Powder Miner

Candide may have been blind, but he was not an idiot. When a figure seemed to suddenly have entered the battle, combined with some sort of... presence that made the former knight of Arne feel chills even without being able to see what was going on, well... here there was only one real possibility. "Sir Lancelot the Black, I assume. It is a shame I never had the opportunity to see one of Tameloc's Knights of the Round Table with my own two eyes, but it is an honor to be in your presence anyway."

Farther away from that particular commotion, Lizaveta was simply focused on devastating as many of her foes as she could as they moved to surround the little group she was in. "Come to meet your demises at Virtuous' hands too, have you?!" Blast Axe Cav E.

To his likely quite intense relief, Kusuke would find that his drive worked quite well -- as Satomi stepped back a little, each of his test movements worked as they normally did -- moving a certain number of feet no longer brought him right next to Satomi and no longer startled the hell out of her, but put him that number of feet in that direction, and moving a certain amount of time did the very same, which Ena could confirm through her now-rectified logs. Satomi mused on Ena's words. "Yes, I think it quite likely that they would bring the distortion with them -- if they do hail from this place, then they are every bit as much a piece of it as the air, and the dirt, no? Plus being in a realm like this tends to corrupt one's soul to go along with it; such is the way of realms, sometimes. Nonetheless, we ought to bring in at least one of those two to talk about it. Nobody would have more experience with this place than them, and the thinner one of those two men, though still somewhat addled, seemed to know more about the area."

Navin's mouth stayed in its frown. "This is not simply about good or bad deeds, Friedhold. It is about what it does to someone when they are a child and they are in the line of combat, or risking life and death of themselves and others. I have seen it," though in this case "seen it" really meant that he had experienced it himself, "and it does not leave good outlooks for those who are involved with it." With that said, Navin seemed content to turn back to the rest of the discussion. "I am afraid I am not very versed in the gathering of information, either -- I have always been more of a combatant than a detective, unlike some of my compatriots. I suppose I could try and meet somebody who knows something about the place, though."

Johanna's caution to stay calm at least had Ceridwen managing to stay just below the level of panic, but other than that she was more than a little bit out of sorts. However, she wasn't so out of sorts that she wasn't able to catch the cry of "I-intruders!" ringing out from down the hallway, and she immediately began running up the length of the hallway, armor clanking as she did. P12

Perlita buried her face in her hands for a moment, making a thoroughly frustrated sound -- Mira's actions were going to get somebody hurt, and it wasn't impossible that it would be her. But, nonetheless, she had to keep going if she was going to stop Trick from killing any more people. Perlita heads over to the Colorful Blocks area!

Rosanne moves to F10 Lucan moves to F11

Isobel sighed as the lot of them faffed about with the thief witch's hat, and opened a green bag hanging off of her waist. It took a few moments for her to get it ready, as she had to carefully transfer a few brightly multicolored poppy flowers to her pockets and then pack down some internal dividers, but eventually she walked up to the group with Marisa in it and presented the bag. "Here, take this. It isn't made for this, but we might as well get the damn thing put in a bag, at least. I admit that the idea of carrying something like this in my bag is worrying, but it's better than you guys literally trying to use a hat." Meanwhile, LOTUS found herself more contemplative -- she didn't have the instincts to make a thinking motion, but her thought was clear on her face. "This may indeed be some sort of corruptive artifact similar to how the Grail in the world of Asterlux and Shienar functioned, then. I would recommend being extremely careful with it, because we as of yet know very little of what it is capable of -- even if it a Trespasser-influenced artifact, note that we already know its capabilities are at least somewhat different than that of the artifact in the Asterlux world. The former at least could change the physical form of what it affected, while this artifact did not seem to exhibit a significant ability to do so, and the former required essentially fatal divine or light magic in order to dispel, whereas this one simple required a little violence."

move to s16 instead lol

Having just obliterated the wyvern in a single blast of magic, Lizaveta's increasingly euphoric streak continued, and she found herself immediately running (with uncharacteristic lack of huffing and puffing, though that probably wouldn't last forever) at the horseman with the axe, slinging magic at him. "We won't let you tyrants' lapdogs tear the country apart in war!" Oh yeah, that WAS Kane's reason for actually creating Virtuous, wasn't it? N15, worm AxeCav

Lizaveta was, to be honest, getting quite fired up, even if she didn't actually want to be here. "The forces of monarchs will never be able to stand up to forces of a pure, loving heart such as Virtuous!" P18, Worm the Wyvern Rider

Candide's mouth set in a grimace as he heard the sound of Merlin's young apprentice hitting the ground -- but the zip of an arrow being slung, the blast of magic hitting dirt, and the hue and cry of a pitched battle starting let him know that that most certainly was not the end of things. "Worry not, about one fall for this first clash is quite small. I've been in massive battles, surrounded by death rattles. I've been in armored charges where lances went through targes, into their poor target's head, in one instant, scores of dead. And I've been in scrimmages that left much lighter images. Where unfavorable starts were not taken to our hearts, for we just continued on until the battle was won, one fall was far from enough to make things truly that rough. This is one of the latter, do not let one blow matter. Instead, persist, and strike on. Let me hear an arrow drawn, and hear it strike its mark, our battle is not yet dark." H9, perform Neve

"Oppenheimer did this? He's horrific." "How many people has he done this to? How many people has he done things like this to?" Suddenly, a note of alarm entered Ceridwen's eyes as she started to consider the implications of what she'd just said, and she put her hand to her mouth "Oh... oh, no. That Wing Commander he has captured... what about them? He's probably... he's probably done terrible things..."

“...oh...” Ceridwen recognized that smell, from very very early on in her childhood. One of her earliest memories, in fact, though she’d smelled these spores later in her life, on patrols with Ynddi: Ceridwen remembered a bit of her short life before Yn Ddiddorol, before Gareth, and before the Dragon Knights; her mother, doing her best to take care of her on her own, pointing out to a six-year-old Ceridwen that she should never, ever, ever get closer if she ever smelled a particular smell, because what it would do would hurt her very, very badly. Ceridwen hadn’t understood death at the time, so her mother hadn’t put it that way, but... well, she was surrounded by death and misery now, wasn’t she? “...Johanna, I think I found, Greyson, but... well, I don’t know how they got here but there must have been man-eating spores. I can smell them very distinctly and, well... he’s just... ...gone. Only his things are left behind.”

Johanna applied vulnerary to the fellow Dragon Knight of her subordinates, and Ceridwen made a pained noise as she began to move, the scrape of metal on stone sounding out as she pushed her knee under her, her hands on the ground for a moment as she breathed. That all-encompassing, all-rending blast of magic had really been something horrific, and she was still visibly torn up, bleeding and marked along what was visible of her body, blood seeping out between the plates of armor elsewhere. “I’m... I’m sorry...” With another pained noise, Ceridwen managed to bring herself off of the ground - unsteady, but up. Verden’s healing magic at least put a little more steadiness in her movements, but it was still shame-faced and pained that she moved towards the door... shame-faced and pained but once again resolute (and perhaps desperate) to try and prove her worth despite yet another failure. She gently took a key from Fallon, and... “I... I will take front at this door. This may be where that Greyson the leader of the... of the animal-people mentioned is held.” Ceridwen moves to R25, takes the Door Key from Fallon, and opens the door.

Well, by this point Lizaveta and the new mage (Lysander, if she recalled correctly) had pretty much just carved through the entire armored core of an actual kingdom’s military unit... and now she found herself about to engage in a duel of dark magic. It would be less easy, but Lizaveta wasn’t actually worried — she might not really be fit, she might not be totally emotionally centered, but if there was anything she was confident in about herself, it was the way she had worked and studied to learn magic. She’d driven herself to the very limit to learn as much as she could, and she didn’t think the same was likely for this mage. She couldn’t know for sure... but she didn’t think he had a cause, not like she did. Lizaveta Worms Shaman A

Isobel gave Rory a little bit of a disapproving look at his (well, her, right now) bizarre attempt at intimidation — she had to imagine that she didn’t LOOK terribly intimidating, but she did have an axe she guessed... but anyway, she didn’t really WANT to be the intimidating person. ”Er... don’t mind her, please. Others of us, like this fairy and I, have been dealing with these corruptive creatures between worlds called Trespassers for a while now. It may be a bit much to believe, but things will probably become clearer soon enough.” The foot-tall fairy peeking out from Isobel’s pocket chimed in then. ”We have already dealt with entities with the power to alter other entities into corrupted forms against their will — it is of note that previous corrupted entities we found were only uncorrupted through... heavy application of light or divine magic, I will say. This does mark a departure, in that respect, and is thus worth examining more closely. What is the last thing you remember?”

Lizaveta was beginning to get a bit incredulous — had they not planned for people like her who could use magic at all? Was Gul really THIS bad? Maybe revolution would be a bit easier than she thought. M16, dab on Knight E with Worm

The mountain-dwelling, male member of the many mysterious merchants that were the Anna family suddenly saw a familiar scarred face pop into view, with a familiar smile — Anna Venus, holding a bag of (actually quite cold) water, and rapidly walking his way. Once she got up to him, she grinned wider at Anne and winked, extending the bag of water out to him. “Hey Anne, why don’t you be the one to give this to her?”

If there was one good thing about this fight, it was that they seriously weren't slowing down at all -- Ferdiad was doing incredibly, like Lizaveta had never seen before (admittedly, she hadn't seen much before in general but still), and she and the new thief guy were pretty much just melting through the armored vanguard of the enemy forces like a knife through butter. L15, Worm Knight D

Anna Venus winced and patted Anne on the shoulder as Carnation signaled an impending chewing out. "Good luck, bro." Then she proceeded to trot off to do what Carnation asked of her -- they were probably going to get gouged for cold water, she had to imagine, but she guessed that probably just meant that Carnation cared for the maid that much! That was nice of her. Unless she found a free source, therefore (in which case she would naturally milk it for all it was worth), Anna Venus would be using the group's money, not what of her own she had.

Anna Venus' eyebrows raised practically into her hairline for a moment as she shared a glance with her brother -- and then, once again, she grinned at him, then whispered at him: "Duuude, she's like, way hitting on you."

Anna Venus pouted for a moment after Chance initially intervened and the fight that had been spooling up before her eyes disappeared into nothing, but it wasn't long before she was all smiles again -- after all, she was probably going to have other opportunities today. "Fiiiiiiine. I guess that w--" Then Chance collapsed, and Anna Venus leaned over in her direction while Anne caught her -- that was enough to actually get her smile to disappear. "Uuuuhhh... what happened?"

A certain, heavily-scarred Anna had an attitude about the task that she had been assigned that was the direct opposite of that of the maid -- wandering around the city putting up flyers sounded fun! Not putting up the flyers themselves, Anna Venus didn't care about that, but the idea of wandering all over a big and busy city like this, well, Anna Venus couldn't help but smile. Maybe some ruffian would see a lone woman wandering around, decide that he could strike... at then she could blast him! That would be fun. Besides, there was no way that the muggers here in Prospero were anything like the ones in Cape Capital. Anna Venus was distracted from her thoughts by what appeared to be a potential brewing altercation between her brother and one of the other people in Carnation's little caravan, and almost as if on cue she appeared right on the heels of Kyou's complaint -- and, as Cody finished his own lengthy reply, she promptly leaned in: "You know, if you pick on my brother I'm gonna have to fight you." Anna Venus was smiling too, but this smile was way more genuine than was Anne's; after all, though what she said was half in genuine defense of Anne, who she cared for quite a bit, it was also half because she saw a golden opportunity here to maybe throw fists or something and was pretty excited about it.

The first spell that the enemy mage had thrown at Ceridwen hadn't been enough of a problem to stop Ceridwen -- it had hurt, to be sure, and it had injured her, but Ceridwen grit her teeth; she wasn't going to let herself fall and fail everybody! (again) She took a javelin and cocked her arm back, ignoring the pain from the motion to send it lancing out at the mage. Thankfully, this time, she didn't miss, and that brought a short burst of elation to the Dragon Knight, watching the enemy scholar stumble backwards, blood blossoming from his wound. That elation died out, though, as Ceridwen was consumed by the fury-driven cloud of magic created by the mage. All that anyone saw or heard of the actual damage being dealt to her was the beginning of an agonized scream -- cut off, as the magic surrounded her and all was silence and darkness for a few moments. Then it receded, and Ceridwen was now face-down on the ground, her red hair splayed out, in a concerningly growing puddle of her own blood, mauled terribly by the spell. There was a sound somewhere between a roar and a yelp from Yn Ddiddorol, trailing behind the group, as Ceridwen's mutilated form was revealed by the fading of the spell, and the dragon darted over to stand over her, quite possibly nearly knocking down the Scholar as he darted past, but it was rather too late for the dragon to be able to help her, and all he could do was stand over her and bare his teeth. "Rrrr, rrrr, rrrrrrr!"