Freyd

Ilridge had been bad enough, but worse required facing if the Frontlines were ever to manage clearing this forsaken floor. Freyd had finally felt certain enough that their fortified beachhead could hold, a dozen players strong. Each were armored as well as any of the vanguard, though rotating their ranks had proven wise. Just staying on twenty-nine for too long took its toll on anyone's sanity. Immediate needs tended to, he'd forayed away from the main camp to investigate, of all things, an abandoned church. High on a nearby hill, faded signs spun and torn for added confusion, he'd gleane

Quick to recover his blade, Freyd's gaze scoured the black sands and sinfully still waters in case the lich had other plans, or they'd accidentally spawned some other horror in their wanderings. No dice. Good. A breath held was finally expelled and a smile wistfully donned as he turned to regard his companion. "Well done." No excitable praise. No hearty huzzah. Ebullient outbursts were hardly the man's style. But praise was praise, and from a stoic pragmatist, hard earned. "You defeated your enemy, and fought in tune with an ally. Not flawless, perhaps, but battle never is." A sm

Certain that Nymoria had gleaned the fight's pattern, Freyd sidestepped the first of a pair of newly risen skeletal warrior risen from dark Stygian waters to accost them. She cut one down an instant later, the mob's hollow eyes failing to even register her presence. It was too taken by the rantings of the decrepit figure ambling awkwardly onto a freshly righted disk, desperate to make its escape. "Inconceivable! Have you no respect for the will of the dead?! If I still had my Io's cane, I'd beat you senseless with it! Never mess with a Stygilian, when death is on the line!" Glowing

Permitting himself a satisfied smirk at the potential breakthrough, Freyd watched with muted glee at Nymoria's strike found its intended mark and upended the strange skiff upon which the withered lich perched. Damage and impact combined to tip and list the platform, more than enough to toss its rickety passenger off side and dump him unceremoniously to the sands below. 'Mitch' hit hard, and face first, leaving a lovely macabre impression of himself upon the Stygian shore, expletive curses barking out in code anathema to the game's translation matrix. Fitting. Continuing the strange dan

"Parlour tricks? Really? I expected better." The taunt had its intended effect, as the alleged 'father' overreached in his own shadowy gambit and exposed himself. Parrying the boss' blow, Freyd gave ground to further aggravate the gross thing's error, exposing its flank for Ryo, who deftly and precisely exploited. Where others saw horridly glaring yellow beacons in a blighted darkness, the two of them peered through a thinly cast veil to seize their opportunity. "Nice work," Freyd called to his impromptu fishing partner, both men clearly unaffected by the darkness. By some quirk of f

"Mitch? Where did Mitch come from?! Uh... just keep doing that slashing thing. It's working well." Not that Freyd truly minded the dubbing, given his own penchant for nicknaming mobs to help with taunting during battle. It would likely also take time for the algorithm to learn and adapt to their individual thoughts and turns of phrase. The very fact she was receiving any input at all was promising. "That's it! You have them." Undead reinforcements fell nearly as quickly as they rose from the brackish black, returned to watery graves with a shrapnel-like splash of shards, a few deig

"What? Can't hear... oh, right. No lips." With an eerily practiced nonchalance, Freyd figured out the problem after flitting his attention between the monster's features and watching Nym, demonstrating the very subject of their earlier conversation. Academic debate over communications quickly fell to the wayside as she drew her weapon and charged its gathered minions, most of which fell before they'd even had a chance to fully rise from their waterside graves. Blade drawn with a telltale snikt, Freyd moved at her beckoning to down the last of the miniature skeletal horde, lopping the lo

"No, not everything," he responded to her worry that he'd opened up the channel to all possible inputs. That would have been bad. "It only converts party chat. Might still be a little cluttered in a raid, but for testing purposes, with only two of us here, it should work fine. We can already turn off most of the system noise, like trade requests and all the other stuff people always turn off in MMO's, so this should do the same." More hope than certainty, Freyd scratched pensively at his beard, as if that might somehow stroke some insight. It did not. "Line of sight shouldn't be an i

Wandered in again, as usual, staring blankly at the same unchanging walls wan wondering why the heck he had to drum a hundred pointless words about the same old thing. All he was going to do was wander over to the same old kiosk, point at the same old things and stow them away until the next raid anyway. Where was the need? Why bother? The goods were marginally useful, at best. He'd blown through a year's worth against Callisto to negligible effect. Frustrating would be putting it mildly. And so he did the thing. Chose the thing. Stored the thing. Grumbled about the thing. And, like

She was clearly struggling with some of the concepts, and Freyd knew he tended to go too big brain, more often than not. Maybe if he worked to keep the language plainer, it might help. Patience suffused as he calmly repeated the concept in, hopefully, simpler terms. "Turning text to speech is old tech. Cardinal can turn thoughts into audible, understandable words. We just need to tune it to translating what you're saying into something easier for others to follow and understand." Opening up several settings, he already knew that more sensitive options had either vanished or been

"Call it a business arrangement," Freyd replied to Acanthus, regarding his connection to Ren. "I like to invest silently in Aincrad's up and coming players. He likes to help people. We came to a mutually beneficial agreement." [description of travels]. "Ren's an idealist, not necessarily well suited for the rigors of the front lines or the harsh realities of this world. Let's just say that his neighbors and competitors don't always appreciate his charitable demeanor and occasionally need reminding that pranking him is off limits." "Kessel Run." Freyd snorted at the reference while

"You're speaking now, aren't you? The medium may be different, but it works. I hear you." Her frustrations were perfectly understandable, and clearly reaching over a threshold requiring patience and delicacy. Not traits most would normally associate with him, and wrongly so. Freyd could give masterclasses in long term planning, but learning to actually developing the emotional intelligence to devise the underpinnings of a human soul remained a novelty. Until recently, at least. Calamitous change had a way of altering personal perspective. In this case, for the better, or so he hoped.

Straightening his stance, as his grandfather had taught him long ago, Freyd clasped his fist in the palm of its opposing hand before him and bowed slightly to offer thanks. Something within felt the need for the formality of it. Maybe recognition of the silent magnitude of her acceptance? Maybe it just felt right and respectful? Yeah. The latter rang true. "Thank you. It would be my honor to travel with you." Genuine relief visible in the more weathered lines of his bearded face. He had definitely changed since their last meeting, in ways that dwarfed the altering of his appearanc

Clouds gathered in the distance, thunder pairing oddly with intermittently with stray flashes of lightning, like the two couldn't quite get the rhythm right. Disharmony reigned in the Whisper's heart and mind as he left Aruyt behind him, traversing the open central plains, booted footsteps setting a steady cadence like drums of war that resonated in his ears as much as his mind's eye. One inescapable face occupied his memories, ragged, dirty and relieved from a rescue done in the name of virtue. She had questioned the point. His replies sounded hollow in the wake of her defeat. And, if h

Wide eyed miniature faunes halted their games and ran in terror at the sight of a the faceless black-clad figure that emerged from the gleaming white portal arch in the centre of Aruyt. Storming into existence with the force and rancor of an overwound tornado, he marched through the quaint forest settlement with such determination and purpose that the locals instantly intuited murderous intent. As children scattered from their streetscape playgrounds in search of immediate shelter, adults witnessing the scene unfold fell silent and watched his passage as one might watch a hurtling train boun