“NOT HERE!”
“You’re the intruders!?”
Ave’s slide to a stop halts a collision in the dusty hallway! Two females, one with wings spread wide and the other piling up on her long tail, stare at one another at an intersection of Falke’s manse. But it’s Ave’s horror that grows when pointing behind the fleeing page harpy.
“BEAMBEAMBEAAAAAM!”
“Hii!? MOTHE—!?”
With all her carried baggage, the elf leaps sideways to avoid the shining cone cutting through the roof that snares their roadblock.
“YAAAAA——!?!?”
A black bird encrusts with a crown around her head when draped upon by the heavy radiation from overhead. Her reaching out toward a snake elf for help petrifies forever as a last act to leave her as a statue.
The eye-and-ear-blocking crown of reddish-gold juts horns toward the sky to receive signals!
(The scales the crown is made of pierce her skin?)
“…
… DESCENDANT LOCATED.”
The remains of the harpy’s water wave sizzle into steam when she rises to be affixed into the air. A cute scream for Sapphira is now a lifeless report.
(That’s how Luna’s going to win!? Claim us all!?)
“CONVERGE.”
“NO THANK YOUUUU!”
Ave cracks her whip-like self down the bird’s hallway just around the cone, aiming toward a gateway that is black as a void in the far distance. The snaring beam chases after.
“Elf! AROUND!”
“HELP!”
(We’re the ones who need help, not you!)
“Hut!” Adris’ foot flicks into the path of a glowing spade to meet it with martial retort. Even carried off the ground, a twist into Ave’s clutches onto him channels fierce leverage that rings with an aura tinge on impact.
(FUCK!? My foot!?)
The flailing head of an enemy hunting dog’s reaching weapon deflects away. The cost of contact is that Adris’ foot goes completely dead in both feeling and movement. Even the stark whiteness of his boot dulls and dims.
Like when he drank the potion that made him half-real and placed within the Ethereal, his foot is fading from existence!
(They’re sensation-stealing weapons!? They can drain aura and physical reality at the same time!?)
The weapon that struck toward them came through the crumbling wall. Dozens of the crystalline quadrupeds skitter out from archways with ripped-off doors, pulling thicker gray clouds behind them. Their clacking racket of pseudo-metallic surfaces hitting is a din that echoes down every hallway.
(There must be… hundreds by now, converted from the servants and harpies!)
They swat anything they can reach with their shining spade tails. Vases, furniture, and even drapes, nothing made of pseudoprósōpon is allowed to go unground into a fine dust. Through holes that burst along their path from above too this legion of demolitionists hurtle toward Ave.
“NO! [KOL CLUB]!”
“Kol wha—NYAH!?”
The crying elf grabs a hold of Kol’s upper arm and then clobbers the nearest moonspawn with a full swing of the kobold.
“GHACK! STOP! KAH!?”
Down the hallway Ave leaps by her long tail through the whipping creatures. On landing each clearing Ave forces, she clubs one-by-one with Kol to crush the opposition.
Vitrified energies shatter with the sound of crushing glass; but, they don’t appear outwardly harmed when their limbs pop off from Kol’s smashing back or front side leaving their cores’ shells polluted with painted black Vigor.
(But they’re inert!)
Black sizzles against the Lunar radiation attempting to recollect. The cores roll upon the hallway floor long after Ave passes them.
“DUMB ELF! KOL…!”
“GO AWAY!”
“… NOT WEAPON!”
(Why is a kobold such an effective weapon!?)
“Ave is so light?” Their end is in sight, the darkness ahead lacking all violet menaces and causing Ave to suddenly leap for it. She sails far before landing. “WHY IS AVE ABLE TO JUMP HIGHER!?”
“Weight!? Irrelevant!” Neesiette tries to climb up to wrap around Adris’ head again, desperate to berate the elf flinging them around.
“ADRIS!”
Ave turns to watch shining cones already dissecting the manse follow the sight of the horde toward these escapees. Two angle in to melt through the roof to join the one already chasing them.
(In less than two minutes most of the manse is gone!)
The moon above that they project from oppressively looms ever closer and more vivid.
Larger, though still a circle, it grows slightly imperfect for a sphere.
For what is constructed upon it grows irregular and full of purpose, even if coming only minutely into view…!
“[Stellar anchors] answers query!”
“Dont… look up at it! Around you, Ave!” Adris yells, turning Ave’s fright back to their surroundings.
“Traveler’s gravity well (INVISIBLE BODY TRAP) increasingly encompasses now all of Zennia!”
The heavens above are deprived of starlight.
Only violet pulses in the night sky. These swirls stretching toward Zennia appear like a jellyfish out in open waters, prepared to snare the world for feasting.
(We’re not the only ones that stand a chance of dying!)
These manifested energies are kin to the growing attraction in the pit of his gut that Adris feels toward the sphere above.
It is invisibly reaching down to try to pluck him into the sky without a shred of resistance possible.
(I don’t feel as light as Ave claims, though?)
“WHAT IS A STELLAR ANCHOR, YOU DEVIL!?
No…?”
Ave skids to a stop before tens of the creatures muddling before them and also clinging to the dissolving walls. Even the dizzy Kol wouldn’t be able to hit them this high up.
“ELF! LET KOL GO, TO FIGHT!”
“‘Let go’!? Okay!”
(Don’t go forward!)
Adris’ heart has stopped from trying to read what’s beyond the doorway.
All he can feel is absence. A threat strangely more horrifying than the one above.
(I’ll…!?)
“GO GET THEM, KOL!”
“NAH—!?”
Amidst the horde a hero takes a dramatic pose of final resistance while rearing up!
“OOOOOOOOOOOH!?” Elf tears glitter in the violet twilight as Ave begins to wind the howling kobold up in an overhead spin!
“SHHHHAAAAAAAAA!”
Then, the kol-bola is loosed!
(Cruel!)
“HATE EL—! BUH!?”
Kol’s sturdy body whirls to ricochet off the wall. She blows through four hunting dogs that explode into luminous shards. Her perfect poleaxe gores the core out of one of them and rips from her hands to tumble into the pack.
“CHANCE~!”
Ave rockets through this opening, scurrying up the wall with such speed that her undulating tail splashes gray muck on the chasers who try to trap her. Past the roadblock she snatches up Kol by her long tail.
(But effective!)
“STIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLL!”
Adris’ stomach tumbles along with the wild ride. Up and down seem to change orientation at least three times as Ave weaves through the gathering horde. Finally her solid black escape closes in.
But her escape is Adris’ death.
(IT IS NOTHING! THERE’S NOTHING BEYOND THE DOORWAY!?)
Blackness.
Neither shining nor festering.
The read words that come to the forefront are just:
[THERE IS NOTHING BEYOND HERE, ONLY THE END OF YOUR MEANING]
“ADRIS!?”
“FLEE NOT THIS LADY/TOOL’S COMING SOVEREIGNTY!”
And so he tries to kick away from Ave, only to have both the elf and doll in his arms both clench harder to imprison him.
(Run… run… run!!!)
Since the fear paralyzes even his Inner Expanse, he chooses to withdraw his senses. Body and mind and soul prepare for obliteration.
Through the infinite gloom and away from the embrace of a descending godlike being, Adris is pulled.
An oily film coats over his skin…
“GACK!?”
Breathing is hard to achieve within a place that tells Adris it doesn’t exist.
Organs revolt against the solid environment that his body has accepted as real without his mind or soul surrendering to buzzing words in his ears that press upon him like an aura technique.
“Kol think, Elf, make biiiiiiiig mistake.”
“AWAAAAA, AVE WAS SCARED, PLEASE DON’T HURT HER!?”
An elf’s head is planted to the cold stone floor by the furry hand sinking onto it. Her rigid body lies belly up in complete submission, soft tail underscales showing, so that the bloodied kobold growling above knows the lesson is sinking in.
Only the elf’s tail slaps repeatedly toward Adris, a plea for aid.
Adris chokes beside them stuck with his own recalcitrant menace, pinning Neesiette’s arms to keep her struggling to a minimum. Even so, she thrashes her head and kicks at him!
“Succumb not to organic weakness and exit unregistered interference zone! Shuck this fragile vessel and pledge extant conceptual self to a beneficent Creator, to rule foreve—!
Ghh!?!”
“… Later, much later, Neesiette…”
Finally he has to put his hand over her petite lips. In this constraining gloom filled with ominous black smoke encircling them, any uncontrolled mysticism she adds could upset the balance.
(Why did Still’s protection… hurt me…?)
Upon the foyer walls beneath the ever-present dripping candles are glowing paper scraps cut into glyphs and pasted. His scan of the perimeter of the sphere reveals what is written as a headache piercing into his thoughts.
(“Oblivion”, “Self-Refutation”, “Obscuration”, and “Revelation”?)
The last two thoughts are paradoxical together, a fitting blend for a witch. Here, and here only, is the last bastion of Falke’s former craft. It is kept pristine in its foreboding alienation. The sense that they have only just arrived comes to thought.
Traveler’s beams stripped away this quality elsewhere to leave only the terror of the stars behind. Within the copied temple walls that Falke carried with him from his long-lost home, there is a sense of history binding them all.
Grand doors to the outside likely will open now only to their doom, but that Falke’s hopes remain alive at the foyer entrance proves Adris’ forethought genius, as always.
(I was right… what he believes in was strongest where others would first encounter his methodology and ambitions, as cracked as they are.)
What Still’s witchcraft uses to hide from the outside horrors drips from overhead into the central pool. Bluish-green venom congeals in the skylight where the sun once penetrated. In defiance of gravity except for the droplets which strike a pool below it, these momentary secretions erupt into a vaporous fog that settles over the floor.
Where an ever-reforming statue of “perfection” once grew there is now only liquid darkness that overfills the pool. From the boundaries of the room streams of night still collect upslope toward it.
(She gathered everything that was beneath the tree.)
Adris’ skin tingles with the severity of what is kept insensate by Still’s poison, but the girl with a witchy hat only stops in her rushed work of replacing various melting icons at correct places on a pentagram to hastily sign at him.
{You didn’t say “Mother, may I”, Adris, so it hit you harder coming in.} Still turns more pages of the fell tome that she has sought to learn from until the very end. Once she finds her spot, she points with a foot. {Put that new one there!}
“Okay!? I didn’t know where, because your ritual is so ugly compared to—WOE, WOOOOEEEE!?”
A lion with a sideways facing head rolls its eyes toward Adris with fear, then scampers away from Still’s swift kick for disobeying. Its black grail replaces a melting goblet at a point of the pentagram, to be filled by blood that drips from the tin-plated giant corpse looming over them all. Even hunched over and squatting in this small chamber, he fills half of it. The entirety, however, is filled with the pungent scent of rotting blood so thickly that Adris wonders how Ave can endure only by dabbing a perfume under her nostrils.
(I’ve been to battlefields that smelt fresher. He wasn’t this bad under the tree.)
{I can’t keep the barrier up. Something is scraping at it, now.}
Only the dog with bug legs isn’t helping, largely because it’s tied up with thick ropes and left hanging from the ceiling. Even its dog-pelt snout is muzzled to soften its whimpers.
“‘Lying Liar’, the black-white haired one? Isn’t that him, then, then!? Shouldn’t we just chuck him out to get skinned!?” The lion stops its work to dance in place and call Adris out, but Still reaches out like she’s going to wring its neck before signing.
{He’s my liar, not theirs! Hurry up with the rest of the ritual!}
Again the shabby lion moans unintelligibly at Still, only to hide behind the giant’s leg after completing its task.
(These monsters know what I’ve been up to?)
Still’s paints guide the channels of darkness gathering, and her charms surround the pool. All in all, it is her half-finished work that makes Adris’ dream possible.
“Ugh… glowie things, really hard!”
A groan from beside him steals Adris’ attention back. Kol finally lets Ave go to collapse on her side.
(By the Ascended!?)
Stumbling into better light, Kol resembles a slick of purified beast oil with how much Vigor coats her white fur and tanned skin visible beneath torn clothes.
“Ave, your bag!” Adris scoots over to her, then winces. Ave’s magical traveling bag is Kol’s only hope for swift recovery after he peels off what’s left of her jacket to see her back. “Kol, can you walk?”
“Walk? Nah?” Only one leg finds purchase when she tries to get up, before twitching. She falls back down, moaning in discomfort. “No, can’t, not well after Elf…”
(Because her wind blades severed most of your spine!)
“SORRY! AVE IS SORRY! Koooool, you’re so messed up!”
The miracle of Vigor makes it that a girl with her back cleaved across in three spots to where bone shows can continue living. Even mustering the strength to breathe must be difficult.
(She really is only as permanent as her armor! I’d figured she couldn’t be hurt… ah, “I want the Alchemical Regenerator!”)
When he thinks of what he desires, his hand plunging into the unseen infinite contents of the bag scratches on it. Out comes an orange stone with twinkling stardust trapped inside to be slapped against Kol’s back. The freed dust hangs in the air before swirling around her body.
“Nnnn? Ah? AAAAH!? HOT, COLD, BOTH!?!” Kol flops around to protest the painful forced healing. Vigor evaporates to leave wounds flowing back to intactness that only reversing time itself could gift. “HURT, HURT, HUUUUURT!”
“It’ll be fine! Pain is an illusion!”
“KOL, NOT FEEL FOOLED!?”
Once the stitching finishes, the kobold is left pale and gasping. Only Ave timidly strokes Kol’s head.
“Scary outside…”
“Kol, will remind of real scary!”
“SORRY!?”
Ave retrieves her bag to fish out a water skin and a towel, then begins cleaning Kol’s exposed body of stains. Adris can feel her stress coming on after the terror of outside subsides, and so he reaches out to tap her.
“HMMM!?”
“… Keep yourself calm.”
The elf startles more at Adris being next to hurt than Kol’s simmering anger, though, a confusing reaction. “What’s outside… I’ll keep from harming… you, or anyone. So, don’t let your emotions go wild.”
(I told her to keep distant from Still’s work, so as to not interfere with…?)
“Ahaha… Ave, ah no…
I’m… not scared by outside anymore, really.”
“Good! Tribute, offer more!”
When Ave gives Kol some jerky to munch on to fend off the tiredness of forced healing, Ave smiles gaily when Kol cheers between chomps.
(Huh!? Since when…?)
“Adris is here. There’s nothing more… well, everything else is way less scary…?”
“Kol, not included. WILL REMEMBER KOL.”
“KOL IS VERY SCARY, SO THAT’S A REAL PROBLEM, YES!?”
The elf tries to flee from the kobold clawing her way up Ave’s fishtail dress, but can no longer escape the armlock she’s placed in.
“Kol, not enough tribute.”
“… So…! Adris…! Help… Still! We’re fine!”
“Boss, where, Cute!? Kol, can’t really move right now. Shouldn’t Cute’s army defeat bad things?”
Ave waves him off before her eyes roll back from pure suffering and she collapses, yet Kol’s question as she sinks in the joint lock is the one that causes Adris to flee toward a dark ritual.
(Ave isn’t going to faint from fear!? Did she… grow somehow!? WHEN!?)
Dragging a struggling Neesiette up to the pool’s edge isn’t too hard, but keeping both from falling in makes Adris just pick her up off the ground completely. Still’s mask bears a bemused grimace at the sight when she turns from her boiling bloody grail to size him up. It’s always a breathless sight to Adris how effortlessly she embodies the “woman out to do bad things” by shifting to show a profile to him such that the shadows catch her dark blue ensemble just right.
{Princess carry? What is thi—?}
“FOREMOST NECESSITY FOR ASCENDANCY: PACIFICATION OF VILE WITCH!”
{… Oh, she’s having a “moment” again? What set her off?}
Neesiette’s mouth becomes uncovered at the worst time, her insult causing Still to reach out toward her.
“Moment!? ETERNITY! SUBMIT, EVI—!”
{Naughty!}
Adris gasps when his partner’s finger flicks Neesiette on the forehead with a meaty “thwack”!
“Assault and battery!”
{Discipline!}
(SHE’S GOING TO KILL US ALL IF YOU DO THAT!?)
“Instigation of violence, deserving containment!”
Adris nearly drops her to flee, but then when none of them explode into violet light and all Neesiette does is try to swat Still, he manages to unwind his sinking stomach.
(She’s… not going to kill us?)
“GRAND THEFT! ARSON! STALKING! BLACKMAIL…!”
{So accurate you are right now~! Please, continue~!}
Instead, Neesiette only begins listing crimes that Still makes no effort to refute as she pats the doll’s head. Still only leans in to stroke Adris’ cheek with her other hand, further escalating the screaming when Neesiette tries to wrap around his neck.
“GROSS SEXUAL DEVIANCY!!! MALEVOLENT USURPATION!!!”
{I take it she’s… maybe responsible for what was chasing you gals…?}
(So you can’t view anything outside?)
Still’s temperament is rushed, just like her unkempt hat which is half tilted off her head. But there’s no great fear, only a sense of unease at Adris’ own reflecting.
“Stimulant, please.”
Still lifts her chin at the request, but then flicks her hand upright in that special way to reveal a brown pill and an amused smirk.
{Only one, you’re messed up inside.}
Adris believes that diagnosis when the hastily swallowed medicine starts spreading its warmth. When he calms from its effect, closing his eyes and sighing, a burning of his blood cools too.
{At least… you’re safe.} Still sinks back on one foot, her feline paranoia subsiding at the same time.
(Ahhh, am I affecting you, now?)
Their thicker shared link isn’t an understood one. Adris’ doubts must be stifled or he might unsettle his sole ally at the time where she controls their fates.
(Still’s control is justified…? Because… she’s knowledgeable. I’m always ending up in her debt…)
That is cutting to Adris’ ego, but prompts him to licks his lips and just blurt out the truth.
“Still, Neesiette’s creator is outside. In force, hundreds, maybe a thousand.”
{… What?}
“Let’s just leave it at ‘Luna’s coming’.”
{What do yah mean “Luna’s comin’”!?} Still’s fingers fly, her classic cool evaporating as she stamps a foot. {The hell you thinkin’ leavin’ off there!?}
“Because I’d rather ask ‘what’s the most important part of successful witchcraft?’”
{The fuck!?} Still shifts like she wants to stab him with an imagine knife, her fingers wriggling in the air when she doesn’t flick one out. Then, she calms when Adris’ face remains serious. {Huh, that’s… easy, now.} The lady before him has a smugness to the smile she reveals with a quick wave of her dramatic hand.
{The essence of witchcraft is… “image and emotion becoming the same thing in the mix.”} After finishing her signs, she places a hand upon her borrowed tome. An open challenge mixes with her body language, a heavy allure given to how she leans toward Adris.
(Yeah, witchcraft is the same chicanery as what I do, then.)
It’s after hearing an expert opinion that Adris reaches into Neesiette’s bag to pull out Fehr’s core that he stuffed back inside.
{That’s… a suitable reservoir of ‘emotion’.}
Still steps back from it with trepidation. The waves of night that flow from it are normally invisible to others like Neesiette and Ave, but even Kol’s ears perk up when Adris holds the core out to inspect it.
The revealed core glints in the candlelight, setting groans off from the walls and floor.
These subside just as quietly as they began when Adris puts his sight to the core to divine its secrets.
(I can see the potential now.)
The pool of darkness beside them that was purely flat now gathers of its own volition to spill over the edge facing Adris. It searches for what’s buzzing with the intent and rage of someone betrayed. Fehr’s core is burning hot to the touch. It isn’t a pleasant warmth flowing into his bones.
(The location is ready. The ritual is…?)
Still’s pentagram, stacked high with the black, silver, and red artifacts that keep the spheric shell hiding them firm, is enough to start off his ceremony.
{Why are you getting pale?}
(Where is our connection? Hello, Fehr, please reach out to me?)
No matter how Adris twists and turns the sphere, there are no words written upon it by [Authentic Fiction].
His Inner Expanse is unsettled by the outflows, but it also remains quiet.
(I have the [image]! I want YOU!)
Whatever is left of Fehr inside does not announce its role.
It seethes alone.
Unwilling to meet his pulses of aura that he circulates.
(Oy!? Now is your time to shine!?)
“Boss!? Where, Cute?”
“I’m dealing with that!”
Kol ambles up to press on Adris’ psyche, too, all of them watching with suspicion. A showman in the middle of his routine finds that his hidden magic trick was misplaced.
“Dismiss and dispose of inferior construction!”
Neesiette, too, screams up at him, then starts thrashing again…
(Shut up!)
“Boss!? Cute!?”
“Obsolete iteration!”
Kol yanks on him to get to what he holds, while Neesiette tries to kick it away.
(Stop ignoring me!)
“Why are you up here, Kol!?”
“Hah!? Boss, Kol can’t move well, so Kol protect Boss!”
(I’d rather you leave me alone!)
And so he pushes the doll into Still’s embrace, drops everything he carries, and then turns to thrust the core toward the bubbling pool that ichor still drips into.
“You wanted something, didn’t you!?”
Raising his voice separates more sleeping poison from the black depths. It nearly lifts out to lap at Adris.
“Then listen to me, Fehr!
Reach out and you can have everything!”
Gears grind to a halt at the edge of his senses.
[Authentic Fiction] awakens before Fehr, all of its extrasensory might searching to the depths of Fehr’s refurbished core!
It tries to shift the night’s direction by force majeure, a “need” compelling the necessary events rather than reason…!
(Wake up and obey me if you want to live again!)
“A [tale] demands a [star]”, this is the urge that Adris focuses upon as he closes his eyes to see through Fehr’s.
(Show me her alive again!)
Adris channels his energies, meager as they are left, straight into the core. After resistance the darkness parts. The squirming feeling of muck enveloping his hand causes Adris to jolt his eyes open.
(It worked?)
Before his majestic self stands a drooping wreck rather than a resolute soul.
Only one eye pierces with its shining blue rage, for the other has sunk into her body. The workshop they stand in is still wax instruments melting to the floor. They’re proof of the collapse of both her Maker’s dignity and her purpose.
“Ah…?”
Instead of reborn, the Fehr that he’s isolated with in a torrent of black winds is stuck in the state right before final demise. Her female lines drip with the order to self-terminate still issued. Most of her drops free to show off thicker pseudo-bone.
It’s the fullness of life succumbing to death. A fear of futility grips Adris, waking the wreck that he brought to its end.
All that fuels Fehr’s struggle to live is outrage!
The dreams she was filled with decay within, the world she wanted vanishing without!
(… She’s… angry at…)
Adris watches in horror as this dissolving corpse lifts its bony hand to match his.
“… You…!”
She spits out a raspy accusation, as if recognizing Adris is explanation alone.
As his hand is locked within her chest cavity,
she lunges to rip into his own with watchers all around cheering her on—!
(NOT LOOKING ANYMORE!)
“SHIT!?”
{Adris!?}
“Aggh!? She…!?”
Blood dribbles to the floor to be sucked into the gray stone. Landing on his butt, Adris stares down at where his irreplaceable life rushes from beneath his armor. A hand pressing down can’t staunch the flow, so Kol waddles close to add her towel.
(She… Fehr fucking stabbed me!?)
“Boss, stop bleeding. Weak, bleed, not Bosses.”
Pulling out of the vision is almost a lethal timing lapse.
“It’s a minor…”
Adris can’t bother finishing his thought, instead having Kol aid him in removing both jacket and armor. Beneath protection that didn’t defend against a phantasm, Fehr’s phalanxes gouged skin-deep enough to gore small arteries.
{Staunch it with this!} Still’s offered paste stems the tide, leaving a huge red stain on his undershirt when the holes in the shape of a hand’s nails clot. {What idiotic thing did you try to summon just now!? It felt like a demon, but without a deal!?}
(… My [Star].)
The most important component to Adris’ climax was just envisioned as a melting ghost that cared naught for anything else but murdering him.
(Ahhhh, oh, that’s what Lycia meant with her warning.)
Being assaulted, the pain that spreads through him and wakes up his sleepy brain, is the greatest help for comprehending what his [sin] has resulted in.
(I rejected those two. I’m responsible for their deaths…)
“Adris!? What happened!?”
{Keep away, retard!}
Ave notices the tumult, then leaps back when Still threatens her with a rude gesture. Ave’s panic becomes a blank mask, her clear crystal green eyes clouding as she averts to stare elsewhere.
“… Oh…”
{No, no, no, I meant Kol!}
Still points between them, earning a growl from Adris’ seat. The witch placates Ave with a gentle wave, despite Adris feeling her genuine frustration. {Ave, you’re… too powerful to let near the black stuff. It can’t survive you well, like we spoke about!}
“Sorry.”
{It’s fine! Keep the idiot dog with you~!}
Before this night, there were two other encounters with dark things that stay by Adris’ side even now after learning their secrets. Even after tasting the fear of what they are, they, like Still and Ave with each other, accept him despite their uncertain interactions.
(With Lycia… I accepted her, as she was without changing a thing. After learning she was a monster, undead, and the… Alchemaster’s slave.)
Still grasps his arm, forcing Adris to stand up.
Brought close together Adris can feel the tension between his teammates. Ave pulls Kol away without saying a word, a tight fake smile her shield. Still’s worries don’t reflect in her demeanor, but her “heart” is beating incredibly fast at the sight of his wounds mixed with this newest social strain.
A painted frown on her mask disguises it to others…?
(I met… Still, too. Even after she was an… evil witch, possibly my next killer, always at odds with me… even then…?)
“[I… accept you.]”
{!?!?}
Whatever intent and mysterious revelation in Adris’ thoughts about the witch resonates with these words. Shadows dimming her darken, while paradoxically giving her duelist’s doublet and paneled skirt a flash of sharper color.
Bells gong that shake those present.
“BOSS! LET GO!”
Black mesh that hides her skin becomes more like a second one to his touch when he grabs her wrist. It feels sensual to even contact it, an attraction growing. What unlife exists within slides into his body to be tasted by surrendering blood.
Dark clothing, defensive stance, and even a porcelain mask meant to keep her sight from meeting his can’t keep them apart after she pulls free from these sensations.
(We’re… falling into each other…!?)
Fairytale words clasp chains on the link between them that started with the sharing of his blood on a drunken night, and concluded with the drinking of a poison she whipped out to tempt him with that only the Ascended can describe the contents.
Still feels this link digging into her most peculiarly, an active focus on her end of it coming with how her body vibrates before she forcibly terminates it.
“… Ah, that’s… why it works with you, but not Fehr?”
“LEGGO!” Furry hands rip on him, stealing him from proximity.
{Whawhatwhat!?}
Adris’ reddening vision bleeds free by the time Still has pulled away, wobbling back to her altar to collapse into the bloody hand of a giant that reaches down to scoop her up.
“CONGRATULATIONS, COWARD GIRL. FOUND FIRST BELIEVER.”
{!?CONGRATUFUCKIN’WHAT!?}
(I’ve always… fundamentally trusted the way Still is, even after knowing she may one day turn lethal to my plans. That’s what Lycia meant… that I never substituted my own beliefs and desires…)
Adris’ equal collapse into Kol leaves the already badgering kobold livid. “Kol, ask, WHERE!? Boss say ‘Cute’, but not say where!? Why, accept Puddle, but not tell where Cute is!?”
“… Where? Can’t you see?”
Into Kol’s hands is where the finished product is entrusted.
“Fehr is right here.”
(Rage at her fate.)
“Murdered by Neesiette’s moon.”
“PROTESTATIONS! INNOCENCE, EXISTENT!”
(Shut up! Because you’re so perfect, nothing Falke could make would ever rise to your quality! Only if you didn’t exist could Fehr tempt him!)
Kol’s mouth drops open to reveal sharp teeth. They aren’t fearsome in the moment of her pure confusion, though. The fearless girl looks almost spooked.
“… Cute… dead?”
“And all that’s left is what you hold. Her… corpse.”
Pink eyes blink wildly, interest in the core all Kol contains now. Even Adris’ wounds don’t catch her attention now as the boy collapses onto his butt.
(The image is wrong… because… my desires were always wrong, too.)
From the start, Fehr was meant to be a tool of vengeance.
When she ceased to be a tool to others, that state never transferred to the one who resurrected her from oblivion. Even to her “death”, the only thoughts Adris held of her, thoughts that defined her fate as he was the one who originally summoned her, were…
(“It’s a shame she failed right before the end.” Just like Falke denied her from being his “Dohle”, I also denied her from being others’ “Fehr” by making her my tool of revenge…)
Still had noticed something within the tree’s dark hollow, yet had only been able to briefly speculate that Adris’ intentions might or might not be aided by the portrait.
It’s the pain of Fehr’s death that actually revealed her true history and needs.
(The portrait and hollow only contained the real Dohle’s laments! Stuffing her with that recreated the original “mistake”!)
Adris rests his chin on his hands, all of his errors lining up in retrospective.
(I’m… absolute scum! I’m not the villain, I’m not worth enough to be considered one…)
Not once had he offered an explanation or guidance to Fehl that would truly save his sister, only prolong their agonies to die at the meeting with their Maker or overcome that “threat” to destroy it.
His motivations were the pettiest imaginable.
“This… Cute?” Kol’s disbelief cannot be overturned by Adris’ promise. “NAH!? REAL!?” It takes sticking her tongue out to lick the metallic surface to jolt the truth through his squire.
{It doesn’t matter, Adris, you have her core! Just thrust her into the pond to make a new… well, “her”!}
Still urges him to get up, but he brushes her hand away.
(True darkness requires a “catalyst” to unleash it onto Zennia. With the Viscous Veil at the chapel, my call worked because I didn’t stand in the way of what wanted to be called. But now… I’m…?)
If he steps into the pond carrying the core, all that will be summoned to life by merging with it will be an entity consumed by hate.
Betrayed by all that pretended to care about it, this “Fehr” will first kill him and then become a true nightmare for the rest.
It will exist only to avenge betrayal.
(I’m a tainted catalyst. It’ll become… “me”.
Whatever the result, it will not be the Fehr that wanted to be born for “real”.)
And so Adris is lost.
Along with all that he cares about. He and they are trapped within the moment of infinite potential, unable to transform it.
The moment Still’s protections collapse, Adris will be responsible for a star god’s dissection of them.
(Are you shitting me!? BY LEARNING THE TRUTH ABOUT FEHR, SUFFERING THROUGH EVERY LAST PATHETIC DETAIL AND FEELING…!? ALL OF THEIR DEEPEST FAMILY SECRETS!?)
{How did you fuck up this time, Adris!?} His own stress floods into Still, earning him a witch poking at his neck and flashing hand signs at him no matter which direction he turns to escape her.
(What she failed to be messes up any image I try to make of her!)
Even if it’s in front of all of them, Adris can’t help but muss up his hair by scratching his scalp in frustration.
At the climax, he’s revealed as only the [Guide].
(AND A SHITTY ONE!)
“Cute… can’t die.”
“Incontrovertible proof: termination!”
“Moon?”
With no one left to cage her, the villain of the night steals back her bag to pull out another core. It is slapped against Fehr’s until Kol lifts it away.
“Insufficiency! Obsolescence at inception!”
“Kol, not know what words mean.”
Her wild hair is a beacon of fire in the dark foyer. Neesiette’s mania becomes an off-putting superiority that Still, ever fond of the doll, offers no cutesy approval for.
“Abandon TRASH!”
“TRASH!? CUTE, NOT TRASH!”
“Compare to successor iteration!”
The substitute that Neesiette spent an hour cobbling together is what she proudly recommends, chest puffed out.
“Kol, this lady/tool’s ward, bask in superior craftsmanship, abandoning tra—!”
A wild slap banishes Neesiette’s pride into the dimness of the far walls!
“NOT TRASH!”
Only mercy keeps Neesiette from joining the core in flight. Kol’s special Talent of projecting fear leaks out, thick plumes of fire building from her, fluffing up her fur and short hair, threatening all and physically boiling the foyer’s fake stone.
It’s more than rage that starts these flames.
(Kol can cry?)
“KOL’S FRIEND!”
Breathing in and out like a spooked wolf, almost growling at her mentor, the kobold terror that fears nothing, not even loss, also stains her cheeks with unending tears. An animal that wants to lash out at everything nearby, Kol’s sapience forces her to step away from Neesiette to not do so.
“KOL’S… ‘LADY’!” To her breasts she slams a fist. “KNIGHT, PLEDGE!”
“Kol…”
Neesiette cools her wildness, trotting forward to place a hand to Kol’s despite the thick danger enveloping everyone.
Neither Still nor Adris would dare to encroach on this wounded monster.
(Kol is only a breath away from becoming that… beast from Lycia’s dreamworld.)
Kol’s flaming sphere of entrapment, where only fear reigns, has turned from a cool red to a blazing white.
“To be superior” gives way to a baser instinct fueling it.
(Neesiette… be careful, Kol wants to hurt someone!)
“… Worry not of pledges, Kol.”
The moon fairy throws up her hands, her heavy dress and cape gleaming with Kol’s radiance.
“False beings, worthless ones, pledges to them be discounted for being of both detriments!”
“NAH!?”
Adris becomes the target of Neesiette’s interest with a cutting turn, her arm sweeping toward him.
“Explain in easier terms, now, why rebellious tools must be cast away!”
(Don’t bring this back on me!?)
“BOSS!? ALSO… THINK…!?”
“What I think isn—!?”
Kol’s teeth clench, unnatural strength filling muscles sorely abused by an elf transforming her into a weapon. A core is thrust forward, maybe ready to plow through Adris’ face!
The foyer’s gathered darkness could just as easily choose Kol as its implement of vengeance if Adris misspeaks.
“KOL FRIEND! KOL ‘LADY’! KOL PLEDGE!
BOSS’… DISCIPLE, CUTE, LIKE KOL!”
“Huh!?”
(She… kind of was, but I never sai—!?)
Adris cannot move, frozen by the fear washing forth. “Cute, told Kol, ‘Boss, making Cute better, smarter, stronger’, just like Kol!” There’s zero time given to Adris to reply before the kobold stabs her finger into his wounded chest and rages again.
“HIIIIeeeeeeaaahhh~…”
White darkness unique to Kol collapses Ave when it flares and crashes over the elf, sending her to oblivion and eliminating the sole person strong enough to contain the berserking Kol.
(So much for changing!)
“Boss, not abandon Kol, not abandon Cute!”
“I… am not!”
(I want her to become real! But, I discovered…!)
What is “genuine” has a requirement of never being doubted as so.
It is a chemical reaction that unites mixture to reaction to result, such that impurities prevent the reaction or produce refuse.
(Oddly, it doesn’t matter where you start from, so long as all of them connect somehow!)
Adris called out his own killer just from hearing the origin, without envisioning the reaction.
He survived death just by dying, connecting the result to what thwarted it.
(Why did those work but mine won’t!? How can I overturn it…!?)
“KOL, NEVER GIVE UP CUTE!
NEVER FORGET, LIKE BAD MOON WANT!”
(H-Huh?)
While the foyer undulates with the pressure of Kol’s angst flowing out, the pool of darkness behind her is uniquely placid.
Instead of mutating with a “darkness” filling it with wild fantasies…
An oily hand rises slowly from it at the edge near Adris’ kobold, its fingertips turning gray instead of black.
“CUTE, CAN’T DIE!
CUTE, STRONGEST!”
(That’s a woman’s hand!)
Fine nails, long but not ugly, reach for a whipping tail.
“CUTE! MAKE KOL KNIGHT! SO, KOL, DO NOW!” Kol hoists Fehr’s core over her head.
“Kol do everything herself!”
“‘Do’, what?”
“NAH!?”
That hand collapses quietly back into the pool when a bell-like voice interjects into Kol’s rampage.
(Something happened.)
“Name it, the function, technique, solution, implementation, now.”
A villainess steps forward with a new regality she’s been lacking since going berserk.
“Method of fulfilling ambitions, student, share it.”
“Kol… Kol will…?”
At the moment of doing, the battered kobold in a torn civilized uniform looks instead to Adris. Her tail swishes erratically, the girl herself gulping at the question.
“… Boss…? How does Kol do like Boss… and make ‘miracle’?”
(Nobody that put Fehr back together can revive her. I can’t tell you…)
That group of deviant crafters heard the story of Fehr and Fehl’s failures. That narrative unspins the future ones.
Adris no longer needs to consider any alternative options now, though.
(Fehr chose her champion, too, didn’t she, not just her rival, didn’t she!?)
“Simple minds, foolish ambitions.” Neesiette shakes her head before reaching out to take up Kol’s burden. “Ignore not one’s better, instructor speaking, Kol!”
“Moon right now, strong, but also BAD!”
Of Kol’s uncertainties, her dislike of Neesiette is firm. And it sends the kobold in the direction Adris wants her to go! She edges to the pool’s surface so close that the liquid seeps up to tickle her furry foot.
(Ascended! I’m a moron! I’m the [Guide], so it’s my job to HELP the one who can save the [Star]!)
“Haha! YES, Kol!”
“Boss!?”
Adris comes to Neesiette’s side to crowd the moon fairy by pulling in front and pointing at Kol.
He kneels before “his lady”, earning a sideways glance of astonishment from the moon fairy.
“A disciple must act as one…!”
“Disciple? ‘Act’, how?”
Then he trails his aim to a placard that survives the end of what it desired to proudly display to visitors, hoping to answer Kol’s question.
Kol’s and Neesiette’s gazes follow.
“Behold this, my Magnum Opus”
A missing creation awaits center stage at the circle within the pool.
Just large enough for one person to stand there, it is the same place that drew Kol’s first worthy life question upon breaking through this bastion’s entrance.
While she read “magnum opus” as perfection, in reality it holds a deeper meaning.
(It is the BEST work of a creator, the one that defines them and their craft!)
Others believe the phrase to mean perfect, but Adris’ growing mania latches onto the reality obscured by their misunderstanding
“What has a disciple learned from her tutelage this past day? Show Neesiette your worth!”
Finished with his clue, Adris turns to show his back to Kol. Instead, he sweeps Neesiette into a hug.
“… Think only of that and obey your instructor.”
“Indeed, physical closeness approved! Spoken well, that Kol should obey!”
Neesiette’s approval of Adris soars. She pulls into him with a purring tone.
“Act only upon your answer, if you understand it.” Adris’ tone stays level, however.
“Upon wisdom of two peerless ones alone, act!”
(“DO IT! NOW!”)
“Kol…? Oh? Boss… want disciple to do it?”
While Kol’s thoughts churn, Adris’ hands are flying behind Neesiette’s back. The clear signals of his battle signs coax Still with a point toward the clogged skylight above.
Still’s mask is a neutral expression that leaves her raised hand, constantly clenching and opening back to do so again, testing the chaotic situation. Then she taps her finger at him twice, a curious turn of her head putting her face in the shadow of her hat anew.
(“Yes! It’s now!”)
“Kol, asked Boss, what, who, perfect. So, Kol, gonna ask Moon now!”
“Nature of perfection, be that the query…?”
While two others chat, Still twists to pluck up a straw doll from the center of her ritual pentagram. Veins of bluish-green liquid follow its lift up. Adris sees now that they connect upward to the clog of poison by way of the walls.
“Perfect be the nature of Luna, absent entirely upon Zennia, Kol!”
“Nah!?”
“Nothing else may attain such!”
Black shears that can cut even love flick into her other hand with a lethargic whip. They sing with a sheee sound when opened wide to line their edges up to the doll’s neck.
{… Good luck.}
No signs transmit this intent, only the mildest of movements and a burning of Adris’ blood.
The act of opening her sewing weapon is made with such glee that Still’s hunched figure appears to be cackling at what will come, but when the edge barely nicks the neck she…
{Guess… I trust you… but… them…?}
Turns suddenly to face those who have to watch, having stood behind her this whole time without much complaint.
“Too cruel…! Dead and gone once by weirdos, just to return to have the Little Missus do it this time!? Woe, woe to poor innocents like us!?” The cringing lion “wails” into the giant’s leg, stretched onto it and comically slamming its paws. This tin-armored specter holds the panting dog-thing up to its flat metallic face, nuzzling the unhappy captive.
Hesitation is unlike his partner, but Adris refrains from goading her on when catching on to body motions that suggest nostalgia of a perverse kind toward these three.
Still throws her weight back as if to flee from the creatures’ comments, but her gaze never falters.
(Mixed opinion…?)
“WE’LL BE BACK ONE DAY, COWARD GIRL. FOR YOU.” The giant bows its head with a squeal, tin-plates buckling with the effort as gross punctured flesh beneath spills fresh blood. “GROW UP FREE, THIS TIME, WHILE WAITING.”
“Oh well, better gone than afraid, afraid of what I’ll do if they don’t try to do me, first!?” The upright, walking lion waves a sad goodbye that ill fits the two different directions his bulging eyeballs look in. Its mouth opens disgustingly wide so that the shrill creature can yell. “Don’t be afraid of anyone but us, Little Missus!!! Only we love you enough to kill you!!!
Bye-Byeee!!!!!!!”
Because the bound dog cannot talk, it only whimpers while wriggling. Like it’s desperate to lick Still, its tongue rolls out to lick in the air at her.
{S-Sorry, you three gotta go~!}
It’s the slightest of motions, but with a wag of the evilest object Adris has ever seen, Still produces a contrite goodbye.
Once those waving goodbye are prepared,
(The doll, is it… some remnant of your tea—?)
She decapitates the effigy by slamming shut the shears in a synchronized meeting with her other hand forcing the doll to its doom.
The head soars with the liquid pressure bursting from its cleaved neck.
Goosebumps coat Adris’ arms at the sheer satisfaction of Still’s deranged smile streaked across porcelain, keeping its joy long after poison sprays upon her face.
Still spared some affection for the three monsters, but only enjoys to the fullest her ritual’s ending.
(… Guess we felt the same way about our mentors…)
“KAHAHA
HAHAHA
HAHA!”
Its decapitated straw body balloons up before bursting into a cackling laughter that escapes from its student.
“WHAT WAS THAT!?”
A once-unconscious elf screeches when roused, for the shrieks circle her for highest torment!
“Eh!?” The sound rips at Ave’s ponytail and lift up her fishtails to reveal a cute slit set just above where her green-scaled tail offers up humanity, giving Adris a meal he’s suddenly motivated to fight for. Her hands dive to cover herself, but she only leaves her upper section open to be pulled loose.
(Falke chose the best for her, damn him!)
“D-DON’T LOOK!” Ave twists away from him, raises her arms for another peek and then shouts. “Pellaeon! SEND AWAY BAD THINGS!”
Her gem-crusted bracers blindingly flash to repulse this laughing specter, for Adris feels its lingering vestige consigned to oblivion. An invisible thickening of the Veil upon expulsion steals much of the gloom from around Adris.
(Still used Ave to finish the kill!?)
Once banished…
The waterlogged swampy tome on its stand nearby is sheared in half.
It spontaneously burns into bright green flames!
{TCH!?}
This alone Still reaches for by reflex, only to have mesh fingers singed by the flames.
After the false joy fades, the stooped giant’s bolted-on tin plates become a rock slide. Its interior is just a tidal wave of blood that collapses out to fill the area as tin bounces to all four walls. Nothing skeletal lingers from within, only random rotten chunks spilling.
A lion’s shabby skin folds accordion-like to the floor to join the mess. It flops and rustles, until the skin is eaten open by a swarm of forest insects. Roaches, mantises, beetles, and worms spill into the rusty red deluge to wash away on their backs along with what’s left of the rotting, mangy skin and shed mane.
Only the dog lasts longer.
While Still watches, it slips out of its bindings like a droplet to turn umbral during the fall. Into the crimson flood it drops without a splash. Its echoing, sad whimpers and the black shadow of it crawling on the bloody surface are all that remain until it, too, passes away when the blood evaporates.
(The pseudoprósōpon is awakening!)
All the poison which flowed from the straw doll vaporizes to suck out of the skylight! Sickly colors get devoured by the growing violet currents peeking in.
The barrier Still crafted follows when the ritual pentagram and the objects utilized also rip into fluttering black tatters that are carried away with the poisonous clouds. Her black shears, the most evil relic Adris can think of, disperse into wilted rose petals snatched from her fingers.
(I’d wondered where she got all her tools from, but they were magic to begin with!?)
“Still!? What’s going on!?” Ave hectically points at the walls with parchment glyphs affixed. They one by one tear off to fly toward the skylight. “YOUR BARRIER IS COLLAPSING!”
(It had to at some point. It was powered by darkness trapped! Now…!)
— THE FINAL STAGE UNVEILS —
[Authentic Fiction] announces the direction to the end. Its participation soars Adris’ mood, for it proves he’s chosen correctly.
(A guide can’t be the hero, but he sure as the lizard hells can soak up as much ink in the tale as possible!)
The cross is pulled free.
Adris thumbs over its obsidian surface, joining it to what circulates within himself.
(Another is the catalyst, but that doesn’t mean I can’t dope it! Come on out, oh “achievement”!)
When thinking of its nature, tar collects on the surface of the cross.
[Denied the Whispers of Avarice and deprived of Zennia a true creation of the Alchemaster in order to steal another one, marking forever this achiever as an enemy of Greed.] (LUSTER), (!RIVALRY!), (REBIRTH)
Collecting along the cross’ spokes and kissing his hand, Adris revolts at the guaranteed doom of being the Alchemaster’s known enemy.
(It’s the only safe bet gifting what freeing Lycia won! No investiture has ever worked without a gift from me!)
“Kol!”
Reclaimed just a short time ago, Adris tosses his emblem at his right hand.
“Nah!?” She catches it, suddenly awkwardly holding both core and cross. “Why, give Kol again…!? Hah?”
The gathered vestige of evil intent stickily stretches from the cross to caress the core. In Kol’s hands the bond forming sends the foyer shaking with an earthquake.
Solid temple walls buckle outward, then explode toward the sky!
Revealed just beyond the thin false-earthen veil is a land which can never again be their home.
“STILLLL!?” Ave is the first to levitate from the floor. “IDON’TWANNAFLYYYYYYYYY!” Toward the enormous spherical nightmare above she travels until the earth roars with the blinding flash of her bracers!
“HYAH!?” Magical might that groans with annoyance and fear clings to her long serpentine self and binds her back to the crumbling floor with a thump.
Still doesn’t fall up, but cannot move from where she stands. Her clothing wants to travel upward, her skirt falling up to reveal the luscious cleft between her thighs until she forces it down, but her sticky feet cling to pseudoprósōpon brickwork that remains intact.
Only Adris and Kol, both bathed in the growing shadows of Fehr’s core, remain unaffected.
He feels a draw upon his whole body, but his Inner Expanse circulates to repulse it.
(I was right! Dark things like me and Kol are resistant!)
“HELPHELPHELP, THE DOLL’S MOON IS COMING!”
“Don’t look at it!”
Adris cannot sample the mercy of his own advice, for his gaze is stolen by the no-longer-spherical Traveler.
It encompasses the sky entirely. Pulling only ever closer by the second, the lands of Zennia have broken up to pull into the sky like the broken islands of Xin once had.
Once-distant cityscape now announces its plan in his thoughts.
Every grandiose, monolithic tower which eclipses any construction of the Emperor is a defined dream, a distant world comprehended for salvaging. Their orientations and alignments along the surface speak of their place in the cosmos.
A “grand game” is a child’s lark compared to Luna’s ambitions.
Foolish savages who live in caves fight their petty struggles with sticks and rocks, while a star god thinks of the whole of Creation.
AND OF WHAT LUNA SHALL REMAKE OF IT.
(We could never beat this nightmare. Only… Fehr can…)
“Grandiose… be it not?”
“… Khack!?”
Adris’ breathing feels stolen, for the world has no weight and seems equally likely to soon have no sky. Around feels thin with Zennia breaking apart. The manse has vanished, gray clouds and all solidity.
Instead, a circular construct reaching toward the heavens and propagating out from the mountain as a series of smaller silos building to even bigger ones have been constructed from vitrified energies. Each silo is taller than the Alchemaster’s mansion.
(What mansion!? It’s gone!)
Slits open between the bizarre geometry allow minute streams of amber energy to filter through. Great reflectors of radiance are built on their surfaces by the thousands, all shining with the thick Lunar radiation descending to add to expanding constructs.
These gathering streaks of radiation traverse the reflectors up and down the silos, building in severity!
(Embarkation point? This is where Luna is turning everything into itself…)
Shapes hang in the sky, black wings locked in place. Their crowns glow, too, but these nude, stolen children of the lakeside offer no proof of life. Once darker skin now sheets over by the same plating that an enormous throne on Traveler was comprised of. More creations of the Wondrous Works now and the bizarre biology which joined with metal, they have no feeling of “personality”.
They are silent watchers by the hundreds, some of them with their attentions turning from the distance to identify the new additions.
Their chief target of observation is a Lunamaton.
“Kol, obeying instructor…”
So much radiation fills the environs that Neesiette’s dress has become a miniature steel-blue sun. Adris recalls then that this doll is herself like the silos.
“… Relinquish for destruction, mediocrity removed, and ascendancy with this lady/tool earned…”
Violet half-moons blaze with the feeling of Art being woven by her, the real danger of Luna now incarnated in their short benefactor.
Her hand extends politely, but Neesiette’s face is contorted into a strict, wide smile with sharp eyes.
“… [Obedience], essential quality for lesser beings: demonstrate.”
With this order…
Neesiette begins to levitate under her own volition.
(Damn, she’s really… soaking up this villainess thing…)
Dress flutters in the glory from above, her hair long since given up being constrained by her horned crown. Adris feels pushed by an invisible force! The visible ones jump from the silo reflectors to encircle Neesiette.
“Great and small, complex and simple, all lifeforms shall be rectified under me.”
Above them she floats while lifting clenched hands.
A pose Adris might take himself, she grins with the absoluteness of a conqueror.
(ME!? What happened to “your Emperor”, my fucking lady!?)
Cones of radiance spin tight and converge on them!
“Be collected, witch!”
{Why me—!?}
Still’s signs burn bright when five summoned cones circle to overlap and entrap her. The sneak that stuck to the floor to avoid floating away is pulled free when the pseudoprósōpon explodes into gray powder.
Upward she falls!
(FUCK!? Don’t hurt my partner!)
“STIIIIIIIL!”
{N-NO!}
A green blur slams into Still, the full weight of a snake elf’s curled up body wrapping around her. Once wrapped on, Ave claws at the floor to try to pull them both from the converged prison!
“STILL! STILLLLL! AVE WILL…!”
Whatever the witch’s expectations, Adris feels her last thoughts as a heave of confusion, pain, and…
“Don’t go Sti—!”
{Ave… why di—?}
Like in the workshop, the appearing energies build a lattice surrounding the two, then they pop out of existence with a burst of violet.
… relief is Adris’ last emotional presence before a links severs and leaves him wobbling.
(Where did they go!?)
“Oh, haha, hahahahahaha!” The first time that Neesiette laughs, it’s to succumb to madness. “First recorded success, iguana: self capture!” She throws her arms wide, as if to embrace Zennia or the “friends” she just “shined” away.
“Where are they… Neesiette?’
“Be not afraid, Emperor.”
The words that instill the opposite result chide him in a condescending tone.
“[Oracle of Arts], [Zennia Repository], worthy of collecting, newt of earth, witch of water. Quality specimens…” She scrunches up at this word that makes Adris clench his own fist, then smiles when noting his disapproving expression.
“Nay, quality friends! Contained, evermore, never causing errors! A gift deserving only to those near-unique!”
Violet streaks coalesce into a rectangular form.
“Other matters, interrupting disallowed interference…”
Neesiette’s doomed tome, [Brings an End] reconstructs in a radiant transition!
“Then, discovering now, if truly inferior, Zennia!”
Toward her own Creator, Neesiette orients to face.
She grows angry.
“FINAL CONDEMNATION, DELIVERED TO THIS ERROR-FILLED STAR, WITH WORDS THAT SHALL BRING AN END!
TO THIS LADY/TOOL ONLY, FINAL JUDGMENT ENTRUSTED! DESIST, ALTERNATIVES!”
(I want to be scared. I also want to be angry.)
But neither will help, and so the [Guide] reads between the lines to get a sense of the way to defeat the villainess.
(…
… “Make her trust you.”)
Into this madwoman’s territory Adris lunges, sliding forward and raising his arms in praise as if to lift her up.
“THIS IS PERFECTION, IS IT NOT, KOL!?”
“This lady/tool’s Emperor!?”
Before she can unclasp her platinum-and-stone-bound world-ending trinket, Adris’ voice brings the most ecstatic expression of satisfaction from Neesiette.
“Understanding… comprehending, this lady/tool’s designs!?”
“Never would I claim to, for you are truly the most perfect and beyond even me, Neesiette!”
She bites her lip as a true woman would, lowering her outreached arms to hug herself.
“… Chose well, this lady/tool! One… grasps the basics, entrusting to this lady/tool the rest…?”
“Of course! Who… else…?”
Adris looks to his knight.
Eyes blaring his intentions while he keeps the lying, congenial smile affixed that has saved him all his life from those far stronger than he is.
“… could possibly be more perfect than Neesiette, to offer judgment of Zennia? If such a person existed, who would they be?”
“No one or thing, my Emperor!”
“Gack!?”
Kol’s confusion visibly clears up in the moment that Adris starts his upward ascent by invisible force compressing on his chest and legs.
His praise earns the right to float like the harpies beside Neesiette. Into her outreach he orients unwillingly, to have his face and side rubbed by the softest gloves made of moon-spun weave.
“Deserving to triumph, that which be perfect from the start, only ones such as we!”
(…
This… part of you…)
The kiss that this love-struck child places on his cheek is lukewarm like her artificial self, no matter the supremacy of her perfectly symmetrical beauty.
Adris realizes that there is some flaw within Neesiette that is the source of this crazed expression she wears at the height of her power. She appears happy only on a cursory glance.
“No flaws will befall beings made perfectly… no fears, no errors, no disharmony…” There’s desperation in her eyes, though, as she fulfills her role.
“No banishments…!”
(I don’t like this part of you, Neesiette… but… I understand it.)
But there’s no need to voice that, because another takes up her role finally.
“… Kol, disagree…”
“Dissent!?” Neesiette’s mania becomes anger sufficient to “shine” away any threat. “Perfected logic, IRREFUTABLE, intrusive sub-intellects shall be recti—!
RELEASE!”
Neesiette’s orientation tumbles about, for the unbelievably powerful doll still has the physical strength of a kitten.
(BRINGING ME UP TO YOU WAS THE MOST CLICHE STAGE VILLAIN MISTAKE EVER!)
Adris, who had been unaffected by the the oppression of Traveler save for the air being thin like on a mountain, breaks loose of what compresses him by circulating his aura and grapples with his mistress!
Round and round they fly!
(Luna doesn’t know how to really deal with darkness, does he!? YOU’RE JUST INVITING ME TO STAB YOU IN THE BACK IF SO, GAHAHAHA!)
“NOW, KOL!”
“NO!”
The kobold ignores both of them, already trudging through the murk of a pool.
“‘Perfect’, Kol, not know what is? Very weird, very strange, think ‘perfect’, ‘unchanging best’, exist, for all?”
This mire tries to refuse her to step out onto the raised circle, clinging to and leaving indelible stains on her matted feet and soggy pants. Corrupted, chaotic feelings and potential saps at even this titan.
“Not get it, because Kol only Kol… except this part, Disciple Kol, understand!”
Kol thrusts Feh’r core toward the unholy moon above.
In defiance of a faultless conqueror from the stars, a lone girl…
— THE [PRINCE] —
The stains left by the pool reach Kol’s brow to leave this written for Adris’ eagle eyes.
“GO, PRINCE KOL! Wake her with your roar!”
“RELEASE! Non-existent in nearby environs, personages of royalty save for an Emperor!”
Adris’ hooks under Neesiette’s arms keep her constantly oriented away from the [Brings an End] which has unclasped itself. It pathetically tries to float after her to be read, yet can’t beat Adris’ wild momentum.
All the Lunamaton can do of note is repeatedly kick her boot up at Adris’ crotch, forcing him to use a crossed-thigh block.
“Huh? Now, Kol ‘prince’? No, Kol not get that, either, but ‘roar’, roar Kol can do!”
White fire bursts from a tiny wolf girl.
By Adris’ wavering Inner Expanse’ reaction, all of what Kol contains becomes the inferno building around the pool. It even begins to smell of sulfurous hellfire with how much of her aura she gives to this emission.
(She… wait, she’s putting in a lot!?)
“LADY! KOL’S LADY, ‘LADY CUTE’, HEAR KOL ROAR!”
The black waters suck willingly into the pressure void of flames of terror.
A rising fountain of pure night excludes violet radiance from its domain.
“Kol… become… KNIGHT! Silver Knight, Good Moon, Boss, all teach…!
GRAAAAAAAAAH!?”
Another burst of flames intensifies, then focuses the inferno. The flames flow not upward, but warp back to fall into the attraction of a darkly shining sphere.
“Cute hear…? Then… LISTEN, TO KOL, FOR KOL LISTENED! KOL… LEARN… Kack!?”
Black Vigor erupts from Kol’s mouth and nose, followed by her servant’s uniform dying deeper black.
“Kol… learn…!
To take more from others… you have to… give to others, first!”
The sad reality is that Adris was only delaying Kol’s ambitions. Trying to force her to think, lay a framework for mental clarity and imagination.
He’d never had an end goal, only a deception.
(If that’s what you learned, then it’s a truth you’ve earned.)
“Only a little… but some!”
And it’s a powerful truth, though Kol tries to be thrift with generosity.
Like all Techniques do, the unruly aura that she simply pumps into the space surrounding her takes up guidance from the principle she’s realized. Because it is perfectly understood, the Technique guides itself.
Its shape transforms into red arteries filled with fire that shrink to contain all of the energy being loosed. They link Kol’s body with the birthing core, then more snap out from the core to wrap around the Black Cross.
A parasitic union sees the white flames collect in the crucible within a dead servant. It begins to smolder, then burn.
(It’s alive now…!)
The tar on its surface sucks away completely, turning the core into a blinding white/black star which Kol orbits.
“Kol, can’t do what Boss do…! BIG WORDS, DEEP MEANING…!”
The roaring kobold scratches at her own neck, her breath raspy. Tanned skin is turning whiter with less blood flowing. None of it has left Kol, but her candle-flame burns lower.
“So Kol just do… what Kol does, Kol guesses!”
Even though the beating core has sucked up her flames and is draining her dry, Kol finds a second wind! The mischievous bruiser clamps onto the floating core and brings it closer… to lick its burning casing and then shiver at the taste!
“Desist, Kol! Plummeting, cardiovascular functions!”
Neeisette climbs over Adris’ head to try to jump free, but he follows her flight to clamp onto both arms in a bear hug.
“She knows, Neesiette…”
(She doesn’t care! This is what you do for people you truly care about! You… give up things…)
Like Adris did, his disciple learns to “sacrifice”. A burning taste of bile is what it was for him, a self-hatred building every night when thinking of what he gave up.
For Kol it is different.
Kol’s drool is thick, but she contains herself long enough to raise the Black Cross to defy Neesiette. Rather than hating this loss, Kol relishes in it.
“Kakaka… Bad… Moon… try to keep… Cute from Kol…”
(… You’re… probably what she’d like, actually…)
“Only ‘perfect’… WHAT KOL WANTS!”
Kol’s last flame erupts to fill the beating arteries.
“TRUE KNIGHT, GIVE FOR KOL’S PERFECT LADY! KAKAKAKAKAKA!”
Their heat passes along the intent.
Unfiltered and untainted, this “Fehr” will be born of only Kol’s image.
(After being born…)
“Nah…”
A bone-cold kobold crumples in on herself after falling. A life so vivid crosses into nothing with only one second’s cruelty.
The cross stays in her hand as lone shepherd, but the core rolls free. The imagined arteries between core and Kol snap into fragments by the time the sphere sinks into the black pool.
“… Exterminate…”
A will fueled by anger rips Lunar radiation from the great collector silos surrounding them!
His lady glows, losing all color but violet!
“Nee—!? AHHHHH!?”
“KOL… LOSS… DISALLOWED! RESPONSIBLE… EXPUNGE!”
Neesiette’s arms explode through Adris’ grasp and then she turns to curl her hand at him. The resistance Adris’ body claims pales in comparison to the violet surge that leaps from her.
“Emperor, clarify and quantify, rationale and motivators of latest… INDISCRETION!”
Adris’ bones creak with the invisible weight draping onto him from above! The screeching hum draws from the silo around Neesiette.
(Ah, you finally look a little mad…!)
“… I… hate… smug assholes the most, my little treasure…!”
Gathering streams of violet build lattices around his legs, slowly working their way up.
“‘To be… collected’. [Fate], identified.”
(It was a good tale.)
“Dis… Disappointing…!” Betraying Neesiette warps her symmetrical appeal in agonized revulsion.
(Learn to be disappointed by Zennia…)
Already his foot that had no sensation is joined by both legs and soon his torso.
But so long as he has sight of elsewhere while Neesiette is blind to all but him, Adris has reason to grin.
(This tale wasn’t made for me… but for everyone else.)
Black hair has no need to shed the ink of the pool when it rises out.
Feathery and fluffy, the shoulder-length coif of shining night sparks a hostile, bittersweet memory in Adris’ thoughts.
That a woman who would be shorter than he, already a man of middling prospects physically, should command attention like she is towering over even Still’s bloody giant speaks to the alluring, often indescribably appeal of those gifted by the gods or Ascendants with a special spark of life.
Even completely nude, the natural beauty that rises seems to now own Adris’ heart when she daintily scoops up a small kobold girl sprawled lifelessly on the ground. Though she picks Kol up under the arms like she’s a puppy, it’s to this prince’s lips first…
(She’s MINE!)
… then halting to move to her forehead that the specter gifts a peck.
“HhhhHYYYYYAAAAAHHH!?” Caliginous currents claw from the black pool to enter Kol. White skin returns to living pallor and her lungs are forcibly filled.
“… Kol’s… Cute…”
A kobold that stopped breathing opens her eyes for a brief moment to take in her savior before passing out.
“Absurd.”
The agent of the end of the tale turns on the black film, to face the pale violet horrors all around her. Neesiette’s focus shifts to this newest Star, halting Adris’ process of transit such that his fading body returns.
Two forces oppose by stare alone.
Violet madness and chilling blue are not so different in character, Adris thinks…
“Imperfectly made creation, a disappointment to your creator!”
“Correct.”
At that single word and the slight, familiar tilt of the Kestner below, Neesiette’s smug scowl dries up.
It is only in spirit that they greatly contend to the point of being unable to exist in the same place.
“… Imperfect…!”
“Redundant, but again, correct.”
(Beautiful.)
At the height of attractiveness, a full-fledged woman’s grace that Neesiette can never attain, this successor the tale sought appears serene to all slights. But, her stunning eyes do flash discontent when Adris’ study of her grows too involved.
(To think… I rejected the chance to…?)
The Fehr that Kol envisioned cloaks herself with Kol’s own body held to her, hiding her immaculately sculpted tits with perky nipples from Adris’ hungry eyes. Even her slightly athletic curvature is something she seeks to deprive him of, how her wide hips are just right to lay hands on for fullest grip. Adris’ shock at both the action and the fact that his attraction feels broken, deprived by the act in a way that hurts a bit in his chest…?
(I… feel something for her, now. How weird…)
“An addendum to the evil intruder’s qualification:
I – am…”
Black waters become a spiral spear, instantly connecting Traveler to Zennia with but a thought of this dark goddess. In place of the great Tree of Life that once pierced the sky, Fehr’s towering weapon split up the center of the collecting silo banishes the Lunar radiation with one pulse of black.
“… Learning.”
A nightmare where Zennia is conquered by Luna, rectified by a foreign star god, grows lines of black connecting every disparate example of destruction. These lines are like the shattering of the sky when Adris’ murderer was called false by Neesiette, but in this case act more like lines of ants obeying new orders.
The violet splendor drains to pure gray like sand down a clock’s chute.
From possessed harpy, to radiance-collecting silo of mirrors, to even Neesiette’s chest and to pluck on her back ribbons, these ever-growing lines of chaotic darkness stretch from the pool and obey the lifted hand of Fehr.
What was fearsome to Adris and everyone else is stolen away.
“Ad…ris…?”
The violence and anarchy filling Neesiette to glowing subsides.
She starts to descend, forcing Adris to pull her into his ungentlemanly clutches.
“Occurring… what…?”
Adris’ world is becoming black and gray, as bells ring out to welcome the advent of the [Star].
Only the Guide and the Evil are permitted to no longer be involved with what comes.
“Seems you lost, Neesiette.” Neesiette earns a renewed hug when she stops raving.
“… Impossible…
… never… once…”
Into a dreamy sleep the doll closes her eyes, surrendering herself to Adris’ support.
“… competing, did this… lady…”
(If I hadn’t been trying to compete… I wouldn’t have caused this…)
Fehr’s disapproval of Adris is thick. A thin grimace is what she reserves, marring the attractive qualities she exudes when bothering with thoughts about him.
(Please don’t hurt them because you hate me.)
None of them appear to be in danger, but they have now entrusted themselves to an entity that Adris cannot even begin to calculate or feel safe around.
Even though Fehr strokes Kol’s head with the strictest of mercy and kindness after resuscitating her…
(They’re called nightmares because we’re afraid of them.)
— THE TALE THAT WAS FINALLY SHARED SHALL REACH THE EPILOGUE —
— LONG THOUGH THE NIGHT WAS, DAY SHALL BREAK —
Fehr snaps her fingers.
With the whole world now made of gray clay except for those who are truly alive…
Adris,
Neesiette,
And Kol…
They offer themselves to the gray void that flows into Fehr, the only other being who keeps color.
The two couples spin toward each other until Adris’ consciousness gives up.
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?”
“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?”
“Isn’t this purely the convergence of luck? Is that also a form of Fate?”
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’?”
“Encroaches on another mystery of darkness without understanding.”
“Now he sees how little he matters in the greater schemes of others.”
Commentary:
“Yay, eat shit, Adris, die, die!”
Name: “Kol” fehl Dain, “Pink”
Titles: Idiot, “Tyrant Knight”
Race: Kobold, ???
Sex: Female
Age: ???
Occupation: Delver, Frontliner, ???
Discipline: Tyrant Squire
Powers:
[Invisible Edge] – “Axe goes through everything?”
[Full Contact] – “Wanna go!? Kol, let fists talk!”
[“Ride on Dread”] – “THE WORLD, BELONG KOL! KAKAKA!”
[“Tyranny”] – “EVERYONE, SEE KOL’S AUTHORITY!”
[Lost Paradise] – “EVERYTHING BURNS SO VIVIDLY! SUCH GREAT COLORS!”
[ ?DARKNESS? ] – “▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒……!!!”
Items:
[“Dreadful Armor”] – “This is where Kol will live and die. When Kol roars, armor roars, too!”
[Halberd of the Whirlwind] – “GET OVER HERE!”
Disposition: Straightforward / Confrontational / Respectful
Alignment: Neutral
Eyes: Pink
Hair: White
Skin: Tanned
Statistics:
Rantil Value –
Attributes by Grade:
Strength – C-?!?
Vitality – C-?!?
Dexterity – E
Agility – F
Intelligence – F
Mentality – C
???
Beauty:
Cethran Value – “Are you attracted to rampaging metal? Though in your case, you appreciate the voice, don’t you? Do you long to see more? If she reminds you of a certain someone, then…?”
“Self-sacrificial is more like what you pretend to be, isn’t it? If you create a love interest who kills herself, will that be karma?”
Description:
“Brash and forthright, a warrior wielding an axe with two hands forsakes protection to deliver only harm. Contrary to this impression, she also seems interested in a straight up fight. If her words are any indication, she offers little thought to her actions.”
“Learning terrible, awful lessons from the worst teacher imaginable.”
Commentary:
“Let’s get back to basics.”
Name: Avenalliah Aurmaris
Titles: Lustful Lizard, Elf
Race: Elf
Sex: Female
Age: Young
Occupation: Delver, Scared Girl
Discipline: ???
Powers:
[“Sylvan Calling”] – “The spirits play when they want to! … They really do! Why are you looking at me like that!?”
[Preternatural Strikes] – “Um, I’ve always been pretty good with a whip? Elves use a lot of weapons! I just like… my whip…?”
[Monstrous Strength] – “EH!? Why is it monstrous!? Elves aren’t monsters!”
[“Unknown Angel”] – “Ave doesn’t feel especially blessed…”
[Elvish Venom?] – “Hm? Well, Ave doesn’t really know, but if you have fangs, shouldn’t you have venom?”
Disposition: Joyful / Impressionable / Cowardly
Alignment: Neutral
Eyes: Crystal Green
Hair: Moss Green
Skin: White
Statistics:
Rantil Value –
Strength – C
Vitality – D
Dexterity – C
Intelligence – C
Mentality – F
Luck – A
Charisma – C
???
Beauty:
Cethran Value – “While not possessing your newly favorite curves, isn’t a girl with a naive charm also fine? Because she covers so little, you are also left without having to imagine what you could possess, yes?”
“Enjoying her shame? Have you found what you like about her?”
Description:
“As cheerful as she is skittish, Avenalliah fits an unknown position within the four delvers’ group. Though she carries a large sack, that would hardly count as a position… right?”
“There is more to faith than the name of the one you claim to worship.”
Commentary:
“Another sacrificial idiot. Fire and wind are one side of the ‘selfishness’ spectrum when it comes to protecting others.”
Name: Still, “Cyrene Stillwater”
Titles: Puddle
Race: Undead?
Sex: Female
Age: Young Lady?
Occupation: Delver, Trickster/Outfighter
Discipline: Accursed Avenger
Powers:
[“Reprisal Strike”] – {You had it coming, deciding you could oppose me and walk away from it.}
[“Surprising Agility”] – {Is it honestly surprising by now? Walls are just another surface~!}
[Nectar] – {How does my suffering taste, spawn of “cursed blood”!?}
[Shadowplay] – {How did you forget that shadows are also a doorway, Adris?}
[Undead Fortitude?] – {Do you think that what has no life cares about your pathetic strikes?}
Disposition: Playful / Sadistic / Skulking
Alignment: Chaotic
Eyes: ???
Hair: ???
Skin: ???
Statistics:
Rantil Value –
Attributes by Grade:
Strength – E
Vitality – E
Dexterity – C
Agility – C
Intelligence – C
Mentality – D
Charisma – E
???
Beauty:
Cethran Value – “Do you really think it’s not obvious? What she possesses is what you’ve missed all your life, yes? Breasts and curves… are these not a new fruit for you to taste?”
“Why do you make the assumption that the Aurumia is from the same time period as I am?”
“If you keep accepting her so much, you might find that you would wish for the knife, perhaps?”
Description:
“A mute girl who says much with gestures, she also has more going on than she seems to. Though not outwardly aggressive, there’s an atmosphere of danger about her. Opposite of Kol, hers is subtle… Yet, she also can protect others. Given to acrobatics, it matches with her dark, but flamboyant, colors.”
“Witch, noble, thief, all the same.”
“Finally severs her ties and loose ends, ascending to full witchdom.”
Commentary:
“Now she’s gone again.”
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?”
“My, isn’t she the conquering type?”
“Yes, madness is something very easy to overlook, do you now see? It is not an obvious trait, but one that even you might miss, yes?”
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…?”
“When declared to be the villainess… she’s uniquely suited.”
“At the point of the climax, has zero compunctions about being what others fear she is.”
Commentary:
“Are red flags like Chinese New Year still a sign of perfection?”