HereComesTheSnow

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

honestly had a hard time thinking of what to do for this one

just got it out so we can move

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

Gerard's longsword slid free of its scabbard, the noise of steel against leather befitting the tension in the air. It had been more than enough to see the strewn, mangled bodies scattered about the interior of the walls as they approached the thoroughly destroyed gate opposite their entrance— limbs bent the wrong ways, armor roughly shorn from bodies, the telltale signs of flame that ravaged skin, and enough arrows to pincushion what unlucky soldiers fell prey to them...

Yet no occupation. No sign of the supposed cohort that had clearly stormed through the front, despite the clear carnage that had been inflicted. No cannon to blow the gates open. No occupying archers, littering the walls and fortifications to pluck their lives as they came to investigate. Nothing to cause the burns, no oil or errant flame. It didn’t add up from the perspective of standard military affairs as he knew them. Something different was afoot. Magical, maybe, but nonetheless impossible at this point to place.

Being off his guard wouldn’t do at all. A split second was all he might have to steal life away from the reaper’s claws in this increasingly treacherous-seeming fortress. To spend it drawing a weapon was suicide compared to spending it fighting with one. Readiness decided everything. For a man who lived by taking the fight to his foes as he, it was the best he could do under the circumstances, much as he hated to admit it. Striking hard and fast was still his modus operandi, but such was impossible when you could not find your target.

So when the small girl with a crimson spear brazenly impaled a man wearing Thaln’s colors moments after they had entered the outer walls, it was only the fact that he had been placed at the rear of the formation that stopped him from lunging forward and ridding her of her head before that almost saccharine voice began to drip out of her irreverent mouth. Pallid, young, and with eyes like fresh blood, she almost reminded him of the First and Youngest that rode alongside their Captain. Hers was a demeanor that wholly disregarded the overbearing force of their small company in spite of her apparent age and stature— one that screamed of either extreme ignorance or danger. Practically mocking them to their faces, defying them to take action for what they had plainly seen in front of them, offering only the most token of defenses for her actions..! Did she really think that anyone would buy—

“Cool your head, Segremors, you impetuous—”

The third knight he had roughly shouldered past caught him by his collar, momentarily stopping the march in its place as he yanked the building inferno of a swordsman back. Unexpected as it was, the younger man blinked— and saw nothing.

Nothing from his fellows. Despite the girl not having offered much beyond “it’s not what you think” as a defense… None of the other knights were keen on exacting retribution that, to his eyes, had clearly been earned. Not Dame Maritza, who he knew to be viciously protective of the innocent. Nor Sir Fleuri, a man of a paladin’s character, training, and courage. The Knight-Captain, who just moments ago held ice in her veins, had been given enough pause to not yet make good upon her threat when it was clear the spearwoman refused to comply. Even Dame Tyaethe Radistirin, whose battle experience equaled everyone else’s put together at a conservative estimate… She seemed reclined. Even relaxed. A fight wasn’t even near her consideration.

He wouldn’t be getting the orders.

The mental machine that was Gerard Segremors jammed.

“How are we supposed to believe this, based only on the word of an enemy?”

His voice was tight, taut, caught between fury and flummoxing. That she had little else beyond the disdain for assumptions as defense was not helping matters. Not for him. It made no sense— But seemed to be the hand he had been dealt. He felt the grip loosen upon his neck after he spent the next second or so in motionless silence, his senior having seemingly been content with halting his advance. So at least he didn’t mind the suspicion.

He stared daggers at the diminutive killer before them, the sounds of his comrades leaking in as he tried to work this out. Her identity and purpose were good lines of questioning, but he wasn’t sure there would be any clarity in her answer after this initial reaction— to say nothing of truth. It was true that the walls were unmanned, and that luring their force into the open killing field would be ideal for an ambush if there was to be one. But what of the keep itself, where the supposed truth of the matter lied? It was about as simple to bar the door from the outside and roast them alive in the interior, or blow them away.

Again, he returned to the bodies they had seen. To the girl’s indifference to their cohort of prestigious cavalry, many of them veterans, bearing down upon her— presumably as a whole. Whatever had reduced an entire garrison of soldiers here to mere wreckage… That was what they faced. Was it her? Or something they’d yet to see?

His grip upon the blade, beneath his armor, turned yet again white-knuckled. None of it was trustworthy. The Knight Serpenta was best fit to lead the questioning— if he and his temper jumped in, things would derail. Sir Jarde was already investigating one of the bodies. Probably to look into the idea their current adversary had put forth. His eyes were usually good— if any proof of deception existed, he’d surely find it.

Gerard was stuck upon a hair trigger, without anything to set himself to. His head swiveled, scanning their flanks and rear. The gruesome scene caught a lot of attention, but even if he assumed the worst, he couldn’t see her being the cause of everything before them. Something else, surely, had to be lurking somewhere in the fortress.

He would keep his vigilance. Act as rear guard. Not break formation...

Stay ready.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

alive, but also dead

post when less dead

maybe tonight

maybe sunday

Secundi Lux

---

It wasn't the longest fall in the world— not by the standards of the entirety of humanity's history of dancing within the wind. She had learned in her History education that commercial aircraft had broken up mid-flight before (for one reason or another), and some crew had subsequently survived falls from heights cresting the even the highest mountaintops that few dared climb. A couple hundred feet down an observation tower, by comparison, was stepping off a curb onto the street.

And yet the wind still seemed to buffet her face for an eternity as she looked at Mother Earth surging up to meet her from below, the vertigo she'd contended with on the edge left far behind. The screech of metal on stone drowned out a lot of the noise that wasn't the heavy bass rumbles of a shockwave loosed by the thunderous powers at work below, but luckily Rivka's voice (musical as you'd guess) managed to carry over, if only just.

A crucible? Doable. Made sense, even! Trap the spindly bitch in a bunch of rock and then charbroil it where it couldn't escape— a good, simple, yet brutally effective plan. If Selma were to opine, her favorite kind of 'em.

But the other half of their embattled quartet had plans of their own, and where already there, quick on the draw. By the time Selma had clocked what was happening, the spindly creature of night had been broken by the tide, crushed under its weight, and then...

Crystal plunged Hiems into its chest, and from that single impalement blossomed a glacial flow, a sheet of diamond that ensconced their foe, leaving it paralyzed in its hunched, defeated posture as the bitter cold carried it to a final rest that not even the poisonous levels of Nox could rouse it from. Poised and cool-headed, the twintailed blunette wasted no time in ripping her blade free of her defeated prey.

Oh! They got it taken care of, nice!

Her grip, at a point only some three or four dozen feet away from the finish line, suddenly skipped and loosened as her gauntlets passed over an unexpected change in texture. Blankly, the big girl's supernatural speed put itself to work as she glanced up to realize that a piece of steel rebar, intended to reinforce the concrete that had been shorn away by some point of the battle, had crossed her path.

Ah.

She then realized that this skip had knocked her into open space— coincidentally, right above a shiny, glittery, and kind of spiky looking ice sculpture and oh verdammt no no no no WAIT WAIT WAIT GYAAAAAAAA—

Less than a second later, a blur of green, brown, and silver made impact, a crash of disintegrating ice heralding a colossal THUD that threw up a small, nearly cartoonish plume of dust into the air, mixed with the sparkling points of albedo from the many icy bits of what used to a Void.

“Gottem!” The blonde girl announces with a pump of her armored fist.

In her ear, her the radio operator's crisp tone sounded. "—vels are dropping—diffusers are back online. You’re clear."

A shaky, mostly embarrassed thumbs up greeted the team on the ground as it rose out of the settling cloud of particulate, which gave way to a very uncharacteristic warble from their now somewhat bloodied tree. Her forehead, having cracked against a seven-foot mass of ice and then the much larger planet it stood on, had split open with a shallow cut above the left eyebrow. Nothing serious as far as she could tell, but...

"Yeaaah, go teeeeeeam..."

She was gonna take herself a second and shake that one off, as it were.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

yeah they did him really dirty. i gotta let him off on this one.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

he’s going to kill the fedex man

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

Hey guys! Sorry to be saying this after such a break again, but real life kinda got hectic for a bit. Classes, some upsetting family news, all that good when-it-rains-it-pours stuff. On top, of course, of the fact that there were a couple really key posts that I was waiting on. When they finally happened I had gotten busy myself.

The good news is I have been planning, drafting, and writing as much as I can during this, and I've got a good five hours stuck in an airport terminal on my way home with my laptop. If the post isn't up tonight (which even if it's done it may not be, because travel is exhausting) it guaranteed, 1000% will be up by the end of the weekend.

If it isn't Snow is going to physically show up at my house and beat me half to death so.

@Krayzikk

the contract is sealed.

Secundi Lux

---

The silence in the wake of the cacophony that had only moments prior filled the air, were it not for the lonely howl of wind, would have been deafening. Selma, standing alone overlooking the battle, took a moment to fold her arms and listen, searching with newfound acuity in the auditory realm. Four burst of thunder had just sounded moments prior as she and Rivka had launched their respective projectiles the way of the spindly aggressor, lances of light from her lilac compadre rending it nearly in twain before her stones clobbered it right off the side of the building.

Normally, anything with holes the size of her head straight through its body would be more than taken out by such a sequence, but this was a Void— if they were that simple to take care of, people like the Ars Magi wouldn't be needed. People like them, now, actually. Woah.

So, in the aftermath of all that commotion, Selma listened hard. Chie and Crystal were down there, as were many of the operators the latter had set to evacuating. They might not have been out of the woods yet... and while those two could handle themselves, technically every bit as qualified (or not exactly qualified, more accurately) as she was, she didn't wanna leave her business unfinished if it quite literally fell onto their plates. She strained her strengthened senses, searching for the telltale signs that she was needed on the ground below. Far below. How the hell would she get down in time if—

A trio of vibrations through the soles of her feet gave her pause, rattling up the tower at a volume barely perceptible to most, but to a woman one with the earth like Selma, were almost impossible to miss. They heralded the sound rushing through the air, a less dense medium, a moment later. The rumbling bursts. The orbs she had intercepted.

A shout from below, and then a crack of thunder— not metaphor like earlier, an actual bolt of lightning.

That settled it.

There was fighting going on down there for sure, so it hadn't kicked it yet. She needed to get back in there, and fast. A stairwell behind continuous evacuees of the tower's staff? No way she'd make it in time to do anything. She needed something faster.

A loose piece of concrete, a pebble of rubble from the blast of the first attack, tumbled into the void as she shifted her weight.

...

"Hey!" she called after a moment, waving to the spot of purple further off in the skyline that currently shouldered a rifle, probably (rightfully) admiring her work. "Rivka!"

Catching the musician's eye for a moment, she pointed towards the pavement below from the lip of the hole where she stood, her usual alacrity for the first time tinged by a slight uneasiness, a wan shake to the smile as the lips rose into it. "I'm headin' down, alright!?"

A beat passed as she swallowed (literally [ulp] ) her trepidation, not exactly waiting to hear her tag-team partner's response, hefted Kleinbruder to rest upon a shoulder—

And then she stepped off, dropping down the side of the tower, a meteor aimed squarely for the Void locked in mortal combat below. Reaching a hand, covered in steel, out to skid against the face of the building, her last words in the one-sided conversation floated up to the firebrand from the cold Russian north, a plume of sparks in her wake.

"SEE YOU THEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeee_{eeerrrrrrrrrrreeee!}"

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

@ghastlyInc@Crimson Paladin@Raineh Daze@PaulHaynek@FlappyTheSpybot@VitaVitaAR

"Doesn't even need the messenger," Gerard's tight voice floated in from the rear, twin furnaces of amber locked upon the eerily silent walls ahead, scanning for movement. "The plains have already made our approach clear as the daylight on our backs. If there's even a single lookout awake for whatever's garrisoned in there, they can see us if we can see the fort. Enough of us here for it."

His week had been much as the others. Early rise, hard work, keeping his head down and striving to improve. His encounter with Nicomede the dawn after the raid on the Cal crypt had left as many questions as it had answers— further proof that he couldn't remain complacent if he wanted to stand on the battlefield among his fellows for long. There were things out there beyond either of them. He spent much of his day in the training yard, taking his rests in the barracks with a nose in what manuals he could hunt down in Candaeln's library. Horsemanship. Swordplay. Wrestling. Anything and everything.

He knew in the back of his mind that this would exacerbate the issues of feeling alien in courtly society, putting it off once again, but this continuous mobilization was hard to argue with as the more pressing matter. The knights needed him as a soldier, not as a gentleman. Otherwise he would be on reserve duty, posted at the palace rather than out here to take the fight to a potential insurrection.

His aggression was needed. It was what brought him here.

"I agree with Sir Gillian. More time spent waiting gives them more time to assess our force and mount defenses. Catching them flat-footed is the best chance I can see, given our inability to conduct a surprise raid as we did with Jeremiah. In lieu of covert action, create chaos and seize the opportunities it fosters."

It had gotten him this far, after all.

"Hitting hard and fast is paramount."

Secundi Lux

---

Rivka Sokolov, cloaked in parma and supercharged by arcane energies well past the limits of any mortal woman, was as a demigod as her leap carried her high into the air, a steep arc launched into with all the force she could muster. Much as Chie's jog carried her quicker than her former sprints, Rivka's great spring was enough to nearly carry her to the height of the rooftops even before her pyrotechnic propulsion saw her through the rest of the journey. Force enough to send a girl flying like that was bound to make for a hell of a reminder regarding Newton's Third—

And yet her erstwhile springboard, once again awash with green-tinged white, barely budged. Sheesh. Could have asked. What if she had been Crystal, instead of her?

"Hey Crystal? You noticing a pattern here, or is it just me?"

For the second time in a week, Selma Rosmarie found herself rising to her feet in the wake of some form of catastrophic demolition, shaking the keening whine from her ears and tossing mossy locks to and fro in the process. Talk about a head start on their peers— at this rate, they'd all be aces when they rolled up to whatever inevitable "think on your feet when something goes wrong" lesson lay ahead of them. Oh man, what if her first official deployment started with an explosion to the face, too? Better hope she wasn't imagining this one being less bad, and that Rivka's painkillers were onto something when they had her ramble about "just build up a tolerance to bigger explosions by working your way up from smaller ones" two days ago...

Okay, dummy. Get to work.

Her head snapped upwards as she hopped to her feet, base carrying itself back under her in a motion honed by years of impromptu bouts of ringen, and zeroed in on the two most prominent threats she could find— Namely, the seven foot spindle of darkness looming over them some thirty meters away and its projectile, a sphere of black ink condensed from poisonous cloud of curse. The latter hurtled towards them faster than any would have liked, and with Rivka perched atop a ruined high-rise, that left Selma as the forefront vanguard. The first line of defense. She had no idea what shape the other two girls were in. Crystal sounded like she was readjusting as well, and at the very least nearby. She could feel motion carrying through the floor well enough to feel right in guessing such.

But Chie, poor wounded Chie, she had no idea. She should have still been transformed, and her commanded element was definitely a doozy, but... the young ent still had to worry, just a bit. If nothing else, she was certainly the worst for wear.

But if worry was all she could do for her right now, then she had better stick that energy somewhere productive.

First things first— Whatever that thing flying at them was had to be bad news. If her guess was right, one of those being launched was how this stretched out lady-of-the-night had blown a hole into the wall they'd been facing. She needed to knock it out of the sky before it got close!

Scanning the room, she quickly spotted a few larger chucks of rubble from the blast— one the size of her head, the other two roughly two-thirds of that. She didn't have the propulsion to jump across and attack the thing directly, nor could she seal this place up with more stone— it'd only explode again.

So, she saw one option. Rivka may have had the right sport, but her position was all wrong.

Just think of Brazil. Think of 7-1. You got this, fraulein. Nothin' TO IT!

And with a whip of her long, muscular legs, her boot slammed into the largest stone, sending it flying into the path of the orb simultaneous to the mighty CRACK of Rivka's rifle. Two more thuds a moment heralded the twin concrete streaks that zipped outward from the observation tower, this time aimed towards the Void less than half a field away.

They didn't need no damned goalie. They had a striker.