Mcmolly

To Become a Knight! ~ A Chivalric (Mis)Adventure

Dot

---

“Oh, Valefor, right! Uh…definitely. With the…and your…uh, voice. Yeah, for sure. Valefor. Sorry, good morning.”

Dot finished lacing up her boots and stood. She bounced on the balls of her feet, trying to get a feel for flexibility. She stretched her arms and brought her knees up to her chest one at a time, and blessedly didn’t hear any stitches in the uniform stressing. This was a good sign, hopefully she’d be able to move naturally in this thing, but if it couldn’t hold up to an aerial or two, she’d be in trouble.

“I’ve never had a roommate before, actually. So if I’m doing something wrong or, I dunno, if you need anything, you can tell me. Like you said, we’re sharing the place, so, might as well make it work for both of us, right?” She gave Elon a smile, then turned for the door. “Guess we’ll be starting our first day soon. I’m kinda nervous, how about you?”

To Become a Knight! ~ A Chivalric (Mis)Adventure

Dot

---

To Dot's surprise, she had slept quite soundly through the night. The narrow, shelf-like bunks had made her afraid that she might feel confined, trapped as she had in Alexandria, but that was not the case. Even before she’d fallen asleep, she felt no sense of isolation, no panic at the closeness of the walls or the fear that her door might just be locked from the outside. Instead she felt calm. Her dreams were still and quiet.

She had not heard her roommate arrive, but she did hear them wake in the morning. It was much easier to get herself up than she had expected it to be. Back home there’d been no reason to rise early unless she knew Adean was coming to visit; otherwise, there was no one to care if she spent the whole day dreaming—not that she made a habit of doing so.

Shimmying about in the dark, Dot managed to slip into her uniform before she left her bunk. Waiting there, already prepared himself, was a short boy with a rather gloomy demeanor. He had a book in his hands, and it seemed to her as if he was waiting for something. Or someone. Dot blanched—oh no, was it her? Was she holding them up? Oh gods, what if she was late to her first day of training? No, surely that wasn’t the case. Someone would have come, said something, probably dragged her out of the bunk. Besides, panic was likely not the best way to introduce herself.

How did people introduce themselves? She hadn’t worried about it so much yesterday, what with everything happening in such a flurry, but now she was alone. With a person. A person she didn’t know.

Guess she was winging it.

“H-hello,” she said softly, climbing down to the floor. The wood was cold, she took a seat and started tying on her boots. “I’m Dot. It’s short for, uh…Donathon. My full name is Donathon. I mean I have a last name, too, but you don’t have to call me that. Hi. What’s your name?”

Steal Away The Light

Location: Uhladein, Eastern Marches

---

Rain’s back hit stone as a trio of the skittering voidlings pinned her to the wall. One needlelike limb speared her shoulder, another dug deep into her thigh, and she felt two or three more clawing at her kicking feet. Pain flooded her, but it was an undercurrent in the burning deluge of her Gift. There was no way in hell she was about to admit these fuckin’ things were actually hurting her, not a chance. Gross.

Pincers clacked inches from her face, behind them a gnashing maw of razor shadows. Hungry little shit. She would have spat at it, cursed, told it to take a number and get back in line cause she hadn’t eaten all day either, but the spear in her shoulder twisted just right, and her words turned to a pained gasp.

Alright, fuck this. If it wanted to eat so bad, she’d feed it.

Rain let go of one limb, conceding it to scrape into her back, and jammed one gauntleted hand into the thing’s mouth. The furnace within her growled, flared beneath her skin, and for a brief moment the creature’s throat was bright as lamplight. It screeched, or started to, but she yanked her hand up and through its body with all the resistance of melting wax. It fell back, another clawed through its ashen body to take its place. Rain dipped to the side and slammed it into the wall, then sunk her own teeth into the back of what she guessed was where its head would be. Another shriek, something crunched and squished as her jaw snapped shut, and she spat ash onto the ground. The last one was crushed under boiling foot.

In the momentary quiet, she realized the slowpoke on the outskirts had caught up at one point, and carried on further into the keep. Between the rain and the hellbeasts, she hadn’t gotten a good look at her, but even distracted she was sure there’d been some weird shit going on. Regardless, the sounds within Uhladein were myriad and terrible—the party was moving again.

No way was she gonna let whatsherfuck have all the fun.

As Rain dug claws into stone and scaled the wall like a normal freak of nature, she heard screaming—different screaming, not the kind that was literally all around her, this was a collective deal. Once she was atop the ramparts, she scanned what she could see of the keep, and in the flashes of lightning, she thought she saw what had caught her ear.

Not terribly far away, a handful of guards were getting their shit rocked. No wonder though, cause the voidling doing the rocking was hands-down one of the biggest creatures she’d ever seen, and it was accompanied by a swarm of smaller, uglier little bastards too. Whoever it got its hands on didn’t last more than a few seconds, and those who were falling back weren’t going to get far before the void goblins caught up to them.

Far above, she heard a screech so loud it dwarfed the thunder. She looked up, hoping to spot some massive silhouette in the storm clouds, illuminated by the lightning, but was too late. Fighting something in the air, now that sounded like fun. Better than spiders and goblins and ogres. But she couldn’t get herself to move. She heard the guards scream again, and scowled up at the rain. Technically speaking, she wasn’t here to protect the guards, just the ember. It was their fault, really, for being so far out from the inner protections this long into the siege. Papa had said this is what happened—the void attacked, and people died. Not Rain obviously, but other people who weren’t as awesome as she was. It was just the way of things.

“Ughhhh…fuck."

You know what, being in the sky was overrated. Besides, she could get airborne any time she wanted, so really, if she thought about it, fighting some dumb void bird in the sky was actually way lamer than facing off against a giant with an army of violence at its heels.

Yeah, this would be cooler. Rain would know, she was kinda the leading authority on cool things.

Leaping back down, Rain shot off just before she touched the earth again, and made a B-line for the remaining guards. She dragged a claw along the dirt, and kicked up a wave of hot dust and shredded stonework between them and the goblins, before planting herself directly in their path. The voidlings hesitated, just for a moment, but if the guards were smart they’d capitalize on it and get their dumbasses further into the keep. If not, oh well, right? Not her problem, she was just here for a good time.

“You fuckers better make me look good.”

The voidlings came rushing in answer, and she met them with tooth and claw. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew this was too much, knew there were too many. She’d only been a hunter for a few months now, and she’d seen more void in the first hour of this siege than she had in her whole life, and nothing nearly as deadly.

But what did deadly matter? It wasn’t like she could die, right? Papa said so. No matter how much she got hurt, as long as she didn’t give up she’d just keep healing. Just keep fighting. Dying scared her, sure, but if all she had to do to avoid it was take a little pain, then there was no problem. She could take it.

She didn’t have a choice.

Steal Away The Light

Location: Uhladein, Eastern Marches

---

It would have been nigh-impossible to hear anything over the roaring of torrent and thunder, to say nothing of the screaming (agony and terror for garnish), or the crashing of tumbling stonework. But if one were inclined to try, and had a particularly keen ear, they might have heard commotion within the ruins of a small building near the outskirts of the southern front. At first there’d be nothing of note—cursing, angry yelling, the violent, ungodly sounds of the void at work, followed by the telltale silence of a bloody battle’s end—and very quickly our inquisitive listener might have shrugged and gone on to hear bigger and better things. But, if they had just a bit of patience, they’d be rewarded with something peculiar.

Humming.

And then singing.

The crooked door flew open and off its busted hinges, and amidst a gust of void ash sprung a lone girl trailing steam from steel claws, face smeared with black ichor. She moved with a bounce in her step, arms outstretched, letting the storm wash her clean, and sang in the way one does to themselves in the privacy of a bath or a long walk, when they’re certain no one else, not even a curious, hypothetical listener, can hear them.

“Rain on my skin, and ice in my mouth~
The smiles in my tummy when papa’s around~
The teeth of my en-e-mies scattered on the ground~
These are my fa-vo-rite things~ Aaaaand…”

Blessedly, before she could stumble through another verse, she was interrupted by a boom she could feel all the way into her bones, and the blindingly bright blossom of an explosion near the base of Uhladein. For a moment she was utterly captivated, mumbling a quiet, “Wooah…” before she noticed something.

All the fucking void were gone.

Well, okay they weren’t gone, but they’d all moved on from the outer defenses now, towards the inner walls and the tower proper. “What the fuck?” she spat, and what-the-fuck was right. They hadn’t won yet. Just because she’d gotten dragged into a scrap in some dinghy shack for a few minutes didn’t mean they were allowed to just ignore her. That wasn’t fair, it was bullshit. It was bullshit and—

Another explosion rocked the earth, and all of her complaints were blown away like dirt and ash.

Rain on My Skin, Ice in My Mouth grinned, bright-eyed and giddy. Fuck it, no point in wasting any more time. The party might have moved, but it definitely wasn’t over. She began to jog towards the tower, and deep within her, a heat equal parts ethereal and corporeal began to flare.

Not too far away, she noticed another hunter obscured by the rainfall: a tall woman with a big sword and no gumption. As she passed by, Rain hollered loud in the lull between thunderclaps.

“Pick up the pace, granny! We’re missing all the fun!”

Rain hopped and planted herself on the ground in a four-point stance. Her claws sank and found purchase in the tough soil beneath the mud, her feet pressed into a spring-tight lunge. As the heat within her built, steam began to rise from her form. The rain that soaked her through was evaporating as quickly as it touched her, and as the moments went on, even before it touched her. With the sudden crackling growl of a fire igniting, a haze of searing air burst around her, and Rain was instantly dry as a bone. Her hair fluffed out around her, the muddy ground beneath her hardened and cracked and melted against her claws.

It hurt. She grated her teeth into a grin and focused on Uhladein. Her whole body coiled with effort, boiled with heat, and just when the first bit of skin began to peel, she let it go.

With a thunderous roar, Rain launched across the empty battlefield, a comet’s tail of steam. She flew and flew and when she was low enough for her feet to touch the ground, she pushed off of it and shot upward. Colossal voidlings were closing in, some earthbound, others winged. One she saw engulfed in the flames of the second explosion, another, further, seemed drawn towards the rooftops.

Rain found one scaling the inner walls, a massive thing with multiple legs. She boosted herself higher, above it, then torqued to be upside down and brought her legs up above her head. Momentum kept her there for a moment, hanging in the air as though she had her feet pressed against the ceiling of the sky. Before gravity could have the pleasure, she blasted herself down, rocketing towards the creature in a whirling fury of white-hot claws and sharp, flashing teeth. Ichor sprayed the air as its umbral legs were severed, and its hulking body fell from the wall in a tide of dust and rainwater.

Rain landed as it began to dissolve, but in the ash she noticed a great mass remained. Writhing and screeching, she realized then that the voidling had only been half a threat itself—it had been carrying the other half. Dozens of smaller voidlings skittered free, some making for the wall, others fled for easier pickings.

Most, to her delight, came straight for her.

The Shattering of Aegis

_{@Obscene Symphony@Scribe of Thoth}

---

Damn.

The man lowered his sword, but it didn’t look like he was going to let them off the hook so easily. She recognized the bite in his voice, but the intent behind it was still hard to decipher. Was he doing this because they were Tainted? Surely there were easier ways to cause them trouble than to dog them all the way to the Bounty House, though she knew better than to underestimate the persistence of spiteful people. Perhaps he was just a different sort of sadist.

There wasn’t much time to worry over it before they were joined by even more newcomers. They didn’t look like guards—though frankly, it was hard for halflings to look like proper guards even in full armor—but they did bear colors. Yellow robes, the mark of Zubil. Priests.

Damn.

They were performing rites, or giving resting prayers, or doing any number of the other inane things priests did to the dead. It hardly mattered what they were doing, the real rub was that they were getting closer. For now they were bickering, but soon enough they’d notice the absolute mess around them, and immediately thereafter, they’d notice the two Tainted held up by a man with his sword drawn. Not a good look for Kyreth and herself.

“Yes, fine, sure,” she said, quiet and hurried. “We’ll take you with us if you can stand the company. But as I said, we don’t mean to be late, so let’s get going.”

With one last glance to the pair of priests, Lilann swallowed her nerves and gave the hedgeman her back, starting out of the cemetery and ushering Kyreth to follow her. She’d try to keep herself between the two of them, but at the moment it seemed more important that they get away from the halflings first. Then they could worry about being alone on the road with a man who gave his sword before his name.

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Location:The City of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

Time’s lungs were full, this time it was Seele doing the gasping.

Graves dropped his knife, limp, whimpering. Whatever it was he asked of Siegfried, he got a fist instead. It sent him tumbling back, blood lining the whole way—so much blood, oh god. Oh god. He’d stabbed himself. He’d stabbed himself in the chest.

Siegfried seemed entirely unphased, more preoccupied with the knife. He absently asked them to heal Graves, but…she couldn’t do that. Seele wasn’t a healer. She was a support, but she hadn’t—pointedly hadn’t—taken a single healing spell anywhere along the way. Her place was to keep people from reaching the edge, not to pull them from the depths. Now, staring at her friend bleeding on the ground, she didn’t know what felt worse: the helplessness, or the fact that she didn’t regret her choice.

Sif was a support though, surely she had something in her kit that could knit him back together. He might be grumpy about it, but at least he’d be breathing, and alive, and—moving.

He was still moving.

He was still going.

“Stop!” she yelled to Sif, in the same moment that her Shackles broke. The arcane crack that accompanied it did not snuff out her voice, but rather carried it, amplified it, distorted her cry into a dozen different tones and emotions that all withered in the air as quick as a licked wick.

don’t leave me

The air around her became charged with a ghostly puissance, like the whining before lightning struck. She hunched low, hands digging into imaginary earth, and then rose with slow, shaking effort as though she were lifting something massive. Her teeth grated together, her fingers stiffened and curled and began to blacken at their tips. The cobblestones around Graves rippled and began to bubble, boiling, roiling like waves whipped in storm winds. Like something was rising to the surface.

I dreamed I was a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea.

Don’t Leave me

The Anchor breached. The air smeared in thick jets around him, three, six, a dozen, two dozen.DON’T LEAVE METhey shimmered unnaturally, not glowing but rather pushing off the light around them, revealing in negative their ghostly, chain-like forms. Each link was as thick as war hammer, and as wide as a person’s shoulders.DON’T LEAVE ME

Graves had noticed the whisperings when he’d taken Seele’s debuffs, but in his haze he may not have realized that the voice uttering them was different. When she shielded him, when she strengthened him, it was her in his ear, in his mind, making promises, asking for promises in return.DON’T LEAVE METhis was different.

This was not Seele’s voice.DON’T LEAVE ME

And it was getting closer. It was coming from the chains. No, it was coming from his head and it was speaking to the chains. It was the chains speaking to him.

Don’t leave me. It said. The air filled with the scent of petrichor. Don’t leave me.

They surrounded him, a twisting, tightening maze between him and Sif. Don’t leave me. Closing in. Pulling forever up and down, endless, faster don’t leave me. The sound of waves lapping stone don’t leave me. How deep was the terrestrial sea beneath him that it could harbor these things these chains that were not alive but they spoke DON’T LEAVE ME they screamed DON’T LEAVE ME this voice this little voice it was so clear in his head DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME but it was garbled and blurry it was submerged it was an anchor DON’T LEAVE ME IT’S SO COLD DON’T LEAVE ME PLEASE PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS

The chains ran faster they ran closer they ran tighter they wanted him they wanted to hold him keep him DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME Don’t leave me DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME Over and over and over so soft so weak but so loud and so there and DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME_{DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME Don’t Leave Me Don’t Leave Me Don’t Leave me don’t leave me don’t leave me don’t leave me dontleaveme dontleaveme dontleaveme dontleavemedontleave medontleave medontleavemedontleavemedontleavemedontleavemedontleavemedontleavemedontleavemedontleavemedontleaveme}

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Location:The City of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

It was like time had stopped to gasp.

Graves spun and Seele froze, everything froze. The moment their eyes met was pulled taut at both ends, and yet if it had gone on forever she doubted she could have deciphered what she saw there. He hardly seemed sane. He hardly seemed human. She hadn’t recoiled because even as he reared on her she thought: ‘He won’t hurt me. He wouldn’t. He’s grumpy but he’s not…’

God, she didn’t know his name. It was a silly thing to think, especially as something that could very well have been her last thought, but it was all that came to mind. She wished she knew his name.

_{say it}

Time caught its breath, the moment snapped to.

Siegfried was in front of her. Seele caught herself before she stumbled onto her rear. Focus. Focus. Her body was two steps ahead of her. Pressing the barrel of her finger-gun to Siegfried’s back, she fired a Thrill of strength through him. He barked orders to Sif. Caster. Support. She whirled her hand and shot the girl with a spell-powered Thrill and a snapped an Aegis of protection around her for good measure.

In the back of their minds, they’d hear a young voice humming happily.

The Shackles continued to crack.

“Don’t hurt him!” She shouted. It wasn’t a cry for mercy, it was an order to Siegfried. She just needed a few moments. A few moments and some spells.

Seele invoked The Fivefold Path and gave Graves both barrels. A double-dose of strength-debuffs came hurtling his way like bolts of violet lighting. Graves was fast, and had her hopelessly trumped in agility; if her spells hit, then they hit, but she wasn’t banking on it. They didn’t need to, they just needed to buy time.

The chains binding her began to shimmer and crackle. Just a few moments more…

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Location:The City of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

There was no need to throw her off, Seele yanked her hand away the moment Graves drew his knife, stumbling back into the table with a yelp. For a moment she worried he might try to stab Siegfried in the back, but then she realized it was much worse than that. Blood pooled unnaturally in his hand, rushing and shaping with purpose until he’d made himself a hemorrhagic glove of pain. Suddenly, stabbing became the least of their worries.

Graves wasn’t just a brutal fighter, he was a warrior. He’d fought beasts and players alike and he did not have a reputation for losing. Granted, Seele wasn’t familiar with Siegfried’s own track record, and while he certainly seemed like the capable sort, that hardly mattered. Either Graves would run him over, or run himself ragged, or worse. God, it could get so much worse.

turnitoffturnitoffturnitoffturnitoffturnitoff

She scrambled back to her feet. “Jeez, jeez, jeez—Sif!” she shouted, hoping to snap the girl out of whatever trance had her grasped so firmly. “Brother—help—get—get your brother!”

Shackles formed around Seele’s wrists, and she bolted after Graves, shouldering through the door onto the street. Her eyes found Siegfried immediately and she snapped her fingers at him. The air around him briefly glinted with dull violet light, and with another snap, the same thing happened around Graves. Cracks appeared in her chains, not enough to break them, but she had a feeling she’d be throwing more shields out. Shackled as she was, the ones she created were weaker than normal—they wouldn’t hold up to real magic, or a heavy assault, but she hoped they’d take a few punches.

Her fingers formed a gun and she took aim at Graves’s back, but hesitated. Shielding them was one thing, but debuffing her friends? That couldn’t really be necessary, could it? All she needed to do was keep them protected long enough to break her chains. Then, hopefully, she could anchor Graves down and Sif could get Siegfried to walk away. He was reasonable enough to do that, right? Sif could convince him, right?

Right?

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Location:The City of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

Oh god oh no, never mind, no, this was a nightmare. This was a nightmare but she was awake and that wasn’t fair at all. At least with Kazuki they’d had the good sense not to lay hands on each other, but now it looked like sense was all but out the window.

Graves had caught her by the arm, which was good because she had been bound for the floor had he not. He threw the gauntlet down and Siegfried picked it up without hesitation. Seele looked desperately to Sif for help, hoping his sister might intervene and settle him down, she was the collected one after all. But that was a dead end, the girl didn’t look particularly composed herself, and something in her expression told Seele this was not an unfamiliar situation to her.

Fine, it was a fight then. Her friends were going to fight. They were going to punch each other, with their fists, or worse, and get all bruised and bloody and god why were they being so silly? And why was she resigned to it? No. She wasn’t resigned to it. She wasn’t resigned at all.

When Graves let go of Seele, she didn’t let go of him. He had height and weight on her, but when it came to make-believe worlds, size didn’t count for as much, at least not when magic was involved. A quick Thrill saw her strength buffed enough to hold onto him, and yank hard for his attention.

…you the unfortunate news.

“Graves, enough, please,” she whispered. “This is not the time, and he is not the enemy. Tonight you get to beat up all the lowlife bozos you can get your hands on, and if you want to imagine they all have Siegfried’s face, you can do that. But so help me god if you do not let him walk out of here right now I will chain you to the floor.”

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Location:The City of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

Oh, dear.

There was a pattern here, and Seele felt silly for having not anticipated it. Part of her was touched by Siegfried’s concern, another part admired Graves’s conviction—but all of her loathed the idea of them fighting, especially now. There had been time to mend things after Graves and Kazuki butted heads, but if these two fought now they’d be too busy sweeping teeth off the ground to help anyone. Unacceptable.

at 9am this morning

Seele rounded the table and planted herself firmly between them. She shot Graves a halting look that was, frankly, becoming familiar with him, and then gave the same to Siegfried.

“Stop it. Right now. Both of you,” she said sharply, yet paradoxically without edge. “We can’t sit here bickering with each other. We don’t have time for it, and neither do the victims.”

this morning

She noticed Siegfried’s hands were wound viciously tight—the poor boy looked like he might snap at any moment. “Siegfried.” Gently, she placed a hand over his fist, and leaned to be at-eyes with him. “I know it’s risky, and I know that risk means more now than ever. But we can’t sit here, and we can’t lose any more time thinking up something else. I’m sorry, we just can’t.”
on the
“Now, I trust Graves, and I trust everyone at this table. I trust them with my life, and that means you, too. I’m not asking you to share that trust, or understand it, or even support it. But you do have to accept it. I want you to be a part of this because I sincerely believe you can help these people, but I’m not going to force you, and I’m not going to judge you for choosing not to, just like I hope you’ll do the same for us.”

_{on the river bank.}