HereComesTheSnow

Sword and Dungeon: An Adventurer's Guild-based Fantasy RP

"Taking first, Rylia? I'll relieve you after three hours or so, then." I remark from the main pen as I begin to carry away the understandably irate ewe I've been restraining for Csenge's control group blood sample. She's squirming a little in my grasp, but I outweigh her by at least double, so she's got no choice but to deal with the indignity until I return her to the main cohort. Go run home, little wool shrub, and don't stay out too late. This place isn't as safe as it used to be.

"We wouldn't want you running an all-nighter. If we do track this curse down, I'd want burning element of the party at full strength. Doesn't really matter who takes over for me, I don't believe, so we can stretch my shift if need be. I've gotten pretty used to watching sheep over the past couple hours."

It's not like most curses, as far as anything I've heard about them, really respond to being shellacked in a useful or even tangible way. If I want to talk about understanding weaknesses, I'd be remiss to not note that I'm increasingly likely to have drawn the short end of the stick on this one— if the seemingly shrinking chance of this being livestock predation by some large carnivore end up falling through, then eyes and ears are just about all I've got.

That and manhandling the livestock in question. Still, as the newbie here, I'd be served well by keeping myself keyed into the different processes that are currently out of my scope. For all I know, I might at some point learn I too have a background in the investigative or arcane processes. Might find I've got a knack for the vials portion of all of Csenge's sample-collecting, too.

If you're serious about learning from people, pay attention to how they learn things.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

It was a blessing his face was covered, that only he would be privy to the scowl falling from his face and the nonplussed blink that broke his stare through the snow at the crest of the hill, awaiting the first sign of movement until just now. The air was thick with anticipation as details continued to roll in on the true nature of this Valheimr deployment— and that falling expression quickly began to twist back towards a grimace.

One mystrel. Red hair. Bastard thief.

Where had he heard this story before?¹

He pulled away a half step, checking the imprint he left in the snow. Were it not for the mission already on all their plates, Rudolf would have quite happily tugged on this thread to try and bring back something substantial for their miles-away mage to work with. More than just "sounds like Zeke made his way down here too, and he's got the usual suspects after him"— after this, it was just going to be a rolling assumption wherever they went.

But diversions would throw a wrench in everything, the exact same once this information had revealed they still had a chance to dodge. Sure enough, his tracks were going to be deep, a consequences of his arms and armor— if this hunting party were to crest the ridge, it seemed a safe assumption that Rudolf, at least, would have his trail spotted. That'd be a problem if he dove for cover in Elly and the rest's wakes, but if the jig wasn't actually already up the way they thought it was...

He held his left hand up, pointing towards the woods opposite the scatterplot of ambush points their division had set up, and then tightly circled his finger around— planning to bound away from where the bulk of their raiding party was, make the best use of those distinct tracks as he could, then return to the group after he'd left the trail of breadcrumbs sufficiently out of the way. Chisato, at least, would be able to guess at the lynchpin of how he planned to break the trail off and not lead these hapless dozen manhunters right back into the campsite— it was her Exit materia that he had been using as reference for shadowstep this whole time, after all.²

Two breaths later, he set off at a brisk trot, melting into the gloom. With any luck, this would all just be an exercise in theory, and the patrol would drift the other way while they kept good and quiet.

So, Ithar, if you're reading this,

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• _{1. If I were Miina Malina, I'd chalk this up to my brother deciding to fuck with me specifically. Hells, if I were Miina Malina's brother, this is how I'd fuck with Miina Malina specifically. An endless trail of breadcrumbs— actually, this gives me an idea.}
• _{2. Artistic integrity has been debated and relitigated on the subject of reference since long before he picked up the pencil. In a pinch, I cottoned onto her performance against the Ruby Weapon as, "probably the easiest mnemonic for a rock brain". Naturally, I'm right.}

Sword and Dungeon: An Adventurer's Guild-based Fantasy RP

Csenge's addendum to my slice of the task delegation is simple to tack on. Really, I ought to mention that I had meant to do it to begin with, but saying so after the fact in this manner is basically just guessing I'd key in on the change.

"Aye, boss."

My eyes are keen, so far, they've handled low light pretty well, so I might have a little broader of a timeline to work with than most— but all the same, there's a difference, an understated one in fact, between "I'll probably spot it" and "I'll be looking for it". Activity and intention make the castle stew taste more complex than the forever pot a dingy old inn keeps on the flame.

I don't think that's a real metaphor. Regardless, the jawing between Hrefna and Rylia sails in from the far end of the fence line, as they both make first contact with the curse overlaid onto the poor bleating beasts. Insults aside, they at least can return us a quick preliminary diagnostic report— whatever hex is causing this isn't directly upon the future mutton morsels, so much as irradiating them from afar. I'll make sure I don't mention this specific connection to Rylia, but it's sounding like being warmed by the Sun would be a good comparison. Despite that it hangs far up in the sky and the moon chases around on that eternal spinning wheel of the cosmos, we still get the heat when we stand beneath it. That kind of thing.

There's a tug a couple inches from my kneecap. I glance down, and find an intrepid lamb reaching through a gap in the fence to try and chew at the fabric of my trousers. Sorry, buddy, but the fibers they were made from stopped having any nutritional value a long time before either of us first remember seeing them. Still, no sign of any progression into the diseased cohort before I shoo it away. I do have to wonder, though...

"The healthy one that disappeared wasn't any different from you, was it..? Bigger, I guess."

The sheep, naturally, is already grazing closer to Mama, and doesn't deign to respond.

Fair enough. My posted vigil continues.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

@Crimson Paladin

That sounded amply close to "yes" that Gerard would take it as such without much worry of alternatives. In any event, competitors from the far east were rare by design, so fleetingly present as they already were in Thaln every other day of the year. Two or more in the right place and right time could hardly be written off as simple coincidence, with that all understood.

"Niece, eh?" he murmured, idly shifting his weight from heel to heel. "Would I be wrong to hazard the guess that her participation's also part of these 'diplomatic endeavors' of yours, or do we here all serve as a welcome reprieve from something grimmer?" There was a lightness to his tone that suggested he didn't necessarily mind either answer, but given the brewing trouble the Order themselves were dealing with all through the months previous, his curiosities lingered. Were he not trying to be a good host right this minute, Gerard might have produced a dismayed huff—

The dream of the Valours had been proving a welcome reprieve from the ongoing debacle of the scattered shards of Angoron for him, right until he'd found a way to get it back into his head. His first tourney it might have been, but even in lacking experience he knew it to be just like war in at least one key aspect: when you were the man in the arena, on the day sparks flew, having your mind anywhere else was sure to spell defeat.

He stomped the train of thought back down, hoping he'd not shown the slip up on his face. Not like any of it was this Takashima's fault, it would hardly be fair to let that turbulence bubble over onto him unless he stirred the pot himself.

And that would be handled at the end of their blades, as a show of good friendship.

"I suppose the festivities are a good locale for people in high places to rub shoulders with one another, while we're all down here having the real fun..."

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

A huff sounded from beneath the helmet, curling almost to a growl at its tail edges.

"It's enough to make you wonder why we bother, isn't it?" Rudolf remarked in dry commiseration with Esben, his disdain for this ongoing trend every bit as cutting. "Every time we try and put our minds to a problem, approach it like we're professionals, it blows right up. No wonder I was talking to the walls of the ship."

Waste of time. Really motivated a guy. But, for what gripes he had, and a growing list¹ of them at that...

He glanced over his shoulder as their attaché of Skaeller soldiers dove into drifts, letting high-piled snow and long-stretching shadow do what they could to conceal their positions on the short notice. A moment later, the spy raised his voice by just a hair— enough to snap off the bones of a marching order before he and Chisato too sequestered themselves out of sight. Best you could really do under the circumstances, and given how compromised their information channels apparently already were...

The old knight's blade found its way into the hand of its new contractor in short order, blackened mail softly clinking as he stalked three paces forward in the evening snow. "Got it. You and me, Elly. Let's pull them into the snare and get warmed up."

... It was a good thing he'd argued his case in front of the others, at least well enough to get Izayoi's backing. If their position was sighted either way? It was a damned good thing he would be here, and personally get in the way of whatever catastrophe the caprice of the gods tried to twist this into, rather than a score or two leagues away as a landbound swordsman trying to do a dragoon's job.

He'd make a note to mind his pace even as he took the front. Too far forward would be begging somebody to slip past him, after all. Hell, thinking about how exactly "Loki" had gotten the drop on them that first time to begin with...²

Help me out here?

Your fellow caffeine addict's shadow has been duly noted. Provided you actually follow your own advice, we can manage a quick *teleports behind you* and *unzips various swords* if you need to get fancy. Try not to.

Rudolf crouched low, sword and knife drawn, ready to spring. Silently, he agreed with what the demon and Esben were implying— risk as little as possible with the unfamiliar faces, reveal as little as possible to the unfamiliar faces.

---

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• _{1. "List" is always an inexact and frankly misleading word choice here. It's more like a cloud of fifteen— no, seventeen now. Seventeen bugs buzzing around in here, bouncing off the windows trying to get to the outside that they can see.}
• _{2. We were across the map for this. I distinctly don't remember her being said to have popped out of a shadow, since this is where this train of thought's going. Granted, that associate of hers, Lanius, does have that raven he scries through. Maybe you should slime out the next few birds you see.}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

Hold on, let's make everyone's life easy

The ride out to the far south was as smooth as you could expect, given the need for haste at the timetable Kayliss had set. The quadrant of diamonds jostled as three or four gazes pored over them, hastily stamped onto a field of white that only saw a band of austral forest and the northern wall of the muted city itself to break things up. As maps to plot an operation around went, it was...

"Pretty sparse on detail." Rudolf observed bluntly, breaking the tense silence that had fallen over the bigger half of the Kirins. It spoke to the dire straits the proper military arm of even the cloistered kings of winter had been forced into that this was the intelligence picture they'd been able to put forward. He knew well enough by now how deeply the apparatus really ran at full muster— but that meant time and measure beyond their current means. He glanced Esben's way, but the SEED didn't rise to any implication, real or imagined— just continuing instead to pin the map with his gaze, searching hungrily. Rudolf returned his own to it a moment later. "Right. Let me eyeball a couple distribution plots between these guys, then. Without heading or clear avenues of movement fostered by terrain..."

A set of lines were pulled across another sheet of parchment laid atop the first, backlighting spilling through both. "We'll be coming in from the Northwest into a landing zone just past the treeline. Since we're expecting an uncontested approach, my guess for any out-of-field staging areas is going to lean more to the east than the north."

Turbulence shook the airship again. He frowned, readjusting the map and plot. "Since I'm more confident in that second correlation than the first..."

From each diamond plotted, a quartet of vectors streamed out, intersecting with the aforementioned regression line as it extended into the drifts that dominated Solitude's northern approach. The silence and grimace from him, after pulling an ellipse around his "best guess", were all but deafening. He really only had two boundaries to go off of, and no sense of bearing beyond them. He could be way, way off base—

"I would consider that no sign they're in the city proper isn't proof enough to assume they don't have a base within the city—expect reprisal to come from that direction. If they had a dedicated airfield or other staging area that was still on this side of Solitude I think the patrols would have laid eyes on it already." Esben finally added, nothing hopeful on his tone. "Kayliss already told us once that any patrols or agents sent into Solitude proper haven't returned, after all."

The charcoal tapped hard into the dais, as though he wanted to stab straight through the bottom of the hull. "Shit. That's true." the young man spoke through his teeth, amending his misgivings to one boundary. "Ugh... And we won't know until we're there how bad the snow's going to exacerbate the hills for either them or us. Their fallback and staging areas could be east or south, given what you just said..."

Setting the charcoal down, the young man pinched the bridge of his nose, mind steaming as it fought to find a way to forge something workable out of this.

"Looks like we're gonna have to start with in situ reconnaissance then, no other way around it with these gaps. That'll be us leaning on you guys, obviously. So, fuck it, from the top..."

---

...¹

---

As the Kirins touched down and began to disembark, Rudolf brought up the rear on the gangplank, savoring the relative warmth of ground-level air coated in propellant friction. Between Eliane and Esben, once he'd had his fill of trying to outline his initial analysis of what they'd been flying into he had meant to fall relatively silent, stepping back out of their way. They were the ones on their home turf, after all, preexisting within Skaeller command structure. Naturally, the woman that seemed to be the head of the skirmishers attached to their deployment was already reporting to the latter. It was a cool evening, the same as many they'd seen this far south. Snows were present, but thankfully not so heavy as to occlude visibility— not yet, at any rate. Eliane knew the rises beneath the drifts from what she'd mentioned in the past— they'd be able to lean on that rather than try to account for wild shifts in elevation at the hands of Saint Shiva's whims.²

He busied himself instead with mulling over his mission estimation. Starting with order of battle and task analysis: The four Kirins, and their attached dozen riflemen, were to raid and destroy the four detected Valheimr outposts no later than ten hours from this point in order to deny Valheim their control of the northern approach to Solitude, and seize potential staging areas to enable subsequent operations to retake the city from the unknown threats within. This necessitated a total end to the enemy's presence— taking out whatever infrastructure they had set in place as well as inflicting heavy loss to the manpower they could muster. "Erased", in his mind, meant to leave nothing standing. Put the men to the sword, put the motte to the torch.³

It was a tall ask for a force this small, even when headed by people as battle-hardened to impossible situations as them— in his estimation, their lynchpin was going to be the element of surprise once night fell. Esben and Chisato were highly-trained at covert operations of all breeds. By virtue of his demonic pact, Rudolf himself moved with an unnaturally muffled step, and his black armor would melt into shadow.⁴ Even Eliane, for all she disagreed with the method, had received some of the Garden's training.

After their information picture cleared up, the four of them would be able to coordinate an assault apiece to simultaneously raze these outer toeholds, minimizing the enemy's chance to raise alarm, muster defence, and communicate with the larger occupational force presumably stationed nearby. Alone, each of the Kirins possessed ample fighting strength to tear into standard Valheimr infantry quickly— their expertise combined with the force projection of their attached skirmishers' reinforcement would carry them through the average squad, provided they weren't charging into a full stockade of mounted guns and reserve troops. He had to hope that there was no way they'd entrench that hard and that quickly. What else. Quality of command, terrain familiarity, simultaneous assault coordinated by shortwave... hopefully, information overmatch. It wouldn't do if their landing zone had already been pinpointed, or if they were spotted on the way into position. Any good raid relied on infiltration into, investigation regarding, and isolation of your key targets before you put spur to bird.

He glanced at their assembled forces. No birds. Already, a diversion from what he'd been brough up in. A foot approach would in all fairness be likely quieter, leave less evidence of their movement pattern, and remove extra failure points to manage... but it meant that once kickoff hit, their final approach would be slower, and demand they get right under each outpost's nose. Their egress would be slower, too.

So, critical factors: They needed secure, stealthy routes of infiltration to get eyes on these things and place their forces down. They needed the ability to sustain communications between eachother— he had a feeling this would come as a combination of radios and a familiar pair of green and purple lights in the night air. As raiders, it would be paramount to maintain tempo— catch your enemy before he's ready, crush him before he can ready himself. To do any of that, this scouting period was going to be crucial. They needed an accurate picture of how each outpost was laid out, lest they felt like charging into trenches for a machine gun to pick off. The cover of nighttime would be their best friend here. If any of them were still fighting by daybreak, the mission had gone horribly wrong.

They were short on manpower, had a lot of gaps ISR would need to fill, and early compromise would likely damn the whole thing to mission creep well out of "raid". Already, they weren't geared to sustain the control they would win in the event of success if necessary. For vulnerabilities, each one was pretty rough. Margins of error were never something you should allow to broaden, sure, but having these so narrow at the outset would put any aspiring tactician ill at ease.

Maybe I was on the right track when I pretended I started and stopped at the humble sabretooth. he mused wryly, looking down to see how deep his sabatons sank into the accumulated snow beneath. I'm practically cooking myself trying to attack this. Esben must be having a great time in the driver's seat.

"How current are those reports?"

One question to help frame things, that was it. The rest the SEED and Dame-Commander could handle. No doubt they'd already considered most of the same things Rudolf had.⁵

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• _{1. Here, let me chuck this bit in a hider. I can feel everything below it glazing my eyes over already, the last thing you all need is to sit through flavor text. Don't say I do nothing for you guys.}
• _{2. Unless, y'know, Garland.}
• _{2. Hey, you know who that sounds like?}
• _{4. You're welcome, by the way. I seem to keep saying that.}
• _{5. Does He Know?}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

Rudolf grunted, shaking his head doubtfully. ”With Solitude having gone as dark as we’re hearing and the need for longer-range scouting bands to even develop this information picture, I think we can move with an initial assumption that it’s dead on friendly ground out there at best. Otherwise they would have established contact to tell us about before turning questions over to us.”

A tinny sound called the rhythm of his thoughts as his finger rapped against the crown of his helm. His frown and furrowed brow deepened— for a change an encouraging sign, after Esben had acquiesced to leaning on the younger man’s own education in the broader arts of war before they shipped off. To be honest, he was still a little sour about Zacharias brushing him off in Brightlam after noting it… but there were more important reasons to throw his head at the problem.

“Still, another head that knows the terrain better’s going to be a windfall in the planning stage. I like fields and forests and hills more than snowdrift. I’ll be cross-referencing topography with you whenever I get to plotting out potential staging areas. Airships and technological advantage or not, Valheim’s got their own physical and logistical limitations to field— Can’t just pop a whole landing force out of thin air. Plus, if we need to bound into the city later, that could just as easily determine sites we’ll use. Granted.”

He took another pull of coffee. Keep thinking. Keep thinking. He may have been hasty, bleary, and not completely bloodless in making that promise to become the Cadons’ sworn sword, but it was not an oath he meant to break easily, in any respect. He had filled well up on missing standards for twenty years.

“In the aftermath of Garuda, I assume winds are like as not to be more capricious than usual. One blizzard blows through between then and now and so much goes out the window I might just cry.” he drily quipped. “No visibility, no continuity in terrain development, shaping actions are a guessing game, I’ll have to tell Anders I lost my charge two feet in front of me. Terrible. I almost want the lizard culling.”

Yeah, really quick question. What’s the math on these divisions look like before you’ve been drafted, exactly?

…

A narrow-eyed, suspicious look fell upon the junior of the two SEEDs in the room.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Sword and Dungeon: An Adventurer's Guild-based Fantasy RP

"Wyrmbender."

Hrefna Wyrmbender.

The runes inscribe themselves onto the naked parchment with too little trouble, lines of dark smoke curling around the beaten off-white. I haven't ever found myself wanting for dexterity above a pen in the time I've been here. It must mean this mastery was beaten into my muscle, not my mind.

"Hyselia Erenhart. Waaater mage. Gotcha." I repeat as I write, darting down to the next line as our paladin lists off her credentials with a hmph at the end. I'm guessing here, but I don't get the sense I'm necessarily the scoff's intended target. "Rylia Ainsberg. Paladin, Saint Saaaalva. Great."

Maybe it is... The name of her academy falls flat in my face, and my tongue doesn't terribly feel familiar with the words the same way my hands do writing. I glance up, but Hrefna seems like she's (unwittingly) thrown me a lifeline with her heckling. So the Paladin's not a big drinker, then. Good to know— either that, or very selective with whom she cares to imbibe. Good to know too.

On the last space, I quickly scrawl down the pseudonym I've been answering to this month. Barely, almost caught ahead of time, I feel my brow furrow. Under the three real names, with real histories and stories behind each listing, it's hard not to feel how hollow my gut feels when the adjective and noun ring out back to me in my head, bouncing around in so much empty space.

But there's nothing I can do about it. I tap the point of my pen against the tail end of the final stroke, before stowing the thought for the ruminations that populated dead time, like the long trek out to this farm we were all due for. "Right, that's all. Won't keep you longer, thanks for pitching in. West gate in two hours." A reminder more for myself than them. I roll up the parchment and tap it against the wood as I step away— like knocking door to exit, almost. Might be I just like hitting on something.

Would definitely explain the stick.

---

"Fletcher, right? Evening, man." I greet the farmer from further back in our group. Not a big sufferer nor study of pathogens here, so my immediate use is pretty limited while we approach things from this immediate level, but I'll take what notes I can. Firstly, he's gone and quarantined those sheep that have been infected by whatever these weeping sores are. That takes a lot of legwork off our plate in separating them out from the herd as a whole, even if it doesn't prove to be contagious in the end.

Regarding that, he looks pretty hardy for a geezer even after getting them all penned off to the side, so it's nothing that would leave a man worse for wear to be interacting with regularly. If we're here for a good while trying to twist this thing around until it breaks the answer open for us, that's one less safety concern we'll have to deal with, most likely.

Finally, I look to the rest of the flock, those that weren't afflicted yet. I remember the initial dispatch mentioning that they get awful skittish in the evenings. Only so much light left in the day as we have, while the others are busy investigating potential disease, I guess it'd make sense for me to mind whatever's spooking the rest— try and guess where that 'unclean presence' might be skulking around further off ahead of time. I figure there's likely to be somewhere they feel is much less safe than wherever they end up retreating to, when grazing time's up.

"Think I'll defer to keener schooling on them few," I mention to the rest of the party, figuring they probably can't read my mind no matter how much sense I think I'm making. "I'll let everyone know when the rest of the flock starts getting cold feet."

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

The belly of the beast, on another day, would have set the little Shilage's heart alight with wonder. Standing at command of the tight river valley and embedded deep into the steep, jagged stone rises flanking either end, the fault-block range in effect afforded Falcon's Nest miles of stone and ice to guard any attempted approaches from north or south. Its high spired towers may not have crested the peaks surrounding entirely, but they stood tall all the same, thin pennants fluttering in the high winds that rushed through the valley— enough that he was certain their lookout posts had miles of visibility on a clear day, spotting their airship as soon as they had spotted the fortress— to say nothing of the water traffic below. The city nestled at the heart of so many towers, merlons, and ramparts was fed by the waterway through a massive portcullis of black iron at the head of the barbican¹ they saw on their final approach, the baileys within a network of stone terraces ascending out from the valley again towards either peak, this time at the regimented pace only human engineering decreed. As the Kirins disembarked, he caught glimpses of a maze of ramparts and causeways that connected it all, arteries that guided everything out from the furthest tower back into the beating heart of the keep.

But time was short, and they were ushered into Kayliss's awaiting escort. Sightseeing and exploring and indulging in boyish fantasies of "cracking open a beer and daring Valheim to try sieging this shit after I've had a week to make it Even More Annoying" would have to wait for another day, if life had enough luck left to give it to him to begin with. Greetings were sparse as they set off into the arterial tunnels below the pad, everyone essentially settling into the pace of a forced march. The question of mission-readiness went unanswered; largely textural in being brought up at all at this point. Ithar loved a quick turnaround, where their lot was concerned.

His head still throbbed some with each footfall that drove into the cold, smooth tiling as they walked, but his vision was about done clearing up, and his ears only rang with the echoes of a bell tone if there wasn't something more important for them to latch onto. By the time they reached their debriefing room, he felt comfortable unclasping his twisted helm and holding it at his side in the crook of an arm, the other freed to pilfer one of the steaming mugs of coffee. As the Spymaster spoke, he let his eyes narrow pensively as the dilemma unfurled, accentuating the bitter notes of smoke in the dark roast beyond the power of the brew or the bean alone.

"Right into it with this shit, huh...?" he muttered in vexed undertone. Splitting up had gone pear-shaped for them more often than not, but their hands were tied by all powers that seemed to still be— hearing the way Kayliss was saying it, the simultaneity of these encroaching threats left Division of Labor non-negotiable.

He breathed out through the nose, considering his questions more carefully than his preference of assignment. Quite a plurality of people here— Kayliss, Esben, maybe Galahad, and without a doubt Izayoi and Chisato both— would be thoroughly unsurprised that one of these tasks aligned with so much more of his upbringing than the other.

"Okay, so before I ride out. Are there any maps plotted out yet of where these forward outposts are? If there's any particular concentration of them, that's our best shot at determining the directionality of the larger main. Or at least a staging area— those airships Garland and pals are skiffing about on have to be landing somewhere, this far south. If I'm putting their fingertips to the sword, I'd be remiss to not try and take the knuckles while I'm at it. More we cut off their available approach, more breathing room we have to develop the terrain outside the city. Just academic at that point."

"... I doubt it's going to be the traditional raid you're imagining." A voice cut in from somewhere tall, native, and off to the side.

Rudolf shot Esben a sidelong glance, brow beginning to furrow now. "I heard 'wiped off the map'." the counter came.² "That paints a familiar picture."

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• _{1. I'm getting pretty hungry.}
• _{2. Fight! Fight! Fight!}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

Though he historically liked perching on his high places, such as the nights spent on the masts whenever the party had taken to sea or the crenellations and arborea of Castle Demet, Rudolf still found himself drifting towards the center of the wooden caravel once the Warriors of Light had been ushered aboard by the crew. It was a thing unlike those in a way you couldn't ignore or transpose between— it hung suspended below an oversized balloon on a web of steel line, a ship that sailed through sky rather than surf. The high places he liked to seclude himself away in were still, in some way, rooted to the ground. They made contact with something below, something that would catch him all too quick if he teetered off the side.

On airships like these... If he didn't have something at least as distracting as Valon in front of him, he could feel the void beneath, even through the quarters, gun decks, ammo belt, and keel below. As they lifted off and set course upon the invisible currents for Falcon's Nest, he could feel in the pit of his gut that it was a much longer, much emptier way down if something like their skirmish with Siren were to come to pass again. An empty concern, the crew knew what they were doing and the airship was of ample construction, but instincts were instincts, and they bestowed onto him the same vertigo he'd felt gnawing at his stomach just an instant before the granary blew up in his face.

So, he sat at rest quietly, propped against the frontal wall of the aftcastle and sword resting against pauldron as he studied the wood of the deck, mind aching and elsewhere. His gaze was smoldering beneath the greathelm, not quite reaching a furious burn— he hadn't the energy to rage against the setbacks as they settled into his memory. Only to review. Even if he stayed away from the railings, there was still a yawning chasm to peer into.

Garland had called the engagement on the summit a draw. They had pretty quickly torn into his armor, and forced him to retreat after denying his main objective. In broad scope, this read as their party being able to contend with this new foe when they needed to... but from Rudolf's perspective, the right interpretation would be to flip that on its' head.

Looking at it not at all differently, a lone knight in Garland was able to check all six of them. Waves of Earth and Ice at his command on a moment's notice, prodigious strength enough to leave their best-armored frontliner in this state after one exchange—

Who was he kidding. After one strike, Garland had nearly taken little Rudi out of the fight completely. Strong as an ox, deft enough to catch Izayoi in midair, between her strikes, and calm to the point that even when he was swarmed by three of them at a time, he could pick off each individual bullet that had come from Eliane's gunblade, parrying or checking everything as it came to him. In retrospect, he had to agree with what he'd been told was Izayoi's summation of the black knight's ability— easily her master's equal. Ice ran through his veins, the whole encounter a dunk in the fjords below.

Titanically strong, ruthless and deft in body and mind... And above all, a natural font of magic. Quake, Blizzaga, and what looked to him like the same shadowstep he had only just begun to train. He almost wanted to ask if there might be a demon involved somewhere¹, just to try and explain the absurd stack of talent contained within their foe. Seriously, how the hell was that fair?

It was like a point of mockery by Ithar, jokes on fate wrote, that the last thing Rudolf had managed to contribute to the brawl was crawling along to grab at Garland's ankles. That flowing purple mantle seemed to dance upon the wind that coursed over the ship, every time he closed his eyes. All he could see was the Valheimr conqueror's back, looming over him, so far ahead, and so far above. Like taunting him with an image somewhere he could never go. Something he could never become.

His right hand flexed within the gauntlet, and Rudolf glanced over. He'd more or less borne the brunt of the impact from Chisato's cannon thanks to the strength he had stolen when his hand had closed around Garland's ankle. Even though it had only been momentary contact, that vitality had ensured things didn't go that much worse.

... Stealing that strength for himself, eh? If he could reach out and touch the figure he now chased, that unfair totem of power might just bolster him, in a way that would even the odds a little.² If that was what they were fighting, then...

He sat with that thought for a good long while, as the ice raced far beneath them.

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• _{1. I uh, I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out what the hell that disassociative vision was, if it was just you freaking out or something a lllLOT more concerning.}
• _{2. Can't really get into it, but this is so nostalgic. Keep it up. You keep doing this. We're gonna do great under this direction.}