Give me tomorrow & I’ll take your hand
Remi Taliesin
the Bastion


Age: 31 | Height: 5'11 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 15 - Strg: 68 - Dext: 60 - Endr: 100 - Luck: 93 - Int: 3
ORIA - Mythical - Spriggan (Ghost)
Played by: Odd Offline
Change author:
Posts: 10,723 | Total: 16,193
MP: 3059
#1
if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

The alchemist sat before a bush, rotten and puckered with blight, sketching. Recklessly, almost, he took no precautions. No face mask, no distance between he and the rotting plant. Ronin was a ticking time bomb and perhaps some small part of him wanted a piece of that countdown as well. His conscious mind wouldn’t let him acknowledge it - to do so would be to fly in the face of his love for Aoife - but darkly, colouring his every thought, was the overwhelming knowledge that if Ronin died again, Remi couldn’t go on.

He would, for Aoife, for everyone else, but he’d be only a shell. He didn’t want that, but it was coming. Ronin wasn’t getting better. The blight was getting worse, and answers were few and far between.

Grabbing for a piece of a blighted plant, the alchemist smeared it on his drawing. The colour was brackish and without life, even on the page. Remi frowned down at it, his lips and nostril twitching with silent thoughts. Feathers appeared in his hair, a gauge of his level of aggitation, as he, in an uncharacteristic gesture, tore the page from his sketch book and threw it at the blighted bush with a groan of frustration.

Head in his hands, Remi bit the inside of his lip as his fingers raked back and forth anxiously through his curls.
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Messenger

Age: 28 | Height: 5'0" | Race: Attuned x Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 7 (lvl 3 Attuned) - Strg: 10 - Dext: 27 - Endr: 19 - Luck: 14 - Int:
PERCY - Mythical - Unicorn (Superspeed) SOOT - Regular - Wine Spider
Played by: Jaecarys Offline
Change author:
Posts: 1,248 | Total: 1,553
MP: 150
#2
ASHE
are we dancing after death?
   The blight was terrifying. Ashe could cut through units of soldiers, face down a colossal stone beast, survive explosions, kill her Master, defeat a 300 year old demon, breach the Spire, embrace the God of Death himself. But this? How was she supposed to fight an illness?

   Ashe found herself in the Greatwood, morbid curiousity leading her to follow the dead and dying life. Did Mort accept them, with no sentience to grasp him, too? The assassin wore a frown as her feet guided her, boots soft and silent. She couldn't let it happen to Ronin. She fought, she bled, she killed, a piece of her died to get him back. How could she possibly accept that something like an illness could take him away again?

   Ludo's Wood rose around her. She remained wary, watching for those infernal floating lights again, but it was a familiar and infinitely comforting scent that found her instead. Ashe paused, blue cloak rustling around her ankles as she gently inhaled. Remi? She remained silent as she followed his scent, weaving around red trees with careful steps.

   When she found him, her steps halted. A sketchbook sat before him, blighted plants as well. Her chest tightened painfully at his posture, the way his hands clawed into his hair. Her lips pressed together, and after a moment, the small raven-haired women stepped forward, lowering herself to sit with her legs crossed beneath her beside the alchemist.

   "Have you found anything new?" she finally spoke, fire-blue eyes as soft as her voice was.


Remi Taliesin
the Bastion


Age: 31 | Height: 5'11 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 15 - Strg: 68 - Dext: 60 - Endr: 100 - Luck: 93 - Int: 3
ORIA - Mythical - Spriggan (Ghost)
Played by: Odd Offline
Change author:
Posts: 10,723 | Total: 16,193
MP: 3059
#3
if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

He never would be observant. Perhaps now with such ferocious predators lurking just beneath his skin he wouldn't ever need to be. Which was of course all just to say that it was only until Ashe was lowering herself down into the underbrush beside him that he actually took notice of her.

A fleeting flash of embarassment streaked across his face for just a moment until his shattered gaze registered who it was (In Remi's strange new vision Ashe was like a high-contrast version of herself with skin like alabaster and hair like onyx. Her eyes were smudged stars in the canvas of her skin. Beautiful and terrifying to behold, like the storm she was), and then quickly his expression crumpled to reveal his actual feelings.

Despair. Failure. Heartache.

With a small smile Remi shook his head. Pulling out his sketch book he helplessly flipped through the pages, many of which were smeared with sweat and tears or both. "No it...it..." Was too fast. Too cunning. Too new and like nothing he'd seen. His fingers flipped to a page with an impressionistic drawing of his husband; jawline, eyes, hands. It showed the tremors, the darkness. In the margin were notes on his appetite, his mood. How he hadn't been sleeping, eating.

"It is killing him Ashe and..."

I can't stop it. No one knows what to do.

I can't lose him again
.
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Messenger

Age: 28 | Height: 5'0" | Race: Attuned x Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 7 (lvl 3 Attuned) - Strg: 10 - Dext: 27 - Endr: 19 - Luck: 14 - Int:
PERCY - Mythical - Unicorn (Superspeed) SOOT - Regular - Wine Spider
Played by: Jaecarys Offline
Change author:
Posts: 1,248 | Total: 1,553
MP: 150
#4
ASHE
are we dancing after death?
   The way Remi looked at her wrapped around her heart and squeezed, and she felt her own calm wavering. Reality was yawning open to swallow her whole as she looked down to his sketchbook, brows pulling together at the page of.. of Ronin. The blight was wreaking havoc on him based on Remi's notes, his sketches. How were they supposed to fight this? How did they take on an illness that a goddess could contract? This was like nothing any of them had ever faced.

   'It's killing him Ashe and…'

   Her eyes darted back up to the alchemist, the pain of losing Ronin flaring across her face. Ashe bit her lip to keep it from trembling, and she scooted herself close enough to him to lean her head against his shoulder, turning into him, finding comfort in the contact.

   "We will not lose him again," she said firmly, quietly. Her lips pressed together as she stared at plants before him. The thought of that rot and sickness in Ronin… Her vision blurred, the pain of losing him the first time still fresh with how long she had been away from them. She'd hardly been able to process what she'd done, that she had him back, before she was swept away in those storms.

   ”Fuck the blight,” the wolf half growled, a ripple of sparks running down her arm to strike at another sick plant a few feet away. She frowned and sat up to look at him, to find those shattered eyes. "If we go back to where it started, then maybe we'll learn something, right? Ronin said there was an expedition planned for the Spire. We'll fix this."


Remi Taliesin
the Bastion


Age: 31 | Height: 5'11 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 15 - Strg: 68 - Dext: 60 - Endr: 100 - Luck: 93 - Int: 3
ORIA - Mythical - Spriggan (Ghost)
Played by: Odd Offline
Change author:
Posts: 10,723 | Total: 16,193
MP: 3059
#5
if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

Remi tugged in a breath, and then another and another. His smile wavered dangerously as his eyes scanned the pages with a desperate sort of speed as if mere will alone would be enough to solve their problem. The world spun in dizzying chaos, and in the middle of a cyclone of useless information that he'd collected Remi simply wanted to scream if only to prove that he was still able of accomplishing something that he put his mind to.

Flinching at Ashe's weight softly against him if only because it startled him back into the real world, Remi tried to take a few deep breaths but ultimately gave up. What did a little lightheadedness matter. "That is all I want to believe." He whispered, leaning the side of his head against hers and feeling the tears in his eyes shifting as he did so, tracking down just one side of his face.

Remi watched with a dazed smile as the plant before them withered away beneath the blast of electrical energy. Giving a vague nod, Remi swallowed away a shiver of fear. "Safrin said she thought the Voice was behind this. If she is...how will killing the plants help?" The alchemist would of course try anything and everything to save his husband, but hope was such a double-edged sword when the hour glass had already begun to run out. "The plants and poison..it was there when everyone went into the Spire the first time. Before the barrier even fell."
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Messenger

Age: 28 | Height: 5'0" | Race: Attuned x Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 7 (lvl 3 Attuned) - Strg: 10 - Dext: 27 - Endr: 19 - Luck: 14 - Int:
PERCY - Mythical - Unicorn (Superspeed) SOOT - Regular - Wine Spider
Played by: Jaecarys Offline
Change author:
Posts: 1,248 | Total: 1,553
MP: 150
#6
ASHE
are we dancing after death?
   Ashe had felt helpless in her life more often than not. For the better part of her life, she was hyper controlled by a twisted Master. She had been at his mercy, without choice, without control. She had been resigned to it for so long, until she snapped. But this? Somehow, this was worse. Worse, because it wasn’t something terrible happening to her anymore, but her family. One of the most important people in any world to her.

   And he was dying.

   Her throat constricted, and she swallowed roughly with prickling eyes as she met his gaze again. She couldn’t bring herself to smile at him, but she set her jaw, willed steel into her eyes. She pressed her lips together, looking down at Remi’s notes and sketches. Some part of her was taken far away, to a cramped apartment. Where younger, even less sure versions of them had sat, where Remi had taken her hand to sketch it with such care. A lifetime ago. She looked up to him, reaching out with that same scarred hand to briefly squeeze his. ”We’re not losing him. I won’t accept that.”

   ”This started when Safrin crashed into the Spire. Those plants… they’ve been poisonous since before that, and no one had caught any blight. Safrin believes the Voice is responsible…” Ashe pursed her lips. Just saying what she knew now out loud, really, like that alone would help her understand. ”Destroying the plants should be done. It needs to be. But the Voice… maybe we’ll learn something if we speak with her.” She offered a half smile to him, strained but genuine. ”Would you go with me, if I went to one of her shrines?"


Remi Taliesin
the Bastion


Age: 31 | Height: 5'11 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 15 - Strg: 68 - Dext: 60 - Endr: 100 - Luck: 93 - Int: 3
ORIA - Mythical - Spriggan (Ghost)
Played by: Odd Offline
Change author:
Posts: 10,723 | Total: 16,193
MP: 3059
#7
if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

Remi too was reminded of faraway moments, simpler times. There had always been drama and violence threatening their lives, but somehow this felt far closer. Perhaps that was simply Remi being naive though. Perhaps it really had always been like this, but with no one to love and who loved him back, he'd merely watched it from afar. Now it was his husband,  his family, his everything on the line.

Giving Ashe's hand a soft squeeze, Remi tugged in a breath.

"The blight was already in the Greatwood before her fall." Remi added, rubbing at one of his too-pale eyes with his free hand. "A...friend of mine—" (was that what Sam was? After all that they had been through, even now to call him a friend seemed odd. He was both much more, and yet so much less) "—the Voice asked him to explore the Greatwood. Asked all the ascendeds, actually. I asked him if he would take me to the Voice if killing these plants did not help. He is quite confident that she has nothing to do with this...but..." Remi's voice trailed off, his tone and expression quite sombre and sad. It wasn't in his nature to doubt those around him, but he did doubt. And part of him blamed Sam for it.

"The timing...I cannot believe that it is not linked."
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Messenger

Age: 28 | Height: 5'0" | Race: Attuned x Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 7 (lvl 3 Attuned) - Strg: 10 - Dext: 27 - Endr: 19 - Luck: 14 - Int:
PERCY - Mythical - Unicorn (Superspeed) SOOT - Regular - Wine Spider
Played by: Jaecarys Offline
Change author:
Posts: 1,248 | Total: 1,553
MP: 150
#8
ASHE
are we dancing after death?
   Ashe listened with nothing short of frustration and dismay. If the blight started elsewhere, then what were they to do? The once-assassin took her lip in her teeth, and a spark jumped across her shoulders at the mention of the Voice and her ascended. What Jigano had said to her prickled up her spine, and anger flared.

   She adjusted how she sat and shook her head, looking to the sick plants with a frown. "The Voice," she half growled. "Every time I hear about her, she's suspect to fucking shit up." She didn't release his hand, but her fingers feathered with the itch to do something, anything, because gods, Ronin was dying, and she seemed to be the common denominator.

   "So we get rid of the plants, and then we keep looking," she said firmly, because like Remi... she wasn't sure it would actually work. She wanted it to, five hells she wanted it to work and cure Ronin and purge the blight... but that would just be too easy, wouldn't it? Too simple. "We don't stop. We don't stop until he's better."

   Because she couldn't. When Ronin had been dead she couldn't stop, and she wouldn't now. She'd been accused of being obsessive before, she certainly knew it, but she was rapidly beginning to realize that she just didn't fucking care. "Have you already looked for an origination here in the Greatwood? A pattern, an epicenter?"


Remi Taliesin
the Bastion


Age: 31 | Height: 5'11 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 15 - Strg: 68 - Dext: 60 - Endr: 100 - Luck: 93 - Int: 3
ORIA - Mythical - Spriggan (Ghost)
Played by: Odd Offline
Change author:
Posts: 10,723 | Total: 16,193
MP: 3059
#9
if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

"Mmm." Remi hummed a discordant note of agreement. Much as Sam seemed devoted to the goddess (if that is what she actually was), there were almost no instances that the alchemist could think of where she'd been helpful. To her ascendeds? Yes. To the community as a whole? Never.

"We do not stop." Remi agreed, giving Ashe's hand a squeeze before releasing it. In his palm a feather suddenly appeared—whether created or one of his own, it didn't matter. He twirled it in his fingers, touching the black sludge on one of the plants with it, with no effect. "Ah..Mathair, I am told. I went with Phoebe, but it all seemed more or less the same."

Tossing his pale feather into the bush with a huff of frustration, Remi sat back and let his head tip backwards. "They all keep saying Ronin is a not-man, now. That having come from the stars he is not like us anymore. I am not sure if that will make him easier, or harder to cure." Given that, at this point, Ronin was patient 0 and Remi didn't know of anyone else who had caught the blight yet.
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Messenger

Age: 28 | Height: 5'0" | Race: Attuned x Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 7 (lvl 3 Attuned) - Strg: 10 - Dext: 27 - Endr: 19 - Luck: 14 - Int:
PERCY - Mythical - Unicorn (Superspeed) SOOT - Regular - Wine Spider
Played by: Jaecarys Offline
Change author:
Posts: 1,248 | Total: 1,553
MP: 150
#10
ASHE
are we dancing after death?
   Ashe watched the feather appear in his hand, and she nearly smiled at the familiarity of it. She didn't care to question whether it was the hawk or the mage that created it, it was Remi enough that it was still a comfort to see.

   Her hands drew back and plucked a dry piece of foliage from the ground, scarred fingers picking at the leaf. She listened with a troubled gaze cast down. "I'm sure you've tried most everything," she said quietly in answer, not surprised he had already investigated the place. There had to be cure, there had to be. She couldn't accept that they could lose Ronin again, something in her head shutting down when she asked herself what she would do if they failed.

   Shadowed eyes flicked upwards to Remi as pieces of the dead leaf fell to the ground, and then she glanced at another blighted plant. "Does coming back from the dead make him more likely to avoid it?" she wondered quietly. She sighed, and with a gentle wave of her fingers, the cork from her flask popped free, water rising like a ribbon from it. She often neglected her fire, her water, so quiet in comparison to the storms in her blood.

   "If it is indeed the Voice," she said, guiding the water forward to wrap around a blighted plant, coating it. The water pressed inward on the plant, cooling, constricting. She didn't expect anything to happen, but like Remi, would test anything. "Then we will deal with her. However we have to." Sickness, death, gods old and new... she would face it all. She would be afraid. And she would do it anyways.


Remi Taliesin
the Bastion


Age: 31 | Height: 5'11 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 15 - Strg: 68 - Dext: 60 - Endr: 100 - Luck: 93 - Int: 3
ORIA - Mythical - Spriggan (Ghost)
Played by: Odd Offline
Change author:
Posts: 10,723 | Total: 16,193
MP: 3059
#11
if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

Pulling in a breath, Remi wondered at that question as well. She might have meant it rhetorically, but in the silence the alchemist's mind was prone to wander down roads he'd prefer to leave abandoned, and so he chose to fill it with what he knew. "He came back and his body was..like new, nearly. No scars. No muscle." This he said with a flickering of a smile; Ronin had been fairly displeased about that particular fact. "But I have never seen anyone grow as strong as quickly as he has. He's nearly as strong as he was before, if not stronger now." What that meant, Remi had no idea. Was his capacity merely greater, or was he in fact somehow more impervious than before?

Watching with a silent smile at Ashe's use of magic, having really only been privy to her lightning for the most part, he watched the water encircle a plant. Nothing happened of course, save for the microscopic soaking in of water from the plant.

It didn't take a clever mind for the alchemist to know what Ashe meant by however we have to, and despite his gentle nature, Remi nodded in firm agreement. "If it is her..what I would like to know is...is she doing this? Actively? Or..is it an effect of something else she has done?"
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Messenger

Age: 28 | Height: 5'0" | Race: Attuned x Abandoned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 7 (lvl 3 Attuned) - Strg: 10 - Dext: 27 - Endr: 19 - Luck: 14 - Int:
PERCY - Mythical - Unicorn (Superspeed) SOOT - Regular - Wine Spider
Played by: Jaecarys Offline
Change author:
Posts: 1,248 | Total: 1,553
MP: 150
#12
ASHE
are we dancing after death?
   Ashe half smiled, remembering the day he returned vividly. "He was puny," she agreed with a glimmer of humor in her voice as she released the water around the blighted plant, letting it sink down into the ground. She wasn't stupid enough to return it to her flask for a drink later. "I don't doubt that he kicks ass again though." She was woefully behind, but while Ronin was sick and obviously so, he certainly had regained some of the lost mass.

   The wolf girl angled her head to Remi, the temporary mirth bleeding back into the sharp intensity of determination, the need to do something. Thinking about the Voice as of late left a bitter taste in her mouth. "It could be passive, but I don't buy it. A goddess getting sick too? It seems deliberate." An act of war. She didn't want to say it aloud, but the words were heavy in her eyes. These things never happened all at once. Maybe it seemed like it when everything comes to a head, but as an assassin that made more money with more conflict, she knew war. Bloodshed. It always started gradually.

   She looked to the plant she had soaked and held out her left hand. From the very gift Remi had given her, a stream of fire bloomed. She guided it forward. "Lines are being drawn, Remi," she said quietly. The orange glow illuminated them, and she suddenly missed back when her fire had been a wild force to be reckoned with, when it burned blue and burned hot. "All I care about is saving him. All I care about is our family." It sounded like as much of a lie as it felt like one, but she didn't look away from the fire in her control. "But if the Voice is the one doing all this...our side has been chosen for us."


Remi Taliesin
the Bastion


Age: 31 | Height: 5'11 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 15 - Strg: 68 - Dext: 60 - Endr: 100 - Luck: 93 - Int: 3
ORIA - Mythical - Spriggan (Ghost)
Played by: Odd Offline
Change author:
Posts: 10,723 | Total: 16,193
MP: 3059
#13
if you make it all wrong then i'll make it all right

Watching as fire flowed from Ashe's wrist, completely controlled and fluid, Remi found himself holding his breath. Fire hadn't worked in the past, but maybe, just maybe something had changed. Whether in the blight, or in Ashe's sheer force of will to see it destroyed...but as the fire lapped at the leaves the remaining greenery simply charred beneath the heat of the fire, but the blight remained as prevailing as it had before the fire.

"Me too." He agreed, hands tightening somewhat. Sighing at her conclusion, not wanting to admit that she was right, the alchemist merely let his head loll back ever so slightly.

"Come on. This is getting us nowhere and I am sure Aoife will be up and harassing Ronin soon." So saying, Remi grumpily shoved his book and charcoal into his bag.
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)


RPG-D