Tau

[Mabaroshi-Mura:Kuridan] ༺⋆⋇ เภՇ๏ Շђє ๓เรՇร ⋇⋆༻ Part 2

Yume

It didn’t feel like waking. Rather being "spit out" of a nightmare. Outside wasn’t much better: cold, sounds of demon combat, and echoes of battle far off in the distance. Yume groaned softly, rolling herself to standing position. Her brain was throbbing, pulsing in time with the mythril etched into her skin.

She took a brief moment to nod at the moose lady. That was all she had time to do. They were off to the sounds of battle.

Yume, on the other hand, was not.

The trial meant a lot to some. To her, it was a pastime. A fun little challenge to stretch her magic skills a bit. But this tree… this wasn’t just some sentimental rite of passage. This was ancient. Powerful. Special.

…

"This stupid fae blood is getting to my head…" Yume muttered quietly, her thoughts way more like a pretentious elf than she ever wished to be. Nevertheless, she stepped behind the tree, they seemingly ran off, and it wouldn’t be long until they failed to notice the difference.

"Who was that?" Yume asked the magic tree with her telepathy. She doubted she had to elaborate, but she did anyway, "The… Yumom. Did you just make her up? Could you… do it again?" The last sentence surprised even her. She never thought of herself as one to get obsessed over dreams and fantasies. But she was cold, her winter clothes wet and nasty from the snow. Shivering, alone in a strange land of fluffy people who talked weird.

She raised a hand, pressing it to the trunk of the tree, her forehead soon to follow. "I’m tired," she whispered. "…so tired of being a stranger. And…" Yume’s mental thoughts cracked at the seams, as her own, uncharacteristically serious words reached out like psychic ripple, "…if the world outside has nothing for me, I’d rather just sleep."

[Mabaroshi-Mura:Kuridan] ༺⋆⋇ เภՇ๏ Շђє ๓เรՇร ⋇⋆༻ Part 2

Yume

Yume unleashed a self-satisfied smirk as the demon sizzled from her attack. The very fact that it survived was impressive, but the damage was obvious. At first, she thought it was done for. Then, with agonizing slowness, it began to move, her heart sinking with it as she gazed up at the horrific claw of death.

"H-how did you…!?" Of course! It wasn’t real, she didn’t really hit it with a giga-holybeam, this was a dream world, and this ghastly thing was making the rules. Maybe. Either that, or her staff needed some work. Work that, if the claw dropped, would never come to fruition.

Yume crouched down, ready to dash as fast as her legs could carry her, but before she could spring off, she was met not with a crushing demon claw, but something far more undoing. "Get off! We’re…" she never finished the sentence, as the beast seemingly recoiled from nothing.

Then came those words. Yume didn’t know this person, but neither was she (entirely) stupid. She knew what a Mom looked like, what one sounded like, what one felt like. She’d had one once… long ago, in another world. In fact, the two sounded way more alike than felt natural.

A small part of her wanted to shove her away and start issuing grievances, but this mysterious woman practically radiated love that made it an impossible task. Was this it then? Another trick? The impossible test? Not a demon, but saying no to… this? "Who… why didn’t you… where…" Yume started half a dozen questions, half of which ended up half-articulated. Instead, the sassy, obnoxious girl simply melted, rubbing foreheads with the affectionate fae mom until… she was gone.

Slowly but surely, Yume came to her senses, as if finally stumbling out of a warm, secluded sauna. One-by-one, her companions were vanishing into mist, with no way to tell if it was erasure or escape. In the end, it was her and the confusing antler lady. Yume still understood maybe one word out of 3, but this time, it was enough. She shared a nod with her.

"Nice work, tree-head! Let’s finish this!" she shouted, raising the staff and unleashing her signature move… "Dinner time!"

Brain Drain | Grade B — (Trademark Spell, -1 cooldown)
Magic B, Telepathy B, Energized E, Homing E, Element [Psychic] F, Blight [Psychic] E, Range F, Targets F, Selective F, Enervation E, Non-lethal F
3 post cooldown
Unleashes psychic tendrils, which repeatedly strike at the head, aiming to latch on to the minds of several targets. On contact, these consume memories, starting with one critical to functioning in combat, and moving on to core ones.

[Mabaroshi-Mura:Kuridan] ༺⋆⋇ เภՇ๏ Շђє ๓เรՇร ⋇⋆༻ Part 2

Yume

Yume struck the ground with a groan and a gross squelch that she felt in her very soul. Pure revulsion overtook her, not only from the demon sludge, but also her doppelgänger getting slurped up into a dentist’s worst nightmare. Her eye twitched and she pushed herself up just in time to be knocked down again from the earthquake of hands.

"That’s IT!" she shouted. The demon had committed the unforgivable sin of making her feel gross, and Yume’s full ire had finally been unleashed. "Give me back my reflection, you freak!" No more being clever or sassy, it was time for true retaliation.

Fae-like whispering quickly poured from her lips; words she herself hadn’t the foggiest clue the meaning of, they were merely repeated syllable-for-syllable. Her staff rose in her hand, humming with the high-pitched ring of enchanted mythril. The ornate tip began to glow like an artificial sun in the pitch-black nightmare, pouring light into the sky. As it filled the air above, the light refracted through the mirror shards above, covering the dark stone in a cascade of prismatic waves, as if they were under a crystal sea. For a moment, that was all the spell seemed to do…

"Close your eyes and stay near me…" Yume spoke with a low, uncharacteristically serious tone, taking her own advice before swinging the staff down like a hammer. In one breath, the fabulous lightshow turned from a gentle glow, to a radiant inferno. A wall of eye-watering white surrounded them, an eye of the storm, as Yume began to pet her staff. "Good work, Eris…" she whispered to it through the chaos, forcing a smile.

Daybreak | Grade B — Effectiveness 16 (21 if Cognitive Expansion is still active)
Magic B, Penetrating B, Blight [Radiant] B, AoE C, Selective C, Control Environment F, Affinity [Air] F
4 post cooldown (item)
Raising the staff, a bright cloud made of light pours out from the top, covering a half-mile radius. Moments later, it begins to fire devastating beams of destructive light across the area, dissolving whatever’s touched with radiant energy.

[Mabaroshi-Mura:Kuridan] ༺⋆⋇ เภՇ๏ Շђє ๓เรՇร ⋇⋆༻ Part 2

Yume

Yume jumped back as she noticed it: the absolutely horrifying, dead-eyed stare coming from her own face. The stuff of nightmares. Or, in this case, a very particular nightmare. All around her, everyone seemed to be dealing with their own special brand of insanity, and Yume offered each one of them a brief look of solidarity.

"We could ask you the same question, Skyeballs!" Yume shouted, refusing to back down even an inch. "Why should I not just eat you?" It was a complete bluff. She didn’t even know if she could eat the mind of a nightmare being, much less if she wanted to. If brains could get indigestion, that sounded like the perfect recipe for it. And yet, somehow, it probably wouldn’t even be the worst thing she’d eaten.

"It’s not the living I’m after. It’s the legacy! Remembrance!" Yume finally answered, digging her heels into the fracturing mirrorscape beneath her boots. "And I will be remembered, even if I have to carve ‘Yume’ into the very concept of thought itself!"

[Mabaroshi-Mura:Kuridan] ༺⋆⋇ เภՇ๏ Շђє ๓เรՇร ⋇⋆༻ Part 2

Yume

Yume returned a look at the kitsune by her side... the real one, supposedly. Her eyes narrowed, pouting slightly. "You have no idea, Fluffytails," she answered, bouncing a few of her curls with the free hand not clutching her staff. She closed her eyes as she began to concentrate. What flooded her mind began to make her head dizzy.

Voices. Endless voices, jumbled thoughts, seemingly meaningless jargon, or perhaps overlapping. It was absolutely sickening. At once, her magic snapped back, retreating from the cacophony like a burned finger. Her own voice (sorta) brought her back, continuing to taunt Kota with something strangely personal.

Then came the faces. Eris... Aedri... Martin. "That's..." she didn't have time to finish as Lenara shattered the ground (if it could even be called that) beneath her feet. More irksome reminders of who she was, mixed with a tone that had her eye twitching. She leapt back just in time to avoid having a crystal shard rip through her leg, gritting her teeth as the finally broke.

"Shut up, you freaky skyeballs!" Yume shouted, waving her staff menacingly in the air at the looming gaze above. Rushing forward, she opened her arm and wrapped it around Doppelyume's shoulders possessively. A bit too possessively, perhaps. Like a child clinging to a comfort blanket. "Like I'll listen to you. I'll bet you want me to shatter the mirror! Puppeteering my copy and putting stupid words in her mouth. You're hoping I'll destroy her!"

Yume had absolutely no evidence of any of this. The simple truth was... a living, breathing reflection just sounded like a dream come true. Memories began to surface: staring into the still bathwater, whispering at the curly haired girl staring back and pretending she was a friend who really knew her. It wasn't the first substitute for a lasting friend she'd had, and certainly hadn't been the last. But maybe this one could be. They could make their own movie theater, and eat popcorn, and laugh at the people they hypnotized into acting like chickens. She wanted that. Needed it.

"I won't! Because... my reflection is something I cherish!" she declared, her telepathy turning away from the dream itself, and narrowing in on just Doppelyume. One voice in the mess, finding the strings, cutting them. Or, perhaps they were all in her head, and what she was truly doing was drawing over a living doodle of the mind. Either way, she poured all her focus on wresting her reflection back from the influence of whatever nightmare Skyeballs was inflicting on them.

[Mabaroshi-Mura:Kuridan] ༺⋆⋇ เภՇ๏ Շђє ๓เรՇร ⋇⋆༻ Part 2

Yume

Yume was no stranger to weird dreams and mental shenanigans, but something about the scene before her felt uncomfortably ominous in a way that sent shivers down her spine. Something about it. Possibly the giant eyes. Those were never a good sign.

She stared at the mysterious swordswoman—or really, more of a dream copy of her—with a healthy dose of indignation marking her sharp, golden eyes. "Yes," she answered curtly. It was a question which had crossed her mind before. She’d answered it by marking a wall with a silly doodle and returning the next. Proof of existence, as far as she was concerned.

Instead, she turned her eyes to the Yume-dupe: Mr. Spookyeyes borrowing her face to harass the fluffy boy. Lenara was just trying to get under her skin. That was easy to ignore. But Doppelyume!? That really irked her.

Stepping forward, Yume raised her staff, and brought it down on Yume’s head with a solid THWACK, just enough to hurt, without threatening any serious harm. "Don’t you put stupid words in my mouth! That’s my job!" she declared, glaring daggers at her copy. "And if you’re going to provoke him, you could at least go for the tails! Like, save some fluff for the rest of the world! There’s probably 8 young foxboys somewhere crying because he got greedy!" It had the form of a teasing joke, though Yume’s delivery was horribly dry, leaving plenty of room to question it.

Glancing up into the sky, Yume watched the air for a while, waiting for the spooky eyes to return. After a while, the runes on her shoulders began to glow a bright blue, reflecting off the ground underneath. Yume felt her thoughts race at a dizzying speed, the world around her appearing to slow to a droning crawl as the endless flood of thoughts only magnified her natural impatience. At once, her magic reached out, probing the mind of whatever it was that had them trapped here.

Mythril Rune Tattoo

Cognitive Expansion | Grade B
Bolster B [INT & PRC], Magic D, Duration E, Feature [Lightning Calculator]
4 post cooldown
Yume's tattoo acts as a secondary brain, made not of grey matter and neurons, but mythril and magic runes. Until disrupted or forced to rest, Yume's dual-mind races with unnatural clarity, pushing her mental abilities to new heights. Can alternatively be connected via Telepathy to another mind nearby, offering it the benefits instead.

Yume

Telepathy B