⏳ THE SCORCHING ISLE: Oracle Event One ⏳

[beleos]

ARRIVAL

All Bearers have heard whispers of them - the Oracles. Mysterious and unknown entities of an abstract nature, they serve as the heart of each faction’s cause - both as a means to an end and a very real stepping stone in achieving their objectives. To claim an Oracle means growing ever closer to victory: to see your homes restored as they were, or to herald in a new one of your making.

So you go.

A Cornerstone has been set up for each faction; one for the Zenith and one for the Meridian in Yima’s manor and Heliopolis, respectively. They warn you that upon transportation, your safety cannot be guaranteed and there is no telling what waits for you beyond - to be prepared. To make sure you have whatever you deem necessary with you before you go, as there is no telling when - or how - you will be coming back. CONTINUED HERE...

NOTES

Upon your arrival, you woke up with an HOURGLASS NECKLACE. Please refer to the Time Mechanics on the OOC Summary and bottom of this post for details on its usage.

The COURTYARD is frozen in time. Player Characters and the Great Tree are the only signs of moving, free life in the courtyard. During the intro, time magic does not work.

Characters are free to investigate but cannot move beyond the courtyard if you choose a prompt during the intro. You may mingle among your fellow Bearers or speak with [MR. TIBBS] if you so choose. (Also? LOOK AT HIM HELP)

Iconoclasts and Stargazers will notice Aspect benefits/detriments now.

All characters will be weak for the 24 hours - think like mild flu - and unable to leave until Mr. Tibbs has dispersed them. This is the time in which any threads with the NPC will be carried out.

The INTRO concludes with said dispersal of PC’s once interactions concluded. They will be sent to a location around the castle of your choosing; they are free to move about freely from here. Your prompts can start with you waking alone or in the presence of others - whatever you’d like!

Your character will innately understand how to use time magic from this point forward. It will come naturally to them, like a skill they were born with.

CASTLE: OVERVIEW (p a s t)

The Scorching Isles is home to the Atirat, a people of sea-dwellers who have the ability to walk on land. (Think mermaids with the ability to shift back and forth between human and mermaid forms.) As such, much of the Scorching Isles is covered in large bodies of blue water and glistening pieces of ice to accommodate their lifestyle.

THE CASTLE, however, is what dominates the landscape and it's where the Shard-Bearers will be spending their time. The white castle with colorful glass windows is obscured by a thick layer of clouds and fog. Nearly every location on the island has a thin layer of fog that rolls through it, which gives the entire Island an inescapable chill. The castle has artfully built rooms with a CAVALCADE OF DECORATIVE ICE, lavish mirrors, and white plants accented with blue decorations. Several portions of the castle are submerged due to the aquatic nature of the native residents.

And everywhere you go, you find them - STATUESQUE BODIES FROZEN mid-movement. They are haunting reminders of the power in your Hourglass - the very real power to decide their fates.

The castle has many winding paths to explore, as castles often do. There are sleeping quarters, HALLWAYS, a wine cellar, and a few large rooms presumably for diplomatic affairs. Players can use these rooms at their own leisure for whatever purposes they see fit. (Exploration, combat, or supply gathering.)

However, many of these rooms will require some strategy to access their full potential! Atirat were much more comfortable being underwater than many Kenosians may be. Therefore, rooms of higher importance may be COMPLETELY SUBMERGED or require swimming through an underwater pathway to reach them. Very minimal supplies will be kept out in the open for all to reach. More desirable supplies - such as warm clothing, small weapons, treasure, and the like - will be located past or within one of these flooded areas.

Players may gather supplies within and preserve their Sand or use their Sand to make other rooms accessible and gather whatever lies within! The larger the asset you attempt to unfreeze, the more Sand it costs - and the more drained/vulnerable you will be as a consequence, so choose your path ahead wisely.

Currently, a pervasive fog is preventing you from wandering beyond the Castle's limits. Should you try to venture past it, your Sand will rapidly be stolen and you will find yourself suffering the same fate as the islanders if you don't move back to safety quickly... However, if you ask Mr. Tibbs what lays beyond the mist - he will tell you about the thriving farmland, the once-bustling village surrounding the castle, and the beautiful coral reefs beneath it. Sadly, they're beyond your reach - but maybe if the Bearers decide to unfreeze them when the week is up...

LIBRARY (s a f e z o n e)

The ROYAL LIBRARY - A treasure trove of knowledge, history, and glimpses of a fractured past scattered throughout. The lower floor of the Library is void of much reading material and contains several intricate-looking art pieces on decorative pedestals.

A spiral staircase dominates the center of the room, with its once delicate structure overtaken by sheets of formidable ice; it leads you toward the upper levels where a sea of books awaits. There are isles and isles of books, most perched on intricately carved shelves. Many books lay in piles or are discarded onto the floor, and scattered papers are common throughout.

Curious Kenosians may pick out books from the shelves and read on various topics, but players may also pass through this room on their way elsewhere. This area will function as a safe haven where violence and the taking of others' Sand is not allowed; do not disturb the books or Mr. Tibbs won’t be happy!

NOTES

Characters who wish to receive a book with lore specific to the island may comment [HERE]. You will be RNGed a book from a pre-written list of topics. The books may give you a deeper look into the island, its inhabitants, and its history! (Only 1 book per player! Please assume all other books they read are about commonly-available topics.)

THE EATING PARLOR (p a s t)

There are no basic amenities on the island. No hot water, no warm beds, and no salacious magazines (that you know of. heh heh). That would make the Eating Parlour a wise stop for anyone. After all, this could be the perfect chance to procure some provisions!

The EATING PARLOUR has all the equipment one would need for meal preparation. Dried plants hang from the ceiling, and the walls are lined with mason jars filled with every strange manner of presumably edible thing (Is that a head over there? Hmm… maybe you should check).

The parlour also comes with a garden under a massive windowed dome so that the inhabitants could have fresh produce at hand. Many plants have withered, but there are some salvageable plants if you know how to look for them. But beware… Some of the plants have a strange blue glow. These plants can spell potential disaster.

If someone should make contact with these glowing plants, they will crumble into glass shards - glass that will quickly burrow its way under the skin and curse that person with Blight. Blight will make all resources within that person's vicinity slowly age and eventually crumble to dust. (Which I relate to on a personal level tbh.) Iconoclasts will be immune to its effects.

NOTES

Please see the "Blight" section below for more information on its effects.

TREASURE ROOM (f u t u r e)

Faint singing can be heard coming from this room. Once you hear the song, it dulls your senses and leaves you in a haze. There is no stopping your feet from guiding you to it through the doors and into the Treasure room. The door slams shut at your back, sealed with a wall of ice and magic.

Players will find themselves lured to an icy chamber bordered by a ring of cold blue fire. There is a deep pond that surrounds the platform you’ve found yourself standing on. Beyond its glassy surface and crystal clear water, one can glimpse all manner of treasures - from crowns, jewels, ornate statues in various statues of repair, scepters, spears, and books that seem impervious to the water's cold chill.

As you come to your senses, you will find yourself frozen in place and at the mercy of a large statuesque being before you. This beautiful and horrifying figure in a perpetual song is the SIREN, the only Atirat you’ve seen in person. She measures nearly 20 feet (6 meters) from her head to the tip of her long-finned tail. She cradles an icy shard in her arms, singing to it as if it were a child.

She sits serenely in front of a large hourglass filled with white sand, which is bordered by a spear and a lance. Emblazoned in faint text at the base of where she sits reads: “The future lies in our hands.”

NOTES

Welcome to the Siren’s Chamber! Players must use their wit, charisma, or some good ol' fashioned elbow grease to escape the room or break the Siren’s magic. The Shard that the Siren holds contains dormant time magic that players may activate by using the Sand within their necklace. Players can access the future in 5-second intervals and use whatever they find in that time period to escape their predicament.

For example, if they activate the shard by using their time magic, that shard will begin to glow blue. The room around them will shift, and it could change to a point in the future where there is a sword nearby. If you can grab it, now you have a weapon! When the 5 seconds are up and time returns to the present, you will still have that weapon on your person. You may also try verbal communication if you’d like. If your character is someone who would try and talk their way out of a situation diplomatically, they may give it a try!

It is up to player discretion/creativity to think of a scenario you’d like. Each “future" does not have to be the same across player encounters! What one group experiences may be tailored to the player wants (because branching timelines exist). Let your imagination run free!

HALL OF MIRRORS (p r e s e n t)

Should you reach the rightmost wing of the massive castle Library, you will find a door hidden in the very back of one aisle against a wall; it looks as though the door used to be concealed by magicks that have since dissolved.

The stairwell leads down and into darkness. Once you reach the bottom, shimmering light cast from an unknown source beneath sheets of glistening ice will illuminate your new surroundings; you are in a maze of mirror-like ice. This labyrinth is silent save for the quiet creaking of shifting ice that may disquiet you and leave you uneasy regarding the stability of this area… but it holds beneath your feet.

Mr. Tibbs had told you that the “Kaleidoscope” - where your Sand is counted - rests through here, so eventually, you must brave the journey. Is it a trick of the light? Maybe the product of an especially active imagination…?

Did you just see one of your reflections move without you?

NOTES

Please refer to the OOC Summary for details on the Hall of Mirrors!

THE BLIGHT and TIME MECHANICS

BLIGHT

Blight is an infliction that will age supplies and infect people with a creeping disease that steals their Sand. For objects, this includes weapons, food, and items like cloth. It will take a few days to deteriorate things beyond use - so watching your supplies and acting accordingly is in your best interest. Generally, it will make it more difficult for PC's to get by given that their already scarce resources will dwindle and deteriorate - especially since it's 'contagious' through touch.

The Blight will not act quickly enough to severely hamper infected persons, but repeated exposure will cause effects to a person's body - notedly protruding VEINS in the face and extremities, a lower body temperature, and increased agitation. These effects start out mild and grow more severe with each 'dose.'

Characters must touch an object/person that is Blighted to become inflicted with Blight themselves. When that happens, it will become easily identifiable as Blighted from the faint blue, shimmering outline around the infected subject, as well as the WITHERED, FROSTBITTEN or ashy appearance it takes as it progresses.

However, there is one single perk with Blight. (Or is it a perk?) Players will feel reduced impact by the cold surroundings, making the climate around them somewhat more hospitable. Beware of falling victim to a chill you can't feel...

TIME

To use your Sand, each character is granted access to and innate knowledge of a spell they channel from their Shard that automatically manipulates their Hourglass. This allows the remote control of Sand (aka gathering and dispersing), as well as the ability to pull Fragments of time from Shards.

Fragments are literal pieces of you taken from your Shard. They manifest as memories or images displayed on little shards of broken glass (think of the memory being played out in real-time on the mirror's surface), and can be crushed to convert into Sand automatically, either voluntarily or by force. The only stipulation is that the parties must be close to one another, and the Fragment must be exchanged while both Bearers are still. This means someone has to give it to you, or you need to immobilize them before you take it - one way or another.

Once the Fragment is crushed, the memory and associated time of that person's life is lost and your character will suffer amnesia until the Oracle is claimed. How deep this goes is up to you; they could lose a large chunk of time - even all their memories surrounding a person or place for a big payload of Sand, or they could lose very little for a meager net gain.

Sand is automatically gathered or distributed by your Hourglass and added/subtracted to your running total. No need to micromanage. Convenient!

Please note that using Sand to unfreeze anything (resources, a door which can be then opened, etc) is an unpleasant experience. Each time you use Sand in this way, your character will be left feeling weakened and flu-like for an hour or two, which will leave them vulnerable. This effect stacks and scales up to outright KO-ing them for a few hours if they go crazy, so unfreezing too large of an area is off the table!

NOTES

• An OOC POST will be coming shortly explaining how Sand is going to be tallied and the Oracle claimed.
• Should your character attempt to unfreeze any NPC's, please respond [HERE]. NOTE: unfreezing NPC's may result in physical violence with CW's for severe mental instability/illness and a potential reference to self-harm.
• HAVE FUN!!!

CODING

Comments

04

[wolof]

[ The twin tone of hoofbeats is met with another sound in this long hall of reflections. A click-click of heels on the stone, as Akua started her way in, avoiding the patches of ice, and where she could not, she wove firm spaces to step on, as she moved across the path. She could see the faint, distant sight of a horse up above -- it had to be Hayame, right? -- and she let her steps quicken. She could see her own reflections, laid out before her, and as she walked, they shifted -- younger versions of her, eyes mad with power, or even younger, in her hands an... egg. Large, wrought with finery.

Her steps quickened, as she started to make her way toward the other woman, half as if she were running from her own past, and half because if she could see her past self, did Hayame not notice hers?

That she saw a specter of her own -- the madness of the Diabolist long dead, or the fury and drive of an Heiress long gone -- worried her. Would they attack? Would they wait? She could feel the itch at the back of her neck, the story the way it was...incomplete. She had already come to terms with her own past. Moved on. What would there be to gain, in only fighting herself? ]

Hayame --

[ She called, her tone sharp, but not cruel. Only to catch her attention, as the second sound of hoofbeats became obvious. ]

[warmare]

[The deeper she has gone, the further the ice had dug into her hearts and mined it for things that might hurt her. Though she tried not to look, turning her face from the reflections in the mirror-like surfaces... there comes a time when she cannot stop herself. Though she walked past her still fluffy-tailed half-brother crying alone in the stall next to his after she refused him any comfort for fear of looking weak, past the hollow eyed filly watching the stable master oversee a disobedient yearling being tied down to the flensing post... her pace has slowed.

It is harder to pretend as if she doesn't know the woman she becomes in the reflections. The one who begins to linger, echoes still faintly visible on some of the ice Akua passes. The one who had rejected a desperate man's plea for mercy, condemned his sister to the fate she feared the most, and threatened the Armless who had escaped their master's yoke. The one who had been shown kindness by that same desperate man... and still threw herself into a waterfall in an attempt to kill him rather than suffer the shame of being his captive. The shame of being saved by him.

She is yet a captive of her past.

When Akua calls out her name, Hayame turns towards the source of the sound... right before a pair of familiar hands burst from the ice in front of her and wrap around her neck.]

[wolof]

[ Each scene laid before her in ice is another thing that Akua understood, in her own way, as she passed through the pathway. Hayame's own steps slowed before her, and Akua's sped up, hoping that she could catch up to her, even as the woman's pas was laid bare before her. She watched the signs of it -- she had always known Hayame was a hard woman, but -- there were signs of great horror, and suffering in these moments. The Armless one like her, with his head nearly to the point of an arrow -- she paused.

Did some of her people become like that, or was it simply an accident? An illness?

Lips pursed, she turned back to the Jinba, to follow closer, to catch her. She could see the fire and fury in these past moments of Hayame's life, and oh -- she knew it Well. She knew it as well as she knew herself, and of the fire and brimstone she'd reigned on a city and the surrounding armies... She had the power to do so, but the sight in Hayame's eyes was too familiar.

Her mouth opened again, as she neared, before -- ]

No --

[ Her hands moved to spread wide, as the hands broke through the ice, and Akua's fingers quickly peeled back the layers of her gift to bring forth a wreath of her own ice, that crept upward, to freeze the arms up to the wrists -- as if the ice of the mirror had grown out of the mirror's surface -- before it started to tighten on the wrists, to force the doppleganger to let go, as if there was a binding to cause the arms pain. ]

[warmare]

[There is no accident that can create wounds as precise and perfect as the ones on the Armless jinba in Hayame's sights, in a mirror that spilled her secrets to whomever followed her. They are not ripped, nor torn, and the scarring at the stumps is... arranged. The mark of amputation done precisely, and intentionally. The sort that made proud, fierce creatures into pitiful things that cannot eat, dress, or bathe without their new human masters.

But Hayame has arms.

And the person in the mirror does, too- arms that freeze up under the influence of Akua's power, a very different sort of cold than the Hall of Mirrors is beset by. The fingers spasm, struggle... and Hayame rips herself free with a snarl, slamming the heel of her palms into the mirror and jerking her large body up into a rear, her forehooves kicking out...

And the mirror shatters beneath them, into giant shards that crash into tinier shards when they hit the ground. There is a moment when Hayame almost thinks that might be it, her gaze whips around, long black mane following, darting from Akua to their surroundings in confusion, before... No, it would never be that easy, was it? A voice calls out from another mirror. A voice that sounds all too familiar.

Oh, you have "allies" now, do you? And here I thought you hated magic... It is Hayame's voice, echoing eerily in the hall beneath the sound of another set of hooves. Or is it something even more pathetic? Friends? Lovers? It may be Hayame's voice, but she speaks in a mocking, sarcastic tone that Hayame herself almost never uses, employs words that she never uses. No, that would be foolish. You already lost your chance at all that.

She should say something. She should deny it, or condemn it, and instead... Hayame just lashes out at the nearest mirror that a shadow passes through.]

[wolof]

[ Akua watched as Hayame reared back, as powerful as any Liessen Charger, and the glass shattered to pieces under her hooves. She had... rarely had the opportunity to see Hayame in battle, or truly observe her. Their paths had often taken them toward different goals, but seeing it now --

My.

Akua knew and appreciated power more than anything else, she always had. The pursuit of it was inherently Praesi, inherently villainous, but more than that, she could appreciate what a powerful ally Hayame represented at that moment, in watching her crush underneath her hooves. It's one thing to know, and it's another to see it, and understand.

Her lips curled, though, because Hayame's words -- the other Hayame's words -- cut deep, not just to the woman they were directed at, either. She had believed such a thing too, that people made one weak, and relying on them even more so. She had nursed at the altar of iron sharpens iron, and had killed a girl she'd been close to with her own two hands, to remind her that she must never be close. ]

Do you really think having allies is pathetic?

[ She asked -- it is not directed at Hayame, but at the mirrors. ] Or a lover?

[ She had, of course. She snapped a finger, and an entire line of the mirrors shattered, in sequence, as if affected by an earthquake, even though the ground was still. ]

It is no such thing, to find support to fill those gaps we each hold, and a hard lesson that we must learn.

[ Her eyes slid to Hayame then, as if it were for her. ]

[warmare]

[Hayame is powerful. She knew that. She had always relied on that. Where some mountain breeds of jinba might outclass her in pure muscle, some field jinba in the swiftness of their hooves, she herself was an even balance between strength and speed, force and delicateness. And above all else... she knew that even if some jinba might be able to best her, a human never should have been able to.

Not until Horos. Until Kenos. Until magic, that she did not understand and could not defend against, something that could render that strength meaningless. She did not "hate" magic- No. She feared it... and hate was a convenient cover. But magic now shatters mirrors as easily as her own strikes had, and all with a snap.

... Was that it? There is a moment when the voice is silent, and Hayame meets Akua's eyes, her own unsettled state obvious beneath the veneer of readiness until-

Of course it is.

The voice returns, cold and judgemental, from other mirrors, the shadow of a centaur pacing around the pair reflecting in surface after surface.

The strong should need no one but themselves.

And though that might be for the both of them... the next is more of a whisper, more for Hayame herself, the voice growing vicious as it reveals the words to be an insult rather than a genuine belief.

Isn't that why you abandoned your own blood brother and denied his aid? Isn't that why you refused to let those free jinba "trick you", with their pathetic little offers of a home?

The sound of a bowstring drawing echoes in the dark and cold glow.

Isn't that why you didn't tell the man you wanted to love you that you betrayed him?

Hayame's own arrows shatter mirror after mirror, a snarl of denial ripped from her throat but weakened by how she can't actually... she can't actually call it a lie. But the words hurt more than the icy arrow from the doppelganger that embeds itself in her rump.]

[wolof]

[ This. Oh, this Akua knows too well. These words do not need to strike just Hayame, because they strike her true as well. Yes, of course, she had no man that she wanted to love her -- but Catherine, oh -- she knew the longing. That ache, and she'd once told Catherine it was a poison so sweet she craved the taste of it. She knew the longing, and wishing to be better, regret that festered and bubbled, and that she could never find the redemption she so desperately craved.

That she wanted it made it all the worse, doesn't it?

Her lips peel back in a snarl. ]

You ignorant, arrogant fool.

[ This doppelganger did not attack Akua, perhaps she knew, that the Praesi mage was far more powerful, an arrow could do nothing to her -- this was no Named archer, she could stop a normal arrow as quick as could be -- but her eyes searched now, through the passageways of reflection and mirrors, and looked for the right option.

Was there one? She tugged her hand downward, and pulled a wall of the mirrors back, to reveal the ones behind, her golden eyes searching. ]

You will never know what it is, to be welcomed among friends, and I pity you for it, don't you Hayame?

[ She moved closer to her, and in one swift motion ripped out the arrow, and pressed her other palm to the wound to cauterize it. ]

[warmare]

[She wants to say that she does. That she pities this icy copy of herself, who will not know the joys that she has known... But she can't. She can't, and that's what's so pathetic about it. She can't condemn the doppelganger for speaking lies, and she can't...]

Akua, don't.

[It comes out more shameful than she intended, the force of the initial rage breaking as the shattered and cracked mirrors reflect more of her mistakes. Rejecting her brother's offer of rescue in favor of a desperate plea to regain her honor on her own. (Yubari...) Her failure to teach the young ones that had been in her charge... It all mocks her.

The flare of pain from the arrow being ripped free of her muscles and the burn of the wound cauterizing on her rump is welcome (and deserved). Her next words are hissed, pulling another of her own arrows from the quiver.]

It's not lying.

[What did that feel like? She could have felt it... it had been offered to her. Yubari had always wanted her to acknowledge him, to let him reach out and touch her... and she had always kept the wall up between them. The free jinba had eventually warmed to her, under Matsukaze's coaxing, and tried to invite her to plant and hunt and sing and work together... but she had held herself to her self-imposed duty to a master that saw her as a beast for sale. And Matsukaze... the Pleroma, now Meridian...]

No, I'm not, am I?

[This time the voice comes from behind, so close like a whisper. (A distraction... they're getting too close to the right mirror.)]

What do you know, magic women? About this pathetic mare... about being welcome?

[wolof]

Of course it isn't lying. [ She said, as she pulled her hand away from Hayame's rump, the burn present in her flesh, but at least the wound would not seep more blood. It was sloppy work, she was no healer, but field medicine and the work of a chiurgeon she could do with her magic. Her lips, perfect and red, curled, into something of a sharp, broken sneer.

Akua looked out of place here. Not in the palace itself, of course, she looked as though she belonged there. However, she was out of place among these memories, an intruder and an invader that had interceded on Hayame's precious, and sharp memories. Times that she had not done the right thing, or that weight heavily on her conscience. Akua had that, and more, of course. To the price of hundreds of thousands of souls. ]

I was there too, you know. I'd never had anyone even offer, before... [ Akua's memories do not show in the mirror, as she has far too much control over her memories, but there's the flutter of dark wings in the distance, and the caw of crows. A herald of the First Under the Night -- the Warden -- significant only to her. ]

Where I am from, we have a saying. Iron Sharpens Iron. You show no weakness, you give nothing, and woe to those who show weakness and do so.

[ Then, she stepped closer to the mirror that whispered, looking into it curiously. ]

And then -- only after I'd done the truly unforgivable -- I was fed a poison I still crave to this day. It was precisely what you look down on, dear.

[warmare]

[Hayame and Akua have talked many times now, since they found themselves in Horos. But they did not talk much about... themselves. They spoke of battle plans, of strategy, of binding demons and what must be done, and the first time they'd exchanged words it had even been insults... This, though-

This-

Hayame fires off an arrow into a different mirror that flickered with the passage of a jinba within it, only for the voice to scoff from somewhere, from everywhere all at once.]

Then you know it for a poison.

["Iron sharpens iron". It was a phrase that would not be amiss in the barren wastes of Echigo, the harsh living of a jinba breeding stable outpost. But the voice remains sinister, and cold, and cruel, when it accuses-]

But... It obviously wasn't unforgivable, then, was it?

[In the echoes of the ice and the glow, an arrowhead materializes in what should have been a reflection, leveled right at the magic user's head.]

[wolof]

Is it not?

[ Her tone sharp, iron. ] When does a knot become a noose? If the rope thrown to one becomes a sweet poison that is desired, and perspective changed, is it not still punishment? To look upon your works, on tens of thousands of souls, and know that their sacrifice was unnecessary. To know that you were wrong, and the unforgivable has happened?

To be shown kindness in the face of that, to look upon what you could not have, and understand that redemption is unattainable?

[ Akua's tone was sharp, but under that was a soft waver, something unusual for the woman so self-possessed. The sound of someone who had done the unforgivable, and been forced to reckon with the aftermath. To be drug through it, made to understand how unnecessary it had been, how that line crossed had damned her for not just her life.

No, not her life at all. She knew it, deep in her bones and her soul. She was no longer just human, no longer simply Named. She was immortal. Perhaps less-so here, but in Calernia, it reverberated within her. ]

I can spend hundreds of lifetimes, thousands, and it will never be unforgivable.

Ask the Warden, if you wish to see the nature of my sentence.

Oh wait, you never can. You're not real.

[ Another line of mirrors shattered, eradicating the places to hide, there were only so many left now. ]

[warmare]

[Tens of thousands is a number Hayame has never been able to fully comprehend. Has she ever seen more than a hundred men at once, the number that made the trek to the outposts of Echigo for the breeding stable's Exhibition Day? It hadn't been until Horos, until Kenos, that she'd even seen cities as crowded as they were... so even though she had doomed dozens, killed several, committed acts she considered now to be unforgivable...

The scale is different.

One of Hayame's arrows fires, and then another, taking out more mirrors on Akua's other side- one right before an icy arrow can fire at them. Akua speaks with the words of a poet, but she- Hayame feels that she is nothing like that. It feels like she only knows just enough to recognize the damning sameness at the core, a sameness one shouldn't want with anyone, her own words trapped somewhere impotent as if she were letting Akua fight her battles for her-

There are so few mirrors left.

She moves to fire on another, chasing the shadow of the voice that says, In that pathetic mare's heart, I am real enough- !, but the doppelganger knows who is the bigger threat... the mage can destroy more ice, faster, and as Hayame turns her back...

A rearing, kicking centaur suddenly bursts towards Akua from one of the few icy surfaces remaining in a shower of glassy splinters.]

god that should have been "never be forgivable" 🤦‍♀️

[wolof]

[ Akua's reflexes are sharp, and quick, borne from too many years on the war front, marching from Praes, through Callow, and into Procer, war in the Empire Ever Dark, and then war in the lands far to the north, locked in battle with the undead armies of the Dead King. Unsleeping, relentless soldiers that could strike at any time, in any condition, an unwavering, unending flood of death.

Her reflexes are quick, because of that. The flare and pop of High Arcana before her, like wiggly, incomprehensible letters, and the charging form halted in the air, suspended before her. Akua stood there, tall, and proud, and looked up at the creature, as she held it in the air, and she smiled. ]

Did you think to catch me by surprise, dear?

[ The air started to move out from the bubble Hayame's Doppleganger was in. ]

You'll need to be faster than that.

[ Slowly, the air was removed -- would the thing suffocate? ]

waves hands vaguely!!!!

[warmare]

[Hayame had never wondered what happened to ice in a vacuum. She barely had a conceptual understanding of what a vacuum was- it was no threat she was likely to encounter in her world. But as the air is siphoned out of the space in the boundary of the High Arcana... the frozen doppelganger and it's arrested attack...

Begin to evaporate.

It cannot fight back in that state, movement arrested, it will not give either of them the satisfaction of screaming or emitting any sign of pain, if it could even feel it...

But it's eyes are hateful and dark as it steadily begins to change from solid to gas, to mist that dissipates into the air without form or capacity to harm anyone... and all it's original can do is watch, not even sure if she feels robbed or relieved.]

[wolof]

[ The long moment held. Akua's power contained the creature -- this false Hayame -- and she watched it dissipate into gas before her, the frozen ice and jinba dissipating together, and when it is done, when the last scraps of Hayame's harder, colder, sharper self are gone, Akua nodded.

She dusted her hands off, and then dusted off her front, before she reached out, to pop the bubble with a finger. Her lips curled in sharp satisfaction, her teeth white in the dim light, and she felt that self-satisfied burst of fire and pride within her. Her magic had been diminished since coming here, she had no Name to her, and nothing else, but...

She still felt pride at having most of what she could still do. She was not so diminished to not be able to do this simple thing, and it's only after a moment that she tipped her head in Hayame's direction, offering her a slow, and gentle nod. ]

Hopefully, she will not bother you again.

[warmare]

[How easy it seems now, this death of the thing that knew her intimately in a world where no one else really did (even if it only expressed the worst of her). As long as the eyes remain, her gaze is stuck on them- the hate in them. Did her own eyes look like that? She is no longer sure if she should hope the answer to that was "yes" or "no".

But they dissipate into the air. The threat is gone- and she knew it had indeed been a threat. If Akua had not come along when she had... there is no telling what would have happened fighting against an opponent with her exact same weight, strength, knowledge, and experience. And so...]

... You have my gratitude.

[She must humble herself and thank the other woman. But what hangs between them unsaid... No, it must be said-]

... May I count upon you for discretion on this matter?

[wolof]

[ Akua watched too. She knew that look in the doppelganger's eyes as well. It's an old thing that she had long put down, but she knows it, intimately, and understands the person that Hayame had been.

For all her pride and anger, Hayame was so different to that spiteful, hateful creature she had been. In the same way that Akua was different.

That was growth, but she also knew the specter now that loomed over Hayame's back. What lurked in her shadow and dogged her steps. She knew it, and knew that they were similar. ]

Of course, as long as you have mine. I have admitted to... a great and terrible thing tonight. [ She paused and looked her up and down. ]

We both have burdens we must bear.