THE FAME WOLF.

monster of the river van.

Indie, private Ashveil of Honkai: Star Rail. Lore-heavy and mythologically-inspired, by Aldia. Sideblog to @reversescale.

"Man, you'd better not be makin' a jab at my levels of fitness, or lack thereof," Ashveil retorted with a visible pout, huffing sourly all the while.

bold - applies always. | italic - applies sometimes. | strike - never applies.

The time after Operation Zulo was not a cause for celebration for the First Fang that it may have been for others, as it was a pyrrhic victory where he lost everything before the war was even won.

As Jade herself once said, Operation Zulo was touted as a war of epic proportions, the first time in history a Lord Ravager fell. Although the participants of the war were largely unknown, it was spearheaded by the Galaxy Rangers, a fledgling faction brought together by the last survivor of Kronstadt and those who had been plagued by this Lord Ravager against the Propagation. For those whose lives were destroyed by the Overlord Zulo, they gathered under the banner of the Galaxy Rangers. But before that battle could begin, guided by a former Navigator to gain a Shadow of Voracity, Alonso sacrificed his right arm to the beast, in exchange for sealing it inside his body. Although it tore him apart night by night, it was the sheer drive for vengeance that kept Alonso alive, that prevented it from devouring him whole.

They won. Against impossible odds, they won. The Oroboros devoured Zulo, but at the cost of damning every single Galaxy Ranger to the Nihility, save himself and one other.

In the aftermath, Alonso was discovered in the vacuum of space in a wrecked vessel by an IPC scout surveying the area of Zulo's demise. Taken aboard, like the victor of a fatal game, Alonso was transported to Pier Point to recover. To be studied, to understand the effects of a body that had merged with the fragments of an Aeon and the World-Cleansing Blood, Alonso was among the first of his kind. To the public, it was a formality; why wouldn't they want to honor the hero who had slain a Lord Ravager? Wasn't it a modest way to repay such a deed? To the people studying him behind closed doors, he was like a walking Chadwick's cannon for the potential. Although augmenting Aeonic artefacts had been standard for centuries in inanimate weapons, they hadn't seen someone like him before. They hadn't studied a subject like him before.

Knowing what was to come, Alonso knew he couldn't remain. Escaping as soon as he could, becoming one with his shadows, he knew he had to leave. To disappear before anyone could find him.

He really was becoming an old man, wasn't he? Between Seafold City's mellow breeze, the perfectly blue skies, the sound of the sea, and the tapering of the chaotic tourist season, things were finally winding down. Instead of streets being mobbed by crowds flitting from one photogenic hotspot to the next, the sleepy rhythm of a coastal city operated in the light of day, the working-class reality that was much more personable to someone who had originated from a civilizational backwater compared to sleek and shiny snobs of the big cities, the silvery metropolises untouchable to all except the richest tyrants of the universe.

Yeah, no thanks. He'd take anything closer to earth, thanks.

Ashveil stirred when he felt a faint tugging at his flowy locks of hair, cracking an eye open when he saw Harmony casually moving aside a few strands of hair that had flown away in the breeze, not even his fedora enough to keep it tamed. Ashveil's lip quirked, flashing a quick smirk.

Navigating Astropolis was like walking through a field of landmines, which was an impressive feat considering he'd fought on actual battlefields with hazards and dangers that would make Astropolis look like a joke. The danger here was intangible, political. Dressed up as the Anti-Destruction Alliance, the ploy to amass as many powerful figureheads of even more powerful factions as the IPC could was a subterfuge, like some scheme to gather all the leaders in the war room before locking them in and setting off the bomb. But instead of a bomb, it was a deal to negotiate with guns trained on their heads.

For now, though, they were lucky. The situation on Planarcadia had stalled the inevitable by a hair's breadth.

So, when he saw one of the Nameless uncomfortably cornered by an IPC schmuck trying to corral her into some scammy deal going nowhere. For all of Ophelia's defiance against caving to roundabout terms and glossed-over details, the agent was insistent, each refusal spawning a thousand branches like a hydra. So, when Ashveil inserted himself like a wall between him and Ophelia, he turned to her with a sunny expression on his face.

"Holy craparoni, you alright, uh...?"

The detective trailed off lamely as the manic-eyed Amphorean looked for all the world like a deranged serial killer who hadn't exactly been motivated by guilt to turn himself as the elation of his slaughter slowly trickled away. Which would be Ashveil's initial impression, were he not a raging otaku who didn't know who the man before him was. After all, who would he be if he didn't possess a copy of As I've Written that he'd read cover to cover, maybe more than once? A special edition that came replete with illustrations and appendixes that he could pick out from a crowd. And that definitely included the eccentric professor in his own right, even if Ashveil was baffled as to the chain of circumstances that led to this impromptu meeting with a literal celebrity.

Well, he needed to test the professor's lucidity one way or another, so...

"Okay, I'll admit it-- I got kinda sloppy just now."

Ashveil sighed as he let the younger Ranger tend to his arm. Frankly, he wasn't too worried about the wound, as it was simply the result of a careless delivery driver being unable to wait for a disabled old man to clear a path on a very busy, very crowded sidewalk. That people weren't supposed to be barreling down on their scooters and electric bikes, yet they did in order to meet the impossible deadlines imposed by their clients. Not that he was one to begrudge a DogDash carrier just doing their job, but so recklessly? Someone could've gotten hurt! Like he had, apparently.

The detective sighed as he let Enola inspect his decidedly not-prosthetic arm, pouting as they sat on a ledge. Thanks to a few disposable cans of Medi-spray, the fast-acting concoction mended his gashed arm fairly well, but the sleeves of his layered tops...

Man, if his wallet was Imagenated, he imagined it'd be wailing like a crybaby right about now for the pain that was to come.

For days since his escape, Alonso had been driven to his basest instincts, forcing his way from the IPC colony that had been keeping him quarantined from the sheer novelty of what had occurred, of what a mere human body housed within it. A husk of Voracity sealed within his body, that had devoured a Lord Ravager and the Golden Blood that had fueled his ascension. Operation Zulo, as it had been called, had been one of the most spectacular war campaigns since the Swarm Disaster or both Mechanical Emperor’s Wars, calling upon whole segments of the cosmos to face a monstrosity borne from the blackest reaches of what had once been his homeworld. 

All it had taken was one man with a shadow of Voracity in his body, and now, it had become something else altogether. The Golden Blood pulsed through him like a second heart, its dissonance overpowering him in the silence. 

Thunder rumbled as Alonso shambled through the streets of the colony, cold steel structures jutting into the gray, gloomy skies. Runoff from the sidewalks ran noisily into gutters, Alonso limping through its streets with enormous strain. Having lost his arm, the Ranger had cobbled together a ratty tourniquet around his dismembered arm, grimy beneath the heavy cloak he wore that barely disguised the gold that shone through the white wrappings of his bandages. He limped towards what he thought was an airfield, desperate to stow away aboard some freighter and run. All he felt was cornered, ruthless, knowing the wrong person would see him as a weapon to exploit in the face of what he’d done. 

“So, you won.”

That voice. That damned, fucking voice. The one that had led him to salvation, to disaster, to ruination. The accomplice in one of the greatest massacres in history. One that elicited an eerie, disembodied howl to sound as the shadows at his feet thickened like sludge, eyeless maws parting the inky pools that reared up and surrounded the speaker, vacuously responding to his charge, his order: guilty, guilty, guilty! Clad in the garb that Alonso vividly remembered, of stylized compass roses and gold embroidered in cream robes, all it made him feel was wrath. The pain of being the sole person responsible was unbearable, almost as much as bearing the weight of an Aeon and Emanator that roosted in him, the siren call of Destruction utterly irresistible. 

Isee didn’t resist. He didn’t plead, even as Alonso stalked closer to him, eyes twin orbs that smoldered like coals in his black silhouette that seemed to swallow the light. There was little to begin with, but he couldn’t sense fear radiating from Isee: just senseless, bacchian Elation. Because this had been the last test the former Navigator had set for humanity, and Alonso had emerged as the final victor. Everyone else? They had failed. The cosmos hadn’t changed in the face of total devastation; the same stupif galaxies he’d fought to save again and again had been given one last chance to face annihilation of a scale it hadn’t since the Swarm Disaster or the Mechanical Wars. Nothing had changed. Humanity was as blind and complacent and grossly excessive as always. 

Yet, when Alonso snatched away that infuriating mask Isee had always worn, clutching it so hard that the metal cracked, the former Navigator barely flinched. He saw the gold pulsating beneath the bandages, of golden veins illuminated beneath ashen skin, and smiled. Isee, the one entranced by Destruction, saw the one man who had conquered it and made it his own. The man who had sealed Oroboros into himself and lived; who had devoured a Lord Ravager and survived. A human who had surmounted suffering, consumed by wrath and vengeance that was more beautiful than a thousand ages of peace. Isee reached out, taking several strands of waterlogged hair, perhaps remembering the recent past when they had been fond—two lonely flames flickering in the darkness, together. 

One of the maws rearing over Isee reverberated with a snarl as it clamped around the blond’s waist and forced him to the ground, deadly serrations slicing into the man’s abdomen as Alonso stood over him like a malevolent phantom. His glower was unholy, sinking into a genuflection, baring his own fangs. 

“I should kill you for what you’ve done. For how many deaths you’re responsible for!” Alonso barked at him, the downpour seeming to intensify around them and upon them, drenching them to the bone. Isee remained pinned hopelessly to the ground, features straining as the Shadow’s teeth threatened to impale him. Blood stained Isee’s robes, barely allowing the former Nameless the chance to breathe. “Don’t you see it?! Maybe you won’t realize it until you join them personally! Like I did, like I’ve seen!”

It won’t bring them back. Destroying the man who had led him down this path would lead to nothing. Gritting his teeth, Alonso’s eyes became uselessly glassy, tears that would save no one. 

“What a useless name. You don’t see a damned thing.”

Traffic streaked past in the damp, cold downpour just outside the awning Ashveil had swept the two under, arms around Elio as he kept the smaller man close. Huffing a breath, the detective smiled impishly as he pushed back the seer’s hood slightly, humming contently as he nuzzled into that curly mop of snowy hair. And as usual, the fragrance of sweet strawberries filled his nostrils, a swell of adoration warming the detective’s chest.