#or-rp

It’d started as a visit to the Naras tribe, to introduce Dahlia to her family, estranged as they had all been for the last decade. Hali had planned to propose to her that night, after it was all said and done. That wasn’t quite the result, as it seemed to happen so often for the two.

Encountering a pair of forest witches who had a distinctive interest in Dahlia’s condition, and even confessing to having been connected with it in the first place, they began to assault the couple in an attempt to bring Mirseleiris out, breaking the ward stone that held the creature in check and kept Dahlia safe. Though Hali fought them with all of her strength, she was outnumbered, especially when Mirseleiris took over. With a call for aid, not only did Fiona arrive, but so, too, did the Outriders.

The witches fled, attempting to take Auguste’s staff - once belonging to the old Amdapori white mage with whose rituals Hali had managed to interfere, binding the staff to her own anima and winding up with the soul of the man bound to her - though they were unsuccessful in getting too far before Hali’s aether was torn from her.

When she’d recovered the staff, she had just enough strength left between having had a chunk bitten from her neck, been impaled by shadowy limbs, and beaten down already, that, with the Outriders restraining Mirseleiris, she sealed it within Dahlia once more... but not before a beacon-like spell was cast and one last taunt cackled. Then, Hali fell. She remembered nothing else but blackness and the dreams within them that faded when she woke, weak, tired, and feeling so horribly drained...

She learned quickly that she’d been out for moons. Her family doted over her, keeping her alive as best they could through magic and medicine, until she had finally healed, her body a mess of horrid scars and withered, unused limbs. She looked like a zombie, but the moment she put her linkpearl ring back on her horn, she was stricken with fear.

Dahlia had left the Outriders’ house in pursuit of her twin sister, Vivian. When the Cult of the Hierophant couldn’t breach the defences of the house in which Dahlia, like Hali, had laid unwaking, they instead took Vivian as bait the moment Dahlia woke, drawing the weakened witch out of hiding. When they struck, they struck fast, and she was taken away to their ritual site on the edge of Dravania. 

By the time Hali arrived, it had been far too late...

Silent footfalls brought the shinobi closer and closer through the darkened wintry woods toward the site from which the call for help originated. It was a trap. She knew in her head that it was. It couldn’t be anything else, but there was no other way. No time to rally the Outriders, no time to explain to anyone. As it was... she knew she was too late already. She knew what she’d find.

No, the Raen thought as she ran, her Huton carrying her silently as her footfalls would have otherwise crunched down in fulm-thick snow, No, I won’t let anything stop me or slow me down. If there’s even a chance, I can’t convince myself I’m too late. I can’t be. I can’t be.

The thoughts were colder comfort than the biting wind against her face, masked though it was. Jet black robes fluttered behind her, gloves tightening around the staff that was so bound to her. Her glasses threatened to fog beneath her mask but kept from doing so entirely, likely helped by the soft white glow to her eyes that had come from practising white magic - holy arts - without a proper soul crystal. She knew it was affecting her, but she didn’t know how, nor did she care anymore. This was do or die - the final curtain.

When they approached the ritual site, it was obvious: the trap had been laid out, and the cult was ready. Hali - and Auguste through her - could feel the horrible void energy in the very air. The world heaved and threatened to pull her under, but she continued, even as her very being fought against her.

They had prepared for that. They knew she’s press on, and they took advantage of that. The moment she drew near, even cloaked as she was, she was beset by cultists. Ten... twenty... thirty. She snarled. Everything was becoming a blur, and she couldn’t even remember getting to that point.

Just hold on... August prompted, You’ve faced worse odds than this, have you not? Come, now, show me how you handle things like this.

“...shut up, old man,” the Raen sneered, twirling the staff into one hand and letting loose a burst of holy aether that cleared the air at least enough for her to fight. With another flick of her wrist, a blade of white light, like that of a scythe, extended from the head, and she snarled at the cultists surrounding her.

In moments, they were upon her, and cut down like so much fodder. It was nothing new to her. Killing thrilled her, normally. This time, however, there was nothing but anger and desperation.

“Let... me... through!” she roared, cutting down two more as they threatened to pile atop her, kept at bay by the gales of harsh winds she repeatedly summoned with her enhanced conjury, thanks to Auguste. She was met with inhuman silence. Not a snicker, not a whimper.

Another wave of them came, and then another, and then another. She’d begun to grow tired... and then, slowly, overwhelmed. Blows began to land, dagger strikes that lanced pain through her body - poison, she realised, and likely paralysis poison so she could watch her defeat at the prideful voidsent’s hands - and soon, she faltered and fell, lacking the strength to go on. Her body wouldn’t respond. She couldn’t even speak.

The next moments were spent begin carried bodily to the site, out of her sanctified area, and back into the miasma of void magic. She could do nothing for the nausea and her eyes rolled back. She couldn’t even heave. When she was strapped down to a ritual table, she finally saw her: Dahlia... or what was Dahlia.

“I am so very glad you could join us, little shinobi,” the form spoke, chuckling darkly. Dahlia’s voice was wholly eclipsed by that which Mirseleiris used, her body warped in ways that made her hard to recognise, fur, horns and even a tail sprouted from her twisted form. The creature had taken her over completely. She was gone... and still, Hali couldn’t speak. The figure rolled red eyes and scoffed.

“Give her the antidote,” Mirseleris said, “I want to her when this is finished. I look forward to her screams.” Within a few moments, something was shoved into Hali’s mouth, and she was forced to drink, helpless. Slowly, bit by bit, she regained her motor functions, and began to struggle.

“Now, now,” the voidsent crooned, “Enough of that. I’d hate to kill you before I can use you. We need your aether, after all, now, don’t we.”

“...wh- what?” came the struggle of a reply.

A chuckle was all she got in response, dark and sinister, followed by a sharp pain down her arm as a dagger was brought down, slicing a gash into her. She grit her teeth, groaning in pain as blood began to run down her arm, causing her nausea to redouble. She was being bled for a ritual...

“Now, let’s finish this little game, shall we?” the voidsent crooned, stepping away from Hali and out into the clearing, “’Tis time I claimed my real prize.” With that, Hali felt a horrible sensation as a hand lifted toward her, enacting a spell to begin draining her of her aether... along with many of the cultists. A horrible dark visage began rising as those not being drained knelt and chanted feverishly - prayers, she realised - all the while Dahlia’s body began losing strength, but began to show signs of her consciousness returning as the form rose above her, still connected, but becoming its own, bit by bit. Her expression was desperate. Fear chief among all took its place as tears began to roll down her twisted, unfamiliar face.

With mere moments, it began to take shape - like Dahlia before but with monstrous, great arms covered in feathers, taloned fingers, a much more vicious-looking snake-tail that wove around, peering out from behind the main body, grotesque horns, and a wholly unfamiliar face with red eyes that bore no iris or pupil, as if lifeless. 

In that moment, the area fell into utter darkness, the only things visible were faint, red outlines. However, Hali could feel what was happening as the will of the newly-formed primal before her attempted to crush her soul, stealing her will. However, something within her - a light - beat it back, bathing the area in radiance as she heard a voice in her head, Hali! Hali! Now is your chance!

At first, she thought it might have been some powerful entity, sparing her from the tempering... as, she felt, Dahlia had been. On second glance, however, it was clear that Dahlia was still attached to the creature feeding off of her aether... even as it stopped doing so on Hali’s. Had enough, has it...? Auguste asked, Your aether is no longer being drained. It’s distracted! Now is your chance! You can break free of this, can’t you?

“C-course... I can,” the Au Ra wheezed, and with a careful motion, slipped free of one of the straps binding her. Making two quick mudra, she executed a ninjutsu to form a blade of ice in her hand, cutting herself free before she bolted for her blades and staff.

As the darkness faded, she was met with a chortle, echoing and distorted, as if from some horrible, demonic being, “She lives... but she does not bow. The Echo... So be it.”

“My lord! O boundless one!” called a familiar voice. From nearby, two cultists, having been tempered, released Vivian from the bindings with which she’d been held, the red-head grinning with an unnatural zeal, her eyes glinting red as she called out, “If she cannot be made to see your radiance, can we not convince her? Surely she must see, now, even without your blessing!”

“V- no... n-no, no...” Hali could only stammer, wide-eyed. She knew what this meant: Vivian had been tempered. The dear sister of her beloved was beyond redemption. I can’t... I can’t... Not her. She doesn’t deserve it... She doesn’t...

Hali, Auguste’s voice spoke to her in her mind, despite his inability to read it, You know what has happened. This is no life for her.

“I can’t!” she nearly howled in despair, causing Mirseleiris to chortle and Vivian to grow closer, shushing her comfortingly.

“Hali. It’s okay. It’ll be okay. We can all be together, peacefully. Isn’t that what you want? If Menphina can give herself unto her better, why do you not join us? Dahlia has already become one with him. Everything is as it should-” “No, no, no, NO SHUT UP!” she roared, pulling back before instinctively drawing back with her staff, and, producing a spear-like blade at the end, thrust it into Vivian’s chest. The girl choked, hands pressing to the wound as the weapon was drawn back again. The red began to fade as the malevolent being released her from its grasp.

“Please... F-forgive... me...” Vivian gurgled as she struggled to stay upright, “I... I-I... l-love...” She choked again, then again, and fell forward gracelessly, face impacting the frozen ground hard.

Hali’s heart stopped and her body went cold in that moment, only brought back by the shrill shriek from off to her side of, “VIVIAN!”

There was no time to react. The next thing Hali heard was a scream of utmost fury as a multitude of levin bolts raced through the air toward her, catching her and sending her body limp. All the shinobi could do was scream as she was ravaged by Dahlia’s outburst, the trauma enough to grant her momentary control of her own body, twisted and subjugated as she was.

The scene was nightmarish, cultists either lying dead or chanting prayers to their god, Dahlia screaming in fury and despair, Hali screaming in agony, and Mirseleiris laughing all the while. 

This is the end... I’m finished... she thought to herself, even with her screams of pain, I was wrong...

However, Dahlia’s strength had long since been spent and the last of her aether ran dry, causing her to fall back to the ground in a manner not unlike Vivian, leaving Hali to fall, as well, all the wrong nerves firing from the bombardment of electricity. Little by little, though, she gathered herself and began to stand.

“Y-you done?” Hali wheezed in pain, “’Cause... I think it’s... ngh, m-my... turn.”

There’s nothing else, though, Auguste protested, You can’t fight that thing like this. You realise that you’ve no choice now.

“I know...” the shinobi said, bringing the staff to bear as she began to beseech the land for aid, drawing not only on what it would give her, but herself and Auguste, as well. Holy radiance began to shine from her very being as she rose from the ground.

I don’t know what will happen, the old elezen muttered fearfully.

There was a pang of hurt in her heart. She knew this would likely be the end, but she had to try. There was no other option, now. She finally laughed, almost bitterly, but with resignation to her features as she closed her illuminated eyes and said with a smirk, “Shut up, Auguste.”

The elezen felt the tone more than heard it through Hali’s own horns, and even as a possessor - a spirit within her body, bound to her - her felt something stir. It hurt. He felt pity. Much as she had done, she had so much time ahead of her to atone. Should could have. She wanted to, and he knew. After a long pause, the old man’s voice spoke in her head one last time.

Very well. Godsspeed... Hali Naras.

"You're not finished?” the void-primal rumbled, “Ever a thorn in my side... but this time, I will be rid of you, girl..." 

As he raised a massive, clawed hand, Hali rose further from the ground, waves of holy aether washing out from around her. When her eyes next opened, she spread her arms wide, unleashing a torrent of purifying white light toward Mirseleiris. As it connected, there was an unearthly shriek of pain from the creature. It went on, ever further, even as Hali could feel her body wanting to give up. She’d long since reached her breaking point, but there was no giving up, now. It was do or die.

As the shrieking died down, there was a heavy crash of something crystallised hitting the ground. However, with it came a realisation. She was no longer moving, no longer suspended in the air... and she was losing feeling in her body. She couldn’t even move her head to look as pure white crystal began to replace her limbs, climbing up from the ground beneath her as all but pure light embraced her, searing away all and leaving nothing but a crystalline statue behind.

As the look of victorious relief gave way to a dreaded realisation, the shinobi’s last thought was only, “But... I won...?”

It had started simply enough: a call to arms by the Outriders, by Byahta, for those same people who went to slay a creature they had called the Nucklavee, a task thought impossible in the wake of horrible curses and impossible odds. Just fresh out of the Games of Glory as its Champion, Hali was eager to prove herself as a capable adventurer. She didn’t know just the depth of what she’d just entered... but on she went, ignorantly and happily throwing pretence aside in the name of... she didn’t even know. Was it pride that drove her, or just an overwhelming need to prove herself to herself?

Whatever the case, a long ride north had them setting up camp in a stretch of ruins, interspersed throughout the land, overshadowed by a great door the likes of which she had never seen before. The shadow it cast was long, but the darkness that lay beyond was something she’d never expected.

Night after night, morning after morning, dusk and dawn alike tore at her mind. The world, the very fabric of reality screamed, and it hurt like nothing she’d ever felt. Even the pain of the Immortals’ trials paled in comparison. At times, she lost herself, giggling madly as some sick prank played by her mind, others devolving into a crying heap of aethersick convulsions. She weathered it, at times for weeks straight in the name of guarding their rented aetheryte.

Their investigations were long and arduous. Ruins after ruins, each of which had their own story to tell, as night after night, after the mind-shattering aetheric “event”, as Byahta had begun to call it, the dusk would bring scenes as if from a play, the same each night, that drew out scores of soldiers and their commanders to war. Knights and commanders and armies wearing the opposed mantles of Day and Night, their clashes titanic in power. The very aether given off made Hali’s skin crawl as she watched.

As time went on, they understood more, and at the same time, so much less. They encountered an Examplar of Night, with whom they attempted to parley, only to be locked in fierce combat - a fight they lost, their lives only saved by the grace of the night’s fall ending the strange rift in time. 

Another had them speaking peacefully with a pair of brothers faced with an impossible decision: one or the other must die for a decision to be made and peace to be had. If peace could not be reached between the two armies, they had found, the Allagans would surely wipe them out. A coinflip decided the ancient decision, and time and time again it had failed due to assassins, which the company was forced, eventually, to face in order to make the decision last. At the end, a relic stood unbroken which empowered the door, they believed. They marked it as progress.

They met an ancient dragoon who, though at first determined to stop them, to end the threat they posed to everything for which he was sworn, became an ally, if only even briefly, after a long and deep conversation about choices and taking one’s fate into one’s own hands. Let your people die in agony, or be cursed, but live on? Both sides had made their choice, and it was a heavy burden borne by each side. Hali had not been there, of course. Looking back, she wished she was, rather than lamenting her own faults and downfalls to a beastman with no understanding of such complex things. But she, like the soldiers, had a duty, and it was to the runes she had practised, nearly perfected, so that the others could always return safely. At the end, the others had escorted a palanquin back to a designated spot where the next relic was restored. They marked it, too, as progress.

They had investigated a fort next, which had, they had discovered, sunk beneath the waves in a desperate battle with the Allagan Empire thousands of years before. Once again, they met a commander of Dusk when the event shifted time, and they witnessed as the fortress quaked and rattled, shades of Allagan soldiers attacking and cutting down Night and Day alike in their wake. They fought hard, but by that point, the strain it had all put on Hali had begun weakening her. The aether events, the attempts at Blue Magic that she barely understood, she felt something in her dying, and it scared her. A knife tore her open from the back, and she lost consciousness, until she awoke to one of the group, carrying her, a potion bringing her back around. They fought Allagan constructs, and watched as the Door, so far in the distance, blazed, prompting questions that had no time to be answered as they continued to pursue the Knight who seemed to know all too well where he was going...

When at last they met, it was a pained discussion, very nearly a heated debate, over whether it was better to let his people die or to keep them trapped in a repeating nightmare, dying time and time again, going through the same thing every night. Most of them forgot. The Knight always remembered. A thing like would drive a person mad, Hali thought, and even though his insistence on perpetuating the nightmare enraged her, her experience with madness, with despair, with such fear... she felt it all in him. He threatened her with meaning. In a mission of shapes and noise, she wanted to cry as she watched blood seep from his armour as he desperately tried to hold back the tide of destruction, the Locus, his source of power and, ironically, one for the door he had once hoped to destroy to save his people, fuelling a last ditch attempt, just like every night, to stop the collapse until the scene played its course and night fell true. When it did, Byahta posited that they search the ruins beneath the waves, and, surely enough, they found the Locus: a broken, long-forgotten blade with barely a spark of aether left to it. It was progress, once more, but what was about to happen was almost beyond comprehension.

Like a woman possessed, Byahta had rushed for the Door that stood so tall above all else in that vast stretch of land. The linkshell went mad as the woman left to guard the crystal called out in concern... and then fled when she had heard of Byahta’s mad dash. As the Locus completed its ritual and the Door began to open, Byahta was held back by an otherworldly force like a massive dark hand plucking her from the ground and restraining her.

“Gyuhuhuhu...” a dark voice cackled to her, “You do not get to make this journey.”

Standing before the door, then, after so many had come and gone were Hali, the Outriders’ leader Naomi Kett, the monk T’rahven, swordscale Ryuka Yumitori, the Protector Kazukata Go, and the Dark Lancer Shadow Shouvome. As it began to close, it was Hali who had begun running first, her strength failing, but her sheer determination to have this finally done and finished forcing her forward. It had to end. She would find out how to make it end.

On the other side of the door was another world to its own, a mirror of their own. It was silent, empty, hollow, and before them stood a single figure. Battered, beaten, but not yet truly broken, the old and weathered blade of a soldier of Night clutched in his hand. Before him lay several similar weapons, all driven into the ground like grave markers. Words were exchanged. They made Hali want to scream, to cry, to yell in anger. The Outriders wanted so badly for him to join them in their fight against the voidsent monstrosity who, they believed, had set it all in motion, but it was over. It had long been over. The Door was a weapon as much as it was an escape, and everything behind them, with its closing, was not only closed off to them, but blasted in to what they thought may well have been oblivion.

The words continued, but the Exemplar, called Lun, had been trapped with naught but ghosts, time, and a vast stretch of emptiness until, as he had said, “even their dust [was] dust.” It pained her. To be chained to something so hopeless, so meaningless, for so long tore at her. She felt things she never wanted to feel, never could comprehend, and yet still felt, and it made her want to scream, even as she struggled to stay standing. She took a step forward and offered herself, first. He wanted a fight. He was doomed anyway, with the opening of the door, and so he would go out in accordance with his duty. He would fight and be slain, but he would fight.

It was no glorious battle. It was a struggle for one man, one dying knight against six weary adventurers, brought to and beyond the precipice of oblivion through time and despair alone, to make one final stand against something that was so clearly meaningless. All he knew was gone. There was never any hope, never a chance, and so he fought. He fought, despite it all. He attacked and was attacked. He fell, meeting the earth of the mirror-world time and time again, but each time, rose with another wound leaking sand, as if that was all time had left of him, in some cruel joke. At the last of it, he staggered for the weapons that, during the course of the desperate final stand, had begun to glow.

Hali felt nothing. She hadn’t the strength to feel. The pain of her own failing body, her writhing, agonised soul, and her mind, wrung into complete dissociation by the trauma of trying to relate to such a torturous fate, trying to understand such a desperate struggle, for all of them, it all became nothing for a brief moment, and she joined Kazukata in a final rush to run him through before he could finish them, Ryuka blocking his path and keeping him from proceeding further.

At the end, he was nothing but armour and dust, fading into obscurity as the door opened once more, no longer bound by the single man tethered to it in a desperate bid to do anything he could against the tide of inevitability that awaited him. There was nothing. It was no victory. It was hollow. It hurt. It had brought the would-be Blue Mage to her limits, and then pushed her over. She felt as though she would die. She expected to. She did not.

When they returned to the base camp, their whole path littered with the suddenly-returned ruins of a long-dead civilisation, the ground, stone, mountains, and more scorched from the Door’s power, they found Byahta and S’seri Loh. The two green-haired miqo’te, paired with their strange dolls, awaited the company of adventurers, the latter having been tasked for some weeks with guarding their precious aetheryte, much to her own dismay. Byahta was battered and broken, looking not only concussed but entirely uncharacteristic. She spoke in an old dialect, where she was normally mute, turning some heads, before they all went their own ways, Byahta and Naomi using the aerthyte to return home, and the rest packing up camp to make the long ride back on their own.

It felt so much longer than the ride there, and even that had taken days. Most of the time, Hali remained either asleep or despondent, staring silently forward along the long path. She had nothing to say. There was nothing she wanted to say. There was nothing she could say without crying, without screaming, or without simply failing to find the words she needed. The nights were especially harsh, seeming darker, almost less hospitable to her. She wondered why. Had it been because of what they had unknowingly completed? Were they all so scorned? It hurt to think about, and so she didn’t, attributing it only to her weakness. 

Kel’s offer to train her in the arts of the shinobi were a sure thing for her. She couldn’t continue on this path. The Immortals were no more interested in teaching her than they were in trying to kill one another for reasons she barely understood. The magic was killing her, slowly, she felt. This venture made her realise that. It had to end. She would be better on her own. This would be the start... but first, she had to recover. She had so much to think about, so much crying to do, and just so very much to take in.

It would take time before she could truly come to terms with her Memories of Stars.

It was a moment of sheer thrill that Hali recalled easily, lying back in the oversized bathtub and breathing the lavender oil-infused steam. There was an hour until her shift began that night, and already, she was exhausted. Every joint, every muscle, every fibre of her being moaned for rest. Yet, it was a sign, she felt, of progress. Her body wasn’t screaming as it would have before. It wasn’t breaking or broken, and she wasn’t miserable. The hot water helped immensely, but, still, she knew that she would have no issue in getting up and moving on with her night.

Everything had begun in much the same fashion as the last time she had attended the Protectors’ Practice in the Shroud with the Outriders. She met with Naomi, T’rahven, and a few others, and, like last time, a newer green-hair was present, named Lucia. She hadn’t had much of a chance to meet Lucia before, thanks to the arrival of the Immortals and their subsequent interference, and then the accident that occurred with Shadow not long after they had begun to cause trouble.

The night’s exercises were to overcome an opponent in order to reach a third person, posing as a “hostage.” It was a fun and effective exercise. Hali had been grouped with Lucia and an Ala Mhigan woman named Aestridh. Lucia, she found, was a firebug of a miqo’te. Very nearly everything she did was, in some way, fire-aspected. Even her personality was full of fire and energy. Aestridh was fairly soft-spoken despite her stature.

The exchanges were simple enough. They charged, attempted to break through in one way or another, and were either blocked by the defender or managed to pass to their objective. They rotated several times, each getting their own licks in, Hali using a combination of guile, agility, and throwing knives to make her way through. Lucia and Aestridh were tough in their own ways, and especially so when Aestridh abandoned her sword for a gun. She remembered being very thankful for the imposition of rules regarding training weapons.

What struck her, however, was something that, she realised, should have not come as such a surprise when it did happen. A strange, yet familiar movement of aether drew her attention, and when she found its source, she witnessed T’rahven, the monk, using a handsign for ninjutsu. The aether coalesced into a blunted shuriken, and he hurled it, though sloppily, at his own training partner. She stared, transfixed in both awe and intense jealousy. She knew that he had approached Kel; she was there, even if watching as Katsu from the shadows near the inn into which she’d gone just moments earlier. She knew what the agreement had been. She still couldn’t believe what she’d seen.

Training continued, once she had been brought back to reality, her inquisitive stare being caught by T more than once, who, each time, gave her a questioning look in return. Everything ground to a halt when Lucia set their group’s entire training area ablaze. Hali found herself distracted when everyone, it seemed, in all the groups, stopped to converse for a time.

A powerful impulse made her arm twitch as she watched T again. Toss a knife at him. Even if she were to hit him, the blunted blade would do no more damage than, say, a rock. Either way, she intended to miss just narrowly, and the knife whizzed past his ear, starling the poor miqo’te before he went to retrieve it. Hali played off her innocence flawlessly. Not even her immediate group noticed the subtle toss.

To her fortune, Lucia was soon switched out for T in her group, and she had the opportunity to test her mettle against the monk after quizzing him a little on questions to which she already knew the answers well. He’d been learning ninjutsu as a means to branch off and do something new. That his interest was so casual, but his ability already so far beyond what she was even allowed to learn made her want to break his nose, she thought. Thinking back on it, however, she realised she was projecting her frustration on him, which was entirely unfair. She found herself thankful she kept up the cheerful act, despite how much she wanted to act out.

She was outmatched more than once by T that night. Both times she attempted to overcome him, even though she distracted him the first time with a knife and slipped by, he still caught it. The second was even worse. He’d countered her close-quarters attack and sent her flipping hard into the ground. She didn’t even know what hit her.

As the crowd began to disperse and people went their separate ways, Lucia and one of the other men whom she didn’t know had agreed to spar, one-on-one. it was the most amusing event that night, and Hali found herself doubled over and crying in laughter as she watched the green-haired miqo’te bludgeon the man with her grimoire repeatedly, then attempt to light herself on fire after having tackled him. It gave her an idea, though.

She challenged T’rahven to a match. She knew that he loved to spar, and would likely not turn it down. At the worst, she could learn. At best, perhaps she could prove to herself, and to the others, as well, that she was capable. She was still could not believe the fight that followed.

It was a rocky start, to say the very least. Every strike she made at the monk had him blocking her and then summarily tossing her around with heavy blows and aetheric chakra attacks that sent her flying. He’d already gotten two hits in on her before she managed to do anything about it. Cursing herself and her inability to keep up, she tempered her anger, turning it into the fierce blaze of determination that ever pushed her forward. Her counterattack was as furious as it was vicious. Even with training weapons, she could tell she took T off guard by the ferocity of her strikes and the swiftness with which she moved.

The fight raged on for over a bell as the two exchanged blows, the two of them blocking, dodging, and even simply enduring attacks of increasing strength from the other. Aether points lit up all over T, making him look like a man made of sunlight to Hali, her sense for aether going utterly mad in his presence. The points were like beacons, and every time he attempts to use his chakra to attack her, she saw it coming before it was even formed. Again and again, she dodged around his attacks, set on dragging the match out for as long as it could. Her own endurance training was nothing short of essential at that point, as she knew that the old her - the failure - would have been on the ground in but minutes, wheezing for breath.

Despite her ferocious attacks and unique insight that allowed her to keep up without getting pummelled, she still had a hard time landing even a single hit on T. Time and again, she would swing a knife, only to have him catch it and wrench it from her hands during a counterattack, or pluck them from the air as they flew at him. She was running out very quickly. Where there were, at one point, six knives and a dagger, he had taken hold of every one but two as they both began to show signs of wear.

She was soaked in sweat, breathing heavily, expression set in that look of furious determination. T was beginning to get a bit winded, as well, she could tell, as his movements began to get more sluggish. However, he showed few other signs of tiring, as she suspected would be the case. He had, after all, admitted to her earlier that he had been on this path since he was but five. She, meanwhile, was little more than a hopeless failure until just a few moons ago.

Her two remaining knives in hand, she lunged to dodge another wave of aether, disappearing in its wake with her quick movements, having learned the timing and signs in the attacks. She brought one knife in an upward arc toward T’s neck, and he turned, catching the blade once more and forcing her to abandon it. The counterattack, however, was slow. A fist came down hard at her crown, and she ducks out of the way, aiming a jab with her single remaining throwing knife toward his elbow.

As the knife descended, T moved in an attempt to dodge it, but left himself wide open in the process. The blunted blade descended and struck his solar plexus directly as he tried to slip through her guard. With a sudden gasp, he fell limp onto the ground for a brief moment, stunning Hali.

She had won. She had fought T and won. Not only did she keep up with him for over a bell, she beat him. The shock was replaced by concern, though, she she remembered that he bore a death wound in the same place as she she had - right in his solar plexus, through his stomach - the same place he had nearly hit her earlier, putting her in danger of exposing her Katsu persona by virtue of the same death wound. The death wounds were scars borne from their recent excursion into the Sagolii wastes, where they had been killed and sacrificed to a voidsent, only to rise as immortal undead after. When they became whole and living again following the creature’s destruction, they all bore incredibly sensitive scars where their wounds had been. 

By the time she realised this, of course, he had already begun laughing, despite the pain. He was overjoyed, it seemed, at the intense fight itself, and it relieved her. She had grown worried.

It was then, soaking in silent recollection, that she realised: T’rahven had become real. He bore emotion for her. She remembered that she had felt something. Kinship, of a sort? Even rivalry? Competition? Perhaps she could pin it down the next time she saw him. She smiles to herself. Not only had she proven herself capable that night, she had made a friend. She hoped, in any event, that she had happened upon such a thing. She wouldn’t suffer to have another Maximillian in her head, all wasted emotion and purpose. It wasn’t worth dwelling upon, at any rate: she had proven herself capable. She needed this confidence, and, for once, she felt, she had earned it.