'You reap what you sow' is a phrase that exists purely in the minds of downtrodden men. For history rarely ever reflects such things.
The man woke up to the first rays of sunlight creeping in through the curtains. The birdsong was summoning him to begin the day. After a routine groan, he turned over toward the other side of the bed to caress his wife’s hip. His hand met nothing but the cold bottom sheet. He properly opened his eyes to confirm that the bed was empty aside from himself. The man looked around in panic for a moment before the faint smell of freshly cooked porridge met his nose. Oh right, she needed to feed the beast. They used to wake up together; he missed that. He sat up out of bed and let out another groan, this one was not routine.
The man had always imagined something greater for his life. He was the long-forgotten, oldest bastard of King Rouis, or at least that's what his mother told him. While he accepted long ago that it wouldn’t result in any kind of inheritance or recognition, he always liked to imagine that something more would come of his life if he had king’s blood pumping through his veins. But that never happened. Instead of wielding a sword and conquering lands for Perrence, he was wielding a hoe and tilling them.
Stepping into the kitchen space, he could see his wife at the stove stirring breakfast and the demon sitting at the dining table staring at him. It was his wife that wanted a child. He wanted to wait, he wanted the time to do… well, something else before that. But accidents happen and, before he knew it, he had a very happy and very pregnant wife on his hands. What could he really say against it? Get rid of it? He wasn’t a monster and he loved the woman. But if he knew it was going to turn out like this, he would have been more insistent.
His wife practically pirouetted on the spot with a hot pot of porridge. She was first to serve their son, dotting on him with a freshly poured bowl. The boy looked about four years old now and returned to staring at the man after thanking his mother. Those staring eyes were the same ones the man met when he was born a week ago.
The priestess called it a miracle of Oraff. She said that the baby may have been stillborn if it wasn’t for the god's blessing. His wife was over the moon with the news. But the man wasn’t so sure. His wife hadn’t seen the baby staring at her the second it greeted fresh air, it was unsettling more than it was blessed. On top of the baby’s rapid growth and the dull glare it had come out of the womb with, it was also deformed. Its ears were pointy and its skin was a sickly, pale green that only darkened as the days had passed.
They had bought a wardrobe full of baby clothes in preparation for the day. But in a matter of 48 hours, he had outgrown them. They needed to find quick replacements. They asked neighbours, asked tailors in town, and then begged the same neighbours again. They were even forced to barter with some travelling Mycormish fences. The yasoi vagrants had jumped the border to find a wealthier market for their stolen goods and shit they dredged from the bogs. There was a brown coat in their inventory, it was filthy and tattered, but at least it was child-sized.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Yes?”
“When do you think the war will start?”
The man was taken aback by the question.
“Who’s been talking to you about that?”
“People.”
“Well… tell those ‘people’ to keep their words to themselves.”
They continued to their meal.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Yes, Vert?”
“I think we should go to the casino and I think we should play blackjack.”
Amina stands at 5’9” with a slim build. She has a degree of lean muscle that suggests she is physically active but no express effort at building strength. Her dark brown hair is cut at the shoulders and is often messy but not exceptionally so.
Amina is incredibly light on her feet and often moves in unusually fluid movements. They aren’t languid by any means, but are absent of impulse and can seem weightless. In spite of intense dedication to meditation and religious study, she often holds a cheerful demeanour outside of such things.
She typically wears loose and breathable outfits with light colours favoured. They offer little in the way of protection themselves but allow for ease of movement. Most apparel has been provided to her through the Monastery of Dreamers and looks nice but not overly expensive. Around her neck hangs a pendant of a golden sparrow that she received for her 16th birthday, it is the one piece of her old home she carries with her.
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Amina is a friendly and generally welcoming person. She is extroverted but has a habit of quickly retreating to remote places for alone time.
B A C K S T O R Y
From the first moment they could remember, the children of the Mattar noble house knew that they were in competition with each other. They lived a life of splendour and wealth, but only one of them would be chosen as heir and train under their father. Given the example of their aunties and uncles, they knew that only one of them would keep the lifestyle they knew growing up while the others would fade to obscurity in the shadow of the chosen one.
Saladin Mattar is a high-ranking board member of the Al Maham mining corporation operating in the Lawless Continent. He had received this position from his father who had received the position from his father before him. The company’s stronghold and headquarters lie in Saldoun so he would often be away working in the Lawless Continent for months at a time. On the rare occasion he would travel back to Carmaduur, they would have regular family outings. While they were pleasant, scrutinising eyes always felt present.
The Mattar household lies two hours' walk north of Carmaron on the other side of the river. It is a lavish estate beside the ocean lake built from the extraordinary wealth the companies provide. The food was delivered and prepared by an in-house chef, the children of the household were educated by selected tutors, and nannies raised them due to their mother’s penchant for social events and luxury. The travel time to Carmaron didn’t entirely restrict the children from socialising, but they were entirely provided for at the estate so they saw little need to make the trip. Often they would spend weeks at a time in the estate or with their few neighbours and kept few friends.
Amina Mattar - Current age 22 Amir Mattar - Current age 20 Fadi Mattar - Current age 18 Marisa Mattar - Current age 17 Furat Mattar - Current age 15
Amina Mattar was the eldest of five siblings. There was comfort provided in the fact that, if she simply focused on her studies, she would be chosen as heiress based on her age. She had been content and confident in this up until she was 17, one year from being chosen.
Fadi had emerged as an academic prodigy around his 13th birthday; this threatened her position greatly. In matters of finance, mathematics, and science, he had already surpassed Amir and was reaching Amina’s level at such a young age. There was no doubt in her mind that Fadi would become the heir.
What she had spent her entire life building towards felt like it was slipping out of her grasp. Much like the other siblings, this was the one thing her life was pulling her towards, she couldn’t lose it. In the throws of bitter jealousy and fear of losing what she saw as her birthright, she had decided to poison Fadi. The preparations were made a week before their father was due back from Saldoun. A new assistant chef would add Blackwisp seeds to his dinner and the boy would pass peacefully in his sleep.
On the eve of the assassination attempt, Amina sat beside Fadi’s bedside watching him sleep. She didn’t know what brought her to sit there, but she just wanted to look at him one last time. In the waking world, she could barely bring herself to look at him in the past few months. He was the monster that sought to tear her future away.
But looking at him then, he was no monster. He was her little brother. The boy she had grown up with for most of her life. They had swum together by the lake countless times. She had taught him to swim. What had brought her heart to be so poisonous that she would even consider ending his life? It was clear to her that she was the monster.
She left his room disgusted with herself. Walking through the house to her room, her head spun. The walls of this place once held the feeling of greatness, a prestige she would inherit on her greatness and merit. Now they were like a vice on her mind, the jaws of a beast that would eat her entirely if she didn’t escape.
That very night, she cancelled the assassination plot and left for Carmaron.
She meets the Dreamers the next day. They preached of an insidious blight that threatened to consume Carmaduur. The companies chased a vain prosperity in the Lawless Continent without knowing its consequences and society had been taken in its promises lined with greed. Amina listened because she had felt it herself.
Amina spent the next five years of her life at a Dreamer monastery in the mountains near Kafzabad. She studied their texts, participated in meditation and martial arts, and consumed the Breath of Dreams to grasp divine visions. During moving meditation, the commune moved as one, with many people moving in harmony toward one goal. She realised her folly in the warm embrace of community, she had only ever been living for herself. Sparing Fadi at the cost of her own ambition, dedicating her life to the monastery, these were the happiest times she had ever known.
In her fifth year, she inhaled the Breath of Dreams and a vision came to her. She saw Carmaduur crumbling as it was swallowed by a darkness that had come from the Lawless Continent. Much like memories from any other dream, details were lacking, but she knew what she saw. It was the end of life as they knew it.
When she came to, the monastery elders told her that she had shared the founder’s dream and there was little more she could do to serve the faith there. They ordered her to travel outward and gave her a letter. It was a letter for admission to the Arnmange City Academy.
Despite the poor terms she had left on, Amina had one stop before she left Carmaduur: her family home. It had been five years since she had seen the place and she was starting to feel homesick in spite of it all.
However, walking through Carmaron on the way to her family home, she picked up on the events that took place in her absence. Fadi had died in a household accident and Amir had been chosen as the heir to their father.
There was nothing left for her in that place.
Amina left for Armange City immediately.
S T R E N G T H S
Friendly - Amina is quick to make friends from all different walks of life. Whether these are people you would want to be friends with is another matter.
Martial artist - She is incredibly dexterous and nimble resulting from martial practice.
Disciplined - She has a strong grasp over controlling her temptations and fears due to her teachings at the monastery. This doesn’t mean she is an unfeeling person, she will still go out, drink with everyone else, and have a good time. But it does show when needed.
F L A W S
Follower - Amina has little faith in her judgement and decisions. She will often need to consult scripture.
Not Worldly - She has had little experience with deception or people with ulterior motives. She can often fall victim to a lie or a scam.
Broke - Despite growing up very wealthy, she doesn’t have any financial support from her family house. This also means she doesn’t know the concept of pinching pennies. Her talents let her scrape by, but she never seems to be able to save a significant sum of cash.
A T T R I B U T E S
C L A S S
Some where between Monk and Cleric. Probably most resembling Way of Mercy Monk.
P R O F E S S I O N
Amina is a promising acolyte for the Dreamers of Carmaduur.
A B I L I T I E S
Visions - By inducing herself into a semi-conscious state via the Breath of Dreams, Amina is able to see ‘prophetic’ visions. However, they are often cryptic and difficult to understand.
Nimble - Amina can dodge better than most people, she can climb better than most people, and so on.
Medicine - Amina has a grasp of medicine and healing. It is nothing so quick as to see use in a combat scenario, but she can attempt first aid or make medicines during downtime.
E Q U I P M E N T
A hookah & Breath of Dreams mixture - The Breath of Dream is a liquid mixture that, when evaporated and inhaled through the lungs, will put a Dreamer in the state of seeing visions. Amina does not know the chemical makeup of this mixture and hasn’t asked. She only has a limited supply and it is rare to have access to some outside of Carmaduur but not impossible.
A bo staff - A bo staff made from sturdy but light wood.
Basic medical supplies - A small side pouch filled with bandages and basic medical herbs.
An embarrassingly light coin pouch - There’s about three cents in here.
N E N
I would like to play out the character a little more before deciding. But I am leaning toward Transmuter given that opens her up to Enhancement and Conjuration techniques as well.
N O T E S
Saladin Mattar - Her father and a high-rank board member of the Al Maham mining company.
Amir Mattar - Her younger brother, in tutorship under her father to become the family heir.
Nuwaira Adel - Her favourite elder at the monastery and one of the youngest at 46. Filled something of a motherly role during her time there but neither would admit it.
Amina stands at 5’9” with a slim build. She has a degree of lean muscle that suggests she is physically active but no express effort at building strength. Her dark brown hair is cut at the shoulders and is often messy but not exceptionally so.
Amina is incredibly light on her feet and often moves in unusually fluid movements. They aren’t languid by any means, but are absent of impulse and can seem weightless. In spite of intense dedication to meditation and religious study, she often holds a cheerful demeanour outside of such things.
She typically wears loose and breathable outfits with light colours favoured. They offer little in the way of protection themselves but allow for ease of movement. Most apparel has been provided to her through the Monastery of Dreamers and looks nice but not overly expensive. Around her neck hangs a pendant of a golden sparrow that she received for her 16th birthday, it is the one piece of her old home she carries with her.
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Amina is a friendly and generally welcoming person. She is extroverted but has a habit of quickly retreating to remote places for alone time.
B A C K S T O R Y
From the first moment they could remember, the children of the Mattar noble house knew that they were in competition with each other. They lived a life of splendour and wealth, but only one of them would be chosen as heir and train under their father. Given the example of their aunties and uncles, they knew that only one of them would keep the lifestyle they knew growing up while the others would fade to obscurity in the shadow of the chosen one.
Saladin Mattar is a high-ranking board member of the Al Maham mining corporation operating in the Lawless Continent. He had received this position from his father who had received the position from his father before him. The company’s stronghold and headquarters lie in Saldoun so he would often be away working in the Lawless Continent for months at a time. On the rare occasion he would travel back to Carmaduur, they would have regular family outings. While they were pleasant, scrutinising eyes always felt present.
The Mattar household lies two hours' walk north of Carmaron on the other side of the river. It is a lavish estate beside the ocean lake built from the extraordinary wealth the companies provide. The food was delivered and prepared by an in-house chef, the children of the household were educated by selected tutors, and nannies raised them due to their mother’s penchant for social events and luxury. The travel time to Carmaron didn’t entirely restrict the children from socialising, but they were entirely provided for at the estate so they saw little need to make the trip. Often they would spend weeks at a time in the estate or with their few neighbours and kept few friends.
Amina Mattar - Current age 22 Amir Mattar - Current age 20 Fadi Mattar - Current age 18 Marisa Mattar - Current age 17 Furat Mattar - Current age 15
Amina Mattar was the eldest of five siblings. There was comfort provided in the fact that, if she simply focused on her studies, she would be chosen as heiress based on her age. She had been content and confident in this up until she was 17, one year from being chosen.
Fadi had emerged as an academic prodigy around his 13th birthday; this threatened her position greatly. In matters of finance, mathematics, and science, he had already surpassed Amir and was reaching Amina’s level at such a young age. There was no doubt in her mind that Fadi would become the heir.
What she had spent her entire life building towards felt like it was slipping out of her grasp. Much like the other siblings, this was the one thing her life was pulling her towards, she couldn’t lose it. In the throws of bitter jealousy and fear of losing what she saw as her birthright, she had decided to poison Fadi. The preparations were made a week before their father was due back from Saldoun. A new assistant chef would add Blackwisp seeds to his dinner and the boy would pass peacefully in his sleep.
On the eve of the assassination attempt, Amina sat beside Fadi’s bedside watching him sleep. She didn’t know what brought her to sit there, but she just wanted to look at him one last time. In the waking world, she could barely bring herself to look at him in the past few months. He was the monster that sought to tear her future away.
But looking at him then, he was no monster. He was her little brother. The boy she had grown up with for most of her life. They had swum together by the lake countless times. She had taught him to swim. What had brought her heart to be so poisonous that she would even consider ending his life? It was clear to her that she was the monster.
She left his room disgusted with herself. Walking through the house to her room, her head spun. The walls of this place once held the feeling of greatness, a prestige she would inherit on her greatness and merit. Now they were like a vice on her mind, the jaws of a beast that would eat her entirely if she didn’t escape.
That very night, she cancelled the assassination plot and left for Carmaron.
She meets the Dreamers the next day. They preached of an insidious blight that threatened to consume Carmaduur. The companies chased a vain prosperity in the Lawless Continent without knowing its consequences and society had been taken in its promises lined with greed. Amina listened because she had felt it herself.
Amina spent the next five years of her life at a Dreamer monastery in the mountains near Kafzabad. She studied their texts, participated in meditation and martial arts, and consumed the Breath of Dreams to grasp divine visions. During moving meditation, the commune moved as one, with many people moving in harmony toward one goal. She realised her folly in the warm embrace of community, she had only ever been living for herself. Sparing Fadi at the cost of her own ambition, dedicating her life to the monastery, these were the happiest times she had ever known.
In her fifth year, she inhaled the Breath of Dreams and a vision came to her. She saw Carmaduur crumbling as it was swallowed by a darkness that had come from the Lawless Continent. Much like memories from any other dream, details were lacking, but she knew what she saw. It was the end of life as they knew it.
When she came to, the monastery elders told her that she had shared the founder’s dream and there was little more she could do to serve the faith there. They ordered her to travel outward and gave her a letter. It was a letter for admission to the Arnmange City Academy.
Despite the poor terms she had left on, Amina had one stop before she left Carmaduur: her family home. It had been five years since she had seen the place and she was starting to feel homesick in spite of it all.
However, walking through Carmaron on the way to her family home, she picked up on the events that took place in her absence. Fadi had died in a household accident and Amir had been chosen as the heir to their father.
There was nothing left for her in that place.
Amina left for Armange City immediately.
S T R E N G T H S
Friendly - Amina is quick to make friends from all different walks of life. Whether these are people you would want to be friends with is another matter.
Martial artist - She is incredibly dexterous and nimble resulting from martial practice.
Disciplined - She has a strong grasp over controlling her temptations and fears due to her teachings at the monastery. This doesn’t mean she is an unfeeling person, she will still go out, drink with everyone else, and have a good time. But it does show when needed.
F L A W S
Follower - Amina has little faith in her judgement and decisions. She will often need to consult scripture.
Not Worldly - She has had little experience with deception or people with ulterior motives. She can often fall victim to a lie or a scam.
Broke - Despite growing up very wealthy, she doesn’t have any financial support from her family house. This also means she doesn’t know the concept of pinching pennies. Her talents let her scrape by, but she never seems to be able to save a significant sum of cash.
A T T R I B U T E S
C L A S S
Some where between Monk and Cleric. Probably most resembling Way of Mercy Monk.
P R O F E S S I O N
Amina is a promising acolyte for the Dreamers of Carmaduur.
A B I L I T I E S
Visions - By inducing herself into a semi-conscious state via the Breath of Dreams, Amina is able to see ‘prophetic’ visions. However, they are often cryptic and difficult to understand.
Nimble - Amina can dodge better than most people, she can climb better than most people, and so on.
Medicine - Amina has a grasp of medicine and healing. It is nothing so quick as to see use in a combat scenario, but she can attempt first aid or make medicines during downtime.
E Q U I P M E N T
A hookah & Breath of Dreams mixture - The Breath of Dream is a liquid mixture that, when evaporated and inhaled through the lungs, will put a Dreamer in the state of seeing visions. Amina does not know the chemical makeup of this mixture and hasn’t asked. She only has a limited supply and it is rare to have access to some outside of Carmaduur but not impossible.
Basic medical supplies - A small side pouch filled with bandages and basic medical herbs.
An embarrassingly light coin pouch - There’s about three cents in here.
N E N
I would like to play out the character a little more before deciding. But I am leaning toward Transmuter given that opens her up to Enhancement and Conjuration techniques as well.
N O T E S
Saladin Mattar - Her father and a high-rank board member of the Al Maham mining company.
Amir Mattar - Her younger brother, in tutorship under her father to become the family heir.
Nuwaira Adel - Her favourite elder at the monastery and one of the youngest at 46. Filled something of a motherly role during her time there but neither would admit it.
Hey all, I was also someone who helped develop the setting and will be jumping into this as a co-GM. I'll probably have a character sheet out within the next few days. I'm excited to see what people come up with!
Event: Abyssal Forge | Location: A Place Time Forgot | Including: Juulet @YummyYummy & Neki @Force and Fury
The first trio awoke in a spacious room. It was warehouse-sized, in fact, it seemed to have been a warehouse at some point. Leon had been lying on the floor a good ten metres from the crate holding the talking box. A floor full of dust with no footprints surrounding him, as if he had just been dumped there. Kaureerah was in a broken tank surrounded by multiple layers of rust and other muck.
The first thing Leon felt was absence. A dull, cold feeling in his chest told him that the magic he took such comfort in had fled him. He opened his eyes to find the surroundings as miserable as his state of being. He sat up with a labored groan and looked over to Juulet, only a faint smile could crack through.
Juulet was sitting before the crate, already awake though she seemed to be just coming to. Her digits were pressed on her forehead and temple. “Good morning, chickpeas.” she said with a groan, her voice gravelly from the excessive grogginess. She had already opened the capsule. “Careful, thing’s nasty.”
The lanterns were the only sources of light and left a portion of the building’s interior dimly lit. There were many pipes on the walls and ceilings, a few scaffoldings having rusted to nothing with only pieces of remaining in the form of protruding, jagged bars of rusted metal.
There were no windows, but two giant holes in the wall gave a very clear view of the city. They were in some sort of industrial area with countless similar warehouses and an inordinate amount of giant fissures which tore the ground. The dim light in the clouded sky did little to illuminate more than the outline of these conspicuous features.
The radio buzzed again.
"Not my favourite wake-up. Your benefactors certainly have… interesting delivery methods." He called, his tone speaking of a familiarity to the Mad Avatar, a friendship? Slowly, he helped himself to his feet, scattering the dust around him and began walking over to Juulet. "Is your magic kaput too?" A truly pathetic sputter of light emitted from his hand to emphasize the point, he winced somewhat at the effort.
“Yeah.” Juulet answered Leon and stayed seated by the crate, her spear leaned over her shoulder as her idle hand fidgeted with one-half of the opened capsule-egg.
He looked down for the egg-like capsule and noticed that two were laying there instead. He furrowed his brow and checked to confirm that Juulet already had hers. Chickpeas. He knelt down and pick up the remaining two capsules in either hand then looked around. There was someone else here who had escaped his notice.
That didn't last for long. "Rub-a-dub-dub," came a voice from the direction of what had been... perhaps an industrial vat at some point, "three schlubs in a tub, and who do yoo theenk they bee?" A pale arm draped over the edge of the awful basin and the tatters of a curtain pulled back. "It's stumpy, a fish-bitch, and a sparkly sun boy, and equally fucked, all three!"
Kaureerah's hair hung like long threadbare black curtains down the sides of her face, over her shoulders, and over the edge of the vat. She seemed to be scrubbing with invisible water as she hummed. With a single languidly smooth motion, she heaved herself from the basin and took an exaggerated step out. "Hola, compadres," she cooed, with a twinkle-fingered wave and a little pose. She seemed somewhat... unsteady. She glanced around their surroundings and nodded, businesslike. "Dunno if it'll be the next beeg theeng in toorism," she thought aloud, framing a landscape picture through one of the holes in the wall and making a little clicking sound with her tongue. "Joory's steell out."
The eeaiko spun abruptly on her heel. "Unless yoo two know sometheeng feesh-girl dausn't." She pursed her lips, tilting her head as she wandered in their general direction. "Actoolly, Neki don' care," she blurted as she came to a stop in front of Leon, hand outstretched. "Hit me with the mediceene, doc. Give eet too me straight. How long have I got?"
“Although ...” Juulet continued to address Leon. The stumpy-Yasoi wiggled her finger and pointed toward a weathered bucket nearby. With visible strain, she was able to lift it, only to toss it toward the one that had addressed her as 'stumpy'. She missed, terribly, with the throw barely strong enough to go a few meters away. “The pill helps.”
The longer they went without taking the pick-me-up, the more the ants were getting intense on their limbs. Not enough to be debilitating, but it threatened an outcome just like the last memory they've had before ending up here. “I know just as much as you do, fucko.” a dull stare was shot the fish's way. “Big question is, why're YOU here?” she leaned closer, eyes narrowed into an intense squint.
The eeaiko's hand darted forward and snatched the pill from Leon's palm. She crammed it into her mouth and swallowed it. "Thanks, beeg guy," she chirped. "Always there too lend e hand!" She shivered with... was it delight or something else? "Was just starting too teengle reelly nice, too."
Kaureerah waited a good few seconds before responding to Juulet. "Yoo are e very bed liar." She grinned and looked at the yasoi almost... fondly. "But Neki's sure yoo got other talents. She's so proud she just wanna peench your lil' cheeks." The eeaiko stopped just out of arms' reach and leaned forward, as if to pat Juulet on the top of the head. "Neki's here because she's a fucking eedeeot, just like you or..." She pivoted, in that same abrupt manner, to regard Leon, "Well, at least him." Her voice was about as condescendingly earnest as she could make it, until her smile fell away and she shrugged. "Reelly, she was joost curious."
It was all so sudden that the performer froze like a deer in the headlights, stage fright. Almost every time he had been surprised by the girl's appearance, he had smiled widely and honestly. It wasn't the case now. He lingered in the moment just watching with his arms to his sides, hands barely clinging to the capsule. It took very little for the eeaiko to snatch the pill out of his hand.
What played at him more? The guilt that he had been caught showing an alliance with Juulet, the happiness of seeing Kaureerah again after months of travelling the continents, or the pain that he knew something was wrong with her, very wrong.
He had seen it before, Dory coming back from the Lorenthine Queen with her soul wrenched from her being. The missions of Ersand'Enise were nothing more than a means to enhance the strong and bury those who didn't grasp the pinnacle. He had hoped Kaureerah would be fine. But through all the theatrics, or perhaps because of them, he knew she wasn't. His fingers went loose on his capsule and dropped it still in some disbelief, he stumbled the first few steps, then he went to hug her.
Neki let him put his arms around her. She was more focused on the capsule. It would be a shame to let a thing fall and be broken when it still had a purpose to serve. That purpose, supposedly, was to protect them, or so the voice of another person - a queer-sounding voice - had announced. Did she trust that voice? Well, it didn't much matter. Its bearer knew what was happening to them while she didn't, that told her that he was more powerful. There was no point fighting the powerful, but she was too proud to snivel, so she would simply be pushed along until she found something objectionable.
Leon was not objectionable. He was a boy she had slept with, but she'd slept with many boys, in truth. His open arms suggested that he cared about her but, really, he cared more about allaying his emotional anguish. "Aulright, beeg guy," she mumbled, rolling her eyes, "Let's keep thees professional. There's saumone else wautcheng, after aull." Was there, though, or was that third party in cahoots with Leon and Juulet? She knew what she'd heard. She didn't care to hear more. They would do what they would do. She would do what she would do. Maybe she would die. Maybe she could kill Juulet. No, someone like that had fifty layers of protection against any deliberate effort that Neki would be capable of.
Juulet was a downright voyeur in this reunion. In fact, she sarcastically commented. “Oh, don't mind me, love. I'm into it.” with a shit-eating smirk on her face. She absorbed every little bit of body language these two were expressing - one more tender, the other reminding her of a girl with an increasing ick-factor. The yasoi had already concluded that they'd had at least a fling.
Neki managed to save the pill and let it down gently. She mumbled once more into Leon's shoulder. "Did you want it delivered up the other end instead?"
The final comment from the fish-girl confirmed it, in a way, along with prompting a loud snort from Juulet. “Fuckin' prats.” she mumbled too, her Enthish coming out a little.
It wasn't right. What he had sought warmth in had rung so hollow. Who was this woman he had in his arms? Was it still the Kaureerah who loved him or someone else just wearing her face? The thought tore at him like he had never experienced before.
Raising his head, he was once more reminded of Juulet's presence. He had rushed to action from emotion and he knew the Mad Avatar would be taking notes. Perhaps it was best to keep it professional, he needed to forget about it all, there were bigger things at play.
There was a visible shift in Leon's posture. Despite the ants growing more vicious at his neglect of the pill, he stood more confidently. He released the hug and plucked the pill from Neki's hand, swallowing it. "Maybe next time. We have to keep it professional after all." He gave an undoubtedly performative wink and smile before turning his attention away to Juulet.
The Mad Avatar’s violet eyes left the strange display and turned to the box again, Leon joined her in that. First, she poked it. Nothing. “Do you think it can hear us?”
“Bzzzzt. I can, in fact, hear you. I can even see you. To an extent.”
Juulet just flinched and nearly fell back. “Fuck!” her crutch had fallen on her stomach too. She took a little bit to gather herself, with her magic being far less than what she was used to.
A speaking box was strange, one that you could talk back even more so. But Leon had seen plenty of stranger things since Ersand'Enise. This wasn't too hard to accept, even if he had no chance of understanding how it worked.
He took his turn to speak. "And what do you call yourself, talking box?"
“Don Cojones will do.”
Juulet scowled. “You're alive?! You fuckin' rat.” she was quick to get back up and seemed about ready to smash the box with her crutch. “I'm not gonna get fucked over by some wannabe collector testicle man.”
“All of you sought the Forge, I provided a means of entering with relative safety. You would all be dead if it weren't for all these preparations I've put in place. Legends of history stood no chance, neither would you. Until now.”
Yvain's voice rang through the box. "May I assume that these boxes are connected to each other? If so, how many are there?"
"Yvain!? They put you in this box too!?"
"From where I'm standing you are the one inside the box, in fact."
“You are split into three groups with a communication device for each. You will find another one at the Fountain Square - Your next destination. There are older models spread throughout the city from previous endeavors.”
“The capsules you've opened will allow you to capture a frequency should you be within a certain range of a radio. This is contingent on the device's condition, of course.”
“Limit your exchanges to relevant and useful information.”
Whoever was speaking through that sirrahi-tech box wanted to be acknowledged. He wanted them to ask him questions. Neki smiled, listening to others - presumably in different locations - give him their trust, even if grudgingly, and give him more power.
Seviin spoke. "I trust that you will help us, but what is it that you want us to do? What do you consider a victory?"
“Immediately to the point that truly matters. Good.”
“Our "Victory" is gaining access to the Abyssal Forge. To do so, the gates of the tower must be opened. Instructions regarding that will be given once you've reached the Fountain Square. That is what I want you to do. I have placed you all near the main arteries of this dead city, all of which should lead you to your first destination. Do not waste too much time. When even death has abandoned this place, you would do well to avoid what can possibly be lurking in the fog.”
"Why the wild goose hunt, Mr Shithead Voice? If you can be placing us in random spot in this shitpile city, why not just go yourself? You are lazy fat man?"
Leon chuckled lightly at the radio, he couldn't mistake that voice for anyone else. Hearing Yvain and Yuli over the radio helped the tension in his shoulders.
Then, Yuli spoke and, from the eeaiko came a high-pitched giggle. "Good too heer you heer, blaundee," she called out. "Well, maybe bad seence this is an auful place, but we should try to meet soon."
With that, Neki spun on a heel and began to search for a way out. "There's e place wee're supposed too go, eesn't there?"
Juulet calmed herself when she heard other voices, especially as she heard Seviin's. A Tarlonese, here? This was going to make things difficult. Their goal was clearly established and the fish was having the right idea in spite of her spastic behaviour. “I saw a few rounds out there.” she gestured her crutch toward the big hole on the wall.
“Entry into the Forge is far too demanding and contrived of a task to be performed by one individual. Especially with the noxious air you are all feeling right now. Even someone as prepared as I am cannot withstand its effects for long. Neither the Ironshaper nor the Pharaoh of Zaqhoria succeeded in pushing through, I'm not foolish enough to see myself as any more competent. What I do have, however, is centuries of accumulated knowledge and the culmination of years of preparation. And you will be assisting me.”
“Wait.” she ordered, her demeanour stiffer and her violet glare focused on the box. “What's the real deal? You've got pills for the 'air'. What kind of shit can make a fucko like you so pussified as to make me hop through it instead.”
“The pills are a means to keep you alive, and to keep you in line.”
While the chatter continued to come through the box, Leon fetched a lantern. He normally wouldn't miss the chance to light up the place on his own, but he felt he would need every bit of energy he was gathering. It was pouring into him with surprising ease, faster than normal actually.
Turning his attention elsewhere, he noticed a small, smooth-looking string stretching out from behind the talking box. He followed it along to a nearby the string was protruding from.
“Ghosts wander the streets and take all lives they cross paths with. Those unable to move on scour the shadows to add more to their ranks. And the very fog itself corrupts both mind and body. Stay prudent, for the sake of your colleagu-”
The radio suddenly cut out with a sharp noise. A surprised-looking Leon could be seen squatted some distance away with the loose string in his hand. He rushed to shove it back into the wall and restore the box's mystical powers.
"I agree with Neki." He addressed the others with a calm smile. "We have a place to be and I'm not sure these pills will last us forever. We should be off."
He stood and walked back to Juulet, he considered her situation. She had depended on magic for much of her mobility, but her frail form without it seemed... ill-equipped. "There's no harm in asking for help if you need it." He spoke in a quieter voice but not a secretive one. "The ground seems uneven and the air doesn't seem made for dancing."
Juulet turned her head toward Leon and stared at him. Not a glare, but it was intense. Wide eyes, the usual crazy in them, and a clear sentiment of 'Don't do that again' oozing out of them. “Keep an eye on your spazzoid of a friend instead of me. It may save both our skins.” her eyes began shifting back to the radio.
Leon held her gaze. The glares of intimidation felt lesser when the threat of immediate harm didn't back them. At this moment, she wasn't a god looking to smite down those who gave her mockery, she was a moody teenager upset about teasing. And he was sick of it. He was sick of his attempts at kindness being met with ice from those around him.
"Once we get out of here and magic is working fine, the shoe will be back on the other foot and you can do whatever you wish under Dami's light." He tried to deliver it in a friendly tone, but the truth bled through and his annoyance was unmistakable. "Until that time, when you need help, you ask. We help each other." The final words were definitive and conclusive.
He was met with a petulant snarl. One lacking bite. Although those crutches seemed pretty solid. No witty retort, or even one of pure pettiness. Just grumbling. Something about respect and fucko's.
He didn't linger on her too much after that. He spun on his heel to join Kaureerah at the warehouse exit.
Juulet’s moodiness was shifted once she heard familiar voices draw and not-so-good news drawing her back to the radio.
"Could I ask what is meant by keeping us in line?"
“Firstly, it keeps you alive in this city. You can wield some of your magic and will not keel over after prolonged exposure. Secondly, you are now bound to one another. Should one of you die, one or more of you will perish as well. Murder will be met with your numbers halved as punishment. I apologize for these cruel circumstances, but experience has taught me that the carrot is not enough as an incentive. Attempt to leave and you will meet the same fate.”
"Can such a convenient magic really exist? Even a humble merchant like myself can alter their voice, make shit up as they go, and claim to hold all the cards.
If you want us to believe in your expertise and sincerity, how about offering up some practical advice: how to protect ourselves against these 'ghosts' of yours? And this mysterious fog? Show some goodwill, and maybe we'll act favorably."
“In a world where men believing themselves as Gods utilize magic to reverse the inevitable and forge weapons capable of miracles, you find these seeds to be of a far-fetched nature? Interesting. You are free to test whether I tell the truth or not. You would not be the first.”
“Acting favorably is your only play. A humble merchant with no leverage other than potentially wasting yet another attempt is one that should know her place. That being said, your requests are sound. Ghosts are territorial and will seldom ever leave their territory. If you do encounter one, hiding and retreat are your best approaches. The fog, on the other hand, may sometimes be unavoidable. Without access to your full capacity, you will not be able to clear the clouds long enough before they close in on you. If you have an alternate path you can take, do it. If not, then push through it as fast as possible.”
Juulet chuckled mockingly. “Whoever cooked up this fucko squad is a real piece of work.” with an exasperated sigh, she engaged her entire body to try and stand. It was a difficult endeavour, but with her crutch on one hand and spear on the other, she managed to hop herself in semi-balance. “Let's just get to that fuckin' fountain. I'm already done with this shithole.”
Neki was standing in the doorway, whistling a little tune, but she stopped for a moment as Leon approached. Consciously, she started back up again, spun on a heel, and marched out in the lead. "I take first foor en haur, and then sun booy and then haupper." She glanced over her shoulder at the two of them, both untrusting and unbothered. "Time too eether die oor naut!"
It wasn't as if she hadn't heard everything. She just couldn't care about it. People who cared got hurt, like Leon. Like Juulet. Neki was stronger than either of them.
Leon looked at her as she stopped her whistling and wanted to ask what was wrong, but he was afraid of what the answer might be. It was better to leave it.
For whatever reason, her commanding the marching order made him chuckle. It was the type of thing she would say back in the Trials. The dour surroundings gave it grim context, but it still rang the echoes of a desperately sought familiarity. He smiled while getting in line behind her. "Take the lead, captain."
Kaureerah was at the head of this row of errant and lost ducklings. Juulet, in spite of her mightiest of efforts, consistently lagged behind. Not enough magic to carry herself, and spaghetti arms that had only ever been solicited with a healthy enhancement of flames or pure kinetic energy. The lantern she had hanging on her crutch didn't make balancing that much easier. Before long, she would already be huffing and puffing, needing to pace herself a little too often. “Hey now,” she said after a long inhale. “It's not like we've got a timer or anything.”
The main artery the radio spoke of was the road adjacent to the rotted metal fencing that delineated the long-dead factory's property. The road was made of some sort of stone, smooth if abundantly fissured. Many large and derelict buildings decorated the path they were to follow, most of which collapsed or mere ruins. They lucky to have avoided fog, but their luck could only go so far. As they moved further, they found themselves encountering more and more deep trenches. Big crevices in the road, some twice the width of it, though so far they always had some road to work with. Another thing they'd notice was the heavily rusted chassis, mostly on the side of the road. All had holes leading to the rotten insides that seemed to once have had seats, though they seemed a little small for them. They could even find a couple of wheels here and there, made of a rubbery substance.
Leon didn't seem as shocked by the surroundings as the others. He glanced at the city now set to ruinous decay, but his eyes simply rested and went to the next sight. It wasn't a familiarity to this place; it was an acceptance in the lack-there-of. He didn't understand it and he didn't put the stress of excessive theorising on his mind. His companions had already taken all the concern he had to give.
The performer was caught between the two women going at starkly different paces. Kaureerah was making headway with a steady and exaggeratedly adventurous march. Juulet, unsurprisingly, was struggling on the rough terrain without magics to aid her. Leon was torn between making sure the Mad Avatar didn't stumble into falling behind and keeping an eye on Kaureerah so she didn't charge ahead out of sight.
After a while, the hopping Juulet did find a pace that suited her, although it forced others to slow down. From there, she whistled to detract from the ominous sounds of the wind and the deafening silence of the dead city. “What do you think happened to this place?” she asked idly, her violet eyes taking in the unusually blocky architecture. The Hegelan inspiration became clearer as they progressed with what looked to be shops still in one, dusty piece. “I mean, I guess time does a thing, but what's with those big cracks? Kinda makes you wonder what'd do this.”
"I can't say I made a habit of stopping by many ruinous wastelands in my travels." For the first time, he looked at the deep trenches to figure out their maker. "Seems like the result of an impact. One that probably shook the world when it happened... That or a big snake."
“Or a pretty avatar, like yours truly.” Juulet flicked her hair in one suave motion. “I already hate this place. I was expecting, y'know, big bad ghoulies and making some cool ass plan with you.” Just as she said that, her crutch had hit a pebble, causing the mildest of annoyances which received a disproportionate amount of frustration and grunting. “Raaahhh! Instead I get hopping duty. Fuuuuuck.”
She was absorbed in her chattering and complaining. So much so that she'd be completely oblivious to the writings on the wall. Both Neki and Leon had taken notice that they were not alone.
For Neki it was something shifting in what used to be windows of the buildings they passed by, like shadows at the corner of her eyes. Except each time she focused, there was nothing and her drawing range was considerably reduced by the noxious air. All of it could be dismissed as paranoia or the stagnant winds. Until a deliberate sound of metal clanging was heard to her right. Something light had hit something, maybe a can had fallen. Dismissing it as a coincidence came with its challenges, however. Of all the times in the past centuries that something could have dropped dozens of meters away so happened to do so when they passed by?
She had tried to be nonchalant. Perhaps, if she simply believed in some divine destiny or ordination, as the others seemed to do, she might have a modicum of their power. She could've sworn it had worked before, until the island. Idly, as the shadows in windows and the alarming noises added up, she tried to draw, to have some form of magic.
She did not see the lichens on the bare freezing ground.
Leon, on the other hand, saw something. Not at first, it was the sort of silhouette that easily blended in the darkness and murky air. On the roof of a collapsed building was the form of a person; a big one. A mere shadow hidden in very thin fog and the darkness of the city. The dim lighting from the unrecognizable sky was to thank for this clue. The form just stood there, up high and unreachable to these once near-demigods. With smart use of luminescence, despite the capacity limit, he could discern more details: It had hands, palms facing back with the fingers spread. The shoulders were very broad and overall seemed burly. The large thing on the roof was trained toward their general direction. Minor details, of course, to the unsettling realization the sunblessed was about to make.
It had no head.
It had no head and yet its gaze pierced him nonetheless. In that moment he froze in fear. Its form felt surreal. From this distance, he didn't know if it held a tangible spot in reality or just a formless entity projecting an image.
A word manifested in his mind. It was unknown to him. Zoinks. Perhaps it was a useful word of an ancient dialect, but he knew not if it was a word of protection or a lure to other evil spirits. He better not say it.
The thing was too far away to hit and he didn't much want to linger around for others like it to catch up. They needed to make pace and make pace fast. But Juulet's fumbling was going to be an issue. Leon turned his back to the Mad Avatar and stretched out his arms. He was offering her a piggyback ride. "Hop on, quick! We can make a 'cool ass plan' while we run. For now, put all your energy into keeping that thing away from us."
Neki didn't sight it at first. She saw Leon went for Juulet and... "Heh!" Neki laughed, incongruously. "Hop on!" She ran, though. She wasn't sure where, but she ran with the two of them. Those two, and her. Heh, it was fitting. Juulet needed the help, after all.
“The fuck are you on about, jexoff?” utterly unimpressed, Juulet grimaced at the idea. Surely they were just making fun of her at this point. She had half a mind to smack this mistake of an invitee with the flat-side of her spear's blade right where her lantern dangled. With the light shifting about, she eventually moved her gaze to not be blinded by the thing, only to see it too. The Mad Avatar shook her head, hoping to wake up from what she had been seeing.
“What. The. FUCK?!” she shouted, her voice echoing effortlessly throughout the region. With no hesitation, she hopped on. A bit of a mess for Leon with what she was carrying. Her crutch that stuck out would occasionally smack his hip at their brisk pace. A small fireball was produced and her purple eyes locked onto the silhouette. Tongue bit down and intensely focused, she readied herself, only to slowly lower her not-so-terrifying fall of flame and extinguishing it. “It's not really doing anything. I'm nooooot taunting that fucko.”
"What do you mean it's not doing anything? It doesn't have a head!"
Neki had been stealing glances at the headless thing. It shouldn't have... been. It should have terrified her. The thing was that... at best, it unnerved her. She'd seen grand demons in the flesh: beings of pure malevolence, greed, and power that had wanted her dead. She'd watched a knower titan tear through the fabric of reality and consume the very sky overhead: something so clearly alien to life itself and so unfathomably immense that she could not have even conceived of harming it. She had watched Ren Baykara, a person, just like her, do whatever he wanted because nobody there could harm him, and so everyone present, instead of banding together to put a stop to his vicious evil, instead of using their allies present to destroy his ship, had simply bowed their heads meekly to his power. That had been, perhaps, the most frightening thing of all.
What drove her to run now was animal instinct: 'something that I don't understand and that reminds me of death is too close to me, and in a scary dead place'. Neki would always be a slave to that, but she would understand what kind of fear it was and recognize it.
The dash wasn't for long, however. The biggest fissure yet existed as a near-perfect obstacle for them. Far too wide to jump, and the other side elevated into a plateau. It wasn't just wide but also long. It stretched into several buildings and walls of the dangerous fog the radio had described. There was a silver lining, one convenient enough to look suspicious. Perhaps even a trap. A collapsed building, or rather half of it, bridged the two ends. Most of its insides had likely fallen into the deep abyss below, leaving only a labyrinth-like passage to push through if they wished to ascend to the other side.
“Fuck.”
The performer dared to look back to check on the pursuing ghoul. It hadn't moved... "Oh." He felt a twinge of embarrassment at the overreaction and chuckled in relief as he slowly let Juulet down. How was he supposed to know the thing would just stand there?
He saw the sole path ahead and looked for any other options to avoid it, but there weren't any. "What's the plan, Captain?" He asked Kaureerah with a smile.
Still 'good guy Leon', but he was in cahoots with Juulet. He was lying. He liked Juulet. Well, it was no sweat off of Neki's back. They were probably good for each other. That woman was a chaos marble. She might force the sun to orbit her instead, and it might be good for him. "Maybe wee staup raunning like frightened animools," she replied, skidding to a stop. "It moves, we move." She forced herself to look in its direction, though it was not close anymore. "Eef there is one, there aur praubably authers."
Juulet wiggled herself off her steed and brushed herself off, supported by Leon for balance. “Sure, we can stop running, but we aren't stopping either.” she peered over to the flimsy excuse for a bridge, their only means to follow the path. “The shitty path or the spooky fog.” she didn't need long to decide, especially after giving a look back. The shape of that thing, static and still looming over them from afar gave her visible heeby-jeebies. Without hesitation, she used the bit of magic she could to fasten herself onto the flat surface of the collapsed building and crawled onto. It was a not-so-steep slope, but one she wasn't going to be taking chances with. “The faster we get to that fuckin' fountain, the quicker I can find a way to send that shitter to Eshiran's funroom.” driven by frustration, she climbed with great vigour.
"Thet place is e deathtrep and we should be petient," Kaureerah observed with a shrug, but she didn't resist. "Looks like wee heve e new ceptain now." She began to follow.
"We need to keep moving. We got away from that thing, but I don't want be here long than I need to. Not to mention finding a meal around this place."
He began to follow in behind Juulet and next to Kaureerah. "You could hold my hand if you're scared." He quipped to the songstress. "On a professional basis, of course, I don't want to lose my captain." It was a mix of jests and sincerity, testing the waters of a struggling flame.
Juulet led the way and was quite fast when crawling. Dilapidated walls had to be bypassed through oddly angled door frames or by breaking through big cracks with the little magic she could conjure up. “You two lovebirds keeping up?” she didn't confer them a glance, but she was smirking at the cacophony mixed signals the fish was giving to the excessively stressed sun-man.
“Oi, Leon, fishy, did you s-”
There was no sound beyond their own, whether it was their voices or the occasional creaking from their ascent through the makeshift bridge. Only the frigid wind. And yet, the moment they had taken their eyes off their stalker, it was gone. The darkness, murky fog and reduced sensing range made it nearly impossible to predict something would crash into the very middle of the toppled building. It was heavy, came with a boom and inevitably the integrity of their flimsy means of ascension was severely compromised. Massive cracks formed with pieces on the extremities already falling into the pitch-black crevice below.
There was an enormous cloud of dust that hid, in an almost cliché way, the new arrival. At first, it was a normal occurrence during the aftershock, but then the winds persisted in keeping the whole bridge swallowed in an orb of dust. They could make out a silhouette quite easily, however. Big, at least eight feet in height, and without a head.
Juulet was coughing up a lung. Her crutch armed with the lantern had fallen somewhere, leaving only her sheathed spear as a backup. “T-” she pumped her fist against her chest when a big cough came. “The fuck?!” the monster stood between her and the other two, as she had gone ahead and rushed in a bout of frustration over the climb. She was scared. Her magic wasn't strong enough to quickly tug her weapon out, therefore leaving her with the only option of panicking and trying to grab it with her hand. No longer was she securely fastened. “N-no ...! Fuck off!”
The whole structure was shaking and ripping apart. It wasn't going to hold for long, especially with the extra weight of their assailant. It didn't act just yet, but it was there for them.
Kaureerah was right, if it wasn't a death trap before it was now. But what choice did they have? It was risk the death trap or stay behind and accept their certain ends, right? A dread filled Leon's stomach as he realised they couldn't simply go back to the entrance. They needed to find their way around this creature, fend off its attacks, and make it to the other end, all before the bridge collapsed.
"Kauree- or, Neki, we can try to sneak around. If we get seen, I'll draw its attention and I'll join you later, okay?" He spoke with shaky confidence. He wanted to believe they would be fine and tell her she had nothing to worry about. His heart couldn't trick his brain this time.
Kaureerah didn't wait. In her mind's eye, she pictured it: An enormous tangle of vines holding the collapsing building together. They were vines that she - and Leon, for he was always in her head, still - could cross. They would block the headless monstrosity from harming them. "Yoo will naut die stupidly, Sun Booy."
She just ran as if they would be there. It had worked something like that before. She had thought a thing and it had happened. It wasn't magic, not as she knew it. It had worked, though, in that nightmare that had been Kiluaho. It had worked once. It had worked before that in the Trials, and in ReTan. It would work again because, quite frankly, it had to.
She paid little attention to Juulet, for either good or ill. That was what she told herself. "Faullow me."
"Okay." Leon gave a simple nod of affirmation.
She was running for a cliff edge and he didn't know if the call to follow her was one made on certainty or a madwoman running to her demise. Either way, there was no chance he was going to sit back and watch her do it. He followed close behind.
Vines created a barrier between the static monster and the duo on one side of the bridge. They made their own passage while solidifying the severely compromised building. This left Juulet on the wrong side. The smokescreen made her realize her position later than the others, but she could still sense energy in spite of her limited range. “Oh fuck no, poca motherfuckers, help ME!” she impulsively screeched at the duo trying to overtake the monster. “Get it AWAY from the crippled girl, OI!”
The headless awakened, or just decided to move. Like Juulet, it could tell what obstacles were near it and opted for the easiest mark: A legless Yasoi with limited magic. The loud one.
The Mad Avatar, now as imposing as a regular human, gulped. It felt like the Trials all over again. A feeling she NEVER wanted to experience again. And yet here she was. Fear became indignation pushed to a rage that could permanently damage the atmosphere - if she had her magic, anyway. Spear drawn, she held it with both hands and lunged with all the might her thin leg could muster.
It didn't even bother to dodge. The spear impaled it and predictably, it didn't do much of anything. “No way, screeeeew you.” annoyed by the obvious outcome. In a way, it made her fury tick down in favor of admiring the ridiculousness of her situation. A second later, she found herself slapped across the face, hard enough to propel her back. Her grip was enough to yank the weapon off the unknown monstrosity, though the momentum had the thing fling off her grasp and into the deep maw below. Juulet lay on her side, just by the edge.
Her bloodied face looked up at her assailant, vision blurry from the strike. “Yash duul spax ...” its imposing footsteps that shook the foundation of the makeshift bridge had stopped a few feet away. Its arm readied, mangled digits - there were five, like any other human, but were proportionally huge - and lunged for the mostly immobilized girl.
There was, for a moment, a hitch of hesitation in Neki's steps. There was. She felt... as if this was not how she should've done this. There was another woman - young and helpless and crying out against a monster. "Leaun..." she began.
But this was the Mad Avatar: who had taken and would take life at a whim. This was a monster in its own right - one that was sinking its claws into Leon - stripped of its power and vulnerable. "leave her too mee. I heve moor magic than yoo right now." Was Juulet really vulnerable, though? Was someone of her ilk ever truly vulnerable? The universe almost always said 'no', in the end. She wouldn't die. Those like her never did.
Neki would make sure of it.
The shoe was on the other foot now, Kaureerah was the stronger mage, the vines told him that. But Leon hesitated at the request. Did she really want to help Juulet? He wanted to trust her, but he equally trusted people's desires to see the Mad Avatar dead. That would be bad for multiple reasons.
"No, we're together in this. I'll back you up." Much like the Trials before, he didn't mind playing second fiddle to the songstress.
The monster closed in on Juulet, reaching, lunging for her. Simultaneously, vines twisted towards the Mad Avatar, curling up and around, rearing back, and...
They paused.
Neki paused.
She twisted to regard Leon. "Leeaun," she remarked without preamble, "what heve yoo two agreed aun toogether?"
There was a panicked look to Juulet and one returning back. "She saved my life, Kaureerah." Shame coloured his tone. "There's a time for talking, I'll explain everything. But it isn't now!"
He wanted to save Juulet from her predicament. He wasn't about to stop Kaureerah by force, his next best option was to stop the monster. With limited options, he sent a small flare of light over. Despite the monster's lack of eyes, he hoped it still depended on vision and could be distracted. Was it desperate? Yes. But what choice did he have?
In the midst of chatter, Juulet had been seized by the headless monstrosity. Its form was still a shadow within smoke and dust to those outside, but the Yasoi finally got a glimpse of its true form. She couldn't speak, as much as she wanted to, and any punch or kick she sent its way was promptly ignored, just like the flash of light conjured by Leon.
It squeezed, slowly draining the life out of her. In turn, she desperately drew. The foundation they all stood on continued to crack despite the addition of plant life to the ancient stone.
"Sounds like saum naun-answer boolshit too mee," came Neki's sighed response. "Yoo're welcaum, by the wey." With that, the vines snapped forward, shoving both the monstrosity and its captive into the yawning abyss below.
Leon's eyes widened and his stomach dropped. There was a sputtering attempt to call Juulet's name and his arm reached out. But, unless he wanted to jump off the cliff too, he had no ability to save her.
The Sun King, the one who would usher a bright new dawn upon Sipenta, watched helplessly. His gaze just stayed there for a while, not paying a glance at Neki.
"Oh, doon't woorry soo mauch, Mr. Saun," Neki responded into the silence. "People like her aulweys heve e wey aut." She shook her head, pursed her lips, and spun on her heel. Presently, she began moving. Maybe he would follow, maybe he would not.
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.
What is the revolution about? Who is doing it? What is it exactly for? Where does an aspiring revolutionary need to go exactly? These are things that any revolution leader probably needs to know. They were questions Leon could answer far too few of when he arrived on the 4th day after the ocean was fed a lofty amount of coffee. Obviously, he needed to spend some time in San Sameno gathering information.
What was a world-renowned performer supposed to do but spend a couple of days at the enclave's largest watering hole and make some friends? Despite the dour mood, he danced, sang, played, and drank his way to the people's hearts. If you were to ask him, there wouldn't be a single person in port who would keep a secret from him by the end of it.
Shouting rounds of drinks, he made friends with a young man named Bayani, who quietly let loose about his participation in 'that night' after plenty of booze. The two talked for a long while and Leon got informed about the revolution. The performer also used this as an opportunity to learn the local language. No man can become fluent over two drunken nights but he covered the basics: hello, goodbye, yes, no, and most importantly, follow me.
"While I appreciate your honesty Bayani, you've trusted me with something rather dire. I am hardly more than a stranger to you, are you not afraid your secret could get out?"
"No. You have a Revidian accent, the last one got us to do all that in the first place. Even if I shouldn't have followed him, I at least know a Revidian won't sell me out to those dogs." Leon frowned at the response, *he* was supposed to be the only Revidian on the ground.
By the sixth night, Leon was ready to depart for mainland Palapar as planned. However, it had become readily apparent that Virangish inquisitors were knocking at San Sameno's door looking for dissidents like Bayani and his yet-to-be-wed partner Tala, who had a child on the way. For all the help Bayani had given Leon, he couldn't leave the couple with enemies so close. He resolved to stay until the threat had passed.
On the eighth day, Bayani and Tali wanted to get married. The young pair feared for their lives and wanted to make sure they had wed before the Virangish inquisitors entered the enclave. Neither were Quentic so neither wanted to go to the chapel for it. Leon, however, had the authority to hold weddings. Even if it was still technically a Quentic marriage, the lone performer gave them the degree of separation they needed and it was the best they could do. He married them together beneath the nicest tree in San Sameno.
On the tenth day, beneath the grey clouds and light rain, Leon was absent from the square where the Virangish inquisitors met the Torragonese. Instead, he sat in that very same tavern now dead quiet compared to the night before. He kicked up his feet on the table and tuned his lute for the fifth time that morning while whistling to himself quietly. Holding the unmatched power of the sun within you made hiding from magical detection a rather difficult feat. However, it gave an excellent cover for the less gifted refugees hidden beneath the floorboards, their magical footprints were drowned out by his encompassing aura.
While he tuned his instrument again, Leon's mind drifted to Zarina. Even though Palapar was on the other side of the world, this conflict still involved her home country and also the coffee trade. He imagined the draconic lady following the situation with bated breath back in Ersand'Enise. At the very least it would stop her from crying her eyes out about Miret again. Honestly, Zarina needed to find someone who would treat her better instead of leaving her by the curb like that. As a matter of fact, he had three bachelorettes in mind...
This terribly productive train of thought continued for the next few hours of the morning up until the Virangish entered San Sameno. Perhaps one would expect the performer to be worried for the lives of the refugees or even his own, but that wasn't the case. After all, he was the strongest mage on these islands without equal.
The first was Yuli. The two girls were tough, kind of scary, but had plenty of moments of sweetness. They made for a good pair and he would be killing two birds with one stone by getting the Vossoriyan some action. The second was Elizabeth Wright. A kind Enthish woman who, rather rudely, discovered her attraction for women immediately after kissing him at a party in the first year. The third was...
TWANG!!!
Leon frowned in confusion and looked down at his lute, the source of the horrendously out-of-tune note. The performer had been tuning his instrument periodically over the last three hours; a note even slightly out of place couldn't have happened. But it did. He looked at the tuning pegs, saw his wrist, and finally acknowledged that his hand had slipped. That was unusual, it was a mistake for amateur musicians and certainly not the sort of thing he would do without noticing. Something was off.
Then he felt it. Where his mind had been other places before, he could feel the weight of another mage's energy; it rivalled Juulet or Jocasta. He looked up from his instrument and focused on that feeling. It was moving closer and closer without detour. Whoever this was, whatever this was, it was approaching him. His heart began to pump faster.
Leon realised then that he hadn't been whistling since the out-of-tune note had been played. He didn't want to appear as though this figure had disturbed him, so he returned to the lute, fixed the note, started whistling again, and ignored the approaching dread. The mask of the Sun King remained tied to his hip; he was just the performer Leon Solaire and that's what he *had* to be today.
As the figure stood just behind the entrance door, his eyes slid to look but he didn't move his head.
The Boot and Shoe was a place of escape: one within nearly a stone's throw of the Ivy Gate that carved San Sameno from the rest of Palapar, one where a person not looking to stay for more than a night or two in the enclave could book a cheap room and never have to interact very much with it, one where he might book passage from his troubles at the bottom of a cup.
Leon Solaire had come to this place, however, and one had to think that he had done so with purpose. In the intervening period, he had made it far more conspicuous. If many Palaparese did not know who he was, any Torragonese, Virangish, or Revidian with a daughter certainly did. The proprietor of the humble establishment was one such person, and he thanked Dami for sending Leon his way.
Until this moment.
The door creaked open and in strode Ren Baykara, his boots thumping on the wooden floorboards. The man behind the counter had been grimacing even before his arrival and, now, he gagged, and again. Turning on the spot, he hurled into the washbasin.
Had one no concept of magic, they still would've struggled to miss that here was a man of consequence. The head inquisitor was neither tall nor especially remarkable in appearance, but his clothing alone may have cost more than a tavern owner's lifetime earnings, and the dozen figures who remained outside, unflinchingly at his command, told the rest of the story.
Some might've made a quip at the barkeep's expense, something like, "a little early for that, isn't it?" Others might've started softly, to toy with his hopes out of some sense of sadism or for their personal amusement.
"A cup of water, please," said Ren, coming to a stop with a loud thump of his boots. He regarded Leon Solaire, who was known to him and, for the barest of moments, something monstrous - monstrous and anticipatory - flashed across his countenance. "And some music." He sniffed, as if he might've had a runny nose or something of the like, and held his hand out expectantly for water.
Leon did find himself following Ren with his eyes as he entered the room. He kept regarding his lute and gave the sleepy yawn of someone who just had an eventful night before. On the request for music, the performer smiled and nodded to Ren once before calmly strumming his lute. There was no need to start a fuss over nothing given the stakes.
The sounds of Leon's playing filled the air at the Boot and Shoe. If it wasn't his most complex tune, it displaced any other noises that might've been made.
Hurriedly, the tavern owner filled a cup with water and raced to push it into Ren's outstretched hand. The moment that it touched his skin, however, the inquisitor let it fall and shatter on the floor. His head twisted all at once to leer at the man. "You would serve your superior from your unwashed hand after vomiting?" he snarled. He walked towards Leon, who could begin to sense movement under the floorboards as others struggled the same way that the barkeep had.
"Disgusting and unsanitary," Ren concluded with a sneer. "Clean the mess you've made up." He drew closer to Leon. "Is there nobody else here capable of providing a hardworking ruler with a clean glass of water?"
It wasn't just the tavern keep or the patrons disturbed by the aura Ren was emitting but those beneath the floorboards as well. He could hope that the noises and commotion above-board would cover those below. But the regular patrons were starting to leave in the hopes of keeping their dignity leave just himself, Ren, and the poor barkeep Ramiro who just wanted to keep his place clean. Leon no longer had the luxury of being a passive participant in this affair; although he didn't like that he got the sense Ren wanted that.
Leon placed his lute calmy on his table and looked up to the Virangish noble with a smile. "You'll have to forgive Ramiro. There was a difficult drunkard last night who hit him on the head. He is still feeling a little dizzy today if I had to guess." Leon kicked his feet off the table and stood. He looked to the poor, poor barkeep who had a world of cleaning to do after this. "Ramiro, how about you go take some rest? Its been a while but I can serve drinks quite well." He chuckled. "I'll keep the place safe."
Ren held an arm out and clenched it into a fist. "Captain Balik!" he called, and a uniformed woman hurried up to the door and saluted. "Sir!"
"Nobody is to enter or leave this premises until we are finished our investigation. You are encouraged to detain but authorized to use any force necessary...if necessary."
She bowed her head crisply in acknowledgement. "Understood, sir."
Ren turned back to Leon. "What are you doing here, minstrel?" he asked, glancing back at the semicircle of guards who were containing the people who'd tried to leave. "and do try to answer honestly."
Leon looked over the tavern to see military force keeping people in. He kept his cool, the patrons had the choice and he trusted them to make the right one and stay. They hadn't committed any crimes after all. Calmly, he stood around the sick that coated the floor, grabbed a clean glass, and fetched Ren a cool drink of water.
Placing the glass at the bar, Leon gave Ren a discerning look. "You look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere? I can't say I know many inquisitors, but you dress far too nice to be a soldier and have a face too handsome." He smiled, trying his best to be disarming.
Ren crossed his arms. Beneath the floorboards, Leon could feel a handful of the refugees moving as the weight of the inquisitor's latent energy only increased. "I am asking the questions," he replied, eyes narrowing. "You're doing a terrible job of answering."
Leon nudged the glass of water closer to him. "Vacation. Someone told me that the Palapar weather was excellent this time of year. I intend to call him a liar when I get back to Constantia." He kept a positive attitude.
Ren lifted it to his lips and sipped, still as a coiled snake otherwise. "Interesting time to have arrived for tourism," he remarked. "Perhaps you should not leave your friend waiting and return." He set the glass down on the table with a 'clack' that carried audibly. "You'll find that I can also take good care of the people here."
Leon poured himself a glass of water and sipped alongside the Virangish man. His ears were all too keen now to the noise happening below. It must have felt like sitting in an oven beneath the floor and constantly battered by Ren's reckless mana released.
Tala had told him earlier that day she was lucky the baby hadn't been born yet, at the very least, she wouldn't have to try keeping a baby quiet. It turned his stomach, happy that her baby wasn't born to be kept beneath the stairs like rats. Forced into the lowest of places all to escape the clutches of the man who stood before him now. No person should live in fear to that extent and yet Tala cowered for her life not even a meter below his feet. She hadn't even been there for the crime.
"Portals make me sick. I was waiting for the next boat out, but it seemed they wanted to hang back and not get caught up in any blockades... I'm sure that has something to do with why you're here?"
"Forty-two sailors and guards murdered in their sleep aboard their ships in Arangal," Ren responded, "strangely, just before you decided to take your vacation here." His eyes narrowed. "Their crime was being Virangish - " He snorted. " - Though not all of them even were." He began sliding the glass back and forth - almost restlessly - across the tabletop, from one hand to the other. "I intend to find their murderers and punish them to the full extent of the sultan's wishes so that nobody will even consider another act like this." At the very least, the act seemed to keep him occupied and the sound covered any that the refugees were making. "I will find them and I will execute them, publicly." He shook his head. "This doesn't concern you, Solaire." All at once, he stopped sliding the glass. There was dead silence and, from below, a cough. He narrowed his eyes and drew. "Unless it does."
If he didn't know before, he knew now. With the cough, it was only a matter of time until he found the people beneath the floor. He could stand back and let him take them away. Some guilty in the revolution would see justice and the end of a noose, but plenty more whose only crime lay in familial ties to the criminals. Or he could get in their way with the hopes of taking their place in judgment. If he waited, Ren's overwhelming draw could kill them by itself. It was one or the other, and he chose neither. He looked into his glass and chuckled.
Would you do this if someone presented a threat to you, boy? Elder Colex's words echoed in his mind. If your opponent wasn’t weak?
With a slip of the hand, Leon splashed the water of his cup on Ren's face to catch him off guard. Then Leon launched himself at the noble sending them both out of the window and into the street. They tumbled into the street water Ren had tried so hard to avoid.
When you choose to act, it must be with strength and leave none to question it.
Leon was the strongest. It meant he didn't have to choose the lesser of two evils or let some suffer for the betterment of either. He only needed to defeat this man and they would all be safe.
Yet, Ren had already drawn nearly to full capacity and it was M A S S I V E. "There it is, Solaire," he howled, rolling away and springing to his feet. "That's what you wanted!" The blast of raw power that thundered forth in every direction had him as its epicentre. "Time to let it all out!" Leon, perhaps not ready for such an immediate and overwhelmingly powerful response, was flung backwards into the side of a building and right through its wall like a misfired cannonball. "But so will I." Leon was not the only one who needed to worry, however. All around Ren, buildings twisted on their foundations, glass turned liquid, rain froze or burned or simply disappeared. Debris hovered in the air. Bricks imploded. The very land trembled. Without so much as a though, the weak were annihilated like the insects that they were, Ren's mercy in allowing them to live temporarily suspended. Again, he drew, paying no heed to the nothings around him: only Leon Solaire, the treacherous Revidian and the only being present who might actually require his full effort or something like it.
Leon was doing this for them, he wanted to see them safe, yet he couldn't avert his gaze from Ren. The battle would not afford him such a luxury and he had no desire to see anything else. As the noble unleashed an overwhelming show of force and made the world melt around him, Leon's eyes could see the destruction but his mind failed to acknowledge its consequences. Ren Baykara was a threat and needed to be defeated. This was the way forward. The state of anyone else in that equation was secondary.
The performer's first thought was to dodge the attack and find an opening to slip through, but the blast was uniform. Then he tried to resist it, but that thought didn't last long. His momentum dropped quickly and it became a matter of trying not to be flung away. His clothes rippled violently under the pressure along with his body. It was like swimming into a wave, or rather a tsunami. It was better to move along the current than fight against it. He shifted his shoulders forward and flung skyward; he was reeling from the blow but faired much better than if he had hit a nearby building.
Flip, flip, flip, the performer tumbled again and again in rapid succession until he found stability far above the destruction below. His now-tattered cape fluttered in the wind, in his hands rested the lyre humming from a chord freshly played, his visage covered in the Sun King mask which he had donned during the flips, and his smile was wide and toothy.
Ren had cleared the space around him and he alone stood below. Leon let the gravity take him and descended. Flame built up around him and focused on one leg. He began to spin back again in a series of front flips. He dropped down in an incandescent ring of flame to deliver a fiery axe kick onto the noble.
Leon sped towards his target and the attack was so telegraphed that any mage taking it seriously might've simply dodged. Ren Baykara was not unschooled in combat and he was not stupid, but arrogance was a drug that held him utterly, and so he met Leon's kick head-on.
The results were devastating. His hair and clothes burnt away, his skin creased and crisped, and his chest caved in. It was a near-instant fatality, in a single blow, for such was the wrath and power of the Sun King.
The problem was that it never happened, or perhaps it had, in some timeline or another. Ren Baykara was not unschooled in combat and he was not stupid; he had anchored himself temporally. One didn't need to be Hugo Hunghorasz to know some of the basics of that greatest of magic schools.
Leon descended from the heavens, wreathed in flame like the sun burst through the grey ceiling of clouds. Such was the power of his attack that the very oxygen in the air around him ignited and the paving stones melted. Such was the power of his attack that Ren could not fully resist it. With split seconds to spare, he hurled himself free, landing on a rooftop.
His hair and clothes were singed and he trailed a thin veil of whitish smoke and steam as he skidded to a halt. Did his hands tremble? One would not have seen it, for they were clenched into fists. He drew, then, with utter abandon, from the sky, from the buildings around him, from the earth below.
Nobody could say how many casualties there had been in the surrounding area for, when giants clash, they have little attention left over for what they might step on. People fled, disorganized and in terror, in every direction. Those who had some magic used it to protect themselves and their loved ones. Most did not.
The Boot and Shoe, meanwhile, had suffered much of one wall collapsed, its windows shattered, and the canvas awning over its side door set aflame. People were streaming out from it, choking and staggering, but most were not people that Selma Balik or any of the others could recall. Were there yet more inside!?
Then, Ren raised one arm to his side. "I have been attacked, Balik, by a Revidian agitator sent to kill me and deny our legal rights of investigation. You will take your people and carry on with the rest of your duties. There is something that reeks in San Sameno." He sniffed the air, sneering. "I will pull from the root. You will pluck its blooms."
With that, he shifted the direction of his arm and opened his fist. A Revidian bakery across the street exploded. "How many lives am I worth to you, minstrel?" He shook his head. "And how many of these replaceable nothings would you trade for your own?"
Aylin was minding her own business after the conversation, positioned near the chapel. She had given instructions to some of her guard to do some clearing up after the guardias gansos to ensure nothing fell into the wrong hands after their arrests. The Inquisitor had also made his intentions clear regarding the chapel and his agenda, but she firmly informed him that it was not an option. She wasn't going to let things escalate by leaving it unattended. As she dealt cards with her gloved hand to start a game, a commotion erupted already near one of the taverns.
"¿Qué hicieron ahora?" she muttered angrily, pushing her chair back as she donned her long white jacket. She signalled to her guards, gesturing for two to stay by the door. "Nadie entra ni sale. Nadie." With the others, she made her way toward the disturbance to investigate.
The devastation was rapidly damaging the surrounding infrastructure, as sturdy buildings were being reduced to ruins, and Aylin wasted no time in shouting orders, “Evacuen la zona.” She swiftly gave further instructions to the guards to empty the buildings and clear the area of civilians.
Surveying the scene, she shook her head at the chaos. Two young men had made a mess of her enclave. She raised an eyebrow toward Ren then nodded with her head toward the tavern, the one he had already torn through, and a nearby bakery, with his new friend. “Official or personal business?” she asked, her tone sharp. With a quick gesture to one of the guards, he tossed her his catchpole.
Aylin gripped the semicircular pronged staff firmly in her hand, as she banged on the ground with the other end. “Explíquese” she pointedly addressed the man with Ren, “Explain your actions.”
Good Guards, "What have they done now" , "No one in or out. No one.", "Evacuate the area", "Explain yourself"
A flash, a vision in his mind's eye. As Leon brought his leg down upon Ren's shoulder, he could see the noble had failed to defend against it. Flames took him, melting skin, singed hair, and a look of pain in his eyes as he looked into Leon's. It drove the performer's heart out of pace as his smile dropped. In a moment of panic, Leon tried to withdraw the attack, and soften it to save the man's life. But it was too late, his leg had ripped through him.
Then he blinked. He could now see Ren on the rooftops, a little burnt but safe. Leon hovered above the ground to avoid burning his feet, all the remained around him was melted street and the ghost of memory that never was. It was an illusion made to mess with his mind and nothing more.
Leon didn't panic when Balik was sent to get the word out about a Revidian agitator. That was inevitable and nothing could be done about it. He could only have faith that the Revidian government could avoid a war with his lack of official ties to the state. He was a rogue actor, he could trust Zappa to sell that, if nothing else.
He looked shocked at the bakery explosion. But his sight didn't linger enough to even acknowledge it was Revidian. He couldn't afford to look away from Ren.
"If I surrender, innocents die. If I fight innocents die." He called up to Ren on the rooftops. "And if I stand back and do nothing, then you would do the same. One man alone dictates the suffering in San Sameno, Ren Baykara."
He could hear the sounds of someone addressing him in the back of his mind. He ignored it and continued to focus on his target.
"Surrender and leave with your inquisitors. This can't be worth your life." Would he really be willing to take another man's life if he refused? It wasn't something he wanted to think about now. Leon was starting to feel out of breath, he would need to charge soon and this needed to be ended quick.
Ren had felt another energy - one significant enough to matter - as the building had collapsed, and so came Lady Aylin. Thus, he had no chance to respond to Leon's absurd offer. "I was attacked while doing my duty," he responded honestly. "searching at the tavern for those who evade justice for the murders of two weeks ago. I was attacked by this Revidian who was trying to hide them." He leveled a pointer at Leon. "I have been forced to defend myself and now another Quentic appears." His gaze twisted towards her. "I should hope you were as sensible as you appeared and have come to rein in this mad dog."
Leon kept his eyes on the man who just blew up a bakery for fun. Certainly no one was buying his plea for the moral high ground. "Their children and families are also fleeing your *justice*. If the law allows you to hang them too, then it is a mockery of Dami."
His gaze passed onto Lady Aylin and he gestured to the bakery. "Will you sit back and let a man like this dictate the future? At the very least, stay out of my way and let me do what is right."
In the event, the choice was taken from Lady Aylin's hands. A man came running out of a collapsing building, eyes red and bugged out, and launched an artless lance of heat at Ren. Perhaps it was suicide by the inquisitor. Perhaps the man had lost somebody in the collapse or just before. Maybe he honestly thought that he could get the drop on Ren while the Virangishman was distracted.
The energy was absorbed and shot back at him tenfold, and only Leon really could've stopped it quickly and completely enough. He stepped in and the beam bounced back at Ren and Lady Aylin managed to step in and knock the would-be attacker - a semi-trained mage of about 6.5 - out with some chemical magic. She delivered a stinging rebuke to both for endangering the peace and the citizens, but just as great of one to the now-unconscious man for attacking a government official and foreign envoy.
The fact of the matter was that Ren was now trying to kinetically crush Leon and the Revidian had resorted to flinging the the energy away wherever he could, leaving craters and debris to form and fly about. Lady Tojarra, for all that she seemed quite capable indeed, was simply not a match for either in raw magical power. Leon, forced onto the offensive, began to melt the ground beneath Ren but, so monstrous was the Inquisitor's capacity, that he drew all of the heat from it and turned it into an explosion focused on Leon's chest.
Burnt and hurled backwards, the performer tumbled down the street, coming to a rest on all fours, battered, panting, and bleeding. Then, as Ren stalked forward confidently, to a backdrop of screams and skittering rubble, two slabs of pavement lifted themselves up from the ground like a beartrap and crushed Ren between them.
A cloud of dust and rubble obscured the area as Leon staggered to his feet, some words of counter-rebuke or perhaps apology gestating in his mind but as yet unspoken. He reached out with his senses, daring to hope but not sold until Ren's signature was...
The Revidian doubled over, clutching at his temples, and staggered to the side. His eyes began to grow bloodshot and there was a red trickle from his nose.
Ren Baykara, the most powerful mage in San Sameno, emerged from the haze, utterly unscathed. "And now you learn," he addressed Leon, "that you are not the strongest here and that your actions have consequences." He gestured at the people screaming and running. "For them, and for you."
Leon was trying with all of his might to resist - to counter the magnetic reactions depolarizing his blood, but he wasn't at full power anymore and, impossibly, Ren was stronger. Instead, he let what was going to happen happen. His temples pounded. His hearing faded. His senses screamed. He conjured a colossal arcane flash and Ren staggered back, blinking.
Disengaging at breakneck speed, Leon put everything he had into reaching for the power beyond this world and manifesting more energy. He reached out, but... it was as if somebody had closed the door and locked it and he did not have the key. He tried a second time, and a third, and now Ren was rushing towards him, kilij drawn and intent on finishing it the old way. For the first time in... he wasn't sure how long, Leon believed that he was going to die.
Then, there was Lady Aylin, stepping decisively in between the two of them: a barracuda among sharks and yet utterly unafraid. "Gentlemen," she declared, "Perhaps I wasn't clear. I wasn't asking you to stop."
The world around them wavered and, in their minds' ears, they heard both the greatest and least sound they had ever borne witness to. Both stopped in their tracks, grimacing and scarcely able to move. "That was a command." She glared daggers their way, and Leon's in particular.
Aylin lifted her catchpole and thrust it forward with precision. The hooked tip locked around the performer's neck, as it clamped him into place with kinetic magic. It was only natural to use a touch of chemical magic to subdue the Revidian’s temperament. “This is more than disturbing the peace, chico,” she said, as she gestured to the surroundings, and waved over two of the guards. “Disarm him, strip him down, and remove anything he’s carrying.”
She tipped her pipe, as she focused on the performer’s face, her smirk widened. “Well, well, who do we have here? The Sun King.” She turned and cast a dark, toothy smile toward Ren, her gaze briefly dropped to the bared kilij in his hand. “You can go ahead and kill this imbécil egocéntrico,” she remarked with a dramatic pause, as she turned back to look at the performer. She didn’t retract her words, as the guards finished their task, where they removed the mask and left the performer with only the clothes on his back.
Inhaling from the pipe, she exhaled a cloud of smoke as she continued to appraise Leon. Just before Ren moved to strike, she added, “You’ve caught yourself a fat prize here. Leon Solaire, favoured of Prospero Malatesta himself, and betrothed to his precious daughter, the cara de cerdo,” she sneered. She leaned forward, as she tapped the pipe, letting ash drift on the ground in front of Leon. “This estúpido is wearing a mask. Doesn’t he know captured Volti are executed on the spot?”
Aylin stepped forward, as she offered the handle of the catchpole toward Ren to take. “Death’s too good for this anguila,” she murmured, her eyes raked over Ren with an impressed expression. “Nothing a firm hand like yours couldn’t handle. We could not have stopped a man like this. No wonder the agitators have been slippery, with Revidia sending one of their top agents.”
Ren yanked the catchpole from close to Leon's neck, making him lose his footing and stumble forward. He looked down upon the singer brought to hunch from his leash. He hoped that someone of interest would be in San Sameno but looking at him now, the performer was nothing but a paper tiger brought low so easily. It reminded him of a story. 'The bird who flew so high and carefree took his freedoms for granted and never worried for what was below him. He had been turned into a worm, the lowest of earthly beings, to pay penance for disrespecting the ground others tread.' He wondered how long it would take to break this one in.
How did I get here?
It was the one thought that ran through Leon's mind as he sat on his knees with hands on the ground struggling to grasp his breath. The energy he held dear that wrapped him in a warm embrace had fled from him. He could only wait, cold and alone, for the judgement of others to be passed on his fate. He called out for it again, that place in which his dreams could be made manifest, and it refused to answer. He looked up and saw that man, Ren Baykara, looking back at him with eyes like a hawk. The noble delighted in his weakness.
Why did it have to be like this?
He looked around at his surroundings. The town called San Sameno had a chunk ripped out of it, decimated by the destruction wrought by his fight with Ren. Innocent people fled the scene, some fine, some gravely injured, did some die here? He just wanted to save Bayani and his wife, he just wanted to save those kind people who wanted nothing more than to live. Why did fighting for them mean many more suffered in their place? He was doing the right thing and it only brought pain to others. Why, why, why did it have to be like this? Was this how the world was? His mask hid the tears that flowed.
He made no attempt to resist the catchpole that clamped around his neck. He looked up at the Torragonese woman who sought to condemn him, were they not supposed to be allies? Then, before long, he was brought face to face with Ren, defenceless and unable to escape. The noble's grip on the clutchpole rattled his neck and the performer no longer had any control.
"No, I'll keep this one for myself." Ren's eyes were fixed and his words carried like icy hands wrenching away everything Leon cared for. His dreams, his hopes, his ambitions, and those he cared about would all be taken away by this man. Leon struggled to catch his breath, he called out again, that place, that wonderful place, why had it abandoned him? He couldn't let it end like this.
When he was marched outside of San Sameno, Leon took the opportunity to act. Mustering everything he had, he summoned a wall of flame between himself and Ren then in the confusion expended kinetic to launch himself away. The catchpole dug painfully into his neck but it didn't matter, he would be free, he only needed to make enough distance to change and he could fight again. He couldn't lose here.
If he could only charge...
However, within the split second Leon had made some distance between himself and Ren, an unbearably bright flashbang went off around the performer blinding everyone who was looking upon the scene. When everyone regained their sight, Leon was gone and the catchpole clanged against the cobbled stone floor. It may have looked as though the Revidian had simply ran under the cover of flashing lights, but any skilled mage would know better. There had been no resistance against the catchpole and no damage done to it, he hadn't even broken out of the tool's hold. He had simply vanished into thin air and no sign of him could be sensed in the entirety of San Sameno.
For a pretty penny, a girl like Arianna Capobianco could afford a modest room within the merchant quarters. The rooms were more spacious than that of commoners and one could imagine it a little smaller than a nobles room, although she would keep no scope of reference.
Despite being in the second year, few decorations or memorabilia stood out in her room. A Revidia flag hung near her bed and a figurine of a dragon sat on her desk from the first year of trials. She had mixed feelings about the dragon, it reminded her of an outstandingly fun time she had at the event but it also brought back memories of a boy she liked on the team, the feeling was not mutual.
She wore trousers and a button shirt similar to what an on-duty Revidian navy woman might wear. The shirt fit poorly and she favoured rolling up the sleeves instead of going to resize it. For a girl who had no background or family history in the military, this was quite the shift in fashion from her compliance to the typical Revidian dresses. The later night required a meeting and she was not to look weak for it.
She slid the upper abacus bead of the sixth row down ticking the calculation over to 50,000, adjusting the beads from the lower rows she came out to the new running count of 52,235 Veneficus in monthly profit for Ersand’Enise Zenobucks taking away material costs and a rough estimate for labour, there was still more to cover.
She didn’t know why she picked Zenobucks for her economics assignment, she didn’t even enjoy coffee. She drank it because she needed the boost but she could never really say she enjoyed it. She simply chose the business in the closest proximity and with the best ease of estimation. Then again, what could she pick for economics that she would be truly passionate about?
She tried to think that her days ticking away at an abacus and crunching numbers would only be something she would have to cover in school. Arianna liked to forget her father had an abacus as a permanent fixture in his office when time came to do the accounts. Perhaps her future really did lay in the endless calculation.
Some students were made to excel, go on spectacular missions, and carve their names into the future history books. Then there were students like her, only there to, well, study. Arianna never stood out from the crowd once. She took the classes that were expected of her, she did reasonably well but not exceptionally so, her teams had a mediocre performance in the trials, she had yet to know love or even have her first kiss, and she never sought a position of renown because that was not her place. She was not exceptional, she did not stand out, and her life was nothing but enslavement to a fucking abacus. Crunching numbers to crunch more numbers such that you can have more numbers to crunch in the hopes that you have more numbers to crunch than your competition and that's just good business. It was pathetic…
My fellow Revidians, take a look at what this school has become... You see what is happening in front of you. No doubt, you see the injustices happening before you; those held in custody, and those being silenced for speaking out against it. Maybe you are scared to act or try to defend it because that injustice calls itself one of us... But I know Revidia, I know the beauty of its rolling hills, I have tasted its wine, I have danced with its women and men alike. Through all my travels there is a reason I always come back there out of anywhere in the world... But I ask you now to look at the up toward the Forked Tower, where a girl was taken from her home in the early morning and held there without a word. The Perrench think that we condone this, that this is the work of the Central Alliance. I want you to tell me if that is the Revidia you know. I want you to tell me if that is a Revidia you can take pride in. I say no, that is not Revidia.
To those who call themselves Revidian, I ask you to fight. What Revidia would we hope to inherit if we turn a blind eye to the corruption before us? But I am not asking you to fight Revidia or turn against the Central Alliance; only that you fight to remove a coward who hides behind their colours. Take up arms here and let it be known where the true Revidia stands. Follow me, follow my spear, and fight for its honour!
She remembered that speech word for word. She stood frozen watching Ersand’Enise crumble to the unrest of Penelope Pellegrin’s detainment. She sat back watching the gathering armies of students who looked to storm the Violet Enclave. As she was prepared to do nothing because it was not her place, he rose and told her to act.
Leon Solaire spoke of acting against Revidia’s wishes and joining the revolution, yet she didn’t feel she was betraying it. Despite politics, despite commercial gain, it was in Revidia’s honour to storm the Violet Enclave and free the pauper princess. He was like a knight bathed in gilded light who pointed the way and she found a purpose to follow.
Magic had previously been a help for mundane tasks and an extra assurance of self-defence. The night of the revolution, she wielded it to kill two people.
Shifting the first five rows, Arianna updated her running count to 91,327 Ven to account for special Zenobucks orders such as the absurdly popular spratz toppings and household ingredients such as ‘sugar s’... Sugar s…
The first one had been an older Enthishman she killed in self-defence. When the Revidian students made their charge behind the leaders, the old man rushed through straight to her with his blade drawn. She panicked and only just managed to put enough electricity through him before he took her head off. Her heart beat fast, she drew unsteady breaths for a while afterwards, and then she vomited.
The second was done with intent. He was a younger man with pale skin who barely got the chance to speak before lightning shot through him. The mercenaries had made it clear they meant to kill, she felt no remorse in the moment to treat them in kind.
It was an accomplished feeling she had to stand above a battlefield victorious. Arianna had few victories to call her own. She was not a large girl, had not come from a largely successful family, and was not particularly blessed by the gift. It seemed she was afraid, weak, or inferior everywhere she went. She no longer felt that way among the fallen of those who opposed Revidia.
When a second sun bloomed above the Forked Tower, Arianna had an epiphany that she had been lost. She had lived her life with no direction. Her grandfather was a lumber merchant who sold lumber for profit such that her father could inherit that and sell lumber for profit as well. She was at Ersand’Enise so she could compete with her siblings for the grand title of lumber saleswoman who lived only for making more profit. Profit, profit, profit, but what for? For what purpose did she exist other than to do the exact same thing her father did? What point did they really have in the world? Arianna looked at the second sun calling a successful end to the revolution and saw direction where she had never seen it before. She would serve the vision of that man named Leon Solaire who had given her purpose and cause. She felt like something more than she was meant to be…
Ticking up profits for the Zenobuck’s snacks had started to wear on her patience and became quickly frustrating. Arianna looked out her window to see the sun dipping below the horizon, slowly retreating its glow from Ersand’Enise. She happily wrote down her current tally and left her assignment to gather dust on her desk. She grabbed her faux military coat and draped it over her shoulders before heading out.
Leon had departed for Palapar so a special meeting was to be held for the Figli di Revidia, the Revidian student group. Arianna was excited.
The floor of the Fino a Colazione became quite a different place during an Orredes night. It was the cleanest the floors were in the entire week; just preceding the Lepdes and Victendes mayhem. The smell of the faint sea breeze clashing with the herbs and spices of the kitchen was not overpowered by excessive booze and was a welcoming scent to any Revidian who called the coasts their home.
Figli di Revidia gathered at a reserved end of the tavern with roughly thirty students in attendance. It was a mix between a social gathering and a pantomime of a small council, the food was plentiful and the jugs of wine runneth over. Short, tall, rich, poor, they all gathered here under the banner of Revidia. There was even a small bunch of students who shied away from the political nature of the group and spent their time making food in the kitchens for everyone and catching up with friends.
The group’s soul had changed since the revolution and the approaching reality of war. Before, there was endless speculation about the markets and internal plans among peers to manoeuvre accordingly. This often meant that people stuck to small groups of 2 to 4 out of fear that too many people having details would spoil a golden goose. It also meant that nobles talked to nobles, merchants talked to merchants, and commoners made the food as many only wished to go into business if the investment was mutual.
Now, instead of solely discussing a means to make a profit, they spoke of what they could do with those funds. How could Revidia manoeuvre to favour their victory in the war? What contacts did people have to sway neutral nations into Central Alliance sympathy? How could Perrence be chased away from their growing encampments at the borders? Standing around two central food tables they filled their bellies with food and wine while idling away with the chatter of finance and military speculation afforded by said finances. But even subjects of sport, food, and music found themselves more than welcome.
Toward the back wall was a table for the leaders of Figli di Revidia. Three chairs sat facing the group’s festivities while awaiting the topic for the night. Arianna sat in the central seat picking at the pizza made by Fiorella Caruso, a younger commoner girl who had personally served her and awaited a review. It was good but not exceptionally so, although Arianna struggled to think of the missing ingredient. For as much as she loved the girl’s culinary passion, there was more on her mind.
To her left sat another leader, Vittorio Garibaldi, the first heir to Garibaldi’s Pawn in Ersand’Enise. He was a larger, older boy of 19 who was well on the road to adulthood compared to Arianna. He wore round spectacles, neatly trimmed black hair, and had a larger stature with some fat and a little more muscle than someone in finance typically kept.
Vittorio was conversing with Ettore Muti, a 15-year-old with far too discerning eyes for someone barely beginning puberty. They tried to keep their conversation discrete but not secretive as they discussed the prospect of investing in lumber before the war started. Arianna thought it was strange that they wouldn’t ask for her input in the matter but she didn’t get the impression they were excluding her from the conversation. She didn’t feel inclined to participate.
To Arianna’s right was an empty chair. It was supposed to be occupied by Flavio Velluci, but his refusal to arrive on time had held up the entire meeting. He was a truly rat-like man who was lanky for his height and had very little going for him other than being the heir of the Velluci luxury products business. He dressed up an unfortunate appearance with enough gold to feign the impression of dignity and gravitas. Unlike Vittorio, he did not fit the maturity of a 19-year-old. His seat of responsibility was often empty.
The night wore on for some time before Flavio finally arrived. He was likely only a half hour late, but it felt longer to Arianna and she didn’t care to check the time. With all three seated, she was now caught between the two other leaders. Both were taller, bigger, older, richer and had more claims in life than her. But it was past time for her to be intimidated by that. Vittorio had stayed back during the revolution to protect his father’s store and Flavio was absent without explanation.
Vittorio ended his conversation and dismissed the Muti heir, who returned to join the crowd. He then faced the other students and smacked his hand a couple of times to announce the beginning of the meeting. As was customary, the chatter would die down in a minute or so as everyone was given time to finish their conversations. In the interim, he turned to look past Arianna and directly at Flavio with an all-too-polite smile. “How nice of you to join us, Velluci.” It was a pointed, sarcastic remark that demanded an answer for the luxury heir’s tardiness.
Flavio gave an exaggerated sigh and a half-hearted smile attempting to look nonchalant about the inquiry, but his acting was poor. “I was held up by family matters, Vittorio. If I could do something about it, I would.” The relaxed delivery had an undertone of annoyance. Arianna didn’t buy it for a second and barely stopped a scoff. His lateness was likely nothing other than the result of his own actions and she doubted Vittorio thought any differently.
Quiet began to take hold over the hall as the other students wrapped up their talks amicably and awaited the leaders to speak. Eyes were mainly turned to Vittorio who had called the special meeting. Very few people were unaware of the subject matter but they stuck out like sore thumbs while everyone else grew stern. Vittorio, however, smiled politely.
“Welcome to the meeting all,” he began with a formal presentation, “I hope you have found the food agreeable. I don’t wish to waste time or hang on moments that are better spent on drinks among family, so I will make this quick. I would like to discuss the matter of Leon Solaire and his pending membership in this group.”
“Although anyone who has tried my glasses would disagree, I am not blind. I have seen the impact the performer has had on this group since the revolution. This was originally a group for Revidian students to network and help find their future place within this country. There seems to be far too little of that now in favour of talk that is… idealistic, to say the least.”
“It is good to have ambitions and Leon can be an inspirational figure, no doubt many support his membership.” Vittorio looked down at the speech he had written down on a piece of parchment. “But I would like to temper that ambition with practicality. Leon Solaire is a dreamer who has yet to display any real grasp on finance or politics in our meetings, he barely shows up to half of them, and one could even question if he is a Revidian by birth, although I wouldn’t hold the last point against him.” He paused and looked up. “While I am not overly invested in the vote’s result, I would like to vote on the refusal of Leon Solaire’s membership on these grounds.”
Silence.
“You can’t be serious.” One of the wine-avid students at the back called. Arianna couldn’t see who it was.
Enzo Gallo, an unassuming 17-year-old commoner, spoke up at the front. “Leon took down the White Thresher in Mezegol alone while the other students there watched, you should know. That whole city loves him now. You can’t say he doesn’t belong here.” Arianna moved her hand up at her mouth to hide a tight smile. That statement wasn’t true. But she wasn’t going to correct the record and the other students had neither the knowledge nor desire to either.
“My cousin’s friend is gonna marry the Marquis’ son there because of him.” Suddenly called Arianna’s friend Fiorella Caruso, a food-making member of the group. “She’s a navy woman marrying a noble because of him.”
Vittorio frowned in annoyance and waved the chatter and emerging protests down to move the meeting along. “As I said, I am not concerned with the outcome of this vote. I simply wish to give voice to some of the less… vocal members of the group and let everyone have their say.”
“All those in favour of dismissing Leon Solaire, raise your hand.”
Vittorio, Flavio, Ettore, and four others raised their hands. The group’s policy of public voting backfired as one student even lowered his hand after the poor turnout. 6 out of 30, 20 percent gave a clear message that Leon’s place within the group was solidified. Those who voted against his membership calmly lowered their hands.
“That decides it then. Leon Solaire shall be an official member of Figli di Revidia when he returns from his trip.” There were cheers among the group that even Vittorio couldn’t help but admit a smile at in humble defeat. Arianna noticed that Flavio and Ettore were not so gracious, Ettore because of young age and Flavio… had no excuse. “Please continue with the food, the wine.” He waved them away formally. “And try not to hold the results of the vote against anyone, we are familia remember. Family can have their disagreemen...”
“Before that!” Arianna finally spoke up. “I would like to hold a second vote.” Vittorio gave her a raised eyebrow and Flavio scoffed with impatience. A few students groaned at being wrenched away again from the fragrant food while most turned to provide the youngest leader with her due respect.
“I would like to hold a vote on making Leon Solaire a leader of Figli di Revidia.”
Vittorio’s face dropped and Flavio piped up in a snarky tone. “You can’t. This group only has room for three.”
Arianna smiled at Flavio and turned to the student group captivated by the unfolding drama. “...replacing Flavio.”
Vittorio spoke quietly to Arianna but could still be heard by Flavio and the front row. “Arianna, with all due respect, don’t you think this is a poor time for this?” He looked past her and apologetically toward Flavio, who was about to have his reputation put on the block for public execution.
Arianna gestured gently to the crowd. “This is a democracy, is it not? I think we should let the people decide.”
The other two leaders shot each other worried looks and Arianna felt even more confident. There was a time not too long ago when such a prospect wouldn’t have even phased them and the vote could be dismissed. This was before Arianna had informed the group of Flavio’s habit of skipping academic classes in favour of burning his father’s fortune at dingy brothels. His reputation was even lower than normal after that. There wasn’t anything to speak of for Vittorio, but someone thought they had seen him buying Blue Ice in Mudville and that was enough.
Even if the rumours hadn’t gotten back to them yet, they could feel the undercurrent of their slipping influence. That wasn’t even mentioning Leon himself, the Sun King had a hold on the group that both could recognise.
Vittorio bowed his head briefly in resignation. He could already guess the outcome. “Very well, all those in favour of removing Flavio from his leadership position and replacing him with Leon Solaire.”
18 students immediately raised their hands making an instant majority to call the vote. Within a few seconds, that number had risen to 24. Then, after 10 seconds had passed, only Vittorio, Flavio, and Ettore had chosen to keep their hands down. The answer was clear.
Flavio’s face had grown red from anger and humiliation. He almost jumped out of his seat and spared no time in storming out of Fino a Colazione. Arianna watched him leave with a smile, if she had to guess, she doubted he would remain a member now that his precious leadership role had been stripped from him. Good riddance.
All eyes were now turned to Vittorio, who had removed his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose in clear frustration. Flavio had been a problem he had left for too long and now his co-leader had used him as a means of pushing that fraud performer into a position of greater influence. He waited for a while longer after Flavio’s exit to respond.
“Flavio, I can understand.” He spoke with thinly concealed irritation, barely managing to look up from the table. “He had long neglected his responsibilities to this group and I had planned to deal with that matter privately. But Leon Solaire? Do you all really think he will be any better? Are they not cut from the very same cloth?”
“I know he isn’t in attendance tonight, but would Ciro Volta not be a better fit? Or even the Synesti heir?”
His questions fell on deaf ears.
“I have sat back and watched this group crumble since the revolution. I had thought it was something that would pass or that the sudden grand ambitions would find a realistic way forward. But I can’t entertain this any longer. Tell me,” he tried to look every single student in the eye at once, “if this is the group of Revidia’s future, are we really going to hand it over to that fraud musician and his love-sick fan girl?”
Silence met him. His words found no purchase because Leon Solaire was no fraud and they all knew it. He had proven himself time and again regardless of Vittorio's ignorance. A few looked on in sympathy, but many more in judgment.
Arianna stared daggers into the side of his head. She hated the way he described her and how simple it made her feel. Her vision was so much more than that… He was a man who had never found a purpose greater than the path provided to him, so he was blind. At the very least she knew his true opinions now.
“Very well. I resign and leave you all to your group of sycophants.”
Vittorio calmly rose to the erupting sounds of protest. Those who took exception to his labels thrown in contempt were throwing their own unfavourable words back. Arianna watched him stand and saw the heartbreak in his eyes. He truly had considered this group like family and took the shattering of that family as hard as anyone would. But he hid it well to the unattentive eye in favour of the decorum and dignity that fit his inheritance. He walked out of Fino a Colazione calmy. Behind him followed Ettore Muti and Mila Pioli, the daughter of a fish merchant whose father’s finances were even less remarkable than Arianna’s.
There was silence at first when the trio had exited the door. Many students stood shocked at what had just transpired. Some couldn’t believe the gall of Vittorio to say such things. Some glanced at Arianna, concerned that she could do such things.
Then a timely joke from Enzo Gallo got a modest three laughs and the atmosphere slowly returned.
Arianna sat back alone at the leadership table for a moment and watched the closed entrance of the tavern. Despite the planning, she still couldn’t believe she had pulled it off. It didn’t feel real. She half expected the leavers to come right back and join the group again like nothing ever happened. But something did happen, something big that could never be remedied.
Cawuio-Zast had spent his previous payday of 100 Magus the night after he had gotten it, some payments he remembered, some he didn't. His life from then scrapping by until the next score and this was one for the history books. The treasure of Don Cojones was surely an ill-gotten marvel for the ages and would be remembered for years to come. Zast had decided to take this treasure for his own and disappear of the earth, leaving the riches a vague memory in the minds of others. How long would this hoard last him? Two, three days? He needed it.
Waist-high waters meant Cazenax-high waters and even worse for a particularly short Cazenax like Zast. There was simply not getting around it, he couldn't touch the ground and keep his head above water. So instead, he was swimming around the deliciously swampy and rancid water in a bright yellow inflatable pool ring with a rubber ducky head. The under side of it was blackened in the filthy water.
With purpose, Zast made his way to the site of rotted plant matter where the smell would dissuade lesser men. The place had a good feeling about it and the cowards must not have looked in this area yet.
A foul mass of decomposed organic matter accumulated like a large pile of very juicy garbage in the middle of a Virangish Dorrad. If it weren't for Zast's unique characteristics as a walking little piece of trash himself, he would have to fight off the odours and instinct to avoid such wretched air.
Interestingly, there were multitudes of openings in this nine-foot-tall structure. A hole on its surface, so inviting and dank. And if Zast reached out with the gift, he could sense a distinct opening in its underside too. Where they led was hard to say due to the excessive plant life muddying (literally) any sort of precise sensory.
He did pick up one thing among the magic static: Something round. Something powerful.
Zast's famed fortitude and constitution were all he needed to face the challenge of the rotted spire. Few people could follow in his wake and therefore few would have preceded him. And oh what a treasure there was, he could just about sniff it, the money, the power, it had to be his. But he did not want any hidden onlookers to know he had caught the scent so he avoided the obvious entrance in favour of diving under and swimming up through the submerged opening. Regrettably, the rubber ducky inflatable was left behind.
Under it was. Murky waters and alien plantlife did not dissuade the true. Zast found himself in a tunnel within the accumulation of decomposed matter. At this point, the reeking had gotten so bad that a normal nose would simply be deprived of the sense. It was dark, barring any light source from the Cazenax himself. Except, of course, the beacon that was the mild glint in his senses that promised a treasure like none other.
He was so close. Almost there. Its shape so round. Its green-ness palpable. No less than five days of satiation for the legend himself.
With a small conjured light to illuminate his way, Zast finally looked upon the treasure of the wretched structure. The Greedstone. He didn't know its name, but he knew what to call it by instinct. He reached his hand out to quickly snatch it.
Within his grasp, just dangling there among the detritus. Now just inches away from his palm in the mist of the most putrid of places. He could even see it. All his. Only his.
"He, he, he, they make it too easy for me."
Cawiuo Zast’s green palms cupped the perfectly spherical orb. It was warm. It was welcoming. It did not satiate anything. He wanted even more. He tugged upon it, that shining bauble that attracted another tainted soul - a wide eyed fish to the angler fish’s trap. A light snapping sound was heard to the right. And then to the left. And then all over.
Eyes. Red, mucus-covered eyes all served as audience to the cazenax’s victory. And it all writhed.
The high pitched scream of a voice they would barely recognize. As more eyes laid upon the imminently gruesome sight, they would discover it belonged to none other than Cawuio Zast. Dangling high in the hair with a thick and long vine-like appendage impaled through his abdomen. The thing stemmed from the pile he had been diving in, lured in by a stone, and now he in turn dangled as bait.
Tremendous pain was in his screams. Endless. But the auditory horror would very quickly come with a visual one: The pile of rot shifted and churned, until ripples in the water became waves that splashed onto all those within its area. Appearing first as a large, muddy lump that pushed out, they would soon see where all the organic matter had gone - where the bodies were taken.
The unholy monster of the Bog emerged with its many red eyes lined inside its multi-layered maw. A single swing of its tree-sized right arm, its only arm of such a size, prompted a second tremor that awoke its dormant appendages. It stood at the same height as its appendages, although its width was prodigious to say the least. Most of its features remained veiled by the vegetation and mud, but more and more limbs could be seen protruding from the monstrosity.
Zast flailed around helplessly, barely hanging on to life. If it hadn't been for mender, he might have died only a few seconds after the initial blow. Now his blood type only served to prolong an inevitable fate. A steady and unnaturally plentiful stream of coins rained down from his coat as he was flung every which way in the air. Every coin that dropped coated in the wretched blood of the Cazenax.
But Zast was a gambler. He had been in worse situations before and come out fine. He had a plan.
Reaching for his flintlock, he unlatched it from his belt, tried to take aim, and missed his shot.
"Help me! First one to kill this thing will be rich beyond their wildest dreeeaaaaa..." His final word was cut off as the creature flailed him once more.
Before Edyta lay Cawuio-Zast, begging for help and mercy; begging, effectively, for Edyta Laska to risk her own death in order to save him. While that was not something she feared, she also honoured life, and it had been this vile little goblin's own greed that had gotten him into such a situation. Choice comes from Mother Dami, she reminded herself, just as judgements come from Father Dami.
She was just above him, hovering in the air on a gravity loop. This was an alarming place and she had no wish to touch down. Consequences are Mother Eshiran's to hand out, though.
Sister Laska looked upon him not-unsympathetically. "And what, pray tell," she asked with a soft coldness, "shall you give to Mother Eshiran for not taking you up in her embrace?"
On account of being thrashed around by a gigantic swamp monster, Zast's keen ability to focus was a little inhibited. Sure, he had been in similar situations before, at least five times, but none with a nun lecturing at him calmly from about.
"What the hells are ya talking about lady? I'm not dead yeeeeee..." A big swing robbed him from finishing the words. "Cut this damn vine already." The Cazenax was beginning to cough up blood. With a mustering of his meagre remaining strength, he weakly tossed some blood-soaked coins at Laska. It would undoubtedly stain her robes if they weren't already the perfect colour.
The coins scattered as they flew, a handful rebounding off the Rezaindian's robes of the same colour. "Hmm," she murmured, "so you do bleed red." Edyta Laska looked up and, with unsettlingly fast reflexes, snatched one of the sailing coins out of the air.
This, she flipped nimbly across her fingers, examining its bloody golden surface as the cazenax thrashed and moaned. All at once, she brought it to her lips and slid it through. Her eyes narrowed for a shadow of a second as she pulled it out. She spat, then, very much like a peasant, and made a face of distaste. "And you couldn't even pay me real gold." She shook her head. "You've placed your faith in the VOID, Cawuio-Zast. Let it save you." She turned away.
As Caiwuo-Zast’s eyes met Edyta Laska’s, he knew. She did not have to condemn him with her words, her mere aura as not Ahn-Eshira but as an envoy of the Judge sufficed. His eyes veered slightly, offering a novel experience of elevated height. A final spectacle of horror all for him. He watched as the many eyes opened behind him.
"Tommy, did I ever tell ya about my time in the Ensollian? I was under the command of a Belzaggic pirate captain, can't remember his name for the life of me but he always wore a red shirt. Funny reason for it too, but that's for another time. We made a name for ourselves raiding Revidian ships on the strait between Bozan and Medrilan. Got a lot of Magus doing that and caught ourselves a reputation in the process. In a short time, not a single Revidian could go that way without fearing a blade to their throat."
"It made for easy work Tommy. They would see our sails and give up without a fight. No merchant values gold over their own blood, ex-naval officers maybe, merchants no. It was easy work, but they started to catch on and the Revidian's slowly favoured other routes. With the work drying up, we coulda gone to those other routes but the captain had other ideas. With the Belzagg traders being plentiful in the straight, why not just steal from them? So we did. It was a slaughter Tommy, a profitable profitable slaughter."
"But the Belzaggs didn't like that one bit. They mobilized far quicker than the Revidians and they were on our tail before long. A ship weighed by endless spoils doesn't travel very fast and we knew that a battle would come by morning. That's when the captain let me know the most important words I had ever heard in this life. 'Listen boy, as long as blood spills on these waters and Magus is taken over bodies, I will never die. Merchants in this straight will always be scared of me and fear the blade I hold.' I thought he was an idiot Tommy, to this day I can't even remember his name. But he was right."
"Come morning I saw him staggering on the deck holding three blades in the torso and his right arm blown off. He smiled as he dropped to the deck and finally passed. That's when I realised that he had never died because I was him and he was me. It's hard to explain, Tommy, but you'll understand it too one day."
Magnificent Green saw them all fight for something other than themselves - for someone else. Some sacrificed a lot, others nearly died. But most got to keep the most precious thing in the world …
The red, monstrous eyes drew closer. Irregular and loud breathing sent ripples through the water.
The vine twisted and tangled deeper into the Cazenax's ribcage as he saw Laska, his final hope, reject him. The monster's appendage slowly drew him back toward its maw. Blood began pooling in Zast's throat and trickling over his body. His energy gave out, the trickle of coins tapered to a stop and he fell back with his arms slacked behind. The coat he wore slowly slipped from his shoulders and off his arms and it gently glided toward the ground. He had no weapons, he had no coat, just brown slacks and a red shirt once white.
He wondered if he regretted how he had lived, or if anything he regretted his reckless action here.
The massive external maw riddled with writhing life within opened wide, letting out a foul gust of air.
No, not really. It was never not worth it. There was no more begging. Nothing was coming for this greedy little man. A man of many riches, but with nobody who ever truly cared about him.
Cawuio-Zast began to smile a truly sickening, vile smile. He would die here randomly, absent from the eyes of judgement, absent from the eyes of those he had wronged. Anthal, along with a long line of others, would never see justice for what he had done. He danced with Lady Eshiran, he had escaped Dami's hands, now the ride had come to an end and he would die without note on the world. What a wild ride it was. In that moment, with no other motor functions, Zast began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, a gurgle of blood from his mouth. He smiled at Laska with reddened teeth as the jaws of the beast began to close around him.
A sound.
The faint tolling of a bell rang in Zast's ears. He knew that the sound had come from no earthly phenomenon. It was a simple, understated noise that told the Cazenax one thing. Something was watching, someone had judged his actions from beyond, and, wherever he was going, they would be waiting for him. The gods sat waiting to cast their sentence down upon him. The laughing stopped and his smile faded. But before he could process anything else, the jaws collapsed on him and ended his life.
CRUNCH
Cawuio-Zast's coat billowed gently to the swampy surface and floated on the water. The cazenax's epitaph would read: 'Here lies Cawuio-Zast. The man who ran from the eyes of justice so much that he forgot to build anything to be remembered by.' If only there was anyone to write it. Who would be there to shed a tear? Who would know where to go to piss on his grave? Did he ever really exist?
An unmarked tomb of filth and muck was the perfect resting place for a man such as Cawuio-Zast. His coat floating on the water was the only evidence he was ever really there.
He dresses as befits his post. In court, he wares billowing shirts and silken garments fitting for the warm weather. In matters of state, he wears plate armour and ornate weapons as symbols of status.
He stands at 6'9"
T H E G I F T
4 3 3 3 6 0 0 3 0 0 0
Magnetic specializations: Ferromagnetic Kinetic specializations: Gravitational, Stasis
Bloodtypes: Blueblood, Leadvein
B A C K G R O U N D
When Exarch Mycan'intii'seporvyit took to power, there was an incredible reform in the Oiyac ruling class. The man had come from lower nobility and took power through populist support against the previous monarch. The nobles of the day were lined up and their worth was measured with uncaring standard. Nobles who had sunk into nepotism and poor practiced were ousted and simple stood down from their position (if they were lucky). Almost half of the nobility were cruelly ripped out of their positions of power and replaced with those who could do the job.
Malon's familial line did not suffer such a fate. They were nobles who earnt their keep and maintain it to this day. But a youth spent viewing the fall of weaker families he once had to call equal gave Malon an appreciation for the Exarch ideals. Bloodlines don't build hierarchy, power does. It is the responsibility to families with the experience of rule to maintain their ability to be effective.
M O T I V A T I O N
Malon wishes to serve his country to the degree his power befits him. He seeks a strong legacy built upon fighting back the oncoming Tarlonese and to hold a reputation as a good baron.
N O T E S
Malon is acknowledged by the Damy wing of the Yasoi Pentad
ctrlsaltdel
Suicharte
Carlyle
wintersoldier
Fading Memory
Damycles
Lildear18
Izurich
Duoya
