The hand of misfortune struck heavy and with relish, Miina's well-intentioned but all too faint warnings dashed to pieces by the hammer of high heaven about Rudolf's ears, the errant Thundaga as loud as any cannon that had ever drawn a rose's hue onto Eliane's cheeks. His ears rang, and the stench of ozone and smoke filled his lungs— but her protection had overlayed onto his form just in the nick of time and no sooner. Taking the cloven-hooved titan's heralding fulmination right to the damn dome had
hurt for certain, but proven survivable— his fingers flexed when asked, and his breathing hadn't gone erratic even with Selene's Swiftness embossing his movement.
Good, all good. That said, though, the undirected strikes of lightning were hard to predict even with that haste applied— and he couldn't get around the sense that it wasn't quite so effective as it had once been. He'd been grappling with that inkling feeling all through the moments were the Kirins had torn through the blightbeasts like scythes through wheat, but it didn't stand to reason that the purple fairy's boon had somehow been
weakened, so much as—
Another thread of lightning crashed against his back, the third in nowhere near as many seconds. It obliterated the idle thought before it could really complete, leaving again the strange impression that maybe
he wasn't taking to outsourced haste quite so well as he used to. That being the case, it had proven again that he couldn't quite rely on dodging, given that these were the incidental threads of contact. A long blade of steel upon his back, and a yawning chasm where he had once held at least meager fortune— between them, lightning seemed to quite readily strike twice, and then some. His mind raced... and found itself taking a very different tack than the suggestion he'd been too momentarily deafened to hear.
I have an idea. You might not like it.1There was the disembodied sensation of a nonplussed blink. Evidently, somebody in this equation wasn't used to being on the receiving end of that sentiment.
Huh?"I've got the front," he called, swallowing a lump of fear in his throat even as his hands rose to grip the pommel of the tall, smoking greatsword at his back. He stepped forward, a deep puff of air loosing as he exhaled, trying to purge that sensation of clammy palms and pale complexion from his body. They were just all the lightning, he told himself, that was the only reason his hair was going wild, and the hammering heart was just the haste at work. Sword drawn, the young man set off at the head of the group, breaking into a charge. The alternative, he dimly realized, was probably completely locking up. It had been this way for so long he had almost forgotten how to recognize it— that the ideas he verbalized were probably more for his benefit than any one of theirs.
"I'll do what I can to draw the lion's share of the heat onto me! You guys encircle him, attack from the flanks! We faced down Leviathan— just one attendant's in reach if we play this right!"His guard was high, an exaggerated
Vom Tag. Lightning liked three things most of any: high places, metal, and Ithar's blacklisted. While Adrammelech's direct attacks wouldn't be rerouted, even pulling the errant, incidental sparks away from his comrades would give them a lot more breathing room atop the Barthunder
2 that coated them all.
Hold on, what happened to smartly approaching your problems? Your first thought is turning yourself into a lightning rod. Even with the Nulshock, you're playing a dangerous game to maximize the hits you take. You saw what happened to your blonde friend last time lightning was allowed a free point of entry.This is smart, Rudolf countered, letting his will flood the six-foot empty vessel above even as another bolt careened into it, running down the length of steel before crackling at the edges of the arcane barrier around him. They were right, of course— each shot still felt like getting brained with a sledgehammer, to put it mildly, to the point where it felt a shame that his armament might not retain the charge afterward. Even
if the Eidolon's mighty servant almost certainly held immunity to the element it commanded. But all the same, Etro had afforded him at least one rare blessing at birth: a
really hard head.
We're buying openings! Listen, just worry about keeping the fire burning and whatever you can do to shield my heart and my brain!3I can't guarantee anything, but you dying means me dying. I'll try and figure something out. This is what Arton, and that materia you chucked him, are for.
Not happening! You've seen the state he's in same as me— and with him out of the fight, I'm the next most robust person we've got. I don't like it either, you know that damn well!With the fae boon still upon him, it was a simple matter to close the distance between him and his quarry— now came the hard part. He whipped the blade around into an uncharacteristically weighty slash to Adrammelech's right leg, attacking the joint of the knee with the physical force he could pull out of the empowerment— and letting the high-spiraling tornado of blackflame in its wake ravage the titan's torso as it climbed. He would need to get close to contribute meaningfully to the battle anyway, and with him not being terribly confident that his speed was completely up to snuff compared to before and them down their usual bulwark... pivots needed making.
There was a great crash as steel met steel, and he craned his neck to lock eyes with the thunder elemental. He hid the nerves behind a grimace, he hid his grimace behind a growl— Izayoi's master had been bad enough already to stare down. The ram of thunder was easily three times as tall. Basically the size of a house, and actively crackling with the power it held that made your every hair stand on end, made your instincts scream at you to
run away and
not draw this thing's attention.
And Rudolf had to make himself the most pressing target on the board, so his teammates could swarm him and take him down, or at least prove they stood a fighting chance against him. He summoned the image of his brother from within the recesses of his mind. The broad back he always chased. That man was so like those brief glimpses of Arton he'd seen before the Blight infection had truly metastasized; even if faced with a primordial like Ramuh himself, or Leviathan before, he wouldn't falter. He would meet this challenge, even if the very storms their Midgar blood knew to above all else respect were the hurdle he had to overcome.
Of that, the young swordsman was sure.
"You're in our way, goat!"4 he roared, bringing the length of the greatsword back across his field of view a moment later, another line of ink
5 drawn upon the arc he cut through the air, a spray of onyx flame spreading towards Adrammelech's head, his eyes, high above. Hopefully, the smell of ozone and singed flesh would mask the scent of deceit— the constant hammering of Dhinas's smiting judgement all around him cloaking the same of his pulse.
"We've got places to be!"Those opening moments were precious for setting the tone of a fight. Even with seven of them versus one of the wrathful thunder spirit, he prayed that he had at least extended the first stanza by enough for everyone to reposition well enough to bring their full ability down onto their foe— while they were still warm from the fight with the Blightbeasts, maintaining tempo was crucial. that was the lone upside to having this test dropped into their lap with neither warning nor processing time, to the point where he wasn't even sure if he'd had a moment to internalize any of what Cid and Ramuh had revealed of the former's particular, strange existence. He didn't know what he thought of that, or how he weighed it against the Grovemasters issue, or how it played into his running tally of everything that had happened in this forsaken jungle. He'd not had the time
to think.
And that was likely what pushed him here, to trying to buy Izayoi, Galahad, Esben some time to come up with an actual strategy beyond this opening. If he had known this was what he'd be facing, had time to
sit with it, would he have made the same choices? Would he have swam, or sank?
Wasn't that what it always was? Sink or swim, with no time to see what was coming until it arrived? They hadn't expected Leviathan to turn out this way, either. Nor their ride here, nor their expedition into the desert. It was always
this. Think fast, nimrods! The scariest shit you've ever seen is right on top of you!
If you stop to realize that, you're already dead. That's the lesson.So the test then was... were they ready to keep having to ask "how high" when the world they wanted to save told them to jump? No matter when, no matter where?
For his part, Rudolf hated every second of it. He wanted a damned break, he felt like he'd proven all this twice over.
...And that probably meant he was in for the long haul.
- 1. Huh?
- 2. Nulshock. In civilized tongues with real, respectable understandings of magic, it's called Nulshock, not Barthunder. I thought this vessel of mine was the educated one.
- 3. At this point, my mind is racing as quick as it can to try and turn my aether currents around to put some passable buffer between those two (in fairness, most immediately vital) organs and whatever electric rolloff makes it past the ward his mage has so kindly bestowed onto him, likely knowing the type of nincompoop she was tagging along with beneath his facade of pursuing most effective tactic available. It's obvious to me that this 'all or nothing' approach is the idea he's latching onto as a response for the need to act immediately— a plan that he can put into action before he terror spirals. One of these days he'll realize that this is what he's been doing the whole time, but that's a discussion for moments where I'm not about to learn if I can use the expression of my presence to reroute the path lightning takes as it tries to ground itself. This is a bit more complicated than simply digging a channel through the side of a riverbank, Rudolf.
- 4. Obviously the genuine article is more draconic, but those ancient scribes and artists that most of the continent's religious iconography stemmed from probably had a hard time getting their heads around depicting that— and went with a ram's head because they felt some connection to the astrological Capricorn was poignant, or because that was the closest thing they could think of that they had seen that had horns. You'd be appalled to learn how much of your understanding of history and myth is just heavily mangled guesses made by sheltered idiots.
- 5. I burn more luck, he gets more flame, the lightning and the lizard man get more inclination to strike him twice, thrice, and so on, instead of his pals. Everyone wins! This is some ruthless calculus at play, even if it works. I'd be over the moon with it, of course, if my continued existence weren't tied to the idea that this team can outpace the punishment we're inviting onto ourselves. The principle of taking a clear cause-and-effect chain that's dumpstering you from most reasonable outlooks and bending it over your knee until you pull some kind of advantage from it is what I'm all about. These systems are made to be tamed. It's fun viewing when somebody clues into that.
I just don't appreciate having my essence tied to the margins being played. It's little wonder I keep being compelled to chime in.