HereComesTheSnow

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

Tearing through the smoke and dust had come all too naturally to the black-clad swordsman, the broad hews of his blade trailing arcs of silver moonlight and spraying blooms of inky, dead blood. He was a wedge at the foot of the door the hail of explosives had opened, finding the right pace to keep forcing their little bubble of safety within the throng forth without leaving their most infirm, under the watchful care of the other three, behind. They were going to make it, they could maintain this pace for the last few me—

Oh Mother—
—Fucker, are you serious.

"You'll want this back, Esben!" Rudolf roared as he finally smashed through the far boundary of infected and about-faced, digging through his pouch for the Time Materia and flinging it home once he made eye contact with the SEED, a litany of growled swears passing beneath his breath as he pounced again, this time to jam his foot in the door. His mind raced. Ferdiad.

Ferdiad. That demon wasn't bound to the ruins in any respect after all— in hindsight, it made sense that the erstwhile impossibility that was the jongleur's corporeal form let him range that far from Lunaris¹, a realization that did little to assuage the dismay it came on the heels of. He wrenched his sword around to cut off the advance of another trio of zombies as the rest of the group hurried along, the crash of steel through flesh and bone punctuating sharply barked orders, each one familiar to those that had been on the other side of the border two weeks past.

Oh, I get it.

"We're going to have to stick to light the rest of the way through!" Him most of all— presuming they were still hoping they could avoid giving the game away. Blackflame as a last resort— and a total moratorium on shadowstepping after all. For all that he was making good progress at picking it up, with the demon in the picture swimming through the same pools of darkness, it'd be akin to going overboard with a shark tailing your ship. Rudolf had hoped to bank on the technique as a utility to navigate tight spots, repositioning himself out of a jam— he didn't fancy his chances of meeting Ferdiad in his own domain. "He can walk through shadows damn near the same as we've been going roof-to-roof; everyone stay tight once we're topside!"

He could feel the scowl spreading across his face as his strokes grew more desperate, harried less by the undead and more by the mounting tempest at the back of his thoughts. He tried all he could to keep paring the situation down, focusing on bare essentials lest he begin to spiral off into a mild panic— dots threatened to connect in his head that he was really, really hoping were off-base. No doubt, if they found safe enough harbor to go slack a little, he'd have to confront them head-on. He couldn't stop himself forever— he needed to settle for stopping himself for these crucial minutes that came next.

Honestly, I just noticed this, but it's a little crazy you haven't with the way you always want to make a big stink about having the "right" answer to everything.

If you mean the fact that his "patron" is probably just the person we were arguing over having shadow magic a minute ago—

A shock of red flitted by, filling the field of his visor for an instant.

No points for "if", little man. Nobody wants a rambling schizophrenic who says, "it depends".

Gods, he wished he could slug this unhelpful piece of shit—²

"Zeke! I don't suppose you've run into Dispelja, have you? If not... Hell, even if you have— Where's the nearest chapel to where we're headed!? Don't tell me it's on the other end of the border!" he called, switching his attention to the SEEDs at the end of the line and ushering the Mystrel along as they broke through the end of the crossing, the first few raiders in tow. Solitude, and more broadly Skael, were notoriously the most secular of the four nations of Ibros— half the reason certain slices of northern country refused to adopt materia were downwind of the resultant theological dispute. They considered it unholy, unnatural twisting of Etro's divine ordainment of the Aether, little better than Black Mages.³ "I don't even know if corporeal demons would be rebuffed by it, but holy ground's our best chance!"

He wasn't willing to bet that'd do it. Not at this point. Ferdiad had already proven twice over that the Goddess's disdain could only impede him, not outright smite him— crossing great distances from the land he had once been tied to like this, as well as Miina's Dispel in Lunaris not proving enough to finish the job outright. He could feel his backups falling away even as he tried to set his repertoire to work in his mind's eye.

Blackflame was out. Shadowstep was out. Quake he dared not utilize too early, for threat of directly squaring off with their pursuer— his other materia had been sapped once already in helping get their wounded comrades stable enough for the fairies to heal properly. At this rate, swordplay and split-second prescience courtesy of his passenger⁴ were going to be the only things he would have left to leverage. With half their fighting strength, and a handful of wounded or non-combatants to look after, the odds were a whole lot worse than they were in the ruins— even before you factored in that they had no midday sun at their backs.

The din had attracted more undead to the thoroughfare, naturally, and the gaps the Kirins had carved through the street were filling up quick. So many... little wonder the city had seemingly gone totally dark. It had already felt like he'd cut through a hundred, just trying to hold their space open until the last of them were safely across... but in truth, he wasn't keeping track of the smaller details, once Ferdiad had manifested. A chill had begun to settle into his bones, hearing the laugh and seeing the waves of shambling bodies that threw themselves into the whirlwind— in this once-metropolis, now so suddenly dead.

They took to the roofs again, once the last man was across, but try as he might Rudolf could do nothing to shake it. The spike that had built up in the back of his mind, regardless of how much he worked to keep his focus on the task at hand. It was going to run him through the moment he gave it the chance, verdegris that had torn into the sky now turned upon the snow. Horror. A black, moonless horror.

He had heard this story before, he realized— and he worried he might now have found the terrible answer at the end of it.

---

---

• _{1. You know, come to think of it...}
• _{2. You have bigger problems than me. Bigger problems than what I've put together, too.}
• _{3. To be clear: This is not the official position of anyone in this unit. The spy has talked plenty about how he's Ithar's specialest little boy— Rudolf actually seethes a little at having it rubbed in his face. We just engage in "rhetorical framing", the same way I "rhetorically frame" mystrel as "recently uplifted", and Valon "rhetorically frames" Ospreyans as "incapable of differentiating between 'l' and 'r'."}
• _{4. Wasn't I "unhelpful" just a moment ago? Should I maybe remind you that there's much more precedent for "ungrateful", in this arrangement? That I'm a magnanimous patron? Funny we mention that word— and just to drive the point home, I'll tell you for free that if Dispel worked on contact, Absorption will too. Try and throttle him if you go for it.}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

"Oh good," Rudolf dryly remarked from the rear of the group before stalking forward, gaze pinned on the field of undead below. "I've always wanted a chance to say 'I'll deal with the rabble, you guys make a break for it'. Get to cross that off the bucket list after all."¹

The zombies below shambled aimlessly through the street below, seeming to drift, however vaguely, towards the echoed sounds of their rag-tag incursion force hopping from building to building. That they congregated in this wide passage below seemed just as much coincidence as it did pursuit— but all the same, it'd take legs like Galahad's to bound the gap that lay ahead without falling to the pavement and into the lot of them. Rudolf had stronger legs than anyone here, but not nearly to that degree— saying nothing of the wounded they had in tow. His eyes darted from head to head as they swayed along, piling each of the walking corpses up in a soaring tally. By his count, well past four score of them, at least. Probably safe to round it off to a hundred.

Those were daunting numbers to throw yourself at, even against normal soldiery; for all that undead proved to lack compared to the guile and rational minds of the living, they traded it for no sense of fear or survival, merely bestial hunger for flesh. No doubt they'd swarm and try to crack him and his armor open like a summer crab. Long odds in either scenario... but not impossible.

Garland could do it. Limbtaker Izayoi could do it. You're pretty sure your brother, provided this many additional warm bodies, could do it as well. Very reasonable standards.

He freed Anders' greatsword from his back, rolling his shoulder and testing the weight, growing so familiar so soon as it was. They wouldn't heed the arc of death it would carve through the space around him, throwing themselves at wherever he landed by the dozen. If he was diligent, stayed mobile, and liberally applied the islands of terrain the upturned car wrecks provided, he could see those staggering lumbers they mustered for prey being turned into a merry chase around the field, herding handfuls at a time into the path of his blade before bounding again. His harness would insulate him from incidental scratches and bites, his knife could punch through those that got too close²... taxing physically, even moreso mentally, but he saw the path through the situation in front of him.

"I still have Quake and the blackflame, too, if things get a little more hairy than we bargain for. I'll be fine," he affirmed, slipping the Time materia³ into his pouch with a nonetheless. The problem, as one might expect, was the situation behind. With the extra parameters they had to deal with, Rudolf knew very well that it forced 'waiting around for him to whittle the whole mass down' wasn't as viable as it would be on his own. Twice the issue in enemy territory, Three times as bad when you considered how much noise the protracted combat would make to attract more undead than he could keep up with. Compared to re-slaughtering half of Solitude? Blasting through naturally won out. "Just focus on getting everybody across in one piece. I'll be three seconds ahead—"

He raised a hand palm-down and then wiggled it. Time Materia, after all.

"—Give or take."

He then crouched as that hand fell to the stark white bone of his dagger's hilt, drinking in the soft blues of moonrise. Deep breath, deep focus. Once everyone was on board, the bombs would fly— and then so would he, into the wake of the smoke.

---

---

• _{1. Long time listener, short time caller here: You have literally never mentioned a bucket list before now. This is news to me.}
• _{2. Obviously, stab wounds don't mean much when you stop needing your organs to animate you. It'll provide a handhold to muscle an intrepid cadaver around, like a meat shield.}
• _{3. Remember, "Honor is the refuge of the strong" extends to agreements, too. Scam your friends. Take their valuables. After all, they gave them to you. This materia's never leaving our pocket again, I do not care that you kind of don't believe you need it. I want it.}

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

By all accounts, an uneventful night. My watch same as the rest, though I can't help but feel I may have looked towards the moon for some kind of guidance a little too often— whatever I was expecting to get, I can't even begin to name. At some point, I think it was just resting my eyes from trying to search through the mire of ink between those trees, long and tall and dark in the dead of night. That's thing about a late watch, I now realize— you spend long enough looking through the shadows for something, your eyes start trying to guess what your brain might want them to see.

Everyone gets fed up with work at some point, I suppose.

But mainly, I can't report anything of note back, beyond one or two times I heard something and reached for the club. Like I said, though, nothing came of the noise in either instance. Probably just some small creature running through the brush, about as concerned about the farm as me— new noises, new smells, and a very obviously new Big Animal there, staring out with raised hackles any time you move. I'd also stay clear, if we look at it that way.

I hadn't slept beforehand either, opting to just kind of shadow the others as I was able until my turn on the post was set to begin. Primarily, I was bound for the shed, to try and lend Csenge a hand with whatever physical work her rituals might have entailed, but it ended up coming fairly short of the mark as "need for Pete" came. With that determined, the most I had left to do was to politely keep undisruptive, which at least isn't a tall order for a guy like me— I can handle staying out of the way well enough. Hrefna was already lights out when I swung around, and Hyselia had coiled herself near the pastures anyway— something about a bunch of warm-blooded wool in one place being nice and cozy, if memory serves.

So, by the crack of dawn, it's the sense of unfulfillment that wakes me as much as anything else— I hear the tail end of some of Csenge's wards, and she's wearing the long evening on her face, so it isn't as if everyone's been up to nothing much.

As long as we're moving forward, I can suck it up.

"How far's your property go? Any of the woodland back there your purveyance as well?"

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

@Crimson Paladin

A half-shrug and a raised brow, both common language regardless of tongue for the unspoken sentiment that a given response was "fair enough". He listened quietly for a time, as Fleuri and the old swordsman spoke of their order's unrequested hangar-on, of living by way of the sword right down to the marrow of one's bones. The singular pursuit of perfection, in so many words— Gerard remained silent, but he doubted it was quite so rare as the foreigner intimated. What was true was that she stood among few equals in how much ground she had achieved along that path. Quite evidently, the lot of them still had more catching up to do.

But when the horn called them forth in thundering tones of brass and war, the need for argumentation of any point ceased. As Takashima had already acknowledged— words were an unclear, muddied message in this field.

"Well, it looks like we'll have ample time to keep talking soon enough. Takashima, Fleuri."

A wolfish grin graced his features as he looked back over his shoulder, hand all but burning to free his blade from its' scabbard. Farewells first. He could hear the steel sings, indulge in a few strokes, roll out the shoulders— all on the way down the hill.

"Fair winds and gold rays to both of you. I'll be seeing you on the other end of the bracket. Reap greedily until we meet there."

And there, his case could be made.

Off to the grounds.

His Day had arrived, a long time coming.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

”Don’t sell us short on preparation,”

Metal creaked and shifted as a rough-hewn growl sounded a moment after Zeke’s tirade, before the rightmost panel of twisted aluminum alloy was cast aside by an arm of black steel. Rudolf’s greathelm bore a few new scrapes and scuffs, but otherwise seemed little worse for wear even after the wreck. His eyes shifted behind the visor, more metal shifted behind his arm. ”We have three tour guides.”

Esben, Eliane, and Chisato were revealed in short order. The former two were as native to the city as anyone left within, at this point— and they no doubt would know the way towards what would pass for safe harbor. Not to mention…

“I was hoping we could just have Eos and Selene handle this bit. I didn’t say fly directly over— Loki got us, didn’t she?” More a rhetorical question than anything else; there was no real alternative candidate. Zeke had stayed within eyesight the whole time they were aboard, the engine conditions were verified before takeoff, and most importantly—

You are a terrible early warning system.

I had maybe half a second to smell the shadow on the aethereal wind. I work with what I get. It was still enough for you to get everybody to crash position.

The armored flatlander clicked his tongue, thumbing the pommel at his belt. The black spot on his soul coiled in response, no happier than he save for their argument. Disdain swirled around the pair of one.

Riddle me this: What’s a fundamental step in melanosis? What begins the process of transmutation, since you’ve been so encouraging of my alchemical interpretation of everything you do?

I am a literal shade, boy, spare me. Dissolution of the form is a fundamental concept, true. It can be leveraged to restructure your guise to that of another, true. I myself am familiar with the requisite magic. In my life, I wore other faces when the need arose. YOU riddle ME this: what would the practical use of such magic be, if it was so easily seen through by a feeble echo of the mages that developed it in the first place?

He supposed that was a good point, but it helped matters none.

Their initial suspicions were well-placed, in the end, but they’d still been caught off-guard once their mission parameters had changed. Flying right in was already enough to set the lot of them on edge, not being remotely close even to Eliane’s intent— but the strike had come without warning, save for his passenger’s last-second alert that, oh, by the way, i smell shadow-aspected aether, you got played after all.

After that, it had been all he could do to try and put as much of himself between his teammates and the screaming metal as he could. It was a wry quirk of fate, thinking about it, that he kept pushing his familiarity with weightless vertigo to his advantage whenever Loki let her mask drop. This was the second—third, if you liberally counted the battle against the Behemoth.

And now here they were: Stranded inside the walls of the zombie-infested city, their way in strewn hallway across the rooftop and gardens of a Skaeler manor, and their chaperones in nearly as many pieces as the ride. A grisly sight by any measure. Rudolf let a moment pass, full of wondering when exactly he had become so cold blooded about seeing people, real living people, be reduced to scraps of meat…

And then he returned to searching through the wreckage, turning aside rent steel and stomping out tongues of orange flame, the long shadows of dusk seeming a thirsty pool around him.

“That’s all the more reason to get everyone still breathing stable, and everyone still stable moving.” He huffed, pulling a groaning raider free. Zeke was hardly wrong—a cataclysmic wreck like this and fresh blood on the wind were sure to draw the attention of everything in the city.

He could hear his father’s voice echoing in his head, cutting through the swirl of smoke and confusion in his head, carefully cordoning off the part of him that wanted to panic and lose nerve before smashing like a mace into the mire with characteristically heartless advice: Those who can follow you out will. Those who can’t will not slow you.

He bit back at the unwanted counsel.

“Now if you can complain, you can help us get out of here quicker.” he grunted stiffly, reaching for his absorption materia. The flow of vitality was itself an expression of aether, at some level— that it could be manipulated to sap strength from one to bolster another, in theory, was a two-way street. And he had by far the most strength here to give, by any reasonable reckoning— but he couldn’t overextend himself, lest he end up trapped beneath the weight of his harness. ”Or do you not share your sister’s gift for both the major schools of magic? If so, help Chisato with triage— we’ll get who we can on their feet as we get them out of the mess. I’m sure there’s already somewhere we’re to be heading between the other two.”

Her home. Please be her home. If anything had to come of this horrible mess they were once again stranded in… please let it be closure, if not a reunion.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

Zombies, then. Reanimated corpses with second leases on something that approached life¹, typically propogating further than the initial batch raised through necromancy via salival contact— biting healthy humans to instigate the necrosis. In that way, it was like the wedge point between a disease and a curse— but regardless of categorization, it was a snowball rolled downhill if not quickly dealt with— and given that necromancy was rare enough to crop up only once or twice every century? Nigh-on impossible to insulate against ahead of time. Even in Edren, with his access to one of the more specialized populations of warriors vis a vis dealing with all manner of pages in the grand bestiary of the continent, Rudolf had never heard of undead cropping up outside of old stories. Not until Valheim entered the picture, with Siren and Revenant. He expected Skael, with how neatly they had severed their culture from magic to the point where they could commodify it, to be even less equipped than that.

If anything, their best bet would have been the land itself— the harsh winters of this place, the lifestealing frosts and winds, could render the lifeless interior tissues inert as they froze the shambling corpses, growing ice shredding old muscle and splitting bone. If that were to come to pass, though... Rudolf suspected it'd already be done. The arcane framework granted by necromancy left these corpses unnaturally robust, then. At least against environmental rigors.

He remained silent, keeping his careful gaze pinned on Zeke, as Esben set to work buying the departed Valheimr an alibi— covering their metaphorical tracks as much as one could, given the circumstances. It'd buy a couple hours, but Rduolf didn't see a great many futures where their group were going to need more. Either by that point they'd be set to hitting the outposts, or—

"You're sure?" he inquired, canting his head over to the spy as the call came in. From the armored northerner's posture, it seemed he had a few reservations, even though he was fairly sure what Esben's answer would be. "I know the new plus one would complicate moving forward with the assault, but what about getting eyes on the city, at least in brief? If not yourself or Chisato, what about the fairies?"

Much like their reasoning for shooting down the prospect of leaving Zeke and the aircraft alone together, having any one of them trying to both mind him and a surprise assault against enemy fortifications simultaneously was a recipe for failure at both. Having already had a little wind come out of his raiding sails before this, completely scuttling the whole thing stung, certainly. They only had so much room for scope creep, though, given their equipment and manpower— couldn't really help it, and this was priority intelligence.

And not just for the leadership, either. While they still had some dusk, a flyby could corroborate things a little— and they'd be much less likely to befall the same fate as whatever kept gobbling up the scouts that had gone missing before they were on the scene.

Probably the zombies, on that note. Probably literally.² Again, Lanius and his raven popped into Rudolf's head.

---

---

• _{1. Wide umbrella here, too. Pharaohs, Ghasts, Vampyres, Ghouls, all types of Undead, all "zombies". I'm something different, though, but you'd be forgiven for thinking I'm that kind of Shade. Wights, too! We can't forget Wights, many a good barrow has housed many a good Wight or six. Or seven.}
• _{2. It's kinda like a pun, you know? Intelligence gathering specialists, falling victim to things that eat brains?}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

"You've given a lot of people the runaround, Zeke Malina," A tightly levelled-off voice sounded from the bottom of the ridge, as the departed black iron swordsman marched up to rejoin the group. Rudolf had slammed into the tail end of the search party about as well as he could have hoped— the deep tracks his boots in the snow flanked by flecks of fresh crimson, running down the length of his sword and knife. Within the helm, his furrowed brow had yet to loosen.

Cresting the summit, his coppered gaze flickered off Miina's suddenly-discovered brother to try and meet the gazes of the assembled Skaelers, almost to a man Solitude native. Forget the impulse to hogtie the slippery bastard until they could keep him still long enough to give their long-suffering Red Mage a good reunion; if the guy spoke truly, there was a real chance that their immediate mission here was about to severely reshuffle its set of priorities— if not fly off the rails in totality.

It was hard not to linger on Eliane's face, in particular, as the words "A city of the dead" echoed through all their minds. Each mental refrain was like a flame licking at the back of his skull, branding it— rationally speaking, the immediate presumption to make was that this was the reason Solitude had gone off the record to begin with, all the way back when Kayliss had first shared the information in Edren. The ongoing state of affairs that preceded any intervention on the Kirins' behalf. But was psychology ever rational?

They had been detoured for weeks since crossing the border. The weight of that time, in this new context... Zeke had just said it had been hell for a week, not multiple. If Rudolf thought back to what they were doing a week ago...

The flames at the back of his mind surged a little.¹ Context. They needed more context.

"But that's vague. Vague and a pretty alarming claim. Let's tackle elaborating first." he continued, not moving to restrain the mystrel as he drew to a halt. Truth be told, Zeke was a picture of the man on the run he'd come to expect, once you got past the striking similarity to his little sister. Rudolf was fairly certain he could run the redhead down if he bolted— eyes bloodshot and baggy, thin-boned... and not smiling. Miina said he always smiled. There was room for breaking of mold, given the magnitude of the crisis he was putting forth. As well, it wasn't shocking that the fond memories she had didn't line up with the shady image that day perusing Osprey's seedy underbelly had cobbled together. He could allow for extenuating circumstances like that a half-step, but given everything² that had happened to the group since that day of tailing cold leads...

He did not raise his blades, but he didn't sheathe them either.

"What exactly is Valheim quarantining? They're plying necromancy in there and it got out of control, or..."

...Had the city just up and lost all corporeal form, in a single night, leaving only malevolent shades?³

---

---

• _{1. So is it more or less fucked up if you don't at least commit to the bit in full if that's true?}
• _{2. Loki. I'm with your instincts. I've basically become your instincts. Loki wants you to take her to your superiors. Calling it.}
• _{3. That would be exceedingly difficult for a bunch of reasons, which we do NOT have the fucking time to list out right now. I'm chatty, I'm not long-winded. I would significantly doubt infamously secular southerners Solitudeners would manage to remotely stumble upon a way to accidentally the population across the veil. Let alone pull it off.}

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Rudolf Shilage

He had gotten maybe thirty meters into the bush when the first crack of the rifles sounded, and nearly bit his own tongue off when his teeth, naturally, ground against eachother in an a frustrated, helpless seethe against it all. Damned good-for-nothing threadweaver of fate! This was why he never asked Ithar for anything!¹

A small tuft of white powder rose as Rudolf ground his heels into the earth beneath, wrenching his path of egress around to the left, muttering a few other untargeted invectives to those whose will he ostensibly meant to defend— even if the bubble had in the end popped early, there was still a sound use case for the previous idea. The rising voices of the Skaellish outriders engaging the search party were directly behind him still, meaning that the Valheimr were, more or less, going to be entangled in the original net they'd set up— hindsight being what it was, this would be a lot simpler if he'd just held position to begin with. Blunder. Careless.

The shadows of the forest had grown longer still in those tense pair of minutes. True to his evasion plan, now they were deep and broad enough to dive into— and dive he did, flitting between the trees as he drew a long arc around the circumference of the hill, an eventide shade of the woods. Fundamentally, the best thing he could now do would be changing direction in this manner; where he had meant to pop up behind the other Kirins and rejoin the group properly once he'd thrown off any tails, now he would wing around behind the mass of the ill-fated blackhelms, swords drawn, and split their guard if not outright wall off their retreat from the ambush.

Sink through, spring out. Sink through, spring out.

There was a rhythmic element to it, when you tabled the arcane conundrum of melting away into darkness while retaining your sense of self-distinction. Magic was rarely ever considered so physical in Edren², not beyond applications of materia— but as he pulled his arc tighter, faster, changing dozens of meters down into doubles at a time, Rudolf almost felt more a bounding animal, closing in on prey, than any manner of mage as they were known by most of his country. He almost felt he understood Miina a little better, in some uncertain way, tying together the familiar martial conditioning with the esoteric whims and means of magecraft. Something about the unity of opposites? It'd tickle him to keep finding ways to push the alchemy metaphor.

Or maybe the Rakshasa, to speak of man mantling a hunting tiger...³

"For Skael!" a voice sounded out, as he appeared between the ring of pines just beyond the treeline. Even if the swordsman's relationship with the god of fortune had clearly cratered to the point he half-believed this boondoggle was somehow his own doing, at least Ilias's winds still guided him true.

His knife freed itself from the beltline, Anders' greatsword from the back. Bursting forth from the trees, Rudolf's flanking arc had taken him to the far side of the ridge, instantly sighting them all— panicked, under the hail of fire from the raiders, desperately trying to regain their bearing on the situation. It was an honestly very familiar sight; were they not so by necessity at odds, Rudolf figured he and his empathy'd have no great trouble feeling sorry for them.

But by that same measure, if he hated surprises this much, it stood to reason that they would too.

"Solitude! Balmung!" he bellowed, answering the rallying cry and announcing himself as he surged into the back ranks and set his swords loose, a one-man arm of the sudden pincer envelopment.

---

---

• _{1. : )}
• _{2. I'm not kidding when I say it, yov need to retvrn. This is a terrible state of affairs to have let things reduce to. There were Gods walking among you people once, you know that?}
• _{3. Don't let the furries hear about this one. Skirting the line with this upjumped jaguar warrior shit as the Sagramori are, a legend about an actual evil tiger guy eating the weak and the excommunicado is going to be, I ask no forgiveness in saying it, catnip to them.}

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,

---

---

• _{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.}