There is no sound but progress.
At this juncture, the squeal of a press.
“Connecting architecture stamped, free individual pieces for usage.”
Insulated gloves protect hands so that they can pass the metallic forms through a heated cutter.
(Softer metals freed by superheat pressed to it? Then…)
“Efficient separation.” The outlines come free with his overlord’s joyful announcement. Extra material is discarded into a bin. “Proceed to riveting! Mechanism activation, achieved through manipulating these keys…”
The v-swingout station that buzzes with current should be too large for a child to use, but its open seat doesn’t confine. Racks and tables are ever within reach. They shift to bring what’s sought closer when a hand draws near.
Progress drives away all but itself as a cheery voice manages to remain monotonous in its instructions. As if anticipating his needs, the arcane ritual led by Neesiette grants him an opening to a bucket of metal rivets at the twist of a lever. A telescoping hammer which rises out of the table links to its own striking plate.
(A riveting device? So it fits these pieces…)
The interior support for Neesiette’s core is fastened by metallic bolts. One piece after another joins a lattice as Adris’ sweat falls onto the table, multiple clanks for each connection.
“98.8% to specifications dimensions record, within allowable margin of error. Apply to holding field for smoothing.”
“Ah…”
A still unpolished metallic frame is thrust into a humming field. Above the table it joins dozens of other pieces, obeying the tapping of small fingers on numerical keys below to position it.
“49 fabricated pieces out of 67 required.”
This rough work of metal immediately joins its kin in shedding its top layer when grinders hover beside to spin. The shriek of work is overwhelming, especially now when all are in the thick of it.
Progress demands it, but four souls toiling for the sake of a doll maker who drank himself to sleep scream to be heard. Neesiette’s instructions are louder than even Orloss’ boasting.
“Nearing conclusion, fabrication stands! Essential containment pieces finished. Move immediately to central recirculator assembly.” No air is required for a Lunamaton to yell above the din.
(She’s got the gift of lungs!)
“Attention, Adris!”
“Hah! I’ve never given it elsewhere.”
But the demand launches him into his next task, even though his sight twitches when faced with the immense challenge of recreating in reality her “dream” from a byzantine schematic hanging next to Neesiette.
“Deigning to accept an inferior stopgap design, this lady suffers only by necessity of time constraints due to mutiny. Strictest purity of essential component sought in return.”
“The core of the core…?”
Adris’ fingers are already lining up the rarest metals and materials once more, most of which are contained within sealed glass tubes whose pressures keep them liquid until deposited.
(“Don’t breathe an”—Huh!?)
A silver rod delivers a strike to the schematics for the inner assembly, kinking the parchment that bears the curious writing of a doll’s language.
“‘99.7% to specifications’ requirement for central recirculator, paramount this be.” Luna’s runes spell out the bizarre steps required to achieve [inversion] of space itself where she squishes. “Aiming for this with no allowances for failure, this lady’s Emperor shall.” The smiling tyrant, positively radiant her porcelain skin seems with the liveliness filling her, frowns momentarily at her captive worker. “Necessity of safety, stated, exiting from simply catastrophic self-failure and escalating to… excessive bystander risk if tolerances lapse.”
At the quip, Adris simply carries on with quick fingers.
By the numbers, with literal numbers scratched into the components, he lines them up to await Neesiette’s last inspection.
“Falke’s precision and meticulousness, near parity achieved by the current menial a favorable discovery manifests!”
(I don’t like that word.)
Adris’ brow is drenched more so now, though the heat has lessened after finishing the metal parts.
“Then, beginning, precisely follow: 1A, tie to part 1B, set to Section C. Creation theorem, recirculator limiter…”
“One ‘A’, One ‘B’, Section C…”
A litany would be simpler, for it still carries some measure of poetic form.
Assembly is far more inhuman. Even though his fingers fly and his arms fluidly move over the station’s controls to match the unending progression of Neesiette’s instructions, there is no great inner joy to be discovered.
“… 4I, to Prime M…”
… Four ‘I’, biggest ‘M’…”
“Menial’s discipline, commendable! Attention, recirculator energized source, relay for…”
“Relay part? Here…”
It’s not enough to hurt his work, but the sweat drenching his back now is distracting as he registers never-ending minute details. From schematic, to parts, to hands, to machine, everything lies within his sight when her words direct his mind, yet he still feels a distraction.
“… essential step, containment apparatus, surrounding assembled Section J, encase by the next Turn within Master Part 29.”
“… six seconds!? Right, twenty-nine is here.” The sudden rush throws him off not a bit, for Adris plucks the now shining metallic cage from where it hovers over his head. “So, it fits like this? Now…?”
“Part 18L, attach to ingress, seal with thermal paste. Orient the assembly 30°…”
(… Why am I itching…?)
Aside from the top of his feet, there’s also the back of his hands.
“Menial accuracy escalating, containment achieved! Part 26, Part 27, left prong 26, right prong 27, to part 3B, Section C to lock down.”
Along with a curious upset stomach, and a heated feeling in his esophagus…
“Crimp, seal. Harder, firmer! Cessation!”
A slipping sort of vertigo. Subtle so much before that it now swirls violently his view.
“Affix to temporal unifier, part 10D, keying in—!”
(She’s not mean.)
Even though his hands are sure, they feel mistaken!
“Attention, shift focus, to sealant for inner assembly connecting to thermal shunt…”
They’re unchanging and swift, but his legs shiver!
(She’s very polite.)
“Part 32A, subparts D-L, assemble by following instructions without any diversion!”
That tinkling cry of hers that can overcome metal grinding, aimed at his delicate ears, fills his thoughts with nothing but numbers and letters!
(She’s extremely specific.)
“Time-tables may adjust with performance improvement!” The exuberant (in tone only and ever-present smile) Lunamaton leans over from on top of her perch above him. She unfurls a new parchment to flap in front of his eyes. “Supplemental parts, named off as follows, gather to preparation area!” She begins to make “alterations” known that should never be allowed at this stage of commitment, pointing out parts sitting out of his work area.
(I feel… like someone is hunting me.)
“19% recirculation efficiency, heat exchange, achievable wi—!”
“Come to me, my lady.”
“Desist!”
The moment Adris attempts to lift her off of her godly perch and bring her to the lowly station table where he toils, she slaps at his hand.
“Governance, oversight of menial, efficiency in such tasks reduces without the correct vantage point!”
“No, my hands aren’t the knowledgeable ones needed right now. And I have need of nothing but extra hands.”
“Creating, never, a lady-who-be-also-a-tool shall not!”
“Create? No, I am the maestro here. I…?” Adris flicks his head back, running his hand over his scalp with a dramatic flair. “… am the foreign party that you desperately needed, my lady.”
“‘Desperation’, term as utilized, found to exceed circumstances this lady fee—”
(SHUT UP AND COMPLETE THIS INSANE THING YOURSELF!)
Its processed form hurts Adris’ eyes even at this juncture! Depending on how one looks at these incomplete sections through the candlelight above, they seem to distort the pale orange glow. Without any impression of “power” gifted yet, even the design plays havoc with Adris’ common sense.
Yet it’s not just the design that annoys him.
(Why is it disgusting to obey your orders!? I feel itchy, like with Still’s accursed poison.)
“Of acceptable quality, an Emperor’s hands be found!”
It can’t be explained, that this beautiful treasure he’s conned into becoming his “future lover for training” is the creepiest thing he has experienced as of late.
“A desirable addition to this lady’s future. As yet, no greater efficiency be required.”
(Getting “congratulated” by you makes me want to vomit?)
“Maybe they belong to you, Neesiette, but I desire hands, too, ones that can shape… Art!”
“Art… be it?” Her resistance eases at the merest mention of what she’s designed to facilitate, but she reclines away with a catlike suspicion.
“Those hands guided by superior vision, so that the end result is only as perfect as… we are. If it’s Art we seek from Falke’s craft, then…?”
“… The hands of a Lunamaton, seeking only to perfect Art, be required…?” A frown vanishes, then the spoiled princess who only dictated terms surprises Adris by stretching a hand out to take up his.
“… Then…”
And into his lap she then slides from her perch to be left facing her own project.
“9/10ths of the process, sheer majority, carried out by… another, may this be requested…?”
“You can’t even be considered to be a real contributor to this project with such a low contribution, now can you?”
“Rationale, impeccable!”
Small tools that she would normally reject as if they are red-hot blanks ready to be pounded during forging are lifted up with a growing eagerness.
Then she timidly turns her head up to glance at him, squeaking out a question.
“… Synchronized efforts, assisting only, promises one?”
“It’s just a little help here and there, Neesiette.”
“No guidances be violated under such terms.”
When she’s not screaming orders without any stress imposed on herself to howl, she’s much cuter as an oasis of strength against the chaotic others. Three other madmen and women chatter, boast, and curse, but now Adris’ little slice of forced labor has become…
(This is heaven, now? You’ve really changed, Neesiette.)
What Falke desired was furiously refused, but Adris’ request takes only the merest pretense to achieve his goal.
“On this Section, continue work.” Her pinching work to connect parts by tabs begins. “Follow precisely, synchronizing with timing of this lady.”
(She loves me, not you, you bastard! Hahahaha!)
“Oh, but it’s you who will need to keep up now, my de—!”
“Concluded this lady be in mere moments. Cease boasting.” A pinching tool taps Adris’ wrist. “Present one’s own Section for joining swiftly to maintain synchronization.”
“… It’s almost ready.”
And with an overseer as aid, their work begins.
Time passes by ever more intensively.
The last hour before judgment becomes the lockstep of a conman tinkerer pursuing the elegant supremacy of his “assistant” genius.
“Concluding Sections J and K and L, fifteen Turns out of sync, a false god stands. Alacrity, suggested.”
“I’m making sure it doesn’t explode when we join them.”
“‘Explode’? Misunderstanding, mentioned risks…”
“Then don’t explain them, we’ll simply make it perfect on the first try.”
It should be expected that any absolute novice cannot keep up.
That even if the schematics could be interpreted, it should take an eternity of study to comprehend a technical field so foreign.
(Why am I so good at this, though?)
But not Adris.
Neesiette’s skill is strictly paranormal, for the lady that protested of doing anything now moves to completing all of the tasks herself without resistance.
Neesiette’s work will end up being 9/10s instead of 1/10; but, that Adris can even follow her explicit instructions to the height of 98% accuracy is, in and of itself…
(I should be lost completely, but I’m rather good at this!)
His hands follow hers, a warzone of half-finished sections and components spilling over this workstation. A human mind easily calculates the next actions to complement Neesiette’s inhuman own.
(We’re actually in sync!)
Adris has created many trinkets and charms in his time, but never a partially clock-work, fully fluidized mechanical monstrosity such as this sphere. Lacking all tutelage needed still doesn’t balk his efforts.
(I’m… guided.)
So long as he ceases thinking too hard, his hands move of their own volition. It’s a different feeling in their surety than [Authentic Fiction] imparts.
Instead, he smells ghostly scents around him that remind of the essences of concentrated monstrous humors he once commonly used for his own crafting. With his cobbled-together kit that was lost in the chaos of the fight within the Emperor’s tomb, Adris often tried to create novel applications of aura tools.
Just like then, the spirit within moves him.
(… I feel…?)
“Completed.”
A metallic snapping joins two hemispherical halves denies his introspection.
Primed within, outside the sphere becomes complete too when the connecting seam vanishes with an applied metallic paste that sucks into it.
“As envisioned. 1% detrimental error rate, notwithstanding.”
“It’s beautiful, certainly.” So Adris states while fanning himself.
An hour’s candle flame is almost consumed. Minutes alone linger as the tumult around them continues.
(Absent the bickering now?)
Sapphira’s wings spread over her station, puppets of water a flurry while Orloss beside her whispers with instructions that Adris cannot decipher. The genius Lycia has her back to him. She leans over lethargically, scratching over the schematic of her decided end goal.
Pensive and moody, without her self-chatter.
All about is growing stiller.
Rather than fearful to interrupt them such that they might attack him out of annoyance, it now feels like he might be pulled into their dark designs if he wanders too close…
(They’re very withdrawn from their usual conniving moods.)
“It’s to be expected, Neesiette.” To his master craftsman Adris returns attention and lavishes praise to lead her along. “After all, I made it with the best instructions.”
“Astute!”
The vertigo from earlier subsides now that the “nearly transparent, fluctuating sack which folds in upon itself” inside is hidden away. Connected not even to a tube, there are instead scoops along the sphere’s equator collapsing inward into this inner membrane. These scoops face both directions, curiously, such that if it spun the drag would cancel out either way.
(What she locked away inside reminds me of the stomach of a sea creature which siphons around it?)
“How will this design work without an ‘in’ and ‘out’?”
“‘In/out’, such be misunderstood temporal functions of directional flow.” Neesiette extends her rod to tap on the schematics at the diagram which breaks this mechanism into its parts. “Maintaining discrete guidance, a function of ‘time’ explains that each channel may be used for the same purpose depending on dimensional assignation.”
(How can something go in and out through the same hole!?)
“Deeper elucidation, instruction, shall this lady offer out of generosity? Very well, beginning with basic mathematics and moving from this basis, including others lacking in fundamentals shall we?”
Neesiette hops down with her finished core, nodding as she starts to march toward three muted former enemies who all remain trapped in their works. Ready to thrash whoever intrudes into them!
“Bowing to superior design, for them a lady deigns to explain concepts which may repair such lesser intellects by experie—
R-Release!”
Neesiete doesn’t make it more than a few feet before Adris hoists her up and makes for the workshop’s doors.
(We’ve only got ten minutes or so before this whole place is overrun by monsters from the blackest thoughts of men! You don’t have time to brag and set them off!)
“My, your masterpiece is done, let’s show it off!”
“True, that be, howe—!”
“Let’s leave the less capable to their tasks, Neesiette. They have so little time in comparison.”
“True, as well, howe—!”
“Let’s get you to safety with the others!”
“Safety be…!?”
Outside the workshop is where Adris can finally kneel before his lady and hug her despite her continuing thrashing.
“You did it!”
“… ‘Did… it’… signifying…?”
With the core crushed between them, Adris is nearly in tears when he pulls back from the hug that the paralyzed Neesiette endures.
“You helped me do what he does so easily! It seemed like it’d go wrong all the time!? Sis was so… mad at me, and Orloss’ lightning was bright and loud!?”
The Lunamaton’s glee fades now. “… Indeed… quite bombastic, that one’s symbiotical Talents present as.” A careful neutrality comes instead to her when she reaches to pat Adris’ cheek.
“You were all that got me through fooling them, you know, Neesiette? Thanks for trusting me… I’m in your debt!”
“… Trust, earned previously, thanks unnecessary. Debt, nonexistent.”
It’s in this blinding space that heightens emotions that Adris can unleash some of his own with a special spin.
Freed of the sight of the kraken and Orloss’ gaze, as Neesiette must intuit the cause, she allows herself to act candidly for only a moment to match his honesty.
A hand delicately pats Adris’ head.
“‘Bore fruit’, one’s impersonation did… Adris.” Neesiette’s emotionless tone honeys over only a bit, but it’s enough to earn Adris’ ‘breakdown’.
He sighs and covers his face.
“I was… scared… mostly…”
“Strong of conviction and character, however, even if imperiled.”
A strange scene where a small girl comforts a larger boy is one that cannot be replicated elsewhere, lest all credibility evaporate from Adris’ prestige. It’s only here at a gleaming bridge between two worlds that Adris can finally sell the difference between,
[Adris] and [Neesiette’s Emperor].
That both must be confronted, united by this “lady” if she wants to comprehend him.
“Forgetting of one’s difficulties this lady became when in the thrust of perfecting Near-Art. Applied to tasks far beyond one’s means this lady mistakenly placed one in position to fulfill. Apologies conveyed, hopeful to be accepted.”
“No way! You were the one that put it together, really! I did hardly anything!”
“That…!?”
Adris’ most carefree smile, one saved for when pretending to be drunk with socialites so that they can ‘take advantage of him’, is what he gives his ‘mistress’ when he intentionally blurts something that makes her drop open her mouth and go silent.
(I led you right into doing something you would never do, which means… who is really in charge, huh?)
“One… provided… instrumental assistance…”
After a moment of collapse, Neesiette’s stricken face recovers its kind neutrality.
“Everyone will be safe now, we did what the Emperor wanted, right?”
“In-Indeed… let us collect them to proceed, with proper core for ritual in possession. Leave others to unneeded and substandard pursuits.”
Neesiette nods, then sets the core into Falke’s bag that she carries with her. Almost ready to turn and depart, she then swings back to Adris.
She opens her mouth to speak, but it’s a minute before the question comes.
“Previously, spoken of…
Falke’s ‘fatalism’…?”
Another topic intrudes, one which arises from Adris’ pronouncement that Falke would not meet the coming morning.
Neesiette’s body is stiff, her eyes hard. “‘Proving one’s own romantic sincerity’, occurring before or after this encounter did a conversation that assured one of Falke’s instability?”
(Did something go differently?)
In Adris’ meeting in Falke’s private chambers, Falke had openly abandoned any idea of continuing with his life’s work, and by extension his life.
But, that meeting had been before the hellish giant lizard and the “Kol” rider.
“… I see… it was different for you… for us, me with you?” Adris’ hand is to his neck without realizing it, and Neesiette’s notice is swift with how she almost marches back to soothe him with her own lifted hands.
Instead, she keeps her distance.
“One’s circumstances, conversations, and outcomes differ due to causality refusal, then?”
“As different as ‘life and death’, yeah.”
“‘Safe’, this lady promised a boy, therefore dwell not on other Fates.” The mention of death brings Neesiette to finally come back to cup the kneeling Adris’ face. There’s no amorous intent with her smile after, only kindness.
“Until the day that an Emperor acquires a more resolute vessel, preserving a ward named ‘Adris’ for return to one’s people shall be paramount.”
“… My people?”
“Far to the east, matching facial characteristics.” To his armor is where Neesiette goes next, swirling a finger on a lamellar piece. “Cultural emblems, designs, similar as well. Appearing not within archives of Traveler before… this lady’s parting, but learned of after. Isolationist be their nature, but not unreachable.”
(… There are… Xinians here other than me and Peak?)
“To one’s family this lady shall return ‘Adris’.” It’s Adris’ turn to be astounded when Neesiette bids him to stand up. “Keep to this lady until then, in safety and security as much as may be provided.”
(She’s… serious.)
Neesiette has the glance of an adult expecting excitement from a child. That this news should be a treasure for Adris to learn.
“… Family…?”
“Indeed, though separated by innumerable steps in lineage due to devilish forced slumber, family be avail—?”
“Ahaha!”
“Mirth instead of relief, revealing why!?”
“Because…!”
Neesiette jumps when Adris taps her shoulder, then gawks at him.
“Family is something I have right here! And my family isn’t just Lycia, it’s… bigger.”
He intentionally looks away with an expression revealing discomfort bordering on embarrassment with how he goes redfaced.
“Considered… as such, be we? Then… let us conclude this ritual!” If Neesiette were any more shocked, Adris might be struck by a violet ray that disintegrates him. She struggles to say more, then merely turns around with mechanical precision.
“Be not witnessed in a distressed state by the rest, composing oneself firstly!”
So she announces before fleeing him through the opening doors to the great garden.
(Off balance at all times, that’s where I’ll keep her.)
Adris’ feigned unsteadiness vanishes. He only rolls his neck to pop it before aiming for Falke’s workshop again.
(Logic can’t beat her, but emotionality she can’t “calculate” does. “Lover” and “family” are two different subjects that cannot be reconciled together by a clever mind alone.)
Inconsistencies will pile up, but explain themselves by being about a godlike emperor and a fast-thinking boy occupying the same place. If her device can shoot out gunk at the same time as it sucks it in, then that proves Adris can accomplish the same duality.
“But, we’ll be using the real Fehr, not what you made.” It’s a shame not to use the device Adris spent almost an hour constructing, but it cannot conclude the “tale” as designed.
Instead behind a flaking ornate entryway is where Adris will reunite with his real ‘star’.
(Judging by my own work, they were in the process of sealing the device up, so we’re right on schedule.)
Goodbye to gray, and also blinding realms that feed Adris’ exuberance to the point where hugging Neesiette felt emotionally rewarding enough to drive him to never stop!
(Fehr… I will make you understand that I am not the bad guy!)
The doors open with a cracking sound, to allow to roar out a sticky fetid air. Adris’ skin burns with the murky taste.
He recoils instantly from its invisible grasp, but isn’t quick enough!
(Si-Sis!?)
His balance crushes instead into the opening, for a striated, elongated hand greedily sinks into his arm. Exposed to the radiance of the mirror realm, it begins to burn into a smoldering cloud.
“Let go!”
Rasping breathing is the only response. Whispers from beyond the precipice, clouded by the gloom of a workshop that should be bathed in ever-violet shine, are as rancid as the decay hanging around Lycia’s changed figure.
“Why have you become…!?”
— THE TALE’S ASSIGNED ACTOR BECOMES FICKLE, AND WITH IT, THE AUDIENCE’S INFLUENCE GROWS —
(She succumbed to those dark things!?)
The Emperor’s warning is too late, as if not even within himself Adris predicted this alteration. His Inner Expanse compresses with Lycia’s paralyzing touch coursing cold rot through his muscles.
Every breathless moment they stay in contact twitches Adris more, such that he falls to his knee while wheezing.
([Authentic Fiction] failed… because I wasn’t strong enough!? They went after Lycia to get to me!?)
But it’s not violence he suffers once in her thrall. Obscured by the double doors only peeking open so that her long arm can claim him, his sister’s breathing slows.
“yOu DiDn’T sInK!” A beast growls, then purrs. “lOvInG mEaNs To… SiNk… So, YoU dOn’T…?”
“GUH!?”
Adris’ face slams into the metal surface, coating it with drops from his nose.
“LOVE ME, IS IT!?”
“… NOT LIKE… A LOVE LIKE DROWNING! Kah!?”
(She’s lost her mind!? What about the others inside!?)
The darkness beyond the doorway awaits him. Slithering temptations come to his hearing, then.
Alive, is what within still is, despite a ghoul having appeared at the entrance.
(Did she not get them, or have they…!?)
“wEaK? sTrOnG?”
Her hand tugs…
“fOoD…?”
Then, she relaxes her rage.
“… fRiEnD? wHaT aRe YoU nOw?”
(Rantil’s “friends” gleefully murdered each other at the chance to exist in the Castillo’s chapel, so I’m not them!)
Even radiance that numbs and excites thoughts is fading out here. The manse as seen through lit mirrors is clouding over, for those mirror-lights wane.
Gateways opening to every hallway in view are infesting with blackened blood running up from their bottoms!
(I’m close to Lycia, but the way I’m hers is different! Is this a test!?)
The conspirators beyond the doorway lavish Lycia’s monstrous form with praise, indecipherable in meaning but certainly pleased.
(Is she… trying to trigger me to be afraid of her, so that she can eat me when I’m the tastiest!?)
“wHo Am I!?”
“Who…!?”
(Cethran’s question!? Why is Lycia asking it!?)
And her gentle squeeze aggressively tightens when he doesn’t answer immediately!
(… But… “who” was a question that Rantil didn’t want to answer!)
“You!? You’re…!?”
“tElL mE…? AHA, hAhAhAhA!”
Adris’ feet leave the stairway, and he struggles to free himself from the grasp!
(In the first place, what does it matter what my opinion is of you!?)
Lycia Vehrose,
ghoul and sister,
inventor and madwoman,
predator and savior…?
(I was never afraid of you, just pissed that you’d try to drag me down, and I gave up trying to figure out what you are!)
“You’re whatever the fuck you want to be!”
“… oHHH?”
“I don’t decide anything about you! That’s what I promised! Besides… you… you’d just betray my expectations, anyway!”
“YES! REMEMBER THIS, THIS INSECURITY!”
The pleased whispers halt when Adris answers in a way that Lycia agrees with. And so does Lycia’s tightening! Gathering dread flowing toward her paralyzing touch weakens.
(Nightmares…!? Things that shouldn’t exist, and they want others to define them, but…?)
A blinding point extends from the darkness beyond to aim at Adris’ heart.
Kol’s beloved poleaxe stretches ever closer!
(Fuck!)
“WE — WERE — FIRST!”
This killing weapon rears back to strike! The ghoul’s hiss exalts its lethality!
“BEFORE YOUR ABOMINABLE TRUTH, ALWAYS THERE; BEFORE ‘BEGINNING’, WE WERE ‘END’!”
(How can things that aren’t real unless imagined be fir—!?)
Kol’s point shatters the luminous stairway. Sparks of the solid light singe his backside. Adris’ body hangs onto its shaft when Lycia allows him to touch it again.
“oUr DrEaMs BeCoMe YoUr ‘REAL’!”
The whispers behind the door peak in a confusion that matches his own when the howling ghoul returns to a low roar.
“nEvEr FoRgEt ThAt…”
Lycia’s arm that thrust the poleaxe a hair’s breadth from his side withdraws into the gloom.
“i’Ll FoRgIvE yOu, ThIs TiMe~!”
(She’s… sparing me!?)
““““““““““BETRAY!!!!!!
LIE!!!!!!
STEAL!!!!!!
HATE!!!!!!””””””””””
The conspiratorial watchers rip at Lycia’s already burning arms! Skin peels away, then bone shards and chunks fly!
What they protest most escaping their clutches extends beyond the gloom of shaking doors. Appendages of every nightmarish, beastly taint drag back to try to reclaim the prophesied remedy for this abominable night’s end, but they recoil from the light Lycia extends the sphere into.
(THEY FINISHED IT!)
Adris snatches the completed core from Lycia’s gracious hand, then collapses to the stairway when her strength vanishes. Who held him resists her slow withdrawal into the shining starry night beyond.
“yOu ReJeCtEd My LoVe (HUNGER), BuT dIdN’T fLeE mY ‘sAd’ SeLf, SO…!”
“SIS!?”
“Work back from the start, little MORSEL (brother), to understand why SHE (Lycia) can stay with you even after you met ME (■■■■■)!
rEmEmber…!”
The locking mechanism clicks shut to deny his concern, air sealing behind its thick barriers.
“… How you wronged THEM,
but were kind to ME!”
Adris clutches Kol’s poleaxe, using it to leap up.
The echoing command Lycia parts with cracks the foundations of the flaking archways filling the mirrored world.
(Did she just… speak her real name?)
Even if light will endure in a kaleidoscope of colors here forever, the forms taken by observing Zennia lose focus faster than Adris can figure out how to rescue his sister.
(It’s an invasion!)
The garden’s aerial view wavers. Freedom contracts with the shrinking doorway leading from the workshop.
(The dark things are already breaking the other side down!)
He turns, dragging a lethal weapon free. It doesn’t fly from his hand, this time. Its eagerness to return to its owner allows him to vault the distance to the gate and clear it before the portal dissolves.
“… It’s always something you’re behind, you prissy doll!”
“Ignorant newts, absent of facts and bereft of correct definitions, substituting childish terms as such, solely upon loudness for argument’s sake do such crippled intellects rely.”
Two people share a meaningless argument, one far below forcing the one up top to lift her chin in contempt.
“FALL DOWN HERE AND CALL ME ‘CRIPPLED’! SHAAAAA!”
A lady on the other side turns to regard Adris, an arching of her eye her the sole notice of his heaving breathing. Adris sits up from his slide, checking over his shoulder to find that the gateway to Falke’s workshop exists only as a pool of vertical shadow.
(“How you wronged them, but not me…”?)
Below them, a snake elf still wearing her fish-tailed dress that opens painfully naked at the center is as defenseless against a threat as a kobold who wears only a new suit jacket she stole from god-only-knows where.
Lycia’s, or the man-eating instincts of her repressed by discipline, warning sticks in his thoughts when viewing the courtyard where rebels struggled. At first pretending to kill him, instead Lycia betrayed the other things to gift him his goal with an added bit of knowledge he must grasp.
(Fehr… and… Fehl, maybe, are “them”? She convinced the voices she’d betray me so that they wouldn’t choose another, and then she fought Orloss and Sapphira, if they monsterfied as a result…?)
Adris’ dread worsens, a cold pain in his stomach.
The signs that darkness was spreading within the workshop were obvious. They’d all been affected, yet he hadn’t acted.
He could not rescue Lycia, nor the others, for…
[Whatever occurred within Falke’s workshop with him leaving it is unknowable unless he returns to open the doors.
So long as the night doesn’t end, he cannot reveal her true fate. To save or damn her.]
This is a rule of the world as it currently is under [Authentic Fiction]’s influence.
And that influence is intensifying in the world he witnesses below, too.
The chaotic forms squiggle with dreadful energy.
(What I did wrong to Fehr, but not Lycia…?)
The branch Adris rests on creaks as its siblings sway with a heavy wind. The manse usually refuses what is outside, but still the wind billows about here.
Signifying the forthcoming doom of man with the end of Adris’ hour.
“Adris? Shall one not join this lady?”
Neesiette’s hand extends toward him.
“Orloss said you are all like this! ‘Mad Descendants of Luna’, I get why you’re called that now!”
A kindness peculiar to her, cold and passionless, but abiding, doesn’t comfort at the moment when her eyes twitch at the epithet.
“He said you’re just a disaster waiting to happen! After that thing with the evil book, I get it, totally, right, Kol!?”
“Nah? Leave Kol, out of this! Kol, want Boss, not arguing about Moon!”
(Stop pissing off this catastrophic moon fairy!)
“… [Mad… Descendant]… slanders a reptilian leech!?”
And under view of her Creator above, a lady’s anger becomes absolute!
“[Obliterating newts]… foremost of merciful tasks to fulfill shall this lady attend to!”
Adris’ chilled body won’t warm when hearing that threat!
— [STAR], [GUIDE] GATHERED, A CONCLUSION FORESTALLED SHALL FULFILL ITS POTENTIAL AT THE PRECIPICE OF INTENT —
What stole Lycia is gathering, an ocean of otherworldly rage seeking a form. Hidden beneath the manse’s surface. Its timing coincides with the Emperor’s decree of the ending, rising with the seriousness of this imperious man’s tone.
— PRIOR [EVIL] ABANDONED, BEING FOUND WANTING, ANNOUNCE THE SURROGATE OR LEAVE OPEN TO UNKIND [FATE] THIS CHOICE —
(… A “tale” always needs a bad guy…)
“This lady’s Emperor, shall not outright slander be punished?”
Even if a joke, Neesiette’s encouragement to retaliate against Ave registers differently!
Falke abandoned the role.
Lycia just refused it for Adris’ sake.
And now…
Neesiette’s crossed arms allow for no dismissal or evasion. This totalitarian vibe that fills her is nothing more than what Ave screams about, a “warning to all who would oppose her view of perfection”!
(The Evil was abandoned because it was the wrong choice? Oh, I was the only one who thought Falke was the enemy…)
It’s such a sudden realization that Adris can only witness how he lifts the cross toward Neesiette.
Lycia’s warnings, before and after he was stuck in her mire; Fehr’s instabilities when facing who Adris had wanted defeated, but instead she surrendered to destruction to; Fehl’s fears of how their trek toward confronting their Maker seemed misguided.
If Adris has a [sin] that Lycia references towards Fehr in particular, then it can begin to be understood with this first fact.
(Falke was never Fehr’s [Evil]. She was growing, learning, to face another one that she decided upon.)
In reality.
This TALE only had one EVIL.
By skipping the choice another made, it could never correctly end.
This evil tilts her head at Adris, wondering with her delicate facial features scrunching at how he refuses to heed her command.
Bathed in the increasingly terrifying splendor of her pet wandering moon above, Adris’ lady singles herself out as by far the brightest actor left on the stage.
“Ending shortly, time remaining, would not the allotment be, Adris?”
The only figure grand enough for Adris’ Star to rail against is the one who would presume to be superior to Fehr, going so far as to create…
“Core designed by this lady, superior in all respects!” Neesiette’s bag is lifted up, so that the fairy can pat it as she ignores further condemning yells by an elf. “A less error-riddled avatar presenting, obedient to creator, deserving of existing…!”
(Ah yeah, I can see why Fehr would hate you most of all. You’re “perfect” and act precisely as such, while she “isn’t”.)
Adris’ lady is a fickle soul. Even after being taught that she’ll be saving another…
“Better than ‘Fehr’, perhaps the designation may be amended for the successor? A name suited instead for a creation that be not rebellious, instead submissive and dutiful without verbal retorts, as all those created must be?”
Even more dismissive than Fehr’s original maker, the grinning Neesiette stands poised to obliterate even the memory of the servant that disobeyed.
The wind howls, and with it roars of violence and bloodthirst!
Fehr’s core in his hands burns hot, though he cannot tell whether the heat flows from within it or from his own blood that burns at the slight!
(I can… understand that hate.)
“HYAAA!?”
“BOSS!? KOL, FEEL…!”
A whirlwind of darkness washes across the garden over canny spectators, crashing into the tree which shakes and sways!
The clamor of battle, its hunger for conflict, begs for the contenders to step forth as it swoops upward!
“Adris?”
Neesiette’s amber hair lifts weightlessly up, followed by her shining steel-blue dress as the summoned dread gathers not to the Black Cross, but instead to creep up her body.
(I was being selfish… that’s why it never worked, because I pretended that I was the Star of the night.)
“The Evil of this Tale is…”
— SO BE IT —
The gathered darkness slithers into Neesiette’s body, widening her view of her emperor as porcelain skin darkens with the ink flowing inside to absorb an evil power.
Neesiette tilts back, suddenly struck with obsession of the place she fell from looming above.
“Tra-ve-ler…?”
Adris follows her gaze, defying the blinding tornado of caliginous currents that envelop the two of them once the their spirits resonate!
(Only Neesiette is the one that can give Fehr a reason to “resist”, to oppose Neesiette until victory or death.)
“… Neesiette vera Luna.”
— THE TALE REACHES ITS CLIMAX —
A bolt of pure night fires from Neesiette to pierce the heavens!
Its fat projection accelerates like light to strike Traveler. Its glowing surface ripples like water. The black film of otherworldly darkness traverses the circle to its end.
Once the rippling subsides,
A distant engine screeches into awakening across the sky’s void!
(What have I done?)
Neesiette’s horned crown glows, and her dress soon joins it as the ‘radiation’ she speaks of drapes sluggishly over her from above. It descends in a deluge, far thicker than even when she claimed Traveler was at its “height”.
(Traveler is glowing too!?)
The distant object hanging in the sky glows as brightly as it does within Falke’s workshop, its radiance cutting through the swirling, dark clouds that ominously hang level with the evil Castillo. Their obstruction departs, followed by the pinprick starlight beyond receding.
(Why is Traveler getting bigger!?)
A screeching clamor falls upon them from this growing threat, with conflicting voices buzzing rapidly.
No language sounds like ringing cicadas with varied tones at war with each other and the night!
Grating at the lexicon of Adris’ homeworld as if carving inside his brain, his instant comprehension damages his sanity instead of granting understanding!
(NNggh!? But… that’s cleary the language Neesiette speaks! Why does [Tongue of Air and Darkness] fail to translate it!?)
With this unintelligible cry, more cones of radiance descend to envelop the manse’s other areas.
They probe, searching by movement.
Female screams echo down the hallways!
“…
… Creator’s… orders…?”
More than just soul-crushing violet, the demand from on high sends the enormous orange tree that binds earth spirits into a shuddering fright!
The pseudoprosopon mutating the garden into limbs and visions of discontent springs to life, fleeing as waves in every direction to escape encroaching radiant cones.
“Kol!”
“Ah, Boss!”
Adris runs to the branch’s edge, hurling the poleaxe at the white-furred knight squire below.
“HIEEEE!?”
“KOL’S TREASURE~!”
The elf beside jumps sideways when the kobold leaps up, leaving Kol to swing her battered poleaxe in a hazardous circle upon landing. With a swift knock the contracting mechanism jolts it into its shorted length so that Kol can rest it on her shoulder.
“BOSS RESCUED PERFECT WEAPON! KAKAKAKA!”
(Now, I need to— Ah, too late?)
Just as Adris sought to grab the slumping Neesiette whose crown stays blinding, another gloom-cutting light enters through the garden’s main entryway.
Black feathers and purple sashes are normal, but the posture of the one who claims them is clearly strange.
Especially with how this harpy floats, but doesn’t fly.
“… Adris, Ave wants to leave, please!”
An enemy Adris summoned of this magnitude cannot solely be Neesiette, after all.
(I’ve wanted to flee from Neesiette all night.)
Falke’s loyal raven servant, one of Sapphira’s many endless daughters by lineage, hovers into the room without a seaspray to ride upon.
Instead of this watery cushion, the frozen air surrounding her obeys a curved, horned crown of immense size that entraps sight and hearing. Gold as another’s is, the violet penumbra replicates just as intently surrounding her.
“TAINTED LOCUS, CENTRAL EMBARKATION POINT.”
A page harpy appears to be a corpse in rigor mortis, now in service to a new master that transforms a melodic voice into a lifeless screech.
Only the head of this captured soul tilts up, to meet the gaze of a Lunamaton.
“LOST SERVITOR DISCOVERED. RE-HARMONIZE.”
“S-Signal!?”
A beam of violet connects the two crowns momentarily, leaving Neesiette nearly tumbling from the branch when she collapses! She twists around, starting to roll off!
(What did she do!?)
Adris dives, pulling Neesiette up and slowing until only his hand keeps them from falling from this slide-off precipice.
(Too far for the rabbit boots!)
“… SIGNAL ISSUED. NOVEL NODES IDENTIFIED?
AMENABLE, LUNARIZATION OF LESSER CONSTRUCTS AUTHORIZED.”
But a violet flash to his left sends his heart plummeting first…!
Radiant cones from Traveler to earth track to the branch Adris hangs from.
Any pseudoprosopon remaining clinging to the bark bursts into ash when touching this emission!
A tree-servant-defender’s core, one ruined and forgotten after their violent ascension, blazes with crystallizing lattices blinking into existence surrounding it.
The metallic surface evaporates, the complex interior visible just for a moment as it, too, is remade. A crystal, spherical core that reflects a prism when looked at is left resembling Luna’s discipline when the lattices fade.
(IT’S ALIVE!)
Adris’ heart skips a beat from the bestial threat exuded by this core that sprouts slinking transparent appendages from the swirling energies left hanging around it.
Upon four vitrified, shimmering limbs it stands upright as large as a wolf, with two more limbs extending fore and aft ending in curious spades that glow with an eye-searing color.
It monotonously clicks in motion, testing its movements before reorienting on Adris!
(Oh shit, oh no, it’s… Luna is…!?)
“RECTIFICATION OF THE PROMISED STAR COMMENCES NOW.”
More cores shine, shedding their old selves into reassembly when a cone halts over them.
All are united by cones of violet centered above them, connecting back to their home above and granting the material for ascendancy to a “higher purpose”.
“CRUSADE OF LUNA, THE MISTAKE OF AN IMPERFECT UNIVERSE SHALL BE UNMADE BEGINNING WITH THIS LOCUS.”
“ADRIS! HEEEEEELP!”
The speech of an invader comes with hundreds of cores lifting into lattices which reconstruct to another’s glory, then spring to life to start their marches towards Kol and Ave.
A wave of glimmering spider-like horrors test their lethality, creating destructive arcs of violet between them by lifting limbs to triangulate radiation from above!
“IMPERFECT EXISTENCES, EXPULSION MANDATED.” Another pulse of violet sends Neesiette writhing in Adris’ arms! “DESCENDANT, ASSIST.”
(Fehr thought she was the true enemy, and I confirmed it!?)
The garden’s mutations succumb to the pacifying auras of the reordered cores, their living fields cleansing the gray as an ash which clouds the air around them!
It obscures the approach of these villains, leaving them only as ominous will’o’wisps!
(… If Neesiette truly joins them…!?)
Adris hugs her to himself to halt her protestations, regretting his choice.
The one hope for truly granting Fehr a revival is also capable of annihilating them all by herself.
(Don’t become what I’m afraid you are!)
He tries to clamp his hand over her mouth to prevent reciting Art, but then she chomps it!
“GYAH!?”
She chews on his palm until he rips away, almost dropping her. She grabs ahold of his arm, swinging with him!
Amber hair perfectly kept contained by her crown spills out in a mess!
“ORDER NOT THIS PERFECTLY MADE LADY/TOOL WITH AUTHORITY PRESUMED BUT NOT GIFTED, LESSER CONTRIVANCES OF A GLORIOUS CREATOR!”
(Huh!?)
The pulsing violet of Luna is resisted by a dark aura that spreads from the alchemical glyph of “earth” shining from Neesiette’s breast.
Then, repulsion becomes ensnarement! The Lunamaton eagerly absorbs the radiation gathering around her equally with the lingering darkness that wells forth.
“Forsake a tainted world, YES!” When both join inside of her, her polite expression deforms into a manic glee! “Equally, the taint of mere contrivances which seek to surmount their BETTER must also be purged!”
“… ERROR, BEHAVIOR OF SERVITOR EXCEEDS EXPECTED NORMS.”
“‘Servitor’ this lady/tool be NOT! BE UNMADE, PREDICTED CONSPIRATOR OF REBELLION AGAINST LUNA ON HIGH!”
The fever that grips Neesiette fires through her very being, sending her into wild gesticulations as she kicks her feet at the distant harpy.
“[Specimen Pacification Crown], identified as a page harpy’s adornment! Familiarity between us, purpose-made uniquity and manufactured commonality, existing not! CLEARLY ESTABLISHED, supremacy of Lunamaton!”
“KICK HER OFF YOU, ADRIS! THE DOLL HAS GONE NUTS AGAIN!”
Ave’s scream from below sends Neesiette even wilder, climbing Adris to stare into his eyes from inches away.
“Obey now, sworn to this one, the dictates which shall bring peace we desire to Zennia!”
“Nee… siette…?”
Nothing but manic joy remains in her usually placid eyes!
“Rectification of Zennia, absent interlopers!”
At the heart of the shower of Traveler’s doom is where she reveals her true plan.
“By lawful order, the sole arbiter of glorious Luna’s will decrees!”
“… Y-Yes…?”
At the growing horde she points, then above them to fifteen closing killing forms to complete the circuit of the threats to Adris’ life.
“Annihilate pretenders, this lady commands, so that a perfected false god may be installed as harbinger to Luna’s forthcoming rectification of Zennia!”
(So, you want to destroy Zennia, too?)
When ordered to prepare the way for global invasion by a doll who grins like a maiden in love…
“… Yeah, glad to. Hold on.”
“Clarify, meeaaaAAANINGGG!?”
Adris lets go, beginning their plummet to escape the many stabbing thrusts of Luna’s attack dogs.
(At least she wants me to be the one that does it for her, aha… ahahaha!)
“AVE! SAVE USSSSSSS!”
“ERROR: FORSAKE GECKOS, FEARSOME HEIGHTS/FALLS, HER FAULLLLLTTTTT…!”
Clothes whipping with the drop, Adris howls as loudly as he can to overcome Neesiette’s fearful curses. He finds himself crushed by the sudden panic!
Kol circles the elf, growling at the approaching horde, leaving Ave to stare up in confusion.
“Huh?”
Adris stares back hard, their distance declining rapidly.
(LIKE YOU DID WITH THE KITCHEN DRAGON, SAVE US!)
“… But… Ave can’t do the ‘break-fall chant’ unless she’s beside you.”
(Oh, good, I can finally sleep.)
Adris closes his eyes, gripping tightly the rampaging Lunamaton that will no doubt survive their impact.
“G-G-Gentle gale, thy will and ways sharp when aggrieved!”
(OH THANK YOU, AVE, YOU’RE GOING TO SA—!)
The earth roars in place of the dying manse, maddening the air that was already agitated.
“BECOME A DOOM THAT LEAVES MY NEMESIS CLEAVED!”
At Ave’s fearful pronunciation of hate, directed clearly at Neesiette, winds answer the cry.
The elf’s clawed hands close to cage Neesiette and Adris within them by her viewpoint.
(That doesn’t sound like a chant for aid, Avenalliah.)
Adris’ fall stops, becoming instead a gentle descent as the winds thicken. Tickling currents taste Neesiette’s body along with his, connecting skyward to yellow-dusty blades that swirl into existence. The size of a giant’s cutter wide enough to split the orange tree’s limbs, thirteen of them begin a flighty dance encircling above.
“Lacking a central nervous system, a newt’s destruction be paramount for cycle of violence’s conclusion!”
(… THIS IS NOT HELPFUL!!!)
Adris doesn’t refute Neesiette’s decree as he balls up.
He seizes in fear as he hears the approaching blades.
“AAAHHHHH!? DON’T HURT AVE!?”
“ELF, DUCK!”
At the screaming below, Adris hazards a peek. His body shakes with the racing air around him. The blades which were called to dice the doll he carries weave past her specifically, leaving them descending on a cloud as the killing spell instead chases an emerald serpent.
(Oh…?)
“HOOOOOAAAAAH!”
Kol jumps upon Ave as the snake girl coils in terror, moments before the first blade impacts. The fearsome aura she generates swells up. Each blade that lands on Kol deflects in a random direction after briefly sinking in to paint her with sprays of black Vigor.
Every direction earns the carving of pissed wind spirits!
Thirteen blades make the full tour of the garden, endless gouges tilled through the false soil.
Remade cores direct their gathered energies toward the blades on approach. Every last one succumbs to the mighty condensed winds, shaving off only a meter from the giant cutters before disintegrating into hundreds of remnants.
“ERR—!”
One blade finally rolls through the slave who spoke for on high, bursting the harpy into a shower of black feathers. The golden crown that’s ripped from her head tumbles along with her on a lifeless trajectory down the connecting hallway.
“HEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPP!”
The caller asks for aid, but the only response is the endless circuits of blades through the garden. Kol’s sphere of terror alone keeps them from plowing up a snake elf.
(And Kol drives Ave crazy.)
When Adris’ foot touches the ground, though, the blades unspin into plumes of dust.
With the original target no longer threatened they seem content to give up.
“… Good job, Ave, Kol.”
“Congratulate not inferiority!”
Adris slings Neesiette under his arm, then helps his “second baggage” off of Avenalliah.
“BOSS! KOL, DIDN’T LOSE CROSS!”
Kol’s stress is high, less fearful and more irate at the black cross that Adris has tucked into his sash. If she could burn a hole into it by staring, it’d have already gone up in smoke.
“Oh? Yes, you didn’t lose it, it’s fine…”
“NO! KOL, TELLING TRUTH! Kol, just holding cross, then!?”
“Then I called for it.”
“Oh!?”
A quick pat to her head sends the kobold’s tail swishing in that strange pattern of left, left, right, right that she gets stuck in sometimes.
“You performed splendidly so far.”
“Yes, always! Boss, found Kol’s weapon! Great thanks, kakaka!”
After salvaging Kol’s mood, Adris helps up his “steed”.
“Your wind is a bit too playful.”
“… Ah! Ahaha…!” The elf shivers, her hands raised before her twirling around. Tears stain her face to clump gray powder on her cheeks. “Ave is a… bit too bad at asking it for things, so she tried to be… clever, but… THERE ARE MANY THINGS AVE WOULD LIKE TO ASK FOR NOW!”
It’s impossible to stop her fright though, for all around the sylvan bungler shifts her wide, teary eyes. With good reason, for within the returning, thickening gray dust cloud that’s befallen the garden there are violet will’o’wisps shining anew.
“ERROR IDENTIFIED, ROGUE SERVITOR.”
“PACIFICATION, AMEND TO INCLUDE DESCENDANT.”
Through the adjacent side entrances enter more glowing wisps, black, winged forms frozen in painful contortions and floating through the cloud.
Tens, then hundreds of similar, smaller kin pierce the gray all around them.
A garden just savaged denies the assault with screeching anger.
(I don’t think it’s actually possible to beat Luna’s minions. We’re just… ants, in comparison.)
“EMPEROR OF BLACK SKIES!”
“… Yes, I am he?”
Adris looks to his Lunarian luggage, which kicks while pointing at these will’o’wisps.
“Obliterate interlopers! So as one be sworn, so shall one obey, forthwith!” It is her confidence in him, how she ignores both Kol and Ave to rely on Adris against this hoard, that sends a chill down Adris’ back.
“Certainly, my lady.”
And so he tightens his grip, then throws himself under Ave’s armpit to hoist her up.
“HIEEYAAH!? A-A-ADRIS, WHAT!?”
“Like the fastest wind you can think of, my Avenalliah!”
“… Y-YES!?”
Kol clicks her tongue at the reforming enemies, then joins Adris in squishing Ave.
Together they make the elf pick them up.
“Liberate us to the foyer entrance without letting anything stop you!”
“… Yes?”
A vague, distant expression comes to Ave when she takes in her surroundings, growing greener in pallor when she recognizes Adris’ intended tactic.
All of the violet lights encroach on the poor snake elf, left without a single defender.
“WHY AVEEEEEEEE!?”
Ave’s tail whips to slam a closing terror that only briefly reveals, cracking its casing and ending its rebirth into a shatter of energized particles.
Then she becomes a green star shooting for freedom.
Ave jukes and rushes past the shapes that skitter to close her off, all while cradling a boy, a kobold, a doll, and a bag to herself.
(We’ll never need a pack mule or a horse! DODGE!)
“HYAH!”
A kobold’s wild swing cuts its invisible edge of destruction through the enemies’ limbs reaching through the gray clouds, vanishing their energies and leaving their bodies tumbling to the floor so Ave can leap past.
“KAKAKA! CHARGE, ELF, CHAAAARGE!”
“SAVE AVE! SAVE AVE! SAVE AVE!”
(We have to go there! To the only place this will work!)
To that foretold place upon entry where Adris’ mind places a step into a process.
A ritual must take place, even if the environment begins to feel lighter surrounding them. As if the ground no longer covets them as much…
Characters:
Name: Adris fehl Dain, “Boss”, “Starr”
Titles: Lycia’s Little Brother, Slayer, Gigolo (Self-Admitted)
Race: Xin’El, Emperor’s Child (Human), ???
Sex: Male
Age: ?? – Young
Occupation: Crossbearer; “Star of Ruin, Cast Down from the Sky Upon a Dying World”, Slayer of Petripolis, [True False God]
Discipline: [Rule in Dark]
Powers:
[Tool Savant] – “Adris is a tool-collecting-and-utilizing fanatic. Most men would consider him disgusting for loving tools more than his own partner. Has so many tools that it can be said to be his true power. What does he do when he has no tools left? He seeks to acquire more, obviously!”
[Rule in Dark – Wave of Darkness] – “Making victory possible? No, no, no. That thing isn’t that kind! There’s more than that!”
[Brainfry] – “You’re still with me, right buddy? Yeah, you’re still there.”
[Refuse to Kneel] – “Ah, even the Alchemaster can’t make me submit! This is the one that’s saved me all those times!?”
[Tongue of Air and Darkness] – “What’s the difference between this and the old one? Why ‘air’?”
[Conceptual Refusal] – “How the fuck does dominating people’s minds turn into a weird statement like this!?”
[Marital Arts – Self-taught] – “Hoh, even if it’s dangerous to use, it feels good to prove to myself that the body is still as willing as the mind! Even if I can’t call it aura, something is inside me now!”
[Verisimilitude] – “Stop giving weird names to what I do! But if my imaginative truths are more believable now, I’m not gonna complain.”
[A WONDERFUL CURSE] – “If that old corpse wasn’t already dead, I’d definitely kill him!”
[Authentic Fiction] – “All tales eventually gain sufficient truth if retold often enough, right? Why shouldn’t my fiction be better than ‘reality’?”
Items:
[Lord of Predation] – “BECOME NOTHING MORE THAN FOOD OR PLEASURE FOR ME!”
[The Mountain King] – “[Honor the gods, inheritor, and ever seek victory for their sake.]”
[Amethyst Oracle] “A present from this stuck up hoarder!? Am I gonna die if I use it!?”
Disposition: Resilient / Adaptable / Sinner
Alignment: Chaotic
Eyes: Black
Hair: Black, with strands of White
Skin: Tanned
Statistics:
Rantil Value – “Even after all of that, Master is still an idiot!”
Attributes by Grade:
Strength – E
Vitality – E
Dexterity – D
Agility – C
Intelligence – D
Mentality – C
Luck – F
Charisma – D
“If you want more, stop being mean to Rantil!”
Beauty:
Cethran Value – “Much the same as before, but isn’t the way you look at others a bit more dashing, now? Forced to open yourself to the world, perhaps the gentleman may grow? That is likely impossible, isn’t it, Adris?”
“Duality is the key, isn’t it? Have you noticed something untoward about contradictions?”
“Aren’t you shaping up to be a bit more than you believe you’re achieving…? Perhaps intervention…?”
“Becoming weak and strong, this is a way of being seen, but can you turn all four plans for four girls into a cohesive result?”
Description:
“A boy who is a bit out of place as far as features, he descended from the top of the Castillo to the bottom by pluck, luck, and outrageous lying. Reborn into the world of Zennia, what can be said other than ‘he’s still exactly the same, but different’?”
“Understanding breeds a solution.”
“Allowing others to ‘take advantage’ of him is also a path to victory.”
“Encroaches on another mystery of darkness without understanding.”
Commentary:
“He’s too multi-layered at this point. Either he loses the narrative or I do.”
Name: Neesiette vera Luna
Titles: “Moon”
Race: Lunamata
Sex: Female
Age: ???
Occupation: Delver, Mystic
Discipline: ???
Powers:
[Rod of Force] – “In what way would it be changed? As designed, so shall it function, correct?”
[Rod of Respelling] – “A lady be every ready to instruct regarding what be in error.”
[“Brings An End” – Ponderous] – “[Ponderous was the end, for the unfair passage of time finally brought even earth to its conclusion]…”
Disposition: Impassive / Calculating / Curious
Alignment: Ordered
Eyes: Pale Violet
Hair: Amber
Skin: Pale White
Statistics:
Rantil Value –
Strength – F
Vitality – F
Dexterity – D
Agility – E
Intelligence – B
Mentality – C
Luck – F
Charisma – C
???
Beauty:
Cethran Value –”First imps, and now short girls? This is certainly becoming a pattern, isn’t it? Though you might not fare badly with a girl as beautiful as this, yes? Though she’s a little perfect, doesn’t she seem oddly demure?”
“Do you want her to be your mother now?”
“If her intellect breaks free of your tiny cages, where will your lies survive?”
“My, isn’t she the conquering type?”
Description:
“An otherworldly existence, she wears clothing that doesn’t fit with the Castillo. With mannerisms quite distinct from all others, even the girls she travels with seem incomparable to her uniqueness. Yet, she definitely seems to be in charge…?”
“What she sees in others, she finds that she can no longer easily explain.”
“When jilted, becomes a tiger.”
“When declared to be the villainess… she’s uniquely suited.”
Commentary:
“She can’t be too perfect.”