Suicharte
wintersoldier
Fading Memory
Damycles
Lildear18
Izurich
Duoya
Mixtape Ghost N
Rabidporcupine
When autumn claimed its first leaf from the browning trees, the caravan trail had stopped in a sprawling apple orchard with fruit ripe and ready to eat. They circled the wagons, set the campfires, and it wasn’t long before the smell of fresh stew carried through the air. And yet, not a single person waited on food with impatience and hunger. There was no rush to anything in a place like this, the food would be there. It was a place where the world couldn’t reach them and they wanted for nothing.
A boy who had yet to recognise the sun from its reflection in a lake saw the orchard for the first time. Musicians played, not for money or need, but just for the love of it. Their songs carried on the winds imperfect but beautiful in their experimentation. Young men lead young women into the trees with playful giggles that the boy couldn’t understand yet. Dancers and non-dancers alike let their bodies move freely and without fear of what others might think, there was no one around to judge. Some kids his age eager to show off their climbing went right to the top of a tree and made a show of tossing apples down to the others. The older folks seemed more reserved as their hair turned greyer and sought comfort in sitting back to watch the fun. They seemed the happiest even though they were missing out; the boy had no hope of understanding that.
It seemed a perfect place. It was a picture of what life could be like if they could escape the harm and ills of the outside world for a while.
When the caravan trail started packing up their tents and he saw the trees retreating behind the horizon, he wondered why they left at all.
Leon’s escape was swift but imprecise. His immense momentum had become hard to control with his limited remaining capacity. He realised he had no longer been dashing forward but instead plummeted down into the ground. He could save himself if he still had wits, but there was another factor that ensured he wasn’t to perish so unceremoniously. So anticlimactically. They had gone through the trouble to hoop the Revidian star through a sudden, point-blank portal, after all.
He was in what resembled a roof at an elevation that overlooked San Sameno. An administrator’s abode, no doubt. A risky place to be in, as one could potentially even see the group that had antagonised Leon from their vantage point.
The landing was far from graceful, the sudden shift of surroundings caught him by surprise; only a turn of the head prevented him from landing face first and damaging the money maker. It took him a while for his brain to catch up with exactly what happened; he was safe, for now. The performer rolled around to lay on his back, gazed into the blue sky above, breathed in the free air, caressed the tiles he lay on, and chuckled with immense relief. The performer who usually kept a façade let himself be free at that moment and cared little for whoever was looking. It was unceremonious and honest.
“Wowee. So much for a graceful curtain call, amirite?” cackled a chillingly familiar voice. Sat on the ledge with her good leg hanging was the Mad Avatar making her return, in Palapar of all places. A menace traded for another, but at the very least these creatures could repel each other. Before she spoke again, she pinched a decorticated roasted shrimp with multi-coloured nails and snacked on it gleefully. “Mmm, of all the fuckos you had to square off with, you chose that guy.” She clicked her tongue a couple of times after finishing to chew on her food. “Rookie mistake.”
A light pivot of her form had this familiar silhouette acknowledge her recent catch. Purple eyes locked onto Leon, narrowed into crescents as she grinned with unknown intent. “Hiiiiiiiiiiii.”
When he heard the voice, hesitations set in, he froze up a little. He sat up slowly and came face to face with his saviour, Juulet, and flinched. He was sure she had set his life to a matter of chance when he last met her and now she had saved his life. It was hard to make heads or tails of what the woman really wanted. At the very least, if she wanted to harm him, he would be harmed already. There was some grim comfort to be had in that idea.
Loosening the Sun King mask, he took it off and tossed it aside. He rubbed his face, letting his heart catch up to what the mind registered. There were no certainties here. She greeted him and, for whatever reason, he smiled back at her; it seemed genuine. There was no point in decorum or the pursuit of presenting as something more to Juulet.
He cautiously scooched himself over to the roof's edge to hang his legs beside hers. "Well, someone had to take him on." His gaze drifted upon the town he had turned into a warzone moments earlier. He tried not to think of the destruction he brought on others by resisting Ren's decree. "There are some people back there that deserve to live and see tomorrow... Could you save them too?" His plea didn't carry much hope.
Those purple eyes, each surrounded by black rings, widened with pupils equally dilated in the moment as Leon found a seat by her. Juulet made a point of peering down right at the spot he had taken and then right back into his eyes, head slightly canted. What did that stare even mean? Was she angry? Twitchy? Was something going to happen? The brief silence that followed the entertainer's answer and request only made that wicked stare all the more heavy in the moment.
She took a bite from a partially peeled shrimp, prompting loud crunching sounds. There was speaking while eating. “And maybe end up in that guy's range?” The one-legged Yasoi snorted. An exaggerated sort of snort, like she was imitating a pig. Her sauce and spice-covered digits tapped his shoulder. “You're a funny guy. Real, real funny. I save you, you get me in a pickle, classic skit. Haha. Heehee.” She crunched the remaining bit of her snack.
Those eyes made it difficult to tell who she was. Was he safe? What would make her happy? What did she truly want in this world? He couldn't understand it and he doubted she understood either. But maybe, just maybe, there was a chance that unpredictability would turn in his favour. It wasn't the case. Rey Baykara had something about him that made it a dangerous gambit and he couldn't blame Juulet for avoiding that risk.
He looked back toward the town, where the people he had grown to care for were bound for the noose and he was powerless to stop it. How could he say if he didn't endanger more people just to resist it? If trying to make the world a better place only resulted in more harm, then what was the point in trying at all? He looked and looked and then he lost the will to keep his head up; he hunched forward, defeated. He only had to be grateful that his own life wasn't to be defined by chains for the effort.
This wasn't something new. It was the norm in this place. The suffering of others was commonplace in the world. How could he continue if the deaths of a few immobilised him so? He needed to turn a blind eye, he needed to forget them.
“Soooooooo, now that you've made an ass of yourself, will they make you display your insides like they do up North in that silly island?” Right after the question, she rapidly downed a drink from a gourd. The smell suggested something sweet. “Did you know they, like, do that over minor spelling mistakes? It's the funniest shit.”
Leon chuckled at her quip but didn't look back up. "I don't imagine this will be without consequence, no. Are you here to give me one of those swords?" He joked back grimly. While his face was hard to see, his arm came up to wipe away tears.
Another moment of silence. The same, wide eyes studied the lamentable state of the supposed embodiment of the sun. The left corner of her lips folded to make a particularly perplexed grimace. “Huh.” The plate of shrimps that had been resting over her thigh was carefully placed over the ledge. “I didn't realize they had emasculated you so much.” With her posture straightened and her natural Yasoi-like height, she could easily look down onto the seated Revidian.
Juulet, in a vulgar swing of her arm, tossed a wakizashi she had seemingly produced out of nothing. It landed on the centre of the roof. “Okay, do it.” her head cocked toward the other shoulder, her voice insistent without a single disturbance in her intonation. “You can save your honour before you have yourself a little baby cry. I'll be sure to inform the Dog.” She continued to study him, eyes large like an owl's, or maybe even a fish's.
The clatter of the sword landing against the roof tiles made Leon turn his head and look at the blade presented to him. His stare remained for a while, just looking at it…
He turned back at San Sameno once again before hoisting his legs up and standing on the roof. When he looked down at Juulet with eyes dry as if had never been crying.
"You know Juulet, I never asked to have magical ability." Leon started walking slowly over to the wakizashi. "I suppose no one chooses anything in life really. We can lean in a direction, but factors beyond our control decide where we land." He squatted next to the sword showing a distinct lack of knowledge, or respect, of the Nikanese custom. "For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to make people happy. But before I knew it I had power beyond what I could even grasp and I could do more to make people happy than just playing a lute."
"I hate it." He picked up the sword, unsheathed it part way, and inspected the edge. "That greater ability to make others happy involves fighting and seeing others suffer where you can do nothing about it. When whatever string of fate gave me these things, it still made sure to only give me the heart of a lute player." He looked back at her and smiled.
"This is no stopping point, I have further to climb." He sheathed the sword quickly and affixed it to his belt. "Thanks for the sword." How could he smile at her when the Mad Avatar glared at him in such a menacing and studious fashion? It was almost certainly a façade but it was a good one. He stood back up, she certainly had greater reasons for fetching him out of San Sameno than this.
“Pffftttt. Hahaha!” Juulet burst into laughter after a long stare of anticipation. Leon's resolve to keep his life and spare her a show had prompted the Mad Avatar to drop the dead-eyed stare with a half-lidded gaze and occasional giggles between phrases. “You don't hate it. Shut your whore mouth.”
The words were heavy but the tone was mellifluous enough to suggest she sought only to banter. “You're pissed because you don't have enough of the super awesome power. If you did, you could stand up to the guy.” Her head rolled from one shoulder to the other, cocked completely to one side with her dark hair flowing down over her arm. “You could save those people.” she added, her voice sombre and more collected.
“You'd be loved by more, if not all, too. Whether out of affection, or fear-” Juulet stopped, blinked and looked Leon's way. “We've had this conversation before, didn't we? Hah. You wouldn't have to listen to me vomit out the same crap either. Just like you've had to hear that insufferable whelp yap. The more you got going for you, the more choices you got. Simple as. Nothing to hate.”
"You aren't wrong." He grimaced. "I apologize for the repetition. That was before the revolution, the white thresher, before this. It all seems so different now that I see more of the road ahead, but I suppose it hardly ever was." Leon looked Juulet up and down, for as foreign as the world seemed at this moment, she was more or less the same as back then. Nothing had changed her; this was normal. Slowly, calmly, he returned to her by the roof's edge.
The Yasoi's eyes narrowed more onto his form. Once again she indulged in her sea-food snack. “You're held back. By petty worries. By petty wants.” Her lips curled into a lopsided smile. “Petty allegiances. One so petty, that Doggy doesn't even address you with that silver mantle he wears so proudly, does he?”
Juulet hoisted herself up with the help of an obsidian, cracked spear oozing with constant heat she had manifested out of nothing just like the small blade. It served as a crutch she held with her right arm while the other had gathered a few snacks. “How about we stop squandering that potential you got there, Yanii, and tell some assholes what to do for a change?” That same grin became a little more toothy. “You also owe me for, like, two things. At least.”
It was Leon's turn to laugh. "I've never been much for keeping debts..." He popped down to sit beside her. "You sound like you want to open a door for me, give me an opportunity when I had faced down hopelessness, and you consider that favours called due?" His head swung around to look at her, ignored the shrimp shell in her grin, and he smiled back, if less manic than the Mad Avatar. "You make for a poor debt collector, I would say friends suit us better."
“Friends?” Juulet arched a brow. “You mean that? Awww.” Her cheek smushed against the spear she clutched closely, exaggerated how endeared she was. “Sentimental! And with that, the poor folks trapped way over there hardly matter, even less so now that I totally dismissed them.” A smug grin took the more foxy smile she once had. “We're not friends. We're both at the top of the food chain and ambitious. People like us need a ton of trust to get even close to buddies, pal.”
Leon didn't look shocked, even the mention of the people back in San Sameno did little to curb his expression. No, for all the words Juulet threw at him, he kept smiling like he didn't believe her.
The mad avatar leaned forward, practically bent over, for reasons she hardly knew why. It felt comfortable, perhaps? Her purple pupils remained locked onto her catch, though. “I do have a proposition. One that can serve as a trust exercise. One that will serve YOU more than any sort of scraps you'd get for sucking up to doggy and whatever baby-shit ideas you got for your inevitable rise to power. M'hm. Oh yeah. Young buck like you.” She clicked her tongue a couple of times, shook her head and bit her lip with a single molar. “Just the job for you. Perfect fit. Strong, promising AND I can guilt you!”
The performer leant back lay on the roof and harnessed the midday sun. The proposition amused him. "A trust exercise that benefits me? Sure, lay it out for me, what would you need to guilt me into?"
“Oh, just an expedition somewhere that even the legends of old avoided like the plague.” Juulet rotated her head along with a roll of her eyes as she laid it on Leon. “Wildly dangerous. Outrageously exciting. So few people to count on.” Her features folded into a big frown with shivering lips like she was about to "have a cry"'. “Far more rewarding than pulling a moral victory in this-” she waved her hand indifferently toward the general direction of Palapar's inner territory. “place thing.” then came a smirk. “A means to mark the world in a way never before seen.”
"Danger, struggle, risking one's life, that's nothing new anymore. But the means to mark the world? That's new." Leon turned to Juulet with a raised eyebrow. His eyes were attentive and intensely interested. "You went out of your way to fetch me out of that 'place thing' and wish to grant me this kind of power, yet you don't trust me. Why? Why did you want me?"
Juulet stared at Leon as if he had gone mad. Amusingly, this meant her own gaze widened to the usual 'crazy' look. “Uhhh, because you're strong? And your ego can't possibly resist it?” She nudged her head toward his mask. “You call yourself the fucking 'Sun King' and had to make a big light show after-” she went out of her way to coil her arm around her spear to keep stable, just so she could air quote. “'liberating' the Yanii elite school of Yanii elites. You're, like, either gonna be the sun or get cooked in a spectacularly stupid way.”
Again, she leaned in, but this time her face was oh so close to his. “I don't know about you, but I like to prop up by potential friends when I become the top bitch I'm meant to be. And with Ol' Hugo and the Seppuku emperor-man outta the canvas, now's the fuckin' time.” At this point her nose practically touched his. She reeked of spicy shrimp. “You in?”
The last time Juulet had her eyes this close to hers, she had almost killed him. Now, in the same manner, he found it hard to realise such fears. It was hard to fear a saviour.
"'Ol' Hugo' held the world in his palm. He was in the position to choose everything. And yet, wars still happened, children went without food, and the cycle of suffering that afflicts the beauty of man continued under his ever-watchful gaze and his all-powerful hand." Leon smiled back at Juulet, not kind or humbled like before, but reeking of an ambition that overwhelmed the senses more than any spicy shrimp. "I don't plan to make the same mistake when I take that seat and I can't risk others choosing for me, certainly not that monster back there. I'm in."
Juulet got what she wanted to hear. There was no need to elaborate or goad any further, even if the prospect of flaring up the sun remained all too tempting. Once again, she fell into the habit of producing something out of nowhere, this time an envelope. It had nothing abnormal that stuck out other than the seal bearing the horns of a ram.
“Get this posted by tomorrow. This is the only spare I've managed to dig out.” she demanded, her voice mellowing out.
Dear Honourable Prospect,
Has your life taken a turn? Do you seek thrills you have long since desensitized yourself to? Or perhaps you wish to start anew?
Whatever your creed may be, one of Sipenta's mythical and lost marvels beckons the ambitious, curious and desperate alike. Deep in the frigid tundras lies the oldest gem of this world.
An expedition like none other in history to unearth a legend that can make dreams into tangible reality. A chance for a legacy. A chance for a new beginning. A new era.
The Abyssal Forge awaits you.
Signature: ______________x
Please send this letter through your local post office.
Leon accepted the invitation without much fuss. He poured over the contents of the letter and even laughed at its light-hearted tone before tucking it into a pocket.
"You know Juulet, when I was in the Forked Tower, I met a woman." He looked out to the distance and just admired the view of Palapar in the absence of personal struggle or responsibility. "Her name was Juliette and she was a teacher at Ersand'Enise."
He turned to Juulet. "I know you are the Avatar of V..."
Leon felt a pulse in his chest. Juulet was immobile one second and then in the full-motion of shoving him away with one palm the next. All that was needed was a few inches and he was once again falling. A portal right to ... Somewhere. Meatu, maybe? It was the countryside and the nearby wooden signs would confirm his place in Constantia. The fall wasn't too high either.
“Tsk.” Juulet grimaced before unleashing a loud sigh. “Even the sun should know its place.”
Palapar wasn't too bad for a "place thing". She putted around a little longer. The shrimp was exquisite.
She had the courtesy to let him land on his butt this time, although two portals in short succession made him a little queasy. He sat up trying to figure out where he was but couldn't quite decide on a place. It was no matter, he had no issues getting a meal, bed, and finding a post box from here.
He took the envelope out of his pocket and smiled. This 'Juliette' woman must have struck a nerve. He didn't think that she would react that harshly hearing about her sister. Maybe this Juliette person was someone more. He would get through to her at some point.
