Avatar of Raineh Daze

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2 mos ago
Current B♭ minor
3 mos ago
Cold air is spiky, not soft. Spiky air.
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4 mos ago
i wasn't expecting to see spam for an indian moving service
4 mos ago
i slept on my shoulder funny. ow
1 like
4 mos ago
fight existential dread with cake
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Hikari


"Hm, so we've all been reincarnated? At least this won't be a lonely isekai." Hikari wondered… after being put down from the hug. Now, wasn't that an odd situation? Nobody was likely to have been able to just pick her up and do something like that before this, and quite certainly nobody had tried since she was a child.

Now that everybody had stood up, she could see that, indeed, it was more than being a cute fox girl that had changed in her death. Ah, this was going to be an inconvenience later, wasn't it? Still, if she was a fox, and had nine tails, there must surely be the potential for shapeshifting so she could get a more adult body for when it would be useful. Until then, maybe she should just try and get something to dissuade weirdos.

"I'm Abe Hikari. Ah… I don't suppose either of you know how to navigate? I only left Tokyo for a few business meetings…"
Hikari


… huh. This was… hmm, she didn't remember taking a trip to Aokigahara? Even then, it wasn't the sort of place where you just went and fell asleep in the forest. No, wait, she'd been on a trip across the sea – hang on, that didn't make sense, either. Flight paths went north, there wouldn't have been some huge forest to land in after a crash… at least, she didn't think so? Was this Canada?

As she thought, Hikari's tails swished.



Tails? Now, that was definitely something that didn't come with a crashed plane. It was kind of hard to count but reaching a and around made it a bit easier and… yup, nine tails. Huh, that was neat, and it explained why her ears felt so much twitchier. Not, looking down, the maid dress, but there were worse things to be stuck in.

She guessed this was one of those isekai scenarios, then. Although, it would've been nice to be dropped off somewhere more inhabited? She didn't feel like she had many useful skills for being in some dilapidated forest building with… some man wearing a coat, and a lady with surprisingly pretty hair. Ah, which one to wake up first?

The lady was a bit closer. Right, just give her a gentle push. "Excuse me, ma'am, you can't sleep here."

@Pyromania99 @FujiwaraPhoenix
Caster


"You misunderstand me, Master. While I would love to instruct you in the finest of Rome's cuisine, from the simplest to the most intricate preparation, I simply mean that I need not fear fighting on a full or empty stomach. The existence of a Servant has its own benefits," the Servant replied, unable to mask the pout at being admonished like a child over her wording. So uncalled for, to poke her like that!

"Yes, of course, soon we will enter into glorious battle! Ah, I look forward to seeing who was called. A chance to meet fellow heroes is a rare thing indeed, even if there must have been some amongst my associates." That transformed into a dark look for a second.




"Of course someone already broke the rules…" the overseer said with a sigh, accepting the packet and then looking through the photos, then pocketing the envelope, "It was too much to hope for more than plausible deniability, I suppose."

The woman took a drink from her can, eyes drifting the ceiling, "If you're quick, you might be able to go through the kitchen and out. The church has a small graveyard, and the path through it rejoins the main one a bit further down. If you're slow, the chatterbox might get you."

No indication of which one that was. Though, their appearances should make it obvious.
The bow goes off with a distinct creak, the old wood in the skeleton's hand visibly straining – but the shot is wildly off course, at least if you were the target. There's a slight chance that Lanessa would be hit but… no, the shimmering ward she off-handedly tosses up as she pokes in one corner of the cave completely negates the arrow, the projectile dropping harmlessly to the ground. That leaves the archer completely defenceless to being carved apart, the fine sword cleaving through with only the slightest hint of resistance. It doesn't take much for it to collapse utterly, and the pair you rushed through show a similar degree of threat.

That only leaves, as it turns out, a single undead in this portion of the cave, at first nearly indistinguishable from the half-prepared bodies laid out on slabs of rock or tables. A zombie so rotted that its race is barely determinate, its legs wasted away just to stumps.

Not much of a threat.

"Of course a necromancer would fall in with such a foul cult…" the mage says bitterly, waving you over. The alcove contains a small statuette of something vaguely crocodilian, surrounded with trinkets, various herbs and fungi, even a few fragments of unfamiliar crystal. All surrounded by a steadily brightening magical circle. "Molag Bal. Prince of Murder. Lord of Corruption. The Dunmer Tribunal referred to him as the King of Rape on occasion, aptly. As a Daedric Prince, his sphere is domination and enslavement, and as the creator of vampires, he unsurprisingly enjoys some popularity amongst necromancers."

She clenches her fist, and the circle erupts into a pillar of blinding flame, burning brightly for several long seconds before dying out and leaving only a glowing pile of slag. "I say this as a warning. The Princes are not as blindly evil as the Imperial Cult would have you believe, but his followers come close. The Dark One's sphere is wholly inimical to civilisation or even joy, and his plots have been as much a threat to the world as anything else.

"Now, come; the cave's necromancer awaits. I'm sure she's expecting us, her remaining creations await."

Lanessa points to a small curtain, a passage into another room.
Tyaethe


Oh. That was… hmm, interesting, and not just because her pillow falling out from under her was strangely disconcerting. Good on those guys to have found a way in while the rest of them went to deal with the gate guard. But this was also bad news, as now they were entirely within a fae realm. That meant… right, she did have seniority and experience, she couldn't just wait for someone else to get to the point. Even if that meant dealing with a fairy queen…

And, as the captain had already found out, there was very little that the realm's ruler couldn't do if she wanted it. The restrictions of normal magic meant so little in a place like this, and it wasn't like any of them had special protection. Well, maybe she had a little, as one of Reon's devoted and her own mana, but that wouldn't be enough to pick an aggressive stance without preparation.

"It was just a big snake," Tyaethe said with a shrug, pushing past the other knights so that the Moonlit Queen would actually see her, eyes closed. "Doesn't matter if it regenerates, without any sort of support, it's not that special. I've killed a dozen things like it and it doesn't hold a candle to a dragon."

She opened one eye. "Besides, your guardian wasn't the one that let us in, was it? Isn't that more important than some replaceable construct?"
Miina Malina


… damn it. They'd pierced the barrier with everyone, just about, but the attacks hadn't brought it down. And it didn't seem likely that anyone that had been involved in breaking the barrier would be able to pull off the same feat immediately after. That left… well, quite a lot of them, really, but it was still more ways to stab or explosives. And while there'd been so much testament to the effectiveness of stabbing, at heart Miina couldn't really say that the Skaelan focus on technological warfare seemed… optimal.

At least, not when your enemies stopped being conveniently limited to rather familiar limits. Unless they had some secret way to make bullets more than what they were? That—

This wasn't the time to get distracted. Think, Miina… her best attack against a single opponent normally would just be to stab them and then work on the ice. It was, in a lot of respects, ideal given her mediocre talent: she couldn't pump out a stronger spell, so just make the way the ice worked far more effective than normal. Tossing it at people was basically just elemental stabbing, which was a blunt instrument. Freezing someone solid was undoubtedly deadly… yet even more blunt, hard to pull off, and just overall intensive. Plus, it was very upsetting when whoever you were trying to freeze just shrugged it off. No, she'd just concluded that if you took the same amount of ice but guided how it crystallised in someone's blood, in their chest cavity… all those things that helped with healing and working out why there was an injury? It could do so much more damage as it specifically shredded everything important.

But that was useless against Leviathan. Even if there wasn't the central conceit of trying to weaponise the Eidolon's own element against it, it was simply too big. Where even on a giant magical serpent would constitute a vulnerable point, anyway? No, she couldn't just pull off that trick. Fire… eugh, Leviathan was the opposite of combustible, she couldn't think of any way to apply the same principle. No, she needed to maximise damage by lightning.

Except lightning wasn't nice. It could sort of be controlled, the Mystral guessed, but it was all so eager and fast to leap that it was barely worth it, guiding it from one target to the next was one thing but trying to contain it and keep pouring on more… it was an interesting thought, but not practical here. Not by raw control. Could she exploit it? It always wanted to escape, taking the easy path… play with it too much in a jungle and you really started to know that.

She had an idea.

"C-Cover me!" Well, maybe someone could? It was unlikely, even by the standards they'd displayed so far this was… stupid. But she needed to not be killed before attempting her idea.

Jumping onto the swiping tail was definitely the stupidest thing she'd done. Sure, it got her close. Sure, she was armoured. Sure, it wasn't a direct hit. But it was still momentum, and an impact, and breathing was now a lot harder. But that wasn't important, she had one hand on Leviathan, and the other was braced to pierce the beast's scales just a little.

In one hand, she held a protection against lightning. And in the other, her sword crackled. And now—thrust.

As was its wont, the thunder spell surged forwards, seeking to scorch as it went and just ground itself. But Miina couldn't be allowing that, could she? If she could just direct the defence to that part of the great beast, the magic would have to rampage elsewhere, and if she could steadily block that off too, and keep both going, it could only intensify as it jumped around and around, the magical lightning looking for its escape—

How long could she keep this up? Moments, if she was dislodged. Or pancaked, but being so focused on magic at least meant forgetting her own mortality. Maybe seconds, if she was lucky, and her request was heard. But it would have to be enough to help, wouldn't it?


Accepted.
The journey to Sentinel is understandably tedious; you travel first by carriage down the length of the Gold Road and across the breadth of Cyrodiil, then by boat from Anvil to the Iliac Bay itself. Yet, even with the uneasy watch against the Thalmor, the travel through coastal waters is by far preferable to stomping across the breadth of the Alik'r, and a far better excuse besides for why you all happen to arrive at the same time as the Empress's diplomat.

Your first days in Sentinel are busy, your explicit orders to buy up somewhere you can more permanently stay. The idea, after all, is that you'll come across as immigrants rather than travellers… as strange a group as you are.

What your initial funding eventually secured you is a rather nice two-floor building, with the caveat of being outside the city walls when some invading force or other comes knocking… and as the fate of the former refugee district in the same area shows, if anything does happen, your current residence is unlikely to survive. It also does little to cool the omnipresent heat of the area, and the sea breeze can only do so much.

That leaves two immediate problems: one, establishing a proper cover for your presence in the area. The willingness and ability to pay out got you this foothold, but with how distinctive a group you are—particularly the wizards, even more than the unexpected minotaur—it's only a matter of time before the authorities grow concerned about what you're doing. More importantly…

The small pile of coins sitting on the table paints a dim picture. It's enough to get by for another week or two, but it seems that the Empress either has no means or no willingness to send more… and you still need to eat, too.
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