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And so they interlocked, Gwyn’s arms seizing over his own, grasping behind his back, squeezing tighter and tighter. A deathly embrace, crushing with finality that made gravity gossamer. Even bearing the concentrated curse drawn from this death-laden environment, even with her body wrecked by magic calamitous and taboo, the fighter sunk into her grapple, blood seeping into her clothing and his. And he had no miracle to pull in such a situation himself, his lungs pressed against fracturing ribs, his blood trapped in a head that was turning purple, red, black. Arms trapped. Legs flailing. Magic sealed.
His head swung back and swung in!
‘Please don’t take away my life and my love
You break my heart
Why do you have no heart?’
Brow grounded against nose, blood bursting from capillaries ruptured. Head emptied of naught but the desperation to fight against that which he could not, Cain drove his head again and again into Gwyn’s, savage violence granting both of them sanguine masks, yet offering no reprieve but the purging of putrid blood from his face. And with each strike, he could feel it. A feeling long-forgotten. A feeling that finally crept in, right as the chains became lax. The hangman’s noose, burning into his neck each time he craned it backwards. His particular affliction, one that dropped the weight of
his world against the drive of his emotions. Second thoughts, demanding clearer thought.
But he didn’t want to think.
‘Please don’t take away
The ash falling with my memory
I’ve lost my voice’
And as his foe, unflinching, unparalleled, constricted him further, Cain closed his eyes and allowed it all to fall apart.
So long as it didn’t leave his body, it could not be disrupted. That was true for his own healing, and that was true for his own
gravity.
Into the storm, they fell. Into the tempest, they rose.
And into the ground, they broke.
The rope snapped.
…
Rain roused him, beating nonsense rhythms against his cheeks.
He opened his eyes, to see Heaven’s contempt once more, stormy clouds turning the sky into a torpid mass. Every inch of his body ached, and even more of that was chilled. Seconds, perhaps, was all that had elapsed since impact, but the one he had held wasn’t by him now.
What, really, was he doing?
Four years. He had hoped that four years would have seen some change in himself, but even good news was enough to break him. All he had accomplished was an outburst against the people he loved. All that he saw was the emotions that he, for whatever reason, believed to have been wasted. All he had done was seen a living miracle and wished that it had been slaughtered instead.
He raised his hand up, to grasp the storm, but it closed only over air.
A meager muse, all that willpower without any of the mental
fortitude. Burning bridges left and right because
she couldn’t live within the warmth of forging herself. Living, living, living. Affirming that
she could make up for the lives that she cost by living even harder. Fixated on the dead, making a castle out of grudges, stepping upon mountains filled with spite, all under the belief that debts could be paid if
she tried harder. And when it turned out that Seigi was alive, how did
she come to view that beautiful fact as
abhorrent?
He fucked up. His fist smacked against his face. He fu-
Where was his hat?
Cain pushed himself up. One controlled movement at a time. Hands bloodied, joints ragged, eyes searching. Blasted stumps, smouldering craters, rent earth, and hacked foliage, all marks of the battle that had occurred, but where was his hat? He coughed, spasmed, one hand clutching his chest now, feeling the indentation left there by Gwyn’s own. Saw her too, gradually rising, but where was his hat? His vision blurred and stumbled upwards, swaying with none of the grace he once had, stained locks stuck to his face like the visage of a banshee. Where was his hat?
Where else could it be?
In the rain. In the mud. Above the Flagpole he discarded.
A feather, swaying in the storm, gleaming the cerulean of clear skies and of lightning divine.
All men are animals.
But all men aspire to be more.
She would have to beg for forgiveness after this. In the real world. For dragging Sabine into her vortex of bullshit again. For being a stupid kid who still moved only on her own moods.
For now though?
He’d finish this, properly.
…
Cain Darlite, Flagbearer of Miracles, picked up his hat and set it on his head. He met the Huntress’s gaze from beyond the field of their shared carnage, and then slanted his hat, just enough so that the brim shadowed one eye. His other hand extended, and from the mud rose the flagstaff once more, smouldering shadows lapping up the blood on his hands, as the astral banner billowed out, then spiralled into itself, the substance of space forming a spear that encompassed the brilliance of the storm-veiled skies.
It pointed towards his friend, and Cain smiled, his ashen gaze filled with longing, yearning. Not for brutality, for wretched violence, but for just one chance to test himself. A hope that she would put up with his nature for just one more bout. For the final bout.
For finally, there was symphony within the discord.
‘You crept inside my brain’
Darkness bloomed, that wellspring of power opening up before the wounded, granting cataclysmic might in the face of death, in the face of a sacrifice bound in ice.
‘Dragging roses and tragedies’
His stance shifted, both hands on the Battle-Banner, both knees coiled, both eyes open, spirits surging as brightly as a swordswoman upon the peak, clasping a single steel.
‘Leaving everything with bloodstains’
The cosmos answered with their fiery brilliance, arcane rings unfolding every fate that once was, every life that once passed, leading to the sole future secured with a clenched fist.
‘But from this madness and stabbing pain’
Hymnic notes roared out their defiance, harmonies that shook the bone and the soul, melodies that ignited the heart, and a little hope that glimmered at the core of it all.
‘I will rise again and again’
He called its name, evoked his memories, and remembered to make it flashy.
It was, after all, the only
true spell he wove since his return.
Normal Attack
1d100 (39) + 25 + 20 = 84
84 damage
Pierce Weapons | Cain Darlite | Vibrates intensely
Normal Attack
1d100 (77) + 25 + 20 = 122
122 damage
Astramancy | Cain Darlite | Then just Tsubaki droppu
Normal Attack
1d100 (53) + 20 + 20 = 93
93 damage
Martial Arts | Gwyn ap Herne | Gwyn vs. Cain Defend Cause If I Fail It's All Ogre
Play Sheet Link
