#commander surta

The sound was clear and clarion, though it quickly turned sinister as her voice changed, distorted by Magitek.

“Good boy, Lazarus! Look at you~” she turned around, smirking beneath the helm. She’d faced him across the battlefield before, many times. Before he’d turned on Titus’ path. And so she wasn’t so unused to something like this.

She could imagine it was going to be a bit surprising for Luche though. Who hadn’t quite been clued in to her identity yet.

Things with the other woman had...complicated. They were involved, now. And she was getting...

She was getting invested. Which made fighting the other glaive complicated. Which made everything about the eventual aims she and Glauca shared, complicated. She should get out now, really.

Or end this. Except...

“Lone glaives have tried to fight me before, sweetheart,” Surta drawled, having to think about her persona, knowing that she was usually this flirtatious with most in the armor. It infuriated people, worked in her favor. “Do you really think you have a chance? Shouldn’t you go bring a few friends?”

She taunted the other woman as she spun her staff, ends heating, turning near molten as she leaped back a huge distance from the other woman.  She settled into a taunting stance, staff held off to the side, confident, and hoping the other woman just left.

@sewingrainbows from here 

They’d found her when she was struggling to get her father’s body down.

Screaming and weeping, Iris fought the men of the Empire, too lost in her grief and rage to wonder why they didn’t send in their MTs. She fought, and fought, and fought, but eventually exhaustion and numbers were her downfall.

She was dragged from her father, too tired now to scream, bound hand and foot and then tossed aside to await her fate. Battered, bruised, her face stained with tears and blood, Iris steeled herself for what was to come.

Crowe....took care of the bodies, after the incident with the Amicitia girl. They’d been neglected in the chaos of it all. And as much as she didn’t care for the Shield or any of the Councillors....

Leaving them, once attention had been called to them, seemed unnecessary. She ordered a few troopers and their commanders to start handling the dead from all sides, gathering them respectfully.

And then she went back to her business.

It was only much later in the day, that she learned that she was receiving the Amicitia gift as a....reward for her efforts. If she refused, the girl would be sent off to Besithia. Which, well. Crowe had always found the man rather revolting.

“A lesser one perhaps,” she responded lightly as she continued to work in a small sketch book working on a new blue print. Rina’s eyes never left the page, though her expression remained as placid as her voice, casual. 

“You do good enough work for the title, Daedalus,” Crowe nodded, watching Rina curiously. The woman was interesting, she was good, brilliant even. And she brought a whole slough of ideas with her. A different background, different approach to Niflheim’s vaunted engineering.

And she’d recognized in the woman, she was fairly sure, not a true defector. But someone with loyalties as sparse as her own. Maybe not the same motivations, but there was a certain dependability in that. 

send me ‘SHOUT’ for my muse to admit something that’s buried deep in their mind about yours; something they would never admit otherwise.

Surta: “Love is really not where I expected this to go. But it’s worth it. Even if her whole Daedalus name turns out to be a bit more accurate than I expected.”

Nyx had to force his eyes open, his entire body screamed pain and fatigue but where was he?

He couldn’t hear the roaring fires of Insomnia or the thunder clap of buildings collapsing. The heat of the flames and the smell of destruction were mere traces in his nose, mostly covered by metal and antiseptic.

“…Lu…na…”

He remembered the fight, the strength of his opponent–

No.

His heart rate increased suddenly as the panic set in.

Nyx had failed.

“She’s alive, she’s being well taken care of,”  Crowe drawled as she sat in the chair in the small room. Once, she might’ve been afraid of openly being herself in a room with Nyx, despite the advantages she had.

But now, despite his size. She had the connection to her magitek swimming in her veins. Available at a moment. She more than had the advantage between them.

“But you don’t need to worry about that, now do you? You should be more concerned with yourself.”

Send “ZAP!” and I will write a closed starter for one of my AUs that you have not interacted with! 

Surta looked over the young blond with a professional, appraising eye. She’d started about as early as this boy had, but they’d rarely had time to meet. Even then only ever in her full armor.

“They think we’ll work more effectively together, on the next batch of assaults. Your deployment of daemon assets lacks...innovation. I’m in nominal command. But we both know you’re the better tactician,” Crowe said, voice even, almost bored, a sort of detachment she’d learned from Glauca, all her emotions internalized.

As she spoke, she lifted her helmet from her shoulders, propping it underneath one arm.

“I’m content to handle the daemons, I have a feeling you find them...distasteful, don’t you?”

In this verse, Crowe was taken in as a young teen by Titus, and slowly brought under his wing.

She already had little connection to her homeland in Galahd, in this verse he trains her. As young as fifteen she’s fighting for Niflheim under the name Surta, her face always covered and body supported by the magitek armor he had made for her.

When old enough, she enrolls in the glaives beside him, taking the king’s magic, and within a few years becoming one of his publicly acknowledged scions and favored glaives.

While as a glaive she shows massive skill both physically and as a mage, in her magitek she shows a great talent with a magitek heated metal staff who’s ends glow molten and with corralling daemons in combat, commanding them with the help of several pieces of inbuilt armor and a particular gift of hers.

She does not form her usual actual attachment to the glaives as a whole, in this verse, and is often closer to both Tredd and Luche -- she is not a good influence on either. 

In this verse she never gets rid of her childhood anger and loneliness, she shows little vulnerability, but is an accomplished liar. She shows her anger outwardly far less, and can go cold and smoldering quite easily.

In this verse, as Surta, she’s familiar with most of the major Niflheim players, and has probably met both Ravus and Lunafreya several times, though she didn’t play a part in Tenebrae.