princess
Tae
Infinite Cosmos
Location: Top Deck
Race: Dark Elf & Human
Class: Artificer & Rogue
Interactions: @Helo Ezekiel; @Oso The Three 他妈的混蛋
Mentions: @Princess Callandra
Equipment:
Attire:
Gold: 90
Injuries:
Neither Eyepatch’s state nor his words brought Scaerthrynne much comfort. The latter wasn’t anything he didn’t already know—he’d already gathered that Callandra was clinging to life by her mere fingertips when he’d laid her out on the floor. He wouldn’t have bothered with asking the man-in-white as to whether or not she could be saved, if that wasn’t the case.
And as for the former, well, it wasn’t exactly reassuring to see the extent of the man’s injuries. The worst of them was likely the jagged splinter—more of an entire wooden shard, really—jutting from his leg, but there more, smaller fragments, peppering his exposed flesh. Judging by the way he’d winced when he squatted to pick Venn up, and the stumbling, staggering manner in which he stood back up, Scaerthrynne was quite certain that he had several internal injuries as well. Particularly around the chest region. Broken ribs, most likely, or bruised ones, at best. He seemed to be favouring one arm over the other, as well.
Their situation was dire, to say the least. And yet, it wasn’t despair, or cynical pessimism, that seeped into the dark elf’s heart, but a strange, but very much welcome, surge of confidence. With it came fiery, burning courage, and stout resolve.
After all, what else was it that Eyepatch had said? “Not here.” That meant that there was still a chance that Callandra could be saved. There was still hope; not all of it had been lost in the explosion. They just had to get out of this dismal wreck of a cargo bay, get to the engineering core, and all would probably, most likely, have a good chance of being well. And it wasn’t as if he had to do everything on his own. As injured as the man-in-white was, he still seemed quite steady carrying Callandra, as he was. And Scaerthrynne felt more than certain that Vallena would be able to lead them back to the cargo hold’s entrance in good time.
Yes, everything was going to be fine.
He glanced at Vallena as he packed up the syringes he had taken out earlier. The girl had already finished bandaging herself, and was busy adjusting her clothes over the dressing. Although there were still hints of fear, worry, and anxiety scrunching up her features, there was a marked sense of sureness, of nerve, in all of her actions. She drew in a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut, and gave her head a firm shake. With a few light slaps on her own cheeks, she looked straight ahead with a determined gaze.
A thin, mirthless smile pulled on Scaerthrynne’s lips.
Everything had to be fine. Hadn’t he promised her that much, after all?
He quickly slung his medical pack across his body. There wasn’t any time to waste. “Val, we’ll need you to guide us back to the entrance–”
“S-Scratch?” Vallena’s timid, trembling voice interrupted him. All of her earlier poise, all of her earlier heart, vanished, as if they’d been nothing more than a figment of his imagination. “P-People,” she continued, her arm shivering like a leaf as she pointed at something ahead of her. “D-dangerous people, Scratch!”
Scaerthrynne followed her finger with her eyes, and laid his eyes upon the three newcomers. Well, two, at first—the third only materialised into view after he’d looked their way. Heavily armoured, with faces hidden within the shadows of crimson hoods, they were an intimidating presence even without flickering shadows dancing across their powerful forms. Two were well-armed—one with a pair of thin blades, the other with a brutal-looking sickle. The third was a magic-user, with arcane power swirling about his hands.
For a moment, Scaerthrynne felt his spirit falter.
Memories flashed through his mind. Memories of facing long odds; of chaotic battles; of acquaintances, all laying dead, and so many that he could hardly keep count; of his own ragged breathing, his legs pumping hard against dirt and blood and mud and stone and flesh as he, and he alone, fled for safety, as he’d done so, so many times before.
Coward. That word whispered in his head, in his own voice, but it wasn’t his.
No point dying in a lost fight. I lived to fight another day. No shame in that. Now, those words were his, and were also in his own voice, but they weren’t strong, as if even he didn’t believe them. His mouth dried. His blood froze.
Then, Vallena inched closer to him. He could hear her sniffling, hear her swallowing her tears, as she held onto his coat with her little, trembling hands. “S-Scratch?” That one, whispered word was wrapped in fear, a type of fear Scaerthrynne hadn’t heard from Vallena in a long, long time. “W-What do we do? Should we run? O-Or hide? Or…I-I don’t know, Scratch, I-I don’t know–”
And just like that, courage burned through him once more, and resolve stiffened his nerves. His shoulders heaved as he drew in a long, deep breath, and released it just as slowly. This was different from the surge of confidence from earlier. It wasn’t just a sense of certainty, or of optimistic hope that filled him. No, there was another thing that followed it, this time. Something energetic. Something that pushed, that shouted for him to act. Something angry.
“Don’t worry, Val.” His voice was cool, but his jaw was set, as he rose to his feet. With a hand on Vallena’s shoulder, he gently shepherded her behind him. The girl whimpered, pressing herself flush against him as she peeked around him, her knuckles white as she gripped onto his trousers. “Everything will be just fine.”
He cleared his mind. Thinking about the past wasn’t going to help. Worrying about a possible future wasn’t going to help. Only what he saw, what he observed, and what he knew in the here-and-now would help.
And so he glared at each of these red-hooded strangers, at the battlefield, and he analysed.
First, there was their armour—Karrnathi-made, if he wasn’t mistaken. It didn’t matter even if he was; for all he cared, they could be wearing armour from the moon. What did, was their fit. Sleek plates, hammered to conform as much as possible with their bodies. They offered protection without sacrificing much in the way of mobility. Impressive, if Scaerthrynne dared say so himself. But, heavy armour was still, at the end of the day, a great weight. Moving around with them through the cargo hold would be a challenge even when all was in order, let alone now, when everything was in disarray.
Perhaps they might have trouble ducking under, squeezing between, and clambering over wreckage? The dark elf tucked that bit of information away.
Then, there were the fighters themselves. They all looked remarkably identical, save for the weapons they wielded. Annoying, inconvenient, but otherwise inconsequential. Scaerthrynne focused on the one directly opposite him, first. The one with the twin blades. They could be called Two Swords, he supposed. Arcane energy clung to them in a thin, ethereal layer. A spellblade, maybe? They seemed light on their feet, too; a sign that their armour wasn’t as heavy as its appearance suggested, perhaps. Would they be the simplest to dispatch?
No, that was a poor assumption. Better to err on the side of caution and use maximum force. Beides, they had proven that they could teleport, in a way. That made them the most dangerous in a chase through this terrain, and therefore, they had to die first.
Scaerthrynne turned his eyes over to the one facing Eyepatch. This one seemed to be the utter antithesis of Two Swords. They moved slowly, deliberately, and didn’t carry as much as they dragged a sickle behind them. Sparks flew from the wickedly-curved blade. Scaerthrynne clicked his tongue in disapproval. Such a dismal show of care for their weapon. There was magic in the weapon, however, but unlike Two Swords, it wasn’t clear whether that magic extended to its wielder. Scaerthrynne cocked his head slightly. It wasn’t an important point—enchanted weapon or person, they had to be taken care of all the same. He decided that this one’s name was Sparkler.
The last one, the magic user, this one Scaerthrynne called Furnace, mostly because of how the air warped around him as it would around a furnace in operation. He saw the sigils they etched on the floor. Perhaps they were a sorcerer who preferred runes? That didn’t seem right—they seemed to use whatever magic it was swirling in their hands just as much. It was fire-based magic too, by the looks of things, although what they were trying to accomplish with the sigils, Scaerthrynne didn’t know. Did they want to melt through the floor of the cargo hold? If so, then they had his blessings. It’d give their wild friend an avenue of escape.
And that brought Scaerthrynne to the griffon in the room. The creature was still raging, still thrashing about in the small space. They had keen eyes, if his memory served, and were drawn to things that shimmered and shone under light, such as, for example, armour that reflected firelight. They were good fighters, too, a lot better, and far more stubborn than their hippogriff cousins. The ghost of a smirk pulled on the dark elf’s lips. This griffon wasn’t a friend, but neither was it an enemy. He just had to make its madness work in his, and Val’s, and Eyepatch’s favour.
All the while, faint wisps of arcane energy wafted from Scaerthrynne’s body, curling their way to Eyepatch, swirling around the man’s head and sharing all this analytical information with him, to hopefully grant him an edge should it come to a fight.
A plan formed in his head. It wasn’t a good one, but it was the best he had. The best they had.
“Val, go scout a path for us to the entrance,” he said in a voice just low enough for the girl to hear, his eyes still fixed on the three hooded strangers, particularly on Two Swords.
“W-What? On my own?” The girl squeaked, shaking her head. “I-I don’t know, I can’t, Scratch, I–”
“You can, and you will,” he cut in firmly. Vallena whimpered. He knelt and faced her, looking her straight in her eyes. “You survived on your own for years before I found you, didn’t you?” A moment’s hesitation, then she nodded, averting her gaze. “The entrance isn’t far, but we need to be sure that there’s a safe and clear route for us to follow. It’s going to be hectic, things are going to move fast. We won’t have time to pick our way through all this wreckage, so it’s up to you to go on ahead and find a path. Can you do that, Val?”
The girl sniffed, but nodded. “O-Okay, Scratch.”
“Good girl,” he said and ruffled her hair. He grinned. “Look at you, brave little Val. I’ll keep their attention off of you, and you just stick to the shadows and do what you do best. Once you find a way back, come back, give me a signal, and I’ll do what I do best. Alright?”
“I-I will, Scratch!” She breathed in deeply, and looked at him with as much nerve as she could muster.
Scaerthrynne had no reason to doubt her. Vallena had always been a stealthy girl, and a skilled infiltrator who had a knack for finding her way through places that would confuse anyone else. If there was anyone he’d trust with navigating this mess of a cargo hold, it was her.
As he stood back up, he grabbed a length of broken pipe and slid it up his sleeve, hidden from view. Then, he turned back to the three strangers. “Eyepatch,” he said in a low voice, hoping his words would find his, and only his ears. “Fighting here with that thing–” Scaerthrynne tilted his head towards the Griffon “–there would be a terrible idea. Keep holding onto Venn and follow my lead.”
Now, for him to play the first of his parts.
He drew in a deep breath, steadied himself, and took a step forward. “Look, I’m just the engineer,” he said loudly and clearly, addressing the three hooded strangers. “I’ve no idea what’s going on here, or who any of you even are, to be very honest.” He concentrated arcane energy in the hand which held the pipe, and infused the length of brass with the properties and abilities he needed it to possess. It needed to have just the right sound, just the right payload.
And at the same time, he kept talking.
“Well, I’m guessing none of you are interested to know who I am,” he continued, making a show of shaking his head and chuckling. Anything at all to make him seem ridiculous and hopefully attention-grabbing. “But since I’m here, I thought I might just try asking. Any of you ever been to Khyber?” He wracked his mind for the exact type of chemical he needed the pipe to contain. What was its name again? Gods, it has been so, so long since he’d messed about with it. “I don’t think so. Nobody wants to go to Khyber. Not even us dark elves want to stay there. It’s probably why we’re all in such a terrible mood all the time. I lived there for the first fifty years of my life and let me tell you, it was fifty years too long.”
Maybe he shouldn’t start with the payload. Sound, first. He knew that specific screech; those low, growling notes, and agitated squawks well. It had to be loud. Loud enough to catch the griffon’s attention. “Anyway, one thing about Khyber is that we’ve got maybe 1,562 different species of glowing moss. It’s the truth. I’ve counted them.” He went on. This was a dangerous game he was playing. The three strangers’ seemed to be happy enough watching them for now, but who knew how much longer their patience would hold. “One of them, I remember, gives off a strange slime.”
At last, he remembered. Time to finish things up quickly. Vallena should be back soon. “Stone-eater moss, that’s its name. It didn’t really eat stone, though. What it did eat, however, was metal. Bronze, iron, copper, steel, it wasn’t picky.” Now, just a little something to help the pipe fly further. “And whenever it ate, it’d give off this pretty, bright light. Never knew what it was called until I was older. Exoluminescence.”
A hand tugged on the hem of his coat. “S-Scratch, I found it!”
Scaerthrynne nodded, his eyes still on the three strangers. “Where was I?” He asked, and slid the pipe out from his sleeve.
“Ah, that’s right,” he said, his face turning hard. “You shouldn’t have hurt the girl.”
With all his might, he threw the pipe towards them. Dull brass, faintly aglow with arcane energy, spun and tumbled through the air, seemingly gliding on its own until it was above the three hooded strangers. Then, it exploded, but not with a boom. The sound that came out of it was that of a younger, hot-blooded griffon, one that was eager to claim territory for its own. Loud squawks, challenging growls, and daring screeches bounced off the cargo hold’s remaining walls. A purplish slime spattered over the three’s armour, instantly lighting them up in hues of vivid violet and eye-catching teal wherever they landed.
Amidst the chaos, Scaerthrynne quickly drew his pistol. Lingering arcane energy coursed through his hand and into the weapon, seeping into, and infusing the round in the chamber with a sheath of arcane-piercing energy, and shaping it, warping it into something that could punch through the hardest armour. “And by all the Gods and all the hells, you shouldn’t have made her cry,” he added, his voice cold. He took aim at Two Swords. The recoil slammed the grip into his palm, and a bright light burst from where the bullet impacted them. Scaerthrynne didn’t bother staying to see whether or not they were down.
“Eyepatch, let’s go!” He shouted. “Follow Val! I’ll be right behind you!”
