[KQ] Bigger A(spire)ations

ASHƎ She was a storm: sudden; powerful; violent; devastating;     She hit it, she knew that much, but it wasn’t enough. She eased Percy to canter back in an arc towards the frey. Her heart stopped again at the sight of the beast descending on Ronin once more, but it’s jaws were halted at her friend’s gauntlet and then it was thrown back. She didn’t slow Percy as they moved in closer, electricity crackling along her arm as surely as it began wrapping around the monster.     Ashe slowed her steed not thirty feet away, her eyes wide as she watched the magic of Ronin’s gauntlet overtake the spire beast. Her heart raced even as she watched on with nothing short of fascination. Was it... mechanical? Gears and strange metal and rust beneath that vile flesh. Nothing like she’d ever seen but for that little glimpse she got the first time she fought it. What the fuck was this thing?     It appeared that the beast part of this thing had disappeared with the ravaging of the gauntlet. What was left behind possessed a chilling sort of calm that had her holding Percy at a halt. The stallion stomped and snorted and bounced his front hooves, unhappy with coming to any kind of stop around the creature. She watched as its jaw unhinged, and it laughed at them.     Remi disrupted the earth and blasted it with flame, and Ronin, the crazy fucker, got up with his shredded back and moved to tear into the strange creature. Ashe didn’t waste time. She urged Percy forward at a lope on the other side of the creature from her friends, her heart pounding, and she waited until she could avoid Ronin.. And she threw everything she had.     Once more, there was a deafening thunderclap as a wild charge of lightning burst forward from her outstretched hand. ”You’re fucking done,” she growled, gritting her teeth as she pressed in with a continuous stream of powerfully mastered lightning. Her muscles trembled and her heart thudded dully, but gods fucking damnit, they were going to kill whatever in the five hells this thing was. Ashe has moved in closer around the other side of Remi and Ronin, towards the spire monster to press a focused attack of continued lightning! and utterly magnificent.

art belongs to Jaecarys

Roana I am more than just a piece in their game Roana gaped at what she saw, only partially irritated with herself for missing. She would have been more so were she not staring at an inside of a demon that was wholly unnatural. Her brows furrowed in confusion, her sword arm going through the motion of finishing the slash and pulling it back in with practiced familiarity. Ronin’s question would have earned a shrug had they not still been in the thick of the battle. ”Some kind of moving armor?!” she shouted back at her teammate, already queueing up her next hit. Blue eyes took in what the others did, another fire blast and gaping hole, a punch, more lightning…she could work with that. She was still positioned opposite Ronin, and from there swung Krosis at the waist of the beast, just below where Ronin was aimed. Apparently cutting its head off was too hard a target, so she would just cut the whole thing in half. Roana maintains her position and tries to cut the beast in half. Slashy McSlashin’.

Fire. Earth. Lightning. And raw, brute strength. The creature's hoarse laughter didn't stop, even as it was blasted with fire from Remi's staff and pummelled by the rock that he pulled up from the ground. It twisted to dodge Ronin's strike, but did not quite succeed. The ex-captain's hand buried deep in its exposed side, grabbing wires and rusted gears and other, foreign circuitry which buzzed and hissed as it was torn out. The impact of the gauntlet and the ripping of its innards jerked it somewhat - unintentionally, it dragged it out of the path of Ashetta's lightning storm... but right into Roana's blade. The other former captain might notice, just about, that as she bisected the horrific creature, something strange seemed to glow within it. Something... ticking. Something... odd. Something that detonated the moment her sword made contact. The explosion was immediate and all consuming. Roana, whilst she would receive some nasty burns and even nastier shrapnel, was behind the creature and would find herself thrown back and onto the ground, winded but alive. Remi and Ashetta, too, would be hit by the blast radius. Their wounds would need healing, would leave scars. But they would also walk away from this fight. Ronin Taliesin was not so lucky. Caught in the eye of a storm which laughed in a voice that was not human, the detonation hit the guildmaster point blank. The impact would drag the world out from under him and send him slamming mercilessly into the side of the pit, where would fall. He would not get back up. The Spire Demon has exploded and the KQ has ended. All who survived will receive credit and +3 to stats of their choice. Ending HP Roana: 31 Remi: 106 Ashetta: 43 Ronin: -1 Please allow Ronin to make his final post before posting any reactions. whatever doesn't kill me better run

Safrin Safrin was not one to lie. To mince words perhaps, but never with those she truly cared for. Those she adored. And she adored Ronin. Even as the world around him exploded into pinpoints of metal that would put an end to him, he would feel nothing. As soon as the first blast rocketed him from where he stood, he was entirely enveloped in serenity and starlight that cradled him like the night sky. "My sweet sweet one. You've done it!" Safrin whispered against him, her kind and gentle face all that he would see. The world around them had halted entirely; not even the stench of his own death could reach him here. "I would break all of the rules for you sugar." She added with a small laugh, even as tears moistened her lashes. "All of them." Her laughter was choked with emotion, a wellspring of it that would forever be without end for the fallen captain, and yet for his sake, she smiled down at him as she ran a hand through his hair, cradling him against the earth he had fallen into. "But you are too far for even me to bring you back this time." She added, voice cracking even as she tried to smile through her tears. "But you have done so well." She added, her fingers wrapping around him as if holding onto his ephemeral body would somehow be enough. "Look—" The goddess whispered, and above them night had fallen. One star shone more brilliantly than the rest, and in the haze of this unreal galactic midnight, waves seemed to ripple outwards from it. "Vanya is waiting for you to join her." Safrin whispered, absently wiping a smudge of dirt from just below Ronin's eye. "I will watch over Aoife, and when it is time, all that you were will be passed down to her. She will not want for the memories you would have told her." Gods have few regrets, and as vain and fickle as she was, it was not in Safrin's nature to want more than she had. But she did now. She wanted to be able to give more to Ronin and his child, to do more than place him in the stars and let his daughter see memories of him like moving pictures. She wanted his soul to stay here. Glancing across the field, she could see Ludo sprawled upon a young girl. An abandoned. And if it wasn't for them, and if it wasn't for the Voice this creature would have never even been. And there was Ludo like a fucking accessory making light of the way that life tried to prevail, even here. With fresh anguish in her eyes, Safrin looked back towards Ronin. "She is waiting for you my sweet one." The ocean waves above them turned into a shoreline. Upon it was Vanya, wearing hardly anything as the Hali's were want to do. Her sunkissed skin shone against the starlight backdrop, and her naked feet danced in the waves. Her laughter echoed down to him. "Say your goodbyes my love. You haven't long." Stepping back, Ronin would find himself quite able to stand. Blood saturated all that he wore, his clothing a shredded mass, but for the precious few moments that Safrin could stave off death, she would.

RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving They had done it. Ronin's blue eyes widened in shock at the detonation, so sudden and so immediate, that blinded him with white hot rays of should-have-been pain. While externally what happened to him was undeniably brutal, a series of lacerations and burns and breaks from which his body would never recover, he felt only warmth. Warmth and comfort, and a nagging sensation that something must have been somehow wrong. The sound of Safrin's voice, like a song on the wind, allowed him to put the pieces together. "Ah," he whispered through lips red with blood. "You did say you would come, didn't you?" Because as disorientating as this all was, Safrin had said she would be with him until the end. And if she was here, then... then this must be it. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more," he rasped, closing his eyes against the touch in his hair, the soft fingers across his face. "C'mon, you can't go breaking any more rules for me. People will start to whisper about us." He tried a laugh but it ended in a hacking cough that tasted copper. He blinked over her shoulder as she told him to look, inhaling softly at the glory of the cosmos that spread up above, at the rippling velvet of the sky, of the stars... Of the star. Of Vanya. Of her laughter, her smile, beckoning him up to warm sands and cool breezes. "Oh," he choked, eyes growing misty. "So she is. We'll sail the sky together." Tearing his gaze away at the mention of his daughter, he gritted his teeth. "Tell her I didn't mean to leave her too," he whispered, tears leaving a trail of clean through the blood and the dirt on his face. Safrin moved back and Ronin felt his feet beneath him, though his eyes were back on the sky. "But I want to..." Oh. Oh. That's right. Glancing around, up at the edges of the pit, through the dust and the debris, Ronin tried to spot his friends.

Unimportant things happened. Lights, sounds, pain, and screams. You read the words, you know what it was.

You know who lived, and who died.

As the aftershock began to clear and Remi's hearing came back in a ringing-wail, he narrowed his eyes in a dazed glare to try and parse what had happened. He saw Ashe and Percy, saw Roana...they looked wounded, but upright at least. He saw—

—but no he didn't

—he didn't. He—

—"Ronin?" Remi called his voice a shaky sort of half-laugh. A frenzied sound of one holding back sheer terror and panic. Ronin was just ... well, he was somewhere obviously. Behind him, perhaps? But no, turning his head Remi didn't see his friend. Was he ... was he with? With? Words and understanding ceased entirely in his mind as his breathing came fast and untempered. "Ronin..." He called again, voice louder, hope tinging the words as tears pricked the back of his eyes.

He knew where to look next and some dark and hateful part of him filled in what he would see. The pit, and Ronin at the bottom of it. Ronin who had once thrown Remi into a pit to save and protect him, would now be broken at the bottom of one. Inching forward, his lungs empty of everything save for grief and a hopelessness he thought would consume him, he saw...

Ronin. Standing.

"Ronin...you...you are.." The ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of Remi's lips as he looked down at his friend. He was bleeding yes and had certainly looked better, but he was standing, and he was—

—slowly Remi's gaze moved to Safrin and his smile curdled and fell away. Tears sprang in his eyes so immediate and blinding that all he could do was blink wildly for a moment as his smile teetered back and forth on his lips, disbelieving.

"Ronin, you are okay right?" Remi's eyes darted from the ex-captain to the goddess and back again. "He is okay? You will heal him, as you did me? And he will be.." He breathed, eyes not leaving Ronin's dirt and blood smudged face despite the fact his comment was meant for the goddess. Stumbling forward, half scooting on his back down into the pit, Remi ran towards Ronin, stopping hardly more than an inch away. Up and down his eyes looked over his friend, hands shaking as they hovered above his wounds as if some new power might emerge. Tears streaked down Remi's cheeks leaving clean skin-coloured lined in the wake of the dust and the grime as his heart stuttered painfully in his chest. "Ronin, you're..." His breath hitched. No, no, no, no, no— He understood but he wouldn't acknowledge it. He couldn't acknowledge this. "Ronin,please—" He whispered, tears and saliva muddying the already too-accented words as he shook his head dumbly, looking at his friend with pleading eyes. "Please, you can't go.." He whispered, emotion and the weight of his tears making his lips tremble.

All the things they'd never done together crashed down around Remi in a blast far more devastating to the alchemist than anything the spire demon might have done. Wounds would heal, but he would never get over the loss of the captain.

Of his friend.

Of his Ronin.

Яemi

& we don't know what we're waiting for & we don't know the truth anymore
& we can't see clearly through the fog so we end up chasing g h o s t s

ASHƎ She was a storm: sudden; powerful; violent; devastating;    She couldn’t see well beyond her lightning, but she felt it. Every nerve was alive and firing and burning, and the fucker was dying. He was dying and they were winning - they were going to fucking win. Then Ronin ripped the beast just barely out of her path, and she was about to redirect herself and finally just finish this -    Ashe wasn’t quite sure what happened next. An.. explosion. She registered Percy’s scream, and she felt pain, searing pain, and there was brilliant white light and an impact that hurt -    Silence. Ashe’s ears were ringing terribly, and she groaned from where she lay upon the ground. She coughed first, inhaled a rattling breath around the sharp aching in her chest - her ribs - her back - her burned and cut and bleeding skin. She picked her head up and found Percy, galloping some distance away - she couldn’t tell if he was harmed or not. She assessed with half-blurred vision, every breath hurt..    But they won. She looked through the dust and smoke and debris for her companions. Roana: hurt but alive. Remi: hurt but alive. Ronin: hurt but alive. He was -    Ronin wasn’t moving. Ashe pushed herself up and… she didn’t quit understand it. What she saw. The beast was dead, blown apart, and Ronin was just… laying there.    ”Ronin?” Her voice was quiet, it hardly worked, and it rasped from her throat as though he could hear her so far away. She was lurching to unsteady feet, but she didn’t feel it - only the world moving around her even told her she was moving. Shaking. Her eyes didn’t leave him, the captain, her brother, she stumbled forward but.. Something happened then, something bright and he was standing. Ronin was okay, he was fine.    Injured and spent, a harsh gasp left Ashe as she lunged forward. She ignored her hurts, her weariness, she didn’t care because Ronin was okay. She ran for him, for that pit he was in. ”Ronin!” They needed to share a drink - ten fucking drinks and celebrate in the guildhall.    There was a savage, panicked dread that kept trying to slip between her thoughts of elation at seeing him stand after not seeing him move. Something was wrong. She couldn’t feel anything. None of it mattered in the face of Ronin so bloodied - he had been right there when the demon exploded, but he was fine, he was fine, he was fine. She lurched down into that pit without thinking or feeling -    Remi got there first - less hurt than she, but he was talking to - to.. Safrin and.. no. Ashe came behind Remi, to his side, before Ronin. She didn’t realize there were tears streaking clear paths down bloodied cheeks, and she heard Remi say it then: ’Please, you can’t go.’    Ashe snapped wide eyes at Ronin, and her heart stopped working. ”No -” she choked. ”Ronin, no..” She looked up at her - the goddess she might have felt some kind of awe at if Ronin weren’t… She looked back at Ronin with tears spilling hot down her face, and a sob cracked from her chest. ”You can’t -” Her tears strangled her words and she reached out for him, for his hand, for any part of him with her heart racing, her chest heaving. This was wrong, he was fine, he was fine - he’s fine he’s fine he’s fine. She wasn’t going to lose him, not after everything, not when she had been so fucking stupid and just ran away from everyone and hadn’t spent any real time with him in so fucking long. She would never forgive herself for this. Her friend, her brother.    ”Ronin,” came her broken whisper. ”Please..” and utterly magnificent.

art belongs to Jaecarys

Roana I am more than just a piece in their game Roana tried to warn them. She tried to shout. She didn’t need to know all the ways whatever this thing was to know an explosive when she saw one. But it all happened much too fast and in a flash of light she suddenly felt weightless as she flew through the air, Krosis being pulled from her hand and flying alongside her. It lasted only a moment as her body hit the ground and skidded along her bad shoulder, gasping for air from the pain as arms and legs were pelted with shrapnel. As she came to a halt, she gasped for air, staring at the sky, alive, if only just so. Slowly she turned her head, her claymore stuck into the ground just out of reach. Everything ached, the world spun, and yet she rolled to her good shoulder and forced herself up. The ringing in her ears was disorienting and… blue eyes narrowed. Was…there a woman? She was gorgeous but unfamiliar, standing behind Ronin. Ronin. Her heart stopped as she saw him, drenched in blood, clothes littered with holes. She didn’t need to guess and stammer. Roana knew what such wounds would do having seen such on battlefields in Northwind – the only thing missing were the arrow fletchings. No… no no no no no! ”Ronin!” she cried out, forcing herself to stand and stumble forward, her sword all but forgotten where it stuck in the ground, as if to signal their victory on the field. Tears, unbidden, streamed down her eyes as she forced herself to walk. Why? Why was she walking, why was she here?! Her feet brought her up next to Remi, next to Ashetta, her expression the definition of guilt-ridden remorse. ”It was supposed to be me…” she said hoarsely, but with great surety. She didn’t need to guess it. She didn’t say it for comfort or for vanity. When she had hugged her boys that day she had done so knowing it would be the last, knowing that come that night they would be orphans and accepting that. She had come to death’s door so many times over the years; it was her time. And yet here she stood, limbs trembling, lungs aching, tattered and torn but still whole enough to continue forward. But Ronin ”I am so sorry, my friend. What can I do?” she said, hardly above a whisper. What assurance could she give a dying man, one who died undeserving of his fate while she still lived for some purpose some reason that she did not understand and knowing she deserved to die while he lived on.

RONIN if there's one thing i'm good at, it's surviving "Hey, hey..." His friends were before him with wet cheeks and aching hearts, and for once Ronin couldn't laugh it all off and tell them it would be fine. "I don't think I have a choice about this... I..." Swallowing hard, he glanced to Roana first, throwing her a lazy salute and a cheeky wink. "For what it's worth, I think I'd have trounced you in that race for General. But here... I think we'll all need a little light after this." Absently, he slipped a ring from his finger and pressed it into his fellow ex-captain's hand. "Get them out of this place." Next he glanced to Ashetta, a crooked and bloody smirk on his lips. "Madam spy," he murmured. "Always so much to do. Always so little time. Please, take care of yourself. I mean it. Live. If you don't ever listen to a word I say, just listen to that one. Okay?" He was unstrapping his bracers now, tossing them at her feet before reaching out to wrap her in a bonecrushing hug that would leave her smeared in his blood. "Give them hell." Remi was the hardest to make eye contact with, and Ronin only realised it when he was wiping his own tears away. "You'll look after her, won't you?" he asked softly, fumbling within his shredded shirt to withdraw the pendant in the shape of an eye, which had sat against his chest for so long. "And you'll tell her, about Vanya... about me?" Shaking his head and knowing he didn't have time, he reached out to embrace his friend one last time, holding him close and tucking the pendant into his pocket. "You're a good man, Remi. Don't waste a second more of your time second guessing, or being unhappy. You hear?" With a kiss to his cheek and a gentle nudge, Ronin finally stepped back with Safrin, into the warm embrace of eternity. "I think I'd like to see her, now," he whispered.

Safrin Listening as Ronin said his goodbyes, the goddess waited as long as she could. Drawing up behind him as he came to her, she slipped an arm around his shoulders giving him a playful wink. "You really gave 'em hell, sugar." She said with a laugh. In one shining moment that would etch into their minds for the rest of the time they drew breath—and probably even longer—Ronin ascended. Not as some pawn in a game so large none of them could see it, not in a body newly made, but as pure light. The dusky purple of near-midnight would descend around them all, and into it Ronin and Safrin began to rise. Their bodies bled away into starshine that gently echoed down around the broken remnants of the demon and the ex-captains living comrades, swirling into cosmic patterns. Unfortunately those who lived would receive no healing from Safrin, for her attention lay elsewhere. Up and up Ronin and Safrin rose, but after a point the goddess ceased to ascend further at about the same time Ronin's body had become naught more than pure starlight. Waves crashed above as Vanya extended a hand, her laughing face impatient as she waited to be reunited with her love. As their hands clasped once again, a firework of energy streaked across the sky, thrusting back the darkness and hiding the stars in the noon-day sky once again. But there they would forever be, in the ocean of the sky, together again.

With an unhappy laugh that was more of a gasp and a hasty inhale, Remi bit down on a sob as he nodded. Of course I will you idiot he meant to say, but he didn't. His lips were trembling far too much for that, his mind too unraveled to believe that any of this was real. "What, about all the times you've been stabbed? Or how Vanya was always too good for you?" The joke came far too easily, and in its wake Remi felt tears streaking down his face all the harder.

The easy camaraderie, it was over now.

It was all over now.

Every muscle in Remi's body clenched as he shook his head looking at the pendant as if it was it. As if it was the thing that would end it all. And if he didn't take it then—

—"I love you." He whispered into Ronin's ruined neck, holding him far too hard but knowing that his friend was beyond pain now. Time was slipping away, and Remi felt a cold sweat fall over him as a shaky panic began to stir his fingers. Ronin's kiss against his cheek was like a wildfire in his soul, but then he was backing up, and the alchemist's ears were buzzing too loudly to hear and then—

—as Ronin ascended, Remi collapsed to his knees. Screaming his anguish dispair into the wake of Ronin's starshine, he clenched his fists and berated the ground with a misery of which he'd never experienced before.

There were no words, nothing that came close to capturing the loss, the mounting regret that would soon bury him during the long nights he would spend with Aoife in the guildhall, and the monumental heartache. Why hadn't he told Ronin he loved him before? That he was his bestfriend? Why had he left so much unsaid, let so much simply be sponged up with excuses like there's time for that later, or well obviously he knows.

As the sky turned white again, Remi wiped a bloodied and dirtied sleeve across his nose. He looked towards Ashe knowing how close they'd been and bit the inside of his lip hard enough to draw fresh blood as he held back a sob. He shook his head. It wasn't worth this, that look seemed to say, as he clawed his way out of the hole.

He cared not at all for the Spire now. He'd not be stopped by anyone who might try to intercept him on his way. Remi had one goal now: to retrieve Aoife and to return to the guildhall.

Яemi

& we don't know what we're waiting for & we don't know the truth anymore
& we can't see clearly through the fog so we end up chasing g h o s t s

ASHƎ She was a storm: sudden; powerful; violent; devastating;    She was shaking her head, tears falling freely with the soul crushing pain was tearing through her. He couldn't go, she couldn’t lose him, she couldn't withstand this, not her brother, not Ronin. She would trade anything, anything.    Ashe broke apart at his smile, her face crumpling with her tears. Live. No, he couldn't leave her with that, he couldn't tell her to live when he fucking wasn't, when he was leaving, he needed to stay here! But she still cracked a broken laugh at him. ”You got it crab-kicker,” she wept. His bracers went down at her feet, and she felt their impact with finality. No, no, no, no please, not Ronin, not my brother, please - This price wasn't worth it. She would live and die in this stupid fucking hell hole in the barrier instead of this, she didn't care about any of, he needed to be okay, he had to come home to his baby, to his family, to his friends and all the people he fought for and loved -    She let loose a gasping, shuddering sob when he pulled her into a hug, and she threw her arms around him as tightly as she could hold him. She sobbed into his chest, heedless of the blood or the pain, she held him like that alone would keep Ronin there with her. But he released her, too soon, too soon. Her hand stretched out after him, and she couldn't even process what he was saying to Remi, could hardly see beyond her tears.    Then there was his Goddess. His Safrin. The image of her brother leaving her, ascending to the stars themselves.. it would never leave her. It would follow her until the day she followed him.    Remi was screaming, she knew, but she couldn't hear it. By the time the sky cleared, Ashe had hardly moved. There was nothing but absolute silence in her head, her heart, her soul. Numb fingers gathered the bracers, and somehow she followed Remi out of that pit. She was staring down at Ronin's bracers, and tears kept falling, but she could only shake violently. The girl looked up at Remi, and numbly, she began to limp after him, towards the only source of warmth left, that bond tugging her onwards.    Ronin was gone.    Ronin. Her best friend. Her brother.    Ronin was dead.    Live. His warm voice rang in her head like a keening bell, and it was all that kept her from falling to her knees.    Live. and utterly magnificent.

art belongs to Jaecarys

Roana I am more than just a piece in their game Roana grew stoic, as stoic as one could be while struggling to breathe with tears running down their cheeks. But she did not sob. Her voice would not crack. The former captain straightened as much as she could in her current state, visibly favoring one side. One hand rose to give him a formal, perfectly practiced, sharp salute. The two Ro's had always been opposite that way in their careers, one fast, loose, charming, and the other rigid, sharp, and harsh. She accepted the ring with a nod, fitting it to her index finger where it fit best. Roana swallowed a lump in her throat to accept it though. This was not the circumstance in which she wanted to accept a gift. "Get them out of this place." A mission. An order. Roana's expression fell into a look of determination, one that those who knew her would know meant she was not to be messed with; she would not be stopped or die trying. And she had yet to die, hadn't she? "Yes, General." she said, emphatically, without hesitation. Roana remained silent as he said goodbye to the other. She still didn't know who the woman was, and could only assume it to be Safrin on appearance alone. Blue eyes went up to watch as they disappeared into the air, Ronin becoming a star amongst millions. She stayed silent for a moment, staring, wishing she could've paid his price. But she had been chosen to live and fight on, by whatever sick twist of fate. She turned to hobble back and retreive her sword, sheathing it quietly. When she turned back Remi had already begun to leave. Ashetta remained rooted in place. Roana approached, clapping the woman on the shoulder to shake her from her grief induced reverie. "Come on, Ashetta. There is work yet to be done. General's orders." she said, voice still scratchy, but taking on a new tone. It was serious, steadfast, with unshakeable authority. Of course, she could not force Ashetta to follow, but Roana had to. She had work to do. She had to get them all out of here.