HereComesTheSnow

Secundi Lux

---

Thunder cracked in her face, as she was awash with the nova of blue and white cast off by the harmless flames, too far from her skin but not far enough from her space. That one had been close... if she breathed in deep, she could taste the explosives on the air— acrid cordite and phosphorous, like if she'd burned a packet of her fertilizer and mixed it with dust. They sure weren't pulling any punches for a training exercise...

Guess they expect big things. Far be it from me to say they're wrong!

She couldn't make eye contact to show her appreciation to her dear feuer fraulein thanks to the swath of drones fast approaching, in no small part thanks to the selfsame explosion she'd caused. Unfortunate, and she hated not getting a chance to see her purple clouds poking out from beneath the scarf, buuuuuut she'd have to make do.

Feeling a big ol' brawl coming wasn't a terrible problem to have.

She flashed a thumbs up high in the air, her grin carrying through the bellowing voice that echoed through the street.

"Nice shot! I owe ya!"

As she was about to hunch low and gamely growl a line about being all tied up at one-all, a flash of light caught the shattered glass of the windows she'd sent her kill tumbling through, stemming from the sky high above. It wasn't the brilliant blossoms of explosive amber, azure, or scarlet that they'd all just created here... Then what the hell was—

"More coming down the intersection— prepare to engage."

She felt them coming, only second away at the furthest, but was already quizzically looking up when her earpiece had crackled to life with its electric whine. In that span, she saw a dark, unnatural shape— and perched on the roof adjacent, just shy a line of smoke tipped by a crimson, molten edge to the balcony,

"Crystal—!"

Before she could finish the thought, let alone a sentence, she was interrupted by the luminous snap and eye-searing cascade, blued white filling her view as a symphony of floodlights clicked on from either side of their not-exactly-a-formation, casting her girls in stark relief against the ruined concrete. It was impossible to be truly surrounded in this terrain, but this was as close as you got in lieu of that.

Not good on either front, not if you looked at it from plain tactics... she had to do something to consolidate the threat.

Selma stomped roughly, sending out a pulse of vibration that rushed through the ground and felt for what came back, looking for— there.

She burst into motion, Nox-infused legs carrying her to the ruined office where her first kill lied, torn and twisted.

It was a snap decision, the kind she felt came the easiest. These guys they could handle, they'd proven that without a scratch to show for the first wave. That thing up there...

After hunting down a suitably large hunk of debris, a block of rebar and cement only slightly smaller than a dumpster, she gripped it tight. With a mighty roar she pulled it around, wrenching her arms—

...She just didn't like the look of that stinger. Why not swat the bug?

—and sending it hurtling, end over end, towards the flyer.

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

Gerard Segremors

@VitaVitaAR

"Been better," He hedged, bluntly honest in the tone of his self-assessment. A thousand battles behind had bored it into him, well before the aspirations of knighthood, always pushing him into the next, had even a chance of being realized. In the ghost of a smirk that flitted across his features, there was a darkly cavalier edge to his words as he began to explain thoroughly. "Been worse too. I was more worried about the nicks—"

Here, he presented her his cheek, showing the white square of gauze that was complaining to his face about moving his mouth so carelessly.

"Felt woozy the whole ride back. Think for the arm I just wrenched an oberhau too hard onto a shield, or yanked too recklessly in a grapple— tough to tell." The knight shrugged his shoulders. "I was lost in the swordplay. Whomever the new Quartermaster is for the Boars, he's definitely kicked their training up a notch. I won't say they're suddenly amazing fighters, far from it, but they're better than I remembered... Makes their hiring all the more interesting."

Mercenaries are an economy. Asking fees had to go up with the quality.

The raised eyebrows of impressed hindsight faded, a contemplative furrow taking their place as he looked over the tiny Captain's choices in literature. In lieu of a concrete title or direction... these guesses were as good as his, all told. Direct understanding of the legend's text and body aside, they all sounded like they'd have the sort of background upon which the history was couched. Information like that could prove useful in hunting down the shards for certain.

... Fees. Hunt. Hold on.

"I'll be honest, Captain, I'd be lucky to even be in the same boat as you." he chuffed with a touch of self-effacement, backpedalling through the shelves, squinting as he searched through the rows at head height. He'd just passed this one... "I'm only here as a favor, or if I'm hunting down the old training manuals. I'm too simple for the literature; even your novels'd be wasted on me."

His eyes lit for a moment, and his free hand pulled a spine, then an old navy tome loose from the shelf. He looked over it momentarily, as if double-checking the cover for the words that had caught his attention, before placing it upon the stack Fanilly had already procured: Lost Treasures of Thaln: For Legendary Collectors.

"That said, we know they're in demand. Artifacts that powerful have to have all kinds of treasure hunter and adventurer hunting them down. 'Least I'd think so."

What else did they know about them? If he had to narrow it down from this ocean of books, what would he look for in search of "things that suit a Shard to hide in"?

He frowned openly now, throwing his mind at the problem in spite of his previous admissions of thoughtlessness.

"...Maybe a travel guide too..." he now murmured beneath his breath, cupping his chin. "...Since they're corruptive influences like in the fort... Look for areas warned away from..."

He blinked, then looked back up, meeting the blue and gold blur that sharpened and clarified back into the form of his commanding officer.

"Pardon, ma'am. Not presuming to overstep. Your investigation."

Secundi Lux

---

"That right? We keeping count, Aoife?"

If a sequoia could purr hungrily, then Team Kheper's tree shook the world as she crouched low beneath tight, focused brows. Within her, churning in the emerald depth of the fusion reactor embedded into her navel, her stores of Nox coalesced and channeled, much akin to her peers, her comrades, her teammates. It pooled into the soles of her feet beneath the leather of the boots and steel of the greaves, in the palms of her hide-covered gloves as they pressed upon the wet soil beneath— heedless of the muck. She had nowhere else she felt more at home— that her connection with the Earth she called her Elementum was written in fate far earlier than the Nox could ever have graced her with.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

In the distance, she felt them. Hulking masses of steel and silicon, artifice and technology that she could never hope to understand how to dismantle correctly— their workings were as alien to her as a void's was. In a sense, that made it so much the better for simulation, for the spirit of this exercise. She was fighting the manifestations of something that took from the Earth, twisted it, and made it into something Other than the grand understanding transforming had given her. Were she truly a tree as her teammates claimed... than these were just as Nox-borne demons.

Constructs that her roots did not touch.

But yet.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

They trod upon them. In a trio of heavy, lumbering gaits, the rhythm of searching, she could feel their strides upon the earth. Imperceptible impacts to the other four, yet clear as the midday sun for her. She followed them closely from their path deep into the city out towards the street where Chie's gravity well lay, noting their canter, weight, and position long before they reached the girls' field of view. Already a natural in the unsubtle aspects of this— shows of force, leveraging her prodigious strength, carrying her power for destructive upheavals— so instead, her instructors almost to a head had spent their time with her in specific hammering home the importance of the finer details.

One such was this seismic sense. It was already prudent to be actively listening through her feet for them, knowing where these points of resonance had originated and locating friend and foe alike, but she had been pushed to go deeper— analyzing weight and density by depth of the impact, composition by the tone of the resonant noise, number and stride by the cadence of the footfalls. The importance of knowing ahead of time what her team would face, so she could be best used to brutalize the specifities of the opponent.

For instance—

"Hoooooooh." she let out a low exhalation, almost a warrior's throaty bellow, as the walkers finally came into view, skirting the edges of the gravity well with clear trepidation that belied their artificial origin. Their onboard systems weren't entirely dumb, then? No matter. They could only work against what they could detect, and only were it not too, too late.

—She'd long known that the drones were bipedal, and that they were heavily armored 'round the legs to compensate for attacks trying to ground them. The designers understood a crucial weakness of the layout— but they could never have anticipated it to face the earth upon which those two crucial legs walked.

Kleinbruder manifested in her right hand, raised high into the air above her as her brilliant eyes, alive as a forest, traced a line through the pavement to the base of the rearmost walker. As she'd been dowsing the incoming drones those same vibrations had gifted her a rough picture of the ground beneath, all of its strong, reinforced earth... and all of its weak, easily broken soil.

She dashed the silvery axe's bearded edge against the earth, and from it, a rush of cracking ground erupted forth along the length of this ad-hoc "fault line". A plume of dust, stone, and soil rocketed free and into the air as the directed impact traveled through like all the seismic footfalls before it, tearing, tearing, ripping up the street—

Until it exploded beneath the armored boot of her quarry, sending it off-kilter and into a nearby building.

There was a chance, she supposed, that it could right itself yet.

"One." she declared in triumph, before rearing back to strike the earth again.

But that was only if she let it.

A meteor from the Academy's finest hit the deck, and in response to that call, a jagged spike of earth erupted forth, tearing through the foundations of the former office building as it stabbed deep into the cuboid central body of the stricken machine, grinding against armor. Juno making fairly quality robotics, there was little telling if it was immediately punctured by stone rising to meet the force of its own careening weight.

Heedless of the result, a green and silver blur rocketed towards the fray them moment she wrenched her axe free.

"Let's get cooking!"

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

Gerard Segremors

@VitaVitaAR

"You hunting something, Captain?" called a low voice that, to its meager credit, was only just too loud for a library, rather than the trumpeting horn one would expect from its owner's prior profession. If Fanilly deigned to turn, she would find a rare sight for the many tomes of history, literature, and myth ensconced within the vast, eerily still hall deep within Candaeln— a man of coal-colored hair and clothing, right arm limply hanging in a sling of white cloth and bereft of the sword it seemed incomplete without. "Four eyes are better than two."

In the end, Gerard's better sense finally won out. The simple fact of the matter was that he ran too much risk aggravating the pile of injuries— and more to the point, working in the open air of the training fields meant he would run far too much risk of being spotted and hauled off back to his bed in chains.

Metaphorically, anyway. I hope they wouldn't do that for real.

So, his thirst for betterment took him instead here, to a rare haunt. While the Library was impressive in the size and scope of the knowledge contained within, Gerard admittedly felt far too simple to be trying to wrap his head around most of the esoterism— and as such, his ventures here usually manifested in poring over Fechtbucher, old manuals for training and swordsmanship that he'd doubtlessly spend the rest of the day putting into practice on the fields. If he was laid up, his thinking was simply that he may as well frontload his bored skull with new things to try once he was back to full strength.

His golden eyes slid over the many shelves as they left the form of his small blonde commander for a moment, squinting to pick out names of authors and titles upon each carefully-bound spine. Owing to the sporadic frequency of his visits, he wasn't entirely sure which section he'd wandered into upon coming across Fanilly— only that it probably wasn't the one he'd personally been looking for.

But that was fine. There was satisfaction in a hunt even if it wasn't prey you necessarily chased, and moreover, the erstwhile soldier for hire could count on one hand the times he'd had a conversation with his leader. He had to wonder what went through the mind of one taking up the mantle of command at such a young age, preordained for her by the threads of fate woven by the Goddesses. Helping her'd... Be an interesting way to spend the forced rest. He'd spoken before on the importance of getting to know the man or woman you were faithfully raising your sword for— might as well follow up on that idea here.

"Not like I'm up to much."

The banner of the Roses was one thing. But it'd pay dividends to demystify the Knight-Captain.

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

As luck would have it, I’ve gotten the coof. Will post when I can.

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

I’m playing host right now, but i was looking to get another post out after one or two more— should they not come, i might crank one out over the weekend

Secundi Lux

---

"There you go pouting again, mein reizender komponist~"

As ever the study in contrasts with Rivka, all dark, stormy, and moody (probably the rain and being in it), Selma seemed incapable of containing her vigor from the moment the words "draw fire" had left Liam's lips. The big girl's emerald hair was tossed to and fro in the thick, moist air, the moisture buildup seemingly weightless when faced with the energy carried in actions as simple as rolling her shoulders or bouncing upon the balls of her feet.

"You gotta look at the big picture, babe!" She continued jauntily, suddenly sinking down below even Chie's level as she shifted all her weight onto her right foot, hand propped upon the knee, as her long, long leg opposite bounced into a stretch of the hamstrings for one, two, three moments. "We're the distraction."

The spot of green atop the tawny leather and hide rose and fell as she mirrored the motion on her other side, heedless of how it might seem improper in front of the lads present— her mind was on much more important things.

"That means we get to take center stage— and I've never known you to hate havin' all eyes look your way~" she crooned cheekily, rising and pulling the white scarf free from her neck. Rising again to her full height, her arms blurred— to the view of the officers. Even at speed, however, the other girls' transformed eyes could quite comfortably track the biggest and admittedly slowest of the girls in "Team 5" (so lame.) as she very deliberately wrapped it 'round the Baeterran's simpering chin and neck.

A gauntleted fist slammed deep into the palm of its twin, a dull thud resounding through the floor and even a ways up the outpost building as sternly arcane metal met sternly arcane leather.

The Maiden of Mountains sported a familiar look on her face as her eyes met Crystal's. She was transformed. Alive. One with All the Earth, as All the Earth stood behind her and her peers. The snow carver was right— she did already know the answer.

"An' who does that much better than Kheper? We're old hands at getting trouble sent our way— We'll have to see if they can even keep up to begin with."

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

found some

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

Gerard Segremors

The ride back had been a quiet one, as it so often was, for Gerard— though upon their arrival the attending healers had broken into a bit of a sweat regarding his pallor. This redoubled, much to his and their mutually weary chagrin, when he responded with confusion regarding why he'd not at least allowed Martin to take a look over him— something to the tune of "Was he there? I never saw him."

He... could only reason a guess as to why: mainly being a little too involved in his own head, and own duties confirming the knights' kills. He must have blundered past his compatriot at some point while gutting it out, and not drawn enough attention to himself in doing so. No fault of the healer's, seeing as the knight's mind was a thousand leagues away by that point.

Very well~ I hope to see plenty more from you~

He'd gotten the urge to snap back at the lilting, cheshire tone, and in his tightly bundled haze of thoughts had begun to jumble out the half-formed concept of a steely-toned promise that he wasn't going anywhere... but no matter what happened through the rest of the night, the voice had been content to let the knight stew upon it in silence.

Not a word more in his head. Baffling... but, if nothing else, the "solitude" helped him focus on the important things like managing the canter and his stance upon it on the way back. A cold, stinging, and achey ride, but one he didn't slump out of his stirrups in— good enough. He had managed to escape serious, serious harm— no loss of limb nor break of any major bones. Once the medical and esoteric arts of healing had gotten their hands upon him, they'd seen to it that his wounds were closed, muscles treated with pungent balms, and his torso pockmarked by a manic scattering of bandages. That pull in his right elbow had manifested into a sling, even.

A loss of blood and the multitude of lacerations had also meant a day of harshly enforced bed rest, and so the knight was confined to his quarters for most of the direct aftermath of their excursion to the moon stone, only meeting any compatriots who had elected to drop by (mainly those that had been kind enough to chauffer meals from the mess to help him get his strength back) and spending the rest of his time bored through his skull.

Only today had he managed to get out into the fresh air of the halls proper, damning his idle hands as he walked and took in the morning sun as it warmed his drab black shirt. Truth be told, that was the worst part— he hardly minded the solitude and quiet, but the fact that he spent the entire time without doing something had made it as agreeable as pulling a rotted tooth.

He'd always favored the Training Grounds for this much, but with a sword arm out of commission...

He grimaced openly, the patch of gauze over the numbly painful line down his cheek wrinkling some as the corner of his mouth pulled into it.

That one's gonna scar. I know it.

He desperately wished to hone his form.

He half-turned. Further down the path that branched off to his right lay Candaeln's library, somewhere he'd never really found himself visiting in anything more than passing, or as a favor to a tied-up compatriot looking to grab a novel and seeing a free hand. Maybe further on, the kitchens? Well, not much reason to visit there...

But even he had to admit that probably wasn't the best idea.

Not yet.

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

have a cold so bad we needed to deconfirm both the rona and the flu, so between that and a month of preparation for this current month of being really busy i’ve been pretty wiped out. checking in to say i’m alive, but im not sure when i’ll be able to post next.