Cold enough to chill the blood in the veins. Cold enough to sluice away hope. Cold enough to clot the soul.
The small figure atop the keep stared out at the screaming, roiling mass as they seethed through the southern front. The rain hammered down hard enough to nearly knock her breath away. It was loud for sure. But not enough to blot out the terrible sounds of the Void, nor The piercing scream that had emerged from within them, cold as the falling rain. Zecimia had gone to ash defending the breach. Uhladein was next. The Hunters within the walls were the only ones left that could stanch the endless tide. She flicked her eyes to just behind her, to the fading, wavering of the Hearthfire, and then down, to the group of pyromancers that clustered around the crystal. The tide wasn't endless. But it wouldn't stop until the rain did. And she had her doubts about which would come first; the rain's end, or theirs.
She took a deep breath. The world around her was frigid. The darkness was lit up only with the flashes of lightning, marking time through this nightmare dreamscape, and the fitful flickering Hearthfire behind her. But despite the cold, the air that she breathed hissed down her throat with painful heat. And though the swarm beneath her was loud enough to drown out the pouring rain, it fell away before the roaring furnace of Undying Light beside her face. With ease born of long practice, she quickstepped around the perimeter towards the entrance of the tower. Stretching out before her was the end of the world. The roaring was nearing fever pitch. She could feel the fire that it surrounded swell as it gorged itself on her inner flame, and she bared her teeth in a soundless snarl. Almost ready. Almost time.
After this, time would be precious, and every wasted moment meant she crept closer to a final death. So this shot had to be as powerful as she could make it. Her jaw creaked as she clenched her teeth, the pain in her soul intensifying. She pushed ever harder into the fire. She gasped out an involuntary breath as the pain redoubled. And somewhere within her, she felt something deep and fundamental break.
Ah. There we go.
The metal was searing hot as she pressed it to her cheek. She steadied herself. She aimed, taking sight on the grim ocean beneath. And, heedless of any audience, she gave vent to a harsh, grim death rattle of a laugh.
Click.
The entire battlefield was, for a brief moment, bathed in a light like the sun as as a cascading torrent of flames bloomed from her cannon like a flower, and the crash was louder than any thunder. Where it struck, Voidflesh sizzed and burned before the rain doused it. sending forth a cloud of foul-smelling steam above the scorched earth. The laugh only grew louder. And though the ebb in the tide was filled again in the space of a moment, her blood still burned with satisfaction.
In the absence of the cannon's roar, the sounds of the Void and the frigid rain filled her ears once more. She paused, her laughter stopping as she heaved in a breath through clenched teeth. With a sound like lightning striking stone, an incandescent crack of golden light seared across her chest for a moment before fading away. Her breathing grew jagged, and the furnace began to stoke once more. She gave Undying Light an affectionate stroke as the hot metal began to vibrate with the as-yet-inaudible force of the nascent soul-fire within.
Then beneath her, she saw a massive Void beast slithering its way through the dread all around them. Her eyes widened, and a vicious knife of a grin spread across her face as thoughts of duty and protection fled her mind. She backed up, retreating until she felt the paltry warmth of the fading embers at her back. The flame continued to build. She could hear the roar now, could feel it swelling. She slammed as much magic as she could into it, one more time.
Then she ran for the edge and catapulted herself into space.
The fire roared. The cannon burned. The rain fell. And beneath her, the world once more blazed white with staccato cracks of lighting, highlighting the horrifying faces of Voidlings and the grim determination of hunters alike. She hurtled towards the colossal thing, howling as she went with rage, pain, and glee. The fire roared. The rain fell. The Void screamed back at her. And, as she plummeted—cannon pointed straight beneath her—Quinnlash laughed.
"And choke on it!" she screamed, the laughter mangling her words, "Choke on it, you bastards!"
“I'm bleeding, I guess. Shut up. Hurry and get outta here 'fore you get hurt.”
Overview
Name
小林熱子 Kobayashi Atsuko
Age
20
Gender
Female
Occupation
Hiki-NEET
Characterization & Conceptualization
What Do They Look Like?
Atsuko is a scruffy young adult a little on the shorter side, measuring in at just over 5'1," with tangled, unkempt blonde hair that goes for far too long between washes and brushes, and hasn't been properly cut in much, much longer. Because of that, it's longer than it used to be, going down to a few inches above the small of her back. Her skin is as pale as it can realistically ever become—after all, she hasn't seen the sun in years—and her eyes are fixed in a constant tired squint from not sleeping enough, with nigh-permanent shadows undercutting them from the same. Her frame is thin from not eating much or working out, and unless she needs to, she moves at a slow, languid pace, almost like she doesn't have the energy to spend. She has a long scar down the inside of her left calf from a childhood accident.
What Are They Like?
In a word? Tired. Not only is Atsuko physically tired much of the time, from the aforementioned lack of much food or exercise, but she's mentally tired as well. Consequently, she tends to speak in a bit of a bit of a monotone, quite lacking in inflection. Her voice is usually quiet and somewhat raspy, and she doesn't really show a whole lot of emotion—especially positive emotion—in large part because she sits in the bottleneck of a vast ocean of self-recrimination. She refuses to let herself be happy, because in her mind, she doesn't deserve to be happy. Because she needs to be punished for her crimes. Because she is a terrible person.
What's Their Story?
Atsuko grew up with her small but wealthy family—her father Akito, her mother Sakaki, and her younger sister Hana—in a small town some twenty miles north of the Sapporo city boundary in Hokkaido. They were all of them close, but especially the sisters. They adored each other, and as they aged, Atsuko began to feel a fierce older-sister protectiveness. For most of her life, she was altogether typical; healthy home life, healthy school life, and a future ahead of her.
But then she entered high school and everything started going wrong. Some students got it into their heads somehow that she'd cheated on her entrance exams. The bullying was merciless. She'd done something wrong. She'd hurt people. She was disgusting. But she could handle it, she thought. Better to not provoke even more bullying by going to a teacher who wouldn't believe her anyway. And though it certainly took a toll on her, she—self-confident, self-assured—made it through. But then, as she went into her third year and Hana went into her first at the same school, she realized with horror: if it was affecting her like this, then Hana would be destroyed, just by being her sister. And she refused to let that happen. So she struck back. A whisper here, a cruel note there. Unkind words etched into lockers and desks. Anything to keep them from targeting her baby sister. To keep her safe.
She did her job too well. Hana started crying. Wouldn't say why. Atsuko was furious. Obviously, somebody was still bullying her, and she needed to stop them. She became crueler. Never openly, of course. Quietly, subtly. More etched words. Worse words. Vases of flowers on desks. Then, a bit later, she overheard Hana crying hysterically to their mother, because all of her new friends had left her alone. Looked at her like they were deathly afraid of being near her, like they panicked if she even walked by, like they'd be punished for even talking to her. And Atsuko realized what she'd done.
She dropped out of school immediately. And she made it public. She was the queen bitch bully now, after all. She was the reason her sister was crying. Best to stay away from her. She hasn't left her house in two and a half years now, not even to go to Hana's graduation. After all, better to just stay out of her hair, right? Just keep on staying up late on the computer. Keep lying to people on the internet about a job so she wouldn't sound too much like a loser. Stay out of sight, out of mind, so nobody would ever need to connect Hana with her in their little town. Kobayashi was a common enough last name, right?
All she wanted to do was protect her.
Why Did The Wish Choose Them?
Before she messed everything up, Atsuko thought about being a hero. Not like an Eferion hero, nothing like that, but a kind of hero to Hana. Someone for her to look up to, at least. But that wish vanished years ago, replaced with a crushing sense of emptiness and stagnation. After what she did to her beloved baby sister, she hasn't wanted to be looked up to in a long, long time.
What "Hero" Will They Embody? Why?
All she ever wanted to do was protect Hana. She sacrificed her morals. She sacrificed her self-worth. She sacrificed her future. She will sacrifice anything, throwing herself under the bus in a heartbeat, to protect the people that she cares about. Who else could she be but the Hero of Defense?
What Belongings Will They Take With Them?
Atsuko doesn't keep much on her, day-to-day. Other than a pair of battered gray sweatpants and a rumpled black tanktop, she has her smartphone with around a quarter charge, and a comb stuck in her tangled hair.
Talents & Abilities
Mundane Talents
Given how much time she's spent on the computer in recent years, she's become half-decent at video games, which helps her hand-eye coordination. Additionally, she's exceptionally skilled at mathematics, her favorite subject when she was back in school. She's out of practice, but she could pick it back up again pretty easily. Finally, given how much time she's spent in her room, she is very, very good at being alone.
Full Name - Maki Kirika Hometown - Sapporo, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan Quirk Type - Emitter Gender - Femme -
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Attention-Seeking Kirika is hungry for attention. Forever filled with an urge to always have every eye on the room locked on her, she does her best to always draw everyone's gaze. The personality she's cultivated has resulted in what looks to be an easy confidence behind her as she moves, and though every step is filled with trepidation and fear, she does not show it easily.
Fearful One of Kirika's great motivators is the fear she bears towards her Quirk. Its random activation when she was younger, coupled with the lack of any feedback about when it's active and the sheer duration it can last for, has cultivated in her a dread: what if one day, her Quirk refuses to break? What if touching someone no longer pops it open, and sleeping no longer fades it away? If these no longer work—if she no longer has the manual overrides that she needs to pull herself out of it—then what can she do if it refuses to listen to her? She vividly remembers the un-personing of her childhood. More than anything, she is terrified of being forgotten.
Loyal Because of her history—both the consequences of her Quirk, and the fear that comes to her with it—Kirika has never had very many friends. She's only managed to find a really good, close friend once or twice. So when she does find one, she is intensely loyal to them. She is loyal, she is protective, she is attached. Some of it is in her nature; some of it is out of that same intense fear that they'll forget about her.
Physical Description
Kirika is quite a tall girl, standing at nearly 170cm (or roughly 5'7"), with a stick-thin physique that looks more like a slender boy's body than a girl's. She feels somewhat like it should make her self-conscious, but she's thankful for it; anything to stick out more. Also somewhat helpful in that endeavor is her hair. Smooth and pin-straight, it falls in a violent silver-white curtain to more or less the small of her back. It matches her eyes, the pale gray of morning fog. The way she walks helps her grab attention as well: a smooth, crisp, snapping stride, moving perhaps a little bit more quickly than is necessary. It makes her look like she's perpetually hurrying, and it comforts her the way people look at her a little bit strangely when she's going about her business.
When not wearing the dour school uniform that she's entrapped within, she wears things that, while well within acceptable range, tend to stick out a little bit. Her most common example is a tan trench coat that her father gave her when she went off to school ("In case it's raining, sweetie!). It's a little longer on her than it is on her father, dropping just about to the middle of her shins. The summer is a little warm to wear it unless it's a particularly cool day, but she's beginning to grow attached just the same.
Personal History
Maki Kirika’s first couple years were completely normal. Her mother and father, an editor and photographer respectively, doted on her. And while of course she doesn’t remember anything of that time, it was almost idyllic until she was about halfway through her second year, when her Quirk manifested and she vanished. Not just from her parents' sight. Not just from their hearing. Not just from their photos and family videos. No, her face even vanished from their memories.
And so, her first memories are of smothering attention. Smothering attention and very seldom being left alone. And she didn't understand why, until one day she realized that her parents didn't notice her.
The next years of her life would be characterized by a feeling of suffocation. When she was at home, it was that feeling of suffocation that worried parents give. She had very little privacy; even being alone in her room was a rarity, even up through middle school. Personal space was a thing that belonged to other people, and her mom was never too far away to reach out and touch her hand. When she was at school, that suffocation was the feeling of choking fear that comes with being forgotten. Her Quirk was unstable for a long time, and there were times when she would simply vanish, and times when she couldn't reappear. Though she always told people that touch would break it, every time it happened, she would tense up when peoples' eyes skated over her. Even worse were those rare moments when touching people wouldn't break it, at least not for a few seconds. She thought. She never could tell on her own, after all.
About this time was when her attention-hogging personality began to come to the fore. She couldn't tell when her Quirk was active, it was true. At least not on her own. But if she was up in everyone's faces, when the whole room was looking at her, then she would always know. She would know. And, she convinced herself—in defiance of the facts—that the closer she was to everyone, the less likely it was to not break on touch. And with that personality came the start of a seething resentment. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that she always needed to make sure people could see and hear her before she did anything. It wasn't fair that she was terrified of fading away, being un-personed so thoroughly nobody would ever remember her. It wasn't fair.
But as she aged and gained some control over her Quirk, she began to experience another side of it. Yes, it was unpredictable, and when it went off without her knowing, it was genuinely terrifying. But, as she discovered when she was cornered on a city street at night before fading both her and her friend away, it could also be exceptionally useful. And that got her to thinking. Using her Quirk in public would certainly be frowned upon—if anybody could really tell, that was. But it would be difficult to learn how to keep it from activating on its own without any kind of instruction.
Somewhere to learn how to properly use her Quirk, to peel back the anger that she had towards it, and to harness its burgeoning power as a force for good? Well, she'd lived in Sapporo her whole life. Ishin academy was just down the road, right?
Character Arc
Kirika's character arc is founded deeply in her fear. How her fear is created, how her fear is handled, and how her fear is eventually resolved. She has a remarkably powerful utility Quirk, something that could be genuinely terrifying if she were to embrace it all immediately. But she can't properly use it, because she fears it desperately. She grew up being terrified of being un-personed and forgotten since she can remember, and it's going to take her a long, long time to move past that.
That moving on is going to form the crux of her character development. As she gains better control over her Quirk, her fear will slowly begin to abate. And though of course there will be moments of relapse where her Quirk activates all on its own and she returns to that instinctual fear, she will move past them, and eventually past that bone-deep fear to truly take advantage of the Quirk that she's been cursed or—she will eventually realize—blessed with.
Quirk Description
Kirika's Quirk, and the great object of her fear, is Null Field At a thought, she can project an invisible bubble around her, more or less five feet across. She, and anybody within that bubble, becomes imperceptible. They'll still trigger motion detectors, infrared lasers; they're still there. But living things struggle with the same. They're not made invisible. More like...they're rendered so unbelievably unremarkable that wherever they are, it just seem like the most natural thing in the world.
Other than the somewhat restrictive size limit that requires people to stay close to Kirika, there aren't a lot of inherent factors that limit its use. Though it does constantly drain her energy when it's active, it's more of a passive drain than anything else. She may become tired and hungry a little bit more quickly and easily, but it's nothing she really notices. So duration isn't an issue. The main restriction placed upon its use is when anybody within the bubble does anything that would get them noticed for sure. Touching someone, throwing an object with an easily traceable flight path, having their footprints followed back to them; when one member of the bubble is noticed, then it immediately pops and reveals everybody. And while there's no set duration on the Null Field, once it's brought down it can't be thrown up again for at least a couple minutes. No do-overs.
In addition, the field will break whenever Kirika falls asleep or is knocked unconscious—for the most part. Though unlikely, it can stay up through sleep. And this is when Kirika is the most afraid. Because if it won't break, even when she's not conscious...will it ever break at all?
Full Name - Nigata Kayo Hometown - Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan Quirk Type - Emitter Gender - Femme -
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Narcissistic While you might not tell it from first glance, Kayo is a dyed-in-the-wool narcissist, obsessed with status and living on praise. Though she expertly projects a facade of a cutesy, sleepy girl, once you get past surface level she is revealed as the cold, calculating young woman she truly is. The picture is completed with her stunted empathy; so convinced is she of her own superiority that empathy for others doesn't even factor into her worldview.
Obsessive If Kayo latches on to something that she wants, she wants it to truly belong to her. This can be harmless; she can want something as innocuous as a new pen. It can also be something truly sinister, as she decides that a fellow human being is now hers.
Spiteful A great deal of Kayo's life has been characterized by being hurt in various ways. The only way she could avoid being completely broken down was to build a shell of pure spite around herself, enough that even a small slight against her could have drastic consequences, and many of her motivations—including being a hero to begin with—find their start in anger and spite.
Physical Description
Standing at 5'1", Kayo stands at a height just slightly shorter than usual (which only helps her, really). Her most noticeable physical trait at first glance is her long curtain of pale green hair, which she takes very, very good care of (it takes her nearly an hour to brush it out in the morning, it's a nightmare). Her skin is smooth and fine due to an equal amount of care. She has a narrow face and a sharply pointed chin. Finally we reach her brilliant green eyes, which are slightly off-putting to some people: they glow dimly in low light, and her pupils are narrow and slitted, like a snakes. She's almost always wearing a smile; it's just unclear which kind of smile it is.
Personal History
Nigata Kayo did not have an exceptionally good childhood.
It was alright for the first couple years. Her mother—Nigata Kagami, an excellent doctor loved by all—had always been a touch strange, but she was too young to really understand anything about it. Until very early in elementary school, everything was fine. Everything was fine. And then her Quirk manifested itself just slightly later than normal. And it manifested itself while she was playing with her mother.
She doesn't remember a whole lot of this time, but she does remember her mother grunting in surprise and pain and then looking at her with sudden malice. And from then on, her childhood grew harder.
Her mother dropped the act, revealing herself as the raging narcissist that she was. Someone who only became a doctor for the accolades and praise. Someone who only acted nice because it made people love her. And somebody who had a minor and pedestrian Quirk to adjust her own pain tolerance. Because of her Quirk, Kayo's did very little to her. But now she knew that her daughter's Quirk was more powerful than her own. And she took offense. She became a monster to her daughter, alternately ignoring her, psychologically tormenting her, and forcing her to look in a mirror and use her own Quirk on herself until she was a screaming, crying wreck (mirrors still terrify her to this day). So it's not a stretch to imagine that Kayo began to pull inwards, and give herself the ego that her mother no longer did.
This was only aggravated in school, where she would occasionally accidentally use her Quirk on other kids. And though she apologized profusely, they began to avoid her, all but one. And so, the only way for her to rationalize it and preserve the ego that she was beginning to build up for herself was to assert: they're all dumb. Everybody but Kaoru, they're all dumb idiots. And to make it worse, as her Quirk began to build in power more and more, pain stopped repulsing her. Instead, causing pain began to...intrigue her.
All of these factors conspired to forge her into an obsessive narcissist who, additionally, was very fascinated by pain. And when she was a little way into middle school, these all combined to give her a horrible fixation on a classmate who she grew absolutely obsessed with. And when she fixed him with her eyes, when she caused that terrible pain, she felt a thrill like nothing else. Though she—with Kaoru's help—managed to escape her obsession, it still bubbled just under the surface, waiting for a new target. Crushing it down as best she could, she decided something then and there.
If her mom was that jealous of her Quirk, then what would insult her more than becoming a hero?
Character Arc
As a character, Kayo is an exploration on inversions.
She initially goes to IA out of spite for her mother, but eventually really, truly wants to become a hero. She starts her character arc with manipulation and obsession, and ends it with contrition and redemption. Rather than the character course of someone who wants to become a hero, aims straight for that goal and then perhaps dips down onto a dark place and becomes a villain, she is a character who starts on that dark path towards villainy, but manages to pull herself out of that doom spiral and become somebody that she can legitimately be proud of.
And so, her character development over time is just that. The obsessive pit that she digs herself down into is not only a low point for everyone else around her, but a low point for her own health, safety, and sanity. The way that she crawls out of that pit—the challenges she faces in order to get there, the people that she's hurt that she needs to hopefully make amends to—is where the great majority of her character will be, and I'm very excited to see it.
Quirk Description
Kayo is so toxic that even looking at her can be dangerous.
Her Quirk Venom Eyes can be activated any time she makes direct eye contact with somebody, directly tapping into the target's nervous system—specifically the pain receptors. With a pulse of a sickly yellow glow from her snakelike eyes, she can dial them up or down, causing either a searing, full-body pain or a deadening numbness, though she's significantly better at using the pain than she is the numbness.
There are a few limits on this power. Since it requires direct eye contact, it has a limited range, and is almost completely useless, at least at the start, on people who either hide their eyes, don't have eyes to hide, can't use their eyes, or have no nerves to aggravate. Each pulse from her Venom Eyes additionally accrues a brief cooldown period where her optic nerves need to rest from the sudden stimulation.
"We shouldn't need to have a job from Pris to talk with them," Alja huffed out. "You've heard everything that's going on. Wayfarers aren't the most well-liked group right now, so the more of us there are, the better chance we have to make it right. Keeping a line of communication open is a lot easier than reopening a broken one." She walked up to the door, hesitating in front of it.
If she was honest, she was scared of going into Mystic Prophecy herself. Every time she'd been in this guild hall before, it had been like a home. Now, as the silence yawned, it felt more like a tomb. But there was no point in running away. Kazuki was only half the reason she'd been so insistent on coming here. There were people here that she liked, like Pris. People she borderline needed, like Leaves. And somewhere back there was Luci, surviving on anger and spite. Maybe, just like after Arnaakus, she couldn't do anything to help her. But, just like after Arnaakus, damn sure she was going to try. Rael and Benkei could could come if they wanted; she rather hoped they would. But Kazuki wasn't getting out of here without going in. He might have visited Prophecy post-glitch before. He might not have; she wasn't sure. But if he had, then it hadn't. Been. Enough.
So she couldn't give him an out. She couldn't give him any way to avoid this, or else it would never happen. He might hate her after this. That was fine. He could hate her all he liked. But she knew very well what desperate guilt gone unaddressed turned into, and she wasn't keen on turning him over to it.
She turned to the three behind her, judging the distance from her to Kazuki. "Come if you're comin', we don't have all day!"
Then, with one swift motion, she yanked the door open, snatched Kazuki's wrist, and pulled him inside with her.
Kana whirled around at the sounds of a scuffle, awareness ratcheted up as high as it could go. A man with an accent yelling. The sound of harpoons striking the walls. And a very, very faint noise that she couldn't quite parse, but reminded her of violence all the same. She closed her eyes tightly.
There are so many better things to worry about right now. There could be something very bad happening down with the engine. You could go up like you planned and deal with the leader. Can you really afford the time to go help whatever's going on?
Before the thought had even finished, she knew the answer. Not a chance she was going to stand there as more people got hurt. Not when she could do something about it. Damn everything else, she'd been 'gifted' with these goddamn legs; might as well use them for good for once. She took a long, calming breath. I didn't want to hurt anyone tonight. I really didn't. But just because they started the fight doesn't mean I can't end it. It's different this time. You're helping people. The breath heaved out. Eyes still closed, "Keep going towards the engine room. I'll catch up with you soon." For just a moment, she was very grateful that she was wearing her mask.
Her eyes snapped open, and she blasted towards the fight, Edgedancer surging out of her at its full strength. In the space between heartbeats, the calm and slightly wobbling tink of her footsteps was replaced with the shrieking sound of metal crashing into metal at high speed as she blazed down the narrow corridor. The world moved in slow motion around her, and the sound of fighting came into clear focus. A distant corner of her brain hissed in dissatisfaction at the British man. You're making too much noise. Just asking to get hurt. Shut up. She wanted to hate him for being in such a place that she needed to do this. She wanted to find a vessel for her pent-up anger and frustration. Someone that she could blame, and blame harmlessly. But she couldn't bring herself to hate him. He was stuck here like everyone else. Nobody was making her do this but her.
A corner in the hallway loomed ahead of her; sounded like whatever was going on was just around it. Even if she wanted to, she didn't have the time or space to slow down. So instead she sped up as much as she could. And jumped.
She struck the wall, and with all the speed and power that her Septima brought her, she kicked it. With one more jagged, metallic screech, she launched herself forward and twisted in midair, whizzing past the Englishman and a...man? Woman?...person in a haori, of all things—and aiming a flying scissor kick at the closest frogman.
And, as all her pent-up frustration boiled over—her quiet time ruined, her guards off, her legs being used against a human being again—she axed downwards at him with a furious scream.
Full Name - Quinnlash Loughvein (Don't call her Quinn. She hates that.) Age - 28 Gender - Female Vocation - Caster Nationality - Midnos
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Emotional Quinnlash is boiling with emotion. Even if she could bottle it up anymore, she wouldn't, and it flows freely out of her. Most of her emotions are...less than charitable much of the time, but she has a greater range than that, certainly. While uncommon, it's not impossible to see a wide smile on her face after a stressful situation has resolved in her favor. Most of the time, though, it's anger. Lots of anger.
Reckless Just like emotions, Quinnlash boils with energy. She has issues with thinking things through. Exacerbated by her emotional nature, it's all too common for her to shoot first and ask questions later, or to run headlong into certain and overwhelming danger. She does put a bit of thought into controlling this impulse, but it's always there, and usually controls her instead.
Critical A vestigial remnant of an ignored past, Quinnlash is very critical, both of herself and others. While this can be useful, as she never throws around criticism unless she means it, it's often misunderstood. Her often hostile emotions can conspire to make genuinely constructive criticism sound a whole lot like "just be better."
G I F T
Soul Ablaze The burning soul-ember that Quinnlash received erupted against her innate pyromancy. When the two settled, she found that in the process, her magic had become unstable and volatile, allowed her to break pieces of her soul off and wield them. Though each one created reduces how long her magic can last, these fragments become flames that never fade, never waver, never die, until the magic within them burns out and returns to her. They can be reabsorbed at will, restoring her splintered soul with a flash of light from her eye; or fed from her magic, renewing them ad infinitum. Notably, her soul does not immediately mend itself when she reabsorbs a soul flame. It takes some time for it to fully rejoin. Still, nobody else can fracture their own soul this way. Nobody but Quinnlash. This is her Gift.
E Q U I P M E N T
Undying Light Quinnlash's weapon of choice against the Void is an enormous rifle-cannon. Created with one of her broken-off soul flames at its core, she can stoke it until it destabilizes and erupts, raging at its constraints until the trigger is pulled. When it is, the magic is released, launching an explosive barrage of scorching fire from the barrel. It takes time for Quinnlash to feed the fire to its fullest extent, but when the furnace is fully stoked, Undying Light is a force of nature and a sight to behold.
Physical Description
A woman of perhaps 5'5" with an extremely average build, Quinnlash can melt into a crowd of people with relative ease as long as she pulls a hood over her head. Not only imbued with a pyromancer's ember but a pyromancer herself, her single eye gleams with a brilliant yellow light. Her hair is very long, kept in a tight braid that trails down her back. Though most if it is the dark gray it always was, bits and pieces of the fringes around her face have begun to bleed the same vivid hue as her eye.
While her body certainly isn't unfit by any stretch, it's not to the same standards that many other Hunters have trained to. Her tendency to keep her distance means that much of her evasive skills in combat rely on creating space between her and enemies as fast as she can. She's nimble enough, of course, needs to be in order to avoid being struck by any return fire, but not very strong. The most obvious place to see this is in her musculature. It is very apparent that she's not a frontline fighter by any means. What she lacks in strength, though, she makes up for in consistency. Though her muscles aren't overly strong, they are filled with a seemingly unnatural endurance and surefootedness even for a hunter. Bought and paid for with each backwards step taken while lining up a shot, that manifests in confident and easy movement, even in the most perilous situation.
She wears long, baggy, thick clothes with many layers, worn and tattered by now, as she travels. She no longer feels the cold now, heated as she is with an ember from deep inside. But deep within her, in a part that she despises, there is a fear that one day, she will lose what makes her human. That perhaps she already has. That her soul, already so fragile, will shatter like a pane of glass, and she'll lose something very, very important.
Character Conceptualization
Quinnlash was a scholar once. A books-in-a-library-in-Midnos, dyed-in-the-wool scholar. She'd been raised to be one her entire life. Ever since she could read, her parents—both reputable scholars themselves—had inundated her, drowned her, with diagrams, carvings, and so many books. Some as heavy as she was and varying widely in topic, the only way for her to keep her head above water was to swim. And swim she did, meekly accepting her parents' demands and doing her work, kept totally isolated in her room within the small but lavish house in the capital of Midnos. She grew very knowledgeable for her age as she simply read. Not that she could understand most of what was in the books. But what else was she to do? With nothing else around her, all the time she could ever want, and the only two people in her world constantly telling her to study at such a young age, what could she do but eat, sleep, and read? She didn't want to go outside. Her parents told her that it was dark. It was dark, and scary, and filled with things that wanted to hurt you. Best to just stay inside studying, right? She could go outside when she was older.
But when she was seven, she was allowed to leave the house. Just once, with her father close beside her. She clung tightly to him, looking fearfully at the dark world, as he took her to see a strange woman. The two of them spoke seriously in low voices for some time. What little she could hear, she didn't understand. Words like "magical affinity," "innate talent," "potential for phenomenal things." She had no idea what was going on, and flinched away, clutching to her father's clothing, when the woman reached her glowing hand out to her. She averted her pale violet eyes from her and closed them tightly, terrified. But no touch came, only a faint warmth that soon faded entirely. She opened her eyes in time to see the woman nod gravely at her father and then turn to walk towards her. And no matter how Quinnlash struggled, no matter how she screamed or cried—the pyromancer took her. The last things she ever heard from her family were two words from her father, as she tearfully begged him to take her back home with mama, please, whatever she did she was sorry, she'd be a good girl from now on, she'd never ask to go outside again:
"Goodbye, Quinn."
From then on, she studied different topics, in different ways. How to conjure flame. How to use it to defend yourself. How to exercise fine control over it. How to channel it for sustained periods. The work was grueling—mentally and physically exhausting. Months bled into years and years bled together, as she studied and trained as a pyromancer, first from a small group of skilled pyromancers and then—as her prodigal once-in-a-generation skill became apparent—by Ezlineia Aldos, the Pyromancer-Queen of Midnos, whom she became very close to. She even started calling her Mom.
Still, the habits ingrained into her by her parents held. Whenever she had time to spare, little enough of it thought there was, she would plod her way into Ezlineia’s library and find the book that Ezlineia told her to sink her brain into to distract her from the crippling fear she felt of the outside world. In reference tomes and manuals of pyromancy, the world was categorized. Understandable. Dissected. But whenever she stepped outside, it all bled together into a mess of darkness and confusion that she fled from time and again. She'd heard the stories of the Void. She'd heard tales about what lurked out there in the darkness. And she was, as ever, afraid. So she buried herself with scholarship and training, distracting herself from the terrifying world around her. She was a perfect piece of moldable clay: quiet, meek, obedient, desperate to be loved, and hopelessly eager to please.
Time ticked by, revealing Quinnlash, now a very powerful—if very inexperienced—pyromancer of 24 years, still lurking in Ezlineia’s libraries, reading about the world that she was ever and always too scared to explore, even past her doorway. There was a hidden, growing part of her that wanted, that desperately yearned, to see what was out there. But it was crushed beneath something far more meaningful that had bubbled up beneath her of late. Studies had been done in Midnos on how to fight the Void. How to resist their corruptive influence. She should know, she’'d read them all. But nothing she'd ever found in her mentor’s library knew what they were. And with that realization, the deep-rooted anger reared its head. She had been shut up her entire life, first of her parents' will, then Ezlineia’s, then her own. And now, 24 years into her life, what did she have to show for it? An exhausting fear. A horrible feeling of being trapped. And not a fragment of new knowledge to contribute to anything. She knew how to wield fire, but what did that matter if she didn’t even know what she was fighting?
Angry. Angry.Angry. Angry at the entire world. But she didn't let it out. She couldn't let it out. She closed in again. And she let it fester. It simmered beneath her for a year and a half, during which time she grew increasingly desperate to find out more about the Void. To find out something, anything, about the Void. A way to justify to herself the decades spent in isolation.
But she never did.
And nearing the tail end of her twenty-fifth year, the caldera of rage had swollen within her, growing more and more misplaced tremors of anger. Anger at her parents, who locked her in one room for years, and instilled deep within her the fear of the unknown that still dogged her feet. Anger at that damned pyromancer Elan for taking her away from her family when she was scarcely old enough to understand what was happening. Anger at Ezlineia, for her obsessed devotion to training her to become the next Queen. But most of all? Most of all, she was so furious it made her sick to her stomach at herself. If all the Midnosian studies on the Void were useless, what was she? Hiding in the library walls, never daring to take more than a few steps outside? Her whole life...what did any of it mean?
No more. No more calculating decisions for weeks before taking a single action. No more staring silently at the ceiling, unable to sleep, eyes fearfully darting about the room for hours. No more suppressing her emotions, crushing them down until they boiled her alive. No more books. No more. No more useless scholarship. No more being groomed to take the throne by Ezlineia. After all, a queenship was just another, shinier cage. Never again. No more. She needed to leave this place. To escape. To throw herself into something else, something so singular and savage that she could only ever think of it. Her brain screamed for it.
The caldera burst. The volcano erupted.
With barely a conscious thought, she found herself strapped to a table as a willing volunteer, with Mom standing above her.
"Are you really sure you want to do this, Quinnlash?" "Fucking yes! Hurry up already!
The Queen sighed almost mournfully. And then came the pain. Her pyromancy warred with the ember growing within her, violently rejecting this foreign flame. Her skin peeled off and regrew. Her blood seethed and boiled. Her muscles were shredded, rebuilt, and shredded again. She vaguely remembers her bones snapping like brittle burnt twigs under their own weight. And her eyes incandesced, searing themselves white hot and bubbling within her skull. One of them ran out of her face, dripping like magma to the floor and collecting in a smoking, ruined pool. Only the other made it through the transformation from scholar to something far more dangerous, and it was forever dyed with a baleful yellow light.
In the years since, she's changed so much from the her that hid from the world that she doesn't even recognize what she was anymore. She's a different person now. The life of a Huntress was one that she'd only come upon through reckless abandon and overpowering emotion—sheer blinding anger—and so that is who she became. She barely even remembers the old Quinnlash. The Quinnlash that she left behind. And for that she is thankful, as she embraces a new Quinnlash. The Quinnlash who fights the darkness. Who embraces the constant pain. Who does all she can to not feel fear. Because if she does, then the rest of her—the one she's tried so hard to forget—may come creeping back.
Never again. Fight for the sake of fighting. Never again. Move on. Never again. Don't ever look back.
It's going to be a bit before I can properly dig into a character, I've got some nerve damage to deal with. If it goes on too long, don't hesitate to move without me.
Member
Mcmolly
Fetzen
washcloth
Kuro
Nev
Izurich
ruler of spades
Supermaxx
Feyblue
Punished GN
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