#leonis

You have a job to do.

Not everyone has come back from this. It's a risk, but it's one you're willing to take.

After all... Sebastian injured and killed so many of your coworkers. You, one of many soldiers, have the honor to avenge them.

But when you get down there, you meet Leonis. You remember seeing him around as others were tasked with training him and teaching him. He aims his gun at you, telling you, "you don't want to do this."

You don't understand how Leonis could be so attached to the monsters that kill in cold blood. He was always so kind. And now he holds the gun to your head?

Orders come through. "Knock him out. Do not kill." HQ says this urgently, "Tie him up and grab him on the way back if you can."

So, overcome with your anger, you manage to disarm him. Stomping on his tail to keep him from moving too far before slamming your own gun against the back of his head. When he falls, you grab zipties off your belt pouch and make sure his hands are tied behind his back. You move on.

When you reach the shop, Sebastian is asleep. Extremely lucky, as others have never encountered him like so.

You can end it now. But you see a picture on the desk. One where he's... Human.

He's smiling, and he's with two others. You realize slowly that it's his siblings, before the Solace Project commenced. Leonis is small, and Vanessa is giving bunny ears to the two. A wave of understanding hits you like a train.

Are they monsters? Or are they trying to survive? Who is really in the wrong here?

You can spare them. Or, you can follow orders.

Today, you let your anger win.

You remember all the faces you'll never see again.

"It's me or you."

But before you can pull the trigger, a voice yells for sebastian to wake up. It's Painter, over the glitching walkie talkie.

Sebastian quickly rises and swipes at you, but you're prepared. You jump back and start shooting.

There's not much room for him to dodge. Bullets hit him and he yells, but it's not enough to take him down.

The fight lasts forever, or so it seems. You don't go down easily, and neither does he. Especially with the adrenaline PATH is providing you to keep you up.

This is the closest anyone has ever been.

You manage to swipe something off the desk- and it turns out to be a smoke bomb. The shop fills with smoke, and your mask keeps your breathing easy. Sebastian on the other hand, he coughs as he mistakenly inhales it. He lost sight of you. You take the chance and pull out your knives, jumping at him as he turns around.

Your knives dig into him, deep. He roars in defiance, trying to get you off, but you've already cut deep and long. He collapses as you finally get off, gripping at the long, bleeding wounds.

For once, his voice sounds afraid. Complete and utterly afraid. "Wait- I have a family. Please don't-"

You shoot him in the head before he can finish his sentence. His lights flicker out.

Painter is screaming over the walkie. Begging for Sebastian to respond. Saying he's coming. He'll help.

You need to leave. You run, and when you pass the area Leon was in, he's gone. The ziptie broken on the ground.

PATH speaks. "Turrets are back under Echoshell control. Personnel are cleared for safe passage."

Turrets fire far behind you. You hear metal falling, crashing into the ground.

You make it back to the surface.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

Leon scrambles back to the shop. He heard the screams. The cries. Like visions in his head.

One room in front of the shop, he finds painter. His screen shattered and holes through his metal chest. His wires are sparking and his chip... has been shot straight through. The turret above pays no mind to Leon.

He screams at the sight of his dead best friend. Painter was like another brother to him. And they took him like he was just another piece of metal.

His eyes widen when he realizes that Sebastian hasn't come out of his shop. He runs in.

Blood is pooled on the ground. His brother is gone, a lifeless body snaking on the floor.

He screams again. He cries. His agony bloodcurdling, scaring even the toughest entities in the halls. His family is dead. And it was your fault.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

You're getting your injuries taken care of in the med bay. They're celebrating you, you did it. You did the impossible. Not only did you kill S-13, but you took down the computer with him even if by mistake.

When they finally give you space, you look at your own hands. Was it worth it?

That's when the lights go out. Alarms go off. You quickly gear up again, wincing a bit as you grab your gun and your knives.

The large metal door creaks. And then it glows.

Claws rip straight through the inches of metal. Sparking and tearing their way into the room.

When the door is ripped open, Leonis stands there. Patterns of lightning down his skin. His eyes a small cyan dot in the pools of black.

"YOU."

"YOU KILLED THEM. YOU TOOK THEM AWAY FROM ME! I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO IT! I'll fucking KILL YOU!"

He shoots towards you, still flowing brightly as he attacks. Ripping at your wounds. You don't stand a chance. You weakly grip your knife, stabbing blindly.

When he finally lets go of you, it's too late. You feel yourself slipping away. Leonis is collapsed next to you, gripping at the stab directly at his heart.

He's gone. But he took you down with him.

Originally it was a rudimental ritual spell created by the Flame Legion, one used to turn living beings into fire elementals and to animate effigies. His warband succeeded in refining it further, but Leonis Sootflair, Ardea's grandsire, found a way not only to use it on himself to create an elemental extension of his will, but to do so without consuming his life force completely. Others tried to emulate him, but he was the only shaman who did not burn away in the attempt, thanks to his particular talent with elementals.

Tasked by superiors to develop it into a stronger and safer-to-use spell for the war, Leonis made it a point not to reveal exactly how the ritual worked to anyone due to the objective danger posed by it (and because he preferred to keep it for himself), but he still taught it to his four cubs as a contingency for their plans to escape. After his attempted escape and demise, the survivors of the Soot warband and other powerful shamans were able to eventually rediscover what the ritual entailed, and while they could never recreate it exactly, that knowledge was used as one of the starting points for many rituals later used by the Flame Legion (lots of those seen in-game, with Baelfire's godform being the most refined evolution of it, but also Drakin Cinderspire's boss fight for a messier but effective result).

Only three charr were ever able to complete the ritual.

Leonis was obviously one of them, and did so many times. Still, despite able to withstand the rituals in normal conditions, he chose to fully consume himself and transform into a massive elemental of solid fire to buy time for his escaping cubs. A display of power not even his warband expected, but that still ended with his ashes being scattered to the wind, along with those of the many he took down with himself that day.

Out of the cubs, Sidra fell to an arrow as they were fleeing, while Darion got to successfully complete the ritual, albeit for a brief time. His fatal wounds had weakened him, but in spite of it he was able to kill a couple of pursuers before his flame fizzled out. Levant, the only one of the four cubs who wasn't there when his family was forced to flee, had make his life a lie to survive. He was never involved with his sire's plans, he denied any knowledge about the ritual, and he justified his time spent with them and his brother's transformation as cruel experimentations Leonis did on his cubs. He eventually became a powerful shaman in his own right and did much against Flame from the inside, but he died without ever using the ritual.

And then there was Cassia, saved by Darion when he shoved her into a river and later found in Blood Legion territory. The trauma of her past prevented her from using the ritual, the only attempt she made frightening her more than death, but she figured her cubs could make use of it, going out in a blaze of glory while saving those dear to them. And so, she carried on that "tradition" and taught it to any of her cubs that was magically inclined, and Ardea and Sidonia were the first of that list.

Ardea had not told anyone about that spell, not even Aurelia. She just promised her warband that she'd be ready to die for them if they were ever cornered by the enemy, but only her sister knew what she meant. Sidonia's magic had ended up not being fit for rituals and that was fine by her, but Ardea's was and she had listened closely to her dam's teachings, hoping to never use it but putting her warband before herself. In the mission that had nearly cost them their lives, Ardea was the first to go down protecting them in other ways, but 12 years later, in the mayhem and chaos of crystalline monstrosities that had erupted from the newly formed Brand, Ardea was left without choice.

Her son was in the building that had collapsed and exploded with so many next to it, her mate had just disappeared into thin air while fighting a huge Branded monster, the smell of blood and death filled the air, and the only ones she could still see standing were Sidonia, Obsius and the terrorized cubs they were protecting. With nothing more to lose but them, Ardea told her sister and friend to run, then she chanted the ritual spell as a last ditch effort to save them. She managed to take down one of the massive Branded griffons and any of the monsters who got close, but she could do nothing against the following wave of Branded that overran her flames and everyone left.

Ardea's transformation was powerful, far more than her grandsire's first attempts. Her body could have lasted a long time in the whirling flames, and she could have even survived, but in her grief and rage she had consumed herself and transformed into an elemental of solid flame, like Leonis had done decades prior to save his family. In both cases, it couldn't prevent more death and loss, but also allowed their own cubs to survive.