[hr][hr][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/pVShkWd.png[/img][/center][hr][hr][center][color=808080][i][b]Present:[/b] Esmii [@BlackRoseSiren], Oksana [@Ti], Yuliya [@Suicharte], Marz [@Th3King0fChaos], Yvain [@jasbraq], Roslyn [@Fallenreaper], Khaliun [@YummyYummy], Sven, and Penny[/i][/color][/center][hr][hr][center][h1][color=B0E0E6]F O R T    P E R E K R E S T O K  ||  [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-NYm4PZZEM][color=B0E0E6]♫[/color][/url][/color][/h1][/center]
[color=C0C0C0]It started with more disagreement. Everyone had their ideas and not all could be followed. The urgency built. The seconds ticked away. Agents of the Dieci Volti Nascosti closed in on the epicentre of the anti-magic disruption. 

The students of Ersand’Enise split into two teams and evaded the legendary assassins for as long as they could, remaining within the bubble of safety where they could use their Gifts, scouring the city for the magic disruptors. 

Then, they split. 

Yuliya, Marz, Sven, Khaliun, and the latter’s mercenary ronin, Sugawara Yoshinori, headed straight for Fort Perekrestok at the confluence of the Kuska and Belykuska rivers. Yvain, Roslyn, Penny, Esmii, Oksana, and the remaining mercenary, Fritz Rudolf von Weigenen, went to investigate a warehouse they had already identified as suspicious some days earlier. 

The latter group met with failure and made to cross the river instead, with the aid of magic, before the teams were too far apart. Oksana’s bridge of ice proved sturdy enough to resist the mighty river’s flow just long enough for most to cross, but Penny found herself stranded on the other side with a mild concussion after slipping and no way across. 

Time was everything, and they could feel it eating away at their chances of recovering what they knew to be weapons of terror hidden throughout this remote Vossoriyan town, so they left her and carried on. It wasn’t long before they found themselves shadowed by nearly a dozen more shadowy operatives, and it was only Roslyn’s quick thinking that saved them from having to fight for their lives against odds that no gambler would’ve taken. A canny use of a smoke cannon, a feint attack, and some arcane magic threw their pursuers off and they raced to rejoin their allies.

Those allies, however, had not been so fortunate as they, for, as they had approached the small triangular island on which the fort perched, they came upon two things. The first was indisputably an active magic disruptor, and Yuliya rushed to turn it off. The second, however, was the man in the blue mask who had tried to murder Yuliya and Yvain less than a week earlier - not merely an agent of the Dieci Volti but one of its actual members: the legendary assassin Soldato. He was [i]not[/i] alone.

Pursued relentlessly by nearly twenty enemies, the group of youths made a desperate crossing and then turned off their anti-disruptor at the key moment when their enemy tried to follow. Four plunged into the river, one drowned, two washed far downstream. It was then that they unleashed a withering counterattack, and agents of the enemy fell before them. 

It was not a massacre, however. For all that the enemy bled, so did the students, now surrounded, now hemmed in. Yuliya had found the crate containing the magic disruptor and a hundred more of its kind - dormant - and she made a desperate play, with her nascent temporal magic, to teleport the entire thing back to the royal palace in Karamevo. 

It was Soldato, though - the Blue Volto - who they could not best, however. His shot struck her and the girl’s concentration was broken, the contents of the splintered box scattered across the still-melting snows on the tundra some mile or so outside of town. One by one, she and her allies fell, gasping for breath, mortally wounded, perforated by his deadly accurate fire. Azure Devil - rifle of the magusjaeger volto - sung its deadly song and, for all that they were able to lay low the lesser members of the attacking cabal, they could not touch him.

Then, they beheld Penny’s fate. Their abandoned comrade had dived into the warehouse they had visited earlier and there found a similar crate of magic disruptors. While she had shut the active one off, the act had come at great cost. Waylaid by another Volto - the lilac Coccinella - she had been brutalized to the edge of death, as had many of them. Yet, the enemy never killed. They never seemed to seek unnecessary bloodshed. Again and again, they entreated the foreign youths to stop fighting and let them have what they had come for. Most of these attempts fell upon deaf ears.

Coccinella hovered in the air before the youths, however - not a human, but half-transformed beast: a thresher of some sort, with Penny impaled on one of her claws. She tossed the limp figure aside, and how the others ran for it! How they wasted their time rescuing, healing, and fretting over their friend. It was Sven who suffered next, pierced by Soldato’s bullets. He dropped to the ground, seemingly at the door of death. 

They could feel it coming, too: the final remaining Volto, and his power was [i]massive[/i] even from a distance. Then, the Eskandishman revived, seemingly out of nowhere, and his rage was something to behold. Gone was the meek, polite, academic Sven Bjørnsson that they knew best. With a bestial fury that they’d gained only glimpses of before, he tore through the Volti agents, making his way towards the Blue Volto. Even Soldato was laid low before the fury of the Southman. 

Yet, he was not defeated. Sven was. Coccinella made quick work of him and left the Eskandr giant lying unconscious, right back where he’d started. It was… finished. They were surrounded. The final Volti’s forces had arrived to cut them off and the dainty little Lilac had revealed her true, monstrous power. She was one of the ten - The Originals - an ancient wildblood of unfathomable power. Against this, against Soldato, against two dozen others and the final Volto - as yet unseen - victory did not seem to be an option.

There were two factors that the enemy hadn’t counted on, however. First was the sheer, relentless [i]spite[/i] of Yuliya Ilyanovna Vassilieva, Tsesarevna of the Vossoriyan Empire. If there was one thing that she wanted above all else at that very moment, it was to reap a terrible vengeance upon Soldato for the injury that he had caused her and her allies. The second was that she had, in her possession, a chaos marble. This, she launched toward the sniper as he perched on a rooftop across the river and there were none present who could stop it. 

There are moments where it becomes clear that one’s enemy is not actually an evil being, and such was the case for Soldato. If Yuliya had not a care for what would be destroyed or how many would die from her attack, Soldato [i]did[/i], and he threw himself into the path of the projectile as it was still in flight over the river, knowing that he was a doomed man but hoping to prevent the death of dozens of innocents.
[hr][hr][center][h1][color=B0E0E6]R A D O M I R  ||  [/color][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M954D_jyJbQ][color=B0E0E6]♫[/color][/url][/h1][/center][hr][hr]Then, the world wavered and there hovered, in the air, a man. He was tall and strongly built, with a full and well-trimmed beard and richly ornamented robes adorned with the ancient seal of the Vossoriyan Royal House. Yet, most of all, it was his face. As if carved from a block of ice, it turned to the feuding parties, even as he released the limp and broken figure of Soldato, who he had grasped, with indescribable force, by the neck. The corpse splashed into the frigid water and was gone.  

Radomir, legendary protector of Vossoriya and - some claimed - its first emperor reborn, had arrived. He regarded Coccinella and the other Volti like the insects they were as he took a pair of knives from his pocket and slipped the chaos marble casually into it. His gaze was cold and unblinking. [color=red]"You have five seconds to get out of my city,"[/color] he commanded, [color=red]"Or these are going into your necks."[/color] Immediately and reverently, Yuliya sunk to her knees before him, only a single question on her lips. [color=pink]"Почему ты здесь, сэр??" (Why are you here, sir?)[/color] 

Radomir's cloak and ribbons flapped in the dusky breeze as the last rays of sun disappeared beneath the horizon. His icy eyes flicked away from the Volti for just a moment and took in the form of Marz well below him. [color=red]"This boy -"[/color] He narrowed them. [color=red]"has my hammer."[/color]

Then, however, he judged that about five seconds had passed, and it was time for these Revidian criminals to learn why they should never have come to Vossoriya. First was the illusionist who Yvain had been speaking with. She exploded upon contact, chunks of flesh, shards of bone, and ribbons of skin raining down across the small courtyard. A second was cleanly decapitated by the elder sanguinaire's hand, his head hitting the ground with a meaty 'conk'. So sudden and terrible was the violence that the Volti were slow to respond. A third and fourth were roasted alive where they stood by the sanguinaire elder's mere gaze. 

He came for the next one on his hitlist, eyes wide and burning with ravenous bloodlust, only for his unstoppable force to be met by an immovable object. Coccinella was zipping and whirling above, but Radomir had run headlong into something massive, like a bird hitting a window. He rebounded and reeled, shaking his head to clear it. In his path stood a mountain of a man, his wild, bristly beard poking out from beneath a yellow mask with a smiling face, his gigantic arm steaming where Radomir had impacted, and his great gut protruding before him. He straightened. [color=gold]"Bad idea coming alone, [i]kompis[/i]."[/color] He shook his head. [color=gold]"Imagine that: living a thousand years, founding a dynasty, becoming a [i]legend[/i], just to die here to some fat guy."[/color] From behind the mask came the high, unsettling sound of the man's laughter, tinged with hints of madness. He seemed endlessly amused by his own taunt, giddy and eager. 

Radomir's face remained stoic as he, too, straightened. [color=red]"Who says I came alone?"[/color] he asked, and a half-dozen oprichnina of the Zavesa Imperii (Veil of the Empire) materialized around the courtyard. A tall, pale woman was among them, standing beside Yuliya, and the girl might have recognized her from the portraits handing within the family palace: her own great grandmother, Ekaterina. There was a distinct resemblance between the two. She leaned in and whispered something in her younger descendant's ear before drawing back. Her peers were already starting to engage the Volti in battle and, just then, Radomir lashed out once again at the colossus that some may have recognized as Il Sorriso (The Smiler) or Volto Giallo. This time, he had the Chaos Marble clearly in hand and was aiming to use it.

The oprichnina turned to the students. [color=f49ac2]"My friends, you have helped us much, and your service will be rewarded. I ask one more thing."[/color] She gestured broadly, taking in the rest of the city. [color=f49ac2]"There are two more crates like this one. If this terrorists retrieve them, our country - and many others - will burn."[/color] She glanced up above as Volto Lilla went hurtling through a wall with one of her fellow high sanguinaires in her clutches - not that anyone aside from Yuliya and perhaps Penny could've known what they were. [color=f49ac2]"I know where two of these are. Me and another officer will go with you."[/color]

Then, the junior Volto was there: an insectile being with few human features remaining. [color=C8A2C8]"I say to you, once again, that the greater evil would be to let these devices fall into the hands of Vossoriya,"[/color] she buzzed. [color=C8A2C8]"You are only our enemies so long as you fight us."[/color] The monster leveled an arm at Yuliya, [color=C8A2C8]"Except for -"[/color] A half-dozen skewers shot up from the ground, furrowing the wildblood's carapace and forcing her to dodge aside. [color=f49ac2]"Run!"[/color] shouted their guide. [color=f49ac2]"For the warehouse where you first found them! I will follow after I deal with this menace!"[/color]
[hr][hr][center][h1][color=B0E0E6]I N   T H E   B A L A N C E  ||  [/color][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAQr_G_xOmo][color=B0E0E6]♫[/color][/url][/h1][/center][hr][hr]There was, indeed, a menace, but what form it took was very much a matter of opinion. Even as magic returned to Kirimansk and its people began to rejoice and clean away, in earnest, the debris of these two weeks of calamity, others fled the growing conflagration at Fort Perekrestok and agents of the Dieci Volti Nascosti swarmed about, hard at work. They had claimed the crate full of disruptors that Penny had fought for and lost. They had come upon the second crate as well, out to the east, and stolen it. Even now, they were seeking the chaos marbles hidden beneath the town in its sacred caves and searching the sparse taiga forest to the north beyond for the precious devices that Yuliya had spilled there. Time was, once again, wasting, and much hung in the balance.[/color][hr][hr]