HereComesTheSnow

ArrowFell: The Wizard Queen's Court

He was a fighting man, an enthusiast in in his craft, a damned pain in the ass

Oftentimes the narration tells on itself in these moments

ArrowFell: The Wizard Queen's Court

Amerigo Spadoni

Castle Hathforth, Present Day
@AWildSquirtle@Estylwen

---

Amerigo bowed his own head graciously upon his introduction by Aubri, in answer to the Countess— though not without catching that surreptitious glance sent his way with a wink and a sly smile. In truth, he had only a few inklings of what the little Angelite had told her in that moment, not even anything he could honestly call a guess— but if her eye was on him now, for whatever reason, he saw no reason not to play it up for his audience.

"Charmed, Contessa Vernon. A shame we meet at such a trying hour."

The worst result he could imagine would still at least be funny, to say little of the best before it showed its face to him. He could always see when he was making an impression, whether he necessarily meant to or otherwise— and it was always found in those second appraisals, rather than the first. On that note, he took his own of the woman before him, beautiful and clearly the authority here— yet barely any older he or Aubri. It seemed they all shared responsibility some would consider beyond their meager years... some would.

Sharp eyes set between her bedraggled dark waves stood out to him the most— in spite of the crisis she had been tasked with managing for hours now, she still found no lag within her will to start measuring, reading, and remembering with her gaze. He found it polite to make no attempt at hiding that keen eye— and afforded her similar courtesy.

It was a different thing from the stress of the moment taking her instincts to the forefront, and sizing up any potential new threat like a wounded dog. He suspected the armor, stature, cape and title all earned at least in part off the backs of men and women that would not have been able to make that distinction quite so readily. She would be one to watch, regardless of how this went.

On the matter of watching... he placed his free hand behind himself (his sword arm at a leisurely rest upon his pommel, perhaps churlishly if you spared a moment to worry about it) and nudged the changeling further out from behind him, nodding his head to Raguelie.

"In more immediate terms, we believed it best we ferry these two from those demons in the streets to people who might better be able to keep them safe, at least until this dreadful incursion subsides. I was rather insistent that I would see the both of them live another day, you see— and I'm afraid my employer and I had to drive the point home in the face of disagreeing voices."

Aubri, of course, was dead on the money regarding Amerigo's basic inclinations. He was a fighting man, an enthusiast in in his craft, a damned pain in the ass to convince to walk away from something like the second shade they'd run into out in the streets. Were he by his lonesome, he could easily see himself offering his services as a sword-for-hire just to rid the world of the abominations Dremora's Shade spewed out as well as get into an enjoyable fight.

But he wasn't. And he'd wait at least a little while longer to entrench the two of them, before he let his every whim have its day in the sun.

Patience and poise separated good swords from great ones.

"Given the circumstance we find ourselves having sailed into, we do appreciate the hospitality. And this moment we've stolen away from your duties, in the absence of Her Majesty."

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

@Eisenhorn@VitaVitaAR

They really were nice legs.

Gerard, as previously, simply endured the long silence with an attentive eye and a stilled bearing, allowing her ample space and silence to ruminate— if nothing else, it was good practice to follow the lead of the whole rest of court. Her guards were all but carved of stone, to the point where he wasn't even sure whether or not they'd truly registered the Roses' presence.

Point was, he knew grinning and bearing it was the best option on the board. The last thing he needed to be doing was showing impatience, annoying her by saying to hurry the hell up, and scuttling the good work they had done thus far. It was a windfall already to have earned this much favor from any such fae as the Lady before them, let alone on his first outing doing anything but keeping his damned distance. It'd be poor form to let greed take him now.

So, he watched, he listened, and he even leaned in as she did from below in his kneeling posture, as though indulging in a conspiratorial whisper. Nodding along as she spoke, he allowed his mind to run through possibilities for a moment, weighing her words as they were due. Valueless symbols of power... perhaps some form of trophy taken from those would-be usurpers? Trinkets she declared signatures of her title, which she truly was guarding jealously?

Hard to say at the outset. Eventually, it would be made doubtlessly clear— The next question would be what he would offer in return as collateral. High stakes.

His first thought was his loyalty, that sudden and impossible being of an Iron Rose that he treasured deepest.

Next, his life. An easily understood gamble for man or myth. Hard to find more universal proof than that, though... he was still breaking bad habits with gambling it to begin with.

Still, that'd make it a simple matter of earning his way to the table. Keep the thought in his back pocket until more was clear.

Third... perhaps his sword, his helm? Far from valueless as she'd intimated, but in a way every bit as symbolic of his power. Maybe something more arcane, if that was the direction. Maybe his name.

...In any event, his posture rose again, as a daring expression crossed his face, and his golden gaze refused to doubt.

"A wager, you say? I should be happy, then— I've built this entire life on the back of long-odd gambles. I, at least, ought to have the home field advantage." he declared, placing a gauntlet over his cuirass, atop the heart beneath the steel. "I expect to return soon, with your prize well in hand, milady. All we would ask now is how we might enter her domain to make this challenge— in the admittedly unlikely event the rest of our Order hasn't already pieced it together themselves in our absence."

He inclined his head, after taking a moment to turn his eyes over to the two aessyr one more time.

"Beyond that, all I can say is I share my companion's wishes of good fortune to these two. I can hardly imagine safer hands to leave them in than yours."

A wave of the hand, indicating the unmoving ranks of spears around them.

"We should trouble you no further than this."

ArrowFell: The Wizard Queen's Court

sounds like a plan chief, i'll brainstorm what i wanna get up to over the interim

ArrowFell: The Wizard Queen's Court

Hiding behind an abandoned carriage to avoid a second confrontation with a Shade on the loose,

two kids and a diplomat desperately trying to hold amerigo back, Raguelie definitely just told Elysabeth he's a loose cannon

aubri only you can save us

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

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.

ArrowFell: The Wizard Queen's Court

@HereComesTheSnow Ameri is actually pretty op.

@Estylwen

i mean who are we to say no to that smile

ArrowFell: The Wizard Queen's Court

did not know about the fire honestly i thought the cities just kinda did that

ArrowFell: The Wizard Queen's Court

everybody loves ameri it's just these three that know it right now

ArrowFell: The Wizard Queen's Court

i like deep lore questions like "when is snow going to afford himself the time to read past page one"