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8 days ago
Current Just ran a stale yellow. Nobody on this website is doing it like me, sticking it to the man like me, blazing a trail against tyranny like me. the only thing revolutionary about you is your rhetoric
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1 mo ago
Takeru Segawa is the type of man they made myths out of. Intensely privileged to be able to say I watched him burn so bright as he did before going out with a win. I’ll miss you, hero.
2 mos ago
a frayed thread on the colorful tapestry of our existence, begging to be yanked until the whole thing unravels, a suggestive, inviting golden glow around the idea of leaking my buddy's DMs to his wife
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3 mos ago
I'm like the "conspicuously modded with multiple trojan backdoors skyrim save on your friend's screenshare stream" of white boys
4 likes
4 mos ago
Completely fucking up my field sobriety test as i clamber out of the honda fit i've wrapped around a lightpost, staggering everywhere, before finally scoring a big fat goose egg on the breathalyzer
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Rudolf Shilage


"Thanks, Goug. Stay safe, Goug.”

Freshly-set rime crunched beneath Rudolf's sabatons as he set off after Izayoi in short order, a blur of black and red against the pale, sinking cold of what might have been the golden hour, a few dozen leagues north. While it was a welcome change of pace that Kayliss's word was reliable enough to see them ushered through the border without undue hassle, he didn't have it in himself to be terribly surprised that their good fortune was limited to just this one stroke— his personal situation notwithstanding, they just never seemed to stray too far from trouble for very long. The nature of the beast, one could reason.

His eyes cast themselves onto the field, past the fleeing townsfolk and into the waves of blightbeasts ahead. The local militia had done a good enough job in staving the assault off that the noncombatants seemed to have gotten good distance between themselves and danger, but sure enough, his soldier's eye could see the seams beginning to fray in their ranks. They were spread too thin, even with most of the enemy ingress funneled down to the eastern and southern gates, and their discipline was wavering. One or two more surges would be all it took for them to melt to a rout. He could see it, he realized— He could see where he would tug at those threads to let them unravel. If he kept them split between these two fronts, they'd shake themselves apart as their attention kept needing to oscillate, their stress mounting against the harrowing numbers.

"I see the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree."

He slammed the visor of his greathelm down and drew the bone-hilted knife from his belt, clicking his tongue as he slashed through the throat of a stray corrupted elk that had slipped through the gaps. Drawing up to the melee proper, only a few dozen strides away, he twisted his trunk to look over his shoulder and hollered, catching the eyes of the two natives most pointedly.

"The two of us can hold the eastern gateway! Eliane, Esben, can you rally the bulk of them south!? They'll listen to you a lot sooner than us!"

Amazingly, he almost found himself wishing for harsher conditions— if the landscape or rooftops had heavy enough snowfall to leave them with large drifts, they could likely have shored up some quick and dirty canalization by way of their magic on hand— chiefly, his gravity materia could have played a fair role in bringing those mounds of snow and ice down into the pathways the Skaeller Militia were trying to keep filled with something sharp.

Even if it wouldn't have cut things off, it would have helped to funnel those numbers down into something the pikemen at the eastern road could manage much more readily. If only.

His free hand reached into a pouch, and palmed the lone materia within. In lieu of using heavy snow as a barrier, he'd have to resort to an old standby—

The nearest blightbeasts to the eastern pikemen's lines stopped dead, as a field of purple sparks danced around their newly-leaden feet, suddenly themselves cutting off those surging behind them— and leaving them easy pickings for Izayoi. Rudolf stalked forward, drawing alongside the militiamen in this brief reprieve.

"My friend and I can handle this flank— There's a Commander of the Household Guard just behind us. Please follow her instructions."

In time with his clipped, hard-edged command, he drew the cursed blade from his back, all six feet of it— with that moment bought and new direction given, all that was left to do now was take up as much of this space as possible until the bests broke themselves against the wall. Few tools served this better than greatswords of this ilk, with their wide arcs of destruction— and in needing to bring this thing up to that standard...

He stepped forth—

Up and at 'em.1

And here I was thinking you'd save up a little, after our big come-to-Etro moment. But don't let me stop you, gift birds don't get looked in the beak where we're from.


— And a familiar pillar of black fire wreathed his blade, as his feet dug into the frost before he leapt into a lunging, full-bodied swing, a pouncing sabertooth set to rip through as many of the corrupted beasts as it could.




  • 1. I can hear the subconscious thoughts too, you know. That part where you think you're telling me to "quit brooding" is convincing me I should let the next cardiac arrest, major organ failure, or whole tendon separation ride— beat whatever shame you've been convinced to lose back into you.
Rudolf Shilage

&

Ranbu no Izayoi




Later that night at camp, Rudolf thought to wash himself clean. The grime of the road was no stranger to him, nor was it to any of them by now— but after the expulsion of the truth from his tightly-guarded heart and the quiet dinner that had followed, the young swordsman was all but spent.

He had idly gnawed on his flatbread and stared long into the flame, letting the Kirins and camp mill about around his hollow, slumped frame. Errant wind had painted his brow, long sticky with drying sweat, a dingy gray— smoke from the fire, the same that stung the edges of his eyes.

But stare he did, mind empty, letting the dancing orange and cream and scarlet lick away his thoughts, chasing them cores of blue and streaks of rust. Like a mesmer. He seemed drawn to these moments, he realized— drawn to flame. Drawn to staring, when he had nothing else in him, to let it quell his mind from a tempestuous rapid to a placid lake.

But all the same, eventually he roused, jolting back to awareness as if he had fallen into a snooze. With a sigh, Rudolf shook off the torpor and rose, letting his feet carry him through the quieted camp and towards a stream a few dozen yards away, one of the many uncharted soft-watered brooks that weaved across Edren’s verdant lowlands, no different here than so many they’d crossed after making landfall.

Perhaps Danube in some way favored this stretch of land, long ago when she walked among mortals. Who could say? Perhaps an old king of the land had pledged good fealty.

But by rights, there was one gift she had bestowed on men, regardless of if she gave it in personal charity or simple boon of domain— the gift of washing oneself anew. To clear the old grime, to lay bare one’s true complexion, to remove that which had stained you impure.

Yes. He needed a damn wash, at least to take the ash off his face, to get the smoke clear from his eyes. The rest of him, he might deal with once they were closer to Skael, closer to a bath, closer to not needing travel at all speed. He would rather take true rest than go through with the trouble.

But his face, at least.

He knelt down at the bank, casting a hand into the cool mirror for a moment—

And pausing, as a splash sounded from downstream. Turning his head, there was no trouble spotting its source:

—Another splash, as Izayoi worked to clear dinner’s remains from her pot and pan.

His forehead throbbed, the ghost of the scabbard’s thumping upon it. Grimacing, he wiped at the spot, the water gracing his brow and ringing around a small bruise.

Ridiculous the way these things worked. It had hardly hurt the minute she’d done it, to the point where he’d believed it too light a touch for any punitive measure— but now, long after the fact, that simple bonk lingered as well as any cut, like the ringing of bells hours past, still trapped in cathedral stone.

Izayoi grumbled to herself as she worked to scrub a particularly stubborn scrap of burnt food out of the bottom of the cookpot, the effort not helping her usual mood. After several more moments of concerted effort, she managed to wipe it clean and rinsed the pot out in the stream. With that finally done, she hefted both pot and pan up to bring back towards camp to store.

Rudolf simply happened to be in the way of her return to camp. She approached, paused, and frowned as she saw him rub his forehead.

”Oh, stop being ridiculous. ‘Twas hardly a tap. You were being bludgeoned with Thunder spells not two weeks ago and moping less. But I could give you another bruise if you'd care to.” She huffed, raising the frying pan she was carrying in a threatening manner.

”I’m washing my face,” Rudolf countered, obstinately splashing more water across his brow and wiping through, scrubbing at the cheekbones and for a moment feeling the feather-light line across his cheek left by Valon’s spear. “I’ve spent mothercrystal knows how long staring at the fire, this is the first time I felt it there. That’s all. My eyes sting more than my forehead.”

He shook his wrist, slinging away excess water and sending a dozen rings to bloom across the surface. A glance up towards the moon gave him an idea of where its position had changed since he’d gone silent— and then he turned his gaze towards her, rather than study it. “A couple hours” was close enough, at the end of a hard day.

”Any other time before now, I may have taken you up on your offer. But for tonight, I think I’ll just be glad I got a lighter touch than I would have bargained for. I don’t care to push my luck with punitive measures.”

Much. he silently amended.Tonight.

He shuffled his frame to the side, to allow her passage if she deigned to take it with her point well made.

“I expect soon enough the Thunder will be hitting me again anyway, now that you know how I’ve been keeping up.”

Izayoi quirked an eyebrow at Rudolf’s retort, mentally noting that he wouldn’t have had that much cheek not even a month ago. He was improving, at least. So long as this latest bout of honesty didn’t send him into too much of a funk. Best to nip that in the bud.

”I should hope that spate of honesty would have helped your mood, rather than leave you more pensive. Outside of Chisato, everyone else recognizes that your situation is only a danger to yourself. And she will get over the matter sooner or later.”

She moved to stride past Rudolf, only stopping to poke him in the forehead at the exact spot she’d rapped him with her scabbard earlier.

”Am I understood? No more getting inside your own head. What’s done is done, and you’ll have to live with the consequences afterward.”

”Ow.”

His syllable of furthered complaint came in a dull monotone, comically crossing his eyes to see her fingertip off as it returned to more pressing matters. With a blink, and his little bit over, he turned away, seeming to study his reflection as the ripples in the water stretched and shaped it.

“Truthfully, that may take a while. I’ll work on it. Consequences my own, but…”

A glance back over his shoulder cast searching eyes over the mystrel’s frame, freed of a vengeful shadow so recently as it was. He continued on, almost conversational. Almost, but for the contemplation inherent to his words.

“What do you make of ‘afterward’, Izayoi? Now that Reisa is dead?”

It had been an all-consuming purpose, to the point of outranking her own life. Time and again, the Kirins had watched Izayoi stop at nothing to take the Valheimr lieutenant’s scalp, whether it meant storming straight into conflagration or diving into the void sword first.

Theirs were different situations, of course. To compare her pursuit of retribution with his furtive obscuration of truth was, in many respects, to cast apples against oranges.

But at the core of both of them was, as far as he knew, was that they were an unassailable priority.

”Where do you stand now, without that weighing on you? Pushing you?”

And neither of them were there any longer. They were drifting without those key lodestones. In Rudolf’s case, he had never really dared plan for that ‘afterward’. There was the quest, sure, but beyond that…

Izayoi had been meaning to stash the cookware back into Goug’s wagon, but stopped as Rudolf questioned her. A sigh came from her lips, unbidden. This was to be one of those conversations with the boy again. Gods damn that ingrate Istvan Shilage for not bothering to parent his son properly.

”A foolish question, considering the situation we stand in now, no? The land still stands at risk, and Valheim continues to infest my home. Slaying Reisa has only served to correct my most personal failure. Ask me once more when we’ve averted the blackhelms’ threat to the continent.”

“Oh, so it’s no different.” he noted breezily. “Heartening.”

At this point, it was on him for trying with her.

”Fine. You needn’t worry. My existential concerns haven’t stopped me from carving through their ranks when they’re in front of me yet. I lost my last chance at letting them when Wulfric rode north at first light, even if I cared to. I haven’t lost sight of the big picture just for not having things sorted out.”

He slashed through the surface of the water, scattering the image as he smeared away the last bit of grit he felt near the eyes.

”I will continue to further the cause, as I always have. Now that there’s nothing I’m trying to hide behind, I’ve all the more reason to see this through.”

He rose, as a cool breeze from the south blew across the lingering moisture on his skin, the chill sinking into his head even as it dried. A shiver passed across his person at the feeling, but he didn’t begrudge the clearing of his thoughts that came with it.

Picking up the pieces of whatever was beneath your protective shell was always your job and yours alone. No matter what Izayoi had given him as answer, it was always going to be his own legwork that made sense of what was man and what was mask. Only time would tell if he even could, and if it was even the source of the void that had come into him in the wake of his confession.

Taking a breath, the young swordsman started forward, following in Izayoi’s wake as her quick return to camp resumed.

He wouldn’t get any blood from that stone today. It was too late, they were both too set in their ways of navigating the world. This was what felt like the third or fourth time he had tried to scratch at her hard surface to no real avail, given the topic wasn’t her loved ones, but there was a small victory in there.

”My disorganized internal world aside, if your perspective ever does change and we’re both still alive to chat, I’d be curious to hear of it. I think I’ll keep you on the hook for that, since you’re offering. In the meantime…”

Drawing up alongside the samurai, he glanced to the cookware in her hands. None if it looked terribly heavy, not to trained warriors such as them, but it wouldn’t hurt…

”While you’ve got me, I may as well offer some help with whatever you’ve left to do in cleaning up. It hardly looks like much, but I could be wrong.”

”Mouthy brat. I almost prefer when you were terrified of my shadow.” Izayoi said, rolling her eyes with no real heat in her tone. She handed over a pan nonetheless.

”Take a rag and dry it out. I would prefer for the iron to not rust.” As they returned to camp, she looked back to Rudolf following after her.

”You could have washed your hands of this and conscripted that annoying buffoon of a boy in your place, indeed. And yet I remain thankful that you did not. If not for my own sanity in dealing with such, then for the sake of your own progress. As ever, you think too little of yourself.” She very carefully refrained from blaming Istvan once more, though she certainly thought the invectives within the confines of her head.

Her summation of Wulfric drew out a smirk, then a small chuckle as he swiped a spare piece of cloth and began to wipe away, checking the finish of the iron against the firelight to monitor his work.

“He’s a loud ingrate, for sure— though I daresay Galahad would have gotten fed up even sooner than you,” he quipped, tilting the pan to eye the surface as the calming rhythm of the work washed over him. Be it blades or cookware, it seemed keeping metal maintained agreed with his body and mind. ”And then you’d have a real problem on your hands.”

A playful exaggeration of reality, of course, but he’d seen that dynamic play out all through the one afternoon he’d gotten to spend somewhere close to home. He could already imagine the vein in the dragoon’s forehead beginning to swell, even as he fought to maintain a genteel, knightly composure.

Wulfric, Galahad… Otto and Imre. If he wanted to deal in hypotheticals, while they were at it, who knew how either of his brothers might have panned out in his stead.

“That’s the rub. I’ve been chasing long shadows all my life— It’s only natural that I get a little too comfortable with them after a while.” He joked, holding the pan out for her inspection. “I’ve always been mouthy, you can ask Cadmon about it; I just wanted to be sure I never gave the ‘Limbtaker’ a reason to demonstrate herself. I’ve had the privilege of separating mystrel from myth since then.”

He shrugged, closing his burnt eye and cocking his head to the side. “Not to mention: from where I stand, you’ve gotten less austere these days, too. Not by much, even compared to when we first met, but you are warming up to us. It's a good change.”

Said mystrel took the pan back, giving it a once-over before a crooked smirk crossed her face.

”More of the cheek, and the pan goes upside your head.” She jibed, starting to make her way back to the wagon to stash it. ”A word of advice: worry less of what could be and concern yourself more with what lies in front of you. Mayhaps it ought to be easier now with your truths revealed.”

His hands rose in surrender, palms out and holding no weapon, a caught miscreant.

Hai, hai, he intoned, mirroring her expression. “I still know when to back down, thank the Goddess.”

What was in front of him, eh? Mayhaps it would, once he washed the rest away. With any luck… well. Maybe not luck, in such short supply as it was— instead, his only refuge, the same as he had since the day he was born.

“Maybe so. If I feel adrift, by that same measure it means I am bereft a certain ball and chain, after all.”

He glanced south, towards their next set of trials, past the slowly dying light of the fire. As his words left his mouth, they were of course cloaked in a musing tone— nothing of what they spoke changed overnight, after all.

“To unfamiliar waters it is, then.”

He rose, dusting himself off. That crooked smirk had faded, but not completely left his bearing.

“Been a long day. Good night… Thank you, Izayoi.”
Gerard Segremors

&

Captain Fanilly Danbalion


A splash of dark liquid hit the soil, breaking the mournful silence that pervaded the funeral grounds as a taste of stout was shared with the dead. It was custom to honor those that passed ahead of you in this way the world over, at least in his experience— be it a mound marked only by a planted sword, high in the northern latitudes of Estival…

He glanced up at the elegant stonework, the same polished marble that raked the skies of the spikes of Aimlenn staring back at him, the silent vigil of the stone edifice mere months into however many countless centuries it would stand. Entombed here, with full honors as a Knight of the Iron Rose and no less, were the remains of Sir Rickert. Down here in Thaln, surely, the custom was hardly any different. The worst he could have done was perhaps not observing proper decorum as a member of the Order— but he had made his prayers to Lady Reon with the same priority of intent over ceremony for a long time, and her watchful eye had yet to blink— perhaps, in these ways, the world made concessions for your familiarity.

Gerard took a swig of his own, letting the roasted cacao notes coat his tongue as he quietly quirked a brow. Regarding familiarity, the truth was that he’d only really known the man below in passing, still very much a greenhorn to the Order even nowadays. Back then, it had only been a scant few that had deigned to try and pry the erstwhile mercenary out of his comfortable, quiet solitude; men like Rickert were welcoming enough that he’d made a fair impression, but at the same time they were perfectly content to live and let live.

They’d not spoken much. Likely less than three occasions total, before he was brutally cleft from the mortal coil by Jeremiah. The first sortie Gerard had seen with the Order had been Rickert’s last. For a moment, he wondered if such an offer as the one he’d poured would have been accepted if the man still lived…

A shrug of the shoulders, a shake of the head.

It didn’t matter. They had brought their blades to bear upon the same enemy, in the same battle, staking their lives for the cause. That had been enough for Gerard, long before his dreams of knighthood had ever remotely seemed like they were to ever be realized. Sharing a battle was sharing spilt blood, as good a reason as any to share spilt drink in the aftermath.

He had no reason to fear he was disrespecting the dead unduly. If anything, choosing Rickert’s grave to stop by had been a long time coming with all that in mind.

Ah—

She wasn’t alone this time.

Every week since he was interred, Fanilly had visited the gravesite. It seemed only right.

It was because of her that he was here in the first place. Even if it had been in the line of duty, Sir Rickert had still died under her orders.
The least she could do was this much. His family had already received support from the Order, so now all that was left was to pray for him over his grave.

And so, that is what Fanilly had been doing every week, usually at the mid-week. While it was not a proper religious teaching or doctrine, from a young age Fanilly had been told by her parents that both Sun and Moon were highest at the mid-week. Thus, it was the best time for your prayers to reach the Goddesses.

Perhaps it was just a simple principle told to a child to help her become used to regular ceremonies, or perhaps there was some merit. Either way, it was what formed the basis of Fanilly’s prayer for Sir Rickert.

But this time, she wasn’t alone.

“Captain.”

Sir Gerard had demonstrated his capabilities multiple times, particularly as he was among one of the four knights who had slain a gannek.

And now he stood before her, at Sir Rickert’s grave.

“Ah—”

The Knight-Captain cleared her throat.

“Sir Gerard, greetings.”

“Evening, ma’am.”

He’d heard her coming. By now, if he listened for the differences in cadence and pitch, he was beginning to learn how to identify his peers by the sound of their strides. Part of his ongoing efforts to cultivate a more active, observant mind— and just as much downwind of all he’d learned from his mercenary days, watching gait rather than listening for it. Her steps were light, careful, but in a certain way rigid. Different from the soldierly regimenting of his own, or Renar’s, or even Fionn’s— however much that one carried the rest of himself boisterous and easygoing.

He rose from the knee he’d taken in making his offerings, seeming to loom over that little leader of his even from afar. His golden eyes caught the last light that burned behind her, wolfish and measuring. A chance encounter, definitely, but… one that, much like visiting this knight he hadn’t known, was somewhat overdue.

It felt he barely knew his leader, too, though maybe not for lack of shared field experience. In a way, she seemed guarded, hard to take measure of beyond the capacity of her rank. The rank thrust upon her maybe only half a year ago, as dozens of memories featuring their departed Lioness were quick to remind him.

“Hardly a place I’d expected I’d meet you. What brings you this way?”

She had only held the position for a month or two before he had been accepted into their ranks. The deployment upon which the knight looking over the both of them from beyond had perished was also their first in this official capacity they now occupied. He’d previously accepted that it was beyond his calling to question the tradition, but facing the reality made it seem all the more prudent. Bluntly put, were she an employer and he a mercenary, every part of him would have rankled at the state of affairs being so unknown.

After all they’d been through together, too. It seemed a waste of that good blood the three of them had shed in eachothers’ names.

A blink later, and the mug, still a third full of the dark stout, was gently pushed into the gap between them, an offering to partake.

Fanilly’s eyes lingered on the grave, then on the mug, for a few moments. While she’d rarely drank anything particularly strong, in the span of a few more heartbeats she had reached out and gently taken the mug. Her tastebuds were greeted by the strong taste of alcohol she was unaccustomed to, as she suppressed the desire to wince. Her lack of familiarity with the beverage most certainly made it difficult for her to detect any other flavors.

But the solidarity was what mattered, here before the grave of the man who had died under her command.

“... It’s for Sir Rickert’s sake,” she responded, after taking a pause to recover, her blue gaze returning to the grave. Its solemn nature suited what she knew of the man interred beneath it.

“I was in command when he lost his life,” continued the knight-captain, eyes downcast and voice soft, “Even if he was performing his duty, it’s only right that I repay him…”

Fanilly trailed off. The rose symbol hanging from her neck made her intentions to pray for the fallen knight quite clear.

“---I suppose you must have had similar intentions, Sir Gerard?”

“In a manner of speaking,” the older knight huffed, a brow raised as he took the words in, turned them over in his head. Eventually, his gaze followed hers, casting itself again over the stone of the grave, sliding across name, date, memory. “Not so specifically him, as much as everyone under the banner that finds their way here.”

His eyes narrowed, just a hint. Behind the amber depths, a thousand battles flashed, countless names learned and forgotten blazing by. A deluge of red at the tip of the spear. So many of those same faces could have been him. Each one was no more or less favored by the Goddesses than he. For all he had accomplished beneath this new banner…

“I come by every now and again to remind myself that death holds no clemency for station, for tenure, or for risen standing.” He folded his arms, seemingly long at peace with the grim topic. “Nor achievement. It’s worth remembering each time you ride out could be your last. I owe it to those that have come before me to learn that lesson.”

He glanced her way, folding his arms.

“That our recent tutelage seems to have made me so much stronger than I was when I began this tradition only makes it more worth doing, I think. Even our mutual acquaintance from that time met his end on the field. How he did it was the stuff of legend, but his story ended just the same. As those who survived when men like Rickert fell, it’s our duty.”

A small smile, somewhere between wistful, wry, and wan, crossed his fangs. He cocked his head after a momentary pause, before offering a much more mundane angle to it all.

“It’s also just nice to have a place where I can sit with the dead, pay my respects with a little more time to breathe. Or, hell, pay them at all. In the free companies, attention is a rare privilege, remembrance rarer, and graves rarer still. We were on the move quite quickly— never more than a couple weeks away from the next dispatch.”

Fanilly had known of Sir Gerard’s past, in a company of mercenaries who exchanged lives for librans. It wasn’t as if she had been totally unaware of the details, of the implications. But the idea of the bodies of those who passed going unmourned, unburied, left without the rites to help them reach the Moon and Sun—

It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

The Knight-Captain’s blue gaze drifted from her knight, to the shape of the lamplighters carved on the tombstone that marked Sir Rickert’s grave. The young girls raised their candle-tipped staves, forming an arc over the inscription that bore his name.

“Even though they reach the next world, losing someone here is still painful,” she half-murmured to herself, before raising her head and turning to face Sir Gerard. Her early life was punctuated by two deaths: First, the death of her father’s pet highland griffin, the first one she had experienced directly. One day, she had been doing quite well, preening her feathers and accepting snacks as usual. The next, she had taken ill, and the next, she was gone.

The other had been the death of her grandmother on her mother’s side. They had never been particularly close, but she recalled the details of the procession bearing her corpse to its final resting place sharply at the conversation of the end.

In both cases, they had been seen to their rest.

But those who Sir Gerard had fought alongside—-

“... Then… then perhaps today’s prayer should be for your former comrades, as well?” Fanilly proposed, after a moment’s hesitation, “In case they are still lost, then a few words may help them find their way.”

“How considerate,” he smirked around the word, inclining his head all the same despite a quirk of the brow. As snickers at her expense went lately, his was hardly acrid. A light jab between the ribs, maybe an elbow to simply prod and annoy for half a second. “If you wish to, then go for it. I won’t stop you, but I have said what words I could, and made peace with the ones I couldn’t. More than some of those scoundrels deserved, to be blunt— I almost worry the folks interred here might take offense at being lumped in with their lot last minute.”

He chuckled, nevertheless dropping to one knee at the foot of the grave, and bringing his hands forward. He’d go without speaking his overtures to the goddesses this time— even putting aside that he tended to beseech Lady Reon alone most often, there was only so much their time in the dreaming world had done to tighten up his old habits in mind and body both. Gerard was well assured that the young girl beside him would be so much more precise with her words.

And, in saying that…

“Far be it from me to advise against giving the dead their due— but for those of us that live, you needn’t be so stiff, Ma’am. We’re off the field.”

The first point he wanted to test, while he had her here. Admittedly, he hadn’t framed it great, but he could start by getting that thought in her head. He bent his head low, and clasped his hands, falling silent after a soft invitation.

“Do lead though, please. I’m curious.”

“Ah, I… only those who are truly wicked in life cannot reach the sun and moon, so…”

Well, that cuts your list in half if I’m generous.

She trailed off, before sucking in a deep breath. Stiff? But she was the Knight-Captain of the Iron Roses. What else suited her position? She had to conduct herself formally, and with grace. Was anything else appropriate for the one who was carrying on the legacy of the vanished Saint Elionne?

Speaking of that legacy—

Despite her position, and the Iron Rose Knights’ history as a true holy order, Fanilly herself had never personally led a prayer. Her words had been between her and the Goddesses, not for the purpose of guiding others.

It was somewhat unfamiliar to her, but wasn’t this something she would have to do some day, regardless?

Besides, she was the one who had mentioned it in the first place. It was only right.

“Very well.”

Facing the gravestone, the girl clasped her hands tightly together and bowed her head, gently shutting her eyes. It took her only a few moments to find her words.

Fanilly’s lips parted.

“O Lady of the Moon. O Lady of the Sun. Please, may these words reach you.”

Her voice was soft, but firm. She had to make sure that the Goddesses could hear her.

“May your light shine upon those who have passed. Those whose lives ended long ago, and those who fell in nearer days.”

It was a simple prayer, one that in some form or another was uttered at the sites of sudden deaths. The words varied, but the meaning was always intact through them.

“May those who light the lamps guide their way, shining a path to your eternal paradise. Let the darkness be driven away, let no foul spirits stall their journey. May their days lead them to bliss, may their days lead them to peace.”

The sight of Sir Rickert’s fallen body re-emerged in Fanilly’s mind. A small knot, coiling in her chest for a few moments, had reformed.

“Please, hear these words, Lady Mayon, Lady Reon. So that those who have passed on find comfort.”

It was a plea on behalf of the fallen knight and on behalf of those she had never known, who had died years ago. If they still wandered, then Fanilly could only hope these words would serve to help guide them.

The knot had loosened. Her hands lowered.

For a time, there was only silence upon the wind that passed through the graves as the sun continued to creep low to the horizon. Gerard diligently observed it, allowing the sobering moment to linger with them. The Goddesses both heard ones’ words before they were even spoken, he had been taught, but it was the act of saying them that guided the wish a prayer carried towards their hearts, rather than be lost among all the world’s noise at their ears. Befitting this, it served one well not to distort the message by speaking too carelessly, or too quickly, while your own heart was still lingering upon that desire, that plea to the divine.

But, all such things, eventually, did pass. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her slight frame, still clasping her hands, still hunched over at the foot of the gravestone. There was a subtle cruelty to this, he knew well. Anyone with two thoughts to rub together in their skull could tease it out of the sight— a young girl, thrust into this mold at her birth, with only another gravestone, somewhere in here, to look to ahead of her on the path. Even with all the training in the world… the real thing weighed upon you more than you could really prepare for.

He knew that very well, even as a cog in the war machine. Even as someone that had the luxury of a choice in the matter. War and Death weighed heavy on old minds, let alone the young. And Command… Command was the heaviest of all mantles.

Finally, there was an easing of the quiet tension in her shoulders, and he let his voice free once more.

“Well said,” he began simply, inclining his head in a small, appreciative nod before seating himself cross-legged, turning to face her. His wolfish eyes seemed to study her for a moment, casting themselves along her bearing before settling on her eyes.

He spoke in a low, but level voice. A statement, not a question. An observation, not an interrogation.

“...Sir Rickert was the first beneath your command. You feel responsible, don’t you? More than you bargained for.”

That stiffness of hers had betrayed her, in the end. She’d spoken very well, firmness and sincerity coating every word… but towards the end, it was like her breath had drawn tight on her. After what they had been through, Gerard wasn’t keen on attributing that to a real fear of dark spirits.

The way she carried herself socially among her subordinates was fine to be left as an ongoing project, at the end of the day— no different from the ongoing project he himself was. There were far, far more important ways he and she seemed to be cast in opposition— though, thinking about, it was curious how many parallels the two of them ran in, if you squinted at it from the right angle.

“Am I wrong?”

Most of all, for what the two knights were… was their relationship with death. It was why Cyrus had been the one to mentor them both in the dream world, as far as Gerard was concerned. It was why they had met here, if fate ordained such.

“---Ah…”

The soft breath that left the Knight-Captain’s lips hung in the air for a few moments, slowly drifting downwards like a discarded feather.

It shouldn’t have been surprising, really. She hadn’t tried to make it so overt, but the mere fact she was here in the first place spoke of her feelings.

Fanilly opened her mouth and shut it once, as she tried to compile her thoughts, the knot in her chest tightening a little once more.

She had accepted by now that the possibility of death was within the duty of one of the Iron Rose Knights. They put their lives on the line for the sake of Thaln’s people, for the sake of justice.

That much was only natural.

And yet—

“... A part of me still wonders if I had been more prepared, or considered the possibility of a trap, he may still be here,” Fanilly said, softly, her gaze downcast.

It was her command, so ultimately the fact that her leadership led to Sir Rickert’s death could not be ignored, even if it were only in part.

That was why she had to come to his grave and do what she could. It was the only thing she could do for him, now.

“Idle wondering. A lingering pull.” he mused almost tonelessly, boring into her with his gaze. “Bringing you back here. Do these thoughts carry themselves with you onto deployment? That you’re missing something, somewhere? That he’s gone because you’re flawed in your judgement?”

He leaned forward, the approaching night a heavy, warding cowl over his shoulders.

“To put it another way:”

The wolf huffed, gazing down his snout, fangs yet to bare. Searching, searching, always searching— as cast from stone as the many statues that bore the cold wind blowing down upon them from the north.

“Do you think you can tame war, if you’re clever enough?”

“I…”

Fanilly hesitated.

Was that how she felt?

She wanted to approach the battlefield in a manner that would lead to victory, that would lead to defeating the enemy and sustaining as little damage as possible. She was hardly unique in that regard, of course, but it was nevertheless the goal she placed in front of herself every time she set foot into combat.

But did that mean that she thought she could tame the battlefield?

Fanilly’s right hand clutched into a fist at her breast, her gaze once more drifting towards the green grass.

If it were possible, then of course. She would want to ensure everything went exactly as planned, perfectly, without the slightest deviation.

However—

“... I… I don’t think it’s possible,” she half-murmured, “No matter how I might wish it were, I…”

The Knight-Captain sucked in a deep breath.

“Even the great Conqueror-King of Talderia didn’t believe he had perfect control of the battlefield, there’s no way I could claim that I do.”

He seemed to accept that, following her eyes to drink in the waning greenery in turn, watching the grasses slowly blacken as dusk slipped further and further away. Though his shoulders loosened, his voice held firm.

“Good. That’s a delusion you can never hold. Otherwise you’ll never escape this place.”

The grass’s blades danced with the breeze, almost imperceptible, like the waving banners and swords of a tiny, verdant legion. Wide blockades of men at march, their war cries a light scent upon the wind. In some way, it must have been how the Goddesses had looked upon the armies of their mortal realm, all its conflicts a trifle.

“It’s no beast. It falls under no yoke. Not yours as commander nor ours as soldiers. Not even the King’s. I would argue even the Goddesses would be hard pressed.”

He snatched some of the little green soldiers at his feet, lifting them and letting them fly from his fingertips. They would have no idea where they were going— only that they were gone.

“The field is a river.” he arrived at his analogy after some time. “You can plant seed in the plain and feed yourself if you know when it spills over. You can reach a new land by using a bridge that passes across it, but it’ll always be there, just under you. If you don’t mind your step, it’s where you end up, soaked to the bone. Or drowned.”

Apt for diplomacy and war, by his measure, but not the point. His brows narrowed.

“You can even influence its direction. Build along the banks. Bend it, dam it, create channels to expand it. But those are all done from the outside. From within… the current takes you.”

A deep, deep red, the last of a retreating day, painted blood over the western clouds.

“You can’t fight the rapids. You can’t control them. In the middle of it all, you’re at the river’s mercy. It will cut through stone itself. It will drown you, if you ever believe you’re completely safe. It’ll sweep you away and dash you on the rocks, if you ever stumble.”

Absently, his hands clenched around the hilt of an imagined blade. A grip hammered into him, his only rope to brace against the current.

“That is the path we walk in taking up the sword. Wading into chaos, with you at our head. You know as well as me, but it still bears saying—“

Beneath the hard-knot brow, he continued to glare into the middle distance, focus and steel behind his eyes. An expression that looked more at home on him than any other he wore.

“Every time we ride out, we know we might not come back. We might meet that same fate out there— cruel, merciless, unexpected, unpredictable. It’s our job to accept that and trust your judgement. It’s yours to trust that we do, and pass your best judgement along.”

It wasn’t necessarily new information. The tomes of strategy she had been instructed to read as a child were often quite explicit that there was no way to approach a battle with utter certainty to how it would progress. Even if the outcome was almost guaranteed, the progression of the battle and possible uncertain elements could never be taken for granted.

But hearing it spoken like this, by one of her knights, was still a new experience.

Fanilly’s gaze remained somewhat downcast, as she sucked in another deep breath.

“I hope, then, that I can make judgement worthy of trusting.”

It was a pervasive worry deeply-rooted within her mind, one that she could not so easily push aside.

“…Hope isn’t enough.”

The wind parted around the stone all through the graveyard, its currents split by each hard, unyielding face into shivering, fraying eddies. They tended to die out before they hit the next few yards, little more than whispering nudges against one’s frame.

“Hope is something outside of yourself. It can betray you. It can refuse you. It can skip out when you need it most. For many, it keeps them around far too long.”

Six years. Six years of vain, vain hope— Even having his answered, beyond anyone’s dreams, the hundreds of unmarked graves in his wake the two knights had shared a prayer for told their own stories. They were never far from a wise man’s mind.

“For many, it leaves too much out of their hands. As your Knights, we are the sword arm of your will as much as every ideal we uphold. If that will is ‘I hope this is right’…”

He paused, seeming to mull his words over as he regarded her sidelong.

“You’re going to lose more of us, you know. No matter what you come out of this chat believing, heeding or ignoring my advice— it’s inevitable. Fionn, Renar, Gertrude, even me. If we’re being honest, I’m more likely to go than anyone else. But the going will get tough. When it does, we’ll be looking to you to ferry us out of the maelstrom.”

More than anything else.

A leader had to keep everyone moving, out towards the other side. Any confusion they had about where to go would give the current room to tear the lot of their people apart. He’d seen it enough to know. And if there were thoughts that always took her back to this grave, then…

“That’s what it means to be Captain, Fanilly.” her name felt alien upon his tongue, but the gravity of the words held it in place. “You can’t doubt yourself, or the decisions you make. Least of all when it’s a mess like it was that first ride forth. If you aren’t confident… how can we be?”

“I…”

Fanilly trailed off. Hope… just putting faith in hope wasn’t right either, was it? Even if she had a more optimistic outlook on the concept, at the same time it was hard for her to find it in herself to deny what Sir Gerard had just said.

Hope on its own wasn’t enough, was it?

Fanilly’s gaze fell downwards again, her hands clutching at one another. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to lose anyone else if she could possibly help it. The great Conqueror-King of Talderia, the Minneria the Strategist, the Seer of Terios—All of them had conviction in their decisions, their conclusions. Be it in battle, or anything else.
Was that what had carried them forward, in spite of their inability to truly tame the battlefield?

Was that what she had to embody, even in spite of her own doubts?

—Did previous Captains ask this question of themselves?

Fanilly didn’t know. She’d long thought that those who filled this role prior to herself could never question themselves as much as she did.

But she didn’t know their minds, so it was a question that could not be answered.

But there was one thing she could do, no matter her doubt.

If nothing else—

“... I… I’ll do everything in my power to lead all of you to tomorrow, no matter the battlefield.”

—She could say that much.

A nod.

The sun slipped behind the horizon in full, leaving only its final rays behind as the threshold had been crossed. Lady Mayon arose opposite, surveying her domain through the gentle glow of the moon.

“That’s what we’ll have faith in, then. As you do us, in doing everything in our power to carry out your orders. Even sacrifice, should we have no other way through.”

The wolf rose again, glancing aside to the blue-white of the polished marble standing guard above their talk, seeming to capture the silvery filaments as they blanketed Aimlenn.

His gaze then followed the light upwards, towards the palace of the kindly shepherd, the shield to the weary, the weak, and the lost. Doubtless, the Moon Goddess had an eye on her ordained champion— another weight upon those slight shoulders of the Captain’s.

He huffed, a small, relenting puff through the snout.

“The night’s coming in,” the taller knight intoned as he turned towards the gates, towards the retreating sunlight. “I’d best get going— I’ve paid what respects I’m able with prayer. Best I not keep you from the rest of yours.”

One step forward. Then two, then three.

In his desire to take her measure as his commander, he had come across a few confirmed suspicions. That her mantle was as heavy as he’d imagined, that she was prone to agonizing over mistakes, the way all greenhorns did, that her schooling, however quality, could only prepare her so much for the real mass of this undertaking, thrust upon her.

She was rigid. Distant from her troops. Prone to flustering. To getting herself into trouble. And so shackled by doubt. Only an old tradition would put a young woman like her in such impossible shoes to fill. To choose a Commander like this flew in the face of all the hard-earned reasoning a mind like Gerard’s could muster.

A total washout.

He stopped, five or six good paces away, and thought for a moment, before looking back over his shoulder one final time.

“…Take this for what solace it’s worth, Captain.”

Even so.

“I was younger than you when I took up the sword. I never reached a position of leadership in that time— I’ve always stayed on the front. There are many parts of this I don’t understand. Little diligences that are simply beyond me.”

Even so, all that said.

“In that time, since I left that little wide-eyed know-nothing farmboy behind… these six months have been the cleanest. Rookies or otherwise. That’s worth a little faith you’re running the place on the right track.”

—The cleanest.

Despite everything, despite her shortcomings, her doubts—

Despite all of that.

Those words managed to reach deeply into her being.

Even though she could never live up to the Captains who came before her, she could never live up to Saint Elionne herself.

Sir Gerard had said those words to her.

“I—”

Fanilly faltered. It was hard to grasp that such a thing was possible. Even in the dark dealings of the sort of mercenary company that Sir Gerard had once been a part of, the brutality and cheap death that she could only imagine, never to touch—

She managed to give her knights the cleanest six months he had ever experienced.

“I—”

What did she say to that? Was this the sort of faith the past Captains had received from their knights?

How could she keep living up to such an ideal?

—No, it wasn’t how, was it?

She had to try. She had to do it. For the sake of all of her knights.

Wasn’t that what this was all about?

“---I… I won’t betray that faith, Sir Gerard.”

A firmness found its way into Fanilly’s voice, even if only for a moment, her hand clutched over her heart.

“You have my word.”

As Captain of the Iron Rose Knights, that was the only path forward.

He was silent for a moment more, then…

“And you mine. We’ll hold eachother to that.”

… He turned away, accepting whatever he saw in her burning twilight gaze for what it was. The sound of fine gravel shifting between leather boots sounded again, as he started off towards Candaeln anew. Towards their home.

A hand rose as he left, waving a stolid goodbye once, then twice.

“Be seeing you, Ma’am.”

“And I, you, Sir Gerard.”

It wasn’t that this had assuaged her self-doubt—

But Fanilly couldn’t allow herself to let her knights down.
Rudolf Shilage


”I trust if that ever changes, you'll be the first to let me know. At the end of your knife or otherwise.”

No more needed saying between them, the rest carried through in the cold standoff between their respective bearings. Asakura Chisato and Rudolf Shilage held no friendfship between them that might bridge this gap, the way the others could, but within that same distance...

He nodded, curt and slight enough that it could be mistaken for a simple shift in posture. Of all the people that came out of this speaking sense... He was a little surprised it was her. Maybe expressing an actual like or dislike was akin to an outburst of disgust, or maybe she was just far enough and cold enough to have no qualms about trying to ameliorate a ranting comrade—

But all the same, it brought a strange sense of satisfaction, hearing that at least that unfriendly and stiff shinobi agreed with him. She didn't like it. That was good.

That was correct.

Recognizing he had leveraged the consequences out into as good a furthering of their common goal as he could, as the others had been sure to note, was one thing. He could accept that his desperate efforts were recognized for what they were... But brushing off the act as a whole had never struck a chord that sounded sane in him.

It was strange. In the back of his head, he knew it was strange, this interplay of distaste and tension... but it felt like the way things should be.
Rudolf Shilage


”Things came up between then and now if you’ll recall. Anyway. Now that I’ve proper harness, my health is as assured as it realistically can be in these circumstances.” Rudolf replied, laying a hand to rest atop his greathelm as he addressed Elaine’s chief concern. ”But I’ll need to play things smart going forward, if Reisa was any indication— my senses are still a little dulled, and after Leviathan’s near-disaster, my eyes and my body are still moving slower. Drana Asnaeu took me in a bad direction wholesale.”

He rolled his eyes. “Lose its effect”. Everything a performance to this guy, was it?

”You want me to spill, don’t begrudge me the splash, SEED. If they trained you right you’d know how this works. Depersonalizing’s for you guys, not me. Now, is that all?”
Rudolf Shilage


"So many things." he replied, nodding gratefully and taking a pull from the offered wineskin, letting the warming sweetness cascade down the back of his throat before staring into the blaze once more. "And so little of them what they had hoped I would. Add that to the list, Miina: I'm a terrible student. If we were there longer than a night, you'd have heard Cadmon talk up a storm about the thorn I am in his side." he joked sardonically, before passing the wineskin over his shoulder towards her. She did like her drink— surely that would help serve as an apology for earlier.

He sighed, the catching between his nose and soft palate a little— in that specific, fricative way that managed to stretch an "h" sound.

"Regarding control... the chance is low. Lower now than ever, given how deep I've had to go down the well to get any pull— he and I are intertwined enough that there shouldn't be too much chance either of us screw up the way I did with Otto. But, in that same vein: I know it's never zero. And with that demon from earlier openly manifesting now, which I am assured should never be possible, I worry I may be walking into a relitigation of the terms if before I know it. I was all the way down to burning blood against Reisa. That's not a good place to be when taking out a loan."

A twitch of the eye hit him for a fraction of a second, when the matter of hiding it from everyone came up. He hid it behind a wry smirk quickly, though, and shot back.

"And I don't know, Sir Galahad, true as that may be I'd wager my position's the same too— whatever shame we all hold close to our chests, attempted fratricide by way of primordial darkness is going to be a tough one to beat. Everyone here loves their families, last I checked."
Rudolf Shilage


Okay, point, but...

He raised an eyebrow, remarkably calm in the wake of his oversight staring him in the face like he was an idiot.

"I thought you meant properly properly. I was under the impression you're essentially reverse-engineering things through feeling and observation, not rigorous study. To be blunt, I figured half the reason you brought it up was because you'd also be in the market for contact with a specialist— But... Sure. If I ever suddenly run into a wellspring of untapped potential to turn myself into more of a walking bonfire, I'll keep you in mind if you're really that confident."

All told, there was an undercurrent of sincerity in that glib rejoinder, if you listened for it. It seemed she really had slipped his mind, be it from the differences between Black and Red mages, her not exactly fitting the dismal image he was describing when shooting the idea down, or whatever else.
Rudolf Shilage


Miina...

Well. He supposed her focusing more on the technical aspects of what he had become was a given. They had already done this, in part, once before while he was stuck mummified beneath a mountain of medicinal bandaging. She was already pretty out of sync with the societal norms he had once believed basically universal, and short of seeking out her missing brother, or...

Let her off, Rudi.

... It seemed the finer details of magic, that she had been pulling out of the aether from first principles for so long, had held the lion's share of her interest in the time they had been traveling together. He had a feeling proper schooling would put her over the moon, were it realistically available.

He closed his eyes, letting his mind's eye proliferate through the nerves of his body, focusing on feeling.

"...No." he intoned after a moment in response. "Not unless it's a situation like the last battle of Drana Asnaeu, where that aethereal essence, is basically stitching me together from the inside."

One eye opened.

"Other than that, it's just kind of heavy—"

The brow above it rose, and though his stoic mask didn't leave the features of his face, he did lean away from the diminutive Mystrel as she seemed to have all but teleported right on top of him, the golden irises catching the firelight and seeming to glow as they scanned his frame, as if trying to peel back his outer layers to reveal the meat inside, as if on a hunt— however benign her intent might have been,. he couldn't help but be reminded of the very first sabertooth he'd slain, who had been stalking him even as he stalked it, whose fang had forged the knife at his hip.

He scooted away, a small shuffle of the hips.

"No, I haven't. Unless I've missed something, I still have no innate ability to weave aether the way you, Neve, or Eve do— Everything is downstream of the contract. Were it to be severed, I would go back to the days where I had materia, and materia alone."

The profaned swordsman frowned, glancing towards Galahad before meeting her eyes again.

"Additionally, Black Magic is going to be hard to track down from here on out. I don't know whether the proliferation of white mages has changed attitudes in Drana Asnaeu— given how my mother reacted to all this I doubt it's much different— but naturalborn mages are shunned if they're lucky, on the rest of the continent. Hunted if they aren't. Black Mages most of all. What society wouldn't fear somebody that can do... What Eve did, for example. Tampering with the aether the Mothercrystal has allotted for the world to produce such an unholy firestorm that not even Valheim's airships could withstand it? You would always be looking over your shoulder, praying they don't decide they want to take that power and call themselves King with it."

Another crackle from within the flames, as if punctuating the argument.

"Galahad and his fellows hunt dragons to protect Midgar from them. A proud, specialized warrior tradition, going back hundreds of years, if not millennia— but what happens if a dragon can take the form of a man, and walk right inside the walls, where a bunch of unsuspecting normal humans are there to be burned? That's how black magic is seen— volatile, untrustworthy, destruction itself wrapped up in a person. Even if I could manage magic... anyone that would be able to teach it to me would keep themselves very, very hidden. I appreciate what you're trying to get at, but I doubt it's in the cards."
Rudolf Sagramore


For his part, Rudolf had quietly collapsed into an almost-unstructured pile once they made camp, his cold granite edifice of a helmet at his side as his hands steepled at the front of his burn-scarred brow. Even knowing that the explanation he had almost courageously launched into was long overdue for revisiting, now that the treacherous ruins were well behind, the concern seemed almost a world away thanks to that singular, horrifying word that had slotted into Ferdiad's closing remarks:

"Patron."

Why "Patron"? What could he have possibly meant when he'd said "patron?!" Imir? Had the goddess who watched over the lost and forlorn have found it within herself to not only accept a blasphemous reprobate like himself, but the whole civilization and the vengeful, amoral ghosts it had left behind? Was Lunaris's vaunted moon goddess still out there, lurking in the shadows, awaiting to overthrow Etro's hegemony and replace the Mothercrystal's light with her own?! Had Valheim somehow found a way to worm its claws so deep even into the furthest corners of Edren?

No matter how many of his personal pet theories he cycled through, cobbled together from his own dabbling in archaeological studies or gleaned in armed escort of true professionals in the field, the result was the same— in the face of such an unprecedented development as the shades of Lunaris manifesting corporeal form, he was at a total loss. And what was more...

Hey. What the hell kind of "patron" do you have lurking down there?

...

Even when he tried to accost the second voice in his head for that context he was missing, only silence met him in return. His passenger had been quite thoroughly spooked, or otherwise convinced to clam up as they had in Drana Asnaeu— once Ferdiad had gotten too close to Rudi, and began sniffing out that "familiarity" he'd kept mentioning, it was damn near curtains for any measure of context on the matter. The only token point of direction left to him was the sense that, at the very bottom of their interwoven ties, the spirit was also spinning away at the problem, trying to make sense of all the things it had pointed out were very, very wrong with what they'd survived.

So given this abandonment, the young warrior was left only with his own devices to work out what the hell had just happened to them all, his own inferences from the piecemeal image of the ruins that multiple millennia after the fact left you with.

It almost came as a relief, Izayoi's harsh tone bidding him away from his newest spiral of uncertainty and back to the revelations he had been so close to finally making.

"No," he muttered plaintively, a wry thing between a smirk and a scowl nestling itself onto the delicate features of his face, so unlike his pedigree. "I'd like to never have shown the lot of you anything, and for you all to think me a run-of-the-mill swordman forever."

The words tasted bitter as they flew off his tongue, the barest edges of a chuckle tilting them askew. Like his lungs were choking with ash again, his chest felt tight, his heart seeming to thud against it, a cold sweat upon his skin. That was the most damning part of all this. No matter how hard he worked to build himself up to the task, however many reminders his conscious mind fed itself of how far he had already come———

He felt that same, stubborn impulse clawing at his heart. A spooked bird in a storm, wanting for all the world to bolt into the night as he willed himself to pay the piper. Cowardice, still living in his bones.

His brow then furrowed, and his gaze left the rest of the group, settling somewhere in the middle distance.

"But 'like' has left the picture a long time ago. I’ve kept everybody waiting long enough twice over."

He took a long, deep breath, bracing his core to stop the quivering in his soul. One hand broke the steeple in half, holding the palm out and flooding itself with an attempt to produce the accursed flame. His gaze hardened further. The scents of camp filled his lungs, the smoke of the fire, the herbs of the stew, the warm blanket of flatbread. He was, naturally, the furthest away from all these heartening things— he had parked himself upon a stump framed by the shadows of two high, old hawthorns. They seemed to grow deep and bold as they draped his head and torso in gloom, masking his features save for what caught firelight.

He let the breath loose. No black flames greeted him. So much for a visual aid. Fine.

He crushed the thought, and used the hand to slick his hair back, it and the sweat on his brow forced away from his eyes as he met the expectant stares of the party.



Rudolf Shilage



"Let's get into it, then. I surmise some of you have already put most of this together, between the way I've been acting and the events of the past few days. From where I'm standing, at least, the whims of fate have already laid out enough of the hints. If you think you have the basic gist of it, we can probably both assume you're right."

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His gaze flickered between the faces before him— first to Galahad, who had hunted him down for his many withheld truths the longest. By all accounts, he had held to his words, that night in the forest when Rudolf had finally broke. He hadn't told anyone else.

"I'll start with laying out the obvious: Rudolf Shilage is weak. He is craven. He is dishonest. He is weak. Too weak to stand and meet expectations, too weak to hold faith that he can do anything on his own, too weak to face a fundamental truth if it's painful. That is how I am, and that is how I've always been. A dim spot on the family name, ever since an illness tried to take me in the cradle. I lagged in my study, I lagged in my training, there was no part of being the second son of a knightly house that I didn't make into a struggle."

They flashed to Esben next. His oldest companion, here from before the very beginning. He, surely, had always known Rudolf was lying. Good liars, the kind that became accomplished SEED Infiltrators, knew all the tells. They knew how to spot dishonesty while it was still brewing in your head. It was how they had learned to iron them out. Esben had skipped that first step. He had the ability to sniff out the truth while always telling it. It wasn't even remotely fair.

"So, naturally, knowing this fundamental truth of who I am began to grind me down. For fourteen years I'd lived with it, and despite every effort I had made to the contrary, I could never really get over feeling powerless. Runt of the litter, unable to save himself from loss after loss." He dismissively waved his hand. "Spinning my wheels without end, and watching the world I was living in pass me by. Before I knew it, the call to war had come knocking, and I wasn't up to par. Rather than joining my father and brother on deployment, I ended up being sent here, to Lunaris, to further my studies and training until I might one day become useful."

To Chisato, who had narrowly missed his being there by a couple of months. Maybe sooner, depending on how quickly she had been thrown behind enemy lines to swipe enemy bargaining chips. With how fast the Shilage Cavalry liked to move, and how stubborn Rudolf had been about accepting being sent away, it wasn't the biggest stretch of the imagination that Izayoi might have known of one of her approaching enemies quickly— quick enough that the little hare was already inside Edren when Rudolf had finally been convinced to go study on the other end of the country.

"As it happens, I was no swifter a learner or bloomer there than I was at home. The breadth of my mind may have expanded, but the depth of my ability was still a shallow puddle. I grew sick of myself. Sick of knowing that I would, inevitably, have nothing to show for all those that placed their sincere hope that I would finally get it all together. That I might become somebody to be proud of. Not at Castle Demet, not at Sagramore Village, nowhere did I see any breakthrough. Anything to pull me out of the pit, as I kept despairing, kept losing, kept failing. I always trend down. So down I ended up going. Into the deepest, darkest pit I could find, where the gods could no longer remind me of their 'cruel ambivalence'."

He spat the words out, clearly disgusted with his own thoughts, as he slid his gaze to Izayoi now. Izayoi. She had terrified him for so long. Existed in his head as a demon, to twist his skull from the spine and drink the marrow from his still-wet bones. Surely, even after knowing her, breaking bread with her, and sharing the road with her, that fear had somewhat quelled— even if it still flared to life, however briefly, when he met her steely, demanding gaze. In a way, this had started with her. When he had first, in the heat of the moment, decided that her life that terrified him was worth more than his safe, comfortable masquerade. All to try and not let somebody he knew down, one more time.

"That lead me to those ruins. A great place to get away from everything that hurts, really. Stony, gloomy, dead, silent. If you want to be alone to wallow in your disillusionment, Old Lunaris has you covered. If a dozen guiding hands can't help you, to the point where they begin to fall away, you may as try camping out in isolation before you trudge home to deliver the bad news to a returning war party." There was a snap, as the firewood split somewhere in the middle of the blaze. "Only you're never alone there. There's always a taunting voice, beckoning you down, below the earth, towards a chance to rewrite the rules, to take the rails you're stuck on out from under you. It's at the edge of your hearing. You think it might just be your mind playing tricks on you at first. Like you're just jumping at shadows. But as we all saw— the shadows are jumping too. It's all too real. More real than ever, apparently."

To Miina, to whom he owed more explanation than anyone else here, if only in that he had promised she'd get it when they came. It was hard to read her through the cloak of shyness, stuttering words, and fraying nerves, but she was the only naturalborn mage here— he doubted that she hadn't felt the similarities between Ferdiad's essence, and every big expression of the blackflame Rudolf had brought into the world. With the time they had taken to put the ruins behind them once the demonic jester had scurried off, he was sure that her arcane intuition had ample time to put the requisite pieces together.

"Your senses," he began, each word heavy and final, impossible to catch and stuff away once they had dropped from him. He looked between her and the two points of light orbiting Esben, a green and purple duo that had pinch-hit for his dumber ideas almost as much as the Red Mage had. They were part of the team too. "Don't lie to you. That clown's aether and my own are of the same kind. Demons, the vengeful ghosts of the Lunarian Empire that vanished in a single night. When my faith in the Gods bottomed out, I followed those voices down into the abyss. Into the shadows, until..."

The briefest glance to Eliane. In truth, there seemed nobody in the world less concerned with what was going on regarding Rudolf's unholy bent and insincerity as her— she was always, simply, assured that he was working towards the same goal as her, and that it was enough that he contributed to her eventual victory, for the glory of Skael. He wished he had that in himself. For all he weaselishly grumbled in his own mind about the way she wielded that self-assurance, it was also true that he wished he could be more like her, in that simple, pure way.

He stared into his palm again, his expression a stony, austere knot. Tight around the eyes, mouth a hard, dispassionate line, he would throttle that little fool if he could ever walk back to that moment of nadir and undo this mess he'd made of his future. But the depths had taken it from him. He had given it away. With that same upturned hand, he had held out his soul, his life, and his fate. He had been a beggar. A servant. A knight swearing fealty. A vagrant accepting alms. A man at the end of his rope, making a payment in quiet desperation. All of these. None of them.

There it was again. That knot in the gut, like they had all stabbed him while he had weaved his whinging tale.

"I forged a contract with the demon that now resides within me. They are not manifest the way Ferdiad is, but they are the source of the black fire that stains my sword, my armor, and my aether. I burn away at the luck that was ordained to me and house its soul upon my own, our essence intertwined. In exchange for my ties to Mother Etro's will, I gained the power to do what you all have seen me do. Obviously, right?" A rueful chuckle came as he shook his head. "It's not through any mundane means that a reedy half-rate son of cavalry raiders can summon a barrier strong enough to withstand a blow from Izayoi's teacher wielding the greatest blade Kurogane produced, or that he can put a spear through the scales of Leviathan, or that he throws around Black Magic so primordial it can structurally break down Materia for greater effect at the cost of rendering it inert, or that he could throw a ball of clinging black fire into his own brother's face because he's mad he's still the nail and not the hammer and he thinks nothing's changed."

Without realizing it, the bitter, loathsome tone in his voice had grown stronger, fiercer, rawer, until he was all but shouting his final words. His veins throbbed behind his skin, and the burns felt newly hot, remembering the fire he had forced through his eyes when he began to use his own blood as fuel. One breath, shaking, quivering. A second, likely saving him from spewing his guts out right in front of dinner. A third...

And he grew still.

"That's why I was warning you all away from paying anything in there any heed. I made that mistake already, and now I am a walking totem of ill omen. Right down to the fibers of my being. That's the dramatic way of saying it— the plainer way is that you've all been trusting a craven idiot with your lives, the whole way through."

He regarded the group as a whole hollowly. At this point, he would live with whatever they made of this— if Galahad were any indication, it just as well might have ended up that the most foolish part he had played in it all was of the man too scared to tell the truth. If that was he case, he gave up. If they reacted the way he'd feared, and excised him from the group, he could accept that too. It didn't really matter, did it? He'd finally put it out into the open. He had cast another die, the way he had when he first forged the pact, when he had first accepted the redirected call to action, when he had first revealed that something was very, very wrong with him.

If he had come up snake eyes on all of them, so be it. What was done was done. He had boiled the whole thing down, only leaving the complete basics.

"I turned my back on the light we're now fighting to save because I was a scared, hurt child, looking to appease my own ego. There's no justification at the end of this. I wanted to feel like I could win. There's no misunderstood or misapplied noble intent. I wanted to tell the way of the world to go to hell if it kept letting me lose. Just a stupid boy with a stupid decision made for the stupidest reasons. I'm not asking any of you to pity me. Don't get it twisted. I'm not a victim. I made my bed and I've been lying in it for five years. This isn't about any reconciliation or sympathy. It's about getting this useless lie off my back. I was selfish then, I was selfish when I told you all to believe I was just some bum from a swordsman village, and I'm being selfish now."

He barely registered his own words, but out they came. Was this catharsis? He hadn't felt much when he had first told Galahad most of the story. He'd chalked it up to the Knight-Dragoon's acceptance and reassurance, in hindsight a practical choice to keep an able sword arm around when he had lost so many in the span of a week. But maybe this empty feeling was that 'lightness' he'd always heard it described as. Maybe the weight coming off his shoulders had only revealed a fine, unrecognizable powder beneath, this lie a grindstone for the fragments of his life that he had hid beneath it. What else could possibly be under there, at this point?

"What else. As far as I'm aware, the clown manifesting the way he did is a very recent development." he dully explained, noting Izayoi's other demand from their skirmish near the Pillar. "My passenger knew of him previously, though they were adamant that any of them popping up and putting claws to our necks was on the same tier as waking up next to a river and having a face-to-face chat with Danube herself. It was the whole reason they took residence as a shadow overlaid onto my soul. And I suspect their taking my luck as payment for these ill-gotten gains has something to do with it too— luck is the Divine ordaining the flow of the world. Black Magic is rooted in destruction. Like we discussed, I'm not a 'proper' mage. I can make vague guesses and associations, and I was really hoping I'd be able to confront all this with more answers than I have."

He wiped his hand against the red of his armor's tabard. He had drawn blood when his fury spiked a few paragraphs ago.

"But as whatever's even left of my luck has it, I've now got more questions."

He sat back, pressing his spine into the trunk of the nearer tree. His arms folded across his chest, and he looked up, away from everyone, towards the moon as it hung in the sky overhead. The nightfolk, they were sometimes called, so venerated that thing...

"I imagine there's also some you all have that I've missed while indulging in writing my little autobiography. Go ahead and hit me. Do your worst. If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that I just love talking. Let's break it all down while we have the time. Once we hit the border, I imagine more immediate deceit's going to take the stage from me."
Rudolf Sagramore


"Boy".

Rudolf grit his teeth, as Izayoi made her frustrations known and the word crossed his ears. It was hardly the first time she'd used the dismissive appellation for him, or similar towards anyone else for that matter, of course. Her gruff manner of speech and referral was something even a callow-hearted, sensitive little runt like him had gotten used to, somewhere between Atsu and the raid upon Mizutani's manse. In fact, he was sure he'd brushed it off a dozen times between all the little moments of their travels in just the past week— idle encounters while stuck on a boat at sea, setting camp while on foot, or pointing eachother towards where they'd last seen another of their unit.

But something about it struck him wrong, this time. Something contextual, it must have been— Because it was here, or because it was about this shit— he couldn't place it exactly. He just knew who it reminded him of, and that it made him want to snarl. So, given that they were now neck deep in a fight, stuck trying to get a demon the hell off their back the way he should have been the last time he was around here—1

"That—"

Snarl he did, planting a sabaton into the earth and vaulting over the waves of shadow.

"Was—"

As he landed, a dome of darkness fell over them all, casting the battlefield in midnight umbra. His eyes adjusted quick enough— quicker than he remembered them ever doing beforehand— but the enshrouded steel of his armor still almost seemed to melt away into shadows, leaving only streaks of blood red and the soft glint of his blades to mark his movement. But more importantly than his—

His eyes scrambled as Ferdiad's form vanished behind the gloomy veil, alight behind his greathelm as he desperately searched the void for movement. It was the very edges of his perception, almost there to read and not guess at, the swirling eddies and shifts within the darkened aether— the feeling of having motion pass just outside your peripheral vision. You couldn't see it, you couldn't track it, but you could feel something happening—

The aether's pooling again, boy.2 He's going to pop up in a moment. Miina and Chisato are your VIPs. Clown going after the two that look like kids, this fits.

But fortunately, he had a more skilled hand at this on the job.

He kicked off, flying through the night, surging forth through the gap between the two, and bringing both blades to bear—!

"The plan!" he growled, capping his response with a shower of orange sparks and the ring of steel against steel as the Crane Wings met the reappearing Ferdiad's claws and scythe, checking their arcs before either could get up to speed and rip into his two smaller compatriots. It was a closer-run thing than he would have liked. The weight of the armor, even with darkness embedded between the gaps of its structure, wasn't the issue— but even having enough forewarning to be moving in place during that half-second of confusion still left him getting there in, as far as he was concerned, the nick of time.

Margins nobody should accept living in.3

"Going after little girls part of your act too?" he jeered through grit teeth, driving as much power as he could through sturdy legs and back to hold the demon at bay. "Pathetic. Nobody likes a creative who plays it too safe!"

A surge of force, as he finally wrenched his body through the swing and knocked the attacks aside, whirling into his own counteroffensive by slamming a boot in the demon's gut. Like the Wild Dance before him, his swords then blurred as he brought across a series of paired and sequenced hews into the space between himself and Ferdiad, aiming to make the most of this small moment of tempo his interception had gained—

And buy the rest the window they needed to keep pounding this thing back into the depths it belonged to.




  • 1. The widow you're whinging at would have died without me. I'm never gonna let you forget.
  • 2. I'm evil. I enjoy triggering "sensitive young men". It brings me great joy, knowing that you've willingly broadcast a sore point for me to poke at. What do you expect?
  • 3. Since he's correctly deducing the fault here lies with him, I'll let him off, but if we want to bring up "unacceptable margins": Get Me. The Hell. Away From This Screeching Chimpanzee. I'm pretty well embedded into this armor, and if there's a chance of him smelling me on you in the middle of this, let's just say I may have discovered the cure for gambling addictions— I don't want to take it. I want somebody to teach Miina Holy, or for Esben to reveal he still has the Cid-summoning crystal.
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