RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Twinflame · **05-06-2014, 02:25 AM**

On her way up the tower, Lyrique Midichante collected one of the golden lances from the monument to Halone. It wasn't the most effective weapon, but anything less than a lance built for a Dragoon's use was likely to be insufficient, and she'd lost her best in the fight earlier. The golden lance was imperfectly forged for use, but it would have to be sufficient, just as her broken body would have to be sufficient.

Lyrique exited the roof of the tower in the reverse of how she'd fallen into it, launching herself into the same skies where minutes before she'd been swarmed by an unexpected number of heretic dragoons.

The Lady of Midichant no longer felt like a Dragoon should feel. Her body had been shattered, her armor defaced, all ornamentation twisted into ugly patterns, and so covered was she in heretical dragonsblood that she thought she must look like a wyvern as she moved through the air. Mitari had gone mad with the heretic's soulstone, and she felt her body had been debased by his healing.

She might as well be a heretic herself at this point. Her hand tightened on the golden lance, monument to Halone, but it could not help that she felt very far from grace. No amount of washing, fasting, prayer or humility could get this black blood out of her body. But maybe if she died...

Finding the skies empty, Lyrique fell. She dropped past the tower's summit, watching the parapets flash past her on either side. The dragon no longer circled the tower. The minor beasts and common heretical cannon fodder were either dead or gone. As she came close enough to the ground to see through the whiteout of the storm, she saw nothing but corpses, and a great many of them.

But no Dragoons. None on her side, none on those of the heretics. Had the Dragoons of Midichnate really betrayed her? So many of them had been her friends, confidantes, allies; more than a few had secretly been lovers. She rejected it. These Dragoons were something else. But then where were the Dragoons that should be protecting the keep?

She hit the ground hard, but her body held together. Snow flew away from her impact in a maelstrom. From the golden chains that had once born glass beads, drops of frozen blood now flicked in the light. Her sweat had turned to frost in her eyebrows and hairline. Sick black-blood icicles hung from her hair, patches of it clinging to her legs and greaves.

The absence of the enemy was like a threat uttered by the world around her. It settled into her bones and lay there like the snow piled up against the tower walls. Lyrique pointed her lance at strange objects as though they threatened her, sating her instinctive need to find a threat. But it was ephemeral, and uneasiness overtook her.

They would not just leave.

Lyrique jumped sideways, throwing a trail of snow as her greaves flew just over the snow cover. She hit the outer wall of the keep and pushed off of it, moving to a different side of the tower. But there was only emptiness there, as well. At once infuriated and fearful, Lyrique moved in strange silence. She decided to return to Mitari and the survivors he was escorting.

With quiet and tentative steps, Mitari led for the congregation of wounded and frightened Elezen. None seemed pleased to follow a Miq'ote, but also none argued since he was the only one there with armor and a lance and the ability to wield it.Â

He lead them from the rubble of the keep towards the stables where they might be able to round up some Chocobo to flee towards Dragonhead on. Surely, Dragonhead would aid the Midichnate Keep in this time of need. Slipping inside the stables, Mitari indeed found a few Chocobos and instructed the young and the elderly and the injured to have first take of the Chocobo flock.Â

It took a few minutes to make sure everyone was settled, but as they were it left only the middle-aged and uninjured. Which was good, because they could run faster than the children or the severely injured.Â

Mitari peered out the door, eyes scanning for any sort of darkness on the horizon. But there were none. Everything was strangely... quiet.Â

So he lead the way, chocobos and Elezen behind him. They managed to make it out of the keep without much incident however, it was only moments outside the keep where they had found where the horde had gotten off to. Minor dragons and heretics doing Halone knew what and it was all Mitari could do to command the civilians to make for Dragonhead fast on foot.Â

And with that he leapt up high into the air and crashed down, lance first into the center of the horde, grabbing their attention with a fantastic Dragonfire Dive. Flames licked and burned the creatures, all of their attentions moved towards the single Miq'ote while the others were able to run. He could only hope that would last long enough.Â

And that he wasn't going to be ripped to shreds instantly.

How?

Lyrique saw through the whiteout, just a flash of a moment before the snow blew in and obscured it again, a white-haired Miqo'te attempting to fight off a swarm of heretics and lesser dragons. How had the heretics tracked down the survivor's so flawlessly? How had they moved as one to intercept them, evading Lyrique entirely? How was Mitari even thinking to fight them?

The Lady of Midichante hit the snow with a great thud that broke the dark stone beneath it, leaving a white crater with cracked black earth in the middle. Then she launched herself into the air again, flying towards the heretics and the single defender in their midst.

By all good reason, Mitari should have torn his own body apart in his first attempt to use the power of the soulstone untrained. The might of dragons was easily enough to shatter one's own skeleton, to immolate one's own innards. And yet Mitari was using it. He was a clumsy novice at best, but he was surviving.

This meant two things. First, that Mitari was a liar: the orphaned Miqo'te had been trained at some point, albeit clumsily. Second, that the heretic dragoons had not yet descended upon him: he would be dead the moment they did.

Lyrique hit the ground on the outskirts of the heretics, landing directly on a lesser dragon's head and crushing its skull beneath her greaves. No sooner had she realized that she did not see the heretic dragoons among the group than she saw the plumes of snow thrown by the dragoons' advance. There were five heretic dragoons, not counting the three Lyrique had successfully killed and the one who had somehow managed to die while fighting Mitari. They launched themselves parallel to the ground, throwing snow behind them as they flew with lances out directly at Mitari.

The orphan Miqo'te stood fighting at the heart of the heretic horde, and the five dragoons drew a five-pronged star of snow thrown high in their wake, converging as one on the place where Mitari stood. If he had wanted their attention, he had gotten it. They had already done too much damage to the house of Midichante that day, though, and Lyrique wasn't going to let them do any more, even if it was just to some errant stable boy.

She crouched and readied her lance to intervene.

The dragon crashed down in front of her, black and glistening, eyes aglow with unholy fury, and its maw opened to bellow in rage at Lyrique. Black blood spilled onto the snow from the wound Lyrique had given it earlier. Its teeth were terrible. Its gaze sought to corrupt her.

Lyrique did not hesitate. She threw herself forward just as planned, but her lance preceded her, the point embedding deep in the dragon's throat. It made a viciously sick sound and spat blood, its wings shaking, its body convulsing as it threw itself backward.

She ducked low and managed to pass just beneath it, one of the spikes on her armor embedding between its scales and breaking off. She left it behind and continued on, flying over the snow and throwing up a plume of white behind her as she went. Disarmed, she bundled one hand into a fist and opened the clawed fingers of the other into a talon.

There were now six dragoons flying at Mitari, one of whom did not intend to kill him, and the only warning he received was a roar from Lyrique's thin throat, "Mitari! Move!"

His fight with a horde of dragon heretics was not going well. How could it be expected to? Mitari had fought before, away from the Keep, and with a soulstone before, but never with this intensity. Every move he made, lives were depending upon him, and it was frightening. But as frightened as he was, he was also furious. Furious that Lyrique's own knights would turn against her and become corrupted. Perhaps the Ishguardians were not right in their fight against the dragons, but the dragons certainly weren't correct either!

Mitari was only picking sides with the lesser evils.Â

After he had landed, he had set to using the lance like a baseball bat and swinging it hard in a circle to knock everything around him off its feet. And he had succeeded at the cost of dislocating his shoulder. Next came the wave of dragons, whom had a faster reaction speed and were upon him in seconds, tearing at his armor and flesh. They ripped into his armor easily and claws dug deep into his chest and limbs. The armor around his head came ripping off in a needlessly violent fashion, and it was all Mitari could to flail and roar angrily. He flailed his arms and legs, the immense power from the soulstone making for a powerful movement that managed to shake loose the dragon's very teeth from their mouths and free Mitari, albeit with dragon fangs and claws stuck into him like a pin cushion.Â

He breathed hard, and it was then that he heard Lyrique scream. Well it wasn't like he had planned on standing still particularly, unless he wanted to be a Miqabob. Which he did not. While Lyrique's screech was noted and heeded, and so he jumped up high with all his might, lance in bloodied hand.Â

There was a breathless moment as he glanced down at the ground form high above, overlooking the scene. He hovered in the air for what felt like a millennium, watching below before he began falling straight down again.

After Mitari jumped, Lyrique found herself looking across a hundred meters of snow and heretics into the face of an oncoming Dragoon. A familiar face, once bright with color, now pale and cold, the hair thin and brittle, the eyes pale. But it was him. She knew him. It made sense. It made her sick.

Lyrique went limp mid-charge and fell at full speed, hitting the rough stone earth that the snow concealed and tumbling hard. Snow and dirt flew up as she careened like a metal-clad ragdoll for nearly twenty meters before she came to a stop right where Mitari had been, laying face-down with her limbs skewed in painful directions.

The heretic dragoons continued on as the had been, only now they were going to converge on her instead.

She stirred, slowly, her limbs straightening out one by one.

Too slowly. If she were to get up now and run away, she could escape.

But Lyrique only pulled herself to her knees, returned her gaze to the heretic dragoon with the familiar face. And that face smiled at her as five unholy lances extended towards her, and they converged on Lyrique Midichante in a rush of snow and black metal. A small blizzard erupted outward from that point, spiraling upward into the sky to consume the descending form of Mitari.

In the blind column of white, several seconds after it swallowed him, Mitari would be struck by the rapidly ascending form of Lyrique Midichant. The momentums of the two bodies momentarily negated one another, causing them to hang in the air for another second. Clinging to Mitari with one hand covered in black blood, Lyrique's helmet was missing, along with massive chunks of her armor. Her red hair shook in the wind, failing to hide the dead look in her eyes. She watched the white around them in complete disinterest. Her off-hand was unarmored, and her thin fingers were holding by its hair the dismembered head of the familiar heretic dragoon.

"Mitari," she said, while they lingered in the air without sight of the ground. "Can you still fight?"

He could see nothing of the fight below or what had happened. A flurry of snow blocked his vision, and the heavy impact of Lyrique as she shot up and ran into him confused his brain and senses. He vaguely felt a hand clinging to his ragged form and straightened himself to recognize words and Lyrqiue herself at least.

"Yes." The answer was simple, straight-forward. He was badly injured like she was, but his body wasn't completely broken yet. Probably a mixture of adrenaline and healing magicks had him thinking he could still move when in reality he should have been dying on the ground.Â

But the moment of silence and clarity was broken by the dying roar of the dragon. It hurt Mitari's ears, and he cringed at the unholy sound. But not for long, as the dragon's powerful wings knocked away the snow that covered them. The dragon's roar was barely an instant's warning before the teeth and the lances were upon them. One dragon and four heretic dragoons rose to them as they fell to earth. And they were at the mercy of the dragon and his heretics.Â

Mitari did the only thing he could think of as the dragoon's rush for them. He threw his body in front of her as best he could in mid air and watched with nothingness as a lance from the heretics impaled itself through his chest. His body convulsed for a moment. The moment had felt so long, but it was only a short few seconds and again they were falling, spiraling towards the infested unholy ground.

Lyrique noticed Mitari's seeming death with half a glance to one side, registering it dully. She was not so cold that she did not care. But compared to everything else that happened, what was this? Just one more thing for her to lose.

She put similar emphasis on her own life, lazily catching an extended lance in her chest, the point smashing through her ruined arm and pushing into her flesh. She could almost feel the black heretic blood on her clothes mingling with her own red blood. Her expression was bored, her lips turned down and insult.

The dragoon that had struck her smiled for a moment, and then his head snapped to one side as the toe of Lyrique's sharp boot ripped a jagged line through his helm. She stomped on his shoulder with shattering force, knocking him off of her and pushing her back up into the air. His lance pulled from her flesh, and her pierced lung began to fill with blood. The dragoon fell away and was knocked aside by the dragon that still ascended.

Lyrique still held onto Mitari by his shirt, the dragoon that had killed him hanging near them in the air and tethered to them by his weapon. The teeth were coming.

Dead, perhaps not. Dying, perhaps so. Mitari went limp in shock for a few moments, hardly registering what was happening. All he could see in front of him was the pointed jagged teeth of the dragon and his minions, faint specks of black hovering around them.Â

He inhaled sharply, muscles moving on their own accord. If this was to be his death, then he was going to die in a blaze of glory.Â

Mitari reached down and grasped Lyrique's hand, moving to free his shirt either by ripping the fabric to just unfurling her hand.Â

The dragon that had been below her blasted past her with a violent thrash of wing and claw, but it did not do more than shake her, and Lyrique's expression did not falter. She spied the shaft of her lance between its teeth, still lodged in its throat. A streak of black blood bubbled from the wound as it rose away.

"I'm going to do it." Mitari whispered, just barely loud enough that Lyrique might hear him. "I'm going to kill that dragon. And when I kill it, you'll believe me that I could have been a great Dragoon." And with that, he pulled himself together, pushing his leg off Lyrqiue to rocket her downwards and him up to the dragon.

Lyrique didn't even spare the thought to which him luck, nor to wonder if he would succeed or not. The heretic Dragoon still held the lance that had impaled the Miqo'te, but as Mitari kicked off of her, she took the heretic by an eye socket with her clawed fingers. Under such pains, the man let go, and let Mitari keep the lance, too. He pulled the lance from his own chest at the same time and bellowed a roar back at the dragon, heading lance first for its teeth.

Lyrique was thrown downward, a decapitated head in one hand, and in the other was a head with a writhing heretic at the end of its neck. She did not concern herself with the fact that Mitari had injured her in using her as a launching platform. The disrespect of his action was far worse than that, and it did not measure near the other insults of the day.

The Dragoon whose eye-socket she held struck at her hand with supernatural strength to dry and dislodge it. Lyrique too the blow and added her own strength to the gesture, and ripped her claws through his skull. The man's helmet shattered, bits of bone and dark gray brain splattering into the air. She let go of the man as his body seized violently, leaving him to die either before or after he hit the ground.

Mitari launched skyward, lance forward as he rushed to the dragon's maw. Air rushed past them, and suddenly his body tremored from the impact upon the black bloody teeth. The teeth, and it felt like every bone in his body, shattered and still the momentum from his jump pushed him forward still. Through the mouth of the beast, his lance ripped through flesh and blood shot out like foutains at him, coating Mitari in a thick hot black blood. Yet still the force pushed through, his lance carved through the soft internal flesh of the dragon. Its throat sliced to bits and still Mitari flew straight through. First the lance appeared at the back of its throat, and suddenly the flesh blew open with the greatness of Mitari's force.Â

A shower of black blood hissed as it settled upon the snowy landscape and Mitari just another large drop of blood. The dragon could make no noise other than to flail and die as it fell to the ground with a tremendous thud, crushing a good portion of the remaining heretics and minor dragons.

Lyrique was crouching on the ground not far from where the dragon fell, and she watched the Miqo'te shaped glob of gore fall into the snow. The heretics and the lesser dragons were not harassing her. The last two dragoons -- she'd glanced their faces as they passed by, both familiar -- had continued into the sky away from her after she had killed the last, abandoning the dragon to Mitari's attack and, from what she could tell, vanishing. Though she didn't trust it.

The Lady of Midichante stood up crookedly and walked. She did not run, leap, or fly. She walked to the corpse of the dragon, to where she'd seen the orphan fall. The heretic forces and dragons began to disperse around her, neither attacking her nor pursuing the survivors, but universally moving back towards the keep. Likely to occupy it again, or finish demolishing it. She couldn't bring herself to care.

"Mitari!" she called, looking into the black-bloodied snow.

There was silence that only the muted snow could bring after a battle. Laying mostly broken and drowning in dragon blood, Mitari was somewhere. His head swam and he knew not where he was, only that he had done the one thing he had always set out to do. He could die like this and he would be alright. He had become a real dragoon. He had killed a dragon. He had saved so many people. It would have been what his mother wanted. She would have been sad to see him die, but happy he could die in such a way. Not gunned down by Garlean scum as innocents, but a brave and mostly honorable man.Â

Fading somewhere on the line between death and life, his body choked out the blacken blood from his mouth in a singular sick cough.

The sharp point of Lyrique's boot kicked Mitari's arm. "Stop being lazy. If you've got a soulstone on you then you need to act like it."

Mitari coughed heavily again, spitting up black blood and bile and rolling over to his side to vomit what little remain in his stomach. It took a few moments to try and shakily regain some sort of consciousness, but he managed to look hazily up at Lyrique.

The Lady Midichante waited patiently. She pulled herself up into a proper posture and gazed at the horizon, but inwardly she was in ribbons. It showed only in her eyes, which bore a tired despair, and her shoulders which heaved in desperate need of breath. When she noticed Mitari looking up at her, she spoke in a strained voice that sounded either pained or angry, "Can you move or not?"

Mitari let out a long soft breath. He just laid there breathing for a few moments before slowly pushing himself onto his knees. "I... can..." he breathed out slowly, feeling dizzy and half dead.

"Then find me at Dragonhead and I'll see to it you receive medical care. If you aren't mistaken for a heretic and killed on sight." She turned abruptly stumbled and reset herself. Inhaled and exhaled and began to walk away. The decapitated head still dangled from one hand.

Mitari only let out another long exhale before his eyes fluttered shut and his broken body slowly became limp.

After a few steps, Lyrique looked over her shoulder. When she saw Mitari slumped down in the snow, she turned to look at him and said, "Don't sleep here or you'll freeze to death! Don't make me carry you to Dragonhead!"

Mitari didn't reply, only remained still as the falling snow slowly began to bury him.

"Mitari!" And she paused, "Did you die?" After another long moment with no response, Lyrique let her composure snap like a stressed buttress, first sagging forward and then collapsing completely into the snow. The head she was carrying slipped from her fingers and she pitched forward, falling on her face. For a moment, she just lay there like this, her shoulders shaking. The snow muffled the sobbing until she stirred, and then the woman's crying was unfairly loud in the snow.

Vauge sounds flittered past Mitari's ears. He heard the sounds of a woman crying. The movement of snow, something that had become familiar to his ears over the years. But they died on his mind which didn't yet stir, although the sound of a crying woman always bothered his very soul.Â

Lyrique pulled off her last gauntlet and threw it away like something worthless, and washed her hands in the snow. She lifted snow and pushed it into her face repeatedly, scrubbing frantically to get the black blood off her features. Ice froze in her eyebrows when she was done. Icicles hung from her hair.

Slowly, she composed herself again.

Then she stomped over to where Mitari lay in the snow and unburied him. First, she checked to see if he was alive, finding that he was, however vaguely. Then she sought the soulstone of the heretic. Her intention was to take it from him, but she hesitated when she realized without its power he would likely die before he received any medical attention. Not that she was in the habit of caring, but...

With the decapitated head back in her right hand, she took Mitari by the collar in her left hand and began to pull him through the snow.

Eventually, the feeling of rough movement across the landscape and the black blood being wiped from parts of his body as he was dragged stirred Mitari's mind and he wearily reached up and grabbed at Lyrique's wrist.Â

"I can walk..." he slurred at her stubbornly, as he could only assume it would be Lyrique dragging a half dead man through the Coerthas snow.

The Lady stopped walking and looked back to Mitari, her green eyes framed by ice-laden red hair as she stared down at the man for several seconds. And then she said, "You don't need to. I can get you there."

"No... I..." Mitari half-frowned, slapping weakly at her wrist before his arm limply fell back to the ground as it was dragged along again. There were a few moments of silence before he could muster up the energy to speak again. "A lady shouldn't... carry her... disobedient servant through the... snow..."

"No she shouldn't," Lyrique agreed, directing her gaze forward and continuing to walk. "And a knight should not let himself be dragged. But we'll not speak of it."

"A... knight..." Mitari repeated the words in a slurred somewhat delirious haze. Was she really calling him that? It was as much acknowledgement from her as he could ever hope to get, and somehow... he felt less like dying now.

Lyrique wordlessly dragged him on. She found the trail left in the snow by the survivors who had left the keep and began to follow it, using all of the strength in her soulstone just to keep walking forward in the snow, maintaining her grip on the broken man.

Mitari remained wordless like Lyrique, just letting her drag his body somewhat roughly through the snowy fields. He could only hope that they didn't run into anymore dragons, heretics, or corrupted dragoons.

Camp Dragonhead was not a holding of the Midichante family. Not by a long shot. It belonged to one of the High Houses, several orders above the Midichantes, but the place was a friendly refuge to them. And the Midichante family was given a building of its own, albeit a small one. Lyrique Midichante held court in a small five-meter room without windows, a single desk sitting centered. The Lady occupied it wearily.

It had been a weak since the fall of the Midichante keep, and she had mostly recovered her mobility. Pain and a need for sleep and medicine remained, but she was trying to keep herself busy. Even so, the desk was pristine and empty, bare wood. Two attendants, both Elezen women, stood off in the corners of the room and watched the Lady, but she did not look at them.

This was the place to which Lyrique Midichante had summoned Mitari, with a message promising the formalizing of his knighthood, which she had promised on a whim on the worst day of her life. She stared at the grain of the wood on the desk, thinking about that decision. Her red hair, cut much shorter, hung over her features as she pondered.

Mitari was not faring well. Even with the medicine and medications the extent of damage was beyond the capacity of Camp Dragonhead to heal. He needed the healing capacity of the warm waters of Camp Bronzelake, and thus was soon to be sent off to the place.

But first was his meeting with the Lady Midichante.

The white-haired miq'ote knocked tentatively on the door. He was a mess of bruises and bandages and swollen injuries. But at least he was limping around decently these days. It was something about the dragon's blood he was covered in, seeping into his injuries, that had made them so difficult to heal.

Lyrique nodded to one of the women in the room, and the attendant moved towards the door. The Lady stood from her seat. She was not wearing armor, but instead a dress, blue and decorated with a great number of silver chains and crystal. They shifted on her body as she rose, and she composed herself before the door opened to the wounded orphan outside.

Mitari tentatively glanced about the mostly empty room. Just... Lyrique in some fancy dress and other Elezen. Always more elezen. He limped forward into the room, still hazy eyes, from the medication of course, taking in the room before settling on Lyrique.

There was no chair to offer to Mitari, so instead, "I know you're not recovered yet and going to leave soon. That's why we need to talk. I'll be brief." She gestured to her attendant and the door closed. "There's suspicion you've been corrupted by dragon's blood. Do you still have that soulstone on you?"

Mitari watched the attendants leave and quietly turned his attention back to Lyrqiue. Corrupted? Of course they would think such a thing. He came back practically chocking on dragon's blood and had used a corrupted dragoon's soulstone.Â

He paused. Should he tell her such a thing?Â

"I do." He finally answered and pulled the small stone from his pocket to show her.

She did not react to that. She had not expected anything else, not with how Mitari had been talking and acting while in possession of it. Lyrique had mixed feelings about that behavior. She said, "I want you to put it down and leave it here."

Mitari hesitantly looked to the stone. How could she ask that of him...? After all he'd done for them? A frown flashed across his broken features. He understood why... and yet. The miqo'te stepped forward and placed it gently on her desk.

"I want another one. I want to be a Dragoon." He insisted quietly.

Lyrique reached out a single finger, set the very tip of her fingernail upon the corrupt soulstone, and moved it aside. She said, "I could make you a Dragoon. I have that authority. I am now the head of my family."

Mitari's ears fell. Then... her father hadn't made it? He had tried so hard to keep the old man alive and yet... All those efforts for naught.Â

"I want to be a Dragoon." He repeated, voice devoid of the once passionate calls for knighthood.

"My brother led the attack on our keep," she explained, ignoring his request a second time. "My brother, a dragoon. I took his head as proof. He was corrupted. He corrupted the others. He attacked his own keep. My father fell under suspcion and was taken to have his loyalty tested yesterday." She spoke as though telling an uninteresting story. "He was thrown from the cliffs. He passed the test. I am the head of my family now."

Her brother? Mitari looked up to Lyrique, his eyes wet but yet not crying. It was... horrific. Her own family... her own brother. How could he do such a thing? The dragon's corruption? There was something more there. There was more than just a dragon's corrupted touch. There had to have been hatred there that the dragon took hold of. Of this, Mitari knew at least. Dragons were corrupting... but they had to have the seeds to hatred first because they could so easily take over someone.

As for her father... Mitari closed his eyes and said a silent prayer to Halone. He hoped that the man would find peace finally.

"I will make you an honorary knight of Midichante," Lyrique said, and knocked the heretics soulstone off the desk. "I will not make you a dragoon. My answer is no."

Mitari looked up to her like he had been betrayed. His hands clenched into tight fists. "Why?" He asked, torn between fury and despair.

The Lady turned her green eyes on Mitari and said in a frigid voice, "You need to leave now. Take the mercy that you are being sent away, or soon they'll throw you from the cliffs as well."

"I killed a dragon! I helped save as many as I could! Why!? Why would they question me? Or you? Or your father? It doesn't..." Mitari winced as he gestured widely by habit. He put his hands back to his side and looked at the ground, feeling as small as he had when he'd first been taken in by them. There was silence before Mitari turned to leave.

"I WILL be a dragoon." He declare beneath his breath, anger seeping into his words.

"Hey!" Lyrique called before Mitari got out of the room, "If you see U'tania around. I miss him. He would've made a good Dragoon."

All Mitari felt as he left was ice in his chest at her words. Miss him? Would have made a good Dragoon? How he had begged and pleaded and stolen and racked himself raw to become a Dragoon when he still bore that name. And now she would say such a thing? It was too much. He felt no sorrow when he left. Only fury.

And he would leave the keep that day, stopping by the former Midichante Keep keep to pry another soulstone and a dragoon's armor off a dead heretic. He felt nothing but righteous fury when he tore the garments off the dead body and reclaimed a new soulstone. He was a Dragoon. Regardless of whether that woman admitted it or not. He was a Dragoon. And he was better than she would ever be.

.

The Orphan and the Lady Midichant [story, Ishgard pre-ARR, ooc welcome]

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes