#lualamina

Night-black hooves thunder beneath storm clouds, churning and kicking up sodden earth. Combatants have thinned since the wyvern and its rider crumpled before his lance, but the knight with the hunter's eyes seeks a fresh target still. Do not kill them rings incessantly in his ears, but quieter now beneath pouring rain and the thrum of his own blood. D-- t--- kill them. D--- kill them. Kill them.

Someone stands up ahead. Red hair, blood-colored, supplants humanity with a target. The hunter spins his spear in one hand and strikes down with the precision of a spear-fisher as he gallops past. New, fresh blood drips into the serrated ridges as he rips it free again, where it mingles with the remnants of her brother's that the rain could not wash away.

Jeritza uses Hit and Run [Killer Lance]! Roll: 19 - 1 = 18, Critical Hit! Damage: -5HP, Miracle activates! Maria 0.5/5HP

“Aagh!” Though she catches her new opponent’s arrival, it’s all too slow; a frantic turn over her right shoulder, a lightning-flash of pain striking her on her left. It hurts. She falls back, all her weight crashing into her out thrown palm. It hurts. Mud sticks to sable cloth in mostly-wet clumps, her heart a-quiver in a syncopated beat. 

Maria initiates with Nosferatu! 1d20 = 5 ; barely hit! Fiendish Blow grants +1mag to Maria ; +/-1HP (Maria 1.5/5 ; Jeritza 4/5)

It is a spell as steady as her hand. With every breath, her shoulders rise more, blood and rainwater seeping between uncalloused fingers. No -- no, she mustn’t panic. What would Michalis do here? Minerva? 

Spring too, is banished from their sight. Such is the way of nature; no one season can last forever.

Industrialization sprouts from the ground. Metallic tiles begin to cover up lush grass and trample over flowers, paving endless streets with their slick cover. Every tree is replaced by a skyscraper, each a thousand times thicker and infinitely tall. Signs begin to advertise products and technologies none from Fodlan would even understand, their holographic light a dazzling contrast to the rustic setting they’re used to. Vehicles that hover just above the ground begin to decorate the scene, with holographic street lights mimicking the billboards high above. Together they paint a picture of busyness. The world is transformed into something incomprehensible; machines have come to transform Eden.

It is raining, but that seems to have little impact here. 

Sirius’ mouth is left ajar when his new arena unfolds before him. His robes and magic bow have been traded for the garb of a warrior and a pair of weapons, intimidating as they are ominous. He takes a moment to gaze up at the sky--noticing how it is now a pale gray--before examining his equipment. Though not visible underneath his stygian gauntlets, a ring wraps round his finger. It feels warm, much like the warmth he shared in the tundra. 

This melancholy silence, however, is broken by the approach of their enemy. A gigantic creature of metallic flesh clings to one of the buildings before him. Multiple limbs crush the glass and concrete of a skyscraper to keep it suspended, seemingly uncaring of the damage they cause to their surroundings. It lets loose its robotic cry: a deafening shockwave no man or beast could possibly reproduce on its own. It has his attention. 

But before Sirius can rush in to attack, its spare limb smashes the ground in front of him. A door on the machine slides open, and from it emerge three smaller entities. They immediately scatter, seeking to terrorize the landscape with shrapnel fire and weighted chops. The main beast roars again, and the cores of all three scouts light up in response. A similarly-colored light cloaks the bigger bot, and it becomes clear to Sirius that they are protecting it. 

This land is not his to call home; this is not his battle to fight. But Sirius cannot stand idly by while four great terrors put countless lives in danger.

He makes for the first scout. It is an easy task, given how preoccupied it is with wreaking aimless havoc. Black energies surround his fist as he closes in, and...

Sirius uses Devil Gauntlets! Roll 1d20 = 10, hit! -2.5 HP; Radio Scout: Bulwark A 7.5/10 HP

Black Ice Node activates! Roll 1d3 = 1, Radio Scout: Bulwark A is deactivated!

The light fades. His fist slams into its hard body, knocking it flat on the ground with a single punch. What’s left is a soulless husk, no better than a large tin can thrown on by the wayside. It is not destroyed, for when Sirius hits it again, no further damage can be done, but the main foe roars again and its protective coat flickers. That’s his sign that progress has been made--that something similar must be done to each smaller enemy. 

Devil Gauntlets activate! Roll 1d10 = 10, -10 HP! Miracle activates! Sirius 0.5/10 HP

As he turns for the other two, tragedy strikes. His gauntlets demonstrate to Sirius that all power comes at a cost. The same black energy that amplified his hit against the monster assaults his arms. It causes him to gasp out in pain, dropping to his knees when the searing spreads to his chest. For a moment, it appears as though this power would take him, but then he feels it: the ring. From beneath his cursed weapons it breaks, and he is spared further harm. The warm healing still ebbs throughout his body, but as he stands, he fears whatever divine force kept him alive would not be inclined to do so again. 

Sure as the sun will rise, the slaughter will continue. 

Corrin does not have nightmares often. She knows them well, has comforted many through exactly that, but her own are few.

Sleep leaves her groggy, pushes her to sit upright. It’s a rare occasion in which laying back down seems worse, even despite the hour, so Corrin carefully dislodges herself from her sheets and the other body that shares them.  

Her bedroom door clicks shut behind her and bare feet begin their path through empty hallways. It’s an absent wandering she does often -- an old habit from years within the northern fortress. There is no direction, no end goal. Only forward until the walls around her have disappeared and been replaced by snow and the bite of crisp winter air, 

Crimson eyes turn skyward, watching the stars as her feet continue on down the stone pathway. Here she can see them without the barrier of a window. Here, she is free to step outside and wander as far as she pleases.

( it has been years since she wasn’t, but sometimes it stops feeling that way. )

A flicker of light catches the dragon’s attention, pulling her gaze from constellations she is still learning to recognize and redirecting it instead to a window of the greenhouse. Brows furrow a moment, watching as a silhouette shifts and disrupts that warm torchlight.

It is awfully cold out here, now that she thinks about it.

Corrin steps towards the greenhouse’s doors, pulling one open just enough to poke her head in through the gap. A singular figure occupies the space, silent. There is the thought to leave him be, but then the warmth of the still burning lights is too hard to resist. The door opens only a fraction wider, allowing her body to slip through before shutting silently behind her. 

“It’s awfully late,” her voice breaks the silence finally, curiosity lacing her tone as she takes a step further into the room and towards her company. “Do people come here often at such an hour?”

          in the story, there is a knight & a dragon. she’ll never forget it. at first, when she’d picked up that old tattered copy of memory of the hills ( evidence that it had been well-read and well-loved, ha! goes to show everyone that she wasn’t the only person on this good green earth that’d liked the book ), she’d only been meaning to talk to the projectionist about an uncommon shared interest — or what she’d like to assume was an interest. she hadn’t actually had intent to buy it, not with her own copy rescued from the annals of some dusty secondhand store sitting back home.

          in the story, there is a knight and a dragon.

          to know that, and to know the plot like the back of her hand, was one thing. to be looking for said knight, a knight whose face she’d never truly stopped to envision but ( maybe unsurprisingly, for anyone who knew her ) had at some inexplicable point in her tenure with the novella had begun to imagine might look something like herself, was something else completely.

          she pauses for breath beneath a vanilla-lit sky, squinting at the ramshackle walls denoting the start of the nearby village — feels the grass tickling at her ankles, and looks down. and thinks the curvature of this hill, against this sky, against those clouds, that something about it feels like she might’ve been here once.

          she brushes it off as having read that story one too many times; the village had been such a homogenous centerpiece of the novel — in fact, that was the whole point! what so many of its critics failed to understand because they couldn’t look past the lack of a fast-paced plot — of course it would feel familiar to her at this point. in spite of herself and the urgency ( and absurdity ) of this rescue mission, she can’t help but indulge herself in an elated grin here where no one’s looking. her! inside a storybook! oohh, she wishes she could tell mitama about this. you can’t go inside a poem, so she thinks she has one up on her here.

          moment of giddiness satisfied, she sets herself back to work, imagining that she might be on any other mission of a similar nature — a missing person’s case, and the current lead is a knight, known to challenge passersby to tests of strength. thinking of it like this is the only way to keep herself from getting distracted, too caught up in seeing through firsthand the events of the story around her and wondering, briefly, if this is a little like what it must be like to be clairvoyant. and then feeling a little bad, because that seems unfair to the lives of the ones around her, even if most of them are only characters.

          “excuse me!” there, at the foothills before the village, stands the knight, strident in a gentle off-white and red, nobly trimmed in gold. long, pale hair obscures her turned back, but it’s not like there could be anyone else. instinctively, caeldori reaches for her weapon, a smile at the ready. “dame knight, you’re here to test travelers trying to get into town, aren’t you?” the curve of her polearm gleams with the flash of the storybook sun as she spreads her legs shoulder-width apart, steadying herself. “my name’s caeldori, and i’ll accept your challenge.”

Her birthday begins the same as most days do: with classes that she attends as diligently as ever. By all reason it should proceed the same as the rest of them too, with the exceptions laying with friends and visitors, not such a thing as luck. Yet in spite of this, Maria cannot shake the ineffable feeling that something good will happen today.

And she is proven right when she comes to stand by her desk first thing in the morning, peering at it with curiosity in her eyes. What should greet her but a plate of cookies? Sugar cookies at that — plain and simple, perhaps, but in the same measure sweet and delightful! A gift in no way lacking for any supposed absence or flair.

Pinching the corner of the card beneath it between thumb and fore-knuckle, her suspicions are confirmed: this really, truly is a gift for her. But J…? She doesn’t know a J, does she? A finger curls over her chin in thought. Who would leave this for her…?

It’s when the scent wafts to her nose again a second later that she realizes the treats are still warm, and with a jolt, the little cleric stumbles toward the entryway, a hand braced upon its frame as she looked out upon the courtyard.

“Um…” Rather than worrying about anonymity and mysteries, if the confections were that fresh, surely— surely!— her secret gift-giver had to be nearby.

“Thank you very much!” She called out to somebody, wherever they were. “I hope you have a good day, too!”

For a moment, there is peace. A humbling quiet falls over the ragtag group of heroes, and they are given the rare opportunity for personal reflection. In the vastness of a black void, what else is there to do? Perhaps they are being shown a small comfort to make their upcoming struggle worse, or perhaps it simply takes the universe a second or two to generate the next dream for them. Whatever the case may be, Sirius looks at his allies from the safety of his mask. All of them stand with him in this strange plane, the aura of their lances now emanating from their entire bodies. He is merely a traveler: homebound and unwilling to anchor himself to the academy’s personnel. But this group, despite its general lack of conversation, has shown character through action.

That’s the kind of language he can get used to.

The scene changes again, this time filling their void with a thick fog before they’re allowed the gift of light. They stand in a square shaped arena, its floor a red-and-blue checkerboard with some kind of strange emblem decorating its center. Metal pillars sprawl up and away from their box, trailing into the infinite expanse of fog until they can no longer be seen. Stairs and ladders, too, seem to lead into this unending yellow abyss, but what they’re connected to is anyone’s guess. 

Sirius’ first instinct is to touch his face, and doing so reveals that his mask has manifested as a pair of tinted shades this time. They let him see through the fog, if only just what’s in front of him. They’ll be good enough for close-quarters combat.

For lack of a shining Harmony Lance, he has been gifted something extra special: the divine Gradivus. Holding it in his hands almost makes him feel like he’s hallucinating, but its grip is indeed the one he’d familiarized himself with long ago. “We meet again, old friend,” he whispers, just low enough that the others can barely hear it. With this lance, he is all but invincible. 

His steed, too, has been returned to him, though now it sports a pair of wings. If it is anything like the sturdy mares of Grust or the swift mounts of Rigel, he should have no trouble maneuvering himself this fight.

But to fight, one requires a foe. And at first glance, one does not present itself. Rather than creating a sense of security in the knight, it breeds unease, for there is always a great beast to battle in these dreams, and the lack of one only means it could be hiding. 

...

“...In the fog!” He’s spotted the enemy, and this time it appears as a lion wreathed in shadow. Its movements blend in well with the heavy cloud blotting the air around them, but squinting closer reveals four stalking paws circling round its prey. Sirius takes to the skies, quick to deliver the first, revealing blow,

Sirius uses Gradivus! Roll 1d20+4 = 11, hit! -7 HP; Shadow Self 1: Chosen 8/15 HP

His thrust is strong and true, piercing through cloud and darkness to strike the enemy in the heart. But as he pulls Gravidus’ shining point from the warped body it stabbed, the umbra coalesces around him and assault him in the same way he did it; a Shadow Gravidus is formed from the beast’s midsection to harm him back,

Reflect activates! -7 HP; Sirius 5/12 HP

Shadow Self 1: Chosen uses Mauling Strike! Roll 1d20 = 19, crit! -4 HP; Sirius 1/12 HP

Sirius is inflicted with -2 def for one round!

The stygian point of his spear’s counterpart also strikes strong and true, forcing the Grustian to reel back and gasp. Blood spills onto his saddle, and before he can grab hold of it to steady himself on his mount, the monster follows up, enlarging one of its claws to bat both pegasus and rider.

Each fall to the colored floor with a loud thud, their bodies hanging on by a thread. Sirius winces as he remounts, and looks again to the battlefield. He knows his allies have not caught up or seen the shadow yet, knows they may fall victim to its trick if they are not warned. And the beast moves closer, and though it has no eyes, Sirius can tell it intends to take him down before its secret is spilled. So he turns away from them, not daring to utter another word. With the holy lance in his hands, only he has the power to end this fight before it even begins.

Sirius uses Gradivus! Roll 1d20+4 = 23, crit! -24 HP; Shadow Self 1: Chosen 0/15 HP

Reflect activates! -24 HP; Sirius 0/15 HP

“May this battle be your last!” And again, he charges straight into the action. There is a wordless agreement sown between him and his mount, that should they miss, or should his heavy spear not pierce the enemy far enough or spill all of its black blood, they would surely die on retaliation. And they’re both okay with that. A death as a proud knight beats a life lived in solitude; if they can give their allies the upper hand with their sacrifice, then so be it.

The lion’s head is cleaved from its body when Sirius puts all of his power into his last slash. His eyes go wide, sure that they’ve done it and earned themselves survival, but again he is stuck. Tendrils emerge from the decapitated shadow and assault his torso, bringing him once more to his knees.

Only this time, he has been robbed of the strength to stand.

The world he had only just been introduced to starts to go black. He knows it is not the enemy covering his eyes. Consciousness is fading--a sensation he’s already met with before. Perhaps it is fate that he would end his dream like this. But he would not change if it he could. He watches as the enemy melts into a puddle of black, and they fall together. “Tatiana...” he whispers, and “Nyna...” and then, everything is void again. It’s cold, almost like the sea. He’s been swept from this battle by a force beyond human comprehension, his cobbled form made into a mere pebble to be washed by the tide. But surely they’ve won... Right?

Wrong.

The puddle stands again, this time a crude reconstruction of Sirius’ body. It sports wings--the same wings his mount had--and uses them to ascend to the center of the arena. “I am a shadow... The true self,” it says in a harrowing version of the knight’s voice, “...What a shame. As long as I have Gradivus, I will not fall... You are out of luck; give it up.”

To round out its introduction, it immediately starts charging an attack. It holds its vile imitation of Sirius’ lance in front of its body, and its wings begin to fold in on themselves. Then it glows, a thrum of black almost like a heartbeat. A dark power starts to build up at its core... Ready to be unleashed!

it felt better and better to get away. each year, it seemed, the grounds of the academy closed in further. its walls loomed higher. each year, the strategies she had developed consciously or unconsciously to cope numbered greater, and their efficacy continued to dwindle. it became difficult to keep her mind focused during her morning runs and stretches; she caught it drifting away more and more during drills, classes, study halls, stable duties. work was no longer a comfortable respite, but a heated cage for her troubles, busy hands breeding an even busier mind circling the same paths with no resolution.

so far, she’s found breaking past garreg mach’s borders to be one of the few things that helped, however temporarily. though she suspected that it too would only be so sustainable a solution, for now she took solace wherever she could find it. no mission or errand was too menial — small monster nests, neighboring village repairs, running correspondences? if she could watch those sandy-grey fortifications peel away far beneath her to the drum of belle’s wings and imagine that her thoughts too could become such a miniscule speck shrouded in a panorama of budding greenery, she’d take it.

albeit even in stories, the castle in the sky crumbles eventually.

frowning, she scans the plateaus below and loosens the grip of her thighs as a signal to prepare for landing. “let’s take a break.” the pegasus snorts as though sensing that this isn’t exactly the reason why she wants to stop here, but eases the rhythm of his wingbeats nonetheless. as they descend through the cold mist of the post-dawn air, caeldori catches the movement of something small that’d blended in previously with its surroundings.

someone’s there?

a lone traveler, or a hunter checking his traps in the morning, are her first guesses, but both are dismissed as the colors and pale raiment of the church come more clearly into view. she lands with curiosity, dust swirling about her ankles as she dismounts.

her eyes widen. she’s seen that— face, before; that hair. “... you’re...” they hadn’t belonged to a storybook character? ( it’s harder and harder to be sure now, sometimes, after the recent events. reality is still like a summer storm: too loud and too quickly gone. ) then something moves in his hands, small and dark. “oh, what... is that?”

The Mother vowed to grant two things to all who follow her: the right to enjoy life's pleasures and the right to a dignified death.

The value of lives can be easy to forget, and Lukas tries not to. His life is as fragile as any other, yet that awareness . Far from it, he fears. This dance of death, the exhileration, thrill, tension, to truly know what living and breathing means when he stands tall above his enemy… it's unmatched.