-... The one who stands atop all is alone. This is an inescapable law.-
A voice like cooling magma. A scent of apricots, suffusing everything. The sensations filled her mind with a passionate scarlet, intoxicating her. When she retreated into her memories and felt with blind hands for those days before, every sensation, every stimuli was etched into the deepest recesses of her mind.
-... Shichiseiryu and Meikyuuken entwined. The two halves comprise a whole that is more than just a school of fighting. It is a labyrinth, like the twist of entrails or the hollows within your bones, a maze within yourself. A man could look inside and find infinity. A self-important man once did.-
It was all there. The lazy, half-shaded glare. The messy fringe of black hair casting a shadow across her face. The dark-steel tsuba covering her bad eye. The crooked twist of flesh that was nominally a grin. The sensation of static on the back of her neck that no other being could provoke within her. A phantom, she wasn't there and never had been and yet her power was so tangible Virara's body shook with its approach. Like the cavitation of a great ship traveling through the Indigo Deep, one could not help but be held captive by its billowing wake.
-Many other traditions have used the law of the fist to order the universe, to shape the world about them into a reflection of what lay inside. A Monk of Ala Mhigo, for instance, builds a shrine to their god within the bodies of his foes. He tempers his hunger, his fear, his desire. Every blow an act of devotion.-
Even if unseen, even if unknown, the Master could walk alone among thousands and still be found by those who understood her inexorable gravity. She hid but never was truly incognito, was nameless but still known. A law unto herself, engraved upon her single student's soul. Master was all that was, and would be. In the endless cycle of winter, spring, summer and autumn, the apricot grove grew, bore its blossoms, gave up its fruit and were cut away by their arms. Within her the cycle continued. Virara was still there, in the flooded grove. She could feel the island winds upon her skin whenever her mind wandered, smell the fragrance of the blossoms seeping in from the shadowy gaps of her senses, hear the clash of the waves and the creek of flat bottomed boats swaying in the ocean tide.
-Ah, but you know better. So do I. For what use are the mental calisthenics of the monastic orders? The piousness of the Destroyer's followers? The posturing of the buke? We have a hunger to answer to. A diet of airy dreams makes for a poor supper. An empty stomach must be fed. Who can reason with it?-
Before her, Virara saw the tall shapes of the harriers file in like monoliths, circling about her in naked aggression. No hunting party would move to talk peaceably in envelopment. The one with the heavy shield hefted it with an awkwardness that betrayed unfamiliarity. The blonde with the spear's hands jumped with the tightness of their grasp, while the graying man, his beard encased in a thin sheath of frost, handled it casually at his side, making every effort to seem as modest and conciliatory as a man could be bearing steel. A fourth followed in the distance. Virara's ears twitched as she huddled deeper into her warm coat. A bowman? He'd covered his weapons with cloth, but she could still faintly make out the sound of his quiver rattling against his mail.
-The fist is a tool for killing. A technique that does not slay is useless. A lesson that does not aid in conquest is worthless. That is an inescapable law.-
They'd found themselves a suitable spot to corner their quarry. North of them only a short distance away lay a long crevasse. Virara could perhaps have outrun them, despite the Elezen's remarkable stride, but that would require many steps and much expended energy. It was unwise to do so in the unfamiliar white wilderness. In the forest, on the island, even in the city, Virara's sense of direction would always serve her well, but there was little but white fog in every direction there to gauge her bearings from. What would become of her should she sprint into the mists, straight over another cliff like the one she backed towards now?
“Only four.†Virara muttered under her breath as they approached, her mouth working unconsciously.
The lead man cocked his head curiously, and crept closer, spear readied.
“Hold. Your travel pack, lass. No need t' getting' yesself skewered over a bit o' jerky and heating oil.â€
As if in response to this, the graying man raised a corrective palm. He had a look about him that would have seemed grandfatherly, had Virara any grasp of what that impression entailed.
“No need for threats. Young lady,we're travelers in dreadful need of provisions. Though we bear you no ill will, we must relieve you of your pack. You won't be harmed.â€
He-shaded his vision with fuzzy, frost-coated eyebrows that looked like silk moth cocoons.
“You'll be left enough to make it back to Falcon's Nest safely. I'll direct you to the path most commonly patrolled by the Holy See's servants. Now, please...â€
Virara gazed up at the tall, thin man, his thick glove extended with gentlemanly poise. The mail practically hung off his bones. He was the least threatening of the four, even compared to the encumbered woman crouched behind her, shield raised. That of course meant he was by far the most experienced one there. Virara could sense no desire to kill, no hostility from him whatsoever. Taking a life was likely reflexive to such a man. Yet, bathed in blood enough times, Virara knew that even an experienced warrior could not hide the aura of slaughter that followed true 'monsters' of the battlefield. Every ilm of their body exuded a suffocating stench of mortal danger, no matter how they tried to hide it. That man had no such body-language. Virara never had to think deeply about it. She only compared the economy of their movement, their open confidence, the look in their eyes, and something far more immaterial to a very familiar woman.
The small girl gazed up at her soft-eyed captor. He held his spear ready in the other hand, but extended his leading arm for her pack. His legs were braced ankle-deep in the snow, already securing footholds for a lunge. The aged lancer must have noticed her glancing about his posture, for his faint smile faded and his arm grew tense.
“Not much for talking, are you? Young lady, do you not speak our tongue?â€
Virara's scarlet eye blinked once languidly. Her subdued voice crept out from behind her collar.
“I cannot.â€
The man blinked, shifting in the snow with a soft crunch. A forced smile stretched his hardened face thin across the cheekbones, like a leathery mask.
“... I see you've good humor in you still, even set upon by us lowly thieves. Look lass, we don't want violence. With the great city as it is now, surely you'll be able to get back in without much trouble. You won't find yourself wanting of supplies, what with the airship coming and going now.â€
He chuckled to himself, brushing his forehead in feigned self-mockery.
“But of course you'd know. Forgive me, suppose age has addled my brain. You'd have to have taken one to get here from the south.â€
".. Mm... An airship. Though I have no such home in the south."
Virara nodded her round head, hair drifting across her shoulders. She'd taken her hood down. The cool air played across the nerves beneath her skin until they could discern the length and coarseness of each thread in the lining of her collar.
"... A foreigner twice again, ah? You're fortunate, miss. Weren't always the case the Holy See would allow folk such as yourself to walk about unfettered in their lands. Even contested land, like ours."
She gazed up and down the head harrier, her red eye sliding from side to side, glancing at the others, and the shadowy figure in the distance, raising what could only have been a longbow. The boyish one with the fair hair was trying to scuttle to her left side, doubtlessly attempting to hide in her blind spot. He didn't know, as many did, that the patch was merely cosmetic. Not that it mattered. She didn't need sight to gauge his distance, or strike him, or even avoid his blows. Master had made sure of that.
The breadth of the scenario flickered through Virara's conscious mind. They were vulgar criminals, though not without some martial professionalism. She could gain little by fighting them, and an injury would be unwelcome. The highlands were vast yet, and she had to hunt hardier game to benefit from the miserable foray out into the wild. The unconscious mind was as it always had been. It tightened her muscles and tickled her nerves in anticipation. Virara ran her tongue across her dry lips, a hot breath escaping, then knelt, as if in prayer, no stranger to worship despite her faithlessness. Her small, overladen pack tumbled to the snow beside her.
The old man nodded, spear tapping at his side.
“Come now, no one travels this far alone unarmed. Your dagger and belt as well, miss. Come on.â€
Virara reached for the belt beneath her coat with sluggish compliance. Her gloved fingers brushed against familiar metal grips, somehow cool to the touch beneath the layers of fur and leather, scornful of the mounting heat within her body. She shivered, but it was not from the cold. Her fingers wouldn't cooperate. Those knuckles were his. They belonged to him, a gift to her, not hers to offer.
"Come on." The elderly harrier repeated, more insistently now.
Her fingers trembled across the painstakingly shaped metal. Her other hand found the folded leather eye patch in her pocket. Even if they stripped her of everything else, she wouldn't allow them to take those, nor that which her Master gave her.
The man sensed her hesitation. His smile faded slightly, craggy face betraying a faint trickle of impatience flowing beneath his pale expression.
"... I cannot."
"We can't very well let you go armed."
"My weapons. These knuckles. They are not mine to give."
"Oh? Might be they'd make fine paperweights."
A hoarse laugh from the gaunt blond young man. He curled up on his spear from behind Virara's eye patch.
"I will not."
The blond man grinned widely. She imagined it was meant to be friendly, but Virara was prone to misunderstanding such gestures.
"Though I s'pose it'll be much too small for me hands, I'll take good care of 'em. Ye've nothing to worry about lass."
The remark provoked a pointed look from the older gentleman. Virara heard a faint clattering of metal on metal from behind her. The girl was struggling with her shield again, sleeves of mail ringing against the hard wood and steel on the inside.
Virara searched for her buckle when, darting a glance to the shield-bearing woman to keep track of her position, she saw a cloud in the sky above them darken briefly. It was for a fleeting instant, but a stripe of shadow crossed her face, cast from above.
"A scaled one? A flock of buzzards?"
Her ears twitched. Upon the curling mists the unmistakable groan of twisting, spinning, stretching metal scraped the inside of her skull. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck ready themselves at attention. Virara knew that gaze.
Her visible red eye began to flood with black. Her tiny, sharp, perpetually glaring pupil widened, as if her veins were engorged with stimulants. Her small nostrils released a hissing sigh of visible hot steam. Behind her parched lips her teeth wanted to chatter, so she ground them together as if to triturate them to dust.
"The gaze. It is here."
She recalled the feeling of the watcher's eyes upon her. Virara could not see him, but the churning of her innards, her body's natural fight or flight response, never lied to her before. Somehow she knew the spider was there, crawling upon metal webs, twisting its many legs with nauseating grace.
"The Spider. It comes. It crawls on its web. It followed me from Mist. Persistent thing."
Furious sensations poured through her numb body, the feelings overwhelming her in a dark navy flood. Virara felt the phantom bite of the garrote, the tautness of thin metal wire across the skin, and shivered once more, teeth gritting until the bitter taste of blood filled her mouth.
The harrier's leader smelled something in the air. He raised his weather-worn face to the drifting clouds, but discerned nothing his face would betray. Somehow, Virara's agitation infected him.
"Lass, come on now. Hurry up and surrender your weapons and we won't get rough with you."
His tone provoked an odd look from the blond youth, and more chattering of metal behind Virara. She heard the screech of metal wire in the opaque mists, louder now. The man cringed. Finally he'd noticed. His milky eyes struggled to focus, not upon Virara's darkening, savage expression, but over her shoulder, at something unseen, squinting past the shivering swordswoman. He drew his spear slowly from his side to both hands before him, expression trance-like, and Virara's fingers crept to the gifted knuckles long before her brain could issue any commands.
".. That would trouble me."
Virara's words, soft as velvet, betrayed none of the dark ichor boiling within her. The air was polluted with a thickening haze of hostility that could only be from her foe. Were the brigands preparing to face whatever hunted them in the mists? Or were they merely discomforted by their vague dread, driving their aggression towards Virara forward in haste?
"Y' thick little runt! Hurry up and disarm!"
The blond man yelped, glancing from side to side, hearing the shrieking whine far too strident to be a mere highland gale.
Virara raised her chin. Set within the placid face of a doll, an eye like a star ruby affixed the old man with a far off, unblinking stare.
"I think you should leave."
A whistling. The childish hairstyle her Master entrusted to her twirled with the motion of something streaking over her left shoulder. The momentary distraction of the screeching in the murky depths of the chasm left Virara momentarily unaware, as the distant harrier loosed an arrow. Tilting her head out of the way in a walking daze, purely on instinct, she felt the bite of an arrowhead nip at the soft tip of her oft-pummeled left ear, drooping slightly from years of abuse throughout training. A widening of the eye was all that registered as shock upon Virara's face.
"You blasted idiot!"
The gaunt lancer with blond hair was looking frantically between the shadowy figure in the distance, lowering his bow with hesitation. The woman with the shield crouched awkwardly, bare steel peeking out from behind the round wood and metal structure. The elderly ringleader cussed hideously beneath his breath, not turning to look at his wayward follower.
Virara listened for the whistle of the traveling arrow behind her and heard only the singing wires in the white nothing. The enemy's concentration was shot. That would be her first and perhaps only window to act.
The scent of apricot blossoms filled her, lungs filling with the last gasp of summer from a place that never knew snow.
A voice like cooling magma. A scent of apricots, suffusing everything. The sensations filled her mind with a passionate scarlet, intoxicating her. When she retreated into her memories and felt with blind hands for those days before, every sensation, every stimuli was etched into the deepest recesses of her mind.
-... Shichiseiryu and Meikyuuken entwined. The two halves comprise a whole that is more than just a school of fighting. It is a labyrinth, like the twist of entrails or the hollows within your bones, a maze within yourself. A man could look inside and find infinity. A self-important man once did.-
It was all there. The lazy, half-shaded glare. The messy fringe of black hair casting a shadow across her face. The dark-steel tsuba covering her bad eye. The crooked twist of flesh that was nominally a grin. The sensation of static on the back of her neck that no other being could provoke within her. A phantom, she wasn't there and never had been and yet her power was so tangible Virara's body shook with its approach. Like the cavitation of a great ship traveling through the Indigo Deep, one could not help but be held captive by its billowing wake.
-Many other traditions have used the law of the fist to order the universe, to shape the world about them into a reflection of what lay inside. A Monk of Ala Mhigo, for instance, builds a shrine to their god within the bodies of his foes. He tempers his hunger, his fear, his desire. Every blow an act of devotion.-
Even if unseen, even if unknown, the Master could walk alone among thousands and still be found by those who understood her inexorable gravity. She hid but never was truly incognito, was nameless but still known. A law unto herself, engraved upon her single student's soul. Master was all that was, and would be. In the endless cycle of winter, spring, summer and autumn, the apricot grove grew, bore its blossoms, gave up its fruit and were cut away by their arms. Within her the cycle continued. Virara was still there, in the flooded grove. She could feel the island winds upon her skin whenever her mind wandered, smell the fragrance of the blossoms seeping in from the shadowy gaps of her senses, hear the clash of the waves and the creek of flat bottomed boats swaying in the ocean tide.
-Ah, but you know better. So do I. For what use are the mental calisthenics of the monastic orders? The piousness of the Destroyer's followers? The posturing of the buke? We have a hunger to answer to. A diet of airy dreams makes for a poor supper. An empty stomach must be fed. Who can reason with it?-
Before her, Virara saw the tall shapes of the harriers file in like monoliths, circling about her in naked aggression. No hunting party would move to talk peaceably in envelopment. The one with the heavy shield hefted it with an awkwardness that betrayed unfamiliarity. The blonde with the spear's hands jumped with the tightness of their grasp, while the graying man, his beard encased in a thin sheath of frost, handled it casually at his side, making every effort to seem as modest and conciliatory as a man could be bearing steel. A fourth followed in the distance. Virara's ears twitched as she huddled deeper into her warm coat. A bowman? He'd covered his weapons with cloth, but she could still faintly make out the sound of his quiver rattling against his mail.
-The fist is a tool for killing. A technique that does not slay is useless. A lesson that does not aid in conquest is worthless. That is an inescapable law.-
They'd found themselves a suitable spot to corner their quarry. North of them only a short distance away lay a long crevasse. Virara could perhaps have outrun them, despite the Elezen's remarkable stride, but that would require many steps and much expended energy. It was unwise to do so in the unfamiliar white wilderness. In the forest, on the island, even in the city, Virara's sense of direction would always serve her well, but there was little but white fog in every direction there to gauge her bearings from. What would become of her should she sprint into the mists, straight over another cliff like the one she backed towards now?
“Only four.†Virara muttered under her breath as they approached, her mouth working unconsciously.
The lead man cocked his head curiously, and crept closer, spear readied.
“Hold. Your travel pack, lass. No need t' getting' yesself skewered over a bit o' jerky and heating oil.â€
As if in response to this, the graying man raised a corrective palm. He had a look about him that would have seemed grandfatherly, had Virara any grasp of what that impression entailed.
“No need for threats. Young lady,we're travelers in dreadful need of provisions. Though we bear you no ill will, we must relieve you of your pack. You won't be harmed.â€
He-shaded his vision with fuzzy, frost-coated eyebrows that looked like silk moth cocoons.
“You'll be left enough to make it back to Falcon's Nest safely. I'll direct you to the path most commonly patrolled by the Holy See's servants. Now, please...â€
Virara gazed up at the tall, thin man, his thick glove extended with gentlemanly poise. The mail practically hung off his bones. He was the least threatening of the four, even compared to the encumbered woman crouched behind her, shield raised. That of course meant he was by far the most experienced one there. Virara could sense no desire to kill, no hostility from him whatsoever. Taking a life was likely reflexive to such a man. Yet, bathed in blood enough times, Virara knew that even an experienced warrior could not hide the aura of slaughter that followed true 'monsters' of the battlefield. Every ilm of their body exuded a suffocating stench of mortal danger, no matter how they tried to hide it. That man had no such body-language. Virara never had to think deeply about it. She only compared the economy of their movement, their open confidence, the look in their eyes, and something far more immaterial to a very familiar woman.
The small girl gazed up at her soft-eyed captor. He held his spear ready in the other hand, but extended his leading arm for her pack. His legs were braced ankle-deep in the snow, already securing footholds for a lunge. The aged lancer must have noticed her glancing about his posture, for his faint smile faded and his arm grew tense.
“Not much for talking, are you? Young lady, do you not speak our tongue?â€
Virara's scarlet eye blinked once languidly. Her subdued voice crept out from behind her collar.
“I cannot.â€
The man blinked, shifting in the snow with a soft crunch. A forced smile stretched his hardened face thin across the cheekbones, like a leathery mask.
“... I see you've good humor in you still, even set upon by us lowly thieves. Look lass, we don't want violence. With the great city as it is now, surely you'll be able to get back in without much trouble. You won't find yourself wanting of supplies, what with the airship coming and going now.â€
He chuckled to himself, brushing his forehead in feigned self-mockery.
“But of course you'd know. Forgive me, suppose age has addled my brain. You'd have to have taken one to get here from the south.â€
".. Mm... An airship. Though I have no such home in the south."
Virara nodded her round head, hair drifting across her shoulders. She'd taken her hood down. The cool air played across the nerves beneath her skin until they could discern the length and coarseness of each thread in the lining of her collar.
"... A foreigner twice again, ah? You're fortunate, miss. Weren't always the case the Holy See would allow folk such as yourself to walk about unfettered in their lands. Even contested land, like ours."
She gazed up and down the head harrier, her red eye sliding from side to side, glancing at the others, and the shadowy figure in the distance, raising what could only have been a longbow. The boyish one with the fair hair was trying to scuttle to her left side, doubtlessly attempting to hide in her blind spot. He didn't know, as many did, that the patch was merely cosmetic. Not that it mattered. She didn't need sight to gauge his distance, or strike him, or even avoid his blows. Master had made sure of that.
The breadth of the scenario flickered through Virara's conscious mind. They were vulgar criminals, though not without some martial professionalism. She could gain little by fighting them, and an injury would be unwelcome. The highlands were vast yet, and she had to hunt hardier game to benefit from the miserable foray out into the wild. The unconscious mind was as it always had been. It tightened her muscles and tickled her nerves in anticipation. Virara ran her tongue across her dry lips, a hot breath escaping, then knelt, as if in prayer, no stranger to worship despite her faithlessness. Her small, overladen pack tumbled to the snow beside her.
The old man nodded, spear tapping at his side.
“Come now, no one travels this far alone unarmed. Your dagger and belt as well, miss. Come on.â€
Virara reached for the belt beneath her coat with sluggish compliance. Her gloved fingers brushed against familiar metal grips, somehow cool to the touch beneath the layers of fur and leather, scornful of the mounting heat within her body. She shivered, but it was not from the cold. Her fingers wouldn't cooperate. Those knuckles were his. They belonged to him, a gift to her, not hers to offer.
"Come on." The elderly harrier repeated, more insistently now.
Her fingers trembled across the painstakingly shaped metal. Her other hand found the folded leather eye patch in her pocket. Even if they stripped her of everything else, she wouldn't allow them to take those, nor that which her Master gave her.
The man sensed her hesitation. His smile faded slightly, craggy face betraying a faint trickle of impatience flowing beneath his pale expression.
"... I cannot."
"We can't very well let you go armed."
"My weapons. These knuckles. They are not mine to give."
"Oh? Might be they'd make fine paperweights."
A hoarse laugh from the gaunt blond young man. He curled up on his spear from behind Virara's eye patch.
"I will not."
The blond man grinned widely. She imagined it was meant to be friendly, but Virara was prone to misunderstanding such gestures.
"Though I s'pose it'll be much too small for me hands, I'll take good care of 'em. Ye've nothing to worry about lass."
The remark provoked a pointed look from the older gentleman. Virara heard a faint clattering of metal on metal from behind her. The girl was struggling with her shield again, sleeves of mail ringing against the hard wood and steel on the inside.
Virara searched for her buckle when, darting a glance to the shield-bearing woman to keep track of her position, she saw a cloud in the sky above them darken briefly. It was for a fleeting instant, but a stripe of shadow crossed her face, cast from above.
"A scaled one? A flock of buzzards?"
Her ears twitched. Upon the curling mists the unmistakable groan of twisting, spinning, stretching metal scraped the inside of her skull. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck ready themselves at attention. Virara knew that gaze.
Her visible red eye began to flood with black. Her tiny, sharp, perpetually glaring pupil widened, as if her veins were engorged with stimulants. Her small nostrils released a hissing sigh of visible hot steam. Behind her parched lips her teeth wanted to chatter, so she ground them together as if to triturate them to dust.
"The gaze. It is here."
She recalled the feeling of the watcher's eyes upon her. Virara could not see him, but the churning of her innards, her body's natural fight or flight response, never lied to her before. Somehow she knew the spider was there, crawling upon metal webs, twisting its many legs with nauseating grace.
"The Spider. It comes. It crawls on its web. It followed me from Mist. Persistent thing."
Furious sensations poured through her numb body, the feelings overwhelming her in a dark navy flood. Virara felt the phantom bite of the garrote, the tautness of thin metal wire across the skin, and shivered once more, teeth gritting until the bitter taste of blood filled her mouth.
The harrier's leader smelled something in the air. He raised his weather-worn face to the drifting clouds, but discerned nothing his face would betray. Somehow, Virara's agitation infected him.
"Lass, come on now. Hurry up and surrender your weapons and we won't get rough with you."
His tone provoked an odd look from the blond youth, and more chattering of metal behind Virara. She heard the screech of metal wire in the opaque mists, louder now. The man cringed. Finally he'd noticed. His milky eyes struggled to focus, not upon Virara's darkening, savage expression, but over her shoulder, at something unseen, squinting past the shivering swordswoman. He drew his spear slowly from his side to both hands before him, expression trance-like, and Virara's fingers crept to the gifted knuckles long before her brain could issue any commands.
".. That would trouble me."
Virara's words, soft as velvet, betrayed none of the dark ichor boiling within her. The air was polluted with a thickening haze of hostility that could only be from her foe. Were the brigands preparing to face whatever hunted them in the mists? Or were they merely discomforted by their vague dread, driving their aggression towards Virara forward in haste?
"Y' thick little runt! Hurry up and disarm!"
The blond man yelped, glancing from side to side, hearing the shrieking whine far too strident to be a mere highland gale.
Virara raised her chin. Set within the placid face of a doll, an eye like a star ruby affixed the old man with a far off, unblinking stare.
"I think you should leave."
A whistling. The childish hairstyle her Master entrusted to her twirled with the motion of something streaking over her left shoulder. The momentary distraction of the screeching in the murky depths of the chasm left Virara momentarily unaware, as the distant harrier loosed an arrow. Tilting her head out of the way in a walking daze, purely on instinct, she felt the bite of an arrowhead nip at the soft tip of her oft-pummeled left ear, drooping slightly from years of abuse throughout training. A widening of the eye was all that registered as shock upon Virara's face.
"You blasted idiot!"
The gaunt lancer with blond hair was looking frantically between the shadowy figure in the distance, lowering his bow with hesitation. The woman with the shield crouched awkwardly, bare steel peeking out from behind the round wood and metal structure. The elderly ringleader cussed hideously beneath his breath, not turning to look at his wayward follower.
Virara listened for the whistle of the traveling arrow behind her and heard only the singing wires in the white nothing. The enemy's concentration was shot. That would be her first and perhaps only window to act.
The scent of apricot blossoms filled her, lungs filling with the last gasp of summer from a place that never knew snow.
ã€Œè’¼æ°—ç ²ã€ã‚’使ã‚ã–ã‚‹ã‚’å¾—ãªã„!
AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.
AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.
