Neopronouns in Action #101: Rock, Paper, Glass Canon
The audiobook vidoeo is here, recorded early, because text-to-speech programs can struggle with the pronoun that is spelled "V I", by confusing it for the Roman numeral six. They sometimes also spell out the pronoun "eir" every single time, rather than pronouncing it.
___
Neopronouns used: Ey/em/eir/emself, and vi/vim/vir/vimself
Archaopronouns used: she/her
Around 3,000 words long. The ending might seem a bit abrupt, there was originally a longer resolution, but my cat stepped on my keyboard and deleted everything, then when I got it back the resolution was gone, and I was too stressed to rewrite it, thinking the whole thing was gone.
___
The auto-ref bounced up into the air and waved the double-sided flag over their head showing the blue and white striped-side, then, with a mechanical shout of, "Ready? Go!" Twirled the flag until the solid red side was up.
Then they zipped up into the air with a whir of motors. The hexagon-patterend protective forcefield that hung in the air in pause mode with lines of gold, solidified into red once the auto-ref was above it.
Cloud didn't waste any time, she threw her hand up toward the sun above the forcefield, and shouted, "Flare of the Ages, lend me your strength!"
Across the three-way battlefield, she could see her older sibling Lightning preparing eir own opening move, half-crouched on eir starting point, hands pointed toward the ground, mouth moving in an incantation Cloud couldn't hear at this distance, but had long-since memorized: "Shard of the Ages, I call upon you!"
She'd been hearing it for years, even before she'd been able to perform her own incantation. It always seemed so easy, when a summoner said it, that it made it hard to believe how difficult it was to find your own right words.
The fire Cloud had summoned was starting to wrap around her fingers now, climbing down her arm like a constrictor snake, but not in a scary way, not to Cloud, never to Cloud. The weight was familiar and welcome, the sun itself lending her its strength, lending her its daughter, the person that was quickly becoming Cloud's best friend.
(Archived read-more link)
This always made Cloud's heart pound in her chest with almost breathless exhilaration. She was so proud of herself for finally mastering summoning, after struggling so long just to even find what her focus was. All the excess magic crystals her magical core had been forming since turning four, when her parents had been the ones collecting them for her in a special box made just for her, had finally had a purpose.
No longer did she have to simply sit by, enraptured as she watched her first her older sibling, and then her younger, always quiet, but somehow able to find vir focus before her, infuse their own crystals into different aspects of their magic.
It had been two months since Cloud had first managed to summon her familiar, and she did not regret any decisions she'd made since. She'd been saving up magic crystals since she was four, and she'd already known exactly what she would do with them when the time came.
Cloud had exactly one strategy, and it was a winning one. In only two months, she'd beaten both her siblings more times than she'd lost, even though Lightning had three years of experience on her, and Storm had one.
Careful planning could only get you so far, and Cloud was delighted to bulldoze through her siblings meticulously crafted battle plans like they didn't exist.
It was time to do it again!
Thiranfor, the two-headed, two-tailed, scarlet snake, completed her manifestation, and her hiss curled through the super-heated air with a chuckle. "If we win, Kavulel and Salk owe me one week's worth of star vanilla!"
Cloud, so delighted just by the sight of her friend that she was smiling so wide her mouth actually hurt, was about to tell Thiranfor that if they won, she wouldn't have to do *any* chores for the next three days which would be the best timing ever, because the next two days were the start of the Spring Festival and—
—Yep. She'd gotten distracted.
She should have seen the Flying Tackle that Storm, her younger sibling, barreled into her with from a mile away.
But, well... Thiranfor...another sucessful summoning...the upcoming Spring Festival...the fact that Lightning was still busy summoning...
She'd been distracted. Maybe she would even go so far as to say she'd gotten overconfidant. Cocky, even.
Yeah. This was definitely on her. Though, Thiranfor, who'd been looking in the right direction, probably wasn't blameless either.
Say what you wanted about Storm's weird hobbies and shyness in literally any other situation, but vi did not hold back in the arena.
Storm's arms grabbed Cloud around the waist at the same time that vi used vir head like a battering ram, right into the flexible portion of Cloud's leather armour, at the highest speed the fifteen year old could throw vimself.
And Storm had alwas been the fastest runner of any of them, so that was really saying something.
Needless to say, it was a good thing they were both wearing helmets, and that the arena was enchanted to prevent serious injury, because they went flying backwards at least two feet, and hit the ground so quickly and so hard that Thiranfor didn't even have time to unwind from Cloud's arm.
With a whumf that would absolutely have knocked the air out of her lungs if not for the magical protections in the arena, Cloud landed flat on her back, her head bouncing off the sand, and was left staring up at the sky as the magical yellow spiral symbols of a successful Ambush spun above her, counting down from 15, when her stun status would end.
Thiranfor, still wrapped around her arm, had her own stun counter, a second behind Cloud's, just visible out of the corner of Cloud's eye.
They were very lucky it was only a count of 15. If they'd been any more distracted, it probably would have been doubled, at least.
And let's be honest, if Cloud had been the one to pull off that sort of trick within the first minute of the battle, she would have been cackling her head off, and you wouldn't have been able to shut her up about it for a week, at least. Cloud did not particularly care for the art of subtelty, nor humbleness.
But not Storm. Nope. Vi was pretty much the grand master of subtlety. Whether vi were humble or not was a different question entirely.
Silent as the grave, Storm had stepped back, far enough that Cloud could see vim, and was lifting one hand overhead, almost in a match to the pose that Cloud had taken to summon Thiranfor, but instead of summoning vir familiar, a familiar black mist was surrounding vir hand instead.
Oh, yeah. Even if Storm wouldn't brag about it like Cloud would, she was never living this down. No one would have to brag, she'd know about it, and that was enough to be annoying.
It only took exactly 3 seconds for Storm to summon vir spirit-weapon, Sparklight, the pitch black staff surrounded by a halo of blue light.
Cloud still had 11 seconds of stun left, and could only sign internally as her younger sibling — younger! — took out an entire twenty five percent of her health bar with just a single, basic, Soul Slash. The kind so basic you could do it with any type of magical weapon. Not even remotely specialized or costly. And it only had a two second cooldown, too.
And that was enough to take out a quarter of her health.
This was the risk you signed up for when you dedicated most of your magick towards offence at the expense of defense.
Cloud knew this, and resolutely did not sigh or grumble, she just kept her eyes locked on the stun counter above her.
Lightning should be done summoning by now, and would probably be charging over here any second, either to attack Storm, or get some easy shots in on Cloud while she was down. It depended on who ey thought posed the most danger at the moment. Those two were always debating who to attack when, or how, and played rock paper scissors like their lives depended on it.
Maybe watching them do all that for years, while her own magic was still a mystery, was why Cloud had chosen the tactic she had. Sometimes cutting straight through all the chaff was the best way forward, but also, it was just very satisfying, after years and years of constant "you have to predict what youre opponant will predict what you're predicting they'll do" and so on and so forth. It was maddening.
Either way, whichever one of them Lightning chose to attack first, there were 9 seconds remaining on Cloud's stun counter.
This was when Lightning and the fully-manifested Kavulel finally joined the fight, probably after planning out every single step they would take, and the exact angle they approached from, too.
Cloud couldn't see it, but it sounded like Lightning had decided to copy Storm, and went with a Flying Tackle — which did not land, while Kavulel, the grey and transparent living-rock unicorn with diamond horns and hooves, audibly began powering up an Earthquake area of effect with a loud hum deep in eir throat that made Cloud's bones tingle.
Earthquake, Cloud knew, took 8 seconds to cast, unless Lightning and Kavulel had been doing a lot of secret training together that Cloud didn't know about. Which was entirely possible, given how badly she was beating them most times they came here to play.
6 seconds left on her stun, versus 8 seconds to Earthquake. That didn't inspire confidance.
Cloud was going to have to move faster, maybe than she was even capable of, if she wanted to get out of range of that area of effect. Two seconds to get to her feet and get five feet away to halve the damage and maybe get Lucky, ten if she could make it to dodge the damage entirely — was that even possible?
With how low her health resource was at the baseline, even if she only took half damage, she was going to go down in a single hit. Earthquake was worth twenty Souls Slashes, at least.
All of these thoughts were flying through her head so fast, it was like time was slowing. But they all added up to the same thing: As soon as her stun counter hit zero, she was going to have to move, fast.
From the sounds of it, Storm and Lightning were just flat out having a wrestling match somewhere off to the side, without any actual use of magic, as far as Cloud could hear.
At this point, if she thought ahead for five seconds, the more she and Lightning could keep Storm off balance, the better both their chances probably were. They'd both already summoned their familiars, but vi hadn't— they needed to keep it that way.
See? She could plan ahead. She just didn't think it was necessary to have a branching, five thousand step plan just for a single 3-way Magic Battle at the park between siblings. That was just excessive.
Not that any of that would matter if Cloud lost the fight in the next three seconds—
It was a good thing her method of attack was always so simple, because you couldn't talk while Stunned, but she didn't need to talk to Thiranfor to tell her what the plan was, because it was always ths same—
Counter at zero!
Two seconds until Earthquake!
Every thought except "Ahhh!!! Runrunrun!!!!" Fled Cloud's mind. Her veins were like ice. It felt like there was a rubber band wrapped around her head.
She had *no* idea she could move so fast.
Somehow, not only did she sucessfully get to her feet, not only did she sucessfully grab the still-stunned Thiranfor from where she'd fallen to the sand, but Cloud also managed to half sprint, half leap more than ten feet in *two seconds flat*.
It was the fastest she had ever moved in her life. She hadn't even known that was possible.
She barely had time to process the fact that she was out of range before the earth-shaking roar of Earthquake behind her hit her ears like an avalanche, making her flinch instinctively, even though she knew she was out of range.
Somehow, she'd gotten away. Her lungs were burning, her heart was pounding with fear, but she'd gotten away.
And now it was her turn do to what she did best, go on the offe—
Look behind you, Torak!
The thought came to her in the voice of her favorite character in her head, sending an icy chill shooting down her spine in sudden realization that she was literally just standing there, her back to both other combatants, not even paying attention!
Again!
Thiranfor, finally unstunned, raced back up Cloud's arm to her favorite perch and reared up to her full height with a hiss of challenge as Cloud spun around as quickly as she could, berating herself for her thoughlessness.
It would have been completely unforgivable for her to fall for the same trap twice in the same fight. And she had realized that just in time, too, because that was exactly what Storm was attempting.
The scene seemed to play out in front of Cloud's eyes in slow motion.
Storm was rushing at her again, vir footsteps silent in the sand because of vir Sneak skill, arms poised ready to grab her, and head lowered for another ram.
Behind vim, Lightning was on the ground where ey'd obviously been stunned emself, but not for long — ey was already pushing to eir feet, eyes locked on Cloud, not Storm, now that Storm was focused on her.
All that planning, all that scheming. It was about to go up in flames.
Kavulel was rearing onto eir hind legs again, diamond horn and hooves flashing as ey sang wordlessly, preparing the weaker, but much faster to cast Aftershock, aimed directly towards Cloud.
Because everyone knew what happened next.
Now Cloud couldn't resist the urge to cackle, and let her laugh burst out of her chest, because her siblings knew exactly what she was going to do, and that's why they were both focusing on taking her down first.
It was, after all, why Storm had ambushed Cloud in the first place. You couldn't plan anything with a flamethrower pointed at you the entire time.
"Infirno!" Cloud shouted, throwing her hands forward to aim as Thiranfor opened both her mouths wide.
The fan-shaped gout of magical fire that errupted was massive, bright red edged with black, and did massive amounts of damage every second it touched you, and it was almost effortless to cast, since Cloud had invested every single one of her magic crystals into learning it.
Cloud had once heard the saying that offesnse was the best defense, and had taken it entirely to heart.
So what if her health and armour were at novice rank, when she could practically take out any opponant in just a few seconds of aiming Infirno at them? It was a gamble, but it was a simple gamble. If she could hit her enemmies, she won!
It was perfect!
Cloud let the fire run rampant for 5 seconds, which was usually more than enough to reduce both her siblings and their familiar's health to ashes.
Just as usually happened when she was actually paying attention instead of being tackled from behind and stunned, her "hit so hard they can't hit back" tactic worked.
When the flames disappeared, Cloud could see that Kavulel's health dropped to zero in three seconds flat before ey could hit back with Aftershock, and the rock unicorn dropped back to all eir fours with a sigh, flicking eir lion-like tail and shaking eir head in resignation.
Lightning was down for the count, too, even though ey had clearly tried to throw up a Soul Shield at the very last second, to no avail, since ey were still in the blocking pose, both arms crossed over eir chest to form an X shape.
"Alright, alright, we lost!" Kavulel cried, shaking eir head and prancing in a small circle as the color drained away from them both until they were greyscale to show they were no longer active battlers, "You get my star vanilla for the rest of the week, Thir, and Lightning does half of Cloud's chores. You happy?" Kavulel straightened and tossed eir now greyscale mane again, so that eir silver-looking horn glittered in the red light from the forcefield above.
Lightning got to eir feet with a big show of kicking sand everywhere. "Yeah, yeah," Ey said, waving one hand and pretending to be unimpressed, ignoring the new burst of cackling that Cloud hadn't been able to hold back.
Lightning, undetered, snapped, "You've only got one trick up your sleeve, it won't work forever!" Then ey threw one hand and pointed at the sky dramatically, and shouted, "You'll rule the day you decided to forgo all defensive capabilities, Cloud, you'll rule it!"
The old joke about not knowing the difference between "rue" and "rule" was almost enough to distract Cloud again in her pride, and make her forget that she still had an opponant to watch out for, a very quiet opponant that, unlike the defeated Lightning and Kavulel, wasn't going to purposefully draw attention to vimself until it was too late.
The second she realized that, Cloud spun around again, arms thrown out in front of her and "Infirno!" bursting instinctively from her lips, expecting to be once again tackled around the middle by her baby ibling.
But the wave of fire she and Thiranfor unleashed hit nothing, and when she raised her eyes to look above her immediate surroundings, she realized that Storm had fled across to the other side of the arena, back to vir own starting position, where vir summoning circle was, and had both arms raised overhead.
"Uh oh." Thiranfor hissed. "Run for it!" She almost threw herself off Cloud's arm in her haste to get on the attack again, and Cloud threw herself into antoher desperate sprint, hoping her almost impossible speed from earlier would return, and she would make it in time to interrupt the summoning.
If she could just get close enough to set off another Infirno—
But she didn't.
She was still half the field away when thunder roared despite the clear skies above the red forcefield, and with a lightning bolt of neon purple, a giant storm-grey eagle was summoned in the air over Storm, the edges of vir wings crackling with purple electricity, looking, of course, directly at Cloud and Thiranfor.
Salk.
They were doomed.
Storm didn't cackle like Cloud would have, as vi pointed one hand towards her, even as she did almost tripped over her own feet, trying to figure out which way to try and dodge, but knowing already that it was hopeless.
No, there was no bragging, or laughter from Storm as the giant eagle Salk raised vir massive wings in preparation for a battle-ending Thunderclap, but to be honest, that almost made losing like this even *more* embarassing.
Still one of my favorite informative blogs
