Private Vintergard Strangeling

[Rael]

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Rael's hand wrapped around the familiar grimoire, a breath of resignation spreading through her chest as she closed the book one last time, the story held within having finally come to an end.

Fingertips touched the bandages wrapped around her neck, then looked down at herself, Vern's handiwork no longer in effect yet not even that brought her relief. In its own strange way, it felt like a prelude of sorts she decided to bury at the back of her mind. For now, she would walk.

She treaded along the edges of what remained of the wall overseeing the field of charred metal plating and the magitech which had come to aid in Hope's destruction, watching the remnants of what had been the machine to lay down the lives of others. Even now, there remained those who, in spite of wounds that had yet to heal, scouted the battlefield in search of allies or methods by which to make themselves wealthier - smarter, perhaps, in the face of an enemy perpetually improving.

Within minutes of her walk, she caught a glimpse of a person she couldn't recognize by name, because she did not know it, his face vaguely familiar. A second more of consideration brought to memory the image of one rushing to assist one of her fallen teammates, her condition still quite unknown to Rael. But... If someone had assisted, it couldn't have been that bad, no?

Far from relishing in the hard-earned victory as many Travelers did, however, he looked outwards, never seeming to focus on something in particular. The sight alone drew the attention of her curious eye, yet it was her desire to express her gratitude towards him that made her walk closer.

"[ You are the one who helped my friend. I saw it. ]" The first line written upon a page which she held up to him read, intent and emotion barely discernable from mere words meant to help her communicate, but words that took a kinder meaning if the smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth was to be believed. Her index tapped the following line, "[ Are you okay? ]"

The elf would then draw closer, hesitant and careful, attention never straying from the stranger's face for any indication her presence was unwelcome. Rael would look up at him, then down again, and finally reach her hand out, fingers closing around his sleeve and pulling ever so slightly.

She was here.

@Valmont

 

[Valmont]

Having made it back to the wall after the fight, he couldn’t bring himself to go any further. To return back to the camp and celebrate with the others with drinks and food. Instead he just stood on the wall looking out over the destruction that the fight had wrought. The acrid smells of scorched earth, and oxidizing metal hung in the air. His eyes flicked here and there, seeing without observing. Figures out among the rubble, searching for riches, scrap, weapons, profit, and friends. He looked like a proper mess. His clothes were dirtied from the battle, one knee torn and bloodied where he’d tripped at some point and taken a scrape. His luscious blue coat, still catching the light breeze to flutter, was covered in singe marks, the hem and cuffs in tatters. The glasses through which he stared out at the field had a large crack through one of the lenses, it didn’t appear he’d noticed yet. Within the layers of cloth his shoulders slumped in a deep inverted V giving him the appearance of a soiled coat hung on a hook.

Absently he spun a translucent blue, faceted, hexagonal coin across his left knuckles. Turn, turn, turn, turn, flip. Back and forth in a steady, rhythmic pattern. Around his shoulders a lone octahedron held its orbit, wobbling slightly. The two objects worked in harmony, the coin caught light on its internal facets, spitting out fractals of cold blue, while the octahedron caught rays of light on its surface and returned flashes of warm golds and browns.

Here his thoughts ran in circles. Trying to organize everything he’d heard and seen in the way he was trained. Slotting important information into their proper, cataloged place inside of a mental memory palace. Lost in this process, and his own worries, he didn’t hear @Rael approach. When the book was presented before him he started, jumping slightly. The coin fell from his hand to shatter into blue particulate when the fragile surface hit the broken scrap wall. His left hand moved to a spot at his hip, but he stilled it when he regained his senses a heartbeat later.

”Ah! Oh, Jeez, sorry.” He gave a half-hearted, embarrassed, chuckle. ”I didn’t hear you. Hello there.” He smiled at the unknown figure, his eyes glancing up over her head to the <???> there, before seeing her tap on the page and focused his attention on the book. ”I’m quite fine, thank you. Unfortunately, I don’t know who you’re referring to, my apologies.”

On the contrary to her concerns he seemed to welcome the company. His face brightening a little, and shoulders lifting slightly. But all of his false bravado was torn to shreds like spider’s silk when she tugged at his sleeve. The worry, the warmth, the gentle reminder that there were other people here undid him. She could watch him deflate, landing somewhere between where he was before and where he was pretending to be. A slight increase overall. ”Hah. I must look like a sorry state, eh? Thank you, really. There were just so many faces there, I-uh, it's hard to keep them all straight. Who was-is your friend? They made it out alright?”
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[Rael]

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Rael's shocked reaction mirrored that of the Magia's, stumbling backward in a panic born of the sudden movement, eyes shut tight and tome pressed to the tip of her nose as an improvised shield against any form of attack that could come her way. None did, however, as instead she was met with the kind words of the gentleman who was every bit as embarrassed as she, if the chuckles that tumbled from his lips were anything to judge him by.

An eye cracked open, timidly peering at the figure as if to double-check his intentions, lowering her guard as the man greeted her and she could advance to regain the lost distance between them. An awkward smile crossed her lips, hand lifted mid-air in a small wave to return his greeting, the sullen air about the battlefield momentarily forgotten in the bubble that was their first-ever interaction.

Though it could not remain, she was glad for it, however brief it had been.

Kyra had perished during the battle, having succumbed to a mixture of injuries produced by an assassin and others of her own making, Rael herself being acquainted with the woman's self-sacrificial method of healing. The elf's head hung low, gaze downcast and averted from the taller man's, a lapse in motion before she nodded her head in answer to his question regarding her wellbeing. Her walking away from that battlefield on her own two legs was a feat none could claim as their own save for the person who now stood in front of her, the very same person she had witnessed using the magic to return lives lost to the magitech's onslaught.

"[ Kyra is her name. She... Died, and I saw you help her and another to rise back up. I have yet to find her, but I assume she was taken by the medics for proper treatment and rest. ]" While not the most sturdy of reassurances, it was everything she could offer at the time, other than fingers drifting to write a message that would go unanswered for the longest of times to the subject of both their concerns. "[ Thank you so much. For helping her. ]"

And yet, for as much as she wished to elaborate on how his efforts to help someone not even he seemed to remember, there remained a matter far more urgent at hand. One that had the previous warmth from her expression subside the longer she observed him, noting every location where the battle had left its imprint on him. Furiously, she wrote at twice the speed she had done earlier, though her handwriting did not seem to suffer for it.

"[ Are you injured, sir? You seem... ]" She shook her head. It was an unfinished sentence that she showed him, taking him by the same sleeve that she had tugged at him from, lifting it into view so she could press her thumb to the fabric of the cuffs where the most evident signs of damage were. "[ Tell me your name, please. I will have someone arrange one of the medical tents for you. ]"

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@Valmont​

 

[Valmont]

”Must have been the dark haired beastfolk, eh? Kyra.” Trying out her name he spoke softly, barely above a whisper, his gentle voice barely carrying away from their little bubble of peace among carnage. He gave a wan smile, it barely reached up to crinkle the corners of his eyes. ”I’ll remember that. I got to talk to the little blonde right before we got separated. I hope they’re ok. Like you say, they’re probably recovering in the medical tent, yeah?” A note of hopefulness laced through his voice, cut off by the briefest hitch before he cleared his throat.

He allowed her to change the topic to himself. For the first time he really noticed the effect the fighting had had on his clothes. He seemed surprised, patting himself down and finally taking off his glasses to get a better look at the crack on the lens. The golden haloes of his eyes irised to thick bands, the segments clearly visible and marking him as Magia while his pupils drew to pinpoints. ”I’m called Valmont.” He offered, then to himself he added, ”I’ll never get the focus on these aligned again… I’ll have to make new ones.” With a casual flick of his wrist he cast off the glasses into the scrap pile, a faint tinkle heard of the lens finally surrendering its fight before disappearing among the rubble.

He drew up his sleeve near where she’d been fingering, under a gash stained dark that marred the serine blue fabric. The skin there was whole, if a little scuffed and dirtied with soot and ash. ”I -ah… Healed? Repaired? Fixed myself as best I could. Unlike many of the others, my injuries were mostly superficial.” His voice grew distant as he spoke, and the shadows began to creep over his face before he blinked them away. Once more, turning up the brightness on his personality. ”Healed.” He decided.

”How about you, though, Miss…?” He asked, reaching up to touch his own throat, indicating his voice. ”Are you injured, or injured? It seems this world likes to take more than just blood, sweat, and tears.” He emphasized the second word, giving it depth in meaning. His voice was warm, concerned. Like he genuinely cared for the wellbeing of this woman whom he’d never shared a word with before now. At least, given his attitude, more than he cared about his own.
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@Rael​

 

[Rael]

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The elven woman didn't grace the assumption with a written affirmation because it was not needed, instead nodding her head once as her friend's name was spoken, and the mention of a blonde girl whom Rael wasn't acquainted with, but had witnessed falling in the battle.

Azure eyes turned instinctively towards the man's face as his tone shifted somewhat with the introduction of a more positive emotion into an already grim conversation, widening ever so slightly at the sudden change in the golden pools of Valmont's eyes, and the realization that came with it.

A Magia. One of the afflicted during the magitech's accursed chorus, and one whom she now more than ever wished to spare a few words for.

What a bothersome circumstance it must have been for him to be stuck in a conversation in which his partner couldn't utter a word, forced to read hastily written line after line whenever she came up with a response or another piece by which to continue the conversation. Her lips trembled as she took a deep breath in.

"Val... Mont..." Her low, raspy voice came as something akin to a whisper, if one could even call it that from the way she struggled to keep herself from wincing as she spoke. Though the damage had been recent, it was thanks to the prowess of others' healing magics that she could even attempt to speak. Her index finger pointed at him, then returned to herself. "Rael."

He was a strange sort, she decided after watching him work through the terminology he would apply to himself, unsure of why the first iteration of 'healing' hadn't been enough. Did it haunt him to have others of his chosen player race come to attack the Players when there was so little known of the magitech? Had it been the chorus that had affected his perception of himself?

Rael snapped away from her inner musings with the touch of his fingers to his own throat, causing her to absent-mindedly mimic the gesture to finally understand what he had meant by it. She would give the answer, of course, dutifully turning the page and pressing the quill to the paper as she wrote it down, but it was what he said next what caused her pointed ears to twitch curiously. If his words had any other meaning hidden behind them, she was not able to grasp it.

"[ I have been healed already. It's... A lot to explain and could be rather boring, but it involved a... Vision which then turned to attack us when it shouldn't have been possible. And an assassin back at Camp didn't quite like that we found out about his lies, and thought he might dish some punishment out for us. Too much for my first mission, I think.]"

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@Valmont​

 

[Valmont]

When she spoke his eyebrows shot up, his hand quickly flicking out to ward off her effort lest she ruin her healing. ”A pleasure to meet you, Rael. But do not push yourself on my account. If you are injured, let it heal, I am sure your voice will come back with time. Then we can talk at length, yeah?”

Despite her concerns, he seemed more than willing to patiently wait for her to write out her responses. Even if during those lapses in conversational flow it seemed like he never fully stopped. The way he shifted his weight, or the expressions on his face changed, he was always thinking, always fidgeting, always moving. It would almost be comical in its way. When he spoke, he was still, almost stoic. His left hand moved around in small gestures to accentuate points, and his voice and face were quite animated. Afterwards, when he was silent, he would sway slightly on the balls of his feet. His fingers played with the cuffs of his sleeve, or his coin when he materialized it. His eyes flicked this way and that, studying everything around him. It was as if he had a constant amount of internal energy, and had to use all of it all of the time.

While she wrote, this time he pondered her. Assessing her. He watched the way she carried herself, presented herself, even the way she held the book to write. Each feature a small mental note to get cataloged with the rest of his observations. When she looked up from the book to present her writings his eyes flicked away like similar lodestones brought together. Not wanting to be seen paying such close attention to his companion, though he did not show embarrassment. Quickly he came back to read the proffered text.

”Visions and assassins.” He chuckled. ”That sounds like a very interesting tale indeed. I’ll have to get you to tell it to me one day, when you're feeling better.” He turned his gaze out over the former battlefield, still scorched and smoking. Golden hues drawn to the remains of the DREAD.naught. ”This world seems to take its toll on more than just our health. If we are not careful, it will take more. Take our souls. Use them. Too much for a first time. Far too much.” He took a long breath in through his nose, holding it a moment before letting it out in a puff. ”I have hardly been here for a few days. Already I find myself wondering. What compels the Starcalled to return? To risk life and limb for… This place.” He waved out, not just at the scar of war, but at the world in general. His voice carried with it notes of curiosity, dread, and not a little sadness.
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@Rael​

 

[Rael]

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A promise of a future encounter was more than enough to warrant the positive change reflected on her person, unable to help, even if she tried most of the time to keep herself neutral to all that surrounded her, the way such simple things like meeting someone new could tear a smile from her otherwise apathetic exterior.

So she nodded, and tried to write some more, but nothing ever came out.

He moved and from the edge of her vision, she could watch as his body gave in to some unknown agent, eager to continue doing the very same thing that had left him in such a state of shock. She ought not to blame him, as she was just the same.

Exhaustion should've seen her fainting somewhere underneath the debris, the ache deeply set in her bones finally taking its toll on the artificial body which carried her from one extreme of camp to another without a minute of rest, yet there she stood. She stood at the edge, overlooking the destruction brought upon by lifeless machines, and wondered the same as he did.

Equals, brought together by chance and words writ upon paper.

He spoke of her story, of the briefest mention she had given of what had caused her predicament, and for a second she thought she knew where the conversation was going. Rael hummed her understanding and moved in closer to where he stood, just in time for a deeper twist to occur.

"[ It was my first too... ]" These weren't written words to give him an answer, but melodies taking the shape of a voice as she hummed and tapped her fingers to the cover of her grimoire, stringless noises given form, and meaning. "[ Too much. ]"

"[ I don't know. I ask myself the same and wonder if, maybe, someday someone will say something that makes sense for all the sacrifice that this place is given. Some other days, however, I wonder if anybody really knows... No one shows it, and I have... Been playing assistant to researchers ever since I joined. Never thought that something that was supposed to be difficult would be this harrowing. ]"

Valmont's eyes were lacking in the same way hers were. They lacked the understanding of the people who had joined, their motives, their desires, and were compelled to understand it to some unknown end. Gazing outward, to an indistinctive point beyond the pillars of smoke rising up in the sky, was no different than to hope for answers that would never arrive.

"[ Am I to understand you know about the grim... rumors of this game, then? ]"

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@Valmont ​