Hornet has spent her week far closer to the center of former Spirale than was her wont before. As a sworn Yela Aloran soldier and one of the “heroes” brought here from the old city, she has managed to enlist a sizable squadron of elves in her own service. Each now wears her personal crest - Herrah’s six-eyed mask, of course - in addition to their own and the Aloran tower, and has been outfitted with mail and sword to match their varying abilities.
Hornet herself has bought a light breastplate to strap on under her cloak, protecting her shell-less chest. She spent half of last night sharpening her needle, making it ready for whatever comes, ready to make good on her Deepnest oath, to kill or to die in this final battle.
She takes the field with the rest of Fantasia’s combined forces, facing the tree. She startles mightily when the world becomes naught so much as a blank white expanse. She sees the exchange between Essair and the spirit of the tree - now revealed to be none other than the mysterious Ofiuco, whom Hornet had been so reluctant to trust, but who she would now swear her needle to if she could.
We are both the children defiant, she muses. Our parents are cruel and powerful and we will have none of it. I fight the Wyrm as you fight your Demon Lord, with claw and nail and magecraft as far as we both are able. Though you be metal and spirit-flesh while I am shell and blood, we are not so different, you and I.
All at once, Hornet is herself again - not the elf using the old Deepweaver surname her human copy had borne, but Hornet of Hallownest, a bug once more, though her clothes have changed little if at all from the elf’s garb. She flicks her returned thread around herself, a clear pattern spelling danger to any who would cross her; her soldiers murmur behind her, but the line holds.
“For the tree!” she cries as the monsters descend and battle erupts all around her. “For your home and mine - charge!”
The elves may give their own battle-shouts. For her, the shout went up two weeks ago. She protects her people, leaping and slashing and weaving protective cages of Wyrmlighted thread to shred any foul thing that comes close, but her own path leads upward, toward the Demon Lord himself, waiting in fire and terrible glory, untouched by all the beams of magic flashing among the combatants below.
Perhaps she has bitten off more than she can chew, but no matter. She has staked her life on this; there is nothing to lose anymore.
Moving on warrior’s instinct, she ducks two fireballs and a misty needle far too much like her own. Her own face snarls back at her from behind the needle releasing purple smoke with every swing. Hornet stifles a hiss of displeasure. It seems this other doppelganger has caught up with her at last, the one she’s been fleeing through the streets of the capital for days, not for any lack of confidence in dueling but for a desire simply not to have to deal with it.
It shares her speed, her needle, but it lacks the powers of mobility and thread-work Ofiuco has returned to her. It is not focused enough on her, trying instead to fight her and two of her retainers at once. Its final Gossamer Storm does cut her shell in a couple places, but Hornet makes short work of it on the whole, leaving it smoking in the now-bloodied dust.
so the tumblr ask formatting thing isn’t a glitch. someone i know got in touch with tumblr support and was basically told that staff intentionally got rid of all formatting options on asks, so if you have a problem with it, you should definitely contact support to complain ( because they did say that they want user feedback, even if i think that’s a load of bullshit ). personally i’ll be mentioning that it’s completely ridiculous, because people who don’t want formatted ask replies aren’t the ones doing the formatting - it’s the people who WANT it that are doing it, so getting rid of it is just alienating people. but uh. yeah. idk. in case people still thought it was a glitch, just thought you should know
“Why are you so calm about this? You’re really hurt.”
“I think your arm is broken. It’s not supposed to bend like that.”
“Here, let me help you with that.”
“You’re bleeding a lot. Too much. Apply more pressure. I’m calling an ambulance.”
“Did you think I was gonna leave you like this?”
“Instead of helping you, they ran off? What an asshole.”
“You need to be more careful. You keep getting hurt like this and you’ll put yourself out of commission.”
“Let me grab the first-aid kit. Don’t move.”
“So, do you wanna explain to me what the hell happened?”
“You look really pale. Sit down. I don’t need you fainting before I get this stitched-up.”
“I’m not blaming you, I’m just saying this looks awfully suspicious.”
“How many of them were there? This doesn’t look like one man’s doing.”
“Sit still. I need to clean this before it gets infected.”
“Wiggle your fingers. I need to make sure it’s not broken.”
“This is gonna hurt. A lot. But it’ll be quick. I need to pop it back into place.”
“I told you not to act recklessly like that. You might think you’re protecting me, but you’re gonna get yourself killed if you keep jumping in like that.”
“That was really close this time. Too close. Please, promise me you’re gonna listen to me and be more careful in the future.”
“This Father’s Day, I would like to make it perfectly clear that I wish no association with my father whatsoever. His atrocities are not my atrocities. Also, he’s a prick. Fuck off bad dad.”
i’m the type of person that if we’re roleplay partners and i really enjoy your writing i’ll follow you anywhere. seriously. you mention you’re starting a new blog? gimme that url. you have this new OC you want to try out? come at me bro. i may not know who the hell your character is, or a damn thing about the fandom, but i’ll still follow. i don’t care what character you play, i just want to write with you.
“All right, all right, no need to point that thing at me.”
There’s still magic burning in his veins, and he has certain combat advantages, but he isn’t particularly interested in picking a fight the way this one seems to be. Granted, he supposes the reaction is reasonable; he may have gotten one of the other newly-christened demons to get him a hood, but that didn’t really hide much.
The appearance of this one does catch his attention, though, and he frowns, brows knitting.
“…Though before you try to kill me, I should ask; are you a Faerun elf, or were you turned into an elf. Just a distinction I want to get out of the way. No dying regrets, you know.”
Hornet lowers her needle as she identifies the hooded figure as an Unholy, likely a civilian as he wears no Yela Aloran colors. She’d tracked him through the swamp, thinking he might be a Xalphinan spy given the area they’re in right now, but she sees now that she was mistaken. “I yield. My apologies,” she says aloud. “I believed you were someone you are not.”
She frowns right back at his question. “I am unfamiliar with something called ‘Faerun,’ though. I was not an elf until quite recently, no - my name is Hornet of Hallownest, though I suppose you’d call me Hornet of Yela Alora for the time being, and I was...a bug, mostly. Daughter of a queen among spiders and the Pale Wyrm. I have not traveled outside this my sworn kingdom; might Faerun be a Xalphinan concept of which I am unaware?”
Appearance: Hornet is still short, roughly five feet tall, but the similarity ends there. She now has short white hair and a humanoid body; her eyes are still large and black, but they appear more or less human. Instead of horns, she sports a pair of very long pointed ears, curving slightly behind her head the way her horns once did. In terms of clothing, she favors sturdy boots and gloves, dresses (typically dull red or black), and a short red cloak fastened with a brooch bearing the tower crest of Yela Alora.
ABILITIES
Retained: Gossamer Storm (whips thread, or equivalent, around herself in a damaging AOE attack) 5x/day
Racial Traits: excellent low-light vision and limited darkvision; moves with an almost ethereal grace, though this confers no appreciable combat benefit. (A good sense of interior design??)
Spells: Blessing, Light, Ice, Levitate. Hornet, as ever, uses the Wyrmlight she inherited from her father to work her magic; it’s just stronger now. When she casts light-based spells, they come out silver-white and frigid. She can also cast a self-designed version of Levitate that releases the spell’s energy all at once, flinging her a long distance forward and high into the air, though she’s entirely subject to the effects of gravity afterward.
OTHER
Hornet is firmly loyal to Yela Alora, and works in their employ with the informal title of Seamstress-Defender. She guards the outskirts of Sterlow from marauding Airaisali and Xalphinan forces, waging her own guerrilla war of sorts, while also searching the swamps at the borders of her kingdom for any sign of Ghost or Hollow. She’s not forgotten her promise to kill the mysterious evil from the event intro or die trying, not has she forgotten the danger the Radiance poses to her dreams. She has, however, discovered by asking around that no magic capable of an infecting an entire kingdom through the dream realm exists in this world, so her sleep schedule has...gotten closer to normal, anyway. She’s still pretty nocturnal.
Cold, silent, as much a predator as she has ever been, Hornet draws her needle into the shattering dark. Her siblings are at her side. Her heart blazes with fury, a frostfire hotter even than the ring of fire above, yet as cold and rational as her sire ever was.
Her home, forever in tumult, made battle-cries into a language. Now, for the sake of the ones who have no voices, she finds hers, and finds that she does have a word for what she feels, what she wants to do.
“Karado!” Hornet screams, as she leaps for her target. I challenge you, the word says. I declare a duel. There will be no quarter, no begging mercy, no life for honor. I die or you do, and the latter is far more likely.
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