RESONANCE
Act I, SCENE V
Act I, SCENE V
Larkscall, somewhere north of Little Solace
There was a sharp sort of thwip, and a plunk, followed by an eerie mix of sussuration, shriek and rustle.
It was exactly the sort of sound that one would expect from a crossbow bolt piercing and taking down a flying sylph, since that was precisely the source of it. It was a sound that the weapon's wielder had heard numerous times this morning, among the perturbing mix of noises that usually permeated the thickets and bowers of Larkscall: the cries of axebeaks, the splintering crash of angry trees, and the everpresent rustle, rustle, rustle of morbuls, ochu, and the current prey - the purple-hued sylphs that occupied and held the northern reaches of the woodland in the name of their master, Ramuh.
The owner of the crossbow was indeed very much an intruder in these woods, which no one could deny from even the most cursory look of her. Her robe was a rich, lush red that only berries in these woods had any chance of matching, and no berry in the Twelveswood was big enough to pass for the garments of a Roegadyn, even one of the average height for her kind. Her skin was dusky, nearly ashen, with but a hint of glinting blue in her otherwise black hair to offset her Hellsguard origins. To suggest that Obsidian Glimmer stood out among these woods was as astute as suggesting that the sun was bright and warm, or that travel by aetheryte from Limsa Lominsa to Gridania was swifter than walking.
Nonetheless, she was crouched within the branches of a felled dryad, its thick branches not hiding her as much as simply breaking up the obvious contrast of woman to woods; the cover made reloading the crossbow into a chore, snaking it between branches, but it was enough to lure the purple leaf-beings close enough to target with the weapon.
The crossbow itself was something of an awkward thing, anyway. It was heavy, poorly balanced for carrying, and took entirely too long to load, even with a lever, to be of much use in open combat. It was a weapon for a sniper, or an entrenched assassin, or someone who cared only for firing at long-range targets without concern about whether or not one was seen. Glimmer considered herself the latter sort.
As the last of the faint rustlings from the fallen sylph faded, she stood, and lifted the other burdensome object she had with her; it scraped against the leaves and twigs of the dryad. It was a cone of thin, light metal, shaped like a lengthened, acute-angled megaphone, but with a small, box-shaped contraption attached to the thinner mouth. She hoisted it and aimed it at the bolt-pierced corpse of the sylph, narrowed one eye in aim for a moment, and then pressed a button on the mechanism.
A piercing, high-pitched tone practically screamed from the open end of the device, and Glimmer grimaced, even though it was no more than a noise from her end of it. The dead sylph rustled, and a cracking, tinkling sound could be heard within the din.
Glimmer sighed, and lowered the device into the loamy ground. She tapped lightly on one of her pearl earrings, activating the voicelink enchantment, feeling its slight vibration in her earlobe.
A crisp masculine voice sounded in her hearing. "What news?"
She dug her boot's heel into the dirt. "Not enough volatility, I'm afraid, sir. The crystals are responding to the resonator, but only cracking. I suspect either that their matrix is still too stable, or else the resonance is being affected by the delivery method. You're getting results, sir, but not the ones you want, yet."
"Are they breaking on impact?"
"No, sir," she said. "I chose sylphs to minimize that possibility. This last one was a clean hit, total penetration, but still a subpar reaction from the tone. Could it be a question of scaling?"
"We don't dare discount that, but if we can't get them to work with the quarrels, then we are stalled on the next two stages. Recover the spent crystals, and return as soon as you can. We will have the next shipment within two suns, and I'll need your skills back here. End transmission."
She squeezed the pearl to end the spell, and her face scrunched; the only sound left was the eternal rustling of Larkscall. It did seem a bit...
"Noisy one is there! Noisy one is murdering one! Teach noisy one not to invade our home!"
The voices were the shrill notes of tempered sylphs, and she spun in place, still among the dryad's wilting foliage. Three, no, four of the purple-tinted leaf beings were flitting her way, a few dozen fulms from her, and they were already starting to crackle with the corruscations of angry spellbinding.
She glanced at her equipment - the crossbow was unloaded, would take to long to load, and it would be looked down upon to waste the crystal-tipped bolts any further. The cone-shaped resonator would need a charge.
Neither one mattered.
She took a pair of long steps backwards, moving away from the dryad's foliage and putting it between themselves and her, and she seized the slim black wand at her belt.
"Come on, then, you nasty little vegetables. You can tell Ramuh about me when your aether goes to meet him!"
Pale yellow flames enveloped her hands, and the wand, in a bright, hot aura, and she gave the encroaching creatures her wickedest smile.
"But in the laugh there was another voice. A clearer laugh, an ironic laugh. A laugh which laughs because it chooses not to weep."