"No! You can't! Graintaire!"

Her words were crafted upon the chords of fate, and rang true through the din of combat and storm. It was a miracle I could hear her over it all—The screams of men as they lay dying, the torment of souls as the Gate opened in the sky above, the tempestuous rush of wind as it escaped our mortal realm into the Hell that rent our sky asunder—and yet it was also my damnation. My blade quavered in the air. My arms felt, at last, the weight and labor of the day's fighting. I hesitated, but did not lower my weapon. Even as her cries reached me, I dared not look away from Grennich. His pale features stared back at me, and in the blackness of his eyes I saw myself reflected in the arcane glow of the Gate above.

That reflection struck me; it was the same vision from the Oracle. My blade coursing with energy, raised to a point as if it were my own hands that had cleaved the sky in twain. My eyes widened, and Grennich sneered up at me as if he could read my mind.

"You see it now. How the butterfly's wings—" Grennich's venomous words halted with a gurgling, wretching, cough. Black phlegm and ichor flecked his lips and ran from a gash upon his forehead. I dared not move, even as I sensed the dark energies of the Otherworld manifesting around me. Every second I hesitated, the more death and carnage would wax around me. At last, Grennich continued in a whisper; "—Bring the hurricane. This is your fault, Grantaire. You cannot do it because you are [i]weak[/i]! Without me, you are but a vessel for a blade, with no will of your own! Better that I use your power than it! I at least gave you a choice!"

My shoulders slackened at his words. My eyes shut for the briefest of moments. When I opened my eyes next, the blade's energy was coursing through them. Lightning crackled within my eyes and I raised the blade higher. As I swung it about slowly above my head, I felt the weight of the sword multiply as the sky moved with its tip. The tempest above, the scar in the sky which was spreading and devouring our world, reacted to the blade's movements. Each swing of my arms brought the storm to greater heights, the clouds darkening and thickening until great streaks of lightning were raining down around me. In great swathes, the hordes of Otherkin that were streaming earthward from the Gate were obliterated in the surging electrical blasts.

"No!" Her words rang true yet again, but this time I deafened myself to them. Fighting through fatigue, exhaustion, and the loss of my own blood I raised the blade one last time. Its weight was incredible. I could feel my entire body aching under Atlas' burden, the blade holding the sky itself on its point. In that last moment, which to me stretched for an eternity as I stared down into Grennich's blackened eyes and saw the storm raging against the hellfire of the Gate and myself silhouetted against that impossible arcane horrorscape, I felt like a God.

But when I brought my blade down, that moment of ecstasy turned to torture and obliteration. As I brought the blade down, bringing with it a column of lightning that sprung from beyond the firmament of the heavens, Yvonne was suddenly before me. I could not believe how quickly triumph could turn to horror. How swiftly Godhood could become a curse. In the blinding light that fell, the last thing I saw as she shielded Grennich's body with her own was her lips moving. My own blood filled my ears, I could no longer hear her voice, but in the glow of lightning the words 'I love you' were seared into my vision and mind.

Then, all was dark.
[hr][h3]Bang! Bang! Bang![/h3]

Tobias jerked away from his desk with such violence that he tumbled to the ground and hurtled into the empty bedframe. The banging on the door was joined by his head knocking against the metal edge of the frame, then the less significant thud of his head hitting the floor with the rest of his body. He groaned quietly, shutting his eyes tight.

"Malkinson you were scheduled to be out of there [b]yesterday[/b]. This is your last chance before they bill you for the summer and write your grandmother—" Before the threat could be finished, Tobias was on his feet with a hand pressed to the back of his head. He reached the door and threw it open just as the speaker finished their intimidation, "—That you're being a nuisance. Ah, somehow I knew that would get you on your feet."

"Mel." Toby said in a groan. "Can't you cut me a break, all my stuff is already moved over to Phil's, I'm just finishing something up. I'll be out here in...Two hours, tops!"

"Two hours?" The stern face of his dormitory RA Mel(ody) somehow became more stern. "Toby, I'm supposed to be out of here myself. I'm glad you're finally showing some...spirit, or whatever it is you need to write, but if you take any longer then I'll be taking the flakk myself. You need to get everything out of there [i]now[/i], I can't delay any longer."

He rubbed the back of his head, wincing now for multiple reasons. Firstly because of the nasty bruise that must be forming, and secondly because of the cringing sensation he often got when he felt as if he was being a nuisance to someone. He sighed and nodded glumly.

"...Yeah, I'm sorry Mel. I'll wrap this up now and get out of your hair."

"Thank you." She said, her stern expression melting into a more amicable one. "Enjoy your summer" She concluded the dialogue with a wave of her hand in farewell and a friendly wink. Toby waved after her, then turned and ran back into his dormitory room to hastily save his manuscript, then print the paperwork to get compiled into his physical binder of pages, then he had to swiftly annotate the pages with color-coded sticky notes and...

An hour later, Toby was rushing out of the dorm with a stack of books in his arms, a computer being lugged behind him on a cart, and a second bruise parallel to the first on the back of his head from where Mel had thumped him for wasting more of her time. He sighed and rummaged awkwardly in his vest pocket for the keys to his car when the first raindrop fell onto the hood of the car. He blinked slowly, looked skyward, then allowed the panic to set in.

By the time the rain began to fall in earnest, Toby had managed to get his things lumped unceremoniously into the trunk of the car. When he was safely seated himself in the driver's seat, he slowly lowered his forehead against the steering wheel and let the throbbing headache he was trying to ignore finally emanate throughout his entire body. Reluctantly he pushed the key into the ignition, and twisted.
[hr][h3]Phil's Coffeehouse[/h3]
[@kalanggam] 
Toby sprinted into the building from the rear entrance, feeling quite lucky that he had managed to get a parking spot right outside the door. He lumbered to a halt a few feet within the door, smoothing out his vest with one hand as the other brushed loose strands of damp hair back into place. With a quiet exhalation of calming, he returned his hands to his sides and made a small gesture that universally symbolized 'I'm okay'. He was almost convincing with it, too. He turned on his heel and pressed against the window beside the door to peer at his car.

"...I can wait, I've already lost my muse anyway." He spoke to himself in plain language and a strained conversational tone, externally on edge for some reason but internally struggling against the severe pain of his throbbing cranium. He cast his gaze about at the busy state of the cafe, and felt a genuine happiness slowly bubbling within the depths of his headache. He strode across the room quickly, stooping and conversing along the way to the counter;

"Why hello there Michael, I'll go ahead and take those plates for you—It's no trouble, I'm heading up that way myself. Oh, you guys stopping here before heading home? Yeah, I can't believe how insane Professor Olston's exam was. Did you guys manage to make the connection to Arusianus Messius in the third essay prompt?...I guess you guys didn't, huh? It's okay, it was a seriously tricky prompt that I think he was being deliberately misleading by mentioning Fronto prior to the year 1815. Oh, you still have library books? I can return those for you, I'm still going to be there volunteering over the summer. It really is no trouble at all, I can just stack these things like this...and...voila!..."

By the time Toby reached the counter, he was holding a stack of books, dirty dishes, and a hand-written note for someone else's drink order. He deposited his stack of gathered items onto the counter, took a deep breath, then looked Val straight in the eye.

"I need an..Er.." He looked at the note, losing his steam as suddenly as he seemed to get it. "Mocha frappuchino with whipped cream for Miss Enfield over there. Upside down?  Upside down. [sub]I didn't know you could order drinks upside down[/sub]." He slowly folds the note in his fingers. "And whatever you can legally give me that has the highest concentration of caffeine possible."