompted this guy to wake back up. Odd. He kind of believed in it less, now that he heard the actual worst influence he’d been gullible enough to believe choosing to back it.

Wouldn’t you zone out completely walking along a nice painting-like beach with the girl you liked?

I genuinely have no idea.

Rudolf had no idea how he got the impression that a disembodied voice in his head was smiling cryptically after that dry rebuttal. Maybe he was the one that needed better sleep. Would be a good start on the case he’d just argued for, certainly…

Esben rocked his head back and forth, thinking for a moment, before he shrugged. ”I haven’t been sleeping well,” he admitted. ”For the same reason that you may be sleeping better, I imagine.”

“Not really. Dreams have been getting real weird. Existential. Confrontational.”

”Mmm. That’s a shame.”

He turned back, catching Rudolf’s narrowed eyes focused on the bear, and raised an eyebrow in response. ”Is it really so surprising? I’ve got a lot on my mind lately, and she wasn’t really demanding too much of it there.”

Rudolf cocked his head and shrugged the less load-bearing shoulder after a moment’s thought. That wasn’t a terribly hard concept to get his head around when explained that way, in fairness, more just…

“A little unlike you, is all. Until now, it didn’t seem like anything really got past your notice or that you ever weren’t as on top of things as somebody could… well, reasonably be, given the circumstances. That’s part of why I started the whole ‘I should ask for pointers’ talk.”

”I suppose I can just...trust her not to do anything that demands much of my attention? At least at times like this. In front of guards or Grovemasters is a different story, clearly.”

“That makes sense,” Rudolf replied neutrally. “She’s more of a known quantity to you than the rest of us, or something.”

Or something. The voice unheard agreed, mirthful in a horrible way Rudolf had only ever believed his direct family capable of.

“But, yeah, part of me wonders if we shouldn’t keep a hold of some load-bearing mechanism to that thing while we aren’t immediately needing it.” he then agreed, nodding along to the final point with a mostly-quelled huff. “Like a…”

He blinked as he ran into the twin brick walls of technological and educational gaps. For all the good ensconcing himself in a village of very traditional artisans of the blade had been, he was suddenly very aware of how little they cared for what the hell a “gun” even was, even the rudimentary ones that Edren was beginning to adopt— let alone something so advanced as those the still-faraway invaders from Valheim had brought to bear upon the people of Osprey.

“Gear for the winch thing, maybe.” he finished lamely. That, he needed to shore up ASAP. He had the general concept down between news passed along through his mentors and now a good helping of lived experience staring down the business end of them, but if he somehow got to the point where one had become his last option, given his worrying tendency to lose his preferred tools of the trade recently…

He wasn’t all that certain he had much in him beyond “point, pull trigger, and hope it’s loaded”. Good thing they were looking right at somebody who evidently lived, ate, slept, and breathed all the rest.

“Well, clearly I’ll need to ask her for advice on her specialty too.” he muttered, shaking off a dark cloud of embarrassment that wouldn’t do any of them any good, taking his foot out his mouth, and clearing his throat. “That being said, everyone’s always asking me, so it’s my turn for the question— what’s been eating at you?”

”Deciding what to do about the Grovemasters that hopefully won’t push Drana Asnaeu into a period of lawlessness or potential civil war. Or overly strain our own resources preventing either.”

An eyebrow rose.

“And nothing little miss Logistics Are Mythological said to you while you were thinking about that registered as important?”

Silence. Lasting longer than was normally customary for Esben, even when he did decide to let it drag on for effect.

”...I think I would have noticed if she said something that applied.” He paused again, trying to think back to anything she may have said to him while they were walking...finding a completely empty space. ”Was it really so noteworthy that I was walking with her?”

“It’s a bit of a pattern. A lot like us and being wanted fugitives in warm places.” he grunted, clicking his tongue. “I really don’t see any deposition attempt not leading to the exact type of fracas we wanna avoid, as you said— leaving the country with a power vacuum is gonna have about five Valheim airships here by yesterday. As would suddenly electing to start intracontinental infighting. That whole idea’s a mess from every angle I can think of. You weaken their self-defense capabilities, split both nations’ manpower and attention away from the actual problem, any applicable force projection’s gonna have to go through our territory— Whiiiich I understand you already know.”

He stopped abruptly, realizing he was starting to ramble and preach to the choir. He’d had an easy time brushing that off for the moment it had popped up, but it was now clear to him that the idea had crawled under a rock and lived somewhere in the back of his mind for a while now. He held up a hand, coated in a violent red but all the same apologetic.

“My bad. Back on topic. I guess one of the primary concerns would be the apostasy argument getting to Zacharias, given he seems the old conservative fogey? If we assume Isolde to be a lost cause, then… we’d have to at least isolate as much of her pull as possible, right? Keep the possibility of two versus one to our favor, and all.”

Esben nodded. ”Exactly. I may be hopeful that she can see reason, but I really do not think it’s feasible to get Isolde to reverse course, especially after trying to alert half the country to our presence. Alambert is a wild card, keeping things as close to his chest as possible. Zacharias—for all that he was opposed to us from the start—was also the easiest to read, and, perhaps, may be one of the easiest to get to.”

“Makes sense. Better the devil you know.” Rudolf let the Isolde portion of the problem hang. Nothing more to be said on it at this point. “So from there, it’s a question of getting him isolated from the other two, and getting the right words to his ears in the right context. Stack the deck as much as possible against chance.”

The frown folding over his expression grew, as he ran what he’d gleaned from the Team’s brief encounter with the ancient sage. Not a lot to work with, regrettably. For all he knew, they’d held Neve back because she was to be brought up as his successor, or something— he knew that you had to be old as dirt to look so wizened as a regular practitioner of white magic.

The older you got, the more you set in your ways, and the harder your mind was to change once it was made. They were fighting an uphill battle no matter how they played it.

“We’d have to take the messenger into account too. We know his opinion on Izayoi. We can probably guess them about Galahad, given they’re related to the war. Then there’s the question of you yourself— Being from Skael at all probably puts you at a disadvantage in trying to persuade somebody who I’m sure thinks of Materia as an affront to the Mothercrystal. Even before ‘military intervention’ was threatened…”

Rudolf himself was of course right out. He doubted Isolde would be the only Grovemaster to sense that there was something else in the room with him— and whether her faith in his character beyond was sincere or not, first impressions left him doubtful Zacharias would offer the same grace.

“It’s looking pretty messy, isn’t it?”

Esben nodded. ”Challenging, to be sure,” he agreed. That was why he’d been putting so much thought into it, after all. ”But not impossible, I think. There may be ways to make use of what little information and what few advantages we do have. If not...”

He shrugged. ”The mission comes first, as it always does. We may just have to apologize to Neve later.” He worked on in silence for a bit longer, before speaking up as though he’d only just remembered something else important:

”Thinking of, I haven’t had a moment to bring it up to the others, and I doubt Éliane has either, but we need to go to Skael after we’re done here.”

”Meaning we bypass Edren for now? he asked, tone refusing to give anything but careful neutrality away. ”We’d need to get another favor from Bikke, or something. Taking any overland route I can think of would make not verifying the Earth on the way a wasted opportunity.”

Of the two remaining nations, both had more robust self-defense capabilities than these warmer northlands, but so far only one had seen its highest authority directly threatened by infiltrators. If Valheim had managed to push all the way into Balmung, then there was no getting around that Edren was under more threat— at least with what they knew right now. To say nothing of sharing a land border with Occupied Osprey, albeit through a classically defensible mountain pass.

He was curious if he’d hear the reasoning— there had to be something pretty time-sensitive to demand the detour, as far as he could tell.

”Maybe. Depends on if we just followed the coast, and moved down by Lunaris and the Demet marches,” Esben mused after a moment, though taking a ship would be faster by far—even accounting for the possibility of another maritime attack. ”Ideally, Edren’s crystal is somewhat more secure right now, even if Leonhart had to be bypassed for it. We may be able to rely on the land to keep us a bit more hidden if that’s the case. That might give us a better chance to make it to Solitude in one piece.”

Ooh, yeah. Do Lunaris. We’ll all have fun there. I’ll have something neat to show everyone, once I’m back home. After all, you’re taking forever to do it.

He mulled it over after telling the nonverbal peanut gallery off, looking a little apprehensive. “I’m… sure the Earl’s already been working on that front, at least in calling in favors. He’s as up to speed as we were the evening we hit Costa del Sol. If I could manage to get word out ahead, he’ll at least be ready for us once we hit the marches if we do as you suggest. He’ll be a good host, we might be able to use the archives for further research, Wulf’ll be there, we can cross reference plans of action with him, it’d be helpful.”

In his mind, he could trace the winding march south along the sandbar, dozens of coves, inlets and deltas similar to those they had tucked themselves into now along the path. Eventually, it’d give way to rockier bluffs and cliffsides as they hit the true lowlands— a billion nooks and crannies to hide a fighting force of less than ten within. If they could guarantee a good pace, it made a lot of sense.

”It may just be a redundancy by the time we’re at that point, but I think he’d have a few ways of getting us across the border without raising much alarm from potential third parties— but if he is under surveillance, than we can’t expect much movement for him to meet us on the way to Lunaris, and that’d make sense, he’s got a big chunk of Edren to worry about… What’s got us detouring?”

He fell silent, spinning away at it, the question almost an air-filling afterthought. If he didn’t need both hands to keep their carcass properly braced, he’d have been cupping his chin by now.

”I miss the Laruelle bakery,” Esben replied drily.

…

”She’s right there. The arlettes were good.”

…

”Also, orders.”

“Ah. Orders.” Rudolf echoed, in that way you did when you knew damn well that was going to be where that conversation ended. The way SEEDs operated, there was every possibility Esben himself didn’t know beyond ‘we need you to reroute down to Solitude ASAP’— or that he had been instructed to keep it brief. Even if he was the type that lied, it wouldn’t serve him in the long run. If he knew and was at liberty to say, he would. If either of those prerequisites were untrue, this is where they’d end up. “No helping it then, I guess. We’ll need to go there anyway. And I’ve got black pearls to find while I’m down there, presuming Isolde was honest with me regarding breaking curses.”

He thought about it. A diversion at this stage of the game could be a real blunder if it didn’t pay off…

“She did think we’d play ball when she demanded Cid, so I have to assume there was something to that. Fine, Skael it is. But since you bring it up, Castle Demet would be… wise to hit on the way.”

To tell the whole truth, if they did move in that direction, he wasn’t quite sure what would be waiting for him there. A good dressing-down by the Earl for the mess he’d gotten into at the very least, now a wanted man in two countries… to say little of anyone else that might just happen to be visiting. Hell, even Wulfric might just give him a good hiding the way he did to “check up” in Sagramore.

But the other Kirins could probably get something out of it, aside from just a chance to recover from the long sojourn.

”Mmm. I found a grey one once when I pulled open a mussel. But it wasn’t worth anything, I think.” He didn’t really have any comment to add on the matter of visiting the Earl Demet, so he focused in on the pearl situation. ”That may prove difficult. What else did she say you might need? We may take some time to verify it when we get the chance but I can’t imagine any reason she’d have to lie about any of that. It would be pointless.”

He took a moment to himself before speaking. Logically, leveraging the abilities, knowledge bases, and skillsets of everyone he was alongside to get this objective done made sense. Any idiot could see that. None of it had to be accomplished by the swordbearer— otherwise there was an immediate failure baked into needing a mage of exemplary caliber to actually do the cursebreaking.

But he was human. He had been raised a certain way, and valued certain things. He couldn’t help it—

“It’s middle of the pack. Easiest ought to be the diamond dust,” push came to shove, he could haggle a jeweler out of an uncut stone and crush it himself.

”Haggling”.A subcategory of the art of “persuasion”, typically one tier up on the scale from “suggestion” by introducing sharp objects to the talk. A good use case was discussed just a few minutes ago, where the SEED intends to “haggle” with Zacharias until he gives you guys what you want.

“...The bad one is going to be the still-beating heart of a dragon. I’m gonna have a lot of legwork to do, even if I enlist you guys’s help.”

—He did want to get it all done off the back of his own work. Some things were just that way.

”Well. Good thing we have a dragoon.”

A pained expression.

“You’re right, but that spearwork is hard to adjust to. Not to mention, our other lance is now at the bottom of the sea.”

Rudolf very much wanted to worry about sorting the other two components out first. The detour was looking more and more enticing by the minute— the dragons of Midgar were famously tough-hided, to the point that the only blade he wielded that might have gotten through was the very same he needed the heart to truly leverage in the first place. He wanted more time. A lot more. At the very least, enough to figure out how the hell he was to get ahold of a heart that kept going after being carved out of the cage of steel scales— as he understood it, Dragoons typically aimed to sever the spinal cord at the base of the skull.

Most hearts stopped when the brain went dark.

There’s a metaphor in that.

Present company included, he noted, now all but freed of its hide and a good selection of its meat. How long had they been at this?

”Mmm.”

Esben shrugged again, and looked down at the carcass. But for the head, they were essentially done. ”Was there more you needed of me?”

Well, that was a good question. On the face of it, that was just about everything he’d meant to enlist Esben’s help in, for better or for worse manifestations of it. The guy clearly needed a break, too, so if nothing came to him in the next few seconds…

Ask him if he’s fine with you calling her Elly too, see what he feels about it. Maybe he’d learn it makes him protective.

A slow exhalation, followed by a shake of the head. Caught in a salty breeze from the water, the beast-blood anointed locks hung a little more wildly.

“No… No, I should just be finishing up the pelt and figuring out what I wanna do with the offal. Maybe… fishing bait, or something. Like chicken gizzards on catfish lines. I’ll talk with Izayoi and Galahad about it, go get some rest, man.”

”...I don’t know how likely that is. I’ll wash up at least.” With a nod, Esben stood, and left for the water’s edge a second time.

Rudolf watched him go, not sure what help he could really offer beyond praying it settled soon. Surely at least a little time to decompress, stop thinking while they could, and listen to the waves lapping against the shore… ought to do some good.

You’re no fun. You should’ve bugged him. And you’re hardly a good authority on relaxing, either. I’ll show you how it’s done.

After that, silence, like somebody had quietly left a room beneath his notice.

Once again, Rudolf had his thoughts, his knife, and his task, all to himself. He grunted something that wasn’t quite a word in any of the languages he’d learned, and all the same got back to work.