Scarlet adjusts her new armour. Her boot had taken an impact in amongst the recent fighting. She was thankful it hadn't taken her whole leg, frankly - but the armour was cracked and half-broken. She adjusts her leggings, and tightens the straps of her new boot.
There's a shimmering sound around her, and Oul Uin peers at her appraisingly, floating around their loyal knight. After a few moments, they grin and give her a firm nod. "It certainly fits well, my Willow Sapling. Shall we see how it fares against something harder than my gaze?"
Scarlet grins, lifting her fist towards Oul Uin. The pixie looks surprised, staring at the gesture in confusion. After a moment, they reach reach out with their own tiny hand to bump their fist against Scarlet's knuckle.
"Let's go, aye?"
Oul Uin smiles, and their wings flicker and twitch. "For Voeburt that was."
Scarlet freezes. She bites her lip, as if overcome with emotion. Then she nods. "For Voeburt that was, and for Il Mheg that is."
_
Savalle twists her sword between her fingers, sneering at the gang of bandits before her. Their ambush had been messy, fumbling. She would've done one with far more skill. One raises his rifle, and she twists her sword and the focus in her other hand, a jolt of lightning striking the gun. It explodes, the rounds within detonating into so much sharp shrapnel. And that's all the distraction she needs.
She darts forwards, faster than the bandits can see, and her sword strikes the ringleader through the chest. Her momentum pushes him from his feet, but her focus is glinting even before he reaches the floor. Fire bursts forth, setting the group's only mage ablaze. She twists her sword free as the ringleader hits the floor, spinning the cleave open the cheek of the next. She strikes the shield of the next, his fear causing him to raise it in pure defence.
Oh, so it's to be like that, hm?
She kicks off his shield, backflipping away with finesse, and regards the last survivors. She spins the sword in her hand to hold it in an icepick grip behind her back. On outstretched hand, a simple gesture with the focus, and the last survivors are struck by swirling energy of light and darkness. Savalle's smirk widens as she takes a bow.
_
Salix's ears twitch as they overlook the ruin before them. They've heard of places like this. Old ruins, from before the time of the gods. They're...strange. Some people see them and burst into tears. Others swear they see visions of fire and destruction, or hear the voice of the mother star. The whisperings of the father moon. But Salix doesn't see anything except potential.
Potential, and an overly-large gap between buildings that there is no way any mortal can leap. Except maybe the Valkyries, but they weren't one of their order the last time they checked. Another solution is required, then. And Rangers are good at other solutions.
They slip their satchel from their back, rifling through it until they find what they're looking for. They withdraw a piton, screwing it into the barrel of their rifle. Rope and a grapple are the next parts to be attached. Satisfied, they aim high. Adjust their sights. They breathe slow and easy. And they take the shot.
The grapple soars true, landing across the gap, and they giggle in delight. They bounce on their feet, dropping their rifle for a moment to give themselves a self-high-five. "Yay!"
...Now they just need to actually get across that rope. Frick.
_
Yanagi hums softly, letting her hand flow back and forth as the music gently fills the tavern around her. Her eyes are shut, but she's relaxed. She knows where everyone in the room is. There's a woman arguing with her husband in the corner, a trio of fishers arguing about who caught the biggest fish of the day, a bartender cleaning glasses as they are wont to do, and...oh, hello there. The door and Yanagi's eyes open.
The guardsman seems uncomfortable in the tavern. A little rough for his tastes, perhaps? Or perhaps he simply feels uncomfortable with what he is here to do.
"Lady Yanagi?" He asks, and she tilts her head in acknowledgement. He glances around, then clears his throat. "Our Lord and Master Jian requires your assistance in a matter of great import, and requests your presence immediately."
Yanagi hums. "Your lord and master," she corrects for him, then lifts her pint of ale to take a slow draught. "And if the matter is so urgent, I'd have you tell me what it is I'm to be doing, rather than us waste our time wandering all the way to his overwrought palace, yes?"
The guard shifts, seemingly trying to decide between offending his lord, or offending her. Eventually, he reaches his decision. "A foul Avatar has been summoned by the fouler Zilart. Their ultimate goal is unclear, but Master Jian was clear that a Warrior of Light would be required to--"
Yanagi is already on her feet. An avatar has been summoned, and she was alerted by a single guard finding her in the tavern? Gods, these people are idiots. She rubs her eyes, reaching out to grab the staff she left leaning against her own chair. Her joints complain at the sudden movement, and she holds back a wince as her wrist twinges. She's starting to get too old for this.
She rubs her wrist surreptitiously and nods. She might be getting too old, but...she's not there yet.
"I'll handle it."
_
Wyda wakes up first, for once. And for a change, she feels...rested. Normally, if she's the first to wake, it's because she barely slept at all. A glance to the window shows her that it's a little past dawn.
She groans, burrowing her face closer against Victoria's hair and squeezing her eyes shut. She's awake and she hates that, but she refuses to get out of bed yet.
After a moment of hesitation, she rolls on to her back...and promptly hears a squawk from beneath her as she rolls on to something definitely warmer and more angular and spiky than the bed. Oh. Fuck.
Max thwacks her in the arms repeatedly and kicks the back of her knee, shoving her away. "Did you just...LIE DOWN ON ME?! What the fuck, Red?!"
Well.
Now she's definitely awake.
_
Vrba sighs, tossing an apple into the air from her position on the far-too-comfortable couch of her apartment. Once upon a time, she would have killed for a couch this soft. Well...technically she did kill for a couch this soft. If you had had to sit upon her previous couch, you would've killed someone too.
She catches the apple again, then twists it in her fingertips. Looking at every imperfection, at everything that makes it unique.
She wonders, not for the first time, what her other shards are doing.
Probably things infinitely more boring than her, but that much is pretty much a given at any moment. She is, after all, living her very best life.
But what sort of people are they? How different from her are they? What similarities do they bear? Is there one out there who loathes apples? One who looks nothing like her? One who is happy to spend their life as an accountant, or a caravan guard, or a merchant?
"Do you remember your life before you were Ascended?" she asks, aloud, into the silence of the room.
I remember all of my lives.
The voice of Eunomia washes over her like warm water.
"...Does that ever confuse you?"
All of my memories and all of my lives are united in my purpose. From pauper to prince to something else appropriate beginning with P.
"Plumber?" she offers, throwing the apple and catching it again.
Porter. Eunomia corrects, firmly. The flat, no-arguments tone of her voice sends a full-body shudder through Vrba's body. You are wilful today.
Vrba hums. Her free hand traces over her stomach, and she lets herself grin. The red skin of the apple presses against her lips, teeth grazing across it. "You know me, love."
Salix alba var. vitellina 'Yelverton' (willow) is a deciduous tree, that is often grown as a coppiced shrub for the striking stem colour. These yellow-orange stems were shining in the winter sunshine by this lake. It is an easy to grow vigorous plant that will take a location with sun or partial shade. It can be grown with a trunk and pollarded to result in colourful crown.
Zyrra had been giggling about Scarlet's, as she put it, quaint small-town traditions.
Just because she was chivalrous by nature and by nurture doesn't make her quaint, damn it! She pouts dramatically, crossing her arms.
"Aww. There there, Sinner." Zyrra sounds positively delighted, leaning over to pat Scarlet's cheek and running a finger through her newly-short hair. "It's endearing, really."
Scarlet rolls her eyes, but leans in to the touch a little. "Yes, well. Knights of Voeburt don't exactly tend towards this behaviour to be endearing, but I suppose if it works, it works."
It takes her a moment to realise that Zyrra has frozen. "...Did you say Voeburt?"
Ah.
Shite.
Scarlet winces, rubbing the back of her neck.
In truth, she's been avoiding bringing it up. She's well aware that it doesn't exactly sound believable to most people, and would rather not be looked at like a mad woman. It's enough that she's got a pixie whispering in her ear at every bell of the day.
"...Aye, I did."
Zyrra blinks, slowly. "Voeburt as in...the ancient city which is now Il Mheg? The one that's been under a lake for a hundred years?"
Scarlet winces at the bluntness of the words - the wound is still fresh for her, after all - then tries to school her expression into something approximating a charming smile rather than anything pained. "That would be the one."
Zyrra's fork twists through the pasta in front of her, smearing sauce across her plate in an orangey-red trail. "I wasn't aware I was having dinner with a nonogenarian," she says, mildly.
Of all the comments she was expecting, Scarlet has to admit, she wasn't expecting that to be the first. She scoffs and makes a general gesture towards her dinner partner. "Oh, come on, you're a Viis, how old are you?"
"Younger than you, apparently!"
Okay, that's a fair counterpoint.
Scarlet opens her mouth a few times, then snaps it shut again. Nothing quite seems to be springing to mind as something clever for her to say.
"...Technically I'd say I'm almost 130. Though it's hard to know for sure, since nobody seems to know how long the Light was present." It's hard to measure days and years when the skies never change. "So I'm more of a supercentenarian."
Probably not the most important point for her to bring up here.
Zyrra barks a laugh, then gestures towards Scarlet with her cutlery, incredulous. "How? Just...how? I know galdjent don't live that long, so..."
Well. This is it. This is what causes the woman in front of her to run away and ask to never see her again. "Would you believe me if I said I...irritated a pixie, and was transformed into a leafman for a hundred years? And the process was only undone...a matter of moons ago?"
The silence between them after that is very, very heavy. Scarlet ducks her head down, focusing on eating her dinner and not opening her stupid mouth any more.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
"You are completely mad, y'know that?" Zyrra breaks the silence, suddenly. Her voice...isn't angry. It isn't frustrated, or disbelieving, or upset. Scarlet risks glancing up at her, and she's met by the gaze of a Viis who is looking at her with...something close to awe. "Utterly ridiculous, and either a mad liar or an impossible knight, and I've never dated a stranger woman than you."
Scarlet's intention of responding to that is interrupted by Zyrra grabbing her by the straps of her jacket and pulling her half across the table to kiss her. She makes a startled noise, then melts into the kiss. Oh. Okay, then.
By the time the kiss ends, Scarlet's smiling like a little bit of an idiot.
"...so, what you're saying is that we're dating?"
Zyrra makes a frustrated noise and drags her in for another kiss.
Every step is torture. She clutches the stab wound piercing through her side, but it's long since stopped dripping blood.
No, now it's dripping something white and viscous. Something that she's seen pour from the mouths and wounds of sin eaters.
Oul Uin flitters this way and that around her. "Sapling, you should--you should go to the mortal healers. They can help you!"
She'd been stupid. Careless.
Overly-aggressive. She'd seen...she'd seen a spear of Voeburtite design in the shoulder of the Sin Eater she'd been fighting, and she'd been so...angry.
So careless.
"I'm going to Il Mheg," she reiterates, wheezing in effort and taking another agonising step.
She feels white curling at the edges of her vision. Her senses feel...muffled. Broken, somehow.
"Why? Us Fae aren't likely to help you, even if we could!" There's an edge of something in their voice. Panic? Annoyance?
Concern?
"So just go back to the Crystarium! Or to that strange place in the desert, with all those smelly worms. Just...just go somewhere!"
Scarlet laughs, breathlessly, and takes another step. "Worried about me, my Branch?"
Oul Uin flies up into Scarlet's face and flicks her on the cheek. Scarlet barely feels it. "Of course I'm worried about you, you daft mortal! You are so fragile! Fragile, and easily harmed, and easily broken, and so short-lived, and...and...." Their lip quivers. "And can you just stop WALKING for a MOMENT?"
Scarlet meets Oul Uin's eyes. "If I stop walking then I'm going to turn into one of those things," she says, bluntly. "If I stop, for a moment...I'm never going to start again."
As if to emphasise her point, she takes another step. White liquid drips from her wound, hissing as it drips against the dirt.
Oul Uin shimmers, blinking rapidly. "I don't...I don't---I don't understand."
Scarlet grits her teeth, looking down at her injury. It looks...sickly. The skin around it has grown pale, hardening like porcelain or ivory.
There's no way of ignoring the truth of the matter.
"I'm dying," she says, simply. "So I'm going to Voeburt."
That does nothing to calm Oul Uin down.
"But I don' understand!!" They reach their hands into their hair, tugging at it roughly. "That's not...you're not allowed to die! You were meant--we were meant to be together! My loyal sapling and her branch!"
That's almost enough to make Scarlet stop.
As it is, it's enough to make her pause. Swaying on her feet, and looking at the pixie she has come to consider her closest friend. Come to consider...
No. She can't let herself think that. That makes it all hurt too much.
"I'm sorry to leave you, my Branch. I-" Scarlet swallows, blinking back tears. Her eyes burn, and she's pretty sure the tears are the same liquid that's pouring from the stab wound through her side. "I wish, more than anything, that I could stay. That I could see my oath to you through to its fullest."
"I don't care about the oath!" Oul Uin blurts, all desperation and wide eyes. "I care about you! So just...tell me, Scarlet!" They reach forward, grabbing at the top of Scarlet's armour, close to her neck. "Tell me how I can help! Tell me how to save you!"
Scarlet smiles so, so softly at her beautiful Branch. Her eyes are dimming, now, vision blurring almost completely. Drowned in light.
"Guide us?"
Oul Uin stops. Their eyes close, and they take a slow breath.
They nod.
"Anywhere." Their voice is soft. Peaceful. Scarlet feels, listening to them, that everything is going to be alright. She takes another step forwards, then another. The pain is dimming now.
Everything in this world is dimming, except their Branch.
Scarlet Willow, Knight of Voeburt smiles, despite everything.
