HereComesTheSnow — Roleplayer Guild

Rudolf Sagramore

@The Otter@Psyker Landshark@Raineh Daze

There was no resistance as his blades passed through the space where the Serpent's neck had lain, mere fractions of a second beforehand. No impact to shock his bones, a sensation that all the same seemed to almost shatter him. The silence too was deafening— a void where the sound of, if nothing else, the ring of her sturdy scales rebuking the steel of his twinned swords should have filled his ears. At once, the embattled boy's blood turned to ice, as the tail ends of a sideswiped guffaw rang in his head.

Oh, that is rough. You had better be real careful when you next enter the Gold Saucer, and this is what we get for it.

A choked, gritty snarl escaped Rudi's throat, as the taunting impulse left him a parting gift of 'look up, by the way', prompting him to throw his body to the side as Leviathan's massive head hurtled down to crush him, before her instinctive jerk away from Galahad and his falling lance (by some burnt stroke of luck coming to roost) corrected her course and brought her skull crashing into his torso regardless, knocking him into a far-less controlled tumble. Not far away, he heard the seas roar, as water surged around her.

Without really thinking, he slammed the wings into the earth, trying to arrest his movement once he felt the ground beneath him again. He'd put on as brave a face as any for this Trial, but really... what the hell were they thinking? Any of them, let alone him? This was a primordial Eidolon.

The seas roared, and then crashed. He hardly had time to look up, before his wings were stripped and he once again was tossed away, a rag caught in riptide.

Of course they could hardly scratch her. Of course he would miss— her falsified counterpart, a zombie faye with a coral horns and some parlor tricks tacked on compared to the real thing, had already been enough to nearly wash him away beneath the tides, barely a scratch made in return.

He coughed and hacked as he tried to clear the stinging salt and swelling sea from his lungs, his nose. His hands were free now, he could tell that through the proprioception that didn't need to reorient itself after the second trip through maelstrom in as many weeks. They managed to clear enough of the spray from his brow, and slick away enough hair, to crack one eye open.

His swords, plunged into the earth and bereft their wielder. His teammates, all strewn across the field as he was. Their hope of proving their valor before the storm. Before the storm, he felt a paper tiger.

Leviathan, encasing herself in a roiling orb of brine, as raw aether gathered within each bubble of the foaming waves that surged within. Her coup de grace, surely. He watched Izayoi's wind slash tear into the barrier's outer layer for an instant... but be itself shredded, swallowed, and sealed when it passed. 

He had stashed Valon's lance not far from here.

But what was the point?

Each word of the Lady of Whorls' furor echoed in his mind like a ringing bell, the thunderclap of an oncoming hurricane. Even as his grasp closed around the weighty lance, and his heart hammered as he tried to will himself onward, he saw no way through. If Izayoi, who had once rent open the seas not so long ago, couldn't manage... then surely he would fare no better. Even with all the power he had borrowed, he could barely force his way through a pale imitation of her whorls. Let alone this barrier.

It was beyond him. His measure was not there. He could throw himself against that thing all he liked— for him, for any of them, it was as a steel wall. The side of an ironclad fortress, while Leviathan's mighty cannon was doubtlessly mere moments away from firing, whatever that huge mass of power was going to be. This was their last moment. This, in all the important ways left, was the trial. And it had found them wanting.

Out of time. Out of options. 

... Shots rang out. Voices, screaming over the boiling roar of the tides. They were lost to him. All he could hear was the rushing water. All he could feel was the bitter cold sinking into his bones, the way it had below the waves.

And then, tiny hands brushed his shoulder for a fleeting moment, and the outstretched palm of another desperate ally he couldn't see turned itself over to his direction. Paired blessings, anointing him, of all those present, as the one who would act. And...

Time... shifts.

By its lonesome, being granted haste is an unnatural rush through the nerves. It’s like every weight upon you, right to your own skin, has been lifted and pulled away. Lightning, blessed by Dhinas, courses through you where your blood used to be. Your vision sharpens. Your hearing almost fades.

It’s free access to that oft-mythologized “flow state” every follower of Himstus knows of. It’s more than that, even— already, I watch the grains of sand fall through the hourglass one by one. Already, I can feel the aether surging through me, as I live these seconds more thoroughly than any I have known.

With one haste layered upon them, even an untrained commoner can equal the finest knight in raw velocity, the fleetness of foot and thought. While I’m no warrior savant, I would still like to believe myself well-trained; enough that I have stepped quite broadly into the realm of supernatural. No man may reach that peak for more than a moment through their own training. It doesn’t matter who they are. This is why the spell is so coveted by warriors the world over— imagine dehydrating yourself for three days only to take a liter of coffee right to the dome. It's the difference between standing still and a dead sprint. Between a dull gray and a blinding, blazing red. It’s like life has been breathed into you, when you had forgotten you were one foot in the grave.

That is the first haste.

The second… feels…

—I crouch low. A sprinter’s stance. The grip on my armament is white at the knuckles but my arm is still, calm. Ahead of me, I watch the world that had slowed to a half-crawl seem to stop. Eons later, my mind finds the word, this taking so long a testament to how poorly I learn for all my good teachers’ efforts—

…Multiplicative.

I look to Miina, her arm still outstretched in the instant her spell took hold upon me. I realize that I have spent this same instant coming to terms with my new echelon, and am spending yet more of it looking over my shoulder to Esben. There is still smoke rising from his rifle, and the fairy that brought her wind to me, Selene, is still far closer to me than him. Her wings do not beat. They drift.

I am as removed from the first haste as that state was from my highest natural gear. I wonder for a moment if I might not explode, having this much magical potential running through my veins like white hot magma. My chest is soft, warm down, a chocobo's feathers in the summer. My limbs do not feel themselves move, they are so filled by energy— I simply trust that they have, because I've no other recourse. My heart hammers like the whole of Midgar. I'm not sure I can truly discern one beat from the next.

Worrying? Ought to be. But I have to shelve it. In this altered state, that is oddly easy.

Finally, I return my gaze in that moment to Leviathan ahead. Even in this eternal second, the energy of her channeled aether is powerful enough that even those of us that have not been cursed with naturalborn ability to manipulate the breath of the world can feel it in our bones, in the deep, gnawing dread. That shell around her too, an aquamarine pearl of surging steel, is still no doubt strong as ever. I’ll need to punch above my weight all the same.

Memories flash through me, collected images and words. I am before a fire, hearing Galahad’s advice. Let the weight of the spear’s head carry it through the lead, and follow with my body behind. Gather my energy through the legs and trunk, then leap forward.

I had given the concept a try a few times between then and now. Too committed and too singular for fighting another man, but… I have it down enough to level against a big, stationary, and undeniably protected target as this.

I am at the dunes, after giving all I had to a burst of non-hasted speed, thrusting out the strongest barrier in my arsenal and watching it nevertheless begin to crack as a titan tried to force its way through. Even though it in and of itself was a singular moment I had forged.

So from that my lesson is that there is no necessarily uncrackable wall. No barrier that can’t at least be weakened, if you hit it hard enough behind a sturdy enough weapon. And this thing, pilfered though it is, profaned though it is, was made to pierce through a mighty wyrm’s hide. And I will put behind it a strike at least as hard as that Revenant tried to impale us with.

I am below the waves, lunging for this Eidolon’s false copy, a faye reanimated and trapping me in the leaden notes of her song. It was only a scratch upon her scales, and only piercing a vortex instead of a whole barrier, but my blackened flames do still shepherd my blade home.

How much can I pour into punching through that thing? What do I have left to burn? Enough to reach out and touch this eidolon... a little more thoroughly than a scratch?

A second voice answers me. You’re not particularly giving yourself much time to live out the fortune you’ve already shaved off, it says. It’s rather businesslike about the ordeal through that stilted, staccato cadence it always goads me with, but I can feel an intrigued smile at the corner of the entity’s nonexistent lips. Everyone, eventually, runs out of luck. Period. Not just the good stuff, but the bad stuff too. Still, there’s good news and bad news to this. I can still give you the blaze you want. Enough to fortify this strike further than any other... but you’re going to be hearing a lot more from me from now on.

With something quicker than a thought, Valon’s spear is a bonfire of profaned flame, the black tongues erupting from my palm and licking at the air as though writ upon the world with a heavy, broad calligraphy brush and anthracite ink.

You know, I for once don’t feel like living my next days dreading the bad news— not when I first need to go and earn them, from the bad news that’s already before me. If I turned a day’s finger over on the monkey’s paw once already in this fight, this one…

Yeah, I’m better off not even knowing what I’ve just done to my life. At least until I know I’ll get there. I’ve surely sold some noble end twice over by now, so if I am to die an unlucky man here… 

That’s the spirit, champ. It says, pleased that I know better. The conversation is over. My vision, so broad and clear with the speed I am granted, narrows to a pinpoint.

The body no longer responds to the will. If anything, the opposite is true. My mind is informed by the shape my action gives it. The motion is already there. The messages sent long past. At this unreachable pinnacle that only Izayoi has known, intent is not call and response. It is holistic, pure, as it puts power through my legs.

My breath is a hurricane. My twisted aether the black storm. My weapon, and my limbs, the crashing lightning.

My mind, the eye. Serene at the center. Nothing left to do.

For the first and only time, for I know I will never reach this again, I understand why she responds in a more reverent voice than she affords her prayers for our victory, when I ask what she is missing from the days of her prime. I understand it now. This is where we warriors reach out and touch divinity.

The instant overflows. I taste the Godspeed.

The ground cracks beneath my feet, and that fractional moment, that lone shard of still time I had been living out so much within fades into the aether, as I launch myself through the next. The flames at the tip of my bloodred lance gain ruddy hue as I cross the distance, a streak of black in my wake. I am suddenly before her, throwing my whole being behind the point.

Ye serpent, crawling at the base of the World, the cradle at the roots of life itself. You are of the primordial sea, to it you were cast, and to it you shall return, by thy ancient name in my tongue— Jormungandr. I anoint the weapon in this boy’s hands the same as the wise old man who first tossed you to the mighty oceans. The one-eyed king, in the land of the blind. It will strike every bit as true as that which was hewn from the Yggdrasil. Strength and skill will not stray it from its mark, for it is the wolfbiter, the swordbreaker, the rocking—

At first haste, I believe I said your weight leaves you, and you feel like you can do anything and everything at once, for you’re so fast nothing holds you down.

At second haste, however, in putting the Godspeed into any attack… 

I learn quickly that speed is a weight all its own— and one far greater behind the point of this lance, biting and burning deep into the watery barrier, than even a human wrecking ball like me could muster with strength alone.

In one instant, the Kirins' most wayward, lost soul had been spread-eagled and strewn along the battlefield by the Tides that had surged around Leviathan, same as the rest—

And the next, his voice cut through a silence that should not have been there, a single name leaving his haggard throat.

"GUNGNIR."

And in his wake was the clap of thunder, no matter how clear the day overhead.

Amerigo Spadoni

Furino Estate, Castle Gardens, Present Day
@AWildSquirtle@Estylwen

"Ay, tranquilo, both of you."

If there was one skill where Amerigo's mastery was self-evident, moreso than even the blade, it was the subtle art of speaking with a sharp yet unbothered tone when cutting into a conversation that was trying to speed past. In a way they were similar, demanding poise, precision, timing, command— but few pushed the metaphor quite so far into reality as the Brother strolling out from the ashen cloud.

To wit:

The length of his blade sank between the faces of the two tiny abhumans, coming to a controlled stop a few inches above Raguelie's arms, regardless of how vigorously she attempted to throttle Erfir— as pointed and inarguable a barrier as any man could muster. In the hands of a lesser, begging for an accident— but Amerigo did not allow those. To him, this was little different from getting his bare arm between them, corded muscle where he'd instead gone and put the flat of the coral. He spoke in similarly even, pedestrian tone, his clipped Arrowfellian falling back behind the curtain of he and Aubri's lilting vowels and melodic Republican cadence. Like discussing the weather, albeit with a blade in one's hand.

"You show good, strong spirit," a hint of an acknowledging nod Raguelie's way began his chiding. "But remember how that eyesore found us to begin with, claro? The wind carries voices. Theirs and ours both." He glanced to the castle, eyes narrowing before barreling on, heedless of any protests from those barely scraping the four-foot mark.

"Now then, allow me to make something clear. Signore Aubri and myself are not pirates. I am in fact paid to cut pirates down. We are here on business. Our business." A glance to his employer, before his eyes were cast back down onto the two children he was looming over. "The interests of the Most Serene Republic are represented through him— and its' protection through me. We are not quite so partisan in the conflicts of a faraway place as you may believe. Though, in saying that,"

As smoothly as it had passed between the two, Amerigo's blade rose, and returned to its sheathe with a brief flourish, sliding Bone against leather until the swept hilt seemed to click into place. The barrier between them now removed, his point seemed more or less made. For a moment, at least.

Then, with both hands now freed, each settled atop the scalps of either side of the little proxy war in the courtyard, blonde and coal locks both getting worked over by the foreigner and his cheesy grin.

"I do represent my own interests as well, and chief among them is ensuring I won't be made into a liar. I promised you both your lives— let us four at least not 'liberate' one another. The blaze has surely taken enough already from the city and the people, before what other demons may yet prowl. This Countess Vernon being our next best option after the Queen, to hear you say it— she must have the guards available to keep you safe until this blows over, no? A Brother's duty is to deliver his charges to safe harbor."

He returned his gaze to Aubri even as he continued to mess with the two runts, his tone dropping ever so slightly closer to serious. "And in a storm like this, any safe port may work, so long as we arrive with a favor in hand, no? We are here to make an impression. I doubt either option could find much fault in learning the first thing we did here was save innocent lives."

He would follow his charge's lead with little fuss, at the end of the day— but a Brother of the Bones' word held certain weight, as Aubri well knew. Amerigo, flighty and lax as he had so often been on the voyage, still had his points of pride. To one of them, he had tied at least the assurance that these two would draw breath by tomorrow. Whatever happened on either side of that, he had no qualms ceding.

"I have seen good friendships begin with far less."

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