My sweetest friend

REMI wish that we could go back in time, i'd be the one you thought you'd find Ludo didn't say no immediately. Hope grew. It rooted. It blossomed. Remi choked, unable to hold back the tears and laughter and euphoria that had already cultivated in that stretched silence. It hadn't said no. The light was green. It was— —"Anything." Remi replied immediately. He could feel Jigano's disappointment, the quite brooding and condescending stare on the back of his neck, but the alchemist hardly cared. He had meant it when he'd said his life meant little. Isla was a healer. Remi made baubles that fell out of the pockets of those he cared for. He was loved and might one day be missed, but Isla was worth so much more than he was. Even if others argued with him about that, it wasn't their choice to make. The light was green. Remi shook his head. "Please. Just bring her back." The alchemist agreed, though he knew not to what he had bound himself.

"Anything," Ludo echoed, gazing at Remi and tilting its head. It nodded. "Very well." Rags whipped up and around the form it had taken, concealing the not-Isla from view as it reached up to place a porcelain mask upon its face. Tendrils of black shot out and Ludo surged up - up and up, into the bleak and snowy night. And the corpse of the healer that Remi cradled so close was ripped from his grasp as well, pulled into the darkness like some ghastly marionette. From within the snowstorm high above Remi, the alchemist would hear a truly sickening array of sounds; crunching, snapping, a slick noise like blood hitting earth and a hoarse whisper, like a breath being returned to something not... quite... alive. The Luxere, unnerved by the goings on, had trotted up to Remi, standing almost like a guard around him, a glowing sentinel in the shadows. When Ludo was done it returned to hover before Remi with a lantern in its grasp, one pulsing with the light of a thousand, thousand stars. One fashioned out of new bones. It had made some alterations to Safrin's lantern, but some things were necessary. Without preamble, Ludo smashed the thing upon the ground before Remi. Whatever amalgamation of horrors and wonders lay inside spilled out and started to take form before the alchemist. LUDO she's still here if you believe it hard enough

REMI wish that we could go back in time, i'd be the one you thought you'd find Remi flinched as not-Isla began to change. Part of him wondered if he should have taken a longer and more lingering look at her before agreeing. To memorialize Isla in this form before she was placed into another. Another part of him laughed at that though. Surely whoever Isla became next, she would scoff at Remi for being so sentimental. She was pretty as she had been of course, but he loved her for so much more than that. Why bother wasting time on who she was? However as the body of his friend was torn from his grip, Remi sputtered, gagging on his own cry of alarm and anguish. Stumbling to his feet he looked up into the night sky and of course saw nothing. It was full dark, no stars. But somewhere up there was a promise. Somewhere up there was a god who said he'd bring Isla back. The light was green. Flinching with alarm, Remi's pale gaze shot around the whirlwind of snow, eyes unable to locate the origin of the noises he was hearing. He really was a fool to think what Ludo had in mind matched with the outcome that Remi was hoping for. But that was all the alchemist had: hope. Hope, and that stupid green light. With fingers not quite focused, Remi brushed them against the fur of the luxere, unsure who was comforting and who was being comforted. The reappearance of Ludo was neither reassuring nor frightening, but still Remi moved closer to the luxere, pale eyes wide and unfocused as he stared at the lantern. He inhaled shakily, for he'd seen Ludo with lanterns before. As the lantern smashed, a grotesque transformation occurred. The bones stretched and contorted, growing longer and longer. Earth affixed them together into sinew and muscle, the hideous flesh growing and stretching around something not quite being born. It rose from the ground up, sliding into the body that the lantern had allowed it to create, looking like a contortionist whose joints were naught but string. Regardless of how terrible it looked, Remi was sure of only one thing. It absolutely wasn't human. Flesh made black and dark, an obsidian spire fused to its skull. Pebble-blue eyes and a body made of ink and starsplatter.

ludo Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own Ludo watched the creature emerge from its unlife with mild interest, as if it had only really half thought about what it would create from the healer's body and soul. It tilted its head as the form assembled itself and - not that Remi was likely looking - there was almost an expression of amusement on its face. Isla was finished - whatever she had become, anyway, and Ludo drifted behind Remi and the Luxere both to admire its work. "I wonder if she likes unicorns," it wondered aloud. "Here is hoping, given that she has become one. I will be back for my payment, alchemist." Tickling Remi's ear with a flick of fabric, it giggled to itself and was gone. Odd has spent MP for a mythical companion!

REMI wish that we could go back in time, i'd be the one you thought you'd find Remi hardly noticed Ludo moving. It blended in with the blackish background as it was, but even had it not, the alchemist's eyes were focused so intensely on the frothing and combining skin and bone before him, he had basically forgotten how to breathe, much less anything else. "Wh—" Remi called, spinning rapidly, eyes wide. But there was nothing. Ludo was gone. "You..you said..she..." Remi shouted into the empty air. Panic descended on him like ice water. Turning again, Remi regarded the unicorn with wide eyes. He hardly breathed. "Isla?" He asked in a shaky voice. The unicorn regarded him silently with a mischievous pebble-blue stare that he recognized in his very soul. "I...I thought..." Remi stuttered. If Isla had a brow to raise in this form, the medic would have. Instead she just regarded him calmly, though through the bond that now connecting them, the alchemist could feel Isla shaking her head. Ever practical even in this foreign body, she mentally urged that they go back to the Temple. They could debate the merits of his choices later. Shakily, Remi nodded. Beginning to walk forward, Remi felt a nose in the small of his back, shoving him briskly. "What?" He said, turning to see the unicorn giving him a flat stare. In his mind he could see the image of him getting on her back, to which he immediately shook his head. "No, that...that would be.." Weird? She was still Isla after all. I have carried you as a raccoon. This is no different. Her voice in his mind made him wheeze and nearly drop to his knees. "It really is you then." He whispered, stretching out a hand awkwardly. It felt so strange to touch her in this form, condescending perhaps, but still his fingers found the dark fur of her muzzle, and he gasped at her warmth. We need to go, Remi. She urged, and, too overcome at hearing the sound of her again, the real her somehow, Remi nodded. Reaching down, he picked up the green beacon she'd once dropped. Tangling his fingers into her mane, Remi pulled himself onto her back. As she did, Isla gave a snort of appreciation to the luxere, and galloped off into the night. Isla the unicorn looks like this!