Mishiro

a soft hum of agreement follows pinball's chatter. behind the stagnant tree, a path opens. they continue to descend. content with her place a few steps behind pinball, mishiro considers their surroundings in the halcyon space between enemy waves. there are small flowers, weeds, really, blooming between the stones that she carefully avoids stepping on. the walls narrow the further they venture into the dungeon but once spilled out of the claustrophobic throat and faced with two prowling wolves, the area spreads in allowance for a fight. at least merely being here does not bring them immedi

her hand drops from his sleeve when the moment has been quietly tucked away. she listens. the strange truth is, she knows so little of pinball outside of their shared history. pinball begins and ends on the day she dropped him a generous change for knife tricks and on everything she has seen and heard from him since. there is a name she mutters into the air between them. (she decides: not today.) there are questions she thinks she’ll receive answers to if she asks. but aren’t ten years more than enough? she thinks, they ought to be. ‘before’ is a momentous breach. she listens, a

# 237454: LD 4: +4; 5 total

# 237365: LD 1: +1; 1 total

"great! thanks. take as long as you need." and with not another pause, sibyl wanders off in the direction of the pallankuli tables, leaving her to peer down at the card they had pressed into her palm. map data. mishiro but closes her hand over it, thankful and faintly apologetic. but it is no trouble at all. "yes. let's be off," she tells pinball. she about turns and leads him outside, into the soft, quiet night of a ronbaru temporarily emptied. for a while they walk side by side in silence. the lights of the festival fade far behind until they are nothing more than a vague spla

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one. | two. | three. This post is best experienced in light mode. SHE TURNS THE UNLIT LAMP IN HER HANDS UNTIL SHE IS HOLDING UP THE SIDE THAT BEARS A LINE OF BLACK INK. UNDER A BLINKING STREET LIGHT; DESERTED NORTH RONBARU, LAND STRIPPED TO BONE, SONGS AND LAUGHTER FADING FAR BEHIND; SHE READS THE FIRST INSCRIPTION. | ‘To our parents who guide our journey, we grant of you this blessing.’ [MISHIRO]: I don’t have parents. SHE IS ILL-FITTED TO THIS SUBJECT. HOW MUST SHE REFLECT, THEN? [MISHIRO]: Do you count? SHE IS ASKING TOO, JUST TO BE

she turns the unlit lamp in her hands until she is holding up the side that bears a line of black ink. under the hundred lights of the plaza, she reads the first inscription. 'to our parents who guide our journey--' “for me as well, please.” she almost doesn't believe herself. pinball -- unstealthed in the thick of a festive crowd? she looks, almost without moving her head, still holding the peach half shape of her diya. she hasn't spoken to him in two weeks. the warmth and verve emanating from their surroundings seem to sand down his edges in a manner entirely different from th

they break for food at a secluded corner then resume their appreciation of the festivities. mishiro, in search of more unique items, methodically goes from stall to stall to try each one's offerings. perhaps fermata had missed something in its initial sweep. it is not impossible. there are vanity shops wherever one looks, selling street food, outfits, tattooing services, and a half hour with a rented mount. more games. from a simple ball toss, she wins a feather. she immediately knows what she wants to do with it. the problem is sibyl, who jealously curls a hand over loth's gift. ("one mo

"two orders, coming up!" "thank you." the line moves forward. she has two drinks on a paper carrier, a bag of steaming hot samosas, and her earlier winnings. she shuffles the items around in her arms so that she is not being scalded by her newest purchase, and gently pushing her way out of the crowd surrounding the stall, she looks for sibyl. they are gone. a dark blur crawls up the edges of her vision. (if she lets this one out of her sight.) she catches their silhouette, darkened underneath the shadow of the tent across. she hurries over, flooded by irrational relief

"oh, um!" an turns bashful at the woman's gratefulness. "y-your-- i mean, please don't forget them next time!" she says first to morningstar, her hands clasped over her chest. then back to his friend. "he helped me a lot, too." "why were you at the 25th?" an smiles brightly. "money." "ah." seamlessly, an turns back to morningstar and his still unidentified friend. she doesn't need her to guide the conversation at all -- she had only needed a small nudge. an's sincerity would have reached others eventually, whether or not mishiro was here. she feels comfortable sl

their honored guildmaster had been bested by a simple game of chance: he had ventured farther than most pieces in the game but was unfortunately brought back to the start by the snake of 'greed.' the stem of the peacock feather ends up woven into sibyl's hair. mishiro thinks he made far better use of his luck than they were giving him credit for. she moves her piece one tile forward, and to her surprise, sibyl asks for the die. "another 'one'? really?" sibyl hides a laugh behind a cough. "karma strikes the entire household--" mishiro studies the prize list again, disappointedly

a corpse is talking. two weeks. two weeks since those messages. she was dizzy, sleepless, confused, paranoid, reading through a history that met its end two years ago that cardinal insists was hers. she could not trust her memories. at a certain point, this extends to her senses. is it the end or a portent? the loss tears at her. she hadn't left her house. had rifled through her planners, her records which she faithfully kept every day for years, duplicated the work she had done for fermata since she assumed her most recent p

-> combat: st-i vs m?steri??s br??er

in the forest she peers over pinball’s shoulder to look at the dungeon map but the world around them is already shifting. the ground pries apart to reveal a staircase, and she waits, quiet, for pinball to make his final preparations. “...” she turns her eyes to their health bars. three mass heal crystals in her pocket and a teleport each between them. the moment he goes, mishiro follows. their steps echo as they descend. the domain is spacious, walled off on all sides by stone, and still as brightly lit as though they were still outside even if she couldn’t quite tell where the

"ah. a house?" tented hands raise to her lips; she feels faintly embarrassed. one would think, having lived in sibyl's estate all these years, that she would have pried through the mechanics behind it enough times to remember. so far, all she had troubled herself with was the security system. "i never needed that before. it must have slipped my notice. but, pin..." they had stopped and the question hung in the air. lost, mishiro gentles her next words. "i'd hate to impose." she does wonder where the line is, sometimes. the teleport whisks them away to glyndebourne. mishiro, blinking

something is wrong. she is on the ground, nearly half of her life gone, paralyzed. not stunned: the part of her mind that isn't yet filled with clamor supplies. stuns have a cooldown, paralysis doesn't. she learned this lesson herself. it need only be inflicted once, then chaining it endlessly becomes numerically possible. she is on the ground, feuding uselessly with her unmoving body, but the system's decrees are absolute and where else is there left for you to go but to turn into a long, drawn-out scream for her ears alone? her injured hand is cradled to her chest. shay stands in front

“i am,” mishiro insists. suddenly conscious, she crosses an arm over herself, fingernails digging into the opposite elbow. the thick fabric of her gloves dulls the bite. “thanks for asking. really. i’ll… recover on the way there.” they need a little more time. “and if my energy hits full capacity and i still feel off, i promise i’ll tell you. how is yours already restored? surely not the water? i hope i didn’t drink the water wrong, otherwise we are really calling this off.” she eyes their status bars, jealous, for just a second longer before she starts to busy herself with her

she's still tracing the line of cerberus' claws with her eyes. he had looked back at her, once, in that close, watchful way of his that leaves her feeling torn, then something else drew him from her, and had she not already pulled away, and were they in any other place than this, she might have, thoughtlessly, curled the hand she was holding him with into a loose fist. crumpled the layer of his cloak into her palm. mooring. -- what is it? tell me. -- his hand is on her shoulder and she can’t make distance. if he says so, she thinks. she tries to cut herself from the tangled spool of the rest o

the whispers stop. three hounds and another head are gone and she nearly drops to the ground herself. in her periphery she thinks she glimpses the barest suggestion of pinball's image behind a curtain of triangles but she doesn't look. mishiro comes up to cerberus and walpurgisnacht drinks the last of her energy. she swings, sinks the blade deep into the remaining head's neck. the entire body splits into thirds. cerberus, inferno's rage, falls. in its owner's wake, the temperature of the cavern slowly drops. fires dampen as though they had been fueled by cerberus' soul

her rapier slams into the armor, a downwards cut intersecting with the damage left from shay's attack. she is, briefly, weightless: hollow inside, the guardian melts, its plating split in a cross, and with nothing to hold her upward, she lands less than gracefully before the carved throne. she doesn't sheathe her sword. "take the final hit bonus if there is one," shay called, "i don't care." she'll take it -- the [crystal of support] is on the right arm of the throne, split into perfect halves for the two who had slain the guardian. she's almost ankle-deep in useless scraps of plundered treasu

but she doesn't stop sneaking glances. "oh, gosh, that girl is circling him like a cougar." "you would like that." mishiro, having since turned her eyes back to the sea, sees an in her periphery, flushing a deep, deep red. "huh?" the exhalation escapes her like a wheeze and she reaches over the space between their beach towels to lightly smack mishiro on the shoulder. again and again. she endures the harmless barrage; better that than being labeled voyeurs or having to deal with an impossibly more timid an. "says you?! i'm the one doing the circling--" "as if that's any les

"but--!" no time to speak. no time to think. a battle is an instinctual art and mishiro, the dilettante, has hardly learned the steps. red flashes at the periphery of her view, informing her that the system has recognized pinball's denial. his knife digs into cerberus's skull. reinforcements emerge from the surrounding pools of magma and two cerberus heads crash into pinball. she's pushed to the side to make way for his maneuvering as she realizes even the hounds are swerving around her to pile on their master's mark. she can barely see the orange among the red. alcohol washes over her to

her mass heal crystal is in pieces before she can even think. liquid fire lines her throat and it narrows the senses she is so desperately keeping attuned to the flow of the battle. pinball's hp looks too low for what's about to come. he doesn't have mitigation. that's the half of her build, distressingly underutilized, because, because-- "pinball." could she not just fell a third of the beast? if only she could live with his disappointment. "pinball. switch with me on this one! let's divide its attention before it calls the hounds." the third head: cerberus is th

an brightened the screen of her interface, allowing mishiro to peer at it as they walked. to her credit, her quest log wasn't barren. mishiro's was, save for the quests that yielded her the martial arts skill and her crafting profession. she had been out and about as her tier implied, just inconsistent. "here it is. the old one." the tip of an's finger hovered over a tab, guiding mishiro's gaze. beneath it was one quest, marked completed, and three titles following in faint gray font. unselectable but for the first. she lightly bumped an's hand to bring up the summary window and she found