[center][h3][color=C0392B]Rudolf Sagramore[/color][/h3][/center]

Naturally, he was the first to advance, testing his work before any of his peanut gallery risked the sahuagin's fate.

[color=c0392b]"Well yeah,"[/color] The youth flippantly snorted, offering a shrug's affectation to the dry, falsified anecdote from their lofty-minded spearman as the lot of them crept past their first obstacle. [color=c0392b]"As I said, [i]ancient[/i] ruins, crypts, and grottoes. Good on the Caradocs for starting small— your mausoleum's still rather contemporary. Wouldn't want to dive off the deep end before you're ready."[/color]

He didn't turn back to press the issue after that, instead falling silent and stepping aside once they hit the minefield, giving Miina her room to work. He supposed it [i]was[/i] a rare war hero that high in the social strata that had [i]time[/i], let alone means or cause, to get their knees dirty in the stripes of dungeons he'd been referencing to begin with— they had more important things to worry about.

And no less did the Kirins. Soon enough, the traps had been solved, shut down, or sorted out, and their motley crew was on the move once again. Only fitting that the repartee fell away, once Eliane had been chaperoned over the finish line[sup]1[/sup] and they'd descended towards the chamber proper— he found his hands drifting to his knife, as the long and dark shadows that surrounded the torchlight guiding them drew themselves an uncomfortable, familiar path about the riverbanks. Darkness, ever malleable, ever dancing, seemed to almost mix with the rushing water. He knew this feeling. What lied ahead was... nothing good. For what felt like the hundredth time since nightfall, Rudolf found himself quietly thankful for being an old hand at skulking off to train in the dead of night. With the unease coaxing out his instincts, he felt no duller for the late hour.

A pale, dull blue glow greeted them, as the rapids coalesced into a pool ringing an ancient grotto of worn stone, the crystal suspended above tinged at the edges not with radiant azure, but rather... an almost sickly violet, like a day-old bone bruise. Rudolf still held no true command of magic, not the way Miina, Eve, or Neve had, but now that he was confronted with the corrupted orb up close and in person... the twisted aether that swirled about it struck him as the taste of blood and bile, at the back of his throat.[sup]2[/sup]

Like he could [i]feel[/i] the wrongness. He'd never known that to be on his table.

[color=c0392b][i]Is that what they sense off of me, with you here?[/i][/color] He ventured, as the presence on his soul shifted contemplatively. Thinking back to every time it had been sniffed out, starting with Eve, it had always seemed like it had registered to the aether-attuned as a pervasive aura of disquiet.

[i]...No.[/i] came the reply a moment later, as they began to cautiously approach. He could feel the flame begin coiling outward from where it sat, dripping through unseen pathways, towards his arms. It was not at his command. Had he not already heard the war drums begin to beat in his chest, he would have taken umbrage. [i]This is different in nature to what our deal grants you. Death and corruption taint this crystal's light, they poison and warp the arrangement of its aether. I deal in the decomposition of such structure wholesale. Grinding, dissolution, putrefaction, and calcination, it's why your brother is likely to have bruised near as much as he burned. [b]That[/b] is profane because it begets chaos in a world deemed Ordered by Light. Night, shadow, the void, the basest state of all— it is unknowable potential. Everything lurks within nothing, impossible to pin down. Impossible to—[sup]3[/sup] Esoterics later. Company now.[/i]

Even as the blur burst from below the waves, Rudolf drew his paired swords and stepped to the front of the line, feeling the hairs on his neck rise as the spirit, Famfrit, introduced itself— it too was tinted by that deathly violet, corrupted as the crystal it guarded. Miina's Libra came a moment later, the information it gleaned confirming that intuition even as the familiar feeling of her Nulfrost[sup]4[/sup] settling atop his frame, flanked moments later by Selene's haste and Eos's awakening.

So Hydroponic Adrammelech then, but corrupted and at what they could only assume had to be full-bore, rather than merely testing their valor. Great way to warm up for an imminent siege. A twelve meter statue, at the base of the city they were due to protect, turning all the animus that had been breathed into it onto protecting the crystal from [i]them[/i].

A grimace painted itself across Rudolf's face, as he assumed a fighting posture. Already at the fore, he listened carefully as Esben about-faced, peeling off and barking orders the moment he'd heard their foe was already beginning to channel the ambient aether of the massive grotto into [i]some[/i] spell— all of them ideas he could get behind. He swung the Wings in a wide arc, aligning them with the two burnished dots that appeared as eyes on the golem, but stayed put otherwise— if the rest of them fanned out, as they all very well should've, the Kirins would still need a man up front.

The black blaze, when it billowed forth from the slash, seemed to drink in the gloom. It swelled and spread, losing concentration as it melted outward[sup]5[/sup], but even a curtain that barely reached, barely caught...

[color=c0392b]"That's wool over its eyes. I have you a window!"[/color] he called to the diminutive ninja, wherever in the chamber those opening seconds had seen her leap. With what had already come and what was still on the way, the two youngsters both knew damn well to shelve their mutual disdains— for now. Mostly. Most likely.

He needed to ready his materia next. The moment Izayoi and Galahad found their mark and toppled the giant, he would need it to ensure it couldn't get back up.

[hr][hr]
[list]
[*][sub]1. Final Score is a Six out of Ten. Three or four of them coming in at the very, very end. [/sub]
[*][sub]2. It hasn't quite come up yet, but this [i]is[/i] part of "hearing a lot more from me". Before all this, I spoke in whispers and inklings of impressions, the dark and scared parts of the mind. It shouldn't be shocking.[/sub]
[*][sub]3. Making a long story short here. A long story very, very short, as this all relates to fundamental truths of the two predominant schools of magic— wouldn't you know it, the one that emphasizes maintenance of structure and rigid ordering is given a "pass" where the one that focuses on reduction from composition to components to fundamental, closer to the [i]prima materia[/i], is reviled, shunned, and feared.[/sub]
[*][sub]4. Barblizzard, we've been over this. For that matter, why the hell are we doing [i]Barblizzard[/i]? Do they not teach Barwater any more? Is that one lost to time? What happened here?[/sub]
[*][sub]5. Everything melts into the darkness. See?[/sub]
[/list]