Raineh Daze

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Miina Malina

Ride sea serpent, try not to get her ribs broken again, go kill people. It was a nice simple plan from Miina's end; nobody was expecting her to make any sort of big decision making and she just had to not burn herself out early on before they got to the meat of the matter. It was bound to be less subtle than her last attempt to infiltrate while people were distracted, but…

Huh, would that woman be there? "I g-g-guess we should be c-c-careful of that Loki woman?"

Or maybe she'd go off and try infiltrating? Whatever spies did was annoying and complicated, this was why it was good there were other people to do it.

An hour… more than enough time to get something to eat, she'd go looking for that. Ah, but Rudolf…

She gave the Edreni man a tap on the shoulder. "D-D-Don't die. I have q-questions."

…

There ought to be fish around, right?

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Miina Malina

Miina waved off returning to the surface immediately – after all, she still had her Exit materia, so it would take almost no time at all. When? Well, they knew it was a few hours, she wasn't going to stay down here that long. It was fine, she just wanted to take in the atmosphere a bit longer…

Well, the Mystrel hadn't been lying. She did want to just take it in and look at it, but it wasn't… well, that didn't really encompass it? Even if she put aside the existence of the crystal for just a moment, all the attacks unleashed in such a short span of time, in such a confined space… the taste of it almost lingered on the air. It was fascinating to look at, all the slight ways the purity of the aether and the elements themselves had been twisted and touched, the almost unnoticeable lingering difference between the haste Izayoi's materia had created and her own…

Even now, the air was still slowly drifting, not yet reduced to its natural underground stillness.

What was particularly strange was the two flavours of something… unpleasant. One was both thick and almost burned away; that would be the Blight and the corruption on Famfrit and the crystal. There was nothing to be learned there, Miina might be reckless but she wasn't suicidal. The other… hmm, where had that come from? It didn't fit with the ninja, nor Esben's new penchant for summoning, and Galahad had just thrown his spear.

Ah, that was Rudolf, then? She hadn't really been of a mind to focus on it, the last few times they fought something big – never in a position to stick around after and just examine the battlefield. That explained some of the… stranger things he'd done, she had thought maybe they were sword techniques or materia. Would he answer if she asked? Whatever was going on, it was interesting… not something that she wanted to tangle with directly, but the knowledge would be nice. Conceptually, she knew the most extreme, most violent parts of black magic must touch on something similar and not pure elemental destruction, but…

She knew her limits. Rudolf might not know what's going on, too, not enough to answer her questions.

The red mage's attention drifted to the crystal. This… this was interesting, though, now that it was purified. Oh, what could she do if she was able to just manipulate it directly… but that would be wrong, possibly destroy the world or something, and get her in trouble. The best case scenario she could see was drowning an army in exchange for Brightlam, which…

Hmm, she cared more about killing Valheim than she did the city, but there were still those other things to think about.

But it was her best opportunity to study and, well, meditate on water alone. It was honestly a lot more fascinating than she gave it credit for, and now that Miina thought about it… why? Why did all her offensive and defensive spells revolve around ice? Defensively, it worked in a pinch, but they had been having water shot directly at them, so countering it with the pure element and not mixing it with a hint of air…

Offensively, ice had its benefits. It was more about piercing than violently smashing, and it jumped out as a somewhat more enduring way to enforce restraint. It was cleaner, you could get away with smaller amounts… but really, it was just habit. Zeke had encouraged her and taught her ice, because it was what he knew and it was just nice to have the skill on a hot day and make it a little more bearable.

But did she really have a reason to stick to it? Yes, her most certain way to kill someone was basically to seed ice into their blood and tear them apart from the inside, but she could just as easily use that as a way into their bloodstream and tear everything out. Or maybe not just as easily, but Miina was pretty confident she could pick it up with practice. The advantages ice gave otherwise… if she wanted penetration, generally, lightning would be more beneficial. She could restrain and impede people in other ways. Water… well, Famfrit had shown one part of it: water could smash and crush, or it could flow around, or… hmm, if you could get it around their head, that was even better. Everyone needed to breathe.

But, for now, could she pull off anything adjacent to that? There was no better place to practice, nowhere that would ever come as close to being so effortless that even non-mages could do it. It probably wouldn't impede her fighting ability later, even. So, if she just picked an arbitrary part of distant wall as the target, then it would… probably be fine.

Even if she was trying to work this one out based entirely on guesswork and an assumption it should vaguely be like the golem's weird magic jar.

Naturally, there were a lot of failures. At first, that meant nothing. Then it meant that Miina, and everything around her, were unfortunately saturated by the water conjured up out of nothing… it really was a good thing that wet fur wasn't that annoying, so long as the water wasn't salty. Then a vaguely directed stream (maybe if she ever needed to put a fire out?), a more concentrated stream, and then…

The smack of water against stone was satisfying.

So she did it again. And again.

… hmm, she'd probably better get back to everyone, right?

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

"What's missing?" Tyaethe was the first one to ask, leaning forward curiously and… it wasn't that she wasn't aware that this could be misconstrued, or that the fey might take offence somehow; it was that she didn't care. Standing around in awkward silence wouldn't necessarily see them out of here faster – they might just be seen as common thieves, too, or suspects. Despite having all been rather busy while… whatever was taken was taken.

And she was curious. What had been taken from the Moonlit Queen while they had been out fighting Rozenalt that was so important that it couldn't wait until her visitors had left?

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Miina Malina

The dark orbs overwhelmed all thought of fighting back for a second, Miina doing her best to dodge and generally stay out of the way… although not in any way that left her open to retaliating. Dropping to all fours might get you out of the line of fire but it was hard to think of anything more restrictive to your ability to fight. Hands were useful. Including for scrambling out of the way, as it turned out, pushing herself closer to the action.

But Izayoi's instructions came through before she had chance to think of anything else. Maintain the storm, huh? That should be easy enough, the older Mystrel had already saturated their surroundings with air aether. To keep it going would only take more haste… but maybe she could add a little something else? As corrupted as it was, Famfrit was still water-aligned, and as Galahad had already shown, lightning was effective…

"On it."

So why not push that into the vortex? Maybe it would be useful leveraged to attack, or maybe it would just harass the construct. Best case scenario was that this would become a proper storm. Or maybe they'd all get shocked, that would be bad. But it was too late to second guess, and she was already committed, the redhead wanting to know what would happen. Wind and haste to whip the water into a hurricane, and a charge building…

Had anyone ever created a true thunderstorm underground?

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Miina Malina

"Dispel," the cat hissed, ears flat and glaring at the golem for a second. Eugh, how did someone like Isolde do it to an entire group? That would be so handy but… no, of course it could repurpose into something completely unrelated to water. Why expect the stupid guardian thingy composed almost entirely of water aether to stick to it?

At least this was fast enough to let her start dodging the spheres of water and not getting pummelled by them.

Well, Rudolf had had the right idea, and making it easier for everyone who wanted to stab Famfrit to not get shot was probably better than directly attacking herself, so… how about if she turned around one of her usual pieces of assistance? And gave this guardian a taste of its own medicine at the same time?

"Slow," Miina said. There… well, for however long this held, if it even worked at all. If it worked, this dodging would probably be easier. Hopefully.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Miina Malina

Miina stared dumbfounded at the golem for a second before falling back on what had worked so well for the mines: "Libra."

…

Well, that could have been more informative. Well, she supposed it was useful to know that it wasn't really a giant metal contraption (probably), but just some eidolon or other… but "oh yeah, it's water" was pretty obvious. It had even announced it! And its own corruption.

"It's m-m-mostly water aether… n-not quite Leviathan," she rattled off, head tilting. Did that mean anything to most of them? Uh… well, it should dissuade anyone from attempting to burn it, which was probably only the small rabbit, and maybe something Éliane had on hand, "It's c-c-corrupted… oh, and it's c-casting."

For her part… well, lightning had worked well against Leviathan, but she didn't want to do that sort of strategy again against something with even fewer obvious places to stab. It had hurt quite enough the first time, and this time they knew there would be extra fighting. But, if they were going to be magically assaulted by a water-aligned enemy…

There was the familiar white magic feeling of a barrier settling on the various party members. _{"…Nulfrost."}

It had better not pull out a fireball or something, corruption or no. That would be rude.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

"He was too much of a skeleton to cry… but there was a lot of cursing. And screaming. It was magnificent," Tyaethe announced, sharing a bloodthirsty grin with the fae queen from atop Fionn's shoulder. "Oh, but he's gone without a shadow of a doubt. Everything that was Rozenalt was burned away by Reon's fire, there's going to be no coming back from that."

It was just a shame he hadn't said yes to letting her have his blood. There had been so much of it, and it would have been an interesting experience… oh well, she would live.

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Miina Malina

Once the pressure plates were cleared, the redhead advanced towards the minefield and… stopped, crouched down with her tail for once level and still. As usual, she was just going ahead without actually talking about what she was doing, already too wrapped up in the puzzle presented.

It was… hmm, the arcane magic was interesting, she supposed? It wasn't really very often that she had come across magic made to do something permanent; it came with the territory of being… well, generally reviled, especially when it came to black magic. She really ought to ask Rudolf if she could look at his big sword some time; there was something very strange about that weapon…

No, no, focus, Miina. The mines were pure magic, there was nothing physical to them… which made it all the weirder, really. Ah, if only she had plenty of time to check how they worked, it would be nice to be able to set up something like this in future…

Still, for now she just had to get rid of them. It was possible that tossing something physical in would set it off. Hm, but then the entire minefield would clear itself if a bit of person got blown in by one of the other traps, that would be no good. So… she wanted to set it off magically. Or just clear it out… the entire thing could probably be dispelled, but that would be a wasteful effort when they might have to do a lot more fighting. So… she'd need a better examination, one that didn't involve creeping right up to one of the mines and potentially having her face blown off.

"Libra," the Mystral muttered, otherwise continuing to stare at the mines. So… if she looked past everything keeping it stable, then it was basically just contained until the detection set it off? It was a neat construction, she supposed; very split out rather than integrated. The sort of thing built up until you could use all of it independently, and keeping any white and black magic very separate… if they even counted as such; this wasn't her focus at all. Still, that meant there was a critical weakness here: every single one of them could be triggered by the same… hmm, what was the word? Ah, it didn't matter, she wasn't trying to teach it to anybody else. Some sort of metamagical commonality, that was all that was important.

So, if she just pulsed that once…

"G-Got it," Miina announced, standing up and taking a step back. This range should be good, right? So… go.

Ah, she was really starting to enjoy the sight of things exploding, even if nothing got blown up.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

She could have avoided being picked up; there was nothing impairing her reaction times. She could even have broken free after that, even without causing (real) damage. Watching Fionn try to keep his grip on a suddenly armoured figure even larger than he was would be an interesting one.

But all of that would have been more exertion than she thought was a good idea, so the vampire just pounded her (less) burned fist on his back. "This is no way to carry a lady!"

Still, there was enough slack for her to wriggle around to a seated position with the air of someone who's done this too many times before, even with her somewhat limited range of motion right now.

The vampire gave a slow blink at Renar's announced desire to take armour. "Do none of you have any sense of self-preservation? Those idiots nearly drew Rozenalt's entire attention, and now you're taking magic fae armour?"

Final Fantasy: Lightseekers

Miina Malina

Now properly dressed for battle – that is, clothing that could accommodate some armour without looking ridiculous, and more importantly having a hat – the Mystral slunk along at the rear of the group, almost coming to a complete stop in the prison. This close to meeting up, and she had to go into the bowels of the cathedral rather than follow the trail? Mm… well, there probably wasn't much of one at this point, especially if he'd done a proper disappearing trick after recovering anything that had been confiscated.

But there was no time to stand here thinking about how this had happened again, and instead she hastened to keep up as they trundled ever deeper.

Miina had no idea what she was expecting here, but fish lizard men leaping out of the rivers wasn't it. But it was very nice of them, to her, to be all… wet. It made them a much easier target for what was about to come – if they were intelligent, maybe they would have stayed in the water and let them past?

"Thundara," the redhead's voice was quiet, but the spell itself wasn't, in the confined space. Hmm, that was something she hadn't really thought about, was it? Still, electricity and such invitingly wet targets… it was nice watching it jump. That should thing things out a little for the frontline fighters.