King Cosmos

Purgatorium [Cancelled]

Sure, I don't have enough on my plate. I'm interested.

Etude of the Heavens — Now Accepting!

First.

Katya Athelas - Swashbuckling Mage

Name: Katya Athelas

Race: Kinjo

Age: 35

Appearance: Standing at 5’ 5”, Katya is shorter than she would like to be and has a fairly lithe and petite frame that is typical of her race; thin arms with a slight hint of muscle, narrow shoulders and a thin waist. Her skin is tanned, a result of long days spent on the deck of a ship exposed to the sun and her hands are calloused from either pulling ropes, hauling cargo or wielding a sword.

Katya’s hair is a dark brown, as are her ears and her tail, although the latter is tipped with white fur as are the tufts on the insides of her ears. Her eyes are sharp and golden in colour. A dour expression sits on a face with a pointed chin, an angular jaw and a round, button nose; some would describe Katya as cute or pretty, and she would hold that against them.

Personality: A life mostly spent sailing or fighting has shaped Katya into the person she is today; a person who is loud, brusque and rough mannered. She is brash and headstrong, confident enough in her own strength and abilities to rush heedlessly into dangerous situations. She is a thrill-seeker, an adrenaline junkie who is drawn to danger like a moth to a flame.

There aren’t many things that can rouse her to anger and she is likely to brush off most insults or comments with a laugh, but she hates when people judge her by her appearance or by first impressions and especially hates being told that she is incapable of something; when something like that happens she is quick to anger and even quicker to fight.

History: Katya was born in Thryn, the daughter of two merchants, and her early life was safe, prosperous and… boring. It wasn’t that there was nothing to do, Thryn was a thriving city after all, inhabited by all kinds of people and with that came activity. It was just that… Katya like to read, her father ran a bookstore, among other ventures, so their house was always full of books and Katya would read them all; books about other places, books about history, books about important people doing important things. Books about adventures. She loved those stories the most, the stories where big things happens because people made them happen and it seemed to her, at a young age, that big things never happened in Thryn.

It was a city that never changed, where nothing new ever happened or, if it did, it happened slowly. A city that had closed itself off from the rest of the world and which ignored the things that went on beyond its borders. Even the books that Katya liked to read mostly came from within Thryn itself and it was rare that a new book written by someone that didn’t live inside the same city Katya lived in would pass through her father’s store. Things were different towards the outskirts, where people actually traded with and spoke to outsiders, but Katya didn’t live in the outskirts.

Whenever she would ask her parents about what was happening in the rest of the world, because her parents were smart and were supposed to know things she didn’t, they would give her vague and unsatisfying answered. Because they had never left Thryn, just like everyone else she knew; they didn’t even know anyone who had left Thryn, so any knowledge they did have came from far away.

She wasn’t sure when it was she decided she would leave the city. Katya just knew that at some point, she had resolved to leave, to go somewhere, anywhere else and see the things that she had read about in her books first hand. Maybe she would get to see one of those big events, or meet one of those important people. Maybe she would be one of those important people or live through one of those important events. All she knew at the time was that nothing would happen to her if she stayed in Thryn, so she left; Katya saved up her money, figured out people actually went about leaving and who she needed to talk to and a few months after her twentieth birthday, she left.

After a few months of hopping from town to town, city to city, she ended up in Agadia. The money she had saved up was almost gone, most of the things she’d brought from home had been sold or stolen and she wasn’t any closer to figuring out what she was actually going to do with the rest of her life but… she was in Agadia; a place famous (she’d recently learned) for being the home of monster slayers. Surely if Katya was going to find adventure anywhere, it would be there.

Once she managed to stop staring at the sea like an idiot she was ready to begin her new life and an adven… barmaid. She got a job as a barmaid.

Becoming an adventurer, it turned out, wasn’t something you could just decide to do. There were ships in the harbour sure, crews who hunted sea monsters for a living, and some of them were even hiring; but none of them were looking to take on some starry-eyed slip of a girl who couldn’t sail, couldn’t fight or couldn’t even swim. Before she could do anything exciting she needed to learn how, needed to train and that cost money. So, barmaid. Earning money so she could afford a place to sleep and food to eat, saving up so she could buy a sword, then money for someone to teach her how to use it, practising her meagre magical talents into something useful then spending more money on a tutor when she hit a wall.

It was difficult, arduous work with slow gains and the occasional setback. She was pretty sure none of the people she ever read about in books ever had to go through something like this; or maybe they did and the story didn’t start until after this boring part. Whatever the case, after a few years of serving drinks and mopping up spilt beer, or learning how to fight as much from the drunks in the tavern as from the sword tutor who over charged her, after arguing with her mage tutor to stop trying to teach her useless spells and focus on the stuff that set things on fire, she was finally able to convince a captain to hire her onto his crew.

So now Katya is someone who slay monsters for a living, someone who can fight with a sword, cast spells and do all kinds of things that she never would have learned had she stayed in Thryn. She also has a lot of scars and painful memories and a few near death experiences she never would have got in Thryn either. But somehow she still doesn’t feel like an adventurer. Katya still feels like she’s somehow in the boring parts that happen before the first page of the book, even though she’d never describe her current life as boring.

Abilities: Katya is a mage, a rather specialised one with little interest in deepening her magical prowess, but a mage nonetheless; her Kinjo heritage and greater capacity for magic helps, or else she likely never would have bothered to learn spells at all. Her natural affinity is for fire, or perhaps more specifically explosions; the little magic she had learned is almost entirely offensive in nature, allowing her to spread flames and destruction, at least on a small scale.

Skills: As a somewhat experienced sailor, adventurer and slayer of sea monsters, Katya skills are mostly based in that area. She is a skilled swordswoman, more from the need to deal with pirates and brigands than monsters, a competent sailor and an excellent swimmer, as anyone who spends time on a ship should be, and a decent climber due to the need to scale the riggings and masts.

Beyond that she is a luckless but determined gambler, can hold her drink exceptionally well for someone her size, is quite dangerous in a bareknuckle brawl and is rather skilled at evading the authorities, which is to say she can run quite fast.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Leo Wilde – Slifer Red

Okay, so he was right; Helena could see those duel spirit things. She admitted to it a lot more easily than that Ra girl had as well, which made things easy. Maybe this meant he was on the right track with what he was thinking.

But, things were awkward again. The girl clearly didn’t want to speak about this topic, either because of guilt or just because he was a stranger asking personal questions. Maybe someday he could have a conversation with a classmate that didn’t leave him either confused or uncomfortable, but it wasn’t going to be this conversation.

“Well, sorry, but I need to ask you. Because you had that duel with Donte and now he’s in the infirmary and they’re not telling us why.” He let out a sigh. “Look, I don’t know anything about spirits; I’m not sure I even really believe in them, but I gotta ask. Are they dangerous? Did your spirit… do something to Donte?”

@Darkmoon Angel

Dreaming Together With You - A Fading Memory Experiment - On Hiatus

Sidney Malcolm

They never did get to eat anything. Sidney was hungry, the grilled meat smelled good, and the fried dough was delicious if it was the same kind she had eaten last year; but she was also discerning and if she was treating Audrey too then she wanted to make sure she picked something good.

They walked around the festival grounds for a few minutes while she decided, but her indecision cost her as she was still looking when the gong rang and Audrey sped off by herself. Sidney hurried to follow her, almost losing her in the crowds before she found the other girl climbing on top of a trash can to get a better view of the lake. There wasn’t enough room up there for the both of them so she contented herself with just standing nearby, though she shuffled far away enough that she wasn’t standing right next to the trash. The rows of people in front of her meant that she couldn’t see the lake itself, nor the raft that carried Freyja across the water, but that was fine; she’d seen the dance before and the part she was interested in watching would take place above the lake anyway. She could see the sky just fine from here.

After a little while of staring at the back of people hears, Sidney heard Stoat Bilica shout out to begin the best part of the night and slam his cane against the ground. Soon after, hundreds of light lantern floated into the air above the water in a display that had always struck Sidney as being pure magic. The rest of the ceremony continued out of sight, the important people of the town performing the same routine they did every year, handing the old bell off to Freyja before she was pushed out into the lake to dance as the drums beat. Sidney couldn’t see any of that, but she knew it was happening; instead, she just watched the lanterns.

If she’d been thinking ahead, or if she arrived early enough to remember, she would have found a good spot to stand so she could record all this. Or at least take a few pictures. Something she could use later as a reference so she could draw something using the lanterns as inspiration; you’d think after so many years on seeing this she would have run out of ideas, but, nope. Every time she saw those lanterns rise into the sky and their mirrored reflection on the lake it still managed to spark a little bit of creativity in her. Maybe seeing it as a child was even the reason she became an artist in the first place? Who could say? It was so long ago.

Oh well, someone was bound to be recording this. She could just grab it off their socials later, then start drawing. Every year she drew something after the festival; it was like her own tradition.

When the final gong of the bell rippled out across the lake, it took Sidney a moment to realise things were off. She couldn’t see the lake from her position, nor the strangeness of a water’s surface that no longer reflected reality. The people around her had already been still and even the lanterns hanging frozen in the air didn’t strike her as odd immediately. It was only the scream, Freyja’s scream, which clued her in to something being wrong. Water surges upwards, high enough to be seen over people’s heads. Audrey rushes forward and it spurs Sidney to action as well, slowly, walking forward and pushing her way past an unnaturally still and silent crowd as she makes her way towards the water and begins to hear it.

The song.

Sidney slows as she hears the words, confused. She looks around, trying to find a source, but the music seems to be coming from everywhere, nowhere, as if whispered directly into her ears. At first the lyrics make no sense but then, they make all the sense in the world. The words lead her forward again, speeding up as she approaches the lake with less confusion than before. The water, rising up from the surface in unnatural ways, looks more beautiful than anything she had ever seen before. She bumps into someone, her shoulder jostling theirs but she pays it and them no mind.

“Can you hear that?”

Within the pillar lights shone in every colour and beyond those, something else. A city? Sidney can see what look like buildings, tall ones, with lit windows, but it’s hard to make anything out when the water is moving a splitting as it is. she reaches the edge of the water, her shoes and ankles and calves getting soaked immediately as she pays it no mind.

“Can you see that?”

A tendril reaches for her and she doesn’t retreat. It grabs her and she does not struggle. The water closes over her head and she closes her eyes.

----

Sidney opens her eyes and sucks in a breath of the freshest air she’s ever tasted.

She immediately starts to cough.

Sitting up so she can bend over double, she brings a hand to her mouth so she cough up nothing as she chokes on a sudden inhale of too much air. Her soaking wet hair hang lank on either side of her face, more so on the right than the left. Her clothing is wet too; the jacket she wore heavy across her shoulders with all the sodden weight it now held.

Colours swam in front of her eyes, like she’d been staring at a bright light for hours. She blinks to clear it away, but it goes nowhere until she moves the hand from in front of her face. As her hand splashes down into a pool of water, she realises she’s sitting waist deep in a pool and begins to stand. Or tries to, at least. As she places a hand on her knee to push herself up the colours start to swim in front of her eyes again, a dizzying array on them. Her hand is a swirling mass of colours, the skin shifting between greens and reds and yellows and blues as she looks; yellow becomes the dominant colour the longer she stares.

Sidney shoots to her feet, her other hand coming up to roll the sleeve up to her elbow. Her forearm is the same; the skin a bright, vibrant yellow with occasional patches of other colours that bubble to the surface before the yellow overtakes them again. The only spot that doesn’t shift being the butterfly that she had drawn on herself in washable marker the day before; that remains unchanged, though it looks a lot more permanent now than it did before.

A voice calls out nearby and she is shaken from her daze. She jumps and splashes the water around her ankles and sees Odaya standing nearby. A feathery Odaya. Past her she can see Freyja… with horns. There are others too, other voices calling out, other people or other things that used to be people; she’s not sure what to call them.

But she sees and hears none of this.

Sidney follows Odaya’s finger to where she’s pointing and she sees it.

“Oh. That’s a dragon.”

Dreaming Together With You - A Fading Memory Experiment - On Hiatus

A) Thanks! It's supposed to evoke the same "heart on her sleeve" as my first idea, but with the addition of the poison warning, which I think is also fitting.

@Gisk

Do the patterns change with her mood? Because if so then it's very similar to what I was planning for Sidney.

Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Next Gen

Leo Wilde – Slifer Red

His roommate was in the infirmary.

Leo still didn’t know the guy all that well; they barely spoke to each other, even though they shared a room, so Leo couldn’t even say he felt particularly concerned about Donte’s condition beyond the level of basic human compassion. They weren’t friends, but there was no bad blood there either. The last he’d heard the guy was doing okay, but there was no word on when he’d be coming back and no one had bothered to explain what had even happened to him.

All anyone knew was that that Helena girl was involved somehow.

Normally, Leo wouldn’t want to get involved. It was none of his business and no harm… no lasting harm had been done, so he wasn’t going to harass the girl for now reason. But, well, he was curious what had happened. Donte was a big guy and while it wasn’t like Helena couldn’t have hurt him somehow he doubted that was what went down; especially since the teachers weren’t doing anything to punish her for hospitalising another student.

Whatever the situation or the reason, it probably wasn’t the case that Helena had straight out attacked Donte. So something else had happened instead, something the teachers weren’t telling them and also weren’t punishing Helena for.

And, you know, he’d just come around to the idea that weird, magic duel monster spirits existed…

Were they dangerous?

“Hey, er, Helena?” It wasn’t often that Leo got sheepish around people; even girls. But then, it also wasn’t often that he found himself approaching them out of the blue and asking awkward personal questions of people he barely knew. Well, he’d done it twice in as many days now, but still. “This might sound weird but, er… do you… see things? Like, I don’t know, do you ever talk to your cards?”

@Darkmoon Angel

Dreaming Together With You - A Fading Memory Experiment - On Hiatus

EDIT: and King, whenever you post, you can feel free to mention the text exchange. It might even be funny if she sees it over Audrey's shoulder.

If you do, Ambrose is listed as "The Himbo" in her phone.

@Gisk

I don't think I'll be able to get a post out before we move forward either, but we'll see where we're at after the update.

Dreaming Together With You - A Fading Memory Experiment - On Hiatus

Sidney Malcolm

When Audrey grimaced and emptied out her pockets, Sidney grimaced with her in sympathy. It was never a good feeling to be low on cash, especially when the festival was happening and everyone around you was having fun and you just… couldn’t. “Oh, sure. No problem.”

Come to think of it, did she have any money on her? Leaving the house in a rush as she did, Sidney wasn’t actually sure if she’d remembered to bring any with her. She checked, patting down the sides of her jacket and reaching inside to where she usually kept that sort of thing; for a moment she was worried they would both have to hungry, which would be embarrassing, but luckily she was able to find a few bills in an inside pocket. “Yeah, okay, no problem. And you don’t to pay me back; just cover me the next time we go out, okay?” Not that there was much difference, but Sidney preferred to treat these things in a kind of ‘pay it forward’ way rather than hold people to a debt. It was less awkward that way; for herself as much as the other person.

Putting her hands in her pockets, Sidney picked a direction at random and began to walk, trusting Audrey to follow along. “And I’m picking where we eat. Did you see any good stalls? I only just got here; haven’t had a chance to look around.”

@Gisk

Dreaming Together With You - A Fading Memory Experiment - On Hiatus

Fun fact I found out while writing my post. The "new phone, who dis" meme is apparently from way back in 2009, meaning it's almost as old as the characters we are writing.

Dreaming Together With You - A Fading Memory Experiment - On Hiatus

Sidney Malcolm

Bilica squabble? Urgh, whatever Audrey was talking about Sidney was glad she arrived late enough to miss it; that was a silver lining even if she would have preferred not to lose track of time as she had. Of course her friend would find herself in the middle of it as well, but it sounded like things went well enough, this time.

“A dead tree? I don’t know…” It was sweet of Audrey to think of her and her art upon seeing something she thought was cool and Sidney was always happy to be given a fresh source of inspiration, but this one kind of missed the mark. A dead tree just made her think of rotting wood, little pill bugs crawling all over it and dark, shadowy vibes. The thought was enough to make her scrunch her nose up; maybe some other time she would have been into it, but that kind of scene was completely at odds with the kind of colourful stuff she wanted to draw right now.

Although… if mushrooms were starting to grow on it, then maybe it wasn’t as dreary as she was imagining; she didn’t know her way around the woods like Audrey did, but she was pretty sure some of those mushrooms could be pretty colourful. Her look turned thoughtful, and then she began to smile. She could just picture a bunch of brightly coloured fungus growing out of an old stump and a fallen log; a dull, grey under layer with a vibrant, psychedelic forest growing on top of it. Like something out of Alice in Wonderland. “Actually, yeah. Yeah! That sounds great. Thanks for telling me.”

Feeling her phone vibrate in her hand, she turned the screen over to see the return message from William. “Sorry, it’s William. Let me just text him back.” Really? ‘New phone’? That joke was so old.

”Nevermind. I found someone cooler to hang out with.”

Take that.

“So, do you want to get some food? I haven’t eaten all day.”

@Gisk@Teyao