HereComesTheSnow

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

There it was.

"I see it as she does." Gerard bit out, a shrug managing to rise from his haggard shoulders. As he had leaned, settled, and let the others say their pieces, he'd finally gotten a good barometer of the full extent of the damage done to his shattered ribcage. Five at least by his count. He was lucky in excess that one hadn't bit into a lung inadvertently. Even then, the impact itself had rocked him to the bone— he was doing an expert job of hiding it, one that spoke of perhaps too deep a breadth of experience already, but his head was swimming. "I can't say I care for shackles on my will wearing the mask of a deal, but none of us are in any position to refuse to begin with. You're the warden of this place, the choice ends at your insistence. One way or another, I am bound. I'll live. Don't have an argument in me."

Copper had largely left his tongue save for the aftertaste. Looking at the situation on its face, explaining away any newfound ability that carried over would largely be pretty elementary. Just a heightened focus on not dying. Making your own luck. Watching. Waiting. Focus. The like.

In the end, he hadn't done much different than he might have managed before— only drawing from deeper wellsprings of strength, speed, and grit than he had before. The same blade, just exposed to a finer whetstone. Sir Agrahn, should he be made aware of this performance, was likely to be disappointed at how little it seemed (to Gerard at least) he'd learned... But still, Sir Cyrus had drawn those depths out of him. And for that,

"I would stay as well. I've thanks and respects to pay. To Cyrus. To the Demonbreaker. Sir Agrahn, if he's about."

A deep breath, as though steeling himself. A thought had wormed its way into his hard head.

"Plus,"

The tip of the sword drew free from the earth, slowly rising to level itself... onto the frame of Fionn MacKerracher.

"If this 'lout' wants to have his rematches in this deathless land, I know he'll be kicking himself if we don't take at least one chance to have a real fight."

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

"A geas," Gerard repeated warily, finally returned to the earth after a little insistence from Thrinax and his sinuous, preternaturally flexile tail. The mighty dragon, such as it was, was far from hurt by any of them, but he'd been quite committed and insistent in his own right— real damn determined to get through the ruby scales with something that'd really leave an impression.

But they'd done it, all else aside. Wherever they'd been found wanting, they'd locked in and won the day, shoring up their perceived gulfs in mettle. He still held the thunderhead opinion that holding any such doubts was grounds to be told to go shove it, but it was clear now that it'd only belabor a dead point. His voice was ragged as the aftermath of his little stunt set in, too. No damn way he wanted a cake right now, he wanted a flagon of cider and a long rest.

To say nothing of dealing with a capital-W Witch throwing around words straight out of his childhood superstitions. In one respect, you could say it might be the other end of this chance to meet storied heros you grew up hearing tell of. But mercenary suspicion at offered deals cut under a lot. Much of it more amenable than this, at that.

"Isn't that a bit heavy-handed? I know the tale of the Hound. I don't mind the secrecy around the founders and Demonbreaker, but geasa end worse more often than they end better."

The young wolf planted his sword into the soft Earth and leaned onto it, breath measured and slow. He wasn't in much effective position to refuse, but he knew his wasn't going to be the only dissenting voice. He saw no reason not to at least say something.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

They had made hellacious progress, under the sudden and unforgiving time crunch Ciradyl's presence had imposed, bounding up the sides of the tiered estate with what could essentially be called impunity once he'd helped Esben stow the pair of fresh cadavers out of sight. The man had once again vindicated his instincts to take what he said at face-value— distracted by the sudden wrench in the gears or otherwise, the same instincts that had roused Rudolf right out of a dreamless sleep in the desert hadn't even clocked the man was gone until he'd reappeared.

It was a good thing their interests had still been in alignment thus far.

But he'd known better than to expect a free ride. Honestly, the luck of running into two bum-ass guards right at their initial point of entry was so cosmically terrible that he had half a mind to throw out a half-hearted "my bad" in the wake of the second's exsanguination. He pilfered one of the katanas as the team pressed onward, using the unremarkable, unfamiliar blade in place of the usual suspects well enough to maintain their hurried pace in dispatching the two- or three-man patrols as they surged further upward— at a basic level, a sword was still a sword, weird weight distribution and balance be damned. This one wasn't terribly remarkable beyond that, anyway.

"Not good. They're sequencing their fire."

And the staircase itself was under guard by the time they'd gotten there after the alarms sounded, a churning drumline of gunfire and smoke impeding their progress, forcing them into cover. It made sense. Even while the Valheimr weapons they were using were more advanced than anything he'd run into before this quest, there was still a little downtime between shots where you needed to get another projectile ready to fire— if they all shot at once, the Kirins were definitely fast enough to pounce within that window. Staggering it closed the hole.

KRAK!

Directly in the wake of one such shot, a tall, pointed piece of leather and cloth peeked out from behind the cover the Kirins had—

KRAK-PING!

—and flew right off the sword it had been carefully mounted upon, sailing back through the hall with new ventilation as the katana swiftly withdrew from their cone of suppressing fire with a hissed "dammit."

And what was worse, they were keeping their eyes open for sudden movement instead of getting lost in the rote load-shoot-reload down the line— With their infiltration ruined, they were on even more limited time. Could he come at an oblique angle? Maybe, but the ceiling wasn't terribly high and bounding off Ospreyan walls seemed untrustworthy to get there. Could he sidestep the whole ordeal by bursting through one of them, then? Maybe. It could split their fire if he reappeared from a flank, but he'd be wasting time if he ended up getting bogged down by the rotate process. Not to mention, the specific layout of this place wasn't familiar, and he wouldn't have had much ability to check his angle of approach before just sending it and dealing with whatever bullets came.

He needed to work with what he knew now if he wanted to regain tempo. If they were to. He had to find a way to break these lines up from here. Destabilize them.

...His hand crept to the pouch on his belt, palming one of the two orbs that pulsed with mana within. Unlike the one he'd shown Galahad, this was much more geared towards offense, and swirled with a light purple tint to its depths. He had taken it with him in the vain hope he could pass off any swirling black flames as something that looked vaguely similar...

But in true Rudolf fashion, he'd bungled that idea before he could even test it. Eve could sense the spirit's presence, and Galahad was plenty familiar with what Shield actually looked like. Arrogant and half-baked. Might as well just dispense with the whole plan now, and smoke em while he had 'em.

"I can break this up! Get ready!" he called, bringing his nonfunctional dead weight blade to bear. The thing had blocked Valheimr bullets for him already. If it didn't wanna be useful any other way, then...

Leveraging it out in front, he stepped into the breach, vitals behind the flat of the blade, and focused his will around the Gravity materia in his other hand.

Within the midst of the goons, a well of purple and black sprung forth, drawing everything inward, and down, as though their weight had suddenly doubled. He doubted this would kill anyone, but if it could just buy the team a moment—!

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

@Raineh Daze@vietmyke@Izurich

"We might not have time to as it stands, especially if we remain as a single unit," Rudolf replied, letting the length of rope feed out from his grasp akin to a ship's anchor as Galahad took hold, feeling Eve's gaze pin itself for a few moments onto the back of his head. He was none too pleased that it had only been a week or so before she started tripping his inborn danger sense, honed as any proper soldier's was... But focusing upon that in this situation would only bog things down. "But the main advantage at first was to give her less time slip away after catching wind of our presence, like Eve said— Only now we also tack on 'doesn't make Ciradyl dropping in unannounced look immediately, extremely suspicious before she's even inside', too. We're in a real pickle with that. I woulda loved to be able to screen for foot patrols through the garden, first, but we probably gotta play it by ear now."

He turned his gaze over to Galahad.

"No problems with heights here, so long as I'm under my own power..." he eyed the wall, gauging distance, before tugging on it to introduce a little tension to the length between the two Edreni. "I can bring up the rear, and keep the line stable until then. Shouldn't be much trouble getting up last."

In the back of his mind, no doubt spurred on by Eve, the thought occurred that this would be a good measure of the trust everyone was gonna afford him, right here and right now.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

@Raineh Daze@Ithradine@The Otter@vietmyke

"I've rope on hand. Shouldn't be any issue with that." spoke up the platinum blonde from closer to the rear of the group. "If we're looking to belay, though, we've got about fifty feet to work with. I think most of us here have sufficient leg drive to circumnavigate smaller gaps, at the very least in the nine-foot range." Galahad was no question. He wasn't nearly a dragoon, but Rudolf was already well certain he could clear Esben's tall-ass mop of gold with room to spare without undue effort. He'd played peeping Tom to enough of Izayoi's spars to know that she hadn't fallen so far as to be incapable of it, either.

He had to assume Arton could manage similar, rounding things out. He'd stripped his harness down pretty significantly to accommodate for the desert heat on Kirin's last outing, a theme that had continued here. Rudolf had, to a lesser extent, mirrored him on that front— and it stood to reason that whatever weight Arton had left on him would be similarly unproblematic.

Probably, at any rate. The more Rudolf turned him over in his head, the more he realized that the big fella he caught the more outgoing Skaellers eyeing with strange expressions every so often was, in his own right, a bit of an enigma. They were two of a kind, in that sense— whether willfully or just by virtue of barely exchanging words, he couldn't yet say. Wasn't about to find out on the job, either—

A glance to the taller man saw Rudolf's eyebrows quirk at the nonplussed expression, then follow his gaze... Just in time to spy the last threads of a silvery bun bobbing its way through Tane's front door, under the uncomfortable escort of a pair of goons. He quickly put that together, and it didn't come up good whichever way he tried to slice it back down— no matter of how proven the songstress was at handling herself.

"So that's the frontal approach further complicated..." he groused, before turning his gaze back to the walls and keep proper, a frown on his voice beneath the high collar. It and the hat had remained on the ensemble, despite how outclassed he'd felt the latter was by the good Cap'n's tricorn earlier. "And my swords are still in rough shape. For my two gil, I think we have enough people to split again. Prevents cramming once one team's inside, gives an external team less to worry about once perimeter patrols are called away to reinforce against whoever makes contact."

Nothing groundbreaking about any of that, he knew, but voicing the basics helped get them sorted out and keep things moving on track.

"There any realistic option that might allow us to get the drop on her further? I know Miina's gonna want to grill Tane about her brother before we... y'know."

He drew a line across his adam's apple with a thumb.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

A rush of oncoming air, buffeting like hurricane wind. His teeth, gritting, grinding, as his enchanted blade sought purchase.

The self-assured rumble of the massive creature's voice, smirking from on high.

Then pain, blinding, white pain.

It was as though his whole body had been struck to the earth by Cyrus's hammer. He was a castle gate, hammered upon by a siege engine. Breath had left his lungs. Hearing had left his ears. Feeling, vague, beneath a blanket of fuzz, was mainly vertigo. Resistance at his heels had given way to the feeling of rushing through the air. Flying.

And his hand was feverishly, furiously closed around a white horn of bone, a spike upon the redwood log that had all but crushed him. Not flying. Clinging to the tail. To his prey.

His golden eyes burned.

"Empty-headed snake," the lowborn knight spat, the cloud of red that came with each venomous word lost against the sea of ruby in his view, lit by another torrent of that red-white flame. In his other hand, true as ever, was his blade. He squeezed the pommel. Response. The body was subservient to the will. So long as the will persevered... he could still move. He could still act. If he still had enough to hold on?

"Doubt the judgement of the Order again,"

He shoved aside the agony in his torso, replacing it with a familiar burn that had driven him forward so often in the past, before he had forgotten fear, before he had anything else to push it back. It was a part of him. It could not be removed... but he could use it. He could breathe. He could move. It didn't matter if he was a bloody mess.

There was life in him yet!

"And you will rue this day!"

They had earned their places here. To even be in this place, outside time, his companions had proven the all the valor in the world twice over. They had, to a man, been selected for it to even be in the running to join at all.

He had endured much willingly, espousing the newfound virtues of a clear mind, and a tight lid, frosty virtue guiding thoughts clear and true. He had endeavored twice over in his time here to cultivate that within himself. Faultlessly, strategy had subsumed him, and his cohesion with the whole had held against their first two trials—

He wrenched his bones to bear, and drove the point of his blade down into the mass of meat below, a silver fang in obstinate jaws. Solid in scale this dragon may have been, but he had it right in his hands. He could strike, strike, strike with every last drop of his being!

—But every man had his limit. There came a point where Gerard would always find himself, with no other recourse, squaring his stance and accepting a vulgar brawl. It was the hunger, the fury, the desperation of man that lived so close to every one of their still-human hearts. That was what this dragon demanded. That was from where "valor" that had yet to be self-evident was born— That was what they had yet to prove. Where those limits lie. Where they were exceeded.

It wanted valor?

His always came with a dash of recklessness.

A wheezing, rictus grin belied shattered lungs and a bloody gullet, but his gaze did not err, and his arm did not waver.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

@Psyker Landshark@Crimson Paladin@Eisenhorn@VitaVitaAR

The period of tension, in many ways, mercifully short. Within it, the triad of hidden roses had moved swiftly, closing distance under the cover of the moonless night's gloom as the mighty dragon busied himself, for a moment, with idly regarding Gertrude and Fionn as they made their circuit high above, to Gerard's eyes little more than a vague dot against the backdrop. Just a little more...

And then, in the span of a moment, that "little more" was handled by their prey himself, launching forward in a feline pounce and suddenly bearing down on—

Aw hell, the Captain hadn't gotten to cover. She'd be quick enough from what he'd seen to evade the first claw, slashing down, but anything after that was getting dicey. He about-faced, his low prowl shifting to a ready position to bound, reading the new distances they were faced with, forcing a layer of rime over his rushing blood. The distinctive report from Rolan's crossbow, somewhere hidden in the underbrush on the opposite side of the dragon, bought them a split second—

"He's on the Captain. I'm goin' get pressure off her, this is close enough to work."

And with that, timed in sync with the third shot from their ranger, he was off.

He trusted Renar and Fleuri both to be able to fold this into the operation they were running without issue, given the sudden closure of range between all the pieces on the board. While he, Rolan, and the Captain occupied the bulk of Thrinax's attention, the remaining pair could cross over behind, and truly encircle him. A pack of wolves, harrying and harassing their singular target from every angle it'd take to wear him down.

He drew his sword, no longer worried about stealth. His angle of attack would take him close to the hind leg, obscured by the red curtain of Thrinax's wings. He could go for the tendons of the ankle here, the membrane of the wing if it crept low enough, if he was adventurous, even the underbelly, traditionally understood as "softer" in myth.

A flash in the peripheral, a thrown knife from the Captain. Good, another layer of distraction. It'd buy her more time to reset, too. On his end, he likely needed to mind the tail the most.

Time to test out those blessings.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore

and

Earl Cadmon Demet

---

“Ah, about that letter you sent last week…”

It had been a few days since their return to Kugane when the familiar face of one of Ciradyl’s aides caught Rudolf milling the halls, mostly aimless in the wake of puzzling over his swords once more for ninety minutes in the courtyard, much as he had two days prior before Miina had pulled him onto something actually productive. Coincidentally, the platinum blonde was actually wearing one of the spoils of that outing— a light brown tunic rather than his usual, comparatively stifling ensemble of red and black.

It, of course, only served to keep him cooler, rather than produce any windfall in unfucking the things. He really hoped he could return them to proper form once they hit a point to stop in Drana— his experience with Kurogane may have altogether been worthwhile in solving his biggest cruciform problem, but he remembered well that the old geezer held no love for the Edreni style of smithing.

“This arrived in the post early this morning. It matches up with what our contact was instructed to look for— no apparent forgeries on the seal.”

“Hmmm…” he took a quick perusal of the molded wax, before nodding his agreement with the assessment. “Yeah, this is it. Thanks. Sorry to impose on you guys like this.”

The seal of the Demet household he could find fault in with little more than a glance by now, even if he hadn’t specifically trained his eyes for it before the trek North began. For all the time he’d spent as more or less a burning dog (to be pet under no circumstances, per the Earl’s wisdom ensconced in grim metaphor) to have in court, instead rebirthing as “Sagramore” rather than “Shilage”, he had maintained a tradition of written correspondence with his master.

Longform squiredom. A blessing he would never forget. Had he not had the older man’s voice through the page, if not in his ear, guiding him, then…

He breathed deep, sliding the partition to his assigned room shut behind him. He made it here quickly, despite that he wasn’t certain whether or not there was much good to anticipate upon the text within.

Certainly, whatever his next update would entail, after all that their trek to the desert had revealed, he wasn’t looking forward to drafting.

He sat upon the tatami, pried a knife from his belt, and broke the seal with practiced ease.

Rudolf.

Mononym start.

“Oh no.”

I wish I could say I was surprised to hear the news of the king’s banquet corroborated by the words of your new allies, but I’m not. Leonhart did what he could to keep the entire affair under wraps, of course, but you know how word gets out. I couldn’t entirely believe it was as bad as was claimed without some first-hand accounts, or at least second-hand in this case.

Before I get to any of the rest, to set your mind at ease—I’ve kept things as quiet here as I can. Your father is still relying on that ‘plague brought back from the war’ story for now; the frailest of his children, inasmuch as any of you could truly be called frail, laid low by disease and kept sequestered from visitors and common folk alike. Ostensibly, I’m continuing my tutelage of you in those areas your father lacks experience over letters and packaged books. My idea; lies work best when couched within the truth. Most of what I send that way is just for István, of course.

Well. Some things just didn’t change. No surprise there. Perusing the words a couple more times certainly lent credence to the concept. Not like he expected any different anyway. A little surprising the old man didn’t just up and declare him dead, sparing himself the trouble with finality.

I’m working on a different idea on that front right now. I’ll let you know if I get any breakthroughs. The old cunt will still listen to me when it comes to this side of the business.

“We’ll see about that…” he muttered out of the side of his mouth, in spite of his absent audience. While it was true that the families’ long-held friendliness hadn’t waned in light of his exile, Rudolf knew better than anyone that his father could be stubborn as a cliffside, wearing down only over decades, over… so much less than this.

Given the nature of what he knew now of the Blight, and how it could have related, Rudolf was all too ready to accept that his father was more right than wrong in finally reaching the breaking point, where his towering rage made its way out from behind his stony old soldier bearing. It was bad enough that he’d contracted with a Shade in the first place.

He had known that Cadmon, surely, wouldn’t have told the man who had trained him what he’d sent his failure middle son out to do. He was by leagues sharper than that— But, as he’d written, confirmation was a comfort.

As for your current occupation: I tried to put some feelers out for the other teams Leonhart sent out, but the last that anybody seems to have heard of them was that they were all engaged fighting the Blight like those monster hunters I sent you to learn from. I don’t know that they’ve really made much, if any, progress on anything of real import, rather treating it like an extermination.

I’ll see what I can have found out about your current companions, although I already know I won’t be able to find anything concrete on that Valheimer girl you mentioned. Purely in respect for your wishes, I’ll refrain from going straight to the contacts I have at the university or in the church with the information, although if I were you, I would keep that one at arm’s length.

You have—at least, I hope you have—a decent head on your shoulders. You probably shouldn’t need that reminder or any others I can give, but as different as the two of you may be I can see the areas where you’re clearly your father’s son. As I’m sure you can understand, that gives me cause to worry given the nature of some of those you’re traveling with. One of your father’s primary targets during the war, the most decorated dragoon of his age, and a commander of Skael’s Household Guard? The only thing that might worry me more would be dropping you in a private meeting with Leo himself.

Setting the parchment down a moment, the young man took a few breaths and pinched the bridge of his nose. Of the first missive he’d sent, that was the big question mark looming overhead— in combatting Valheimr and being in occupied Osprey at all, the resistance movement was more a foregone conclusion than anything else. “Enemy of my Enemy” and so on.

But the prestige and specific identities of the comrades he’d fallen in with, Izayoi especially, were a potential powder keg to relay. The fracas at Leonhart’s banquet revealing her to still draw breath was one thing, already noteworthy in a vacuum, but for him to be travelling alongside her daily had necessitated the most thorough profiling he could provide at that point to stave off immediate fear for his life. If, say, the Earl’s heir Wulfric had caught wind of her presence without it, Rudi was mildly sure this’d suddenly turn into a two-front war.

And cut the strength of our Skael border by a third…

That, mixed with Lord Galahad and Eliane’s backgrounds necessitating their potentially being informed about the rising star of the Shilage household (the former especially), and he’d be a fool not to see the unspoken point of contention. Already, Izayoi’s own suspicions were being raised by something as small as table manners— he’d only fended her off the trail by exhausting her will to keep driving onto the point. The house of cards would start wobbling, unless he really tightened his guard. Still, though, he had to admit, that could have gone far, far worse. This next one likely would.

Try not to be too prominent in what you’re doing for now. If that one you claim is a Seed—it at least sounds believable, if he did come up with that plan you told me about—is telling the truth, ask him and the other one from Skael for help on how to keep as under the radar as possible. News of what happened in Kugane reached here almost as soon as your letter did. Your father and I hope not to recognize you in any of the stories that get bandied about, because that will lead to unfortunate questions for the three of us, and I’m afraid I can’t manage damage control across two countries.

“...Ha. Haha. Hahaha. Hahahahaha.”
So, I’m definitely leaving out the fact that Valheim knows our faces, at least a little bit.

I’ve included a book on various enchantments, given what you told me of that smith’s findings on your sword. Maybe you can find something in there to break the seal, or perhaps something that will point you further in the right direction. Be careful with it, that was a wedding gift from that assassin your father and I used to travel with.

I won’t tell you to stay safe because that’s nonsense given what you’re doing, but try to keep your head attached. Wulfric is still unhappy that I sent you off and not him, and if news should come back that you’ve died I doubt I could keep him from grabbing your brothers and riding off to retrieve your corpse and take your place.

I never know how to end these damned missives, I prefer talking face to face. Write back to me at your earliest convenience.

—Demet

A deep, purging sigh escaped him, as he set the book aside and began to fish out his own writing utensils from where he’d left them, from the last communication he’d sent. Barely even a week, and he was now going to report on how thoroughly the entire game had flipped onto its head. He wasn’t looking forward to this at all, but if he put it off now that sentiment was gonna put him off it forever.

And then the rescue party really would come.

He had to rip the bandage. He had a duty, where the true nature of the Blight was concerned. Diligence, in the relaying of both the Kirins' and Valheim's movements, in exacting every quote he could dredge from both Cid's and Hien's tongues, within reason. And of course, the most terrifying element of all————————————————

He needed the wisest man he'd known to understand that his wayward, foolish squire, so carefully hiding for half a decade, had let that accursed black flame slip into the world. The worst case scenario had come to pass. Those same worrying companions, to a man, knew it was there. And it was only a matter of time before they all came asking like Eve.

Summoning his courage, his recollection, and his steadiest calligrapher’s hand, he began to put words back onto a new page.

Master,

Your message and tome have arrived in good condition, without trouble from my hosts as far as I know. Thank you, I will be sure to read it thoroughly. I’ve made sure to thank them for being so permissive in use of their channels, but should warn you that by the day of your receipt of this message I’m likely to be on the trail again. We’re set to make tracks for Drana Asnaeu. Much has been revealed in the past few days…

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

@Psyker Landshark@Crimson Paladin

True to expectations, Gerard had skidded to a halt down the slope a mere couple meters away, eyes never having left the massive beast all the while. By the time it had taken wing, he'd already been verifying the unchanged heft of his blade in response to the Witch's enchantments— by the time the silvery-white flame, so close to the golden blazes found in every Reonite shrine he'd ever been blessed by the warmth of, he had similarly already been moving.

"Fionn on high with Gertrude, Rolan slinking around in the shadows for an opportunity with that crossbow, only the Captain and Gretchen unaccounted for with us at the fore..." he muttered in undertone, glancing about the field.

He narrowed his eyes, blinking once, twice, as they adjusted again to the sudden shift in ambient light— that'd potentially prove troublesome. Between the moonless night and Thrinax's brilliant, searing flames, there would be points where the dark might more or less appear as void, before the pupils dilated anew, and the blaze from his maw would conversely be blinding. On the subject of light, though...

"Done." he nodded as Renar's instructions took shape, before driving his sword back into its sheath for the approach. He could pull it free at a moment's notice if need be, but assuming they didn't want to reveal their positions early, judging from Renar's train of thought... "Shadows where possible, too. Less light caught by our steel, less chance he spots us before we're in position."

With that, the wolf set to a prowl like those he once walked his home woods with, stalking forward with a light and considered stride.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Sagramore and Eve “Grayscale”

---

At some point in time...

Early during their return trip to Kugane, before the dawn of the second day even, still with the reigning night sky and chill evening desert air fanning the dunes, a certain swordsman would find his sleep disturbed, that certain unease you'd get from being watched... and that was quite saying something considering he always had his plus one with him.

Upon opening his eyelids, the young lad would find a pair of reptilian, slitted red eyes staring down at him directly from above. From this angle and due to the dim ambience of the campfire, said eyes looked almost vividly, violently crimson. Yet, there was something familiar about them, they didn't belong to a blight beast, a monster yes, but one of his allies regardless, though from how fiercely they were staring at him, no one could blame him if he reacted with hostility.

“!!”

And just as well they didn’t, for when his blearily opening eyes first took in the twin disks of crimson and the enshadowed frame looming over him, eyes catching the vivid starlight overhead and burning with it, Rudolf had fairly leapt right out of his damned skin. For five years, he’d been a chronically light sleeper, plagued by unease in his resting hours—

A point of silver gleamed in the moonlight, a scant few inches away from the Pseudolon’s nose.

—And his adopted home had a tradition of keeping at least one blade on their person, always, even asleep. Of them all, this he’d taken most readily to that. And it wasn’t until that surge of panic faded, consequently, that his shoulders slackened, and he drew the knife back with a sigh as he recognized the placid expression upon which that burning gaze belonged. His own had been a tight snarl with desperate, wide eyes before the waking mind had taken back over— wary, spooked, and cornered all in less than a blink.

Even while supposedly unconscious, some individuals seemed to have this... sense, this figurative watchdog that'd shake them awake if they feel they're being watched, the more guarded a person was, the more keen they became. That was good to know, sleep is such a vulnerable phase in one's day after all, this was one of the things she wouldn't want to have even if she was a normal Sollan.

The shorter-yet-significantly-older of the white-haired duo was unfazed by Rudolf's reflexive response, common as it was for warriors to always have a weapon within arms reach, especially when sleeping in the wilderness.

“...Eve, hey.” he spoke breathlessly, slumping back onto his hindquarters. This was a bolt of a shame— for all he’d been looking over his shoulder at the Kirins after the tangle with Izayoi’s resurrected Master, his sleep had been… deeper, or maybe sounder, while the passenger within his spirit was in its own right seemingly dormant. “Mothercrystal, you scared me half to death.” For once, he’d had a few less tumultuous nights, less tired mornings.

"I apologize." She responded with all the stoicism that only a few could muster.

“You need something? Hear a weird noise out there? Diiid, uh,”

At that, Eve subtly yet visibly shook her head, "No Blight Beasts incursion yet."

“Yet”.

It seemed that streak ended here.

He made a show of rubbing his brow, as though to scrub away syncope. He didn’t like that the Kirins’ out-and-out Mage, most inherently connected to the arcane, was the one to wake him in the dead of knight by looming overhead and thinking Etro-Knew-What behind that unreadable look she’d painted upon him. She’d also been the one that had spoken the most with Cid, done the work in getting information out of the venerable holy man, while they were all licking their wounds.

His words were gonna be fresh in her mind, more than anyone else’s besides Rudi’s own.

He yawned, blinking slowly as he looked her way again. You just woke up, so playing dumb is the move anyway.

“Did I forget the watch rotation, am I up?”

"There's no need for mandatory watch rotations with me around." Again, she replied with an inarguable and pragmatically sound fact.

”What, so you watch us sleep?” he shot back, trying to regain momentum from the misstep. She knew. They both did. It’d take more than schoolyard shit to throw her off.

An awkward and tense silence began to brew between them...

"What haven't you been telling us, Rudolf?" Until she broke it with an inquiry that couldn't be mistaken as anything but interrogating.

”My life story. What my taste in women is. My favorite food. Lots of things. None of them are harmful to the mission.”

He held her gaze. The list was true. The structure was flippant. His tone, though, couldn’t help but begin to tighten. This showed too in his posture, growing more and more guarded with each second.

With each of those - she knew that he knew - irrelevant things he listed out, the more affirmed Eve became that something was up. Really, that display of Blight-esque power he wielded against the Revenant was proof enough, everything else was simply more evidence to support the conviction.

...now all she needed was a confession.

He wasn’t ready. Not here, not now, not yet. He could feel it locking his heart up, twisting his thoughts.

"False." Eve cut him off, whether he was done speaking or not, "At least one of them are potentially harmful to the mission... to the world." Her cold, emotionless tone harkened back to the Eve the party once knew, before Kugane, before Atsu, back when they were still practically strangers.

The swordsman was on the back foot, but wasn’t willing to give any ground she wasn’t working for. Nothing for free. His gaze warned her of that much.

In his mind, he desperately fought to find a way out of this immediate hole, while his mouth tried to buy time.

"I've been nothing but truthful about how I came to be and where my allegiance lies, can you say the same, 'Rudolf'?" If it was indeed his real name. "What are you?"

Blight. She’d made the damned connection. He was sure of it.

”Sollan,” he fired back immediately. ”Sollan to the bone. And Rudolf is my name, ‘Eve’. Only worthwhile thing my Dad ever gave me.”

Dad.

Exile from the Shilage lands seemed a pittance, now. What the hell had he been moping about, when the next person to get an inkling of what he’d done took him for a potential Blight Bomb, about to go off in their midst?

Rudolf spitting back Eve’s mistrust about his name right back at her seemed to strike a nerve, "Eve was my mother's name, I took it as my own because I refuse to refer to myself using the moniker they gave me." Grayscale... implying she was nothing but a weapon to be wielded whenever convenient.

He winced.

His grip on the knife tightened. He wasn’t gonna point it at her again, not unless she forced him.

But the tremble in his hands told more of the story, that which he couldn’t bear to consider.

”I came to save my country from the evil that besets us. I have a duty to the people of Edren. I’ve never lied about that.”

What if she was right?

What if he was just a matter of time?

"... ... ..."

”Just put it away, Eve—”

ZAP!!

A point of light, a screaming danger sense, and a sudden leap to the side.

Without warning, a small bolt of lightning grazed far too close against the side of Rudolf's scalp, singing a few locks of gray-white hair. In front of him, he could see the Pseudolon thrusting her pointer and middle fingers at his head, her hand poised like a pistol, arcane sparks whipping the air around said extremities.

That was her answer to all the pointless beating around the bush.

"The next one won't miss." She forwarded her ultimatum, "Tell me about the evil within you... or don't, I'm sure it'll protect you just as it did against the Revenant's blade, no?" The sparks at her fingertips intensified, "Either way, I'll get the truth out of you."

Scary! What the hell, this was so scary! She’d kill him! She’d kill him now or kill him as soon as she found out! To think he was worried about Robin! Now he knew why so many people didn’t follow in Galahad’s footsteps!

”Are you insane?!” he hissed, knife now aloft in a guarded position as he gauged distances— between himself and her, between himself and past her, between her crackling fingertip and the metal in his grip. ”Throwing around magic like that in camp, what if you’d hit someone like Izayoi?! You’d get everyone killed!”

"I am a monster." She confirmed, "As you've witnessed yourself, I hold the power to destroy battleships, do you really think this little magic is beyond my control?" If his aim was to throw her off, he'd have to do better than questioning her spellcasting, it'd be as effective as doubting Izayoi's swordsmanship. This meant he was desperate... good, the truth was close.

“Power and control are very different.” She was just gonna flat out ignore how many people they were right on top of, then. That level of confidence he had no choice but to believe… but still, if he dodged her and somebody else was in his wake, this would be dangerous for more people than just the two of them, very quickly.

His swords weren’t far. Just a few strides away…

And then what?

Cutting her down was out of the question for all sorts of reasons, but…

No, if he had to protect herself, with them he felt safest. That was it.

”Look, I don’t want anyone getting hurt, Eve… Last Valheimr to point a gun at my head didn’t have great luck with that.” he warned, in the tone of a man faced with a snarling hound. He had to set her off-balance for just a moment, throw the ball back in her court, and pull this back somewhere safe. He needed to get initiative back, if he wanted to make it outta here alive.

"This isn't a gun." She deflected the warning with all the ambiguity of someone who was either dense or confident, "If you don't want to hurt anyone, then tell us the truth, Rudolf." He was a wounded close combatant, she was a fresh ranged spellcaster; it wasn't even a contest, she had the high ground. "Despise me all you want, but they deserve the truth."

He circled, one gingerly made step at a time. He’d caught the glance down at his right leg. Brief, but there— She didn’t seem to know the full extent to which he’d healed. Moreover, she didn’t seem to be thinking about just how quickly he might be able to close the gap.

Please, Eve. He didn’t want to have to take advantage of that. But these were the only thoughts he could even keep straight anymore. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff.

He held the knife aloft, letting it catch the moon, letting it catch her eyes. Even she couldn’t escape the tendency to want to track a bared edge of steel, right? He swung it wide, in a slow arc, away from him.

Her eyes might instinctively follow the knife for a brief moment, but the Pseudolon's "finger gun" kept its aim trained on the monster hunter even as he began taking steps around her. Being a creature of primal ether - artificial she might be - she lived and breathed off magic, thus unlike most mages, incantations were more of a ritual to help her muster focus rather than a mandatory part of the spellcasting process.
She had her Thundaga bolt primed and ready, she'd just need to pull the trigger...

“It’s not about me despising you, Eve.” he intoned ruefully. ”You scare me, but I don’t hate you. Please.”

Please.

"Tell me something I'm not yet familiar with." Being feared? The half-dragon mage was more than well used to it, "But I assure you, the feeling is mutual." Most certainly since Svalinn's reveal.

He flinched, but struggled forward.

”I’ve already lost one life to this thing. I’m not gonna get thrown outta another. Can’t saving Izayoi be proof enough I don’t mean harm?”

One step away. Any false moves, and he was diving for them.

He’d figure it out afterward.

"... ... ..." So it wasn't new, Rudolf had been hosting that 'thing' for gods know how long, long enough to get him exiled.

“I promise, there’s no upside to digging this up unless… you already want me gone. What do you know? Maybe I’m way behind.”

He should have done this part much, much earlier, admittedly— but he needed to see what cards she held. He’d spent this whole exchange playing catch-up.

Her brows frowned deeply at the Sollan's sheer stubbornness, not even Esben was this secretive about his past, and the man's a spy, "I'll be the judge of that." She sighed harshly, "Whatever power you conjured back then, it felt... wrong. I'm no true Eidolon, but that part of me felt revulsion as if I was bearing witness to a spreading disease, the planet's disease, ...the Blight." She let her words hang in the air, then continued before he could respond.

His eyes tightened.

"...I'm not mistaken, am I? You're hosting some kind of Blightborne entity, that's the only possible conclusion behind your unflinching refusal to tell the truth, even in the face of certain death, your silence serves as confession enough." She wasn't finished, "However... the High Caretaker didn't smite you on sight, he even let you bring that thing into Etro's sacred grounds, so... there may still be hope for you yet. Please tell me it's true." So she wouldn't have to euthanize him right here and now.

“…There has to be.”

He seemed to slack before her, all but ready to crumple with relief. It was hard to tell who between the two of them he was making this reaffirmation to.

Safe, only by a hair’s thread.

But she was right. There had been something in that look Cid had given him back there, something he couldn’t interpret.

Pity?

Regret?

Sorrow, maybe?

But whatever it was, it hadn’t been hostile. And Rudolf was now sure that it had meant he’d known, the whole time. And as she’d said, he hadn’t had Ifrit dropped on his dome.

He had to hold onto that.

If he didn’t, then…

”So long as my mind’s still my own, there has to be.”

Leather creaked, deafening in the silence of the dunes where it would be inaudible anywhere else. His eyes had left the tiny pseudolon now. Instead, the holes they stared bore down upon the knife in his hands, in the white, shaking knuckles of his grip.

From here, while Eve seemed to want a way out of having to commit to roasting him like an autumn goose, he could at least bargain the value of sile—

”I… I don’t know if it’s Blight specifically.”

Each breath shook, but the words came.

What the hell was he doing?

”And I can’t exactly ask right now, either way.”

What happened to giving nothing away?

”This has been with me for five years. It’s never tried to spread. If nothing else, I’m pretty sure it’s at least disconnected from Valheim’s incursions. They’ve never recognized him as… like them.”

Incredible. He was chickening out of chickening out.

Pathetic…

"... ... ..." Though her thunderarm was still cocked and ready, there seemed to be little indication that she'd actually pull the trigger, and the possibility only grew less and less as Rudolf finally saw sense and stopped beating around the bush.

He was on his haunches now, and felt like five measures of his own weight were dragging him into the sand. Exhausted. With the fading adrenaline, he became aware again of every last bit of him that had been through the wringer.

Five years of checking his own shadow for a trap. Five years of carefully minding everything he let slip into the world. Five years of pretending to be little more than a common-born swordsman, building lies upon lies to live through.

And now, he couldn’t even choose between giving away the game or committing to it. Right to the end, he second-guessed every move.

How could he save the world? He felt sick.

”Is that enough for you?”

The coward, finally, met the wyrmspawn’s eyes again. With them, his soul pleaded that she relent, even knowing she had every right not to. They all had a right to.

His brothers would have laid it all out for everyone right from the gate. They would have done everything right. They stood tall. Honorable by every measure.

Honor’s the refuge of the strong.

He was not of their cloth.

This was all he could handle.

Eve listened to his story, everything, pauses and all, from beginning to end...

"Haaa...."

...then let her primed spell fizzle out, sighing heavily as if she had just gone through a life-and-death situation. "There... may be more about the Blight than what even Cid knew." The white-haired mage murmured, she wanted to have something vouching for Rudolf's innocence. "Maybe it has always been there, like shadow to light, only the Mothercrystal's shine kept it at bay, but now, with the glow snuffed..."

She paused, closed her eyes, then subtly gritted her teeth, enough crafting theories for now. She had gotten what she came for, "We'll find a way to purify the world of this taint, including the one within you." With that, she turned away, then sat back down on the dunes, this time decidedly not staring down at another sleeping party member.

”I hope you’re right. I really, really do.”

Imir, Ithar, if you can hear either of us…

The dull fwmph from behind heralded the young man finally fully collapsing onto his back, utterly spent. The knife in his hand rolled free, thankfully still on the sands, and his eyes were drawn up.

Above him, there was no black void, as the night he’d been thrown out like trash, his first when truly alone, had been. Clouds couldn’t survive here.

The truth of what lie above them, where so many seers of before had seen fate writ large, was bared to all.

Out in this sea of sand, in a land so far away from any home he’d known… the stars were painted with dizzying brilliance. More than he dared count, enough to drown out even the Constellations he’d learned to name. A thousand-thousand diamonds, tiny points of light that massed to color the night from black to blue, yellow, even pink— the great band that stretched across the heavens, said in some lands to be the arm of Danube herself, packed them together so tightly they almost outshone the moon. At it he stared.

Within that enormous current, that coalescence, was said to be the flow of everyone’s fate. That fate which they now were supposed to be fighting for. Ten tiny souls, be they dimmed or polished to the brightest luster. Faced with that, he was barely more significant than… any one of these grains of sand. Such enormity could crush him. What was his life? What could he really do? What could any of them?

He stared.

…Every point of light singing in this chorus would be drowned by the dark on its own, a lone voice awash in silence. Gathered together, they created a vast, beautiful symphony, pushing back against the night. They sang of life, of truth, of destiny.

Collecting those motes of light together… could make something like this. Beyond the grasp of any man or woman, yet all the same threatened by their foes.

He reached high, with his hand now free, and saw it too be lost against the immense, vivid backdrop.

Was his fate still in there?

What about hers, somebody born under those circumstances, rather than choosing the darker path?

…

Would this feel quite so insurmountably massive, if he could be sure it was?

…

He stared. For a while, they shared the silence, neither looking at the other, neither comfortable nor hostile. Until…

“... I’m sorry, Eve. You’re right that they deserve to know, but… I’m not ready to say it yet. I wasn’t even ready to tell you this much.”

”...” She was silent at first, each trickle of the hourglass’ sand felt like an eternity in its own, yet through the silence, Rudolf could sense that her earless ears were listening.

The pause hung in the air. Hadn’t they put each other through enough for one night?

“Could I ask you to keep it quiet, unless you’ve got no choice?”

His only reply would be a minute shift of draconic red eyes, followed by a barely perceptible nod, but twas’ a gesture that conveyed more than a thousand words could.